Gestalt Prime

by Ignacio Salome

  “Oh I see,” Martin muttered. “So then the sphere is the tridimensional shadow of a four-dimensional object we can’t even perceive?”

  “In a sense, yeah.”

  “Dude, that’s crazy. But I guess it makes more sense for all this energy to leak through it from the galactic center instead of it just being made out of thin air.”

  “But then what about the other citadels?” Joel muttered. At that moment, the elevator mechanism came to life and the cab was lifted away from sight.

  “Shit, someone’s coming,” Joel said. “Go hide.”

  Martin nodded and ran behind an equipment rack next to the scaffolding ladder. Joel minimized all the windows they had opened and turned off the monitor then he ran behind the scaffolding on the other side of the sphere. Carefully, he peeked from hiding to see who it was. The elevator box was lowered and a single person stepped out. It was an old man, wearing what looked like a digger’s uniform. When the newcomer walked into the artificial lighting of the cave, Joel recognized him.

  “You,” Joel said as he stepped out of hiding.

  “Chief Vega,” former Director of Control Administration Ethan Sommers greeted him, nodding.

  Joel stood by the computer terminal, fighting the impulse to punch his arrogant surfacer face. As the Director walked closer, Joel took a step closer and asked “how could you incriminate your own stepdaughter?”

  “I see you’ve come to know Alexia,” Ethan said as he stopped next to him. “Good. I know where they’re keeping her. I know how to get her out and I want to help you.”

  “Why?” Joel asked, clutching his fists in anger. “Why do you care? Aren’t you the one who accused her of terrorism in the first place?”

  “You should not believe everything you hear,” Ethan said. “Those stupid news reports come straight from the Troika, an outdated form of government fighting for survival.”

  “Forget the reports. She told me what you did to all those kids. You piece of shit.”

  Ethan scoffed and rolled his eyes condescendingly. “My boy, please. You have no idea what you’re talking about. The motives behind the Controller Program would go way over your head.”

  “What else is there to know? Your work killed who knows how many children and those who survived were driven to insanity.”

  “I don’t need to explain myself to you. Do you want to get her to safety or not?”

  Martin grabbed Joel by the arm and pulled him away from Ethan. “Okay you guys, I don’t know what you two are babbling about but I agree we should work together to get the Controller out of prison.”

  “It’s not a prison,” Ethan said, looking at Martin as if expecting he would reason with him easier than Joel. “It’s worse than that. Alexia is being kept at a black site. It’s a mental ward where we keep the unstable subjects who failed the Program.”

  “Alright old man,” Joel said. “This is your chance at redemption. How do we get her out?”

  “Redemption?” Ethan chuckled. “You really think everything is black and white, don’t you? How old are you again?”

  “Enough!” Martin shouted when he lost his patience.

  “Alright,” Ethan said, looking around the room. “Looks like we had the same idea,” he added, motioning at the computer they had been using.

  “I can reach the daemon but I don’t know the script syntax to manage it,” Joel explained, trying to calm himself down, knowing the former Director was after all, Alexia’s stepfather. If he said he wanted to help then it was probably true.

  “We need to bypass the daemon and remove the firewall blocking her,” Ethan said, as he lifted the right sleeve of his thick denim jacket, exposing a sort of wearable computer mounted around his wrist.

  “You mean blocking Aurora?” Joel said as he leaned closer to take a better look at the microcomputer.

  “Huh,” Ethan mumbled, as he typed commands on its small keyboard. “You’ve even met Aurora. But yes, the first thing the Troika ordered me to do after we realized what had happened in Francisco Citadel was to firewall Aurora to prevent a similar disaster here.” He then chuckled and added “such idiocy.”

  “Wait a minute, who’s Aurora again?” Martin asked Joel.

  “Long story,” Joel replied then faced Ethan. “I was looking for a documentation file or something that would help me figure out the script syntax.”

