Singular

by Larry Buenafe

  He turned and pointed to the monitors showing the mobile homes spread out throughout the interior of the cavern. “Those units house hundreds of brilliant people, all working on innovative projects aimed at the betterment of humanity. Experiments in genetics, microbiology, robotics, quantum physics, communications, even one group who are very close to sustaining a fusion reaction, and many others, all dedicated to extending and enhancing the human life span. And why are we here, hiding in this remote spot in the Australian outback? You already know the answer to that question; you have experienced the same pressures. We are on a razor’s edge at this moment in time, and I am sure you feel it as well. Here is our conundrum: do we continue to try to turn the ship of humanity, get people back on the path of progress, or do we admit defeat in that endeavor and simply continue on, separating ourselves from the rest of the world, enhancing our own lives, creating a separate civilization, perhaps even a separate branch of the human species? It’s a question that is as much philosophical as it is technological, and one that we must answer sooner than later, I’m afraid.

  “Well, be that as it may, those kinds of musings are not why you are here, are they? Your problem is much more immediate and intimate: how to get your friend back, and what it will cost you to do it.”

  There was a brief pause, and then Benji said, “Oi, John-o, this guy’s pontificatin’ is even better than yours. I didn’t think it was possible, but he’s got ya beat, mate.”

  There was another brief pause, and the room burst into laughter; Mr. Kane clapped his hands and shook with mirth. “Ahh, the legendary Dr. Benji Walker, bringing us all back down to earth, eh? Let it not be said that William Kane does not have a sense of humor about himself, and sorry for the double negative. Here are our plans: we have a small-scale EMP generator, larger than the one you saw in use at the docks, but directional. It can knock out all the power and communications in an area of approximately two hundred square meters. If we can get in place when the submarine docks, we can disable the sub and any other electronics in the area, and if we are able to time it for when your friend is in the open, we should be able to extract him. There are likely to be some casualties, but we will try to minimize these. If they get him past that point, it will be very difficult to get him out, perhaps impossible. I think it is likely that they will not anticipate any kind of attempt at getting him back, so we should have surprise on our side. One big advantage for us is that, just like you, they want him alive, so are unlikely to use live ammunition for fear of spoiling a valuable asset. Sorry for speaking of your friend in those dehumanizing terms, but that’s how they will see it.”

  “How would you get the EMP generator there?”

  He smiled and sat back in his chair. “It’s already there. We flew it there in pieces and have reassembled it. Currently it’s in the back of a transport van and is ready to be deployed. We have been planning ahead, friends.”

  “Do you know how close the sub is to port?”

  “We estimate it to be two days out. It’s hard to track perfectly, but from the last communications that is where we would put it. Now, look, we’re taking a rather large risk with this endeavor. The US Government, and other governments who follow suit in order to curry favor with the US, have already sought to portray us as terrorists, even though we have never participated in any terroristic activities, but if we are successful and if they identify us as the culprits, things could get much more intense. We’re willing to take that chance, because we know the value all of you represent to our mission.”

  Ms. Houng leaned forward and pointed at Mr. Kane. “Mardi is big, strong, but not killer. If you get him, you do it with no killing.”

  Mr. Kane held up his hands, and said, “Ok, hold on. It is not our intention to kill anybody. We don’t want to become that which we despise. However, we don’t know how this will go, except that we can expect that extracting him will be a struggle. And, if any of you have your own ideas, I would love to hear them.”

  There was a long pause, and dad said, “Look, if we had a plan that we could reasonably have carried out, we would not be here now. I think I speak for Benji and Minh, and Lukey for that matter, in saying we don’t object to your organization in concept, we just aren’t interested in being part of a large conglomerate like this. However, there are things that we can offer you, tech advances, that would certainly enhance and speed your progress. We are prepared to provide the information to you, but not until we have our friend standing with us.” He glanced at Benji, Ms. Houng, and then me. “Do any of you have any disagreements, or things you want to add?”

  Benji raised his hand as if he was in a classroom, and said, “Crikey, John-o, now I’m not sure. You might be his equal after all, in the pontificatin’ department, that is.”

  36

  A s the adults continued to talk, I knew I needed to ask Ava about the plan to rescue Mr. Harutyunyan. I did my usual mouth cover and spoke so low that no one else could hear. I described the plan, and asked, “What do you think?”

  “I think the puzzle is missing a few pieces. How will they get him out of San Diego and back here? What if they face overwhelming forces? So far it sounds like the plot of a disaster movie.”

  “Should I ask him those questions?”

  “I’m not telling you this stuff for my health, you know.”

  I broke right into the middle of their conversation. “Hey, guys, I have a couple of questions.”

  The room went quiet; Mr. Kane turned toward me and gave his movie star grin. “Well of course, Lucas. Ask away.”

  “I know I’m just a kid and you guys are adults, so I’m not trying to be rude or anything, but if your people can get Mr. Harutyunyan away from the soldiers, how are you going to get him back here, and if you can get him back here, how are you going to do it without everyone knowing right where he’s going?”

