N302>DREAM FILES ARE CORRUPT. UNABLE TO ACCESS.
“Well, that’s weird,” 62 said as he pointed to the screen. Auntie frowned and asked what that meant.
N302>FILES ON LUCID ANOMALIES HAVE BEEN ALTERED. FILES ARE NOW CORRUPT. I AM UNABLE TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION.
The pair huddled close over the keyboard. Auntie’s fingers were slow, and she had to hunt for each letter before she typed it. 62 fought the urge to grab the keyboard away from her and type the response himself. But she was the adult and he knew that he owed her respect. He sat on his hands to keep from doing anything impulsive, and instead tried to explain to her where each key could be found. Together, they asked the bot if it had any other files that were corrupt.
The Nurse said there were other sets of files deep in its memory bank that were unreadable. Several of them had to do with cognitive anomalies like creative impulses and human deception. But then there were others. The Nurse said that nearly all of them were Defense files.
“In Anna’s journal,” Auntie said as she rubbed her chin thoughtfully, “she mentions building up her defenses in case an enemy arose with a device to destroy her. It was a long time before Curie was finally attacked by the device she feared. Do you think Adaline is still preparing for such an event?”
62 shrugged. “We’ve got a group called ‘Defense.’ I was sent there for a while. They talk about keeping order and enforcing the rules, mostly. But in class once, a long time ago, my teacher said that the people who work in defense are to protect us from our enemies.”
“Well, we’re no threat to Adaline. We’re too small. Too old,” Auntie poked at the wrinkles on the palm of one hand to enforce the point. “Does Adaline have another enemy?”
62 didn’t have an answer, so Auntie typed her question into the Machine. Nurse302 sat for several minutes, fans whirring and hard drive grinding loudly as it thought. When its answer finally typed across the screen, Auntie gasped.
N302>MY PROGRAMMING STATES THAT HUMAN ORGANIZATION IS OUR ENEMY.
“It means us, I guess.” 62 wasn’t surprised. Adaline hadn’t exactly encouraged the humans it produced to be involved in any decision making. And Hanford was a great example of the chaos that human interactions could bring. Getting a group of people to agree on anything, even what was for lunch, took more energy than it was often worth. The computer started to whir again, and more text appeared on the screen.
N302>ARE HUMANS ORGANIZED? YOU HAVE PROTECTED ME. I WAS CREATED TO PROTECT YOU. HOW CAN YOU BE MY ENEMY?
“That’s a very intelligent question,” Auntie whispered. “We shy away from technology because it’s so powerful. But this is far beyond what I expected a bot to think. So unlike the primitive adding Machines we had when I left Curie. It’s like talking to another person.”
“Some bots are smarter than others.” 62 looked into the old Woman’s watery eyes. “They link up together under the Head Machine, which knows everything about Adaline and tells all of us what to do. Lots of bots are pretty basic, just rolling around screeching orders. But 42 made this one so it could learn on its own. Like a kid. But with more equipment.”
“Equipment? Like what?” Auntie asked, astonished.
62 tapped the glowing green screen. “It had lights on its head and tools in its fingers. Hidden compartments everywhere. When it helped 42 change my chip, it broke locks and found its way back to the lab in the dark. There wasn’t any electricity. It shouldn’t have even been able to be turned on.”
“So then, this really isn’t like the other Machines of Adaline,” Auntie said, crossing her arms. “This bot is special. And it thinks that we are its friends.”
“We are, aren’t we?”
Auntie gave a sharp nod. “I think so. Now we’ve just got to figure out how we can help each other.”
CHAPTER 46
THE SECOND 62 TOLD his friends about what Auntie and Nurse302 had talked about, 00’s eyes lit up. He bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet, excited energy pulsing off of him in waves. “N302 isn’t just a Nurse.” He started pacing. His hands sprung out from his body like pistons as he spoke. His eyes darted around the room. “It’s a virus.”
“What?” Mattie, Blue, and 62 said in unison.
