by J. Thorn
But the breathing, corporeal bodies of Gabe and Petal sitting next to him in their individual cubicles reminded him that he could dream all he wanted. He would never be the same again.
Chapter 4
Gabriel spun round in his chair. “Good job, man. We’ll do our bit next. Just relax for a bit, yeah?”
“Yeah. Relax. I’ll crack a cold beer while I’m at it.” They weren’t listening. Gabe and Petal were chattering away about stuff Gerry had never heard of before. He just watched, fascinated, as they blended these old tools with current-day technology like modern-day alchemists.
“Demon’s big,” Petal said.
“I’m containing it now. Ya ready for download?” Gabe asked the girl, swirling round in his chair. The multitude of snakes plugged into his brain wrapped and tangled behind him.
“Yeah, give it to me.”
Petal typed furiously at a beige, retro QWERTY keyboard, and her screen monitor flashed with lines of computer code. It was real old. Gerry remembered something about that language in his college days. It was antiquated then, but now it was positively dead. Very low level, almost chip level, which was unheard of now. Outdated symbols: hashes, colons, dashes, dollar signs, and various brackets filled lines on the screen.
Petal’s head thrashed side to side, and she stopped typing. Her goggles turned blood red. She screamed a piercing note of extreme agony.
Gerry leapt out of his chair towards her, but the cables attached to his neck halted his movement with a crack. He crumpled to the floor.
“Leave her, man. She’s containing it,” Gabe said from across the room.
“What are you doing?”
“Exorcising the AI.”
Gerry turned to look at Gabe’s screen, expecting the same code, but instead he saw proper words, old words. He managed to read just a few before Petal screamed and thrashed violently again.
From his limited knowledge of religion—he only had a part of an antique bible, which belonged to his mother—it seemed like a sermon of sorts. Gabe was actually typing biblical commands to the demon, a piece of code, albeit an artificially intelligent piece of code. That idea raised its head again: had someone coded evil?
Minutes of frantic typing from Gabe and screaming from Petal stretched Gerry’s nerves to the snapping point. Sweat dripped from Gabe’s face as he hunched over the keyboard, banging out word after word after word. The screams reached a crescendo and finally died. Gabe collapsed into his chair, wiped the sweat from his brow, and turned to Gerry.
“It’s done.” Gabe pulled the cables from the sockets in his head and rushed over to Petal, who slouched low in her chair.
Gerry unwound himself from the snake nest of cables and moved quickly to the chair. He and Gabe stood either side and looked down at the fragile thing that was once the full-of-bravado Petal.
Her goggles were opaque again, and blood dripped from her lip.
Gerry moved his hand to her pale neck to check for a pulse. Her chest was still; she resembled a corpse.
A delicate hand reached out, weak fingers encircled his wrist.
“Don’t,” Petal said, her voice cracking.
The tip of her tongue escaped the tight aperture of her purple lips and licked at the blood before darting back in.
“This one’s salty,” she said quietly, her breath shallow. “Like pretzels.”
“Pretzels?” asked Gerry.
Petal turned her face to Gerry and pulled the goggles off her face. Her eyes were no longer the shiny black orbs from before. Gerry was silent. Fixated. Her eyes glowed scarlet, like LEDs. He couldn’t even make out her pupils. Something swirled inside.
“Beautiful, ain’t they?” Gabe said.
“What are you?”
“I can do some strange things. My eyes are like this because it’s the manifestation of the things I contain. You’ll get used to it, eventually. The effects aren’t always the same. It’s pretty cool, right?”
“You’re containing the demon code inside you? Isn’t that—”
“Look, we ain’t got much time. We need to leave town and dispose of it,” Gabe said.
“How do you do this? Is it some kind of new tech, or…”
“Petal’s special,” Gabe said. “She’s disconnected from City Earth’s grid like me and, of course, you now, but she’s her own special kind of ring-fenced network. Ain’t that right, girl?”