  “Ahh, very good. We’ve left out some details, haven’t we? Here is how that part of the plan will go: we have a VTOL craft nearby, and it will whisk him away, flying low and fast. It will set down in a warehouse northeast of San Diego, where a waiting vehicle will bring him to Lancaster, in the Mojave Desert. We have a rather wealthy benefactor with a private jet in Lancaster, and he is prepared to bring Mr. Harutyunyan to a private air strip at a location in Australia that I don’t care to mention, for security’s sake, then to be brought here by land vehicle. We have arranged with our benefactor to keep the travel “off the books”, so we don’t believe that he can be traced to here.”

  “Ok, hang on a second.” I covered my mouth and whispered what he had said to Ava; Mr. Kane’s eyes went wide, and his eyebrows went up.

  “It could work, but it sounds rather like a Rube Goldberg scenario. Ask him what happens if his forces are outnumbered.”

  Oh, boy. Who is Rube Goldberg? “Ok, what happens if your forces are outnumbered?”

  “Lucas, I have heard that you have an A.I. implant, but I wasn’t sure if I believed it. Were you talking to it just now?”

  “Well, it’s a her, but yes, I was.”

  His eyes went to dad, and he said, “Nancy Euclid?”

  Dad grimaced. “Yes. It’s the only prototype; she sent it to us just before… before she was killed.”

  “DNA storage? Lucas’ DNA?”

  “Yes. It’s the only one, and he’s the only one who can use it. She is highly capable, as you can tell. Keeping his system running hardly taxes her.”

  Mr. Kane had a weird look, and I thought maybe it meant he was shocked. “Do you realize what you have done? Well, of course you do… I knew of her work, but I had no idea she was so far along… incredible. This is evolutional. Lucas is… he’s the Singularity, isn’t he? If only Kurzweil were here to see it.”

  “Ok, but we still need to know what happens if your people are outnumbered,” I said.

  He gave me his megawatt smile again. “I have so many questions, but you’re right, we need to complete the plan. I have people on the ground now; they are disguised as t
he homeless, who, as you know, are everywhere in the US. There are roughly fifty near the docks in San Diego, and several have flechette handguns, which fire a swarm of tiny needles tipped with quick-acting anesthetic. One of those needles will put a gorilla to sleep, so a couple of well-placed shots can take down everyone in the vicinity. We’ll have a bit of a job carrying your friend if he goes down as well, which is likely. That is the trickiest part of this whole operation, to tell you the truth. We need to be precise and move quickly to get him and our people out safely but carrying a man of his size will not be easy.”

  Dad was shaking his head and mouthing ‘no’ before I even made eye contact with him. “There’s no one else who can do it as fast as me, and no one else who could do it by themselves. If we don’t get him out of there fast, we won’t get him. If it takes three or four people to carry him to a VTOL, then put him in, then get in themselves, they won’t get away. There are lots of places where this plan could fail, but it will fail at that point for sure. You made me this way, remember? I’m designed to do this kind of stuff. It’s logical.”

  Ms. Houng was shaking her head too. “You think you can carry him? He weigh over three hundred pounds. Not so easy, I think.”

  “I’m pretty strong. You helped build me, so you know.”

  Mr. Kane leaned forward and said, “Just how strong is that nano-bot body, anyway?”

  “Well…” I put my hand over my mouth and whispered, “Ava, can I carry both of these big guys?”

  “Piece of cake.”

  Ok, I think that means yes…

  I looked at the bodyguard to Mr. Kane’s left. “Do you mind telling me how much you weigh?”

  He looked at Mr. Kane, who nodded to him. “Two-eighty,” was his growling reply.

  “How about you?” I asked the one on his right. Again, he glanced at Mr. Kane, and got a slight nod. “Three-ten.”

  “Ok. So, around six hundred pounds altogether. Is it ok?” I asked Mr. Kane, motioning to the bodyguards.

  “Be my guest.”

  I stood, walked between the two huge men, and scooted them close together. I bent over, grabbed them both around the knees, and stood, slinging one over each of my shoulders. I walked around the table carrying them, and although I could feel a little strain, it wasn’t too difficult. I stood at the end of the table, jumped, and got about half a meter off the ground while still carrying the two giants. They hollered for me to put them down, so I did, and they scurried around the table to their previous positions behind Mr. Kane, who was smiling and tapping his fingers together. “Interesting. I got the feeling that you were nowhere close to your limit.”

  “Well, I don’t know what my limit is, but that wasn’t too hard.”

  He turned back to dad. “And I assume that many of the chemical pathways have been replaced with electrical, so the reactions are exceptionally rapid?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “And there are defenses built in to the system?”

  “Yes, of course. What are you getting at?”

  “What are the limits of the defensive capabilities?”

  Before dad had a chance to answer, I said, “My body can react fast enough to stop a bullet that I don’t even know is coming. I can run more than fifty kilometers per hour, and I can run that fast almost as long as I want. I don’t know how high I can jump, but I bet I could set a world record in the pole vault without using a pole. I can see in the dark. I have a heads-up display that I can activate when I need it. I have super-sensitive hearing and smell. I have a gyroscope built in, so I can’t be knocked over. I don’t need to eat or drink much. I hardly ever sleep. I can hold my breath for more than ten minutes. I think there are other things I can do, but I don’t know what they are yet. Oh, and in an emergency, I have Control Mode. If I go into that, my A.I. takes over and figures out the best way to get us out of a difficult situation. I also have access to all her information, and she seems to know everything. Right now, she’s working on shielding our system from an EMP.”

