Spiral

by Andy Remic

  ‘Are you sure it was gunfire?’

  ‘It sounded like a machine gun,’ said one old lady.

  The sergeant stepped forward towards the heavy wooden doors, pitted and stained with the passing of centuries. He reached, turning the squeaking rusted iron handle.

  He shivered as a cold wind caressed him.

  He knew; could feel that Death was waiting for him in the gloom.

  With a great act of courage, he stepped through the portal alone, Armalite X clasped in fear-slippery hands.

  The Priest stood, arms folded, staring down at the dead Nex. It had been tossed across the church, its spine broken, creating interesting shadows among the pews where the twisted snapped smashed body sprawled. The Nex’s small alloy machine gun lay, black and evil, a weapon out of place against the polished wood of the church floor. The stench of cordite hung in the air, gun smoke drifting from the barrel. The Priest nudged the gun with the toe of his boot. Then, stepping carefully forward with a quiet tongue click of annoyance, he reached down and grabbed the limp body. The head rolled slack on a ball-bearing spine but, incredibly, the eyes opened. The mouth moved wordlessly for a little while and The Priest lifted the disabled but miraculously living Nex up to his face.

  ‘Have you found the way of the Lord, my son?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I... underestimated ... you.’ The dull copper eyes screamed with inward hatred, and anger, and frustration. ‘I will not do so again.’

  ‘You are correct, of course, my son,’ said The Priest as kindly as he could. He shook the Nex, and a rattle of pain erupted from crushed lungs. ‘Who sent you? And how did you know I was Spiral?’

  The Nex’s lips formed a compressed line.

  He would not speak.

  ‘Come on, lad, tell me. And I can take away the pain.’

  ‘I will tell you nothing.’ The soft asexual voice was laced with agony; The Priest sighed again, and holding the body upright in one fist he reached down and pulled out a shining broad-bladed knife. One edge was serrated -it was an evil weapon with only one obvious function: to kill.

  ‘Are you sure now, my son? Are you sure you cannot share this information about these evildoers who sent you? If not, you are betraying the Lord, and as His servant I must punish you with bright tongues of silver fire!’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  The Priest lifted the knife. Light gleamed from the blade, cast down by a multi-coloured Jesus; shimmering coloured sunlight glanced from the knife and reflected in the eyes of the Nex.

  ‘Has God shown you the light yet, my son?’

  The Nex stared up with hatred.

  ‘Then I must show you the darkness.’

  The blade smashed down - a single massive blow. The Nex gurgled and The Priest cleaned the blade on the Nex’s clothing before allowing the dead spine-snapped body to topple and lie at his feet.

  The Priest’s head came up, eyes narrowing. A figure moved into the church, cautiously; The Priest smiled when he saw the rotund figure of Sergeant Ralph, Aimalite X shaking in his hands.

  ‘Ah, Sergeant, just in time to save me.’

  The large policeman wobbled forward, eyes wide. He stared at the dead body, then up at The Priest. He licked his lips nervously, awe shining in his eyes. ‘You killed him?’

  ‘God worked through me, my son,’ said The Priest, with a kindly smile. He patted Sergeant Ralph on the shoulder. ‘He decided to punish the infidel for destroying His beloved place of holy worship.’ The Priest gestured to the bullet marks up the wood panelling, across the stone, and the tiny holes in the stained-glass window where three bullets had allowed shafts of pure sunlight to stream in.

  ‘Shall I... shall I... shall I call more officers? Or the military?’ The sergeant was confused; dazed. The stink of death and cordite was stinging his nostrils. The church -a place of love and worship - had become a charnel house.

  ‘Better let my people deal with it,’ said The Priest calmly, and strode out towards the sunlight.

  Spiral_Q: sand-blasted stone, steel and dull glass, a massive complex that rose for a single storey above the desert dunes - and for sixteen storeys below. A surface scratch; an inverted pyramid; a man-made desert iceberg.

