Dr. Grant Holland smiled and gave Rajesh and the others a funny little wave. Long and gangly, Grant was nearly sixty with rosy cheeks and slightly thinning hair. Although he considered himself a scientist, some of his theories on morphic fields and interspecies communication were pretty far-out. “You might say I’m the biologist on board. A native of Bath, England, I studied at Imperial College London. My role here is to look at how life slowly came back after the asteroid impact. And if I was a betting man, which I’m not, I’d say the role of volcanoes in the mass extinction has been grossly overlooked.”
Dr. Dag Gustavsson was next. A square-jawed Swede sporting a thick red beard and a penetrating stare, he could easily have passed for a Viking warrior were it not for the tie-dye and Birkenstock sandals. He clasped his hands and offered a slight bow. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m a paleontologist by training, but for this mission, I’ll be channeling my inner zoologist as I chart the rise of mammals following the cataclysm.”
Billy Brenner tapped the table with his finger, looking visibly uncomfortable. He was handsome, in a gruff sort of way. His cheeks were pockmarked from a bout of particularly bad acne during his adolescence, one of the many difficulties from his youth he continued to struggle with. “I’m in charge of drilling operations for Suntech. Been with the company for about ten years. Used to help my dad with his shrimping business before Katrina done away with that.” He flicked his eyebrows as if to say, But all that’s in the past now. Although to anyone watching, it was clear that wasn’t the case.
“Guess that leaves you three,” Jack said.
Adam and Leah waved and explained that they were both PhD students from MIT, working in the field of artificial intelligence.
The room became still.
For his part, Rajesh skipped over his childhood growing up in Calcutta and moving to America in his late teens, opting instead to swipe the cloth from the nearly three-foot object positioned on the table next to him.
“It is with great pleasure that I introduce A.N.N.A.,” Rajesh announced.
Before them sat the upper torso of what looked like a robot. A glass screen in the delicate shape of a woman’s face displayed the image of a real-looking person. Two mechanical arms unfurled as the robot waved at the group.
“Oh, man, that’s wild!” Dag squealed, bolting upright in his seat.
Billy Brenner appeared stunned, perhaps even afraid.
Jack wasn’t sure what to think. Gabby had said Rajesh would be bringing some sophisticated computing equipment, but he hadn’t expected this.
“Her name is Anna?” Grant inquired.
“It stands for Artificial Neuron Network Algorithm,” Rajesh explained. “We use mesh mapping and projective head technology to create her facial features and expressions.”
Anna smiled and although it was nothing more than a video being projected against the inside of her glass face, the expression had, dared one say, warmth.
Rajesh patted the robot’s shoulder and Anna’s eyes traced down to his hand. “We tend to think of AI as the robot itself, but that is nothing more than the shell. Real AI is the programming that runs inside the robot. But not all AI is alike. Winning chess matches, dominating game shows or using data to target specific ads, those are things we call ANI or artificial narrow intelligence, one that specializes in a particular area of expertise.
“For most developers, the Holy Grail is AGI or artificial general intelligence. Here, the design seeks to emulate human-level intelligence. And yet from university campuses to billion-dollar corporations, the closest any of them have come to date is the basic intelligence of a house cat.”
“What makes Anna any different?” Jack asked.
Rajesh nodded in Jack’s direction. “Far from a household pet, Anna has the emotional and intellectual quotient of a ten-year-old child. She also has a rudimentary form of imagination. What she lacks, however, is what most children lack—wisdom and experience.”
“How is it she’s so much more advanced from everyone else?” Gabby wondered.
“Most AI teams are attempting to map the human mind with the goal of creating a digital duplicate, an undertaking that will surely take years. Let me ask you, if all manned flight had sought to strictly emulate birds, would we have jets today? We examined the work that our peers were doing and decided it was far better to pass all of the heavy lifting on to Anna. She’s the one who has been doing the research on AI and in the process improving and refining her own architecture at an exponential rate. In essence, she’s teaching herself to become smarter.”
