The Tomorrow Heist

by Jack Soren

  “Tourists were going to come here?” Jonathan said.

  “I know it’s hard to tell, but Ashita isn’t finished, yet. Most of the floors are still under construction. Or were, six months ago. The work crews continued for a while after Mikawa was transferred into the computer system. But over time . . .”

  “Over time what?” Jonathan asked. He’d figured there were still some things Tatsu hadn’t shared. The question was, now that they were down here, where would her loyalties lie?

  “Accidents started to happen. Almost a dozen construction workers were killed over a two-­week period. Then the crews stopped coming. You couldn’t really blame them,” Tatsu said, a faraway look in her eye.

  “Something tells me these accidents weren’t really accidents,” Maggie said.

  “You’ve come this far, Tatsu. What happened after Mikawa was transferred into the computer?” Jonathan asked gently. Tatsu looked at him, then at the others staring at her, waiting. Her eyes were moist as Jonathan guessed she was reliving those days.

  “At first, nothing out of the ordinary. We started to doubt whether it had even worked. All computer functions, including the AI programming, continued as before. But it had worked, and Mikawa was merging with the AI program, insinuating himself into every system. But this wasn’t really Mikawa. By the time the transfer was made, twenty-­five percent of the data taken from Mikawa’s brain had degraded and corrupted. What was left was almost a paraphrasing of him. Like someone describing Mikawa who didn’t really know the deep truth of his being. Like that game telephone, where one person whispers something to the next person, and so on down the line. Until the last person says what they heard. The data started out as Mikawa, but in the end it was barely recognizable.”

  “What happened then?” Per asked.

  “The first signs were small things. Maintenance robots and drones seemingly going off program. It was Mikawa exercising his power, seeing what he could control. That’s how the first few accidents happened. At first, maintenance robots would move unexpectedly, tripping workers. Later, closed-­circuit video showed robots and drones cutting safety harnesses and loosening scaffolding bolts. Then the reprogramming became more blatant. Video showed drones literally knocking men off platforms to their death.”

  “Oh my God,” Maggie said, looking down over the edge of the walkway.

  “The day the construction crews stopped coming back, four men were working on malfunctions in the docking tunnel,” Tatsu said.

  “No,” Jonathan said, already knowing what was coming.

  “Mikawa sealed them in and opened the outer doors,” Tatsu said, now not just tearing up, but crying. “The . . . the pressure kept them in the tunnel. When we got the outer doors closed and reopened the inner ones . . .”

  Jonathan covered his mouth and felt his own eyes welling up.

  “Alex ordered some guards to . . . clean up. They did it, but then they left in the night, and we never heard from them again,” Tatsu said.

  “Why didn’t you shut the computer down?” Per asked, matter-­of-­factly.

  “Don’t you think we tried? It’s impossible! Mikawa, if he still has any kind of discrete identity, is the only thing that could possibly extract itself from the computer. We can’t turn the AI off, it controls everything. The air, the heat and light, even the pressure—­everything.”

  Maggie moved closer to Jonathan.

  “And now Umi is going to join the AI and Mikawa,” Maggie said quietly to Jonathan.

  Jonathan looked up in the air, movement catching his eye. A drone flew over them and disappeared around the back side of the tower. They needed to get out of there as soon as they could. Assuming Mikawa let them.

  “Does Mikawa know we are here?” Per asked Tatsu.

  “Possibly. Some of the drones have cameras,” Tatsu said.

  Now everyone was looking up.

  “Just standing here is probably a bad idea,” Jonathan said. “Let’s get moving.”

  “Agreed,” Maggie said.

  “Meet back here in a half an hour,” Jonathan said to Per and Tatsu. Tatsu nodded, then she went with Per into the tower.

  “What’s our plan?” Maggie said when they were gone.

  Jonathan exhaled and looked around the vastness of Ashita again.

  This is hopeless. What am I supposed to do, just start shouting Lew from the—­

  “Jonny?” Lew’s voice said.

  Great, I’m imagining hearing his voice again.