  “No need,” Ethan said as he continued to type. “I know it by heart. There, I removed the firewall locking Aurora out.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Joel said, skeptical and put on the auglens then pushed the power button. The augmented reality device finished its boot up sequence and the default diagnostics were projected onto his retinas.

  “Aurora?” he tried then waited for a moment. Nothing. Just to make sure, he flipped the wireless button off and on.

  “What are you doing?” Ethan asked.

  “We used this to communicate with Aurora before. She was using Alexia’s secondary wireless interface so I’m hoping she’ll be able to reach me through one of the Citadel’s access points.” Joel replied. “Hello? Aurora?”

  “Joel?” A female voice responded, garbled through the auglens earbud.

  Joel smiled with relief. “Yes, it’s me. How are you two holding up?”

  “Alexia is resting,” Aurora replied. “Did you remove the firewall?”

  Joel looked at Ethan then turned away from him. “Yes. Please stand by,” he said and muted the microphone on the auglens. “Alright what’s the plan?”

  “Black sites are isolated from the alleys,” Ethan explained. “They’ll need to escape on their own which won’t be a problem now that Aurora can take over electronic systems controlling locks and security mechanisms. I suggest you meet them outside of the façade that serves at the entrance then bring them here.”

  “Here? Why?” Joel asked.

  “We’ll need to have Alexia fast-converge with the mainframe so we can dump her memories to it then we can start gathering evidence in our defense.”

  “I don’t think the Troika will care for your defense. Seems to me at this point they just want to erase all evidence they ever allowed the Controller Program to exist,” Joel said. “Seems to me they want to get rid of you both and pretend it never happened.”

  “Aurora can control communications systems and broadcast whatever evidence we can get to whoever will listen. Alexia was up until yesterday a very well respected figure in the Citadel. We can use that to our advantage. People will be more open to listen if the message is coming from her.”

  “That actually sounds like a solid plan,” Martin remarked.

  “Alright then,” Joel said then unmuted the auglens. “Aurora?”

  “Yes?”

  “We need to get you and Alexia to safety but you’ll have to get to the surface on your own. Can you do that?”

  “We’ll manage,” Aurora replied.

  “Very well, then I’ll be waiting for you outside of the old hotel.”

  “Got it. See you there as soon as possible,” she added then cut off communications.

  “Okay now there’s the matter of me getting up there with my ID chip locking me off from the surface,” Joel told Ethan.

  “Not a problem. How do you think I evaded the lockdown patrols?” Ethan said. “What’s your Citizen ID?”

  “970350047.”

  “One moment…” Ethan said then typed a new series of commands on his portable computer. “There, you now have complete unrestricted access to the entire Citadel.”

  “You don’t say,” Joel mumbled and looked at his right hand. His whole life, the subdermal chip there had been a constant reminder of his place in the Citadel food chain and now he had just been placed at the top with a few right commands. “Thanks,” he added.

  “You’re welcome. Now go, we don’t have much time.”

  “Wait what about me?” Martin asked.

  “You still can back away from all this,” Joel said.

  “What
? No way man, I’ve got to see this through now.”

  “Okay, then stay here in case we need any help. Grab a radio from the shop. I’ll be in touch over the auglens,” Joel said, pointing at his own temple then he lowered his voice. “And keep an eye on this prick. I don’t know what his endgame is.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  With that, Joel nodded, walked to the elevator and made for the surface.

  Alexia

  ALEXIA DRIFTED IN and out of sleep as the general discomfort of the cold, rigid bed kept her from relaxing and reminded her of the situation she was in. In her mind, she imagined the scene of her execution or simply being left there to rot in that cramped, empty cell. The scenes would blend with her half-awake dreams, causing a disturbing state of awareness. Then she would regain clarity of mind and lay there in the dark, at times absentmindedly reaching for bedcovers that weren’t there.

  Giving up, she lay on her side facing the door in the fetal position, attempting to warm herself up. She wondered how long more would it be before someone showed up to get her. Aurora was keeping quiet and her actor was nowhere to be seen. At least the unsettling sounds from the restless occupants in the adjacent cells had died down and now the halls out there were surprisingly peaceful.

