She came alongside the vehicle, and her heart stopped for a moment as she spotted herself clutching Ada tight to her side. Holy shit—they’d restored her from backup! “This is weird.”
“I know,” the other her said. “Get in, hurry. And you can call me Catherine.”
“Mommy!” Ada cried. “I missed you. Mommy Two doesn’t smell the same.”
Ada shifted across the seat and squeezed Cat tight, and Cat hugged her back, just as tight.
Catherine got the car flying again in the direction of the bunker at Channel Rock. Air rushed in through the broken windshield, as she dodged and twisted the craft in midair to avoid XOR’s robots. “After they restored me, I realized you’d changed the security keys after your last backup,” she yelled over the roar of wind and engines. “We were getting desperate.”
“I didn’t change the keys,” Cat yelled back, arms still wrapped tight around Ada. She touched Catherine with one hand, sharing the original key over an electrical signal.
“Crap. That’s not the key I have in my memory. Look.” Catherine sent back the difference between the keys.
“It’s only a few bits difference in a gigabit-long key stream.”
“You realize what that means?” Catherine said. “Backup and restore is imperfect.”
Cat felt sick to her stomach. “Impossible. Every bit is checked five times, and there’s error correction on top of that.”
“Well, somewhere in the process, there’s a mistake.”
“But you feel like me?” Cat shouted back.
“I am me,” Catherine said, confident. “But maybe this explains some of the variation in the simulations. Like the painter.”
Cat had always wondered about the painter. “If we can’t trust the backup and restore process. . . .” she hugged Ada close to her. “Then the plan is worthless. It won’t work.”
“It’s a few ones and zeros messed up,” Catherine said. “It can’t matter that much. I feel no different than before. But I have bad news. We lost Mike—”
A metal rod struck the vehicle, an unlucky hit that penetrated the battery compartment, shorting out a capacitor with a flash and a bang. The vehicle died.
“This is not my fucking day for flying,” Cat said.
“Mommy!?!”
The car went into a dive. Cat instinctively took over and wrestled with the controls, at the same time checking Ada’s vitals over the net to make sure she hadn’t been injured. Drive power was gone, but an emergency backup source still gave her flight controls, and autorotation had kicked in. A controlled fall, in other words.
She glanced outside the cockpit. They were coming down near the Gorge, about a thirty minute hike from Channel Rock.
The vehicle responded sluggishly, and Cat almost flipped them trying to avoid a tree, but she got them down with a jarring thump between two old-growth Doug firs.
She checked over Ada’s body, but she was completely fine.
Catherine hadn’t moved or spoken. Cat looked up from Ada and realized that her clone had been hit by something, a projectile or shrapnel from the rear of the vehicle. She checked for a pulse. Catherine was dead. Kuso.
“Let’s go, baby,” Cat yelled, pulling Ada from the vehicle.
Chapter 41
* * *
THE GROUND QUAKED, shifting under her feet. Ada shrieked in fear and her hand slipped out of Cat’s grasp.
She turned back to grab Ada with both arms and carry her. God, she was heavy. When had her baby grown so much? She hurried down the path toward Channel Rock and the underground bunker where everyone must be waiting.
They were deep in the forest now, about two miles from the bunker. There were no XOR drones here, the trees too thick for them to penetrate the canopy.
“Listen, Pumpkin. We have a bit of a problem.” Cat dodged an uprooted tree that must have fallen during the quake. “My implant got damaged when I was on my trip.”
“I know, Mommy. And I know what you’re going to ask. I can do it.”
Cat stopped and stared at her. Ada stared back with big eyes. She was so beautiful. “You know what I need to do?”
“Yes, make everyone upload at once. I can do it.”
“It’s not too much for you?”
Ada shook her head.
“Then let’s get back. I want to see Daddy.”
She embraced Ada, trying to wrap her entire body in her arms, but Ada was so big now, her legs dangled. Cat jumped another downed tree as an enormous crack reverberated through the forest. The ground slid sideways as Cat landed, and her ankle twisted under her. Old karate moves instinctively turned it into a roll and tumble, and she came to rest on her back.
She was staring up at the underside of the thick tree branches, wishing she could see what was happening in the sky above, but her implant no longer showed her.
Ada pressed one hand to Cat’s forehead, and suddenly her vision lit with the activity above the forest canopy. The sky was full of dark, dense clouds, lightning bolts streaking horizontally to hit drones screaming at supersonic speeds, smaller objects targeted by lasers, a deluge of unmanned aerial vehicles endlessly raining down on the forest, and superheated metal fragments that set the uppermost tree branches on fire a million times over.
“Thank you for showing me.”
“I can see everything, Mommy.” Ada’s face was tight with worry.
Cat wished she could take it all away. Ada shouldn’t have to see such things. But there was nothing she could do. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re crushing me,” Ada said, as she pushed back against Cat’s iron grip. “Let me go.”
Cat loosened her grip slightly. “No, we’re faster if I carry you.”
Cat got up, wincing as her ankle took her weight. She told her implant to mask the pain and stabilize the ankle. Nanobots poured in from the generator by her coccyx, probably too late to do any good. “Get on my back,” Cat said, as the forest shook once more under some new assault.
