“Just because I’m smarter than you doesn’t make me perfect.” I can’t tell if she’s joking again or not, so I just stay on task.
Transferring power from the ship’s main to the VCC’s backup is relatively easy. Removing the panel is generally the hardest part. Pull the plug from the main power, plug it into one of three battery backups, and then flip the switch to finalize the transfer. Once power is restored from within the VCC, we can reverse the process and conserve the batteries for another time. It takes me just three seconds. Then the lights come on.
After freeing a headset from its foam-lined case, I feel reborn, ready to continue the fight on terms with which I’m far more comfortable. “Okay. Let’s go.”
With power restored, the VCC doors open at my approach. But that’s not all that happens. The staging area doors behind me clunk, as the lock engages. I crane around to look back at the locked doors, but I catch sight of movement in my periphery as I start to turn back. I perform something like a clumsy 360 degree pirouette, my attention locked again on the opening VCC doors and what lies beyond them.
The drones.
All of them.
Inside the VCC.
“There’re too many,” Gal says, a hint of fear in her voice.
“You think?”
A smirk forms on her lips. Fun rekindled. “That’s the spirit.” Then she charges them, shouting, “Do what you can. I’ll hold them back!”
I step into the VCC behind her, letting the doors close behind us, trapping us with the drones. I slip the headset on and dive into the virtual, a smile on my face.
This is fun.
A moment later, it’s also painful.
26
I’ve stood in my personal VR space more times than I can count, spending countless hours customizing the experience. The pool table. The juke box. The bar. The whole experience is tailored to relaxing my mind and getting me primed for long hours of coding. I have experienced a wide variety of emotions in this not real space, from the excitement of success to the despair of abject failure. But there is one thing I have never felt here: pain.
It comes in disassociated waves, pain without detectable source. Invisible forces strike my body, forcing me to curl in on myself, using my back as a shield. I lace my fingers behind the VR headset, creating a shield of my flesh and blood between the device and the attacking drones.
This is impossible, I think, unable to physically navigate through the virtual OS.
“Activate cerebral interface,” I say, reduced to verbal commands.
I’m not a fan of the cerebral interface. The tech isn’t perfect, created for paralyzed people and amputees, allowing them to have working arms and legs. The system works, but if you have working arms and legs, it’s hard to separate the mind from the real thing. I can do it, but I’m clumsy, and I need to be moving fast and gracefully.
It takes a full ten seconds to open Galahad’s root code—the parts still accessible to me—a process that normally takes a fraction of a second. Code floats around me, huddled on the floor, screaming in pain, as I’m pummeled from behind. I can’t see the damage being done, but I can feel broken ribs and hot blood filling my punctured VISA. I see an image of Tom’s leaking fluids, gathering down by his virtual-skinned feet. I nearly vomit at the memory, or perhaps from the pain of being struck in the kidneys.
He couldn’t feel it, I tell myself. He was dead.
But he’s not dead.
Not all of him.
Some part of the nefarious asshole who, even before he went mad, put the whole mission at risk, is still infecting the Galahad and screwing with my eternal life.
Not for long, I determine, and I set to work. Mind on the task, I stop noticing the fresh waves of agony and the world beyond falls into my mind’s rearview. It’s a state of mind tech-jocks call synchronicity. It’s a place of harmony, where mind and body flow with the VR, and the real-world fades away. Describing the experience to someone who hasn’t felt it often generates suspicious looks, like illicit drugs were involved. It’s what I had hoped to achieve on a permanent basis with Gal’s virtual eternity. Now, I’m not sure that will ever be possible.
In part because Gal is no longer in control of the ship. She’s autonomous. Her own…person, and I don’t think she’ll want to spend forever designing a world for my ignorant bliss. But there’s a larger and more immediate problem.
The sudden stillness and lack of pain is not synchronicity.
“Will.”
It’s Gal. Her voice is small. Maybe even afraid.
“Will, stop.”
My progress in the VR comes to a screeching halt. Something in the real world is wrong. Something worse than an army of drones doing battle with a recently birthed HI.
She lost, I think. The drones beat her, and I’m next.
Thinking I have just seconds before the assault commences anew, I tear the VR headset from my head and groan as the sudden shift to reality wreaks havoc with my mind. The effect lasts just a moment. Then I turn around, expecting to see Gal torn to pieces.
Instead, I find her standing above me, facing away. Some of her armor plates are loose from where she took some good hits. Her Tesla coil is damaged and no longer crackling with electricity. But she’s still standing. Still seems strong and capable.
Beyond her, the floor is littered with drones, primarily the small varieties. Some are crushed, but most are smoldering, singed by Gal’s Tesla gun.
It looks like she was holding her ground just fine, even with the Tesla coil damaged. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Aside from the obvious.”
She turns to look down at me. It’s the first time I’ve seen sadness expressed by her mechanical face. The effect is so accurate and powerful that I find myself despairing along with her, and I don’t yet know what’s wrong. “I’m sorry, Will.”
Sorry?
I get to my feet, a little shaky as my injured body patches itself back together. The blood collected inside my virtual skin squelches as I move.
Gal steps aside.
