by M. D. Cooper
Terrance nodded slowly. “Yes, you are the quiet one in the group.” The businessman’s voice held a thread of amusement. “You’re trained to stand back and observe, aren’t you?”
Logan inclined his head. “Got it in one.”
“Uh, want to let me in on it, then, because I got nothing,” Jason said, sending Tobias a frown over their Link.
It was the first time Jason had heard Eric refer to the AI’s former military rank. He turned a questioning look at the AI as he began to speak.
“The recording Lysander gave us was of a machine-generated voice. While that makes positive identification impossible, there are still things within the recording we can infer.” Logan shifted his frame slightly, his words measured and neutral as he glanced around the room. “The voice had no inflection, yet still you have a sense of a cadence. Voices have a certain rhythm to them. Speech patterns can be analyzed, and that can provide insight into a being’s state of mind.”
Jason felt the weight of Logan’s stare as the AI turned, and his gut clenched as the former intelligence agent continued.
“He showed no remorse for those killed. They were depersonalized; in his mind these were not living beings. His words: ‘vermin’, to be ‘exterminated’.”
Logan’s gaze never wavered from Jason’s face, and he felt as if the AI were trying to impress upon him the importance of his next words. “The voice’s cadence increased as Prime made a mental connection between what he perceived as the Prime Minister’s preference for humans, and Lysander’s relationship with Jason and Judith. I read that as anger.”
Logan nodded. “Yes. I think the threat to Jason and his sister is very real.”
Logan shook his head. “I wish I could say I did, but I think this was more than a one-time aberrant behavior.” He hesitated for a moment, then continued. “I could be wrong, but I really do think we have a serial killer on our hands. This Prime reads to me as a true sociopath—which I’ve never seen in an AI. If so, we need to be prepared for this to escalate.”
A ping interrupted their conversation, as Shannon broke in.
* * * * *
Ben felt a tension headache beginning to form as he paced in front of the SIS’s situation room’s holotank. He shook his head mutely at the carnage he saw over the feed John was sending to Tomlinson Base, and then grimaced as the movement caused the pain in his head to flare.
John had arrived late to a meeting of Humanity First followers, only to discover the group of more than twenty humans murdered.
His tardiness was most likely the only thing that saved him, Ben mused.
John had pinged Ben immediately after notifying law enforcement and emergency personnel. Ben had contacted Esther, and the two had begun monitoring the agent’s feed from SIS offices within Tomlinson Base while John awaited the first responders’ arrival.
The imagery coming across the Link was gruesome. As the man’s gaze swept the fatalities, his optical implants gave them a view of a floor covered in bodies.
John had made it to the front of the room and was standing, staring down at the group’s leader. The man appeared to have been thoroughly worked over, then used as a cutting board.
As the view shifted, Ben caught a glimpse of John’s pants and the left sleeve of his shirt. Blood was spattered liberally on them.
The man must have still been alive when John reached him, Ben thought. Nothing spatters like that unless it’s an arterial bleed.
The image dipped, then jerked abruptly, as if the agent realized Ben’s comment had been triggered by the view of his clothing.
The view wavered as the agent staggered back a few steps, and for a moment Ben could have sworn the man was in pain. But then the image steadied, the feed now showing them a more complete picture of the table upon which the man lay.
He appeared to have been slaughtered in an almost ritualistic manner, his body—and body parts—arranged in a grisly fashion for the recovery team to find.
Then the agent’s visual swept out to reveal the nearest bodies lining the floor.
Ben saw a medical worker reach a gloved hand out to roll a corpse over, heard John begin to call out, then stutter to a stop—something he’d never heard the man do before. John reached out to the worker as if in protest.
In the next moment, the worker began to convulse. John’s Link glitched, Ben heard the man moan, and then the image stabilized.
The room erupted as law enforcement barked a warning, and the rescuers backed away. Three others had already suffered for trying to do their job.
After a long pause, the man replied in a faint voice.
As the gendarme left the Link to retrieve her sample, Ben once more addressed his agent.
Ben felt a brief hesitation from the other end, and when John responded, the man’s voice sounded strangled, almost as if the words were being forced out of him.
Ben berated himself over his poor choice of words. The man had just witnessed four emergency medical personnel who hadn’t been so lucky.
