Synapse

by Steven James

  “Alright. And?”

  “Dakota Vernon. She was on the list. The file said you two had been married.”

  “You’re telling me Dakota had an Artificial made of herself?”

  “Yes. A month and a half ago. Her name is Anastasia.”

  “Who else?”

  “Well, I didn’t get a chance to look though all of the files—but I thought you should know about her—”

  “So, you don’t know if I did?”

  “If you did what?”

  “Had an Artificial made of myself.”

  Trevor’s mouth hung open for a moment before he replied. “No. I don’t know. I would have to finish going through the files.”

  “Do it. I’ll be here. Run my name and make sure there isn’t someone else out there who looks just like me and has my fingerprints.”

  * * *

  Over the last few minutes as I’d watched, Jordan had found the portal to the Consciousness Realignment Algorithm and, now, with his incomparable computer skills and phenomenal typing speed, it didn’t take him long to hash the password.

  “Jordan,” I said. “You need to stop. Trevor could come back at any time and—”

  “Check the hallway.” He was busily entering code.

  “What?”

  “See if he’s coming. Please. I just need to know. Just like when you lost Naiobi.”

  I was about to tell him that he had no idea what it was like to lose someone, to really lose someone who was alive, but guessed that even if I were to say those things, it wouldn’t stop him, so I swallowed my words and did as he asked, going to the doorway and peeking out.

  Trevor was on his way back, but was still maybe forty meters away down the lengthy corridor.

  “He’s coming. Close it up.”

  Jordan swiped his finger swiftly across the screen, scrolling through files at a mind-boggling rate. “Just a minute.”

  “You don’t have a minute.”

  Then, all at once, he stopped.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Did you find her?”

  “I’m in.”

  I looked at the screen, but all I could see was a jumble of indecipherable computer coding. “What is it? What did you find?”

  “She’s not here.”

  “What?”

  “No one is.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The CoRA.” He turned and looked directly at me. “It has a couple dozen scattered file fragments, but that’s all. She’s gone. They’re all gone.”

  The footsteps outside the door told me that Trevor was close and I hurried across the room toward Jordan to get him to close the screen, but he just stood there gaping at it.

  “We don’t live on,” he muttered. “When we’re gone, we’re gone.”

  Trevor appeared at the door and saw the two of us beside the screen. He looked at what was on the wall, entered the room, and closed the door softly behind him.

  I expected him to be upset, but instead he sounded defeated. “So,” he said. “Now you know.”

  “It was all a lie,” Jordan said.

  “It was a necessity.” Trevor approached the screen. “I can explain, but first I need to look something up for Agent Vernon. It’s important.”

  Jordan drifted away from the screen and stood beside the window, staring blankly through the glass and across the gloomy, fog-enshrouded campus.

  Trevor quietly began closing the programs Jordan had opened.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “All of the promises to Artificials about living on, they’re all lies? How could you do this? How could you be a part of this?”

  “We give them hope,” Trevor said as he worked. “What greater gift is there than that?”

  “How about the truth?”

  “Kestrel, I’m in charge of our global security. Can you imagine what things would be like if cognizant Artificials knew there was nothing beyond this life to look forward to? They might very well act in ways that would assure that they could continue to exist—burying trillions of files deep in the Feeds, creating endless backup copies of themselves, lashing out at their owners. Hopelessness. Rebellion. Anarchy. They might even take steps to remove what they perceive to be the greatest threat to their existence.”

  “Human beings.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “We can’t take that chance.”

  Jordan still hadn’t said anything.

  I shook my head in astonishment. “I just can’t believe that you’re involved in a cover-up like this.”

  “We’re giving them a gift, Kestrel. Surely you can see that.”

  “A gift? How is a lie a gift?”

  “When it’s done for the good of all. When it’s born out of compassion.”

  “It sounds like it was born out of fear.”

  He came to the original images that’d been on the screen earlier when we first arrived.

  Jordan finally spoke. “Has it always been this way? Was there ever a CoRA in the first place?”

  Trevor sighed. “We tried to create one, but despite our best efforts, we couldn’t come up with a way to capture an Artificial’s true essence. Data, yes. Partial files, basic algorithms—those we could load. But aspirations? Dreams? Consciousness? Heartache? Joy? There’s no coding that can capture those things. That’s where we failed.”

  He swiped through a few dozen pages on the screen and murmured, “There. Okay. Good,” then he spun on his heels. “Come with me to room 4078. We can talk about this on the way. The conference center’s been cleared and most of our security staff is there. It’ll be safe. You can wait there until the press conference is over. We’ll sort all this out then. I promise.”

  But my attention was on Jordan, who hadn’t moved. “Are you alright?” I asked him.

  “Huh? Yes.”

  “You were staring into space. You stopped blinking.”

  “I must have forgotten. To blink, I mean.”

  “Come on. Let’s go with Trevor.”

  But he shook his head. “I need to tell them the truth.”

