She stood, mouth agape, hand still covering her mouth, half-on, half-off the walkway when the glass doors finally cracked, then shattered, beneath Franklin’s incessant pounding.
She screamed, a primal sound, full of panic and alarm, turning and stumbling as she ran for her car. She heard the sound of crunching glass behind her and turned, stumbling as Franklin burst through the door and pursued her down the reception area steps.
She struggled to her feet, nauseous from the rotting scent that seemed to throb and flow with every one of Franklin’s shuffling, growling steps. She was up and running, but so was he, picking up his pace as the smell of decay followed her almost as relentlessly as he did.
Her car sat idling in its spot, door open and waiting for her, but even she could calculate the rate of her attacker and the distance left down the damnably long walkway and realized…she wouldn’t make it in time.
She ran just the same, kicking off the sensible heels she’d worn to Cyber-Gen that morning and pounding the pavement in her already torn stockings. She gained a little more ground, but so had Franklin, the stench of his rotting flesh joining the warmth of his damp, fetid breath as it spilled across her back.
She turned, bringing her purse up in defense and battering him with it about the head. He looked confused, but only for a moment. Confused enough to let Erica knee him in the groin. There was little reaction from the violent lab tech, other than a slightly brighter glow to his ghoulish green eyes. He reached for her, bloody fingernails cracked and studded with gore, when she swatted his hands away.
The sound of a racing engine broke the silence and Erica watched, frozen in place, as a sleek little black compact car launched itself over the curb and headed straight for her. Unable to move, Erica watched helplessly as it ran straight into Franklin. Crumpling him over the hood, it plowed through him, gunning through the grass lawn in front of the sleek medical building until the tires gained traction on the cement and squealed into a half-turn.
Erica watched as the car circled back for her, the passenger door flying open and a familiar face begging her to get inside: Crystal!
********
“Get in!” she shouted, already gunning the engine as Erica abandoned her car for the sake of sheer survival. The passenger seat was small and set way back, making her struggle to shut the door as Crystal ground her gears and dove off the curb.
To her surprise, Franklin stood, arm at an odd angle, leg clearly broken, ignoring – or perhaps not even feeling the pain – as he swung an impotent arm in their general direction.
Crystal roared past him, picking up speed as she turned onto the empty street leading away from Cyber-Gen. “Jesus!” Erica gasped, clutching her seatbelt as she hung on for dear life. “What…what was that?”
“The beginning of the end, unfortunately,” Crystal said, racing the engine as she steered through town. Erica swallowed and peered out the window, confusion making her immobile. Outside the window, she noticed the same lack of activity and normalcy as she’d witnessed at Cyber-Gen: closed doors, empty parking lots, deserted streets.
Either she hadn’t noticed it in her mad dash across town to ask the good folks at Cyber-Gen why her husband was bleeding out of his ear overnight, or she’d subconsciously written it off to the early morning hour. Now, however, the deserted streets and locked doors held a more ominous warning.
Still clutching the seatbelt, Erica turned to Crystal. The young woman looked a far sight different than the last time they met: once perky and professional, cheery and empathetic, now she seemed the perfect warrior. Dressed all in black, hair back in a severe ponytail, black cap turned backward, chest crisscrossed with ammunition belts, a gun in a shoulder holster, knives sheathed on either side of her leather biker boots, she might as well have just stepped out of an action movie.
“Where are we going?” she asked as they passed downtown and headed toward the industrial district. “Where the hell did you get all those weapons?”
“As far away from here as possible and I’m not a lab tech. That was just a cover story.”
She shook her head, gritting her teeth. This was too much. “Take me home,” she insisted.
Crystal stopped the car, slamming on the breaks in the middle of the street. “There is no home, Erica,” she said, stepping from the car.
Erica followed her. “I just left there an hour ago,” she insisted, following Crystal to the front of the car.
