The image of the mansion loomed on the wall-screen. Her focus wavered. The building looked like it came from some Gothic video game with vampires and captured virgins. She wondered if Ridley had included secret passages or a hidden dungeon. Were there things about him that she could never have imagined?
Maybe Ridley was right about designing a fortress. Though the influenza virus had, in a peculiar way, been a pressure relief valve for the world’s problems, cyberwarfare was already returning. Fort Benning’s drone fleet had already been hacked. Terrorist attacks in Perth had capped the latest string of incidents, proof that the unrest had only been temporarily abated. Maybe Ridley had insights into the future that she could only begin to imagine.
At her cottage, Diane fed Kelly and then ate a light meal. The constant worry had taken its toll. She placed the baby into her crib, turned out the light, collapsed onto her bed, and fell asleep.
Her dream was unusually vivid. John appeared in his uniform. He held a single finger to his mouth, reminding her to keep his secret. Diane’s dead parents, in shifting shadows and clouds of gray, warned her that the end was a transformation. She did not understand.
The streets of Rochester melted into Seattle. Diane stood on the roof of the Ukon skyscraper as delivery drones launched like bees from a hive. The missile gave no warning as it slammed into the central library and unleashed instantaneous destruction. The fiery storm tore away at the skeletons of steel as it destroyed the already broken city. Diane was ripped into the sky, pushed toward heaven momentarily before plummeting deep into the charred earth.
A dismal voice uttered resolute and final words.
She awoke screaming.
The room was black. Her heart raced as she sat up. “Lights on”
Kelly shrieked from her crib.
Diane’s eyes adjusted. “What time is it?”
The computer said, “3:23 am.”
Diane scooped the baby from her crib and held Kelly close to her breast. “There now. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”
Kelly slowly quieted as Diane rocked her gently back and forth. Just beyond their window, the stars reflected on the quiet waters of Puget Sound. The question of whether Kelly needed genetic therapy haunted her. She tossed and turned in bed, her mind restless. What if she were the product of a machine? Did it matter? Could anything be done?
Chapter Two
Ridley had planned to nap on his ride to the quarry, but the scenery beckoned him. The car passed through Port Gamble, over the bridge, and north towards Discovery Bay. Mount Olympus glistened in pure white, hinting at the winter season that was to come. The car turned down a snaking road buried in trees, and then down a second before coming to a stop. The owner of a rock quarry stood next to Sven as they inspected pallets of stone bound in wire cages. Ridley was not impressed. “The color is right, but these are too small. Don’t you have anything bigger?”
“We’re pulling boulders from an old stream bed to the east,” the owner said, “Normally we’d crush them for aggregate.”
They walked towards the edge of the quarry and the man beckoned towards the bottom. “There are rocks down there the size of cars.”
Ridley held his hand above his eyes to shield the glare of the sun. “That’s what I want.”
Sven gave him a nervous glance. “You want boulders that big?”
“Bigger if you have them.”
“That’s gonna’ cost you,” the quarry owner said, “Hauling these ain’t like hauling palletized stone. Harder to handle. Dangerous even.”
Sven bit his lip and turned to Ridley, “Maybe we sculpt a few boulders onsite from concrete and paint them? We can replicate the look.”
“I doubt that’d be cheaper,” Ridley said, “These are what I want.”
Sven prickled at Ridley’s request, his back growing stiff and his eyes narrow. He put on a fake smile. “Natural stone is much harder to work with. To place something so huge is difficult for even the most experienced stonemasons. We don’t have experienced stonemasons. I’m not sure…”
“Fly experienced stonemasons in. Figure it out. That’s what I want.”
The quarry owner smiled. Sven started to protest but instead said, “Maybe we can use some at the base of the building and in the landscaping.”
“I want them high up in the building, even in the tower.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible,” Sven said nervously.
“Make it possible.”
Ridley signed some paperwork, got into his car, and left. As he approached Bainbridge Island, thick clouds filled the sky, blown along by a stiff wind. The Toyota was buffeted on the highway as it wound through hilly roads and onto decrepit pavement. He was relieved when the sedan parked in his garage and its charging cable lowered from the ceiling. Despite the weather, he decided to brave the elements and walk up the hill to the construction site. Work had finally begun on the steel frame of the mansion.
The rain fell in sheets; the ground was thick with mud. Tiny rivulets of water snaked down the hill towards Puget Sound. The workers had left early and the worksite was quiet. The steel erupted like a skeleton. Ridley hopped up onto the concrete foundation and tried to imagine the rooms that would follow. The frame of a central tower loomed overhead. Where his bedroom would sit, a section of steel was cantilevered over the edge of a bluff. He tip-toed onto the steel as a stiff wind blew around him. Ridley balanced carefully to avoid falling down to the rocks below. He reached the end of the beam and steadied himself against a steel post. A mist sprayed onto him from the frothy waves. His shirt grew wet. Puget Sound should have been a quiet refuge; but, even this refuge was caught in the anger of a growing storm.
