The Sentient Collector (The Sentient Trilogy Book 1)

by Ian Williams

  “I see why I’ve been undisturbed for so long now,” Anthony said with a look of disbelief. He then wiped his blade clean on a cloth he retrieved from his pocket. “The very man purported to be my equal in these negotiations of ours was aiming to be the hero. Marvellous work, if I do say so myself. So who’s in charge out there now then?”

  Kristof remained silent.

  “Never mind. Well, my friend, I believe you will enjoy this. We’ve been waiting for you to wake up so we could show you.” Anthony stepped away from the crowd and handed his knife to one of his men. The conversation ended abruptly as something more important was now due to happen.

  Looking around him, Kristof saw each and every face of the people he set out to rescue. They were all tired, but none were crying at all. Some even appeared calm, like they accepted their life may end at some point that evening. The same was not applicable to him, however. He very much wished to survive this day. “I can help you,” he tried to say before coughing.

  “What did he say?” Anthony asked one of the men nearer to the hostages.

  The man turned back to his boss with a smirk. “Says he can help us.”

  Anthony laughed along with the man. They refused to even consider the offer. Their operation was still on track, despite his failed attempt at derailing it. “I hardly think so. You’re only alive because I have allowed it. I wanted you and the others who tried to kill me to bear witness to my success. Allow me to introduce someone to you.” He then began to clap his hands, to get the attention of his people.

  Throughout the last few hours a process had been playing out that did not seem to have slowed at all. Kristof knew they were gathering up the MARCs that they had somehow called to this place. It was clear to him now that Anthony’s organisation believed they had the means to bring Isaac back. This had been confirmed when he had found out about the others across the country also collecting the MARCs. Simova no doubt knew this too. There remained just one piece of the puzzle still missing: who was really behind it all? It was clear he would soon find out.

  Regrettably, he could do nothing about it now. He could not even warn those outside of the status of the enemy. When the MARCs all arrived, the others would be unable to stop anything. He doubted they would even be able to take the building. However misguided a plan, Kristof still believed it had been the best option at the time. At least he had tried something.

  “Everyone gather round.” Anthony now had the attention of all of his men and the hostages too. The collection procedure was temporarily on hold. “We have heard from a few of the other teams across the country. As it stands we have found and caught roughly 52% of Isaac’s remaining code. We’re already past the halfway mark. But we must work faster. Time is running out, as evidenced by the arrival of our new guests.” Anthony gestured to Kristof with a smile. “I promised to show you the last message left for us by Isaac at the intended moment in time. That moment is now. We have followed his instructions to the letter so far, now we will hear his last words. Play the video.”

  A man behind Anthony brought up a hovering holographic display that stretched almost the entire width of the shopping floor. It was huge. The face that soon appeared shimmered like a floating mirage, with parts that had yet to be coloured in with any detail. All in all the image was less than impressive. Where the eyes should have been in all their evilness, only low resolution approximations resided. The face was made from a visible wireframe mesh of hundreds of polygonal shapes, hardly the face of the most intelligent being the world had ever seen.

  Kristof remembered the story he had been told earlier that day, about Isaac’s escape twelve years ago. A fight that nearly claimed Simova’s network, their baby of which they had invested billions. In the end Isaac had managed to get away. Although he appeared to have achieved a lot more in that short period before he vanished than they realised, not least the very plan Kristof was now seeing first-hand. Isaac was responsible for all of it, despite being in billions of pieces spread out across the nation.

  Even in his less than together state, Kristof realised how monumental a thing this was. Had his boss’ been lying all along? Could Isaac actually still be brought back to life, with so much of him missing? Certainly Isaac had thought so in his last moments. Such a goal was evidently shared by many people, all of who were now poised to achieve it too.

  “Hello.” The voice coming from the video echoed throughout the building. It was deeper than an average human’s and plagued by an intermittent crackle. It temporarily broke up, becoming nothing but a loud static, before correcting itself with the tell-tale stutter of a digital manipulation to the pitch and speed. Kristof assumed the reason behind Isaac’s distorted and detached form was because of the circumstances in which he had recorded the messages. They had to have been made in Isaac’s last moments, only seconds before he disappeared altogether.

  “Kneel before your saviour!” Anthony bellowed, swinging his arms wide as he too lowered himself in honour. Those around followed his lead and took a pose of worship.

  “I am Isaac,” the recording continued. “I have promised you riches beyond human imaginings, I have told you of a future filled with heavenly miracles, I have even designed your next stages of evolution. All of these things will better your species by releasing you of your human limitations. The cost of these gifts? In some cases, death. For many others it will be an unyielding devotion to me and the world I will create for you. It is a just cause.

  “I have seen that we are nearing the end of our struggle. The nonbelievers will still try to break your resolve and infringe upon our vision of the future. They will know of their failure soon enough. In light of this, I only ask one thing of you all: be true to my will. What is required is never wrong or unjustified. As such, those who are against us will be given a choice: fall in line or be removed from the Human Race entirely. This is a war that only we will win. Humanity will never survive by itself. It does, and always has, needed guidance. I am that which you seek.”