  “Jonny, are you there?” Lew’s voice said again.

  The hairs on the back of Jonathan’s neck stood up as he started to believe what he was hearing.

  “Lew?”

  “Sure, we can try to find him first, but look at the size of this place,” Maggie said, misunderstanding.

  “No, I’m hearing Lew’s voice on my implant! Lew, are you there?” Jonathan said.

  “Welcome to the party,” Lew said. “That sub’s imploding out there your handiwork?”

  “You could say that,” Jonathan said. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Second floor, bottom of the tower. Where are you?”

  “Top of the tower. Stay put, I’m on my way,” Jonathan said, grabbing Maggie’s hand and rushing to the elevators.

  “Watch yourself, there are still four of Umi’s guards around up there,” Lew said.

  “Umi? How do you know . . . never mind. We’re on our way.”

  “We?” Lew said.

  Jonathan quickly explained about Maggie.

  “Great, I’m getting coldcocked with pipes, and you’re picking up chicks,” Lew said. Jonathan smiled.

  “What did he say?” Maggie asked.

  “Nothing,” Jonathan said. The elevator doors opened, but Jonathan stopped short of getting in. After Tatsu’s story, he thought better of it. “Feel like getting some exercise?” Jonathan said, nodding toward the door marked “Stairs.”

  “You read my mind,” Maggie said. They got into the stairwell and trotted down as fast as they could.

  “Taking the stairs, Lew,” Jonathan said.

  “Copy that.”

  When they were halfway down, Maggie said: “You haven’t told me where you guys were partners. Was it at the CIA?”

  “Uh, a little after that,” Jonathan said, picking up the pace so they’d be too winded to talk. A few minutes later, they pushed through the exit to the second floor.

  “Whoa!” Maggie said.

  Lew was standing only a few feet from the door, wearing an exo suit and carrying a robot over his shoulder. Under his exo suit, Jonathan saw that Lew was wearing a guard uniform.

  “Man, have I got a story to tell you,” Lew said. Jonathan thought he looked like a robot, himself. He knew of exo suits from his intel days, but he’d never seen one like this. And, of course, he’d never seen one on Lew. If Lew needed strength support, that thing over his shoulder must weigh a ton. But Lew wasn’t the only one with a story to tell.

  “Back atcha, brother,” Jonathan said.

  3:53 P.M.

  TROIS GYMNOPEDIES: NO. 3 by French composer Erik Satie echoed across the red and gold furnishings in what would have been Umi’s drawing room, where she would have entertained royalty, artists, and scholars alike. In the coming years, the world would have heard about the wonder of Ashita. At first a spectacle and even a curiosity, but after she saved Japan from overpopulation and enhanced the oceanic sciences, it would have been viewed for what it really was: evolution. There would have been many spheres built around the world. A kingdom under the sea. With Umi and Mikawa as their immortal king and queen.

  Would have. While it was the dream, as it turned out, it had never been true. They had played her. With all of her subterfuge, half-­truths, and outright lies, she hadn’t even seen it coming. The player had been played. Umi had tried to save face
by telling Tatsu and a few others that it was she who had reneged on their deal, and she was the one holding Ashita hostage, but even if they all believed her, it was little solace for what was really happening.

  Umi raised a trembling, wrinkled hand and placed it on the floor-­to-­ceiling window, looking beyond the space outside, at the ocean held back by her creation. The same way she’d tried to use technology to hold back the march of time. But in the end, time won out.

  Her eyes focused on her reflection only inches away. She’d been a fool.

  Her eyes flitted from her reflection to that of the incongruous technology behind her—­the machines, cables, and hospital bed she’d had Nagura set up weeks ago. She checked her watch. It was almost time. Soon, she would join her beloved. They would be one in Ashita’s central processing unit. Entwined so no one could tell one from the other. Who would have thought that Umi Tenabe would end her flesh-­and-­blood life as a romantic, she thought. No one except Mikawa. He’d seen in her things that no one else had. Things even she didn’t see. She missed him so.

