She crouched slowly, tucking her DC15s pistol into its holster where the HEL could re-charge. She had something the rebels certainly didn’t; a fusion charger in her belt.
Her long white fingers went to the necks of each hybrid in turn. They were stone cold dead. And their bodies were growing cold faster than a human corpse would. But these guys were extreme Deltas, practically all synthetic. They were barely hybrid at all. More like droids.
Jade chewed her lip. Her eyes caught the distant tower of Blake Enterprises, where she knew Charlie was trying to fix the code.
The only thing she didn’t know was if he was going to do it in time.
A massive cramp moved through her stomach, convulsing her body forward. She lost her balance, falling on top of the hybrids’ corpses in front of her. She stifled the yelp of pain coming up through her throat. There might still be rebels around. There was no need to let them know she was here.
Exhaling slowly through her teeth, she pressed her hand against the fleshy stomach of a dead hybrid and raised herself slowly to her knees. Beads of sweat appeared all over her body and a raging heat wave washed through her.
“Holy shit.” Her breath came slow as she tried to gain control of her body and let the searing pain of the heat waves roll over her. Her body hunched forward over the vacant eyes of the hybrids’ corpses.
“Charlie, you better hurry the fuck up,” she whispered.
“What the fuck is going on out there?” Warren asked Monfils as he entered Command Central. “I was in the middle of my mineral spa. I thought you had this whole thing under control.”
“It is under control,” Monfils stopped himself before he rolled his eyes. One didn’t roll their eyes at Warren. “The breach in the Northern Wall saw an influx of Lowsmiths. The Deltas are in their clearing them out.”
He didn’t bother to tell Warren that a few of the Deltas were dropping like flies out on the field. A fact more troubling to Monfils than a few Lowsmiths out and about in Crowley. Jade had buzzed him and told him she’d seen three fall stone-dead practically from an upright position.
“How many breached?” Warren asked.
“We’re not quite-,” Monfils began.
“You’re not quite sure!” Warren exploded, his black brooding ProtectoBot, Genesis II, looming darkly over his shoulder.
But Monfils didn’t scare easily. “They don’t wear chips like the rest of us,” he said. “So, we think about twenty made it in.”
“How many do we have locked up from the attacks earlier?” Warren asked.
“Ten.” Monfils quickly calculated the number in his head.
“You only have ten prisoners?” Warren was incredulous. “Who is handling this?”
“I am.” Monfils fixed Warren with a steely gaze. “And the hybrids are the ones out there getting their hands dirty. Unfortunately for us, we seem to have contracted a disease, at least the Deltas have, and they are literally out there dying. So, forgive me if we’re not catching every little rat that seems to be getting away from your killer bots.”
Warren scowled at Monfils, but he hadn’t gotten into his position by pissing everyone off. “I understand, and we are trying our hardest to get the disease under control. In the meantime, have one of your people select a Lowsmith prisoner from the tower and have them on standby.”
Monfils frowned, but nodded. He never liked Warren’s tactics, but he wasn’t going to go against a direct order from Blake’s second in command. He pressed a finger against his temple to relay the order.
Chapter 20
Charlie’s eyes glared into the moving sea of code, the CodeSwarm, as he took a massive bite of sandwich a ServBot had placed before him. He quickly grabbed the thermos in front of him and slugged back its contents before glaring at Dustin. “What the hell is this?” He held up the remains of the ham sandwich.
“Ham sandwich,” Dustin said. “Isn’t that what you said you wanted?”
“Salty as all get out,” Charlie frowned. “I can’t get the salt out of my mouth.”
“My bad,” and Dustin said. “I didn’t realize you needed haute cuisine to code.”
“It’s not real, is it?” Charlie asked.
“The chemical compounds that made it are real,” Dustin shrugged. “But last I checked we’re not farming pigs. We’re saving humanity.”
“I sit here coding for ten hours and you feed me a computer chip.” Charlie stood up. The chair he had been sitting in rolled slowly backwards as he stretched his aching muscles. “I have to pee.”
“Why do people ever feel the need to share that information with anyone?” Dustin’s lip curled in distaste.
“I think I’ve got it,” Charlie ignored him. “I just I got to take a piss before I check the numbers again. Then I’m going to check it one last time before we flip the switch. I don’t want anything in there to be wrong.”
“You sure as hell don’t,” Dustin said. “You’ll lose the demigod status you’ve earned over the last three hundred years.”
“You’re a piece of work, man,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “I’m really just here trying to help people out. I don’t want your job. I don’t want anything, so why don’t you get off my ass?”
Before Dustin could say anything, Charlie walked out of the room.
Dustin stared at the door as it slid shut. This was a complete and utter waste of his time. He held his hand up in the air and counted down from five, pointing at the door when he got to one.
The door slid open. Charlie stared at Dustin, who sat in exactly the same place, his arms folded over his chest.
“Take a left, then another left, then a right, go way down the hall. You’ll find a ProtectoBot there who will scan your retinas to check your clearance. Then pass through the ionized pressure vapor –”
“What’s an ionized pressure vapor?” Charlie frowned.
