by Brandt Legg
Michael Hearne announced he would be doing a Shake Russell song and both Tess and Flint knew it would be Deep in the West before he hit the first note. They continued shuffling around the dance floor.
“The end of what?”
“The old order is over,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. “The corporations are in charge now. The governments are just proxies so the people don’t revolt.”
Even though it sounded like the melodramatic statement of a conspiracy theorist, he knew she was neither. Tess was serious. She leaned her head against his chest and let him take her around the dance floor in silence. Hearne sang the final verse, the words they’d heard a thousand times. Suddenly it felt like a personal message:
So you hang on to me and I’ll hang on to you
Said together we’re one, divided we’re through
Divided we’re through
Tess and Flint walked off the dance floor and worked their way through the crowd as Hearne started Red Willow Way and welcomed Robert Mirabal to the stage to accompany him with flute.
“Can I get you a drink?” Flint asked Tess.
She smiled. “No thanks.”
“Are you sure you’re on the right side of this?” he asked, both knowing the weight of the question and the danger in the answer.
“I’ll let you know in twenty years.”
“Will we still be here?”
She shook her head. “Go find your client, Flint. If you want to keep him alive, make him leave TruNeural and GlobeTec alone. They’re at war with a Chinese company, and we can’t let GlobeTec lose.”
“No matter the cost?”
“That’s right.”
“Tess?”
“Go find Chase.”
“Tess?”
“And tell him we have his parents.”
Sixty-Three
Adya and Dez sat on the deck of the Wadogo as the Captain sailed Dez’s beloved yacht across the San Francisco Bay. They were waiting for a call to connect from Mars. They had never spoken to him before, and were unclear how an inmate in federal prison could make an unmonitored call, let alone help them in any way. But Chase’s brother had arranged it, and said it was important. Ironically, they were not far from Alcatraz when the call went through. The two BE executives set the phone on speaker and lounged in chaises as Mars spoke first.
“Seeing how the three of us are Chase’s most trusted friends, and his life is on the line, it would be a good idea if we were all working under the same game plan.”
“Not to sound rude,” Dez began, “but it’s a crazy complicated situation. I’m not sure how much you know, but the stakes are much bigger than just Chase’s life. And, again, I apologize, I don’t mean to sound cold.” A larger than usual wave splashed against the yacht.
“I know about RAIN, Franco, Porter, the MSS, Wen, and even about Tess.”
Dez and Adya exchanged surprised glances.
“I’m sure there are things I don’t know,” Mars continued. “And there are possibly things the two of you aren’t aware of yet either. But Boone can attest to the fact that Chase trusts me completely. So let’s share information and figure out a way to save him because, as you said, Dez, there is a lot more at stake than just Chase’s life, but if he’s dead, things look a lot more bleak for the rest of us.”
“Okay,” Adya said. As the Captain walked by she blew him a kiss, and he replied with his trademark wink. “Tell us what you’re working on.”
“Our first objective is to prevent those looking for Chase from finding him,” Mars began. “I’ve set in motion a plan where reports and sightings of Chase will occur at random intervals across the country and in many parts around the world.”
“How?” Dez asked.
“Through credit card use, surveillance cameras utilizing facial recognition, and a number of other related methods—one of which I need your help with.”
“Okay,” Dez said.
“Can you get me the IP addresses of Chase’s various devices? I know he’s no longer using them, but I have a way to mimic, mirror, and make use of those so it will appear he’s using them in different locations.”
“How does it work? I mean, how do you get the facial recognition enabled cameras to think they’re seeing Chase when they’re not?” Adya asked, sipping tea.
“There are various experts I work with who use methods I can’t even understand, but it’s something to do with making those algorithms think they have seen someone they have not.”
“So you’re not a tech guy?” Adya asked.
“No, I’m a crime guy,” he said, laughing. “That’s my interest in technology. And in my line of work, it’s very important to be invisible. There are a lot of people working to use tech for illegal activities.”
“No doubt,” Dez said.
“Right,” Mars agreed. “I can have Chase spotted in Miami . . . imagine the MSS, and various intelligence agencies in this country that are trying to keep tabs on Chase, and even GlobeTec hackers . . . they will all get alerts, through whatever methods they’ve set up to monitor, that Chase has been spotted in Miami.”
“But they’ll find out he’s not there,” Adya said, skeptical.
“Right again, but then it gets fun,” Mars said. “All those groups will deploy resources, and, as you said, they won’t find him. Later, those same channels will pick up that he’s in Los Angeles, Toronto, Manhattan, Wichita, Cleveland, Tallahassee, Frankfurt, Liverpool, London—you get the idea.”
“But won’t they eventually know these are all bogus?” Dez asked.
“They won’t be able to risk it,” Mars countered. “And, best of all, when sightings come in that are actually him, they’ll have no idea that they aren’t more fakes. We’re going to do the same thing with credit cards, computer usage, and a whole host of other methods, and you guys can help multiply all of it.”
“Brilliant,” Adya said, not convinced. “Where’d you come up with this?”
