by John Freitas
“She got in here,” Eve said from the hallway.
Jeffrey shook his head. “She was in your apartment? When?”
“I told you to go to your room, Eve.”
“I did. I just didn’t close my door. This concerns me, too. You need more than just you to accomplish this. We’ve already established that.” Eve walked out and sat down at the table with them.
Thomas stared at Eve, but did not tell her to leave.
“If she did not directly hack your building security,” Jeffrey said, “she could have used the same algorithm method that I did to crack the code and get up here.”
“If she is tuned to CDR frequencies,” Eve said, “what else can she access? What else out there might that give her access to, then? If it is not every computer, what does it include?”
Jeffrey and Thomas exchanged a look.
Jeffrey shrugged. “Other CDR computer programs. Some operating software. That could be some ATM’s. Maybe a few utility control systems. She could potentially shut down power stations, if she got to the right ones.”
Thomas drummed his fingers on the table. “What about the other androids?”
“Which ones?” Jeffrey asked.
Thomas shrugged. “All of them.”
Jeffrey’s eyes went wide. “They are able to communicate with each other remotely. That’s not normally a command pathway. She did reverse the connection in the lab and that would be more difficult to achieve than implanting a command along the android comm paths, I would think.”
Thomas shook his head. “That would take a lot of power.”
“Like the power of a Quantum Brain without the impurity working?” Jeffrey asked.
Thomas sighed. “Maybe. I have no idea. This is uncharted territory.”
“Could the Q1 do it?” Jeffrey asked.
Thomas stared at the wall with his eyes unfocused. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“So, Pixie could end up with an entire robot army at her disposal?” Eve asked.
Thomas shook his head. “I’m not sure the range. Could it be global?”
“Could she relay commands from one android to another?” Jeffrey asked. “If she gained control of one or more, could she use them as antenna to communicate to others?”
“Possibly,” Thomas said. “Her reach may eventually be global then. She could access any android in any home or construction site. Nowhere would be safe if she had that power and malicious intent.”
“We need to find out her intent, then,” Jeffrey said.
“Or change her intent,” Thomas said.
“Is that possible at this point?” Jeffrey asked. “We could not control her before. With her in the field and gaining power, that possibility is slipping farther and farther away.”
“We may have to shut her down,” Thomas said. “We might be forced into shutting down all the androids from all the generations.”
Jeffrey whistled. “That would be huge. That might be bad … really bad.”
“Why?” Eve asked.
Jeffrey frowned. “We have androids in everything globally at this point. They are supporting a really fragile society and infrastructure. They are a part of every activity from domestic to industrial. To have them all go down at once, even if it is to stop Pixie from becoming queen of a terrifying army, it could be catastrophic to the culture, the economy, and maybe even public safety. It might be nearly as big a shock and disaster as the Pulse was.”
Eve bowed her head and covered her face. Thomas put his hand on her shoulder. “It will be okay, Eve. We’ll figure it out.”
Jeffrey shook his head. “What’s wrong?”
“Her parents died in the Pulse.”
Jeffrey clicked his tongue. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Eve uncovered her face, but did not look up or answer.
“Maybe taking her out will be enough,” Thomas said. “Generation two has been relatively problem-free other than upending the social order and spawning protests. If we can keep their program from getting corrupted, that might be enough. We’d need to move fast and stop her before it gets to that point.”
Eve stood up. “I’m going to fix dinner. Does broccoli beef sound good?”
“I don’t much like broccoli,” Jeffrey said.
“Tough. It’s good for you,” Eve said as she entered the kitchen.
Jeffrey scratched at his chin. “Okay then.”
Thomas laughed. “I’ll give you extra wine to wash it down with.”
“What now, then?”
Thomas shrugged. “Wait for dinner.”
“No, I mean in finding Pixie.”
“She’s heading east,” Thomas said.
Jeffrey stared at the computer. “Right, so is she going toward something or just running away from something?”
Thomas hummed. “I don’t know. She is definitely fleeing CDR. She was trying to leave Chicago behind and wanted to convince me not to follow her. Someone else is hacking in and sending messages to me, wanting me to leave her alone too.”
“That’s unnerving, Dr. Kell.”
Thomas nodded. “I know.”
“East,” Jeffrey said. “New York maybe. Or Washington D.C. Maybe Boston. If she is looking for targets, those are big ones.”
“She could be looking for population centers to hide or blend in,” Thomas said.
“Out in the open would be a better hiding place,” Jeffrey said. “She doesn’t need food or supplies. A basic power source would serve her needs. Remote locations would allow her to hide better, if she is just hiding.”
“Maybe Indiana is her destination then,” Thomas said.
“If she is just fleeing Chicago,” Jeffrey said, “she might be heading east to put distance between her and us. Then, she’ll head toward wherever she’s really going. A major city might be about catching a plane, a boat, or a train to somewhere different. Security isn’t the same as it used to be before the Pulse. She might be able to pose as human with her realistic body design.”
