Autonomous

by Annalee Newitz

  Back at Camp Tunisia, a team of agents analyzed the intel from Vancouver and Vegas while the IPC liaison drank very tiny cups of strong coffee. Eliasz requested an immediate flight to Saskatoon, but Fang said the team needed more time to assess. Paladin and Eliasz would be grounded at the base for at least twenty-four hours—maybe more.

  Eliasz was assigned a temporary bunk, and Paladin was assigned to stay with Eliasz. The bunk turned out to be a faraday room, designed to cut soldiers off from the distractions of the net. But it also meant that nobody was monitoring their body feeds, either.

  It was one of those times when Eliasz suddenly wanted to talk. He told Paladin about Vegas, describing the short, scented alley where Quality Imports and The Alice Shop could be found. He’d left the force in Vegas to work on something cleaner, he told her, with no gray areas. No quasi-legal loopholes that made it possible for bad guys to arrange lawful contracts between kids and sketchy adults who wanted them as “general assistants.”

  It wasn’t like he’d run away from the chance to stop property crime, because now he was in a better position than ever to help people. Infringement was always illegal. Nobody at the IPC would prevent him from busting the bad guys when it came to piracy. He no longer had to see unpunishable transgressions thriving in the open, their victims staring at his uniform with accusation. When it came to intellectual property, justice was simple and clear.

  Paladin sat down on the bunk next to Eliasz. She did not volunteer any stories, but she did have work to review. She projected a map of Saskatoon into the air at Eliasz’ eye level. Bounded by vast, satellite-regulated farms, the city was bisected by a fat, curving river. At the center of downtown was the university, flagged in red. Paladin zoomed in on the campus buildings, which looked like tumbled blocks surrounded by the brown ridges of bot-tended agriculture labs.

  “We should prepare a strategy,” she vocalized. “There is a very good chance Jack has already fled, but I think somebody at the Free Lab will know where she’s gone.”

  She pointed at a building on the south end of campus, which expanded into a block of text that read “FREE LAB” before dissolving into a blueprint of an open floor plan. There were only two ways out of the building.

  “Obviously we begin with Krish Patel, the professor who worked for The Bilious Pills and runs the Free Lab. I suggest we take a look around Free Lab’s networks first to see if we can locate Scarface. We will be arriving at roughly 2300, so the lab is likely to be empty. We may be able to gather enough information there that we never have to alert Patel to our presence.”

  Eliasz grunted assent, then settled back on the bed and closed his eyes.

  Paladin was still finding it difficult to prevent herself from asking questions. “Eliasz, you said my autonomy key was temporary. Do you know how long it will last?”

  The man straightened up again, and Paladin recognized guilt in his face. “Isn’t that something you know automatically? I thought it was a program that you were running.”

  “It’s not a program,” she vocalized. “It’s more like a password that gives me access to programs.”

  “Didn’t Lee tell you when it would expire?” Eliasz looked confused, then concerned. “Are you doing OK? I’ve heard that sometimes bots have problems after they get autonomy.”

  “No problems so far. I just wanted to know when…” The bot trailed off uncharacteristically. When what? When she would stop feeling compelled to ask questions? When she would stop taking security risks the way she did with those bots in Vancouver?

  Eliasz was waiting for her to finish her sentence.

  “… when it will be over,” she vocalized finally.

  Suddenly, Eliasz’ blood pressure shot up and the electrical signals racing across the surface of his brain suggested fear. “Do you regret what we did, now that you are autonomous?” His question was ambiguous, until he leaned forward and put his hands on the shielded fibers of her knees. “Do you still feel the same way?”

  She wanted to ask all the questions: What did he think she felt? Why did he need to know? Did he feel the same way? But she remained silent. Asking too much when it came to this topic only made things more confusing.

  “The autonomy key hasn’t changed my feelings,” she replied.

  “I am so glad,” he whispered, his skin dancing with directionless energy. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you when I was in Vegas.”

  “I also thought about you.” She tasted salt and blood on his skin with her right hand.

