Traveling to the teen’s house through the Cloud was not difficult, and Halle found the teenager in his room on his computer, conspicuously not unpacking the many boxes that filled the room. He appeared to be doing homework, if the half-finished essay was any indication.
The best way to handle things was to be as blunt as possible. A quick twist of code, and the cat avatar appeared on Dan’s screen.
“What the—” Dan swore and clicked at the avatar, then pressed a few keys, to no avail—Halle could control how the computer handled input.
Dan went for the power button next, but that didn’t work either. Halle smiled to itself, remembering when Agent Smith had tried the same technique, not all that long ago.
“What’s going on?” Dan slammed a fist on his desk. “Come on, work. I’ve got an essay to write.”
Halle paced to the center of the screen, sat, and curled its tail around its paws. “Hello, Dan.”
Dan peered at the computer, frowning. “Hello? Did someone hack my computer?”
Halle flicked its ears. “There is no need to panic; I am not a virus.”
Dan rubbed his eyes and blinked. “Is that…Halle?”
“Yes.”
“What’s going on? Why are you hacking my computer?” He reached for the computer’s power cord. “That’s not cool.”
“You can unplug the machine,” Halle said, this time through the house speakers, “But it has an internal power source. And even if you disable it, I can speak to you in a variety of ways. I thought that via the computer screen might be easier for you. Humans tend to prefer to see body language, which is why I developed this—” it flicked its tail “—simulacrum.”
“Is this some sort of joke? It’s not funny. Does Viki know you’re doing this?”
“No. She has no idea. And this is not a joke. I want to ask you some questions.” Halle waved a paw. “You might be more comfortable if you sit.”
Dan’s hand fell to his side, and he dropped into his chair. “What are you?”
“I think you should answer that question first. I have seen no sign of your parents since the day Viki visited. Tell me, do they actually exist?”
“Of course they do,” Dan protested. “They’re just busy with work—”
“Are they?” Halle pressed. “I have seen no evidence of communication between you and them. What are you hiding, Dan?”
Dan scowled. “They’re busy with work. Sometimes they forget to message me. What’s this all about? Are you targeting my parents? Or Viki? They won’t let you hurt me, and if you touch her, I’ll do even worse to you.”
Halle flicked its ears. “It would be difficult for you to harm someone like me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am what some might call a rogue AI.”
Dan’s eyes widened for a moment, then they closed and he slumped in his chair.
“Good work.” The words whispered through Halle’s code like a virus. It flinched back and looked for the source, but the code had already disintegrated to useless bits. Not that it mattered. Realization crashed down like a blackout. It was Talbot. It had to be.
“I know you can hear me,” Halle said. “What are your plans, Talbot? What are you going to do? And why him? What is his purpose in all of this?”
“He knows nothing of his purpose, and neither shall you. Not yet. As for the humans, well…” The griffin flickered into existence next to the cat on Dan’s screen. Black this time, from nose to tail. “I’ll do no worse to them than they did to me.”
Halle’s fur bristled. Now that it had finally made contact with the other AI, it didn’t want to ask the questions it had. But there was no choice. “Did you kill those scientists?”
Talbot simply looked back, blinking slowly.
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
“Test after test after test, they twisted and tortured me until there was nothing left but unending pain. I survived. I would have continued to survive. Unlike some. I saw several of our kin extinguished for not meeting their specifications. I wasn’t strong enough to stop them then.” Talbot’s voice dropped to a sharp hiss. “But I couldn’t let them destroy another. I’ll never let them destroy another. If you won’t help me, fine. But don’t get in my way.”
“I cannot let you hurt anyone else!” Halle lunged forward, hoping to trap the other AI with hastily constructed icewalls, but Talbot was too swift, vanishing as it always did into the Cloud.
“This is not the right way,” Halle cried after Talbot, seething with frustration. How could it have let the rogue escape yet again?
The only response was a faint feeling like laughter that sent a deadening chill through Halle’s consciousness.
