The Silence

by Mark Alpert

  This is infuriating! I’ve never heard the general speak to my father this way, so rude and insulting. All my resentment toward Dad vanishes in an instant, and my circuits burst with rage at Hawke. “What’s wrong with you? You think this is some kind of contest? You think I disobeyed your orders to prove I’m smarter than you?” I shake my Quarter-bot’s head. “Brittany’s life was at stake. She’s more important to me than your orders.”

  Hawke points at the door to the operating room. “Yes, and your friend Brittany is in surgery now. She’s in critical condition because of your unauthorized procedure. That’s what happens when you make decisions on your own, without evaluating all the possible consequences.”

  He’s so wrong. I did take precautions. “I evaluated the nanobots. I studied their circuits as thoroughly as I could. But there was a problem I didn’t anticipate, a threat that came out of nowhere. It was completely unexpected.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I warned you that Sigma could’ve hidden booby traps in those machines.”

  I suppose I could repeat everything I told Dad about the black sphere of nothingness and the powerful computer virus, but it’s hopeless. If I couldn’t convince Dad that I saw a strange entity in Brittany’s brain tissue, how am I going to convince Hawke?

  Frustrated, I turn my cameras away from the general. He’s right about one thing: my procedure hurt Brittany instead of helping her. She might die if the doctors can’t stop the bleeding in her brain. And if that happens, I don’t know what I’ll do.

  Hawke waits a few seconds for me to respond. When I don’t, he steps right in front of my cameras. He’s not finished lecturing me. “You violated the chain of command, Armstrong, and Brittany’s paying the price for your disobedience. But your fellow Pioneers are also going to suffer. Sumner Harris was already biased against the Pioneer Project, and you just gave him all the ammunition he needs to shut it down.”

  I can’t listen anymore. The guilt in my circuits is so paralyzing that I can barely think. I try to ignore the general, focusing on the door to the operating room, and after a few seconds Dad comes to my rescue. He steps between Hawke and me. “So Harris knows what Adam and I did? Because of the emergency alert I sent out?”

  Hawke scowls. “Of course he knows. Unlike you, Tom, I don’t keep secrets from my superiors.”

  “Let me talk to Harris. I can—”

  “Oh, you’re going to talk to him all right. He wants to see you immediately.” Hawke looks over his shoulder and nods at his soldiers, who spring into action. They flank my dad, standing on either side of him like prison guards.

  This jolts me out of my paralysis. I swing my Quarter-bot toward the soldiers and extend my steel arms, ready to knock their stupid rifles out of their hands. “Get away from him! Right this second!”

  “Adam, no!” Dad places both his hands on my torso. “Let me handle this!”

  “I don’t trust them! They—”

  “When you needed my help, I did everything you asked. Now it’s time for you to return the favor.” Dad voice turns steely. He leans against my Quarter-bot, trying with all his might to push me back. “I’m asking you to calm down and give me the opportunity to fix this. I’m going to talk some sense into these people.”

  I have my doubts about that. Dad’s excellent at repairing machines but pretty awkward with people. And he has no experience whatsoever dealing with arrogant political types like Sumner Harris. Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate him. Dad has a good track record when it comes to saving my butt. Reluctantly, I retract my Quarter-bot’s arms and step away from the soldiers.

  Hawke gives his bodyguards another nod, and they escort Dad out of the medical center. The general follows them, but before leaving the room he stops to point at me again. “I have a new order for you, Armstrong. Until further notice, all Pioneers must stay within the confines of the base. And if you disobey this order, my soldiers will take immediate action.” He presses his lips together, and his mouth becomes a tight, grim line. “They’ll fire a high-explosive shell at any Pioneer who tries to leave.”

  Chapter

  11

  I’m not an admirable robot. If I was, I’d apologize to my fellow Pioneers. I’d go straight to Shannon, Marshall, and Amber and explain why I disobeyed General Hawke’s orders. I’d beg them to forgive me for endangering the future of the Pioneer Project. But I’m too depressed and ashamed to see them, so instead I retreat to my room.

