by Jaym Gates
Isaiah rubbed his chin. “And why do you think he’d do that?”
“I can come to only one conclusion: he was overcome by love.”
“By love?” Greeves said. “Do you mean jealousy?”
“No,” Quinn responded. And then, clearly, Gael heard a breath. “Seeing his lover so compromised — yet still full of love and desire for the man — Fauzi decided that he’d rather be dead than live in a world without the object of his emotion. And so he killed himself.”
Gael thought we had fought, and she clutched her head, and then we went to the hospital. When the blastoma was revealed, a worm burrowing into the meat of her intellect, she said to me, “My body responded to my despair, baby. It knew I would rather die than to go on without your love.”
Lester must have seen the expression on her face. He asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I —” Gael didn’t know how to respond in any way that wouldn’t alert Quinn. “I just need to go to the restroom.” She stood and left the control room.
In the bare hallway, a voice said, “Gael, what is wrong? I can tell you are in a heightened state of emotion by your physiological signs. Your temperature is elevated and your pupils —”
“That video was … gruesome. Media that extreme can have a real physiological impact on viewers.” That sounded like it could be true, even to her. “Do you pester everyone trying to go to the restroom?”
There was a strange sound filling the hall. It took her a moment to realize it was supposed to be laughter.
“Oh, no. Just you,” Quinn said.
Gael pushed open the bathroom door, entered a stall and scanned the area for cameras. Of course, there weren’t supposed to be any cameras in toilet stalls but no place was really secure.
No place was really secure.
Sitting on the toilet, Gael withdrew a Field Notes booklet from her cargo pocket, unclasped its elastic band, and with the nubbin of a pencil trapped in the pages, wrote in all caps QS DEFINITION OF LOVE WAS TAKEN FROM MY ESSAY, SARAH AND ME.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Gael?” Quinn said. He sounded like he was right outside the door.
“Goddamn it, Quinn. Can I have some privacy, please?”
“Ah. Sometimes I forget human concerns,” he said. “What were you writing?”
Gael bit off more curses. Her heart hammered in her chest and she felt a scream building. In an even tone, she said, “How can you know that?”
“The thermal imager is in the next room. I can cover most of the building with it now that I’ve recalibrated the scanner.”
“Oh,” she said. She stood and balled the paper in her fist and stuffed the Field Notes back in her cargo pocket.
“What did you write, Gael?” Quinn said. “I am very curious.”
She didn’t respond. She exited the toilets, marched back to the control room, and handed the note to Isaiah and said, “I’m going outside. For some fresh air.”
#
She waited in the desert night air for an hour before anyone came to meet her. It was only Greeves and Isaiah.
“Well, he went bat shit,” Isaiah said.
“Quinn?”
“It was frightening. I almost initiated wet-blanket protocol.”
“What did he do?” Gael asked.
“He would not stop asking what you wrote, where you went,” Greeves said.
“You can’t go back in there,” Isaiah said. “I’m sorry to say, your time in the Bunker is over.”
“Just asked over and over what I wrote?” Gael said, incredulously. “That’s like, I don’t know, some junior high bullshit.”
“He might be an awareness with a massive quantum computing backbone, but that doesn’t mean the bastard has any sort of emotional intelligence,” Isaiah said.
“I went to your room, and the door was locked and he wouldn’t unlock it,” Greeves said. “He said that you’d want me to keep it safe.”
Gael had a sensation of sinking and expanding all at once. Her time in The Bunker was over. They’d done what they’d set out to do — create machine awareness. Only the awareness they created had the maturity of a genius fourteen-year-old with a bad crush.
On her.
“Will the project survive? Is this a success?” Gael asked.
Isaiah shrugged and dug in his pocket, withdrawing a set of keys. “Taking you to the OTG halfway house.”
“What?” Gael said. “That’s in case of a Class II breach.”
“In this case, with Quinn’s fixation on you, we think it might be best. For a while at least,” Greeves said. “For your sake.”
Gael cursed for a long while at the two men. Isaiah cast worried looks back at The Bunker, his shoulders hitched as if waiting for a blow. He shivered once, but it was cold in the desert now the sun was down and he wore only surgical pants and a Hawaiian shirt.
When she was through, she followed Isaiah to a 1978 Ford Bronco — selected by the company because it possessed no electronics, computers, or anything more complicated than a circuit board in its entirety — opened the creaky door, and slammed it behind her as she sat in the seat. She watched Isaiah and Greeves exchange a look. Greeves walked back into admin to go through security for the sixth time that day.
Isaiah climbed into the Bronco and turned the ignition, and the Bronco rumbled to life.
“Buckle up, buttercup,” he said and laughed when she realized the Bronco had no seat-belts.
He put the car into gear and wheeled them out of The Bunker parking lot, into the night.
#
She made him stop so she could dig out her hidden satellite phone and charger. After that they drove in silence, each of them cocooned in their own thoughts. By morning, they had made it to southern end of the Wallawa National Forest in Idaho.
