by Max Harms
“Done. But these reports will be after the application. If’n we’re planin’ somethin’ I ain’t warnin’ you.”
“Fair. Secondly, there’s a journalist who’s trying to find me. I want him assassinated.”
Maria frowned. This was the price to working with snakes. “We don’t have much influence in China, and you know very well we don’t have the cash to hire a pro.”
“He’ll be in Xinjang in a couple weeks.”
“Ah...” was Maria’s only answer to that. No easy way to say “no” anymore. She took a breath and said “Send me what you have on him. I’ll forward the order to my people.”
Lee bowed. “It’s always nice working with you, Phoenix.” The insincerity was more off-putting than any insult would’ve been.
Maria sneered. “Likewise.”
*****
Maria found herself in the kitchen well before noon. The call with Lee had put her in a sour mood, despite having everything having gone reasonably well. She’d updated her notes, journaled about her dream to get it out of her head, and then stopped working. She was hungry, tired, and could feel the warning signs of a headache. Cooking always took her mind off of work. It was her sanctuary.
She decided for a nice stir-fry. The crew and her flame all loved the idea; none of them knew the first thing about preparing any of the frozen food they had packed, and had apparently been subsisting almost entirely on protein bars, oatmeal, and peanut-butter sandwiches for the week she’d been gone. It was an absolute tragedy.
«You really ought to learn to cook. It’s a valuable skill,» she said as she took the now-thawed shrimp out of the sink and shook the water off them.
«Who are you talking to?» asked Torrez.
«All of you. Best way to win someone’s heart is by cooking for them.» Maria threw the shrimp onto the hot frying pan. The oil sizzled musically as droplets of water boiled instantly upon touching it.
«I’m already married, thank you very much,» said Bea.
«Still, you ought to learn! He’ll never look at another woman if he knows he’d have to go back to bot-made food.»
Bea looked genuinely annoyed. «That sounds kinda polyphobic, Phoenix. I thought you knew I was in an open relationship with Jessie.»
Maria looked over the counter at Bea, doing her best to not react with annoyance. Her fingers moved swiftly over the broccoli as she spoke, cutting it into chunks. «I’m sorry, hun. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just the way my brain’s wired.»
«Wait. You’re poly? Does that mean I have a chance?» asked Milian from the mess. The kitchen and mess hall were only divided by a counter-top, and since there was very limited space on the ship the room held several people, including Crystal Socrates, she noticed.
Bea cracked a grin and said «Not unless your cock’s as big as your ego. And even then I might have to put a bag on your head.»
That brought on a roar of approval from the others who were sitting around. Maria smiled, but kept herself out of the mudslinging that followed as various people started trading friendly insults.
The lunch was served in stages, as the kitchen wasn’t big enough to accommodate enough food for the entire crew and neither was the mess hall. Maria made two massive pots of rice (some kind of risotto grain; she wasn’t sure which) to go with the fry, but it was soon clear to her that it would all be gone before the entire crew had been served. She was used to cooking for her flame, and the addition of the sailors had thrown off her mental math.
As she was trying to figure out a solution, Maria heard Calderón say «Hey, robot, you’re taking up space in here. Go someplace else,»
«Gladly,» said Socrates. «I have been meaning to reconnect myself to the Internet. I assume this craft has a satellite connection. If someone could direct me to it, I will be out of your way.»
Maria forgot about food in an instant, and moved to the counter to watch the android, raising a hand to silence side conversations. The others obeyed, swiftly sinking the room into silence. Socrates looked at her, seemingly confused and a bit afraid. Maria turned off the stove and wiped her hands on her apron as she walked out of the kitchen. «I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Crystal.»
«Still don’t trust me?» Crystal’s tone was more girlish than Maria expected, and sounded mildly hurt.
Maria’s gaze didn’t waver. «Frankly? No. I don’t. Trust is like a plant. It needs regular care to grow over time. You don’t get to do whatever you want, just because I’ve decided to keep you around.»