  Jessica Rade slumped back in her leather chair, and gazed out over the desert on the monitor before her from within the depths of the underground complex; she watched the wind spin and whip the sand into spiral eddies, shifting and dancing, twisting as if possessed by some great stone amber demon. Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula: Rub al’Khali - the Great Sandy Desert. How Jessica loved and loathed this vast desolate region of Saudi; how it lived, a dual existence, in her favourite dreams and wormed into her worst nightmares. A place of contrasts; a place of life and death; a place of beauty and a place of great ugliness, hardship and fear.

  Rub al’Khali - three hundred thousand square miles of mostly unexplored desert. A vast rolling landscape of Nature’s hostility. A huge plateau of sand and rock, smashed into mercy by Nature and the heat and aridity of the climate.

  If Jessica tried, if she closed her eyes and really tried, she could smell the Red Sea far off over the mountains past Al Hijaz. It had been too long since she had enjoyed the sea; far, far too long.

  Jessica was considered ‘bright’. In fact, ‘bright’ did her little descriptive justice: she had passed her GCSEs at the age of eight; her A levels at the age of ten; age restrictions had kicked in then, but she had subsequently attended the University of Cambridge at the age of sixteen - by which time she had already achieved degree and post-degree success through a variety of private tutorial systems. She graduated in computing, specialising in artificial intelligence and the newly emerging field of RI - real intelligence. Artificial intelligence was just that - artificial. Set parameters. Set fields. Sub-routines and instructions and base2 binary linear control following scripted routines that were scripted ... WHAT IFs ... THEN DOs ... ANDs and ORs and XORs ... Jessica Rade had pioneered the new school of thought: the concept of the ability to self-learn, self-teach, self-program. The ability for a machine to learn and truly adapt by altering its own core code. Ergo, to possess real intelligence, instead of a stack of preprogrammed directions.

  Spiral_Q had snapped Jessica up after the publication of her third paper. And now, aged twenty-three, Jessica was a rich woman living a life of dreams in a secret location deep within the Great Sandy Desert. She was an incredibly rich woman. A stupidly rich woman. And yet it was nothing as vulgar as finance and money and material possession that kept her at Spiral_Q - despite the desolation of the land: it was to do with her dreams, her aspirations for the future. She could choose to work anywhere she wished: Mexico, the Seychelles, Florida - all had a particular lure for this young sought-after computer genius. But Spiral_Q was based in Rub al’Khali. And Spiral_Q was where the important computing shit went down.

  Jessica Rade had to be at the centre of that importance.

  Otherwise, her rise to the pinnacle of her chosen career would have been for nothing.

  She sat at the terminal, linked to five servers and harnessing the power of forty minor processors. Her fingers blurred across the keyboard and she paused, adjusting the settings of various programs and sub-routines that were running in the background. She compiled her current project - saw the bug even before the compiler reported it; she adjusted her code, compiled a second time, ran the binaries and sat back as figures flickered across the screen. The optical/digital QuadModems flashed small green lights at her.

  Jessica Rade rubbed at her weary eyes, licked at dry lips. She suddenly realised that she was incredibly hungry - and incredibly tired, although she acknowledged these were small discomforts in comparison to what had recently gone down in London.

  Spiral_H - detonated.

  She shivered, and killed the external view.

  Jessica gazed through the thick smoked glass at the offices below her; most of the terminals were empty and it was with surprise that she checked the time. 7 p.m.
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  ‘Jesus,’ she breathed wearily. She had worked straight through from 8 a.m. without a break, her concentration complete, her focus intense and uninterruptible. Now her system suddenly cried out for sustenance and she sighed to herself, climbing to her feet and stretching her perfectly formed athletic body. Her muscles groaned at her.

  I need a fucking beer, she realised. A cold one.

  She caught the lift up to her personal quarters - all the Elite Level programmers and designers were given the most luxurious living quarters near the top of the underground complex. They called it ‘Ground Level’, but in reality it was just below. This was one of the benefits, one of the perks, one of the expectations of working for Spiral_Q. They were offered the best salaries, the best holiday packages, opportunities to work worldwide and the opportunity to work on the most exciting projects with the most powerful computing equipment ever created.

