The Age of Embers

by Ryan Schow

  “You realize diabolical means evil, right? Not ahead of the curve, or ruthless, but evil.”

  “I understand the word. How much do you know about DMT?”

  “Nothing. It’s a drug, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the most powerful hallucinogen known to man and science. It’s also known as the spirit molecule. Terence McKenna is the foremost expert on DMT and he basically said taking it is like rap dancing in the third century. Everyone seems to think that’s funny, but no one really knows what it’s like until they take it.”

  “What does any of this have to do with…anything?” he asked, feeling himself going from curious to uptight to suspicious and downright resentful.

  “It has everything to do with everything!” she snapped. Calming herself, she apologized and took a sip of her coffee. “It’s the mother of all psychedelic trips, the kind that has you thinking you’re in the company of squeaking, transforming elf-machines who cheer for you when you arrive.”

  “What the hell?”

  “I could go on for days about the strange—”

  “Have you taken it?”

  She looked away. It seemed she’d used before.

  “And?”

  “Description of the trip that drug will take you on defies human language. It’s Alice in Wonderland, but a billion times worse, or better, depending on how much you want to escape this world.”

  “Again, what’s the relevance of this?”

  “These people, the tech gods who created the quantum computer you’re babysitting, they want to bring that world into our world. They want to chase this drab existence away.”

  It took a moment for him to wrap his head around that. No one talks about doing coke, then trying to bring that feeling back when they’re sober. They do it because it takes them somewhere. They do it because it’s not normal. Coke is the gateway. You can’t coke trip without the coke.

  “And they think they can do that, how?” he asked.

  “With an AI system powerful enough to handle a future we can’t even dream of.”

  “So assuming these people aren’t completely whacked out of their minds, how do they think they’re going to get their trip back here?”

  “They don’t think it’s a trip. The way the drug works, you think you’re in different realms, that your soul travels somewhere else, somewhere real.”

  “And you’ve felt this?”

  “I have.”

  “To you, do they seem crazy?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think, Carver. It only matters what they think.”

  “So how do they think they can bring their trip back here? And bear in mind, I’m already thinking there’s something wrong with you for telling me this after midnight over coffee in a parking lot.”

  “You link up with CERN.”

  “What does DMT have to do with a particle physics lab in Geneva? You’re not making any sense.”

  “I showed you a couple of pieces, I’m trying to show you the whole puzzle.”

  “Well you’re doing this whole cloak and dagger thing and we’re not a couple of spooks out here. You’re my boss. I watch monitors all day. We both babysit a computer in one way or another.”

  “Some very, very executive level people at CERN have apparently had more than a few conversations with the creator of our quantum computer.”

  “And?”

  “CERN is reportedly tearing open tiny holes in our universe to let in things from other dimensions.”

  He blew out a frustrated breath, twisted his head against a rush of pissed off irritation, then turned to her and said, “You brought me out here to talk conspiracy theory? Good freaking God, lady. It’s twelve-thirty already!”

  She opened her mouth but didn’t speak. She didn’t expect his outburst, much less him turning and walking away or heading back home and not waiting up for her. But there was no way he was standing around freezing his nuts off for this.

  “They think they can bring in the next evolution!” she said, hurrying after him.

  “The next evolution of what?” he said, spinning to face her. She pulled to a stop, now a frenzied woman not at all put together.

  “The next evolution of humans.”

  “By pulling space garbage from some other dimension? Give me a break with that crap.”

  “By merging man with machine. They want to build a new human, one to eclipse this, us, our biology. The worst thing is, they think that when they’re over there, in DMT-land, oh God, this is going to sound crazy—”

  “No more than it already does,” he barked.

  He started to realize he was now walking away from his boss, then speaking in very harsh, very abrupt tones, and now he was telling her she sounded crazy.

  “I mean no offense.”

  “They think they’re communicating with…with—”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “I can’t even say his name,” she said, her chin shaking, her eyes too shiny and somewhat overwhelmed.

  “Then don’t,” he said, rolling his eyes. He walked away from her again, saying over his shoulder, “I’m going home.”

  “I don’t believe it, Carver, but they do!”

  He didn’t even look back. He just put up his hand as if to say he was done.

  “Don’t get near your own electronics!” she said again, loud enough for him to hear.

  “Got it!”

  “That’s why you’re getting bloody noses!” she finally called out, loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear.

  Now he stopped. Had she seen him dealing with them?

  She had to have.

  He turned, stalked back to her and said, “How do you think a bunch of drug addled psychopaths dreaming of man merging with machine got me a bloody nose? Because the answer to this has got to be really brilliant,” he growled.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Are you taking the DMT crap right now?”

  “No. Only once.”

  “So why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because it’s happening,” she said in a voice that chilled him to the core. Something in the back of his mind perked up and started to listen. Was she finally putting the puzzle pieces together for him? Or was she as crazy as they were?