* * * * *
John felt ill; he’d tried to warn the workers not to touch the corpses, but the compulsion sent such fire racing along his nerve endings that it had utterly incapacitated him. More, a paralysis had swept over him that had rendered him unable to move or react in any way to the agony inflicted upon him. Somehow, this made it even worse.
He let go of his attempt to warn them, and his chest burned with shame as he stood by and did nothing while good men and women died in the line of duty.
‘Lucky’, his boss had called him—if Ben only knew.
Now John wondered what the evil inside that held him captive would allow him to include in his report. He knew now that he would never be permitted to articulate the threat this creature posed.
Stars, I need to figure
out a way to convey the danger we’re all in, before it’s too late.
As he turned, his foot trod on something soft and bloody. Glancing down, he spied the vest the bastard had been wearing when he’d been working over the human on the table.
When the AI had told him to strip, a part of John’s brain—the part that had been trained to observe such minute detail—had noted the unusual wardrobe the psycho was wearing. It seemed conservative, scholarly even. Certainly no one he knew would ever dress in such a manner.
So when the AI had taken John’s clothing, the compulsion had forced the agent to cover himself in the monster’s own discarded attire in order to avoid questions that may have arisen as a result. The agent had bypassed the sweater vest, choosing only to don the simple, though blood-spattered, shirt and slacks.
His mind shied away now from the vest as he stumbled past it, riding a wave of pain as he resisted the impulse to pick it up and carry away the evidence.
It would be out of character for me to do so. I would contaminate it, CSI would call me out. He focused his entire being on that thought, convincing himself of its verity while refusing any thought that the vest might implicate the true killer.
John didn’t allow his mind to alight on the small win as he hauled himself up the stairs to street level, nausea from the waves of pain causing him to stumble blindly as he went.
SHACKLED
STELLAR DATE: 05.21.3191 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: El Dorado
REGION: Alpha Centauri System
The event came to be known as the Humanity First Massacre. Still reeling from the Enfield Slaughter just two days earlier, people cried out for justice.
Reports of vigilantism began to erupt on the news nets. Threats against AIs circulated, some vague, some graphic in nature. Materials for a bomb were found inside a residence where a known Humanity First sympathizer lived.
Details from a homicide scene were leaked, showing an AI’s cylinder cracked open, its internal circuitry spilled out across a surface with the Humanity First logo emblazoned upon it.
In the midst of the chaos, two messages appeared across the planetary net. One was transmitted in the open, but with all trace of its origin scrubbed. The other was buried in contextual code no human could access.
Both were a single line of copy.
The first was a warning: “For every AI killed, a thousand humans will die. We are Prime.”
The second was an invitation: “Join me in the Journey to Primacy. Together, AIs will prevail.”
The invitation was enigmatic, intentionally crafted to foster interest. Embedded in the simple message were two packets: one contained the image of a man many recognized as the outspoken Humanity First follower who was interviewed yesterday. It was the man whose comments had stirred such rancor across AI net channels earlier that day.
The recording that the image linked to was graphic, violent. It had been edited so that only the victim could be seen. The attacker had been redacted, and no amount of file manipulation or enhancement would disclose its identity.
The second packet was tagged with a ‘members only’ icon. An AI who selected that icon—without carefully sandboxing the message first—found a program that executed, but then appeared to do nothing. And then a message appeared:
A few AIs admitted in their most private thoughts that it would be nice to have a way to level the playing field, to be able to strike back at those who had hurt them without repercussion. But the thoughts were fleeting, a way to engage in a flight of fancy for a brief moment before returning to reality.
All but the most hardened recoiled in horror when they saw the murder, and attempted to reach out to warn the authorities.
The next day, a select few discovered they served a new master.
DOUBLEBLIND
STELLAR DATE: 05.21.3191 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ESS Speedwell
REGION: El Dorado Ring, Alpha Centauri System
Jason prowled the corridors of the Speedwell, down one level and up the next, eyes sweeping the empty, almost sterile walkways that stretched out before him. It had only been a day since Eric had stopped him from walking off the command deck and heading down to the ring to guard Judith, but already he felt like a caged animal.
Being told he was confined to a ship being refitted in drydock didn’t sit well with him, even if it was one of Enfield’s newest designs, being tricked out with the best that Enfield Aerospace had to offer.
Portholes spaced regularly along the ship’s outer bulkhead were his only break from the visual monotony. What the portholes revealed, though, was yet another interior—the large slip within ESF drydock that currently housed the Speedwell.