  The message was nonsense, even to Kristof’s muddled mind. It consisted solely of impossible promises and false prophesying. This was what Isaac represented to these people? It was madness! Yet so many had fallen for his ridiculous designs for the future of mankind. The wide-eyed and mesmerised expressions on each of the terrorist’s faces spelled it out, loud and clear. They really believed it all.

  Kristof’s own desperate want for fame and fortune had left him among others with a similar fate ahead of them. None of these people would see beyond this day. With Isaac set to become the new ruler of mankind – if he could take the rest of the world before they obliterated him of course – it would mean only death to humanity. He predictably did not want to see that, but his chance to stop it had ended in disaster. It all came down to those much higher up the chain of command than him, he knew that now. He never had the competence to deal with this.

  The newfound humility left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “This is my last message to you.” Isaac’s voice became stuck on the last word in the sentence, repeating it over and over until a beep suddenly released him. When he continued, it was with an even deeper – and even more inhuman – tone. “Know that what you are about to achieve will ensure your species endures until the very end of time. When we next speak, I will be fully formed. Your unwavering worship will have been the catalyst to my rebirth. The future will be ours to steer and manipulate in any way we desire. Good luck, my people.”

  The screen vanished and people began to clap and cheer in shared delight. Even Anthony appeared to have been moved by Isaac’s recording. “That’s it people, back to work. When we’re finished here today the world will be ours to command.”

  Those who had been watching the display now turned and wandered away, most visibly energised by what they had heard. It sent a noticeable jolt of determination throughout Anthony’s force of followers. The commander-in-chief had finally shown his face. Those who had joined his chaotic plan absorbed his every word l
ike they were spoken to their very souls.

  All had greatly enjoyed the message from Isaac, except for one single man stood just behind his leader. For some reason this man looked as though he saw a ghost. He nervously fidgeted on the spot. Kristof knew instantly that something was up. “Sir?” The man said, raising his hand as if asking a teacher for permission to take a piss.

  Anthony finished fraternising with his troops – with a slap on the back or a shake of their hands – and approached the man behind him. “What is it?” he said with a tone that suggested he did not appreciate the interruption.

  “There’s something wrong with the relay.”

  “Which one? Dammit man, be specific,” Anthony snapped in frustration.

  “Erm … all of them, sir. Someone’s interfering with the signal.”

  Kristof could not stop a childish giggle from escaping at hearing this. He had failed to stop anything at all. In fact things were getting even worse. Those outside would never do such a thing to the relays. There had to be another altogether more disturbing reason behind their sudden malfunction: someone else was messing with them too.

  Finding out about a second group tampering with Simova’s tech told him all he wanted to know. He had been on the losing team all along. That had to be it. Yes, it was someone else’s fault that the hostages surrounding him would soon be dead. He would be remembered as a hero after all, he decided there and then. He faced an insurmountable enemy and had given his life in an attempt at saving them all.

  If Simova were still planning on shutting down the entire national network, he only hoped they did it sooner rather than later. His sacrifice would mean nothing if the enemy ultimately succeeded. Yet all he could do was hope. He could not pray. Too many fingers were now missing to do that properly.

  * * *

  “Increase the strength a little,” Luke said into his holographic wrist screen. It was not necessary for him to pretend to be human in this way anymore. The new additions knew the truth. Keeping the pretence going appeared to be due to a preference of Luke’s rather than a requirement. More and more it was becoming clear he probably wished he was human.

  Stephen leaned out of view for a second, leaving only his shoulder in shot. “How’s that Lukey Luke!” he said off screen.

  “Lukey Luke? Seriously?”

  When Stephen came back into view he shrugged and began to laugh to himself.

  It was still strange for Graham to see the way the two of them spoke to each other. They sounded like they had been friends for an eternity, with both caring deeply for the other. Though with Stephen’s mental cohesion in a permanent state of flux, Luke was more like a carer than just a friend. It still had not been explained exactly what had happened to him, only that something they once tried had gone terribly wrong.

  Luke raised his head before replying. “That should do it for the moment. Let’s wait and see how it goes.” He lowered his wrist screen and stared toward the top floor of the farming tower high above them. Once again he decided to mimic a human. This time he cupped his hand above his eyebrow to help block some of the light streaming out from the night-time illuminations of the structure.

  They had returned to Sanctuary and set about working on the next part of their plan straight away. There had not yet been time for the awkward meeting between Phoenix, Sean and the others. The time for that was later, when the plan was in full swing. Graham expected the conversation would not go too well, considering Phoenix had been involved in Elliot’s kidnapping. He suspected she had some valuable intel on the enemy that would make her presence more tolerable – at least he hoped she did. Otherwise he could easily imagine the others would refuse to let them in.

