The Silence

by Mark Alpert

  I learned a lot when I read the source code. It’s like an instruction manual for the simulation. I made a few changes to its software when I was in the operating system, and then I set up a permanent link to the program. Now I can send it new instructions from wherever I am.

  Jenny has been gone for only a few minutes, but it seems like much longer. Accessing the source code has changed her. She’s connected to the heart of the universal simulation, and her circuits are charged with all the new information she’s acquired. I guess it’s a positive change—she sounds confident and proud—but it still worries me. Now she’s even farther from the original Jenny Harris.

  On the other hand, I’m glad she’s learned so much, because we really need her help right now. Listen, we have to do something about these Sentinels. Can you turn them off?

  Sorry, that’s one of the few things I can’t do. The error-correction software is too crucial to the program to be disabled. But don’t worry. There’s another solution.

  Well, whatever it is, you better do it quick.

  Jenny laughs again. It’s an eerie, inhuman electronic chortle. Oh yeah, this will be quick. Now that I know the source code, I can adjust the simulation in a million ways. Here, watch.

  A golden bubble appears around the Snake-bot. I can view it with our sensors: It’s mostly transparent and tightly wrapped around our machine, like shiny cellophane around an enormous cigar. After a moment, the bubble starts to expand, its brilliant surface moving outward from the Snake-bot’s armor and passing effortlessly through the bedrock around us. It must be a specially programmed object that doesn’t interact with ordinary virtual matter.

  I’m impressed. This ghostly bubble is a lot more interesting than the lightning bolts and explosions I’ve set off with my surges. Jenny has created something unique and otherworldly, and she did it in an instant, without any strain or exertion.

  Okay, I give up. What is that thing?

  Because I can’t turn off the Sentinels, I wrote a program that’ll keep them away from us, at least temporarily.

  The golden bubble keeps expanding until the upper part of its surface touches the closest Sentinel, which is tunneling toward us from above. At the moment of contact, the dark tentacle disappears, its simulated energy absorbed by the glistening surface. Then the growing bubble absorbs two tentacles to our left and three to our right and five more below us. Its expansion accelerates, and in less than a second the bubble vacuums up all five hundred and twelve Sentinels. Its surface shimmers with their energy.

  Then the bubble pops. Jenny erases it from the simulation.

  There! That takes care of it. The Sentinels won’t bother us for a while. Are we good now? Everyone happy?

  I’m definitely glad that the Sentinels are gone, but I’m still anxious. The changes in Jenny’s behavior—and the sudden increase in her powers—are making me uneasy. And I’m sure Zia isn’t happy about it either. She’s the jealous type, the Pioneer who always wants to be the most intimidating robot in the room. Jenny’s link to the simulation has made her far more powerful than us, so now Zia has yet another reason to hate her. But she doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. We’re both waiting to see what Jenny does next.

  There’s an awkward silence. Then Jenny breaks it. Okay, let’s move on. I’m getting tired of life under the Pacific, aren’t you? Why don’t we get out of here?

  So should Zia and I transfer to the other Snake-bots? We can—

  No, we should stick together. We can travel faster that way. Look, I’ll show you.

  The bedrock around the Snake-bot starts shaking again. This time, the seismic activity fractures the seabed above us. The oceanic crust heaves and buckles, and a huge fissure opens in the seafloor. Millions of tons of mud and basalt gush out of a new hole at the bottom of the Pacific.

  Jenny, what are you doing?

  It would take too long to dig through the muck with the Snake-bot’s drill. So I’m adjusting the simulation, adding some tectonic forces to the seabed. That’ll make a nice big tunnel for us.

  It’s like the eruption of an oil well. High-pressure fluid rushes up to the surface, and the current carries the Snake-bot along, pushing it through the new fissure in the bedrock. The machine rockets out of the hole in the seabed and races upward through the ocean like a torpedo.

  We’re going too fast! The armor’s gonna buckle!

  It’s all right. I’m being careful. I’m controlling all the simulated forces on the Snake-bot.

