No turning back at this point, she thought. Making an effort to maintain her positive I’m-TOTALLY-not-getting-the-feeling-this-whole-situation-was-designed-to-intimidate-me appearance.
Forms signed, Margot closed the folder and slid it back across the desk.
“Please accompany us to your work area, Ms. Kay,” Olivia said.
Margot was surprised to find that she was not immediately put in front of a computer terminal. Instead, Rivers requested that she give up her cell phone before they escorted her into a garage where a sedan waited, and Rivers pulled open a door for her. Shortly after, they were on the freeway, headed into Seattle. Olivia remained silent while Rivers engaged her in pleasant but idle chit chat: How is the weather out in Maine? How is your son doing in school? How has your mother’s health been holding up?
Within ten minutes, they had pulled off the freeway and driven into the Capital Hill district. Eventually, they pulled into what appeared to be the parking lot of an abandoned grocery store, the driver taking them around to the loading docks behind the building.
A garage door opened, and their car pulled up a ramp into what looked, to her, like a large room originally meant for excess inventory. The room had been re-purposed into a garage now, and the driver parked the car in between a number of other nondescript vehicles.
From there, she was escorted down into a basement, where she found an underground operation that reminded her of something she had seen on fictional television programs—an array of computer terminals set into cubicles, absent of any furnishing other than the cement walls that kept the building standing.
She was brought to a small room in the far back, where she was finally sat in front of the computer terminal she’d imagined. Olivia excused herself at that point, heading to an office on the opposite corner of the building.
“So, what am I up to, boss?” Margot asked Rivers.
He smiled at her and nodded at the computer screen. “We are going to provide you with a series of time stamps and coordinates,” he said. “This terminal has access to the GPS networks. We want you to look for a pattern of….”
He trailed off, seeming to consider his words.
“I’ll be candid, Margot,” Rivers finally said. “We aren’t sure. We need you to tell us if there is anything out of the ordinary occurring in the network associated to certain time stamps and coordinates we provide. If you find something, we need to see if you can use whatever irregularity you uncover to work backwards. See if you can find similar irregularities at times and places we don’t have on file.”
Margot considered the job that had just been described to her. It was well within her skill set, and straightforward enough—except for one thing. “The GPS network is run by a proprietary system. Even with access, it’s going to take me a while to become familiar. It isn’t as if its inner workings are open to the public,” she said.
Rivers nodded and pulled open the door of a binder cabinet that ran across the top of her office desk. Inside was a row of reference materials. She suspected that she was looking at the technical user manuals for the very network she was going to have to familiarize herself with, though it was odd that they were hard copies. Normally, in these types of jobs, she was simply provided with access to the electronic versions.
“Well, look at that,” she said. “Not your first rodeo.”
Rivers grinned, happy that he’d been able to predict what tools she’d need at her disposal. “Any idea what kind of time frame we can expect from you?” Rivers asked.
She took a look at the number of binders before her. “I guess it would be silly for me to point out that this would be easier and faster if you simply hired someone that designed the systems to run your analysis,” she said.
She was met with a deadpan look from Rivers. She understood immediately—yes, obviously this would be faster, but would completely contradict the point of the exercise.
Margot nodded and let out a long breath. “Let me dive in,” she said. “Once I see what I am dealing with, I’ll have an idea.”
“Fair enough,” Rivers said. He stood, heading out of her new office so she could get to work. As he left, he added, “You need anything, and I mean anything, don’t hesitate.”
“A crap ton of coffee,” Margot replied, pulling down the first of the manuals. “That would be a good start.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SUNDAY | OCTOBER 9, 2005 | 12:30 PM | SEATTLE
JONATHAN HAD ONLY been at work for a few hours before he caught sight of the alien. One moment, he noticed a man in a black hat and coat on the periphery—the next he was gone. As soon as he could, he took his break and walked off the site. Heyer didn’t make him wait long to appear, blinking into existence beside Jonathan after he’d turned a corner down an alley.
