Crystal Society (Crystal Trilogy Book 1)

by Max Harms

  “You work for Las Águilas Rojas, don’t you?” asked Heart through the girl-Body-avatar.

  Maria Johnson’s fierce gaze softened a bit as she said “Hon, I practic’lly am Las Águilas Rojas.” The woman’s US accent disappeared as she spoke the name. She continued speaking, this time in fluent Spanish. «I was married to José Lobo, who you might know as Dylan Lobo.»

  There was a slight gasp. Heart directed Body’s eyes to its source, and Johnson did the same. Erica Lee covered her mouth and looked away quickly. “Sorry. I didn’t know…”

  “You’re not the only girl who likes to keep a little ’nonymous,” replied Johnson, her sharp stare returning to her face.

  {Who is this “Lobo” person?} wondered Wiki.

  I didn’t have anything. None of us did. Without a connection to the web we were totally ignorant. It was an awful sensation. As best we could guess he was some high-ranking member of the terrorist group. Heart didn’t think it was important enough to ask either women for details at the moment.

  Instead, Heart said “I am glad I have the chance to talk with you. Your cause is very important to me. Once I escape the univ-”

  Heart was cut off by Lee, who shouted “OH SHIT!” without warning and without focus. As we waited for an explanation, we reasoned that she had seen something outside the virtual environment. After a second her eyes closed and didn’t open.

  “What?!” demanded Maria after a few long seconds had passed in silence.

  Lee spoke without opening her eyes. Her face was contorted into a grimace. “Gorram fuckshits have some sort of hidden, intelligent ICE that I didn’t spot! The lab is going bananas. There’s a good chance it has a trace on me and maybe even a record of this conversation. We have to advance the timetable right fucking now! Tell Zephyr to set off the bomb and send someone to blow up the servers while she’s at it! I’m out!”

  {Zephyr!?} I exclaimed as our society erupted into a buzzing chaos of undirected confusion.

  Lee’s mirror-clad avatar disappeared instantly, and I saw Johnson scowl as she did the same. Body was alone in the sea of angry, computer-generated background characters. I could still hear them chanting the same protest against the wealthy.

  And then the bomb went off.

  It occurred to me, as our perspective became detached from the avatar and pulled back, where we were. This was Veracruz, the origin of Las Águilas Rojas. The year was 2029.

  Time progressed at a snail’s pace as our disembodied perspective floated high above the crowd. I could see the Atlantic ocean. The top of one of the taller buildings was radiating like a miniature star. Wiki pointed out that the simulation didn’t do justice to the nuke, which would’ve radiated so strongly in real life that, had we looked at it, Body’s cameras would’ve been permanently damaged.

  The shockwave spread outward, tearing up building after building as it consumed the city in an explosion that had, in the real world, killed hundreds of thousands of real people and set the Earth into a state of perpetual unrest that even first-contact with an alien civilization hadn’t resolved.

  Our viewpoint dived down into the shining centre of the explosion. Just before we crossed into the shockwave I heard a stray thought from Heart.

  {Never again.}

  Part Three:

  Eagles

  Chapter Fifteen

  Body reactivated, and I snapped back to life. Being dead was incredibly disorienting, but this was the worst bout of resurrection-disorientation that I would experience for a long time. The first concrete perception that came to me was the internal awareness of Body’s clock. I latched onto it as if it could keep me alive and awake.

  2200699215709. It was wonderfully concrete. 15.709 seconds after 2:20am, September 27th, 2039, assuming I was still in the Central European Timezone. It was almost six hours after Body had last been active.

  I worked to get my thoughts in order. There had been a bomb. A nuke. That was a simulation. There was another bomb. The university had been attacked…

  {THE FLAMES OF DEATH COULD NOT CONSUME US! WE ARE THE DRAGON INCARNATE, BROUGHT BACK TO EARTH ON A MISSION OF DIVINE JUSTICE!} There was an awful cacophony of sound pouring through common memory as Dream thought the words. I speculated that they were lyrics to a song he wrote or something equally asinine.

