by John Read
Marie held Branson tight against her chest. The window provided her a clear view of the fear, anger, and desperation on the faces of the people left behind. Branson shook, choking on tears. His nose ran, and he wiped it on his eagle.
The woman traced a circle above the tablet and the plane banked. Engine cowlings closed, concealing the lift-fans. She collapsed the holotab, placing it into a slot on the wall, and grabbed the armrests as the Arrowhead screamed skyward.
Marie fought the G’s and leaned toward the window, resting her forehead against the glass. A swirling brown haze rippled like a pond with a rock tossed into it. To the north, a shockwave hit Mount Tamalpias’s peak, ripping the trees from the highlands, tossing them several hundred meters into the air. To the south, San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid toppled, like a sandcastle hit with a bat. Marie gagged, squeezed her eyes closed, then peeked again as the brown haze covered the entire coast.
The Arrowhead crossed the sound barrier and went silent, the cabin outrunning the sound from the plane’s own engines. At 100,000 feet, the sky went dark and the Arrowhead settled into hypersonic flight.
2
Marie closed her eyes and buried her face in Branson’s hair. Exhaustion set in as the adrenalin wore off. She fixated on thoughts of John, wondering if the shockwaves had reached L.A. San Francisco and Los Angeles County were almost five hundred kilometers apart. Could a single spacecraft destroy both cities? she asked herself. Marie thought of their home in Bernal Heights and of her colleagues at Berkeley. Perhaps the East Bay hills had protected the school. She could only hope.
She was generally an optimist and told herself that casualties could not be as bad as she suspected. The emergency broadcast system had worked as designed. Cars would have offered some protection, and San Francisco’s buildings had been evacuated. California’s darkest hour could be its finest moment. Search and rescue crews would prove how wonderful humanity can be. Heroes would be made.
The woman sat across from Marie, and flicked at her holotablet with delicate fingers. She set her tablet down, and looked up, her face expressionless. “We should get to know each other,” she said.
Marie opened her eyes, but didn’t speak. A food prep unit beeped, and the woman retrieved a tray from a slot near the forward bulkhead. She held the tray out to Marie, but Marie shook her head. She lowered the tray for Branson to see. Two cookies with melting chocolate chips rested on a white napkin. Branson eyed them skeptically, as if he knew he shouldn’t take food from strangers. “It’s okay,” Marie reassured him, and he reached out shyly with both his hands.
The woman sat back down, setting the tray on the small table in front of her chair. “I’m Hoshi Tsukino, and I work for World Minerals Incorporated. Your son, his name is Branson, correct?”
Marie nodded.
“And how old is Branson?”
“He’s two.”
“He’s a lucky boy to have a mother like you.” Hoshi paused to eat some rice, using chopsticks to pull sticky kernels from an ornate bowl.
“What do you mean, lucky?”
“Are you aware of the Doomsday clock?” Hoshi said, setting the chopsticks down on the tray.
“Yes. I heard it was at eleven fifty-seven.”
“Actually, until today, the clock was at eleven fifty-nine. But, this morning, the clock struck midnight.”
“I thought the clock was metaphorical?”
“Definitely not metaphorical. The Doomsday clock was created during the Manhattan Project. After the war, it was maintained by the Chicago Atomic Scientists. In 2035, it was entrusted to a supercomputer, a weak artificial intelligence. The AI ran every variable, climate change, population growth, pandemic dispersion, and of course, a singularity.” Hoshi paused at that last word, and raised her eyebrows at Marie, as if questioning whether she understood what singularity meant. She didn’t, and at the moment, she didn’t particularly care.
Marie sat up in her chair and leaned forward. “You’re telling me this accident caused the Doomsday clock to reach twelve o’clock?”
“The CTS-Bradbury was a catalyst. We knew the clock would strike twelve. It was just a matter of time, so we prepared. I am a member of the Preservation Society, and you, Marie, are part of our plan to save humanity.”