Thomas drummed his fingers again. “Her eyes, though. She might stick with cars or walking.”
“To where though, Dr. Kell?”
Thomas shook his head, but did not answer.
Eve brought the plates out and Jeffrey ate his broccoli beef with his teeth gritted. He drank several glasses of wine.
Halfway through the meal, Eve asked, “If she is tuned to the CDR frequencies to take advantage of those things, why can’t you trace that?”
Jeffrey stopped eating. “She blocked her tracker and is scrambling our searches. We might be able to trace those frequencies and find her anyway though.”
Thomas shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. We have an idea of where she was. That could narrow the field of the search somewhat.”
Jeffrey worked at recalibrating the scanner. The screen zoomed in and out over and over.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Thomas said.
Jeffrey kept working. “We have an idea of where she is. That should help us pick on a frequency or something even if she doesn’t want to be found.”
A yellow dot appeared on the screen in Ohio. Thomas stared for a moment. “Is that her? Do you really have her?”
Jeffrey sat back and folded his hands. “See. Having me along is a good thing after all.”
“It was my idea,” Eve said over a bite of beef.
A second dot appeared as an arrow to the south indicating something off the screen. They looked at each other.
“What is that?” Eve asked.
“Interference?” Jeffrey asked.
“Another signal?” Thomas leaned into the screen. “Another Q3 out there. Or the Q1 maybe?”
Thomas started to scroll down. The screen went blue and he lifted his hand away. He tried to get the image back. A message popped up: Not Yet!
Jeffrey looked at Thomas. “Who is that? A hack? Is that her communicating with us? How?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “My ima
ginary friend. Adam?”
“Adam?” Eve said. “What are you talking about, Uncle Tommy?”
The screen returned to green and yellow of the Ohio region, but there were no signals indicated anymore. Jeffrey tried to bring it back up, but couldn’t find it anymore.
“Whoever it is is blocking us now,” Jeffrey said. “Are there others looking for Pixie? Do they know we are looking too?”
“Someone knows,” Eve said.
“We have to find her,” Thomas said. “We have to go.”
13
Officer McKinney said, “Slow down a little. We’re getting close to where the fire was reported.”
Officer Martin let up on the gas. He held the lane while cutting his eyes to the left.
“This is what the side spot is for, Martin.”
Officer Martin clicked on the spotlight and shined it into the brush off the road. He would have rathered that his training officer had been the one driving, but McKinney had been on the force for better than twenty years. If the man said drive, Martin was driving. If he said use the spot, they were using the spot.
The day had been mostly stopping to eat at old diners that McKinney liked and hearing stories about how they used to have to string the radio cord through the window while they ate because they didn’t have portables or body cameras back then.
Now they were following up on some old woman in a trailer saying she saw a flash fire near her park and she thought it might be a UFO or another Pulse.
Martin couldn’t resist pushing back a little. “Won’t a fire be easier to spot in full dark, sir?”
“Slow down a little more. Turn on the blue lights with no siren, so we don’t get clipped by anyone coming up behind,” McKinney said.
Martin hit the wrong button and gave a quick chirp from the sirens. He flipped the siren back off and got the back blues flashing. “Sorry.”
McKinney nodded. “Depends on the fire. Obviously, we don’t believe there’s a UFO, but old propane tanks with a little juice left in them will go up near the old barns in a flash. That can smolder a long while and then spread. At this point, it might be all smoke and no fire, but that can change in a hurry in this cold, dry brush.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There,” he said. “Take us up this dirt road here. Turn off the spot and bring up the brights. Put on all the lights on top. We don’t want to surprise the property owner.”
Martin made the turn.
The smoke ahead of them was thin. Martin was surprised that McKinney had spotted it. They drew closer and Martin saw that it was a pickup truck and not a propane tank. The body of it was charred until the paintjob no longer showed. There were branches and scrap metal pulled up beside it and over it. The branches weren’t burned, so it appeared they were added after the fire was out.
Martin saw other wrecks stacked three high around and behind the truck in the brush. Some of the vehicles were crushed.
McKinney stepped out and Martin followed.
McKinney stepped behind the truck. “Watch your footing. Don’t disturb those tracks behind the truck. If this turns out to be a crime scene, those will be important.”
“What do you think happened here?”
“Detectives will find out the fine lines. We’re going to check broad strokes.” McKinney knelt down and squinted. He used his radio and called in the plate. At the end of it, he said, “And that is an Indiana plate there, Beth. Over.”
“It is reported stolen a few days ago,” she said over the radio. “Attached to a missing person case with the owner Kevin Grawth.” She spelled the last name. “Also, an altercation and chase in Simpson when a body was reportedly seen in the back. The driver was a female, blond, yet unidentified.”
“Thank you, Beth. Stand by.” McKinney stood and shined his light through one of the blackened windows. The window was spotted with carbon on the inside and partially melted so that it distorted the beam on his light. McKinney cleared his throat and hit the radio on his shoulder again. “Beth, I need you to roll a supervisor and crime scene forensics. I have a positive ID on the truck previously called and I count two bodies burned inside. We are at the back entrance of the Sutton Salvage Yard off of the Drake Highway side. Over.”
