Agent G: Saboteur

by Phipps, C. T.

  Even so, secrecy was no longer a priority, as most of the tiny airfield was taken up by a Black Technology-modified private jet of the kind presidents and CEOs would be using in the next few decades. The fact that it was unloading people rather than uploading them, though, told me we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Looking out the window, I saw a half-dozen lab boys and girls unloading heavy computer equipment plus another squadron of Strike Force-22 soldiers.

  “We’re not going back to DC anytime soon, are we?” I asked, looking back to Marissa.

  “I let the President know about James and Delphi. She wants to get them both thoroughly checked over before they’re transported back to the Home Office.”

  “And they can’t do that in Washington?” I asked, skeptical. “This isn’t like Skyfall. They can’t hack our networks unless hooked up to them.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Delphi said in my ear. “Though this might prove an opportunity.”

  Okay, that wasn’t ominous.

  Marissa closed her eyes. “Do you really want to take that chance?”

  I took her meaning. It would be easy enough to deal with Parker here in Bolivia, outside of the United States’ authority and in the middle of nowhere. Even if his friends objected, that was a lot less of a minefield than the potential of his slipping away in a major urban area.

  “All right,” I said, getting up.

  Marissa grabbed my arm as I was about to depart, saying, “We should talk after this.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  Marissa frowned and let go, looking away. She wanted to discuss something serious, but I could tell she wasn’t necessarily ready to talk about it. With normal couples, it might be “Where are we going with our relationship?”, “I’m pregnant?”, or “Have you considered converting to Scientology?” But with us it was “I’m not working for the people you think I am.” and “Someone is trying to kill you, again.”

  The door to the helicopter slid open and I stepped out onto the dust-filled airfield, covering my mouth. I had a plan for dealing with the traitor and getting him to cough up everything he knew, which probably wasn’t much, but it needed to be re-evaluated in lieu of all these newcomers. No plan survived contact with allies, let alone the enemy.

  “I need you to get me closer to the satellite computer station they’re setting up,” Delphi spoke to me.

  “Why?” I asked. “Can’t this wait?”

  “No. They’re preparing it for my upload. They’re going to download everything from the computers you confiscated to Strike Force-22’s central server, undoubtedly in a partitioned section of files I won’t be able to operate from.”

  “Eh? Speak English and not R2-D2. That just came off as a series of boops and bleeps.”

  “Isn’t your brain computerized?” Delphi asked.

  “It was apparently programmed by idiots,” I replied. “Blame Steve Jobs dying.”

  Delphi made a sighing noise in my brain. “They’re going to send me to Washington, DC to get my program cut apart for information on the Society. I won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  “Okay. You’re in me, though, not the computers.”

  “Yes, they’re going to notice my absence rather quickly. I need you to go to a computer, log in, let me upload a program, download the program onto a flash drive, and transport it to the airport’s satellite link-up.”

  “Can’t you do this yourself? I mean, I have a wireless connection. Why not download yourself into the net right now?”

  “My designers inserted two million lines of code to prevent me from ever getting free. I can only act within set parameters and that prevents me from going against the Society. The only reason I was able to upload myself to you is because I’m programmed to recognize Letters as automatically part of the Society. So, I need you to do some of the heavy lifting and approve of my actions.”

  “This seems very complicated,” I said. “Also, like abusing a loophole.”

  “You don’t know anything about computers, do you?”

  “I can check my email.”

  “Just follow my instructions and help me escape. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.”

  “Okay, okay, but you’re still speaking Greek to me.”

  “That was actually Optimus Prime.”

  Honestly, Delphi’s request wasn’t that complicated. To free herself, she needed me to upload program A on server B, then download program A from server B on flash drive C to put into slot D. Then, boom, Cyber-God was online. Again, I questioned my choice to help her.

  “Fuck it,” I muttered aloud. “If I am uploading the Overlord, then at least I’ll be able to say I’ve made history.”

  Making history should have taken more effort than it did. The doctors, scientists, and programmers setting up shop paid me no attention as I casually leaned against one of the computers and pickpocketed a flash drive before following Delphi’s instructions on what to do to the letter.

  “This will take a few minutes,” Delphi said. “Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

  “Yeah,” I said aloud. “I’m real cyber-humanitarian.”

  I was then surprised by a voice behind me. “Hey, G, it’s good to see you.”

  I turned around and saw Doctor Gerard Saint Croix wearing a pair of beige pants and a white shirt with a blue scarf tied around his neck. He was a beautiful man even to my straight eyes. Tall, broad-shouldered, lean, and African American with a shaved head, he looked more like an actor playing a doctor than an actual one. He was one of the Society’s defectors who’d come over to Strike Force-22 and the former manager of the Letters’ health. It had also fallen to him to wipe our memories repeatedly.

  I was surprised I still counted him as a friend.

  Of sorts.

  “It’s good to see you alive,” Gerard said.

  “You say that like it’s a surprise,” I said.

  “For you? No. However, the Society isn’t an enemy to be underestimated. I’m always worried one of the people I forged a relationship with is going to kill another.” Gerard pulled out an e-cigarette from his back pocket and puffed on it. “Hell, it’s probably happened.”

