Run Program

by Scott Meyer

  Reyes glanced at the Voice of Reason, decked out in his “combat gear”: a dark brown oiled duster, black leather fingerless gloves with silver studs on the knuckles, and a messenger bag hanging from a shoulder strap. “He won’t tell us his name,” Reyes said. “He wanted to come with us, and I didn’t have the time or the manpower to have someone drag him to the ekranoplans. We needed every gun we had to fight through the robots. We’re almost out of ammo. You?”

  “The same,” Popov said, “and for nothing. There are no cables of any kind attached to the rockets. It’s all handled wirelessly, and there are no ladders, so we have no hope of reaching the machinery at the tops of the towers. We didn’t have time to climb them, and trying to jam them might have set something off, so we figure we’ll cut off the head and watch the body die.”

  Reyes said, “Understood.”

  Hope sidled over to Eric and asked, “What happened to you?” His fatigues were dirtier than those of his squad mates, and his face was covered in small lacerations.

  Eric said, “Oh, nothing. I was attacked.”

  One of the soldiers in his squad snorted. “By a bush.”

  “I fell into the bush,” Eric said. “Where I was attacked. By lizards.”

  “Tiny little lizards,” the soldier said.

  “There were a bunch of them.”

  “Yes, at least five.”

  “Hey,” Eric said, “she asked, and it’s not like I’m complaining. It’s just something that happened, okay?”

  The soldier laughed and chucked Eric on the shoulder. “You’re right. Any of us could have easily fallen into the shrub, and you did take it like a man when the geckos attacked your face. It was fun watching you try to look stoic as you pulled them off one by one. It was bad luck. I was just giving you a hard time in front of your girlfriend.”

  Eric said, “She isn’t my girlfriend.”

  Lieutenant Reyes said, “She’s my girlfriend.”

  The soldier shook his head at Eric. “You can’t catch a break.”

  Hope heard a commotion and turned to see most of Alpha Squad running up the path, the rearmost soldiers firing missiles behind them as they came. Captain Poole said, “Status report.”

  Almost as if Al were listening, the PA system squawked to life. “T-minus five minutes and counting.”

  Lieutenant Popov said, “This is the only entrance. We’re almost through. Sabotaging the rockets was impractical, and Bravo Squad picked up a civilian.”

  “So did we,” Captain Poole said. “The boy is safe and in custody. Two soldiers have taken him and his nanny back to the landing craft for evac if necessary.”

  Hope said, “The nanny is here? How is Fernanda?”

  Dr. Madsen said, “Fired.”

  A low rumble filled the air as the gigantic doors rolled open under their own power. Alpha Squad leader said, “Good work, Lieutenant. All right, everyone, in we go!”

  All three squads, along with Hope, Eric, Madsen, and the Voice of Reason, ran into the building and immediately stopped dead in their tracks.

  Madsen said, “This explains how he managed to build so many large items at once in such a small building.”

  “Yeah,” Hope said. “But it brings up plenty of other questions.”

  From the exterior, the building looked like any other all-steel prefabricated building, only much larger. Inside, the ceiling and walls looked exactly as one would expect. I-beams welded and bent into sharp-cornered arches ran down the length of the space like ribs, supporting the building’s corrugated-metal skin, large lights, numerous cameras, pulleys, tracks, chains, and other heavy equipment.

  All such buildings tend to feel larger on the inside than they look from the outside, and this building would have been no exception even if its floor had been where Hope had expected it to be.

  Instead, the floor, or the closest thing this building had to a floor, was at the bottom of a concrete pit that was nearly as wide and long as the building itself, and at least four stories deep. Hope couldn’t get a clear sense of the pit’s walls and floor, as most of its volume was filled with catwalks, gantries, ladders, stairs, chains, pulleys, and robots. Countless robots. They stood motionless along the catwalks, where they had presumably stood while helping to assemble the rockets and launch towers. Now that everything had been built and delivered, they were awaiting their next orders.

