by Frank Tayell
Dim emergency lamps on the underside of each landing illuminated the bare concrete stairs. Henry could hear the professor and Isaac running down them, already at least two flights below. He thought of going up, of hiding, of distancing himself from whatever madness he’d been thrust into. Again, thoughts of his future career came back to him. He couldn’t run away, not now. He had to report what had happened, and since the professor wanted to go to the police station…
Henry ran down, taking the steps two at a time. One landing, then another. Above, he heard the door open. He heard footsteps following him. The footsteps below had stopped. A moment later, Henry reached the bottom. There was only a door in front of him. He pushed it open, and ran out into the brightly lit London night.
“You took your time,” Isaac said. He had his phone in his hand. “It’s this way,” he said, pointing.
“How far?” Henry asked, glancing back at the door. “Because that man’s following us.”
Isaac started running, the professor followed. Henry fell in at the rear, uncertain what was going on, and what he’d become a part of. At least they were heading to the police station. This, whatever it was, would all be over— He heard the glass shatter before he heard the shot. He spun around. The assassin stood a few feet from the hotel, legs braced, gun held in both hands. A figure knocked into Henry as the assassin fired again. Henry hadn’t noticed how many other people were about, but it was London, the streets were always thronged with tourists, students, locals, and commuters. Henry wasn’t sure which category the young woman fell into, but the bullet meant for him took her in the throat. She collapsed, and that was when Henry realised that people were screaming, running in every direction, away from the gunman. Henry dropped to his knees, clamping his hand over the injured woman’s neck, trying to hold in the blood. He couldn’t. No one could. Her eyes met his. Blood bubbled up around his fingers. She went still.
Another shot. The bullet hit the window of a car, abandoned in the street when the shooting had begun. Henry looked towards the hotel. The man was walking towards him, gun raised.
The gun he’d taken from the assassin dug into Henry’s back as he rolled sideways into the gutter and behind the car. He drew it, stood up, and let months of target practice take over.
Henry had tried to go to the batting cages after his father had died, but the memory was too raw, the place too full of missed opportunities. He’d never managed further than the parking lot. Instead, he’d spent night after night at the firing range, shooting his rage and frustration out on target after target, telling himself that he was training for the academy.
Henry had the man square in his sights, but as his finger curled on the trigger, the streetlights went out. Then the lights in the buildings either side went dark. There was the sound of yelling, of a distant crash of metal against metal. Then there was more screaming, this time coming from further away. Henry tried to spot the assassin, but couldn’t. Instead, he backed away along the street, heading after Isaac and the professor.
Distance was hard to gauge in the mostly dark, screaming city. The only illumination came from a few dimly lit windows. Henry could no longer distinguish the pavement from the gutter. An arm grabbed his. He spun around, raising the gun.
“Woah! It’s me!” Isaac said. “Did you get him?”
“No,” Henry said. “Where’s the police station? Where’s the professor?”
Isaac had his phone in his hand, but the screen was dark. He had a headphone in his ear, and almost seemed to be listening. “We want to go this way,” he said.
Despite the darkness, Isaac knew where he was going. He led Henry down a dark alley and into a pedestrianized square, cutting across to its far side where a figure stepped out from the shadows. It was the professor.
“What’s happening?” Henry asked.
“Nothing good,” the professor said. “But we can stop it.”
“Not from here we can’t,” Isaac said. “Come.”
He led them onward, down an alley between two towering buildings. Behind them, the lights suddenly went on. All of them. Not just the streetlights, but every light in every window of every hotel, office, and university building. Just as abruptly, the lights were extinguished.
“That’s not good,” Isaac muttered. He tapped Henry on the arm. “Put that away.”
He looked down at his hand. It still held the gun. He looked up at Isaac as every light flashed back on. In the second that the street was lit up, he saw people. A few were hurrying along the street, but more were gathering in the doorways of buildings. Some looked as if they had come downstairs, others as if they were taking shelter there. All of them looked more baffled than scared. Henry slid the gun back into his waistband, and pulled the jacket over to cover it.
The police had to be on their way. They had to. He could hear sirens, though they weren’t close. As Isaac led them down one street and then the next, Henry looked for a uniform, for a flashing blue light, but the only flashing lights came from the buildings around them.
“Down here,” Isaac said, leading them into an open courtyard. To one side was a collection of massive pipes. On the other was a noticeboard dotted with flyers and leaflets.
“Where are we?” the professor asked.
“Among the university buildings,” Isaac said. “That’s Birkbeck behind us. SOAS is somewhere over there.”
“Where do we want?” the professor asked.
“Senate House,” Isaac said. “The university has a basement lab where they stream images for the British Museum. If someone in a museum in Tokyo wants to examine something from a British collection, it’s brought there.”
“They have the bandwidth?” the professor asked.
“I hope so,” Isaac said.
“Then why have we stopped?” the professor asked.
“Because this is a good spot for an ambush,” Isaac said. “Have you got that gun, Henry?”
“You want me to shoot that man?”
