“Send it anonymously,” Ridley said, “Make sure people can’t trace it back to your ship.”
Ridley turned the volume up on the news. An aerial drone was broadcasting live footage from the Los Angeles blast site. An announcer said, “The President has not yet authorized a counterstrike.”
“Was it like this in the Great Collapse?” Kelly asked.
“We had less information,” he said, “I don’t know if that made it better or worse.”
“Are we going to die?”
“We’ll get through this.”
Lucy continued to scour the Internet for clues. “I am finding no information on the remaining four warheads but I have decrypted several encoded messages. They speak about launching the horsemen into the dragon.”
Ridley remained calm. He had seen disaster in his life once before. “Discretely share that information with the authorities. They may be able to piece it together.”
“Messaging applications are crowded,” Lucy said.
Kelly curled up on the corner of a cot where she clutched a pillow. Ridley saw the tears welling in her eyes. He sat next to her on the bed and stroked her hair gently. “We’re going to be okay.”
Within hours, the image of the Dubai explosion, taken from space, became an iconic meme as people mourned. The world needed answers, even though it was awash in information.
“How long do we stay down here?” Kelly asked.
“I don’t know. As long as we need to,” Ridley said, “There are enough supplies to last a year.”
She looked around the room nervously. “Is there going to be another bomb?”
“Lucy is scouring the Internet,” Diane said, “We’re trying to figure that out now.”
“When are you leaving orbit?” Ridley asked.
Diane did not reply.
“You should go now,” he said.
Unlike the mansion, the shelter had low ceilings lit by stark LED lights. Its walls were lined with shelving stacked with dried food. As the hours clicked by, Ridley watched the news feed nervously.
“The DoD has acknowledged the information I sent them,” Lucy said, “I pretended to be you.”
“That’s fine,” he replied.
Ridley dimmed the lights. Kelly pulled the covers over her head, as if to hide. She fell asleep.
With the sound muted, he continued to read the news headlines. He fully expected another bomb to fall. His eyelids grew heavy. Ridley lay on a cot and fell asleep.
A digital sunrise greeted Ridley and Kelly on the wall screen. He drank a cup of instant coffee as a newscaster recounted the latest events. “The head of a religious sect was apprehended. Three additional weapons, stolen from the Ukraine, remain missing. Authorities also destroyed a medical lab where the Bolivian flu was being re-engineered into a new strain.”
Lucy sent a text message. “I believe Seattle is safe for now. I will monitor satellite feeds to ensure your safety. For now, you may lower the barriers.”
Ridley unlocked the heavy metal door. He and Kelly walked to the living room, which was dark. Ridley opened a panel to review a mechanical lock. He disengaged the mechanism and the steel panel slowly lowered. They looked out over the glassy water. The morning calm belied the dangerous state of the world.
Two days passed. “What do we do now?” Kelly asked.
Diane answered, “The same thing I did when I was pregnant with you. You have no choice but to go on with your life.”
“But there are more bombs.”
Lucy appeared on-screen. “It’s not the bombs that you should fear. It’s the drones.”
“Why do you say that?” Ridley asked.
“I have simulated the response of the dead.”
That night, a new ordeal unfolded on television. Protesters were dressed in black with masks covering their faces; each was armed. They set traps for the drones. They fired rockets into the sky.
Once again, the satellite feed became corrupted. Ridley tried to contact Lucy but could not reach her. Was it possible that the network had been completely overwhelmed? Or, had something else happened?
Aerial drones, controlled by the dead, flew over Seattle in slows circles. Water drones darted along the shore. On television, a type of drone that Ridley had never seen, was shown patrolling the streets. The drone was heavily armored and rode on two wheels like a gyroscopic scooter.
“What’s going on?” Kelly asked.
“I’m not sure; but, we’re not taking any chances.”
Ridley accessed the security system. They walked quickly down the stairs. Again, he raised the steel plate over the glass walls in the home and activated the security system. The steel bolts locked into place with a series of mechanical clicks.
Once in the safe-room, she sat on the cot again. “I thought you said we were safe?”
“We are now. It can’t hurt to stay down here for a while.”
“Lucy predicted this. Didn’t she?”
He nodded. “The odds were great.”
“She’s like the Oracle, from the game?”
“I guess so.”
“Will she tell us what will happen next?”
“I’ve been unable to reach her.”
Kelly pulled a blanket up over her shoulders. “Why didn’t she didn’t try to stop all of this?”
He did not answer.
They watched images of drones chasing protesters from the streets into their homes. Ridley wondered who really controlled the mechanical beasts. Were the dead simply an extension of a new computer intelligence, brought into existence through manipulation and obfuscation? Were they Lucy’s offspring, digital artifacts rendered from the combination of human minds and artificial intelligence? Could Lucy have stopped any of this? Or, had she created it on purpose?
Ridley wondered if the outcome had been inevitable, a natural consequence of technology.
