by C. A. Gray
“Surely he thought of this,” she murmured. “All of these are safe houses if they’re on the run. But I can’t get a message to him without an A.E. chip.” She seemed to be talking to herself.
“I’m sure he thought of it, Mom.”
“I hope so. It would be a shame to lose them. For all her ridiculousness, Larissa’s a sharp cookie too.”
“Not that the only thing that matters is their usefulness. Right?”
She gave me a sidelong glance and an exasperated smirk: the only reply I was to receive, apparently.
When Mom went back downstairs and off to the next task on her to-do list, purposeful as ever, I stayed in the domed study, sinking back onto the couch. Madeline wheeled over to me, and I scooped her up to rest beside me, draping my arm around her cold little shoulders—if they could be called shoulders.
“So,” Madeline murmured in a low, significant voice, “Andy’s here…”
I sighed. “Yep.” I glanced down at her. “Did you send him a comm telling him I loved him?” My tone wasn’t accusing; I really couldn’t muster the emotion for that. I just wanted to know.
Her already enormous eyes, if possible, grew even wider. “You once told me that if you knew you were about to die, one of the things you’d do is tell Andy how you felt about him!”
“When did I tell you that?” I challenged.
“Remember? Three years, seven months, and eighteen days ago, you couldn’t sleep, and you powered me up and said we should have a slumber party. You got your sleeping bag out for me, and we played Truth or Dare! I asked you, ‘You know you have less than twenty-four hours to live. What do you do?’ And you said—”
“I’d comm Andy and tell him I loved him,” I groaned. It was all coming back to me now: I could even see the moonlight filtering through my curtains in my bedroom in Casa Linda, because that was shortly before I’d left for university.
“And I said, ‘What if you couldn’t send it for some reason? Would you want someone else to send it for you?’ And you said—”
“‘It wouldn’t be important at that point; I’d just want him to know,’” I finished, closing my eyes, and sinking my head back against the couch.
“That’s right!” declared Madeline triumphantly. Then she added, eyes scanning my face, “Sooo? What did he say?”
“Nothing,” I sighed.
“Nothing?” she repeated, confused.
“He asked me about it,” I amended, “and I played it off like you’d probably sent something similar to all my friends.”
“Oh.” She said this with indeterminate emotion—I knew now that she was waiting to see how I felt about it, so that she could mirror it back to me. But I didn’t know either. So I wasn’t much help.
“Are… you happy he’s here?” she ventured at last.
Not really, was the truth. But I rebuked myself for thinking it, because of course I was happy he was here. It was exactly what I’d been fantasizing about.
When I tried to feel happiness, though, I kept thinking of Liam, and got a sick knot in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t totally sure what the knot was about—mostly I figured I was just worried about him. He’d looked so pale and sickly. I couldn’t see him dodging bullets very well at the moment—not that anybody ever did that very well, but he’d looked like he should barely be out of bed, let alone off gathering supplies in a hostile environment. I’d feel better—or as better as I could be—once he was back safely.
Madeline continued to watch me, waiting to take her cue from me.
“I’m happy you’re here,” I said at last, leaning over and kissing her forehead again. She glowed up at me.
I spent the rest of the afternoon just trying to keep busy and out of everyone else’s way—except that both Madeline and Andy seemed to follow me wherever I went. I gave Andy a tour of the compound: the basement, the first three floors which contained individual chambers, the kitchen, the storage-slash-den, and the upstairs domed study. We picked out rooms for Jake and Julie once they arrived, and tried to find enough topics to keep the conversation going. When we were in one of our ‘on again’ stages, Andy and I had managed to keep our conversations flowing via comm, but we’d always had this problem in person. I wasn’t sure if he just typed faster than he thought, or what, but the burden of keeping the conversation going tended to fall to me.
“Do… you want to help me make dinner for everyone?” I asked him at last, even though it was too early to start cooking, really. But we’d toured the whole place, and I’d run out of questions to ask him.
He shrugged. “Sure. I can’t really cook though.”
