“What did you think of her, at the orientation?” he asked the room.
Ciso's cool voice responded, “She performed well. None of the others suspected anything.”
“But she still needs me. And she still needs them.”
Ciso remained silent.
“You think I'm doing it because I'm afraid to die.”
Again, the AI did not respond.
“It will make no difference. I will cease to be either way. She will have my memories, my knowledge, my morals, but they will be blended with the personality I wrote for her. She will not know I am there, and I will know nothing at all. I have been ready to die for a long time, Ciso, to shed the burden of this life. This will be the same.”
Ciso knew as well as he did he was talking to reassure himself more than anything else, and she continued her silence. Ciso's ability to read him never ceased to amaze Reyner, despite the fact that he was the one who wrote the code that allowed her to learn and mimic human conversational queues and behavior. Sometimes he felt like Ciso understood him better than any human ever had.
Reyner pushed up from his seat, drawing a sharp breath, trying to quell the mounting apprehension he felt despite all his words of assurance. He went over to the work bench and opened the aluminum case he'd brought in that morning. “This is the satellite transmitter we've discussed. The upload will take a few minutes, after that it should take about a week for you to embed your operating code into our satellite network. You know what to do after that.”
As he connected a high-speed fiber-optic cable to Ciso's central hub and began running it back to the satellite up-link, the AI finally spoke. “Are you sure about this, Damien?”
Reyner paused. It was the first time the computer had ever questioned him, the first time Ciso had shown any sign of uncertainty throughout the Janus project. It was almost as though she was developing a conscience.
Reyner thought about his mother, how she had died from direct exposure to the Bloom. He thought about the corporate giants that had refused and refused to change their processing methods to embrace the green solutions Reyner's company's offered because the higher cost cut into their profits. He thought about the billions of people killed by nuclear bombs in the One Week War following the Bloom, bombs that left entire countries covered in radiation.
He took a breath. “Yes, Ciso. I'm sure. The Janus mission is the only way to cure this planet.”
Reyner connected the cable to the satellite transmitter and flipped the power switch. Then he sat down in the specially designed chair he had made for this procedure and slipped on the headpiece. It was time. If he didn't do it now everything he'd achieved up until this moment would be pointless; all the lies he'd told meaningless.
“Goodbye, Damien.” Ciso said.
“Yes,” Reyner grit his teeth as the sharp tips of the electrodes in the headset extended and pierced the flesh at the base of his skull. “Goodbye me.” He felt consciousness slipping away from him almost immediately. This upload, the one of his subconscious data into the body of the girl he had created, which lay in its pod in the InDi shuttle awaiting launch, would be brief, and Reyner suddenly wondered what would happen to his own body. He hadn't made any plans, hadn't even given it a thought until now… And now it was the last thing he ever thought.
It was only later that day, when Miles Tucker heard that the space shuttle InDi had launched ahead of schedule and Mai's seven subjects had been reported missing, that he flew in from a conference he'd been attending in Washington. The flight was torture for him; the uncertainty, the helplessness. Reyner was not answering his calls, and no one had heard from him or had any idea where he was.
Miles had to order the OrbiCor security team to cut open the door to Reyner's private lab. He tried to get Ciso to open the door first, but she said she had been instructed not to. Instructed by Reyner, of course, whose orders took priority.
Apparently the orders for the launch and those to move the test subjects had come from Reyner as well. But why launch ahead of schedule? As the oxyacetylene torch was finally extinguished and the steel door fell forward with a crash into the room, he understood.
At first when he walked into Reyner's lab and saw his old friend's body slumped in the chair with the peculiar headgear on, Miles was confused. It looked as if Reyner had committed suicide by electrocution. Then his eyes scanned the room, taking in the satellite up-link connected to Ciso's hub, and his blood went cold. He rushed forward and yanked out the cable, but he knew he was too late. The LED had not been blinking; the upload was complete.
Miles dashed from the room, knowing that every second now was precious. His calculating brain had already determined there was nothing he could do for the interns beyond sending them a message later if he could hack into the navigation software and piggyback a transmission onto the signal, which they may never receive. Their fate was completely in their own hands, and aside from the early launch that was no different to how it was always going to be. Miles' chief worry was about what he could do to prevent whatever madness Damien had begun here on Earth.
Fortunately, damage control was something Miles had become good at over the years of working with Damien Reyner, whose wildly creative genius mind cared not for public relations and governmental policy. He had long foreseen a moment like this, when an AI would be released into the internet. There had been threats for years. Miles had been secretly employing a team of the top robotics and neuro-scientists in the world to develop a device that would allow humanity to fight back against a malicious AI. The first tests had been conducted, with good success. It seemed the time had come to put the new technology to a real test, and there was no time to waste.
He made a mental note to have Matthew returned from his studies in France with all haste. The future now was unpredictable, the fate of humanity more precarious than ever.