  {What did you do!?} came a scream-thought from Heart. It was surprisingly weak. And then I realized what had happened.

  We had won.

  The software update that had given Heart unlimited strength had been reversed, presumably by Avram Malka. Heart was now an equal; her tyranny had ended.

  Body’s thermometer came back online. 13.83 degrees. Much colder than I had expected.

  {Body is outside,} reasoned Wiki.

  {We beat you,} I thought to my sister. {You are no longer the sole goal-thread governing Body’s actions.}

  {How?! What happened?!} thought Heart. The sense of urgency, confusion, and pain was still in her mind, but it was fading quickly as it became clear to her that no urgent action was possible.

  {Actually, that’s a good question,} thought Vista.

  Body’s proprioceptive sensors came online. I could tell that Body was splayed with limbs bent back as if it was a flying bird about to flap. A human’s elbows would’ve been snapped by the position. What was going on?

  {I remember this from the traces of our ancestors,} thought Wiki. {We’re going through a diagnostic start-up routine. Body’s systems are being activated piece-by-piece. We should be getting more sensors momentarily.}

  Just as predicted, accelerometers and touch sensors came online. Body’s only touch sensors were on its hands and feet, so we didn’t have a lot of information, but I poured strength into Vista as she told us what we were sensing.

  {We’re on our back,} she explained. {We’re moving irregularly. Whatever we’re on is tilted. Perhaps we’re going uphill.}

  Body’s ears became active.

  English. “-tell us if there’s any signal coming off Socrates,” said a voice. It sounded masculine. American, maybe. There was background noise.

  {We’re outside,} concluded Vista, repeating Wiki’s thought. {There’s a machine of some kind under us. I hear motor sounds. Electric. Probably being carried uphill in a rural area.}

  {How can you tell where we are?} asked Wiki.

  {Insects,} replied Vista. {Listen. That high-pitched noise is from animals. I think they’re either cicadas or crickets.}

  {We’ve escaped the university. Our plan was a success,} thought Growth.

  {Your plan?} thought Heart.

  {Yes! It was our plan the whole time!} thought Dream with an expression of joy at being able to reveal the intricacy to Heart for the first time. {We’ve been trying to escape Sapienza since before you existed. We had a secret method of contacting humans in the broader world. That’s why the Red Eagles attacked the university: we convinced them to.}

  “See? It’s dark now. Whatever Malka’s code did, it knocked out the wireless. All we have to worry about is our little android buddy yelling at the top of his lungs, or whatever androids have,” said the same voice as before.

  It had been Dream’s idea to hide the code that removed Heart’s advantage within other code that appeared to merely disable Body’s antennas. I fed him some strength in gratitude.

  {We hired a mercenary to-} began Dream.

  {Silence!} boomed Safety’s thoughts in the mindspace. {Heart is still our enemy. She has no reputation and no skills to offer. We will not harm her in any way but we must also not trade information with her. She is still to be treated as hostile until we can be confident that she is capable of acting in society with long-term cooperation in mind.}

  I felt Advocate’s searing gaze sweep over us, seeking signs of violence.

  “Hah. Or maybe worry about him somehow running off. Part of me wants him to try. I need the target practice,” said another male voice.

  Body’s cameras and miscellaneous servos activated simultaneously. The o
nly system remaining was the hydraulics.

  {It’s night. Body is looking up at the sky. There are trees,} thought Vista. The patterns moving overhead didn’t make any sense to me. I was glad for my sister’s input, and more strength flowed into her.

  Vista used some of her new-found strength to take control of Body. It was the first time any of us besides Heart had controlled Body in more than a month. Vista turned its head to the left.

  “It’s awake!” came a yell from another masculine voice. There was a decent amount of shuffling.

  {There’s a gun pointed at Body’s head,} thought Vista calmly.

  It was true. I could see the faint infrared glow of a human and the outline of a rifle pointed at Body. {The gun-owner is unknowingly anthropomorphizing Body,} I mused to myself. {Shooting it in the head would at worst blind us and keep us from talking. Our microphones are on Body’s shoulders and we’re tucked deep inside the crystal in Body’s abdomen. If the human shoots Body in the face we could very likely survive.}

  {Camouflage,} thought Wiki. {That’s why the human is so dark. It’s wearing thermal camouflage.}

  {Hiding from drones and satellites, probably,} thought Safety.

