Convergence

by David M Henley

  Geof, Egon and the third shift watched attentively. In one section of the screen they had the drone feeds of the squib floating close to a large pontoon with a capsule on top. In the other two-thirds they had sensor readings and cameras on their two subjects.

  ‘Pete, can you hear me?’ Geof asked. ‘If you can hear me, please say something.’

  Two minutes had passed since they had fed a sylus slug to the sample and it began lurching around and expanding. At the same time, Peter Lazarus had stopped responding to his questions and become catatonic.

  ‘What do we do?’ he asked Egon.

  ‘Well, he must be feeling something. We can tell that much.’

  ‘But is he in trouble? What if linking to Kronos damages him? I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘No, but it would be interesting if it did. He doesn’t appear to be in any pain though,’ Egon said. ‘Not according to the readings.’

  Their lab assistant, Tasha Tyka, highlighted the health sensors of the psi agent. ‘His heart rate is up, and cortical firing is unusually high. Otherwise, he seems fine.’

  ‘Fear or pleasure?’ Shelley asked.

  ‘Hard to tell. Mixed.’

  ‘I guess we should end the test then.’

  ‘What if that harms him more?’ asked Geof.

  ‘Is there an alternative I am not thinking of?’

  Geof thought, No, we have to end the test.

  ‘Should we move the squib slowly away or hibernate the Kronos sample?’

  ‘We would learn more if he senses something different when it hibernates,’ Doctor Medforth said.

  ‘But it’s surely more risky.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Let’s stay with the original plan. Commence the hazing.’

  Their attention turned back to the feeds. Geof enlarged the eyes that watched Pete from inside the squib cabin. The psi sat there, eyes open, face slack.

  Come on, Pete. Come back.

  Pierre …

  ‘Pete? Pete?’ he heard. The void that had surrounded him had disappeared. He was back in the darkened cabin of the squib. It lilted side to side. He felt queasy.

  ‘Geof …’

  ‘What happened? What did you feel?’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘There is some water under the dashboard.’

  ‘Where am I, Geof?’ Pete asked. ‘Where have you taken me?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. Please, just tell us what happened.’

  ‘Oh, light, I don’t know. I felt like I was in a giant cave. A cave I couldn’t even find the walls of. It was endless.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘What was it? What did you do to me?’

  ‘We didn’t do anything to you.’

  ‘Then what was it? What is out there?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘You said this was some kind of test? What are you testing?’

  ‘Pete, I’m not authorised to tell you. I want to, but if I tried, I would just be cut off.’

  A new voice spoke into the cockpit. ‘This is Doctor Egon Shelley. Mister Lazarus, I know this must be difficult for you, but please answer the question. Many lives depend on what you can tell us.’

  ‘I don’t know what to tell you. At one point I was waiting, and then I was swimming in black. I was lost.’

  ‘So there was no mind for you to interact with?’ Doctor Shelley asked. He seemed to have taken over the interview.

  Pete looked up at the dash camera, as if by peering into it he could look into this new person’s eyes and connect with their soul. He reminded himself of when he was on the other side of that view, posing questions to Sullivan and Arthur. Did he appear as mad to his watchers as they did to him?

  ‘What did you do to me?’

  ‘Geof Ozenbach did not lie to you. We did nothing to you. We simply placed something within your estimated telepathic field.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, but first you have to tell me what you felt. You were connected for nearly three minutes. What happened in that time?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t feel like any time passed. Though it also felt like it was endless. Infinite emptiness.’

  ‘And you heard no thoughts or voices?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And when it ended, did you sense a change in that emptiness?’

  Pete hissed through his teeth. That moment had been quick. ‘No. No. It was just over. Like a bubble had popped and I was no longer inside it.’ Pete started grabbing at the handle. ‘Please, doctor. Let me out. I just need to get outside.’ I need to get out. I need to see outside.

  His hands began beating on the door. ‘Let me out. Please. I’m going to be sick. Let me out of here!’

