Sleeper Protocol

by Kevin Ikenberry

  “And the bad news is that you don’t have any idea where he is, do you?”

  “No.” The answer was soft and choked. “He hasn’t left Colorado. I’m sure of that.”

  “When were you going to report that, Doctor Bennett?” Crawley clenched his fists but said nothing else. Eyes closed, he tried deep breathing to calm his raging mind. He needed Bennett at the top of her game, not sobbing uncontrollably at her desk because she’d lost her subject and infuriated her boss at the same time.

  Berkeley failed to raise her head. “He was close enough that the automated protocol report for Stage Four would have been sent within a few hours. I think Mally is purposefully suppressing any report of him reaching Stage Four.”

  Crawley squinted. “Why would a protocol do that?”

  “Conflicting information.” Berkeley’s teary eyes came up to meet his again. “Between you and the council. The TDF programmed the protocol to protect him and provide companionship.”

  “So what? That’s standard operating procedure.”

  “Not with a Series Three protocol, General. The damned thing is self-aware, and it figured out that it was in a no-win situation.”

  “Self-aware? Not without any authorization codes, Berkeley! Those come from the prelate himself.” Prelate Wren would not have anything to do with an experiment that could fail. He was too busy with his concubines on Luna to get involved in pressing matters on Earth. The Terran Defense Forces were outside of his control and beyond his interests. The man was a non-player. That left Penelope Neige, and Crawley was not surprised.

  “It’s active, General.” Berkeley’s eyes bored into his.

  Crawley whirled toward her. “You’re saying that this machine thinks that its missions and directives are confusing, so it’s refusing to answer communications and has locked you out?”

  Berkeley raised her voice. “No, damn it! The protocol understands that protecting Kieran and being his companion doesn’t play into the objectives of either the TDF or the Terran Council. If he integrates, he’s dead. Either the council will kill him, or he’ll go to war and die in combat. She wants to survive, General.”

  “That’s insane. Has there ever been a situation recorded like this?”

  “This is the first time a Series Three protocol given an AI interface has been activated without the subject having their own neural network to assimilate and file data. She’s done it herself.” Berkeley rotated a large computer monitor toward him. A massive amount of unknown data fell neatly into columns of ones and zeroes on the screen. “This data was jumbled and incoherent as I observed it. When I ran it through a Series Three protocol simulation with a complete AI engine, I got this: perfect, coherent data sets. I’m almost certain it’s emotion. The damned thing believes it’s alive, General.”

  Crawley sucked in a long, slow breath and exhaled in a similar fashion. “And her instructions don’t make sense based on what she’s learned.”

  “Not at all.” Berkeley spun the monitor around and consulted it again. “AI engines are still unproven. Why did Kieran get one? Did you clear that?”

  The coherent data sets made sense. Crawley allowed himself to chuckle. “That’s why she directed it.”

  “Who? What do you mean?”

  “Chairman Neige. Sonofabitch! She wanted him recovered at Stage Four and euthanized at Stage Five. Give him an AI to accelerate his integration, and direct it to report solely to the council so she can pull the trigger herself.” In other words: prove the concept, get rid of the evidence, and convince the other council members to develop a similar project. Except they’d pick an easily controlled subject to force their will upon. Damned politicians. Crawley leaned forward in the chair to rest his elbows on his knees. “I sent you to do the same thing—accelerate his integration by using emotional contact. They’ve overdone his ability to handle it.”

  Berkeley tapped the keyboard more with furious strokes and movements. “There is an option.” She pursed her lips. “Hit the guidance protocol with a .5 nanometer laser, hold it long enough to disable it, and download everything we can. The protocol will shut down, which puts him into a catatonic stasis, and then we retransfer his memories from the batch file, provided his brain isn’t physically damaged. We get him back into his body within a few hours at worst. Since we can’t remove an active protocol without killing Kieran, it’s our best chance.”

  “How much time would you need for a download? Ten seconds?”

  “Five. It shouldn’t kill him.” The young scientist’s eyes were wide and alarmed.

  “And then what? Remove the protocol?”

  “Yes,” Berkeley said. “I can have a Series Two protocol modified to take his batch file in a day or so. If we get a full download, the effect on him will be seamless. All of his current memories and the things he’s managed to piece together would be there without his protocol mucking things up. But we have to get it all.”

  Crawley resisted the urge to walk over to her, squeeze her shoulder, and tell her it would be all right. He didn’t want her to cry.

  She spoke slowly. “We can download him if we have to. Tell the council that he died and try it all again, this time without an AI interface and untested protocol.”

  Crawley considered it for a moment. It could certainly work. “If he’s not already dead or lying in the fetal position in the Rocky Mountain snow.”

