The End of Ordinary

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The End of Ordinary Page 26

by Edward Ashton


  “None taken. You’re probably right. I eat a lot of bologna.”

  “Right,” I said. “So what’s the news, Inchy?”

  “The what?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “The news,” I said. “You said you had news?”

  “Right,” Inchy said. “That. Good news first, okay?’

  “Sure,” I said. “Good news.”

  “I’ve got an extraction team on the way. Also, I figured out how to partially disable the external lockdown, so when they get here, they’ll actually be able to get in.”

  “Hey,” I said. “That is good. I kind of assumed you were yanking my chain. So what’s the bad news?”

  “The what?”

  “You said there was good news and bad news. This isn’t cute, Inchy. You’re an AI. You don’t actually forget things.”

  “Good point. Okay. The bad news is that your extraction team isn’t actually an extraction team, so much as a car full of your dipwad high-school pals. Also, there’s a pretty good chance that they’re about to be killed by a NatSec drone. Oh, and when I disabled the external lockdown, I accidentally triggered a biocontainment protocol. The automated system that runs this craphole has been trying to flood the building with sarin gas for the last fifteen minutes. I’ve got it stymied for the moment, but it’s surprisingly persistent.”

  We sat in silence for a solid ten seconds.

  “Um . . .” Nathan finally said. “What’s a biocontainment protocol?”

  “Funny story,” Inchy said. “Turns out, this facility wasn’t actually designed as a prison for children. It was supposed to be a containment facility for potentially dangerous projects—viral vectors, malevolently sentient corn, that sort of thing—and you don’t take chances with stuff like that. A biocontainment protocol is a system for making sure that if the facility loses physical containment—like for instance if it goes into external lockdown, and then the external lockdown gets disabled by a brilliant yet charming ragamuffin—nothing gets out of here alive.”

  “Oh,” Nathan said. “That’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not. Like I said, though, I’ve got it stymied for the moment.”

  “Great,” I said. “So what happens now?”

  “Now?” Inchy said. “Now you wait. Just be ready to jump when I say, because once the doors actually start opening, the containment system is really gonna go apeshit.”

  “Got it,” I said. “I’ll go pack up my steamer trunk.”

  “Excellent,” Inchy said. “Further bulletins as events warrant.”

  The wallscreen blinked off. A second later, though, it blinked back on.

  “Oh,” Inchy said. “By the way, Hannah—your dad says howdy.”

  It winked then, and disappeared.

  36. In which Jordan loses his phone, and also one of his shoes.

  “They’re gonna kill us,” Micah said. “Just putting that out there.”

  We were on our knees, hands behind our heads, lined up beside my idling car on the shoulder of I-90, halfway between Rochester and Syracuse.

  “Maybe,” Devon said. “Inchy says he’s on his way.”

  “Great,” Micah said. “Does Inchy have a rocket launcher?”

  Devon shrugged.

  “Guess we’ll find out.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Inchy says he’s on his way? How do you know? You don’t have a phone.”

  Devon stared me down. The barrel of the cannon, which had been drifting off to the north, slowly rotated back around to bear on us.

  “Straight up,” I said. “You’ve got an ocular implant, don’t you?”

  She blinked twice, then looked away.

  “Holy shit,” Micah said. “Seriously? Isn’t that how AIs get into your brain?”

  Devon turned on Micah, her face twisted into a scowl.

  “Fuck you, Micah. It’s because of that kind of bullshit myth that NatSec swept the nets six years ago. There was exactly one other sentient species that we knew of in the entire fucking universe, and we wiped them out because pinheads like you thought they were all itching to crawl inside your tiny little brains.”

  “Hey,” Micah said. “Easy there, Sparky. I was eleven at the end of the war, remember?”

  “Guys?” I said. “Maybe we could settle things down a bit? I think you’re making our friend up there nervous.”

  The barrel of the cannon had steadied itself. The aim point, as far as I could tell, was the middle of my forehead. From twenty yards away and over the whir of the rotors, I swear I heard the click of a round chambering.

  What happened next was probably the most wonderful thing I will ever see.

  A background buzz that had been growing for the past thirty seconds or so suddenly got really loud, really fast. The cannon on the NatSec drone elevated, and the drone itself reared back like a spider and slid away from us. The cannon barked . . .

  And a thing roared past us, directly overhead.

  It was bigger than the NatSec drone, and had two rotors instead of four. It also had some kind of jet on the back, and two sets of grapples on the underside. I found out later that it was a Bioteka construction rig. At the time, though, I thought it was another NatSec killbot, come to fight the first one over which one got to splatter us.

  The fight, if you want to call it that, didn’t last more than a few seconds. The NatSec drone tried to bring its cannon to bear, but the Bioteka rig was too fast. It popped high and came down on top of the drone, grabbed it with its grapples and shook. They staggered in the air together, dropped and then rose. The cannon fired again, wildly. Devon dropped and rolled under the car. I couldn’t look away. The rotors on the drone screamed as it tried to pull free, but the Bioteka rig was locked on tight. They rose up to a hundred feet or so, thrashing and flailing all the way, and then the rig rolled the drone onto its side, engaged the jet, and drove them down.