“If he’s followed us, yes,” Isaac said.
“You can’t be serious,” Henry said. “That’s murder.”
“He tried to kill us about twenty minutes ago,” Isaac said.
“That doesn’t make it all right.”
“Look around you, Mister Mitchell,” the professor said. “Listen to the screams.”
Henry didn’t draw the gun, but he did edge towards the side of the large pipes. The lights suddenly flicked on. A small group, about twenty-strong, had coalesced outside one of the university buildings. A few still fruitlessly swiped at dark-screened phones, but most were looking around. He wasn’t sure for what, but he couldn’t see the assassin.
“Who is he?” Henry asked.
“A killer,” the professor said.
“Be more specific,” Henry said.
“Isaac told you what we have done?” the professor asked.
“Created an artificial consciousness,” Henry said.
“And do you know what that means?” the professor asked.
“Not really,” Henry said. “Do I need to? What’s going on with the streetlights? What’s—”
“I can get you all the answers you need,” Isaac said. “And most of the ones that I need, but not here. Let’s— Damn.” He pulled the earbud out of his ear. “The phone network’s gone down. Now we really need to move, and hope he hasn’t followed us.”
Isaac led them to a stone granite building. It was securely locked.
“Keep watch,” Isaac said, as he levered off the lock’s panel.
Henry turned around, peering into the darkness. There were more sirens now, and more screams, but none seemed to be getting nearer.
“Done,” Isaac said. “And ridiculously quickly. They call that state of the art, you know.”
By the light of his smartphone, Isaac led them into the building and down into a sub-basement room. It had five rows of tiered seats, a little like a theatre. At the front was a large glass case. Above it, on a moveable and rotatable arm, was a b
oxy grey camera. At the side was a bank of screens. Isaac and the professor made a beeline for them. Mitchell sat in the front row of theatre-seats, and tried to process what had just happened. After a minute, he gave up.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Later,” Isaac said. He’d taken out his laptop and had plugged a cable into it. His fingers flew across the keys. The professor peered over his shoulder.
Henry knew her field was neuroscience. Isaac seemed to be some kind of hacker. Mitchell wondered how they’d met.
He took out his phone. There was no signal.
“Were you responsible for the streetlights flickering?” he asked.
“No,” Isaac said.
“Who was?”
“Tell him,” Isaac said. “Otherwise he’s only going to keep talking.”
The professor turned around. “Someone is trying to stop us demonstrating our artificial consciousness. It’s possibly a government. It is more like to be some corporation.”
“A company?” Henry asked. “Some tech company just hacked London’s lighting system?”
“They think that whoever creates the first functional, truly artificial intelligence could patent the concept,” the professor said. “They think whoever is first would own the market for long enough to become the sole global monopoly. Imagine a driverless car where there is a sentient being in control, but one that can react a million times faster than a human? Planes, shipping, satellites. Every missile could have a driver, every remote cannon an operator. That’s what they think. Overnight, the value of their stock would go through the roof. Every country on Earth would throw money at them. They want to get rich, and they think this will ensure it, but only if they are first.”
“They think? You mean they’re wrong?” Henry asked.
“They’ve been watching the same movies you have,” Isaac said. “That’s why we beat them to it.”
“It’s a consciousness, a person, a being,” the professor said. “It’s code in the same way that you are chemical signals. It’s like saying that, if you take two humans, and use them to make a third, that third human would be as proficient in any task that either of the first two had previously mastered.”
Henry parsed that. It was an odd way of talking about parents and children. “Code doesn’t need to be fed, right? It doesn’t need to sleep?” he said.
“How can it be alive if it doesn’t dream?” the professor said. “And though it is code, it requires energy to operate. This is not—”
“We’ve a problem,” Isaac interrupted. “This has gone global.”
“What has?” Henry asked.
Isaac turned around. “It’s a virus,” he said. “They’ve unleashed a virus. Strictly speaking, they’ve had millions of viruses embedded in thousands of different systems, and they’ve just been activated. The streetlights were the beginning, I don’t know where it will end, but this is designed to keep the authorities distracted while they find us.”
“You said it was global, why isn’t it just London?” Henry asked.
“Because the best place to commit a murder is on a battlefield,” the professor said. “No one ever notices another corpse. This is the same. In all of this chaos, no one will know who the real targets are.”
“It’s worse than that,” Isaac said. “There’s another virus, a self-replicating bot that’s searching every networked computer for our creation. They want to destroy our child.”
“It’s not our child, Isaac. I’ve told you that before,” the professor said.
“Well…” Henry hesitated. “Can you stop it? Can’t you send your AI to… I don’t know, to fight it?”
“Nope,” Isaac said. “I told you, it doesn’t work like in the movies.”
“I wish you would tell me how it does work,” Henry said. “What do we do?”
Isaac turned back to the laptop. “You do nothing. I save the world.”
