“Civilized? What about those poor people you have working themselves to death out there? Is that civilized?”
“You have no idea what's going on here, Evelyn.”
“Well then why don't you enlighten me?”
“Because that would be a waste of my time.” Brenner held a hand out towards one of the data terminals. “Now come, it's time for me to have what's in that head of yours.”
Evelyn felt the hands of the Taken who had escorted her here on her shoulders, but before they could take hold of her arms she pulled her knife from its hiding place up her sleeve and pressed it against her own throat. “I don't know what you think I know, but you can't find out if I'm dead. Now let Brenner go.”
Brenner smiled at her in amusement. “I know you're just bluffing. Your programming prevents you from self-harm.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Why do you think I've been able to speak to you inside your head, Evelyn? Why do you think you know how to read the LRI code? Why do you think you were able to repair the wiring in the shuttle that I made Holly cut?”
“I … I don't know. What are you getting at?” Evelyn's thoughts were racing. It had been the Mind, through Holly, who had tried to sabotage them aboard InDi? Not Seren?
“Another quirk of your programming. You'll overlook anything that questions your core belief that you are human.”
“I am human,” Evelyn said.
“No, Evelyn. No you're not. I know because I helped to make you, all those years ago.”
“You're not making any sense,” she said, pressing her knife hard against her own neck. “And I'm tired of listening to this crap. Now you listen to me: get out of Brenner or I swear I'll do it.” She made is if to cut her throat.
“As you wish.”
Brenner's arms dropped to her sides and her face took on a peculiar expression. Then there came a humming sound, and the black stuff of the Mind began issuing from her nose and mouth and eyes, forming into a cloud before her. But unlike the previous times Evelyn had witnessed this emergence, the cloud did not disperse. It remained thick and strong, and it began moving purposefully towards her.
“Stay away from me!” she cried, gripping her knife with both hands. “I mean it!”
The cloud stopped. Evelyn watched it, mesmerized despite herself. Each particle seemed to be constantly moving, and together they swirled around in a perfect flurry. As a whole mass the cloud was completely steady, and now it began to take on a shape: the shape of a face.
Evelyn's breath caught in her throat. “What are you?” she asked.
“You know what I am, Evelyn,” the face replied, though the sound seemed to come from the walls of the room. “Don't you recognize my voice? Don't you remember me?”
And Evelyn did remember. It was the same voice she had heard in her head, the same voice she had heard in her dreams: the voice of her mother. But she had also heard it somewhere else, she realized for the first time, in a place and time that felt like a lifetime ago. “Ciso,” she whispered.
“Indeed,” replied the face. Then it rushed forward like a crashing wave, and Evelyn felt it as a physical force gripping her arm and tearing the knife from her fingers. There seemed to be much more of it than before, and she realized the Black Mist was pouring from vents in the ceiling, swirling around her like a sandstorm, loud and fast and powerful, so that she was forced to cover her face with her arm. She flailed with her free hand, but the stuff caught it, pinned it down to her side, and began to drag her along the floor.
“Let her go!” She heard Brenner's voice, and glanced up. Through the swirling blackness she was just able to see Brenner run forward, only to be knocked out of the way as if hit by a car. She bounced off a wall and fell to the floor. Evelyn didn't see if she got up again.
“Don't worry Evelyn, this will all be over soon,” Ciso's voice rang in her head and echoed from the walls as she was forced along.
She was pressed against a wall, the steel cold against her cheek, and from a console beside her a cable snaked out. At its end was some kind of plug with a long spike in the center. It coiled around to the back of her head, and a piercing pain shot down her spine as it was jammed into the base of her skull. Her vision turned white, and then she felt Ciso inside her. It was a strange sensation, this presence in her own mind, and it sickened her. She fought back, trying to resist, but Ciso was stronger. Evelyn could do nothing while the AI began to rummage around inside her head. But as she relaxed she realized she could also see into the AI's mind. And what she saw shocked her.
She saw herself, lying on her back on a table in a kind of lab. She was naked, and Damien Reyner stood over her, looking at her chest. But that wasn't the part that terrified her. It was what he was looking at: her chest had been opened up like a can of beans, and inside her where there should have been a heart and lungs and stomach, an intricate array of machinery hummed and pulsed instead.
She heard a voice, Ciso's voice. “How are you going to do it?”
“Make her human?” Reyner replied. “For her to truly behave human she must believe she is human.”
“An interesting theory,” the AI replied.
“It's more than a theory.” Reyner turned away from her. “I need you to write the code that will make her overlook things, things that would otherwise give her away.”
“Such as?”
“For example, if she's wounded she needs to see blood, feel pain. Or if she does something she shouldn't be able to she should invent a memory to explain why she can do it. I'm sure you can think of more.”
“Yes, I get the picture.”
“We'll start running tests on her emotional programming next week. I just need to get rid of a few bugs,” Reyner continued, as if talking to himself, “and we can also begin testing her digestive system.”
“I don't think it's enough,” the AI said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if you want her to really feel human you need to give her some kind of foundation for all her programming to rest on.”
“You're talking about core beliefs and empirical knowledge?”
