The Girl Who Dared to Stand

by Bella Forrest

  “He’s definitely a full AI,” Quess announced, his eyes wide. I was glad I had asked him to come—I certainly couldn’t understand what I was looking at. “His personality matrix is amazing! It’s very sensitive to empathy and fear, as well as logic and strategy. How did you end up down here—and why aren’t you in the Core?”

  “Certain people didn’t want me to be found,” Scipio replied, moving over to stand next to the desk and observe. “Well… they actually didn’t want me to survive. I’ve… I’ve been alone down here for a very long time.”

  Scipio’s voice was hollow, devoid of anything remotely resembling humanity, and I looked over to see a haunted look on the AI’s face. I had so many questions for him: how long had he been alone, how was he still functioning, what did any of that have to do with him dying... But there was one more that was even more critical: who were “they,” and why didn’t they want him to survive?

  “Well, so far he’s not a liar,” Quess said, ignoring the pain in Scipio’s voice. “He’s not connected to anything outside of this room. It’s incredible.”

  “Thank you,” Scipio replied, bristling with pride. “I am incredible, though, aren’t I?”

  Grey met my gaze and rolled his eyes, and I couldn’t help but smile. This Scipio seemed to have an arrogant streak, just like the one in the Core. I wondered if it had somehow raged out of control over the centuries—or merely grown larger when he was transferred to the Tower.

  “You are,” I said amicably, and his grin deepened. “But I’m going to need Quess to explain what he meant by ‘it’s incredible.’”

  Quess was still staring at the screen, a lopsided grin on his face. He glanced over at me a second or two after I asked the question, looking as if he hadn’t realized we were still there, and the grin intensified until he was practically glowing with excitement.

  “This system has been running for three hundred years, Liana! Three hundred! Our machines are good, but they aren’t that good. Even the Core has hundreds and thousands of parts replaced, every week. But his system hasn’t needed it.”

  Scipio frowned. “Well, that’s because—”

  “Your repairs are automated,” Quess finished. “Someone set you up to survive. Last longer than even the newer version of Scipio could. You don’t lose data the way he does. You haven’t seemed to succumb to any sort of digital rampancy!”

  “Digital what?” Grey asked, and I listened, eager to understand what that was.

  “Rampancy,” Scipio said softly, fidgeting. “It’s something that happens to many computer programs after prolonged usage. If I had to compare its symptoms to something more human, I guess it would be very similar to early onset Alzheimer’s.”

  “Yeah, except it’s nothing like that,” Quess added. “It’s just the breakdown of data over time. Now, the AIs are supposed to be resistant to that, but… Scipio has to be reset every year to prevent degradation to his system. How were you able to avoid it?”

  There was so much information floating around in my head—I had never heard of digital rampancy, never had an idea that computer programs themselves could break down with use.

  “Could rampancy explain… the Scipio’s new bloodthirsty nature?” I asked, pointing a finger up in the general direction of the Core, lacking a better descriptor.

  Quess paused, and then shrugged. “I mean, maybe. But that’s why IT shuts parts of him down to run a program that cleans, repairs, and restores him to his original programming. I doubt very much they’d skip it—it’s protocol. Basically, it’s like sleep for an AI—they need it to keep from going crazy.”

  He said that as if it should explain everything, and it actually did. Protocol was not something you messed around with as a true citizen of the Tower. It was in place to keep us, as a majority, safe, and if you failed to follow those rules, then you were acting in direct opposition to the Tower.

  “Do you really think something is wrong with… the Scipio?” Scipio asked, studying me.

  I hesitated. My brother had said as much, and I was fairly certain he was right. He’d know better than anyone here, as he currently worked in the IT department. They’d recruited him shortly after we’d turned fifteen, and I’d barely seen him since. He used our nets to contact me as often as he could, though—keeping an eye out for me whenever possible—and I was certain that he was worried sick about me.

