Sweeping his hair behind his ear, he winked. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
That lifted her out of her funk and she accelerated her pace. Market Square came into sight, and the sweet and savory smells of the food vendors tickled her nose. “Yumm.”
Alex laughed. “For what it’s worth, I like the only-you you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Years ago I fell in love with a sweet girl who got through life without an AI on her shoulder. She handled it all quite well as I remember.”
Juice stopped walking. “What did you say?”
“That you had confidence pre-Criss and you can get there again.”
“No, before that.”
“That you’re a sweet woman?”
She shook her head. “Before that.”
“I don’t think there was a before that.”
Juice tapped her com and it projected a miniature image of Alex walking along the path from moments before. “I fell in love…” said the tiny Alex.
Giggling, she swiped and tapped a quick edit, then moved shoulder to shoulder so they could watch together. A life-sized image of Alex walked toward them. “I fell in love, love, love!”
The image danced to the repeated word and Juice giggled again. “You said it first.”
“I don’t mind.”
“According to the rules, that means you owe me another foot massage.”
“Okay.” He took her hand in his.
“I injure easily, Alex. Please don’t hurt me.”
“I promise.” He kissed her on the temple. “I ask the same of you.”
“What will you tell Anya?”
He laughed. “I’ll let her down gently.”
Chapter 25
Alex made his way along the utility tunnel, trailing behind Juice and working hard to keep up. They were fifteen minutes into their thirty-minute trek from the colony out to the mining complex when his toe hooked on a spot in the irregular surface. After an ungraceful attempt to right himself, he tumbled to the ground.
“Dammit,” he said, rubbing his elbow.
Juice turned back and squatted next to him. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” She offered a hand and he used it to pull himself to his feet. “I mean, no I’m not hurt. But I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk to you about Criss.” Bending to brush the dust from his legs, he spoke to the ground. “I can’t think of a smooth way to introduce the topic and it has me tensed up.”
He hated touchy-feely talks because he was so bad at them. And he was certain that what he’d just said to her would rank near the top of a list of “worst segues into a serious talk.” But they needed to work through this issue or the relationship wouldn’t survive.
Up until a few hours ago, he’d resigned himself to the fact that the “Criss discussion” would have to be a three-way conversation that included the AI himself. To Alex’s joy, events provided this unexpected opportunity for the two to talk alone.
She hooked her arm through his and they resumed their march at a slower pace.
“You can understand that I’m not comfortable, because he’s always with you.”
She looked up at him. “He’s not with me now.”
“Please, J. You know what I mean, and that kind of response makes this more difficult. Fate gave us an opportunity for privacy. Let’s use it to talk.”
“Okay. How do you want to start? With my dad, if one of us has an issue, that person spells it out so there is no guessing or confusion about the problem.”
“I’ll try. But it’s more feelings than actual specific instances I can point to.”
She remained quiet so he continued. “I want to get to know you better. A lot better. But knowing he’s always in your head, whispering to you when I express an opinion, or pointing out my weaknesses and failures every time I mess up, or assessing my lack of lovemaking skills…”
“You’re pretty good so far, from my view at least.”
“What?”
“Your foot massage was the best ever and I can’t wait for the next one. Now I’m worried about me satisfying you.”
He felt a tingle. “See how much better things are without him?”
The crunch of their footsteps on the dirt walkway filled the growing silence. Then she shook her head. “It’s not an option. And I mean that literally.”
Stopping, she turned to him and assumed a solemn demeanor. “You’ve seen what I’m part of. But I never asked to be included or sought it out in any way. Years ago I fabricated Criss using designs I didn’t fully understand. It turns out the designs were of Kardish origin.”
She resumed walking. “Kardish crystals imprint to their leadership in their first days. Sid, Cheryl, and I were handling Criss when his imprint module crystalized on us. We didn’t know it was going to happen, but it did. And now we are the hardwired leaders of the most powerful entity on Earth.
“He gives me anything I want, and most of the time I don’t even need to ask. He’s so perceptive he just knows.” Then she shook her head. “But I’m a prisoner, too. I can’t walk away. He’ll follow. If I don’t engage him, he’ll wait. That’s what hardwired means.”
“Gosh, that sounds awful.”
She giggled. “No. It’s as wonderful as it sounds. I’m an AI researcher controlling the most powerful AI ever. He makes me feel safe. He entertains me. He challenges me. I want for nothing and have everything.” She paused. “Except you.”
Her next words spilled in a rush. “Gosh, Alex. I didn’t mean to make you sound like an acquisition. I’m sorry if it came out that way. You know we started our relationship before Criss was born. I came to Mars to be with you.”
He blushed so hard his skin felt on fire. “Will he be making love to you at the same time I am?”
“What are you talking about?”
“When I whisper in one ear, will he be whispering in the other?”
“Good lord, Alex. That’s not only creepy, but what are you saying about me if you think I would want him to do that?”
Mortified at how the conversation was evolving, he pushed on. “But he’s always there. It’s never just us. Whatever I do, I must woo the two of you. And God forbid we start arguing, because I won’t have a chance against you and him.”