  They hit the pavement together, hard.

  They exploded.

  “Shit on a shingle,” Micah said.

  I gave a long, low whistle.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That about sums it up.”

  Devon crawled out from under the car. We all got to our feet. Micah stepped up beside me.

  “Think it’s dead?”

  I couldn’t even tell what parts of the mess in the middle of the highway used to be NatSec, and which used to be Bioteka.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Pretty sure they’re both dead.”

  “Good.”

  He snatched the phone out of my hand, reared back, and flung it out over the swamp that bordered the roadbed. Micah had a hell of an arm. I couldn’t even see where it landed.

  “Right,” Micah said. “Anybody else have anything they want to declare?”

  Devon shook her head.

  We climbed back into the car, and we drove.

  “They’re keeping Hannah in a giant Lego?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Looks like it.”

  I shut the car down, and we climbed out. We were sitting in an empty parking lot, by an empty guardhouse, under an empty, overcast sky.

  “Seriously,” Micah said. “What is this?”

  “Well,” Devon said. “According to Inchy, this is a Bioteka biological containment facility.”

  “Right,” Micah said. “Which means?”

  “Which means,” I said, “that this is where they keep the sentient corn.”

  Devon smiled.

  “If they had any sentient corn, yeah, this is probably where it would be. Lucky for us, the building’s on emergency internal lockdown.”

  “Great,” Micah said. “What does that mean?”

  Devon’s left eye started twitching, independent of her right one. It was one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen.

  “Emergency internal lockdown,” she said, “is a mode designed for situations just like this—power failures and whatnot. The idea is that emergency folks can get in, but the sentient corn can’t get out. Basically, all the doors are open from the outside,
but locked from the inside.”

  “Or so says Inchy,” Micah said.

  Both eyes focused in on him.

  “Yeah,” Devon said. “So says Inchy.”

  “So wait,” I said. “You mean we can walk right in?”

  “Sure,” Devon said, “as long as we don’t let any doors close behind us. If that happens, we’re stuck in there with Hannah.”

  A shiver ran down the back of my neck.

  “For how long?”

  “Oh,” Devon said. “Not long. I mean, not long alive, anyway. Just until the place fills up with nerve gas.”

  “Nerve gas,” Micah said. “And when, exactly is that?”

  Devon shrugged.

  “Could be any minute, actually. We should probably get going.”

  We walked across the parking lot. There was an unmarked double door on the front of the building, but Devon shook her head.

  “Not that one.”

  Micah looked at her.

  “Why?”

  “Well,” Devon said, “there’s three of us, right?”

  “Uh . . . yeah?”

  “So we need a route from outside to Hannah that doesn’t have more than three doors. There’s a service entrance on the side of the building. That’s the one.”

  “I don’t get it,” Micah said. “Can’t we just prop the doors open as we go?”

  Devon shook her head.

  “Can’t keep any door open for longer than ten seconds without triggering the containment system.”

  “Containment system?”

  “Nerve gas.”

  “Right,” Micah said. “I’ll take the outside door.”

  It was bottom-of-a-coal-mine dark inside when we opened the first door. I reached for my phone before remembering that it was slowly sinking into a swamp.

  “Hey,” I said. “Did anybody bring a flashlight?”

  “No need,” said a faint voice from inside, and a glow appeared around a bend at the end of the corridor. I looked at Devon.

  “Inchy?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve got six seconds to close the door,” said the voice.

  “Right,” I said, and followed Devon inside.

  “I’ll be right here,” Micah said.

  He slammed the door behind us.

  With the outside light gone, the glow ahead seemed much brighter. We started walking. There was a screen on the wall, just around the first bend. A cartoon dog was waiting for us there, arms folded across its chest, one foot tapping impatiently.

  “Good,” it said. “Glad you made it. Just so you know, we’re in a bit of a hurry here. The containment system is dumb as a box of hammers, but it is very determined right now to flood this place with sarin, and I’m not one hundred percent confident that I can hold it off indefinitely. Hannah’s ready to jump. All you need to do is get to where she is, and get her back out here before I lose containment.” It took a quick look around. “Where’s Marta?”

  “Couldn’t get in touch with her,” Devon said. “Is that a problem?”

  “I told you,” the dog said. “Three doors from here to Hannah. There’s only two of you. I know you monkeys aren’t great at math, but you should be able to figure this one out.”

  “No,” Devon said. “There’s three of us. Micah’s already watching the outside door.”

  “Yeah,” the dog said. “When I said three doors, I wasn’t counting that one.”

  Devon scowled.

  “That’s kind of an important point, Inchy. Seems like you could have been a little clearer on that.”

  “Don’t fix the blame,” said the dog. “Fix the problem.”

  They stared at each other.

  “So . . .” Devon said finally. “We go find Marta?”

  The dog shook its head.

  “Definitely not. I don’t know exactly how long I can keep the lid on here, but it’s probably closer to minutes than hours.” It turned to focus on me. “You look pretty speedy. Think you can run twenty-seven meters, pop a door open, and run twenty-seven meters back in less than ten seconds?”

  Devon turned to look at me.