“I’ve got a lot of time on my hands in here. I read a lot,” Mars said, sounding slightly bitter. “A book called The Lost TreeRunner gave me the idea. Everyone is after the main character and they do something similar.”
“And, does the protagonist make it to the end of the book?” Adya asked.
“I make it a rule to never tell the end of the story,” Mars said. “But we’re going to save Chase . . . because we have to.”
They continued their conversation for another forty minutes, going into detail and exchanging information until they each felt confident that they’d be able to keep Chase alive a little longer—at least until they could speak again. Adya and Dez gave Mars all their contact information so he could be in touch whenever necessary.
After the call, Adya and Dez, who had been using Wadogo as their de facto headquarters ever since the break-in at the Balance Engineering building, went back to work. Adya had several more steps to complete in order to protect Chase’s fortune, and Dez had ten minutes before a scheduled call with the only surviving member of the Garbo-three.
Dez checked in with the Captain and then walked out onto the deck alone, admiring the San Francisco skyline. He was close enough to Alcatraz that he could read the graffiti on the prison water tower. Peace and Freedom. Welcome. Home of the Free Indian Land. The hand-painted words dated back to a cold November morning in 1969 when the nearly two-year occupation of the island by Native American activists began. Peace and Freedom. Welcome, Dez thought. How fitting that a guy in prison may help us keep peace and freedom and Chase alive.
In his next breath of salty air, the Wadogo exploded.
Sixty-Four
Chase and Wen had discovered they’d dropped into an old railcar that had once been part of what was known as the “White Fleet.” They deduced that the Canadian National Railway (CN) once used the old bunkhouse cars—complete with rows of bunkbeds, a bathroom, and cooking facilities—as a way to easily move work gangs to remote locations. However, in recent years, CN, relying less on manual
labor, must have phased out the White Fleet. According to the manifest Chase found, these were among the last ones still operational, but were now on the way to be scrapped in Kamloops.
As soon as they settled in and were sure they hadn’t been spotted, Wen powered up the Antimatter Machine. They used it to leave messages for Boone, Flint, and Dez, all of whom were frustratingly unreachable.
Not much light came in from the edges of the boarded up windows and the roof vents, and once the sun went down, it was so dark they couldn’t see their hands. The illumination from the Antimatter Machine’s monitor provided a dim enough light that they could see each other in a pale blue hue. Incredibly, Wen had military-style rations that she quickly cooked up on the stove. The food even tasted good.
“Catch me up,” Chase said. “We have hours.”
She looked at him with an expression of deep sadness, their faces just inches apart.
“What?” he asked, suddenly afraid of what she would tell him.
“My country is so beautiful, my people so strong and smart,” she said. “They work so hard, like my parents did . . . but the government is not good. The Party wants to control everyone. So many cameras watch everything, every moment. The government censors us, and they use social scorecards to rank the behavior of every citizen.”
“What is a social scorecard?” He reached for her hands to hold.
“They give scores up to eight hundred. Points are given and taken depending on algorithms.”
“Where do they get the data?”
“From the cameras. Hundreds of millions of cameras, and more every day. Soon they will have a billion cameras watching. Facial recognition, body scanning, and geo-tracking all feed the machine. Also included are internet browsing histories, government, medical, financial, and educational records of every citizen! They know all! Scores change based on who else you associate with, who they know, what they do, like a giant poisonous web.”
“I thought things were improving in China with capitalism.” He massaged her hand, touching every finger and callus gently.
“No! It’s getting worse. The Party has the money—so much money—to build the surveillance networks, and police and military. They teach us that, ‘keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful,’ but they mean ‘trust the government, not each other.’ It is horrible, maybe unstoppable.”
“And that’s why you fled?”
“No, that is where I come from. You need to know what China has become,” she said, looking away. “I left because of BCI.”
“What’s BCI?” Chase asked, nudging her chin back to face him, never imagining she left China because of Brain-Computer-Interface.
“You don’t recall your thesis?”
“Of course I remember. I did my thesis on neural implants after seeing a talk by Elon Musk, when he started his Neuralink company. The thesis is what got me in to Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the internship at HuumaX . . . It’s been my life’s work. It’s what eventually led me to develop RAI.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And HuumaX took your idea and ran with it. They worked hardest on the implant side, bidirectional communications—where the brain can read and write from the computer and brain injectable technology, embedded tech, brain-intertwined-program, nanoscopic silicon and metal mesh—because they knew you, or someone, would eventually come up with a way to make super, or rapid, AI work.”
“And HuumaX succeeded?” Chase asked, seeing the stress on her beautiful face.
“Yes.”
“So did TruNeural,” he said quietly
“That’s why they want to kill you.”
“But you couldn’t have known TruNeural wanted me dead when you decided to leave China.”
“But I knew about HuumaX planning to kill you.”
“Wait, what?”
“Rong Lo is working for HuumaX.”
“But he’s MSS.”
“Corrupt MSS,” Wen said. “The Ministry is filled with corruption, like all Chinese government.”