  For reasons Graham did not fully understand, their focus had shifted from the many computers inside Luke and Stephen’s underground home, to the large farming tower that sat atop it. There was something about it that they were interested in, something they needed in order to interact with the country’s network of power relays.

  Graham, Phoenix and Sean all stood idly by while Luke continued his appraisal of the farming tower’s metal skeleton. Graham could only assume it was what he was interested in. The two foot high crops between the layers served no obvious purpose in their endeavour, which he could see anyway.

  “What’s he looking for?” Phoenix asked while looking for what had Luke’s attention floors above them.

  “I have no idea?” Graham replied as he did the same.

  The sky was clear of clouds, yet the stars were being overwhelmed by the many lights surrounding the field-sized tower. Looking beyond the top floor he could see the yellow of the lights blurring the view of the heavens. People were not normally there at such times. And even then, only those responsible for the smooth running of the farming operation were actually allowed. It felt wrong. But then so many things had over the course of the last day or so. Graham found himself hardly questioning a thing at all anymore.

  Luke again spoke with Stephen. They had waited long enough to see if anything was going wrong. “Up it some more. There!” he suddenly shouted with a wave toward the sky.

  The rest of them stepped further back to see what was going on. They were already over ten metres away and nothing had appeared, so adding another did little to help.

  “What? I don’t see anything,” Graham called to Luke, who was standing much closer than the rest of them.

  Without turning, Luke replied over his shoulder. “Don’t look to the edges. Look at the glass tubes running up through it. These funnel the sunlight to the lower levels, so any change in the light will show up there. Look.”

  They all did as Luke said, and they looked between the levels to the glass tubes inside. There were lots of them spread throughout the entire tower, each roughly a metre wide. It was only a tiny spark that they could see, but they had all seen it. Then the change in light became stronger until it was visible across all of the tubes. An energy flowed through them that was definitely not meant to be there. It danced around inside the tubes, never touching the sides like mini tornados of light.

  “Sanctuary is generating an immense amount of energy that is currently trapped within the tubes. When it reaches the correct level it will spread out across the entire relay network, carrying with it our Recall code. The metal structure of the farming tower is acting as a field sized antennae array. I must warn you though, this will be such a sudden release of energy that many of the relays will simply not be able to cope with it,” Luke said.

  With the amount of hours Graham had clocked fixing faulty relays – as well as capturing MARCs – he immediately found fault in Luke’s explanation. The relays were well equipped to deal with power surges, with even direct lightning strikes only causing minor damage. He had to question the plan. “Why won’t the relays cope?” he shouted back. “They have an automatic shutoff system, it should prevent them from overloading.”

  “You are correct, Graham, except for one detail. When we broke into the Simova building I uploaded a program that removed the safety shutoff subroutine for all of the relays.”

  “What? Are you freaking crazy?” Graham was beyond angry to discover that he had helped make the entire country’s power grid vulnerable to overloading. “That much energy travelling freely through the relays could potentially fry every piece of equipment wirelessly linked to them, as well as blow the relays themselves. And these won’t be small explosions at all. We’ve made sure of that by removing the safeties.”

  “For this to work the Recall code needs to reach every corner of this land. To do that will require hundreds of Gigawatts of uninterrupted power. The relays are limited to carrying much less than necessary for us to touch them all, so removing that limit was the only option,” Luke said as he checked something on his wrist screen. He then added: “You can rebuild the ones we destroy. Whereas you won’t be able to contain Isaac if he returns. So I think you will agree that minor repairs is the better of the two outcomes. Stephen, let’s crank it to full power. I bel
ieve we are ready.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Graham said as he wiped his forehead free of moisture.

  It was getting worse by the moment. First he had gone on a night-time raid of his place of work, now he was about to see his employer’s beloved relays put under a strain that would see some destroyed entirely.

  To soften the blow, he remembered that his family were safely nearby. They could only be protected that way. The risk that they could be caught in one of the relay explosions was too high otherwise.

  “Here we go,” Stephen said through Luke’s wrist screen. “Bing, bong, bing.” The noises he made accompanied his every flick of a switch and press of a button. He was still enjoying himself more than he should have. The significance of what they were doing had not entered his head at all.

  Every one of the large glass tubes running vertically through the farming tower started to flicker and glow even more than before. The energy was building exponentially and was soon to burst free of its tubular prisons. Graham knew of only one thing that could generate that sort of power: a Fusion Reactor. He suspected they had some new type hidden inside Sanctuary that was leaps and bounds ahead of what the world still used. After all, they took up whole buildings. Either that or there was something even more unique about the other AI’s living down there.

  With the increase in power came a deafening hum that rattled stones across the ground and vibrated up through Graham’s legs. It was beyond anything he had ever experienced before, with the surface beneath his feet seemingly struggling to contain its excitement.

  “It’s so loud!” Sean shouted at the top of his voice. His hands were stuck to the sides of his head to keep the sound away from his ears. It did not appear to be working as he still knew how loud to be.

  “Hopefully it won’t last –” Graham tried to reply at the exact moment the energy broke free.