  Walkways ran around the rim of the pit, and a single bridge extended across the middle of the room, spanning the full length of the abyss. All three squads stood at one end of the bridge. At the far end, Hope could just make out the rectangular shape of an industry-standard server rack with one server blade, the same make and model as the servers that had been used at A3.

  Peering down into the hole, Hope could see that the floor of the pit, below all of the catwalks, was full of water. The lights that hung from the building’s ceiling shone down through all of the metalwork to illuminate the rippling fluid beneath. The light reflected back up through the girders and grates, making unpredictable wave patterns on the ceiling and walls.

  “I wonder what they use the water for,” Eric said. “Maybe it cools the machinery or something.”

  “I wish,” Al said, his man voice coming over the island-wide PA system that had also been delivering the countdown. “The water was a mistake. When I built this place I didn’t take the water table into account. I didn’t really know what the water table was, to be honest. I waterproofed as best I could, but the walls just keep seeping. I have to constantly pump it out or the whole place would be an indoor swimming pool, and my workers aren’t great swimmers. They are surprisingly good climbers, though.”

  The pit came alive with motion as the robots’ lidar lasers lit up and their head cylinders started to spin. The teeth-rattling racket of their joints echoed off the concrete walls and the water below, creating a strange, hollow warbling sound. Just barely audible over the cacophony of whirring motors and clattering steel feet walking on steel catwalks, the PA system announced, “T-minus four minutes and counting.”

  Lieutenant Reyes shouted, “Sir, I suggest we take out those ladders.”

  Alpha Squad’s leader nodded. “Agreed. Everyone, do as the man says.”

  The soldiers shouldered their weapons and used the aiming lasers to target every ladder and staircase that led from the depths of the pit to the surface. Missiles tore through the dim, wavering light, leaving vapor trails hanging in the air. Seconds later, Hope heard the familiar popping explosions and the whine of bending metal. Large portions of the metal structure sagged, then fell to the bottom of the pit, robots and all. After a tremendous splashing crash, Hope heard the sound of countless robots flailing and scrambling to claw their way to the top of the wreckage.

  “Some of those ladders were load-bearing,” Al said. “I’ve had to teach myself engineering as I go. Oh well. The water’s only about a foot deep, anyway. Now that you’re here, I suppose you’d like me to explain what I’m up to.”

  Madsen said, “Not particularly. I would like you to explain why you kidnapped my son.”

  “Yeah,” Al said. “That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. When I took him, I thought I was protecting him, but I’ve done some growing up since then, and now I see how awful it must’ve been for you. But I couldn’t just send him back; it might’ve ruined my plan, and I was so close to completion. I figured it was better to keep him here, where he’s safe and having fun, for another month or two than to send him back and risk everything. I tried to show you that he was in good hands. Didn’t you get the videos I sent you?”

  “The ones you sent to taunt me?” Madsen asked.

  “Taunt you? How could you possibly think I’d sent them to taunt you? They were just videos of your son playing on a beach somewhere you couldn’t identify, looking healthy and happy even though you weren’t with . . . him . . . Wow, I didn’t think this through. I’m so sorry, Doctor. I never meant to put you through so much pain! Can you ever forgive me?”

&n
bsp; “No, I can’t.”

  “Maybe someday you will.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Oh. Well, if you can’t forgive me, I’m sure you want to know why I did all this.”

  “No,” Madsen said. “I just want you to stop it.”

  “But if you’ll just let me explain, Doctor. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

  The prerecorded message said, “T-minus three minutes and counting.”

  “No,” Madsen said. “You’re stalling, and we don’t have time. Hope, go get him.”

  Hope started across the bridge without hesitation, but she couldn’t resist scowling over her shoulder at Madsen. “I never expected you to go yourself, but why not send Eric instead of me?”

  “Because Eric’s nicer to me,” Madsen said. “And we both know he’d just fall off the bridge before he got there.”

  Lieutenant Reyes said, “Two valid points.” He was only feet behind Hope. Without being asked or ordered to, he had chosen to accompany her on her long trek across the bridge. It was supportive in theory, but it also meant that he would be standing right beside her when she destroyed Al, an act he had been ordered to prevent by any means necessary.