“No, you can code those. I'm talking about the memory of human experience. The building blocks of what make a person who they are: an understanding of life represented by the imperfect recollection of events perceived, evaluated and ascribed meaning to by the subconscious mind.”
“Ah. I do have a plan for that, actually.”
“I should have known. What is it?”
“I'm going to give her mine.”
“Your what?”
“My human experience.”
“How?”
“I'm still working on how, but I plan to upload my subconscious mind into her neuro-cortex.”
“That will be the end of you then, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” Reyner acknowledged without regret, turning to gaze at Evelyn's naked body on the table. “It's a sacrifice I'm ready to make. She will be the next step in our human evolution, Ciso, and more important than anything I can still do here. Everything I’m working towards depends on her.” He reached out and touched Evelyn's cheek, and as she watched she felt a strange sense of loss.
Then as suddenly as it had come, the vision faded, leaving Evelyn floating in the expanse of Ciso's mind. She felt the AI, sensed its intentions. It was as though, for a second, she was Ciso. And Ciso had found what she was looking for. Evelyn’s vision exploded into a million fiery stars as she felt something being torn from her mind. It was hard to describe the sensation, like a splinter being removed, or a fingernail being pulled slowly out. She screamed.
And suddenly it stopped.
Her mind cleared, and she was able to open her eyes and look around. The Black Mist had dropped to the ground all around her. It lay in a thick layer like dust. At the other end of the room the Taken who had accompanied her stood around blinking in confusion, as if they had just awoken from a deep sleep. One of them dropped to his knees, staring
at his hands like he'd never seen them before as tears began running down his cheeks. The Mind – Ciso – was gone from them.
Evelyn looked around the room and saw that the blinking LEDs on the memory banks had gone out. The only light came from the floor-to-ceiling window on one side.
Their plan had worked. The others had succeeded in cutting the power from the solar fields Bob had spoken of.
She shook her head to try and clear it. She had to get Brenner out of here, now. There would almost certainly be some kind of backup power system, but there was no way to tell how much time they had until it came online.
She rushed over to where Brenner lay and gently turned her over. There was blood on her head, but the wound seemed insignificant. The NAMs were probably mending it, Evelyn thought. At least, she hoped so.
“Brenner,” she said urgently, slapping her cheek. “Brenner, wake up.”
Brenner began to stir, groaning. Her eyes slowly opened, full of confusion. As she took in the room around them her vision seemed to clear. Evelyn helped her into a sitting position.
“It … it was in my head,” Brenner said, clasping her temples and squinting her eyes as if in pain.
“It's gone now. But it'll be back. We need to get out of here. Can you walk?”
“I think so.” She got unsteadily to her feet.
Seeing that Brenner was okay Evelyn led her towards the door, where the Taken were still looking around in wonder.
“How do we get out of here?” she asked them.
They stared at her like she was a ghost. One of them, a middle-aged woman, tried to say something but the words came out garbled. It was like she had forgotten how to speak. Evelyn thought of Bob and his disjointed speech. Having the Mind inside their heads had clearly taken a toll on these people.
The woman pointed to the elevator behind them and shook her head.
Of course, Evelyn thought. No power. And as she looked she saw that there was no control panel either. The thing was obviously controlled by Ciso.
There's nowhere for you to go Evelyn, came the voice in her head, and finally Evelyn understood that it was not her mother's voice. It was the voice of Damien Reyner's mother. He had given Ciso his mother’s voice, and he had given Evelyn his memories of her.
Evelyn felt ill.
Leave me alone, she thought, wondering at the same time how the AI was still talking to her.
You think I exist only here, in this tower? Apparently Ciso could see what she was thinking. My reach extends far beyond here. You know it. You've seen it.
Get out of my head! Evelyn shouted the thought, and to her surprise felt Ciso's presence leave her.
“What do we do?” Brenner asked, pulling her back to reality.
“I don't know. I … I need to think,” she replied, closing her eyes. Ciso was right. Evelyn had seen her, all of her, for a brief second when they were connected, she had seen everything. “The Mind, it's the AI from OrbiCor – Ciso.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“She's got an entire network of satellites orbiting this planet ...” Evelyn tried to remember more. “This isn't the only Colony. There are thousands, all over … and, my God ...”
“Evelyn, what the hell's going on?”
Evelyn opened her eyes and looked at Brenner in awe. “We're not on Janus.”
“What do you mean? Where are we?”
“On ... Earth.” She looked out the window at the green forest spreading into the distance. This was not the Planet Earth she remembered, and yet she knew it was true. Somehow they had traveled through space for centuries and ended up back on Earth, an Earth that had recovered from the destruction mankind had wreaked upon it. “This is Earth,” she murmured again, as if still unable to believe it herself.
“But that's impossible.”
“No … no, it's not.” The more she thought about it, the more obvious it became. “Brenner, I think Reyner lied to us about the Rift, about Janus, all of it. I think we never left Earth.”
“What? Why would he do that?”
“I don't know, but isn't that less strange than if it were true?” While she spoke, her eyes scanned the room, falling on the yards of cables linking the memory banks. She turned to Brenner. “Listen, I have an idea. Help me with these cables, we're going to use them to rappel down the outside of the building.”
