One Giant Leap

by Heather Kaczynski

  Crane’s face morphed into a mask of outrage. I could almost hear him begin to say now you look here, missy!

  Just then an alarm began to blare from a nearby computer, and the giant wall screen pulsed a flashing red “WARNING.”

  I was getting so sick of alarms.

  “Damn it, what now?” the general snapped, pivoting on her heel. “Somebody tell me what the hell that alarm’s for!”

  The woman in front of the computer that was sending up the alarm leaned back in her chair, looking remarkably composed—only the wrinkle between her dark eyebrows betrayed her concern. “Massive energy output from the droneship. It appears to be preparing to launch.”

  Hanna had come through after all.

  “You can’t let that thing get off the ground!” I shouted at Crane. “Listen to me! The aliens who built that designed it to destroy planets. It’s going to explode like a neutron star.” I ran to Hanna’s side before anyone could stop me. A jumble of thick cables connected the mask over her eyes to the floor. I scanned the setup, but didn’t even know where to begin turning it off. This was nothing like what I’d trained on. “You have to get Hanna offline, now!”

  There was suddenly a tech person at my shoulder—either there to help me or to stop me, I couldn’t tell. “Can’t,” she said. “We don’t know how enmeshed she is with the program at this point. Pinnacle may have taken over control of her breathing and heartbeat. If we pull the plug, she might die.”

  Exhales coming short and fast now. My eyes lingered on Hanna, a feeling of helpless necessity, of dreaded certainty, looming from some deep and terrible place inside me. She still hadn’t moved.

  My stomach was turning over, rebelling. But I couldn’t listen to my fear.

  “I can stop this,” I said, forcing strength into my voice. “I mean—I can try.”

  Now there were several pairs of eyes on me. Crane advanced on me, eyes alight with curious intensity. “What are you talking about?”

  Trying hard to escape the feeling that I was making a huge mistake, I spoke quickly. “I can do what Hanna’s doing. Don’t ask me to explain how. But I might actually be able to stop that thing. I mean, unless you have a better plan.”

  The chief of staff bounced her gaze back and forth between Crane and me. “Well, do you?”

  He gave her a slight shake of his head. “Hanna was the only one sufficiently skilled. Gupta, you’re sure you can control it? Pinnacle is—”

  “I know.” I nodded decisively, but every muscle trembled. If I was wrong, they wouldn’t live long enough to realize it. “We can’t let this thing activate.”

  The general must’ve bought my confident act. “Let’s get her suited up, then!”

  The minions in the room had already begun to follow the orders before they’d finished leaving her mouth. Suddenly I was pushed into a chair beside the motionless Hanna.

  The tech that had been by my side earlier gently eased me into it, meeting my eyes briefly before lowering the mask over my face. I felt the slide of electrodes through my hair, and it brought back an unwelcome wave of déjà vu.

  I’ll shut it off, I told myself. I’m in control. Not them, not the machine.

  Except something had happened to Hanna when they connected her to the device. And with a nauseating swoop to my stomach, I remembered the fracturing of my mind the last time I’d been connected to Pinnacle.

  I know what to expect this time. Everyone’s counting on me. I’ll be strong.

  And then the wires touched my skin, and my thoughts scattered like leaves in the wind.

  Thirty-Seven

  IT WAS LIKE being caught unawares by a rogue tidal wave. I was drowning, sinking, tumbling, falling.

  Pinnacle was in my thoughts, scanning the data of my processors, learning, absorbing, cataloging. It was moving faster than I was even aware, multiple thought streams, memories, all replaying at once.

  Me, age eight and onstage at my first piano recital, wearing a flouncy dress, my hair tied up with big red ribbons, still fuming at being dressed up like a doll—but my fingers flying, creating music that hushed the entire crowd. My family, huddled around a phone, crying behind a pane of glass. A classroom of hostile faces, dozens of eyes challenging me, just before I turned my back to them and felt smug as I wrote the correct answer on the board. Sitting alone at lunch in my school uniform, not making eye contact, and acting as though I couldn’t care less.

