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“Hey,” Evan said. “You were awesome. Much better than Dr. Fielding. At least you didn’t kill the damn thing!”
“Well, that’s something,” Chal said, waving one hand as Evan left the room. He had made her feel better, oddly enough. Perhaps it was being compared favorably to Dr. Fielding. She hated being condescended to, and Evan seemed to be the only person in the laboratory who treated her nicely.
Flipping open the laptop, she brushed back her hair. Even with food in her, she felt weak. She didn’t know how she was going to be able to handle the next awakening. As her eyes scanned her email inbox, she did a double take. She checked the first two pages of her email, but they had all been read.
Someone had been going through her mail.
Chal was pissed. Her first thought was Evan – he had been the last one in this laboratory, anyway. But Evan wouldn’t know her social security number password, and even if he did, so what? What would he want with her email? Of all the people in the lab, he was the most trustworthy. It must have been someone else.
She checked to make sure none of the emails had been deleted, but everything checked out normally. Someone had broken into the laptop just to read the emails, and didn’t even bother to hide the tracks. It was odd, to say the least. And just like that, Chal felt the last vestige of her privacy rise like smoke in the air and dissipate.
She had to talk to Johnner.
Snapping the laptop shut, she rose and went to Johnner’s office. She swiped her ID card, but it didn’t open. Great. The one door in this entire damned structure that she couldn’t open. She banged the palm of her hand on the door and was surprised when it hissed open immediately.
“Dr. Davidson.” Lieutenant Johnner stood in front of her, his expression unreadable. “I was just about to go find you.”
“I’m here,” she said, striding into the room. The door hissed shut behind her. There were plaques and awards of commendation hung all over the walls, and instead of the standard office model Johnner had a leather-backed chair behind his desk. It was painted a dark red, and the effect was one of luxury. Chal looked down to see the white tile still extended across the entire floor. The room was still sterile underneath all its trappings of luxury. Sterile and dead.
“Somebody went through my email,” Chal said.
Johnner sat behind his desk, reclining in the leather chair. He didn’t say anything.
“Did you know about this?” she pressed.
“How do you know somebody went through your email?” Johnner asked.
“It was read before I opened it up today,” Chal said. “All of my new messages.”
Johnner frowned. “Where was the computer?”
“In the substrate lab,” Chal said, realizing that they must have security tapes. “Will you be able to check to see who had access? Who’s been in there?”
Johnner exhaled. “I’ll check with security. In the meantime, please don’t leave your computer laying around where anyone can find it.”
“It had a password,” Chal bristled.
“Did you leave it open, perhaps?” Johnner said. Chal started to say that she hadn’t, but now that she was thinking about it, she really didn’t know. Maybe she had left it open, and some curious person had just read her email and closed it back up again.
“It’s possible,” she admitted.
Lieutenant Johnner folded his hands in front of him. “Then we will both try to do better with security for next time.”
Chal didn’t like Johnner’s tone, but she pressed on to the more important issue.
“Did you know about the interferon?” Chal asked.
“The what?” Johnner said.
“The interferon serum,” Chal said. “Dr. Fielding–”
“The serum. Yes, yes, of course. It’s part of the protocol to be able to turn off the prototypes if we need to,” Johnner said.
“Turn off?” Chal said. She knew what he meant, but it irked her that he brushed off killing the androids so quickly.
“No more consciousness,” Lieutenant Johnner said. “It wipes them out completely. Or so Dr. Fielding assures me.”
“What would make you want to do such a thing?” Chal asked.
“Oh, you know,” Lieutenant Johnner said. He waved his hand in the air vaguely. “In case the prototype grew violent. In case things got out of hand.”
“That serum,” Chal said. “That was what was in the syringes the assistants had. Is that right?”
“It’s required by protocol that we have alternatives ready,” Johnner said.
“You would just kill him,” Chal said. “One injection and he would be dead.”
“It,” Lieutenant Johnner said, “would be turned off.”
Chal fumed.
“Look,” Lieutenant Johnner said, “I brought you in here to update you on the political status. There’s been some turbulence topside.”
Chal stood, waiting. She had never cared about politics, and wasn’t about to get started now.
“Singapore has developed the same kind of bio-intelligence as we have here in our labs. They’ve just declared war on India.”
Chal laughed. Singapore was a leader in bio-tech, to be sure, but to declare war on one of the largest, most developed countries in Asia? It was insane.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Davidson. You find this funny?”
“What are they going to do next, invade us?” Chal said. “I’m sorry, but is this really happening? This isn’t just a joke?”
Johnner looked at her, and she felt the full force of his disapproval.
“Perhaps you don’t understand what we’re doing here.”
“Perhaps you should tell me instead of playing cryptic word games,” she said.
“The bio-intelligence they have developed–”
“The same as what we’re doing here? Creating human intelligences?” Chal wasn’t too surprised. Singapore had always pushed the boundaries of ethical experimentation, and this was as lucrative a research opportunity as any, barring the strange focus on emotion.