  “Your feelings must be coming from the real you, in here.” He touched the armor over her brain lightly. “That’s why they’re not affected by autonomy programs.”

  Paladin chose not to repeat that autonomy was a key, not a program, and that her brain had nothing to do with what she truly desired. Around them, the base walls rattled with wind coming off the Pacific Ocean.

  “I want to watch you play that file again.” Eliasz whispered to her, his arm pressed tightly against hers. She wanted it, too.

  Early the next morning, Paladin tasted the oxytocin spiking in Eliasz’ blood for a second time. Her arm cradled Eliasz, and his perimeter weapons were in a weightless pile of almost-invisible netting on the floor. The man had a whole day to sleep before they flew out to the prairies to pick up Jack’s trail.

  JULY 18, 2144, 0400

  Med was finishing the “methods” section of the Zacuity paper when she sat rigidly upright. Threezed was watching a movie on his tablet. Across the lab, Krish was rewriting their press release about how Zaxy violated international law. Suddenly, none of that mattered.

  A sequencer clattered to the floor as Med stood with an inhuman speed that made her look like a special effect. “Get out of here now!” she whispered, railroading her body into Threezed’s. In seconds, she had half-carried him to a back exit used mostly for taking out the recycling. “Go! Hide!”

  Threezed didn’t hear panic in the bot’s voice, but he understood danger. He sprinted out the door and didn’t look back. Med whirled to face Krish, who was staring at her open-mouthed.

  For the first time in her life, Med felt what it was like to have a program override her choices. The instant she saw the IPC bot on the Free Lab network, she stopped being a researcher and went into primary defense mode. As the researchers back in Anchorage would no doubt say, the fight-or-flight response wasn’t quite as reflexive as that: First, she realized that an IPC bot was in close physical proximity, accompanied by an IPC agent; then she deduced they were specifically looking for information related to Jack. Which meant they probably weren’t concerned about leaving anybody here alive.

  Alien thoughts and reflexes overwhelmed her. The lab was under attack, along with the human lives inside it, and she would fight to the death to prevent the attack from succeeding. It felt like she had no other option, but of course she did. She could have run. She chose to stay.

  Med perceived the bot opening the poorly encrypted locks on the lab’s front door and cartwheeled back across the room, ripping the seam that held her lab coat together at the back. When the armored bot and the agent burst into the lab, she was blocking Krish with her body. The agent squeezed off three syringes, probably tranqs or hypnotics, and Med snatched them out of the air with the palm of her rapidly moving hand. As the caps burst, their payloads—packed with molecules that would disrupt signaling pathways in the cerebral cortex—leaked out of a small tear in her skin.

  “It’s no good shooting her with drugs,” the bot now facing her vocalized. “She’s a bot.”

  Med knew this model: standard military with vaguely human morphology and a lot of custom upgrades. One of the upgrades was a human brain, probably used mostly for facial recognition. And it looked like one of her hands was packed with lab-grade sensors. Her entire body glowed from the weapons powered up beneath her carapace.

  The bot signaled to Med on an open channel. I am Paladin. You are unknown. Here comes my data. We want information about a pirate named Judith Chen. She g
oes by Jack. She is a terrorist, and has already killed hundreds of people with her pirated drugs. We have good reason to believe that she has been here during the last week. That is the end of my data.

  Paladin and Eliasz’ credentials, packed into a data ball, were appended. The signatures on them were good. No doubt that these agents really were with the IPC.

  I am Medea Cohen. You are Paladin. Here comes my data. I have no information for you. That is the end of my data.

  For the benefit of the humans, she vocalized, “I have just seen their credentials, and these are agents from the IPC.”

  “What can I do for you folks?” Krish asked, still keeping himself behind the bot. “I’m happy to talk if you’ll stop shooting at us.”

  Eliasz stepped forward. His face and voice were relaxed. “I’m Agent Eliasz Wójcik, with the African Federation IPC. I just want to talk about your friend Jack. We have evidence that she’s been here, possibly with a fugitive.”

