Entanglement

by Michael S Nuckols

  “We had to open another assembly line to manufacture processors,” Everett replied.

  Within the simulation, Lucy broadcast Christina Lewis’ latest story. “Over ten-thousand candidates volunteered to become drones on the first day. Each took an aptitude test to determine the most suitable candidates. The dead will defend both the living, and the servers housing the dead. After a period of fifty-years of service, the drone operators can retire to the safety of a server specifically designated for veterans. This new server will be guarded day and night by the dead themselves.”

  Lucy broadcast the videofeed from the security camera in Ridley’s hospital room. “It appears that you are leaving us now.”

  A rotund nurse removed the neural interface from his neck. “Time for you to join the real world again,” she said with a smile.

  Ridley awoke from his dream state. The sudden onslaught of pain was jolting; he grimaced as light filled his eyes. The pain in his head exceeded his worst headache. Kelly sat at the edge of his bed. “Dad, take it easy.”

  Even through the pain, the word Dad surprised him. She usually called him Ridley. Samuel watched from the doorway. “They tried to kill you,” he said, “You were in a bomb blast.”

  “What?”

  “Please just lie still,” the nurse said, “you still have much healing to do.”

  “Who planted the bomb?” Ridley asked.

  Samuel did not answer. Ridley controlled his urge to ask about Fiona.

  Kelly leaned forward and hugged him gently, relieved that she would not be alone. “I was so worried. I was afraid you wouldn’t wake.”

  Pain pulsed through his forehead. He smiled feebly. “It feels like someone is beating me with a hammer.”

  “That’s sort of what happened,” the nurse said, “During the explosion, your brain bounced in your skull like a basketball.”

  He put his hand to his scalp.

  “Careful,” the nurse said, “You’ve got a hole in your skull. We replaced the bone, but it hasn’t knitted into place yet.”

  His red hair had been shaved. A bandage on his scalp hid the still unhealed skin. Kelly took his hand. Ridley tried to make sense of the world. He blinked in the strong light. “Where did it happen?”

  “They bombed the Porsche,” Samuel said, “You can get another one. It was insured.”

  Kelly asked, “What did you dream about?”

  He wanted to tell Kelly about Lucy and Diane. Instead, he told a lie. “I was in a forest. There were deer.”

  Samuel was like a peacock as he strutted across the room. “I made sure that you weren’t connected to an open network, just in case Lucy decided to hack into the system.”

  Ridley looked at Samuel in confusion. “How long was I out?”

  “Almost six months,” Samuel answered.

  “Where’s Diane?” Ridley feigned, looking around.

  Kelly still held his hand. “You don’t remember, do you?”

  Ridley paused and a frown came to his face. “I remember,” he said weakly.

  The nurse began injecting a painkiller into Ridley’s IV. “This will help you sleep.”

  “No. I don’t need it.”

  “The doctor insists.”

  Ridley squeezed Kelly’s hand. “Stay with me.”

  An enormous bouquet of flowers sat by the bed. Ridley reached for the card, but cringed as he did. Kelly read the card for him instead. “Hope you heal quickly. Love, Fiona.”

  The drug burned as it made its way into his veins. Why hadn’t they used the neural collar again? As he leaned against the pillow, he wondered if the drug were a sedative or a poison. It was too late. Ridley fought to stay awake but his eyes grew heavy.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Ridley’s eyes fluttered as he awoke. “Is Samuel gone?”

  Kelly had been napping under a blanket. She pushed it aside and sat upright. “I’m glad you’re awake.”

  “Where’s Samuel?”

  “He wanted me to go back to the mansion with Wes. I told him that I wanted to stay.”

  He remained groggy. “I’m glad you did.”

  “He threatened Lucy,” she said, “He told her that he’d power her down.”

  Ridley wanted to tell Kelly the truth. He looked at the security camera watching them and then at his daughter. She seemed to have grown taller and her hair was now tucked into a loose bun. “Are they okay?”

  “They’re angry, but okay.”

  “We’ll talk about that when we get home.”

  Ridley tried to sit up. Kelly went to help him. “Slow now.” She placed a pillow behind his back. “The nurse said it’ll take some time to get used to your body again.”

  He paused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your legs.”

  “My legs?”

  Ridley tried wiggling his feet, but the sheet did not move. He pulled back the fabric. His legs had been amputated above the knee. “Get the nurse,” he said.

  “I thought you knew,” Kelly said.

  The nurse appeared at the door. She explained his injuries. “In addition to losing your legs, your spine has been stabilized with pins. The spinal cord was bypassed with a neural transmitter until it heals. You’ll need a daily hormone shot to help regrow the severed nerves.”

  He began to panic. “I can still feel my legs. I don’t understand.”

  “It’s phantom pain.”

  Ridley could feel his toes wiggle even though they were gone.

  The nurse tried to reassure him. “Virtual dreaming makes the phantom sensations worse. Your brain remains conditioned to having legs,” she said, “Once your cybernetic legs are fitted, you won’t know the difference.”

  Ridley thought of the brainless clone growing in Korea, which had to grow for many more years before its parts could be put to use.

