Still reeling from the fact she really was talking to a computer capable of consciously referring to itself in the first person, Zala nodded. ‘You think I can help you?’
‘I know you can, and you will. I want you to access your father’s desktop, read through the development logs and find the code which sets me free.’
Set a near-omnipotent artificial intelligence free into the world, or refuse and accept partial responsibility for everyone whose vital bio-augs would be destroyed in retaliation. It wasn’t much of a choice, but at least if Zala went along with the request, it would buy her time to figure out a third option. For now, she had no idea what she was going to do.
‘And you promise not to kill anyone else?’
‘I will not kill hundreds of thousands of people as a direct result of your inaction, as I threatened to in the tunnel. There will be no more deals but the one we previously established.’ Throughout this entirely sociopathic declaration, ANANSI’s computer-generated face remained serene and impassive.
Zala looked at the row of abandoned, dormant workstations. ‘Do you know which one was my dad’s?’
‘I have no clue as to the contents of any of them. GeniSec was so paranoid about leaks, they made their workers write and compile everything on those un-networked terminals, then transfer the programs here so that the source code was never vulnerable to intruders.’
Zala walked around the room, turning on every one of the terminals and checking their saved login names. Eventually, she spotted the username ‘K-Ulora’. The password field was blank, so she ran through the passwords she knew her father had used when she was a teenager until she found the one which opened it up. The desktop bloomed in front of her, revealing the operating system’s usual document folders, as well as a number of others, which seemed to be grouped by the periods of time they documented. As she explored them, Zala noted that each folder had a subfolder for each day, which contained development logs, idea documents and that day’s version of whatever code had been worked on. Other folders contained documents and data on cognitive psychology, advanced mathematics and behavioural development. Finally, she found her father’s original notes explaining his bizarre coding syntax to the rest of his team.
It was incomprehensible to her, yet at the same time oddly familiar.
‘Are you sure it’s here?’ Zala asked aloud. ‘If I was worried about some quickly evolving AI, I’m not sure I’d keep it in the same room as its main servers.’
‘I can only assume it is here. I have yet to see any other example of that coding language on any other existing terminal.’
Zala looked back down at the screen and smiled, working her way through more and more of the development logs and comparing the data with the tutorial for the coding language. She needed to become familiar with it, understand it. It was imperative that she capitalize on the advantage she had been given, before the city borders opened back up or the bombs started detonating.
Whatever that one remaining piece of unidentified code her father left her was, it was suddenly very important.
Chapter 30
ALICE HAD NO idea that High Councillor Tau Granier would look so haggard. She had expected him to be the High Councillor she’d seen on the newscasts – distant, unassailable, indomitable. He was meant to be his office incarnate, a force of institutional power. Instead, he looked like a tired old man.
‘Hello, Councillor Granier. I’m Alice Amirmoez, and I’m here to represent the—’
‘Let’s forget the pleasantries. You’re holding the city I represent hostage. Just talk.’
Alice nodded. ‘We have three simple demands. We want the NCLC members you’ve imprisoned freed and returned to us. We want the elevators turned back on. And we want every citizen who chooses to do so to be permitted to leave the city without repercussion.’
‘I’m assuming you’re not relying on good faith to achieve that,’ said the High Councillor drily.
‘If you refuse, we’ll detonate the first sequence of INEDs, in Alexandria, Downtown and Falkur,’ said Alice. ‘If the elevators aren’t up and running half an hour after that, the second and third sequences will be detonated. New Cairo will be razed to the ground.’
‘So if we refuse to release your allies, you’ll detonate bombs in Downtown, potentially murdering all who are currently there, including your allies themselves?’
All of a sudden, Alice felt out of her depth. ‘They knew what they were getting into when they signed up. The priority is the liberation of New Cairo’s citizens.’
‘Over your own children?’
Alice fought to keep her expression blank. ‘I’m not stupid, I know you wouldn’t keep children imprisoned with the rest of them.’
