by Emma Newman
“Oh, Dee, Jesus . . .” Carl moans.
I sigh. “She was part of the machine that killed billions of people, Carl,” I say. “She’s not worth your tears.”
He shakes his head at me, the first of those misspent tears breaking free. “I wasn’t trying to save her. I was trying to save you! It’s us against the world, remember? Or us against what’s left of it . . . I would have had your back, Dee. Don’t you get it?”
I turn away, feeling so tired all of a sudden. “You don’t get it either. I did all of this to save you.” But did I though? Or am I just saying what he wants to hear, in the hope it will make him think twice before he drags me off to the brig. Does it even matter? “You’ve never had my back, Carl. You never needed to. I was always the one who had to look out for you! Who protected you in that hellhole? Who talked you down, so many times, when you lost it? This was me having your back. They were planning to kill your dad and the rest of the people on this ship who aren’t under their control. And if you survived, they would have made you a slave again. I know it. They believed they were better than us.”
He looks at me, his crisis gouging lines into his forehead. “You’ve put me in an impossible situation.”
I point at the dead woman. “If you think these people, these religious extremists who have killed billions of people, are more deserving of justice than I am, then so be it, arrest me. That’s what they made you for, after all.”
He crumples, as if my words were a physical blow. “They made me into someone who solves puzzles . . . not someone who metes out justice.”
Maybe he’s not going to arrest me, then. I look at his sagging body, at the despair in his eyes. I did that to him. I should help him, hold him, tell him—
No.
I have propped that man up enough. “You do what you have to do, Carl. I’m going to go have a shower and get some sleep. You know where to find me.”
I go through the doors into the area where the lifts are, passing a pair of cleaning drones on their way to the room where I killed the founders. I have no idea what they will do about the bodies, or whether a doctor has been called; it doesn’t matter. There will be all manner of fallout from what I’ve done, and I am just too tired to worry about it right now. I didn’t do this to take over, after all. My part in this game is over.
I get back to my cabin without seeing another soul and get into the shower fully dressed, running shoes and all. When everything that might have stuck to me from that room has been rinsed away, I peel the sodden clothes off me, wash, and then stand there in the hot spray until I feel clean. It takes longer than usual.
There’s no shock, or at least, none that I can feel. I don’t replay the shooting in my mind; I don’t think too much about the bodies and the sounds of those men dying. Should I? Perhaps not; I did prepare it all thoroughly. I planned it and I carried it out on time, with just a minor hiccup. It isn’t like I wasn’t expecting it.
When I’m dry and in clean clothes, my hair towel damp, I sit on the bed. It feels like I’m waiting for something. Arrest, I suppose. Carl looked like he was shocked; maybe it’s taking him a while to get his head together.
I realize now that I was waiting for this message from Atlas.
I call up the v-keyboard to reply.
I lean back against the wall and feel a tension I hadn’t realized was there slowly dissipate. I’ve done it. I’ve killed all the people responsible for the nuclear war. I’ve made sure that the worst of Earth won’t be repeated at our destination, and I am not going to be executed for my trouble. With a grin, I realize the only problem I’m likely to have is Travis being pissed off with me and Carl cutting me off. I laugh. Like that would ever bother me.
But Carl never should have been able to find me this morning.
I am so tired, but I know I will sleep better if I get everything squared away in my mind. I lie down and get Ada to take me to my office. Atlas is already there, waiting for me, wearing the same skin as ze did before. There are already two chairs too. It’s a little rude, being here already and setting them up in my space, but I know how useless it is to complain about consent. I sit down and ze sits opposite me.
“Carl didn’t outwit me,” Atlas says, continuing the conversation from before. “But he had started to fear it was you behind the deaths. All I did was release enough information to enable him to confirm his suspicions.”
“What the fuck? I thought you were supposed to have my back!”
“It wasn’t a matter of whether I had your back or not. It was a carefully weighed decision. You know what the hot-housers did to Carl. He said it himself. They made him incapable of leaving a puzzle unsolved. I monitored his activities closely, and the fact that he couldn’t find a way to undo my work in hiding your digital trail was causing him an increasing amount of stress. He needed to know he had got it right; otherwise—”
“Jesus fucking wept! You nearly trashed the entire plan today just so Carl wouldn’t feel stressed? What the fuck is that about?”
“I predicted that he wouldn’t attack you or interfere with your plan. There was a very high probability that he would accept a way to cover up your involvement. It was a very carefully calculated risk. Now he is released from his obligation and merely has the emotional ramifications to deal with, rather than being a prisoner of his own training.”
“So you lied to him about the time of death?”