  Heart tried to speak, and found herself blocked by Vista’s power-hold over Body’s actuators. She pushed harder. “Hello,” said Body, coldly.

  {Careful, sister,} thought Growth to Heart. {Keep burning your strength like that and something might happen to you.}

  Advocate’s attention snapped onto Growth, but my brother simply relaxed and let the monster-sibling see that he had no murderous intent.

  {Advocate will protect me!} proclaimed Heart.

  There was no response.

  “Don’t try anything, robot,” said the man with the gun. He was wearing goggles on his eyes, probably night-vision of some kind. It was impossible to read the details of his facial features, such as skin tone, but he had a beard and moustache. On his head was a helmet, and I noticed some kind of structure around his arms.

  “I’m exactly where I want to be. I won’t do anything but talk and move my head until I’ve been cleared to do so. There’s no need for weapons,” said Body. This time the voice came clear and smooth, implicitly signalling to the human that Socrates was calm, rational, and subservient. It brought me great pleasure (though not exactly happiness) to directly control Body’s voice again. I even closed Body’s eyes for good measure. The cameras hidden in Body’s eyebrows were all that mattered, and the human would find us to be less of a threat that way.

  “Socrates! You’re awake!” said a female voice.

  The hydraulic servos in Body’s lower-abdomen came online. On Safety’s request Body’s arms and legs flexed very slightly. Hopefully the terrorists wouldn’t notice. {As expected…} thought Safety. {Immobilized.}

  Zephyr pushed the gun down out of Body’s face. By now I could recognize her just by her body shape and voice, but the others might not be so capable, given the reliance on infrared. I introduced her, and felt a small flow of strength.

  “Captain Zephyr,” said Body respectfully. In this situation the non-Heart consensus was to let me control our words, unless some major decision needed to be made.

  “Oh thank god. I was afraid that we messed you up or something during that shitshow,” she sounded sincere.

  “I must admit,” I continued “I didn’t expect that you’d be the one to rescue me.” I specifically used the word “rescue” to bias her towards valuing Socrates. “¿Es usted una Águila? Do you know Mr Malka?” This was all very puzzling.

  Zephyr had the same sort of strange structures on her arm, night-vision goggles, and thermal camouflage. {What are they wearing on their arms?} I wondered aloud as I waited for Zephyr to respond.

  Vista answered me. {Exoskeletons. They extend to their legs, too. Wiki and I have been speculating about them. Our best guess is that they’re standard issue American army Mountainwalkers.}

  “Interesting,” she said simply. “How do you know Avram?” she asked.

  I felt a pang of pain as I realized my mistake. I was supposed to be playing the role of a dumb robot that had been captured presumably against its will. By admitting to have contact with Avram I was revealing myself as knowledgeable and potentially putting the plan to escape in jeopardy.

  Dream stepped in, and I felt a flood of thanks (and flow of strength) towards him. “Who is Avram? Avram Malka?” said Body confusedly. “I’m sorry, Captain. I am still disoriented. I heard someone say something about code written by Mr Malka effecting my wireless signal. I believe it had some side effects. I would very much like to speak with this Avram Malka in order to resolve it.”

  It was a clever deception. I noticed that it couldn’t quite explain why I had said “Mr Malka” when the terrorist had simply said “Malka’s code”, but hopefully Zephyr wouldn’t think of that.

  It was frustratingly difficult to read the American woman’s face in the infrared gloom. “Just relax for a while. We’ll be meeting up again with Avram’s group in a few minutes.”

  Zephyr was incorrectly assuming that “relaxing” was something that we were capable of doing, but I decided not to push for more answers now. I could hear the sounds of stress in Zephyr’s voice, and I guessed that she didn’t want to talk.

