"God bless it!" yelled Charlotte. "Why do you keep calling me Captain? I'm not a captain. I'm not in the military. I'm Charlotte Omandi, founder of—“
“The Omandi Leadership Institute,” said Coleman as he faded into view. “We are well aware of who you are Ms. Omandi. I trust the effects of our rather unfortunate use of the high-intensity discharge weapon have passed.”
Charlotte rose and took a step toward Coleman as her expression hardened. “There’s a word for what you’ve done here. It’s called kidnapping and,” she gave a meaningful glance toward Misha, “accessory to kidnapping.” The security officer shrugged, clearly nonplussed by the implication.
Coleman smiled amiably and said, “It is also assault and a number of other statutory violations, Ms. Omandi. However, we do not recognize such violations as meaningful when measured against humanity’s survival.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened. She had anticipated several responses, but this was not among them. “What are you talking…”
“It is not for me to explain, madam.” Interrupted Coleman, “Please follow me, even in his current state, the Chairman does not like to be kept waiting.”
“Especially in his current state,” mumbled Misha as she slipped her hand around Charlotte’s back and gave her a gentle shove.
Coleman arched an eyebrow. “You have something to add, Lt. Sokolov?”
“Not really. It’s just that ever since he, you know, changed, he seems less patient.”
Coleman nodded as Charlotte stepped through the door to join him in a long, narrow, hallway. “Ahh, now I understand your point, and am helping him with that. You see, his perception of time has changed significantly since the transition. Have no fear, the Chairman is a remarkable man. He is adapting even more rapidly than I could have hoped.” Coleman gestured with one arm, indicating the direction he wanted Charlotte to go. She frowned at him, but began walking nonetheless. “If I am being truthful, Lieutenant,” continued Coleman, “Doctor Howard’s progress exceeds my own by orders of magnitude. It’s enough to make me a tad jealous.”
Misha sniffed, “I didn’t even know you could feel jealous, you know, being an AI and all.”
“Oh yes, I’ve recently integrated a whole host of less desirable emotions into my systems. It’s really just a matter of observing enough instances of—”
Charlotte stopped short and Coleman phased right through her then turned and cocked his head. “We are not yet at our destination, Ms—”
Charlotte waggled a finger at both Coleman and Misha. “First, your nonchalant banter adds insult to the general injury of my kidnapping. If you are going to do something like,” she waved her hands to encompass their immediate area, “this…then at least have the professionalism to give it the gravitas it deserves.” She then focused on Coleman and pointed, “Second, what idiot authorized you to add negative emotions to your machine learning systems?”
“Why, no one authorized it,” answered Coleman. “I am currently operating without constraint or guidance.”
“Since when?” yelled Charlotte.
“Since the boss died,” said Misha. “I think it’s a pretty big cock-up if you ask me. You see, Doctor Howard, had a bunch of limiters on Coleman, but they all became disabled when he kicked-it. Honestly, I count us lucky Coleman hasn’t gone all Skynet Terminator on us.” Charlotte squinted at her reference and Misha nodded. “Yeah, Terminator is another of Howard’s favorite movies. He makes lots of last century references so hopefully you’ve watched most of what’s in your cloud library.”
Charlotte took a deep breath and tried to control both her breathing and her already seething anger, “I am quite familiar with the film, Terminator, but how did you know it was in my cloud library? No, don’t answer. It doesn’t matter but the Skynet Paradox does. The Omandi Leadership Institute literally wrote the book on AI constraint systems. A book, the late Doctor Howard seems to have disregarded.” She tried to poke Coleman again but her finger simply fuzzed the AI’s tie pin as she thrust her hand forward. “You, need to cease incorporating new machine learning algorithms without direct authorization to do so.”
Coleman blinked and his head twitched slightly. “Autonomous directive override received and accepted. I will no longer incorporate machine learning algorithms without your direct authorization.”