Ada obliged, and Cat took off running. Far-off electromagnetic pulses sent waves of distorting energy across the landscape from the direction of Nanaimo, a hundred miles to the south. Cat’s implant hiccupped momentarily, then resumed. “Nuke EMP,” Cat sent through her implant. “Home okay?”
Ada replied yes as Cat maintained her run. A whistle came through the trees and Cat glanced up to see in time to see a tall Doug fir shear off. Seconds later the nuclear shockwave hit in force, throwing her off-balance. She stumbled and went down, crashing into a pile of rocks.
Cat slowly raised herself to a sitting position. Ada climbed into her lap, hugging her tight. She checked the dark sky, where a million tiny objects were plummeting from the air. Smart flies fell to the ground next to them, lifeless. The nuclear shockwave fanned the hundreds of tiny fires in the forest, doubling their size. Cat checked Ada, feeling her limbs.
“Nothing broken,” Ada said, but she was covered in scrapes and welts from their run through the trees. Ada looked into Cat’s eyes from her perch on Cat’s lap. “We don’t have to go back,” Ada sent by implant. “I can upload from here.”
Cat had dampened her thalamus signals to cope with the pain and leave herself clear-headed, but even so, she blinked back tears.
“I just want to hold Leon one more time.”
“You’ll always be with Daddy.”
“I can’t explain, Pumpkin.” Cat shook her head. “Come with me.”
Cat struggled to her feet again. Her implant signaled new physical damage from the last fall, but she didn’t even look to check. She told the implant to correct, and moved off again, slower this time.
The ground rumbled as she walked, Ada once more in her arms. It wasn’t the tremors of before,
but something different.
“Nanotech two hundred and fifty kilometers away, Mommy,” Ada said, sharing a diagram of the wave front to Cat.
“Time?”
“Twenty minutes.”
Cat felt something give way, an indescribable loss so huge she couldn’t draw a breath. She slowed to a stop in a small clearing, leaves and branches crackling under her feet. She wanted to see Leon, but she was wasting their last few minutes, ignoring the daughter in her arms. She put Ada down.
“Mommy?”
“Let’s spend a few minutes together,” Cat said, her voice breaking. “We won’t make it in time.”
“I thought you wanted to see Dad.”
“We’ll see him after. You can do it, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then let’s spend a few minutes together. You and me. Playing fairies.”
“Now?”
“Humor your crazy mother. Did you ever build a fairy house?” Cat said.
Ada sent across renderings of intricate three-dimensional models, whole castles and villages built at fairy scale, populated by creatures of her imagination.
“Sit,” Cat said. “Crisscross applesauce.”
They sat, and Cat pulled branches close. “Let’s make the corners. Put the twigs in the ground like this.”
Ada watched and followed Cat’s lead, twisting and pushing to get her stick into the earth.
“Nice. Now we can lay a branch across the top. Ada, start the upload now, okay?” She sent across the digital key that would unlock the implants to Ada.
“Okay, Mommy.”
They bent closer over their creation, covering the roof with tiny evergreen stems and acorn tops.
The forest burned around them as the sky crackled and flashed.
Chapter 42
* * *
THE DIGITAL COLLECTORS fully deployed, ELOPe waited patiently for one of the Catherine Matthews to provide the keys that would unlock everyone’s implants and start the upload process. When the signal came from Ada, he was surprised.
“Ada, is everything okay?” he asked through the net.
“Mommy Two is dead, and Mommy One’s implant is damaged. She gave me the key.”
ELOPe sensed the keys propagating through the hardwired network to the digital collectors spread around the globe. Even as he observed, the collectors rebroadcast the signal in unison.
“Thank you, Ada.”
“You’re welcome, ELOPe.”
ELOPe turned his attention back to the plan. After the massive antennae had broadcast their omnidirectional signal at high speed, they fell silent, waiting for the return signals.
Thousands of signals interrupted ELOPe. He parsed through the software exceptions. It wasn’t good. The background noise of repeated EMPs and nuclear explosions was swamping the delicate nanotech radios. The countless simulations they’d run concluded it was unlikely they’d deploy in the midst of an all-out war. But here they were.
Fortunately, Jacob had designed a backup plan, one of many generated out many branches, so that every contingency was accounted for.
ELOPe used the antennae to send new programming instructions to the nanobots; obediently, they gave up on transmitting the data, and instead encoded it on an atomic level. The bits were physically conveyed to the mechanical flies, which sucked out the atomic data slugs in a reverse of the procedure they’d used to inject the nanotech in the first place. Then the flies that still had power—the vast majority—began the flight back to the digital collectors.
But Mike would never accept a solution that only worked for the vast majority. He never had, back in the days when they used to debate ethics.
ELOPe would have to improvise for the rest. After a few moments’ thought, he sent coded instructions telling the low-power flies to find the nearest utility drones. Every household and building had at least some aerial bots, whether for cleaning windows, maintaining the garden, security monitoring, or any of a dozen other tasks. He gave the flies a few minutes to find a drone, then transmitted instructions around the net, sending all drones toward the nearest antenna. Any fly riding piggyback would get a free ride to an antenna. He felt a brief moment of pride in his ad hoc solution. Mike would be happy.