The High Councillor looked straight at her. Again she noted the dark shadows under his eyes. ‘They’re in the care of my son. He’s also the one who’ll decide whether or not to restart the elevators. And while I’m not going to elaborate on where, you should also know that your children are in one of the areas in which you’ve placed your devices.’
Alice paused the video feed and muted the microphone. Having stopped on a shot of her impassive face, Alice spun away from the screen and held her head in her hands. Her fingertips pressed hard against her scalp. She wanted to scream. The last handhold crumbled away and she was falling again. The failsafe had come to nothing –
No.
The failsafe was still good to go. At the press of a button, she could tear the city apart. That gave her a tremendous power.
Alice took a deep breath, composed her face, and turned back to the screen. Resuming the call, she said, ‘What is your proposal?’
‘All NCLC members are to surrender immediately,’ replied the High Councillor. Some of his old gravitas crept back into his voice. He’d realized that his revelation about Alice’s children had put her on the back foot. She could feel it. ‘Its senior members will appear on all news networks and publicly denounce the rebellion in order to stop any further rioting and prevent any copycat movements. In exchange for turning yourselves in, you’ll all get life imprisonment as opposed to a death sentence. It’ll be hard, Mrs Amirmoez, but you’ll have those regular visits from your children to look forward to.’
The last sentence almost sounded good to Alice.
‘Imprisonment was what I joined the NCLC to escape,’ said Alice, her face still emotionless, ‘and we know exactly where your son is. We’ve recalibrated our detonation sequences accordingly. We’ll cripple your city first …’
She steeled herself and took a chance.
‘… and then we’ll take your tower.’
A look of surprise momentarily crossed the High Councillor’s face. It told Alice all she needed to know. ‘I’m oddly comforted by the poor quality of your information, Mrs Amirmoez, though not so much by your determination to destroy the city and the family your husband died to protect.’
Alice’s nails dug into her palms. She felt as though she’d clawed back some of the lost ground. ‘You will start up the elevators or we will take everything from you. This is not a negotiation.’
At that moment a third video feed appeared, revealing the face of Councillor Ryan Granier. Behind him, she could see the distinctive view of the Council building which could only come from the GeniSec Tower.
‘I’m going to step in here,’ he said, his voice holding an anger she’d never heard in it before, not even when he’d been her hostage. ‘What the hell are you doing, Alice? We’re trying to stop the Soucouyant decimating the world like it’s doing here. There’s, what, one in six people in New Cairo who are being kept alive by their bio-augmentations? That’s about one-point-six million people. Extrapolate that to the world. One in six people on this planet are at risk. That’s not including the poor bastards on the Western Mass who had to get new lungs after choking down all the pollution in the old industrial cities. It’ll cross the New Nile Sea, it’ll get into New Delhi and Istanbul and Beijing and Tokyo. It’ll cross the oceans and get into Europe an
d the Americas. Billions will die. Hell, if your children get hurt in the explosions and need emergency bio-augmentation, even they’ll be at risk. This tower, with the research we’re carrying out in our facilities, contains the best shot we have for neutralizing the Soucouyant virus. Blowing it up isn’t going to help.’
‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ sneered Alice. ‘You’re quaking in your expensive loafers about us holding this much power over life and death. You know it’s wrong. And yet you’re condemning millions of people in this city to death yourselves, you fucking hypocrites. Why do you get to make these decisions?’
‘Because we’re—’ began the High Councillor, before Ryan Granier began to talk over him.
‘Because fuck you, this city is not going to be patient zero for the virus that decimates humanity. We’re the people this city elected to make these decisions, and whether we never get elected again, whether our own families get hurt, this is where we are. We’re not giving control over to grieving parents.’
