by T. K. Malone
“What happened?”
“Like I’ve said, it will be easier to show you.”
“Why?”
“Because we have to persuade you to do something for us.”
“What?”
The old man wheeled back and forth in his chair.
“You have to kill your brother, Zac. You have to kill Connor.”
Irving’s words hit Zac like a bullet in the stomach. He felt sick, sick to his very core, his mind revolting at the very thought. Had he heard him correctly? Did the old man just say he…
All eyes were now on Zac, his decision awaited with bated breath. Renshaw had grabbed his automatic back, though, looking every inch the soldier now rather than the lecturer. He moved back into the center of the room, his aim never wavering, and from behind him, two more armed men filed in and took up positions. Zac studied them in turn, clearly both mercs, both cool, collected and calculating.
But Zac didn’t want to throw in his hand right now and let these men know what he truly felt. It would surely have meant a swift end. And so, in the few moments he had, he thought hard, letting his finger circle the top of his glass.
“You want me to kill my brother? You want me to do this when you know I’ve already let one man die to save him. When you must also know I’ve lived a life entirely at odds with the one I wanted just to see him thrive. So, tell me, knowing all this, what makes you think I’d even remotely consider doing such a thing?”
“Willingly?” Irving said, holding his glass of wine to his mouth. “No, no, you wouldn’t do it willingly, but you will do it.”
Every sinew in Zac’s body had drawn taut, every muscle tensed, as he tried to control himself. He wanted to say so much more, to spout fire and brimstone, but he clenched the muscles in his throat to hold them back as he gripped the arms of his chair, as though wishing to crush the very wood. “What,” he eventually managed through gritted teeth, “have you done to him?”
“Us?” said Irving, seemingly unaware of the dead atmosphere which now hung between them. “Aren’t you forgetting she saved his life? That Charm had him adapted in our own hospital, in what was technically our city? Are you forgetting that?”
“So that makes his life yours to take away?”
Irving let out a long sigh. “You’re missing the point—”
“The point is my brother.”
“The point, Mr. Clay, is that he is not your brother, not anymore. Didn’t you notice how he never really fitted in? How he couldn’t stay in one place for long?”
Zac thought back to the last time he’d seen Connor. True, he’d been jumpy, hadn’t stayed more than a few minutes, and yes, it had been awkward, but that didn’t change anything. Connor was his brother, his flesh and blood, and that was all that mattered.
“He flitted about a bit; so what?”
“Always seemed okay to me,” said Billy Flynn.
Irving raised his hand, his head now nodding forward as though slowly wilting. “But you did notice. You do know. You may not like to admit it, but you do, both of you, know what I’m talking about. Let me try and explain it a different way.”
“Nothing, there’s nothing you can say.”
Irving raised his head, just a little. “Forgive me, gentlemen. I am old. I am tired. I am nearly done for the day. Bear with me for a little while and let me explain this one last thing. An AI or VPA, or whatever you call them, however you disguise it, is in some ways sentient. Anything that can think constructively can be construed as intelligent.”
“Well, that rules you out, Loser,” said Noodle, and he began nervously tittering under his breath as Loser gave him daggers.
“Shut up,” Zac growled.
The old man’s gaze now rested solely on Zac. “Let them play. Your troubles have flattened your humor; don’t begrudge them theirs. AIs need to be governed, and governed in the true sense of the word. Govern can mean a few things, but what we’re talking about here is regulation—constraining the rate of the AI’s growth to ensure it operates properly. Sable has shaken loose of her bonds, or more specifically, Charm has unshackled her.”
“Un…shackled…her?”
“However it’s happened, he’s given her her head, loosed the reins, unleashed her, or let her unleash herself. Why? Well, we aren’t too sure about that, but it has happened.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means unless we stop her, unless we kill the machine, we are entering a new time, a new era, one where we no longer have control.”
“But can’t you just…”
“Cancer, Zac, cancer. The AI known as Sable will grow like a tumor, spread like one until she is all there is. She is the single most developed AI which has ever existed. She is evolution. The brother you knew is already dead. Eventually, his body will be wholly hers, and as his functions become less and less important to her, so she will forget about its maintenance, and then, Zac, the shell who is Connor will decay before your very eyes.”
His words had hit home, and he felt Laura’s hand on his again, but gained no comfort from it. A sense of bewilderment flooded through him, set him adrift, as though he’d been cut away from everyone else at the table, his sole purpose wrenched from his grasp. Zac felt truly lost, numb and desolate.
“Why me?” he barely whispered.
“As she gains awareness—proper awareness—she’ll become defensive. It may already be happening, there in the compound. Things may not be to her best liking in that place, may indeed be muddling her intentions, but she will likely already be coercing events around her to her own ends. With awareness comes paranoia, Zac, but in a machine such paranoia will be calculated to the nth degree.”
“But why me?”
Irving raised his head, his old, tired eyes meeting Zac’s. “Because we wager Charm sent you to us for a reason. He’ll have known she could get out of control, and as his plan was to test her, and if all went well, to use her, he wanted a backup. We think you’re that very thing, the only one who can get close enough to stop her. And to stop her means killing Connor, a task for which the clock is now well and truly ticking, something we believe Oster Prime has now gotten a whiff of.”
