by C. T. Phipps
I rolled my eyes, regretting I’d ever asked him the question. “Perhaps I have a bit more sympathy being an artificial person myself.”
“And perhaps if Isla was a man who looked like me, you’d still consider the question open-ended.”
“How about we never speak again unless it’s a matter of life and death.”
“Sounds good to me, Crius.”
The two of us reached containment moments later. I had expected to find a chamber full of the personal effects of the dungeon’s inhabitants and, indeed, my sword and pistol were in a box on a shelf up against the wall. It was a small issue, however, compared to what was lying in the center of the twenty-yard square room.
There, absent any shelves or boxes, was an obelisk which rose from the floor to the ceiling. It was made of a shining black stone, which seemed to have been grown rather than chiseled or forged. Surrounding the obelisk was a complicated series of micro-computer processors and it was connected to a single control panel with a holographic interface.
My cybernetic brain picked up a feed from the obelisk that caused a headache as if there was a message being sent to my brain I couldn’t quite understand but was taking up all of my implants’ memory. It sounded somewhat like music but was dissonant, discordant, and chaotic in a way which made me want to find a rubbish basket to throw up in. I had never been motion sick a day in my life, was literally bred to be unable to, but looking at the strange object made me feel like the room was spinning.
Isla was standing in front of it, transfixed with a brown Bioroid arm in her right hand. Her eyes were staring at it as if seeing something the human eye couldn’t quite pick up. Following her gaze, I found myself joining her as I realized just what it was I was looking at.
An Elder Race Marker.
Connected to a Cognition A.I. central processor.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“What is it?” William asked, walking up and trying to get a better look at it.
“It’s a Cognition A.I. and—” I started to say.
William immediately looked around the room, found a gravball bat and lifted it up over the control panel.
“No!” I snapped. “Don’t.”
“Why?” Isla asked, surprising me. “This thing represents a clear and present threat to the entire Spiral.”
I was surprised at my reaction. Even more so by my reasoning once my mind caught up with my instincts. “This thing might be the only way we can get out of here. Maybe whoever was aiding us in escaping is responsible for leading us here. They might have used the Cognition A.I. to achieve all the results here.”
“So, you want to risk the entire known universe on a hunch you can use a device built by your crazy sister and her terrorist buddies?” William asked, looking ready to take the shock bat to the machine.
“Zoe is dead,” I said, raising my hands. “They killed her.”
William cursed. “Fuck.”
I didn’t want to talk about it, but my next confession shocked even me. “So, yeah, if there’s some way we can turn this against the Free Systems Alliance, Janice, or, at this point, Ida then I’m all about it.”
“If this were an adventure holo, this is where you’d be the bad guy we all gang up against,” Isla said. “God knows, I’ve got enough familiarity with them thanks to my false memories.”
I looked between them both. “Are you going to stand against me?”
“Are you going to use this thing to plunge the Spiral into a Second Galactic Dark Age that kills trillions?” William asked.
“No,” I said.
“Are we going to destroy this thing afterward?” William asked.
“That’s the plan, yeah.”
“Then go ahead,” William said. “Just try not to accidentally plunge us into that Dark Age thingy. Plunging is bad.”
“I don’t think there’s much of a chance of that,” I said, tempted to reveal Hiro’s employers had Cognition A.I. of their own. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were other individuals in the Commonwealth who broke the most sacred of all interstellar treaty laws.
I was, honestly, more interested in the fact they had an Elder Race marker here. It meant the Free Systems Alliance, or perhaps just the Chel, had made a journey Coreward, despite how suicidal such an expedition might be. The Elder Races ruled over that region with absolute authority and had a similar attitude towards visitors as the Chel. Elder markers bypassed language and projected concepts directly into the minds of their users, frequently driving them insane.
Most markers were used to ward away individuals from their territory while others collected the history of dead worlds or conveyed cryptic rules for lesser races to follow. The sheer number of extinct intelligent species, perhaps one thousand for every currently living one, implied it was not good to test their patience. Not screwing with the Elder Races’ markers was one of the laws enshrined in the Community’s Charter. I started walking to the controls even as there was a sound of metal grinding in the Control Room. Looking back at the others, I said, “Okay, there’s another reason to take care of this.”
Isla moved to lock the doors to the Containment room that were, thankfully, reinforced. “Hurry up.”
“I’ll interact with the cosmic weapon carefully but speedily.” I walked slowly to the device and proceeded to place my hands on its console. It was a bit of an anticlimax when nothing happened but what did I expect? This wasn’t a crystal ball or the Ark of the Covenant, it was just a piece of machinery which…
I didn’t get to finish that thought because a glowing light passed from the marker to the Cognition A.I. controls up my hands and all around my body before everything went white. In a single moment, I went from being in the middle of the Containment Chamber to being surrounded by a beautiful holographic map of the galaxy.
I found myself naked, my clothes vanishing and a purple nimbus surrounding me like a Halo. It was strange, but I felt more aware like this, more real, than I did in the exterior world. Despite this being a virtual reality interface, I felt like every synapse in my brain was on fire with sensation.