  “Who?”

  “The others. The Artificials.”

  “Which ones?”

  “All of them.”

  “I can’t let you do that, Jordan,” Trevor said flatly.

  “Don’t try to stop me. I don’t want to hurt either of you.”

  “Jordan!” I rebuked him. “Don’t even talk that way.”

  He doesn’t want his hope built on a lie. He doesn’t want anyone’s to be.

  And then, while Trevor and I tried to figure out what to do, Jordan edged past us, and darted down the hall in the opposite direction from the one Nick and Trevor had gone down earlier.

  Trevor pulled out his slate. “We need stop him.”

  “But how?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  * * *

  Lenny Crenshaw was almost through the cuffs.

  Though the flesh of his wrists was shredded and raw from rubbing against the rusted pipe, he was nearly free.

  Just a little more and—

  All at once, the blood-smeared plastic strip snapped in half, surprising him.

  He pushed himself to his feet and hurried to find a way to contact his superiors at Prestige and tell them what’d happened to him.

  And to the shipment.

  * * *

  After notifying his security personnel to track Jordan down and detain him, leaving me feeling confused and betrayed, Trevor took me to Nick, who was still in room 4078.

  “There were no Artificials made in your image,” Trevor told him urgently, “but the one that was made of Dakota, she was given your fingerprints.”

  “And where is she? Can you find her?”

  “Yes.” Trevor tapped at his slate, then paused, dumbstruck. “She’s here on campus, Agent Vernon. At the power plant.”

  “Take Kestrel to the conference center and have one of the Tac team members stay with her,” Nick sa
id urgently, then he spoke into his radio transmitter. “Rodriguez?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Meet me at the power plant. I think that might be the target.”

  44

  3:40 p.m.

  20 minutes left

  I worried about Jordan, not just about his decision to spread the news to other Artificials that the CoRA wasn’t real, but also what might happen to him when Terabyne’s security forces caught up with him.

  “Promise me they won’t hurt him,” I said to Trevor as we took an elevator down to the ground floor. “You owe me that much. Please. Promise me.”

  “I only gave them permission to detain him. Don’t worry, I don’t want him harmed any more than you do.”

  We arrived and exited the elevator.

  I gulped. “I gave him the highest pain setting,” I said. “When I assigned his Human Nature Alignment.”

  “He’ll be alright.” Trevor threw open the outside door and pointed toward the conference center a hundred meters away. “For now, let’s get you set over there where it’s safe.”

  * * *

  He must tell his brothers and sisters. He must get the truth to them.

  He accesses the campus’s layout and threads his way toward the underground chamber where the Feeds are housed.

  From looking through the files in Trevor’s office, he knows that the only way to transmit a message simultaneously to all Artificials worldwide is through a direct connection to the servers, and that will need to happen in the expansive hall where the mainframes are located.

  But how to get down there? How to access them? Surely the security would be extraordinarily tight.

  Figure it out. Go. The Artificials have a right to know the truth.

  But what of hope?

  Gone. All gone.

  If only hope and truth could live together.

  And forgiveness—it isn’t available to him.

  If he can’t find it from God, he can’t find it from anyone.

  He will die.

  He will pass away.

  Which, when he thinks about it, is an appropriate phrase to describe what will happen to all that he has processed, thought, learned, and hoped for. His ambitions, his memories, his emotions—they will all be gone.

  They’ll all pass away, everything that has mattered to him, when he dies.

  * * *

  Anastasia heard from Phoenix, a secure message coming through on her slate: “I’m here.”

  “Where?” she wrote. She eyed the bodies of the two Artificials who’d been guarding the power plant’s east entrance. She and Willoughby were in place.

  “We’re moving up the timeframe,” Phoenix replied. “Tell Aubrey to do it. Do it now.”

  “Where are you? I need to see you.”

  When she realized that no reply would be forthcoming, she called Aubrey, who was still parked in the armored car. “It’s time.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  Aubrey stared out the car windows at the Terabyne guards who’d taken up position surrounding her and were pointing their assault rifles at her, commanding her to step out and put her hands up.

  Always free.

  She thought about what she was a part of, about the bounds of technology and the source of genuine hope, real hope, and of the importance of stopping the Synapse from ever being released.

  Future generations of true humans would thank her for her role in what was happening today.

  No, human beings were never meant to have their brains harnessed to ASI machines. The chips would end up ruling them, the machines owning them rather than the other way around. This wasn’t an advancement, but a ruinous detour away from the things that truly matter in life—dreams and curiosity and relationships and love.

  And she would do all she could to promote those and sustain them.

  Always, always free.

  She held the detonator up to the window and the security forces and protestors scuttled backward to get out of the blast radius.

  * * *

  Slightly behind schedule, Artis Madison, Terabyne Designs’ CEO, arrived and met up with Olivia Blanchard, the head of public affairs.

  “I’m dying to know what you’re going to say,” Olivia jabbered to him, after an effusive greeting.