“It told us that 42 wanted it to replicate itself if it was installed in another bot, remember? He wanted it to spread through the system. Like a virus!” 00 stopped mid-stride and looked at the confused faces around him. He let out an exasperated sigh and threw his fists in the air. “Ugh. You guys, 42 programmed this thing to hang out on the system without being detected by the Head Machine. But he also set it up to take the side of humans over the other bots. 42 was going to make it easy for us! Whatever bots N302’s programs became active on would start punishing us less. They’d be more helpful, and they wouldn’t report every little thing to the network. Right?”
62 tried to understand everything that his friend was saying. “I guess? I mean, that’s how N302 works. It was a helper like a regular Nurse, but it didn’t alert anybody about what 42 was doing when he snuck out of the lab.”
00 clapped his hands and pointed at 62. “Exactly. If the program spread, like a computer virus, then it would keep helping its friends. And if it got itself worked into the above-ground systems then —”
“It could tell us when to get people out of the incinerators and keep us out of trouble when we were in view of the building.” Blue’s eyes went wide. “That would make getting people out of Adaline so easy! I mean, what if it spread to the above-ground patrol bots? If they thought we were all their friends, they wouldn’t shoot us.”
“Yes!” 00 shouted. “And if we hooked up some kind of antennae to this thing,” he rapped the side of N302’s computer case, “then it could tell us anything we wanted to know. When they are going to get rid of bad people, when systems shut down for maintenance...”
“But if it could help so much,” Mattie said, eyeing the brick of a Machine, “then why didn’t your friend just do that from the beginning? Seems a lot easier than sneaking around to get messages in and out and having to make sure a rescue group was around to get them.”
“Maybe he wasn’t done writing the program yet.” 62 gazed down at the blinking cursor on the screen.
“Or maybe he was afraid,” Blue offered. “Tampering with a Machine he had control of in the lab is one thing, but trying to get into the whole system to plant a program? Seems to me that if it failed, 42’d be in a mess of trouble. If he could even pull it off to begin with.”
00 shook his head. “It isn’t hard to get into the network and change things.” Mattie and Blue turned and stared at 00. He grinned. “I did it. It’s how I got out of my pod. I punched a bunch of commands into the keypad outside my door and put the doors on timers. I made it all the way into the elevator before the bots caught up with me.”
“It’s true,” 62 nodded. “We woke up one day and he was gone. Rumor was that he’d unlocked the doors and let himself out.”
“I woulda made it farther if I’d known what to do at the elevator,” 00 shrugged. “But I’d never seen one before and didn’t know which button to push or which direction to go.”
“So again, if he could have put this program into the system, why wait?” Mattie asked.
“Maybe he was afraid of it,” 62 said quietly. “Maybe he wasn’t sure if the program would always choose to be helpful if it could decide on its own.”
Mattie turned back to the bot. “00, do you think you could talk to N302 and find out if the program 42 wrote for it is complete?”
“Sure.”
“And what if it wasn’t finished yet?”
00 closed his eyes and stroked his chin. “I can read through the commands and try to figure out how he has it set up. But honestly,” his eyes popped open and he smiled wide. “I bet N302 can program itself. It’s smart. Wicked smart.”
“We’re just going to set this bot up to copy itself? And then what? There’s nothing up here to copy it onto to test it
out. We’d have to break back into Adaline to get it into one of the other bots.” Blue’s voice cracked. “And then, how’d we even do it? Throw the computer at it?”
“Woah, woah,” 00 grabbed Blue by the shoulders to calm him down. “This isn’t going to happen overnight. We’ve still got all those computers laying in that building across town. All we have to do to test out if the bot can copy itself is get another computer running and then hook a communications wire between the two Machines. Turn ‘em both on and see what happens.”
“Before that, we should talk to Auntie,” Mattie said sternly. “She gave us permission to talk to one bot, not to build an army of talking computers.”
“Plus, we’ve got to make sure that if we start hooking computers together, they won’t send a signal to Adaline,” 62 added.
“It wouldn’t do that,” 00 insisted. “It’s on our side, remember?”