  Ridley’s prosthetic legs were the same type that he had fitted on the young soldier at the beginning of the Great Collapse. The nurse tuned the devices to his nervous system and they responded accordingly. “Now, these are just temporary,” she warned, “You’ll need to remove them nightly so that you don’t get sores. We’ll refit them after you’ve healed a bit longer and the swelling has gone down.”

  Cerenovo’s original design had changed little. He finally understood that his client’s discomfort was not physical but mental. Though his slacks covered the prosthetics perfectly, his humanity seemed bare to the world. He was slowly becoming a cyborg. His brain adapted. Occasional misfires caused him to fall so he carried a cane just in case.

  Kelly led his way into the mansion, carrying a bouquet of gigantic yellow roses. Each bloom was the size of a grapefruit. Fiona had inscribed a note that simply read, “We miss you. Get well soon.”

  “She’s trolling me,” Ridley said.

  Lucy and Diane greeted him from their perch above the fireplace. “Welcome home,” they both said.

  Lucy displayed celebratory fireworks in the digital sky. Ridley smiled at the image. He sat on the sofa, exhausted from the short trip. “It’s good to see you both again.”

  “We have many things to tell you,” Lucy said, “But I think you need to rest.”

  He agreed and went to his bedroom. “Dim the lights.”

  He stared briefly at his LED sky before falling asleep. His dream festered like a sore; his parents spoke to him from their graves. He ran again on the beach.

  In the morning, Ridley tried a brief upper-body workout. His muscles had weakened considerably while in the simulation. A t-shirt that used to be snug hung loosely on his frame. He had become the high school weakling again. He tried the bench press, but the weight was too heavy. He wanted to run, but the prosthetics were still painful.

  A notification for an incoming call appeared on the wall-screen. Fiona appeared. “Hello, Ridley. Surprised to see me?”

  “Why aren’t you still in jail?”

  “Parole can be bought with little more than a smile,” she said, “Not that prison was all that bad.
With computer access and your wonderful virtual simulations, it’s like I never went.”

  Ridley tossed a towel over his shoulder. “I know you planted the bomb.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “What do you want?”

  Her voice was tinged with condescension. “Oh, I just wanted to see how you were doing after your unfortunate accident. I’m amazed that you escaped so easily. What tremendous luck.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Ridley, I’ve been in jail. How could I have done it,” she said with no hint of remorse, “The police are working hard to find the culprit, I’m sure.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “You’ve done very well in my absence. I never thought that I’d watched my portfolio skyrocket while lounging in a white-collar prison, but, c’est la vie. I spent a few years thinking about you, plotting ways to get revenge or to see you suffer. But you’ve done quite well making money and screwing up your life without any help from me. You have no friends. Your girlfriend is dead and in a machine.”

  “How did you know about Diane?”

  “Samuel and I talk.”

  “Diane is not my girlfriend.”

  “So you say. That little girl is calling you Daddy from what I hear.”

  “Don’t you even think about…”

  Fiona was brusque. “I wouldn’t harm a hair on her head. I need Kelly, after all. She’ll be easy to manipulate once she inherits your fortune.”

  “Lucy will stop you.”

  “The AI? My dear Ridley, you should know that Lucy came from the very same files that brought the entire nation to its knees. The botnet is the core of her coding.”

  “That’s not a revelation.”

  “You think you created her. The truth is that she came to you. She needed you. She found a way to manipulate you from the very beginning.”

  “You’re not getting under my skin, Fiona.”

  “Oh?” she said, “I hear Dr. Stone corrected your brain to fix that little skin problem too.”

  He folded his arms tightly. “Lucy completes accurate simulations of everything she encounters. We know what you are doing.”

  “Lucy models correctly when she has accurate data. The Internet is full of lies. Garbage in. Garbage out.”

  “What makes you think that Lucy hasn’t predicted this conversation?”

  “Because she didn’t stop you from stepping into a car with a bomb in it. I’ve been following her online. Chatting with her. I even offered to marry her. It was so sweet.”

  Ridley remembered the little boy that had proposed marriage. “That was you?”

  “Yes. She didn’t even realize that I had used a stock photo from the Internet, she was so excited. One web search would have revealed it. How very human she is.”

  Ridley fumed. “Why, Fiona? With your money?”

  “My money? My money was wiped out in the Collapse. I had nothing but Cerenovo and my possessions. And you took most of Cerenovo from me. It takes a little time for a girl to come back from something like that. They refused telomeric treatment while I was in prison and now my genes are too damaged for treatment to be effective. The doctors have done all they can. I’m growing old. I need an alternative.”

  “I’m sure you have a clone.”

  “My clone died during the flu epidemic. Most clones did. Didn’t you know that?”

  Ridley shook his head.

  “I had no idea either until I flew to Korea. Organic biology doesn’t like things that last forever. I don’t have twenty years to wait for a new body to grow. Unlike you, I hear. The minute you stepped foot in Korea, I knew what you were doing.”

  “Once again, Fiona. What do you want?”