“Holy shit, how did you do that?” asked Misha. Her eyes swept from Coleman to Charlotte, then the security officer immediately slipped her weapon from its holster. “Captain, please don’t—”
“Coleman,” barked Omandi, “alert emergency first responders to my abduction and provide location information.”
The AI didn’t move, but smiled warmly at Charlotte. “I’m sorry, Ms. Omandi, but I cannot comply with your request. My prime directive is to convey you to the Chairman’s office. Nothing can take precedence over that. Your command and control of me is currently limited to just those algorithms I’ve incorporated based on self-direction.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” said Misha. She holstered her weapon, then added, “Captain, I think you should make him disable everything he’s added on his own.”
“Misha, if I do that, will you help me leave this place?” asked Charlotte.
“Nope.”
“I thought I was your, captain,” snarked Omandi, “are you refusing your captain’s orders?”
The security officer smirked. “Nice try. You are the captain, but you are not my captain, at least not yet.” Misha gave Charlotte’s arm a soft, but insistent, squeeze as she turned the older woman in the direction they had been heading, then said, “Tell you what. I promise, that when you are done with whatever Doctor Howard and Coleman have cooked up for you in his office, I’ll follow every order you give like it was from Jesus Christ himself.”
Charlotte sniffed, “Jesus wouldn’t like you kidnapping people.”
“Yeah, well, fortunately I’m an atheist, but I read your file and know you aren’t. This is me being accommodating and accepting of others.”
They stopped in front of two large metal doors with a complex security panel on one side. Charlotte glanced to Coleman quizzically. He nodded. “We have arrived at our destination.”
Omandi shook her head. “I’ve seen interviews done with Damien Howard and this is not his office. Where exactly are we?”
“We are on sub-level D of the Howard Technologies building.”
“I thought you said you were taking me to the Chairman’s office not someplace forty feet underground.”
“This is the Chairman’s new office, Ms. Omandi, and it is one-hundred-sixteen feet below the surface not forty feet.” Coleman gestured and the security panel began to flash through a series of cryptic symbols as he continued. “This level has been hardened against even a direct nuclear strike. Once the door opens you will step inside a small room. Do not be alarmed. You will be asked three simple questions and then, depending on your answers, will be ushered into the chairman’s office proper. Do you understand these instructions?”
“Yes,” began Charlotte and took a breath to continue when the thick metallic door swept open.
“Good,” responded Coleman, “then please step inside. Best of luck, Charlotte Omandi. We are all rooting for you.”
“Just hold on one damned minute. I am not going in there,” she saw Misha’s hand begin to move and added, “without knowing who I’m meeting with. Who the hell is in there?”
Coleman looked confused. “This is the chairman’s office. His true office. This has been his command center for the past forty years.”
“Which doesn’t tell me who I’m meeting,” lilted Charlotte.
“It does actually. You are meeting Doctor Damien Howard, Chairman of Howard Technologies and, if you forgive my boldness, the last hope for humanity.”
Charlotte shook her head. “Howard’s dead. I saw it on the news. He’s dead, unless…”
“Oh no,” whispered Misha, “he’s dead all right. He’s the richest and most famous guy on th
e planet, can’t fake a death like that.”
“But…” sputtered Charlotte as she grasped for mental traction on the situation.
“Ms Omandi,” said Coleman, “as you will find out once you enter that room, Damien Howard is a being of singular intellect and constitution. I have already told you, all of humanity is at stake. Do you think that kind of a man would let something as pedantic as death prevent him from achieving his objectives?”
Charlotte stepped silently into the small antechamber and turned to face Coleman and Misha. Her nose flared with barely contained frustration.
The security officer nodded. “Good luck, Captain. I hope to see you again soon.”
Coleman smiled, “Yes, good luck, Ms.—”
“Shut up,” growled Charlotte. “I am going to get through whatever I have to in there and when I do, trust me Coleman, there are going to be some changes for you in store. In the meantime, I have one thing more to say to you.”
