The Silver Six

by C. A. Gray

  “Ah-ha!” Liam gloated, “It’s Kyle, the guy who runs Francis’s pub. He’s a sharp enough guy, this should be quick.” Now he typed in English, asking Kyle to search the labyrinth for the VMI plans. “We need the parts, the materials, and assembly instructions—the whole thing,” he wrote. “And we can’t access holograph or video unless you can sit there and play it for us over the Commune, so written instructions would be best.”

  A few minutes and a few false starts later, Kyle had sent over the plans, which Liam read to make sure they had everything we needed. The manufacturing printer sat in the corner of the room already, so there wasn't much for me to do but wait for Liam to decide whether or not we had enough detail. He frowned.

  “Hmm, some of these parts need to be broken down into smaller parts so we can print them—our printer isn’t that big. Give me a sec.” He exchanged a few more requests for plans to create individual components of the VMI machine.

  “Great,” Liam said aloud after Kyle sent over more files, “I think we’ve got it all.” He scooted the printer over to where we sat so that it was more easily accessible, and printed Kyle’s instructions on regular paper. Then he sat on the floor in front of the manufacturing printer and began to type in instructions. I settled my elbows on my knees, my chin in my hands.

  “I’m so happy to be so useful,” I commented, in an exaggerated dull tone.

  He shot me a sidelong glance, with a half smile. “You’ll be way more useful than I am once it’s assembled.” Then he added, “So you think the Silver Six are essentially sociopaths, huh?”

  I nodded. “Giovanni agrees, and he made some of them… or, some like them, anyway.”

  “It’s kind of surprising how little we still know about how the human brain works, if you think about it,” Liam observed, setting aside little pieces for assembly as they came hot off the press. “Collectively, we know practically everything else.”

  “I guess that’s why Giovanni and the others could only create true Synthetic Reasoning by patterning synthetic brains after those of human cadavers. They didn’t actually have to know.” I thought for a minute, and added with a shudder, “Although that was twenty years ago. I wonder if the bots know exactly how the brain works now, given all of the human experiments they’ve apparently done over the years.”

  Liam glanced up at me. “Scary thought,” he agreed, “but I somehow doubt it, not yet. No technology we’ve ever created even begins to match the complexity of the human brain. I think they’ll have to create superintelligence first, and then the upgrades will have to become available to all the other specialized bots before that occurs.”

  “How do you know they haven’t created superintelligence already? If Halpert and the others have existed for a couple decades, and we never knew about it…”

  Liam shook his head. “They wouldn’t be hiding anymore, if that were the case. Once superintelligence exists, we’ll be completely at its mercy. I don’t doubt it’s coming soon, but I don’t think it’s here yet. When it is—we’ll know,” he added ominously.

  “When, not if?”

  He gave me a somber look. “Unless we figure out some way to defeat them first, and that will require understanding them at a deeper level than we do now. Seems like studying Francis is a reasonable place to start, though. He’s about as robotic as any human I’ve ever met.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, matching Liam’s lighter tone with the subject shift. “Although weirdly enough, I think I’m starting to see his ‘charm,’ as you once described it—”

  “Oh-ho! Don’t tell me Larissa’s got competition!”

  “Please.” I rolled my eyes. “I use the word ‘charm’ very loosely. It’s like someone who’s so ugly they’re cute, and in exactly the same sort of way: Francis is so rude, he’s sort of endearing.”

  “Unlike Halpert,” Liam pointed out.

  “Well yes, but Francis can be charming in a traditional way if he wants to be, too. If it suits him.”

  “So he claims,” Liam pointed out, amused. “I’ve yet to see him do it, but I suppose it’s never suited him before. We’ll see if he turns it on, now that Alex is around.”

  I snorted. “Seriously. I’m glad—” I stopped myself.

  He looked up. “You’re glad what?”

  I’d been about to say, I’m glad at least you aren’t slobbering all over her, but that sounded jealous, or catty, or something. I could think of all sorts of wrong ways he could take that. Instead I gestured at the printer again and said, “Seriously, can I help?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, I guess I can show you how to use this thing, in case you ever need it. Come here.”

  I shifted off my chair, seating myself cross-legged beside him and leaned in while he showed me the ports for various raw materials: plastics, powders, resins, conductive metals, and chemical compounds. “These are the ones used most often. When you program it, you have to specify which ports you want it to use and when. You don’t really even have to know what you're doing, as long as you have the plans and type in the instructions exactly. See?” He pointed to the paper instructions for the current component he was working on, a diode of some kind, tapping the printer’s little interface to transfer them. “Of course, if we still had our A.E. chips, we could just download the instructions and upload them to the printer directly with a thought, but we no longer have that luxury.” I nodded, watching what he typed. When he’d pressed ‘print’ and there was nothing more to watch, I stayed there for a moment, suddenly aware of how close he was. Instead of backing away like I normally would, for some reason I turned to look at him. He held my gaze for a moment, neither of us saying anything. My heart sped up, and I thought I saw the pulse throbbing faster at his throat too. At last he blinked, looking away rather abruptly as he collected the newly minted diode.

  I coughed, and scooted back, just far enough for comfort.

