The Installed Intelligence Trilogy Collection

by Phoenix Ward

  Karl took a deep breath and let it out slowly through pursed lips. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. Then he started walking.

  “Good morning,” he said as he approached the entrance. “Coffee, anyone?” He waggled the cups in his hands in an enticing manner.

  “Ooo, over here,” the officer on the left said. She took the cup and thanked Karl before taking an enormous sip like it was the first sustenance she’d had in days.

  Karl didn’t break his stride and continued to the door. He placed his hand on the push bar that opened only to those with the correct clearance.

  For a couple seconds, the little light over the handle blinked red. Karl could feel droplets of sweat pushing their way out of his forehead pores as he waited.

  The locking mechanism finally got the signal from the ID Thompson had installed onto his C.C. The light turned green and the door swung open. Karl couldn’t help but sigh a little as he made his way through.

  “Not bad,” Maynard commented. “Pants still dry?”

  For now, Karl thought.

  “Well that was the hard part,” the I.I. reassured him. “It’s all downhill from here.”

  That can be taken two ways.

  “I know. Let’s keep moving.”

  The hallway seemed longer than any internal corridor should. Each second dragged on for hours and taxed Karl’s mind further. Still, he was calm now that he was in the lab.

  “Morning,” he said to a cop, raising his own coffee in a sort of salute.

  The officer seemed too distracted by his thoughts to provide a greeting in return. Karl preferred it that way.

  He took a couple glances down each direction before slipping into his office. None of the police seemed too invested in what was going on inside the building, so long as they knew who went in and out. He’d expected a much larger presence inside, but found it fairly devoid of life. That brought a pleasant sense of relaxation to his nerves.

  “Still remember your login stuff?” Maynard asked like a father to a child.

  Of course, Karl replied. Now be quiet.

  The psychologist was beyond relieved to find out that the network’s incognito logon service was still active. It was generally used by supervisors, so they could look over their subordinate’s code and designs without alerting the coder that his work was under scrutiny. It also allowed Karl access to his account without any logs of his activity being saved on record.

  For a minute or two, Karl couldn’t help but look over his secured files to make sure they hadn’t been changed or bugged for tracking. There were all the transcripts from his correspondence with Dr. Elfa and others. One file included code snippets a colleague, whose name he couldn’t remember for the life of him, had asked him to look over.

  His eyes widened as he started to notice something was amiss.

  It’s gone, he thought.

  “Huh?” Maynard said. “What’s gone?”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Karl cursed aloud.

  “Hey! Keep it down! What’s wrong?”

  The files—our files—they’re gone. All of them.

  “What?”

  Our work! Everything we recorded and kept on our sensory experiments has been deleted!

  “What the hell?” Maynard said. “Why would anyone do that?”

  I don’t know! Karl was in a state of anxiety. That was over a year’s worth of work!

  “Well calm down, alright? That’s not what we’re here for.”

  But what does it mean? Karl asked. What does our code have to do with any of this?

  “I don’t know.”

  It will take months to get back to where we were! Karl’s thoughts were drenched with despair. Why would anyone want to set us back? What’s the point?

  “Well, we both know there are lots of people who aren’t too fond of human-I.I. progress,” Maynard replied. “But hey, don’t worry. I have backups.”

  Karl was taken aback.

  You do?

  “Of course,” Maynard answered. “I wouldn’t trust these systems to even save my birthdate.”

  But that’s against regulations, Karl thought.

  “I know.”

  It’s illegal to take info like that off-site!

  “Well, there’s a couple cops at the front door. Want to turn me in?”

  No.

  “Then relax,” Maynard said. “The data is safe with me. I can’t be hacked.”

  Guess you’re right, Karl conceded.

  “Now focus. We need the lab’s personnel and visitor data and we need it soon. You only have twenty-three minutes and fourteen seconds before your ID expires.”

  Right, Karl thought before closing out of his file browser.

  Thompson had given him strict instructions to call when he was at a computer and to touch nothing else. The psychologist was grateful for that; he was no I.T. specialist.

  “You in?” Thompson asked without greeting after answering the call.

  “Yeah,” Karl replied. “Where do I get started?”

  “Show me the root directory.”

  It felt like an incredibly complex process to Karl as he followed his friend’s instructions, but Thompson watched their progress with near boredom. Maynard remained quiet while they worked, not too eager to break anyone’s focus.

  Everything seemed to be going smoothly, despite Karl’s ignorance, until Thompson let out an irritated groan.

  “That shit’s all encrypted. Go back to the root. Maybe we can find an unencrypted backup.”

  They deliberated over the files for another handful of minutes before deciding they had to start all over once again. Karl was starting to sweat as he became more and more aware of the time passing around him.

  When he noticed a lull in the talking, Maynard spoke up. “Five minutes left, guys,” he warned.

  “Thompson, we have to hurry,” Karl urged.

  “I know, I know, just be quiet for a minute!”

  The hacker was quiet for far longer than Karl was comfortable with. There was even a moment where he thought Thompson had hung up on him.

