The Loop

by Wesley Cross

  Connelly’s pace had slowed to a crawl. The uneven surface served as a natural minefield and a warning system against the intruders—not knowing where the paths were that the gang members undoubtedly knew by heart, every step he took in the dark brought a risk of revealing his location, getting impaled on something sharp, or both.

  He looked around, trying to find traces of the path, but the mountain of rubbish seemed evenly spread out on the ground. He decided to move close to the left wall—it wasn’t an ideal solution, but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone coming at him from that direction. After a few more minutes of the painfully slow movement, he started to make out the sounds coming from the ghostly shadows gathered around the two bonfires.

  Connelly stopped about fifty paces from the camp and squatted with his back to the wall. He looked away from the fires, letting his eyes get adjusted to the dark. Then, when the shadowy world came into greater focus, taking great care not to look directly at the flames, he scanned the area near the camp. There were seven people as far as he could tell. The skinny outline standing with his back to him seemed to be Bones. He was talking in hushed tones to a large man lying on his side next to the bonfire. Connelly reckoned that was the wrench-wielding giant from their previous encounter.

  There were three more on the other side of the fire, and another two figures were shuffling next to a row of boxy outlines of what Connelly thought to be cardboard shelters.

  He watched the camp for two more minutes to make sure he wasn’t missing anybody else in the dark. Satisfied, he started moving toward the bonfire with his pistol at chest level when a new sound stopped him in his tracks. Coming from the boxes on the side of the camp was the unmistakable wail of a child.

  “Shut them up. It’s getting on my nerves,” the giant barked at the two shadows by the boxes.

  “It keeps going,” a woman’s voice answered. “I’m tired of smacking it.”

  “Get the whiney shit over here then,” the man said. “I’m hungry, anyway.”

  Connelly started to run. He tried to pick the spots to place his feet and avoid noise, but after only a few steps, something crunched under his left foot, startling the gang.

  “Who dat?” Bones said, turning in a flash to the sound.

  Connelly shot him twice through the chest, accelerating to a full sprint to close the distance between them and moved the barrel toward the large man when something caught his right foot, tripping him.

  He fell hard, crying out in pain as something sharp bit into his side, but he didn’t let go of the gun. The giant was almost on him when Connelly shot the man through the knee, stopping his mad rush, and then finished him off with a clean shot to the head.

  He scrambled to his feet in time to see a large object flying toward his face. He ducked sideways, and the piece of a rusty pipe struck him in the shoulder, knocking him back on the ground. As he fell back, he felt a piece of glass penetrate his jacket and lodge in his lower back. There was no time to get up as the three men closed on him, pipes in hands, and he let out a yell of pain and fury as he turned on his back for a clear shot, lodging the shard deeper into his flesh.

  The first bullet hit the closest man in the chin, shattering his jaw and ripping apart his tongue; he fell backward, choking on blood. Connelly rolled, dodging a swing of a pipe, and shot the next attacker twice to the groin, and as the man collapsed, he pushed himself off the ground and used the man’s body as a battering ram to knock the last thug down. As they fell, Connelly stabbed the adversary under his chin with the silencer and pulled the trigger.

  “I’ll slash her throat, I swear,” he heard a pitchy woman’s voice as he clambered to his feet.

  Two women stood next to what at this distance appeared to be wicker cages. One held a small girl, no older than eight or nine, by the hair with one hand. Her other hand held a large butcher’s knife to the child’s throat.

  “You better leave, son,” the woman said. “Or else I’ll—”

  Connelly shot her through the neck, severing her spine. The other woman turned to run, but he placed a bullet in her back between the shoulders, and then when she fell, added another one in the back of her head.

  He put away the pistol and kneeled next to the child. Every part of his body seemed to be on fire.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  The girl looked at him for a few seconds, her eyes shining brightly on her dirty face.

  “Sarah,” she finally said.

  “Okay, Sarah,” he said. “Let’s get you and your friends out of here, shall we?”

  11

  Hong Kong

  When Helen walked into the conference hall, most seats had already been taken. She scanned the auditorium, looking for an empty chair and, not seeing any, started to walk toward the end of the room, to take a standing place by the wall.

  “Over here, girl,” she heard a voice and then saw Mandy waving her down. “I had to bribe people to save you a spot.”

  “I didn’t know you bribed people,” Helen said, taking a seat next to the woman.

  “There’re a lot of things you don’t know about me, dear. Big day, huh?”

  “Could be,” she said. “Or it could be a disappointment. I think the chances are pretty slim it’ll pass the test, but it’ll be interesting to see how well it does. It’ll probably take more than one try to get us there. Besides, we don’t even know how he’s planning on testing it. He’s been so secretive about it.”

  “Perhaps,” Mandy agreed. “Ten bucks says Tillerson will have a bow tie on.”

  “I don’t take losing bets.”

  A hush fell over the audience and then the room erupted in applause as Tillerson walked through the doors and went to the podium. He wore a lab coat over a gray suit. A yellow bow tie with purple stripes sat crookedly under the collar of his shirt.

  “You owe me ten bucks,” Helen heard Mandy whisper.