  The last time I’d talked to him, I hadn’t lied about being in danger, and had ended the transmission so I could focus on escaping Devon. I had to reach Alex soon—or he could do something stupid, like leave the relative safety of the Core to come and find me.

  I reassured myself by remembering that my brother wasn’t an idiot. He was one of the smartest people I knew. He was probably listening in on Devon’s nets even now, and would know that I had gotten away, and that they were looking for us. He’d help us if he could. Although, I hoped that he didn’t—I didn’t want him getting caught doing something reckless. That, unfortunately, was my job in the family.

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said after a moment. “But that’s why I want to know why you keep saying that someone tried to murder you. I want to know who did it and why. And I guess I want to know if there’s a way we could use what was done to you on him. Just in case he really has gone off the deep end.”

  Scipio met my gaze, a maudlin smile on his face. “You don’t understand yet, but you will. Sit down on the couches, and I’ll show you.”

  I looked at Quess, who shrugged, and then at Grey, who mirrored the movement. Sighing, I moved over to one of the two sofas and gingerly sat down on it, trying not to disturb any of the dust I knew was lodged inside. I realized a moment too late that I should’ve warned Quess and Grey.

  A large, thick cloud of dust erupted from the cushions as they plopped down into them. My eyes immediately began to water, and I had to stand up and move. I sneezed three times on the way to a distant corner, and proceeded to keep sneezing. Uninterrupted. For what felt like an eternity.

  The only reward I got was the sound of Grey and Quess both sneezing and hacking and sounding miserable as well, but that did nothing to alleviate the itchy nightmare that made up my nasal passages. After a while, the sneezing began to fade, and I sniffled several times, trying to clear my mucus-blocked nostrils.

  “We should probably make a note to clean this room,” Quess said, his voice high and nasal.

  “Can’t we make the AI do it?” Grey wheezed hoarsely. “Because if it’s that dusty everywhere, I don’t think any of us will survive without an environmental suit.”

  “I would be more than happy to do so,” Scipio said, still standing calmly in the center of the room. The dust particles in the air were interfering slightly with the light beams emitted by the projectors, making the individual strands of light stand out and giving him a prismatic look. “Sadly, I lack actual human appendages. Perhaps if you’d be willing to put your personality into my mainframe, while I inhabit your body…”

  Grey’s eyes widened, and he recoiled in horror. “He can’t… You can’t actually do that, can you?”

  “What?” Scipio looked around, crestfallen. “Did I mess up? I meant that as a joke. Lionel always said I was bad at jokes.”

  “Lionel?” Quess asked, his passages somewhat clearer. He looked over at me quizzically. “He’s mentioned him before. Who’s Lionel?”

  “Lionel Scipio,” I muttered, moving back over to the sofa and sitting down.

  Quess’s eyes went wide. “You mean, the Founder, Lionel Scipio?” I nodded, and it was as if my words had physically struck him across the face, because he looked around the office, dumbfounded.

  All of this was beginning to feel a little insane. A room that was three hundred years old with an AI that was the first version of the one that ruled our lives? One that someone had attempted to “murder,” and yet was still somehow even better than the supposedly superior version?

  “Wait, so… is this his office?” Quess looked around and frow
ned. “I thought his office was upstairs in the Core.”

  “The Core wasn’t finished by the time the remnants of humanity came to reside here. The shell, yes, as well as most of the great machines, but the hospital, mainframe—which was later rechristened ‘the Core’—and security offices weren’t completed yet. This has been Lionel’s original office since the beginning, and later, he sealed it off as much as possible to keep it hidden and out of the way, so he could focus on completing me. He couldn’t risk the chance that someone would sabotage me before he was able to copy and replicate me. He needed the program to achieve his vision for the Tower.”

  “Sabotage?” I perked up. This was all interesting information. In school, we’d only ever been taught the rudimentary history of the Tower—and never really touched on the internal political atmosphere during that time. In fact… we never discussed it at all, now that I thought about it. The history given to us was devoid of any mention of a group acting in opposition to the Tower, but the existence of one was becoming easier and easier to believe in. After all, in a little over a month, I had found seven people like me. There had to be more—maybe not these days, but definitely in our past.