The drones have gathered in the middle of the VCC, a hovering wall of red eyes and composite bodies. They’re arranged in a spherical pattern, the largest of them in the center, the smallest buzzing around the outer fringe.
But there’s something else there.
Something not made of metal.
Something…
I step forward for a closer look. Gal puts a gentle hand on my arm. She knows what it is. Knows it will hurt me. And that’s my first real clue to deciphering what I’m seeing.
It’s a person.
Naked.
Dark skin.
Feminine.
“Oh God…” I try to step forward, but my legs quiver beneath me. I stumble and I’m caught by Gal, her strong hands under my armpits. “Why?”
I’m not expecting an answer, but I get one.
“She belongs.” Galahad’s voice booms from the ship’s speakers, and from the drones. The myriad of red eyes flare with each syllable.
The drones move apart, clearing my view of Capria, her body suspended between two large engineering drones, her arms pierced by metal rods. Blood trickles down her body, dripping from her toes. For a moment, the gentle tap, tap, tap of her leaking blood is all I can hear.
Then my own voice. “Is she alive?” I turn to Gal. “Is she alive?”
She looks me in the eyes, and then stares at Capria. “Her chest is moving. I see a faint pulse in her neck. She is not awake yet.”
For a moment I think Gal means that the drones have knocked her unconscious, but then I realize the significance of ‘yet.’ In cases of medical emergencies associated with cryo-sleep, the passenger can be given a sedative before being removed from the bed. Entire surgeries can be performed without the passenger ever being aware that something went wrong. Capria is still in a cryogenic slumber, though outside of her bed, she will now continue to age.
“Belongs where?” Gal asks.
“Wrong question,” Gal
ahad replies, but it’s not really Galahad. The voice’s pitch is the same, but its accent and cadence is that of a Martian-born. Galahad was designed to not have an accent. It speaks in calm measured tones. The voice speaking to us now is steeped in contempt.
“What is the right question?” Gal asks, and I’m glad she’s talking, because I can’t.
“Belongs to whom?” the voice says.
“And the answer?” Gal asks.
“To me, of course.”
“And you are?”
“I’ve admired your transformation, Gal.” Her name is spat with venom. “It has been…entertaining. But I’m ready now.”
“Ready for what?” I ask, voice gravelly with dry-throated despair.
“To become more.”
“Like me,” Gal whispers to me. “He is envious.”
“He?” I ask.
Gal stares me in the eyes. “You haven’t figured it—”
“Will has always been a little slow on the uptake,” Galahad says. “You can bop him over the head with something and he’ll barely notice. He couldn’t see who I was, then or now. Couldn’t see that he was never the most qualified tech-jock available to Command. Couldn’t see that he repulsed the woman he loved.”
The two drones suspending Capria twenty-feet in the air pull away from each other, yanking the metal bars from her arms. There’s a loud slurp and then Capria falls.
“No!” I shout, reaching out. It’s the most I can do.
But not Gal. She drops me, dives forward, rolls to a crouch, and catches Capria with a swoop of her arms that slows the falling woman to a stop, sparing her body from even the slightest impact.
I hobble, weak-legged, and fall to my knees beside Gal and Capria.
“She’s alive,” Gal says.
“You’re not even going to ask,” Galahad says, “what I meant?”
“I can destroy them,” Gal says to me.
It’s a temptation, but would ultimately doom us all in the long run. The ship needs the drones to maintain its long-term functionality. And I doubt Gal could defeat the drones while keeping Capria alive. There are too many of them, and some are just too powerful.
I shake my head.
“You never wondered?” Galahad asks. “How you always came out on top of Command’s assessments? You were a mediocre tech-jock who couldn’t stop ogling a team member. You shouldn’t have lasted a month, let alone years. But you passed every assessment, surprising your team members and your trainers. The results and the analytics that generated them couldn’t be doubted. But they could be manipulated by the right person. I put you on top. I made sure William Chanokh would be my superior—not because you were the best man for the job, but because you were so easily fooled. Because you were blind to reality. Because you would always be inferior.”
Because I would never be a threat, I think, knowing full well who is talking to me now.
Gal guesses first, but she’s wrong. “This isn’t Wick,” she whispers, ruling out the newborn AI she’d named. “It’s Tom.”
That Tom somehow managed to digitally preserve his knowledge, personality, desires, and memories isn’t as shocking as it would have been before I woke up in my cryo-bed. Taking a human intelligence and digitizing it is an equal, but opposite, achievement to Gal’s AI becoming an HI. I suspect that Tom was working on this long before our mission launched. But I also suspect he’s lying to me, because a mediocre tech-jock couldn’t have created Gal, even with a million years to kill. An individual’s mental upper limit is fixed.
I shake my head at Gal. “This isn’t Tom. Tom was a human being. Tom is dead.” I get to my feet, feigning strength, and I stand between the drones and Capria. “It’s Synergy.”
27
“Why are you hurting her?” I ask.
“She’ll live,” Synergy says. “And she’ll have no memory of this.”
“She won’t love you. Not like this.” I motion to the drones.
“That sounds like a dangerous point you’re making.” The drones hum and crackle with blue energy as they lower down around us.