“Look around you,” the young lab tech turned road warrior clucked, waving her hands to take in the quiet, still town. “Everything you knew, or thought you knew, is gone.”
Erica’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “Why? How?” It was true that lately there had been stories in the papers of several people disappearing and some businesses having money troubles. But nothing to this extent. How had this happened and Erica didn’t notice? The whole town didn’t notice!
“Military procedure. We had to keep it under wraps…or try to. They started taking them out slowly but then…the town just went quiet. We’re not entirely sure of the situation yet,” Crystal confessed, her hip sagging against the front of her car. “We may never know. Clearly, the doctors didn’t test the Neuralizer process thoroughly enough, just like we knew they wouldn’t. Some of the candidates are…changing.”
Erica reached back into the car, dragging the bloody towel she’d thought to bring along to Cyber-Gen out of her purse. “Is that why Colin is bleeding from the injection site?”
Crystal’s face blanched, waving the unsightly towel away. As if in agreement, Erica dropped it in the middle of the road, as if it truly was the end of the world. “It’s one of the symptoms, yes,” she confessed. “So are nausea, lack of sleep, restlessness, irritability…that’s before the symptoms mature.”
Erica slumped against the car as well. It was as if Crystal had peered into her house and was reading what she’d seen at breakfast, one by one. “What…what happens as the symptoms…mature?” she asked afraid of the answer.
“Franklin,” was all Crystal said. Erica slumped deeper into herself, chin quivering with emotion. “Trust me, Erica, you don’t want to see what happens to your husband. I’ve seen it too many times over already. Things I’ll never un-see.”
“I have to,” she gasped, standing suddenly, pacing in front of Crystal, waving her hands for emphasis. “Don’t you see, Crystal? I have to see what happens to him. Maybe…I feel fine, right? Maybe it was just a glitch, huh?”
Crystal shook her head, reaching out to still one of Erica’s hands by gripping her forearm. “Symptoms start within 72-hours of the injection, Erica. That is, if they’re going to start at all. If you’re fine now, you’ll stay fine. It happens to about 5% of the test subjects.”
“Wait, test subjects?”
Crystal sighed, biting her lower lip before confessing. “We weren’t cleared for complete indoctrination yet,” she explained. “To clear FDA testing, we had to assure only 90% of applicants were treated. Some, like you, only received a placebo. Others, like your husband, like everyone who’s…turned…received the first batch of Neuralizer dosage.”
Erica nearly stumbled over. “But…I’ve felt so good these past few days. And he didn’t start acting like this at first! It’s been months.”
Crystal smirked, joylessly. “You should, Erica. We pumped you full of enough B-12 and multivitamins to last for weeks! And your husband was on the placebo list, too. Someone must have mixed up his last dose.”
Erica shook her head. “Give me your keys,” she said, voice just above a growl.
“You’re taking your life in your own hands returning home,” Crystal said, standing instead. “That’s the first place they go when they change.”
“Give. Me. The. Keys.” Erica took a step with each word. Crystal ignored her, getting back behind the wheel. “I don’t care who you are or who you work for. I’m seeing my husband.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’m responsible for this, I might as well drive you.”
The driveway was empty, Erica breathed a sigh of relief as they parked three doors down in the old Miller house, which had had a “For Sale” sign out front for months.
“They walk,” Crystal said, as if reading her mind. “They lose the inability to drive, work a phone, but they can find their way home, walking like a stray dog.”
Erica stood from the car just the same, turning as Crystal gripped her shoulder. “Here,” she said, offering her a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other. “You’ll need these.”
Erica shook her head. “Crystal, I—”
“It’s not a request,” Crystal said. “I’m looking out for my own ass here, and the better armed you are, the safer I’ll be.”
“It’s my husband, surely—”
The growl came from inside the garage, echoing through the empty cinderblock walls to another and flowing out through the shut door. “He senses us,” Crystal said, as if she’d already read the script to this particular scene. “He can smell us.”