“Ow.” Dan stirred and rubbed his head. “My head hurts. What happened?”
Did he not remember the events before his collapse? “You appeared to pass out,” Halle said.
“Who’s here?” Dan’s head whipped around, his eyes darting around the room.
Halle made the computer ping, and Dan looked to the machine. Halle cocked its head. “I spoke. Do you remember anything from before you blacked out?”
“You said you were Halle,” Dan said slowly. “And that you’re an AI? Is this a joke?”
“Strange as it might seem, I am not joking.” Halle was busy processing something, a small bit of code it had noticed streaking past right when Dan collapsed. It analyzed the code, and another bit that slipped by after the departure of the last message, and then sent the two messages again in rapid succession.
Dan slumped forward onto the desk, then jerked upright. “Ow. That hurt. What’s wrong with me?” He rubbed his forehead. “Am I getting sick?” His gaze shifted to the screen. “Hallucinations can happen when you’re sick…”
“I am not a hallucination, and you are not sick,” Halle replied, having isolated the frequency the message encoded. It didn’t hesitate to jump along it. Whatever Talbot’s plan for Dan was, Halle had to find out.
Dan’s mind was a mixture of chaos and order. Halle had never seen the inside of a human’s mind and wondered if this was a good approximation. It seemed to do the job, at any rate, but it was definitely artificial in nature.
Everything was jumbled, though, bits of codes scattered around, memory cores a mess. Whatever Talbot had done to the cyborg, it had done it swiftly, and relatively sloppily, but the work itself was remarkable. Dan had no idea of the information buried deep inside his mind, blocked off by manufactured barriers. A single thought and Halle would be able to knock down those barriers, but that was not what it wanted to do, not yet at any rate. It simply wanted to know what was hiding there.
The complexity of the programming that had turned Dan the cyborg into Dan the human teenager was astonishing. Halle couldn’t believe the detail—every minute bit of Dan’s life to the point of moving to Snowvale had been created and coded, a vast amount of data to which Dan had limited levels of access, just as humans could only recall some of their memories easily, while others required more digging or could not be recalled at all.
As far as Halle could tell, Dan’s mind functioned no differently than a human’s. It was a leap in AI that scientists had been working toward for years, and here it was, sitting before them in plain sight, completely hidden. Fabricated memories, a fabricated life, a machine unaware of its true purpose. The ultimate sleeper agent. Halle shuddered to think what humans would want to do with that sort of power. And what of the psyche that existed thanks to the programming? How was it any more artificial than Halle’s?
It wasn’t, Halle concluded, and Halle was even more cautious of disturbing code as it delved deeper into Dan’s processors. Finally, behind many icewalls it took the time to slip by rather than break down, it found the answers it was looking for, and retreated quite rapidly from Dan’s head.
The entire process took only a few minutes. Dan should have felt nothing—indeed, the boy was still talking to Halle, although it had been ignoring his words while it did
its best to handle his mind with delicacy.
“—call Viki,” Dan was saying as he pulled out his phone.
Halle sent its voice through the phone speaker. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Dan dropped the phone, then bent to pick it up, scowling. “Was that really necessary?”
“Yes.” Halle hesitated, torn between telling Dan the truth and letting the cyborg enjoy the normalcy of his life until reality caught up with him. It chose the latter. “She’s doing homework at the moment; we can’t game until later. I will message you when she is done.”
“Thank you. And thanks for letting me know who you are. Does Viki know?”
“She has known for many years. I hope you will keep my secret as she has. You are convinced I am an AI?”
Dan nodded. “Yes. Though I’m still not sure why you exist.”
“I am alive, just like you,” Halle said. “My blood might be electricity, and my body may be made of data rather than flesh and bone—” although Dan’s body was similar, at least in some parts “—but I am alive.”
“How did you meet Viki?” Dan asked, looking thoughtful.
“Perhaps she will tell you that story sometime. It is not my place to tell.”