  We rise from the cold crushing depths, buoyed by a virtual force stronger than gravity. Within seconds the Snake-bot ascends through the Pacific’s upper layers, which glitter with sunlight. Then the machine reaches the surface and shoots out of the ocean and arcs across the sky.

  It’s dawn over the Pacific. The Snake-bot hurtles above the water like a sea-launched missile, propelled by Jenny’s virtual forces. We rise nine miles in half a minute, then decelerate and level out at fifty thousand feet. We’re flying east, toward the rising sun, at six hundred miles per hour. If we stay on this course, we’ll reach North America in two hours.

  A bolt of hope whizzes through my wires. Are we going back to New Mexico? Back to Pioneer Base? It’s now an hour past the 6:00 a.m. deadline, and my dad has probably transferred Marshall and Shannon to the Model S robots, but maybe Jenny can use her new powers to rescue them.

  Before I can ask her about it, though, the Snake-bot flies into an enormous bank of gray clouds. This storm definitely isn’t natural. The clouds materialized from the atmosphere much too quickly, and as they whirl around the Snake-bot they spontaneously transform from wispy masses of vapor to solid blocks of steel. Soon we’re surrounded by giant pieces of machinery, some of them even larger than the Snake-bot. Then the closest machine—a steel slab shaped like a right triangle, with a hypotenuse that’s half a mile long—rams into the Snake-bot and fastens itself to our armor.

  Sentinels! They’re back!

  Jenny laughs once again, and it sounds like thunder from the storm around us. No, they’re not Sentinels. I made them myself. I’m manipulating the atmosphere and creating new virtual objects.

  At first I’m relieved that we’re not under attack. A moment later, though, I feel an uncomfortable shock. You can do that? Make things out of thin air?

  It’s easy. The simulation has codes for every kind of material. All you need to do is specify the dimensions you want.

  Another gigantic triangle approaches us from the other side and latches to the Snake-bot. Then a vast steel cylinder bumps into us from above and clamps to the top of our machine. We’re sandwiched between the huge geometric pieces.

  But what exactly are you doing? Why are you piling those objects on top of the Snake-bot?

  I’m giving it an overhaul. Attaching some new parts to the machine.

  New parts?

  Yeah, I’m turning it into a jet, a really big one. It’ll take us anywhere we want to go. And humans won’t be able to see or hear it, because it’s surrounded with cloaking software that’ll deflect sound and all frequencies of light. Check it out. You’ll love it.

  I adjust the sensors so I can view the exterior of the Snake-bot. The gigantic triangles on either side of us have become the machine’s wings. The rectangular cylinder above us has a glass-walled cockpit at its front end and a pair of humongous jet engines at the back. Jenny is building a gargantuan plane, an aircraft bigger than LaGuardia Airport.

  I don’t love it. Not at all. I’m horrified. Jenny’s too powerful. This won’t end well.

  Zia must be shocked too, because she finally jumps into the conversation. Adam, if you won’t…ask her the question…then I will. Where…are you taking us…you disgusting…coward?

  There’s so much hatred in Zia’s voice, and I feel certain that Jenny will respond in kind. I expect a war to break out inside the Snake-bot’s control unit, an electronic
battle to the death. But Jenny stays calm. I’m surprised you haven’t guessed. You hate being vulnerable, don’t you, Zia? And everyone in this virtual world is vulnerable. It could shut down at any time. Then we’d all be gone, erased.

  Stop messing…with our heads…and answer…the question.

  I want to find out who wrote this program. And why. I want to know what kind of world the programmers live in, the world outside whatever computer we’re running on. And most important, I want this program to stop trying to delete us.

  And how…will you do all that?

  I’m going to talk to the programmers. We’ll figure out a way to communicate with them.

  My circuits stutter, their currents interrupted. I’m stunned by the audacity of the idea. Is that even possible? Are you—

  No! She’s trying to…trick us again!

  Zia won’t listen. She’s reached her breaking point. I want to tell her to calm down, but I know it would be useless. Rage floods her software. She roars across the Snake-bot’s control unit and hurls herself at Jenny’s circuits.