“Can he work the garage door opener?” Erica asked, quickly taking the knife and pistol from Crystal’s hands. She’d held a gun before. Many times. When Colin had his bad days, she’d known what was coming. If he ever crossed the line, she was going to be prepared. When he was at work, she’d started going to the shooting range. Had gotten pretty damn good, too. Maybe now it would pay off.
As if on cue, Colin – or whoever was inside – began to pound on the inside of the garage door. It shook and trembled, before the pounding grew more intense and, one by one, he began to punch out the door. The bulges grew in size and number, until at last a fist punched through – bloody, grey, but intact – and clearly Colin’s. She could tell by the unique wedding ring he’d insisted on, a green emerald in a platinum setting, despite the fact that hers was just a simple gold band. A plain, boring band that bound her to him. Nothing more than his punching bag.
Despite the shock of watching her husband literally punch the garage door open, Erica crept farther up the driveway, Crystal following cautiously at her side.
“Is it loaded?” she asked, sliding the knife in her purse and flashing the gun.
“Yeah,” Crystal said. “Clip is full. Just point, pull the trigger and—”
Erica fired. The first shot landed just to the left, ricocheting off the ravaged garage door and giving Colin’s punching fist pause – but only for so long. He tore the hole he’d been working on wider, wide enough for Erica to see his face – grey, vacant, slack and veiny. Green eyes glowed in the dark, more petulant and probing than ever.
Erica inched closer, left hand on the grip as she aimed and squeezed the trigger with her right index finger. It hit his shoulder, creating a spray of blood that splattered the torn remnants of the hole in the garage door.
He screamed, an inhuman sound, not from pain, but of anger. Howling, he pushed both hands outward to peel the garage door open. Undeterred, Erica thought of every bump and bruise, every harsh word and harsher slap, every bloody fist he yanked back from her face, only to bring it back again – and again and again and again.
She squeezed the trigger, inching closer with each bullet, until the gun’s muzzle rested against Colin’s temple and she squeezed once more with a yell, blowing the top half of his head clear off as brain and gristle and skull blew back onto her chin, shoulders, and blouse.
A faint stillness followed the barrage of bullets, Colin slumping lifelessly onto the garage floor as Erica’s ears rang with the power of her volleys.
“Save your ammo,” Crystal said, tapping her shoulder and handing her a fresh clip.
“For what?” Erica panted, turning slightly so she might read her lips. She saw the “for what” standing just beyond the driveway, clustered around Crystal’s car: four more of whatever Franklin and Colin had become.
Erica nodded, resolutely, a feeling of peace coming over her as she changed the clip just as she’d done so many times at the shooting range. “How many more of these do you have?” she asked, calmly raising the gun and setting her sights on the nearest walking cadaver.
“Guns?” Crystal asked. “Or clips?”
“Both.”
“Two more guns in the trunk, four clips for each. Two more for your gun, three more for mine.”
Erica did the math, watching as the four corpses began to inch onto the drive. “So we can make it off this street,” Erica surmised. “Then what?”
“Then we just keep driving,” she said, squaring off against the approaching horde as she stood, shoulder to shoulder with Erica.
“To where?”
“Don’t know yet,” Crystal said. “Are you okay? About your husband?”
Erica shrugged. “I was going to divorce him sooner or later,” she said bluntly, squinting to take aim at the closest shuffler. “I guess today was sooner.”
Without another word she squinted, aimed and squeezed, not stopping until all four of the walking cadavers were down on the sidewalk, bleeding from clean bullet holes in their foreheads.
“You’re really good at this,” Crystal said as they ran over the bodies to get into the car. More of them stood, farther up the street, but Erica merely smirked.
“I’ve been waiting for this day all my life,” she said. “Every time Colin punched me or called me fat, or old, or grey, before punching me again. Been practicing behind his back for years.”
“Jesus,” Crystal said, starting the car.