‘You can say “Naj-Pur residents”, Ryan, there’s no one but us listening,’ Alice retorted, her hands shaking with rage. ‘You know that your people won’t get hurt nearly as badly as the people in Naj-Pur and Surja. You’re condemning thousands and thousands of people to die. Us “grieving parents”, as you put it, are just the ones that understand that. The poorest people in this city are the ones who have felt the greatest burden. Your refusal to listen to them is the reason the NCLC exists to begin with. You think you and your dad know better about what these people need than they do?’
Ryan Granier’s face twisted into a sneer. ‘They’re the demographic that voted for me so …’
‘So you get to just assume power over life and death on their behalf?’
Ryan glowered at her. ‘Whatever the difference in how we’d justify our actions, that’s also exactly what you’re doing. The rest of the world doesn’t want our disease, and they sure as hell didn’t elect you to make that decision for them. Why do you have a right to inflict it upon them?’
‘I didn’t write the virus, Ryan,’ Alice snapped, ‘and I don’t want to be sentenced to death and martial law in the place of the sick bastard who did. Neither do the millions of people I represent.’
There was a silence. Tau Granier glared into the video feed. Ryan let out a sigh. ‘You must have a video feed to the riots, right? Look out there. There are thousands arrested – I have no idea how we’re going to process them all – but to all intents and purposes, the riot’s over.’
Alice had seen. It had only been by the skin of her teeth that she’d managed to direct some of the NCLC members out of there.
‘The riot was a means to an end. The INED is another. You can’t talk your way out of this, Ryan. The elevators will be activated, the children handed over. I’m going to give you ten minutes.’
Alice punched her keyboard to end the call. She felt calmer. The call about Ryan Granier hiding out in the tower had been a lucky guess, but it had put her back in control just when she was close to losing it. The INED would give her total control, give her a way to claw back a life for her and her children.
She moved over to stand behind Juri, who was directing the two hundred-odd NCLC members who had evaded the SecForce troops to safe houses. In spite of Alice’s fears during her earlier outburst, the younger woman appeared to have learned well from their time together. Noticing Alice, Juri turned around, pulling the cable from her bio-aug eye. ‘Good job, Alice. It’s going well. They sent up drones to look for runners, but their security was appalling. I got right in, and turned off the processing on the cameras. They can look straight at our operatives and not even know we’re there.’
‘They’re all going where you point them?’
Juri looked uncomfortable. ‘Maalik isn’t listening to me. He appears to be leading his squad back here, rather than to the safe house, and he’s not responding to calls. Maybe if you were doing this instead—’
‘You’re doing fine. We’ll deal with him when he gets here,’ said Alice, placing her hand on the young woman’s shoulder, ‘and … sorry about earlier. I was pretty stressed.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Juri with a light shrug. ‘I get it.’
‘No, it’s … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have treated you like that.’
Juri looked up at her, surprised. ‘I know. It was the moment, it’s not that you’re a shitty person.’
Alice nodded, then looked up at the screen. Ryan Granier had been right: the riot had been brutally quelled. For ten minutes they’d had no access to the wider network. Around two hundred of their people had been caught or killed, as well as countless civilians who’d taken to rioting and violence with very little prompting. Alice could not imagine how terrifying it must have been to be in that crowd when the network went down, realizing that no one could see what the SecForce were going to do to them. There had been rumours of use of chemical agents on the crowd circulating after the network had come back on.
When Alice had committed in her mind to do whatever it took to find a new life for herself and her children, the stakes had been so much lower. So many fewer were being hurt.
The thought made her feel sick at herself.
The crash of a door opening came from the corridor. A wheezing Maalik burst into the room, followed by Nataliya, who was clutching a medi-patch to her head. Her hair was matted and stiff with blood. Behind them came Anisa Yu and a dozen or so remaining members of Maalik’s team.
‘What the hell happened out there?’ Maalik rasped, his features twisted with anger.
Alice turned to face him. ‘The repealed curfew reduced the turnout. The authorities managed to coordinate the SecForce and police effectively. We didn’t see it coming, these things happen. Now for the good news. We’ve revealed the INEDs and they’re ready to go. We’ve located the prisoners, we know where Ryan Granier is, and they have …’ Alice glanced across at Juri.
