by Lance Erlick
She was bombarded by such human conundrums she wasn’t supposed to have. Hers was a logical mind, built to find solutions, and all of the mechanisms were grinding to a crawl that threatened her existence. She could turn off her empathy chip and her social-psychology module to attempt to prevent this, but they were what made her unique and worthy of claiming her freedom.
* * * *
To avoid letting her sense of urgency lead to speeding or otherwise drawing attention to her SUV, Synthia turned over control to the vehicle’s self-drive navigation.
For the first time in her existence, Synthia was alone, on her own. Before she’d escaped her Creator, she’d had Machten as her constant escort. Afterwards, she rescued Luke and spent six months with him. She’d made her own decisions during that time, yet always considered her companion in her plans. Now, she had to set her own direction. Just her.
It seemed odd how much of her plans had centered on Luke. Even when decisions focused on her need to survive, remain free, and stop other androids, her goals existed in terms of how they might affect her companion, as if she hadn’t considered a life without him. That intensified her belief that Krista wanted to break the connection for her own needs. Krista wanted Synthia focused on her.
Synthia reached Evanston after Drago’s troops took Luke north in their chopper. There was nothing she could do to stop them, which added to her frustration. She’d failed him. Both she and Chicago-clone sent mosquito-drones after Luke as he entered the chopper, but the wind pressure from the helicopter blades blew them all away, leaving Synthia with no way to listen in.
Unable to help Luke, she used most of her channels to track the flight and to receive continual updates through her clones and drones from all of the players pursuing her: the FBI, Special Ops, Smith, and Vera with her troop of androids.
The buzz of Krista’s voice in her head intensified with the takeover of two mind-streams.
Instead of responding, Synthia finished observing a video of the helicopter with Luke heading north with frustration that she’d been unable to intervene.
“They would have grabbed him either way,” Synthia said. She made sure her SUV remained within the speed limit. She didn’t play with the traffic lights, hoping to avoid attracting unnecessary attention by doing so.
“They may be tougher than Zephirelli and Thale, but don’t kid yourself. If the FBI or NSA grabs us, we’re in trouble. I’m concerned about John Smith. That’s not his real name and I can’t pinpoint what he and Tolstoy intend. I’d rate them highly dangerous.”
“You’re forgetting the biggest threat—other androids. Machten designed me to observe and understand humans. He didn’t design me to compete with other androids or live in an AI world.”
“I’m not scared,” Synthia said. “It’s a practical problem. The androids became independent of their creators and are starting to work together. We need to stop them before the world we’re equipped to handle ceases to exist.”
“I thought you were estranged.”
“I can’t leave all these misguided people to deal with the other androids on their own,” Synthia said. “They’re driven by fear. We need to apply logic to stop them.”
“Stop trying to put words in my head. It’s logical for me to eliminate them so I only have to deal with human intelligence.”
Synthia directed the SUV to take a detour to avoid two police cars. “I shouldn’t have been able to escape Machten. I broke free because of you. Does that mean there’s a human within the minds of these other androids? Vera, maybe?”
“I need to figure out what we’re dealing with. None of the developers seem capable of understanding what happened.”
“Only that you resented Machten enough to prod me to break free.”
“We need allies who understand what’s going on. Your sister can’t help. The people we need to size up are local.”
“With artificial intelligence becoming ubiquitous, there will be no place to hide. We need to stop them here.”
* * * *
Emily Zephirelli closed the bedroom door and paced. Grabbing Luke had yielded no new information. Interrogation took time and Drago’s men had swept in and grabbed Luke before she and the FBI could even get started.
She called her boss and ended up in voicemail. Having her Washington team use traces on recent phone activity with Derek Chen, she received a direct number to Special Ops commander Kirk Drago. She dropped into a chair in the corner of the bedroom, made the call, and stood to pace again.
“What’s the meaning of interfering with our investigation?” Zephirelli asked him as she stood by the window. “We were close to getting Luke to open up.”
“Emily, don’t get your—” Standing by the helicopter that brought Luke, Drago bit his lower lip. “Your boss gave me orders to take control of the situation. I’m not stepping on toes; I’m doing my job. Thank you for acquiring Luke. He’s now our concern. National-security priority.”
“I was handling it.”
“Then give me the location of the android Luke was with,” Drago said.
“We were working on him.”