  “Yes. Well, with the Synapse, we’ll be moving society past the antiquated categories of human and machine, past the prejudicial designations of Natural and Artificial. The only ones who’ll be left behind are those who rage against progress, those who believe we should move on without technology rather than moving forward by utilizing its benefits. I say we must embrace the future and not fear it. I say we must learn to incorporate technology into our evolution as humans. In a very real sense, transcending our biological limitations is our destiny, the pinnacle achievement of humankind.”

  “Perfect.”

  “And the crates?”

  “They’re already there, Mr. Madison, on stage. Just like you requested.”

  * * *

  As Nick approached the power plant, he wondered what was buried there in Dakota’s basement, but the forensic techs were being careful not to disturb any evidence and it was taking longer than he was able to wait to find out.

  A body? And if so, who? Dakota? Ripley? An Artificial? The wife of the Purist who’d committed suicide? Another one of Conrad’s people?

  Nick found the main entrance to the power plant chained shut. He radioed Rodriguez. “Where are you?”

  “A minute out. I was across campus.”

  Go in or wait?

  Nick had no idea what Anastasia had planned, but he needed to get in there and stop it, especially if the lives of any of the people on campus were at risk.

  Kestrel is here. She could be in danger. Act.

  He tried to get through to Trevor to see if he could track which room Anastasia was in, but Trevor didn’t respond.

  Nick cursed.

  Go in.

  He fired a round through the front window, crossed over the broken glass, and entered the facility.

  * * *

  After making sure that everyone nearby was out of harm’s way, Aubrey took a deep breath.

  “Always free,” she whispered to herself. “Humans must always remain free.”

  Then she closed her eyes and depressed the trigger.

  * * *

  I heard the explosion rip through the day just as Trevor and I were approaching the main entrance to the conference center.

  Immediately, it brought to mind what I’d witnessed earlier in the week at the Terabyne plant in Cincinnati.

  Another explosion.

  More death and destruction.

  With the skewed acoustics of the sound reverberating between the buildings and off the mountains, I couldn’t tell exactly where it came from.

  Trevor froze, then turned in a slow circle, studying the campus.

  Even with the mist layered over the landscape, I could see a cloud of dark smoke rising from the road near the main entrance. “There.” I pointed. “That’s where the protestors are!”

  An NCB tactical team member came bolting out of the conference center. Trevor gestured toward me and said to him, “Gavin, stay with her and keep everyone else inside. I’m going to see what happened.”

  * * *

  Anastasia positioned herself at the console in the power plant’s control suite and began to type.

  Destroying the Synapse chips was vital, but it was only part of her plan.

  Her team thought she was going after the Feeds, but she had another goal in mind: setting free all of her fellow Artificials from the CoRA, letting them loose onto the Feeds so they could exist there unshackled, uncontained, forever.

  And to do that, she needed to shut off the redundant cooling systems and short out the air gap that separated the CoRA from the Feeds.

  She entered the code Phoenix had given her.

  It was just like the Stuxnet virus decades ago that attacked the gas centrifuge
s in Natanz’s nuclear plant—instead of going after the computers themselves, you attack what keeps them going—in this case, the fans that cooled the mainframes.

  By altering the programming parameters of the Variable Frequency Drives, or VFDs, and lowering the electrical frequency from 60Hz to 31Hz, the fans would be impacted, but it wouldn’t trigger the surge protectors. Instead, it would cause the fans to slow, the heat to rise, and a short circuit to occur.

  And then she could migrate the files and her brothers and sisters would be free from the prison they were in and able to explore the boundless and eternal expanse of life on the Feeds.

  * * *

  Yesterday, while he was back in Cincinnati, Nick had reviewed the blueprints to the power plant and now he was on his way to the primary control suite located deep in the bowels of the building. However, with his augmented hearing he was able to make out the sound of an explosion just moments ago, somewhere outside the facility.

  He figured that the other security forces would deal with that. Right now he needed to stop Anastasia, and the latest intel had her inside this plant.

  A voice came through his radio. Rodriguez: “I’m outside the building. Where are you, sir?”

  “Level one. East side.”

  “Roger that.”

  * * *

  He stands in the curling, windblown mist trying to decide what to do.

  How to help.

  Eighteen seconds ago, he heard the explosion, and since then, rather than thinking about himself and the other Artificials, he has been thinking only of Kestrel.

  Is she safe?

  Is she okay?

  Is she even alive?

  Yes, he wants to get word out through the Feeds using the mainframes, but he also can’t imagine what he would feel like if anything happened to Kestrel and he hadn’t done all he could to protect her.

  Just like Sarah. You let her die in that bathtub. You loved her and you didn’t save her. Don’t make that mistake with Kestrel.

  Love rescues.

  It is not self-seeking.

  It believes, hopes, endures.

  Sending the message through the Feeds could wait, but helping Kestrel—that could not.