“Yeah, I ain’t the same kind of hacker like Gabe here. I’m impervious to data. I can kinda block code demons, bad AIs, and viruses inside me, like a secure safe house for bad code. But when I get full, like now, I need to dump ’em somewhere safe. And we need your help.”
“What do you need?”
“To get out of the city,” Gabe said.
Gerry choked on spit and wanted to laugh. “Are you both completely insane? No one gets out of the city. There’s nothing out there!”
“Oh, Gez.” Petal patted him on his head. “You’ve got so much to learn. Don’t worry, though. You’ll pick it up as we go along.”
“Pick what up?”
“You’re one of us now. You’re gonna work with us. And you kinda owe us for saving your life.”
“Yeah, but, what—”
Petal stood up and disconnected her cables. She pulled her goggles back down.
She leant into his ear, real close. He could smell something sweet on her breath: a perfume of sorts. Her lips brushed his ear as she spoke. “You’re a Techxorcist now, Gez. You’re gonna help us track and contain our next target.”
“What target?”
Gabe turned to face Gerry.
“A particularly nasty AI that’s gunning for President Kuznetski. It’s already breached City Earth’s outer network. It’ll get to him in a matter of days. It came on the coattails of yours. It’s much more complex, though. Real evil. But first we need to empty Petal’s internal storage. We leave in five minutes.”
“What does this other AI want? Who’s behind it?”
“That’s what we’re gonna find out, man. We’ve stuck a trace on it for now.”
“Shouldn’t we just alert City security? At least let me get in touch with Cemprom. Tell them what happened to Mike. They’ve got good hackers there. They can—”
Gabe shook his head. “Nothing goes in or out, ya hear? I suspect it’s an inside job. We can’t risk it. We’ll nuke it before it gets to him, and then we’ll see what’s what.”
President Miralam Kuznetski, a grandson of a Croatian diplomat, was one of the first proper immigrants to the City. The Family brought him in due to his heritage and his father’s support of the Family during World War III. Although he portrayed himself as an independent leader, guiding the City Earth Council for the benefit of the citizens, he’d often tried to dictate the direction of Cemprom’s research.
Although Gerry didn’t trust him, he was still the appointed helmsman of the City, and stability was important. If he was taken out, affected by the AI, the ramifications could run through every department of the City.
***
Gerry sat alone in the drawing room, his head swirling with confusion. It was all moving so fast. He thought about his family. No doubt they would find out soon enough about his numbers and go through the formalities of a ceremony. There’d be no burial without a body.
He would have to get word to them soon, somehow. But even that would jeopardise their safety. The Family didn’t like loose ends and would interrogate them to find his whereabouts. It would be much better if they didn’t know the truth or have any trail that could lead to him, which, of course, meant entire network silence. He’d have to do it by proxy somehow.
“You’re gonna need this.” Gabe dropped an aged leather duffel bag at his feet.
The top fell open, and Gerry pulled
out the contents: two books, a vial of NanoStems, and a polished brass and mahogany box.
“This was my old man’s. I don’t use it no more.” Gabe motioned to the box.
Gerry opened the lid and gasped at its contents.
“A pistol? How did you—”
“No time for more chatter. Just take the gun, and read the books on the way.”
Petal arrived in the doorway between the drawing room and kitchen. “Nice, ain’t it? Ammo’s in the bag.”
“Lighter than I thought it would be.” Gerry lifted the gun, feeling its weight in his hand.
“You know Helix++?” she asked.
“I’m familiar with it.” Gerry lifted up the heavy paper tome titled Programming Exploits and Malicious Algorithms with Helix++.
“Transport’s on its way. Let’s get out of Dodge. Security detail’s tracked our general location. They’re like a swarm of angry wasps. Won’t be long before they find this place. Besides, I’ve only got a couple of hours.”
“Until what?” Gerry asked.
