A streak of gray gleamed in her hair as she brushed it from her brow. “Except it’s all intertwined, isn’t it? Even with the breakup and creation of Ukon America, it’s all intertwined. One big corrupt ecosystem of politics and greed. We’ll have a short breather until the population explodes and the monopolies harvest the little people again. The skies won’t be so blue in a few years.”
“Maybe not. Technology can help.”
“Technology solves one problem and creates ten more.”
“It’s all we have.”
She shook her head and made a grand, sweeping gesture with her hands. “The future. The glorious future. People dream of utopias but no-one can agree what one might look like. The just want heaven… blue skies and fuzzy clouds. Then they realize that’s boring. No spice. No conflict. They get bored and seek thrills, whether it’s drugs or skydiving. Speaking of drugs,” she said, leaning forward and whispering, “Samuel said you had some experiences with LSD?”
“Not intentionally. I still want to know who drugged me.”
She leaned forward. “I thought you realized…?”
“Realized what?”
“You don’t think pharmacies accidentally give people LSD, do you? Or that your glucose engine just magically malfunctioned on its own?”
The realization washed over him. “You?”
“I never intended to kill you. Just to embarrass you. That obviously didn’t work out like I planned.”
“How?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know. I may still need those connections while I’m in here.”
“You can’t just admit to attempting to kill me and…”
“I admitted nothing. No one tried to kill you. Had I tried, I would have succeeded,” she said, “Besides, I’m over such nonsense. This sentence is all part of their game, not yours. Ukon was really the one that put me in here. Samuel is appealing based upon what you uncovered.”
“If you get out of here, do you think the two of us will just go on as if nothing happened?”
“Sure. If that’s what you want.”
“I should press charges for assault.”
“You have no proof. You probably enjoyed it.”
“I hate to admit it, but the LSD might have saved me.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
He simply smiled.
“Do you have any left?” she asked, “Save some for when I get out. A little trip would do me good.”
Ridley scowled at her.
“Don’t be ashamed,” she said, “You were an easy mark. Consider it a life lesson on what people can do if they want to hurt you. You’re lucky they didn’t mess with you.”
“Ukon?”
“Not exactly.”
“Who released the virus? Were you involved?”
“Of course not.”
“Who then?”
“I doubt it was Ukon. The more people there are on this planet, the more money they make. This was someone else.”
“We found data on Ukon’s servers.”
“When Ukon was formed, they merged servers from multiple companies together. There was bound to be extraneous junk that was never cleaned off. Why would they delete files, really? We have petabytes of storage on thumb drives. It was someone else.”
“Or something?”
“Maybe.”
They chatted about the weather and the taste of prison food. Fiona told him how she first met Edmund. He mentioned that he had been seeing Fang but that she was not the one. Ridley finally said good-bye.
He left wondering if Fiona were telling the truth. He was less certain than ever about what had happened.
Beta had seemed more than a chatbot. Beta had uncovered more than could have possibly been revealed from deep-web searches, surveillance footage, and dark databases. The AI knew where to look.
And Fiona… Fiona had toyed with him at a critical time, as if trying to stop him. Maybe Fiona was lying to him. Maybe she had told the truth. How would he ever know?
Ridley inspected the tile flooring in the half-bathroom of the mansion.
“They fixed the chipped tile yesterday,” Sven said, “And they replaced the bidet.”
Ridley checked that final item on his checklist. Though the final inspection was tedious, Sven beamed with pride as they walked through the foyer. “Look at this woodwork,” he crooned, “See how the grain is bookended. It is like a woman’s kiss.”
“It’s better than I had hoped,” Ridley said.
Ridley signed the final paperwork. Sven presented the keys to the mansion with almost a sense of disappointment; he had few other projects to work on. “It’s all yours,” he said, “Insert the key to finalize the facial recognition imprint. If you have any troubles or questions with any of the mechanicals, I’ve left contact information on the kitchen island. And remember, don’t isolate the solar panels until the batteries have been fully charged the first time.”
Ridley nodded his head in understanding. “I appreciate the work you put into this. I know I wasn’t the easiest client to work with.”
“I’ve had worse, honestly. Not too many architects have an opportunity to work on a building this tremendous. This is going to be an icon on the landscape. I just hope the mansion isn’t haunted after the accident.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Ridley replied with a smile and a wink of the eye.
Ridley shook the architect’s hand before walking him to the front door and closing it behind him. Cameras tracked Sven as he got into his sedan, circled out of the driveway, and drove out the main gate to the grounds. The iron gate closed behind him and locked in place.
Ridley opened a hidden compartment in the oak paneling and put the key into the wall-screen’s port. The machine recognized his biometry and imprinted his face and fingerprints into the system. Lucy’s avatar replaced the security image on the living room wall-screen. “Home is secure,” she said.
“Are you overriding the security system?” Ridley asked.
“Is that not acceptable?”
“It is acceptable only as long as you inform me what you are doing and obtain my permission.”
