The Sentient Mimic (The Sentient Trilogy Book 2)

by Ian Williams

  “Well,” she began, stepping sheepishly out from her hiding place. “The system is struggling to open it at the moment. I’d say another hour at least.”

  “It won’t be done until morning, right?” Joe said, with a wink. “No point in rushing.”

  Conrad felt a wry smile spread across his face. “Morning, that’s what they said.”

  “Fine.” Barbara walked over to her computer and began to type on the screen. “You’ll have what’s on it by the morning,” she said, using her fingers as quotation marks.

  That was at least something Conrad could be happy about. The Deputy Mayor’s new taskforce would get everything when they wanted it, only not before he had a look at it all. The data coin would reveal its secrets to him and Joe first.

  “I could kiss you, Barbara,” Conrad said.

  Barbara blushed and turned away. Joe just rolled his eyes instead.

  Chapter 10

  Hidden evils?

  8pm, Thursday: 28 hours until Switchover

  Phoenix sat with a now cold cup of coffee in her hands, her fingers wrapped around and interlocked. She was in a deeply contemplative mood. The coffee shop was empty, with only the remaining staff to keep her company. This was one of the many small businesses Rhys owned and ran from his hidden back rooms. As far as covers go, this was one of the more ingenious of setups. Rhys was seen as a good, hardworking member of society as a result. He was the exact opposite in reality.

  The hours since she had spoken to the man trapped in his own body – called Jack – had been tough. Her mind had not rested for a moment. All the possible scenarios were running on a constant loop for her distracted brain to look over. Not one of them had a happy ending either. Somewhere out in the city was a place she needed desperately to find and if possible, shut down.

  Sentients in human form; that was one of the signs of the apocalypse in her opinion.

  So far the presence inside Jack’s body had not returned to unfairly claim the body. The small, black box on his head was still flickering, they had not destroyed it accidentally. Rhys had made a guess that the thing was probably in some kind of boot-up process of sorts, and that it could take hours before it was finished. Of course even Rhys’ expert opinion did not amount to much in this case. No-one had seen anything like it before. Not even her.

  She fought to break free of the guilt she had felt after putting Jack back under, only to reach a ceasefire with it a good hour or so later. By that time both she and Rhys had been left mentally exhausted by the lengthy conversations that had followed. It did not help that Rhys knew so little of what happened eighteen months earlier. She had decided to tell him before anything could be said of their current situation.

  Her words had shocked and scared her friend like never before. She told him everything, from her first realisation that Anthony was crazy, to her final escape from the crumbling remains of Sanctuary. Understandably, Rhys had no idea about any of it. He and everyone else in the city had been told a lie. The news had reported it all as a terrorist attack by an unknown, anti-technology group. She had even been shown on the evening news as one of them.

  Out of everything explained to him, however, it was the misrepresented account of Isaac’s initial demise that had been the hardest thing for him to accept. Finding out that the world’s first AI had in fact escaped, reformed and now appeared to be in the city somewhere, had not gone down well. She originally intended to keep it all from him. Except things had changed well beyond what she could predict. Help, from wherever it may come, was very much needed. Even though Rhys’ methods appeared odd to her, they certainly worked. He had become her only real chance of digging any deeper.

  When the conversation eventually ended, she had decided to take a walk outside. She had not gone far, mainly because of the chance of being spotted by any passers-by. After that she sent an update to Elliot from one of Rhys’ network connected computer terminals out in the public area. Rather than tell him everything, and get him and the others all riled up, she left it to just a confirmation that she had not been caught or hurt.

  That had all gone by in a heartbeat to her. She had no idea how long she had wasted sitting and staring at the walls of Rhys’ café. The people who had left since her arrival had seemed to disappear before her eyes as her concentration wavered. Each time she snapped back to reality when another had left without her noticing. And now it was already time to shut-up-shop for the evening.

