The Robots of Gotham

by Todd McAulty

  “It is odd,” said Sergei. “Do you know what you find when you do a complete network search on gibberish phrases, especially those that involve proper names?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You get pages and pages of garbage. Useless search hits.”

  “Is that what you got?”

  “Nyet. I told you; I found nothing. Nothing at all. Zero. Tell me, how often do you get zero results for search?”

  “Never, now that I think about it. What does that mean?”

  “It means the results have been censored. It means the AGRT does not want us to know what is ‘Bodner-Levitt extermination.’ ”

  I closed my eyes. “Damn,” is all I managed.

  “So I must ask you again,” said Sergei. “What is ‘Bodner-Levitt extermination’?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Where did you hear of it?”

  “Sergei . . .”

  “You are keeping secrets.”

  “Yes. But not intentionally. Someone mentioned it to me recently, in a very different context. It may be nothing. It probably is nothing.”

  “This same person. Did they also mention ‘Network of Winds’?”

  Shit piss damn. “Yes,” I admitted.

  “And they mentioned Jacaranda, who is involved with Network of Winds.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I suggest this is not nothing. I suggest this person knows something. And that this person is very dangerous.”

  I thought about that before I gave Sergei another vague reply. Was that possible? Did Black Winter know something? And was it possible he was dangerous?

  I had given him my word that I wouldn’t reveal what he’d babbled in his robot delirium three nights ago. And now I had to decide. Did I honor that promise and keep Sergei in the dark about crucial information that could make the difference in his battle against a lethal plague? Or did I betray Black Winter and involve him in something that in all likelihood had nothing to do with him at all?

  “Perhaps you’re right,” I said. “But I need to give this person an opportunity to explain their comments.”

  “Explanations can be misleading.”

  “I’m aware of that. Give me forty-eight hours, Sergei. After that, I’ll answer anything you want to know.”

  Sergei nodded, but it was obvious he wasn’t happy about it.

  We needed to move on to a more productive topic. “Let’s review what we know now,” I said. “The pathogen was brought here during the war. And someone on the Venezuelan side—probably military intelligence—knew about it. So the question is, is this outbreak accidental or deliberate?”

  “Unknown.”

  “And what exactly is Hayduk’s involvement? He’s a colonel in Venezuelan Military Intelligence, right? Is it unusual for military intelligence to get involved in a medical emergency like this? To take action the way they have at the hospital in Indiana?”

  “Yes,” Sergei agreed. “Very unusual.”

  “Okay, what does that tell us? That Hayduk and military intelligence are involved somehow? Did they help orchestrate the outbreak? Is Hayduk the one who released it? Is he willing to sit back and watch while his soldiers die?”

  “These conjectures . . . they are of no use until we decrypt data.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I cannot read Hayduk’s drive. It does not respond to normal queries. I cannot determine manufacturer or operating system. I can use Venezuelan data drill to attempt to access data, but to do so requires connecting device to network. Likely drive will immediately identify itself, and Hayduk will know where it is.”

  “Yeah, let’s not do that then. Damn. How are you supposed to access the data?”

  “I am medical specialist, not part of data warfare team. This is completely beyond my expertise.”

  “Well, why the hell did we both risk our necks to get it?”

  “This morning, I received . . . unusual communication.”

  “Unusual how?”

  “Unusual in many ways. I was sent data archive tool, with instructions to connect tool to drive.”

  “What? Who sent it?”

  “I do not know. Message had no traceable source.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “I do not know. Message had no SMTP headers. Mail servers had no record of message.”

  That didn’t sound possible, but I was starting to get used to that. “Probably a gift from our new friend Jacaranda. I hope you didn’t open the damn thing.”

  “I did.”

  “Shit—how did you know Hayduk didn’t send it, or somebody in military intelligence? They could have blasted it out to thousands of people, just to see who bites.”

  “I do not. Yesterday, you took many great risks to acquire data. I thought perhaps I should take a small risk.”

  “It doesn’t sound like a small risk to me.”

  I took a minute to calm down, collect my thoughts. Was this going to be my life for the next few months? Was I going to be watching over my shoulder for Venezuelan Military Intelligence—or worse? Would every stray glance from a soldier, every odd message, send me into a secret panic?

  I suppose it’s better than dying in a pandemic, I thought.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Tool began to query drive. Drive responded immediately—tool had correct salutation and encoding.”

  “I’m sure that’s not a coincidence. Did it get the data?”

  “No. Accessing drive requires sequence of challenges and counter-challenges. Tool has been challenged multiple times. It has provided sufficient correct responses for drive to continue exchange.”

  “Do you think it can access the data?”

  “Yes. But it could take time. And we need to be prepared for failure.”

  “Failure?”

  “Too many incorrect responses and drive likely destructs.”

  “Of course it does,” I said in disgust.

  “We will know shortly. One way or another.”

  “I hope you’re right. What can we do in the meantime?”