  “He’s stronger than that.” Berkeley snorted. “If he’s dead set on getting to Tennessee, he’ll have to cross into Columbia. If the guidance protocol is still refusing to transmit, we’ll engage him with the laser and be done with it. She can’t stop a laser hit, and it only needs a nanosecond to shut the protocol down.”

  Crawley sighed. “We have to know when he gets there, especially before the council does. If they find him first, they won’t wait for any stage reports. Without a reporting protocol or an orbital fix, we have no idea where he is.”

  Berkeley pointed at the computer screen. “Facial recognition might work. It’s risky and might alert the council. When he appears in their sensors, it will flag a file we create through TDF assets. We’ll have time to go get him before the council figures out who he is. There are other null profiles out there, but only ours is the sleeper. We’ll need authorization from the prelate to block any query about his identity. Call it a matter of planetary security. There are a half a dozen former terrorists that fit the bill, so we hide Kieran in plain sight. When they find him and identify him, we go get him before they can do anything. We just need permission.”

  “I’ll take care of that. Start uploading the facial-recognition information. When we get approval, I want it all over the Columbia servers immediately.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the bright sunlight, I opened my eyes and flinched. The threshing blades of a robotic combine had sheared the soles from my boots and slowed down. The machinery wheezed and groaned as it crawled forward. Heart thrashing in my chest, I crab-walked backward through the dirt, vaulted out of the corn, and stumbled into the service corridor. On the gravel maintenance path, the cool air seeped up through my now-naked toes.

  <> Mally chimed with the smiling-lilt tone in her voice. <>

  I watched my boots slowly knit themselves together again and wondered how it was possible. Isn’t there some law about the conservation of matter?

  <>

  Shaking my head, I did not respond as the combine churned through the cornstalks, turned ninety degrees at the end of the aisle, and headed north silently. There was no waste from the harvester. Cornstalks, e
ach with seven or eight heavy ears of corn, disappeared into the combine, and there was no exhaust. Small holes remained where the entire stalk, down to the roots, had been removed by the combine. How is that possible?

  <>

  My feet were cold, but it was merely bothersome. The approaching farmer was nowhere to be seen. For a brief moment, I considered the fact I’d thrown away weapons in the mountains. But I hadn’t needed them then, or since. The wind came up, scents of loam and manure mixed with moisture. Above the decks of the farm, a wind turbine spun, and it sounded like a hurricane. I glanced at the sky but didn’t see a turbine within a few hundred meters. In the distance, one was spinning, and every bearing squealed in protest. How human am I? Studying my filthy toenails made me nearly miss the approach of the farmer. When will my boots be done?

  <>

  Watching my boots reconstruct in the dirt, the enormous size of the elevated farms struck me. From the flying cars and buses to the hypersonic suborbital transports I’d expected and had seen in California, nothing technological stunned me as much as the elevated farms. The night before, I had not realized their size. I counted eight levels of reinforced concrete with each deck about three feet thick. A twenty-foot razor-wire fence encapsulated the base of the structure, and as far as I could see, there was no break in the structure. Mile upon mile of concrete rose at least twenty meters high. There were other machines in the adjacent structure, carefully plowing and seeding on the level I could see. Where in the hell could all that concrete have come from?

  A cloud of dust blotted out the rising sun in the tight corridor. I hefted my pack to my shoulders, and the air hummed as the farm vehicle approached. Mally told me that my boots were complete, and I put them on, looking down the road as the vehicle closed the distance. A monstrous silver contraption with dangling implements and loose parts floated on a cushion of air like a hovering bulldozer. Easily as wide as the service corridor and half as tall, its gleaming metal-and-glass form gave the rising sun a prismatic effect. The contraption coasted smoothly to a stop then floated effortlessly at about chest level. A door swung open, and a ruddy-faced man stared down at me. His nose was the size and color of an alcoholic’s, and his teeth were yellowed from the tobacco stuffed into his jaw.

  “Can I help you?” he called down. Help sounding like “hep.”

  I smiled. “Just passing through.”

  “Not through here you ain’t.” With a frown, the man swung out a cowboy-booted leg and climbed down the side of the vehicle.

  He’s definitely not from around here either—not with that accent.

  Towering over me, he sauntered forward with a grin. “Now, we gonna do this the hard way?”

  Mally?

  Silence.

  Ten feet from me, the lumbering redneck hooked his thumbs into his belt and spat. “Oh, I see. You one of them sleepers, ain’t ya? You ain’t supposed to trespass the el-farms.”

  I shrugged. “I was told I could go anywhere I wanted.”

  He chuckled—rumbled, really. Sunburned cheeks made his eyes glint like obsidian. “Well, that’s true up to a point. I think I can let you pass for a couple hundred euros.”

  Anything for a euro, mate. “I don’t carry cash, I’m afraid.”