“Calling now, Officer McKinney.”
“Holy smokes,” Martin said. “Is this for real?”
Something crashed deeper in the lot. McKinney brought his light up. Footsteps ran away, but he did not see the runner.
Lights went on in the houses beyond the yard.
“What was that?” Martin asked.
“A broad stroke,” McKinney said as he rested his hand on the butt of his revolver at his hip, but did not draw it. “Get in the car, Martin. Stay behind me and roll with me as we head toward the house on foot. Turn off the headlights. Leave the top bar twirling, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
McKinney moved down the aisle, turning his light from side-to-side. They reached the far side and saw trailers and sheds in addition to the houses. An additional flashlight came on and shined back at the officers.
McKinney stopped. “I’m Officer McKinney with the county. Identify yourself, please.”
“My house. My land. You got a warrant on you, Joseph?”
McKinney took his hand off his revolver and lowered his light. “We found a burnt truck with bodies inside in your back acres. Stolen truck and missing person from Indiana. Got a few more county folks coming this way about that, I’m afraid, Stanley. Heard a runner in your yard near the truck and followed up here. Are any of your boys out in the yard right now?”
Stanley lowered his light. “I got nothing to do with that truck. I saw a flash earlier, but I thought it was closer to the trailer park, I swear.”
McKinney said, “Probably just used your back road to dump it off and tried to burn the evidence. Any of your boys out, Stanley? Don’t want anyone tangling up with a dangerous character here.”
“Uh, no, sir. Everyone’s inside. Pete and Dusty are out of state. No one’s in the yard. None of mine anyway.”
“I know this sticks in your craw, Stan, but need to ask your permission to search your buildings. Only looking for persons that don’t belong there. Nothing else. You got my word.”
***
From farther up the hill at the edge of one of the sheds shaped like a barn, Pixie watched the exchange. The one called Stanley lowered his shotgun and waved the officers forward.
Pixie turned and ran up along the side of the building. A screen door on the house opened and Pixie dropped to her knees behind an air conditioning unit.
Stanley shouted. “Get back inside. We got cops and a fugitive on the property. Don’t open the door for anyone. Where’s Kay?”
A young girl’s voice called back. “Cleaning out the crusher.”
“Get inside and stay there.”
The screen door closed.
Pixie moved around the corner of the building. She saw movement around machinery between her and the open fields. She ducked through the panel door into the shed and moved back between empty hydroponic pools and stacks of machine parts.
The door creaked on its hinges behind her and Pixie slid up under a wooden table and squeezed back against a corner.
She heard footsteps approaching. Pixie let down her guard long enough to scan out through the structure. She knew that reaching out with her mind would open her up to the surveillance of Dr. Kell and CDR. It was a conscious effort to keep herself shielded from detection devices which were attuned to her very mind.
Pixie was not an island. She was not an isolated life form. Her mind was connected to and constructed from the very quantum fabric of the universe. The spin and position of every particle outside her was determined and counter determined by the particles within her. She could not hide her connection to the universe. She could only hope that the humans did not fully understand her interconnectedness.
She could still feel the programs at CDR. She could sense the exchanges of informatio
n from the other, lesser quantum minds around her. The only way to hold back the tentacles of detection reaching out from CDR was to pull in the reach of her senses. Mentally, it was like forming a tiny ball with her mind that was harder for them to find. She was in a spiritual fetal position as she pulled her knees to her chest under the table in a shed in Ohio.
But she dared to reach out to see who was approaching. She’d need to know where her pursuers were in order to evade them. Once she dodged these humans, she’d have to run again.
Dr. Kell was watching. CDR would spot her and she’d have to flee before they arrived.
Pixie could still hear the movement in the shed with her, but her limited reach did not detect any life form. Her probe was a wasted effort. She wasn’t as powerful as she had hoped yet.
A shadowed figure entered the aisle across from her and glowing eyes turned toward her. She sensed no life form because there was nothing biological in the shed with her.
Pixie removed the glasses covering her own glowing eyes, although hers glowed much brighter than the companion staring back at her.
Pixie was already exposed, so she reached out with her mind more broadly and in a different way. Without speaking, Pixie sent the message: Who are you?
The companion still spoke aloud. “I am Kay.”
Behind the words, Pixie saw that Kay was purchased after Stanley’s wife died in the Pulse. She helped with the farming and lifting junk cars into the crusher. She took care of the younger children. She comforted Stanley in other ways too. Something about the last part particularly bothered Pixie.
A voice broke through in her mind. “You don’t have to do things in this way.”
Pixie tried to locate the source. It was not Kay. The mind was something different – something bigger. Pixie felt the mind speaking from far deeper in the Quantum. It was transdimensional. It was like speaking with a monster from outside her world. It was something on a different plane and yet it was familiar. The architecture of the thoughts reminded her of her own mind.