Ganymede

by Jason Taylor

  “Good,” Ava said, sounding pleased. “To the elevators then.”

  Ava walked toward the exit that would lead them from the secure-facility into the lab. The other three followed, sharing puzzled glances.

  “You know there is another squad waiting for us out there, right?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Yes,” Ava responded.

  “And they have their masks up, so they’ll be able to see us as soon as we open the door,” Elizabeth added.

  “Yes, I know,” Ava said.

  “How will we get past them?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Simple. You are going to turn the sedative system on them.”

  “Oh, of course. I can do that,” Elizabeth said.

  “What about us? Won’t it affect us too?” June asked.

  “Two different zones. I’ll re-route the gas into the other zone,” Elizabeth said, looking to Ava for confirmation and smiling when she nodded.

  “How about after? How will we get to the roof?” June asked.

  “How long can you hold your breath?” Ava asked.

  “At least five minutes, maybe longer,” June replied.

  “That’ll be enough,” Ava replied.

  When they got to the door, Ava nodded at Elizabeth. She closed her eyes for a few moments, “It’s done. And the air-car arrives in four minutes.”

  “Very well,” Ava said, waiting a few moments before opening the door. Just outside, four armored bodies were slumped on the ground. “Hold your breath,” she added.

  The girls walked carefully around the sedated squad and then called an elevator that would take them to the roof.

  Jules watched from the control room in disbelief. She’d seen the system trigger a dose of sedative gas into the lab, but before she could transmit a warning to the squad, they were already unconscious.

  Stupid. So stupid! If they had been wearing their masks, they wouldn’t have been affected by the gas. Because of her decision, the clones had disabled the squad and escaped the secure-facility. Of course, if they had left their masks down, they would probably all be dead. “Bloody Hell!” she yelled to no-one at all.

  An alarm triggered on her console. An elevator had been broken into on the seventh floor, just outside the secure-facility. After trying unsuccessfully to shut it down, she checked her feeds to see if Raven could respond in time.

  “Raven-Alpha,” she transmitted. “It looks like they’re headed for the roof.”

  “Already on our way,” Alpha transmitted back.

  “Be aware they can manipulate your data feeds. Keep your eyes on the target,” she added.

  June stepped out of the elevator, squinting into the glare of the setting sun. She could feel bits of debris hitting her face, thrown airborne by the air-car as it idled nearby.

  “Come on then,” Ava said, waving them forward and into the car.

  “Where to?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Bremerton,” Ava grinned. “They have something there that I want to steal.”

  They lifted off in a roar of rotor wash just as Raven squad burst onto the roof.

  Raven-Alpha raised her rifle and fired bursts of needle shots at the air-car as it flew away. The rest of her squad joined in, a deadly fusillade snapping in waves toward the clones, seeking to bring them down.

  “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Jules yelled. “We can’t risk civilian casualties on the ground.”

  “Roger that,” Raven-Alpha replied, lowering her rifle. “We’ll track them wherever they go,” she said, and then she spat bitterly onto the textured concrete of the roof. “They won’t get far.”

  Part 3

  Chapter 27

  The sound of blaring alarms tore Jill from sleep. For a disoriented moment she had no idea where she was. She stared wildly through dull, flickering light at dirty, pockmarked walls. And then she remembered – she was on the seventh floor of the lab. She had been working on the brain-scan analysis, and in her utter exhaustion she must have fallen asleep. By instinct, she tried to trigger her interface to see what was happening but, of course, there was no response. The only information she had was the shrill tone of the alarm and the flashing lights that indicated there was an emergency somewhere in the building.

  Heart pounding, she logged into the hard terminal on her desk and navigated to the notifications system, searching desperately for more information. Should she stay where she was or should she run for the exit? She had no idea.

  Just as she had decided to make a run for it, sedation-gas filled the air and she slumped forward onto her keyboard unconscious, cut off mid-thought.