As water dripped from his body, Ridley remembered standing nude in the rain on his patio, his body overtaken by the influenza virus. The cold had broken his fever. Had that been what saved him? Or had it been Diane? The wind grew stronger. Ridley turned and danced across the beam back to the safety of land. When he reached the old ranch home, he marched into the living room, leaving a track of brown mud across the carpet. A bot immediately chased behind him but it had difficulty erasing his tracks. His mother would have chastised him had she been alive.
Ridley changed into clean clothes and then sat at the kitchen table. His old laptop remained as he had left it. He tapped the on button and the machine booted to its operating system. Its screen flickered, a momentary hesitation barely discernable. “Hello old friend.”
After the storm blew through, Ridley walked through the overgrown remains of his father’s garden. Branches littered the ground. He plucked a scented leaf from a patch of mint. Spent goldenrod blossoms were fading to tan and gray. The most persistent of the shrubs, vines, and flowers that his father had planted grew through the tangle. He walked to the plain grave-marker. The tree peony next to it had grown another foot; its leaves were tinted red. He brushed away fallen leaves from the wet concrete. A camellia bush was blooming early.
The hen house was now empty. Ridley had debated keeping his mother’s flock, but the time needed to tend them was more than he was willing to give. His fears were diminished when a young teenage girl showed up to collect them. She gathered the birds and put them in small carriers. The silkies would be her first pets. Her enthusiasm reassured him. His mother would have approved.
Ridley had briefly considered tearing down the ranch home but could never commit to signing the paperwork. Maybe Diane was right? How much did a single man really need? Did he need a fortress? Did he need a lab? The home had nurtured him through one calamity; certainly it could survive a second.
His parent’s grave was becoming overwhelmed with weeds. He plucked a few from the ground and tossed them aside. There were too many to manage as his mind wandered.
Ridley’s visits to Cerenovo were becoming infrequent as his company took priority. He absentmindedly thumbed through photos at his workstation.
Wes brought him a cup of coffee. “We miss you in the morning. Chauncey doesn’t comp
lain about our coffee quite like you do.”
“He must have a perfect sense of taste,” Ridley said in muted sarcasm.
“Everett was hoping you’d write the controls for the low-power interrupt.”
Ridley took a sip and then put the cup down. “He doesn’t need me for that.”
“Chauncey’s a good programmer, but you’re better.”
“I do enough for Cerenovo. The glucose engine works beautifully,” he said, pointing to his lung implant, “From here on out, it’s just lab testing. I can think of better projects to spend my time on.”
“Do you really think we need another AI?”
Ridley squirted hand-sanitizer into his palm. “A more advanced, sentient, AI,” he corrected, “There’s still a virus on every hard drive. We don’t know if that thing was manipulating DNA or if it started the pandemic.”
Wes sat down next to him and leaned forward. He tried to be tactful. “I understand the theory. I get it. But it seems a stretch. We’ve seen no evidence of the botnet on our networks. Whether the flu was engineered is controversial. This idea of a computer program working for 40 years to breed people… I dunno’. I think you’re reading too much into things. Maybe working a little too hard? PTSD can be hard sometimes. If you talk to someone…”
Ridley spun around in his chair. “It’s not PTSD. I mean… I can’t argue with what you’re saying. But, this idea is out there. What if we’re right?”
“You’re chasing a ghost while we make actual progress with implants. Neurotechnology is the next frontier. Direct manipulation of the nervous system.”
Ridley rubbed his hands together. “You’re talking about multi-sensory interactive virtual reality.”
“Isn’t that the holy grail?”
“IVR will require a massive jump in computing capability.”
“Diane’s new processor should be able to handle that,” Wes argued.
“If she finishes it,” he said, before hesitating, “We’ll need new sensors. Neural transmitters. The software is going to be complicated.”
Ridley walked to the glass separating them from the clean room. Diane’s processor, the one used to ensnare the botnet virus, glowed softly. “Diane wants nothing to do with Cerenovo.”
“I know. I can’t blame her. But it’s different here now that Fiona is gone.”
Ridley took the elevator and walked to Edmund’s old office at the end of the hallway. Samuel looked up unexpectedly. “You’re early.”
“I finished up in the lab a little faster than I thought,” Ridley said as he sat down.
“I hear you’ve been out of the office quite a bit.”
“I’m getting my work done.”
“True, but it seems you could be doing more.”
A drone flew past the window. “Have there been complaints?” Ridley asked, “The new cochlear implant is perfect. The patients love it. The glucose engine will make a hefty profit when people begin swapping implants for ones without batteries. Our devices are smaller than ever.”
“Well, the fatties certainly like it,” Samuel said.
Ridley shook his head. “They don’t burn that much glucose.”
“So you say,” Samuel said, “A woman in last week’s trials claims to have lost ten pounds. Which makes me think we might be onto something. Why don’t we build one that does nothing but burn glucose? Then they can eat all they want. Hell, I could use that myself.”
“It’s an interesting concept but probably not something that would get approved.”
“I’ll suggest it to Everett,” Samuel mused, “But… Back to your moonlighting.”
Ridley tried not to be defensive but the tone of his voice became sharp. “My work here has been up to standard. Everett and Wes can tell you that. We worked hard to scale up the glucose conversion modules and get them out on schedule.”
