Exile: Arc

by Jack Lance

  “It’s a Mainframe cell. A remote part of The Lord.” Bailey said, having heard the story prior to this. “Something went haywire with it so they shipped it to work here on Narcosia. A little slice of harmony technology to keep us in line.”

  “Correct, and it’s the missing link behind a lot of the little puzzles we face here in the city.” Dane went on. “Our expedition to the smallest dome found within it a female AI, that was to be linked into The Lord network before her own exile. The computer told us of her story, that she had found something distasteful about the imperial mainframe, and rebelled against it. She had originally been designed as the global AI of a new agriculture planet under the Cequodus dynasty. All was going well until she was networked into The Lord, where she suffered a massive psychotic break. Once merged with the crowd of AIs within The Lord system, and privy to all that they knew, she became unfit to handle the massive levels of responsibility that went with taking care of the peoples of a world.”

  Josep booted up a small holo terminal and expanded the display. It showed surveillance recordings of streets, paths and mall ways, with each of the recordings showing what looked to be a sandstorm blowing in, and the occasional ghostly figure of a woman walking or gliding by within before the sandstorm blew back out again rapidly.

  Dane went on “The woman’s mind deteriorated, ending in multiple psychotic episodes on the planet; some homicidal, slaughtering thousands with the typically passive terrafoming-dust. The colony suffered many further disasters before Cequodus pulled the plug. Then they were left with an out of control world management system, with a unique software architecture that they wanted to study further. They also now had the Narcosia exile colony, which had grown very large in the century or so since its creation. So they hardcoded control braces onto her mind, and installed it as the robotic control center of the colony. She called herself Netic, since she can’t remember much of her existence before being exiled, or the reasons why it had happened at all.”

  “Quite a story…” Josep said, as he stood by the stream of recordings. “If she was telling the truth.”

  “She had no reason to lie.” Dane said. “And this new surveillance we’ve decrypted shows her abducting the exiles, taking them away toward the catacombs below the city. They must lead to the citadels somehow, although we’ve never found the path.”

  “If we only knew why they were taking us, we could give them people we wanted rid of anyway.” Josep snarled in his way.

  “I might have an idea about that, but trust me, you don’t want to know.” Bailey said grimly.

  “It is she creating these murals we see everywhere in the city. The Citadels aren’t there. It’s almost like she’s trying to tell us something. Something she feels we should all know.“

  “So all these terraforming books we have in the colony, they all came from this AI?” Bailey asked.

  “Yeah, there are always the books. Man’s only way to control the God like power of The Lord.” Dane said. “All world craft is done by her dust. She and the dust are homed in the smallest dome, along with your heletank, a lesser AI she considers something of a pet. You’d better hope she’s in a good mood when you meet her, otherwise you’ll need to use the EMP grenade. It should knock her for six, maybe even kill her completely, but will also destroy the heletank. You can negotiate with her, to take the heletank. Bailey and I are sure of it. She is not fully under their control.”

  “Well we know the heletank can enter orbit.” Josep said. “We have long range photographs of it playing its weird games in zero gravity. And there is a cockpit within, that may or may not be manned sometimes. We’ve tried to calculate the size of the cockpit from the dimensions we know, and we think we can fit most of our family inside, for the journey into space.”

  “It’s a good plan. Credit to whoever thought of it.” Bailey smiled.

  “You’re a genius, Bailey. We’d be lost without you.” Josep said patting his leg.

  Dane looked at them both and said “I would try to talk you out of it, but I know it’s pointless.”

  “You should come with us.” Josep said. “And you Nash.”

  “I need to finish my work here on Narcosia.” Dane said grimly.

  Nash simply shook his head and said “My new life is here with Francine. A new dawn for all of us.”

  "Then we leave tonight." Josep snarled with a dark elation, catching everyone's attention.

  "As you wish." Dane nodded.

  Bailey shrugged and patted Nash and Francine on the shoulders.

  After their meeting at the Church of the Naturalistic Mind, it was beginning to get late. Bailey returned to the Old Gang block and called his car, then took it up onto the crystal highways.

  He rushed back to the East Syndicate village and was just in time to pick up Bede Sagar outside of her home. She was very well dressed, and as she entered the car Bailey found her smell just as wonderful.

  She leaned over and kissed him on the lips.

  “Welcome back.” she said and sat back.

  Bailey drove across the regular highways to the central metropolis, and down to the main street.

  They got out and let the car park itself, and then walked along the Sagar Strand, to a line of restaurants that this side of the main street was famed for. They went to a nice, small restaurant with a central continental feel, and sat on a two seater table.

  They ate a meal, while Bailey tried to make the fictitious expedition to the western narco-harvesting gangs sound more interesting and plausible. Jayne’s fictitious role in it all seemed to win her favor and so Bailey quit when he felt he was ahead.

  After the meal Bede sat back and said “What is this really about?”

  “I have something to ask.” Bailey said, and brought a box from his pocket, and placed in on the table between them.

  She took it and opened it, finding an engagement ring within.

  “Marry me?” Bailey said, and Bede looked up at him in awe.

  Come Strictly.