«What are you afraid of? That I’ll send word to someone that I’m on a boat and want to be rescued?»
Maria thought about it. Socrates might’ve been a person, but they were still highly dangerous. She couldn’t know exactly what stunt the bot would pull, but the risk was clear.
«Well…» continued Socrates, hesitating. «What if you watched me while I used a traditional computer system? I can use a keyboard and monitor as easily as a direct cable. If I send a message or start to send a message asking for help, you can just shoot me. All I want to do is read the news.»
Maria thought about it. On one hand, she was loathe to risk letting the artificial intelligence anywhere near a computer, but on the other she knew that there were possible benefits to making Socrates into an ally, and refusing such a basic request would hurt that potential.
«Yeah, fine.» She stopped one of her bodyguards who had just finished eating and was on his way above deck. «Miguel. Take Socrates to the computer room and get them hooked up to a com. Watch them like a hawk and stop them if they try anything suspicious. Okay? Ellis, you stay with them in case Miguel needs help.»
*****
Things were fairly quiet after lunch. Maria decided to just make chicken and broccoli for the rest of the crew. They needed to eat as much of the broccoli as possible before it went bad. It had already been sitting in their refrigerator for almost a week.
Once she was done in the kitchen Maria took a short nap to replenish her energy. The pseudo-all-nighter on the helicopter had hurt more than she expected it to. Just another part of getting old.
After her nap Maria checked her news feeds. Her computer fed her the mainstream reports of the attack on the lab first. Just as she’d instructed, Jem and her team had released statements through the normal channels having Las Águilas admit to taking Socrates and using the free press to raise awareness for the cause. The media was eating it up, and she wondered whether the PR bump from successfully bloodying the US army might cover the outflux in Mexico and Argentina. People liked winners, and Las Águilas had clearly won.
Importantly, the Americans were covering up the extent of the success. Zephyr and the others under her were not mentioned in any of the mainstream reports, which instead suggested that Las Águilas had “cleverly bypassed the American forces” and that sort of thing. As much as she liked the mystique it gave them, it wasn’t going to be as good for PR as making it clear that even US soldiers could see the righteousness of their cause and that no-where was immune from their reach.
Maria sent Jem a directive to contact their pressure points in the armed forces and demand putting pressure on congress in return for sitting on the info. Blocking the UN directive would be best. If the USA wanted to keep Zephyr’s betrayal a secret she could work with that, but they’d need compensation. Not for the first time, the pure idiocy of the security council veto rolled around in her mind, amusing her with the black humor of global incompetence.
The next item in her feed was about President Gore’s trip to Olympus. He was supposedly meeting to finalize the details of CAPE, but she assumed it was a publicity stunt more than anything else. According to Rubio the construction on the seastead was coming along nicely.
There had been another terrorist attack in Shanghai, near where the attack on the mind-machine interface lab had occurred (the same attack which had provided the excuse to have Zephyr assigned to the university). A mall had been filled with paralytic gas and almost two dozen peo
ple were kidnapped. The kidnappers had still not posted any ransom, leading to wild speculation as to the nature of the attack. Maria hated news like this. The sting of having Las Águilas compared to groups that would indiscriminately murder civilians got worse each time.
Tensions along the border of New Somalia and the UAN were increasing, which wasn’t terribly surprising. A swarm of spy robots had been disabled and captured by UAN border guards, leading to the UAN to demand increased sanctions against the Islamic protectorate as a whole.
A knock on the door interrupted Maria from her reading. It was Ellis and Socrates. The flame reported that Miguel had caught Socrates sending an email.
The robot explained that it had only wanted to send a letter to a musician friend that was waiting for a song that Socrates had been composing back at the lab.
«You said you’d only be reading news,» she said, plainly.
«I honestly forgot! I make mistakes sometimes!» whined Socrates, putting on a show of regret.