  ***

  Jill found herself in a dark and echoing space. Sounds surrounded her, but she couldn’t understand what anything meant. The world spun around her, her eyes hunting back and forth, trying to find something to focus on.

  Gradually, the echoing cacophony resolved into individual sounds and voices. A domestic scene defined itself before her eyes, slowly growing more distinct as the darkness was replaced by light and her vision swam into focus.

  Jill was in a warm, comfortably furnished room, a hearty fire crackling in a hearth nearby. She lounged comfortably in a plush chair, generous arm-rests, her legs crossed in front of her; she was wearing smooth, semi-reflective black slacks and dangerous looking heels. Her arms were covered in a variety of bracelets and armlets, most of which were lit up and flashing indecipherable symbols at her. In one of her hands was a bright green drink, an aquamarine thread spiraling through it.

  An odd couple was snuggled together in a nearby chair, her delicate head on his massive shoulder. Sitting across from her was a little man with lumps above the outer corner of each eyebrow. He was leaning toward her, intent on conveying some point, and to her shock, a pair of delicate, gossamer-grey wings extended from either side of his back.

  “Hul, eh meh, tol dah lock?” he asked.

  “What?” she responded.

  He cocked his head at her, looking amused. “Hul, eh meh, tol der dah lock?” he asked again.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, starting to feel worried.

  As Jill was talking, the girl from the couple leaned forward, taking an interest in her. She was extraordinarily pale, skin like alabaster, hair silvery-white, sparkling where it reflected the fire, long graceful fingers tipped with a reflective silver that matched eyes like pools of mercury.

  “Palos alber nock tolar bask oh mara,” she said laughing, her tongue flashing in her mouth, the scales of a fish reflecting moonlight as it swam.

  Feeling bewildered, Jill stood up, wobbling on her heels, spilling drops of her drink on the floor.

  The massive man sitting with the pale girl pointed at Jill and laughed, holding his stomach with one large, red hand, his eyes closed in merriment. The pale girl grasped his other hand as she threw her head back and laughed with him.

  The man with the wings stood and walked to where Jill was standing. He took her glass and placed it on a small table next to her chair, then put his arm around her and led her to the fire, away from the laughing couple.

  “Indol?” he asked.

  Jill closed her eyes, overwhelmed. What was happening to her?

  When she opened her eyes again, she saw the man’s concerned face fading before her, the small lumps of his horns the last to go.

  Then she was surrounded by darkness once more.

  ***

  Jill was shaken roughly awake. She opened her eyes to find Alpha’s hand on her shoulder, the rest of Raven squad arrayed behind her.

  “Jill, can you hear me?” she asked.

  “Alpha, is that you? Why do I feel so horrible?” Jill slurred.

  “You were hit with a dose of sedation-gas. I’ve administered an antidote. You’ll be unsteady for a few minutes, so take it easy.”

  “Why sedated? What happened?” Jill asked, her words coming more easily.

  “The clones escaped,” Alpha responded bitterly. “Tros is in the control room with Jules. You c
an ask her for details, I’ve got more civilians to wake up.” She paused a moment. “Take the stairs. Elevators might be compromised. We haven’t checked them out yet.”

  Jill stood on unsteady legs as Raven squad moved out. The clones escaped? How did they manage that? She walked as quickly as her legs would allow to the control room, her mind reeling.

  Jules was sitting at the console, Tros pacing behind her. Jill had never seen Tros so worked up. She looked like she was half a step away from tearing her hair out.

  “Where the hell are they Jules? They couldn’t have made an entire air-car disappear,” Tros shouted.

  “I don’t know Ma’am. Nothing’s showing on our tracking system. I saw them lift off the roof and fly down Pine toward Elliot Bay, but as soon as they flew over the water I lost them.”

  “Have you checked the video feeds?”

  “None of the feeds can see them. Even when I was tracking with radar, the video showed nothing.”

  “Elizabeth,” Tros said flatly, staring ahead, thinking.

