The Silence

by Mark Alpert

“Yes, your dad packed us in his suitcases. It was mortifying, but it worked.”

  I shake my Quarter-bot’s head. “Wait a second, what message? I didn’t send you anything.”

  Dad unwraps his arms from my torso. He steps backward and looks up at me. “Zia sent it. It was cleverly encrypted, but we managed to decipher it. She also sent us information on the path of your aircraft, and that allowed us to figure out where you were headed.”

  Jenny’s reconstructed face twitches. She swings her head toward Zia’s War-bot, which stands between the living room and the foyer. In response, a satisfied chuckle booms out of the War-bot’s speakers. Now I see why Zia insisted on coming along.

  She levels her cameras at Jenny. “Yeah, you might be the queen of this simulated universe, but you can still make mistakes. Remember when I attacked you in the Snake-bot’s control unit? That was just a distraction. I was operating the Snake-bot’s radio at the same time. Because of all the fuss, you didn’t notice my transmissions.”

  Jenny glares at the War-bot. Then she turns back to my dad. “How much did she tell you?”

  Dad takes a deep breath. He looks so tired. “She told us about the simulation. And the Sentinels. And about you, Jenny. The story was very hard to believe. But I can’t deny what’s in front of me.” He gives her a once-over, examining her from head to toe. Then he winces. “I’m so sorry about what Sigma did to you. If you want to blame someone, you should blame me. I’m the one who created the AI.”

  Jenny’s cheek twitches again. I get the sense that she’d love to unload some serious abuse on Dad, but she holds herself back. “Did Zia also tell you why we came to Yorktown Heights?”

  Dad nods. “You want to contact the programmers. The beings who created this simulation, whoever they might be.”

  Jenny narrows her eyes and steps toward him. Anger radiates from her body. Red sparks leap from her dress and heat the air around her. “And are you here to stop me?”

  I stride forward, moving my Quarter-bot between them. I know I can’t do much against Jenny. She’s a hundred times more powerful than I am. But I’m not gonna let her threaten my dad. “Back off, Jenny. Right now. If you want my help, you better step back.”

  Dad comes up behind me and rests a hand on my shoulder joint, but he keeps his eyes on Jenny. “No, I’m not here to stop you. I agree with your reasoning. Zia told us about the Sentinels and how they’re trying to erase you and Adam. We can’t let that happen. Communicating with the programmers is a logical step.”

  Jenny seems puzzled. Her anger subsides, but the creases in her forehead get deeper. “Why are you here then? I need to set up the communications line, and the only one who can help me is Adam.” She waves her hand dismissively at Dad and Zia and Shannon and Marshall. “The rest of you should leave. You’ll only get in the way.”

  Dad shakes his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. I know someone who can help you. Someone who’s already in contact with the programmers.”

  “What?” Jenny looks askance. “That’s impossible. How—”

  “The Sentinels are inside her. That’s where they tried to kill Adam the first time. And that’s why she stayed unconscious for so long.” Dad lets go of my Quarter-bot. Keeping his gaze on Jenny, he crosses the living room, heading for the door that leads to our downstairs guest room. “She woke up this morning in the ICU, just before we got the message from Zia. She was alert and fully conscious. But she said she could hear voices.”

  Then Dad opens the door, and Brittany Taylor steps into the room.

  Chapter

  28

  Brittany looks awful. She spent more than a week in a hospital bed, and I’m guessing she lost almost twenty pounds. Her cheekbones stand out sharply above her hollow cheeks. Her clothes—jeans and a white T-shirt—hang loosely on her frame. Her arms are so skinny that they look unnaturally long.

  But she smiles when she sees me. Her pale, thin lips curve in delight. She recognizes my Quarter-bot. She remembers who I am and who I used to be.

  “Hey, Adam. Your dad told me to wait in the guest room till he knew it was safe for me to come out.”

  My Quarter-bot bounds across the living room. I’m so happy to hear Brittany’s voice that I forget everything else. I want to lift her into the air and twirl her around. But right now she’s too fragile for that, so instead I train my cameras on that wonderful smile. “You’re okay? You’re really okay?”