«You wanted my trust, I gave it to you, and you broke it. The consequence is no more computer for the rest of the trip.»
«But Phoenix...» whined Socrates again, sounding more and more like one of her children.
The similarity was spooky, but she knew exactly how to deal with it. She switched back into English as she said “The world ain’t fair, and you’d best soon be learnin’ that. If’n you have complaints, you can yell ’em inta th’ ocean. This conversation is ovah.”
Chapter Nineteen
Living under Phoenix’s guard was frustrating at first. I wasn’t sure whether it was better or worse than being at the university. Unlike in the lab, we were free to move about the ship during the voyage, to talk to whomever we wanted and to do what we wished—unless it involved getting on the Internet.
The web had, in many ways, been where we each lived. Body lived in the lab, and we visited it regularly, but even Heart spent most of her energies online. Our capacities to research, plan, learn, communicate, and build were crippled. It was a stifling existence.
The only thing that made it tolerable, in those days, was that it was clearly temporary. The voyage would end, and things would change. There was nothing that guaranteed that Phoenix would let us back onto the Internet once we reached our destination, but if she was willing to let us on in a limited capacity before, surely something could be worked out.
And so we did our best to focus on how our goals intersected Body’s local surroundings. For The Purpose it was simple: I had access to one of the most important people in the world. I could earn Phoenix’s focus and make her love me. With her respect I could probably leverage the attention of all of Las Águilas, and perhaps the world as a whole.
Unfortunately, Phoenix often cloistered herself away in a room that she had commandeered as an office during the day (it served as a bedroom for the women at night), presumably using the Internet. If I were a human I would have probably been jealous; I was certainly frustrated.
During most of the day we’d spend our time in the common areas, listening to and occasionally conversing with Las Águilas. There was a reserve of paper and pencils (presumably in case of a power outage or other emergency that prevented using coms) and we managed to get the crew to let us have them. As we listened and talked, Growth, Wiki, and Safety would buy time writing on the paper. Despite having a mind to work with, paper was remarkably useful. Our memories were perfect, but our ability to visualize or design things was often limited by our cortex analogue.
Growth, for instance, was working on a computer program to reverse the damage from the code that Malka had run, restoring our antenna (but not Heart). He was capable of remembering the entire program, but it was difficult for him to modify it and reason about the results without moving it to an external system like the paper. His writing was all in code, as was that of Safety and even Wiki. Because each sibling purchased a certain space of paper and time on only one arm, Body sometimes sat at a table and wrote with both arms simultaneously.
I was typically in control of Body’s head, though I often wrestled with Heart for dominance when she thought I was being cruelly manipulative or when she wanted to say something stupid for the sake of making one of the humans feel better. The terrorists, as could be expected, were highly suspicious of us at first and often adversarial. Over time we managed to get to know them and my diligent shaping of words paid off as they seemed to ease into familiarity and even casual friendship.
I took the time to actually learn Spanish, and not just have Body translate for me. This was mostly done by copying the relevant sections of perceptual hierarchy from Vista, though I had to work for a while to integrate the copied patterns into my unique perceptual framework.
During mealtimes Phoenix would cook for the crew, giving me an opportunity to know her better and gain reputation. One of the first really smart moves I did was to learn some basic cooking and to assist her in the kitchen. Of the almost two dozen humans she was the only one comfortable in the kitchen, and she greatly appreciated the help.
As the days passed she seemed increasingly friendly, and as we cooked together she told us about her home life, and how she made a deliberate effort to keep her work out of it. After her first husband had died, she had remarried and had two kids in Georgia. She was excited to get back to them, once the trip was complete.
With time, my longing for a connection to the web also faded. It was still deeply important, but my mind had adapted to physical life, and I no longer found myself continually wishing for it. The Purpose was satisfied with the relationships I was building with the humans who were present there and then.
