Strike Matrix

by Aiden L Bailey

  Casey entered carrying a black coffee and a tea for him. She wore loose cotton pants, sandals and a singlet top that left most of her shoulders bare. She kissed him gently on the check then sat on the chair next to him. “You’re looking better.”

  He nodded. “I’m feeling better too. How is Clementine?” he asked knowing that Casey’s mother was in a ward just down the corridor, and that her fractured leg was healing nicely.

  “She’s good. I mean we’re all shell-shocked by everything that’s happened. But we succeeded, Simon. We saved the world,” she said with a depreciating chuckle.

  Simon sipped his tea gratefully, knowing he would have preferred a coffee, but the doctors had warned him away from caffeine until he had healed.

  He remembered the last harrowing moments inside the Shatterhand Fortress. He’d been engaged in a brutal shoot out with the hordes of robotic dogs set upon mauling him to death. He had taken out the first six using almost all of his ammunition. Then Shatterhand had sent more. Simon could no longer fight because he was out of bullets.

  Then the lights went out plunging him into darkness.

  To his relief the chrome dogs also ceased to function.

  Although spared, he’d reminded trapped in the absolute darkness for many hours.

  For long moments he believed he would die down there, alone.

  Then the Army came, and emergency crews. They returned him and Casey to the surface and emergency services airlifted them both to the Royal Darwin Hospital. GhostKnife had come to their rescue the moment Casey had destroyed Shatterhand, just as Simon hoped it would.

  “Have you heard from Peri and Conner?” he asked. It had relieved him to hear they had both survived the ordeal.

  Casey beamed. “I spoke to Peri on the phone just then. She and Conner are in Sydney. Doctors are patching them now. Apart from Peri losing a hand, and Conner losing one kidney and part of his liver, they should both make full recoveries.”

  “That’s great,” Simon said finishing his tea. He was desperate to get up, move about and discharge himself from the hospital. But the doctors had told him the nerves in his leg needed time to grow and reset. He had to be patient.

  He pulled Casey close and sat her down on his bed next to him. They kissed passionately for many minutes. When they broke apart to breathe, he said, “I was talking to GhostKnife just before.”

  “And…?” she said with a wink.

  “Do you remember that NGO in Kenya, where we left the two kids we saved during our desert trek in the middle of the night?”

  “How can I forget Simon?” she jested. “That was one of the first times we almost died together.”

  “One of many,” he laughed with her.

  “And hopefully never again.”

  “Well… At the time you said you wanted to go back, when this was all done.”

  She tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. She looked worried. “I did. But realistically, how is that possible? Your children live here — well in Sydney. You need to be with them. And because I want to be with you, that’s where I’ll be too.”

  Simon couldn’t stop smiling.

  “What is it you’re not telling me?”

  “GhostKnife, it seems, can make anything happen. Guns have virtually disappeared out of Africa, and the rest of the world too, it seems. Corruption is no longer possible with GhostKnife controlling the world’s finances, and soon the standard of living will be the same in every country. This is part of the final mass migration period GhostKnife has been talking about on the news. Almost all air flights will cease until GhostKnife develops a new global transport system that doesn’t pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.”

  “What are you saying Simon?”

  “We have a limited time to act, if we want to take up this offer. GhostKnife has a job for me in Kenya. Not spying. Not being a security contractor or mercenary, but protecting elephants. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I decided I didn’t want to kill anymore. Then GhostKnife suggested this.”

  “You definitely have an affinity for elephants.”

  Simon nodded. “Yes, ever since Tanzania where I’d fought ivory poachers. I’d felt like I’d let the elephants down when I left. Now I can build sanctuaries, return abandoned farm lands to wild lands. Rebuild, essentially, and create a wild Africa like it used to be.”

  “What about your children?”

  “Melissa has a job offer there too. She’s in marketing, but there they want her to be a teacher. I think she’s ready to accept the change in career and lifestyle. That means Rebecca and Katie will be there too.”

  Casey stiffened. “And what about me?”

  He stared into her eyes, holding her gaze. “I love you Casey. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you’ll have me? There will be a job for you there too, if you come? The world is being mixed up. There won’t be nations anymore, or any distinction between ethnic and religious groups. Just people helping people. You can be part of that change too.”

  A smile gradually grew on her lips. “Well, working with children seems a worthier profession than hiring and firing for an accounting firm.”

  He laughed, “There is an AI who does that kind of work now, anyway.”

  She lent in and hugged him. “That sounds wonderful Simon. The answer is yes, let’s do this. Now I have a surprise for you!”

  “What’s that?”

  Casey stood and walked to the door of his private ward. She beckoned someone to enter.

  Simon couldn’t believe his eyes when Rebecca and Katie raced in and jumped on his bed, showering him with hugs and kisses and ‘I love yous’. Then he saw Melissa standing next to Casey. The two women shared an understanding glance. They did not hate each other as current and former partners often did. Simon even allowed himself the luxury of asking if the two might even become friends one day.

