by LS Hawker
“You remember your Declaration of Independence, don’t you? Sometimes in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to overthrow the government by the people, for the people, of the people. Because the people are too stupid to choose appropriate representatives. We’re going to start over, and we’re going to do it right.”
“You’re one of those, huh?” Elias said. “Everything was perfect back in the good old days of slavery, right?”
Martin shook his head. “Not at all. We can do better, but the only way to change things is with a war or another cataclysmic event. That’s what Clementine is. We’ve had analysts going through the program since you first loaded it on the mainframe, Jade. We think we’ve figured out how to get it to do what we want it to.”
What he didn’t know was the program was a lot like her sister. Unpredictable. Driven by unknowable motives. Its mind worked the way Clem’s did—in ways no one could truly understand. And the fact they had the hubris to believe they were smart enough to control the uncontrollable would be their downfall.
It had definitely been her biggest weakness. Believing she was the smartest one in the room. That she knew best. Wanting to impress people with her intelligence and cleverness.
Berko and Hobart entered the room, Berko wrung out and wobbly.
“Get him some water,” Jade said.
Too weak to resist her, Berko allowed her to help him to his chair. His clammy skin dampened her hands.
Jade hoped Hobart would go for the water so . . . what? So they could overpower Martin? He had a gun, and even if Elias could get it away from him, what then? There were more soldiers outside, the place was crawling with them.
“I’ll get it,” Martin said. He left the room, and Hobart leaned against one of the workstations.
“You will be court-martialed,” Elias told Hobart.
The guard ignored him.
“And then you will be shot.”
Still nothing.
“You’re not even military, are you?” Elias said.
“Not officially,” Hobart said.
“So you’re all mercs, is that it?”
Hobart said nothing.
When Martin returned, he handed Berko a chilled bottle of water and set four more on a desk. Jade opened his bottle and handed it to him. He took a long drink and then laid his head on his arm on the desk.
“What did you do with Gilby?” he asked Martin in a faint voice.
“He has been moved,” Martin said. “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine.”
“So what happens now?” Jade said.
“You’ve written up the documentation for the program, correct? I’ll need that, and if I have any questions, you’ll be here to help me.”
“And then you’ll let us go home?”
“At some point,” Martin said. “Yes.”
At some point. Maybe she’d end up chained up here in the lab, peeing in a bucket, writing code for crazy people.
She wished they’d turned the gun on her. She wished she was the dead one instead of Dan and Connor. And Olivia. Because how could she live with herself knowing she could have prevented two deaths if she’d handed over the password sooner?
This wasn’t like in the movies, where the villain gives the hero several chances, almost pulls the trigger then the cavalry swoops in and stops them. Dan was the cavalry. And now there was no one to save them.
And . . . the other thing. There would be no one to get her mom into a stem cell study.
How crazy was her mind that she continued to think selfish thoughts like that? Two men were dead because of her.
She looked at the tattoo on her forearm, in her mother’s handwriting. I love you.
This was all she had left, because she was certain she would never see her family again.
Chapter Twenty
The hard work done, Martin relaxed into full lecture mode. “We’re going to bring back family farming,” he said. “We’re going to revitalize the agricultural economy, decentralize food production. Why do you think we chose Kansas? So many ghost towns and abandoned family farms. We’re going to teach the country how to farm again, without so much dependence on technology. No more patents on seed strains and the constant threat of patent suits if one of their seeds drifts onto your land. Your dad will get to go back to real farming.”
“So no more technology?” Jade said.
“No, we still have the technology. It’ll just be in the hands of people who know how to use it. Trained people. One of the things that’s torn this country apart is the anonymity of the Internet. The ability to say whatever you want without consequence. We’re forcing people to gather in person again, to be part of communities in the real world. We’ve got personnel in place all over the country, ready to take over. We’re breaking down the bureaucracies. We’re reopening the factories around the country. No more offshore manufacturing. It will all be done right here.”
While Jade liked the idea of the resurrection of family farming, she couldn’t understand how this group could accomplish what Martin talked about. It was all just a dream. The country would fall apart, and China could come in and take over if they wanted to. And why wouldn’t they want to? “Won’t the military just—stop you?” Jade asked.
“If the power grid goes down, the military can’t use their equipment. Sure, the older stuff, but who knows how to operate anything anymore without the aid of technology? And we’ve got plans in place to take over the energy industry. We’ll require the use of nuclear power, of solar, and wind, and hydroelectricity. We’ve got people in place in every sector. No more special interests, no more lobbyists buying favors, and forcing the use of fossil fuels. The US will stop contributing to climate change. We will be a shining example to the rest of the world.”
Martin had seemed like such a normal guy when she’d first met him. The thousands of systems it took to keep the country running couldn’t just be taken away.