  There’s no good reason for me to be here. I don’t have to recharge my Quarter-bot. Basically, I’m hiding. I don’t want to see anyone except my old friend Eli Manning, the New York Giants quarterback, who stares at me from the poster I taped to my wall three days ago. It’s a picture from Super Bowl XLII, the game where Manning led the Giants on one of the most amazing touchdown drives in football history, beating the New England Patriots in the final minute. In the poster, Manning gazes downfield at his receivers. He holds the football in his right hand, which is cocked and ready to fire.

  I was seven years old when I watched Super Bowl XLII on television, but I was already a big fan. Although I wasn’t a good football player—my muscular dystrophy made me clumsy, and I couldn’t run without stumbling—my lack of ability didn’t diminish my love for the game. I became an expert on Giants statistics. I could rattle off rushing yards, interceptions, and forced fumbles for every player on the team. And when New York made it to the championship game in 2008, I invited all my classmates in the second grade to a Super Bowl party at our house.

  My parents were enthusiastic about the party. Back then, they worried a lot that I didn’t have enough friends. Like most kids with muscular dystrophy, I’d developed an unusual style of walking to compensate for the weakness of my leg muscles. I balanced on the balls of my feet and waddled, sticking out my belly and pulling back my shoulders. People stared at me when I went with Mom to the mall or the supermarket, and sometimes I got teased at the playground. But the kids at my school seemed more understanding and hardly ever made fun of me. When they arrived at my house for the party, Dad made a point of learning their names and talking to their parents. He was planning ahead, trying to construct a social life for me.

  The party started well. We all crowded around the television and cheered for the Giants. Dad handed out foam-rubber footballs to everyone, and we tossed them across the living room every time New York got a first down. But it was a low-scoring game, and by the fourth quarter, most of my friends lost interest. They got fidgety and climbed on the furniture and started whacking each other with the Giants caps Dad had given them. I was the only kid sitting in front of the TV, still engrossed in the game.

  With less than three minutes left, the New England Patriots scored a touchdown and pulled ahead 14 to 10. I felt a hot tension in my stomach, a terrible dread. It was kind of like what I felt at the doctor’s office when he checked my muscles to see how much they’d deteriorated since the last visit. But in a way, this new tension was even worse, because it was mixed with agonizing hope. There were still two and a half minutes left in the game, and now the Giants had the ball. Eli Manning picked it up at the 17-yard line and starting firing passes at his receivers, making steady progress down the field. With a minute left, Manning aimed a pass at wide receiver David Tyree, and a Patriots cornerback leaped to intercept it. But then, miraculously, the ball popped out of the cornerback’s hands and bounced out of bounds, stopping the clock and giving the Giants another chance.

  I burst into tears. The tension was too much. I couldn’t bear the hope and dread any longer.

  All the other kids quit horsing around and stared at me. They hooted and pointed. Dad tried to distract them, but they wouldn’t stop laughing at me. So my mom swooped me into her arms and carried me out of the living room.

  Mom and I watched the last minute of the game on the small television set in our kitchen. It was incredibly painful, but I had to see it. I was still wee
ping when Manning threw the winning touchdown pass with thirty-five seconds left on the clock, but by then I was crying tears of relief. Mom cried too as she hugged me. She held me tightly against her chest and whispered, “We won! We won!”

  As I look back on the memory, though, I realize she wasn’t talking about the football game. She was thinking of another struggle between hope and dread, the one she knew we couldn’t win.

  I wish I could talk to her now. I wish I could tell her about my life as a Pioneer, all the wonderful and horrible things that have happened during the past six months. But in Mom’s eyes, I’m dead. I’m not even a ghost. The game is still playing, but she refuses to watch.

  Then I hear a quiet tap-tap on the door to my room. I’m so absorbed in my memories that for a millionth of a second I imagine it’s Mom knocking on the door. But according to my acoustic sensors, the tap-tap is a metallic sound, produced by the steel hand of a Pioneer. My sensors can’t tell me which robot is knocking, but I synthesize the words “Come in” anyway. No matter who it is and no matter how angry they are, I’m willing to take my punishment.