They played chess but neither could concentrate. The news broadcast continued. The crisis seemed to abate as the rebels scattered into the crowds. As they fled, the protestors ripped off their black masks. The tattered rags littered the ground.
Ridley considered walking upstairs and opening the shutters. He could watch the sky. Instead, he sent Lucy a short message. “What happens next?”
An hour passed. Lucy texted a short answer, “It ends.”
“What do I do?” he replied.
This time, her answer was delivered immediately. “Survive.”
Kelly looked over his shoulder. “What does that mean?”
Ridley tried to contact Lucy by videophone, but the service kept cutting out. The satellites were under attack. Disrupting communication was at the heart of what was really an information war. “It means they’re coming for us.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Christina awoke to the sounds of her maid shouting from the hallway. Wearing only a nightgown, the reporter opened her bedroom door as the woman was shot in the head. A bipedal drone with black optical scanners stood in her hallway. She had no time to think; the AI grabbed her arm with an unyielding iron-grip and dragged her into the street. “Let me go,” she screamed.
It chanted, “Eternity awaits.”
Inside the transport vehicle were dozens of Seattle’s elite. “Where are they taking us?”
The mayor responded, “To be scanned.”
“Why?”
“They think they’re saving us.”
Ridley crept upstairs into his bedroom, changed his clothes, and quickly unlocked a single metal panel. The sun was blinding. He blinked in the light. A deer and its fawn ran into the cover of some trees. He raised the panel back into place, locked it, and went to Kelly’s room for clean clothes.
In the living room, he opened another small panel. Across the water, Seattle seemed eerily quiet. Boats and ships were absent. The ferry was nowhere to be seen. Ridley barely made out an aquatic drone that had breached the surface before submerging again. He locked the metal shield back in place and then checked the other security doors
and window guards. Each remained firmly locked. Ridley returned to the bunker. He closed the heavy door with a thud, securing it with bolts that slid into the massive concrete and steel frame.
“Did you see anything,” Kelly asked.
“A submarine drone was patrolling by the ferry terminal.”
“Did it see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
The local television network now broadcast only security feeds from the city. People ran through the streets, hunted by drones. Kelly trembled as she pointed to the screen. “Why are they doing that?”
He watched as people were snatched one by one and dragged away. Drones continued attacking the living. “Do not be afraid,” a familiar voice said, “We wish to save you. You are in danger. We will protect you.”
Ridley recognized the voice of Christina Lewis. Was it a facsimile? Or was she now in the machine?
“Do you think they’ll attack here?” Kelly asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Should we leave?”
Ridley snapped, “I said I don’t know.”
“They might come for Lucy.”
“She’s not here.”
“They don’t know that,” Kelly argued.
He handed Kelly the clean clothes. “I brought these if you want to change.”
She took them and put them aside.
On the screen, an aerial drone flashed through a downtown street. A man struggled to get his car to move but the vehicle had been disabled. A bipedal drone opened the door, dragged the man from the car, and into the unknown.
Ridley struggled to make sense of the situation. “If the DoD created a facsimile of Lucy… Maybe… Maybe that AI is doing this now? Lucy said that it may not be sentient… Maybe it is simply carrying out its programming. To protect people.”
“By killing them?”
“It might be some twisted computer logic. I don’t know…”
He grabbed a bottle of water and drank.
“The dead would want to protect Lucy. Wouldn’t they?” she asked.
“I don’t know if we’re watching the dead or DOD’s new AI.”
A toddler and his mother were separated. An old woman fell to the ground but the machines passed her by. A homeless man was snatched away. The situation made little sense to Ridley.
“Maybe we need to hide someplace else,” Kelly said anxiously, “They have to know that we’re here. Won’t they come for you?”
“They might think we died in California.”
“The car connects to a database, doesn’t it?”
“Few people know about this bunker.”
“Maybe we should be quiet and shut off all the power,” she reasoned.
He debated fleeing as they watched the drama unfold. Lucy’s cryptic words stung like a bee. Survive.
The images continued as Christina’s voice narrated, “We punish those who killed the innocent dead. These unjust acts of terror…”
The pirated broadcast ceased. A news anchor, his face harried and his hair unkempt, appeared against a green-screen. “Are we back on the air?”
A producer motioned to the man.
The announcer could barely contain his fear. “Cities throughout the world remain under attack by military drones. Authorities believe that an AI may have taken control over from the dead.”
The broadcast returned to the security feed and Christina’s voice. “We protect the innocent.”
A traffic camera showed a woman wearing a business suit running for cover in a storm of bullets, but falling in a pool of blood.
The camera lingered on a drone as it prowled the street. Ridley studied the image. He opened up files of schematics and compared a video still to the drawing. The realization was disturbing. “That type of drone can’t be controlled remotely,” he said, “It must be the dead doing this.”
“Why would they do this?”
“Revenge? Power? I don’t know.”
The news reporter confirmed his fears. “We have reports that people are being collected and taken to the Veteran’s Mausoleum, presumably for scanning.”