15
Zac’s Story
Strike time: plus 7 days
Location: The Meyers' Retreat
They followed Renshaw toward an isolated cabin. Confusion once again roiled within Zac. Were they telling him Connor was both alive and dead, all at the same time, that he’d survived but as a living corpse? Was it already too late for him? He clung to his grief, knowing he’d have no time to assimilate it, that he’d hold onto it as though as a deadly poison waiting to be ingested, to be swallowed in a final fatal act. Renshaw’s voice cut through his thoughts as the man directed them down a path.
“Where are we going?” Zac asked.
“To witness a birth,” but then he halted. “Well, actually we’ve missed that. What we’ll see is more of a reaching for maturity, an attempt to grasp reality. What Walter and Irving failed to explain is the exact nature of the AI they refer to as Sable. It understands a great deal, too much, but is naïve about certain things.” His face remained devoid of any expression. “It’s reaching out, flexing its muscles, and it can’t be allowed to continue. That, Zac, is why you have to stop it, because if you don’t, maybe everyone dies.”
Renshaw continued leading them along the trail, one which took them to a small cabin, its door sliding open as they approached. Without breaking his stride, Renshaw passed through into the room beyond, into a room of stark white which resembled a school classroom. As all but Zac followed him in, he turned and stood tall before them. “This,” he beamed, “is where it all happens.”
Zac had only gotten as far as the doorway, the noise of the sliding door repeatedly attempting to close against him the only thing breaking the ensuing silence. That the room reminded him of the tube where Switch had died made him feel nervous. It was formed of the same resin, but here it had a silver sheen to it,
as though reflecting the glow of the many computer monitors set in a line along a long table down the center of the room. Then he saw the resin itself appeared to be pulsing ever so slightly, as though it were alive, lending the room an almost magical air. Before each monitor stood a chair, each glistening as though an unseen light shone down upon it and its monitor. The whole place had the feel of being a living being.
“Imagine,” Renshaw now said, “a computer not restricted to its memory chips, one which can, essentially, stash its memory anywhere. Such a computer would have limitless potential, and if you add in AI developments like Sable’s, then that intelligence would be beyond the realms of our comprehension, and I’ll tell you why.” He faced Zac, who was still frozen in the doorway. “Because then it would live. It would then, in essence, move. Its memory would be like our soul, like our very consciousness, but flowing from one crystaline structure to another. It could seek out what it wanted, what it needed. Its food would be information, its goals, though, known only to itself. That is why this room is so contained, and trust me, this AI is primitive when compared to Sable. She lives, Mr. Clay; Sable already lives.”
Zac finally stepped inside, now beside Laura, the door at last hissing shut behind him, locking them all in.
“It lives?” Zac questioned.
“Technically,” Renshaw told him. “Sentient computers, those with the ability to think, have been around for an age, from the first ones who could play chess up to what we have now. Thought, Zac; what is thought? Whatever the creatives say, it’s just a load of yes’s and no’s until you get to where you want to be. Options, Zac, that’s all it is. Where we’re at now, though, is a little more worrying.”
“In what way?”
“Let me show you, but first...” He handed his machine gun to one of the guards. “There, now we can all relax.”
“I’m about as far away from relaxing as I’ve ever been,” said Noodle, shuffling where he stood.
Renshaw pulled out a chair. “This cabin is a living computer, but one contained within an impenetrable shell—there’s no power source, you see. Everything it needs is supplied by self-contained sun cells and batteries.”
“Can we skip to the bit that affects Connor?” Zac urged, but Renshaw only stared at him. To Zac he was a conundrum, clearly ex-army but also versed in much more. Now closer, Zac could see the first signs of middle age creeping into his features, crow’s feet nestled in the corners of his eyes, gray flecks in his hair. He had the overall look of a man burdened by more than he was willing to reveal.
“Skip, Zac?” he said. “Tell me, how do I skip more? How do I put into laymen’s terms what I need to reveal to you, what I must reveal in order for you to understand completely why we ask the un-ask-able, why we demand the impossible?”
“You say ‘We’,” Laura said. “Are you part of the family, now?”
“Me?” said Renshaw, avoiding her gaze at first, but then holding it firmly as he told her, “I am a proxy for the child who never returned home. They couldn’t wait forever to share their paradox; they needed a casting vote.”
“And what paradox would that be?” she demanded.
“Whether to let their accidental child loose into the world, or to destroy it.”
“So,” said Zac, “Irving and Walter made this…this thing?”
“This AI?” He shook his head. “Not in any real sense. They invented this resin,” and he tapped the wall behind him, “gave it a home, a place to grow, to thrive. The original idea was to give this cabin a consciousness so it could maintain itself, but so much more has happened since. Coincidence took our plans out of our hands.”
“Coincidence?”
“Yes,” but he looked a little bemused. Then, smiling, he went on to say, “Well, we like to think of it as coincidence, the other explanation you’ve already heard. And that Sable engineered all this is even more worrying than the prospect of another apocalypse. It was unfortunate for Irving and Walter. A slight skew to their plans for the boy.”