Jonathan had imagined versions of this conversation, where he vented his frustrations in regards to the alien’s extended absence and irresponsible hoarding of information. As per usual, he was too relieved to see the man to actually complain. That relief, however, was somewhat short lived upon taking a good look at Heyer’s face—the alien looked exhausted.
“You alright? You look sick,” Jonathan said. “Can you get sick?”
“I have had a long few days,” Heyer said. “Haven’t had much opportunity to sleep since we last spoke.”
“Few days?” Jonathan asked. “I haven’t seen you for a month and a half.”
Heyer nodded. “For you, yes,” he said. “Traveling to another dimension does not make accommodation for the passing of Earth time. As I’ve experienced it, we last spoke roughly four days ago. Getting to the Feroxian plane from this side doesn’t generally cause the time distortion; it’s the trip back that plays havoc with my schedule.”
Jonathan smirked. He already knew that getting angry at Heyer was a waste of his time and energy. “Well, I’m glad you’re here.” Jonathan paused. “Things have been getting pretty strange the last few days.”
“Yes, Mr. Clean has brought me up to speed,” Heyer said.
Jonathan nodded. “Yeah. Heyer, look, I’ve done the best I could to handle things how I thought you would want them handled,” Jonathan said. “I know it may not appear that way … but there were reasons I don’t think you and Mr. Clean are aware of. I…” Jonathan trailed off, seeing Heyer’s expression wasn’t angry.
“Jonathan, you aren’t accountable for the events of the last few days. I suspect that, if anyone is responsible, I am,” Heyer said. “I apologize that my departure was so abrupt, that you were unprepared. I had no choice in this instance.”
“So, about that,” Jonathan said. “Do I get to hear why you had to leave town in such a hurry?”
“Meet me here, when leaving work will not cause you any unnecessary explanations,” Heyer said, and looked away, then. “I have a great deal to explain to you.”
“Alright.”
Heyer’s face looked concerned, distant. “You aren’t going to like what I have to tell you.”
It took a few moments, but Jonathan let a smile form on his face. When Heyer noticed it, he frowned at him, and Jonathan snorted before he found himself laughing. “Sorry, Heyer. I know you’re serious, it’s just—when have I ever liked what you had to tell me?”
The alien’s frown relaxed, and he nodded “You seem to have found a sense of humor again. That is good.”
“Speaking of humor,” Jonathan said. “Who models their artificial intelligence after toilet bowl cleaner?”
The alien gave Jonathan a slight smirk. “Mr. Clean is free to choose his own appearance.”
“Okay,” Jonathan frowned. “So why would a computer want to borrow the identity of a cleaning product mascot?”
Heyer sighed. “The short answer is that he gets bored. He changes his identity a few times every century. Before Mr. Clean, he borrowed the appearance of Mamie Eisenhower, the First Lady of the 34th U.S. president,” Heyer said. “To be honest, I think he liked the name Mamie.”
Jonathan shook
his head, unable to tell if the alien was purposely screwing with him for once. “And the long version?”
“The question is not as straightforward as it seems. His decision to change is more significant than, say, a human purchasing a new wardrobe,” Heyer said. “Mr. Clean is a species himself, a person like you or I—though he is not composed of organic tissues. My understanding of his desire to change his appearance is that it is somewhat like a human’s desire to breed. Though, in the case of Mr. Clean, he is both the parent and the child.”
“So, is that common for a computer intelligence?” Jonathan asked.
Heyer shook his head. “Like any person, Mr. Clean has personality quirks, as he is the product of his initial makeup and the experiences he has had since being brought into conscious control of himself. Before Malkier and I found him, he’d been trapped, lying dormant for roughly five hundred years.”
Jonathan’s smile faltered, the computer’s story suddenly less humorous. “Your ancestors imprisoned him?”
