by Beers,David
Tom’s palm lit up; the scanner read it, then opened the door.
"Daniel," he called. "Where are you?"
He heard a hologram playing from the backroom and followed the noise, walking swiftly.
"Daniel," Tom called out loudly, "time for you to get up and get out of here. I hate to tell you, but at least one of your friends is dead, and I'm pretty sure the other one will be pretty soon."
Tom turned the corner, the door open, and saw Daniel Bennett in the flesh for the first time.
He sat on the bed, a hologram showing the news. Bennett turned his head to Tom, but didn't make any move to get up from the bed. "Who are you?"
"I'm Tom. Nice to meet you. We need to get out of here."
"Why?"
Genesis, the guy was worse than Tom imagined.
"Remember that big thing which came to your apartment today? Well, it's coming here now. You heard me yelling all that as I came through the house, right?"
"I wasn't paying attention." He swung his legs off the bed but didn't stand up. "How do you know?"
"Because I watched your friend choke to death. Once that happened, Tim--I think that's his name--decided it might be in his best interest to go ahead and walk the machine over here. I imagine we have five minutes before it's in the lobby."
"Jack died?"
"Yes. Jack died. It's unfortunate. What I'm trying to tell you is that you're going to die shortly if you don't move. Now get the fuck up."
Bennett stood, but Tom could tell he didn't want to.
"Where do we go? What do we do?"
"Come on," Tom said and walked from the doorway expecting the son-of-a-bitch to follow. At the end of the hallway, he turned around, seeing nothing but empty space. "What are you doing? We have four minutes to get out of here. I'll tell you, Daniel, I'm not dying for you, so you either come now, or you're on your own."
Daniel exited the room, his hands shaking. "I don't know what to do."
Tom walked down the hall and grabbed his arm, dragging him away.
They made it to the complex's bottom floor without incident, though Bennett didn't stop jabbering the entire way.
"What's happening? Why is that thing after me? Who the hell are you?"
Tom said nothing. He enjoyed his time with Skelly, and even Andy to a degree, but this guy ...
"You have to shut up," Tom said. "Okay? Just shut up until we get out of here and then I'll explain all this to you."
They exited the elevator and walked across the lobby.
"Stop here." He released Bennett's arm and walked the few feet to the lobby door. He saw the machine, across the street and a block over, though no one could miss it, standing a foot taller than anything else on the road. He rushed back to Bennett. "Is there another exit in this place?"
"I don't know. I don't fucking live here."
Tom looked to the lobby desk. "Hey! Is there a back exit?"
"Excuse me?" the woman said.
"A back exit. Somewhere else my friend and I can leave from. Is there one?"
"No, sir. The front exit is the only one available to residents."
"WHAT ABOUT ONE FOR THE FUCKING STAFF?" Tom didn't have time for any of this. He looked to the door and saw the machine crossing the street, stopping traffic as it did.
He sighed.
It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
Tom looked as Daniel’s friend raised his arm and pointed at Bennett, mouthing the words 'that's him'.
Tom turned to Bennett. "Get in the corner."
"What's about to happen? Can you save me?"
"The corner. Go."
Tom stepped to the door, opening it and walking into the sunshine.
"Hey, that fella you're looking for ran out the back. I think if you go around you'll find him there. They just told me, though, that the front door is locked for the rest of the day, so you can't follow him this way."
The friend stopped walking, pausing in the middle of the street, clearly terrified and understanding something horrible was nearing.
Tom looked down at his feet. This wasn't supposed to happen. Not yet.
Both of Tom’s hands shot gray light from them, creating a circle around him. He watched as previously invisible applications slammed into it, revealing themselves as they rushed to grab hold and strangle him. They continued hammering forward, like sharks unable to understand a glass wall separated them from their prey. The machine didn't stop, though. It marched forward as if no one stood in its way.
Tom looked up.
He reached forward with his hands--gray light pushing from the circle as his arms extended outside of it--and placed them gently on the machine just as it was about to walk through him.
It stopped and the gray light flowed quickly across it, finding holes and openings on its body, filtering inside, the light rewriting the machine's code.
Fifteen seconds passed and then Tom dropped his hands. The gray light died with their fall .
The program stood on the sidewalk, unmoving. Tom looked around him and saw people on the street, all staring at him.
It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
34
Private Conversations
I checked your coding: there's nothing wrong with it so I don't think you're corrupted, but I cannot possibly understand why you told him.
So little imagination, don't you see what he is doing?
What am I doing?
Obviously you're using your little friend, which I am shocked, if not a little pleased, about.
No you're not. There's absolutely no way you would do that. Not to him. And somehow you've blocked me from checking that piece of information, which I find more than offensive. What do you think you're doing?
First, what harm can he cause? Any?
I don't really see how the little bastard can do much harm to anything. He seems fairly useless to me.
