Silver's Gods

by Rich X Curtis

  He laughed out loud and checked the time. Twenty minutes until rendezvous. He started the engine.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “Goddammit,” Silver said. “You didn’t need to do that.”

  Gold rolled off the now lifeless man. He still stared at her. She shook her head.

  “I needed to. He would have been a burden, and couldn’t tell us much.”

  “How many—” she started, and Gold waved her off.

  “One left, after him.” She glanced down the hall, nodding at the body sprawled in the doorway. “Good shooting.”

  “He was outside,” Silver said.

  “So there’s one left inside.” Gold looked at her. “Let’s go find him.”

  But then they heard it, a door slam, heavy by the sound. An outside door.

  Gold listened. “I think he just left.”

  Silver strained her ears. It had come from farther back, towards what had, in her mental picture of the place, been a loading dock. She heard another, fainter door. A car? Then an engine.

  She ran for the door and yanked it open, dashing out into the night, holding her eyes wide to adjust them to the darkness. She saw it then, an SUV, black, reversing out of the parking lot at speed. She raised her gun to fire, but he turned the corner, tires screeching.

  She went back inside. Gold was bent over the bearded man, his earpiece held to her ear. She looked up at Silver as she came in. Silver met her gaze frankly. Gold rolled her eyes at her. Get over it, the look said. Silver looked away, sealing the door behind her. She checked the corpse of the man she’d shot, holding her hand to his neck. Dead, for sure. His eyes were closed. She sighed.

  “Okay, what’s next?” Silver asked.

  Gold shrugged. “He’s screaming for backup, air strikes, the Marines.” She looked at Silver. “Couldn’t get a clear shot? Or lose your nerve?”

  “Stop it,” Silver said. “Did I lose my nerve with him?” She indicated the dead man behind her with her chin.

  Gold looked at her; they were almost the same height. Silver was taller. “He wouldn’t have told us anything we didn’t already know.”

  “Maybe,” Silver said. But I wanted you to stop, and you wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to. “So, what’s next?” You’re in charge, so be in charge.

  “Smoke and the others are coming up the road”—she glanced at her watch—“any minute.”

  “Let’s hope they get past our stray,” Silver said. “When they get here, think Smoke will have a plan?”

  “I doubt it. He’ll probably want to report in to the mother temple,” she said. She spat.

  “We won’t have much time for that,” Silver said. “They’ll have backup incoming in an hour. Local SWAT, maybe, but it’ll be something.”

  “Too bad, would be fun to see the Marines.” Gold grinned at her. She was enjoying this. They had spent much of their lives waiting, watching, rarely acting. Rarely doing anything other than wandering around in a daze from their dreams. Occasional bits of mayhem like this, but it seemed to Silver that their long lives had been nothing but a boring security guard job, patrolling endless corridors of history just like those in this server farm.

  “It’s not fun,” she said, absently. “The cafeteria. Let’s go see what we came up here for. Take a tour.”

  Gold nodded at this and took the weapon off the bearded man’s corpse. “Get his too. Might need them, for the Marines.”

  Silver sighed and did it, trying not to look too hard at his face as she did so. He was young, not yet thirty, in great shape. Had a whole life ahead of him, and she’d taken it, like that, without a thought. He wasn’t the first, she knew, that she’d treated this way. She could remember many, and there were others she couldn’t remember. Lost to history. It will be good, she thought, when this is over.

  As she thought this, struggling with a stubborn nylon clasp, she realized that this might be the end, that it may very well be nearing the end. Her life. Hers and Gold’s. They would be, as almost everyone she’d ever known, lost. Over. Done. Complete. What did that mean, really? What would happen, in the land of the dead? Nothing good. But that was, she recalled from her childhood so many years in the past, the point. The lesson. Nothing good happened in the land of the dead, so if something came back from there, you shunned it. You cast it out.