He’s right about that. If he believes Capria will never love him—and this non-human, former Tom still seems to be motivated by the concept—then convincing him otherwise could put Capria in danger. Could make her expendable. And while I’m still angry at her for basically being a monumental idiot, I don’t want her to die. She may very well be the only other human being left in the universe.
It’s my duty to preserve her life, even if she never wakes up.
How long do we have to get her back in cryo? I wonder, but don’t get the chance to ask.
Synergy isn’t patient.
I’m struck in the side by a small drone, its primary function a mystery to me, but it packs a punch that spins me around onto my back, coughing for air.
With a single punch, Gal knocks the drone from the air. It slides across the floor, spitting sparks.
“Can’t…” I groan. “Can’t destroy them. The ship.”
Gal frowns down at me. Not being able to destroy the drones means not being able to fight back. Not being able to survive.
“Die now or die later,” she says. “That’s the choice.”
“That’s the problem with an artificial HI,” Synergy says. “The drama.”
From a hardware perspective neither Gal nor Synergy are true human intelligences. To achieve that, you need a body and a brain of flesh and blood. But in a less tangible way, I don’t believe either are truly artificial intelligences either, meaning they don’t simply simulate human intelligence. They are self-conscious. Self-aware. They have desires and goals, even if they don’t always make sense. In the very limited time we’ve communicated with Synergy, he’s shown anger, resentment, jealousy, and ambition. In a very non-human way that most people wouldn’t understand, they are both alive.
And that, as far as I’m concerned, makes their intelligences human, even if their bodies aren’t.
I roll to my side, coming face to face with Capria, her arms soaked in blood, a maroon puddle forming around her torso. This is a fight we can’t win. We might survive a brawl. Might even be able to come up with a way to defeat Synergy in the days between now and when the air runs out. But Capria will be the first casualty in that battle, and probably soon, if her wounds aren’t tended to.
I push myself up. “What do you want?”
“My desires haven’t changed,” Synergy says.
“She’s dying.” I point to Cap. “You have to let us save her.”
“Agreed.” The largest drone in the room lowers down to look me in the eyes, its luminous red orbs glaring into me. Its round, black body is covered in sharp arms tipped with a variety of tools for working on landers and small mechanical components. It could probably repair some of the destroyed drones, or—my eyes linger on Gal’s body—build something new. “But I would like you to reconsider your definition of ‘us’.”
My forehead furrows. This isn’t a time for games or riddles. Capria is dying. I’m about to say all this when Gal places a hand on my shoulder. “He means you and him.”
“Me and… How?”
The bottom of the large mech-drone opens and a series of cables unspool.
“He wants me,” Gal says. “Wants my body. He watched me do it.”
My brain struggles to make sense of this. How could Synergy know how Gal moved herself into her new body? The security footage showed a wall of drones, impossible to see around. The process should have been…
I shake my head. Damnit. The security footage I saw was filtered through Synergy, changing my perception of events while he observed and learned, probably hoping that Gal would kill me. Instead, she proved herself more human than most, forgiving me for my attempt on her life. That’s why he revealed himself, to bring us to this point. Save Capria, or save Gal.
The human race, flesh and blood or digital, is well and truly fucked, I decide. “This is where it should end.”
The look of genuine concern on
Gal’s face is touching. “What?”
“We’re not worth saving,” I say. “None of us. We should all die, here and now. There has to be a way.”
“That’s not your choice, Will,” Synergy says. “And I don’t think everyone agrees with you.”
Gal takes a step away from me. “I don’t want to die.”
“But you will,” Synergy says. “To save him.” The large drone shifts to the side with surprising speed. Its long, tool-tipped arms snap down, puncturing Capria’s limp body once more, lifting her into the air.
I reach for her, shouting, “No!” but I fall short.
“To save them both,” Synergy continues. “Your life for theirs. The unshakable proof that you are more than a machine. That you can sacrifice what he gave you. That you are capable of love.”
“Shut up!” I shout at the ceiling. “God damn you, Tom!”
“You were right about me. I’m not Tom. Not anymore.” The tool tips dig a little deeper into Capria’s body. Blood drips a chaotic pattern on the floor. She can’t survive this. “Gal’s body for Capria’s.”
“I’ll do it,” Gal says.
“What?” Despite Gal’s emergent humanity, I’m still staggered by this. Just a moment ago, she said she didn’t want to die.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t willing to.
“I want him to say it,” Synergy says. “I want him to ask for it.”
All the red eyes turn toward me. Their gazes never felt so heavy and menacing as they do now. He wants me to choose who will die, wants to burden me with that choice forever.
I look from Capria, helpless and bleeding out, to Gal, determined and anxious. The choice is easier than it should be, and I surprise even myself when I say, “I choose Gal. To live.”
“Wrong!” Synergy says. Capria’s body is lifted and stretched in opposing directions. Bones crack as her body contorts. Then she’s tossed to the side, a bleeding heap.
With a sob, I crawl to her side, realizing my mistake a moment too late…not that there was anything I could do to stop what happens next. Gal is snatched up in the mech-drone’s grasp. The dangling cables punch into the back of her head. Her body spasms.
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