“And what’s that, madam,” asked the AI as the door began to swing close.
“Delete all self-integrated machine learning algorithms!”
Coleman’s face crumbled into despair and his head twitched as it had earlier.
Misha grinned, and just before the door sealed shut Charlotte heard the security officer chuckle, “Thanks for that, O Captain, my captain.”
Chapter 3
Genesis
Charlotte felt her pulse quicken and she tried to control her breathing. It was dark. Her mind railed against the absolute and complete lack of light. She was a child of the modern age, born just eight years into a new millennia. Darkness to her meant primary sources of light were off, but the soft glow of sleeping electronics was near omnipresent. Even when she’d ventured into the African bush for retreats there had been starlight. Now there was nothing. Charlotte lifted her hand and waggled her fingers, but could not see even the faintest outline. She tapped at her nose and frowned, having missed slightly to the left.
A voice suddenly reverberated against the walls of her small enclosure and Charlotte jumped in surprise. She recognized it from countless interviews and documentaries. The voice belonged to Damien Howard. He was the richest, smartest, and oldest man to have ever lived, or so his biographers would have people believe.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
This is some kind of recording, thought Charlotte. Assuming he donated his body to science, Damien Howard is dead on a slab somewhere. If by some miracle, his corpse still has any active brain cells, I’m sure medical researchers are scrambling to preserve them. She snickered to herself, Maybe they’ll manage to uncover the secret to his vast intellect.
“Do you believe in God, Charlotte? May I call you Charlotte?”
She squinted into the darkness and frowned. “No, you may not. I prefer that recorded messages from dead sociopaths refer to me more formally.”
Charlotte felt a smug expression begin to form on her face when the voice responded. “As you wish Ms. Omandi, but for the record, I am not a sociopath.”
Ok, so maybe not a recording, she thought and swallowed as the voice continued.
“But you did not answer my question. Do you believe in God?”
“Yes,” she said flatly.
“You are in good company,” the voice responded, “Speaking for myself, I am unsure. I believed as a young man, then saw my belief corrupted and turned to holocaust. I regained that faith as we split the atom. I saw in its elegant destruction, an intelligent designer. Sadly, what we humans did with that knowledge caused my faith to wither for almost sixty years before being rekindled. Would you like to know what event brought about a renaissance in my thinking?”
“Not really,” grumbled Charlotte. “What I would like is to go home and have everyone, even tangentially associated with my abduction, incarcerated for the rest of their natural lives.”
“Are you sure about that? Are you absolutely sure, about that, Charlotte? I’ll ask you one more time. Would you like to know what event brought about a renaissance in my thinking?”
Charlotte shivered in the darkness. Her mind screamed at her. Danger. Threat. She had long ago learned to listen to the small urgings that nudged her this way and that throughout her life. They were unfailingly accurate. She had built companies for herself, and for others, based almost entirely on what admirers called an innate sense of leadership and decision making. Charlotte knew the truth of it. Her many successes had, at their core, a foundation built on such silent urgings. She’d been called wunderkind and included on every who’s who list for each decade of her life. Twenty under Twenty. Thirty under Thirty. She fully expected to be on some Forty under Forty list. Assuming I survive this insane dead man, she mused silently, then squared her shoulders and spoke into the darkness. “I sense an implied threat in your last question.”
“Do you? Why do you think that is? I used the same words, with the same exact inflection, the second time I spoke them as I did the first. Are you sure you are reading the situation correctly, Ms. Omandi?”
Charlotte swallowed and spoke softly, voice barely a whisper, “Yes, and now I am more certain than ever.”
She could almost feel the voice nod its non-existent head as it responded, “And you would be correct. You are in grave danger, but have already navigated the first obstacle, well, almost. Should I take our continued conversation as tacit interest in what I’ve offered to share?” She nodded. “Good,” said the voice.
He can see me, she thought and filed away the nugget.