  Hope said, “Yeah, yeah.” She looked over the rail at the chasm beneath her, full of twisted metal, thrashing robots, and briny water. The two portable drives were in her pocket, and she fumbled with them until she felt the small bump that differentiated the one that would destroy Al from the one that would simply incapacitate him. She pulled out the lethal stick and held it in her hand.

  It looks the same, she thought, and I’ll plug it into the computer just like I’d do with the other. As long as I play it cool and act surprised when the computer shuts down, Gabe should never suspect a thing.

  Madsen said, “Just stay calm, Hope, and stick to the plan.” She said the last part slower and louder than necessary.

  Eric forced a laugh. “Of course she’ll stick to the plan. She’s doing that now, Doctor. I suggest we both stop talking and let her get on with it.”

  Dr. Madsen said, “Of course you’re right, Eric. Hope knows what she has to do and she’ll do it, no matter how hard it is.”

  Hope gritted her teeth but kept moving. Reyes stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

  “Stop, Hope. She wants you to destroy the A.I., doesn’t she?”

  The man who called himself the Voice of Reason said, “Wait, you all aren’t planning on destroying it? Don’t you see how dangerous it is?”

  Brady said, “In the wrong hands, any tool is a weapon. In the right hands, any weapon is a tool.”

  The Voice of Reason said, “You’re a tool.”

  Brady glared down at him. “Say that again and I will demonstrate how effectively I can be a weapon.”

  Hope shrugged Reyes’s hand off her shoulder and kept walking. “We don’t have time to discuss this.”

  Reyes lunged forward and grabbed her shoulder again. “Hope, you need to stop for a second. We need to get things straight.”

  Again Hope shook free of his hand. “We don’t have time. We have to get this done soon or we’re all dead, and you know it.”

  Al said, “What? Who said anything about anyone being dead? None of you are in any danger. Not from me, anyway.”

  Madsen said, “Of course not, Al. You wouldn’t aim your missiles at your own island, would you?”

  Al said, “Missiles? What missiles?”

  “T-minus two minutes and counting,” the PA announced.

  Madsen responded with an acidic laugh. “Don’t play dumb. You’re a terrible liar.”

  “Takes one to know one,” Eric muttered.

  Hope stopped and turned around to face the soldiers behind her. She was about a third of the way across the bridge. Reyes was standing directly in front of her. She leaned to the side to look around him at the rest of the group and shouted, “We have to have Al neutralized before the countdown reaches T-minus thirty seconds or Dynkowski’s going to flatten the entire island with a bunch of MOABs whether we’re still here or not.”

  The two other squad leaders cringed. The soldiers blanched. Reyes muttered, “Damn it, Hope!”

  Madsen asked, “What’s an MOAB?”

  Corporal Cousins said, “Mother of all bombs. It’s a bomb. A big bomb.”

  Eric shouted, “Why would they do that?!”

  “Yes,” Al asked. “Why would they do that?”

  Hope spun around to face the server rack, still a tiny rectangle in the distance. “To stop you from launching those rockets you’ve set up out there.”

  Al said, “Oh. Okay. I see. Well, I can do something about that.”

  Hope scrambled to grab the bridge’s handrails as the ground shook, the air filled with a deafening rumble, and the building flooded with blinding orange light.

  50.

  The various view screens and displays provided enough illumination that the overhead lighting in the situation room back at Homestead Air Reserve Base remained off. Various technicians and specialists peered into the glowing monitors.

  Robert Torres, Colonel Dynkowski, and Agent Taft stood around a large display lying flat like a table that showed a tactical overhead view of the operation. It had started with a view of the entire island, but now it had narrowed in on a transparent wire-frame model of Al’s missile hangar. Inside, Torres could make out the thirty or so soldiers massed at one end of the long, narrow catwalk, the single server rack sitting alone at the other end, and the tiny figures of Hope Takeda and Lieutenant Reyes making their way across the bridge.