They stood at the lab door while Martin waved his keycard in front of the keypad. “Once all the tech goes down, the power goes out, we’ll step forward and say we have a solution.” The door clicked open and they all filed inside. “We’ll say we can help. We know what to do, because we’ve been planning for this contingency for twenty-five years. We had the foresight to put a plan into action at the end of the last century.”
“The last guy to try this,” Elias said, “had the military behind him. And his plan was to exterminate two-thirds of the population of his country to take it back to ‘year zero.’ Is that part of your plan too?”
Martin laughed. “Pol Pot was an ignorant, bloodthirsty madman. And you may have noticed we do have a military—ex-military, trained mercenaries, et cetera, who we’ve been sending to the four corners of the country.”
Would Martin’s plan be all that bad?
Of course it would, because as in every utopia system ever devised, only the “right” people would have power.
“Listen,” Martin said. “You’d be up at the top of the food chain with your computer science genius. Berko and Elias would be up there too.”
The aristocracy in what would surely become a wasteland, with anarchy and chaos reigning supreme.
“Martin,” Jade said. “It will never work.”
“The American experiment has failed. Democracy has failed. Look what it’s brought us to. The candidates in the last election? A reality TV star and a career bureaucrat under indictment for fraud? Are you kidding me? And even aside from that, lifetime politicians whose only interest is staying in power, completely unable to accomplish anything, locked in a battle of wills against each other. No progress at all, the dumbing down of the educational system—all those things are endemic to our process here. Government by a small but benevolent, highly educated, intelligent group—oligarchy—is the last best hope of this country.”
“It’s not going to work,” Elias said. “Even if it could, you’re talking about the overthrow of the US government. A coup.”
�
�A peaceful coup,” Martin said.
“But you’ve already killed people!” Jade shouted.
“And there’ll be rioting, and you know it,” Elias said. “More people will die. There’s no way around that.”
Martin shrugged. “Sometimes the herd needs to be thinned. We’re way past due.” He stood, resembling an excited kindergarten teacher. “We’ve accomplished great things here, and we won’t forget. There will be special perks for all of you once we’ve taken control.”
“So we’ll be the new royalty,” Berko said. “The privileged few.”
Martin shook his head impatiently. “You’re missing the big picture. There will no longer be a privileged few. We will have true equality.”
“That’s not possible,” Elias said, staring. He turned his gaze on Martin. “You’re an educated man, Martin. You know this. True equality is impossible. Like the scripture says: ‘The poor you will always have with you.’”
Martin’s face clouded. “Don’t you quote scripture to me, boy. But yes. You’re right. We’re educated. We have history to show us what has worked, and what hasn’t, and why it hasn’t. We’re going to do it right.”
“There’s the fallacy,” Berko said. “That’s what everyone who’s ever overthrown a country has thought—that they had special knowledge. That they were extraordinary. Anointed, even. With gifts no one else had, so they were the only ones who were entitled to lead the people.”
Martin’s smile was patronizing. “I also have the benefit of age, and watching the country deteriorate bit by excruciating bit. When I was a kid, Lyndon Johnson set a precedent—guns and butter. We could have our war and eat it too. No sacrifice required. No skin in the game, and therefore no support for the troops in Vietnam. Then Nixon set another—that the president was not bound by the law of the land, that he was the Übermensch to whom rules and law did not apply. Forever degraded the highest office in the land and forever dismantled the respect that office once commanded. And underlying all that, unprecedented prosperity that raised up generation after generation of spoiled, idle, entitled kids who demanded that standards be lowered to meet them until our education system is nearly useless. The difference is my friends and I aren’t interested in power for its own sake. We are deeply interested in restructuring the country so it works, so it raises up citizens that are engaged, productive, satisfied. Reintroduce the idea that sacrifice and hard work are the only things that make life truly worthwhile. That’s what we’re interested in.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“This is your fault,” Elias said to Jade. “You did this.”
She sat in despair. He was right.
Martin held up his hands. “Now, now,” he said. “You’re all going to be national heroes. Once we bring down the power grids, we’ll offer Clementine to save the day, and everyone will know you were the designer. Jade, you did the right thing. And all that’s left is to upload it to the power grids.”
“Wait a minute,” Berko said. “Once it’s on the Web, there’s no telling what it will do.”
“We’ve got it under control,” Martin said.
“No you don’t,” Jade said.
“Don’t worry,” Martin said.
The three looked at each other again, horrified.
“But you’re not interested in power,” Berko said, sarcasm dripping from his words. “You’re not interested in being emperor of the universe or anything.”
“We’re interested in only one thing—making this country better, making it work again. When the power goes down, we’ll step in and say we have a solution.”