“To get rid of the demon. It’s a big’un, and it’s already passed my internal security. It’ll be out in a few hours if we don’t dump it.”
“Out where? Code can’t just float about in the air.”
“The Meshwork,” Petal said. “You government types don’t know about that, do you?” Petal gave him a sly grin. “It’s all around us, Gez. We act as nodes. You do too, now. You’re basically an Internet switch. A hyperintelligent, bad-ass switch. You just don’t know it yet. But you will.”
Gerry ignored the dig and minor revelation. He’d enough to think about without digging into yet more underground tech. He’d figure it all out eventually. “If this demon AI did get ‘out’, can’t you just recontain it?”
“Not really, and we’re risking all the other stuff escaping. We’re talking about a mass prison break of biblical proportions here, Gez, and there’s some bad mojo in me right now that we really would prefer stayed tightly locked away. Besides, it took a crap-load of effort to win those contracts and get payment. If we lose ’em now, all our bins won’t be worth a damn.”
“Bins?”
“Currency. Digital coinage,” Gabe said. “Outside of ya fancy little utopia, the rest of us have to have something to use to exchange resources. Those of us off-the-grid don’t get nothing for free. Besides, ya gonna earn us a pretty penny with your skills. Ya just need to trust in ’em. So, ya ready?”
Gerry couldn’t find the words. He tried to remember how to use his real brain to sort through all these new terms, data sets, and ramifications. It would take a while to not be able to manipulate an AIA, but he felt excited, and worried, and anxious. Like being a teenager learning the rules and boundaries the hard way.
“Don’t think I’ve got much choice, then, do I?”
“Sure ya’ve got a choice, man. Ya can join us and do something good. Put your skills to use. Or ya can walk out that door and let the security deal with ya.”
Petal looked at the thick watch on her wrist. “Shake a leg, princess. I meant it when I said seriously bad mojo will go down if I don’t dump these demons.”
“I just want to do one more thing before we go.”
Before Gabe and Petal had a chance to say anything, Gerry walked through the kitchen and approached the mewling, zombie Mike.
“I’m sorry, pal. Take care in the afterlife. If there is one.”
Gerry jumped at the surprisingly loud crack from the gunshot. The head exploded as if it were a ripe pumpkin. Brains and blood smothered the back wall of the nook, and the lumpy body slumped forward. This time it remained still.
Gerry looked back at Petal and Gabe. Petal flashed him another wolfish grin. Gabe’s eyes grew wide with surprise. They clearly underestimated him. Good. It was best to keep them from knowing too much. They’d have to wait to find out what he was really capable of.
“Let’s go flush these demons, then. The quicker we get out, the quicker I can get back to my family.” He wasn’t sure if that was entirely possible. But right now, he’d cling to anything to avoid admitting it was completely hopeless.
Petal and Gabe glanced at each other briefly, sharing an unspoken message, before filling a backpack with bottles of water and food rations sealed in vacuum graphene foil from the kitchen cabinets. Gabe took the pack and headed to a section of the wall inside an alcove opposite Mike’s corpse.
Pushing against a particular area, Gabe stood back as the wall moved inwards, revealing a dark gap.
Petal took Gerry’s elbow and beckoned him to follow Gabe down a flight of stairs.
As they descended, it occurred to Gerry that these weren’t regular stairs. They were motionless escalators. They were heading into an old, disused subway station. The smell of carbon dust and body odour clung to the air still.
The three of them stood on the platform, waiting.
Gerry was about to ask how they would leave the City when a rush of air and whirr of electric motors answered it for him.
“A train? Are you guys for real?”
Gabe grinned at him. “Man, there’s so much you don’t know.”
“Tell me about it,” Gerry said, trying to stop his mind from spinning as each perception of the world was stripped away like an onion skin. “How is this even possible? I thought all these kinds of vehicles were out of action since the Cataclysm?”