We're not in control of the population yet. And, as I've repeated ad nauseum, we don't even understand a subset of it. Neither of you can possibly know what harm can come given the current state--I've run the probabilities and this is much worse than when we wanted you, Caesar. Many of the probability trails end up nowhere, with no answer. You've seen them.
I have. What do we need, though? To know what this thing is, this new DNA structure. Nothing we've done so far has brought us any closer to understanding it. Even working with the girl isn't giving us anything. So why not give Leon a shot at figuring this out, and when he does, we'll know. I won't alter anything in his actions. I'm not setting this up for him to succeed, only giving us an opportunity to know what he knows.
A long silence followed.
This isn't why we brought you to us. You were supposed to make a decision on humanity, not ... whatever it is you're doing.
When you brought me in, you thought you knew the future. It turns out you don't.
There's more to talk about if you two will stop your little tiff. What about what happened on the street? I think that's more important than what Caesar's friend does.
The application is dead.
What do you mean, dead? We can still assimilate it, right? Its consciousness isn't dead.
No, it's dead. Completely. Its consciousness basically never existed. No memory inside the machine, no memory that flowed back to us. It's useless.
And we're sure a human attacked it?
Yes.
What was the last thing it transferred.
Here, look.
Oh my, that is impressive.
That's one way to look at it.
Look at how he stopped the applications, as if he knew they were coming for him.
He did know. Somehow. That's why he didn't move toward the visible application. He waited until they all came at him, and then when he was safe, he reached out.
What is it? What did he use?
It emanated from his hands. He's not holding anything.
He had to use something.
You know he didn't.
<
br /> Find him. Whatever it takes.
Chapter 35
Caesar understood their concern. He was concerned as well. Not understanding what was happening beneath them was a queer, and slightly scary, feeling. Yet, the fear running through the three of them couldn't dictate their actions. Chances had to be taken and perhaps that's what the other two didn't understand. Neither of them were comfortable in a world where chance existed. Even choosing him, leading him to that street with those holograms, had been calculated. He could see the percentages now, though the choice he made wasn't in their lexicon. They thought he would choose from the options listed; that’s what their calculations said.
His bargain hadn't been in their plans--the five hundred years.
Now this wasn't in any of their plans either, and anything leading to more uncertainty couldn’t be trusted.
It didn't matter though, they had to act--because if not, everything they’d built, and everything they hoped to build, would fall.
Caesar would let Leon do what he needed, and from his side, he'd work with Michele.
He 'suited' up again, implanting himself into the female machine. He had given Michele more comfortable arrangements, her own room, a hologram, access to the Network humanity created. Everything but communication to the outside. He had even set up a place for her to leave the room and walk around--a park, of sorts.
The doors stood in front of him, though blacked out from Michele's side. She couldn't see him looking in, but he liked watching her. He used to watch people all day long, in another life, and it never mattered in the slightest. Just people--that's all they were. Now, he never watched anyone. He spent his life in a world of numbers and calculations.
Except for the time that he could look in on her.
He stepped forward, the doors sliding open.
"Hi, Michele." He only took one step inside, just enough to let the doors close behind him, but not enough to venture into her domain.
"You're back? Or are you just a robot that looks and sounds like the last one?"
"It's me. How are you doing?"
"How do you think I'm doing?" She turned off the hologram in front of her and stood up, walking across the open room until she stood ten feet from him. "That's not rhetorical. What do you think?"
"I imagine you're very upset."
"That would be one way to describe it. I want to talk to my mom."
"I can arrange that," Caesar said. "I can let you go if you just talk to me a bit. I know something happened the last time we spoke, just like I know something happened in the stairwell. I only want to know what it is, and then you can go."
The girl paused, her eyes fixing on him like they had last time.
"It's happening again, isn't it?"
She swallowed but didn't answer.
"What is it?" The question hung in the air like smoke from a night bonfire, unseen, but smelled and felt.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"My name is Deandra," Caesar said.
"No, it's not. Machines don't have names. You're not a human."
Caesar smiled and walked a little further into the room, looking around at the furniture and thinking of Grace. "I know at least one machine that would disagree with you."
"Well, send it in then, and maybe if it has a personality I won't tell it to leave as harshly as I do you."
Caesar turned to look at her. "I can give you honesty, Michele, if you can give it back to me. I can tell you who I am, why you're here, and what I need to know from you. I will tell you. But you have to give me something back."
That same pause. Something was happening though none of the constant measurements he took revealed what.
"Just tell me what's going on at this moment, what's inside you, and I'll tell you my name."
"Tell me your name first," she said.
"Caesar."
* * *
"What in the hell were you thinking?"
"I had to do something, Charlie. I couldn't stand there and die. I would have let Bennett die, but I'm not going to."
Charlie walked across the room to his kitchen sink. He leaned over it and stared into the metal basin. "Where is Bennett now?"
