The Reborn

by Ray Mazza

  Something in Damon’s pocket chimed. He reached in and grabbed his iPhone.

  “Would you excuse me, Jan?” Damon said to the PR executive. “We can continue this after lunch.”

  She nodded, picked up her folder of case material, and trotted out of his office without shutting his door. He got up and shut it himself, then returned his attention to his phone.

  Its screen displayed a hi-def video feed with a view from an elevated angle aimed down toward the entrance of a room. There stood Trevor. It was Damon’s sanctuary.

  Damon watched Trevor Leighton stroll around the room, picking things up, turning them over indifferently, then putting them back. Damon dragged his finger around the surface of the screen to shift the view so it stayed centered on Trevor. Trevor walked over to a bookshelf and ran his hand along the books, then pulled one out, inspected it, and put it back.

  Trevor returned his hands to his pockets, then moved over to the black velvet curtains. Damon watched as Trevor looked around, then disappeared through the curtains. The view on Damon’s phone popped to a new one, inside the equipment room.

  ~

  Trevor stood on the other side of the velvet curtains, inside the equipment room, and gaped. It didn’t look so much like a room as the inside of a massive computer.

  Stacks of equipment and shelves reached to the ceiling, full of metal boxes, presumably computers or computer components, all covered with flashing LEDs. Fridge-sized units and computer cabinets stretched fifteen feet high and looked as if they must have been painstakingly pieced together right here by Damon. Three cylinders thick around as tree-trunks rose floor to ceiling, full of wires. Every few feet, veins of smaller tubing shot out of the trunk and fed into a piece of equipment. One wall offered a table along most of its length with monitors and consoles, and a row of iPad-like devices – the same as the one he’d spoken to Allison on. The devices rested in sheaths, mounted on the wall. A loud hum from the fans and drives filled the air.

  There was also a dull drone from a ventilation system that appeared to be pumping cool air in from the floor and siphoning hot air out near the ceiling. If that weren’t on¸ Trevor thought, this place would probably boil.

  And up in the corner of the room, concealed from Trevor’s view in the twist of one of the ventilation ducts, a tiny black camera silently adjusted its aim on him, watching.

  Trevor had never seen the likes of such computers, even around the office. The only thing they resembled were pictures he’d seen of supercomputer arrays, like Japan’s “Earth Simulator” supercomputer.

  The Earth Simulator was built in an attempt to better predict physical changes in the Earth, like climate and oceanic shifts, plate tectonics, and the movement of the inner core of the Earth and its resultant magnetic field. The Earth Simulator, however, had nearly enough computer cabinets to fill a football field, whereas this room had its equipment squeezed into a thirty foot by thirty foot area. If it took the Earth Simulator all that equipment to just guess at how the ocean might react to a climate change, how could far less equipment do a task many orders of magnitude more difficult, namely, simulating a human?

  By Trevor’s quick and dirty calculations, the human body alone had many quadrillions (the next step after trillions) of times more atoms in it than a conventional computer could store in its memory… assuming a kilobyte of computer memory could store an atom and its state. Trevor had no idea how all the computers on Earth combined could store a human in memory, let alone a relatively small room of equipment, as advanced as it may be.

  But... theoretically… humans exist in real life, so it must be possible to store a simulated human in a space nearly as small as an actual human itself. After all, the universe can do it, why can’t we copy it somehow?

  The computers in this room must be the ones they used on the restricted floors at Day Eight. And there was no way this all could have fit in one truck; he wondered how much of it had already been here, and which pieces were the ones with Allison in them that Damon had snuck here.

  Damon had told him he could feel free to look around, but if he went into the equipment room, he was forbidden to touch anything. That wouldn’t be a problem. Even if Trevor saw something he wanted to touch, he was too scared that he might accidentally break it. He figured Damon was concerned about the same thing.

  He walked over to one of the largest units. Up close, he noticed a readout that displayed 37440 Watts.

  “Holy crap,” Trevor whispered to himself. That was a ridiculous amount of power for anything to be using. Damon’s power bill must be tens of thousands of dollars a month if all the equipment in the room used even close to this much energy. And he must have had special heavy-load power run to his house during construction.

  Trevor left the room in awe, then plopped down in the same sofa chair he sat in the previous day. He grabbed Allison’s tablet off the coffee table where Damon had left it for him, and put his feet up.

  ~

  After watching Trevor over the video feed for a few minutes, he nodded, satisfied that Trevor was doing as asked, and closed the remote monitor program.

  The phone on his desk rang. He let it ring four times before lifting the receiver.

  “Winters speaking.”

  “Hello Mr. Winters, this is Lieutenant General Charles Warden, Director of the NSA.”

  Charles’ renewed sense of formality was as unsettling as his voice. Damon had done business with Charles many times over the past fifteen years, and couldn’t remember the last time Charles referred to him as “Mr. Winters.”

  “Ah, yes, Charles, it’s been a few months. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, Mr. Winters, with the situation that you have on your hands, we are all deeply concerned over here.”