  “See if you can find some sort of external storage somewhere,” Thompson commanded all of a sudden. “A flash drive, thumb stick, anything. Even a disc would work.”

  Karl started rummaging through the drawers in his desk. He knew it was a hopeless cause as he memorized each and every item he had in his office, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  “We don’t have much time left, we’re just going to have to download the data and leave,” Thompson explained. “But do not put the info on your C.C. We have no idea what it can do or who can track it.”

  Karl’s heart skipped a beat when he noticed the shape of a police officer walking past his window. Out of instinct, he ducked and hid under his desk.

  “He didn’t see us,” Maynard stated.

  “What are you doing?” Thompson asked with a frantic tone. “You need to get that data NOW!”

  We’re going to get caught, Karl thought without much hope.

  “No we’re not,” Maynard argued. “Now listen, I can download the data. Just like the work files. Just open them up and I’ll grab them.”

  Karl’s fingers trembled as he did as he was told. Thompson kept asking what he was doing, but he wasn’t able to focus on a response and open the file at the same time. His brain felt like it was shrinking, and he was quickly losing his ability to problem solve.

  “There, I have them. Now get outta here!” Maynard said.

  Thompson caught on to what they were doing before wishing them good luck and hanging up.

  Karl felt terribly alone now that his friend was off the line.

  The psychologist loathed how clammy his hands had become. He tried with all his might to calm, but to no avail. Still, he managed to pull the door open and slip into the hallway without too much fumbling.

  Before he could take a single step, a voice cleared its throat behind him.

  His blood froze and his brain fell asleep. He c
ould feel the prickly sensation of a limb waking up all over his skull. He didn’t dare turn around.

  “Excuse me?” the voice said after a moment.

  Karl reanimated like a fish being thawed and spun to face the stranger.

  A tall black officer with his hat in his hands was gazing at him under a furrowed brow. His shiny scalp reflected the fluorescent lighting above them.

  “What are you doing?” the officer asked.

  Fuck.

  “Just breathe,” Maynard said. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “Hello?” the officer asked after another length of awkward silence. “What were you doing in that room? Are you supposed to be here?”

  If he finds out the ID is fake or it expires, we are so screwed, Karl thought.

  “If that were the case, he would know it already,” the I.I. said. “He’s already scanned you with his C.C., no doubt.”

  “Sorry,” Karl said aloud, blushing a bit. He did his best to seem bashful, maybe even a little ashamed.

  The officer’s eyebrows raised as he waited for Karl to explain himself.

  “I just… I dunno what happened,” Karl continued. “I started to get really nauseous and dizzy and—and scared.”

  The other man said nothing.

  “I just really needed a moment to recollect myself. I think it could have been a panic attack. Too much coffee, maybe?”

  He gave a weak chuckle.

  The officer’s face seemed to lighten up and he laughed a little as well.

  “Man, I know how that can be,” he said. “You gotta moderate that stuff. Panic attacks are the absolute worst.”

  “You’re tellin’ me,” Karl replied.

  The officer seemed to be in good humor. “Well alright, get back to your post. I won’t tell anyone about this.”

  Karl smiled. “Thank you, that means a lot to me,” he said.

  “Go on, now,” the officer replied.

  The psychologist spun around and walked for a bit before letting out an enormous sigh of relief.

  That was close, Karl thought.

  “Well look at you, DeNiro. Where’d you learn to act like that?” Maynard asked.

  I’m a psychologist, Karl reminded him.

  “Oh, right,” Maynard said. “By the way, one minute left.”

  Encrypted

  Thompson had an ecstatic expression on his face when Karl climbed into his vehicle. He didn’t pull off into traffic just yet, however, instead grabbing the psychologist by the shoulders and shaking him with excitement.

  “Ha ha! You did it, buddy!” he exclaimed. “That was some top-notch lying, if I say so myself.”

  “Thanks,” Karl said. His face was devoid of emotion. Part of him felt surreal, like he was only in a dream.

  “Aw, come on, give yourself a pat on the back,” Maynard insisted from within his head.

  We’re not out of the woods just yet, Karl reminded him.

  The I.I. called him a stick in the mud and remained silent for the rest of the drive home.

  Right after opening the front door of his apartment, Thompson went straight for his computer desk. He gave the old-fashioned mouse a shake to wake up the displays before starting right in with a program search. A window loaded for a minute before he turned to his friend.

  “How do we get those files over to me?” the hacker asked.

  Karl knew the question was for Maynard rather than himself, so he didn’t provide an answer of his own.

  “I can send it anonymously,” the I.I. said. “Tell him to set up a throwaway email account.”

  “Oh, I have hundreds of those,” Thompson replied when Karl conveyed the message. “Lemme write one of them down for you.”

  It took only about seven seconds from when Karl saw the email address to when Thompson received the file in his inbox. He seemed a little taken aback by Maynard’s efficiency, but didn’t pause for even a second before opening the file into his program.

  A wall of text appeared on the screen, filling the document with so much content that the scrollbar turned into a miniscule blip on the side of the screen.

  “Dear God,” Thompson mumbled to himself as the text went on and on and on.