“ –the intelligence they have developed falls outside of the boundaries of the MacLaurin Conventions.”
Chal’s mouth dropped open. Immediately the pieces started falling into place.
The MacLaurin conventions had prohibited digital intelligence designed to kill emotionally conscious beings. But what if the digital intelligences themselves were emotional?
“How–” Chal said, then stopped herself, trying to figure it out. She couldn’t. “How are they planning on using them?”
“Various possibilities,” Johnner said. “It would be difficult to stop an invading force made up of conscious digital intelligence.”
“But India has tons of digital intelligence,” Chal said.
“That just makes it worse,” Johnner said. “If Singapore tried to invade a non-digital nation, they’d be sunk. You can still use guns on anyone, after all. But everything in India has been developed with digital intelligence, including their military arsenal. And they’re not allowed to fight back with anything even remotely dig-int if the invading force is emotionally conscious.”
Chal went silent, considering the possibilities. If they had indeed developed digital intelligences of the same sort, there was no reason they couldn’t have used them as spies, even before invading. The digital intelligences themselves wouldn’t be able to fight, but so what? They could be used for reconnaissance, or simply as cover for the non-digital arsenal. They could spread through the world unknowingly. Or they could be used to incite a breach of the MacLaurin conventions, to spark a world war. Chal’s head spun as the true possibilities of the research became clear to her.
“That’s why all the guards with guns,” she said. “Is everybody here military except for me?”
Lieutenant Johnner nodded. “This laboratory is now considered a combat zone under M.I.D. command.”
“A combat zone?” Chal was aghast. So that’s why it was all men working in this lab.
“Alw
ays a possibility.” Johnner seemed unfazed. “It was in the paperwork you signed upon arrival.”
“Right, one of those stacks of paperwork,” Chal said. She hadn’t read a single page. There had been no time. No time –
“The NorAm-Soviet consulate considers the research here a prime target for its work in emotional sentience,” Johnner said. “All the more so now that an outside nation has declared war using emotionally conscious intelligences.”
“Nobody thought of this beforehand?” Chal said. She looked at Lieutenant Johnner accusingly.
“We did,” he said. “We just thought we’d be the first ones to develop them.” He looked slightly embarrassed.
Chal stood. She was tired, and she felt as though her brain was moving slowly, as though in a dream.
“So...the prototypes?”
“Yes?”
“You’re planning to use them as foot soldiers?”
“More like defensive aids. They won’t be fighting against any actual people, just other biologically-grown intelligences.”
Chal blanched. “What’s the difference?”
“I’m afraid we’re talking at cross-purposes, Dr. Davidson,” Lieutenant Johnner said.
“We certainly are.” She wasn’t going to help the military create a second tier of fighters. It was immoral, atrocious. She turned on her heel to leave.
“Dr. Davidson, there was something else. The reason I was going to look for you.”
“Yes?” Chal asked. She was already seething with contempt, and the last thing she wanted to do was spend one more second in front of Johnner’s desk.
“I’m returning the project’s lead to Dr. Friedman,” he said.
Chal wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “You’re what?”
“Dr. Friedman will be in charge of the project from here on out,” Johnner said. “As a sensitive M.I.D. project, this experiment needs to be under military command.”
“Is that protocol?” Chal snapped.
“No, Dr. Davidson, it’s not just protocol. It’s me replacing a scientist who has endangered the success of this mission–”
“Mission?” So it was a mission, not a project. Of course.
“–who has bordered on destroying a priceless prototype–”
Chal leaned over the desk and spoke over Lieutenant Johnner. “You said this was an emergency scientific project, not a mission. I am working in this lab as a scientist–”
“–and having sexual contact with the subject of the experiment!”
“The android was malfunctioning,” she said, jaw clenched. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Apart from your misconduct in the laboratory,” Lieutenant Johnner said, continuing on as if he hadn’t even heard Chal, “you’ve compromised the success of this mission from the beginning.”
“How?” Chal asked. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“You lied during the initial medical examination,” Johnner said cooly.
“Excuse me?” Chal said.
Johnner picked up a folder from his desk; Chal saw the logo of her graduate university on the top page.
“Chal Davidson, twenty-one years of age. Suffers from ongoing episodes of depression–”
“Give me that!” Chal reached for the folder, but Johnner leaned away.
“–episodes of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder brought about by her childhood experiences in wartime.”
Chal was trembling, her face burning hot. “That’s private information,” she said. “They shouldn’t have released that to you.”
“At this level of security there is no private information, Dr. Davidson,” Lieutenant Johnner said.
Chal’s expression deadened. She was white with fury, her hands clutching the edge of the desk. She wanted to scream at the lieutenant, wanted to slap him with all of the rage that had built inside of her. She wanted to resign right then and there, and demand to be taken back to California. Right now California seemed worlds away.
“I take it I’m to leave, then?” she asked instead.
“You can’t.” Johnner said.
“Excuse me?”
“This laboratory has been locked down due to the political crisis on the surface,” Johnner said. “Nobody goes in or out.”
