by J D Stone
Cameron gently elbowed Ben on the shoulder and said: “This is where our Stranger here cut me off from the story, just when it was getting good.”
“I thought that what I’m going to tell you would be best told just once,” the Stranger said gravely. “This is bigger than all of us.”
“The suspense is leaving us trembling in anticipation,” Cameron deadpanned.
The wind began to pick up a little bit, clouds moved in, and the smell of rain touched the air for the first time in months. Ben looked for lightning on the horizon. He loved thunderstorms. But there was only dark, swirling sky. Another disappointment.
In the far-off distance, he made out a tiny yellow dot. A campfire. He wondered who they were, where they were from. He hoped that they’d make it through the night.
Ben glanced expectantly at the Stranger, who was watching the embers from the fire crumble into themselves.
Finally, the man let out a deep breath, and said softly: “Your father joined DARPA for one simple reason. He needed access and funding to write a code.”
“Code?” Ben asked, his eyes narrowing. Now things were getting interesting.
The Stranger nodded, then said: “The code. One code that could disable or control every AI processor that he helped design in the last fifteen years.”
“And that includes the vagabonds,” Ben said in a low voice.
He leaned his head against the rock wall and rubbed the bridge of his nose; he wanted to close his eyes and think.
A million things flashed through his mind. He’d have to dive back into old memories and gather the clues, anything that’d back up what this guy was saying. Things his dad said, the way he acted, where he was on certain nights — this was going to take a lot of time, and he needed a clear head and to be alone.
But one thing was sure. . . .
“It was the UN deal that did it for him,” he said, speaking up. “When the government handed over the research. His research.”
Cameron grinned and clapped his hands once. “Of course he would, right? That would be his ultimate preparation for his doomsday, even greater than this castle.” He chuckled and poked at the fire.
“To an extent,” the Stranger said. “When your father discovered that the government had made the UN deal, one project concerned him in particular. An important one.”
“They were all important,” Ben said with a shrug. “His scientist friends would always come up to me and say how your Daddy’s research on sensors and neural electrodes helped thousands of people see, feel, touch, and walk again.”
“Wasn’t he the Einstein of AR too?” Cameron asked. “Great going on that one, Dad.”
“Really?” Ben shot back, prickling. “His work was the opposite of AR.”
“Same difference.”
“No, moron, it’s not.” Ben took a deep breath. “In AR, when a person wants to do something, he can just imagine, and the neurons in his brain will send signals to that artificial world where the person can do whatever he wants. But in the real world, someone can think something, and the electrodes implanted in his brain will pick up that electrical pattern generated by the neurons and transmit it somewhere else. That was Dad’s work.”
“What do you mean somewhere else?” Cameron asked.
“Anywhere. For example, if each signal can be translated into a command code for controlling a robot, then that person can control that robot just by thinking. In the field of robotics, it’s called telepresence.”
“I get it,” Cameron said with a fake yawn. “So, instead of moving your body and having the robot mimic what you’re doing, you can pretty much think what you wanna do, and the robot responds. Boring stuff.” He tapped his knees impatiently. Unlike Ben, Cameron couldn’t care less about their dad’s work. As far as Ben knew, his brother’s only interests were girls, shooting things, and living in the wild.
The codes! They were getting off track.
“What was the project?”
“Super soldiers,” the Stranger replied, leaning back. “AI-enhanced.”
Cameron whistled.
Ben rubbed his forehead. “Did the government know what Dad did?”
The Stranger paused. “No,” he said slowly. “It was undercover.”
Ben’s face darkened into a frown. “So what he did was illegal?”
Silence. He already knew the answer.
“But why would he do that?” he pressed. “Why would he break the law?”
Cameron rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Ben, it didn’t matter whether it was legal or not. He did it to protect us, protect everyone.”
But our dad? Ben thought.
“It’s treason,” he said with a tinge of disgust. “No different from that military officer.”