“It was on 42’s side,” 62 corrected him. “It seems friendly enough now, but I don’t know how much it’ll actually do for us with him missing. All I know is that the bot said it was lonely. If it gets homesick enough to contact the Head Machine, there’s no telling if it’ll keep Hanford secret or not.”
00 looked angry, but he nodded. “I won’t build a second computer until we talk to Auntie. See what she says.”
“See what I say about what?” Auntie croaked from behind the group. Everyone jumped, startled by her sudden appearance.
62 stepped forward. “We think we know how to start rescuing males from Adaline again.”
Auntie found a suitable place to sit and lowered herself down. She folded her arms over her chest and crossed her legs at the ankles, settling in for a long listen. She looked expectantly at the young group of rebels before her. “See what I meant about young determined folks always finding a way to get back at it?” She looked at the conspirators around her. “Well? Let’s hear it.”
CHAPTER 47
IT WAS DARK. A WARM breeze blew in from the unseen horizon, passing over 62’s skin and ruffling his hair with invisible fingers. He saw a light, far away, and recognized it immediately. He swam through the air toward it, knowing it was a break in his dream. Perhaps it was 71, suddenly aware of him once more. Or 42, able to connect after so long away. 62’s arms reached toward it and he willed himself to bolt forward more quickly, not wanting to miss his chance to see them again.
The light flickered.
He willed the speck closer. Pumped his arms in the air to move faster. His heart pounded in his chest and his mouth went dry. He cried out toward the speck, “Don’t leave!” The closer to the break that he reached, the dimmer the light became. It sputtered and sparked, like a lightbulb burning for the last time. Then it vanished. A wisp of shimmering smoke left hanging in the air where it had been.
He woke up, tears staining his cheeks and sweat soaking his clothes. His room was silent, moonlight falling through the window glass and painting a long stripe on his floor. It would be hours before the sun came up. He got out of bed, changed into a set of dry pajamas, and opened one of the books he’d been reading. He lay the Hanford Manual on the floor in the stream of moonlight, but it was still too dim to see the words. He’d read them enough to know what it said though. Hanford was built to be a town of abundance, comfort, and progress. The residents had all been selected to join a great cause; the building of a device that would change the world.
He flipped through the pages, skipping over the too-dark words. Instead, he looked at the few pictures in the book. Most of them were maps, or drawings of smiling people walking in front of a large building with plumes of smoke reaching into the sky. Auntie had told them that these smokestacks were yet another reason for the radiation hidden in the dirt all around them. Radioactive particles had climbed up through the smokestacks, assembled in the clouds up above Hanford, and rained down wherever the winds happened to have pushed them. Anna’s diary said that she’d warned her assistants to follow the same procedures that Hanford’s residents still employed; shoes off at the door, masks on whenever they were outside, and compulsive hand washing.
Anna had even written that she wouldn’t eat the food in the cafeterias where Curie was built. She said she’d had her food brought in from somewhere else. Somewhere beyond. 62 wondered what kinds of food came from this far off place. Then he shook his head. Anna was long dead. The only thing beyond Hanford now was the Oosa, and 62 had no desire to go to where they lived.
He turned the page again to an overhead view of Hanford, the detailed drawings making the buildings look like little rectangles set in rows around lines where the dirt roads lay. The town was set wide, reaching from one end of the page to the other. He tried to think of what Hanford had been like as a new place. The now crumbling buildings and faded facades seemed to want to melt into the hills beyond the fences. To turn to dust and be forgotten. The pamphlet before him showed a place that seemed exciting and revolutionary. Completely opposite of the dilapidated and backwards community just outside his room.
Eyes feeling heavy, he closed the book. He put it up on his shelf and returned to bed. When he lay down, he tried again to imagine Hanford as it had been long ago. He pictured every surface spotlessly clean, the way the bots had kept things in Adaline. He dreamed of males and females working together without awkward gazes or angry outbursts. He fell into the image of a town run with the precision of his childhood, yet above ground and with mixed genders. In his dream he felt peace and prosperity emanating from every corner. The calm joy of the new place made him smile.
