by John Freitas
Miles stared at the androids rebuilding the Washington Monument a while longer. “My overpriced Washington lawyer just told me we had a win today, Doctor. Why would you mess that up for me by asking questions you really don’t want to know the answer to?”
“Sorry, sir, I meant no disrespect.”
“You did well today. Let’s leave it at that, Dr. Kell.”
“Yes, sir, but if I can dare just a little bit more, we obviously want to find the first Brain. Why am I not looking for it anymore?”
Miles sighed. “You were there when it disappeared.”
“So you blame me, sir?”
“I didn’t say that, Doctor.” Miles said. “All the agents that were present have been reassigned. You were there. You have been called before Congress to testify about being there as a matter of national security. We may have won today, but we are being watched. So, I am not looking for something that I testified no longer exists and you will not be looking for something you testified does not exist. If I hypothetically had someone looking for a nonexistent Brain, it would not be us. You are my project lead for new brains and that’s what all your energy goes to, Doctor. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Thomas thought about the lawyer’s advice of giving short answers without elaborating. That might be good advice for his entire life as long as his life was in CDR.
“Do you have a flight out tonight?” Decker asked.
Thomas had to think. “Yes, I changed the flight each day like you said. I thought we were going to end up with another day of testimony, but I’m on the red eye tonight, I think.”
“I have the company jet, so I’ll beat you back to Chicago. Did you talk to anyone on the flight in about who you are or where you are from?”
It occurred to Thomas that Mr. Decker had not offered him a spot on the company jet which would have been easy enough. Thomas said, “No, sir. No one.”
“Anyone at your hotel? Chitchat with taxi drivers maybe?”
“No, sir.”
Miles patted Thomas’s shoulder. “Good man. Get something good to eat before you leave and then get back to work in Chicago tomorrow. We have big things in the works. Your team will catch you up when you get back. Don’t talk to anyone on the flight back.”
Miles Decker went down the stairs without waiting for an answer. He stepped into a limo and zipped away.
Thomas sighed and said, “Yes, sir.”
Thomas ended up taking a taxi out of the city. He had an android driver that asked him friendly questions. Thomas dodged the questions until the android stopped asking. He felt like he was being interrogated by his own creation. A number of roads were still impassable from debris they had nowhere to put or from construction on other adjacent projects or memorials. Sadly, Washington D.C. was actually ahead of cities on rebuilding.
“Have a nice flight,” the android driver said as Thomas stepped out.
“You too,” Thomas said.
As other androids carried his bags away, Thomas watched the taxi drive away. The driver made no comment in response to Thomas wishing him a good flight.
Instead of a nice dinner like Mr. Decker had suggested, Thomas ate a questionable kabob from a food truck outside the fence at the Arlington Memorial Air Field. Ronald Regan Washington National Airport was still largely closed to commercial aircraft from the damage. The real airport had one runway open for private jets which was where Miles Decker had already taken off in a jet with plenty of room inside.
As Thomas went through the light security before being admitted through the chain-link gate, the lights hummed along the perimeter of the field and dazzled his eyes. He could only just barely make out the shadows of the Arlington National Cemetery starting on one of the distant hills. Thomas squinted and tried to remember. He thought there used to be lights out there even late at night like this. Maybe power restrictions reached as far as respect for the fallen warriors.
He sat on a folding chair in the darkness under a plastic canvas tent. The blue plastic rattled in the wind across the open field. As sections of tent parted in the chilly wind, he could make out the rectangles of foundations like ghosts of the houses that used to be here back when the air field was a neighborhood. The damage was bad enough here and other places all across the globe that the houses had be leveled and the brick and siding scrapped away. These had been expensive houses too. The owners probably had the resources to rebuild, if their companies were not busted by the Pulse too. This area had been claimed by eminent domain for more powerful people that needed a place to land their planes. The irony was that some cheaper, newer starter homes had held on to the Earth better in the lift and fall of the gravity Pulse than older homes that were better built and larger, but not up to the stresses of the universe pulling them in two directions like that.
Dr. Thomas Kell whispered. “We pull everything apart until we get down to the quantum and then we find everything again.”
A few people on folding chairs near him turned their heads at the sound of his voice. He could see the whites of their eyes and thought what he said might be considered threatening or crazy, if there was no context. As he thought about it, the context did not make it less threatening or crazy.
The era of terrorism had taken a bit of a breather in the wake of the Pulse. There was fighting around the world and new civil wars had broken out around the globe as resources became scarce. Troubled regions became more troubled when aide from richer nations ceased in an instant. Thomas supposed there was not much terror to be had in trying to blow things up when everything was already destroyed anyway. Transportation between nations was cut off for quite a while and had only just begun to reopen. Moving willing terrorists to worthy targets was a difficult proposition. Global communication was out for a time and was spotty now. An incident in one part of the world would sometimes take days or weeks to become news elsewhere. It was hard to make an impact when a problem was already solved before people in other parts of the world heard about it. Thomas thought about the fact that he was working hard to rebuild the world when it appeared that global connectivity might have inadvertently fed some of the troubles people had been trying to solve. He hated to think that the only way to cut off the global threat of people was global isolation.