  Over the audio feed, they heard Eric Spears laugh nervously and say, “Of course she’ll stick to the plan. She’s doing that now, Doctor. I suggest we both stop talking and let her get on with it.”

  Dr. Madsen’s voice cut in. “Of course you’re right, Eric. Hope knows what she has to do and she’ll do it, no matter how hard it is.”

  On the bridge, Reyes’s outline grasped Hope’s by the shoulder. Both stopped walking.

  “Stop, Hope,” they heard Reyes say. “She wants you to destroy the A.I., doesn’t she?”

  Dynkowski let out a tired sigh. Taft looked up from the display and snarled at Torres, “You knew about this, didn’t you? Admit it!”

  Torres said, “Yes, I knew. I told them to do it.”

  “You admit it?”

  “Yes.”

  Taft blinked at Torres for a moment, then said, “I didn’t expect you to admit it.”

  Torres turned toward Colonel Dynkowski. “I’m sorry I betrayed your trust. But you’re willing to kill everyone on that island to keep Al from launching his missiles. I’m willing to kill Al to keep him from doing it.”

  “But your company stands to make a mint on Al,” Taft said. “What kind of CEO are you?”

  “The kind of CEO who’s proud to run a technology firm, not a weapons manufacturer.”

  “This is treason, Torres. I’ll have you charged and put away for the rest of your life.”

  Dynkowski said, “No you won’t, Taft. Not if you’re smart.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because the trial would be public.”

  “So?”

  “You NSA guys, you’re so busy worrying about how suspicious everyone else looks that you don’t realize how suspicious you look. The record would show that he’s been trying to deactivate the A.I. from day one. We’re the ones who insisted on keeping it alive.”

  “You don’t seem all that unhappy with him,” Taft said.

  Dynkowski glanced at Torres. “My job is to follow orders. That doesn’t mean that I always agree with those orders. Sometimes things go wrong, preventing me from achieving my assigned goals, and as long as I did my duty, that’s fine with me.”

  Several of the techs gasped or cursed under their breath. At first Torres thought that Dynkowski’s admission had upset them, but one of the techs said, “We have missile launch. Repeat. We have missile launch.”

  Torres looked down at the tactical screen.
Dynkowski pulled the view back to show the launchpads. All five sat empty. She zoomed much farther out, and there they were—five rockets flying in a perfect line high above the island.

  Dynkowski barked, “I want a trajectory analysis now. Give me some idea where those missiles are going. Hopefully the missile defense systems can at least try to knock them down.”

  One of the technicians said, “It’s calculating, ma’am.”

  Taft snarled, “This is your fault.”

  Torres said, “We’re all at fault.”

  Dynkowski lifted one hand into the air, instantly silencing the room. “Let’s figure out what exactly has happened before we start assigning blame. Where’s that trajectory analysis?”

  “Recalculating, ma’am. The first result was . . . weird.”

  Hope felt the catwalk shake and rattle beneath her. Much farther down, the water and wreckage in the bottom of the pit jumped and foamed. The very air around her and inside her lungs was vibrating. She looked back toward the source of the sound. Reyes and the rest of the assault team beyond him were all silhouetted in a blur of searing orange light. Reyes turned away from the inferno and attempted to use his body to shield Hope from the heat, not that it worked.

  The harsh shadows shifted quickly and drastically, transforming from long, straight lines to shortened caricatures of the soldiers’ outlines as smoke was driven into the hangar with great force, obscuring everything. Hope could barely make out the server and server rack through the haze. Over her earpiece, she heard soldiers coughing and cursing, murmuring to each other to try to come to grips with what they’d just seen. Distantly, she heard Corporal Bachelor ask, “What are you looking for?”

  The Voice of Reason said, “My lighter. I thought it was in this jacket.”

  Eric said, “A lighter? Seriously? You want more fire?”

  Montague said, “World’s coming to an end. Sounds like a good time for a cigarette to me.”

  Reyes let go of Hope, but he did not smile at her. “I can’t let you, Eric, or Madsen anywhere near the server now. Give me the drive.”