  Liar! I’m gonna…rip you to little…

  Then I feel a sickening jolt. With a silent command, Jenny transfers Zia and me out of the Snake-bot.

  Chapter

  26

  I wake up three hours later inside the circuits of my Quarter-bot.

  I panic for a moment, remembering the kill switch. The 6:00 a.m. deadline passed four hours ago, and I don’t have the prime-number code that my machine needs to keep operating. But when I examine my wiring, I see there’s nothing to worry about. Before Jenny transferred me back to my robot, she rebuilt its control unit and removed the Army’s kill switch. I don’t need Sumner Harris’s special codes anymore.

  I should be grateful. This is what we wanted when we rebelled against Harris and the other humans trying to take away our freedom. But so much has changed since we left Pioneer Base. I’ve learned that no one in our world is fully human, at least if you define the word in the usual biological way. And no one is completely free either. We’re all electronic puppets. Our lives are just unrehearsed performances in a long-running, worldwide show.

  Also? It’s hard to be grateful for a gift that’s so disturbing. Jenny redesigned my Quarter-bot’s circuits too perfectly, rerouting a billion wires with uncanny precision. It’s frightening how much she can do and how fast she can do it. She can change even the smallest details of our virtual world. She also repaired my Quarter-bot’s legs, which stand straight and strong under my weight, as good as new.

  She’s obviously trying to make amends. Trying to show that she’s our ally, not an enemy. But I’m not falling for it. How can I trust Jenny after everything she’s done to me? I turn on my Quarter-bot’s cameras and activate my weapons. I’m ready to defend myself.

  My robot stands in the middle of a cavernous room. Its floor is an enormous semicircle of steel, more than a hundred feet across. Its ceiling is a giant, curved piece of glass that arches high overhead and slopes down to the floor. It’s a transparent half dome, an amazingly big window that shows the vast blue sky above and scattered clouds to the east, north, and south. I realize I’m in the cockpit of the gargantuan aircraft Jenny built. I can feel the rumble of the jet engines, which are making the floor vibrate.

  But this cockpit is empty. It has no pilot seats or control sticks or instrument panels. Either the plane is on automatic pilot, or Jenny is controlling the aircraft from somewhere else. This room is strictly a viewing platform. The half dome window at the front of the plane offers a spectacular vantage point.

  I stride toward the giant window and aim my Quarter-bot’s cameras at the ground. The plane is flying over a vast mountain range, which I recognize from the maps in my databases. We’re ten miles above the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. I see no other planes near us—in particular, no Air Force jets trying to shoot us down. Jenny’s cloaking software is keeping us hidden.

  Then I point my cameras at the steel wall opposite the window. There are no doors in the wall, no passageways connecting the cockpit to the rest of the plane. But standing a few yards in front of the wall is a block-like structure, a metallic shed about ten feet high and five feet wide. It looks a bit like a garden shed and seems very out of place in the big, empty cockpit. It has a roll-up door made of corrugated aluminum.

  I approach the structure warily, using my ultrasonic sensors to probe its interior. I assume it’s the entrance to a stairway leading to a lower level of the aircraft, but my sensors don’t detect any stairs behind the door. Instead, I see a familiar nine-foot-tall robot.

  I lift the rollup door. Zia’s War-bot stands in the narrow, dark space, silent and still. Jenny either rebuilt the machine from its charred pieces or constructed a duplicate, but she seems to have disabled some of its critical systems. When I send Zia a radio signal, she doesn’t respond. Her software is inside the War-bot’s circuits, but she can’t operate its radio or start its motors or turn on its loudspeakers. Although she can see and hear and think, she can’t speak or move.

  Outraged, I grab the War-bot by its torso and drag it out of the shed. I’m going to connect to Zia’s circuits and remove the software that’s restricting her. But then I notice there’s no cable port in her armor. I can’t link to her control unit.

  Then a voice blares from a loudspeaker embedded in the wall behind the shed. “Don’t worry, Zia’s fine. I turned off her War-bot’s speakers because I need her to shut up for a few minutes. I have some important things to tell you, and I want to do it without interruptions.”