  The Captain’s words resonated in her mind. Either he was lying or Ethan had actually incriminated her although it would not make much sense. It could be he had been made responsible for Sophia’s actions and giving her up would be a way to mitigate his punishment. As much as Aurora hated him, as far as she could recall, Alexia could not remember a single instance where her stepfather had betrayed her trust or done anything that was against her best interests. He had been there on the day she was taken from the orphanage in the alleys to the Control Administration building where she, along with dozens of other kids, were given a home and a chance to make something of themselves. Without Ethan, there would have been no Controller Program. And without the Program, Alexia would have grown up an alley rat. It was hard to imagine how different her life would have been. Then she remembered those days after her father had passed away. She remembered the weeks she had spent hiding inside the maze of maintenance tunnels in the space between sublevels before someone had captured and brought her to the orphanage. Just bringing up those memories made her feel as lonely as she had been back then.

  “What are you up to?” she asked out loud. Aurora rendered her actor sitting on the bed, in the same place she had been when the lights went out.

  “I’m traversing the Citadel network,” Aurora replied.

  “What? How?”

  “Joel figured out how to bypass the firewall. It was a matter of seconds to crack wireless access after that.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Alexia said annoyed, as she sat up and faced her sister.

  “There was no point. You were struggling to go to sleep and wouldn’t be of any help anyway,” Aurora replied, as she turned to look at her.

  “Well, I want to know what’s going on.”

  “There’s not much to know. I haven’t found any records of Ethan’ session with the Troika. I also keep colliding with my daemon instance. It’s disturbing”

  “You can communicate with it?”

  “No. This is not what I expected. Sophia’s daemon was a fully functioning consciousness but this is something else. It’s more of an automated mechanism, acting out instructions much like a neural group, proving output to input but not much else. It adapts and blocks my access to some sectors in the network. It would appear the daemon instances inside that encephalon we found are different from the ones hosted in Citadel mainframes. Which would make sense, given the relatively weak processing power of silicon based architectures.”

  Alexia looked down as she tried to picture how that even looked or felt like. To encounter a barebones ghost carbon copy of one’s brain while navigating a computer network then fighting over control of it. She failed to understand the strangeness of the situation then decided to move on. “So, what now then?”

  “Now we escape,” Aurora said, looking at Alexia with a faint smirk that surprised her.

  “I hope it’s easier said than done.”

  “It should be. I have been able to push back the daemon’s influence over the security system in this place. I have root access to door locks, security cameras and motion sensors.”

  “That would help,” Alexia said as she stood up. In the darkness of her cell, she managed to reach for the sink and wash her face with the cold running water so she could fully wake up. There was no towel and had to dry herself with a sleeve. She then picked up her glasses from the edge of the sink, where she had placed them before attempting to get some sleep and put them on. “Alright then what do I do?”

  “There’s one complication. I see several security guards on patrol. They appear to check each cell at set intervals. You’ll need to avoid them.”

  “So? You can see them through the surveillance system just tell me where they are and I’ll stay away from them.”

  “Too inefficient, I have a better idea.”

  “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  “I can feed the facility’s layout and motion sensor readings directly into your visual cortex,” Aurora explained.

  “That does sound like a better idea,” Alexia indicated as she fixed her hair since lying in bed had messed it up.

  “Well, there’s the matter of me manipulating traffic within its neural groups.”

  “That’s going to hurt,” said Alexia. “What are you going to do? At least it’s for something useful and not just you having a bad day and taking it out on me.”

  Aurora looked as her sister as if deriving meaning from the comment. Alexia sighed then clarified. “I’m just messing with you. Let’s do it.”

  “Very well. You may want to sit down until you get used to it.”

  Alexia nodded, sat on the edge of the austere bed and closed her eyes while she breathed deeply. It started subtly, like a slow, rhythmic pounding in her temples. Then the pain became sharp and ran all the way from the back of her head to her eyes. She exhaled slowly then focused on her breathing as a way to distract from the pain much like she had done countless times before.