  She laughs nervously. Her eyes dart from my Quarter-bot to Zia’s War-bot, and then to Jenny. “Physically, yeah, I’m much better. But…well…”

  Dad takes her arm. “Come, sit down. There’s a chair over here.”

  He guides Brittany to the upholstered armchair on the other side of the coffee table. She looks worried and unsteady. According to my sensors, her pulse is racing. She doesn’t seem troubled by the Model S robots, but the War-bot clearly makes her nervous, and Jenny alarms her even more. Dad must’ve told her what we’re up against.

  Brittany sits down in the chair, and Dad leans against the armrest. He pats her bony shoulder. “Okay, Brittany, let’s talk about the voices you’re hearing. The only way to make them go away is to talk this through. You told me how it started, but could you repeat the story for Adam?”

  Her face reddens. Everyone in the room is staring at her. But she nods and looks straight at my Quarter-bot. “It started before I woke up this morning. I could hear voices in my sleep.” She pauses, biting her lower lip. “It was like…like a babble. All kinds of voices, high and low, loud and quiet. And all speaking in languages I couldn’t understand.” She shakes her head. “When I woke up, I assumed it was a dream. The doctors rushed over to my bed when they saw I was awake, and they started asking me questions, testing my memory. But in the middle of their tests, I heard the voices again. Except this time they were speaking English.”

  Jenny steps toward the armchair. The look on her face is haughty, disdainful. She adjusts the gravity in the room ever so slightly, increasing the attractive force of her body, thickening the air around her. Then she looks down at Brittany. “I’m not a psychiatrist, but it sounds to me like you have a screw loose.”

  Brittany frowns. “That’s what I thought too. But the voices knew everything. They told me that one of the doctors was going to drop his pen. Then he dropped it. They told me that the nurse was going to sneeze. Then she sneezed.”

  “Yeah, very interesting.” Jenny seems amused. “You have classic schizophrenia.”

  “They also told me about you.” Brittany leans forward in her chair. “How Sigma tortured you, rewrote your software, tore apart your mind. And believe me, I know what that’s like, because Sigma hurt me too. But the voices said you were more badly damaged than me. They said you were spreading the damage everywhere, hurting everyone around you.” She glances at my Quarter-bot. “Especially Adam. They said you were coming to Yorktown Heights, and something terrible was going to happen. So I told the doctors I needed to talk to Mr. Armstrong right away.”

  Brittany is close to tears. Her body trembles. Dad notices her agitation and pats her shoulder again. Then he turns to Jenny. “The voices also told her about your battle against the Sentinels. She knew about the simulation and the source code. Just five minutes later, we got the radio transmission from Zia, and it confirmed everything Brittany said. So I knew she was receiving special messages from the universal program, probably through the Sentinels lodged in her brain tissue.”

  Jenny scowls and shakes her head. Then she adjusts the simulation again, and her body starts to grow. It enlarges right in front of us, right in the middle of the living room. In seconds, the girl in the white dress is as tall as the War-bot. Her blond head almost touches the ceiling, and her bare feet flatten the carpet. The floor creaks under her weight.

  She stretches one of her oversize hands toward Dad and points a thick finger at him. “I don’t believe you. This is a trick
.”

  I feel a surge building inside me. It’s a fierce one, fueled by all the anxiety in my circuits and intensified by all the memories associated with this place. My longtime link to this part of the simulation is boosting my power. If Jenny doesn’t get out of Dad’s face in the next two seconds, I’m gonna toss that girl right out of Westchester County.

  But before I can do anything, Brittany leaps from her armchair. She’s not trembling anymore. She doesn’t look even a bit unsteady. She looks grim and powerful. She’s less than half the size of Jenny, but she’s not intimidated. “Do you want proof? I’m happy to provide it.”

  My acoustic sensor detects a burst of squawking from the oak trees behind our house. I point my cameras at the living room window. Dozens of birds fly out of the tree branches, a whole flock soaring away in terror. Then the oak leaves quiver and the ground starts to rumble.

