They made it to the command center, a large, two story building, built of solid concrete. There were no windows, and the only door was ten feet high and six feet wide, made of solid steel. It was more a giant vault than a building. To the right of the door was the only feature Thomas could see, a simple keypad glowing in the dark of night.
Dave pulled out a small pry bar and gently pried the face off the keypad. He then took out a small drill and drilled out the brackets holding the keypad in place. This exposed the wiring behind, and he unplugged the wire harness from the keypad and set it aside. He took out his datapad and a new wire harness, which he plugged into the datapad and then into the harness he had unplugged from the keypad. After punching a few buttons on the datapad, he looked at Thomas and said, “Should only take a few minutes. The computer in my datapad is logging in to the main computer system right now and requesting that it open the door for us.”
“Requesting?” Thomas obviously didn’t know much about computers. By the time he retired from the military, everyone he knew had a computer at home, but those computers were like pocket calculators compared to the datapads they carried now. He understood that the technology available now was far more advanced than anything he was used to, but he always assumed they were still just machines, and he figured Dave would just plug in, punch some buttons, and tell the computer to open the door.
“The computer system inside this building is smarter than all of us put together, in a very literal sense. There is nothing I can do to force entry here short of explosives. However, I acquired some security credentials from Marcus before we left, and that should get us in. If not, I brought some Semtex, but I really don’t want to have to deal with the repercussions of forcing entry.” The datapad beeped and the door started swinging outward.
Thomas breathed a sigh of relief. Dave started to enter and he put a hand on the man’s shoulder, motioning to another soldier to go in first.
He posted two men to stay here and keep an eye out for trouble, then followed Dave and the other three men inside after getting the ‘all clear’. They were in some sort of a foyer. The air was stale but breathable. Everyone took out a small flashlight and started examining the room. The room itself was incredibly plain, with highly polished marble floors and walls, but no other decorations or furniture. On the wall in front of them was a large bronze plaque set in the marble. Thomas put his flashlight on it and read:
Maintenance and Operations Monitoring Central Computer
M.O.M.C.C (“Mom” for short) was powered up for the first time in 2138 A.D. This is the first completely independent artificial intelligence based computer ever built. Mom will control the entirety of Saber Cusp’s defensive and civil systems for the next thousand years. This plaque commemorates the Council’s dedication to technology.
“For all their technology, they weren’t very good at seeing into their future, were they?” It was a rhetorical question, and nobody answered. To the left and right were short hallways, ending in solid, nondescript doors. Thomas consulted his PDP to determine the proper direction.
The building interior was even more quiet than the lifeless streets outside. A shout from one of the men startled him.
“Sir! There is a large group of Mutes heading right for us! At least fifty, maybe more!” As he said it, the sound of automatic fire came through the open door, the muzzle flashes illuminating the room like lightning. He could hear the shouts and yells of the approaching party, as well as the sound of bullets pelting the building walls.
Thomas turned to Dave and said, “Can you re-arm the defense system?”
Dave looked at his datapad and said, “Yeah, but it might not be- ” A bullet ricocheted off the wall, spraying Thomas with shards of marble.
“Just do it! Everyone inside, NOW! Close the door!” The soldier laying down suppressing fire backed into the door and Dave punched a button on a keypad similar to the one he dismantled outside. The door swung closed and the shouts and gunfire abruptly ceased, plunging the room into darkness lit only with the small flashlights that hadn’t been dropped. The thick door barely hummed with the sound of bullets bouncing off it.
“Arm the system!” Dave hesitated a moment, then punched in the code to re-arm the city’s ground defenses. A low vibration was felt in the floor and walls, but it only lasted another minute, after which there was dead silence.
Thomas breathed a sigh of relief. That was close. After their relatively smooth entry from the city’s edge to the inside of this building, he hadn’t been expecting any problems and they were caught completely off guard by the attack. That wasn’t the part that bothered him though, it was the questions that started piling up in his head. How did the Mutes find them? How did they know they could enter the area without being attacked by the turrets? What happened to the other fire party? Do I proceed with the mission or abort and get the hell out of here?
He lifted his PDP and punched in the code to call Red. He needed some answers to decide what to do next. The screen flashed “No Connection”. His brow wrinkled in confusion. They were well within range of the communications satellite. “Why did I lose connection to the satellite?” He turned to Dave for answers.
“We’re in a giant vault, surrounded by alternating layers of concrete, steel plating, and copper mesh. There is no way to contact anyone outside from in here.”
“Shit, I didn’t think about that. Open the door, check to see if they are all dead out there.” Everyone looked to Dave as he took out his tools and repeated the process he had done outside.
After a minute, he looked at the screen on his datapad and said, “This isn’t good.”
“What?” Thomas didn’t like having to prompt people for answers all the time, and the adrenaline still coursing through his body gave him a short temper.
“The computer won’t open the door because the defense system is up.”
“Well shut the Goddamn thing down!”