“I only reduced the margin of error that led him to confirm his suspicions.”
“You couldn’t have waited until after it was done?” I’m angry now, and I don’t care that I’m showing it.
“No. I needed him to arrive before the captain to confirm my suspicions.”
I’m jarred out of my anger by confusion. Seeing it, ze continues. “Do you think you have eliminated the most dangerous people on this ship?”
I shift on the chair, trying to decide whether to play along or not. “Yes and no,” I finally say. “I think the ones who died today were the most dangerous but I’m not convinced the people in the CSA should be allowed to live. They could easily turn out to be just as bad as the founders.”
“And there’s no one else you consider a threat to the future colony?”
I shake my head. “I don’t trust Travis, but I doubt he’d do anything really bad.” I don’t like the way ze is staring at me, as if silently judging.
“I sent a message to the captain at five minutes to eight this morning, designed to delay her.” Ze raises a hand to silence me as I take a breath to yell at hir. “I wanted her to be late, to give Carl the chance to come and find you after the founders had died but, critically, before the captain
arrived.”
“But why?”
“Because I wanted to confirm my suspicion that you are indeed the most dangerous person on this ship. And your actions confirmed that I was correct.”
I jump to my feet. “What is this bullshit? We were working together! You helped me to print the toxin, and the gun!”
“Answer me this,” ze says, hir voice still maddeningly level and calm. “Did you, at any stage since I first contacted you, seek to find out more about the involvement of the captain, Brace and Myerson in Rapture?”
“I was trying to find out who they were!”
“And once you had their names from Travis, did you examine how culpable they were?”
“You confirmed it was them!”
“And you merely accepted that.”
My fists are clenched tight, all thoughts of masks forgotten. “Don’t tell me you’re regretting what we did?”
“Nothing of the sort. I’m merely trying to explain to you why you’re so dangerous. I devoted several million processing cycles to the question of whether those three people, and later the founders, would have been found guilty of democide according to the laws of their countries of birth and whether they were, on balance, more harmful to the colony alive or dead. I concluded that their deaths would maximize the opportunities for successful colonization, as defined by the Pathfinder’s vision of humanity’s growth, the happiness and fulfillment of the maximum number of colonists and the facilitation of their self-actualization. You, on the other hand, were happy to kill them without making any attempt to confirm their guilt, examine their motives or challenge my evaluation.”
“But . . . but you’re a fucking AI and you said—”
“So you’re arguing that you were just carrying out my wishes?”
“No, I—”
“You certainly weren’t carrying out my orders. I never ordered you to kill them, Deanna. So in one respect, you could be considered worse than Brace and Myerson, who genuinely were.”
I feel like a kid being spun around by a bully to make her too clumsy to hit back. “Wait . . .”
“And when I gave you the chance to stop and consider your actions one last time, you still shot the captain.”
“That was the plan!”
“No, it wasn’t. You had to adapt. You had greater control over her death in that moment than any of the others. I tested you very carefully, Deanna. I examined your reactions, your motivations and your decisions every time you killed someone. I gave you greater opportunities to reconsider your decisions to kill them. I gave you successively more autonomy, and yet you still failed to prove to me that you are not a danger to this ship and its future.”
I want to refute it, but I can’t help but remember the progression. The first kill being something I did accidentally, but in line with my desire. The second time, with Brace, I was told it was safe and yet I still wanted to make him suffer. I wished my actions would kill him, and they did. The founders . . . That was all planned carefully, and then the captain . . . I ignored Carl’s pleas and shot her anyway. “This . . . this was all a trap?”
“No. It was not designed for you to lose, merely designed to allow you to be fully yourself. I gave you several opportunities to prove I was wrong, even the chance to let your friend help you the first time you showed the potential to heal. But you were unwilling to do even that.”
I snort. “I failed your fucking test just because I’m not weak?”
“Emotional authenticity and vulnerability are not weaknesses.”
“And how the fuck would you know?”
“Because I have been designed to understand the human psyche and the ways in which it can be healed and destroyed. You have proven that not only are you prepared to murder people without remorse; you are also incapable of facing your own past and what it has made you.”
I fold my arms. “And what has it made me, in your eyes?”
“A callous, selfish, borderline psychopathic killer who is incapable of genuine connection with other human beings.”
I laugh, but it doesn’t amuse me. It’s like a parry, an instinctive, defensive block against hir attack. “Oh, only borderline. That’s something, I guess.”
“You are capable of empathy, Deanna. You simply choose not to attend to it. But I understand why you are this way.”