Chal blinked and paused a second before continuing; she hadn’t expected something so drastic. “I’ll stay in my quarters, then. Do you know how long it will be before I can go?”
“I don’t know,” Lieutenant Johnner said wryly. “How long do wars usually take?”
Chal’s gaze glittered with anger, but she forced herself to back away from Johnner’s desk.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said, at the doorway.
“You’ll be notified as soon as the laboratory is unlocked,” Johnner said.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
***
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Chal left Johnner’s office, her eyes burning with tears she would not let escape. She wanted to leave right then and there; she wanted to stay with Alan, the most precious experiment she had ever been a part of. He was a sentient being, an emotional being, and she had helped to bring him into existence. How dare they take the project’s control away from her!
In her quarters Chal fell onto her bed. Every part of her seemed dead, and there was a buzzing in her ears. She felt as sorry for herself as she ever had. These feelings weren’t normal. She was always able to separate herself from her work. All of her achievements meant precisely nothing, she knew, and neither did any of her failures. She had always been able to work and just enjoy the work, enjoy the feeling of acting competently, creating something where before there had been nothing.
She thought of what it would be like to have her consciousness – how had Johnner put it? – turned off. Chal had always thought of death as something to be accepted just as any part of life was accepted, but she only thought of it in an intellectual sense. The fabric of the universe shifted and changed. At one time she had been nothing, and someday in the future she would be nothing. Right now she was just a flicker of consciousness in a vast dark sea of unconscious material. It didn’t faze her to think that one day the flicker would be extinguished in her body and ignited in someone else’s. Grieving over death made as much sense as grieving over the crashing over the waves against the sand. New waves formed and crashed, and there was no loss, just the endless cycle of a process put into motion a long time ago.
This project was different, though, and as she tossed and turned over on the bed she tried to separate the strands of her work from the emotions that were indelibly tied to it. She couldn’t help but think of how Alan would react during the next questioning. If they tried to ask him about his own mental states again –
“No.” She whispered to herself, her face turned to the wall. “No!” She was no longer concerned about herself; she didn’t care how long she had to stay underground, locked into this laboratory, but to leave him behind... it wasn’t possible. She didn’t want to stay, but she didn’t want to go back to the world either. Not without him.
Chal felt something inside of her fall apart, and the wall which had been holding her emotions at bay was no longer there. Tears streamed down her eyes and she let them roll, her body racked with sobs. Her entire being felt as though it was burning up from the inside, and, not caring anymore who observed her pain, she cried aloud in terror for the man she could no longer do anything to save.
In time, she ran out of tears.
***
When she next awoke, Chal had the sensation of waking up in a completely foreign place. The lights in her room had been turned off, and she stumbled to the doorway, her fingers scrabbling at the wall before she could turn them back on. She leaned against the wall, letting her eyes adjust to the brightness.
Her face was blotched and red, her clothes slept in, but who cared? There was nothing left for her to do here but wait until they let her leave. She splashed some water on her face and headed towar
d the substrate lab, where she had left her computer.
Rounding the corner, she saw the lab assistants wheeling Alan back from the main lab. The sight stopped her dead in her tracks. His face looked peaceful, and for a moment Chal was sure he was dead. Then she saw his chest rise in breath, and his head turned to one side. The gurney was wheeled into the room, and he was gone.
Her heart was twisted in jealousy. Dr. Fielding had taken the project, had taken him. She blinked hard and forced herself to walk normally, past his room and down the hall to the substrate lab.
Nobody was there but the animals. Chal walked to the back of the lab. The octopi were hiding in the underside of the coral, their legs only partially visible through the craggy holes in the rock. She bent down, scrutinizing the heads of coral.
When she was a child, she had made her own seawater tank, jury-rigged with a filter she had found in a scrap heap somewhere. Most of the coral that grew in the Mediterranean were the red, sticklike colonies of coral. Once she had found a white blooming coral that she transplanted ever so carefully to her tank. She was fascinated by the way the polyps grew slowly but surely, spreading their exoskeleton millimeter by millimeter. Most children would not have the patience to take care of something which grew so imperceptibly, and her mother had often wondered aloud if she would not like a fish or two to put into her tank, something more like a pet.
“Something alive,” her mother had said.
“Coral is alive,” Chal remembered saying.
“It just looks like rocks to me,” her mother said. “Tcha, whatever you want!”
Standing back up, Chal thought back to her childhood, which had seemed so happy even in distressed times. Her mother always let her play, never stifled her curiosity even when her curiosity involved taking apart the only working radio in the house.
These happy thoughts were broken up by the chattering of the mice, which were at the moment fighting over a cardboard tube which had been chewed and shredded so much that it was falling apart. Chal’s gaze went past them, focusing on the door which stood so unobtrusively at the very back of the lab.
Chal approached the metal door, reaching her fingers out to touch it. The door was cold against her palm. All those bodies, lining the walls. All those bodies, cold but breathing, their stares empty and eternal.