  “I’m sure you know that Jack and I used to be very close,” Krish said reasonably, stepping out from behind Med. He had also modulated his voice to sound relaxed. Both men were practiced at being on opposite sides in this kind of conversation. “But you probably also know that I haven’t seen her in over twenty-five years, since she stopped working here and moved to the Federation.”

  “We know that she sent data about pirated drugs to Bobby Broner through a server called Scarface here at the university.”

  Paladin added, “A server that I have verified is here in your lab.”

  “Do you still want to stick to your story that you haven’t seen Jack in the past twenty-five years?” Eliasz sounded as though he were asking a question about the weather.

  “I have no control over who sends data through the servers in my lab,” Krish replied in the same tone. “The university network is open.”

  Med watched this exchange beyond the visible spectrum, and perceived from microwave transmissions that Paladin was accessing their lab cameras. Whatever happened next would be impossible for anybody to piece together from the lab’s media feeds. She began dumping video of what she was watching to a tiny, shielded backup in her chest that was impervious to EMPs, radiation, and fire.

  “We also have reason to believe that Jack was headed here based on what her friend Threezed has been posting in his journal on Memeland.”

  With a mix of rage and sadness, Med realized that Threezed’s SlaveBoy journal had given them away. The agents seemed to know nothing about the Retcon Project. Of course, given the rate at which Paladin was sweeping their network, this gap in their knowledge was likely to close quickly. And it would only make them look more guilty.

  Med’s state of alarm grew when she checked the net for the name “Bobby Broner” and discovered it belonged—at least in one instance—to a professor who had been found murdered in his lab two days ago. Gambling debts, the story said. She had to assume these agents would stop at nothing to discover where Jack was.

  Their only hope was to get to a public place where they couldn’t be murdered outright. Even if they were taken into custody, they would have witnesses. This might or might not protect them, but their odds would be better than if they stayed here. There was a student bar just a few buildings away. The place was always packed, even at this time of night.

  Act fast. Distract their attackers. Get away. Med palmed the molecule regulator she kept tucked into her pocket.

  “I’m sure you won’t mind us looking around here, then,” Eliasz said. Med watched the agent’s thumb, flicking through the settings on his perimeter weapon.

  Krish prided himself on being good at stalling in these situations. “I’d like to see your warrant. You can’t search this place without proving you’ve gotten judicial oversight.”

  “I can write my own warrants,” Eliasz replied. “And I have, in this case. You’ll find it in your queued messages.”

  Med made a decision. Defense was not her expertise, but she hoped her strategy would buy Krish some time.

  “Run, Krish!” she screamed. “Get somewhere public before they detain you!”

  The bot’s body blurred into motion, her torn lab coat streaming behind her like wings as she launched herself at the military bot. The regulator’s beam was set to decompose metal alloys. It was eating through her right hand, drawing a glowing red streak through the air as she flew.

  A defensive stance and perimeter shield were not enough to prevent Med’s fist from connecting with Paladin’s carapace. Med’s melting fingers sank into Paladin’s armor at forty-five kilometers per hour, still holding the tuner. It took less than a second for the device to disintegrate its way through layers of shielding and a small amount of cerebrospinal fluid. By the time Paladin’s shield had overloaded Med’s system with a possibly fatal EMP, her arm was buried past its elbow in Paladin’s brain cavity.

  Whitish gray slime bubbled out of Paladin’s wound and globbed on the floor along with strips of skin torn from the steel and polymers in Med’s arm. The pulse had forced Med to shut down midblow. Her body slumped to the floor at Paladin’s feet, dragging her arm partly out of the hole in Paladin’s carapace along with another slurry of gore.

  Krish was too shocked to move. Only when the bot doubled over, clutching the hole in her abdomen, did he realize he needed to get out of the lab. As he turned to run, Krish heard Eliasz roaring.