  “So. Val seems… really nice.”

  He raised an eyebrow, handing me the paper for the next widget. I scooted back over again and dutifully copied the instructions into the printer, having no clue what I typed.

  Liam replied, “She’s definitely that. She likes you a lot.”

  “Does she?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

  “Val likes everyone, don’t get too excited,” he commented, slightly amused. “She’s completely trusting, always giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, taken aback.

  “Just that she doesn’t participate in any sort of female cattiness or rivalry. For instance, she told Alex how beautiful she was the moment she met her.”

  “Oh.” Val hadn’t told me that, I noticed. But I was glad I hadn’t made the comment about Alex earlier, after all. “Well, she certainly seems attached to you.”

  Liam sighed, collecting the small metal thing I’d just programmed the printer to create. “Yeah.”

  I raised my eyebrows and waited. He glanced at me at last, and I reeled once with an open palm, encouraging him to continue. He picked up the next paper, and began typing the instructions into the printer before he replied.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed at last.

  “About the fact that she still clearly has feelings for you?”

  He nodded. “Val’s a sweetheart, and I do care about her. But I know I’m not going to marry her. And that’s what she wants.”

  I choked a little at this. “Marry her?”

  “That’s why I broke up with her the first time,” he went on, as if he hadn’t noticed my response. “I told her I knew it wouldn’t go anywhere, and I didn’t want to waste her time. She came back like a week later and said she was okay with just dating, and… I don’t know, I was lonely. And being with her was easy, I guess. So I took her back.” He ran a hand through his dark hair, resting one elbow on his knee while he waited for the printer to finish its current widget. “But I knew it was wrong, even if sh
e said she was fine with it. When I broke up with her the second time, I cut off all contact. She deserved a chance to move on, you know? And find someone who would actually give her what she wanted. I’d hoped that, since a few years had gone by since the last time we’d seen each other, she’d be over me and healed by now. Maybe she’d be with someone else. But, apparently not.”

  I didn’t say anything for a long moment. I wasn’t sure what to say. Liam looked so tortured, and I did feel sorry for Val.

  “I know it wasn’t my fault that she ran into me yesterday, and I couldn’t have just left her there after she called out my name on camera. I’m sure they’d have hunted her down, and who knows what they would have done to her. It was just sheer dumb luck. But now she’s here with me, indefinitely. Because I got myself mixed up in all this, now she probably won’t ever be able to go back to her normal life. I stole that from her, and can’t even give her what she wants in return.” He shook his head. “I just feel really guilty about it.”

  “So… you don’t have any romantic feelings for her anymore?” I asked, as casually as I could.

  “No, of course I do. That doesn’t just go away completely,” he shook his head, collecting the next component the printer spat out. “I just know it’s not enough.”

  The pang in my chest really felt physical, but I kept my face as neutral as possible. I’ll process that later, I told myself, scrambling to think of the next question so he couldn’t tell that his response had affected me. “So you’ll only date women you think you can marry? Is that it?”

  He gave me a lingering look. “It depends on the situation, and her expectations. But I’ve done enough dating around at this point. After awhile, dating for the sake of dating just seems kind of… pointless. As soon as I know for sure it will never go anywhere, I’ll pretty much just cut it off.”

  I let this sink in.

  He’d nearly kissed me. Twice. If this was his philosophy… what did that mean?

  “So, Andy’s following you around like a little puppy dog,” he observed dryly. “Is it everything you hoped for and more?”

  “Shut up,” I murmured. “He doesn’t even want to be here. He’s only here because you made him come.”

  Liam snorted. “Now that’s ironic.”

  It didn’t seem like he was going to say anything else. After he’d shared so much with me about Val, I felt it was only fair to reciprocate a little. Finally I confessed, “We don’t actually seem to have that much to say to each other.”

  “No kidding! Who would have predicted that!”

  “Don’t be a jerk!” I shot back, but I couldn’t help laughing a little.

  He laughed too, but shrugged, and added seriously, “It’s the classic wanting-what-you-can’t-have syndrome. Sometimes you don’t know that’s what it is until you can have it.”

  “Maybe I’m just broken.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. My eyes widened when I realized I’d said it out loud.

  “Maybe,” he agreed, apparently unaware that I’d just confessed one of my deepest fears. “Doesn’t mean you can’t be fixed, though.” He looked up at me, searching, and added, “The real question is why you were using Andy to avoid a real relationship in the first place. What are you so afraid of?”

  I felt the heat in my cheeks, and balked, “I’m not! I’m not avoiding anything, I’m just… stop looking at me like that.” He looked amused. It was totally disarming.

  “Whatever you need to tell yourself,” he said, catching the last unidentifiable object the printer spat out and climbing to his feet, dusting his hands off on his jeans. “Okay. Assembly time. How are you at building small electronics?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Puzzles?”

  “Not much better.”

  “Following instructions?” he tried again, suppressing a smile and handing me one of Kyle’s printouts.

  “If it’s like following a recipe, I’m… improving. Slowly.”

  “I have faith in you.” I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or serious.