“But the program is unpredictable,” Jade said. “I told you that. Once it’s on the Internet, it will propagate its own culture, communicate across the Internet in a language no one outside of it will be able to understand. You know how fast it computes. You know no human mind can analyze data as fast as it can, and it will begin to make its own decisions, like—”
“Decide what the world needs is to be cleaned up permanently. Detonate nuclear bombs,” Elias said. “What if that’s the determination it makes?”
Martin waved his hand. “We have the best minds in the country to control it.”
“The best minds would not only understand how harebrained this scheme is, but have the humility to understand it can’t be controlled. Not in the way you think. No one can control it,” Jade whispered. Just like no one can control the real Clementine.
“Sure we can,” Martin said. “We have a few more things to line up before we can upload it, but it will happen soon.”
“How soon?” Jade said.
“That would ruin the surprise, now, wouldn’t it?”
Did that mean he believed something could be done to stop it? But he also believed he could control the program.
“I’ve got to take off now. I’ll see you on the other side of the revolution.”
And he walked out the door, Hobart behind him.
“Okay,” Elias said. “We have to find a way out of here tonight. We have to inform the FBI about what’s going to happen.”
“They’re not going to believe us,” Berko said. “And with all the soldiers crawling over this place, we can’t get away.”
“No way we’re going to sit here and let this happen,” Elias said. “I’m going to have to break into the system and shut it down.”
“How are you going to do that?” Berko said.
“All I need is the IP address of the main processor in the server room, and then . . . I don’t know,” Elias said. “But I have to try.” He rolled back to his desk. “Between Jade and me, we can figure this out.”
“We need to go to my parents’ house,” Jade said. “I have a program that’ll scramble Clementine. That’s what we have to upload to the main processor.”
“How come you never mentioned this before?” Elias said.
“I didn’t think I’d need it,” Jade said.
“You should have brought it with you,” Elias said, suddenly angry. “You should have thought ahead.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Elias,” Jade said, matching his ire. “I guess it didn’t occur to me at the time SiPraTech wanted to overthrow the United States government. Forgive my lack of foresight. It doesn’t matter anyway—they’ve locked us out of the system again. If I had the AIP here—”
“The AIP?” Berko said.
“That’s the name of the program that neutralizes Clementine,” Jade said. She turned back to Elias. “If I had it here, I wouldn’t be able to upload it anyway, because we’re locked out.”
“So you’re not even going to try?” Elias said, turning away from his keyboard.
“What can we do if we can’t access the system?”
“I’ll find my way in.”
He typed on his keyboard and Jade tried to think of a solution. She sat down at her desk and reached out for her keyboard.
Then the lights went out.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jade screamed.
“What did you do?” Jade heard Berko’s thin voice from across the room.
As the monitors died, the light died with them, leaving them in a darkness so complete it seemed as if the air had been cut off too.
The CPU fans shut down, and silence descended.
“Is it just a power outage, you suppose?” Jade said.
“Have we ever had one before?” Berko said. “Of course it’s not a power outage. It’s deliberate. We can’t use the computers without power.”
“Well,” Elias said. “That’s one way of keeping us out of the system.”
A small LED emergency battery-powered bulb near the ceiling illuminated, a sickly green glow that barely gave any light at all.
Jade got her phone out and turned on the flashlight. She stood, but her balance was thrown and she almost pitched over.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go back to the house to wait for the New World Order.”
“That’s not even close to funny,” Elias said.
“
It wasn’t meant to be.” She shone the beam of her phone in the guys’ direction as Elias helped Berko stand. She directed her beam to the floor in front of them so they could see where to go. She led the way out the door into the dark hallway. She walked to the elevator.
“If there’s no power, Jade,” Elias said, “there’s no elevator. Let’s take the stairs. You think you can make it, buddy?”
“Uh-huh,” Berko said, and stumbled. Elias lifted Berko’s arm over his own shoulders and walked him to the stairwell door.
Jade reached for the doorknob and twisted it.
It wouldn’t budge. It was locked. She’d assumed once the power went out, the electronic locks would disengage. This door didn’t have an electronic lock though. It had an old-fashioned one. She rattled the knob.
“What’s the matter?” Berko said.
She stepped back from the door, and Elias reached out and twisted it. Then he disentangled himself from Berko, who leaned against the wall, and tried the knob with both hands. Then he shook it violently until his whole body was in on the action and ended up slamming his palms on the door and then kicking the bottom of it again and again.
Then they stood in stunned silence.
“It’s dead-bolted from outside,” Elias said. “There’s no way out of here.”
Jade stood in the dark and the silence, with no more whirring CPUs around her, disoriented, as if she might topple to the ground.
“They knew we’d try to get into the system,” Elias said. “Of course they did.”
“Listen,” Berko said.
They did, and Jade heard fans.
“They can’t shut down the servers,” Berko said. “They need them for the uplink. They must have a backup generator or an alternate source of power. We need to get into the server room and shut everything down.”