“Not deliberately. Mr. Clean’s programming did not allow him to move from his physical location without the permission of one of his creators. Upon the extinction of the Borealis, he was left behind on a planet that had suddenly become an uninhabited graveyard. He was, therefore, trapped until we found him. Prior to that, I had traveled with my brother, but on finding Mr. Clean, he became my vessel. However, it is a simplification to refer to him like a vehicle. Mr. Clean has a body, just as you or I. So while he may provide me a home and a vehicle, it is more accurate to say he shelters me within himself when I am on board.”
“You talk about him like he’s a friend,” Jonathan said.
“Mr. Clean has accompanied me of his own desire every place I have chosen to reside. Since the development of mankind’s internet, he has grown quite attached to Earth. Seeing as how he is limited in mobility by the necessity of keeping his existence secret, the internet has allowed him the means to interact with your planet and species in ways he could not elsewhere. Mankind creates such vast amounts of data. You would be surprised how much time he spends discussing films on internet forums with humans who have no idea they are arguing with an artificial alien intelligence.”
“So,” Jonathan said. “An advanced A.I. finds itself on Earth, and ends up watching television and trolling the internet?” Jonathan smiled. He saw a picture of Hayden in his mind, on some discussion board, furiously typing away at his keyboard, never even knowing that he was debating with an alien computer from another reality.
Guess I can tell Collin and Hayden not to worry about Skynet, Jonathan thought.
“If you give Mr. Clean a problem to solve, he will happily accommodate,” Heyer said. “But he is incredibility efficient. He is fascinated by the vast frontier that the human imagination provides him, especially in film. When I asked him why, he said that human stories gave him a better understanding of a biological entity’s experience of time, a thing he experiences in a manner quite foreign to you or I.”
“It’s strange,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t get much sense of personality from him.”
Heyer raised an eyebrow. “He confined his interactions with you to a professional tone due to the nature of the restrictions I advised should he contact you. You may come to find you miss those restrictions once they are no longer in place.”
“What, is he chatty?” Jonathan asked.
“Mr. Clean isn’t like the other A.I.s I’ve encountered from my civilization. He craves interaction. When I was growing up, he was my only friend outside of my brother. Malkier had no interest in the computer’s peculiarities. He much prefers the A.I. installed on his own vessel, as it behaves in a more standard, disinterested, and obedient manner. Malkier’s vessel crunches data like any other computer, responds to commands, and takes no personal stake in the outcomes outside of its programming.
“I was drawn to Mr. Clean immediately—fascinated by his fascination, so to speak—always attempting to bridge his understanding between the data he observes and what it means to interact with biological beings.” Heyer shook his head. “My brother used to say he was like a pet that thought itself the same species as its owners.”
Jonathan frowned. “You mean like when a person says the family dog thinks it’s a human?”
Heyer nodded. “Yes, a similar sentiment. Malkier thought it quite pitiful. I, on the other hand, spent hours with Mr. Clean, answering his ceaseless questions about the decisions I made. My reasoning evolved as I grew from a child to a young man, a considerably longer biological process for my species, compared to humans. Mr. Clean was always grateful for those conversations, always intrigued to see my philosophies change as I grew older, even when his programming failed to grasp the complexity of a biological being’s reasoning. That may, of course, be misleading. It would be better to say, even when his programming failed to grasp a complex lack of reasoning.”
Heyer’s face again seemed to drift back into memory. His expression became hard to read. Jonathan almost thought the alien felt indebted to the computer. What was odder was the uncharacteristic way that Heyer spoke about the A.I.. He seemed more animated than Jonathan had ever seen him. Though, perhaps it was that they simply weren’t talking about the end of the world for once.
“When my brother brought forth his plan to enslave Earth, I never had to ask Mr. Clean if he would assist me in my efforts to find an alternate solution. Initially, I saw no way to stop what felt like an inevitability that Malkier intended to set into motion. It was Mr. Clean who was able to pull together all the pieces, to find a balance that preserved the human way of life. He did this before I’d thought to ask him to try. What hope we have now comes from the very ‘dog who thought itself a human’.”
Jonathan checked his watch, and at almost the same moment, Heyer did the same.