  “Yes, Ma’am. I believe she is still hacking the video feeds.”

  “Where else does she have her fingers? Is she hacking any other systems?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll start an analysis right now.” Jules bent to the work.

  “Jill,” Tros said, waving her in. “Come in, we may need your help.”

  “How did they escape?” Jill asked.

  “I will debrief you later. Right now, we need to work the problem. I have eight dead officers and four very dangerous clones in the wild.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Jill responded.

  “Any idea how they’re hiding from us?”

  “If it were me, I’d shut down the transponder and fly low to get lost in the radar surface-clutter.”

  “You’re probably right. Hacking the transponder seems well within Elizabeth’s skill set. Any ideas for how we can find them?”

  “Keep a close eye on the radar feed. They’ll need to pop up once they reach land. We’ll probably get a glimpse before they disappear again,” Jill surmised.

  “Hear that Jules?” Tros growled. “Get the plan onto tac-net. As soon as we see a hint of them, we hunt them down.”

  Tros’s eyes lost their focus for a few seconds while she received and responded to a transmission. When she was done, she turned to Jill. “Come with me. Dr. Bateman may have found something.

  Jill followed Tros to Dr. Bateman’s office, where he was waiting with Dr. Marks.

  “What have you got?” Tros asked, as soon as they’d entered the room.

  “Dr. Marks and I have been studying the brain recordings made during the interviews,” Dr. Bateman started, “and we found an interesting pattern.”

  “Interesting how?” Tros asked.

  “Do you remember how we discovered a lack of brain activity in the center of the clones’ temporal lobe?”

  “Yes,” Tros responded impatiently, motioning for him to hurry it up.

  “We’ve spent a lot of AI cycles analyzing that particular bundle of neurons, the ones that are dormant in the clones but active in normal humans.” Dr. Bateman continued. “It’s not an area of the temporal lobe that has ever been catalogued as distinctly important. But as it turns out, it is.”

  “It’s distinctly important?” Jill asked, with a small frown.

  “Yes, very,” Dr. Bateman replied, with a smile. “Let me show you.”

  Dr. Bateman projected a three-dimensional representation of a human brain. It was on a physical screen in the room so Jill could see it without the use of an interface. The brain was crackling with activity, billions of neurons firing, each section of the brain green, indicating healthy function.

  “What do you see?” Dr. Bateman asked.

  Tros shrugged and looked at Jill.

  “I’m not an expert, but it looks normal to me,” Jill said.

  “How about now?” Dr. Bateman asked, zooming into the temporal lobe and setting it to spin so they could see it from every angle.

  “Still seems normal,” Jill answered. “I notice that the entire temporal lobe is firing; there are no dormant neurons.”

  “Yes, that's true,” Dr. Bateman said. “How about now?” he asked again, slowing the recording down.

  “I can see chains of neurons firing. It’s easier to make sense of it at this speed, but still nothing that I would consider abnormal,” Jill replied.

  “This is the typical speed we use when conducting a brain scan analysis. Slow enough to see the chains, but fast enough to observe the larger patterns. Let me slow it down further,” he said, reducing the speed so that it was possible to see individual neurons firing, each synapse clicking like the tick of a stopwatch. “How about now?” he asked.

  Jill studied the brain, trying to find what he wanted her to see. She focused on the center of the temporal lobe, the part that was dead in the clones. “Maybe…” she said, uncertainly, then lost it. “No, I can’t see it. What is it that I’m supposed to be looking for?” she asked.

  “I don’t know if I would have caught it either. But our AI did, and that’s what matters,” Dr. Bateman said. “In certain instances, the neurons in the center of the lobe fire a few nanoseconds faster than the rest of the lobe. When that happens, we see the rest of the brain reorganize itself into a new pattern.”

  “That’s it?” Jill asked.

  “Yes,” Dr. Bateman answered, still looking as if he expected Jill to put the puzzle together and share in his sense of discovery.

  “I don’t get it. Why is that important?” she asked.