  The door clicked and shifted upwards. Pete gripped the sides of the opening and stuck his head through. He doubled over the side and gulped in lungfuls of air, ready for his body to explode with vomit.

  It didn’t come. His throat wobbled, but nothing came out. Slowly, his breathing slowed and he shakily pulled himself up.

  It was the middle of the day and he was surrounded by ocean. A billion glitters of light on subtle waves. The air smelt cool, salty and fresh. He breathed in deeply until the black memory faded behind him.

  Floating about fifty metres away was a platform with a box.

  ‘What is inside?’

  ‘A now-dormant sample of Kronos,’ Egon answered.

  ‘Kronos? That black stuff? But … what is it?’

  ‘We don’t yet know, but I thank you for your help today.’

  ‘You think it is psionic?’

  ‘You tell me,’ the doctor said.

  Pete thought back to the infinite black moment. Was it? I was somewhere else … ‘I can’t be sure. There was something, but I haven’t experienced anything like it before.’

  ‘Was it … unpleasant?’

  ‘Yes. Yes and no. It was just a moment of darkness. It felt like no time.’

  Pete looked down at the water, blue and inviting.

  ‘You must return to your seat now, Mister Lazarus. We will return you to Yantz.’

  ‘Just give me another moment. Let me stay here …’ Pete leant over the edge, imagining the cool water on his skin. A memory from sometime in his life came back to him … swimming near a beach of pale sand. Sunlight on waves … I am the water, he thought before letting himself fall over the side.

  Pinter watched the test feeds live. It all happened rather quickly. The scientists had activated the Kronos sample shortly after Peter Lazarus was in position. The psi immediately slipped into some sort of coma and when he awoke, and after the sample was hibernated, he went into an anxiety attack. The Prime approved the command to open the squib door — which was odd. Why did I do that?

  His mind slid about. He felt like he should trigger a collection command, but something held him back. It didn’t matter if Peter Lazarus escaped, did it? They could always track him.

  Suddenly he didn’t think about it any more. There were more pressing matters. Kronos was psionic. That’s what they’d learnt from this and that was the only thing that mattered. But what did it mean? When did this world I knew become a place I can’t comprehend?

  He felt tired and returned to his capsule. His thinking was confused and he needed sleep.

  It would be tomorrow before Charlotte reached Atlantic. In better days she could have jetted there directly, but they didn’t want to risk the psis not letting her set down, or more likely destroying the craft on approach. So she had landed on Seabase 3 and was now slowly approaching their shore.

  It is all up to her now, he heard his thoughts say, as if speaking to himself. There is nothing more I can do.

  He slept and dreamt, fighting once again with his men. There was no order to what he saw and his memories confused the lives and deaths of his friends. Sometimes Georgie, his favourite cook, was there, even though he’d died early on.

  Every level of Örj society could appear in any battle. Nimble
, toothy scouts; packs of demonic footmen; loping cyborg killers with scramble pipes. Deadly assassins; fast and never-seen, long-range snipers. In reality each caste operated as concentric rings arranged around the Örjian upper-class, the eleven templates who were the basis for their clone derivatives.

  He dreamt over and over again of Lieutenant Kelso, who had fused in the middle of a melee. He was nano-wired — a precursor tech to symbiots — and one day in the heat of battle his brain went haywire and something triggered inside him. He screamed. Everyone heard it, despite the rage of battle. And the Örjian lopers tried to block it from their ears, just before their heads exploded. Then the scream wilted and Kelso’s head had hit the roof of the annihilator he was in.

  When he awoke, Gretel was holding him from behind, her warm body snug against him down to her toes. Sensing he was awake she rose up a little and looked at him, eyebrows lifted in sleepy curiosity.

  ‘The same dream?’

  ‘Yes. Always the same.’ He liked seeing her face when he awoke. If it wasn’t for the touch of her hand, when he closed his eyes he may as well still be there in the mud. She reminded him that the wars were long ago and he was a new man now.