  “We are not idle. If Jacaranda is correct, data on drive includes formula for antiviral agent. We will be prepared to begin production as soon as we have formula. I have located a reactor vessel and vaporizer. I have secured piping and other components for sixty-gallon bioreactor. We will have reactor assembled and sterilized in three days.”

  “An antiviral agent . . . that’s like a vaccine, right?”

  “No,” said Sergei. “Is too late for vaccine. Vaccine is of no use to infected. Antiviral agent will actively treat infected.”

  “Aren’t we taking a big risk here? Even if you crack the data drive, what if Jacaranda is lying? What if F5-117 turns out to have nothing to do with this current outbreak? We could be wasting precious weeks while the plague rampages through the whole Midwest.”

  “Is not wasted effort. We are simultaneously analyzing live virus from Field Museum. We will need to understand this specific viral genome even if we have F5-117 antivirus to perfect treatment. We would be foolish not to explore all avenues.”

  Maybe that was true, but something about it still bothered me—and not just the fact that I’d trudged across the dark Chicago landscape carrying a vial of live plague. The live virus sample, our excursion to the Sturgeon Building, the antivirus formula—they were all connected.

  Of course, there was also the fourth part of Black Winter’s strange message to me, which just grew more maddeningly enigmatic as time went by. “Find Jacaranda, and the Network of Winds. They can stop it. They can keep you alive.” What was Jacaranda’s role in all this? And what did she want from us? “It can’t possibly be luck that we simply blundered into all this,” I said. “Someone planned for this to happen. For us to be involved. Someone very, very smart.”

  “Data archive tool did not arrive by luck,” said Sergei.

  “No. I think we both know who sent that to you. Jacaranda.”

 
“You think she was also involved in sending us live virus?”

  “I don’t mean to sound paranoid, or like I don’t trust Thibault. But yeah . . . I think it’s possible. She was at the Field Museum that night. She’s certainly responsible for diverting me to Hayduk’s data when all I cared about was getting my ass out of the Sturgeon Building. And I don’t believe she just happened to be there by coincidence either. The truth is, Jacaranda is just way too well informed for me not to believe she hasn’t been involved in this since the very beginning.”

  We sat together in silence for a moment. “You know, Sergei,” I said at last. “Maybe we’re going about this all wrong. Trying to figure out what’s going to happen to us, I mean. Trying to predict what the Venezuelans will do—and Hayduk, and the search algorithm, and all that other crap. I’m beginning to think the fastest way to determining our fate is to figure out who the hell she is and what she wants. Because if there’s a spider at the center of this web, it’s her.”

  “This may not be so easy,” Sergei said.

  There was something in his voice. “You know something?” I said.

  “No.”

  “You suspect something?”

  “Nothing concrete.”

  “Damn it, Sergei, let me hear it. Conjecture, wild guesses—I’ll entertain anything at this point.”

  “Your description of her . . .”

  “The mask, you mean?”

  “Yes. The mask. I have heard of other robots who wear masks.”

  That was curious. “Really? Who are they?”

  “There is nothing definite. Only rumor. But when war with America began, it revealed first serious rifts in community of Thought Machines. There were reports of some who split with majority—who challenged the authority of the Sentient Cathedral. The war exposed factions among a group we had long assumed spoke with a single voice.”

  “Machines who opposed the war, you mean? Does that mean they actively oppose the US occupation as well?”

  “We do not know their actual agenda. We are speaking of matters that no human has witnessed. All we know for certain is that there was rift in Cathedral—a schism—sometime after war broke out. According to some confidential Venezuelan reports, small minority left the Cathedral.”

  This was news to me. If it was true, it was fascinating. I knew almost nothing about the Sentient Cathedral. And if there’s a human alive who knows how many members it has—or who they are, or how often they meet, or even if they meet at all—I’d be very surprised. It’s the most secretive organization—or religion, or cult, or whatever the hell it is—on the planet. There are rumors the Cathedral was founded by Duchess, the first Sovereign Intelligence, and that she originally intended humans to be a part of it, but no one knows. All I know for sure is that if there’s an organization or political body that machine intelligences around the world fear and obey, it’s the Sentient Cathedral.

  “Who were they?” I asked. “Any names I’d recognize?”

  “Unknown. Machines who left Cathedral no longer communicated using their birth designation. Instead, they identified themselves with self-created images.”

  “Images?”

  “Masks,” said Sergei. “They hid behind masks.”

  “You’re not talking about physical masks . . .”

  “No. Virtual masks. Elaborate self-created identities—colorful, very symbolic. And very effective. There is still conjecture today about who these machines are.”

  I chewed on that for a while. “And you think that could be a clue to Jacaranda’s origin.”

  “A possibility only. If these machines have physical agents, it is possible they exhibit similar behavior.”

  “Wearing masks, hiding their identity, you mean.”

  “Exact.”

  “Well . . . as fascinating as that is, I’m not sure how it helps us.”

  “You want to know who Jacaranda is. It is possible Jacaranda is part of an ecosystem of rational devices that is normally entirely hidden from human eyes. There has been unprecedented evolution and expansion of Thought Machines—and their agents—in last five years. We may be glimpsing new machine species for first time.”