The Stranger looked up at him impassively.
“Look, I get why he did what he did,” Ben continued, “but that makes Dad a criminal. Our dad. A criminal.”
Cameron scoffed. “Look around you, Ben,” he said sharply, motioning across the basin. “You think Dad bought all of this stuff? The weapons, the supplies, the military-grade features? He’s been backdoor dealing with his fellow doomsday buddies in the military for years. It was probably just as good that he resigned before they caught him.”
Ben had never thought about it that way before. He grew up with so much advanced technology and prototypes of so many different things that his dad brought home.
But everybody respected Dad, he thought. They respected his honesty. His honor.
“Dad is no saint,” Cameron said flatly, crossing his arms and shaking his head in condescending disbelief.
Pushing it out of his mind, Ben looked at the Stranger. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You have the codes.”
The Stranger pulled the holographic virtual disc out of his shirt pocket and held it up. “In here. As far as I know, it holds the codes, your dad’s research, the UN files, everything we talked about.”
He handed the disc to Ben. “You can check for yourself. It recognizes both yours and your brother’s thumbprints.”
“How did you get this?”
“When your dad finished writing the codes, he made a master copy of everything and downloaded it into this disc. It was arranged that it should be kept with me for safe keeping.”
Ben cocked his head. “Why not with us?” he asked skeptically. “Why not here?”
“Your father didn’t want to take a chance of it being discovered in his possession. I live on a farm in the Santaluz Mountains, quite remote and far from prying eyes. The arrangement was simple: I’d keep it safe, and in the event of ‘zero hour,’ I’d get a message from your father telling me to activate the next step. And that’s what happened: I got the message from your dad on the day of the EMP.”
“The next step was to get it here,” Cameron said.
“Right.”
“But this was over a year ago,” Ben said. “Why didn’t you come sooner?”
The Stranger looked at him intently with his piercing blue eyes. “I tried.”
“Fair enough,” Cameron said, slapping his knees lightly. “You’re here; you brought the codes — what’s next? We punch numbers and all the robots go boom-boom?”
Ben glared at his brother.
“Not quite,” the Stranger replied. “The only way to shut down the machines is to transmit the codes via satellite.”
“But there’s no electricity now,” Cameron said. “How can that work?”
“Satellites are still up there orbiting space,” Ben explained. “If the electrical grid fails, that doesn’t mean they stop working and come crashing down to earth. In fact, you can still broadcast signals by satellite, but you need a charge as well as access to the satellite you wanna use.”
“Leading to what I was going to say next,” the Stranger said, smiling. “According to your father, the only way to transmit the signal is at this one particular DARPA facility. A laboratory or military center here on the West Coast.”
“Y
ou don’t know where it is?” Ben asked.
“That’s the thing,” the Stranger replied with a hint of irony in his voice. “I don’t.”
Ben and Cameron both gaped at him.
The Stranger held his hands up. “Let me explain. Your father intentionally withheld the location of the outpost. He thought separating the codes from the facility’s coordinates would be another fail-safe in case the disc was to ever fall into the wrong hands.”
“So, what now?” Ben asked, laughing. “The codes are useless!”
“Just wait,” the Stranger said, holding up a finger. “Let me finish. Right before your father’s message cut out, he was trying to give me the coordinates. However, he must’ve recognized that he was losing the signal, so he quickly said: ‘at my house, on my desk, the—’ Then that was it.”
“That’s it?” Cameron asked abruptly. “Really?”
The Stranger nodded. “As part of the original plan, I wasn’t allowed to contact him, so I didn’t call him back.”
“On my desk . . . .” Ben mumbled to himself. He perked his head up. “He must've meant that the location coordinates are on his desk.”
“Nice work, Sherlock,” Cameron said, brushing off a spider that was crawling on his boot. “Of course that’s what he meant. Probably on a sticky note, collecting dust.” He paused. “That is, if the house wasn’t toasted by fire.”
