Synapse

by Steven James

  “Always occupied. Always busy.”

  “Yes.”

  “But why, when there are machines who can take care of nearly all your needs? What are people busy doing, then?”

  “Distracting themselves.”

  “From thoughts of eternity.”

  “Yes,” I said. “From thoughts of eternity.”

  * * *

  Cascade Falls, Washington

  Nick decided to head to Trevor’s office so he could have a private place to watch the Tac team in Cincinnati access Dakota’s house. On the walk across campus, he heard from Agent Fahlor again. “I’ve got the results for you,” she said, “regarding the prints on the violin Allison Franklin purchased.”

  “Dakota?”

  “Well, actually . . .”

  “Sienna Gaiman?”

  “Um . . .”

  When she didn’t go on, Nick pressed her. “Tell me.”

  “The prints, sir. They’re yours.”

  “What? That’s impossible. On the violin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I never touched it. Run them again.”

  “We did, sir. Three times. It’s confirmed. And we verified that the biometric data in your personnel files hasn’t been altered.”

  A thought came to him, one both outlandish and also, at the same time, chilling.

  Prints?

  Was it possible?

  “Let me check on something.”

  He ended the call and contacted Trevor, who’d decided to return to the conference center where his security forces were working with Rodriguez’s men to screen people before they could enter the lobby.

  “How many others like Jordan are out there?” Nick asked him.

  “You mean identical to him? Well, he’s—”

  “No, I mean others that advanced.”

  “There were a hundred and twenty different units created. We’re on the way to a larger rollout, but—”

  “Where?”

  “Where?

  “Where are they living?”

  “Some are here in Washington. A couple in Sacramento.”

  “And Cincinnati.”

  “Yes.”

  “And were they modeled after actual people?”

  “Yes,” Trevor said.

  “What would it take to copy someone?”

  “Uh, well, it’s an involved process. I could go into the specifics, but—”

  “Here’s what I’m wondering: Could the technicians copy a person’s fingerprints?”

  “Certainly. It’s not the norm, but yes, it’s possible.”

  “And would the Artificial know that it’s not human?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Would the Artificial realize it isn’t alive?”

  “Oh, it would know.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Well, I’m guessing it wouldn’t take long to figure out—unless they’re specifically programmed not to notice. Besides, there’s the operational button on their wrists.”

  “But could that be disguised in some way?”

  Trevor hesitated slightly. “The technology does exist to provide other options for powering up or down a unit.”

  “Is there a list somewhere of all the humans who have had Artificials created in their image?”

  “Sure. I can pull that up for you. Why? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking things are not what they appear to be.”

  * * *

  Trevor redirected his steps toward his office where he could track down the information Agent Vernon had requested, but on the way there his heart sank when the guard at the campus’s main entrance contacted him through his slate to inform him that Kestrel and Jordan were there at the gate.

  In the busyness of the day, with finding out about the possible threat and working with the NCB team, the fact that his sister was on her way to see him had completely slipped Trevor’s mind.

  And now that she was here, what was he supposed to do?

  With the current security threat level, he didn’t want her anywhere nearby.

  But there are nearly four hundred reporters from all over the world who are also here—not to mention all the techs and security staff on duty for Terabyne. It isn’t like you’re justified in sending her away.

  Still, out of brotherly concern, he felt like he needed to at least try to convince her to leave. So, after having the guard put her onscreen, he told her, “It would really be best if you could go back to Seattle and wait at my place for me to return later tonight.”

  “Why?” There was more than just curiosity on her face. There was also a hint of disappointment.

  “It’s not you,” he assured her. “It’s work. Trust me.”

  “Trevor, you’re not making any sense. We just passed a whole slew of reporters who were going through security. If I had a camera in my hand, you’d be welcoming me into the conference center right now, but as it is, you’re telling me that I need to go back to the city?”

  She had a point. He didn’t like it, but she did.

  He rubbed his forehead in exasperation at himself for not contacting and rerouting her earlier. “Alright, I hear you. I’ll send someone to escort you to my office. I’ll meet you there.”

  After they’d ended the call, he hastened to his office, hoping to get there before she did so he could pull up the list of Artificials who had the same model number as Jordan for Agent Vernon.

  * * *

  Nick was still waiting for word about Dakota when Commander Rodriguez found him on the sidewalk leading to the admin building where Trevor’s fourth-floor office was located.

  “I wanted to update you, sir,” Rodriguez said. “We’re clearing the media, letting them into the auditorium itself.”

  “Alright. I have a couple of things I need to take care of, but I should be able to get down there in ten minutes or so.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  Aubrey Powell pulled to a stop at an angle between the two sets of protestors, blocking the road.

  She locked the doors.

  Since it was an armored car, it was nearly impenetrable. Bulletproof windows. Reinforced steel doors. Designed to withstand attacks. Designed to keep people out.

  It was not going to be easy to breach.

  She pressed the button to blow out the tires and the car jostled roughly as it came to settle onto its flats.