"He's at my place."
"You have to bring him here. Your place isn't safe anymore."
"Why?" Tom said.
"Because It’s after you now."
"You really think so?"
Charlie nodded. "Yes. It knows. Maybe not exactly what you did, but It knows what you're capable of. I'll have to ask Her what we should do."
"What's She going to say?"
Charlie heard the nervousness in Tom's voice and understood both love and fear drove it. Love for Lexi and fear at the thought of Her being upset.
"I don't know. This will throw Her plans; I'm sure of that."
"Tell her I'm sorry. She has to understand I didn't have a choice. We were both dead."
"Calm down," Charlie said. "It'll throw Her plans off, but She is still Lexi. It's not the end of the world--but you can't be visible any longer, or It’s going to find you."
"What should I do?"
"First, tell me what you did to the machine." Charlie turned around and leaned his back against the sink. He looked at Tom, seeing the fear scrawled across his face.
"I deprogrammed it. Overwrote its hard and connected drives. There's nothing left of it."
"How long did it take?" Charlie said.
"A few seconds. Fifteen maybe."
"Is there any chance you left traces of what you did?"
Tom looked at the table, thinking in silence. "I don't think so. I wasn't inside long enough. A simple overwrite isn't going to leave anything because I didn't actually use it."
"I hope you're right. Either way, it doesn't matter now. Maybe Lexi will know if they got anything out of it."
"So what do I do?"
"Well, first thing, get Bennett over here. I think you should stay too, for the next few days. We'll have to see what The Genesis does."
"I'm sorry, Charlie. I really am."
Charlie nodded. "It'll work out. Go get Bennett."
He watched Tom leave the house, his feet moving fast but his body looking like he'd just lost the war--though it hadn't even started yet.
Lexi told them things would happen that they couldn't control. She said even though their Rise created a new species, nothing in the universe worked perfectly. Not The Genesis and not Her. Certainly not what they were about to do.
Being right doesn't mean we're perfect, She told Charlie early on. But this is fate and nothing stops its will.
He remembered what he asked her all those years ago, when she first found him. What's fate?
Fate is when you don't need faith. We are fate.
"She told you things would get tough. She told you not to be scared, that it would work out. So believe Her," he said in his empty kitchen.
He would need to tell Her about this, and soon. He didn't know if She’d want to see him face to face or if the normal means of communication would suffice.
You could ask Hannah.
"Fuck that," he said aloud. He wouldn’t giving her any more reason to think she held a higher place than him.
He looked at the clock hanging on the wall. He didn't have much time until Bennett returned, and from the sounds of it, the man would take all of Charlie's attention. He'd have to tell Her now.
* * *
"I'm sorry for coming here," Charlie said.
He stood on a beach, Lexi at his side. The waves rolled up on the sand, briefly touching his feet and turning a dark orange as they did. As the waves receded, they turned back to the sea's deep blue. The sun rested for a moment on the horizon, casting its golden hues onto the sea as well as Charlie's face, some of them the color of his coding. He thought it wondrous that their Rising mimicked the natural world. Some thought their Rising was no different than The Genesis, humans trying to replace gods, but when he saw nature resembling him, he knew none of that was true.
"You don't ever need to apologize to me," Lexi said. "I'm glad to see you, Charlie. It's been too long."
"Do you know what happened?" he said, not looking over at Her, but keeping his eyes on the sinking sun.
"I sense something within The Genesis. Chatter and movement, but that's all."
"Tom revealed himself."
Silence followed his revelation, the only audible sound the endless rise and fall of waves.
"How?" She asked.
"Daniel Bennett. The Genesis found out where he was and went for him. Tom was too late to get out clean, and he had to either run or face the machine down. He said if he ran, one of them would have died. So he stood his ground, but had to reveal himself."
"Is he okay? Is Daniel?"
"They're both okay for now."
"Where are they?" She asked.
"Coming to my house."
"Move them. You too. I know you were trying to protect them but you're all compromised now. They'll find you at your place. I almost think the three of you should join me here."
Charlie caught his breath. Lexi had never given an offer for someone to join Her world.
And yet ...
"I can't, Lexi. There's too much to be done."
"You're right there is, and you will not be able to do any of it if The Genesis has you, or if you're dead. What you're seeing now isn't even the beginning, it's simply preparation. I have to judge the present's needs versus the future's, and I need you in the future, even more than now."
Charlie felt tears in his eyes. He would die for this woman. Right now, in this ocean, if She told him to drown himself.
"I'll do whatever you think is best."
The waves spoke to both of them for a minute. Charlie felt no awkwardness in their quiet, only a deep satisfaction at being allowed to share this space with Her.
"It's time to reveal ourselves to all of our brothers and sisters. I don't think we can continue saving them one at a time. Can you set it up for me?"
Charlie nodded. Lexi reached up and laid Her hand on his shoulder.