Director Ethan Sommers considered his friend’s words for a moment. For years, the objectives outlined for the Program had been successful but there were those who had opposed it from the beginning. His vision of Controllers leading a new renaissance for mankind was a hard sell in certain circles who argued it was not a great idea to entrust the survival of millions of people to mentally unstable children. Any evidence that indicated malicious, intentional harm to Citadel residents by a Controller unfortunately only confirmed those concerns. Allegations of nepotism further complicated matters.
“Controllers threaten to render the status quo obsolete,” Ethan said while reclining back on his luxurious leather chair. “It’s no surprise they would resist change even if doing so meant certain extinction.”
“So far they have tolerated the Program with all its faults simply out of necessity. But mindsets change in the face of tragedy. We’re too close now, you can’t let them shut it down.”
Ethan scoffed as he put his elbows on the desk, observing the portable microcomputer the size of a wallet on it. “What choice do they have now? Fallback to manual operations? The Citadel is safe thanks to me and my daughter and that’s a fact whether they like it or not.”
The voice on the speakerphone chuckled tiredly then said, “careful, old friend. Don’t let all that power corrupt you.”
The phone rang on an alternate line, interrupting the conversation. “One second,” Ethan said then pushed a button to put Mikhail on hold and answer it.
“Alexia is here,” Mary said over the garbled connection.
“Give me ten minutes.”
“Yes, Director.”
“Thanks.”
Ethan pushed another button to bring back Mikhail’s call.
“This tragedy has set the wheels in motion,” Mikhail said. “You will have to adapt as the consequences unfold while making sure the Program stays on track.”
“I don’t care what happens to me. Just promise you will look after her when the time comes.”
“Do you really have to remind me?”
“Thanks, old friend.”
Ethan pushed a button on the phone to end the call then reclined back. Turning the chair, he faced away from the dual monitors on his desk which showed live feed of the devastation. The large window behind his desk offered a direct view to the central bastion, still humming and protecting its residents who were oblivious to the situation just a few miles north in their neighbor citadel. As he observed the dim red glow of the barrier, he wondered if the daemon would be able to handle solar flares just as efficiently in the absence of a real Controller. Only one way to find out.
After a short moment meditating, the doors opened and Alexia stepped in.
“Dad, what’s going on?” she asked.
“I’m sorry for waking you up,” Ethan said as he grabbed the microcomputer and put it in a drawer then stood up and welcomed his stepdaughter with a hug. “Please sit down.”
Alexia pulled one of the two chairs in front of the desk and sat down. That particular office had once been used by a member of the Troika Council and so it still retained some of the luxuries that wouldn’t be found anywhere else. A well-maintained mahogany desk, leather chairs, even book shelves lining the walls packed with tomes no one seemed to have touched since pre-Sync times. Ever since the Controller Program was put in place, most high ranking officials had relocated underground with the excuse that Citadel government should be closer to the people. In reality, they were just worried if anything ever went wrong with the barrier, surface-side buildings would be the first to burn. Whatever measures or safeguards put in place to guarantee the safety of a Controller running the citadel were not enough for older citizens who had grown up on the days before the Program and were too accustomed to the old way of doing things. Unfortunately, current events –although in his mind completely unrelated- had proved him wrong.
“Alexia, we don’t have much time to waste so I need to go straight to the point,” Ethan said. Her expression then went from confusion to alarm.
“Sure, go ahead,” she said.
“About over an hour ago, our satellite link to Francisco Citadel reported several systems there shutting down,” he began. Alexia listened patiently just like she used to do all those years ago back when she was but a scared little orphan struggling to keep up with the rigorous Controller training. “Those systems affected include life support.”
Understanding lit up in her eyes.
“You mean the barrier?” she asked.
“Yes.” Ethan took a deep breath then continued. “Not only that but air filtering and recirculation, even water delivery-”
“What about the residents?” Alexia interrupted even though by now she had probably guessed the answer.
“Given the situation, we don’t expect there will be any survivors,” Ethan replied.
Alexia took a moment for the news to sink in. She looked down at her feet in shock.
“This is horrible,” she said. “Was it some kind of accident?”
“No,” Ethan replied. “So far, all evidence points to a systematic shut down that was mainly concentrated to life support systems. Almost everything else not affected by atmospheric dissipation remains intact.”
Alexia then looked up at Ethan with shocked understanding. She had always been a smart girl and even now she did not disappoint.
“You think this was done by the Controller onsite,” she said. “That’s why you firewalled my wireless interfaces, like this is something that could happen here too.”
“Correct,” Ethan said. “But it wasn’t my idea, I was ordered by the Troika to do so.”
At that moment, Alexia turned to face the chair next to hers. She seemed lost in trance, observing it as if someone was sitting there.
“She’s here?” Ethan asked, looking at the chair too. “What does she have to say?”
“She doesn’t know what happened,” Alexia said timidly. “And she would like to know how the Citadel is running while she is cut off from the network.”