  I couldn’t control it. Pinnacle had the reins.

  Pinnacle wasn’t used to me, though. It needed to sink into the sulci of my brain, send its electrical tendrils over the gyri, trace the neural connections. Every human brain was unique in its makeup, roots grown to suit the needs and habits of the tree. Pinnacle couldn’t just move right in and take over everything at once.

  I kept trying to tug the reins away, feebly. I knew I was supposed to be able to feel my body. There was a physical me, somewhere, but Pinnacle had stepped between my central nervous system and everything else. My body wasn’t important to Pinnacle. I was just a set of electrodes.

  It dragged me along, stumbling and falling, skinning my hands and knees as I tried to pull away long enough to have one original thought, to gain some kind of control.

  More memories. Mr. Finley sitting across from me in his office. The blur of my selection process. Meeting God-Mother, pale and monstrous and massive, her mind touching mine as directly as Pinnacle was doing now.

  But Pinnacle was not alive.

  I struggled to keep hold of that thought. It seemed important.

  If only I could—

  It was like trying to concentrate in a room full of TVs, each playing a different channel, volume on full blast.

  If only this noise would STOP!

  I pushed back against Pinnacle with sheer, desperate will. I focused my concentration on a sole point, like burning a hole through paper by focusing sunlight through a magnifying glass.

  The volume in my head lessened, just a little bit. I gained a bit of ground; I could string a coherent thought together. You’re not real. You’re not alive. I pushed back a little more, and Pinnacle retreated.

  But it quickly recovered, redoubling its efforts to take over my brain, integrate my systems into itself as it was programmed to do.

  No, no no! A living brain was unknowably complex. Surely a man-made computer program couldn’t learn it so quickly, couldn’t control it, take away autonomy and sentience just like that. This body was mine. I knew my own mind better than anyone or anything ever could. My dreams and hopes and wishes, they were mine alone.

  Earth, floating in space. Luka, reaching across the car seat to take my hand. Mitsuko and Emilio, laughing, teasing.

  These memories were mine. There were things I wanted for my future—people and places and experiences. A future I wouldn’t let them take from me.

  I gained more control. Tasted triumph.

  For a moment, I had my hearing back—and then it was gone.

  And then I realized my fatal error: Pinnacle was never going to tire.

  I had a hard time keeping hold of my thoughts. They slithered like fish through my grasp, escaping back to Pinnacle’s control.

  Was that what happened to Hanna? Did she fight Pinnacle and lose, or was she still fighting it?

  Hanna. HANNA!

  I pushed Pinnacle back, hard, focusing my thoughts and energy past myself and into Pinnacle itself.

  When God-Mother and I had touched, the communication had gone both ways. She’d obviously been in control of the interaction—it was her native language, she was far better at it—but there was give and take. If this technology was based on the vrag’s communication abilities, maybe it would work both ways.

  I gave up trying defense and went on the offensive, blasting my way into Pinnacle. You’re not in control here. You’re mine. You’re a machine, and you follow my orders.

  Show me Hanna.

  Pinnacle wasn’t human, but it wasn’t like most computer programs, either. Pinnacl
e and Sunny were both designed to learn and adapt. I was banking on its adaptability as my only hope in overcoming it. If I was strong enough . . .

  I didn’t let up. I pushed my will into Pinnacle—like flexing all my muscles and holding my breath until Pinnacle seemed to let up, pause, reconsider.

  Come on, you stupid machine. Do what I tell you. Listen to me.

  And then I was pushing against nothing. Pinnacle had retreated, stopped trying to take over—for the moment.

  I felt a tingling in my fingers. I felt my chest rise and fall. The silence in my ears slowly gave way to sound. I didn’t test my mobility—didn’t want to draw a shred of attention away from my task.

  Just like when I had been semiconscious on board Odysseus, I felt another heartbeat outside of my own. A slowly tapping rhythm echoing on the fringes of my awareness.

  I reached my mind toward it and realized I was actually reaching through Pinnacle, to Hanna’s brain—Pinnacle acting as a conduit between us instead of a wall.