  I took a deep breath in, and let it out. We ran lines in the gym sometimes when the weather was too rough to run outside. It was about that far from baseline to baseline and back, and I usually finished under ten seconds.

  “Yeah,” I said finally. “I can do it—I mean, as long as I don’t slip, or trip, or stumble, or have any trouble at all getting the door open. Sure, no problem.”

  The dog smiled.

  “Great! Love the confidence. Devon, it seems like you’re putting your life into excellent hands. If I still had a body, I would totally not be nervous about this at all.”

  The screen blinked off. An instant later, another one blinked on, farther down the hall.

  “Follow me,” it said. “Tempus fugit, my friends.”

  We walked down a long hall, then turned a corner and walked another fifty yards or so. That corridor dead-ended at a steel-reinforced door, with a window set at eye level. I stooped to look through. There was a mostly darkened room on the other side, with a half-circle desk in the center, and an identical door on the opposite wall. A wallscreen flickered on behind the desk. The dog was waiting for us.

  “Okay,” Devon said. “This is all on you now, Jordan. Just remember—if you screw up in any way, we all die. No pressure, though.”

  “Well,” I said, “not all of us. Micah’s in good shape.”

  “Right,” she said. “Micah will drown looking up at the rain if we don’t get back out of here pretty soon.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s probably true. Tell you what—I’ll do my best.”

  I opened the door.

  “Jordan?”

  I looked back.

  “Seriously . . . don’t screw this up, okay?”

  I pulled the door closed behind me.

  “Okay,” said the dog. “Here we go. This is the guard station. Through there is a corridor with doors on both sides. You’re looking for the third one on the left. All you need to do is pop this one open, scoot down there, pop that one open, and scoot back here. Sound good?”

  I walked over to the door, and peered through the window. There was a screen glowing white on the wall about halfway down, and I could see the doors. The third one looked really far away.

  “You sure that’s twenty-seven meters?” I asked.

  The dog rolled its eyes.

  I put my hand on the knob.

  “Hey,” I said. “How do I keep this door open until I get back?”

  “Huh,” the dog said. “Good question. I like that you’re thinking about these things.”

  I looked at it.

  “Well?”

  It shrugged.

  “Prop it with your shoe?”

  I looked down. I was wearing a practically brand-new pair of trainers.

  “So I get to do this barefoot?”

  “Sure. It’s not like the floor is made of razor wire or anything. You’ll be fine.”

  I knelt, untied my shoes and pulled them off, then pulled off my socks and tucked them into the shoes.

  “You suck,” I said. “You know that, right?”

  It smiled.

  “You’re just nervous. You’ll feel much better about our relationship when this is all over.”

  I stood, picked up my left shoe, and walked over to the door.

  “Remember,” the dog said. “Ten seconds. I’ll count it down for you.”

  I nodded, and put my hand on the knob.

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  I yanked the door open, dropped my shoe in the gap, and ran.

  Ten seconds. Doesn’t seem like much, right? I tell you truly, ten seconds is a really, really long time. As soon as I catapulted myself through that door, I heard the dog’s voice coming from behind me, and also and from the screen down the hall. Nine. I passed the first door. Eight. The floor was slick metal under my sweating feet. Seven. I passed the second do
or. Three steps. Two steps. One step, and I was there. Six. I grabbed the handle and tried to jump-stop, like I would have running lines.

  My feet flew out from under me.

  I was so sorry to hear about Jordan, Ms. Barnes. What did he die from?

  Sweaty feet. I had a terminal case of sweaty feet.

  On the plus side, the door popped open. Hannah came through it at a dead run, followed by what looked like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz after a two-week bender. I scrabbled at the floor with my hands and feet, got moving forward again even before I was upright. Four. What happened to five? Must have gone by while I was flopping around on the ground like a fish in the bottom of a boat. I was running again, making up ground on the scarecrow. I passed him at Three, right at the second door. By Two I’d passed Hannah and the first door. I crashed back into the control room at One, kicked my shoe out of the way. Hannah came through a step behind me.

  The scarecrow was still five yards down the corridor.

  I slammed the door in his face.

  “Nathan!” Hannah screamed. “What did you do, Jordan? Let him out!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We only had ten seconds. I had to close the door.”

  Nathan had reached the door by then, was pressing his face against the glass. Hannah reached for the handle. I pulled her back.

  “Let me go! Nathan!”

  “It’s okay,” Nathan said, his voice muffled. “I was too slow, Hannah. Go. You need to save yourself.”

  “No!” Hannah was crying by then, kicking at my shins as I held her off the ground. “Inchy, tell them! There has to be a way to get him out!”

  I turned to the screen. The dog was covering its face with both paws. Hannah saw him too, and went slack in my arms.

  “Inchy?”

  The dog looked up. I couldn’t read the expression on its face.

  “Tell me something,” it said. “Did I ever say that you couldn’t open the same door twice?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

  “In fact,” Inchy went on, “if you couldn’t open the same door twice, how, exactly, were you planning on getting back out?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s a good point.”

  I let go of Hannah. She ran to the door and yanked it open. Nathan came through it. She hugged him, and cried.

 

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