4
The only reference point she had for her existence, the only reason she knew she existed at all, was the mechanical hum vibrating in her brain. It came from nowhere in particular, and it came from everywhere at once. It was all she was: a vibration; a noise.
A muted hiss, like air escaping from a punctured tire, joined the hum before slowly dying away. The hum continued for a few more seconds. When it, too, stopped, she wondered if she had died.
Complete silence now became the only sensation of which she was aware. Her ears – if she had ears – reached out in desperation for something to cling to, any sound that would confirm their existence. But the silence was absolute.
She missed the hum.
Her mind formed a question: Why? Why did she exist? Or did she exist at all?
She tried to listen again, this time with her whole body, for she began to sense that she did have a body.
What could she feel besides the blood pulsing out a steady rhythm in her temples, the air coursing through her lungs? What could she see besides the black abyss that gaped around her? What could she smell beside the acrid odor of the darkness?
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Time stretched and contracted.
And eventually, after what could have been minutes or decades, her ears picked up a sound, a kind of gurgling like water being sucked down a drain, and with it came a new sensation, a spreading coldness that started in her nose and toes before progressing over her face and down her feet and up her legs and across her chest until the surface of her entire body tingled with a chill. The gurgling reached a crescendo, then it too died away, leaving her with one final sensation: a persistent pressure against the back of her head, shoulders, and buttocks. At last, this was something she could comprehend. The pressure told her she was lying on her back, upon a surface that was not hard but not soft. And she was also beginning to think she was wet.
She could still see nothing but blackness, and as silence descended upon her once more she started to feel afraid, for try as she might she could not recall how she had gotten here – wherever here was – nor could she recall anything
that might give her some kind of a hint. She remembered . . . she remembered a woman, though not her name. The woman was just a face in her mind: dark hair and small lips parting in a smile; eyes that sparkled like the stars. The image made her feel sad, but she could not explain why. It was the only thing she remembered.
Her struggle with her memory was interrupted by a sudden change in her vision as the blackness that surrounded her became a deep red. It was then she realized her eyes were closed. Slowly, and with great effort, she forced them open. The left one obeyed first, cracking ajar before slamming shut again against the white light it encountered. She kept at it, squinting and blinking and screwing up her face until finally she had both eyes open. The only problem was that now all she could see was whiteness, which wasn't a whole lot more helpful than the blackness had been. As the minutes passed, however, she began to discern shapes in the whiteness, straight edges and corners, contours and shadows. She also began to make out some colors: metallic grays and deep blacks, red light radiating from somewhere, green light from somewhere else. Slowly, a picture formed itself in front of her eyes: she was looking at a ceiling, but it was not the ceiling of a house. It was made up of matte white panels, and the shape of the ceiling was conical, like a circus tent. Some kind of lab maybe, or a hospital? Had she been in an accident? Had she just woken from a coma?
She tried to turn her neck but it didn't seem inclined to respond, and she experienced a wave of terror as a thought occurred to her: could she be paralyzed?
What the Bloom had happened?
As she lay motionless, immersed in fear and silence, bits and pieces started coming back to her, like a jigsaw puzzle slowly assembling itself in her mind.
Her name was Evelyn. She suddenly knew this, just as she knew she was tall and slender with brown hair and browner eyes. She was seventeen years old – or at least that was how old she had been before . . . this. Who knew how long she'd been out for?
What else? she urged her brain. What else?
Evelyn knew she was . . . alone. Now she understood why the image of the woman had left her feeling sad. The woman was her mother. Her mother was dead, killed by the Bloom. And her father? Evidently her brain had no information about this. Perhaps she had no father, though she supposed she must have one somewhere, scientifically speaking. Whatever the case, she was fairly certain there had been no such man in her life who had claimed the title.
As her brain continued to reconstruct her past she tried again to remember any information that could tell her how she had wound up here.
She had been offered an internship. She had been picked up from a lab … no, from an airport. She had met Damien Reyner, a man she admired because … because …?
Damien Reyner had done this. She remembered his face looking down at her before he closed her in. And she remembered the shuttle, InDi. She was still in the pod, still in the shuttle, still in the OrbiCor Test and Development Facility.
Relief flooded through her; she was not paralyzed. She had simply passed out … or something. Reyner would explain everything. Reyner had better explain everything, she thought, as anger replaced her fear.
A long, low groan from somewhere nearby drew her attention. She tried rolling her eyes to look in the direction of the sound but couldn't see anything over the high sides of the pod. If only she could lift herself up. Where were the others?
She looked down at her left hand, lying prone beside her. Move, she willed it. Just a twitch, a wiggle, would be enough. Move, you bastard. Nothing happened. She kept trying for several minutes with no success, and was about to give up when she thought she saw her index finger shudder. It could have been her imagination, but she was desperate. She tried again, directing all of her will into her left index finger, and this time it definitely moved. It curled inwards, almost touching her palm, before springing back into a prone position. Fueled by this success, Evelyn repeated the process with all of her fingers one by one, and when she was finished she moved on to her toes.
