“I kind of like this.” He lifts me up, turns me easily. He cradles me against his chest, fingers touching their way down my scalp and neck.
I just listen to him breathing. Wondering what happens if I fall asleep. Wondering if, when I wake, I’ll have been triggered in my sleep.
I should sleep somewhere else. It’s not safe. If I turn out to be like Miyaki, I could do so much harm.
Don’t. You already fell asleep, more than once. Stay.
Doesn’t mean it’s okay. Miya seemed fine to you too.
“I’ll take my chances,” he growls. His embrace tightens.
I’ve missed this so much, my gentle, pale giant.
21
At first, all I do is rest. And then all I do is watch others work and train. More than a few look at me with outright suspicion, and worry.
It is a week before anyone remembers to tell me that the group has taken the name the Archivists.
The amplifier I took from that ISec clerk serves as a distraction for a little while. It is a civilian defense amp, limited in output and onboard computing power. It looks like a slender hoop of silvery gold; the circuitry is nanoscale and far too small for the eye to see.
The average crewman would not know where to start to modify one, though a number might know how to bypass some of the safety features and overclock the hardware to let it draw about 10 or 20 percent more power, at the risk of overheating and burnout. Salvador had us make them from scratch in class, way back when.
The eyes can’t see the circuitry, but when engaging the amplifier, my psi runs through each tiny line doped into the plastech matrix, and through those infinitesimal pulses, a properly written application in one’s Implant can map the microstructure. From there, it is about the hours it takes to add a few grains of plastech taken from the raw construction ingots the Archivists have lying around, and adding to the existing template. More capacitors and parallel channels let it draw and hold more power from the grid, more memory and processing power let it actually control that additional power, and finally, it takes mere seconds to flash its operating system and upload the one I keep a copy of in my Implant, which I have been tweaking and using on all my amplifiers for over a decade.
The result: it looks the same, but has close to the ratings and access codes of the engineer’s gauntlets I’m used to and has my usual suite of applications loaded to make it more responsive to my style of touch and thinking.
Unfortunately, I finish it too quickly and again have too little to do and too much to think about.
I could mope at being kept out of things. I could be offended that no one has asked me to help with the perpetual tweaks on the AI swarm. But from my conversations with Bullet, they too know that it’s special, that it’s not like any other program they’ve worked with. Under the prodding of the two most important figures in the group, the others act a little more openly around me, and a few start to talk to me about the data-miner, about my design and how it has changed.
At “night,” I close my eyes and seem to catch a glimpse of something huge coming into shape around us. Mincemeat deaths going on even now. Suspicious Retirements. Man-eating things in the sewers. The secret history of the Noah. The Builders. The other groups of Archivists, pursuing their own ends. My data-mining application that has become so much more, become a secret communications tool, become AI, working relentlessly toward so many disparate goals. Construction of undeclared research laboratories in Beijing Section. And somewhere, the encroaching steps of those who hunt us: Karla, and the rest of Information Security.
When I try to fit it together, this mass of details cascades and swims, refuses to assemble into a coherent whole. The pieces change shape and keep moving when I try to touch them.
The Archivists seethe, agitated, impatient for the next step, the next big reveal. After years as individuals feeling alone in their doubts about society, they have been brought together, they feel validation. They are getting closer to the great secrets at the heart of all the mysteries. They have no doubts.
Their certainty and faith make me nervous.
I wish we had more time alone together, Barrens and I.
He leads. He manages. And he teaches the kids how to fight.
Everyone practices with amplifiers.
They also train to do without amps, for fighting in areas of the ship without power.
Before my detention, this would have resulted in a major argument between Barrens and me. Because he will not rule out the use of Psyn.
Only the rarest of individuals have the internal discipline to use it without personality instability.
Barrens is one. The effect of Psyn on him is eerie. It makes him coldly, mechanically rational. Perhaps, having wrestled with his inner beast all his life, he finds this external chemical influence to be just another mental influence for him to crush into submission.
I avoid those sessions when he trains the others with it. I loathe it. It terrifies me, the drug.
He used Psyn because he had to. Miyaki, fully empowered, amplifier encoded with all the safety bypass codes ISec wrote into her mind, was murdering them.
After that incident, they had all wanted to be tested for Psyn compatibility. Voted on it, demanded it.
He looks uncomfortable when he explains, “Better I help them use it safely than for them to screw around with it on their own.”
Of the twenty men and women in this cell, only a few, other than Barrens, react positively to Psyn. Most, tested with but a drop each, either have too little response, too much response, or are overwhelmed with hallucinations. He is conservative with the dosage and keeps a close eye on the rate of consumption.
He teaches them to work in teams of three, standard police strike teams of a support telekinetic assisting and covering two bruisers.
They learn hand-to-hand combat and weapon use. They practice taking apart and putting together and using their crossbows.
An oversize version, practically a ballista of ancient Roman design, fires bolts all of a meter long—it takes two men to operate one, or a bruiser or touch talent using Psyn. These massive projectiles, shot with such velocity, can punch through inches of armored wall.