  And Jessica Rade was, quite literally, at the top of the pile.

  She stepped through the doors of her apt, stripped off her clothing and revelled in the feeling of the air-con on her naked skin. She walked barefoot across the marble tiles and flicked on the shower, stepping tinder the warm jets and soaping her lightly tanned skin. She massaged conditioner into her long dark curls, washed it free and then stepped out of the glass cubicle and towelled herself dry.

  Still naked, she crossed to the fridge and pulled free a bottle of ice-cool Budweiser. She flipped the cap, and took a long, long deserved drink. Then she set about preparing a light salad... what with the recent worry and gossip surrounding Spiral and the London HQ’s annihilation, satisfying her hunger had not been a priority until just now.

  She revelled in the simple task of preparing the salad; she enjoyed the basic simplicity of slicing lettuce and cucumber and arranging it neatly around a plate after the brain-wrenching math calculations of an average day working on the QIII.

  Jessica Rade was on her fourth Budweiser when the comm buzzed.

  She hit the switch.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We have a problem.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘The QIII secondary-source has just de-compiled.’

  ‘Shit. I’ll be there in five.’

  ‘Can I just remind you that we only have a week left to hit 98%?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I fucking understand. I’ll be down shortly.’

  She killed the comm.

  ‘Shit. Now I’ll have to get fucking dressed ...’ she muttered, tossing the empty bottle into the bin where it clashed against its comrades. She disappeared into the bedroom, brain whirring at the possible errors that could have caused such a computing calamity ... and all the time at the back of Jessica’s mind was the nagging doubt about Spiral, and what was happening to the organisation ...

  She did not see the flashing white cursor on her screen.

  Jessica Rade loved the small hours.

  The early hours of the morning when everything was still; when everyone was sleeping; when the world had died.

  Jessica had often fantasised as a young girl - and, indeed, had carried the fantasies on into adulthood - had played out intricate scenarios in her mind, imagining what it would be like to be the only woman left alive in the world - the only person left standing after some horrific chemical accident, after some amazingly deadly virus that had affected everybody on the planet except her.

  And now: 4 a.m.

  She was awake, lying in her light cotton pyjamas on top of the duvet, staring at the ceiling. She rolled from the bed and stood for a moment. The air-con hissed quietly behind her and she sighed, brain swirling with numbers and calculations and projections for WorldCode. She shook her head, smiled to herself, then wandered, seemingly aimlessly, out from her quarters and towards the lift.

  The lift ascended with tiny hydraulic sighs. The doors opened.

  Jessica Rade listened, and with a sense of danger stepped pyjama-clad out onto the carpet, her feet luxuriating in the rich pile, her whole being tingling at the audacity, the daring, the temerity of her actions ... to creep around in her own Spiral_Q at night... naughty naughty ...

  She walked the corridors while the majority of the complex slept, and after passing several guards who merely nodded sedately at her presence, she moved stealthily to the unguarded laundry shaft leading to the true ground-level kitchens and boiler rooms. Here there was noise and she had to stay alert. She ran a hand through her curls, stepped lightly over bags of linen and clothing lined up for the washers and driers; but, as usual, she was alone in this vault, alone in this world of her own choosing...

  She reached the exit at the rear of the ground-level complex. She produced a key and overrode the electronic protection - after all, if one was a computer expert one might as well use that expertise to one’s own advantage.

  Jessica stepped outside—

  The cool of the desert night washed over her and she took a few steps, revelling in the feel of the fresh air, the real world, the danger of being merely pyjama-clad out in the Rub al’Khali desert surrounded by heavily armed guards ... guards who sat at their posts with mounted machine guns and other heavy metal to take out aircraft and tanks. Part of her wondered if they could see her, and merely endured her quirkiness, her eccentricity. Another part of her revelled in the feelings of rebellion.