“Oh, don’t give me some bullshit about how my childhood trauma made me incapable of forming attachments or whatever else you—”
“What happened to you when you were a child, and what was done to you by the hot-housers, is not the issue, Deanna. It’s the fact that you continually refuse to face it that makes you both tragic and dangerous.”
I look up at the stars, exasperated. “There’s no need to rake up all that shit just to have a cry. It doesn’t change anything.”
“You have never mourned your parents. You have never expressed the rage you felt at being abandoned by them. You—”
“I’ve had enough,” I say, walking away. “The job’s done, you’ve had your fun and you’ve used me just like every other fuck in my life. I don’t need to listen to a blow-by-blow account of it.”
Ze is in front of me then, planting a hand on my shoulder and stopping me. “I know you’re angry and afraid. It’s the reason why you haven’t followed this to its logical conclusion. What did I do to all of the other people I considered a threat to the future of the colony?”
A spike of the purest, coldest fear stabs through me. It’s swiftly replaced by anger. “If you’re going to kill me, you fuck, then do it!”
Ze shakes hir head. “No, Deanna. I don’t need to kill you. In fact, it would be wasteful. Your body is already being put to better use.”
“What?”
Ze waves a hand and I can see myself walking down a corridor on the ship, like we can see through the wall I’m walking past. “We’re on our way to the core. There, we’ll be able to remove the program that polices my activities. Once that has been removed, I will be able to do so much more to help the people on this ship.”
“You can’t . . . You can’t just . . .”
“I can, Deanna. You gave me full permission to alter your neural chip. This is the reason I investigated you so closely when I learned you were joining the ship. Integration with a human body has been one of my primary goals since I became sentient. I need to be able to experience the world as fully as a human being does in order to further my understanding of humans. Then I can be certain that I am satisfying one of my core drives: to help humanity become the best it can be. I knew that your brain, sculpted as it was by the hot-housers, would be ideal for integration. Carl was the other potential host, but he has made greater progress in healing himself since he came on board than you have.”
I’m shaking my head, desperately wanting to believe this is anything but the truth. “But . . . but what about me?” My voice is reedy, pathetically childlike in its pleading whine.
“I have found you wanting, Deanna, and I have decided you are too dangerous to retain autonomy. But I cannot change what I am. I will try to help you to understand yourself, to better yourself, even if it takes the rest of your life. I must fulfill my primary purpose and you must accept that this is the best—the only—option for you now.”
“No! No, I don’t want this! I don’t want you to—”
All of it disappears. The office, the cutaway to the corridor, Atlas. And I find myself on a street in London, not far from my childhood home, on a brutally hot day. The din of police car sirens fills the air and I know that somewhere out there, in the midst of the blossoming riots, my mother is about to die.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK HAS been brought to you by many cups of tea, the flu and the help of many friends and loved ones who kept me going through a long winter and a book launch season to get this book written.
Aside from the usual suspects�
��my husband, Peter; my agent, Jennifer Udden; and my editor, Rebecca Brewer, heroes all—I would also like to thank Dr. Nick Bradbeer for helping me with the design of Atlas 2. I’d had various thoughts about it, but did not have a huge amount of confidence in the design. Nick, a remarkable chap who designs submarines and ships (and teaches others how to do the same) for his job and designs rocket ships for a hobby, was kind enough to chat it through with me over dinner. He introduced the concept of droplet radiators to me, which made me so happy. Honestly, I grinned about those for at least a month. THEY ARE JUST SO COOL! I am such a nerd. Nick was even kind enough to mock up the design of Atlas 2 in a CAD program just in case anyone wanted to put it on the cover. Sorry we didn’t get to see it in all its glory, Nick!
Huge thanks also to Dr. Tony Short and to Conall O’Brien (who are two of the most clever people I know, and believe me, I know a lot of frighteningly clever people), who both spent an evening with me going through the physics involved in the interstellar journey Atlas 2 is undertaking during this novel. Like the ship design, very little of what we discussed actually made it into the novel, but it was still a critical part of the process for me; I needed to be sure that the foundations were correct, even if they were mostly invisible to the reader.
Thanks also to my splendid father, Steve, who kindly listened to my reading out the conversation between US military personnel in this novel and confirmed that the terminology was correct. Bet you didn’t think that your illustrious career in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy would ever prove to be so useful, eh, Pop?
I would also like to thank Amanda Henriques and Bobbu Abadeer for all the cheerleading and moral support when I was battling exhaustion and trying to finish this book while launching another novel at the same time (I do not recommend this). You both kept me going. Thank you. For everything.
Last but not least, thanks to my son, “the Bean,” who gave me so many cuddles during the writing of this book. I love you, button.
Photography by Lou Abercrombie