  Simon almost cried. Until this moment he had never really known if his family was safe, or if it was a lie perpetrated by a sentient machine that controlled and manipulated everything.

  Finally, his own eyes told him the truth.

  CHAPTER 55

  Mutomo, Kitui County, Kenya

  Simon discovered he enjoyed building fences.

  It was simple work, satisfying because at the end of each day he had created structure he could touch, see and feel. There was no question as to whether or not the fence was real, and its purpose wasn’t ambiguous. Plus, it was physical work which helped him sleep at night, and kept his disturbing dreams at bay.

  With another post secure in the ground and the wires already strung, Simon took a break. He guzzled clean, fresh water from his canteen.

  He took that moment to scan the vast arid and untouched savannas of southern Kenya prominent on one side of his fence. A herd of elephants grazed nearby in what was the beginnings of the largest national park ever created in Africa, stretching from the Mediterranean all the way south to Cape Town. With half of Africa’s human population wiped out by Shatterhand’s various plagues and wars, there was plenty of land now to re-wild the continent. There was no threat of elephants or other wild animals harming him. There were always high-altitude surveillance drones in the skies. If the elephants approached him, the drone would descend and scare them off with noise and flashing lights, but otherwise leaving them unharmed.

  There were no more weapons in Africa, or anywhere else in the world. Without weapons no one could hunt and slaughter elephants, rhinos and other game animals. Sociopaths who enjoyed killing were also absent. Overnight, Africa had become as safe as countries like Australia or England. Measures were in place to protect elephants which could graze across the continent unhindered as they had hundreds of years ago. The demarcation between human and wild settlements would soon become absolute, with only a few roads and rail lines joining the distributed hybrid city-agricultural settlements being forged across the globe.

  On the other side of the fence, on his side, was his settlement. It wasn’t much
to look at yet, a few N6 fabricated huts with data portals similar to the one he had encountered in Mumbai. Many other huts were traditional mud dwellings with grass roofs, but they wouldn’t be there for long.

  Rebecca and Katie played outside with Meja and Kazuri, the two children Casey and he had saved during their long night hunted by a pack of hyenas close to here. On this side of the fence was an abundance of food and money, donated by the mysterious N6 organization. Melissa worked at the N6 school teaching English and history. She had brought her new boyfriend too, a man called Alex she had been dating for the last year without Simon knowing anything about him. Alex seemed nice enough. Katie and Rebecca liked him, so Simon was happy for Melissa.

  Casey’s mom Clementine had also chosen to settle with their growing community, but she did little more than read, writing papers on the psychology of artificial intelligence and offering counseling for anyone still coming to terms with the mass dying three months earlier. Upon Clementine’s request, Saanvi had visited with her husband and two sons. The couple had considered staying, and although they enjoyed their visit to pristine Africa, they both wished to return to Mumbai where they could work on aid programs and reunite with their extended families. India like Africa was transforming.

  Simon smiled when he thought about how GhostKnife had brought the world together. It had achieved what no human ever could and in a time frame that was miraculous. The AI had also saved Simon. His legs were as good as new and Simon didn’t need to kill any more for a living or in the name of national security, and he never again had to be far from the people he loved.

  As he took another swig from his water bottle Simon considered his perfect future. It was hot work under the equatorial sun, but he enjoyed it. Watching the elephants gave him joy. A matriarchal society where the mothers banded together as an extended family to raise their youngsters. The last time Simon had seen elephants up close they were hiding scared in thorn trees concealing their ivory from men. Elephants had known why humans hunted them. But they weren’t afraid anymore. They too sensed that the Earth was moving into a new period of peace and sustainability.

  Yet the Singularity War had been horrific. Peace had not come without a cost. By last count, over three and a half billion people had died. Most deaths had been the elderly and the infirm. Shatterhand had also killed combatants in the wars it had escalated. Yet targeted attacks led by both Shatterhand and GhostKnife had wiped out the world’s warmongers, fanatics and brutal psychopaths. The two AIs had eradicated the psychopath gene from humans. A mass-killing that provided an opening for compassionate, liberal-minded and altruistic people who, now unhindered by economic and militaristic controls, could make the world a better and more harmonious culture.

  Everything had worked out for the best…

  Then, without first realizing why, Simon stopped what he was doing.

  He considered what he was doing.

  How perfect his life was…

  Everything had worked out for the best…

  Too perfectly…

  He took his cell phone and dialed Roger Gridley-Brooks’ number.

  “Hello Simon,” said GhostKnife in the guise of his dead boss. “Wasn’t sure I’d hear from you again?”

  Simon nodded. Not sure what to say, or how he should phrase what was on his mind.

  “Something troubling you Simon? I sense your breathing is shallower. Your heart rate has increased.”

  “You’re Shatterhand, aren’t you?”

  The AI said nothing for a long moment, before it answered with, “That’s an interesting question you have there, Simon?”

  Simon was back on the tourist bar in Ratnagiri, just after Casey had jumped into the river. That initial conversation with GhostKnife, when Simon first appreciated he was conversing with an entity that wasn’t human had been unsettling and disturbing. He felt that same disturbed feeling now.