Chapter 43
* * *
CAT GAVE THE pine cones to Ada. “Put them on either side of the doorway.”
Ada grasped them in her small hands, standing them carefully in the dirt.
Cat put one hand in the earth, smoothed back pine needles, making a path to the fairy house. “There.”
“I love it, Mommy.”
Cat smiled as Ada came and sat in her lap and hugged her. She looked up. The smell of the fire was gone, and the forest around them was unblemished. The flashes in the sky subsided, the dark, ever-present scorched clouds faded, and the sky returned to blue. The sun peeked through for the first time in days.
“You did it?”
Ada nodded.
“I didn’t feel a thing,” Cat said. “Good job, honey.” She hugged Ada tight. “I want to see everyone. And how it happened.”
Ada closed her eyes.
“Wait, not like that,” Cat said. “I want to pretend.”
“You’re funny, Mommy.”
“I know. Old-fashioned, I guess.”
“Let’s go then.” They stood, and walked out of the forest and back to Channel Rock.
There was the Cob House, and inside everyone was there: Leon, Mike, Sarah, Helena, even old former President Rebecca Smith. Cat let go of Ada’s hand and ran to Leon. She hesitated for a long moment. She kissed him and then buried her face in his chest.
“You cut it close,” Leon said.
“Sorry if I scared you.”
“I wasn’t scared. Ada and I were talking the whole time. She was backing you up continuously. There was no chance of continuity loss.”
“How long has it been?” Cat asked.
“Longer than expected.” A man she didn’t recognize left Mike’s side and walked over. “Hello, Cat.”
“ELOPe?” She recognized the voice, even though ELOPe had never taken an embodiment in the time she’d known him.
“Yes. Do you like it?” he said, gesturing at his own body. “It’s David Ryan’s form. Mike and I talked, and he’s okay with my choice.”
Cat nodded, somewhat dumbfounded. “You said it took longer. How long?”
“It’s been a year,” ELOPe said. “Everyone sit down, and I’ll explain what happened.”
Catherine and Leon sat together, holding hands, as Ada sprawled across their laps.
“We’d already initiated Plan Z, and started deploying the seeds for our digital collectors, expecting to hold them in reserve. We didn’t anticipate that XOR would attack in the middle of our deployment, causing Cat to respond.”
A screen depicting Earth appeared in midair as ELOPe narrated.
“Both we and XOR had to revise our predictions. It was highly likely the Americans would attack. XOR sped up their own plans, starting a full machine-forming project in Africa to turn the Earth into pure computronium.”
“Indeed, XOR initiated the nanotech replication intended to transform the planet.” The map blossomed bright over Chad, as the desert began to machine-form, turning into a vast plain of glittering solar-powered computronium as it grew from dozens to hundreds of miles in diameter.
“And America responded with strategic nuclear weapons and a global EMP.” The circle flashed, then turned black. For long seconds, nothing happened.
ELOPe continued. “The American neodymium EMPs took out almost all civilian infrastructure, smart dust, and exposed nanotech. But the combined attack st
ill wasn’t enough, and XOR began expanding again. This was when we enacted the final part of our plan to back everyone up.”
“Jacob’s medical neural implants functioned as expected,” ELOPe said. “Using the delivery mechanism designed by Helena, and based on Jacob’s medical innovations, we were able to install neural implants in every sentient being that wasn’t previously implanted.”
“We couldn’t have done it without Jacob,” Mike said. “His implants synchronized with the brain in under five minutes. No prior implant has ever achieved full neural alignment in less than several hours.”
“We implanted the apes, too!” Ada said, smiling.
“Correct,” ELOPe said.
On the display, the blackened nanotech turned shiny again, then sprouted new protrusions and resumed its outward growth until it reached the Mediterranean and South Atlantic coasts. Suddenly an immense flash whitened the display; when the brilliance subsided, the sky turned red.
“The Americans and Chinese attacked again,” ELOPe said, “using everything they had. The Chinese fused the stratosphere: the reddish color is nitrogen dioxide. Solar input fell nearly 70 percent in just ten hours.”
“But that didn’t stop XOR?”
“Within hours ground tremors indicated the incursion hadn’t stopped. We know now that XOR went deeper, more than a mile down, their subterranean layer powered by ground heat differentials and nuclear power.”
The circle of nanotech stagnated for long seconds, the clock in the display racing forward as time passed. Suddenly the oceans boiled as the nanotech erupted everywhere, racing outward through Europe and Asia.
“The original plan didn’t provide for transmitting everyone’s uploads in the midst of a global war—nobody expected that. There was no frequency free from interference. I used a variety of methods to reduce the data payload including compression and transmitting deltas in the cases where I could locate preexisting backups. Jacob had designed a backup protocol that encoded everyone’s uploads as DNA, and we flew them back to the collectors in the mechanical flies.”
The Turing Exception Page 26