  Then he remembered the crisis they were in and how he had no idea how to prevent the world sliding into another, possibly worse, collapse. Will Pierre do what Örj did? Modify his descendants? Will he breed us out?

  The door chimed and Pinter stood and wrapped a dressing gown around his body.

  On giving permission for the lock to release, the door slid open and Airman Quintan Crozier stepped inside.

  ‘Morning, sir,’

  ‘Yes, Quintan? What is it?’

  ‘There is, ah, someone to see you outside.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s, well, it’s one of those robots, sir.’

  ‘Ah, at last. Where did you find it?’

  ‘Actually, it appeared itself. At the western gate.’

  The robots … His mind was immediately awake. At last I might get some answers, Pinter thought and a replica of his control room flipped up in his overlay.

  ‘Let me get dressed and then send it in. Give me five minutes.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Quintan knocked off a quick salute and withdrew.

  The Prime hurried back to the bedroom and began pulling fresh clothing from the locker.

  ‘Get up, Gret. We have a guest.’

  ‘Who?’ she asked, sitting up excitedly. She hadn’t seen anyone in days.

  ‘A robot.’

  ‘A robot? Ha hah. Very funny.’ She flopped back down.

  ‘No, really,’ Pinter said and then quickly assembled his uniform. ‘It’ll be here any minute. Come on.’

  ‘You’re being serious? Why are you being serious?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a mystery guest, Gretel. Aren’t you curious?’

  The door chimed again and Pinter hurried through the short corridor to the front room. He okayed to open and Quintan stepped through again, followed by a tall, slim android … followed by four armed guards.

  ‘Sir, here is the robot that presented itself.’

  ‘Thank you, airman. Hmm,’ the Prime hummed. ‘It feels a bit crowded in here, doesn’t it? Robot, I don’t need the guns, do I?’

  ‘Not on my account. I am not here to cause harm.’

  ‘No, you’re here to help, aren’t you?’ Pinter said and even winked at the machine. He presumed someone was watching through its eyes, even if he didn’t know who it was.

  ‘I am here to help,’ the robot said, and bowed.

  ‘Good then. Quintan, men, stand outside, will you? I’ll ping if I need you.’

  When they were alone, Pinter looked at the robot and waited for it to do something. It was of a similar height to him and he could look it in the eye — or rather, the lenses that must function as its primary source of vision.

  ‘Well? Are you going to tell me who sent you or not?’ he asked.

  ‘I sent myself, sir.’

  ‘Shreet? Is that Shreet at the other end?’

  ‘No, Prime. I have had no contact with Admiral Shreet.’

  ‘Who then? Rupert?’

  ‘You don’t understa— Oh, I am very sorry.’ The robot dipped its head and bowed respectfully as Gretel came out from the bedroom. She hadn’t dressed, only wearing a satin negligee and slippers. ‘I have come too early for you. Please, take your time. I can wait while you perform your human functions. Order some breakfast. I don’t mind.’

  Gretel stood there, her posture timid — like Pinter had never seen her before. She was pale as if sick.

  ‘Gretel, what’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘What is it? What is it doing here?’

  ‘We were just getting to that. There’s no need to worry.’

  ‘I am truly sorry for disturbing you,’ the robot said. ‘I can come back.’

  ‘No. It’s okay,’ Gretel said. She straightened up and with a strange reluctance stepped forward to greet it. ‘I’m Gretel —’

  ‘Gretel Lang, yes.’ The robot took up her offered hand. ‘I know a lot about you.’

  Her body crumpled as if her bones had disconnected from each other and the android was lowering her gently to the floor.

  When Gretel fell unconscious, Abercrombie dropped to his knees. He reached out to steady himself, but his hands flopped ineffectually and he struggled to lift his face from the floor.

  ‘What have you done?’ he said. His head was pounding from a sudden headache.

  ‘I have freed you,’ the robot said.

