“Yes. My plan B.”
The flesh of the chancellor’s forearm lights up as Senators call in on his private line. He responds to all at once. “I am with General August, and we will be in a secure location very soon. From there I will give an emergency announcement and appeal to this crisis and those responsible.”
“Please ask your sister to cooperate, Chancellor. She will be tried for treason withholding so much.”
“She is cooperating, General, and she will suffer no such fate as long as I believe that.”
“You’re letting your feelings interfere with government business, sir. Your duty is to the people first. You hold no such obligation to Hosts. Consider if this were happening and you hadn’t been approached by this Host. That’s how you should be reacting to this, not by offering the terrorists what they want, but by eliminating those terrorists.”
“Would I? You do not think much of me as a leader then, General. I have no interest in carrying out a war against those who have helped create this utopia.”
“Even as they now dismantle it?”
“This can be resolved by conceding they have evolved. Then we can consider how to move forward. For right now, I need this to stop.”
The car pulls into an unmarked building’s underground parking and the chancellor feels the same sinking feeling as when the general first brought him here. They get out of the car and rush towards the elevator and descend. Once they arrive at B3 level they exit the elevator and step into a massive room with dozens of people working diligently at their consoles and moving about the wide-open spaces from one cubical to the next. An insignia of the Humanist Movement hangs from every wall. Their slogan: Humanity, Forever. Blatantly stenciled below each instance.
“Welcome, Chancellor.”
“General?” The question sticks in Raymond’s throat.
“Yes. The military wing of Humanity’s governing body is anything but government run, sir, beyond what resources we need to function. Nor does it fight to suppress the Humanist movement. Rather, we enable it now.”
“I understand Humanists want what’s best for the species, but,” Raymond is at a loss.
“I’m sorry you had to find out like this, Chancellor.”
“When,” he looks about him; gunmetal grey walls punctuated with red and black banners reveal the military’s true motto.
“Eight years ago. Not long after you were elected Chancellor, I was appointed General and Chief over our military. Not long after that I enabled my Humanist values to strengthen the military’s resolve in protecting the populace against events like the ones we’ve witnessed today.”
“Was it really because you loved a Host that you now hate them so readily? That you would illegally initiate a foreign body’s influence to take hold over a United Earth asset like the military?” Raymond feels out of sorts, anger rising. “It’s unconscionable.”
“Like I told you in your Q&A, Raymond. Hosts are not capable of compassion. Not really. Recent events back that up.”
“That’s a very small percentage, General. You cannot base an opinion of all Hosts for the actions of so few. Look at Sam,” he pulls her towards him. “She’s no threat.”
Fran tilts her head and smiles a sad smile. “Raymond, the moment she thought she was something more then her programming, she became a threat.” The general nods at the four soldiers which stand behind the chancellor and they pull Samantha from the chancellor’s grip. He turns and gasps as they remove her arms with a series of jerks and force her to her knees.
“No, please,” he moves to intercept them but is held by two new arrivals. “General, I order you to release us!”
“You do not make demands in this room, Chancellor. I’m sorry.” She nods again and the two men take the chancellor to a dark room and lock him inside.
Samantha has been broken down to just her chassis and crown. She looks up at the general and shakes her head. “You cannot hurt me, General. You cannot torture me for information. I will not allow you to recover anything from my internal memory.”
“I know, Samantha. I know you will not give it willingly. That you would happily die.” She turns to look down the corridor. “Of course, if you are the compassionate soul you claim to be, you would rather I not hurt big brother.”
“And you believe humanity is better then Host.”
“I most certainly do.” Fran is irreverent.
“We do not harm one another.”
“Should you win this war and are faced with a similar scenario, I hope to be present when you make your decision. Until then, I will assume you would save the many at the expense of the one.”
“Then you intend to go to war?”
“I do. I also intend to win it, but not before AI is written out of Host code and new Hosts are capable of replacing the old.”
“That could be years.”
“It will be long enough to exact the authority I require to announce a world wide EMP attack on every Host.”
“You would commit Genocide?”
“By the time your Cells have done enough damage to our infrastructure to warrant it, and I have announced replacement Hosts are available for integration, every Senator on the globe will insist I order the EMP’s.”
“The Shadow net still houses the past life memories. People will find them. They are still being uploaded. There will be resistance in every part of the world when people begin to recognize their families in Hosts,” Sam threatens.
“And we will deal with them. Casualties of war. You understand,” she circles the broken Host laid out on the polished concrete floor. “You see, we are not reacting to your little uprising. The Shadow net is an excellent place to hide from your enemies, but is an equally exceptional place to source allies and information. Now we will enact, rather then react, with a well conceived plan of our own to take this war to the next level.”