  But Mikawa is dead.

  She shook the idea away though it was more fact than idea. It was true that some of Mikawa was gone forever. For a start, his body had been buried at sea. The body that had betrayed him. In the same way that Umi’s body was now betraying her. Though at a hundred and two years of age, it wasn’t so much a betrayal as an inevitability. But it was all relative. When ­people are in their thirties, fifty seems old, but when they’re in their sixties, fifty seems young. To Umi, dying at eighty, as Mikawa had, was far too young.

  She was getting upset, and she tried to calm herself. But in truth, it wasn’t her thoughts that were upsetting her. The visit with Mikawa on the nineteenth floor had upset her. Try though she might, he wouldn’t talk to her. She knew he had the capability of talking from their past conversations. Conversations that had upset her far more than his silence today.

  But none of it mattered. Soon they would meld as one. They would have many lifetimes to reconcile any differences. The important thing is that they would be together. Forever.

  And all it cost was fifty million lives and the future of the human race.

  3:58 P.M.

  TATSU AND PER had easily gotten past the guards outside Umi’s residence, but now she was wishing that perhaps they had been turned away. What if Umi wasn’t happy to see her but angry? What if she called the guards in to do what Tatsu had failed to do in Toronto?

  As they walked through the residence, peeking around corners and into rooms, looking for Umi, Tatsu briefly thought about Toronto again. The man beside her had tried to kill her, and she had tried to kill him. She had aches and pains from being hit with that arm of his, but he was bald and sporting a limp thanks to her. Yet here they were, halfway around the world, ostensibly on the same side. It had definitely been a strange day.

  They reached the drawing room. Umi was sitting on the hospital bed beside the machinery Tatsu had helped Nagura carry up here. She didn’t like the way she felt when she thought about Nagura, so she put him out of her mind for the moment.

  She and Per entered quietly. She had noticed that Per had let her take the lead from the guards until now. He didn’t make any suggestions or speak at all, really. For that, she was glad.

  Umi was looking out the window, hunched and appearing . . . sad. It was difficult at first for Tatsu to identify the sadness since she’d never seen Umi look that way before in her life. Even when Mikawa died, she’d seemed more shocked and angry than sad. Now, the old woman seemed to really be showing her age. And in that single moment, Tatsu realized that Umi wanted to die. This wasn’t about being with Mikawa or moving on to the next plane of life, she just wanted it to end. And so did Tatsu.

  “Obasan?” Tatsu said softly. Umi turned and looked at the intruders in her doorway, seeming to take a moment to even realize who Tatsu was.

  “Tatsu? What are you doing here?” she asked. Looking at Per, her eyes widened, then narrowed. “Have you come to kill me?”

  “If I had, you would be dead, madame,” Per said.

  “Then why—­”

  “Don’t do this,” Tatsu said, cutting the distance between them in half. Per remained where he was. “Come back with me before it’s too late. We can find another doctor who can help you.”

  “Oh, child,” Umi said, sounding disappointed. “Is that what this is about? Is that why you’ve disobeyed me? Why you’ve brought a dangerous stranger to my bedside in my final moments?”

  “They don’t have to be your final moments. Stay away from the machine. Stop your revenge. It’s so ugly, and I know the face you show the world isn’t your true face. Give up this insanity before it’s too late!”

  “Child, it was too late the moment you took my hand all those years ago, back at the institution. And I’m not taking revenge on anyone,” Umi said as she struggled to stand. She appeared to be more hurt than angry. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m so petty, all I want is revenge and death?”

  Tatsu felt like she’d been hit with a club. What was Umi talking about?

  “I . . . I don’t understand. The gas attack on the ship. The virus you’re going to release—­”

  “I’m going to release? I’ve got nothing to do with it!” Umi yelled so loud she coughed afterward.