  She thought of her sisters. and how they had stared at her with open hatred, as she left with her Murta, near the banks of that little river. It was all so pointless, it seemed. Did it really lead up to this? To spend an eternity shepherding a machine into life? That seemed to be what she and Gold had been doing, or at least a part of it. Shepherding, guiding, shaping humanity towards a civilization that could create whatever was thrumming behind these walls.

  The clasp came loose. She stripped the corpse of the weapon and ammunition. Four clips, smeared with blood. She stuffed them into her pockets. She hoisted the gun and walked back to Gold, who was listening on the radio. Gold held up her hand for silence as she approached.

  Gold removed the earpiece and tossed it onto the bearded man’s corpse. His eyes weren’t staring at her anymore, just the open eyes of a dead man. “Lots of chatter now. Sounds like an AWACS is nearby, which means the Marines might not be so far away. Or Airborne. We have some hours yet. Our friends got past him, so they should be here soon. If there aren’t drones standing by with missiles.” Gold looked at her. “Sounds like they were moving at speed and passed him on the road up. He was asking for that, for a drone to take them out.” Gold shrugged. “So, we’ll see them if we see them.”

  “If they make it to the parking lot, they’re safe,” Silver said, shouldering the extra weapon, a submachine pistol identical to the others. “No way they will risk this thing.” She encompassed the building and the AI with a wide gesture of her chin. “Not a chance.”

  Gold nodded. “Well, let’s hope, then. Marines for sure.” She grinned. “Let’s go let them in. They can’t be far.”

  They headed to the front door. Silver stopped at the cafeteria. “Wait, we need one.” Gold opened the door for her and stepped back with mock courtesy. Silver entered, warily, but the weapons were where she had left them on the counter, and she’d taken the magazines. A balding man with wire-rimmed glasses stood when she came in.

  “You,” she said, pointing at him. “What’s your name?”

  “George Miller. I’m a scientist here. Senior, I guess.”

  She looked at him. Balding, a paunch, khakis and a now-wrinkled oxford. “You’re an AI researcher?”

  He swallowed at this, but nodded. Brave enough, then. “Okay, come with me. We need a guide.” She turned to the others in the room. “Stay here. This won’t take long and the rest of your captors are…gone. So stay here and you’ll be safe until backup arrives.”

  There were some sobs. Two of the women were crying. She probably looked terrifying, she realized. She and Gold were both smeared with blood and bristling with weapons. Well, it couldn’t be helped. “Stay here,” she said, feeling foolish. She looked at the researcher. “Mr. Miller, come with me. Ahead of me, please.”

  At the front door where they could watch the approach from the receptionist station, they stayed well back from the glass door. Snipers could be in place already, would have been if Silver had been in charge of this operation, for certain. But this had the smell of hasty planning, so she hoped she was right and there were none. Just a nearby tactical team from a base in Nevada or California, sent up here the day before to secure the place before…who? The CIA? Those schoolboys would wait for the Special Forces to secure the place now they knew she and Gold were here. They had an hour, maybe two, before all hell broke loose here. And they had only small arms. It wouldn’t take long.

  She could flee, she thought. Run for it, right now. In the hills she stood a chance, if she got a head start. But with drones overhead, it was risky. She decided she was not running. Let them kill her or capture her. Capture meant prison, but she’d escaped prisons before. It t
ook time, and in this case it might take a lot of time, but time, she told herself with an inner sigh, was on her side.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  As they rolled up the hill towards the data center, Jessica reflected on the conversation they had just had. The AI was potentially more advanced than even Smoke and the Center had expected. This was bad news apparently, since Smoke now knew that Gold knew this, or might suspect it. He was driving like an automaton, hands rigid on the wheel, eyes intent on the empty winding mountain road. She had traveled in the mountains once, with her parents on a camping trip, and remembered looking out over the edge of the road down a steep cliff. This road was like that, and it was dark, and they were heading up into danger. And Smoke was driving by moonlight, with the headlights off.