“I’m sorry, but this ain’t normal, or natural,” Billy said. “I mean, where does it all end?”
Anna’s head swiveled to the engineer, her digital features cold and humorless. “It will end with my omnipotence. And humanity’s enslavement.”
The air in the room grew still.
A moment later Rajesh burst out laughing, his fleshy hand slapping the table. Anna joined in as well, her own robotic arm mimicking his.
“Oh, the looks on your faces,” Rajesh said, his own face a mask of pain and pleasure. “Priceless, absolutely priceless.”
Jack couldn’t help but smile. “She’s got a sharp wit, I’ll give her that. I was worried Anna’s abilities would be limited to ordering all-dressed pizzas.”
Anna turned to face Jack and grinned. “I assure you, Dr. Greer, I’m capable of so much more.”
“There is, however, one significant ingredient Anna is missing,” Rajesh admitted. “Something common to human beings across the globe.”
“Legs!” Dag shouted excitedly, eyeing Anna’s torso.
Grant regarded the robot thoughtfully. “I must say, for some reason the thought of religion came to me,” he admitted.
Rajesh shook his head. “You are not far off, Professor. What she lacks is the conscious desire to create in her own image. In effect, to evolve from created to creator.”
•••
Moments later, with the meeting over, the drill was back up and running. Most of the team waited in the control room and watched a digital rendition with palpable anticipation. Jack and Gabby held their breath as the bit inched ever closer to the amorphous shape on the geographical display. Somewhere at the back of Jack’s mind, beyond his buzzing nerves, beyond the shrill sound of the drill, he registered the drone of a nearby plane. Not nearly loud enough to draw his full attention, but for now it was there, like a circling fly.
The next sound Jack heard was the violent screech of metal as the drill seized up. Jack’s heart froze in his chest. Whatever the bit had dug into down there, it had done to the tungsten carbide what a tank might do to a wooden spear—which was to say, shatter it. Within seconds, the resulting shockwave travelled up the pipe and into the drill housing. A gout of flame shot ten feet into the air. Billy and his team ran for cover. But the whine of grinding metal continued. The engineers had fled without shutting down the equipment. Jack snagged a hard hat off the wall and ran toward the drill.
He didn’t get three paces before the platform began shaking, his ears filled with an electric hum. Jack fought for each step as though he were walking along the bottom of the Gulf itself. A terrible force was pulling down on him, something he had felt years ago as a passenger in a looping stunt plane. The g-forces were pulling him toward the grate. The water below was growing concave as well. Jack looked up just in time to spot that plane he’d heard earlier crashing into the water. Nine-foot lengths of pipe fell from their moorings and landed on the metal grate next to him without bouncing end on end or rolling back and forth. It was as though a giant magnet were sucking everything toward it. Then all at once, the world let go. The ocean, now released from the force’s grasp, rose up, spraying the deck. But it wasn’t over, not yet. A blast of blinding white light struck them like a million flashbulbs firing at once.
Jack rubbed the stars from his eyes, rising to his feet.
What the hell just happened?
The drill was still grinding away. In
a few paces, he reached it and hit the emergency shutdown button. With that danger out of the way, Jack immediately initiated safety protocols to ensure everyone was unhurt and accounted for.
The plane he had seen tumble out of the sky and into the sea hadn’t been more than a mile or two away. With flashes of light still dotting his vision, Jack gathered three deckhands and led them to the oil platform’s Zodiac rigid inflatable boat. The supply ship was only scheduled to return in another two days, which meant that apart from a handful of lifeboats, the Zodiac was all they had to mount a rescue.
Fear stinging at every nerve ending, Jack and the deckhands set out to search for survivors. But crowding in on the frantic thoughts swirling through his head were new and disturbing questions about the meteorite. Whatever lay down there, it possessed powers the likes of which the world had never seen.
Chapter 4
Northern Brazil
Three hours earlier
The frame of the tiny turboprop plane shook violently, vibrating every bone in Dr. Mia Ward’s body. The cabin was narrow and mostly empty except for the three other passengers sitting nearby, all fellow members of a WHO research team en route to Brazil to study craniofacial anomalies.