Ethan put his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on his hands to study the situation for a moment. It was usually tricky to deal with Aurora especially because messages had to be relayed through Alexia. She also did not appear to be particularly fond of him. In order for the next stage of the Program to be successful, he had to choose his words carefully.
“Do you remember Phase 3 of your training?” he then asked.
“Yes. The last step towards synchronizing my brainstem to the stemlink in order to assume automated control of the Citadel,” Alexia readily replied almost as if quoting a textbook.
“That’s right.” he added. “Had everything gone per our original design, your brainstem’s involuntary functions would use sensory feedback from the Citadel network to control operations, with the stemlink acting as neural translator in between them. You and your classmates were supposed to gain the ability to directly interface with Citadel systems.”
Alexia nodded in acknowledgment.
“I can never apologize enough for what happened instead,” Ethan continued, reclining back. “We did not expect your minds to develop alternate personalities to cope with the training.”
“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” Alexia said looking back at Ethan with a faint smile. Suddenly, she reached for her head and covered her ears, whimpering in pain.
“Enough! Stop it!” Ethan said, standing up.
“She says she was not an accident,” Alexia whispered through her teeth.
Over the years, Ethan had tried in vain to force Aurora to cooperate but she was unpredictable and the power she had over Alexia’s higher cortical functions would sometimes get out of hand. As they grew older, the outbursts happened more sporadically but they were still as disruptive as ever. At that moment, however, he did not have time to put up with it. He stood up and walked to the front of his desk then crouched down and grabbed Alexia’s head to force her to look at him. She looked back, her eyes pleading
for help.
“Yes, you were an accident,” he said firmly. “You exist solely because of a miscalculation on a blackboard somewhere and for no other reason.”
Tears ran down Alexia’s face. Her widened eyes were locked with Ethan. The fast, deep breaths gradually slowed down and she began to calm down. Ethan let go then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and reached to clean her face.
“I’m fine,” she said, pulling away perhaps embarrassed of him having to defend her but still taking the handkerchief from his hand. “She backed off.”
“How often does she do this to you?” he asked calmly as he stood up and reclined against the desk and crossed his arms.
“I said I’m fine,” she replied, taking off her glasses and cleaning her face with the handkerchief while looking away from him.
“Very well,” he continued. “We’ve been working on a solution to this unexpected situation from day one. If everything goes well, you will soon no longer be bound to the host-Controller symbiosis.”
Alexia’s eyes widened as he looked at him with a glimmer of hope in them.
“How?” she asked and put the glasses back on.
“With an encephalon snapshot I call a daemon,” he replied with a proud smile.
“A copy of my mind?” she asked puzzled.
“Close, but not quite,” Ethan replied. “You could say it’s a computer emulation of your encephalon’s neural groups, providing output to input in a very similar way your brainstem would. Of course, the whole affair is much more complex than that.”
“You have a daemon in place right now running Citadel systems instead of Aurora,” she said, bewildered. “But how? How do you emulate brainstem neural activity?”
“We can go over the technical details at a later time,” Ethan said. “For now, just understand the Troika no longer trusts the Program and this is only the first step towards phasing it out. I will most likely be ordered to disseminate documentation on how to create daemons to other citadels soon enough.”
“Wait, if this works permanently, what’s going to happen to Controllers?” Alexia asked, her voice subtly betraying fear. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“You provided a great service to us, you will always have a place on the surface side,” he replied.
“What about Aurora?”
“Well, the process of creating a daemon requires intimate knowledge of neuropsychology. One of the things we learned along the way was how to treat mental trauma by wiping neural sectors from an affected encephalon. Over time we may be able to erase her. After that, it would be a relatively simple matter of removing the stemlink implant.”
That last comment seemed to disturb Alexia. She looked at the floor and considered it for a moment.
“But she is my sister,” she said, apparently conflicted.
“Come on Alexia, she is a mental aberration. We shouldn’t even refer to her as a person. On top of that, she hasn’t been exactly the best of roommates.”
Alexia seemed distressed. The fact she and the alternate personality considered themselves sisters to each other over time created a kind of twisted family bond between them. He could only guess it was some variation of Stockholm syndrome. She appeared to need some time to process so he went back to sit down on his chair and take a sip of coffee.
“Well?” Ethan asked after a couple minutes.
“I don’t know what to say,” Alexia replied. “I think she’s scared.”
Ethan put the cup down trying to hide his relief as much as he could. His words had actually managed to produce the results he wanted.
“I suppose we could find a way to preserve Aurora, if that’s what you want. It would of course depend on her cooperation in the next few days.”
Alexia nodded for him to continue.
“First of all, she has to behave. Just because she can take over your higher cortical groups, doesn’t mean she should.”
Again, Alexia appeared to listen to Aurora for a moment.
“She doesn’t appreciate being held hostage,” she then said.