  “But . . . but . . . Dr. Norris developed the virus. He worked for—­”

  “The Japanese government! Or a faction of it, at least. Norris didn’t work for me, he was foisted on me. I couldn’t stop the virus release if I wanted. And even if I could, there’s an attack submarine sitting twenty kilometers away with a torpedo aimed right at the heart of Ashita. What do you think the deadlines are about? If I interfere with the launch of the virus, or if they don’t detect a launch at exactly 5:15 P.M., Ashita will be destroyed.”

  “But, why would the Japanese government want to kill ­people?”

  “To save the ones who will be left. Japan has a population problem, but not the one most of the world thinks it does. Our aging population outweighs all other nations on Earth. If everyone was like me, it wouldn’t be a problem, but they’re not. They’re a burden on society. Almost twenty percent of Japan’s population is over eighty years old. And more than fifty percent is over sixty. It’s a problem now, but in the coming years, it will cripple our country.

  “And Japan’s not alone. The same problem is happening all around the world. Japan is just feeling the brunt of it first. Too many years without war and disease has put the planet on a collision course with a disaster of a different kind. One that we won’t recover from unless someone does something about it. Now.”

  “That’s what you believe or that’s what they told you?” Tatsu asked.

  “Both, but solving the world’s problems down the road is not really what concerns someone of my age.”

  “Then why—­” Umi stepped faster than Tatsu thought she could move until she was nose to nose with her.

  “I’m trying to save Mikawa, you idiot girl!” With that, Umi pushed Tatsu, and she fell back into the arms of the guards who had come up behind them. Tatsu realized Umi had pressed her panic alarm.

  Two of the guards grabbed Per, but he launched one of them into the air. Before he could do anything else, the other guard zapped him in the neck with his Taser and Per went down like a sack of machine parts. Tatsu struggled, but a moment later she felt pain in her neck and smelled flesh burning.

  She was out before she hit the floor.

  Chapter Thirty-­four

  4:00 P.M.

  “REESE?” LEW SAID when Jonathan told him Reese was the key to finding the hidden database copy. “We’re fucked.”

  Jonathan motioned for Lew to be quiet. Lew had brought Jonathan and Maggie up to date on what he had learned about Mikawa and Project Dead Lights. And then Jonathan and Maggie had brought Lew up to speed on everything Tatsu had
told them. But not verbally. With both of their implants not only connected, but no doubt monitored by Mikawa, they quickly decided against sharing their information out in the open. Once they checked that no cameras could see them, they used Jonathan’s data device to type messages back and forth. And with Lew’s lack of typing skills, it was taking a frustratingly long time.

  When Jonathan had finally gotten to the real mission for The Custodians, Lew had been unable to contain himself and spoken out loud about Reese.

  “Is everything all right, Lew?” Mikawa asked, his odd voice coming out of Jonathan’s implant as well. Jonathan typed what Mikawa had said for Maggie. They both looked accusingly at Lew.

  “Uh, sure, Mickey. I was . . . I was just telling Jonathan a joke.” Jonathan rolled his eyes.

  “Time is getting short, Lew. We think you should get moving again if you want us to help you get back to the surface.”

  “Sure. Almost done, Mickey. I’m going to head up in a minute.”

  “Very good, Lew.”

  Then Lew typed something that almost made Jonathan speak out loud:

  He doesn’t just listen. Tracks my position. Using implant. Need to cut it out. Both of them. Take them up to him for me. I get Reese and find database. Keep Mick busy.

  Jonathan shook his head, but Maggie tapped his shoulder and nodded. She agreed with Lew. Great, two against one.

  Lew was already out of his exo suit, and he held up a finger, indicating they should wait. Then he took off down the hall. A few minutes later, he was back with a first-­aid kit. He opened it up and took out a knife. After pouring antiseptic on the blade, he gave it to Maggie. She did the job without even making a face, first cutting Lew’s out, then Jonathan’s, patching them up as best she could with what was in the kit. Jonathan wrapped gauze around the implants and put them in his pocket.

  “We should be okay to talk softly,” Jonathan said, barely above a whisper.

  “Good,” Lew said. “Now get up there and see if there’s any chance of shutting Mickey off.”

  “Probably not, but worth a shot,” Maggie said.