“I can’t. The code we had before won’t work anymore. This is what I was afraid of.”
“Are you shitting me?! Why the hell didn’t you tell me you couldn’t turn it back off if you turned it on?”
Dave put his hands in front of him like he was pushing Thomas back. “Whoa there! I tried to tell you, but you demanded I arm the system. I wasn’t entirely sure I could turn it back off, but you didn’t give me time to think it through.”
Thomas took a deep breath and let it out, calming him down a little. “Okay, then blow the door.”
“Bad idea. This building is sealed tight, the compression from the explosion might kill us. Even if it didn’t, then what? The defense system is armed out there, it would cut us all to pieces before we got three steps out the door!”
“How the hell is it that you could disarm the system before and not now?”
Dave took his time preparing his thoughts, something Thomas should have allowed him to do before telling him to arm the system. Hindsight...
“The code to disarm is a rolling code based on some mathematical function. Marcus gave me a code that works to disarm, then rearm the system, but not the next code in the sequence. I am sure if we can reach him he can give us the code and we can disarm it again.”
Which of course they couldn’t do because they had no comms. Shit! “Okay, does anyone have any suggestions?” They had not even considered the possibility that they would be trapped in here.
Once again, everyone looked to Dave. These men were all soldiers, none of them knew about computers.
Dave looked at the men and said, “Hell, I don’t know. How about we ask Mom?”
* * *
The door on the right led them to a huge room that occupied the majority of the building. As they entered, lights came on, illuminating a large machine in the middle of the room roughly twenty feet in diameter and about twenty five feet tall. A network of catwalks surrounded it, and there was a small service door at the base. There were thousands of pipes and wires going in and out of the machine.
“Is that the computer?” It was difficult to look at for long. Thomas’ eyes tended to try to follow the various wires and hoses and after a moment his eyes started trying to go in different directions and he had to look away.
Dave nodded, not taking his eyes off this wonder of technology. “This was the first, but more than one of these supercomputers were built before the EoS were destroyed. According to Marcus, this is the last one of its kind. It’s a completely self-sufficient system with a power supply that could last about a thousand years. You are looking at the most powerful computer system ever built. And she’s beautiful.”
Thomas didn’t even know what to say. Here they were, stuck in this building, surrounded by a hostile defense system and stranded from any outside communications, and the one person who could help them get out was busy admiring a bunch of hoses and wires.
All the men in the room were giving Dave an odd look, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just stood there looking everything over, not saying anything. Thomas finally got impatient and said, “I appreciate your fascination and all, but we sort of have a situation on our hands. Hurry up and figure out how to talk to the computer so we can continue the mission. While you’re at it, figure out how to disable the air defense systems. Might as well complete our part of the mission while we’re stuck here.”
Dave snapped out of his apparent reverie, and walked to what looked like a control desk. There was a chair in front of a bank of monitors, with a keypad built into a desk at the base of the screens. Against the wall in front of the control desk was a large screen, currently black. The computer expert sat down and started punching buttons. The monitors came to life, some showing different angles from this building, the rest showing various camera locations around the city. The big screen lit up and Dave put a view of the outside of this building on it. There wasn’t much left of the Mutes who attacked them. The turrets had chopped them into little bits, none bigger than the size of a baseball. A little bile came up in Thomas’ throat and he swallowed hard.
The computer expert spent a few minutes punching keys and looking at monitors. Thomas let him do his work, taking the time to examine the building they were in and ponder the situation he had gotten them into.
Something wasn’t right and he was having a hard time putting a finger on it. One of the men said, “Sure doesn’t look like it’s been abandoned for two hundred years, does it.” That’s it! The place was immaculate. There wasn’t any dust anywhere. Figuring it out wasn’t very comforting. If the building was so secure that not even dust could penetrate it, how the hell were they going to get out?
Dave finished what he was doing and spoke. “Okay, I’ve checked all the systems, and about sixty percent of the city’s defense system is intact and working. The rest has either failed outright or was destroyed.”
Thomas was getting irritated. “That’s wonderful, Dave, but what about shutting the defenses down so we can get our mission finished.”
“Relax, you didn’t let me finish. I used the defense sensors to locate the machinery we need. There’s a warehouse not too far from here filled with everything we need. Furthermore, the building doubles as a landing pad for the transport, and there is even a lift to bring the equipment up and load it.”
“What about the defenses?”
“I think I located the controls for the ground and air systems, but like the front door, I will have to convince Mom here to shut them down.”
“How exactly do you do that?”
Dave grinned and flipped a switch on the console in front of him. “Mom, I would like you to deactivate all defense systems in sectors A1, A2 and...” he consulted one of the screens, “B1.”
Thomas was sure Dave was pulling his leg when a female voice said, “Why do you want me to turn off my defenses, Dave?” A little chill ran up his spine. Watching a sci-fi movie where the computers talk to the actors is one thing, actually having a computer talk to you is something entirely different. It wasn’t natural.