  Krish’s neck stung. He dimly realized Eliasz had shot him with a syringe. Everything took on a hallucinatory brightness. His heart pounded with something that might have been pleasure or fear. What had they dosed him with? It made his face hurt, but then he realized he’d fallen to the floor and split the skin on his cheek. Another hiccup of the pleasure-fear shook him, and he watched with dissociated intensity as Paladin snapped Med’s arm in half. He was supposed to do something. Med’s arm was wet and broken. It was an arm, or it was something else. He thought of Jack and started to cry.

  When Eliasz lifted Krish into a chair and slapped him into attentiveness, he discerned that tears had mixed with the blood on the scientist’s face. This was going to be easy.

  Eliasz asked gentle questions and Krish babbled the answers as Paladin fabbed a swatch of new carapace to patch the hole over her ruined brain. Three meters away, Med’s eyes were still open, dumb cameras recording to the tiny, shielded device in her chest.

  JULY 18, 2144, 0600

  A hard reboot, followed by an initialization process, followed by another. After a certain point, these automated events could pass for consciousness. Med’s visual sensors came online and she could see her detached and slightly pulverized right arm lying in a puddle of drying brain. She was in more pain than she’d ever experienced in her life, though her suffering lessened as she progressed through recovery mode. Most of her body was intact, except for the shredded steel and flesh stump where her arm had been. She perceived that the drivers for her legs and remaining arm were undamaged.

  The bot sat up and tuned the local network. It had been two hours since Paladin knocked her flat with that EMP, and she’d started a slow recovery from her shielded backup. There were no signs of her adversaries. Where was Krish? She retrieved video from the past two hours. When she tried to stand, her feet skidded out from under her, scoring tracks through the brown, half-congealed blood on the floor. Her own blood, she realized, from the soft layer of tissue that covered her endoskeleton.

  Standing up was the least of her problems. Video capture and real-time data both indicated that Med’s plan had failed. She reviewed, at twenty times normal speed, the video of Eliasz interrogating Krish. A few meters away, she could see for herself what remained of the interrogation scene: Krish slumped over a lab bench, his body emitting very little heat.

  The bot walked haltingly to the man who had hired her for initiating a project that Big Pharma wanted to suppress. Based on his body temperature, she estimated he had been dead for over an hour. Probably massive organ failure from drug overdose, though only a blood test could verify t
hat. He had some injuries on his face, but nothing that suggested he’d been beaten to death. She supposed it was even remotely possible that the agent hadn’t intended to kill Krish, just drug him into suggestibility.

  From what she heard of the interrogation, the drug they’d given him was incredibly potent. Krish was spurting sentences that made no sense and hallucinating that Jack was in the room, pushed along by hints from Eliasz.

  “Where would Jack go to be safe? Where would she go?” Eliasz murmured again and again, no matter what Krish said.

  Finally, Krish started to nod out—probably oxygen deprivation as his heart began to fail—and he gestured for Eliasz to come closer. The agent knelt next to the dying man and they both came into video range.

  “Jack, I’m sorry,” Krish slurred around a sob. “I’m so sorry.” He looked into Eliasz’ face and placed his hands tenderly on the man’s cheeks before leaning forward to whisper something she couldn’t pick up. Then, still cradling Eliasz’ face like a lover’s, he kissed the agent on the mouth. “Please keep yourself safe,” he sighed, then passed out. Eliasz caught Krish before he collapsed sideways to the floor, seating the unconscious professor at a lab bench and placing him in the exact position he held lifelessly now.

  “Did you hear what he told me?” Eliasz asked Paladin, from beyond the range of Med’s cameras in the video.

  “Yes,” Paladin vocalized. “I have also found some university documents that suggest where her safe house might be in Moose Jaw.”

  “Let’s go,” Eliasz replied, as Paladin came into visual range. A square of hastily printed carbon fiber covered the hole that Med’s fist had opened in Paladin’s carapace. Distracted by a feeling of wrathful satisfaction, Med registered but did not process the meaning of the intense flush of heat that illuminated Eliasz’ body as he touched the bot’s arm and they walked out of the lab.

  She messaged Threezed and began searching the university network for Jack’s birth name, in association with Moose Jaw.