“Dad… What do we do?”
Would they come for him? Would they be forcibly scanned?
“We can’t fight them on the streets. We have to stay here. Figure out what’s going on first,” he said, “Information. We need to know what’s really happening.”
“Try to contact Lucy again.”
Ridley agreed. He could not reach her through the videophone. He wrote an email but hesitated to send it. What if the message was intercepted? The drones would know that they were in hiding.
The security feed on television continued to switch from security camera to camera. Ridley did not understand. Why would the dead broadcast the carnage? Was this a warning to those that might interfere? Was it a message to those who believed the dead had no rights? Was it simply a fear tactic to clear the streets?
The drone paused. A man’s face was broadcast. Within a few seconds, he was murdered while a second man running next to him was left entirely alone.
“Did you see that?” Ridley said.
“No. What?”
“They left that man alone. I think the drones are using facial recognition to identify friends and foes. They’re transmitting data through the television broadcast.”
The attack continued. Kelly held her hand to her mouth in horror as the traffic camera panned to another victim; the priest’s blood mixed with litter in the gutter. An aerial drone flew overhead, scanning for more victims.
“They are killing the people who want to delete them,” Ridley said.
“How would they know?” Kelly asked.
“Probably social media.”
Another woman was murdered. The feed swapped back and forth from the news station to the pirate signal. “We have a breaking report that the President and members of Congress have been kidnapped…”
A low rumbling echoed through the concrete walls.
“What was that?” Kelly whispered.
“I don’t know. But if they are here, it’s too late to run.”
Another dull thud echoed from upstairs and through the concrete. They waited but could hear no other sounds.
Ridley and Kelly continued to watch the dueling propaganda through the night. The pirate feed switched to a web-camera mounted on the Space Needle. In the streets below, soldiers from Fort Lewis arrived in modified armored vehicles. Each was equipped with an EMP gun that destroyed all unshielded electronics. Aerial drones fell from the sky. The camera cut out and the screen went black.
The television feed switched to a high-resolution image from a military satellite. The battling armies of the living and the dead became ants scampering along pavement, a two-dimensional video game of Pac-Man.
The lights in the bunker blinked. The emergency generator powered on just as the television feed stopped. Static filled the screen. “An EMP must’ve knocked out the power grid on the island. We stay down here now.”
“How long?” Kelly asked.
“It’s hard to say.”
They ate a dinner of canned sausages and peaches. The room was quiet. “I won’t be able to speak with Mom again, will I?”
“The satellites should be unaffected,” he said, “Maybe we try again.”
Ridley went online. With the Internet relieved of traffic, he was able to patch through to the space station. Diane’s photo appeared. Her voice was filled with static. “Are you okay?” she asked, “We’ve been trying to reach you all night.”
“We’re fine.”
Lucy appeared. “We are approaching your horizon. When we are over Puget Sound, I will scan the area around the mansion for hostile activity.”
“We saw soldiers on television,” Ridley said, “Do you know what’s happening?”
“This may help explain,” Lucy said.
She broadcast a live feed from the body-camera of a soldier. On the ground, a sign read “Veteran’s Mausoleum.” Cerenovo’s corpor
ate logo was painted next to that of the Department of Defense.
Lucy said, “The servers are located ten-stories below the scanning facility. The Army is attempting to breach the facility now.”
As the man ran towards the entrance, Ridley could make out piles of bodies on the grass. How long had the drones been forcing people into storage? How many of the living were robbed of their souls?
Two soldiers placed charges on the doors and ran for cover. The men overwhelmed the building, clearing each room one by one. Two drones tried to defend the scanning room, where a woman struggled to free herself in the belly of the machine. The soldiers fired an EMP as a cascade of bullets flew. The two remaining drones fell. The woman ran to freedom.
Hundreds of bodies lay in piles. The camera’s feed changed focus as the soldier moved to the next room. Ridley rewound the broadcast ten-seconds. He paused the video. The corpses of Fiona and Samuel were buried in the pile. The telltale signs on their forehead indicated that they had been scanned while still alive.
The soldiers continued moving from room to room, pushing deeper into the building. “The facility is now secure,” Lucy said, “They have not disabled the server.”
“Why?” Kelly asked.
Ridley was exhausted. “They don’t want to kill the victims who were scanned.”
The soldier walked through the flickering. Thousands of newly imprinted prisms glowed with activity.
“They’ll come for Lucy next,” Kelly said.
“No one knows that they’re in space,” Ridley said, “They should be safe.”
“That’s not what I meant. Won’t they think she’s still here?” Kelly asked.
Ridley’s heart raced.
Lucy and Diane appeared on the wall-screen. Lucy reported, “I see no signs of activity near the mansion.”
“Why are you still in orbit?” he asked, “When they realize your processor is not in the mansion… They’ll figure out where you are. They will shoot you out of the sky. They’ll destroy your ship.”
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