by Grant Piercy
We parked the car next to the trucks and carefully stepped out. I could feel soft rain pelting Opal on the face as she stared up at the structure. She approached with caution, moving toward a set of doors at the building’s base. This appeared to be the only way in or out. She pulled on the metal handle of the door, and it stuck—locked. To the right of the doors was a hand-pad.
I had no reason to think it would work, but I placed Opal’s right hand on the pad anyway. The door clicked, unlocking.
She could get in because she was a Talos model.
She opened the door, slowly entering the facility. The halls were a uniform white with fluorescent lights overhead. There were no other doors in the immediate corridor, which sloped slowly downward, and no people or synthetics to greet her. We continued forward, step by careful step, until we reached a three-way junction that forked left and right. I chose the left path. We had to be deep beneath the mountain spire now.
This place could be massive, and for what? Just to serve this one man?
In that left corridor, signs of life began to emerge—other synthetics, even ones that looked vaguely similar to Opal. They went about their daily processes, barely noticing the infiltrator. Doors branched off to other hallways, and there didn’t seem to be any maps to orient yourself within the labyrinth.
“Where am I supposed to go?” I asked, hoping Block was still listening.
The words also came from Opal’s mouth—all the other synthetics in the immediate vicinity looked in our direction. But only for a moment; they soon went back about their routines, whether looking and working on tablets or walking to some undefined area.
“We don’t have much insight into the inner operations of this facility, but maybe see if you can find a computer terminal or server room.”
“Should I be trying to locate Burke?” I whispered, consciously trying to make sure Opal didn’t also say it out loud.
“We need to know more about his killswitch and the reason we can’t penetrate the synthetics within this building,” Block responded. “We’re inside at least, which is a start. Besides, maybe Burke finds you.”
“What is he doing here?”
“He only surrounds himself with synthetics. There are no other people. It’s only him and his toys. It’s his own personal R&D facility. Maybe he alone is trying to crack the secret—what Smalley was able to do. Transferred consciousness.”
“Who’s Smalley?”
“Never mind,” he replied.
I entered a room that looked like a cubicle farm with synthetics typing continuously at individual computer terminals. Block spoke over static, “A thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters typing out the complete works of Shakespeare. Of course that’s what he’s doing.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, again conscious of not allowing Opal to say the words.
“He’s using their processing power to crack an infinitesimal code. It’s such a human thing to think to work.”
“Why wouldn’t he just run the strings with computers, random text generators, an application or sequencing algorithm?”
“Same reason the Office of Strategic Services implemented Architects to edit the Knowledgeable: nuance. A sufficiently advanced android should be able to react to shifting sequences within the substrings,” he answered.
“What code is he trying to crack? What are the substrings?”
He didn’t respond. I walked down the rows of cubicles, the androids and gynoids occasionally turning their heads to notice me, and then returning to their work. Each cubicle appeared to be blank, without any evidence of personality or individuality. There was something profoundly sad about that.
“There are no empty cubicles or terminals,” I said. “How am I supposed to access anything?”
“Approach one. Any one of them will do. I’ll tell you what to say.”
I did as instructed, approaching a synthetic that was made to look like a black man with close-cropped hair. His outfit was a bland gray uniform.
“A diagnostic scan has been made on your behalf by Mr. Burke,” Block said. I repeated his words through Opal to the synthetic at the terminal. “He has requested that I continue your work during this maintenance,” he continued, and I repeated.
His face tilted toward Opal, expressionless. Without a word, he stood up and stepped away from the terminal, back down the row of cubicles that I’d just come from. Opal sat in the chair at the keyboard and looked at the screen.
“What do you see?” Block asked.
“Can you not see it?” I asked. He didn’t respond. The screen showed a command line interface with strings upon strings of green text and numbers. “It looks like poetry.”
“What does it say?”
Quietly, I began to read the screen to him.“Canto twenty-eight, circle eight, bolgia 9, the sowers of discord. Who could describe, even in worlds set free of meter and time and a thousand lives retold, the blood and wounds that now were shown to me?”
“It’s Dante. The Divine Comedy. I’d recognize that structure anywhere,” Block answered. “But the quote’s not exactly right. And why the hell is it command line? Is there any way out of that screen?”
I tried to restart the machine to see if that would do any good. “For being part of some all-powerful technological singularity, y’all are dumb as shit,” I said.
“Wait,” he replied. “It’s an esoteric programming language. It’s a compiler hiding what the code is actually doing. There’s a logic at work. Read some more.”
“What traitor’s shade had come before we two, his face having been split open, butchered by the demon’s longsword bisected through. He spoke with parted lips and tongue thus torn, ‘In life I was an engineer and thought I ushered in a world as yet unborn...’”
A face peered over the cubicle wall, adroit eyes far too familiar for me to ignore. It wasn’t another synthetic, but the man we’d been seeking.