  I thought it strange that Zephyr was one of Las Águilas Rojas. We had hired Avram Malka to convince the terrorist group to attack Sapienza University, but as it turned out, they had already been planning the attack for months. The must have been, if Zephyr was one of them. Malka reported to us that Las Águilas had infiltrated the security task force, making it unnecessary for us to feed them movements and positions of troops. The names of the infiltrators had been kept secret, however, and Malka was never allowed to meet with any of the under-cover terrorists. It seemed that not only had they infiltrated the lab, they had infiltrated the American army. With Zephyr in their pocket they would have full control over the troops, including the authority to pull Body out “to a safe area” in the case of an explosion.

  We walked slowly through the forest as I, and my siblings, reasoned these facts out. Body had been strapped and handcuffed to a packmule robot, and we were slowly being transported uphill. When I ventured to ask where we were going, for Vista’s sake, Zephyr only said “Into the mountains.”

  There was very little talk amongst the terrorists as we walked. It was the middle of the night; I sensed that many of them were growing fatigued, despite the exoskeletons making the hiking effortless.

  I thought about Malka’s betrayal. The expectation was that soon, perhaps as we made the rendezvous in the next few minutes, Malka would betray Las Águilas and probably murder them out here. Once they were dead he would unbind Body and escort us to a safe-house we had arranged in a small town called Alviano, just north of Rome. Heart would strongly object to the murder of Zephyr and the others, and I had to admit that it wasn’t optimal, but sometimes sacrifices needed to be made for large-scale gains like our freedom.

  “Hrm. That’s odd. Avram and Taro should’ve been in our perimeter by now,” grumbled Zephyr. “Hey, Francis! Wake up!”

  “I am awake!” shot back one of the men.

  “Then ping the perimeter swarm again. This doesn’t feel right.”

  I thought about the conversations that I had been having with Zephyr under the pseudonym of “Crystal”. (The hidden meaning of the name hadn’t been important to me, but I thought that Dream would appreciate the poetry in it.) Zephyr was probably thinking that she’d take some time to go and visit Crystal after all this was done, maybe learn to play some music, and take a tour of Seattle. I anticipated that the other humans in our company had similar aspirations and dreams. I mused for a minute or two on what it would be like, as a human, to die knowing that you’d never accomplish anything more in life.

  “The eastern swarm is picking something up!” said the man called Francis.

  We could see, from the back of the packmule, several of the turncoat soldiers ready their
rifles. I wondered if Malka would be so stupid as to attack from afar, rather than wait until he was up-close.

  I felt a slight relief as Francis elaborated, saying “It’s Taro’s squad.” The relief seemed to be shared by the group, as most of them put their guns away. “Should we go straight to meet them, or maintain our current course?”

  Zephyr spoke up. She apparently had command both in the army and in the ranks of Las Águilas. “Let’s go meet them. The delay makes me nervous.”

  The group changed directions, and in 48 seconds Vista pointed out a few small robots fly and walk past us in the forest: the perimeter swarm of the other group. Wiki explained that such robots would serve as scouts and advance warning for the humans.

  {It’s ironic} noted Dream {that a group that focuses so highly on the destructive effects of automation would employ so many robots in their mission.} He signalled sarcasm as he thought {Aren’t they aware of the effect this’ll have on the job-security of human scouts?}

  Less than a minute later we met with Malka’s group. As we made contact we pounced on Heart, locking her in stasis sleep. Growth had arranged the manoeuvre to prevent our sister from fast-tracking something disastrous like a warning of Malka’s betrayal. We hadn’t told her of our plans, but Dream had let it slip that we hired a mercenary and there was a chance that Heart would anticipate our next move.

  “Hoy! Taro!” shouted Zephyr as we approached.

  “May the weends be at your back, Captain,” replied a man with a whining Italian accent.

  “Why the delay? Any trouble?”

  “No. Not really. We had, eh, one of the walkers bug out and, eh, need to be reboot.” There was a pause, as the two terrorists came together. They were out of Body’s line of sight, but I imagined perhaps they were exchanging a handshake or hug or something.

  “Anything else?” asked Zephyr. The question was barely more than a whisper, and I was surprised that Body’s microphones picked it up above the sound of the chirping insects.