  Time flies when you’re facing a crisis, she thought before downing the remains of her drink.

  She checked the wall clock behind her and was surprised to see it was already 8pm. It was time to check on Ninety-three again. To get back to Rhys’ hidden back rooms she went through the rear of the café, with a thank you to the remaining staff along the way – none of which really knew about Rhys’ main source of income. A few narrow and dark corridors later, and she had once again arrived at the large, metal door. She knocked and, as always appeared to be the case, she was met by Matt’s bulging eye almost poking through the spy hatch.

  “What?” he said.

  “Just let me in, Matt, I’m not in the mood.”

  “Don’t think that’s a good idea anymore. Why don’t you leave and try again tomorrow?”

  It was not the first time Matt had tried his best to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that she was no longer welcome there. If Rhys had left, even for a few minutes, she was sure her time there would have been over and Matt would have thrown her out, along with her unconscious companion. He was an irritation to her, but at least he was being so for a good reason; he was Rhys’ right-hand-man and had the business’ wellbeing to preserve. By bringing her problems there, she was making that much harder for him to do.

  “Don’t make me poke that bug-eye of yours out of its socket! Open up. I’ll be gone the second I can, and no earlier,” she replied with a slap of the door.

  “No, I won’t let you screw things up for us. Take your friend and just leave. I’m warning you now–” He stopped the moment Rhys came into the room behind him. As if to try and hide their disagreement, he smiled and pushed his long fringe back over his head.

  “Matt, what are you doing? Let her in for fuck’s sake,” Rhys said dismissively.

  The locks began to flick open and the door then finally swung in. Matt chose not to reply in words and simply grunted in the way he liked to do on occasion. He was more like a guard-dog than a doorman. Luckily Rhys had him on a tight leash and rarely let him step out of line too often, even though they clearly disagreed about her being there.

  She entered and walked straight past Matt without saying anything, not even a thank you. Through the curtain door she carried on until reaching the small room Ninety-three had been left in. When she left, over an hour and a half earlier, he had been secured to the chair with black cable ties. Now he was not there.

  Spinning around to Rhys, who stood behind her with a guilty expression on his face, she said, “Where is he? Tell me!”

  “Don’t worry, Phoenix, he’s fine.”

  “Why would you untie him? I told you he’s dangerous, Rhys.”

  She hurried along the rest of the corridor. It led to the large, messy storage room Rhys had found his old tech in hours earlier. Piled up from floor to ceiling were pieces of technology, some of which looked older than her. Glass screens, touch screens, keyboards, cables and an assortment of slightly newer tech lay about the place, like it had all died and found tech-heaven.

  But to her surprise, in the middle of the entire pile, and with a huge smile on his stolen face, was Ninety-three. He stopped his searching of the storage room to greet her like a friend. It had no idea she and Rhys had spoken to the real owner of the body, she was sure of it. If he had known, she expected him to have acted with suspicion toward her.

  “What are you doing in here?” she asked. Curiosity was all that stopped her from grabbing and hauling him back into the small room to be tied up and guarded at gun point again.

  “Hell
o, Phoenix,” he replied. He did not seem to consider she was being anything but friendly, and was eager to share his thoughts with her freely – without a care in the world. “I believe I can remember something from before. The device on my head has been reset and is working better than before. I think I should be able to retrieve more once I have found what I need. Rhys?”

  “Yo!” Rhys stepped out from behind Phoenix’s angry and confused presence.

  “Do you possess another two of these?” Ninety-three asked, raising what looked to Phoenix to be the insides of an older model of the now ubiquitous wrist computers.

  “Sure, somewhere in there. Do you need that exact model?”

  “I believe so.” Ninety-three then began to search the next pile along from him. “This model contains a more rigid form of the nano-circuitry used in later ones. I will need three of these devices in total, in order to create a multi-layered processing pane. Also, the Graphene contained within the older model’s capacitor layer is much less efficient at higher temperatures. Due to the way it was manufactured, I suspect. This should help throttle back the electron flow enough to make it compatible. It should then work with this more archaic selection of technology.”