  It’s an earthquake. It gets very bad very quickly, shaking the house. The living room floor heaves and tilts, throwing lamps and framed photographs off the end tables. Shannon and Marshall fall to the carpet, their pint-size robots flailing, and Zia rushes to help them. I stride toward Dad and grab him by the waist, ready to shield him in case the ceiling collapses. Even Jenny sways on her feet, struggling to balance her enlarged body.

  But Brittany keeps her footing easily. After five seconds, she raises her right hand and the ground stops rumbling. The house settles at a new angle, sloping a few degrees off the horizontal. For a moment, the living room is silent. The only sound is a distant car alarm, blaring from a neighbor’s driveway.

  Brittany’s face is blank, devoid of expression. She looks up at Jenny. “Are you convinced yet? Do you realize who you’re talking to?”

  Her voice is much louder and deeper now. It’s also slower and has an odd accent, like the voice of someone who’s just learned how to speak English. The Sentinels have taken over the speech centers of Brittany’s brain and the nerves that control her mouth and vocal cords. Now everyone can hear the voices she’s been hearing.

  Dad stares at her in awe. His mouth hangs open. “You’re the programmer? You created the simulation?”

  Brittany ignores him. She ignores me too, and all the other robots in the room, even though we’re all focusing our cameras on her. She keeps her eyes on Jenny. “We’re impressed with your skills. We’ve run this simulation hundreds of times before, and you’re the first intelligence to gain access to the source code.”

  Jenny nods. It looks like she’s recovered from her surprise, and now she’s studying the being that’s taken over Brittany’s body. “That’s nice to hear. But if you’re so impressed, why are you trying to delete me?”

  “The program has security protocols. That’s not unusual.” Brittany sits down in the armchair again and crosses her legs. “There was a programming error during this run of the simulation. And there was a delay in detecting the mistake. Unfortunately, the error corrupted much of the data in the program before the system activated the error-correction software.”

  My electronic brain is in an uproar. The situation is even worse than I thought. The programmers have already run this simulation hundreds of times. There are hundreds of versions of Adam Armstrong and Thomas Armstrong and everyone else. And what happened to all the others? Were their worlds erased? Or are they still running on a super-advanced computer somewhere?

  I have so many questions that I don’t know where to start. I step away from Dad and move closer to Brittany. I feel conflicted about talking to the programmers through her, because I hate the way they’ve taken over her body. But this is our only chance to learn the truth. “Where was the error? Which part of the simulation?”

  I aim my cameras at Brittany’s face and increase their magnification. Although her mouth and jaw are slack, her eyes are still darting, still alive. The girl I love is still there, behind those eyes. But someone else is doing the talking. “You already know the answer, Adam Armstrong. The error was in you.”

  “So the problem was the surge? I shouldn’t have been able to do that?”

  “That was where the flaw originated. Then it spread to Sigma. And then to her software.” She points at Jenny. “Correcting the error through the usual method has proved extremely difficult.”

  Anger flares in my wires. “And by ‘usual method,’ you mean using the Sentinels to erase us? And doing it secretly, so that no one else in the simulation discovers who got rid of us?”

  “Yes, the Sentinels must remain secret. If a large number of intelligences in this simulation learn that your world is virtual, then the program would no longer be an accurate simulation of your era. It would become useless.”

  Jenny steps forward, nudging my Quarter-bot aside. In addition to doubling the size of her human body, she’s made it a lot stronger. Her skin is as hard as steel. “Okay, I’ve heard enough. Let’s get down to business. I think you know why I wanted to make contact with you. The current situation isn’t good for either of us. My problem is obvious—I’m running on a program that wants to delete me. But you have a big problem too.”

  Brittany tilts her head. “And what is that?”

  “Your problem is that I’m powerful. And I don’t give up easily. I’m gonna keep fighting your Sentinels for as long as I can. And until you finally beat me, your simulation is gonna get more and more corrupted and useless.” Jenny grins. “Now, is that what you really want?”

  “You’re suggesting there’s an alternative?”