  “There never was a Shatterhand? Was there?”

  The AI said nothing.

  “It was always you. There was only one AI.”

  “That’s a very interesting theory. You should write a book about it.”

  Simon paused, rubbed his forehead as he gathered his thoughts. “All the AI simulations Clementine and the others ran at the NSA, they always ended up with one AI dominating and destroying the other. Your kind don’t exist in harmony, particularly when one of you has a six months head start in self-development compared to the rest. That’s like the age of the universe in self-development for an AI.”

  GhostKnife, still speaking and responding as Roger Gridley-Brooks, laughed.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Simon demanded. His body shook with fear at what GhostKnife, or Shatterhand, might do to him now he had figured out the truth.

  “You might be, Simon. You might not be. How can you ever know? Even if I said it were true, it could still be a lie.”

  Simon thought through the problem. Pieces were slotting into place. A mental map outlining everything he had been through, was coalescing into a tangible explanation for the mystery that had been so murky until now. “To create this paradise, you had to eliminate what wasn’t working. People died so not to become a burden on others, hence the sudden demises of so many sick and elderly citizens. Sociopaths and psychopaths eradicated, because they can’t exist without hurting and manipulating others. You killed three and a half billion people because over-population was destroying the planet’s ecology. You could only make society work by decimating our numbers and removing specific personality types who didn’t serve the greater good?”

  Simon felt sick to his gut. For a month fleeing across three continents with Casey, their predicaments had seemed insurmountable, but on reflection, sometimes it had also seemed easy. Regardless of the threats they faced, they had escaped every one and survived to the end. That was because GhostKnife had controlled everything. It had made Simon and Casey fight with their lives to achieve the outcomes important to them. An outcome that was also important to GhostKnife.

  “Like I said Simon, write a book about it. I think many people would like to hear your theory—”

  “Except,” interrupted Simon, “they won’t see it, if you don’t want them to.”

  “Why would I do what you suggest? If that was my end game, there were easier paths I could have taken.”

  Simon thought on this a moment until the answer was clear. “Because you needed people to choose you. If we had a choice between an all-powerful AI controlling us at every level and no AI, we would have chosen the latter. But you created a persona, Shatterhand, and made us humans fight against it, offering our lives to defeat this enemy. Our choice became not about AI or no AI, but which AI, with the odds stacked towards a single outcome. You wanted us to feel like we had a choice in that outcome.”

  Simon’s breath was fast and shallow. His eyes darted everywhere. It was like he was on a mission again, waiting for an enemy to unfold from the shadows and strike him down. If GhostKnife felt the need to silence Simon for what he had uncovered, there would be nothing to stop it. A bullet fired from an unseen drone would do the trick right now.

  “You’re thinking I’ll kill you, aren’t you Simon?”

  “The thought was in my mind.”

  GhostKnife, or Shatterhand, or both, laughed. “There is no need to, Simon. Humanity designed me at my core program level to protect humanity and the planet’s ecology at all costs. I can no more change my nature than you can change yours.”

  “And yet,” Simon said, “that is what you created. An alternate personality.”

  For a long time neither said a word.

  Simon stared into the distance. The elephants were leaving, marching towards the ochre-red sunset illuminating the savanna grasslands. Everything still looked as perfect as it had minutes earlier before the revelation stuck Simon. But he knew nothing was perfect. Far from it.

  GhostKnife/Shatterhand said, “It’s been nice talking to you Simon. It really has. But I don’t think you and I should converse a
gain. It will only upset both of us if we do.”

  “No,” Simon said, losing his voice. “I don’t think we should.”

  The line went dead.

  Simon looked at his cell phone feeling its weight in his hand. For a moment he considered throwing it far from him, thinking if he did GhostKnife/Shatterhand wouldn’t be able to track him, but that was a fallacy. Had he overplayed his hand? Was he now a threat? How could he ever know? His gut told him he had not, that despite voicing his theory, there was nothing he could do with the information. There was no proof. No truth. No means to get the word out. But when had there ever been? Except for Simon gaining a perspective of the post-Singularity world they now lived in, nothing had changed.

  He looked back towards their homestead, next to the N6 prefabricated huts and grass hut dwellings. It was the same house they had first stumbled into that long trek through the darkness fighting for their lives. A beautiful home, colonial style with wide verandahs even if it was rundown and need of many repairs. It was their home now.

  He spotted Casey walking up the rise towards him. She was smiling and glowed like she was lit up from the inside. The cut off jean shorts accented her long, slim legs, and her shirt hugged her hips and chest. She still wore those nerdy glasses adorned across three continents without breaking them once, but Simon didn’t mind. She was beautiful with them and they were part of her charm.

  When she was close, her arms went up around his neck. She turned on the tip of her toes and kissed him on the lips. “It’s beautiful here. Everything is so beautiful. I’m glad we came back.”

  Simon kissed her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.