  To Karl, all the symbols looked like hieroglyphics. There were plenty that he recognized—the occasional letter or number—but most of them seemed unorthodox. It was like one of those old fonts that replaced each letter with some kind of symbol or picture. He found it peculiar and a bit childish, like writing “top secret” on a journal.

  Thompson seemed to be just as confused, if not a bit more so. He looked over the symbols with the same frightened eyes a dentist might have if he’d accidentally scrubbed up for a brain surgery. His lips moved as he tried to interpret the text, but Karl could sense the frustration.

  “What the hell is all that?” the psychologist asked.

  “I have no idea,” Thompson said. “I’ve never seen this typeset before, so I don’t have the faintest clue how to translate it.”

  Karl’s brain started racing over ideas. If it were a human being, he’d be afraid of it tripping as he made it work at a sloppily fast pace.

  “There’s a way to decipher it,” Maynard said.

  The psychologist ignored the obvious comment and watched the code grow even larger as they stood there.

  “It keeps outputting,” Thompson said. The symbols seemed to zip past the hacker’s cornea like an infinite highway, lighting up his eyes as he stared.

  “What?”

  “It’s self-replicating,” Thompson explained, starting to type something into his keyboard. He seemed agitated when nothing happened.

  “What does that mean?” Karl asked. He felt like a tourist constantly asking for translations.

  “It means that the text goes on forever. Some might guess that it’s a glitch, but I suspect someone has a stop password that freezes the code in place.”

  “Who could have something like that?” Karl wanted to know.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Thompson replied.

  “Guys,” Maynard said.

  “Could you try restarting the program?” Karl asked his friend.

  “You don’t think I’ve tried that?” Thompson replied. “It’s gone through three complete cycles just since we’ve been talking.”

  “But have you changed your launch protocols?”

  “Of course I did all that, do you think I’m an amateur?” Thompson asked.

  “Guys!” Maynard screamed.

  “What?” Karl asked, once he could take no more of Maynard’s harsh screeching.

  “I know how to decipher this code,” Maynard said.

  How? Karl asked.

  “Just you watch,” Maynard conveyed through the psychologist.

  Thompson seemed lost. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Maynard says he can break the code,” Karl explained.

  “He can?” Thompson inquired. “How?”

  “He said to just trust him,” Karl replied.

  It took an entire forty-three minutes for the I.I. to work before the silence was broken.

  “All done,” Maynard replied. “Thompson should be receiving it on his device now.”

  The hacker jolted upright when his monitor lit up. Karl didn’t have to relay Maynard’s last statement to tell the hacker that a message awaited him. He started reading without hesitation.

  “Dear God, he’s done it,” Thompson said.

  “Done what?” Karl wanted to know.

  “Broken the code. There’s hundreds of pages here,” Thompson explained.

  “All useful?” Karl asked. It was half toward Thompson, half to the I.I.

  “I didn’t filter anything,” Maynard replied. “That’s your job.”

  Karl shared that information, but the hacker seemed far too engrossed in the document to take note.

  How did you do that? the psychologist asked internally.

  “What do you mean?” Maynard asked, playing dumb. “I wrote the code.
”

  You did? Karl was shocked.

  “I did,” Maynard replied. “You didn’t think I’d share my patents without some form of encryption, did you?”

  No, but I had no idea the code was still in use today, Karl reasoned.

  “Of course it is,” Maynard said. “I’m a smart man and developed smart encryption. It’s no wonder people continue to use it decades later.”

  Karl explained Maynard’s knowledge to Thompson despite the I.I.’s protests. He seemed to want to keep the knowledge secret in order to impress, but the psychologist reasoned that desire away.

  “Just none of you forget that the dead have your back,” Maynard concluded.

  Second Nail

  The only thing that halted the work of the three “outlaws” was the sudden introduction to a breaking news story. It popped up unannounced like an amber alert or an evacuation announcement might and gave both of the living humans a scare.

  They exchanged a few curses as video from a broadcast appeared in the corner of their eye displays. It was designed not to impair walking in traffic or important moments of concentration, like surgery. The video didn’t seem to think Karl, Maynard, and Thompson’s work was too important to interrupt.

  “Tragic news coming out of Miami,” a woman of about thirty-five said from under a short mop of red-dyed hair. “Thirteen people are confirmed dead and two dozen reported injured after five gunmen allegedly burst into the Miami Beach Convention Center and opened fire on a gathering of anti-I.I. activists.”

  “Jesus,” Karl heard his friend say, watching the report on his terminal rather than his C.C.

  Karl said nothing. A sense of dread washed over him as he listened.

  “Two of the attackers were shot and killed by responding officers, while two others were reportedly taken alive and are now in custody,” the anchor continued. “The fifth suspect has been fleeing officers in what has become a deadly pursuit. I-95 has been cleared of all civilians to minimize public risk.”

  The camera shifted shots and a woman rotated to face the audience head on. Next to her face was an image of the gunmen who had attacked the building. “Tonight, we turn to Rebecca Rinney, who is on the scene just outside the convention center. Rebecca, what’s going on down there?”