“I thought the MSS was after me because they thought I was helping you defect.”
“No, the MSS and Rong Lo are after me, because I am trying to protect you.”
Sixty-Five
The Wadogo was gone, the loud roar of the explosion giving way to an eerie, echoing silence, the fiery flash replaced by a dark, blurry kaleidoscope of unrecognizable shapes muted in a smoky fog of debris. Dez couldn’t seem to swim. As he flailed about with his arms, it felt like he was wearing boots full of water. Everything went black except for swirls of lights like trails of fireworks.
Dez tried to think, recalled he had not been wearing shoes—Why are my feet unable to move? He continued to tread water with his arms, but could barely keep above the surface. What happened? Where is Adya? The frigid water pulled at him. It’s too cold. If I don’t get out . . . not much time left. He needed to find something to hold on to.
He kept fighting, but didn’t have much energy left. The water was closing in. His ears were ringing, as if the explosion continued inside his head. The lights kept moving in erratic patterns. Could the boat still be floating? Dez tried to look, but there was only swirling lights and chilled darkness.
Then the water took him. He went under. So cold. It was impossible to know how long he was down. My legs are so heavy.
And then air—beautiful, clean, fresh air! He gasped and gulped, filling his lungs, before slipping below once again into the inky fluid. This time when the bay swallowed him, he wasn’t sure he would make it back up.
The depths pushed on him until he thought he might cave-in. His legs pulled him deeper. A final thought seared into his mind just as the flood engulfed him completely.
Is there still a world left to save?
Chase stared at Wen as if she’s just told him a lie, because, in a way, she had. Everything he’d been doing to “save” her over the past five days had actually been done to save himself.
“I thought I was helping you,” Chase said slowly. “I mean, that it was all about you.”
She squeezed his hands. “I know. Thank you.”
“Then Twag was . . . ”
“He knew how important you are,” she said.
“To you?”
“Yes.” Wen gripped his hands, which had suddenly gone limp. “And to The Cause.”
“What cause?”
“The same cause you took on when you decided to stop Sliske and TruNeural from tuning RAI into RAIN.”
“It’s not a cause, it’s . . . If Sliske succeeds with RAIN, it will lead to the end of humanity.” As he said it to her, he was afraid she would think he was exaggerating the dangers, might laugh and say there could be no way to know, that she might even question his sanity.
Instead, she leaned in and kissed his forehead.
“I know,” she whispered, in the flickering light of a candle she’d found earlier.
“You know?” He pulled back. “How could you know? It’s only because of my program SEER that we can forecast the outcome, and I haven’t published . . . only my partner, Dez, and a few others . . . ”
“True, you may be the only one who can predict with certainty how RAIN will destroy the future, but there are others who want to stop technology from taking over.”
“Technology is taking over,” he said emphatically as the train lurched around a turn. “I’m not against tech. Innovation is my religion, but what Sliske has done with RAIN is something different. He’s crazy. People have no idea what’s about to happen because RAI was ten or twenty years ahead of what engineers thought possible, and so was—”
“The implant,” Wen finished for him. “The Chinese through HuumaX, and the Americans through TruNeural, are battling for who will dominate. Not just the next century, not even the next thousand years. AI is forever.”
This time Chase finished for her. “Whoever wins AI, wins everything.”
“Yes! And we must make sure neither side wins because neither can be trusted.”
>
“This cause you mention that I’m important to . . . who are they?”
“You can meet them later. It is a small band of people around the world who see the dangers of how technology, controlled by a few, can be so dangerous.”
“Extremely dangerous,” he agreed. “Especially if they have RAIN.”
Wen started to say something, but changed her mind.
“What?” Chase saw her hesitation, overwhelmed by her beauty in the candlelight.
She couldn’t say, but equally felt. “I have missed you.” Tears surfaced. She blinked them away.
“I want to ask you something.”
“Shh, not yet.” She covered his lips with her fingers.
He kissed her fingers, then held them in his hand. “Why did HuumaX want me out of the way?” Chase whispered. “Didn’t they know I was trying to stop their competitor?”
“At first they thought that you would unknowingly help them win, but then they figured out that if you stopped TruNeural, you would certainly come for HuumaX next.”
“Once I discovered that they were close to implanting humans, I would have had to. But with RAI, I have a backdoor. I don’t have that advantage with HuumaX.”
“But you can stop HuumaX.” She stared at him, waiting for him to get it.
“Because they based their models on my thesis?”
“Exactly.”
“And they know that?”
“Of course.”
“And you said the MSS is working with them?”
“Not exactly the entire MSS. The Ministry is divided into sections—high, very high, security. Everything triple insulated so that no one knows everything. Rong Lo is a Division Chief, which means agents are only known to him. He is the connection to HuumaX.”
Chase nodded, taking it all in, and then asked the question he should have asked at the beginning. “How do you know all this?”
Wen stayed silent for a moment. Finally, she looked deep into his eyes. “Because I am with the MSS.”