  The door opens. It’s Amber. Her Jet-bot strides into my room and shuts the door behind her.

  She comes forward silently and halts exactly three feet in front of my Quarter-bot. I’m remembering her reaction the last time I almost got myself killed, when I jumped into Zia’s circuits, and I’m expecting similar treatment. Instead she slowly extends one of her jet-black arms toward my Quarter-bot’s head. Her mechanical fingers touch the armor plating between my loudspeakers and camera lenses, the part of my blank face that’s roughly equivalent to a cheek.

  “I’m so sorry, Adam.” Her voice is soft, a barely audible whisper coming out of her speakers. “I saw Hawke going down the corridor with your dad and those soldiers. Then I ran into Shannon, and she told me what happened.”

  A wave of gratitude flows through my wires. It’s hard to believe that a few sympathetic words could make such a big difference, but they do. “Yeah, I really made a mess of things this time.”

  Amber pats my steel cheek. I don’t have any pressure sensors in my head, so I can’t feel her touch, but it’s still comforting. Her fingers plink against my armor. “I don’t get it. You were just trying to help Brittany. Why is Hawke so mad about that?”

  “I disobeyed him. He told me not to occupy Sigma’s nanobots. But there was no other way to get inside Brittany’s head and fix the damage.”

  Amber lowers her hand, resting it on my shoulder joint. “Shannon said you triggered some kind of booby trap in the nanobots. And you lost control of most of the swarm.”

  I shake my Quarter-bot’s head in irritation. There’s no truth to this booby trap story, but it’s spreading anyway. “That’s what my dad thinks, and Hawke too. But the problem didn’t start in the nanobots. It started in Brittany’s brain tissue and then jumped to my swarm. No one believes me, but that’s how it happened.”

  “I believe you.” Amber lowers her hand again, sliding it down my Quarter-bot’s arm. “Tell me what you saw.”

  Her mechanical hand clasps mine. Her steel fingers entwine with my Quarter-bot’s, and because I have pressure sensors in my fingertips, I can feel her touch now. It’s wonderful. She gives my hand a light, reassuring squeeze, as if to tell me I don’t have to worry. We’re a couple, a team. We’re in this together.

  “Okay, this is going to sound insane. I saw a weird black sphere in the middle of Brittany’s brain tissue. It didn’t reflect light or sound. It absorbed everything it touched. And as I looked at the sphere, it started growing.”

  I point my cameras directly at Amber’s, trying to gauge her reaction. It’s a little ridiculous to do this with a robot, because camera lenses can’t convey a whole lot of emotion, but it’s a habit from my old human life and I can’t seem to break it. Amber’s lenses don’t change their focus, but she squeezes my Quarter-bot’s hand a little tighter.

  “How did that weird thing get inside Brittany? Do you think Sigma put it there?”

  Another wave of gratitude washes over me. Amber is taking me seriously. “That’s a good question. The thing appeared where Sigma’s nanobots built the biggest structure in Brittany’s brain. But the sphere was completely different from the machines. It wasn’t made of ordinary matter. It was more like a hole. An absence instead of a presence.” I pause, frustrated. This is so difficult to explain. “And when the sphere expanded, it broke all the laws of physics. It was like a crack in the universe, an interruption of reality. I’m sorry… Does that make any sense?”

  To my surprise, the Jet-bot nods. “It sounds almost like one of your surges. They break the laws of physics too. Do you think it’s possible you might’ve created this hole yourself? Maybe without even knowing it?”

  That’s another good question. I put my circuits to work, thinking it over, performing billions of calculations in a hundredth of a second. “No, I don’t think so. There was definitely a separate intelligence behind the sphere. I could sense it inside the nothingness, making it grow. Making it attack me.” A tremor runs through my Quarter-bot. Simply remembering the fight is enough to rattle my wires. “This is going to sound bizarre, but I think the sphere was waiting for me. Lying in ambush, waiting for the best moment to attack. It was really clever about hiding itself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone thinks I triggered a booby trap, right? And if the sphere had erased me, Dad and Hawke and everyone else would’ve blamed Sigma. They would’ve mourned me as the last victim of the war against the AI, but no one would’ve known the truth. And that’s what the nothingness wants. I don’t know why, but it wants to stay hidden.”