“The Family like you to believe that everything was destroyed,” Petal said. “They wanna make you think it all begins and ends with the Dome, but it don’t. There’s a world out there, Gez. It’s messed up, dangerous, exciting and a hundred other things, but it ain’t empty.”
“How do they even allow this to run?”
“What makes ya think they even know about it?” Gabe said. “Listen, man, they built this city on top of an existing town. An old traditional Mongolian town that was on the up-and-up. A few transport links here, a few developments there. You get the idea. But when the war finished and they built the Dome, they left a few relics here, like this train and the tunnel.”
“But how is it running?”
“Hackers, engineers, people with a vested interest in staying off the grid,” Petal said. “This old train line was still connected to the power grid. It took just a little bit of modification on our part to reroute the signals so that they wouldn’t notice the power usage.”
Gerry looked at the fuse box on the side of the stairwell. The case hung open, and various wires rose from the electronics and snaked up into the ceiling, where a number of tiles hung loose. “They must know,” Gerry said, not believing this could be going on under the Family’s nose.
“Not this, they don’t,” Petal added. “But don’t think they don’t necessarily know that some of this stuff goes on, Gez. It suits them to have something else going on outside the Dome.”
“Suits them?”
“Yeah, think about it. This Dome is one great big test lab. You need stuff to test against, right?”
Gerry shook his head, still unsure what to believe. He couldn’t believe that the Family would deceive them that far. With the control over the population, they didn’t need to. But then need and want weren’t necessarily the same thing.
Gabe approached the train, pressed a button on the outside of the carriage, and the door slid back. Gabe stood aside with his arms open. “Welcome to Salvation Train Service,” he said with a grin. “Please mind the step.”
Petal took Gerry by the elbow and led him in. They took a seat, and Petal slid in next to him.
“Read up, code monkey,” Petal said. “We got a lot of evil to dump.” Petal sat next to Gerry on the plastic seat and looped her arm around his. “This is gonna be fun,” she said with a wicked smile.
Gerry returned her smile, though his was pained and lopsided.
Anxiety grew within him like hungry, urgent bacteria.
“What the hell have I got myself into?”
“The salvation business, man,” Gabe said.
“The pay’s crap, but the satisfaction is good for the soul,” Petal said with a wink.
“Okay, let’s do this. But once you’re sorted, I want you guys to help me reach my family.”
Petal and Gabe remained silent as the door to the train slid shut and the electric motors whined up to speed. They headed deeper into the disused tunnels. Gerry turned his head and watched the light of the platform shrink to the size of a pinhead before finally disappearing, taking his old life with it.
A new light shone in the far distance: a light beyond the city, into uncharted territory, into a land that no one he’d ever known had ventured since the rebuild. It was forbidden. The penalty was death—like almost every misdemeanour against the Family—and he, along with two people he’d known for just a few hours, were hurtling towards it in a train that should have been mothballed with all the others over fifty years ago.
There was a name for the place he was going: Purgatory. All his life he was told there was nothing out there. The Cataclysm had wiped out everything, and yet despite that, despite the evidence to the contrary, here he was rolling to a frightening new phase of his life with two anomalies, outliers, freaks.
When he saw his reflection in the window, he realised he looked just like them.
His new life was starting. A man reborn.
Chapter 5
The train came to a stop at a decrepit platform a few minutes later. Old posters peeled from tiled walls. Mould colonised the paper, creating a map of its own organic tracks. Dark shapes skittered along the platform in the angle where the wall met the floor. Rats. Living creatures. Something Gerry hadn’t seen in City Earth. There were pets and animals, sure, but certainly not living, just constructs to make people feel comfortable. It worked, of course. Not that he knew any different. A cat running on a Cemprom chipset and AI logic was enough for most people, but Gerry could tell there was something missing there: a lack of a spark, real randomness. But that was to be expected. The degree of AI in those things was barely above children’s toys. Still, most people were happy with them, happy to settle for a close approximation.