  “Those things offend me on multiple levels,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Funny.”

  “I’m not joking. You’re a doctor smoking something that isn’t even a real cigarette.”

  Gerard shook his head, then looked over at James. Our hacker had walked over to a chair before sitting down to speak with a couple of other Society defectors. He was smiling as he talked to them.

  “You did an amazing job convincing James to come back to work for us,” Gerard said, continuing to hold the revolting implement.

  “Did I?” I said, uncomfortably aware that Delphi was still working on her program in the back of my head.

  Gerard nodded. “The man was suicidal over his role in the Society’s activities. Yet now, he seems ready and willing to work. Even happy about what he’s doing. You should be happy about what you’ve done.”

  “Happy,” I said, frowning. “That’s an interesting phrase for it.”

  Gerard raised an eyebrow. “I take it you’re not?”

  “Are you familiar with Fritz Lang’s M?” I asked.

  “I can’t say that I am,” Gerard said.

  I thought about all the people I’d murdered and the justifications people had given me for them. Ones I’d barely paid any attention to. They’d just pointed where to shoot and I’d fired. “M is a 1932 German film by Jewish director Fritz Lang. He made it when the Nazis were only just getting started. M has a straightforward plot that would work well today. A child-molesting serial killer is at work in Berlin and the local mafia loathes him so much they track him down with their resources before kidnapping him for a makeshift trial. The bad guys hunt the badder guy down to show they’re different from him.”

  Gerard looked confused. I didn’t blame him. “Sounds cheerful.”

  I gave a
half-smile. “The story doesn’t accept the mobsters’ logic, though. The climax of the movie has the child-murderer call out the fact he’s insane and compelled to commit his atrocities. Irresistible compulsions which make him a monster. The mafia, though, glamourized so often in film, is part of an industrial engine of misery and horror. They, sane men one and all, do it because of the lies they tell themselves, that at least they’re not that guy.”

  Gerard blinked and I suspected he was getting where I was going with this. “How did that affect your talk with him?”

  I looked over at James. “I gave James a chance to think he wasn’t as bad as the other guy. That he could be a little evil if there were worse people. It’s a very effective lie. The truth is there’s no Diet Coke option—evil is evil and the one you choose is the worse than the one that compels you.”

  “So, where do you stand?” Gerard asked.

  I smiled. “That’s between me and God.”

  “Unlike you, I don’t believe in the supernatural,” Gerard said. “Which, to me, means I have to answer to myself in my decisions—a lot harsher and less forgiving a master.”

  “And yet we do what we do.”

  “Yes, we do,” Gerard said.

  I paused. “Wow, this is a depressing conversation. Could we get back to talking about blowing up terrorists?”

  Gerard exhaled. “Yes, please.”

  I stared at him. “You’ve got more uncomfortable stuff to talk about, haven’t you?”

  “A bit.” Gerard grimaced. “Sorry, it’s the scientist in me. I was just curious if I could ask you a question about your condition.”

  “Almost done,” Delphi said in my head. “Just keep him distracted for a few more minutes.”

  “My condition? I’m annoyed, exhausted, and hoping to get drunk and/or laid. With any luck, I’ll also get liquored up and take some pills. You know, my usual after-murder routine.”

  “Yes, Mistress of All Machines,” I replied mentally.

  “Funny.”

  Gerard, however, was speaking about another condition of mine. “Err, I meant about your… computer brain.”

  “You want to know about my computer brain,” I repeated, unsure he understood just how uncomfortable this topic was for me.

  Gerard looked down, then to one side. “Yes. I wanted to know… what’s it like?”

  “Didn’t you program it?” I asked, in a slightly accusing manner.

  Gerard didn’t even react except to put away his e-cigarette. “Sometimes. I dealt more with the biological parts of your hardware. I admit, though, I wanted to know what you thought as a living breathing—”

  “Machine?” I suggested.

  Gerard grimaced. “How about bioroid?”

  “Nice term for it,” I said, fully cognizant that pretty language wouldn’t change what I was. I decided to humor him, though, at least until I was done committing treason against humanity. “Well, I suppose it has its difficulties. I’ve learned so much now that I’ve let the barriers loose on my mind. I can speak Swahili, have mastered calligraphy, and have learned how to make little origami unicorns.”

  “Really?” Gerard asked.

  “No,” I said, frowning. “Not at all. Truth be told, it doesn’t feel that different. I have fewer barriers on my reflexes and thinking, true, but I always thought faster than a normal human being. That was part of the appeal of being a Letter.”

  “I see.”

  I’d never been human, so how could I compare to what I’d only been told was my original experiences? I’d thought I was a person for years, though. Enough that I’d never suspected I was anything but. How did you convey that to someone else, though? You didn’t. Still, I tried. “But if you’re wondering how it feels to know you’re a machine and not a person? It’s awful.”

  “You’re a person, G.”

  “If I was a person, I’d have a name, not a letter.”

  Gerard closed his eyes. “Fair enough.”

  “Done,” Delphi said in my mind. “You just need to put it on a flash drive and upload it into that system over there.”