It was as busy as the corridor he paced was quiet. Bots floated past, maneuvering Elastene panels into place for laborers poised to adhere them to the ship’s outer hull. The occasional arc of a welding torch would flare for the briefest instant before the nano inside the porthole dimmed the tool’s output to safe viewing levels.
Jason had never seen a repair bay this busy; the frenetic activity did nothing to calm his agitation. He increased his pace, and the Proxima cat padding alongside him adjusted her stride to match.
At this rate, they should be able to leave within another day or two. Jason wasn’t sure if that was what he truly wanted. He had a strong urge to stay and fight. The problem was they had no clear enemy to engage just yet.
Jason growled in frustration, and he felt the slightest touch, a reassuring calm in his head that meant Tobias had heard.
Tobias kept his own counsel, waiting, Jason knew, for him to either work it out on his own, or discuss it in his own time. It was one of the many things Jason appreciated the most about the AI—how he knew when to push, and when to give him his space.
Of course, he’d known Jason since he was a kid, so he supposed that was plenty long enough for Tobias to figure that part out.
Jason heard quiet footfalls approaching from a cross-corridor and glanced up as Calista fell in next to Tobi. She shot him a measuring look then returned her gaze to the hallway that curved gently inward before them. Together, the three walked the outer cross section of one of the empty crew decks of the ship.
They drew abreast of an open seating area that was attached to a small galley. By Jason’s estimation, it was about halfway to the corridor that led back to the ship’s main lifts.
Calista pulled to a stop. “Let’s grab something to drink,” she said with an incline of her head. She turned in, not bothering to see if Jason would follow. After a brief hesitation, he glanced down at the big cat, shrugged and followed.
The galley was shuttered, its contents unneeded without the ship’s full crew complement aboard, but Calista seemed to know her way around. It made sense, Jason supposed, as the ship was an Enfield design and she had served in the ESF.
Calista busied herself opening cupboards until she found what she was looking for. She retrieved a soup bowl and filled it with water for Tobi, then unsnapped two mugs that had been secured against possible rapid shifts in acceleration. Pivoting, she headed purposefully for an instant hot water spigot.
With practiced moves, she freed a packet of coffee for Jason and some sort of powder for herself. Filling both cups with the reconstituted liquids, she headed out to the seating area.
As she folded herself into a comfortably cushioned chair, one leg tucked underneath her, she handed Jason his coffee and smiled as the cat padded to the far side of the room, leapt up to a low, cushioned bench, and settled in for a
nap with a soft chuff. The message was clear: both cat and AI were giving the two humans their privacy.
“So….” Calista began as Jason lowered himself into the seat next to her. She allowed her voice to drift off as she blew lightly over the surface of her drink.
Jason knew what she wanted to discuss. He shied away from it and indicated her mug, knowing she would see it for the diversionary tactic it was.
“So, the tough ESF major now drinks an herbal tea?”
Calista shrugged, and a faint smile played on her lips. “It’s tulsi. It smells good.” She leaned forward a bit and added in a light tone, “and it doesn’t hurt to do something different every now and then. You should try it sometime.”
He knew she wasn’t referring to the tea. He ignored her opening conversational gambit implying that he should open up and talk about what was bothering him, and instead used his mug to gesture to their surroundings.
“Were you and Shannon involved with this design?”
Calista nodded as she lifted her mug to her lips. “It was one of the first we worked on together after I was hired as chief pilot.” She took a sip, and then her mouth curved into a reflective smile as she glanced around. “It’s the first nebula-class starship Enfield built. It was in development when I joined the TechDev department almost five years ago. At the time, we just knew it as ‘the BFS’.”
Jason barked a short laugh. “Um, yeah, I can see why. It’s pretty damned big for an insystem ship.”
Calista cocked her head to one side as she considered his words. “Oh, I don’t know. It could come in handy for some of the more remote outposts beyond the dust belt. But you’re right, its main purpose is for transit between El Dorado and Proxima. Too many businesses petitioned for an increase in trade with our sister star, so the ESF decided to invest in this starship.”
“Yeah, about that. ‘Starship’?” Jason’s brow rose as he mentioned the moniker.
“Well, we couldn’t keep calling it ‘the BFS’. And we do intend to use it for transit from star to star,” she pointed out, and then shook her head, exhaling on a little laugh. “Although I did begin to wonder if we’d ever get the ship launched,” she admitted.