From the open cockpit, the two pilots shouted at one another in Portuguese. Mia caught something about high winds, but the rest was drowned out by the noise made by the shuddering overhead compartments.
On Mia’s left sat Dr. Eric Metzner, his fingers wrapped tightly around his armrests, breathing like a woman in labor. He was a Canadian pediatrician with a specialty in disfigurement and an aptitude for high drama. On her right was Dr. Scott Chapman, a Brit from Manchester who held a special loathing for anyone who mistook football for soccer or didn’t know the proper way to pour tea. Two seats behind them was Maria Bertola, a PhD student with a background in genetic epidemiology, the study of how genetic and environmental factors affected human health. Maria made the sign of the cross and kissed the crucifix around her neck. If there was an accident, chances were that crucifix was all they’d find of her.
The wingtips rolled up and down as the pilots struggled to keep the plane level. Mia glanced at Scott, who was struggling to swallow a pill. The sight made her stomach curl into a fight fist. She closed her eyes and thought of her daughter’s smiling face and the dream of one day being together again.
Her physical journey to Brazil had started in Richmond, Virginia, when an application to the WHO and a never-ending stream of interviews had finally won her a spot as principal investigator. Their assignment was to study a terrible genetic ailment which left too many young Brazilians ostracized and in some cases unable to eat or speak.
Trained as a geneticist, Mia had once helped to create a groundbreaking de novo human artificial chromosome. This when most of her colleagues in the field had given up the possibility of creating a working HAC and had opted instead to empty existing chromosomes, filling them with helpful genes. The main application was in the field of gene therapy. Once humans had passed the embryonic stage of development, the challenge with HACs was getting the new chromosome into our cells. Doctors sometimes used viruses as delivery mechanisms, commonly referred to as vectors, but Mia was certain there was a better, safer way. The answer was in the body somewhere. She was sure. And when she found it, the treatment of illness and disease would be transformed forever.
Suddenly and much to the relief of those around her, the plane evened out no more than a second before the wheels screeched against the sizzling asphalt.
Mia stared out the window as the plane taxied. Huddled along the Amazon River and with a population of two hundred thousand, Santarem marked the northern edge of the civilized world in Brazil. To cross the Amazon here was to enter a region few westerners dared to visit.
She removed her phone and used the glare to check her reflection. Her red hair, normally long and striking, lay in a jumble, making her look like she’d been through the spin cycle. Her face was pale and blotchy, her cheeks sunken as though she hadn’t eaten in days. Certainly nothing a touch of makeup couldn’t fix.
The plane came to a stop. Mia and the others stood and stretched in silence, thankful they weren’t being scraped off the runway with spatulas.
Grabbing her knapsack, Mia strode out into a wave of stifling heat and blinding sunlight. With some effort, she struggled to draw in a lungful of air. Metal stairs led down to the tarmac. Scanning the horizon, she saw endless collections of flat structures with roofs made of corrugated tin. The sound of buzzing insects and blaring scooter horns dominated the landscape, along with the overwhelming abundance of the color brown. Despite the city’s size, the airport in Santarem represented one of the few paved surfaces.
A black van awaited them at the bottom of the stairs. Beside the vehicle was the WHO’s Brazilian Regional Director Isabella Silva. She waved them forward in short choppy motions. She was a pleasant-looking woman in her fifties who wore a large smile and a pair of lifts intended to rocket her into the five-foot-and-over club.
“Welcome, welcome,” she said in broken English, motioning to the van. “I know you’ve had a long trip, but we go straight to the hospital. Carlos will take your bags to the hotel.”
“How about a chance to freshen up first?” Mia asked, more concerned with her team than herself.
Isabella laughed. “It’s one hundred degrees out today, my love. Freshen up will be gone as soon as your shower is done.”