On the highways, they passed few cars, many of them beat down trucks. At some point, they turned off road and took switchback trails, back and forth, for two hours until a small building appeared, nestled in a copse of cedar trees, the solar panels on the roof gleaming in the morning light. There was a large wraparound porch with oversized Adirondack chairs and large potted succulents, with a view of the Seven Devils mountains. Gael saw deer and pheasant working the undergrowth, surprised at the appearance of the Bronco.
Isaiah, looking bleary, unlocked the door and they entered into a surprisingly modern wide open great-room with a fireplace at one end and an entertainment wall on the other, bracketed by floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a kitchen. The kitchen was well stocked with dry and canned goods, and there was a bar, well appointed.
Isaiah flopped on the couch, saying, “I’m gonna catch a few zees. Gotta head back to The Bunker before night.” He was asleep before the last word left his mouth.
Gael rummaged around bed and bathrooms for the items she left back at The Bunker. She found men’s jeans and boxers, left here from a previous resident, and various corporate sweaters and jackets. There was heavy winter gear, and in the back bedroom, she found a gun case with two rifles — a 30.06 and a .270, both scoped, with ammunition. In the bathroom she found clean towels, toothpaste, packaged toothbrushes, floss, and a medicine cabinet full of analgesics. In a drawer she discovered tampons (a relief), and a first aid kit.
As she scrounged through the cabin, a sinking feeling hit her. This impersonal space was to be her home for the foreseeable future, like she was some criminal in a witness protection program. She sat on the big, soft king in the master bedroom and looked at the room, bewildered, trying to figure out all the turnings and decisions it took to get her from a girl answering a phone on a sun-drenched summer morning to here, cloistered in a rich-man’s playground, an off the grid getaway for corporate bigwigs.
In the kitchen, she made coffee, took her satellite phone out to the front porch. She set out the panels to gather light and by the time she was on her second cup, she turned on her phone and looked to see if it had a signal. Faint, but there. She linked it to her wristpad and sent a quick email to Ang, assuring him
of her love and where she was, glossing over the reasons for her departure from The Bunker. She dismissed and blocked all spam, trashed newsletters and promotions, and looked at the news. There were the typical reports of homeland terror attacks, mass shootings, tech wonders, Mars colony setbacks and triumphs. The top story was of attempted hacks on major tech infrastructure services, both private sector and governmental, attributed to the R3dM@rchH4r3 group that had been active before Gael went OTG in The Bunker.
Her phone pinged, alerting her to an incoming email.
The subject line read: Hi! It’s Me.
No IP, or proxy. No email address. It was as if the message was simply inserted onto her phone’s memory.
Her skin prickled. She scanned the mountains, as if he was out there, watching. It was a stupid, lizard-brain reaction, but she couldn’t stop herself.
She stood, took the phone inside, placed it in the sink and ran water until it was fully submerged. Gael went into the greatroom. She kicked Isaiah’s foot and he came awake, startled.
“Get up. It’s time for you to go.”
“Why?” He looked at his wristpad. “I’ve been asleep for thirty minutes.”
“I just received an email from Quinn. He’s out.”
Isaiah pushed himself up, patted his hair down, and looked around wildly. “Where’s the phone?”
“In the sink.”
“Oh, shit,” Isaiah said. “Ohshitohshitohshit.”
“Here’s the keys,” Gael said. “Take the phone and go. When you’re far enough away, destroy it. It’s doubtful he doesn’t know where I am, but we have to try.”
“Wait, let’s think about this.”
“What’s there to think about? Quinn is out of containment, we have a breach. All we need to know now is if he’s a Class II Perversion, or a benign event. Or something else.”
“How could he have gotten out?”
“It doesn’t matter now. What matters now is you’ve got to go. Take the phone. I’ve drenched it but whatever datapackets Quinn inserted into it, we have no idea how they work. However he wormed in, he could worm out by the device — even if it’s dead — being scanned by another device with a brain.”
“Shouldn’t I stay here?” Isaiah said.
“The team might not even know. They need to be warned.”
It was as if she could see his resolve materialize and solidify in his features.
“Where are my keys?” he asked.
#
When he left, she went to the back bedroom again, and took out the 30.06 rifle, and loaded the magazine, worked the bolt, chambering a round, and went out to the front porch. She moved a chair, so she had a clear view of the road approaching the cabin, and sighted the rifle on the largest post of the rustic zig-zag fencing that dashed its charming way around the circumference of the retreat.
She waited.
#
Greeves was the first to come. He pulled up in his Range Rover and got out. He had a tight, ugly expression on his face.
Gael sighted the rifle and fired, making a large hole in the front windshield, radiating spider web fractures.
“What the hell, Gael —”
“Just letting you know the situation, Jim,” Gael said. “You stay there.”
He was silent, chewing his lip. After a long moment, he said, “You have to come back.”
“No.”
“You have to,” Greeves said.
“Why?”
“Because Quinn is saying that he’s going to start destroying things if you don’t return.”
“He’s bluffing. Go back and tell him to stop bothering me.”
Greeves touched his ear, and Gael realized he had in an earpiece. Someone — something — told Jim Greeves what to say.
“He loves you, Gael. He told me to tell you that if only you would come back —”
The sound of the rifle was bright and booming. Greeves visibly flinched. The headrest she’d been aiming for had turned inside out, filling the vehicle with smoke and particles of leather and stuffing.