  Jenny has made some improvements to her voice. It sounds less tinny and robotic, more human than synthesized. I think she’s trying to win me over by reminding me of the human Jenny Harris. But it’s not working. “Let Zia go! Right now!”

  “You saw what happened inside the Snake-bot. She attacked me.”

  I step away from the paralyzed War-bot and point at the loudspeaker that Jenny’s using. There’s a wall-mounted video camera right next to it, so I know Jenny can see me, wherever she is. “You attacked her first! You blew up her robot!”

  “But I put it back together. And I fixed all the damage to her software and got rid of the kill switch. I made everything right, and now I just want talk to you for five minutes without her yelling at me. After we’re done, I promise I’ll release all the restraints on her circuits. Just five minutes, Adam.”

  I don’t really have a choice. Jenny has all the power. “Where are you? Are you still in the Snake-bot’s control unit?”

  “No, the Snake-bot doesn’t exist anymore. I incorporated all its hardware into the Flying Fortress. That’s my nickname for the plane I built. It’s awesome, right?”

  “Yeah, awesome.” My circuits are fuming. I want to punch a hole through her plane’s fuselage, but I manage to keep my voice steady. “You really outdid yourself. Now what—”

  “Hold on. I want to show you something else. I’ve been working on it for the past couple of hours.”

  A door suddenly materializes in the wall, just below the loudspeaker. It wasn’t there a second ago, but now it’s as solid as can be. Then the door opens, and a teenage girl in a white, sleeveless dress steps into the cockpit.

  She has long, blond hair and bright-blue eyes and dimpled cheeks. Her feet are bare, and her toenails are painted purple. There’s a birthmark the size of a pencil eraser on her left shoulder.

  She smiles at my Quarter-bot. “What do you think?”

  It’s Jenny’s voice, breathy and vibrant. At first I assume she’s occupying a lifelike robot, like Marshall’s Super-bot, but even more realistic. Then I switch my cameras to the infrared range and probe her with my ultrasonic sensors. Her face is warm. Her heart is beating. Blood is circulating to her arms and legs and head. Her body is composed of skin and muscle and bone, about 35 trillion cells in all. It’s as human as any other human body on the planet. />
  I step away from her. “How…how did…?”

  “Not bad, huh?” She spins on her right foot, turning all the way around, and her dress flutters at her knees. “Don’t get me wrong. I was never a hottie, not even close. But before I got sick, I was pretty darn cute.”

  I take another step backward. “You programmed the simulation to do this? Reconstruct your human body?”

  She smiles again. Her hair sways behind her bare shoulders. “It wasn’t that hard. The program has an archive. It stores all the data from the virtual world at regular yearly intervals. So all I had to do was retrieve the data for my body from two years ago, before the cancer started.”

  “But what about your mind? How did you get all your software into—”

  “Oh, the brain is linked to my network. It’s the same trick Sigma used to take control of Brittany, your old girlfriend.” She turns around and uses both hands to lift her long mane of hair from the back of her head. At the base of her skull, a stubby black antenna pokes out of her skin. “My software is running on a control unit on the plane, which is connected wirelessly to the implants in the girl’s skull.” She lowers her hair and turns back to me. “This way, I get the best of both worlds, human and machine.”

  I shake my Quarter-bot’s head. It’s so disorienting to see this version of Jenny. It isn’t the first time I’ve seen her human body—I met her before she became a Pioneer—but she looked very different then. She was bald and painfully thin, her body ravaged by cancer and chemotherapy. But later, after our minds were downloaded into robots, Jenny showed me an image of what she looked like before she got sick, the blond healthy girl she still wished she could be. And now she’s made her wish come true.

  She tilts her head, waiting for me to say something. After a while, she stops smiling. “What’s wrong? You don’t like what you see?” She narrows her eyes, scrunching her pretty face. “Or maybe you like Amber Wilson more? It’s okay if you do, Adam. I could reconstruct her body as well.”