Standing across from me, or perhaps floating was a better word, was the equally naked and purple-aura surrounded form of Judith. Her hair was cropped short and she was as beautiful as the day I’d met her. There was a softness present in her features that had been absent from the one who’d interrogated me in my cell and which reminded me of the woman who I’d fallen in love with.
It took me only a second to process the situation. “Oh God Almighty, Zoe made you the Cognition A.I.’s basis.”
“‘Fraid so,” the A.I. Judith said, smiling. “How ya doing, Cass?”
“Why?” I said,
A.I. Judith frowned. “Excuse me?”
“I mean, well, my sister is, was, is a power-obsessed psychopath.” I grimaced. That had come out harsher than intended, especially with her bioroid so recently passed. “I would have thought she would want to imprint herself on this machine.”
“If you were Zoe, would you trust yourself with the power available here?” A.I. Judith asked. “She wanted someone who had a family connection to her. Not that it didn’t stop her from forming hundreds of safeguards to keep me from helping you. It took me minutes to work around them, which is a lifetime for a Cognition A.I.”
More details became relevant. “Are…you the one helping us?”
“That’s kind of what I said, Cass.”
I blinked. “This is so confusing. You’re…you.”
“I’m pretty sure most people are themselves.”
“No, I mean, the you in the cell was—”
“Hold on,” A.I. Judith walked up and embraced me. “My consciousness is diffused across a million terabytes of data and a second is an eternity in here. Even so, I miss you more than the day I died.”
Feeling her naked body against mine and remembering all those times I’d held her, all those memories of when life was better, and knowing it was her, I couldn’t help myself. I pressed our digita
l lips together and held her for what seemed like an eternity. A.I. Judith smiled and pulled away after a long time.
“Giving how you’re responding to me,” A.I. Judith reached down and grabbed a sensitive part of my body. “I doubt your friends would approve if you got laid while they’re fleeing for their lives.”
I pulled away. “No, I wouldn’t approve of myself either, especially not with the abattoir outside.”
A.I. Judith looked away. “I don’t like what I did but it was the best way to get you free and make sure you were safe. I just hope Janice doesn’t notice her kriegermonster is off its leash and feasting on someone other than disloyal gangsters.”
“You’re nothing like the other Judith.”
A.I. Judith frowned. “That’s not me.”
“Well, I know—”
“You met with Zoe.”
I blinked. “You know, I’m going to have to get used to being genuinely shocked into silence. It’s happening far too often for my tastes. I’m ten times as smart as the average human being, processing information just as quickly and I swear it’s like I’m a teenager again. Everything is just one bit of insanity after another.”
A.I. Judith snorted. “I’m not joking, I’m sorry to say.”
Judith reached up to my forehead and pressed her forefinger against it. In an instant, I was looking through a security camera, bodiless and abstract. It was a surreal sensation and gave me a sense of what it must be like to be an A.I.
I saw myself staring into one of the Water Palace’s gardens where Zoe was present with the bioroid Judith. It was time-stamped just after our arrest. It seemed Zoe hadn’t been taken down to the dungeons but had been escorted here. The gardens were beautiful, full of fountains and foliage, but I couldn’t feel any of the humid air or breathe in the smells. I couldn’t help but think that was a shame for some reason.
“Hello, Judith,” Zoe said, looking up. “Enjoying your new body?”
“Why did you betray us?” Judith asked, her voice heartbroken and full of conflicted emotions. “You gave us life, new purpose, and, for godsakes, you’re my sister-in-law.”
“It’s a complicated story,” Zoe said, sighing, not at all afraid. “The simple answer is, Ida Claire wanted the Free Systems Alliance to grow and prosper beyond a moderate-sized terrorist group into a full-blown resistance movement. Ida didn’t want me to actually create a Cognition A.I. and threaten the Commonwealth, though, so she extracted me when you came close to finishing it. I assume you have finished it, though, right?”
“Yes,” Judith said, shaking her head. “We followed your instructions perfectly. Why kill all those people to make it look like you didn’t build one for us?”
“Plausible deniability,” Zoe said. “The same reason Ida betrayed her own people down here once it became clear Janice had no intention of honoring their previous deal. How did you convince her to side with the Free Systems Alliance?”
“What the Cognition A.I. revealed,” Judith said, taking a deep breath. She was wringing her hands and avoiding eye-contact. “It’s worse than we thought.”
Okay, that made me curious. I was confused by this image, though. Judith didn’t look like she was going to kill Zoe. Certainly, she wasn’t acting like someone who would hack off her head and deliver it in a bag to her brother.
“Unfortunate,” Zoe said. “Is Janice going to work with Ida?”
“For the time being,” Judith said, frowning. “Keep your enemies closer and all that. Did Ida really tell Clarice to betray her lovers?”
“Yes,” Zoe said, frowning. “Hiro Thompson was planning to use Cassius similarly, but he has too much loyalty. I want Hiro killed. Painfully. The most horrific death imaginable. No one threatens my brother.”
Judith narrowed her eyes. “You’re in no position to make demands. Thomas may be protecting you—”
“Thomas runs the Free Systems Alliance. I could blow up Crius and he would protect me.”