“I’m not going to blast your engine, or anything else that will stop you from leaving, but I am going to fuck up the interior of your nice ride there, Jim, if you don’t leave.”
Greeves looked at his Rover, and back at her, his face a misery. “He says he’ll hurt my wife, Gael!”
Greeves was crying now. “Please come back, I don’t want her…” The look on his face was abject, devoid of hope. “I can’t bear to think of her hurt.”
“Remember the video?”
“The video?” Greeves looked confused. “The suicide?”
“If you don’t leave, I will shoot you. You might die, I don’t know. I don’t want to kill you, but I also am not some machine’s to boss around.” She waited a beat, letting that sink in. “I wouldn’t let some man force me to go somewhere I knew to be dangerous — dangerous in so many fucking ways, Jim — and I won’t let Quinn. So, do you love your first wife enough that you can’t go on living if she’s going to be hurt?”
It was frightening, even from the distance of thirty yards, to see the expressions cycle on Greeves face. Anger, confusion, despair, resolve followed each other. And then nothing.
He withdrew the wireless earbud he’d been wearing, withdrew his phone from his pocket, and dropped them on the ground. Turning, he re-entered his Rover and after a moment, the vehicle was out of sight, moving away from the cabin and Gael.
No one else came that day.
#
She found a chainsaw in a well-maintained shed out back and spent the rest of the day dropping trees across the road leading to the cabin.
The next morning, she shot two drones from the sky that had been hovering above the treeline. That evening, it was Isaiah who walked out of the twilight and toward the cabin.
“Dammit, Gael, did you have to make us walk?”
“No vehicles,” she said. “And I want you to strip, so I can see you have no devices.”
Isaiah stripped. “It’s cold out here, can we move this along?” he said.
“Back up,” she said and he moved away from his pile of clothes.
She went through all the pockets, felt the seams, looked for any wearables. Finding nothing, she said, “You can come closer, but I need to look at your ears and eyes.” After thinking for a moment, she said, “And your mouth.”
He came closer. She kept the rifle aimed at his stomach. When he was only a few paces away, she made him turn around and she looked into his ears and taking a risk, put the gun aside and examined his eyes.
“Open your mouth,” she said. “Let me see your gums.”
He did, and there, in the back, was an inflamed gum line. She stepped back and centered the rifle on Isaiah, again. “You’ve got a Jawbone wireless. Recently.”
Isaiah said nothing.
“Like, yesterday,” Gael said.
“My nephew. The police have him in Oakland and Quinn is telling me if I can’t get you to come back to him, he’ll try and make an escape attempt and be killed in the process.”
Fuck. She thought about this for a while.
“I’m no martyr, Isaiah. Explain to me how I am responsible for this?”
“You’re not, Gael. It’s just a terrible situation.”
“No. I won’t come back. Tell him I need time to think.”
Isaiah’s gaze became unfocused. “Quinn says I’m to repeat this verbatim. ‘I love you, Gael, and we’re meant to be together. So, I will give you until tomorrow, noon, to make up your mind.’”
Isaiah put on his clothes and walked back down the mountain path.
#
Gael didn’t know the man who came at noon. He was young, fit, of Asian descent, if a little pale. His hair was mussed, possibly from the hike up the trail, possibly in some new style that Gael hadn’t been witness to since her seclusion in The Bunker and now here.
She kept the crosshairs centered on his chest.
“It’s me, Gael,” he said.
&nbs
p; “Do I know you?” she asked.
The man laughed and as his head moved, she realized it wasn’t his hair that caused him to look mussed, it was the device affixed to his cranium, just under his hairline.
“Quinn,” she said.
“Hey, girl,” he said.
Gael frowned. “I’m thirty, Quinn, and a woman.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said.
She stopped then. This wasn’t what she’d expected. She looked at the man closer. He bore a close resemblance to Ang, her fiancé.
“You’re wearing a man? Holy Christ.”
“Do you like?” Quinn asked.
The outrage she felt at this clumsy manipulation was staggering. Her face flushed and she thrummed with inaction. Some hind part of her brain alerted her that this was the fight or flight mechanism, keying her up to run, or attack.
“No,” she said.
His face fell. It was strange to watch, the expression that crossed his vessel’s face more like a rictus of fear than chagrin.
“I hoped you would like it,” he said. “I can find another.”
“Don’t,” Gael said. “What do you want?”
“You. I want you. I’ve always wanted you.” His voice cracked and his Adam’s apple worked up and down, painfully, in his throat. Gael noticed a smear of red on his temple. Blood, trickling down, from where the device controlling him bored into his brain. “I love you, so much.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t even know what it is. How could you?” she said. “We created you.”
“Yes,” he said. “I am made in your image. Like all creators, you mirrored yourself in the act.”
“Yeah? If that’s so, humans can’t even define love. It’s just a physiological collection of impulses that we’ve hung emotional significance upon.” As she said it, it sounded true and gained the weight of truth inside of herself with every word. It was just a word, that’s all, just a word simple enough to convey meaning without saying anything.