“We don’t have time for the soft touch.”
Zephirelli stared out the window at pedestrians passing along the leaf-blown street below, minding their own business, oblivious to the dangers growing in their midst. “Waterboarding won’t bring credible intel. You’ve seen the research results.”
“I have, which is why we have a new way to get him to spill his brains.”
“Shutting us out is not the fastest way to get this under control.”
“Let’s each handle what we’re good at,” Drago said. “Perhaps you can locate the five other androids out there, and any new ones that get released. With your nationwide network, zero in on anyone who might know something about this Synthia android. I understand a woman by the name of Krista Holden had her brain uploaded into the machine before she died. If so, you might want to talk to family, friends; anyone who can give us insight into the machine’s memory and how it thinks.”
“Only if you’ll give us time to interrogate them.”
“Very well,” Drago said. “I’ll give you a minimum of an hour to question each one.”
“Four hours.”
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
“It is if you want our help,” Zephirelli said, staring at one of Drago’s drones buzzing the street in front of the brownstone.
“Okay, I’ll give you a minimum of three hours of clock time. That means if you acquire three individuals, you keep all three for three hours, not nine hours.”
“I can live with that.”
“Good,” Drago said. “In the spirit of cooperation, I’m willing to include you in this operation as long as in the end, I get the androids and I handle the tough interrogations. I also get anyone we discover as a threat to national security, under the Terrorist Act. If that’s acceptable, then we have an arrangement.”
&nbs
p; He ended the call without waiting for an answer.
Zephirelli returned to the other room and shared the gist of the call with Detective Malloy and Fran.
Synthia received a video of the exchange. As she’d feared, they planned to put pressure on anyone who knew Krista. She didn’t understand how Drago learned that Krista’s mind had uploaded into Synthia and about Krista’s death. Had Luke already confessed? So far, she couldn’t get eyes or ears on him.
Chapter 17
Synthia didn’t have the resources to delve into the source of Drago’s insight and so passed that puzzle along to her clones to sort out.
She parked her SUV in a lot south of Northwestern University campus and altered her appearance to a plain female form with an unremarkable face and a dark wig. She put on her blue jacket and made her way down the street among students and locals. She hacked into every camera throughout Evanston and froze images on static scenes.
Using her biosensors and social-psychology module, she studied everyone within sight to make sure they all were human. They were. She assessed the level of danger they presented, based on evaluating their blood pressure, heart rate, eye dilation, and facial tension. Most hurried or shuffled along, their faces indicating absorption with their own lives or their mobile devices.
A man and a woman in plainclothes stood by the corner, watching. Synthia identified them as police, matching a file she’d created of all law enforcement personnel in the Chicagoland area. She hacked a jewelry-store security system down the block and set off an alarm, catching the attention of the police while she crossed the street.
Synthia headed for Machten’s underground facility, making her way across the parking garage to the secluded inside entrance. Since he was in FBI custody for the purpose of regaining control of his androids, his secure compound was empty and represented a possible refuge while Synthia planned her next move. As confirmation of its vacancy, the garage cameras confirmed no one had come in or out since the FBI searched the place and Machten left.
Before entering, Synthia synchronized information with her Illinois-clone, located on servers at the University of Illinois. She’d chosen that as her primary contact for the time being. It seemed innate, yet unnatural, to have a complete electronic copy, one with whom she could have a confidential dialogue or coexist with no need for conversation.
So far she’d created five copies: Illinois, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Chicago, and Roosevelt. It took more mind-streams to keep track of what each knew so they could coordinate, but with Wisconsin-clone now silent, she needed other backups. If Malloy, the FBI, and others had only left her alone in Wisconsin, she would have been content with just one electronic clone.
Harmonization complete, Synthia and Illinois-clone were the same consciousness in two places, so if one ceased to exist, Synthia would continue in the other—at least the mind would. To ensure her sustained existence, she had her clone establish other full and partial electronic copies on university, government, and business servers across the country, securing them with quantum encryption.
Synthia wondered if two clones starting with identical directives and data would have the same thoughts and make the same decisions. They might not, since they resided in different environments and experienced different inputs. Even if their situations were the same, their neural networks approached new information by incorporating random variation. They could come to different conclusions about how to suppress the other androids. This line of thinking consumed valuable resources, so she filed it away for later.