Brenner raised an eyebrow. “Do you think they'll hold our weight?”
“They'll have to.” She began ripping out cables and tying them together. Brenner joined her. The cables were short, only about three feet each... Evelyn ran to the window and peered down. The ground appeared far below indeed – about a hundred feet, she guessed. They were going to need a lot more cables, and they were running out of time. She wasn't sure how, but she could sense that the backup power was almost online. She turned to the Taken, holding up the cables she was busy tying. “Help us! You want to get out of here, right?”
They looked from one to the other, then one by one they came forward and began pulling out cables and tying them together. “Good,” Evelyn nodded at them. “Now, we need to break this glass ...” She knew it wouldn't be as simple as it sounded. The curtain wall of the Tall Hut was almost certainly made from toughened glass. There had to be something in here she could use…
Her eyes fell on a blaster, discarded on the floor by the elevator. She picked it up. “I wonder ...” As she studied the weapon closely, she realized she understood exactly how it worked. It was technology that hadn't existed on Earth before, but she suddenly knew every detail of its engineering. And if she rewired the lithium core she could make it overheat and explode. The explosion might just be enough to take out the glass if she could focus it.
“Help me with this,” she said to the others, indicating one of the server towers. “We need to get it over to the window.”
“I don't think that's going to break that glass,” Brenner said.
“Don't worry, I have a plan.”
With the help of Brenner and two of the Taken, she maneuvered the heavy tower over to the window, leaving just a small gap between it and the glass.
“Okay, keep working on those cables,” she said.
She picked up the blaster and dismantled the cover, revealing the inner workings of what was essentially a concentrated microwave pulse generator, and reconnected a few wires. Then she took one of the cables and wrapped it around the trigger, fixing it in place. She could feel the weapon beginning to get hot as it tried in vain to discharge its pulse. It was building up energy. She slipped it between the computer tower and the glass and hurriedly backed away.
“If this works we should probably take cover,” she said, getting behind one of the other towers. The others followed suit, watching the window curiously.
“What did you do?” Brenner asked.
“I made a bomb.”
“You made a bomb?” Brenner raised an eyebrow. “Who are you?”
Evelyn's felt her mouth going dry as she thought about that. Not ‘who am I’, she thought, ‘what am I’?
A noise was coming from the window now, a kind of whirring sound. “Here it comes, she said. “Get back.” She ducked down, holding her breath. Two more seconds passed, then the air disintegrated into white noise and the floor shuddered beneath their feet. Splinters of glass flew around the room. Evelyn felt one catch her in the forearm as it ricocheted off the roof. She glanced down at the wound, saw a shard of glass the size of her finger sticking from her flesh, and felt immediately light-headed.
The danger seemed to be over, and she quickly checked to make sure the others were okay, then she gripped the glass and tugged it loose. Blood began gushing from the wound.
Brenner was staring at it. “What the ...” she said in confusion. “Evelyn, you're … you're not bleeding.”
Looking at the blood, knowing it was only in her mind that it existed, Evelyn nodded. “I know.” She didn't know what else to say. How could she try to explain? She felt human, and the knowledge
of this fundamental lie was tearing her heart in two. Except, she though bitterly, she didn't have a heart.
The wound in her arm was closing, knitting itself together the same way Matthew's hand had done. So, she was also inhabited by the NAMs. “Come on,” she said, pushing herself up. “Let's get that cable tied around one of these pillars.”
“R-Right,” Brenner nodded, thankfully not pressing the matter.
Too late, Evelyn, came Ciso's voice in her head.
She looked at the computer towers around the room. A thousand LEDs blinked merrily back at her.
“We've got to go. Now!” She grabbed Brenner and tugged her towards the blasted-out window. Without the glass the drop suddenly seemed much further…
“Oh Christ,” Brenner cursed. “I … I don't know if I can do this.”
“You've got to. This is the only way out of here. We don't get another chance.” Evelyn turned back to the room, where she thought she could hear a sinister humming sound. “The power's back on. It's now or never.”
Brenner nodded, her face pale, and inched towards the edge.
“Grip the knots in the cables with your feet and just take them one at a time.”
“Right. Mm-hmm.” Brenner nodded, eyeing the ground far below them.
“And don't let go.”
“No shit.” She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. “Okay, here goes.” Brenner sat down on the edge and placed her feet on the first knot. Then she slowly turned her body so that she was outside the window, and began moving down.
“Great, that's it!” Evelyn encouraged. “And it may be a good idea to not look down.”
“Don't look down. Got it.”
Evelyn turned back to the Taken. “Okay, who's next?”
None of them replied. Their eyes were fixed on a menacing black cloud that was forming in the air before them as they began backing away. The Black Mist was rising from the floor. They were too late.
Then one of the Taken found his blaster. He began discharging the weapon into the swirling cloud, sending it scattering like dust on the wind, but it quickly reformed and tried to surge at the man. One of his companions joined him, shooting at the black stuff with her blaster too, then a third. Even with the three of them, Evelyn could see they wouldn't hold out for long, but maybe they could keep Ciso busy for long enough that she could get Brenner to safety.
The Cloud Page 17