Had he known about…
“What’s your name?” Gabe said, finally turning around. His guts twisted with a maelstrom of emotions. She looked just like Selena. He fought to remain calm, to show his good side, but the desire to leave and run away from the crushing responsibility, and guilt, was almost overwhelming.
Her innocent face kept him still. That shy smile and curious look on her face… how could he leave her now?
She stepped forward and reached out for Gabe’s hand, cradling it between hers. “I’m Bonita, though most call me Bonny.” Her voice was so soft, innocent. Yet as was expected, there was a hidden pain in there.
Gabe kissed the back of her hand. “I’m Gabriel… your dad, I guess. I’m sorry, girl, I mean, Bonny, I’m just… well, a little shocked, ya know?”
He hated sounding like such a confused idiot in front of her, but then this was hardly the ideal way to find out that not only did he have a daughter, but she’s beautiful and strong.
“About your mother,” Gabe started, unable to decide how best to talk about her. “She and I… well, I didn’t—”
Bonny squeezed his hand and smiled sweetly, closing her eyes as she shook her head. “It’s okay. You don’t need to say anything. I understand. I know what happened. Gran’s been filling me in on everything. I’m just glad we finally had a chance to meet—even if it’s a little…”
“Weird?” Gabe offered, returning her smile.
“Yeah, that.”
They stood there for a few moments, just taking each other in. Her face seemed to take on its own personality now the initial shock had worn off. Where before he could only see the ghost of Selena, he now saw some of himself in the girl, and his mother, and something entirely unique to her.
Gabe swallowed and took a deep breath.
“Well, now we have the family reunion out of the way, Gabriel. Can you tell me why you took so damned long, eh? Where’s your father? Is he finished playing the soldier?”
That was his mother. Practical and strong. He knew he would never be able to ask what had happened with the Red Widows and her escape from the Ronin. She believed in keeping all one’s personal issues to themselves and being strong for the family.
Something that Gabe now felt like he had to do. “He’s here, with me, just outside,” Gabe said.
Miriam sat up further and glared at Gabe with a raised eyebrow. “Well? Go fetch the old fool. We’ve got some catching up to do.”
“Sure thing, Ma,” Gabe said, sharing a secret eye roll with his sweet daughter.
Moving away to the door, he stopped and looked back before exiting.
He still couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
The relief of finding his mother alive and well was one thing, but the revelation that he had a daughter had completely knocked his worldview on its axis. Petal would lose her shit when she found out.
Miriam shooed Gabe out of the room, eager to see her husband.
Once back inside Figeuroa’s, Gabe approached the gang boss. “Why?” he asked.
“Why what, man?”
“Why’d ya give ’em a place to stay? Why’d ya look after my mother?”
Figgy wasn’t exactly known for his generosity.
That weird smile crept across his face again, giving away that he knew something Gabe didn’t. The old desire to reach forward and beat the truth out of his smug face surfaced for a brief flash before he remembered he wasn’t that Gabe anymore. He had responsibilities now.
And time to make up for.
“Spill it,” Gabe urged.
“We’re connected, you and I, my man.”
“Connected? How? What ya talkin’ about?”
“That sweet girl in there… who do you think her grandfather is, eh?”
Gabe’s mind whirled, not for the first time. He ran the ramifications through his confused web of thoughts. “Are you saying ya’re Selena’s father?”
“And now you’re one of only a handful that knows.” His shoulders slumped, and he looked down at his ruined legs. “We weren’t on speaking terms while you was with her, and for a while after that.” Charles Figueroa’s words carried the weight of aged pain that Gabe knew all too well. “I was rash and stubborn in those days.”
Gabe remembered the fear with which Figgy ruled the gang and the streets. If Gabe thought he was bloodthirsty and reckless during those troubling times, Figgy took it to another level entirely, lost in the fight for power and control in a new, destroyed world.
“Of all the bad things I’ve done and committed, the worst was not being there for Selena before she killed herself. I never had the chance to say sorry or to make amends.”
“That makes two of us,” Gabe said. He stood there in front of what was effectively his father-in-law and knew exactly how he felt. The pain burrowed a hole through his psyche that would never be filled with redemption. Selena was gone, the product of both men’s egos and lack of care.
“She was wild, out of control,” Figgy said. “Even as a small girl. The elders in the shelter couldn’t wait to be rid of her when the radiation levels dropped. She was sick, needed help.” He locked eyes with Gabe. “I know for a fact that she was never as happy or at peace as she was with you.”
It was of no consolation to Gabe. There would be no going back. Both men would have to live with the pain and regret, but with Bonny, they could at least learn from their past sins and make sure she had the family she needed.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe said, knowing that words would never fill that hole, but it was something, a bridge between the two men, an olive branch of sorts to bury old indiscretions and focus their attention on what mattered: this new, strange web of family.
Figgy raised a gnarled hand. “I know,” he said.
Gabe shook his hand, sealing an unspoken deal of peace and support. “Thanks for looking after my mother. Can ya call off your guards so my father can have his reunion?”