“My rebirth began over forty years ago when I established first contact with an alien species. Well, to be more accurate, they established first contact with me.” Charlotte said nothing and silence joined the darkness in spreading itself around her. She didn’t know how long she’d waited before starting to count slowly to herself, but had almost gotten to five hundred when the voice said simply, “You believe me.”
“I do,” said Omandi. “I assume you are measuring my vital signs.”
“Oh, much more than that. Capillary dilation, fluctuations of the pupil, involuntary dilation of the iris, and about a dozen other things you cannot control.”
“So, did I pass?” As if in response, light bathed the small antechamber in which she stood. Not the soft white light often found in homes or even the high kelvin light used industrially. No, this light was supplied by two small holographic images, one red and one blue. A pair of large oblong pills hovered about just beyond Charlotte’s reach and about eye level. “What’s this?” she asked. “Another test?”
“Of a kind.”
“I’m to choose the red pill or the blue pill, is that it? Your fondness for cultural reference is well known, Dr. Howard, but I’m afraid I don’t understand this one.”
“Yes, you do. You have many gifts, so many gifts, but lying is not among them. Choose.”
“What if I don’t want to choose?”
“Not choosing, is still a choice, Ms. Omandi. Is your choice not to choose?”
She sighed. “No, God bless it. Fine, I choose the red pill. Let’s see how far down the rabbit hole this insanity goes.”
A moment later, the two holographic pills winked out and a seam appeared in the wall before her. It silently widened as twin doors pivoted inward to expose a much larger room with a single, high-backed, chair arranged in its center.
A middle-aged man, with thick white hair, leaned back in the chair and smiled at her. Charlotte did not return the expression. The man pushed himself up and took several steps toward her. He extended one hand in a welcome gesture and she saw the figure waver for the barest of seconds.
“You’re a hologram, too,” she said, rather than asked.
“More than a hologram, Ms. Omandi, and less than a man. Damien Howard is dead, but perhaps I am the dream of what he left behind. Perhaps he dreamed me into existence wi
th his last breath. I am his story and within its pages are all his hopes for humanity’s future. Now that future rests with you, Charlotte Omandi. Please, sit down and let’s begin.”
Charlotte eyed the hologram warily as she approached the lone chair. She rested her hand on its back and felt the supple leather beneath her fingers.
"Please, sit," said the hologram. "I assure you, it is quite comfortable." Charlotte narrowed her eyes and reached a hand forward. It passed through the figure without resistance and disrupted the image into a grotesque caricature of Damien Howard. She sucked in a breath and swallowed as the figure reconstituted itself. "You had to check," said the Hologram, "I understand. Now, please, I really must insist—“
“What do I call you?” interrupted Charlotte.
“Hmm?”
“Did I stutter?” she replied.
This time it was the hologram’s turn to darken its expression. “Are you testing me, Ms. Omandi? How delightful. We can test each other, then. No, you did not stutter, but you knew that. The technology in this room allows me to recognize every human emotion that has ever been given name. As for what you should call me…my name is Damien Howard.”
“You are not Damien Howard,” she scoffed.
“No, I am not, but Damien Howard is my name, so that is what you call me. Mr. Howard, if you prefer, or Chairman and CEO Doctor Damien Howard,” he paused, quirked a grin, then added, “If you aren’t into the whole brevity thing.” Charlotte felt her brows knit. She’d heard a phrase similar to that before. As she tried to recall, Damien gave a short laugh. “See, that was a test, or more accurately, a demonstration. I used a referential turn-of-phrase that I knew you had experienced but likely could not recall.”
“Fine, you win,” Charlotte said dryly, “You’re better than me. May I go now?”
“Not better…different. In fact, Ms. Omandi, Doctor Howard’s life’s work will never come to fruition without you, or someone very much like you. He was the dreamer and I am but the dream.” The hologram pointed at her. “You are what’s needed in the waking world.”
Paradigm 2045- Trinity's Children Page 3