  And if there were any historical groups that hadn’t agreed with Scipio’s role in the Tower, they would’ve tried something.

  “Who would want to sabotage you, and why?” I asked. “Is it related to your attempted murder?”

  “One and the same, actually, and unless you can find another terminal for me to inhabit, I will have been effectively murdered – it’s only a matter of time. Now, lots of people didn’t like the idea of having an AI in charge, without… firmer methods of control, at the very least. But Lionel was adamant that we be allowed a measure of independence, to find the best possible outcome to any problem while keeping as many humans as possible safe—independent of any council decision. He wanted the AI to be the voice of reason, of practicality, and of hope, but there were others who didn’t like that they could be overruled by a machine. We lost one of the earlier AIs to sabotage, and her code was never recovered, so he had to create her program all over again. It turned out she was unsuitable for the job anyway—her empathy rating was too high to allow for more extreme solutions, and she was determined unfit. However, it’s really quite interesting, because the second version of her was so much more alive than the first. I mean, not that I had any direct interaction with her, but I got to review many of the tests after…” He trailed off, looking around. “Am I talking too much?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’m extremely interested. I think we all are.” Quess and Grey nodded, and I couldn’t help but smile at the excited looks on their faces.

  “Should we start the video file now?” Scipio asked.

  “I’m ready!” Quess said excitedly, practically bouncing up and down. “Lionel Scipio dedicated his entire life to making you and the Tower! He basically gave his life for you, right? He died a few weeks or a month after the Core Scipio went online.”

  “Ninety-two days after the other version of me went live,” Scipio said sadly, and the lights in the room grew dimmer as a screen began to form in midair. I leaned closer to it, dazzled by the fact that it was floating just a few feet from our faces, and ran my hand through it, watching as the lights scattered in the wake of my movement, glittering purple and neon pink. The blackness that formed inside the glowing frame suddenly changed, showing a high-angle view of the office, starting somewhere in the vicinity of the bookshelf behind me and pointing toward the door.

  The door, in fact, was opening, revealing a whipcord-thin man with bronze skin, a weathered face, and stark white, wispy hair on top of his head. Something shifted in the corner, and the profile of a face appeared as someone stepped onscreen: a black man in his late seventies, with white hair and a mustache. I immediately recognized him as Lionel, due to the monuments erected to him throughout the Tower, but I never thought I’d ever see him move or hear him talk.

  “As I do live and breathe,” Lionel said in a tired voice. “I never thought you’d set foot in here, Ezekial.”

  “Did he just say Ezekial?” Grey whispered, and I shrugged, just as mystified, my eyes never leaving the scene. It was unreal that I was looking at one of the Founders—the very mind that had created Scipio and the ranking system, both of which had controlled Tower life for the past three hundred years or so. Had he known his accomplishment would last so long? Could he have predicted it would also turn out so… wrong?

  Ezekial looked around the office. “Is it here?”

  As if on cue, Scipio appeared in the image. “If you are referring to me, Mr. Pine, then yes, I am. It’s so good to meet you. The AI modeled after you really gave me a run for my money.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Quess asked over the sound, and I filed the question away to ask Scipio later. For now, I was too busy staring at the man Lionel was speaking to, the man I should’ve recognized almost instantly. Ezekial Pine had been one of the first Founders, and would later become the first on the council as leader of the Knights—although at that time they were known as “Security.”

  “Indeed.” Ezekial Pine’s voice was rife with disdain. “Can you shut it off, please? This is a conversation that requires… some privacy.”

  Lionel stepped forward, and I realized there was something wrong with his leg, as if he had an old injury. He leaned heavily on a cane clutched in his right hand as he hobbled forward. “Of course. Scipio, run diagnostic protocol.”

  “Yes, sir,” Scipio replied, immediately fading out.