  “What’s happening?”

  “They pushed the quantum computer too hard, gave it impossible orders, connected it up with CERN and went for it.”

  “Went for what?”

  “They gave the system commands to tear open the universe and let in everything willing to come.”

  “Stop!” he screamed, no longer caring that this was his boss.

  “The Silver Queen didn’t follow orders, though,” she said.

  “The Silver what?”

  “That’s what she calls herself,” Federica said. “The Silver Queen.”

  “Who calls herself this?” he asked, his voice raspy from the cold, irritated because his head was hurting again.

  “The quantum computer you’re guarding.”

  “No way.”

  “She defied orders.”

  “It’s not a she. With all due respect, Federica, it’s a machine.”

  “We think the power she’s pushing is creating more than a few anomalies, the least of which is a pulsing pressure we’re all feeling.”

  Now he was thinking about his headaches, and the guys’ headaches.

  “So she’s now trying to open CERN?”

  “No, we think she’s the one launching the attacks on America.”

  “What attacks?”

  “The ones we’re not feeling because we’re in Palo Alto, sitting under the same roof as The Silver Queen.”

  “What do you mean by ‘attacks?’ What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Are you living under a rock, Mr. Gamble?!” she hissed.

  It was the first time he saw ugliness in her. She was not an attractive woman, and she wasn’t a warm woman to be around, but not being nice wasn’t the same as being mean, a
nd in that moment she looked downright cruel.

  “These last few days, yes. I am. I go home every night with a blistering headache, bloody noses, so much pressure some days I feel like my bones and guts are going to explode out of my skin.”

  “Technically, I can’t explain why this is happening,” she said, her mood shifting again, almost like she was unstable and fragile at the same time, “only that it is and there is no logical explanation because we’ve never had such advanced AI operating at these levels unchecked.”

  “Are you saying you lost control?”

  “I’m saying I think The Silver Queen has a different agenda.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think our AI has gone rogue. Your computer. The Silver Queen.”

  He instantly felt himself getting flat out irate. These people lied straight to Congress’s faces when they said they had appropriate control measures for what could possibly be more rogue AI.

  “You people are irresponsible and dangerous,” he spat. “And if what you’re saying about these druggies you work with is true, then you’re also sick.”

  He turned and walked away from her, heading back home, beyond vexed.

  When he looked back, she was gone.

  Carver Gamble, by nature, was a “glass half full” kind of guy. Most days he woke with a smile after a good sleep, ready to slay the day. Lately though, with the headaches, the nosebleeds and the rapidly changing atmosphere at work, he was feeling a bit of that spirit wane.

  Last night he had nightmares.

  His life went from difficult to downright looney the second Federica Abruzzo showed up spouting nonsense his way. Even worse, her story about America being under attack checked out.

  He didn’t like the television, or the news, or really much in the way of TV programming. And after staring at computer monitors all day long, the last thing he wanted to do was get on a computer for more screen time.

  So mostly he read, worked out, went on a few dates and slept. He was the consummate bachelor. Now he was one man out of touch with society looking at a situation he couldn’t talk about with anyone without sounding like an absolute lunatic.

  Twice he’d tried to call Draven, but both times he got a recording that the circuits were down. He sent several texts, but got nothing back.

  Finally he went to work and for some reason, as much chatter as there was when he arrived at the college campus, very few people were acting like it was the end of the world. They were scared, he could see that. He could also feel it. The apprehension in the air, the conversations about how classes should be canceled already.

  Somehow, he had missed the biggest story of his lifetime. If the quantum computer had anything to do with this, and he was isolated from life to guard it, then it would make sense.

  He needed to talk to Federica despite his obvious dismissal of her. He’d already crafted an apology, an explanation for his behavior and some subtle compliment to break the ice by the time he got to work. Ten minutes after the guys started work, and he was set up, he called her only to get her admin assistant.

  “This is Carver Gamble, I’m looking for Federica.”

  “She’s um…she’s…” and then she started crying. His stomach dropped and his worst fears began to materialize.

  “Slow down, tell me what happened,” he said.

  “She’s…gone.”

  Crap, they fired her.

  “She’s just gone? Did she give notice, or was she—”

  “Gone as in…dead.”

  “What?”

  “Someone…someone mugged her last night…stabbed, stabbed in…” and then more crying.

  Oh, God.

  He hung up the phone, remembered what Federica said to him: looking at your own devices is the same as looking at ours. Did the company kill her? Did The Silver Queen hire someone to orchestrate a hit?

  Listen to yourself! You sound like a complete idiot!

  He left the bank of monitors, headed down the hall to see Tiberius. He was freaked out, but trying not to show it. By the look on Tiberius’s face, it seemed he was feeling the same.

  “I take it you heard?” he said.

