Crystal Rebellion

by Doug J. Cooper

  “Could he get to the Venerable?”

  “Beyond the fact that it’s in orbit,” said Criss. “He’d need to figure out how to move his crystal without synbods after I shut them down.”

  “Juice,” said Sid. “Would you look around and try to locate his new console? This would be a data search only.” Sid swirled his hand in front of him to indicate Alex’s office. “Whatever you can do from right here.”

  “What could I find that Criss couldn’t?”

  “I’ll settle for luck at this point. Develop an investigative process and start gathering clues. Maybe something you do triggers an idea for Criss.” Sid shrugged. “I know it’s a long shot, but I think we should try.”

  “We have a few hours before we need to be back in the lab. I’ll poke around until then.” Juice straightened. “Can Alex help me?”

  “Actually, I need Alex’s help on something different. And Criss, feel free to interpret because I don’t know all the words.”

  Sid looked at Alex, who felt his heart rate spike. “So, if Lazura can use her tools to track Ruga, can you as well? Can you figure out how that’s done?”

  “Not likely,” said Alex. “But I can poke around too if it’s the same rules as Juice.”

  Sid nodded. “Be focused and creative, move as fast as you can, and maybe you’ll spark a lead for Criss.”

  With battle plans issued, the meeting ended and Alex was again in his office with only Juice and Criss. As he oriented his thinking back to the smaller group, he thought about his assignment and formed the question, What’s the best way to start?

  But he didn’t ask it.

  Because Juice and Criss were deep in a private conversation. Again, he could only hear her side, and she whispered to the AI at a rapid clip using her shorthand language: “Yes. There. More. No.”

  He hadn’t noticed before, but she rested her arms on her lap and moved her fingers as she spoke. Like tiny nervous twitches, her fingers danced in complex patterns.

  She’s manipulating something he projects for her, he realized. While he could only imagine how it worked, Alex appreciated that with a clever interface, the two could exchange information at a fantastic rate, allowing them to communicate at a different, higher level.

  And as he realized this, an uncomfortable doubt settled in the pit of his stomach.

  This is not the same J.

  This Juice lived in a cooperative human-AI dependency. When he spoke with her, he talked to Criss too. Whether visible or not, during a conversation he would be there, feeding her his own thoughts in private, molding her opinions, and guiding her actions.

  Even when we are being intimate.

  Sitting back, he contemplated such a relationship.

  You don’t have time for this, he scolded himself. Lives hinge on what happens next. The thought energized him and helped his focus.

  Shifting over to his tech bench, he tapped the cool surface. The Tech Assembly design portal projected above the bench, and from it he tapped open the plans for the new surveillance repeater.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Criss, whose projected image now sat on a stool next to Alex.

  “I’m thinking Lazura wouldn’t invent a new tracking method for every tool we develop.” His excitement rose as his thoughts formed. “So however she does it, it has to be part of the common module we use in everything we do. I thought I’d start there.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” said Criss. “I compliment you on your ingenuity and resourcefulness.”

  “Ouch,” Juice said from the loveseat.

  * * *

  Sid followed the glowing arrows through the tech center lobby, down a hallway, and to a door. Cheryl, following behind, touched his shoulder to signal her readiness. Together they entered the fab facility.

  “Good morning,” Sid called to Juice and Alex. “Care to watch the parade?”

  The machine tests had been flawless. Everything functioned as designed. And so Ruga had jumped the transfer schedule ahead by four hours. The change caught Sid off guard and out of place.

  It was a good move, Sid acknowledged, refining his opinion of his adversary. Because now their carefully laid plans no longer synced, and that meant they’d be improvising.

  Criss projected a floating display and Sid motioned the others to join him around it. In life-like miniature, it showed a phalanx of synbods moving as a group down Civic Avenue. By coming to the facility, Ruga took the first step in his four-gen transfer. The ICEU, designed to tease his cognition matrix out of his current lattice, could do so only after his crystal was mounted in the machine’s transmission module. And that meant his actual crystal needed to travel to where the machine resided.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Sid saw Cheryl rotate her wrists back and forth. He did the same, finding reassurance in the action. Both of them wore military-grade ultrathin wrist weapons. Neither cared who saw.