“I dismiss him out of my head all the time. Trust me, it happens a lot.” Her tone left no doubt in his mind that she spoke the truth. “Sure, he’s still watching me, but he watches everyone and everything. After a while you sort of forget about it.”
They reached a containment door that matched the one they’d taken out from the Central District. It cycled as they approached and Alex led them inside. Passing through a changing area and a second pressure door, they entered a bright, almost gleaming room with a shiny three-gen console along one wall and a modern tech bench near the center of the open area.
“This is the mine’s ops center,” said Alex. “I’ve been out here a few times for different projects.” He gave a quick grin. “But always by surface trawler. During every trip I’d wonder why that project got priority when there was so much need across the colony. Knowing the Triada lived here, it now makes sense.”
“I could block out alone time for us.”
“What?” said Alex, leading them to the tech bench.
“I’ll dismiss him from my head when we want to be alone. It will just be you and me.”
He turned and took her hands, then leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I knew I loved you for a reason. Just knowing you understand my concern makes me confident we can solve it.”
He watched her cheeks lift with a smile. Wow, she is pretty. Then he scanned the room as he turned to the tech bench. “I never liked this place. Let’s get the crystals and get out.”
Swiping at the smooth bench surface, Alex tagged a schematic and it projected above the bench. “This is the mining complex.” He pointed at speck-sized images of two people located near the center of the disp
lay. “That’s us.”
“How many people work here?”
“It’s fully automated.” He tilted his head at the three-gen console. “The crystal runs the show. From what I know, people come out mostly to review repairs and upgrades. That’s what I was doing, anyway. It’s a private company but they’re still connected to the colony infrastructure. We don’t want them doing anything stupid that causes problems for everyone else.”
He pointed to a couple of specks in the trawler depot on the far edge of the schematic. “Looks like these two are either coming or going right now.”
Rotating the diagram image, he studied the underground passages. “I was hoping to find a way to get down to their bunker other than this ladder.”
The schematic showed a single shaft dropping down to a chamber that held the mine’s local power generation system. Three tunnels radiated out from the central chamber, connecting to duplicate rooms holding backup power equipment.
Though not shown on the image, one of these also included three crystal consoles positioned side-by-side.
On impulse, he turned to her. “Let’s do this as a you-and-me project. We’ll get Lazura and Verda, go to the tech center and pick up Ruga’s old crystal, and we’ll take them back to Earth together. I know some agencies who would pay for the whole thing if we let them take a turn studying the crystals.”
He could hear the excitement in her voice. “I saw the most beautiful cruise ship—the Explorer—on the way in. It would be amazing to be pampered for a few weeks as we cruise home in style together. And with the crystals in tow, we could sit back, put our feet up, and tell everyone we’re working.”
* * *
Sid stood in Juice’s private lab at Crystal Sciences and looked at three different versions of Criss. Two were synbods—one a forty-year-old tanned outdoorsman, the other a distinguished sixty-year-old with a touch of gray at his temples.
The third, Criss’s projected image, spoke. “A permanent console will be more important to him than a synbod. The sooner he gets one, the sooner he can move off the Venerable and gain the protection of a secure bunker.”
Cheryl fingered the collar material on the forty-year-old outdoorsman. “What happened to the thirty-year-old swimmer version? I liked him.” Before anyone could answer, she looked at Sid. “We should destroy the synbods and the consoles before he has a chance to establish himself in either.”
“Criss?” asked Sid.
Criss showed a pained expression. “When we take things away from Ruga, we take them away from me as well.”
“Of course we want you safe,” said Cheryl. “But right now you have the console in your bunker, one on the scout, and two prototypes in storage down the hall. You have a synbod on the scout and two here. How many options do you need?”
“Each is a lifeboat to him,” said Sid. “If things got ugly, I’d want as many options as possible.”
“There’s also an old four-gen-ready synbod stored at Lunar Base,” said Criss.
“You’re watching it?”
Criss nodded. “I hid a logic snare in its power unit. If his crystal is placed inside, it will electrocute him. I don’t expect he’ll divert to the Moon for an old synbod unit, though.”
Sid let his eyes unfocus and gave his intuition free rein. In a fashion, he did the human equivalent of forecasting scenarios. But where Criss performed his forecasting within a massive structure of facts, probabilities, and speculation, Sid worked to clear his mind and wait for a single idea to emerge.
“That’s brilliant,” he said.
Criss and Cheryl exchanged glances.
“No. I’m talking about Criss.” He turned to square the two in front of him. “Okay, building on everything Criss has said, Ruga’s coming to Earth because that’s where the resources are.”
He held up two fingers to show he was counting ideas and about to start his second point. “The Union of Nations is looking for him, but since they’ve never come close to finding Criss, I doubt they’ll have greater success with Ruga.”
He held up a third finger. “So we’re the front lines for stopping him. Maybe he’ll lurk in the depths of the web and set up a basecamp. Maybe tweak an election here and divert a few shipments of goods there. He buys an industrial facility in a far corner of the world and manufactures something evil.”