  This is wild.

  Distantly, I felt Hanna twitch, as if she’d heard my thoughts.

  As I eased my awareness further across the electrical bridge that linked us, exploring my limits, keeping Pinnacle at bay, I became more and more aware of Hanna, as if I were walking down a hall, hearing her voice grow stronger as I approached.

  And then I realized Hanna was shouting at me, pushing back against me, because I was Pinnacle and that was all she knew.

  Hanna had been fighting Pinnacle far longer, and Pinnacle had very nearly won. She was a small voice, guarding a small corner of her mind with trademark ferocity. But she was fading, and this inner voice was all she had left.

  I was Pinnacle; I had it under my control and therefore also Hanna—not that I knew what to do with that information. I couldn’t figure out a way to communicate this to her. So I reshaped our perception.

  I formed a mental image that I knew would transmit to her and make her believe it was truth: a visual representation of the two of us, alone in a quiet room.

  It may have originated from my imagination, but divorced from our bodies, it was our reality—Hanna’s especially.

  I looked down at the mental image of my body, my hands. And then at Hanna. She sat curled in the corner, head ducked between her knees.

  “Hanna? You’re okay now. It’s okay. It’s Cass. Can you see me?”

  Her head jerked up, strangely mechanical. Her pupils were fixed, eyes glazed. “What’s going on? What . . . is this?”

  “Something really weird.” I tried to smile. “I . . . came to get you. They put you under with Pinnacle to activate Skyfall, but it didn’t work.”

  “It was different than before,” Hanna whispered, her eyes unfocused. “They’ve upgraded Pinnacle. He’s different. Stronger. Trying to overpower me. He did . . . I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even feel . . .”

  She looked down at her hands. “Is this real?” Then at the four white walls all around us—I had never paid much attention to setting. There wasn’t even a door. “No. Not real.”

  “Pinnacle did the same thing to me. I just . . . yelled at it, I guess, until it listened to me. And then I used it to find you. I conjured this environment so we could communicate. Can you control it at all?”

  Hanna held out a graceful hand, small and white and delicate. A cluster of sparkling, miniature stars exploded into being, floating over her palm. “Wild. This is . . . what I imagine a drug trip might be like.”

  My heart skipped a beat. This had gone from terrifying to amazing. I was still afraid I’d lose control at any moment, but it would be pretty incredible to explore what we could do with this—if we ever made it out.

  “We can play around with this later,” I told her. “They activated Skyfall. We have to stop it, Hanna, or it’s going to kill us.”

  Her brow twisted in confusion, unusually slow to understand. “What?”

  Perhaps mentioning it flagged some protocol in Pinnacle, because the white room and Hanna were suddenly gone, and I was thrown back across the bridge into my own mind, as Pinnacle rushed back into dominance.

  I’d won some sort of permanent insight into Pinnacle. I knew it was now reaching out for Skyfall, linking, reigniting the launch procedures that had stalled when I was connected.

  I knew it was holding Hanna out of the way, not letting her go, but otherwise leaving her alone. It was using me, instead, to unlock the doomsday device.

  And it had already begun.

  Thirty-Eight

  I WAS LOCKED out of communicating with Hanna. So I focused my energy on directing Pinnacle.

  Abort! Abort countdown launch procedures!

  Override, Pinnacle answered calmly.

  Damn it, you stupid machine, I am the human here. That means I am in charge of you!

  Pinnacle either didn’t have any answer programmed, or didn’t think that worth responding to.

  Something. There must be something.

  Plugged in to Pinnacle’s network, I was also privy to its resources. While it was busy, I called up Sunny to help me access cameras and sensors. With her translating the data, I could see Skyfall powering up a few floors above.

  I felt the network flowing through me, Pinnacle giving Skyfall access to me, giving permissions on my behalf. My orders—my consent—weren’t necessary. This was how they’d programmed this blasted computer.

  They’d given Pinnacle so much power. They had so much faith in this computer, and so little faith in the brains of two teenage girls and our abilities to program not only these incredibly sophisticated computers but also our own brains.