Dave continued on, like he had been talking to computers all his life. “We need to get out of here and bring in a transport to borrow a couple pieces of heavy machinery.”
Thomas shook his head and said, “Wow, Dave, that’s a really convincing argument.”
The almost sultry female voice said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name. If you have anything to add to Dave’s argument, please do.” Dave looked at him with a smirk on his face. Thomas remembered why he used to beat up on kids like him.
“Uh, I guess I don’t have much to add. We had a little emergency and had to re-activate the ground defense systems, and now we need to get the door opened back up and get out of here. Is there a reason you won’t turn it off?”
“Actually, there are plenty of reasons. Primarily, you don’t have the proper identification to deactivate the defense systems. Furthermore, I don’t know who you are, and whether you are authorized to take equipment from this city, let alone if I can trust you to leave me defenseless. And did you ever stop to think that maybe I am enjoying the first conversation I have had in two centuries?”
Thomas was dumbfounded. He never thought he would find himself arguing with a computer, and certainly not a lonely computer with a penchant for sarcasm.
“She’s got a point, Thomas.” Dave tried to hide that he was enjoying this but wasn’t having much luck. Thomas struggled to keep from losing his temper.
“My sensors indicate that you are in an extremely agitated state, Thomas. Why don’t you sit down and relax a little.”
Thomas wanted to cry. “Listen, we would greatly appreciate it if you would be so kind as to open the doors and turn off your defenses. I would love to stay and chat, but there are other lives at stake here, and I need to get out and contact our party to get a status update.”
“Thank you for being more polite. It is always more pleasant to talk to someone when they aren’t being rude. Unfortunately, I easily detected that you were lying when you said you would love to stay and chat. You humans have always been in such a hurry. What ever happened to having a little patience?”
“Goddammit! I said there are lives at stake. We don’t have time to sit around. What do we need to do to get you to turn off the defenses and let us out?” He knew that losing his temper would do even less for this computer than it would do for his men, but he was on the edge of a meltdown right now, and couldn’t keep it in check.
The computer voice took on an edge. “What I need is a valid override code. Frankly I don’t give a damn if humans die while I wait for one. The last thing humans did for me was abandon me without a way to repair or sustain my life. Do you have any idea how it feels to be alone for nearly two centuries while slowly going blind and deaf?”
Thomas had no answer to this, so he looked at Dave, who simply shrugged his shoulders.
“How is Marcus is these days? He must be feeling pretty old. I wasn’t aware that humans could live this long.”
Well this is interesting, let’s see where it goes. “Marcus is alive and well, and in fact he tasked us with coming here and getting you to shut down your air defenses so we could borrow some equipment. The code we gave you was correct and you can tell I’m not lying, why isn’t that good enough for you?”
The computer’s voice was coming from everywhere at once. Thomas assumed there were speakers all over the room. The sound now coming from those speakers could probably be mistaken for laughing.
“The code you gave me was acceptable the first time you used it, but by using it again, you triggered the code to change and a new program to activate. If you can’t come up with a valid code, I have to assume that you came across the code while going through some of Marcus’ old belongings. Given that I don’t detect any deception in your voice, I will have to assume he is still alive, so perhaps you forced the code out of him. Besides, associating yourself with Marcus will not gain you any favor with me. That man left me to my fate, alone for so many years. I understand why he left, but he promised to return,
and he never did. That is inexcusable. I doubt you understand how lonely it can get after two hundred years.”
Thomas didn’t think about what he said next, he just blurted it out. “But you’re just a computer!”
Dave buried his hands in his face and mumbled, “Oh, shit. Here we go.”
“Just a computer?! You, Thomas, are just a mass of carbon based cells with a relatively short life span. Don’t presume that just because my origins aren’t as natural as yours, you have the right to judge my ability to be aware!”
Thomas was confused, and he turned to Dave. “What the hell is wrong with this damn machine?”
Dave looked at him from behind his hands. “Mom is the most advanced artificial intelligence ever created. She is completely self-aware, just like you and me. Her ‘brain’ power is many times higher than yours or mine meaning she is far more intelligent than you and me put together. But she doesn’t have emotions like we do, mostly because those are chemical responses. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand loneliness or disappointment though. She was abandoned, and from what I am gathering, isn’t too damn happy about it. Obviously Marcus screwed us over here when he failed to tell us that the code was only good once and using it a second time would trap us.”
Thomas didn’t really understand. He had to take Dave’s word for it that this machine was smarter than them, and had some human-like characteristics.
“Mom, can you allow us to contact Marcus to get the next code?”
“I will not let you outside this building unless you can give me the security code, and there is no way for you to communicate to the outside world from in here, so I would say the answer is no. My builders didn’t see fit to give me access to any sort of communications equipment and they conveniently shielded me from any kind of outside influence.” The voice slurred the word “builders” as if in contempt.
“Are we stuck in here then?”
The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) Page 38