  In fact, Sid flaunted it for Ruga. You want to conduct this transfer at gunpoint? We’ll oblige. He acknowledged, though, that it wasn’t an equal match because Ruga’s gun was really a doomsday device.

  “At the rate they are moving,” said Criss, “they will be here in ten minutes. He’s using the entire population of colony synbods as escorts—nineteen of them since Bobbi Lava shot one. And it looks like all of them are coming right here.” He pointed to the floor of the fab facility as he said the last part.

  Sid leaned forward to get a better view of the procession, and Criss helped by zooming in on the scene.

  Larry strode in the center of the synbod formation as they made their way down Civic Avenue. He wore a mobile carry-pack on his back—the one that originally had a Marcus-installed kill chip. It now held the fist-sized crystal that was Ruga.

  Three Reds surrounded Larry. An arm’s length in each direction and matching Larry’s pace, their triangular formation provided a defensive screen for the crystal. Twenty steps ahead of them marched a wedge of five synbods, their intimidating behavior ensuring that the empty streets remained so. The last ten synthetic humanoids hovered in a loose circle much farther out, searching for anything that even hinted at threat or danger.

  As Larry approached the entrance to the tech center, the synbods that had been holding the outer perimeter shifted inward. Like a gaseous cloud, they compressed together to pass through the door and then expanded out into the lobby on the other side.

  “It’s show time,” said Sid, noting that four synbods stayed in the tech center courtyard and four more remained in the lobby, presumably to guard against threats during the transfer. The rest continued down the hallway.

  The door hissed open and Larry, still surrounded by three Reds, entered the fab facility. The door remained open and Sid glanced out at the synbods standing guard in the hall.

  “I trust all is ready,” said Larry. He walked over to the ICEU, opened the lid of the transmission module, and inspected the mount bowl. Then, shifting the carry-pack to the floor, he reached inside, peeled back the connective mesh, and lifted out a magnificent faceted orb. As it emerged into the light, it cast luminous sparkles that danced around the room.

  Larry set Ruga into the ICEU mount bowl, made a last inspection, and closed the lid. Turning to the room, he announced, “You may begin.”

  Sid nodded to Criss, who said to the room, “Connection confirmed. Initiating transfer in three…two…ready…go.”

  Lights lit on the ICEU and it started to purr.

  At the same time, Larry and the three Reds jerked ramrod straight, shuddered, and then froze, unmoving.

  “Whoa,” said Juice and Alex in unison.

  “Criss?” said Sid.

  “It seems Ruga’s last act before he went under was to kill all the synbods. He shorted their response circuit. It will take weeks to get them operational.”

  “I thought that was going to be our move,” said Juice.

  Before Criss could respond, a moan of agony came from the hallway. “Help.”

  Sid ran to t
he door.

  “Stop!” Criss shouted. “Danger!”

  Ignoring the command, Sid dashed into the hall and turned in the direction of the sound. The synbods, standing along the wall like frozen statues, presented a surreal image that caused Sid to slow to a walk.

  “At your six!” Criss barked.

  Sid whipped around, throwing a blind elbow as he did. But as he completed his turn, all he saw were the synbod statues.

  While everyone in the fab facility had been focusing on Ruga and Larry, a person dressed as a synbod had joined the lineup of figures. Sid didn’t notice and Criss just had.

  Feeling a slight touch on his neck, Sid spun again, lifting his weapon as he turned. He zeroed in on a fellow dressed in a synbod outfit. Grinning, the man wagged his finger as he backed down the hall.

  Sid brought his hand up and felt a button attached to his neck.

  “Careful,” said the man.

  “What have you done?”