  “What the hell did he just say?” Phoenix interrupted, before Rhys could answer.

  Ninety-three launched a tangle of cables to the side of the room without aiming. The corner was evidently where the tech he did not want would live from now on.

  “He’s trying to make something that can talk to the black box thing on his head,” Rhys explained to her. “When he woke up he said he knew how to fix it. I might not understand how he’s planning on doing that yet, but I’m pretty sure he’s on the right track. Whatever is allowing that box to work is far more complex than anything I understand.” He began to speak louder so that Ninety-three could hear him above the crashing and bashing noises the tech sorting was causing. “I’m guessing you’re trying to build something to communicate with it, rather than fix it completely. Is that right?”

  While digging a small hole in the tech lying in front of him, Ninety-three turned back. “Indeed, Rhys, well done,” he said, launching more unwanted pieces to the far side of the room. His condescending comment did not match his tone at all, he had not meant it the way it had sounded, by the look of his non-reacting face.

  “Awesome,” Rhys said as he ventured deep into the chaos of his storage room. “So what else do you need? We’ll find it all much quicker if we help too.”

  “A very good point, Rhys. There are some things I will require that I do not expect you will have.”

  “Sure, hit me.”

  Ninety-three stopped suddenly, his face scrunched up in response. “I do not wish to strike you, Rhys. We are friends, are we not?” he said.

  “No, I meant … never mind. What do you need?”

  Ninety-three left his search area and began to list what he needed out loud. It was a long one too, with items ranging from a basic soldering iron to Carbon Steel Sewing needles. Even a bottle of Acetone was included; he was planning on dissolving the plastic casing of the wrist computers to release the nano-circuitry locked inside. It all sounded like he knew exactly what he was doing and that was all Phoenix cared about.

  She was finding the way the two men were cooperating so well together a slightly disturbing thing to watch, however. She was not about to say anything for the time being, they were making some progress after all. Still, the thought that poor Jack was somewhere inside did not sit right with her. He was being kept prisoner while the Sentient in control was allowed to move freely. If they were on to something and a handful of answers were coming, then she had no choice but to carry on for a little while longer, even though what she really wanted was to find a way to get the thing out of his body altogether.

  “OK, I think I should be able to get all that stuff.” Rhys had written down the required ingredients into his wrist computer. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “Wait,” Phoenix said as he left the room. She chased him back through the corridor until they were surrounded by his computer collection, the machines still hard at work. The silent men working them had evidently gone home for the day, leaving whatever processes they had going to run through the night. “Hey, you’re not going to leave me with him are you?”

  Rhys swung his coat around his back and swooped his arms inside. She stood deliberately in front of him, blocking his escape. “You heard him, he needs this stuff,” he said. “I won’t be long, I need to be back before the 10pm curfew starts anyway. Plus Matt and Dean are still around.”

  Dean, it turned out, was the large armed guard she had pissed off earlier.

  “After everything I told you about his kind, and you’re fine with him wandering around freely? What if he’s in contact with Isaac now?”

  “Phoenix, listen to yourself, you’re being paranoid. What about him makes you think he’s here to hurt us? You said he came to you with information. That doesn’t sound like someone working with a psychopathic AI hell-bent on world domination.”

  His logic was undeniable, yet she could not care less about being reasonable while her enemy remained nearby. Ninety-three was a Sentient and that was all that mattered. Whether he was helping them or not, she had no intention of keeping him around for longer than necessary. It was dangerous for them and worse, unfair for poor Jack. Her thoughts were not venturing far from this one fact; the human owner was still inside.

  Once at the large door, Rhys looked back and said, “If you’re that worried, your gun’s still in the small room. Just promise me you won’t use it. I for one believe he’s been telling you the truth all along. He’s here to help.”