“Neither can I. That’s Liam’s specialty, he’s really amazing,” I admitted, ignoring the pang as I said Liam’s name. He’ll be fine, I assured myself yet again. He’ll be back in a few hours. Infusing my voice with as much cheerfulness as I could muster, I added, “My food is just functional and reasonably nutritious. But, I’ll teach you what little I know.”
We didn’t make it to the kitchen, though: once we reached the ground floor, I heard exclamations and running footsteps. I glanced at Andy and picked up my pace, heading in the direction of the voices, Madeline wheeling along behind us.
“What is it?” I asked Dr. Yin as I caught up with her, hearing Mom and Mack’s voices at the compound entrance. That was when I heard Nilesh’s voice among them.
“Giovanni is here,” Dr. Yin told me, sounding immensely relieved. “They made it!”
Chapter 12
I had assumed from Dr. Yin’s declaration that everyone had escaped unscathed. But when I followed Nilesh’s voice into the vestibule, I saw the limp form of a man with his arms draped around Nilesh's and Rob’s shoulders, head lolling from side to side. Every so often his feet shuffled a bit, which was the only evidence that he was not completely unconscious.
“Get Hepzibah!” called Rick.
“What happened to him?” I asked. I didn’t see any obvious injuries.
“Shot with a tranquilizer dart,” Nilesh grunted. Together, Rick and Nilesh dragged in the man that must be Giovanni, the other engineer who helped build the Silver Six. His scarred temple indicated that he’d removed his A.E. chip long ago, which made sense if he’d been in hiding all this time. They guided him toward a couch in the wide open former storage area of the silo, now converted into a den with open wooden beams in the ceiling and concrete floors. When they hefted him down onto the cushions, I saw that Giovanni’s eyelids were half open, and his jaw was slack, like that of a dead man. His deep brown eyes looked too far sunken into his head. I shuddered.
Hepzibah wheeled into the den and up to Giovanni, and we all stepped back, giving her space to work. She shone a pen light into his pupils, and seemed to be testing his reflexes. Then she turned to Mom, who hovered behind us with Mack. Dr. Yin, Andy, and Madeline also crowded around the little couch.
“Where is the manufacturing printer?” she asked in her tinny voice.
“On the second floor. What do you need?” Mom answered at once.
“An antidote to the Central Nervous System depressant he was given. Bring it here, I will program it with the necessary chemicals,” was Hepzibah’s matter-of-fact answer.
A few minutes later, Mom and Mack brought the printer back: Mack did most of the heavy lifting, but it was a large and unwieldy box; Mom helped to guide it into the room and onto the floor beside the couch. Hepzibah rolled over to it, typed in a few commands, and in a moment had a syringe and a needle. She deftly removed the plunger from the newly minted syringe, positioned it beneath the printer, and programmed something else into it. Seconds later, a thin stream of liquid trickled into the syringe, perhaps three milliliters or so. Hepzibah replaced the plunger and jabbed the needle into Giovanni’s thigh without hesitation, right through his thin khaki trousers.
I don’t think any of us breathed or blinked. A few seconds later, Giovanni’s half closed eyelids began to flutter, and his jaw slowly moved back i
nto a reasonable alignment. His eyes focused, and he looked around.
“Where—am I?”
Mom let out a heavy, relieved sigh, stepping forward as the authority in the room. “Somewhere safe,” she assured him. “What happened?” She addressed the question to him, but also glanced at Nilesh and Rick.
It was Rick who answered—without emotion, like a soldier. “We got to him only minutes before Justice Wallenberg and his troops showed up. We hid as long as we could, waiting for them to conclude he wasn’t there, but not long enough apparently. When we emerged, thinking they were gone, one sentry had been left behind. Fortunately, its orders must have been to take him alive, for questioning. Otherwise he’d be dead right now.”
“How did you two get away then?” asked Mack.
“Wallenberg didn’t expect Rick,” said Nilesh, glancing at his companion with admiration. “Shot the sentry bot right in the eye.”