Samuel smiled nervously. “I don’t disagree. It’s just that this AI project seems to involve Cerenovo assets a little more than you had originally promised.”
“What I do on my own time is my business.”
Dollars signs were in Samuel’s eyes. “If you’re using company assets, it’s my business. If you’re going to use our resources, I think we need to define expectations between our two businesses contractually.”
“What do you want?”
“Give Cerenovo a cut of what you’re working on and we’ll open up the entire facility to your projects.”
Ridley considered the offer. “And if nothing comes out of it? If it never makes a dime?”
“Then I will have made a bad deal.”
Samuel held up a document from the U.S. Army Cyber-Command. He presented it to Ridley with a smile. “They granted preliminary approval to work on the AI, by the way. Your name alone was sufficient to cut through the bureaucracy. The geeks there worship you.”
“They’re idiots,” Ridley said, “They have no idea what they’re really dealing with.”
“And what are they dealing with?” Samuel asked.
“The botnet is more than a virus. It’s still out there,” Ridley warned.
“You keep saying that, yet the world keeps spinning,” Samuel chided, “But about your extracurricular work…”
Ridley knew that Samuel had him in a corner. “I’ll agree to give Cerenovo first right of refusal for any medical technology that comes out of this research, but only medical technology, not artificial intelligence. Cerenovo will not have any ownership of my company. Diane and I retain all patents.”
Samuel squinted as he tried to read Ridley’s intentions. “All medical technology?”
“Yes.”
“Are you willing to put that on paper?”
Ridley hesitated. “Uh… Sure.”
“What about Diane?”
“I’ll tell her when the time is right. She’ll understand.”
At the end of the day, as the sun sank low in the sky, Ridley joined a small crowd of commuters on the ferry as it returned to Bainbridge Island. A woman next to him sneezed. He stepped quickly away from her and went to the railing but hesitated to touch it. How many people had leaned against it, depositing God-knows-what germs onto its surface? How long would they linger in this cool air? He put on a pair of leather driving gloves but quickly tucked his hands into his coat pocket. His only other choice to reach the city would be in his car, a trip that would take triple the time. Maybe he could leave early and sleep during the ride? He could avoid people. There had to be another way.
The ferry docked and Ridley scurried off quickly and hopped onto his bicycle. He pedaled as hard as he could, hoping to escape any contagion that was likely surrounding him. His lung implant whirred as it plunged extra oxygen into his bloodstream. He flew down the empty street and down his old driveway. Ridley hung his bike from a hook in the garage.
He considered ordering a take-out meal by drone, but realized that human hands would have touched the food. A sneeze indicated illness. It might be another flu. He took a frozen meal from the freezer and microwaved it instead. Food produced by bots was infinitely safer.
The waiting room had an ultraviolet light over the entrance, presumably to kill germs. Ridley was pleased. The nurse called his name. “After you enter the room, please upload any additional health data from your phone onto the wall-screen.”
The exam room was a sterile white box, like the inside of an ice cube, with two white plastic chairs, a gauzy ceiling with internal lighting, and a wall-screen that displayed a glacier collapsing into icy waters. Ridley unlocked his phone, tapped his health app, and allowed the wall-screen to access his statistics. Graphs of his heart rate, body temperature, exercise, caloric intake, sleep patterns, urine output, and fecal composition splashed onto the wall one-by-one. Only his sleeping pattern was highlighted red, indicating an abnormal result.
The nurse entered and put a cordless blood pressure cuff on his arm; the results were automatically added to his statistics. She removed the cuff and left. Ridley compared the readings to the norma
l ranges displayed next to them as he waited. Doctor Stone entered with an old-fashioned stethoscope in hand. “So, what’s bothering you? Implant problems or…?”
“The implant is working fine. I have another issue…”
Ridley rolled up his sleeves.
Stone took a seat next to Ridley and examined the crusty scabs on his arms. “How long has this been happening?”
“Since the Collapse. It’s a nervous habit.”
“It’s called excoriation disorder. It’s not common.”
“I was at my office in the Cerenovo Tower. Every time I go into the city… My nerves start. I just keep seeing…”
Ridley closed his eyes. The doctor waited.
“I don’t know when I started. I didn’t realize I was doing it. A friend pointed to my arms and I had scratched the skin raw. I would’ve been bleeding if she hadn’t said something.”
Dr. Stone examined his arms. “I can fix this quickly or you can fix it slowly. There are two options. The first is aggressive. We pump iron nanoparticles into your bloodstream, let a magnetic field concentrate the particles where your brain is malfunctioning, and we destroy any connections in the brain directly associated with this. Instant fix.”
“A digital lobotomy? No thank you. The brain needs all of its parts to work right.”
Stone tried to speak in a soothing voice. “We’re not going back to the 1950s. It’s not a lobotomy. It destroys connections formed over many years that will otherwise require years to break. Your brain is not working right. Think of it as a minor programming change.”
Ridley reached for his arms, to soothe himself by scratching, but caught himself. “What will I lose if I went through a procedure like that?”
“A bad habit.”
“What’s the other option?”
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