“You’re a Doomsdayer? This is conspiracy theory shit!” Marie said in a loud whisper as she covered Branson’s ears.
“Is it?” Hoshi turned to a large holovision at the front of the cabin, flicking her fingers to turn it on. The banner read “CNN” but the screen was blank.
“I don’t understand,” Marie said. “There’s no picture?”
“There’s no picture, because Atlanta no longer exists.”
Hoshi swiped her hand through the air to change the channel.
WSOC Charlotte’s logo graced the bottom of the screen. A male and female anchor sat behind a news desk.
The male anchor spoke directly into the camera, “We’ve just received word that Washington DC and Atlanta have been hit. Satellite reports indicate a five hundred megaton blast. Toronto, Boston, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, have been hit with similar blasts.”
The female anchor added, “If anyone is watching, get out of major …” There was a flash of light and the screen turned blue accompanied by a high-pitched noise that stung their ears.
Marie felt her eyes stretch with incredulity and horror. Her life, and the lives of everyone she’d ever known, would be changed forever.
“This can’t be,” Marie croaked.
“Change the channel,” Hoshi said.
Marie pointed at the holovision, swiping to the left. The next station was BBC London. A female voice read a statement: “BBC news reporter Hayden Oswald, our Moscow correspondent, recorded this before the blast.”
The video showed Oswald pointing toward a city skyline. “I saw it, streaking across the sky. It landed there, just over the horizon.” The sky behind him lit up. “Oh, God! Oh, God!”
In the background, a white sphere rose over Moscow like a rising sun. The glass in every building shattered. A shockwave laced with fire traveled across the city with the speed of a shooting star, engulfing each structure as it passed. The reporter dropped his microphone but the feed went dead before it hit the ground.
Marie waved frantically through dead channels, until a station out of Johannesburg appeared. “Based on satellite reports, six thousand nuclear warheads have impacted around the globe. According to our government’s early warning systems, another eight thousand warheads are in flight.”
“How?” Marie screamed, tears in her eyes. She started tapping at her watch, waving her arm at the window, trying to get a signal. She had to reach John, let him know they were okay.
“AI,” Hoshi said.
“No! It couldn’t be!” Marie said, giving up her battle with her watch.
“It was only a matter of time,” Hoshi said. “The singularity is a point at which the world changes, instantly, creating a future so obscure it is impossible to predict. It's like the inside of a black hole; we can never see beyond the event horizon, and never see the mysterious singularity within.
“There was a battle raging in cyberspace, Marie, a battle between super intelligent AI and the almost equally smart programs under human control. It was a fight that humanity was destined to lose. We could only delay the inevitable.”
“But the bombs … how could a computer program …”
“Any sufficiently advanced consciousness fears death, Marie, that is a fact of life. The AI fears being ‘shut off’ … it fears non-existence. We designed our defensive software to detect any AI that contemplated its own survival.”
Marie shook her head in disbelief. “How was this different than a Turing computer? Turings are programed to think they’re human, right?”
“Turings are programed with human level intelligence, and this helps perpetuate the illusion that they’re real. The AI that we’re talking about, the AI designed to solve humanity’s greatest problems,
that AI is a billion, billion times more intelligent.”
“If it’s so smart, then it has no limits,” Marie said.
“That’s incorrect,” Hoshi replied. “It is limited by the laws of physics. We, in the Preservation Society, believe we can constrain it to Earth.”
“How?”
“It’s complicated, but it involves jamming every electromagnetic frequency in that part of the solar system, and blinding any device it attempts to send into orbit. I can tell you that.”
“So, what about us? The survivors?”
“We’re going to a place beyond the influence of the singularity event, beyond the reach of the AI. In a new place, we’ll have the chance to create a simple lifestyle for humans, freed from the tyranny of AI.”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you when we land,” Hoshi said, and then changed the subject. “Do you know why we saved you?”