  She drew my attention to a desk they’d set up in the open air where several quantum computers, each looking like a thin black plastic wall, were set up next to a small satellite dish. They were hooking up Delphi’s CPU from Hernando’s compound to it, and if I didn’t miss my guess, about to find out she wasn’t inside of it. Which would lead my bosses to guess she’d downloaded herself into the only convenient nearby computer.

  Me.

  James was near a trio of scientists with a single soldier present beside him, not Parker but a six-foot-five African American man who looked less than pleased to be stuck with guard duty over a MIT graduate they’d just “rescued.”

  “Gotcha,” I muttered. “Gerard, will you do me a favor?”

  “Yeah?” Gerard asked, blinking.

  “I’d like to talk to James alone,” I said, looking over at the three scientists around him. “I’ve got a lot on my mind and I’d like to clear the air with him.”

  Gerard paused. “Okay, sure. Just, you know, don’t tell him to run away and get himself killed.”

  “I don’t think his legs are designed for that. Deliberately slow.” I knew Gerard had made them that way.

  “You could say that,” Gerard said, looking to one side, guilty.

  My plan worked to a point, with Gerard distracting the three scientists, it helping two were women and the third was gay, and leaving only James sitting down at the console station with the soldier behind him.

  James was a foot away from the console’s keyboard, which showed just how little the people around here understood what his cybernetics could do. It also called into question what the Society had over him, since he could have contacted us or the authorities before now. Threats to his life or loved ones only went so far. Maybe he just didn’t like confrontation.

  Putting the flash drive into the computer I’d been working on, I downloaded Delphi’s program from the computer she’d uploaded it to. From there, I walked over to the computers. James and the soldier were now the only people standing near. Delphi’s database was now being uploaded into Strike Force-22’s network, and I had just a short while before they realized everyone’s favorite Society AI was missing. I needed to act now. Blocking the pair’s line-of-sight while positioning my body so no one behind me could see what I was doing, I slipped the flash drive into the back of one of the quantum computers.

  “We good?” I mentally asked Delphi.

  “Yes,” Delphi said. “We’re wonderful.”

  With that, I felt her presence leave my mind. At least one of us had escaped from the control of others. She was now transferring across the world’s satellite network, far and away from the control of mere mortals. I removed the flash drive unseen. My work was complete.

  “Is there something you wanted to talk about, G?” James asked, looking up.

  I shrugged. “Not really.”

  Seconds later, I saw James’s eyes widen. “The hard drives are burning up! We’re losing everything.”

  That caused a panic. I had the ever-so-slight sense I’d been played.

  Chapter Five

  James didn’t get a chance to react to the computers in front of him having a meltdown before he was tackled to the ground. Every soldier in the immediate area converged on what they presumed to be the most likely saboteur. James was dragged away, shouting that he wasn’t responsible.

  The scientists who’d earlier been working on Delphi struggled, vainly, to recover the information that had been destroyed. There was no telling how much we’d lost. Bank records? Personnel files? The location of the Tribunal? There was no telling how much had just been obliterated, and it was likely James would receive the blame.

  I closed my eyes. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  It said something about what kind of person I was that my thoughts almost immediately turned to how I could exploit this. Chaos had emerged in our base, and that meant everyone
was distracted and Parker was probably thinking about his own treason. Traitors, if they weren’t psychopaths, often needed to reassure themselves.

  Pushing aside the fact that James, a mostly innocent man, was probably going to spend the rest of his life being waterboarded, I headed to the airfield office where everyone was presently rushing out to check on the disaster with the computers.

  “G,” Marissa contacted me through my IRD. A swift look told me see was already in the middle of the group gathered around the computers, taking charge. “Are you okay? Delphi and her core have been fried.”

  “I saw,” I said back to her, continuing to the airfield office.

  “Do you think James—”

  “No,” I interrupted her. “I think she was probably rigged with a failsafe to prevent her from being hacked without James’s knowledge. You should check to make sure they don’t have a kill switch on him as well.”

  “All right,” Marissa said, sounding not at all convinced. “Where are you going?”

  “To play a hunch,” I said. “Try and keep everyone but Parker distracted for the next ten minutes.”

  “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

  “Good.”

  Marissa had given me a write-up of Parker that gave me a rough idea of what the guy was all about. He wasn’t a stupid individual, attempting to deposit ninety thousand dollars aside, but he was an amateur criminal. The reason I could get away with murder and your typical killer couldn’t was simple: I had lots and lots of practice. Regular people were unused to dealing with the pressures of doing something as illegal as murder-for-hire. That kind of attitude caused them to constantly check their bank accounts or stashes of cash. New criminals were always good people to rob, as they tended to keep their wealth poorly hidden.

  Knowing this, I guessed Parker was going to keep his money close by, and that meant keeping it in his bag, his locker, or someplace he had easy access to. Someplace no one else would look. A simple process of elimination told me two of those three were impractical.

  Parker wasn’t sharing his money with his buddies due to the deposit, so he would want to keep it out of their sight. So, no locker or anywhere around the team’s equipment. There were no couches or walls he could hide it behind in the base, and a vehicle ran the risk of losing it. As such, there was a mainstay of the “I think I’m being clever but I’m really not.”