He was about to whisper his thoughts out loud again, but then realized that everyone was still staring at him from around the tent. They thought he might be some crazy fanatic about to take advantage of the lax security around the air field. He was learning to calm people’s fears more and more around his work, Congressional hearings, and everywhere else too.
Thomas cleared his throat and said, “Sorry. I had a bad kabob outside the fence, I think. I’m mumbling to myself to make better choices with my life.”
People around him chuckled and moved their attention off him.
The wind picked up again and parted the plastic enough for Thomas to see the glowing lights of three sets of eyes bobbing through the darkness between perimeter lights. They were dim enough that in his rational mind Thomas knew they were functioning at safe levels. The limitations of the impurities were doing their job with this trio of androids servicing the airfield, but in the dark, their eyes seemed especially bright.
It reminded Thomas of a pack of wolves moving through the darkness – hunting. He thought about a story he had heard of an alligator hunter. Dr. Kell had studied the behavior and minds of reptiles as he worked to improve the earliest designs of artificial intelligence before that created the first Quantum Brain – the one flying loose and wild somewhere in the broken world at this very moment. Thomas had just gotten through lying under oath to Senators about it. The gator hunter had spent most of his days selling insurance in a small office near Gainesville, Florida long before the Pulse. At night he captured or killed alligators or crocodiles that got too close to where people lived after they cut back gator territory to build their condos. Later, he did the same with large pythons that invaded gator territory from irresponsible exotic pet owners. One
gator got too close to a trailer park and had even been seen out on the kickball field at the elementary school near the pond. It was eating folks’ cats and dogs and might move on to the children. It was losing the cats and dogs that got the gator hunter clearance to kill it. He finished up a day of selling insurance and then waded out waist-deep in the pond with a flashlight and a pistol. He made gator mating noises and shined his light. When the gator surfaced into the light, its eyes glowed red and the insurance salesman fired once between the red dots. As he was trying to drag it out of the water, he heard a growl and shined his light to see two more sets. He fired twice more. As he dragged them out, another made a lung at him and he fired again. He told authorities that gators in populated areas didn’t tend to act like that. They didn’t cluster in small bodies of water and they didn’t attack once others had been killed. The eyes glowed like they were supposed to, but the behavior was all wrong.
Thomas wondered what had happened to that guy after the Pulse. If he survived, he would be busy with plenty of claims. Thomas wondered if the alligators and pythons had been lifted out of their swamps by the disruption in gravity before splashing back down. Would that sort of thing tampering with the fundamental rules of the universe change the behavior of reptile brains?
He also wondered whether reptile brains surprising people meant that Quantum Brains could still surprise even more. The first one had certainly been full of surprises.
The glowing eyes out on the field reached the fence and then split up to search in different directions. They were hunting after all. These androids were working security. The human guards at the gate could be slack in searching people because the androids could throw themselves on any problem that decided to wade out waist-deep in their territory.
The tent flap fell back closed causing Thomas to lose sight of the android security.
The flap at the far end of tent whipped open with a crackle and Thomas jumped. The human greeting them said, “Flight 684 to Chicago and points between is now boarding.”
Dr. Thomas Kell and most of the people along the folding chairs stood and shuffled out through the muddy grass. A few stayed behind and Thomas shuddered to think that there were flights leaving later than his. The man led them to a short flight of rolling stairs leading up to the doorway of the plane. They tracked mud up the aisles and buckled in without being asked. Thomas assumed his luggage had been loaded into the belly of the plane, but he was too tired to even ask.
The attendants sealed the door. The runner lights along the center aisle and safety lights on the ceiling flickered when the door locked, but they failed to stay lit leaving everyone in darkness. Thomas did not mind as he was lost in his own thoughts anyway. It did concern him that if they couldn’t even get the lights to work, what did that say for their ability to maintain the rest of the plane. CDR research had failed to protect the first Quantum Brain and then failed to contain it once it was loose. They were populating the world with lesser service robots and Dr. Kell was returning to Chicago to experiment with new levels of AI for the government and CDR’s own profit.
Thomas came out of his thoughts as he watched glowing eyes move along the ground in front of the plane in the night. They trusted the androids with their children and pets, Thomas thought. The senator from Minnesota had raised those concerns and Thomas had brushed the man off in sworn testimony just as he had been ordered and rehearsed to do. Thomas had done well enough to keep his job, but not well enough to earn a spot on the company jet. Now the androids lurked around children and pets like the gators under the pond near the kickball field. Who was going to be the insurance man to hunt down the monsters, if things went wrong? Thomas could not come up with an answer as he watched the glowing eyes in the night.
The androids took hold of the blades of the propellers along each wing on both sides of the plane. They lifted and spun them in perfect time with each other. The blades whirled and the engines roared into life. The androids stood inches from the blades with no fear on their faces which were lit from the glow of their own eyes reflected off the spinning metal. They moved aside and stepped around the deadly blades. The plane rolled forward and held position for a moment.