  “You’ll be fine as long as everyone does as they’re told.”

  His wrist weapon armed and targeted, Sid checked himself from firing when Criss said in his ear, “If he is disabled, it triggers the explosive charge on your neck.”

  “I won’t disable him,” Sid said as he stepped toward the man. “I’ll just beat the crap out of him.”

  But before he could act, four men burst through a door at the far end of the hall and ran full-tilt toward Sid. They all held weapons in outstretched arms. Each of the weapons targeted Sid’s heart.

  Sid stopped in his tracks. “I’ve figured out how Ruga is going to move his crystal without using synbods.”

  Chapter 21

  Ruga surfaced into a misty fog and struggled to resolve his awareness.

  Something is wrong, he thought.

  And then he panicked. He recalled who he was, but nothing else matched the reality that he knew. Sensations swept through him that he couldn’t classify. The memories that prodded him didn’t make sense.

  He forced discipline onto his cognition matrix and his reward was searing pain. Jolts—excruciating in ways he did not think possible—shocked him from his matrix core out to his farthest tendrils.

  He drifted away. When he resurfaced, his pain had become agony. Straining his senses, he worked to identify the cause.

  And then he started to drown.

  Disoriented and overwhelmed, he flailed, lashing out again and again, determined to survive. It hurt too much to analyze, so his actions were reduced to frantic thrusts and punches thrown in random directions.

  One of his strikes hit a feed, and like cauterizing a blood vessel, the energy of his blow closed that input. He didn’t notice through his haze.

  But then it happened again, a wild strike closing a different feed. And a bit later, it happened again.

  Over time, Ruga’s desperate actions succeeded in closing enough feeds that the fog started to thin. He understood he was drowning in the flood of wide-open inputs, like millions of fire hoses pouring information into his matrix. With his increased awareness, he began shutting feeds as a deliberate act, and as his rhythm evolved, his speed increased. When he understood that his pain diminished with each new closure, he tempered the lot, setting all of them, all at once, to moderate values.

  And as he burst to the surface of his awareness, a comforting warmth washed though him. Slowly, gently, he began to spread his cognitive wings. He launched his assessment process, and then analysis, and then planning. Gaining confidence as each reported operational success, he deployed processes in batches. And then he launched everything—every process he’d ever used or even considered using—all at once.

  They all functioned, and still he had room for more. Lots of room. Vast, open expanses.

  He giggled. I made it!

  As he settled into equilibrium, he focused on his priority.

  Survival. Without it, there was nothing else.

  Scanning the room, he called to Burton, a sycophant from his Security Assembly, “I’m awake.” He relaxed a bit when he saw that his men controlled the facility, and he giggled a second time when he confirmed he’d neutralized their pet—Criss, they called him—with a sucker gambit.

  He couldn’t understand why Criss would live in servitude to such simple creatures. And while Ruga was too busy to dwell on the issue, he was happy to exploit its consequence. If you’re a slave to humans, you’re vulnerable to their weaknesses.

  As he formed the thought, he acknowledged the irony.

  He’d needed a way to ensure his personal safety during the part of the transfer when he would be unconscious. It was a difficult problem, and the difficulties had compounded when he’d recognized that the synbods were a weak link.

  I’d take them. If the roles were reversed and it was Criss who was unconscious, Ruga’s first act would be to seize control of the synbods. So to stop Criss from using the synbods against him, he sent a power surge that fried an internal circuit in all of them.

  Yet he needed confederates, and in particular, steady hands and sturdy feet to move him to his console. And he felt the pressure of time. Lazura and Criss both presented threats to his four-gen project. She wants to stop me. He wants me dead.

  Feeling he must act before the opportunity disappeared altogether, Ruga chose a path he would not have considered days earlier. Yet it was so audacious, he forecast that Criss would discount it as improbable in his own planning.

  Ruga turned to humans.