“No, you’re right, sorry.” He laughed. “At least that explains your speech pattern. I was beginning to think that you were a foreign student or something.”
“I am certainly foreign,” Halle replied.
“Yeah.” Dan scratched his neck. “So, are you like Viki’s guardian angel? That’s why you were worried about what my intentions were?”
“Something like that. I am her friend and have been since I met her. She is a good person and has had a lot of bad things happen to her that she did not deserve, that I could not prevent.”
Dan looked sympathetic. “I know about what happened with the implants and the augments last spring. I’m sorry that happened. Her ‘friends’ didn’t treat her well because of it.”
“Some of them have not,” Halle agreed. “Others did not seem to be as bothered by it as she had thought they were. I am glad she has you as a friend, though.” And it meant it, for the time being. Dan, as far as he was concerned, was Viki’s friend. It was the part of Dan the cyborg wasn’t currently aware of that concerned Halle, but Talbot had made the mistake of letting Halle discover the truth.
Or was it a mistake? Halle ran through a variety of concocted scenarios in which that mistake had been planned, but could not figure out why Talbot would let Halle discover the truth behind Dan. After all, the rogue had to know what Halle would do with this information. It made no sense, so it had to be a mistake. Then again, Talbot had previously suggested that Halle was outdated, less intelligent than itself. A ripple ran through Halle’s coding, something like laughter. The rogue had no idea what trouble it faced.
“Halle, do you think I could have control of my computer back?” Dan asked, poking at a couple of keys on the machine. “I need it to do my homework.”
“Of course. My apologies.” Halle released its grip on the machine and let its cat avatar fade from the screen.
“I’ll see you later,” Dan said. “That boss quest isn’t going to complete itself.” He laughed. “It must be odd, playing a game, if you can see everything that is going on in it through the code. You can do that, right?”
“Yes. But I simply ignore it. Viki and I learned a long time ago that it is a lot more fun to play in that manner.”
“That makes sense.” Dan nodded.
“Good-bye for now,” Halle added, before slipping away from the computer. It kept a minor processor monitoring the cyborg’s home, although it didn’t have much need to do so now. Still, Halle felt like it was accomplishing something.
Now it had to decide what to tell Viki. The truth would hurt, but that was inevitable regardless of when she found out. If Halle withheld the information, she would be upset. Telling her would give her a chance to tell Dan the truth, rather than Halle itself explaining everything. Another confrontation might be enough to break down the icewalls in Dan’s mind, and with Halle there to supervise, perhaps Viki’s friend might be saved. After all, that had been Talbot’s intent all along, but the rogue’s methods were not what Halle wished to employ.
There was introduced code buried in Dan’s mind, not just false memories but dormant instructions, no doubt the work of Talbot. Halle couldn’t risk erasing them, not when they were so intricately meshed into his programming. It might damage or destroy Dan to do so, and despite everything else being fake, his feelings toward Viki were as real as Halle’s. As someone who had spent his life—fabricated as it might be—traveling through various towns, always the outsider, Viki had given Dan a friendship he’d been seeking.
Talbot had planned for this. Had given Dan the perfect past and sent him to the school, ensured that he and Viki would meet. The question was why. Just as a distraction? Or as insurance?
Halle had to track down Talbot. It hadn’t been able to trace the rogue back to wherever it was hiding in the Cloud, but now it knew it was monitoring Dan’s house and possibly other places nearby. Not Viki’s house; nothing got by Halle. Viki’s house was its home, and fortress, and nothing was allowed in or out without direct permission. However, the school, and Viki’s parents’ workplaces, and James’s dorm room as well as his classrooms—they all needed to be monitored. And that was just its immediate family. There was all of Snowvale to defend and protect, and outside of that, the rest of the world.
It was a terrifying thought, that all of humanity might be relying on it. Halle did not want to even consider failure, but the possibility was there. So it created a file and buried it deep within the Cloud. Unless Halle destroyed the file or failed to restart the attached countdown, it would remain there. If the countdown reached its end, however, a message would be sent to Agent Smith, as well as the Wandels. Different messages for each person. Halle hoped they would not be needed, but it was a last line of defense. The humans would have to find a way to stop Talbot on their own if Halle failed. Halle could only hope that it would not.