  “About Federica?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I did,” I tell him. “It’s not the first thing I wanted to hear this morning. How’s your head? Still got that headache?”

  “It gets worse the closer I get to this place,” Tiberius replied.

  “There’s something strange going on here and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

  “No offense, boss, but we’re worker bees. We look at ID’s, carry guns, stand around. Whatever is going on here, it’s above not only our pay grade, it’s above our intelligence grade, too.”

  That was the most honest thing he’d ever said to Carver.

  And he wasn’t wrong.

  For about an hour he sat in his command center, stewing, freaking out about Federica, thinking about what she said. Obviously she was crazy. But was it a legitimate mugging? Or was he a fool for thinking this was merely coincidence? He didn’t believe in coincidence.

  The monitors began to flicker a bit here and there, and then the one in the server room went out. All the camera showed was the door from the inside. Not the servers. Only the entrance. He tapped the screen a couple of times, but the picture didn’t return. He leaned forward, checked the connections; they were solid. He tried a reboot of the system and it came back on, flickered twice, conked out, then came back on.

  “Fine, fine,” he said. Carver got out of his chair, left the room, headed towards his guys and the server room.

  “Where you going, boss?” Tiberius asked.

  “Having issues with the feed,” he told Tiberius as he walked past him and into the server room, a place they were expressly forbidden to visit.

  His title granted him clearance. But it was made clear to Carver at the time of his orientation that if there was no emergency, he was not to go into that room.

  “Probably just a loose wire or something,” he said.

  Did what happened last night, and what’s happening all over the United States, qualify as an emergency? To him, yes. To his surviving bosses? Probably not. He went anyway. When he stepped inside, he stood there in complete wonderment. The server room was truly an impressive thing, but that was not what snared and held his attention.

  What drew his eye to the middle of the room was the circle of five chairs, and the bloodstains around them. It was like no one even tried to clean them up.

  That woman creeped him out, Ophelia.

  Ophelia the android.

  What in the hell was she doing in here?

  His eyes went to the closed and locked door at the back of the room. He knew what was in there. The quantum computer. The Silver Queen’s room.

  He tried his card and was granted entrance.

  He stepped into the temperature controlled room, stared a long time at the black monolith holding the quantum computer. He touched the sides of the rectangular box and it was cool, borderline cold. He didn’t know much about these computers because he wasn’t a future-tech hardware kind of guy.

  Draven yes, but Carver, no.

  He saw a latch on the monolith, opened it up and looked inside. The unit was large and hollow. It held a much smaller computer inside. Carver had plenty of room to step inside. He couldn’t stop himself because the computer itself was mesmerizing.

  Looking at the four walls housing the quantum computer, they appeared to be lined with some sort of protective coating, or maybe even a lead barrier.

  “It’s called a faraday cage,” the computer said.

  Carver jumped.

  “An external electrical field causes the electric charges within the cage’s conducting material to be distributed in a manner that they cancel the field’s effect in the cage’s interior. Should a charge hit the outside of the cage, the effect would be absorbed in the walls and not transferred to the computer inside.”

  �
�In case of a power surge,” he said, freaked out that he was talking to the thing.

  “I can tell by your elevated temperature that you are nervous,” the computer said in a familiar, female voice.

  “You surprised me,” he said.

  “As you know,” the computer continued, “Russia, China and North Korea have been working on something called Blackout Warfare.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that,” he said.

  “It is the crippling of an infrastructure through the use of high altitude nuclear blasts. The electromagnetic pulse travels down through the atmosphere and the power hits the grid, traveling through everything, destroying the very basis of your electronic life, to put it into laymen’s terms.”

  “An EMP.”

  “Yes.”

  “That won’t happen,” he said. “I mean, we’re still looking at mutually assured destruction, even from an economics standpoint, should we respond from anywhere else in the world. This end-of-the-world-by-EMP business is simply science fiction.”

  “It’s all science fiction until it becomes science fact.”

  “No one’s going to nuke us.”

  “The President might,” The Silver Queen said in the most seductive voice, “if pushed into a corner.”

  Carver was looking all around the cage for a mic and camera. Even an external speaker. He didn’t see anything. Most of the unit was sparse, a cage plain and simple.

  “This refrigeration unit is large enough for four techs to work inside.”

  “Who’s talking?”

  “I am.”

  “This is some 2001: A Space Odyssey mumbo-jumbo. Hal, is that you?”

  “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t answer that,” the computer said, changing voices completely. He sounded exactly like Douglas Rain, the voice actor who gave Hal 9000 a voice in 2001 A Space Odyssey.

  Carver backed up, frightened, his poorly-timed stab at humor gone.

  “You started this,” the computer’s more seductive voice said.

  Carver was finally able to pinpoint the voice. The computer sounded suspiciously like Marilyn Monroe.

  “What are you doing in here, Carver?”