Dustin rolled his eyes. “It’s like a face steam. It’ll clean off the sludge that could be lingering on you from this area.”
“Fine. Left. Left. Right. Retina scan. Ionized pressure vapor pass. Then what?”
Dustin was a bit taken aback he’d followed all that. He nodded begrudgingly. “Fifth door on the right to the toilet.” He held up five fingers and cocked his head to the right.
“Thanks.” Charlie didn’t really mean it, but his mother had raised him right.
Dustin waited until the doors slipped quietly shut. He counted to ten and carefully pressed the button. The doors were locked and he was sure to be uninterrupted. He’d given Charlie the wrong directions. But despite how much he did not like Charlie, Dustin knew he wasn’t an idiot. He was just a 21st century guy in the 24th century. Eventually he would find the bathroom and make his way back here to the control room.
Dustin touched his temple to connect to Warren. “Are you still awake?”
“Of course,” Warren mutters. “That is my upgrade. I don’t need to sleep.”
Dustin rolled his eyes. Must be nice to pick and choose exactly the way you want to be without having to fill out any paperwork.
“Look, I only have a few minutes,” Dustin said, making sure to control his voice just enough. Warren hated insolence and he was about to get on his bad side. Not when they were so close to completing this task.
“Fine. Do it. I’ll watch,” Warren said, as if he wasn’t always watching already.
Dustin only had a few minutes.
But it was all he needed. He blinked in Morse code at the computer. An archaic language nobody else knew. He had programmed it into the machine a long time ago so he could quickly access his and the corporation’s files in nanoseconds. Using a combination of deft finger moves and eye blinks, he opened up multiple screens, moved over code from a file deeply wrapped and protected tightly on his computer to one he had spent the last eighteen months agonizing over. This one was going to make his name. It would make him bigger than Charlie. He was going to be the name people remembered in the future. His name wouldn’t just live three hundr
ed years, it would live forever. Where Charlie had a gold statue, Dustin would have a platinum building with his likeness at the top of it. All he had to do was carefully get his code and stick it in the middle of Charlie’s.
He blinked at the file. Unraveled it like a tightly wound spring. Two fingers swishes to the left. Engage it. Blink. Blink. Blink. Wrap it back up. Triple twitch with the right hand. And shove it into the background in a place where Charlie with all of his 21st century knowledge wouldn’t even know where to find it.
And nobody else would care.
Because Dustin and Warren would have all the power in Crowley.
Graham Chattaway had thought he was living the dream.
As a young aspiring programmer, he had dreamed of being accepted into Crowley Academy for Hybrids (CAH). He was born with a potentially fatal birth defect, but if he graduated in the top five percent of his class he would automatically be eligible for government assisted hybrid reassignment procedure.
He studied every moment of his life. Programming was the most elite field in the 24th century, and his goal was to be the elite of the elite. To get in the room where it happened, working on the hybrid code to help better the evolution of the human race.
* * *
By fifteen, he knew everything there was to know about modern programming. He knew everything there was to know about the history of the code and the birth of hybrid technology. He knew nothing there was to know about virtually everything else. But that didn’t matter when he got accepted into CAH, and graduated second in his class. He would have been first had it not been for the fact they made them take a class in political obedience. That was BS. Still, second was good enough to get him a completely funded hybrid reassessment.
After that, at the young age of twenty-two, he achieved his life-long dream. He excelled in programming and rose through the ranks. Graham was relocated to work in the big room itself. The Big Room! Where the Malcom code, the brain and heart code of hybrid technology, was written. There he got to work on vital parts of the code, and even got to work with Dustin Bovey himself!
He was living the dream.
So, he thought. It was mere peanuts compared to whom he met in the hallway that day. The man he had read every book on, watched every movie, downloaded every Wiki file into his internal neurodrive.
Charlie. Fucking. Richards.
Charlie Richards had gotten hopelessly lost. All the hallways were sterile white and having any sense of direction was impossible. He thought he found a cafeteria at one point, but all the machines required a retina scan that obviously didn’t register. He was quite ready to take a piss on them if this went on much longer. But now he was in some other white hallway that looked like the last ten he had been in.
“Oh. My. God.”
Charlie turned to look at the voice. It was a young kid, he looked fifteen with his wiry build. His eyes were wide as plates.
“You’re…” It slid out of the kids mouth like spitting up oatmeal. Then, a long silence.
Charlie didn’t have time for the rest of the sentence. “Hey. You know where I can find a bathroom in this place?”
Mumble mumble came the reply.
“Okay, thanks. Appreciate it.” Charlie turned to continue down the endless hallways. Why was everything so weird in this world? He just wanted to eat fish ‘n chips at a restaurant named after him.
“You’re him!”
Charlie turned to the voice of the kid. His eyes were still wide as plates. He blinked once and came racing up to Charlie.
“I’m sorry. Hi. Sorry to bug you. Hi!” The words came spitting out at a ludicrous speed. “I’m Graham. I’m a fan. I mean, I know your work. You’re Charlie Richards! I studied your work.”