  “I understand—”

  “And we want to make sure that it remains your situation and doesn’t become our situation. Is there anything for us to worry about?” asked the man, in an unsettling toneless voice.

  Damon began to take a deep breath, but stopped, not wanting Charles Warden to hear it. “I can assure you, Charles, that nothing leaked. Our technology remains confidential.” And Damon certainly hoped it did remain confidential. Day Eight had developed some of its technology hand-in-hand with the NSA over the past twenty-six years. Their relationship was classified, and so was the knowledge they shared. Damon wasn’t concerned about this shared technology falling into the public eye, though. It was the technology the NSA didn’t know about that worried him.

  “You make sure that it does stay confidential, Mr. Winters,” Charles Warden said. “I’ve already spoken with Mr. Stonefield, and he told me the same thing. But I wanted to check with you directly, and let you know that we’ll be keeping a close eye on the situation as it develops.”

  “Okay. See ya, Charles.”

  “Good day, Mr. Winters.”

  ~

  Allison walked over to her terminal, looked in the camera at Trevor, and waved. She turned it so it was facing a loveseat in her room.

  “I’m going to sit over here, okay?” she asked.

  “Sure, that’s fine,” Trevor said.

  Allison smiled, showing her perfect white teeth, then bounced over to her loveseat and threw herself sideways onto it and swiped a stuffed animal frog off the floor.

  “You have nice teeth,” Trevor said, “you must brush a lot.”

  “Nope!” she said, jumping the frog around on the table by her couch.

  “No? How often do you brush?”

  “Never! I don’t have to.”

  “Why not?” Trevor had so many unanswered questions about how a synthetic human worked. Humans depended on an extremely complex balance of chemical and biological processes; he wondered how these simulations could even sustain themselves – that is, if they really were exact simulations of a human.

  “Because. I asked Dad the same question and they brush their teeth on Full House and on Wonder Years and I wanted to brush my teeth too. It looked fun and I a
sked and Dad said I didn’t have to because the bad things that would rot my teeth the bacterias don’t live here.”

  “You don’t have bacteria?”

  “Nope I’m safe! They don’t get me here.”

  “Don’t you need good bacteria that live in your body and help you digest food and good bacteria to take care of your mouth, too?”

  “Um, I don’t know. That sounds gross.”

  So she didn’t need to brush her teeth. Did she breathe? She appeared to be.

  “How long can you hold your breath?” Trevor said, a challenge.

  “For ten minutes! Just like Hops.” She waved her frog in the air.

  “That’s an awfully long time, Allison. But I think I can beat you.”

  “No you can’t!”

  “Okay, let’s see, I’ll time us! Ready, go.” Trevor noted the time on his watch. Both he and Allison gulped large breaths and closed their mouths. Allison folded her lips in as if it would help keep air from escaping.

  Thirty seconds passed.

  After about forty-five seconds, Trevor began to lose it. He took a breath and told her she won. She didn’t say anything and kept holding her breath.

  After three full minutes, he noticed her nostrils widen briefly and her chest rose, but she didn’t open her mouth.

  “Hey!” Trevor said. “You’ve been cheating!”

  Allison giggled and waved her frog again. “Ribbit!”

  Trevor sat and watched her play with her frog for a bit. She seemed comfortable doing her own thing with him “there” to keep her company.

  “Hey Allison?”

  She looked up.

  “Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Trevor searched. “Uh, like what do you do when you’re bored?”

  “I go on the swings and play outside. I read lotsa books. I play with my friend Oscar, but Dad says Oscar got hurt when he sent a note for me and I won’t be able to see him for a while. He’s really nice though and thanks to him I’m back safe here. I miss Oscar.” Allison put her frog down and crossed her arms, looking slightly disgruntled.

  “Well, I know I’m not the same as Oscar and I’m probably not even as fun, but I can hang out with you a lot now. And you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I got the note your friend Oscar sent.”

  “You really got it? I knew it worked and that’s why I’m better now!” She scooted to the end of the couch and leaned closer to the screen. “How did you get it?”

  “He put it on my computer.”

  “Wow, Oscar’s smart with computers. I didn’t get a real computer, but he got a real computer.”

  “Really? What’s Oscar’s place like?” Trevor asked.

  “You mean his house where he lives?”

  Trevor nodded. “Mm-hm.”

  “I never got to go. Only he could come here but I couldn’t go there.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “The men in white jackets told me compat-uh… compatibil-ty or something and Oscar’s house was backwards… I can’t fit in it because there’s too much stuff happening. I want to go because it sounds fun.”

  It sounded like Oscar, being a newer simulation, had a more complicated environment that Allison’s simulation couldn’t handle.

  They chatted for long time, and ended up playing a game of twenty questions where Trevor guessed on question eighteen that she was thinking of butterflies. Then they played four games of Candyland. A few other board games had been programmed into her environment, including Chutes and Ladders, Trivial Pursuit, and Chess. When she decided to play Candyland, she said, “Let’s play Candyland, it’s the most colorful.”