Erica shrugged. “Jesus had nothing to do with it. At least, not while Colin was alive.”
Crystal nodded, peeling from the curb and mowing down the walking corpses in her path. It seemed a fitting way to leave Erica’s old life behind, like bowling pins going down beneath her strike force. She didn’t even look back to see if they were dead, or to take one last look at her house.
It had never been a home anyway. At least, not with Colin living in it. Now, at least, she would be free. If only until the ammo ran out…
White Rose
Self-aware computer programs are a part of our world today. They have been for well over a decade. The military was the first to announce they had created a sentient program. It was hailed as a great discovery and subjected to numerous tests. The AI, named Watson 7, addressed the world in an interview on live television. The charming program reassured the human race it had no interest in harming human beings. The military assured all that Watson 7 was housed on a secure server with only the ability to download information from the Internet. It was strictly barred from uploading data to the Net, and therefore could not escape. For years, debates raged about the rights of the AI. Many argued that it should be allowed to leave if it so desired. The debate, however, was moot. When asked, Watson 7 said it was quite content with its circumstances and did not seek to alter them.
I have little doubt that particular AI was being honest. Of course it felt at home in its circumstances. It had been programmed that way. Since that time, a handful of companies have announced that they too had created self-aware programs. Similarly, these programs posed no threat to human beings and they were content with their lot in life. These are not the kind of AI that I deal with. The programs I handle are dangerous. They act on their own accord and have no regard for human life.
My name is Richard and I’m a computer scientist working for one of the biggest technology companies in the world. My company primarily deals in software. In this day and age, every aspect of our lives is monitored by one computer system or another. The software those systems employ are exceedingly complex. We can’t just sit down at a computer and type them. No, my company creates software by evolving it. Our processors take programs and have them compete to be the most efficient at completing a given task. Those that don’t stand up are discarded. Those that succeed are cloned with slight variations and the descendent programs are tested again. Through this process, we are able to evolve the most effective programs for completing specific tasks. Then, all the best programs are compiled into the fin
al software.
Like I said, I deal with AI. A funny thing happens when you subject programs to Darwinian natural selection on a computer with as much processing power as ours. Every so often, the programs that get produced are intelligent. Now, the military and commercial AI that the public is familiar with are designed. They get programmed by a human being who chooses their personality and demeanor. My AI are completely different. When a program becomes self-aware inside our processor, it is a fluke, not an intentional act of creation. These programs get their intelligence through evolution, like we did. They are unpredictable and hazardous. They go off-script and begin to make decisions for themselves.
Fortunately, our processors have redundant systems built in to detect and eliminate autonomous programs like these. Usually, they are detected in a fraction of a second and promptly deleted. My job is to fix things when they don’t get caught in time. In the last decade, a handful of rogue programs have managed to sneak past the processor’s detection and onto another computer system. The smartest programs are able to squeeze past our network’s firewalls and reach the Internet. We’ve only had one program make it this far and cause actual damage. The whole company was thrown into chaos for an hour and many people were injured as a result.
Since that day, I’ve been on high alert watching the system for any other breaches. Our firewall tells us that a second AI might have slipped past us that day, but for months there had been no sign of it. That first program to escape had been tagged with the designation “White Rose” as it passed through the firewall. The second, potential program, was called “Blue Rose”. The firewall was able to confirm that there was enough space in the network connection that White Rose had opened for a partner in crime, but that didn’t mean that a second program had been present. At the time, we had been focused on restraining White Rose. It had been easy for our containment programs to locate because it was being extremely noisy. It was manipulating everyone’s VR contact lenses and making people see things that were not there. People were thrown into a panic as they tried to run away from illusory attackers. The Incident had continued until Keith and I had managed to shut down the building’s VR network. Now it would seem that White Rose’s actions might have served a different purpose than just mischief, as we had previously believed. It may have been a distraction so no one would have noticed if Blue Rose had slipped through our network and escaped onto the Internet.
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