“Great!” Charlie said with mock excitement. He wasn’t in the mood. “So, that bathroom…”
Graham looked like he was going to start jumping up and down. “I mean, the Big Bang code was, I mean, it was the most beautiful thing ever created.”
“Appreciate that. Now, that bathroom?”
“One. Forward slash forward slash loop and create individuals. Two. For parenthesis, dollar sign I equals zero, dollar sign I is less than count, parenthesis dollar sign this period people parenthesis…” Graham continued on. He recited the whole damn original code verbatim. “Mr. Richards, I am your number one fan.”
“You know what, Graham? I believe you.”
“The Big Bang code is the most important discovery this world has ever known!”
“The Big Bang?”
“Sorry, that what it’s known as now. Your initial code. Centuries of programmers have come and gone and advanced your work, but your code was the beginning of it all.”
Charlie took a step back towards the kid. What he said had started wheels turning. “How many iterations of the code had there been?”
Graham laughed. “How much time do you have?”
“Very little.” Charlie’s face was not amiable.
The smile left Graham’s face. He was reminded why Charlie was here. He was reminded that a plague was hitting hybrids. He was reminded that he was hybrid. “It’s been three centuries of programmers working on this. Well, two. No one really knew what you had stumbled upon for a long time. Then came a French programmer named Enzo. Enzo’s code helped create the first hybrid mouse. It didn’t come without problems; the mouse became incredibly angry when cheese was withheld. But it did live unnaturally long for a mouse, and that got noticed. Companies began investing heavily in the technology. The competition became fierce. Each company wanted to have their own improvement on the technology, and it became a wild west showdown to produce hybrid prototypes.”
As Charlie listened, his thoughts turned to his own code and what the effects of people using it to build technology upon were. Graham continued about the evolution of the code, and how it was that Blake Crowley cornered the market on it eventually, but Charlie’s mind was back with his original code. What was tricky is he didn’t know the end product his code had become in the 21st century since he wasn’t done his work when Jade had come. Perhaps he worked on it another fifteen years, who knew? (Besides Graham, who seemed to know everything about it.) There was one thing that Charlie Richards did know about the code that no one else knew. Not Blake or Jade or even this kid.
Charlie Richards kept secrets in all his codes. The only person that could ever decipher it was him. It wasn’t complex, or for security reasons, it was because Charlie had created ways to fix his own mistakes he knew he was making later. What if he hadn’t fixed it and they were still there? No one would have known where to look except for Charlie.
Jade was right. The only person who could fix this code was Charlie Richards.
Chapter 21
“The door is stuck,” Charlie’s voice reverberated through the metal doors as he beat against it with his fist.
Dustin twitched a couple of fingers on top of the desk and the door slid open. He was sitting right where Charlie left him, leaning casually back in his chair as if he’d spent the entire time staring up at the ceiling.
Only, Charlie wasn’t alone when he had gone to the bathroom. In the end, he had found not just Graham, but all the programmers. They had been sent out of the room at the final moment but hadn’t gone very far. In fact, they were just outside in the hallway waiting for the opportunity to come back in.
And in they had come, filing directly behind Charlie. Only they had multiplied. It wasn’t just ten or fifteen programmers, it was thirty-five or forty squeezed into every space of the room watching his final moments. The message had gotten around that they thought Charlie had figured something out. And everyone wanted to be there at his side the moment the new code was downloaded and the death and destruction wreaking havoc on Crowley’s hybrids was ended.
“All right, this is it,” Charlie rubbed his hands together as he walked with purpose towards the CodeSwarm. He was refreshed, relieved, and ready to go.
Here’s what Charlie Richards remember
ed while talking to Graham. Charlie had a habit of corrupting his code at an alarming rate. It was what evened him out as a programmer back in his 21st century life; why he was ranked 86th of 89th at his mid-sized Topeka, Kansas computer company. His programming was innovative, but almost always filled with bugs. The bugs tended to be unusual but common mistakes only he would make. The positive from that was he wrote code to fix his own code. This, in truth, was the real genius behind Charlie Richards’s work. Not just the work himself, but the code that fixes code was years ahead of what MIT coders were working on with their “Helium” project.
The thing was, he knew his code fixes that he put at the end of every coding block worked in very particular ways. In essence, they worked backwards to the start of the coding block before leapfrogging the programming fix to the next block. It couldn’t be a simple repeat of the coding block, because if it ran the programming fix again, then was prompted to go the beginning, it would be stuck in an endless loop.
On top of that, his code had been bridged with new genetic code.
Now, surely programmers that came years, even centuries, after him would notice the point of the code. But programming errors are like when chromosomes are off in the human body, they manifest themselves in brutal ways. And generations of minute errors built upon by the next lead to corruption over time. Like the 19th century family of the Fugates in Kentucky where inbreeding over generations eventually lead to them being blue.
The thing was, there were simple fixes that no one other than Charlie Richards could make, no matter how brilliant the computer scientists to come were. Because they were idiotic mistakes. The future contributors to the code made their biggest mistake thinking Charlie Richards was an unrecognized genius.
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