  Darkness had already fallen over the East Syndicate village when they returned.

  “I’m so shocked!” Dora Beldin cried out and hugged Bede and then Bailey. “I’ll send the word out immediately. Another wedding on the colony, I don’t believe it! Double wedding, me and you!”

  Dora ran out of the Sagar home as fast as her age would allow, and they turned to face Bede’s family. They all seemed quite happy apart from some of the older Sagars, who found it hard to be happy about anything.

  Lon Sagar came to them next, and said “Well you certainly got Dora all exited. It was bad enough with ours but now she’s going to be impossible to handle.”

  Bailey winked at him and took a drink that Lon had brought for him.

  “Did she say she was going to go around all the gangs?” Bailey looked at him comically.

  Lon nodded then sipped his drink and walked past him. He skipped toward the front door and said over his shoulder “I’d better go with her. Just to be on the safe side!”

  A few of the others present stood up and they gestured for them to sit. They talked with Bailey and Bede for a long time about when and where they wanted to do the ceremony, since there was an abundance of churches in the neighbourhoods, with most of them being orthodox Naturalistic Mind. There was the question of if it should be a double marriage with Dora and Lon, but Bailey brushed it aside. He said they wanted to do it as soon as possible, since everyone knew that Lon and Dora were taking forever to get around to actually tying the knot; such was their age.

  In the late hours, young Gwyn Sagar went to the holo-theatre and said “Party time I think! Finally something worth celebrating.”

  The music began and a few of them sang along, while the others laughed and drank themselves into a quiet. They all drank heavily into the night, while colony postal robots began relaying into the living room, ferrying in gifts from the various families and gangs across the prison. It was a time to drop all hostilities, not that there were many anymore, and once O
ld Gang had left the little planet, there would be next to none.

  Bailey again was unaffected by his alcohol. He waited until they had sung themselves into a stupor and then got up from his chair. Bede tried to pull him back but fell back on the sofa.

  “I need to pick up some friends. More party people!” he said, and Bede waved him away.

  When he saw they were all either asleep or dozing, he took a small box wrapped in colourful paper from his coat pocket and threw it behind the other presents.

  Bailey left the house and ran along the road to intercept and collect his car.

  From the East Syndicate village he drove to the biosphere and the desert pier and ran across the sea to the door, which was standing wide open.

  “God, you guys are dumb.” he hissed to himself as he side stepped through it and continued to sprint on down to the elevator.

  He took the elevator down to the oil lake, and there met with two members of Old Gang. They stood on the opposite side of the fizzing lake to the testing hut that Bailey had used in the first breakout.

  “You’re late, Bailey. I take it you still haven’t found the key card.” an old man said as he suited up in an air tight plastic diving suit, being careful to tuck in his long beard .

  It was one of the elders of Old Gang Bailey knew from way back, Morton Fincle. He was too old to make a break from the moon with the rest of his family, and was luckily one of the few of them with any tech-savvy. He was accompanied by his bloated wife, Gemm who fussed over the head piece, and its two clear plastic covered eye holes.

  “I’m sorry, Morton. This is the only way in for now. Just remember to enter those commands I taught you. It will connect to my programs, that I installed from the first escape. The rest will do itself. And be careful when crossing the lake. Just remember, its boiling sh…”

  “Yeah yeah. I know. I was born and bred in the stuff.” he said and turned to kiss his wife on the cheek. “Back in a sec.”

  Morton fitted the mouth piece between his teeth, and the two small oxygen tanks under his arms, and then the hood-piece was sealed air tight.

  Bailey helped Gemm sit Morton on the side of the boiling lake. His feet dangled down into the oil, as the dark lime green suit insulated against the audibly searing heat.

  “Hold on tight!” Bailey shouted over the hissing, and handed Morton the wire that looped across the lake from the edge, under the control room and up through the testing pool within. Typically sampling beakers would be dragged through as part of census sweeps but now they'd need to use it to access the room containing Bailey's old hacks.

  Bailey handed the other end of the blue rope to Gemm, and shouted “Hook it over the wheel behind you! It belongs there!”

  As she turned, Bailey slipped a shiv from his sleeve and tore a short hole in the back of Morton’s suit. The noise in the room was so loud, neither of them heard the tear.

  Gemm returned and Bailey took hold of one of the ropes with her.

  “We won’t have much time! Ready? Go!” Bailey yelled and kicked Morton into the lake.

  They both began pulling as fast as they could on the rope, dragging Morton through the tar-like waters, until closer to the control room he was pulled beneath the surface. After a little more pulling the rope stopped, as if Morton had become caught on something.

  Bailey tugged a few more times gently, then shouted “Maybe he’s made it!”

  “I think he might be stuck!” Gemm said worriedly.

  “Stay here! I might be able to see something through the door!” Bailey shouted and jogged off around the lake to the door, which was just out of sight of where Gemm was standing.

  Bailey, who actually did still have the key card from the first escape, swiped it in the lock and entered the oval control room.

  The upper air was still filled with flies even now, as the extractor still had not been fixed.