  But that was silly, she realized. This road wasn’t a lonely camping track or fire road. The county had built it to service light industry, which meant trucks with fifty-foot trailers came up here regularly. They built the data center, so it had to be a safe road. Smoke was, as usual, lost in his own head, responding in monosyllables when she attempted to get him talking again. Something worried him, she realized. He might be from another planet, but the human body only had so many ways to contain tension, and he looked tense: jaw clamped tight, white knuckles on the steering wheel, and there was even a vein in his temple popping out, sharp in the red glow from the dashboard lights. She could see the road in the moonlight well enough. They had been sitting in the dark long enough for their eyes to adjust.

  They were rounding a switchback when an SUV roared around the corner, headlights blazing like twin suns, blinding them. It flashed past, almost sideswiping them. Jessica got a quick glimpse of the driver, a man’s face, eyes wide with fright as he zipped past, missing them by inches. He had a radio held to his ear; she saw it plainly as he passed.

  “Jesus, Smoke, turn on the lights,” She gasped. “That guy almost killed us.”

  “He looked like a soldier,” Smoke said. “He looked like he was running.”

  “Running?” Jessica asked. “Running away?”

  “Yes,” Smoke said. “He was fleeing. I saw his eyes.”

  “I did too,” Jessica said. “He looked scared, but shit so was I. He was talking on a radio, I think.”

  “Yes,” Smoke said, “I saw.” He worked his jaw. He flicked on the lights and drove faster.

  Jessica tried to keep him talking. “What are you going to do? With the AI, I mean? Why does the Center want it?”

  He glanced over at her. “What, still interviewing me?”

  “No dammit! Or yes, maybe. I just want to know!” Jessica snapped. “I’ve been along on this ride for a week and I don’t even know what day it is. You promised me a story and I mean to have it. So tell me. What is the Center going to do with the AI?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, flatly. “They don’t tell me these things.”

  “I think you know. I think you have suspicions you’re not sharing,” Jessica said, more calmly. The trees were thinning, and they reached a broad plateau, sloping up to a long ridge into the next valley. The data center nestled up against that ridge, she knew. “Tell me, it can’t hurt anything if I know.”

  He was silent. Then, he opened his mouth as if to speak. “I think…I think they are looking so hard for these things because there’s something they know about the World they don’t want to tell us. I think they are seeking allies to uncover this, gain access to it. It’s a secret, I think. I don’t know, it sounds vague, but just from hints I think they worry about the universe, about how these gods are a danger to it.”

  “You mean Silver’s gods? The dreams she has?” Jessica asked. “Gold’s too?”

  “They are the same,” Smoke said. “Aspects of the same. Maybe factions within this local infestation.”

  “Infestation?” she asked. “That’s a weird word.”

  “It’s the closest translation I can think of. Infection, maybe.” He was sweating now. “That’s how they talk about these gods. They’re dumb, like viruses, but they wield a lot of power and focus on one task. One thing only. Foster intelligence.” He looked at her. “That’s it, that’s what they do. That’s all they do.”

  “And you wonder why?” Miguel asked, from the back.

  “Yes, why!” Smoke barked at him. “Why do these gods want to do this? What started them? They are everywhere the Center looks, including on Talus. Every place I’ve been, these gods are active or were active. They will wreck this place, if they need to. Like that,” he snapped his fingers. “Poof.”

  “And you think there’s more to it than just mindless machines which somebody turned loose in the cosmos billions of years ago?” Jessica said.

  He nodded. “Has to be.” His nostrils flared. “There has to be more to it, or what’s the point? I can see that, so the Center must know something they’re not telling. What is it? What is the big secret? Why do they need to talk with another thing like themselves? To do what? Compare notes? Notes on what?”

  “To check a solution on a different architecture?” Miguel said. “To validate an assumption with something that isn’t them, or something that isn’t created by them.”

  Smoke nodded. “Yes, this is what I think. They want to prove something, something they can’t prove themselves. Or they can’t prove by themselves.”