  “I don’t think so,” she whispered back. “But nice try.”

  “Thank you very much, everyone,” Tillerson began as he shuffled the papers on the podium. A large screen behind him switched on. A simple diagram of three squares labeled A, B, and C was showing and on top of it was a line of text in big block letters: THE IMITATION GAME.

  “I’m sure all of you are familiar with the classic interpretation of the Turing test.” A small laser pointer appeared in his hand, and he aimed it at the screen. “You have three players—A, B, and C, where player C is the person asking questions and is the one who’s supposed to find out which player, A or B, is, indeed, human.”

  Helen could hear as a quiet murmur filled the audience. The classic interpretation? She had been anticipating, and she thought most people in the room would agree with her, that the classic interpretation would more than suffice for the first milestone. Apparently, Tillerson had something else in mind entirely.

  “However,” he continued, “there have been some chatbots, of course. Eugene Goostman comes to mind, and other programs, that have successfully cheated their way through the standard version of the test. That was done by incorporating some humor and in Goostman’s example, age limitation, where the bot pretended to be a thirteen-year-old boy. Indeed, that’s not a fair interpretation of the test. Most thirteen-year-olds I grew up with wouldn’t pass it.”

  Helen chuckled, along with everybody else. The man was good. It wasn’t enough to be smart to climb the corporate ladder anymore. Not even in such a meritocratic place like TLR. There was a certain amount of je ne sais quoi that was required to have people follow you and convince venture firms to open their checkbooks.

  “So,” Tillerson continued, snatching the audience’s attention again. “When we were preparing, I was thinking—what can be the real litmus test? Something that beyond any reasonable doubt would elevate Minerva to the spot no other AI could’ve claimed before? And that’s when it hit me—Hell’s Gates. Anyone here ever played Hell’s Gates?”

  Helen looked around. A few hands went up. She’d heard
about the massive multi-player online game, of course, but never played it herself. In a game, each gamer had to be a member of a band of players whose purpose was to track down and kill demons. What made the game popular was the feature that required a group of four or more players to solve a puzzle before they could unlock the gates and enter the demons’ lair. The only way to solve them was for the players to cooperate, as each person could see only a part of the puzzle.

  “I expected more from a bunch of nerds like you.” Tillerson chuckled. “Okay, I’m sure that even those who’ve never played the game must’ve heard about it. The key to it is cooperation. Players must communicate with one another to open the gates so they can go in and kick some demons’ butts. That got me thinking. Letting Minerva take over one of the players would create a perfect blind test. You’d have not one, but three humans she’d not only have to interact with but also cooperate, solve a puzzle, and kill the demon with. If she can do all those things without being recognized as a non-player character, or NPC for short, well, I’d say she passed the test with flying colors. The fun part would be that those three humans will have no idea they are going to be a part of history. Without further ado—enjoy.”

  He signaled to his assistant and the lights in the room dimmed as the screen behind him displayed the login page for Hell’s Gates. Tillerson typed in a password, and an avatar of a princess warrior with a long two-handed sword on her back appeared to be running through the woods. Three other avatars, one of a wizard, an assassin, and a knight, ran alongside Minerva. The sounds of the game filled the conference hall.

  “There.” The wizard pointed to the clearing in the forest. “Some kind of a building.”

  “Looks like a small pyramid. Weird,” Minerva said, and the auditorium erupted in applause and cheering.

  “It is weird,” the wizard agreed. “I’ve never seen pyramids here.”

  The players came to a stop in front of the edifice. The golden surface of the pyramid was smooth except some carvings halfway to the top.

  “Let’s check out all the sides,” the assassin said. “Make sure we don’t miss any clues.”

  The camera shifted as Minerva walked around the structure. One side had an opening and lacked the carvings the other three had.

  “Three pictures and a door,” she said, standing in front of the opening.

  “Looks like that. There are some decorations above the door, but they look pretty abstract to me,” said the wizard. “Do you guys get any of the meaning from the carvings?”

  “A lion, a leopard, and a dog,” the assassin said. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Let’s check the inside. See what we can find.”

  “Wait,” Minerva said, pointing at the top of the opening. “I think I got something. Look at the design around the door.”

  The camera moved as the avatar walked closer to the archway. What seemed like an abstract design of interwoven lines from farther away up close looked more like a thorny stem, culminating into a rose dead center on top of the entrance.

  “Oh, wow, you’re right.” The assassin stepped closer to the doorway. “There’s a number nine inside of the rose. That’s gotta be important.”

  The camera zoomed on the flower as Minerva’s avatar approached the door to take a look.

  “We have three animals and a number so far,” the wizard said. “I still have no idea what it could be. Shall we?”

  The group walked through the archway and once everybody was inside, a hidden door fell from somewhere above with a loud clang, shutting out the light and plunging the players into complete darkness. Someone yelped in surprise, prompting laughter around the conference hall.

  Helen watched as the wizard cast a spell and a small ball of fire appeared to be gliding in midair above the avatars, casting dancing shadows on the walls. The space inside the pyramid was empty save for the large triangle-shaped trapdoor in the middle, each side of it connected to three smaller triangular tiles.