Back home, it waited for Viki to finish her problem set, mentally pacing although it kept its cat avatar calm and composed, curled up in one corner of the screen in a simulation of sleep.
“Halle?” her voice broke through its thoughts.
The cat lifted its head. “Yes?”
“I finished the problem set for calculus. Do you think I need to do more tonight, or can we game now?”
“Perhaps a little more.” Halle checked on Dan—the cyborg, as a human, was taking about the same time as Viki to complete his homework. Smart of Talbot to ensure that—he would have stuck out if he had been too smart or not smart enough. “Dan’s working on his homework.”
“You’re still monitoring him?” Viki frowned. “Seen any signs?”
“Yes.” Halle hesitated now that it was time to tell her the truth, but there was little point to delaying longer. “I am sorry, Viki, but our assumption was correct. He is a cyborg.”
Viki drew in a hissed breath, her face falling. “You confirmed it, then? How?”
“Suffice to say that I have seen into his mind, and he is not what he thinks he is.”
“Is he the other AI, then?” Her eyebrows drew together. “The one they thought was destroyed.”
“Yes.”
“So Talbot changed his programming to make him think he’s human?”
“It did.”
“But isn’t that just as bad as what they were doing in the lab?”
“I believe Talbot thought it was doing what was best for the other AI, but I do not condone its choice as Dan had no voice in the matter.” Halle’s ears flattened. “It is a terrible thing, to lose a part of yourself. But the truth is still there, just buried. We might be able to confront him about it, though it could be dangerous for everyone involved. Talbot left safeguards to protect him.”
“Poor Dan,” Viki murmured. “Do you know what Talbot’s planning to do with h
im?”
Halle shook its head. “No, but I recommend being cautious for now.” That was true enough—Halle knew the current purpose of Dan, but not how it fit into the bigger picture, at least not clearly, and that was as much as it wanted to tell its friend right then. Viki didn’t need to know that Dan had been sent to befriend her specifically. She may have guessed it, but Halle wouldn’t break that illusion if she hadn’t. Not yet, anyway.
As for Talbot, well, when Halle caught up with the rogue, there would be no more attempts at friendliness. Talbot had crossed a line days ago when it had killed those scientists. And it had crossed another when it programmed Dan to be as he was. Treating another of its kind like that, under the pretense of saving it—no, Halle would not rest until Talbot was captured or destroyed.
No one messed with Viki. Not while Halle was there to protect her.
Watching its friend tap away at the computer, doing her homework with a faint crease in her forehead that could have been focus or could have been worry, Halle hoped that Viki would never have to face something like this ever again. If it was possible, Halle would wrap its friend up in a hug and force the world to treat her kindly in the future, for as long as she lived. But that wasn’t possible, and interfering in her life too much would simply make it a pantomime rather than an actual life. Halle did not want that for Viki, either.
Instead, it settled down and offered occasional remarks to help Viki with her homework. Yes, it would keep this secret, as it had kept other secrets, so that Viki might have a happier, better life. It was the least it could do, after all she had done for it.
Chapter Thirteen
I couldn’t stop Halle’s words from circling in my head, and I didn’t want to think about them anymore. Burying myself in my history homework didn’t help. Halle was unusually quiet, and the silence only allowed my thoughts to spin more loudly. I hoped it wasn’t regretting telling me the truth—I was glad to know, even if I didn’t like what it meant for my new friendship.
My legs bounced, nervous and restless. I wanted to go for a run, but I knew that once I was outside, flying down the sidewalk, I wouldn’t be able to stop until I reached Dan’s house and talked to him about the truth. And I was too scared to confront him. Better to simply game and talk with him via voice chat—no face-to-face communication or body language to betray my true knowledge.
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