The smallest ones are worn on the wrist, little more than slingshots. But rather than true bolts, they fire hollowed shafts with just enough force to shatter them upon impact. Two chemicals are contained in separate cells in the shaft, and when they mix, it produces a caustic gas that burns the eyes and respiratory passages, instantly incapacitating a man with one breath.
They practice target shooting. How to move together, covering each other.
We both acknowledge that he is training a fighting force and not just a group of eccentric investigators; it is a simple enough thing.
“Would you like me to help with that?” I ask.
“Why would you?”
You only want them safe, isn’t it? These are defensive tactics and drills.
We do not look each other in the eye. He puts his heavy paw on my hip and I lean into him.
They are grateful though, his little soldiers, when I take the time to build obstacle courses and assorted urban environments for them to train in.
If we could only just stay like this, in one of the deep, unpopulated areas of the Noah, outside of the Dome. Perhaps the Ministries and the Enforcers would just let it go, just let us vanish into these shadows, rather than expend the effort to find us.
Finally, the others accept my presence enough that few object when Barrens has me sit in during his exchanges with the other leaders of the Archivists, facilitated by the AI net’s communication functions.
They speak of inciting action, of changing the way the crew sees the world we live in. A former low-level ISec agent named Gomez says, “We are not spending all this time preparing troops with the aim of just running and surviving.” An advertising executive named Thorn, sleek and handsome and a little too eager, talks openly of changing the system. He speaks of working on something more potent
than crossbows. Many others clamor to have their say.
After these virtual meetings, Barrens looks exhausted, his heavy face worn, leaner. The armrests of the chair he sits in are crooked, crushed by his hands, which express what he cannot.
I just want to find out what’s going on. I just think people should know what’s going on.
Why are you with them, Leon? You don’t need them.
I draw his huge head down and hold him.
They didn’t start out like that. But they’re not all wrong, Hana. If we find out. Well. Change may need those who are willing to fight.
I make myself useful in between the moments. Aside from improving the surrounding architecture for their needs, building proper kitchens and walls and bathrooms and bedrooms, I modify the support structure in the perimeter around our warren. Simplified data nodes I learned to make in Advanced Psychokinetic Engineering 133 are seeded throughout the walls and the floor to monitor psionic activity, programmed to identify all the members of our subgroup, to house local copies of some of the Monster’s subunits, and to warn us of incoming non-Archivists.
I participate in a few exercises myself—to try to maintain my own fitness, mentally and physically.
Escaping from the ISec facility took something out of me. I still tire easily, even with the better food, even with all this recovery time.
This odd collection of lonely, paranoid people is still uncomfortable with my presence, unsure of my standing in the group. Yet they do accept Barrens’s words about what I can do. Especially when they see me race through the objectives changes they’ve kludged into my artificial kids, taking only moments to analyze and redo what takes them many hours.
They seem impressed, I guess. But they remain standoffish. Indifferent. Anyway, they are usually too busy to pay much attention to me. Training, hacking, scouring recovered data, cleaning, maintaining and making more weapons, food prep, laundry. This group is tightly knit together, already has its set routines and rhythms and rotations.
Always, someone armed is watching me.
Tommy, Andrews, and Mann are the worst of them. Their eyes are always suspicious of me, following me. Even when it is not their turn to stand guard over me, they keep their weapons close.
Other than Barrens, only Bullet is relaxed with me. “Don’t take it too hard. Those three almost got gutted when Officer Miura went all psycho-killer on us,” he says.
“And you’re not worried?”
He shrugs. “I have a good feeling about you.”
It does not mean much, given the lack of the silvery pattern indicating precognition. But his smile helps.
Odd little guy, really. We become a little more than the friends we were. I guess, in terms of the old days of lost Earth, I am like a big sister to him. He hangs out with me, asks me to teach him my programming tricks. I do so, sometimes, showing my little hacks for tablets, for the Web, and internal ones for neural Implants, such as the smoother interface between Implant and gauntlet that I used with the aid of music, when I built skyscrapers with my mind. We talk about our childhoods, about school.
We had the normal upbringing that Barrens, with his beast, did not.
The others respect Bullet despite his sometimes timid demeanor, his misleading youthfulness. Besides the gift of his psychometry, which has made him a celebrity in the movement, he is an excellent chef. It is a good thing he enjoys it because he is so good at it that the rest of the members of our family of circumstance don’t like to eat anything less than Bullet’s culinary contributions to the cause. Others take turns to assist him, but in the kitchens Bullet is the king.
Once a week, Leon leads half of them off into the darkness, to map their way deeper into the maze outside the Dome.
Often, I lie awake, just waiting for them to return. Worrying.
That nagging voice in my head tells me I should run, now, or send off a coded transmission to Karla and bring the hammer down on everyone. Is that my own voice of reason, or is it a passenger in my head, courtesy of Information Security?
