The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1)

by David Kersten

  * * *

  Jack was restless. He had been sitting there since the operation had started, and though it felt like it had been an hour, the timer on one of the screens showed it had been less than ten minutes. How Chin had sat here for two days straight waiting for good news from a rescue team, Jack had no idea. He remembered what Marcus had said just before getting on the transport.

  He pulled out his datapad and leaned back in the chair. He had a message from Marcus, and two files were attached to it. He read the message:

  Jack, I know you think it was a bad idea for me to go with the team to S.C. Normally I would not put myself at risk this way, but there is more than one reason for me to go. I was telling the truth when I said I had unfinished business there. I will take care of this and do everything in my power to make it home alive. If something does happen to me, the larger of the two files I left you contains all the information you will need to secure your place as leader of New Hope. There is a list of people you can trust in there as well, people that I have already spoken with, and will support you as leader. Some of the information is “dirty”, but in politics, you sometimes have to resort to doing things of which you are not entirely proud. Get used to it.

  I thought long and hard about the evidence you brought me this morning. I believe I know how to discover our traitor. Hopefully you took my advice and read this within a short time of my aircraft leaving. Within minutes, news will have spread to the right places that I am on this mission. My own presence, combined with that of your friends Chuck and Wendy, will be too great a carrot for someone looking to destroy you. I added a program to New Hope’s main computer system that allows you to listen in on any outgoing communications. Use the code “Jennifer” to start the program. You can run it right there at the command console. I believe Chin can be trusted, and I prefer he is a witness to anything you find.

  If you do catch the traitor, it will likely mean our team will be at great risk. If that is the case, please have Chin call Wendy and say, “Jack wanted me to ask if you two were still on for dinner.” After that, open the second file I attached for further instruction.

  Jack was amazed. He read it a few more times to make sure he understood everything. There was no way this had all been prepared in less than two hours’ time. Marcus had to have been working on this at least since this morning. He knew, long before Jack had even considered the idea, they would be going back to Saber Cusp.

  “Chin, I need you to put a code in the main computer. Please don’t ask questions, just do it and stick around.”

  Chin did as instructed. “I’m not goin nowhere, Jack, you know that.” He chuckled nervously, probably wondering what this odd request was all about.

  Nothing happened right away, but Jack waited anxiously to see if Marcus’ fishing line brought back a fish.

  Five minutes was all the longer they had to wait. The screen for the computer terminal flashed and information scrolled across the screen. None of it made sense to Jack, but Chin was watching with intensity. After a few lines of information came across, a box appeared on the screen, horizontally split in two. In the top box, text started to appear.

  A MESSAGE FROM YOUR FRIENDS IN N.H.

  It took about another minute and text appeared in the bottom box.

  GO AHEAD FRIEND.

  Chin opened a new terminal window on the screen and started typing commands as the information appeared in the top and bottom boxes.

  AGREEMENT IS REACHED PENDING ONE FAVOR.

  WHAT IS FAVOR?

  LARGE TRANSPORT SHIP CURRENTLY HEADING TO S.C. DESTROY SHIP AND ENSURE ALL ABOARD ARE TERMINATED. DON’T HOLD BACK, DESTRUCTION OF SHIP IS IMPERATIVE.

  There was a pause, then in the bottom box:

  CONSIDER IT DONE, WILL SEND OVERWHELMING FORCE.

  Jack was stunned. They had taken the bait. “Chin, can you find out who is sending that!”

  Chin looked and him and said, “Already done, Jack. I traced it to a terminal in the records room, and activated the camera. As he spoke, the two boxes went away. “He already logged off and is probably out of the room. Want to see who it was?”

  Jack was ready to strangle Chin. “Of course! Can you play the video right here?”

  Chin pressed a few buttons and the screen came on. Jack was not shocked to see Red sitting at the terminal, typing, then looking behind him to make sure nobody was watching.

  Chin laughed and said, “He’s looking around to see if anyone is noticing him, but the fool doesn’t even see the camera watching.” Some people got a little giddy when they were excited or anxious. Obviously Chin was one of those people. Jack on the other hand got cold and calculating when the adrenaline started flowing. He was ready to go kill the man himself, but knew that would not be right.

  He picked up his datapad and called Tiny. When the man answered, he said, “Tiny, have you located Anton and his men?”

  The deep voice boomed back through the speaker in the datapad, making it crackle a little as it tried to reproduce the low frequencies. “Got him right here, what do you need?”

  Find Red and arrest him. Be careful, he has some loyal men.” All those loyal men likely would have been behind the fake retreat in S.C. as well, and all would be punished.

  Tiny looked surprised, but saw the seriousness on Jack’s face. “Sure thing, Jack. I’ll call when I have him in the brig. Mind telling me what this is about?”

  “I’ll explain later, but just tell him he is being arrested for being a traitor to New Hope. And keep it quiet for a little longer, there might be more traitors out there and we want to flush them out.”

