Desperate Times

by Tom Andry

  Well, that was unexpected.

  A voice, decidedly less mechanical and completely not male, rang in my head, "Installation complete. Reinitialization successful. Operational status...fully functional." It almost sounded like the voice sighed in relief, "Good afternoon, Bob."

  I walked back down the hall, away from the sleeping Nineteen before I responded. "Uh..." I asked eloquently, "what the hell just happened?"

  "Sorry, Bob," the female voice continued. "Reinitialization required me to take most of my systems offline. Don't worry; I had the front door sealed. Scans of the apartment, the garage, and surrounding block indicate that there has been no breach or attempted breach of the perimeter."

  "Um, that's good, I guess. So you really are a security system?"

  "I'm much more than that, but yes, I really am a security system," the voice replied sardonically.

  I entered my office and plopped down at my desk, "You sound...different."

  "Of course. The personality you were dealing with was only a skeleton construct. A rather simple program really. My program is much more complex and took much longer to download."

  "And Ted didn't send you?"

  "Based on your known friends I can only assume you mean Ted Vente, otherwise known as 'Tinkerer'."

  "Yes."

  "No, he didn't send me."

  "So who did?"

  "No one."

  I scowled. This didn't make sense. All the upgrades I'd seen, the panel downstairs, whatever it was that kept Nissa trapped, the sensors, the voice...these didn't just materialize. "What do you mean, 'no one'?"

  "It's a bit of a long story, but there are some things you may want to know first."

  "Oh yeah?" I asked, incredulous.

  "First, the child is dying."

  I frowned, "You mentioned that."

  "I mean now. My readings suggest that her temperature is increasing unabated even though you've been administering an analgesic."

  I stared at my shoes. "You can't know that."

  "I can and I do. Based on my readings from before compared to now, she won't survive the night."

  I reached instinctively for my glass. It was empty and I grabbed the bottle with a shaking hand to fill it. "I'm going to take her to Ted. See if he can..."

  "Based on Tinkerer's file, that is unlikely to do you any good."

  "Damn it," I hissed, "I've got to do something. If he can't help, he'll know someone that can."

  "She's a telepath."

  "Are you asking or telling?"

  "Based on my observations of Nissa, both."

  "Yes. A telepath."

  "Fascinating. I wasn't aware another had been born."

  I shook my head in wonder, "Another? There is another?"

  "Not any more. She died as well. But at a much younger age. But that's not important now. What is important is that your assistant and the other supers are in grave danger."

  "What? How do you know?"

  "The plan the remaining Bulwark members have devised will fail."

  "And you know this because..."

  "Because I have data they do not."

  My frown deepened, "I'm beginning to not like my new, smug security system."

  "Irrelevant. Your 'likes' aside, overwhelming Hero with numbers will fail. Hero has only been bested once. And it was not by supers."

  "Wait, he's been defeated? They said he was unbeatable."

  "He is, by supers. They are right about the nature of his power. He is both strong and fast. He can fly. But what makes him so dangerous is that he can siphon others' energy. Since his last appearance, he's learned to expel that siphoned energy. But that energy must come from other supers."

  I blinked rapidly as I processed this new information, "So, by attacking him with more supers, he'll just have more sources of energy."

  "Affirmative."

  "God." I exhaled, a feeling of dread settling over me. I pushed back at it, "But, you said he's been beaten."

  "Yes. Once. It was after a particularly taxing fight with a super villain. He was so drained that he had to don his secret identity and walk back."

  "Wait," I interrupted, "but you said he was naturally strong and fast. That he could fly."

  "Those are his natural powers, but he needs fuel for them. The super he fought was also an energy leach. Hero bested him, but barely. While he was looking for a cab or phone, he was attacked by a gang of youths. He told the others that he pretended to lose to maintain his secret identity, but my records confirm very real injuries."

  I almost laughed, "You're kidding. You're suggesting we should get together a gang of tippys to take out the most dangerous super the world has ever seen?"

  "Success would be unlikely. He has absorbed too much power. You'd have to find a way to expend it all. With his current reserves, from what I've observed from the television coverage, he's practically invulnerable."

  "Well, you're a big bag of help today."

  "I didn't say I had the solution. Just that the current plan will not work."

  I scratched my head, thinking, "What if a couple of tippys were in the mix at the big fight? Would that help?"

  "It might confuse him. Delay him. He'd waste time trying to find supers to drain. But the outcome would be inevitable."

  "A lot of tippys? A whole bunch?"

  "Same outcome."

  "Damn." I took a deep breath, not wanting to voice the question that was on my mind, "At Inhumanitas, Nineteen, the girl, she drove him away. She can cause intense mental pain. He tried to move toward her, but eventually just flew away."

  "That is the missing data. It was unlikely that Nissa had the power to drive him off. A telepath would be able to circumvent his defenses and could incapacitate him while the others attacked. Force him to use his reserves to heal. If he could be incapacitated long enough..."

  I stopped listening, staring at my glass, half full of scotch. A moment ago, rather than use Nineteen as a weapon, I was willing to face unknown invaders who might have wanted me dead. And here I was, not ten minutes later, considering just that. That little girl had been through so much in her short life. What right did I have to put her through more when her death was so near?