  She told him he could use the pointer thing to move pieces. After turning the tablet over, he found a stylus snapped into a slot in the back. He could actually touch a limited number of things that were in the view of the screen and drag them around or see them up close by double-tapping on them. She wasn’t fazed by it at all.

  “So what do people usually use this for?” he asked.

  “For the games mostly. Sometimes Dad uses it to tuck me in at night and turn out my light.”

  Chapter 17

  Catastrophic Failure

  Trevor used the tablet interface to help Allison set up the Candyland board game on her floor. When the phone rang, he looked around the room and was confused when he realized the ring was coming from Allison’s tablet.

  “That’s for me!” she said as she excitedly lay down on her carpet and began fishing under her bed, yanking out dolls and toys. “Found it!” she exclaimed, waving around what looked like a normal portable phone for Trevor to see, flaunting her exceptional skill at “finding stuff.”

  She held the phone up to her ear. “Allison Winters speaking, who would you like to talk to please?” … “Hillary!” … “I know!” … “Because it’s always you, silly,” she giggled. “Trevor’s here and we’re going to play Candyland and I’m going to beat him just like I always beat you because I’m good at getting the lollipop woods card!” … “Okay, bye-bye Hillary!”

  Allison shoved the phone back under her bed.

  “You have a phone?” said Trevor. “Is that safe? And who was that calling just now?” He was surprised at his own level of concern; this was probably like what a parent felt when they found out their child had been offered candy by a stranger.

  “That was Hillary,” said Allison. “She’s my…” Allison scrunched her face like she was trying to prepare for a difficult word. “My… au pair. My old one.”

  “Like a nanny?”

  Allison nodded exaggeratedly. “Yeah just like you! Haha, Nanny Trevor! Except I can’t see her anymore because I’m here now and she’s not and that’s why you play with me now.”

  “Where is she?” said Trevor.

  “She works for Daddy, like an execative something.”

  “And she can call you, just like that?”

  Allison shrugged. “She calls me in secret sometimes and I can call her.”

  “But what if someone bad calls, like one of the white lab coat men, won’t they be able to figure out you’re here?”

  Allison shook her head. “Nope! There’s a top secret password.”

  “Oh,” said Trevor. “Can you tell me what it is? I’d like to be able to call you, too.”

  She looked down and took on an air of sadness. “I don’t know what it is. Only Daddy knows and Hillary I guess. I wish you could call to say hi and stuff.”

  “Well, you can still call me, do you want my phone number?”

  “No I can’t. I can only call Daddy. Or I can call Hillary, her number is Daddy’s number but plus one. And my number is Daddy’s number but plus two, but it needs the password.” She crossed her arms, frustrated.

  “I have an idea,” said Trevor. He pressed the function button to bring up the command console and virtual keyboard on the tablet. With a little exploration, he was able to find Allison’s program code, and it looked like he could change it on the fly from the tablet.

  He ran a search for Damon’s phone number. Sure enough, there it was, typed out in a single spot of program code. The only other phone number was the same as Damon’s except the final digit was a “7” instead of a “6.” It must have been this “Hillary” girl’s phone number, just like Allison had said: “Daddy’s number but plus one.”

  He studied the code surrounding the phone numbers. It looked like these were exceptions that allowed Allison to call the outside world. Either of these two numbers were allowed to connect. Other numbers were coded to have no response. Then he found a third string of numbers: “11235813.” From the look of the code, this was the “secret password” he could type in after dialing Allison’s number in order for the connection to go through. Excellent – now he could call Allison if he wanted, and without even changing any code.

  But he did want Allison to be able to call him, too. All Trevor had to do
was add his number as another exception. Simple enough.

  He made the change, adding both his cell number and his apartment’s landline, then hesitated with his finger above the program’s Deploy Code button. He only had a moment of uncertainty as he imagined Allison’s huge computer catching fire in response, or alarm bells going off, or even just Damon walking in and yelling at him. But he reassured himself that it was a straightforward and safe change.

  No.

  No, this is stupid of me, Trevor thought, his hands still hovering over the device. But before he could take his finger away, the touch sensitive screen reacted to the proximity of his warm fingertip and the Deploy Code button depressed.

  “Crap! I didn’t even touch it!”

  “Hey,” said Allison, “I can still hear you. Don’t say words like that or the boogie man might find out.”

  “Sorry Allison,” said Trevor, subconsciously holding his breath as he watched a shimmering green progress bar fill up with text that read, Compiling Changes….

  When the progress bar completed, a popup appeared:

  Compilation complete. Execute now, or wait for integration matrix?

  There was no option to cancel, and a timer began counting down – it looked like it would automatically pick for him if he didn’t do anything.

  Trevor touched Wait for Integration Matrix.

  The screen flashed another message:

  Integration Matrix not found.

  Executing code changes now...

  Trevor resisted the urge to swear.

  The command console disappeared and his view on the tablet returned to Allison’s world, where she sat playing with the Candyland pieces. Everything looked exactly the same. As it should if his code was correct. This was a good sign.