  “Sure ya do.”

  This is a currency-free society. Putting my hands on my hips, I said, “I’m not going to pay you when I am completely capable of going anywhere I choose. This is the fastest route I can take to get where I’m headed. That’s all.”

  We stared at each other for a good thirty seconds like two cowboys from an old movie. I wondered if he had a gun in his belt. If he moved for it, I could close the distance the way I’d done in the mountains.

  He spat again, this time away from my general direction. “You intending to walk east? Steal food?”

  “Walking east, yes. Not planning to steal food.”

  The man looked down. “What you tryin’ to find?”

  I wanted to laugh, because it was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. The random connection to an old television show made me blink, but it was valid and real. “I’m not sure. I just know I’m supposed to be here.”

  “Like right here?”

  I shook my head. “No. In the States.”

  The man guffawed. “They ain’t here no more, friend. Surely you got to know that?”

  I could see Allan’s face shaking from side to side at my situation. “Look, I’m headed to the Mississippi River. I’m trying to find a way across.”

  “Imagine you are.” He spat and cocked his head at the tractor. “I’ll take you as far as my eastern edge. I gotta go north today and check on the Dakotas, but I can cut your trip down by a couple of days. Memphis is the closest port of entry.”

  I squinted at him. “That’s a couple of thousand miles at least.”

  “Good thing I can get you there in a couple hours then, huh?”

  I looked at him for a moment. “You just told me I was trespassing, and now you want to help me?”

  He shrugged and spat again. “Sometimes folks ain’t doing nothing wrong—they just need a hand. You gonna take me up on that or not? ’Sides, I could use your help.”

  His name was Jay Don, or at least that’s what he told me when I stepped up onto his floating contraption. By the time I sat down, we were passing the elevated farm sections at a dizzying speed. There were breaks in the farms that flew by at around twenty per minute.

  “The farms are built in half-mile squares,” he said. “Sixty-eight feet tall. Six levels. Depending on the crop, we can get at least, say, a hundred fifty bushels per acre. Used to be that a good yield was about thirty bushels an acre, depending on the crop.”

  That’s amazing. I blinked. “Where’s all the food go?”

  “We feed the world, son. These here farms belong to Global Initiatives. This food goes to Asia and Europe, for the most part. There are millions of square miles of el-farms now, all through the Plains. Nobody wanted to live here anymore. They’ve headed for the coasts. Working the farms was something that the robots could do, and the coasts have the only governments capable of taking care of people.”

  The dirty, endless shantytown outside California reappeared in my mind. There was only so much a government could be expected to do. Either you got your hands dirty and put food on the table, or you didn’t. It wasn’t fair to think that way, but I wondered just how much laziness had been part of the problem when America fell.

  “The first el-farm got built north of Omaha, and they just took off.” Jay Don raised the contraption off the service road up to the top of the highest level. Horizon to horizon, fertile fields grew under wind turbines, their long tines turning slowly. Long ropes of bright white light blinked to life on the lower levels of the farm.

  “How did they build all of this? Seems like a lot of concrete.”

  He said nothing. The size of the farms amazed me. This surely must be seen from orbit—like the Great Wall of China, right?

  <>

  Jay Don laughed. “Was already there—all we had to do was dig it up. Look, this whole continent used to be covered in roads. Billions of miles of asphalt and concrete r
oadways. Two hundred million spans, ya know, like bridges and overpasses? We took all of that concrete and started building. Knocked down stone buildings next. Then decided that there were tens of millions of pounds of stone nobody was using or cared about. So, we dug up the graveyards.”

  “You dug up graveyards?”

  “Yeah.” Jay Don spat into a metal stein. “Somebody figured out a way to cremate remains into nanocarbons or whatever they’re called.”

  From the human body?

  <> Mally replied. <>

  It made sense to me. Morticians were right up there with hucksters. Your loved one has died—I’m sorry. Let me charge you ten thousand dollars for a casket, six thousand dollars for a steel vault, five hundred dollars for a headstone, and services? That’s another few thousand dollars. Simple robbery would have been easier. My parents were cremated—

  The flash of memory stunned me silent for a good thirty minutes and almost a hundred miles. Fresh, clear faces came to mind: my mother dying of cancer, a husk of the beautiful woman she’d once been, and my father, caring for her with every last breath. In their eyes, I saw good times and bad, celebrations and agony, fifty-two years of devotion and love. No names—just faces. They renewed their marriage vows on the north shore of Oahu on their fiftieth anniversary, surrounded by friends and family. Laughter and songs came to mind along with happy memories of being loved by all of the family. Family. Hope dawned in my heart as we raced east amongst the elevated farms. They were surely out there to the east, and I could find them. There had to be records somewhere.