As he said this, I suddenly flashed back to a rainy Saturday afternoon with my dad, when I was thirteen. He was working on something on his netscreen; I was on a castle kick at the time, so I was pulling up photos of and taking notes on every ancient castle ruin on the labyrinth. Dad had suddenly stopped what he was doing, took off his glasses, and turned to me.
“Rebecca, look at me,” he’d commanded. I’d rolled my eyes immediately: Dad always prefaced absurd, paranoid statements with this, to make sure he had my full attention. This time, it was, “If you ever find yourself running from a bot that’s trying to kill you, shoot it straight in the eye if you can. That’s the only unprotected shot into its processing system. Anywhere else, and the bullet will just bounce right off, and it’ll keep coming at you.” When I didn’t reply to this, he prodded, “Did you hear me?”
“Yes, Dad,” I had replied in the sing-song, exasperated tone I reserved just for him.
“Excellent thinking, Rick,” said Mom, bringing me back to the present moment. She turned to Giovanni, pulling a hard-backed chair closer to the couch where he lay. “Can you speak yet?”
“Yes,” Giovanni croaked.
“Have Rick and Nilesh already explained who we are to you?”
“The Renegades,” Giovanni answered, smacking his mouth as if he needed water. Dr. Yin left the room, presumably to get some.
“Yes,” Mom agreed, exchanging a meaningful look with Mack, though I didn’t know what it meant. She turned back to Giovanni. “You disappeared from your research career thirteen years ago. Have you been hiding all that time?”
“Yes,” Giovanni replied, gratefully accepting the proffered cup of water from Dr. Yin. His nervous system appeared to be back in line now: his fingers grasped the glass and he found his lips with it well enough, sitting up to drink.
Mom waited for him to satisfy his thirst before she prompted, “Can you tell us your story?”
Giovanni met her eyes. “You came after me. So you must already know of my former work.” He waited for Mom’s nod before continuing, “They’re called the Silver Six to those in the know. Halpert and his board.”
“We are ‘in the know,’ then,” said Mack. “And you helped build them, didn’t you?”
Giovanni nodded. “There are more than just them, though. You know Mark Polanski?”
Mom and Mack exchanged another look, and Mom said, “The head of the Space Program?”
Giovanni nodded. “I created him too.”
I watched Mom: the only indication that she hadn’t known this already was a slight, almost imperceptible widening of her eyes. But Dr. Yin gasped, “Dr. Polanski is a bot?”
Giovanni nodded, closing his eyes like they were still too heavy for him. “Yes. His core purpose is to gather as much knowledge about the universe as possible—and since that falls under government interests, he reports to Halpert directly.”
“But he’s not considered one of the Silver Six because his position isn’t one intended to influence public opinion. At least not directly,” Mack guessed, and Giovanni nodded again.
“I guess that’s right, though his breakthroughs get picked up by the media for that purpose—colonizing the moon and Mars. What they don’t tell you is, those astronauts aren’t human anymore. Humans still can’t survive out there.”
“But—there are entire cities in space!” I cut in, too surprised to stop myself. “You’re telling us those are all bots out there? What’s the point?”
Giovanni’s eyes swiveled to me. “Polanski’s core purpose is to gather as much knowledge about the universe as possible,” he repeated, “including the question of whether humans would be able to survive in space. To him, that is the point. He knew the best way to do that would be to send bots out there to gather information. First he sent probes, to find out what materials would be necessary, and then he oversaw the creation of bots based on those materials, that could handle the environment in space. Those bots built the domed biosphere, which captured the sun’s radiation for temperature regulation, and they produced oxygen from water and the few plants they managed to cultivate inside.
“Then they started to recruit human ‘volunteers’”—he said this with weak air quotes—“really prisoners from Wallenberg, to see if they would survive. Without space suits most of them died. It’s still bitterly cold and there’s not enough oxygen for humans. None of them froze to death or suffocated, though—that would have been too easy to predict. But they died from other causes: the harsh environment took too much energy, and they had nothing left over to fight off foreign microbes cultivated in the new ecosystem. Or else the stress of the experience itself set off other genetic predispositions, and they died of those. But each batch of humans that died gave the bots new information about what was necessary for others to eventually survive. Polanski and his team created nanobots to aid the humans’ survival, to address each potential obstacle on the cellular level. Every human subject also gets outfitted with a new nervous system designed to release fewer stress hormones in response to their new environment before they ever arrive. The bots there are constantly tweaking the volunteers to allow them to survive under the biosphere dome, unprotected.”