“She’s not a hostage. Alternate personality constructs cannot be hostages. We’re simply phasing out a defective piece of software per its planned obsolescence cycle,” Ethan said then awaited the result of the taunt. But nothing happened which was as good confirmation as any that Aurora was finally under control. He then continued. “There’s a problem we need to resolve and Aurora can help. Up until yesterday, capturing daemon instances was done at the moment of a convergence event. Long ago we put fall back mechanisms for the daemon to take over control of a citadel if the resident controller became unable to do so. I will need her to converge with the last daemon instance we captured of Sophia which is time stamped yesterday just before they met. For the daemon, it will be as if the meeting never happened.”
Alexia listened attentively. She then looked back at the chair besides her.
“She refuses to do whatever it is you want from her,” she said. Ethan took a deep, frustrated sigh but Alexia continued before he could say anything. “She is not thinking straight but I’ll talk to her later.”
“Thanks Alexia. We’re putting together a reconnaissance party that will travel to ground zero to assess the situation. We’re hoping the hardware underground was not damaged too badly. Over time, we could bring the Citadel online and repopulate it.”
“Who would want to live there after today?”
“It would be completely safe once there is a stable daemon onsite,” he replied.
Alexia looked down and absentmindedly reached for the stemlink cover on the back of her head, for a moment sitting there in silence. Ethan figured it was a lot to take in so he reclined and took a sip of coffee while she was ready to move on. After a couple minutes, she looked up and said “so I guess Maya did not survive.”
Ethan closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Her lab was in an above ground building just like yours, with no protection against atmospheric dissipation. I know she was one of your closest friends during training.”
“I don’t remember her that much actually,” Alexia said. “But she helped me make sense of it all. I used to look up to her as an older sister.”
“And now a daemon instance of Sophia, the Controller she was hosting, still lingers in a specialized storage device deep underground. The faster we get done with convergence, the faster the recon party can leave.”
“Got it,” she said apparently ready to move on. “Is there anything else you need from us?”
“Yes, one more thing,” he said, looking into Alexia’s eyes. “For now, the daemon is isolated in its storage space. Before we move on I’d like to gain some insight into what caused Sophia to do what she did. I trust Aurora can find that out from the daemon and when that happens, you’ll be there to observe it.”
“How would I? I’d be in a convergence comma.”
“I know,” Ethan said as he stood up. “Walk with me.”
Alexia nodded and followed him out of his office. Outside, the two Citpol officers were gone and Mary had left her desk. Ethan turned left and opened the first door then flipped the light switch. Alexia caught up and looked inside, unconsciously tensing when she saw what was there. It was a white examination chair which looked like something out of a dentist’s practice. Behind its headrest, there was a torus-shaped metallic device.
“Years ago you said I would never have to go through this again,” Alexia said faintly, her voice subtly shaking.
“Yes, but these are extenuating circumstances,” he said as he signaled for her to sit on it.
Without much of a choice, she walked inside then got on the chair and reclined back. Ethan closed the door and sat behind the desk on the left where there was a computer station he logged on to.
“Is this how I join Aurora in convergence?” Alexia asked.
“Correct. The program I’m about to transmit to your stemlink contains the directives to allow it. Let me know when you’re read
y.”
Alexia reached for the device behind the headrest and pulled it on top of her head, where it rested like a halo. She then said “yeah let’s just get it over with.”
“Alright,” Ethan said then typed the necessary commands on the keyboard. “Three… two… one.”
He could see she held on to the armrests in preparation for the stemlink wireless flash procedure.
“Go,” he said then pressed the Enter key.
His stepdaughter closed her eyes, as she hyperventilated and grabbed the armrests in pain.
“Almost done,” he added as he typed some more commands while on the screen, a progress bar filled up, advancing a percent point every other second or so.
About two minutes later, the bar was full and Alexia exhaled deeply in relief. She then pushed the contraption away and got off the chair hastily, as if wanting to get away as soon as possible.
“Thanks,” Ethan said. “That should do it.”
“Yeah,” she said absentmindedly as she rubbed her temples with closed eyes. Then she looked at him and said “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to converge with Aurora and the daemon but I’ll do my best,” with that tone she would unconsciously use to express her craving for Ethan’ approval.
“Thanks, Alexia. I know I can always count on you. Please report to the lab, Mark has been briefed and will elaborate on the convergence procedure when you get there.”
With that, Alexia nodded to him then left the small room. Ethan stood up and returned to his office. Once there, he took another sip of coffee then looked at his computer screen. The camera surveillance system at ground zero showed night vision images of the devastation. The surface of the citadel was enveloped in darkness but soon it would be dawn. Some video feed of sublevels deep underground showed people still alive, breathing in the toxic unpurified air that lingered. Once the sun rose, the surface would burn and the high temperatures would creep their way down to the alleys to finish them off. It was a disturbing sight. He had not expected Sophia to be capable of causing all that devastation on her way out. Nonetheless, what was done was done and the Troika was probably right in blaming him. The Program had to be completed thought and he figured if this was the sacrifice humanity had to pay to ensure their survival in the long term then they should learn to accept it and move on.
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