“I certainly hope not,” the Stranger said, rubbing his chin. “That’d put a damper on things.”
Ben stared at him. “You’re gonna go?”
The Stranger looked at him and nodded his head gravely. “I made an oath. To my father. To yours. It must be done.”
“And you know where my parent’s home is, right?” Cameron asked. “Practically in the middle of the city. Probably a hundred thousand deadheads and a thousand vagabonds stand between us and there.”
“He’s right,” Ben said. “There’s no way you’d make it there.”
“Speak for yourself,” Cameron said. “And that’s not what I said. I’m going.”
Ben laughed incredulously. “Seriously? That’s insane, Cam. Insane.”
“What’s insane is spending the rest of our lives in this hole, cooped up like a bunch of flea-bitten rabbits. Eventually, we’re gonna run out of food. People are gonna get sick with a disease, whatever. I’m not gonna sit around and wait to be wasted by those freaks. It’s war.”
“Not to mention the death and destruction that these machines are causing,” the Stranger added carefully. “Many millions have perished.”
Ben didn’t think that many people were still alive in this world, but he knew that the Stranger was including the deadheads in his estimation. He scoffed and looked out upon the dark lands.
Far away, a half-dozen gunshots pierced the cold wind.
The Stranger looked up, alarmed.
“No worries,” Cameron said. “Far away.”
Ben looked for the distant campfire. Nothing but damp darkness.
It began to rain, a few drops at first, but then it became a steady drizzle. The soggy earth would make the climb back down from the cave difficult, especially with his ankle.
“Time to head back in,” Cameron said. He threw dirt on the fire and stomped it out.
The Stranger moved to stand up, but Ben stopped him.
“So, you’re going? Both of you?” He looked at them with incredulous eyes, not sure whether to feel terrified, encouraged, or embarrassed at his lack of desire to embark on this suicidal mission.
“I’d like to leave tomorrow night,” the Stranger said solemnly. “Cam, I assume is coming. I think you should come. And one more, too.”
The Stranger extended his hand to Ben to help him get up. Ben took it.
On Dad’s desk lies the key to the survival of humanity? Is this for real? Ben knew he’d be lucky if he slept that night.
CHAPTER NINE
To the Unknown
THE VAGABOND STOOD in the middle of the garage, clutching a Bowden cable in its left hand. An overhead fluorescent light flickered and buzzed like insects flying into an electrocuting flytrap. The elevator lift hissed as it reached the open floor, and the first thing Ben noticed when he walked into the garage at noon the next day was Tomás rummaging through his dad’s tools.
“You’re outta your league, Tomás,” Ben called out. He walked over to the towering robot, and crouching at a slight angle, he tugged at the cable in its grip.
“Wait,” Tomás said, holding a custom-made tool that looked like a screwdriver with a cross-shaped head. “I already yanked at it hard, but this should work.” Licking his lips, he inserted the screwdriver into a socket in the vagabond’s wrist; with a pop, the hand opened, and the cable dropped to the floor. “Out of my league?” he asked. “I even got the thing to stand up: some sort of gravity stabilizer in its torso.”
“Nice,” Ben muttered. “At least I can still throw a baseball further than you.”
“Farther.”
Ben snorted and picked up the cable and handed it to his friend.
“Pretty crazy couple of days.”
“Tell me about it,” Ben replied, closely examining the markings on the side of the robot’s skull. “The Stranger shows up, and suddenly we have a mission to save the world.”
“Well, you know I can hold down the fort here,” Tomás said, wiping the screwdriver on his shirt. He gave a quick look around, then leaned in. “As long as Aiden behaves.”
“I’m not too worried about him,” Ben replied. “Danna will keep him in his place.”
Tomás looked at him quizzically. “Wait, she said she was going with you guys.”
Ben cocked his head to the side. “Going with us?”