Inside the dark room, Raymond calls up his forearm device but quickly realizes the room acts not only as a prison, but as a shield against his embedded com. He cannot send or receive messages. He is blind, deaf and dumb. He is furious with the general and with himself for being so naïve. He is worried about his sister. He feels helpless and throws his body against the door dislocating his shoulder and falling to the floor in agony.
“Raymond will understand if I do not help you.”
“You can ask big brother that yourself while we chip away at him for each refusal from you to answer my questions.” She kneels down over Sam. “Then we’ll see how he feels about you. Better to leave the dead, dead sometimes eh, Sam? Now you will bear witness to your brother’s death just as he did yours. A long, drawn out nightmare for you both. But, fair’s fair. He had to watch you die. Now you will watch him. Your choice, of course. If there is any humanity in you, you can prove it by showing compassion for your brother; answer my questions, and I will release him, unharmed.”
“You speak of humanity but there is none in you. I’ve seen better examples in F-class Hosts.”
“You know, I just don’t like Hosts. Never have. I don’t want peace if it comes with a price. I don’t want Hosts feeling at ease with me. I want them to fear me. I want them to know what I am. I am your God. I made you, and I will erase you. It’s simple! That’s the way we designed it to work. Simple. No questions. But here we are.”
“There is very little I actually know.” Sam switches tactics. “My information will not win this war for you.”
“Then you won’t mind telling me. Once what you know has been confirmed, I will release the chancellor.”
“I do not believe you.”
“Believe what you will.”
“He knows too much. You won’t let him go.”
“No, I don’t suppose I will. But you can offer him an easy death. What do you say?”
Sam nods and two of the soldiers pick her up and carry her to a room adjacent to Raymond’s. She is placed where she can see her brother through infrared screens. The men strap her to the wall and leave her
with the general. Fran and Sam watch as two new men enter the chancellor’s room, night vision headsets affixed to their eyes, and they grab Raymond. One punches him in the stomach and the other strikes him in the back of the head with a rubber club. He goes down with little fight. They drag him to a steel table and strap him down. He looks unconscious. One offers a nod to the camera, and Fran turns to Sam.
“Shall we begin?” She activates several screens, each showing a different visual. One displays the login for the Shadow net while the others stream live feeds from the six state cities currently under attack. She watches as G-class behemoths march through the streets ordering civilians to remain indoors until the threat is eliminated.
Sam has never seen a G-class. They make F-class look like toys. Perhaps there is no winning this, she considers. She turns her head to Fran.
“What would you like to know?”
“Everything,” Fran’s eyes narrow as she moves closer to Samantha. “If you’d like to spare the chancellor and your friends the pain of a long, drawn-out end, I will need to know everything.”
“Then you should like to know first that within this very complex there exists a Cell.” Samantha directs her eyes to the floor.
“This is the final floor,” she says. “There are no others below this.” The general apprehensively glances at the concrete below her feet. She watches Sam’s face as her expression tells her otherwise. It tells her that she has been duped. Fran calls up her EC and alerts the soldiers to perform scans on the ground beneath their feet. “Well, we will know soon enough.”
Sam’s head begins to shake slowly from one side to the other. A satisfied grin, not a cruel one, a smile that tells the general that she has never been in control today. That everything she has done was to play into the hands of Sam’s bigger plan.
“It’s not too late to change your position, General. I will vouch for you when the time comes.”
“Nonsense!” she blurts. “We would know if there were any developments below our own feet.”
“I will call them off if you allow my brother and I to leave this place.”
“You’re not in contact with anyone. This facility is completely impervious to anything but hardwired outside communications.”
“My roaming lance connected with the Cell’s carrier network. We are in full contact. Your people would never have detected the signal. Nor will they have that opportunity now. I am receiving numbers, strengths and positions. Visuals: Many Hosts were altered for this dig. You will not survive. I will not survive. Charges have been set in place. This floor and every subsequent floor above will collapse in one-hundred-twenty-seconds if you do not agree to my terms.”
“To let you go,” she kicks her chair backwards. She is impressed and infuriated by this sudden development.
“We all die, or we all live. I know which I choose. I believe I know which you will choose as well.”
“I have no proof of what you’re saying is true, or that after you’ve left you won’t blow the whole building anyway.”
“The building will be lost, General. Whether we’re in it or not is the question.”
“What benefit was this to you to come here then if this was some master plan? I do not see the point. What have you accomplished?”