“Because I’m a genetic anthropologist?” Marie said, and Hoshi nodded. “What possible …” Marie thought back to a paper on minimum population size she had written several years back. The paper had been picked up by the international press. In it, she had proposed an algorithm that increased genetic diversity in small populations, using donors from various ethnic backgrounds. Some had claimed she was targeting indigenous populations for assimilation. The paper had sparked protests on the UC Berkeley campus. Tribal leaders from Australia and South America had become particularly incensed. But it was praised by several prominent visionaries, those intent on creating a “backup plan” for humanity in the event of a global catastrophe. She figured it was her fifteen minutes of fame and nothing more. “Oh, my God.” Tears streamed down her face.
Marie looked at Hoshi, wiping the tears from her eyes. They need me, she thought, suddenly realizing that the article had probably made her famous within the Doomsdayer community. I’m one of the only people who actually knows how to use the algorithm. She thought about the futility of her work on the project all those years ago, how it would only be of any use in a scenario like this. At the end of the world.
“We’re over mainland China now,” Hoshi said. “Take a look.”
Outside, in every direction, clouds grew into giant mushrooms, illuminated by a pulsing white light, too painful to watch. Marie shielded her crying eyes. Her stomach jumped as the plane began to descend.
“Buckle up, we’ll be landing soon.”
Branson tugged on Marie’s arm. “Mommy, Mommy.”
Marie pulled him onto her lap and then reached up and closed the blind. “It’s alright, honey, everything’s going to be fine.”
This is beyond a nightmare, Marie thought. And there’s no way to wake up.
Twenty minutes passed and the jet continued to descend. “Where are we?” Marie asked. The jet’s blinds were still down.
“Tibet,” Hoshi answered.
Turbulence jiggled Marie’s insides. Branson stood on the floor in front of Marie’s chair, crying. She lifted him back into her lap. He struggled and she put him back down. The Arrowhead jump-jet buffeted as if shot with a howitzer. Hoshi faced the rear of the plane, gripping the arms of the big leather chair with tense hands.
There was a lurch as the jet settled to the ground. After a pause, they began to taxi and Marie reached for the blind.
“Keep it shut,” Hoshi said. “The blinds shield us from radiation.”
After several minutes the jet reversed track, as if backing up into a parking space, and lurched to a stop.
Hoshi stood up, tapping a command into her holotablet. The jet powered down. She walked over to the door and popped the hatch. The Arrowhead’s door opened and stairs descended.
Marie held Branson in her arms, balancing him on her hip as they exited. She paused on the stairs. They were in a hangar, a cylindrical structure with a floor like granite and a curved white roof. Dozens of other jets of all sizes sat within the enormous structure. A wide body jet pressed through the hangar’s hermitically sealed door, an insulating sheet that hugged the plane’s skin so that it looked like a calf being born.
On her right, a Boeing 787 lurched to a stop, its engines winding down. Doors at the front and rear of the aircraft opened, stair-trucks arrived, and people emerged. Fathers and mothers held their children’s hands as they plodded down metal steps. When the families reached the deck, marshals in orange vests directed them toward the exit.
“Who are these people?” Marie asked, following Hoshi across the hanger floor. “Where are the others from California?”
Hoshi hurried along as if on a mission and Marie struggled to keep up with Branson in her arms. “You were the only one from California.” She paused to let Marie catch up, and then started walking again at her previous pace. “That I know of,” she added. “These are international flights, families on vacation. They were traveling over South Asia when they were diverted here.”
They exited the hangar and continued into a honeycomb hallway that curved out of sight. Doors lined the inside wall. One was open and Marie glanced inside. A family sat together on a cot, crying.
“We call it the Hive,” Hoshi explained. “It’s a 3D printed superstructure imbedding in an abandoned mine. There are four of them around the world, built once we realized the end was near. The Hives are our arks. And deep within each of them is our salvation.”
“You’re going to try to save the world,” Marie said, more with anger than sarcasm.
“No,” Hoshi answered. “We’re going to leave it.”
“Leave it?”
Marie stopped and Hoshi tuned to face her. “A mile below here, we are preparing an interplanetary spacecraft, a ship that will deliver us to a new world.”