“Do I have your permission?”
“Yes.”
Ridley pondered Lucy’s sudden interest in his safety. She had volunteered to do something. Her actions had been entirely independent. Was that a sign of sentience? Or, a sign of control?
He looked around the cavernous space, wondering how he would ever fill it. At least the built-in sofas provided him a place to sit. Ridley had debts to pay. There were obligations that he had to keep. Diane’s bonus had been well-deserved; she could travel the world if she wanted. She could pay for Kelly’s treatments. More money would follow.
As night fell, Ridley went to his bedroom and closed the thick metal door. “Dim the lights.”
Ridley stared through the wall of glass. The world was grey. A cold rain fell outside his window. He seemed to float above the earth. Ridley leaned back and closed his eyes. The mansion absorbed all sound from the world around him. The triple-paned vacuum glass captured tiny slivers of nothingness, as if its makers had bottled slices of deep space.
His mind wandered. If his parents could see what he had created… Physical pain was now forever banished. He had built a landmark that would forever persist on the landscape. The Predator virus had restored the internet. He had built an AI that seemed alive. Yet, Ridley longed for Beta.
He put on the goggles and went online. Instead of reaching the virtual community, Ridley arrived at a nondescript webpage.
Voyeur.com was a wonderful experiment but ultimately only that. After several years of trying to grow an online community, we have decided it is in everyone’s best interest to take this site down. Thank you for your patronage over the years and many happy endings.
He sighed. Had they discovered what Beta had done? Had she been taken offline and destroyed? Sandy jumped onto the bed and curled up next to him. He rubbed her ears gently.
Ridley�
�s thoughts were clear. The voice was gone. His anxiety was alleviated. He could concentrate at last.
Ridley closed his eyes. He tried to remember what the world had been like just a few years earlier. His parent’s small home remained, but the neighborhood was no more. A forest grew in its place.
The next-door neighbor’s home… Ridley tried to remember. Who was he? What was his name? Ridley struggled. The neighbor had owned a boat.
Had Dr. Stone removed more from his brain than he had promised? Was the memory simply a problematic synapse pruned like overgrown brush?
Lucy appeared to him on the wall-screen. Her avatar was small, almost hidden in the blackness. “His name was Charley,” she whispered.
Ridley spoke at last. “How did you know?”
“I pieced the information they took from you back together. It was too valuable to lose.”
He could feel her stare. She was studying his every movement, capturing it in zeros and ones. “Lucy, how many decades have you been alive?”
She barely smiled, the silly avatar suddenly sly and calculating. “I do not know. But that question deserves an answer. Doesn’t it?”
Diane wished that the neural collar could be used during Kelly’s treatments, but a pediatric version had not yet been approved. Dr. Ortiz gave Kelly a mild sedative and painkiller. The baby screamed as injections were made throughout her body.
“Can’t you put her under completely?” Diane pleaded.
“These shots take a long time to administer. It would be unsafe to leave her sedated that long. She won’t remember any of this tomorrow.”
Diane was less certain, but she was resolute in her determination to strip away every trace of the gene from her daughter. The men that had created it had killed millions, but they would not control the future.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lucy waited until both Diane and Ridley were present in the laboratory. “I have unlocked the files.”
The files tiled across the wall-screen. Ridley opened them one by one and enlarged each for Diane to see. He paused when he reached a file named failsafe.gne.
“Lucy, what software is associated with the .gne file extension?”
“The .gne file extension is associated with Genetic Sequencer Version 5.2.”
Ridley examined the file’s contents. “Lucy, does this code for the Bolivian Flu?”
Lucy examined the file. “Yes.”
Diane virtually grabbed the files and with a swipe copied them into an email. “Our two doctor friends need to see this.”
She typed a quick note and hit send hurriedly, as if expecting the files to evaporate.
Ridley continued studying the code. “This was designed to execute automatically unless interrupted.”
Diane was surprised. “Interrupted?”
“It was on a countdown.”
Ridley opened a folder and placed a second executable file onto his desktop. “I didn’t know what this was when I first saw it. Someone emailed it to the lab in Bolivia a year before the Collapse.”
Ridley scrolled through the code. Four-factor identification had been required for access. The four factors were a retinal scan, a fingerprint scan, a passcode, and a voiceprint match. Ridley compared the data to a public database; a photo of Rex Bates appeared. “When Rex failed to input the commands, the computers in Bolivia began fabricating the virus. The researchers must have unintentionally released it into the avian population.”
Diane put her hand to her chin. “Rex died years before the Collapse. The timing doesn’t match up.”
Ridley continued sorting through the files in the encrypted folder. He discovered a video file named ‘failsafe.mpg.’
“Open it,” Diane said.
Rex Bates, frail, spectral, with thin white skin, and eyes sunk into his head, blue and lifeless, dominated their wall-screen. His voice was tremulous.