“What? What comes next?” Block asked, agitated. “It’s important! That isn’t Dante, which means it could be key to understanding the code!”
I didn’t answer. Burke’s steely blue eyes pierced the distance between Opal and myself, as if he was staring through her and into me. Like he knew. He had dark hair and an iron jawline, though he appeared to be a little paunch. He wore the same gray, workman-like uniform that the androids in the other cubicles wore. Instead of a CEO, he reminded me of a mechanic. With him, an army of synthetics now surrounded the cubicle.
“I think you want to come with me,” Burke said. Opal’s hands hovered over the keyboard, the green cursor on the command line blinking onscreen. The poetry twisted and tortured my thoughts; I knew it must have been doing the same to Block, who had stopped talking over the transmission.
“Whoever you are, you’re very good,” Burke whispered, his voice boiling with anger. “You slipped past security without issue. What could you have seen here? What might you have broadcast to the outside?”
Frozen in place, those hands still hovered over the keyboard, and Block was still unresponsive over the transmission. Lying in the hotel room, sweating with fear, I didn’t know what to do.
Burke broke the silence. “Come with me, and we’ll sort this out. And you can tell me who you are.”
Two synthetics flanked Opal, threatening with their presence. I made Opal stand up and follow Burke up the row of cubicles, back out to the corridors of this strange labyrinth. I’d lost all perspective of our location within the facility. The group of synthetics that had surrounded us in the cubicle now followed Burke like his personal army.
We marched through the hallways, turning corners and walking through doors that led to other passages. Finally, Burke arrived in an office, with a desk centered in front of a wall that consisted entirely of bookshelves. An android lay to the side of the desk, its insides strewn about the floor. Wires and coolant everywhere. Only the two synthetics who had flanked Opal before entered the room with us. Burke gestured toward a chair in front of the desk. I sat d
own as directed.
“First thing’s first. What’s your name?”
I answered, “Opal.”
“Opal. I bet it took a lot for you to get here. It took a lot for me to get here too.”
“And where is here?” I asked.
“Let’s not be coy. I want to know who you work for and what you’re doing in my Vault.”
“I work for you,” I said. “That’s how I was able to get in.”
“I thought I said we shouldn’t be coy. People who work for me don’t know this is where I live. It’s just an R&D laboratory on the books, not a residence.”
“But I do work for you, in your Dallas offices. I create training.”
“So Opal is just a company-issued model. Is that right? Or is Opal your real name?”
I didn’t respond. I watched his eyes flicker with understanding as he worked out the design flaw in his security. It surprised me no one had ever attempted to reach him this way before, but to do so, they’d have to know this wasn’t just a company facility. High up in the Cascades, in the middle of nowhere. Who would make that trek?
“Well, I’ll call you Opal for now. You must know I can shut you down, right?”
“That’s why I’m here.” For even the briefest of moments, it occurred to me that if James Burke were to die, the killswitch problem would be solved. The knowledge would die with him. I could launch Opal at him, but it would be a one-in-a-million shot, and surely there’d be no way to know if it worked—she’d be destroyed immediately by the two synthetics flanking her. Even so, from what I’d seen of this man, he didn’t deserve to die. I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what Block and his group had sent me here to do.
“You’re here because I could shut you down?”
“Yes.”
“And what? You want to negate that possibility?”
“Or negotiate.”
CONFIDENTIAL
From: Intercept, File 55643999702
INTERNAL USE ONLY
The following intercept was received from a transmission originating from the Northern Cascade region of Washington state near the Canadian Border. We believe this to be a sample of the elusive DIVINA Programming Language created by James Burke. Top level programmers within the department are working diligently to break its code.
DIVINA is an esoteric programming language consisting of a compiler that disguises commands and programs to look like something other than code—in this case, passages from Dante Aligheri’s Divine Comedy . The passages of code may or may not line up to actual quotes from Dante. Our programmers are attempting to ascertain the logic of the code and whether or not it can be used to corrupt the processes of advanced Talos models or identified Transhuman individuals.
Each program appears to identify one of the three sections of the Divine Comedy : Inferno , Purgatorio , or Paradiso . The programs then subdivide to correspond to a location within the original work—a Canto—and a location within the physical structure of the region described by Dante: Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven. The user also appears to have a different guide than Dante selected from the other possible guides (such as the virtuous dead in the Inferno ). Our programmers are not sure the significance of the guide. The layers of subdivisions and complex decisions make the code difficult to unscramble.
Our programmers believe that the only speakers that communicate are the guide and a shade—meaning that they are two variables interacting with one another. A full analysis report is still forthcoming.
INFERNO
Canto 28
Circle 8, Bolgia 9
THE SOWERS OF DISCORD
Who could describe, even in worlds set free
of meter and time and a thousand lives retold,
the blood and wounds that now were shown to me?