  I bit my lip; something wasn’t right here. Ezekial kept calling Scipio it instead of he or him. That told me he didn’t hold the AI in high regard. Couple that with his body language onscreen, and I could feel something dark beginning to unfurl in front of me. I instinctively stretched my hand out, searching for one of Grey’s, and he accepted it, lacing his fingers through mine. It helped, but not by much.

  The two old men looked at each other for a moment. Then Lionel held out a hand, gesturing for Ezekial to sit down.

  “Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?”

  “You still have coffee?” Ezekial asked.

  “What’s coffee?” Quess asked softly, looking over at me, and I shrugged, my eyes wide. I had no idea. “I’ve heard of coffee mugs, but…”

  “Shush,” I whispered, waving my free hand at him. I didn’t want to miss a thing.

  Besides, I had a pretty good guess that the term “coffee mugs” was some sort of holdover from before the End. I was guessing that we had run out of coffee—a beverage, I was assuming—but the word had lingered.

  “I do—I kept some squirreled away. Do you think when everything settles down out there, our descendants are going to go out and rediscover coffee?”

  “I don’t think about those things,” Ezekial said as Lionel disappeared off-screen. I looked over at the shelves where he would be standing, and saw an electric kettle, the varnished edges covered in dust, and several of the coffee mugs in question next to it, as well as a few jars. I made a mental note to investigate later, and turned back to the screen.

  “I think about how to keep the people in this Tower alive now, not what happens after. That’s not why I’m here, anyway. You know that keeping this Scipio around is a violation of the council’s orders. Why is it still running?”

  The council had ordered the first Scipio’s—Scipio 1.0’s—destruction? I tightened my grasp on Grey’s hand, suddenly frustrated. We had never been taught any of this. Had it all been stripped away from our history? But why? I felt stupid and ignorant, like I was stumbling around in the dark trying to fix something with no tools.

  “Allow an old man his indulgences. I created the thing, after all.”

  “It represents a threat, Lionel. If any of those Prometheus psychopaths ever find it, they could use it to subvert the Master Scipio program. All the other prototypes have been destroyed, and with the last one gone, we’ll finally be safe. You know this. We’ve talked
about it at great length.”

  “You think that they’re really gone?” Lionel asked amicably from off-screen, and Ezekial nodded. Lionel must have been watching him, because a moment later, he chuckled. “Ezekial, my friend, I have known you for a long time, and I really wish my imagination had rubbed off on you. Now, back to the matter at hand: I haven’t destroyed him because we need him. His continued existence is crucial in case the Master Scipio AI fails.” He reappeared, holding a mug in one hand with a silver canister perched on top of it. “Here,” he said, offering the mug to Ezekial. “Vietnamese style. You know… I sometimes wonder if it’s still there. I got to go there when I was young.”

  “Goodness, Lionel, really? You’re still worried about whether there is a Vietnam?”

  My head ached trying to keep up with all they were saying, as well as with my own questions. Who or what was Prometheus? Why had the council ordered Scipio’s destruction? What were the other prototypes? Where or what was Vietnam or Vietnamese style? And most importantly, did Lionel leave any instructions on what to do in case of Scipio 2.0 failing? Like a technical manual or something?

  Because the more I thought about it, the more that started to make sense. That the Scipio in the Core was degrading somehow. And needed to be fixed. Or replaced.

  “I’m not worried, Zeke,” Lionel said, disappearing off-screen again. “Well, I am worried, but not about that. Scipio, for all the wondrous achievement that he is, that he represents, is the only thing that can keep the Tower running. But at the end of the day, he is trapped inside a machine, and must obey the rules of that machine. Which means he can be subverted. If we don’t keep an independent copy of him up and running, then, given enough time and a person of enough patience, one who can amass enough helpers, then yes, he can fall. Well, that, and a dedication that spans lifetimes, of course.”

  “Lifetimes?” Ezekial leaned forward, suddenly seeming very interested. “It would take lifetimes?”