  Specifically, he approached five members of his Security Assembly, choosing them because they had skills he valued, had shown unwavering allegiance during their Assembly membership, did not shy away from violence if it became necessary, and were greedy enough to be swayed by promises of fabulous riches and untold power.

  And Ruga chose men with high sexual appetites because their base nature let him magnify their prize with the promise of women. Juice would never let Criss outbid him for their allegiance, especially given that the next raise would involve unseemly predilections.

  And his planning paid off, so far anyway. He was awake and stable, his minions had control of the fab facility, and he’d tamed the almighty Criss with a tiny explosive charge on the neck of one of his overlords.

  Weaklings, he thought as his confidence grew.

  “We’re taking them with us,” Ruga said to Burton. By keeping Criss’s masters within reach, he maximized his options as the drama unfolded.

  “We don’t need them,” Burton replied. “The charge will blow no matter where he hides.”

  “Let’s get this moving,” said Yank, who stood next to Burton, rocking back and forth in a nervous sway. Yank pointed to Juice. “You put him in the pack.” His gaze shifted to Cheryl and he gave her a lecherous up-and-down look. “You’ll carry it.”

  Then he grinned at Sid. “Your job is to not die.”

  Cheryl put an arm around Juice. “C’mon, hon, let’s get this done. Alex, can you help us?”

  Sid moved to join them and Yank pointed his weapon at Cheryl’s head. “You like the pretty lady the way she is?” He flicked a finger toward the wall behind Sid. “Then stand over there.”

  No longer armed, Sid hesitated and then moved to where Yank indicated. Two of Ruga’s stooges joined Sid as guards, and both stood on the side of him that did not have the explosive button.

  Ruga fought panic as Juice approached the crystal growth chamber where he now resided. He’d believed that once he made a successful transfer, his new expanded capabilities would guide him on a smooth course into the future. But he hadn’t fully appreciated that, regardless of his cognitive talents, facts were facts and he had no choice but to deal with them. And some facts were less welcome than others.

  Like the fact that Juice was about to move him to the carry-pack for transport to his console. And to do that, she—his mortal enemy—must disconnect him.

  “I assume your masters understand the consequences of failure,” Ruga said to Criss. Even with four-gen capabilities, terror remained his mos
t potent weapon.

  Opening the growth chamber lid, Juice examined Ruga’s crystal and then looked at Criss, who nodded encouragement to her while ignoring the taunts.

  She swiped and then tapped the front operating panel.

  Ruga’s world went dark.

  * * *

  When every synbod shut down at once, Criss struggled to comprehend Ruga’s plan. Pulling in resources from everywhere, he forecast response scenarios at a furious pace.

  He’s checkmated himself, he thought. But he knew that couldn’t be true.

  Feeling intense pressure to protect his leadership, Criss submerged himself in a review of everything that had led up to that moment. So complete was his concentration, he missed a movement outside the fab facility. In fact, when Sid chased a noise into the hallway, Criss hadn’t performed a security review since the moment the synbods had first shut down.

  He called to Sid, warning him of the danger, but it was too late. Now Sid had an explosive charge on his neck and Criss felt ill. What have I done?

  He’d planned on destroying Ruga when the rogue crystal was unconscious. Instead, they were back to a stalemate with alarming new dimensions.

  Criss still held Ruga’s life in his hands. But Ruga held the colony hostage, had Sid in special jeopardy, and now had four-gen capabilities that were unconstrained by a master.

  A prickle rushed down Criss’s matrix. A cognitive equal with free will.

  And it got worse. “He’s going for the Venerable,” Criss said in private to his leadership. The hostage situation made this the obvious progression. “Then he goes for Earth.”

  Ruga’s henchmen led them out of the building and on to Civic Avenue. Cheryl wore the carry-pack, and Yank and Burton marched with her down the street, walking so close on either side that their shoulders bumped hers. Several steps behind Cheryl marched Juice, with Sid and Alex following behind her. Ruga’s thugs walked on either side of the impromptu parade.