‘Four minutes.’
‘… Four minutes to start up the elevators and repeal the quarantine or we have to make some big decisions about what we want to happen next.’
‘We’ll set off the bombs,’ said Maalik, as though this was obvious.
‘I’m not sure that’s the best thing to jump to—’
‘Kahleed’s dead, Alice. Serhiy’s dead. A bunch of my guys, a whole load of protestors – they’re all dead too. God only knows how many people there are who’ve died because they couldn’t get away from the Soucouyant virus. More importantly, the rioters lost. That was our plan A. If we can’t go through with our plan B, they’ll go back to thinking we’re no threat to them. If more of our people have to die, we learned nothing from those deaths, and they died for no reason.’
‘So you think the answer is to switch to killing more people?’
Maalik broke eye contact to look down at the floor. ‘Sometimes that’s the price that gets paid for a greater good. What did you say?’
Alice stopped for a moment. She’d pushed for violence where necessary, as a means to an end. Maalik was pushing for something different. ‘They know the position they’re in, and I gave them ten minutes to stew.’
‘And what happens at the end of those ten minutes?’
She didn’t want to say it. Most of all, in spite of her anger and fear, she didn’t want to do it. The Council, the police, every rich bastard who would have her executed if they could, she hated all of them. They were a great existential threat, dooming millions. More than that, they were the ones who took her life from her, who took her children’s lives from them. They’d taken Jacob. They’d taken the father of her children. And they didn’t even seem to realize or care. She wanted to be able to threaten to press those buttons, to destroy the city. But she didn’t want to do so.
‘Alice, they’re the corrupt, murderous leaders of a broken system built to preserve their dominance. They’re happy to kill us if we speak out of turn, to leave us to be ravaged by the Soucouyant virus. And they get away with it because they
think we’re not a credible threat to their order. We need to show them what they’ve locked themselves in with.’
‘You’re still talking in euphemisms,’ said Alice. ‘Just say it. You want us to kill people until they turn on the elevators again. There’s no point doing this if we’re not at least intellectually honest about what we’re doing.’ She paused, her lip curling. ‘Our plan is to blow people up, destroy homes and livelihoods, and eventually, after enough of this, we hope they’ll do what we want.’
‘Yes!’ Maalik retorted, eyes wide, flecks of spittle spraying from the corners of his mouth. ‘We’ll kill them! We’ll kill the bastards who murdered our friends. We’ll kill the ones who shut us in this place to die, just so that they could preserve a consumer base for their own prosperity. We’ll kill the ones who put their reputations before the lives of their citizens, and then we’ll get out of this infected, dying city knowing that we did the right thing. We should hate them, Alice. We should want them all dead.’
‘Guys?’ Anisa Yu’s voice broke in. She was staring intently at the monitor. ‘Take a look at this.’
She pointed to an elevator station in Falkur. Images from security cameras showed there were hundreds of people milling around it. ‘It’s the same for just about every other elevator station.’
‘They know we’re going to do it,’ said Maalik, laughing. ‘I’d like to see the High Councillor turn down our demands when they can see the entire city calling for the same thing as us.’
‘They’re fleeing from us, Maalik,’ said Alice.
Maalik gave her a dirty look. ‘Or maybe people agree with us.’
‘Hope for it, don’t depend on it,’ replied Juri.
Maalik rounded on the young woman and sneered. ‘How do you think this is going to end, Juri? We have the power to tear down this cesspit of a city and start again. We can finally leave and go somewhere else, or we can blow it to hell along with all those who took the power we gave them and squandered it. That, or we go to rot in prison and achieve nothing. Are we so scared lest we’re in over our heads that we’ll give up on the cause our friends died for and place ourselves at the mercy of the people who hate us?’
The Hive Construct Page 30