  A few hours later, I’d have answered Liam’s questions quite differently: between the two of us, we’d assembled all the tiny pieces to make up the seven larger pieces in Kyle’s original instructions. Periodically the others wandered downstairs to see our progress. Val and Larissa had lunch duty, and brought us sandwiches so that we could keep working. I felt decidedly more generous toward Val now, though I couldn’t help remembering Liam’s admission that he did still have some feelings for her. Andy wandered downstairs a few times too, sitting in the corner and watching us work, interjecting non sequiturs until he got bored and went back upstairs.

  After a few false starts, we got all seven larger pieces put together until it at least looked like a VMI machine. Liam was just about to let me test it on him to make sure it was working when we heard a commotion upstairs, and an unmistakably exuberant female voice.

  Liam pointed at the ceiling. “Is that your friend?”

  “Julie!” I jumped up, surprised at how relieved I was. I had so many tense relationships in this compound, for various reasons; it was nice to have a few uncomplicated ones to balance them out.

  “Becca!” she threw her arms around me once I got upstairs. I noted the gauze on her temple and Jake’s, and realized that Rick, who had picked them up at the Quantum Track station, must have taken Hepzibah along to perform their surgeries too and waited for them to recover before bringing them back to us. “Omigosh, this place is seriously in the middle of nowhere, and underground! It’s the coolest!”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of the point!” I released her and went for Jake next, who scooped me up in the air and spun me around as I laughed. He always greeted me in that way after long absences—which this was not, but it felt long. “You brought your guitar?” I gaped at the case slung over his shoulder, shaking my head, but grinning.

  “Well, yeah! Your mom said we’d be here indefinitely, so… bonfires and sing-alongs in the caves every night, yeah?”

  “Absolutely!” I hugged him again. One of our favorite things to do in high school had been to make bonfires just behind the Moon parking lot. Jake and any musical friends of his would play and sing, and I’d always sing along too, since I couldn’t play. We harmonized well together. The thought of doing something so simple and nostalgic out here brought tears to my eyes.

  Jake released me to hug Andy, who was never terribly comfortable with physical contact, so the hug on his end looked stiff and awkward. Jake ended up clapping him on the shoulder instead.

  Liam had followed me upstairs, and he now shook Julie’s and Jake’s hands warmly. “Good to see you guys again, though I’m sorry about the circumstances.”

  Julie shrugged. “No worries, it’s an adventure, right? We’re always up for adventures. Plus, all of you guys are here,” she gestured to Andy and me, “and no school—so it’s basically just hanging out every night while we try to bring down the crazy robots! It’s gonna be awesome!”

  I glanced at Mom, who had come into the foyer to greet the newcomers also. She rolled her eyes at me, but with a good-natured smile. I knew she thought my friends were rather superficial, but she had a soft spot for them anyway.

  Jake and Julie made the rounds, meeting everyone else in the group. I noticed Jake do a double-take when they met Alex. Julie noticed it too, and scowled at him.

  “I saw you both at my pub a few weeks back,” Francis announced in a flat tone when Jake and Julie introduced themselves. He gestured at their entwined hands and observed, “You’re obviously dating each other but it’s a new relationship, maybe a month or two old. At the moment, you can still bond over things like travel, music, new experiences and your mutual high energy, but that’ll only sustain you for a few months, six at most. You’re otherwise completely unsuited to each other. You’re pretty straightforward,” he gestured to Jake, then at Julie, “but when you encounter any sort of adversity, you’ll double down on your Po
llyanna ‘the world is full of roses’ attitude.” Then at Jake again: “And you’ll ultimately dump her for it, because you can’t be with someone who isn’t ‘real’.” He did air quotes here. “She’ll come back around and promise to be different, but you’ll have moved on by then. This sort of relationship has a shelf life of about a year, tops. Assuming we all survive that long,” he added with a casual shrug.

  Julie flushed and her mouth fell open, and Jake looked confused.

  “Don’t mind him,” I burst in hurriedly, “he’s a high-functioning sociopath with no filter.”

  “And a frighteningly accurate track record,” Francis added, inspecting his fingernails.

  I draped an arm around Julie’s shoulders to forcibly steer her toward Val, about as great a contrast to Francis as one could wish for. Val said something breathy and very polite, but Julie still scowled from Francis to Alex, as if unsure whom she disliked more.

  “You should have warned us,” Julie hissed to me as I steered her away for a tour of the compound.

  “Sorry,” I whispered back. “You met him at the meeting, so I thought you knew… but I guess you didn’t interact with him there.”

  “And I never will again, if I can help it,” she muttered.

  Chapter 16

  After I’d finished showing Julie and Jake around the compound, Andy and Jake went out to explore the caves. I went back downstairs to find Liam with Dr. Yin and Giovanni, both of whom were inspecting our creation. Val stood a little off to the side, just watching, and beamed up at me with angelic trust as I descended the stairs.

  “Impressive,” Giovanni was saying to Liam, exchanging a glance with Dr. Yin, and then at me when he saw me approach. “But does it work?”

  “We were about to find out when Rebecca’s friends arrived. Bec? You wanna give this thing a spin?” He positioned himself under the helmet, and Dr. Yin adjusted it to the size of his head.