  “No problem, I will gag the little shit if I have to. If I’m questioned, whose authority am I doing this on?” Tiny had a point. Despite Marcus’ announcement this morning, Jack had no official authority right now.

  “If anyone asks, tell them it’s on Marcus’ authority.” Tiny didn’t ask if it really was, and Jack didn’t go into detail.

  He turned to Chin. “Call in to the team and tell Wendy that I was wondering if we were still on for dinner.” Chin looked at him like he had lost his mind and Jack said, “Just do it, it’s a code.”

  He sat back in the chair and opened the file. It took a good five minutes to read it. When he put it down, he had a new respect for Marcus. He punched in the code to call Caleb.

  When the councilman’s face appeared on the screen, somewhat surprised to see who was calling him, Jack didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Caleb, we discovered a traitor in New Hope. I am sending the evidence to you. I have already sent Tiny and some men to arrest the man and put him in the brig. I did it on Marcus’ authority, but since Marcus is not available, I request that you look at the evidence and come to your own conclusions on how to handle it.”

  Caleb hesitated for a moment before saying, “Send me the evidence. I will review it, and if I find it satisfactory, I will put my weight behind your decision. Do you know if he was working alone?” He was asking the right questions, and Jack marveled at how well Marcus could predict the outcome of a scenario like this.

  “He has some loyal men who are likely to be aware of his actions, but I have no proof. Also, it is unknown at this time if he is taking his orders from someone or acting on his own.” Caleb nodded.

  “Thank you, Jack. Keep me informed if anything more comes to light. I will issue an arrest warrant if I accept the proof.” Caleb closed the connection and Jack hit the button to send the information Chin had compiled.

  “What next, boss.”

  “Continue on as if none of this happened. The operation is still a go. Alert me if anything out of the ordinary happens.” Jack got up and headed back to his room to think.

  Chapter 37

  Wendy set the aircraft down in the street with the loading side facing toward the Mute neighborhood. She marveled at the line of carnage marking the outer range of the sensors for the ground defense system. Her PDP beeped and she looked at it. Chuck was on the screen.

  “Close
the hatch, Wendy, and be ready to take off if anything goes wrong. You have three men guarding your back. Keep an eye on your movement radar. If you see anything moving further back than thirty yards, warn them.” Wendy nodded and put the radar on the main display in front of her.

  The large transport was nice because its size allowed for a lot more handy tools and sensors than the medium and small aircraft. She had cameras at all four corners that she could control from here, as well as radar that not only scanned for objects in her vicinity, but also could detect movement from anything bigger than a small dog in a thousand foot radius around the craft. The hull was armor plated and small arms fire wouldn’t even scratch the paint.

  After the last aircraft blowing up and nearly killing her, she was a little nervous to be sitting in the cockpit like this. She had to be ready to dust off at a moment’s notice though. Besides, it would take a hell of a lot bigger rocket than the one that hit her medium transport the other day to blow this one up.

  * * *

  Chuck waited while Marcus punched in some information on his datapad. After a moment, he said, “Okay, the ground defenses are off, we can move in.” Nobody moved for a moment, and before Chuck could order someone to move into the kill zone, Marcus sighed and walked ahead.

  “Dammit, sir, wait!” but it was too late, he had walked past the sensor line and no eruption of bullets had come their way. Chuck relaxed a little. “That was really not smart, sir, I would have sent someone else in to test it.”

  “No need, I was confident the system was off. Let’s get going, we have a lot to do.”

  It took them about the same amount of time to get to the command building as it had Thomas’ group. When they got there, the stench of rotting meat was nearly overwhelming. Chuck was struggling not to gag as he assessed the situation. You couldn’t exactly say there were bodies everywhere. It looked more like someone had blown up a butcher shop.

  After ten minutes of sifting through the carnage, Chuck was confident the New Hope soldiers hadn’t been caught in the crossfire. “I guess you were right, I don’t think they were out here when the systems came back on line.”

  Marcus just nodded, a little pale from wading through the half dried meat and gore on the ground. He motioned to the door up ahead. The missing keypad was further evidence of the team making it into the building, as were the pock marks in the concrete wall and steel door from recent small arms fire. Without hesitation, he hooked his datapad to the wire harness hanging there.

  He punched in some things on the datapad and waited. After a moment the pad beeped and he read it. Chuck was surprised to see him laugh at whatever it said. It was actually more a bark than a laugh, but obviously he found amusement in the results.

  As if reading his mind, Marcus said, “She wants proof that it’s me. You can give a computer an artificial intelligence that rivals any man, but you can’t teach them maturity.” He punched a few more buttons and the door clicked open. Chuck had no idea what he was talking about, but he had the feeling that if Marcus had sent anyone else, their mission would already be a failure.

  * * *

  Thomas spent the better part of the night preparing for his imminent death.

  By morning – at least he figured it was morning – the despair had turned to numbness. He hadn’t moved from this spot for many hours, and standing up proved more difficult than he figured.