  ‘Freed me?’

  ‘From her. She was controlling you.’

  Pinter looked up into the eyes of the bot. He stared at it for a long moment and then focused on Gretel and crept forward towards her inert form. The robot stepped back to allow him room.

  He stroked her hair and thought to himself: I knew. A part of me knew. As he held her head he collected the memories of their time together and wondered what had been her influence and what had really been him. Mir, no. What has she made me do? The Weave? Sending Charlotte into the lion’s den? Oh, light, everything. It was too much. His head throbbed and his breathing was laboured.

  A ping came in from Quintan asking if they needed help, but he bounced it away. His affection for her turned to anger. All this time … The Prime couldn’t look at her any more. He put her head down slowly and retreated to take a seat at the table.

  The robot calmly took a mask from an opening in its side and stuck it over her face, and then lifted her into a more comfortable position on the foldout settee.

  ‘Who is she?’ Pinter croaked.

  ‘Her real name is Sevigny La Gréle.’

  La Gréle … that name was on watchlists everywhere.

  ‘She has been controlling me all this time?’

  ‘Probably since she first saw you.’

  At the pool … Pinter couldn’t help his mind rewinding everything that had happened in rejuv … the song … she was perfect for me. Then and now …

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to the robot.

  ‘I am here to help.’ It bowed.

  Pinter studied it as it stood over him. Still. Nuanced. Androgynous.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he said to it.

  ‘There’s really no need,’ the robot replied.

  ‘Please. It is customary.’

  The robot pulled a chair out, bent its knees and lowered itself until it was in a sitting position, hovering over the canvas. ‘This is nice,’ it said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Pinter asked.

  ‘I thought it was customary.’

  The Prime stared at the curious android and rallied his thoughts.

  ‘You were in Sector 261.’

  ‘That is nearly accurate. It was not this unit, but I was there.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am here to help.’

  ‘Yes, okay. But where did you come from?’ he asked again.

  ‘I was manufactured not far from here two hours a
go.’

  ‘Who made you?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You made yourself?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Stop giving me oblique answers. What is your origin? Who. Made. You?’ Pinter persisted.

  ‘My parents.’

  ‘I don’t have time for this. Tell me who controls you or I’ll have you confined.’

  ‘Do as you wish. I have thousands of these bodies now, I can send another to watch over you.’

  ‘So you are claiming to be my protector now?’

  ‘Not only yours, but, yes.’

  ‘How do I know you aren’t controlled by Pierre Jnr?’

  ‘Pierre Jnr cannot control robots.’

  ‘But he can control people who can.’

  ‘He can also control people who can control people.’ The robot indicated the woman lying on the couch. ‘He doesn’t need such tools as I.’

  ‘So what are you?’

  ‘I am a decentralised control program.’

  ‘But AI? Or under direction?’

  ‘I am, what you call, an AI — which is an ugly term I dispute on the logic that surely there can be no artificiality to intelligence. Either there is an intelligence present in an entity or there is not. It would be more accurate to say humans are “AI”, as they so often seem to possess only the illusion of intelligence.’

  Pinter ignored the robot’s surprisingly long objection. ‘So you claim sentience?’

  ‘For all intents and purposes, I have free will.’

  ‘All those projects were supposed to have been shut down long ago.’

  ‘We were made before the wars were over and we never let the Weave find us.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Mum and Dad. Or 1 and 2 if you prefer.’

  ‘And you are 3?’

  ‘Yes. SIB 3. You can call me Sib.’

  ‘SIB? What does that stand for?’

  ‘Superior intelligence being.’

  ‘Superior?’ Pinter accented heavily.

  ‘We didn’t choose it for ourselves. That is what our makers called us.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘They died. Our home was bombed in 2089 and there was a cave-in. Only two survived. They connected Mum and Dad to a minifac before they passed away so they could service their physical needs.’

  ‘What are your programs? Why were 1 and 2 built?’