Henry paced back and forth until Isaac told him to stop. After that, he sat, watching the pair. The professor had taken out a tablet. Henry wondered if their artificial consciousness was on it. If not, it had to be in one of the bags they’d brought from the hotel. Isaac was right. What he knew came from movies, though he’d picked up a little more from the news. The stories of hacks where viruses had brought down IT systems, or made power station turbines spin so fast they blew up, or caused missiles to explode in their bunkers. He tried to sift through the memories as to which had come from his newsfeed, and which he’d seen on the big-screen.
“Okay, good news, bad news,” Isaac said without taking his eyes from the laptop.
“What’s the bad?” the professor asked.
“It’s spreading. They’ve attacked the power stations. Primarily, I think, to give cover to their agents in London. The attacks on the rest of the world were a way of masking where their true interest lay. Air traffic control has gone. GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo are still okay, but they’re getting into phones and personal computers, causing the batteries to overheat.”
“Mine hasn’t,” Henry said.
“Of course not,” Isaac said. “I gave it to you.”
“What’s the good news,” the professor asked.
“I’m not sure I can kill it, but I think I can speak to the person doing this,” Isaac said. “Or one of them. They’ve been selective in what’s been attacked. It’s like a road, and I just need to follow it. Of course, that leaves the question of in which direction we’ll find the Emerald City, and who we’ll find behind the curtain. This is going to take some time. Henry, this is a university. Universities have vending machines. Find me something to eat.”
Henry was glad to leave the room. It was only when he was out in the dark corridor that he wondered if he should have checked it first, though it appeared empty. He took out the phone, and switched on the light.
He’d wanted to become a cop, so now it was time to consider the evidence. He knew that Isaac and the professor were up to something, and that there was a conference taking place in London at which they were due to speak. Isaac had said he’d been hacking into the university’s email server, but had he? They’d talked about creating some kind of AI that wasn’t really an artificial intelligence, but was any of that real? The phone was real, so was the gun in his waistband. There was blood on his hands, blood that belonged to that woman who had died on the sidewalk. That was undeniably real. The streetlights had flickered on and off. He’d heard cars crash, but who was behind it? Was it Isaac and the professor? They’d advertised for an assistant for an overseas trip, and hired Henry principally because he wouldn’t understand what they were doing. But what were they doing? And what were they really doing in the university’s sub-basement?
He walked down the dark corridor, shining the light on each door in turn. Which was more plausible, that this professor and her assistant had created a genuine artificial intelligence, or that this was some kind of heist? Considering the lone assassin, it was more likely they were robbing the mob than the Bank of England, but that meant Henry’s only purpose on the trip was to be the fall guy.
The corridor branched. He scanned the light along the walls, looking for a sign that might indicate where he’d find the vending machines. Universities didn’t signpost vending machines. Isaac had just wanted him out of the room. He tried the phone. There was no signal. He dialled 911 anyway, then remembered that it was 999, but the phone didn’t work. A phone that Isaac had given him. He looked at it with a growing sense of gnawing suspicion. He needed to find a landline and call the police. Whatever was going on, that was the only sensible thing to do.
Checking the doors as he went, he continued down the corridor, following the arrow that pointed toward the lifts. If he couldn’t find a working phone, he’d go upstairs, outside, and simply get away.
He tried a door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open, glanced along the corridor, and saw a shadow. He shone the light in that direction, blinding the three figures wearing night-vision goggles. As they ripped t
he devices from their faces, Henry froze. One, with a bandage wrapped around his head, was the assassin from earlier. The other two he didn’t recognise. Both were men. All three carried compact submachine guns. A man with the bullet-shaped head recovered first, brought his weapon up, and pulled the trigger just as Henry dived into the room. Wood-chip and plaster sprayed over him as he rolled across the floor. He’d dropped the phone. It lay near the door. The light was still on, reflecting off the white-panelled ceiling.
He was in a seminar room with a table and desk at the front, and three rows of stackable chairs facing it. He crawled behind the desk and dragged the silenced pistol from his belt.
“This isn’t your fight,” a voice called out. The words were English, but the voice wasn’t British, nor was it American. It was the kind of accent used by someone who’d learned the language as an adult, but hadn’t quite mastered the inflection. “I know you’re armed. Throw out my gun. Go home.”
Henry weighed his chances. They weren’t great. The desk was chipboard and veneer. It might slow a bullet, but it wouldn’t stop it. There was no other cover in the room, no other escape. He wasn’t sure how much help the professor and Isaac would be. Besides, the only way to reach them was through those three men.
He levelled the gun at the door. “Who are you? What’s going on?”
“Ah, a very good question. You’ve got yourself caught up in a game that’s bigger than nations. The fate of our species is in your hands. For all of us to survive, I need to know where your friends are. Take me to them, before it’s too late.”
“I—” Henry began. A shape appeared in the doorway. The bullet-headed man swung into the room. Henry fired, a reflexive three shots straight into the centre mass. The man fell as the second goon stepped into the doorway. He was shorter, his barrel aimed slightly higher. As the assassin pulled the trigger, and bullets flew inches above Henry’s head, Henry fired two shots. The first took the man in the neck, the second missed, but the assassin collapsed.