  Minutes. I only had minutes.

  I tried once more. At each turn my attempts to access Skyfall directly were canceled, overridden, misdirected.

  Minutes. MINUTES. Until the destruction of the Earth, unless I could figure this out and defeat this computer.

  Wait. I still had access to my body, didn’t I? I pressed my pinkie finger into my thigh, making the smallest possible gesture that wouldn’t alert Pinnacle to my ability. I twitched one eyelid.

  I had full control over my body. I could rip this mask off my face. Sever the connection. Would that work, now that Skyfall had been activated? Or would it just kill me? Render me brain-dead?

  I pressed all five fingers into my thigh, five pressure points grounding me and reminding me I was real. They were watching this on the screens, I could hear. Someone was counting down the same numbers that were ticking through my brain.

  No choice. My life versus the world? No comparison.

  I pictured my parents. I’m sorry, I told their faces in my memory. I’m doing this for you, too.

  I readied my hand.

  Pinnacle reached out and stopped me. Took away my control over my hands.

  “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” Hanna’s voice fell in my ears as though she had actually spoken, though I knew she was still sitting a few feet away from me in the real world, unmoving. “Yeah, I figured out how to do this, too. Cool.”

  She’d crossed the bridge that Pinnacle made between us, same as I had.

  “Let me go, Hanna! This thing is using me as a conduit to activate Skyfall.”

  “Then we’ll override it. Both of us together should be able to make this damn computer listen to our commands.”

  The countdown. No choice. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing—this was all happening inside my head like some kind of nightmare video game—but outside of us the consequences were deadly real.

  But Hanna knew Pinnacle. Maybe she was the key. “Do it, then! Shut the damn thing off!”

  Hanna’s awareness shifted away from me, focused outward. I concentrated on finding my way through Pinnacle’s sharp, cold logic, across lines of code crafted by the most brilliant minds Crane could afford.

  And further, to the strangely alien, unknowable consciousness of Skyfall. Or at least the computer that housed it.

  My consciousness could only circle around it, not touch it directly.
But I saw it in my mind’s eye, quietly menacing on the tarmac, a hum growing louder within. Powering up.

  This thing that had destroyed two species. Two entire planets. Only seconds now separated us from the same fate. Seconds before a gamma-ray burst like a travel-sized supernova within our atmosphere and irradiated all life on Earth.

  How did I shut it off? How did Crane plan to control it after launch—did he think he had any power over it at all? Or was that what Hanna had been for?

  Those megobari commandos who had orchestrated this were probably watching from a safe distance and laughing to themselves about how easy the humans were to fool.

  Wait. Where would they hide from a gamma-ray burst but be close enough to watch us?

  “Hanna. Hanna!” I didn’t know if I made any sound, or if it was all in my head, but I shouted anyway.

  A few precious seconds ticked by before she responded. “I can’t—I can’t access this—Pinnacle is ignoring my commands. Cass!”

  “If it launches, Hanna, can we direct its path? Can we send it into space?”

  A quick pause. “Yes. I think so. Pinnacle has access to navigational systems, GPS . . . so we have access to it.”

  “Can you program it now?” My voice, even the one inside my head, was pitching toward hysteria. Seconds were in the double digits now and counting. “If you direct its path, I’ll try to delay the activation of the gamma-ray burst until it’s safe.” Try. That was all I had.

  We worked in silence for the tense few seconds we had left. Then it was ten, nine, eight . . .

  “Hanna?!”

  Seven, six . . .

  “Y-yes. I’ve got it. I think.”

  Five, four . . .

  I tightened my tenuous grasp on Skyfall. Skyfall, an autonomous weapon designed to not be influenced by outside sources, to operate despite whatever chaos may be happening around it, created to resist the exact kind of tampering we were attempting.

  Three, two . . .

  Listen to me, damn you. This is not happening today. You will not end us.

  One.

  Thirty-Nine

  I FELT IT like it was happening to a detached limb. Skyfall lifted into the sky vertically, like a fly taking off, buzzing and humming with more energy than our sun would ever produce.