A simmering mass of discontent under the surface is waiting to be unleashed. It has always been there. The confining, limiting pressures of shipboard existence. Humans were never meant to live like this. If we find out all the secrets and set them free, will the discontent ease, just from the knowing? Barrens seems to think so, but the risks gnaw at me. Even after it all comes to light, change won’t come easily. Can the Noah afford the cost of that change?
Another trip. This time, a meeting of the top ten of the Archivist leadership, face-to-face.
I am starting to get an idea of the numbers of the Archivists. There may be hundreds of them. Many still hold mission-critical positions in the Habitat. And they are actively recruiting.
Everyone is sluggish when Barrens is gone. Without him, they slowly devolve into introversion, pessimism, nihilism, navel-gazing. They talk in endless circles about why the ship’s society is the way it is. They wonder and theorize about what might link these strange, gruesome deaths with the rest of the Noah’s dark secrets. Secret laboratories. The tunnel beasts. And so many dreamy fantasies about the Builders, the desire to find something of theirs that will somehow fix things.
Come back to me already, Leon.
22
Tonight is the third night Barrens has been away.
They tell me it is longer than usual.
I get up from my bed and head to the kitchen.
Only Bullet stays upbeat and cheerful. He is cooking a meal fit for kings. “I got a feeling they’ll be back soon,” he says, shrugging when I, and others, ask. Nobody begrudges him this potential waste of food—they have just brought in more supplies from one of the secret stores close by.
More of that glorious bacon, cooked just so, leaving enough fat to still allow one to taste it on the mouth and chew it. He fries up diced potatoes in the fat to a golden, crisped exterior, still soft within. Onions too. Then eggs, with just enough milk, scrambled, fluffy, perfect omelets. Bullet produces an immense platter of them and keeps them warm in the oven. He begins to cut up fresh apples, with the intent of preparing a light dessert.
When I offer to help, he waves me off.
“Nah, missy. The boss says cooking’s not your thing anyway.”
I laugh because it is true. My cooking skill is limited to omelets and cereal, period. And I laugh because the Barrens I first met was too insecure to ever imagine anyone referring to him as “the boss.”
My AI net has now officially been named Argus by the Archivists. They voted on it.
It chimes with inputs from the sensors I set up around our safe house.
I have decided on another name in my head. Though Argus is better than Monster, Argus Panoptes was a giant with a hundred eyes, and if its intelligence does happen to keep growing, I’d rather the AI not have an identifier that’s linked to a legend about a figure that served the gods and was also killed by them.
So a human name, simple, unpretentious. Archie.
I like to think it responds to me better than it responds to them, is better at recognizing my digital touch despite months of work from the hands of others. When I whisper that name as my thoughts tinker with Archie’s code, it seems to become even more responsive to me. Almost happy.
From the kitchen, I walk over to the numerous monitors displaying the structure and complexity of the AI swarm. Dragging a seat over, I sit and gesture. My hands and fingers stretch and unfold the components, revealing the underlying blocks of code. I gaze into the growing universe of its digital DNA, trace the lines of its skeleton of data.
The more I examine it, the more sure I am that nothing I or Barrens or his other hackers programmed into Archie could have triggered this emergence.
Archie, I think in my head into the terminals. It was pieces of the Builder’s programming, wasn’t it? I don’t expect an answer, but it feels right.
While my design was partly self-modifying and the uses we put it to created the circumstances that allowed the sw
arm to find it, the critical lightning strike that keyed its evolution to something more was something alien lost in all those Analytical Nodes.
The timing fits. Its rapid development began soon after that day in the biome, when it found the alien memory.
If my man was not out there, maybe being chased by Enforcers even now, if there were not all these other things going on, and all the overwhelming weight of these secrets we have uncovered and which we have yet to uncover, Archie’s true nature would be enough to awe and terrify and exhilarate me. A unique, digital life. There is so much we could learn from it, especially the alien segments of its code. It is also scary, wondering what its final form might be.
Come on, Barrens. Where are you?
Archie’s excited ping almost catapults me out of my chair. It reads the sensors at the periphery of the Sanctuary and passes them to my Implant. I sigh, in relief, at the feel of Barrens’s approach.
Turning to Bullet, I say, “Seems like you’re right. They’re—”
Finally in transmission range! Hana, get the Doc ready. Meena needs help. Barrens’s mind’s voice is troubled, afraid. It is never like that. This is going to be bad if it can rattle my guard dog so.
I relay his message and Barrens’s army snaps to readiness, their ennui forgotten. One group prepares their weapons, while Gregory prepares his improvised clinic. We shut down unnecessary power draws, such as the heat and most of the lights and the tablets and the displays on the walls, so that the Doctor can draw it all for his amplifier.
Two pairs of men and women have propped the ballista into position, aimed at one of the two access points into our shelter. The gleaming, giant-size crossbow is menacing. The arms and the tension lines creak with the strain as the operators turn the cranks, drawing the immense bolt into firing position.
The other entrance goes through the power lines in the ceiling: our escape route, if the worst comes to pass.
The doors slam open.
Chaos then. People thought they were prepared, but nothing could prepare a person for that wheezing, keening wail.
The Forever Watch Page 24