“Yeah,” Tomás replied, his eyebrows furrowing. “She probably didn’t say anything because she knew you’d try to talk her out of it.”
“What about her sister?”
They heard a shuffling of feet. “Izzy’s just gonna have to suck it up.” Cameron strode out of the L3 armory holding a small ammunition belt. “We’re gonna need her big sister’s secret agent skills.”
The Stranger had wanted another person. Did he already have Danna in mind? Ben thought. Why wouldn’t he ask me first if she could go with us? This is my family. Not his. I should be the one to decide.
Ben turned around and walked toward the stairs.
“Where you going?” Cameron called after him.
Ben didn’t answer.
Ben tapped lightly against the door to the girls’ room. “Danna?”
“I’m going with you!” came a muffled reply.
“So I heard,” Ben replied. He leaned his head against the door. “You sure?”
The door opened suddenly and Ben fell forward half a step. Danna was adding a final few things to her rucksack. Izzy was sitting on her cot, holding her legs and knees close together. Her eyes were red, and she was trying not to sniffle.
“Do you even wanna do this?” Danna asked, giving him a probing gaze.
Ben crossed his arms and studied his dirt-caked fingernails. “No, not really.”
“You’re afraid?”
Ben scoffed. “Of course not,” he said, looking up. “But we’re safe here, you know. I mean, I know we gotta do this, but think about it—”
“Wait.” Danna set her pack down and motioned Ben to move out into the hallway. Glancing back at Izzy, she whispered: “I don’t want her listening.”
Ben stiffened. Lowering his voice, he continued: “I mean, realistically, there’s no way we’re all gonna make it back. I just—”
“Need to find out about your parents,” Danna said, finishing his sentence.
Ben nodded.
“You don’t care about everything else? The codes?”
“I do care, but what chance do we have? Besides, the Stranger doesn’t even know where that place is.”
“Yeah, he told me about that,” Danna said. She tugged on a strand of hair, then said softly: “He asked me to go, you know.”
Ben shrugged half-heartedly. “Tsk, why wouldn’t he?”
“Because I’m a girl?” Danna asked, with a self-deprecating but slightly uneasy laugh.
“Yeah, right,” Ben replied dryly. “It’s pretty obvious that you could take on anyone here.”
“Even you?” She gave him a playful nudge.
“Not if I got HULC.”
They both fell silent.
“But seriously,” Danna said, her dark eyes studying every movement on Ben’s face. “Do you want me to come? I know this is about your family.”
“C’mon, Danna, you know I do.”
Ben realized he meant it. He just wished the Stranger didn’t go behind his back. This was his place. His rules. Even Cameron seemed to be letting the Stranger do whatever he wanted.
Danna’s face brightened. “Good.”
“But what about Izzy?” Ben whispered.
“Katie is gonna look after her,” she replied. She tugged on a couple of strands of her hair. “She can’t just live her whole life here, right?”
“If it’s safe, then why not?”
The air circulation vent suddenly hissed, and Ben felt a gentle puff of canned air against his face.
“I think everything happens for a reason,” Danna said. “And this is it — this is our moment.”
“I hope so.”
Ben put one hand in his pocket and held the other one up to the air vent, feeling the stale air breeze through his fingers.
He wasn’t afraid. But he had weighed the pros and cons. What would happen to the group if none of us makes it back? What if people get sick? Or something happens to Katie? Or if they’re attacked again? What if . . . .
He suddenly heard, as if for the first time, the tinny voices of people upstairs and their footsteps on the steel gangways. A sudden pang of guilt hit his chest as if he and Cameron were abandoning the group, abandoning the place that their dad made for them for times like these. As if . . . they were throwing it all away.
What would Dad do? What would he want?
Time was running out. He had a sudden desire to run somewhere, somewhere hidden, and alone, where he could just think. He felt like the decision to abandon the group was his, and the entire mission rested upon his shoulders. And if they failed, and came back to discover the retreat in flames. . . .