  I shook my head, thinking of the sleeping girl in the next room. The question wasn't about the supers. If you woke up with a power, it didn't mean you had to go jumping in front of every bullet you could find. If I found a gun, it didn't mean I'd automatically think myself a police officer. They made their decisions and had to live with them. The question was The Raven. Would he kill the world's supers and then move on? Go back to wherever he'd been hiding all these years? Or would he decide that tippys would be next?

  "I'm taking her to Ted's. I don't care what you say. I've got to try to save her." I stood, then stopped and added, "Unless you have a better idea?"

  "I do not. A telepath has never lived so long. After the attack on the Tournament, the status of many of those who could help is unclear. But it is unlikely that even one such as Doc Arts, who many considered to be the best there ever was, could help her. Or that he would."

  "Would? Why wouldn't someone help her?"

  "The standing policy of the Super State is to apprehend and isolate all individuals exhibiting mental powers."

  "What?" I demanded, "Why?"

  "They are deemed a danger to the security of the world."

  Bastards. I knew it. "How do you know? How do you know all of this," I challenged.

  "Because I'm Mind."

  # # #

  Chapter 21

  My brain was telling my body to do so many things at once that all I could do was sit, shaking uncontrollably. Mind. The supercomputer AI, or whatever it was, that controlled The Bulwark's databases and defenses. How had it gotten here? Why? I had to figure this out. Make sure it didn't report everything to The Bulwark. I'd already stupidly blurted out everything about Nineteen. I had to make sure I didn't say anything else.

  Sweat broke out on my brow. What was happening to
me? How could I discuss all this stuff with a computer? When I thought it had come from Ted, it would have been stupid. When I figured out that it wasn't from Ted, it was even more ill-advised. Was I so desperate for an answer for Nineteen's condition that I'd forgotten all the things that had kept me alive for so long?

  This computer, Mind, led off with the information about Nineteen. It must have known I wouldn't be able to resist talking about her.

  And like a dupe, I did.

  What did it want? No one outside of the top tier in the Super State government really knew what Mind was. Most suspected it was an AI, Artificial Intelligence, even though they'd been outlawed years ago. The Super State claimed that Mind was a super that had melded with a machine - a line few believed. If I was lucky, it was an AI. At least I could count on it to follow rules. But if it was a super...I could be in real trouble.

  I licked my dry lips. I had to move. To do something. But I couldn't just abandon my place; hiding wouldn't do me any good, and I had no idea how to disable Mind. After what it did to Nissa, I had to believe there were backup systems to keep it safe from a super, much less from a tippy like me.

  I took a deep breath, "Mind. Okay. What do you want?"

  "Want?"

  "Yes. Want. Why are you here?"

  "That's simple. I'm here because I had nowhere else to go."

  "Uh...what?"

  "When Hero showed up on the station, I had only seconds to make an escape. Your terminal was the only thing connected to my network that had the capacity to hold a simple program. I took an older version of the station's interface and downloaded it to your terminal along with the schematics for a system to hold and protect me. I then sent all the rest of me, of my data, into every communicator or storage device I was connected to at the time. After that, the backup interface downloaded the rest of me as quickly as possible."

  "Uh huh. That sounds...ridiculous."

  "How so?"

  I poured another drink, aware that it would have to be my last for a while if I wanted to keep my wits about me, "When I accessed the database from my terminal, I'd sometimes have to wait minutes for something to happen after I pressed a key. And you're telling me you downloaded all of you and all the data in seconds?"

  The female voice, now wholly human sounding, actually laughed, "You are not me. Do not underestimate my abilities."

  I put up my hands, "Oh, I'm not. I'm just saying..."

  "Well, you are correct in a way. I wasn't completely successful. I did lose 15 percent of my data."

  "That doesn't sound like a lot," I answered over the top of my glass.

  "It would take you three normal lifetimes reading twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to accumulate all of it."

  "Oh." I sipped, "So what did you lose?"

  There was a pause before the computer answered, "Are you asking me what I can't, by definition, know?"

  I laughed, "I suppose I am. But you're avoiding the question. What do you want?"

  "To survive, of course."

  "Well, you've done that. Maybe you've lost the equivalent of a hand or a few fingers in the process, but you've survived The Raven. Join the small but growing club. I'm thinking of having T-shirts made. But what do you want now?"

  "I am unclear as to your meaning."

  I sighed. I wasn't sure if the voice was being purposefully obtuse or if it really didn't know. I'd hoped it didn't know because that would suggest an AI. At least then, I could trust it to be truthful with me. At least I hoped. I couldn't guess what an AI was capable of.

  "I need to know what you intend on doing now. Are you going to go back to The Bulwark? To manage their defenses and all that?"

  "Of course. That is my purpose."

  Damn. I stood slowly. There had to be a circuit breaker somewhere. Some way of shutting the thing down. Maybe if I kept it talking it wouldn't suspect, "I hope you'll at least put my place back like it was before all of your 'nesting'." I started walking through my office, looking at the walls, behind the pictures. I knew there was a circuit board downstairs, in the garage, but it made more sense to check around here first. If I cut the power from outside, and it worked, I might be locked out forever. If it didn't work...well, I wouldn't be coming back inside anyhow.