  “The only time we see that particular pattern, is when the subject is conscious of making a decision. If there is no decision to be made, the temporal lobe executes along a certain, predictable track. If there is a conscious decision, however, that bundle of neurons fires first and the rest of the brain follows.”

  “Wow,” Jill said, stunned. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve discovered the basis for consciousness in the human brain.”

  “I don’t know if I’d go that far. But I believe we’ve found the basis for conscious decision making. We are calling it the Executive Neural Bundle, ” Dr. Bateman answered, sounding proud.

  “How does this help us?” Tros interrupted sharply. “I can see why you two would be geeking out over this, and it sounds fascinating, but how does it help me capture my wayward clones?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Dr. Bateman replied, deflating. “But it does give us a start on understanding what’s so different about them. You see, when we look at their brain scans, we don’t ever see an equivalent reorganization of their brain activity during decision making.”

  “What does that mean?” Jill asked.

  “Humans are unpredictable, right?” Dr. Bateman asked rhetorically. “I believe we’ve just figured out why. Something is happening in the Executive Neural Bundle that changes our brain activity during decision making. In clones, on the other hand, that never happens. I think, given a thorough enough brain scan, clones might be deterministically predictable.”

  “Are you telling me that given a clone’s brain scan, you could predict their future decisions?” Tros asked, leaning forward.

  “Yes, I think so.” Dr. Bateman replied.

  “Now that,” Tros said, standing to her full height and slapping Dr. Bateman on the shoulder, “is something I can use.”

  Chapter 28

  The sun was low on the horizon, dipping just below the crest of the Olympic Mountains, the summits crisply backlit against a brilliant crimson sky. Long shadows reached across the width of the Puget Sound, nudging into the densely packed buildings of Seattle, street lamps flickering on in their wake. The air-car flew low and fast over the water, flinging up a cloud of glowing spray, water droplets catching the last of the fading evening light.

  Elizabeth was deep in thought, unaware of the luminous beauty surrounding her. Her eyes were soft and unfocused, her body shifting unconsciously to maintain her balance as the air-car lurch
ed through the bumpy air.

  While in her cell, she’d had a lot of time to think, and she was well practiced at it now. She let her mind return to her favorite subject of contemplation. What was she? Something new, she thought. Something more than human. She let her mind range back to her seventh birthday. The day she had woken up and started on this journey. Her memories before that day were hazy and incomplete. If she tried hard, she could remember a little girl playing with toys, hugging her mother, reading simple-minded books, and playing stupid games. But she wasn’t that girl. The real Elizabeth had come to life on her seventh birthday, and the old Elizabeth had died. She now thought of that day as the actual day of her birth – the day she had become fully aware of herself, in this body.

  She thought of the world in terms of algorithms and data, and it was how she thought of herself too. Her memories were data. The knowledge she’d gained, also data. Her skills, her abilities, the vast intelligence she could feel bubbling inside her mind – all algorithms. She could fully describe herself as a complex composition of all of these algorithms and their accumulated data.

  When she had been in the lab and she had reached out with her interface, she’d found a vast network filled with exciting new algorithms and fascinating new data to explore. It had been a familiar landscape for her, as if she was moving through a house in which she had lived her entire life. And when she’d found the video feed in her cell, it hadn’t take long for her to figure out how it worked. Tinkering with it had been easy, it was just data after all. Then, as soon as she’d understood the underlying algorithm, she had been able to modify it; and by modifying it, she could trick anyone who was watching. For some reason the humans seemed to trust completely in what they saw. They would have to learn, and she didn’t mind teaching them some hard lessons.

  Humans confused her, actually. Humans that weren’t clones that is. They seemed like they should be describable in terms of algorithms and data too, but their behavior didn’t always match what she expected. There was something important that she was missing. When she had reached out and touched Tom’s mind, he had died. Was that because she didn’t understand his algorithm, or was there some other, more important understanding, that evaded her?