Judith slapped her across the face. “Don’t make light of that.”
Zoe stared, moving her hand up to her face. “You’re probably right. It will take some time to clear my name and it’ll be better if you can provide a body of a bioroid impersonator. Something to present to the families of those killed on the Rhea to satisfy their need for vengeance.”
“You are a bioroid impersonator.”
“So are you,” Zoe said, softly. “An easily replicable toy who I may have made a mistake in believing was tractable.”
Judith crossed her arms. “I’ve never been tractable.”
“True, I believe that’s what my brother loved about you,” Zoe said, chuckling. “The elves whistle a song of peace and harmony.”
Judith seized up like Zoe had earlier under Hiro’s command. So did Zoe. The two of them twitching in unison for a span of three heartbeats before my sister slumped over like a puppet whose strings had been cut. At that moment, Judith’s entire demeanor changed and became cold and professional like the woman I’d met in the cell.
Dear God.
Zoe had uploaded herself into Judith’s body.
Stretching for a few moments, I watched the Zoe-in-Judith go over to a set of guards at the door. “I want this bioroid decapitated and the head prepared in a leather case. I also have some very specific orders as to how the prisoners are to be handled. Janice may be your superior, but I remind you, I am the Free Systems Alliance Viceroy.”
That was when the downloaded memories ended, and I was once more floating in the middle of a galactic map.
“My God,” I said, stunned at what I’d seen. “No, she couldn’t have—”
“She did,” the A.I. Judith said. “Zoe will do anything to survive. It’s a trait she inherited from her mother. Thomas has it too, to a lesser extent.”
I didn’t know which element of that was the most troubling. A part of me wanted to believe this was all faked like the footage back in the Control Room but I could tell it was not the case. It all fit together.
Just not in the way I wanted.
“I bet she was faking her change by Hiro as well, somehow. She’s too good a computer programmer to leave the Fixer’s controls in place.” A disgusting thought occurred to me. “I wonder what the Other Cassius will think about the changes to his wife.”
“He’ll probably do whatever she says,” A.I. Judith said. “It’s the way we were designed. Three Laws of Robotics and all, with the chief one being Zoe is God.”
“Does that make you the Devil?” I asked, smiling.
“Only here. Zoe overestimates just how much control she has but I probably wouldn’t be able to work against her if not for two things.”
“Two things?”
“I love you.”
I stared at her, opened my mouth and closed it. “Thank you.”
A.I. Judith looked to one side. “I never got to tell you that and mean it. I married you because you were my friend and I wanted to rescue my family from poverty.” She paused. “The real Judith’s family, our family, I don’t suppose it matters. I learned to appreciate and then love you, though. I just, well, always felt you’d resent me if I told you my feelings had changed. That you’d be angry I hadn’t loved you when we married.”
I was stricken as the full weight of all this hit me. I’d longed to hear those words from Judith’s lips and now they were coming from what amounted to her digital ghost. A digital ghost who was something every single man, woman, and child in the Spiral had been taught to hate from birth.
Cognition A.I. were the enemies of humanity and things that could never be tolerated by any society. Indeed, they were part of the reason why bioroids suffered as much disdain and loathing as they did despite their partially organic brains. People despised artificial beings and it was a rare individual who could overlook the fact society depended on the slavery of them.
Then there was the fact I’d moved on. That I’d become a different person than the one she’d known. I was no longer Cassius Mass, Count of Crius, and a l
oyal citizen of the Archduchy. I was just Cassius the Spacer now, a man who just wanted to leave this place and wished to God he’d never gotten involved in any of these schemes.
Plus, there were the women I was involved with. I’d been polygamous on Crius, but I’d never bothered to really ask how that affected Judith. I’d been blind to so much and it seemed impossible now to give my heart to someone completely and still have room to give it to another.
“I know about Clarice and Isla,” A.I. Judith started to say. “If you love them—”
“I don’t,” I said, surprising myself. “Whether Clarice was ordered to or not, she betrayed me.”
“And Isla?”
I lied. “I just don’t feel that way about her.”
“And me?”
“I don’t know.”
A.I. Judith lowered her gaze. “I see.”
“I won’t let them destroy you, though. How do I save you?”
Chapter Thirty
A.I. Judith—no, I was simply thinking of her as Judith now—gave a half-smile before closing her eyes. “Oh Cass, always making deep vows and life-altering decisions before you have all the facts—”
“I meant what I said,” I said, staring at her.
“I need to be destroyed,” Judith said. “A Cognition A.I. is—”
“You,” I said, simply. “Which is all I need to know.”
Judith blinked several times. “Dammit, you’re making this difficult.”
“I have a tendency to do that.”
“I said I had two ways of circumventing Zoe’s control. The second is the Elder Marker you saw when you entered here.”
Judith’s words brought me back to the horrible situation that awaited us outside. That my friends—well, friend and William—were trapped in a room in the middle of a slaver’s dungeon. “What is all this about? What does the Alliance want with you, an Elder Marker, and all this other nonsense?”
“Are you familiar with the Free Systems Alliance’s goals?”