He walked in his dream toward the library, replacing the old drab shells of empty buildings with bustling labs and offices. Adults waved and said hello as he passed, tipping their hats and bobbing their heads in greeting the way they did in some of the books he’d read. The sky was blue, and the wind was gone, a day where face masks weren’t needed and he could see everyone’s smile as they passed by.
The library appeared before him with its same shape and heaviness, a block of a building just the same as he was used to. But the color was brighter. The strong, heavy door swung easily on new hinges and the room was bathed in light from lamps and fixtures that glowed with the flow of electricity in their wires. People sat scattered around tables and in low chairs pushed into corners, open books in their laps and mouths moving in silence as they read.
He rounded a corner, and there was Mattie. Shelving books, just as she always did. He stood just behind her, silently watching as she leaned down to a stack of discarded texts, checking the spine for the code that told her where the book belonged, and then stretching to a nearby shelf to place it in its rightful place. She’d put away three books when she glanced over her shoulder.
“Oh!” Mattie’s fingers slipped and the book she was holding fell to the floor with a thud.
62 looked behind him to see if something beyond him had startled her. When he looked back at her, Mattie still stared. It was as if she was looking at him. “Hey,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Hi,” Mattie replied, frozen in her stance. The book still lay open, pages askew at her feet. “What’re you doing here?”
“I was just dreaming and...” 62’s voice trailed off. He looked around again and the other people who had been reading in the chairs at the end of the aisle vanished. He whipped his head back around. “Wait, can you see me?”
Mattie nodded, her mouth pursed tight and eyebrows high. She seemed unable to move from her spot, arm still hanging out in front of her as if she were holding the book that had fallen. 62 leaned forward and picked it up, straightened the pages, and handed it back to her. She quickly snapped it from his hands and held it against her chest. Her eyes bulged and she let out a whisper. “I was just thinking about you, and now you’re here. Are you real?”
“I am.” 62 grinned. He reached out and touched her arm. She pulled back. “See? I’m right here.”
“I’ve never seen you here before.” Mattie took a half step back, bumping into the shelf behind her.
&
nbsp; “I’m not sure how it happened. I’ve seen you in my dreams before. But you can never see me back. You know what’s funny? You’re always putting away books when I see you. Just like you are right now.” 62 beamed. Then he blurted out, “You said you were thinking about me, the same time I was thinking about you. That must be the key to us sharing dreams!”
“Maybe it is.” Mattie’s eyes flitted down to the book in her arms. “I usually just focus on the books. It makes me feel calm. Sorting. Putting things where they go. But I was wondering about you. Wondering what your dreams are like.”
“Do you ever go exploring?” 62 picked up another book from the stack beside her and looked at its spine. He found the place on the shelf with the matching call number and put the book away. Mattie seemed to relax as he shelved the book, and she found a place for the one she’d been holding.
“No.” Mattie pulled another book from the stack, and 62 did the same. Although several books had now been put away, the stack didn’t get any smaller.
“Not ever?”
Mattie shook her head. “I like it here. It’s where I feel safe.”
“What about when The Curator shared your dreams? Did you ever travel with him?” Another shake of the head. 62 paused and looked down at the book in his hands. “Can I show you something?”
She looked at him for a long time, fear and uncertainty written in small wrinkles on her face as she considered the question. Finally, her nervous voice uttered, “Okay.”
62 opened the book. Inside, there was a picture of a lush forest of trees. A pond seeped out of the centerfold of the pages. He laid the book down, open, onto the stack of books between them. “Close your eyes,” he instructed. After a short hesitation, Mattie complied. 62 closed his as well.
The sound of a gentle breeze filled their ears. A creak of branches bending and leaves rustling on the wind sounded like music. The gentle lap of water sounded nearby, and a bird sang high above them. 62 whispered, “Open your eyes, Mattie.”
The Adaline Series Bundle 1 Page 59