  “Look at the petals on the door,” Minerva said, pointing at the trapdoor. “And those tiles next to it. They all have carvings.”

  “This one looks like fire,” the assassin pointed at the flame-looking symbol, “that one is a rose and this one, I’m not sure what it is.”

  “Looks like a bridge to me,” the knight said, finally breaking his silence.

  “A bridge,” Minerva said. “What were the carvings on the outside again?”

  “A lion, a dog, and a leopard, I think.”

  “A wolf,” she said. “That was a wolf, not a dog.”

  “What?” The wizard came up to her. “What are you thinking?”

  “Dante,” she said. “Divine Comedy. It makes total sense now. He gets assailed by the beasts in the beginning—a lion, a leopard, and a she-wolf.”

  “What about other symbols?” The assassin walked around the trapdoor and touched one of the smaller triangles. It glowed in the dark for a few moments and then went out.

  “The carvings on the door are for the three parts of his journey,” she said. “The flame is for Inferno, the bridge is for Purgatory, and the rose is for Paradise. As for the small tiles—they are the nine circles of Hell. We have to press them in the right order.”

  She walked around the trapdoor, touching the stones one by one, and instead of going out like before, each new tile glowed brighter than the previous one. When she touched the last triangle, the petals on the trapdoor slowly rotated inward, opening four staircases separated by the walls.

  A murmur rose in the conference hall, and Helen felt goose bumps creeping up her arms—Minerva helped the players conquer the first puzzle without being recognized for what she was. But now, the gamers would have to separate. The real test was about to begin.

  12

  New York

  Besides Sarah, Mike Connelly found five more kids inside wicker cages—three boys and two girls, none older than eight. All of them were quiet and subdued as if under a spell, and they followed his directions without a word as he let them out. He sat them next to the bonfire while he thoroughly searched the rest of the camp to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone else.

  The place was empty, but he found a pile of bones not too far from the edge of the campground. He grabbed a long stick off the ground, and doing his best to keep his stomach from climbing into his throat, he rummaged through the bones.

  He thought it was strange to feel relief while looking through human remains, but Connelly felt just that after a minute when he realized that there were no small bones in the pile. The gang must have started snatching children recently, finding them to be an easier target, Connelly reckoned. He shuddered at the thought of what would’ve happened if he hadn’t come here tonight.

  “Okay, guys,” he finally said. “I want you to form a line and hold each other’s hands, so we don’t lose anybody in the dark. I’ll go first. Sarah will follow my steps, and you guys will follow her.”

  The little faces nodded and started forming the line.

  “What’s your name, buddy?” he asked the smallest boy in the group.

  “Benny,” the kid replied.

  “Okay, Benny,” he said. “You hold on to Sarah, and we’ll be going now.”

  The trip back didn’t take as long as Connelly had feared. Once they cleared the immediate area of the camp with its mountain of garbage, they picked up the pace, keeping in between the rails of the abandoned railroad that provided a natural path.

  A problem occurred when they got to the entrance of the tunnel. While he could easily scale the wall himself, Connelly realized that he didn’t have the tools to lift the children out to the edge of the barrier. He inspected the rough wall leading to the outside world, but there seemed to be no natural steps that the kids could use. The gang must have used other exits to get out of the tunnel, but looking for them in the dark wasn’t an option he could consider at the moment.

  “All right,” he said, turning to the group. “I need to climb out of here for a moment to look for s
omething I can use to lift you up to the street level, okay?”

  “No, you can’t leave us here,” Sarah screamed, tears streaking her grime-covered cheeks, and the sound of her voice seemed to have broken the spell. One after the other, like the matches igniting in a burning matchbox, the kids started to cry.

  “I’m not leaving you,” he said, kneeling next to Sarah and grabbing her shoulders. “I promise. But there’s no way I can get you guys out of here without some tools. I’ll be back before you know it, okay? Make sure everybody stays put and doesn’t wander off.”

  She struggled to wiggle out of his hands, but he held firm, and finally, she gave a reluctant nod. “You promise?”

  “I promise. Five minutes, tops.”

  He let her go, ran to the wall, and catapulted himself up, getting a grip on the edge of the stone barrier.

  It was still dark outside of the tunnel, but the inky blackness of the sky in the east started to give way to lighter shades of gray. Connelly looked around, making sure nobody was watching him, and jogged to the end of the block. There it was—an old Ford F150 pickup truck parked on the side of the road right under the “No parking any time” sign.

  He walked to the truck and, not seeing anyone around, smashed the side window with a butt of the pistol. Then, ignoring the blaring alarm, Connelly put away the gun and got in the car. He used his tactical knife to cut the seat belts from the two front seats and was about to move to the back when he saw the flashing blue-and-red lights coming off West Forty-First Street. The cops must have been cruising nearby when the alarm went off.

  Connelly eyeballed the distance and decided not to risk it. He grabbed the seat belts, got out of the car, and headed back, staying low and keeping the pickup truck between himself and the approaching cruiser until he turned the corner and was out of the cops’ sight.