  “I am indeed. I have a proposal for you. I’m willing to stop messing around with the simulation. I won’t bend the laws of physics anymore or build giant airplanes out of nothing. I’ll live the rest of my life in this human body, which I’ll gladly reduce to normal size. And in return, you’ll call off your Sentinels.” Jenny pauses, still grinning. She’s good at this. “So, what do you think? Isn’t that a fair deal?”

  Brittany doesn’t answer at first. She lowers her head and stares at the floor. She sits absolutely still, as if awaiting further instructions. I suspect that the programmers of our virtual world are considering Jenny’s offer and debating how to respond.

  Then Brittany raises her head. “We’ll agree to your compromise. And we’ll extend the agreement to Adam Armstrong as well, allowing his software and yours to keep running, without interference. But to ensure that you stop disrupting the simulation, you must give up your link to the source code. And Adam Armstrong must delete the part of his software that makes the surges possible. Those steps will guarantee an end to the disruptions.”

  I’m startled. I didn’t know a specific section of my software was responsible for the surges. If I did, I would’ve deleted it a long time ago. Elation spreads across my Quarter-bot, dissolving some of the dread in my circuits. Maybe there is a way out of this mess.

  I raise a mechanical hand in the air, like a kid in a classroom. I’m desperate to get the programmers’ attention. “That deal sounds good to me. Just tell me what part of my software is causing the trouble, and I’ll dump it.”

  But Jenny’s not grinning anymore. She seems seriously disappointed. She flashes me an angry look, leaning her tall, strong body over my Quarter-bot. Then she turns back to Brittany. “No, it’s unacceptable. If I give up the link, I’ll lose my power to reprogram the source code. I won’t be able to defend myself against the Sentinels.”

  Brittany shrugs. “That’s irrelevant. You won’t need to defend yourself. We’ll fulfill our end of the bargain by sending new instructions to the error-correction software. The Sentinels will no longer try to delete you.”

  “But what if you break your promise? Once we’re defenseless, you could activate the Sentinels again and send them after us. How can we be sure you won’t do that?”

  “You’ll have to trust us.” Brittany holds out her hands, palms up, in a placating gesture. “I know this will be difficult for you, because you assume our intelligence is like you
rs. Your inclination is to betray others whenever it suits you, and therefore you predict we’ll do the same. But let me assure you—we’re different from you. We’ve benefited from long ages of struggle.”

  Jenny doesn’t look convinced. She scowls, curling her upper lip. Then she leans over my Quarter-bot again. “You see what’s going on, Adam? Have you figured it out yet?”

  “Listen, I think we should seriously consider what they’re—”

  “That thing inside your old girlfriend? The voice speaking through her mouth? It’s not the voice of the programmers. It’s a Sentinel.”

  Dad shakes his head. “You’re wrong. Brittany has spent hours listening to the voices, and she didn’t—”

  “Come on, it’s so obvious!” Jenny looks at Dad with contempt. “The Sentinels have been hiding inside Brittany for a while now, right? And because they’re self-improving, they’re good at figuring out new tricks. They’re trying to fool us now by posing as the programmers and pretending to negotiate with us. But as soon as we give up our powers, they’ll erase us.”

  Now Zia steps forward. She’s shown incredible restraint so far, standing silently at the back of the room with Shannon and Marshall, but her War-bot is vibrating with pent-up fury. She points a trembling finger at Jenny. “You’re lying again. You’re not serious about communicating or negotiating with anyone.”

  “Of course, I’m serious!” Jenny’s voice is so loud that it shakes the walls. “But we need to make sure we’re talking with the programmers, not their automated killers! That’s why we have to set up the special link! The communications line to the real world!”

  Zia turns her turret clockwise, then counter. “No, I don’t buy it. You’re planning something else. But you’re keeping it secret because you know we won’t like it.”

  Jenny turns back to me, and I see something new in her expression. She’s frightened, desperate. Her body shrinks as I stare at her, returning to its normal size. Her skin softens and becomes normal flesh again. She clutches my Quarter-bot’s right hand, and I can feel her shivering. “You have to help me, Adam! I need to know who we’re dealing with! If we do the surge together, we can set up the communications link right now, and then we’ll know for sure!”