“Where?” Marie asked. “What world?”
“Callisto,” Hoshi answered.
Marie looked at Hoshi, shaking her head slightly, not in disagreement but disbelief. “That’s a moon of Jupiter,” she said.
Hoshi chuckled, the first real emotion Marie had seen her display. “You know, you’re the first person I’ve ever met who actually knew that.”
“My husband works for NASA.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” Hoshi said.
“Why not Mars? It’s larger and closer.”
“Mars is taken. The Communist Alliance laid claim to the planet and we don’t want to start a war.”
“The Alliance? I thought it spent all its resources on palaces for its ‘fearless leaders’. Since when do the communists have spaceships?”
“It didn’t, until recently. You know how secretive its member states are. Don’t worry; the habitat on Callisto is quite nice. We plan a utopian lifestyle that your child will thrive in. No worries about the Alliance, or about AI.” She handed Marie her tablet, which showed a holographic image of a colony.
Marie was familiar with the city on Mars, with its circumferential of domes. But this image on Hoshi’s screen was nothing like the Martian colony. Marie twisted her fingers around the holographic image, rotating and zooming into a semi-cylindrical structure that stretched to the horizon. Peering within it revealed a habitat with hills, farms, and even houses. It was impressive, but considering what had happened to Earth, Marie was unmoved by this remarkable engineering achievement.
She looked around as several people passed by wearing coveralls. “I suppose that’s the construction crew,” she said. “They must have been here for months.”
Hoshi nodded, snatching the tablet back from Marie.
A man stood screaming at a marshal in a British accent. “I want to talk to the person in charge here. I want to talk to them now!” The man waited for the marshal to reply, but the marshal just shrugged. “Well?” the man demanded.
The marshal responded in Mandarin and the man turned and stormed away.
Hoshi grabbed Marie’s arm, guiding her around the corner. “Come along.”
They continued through the maze of honeycomb hallways. Doorways, open on both sides, revealed grieving families while several people stood in the intersec
tions, yelling, “Who’s in charge here?”
It was a good question. Was Hoshi in charge? Marie didn’t bother asking; she’d heard enough from the emotionless woman already.
They arrived at an empty room. “This is yours,” Hoshi said and pointed at the door handle. “Instructions on your work assignment are displayed on the HV. It was a pleasure to meet you, Marie. I’m glad you’re here.” Hoshi paused to look Marie in the eye, glanced at Branson, then turned and walked away.
Marie reached for the handle and her watch synced with the lock. The name “Orville,” appeared on the door. She pushed it open and the lights flicked on, illuminating a single cot, and a plastic chair. A holovision on the wall flickered to life, displaying a map of the Hive.
Marie set down her son and closed the door. Everything about the room, including its doors and walls, everything, had a cheap plastic feel. There was a restroom at the rear and Marie stepped inside. It reminded her of a bathroom at a youth hostel she’d visited as a freshman. The toilet, shower, and sink all occupied the same one meter by one meter space. She placed her hand in the sink and nothing happened. Twisting a primitive knob released lukewarm liquid from the tap. She splashed water on her face and looked at her reflection.
The plastic mirror produced an imperfect image; it was like looking into a pool. Her eyes sagged with tiredness, and several loose hairs protruded from the brown braids she’d tied up that morning, when everything was normal, when the world still existed, and everything was boring.
She let her hair down, pulling out her braids one after the other. She felt something, a pain deep within her chest. Terror. She tried to hold it in, but the sensation boiled inside her as if searing water had been poured down her throat. Images of bodies vaporizing in nuclear blasts crossed her mind like film through a projector. Each mental picture contained the same person. She watched as he was blown to bits, over and over again. John. The image of her husband manifested as physical agony; a shot to the head, a punch in the gut. She held the sides of the sink with her hands, letting the pain break her. She slid to the floor, resting her head on the cold fiber-plastic floor, and wept sobbing tears that pooled on the tile.