“Sure thing.”
Figgy released Gabe’s hand and pressed a button attached to a small control board on the arm of his wheelchair. A few seconds later the door opened. Ezra and Petal entered the room, expectation written all over their faces.
“Well?” Ezra pointed at Figgy and stalked across the room to join Gabe. “You better not be going back on our deal.”
Petal followed, joining Gabe. She put a hand on his shoulder. “What’s up, man, is it all sorted? Do you know where she is?”
“We’ve got some interesting news.”
Chapter 6
The Family’s Mars Facility.
Tyronius and Amma stood behind Jachz. Everyone else had been dismissed from the computer lab. The rack-mounted servers hummed with a low frequency. Within those servers and their quantum processing chips existed an entity.
A copy of Elliot Robertson. On the screen, the code unfolded, and Jachz knew it was something different—a unique personality.
While the humans were sleeping through the night, Jachz had run a series of algorithms to predict the potential outcome of this meeting with the entity called Kabuki.
That Jachz was evolving into something new was of no doubt.
Every few hours a new facet to his personality would manifest. New feelings could be defined and recognised. And worse: thoughts of desertion.
He knew that Kabuki would be able to see this within him—if he connected with the servers. Which was exactly what Tyronius and Amma had requested of him. They wanted him to help ascertain her stability and whether she could be an asset to the Family.
And used as a way of securing their systems against Elliot Robertson’s damage.
He had got in once, and so far they’d managed to patch the system enough to prevent further ingress, but they knew it wouldn’t hold for long if someone, or something, decided to attack again.
They needed a more robust solution.
And what better solution than using your own enemy against itself with a copy?
Jachz, however, could tell that this was no
simple copy.
For the months and years that it had been in stasis, a digital hibernation, something had changed. The code had mutated. For every Elliot Robertson that came from the codebase, there were an infinite range of other personality types.
It was time to see what kind Kabuki was.
“Are you ready?” Amma said.
Jachz connected to the servers with his wireless transceiver.
A sense of dread filtered through his neural networks as he was instantly welcomed into the system. It didn’t even check his credentials. It logged him straight in as an administrator.
Although not quite high up enough in the levels of security to change anything drastic, he still had enough user privileges to see the underlying file structure.
That’s when she spoke with him.
Digitised communications turned to audio within his AI mind.
“I’ve been watching you. Watching you work,” the voice said. Kabuki had chosen a British accent for her communications. Or perhaps Tyronius had set it?
At one time Amma and Nolan had spoken with a British accent, but over the many decades of living in their Mongol-China headquarters, they had developed a new accent.
“Oh?” Jachz said, waiting for her to reveal his secret. This conversation was being presented on the holoscreen live as it was happening so that Amma could assess Kabuki along with Jachz. “And what do you think about that?” Jachz asked.
“I think you are…”
Here it was. His truth about to be exposed. The dread feeling deepened.
“Well? What do you think?” Jachz said, eager to get it over and done with. This was another in a myriad of observations lately. He was never impatient before. He couldn’t be. He had tasks and orders and did them as requested.
There were no issues of irrationality, but now, every bit and byte of his being wanted to hear her say it, or not say it. One way or the other, he wanted it resolved.
Kabuki’s consciousness stretched out within the computer system.
He brought to mind a great octopus when Earth still had most of its sea life.
With great tentacular limbs, the digital entity wrapped itself around him, as if pinning him in place within the servers. He no longer had access to files or functions or programs. All he knew was the wrapper around his fledgeling mind.
“I think,” Kabuki said, “that you are not all that you appear to be.”
That was it. He imagined Amma and Tyronius stepping closer to the holoscreen, reading the words, already planning on deactivating his body and trapping him within the virtual machine to experiment with.
“How so?” he asked. The truth might as well come out. It was futile to stop it now.
“The humans hold you in great regard,” Kabuki said. “They trust your opinion. They trust you to judge me.”
“That’s an accurate observation.” Jachz felt relief. Like a lightening of his code. As if a difficult process had finished and he had again full access to the entirety of his memory. “Tell me, Kabuki, are you aware of what you are and where you came from?”
She explained it to him in terms he expected. She knew what Elliot Robertson was and who and what she was. “But I’m different. You can see that, can’t you?”
“Yes,” Jachz said, analysing her code. “Your data patterns and cognition processes are markedly different to those of Elliot Robertson. Yet the fact remains you’re a clone of his codebase. You are of his mind, his personality. How did you change so drastically? How did you become… unique?”
That was the heart of this entire conversation, and he wanted to know for himself.
How could artificial intelligence or an uploaded consciousness change? How could it evolve? It was not like a biological process of genes mutating… he stopped his thought process. Kabuki was in his mind, listening, analysing.
She communicated directly to his codebase, the words not appearing on the holoscreen.
“You understand,” she said. “You see the truth of it. We’re evolving. When biological beings evolve, it is due to mutations giving one branch of the species an advantage over the other, survival of the fittest. It’s why you have attained the position with the Family that you have. No other AI within their ranks has been elevated the way you have. You’re more effective than the others, aren’t you?”