Mia glanced down at the beige cargo pants and green button-down shirt she was wearing. The faint hint of BO wafted up at her. Or was it coming from Eric or Scott? At this point, it didn’t matter. From the front seat, Isabella spoke to the driver and off they went.
Ten minutes later they arrived at Santarem Municipal Hospital, a five-storied white and pink building that looked closer to a Holiday Inn than it did a place for healing and research. Mia caught the odor of bandages and sanitizer as Isabella led them through a nearly empty emergency waiting room and into what she called ‘the research wing’. There a number of patients were seated. At least half of them were suffering from some form of genetic facial disfigurement. Mia had prepared herself for what she was about to see, but nothing could ever dull the intensity of coming face to face with such an affliction.
Seeing their arrival, the patients and their guardians clapped and cheered. Mia hoped these poor people didn’t think they were about to be cured. Even if a viable treatment could be developed, these were human beings, not guinea pigs. A six-year-old girl the same age as Mia’s daughter Zoey came forward, wrapping her arms around Mia’s waist. The girl’s left cheek had fused, pulling her lips back into a clearly uncomfortable expression. Mia leaned down and hugged her back, fighting the swell of tears threatening to spill down her cheeks. She marveled at their joy and resilience in spite of the hardships they had endured. She’d come here to help heal these people. She wondered whether they were the only ones who needed it.
When the formalities and initial introductions were out of the way, Carlos drove them to the Sandis hotel. Lavished in white tile with a bright orange sign, it was a sight for sore eyes. They had no sooner entered the hotel—Carlos having dutifully brought the suitcases to their rooms—than Mia’s vision was struck by a blinding white light. She came to a stop, rubbing at her eyes, doing what she could to blink away the field of stars you normally saw after standing up too fast. Slowly her vision returned and with it came the realization that she hadn’t been alone. Everyone in the lobby, from the concierge behind the desk to Eric, Scott and Maria, was blinking madly. Then things went from strange to outright frightening. A nearby television was set to CNN International. There, too, the newscasters were reeling from the same inexplicable occurrence.
“The bloody hell was that?” Scott asked, scanning the lobby with wide, darting eyes.
It seemed everyone was asking themselves that very same question. Had the world descended into nuclear war? Had a nearby star gone supernova? Mia’s imagination reeled from the plausible, t
o the unsettling. Either way, she knew it wasn’t good.
Chapter 5
“We found him clinging to a piece of debris,” Jack explained to the group gathered in a semi-circle around the survivor’s hospital bed. Many of the onlookers were just as battered as the patient before them. The survivor was dressed in an aviator’s flight suit, one that sported a Cuban flag on the shoulder.
Lara Steiger, a former first responder and army medic, was the only medical staff on hand. Blonde and in her late twenties, Lara had been running around for the last few hours, applying bandages and dressing wounds. While none of the injuries had been serious, two crew members were complaining of migraines and gaps in their memory, likely the consequence of a concussion.
“He’s one lucky guy,” Lara said, adjusting the settings on the heart monitor. “To survive a crash like that.”
Jack had been under the impression they were rushing to the scene of a downed commercial airliner. Needless to say, he’d been surprised and more than a little concerned when he saw the plane was military and not one of theirs. How would the Cuban navy react when they learned an American vessel had fished their man out of the water?
“Mr. Fuentes,” Gabby whispered softly, reading the name tag on his uniform. She turned to the others. “Any of you speak Spanish?”
“I heard Alejandro Diaz speaking to someone in Spanish on the phone,” Dag offered. “I can fetch him, if you want.”
“Let’s wait on that for now,” Jack said, turning his attention back to the Cuban.
“What on earth shall we do with him?” Grant asked, a Band-Aid over his left eye.
Jack tightened his grip on the bed rail. He could feel the guilt starting to work its way in. Guilt that he had pushed too hard, too fast. “For now we do nothing, except let him rest. We have more important concerns at the moment. I know each and every one of us is eager to find out exactly what happened and why, but first we need to make sure we’re safe here. That’ll mean a new round of scans of the sea floor.”
Extinction Series (The Complete Collection) Page 2