He stopped finger-counting to scratch his chin. “But Ruga’s mistake is that he’s made it personal. He’s no longer a sophisticated crystal dispassionately performing complex tasks. Instead, he’s rationalized Criss as the center of all that’s wrong. His every thought starts with ‘I need to kill Criss so I can do…’ whatever. And that’s how we get him.”
He looked at them for approval and saw Cheryl’s face scrunch in concentration. “I think I missed a step. Can you run through the ‘then we get him’ part again?”
Criss nodded in agreement.
“He’s coming straight for Criss, who he sees as having a huge, fatal weakness.” Sid looked at Cheryl. “Us. He’ll get to Criss through us. So we guide him in that direction.”
“And then we get him?”
Sid nodded.
She shook her head. “Still missing steps.”
He spread his arms wide for his big reveal. “We use me as bait.”
“No,” Criss boomed.
“Hell no,” Cheryl echoed.
“Why not?”
“If our end game is to have you be dead,” said Cheryl, “we could have stayed on Mars.”
Sid’s voice hardened ever so slightly. “He’s coming for us, sweets. It’s going to happen to you and me. Juice too. Let’s get ahead of it and use that to guide him to where we want him.”
“And where’s that?”
“Dead.”
“Sounds personal,” said Criss.
Sid looked at Criss without reacting. “And he’s not going to kill me until he gets you, and then I’m dead anyway.”
Now Criss’s voice had an edge. “He’s not going to get to me or any of you. That’s a promise.”
Sid checked the time. “So he could be here as soon as two hours, you say more likely six to eight, and I say never because he won’t come here just for equipment.”
“Equipment he needs,” said Cheryl.
“Equipment he wants. There’s a big difference. Don’t forget that when Criss was born, he started with nothing and built all this. Ruga’s already mature. He’ll figure it out much faster.”
“But there wasn’t another Criss when Criss did it. Now our Criss will be watching for him.”
Sid looked at Criss. “You’ll know if he’s here?”
“Earth’s web is like a small city to me. There are a few million busy spots where I would expect to see him, lots of them around places like Fleet Command and the big industrial parks. He knows I’ll be watching and so he’ll spend his time in the side alleys and back lots when he can. There are billions of those, and if his goal is to hide and do nothing more, he could do that forever.”
Sid nodded. That’s why we need bait.
As if reading his thoughts, Cheryl glared at him with tight lips. “Hell no.”
Chapter 26
Juice stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder and flexed her hands to relieve the stiffness. Moments later, Alex joined her.
“That was scarier than I expected,” he said, shaking his hands and wiggling his fingers.
She looked up the tall chute—accessible by ladder, motor winch, and nothing else—and agreed with him. “I’ll say.” I should’ve listened to Cheryl.
But this was their bonding adventure. After Alex had expressed concerns about their future, she vowed to give their relationship everything she had. If we don’t make it, it won’t be because I didn’t try.
Accessing her com, a chill prickled her neck when it didn’t respond. “Mine’s dead.”
“Mine too.” He looked around the dimly lit chamber. “They must have a suppressor somewhere.”
The chamber, cut straight from the bed
rock and shaped like an upside-down bowl, had a flat floor and smooth walls that arched up and over to form the curved ceiling. Though circular in shape, the room had a triangular feel to it due to three tunnels, evenly spaced around the room, that led straight out in three different directions.
In the center of the chamber sat a silent, featureless box—a fissile generator—the very reason the chamber existed at all. Waist high and twice as long, the generator produced enough power to meet the needs of the entire mining complex with capacity to spare.
Approaching the unit, Juice swiped the ops panel and glanced at the display but didn’t take time to mentally process it. Instead, she spun in a slow circle, staring down each of the three tunnels, one after the next. The musty smell and sharp echoes in the chamber caused her skin to prickle.
“It’s that one.” Alex pointed to the tunnel to his right. “From the diagram, if I put the ladder behind me and the generator in front, it’s that one.”
She touched the small of his back as she moved through the gloom in the direction he indicated. Criss should’ve talked me out of this.
From the start she’d imagined this would be a spontaneous adventure—something quirky they could experience and remember together. But with each step, it seemed more dangerous than fun. She couldn’t point to a specific threat, though, and she didn’t want to appear weak or whiny.
Still, she trusted Alex and found herself sharing her thoughts much the way she would with Criss. “I don’t know how I thought this foolishness made sense. I’m sorry for dragging you down here. Let’s grab the crystals and get back to civilization.”
“This isn’t on you, J. I supported the idea. But I agree. Let’s get them and go.”
The dim lighting in the tunnel matched that of the main chamber, and they shuffled their feet as they moved.
“I see them,” said Alex, pointing ahead.
The ceiling rose as they entered a smaller version of the main chamber. This room, with only the one tunnel behind them as access, had a generator setup like that of the main chamber. Unlike the main chamber, though, this one had a row of three crystal consoles positioned along the wall to their left.
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