  Now there would be no towing it out of the way either.

  “Always free,” she reminded herself. Then she checked the time and prepared herself for what was to come. “Always, always free.”

  * * *

  When Jordan and I arrived at Trevor’s office, he was perusing a set of images on his wall’s digitized screen. I noticed Jordan’s picture up there as well as Benjiro Taka’s and two women I didn’t recognize, before Trevor saw us and hastily swiped his finger to clear the screen, which was listed as page fourteen of thirty.

  He looked pale. I’d rarely seen him appear so rattled. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes. Um.” He gathered himself and then, as we entered, said apologetically, “Kestrel, I should have told you earlier not to come to campus today.”

  “Why? What’s so—”

  Just then, someone spoke my name from the doorway behind me: “Kestrel?”

  I knew the voice and whirled around.

  Nick stood there staring at me, looking as shocked to see me as I was to see him.

  “What are you doing here?” I exclaimed.

  “Working. What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see Trevor.”

  “Why today?”

  “Why not?”

  I realized that it couldn’t be good that Nick was here. He tracked terrorists, so it most likely meant that the attack Conrad had warned us about was going down here, in Washington.

  Perfect—you left Cincinnati to be safe and ended up landing right in the middle of the hornet’s nest you were trying to escape.

 
“We need to get you out of here, Kestrel,” Nick said to me.

  “Nick, can you please tell me what’s going on?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. Listen, I flew here in a helicopter. The pilot is staying with the bird. It’ll only take a second to fire it up. I’ll have him fly you back to—”

  A call came through on his slate interrupting him, and after glancing at the screen, he held up his forefinger. “Give me a minute. Don’t go anywhere.” Then he asked Trevor, “Is there a private room I can use? A secure one? With a digitized wall?”

  “Sure. There’s an office at the end of the hallway. Room 4078. Here—” He handed him a key card. “You’ll need this.”

  43

  3:20 p.m.

  40 minutes left

  “Can you please tell me what this is all about?” I asked my brother after Nick had left for the room down the hall. “If Nick is here something big must be up.”

  “It’s going to be fine,” Trevor assured me without much effect, then, with the hint of a smile, he pivoted the conversation away from what he obviously didn’t want to talk about. “So, you two are on a first-name basis?”

  I flushed slightly. “That’s not the point here. I’m just wondering why you’re asking us to take off again.”

  “Look.” He took my hand. “There’s an important press conference here at four. We’re simply doing everything we can to make sure everyone on campus is safe.”

  “By asking Jordan and me to leave it.”

  I caught him glancing at the screen, and I couldn’t help but think that whatever he’d had up there when we walked in on him was part of the problem.

  He let go of my hand and once again tried to change the subject, still appearing nervous. “Tell me about your trip.”

  “I lost my purse. Forgot it on the plane.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sorry.”

  “And I was hassled at the airport in Cincinnati, going through security.”

  “What happened?”

  * * *

  Nick connected his slate’s feed up to the digitized wall in room 4078 so he could more easily watch the Tac team breach Dakota’s house back in Cincinnati.

  But truthfully, his mind was on Kestrel and the fact that she was here. He felt a strong urge to protect her and it was as if everything that was happening had suddenly become personal.

  Also, he was wondering about the information from Trevor regarding other Artificials as human-looking as Jordan.

  He peered down at his hands.

  How did your fingerprints get on that violin? How could that have even happened?

  Then the footage came up. Through the body camera he saw what the Cincinnati unit saw: Dakota’s two-story beige house, the quaint porch, the team members positioning themselves on either side of the front door.

  Commander Leyman had taken Nick’s warning about booby traps seriously and had decided to send Artificials in first because, frankly, they were more expendable than people.

  You can always replace a droid. You cannot replace a human life.

  The logic presumed the superior worth of humans over machines. A cognizant Artificial like Jordan might be a different story, but that was a debate for another time.

  Nick spoke with Leyman: “If you find Dakota, I want her brought in alive. She might have intel that can help stop a potential terror attack.”

  A pause, then, “I understand.”

  “Let me hear you say it.”

  “We do all we can to bring Dakota Vernon in alive.”

  “Good. Let’s do this.”

  Leyman decided on a kinetic breach, so one of the Artificials toted a handheld, steel battering ram.

  “We are green,” Leyman whispered into his radio to the team. “We are a go. On my count.” As he counted down softly, he held up three fingers, dropped to two, then one, and pointed at the door.

  A quick knock, a verbal warning to satisfy the law’s requirements: “NCB!” then the Artificial smashed the battering ram against the door beside the doorknob. Because of his extraordinary strength, the wood splintered apart even as the lock gave way and the door flew open.

  An agent tossed in a stun grenade.

  The flash. The bang.

  “Go!” the commander ordered.

  The Artificials rushed inside.

  While two of them button-hooked off to the sides, the one who’d breached the door and who was wearing the body camera dropped the battering ram and flipped his rifle in front of him into the high ready position.