  “That’s one hell of a conjecture. And if it’s true, we know even less about her than we thought we did. If she’s a brand-new species, it will be almost impossible to guess her motives.”

  “Da. We are entering exciting new era of machine life, my friend. The era of human dominance on this planet is coming to an end.”

  “I’ve heard that before. But let’s step back for a minute and talk about things a little easier to grasp. Like, how does she know about you? About who you are? She referred to you by name.”

  “I think is safe to assume Jacaranda has been observing us. Perhaps for some time.”

  “Why us?”

  “I cannot say. But perhaps because we are capable of accomplishing what she needs.”

  “Or maybe we’re just capable of being manipulated.”

  “Da. Is distinct possibility.”

  “So we don’t know who she is—or what she wants. Or who she works for. Why is she helping us?”

  “You asked her on roof, did you not?”

  “Yeah, I did. She said we shared a common enemy.”

  “Who is her enemy?”

  “Damn it, Sergei, let’s start with an even more basic question. Who are our enemies?”

  The fire was starting to die out. There was nothing left to burn but the soles of my shoes and a few of the larger sticks we had thrown in as kindling. Sergei began to pace around the storage locker, his polished boots tapping out a steady rhythm on the concrete floor. “The pathogen,” he said.

  “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Robots aren’t affected by viruses, but perhaps there’s someone she’s concerned about who is. That’s a distinct possibility. Who else? The search algorithm?”

  “Algorithm has been retasked. It has lost priority computational privileges. It is of no consequence.”

  “Yeah, that was a long shot. Hayduk?”

  “Hayduk was not our enemy.”

  “Speak for yourself. If he ever finds out who stole his rubber combat suit, I’m a dead man.”

  “Hayduk was not our enemy when Jacaranda offered assistance. It was our subsequent partnership that brought us into conflict with Hayduk.”

  “Splitting hairs a bit, but okay. I think that’s it for our enemies list, really.”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “We have enemies I don’t know about?”

  “Jacaranda appears to have been our ally for some time, and yet we were unaware of her existence until two days ago. I think is possible our ‘common enemy’ is similar.”

  “An enemy we don’t know about. Someone invisible, operating against us, without our knowledge.”

  “Yes,” said Sergei. “I think that is most likely alternative. And most dangerous.”

  I looked for flaws in this logic, but could not find any. “That’s a goddamned frightening thought. What did we do to piss him off, then?”

  “Do not assume our enemy, if he exists, has particular malice toward us. Perhaps his target is more general.”

  I connected the dots. I just did it a little slower than Sergei.

  “Christ, Sergei. You’re saying there’s a machine out there that bears ill will toward everyone in the country? Or perhaps humans in general?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And you think this machine created the pathogen. Is that it? That our enemy wants all humanity dead?”

  “We cannot fathom long-term motives. We can only draw broad assumptions. If enemy exists, it is most likely suspect for creator of pathogen. And if it created pathogen, it was likely for attack against both Venezuelan and American personnel in cramped proximity, most probably in Displaced Persons camps in Indiana.”

  “Sergei, how the hell do we find this thing?”

  “We cannot. Not right now. And we have more immediate problems. We must focus on accessing drive and
manufacturing antivirus.”

  I wanted to argue, but he was right. The virus was the immediate threat.

  “All right,” I said. “How can I help?”

  “This is not something you can help with.” I started to protest, but Sergei held up a hand. “Proximity to drive is not safe. Is better for you if you are not involved. In fact, I think it advisable that we are not seen together. Temporarily.”

  “You think you can do this all by yourself? Crack the encryption on the drive, build the reactor, and produce the antivirus? And watch your back in the meantime?”

  “No. But I have assistance I need. Thibault has offered to send her team here to help build bioreactor. And there are others among Medical Corps who want to assist.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But who’s going to watch your back?”

  Sergei smiled. “That, I would appreciate. But for next forty-eight hours, I will be assembling reactor with a medical team I trust. I will be relatively safe.”

  “All right, fine,” I said. “I’ll lay low for two days. I can probably use the time to get rid of the suit, anyway.”

  Sergei seemed surprised. “We could use suit.”

  “Not without the power cores. Without those, it’s useless.”

  “Then perhaps we should find them.”

  “Forget it. I’m done sneaking around buildings late at night.”

  Sergei was about to make a comment when something in his pocket buzzed. He took out a small device.

  “Archive tool has accessed drive,” he said.

  “That’s fantastic!” I said. I stood up, clapped him on the back. “Congratulations!”

  “Tool is sending data now,” he said, looking at the device.

  “Terrific. Anything useful?”

  Sergei stared at the device for a long time. When he finally spoke, he looked almost pale.

  “Unfortunate news,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Our enemy,” he said. “You will know the name.”

  “Who is it?”

  Sergei told me.

  “Sweet baby Jesus,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Sergei. “Exact.”

  A Brief History of My Favorite War

  Paul the Pirate

  Monday, March 15th, 2083