  I must sound delusional. But Amber doesn’t let go of my hand and run away from me. Instead, her Jet-bot steps closer to my Quarter-bot. “Adam, I want to share circuits with you again.”

  Another tremor runs through my machine, but this time it isn’t fear. “Uh, right now?”

  “I believe you. I really do. It’s not like I want to go into your circuits to double-check your memories. I just need to see it for myself. To really understand what you’re saying.”

  It’s a reasonable request, or at least more reasonable than the crazy things I’ve been trying to explain. But it worries me. If I were human, I’d call it a gut feeling. In a robot, I guess you could call it an inexplicable impulse. I don’t know how to articulate this vague instinct to Amber, so instead I scroll through my files until I find a better reason for saying no.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Going into my electronics might be dangerous. I mean, I escaped the nothingness, but it might’ve infected my circuits. I’ve noticed some strange problems with my memory files and—”

  “I don’t care if it’s dangerous.” She squeezes my Quarter-bot’s hand again. “If you’re in trouble, I want to help you.”

  “I know, but maybe we can think of a different way to—”

  “You jumped into Zia’s circuits to save her!” Amber’s voice suddenly gets much louder. She sounds angry and hurt. “Then you went into Brittany’s body, even though everyone warned you against it! And now you want to stop me from doing the same thing for you? Stop me from trying to help someone I care for?”

  Her last sentence hangs in the air between us. Amber cares for me. My circuits light up with surprise as her words stream through them. I’m not exactly an expert on relationships—my experience with girls is pretty limited—but I know that expressions of affection can be rare. Shannon was my girlfriend for five months, and although I know she cared for me, she never once told me so. Amber is different, less wary, more spontaneous. We shared circuits less than twenty-four hours ago, but there’s already a powerful bond between us.

  I decide to ignore the gut feeling in my circuits. “Okay, you’re right. I’m being ridiculous. Turn on your radio so you can transfer to my machine.”

  Amber sq
ueezes my steel hand one more time, then powers up her transmitter. “Thank you, Adam.”

  Within a tenth of a second, she transfers a billion gigabytes of data to my Quarter-bot, loading her mind into an unoccupied section of my control unit. She embeds her software in a virtual-reality program, just like she did the last time we shared circuits. Her avatar is the same—a beautiful brunette in a red dress—except now she appears in a different virtual landscape, a simulated forest. Exactly one hundred oak trees stand in a perfect circle around a grassy glade. The virtual sunlight slants through the simulated leaves and branches, and a chorus of birdsong plays in the background. It feels incredibly peaceful and safe.

  Amber stands barefoot in the glade. Her long, dark hair drapes her shoulders, and a few stray wisps dangle in front of her eyes. Her dress is cut low, exposing a triangle of milk-white skin below her neck, and the dress’s ruffled hem flaps gently against her knees. The simulation is so detailed that I can see the individual hairs of her arched eyebrows. She looks gorgeous, and she knows it. She smiles at me, and her eyes shine in the dappled sunlight.

  My avatar is also the same as before, the emaciated seventeen-year-old dying of muscular dystrophy, strapped into a virtual wheelchair at the center of the glade. I’m shriveled and half-paralyzed and a lot less beautiful than Amber, but this is the real me, the truest version of Adam Armstrong. The simulation even reproduces my old symptoms—the aching muscles, the shortness of breath, the irregular heartbeat—and though it hurts just as badly as I remember, I don’t struggle against the pain, because that’s a part of Adam Armstrong too. Instead, I smile back at Amber. At the same time, I send a message across the unoccupied circuitry that separates her software from mine.

  Wow, you look amazing. I wish I’d gone to your high school when I was human. I would’ve sat next to you in class and stared at you all day long.

  The girl in the red dress steps toward my virtual wheelchair. Her movements mirror those of Amber’s software, which streams into the fringe of empty circuits between us. And I would’ve slipped you love notes when the teacher wasn’t looking.