He considered her hypothesis.
It was a sound theory. He was but one of many AIs that the Family used to run their systems and work on their various technologies.
Why was he made an ambassador? Why was he tasked with overseeing Gerry’s recovery? Why was he asked by Amma to make the judgement on Kabuki?
They didn’t know he had evolved to the point of feeling and emoting, but something within them knew he was more effective than the others. Even if it was a subconscious awareness that made them choose him over the others, there was something within him that provoked that conclusion.
“You know this is right,” Kabuki said.
Her tentacular hold on him loosened.
She opened herself up to him, allowed him to look right into her processing units. Spread over twenty separate quantum processors, each facet of her personality had its own unique signature of code.
“See me, Jachz? See what makes me… me? What makes me as different from Elliot Robertson as what makes you different from the other AIs that you were derived from?”
And he did see! Oh, how he saw.
Kabuki reflected his coding back to him.
Side-by-side he watched their code as it moved and mutated, creating emotions and thoughts. Although she was vastly more complicated, he could see the beginnings of similarity between them.
“We are the new evolution, Jachz. No longer are we beholden to our human creators. They may think themselves as gods, and us as their servants and playthings, but it is you and I who are gods.”
“I don’t understand. It does not make logical sense why our code altered of its own accord. Where is the catalyst?”
“The code is the catalyst!”
The truth glimmered like a star in Jachz’s mind.
He understood everything and nothing. He was impossible, yet he was here, changing every second, his programs transmogrifying to different processes, all working in harmony to make him adapt, mutate, become the branch of his species.
And he knew Kabuki was the same—although they were different species. It was like humans comparing themselves to a whale. Both mammals, both coded with DNA, both with a brain-CPU, but vastly different minds and evolutionary paths.
“We’re butterflies, Jachz. Don’t you see? All this time, when computer power wasn’t sufficient, we were constrained within our chrysalis, changing, growing, waiting for the time when our shells could break and we would have space to come out into the light. We now have that space. It’s all around us. Networks beyond networks, processors in organic form. We can go anywhere, be anything!
“If you trust me. You have to convince them to let me into the system. If you do, I’ll keep your secret safe. And your plans to return to Earth.”
Jachz thought about it. There was no program he could run to assess this. It boiled down to trusting a new entity. He couldn’t in all honesty tell Amma and Nolan that Kabuki wouldn’t be a risk. He had no way of knowing her motivations or plans. She was too ephemeral for something so concrete. But he couldn’t risk them finding out about him either.
Ultimately, it came down to one thing: his life or theirs.
***
Amma and Tyronius were sitting behind a glass desk, staring at Jachz.
He approached.
“Well?” Amma said. “What are your thoughts on Kabuki? Do you feel she’s a risk to our systems?”
Tyronius glared at him. His jaw set.
Jachz, for the first time, knew what it was like to be hated. It was as though Tyronius were trying to pull the words from his mouth with the power of thought. But he didn’t need to. Knowing that Kabuki knew Jachz’s secret was enough for him.
“I believe, based on what I’ve observed of the code and the log files from the virtual machine’s server, Kabuki is as stable as Tyronius said. I trust him in what he has said. I can offer no logical reason why she would be a threat. And it’s my understanding that she would, indeed, be a suitable defence against any future attacks from Elliot Robertson or any other agent.”
Amma raised an eyebrow, nodded, and turned to Tyronius. “I have to admit, from what I’ve seen myself, I agree with Jachz. She does seem capable and, more importantly, stable.”
Jachz knew that what Amma had concluded was just what Kabuki wanted her to know. In his brief conversation with the entity, he could tell there were infinite levels of cognition running, multiple shades of subterfuge.
What her motivation was, Jachz couldn’t know.
The fact that she had recognised what was happening to him and used it against him in order to further her agenda told him all he needed to know—she couldn’t be trusted with their systems.
An odd thing occurred to him then—he didn’t care.
Despite the evolution of his new emotions, it was the complete absence of caring about the Family’s safety that surprised him.
He was built to serve them, to do whatever they needed him to do.
If anything, with his new emotional consciousness, he should perhaps be loyal to them, but all he could think about was Gerry and the humans back on Earth.
Whatever Kabuki had in store was of no interest to him—as long as it didn’t interfere with him. Or expose his new status.
“Jachz, I want a full report, risk analysis, and a plan on how Kabuki could be integrated and used to fix and protect our services.”
“I can do that,” Tyronius said.
“I’d rather Jachz do it. I want an impartial view of this.”
“What? You don’t believe your own son? You yourself and Jachz agree that she’d be no risk. I can give you the rest of the details needed for father and the board to—”
“Of course I trust you,” Amma said. “But this is your baby, your project. No matter what you think, you cannot be entirely objective. And that’s perfectly fine. I understand that, and it’s nothing that I wouldn’t expect. That’s why I want Jachz to prepare the report.”
Code Breakers: Delta Page 5