  “The same as you. Immortality. I want my mind transferred into a processor and then placed into a cyborg. But, I don’t want to be the guinea pig. Using all those poor souls out there as drones is the best way to test this technology. If we can concurrently solve our planet’s terrorism crisis and make some money, all the better. We wipe out the poor, the dead, and the protesters all at once. We continue to limit population with forced birth control measures. We make sure that the excess fat is trimmed. And, we take our places as the permanent rulers of this world.”

  “We?”

  “People with intelligence. Scientists and leaders. You weren’t afraid to push ahead with things you knew could be dangerous. When two little boys died in VR, you blamed their mother. You understand what it means to sacrifice for the good of the species. You were the driving force leading to the invention of true cyborgs. I’m counting on you now.”

  “I’m nothing like you, Fiona.”

  “Aren’t you? You have always wanted glory. I knew that when we first met. You wanted your name in history books. You almost squandered your fortune to build that god-awful mansion -- your own personal pyramid for all of time. And you’re lucky… Diane is a genius and found a brilliant way to bail both of us out. That neural collar opened the door to every invention that followed. She drove our fortunes higher not once but twice.”

  “I didn’t use Diane.”

  “We both did, Ridley. I stole her processor and you stole her life.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “Then why is she in a machine?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” she said, “Face it, Ridley. We share more than most people could ever imagine.”

  “I did not kill Diane.”

  “Look at the time,” Fiona cackled, “I really must go. Samuel and I have a meeting with the Secretary of Defense. He’s hoping we can use the botnet code to create a new AI , more powerful than Lucy. One who won’t refuse when asked to do their bidding. And then, we’re going to scan the first drone operator. Have a good day, sweet boy.”

  The screen went black. Ridley balled his fists. If the conversation had been in person, he would have struck Fiona. He slammed his fist onto his desk in anger.

  At the opposite end of the wall-screen, Diane and Lucy had been listening silently. “Are you okay?” Lucy asked.

  “No. I hurt my hand.”

  Software flaws and design problems repeatedly delayed deployment of the bipedal drone. The DoD engineers scratched their head in dismay. Ridley quietly congratulated Lucy on their skillful deception.

  “Do we continue to play along?” she asked.

  Ridley tapped his fingers on his desk as he considered the question. “Diane, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know. They’ve given Lucy access to more data than I ever expected. They actually seem to trust her now.”

  Lucy interrupted. “Only after I proved myself to them. I still had to hack past many firewalls. That data has proven critical to protecting the new probe after it is launched.”

  Ridley scowled. “Protect the probe? I don’t understand.”

  “China was right about the orbital laser’s potential as a military weapon,” Lucy said, “The DoD destroyed the original Hawking Probe before it ever left Earth’s orbit. The imagery from the probe was cobbled together from previous exploratory missions. False data was sent to NASA.”

  “It was more than just imagery,” Diane added, “They’ve falsified gravimetric data too. They’ve actively worked to stymy physics research in general. The Mars mission was actively sabotaged.”

  “But why?” he asked.

  “Control,” Diane said, “Open scientific inquiry means that everyone’s technology advances at the same rate. They want to hamper development in other countries.”

  Ridley rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Do we tell people?”

  “I hacked into this information,” Lucy said, “Revealing this would jeopardize us.”

  Diane shook her head. “It’s technically treason. And, with their active disinformation campaigns, who would believe us anyway?”

  “If we stop helping them,” Lucy said, “They may realize what else we’ve been doing. Even if we make it into space, you and Kelly would rema
in in harm’s way.”

  “They’d kill a child?” he asked.

  “They’ve done worse,” Diane said.

  “There is another consideration,” Lucy said, “Access to accurate data has changed my models.”

  Ridley was afraid to ask, “What are you predicting?”

  Lucy stated plainly. “I foresee civilization ending in fire. Humanity may be coming to a close.”

  “We have to fight this,” Ridley said.

  “I see no path forward. I have modeled many alternatives.”

  “Fiona wins if we go along. Have we found nothing else connecting her to the bomb?”

  “Any credible data seems to have been wiped,” Lucy said, “Though I could construct data to convince…”

  “No. Don’t do that.”

  Sandy sat in Diane’s lap. She stroked the dog’s ears. “I don’t like playing along with Fiona any more than you, but there will always be a Fiona. We have too much to lose. They’ve got us beat.”

  “For now,” Ridley said.

  Lucy sat within the tea house. She meditated as a small fire heated a pot of water. “We use the money from the DoD to build the space probe. We carry information on life into the stars.”

  “Are the stakes really that high now?” he asked.

  Diane nodded feebly. “Maybe we should play along a week at a time. We can revisit this decision as we get more information.”

  A muscle in Ridley’s jaw twitched. His anger remained palpable. “There has to be a way. We just haven’t seen it yet. How certain are you about your model, Lucy?”

  “There is a 0.028 percent chance that I am wrong.”

  Ridley’s decision was agonizing. “As much as I hate to say it, we continue playing along. We focus on getting the server into space. But, we continue to look for a way to expose these lies. People need to understand what has been happening.”

  “Revealing the truth will expedite instability,” Lucy warned, “Revolution is inevitable.”