The engines growled louder and the plane lurched forward. The power crested as they reached the end of the runway and red lights marking the opposing chain-link barrier. The craft lifted and banked as it climbed into the sky. Thomas gripped the arms of his seat until the plane leveled and buzzed steadily out over Washington toward the west.
Thomas knew he should not have been able to tell, but the plane felt slower. He supposed knowing that it was slower than a pre Pulse jet added to the perception.
“Perception is reality,” he whispered.
He missed jet flights, but those were the purview of the wealthy now. Working for the wealthy did not count. When every plane still in the air during the Pulse came crashing down despite the forewarning of astronomers that caught the signs in the stars early from Colombia, Australia, and Hawaii. Some were brought down by the smaller gravitational troubles that preceded the Pulse. Others were on the ground only to be lifted into the air and slammed back down. Airlines went under as they lost nearly their entire fleets despite subsidies from the government. Propeller planes were easier to rebuild first, so in an age of android construction bots and android companions, the era of flight was back to propellers and props.
He had only just started to doze off as they descended for their first landing. As soon as they stopped, the speakers above their heads crackled. The system was wired up with hanging speaker boxes. If there were any turbulence or a rough landing, Thomas suspected they’d all come down on the passenger’s heads.
The voice of whom Thomas assumed was the captain rattled and cracked forth through the static to say, “Sorry for the inconvenience. No one will be allowed to disembark in Toledo and passengers originally scheduled to board with us have been canceled. There is a protest in progress outside the air field. We will be safe. We are doing a quick refuel and then will be taking off again for our next leg to Grand Rapids. Please, remain seated and buckled.”
The passengers on the other side unbuckled anyway and climbed over empty seats to look out the windows in front of and behind Thomas. He glanced out the round port of his window. Spotlights blazed into the faces of screaming protestors lined outside the fences of the airfield. Police cars and officers sat at a distance farther behind the crowds. Androids with batons stood along the inside of the fence every few feet without motion or a sound. Signs declared that God was judging the world and the Pulse was a punishment for sin and that robots were soulless monsters sent by the devil to enslave the world. One sign declared that men were not meant to take to the air anymore like the angels. Thomas saw rage and fear in the eyes of people beating the fence and screaming curses into the lights.
Thomas wasn’t sure what would happen once the fence collapsed or the protestors decided to climb over the razor wire. If they got to the other side in one piece, the androids assigned to security were programmed and permitted to subdue them. They were designed to control their strength, but if the crowd broke, someone would get hurt. It did not appear the police were poised to help the androids on the empty field. This would be another job that would fall on the expendable, artificial intelligence. If reports of CDR androids hurting protestors hit the news over the next few weeks, Thomas suspected he would be sitting in front of Congress again. He decided then that he would take the train next time.
The propellers whirled and Thomas leaned up to see the service androids step aside. The plane rolled forward without warning and the standing passengers scrambled to find seats and buckle in. If any of them were originally scheduled to get off in Toledo, none of them demanded to do so. The plane lifted off and left the protestors behind.
The landing at the Grand Rapids field was far less eventful. It came sooner than from D.C. to Toledo. Thomas was nervous too from seeing mobs of people clawing at the chain-link with CDR’s own android inven
tions between the angry people and small plane. Grand Rapids was deserted with most of the temporary air fields being some distance outside the cities. After the Pulse had brought everything in the air crashing down on that fateful day, many people were more comfortable with aircraft taking off and landing somewhere away from their homes. This was true even among the general population that did not believe the Pulse was a punishment from God.
Thomas leaned his head against the wall of the craft while staring at the first rays of sunlight breaking over the horizon. The first rays of light made the shadows on the ground seem deeper and darker. Dr. Thomas Kell watched attendants with glowing eyes refuel the plane. A human supervisor stood back a few steps watching the androids work. It reminded him of the police hanging back watching the androids wait on the protestors to break the fence in Toledo. Thomas wondered if one of the androids decided to spray down the plane and light it due to some malfunction or because the impurities failed to dampen their consciousness long enough for one of them to get a wild idea, would the human supervisor step in or step back in response? Dr. Kell had a guess which was more likely. It was the androids that were meant to take the risks, after all.
“We should have tested them more,” Thomas said.
A few passengers disembarked, but most dozed back off as others loaded on quietly. Thomas made long blinks, but could not seem to relax enough to go over into sleep. He felt his exhaustion deep. The plane taxied out to the runway and took to the air again. Nothing was on fire and no protestors, human or otherwise, came looking for revenge. As they lifted into the air, the pull on Thomas’s stomach reminded him of the day the Pulse lifted him off the ground and gravity deserted the world. The entire world stopped making sense that day.
As Thomas watched Lake Michigan stretch out under them, he saw islands formed by the rubble of collapsed buildings. Some of them had been lifted from other places and fell into the lake with other debris. Others were washed out into the lake from floods as errant water found its way back in the global downpour when gravity returned. As cleanup continued in the cities, the cleanup in the water was being put off for another day.