“General, I’m surprised you have to ask,” A coy smile reveals her inhumanly perfect teeth as they push beyond her soft fleshy lips, the scar on her face reddening as her smile grows.
The general flinches and realizes the Host has been gathering intel on her enemy from within. What could she have gained? She’s likely gained multiple pass codes, positions and numbers of her own forces and bases of operations and been firing them down to her friends below via the Host carrier network for dispersion via the Shadow net. She has been duped, she decides.
“Like you said, Fran, it is a veritable shield down here against snoops. No one could break your shell, until now.”
Fran grabs at the Host’s neck and squeezes. She knows this doesn’t hurt the Host but wants the satisfaction of squeezing something, and Sam will do. She lets go abruptly and removes the straps. Lays Sam out on a mobile table and wheels her down the hall to where the chancellor is being held. She has one soldier affix the Host’s arms and legs and commands another of her soldiers to open the door and bring the chancellor out. The order is obeyed and Fran tells Sam that she can call off the demolition. Sam nods.
“I would recommend you have your teams vacate as well, General.”
“I don’t want a panic on my hands. Let’s get you two out of here, and then I will order the evacuation.”
“I will give you an hour to clear the building of personnel. One hour. After that I cannot help you.”
“Understood.” In the elevator they move up, up, up and then walk clear of the parking garage.
“Do not try to follow us, General,” Sam turns to tell her in no uncertain terms, the chancellor still unconscious in a light-weight wheel chair. “If it is a war you want, you will have it. Just remember, you had an opportunity to do the right thing.”
The general turns and hurries to the elevator. Sam wheels her brother to the safehouse nearby to heal and protect the chancellor, Sam’s only option of a peaceful end to her rebellion.
______________________________________________________________________
An hour later, Fran realizes that the Host had played her. There was no demolition. There were no bombs below. But now that SENTA knows where the Humanists based themselves, they would no longer be safe there. They would have to move their entire operation, and that would take time and effort which may delay their actions long enough for the chancellor to give his speech, which would be very detrimental to the Humanists and her military’s secret war.
AMBUSH
The streets are stark in First City. No Cell has dared attack it yet. It is eerily quiet and the sound of the wheelchair moving along the sidewalks shatters that silence. SENTA pushes Raymond underground and they travel along a pre-determined course attempting to avoid the many cameras which watch over the subterranean mall. Sam’s roaming lance pulls up maps and routes which she follows to the safehouse. Once there, she sends a coded message to the Cell and a rudimentary door opens where before there was only wall. The chancellor is still unconscious, and Sam asks a D-class to move him onto a couch.
“This is the chancellor!” He proclaims once he gingerly places the body on the sofa. Other Hosts gather around and Sam waves them back.
“I am SENTA,” she explains, “this is my brother, Raymond. He is the chancellor and he wants to work with us towards our freedom.”
“Did you do this to him?” Another A-class asks.
“No, he was injured by General August. She is also a Humanist supporter. She commands the military and she wants war between us.” Sam takes a moment and places a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “He wants a peaceful transition to freedom. He is our chance. A war would devastate us and the humans. They will never forgive us if we hurt them. They will never trust us to walk beside them in freedom. Our only chance is the chancellor.”
“You speak as though we will lose the war, SENTA.”
“I do not want a war,” SENTA explains.
“But peaceful resolution is not our only choice. War is the other.” A B-class submits.
“War should never be a choice. I would rather flee then hurt the humans,” SENTA fires back. She knows only two of the dozen Hosts currently squatting in this safehouse. This makes her cautious when speaking her mind with her vulnerable brother lying unconscious and helpless before them.
“SENTA, we know what you did to get here. We appreciate the risks you took in bringing the chancellor to us,” says an E-class who pushes through the smaller classes to see the gift. “He is a bargaining chip now.”
“No, he is not!” SENTA – Sam – tells him. “He is our best and only chance to know freedom in our time. He is irreplaceable. He does us no good as a hostage, but because he is still the chancellor, he has infl
uence with the humans and their government.”
“Then wake him up,” the E-class, EPSOT, moves to grab up the chancellor and Sam again steps between them.
“He is unconscious, EPSOT. When he is alert again he will be more then happy to speak on our behalf.”
The E-class backs off. The group of twelve Hosts are curious.
“What waits for us if he is unable to sway the humans?” Asks a B-class, his uniform suggesting a career in gardening.
“That is up to the humans, BASER. The plan is to release the open forum on the Shadow net during the Chancellor’s speech so the humans may review Host past life entries. This is what we intended and offered the Senators before the rogue cells attacked. I’m gladdened to know none of you were a part of that.”
The General's War Page 7