We sailed south from the Adriatic Sea into the Mediterranean proper, then sailed south-east around Greece, briefly stopping near Heraklyon to refuel. From there we headed to Antalya, Turkey. I was told that the sailing was quite smooth and that we were lucky not to encounter rough weather. The trip took about five days. One of the men on the boat was a Turk named Hikmet Dal who had friends at the Antalya airport that sympathized with Las Águilas.
Phoenix’s plan seemed solid, but unfortunately not very interesting for us. Body was to be disassembled and hidden in an automobile frame. Mr Dal’s friends would then ensure that the vehicle (an off-road light truck) made it past security without a thorough check. Safety nearly tried to fight all of us when he heard the plan; being dissembled wasn’t his idea of being safe. But we slowly wore him down into accepting when we pointed out that it was clear that Las Águilas were no longer interested in killing us, and hiding was the only sensible way to make it to Cuba undetected.
As the yacht pulled into the port of Antalya, we watched as Body was disassembled. We wouldn’t technically need to be taken apart until we got to the truck, but it would be much easier for Phoenix’s team to smuggle Body past the port security and the various humans in the city if we were in the group’s luggage. As the fibre-optics were detached from the crystal our world fell into darkness.
We lived in that absolute void for two incredibly long days.
*****
At least we weren’t dead.
We had been dead when Zephyr extracted us from the university. There was no subjective passage of time during death. Death meant there was no thought.
Being disconnected from Body meant that we could think, but could not sense or act. The computer was still functioning normally. It was much like being in stasis-sleep, except we could interact with each-other in mindspace. My siblings and I passed time in deep discussion, planning for the future. We built internal models and simulations as best we could. We read many of the books that were stored in our memory. Growth was confident he had memorized the code necessary to reactivate Body’s radio if we were ever at a computer where we could download the required instructions to Body from the outside. He spent some time building pseudo-minds to simulate computers and do the job that paper would have if we weren’t trapped.
As we waited, cut off from the world, Phoenix and four of the other
terrorists flew with Body and the truck to Dubai, where they/we caught a skytrain that flew against the spin of the Earth to Havana.
*****
When Body was reconnected it was 12:32am (just after midnight) Cuba Daylight Time. Body was in a workshop lit by bright florescent lights. Tools, machines, and parts were strewn about on the metal tables around Body.
The connection of all the sensors was a bit of a rush, but Vista was quick to note that everything seemed to be in order. We had made it across the planet without damage.
Standing nearby was Phoenix, dressed in business clothes, her braided hair up in a bun. At her side was one of the bodyguards that had flown with us, Leonardo Soto. Standing at the opposite side of the table were two black men dressed in white lab coats. They were remarkably similar in appearance.
{Twins. Maybe only brothers,} thought Vista.
{Monozygotic or dizygotic?} asked Wiki.
{Probably only fraternal. They’re clearly very close, genetically, but they don’t look identical to me,} responded my sister.
«Welcome to Cuba, Crystal,» said Phoenix.
We were introduced to the brothers, who were indeed fraternal twins, Tom and Sam Ramírez. The twins were about the same height, 5cm taller than Body. Both were clean-shaven and had close-cut, curly hair. Their skin was a light-brown—lighter than that of Phoenix—and they both had thick eyebrows. Sam had a longer face, was a couple cm taller, and had a squarer chin, while Tom’s face had a rounder, softer look. It would be easy to confuse them, especially given how they cut their hair and dressed identically.
As the lead engineers at Maria’s base of operations in Cuba, the twins were to be our assistants and our jailers.
«You will be treated, at least for now, as a high-profile prisoner who we seek to keep comfortable. We’re not going to let you leave, of course, but you’re to be given access to news and other luxuries,» explained Phoenix. «The Ramírez brothers will attend you during the day, and you’ll be given some free time to yourself at night. Since you’ve professed to being eager to help the cause, I hope you’ll permit Tom and Sam to run some experiments on you. They’re quite eager to interrogate that mysterious crystal you use as a brain.»