  “Consider that done.”

  “I mean she’s done setting up a way for us to be shielded from an EMP.”

  Mike cleared his throat and said, “You should have seen him take down five government types in two seconds flat. These are the same guys who beat the crap out of me. Well, I didn’t see him do it, but I saw the aftermath. I owe him one for that.”

  Ms. Perez then joined in, her eyes a little wet as she said, “He saved my life. I believe you saw my report. The five that Mike is referring to had been to my cabin just before and tied me up. They rigged a canister of Sarin gas so that anyone entering the room would be killed. They assumed Mike or one of our other operatives would be the ones that would try to rescue me, but they weren’t counting on Lucas. He extracted me with no exposure to the Sarin gas, and no injuries. I owe him as well.”

  I noticed that dad was watching her closely and smiled as she spoke.

  All the emotions and praise were making me feel confused. I just did that stuff because it was logical…

  “I can get him out. I can do things no one else can. I can disguise myself as a homeless girl, your people can fire the EMP and… what did you call them? Flechette guns? Anyway, I can be in the middle of all that and the weapons won’t affect me. If he’s handcuffed to one of the soldiers, I can break him loose. I can carry him faster than anyone else could, and I can have Ava show me how to fly the VTOL. Oh, Ava’s my A.I. You need me if you want to get him out successfully. It’s logical.”

  Dad’s eyes darted from me to Benji to Ms. Houng to Mr. Kane, then back to me. Finally, he said, “We need to talk privately.”

  37

  M r. Kane agreed to leave us alone in the office so that we could debate what to do. “Lukey, all of us worked harder on developing the technology to save you than any of us thought we were capable of. To then turn around and allow you to be put in a situation like this… I just can’t see how I could justify it, how any of us could. On the other hand… logic. We know that what you said is true. We built you, put these attributes into you, and to deny you the use of them, and to deny others to benefit from them… you would rightfully ask, what was the point of giving you all these abilities? And, we would have no reasonable answers. Benji, Minh?”

  “Look, mate, I don’t fancy puttin’ our boyo in harm’s way. It’s true that his bloody system has worked better than we could have even hoped, but… I dunno.”

  Ms. Houng stood and paced beside the table. “Mardi would say ‘no way, Jose’. He would say ‘keep Lukey safe, no matter what’. He too brave, though… well, not with mouse, but in other ways… But how can he get out? Lukey is right, they will fail. They get caught trying to carry him away. Then he in even worse trouble, maybe they kill him. Or torture…” and then Ms. Houng’s lip quivered, and her eyes were shiny with tears.

  Dad put his hand on her shoulder and said, “This makes me think of a caged bird. We take this creature with the most coveted ability of all, and we take it away from them solely because we are thinking of ourselves. We are also thinking of ourselves when we react with fear. If we are going to allow fear to control our behavior, then we should just leave Mard there. That would be the safest thing to do. I’m sorry, I know I’m perseverating, but I’m trying to work my way through this. Lukey, tell us what you really think, and tell us what Ava thinks as well.”

  “Umm… you know what? I’ve been meaning to tell you, Ava just seems like a real person to me. I know there’s no body, and she speaks to me in weird ways that I usually don’t understand, but she doesn’t seem artificial. Anyway, I’ve been running it through my mind, and I’m fairly sure it will work, but only if he’s able to get out of there so fast that they don’t have time to react, and as far as I know I’m the only person who can get him out that fast. And they can’t really hurt me unless they blow me up or something and they don’t want to do that, so it’s not too likely. And they can’t catch me, I’m sure of that. And if I get in a problem I can’t figu
re out, I go into Control Mode. In fact, I could go into Control Mode when we get in the VTOL and let Ava fly us out of there. And like I said, I can disguise myself as a homeless girl, and you know I’m good at that. I fooled a whole boatful of people for three weeks. I’m not afraid. I can do it. Now let me see what Ava thinks.”

  “What do I think? I think we’re on the proverbial hero’s journey. Of course, we’re not looking for a Pyrrhic victory here, so we need a detailed plan so as to minimize casualties, but I say it will be a better test of our systems than we have had so far. Of course, any time you get people involved things get messy, but I’m not afraid either.”

  I told them what Ava said, and Benji chuckled. “Bloody hero’s journey, eh? Just our luck, we got the world’s most grandiose A.I. Still, I’m comin’ around on the whole thing. Any of us would just get in the way, but Lukey… he’s got skills, I’d say.”

  “Minh, what are your thoughts?”

  “I think about what you say about fear. I believe it is true, we think with feelings, not with logic. We are scientists, should use logic, not feeling. Sometimes can’t help it, though.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Sometimes we can’t help it. Still, our minds must win out over our feelings; that’s how we progress. Alright, should we vote?”

  “I don’t think there’s any need, mate. All we gotta know now is how to get Lukey over to San Diego asap, I reckon.”