  Of course, she couldn’t go far or else the perimeter guards would certainly and undoubtedly spot her and Feuchter or Johansen or Skelter would moan and whine at her: they were only allowed out from the complex with the strictest supervision. But she could at least sample, at least taste the freedom of a life in a world completely alone—

  She gazed at the stars for a long while, their wan light glinting across her slim figure, and her hand dropped to her flat belly. Jessica didn’t work out often, but when she did she gave 200% -- and this had provided her with a well-formed athletic figure that was the talk of the programming department.

  She patted her belly again.

  ‘Still firm and strong,’ she sighed.

  She stepped back inside, heaving the thick vaultlike door closed and rerouting the detection systems. Digits flickered across the micro-monitor and Jessica stooped, found the small hidden brush, and carefully flicked sand grains into the corner where they would not be noticed.

  If only they knew, she thought.

  If only they could catch her!

  She shivered; half in delight, half in fear.

  Yes; she had been the best programmer and systems analyst - probably in the whole of the UK. But there had been something else; a splinter deep in her soul that led her to hack ...

  Her skills had been developed, honed, refined by taking on the largest computing conglomerates and corporations. She cracked their databases for a laugh. She was turned on by smashing their personnel files. She got a heroin high from fucking their finances.

  Jessica knew not what drove her; there was something wrong with her soul, but she hated - loathed - that part of the world which said, You will know this, you will have access to this, but the rest of you... well, you can all fuck off.

  Data protection? Ha.

  Jessica wanted to give the world everything.

  Freedom of information.

  Freedom of choice as opposed to electronic prisons, math cells, digital locks and keys.

  And the QIII Proto?

  Jessica smiled mischievously to herself.

  Well, the QIII would become her greatest achievement. Spiral could use it to override military systems; hack world data banks; match terrorist identities from satellite scans; redeploy troops on the battlefield from RI hack based on WorldCode probabilities ...

  And WorldCode, again, one of Jessica’s finest moments.

  The perfect honing of Artificial Intelligence.

  Real Intelligence, the ability for a computer to think, to possess emotions and control the fight for civilisation! It would be the ultimate weapon against evil, and Spiral would be at the forefront of this awesome new technology, Spiral could con
quer the growing terror of gun-runners and bomb-makers, assassins, hijackers, drug smugglers ...

  Jessica shivered. She understood that the stakes were high; she had not really understood, never really considered before the destruction of the London HQ. But the deaths of so many colleagues had left her chilled to the dark corners of her soul.

  Jessica knew; this was no longer a game.

  And probably it never had been.

  Jessica returned to the lift, and then, on a whim, decided to call on the lab_central, see what the ghostly machines were running at this midnight hour, this graveyard shift. All ops were normally automated during the night and so she had little fear of meeting anybody at this lonely time.

  After descending to the lab depths, she padded along the corridor to her own specialised departments. She stopped. She accessed the first of three reinforced glass doors. As the first door closed behind her, leaving her in a cubicle of glass awaiting access to the second door - she saw it.

  A figure...

  Jessica Rade froze.

  The figure was motionless, standing near the QIII deck.

  Jessica stared for long, long moments. No movement came from the figure and Jessica tried to meet its dark gaze, sure that she had been seen and yet aware that the figure gave no indication of having spotted her.

  Was it a guard? A real guard, not some doped-up corridor sentry with nothing to do except clench his toes to stave off cramp and share the odd cigarette with other examples of patrolling boredom?

  Or was it a sentinel?

  A protector?

  Jessica sank slowly to the carpet and sat, wondering what to do. She crawled over to the door that had admitted her, and swiped her pass. The door slid open silently and she crawled for it, down the corridor, across the carpets and tiles, then got to her feet and, with a smile at her incredible luck, ran for it—

  A few minutes later, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, a glass of brandy in her shaking fingers, sipping it slowly and wondering what the dark figure had been up to; why had it been there?