by Jess Kuras
“Do you think we’re being punished? For what we’ve created?”
He started another simulation before answering. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“But what if everything we’ve assumed simply isn’t true,” I insisted. “What if we can change the future?”
“I suppose I’d believe anything right now,” he replied. “I mean, what have we got to lose?” I stumbled upward in the dark, reaching across the desks for something, anything. My hands closed around something hard and metallic: a screwdriver. “What are you doing?” he asked in bewilderment.
I felt for the handle of the door that led into the innards: where only the engineers ventured in their cottony white cleansuits. I blew past the gowning room and stormed into the soul of the GM. It was cooler in there and alive with the hum of the massive computer. I could see Tim through the large window that connected the two rooms and as he watched, I plunged the screwdriver into one of the metal units. There was no dramatic show of sparks, no sign that I had done any damage except a strangled clicking sound.
I moved sporadically across the room, raking at the innards again and again. I knew what I was doing was nearly irreversible: it would take years to rebuild all the data I was destroying. There was no simple back-up of the GM. There couldn’t be. In reality, the computer took up most of the building and no computer could even come close to storing but a miniscule fraction of the data in the GM. What we had worked on for 50 years, I was doing my best to destroy in seconds. It wouldn’t be complete destruction, not by a long shot, but with any luck, it would be enough. Please let this be enough.
Finally, I stood still, surveying the damage. A putrid smoke had begun to collect in the room and the steady hum had been interrupted by clicks and beeps. The entire system wheezed in desperation. A sharp knock rang out above it all and I glanced over at the window, where Tim was pounding his fist in desperation, holding something up to the window.
Dreamlike, I dropped the screwdriver and walked over to the window. He held a familiar graph up, the global population. With my finger, I traced the little black line up to its peak and then down, down to annihilation. So? I shrugged at him, not understanding the strange look on his face. He gestured to his side and then I understood. The printer. This was attached to the printer.
“Oh god,” I murmured, sinking to the floor. “Oh god, what have I done?”
The GM was crackling in despair and with great effort, I exited the room, back through the gowning room, and into the interface room. “You broke it!” he screamed as soon as I stumbled into the room. “It was you, it was predicting you!”
I knew he was right, but I shook my head anyway, trying to protest my innocence. “But, I thought – I wanted to make it right, what we had done. I thought we were being punished.”
Tim was crumpling the paper into a ball, trying to hide it. “It knew all along,” he moaned. “The GM was giving us the correct results all along. The programming, it was programmed to provide us with the graphs it would produce in the future. It couldn’t give us any results if it knew its data would be destroyed at midnight. Why couldn’t I figure it out?”
“Because we can’t change the future,” I murmured.
I thought he might kill me then, his face was full of so much rage, but a heavy thump rang out against the door and he moved to the blinds, peering out into the dark. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered.
“Is anyone in there?” a muffled voice shouted through the door. “It’s the police.”
“Yeah, hang on,” Tim shouted back, shoving the desks out of the way and unlocking the door.
The door opened and two officers entered the room. “Ms. Riese?” one of them asked. “We’ve come to escort you and your employees home. The situation has become too dangerous here.”
“What took you so long?” I cried. “Why did you wait until now?”
They gave me a strange look as we walked away from the destruction. “Have you seen the demonstration outside? We only just broke through it.”
We descended the stairs in silence and flashing red and blue lights illuminated the lobby. Uniformed officers swarmed the area. As I stopped to take in the damage, a cool night breeze wafted through the broken windows and I heard Tim sigh. “You know,” he spat, “I had always heard people say you were simply finishing your father’s work. I think you’ve succeeded in that more than any of us ever expected. He should be proud of you.”
Maybe not proud, I thought, but maybe he will understand. Out of anyone in the world, he just might be the one that understands.