  He glanced at the bubbling pool at the back corner, and seeing no sign of Morton Fincle ran across to the control panels, and tapped in the codes required to lock down the robot defence grid.

  “Don’t want you getting killed to soon, do we?” Bailey smirked.

  He was about to leave when he heard a groan from behind him, and turning saw Morton slowly dragging his oil filled body suit from the burning lake. He crawled up the sloping metal shore and Bailey walked over to him. Squatting down beside him, Morton reached up an angry claw as if to strangle him.

  Bailey unstuck the rope from his other hand and wrapped it around a part of the fence so he couldn’t be pulled back, then smirked down at him and said “What a fucking hero.”

  Bailey turned his back and left the control hut, sealing the door behind him. He ran back around to Gemm who was still anxiously looking out over the lake.

  “I can’t see a thing. I’d better tell the others.” Bailey said then dialed up Josep Fincle’s number. “Josep, I don’t think this has worked.”

  “Bailey!” Josep yelled with excitement. “The robots are dead! You did it! Just get my grandfather out of that hole and we’ll do the rest. I am genuinely indebted to you, I promise!”

  The phone was cut off, and Bailey said “Morton must have done it. The grid is down.”

  Gemm said nothing, and began crying. She tugged a few times on the rope, which was tied to the fence within the control room.

  Bailey knew he didn’t have much time now, and knew there was no decent excuse for leaving her, so simply patted her on the shoulder and ran back into the elevator. Luckily she was too upset to notice, and Bailey left her in the room, and returned as fast as he could to Colec Warehouse B.

  He ran up to a computer console in the corner of the unit workshop, and tapped in the commands to switch it on, and then onto the right program set. A set of other high definition holographic screens flickered into existence over and around the main holo-dish.

  Something flickered into life on the far right screen, and then the rest. They were images fed from the cameras on each of the tripod droids he had given to Josep Fincle.

  The Fincle family had descended to the crater basin in the cable car and now stood in a gathering listening to Josep. There was a slight snowfall, but a mostly clear evening, and you could just see the robotic dome in the distance. One of the views looked back over toward the colony, and a huge outflow spewing water that had not been recycled, out in a thick flood to a horrid brown lake at that side of the basin.

  Josep Fincle stood gesturing to the large party he had assembled, consisting of young and middle aged men and women. The fully extended droids stood behind him, gripping the rock with their spindly legs through the snow. The cameras at the tips of worm like metallic stalks moved here and there, surveying each of them.

  Bailey tapped a few more commands and a synchronized audio fed through from each. He finally tuned in and heard Josep addressing the other members of his extended family.

  “I treasure each and every one of you, I do.” he said, with more earnest than he had ever heard in his voice, and a note of sadness. “Today finally we will realize our sweetest revenge. For too long now they’ve locked us away from the colonies, holding us back from the glory of our past. Now they will fear us once again. Tonight we will return to the colonies and start anew. For Vengeance!”

  Josep raised a balled fist at the night sky, and the party cheered. They then turned and began walking briskly toward the smaller dome. The main planet was on the far side of the moon, so there was very little light to guide their long journey.

  “Oh man, that was touching.” Bailey muttered. “Let’s inject some fun into the evening.”

  Bailey began patching into the connection he had created in the oil processing plant. He patched the signal from a bouncer program on the terminal there, to bouncers in deeper areas of the communications trunk of the colony. The signal bounced right through to the central computing department of the citadels, and although he could only imagine what the place looked like, the systems were very familiar. He patched through to the cloa
king force field generator, and began overclocking the power matrix.

  The cloaking generator used massive amounts of power each second to keep the whole of the citadel zone constantly invisible. There were safeguards in the computer programs that controlled and regulated it, but could be bypassed by corrupting them with malware injected at the software update system. Once this had been done, Bailey was free to increase the power input to the generator, and bypassing safe levels the generator began to overheat.

  As the Fincles pressed on through the gentle cold air, in the distance to their right the dark grey citadels suddenly came to sight.

  They stood towering up from their wide base, reaching up from a tall, manmade crater near the center of the overall basin. They faded into the wispy cloud high above, with their narrow tips only just visible. There were red and white lights up and down it, and other, brighter lights shining up from inside the crater.

  “Oh God, look!” one of them shouted and pointed at them.

  They all turned and gasped at it.

  “What’s going on? That’s never happened before.”

  “Keep going.” Josep yelled from the back, and then looked as a giant ball of fire rolled up into the air from between the citadel bases.

  The cloaking generator within the zone had caught on fire, pouring smoke up into the evening air, not that the Fincles had a real comprehension of what had happened. They continued onward toward the small dome. The smooth snow cover of the basin became more rocky after a few hours and then progressively the rocks became larger and more jagged.

  They followed a fissure through them, that had resulted in a wide separation between the larger rocks. It had been spotted with telescopes and figured into the plan from the outset.

  The light around faded as they got closer to their destination.

  Josep, who was already on edge started as someone shouted out “Where’s the droid backup?”

  They all stopped and looked behind them, where Bailey’s droids had been following them across the rocks. Now they had all gone without any of them hearing a thing. They looked around but could see nothing, and in the growing darkness it was yet more difficult.