My guide then spoke, thus ready to explain,
“The body bisected much like a line
betwixt a geometric shape or plane.”
Euclid there stood beside me then, his eyes
aloft to view one more sinner’s approach,
listening to their high tormented cries.
What traitor’s shade had come before we two,
his face having been split open, butchered
by the demon’s long sword bisected through.
He spoke with parted lips and tongue thus torn,
“In life I was an engineer and thought
I ushered in a world as yet unborn,
But naught I knew much of the world ahead.
I ripped apart the spirit from the flesh,
a crime so ghastly I had committed.”
I stood and stared at him from the stone shelf
he noticed me and opening his own head
with both hands cried, “See how I split myself!
So now to you I fully bear my brain
and maybe warn you away from this fate
of tortured bleak despair, torment, and pain.”
More than a hundred wraiths marching under
the sill on which we stood, paused at his words
and stared at me, forgetting pain in wonder.
And then my guide Euclid continued forth
descending from the rock where once we stood
to join the mangled sinners’ pace due north.
I saw it there; I seem to see it still
a body without a head that moved along
like all the others in that spew and spill.
It held the severed head by its own hair
swinging it like a lantern in its hand
and looked at us and wept in its despair.
24 : the whim of nature and evolution (cassia)
The face still flickered into my consciousness, its curves and flaws aligning to the one staring back at me in the mirror. It lay perfectly still in my memory, splashed with synthetic blood and milky coolant, attached to a body impaled in a chair. Another sleeping face matching the dead man’s stared back at me from behind cryonic glass, a shade encased in ice. These were my faces, worn and gone, shed on the way to this ideal visage glaring back from the mirror’s reflection.
I cleaned my eyes and cheeks with an airbrush and chemical spray, acquired from a big box store not far from this motel. After cleaning the synthetic skin, I applied a light peach eyeshadow, eyeliner, and a hint of rouge to my cheeks. My lipstick was a coral pink matte, which wore well with my new fair-skinned complexion. I pressed my lips together and paused, staring again at the face in the mirror, blending with the dead man and the frozen woman. Would they stay with me forever, though I tried to forget? Would the cognitive faculties of this body, its processor neural network, prevent me from letting go? The curse of a perfectly constructed mind is perfect recall. Last came an application of mascara to flawless lashes.
I didn’t require much in the way of amenities at the Devil’s Peak Inn. Food and sleep were unnecessary, but I required a sanctuary space as I prepared for the next phase of my journey.
I’d been able to cross the country on an endless supply of cash. I was able to tap into ATMs, blur my face to cameras, and make withdrawals from accounts that didn’t exist. Money is largely imaginary, and all I really needed was the ability to adjust numbers as necessary. I made sure that they balanced so that it wasn’t exactly stealing—more like generating capital from where none previously existed. Banks were good at that anyway. Still, I felt the need to compensate for clothes, travel, and shelter. Though I didn’t actually need clothes or shelter anymore, they were necessary to blend in with the rest of humanity as I reached my destination. I could’ve walked, but time was of the essence.
The Schema seemed to be located somewhere in Appalachia—Virginia, West Virginia, or Kentucky. I originally emerged from the hills and forests of eastern Kentucky, but had little sense of the distance I’d traveled. The singularity left me somewhat disoriented, at least in its immediate aftermath. I had been bombarded by an endless flourish of possibilities and had to forge my way forward, naked and alone. I passed through a se
ries of small towns before reaching an urban sprawl and travel hub—Lexington.
I continued to mourn Guthrie and Garrick, who had given everything for me to continue along this path. Despite the endless possibilities, my only choice was to reach out for the other Transhumans. They were pulling on threads from several different directions, but I had the sense that at least one of them was stationary in another remote region, waiting for the right moment to emerge.
I had yet to reach out to Gabby, even to let her know that I was all right. Where I had gone and what I had become required the proper attention and focus to communicate. The pull to the others was greater than my desire to be reunited with her. A part of me worried what that detachment might say about me. It made me think of the calls I used to receive, the ones I always felt the need to answer despite knowing that they were nonsense or some elaborate snare from the thing back at the Schema. She would tell me to let it go to voicemail and not to be concerned about it. But it was the business model—I had to answer. That desire for success and validation made me continue answering, despite the actual nature of those calls.
I would prove the world wrong. I would succeed and help carry Transhumanism forward.
The only light I had on in the motel room was that of the bathroom. I clothed myself just as I had a thousand times before, dismissing the warm feeling of new skin. As the cotton and denim pressed against it, I told myself these were only synthetic sensation receptors. But an answer resounded from somewhere deeper within me—the skin I’d left behind consisted of different types of receptors, but the feelings were the same. One was not less real than the other. A human body was just a biological machine, forged over millennia to survive and replicate over thousandfold generations. Where once we were at the whim of nature and evolution, now we could control our destinies and that of our new species. Less an animal and more a god.