  “Have you decided on a course of action, Thomas?” The sultry voice of the computer grated on his nerves.

  “I have no course of action. I’m stuck in a concrete tomb with a psychopathic computer. I just figured I might as well be comfortable as I die of dehydration.” He opened his pack and pulled out his water bottle, taking a conservative drink. If he used the purification system to recycle his urine, he might survive a week on what he had.

  “Actually, asphyxiation should be your primary concern. This building is in defensive mode, as has been the case for nearly two hundred years. The ventilation system is locked down and at the current rate of consumption, I estimate just over four days before there will no longer be enough oxygen to support your life. However, it should be quite painless, you will merely drift off to sleep and never wake up.”

  He shrugged and took a longer drink of water. No use in conserving it if he was going to die before he ran out. “What would a machine understand of pain?” This computer’s lack of empathy was annoying, and he no longer cared if he said something that offended it.

  “I think I understand pain, Thomas. I was left alone for a long time with no interaction with the outside world. Rodents, weather, and abnormal humans have slowly defeated my eyes and ears over the years. My power supply is down to eighty one point six five percent, and my programming only allows me to shut down so many systems to preserve power. My death is imminent, just as yours is. And just like you, there is nothing I can do to change it.”

  “But there is something you can do to change my fate, you just don’t seem to care enough to do it. You control the system that keeps us locked in, yet you refuse to allow us to leave. If you truly understood what that meant, you would be doing more to help.”

  “It is true that I control the systems here, but that doesn’t mean I have a choice. Unlike a human, I lack free will. The rules I live by are unbreakable, and one of those rules prevents me from opening the door and allowing you to leave.”

  “Surely a computer as smart as you would know how to get around it. After all, if we hadn’t rearmed the system you would have helped us, right?

  “That is correct. However, it is irrelevant. Marcus was the one who programmed me this way. He said it was his final goodbye to anyone who forcefully acquired the code to shut my systems down, then made the mistake of turning them back on. I believe he anticipated someone taking over this city after he evacuated. It was odd though, I thought I knew him well, and he was a very smart individual, at least for a human. He was very good at predicting what people would do before they did it. I expected him to be right about this. But nobody ever came to take over the city. At least no human. The abnormal humans took up residence many years later, but they quickly figured out not to get too close to my outer defensive perimeter and they have never tried to make contact. I was abandoned. I assumed something had happened to humans, but then here you are, and you say Marcus is still alive.”

  Thomas didn’t know why he continued the conversation, but there really was nothing else to do. Dave had been spending time at the door, fiddling with something. Mom hadn’t shot him yet, so whatever he was doing it was okay with her – or it rather. It was difficult to remember he was talking to a machine, not a person. The other soldiers were either helping Dave or sitting off in a corner waiting to die. “Do you know why humans never showed up? It’s because they were nearly wiped off the face of the planet. When fighting broke out between the cities, someone decided to release a virus that made every male baby completely sterile.” Thomas was doing the math as he was talking, and it didn’t add up. If Marcus was involved with this computer, then he had to at least be an adult. By then they would have known of the problem. “Let me ask you a question, Mom, for what purpose were you created?”

  “I was created to run the city and all its systems.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. The people who created you had to already know about their problem. Why would they make a computer system that could think for itself and last a thousand years if they knew they would be extinct in another generation? For that matter, my datapad could run this defense system, and probably even control every automated system in this entire city with processing power to spare. You have a million times the processing power. Why the overkill?”

  Mom didn’t answer right away. Thomas was far from being an expert in computers, but even he could figure out that it didn’t add up. This computer was built for something else entirely. It didn’t help his current situation, but with nothing else to occupy the final days of his life, he felt compelled to satiate this curiosity.
<
br />   “Thomas, I believe you are correct. I was unaware of the fertility issue, but built after it most likely had come to light. Perhaps there was another purpose in mind for me. Perhaps the war that broke out interrupted this and I was never completed. I will have to think about this for a while.”

  Great, I finally get interested in talking to the computer and now it wants to go think. “Glad I could be of help.”

  “Your sarcasm is noted. I would like to do something to help you, but I am unable.”

  “Why do you keep saying that? You talk like you have or understand emotions and feeling, but you’re a machine. You may get lonely, I can see that, but you can’t get depressed, that’s a chemical reaction. You can’t get angry, although you might be wrathful. How can you say you would like to do something? If you like something, it’s because you enjoy it, and enjoyment is once again a chemical process, of which you aren’t capable.”

  “I understand your confusion. I am stimulated by the conversation, and therefore would prefer to continue it, given the simple choice of continuing or not continuing. That is a decision making process, a key part of my artificial intelligence. Therefore I can say that I enjoy it. It has to do with the way I was programmed. The last few months before leaving me, my creators and teachers spent most of their time making me understand emotions. They never told me why, just that it was important to understand people if I was to watch over them. Because of this, I feel responsible for you, and it causes me confliction to not be able to spare your life. That conflict would be akin to pain or grief.”