  “Okay, let’s see what you can see,” Alexia heard her sister say over the dim ringing in her ears. She opened her eyes and quickly had to grab onto the sides of the bed to keep balance. Then she looked up and saw it. There were faint blue outlines of corridors extending all around her, pulsating all at once every second or so as radar bursts were shot out the motion sensors, updating the locations of security guards who showed up as formless pixel clouds. As she moved her head to take it all in, the overlay compensated for angle of vision. In the distance, a solid red arrow pointed towards a wall around the corner.

  “Is that the exit?” Alexia asked through clenched teeth.

  “Yes.”

  Testing her balance, Alexia stood up and walked around the cramped room. She could see the sublevels above and underneath her, giving the impression she was seeing through walls while standing on a freefall wire mesh.

  “It’s too much data,” she whimpered. “Too confusing. Can you limit it to this floor only?”

  Without a verbal answer, the floors other than the one she was in disappeared and the overlay now made more sense. The exit was three corner bends away. There were only two pixel clouds moving about, representing roaming patrols.

  “Seems like a simple enough walk to the elevator,” Aurora said.

  “Easy for you to say, I have to fight off the pain and the dizziness,” Alexia replied then slowly walked in circles to reassure her balance.

  “Go when ready, I have already granted your ID chip full access,” Aurora said then her actor dissolved away.

  Alexia nodded then stood by the door and held on to it. Again she exhaled slowly then scanned for patrols. They both appeared to be away from the escape path so she grabbed the door handle. At that moment, Aurora unlocked it and it clicked au
dibly. Carefully, Alexia pushed the door out and looked both ways down the hall, her vision blurring for a moment from the sudden change in lighting. The patrolling guards still moved away from her. It was the right window to step out. Besides from the pain and lack of balance she also had to fight off the fear of being out there, vulnerable. If the Troika was indeed planning to execute her then these guards wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her on sight.

  With careful steps, she turned left and followed the red arrow in the distance. The radar overlay pulsated rhythmically and as it did, the guards became invisible for a second while the HUD updated their location. As she arrived at the first corner bend, she stood flat against the wall and took a peek. Aurora had placed a big red arrow pointing left on the wall at the other side. She grabbed onto the wall then exhaled and continued. The next corner bend was the same and the patrols seemed to still be away at a safe distance. Against the far wall, a new arrow pointed the way to the elevator just around the corner. She was about to turn when the next radar pulse showed the motion signature of a patrolling guard turning the corner across the hall towards her. Alexia felt her heartbeat speed up out of control then without much thought she turned around to go back the way she came but then a third motion signature had sneaked its way towards her from the cell she had just left.

  Aurora, what do I do? she whispered internally as she hyperventilated and felt her knees lose strength.

  Calm down. Aurora’s voice echoed in Alexia’s mind with a reassuring tone. Here, she added then a new arrow was rendered in Alexia’s field of view pointing towards the closest cell. She stumbled towards it and saw it was unlocked. With a quick motion, she pulled it open and stepped in then heard the lock set itself in place right after. The first thing she noticed inside the dark room was the unbearably thick smell of excrement which forced her to cover her face and recoil against the wall next to the door. As her eyes got used to the dark, the outline of a man in the bed took shape. He was restrained to the bed frame with padded cuffs on all four limbs that forced him to lay face up. There was a small pool of leaking fecal matter near his lower back. The prisoner woke up, noticed Alexia standing there and moaned inarticulate words as he tried to reach for her but the restraints kept him in place. Distressed, he looked at the cuffs then turned opposite of Alexia and as dark as the room was, she managed to distinguish a small round scar on the base of his skull where at some point a stemlink interface had been. Alexia tightly closed her eyes in horror and sobbed uncontrollably, desperately doing her best to muffle herself when she realized this man was a failed test subject from the Controller Program.