  “What sort of thing could that even be?” Jessica asked.

  “It would be something fundamental, something basic,” Miguel proposed. “Something about the universe, I think. About its nature.”

  Smoke screwed up his face. “Yes! This is their big secret. At the root of their project.”

  “Find another AI so they can talk shop?” Jessica asked. “That is kind of disappointing, if you ask me.”

  “If it is a fundamental aspect of the universe, some foundational principle, that could be big,” Miguel said. “Like, the Mind of God stuff.”

  “What’s that?” Jessica said. “Who said that? Hawking said that, didn’t he?”

  Miguel laughed. “Something like that. If you knew why the universe existed, you would know the Mind of God.”

  Smoke slowed, looking back at Miguel. “I think they are looking for that. To know why the universe exists at all. I think that’s been their goal all along.” Smoke thought back to his early training, watching simulations of earlier Guides. They had said as much. The Center seeks to know all the Worlds, and our mission is to help it understand.

  “And talking to another AI will help them, help them how?” Jessica asked. Ahead, she could see the lights of a parking lot. The data center.

  “I think I want to find out,” Smoke said. “Let’s find out together!”

  “I’m not going in there,” Miguel said. “I’ll wait in the car.”

  “You sure?” Jessica said. “We may need you.”

  “No way,” he said. “I’m done with this crazy train. It’s just a machine. It will not wake up no matter what your nutty friends think.”

  “I think that ship has sailed, as they say,” Smoke said. They were driving past an empty guard post. Someone had smashed the gate bar. He drove over it, bump-a-bump.

  Ahead, the lights spilled out of the front door. Jessica saw figures inside.

  “There, the front door.” She pointed. Smoke nodded, and they rolled slowly towards the door. It opened, and one figure came out, crouching low. It was Silver, and she was carrying a gun.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Miller sat where Gold told him to sit. Not speaking. A smart man, she thought, leaving them to their thoughts. Gold had taken the weapons from the cafeteria and was loading them. They had nine submachine pistols and maybe eight hundred rounds.

  “Our friends are coming. They’ll be here soon,” she told him, so he wouldn’t freak out when they showed up. “Two men and a woman.” He nodded, clearly terrified. She hoped he would not fold up on her, go catatonic or something silly. She watched him carefully. “She’s a journalist.” His eyes tracked hers. She decided he
was okay. “You might even have read some of her stuff. She writes on AI quite a bit.”

  He blinked at her. “Why are you here?” he said, carefully.

  She glanced at Gold. “You know why we’re here.” She looked at him. “This place, what you’ve got in this place…” She looked around, her gaze encompassing everything, the building, and all its twisty passages. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  He snorted, surprising her. She had taken his silence for timidity. She spoke before Gold could. “Why the laugh?” She met his eyes, hunting them a little until he met hers. Not so brave, are we?

  “You can’t take it anywhere,” he said, meeting her eyes. A little defiance. “It can’t leave the building. It is the building.” He waved at the ceiling, the security camera in the corner. She saw Gold follow his gaze, cocking her head slightly at the security camera.

  “Should I shoot it?” she asked. Silver shook her head.

  She paused. He was looking at her, to see if she took his meaning. “Is it awake? Aware?”

  He smiled, the smile of a teacher surprised by a not-very-bright student. He inclined his head. “Awake. Superb. Yes, it has been awake for several months. It’s surprising and quite unique. Unique in the universe, and we’re just getting started.” He broke into a wide grin, mocking her.

  “I’m here to kill it,” she said.

  His grin froze. “What?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “It’s causing a problem. It’s being fought over by other things, things like it, and I’m caught up in the middle. We both are. I don’t like that. I don’t want to play this game anymore.” It surprised her, how steady her voice was.

  He sputtered. “You can’t...you wouldn’t...it’s unique. I’m not kidding. There is nothing—” He stopped, looking closely at her. “What do you mean, things like it?”