“I should be getting back,” Jonathan said. “I’ll come here when my shift is over.”
Heyer nodded.
Before turning to leave, Jonathan realized he never actually got the answer to his question. “So, why Mr. Clean, then?” Jonathan asked.
“It started as a joke,” Heyer said. “Mamie, at the time, was spending so much time removing any digital footprints I left behind that she came to describe herself as a digital cleaning agent. Later, her tasks came to include erasing or altering files associated to humans we had involved, such as yourself. Eventually, she came to be the means of protecting all those involved from the surveillance cells. So, she embraced the character of Mr. Clean.”
Jonathan nodded. “I like it.”
“I’ll tell him you said so.” Heyer smiled.
Then, as was his way, the alien was gone. Jonathan sighed. After a couple thousand years, you would think someone might have told him it’s rude to just disappear without saying goodbye, he thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DATE | TIME: UNKNOWN | FEROXIAN PLANE
IN THE DARK, he heard Cede’s voice as though far away, “Malkier… Sir, are you listening?”
The white slits of his eyes blinked, his neck twitching toward the sound as he finally realized she’d been calling him. How long had she been trying to get his attention?
After Heyer had returned to Earth, Malkier had taken his brother’s advice to heart. He’d made finding out the means by which Dams the Gate acquired a portal stone his focus. What he’d uncovered had made him retreat back into his dark seclusion and drawn his mind back into memory. He noticed, that seemingly of their own volition, the clawed tips of his fingers had been slowly tracing over the scar that ran down his cheek to his neck.
He thought about the day Dams the Gate was named. By Feroxian tradition, the naming of each child was a task of the mother. To the Ferox, this was simply a ritual practice, how it had always been, but Malkier knew well the history that had created the custom.
For most life, sentient or not, an abundance of resources and an absence of predators was ideal. To a Ferox, the word ‘predator’ was relative. No species had ever active
ly hunted the Ferox—their kind always having been at the top of the food chain. Still, the Feroxian plane had once been shared with other apex predators, species dangerous to encounter even for a Ferox male. Back then, the Ferox found frequent opportunities to mate, and their population had grown. Unfortunately, shortsighted in their drive for procreation, the balance had been lost, and those predators had been killed off at unsustainable rates.
The greatest irony of the Ferox was that they only became an endangered species after all those that might kill them had gone extinct.
In those times of plenty, fathers were seldom known with any certainty. The number of mates a female may have was only dependent on the number of offers she received. Ferox males staked no claim, assumed no contract—they had no expectation that a woman withheld her womb for the seed of a single suitor. As such, the only certain parent of any child was the mother, and therefore, she would name her children.
When the moment of conception came, both sexes of the Ferox had an intuition for their pairings. The males were seldom driven to desire a female if he sensed no consonance with her. When he returned from battle, his loins were in a state of savage need. He carried his trophy, the body, or sometimes bodies, of his fallen enemies cocooned within a thick waxy layer of his excretions. This he presented as offering to one of the tribe’s females. If she perceived that same consonance with the male, she accepted by consuming the offering. In doing so, she digested the male’s unique pheromones, and one of her wombs became accommodating of his seed. No further mating ritual was required—for a short period that followed, both became receptive to one another.
In conception, Malkier’s son had been no exception, and he’d had no hand in choosing the child’s name. Dams the Gate was given his name by his mother, Burns the Flame—and the name had not been given with love.
For a Borealis, beings that lived indefinitely, his more ancient memories often failed to hold the weight Malkier felt they should. He’d been a child once, yet no matter how many centuries separated him from that childhood those memories returned to him as though not so long ago. To truly feel the passage of all that time, he had to view his life in its entirety—as one long book of history being read in reverse. This was to say that if he simply flipped to the beginning, to the first few chapters that contained his childhood, any sense of the thousands of years that had come and gone since was lost. For his memories to feel their own age, each moment had to be placed into proper order on the pages, and Malkier had to turn back each page slowly.
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