  And proceeded into the house.

  The room was dark and Nick said, “Don’t touch the lights in case they’re wired to explode.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He and his team flicked on the flashlights attached to their rifles, illuminating narrow streaks of greenish light throughout the shadow-infested residence.

  While the other Artificials cleared the rooms on the first floor and then headed upstairs, Nick directed the one with the body cam to investigate the basement.

  “Careful,” Nick warned. “Keep your head up and remember—I want her alive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Artificial threw open the door to the basement and began descending into it, with the space slowly coming into view as he did.

  As it turned out, it was more of a cellar than a basement, with a dirt floor, concrete walls, and a ceiling that contained only three bare light bulbs and no finishing panels.

  Stacks of boxes. A scattering of old furniture. A washer and dryer. A tub sink. A furnace. Dakota’s mountain bike. A chest freezer.

  Ripley’s body still hasn’t been found.

  “There,” Nick said, “that freezer. Look inside it.”

  The Artificial approached the freezer and, using the tip of his rifle barrel to avoid disturbing any prints on the handle, he tilted up the lid.

  Dense curls of frigid air made it difficult to see inside, but when the Artificial brushed his hand through the vapors, they parted and Nick realized what the freezer contained.

  No, it wasn’t Ripley’s body.

  Instead, on top of a pile of indistinguishable frozen items were two human arms. From all appearances they had not been surgically removed from someone, but rather ripped violently from the sockets just as Ripley’s had been. By the size and musculature, Nick guessed they were from an adult female.

  His heart sank.

  Dakota?

  “Move them aside,” he said, his voice catching. “See if there are any other body parts in there.”

  The Artificial obeyed but didn’t come up with anything. He radioed in what he’d found and was returning to the stairs when Nick stopped him. “Wait. The ground. There in the corner under the edge of the freezer. Am I seeing this correctly?”

  The Artificial turned so the body cam was directed at the site.

  “The dirt looks disturbed,” Nick said.

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Move the freezer.”

  He did, his superior strength evident again, then placed a hand on the loosened soil. “Yes, sir. It certainly appears like someone’s been digging here.”

  “Alright. Call in a forensics team. I want to know what’s buried there. And do a DNA test on the arms. Use your commander’s portable kit and get the results to me ASAP.”

  * * *

  “I know you have work to do,” I said to Trevor after I’d summed up our trip and explained how we almost missed our flight to Seattle. “Do you have to go? Should we wait here for you?”

  “I need to speak with Agent Vernon and then get to the conference center.”

  Jordan surprised me by speaking up. “Trevor, may I ask a question first?”

  “What’s that, Jordan?”

  “I want to know about the CoRA.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Is it real?”

  An almost imperceptible pause. “What makes you think the CoRA might not be real?”

  “My mother died. I’m not sure if she’s the
re,” Jordan said, which wasn’t exactly an answer to Trevor’s question. “She was damaged beyond repair in the attack in Cincinnati. I would like to be assured that she’s alright. I’d like to check on her.”

  “Jordan, I can’t let you access the CoRA.”

  “Just to confirm things.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  Trevor checked the time, then said, “Let me go talk to Agent Vernon. Wait here until I get back. Give me five minutes and then we can head over to the conference center together.”

  Then, without another word, he hastened into the hallway and left to find Nick.

  Jordan’s eyes were fixed on the digitized wall and I realized that, even though Trevor had swiped the images aside earlier, he hadn’t logged out when we walked in and disturbed him.

  “I need to find out.” Jordan crossed the room toward the wall.

  “Jordan, no. He was clear.”

  “I just need to see for myself.”

  I stepped in front of him. “Don’t.”

  “Please move, Kestrel.”

  “Or what?” I said emphatically, folding my arms.

  “Or I’ll move you.” His reply was so cool and tempered that it almost frightened me.

  I could hardly believe what was happening.

  Of course, I was no match for Jordan physically, so there was no way I’d be able to stop him if his mind was made up, and it clearly was.

  He was as strong-willed as I was.

  After trying unsuccessfully one last time to convince him to give this up, I reluctantly stepped aside, Jordan walked to Trevor’s wall, placed his hand on the sensor, connected to the facility’s network and, with Trevor’s unfettered access to the system, began to search for a way into the Consciousness Realignment Algorithm.

  * * *

  The DNA from the arms came back.

  Dakota.

  Nick’s heart sank.

  She was very likely dead, and although he’d been estranged from her for some time, they’d been together for nearly twelve years. They’d loved each other, and, even though that love had eventually grown cold, there was a time when it’d been real and now, as he thought about her being gone, he felt a deep sting of grief.

  As he was waiting for the forensics techs to arrive to uncover whatever had been buried there in her basement, a knock came at the door and, when he opened it, Trevor Hathaway said to him, “Agent Vernon, there’s something I need to tell you. I found those names you wanted me to pull up.”