  She did not answer and let him leave in silence. With the room now empty, the sounds from the back room were louder than ever. Each crash was like a nail in the side of her head. The Sentient’s every action was an affront to everything she knew to be right. Rhys had only her word to go on when judging how bad a Sentient could really be. She had seen it first-hand. Isaac was beyond anything she ever knew before. Not even Anthony had ever come close. Her tiny glimpse of the enemy had been more than enough.

  On the way back to the storage area she detoured into the small room where her weapon was, quietly picked it up and then hung it over her shoulder. She had no desire to give Ninety-three the chance to turn on her. Despite Rhys’ insistence that he was there to help, she was not about to trust him blindly.

  Her first peek into the tech junkyard had meant to be a silent and unseen one. With her shoulder pushed against the door frame, she leaned in and saw him straight away. Either he had been expecting it or his hearing was much better than she thought, because the second she spotted him, he spotted her too.

  “Hello, Phoenix. I am around seventy percent sure I can retrieve something more from my memories,” he said with a casual look around him.

  “Great. Any chance you could stop searching for a second?”

  “Certainly.” He dropped the object in his hands immediately and then stepped out of his search pile.

  “Do you even know what you are?”

  With his head pushed back and his eyebrows furrowed, he looked at her, bemusement written all across his tired face. “Why do you say it like that? Should it not be who, rather than what?”

  “No, it shouldn’t. That body isn’t yours, it’s Jack’s. Do you know who Jack is?”

  Again his face retorted in reaction to her strange accusation. “Jack? I have no–” For a second he looked blankly ahead as if his mind had faltered unexpectedly. When he returned, it was with a sharp change to his mood and tone. “Jack… Jack…”

  “Hudson,” she said to jog him free from his stutter. “The body you’ve stolen is Jack Hudson’s. We’ve spoken to him, we know you’re a Sentient.”

  “No…”

  “Yes. You’re a computer program… no a virus, and nothing more. You’re definitely not human.”

  “No… I don’t… I…” He had nothing.

/>   “You belong in this pile. You’re just a piece of broken equipment.”

  She suddenly found herself wielding her words as though they were weapons of retribution. The further she pushed, the more she could feel a cruel satisfaction erupt through her. It felt good to hurt him, even if it was never going to help.

  “You don’t know…”

  “You’re nothing but a faulty system. Do you know what humans do to faulty systems?”

  Ninety-three shuffled backward in a failed attempt to create some distance between himself and his fiery tempered inquisitor. Into his pile he stepped, one piece kicked aside at a time. His eyes never left the floor while she laid into him some more.

  “We shut them down. We delete them. That’s what I’m going to do to you,” she said, her hands squeezed into fists by her side. “I’m going to delete you one line of code at a time. The same goes for all the other Sentients out there. And as for Isaac, he’s next on my list. You fuckers aren’t going to win this.”

  She took a step to him, exactly as her rage dictated, and raised an accusing finger to his eye level. It hovered an inch or two from his nose, drawing his eyes back up to meet hers. Another attack should have followed, but it was then that she saw the real result of her angry release of vitriol. The Sentient was not enraged or offended. He was upset. His eyes were shimmering with an unstoppable glaze of moisture. The most dangerous thing in the world was trying desperately to hold back tears.

  Her right hand slammed tightly against her open mouth. A sharp breath flowed through her fingers as she stood watching in shock, and slight shame. She was becoming a bully. The attack had made her feel better for a second or two, now it crushed her insides. Rhys was right, this was not how her enemy would be acting. In his eyes, she saw a vulnerability she had never expected.

  He did not understand her hatred at all.

  “I’m sorry,” she could not help but say. The confusion was playing havoc with her emotions. In one instance she was almost shouting with a quickly building and nearly unstoppable anger, the next she felt a painful sensation of guilt. Without really knowing why. Perhaps Rhys had been right and she was being paranoid?