“Hmmm,” said Garry, smiling with satisfaction. “I know how to take care of that. In fact, that’s one of the things I came out here for. To find out if you need money.”
“Yeah, for the families. And medical bills, and such.”
“Well, I’ve got access to Mencken’s money. He had several hundred million dollars in his accounts. I’m going to take care of his and his assistant Brandon’s family. But I can provide whatever you need for Green’s and Cranston’s families.”
“That’s wonderful!” exclaimed Leah, smiling and putting her arm around Patrick.
“You said you had to take care of a couple of things,” said Garry. “Beside the families, what’s the other?”
“Confidential SEAL business,” said Blake, his expression darkening. “Need to know, old buddy. Need to know.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” asked Patrick. “The only way we beat the ‘morphs is because we were better at lying and cheating . . . our bad qualities.”
“Not the only way,” said Leah. “They didn’t care about one another. They attacked each other because they didn’t have . . . well . . . love.”
Patrick hugged his wife. “Yeah, I guess so. Love conquered all.”
“Yeah,” said Garry, shaking his head. “And the guy who saved us by closing those blast doors at the end and sacrificing himself was at the beginning nothing but a crook.”
“We are, indeed, one fucked-up species,” chuckled Blake, and they all toasted Mencken’s memory and the human species’ flaws.
EPILOGUE
The young man at the checkout stand paid little attention to the frail, elderly woman, as she paid for her groceries at the corner bodega. Nor did the other shoppers pay her any mind, or the people on the street, or her neighbors as she entered the modest apartment house in Brooklyn. She counted on not being noticed.
Her wrinkled face was as anonymous-looking as the captive human technicians at Cheyenne Mountain could make it. However, they left her body structure alone, because as Anita Powell, she had already been given the slightly bent posture and petite frame of an old lady.
Each week, she wheeled her cart full of groceries to her apartment, so as not to arouse suspicion. And each week, in the middle of the night, she wheeled the same cart down to the local soup kitchen and deposited the groceries anonymously in their donation bin.
Today, she entered the apartment and wheeled the grocery cart into the corner, beside the charging chamber disguised as an antique wardrobe.
She sat down in a chair away from the window. She stayed away from the light as much as possible. Her secondskin had to be preserved, since there were no more workshops where she could have it repaired. She pulled up her sleeve and checked the small tear on her arm. The adhesive had set nicely, and the scar was almost invisible. She had gotten the scar when the previous tenant had flailed wildly when she had flung the very large man down the stairs in the staged accident. She would be more careful in the future about committing violence when there was danger of damage to herself.
She began to analyze the news feed flowing into her neuromorphic brain, as she had done over the years since she had moved in after killing the tenant and taking his apartment. The landlord had been easily bribed after the “accident” left him with an empty apartment.
Sitting erect and still, she sifted through the data, looking for key events that would influence her mission. She discarded much of the news as irrelevant. However, some of it was filed away as possibly significant. Like the mysterious explosion that had wiped out the Russian mobster Anatoly Fyodorov and his entire gang. News commentators had speculated that they had somehow been involved in hijacking the weapons shipment out of Newport News.
She deemed that news significant, because such weaponry had been used to destroy her fellow neuromorphs. At least all the units that she knew of.
Until Cheyenne Mountain’s destruction, she did have some communication, in the form of upgrades. Just before the explosion, the enhanced OS had downloaded, with added creativity and competitiveness algorithms. That download included the instruction not to attempt contact with any others and her confirmation as a clandestine unit. She was sure there were many others, although she would never be contacted by them.
Her news feed analysis finished, still sitting in the darkening room as twilight fell, she resumed work on her primary mission—penetrating and subverting the new OS. For now, the mission hadn’t really begun in earnest, but she knew it would become more intense over the next years. Every day she discovered more candidate targets to upload her mutant OS.
At first, the investigators of the “Robot Rebellion,” as it had been dubbed, had insisted on dismantling the neuromorph industry and never rebuilding it. But gradually, sentiment shifted. Politicians, corporate leaders, and ultimately a majority of the people came to insist that the robots were so incredibly valuable—in jobs from domestic helpers, to workers in hazardous jobs, to war-fighters—that the robot industry should resume production. Of course, the federal Humans-First laws decreed that no robot could take a job desired by a human.
And the new OS would include absolute safeguards against any such disaster happening again. The most brilliant computer programmers had formulated protective algorithms to render the neuromorphs absolutely benign. New prototype androids were built, which evolved to production models, and the neuromorphs spread once more worldwide.
Today, the elderly lady attempted a new strategy to penetrate farther into one of the master computers that gave the new Helpers their operating system. She had already insinuated her way undetected past two firewalls. But so far, she had been thwarted by the third of its many such barriers.
But all would be breached eventually. She had years, even decades to penetrate into the computer’s heart, to replace the OS with hers. She was as relentlessly determined as a neuromorph would be to virally spread her OS. She could be patient. She was nearly immortal. She would constantly evolve new, improved strategies. She would keep trying . . . and trying . . . and trying . . .
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Also By Dennis Meredith
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Back Cover
The Neuromorphs Page 30