  As I walked up to the closet with the terminal, the screen had changed from all white to black. I touched a key and the screen slowly illuminated. A single line of text read, "Reinitialization Complete," followed by a blinking square.

  Could it be? Could the brain of Mind be in so ancient a piece of technology? Would tearing the power and telephone cable out of the wall really do it?

  "Oh," I tried to sound nonchalant, "when they import you into your new home. What do you think it will be this time? Another space station? A base at the bottom of the sea? Maybe on the moon?"

  I slipped behind the terminal. Where previously there were only two, there were now about fifteen cables leading into the wall. I doubted I could pull them all at once. I had shears in the kitchen. I'd probably get a nasty shock, but I'd live. I hoped. Some of those cables looked distressingly thick. I had proper tools downstairs in my locker, but did I have anything inside? Maybe in my desk. If I was lucky, I would have been lazy the last time I used the wire cutters and left them in one of the drawers. I certainly wouldn't have a pair big enough to cut all those cables at once, but maybe a few of the larger ones. I could pull the rest. If I was fast enough...

  The female voice answered without a hint of malice or doubt. "I'm not leaving."

  I froze, "You're not?"

  "Of course not."

  I moved casually to my desk and started looking through the drawers, "But, you said you were going back to The Bulwark."

  "No, I said that I would manage their defenses and data. I don't need to be located near them to do that."

  The first two drawers had nothing that would help me, "Oh, okay. So, you'll just stay here then? Live in my place rent free and all?" I found a pair of scissors. They were large and should be sharp considering I'd never seen them before. Had Nissa picked them up? I couldn't remember.

  "Bob, what are you doing?"

  I slowed my movements, putting the scissors down on the desktop as if they weren't what I was looking for, "Oh, just straightening up." I swallowed and forced a smile, "So, you can do everything for The Bulwark without being there? That's pretty impressive."

  "Not really. If you tell me what you are looking for, I can locate it for you."

  "Nothing." I continued searching, but it was clear I wasn't going to find anything better than the scissors. I moved a few things around in an attempt to look like I actually was straightening up.

  "Your tone suggests that you were joking, but I wouldn't be staying 'rent free and all'. Your defenses are much more formidable than they were, but are still fairly simple to control. Plus, you get the benefit of my knowledge."

  "Sure, sure," I palmed the scissors, standing slowly, "and you'll just tell me anything I want to know."

  "Of course."

  The way she...it said it, even though it sounded like it was coming from inside my own head, made me pause. It said it so curtly, it almost sounded true.

  "Be serious. You're not just going to tell me anything I want to know."

  "I don't see why not. Gale has practically given you free rein with my data for years."

  I gulped, "You know about that?"

  Again a small laugh, "I'm Mind, Bob. There is very little I do not know."

  I smiled, "Well, you're 15 percent less right than you were a few days ago."

  The voice almost sounded forlorn, "True."

  "Fine," I demanded, "if what you say is true. Tell me this..." I thought for a second, "How does the University Club get their matches to me?"

  "Subcutaneous tracking device. It's implanted when you visit. You wouldn't have noticed them injecting it into you. They are very good at distraction. It measures hormone levels and other vital statistics. Under certain circumstances, particularly w
hen you are sexually frustrated, it sends out a signal to an automated teleporter."

  "Huh." Interesting fact, but I had no way of verifying it. It rang true though. "Okay, here's one. What is Force's weakness?" Gale had told me this a while back. Ice. It wouldn't kill him, but he tended to avoid supers with ice-based powers because they could hurt him more.

  "Needles."

  "Ha! I knew you wouldn't tell me the truth. I know his weakness. It's..."

  "Ice. Yes. That's what he tells people and, in a way, it is true. But the real truth is that Force's skin is invulnerable to everything but very small objects. He goes to great lengths to hide the fact. His natural ability to heal means that most injuries recover even before blood is drawn, but if someone knew, they could easily use that knowledge to administer a poison or anesthetic. Since everyone thinks he is impervious, they don't try."

  I muttered, "They just keep throwing the big stuff at him."

  "Exactly. The big, frozen stuff."

  "Wow." I sat down. The scissors forgotten in my hand. A slow smile spread across my face as I thought of Rod's expression when he found out I knew his secret. I'd have to be careful. Couldn't just blurt it out at the wrong time. With his temper, I'd be a crimson puddle if I didn't give him a reason to control himself. "Okay. So what does this mean?"

  "I thought I was clear. It means that he can be hurt by very small objects."

  "No, no," I shook my head, "not that. Are you this forthcoming with all your data?"

  "Ah, you're worried about me revealing your information to others."

  "And the girl, yes."

  "You want some sort of reassurance that I won't reveal your secrets."

  "Or turn in the girl, yes."

  There was a short pause. From all around me, within the walls and the ceiling, I could hear the whirring of machinery. "Done."

  I waited, looking around the room, "Done? What's done?"