“So, they pretend they saved him when what they really did was kill him.”
“That’s good, Zac: thinking of him as dead—it’s a start. And he is, or will be soon enough. No, what they did was suppress her as best they could. Essentially, they cornered her in his brain and trapped her there. Somehow, we think Charm undid the work. To do that, though, he must somehow have restricted her yet further still while he worked his magic, otherwise she’d certainly have found a way to destroy him.” Turning to the screen behind him, he pressed on it and swiped his hand across it. A three-dimensional schematic came up, presenting what looked like some kind of spaceship with a bulbous prow, all its floors and compartments revealed in cutout form. It had a long hull split into three levels, the lowest leading to what looked like a long, winding tail.
“What the hell’s that?” asked Zac.
“Looks like a snail,” said Loser.
“More a cat,” Billy Flynn ventured, and he pointed. “The big bit’s the head, the barrely bit the body, and then the curly part is its tail.”
“Spaceship,” Noodle assured everyone. “Definitely a spaceship.”
Zac looked along the table, shaking his head slightly. No matter what was happening, however grave the situation, this group couldn’t be kept down, he thought. “You gonna tell us, then, Renshaw?”
The man looked at them each in turn, his eyes finally lingering on Laura. “Not guessing, Miss Meyers?”
“I know exactly what it is. It’s Project Firebird. My mother designed it.”
“Exactly,” Renshaw said, turning back to the screen. “Project Firebird. I never met your mother—a few years before my time—but she was way ahead of hers. This arrangement of walls and floors, this lattice of interconnected rooms and levels, Zac, is, as Laura so correctly identified, Project Firebird. In many ways it was her mother’s madness—”
“My mother was not mad.”
Renshaw hesitated. “Forgive me; her inspiration made this place possible, and it was her dying wish it never be built. I’m told it was the reason she ran away from here. She thought it could never be completed, not without her input, but she was proved wrong.”
“What exactly is it?” said Zac. “And don’t give me that storage facility bull, because we all survived the apocalypse without it.” His voice had been even but his tone laced with impatience.
“Zac, Zac, Zac, I’m getting there. Project Firebird, in its purest purpose, was a place where man might survive in the event a near meteor collision with the Earth. Laura’s mother, Sarah, was obsessed with the thought that all the centuries of human endeavor might be lost in one stray impact, one unfortunate meeting with a roaming heavenly body. Should a hundred-year-long night become a reality, such a place would endure. Ice age, pestilence, viral attacks, anything and everything the future could possibly throw at us would fail to wipe us out because of refuges such as this.”
“From the way she spoke about it to me,” Laura struggled to say, her voice crammed with emotion, “it was only the purest of intentions which spurred her on.”
Renshaw shrugged and pushed his bottom lip out while appearing to consider this, one hand tucked casually in his trouser pocket, the other held out as though wielding a pointer. To all intents and purposes, Zac thought, he looked very much like a teacher, they in their turn his pupils. “So I’m told, but pure ideals rarely get things built. The idea of a nuclear apocalypse was much more likely, and a far better motivation.”
“And the fact she refused to build it to further the political maneuverings of others should not be considered grounds for madness,” Laura asserted.
“No,” Renshaw admitted, “but the circumstances surrounding her leaving may…” But then he glanced a little sheepishly at her. “Anyway, to the structure itself. Project Firebird, Zac, was built, despite Laura’s mother’s protestations. It’s a fully functional, self-sufficient paradise concealed in a mountainside not ten miles from here. The cat’s head, as Billy put it, is t
he residential and commercial areas, its body the military one, and its tail a thing called Hell’s Gates.”
“Hell’s Gates?” Loser muttered.
Zac couldn’t help but notice it was the second bit of input from him. Usually a quiet man, more at ease in the background, he now seemed to be showing a fair slice of unusual interest. Zac noted this and filed it away. He was on edge now, looking for any angle, any way out which might offer a means to untangle Connor from this mess.
“Hell’s Gates, Sarah Meyers' greatest success,” Renshaw continued. “Conceived with a mind not to repel a nuclear strike but to survive a near meteor collision—near being anything over a hundred miles. A spiral tunnel of nine vast gates, it was all designed to deflect force and diminish it bit by bit should it break through the first, or then the second, and so on.” He paused. “By default, it meant it could also withstand a near nuclear strike.”
“And so make it the perfect place to store a city in waiting,” Zac muttered.
“Indeed, and in so doing become a political trophy, because no matter how covert we may have been, you just can’t keep something like this quiet. Noses twitch and fingers point, Zac, and then people begin to covet.”
“Covet? You mean to tell me even as the nukes were falling, politicians were haggling over who would own what?”
Renshaw nodded, quite enthusiastically. “Indeed, in fact, the nukes hadn’t even fallen and the feds and local army were already getting ready to go at it hammer and tongs. And we, too, actually have to put our hands up to that one.”
“You have to what?” and Laura stood up, abruptly. “How can you stand there and say all this as though it were just something which happened to happen. It’s like you don’t even care.”
Renshaw looked her up and down. An ill-concealed sneer threatened to color his expression. “Unlike you, I accept the past and pay it little heed. Only the future should matter.”