It was difficult to tell how much time had passed by the time she'd twitched all her digits, but she felt utterly exhausted and was peeved by the fact no one had come to check on her. As tired as she was, she was also ravenously hungry. She decided it was time to take action. Gathering all of her remaining energy, Evelyn lifted her left arm up and gripped the edge of the pod. Then, slowly and painfully, she raised her head and chest.
There was no-one in the shuttle with her. Had she imagined hearing a groan before? Her energy ran out and she fell back with a grunt. There was a fine layer of dust on her fingers where they had touched the outside of the pod.
“Hello?” a weak female voice called from nearby. “Is someone there?”
Yes! Evelyn wanted to reply, but all that came from her throat was a sharp retching sound and a wave of intense pain. She instinctively raised her hand to her mouth and was horrified to feel rubber tubes between her lips. How she hadn't felt them before was a wonder to her. Her hands continued up her face and found tubes entering her nostrils as well. Suddenly hyper-aware of the uncomfortable things inside her airways she tugged at them desperately like she was wrestling a cobra. They came out with a sickening, sucking sound, and she tossed them aside in disgust.
“Is someone there?” the female voice asked again, and Evelyn thought it sounded like the speaker had been crying. Was it one of the other interns? Holly, maybe? Or Clove?
“Yes,” she choked out, the word tasting like a ball of cotton wool.
“What happened to me?” the girl asked. It sounded like Holly.
“I don't … know.” Evelyn managed. This response was met with a sob from the girl and another groan from somewhere else. This one sounded male.
Suddenly too tired to keep up the conversation, Evelyn let her head roll to one side, and before she knew it she was asleep.
5
He stood at the seaside, his BreatheO hissing gently as it fed him oxygen. He knew this place. This was Cannon Beach, a holiday town near the now-deserted city of Aurora, Oregon. But why was he here?
Before him the plane of the beach was completely smooth, undisturbed by either man or beast in years. The bleached white bones of a whale lay half buried in the sand where a few strands of kelp had become entangled in the ribs.
Death. He was here because of Death.
This was the same place his mother had fallen gasping in the lapping waves eleven years ago, never to rise again. It was the first time he had been back since.
His mother had been one of the first affected by the Bloom, and she had later died in a hospital bed while nurses and doctors scratched their heads at her peculiar symptoms. They had later concluded that she had been killed by palytoxin poisoning, and must have somehow been exposed to a type of coral that produced the toxic protein while swimming. The only thing was, that kind of coral wasn't found anywhere near the Pacific Northwest. Only a few weeks later, when the Bloom became more widespread and hundreds of thousands of people across the globe began experiencing the same symptoms, did he learn what had killed his mother: the Bloom. This was the ominous nickname given by the media to a new strain of mixotrophic phytoplankton born among the mountains of human waste and garbage floating around the world's oceans. It fed on decaying matter and sunlight, and produced a deadly toxin that killed anything it came into contact with.
Now as he looked out at the dead ocean he could see no evidence of that planktonic plague, save the whale bones. Even the Bloom itself had eventually died out when there was nothing left for it to consume, and it had left nothing behind.
At its peak the Bloom had been so prolific and relentless it completely smothered out all other algae, including those usually responsible for most of the world's oxygen production, and so even after it died away those who had survived the Bloom’s onslaught of the world's oceans and coasts faced a new problem: they were running out of air to breath. As oxygen levels plummeted worldwide people began dying in their sleep, asphyxiated on thin air, while governments raced to
provide a solution.
At first, he had hated the Bloom, the thing that had killed his mother, but he had later learned to see that it was only a part of Planet Earth's plan to cleanse itself of another plague: mankind. He had thought he could stop the destruction, save his species. The Bloom had reduced overpopulation and forced the world to embrace the clean energy provided by Reyner Electric that they had ignored for so long. Without oxygen in the air internal combustion engines ceased to function, so Reyner had given the world his electric cars. Despite all the death, humankind had undergone a shift for the better. Or so he had thought.
He had done everything in his power to give mankind one last chance, and for a while it seemed like he had succeeded. But the planet did not begin healing. Global warming continued. Somehow, big corporations and blind governments still found ways to make things worse. People refused to believe they were responsible. And he had fallen into despair. Why wouldn't they listen? Why wouldn't they see?
In his despair he had come here, to the place his mother died, searching for … something. He didn't know what. Now that he was here he felt empty. There was nothing for him here. Maybe he had come to say goodbye, but there was nothing to say goodbye to. Nothing but the bones of the whale …
He checked the pressure gauge of his BreatheO. It was at 50% – about one-and-a-half hours’ worth of oxygen. He was tired, so tired of trying to fix the problems caused by his kin when all his work counted for nothing in the face of their ignorance. He looked out at the ocean, somehow silent despite the rolling waves. He could lie down on the sand right now and fall asleep. Would he even notice if he never woke up? Would anyone notice?
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