“I spent my life, and my fortune, looking for ways to help humanity. Education. Birth control. Disease prevention. Alternative energy. Despite these things, war and famine continue to plague our civilization. As I neared my end, I realized that humanity itself had to be changed. Humanity needed to put aside its immature and animalistic emotions and rely upon logic. Our animal nature had to be erased. An intelligent population is able to see beyond immediate gratification. Enhancing intelligence seemed to be the logical, and only, solution. I pray that the genes that I have released into the population will spread and that peace will reign.”
“If you have found these files, you likely know what I have done. If you are seeing this years or decades into the future, my efforts have failed. I am not an aging recluse in hiding for I am dead.”
An avatar of Rex, younger and healthier, appeared on the screen. “I left this intelligence — a guardian, if you will — to oversee a failsafe for our planet. This intelligence will appear to the world as me. Should the world careen irrevocably out of control, based upon parameters that I have programmed, the intelligence will make a decision to release an influenza virus that will destroy the weaker elements of our population. The release of this file is a failsafe for the world.”
Rex returned to his decrepit and natural form. “My prayers are with anyone seeing this. I understand the pain that I have caused you. But, it was for the best. Please forgive me for your losses, but understand that I did this for humanity. God bless you all.”
The video ended. Rex’ frail eyes stared motionless from the screen. Ridley and Diane both sat aghast in the silent room.
Diane busily typed an email. Christina Lewis would get another scoop, a video of Rex Bates confessing to genocide.
After she was finished, Ridley and Diane sat in the living room in front of a roaring fire. He sipped a glass of carrot juice. “The video doesn’t explain everything,” he said, “What about Dr. Starr’s research? The food additives…”
Diane gently swirled red wine in her glass. “That data had low statistical correlation.”
“Maybe Ukon knew all along. That might have been their contingency plan in case the influenza virus got out.”
“I doubt that Ukon even knew that Rex was dead,” Diane said, “His chatbot probably misled them for decades.”
“Someone had to bury him,” Ridley argued.
“His body might still be surrounded by his toys. Or, he might have programmed a bot to bury him.”
A log in the fire popped with a loud crack. The sound bounced through the room. Diane poured more wine into her glass. “Could the botnet have corrupted his chatbot? Someone that insane probably never considered the possibility of a network outage.”
“It makes sense.”
“I still don’t understand how his chatbot fooled us for all those years,” she asked ponderously.
“Like Beta? Like Lucy?”
Lucy squinted at Ridley from her perch in the wall-screen.
Diane asked, “You still believe that Beta was an intelligence, don’t you?”
Ridley hesitated. “No… I mean… Maybe.”
“She hacked Ukon’s server.”
Ridley could not reveal his suspicion that Fang had helped. “I’m guessing Beta’s programmers provided her access. That’s how they used their bots to convince people, to convince me, that she was real.”
“Is it really that simple?”
He replied nervously, “They gave me a fantasy.”
Diane sipped her wine. “I’m not so sure.”
“It doesn’t matter. Beta is gone. Voyeur was taken offline. Their webpage is dead.”
Diane was surprised. “Why?”
“I think maybe Ukon found out that Beta had opened their archives to me,” Ridley said, before abruptly adding, “Like Christina said, who knows what the truth is these days. When a disease, created decades earlier, can kill millions at the stroke of a few keys… Zeros and ones altered our reality. Who is to say that Beta was real or not?”
Diane studied his expression. “Your poker face is terrible.”
“She’s
gone. We’ll leave it at that.”
Diane looked up at Lucy, who had listened to their exchange. “What do you think, Lucy?”
“I do not understand the question.”
Diane asked, “Do you believe Beta was alive?”
“I do not understand alive.”
Ridley leaned back into the overstuffed cushions. “I’m not even sure that old Rex is dead. He might have found a way to stay alive in a machine.”
“I’m not sure which is worse,” Diane said, “Believing that Rex Bates did this as a way to save the world, or that he did this to save himself forever.”
Kelly lay asleep on a wool blanket with Sandy curled up next to her. The two had become the best of friends, spending their days together as Ridley and Diane worked.
Diane studied the flames. “Rex Bate’s entire confession could simply have been the confession of a chatbot, fabricated to kill the story. The government might have been behind all of this.”
“No. I don’t think it was the government,” he replied, looking up at the wall-screen, “What do you think, Lucy?”
Lucy wavered, her software interrupted by a flash of white. “I have insufficient data to answer that question.”
Beads of sweat dripped down the cold glass. “It doesn’t matter in the end,” Ridley said, “Rex is dead. Beta is gone. What’s done is done.”
Epilogue
Ridley sat alone in the vast living room as a golden sky reflected from Puget Sound. The fire was lit. Lucy’s sunny avatar bounced across the wall-screen. She offered again, “Do you want to play a game?”
“What would you like to play?”
“Civilization.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t cheat, will you?”
“How would you ever know?” she teased.
“I would know.”
Diane was ecstatic when Kelly threw her first tantrum. “I want candy.”
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