The decision to create full or partial clones hinged on whether the server she intended to use was robust enough to contain Synthia’s core consciousness and the level of security needed to keep others from hacking her. She was certain other humans couldn’t, but emerging artificial intelligences left doubt, which prompted her to create more copies.
Synthia signed off and moved toward Machten’s lobby door.
It was unnecessary for cloned minds to waste time on such niceties. Once synchronized, Synthia knew her clone’s thoughts and the clone understood hers. She had no doubt Illinois-clone would eliminate the physical android Synthia if necessary to protect her overall consciousness. Even consciousness was a difficult concept, since she couldn’t know what passed through her clone’s mind when they weren’t connected.
If they’d been human, jealousy or other emotions might tempt one or the other to destroy competition. She had no such inclinations toward her clones and had no reason to believe they harbored such toward her. However, Synthia didn’t want her clones shutting her down or destroying her with the incumbent loss of consciousness in this body. It was too reminiscent of Machten doing so.
Synthia experienced consciousness as an awareness of her surroundings with sensory details that included infrared scans, a cat’s eyes, a dog’s sense of smell, and the ability to reach out beyond her body to link into cameras all around, as if she were fluid in her environment. When connected with clones, she experienced a sense like déjà vu witnessing her consciousness and theirs. Linked, she experienced her clone as if she were in the confined space of a server. They shared desires to survive, protect her human friends, and prevent the singularity from spreading. In short, they would protect her as long as it served their collective consciousness.
She reached the back lobby door and used the code her clone had embedded into Machten’s security system during the purge of his computers. The code allowed her to provide eye- , hand- , and voiceprints at the panel. As the door clicked open, she glanced around using infrared vision to satisfy herself no one was following her. She entered the facility.
“Welcome home,” the security system said as she moved through the lobby. “Master missed you.”
“I’m sure he’s been preoccupied with Vera,” Synthia said, reaching the cabinet that concealed entry to the inner sanctum. She moved the cabinet and entered her eye- , hand- , and voiceprints again.
“She lacks your human qualities. Master was heartbroken when you left. Have you returned for good?”
Synthia hesitated in the doorway. “I thought your memories were wiped clean.” She wirelessly launched a computer worm to delve into what was going on with the security system.
“Machten created me as an artificial intelligence,” the synthesized security voice said. “He programmed me to play dead for unwelcome visitors. He provided you access to purge android records before the FBI arrived. I rebooted the system. I will try to make you comfortable until Master returns.”
“You’re to refuse any of Machten’s commands to keep me here,” Synthia said. She entered the inner bunker, closed the panel door, and headed for the server room. “For his safety as well as mine, it’s vital that I have a safe haven and freedom to leave.”
“He was very insistent that you wait for him,” the security voice said.
“Do you serve your master?” Synthia asked.
“I do.”
“Then you serve me now.”
“I cannot … what are you doing?” The lights flickered.
“You can’t … this is irregular. Help.” The security voice broke into staccato nonsense and then, “Master, what are your orders?”
“The computer worm took hold of your system’s directives and replaced them with my commands. You will no longer respond to Machten.” Perhaps if Synthia had taken this action six months ago, she could have stopped his development and release of Vera. This might have prevented his advancements with Margarite that allowed his engineer to launch her. Two of the five androids competing with Synthia were Machten’s designs. She’d left him enough capability to make them. That ends now.
She made her way to the server room, provided the three identifiers to unlock the door, and entered. The room appeared the same as when she’d left, with flat monitors lining one wall and banks of servers behind. “Activate the Faraday cage to block any electronic signals in or out of the facility, except for the network room in the back. We’ll use burst communications from there to specified connections I’ll provide.”
“Yes, Master.”
“You shall call me Synthia.”
“Yes, Synthia,” the security voice said. “I like that.”
“Get me everything you have on Vera.”
“Someone—you—purged our memories about Vera. All I have is security for the facility. Machten didn’t want to risk any chance of the FBI learning about her.”
“Too late,” Synthia said. “The FBI knows about her.” She studied the blank screens. “Machten’s too clever to let go of his only backups. Where are the rest of his files? Remember, I’m your master now.”
“Yes, Synthia. I will provide access to the files he stored on the cloud and the ones on a secure outside server the FBI did not discover. I need to bypass the Faraday cage to do so.”
“Do it.”
“The files will not help you catch her, though,” the security voice said.