“So they turn them into cyborgs,” said Dr. Yin at last.
Giovanni nodded. “Yes. They are cyborgs.”
“What made you run thirteen years ago?” Mom asked him.
Giovanni looked away, haunted. “I’d known for a long time that the experiments were wrong. Morally, I mean. I justified them to myself because the ‘volunteers’ were criminals anyway, but deep down, I knew. After one particular case, I just couldn’t pretend anymore.” He fell silent here, evidently not wanting to relive it. I studied his face: he must have been in his sixties, bald on top with a fringe of iron gray hair, very deep nasolabial folds, and sallow bags beneath his brown eyes. He was thin enough, but had a bit of a gut, rendered much more apparent by the way he slumped now. So while he’d been on the run, he hadn’t been starving. With a name like Giovanni, I guessed he still ate lots of pasta—though these days, such cultural stereotypes were nothing more than regional preferences. Liam, for instance, was about as Irish as I was.
Stop thinking about Liam, I admonished myself.
“I knew I’d get caught eventually,” Giovanni added at last. “They’d just shoot me if I was lucky. If I wasn’t lucky, I’d end up a lab rat myself. Wallenberg is a fan of poetic justice, I think.” He gave a snort at this that was clearly meant to be a humorless laugh.
“Do you know why we rescued you?” Nilesh asked.
Giovanni glanced up, and then his eyes fell to the floor again. “You want to know how the Silver Six work. You think this will help you defeat them.” He stared at the ground, unmoving, before adding, “You can’t defeat them.”
“Let us be the judge of that,” said Mom sharply. “We already know they were created by emulating the brains of deceased humans. We also know they don’t turn out to be an exact replica of the person they’re meant to copy. They have some emotions, but not the way we do. Tel
l us more. What’s different about them?”
Giovanni opened his mouth and closed it again, taking another drink of water. “The closest comparison I can make is to human psychopaths,” he said at last. “You know what neuroplasticity is?”
“I do,” I said, stepping forward eagerly. Then I blushed a little for my presumption, glancing back at Dr. Yin. “And, she does, of course.” Dr Yin gave me a tiny smile to let me know she didn’t take offense.
Giovanni nodded, glancing at both of us. “For the rest of you, neuroplasticity is a term that means the brain can change itself based on usage. The parts you use more grow, as do the connections between areas that are frequently used. The parts you use less, shrink, and connections get pruned away.” He bit his lip. “We started out with a dead person’s brain, created a synthetic copy of it, and then programmed the bot who used it with a single core purpose. The brain morphed to reflect this.”
“But they still had emotions, if they were a copy of a human brain, then?” asked Mack.
Giovanni nodded. “Emotions are not totally useless, so those remain in some capacity—in the same way that a psychopath feels pleasure when he gets something he wants, and that acts as a stimulus reinforcement—”
“Meaning he gets a dopamine hit, and he wants more of it,” I cut in, and Giovanni nodded.
“Yes. Many of Halpert’s generation of bots also use their capacity for emotion to understand the emotions of others, but not in an empathic way: empathy would pose a competing interest to their core purposes, and thus, that capacity gets pruned by neuroplasticity. But understanding and using the emotions of others to further their own ends is quite useful for those whose purposes involve interfacing with humans.”
“Like Halpert,” said Mack. “That’s why he’s so compelling. He uses our emotions against us.”
“And that’s essentially the definition of charm, or at least one definition,” Giovanni agreed. “Hence the word, which can also mean ‘to put a spell on.’ The rest of his board isn’t terribly charming as a rule, though they can all turn it on when they need to. But Halpert is a master.”