Mad Skills

by Greatshell, Walter

  Burrowing into the mainframe, the thousands of critical program files, she started wiping stuff, scrambling codes, breaking connections right and left as though hacking jungle vines with a machete, opening a clearing so she could see the sky.

  For a second she could feel the sunlight … then it was blotted out, as though by an eclipse.

  Something was coming.

  Something big, snuffling through the undergrowth for her. A shapeless hulk with a thousand seeking tentacles. Leech-Tron, she thought.

  Maddy had given herself away, set off some kind of system crash warning, and so it was hunting her, this monstrous artificial intelligence. It was on her trail, tracing the source of the breach. And it was fast, faster and smarter than her—Cthulhu, version 10.0. She was hardwired in; if it found her, it could hack right into her exposed brain.

  Ducking low, Maddy fled through the brambles like Brer Rabbit, hiding deep in obscure programs as if they were hollow logs, covering her tracks, camouflaging herself and setting diversionary fires.

  It was no use. The thing was onto her, boxing her in and smoking her out, channeling her into narrower and narrower runs until she had no place left to go, forcing her to face her demon. Then: There it was, rearing up all around her. She was cornered!

  In the nanosecond before the monster took her, a small entity darted between them, leaping into the billowing face of her adversary. Maddy only caught a glimpse of its bushy, striped tail as it disappeared into the gullet’s whirling black teeth … but she did hear the last words of that familiar, high-pitched voice.

  “Eat me!”

  Then Moses was gone. Maddy stood alone as the beast’s rough claws ripped through her last defenses, groping through the pirated firewalls that formed a multilayered shell around her soft, helpless mind. She wanted to scream, to run, but it was just like in a nightmare—she couldn’t get away.

  It swallowed her whole.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  GOOD-BYE, YELLOW BRICK ROAD

  MADDY floated, blissfully innocent as a fetus in its mother’s womb.

  A hard, white, ceramic womb—a motel bathtub. There was a loud commotion outside the shower curtain, a very bright light, and Maddy squirmed, frowning. Her head was killing her.

  “Go ’way,” she moaned. “I’m sleepin’.”

  The curtain was ripped aside, and behind the glare, someone said, “Oh my God.”

  Another voice, the familiar one of Dr. Plummer, said, “Christ, what a mess. Let’s close her up and get her stabilized so we can transport her. I’d say this kid’s had enough play-time for today.”

  There was a sharp prick, just where it hurt the most, and immediately the knives of pain began to dull.

  They didn’t mess with the inner damage to her implant—they weren’t equipped; that would take specialized microsurgery at a later date. Dr. Stevens would want to assist. All they could do for the time being was reset the skull plate as best they could, pull the staples, and suture the wound shut. Give the flesh a chance to relax.

  Wheeling her out, someone said, “You gotta admit, this is pretty amazing. I mean, look at this. When’s the last time you saw someone do microsurgery on themselves? With household utensils? In the dark?”

  Dr. Plummer grumbled, “Yeah, she’s a bloody prodigy.”

  “What are you pissed off about? This is everything we’ve been working for. You and Dr. Stevens especially.”

  “I don’t know …”

  Leaving the motel, Maddy felt the sun on her face. She could see that a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. A number of people familiar to her were there, watching solemnly.

  There was Ben, poor Ben, standing guiltily with Lakisha, and beside them her best friend, Stephanie. There was Locust with the other bikers, and Donna with her two kids. Even the carnies from the fun house. Nothing surprised her now, not even the sight of her parents, Beth and Roger, anxiously holding each other as if they still really thought they were her mom and dad. Cogs—all cogs. Not real.

  “Thanks, Doc,” Maddy said, her voice cracked.

  “For what?”

  “For making me the girl I am today.”

  “Well, Miss Grant, you may not appreciate any of this right now, and I don’t blame you, but by tomorrow, you’ll have a whole new perspective.”

  “Off the top of my head, I’d probably agree with you.”

  Dr. Plummer laughed sympathetically. “I know you’re upset with us, but you must admit the experience has been interesting.”

  “Well, that makes it all worth it, then.”

  “You can’t be expected to understand the value of everything we’ve accomplished, or your part in it. It will all make sense, I promise.”

  “Oh, it makes sense. You needed a stick to shake the tree. A troubleshooter smart enough to probe the system for weak spots—it couldn’t be one of these slaphappy local yokels. Moronic contentment isn’t very conducive to sabotage. You needed a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a sincere gremlin to prove there’s no problem you can’t handle. I’m your little monkey wrench. Did I perform to your satisfaction?”

  Dr. Plummer started to speak, paused, then gave up, and said, “You did great.”

  “Just call me Humpty Dumpty. Hey, tell me something.”

  “You should try to relax now.”

  “Why do people keep telling me that? I’m very relaxed. I just want to know what happened to all your high ideals. When did you change your mind about saving humanity’s higher virtues? Was it always your idea that the glorious future of mankind should be a paid presentation?”

  “Sometimes, to achieve great things, it is necessary to make temporary compromises. That’s par for the course in doing research on this scale; corporate funding is paramount. The project would not have been possible otherwise.”

  “Maybe that’s a hint you shouldn’t do it.”

  “You only think that because we are in a period of transition. These are birth pangs of a new age. Money and power will become increasingly meaningless as the equalizing force of technology begins to break down the archaic systems of commerce and class. With a little time, these problems will go away.”

  “Finally,” Maddy said.

  “What?”

  “Something we can agree on.”

  As they loaded her in the van, there was a disturbance. A couple of blocks away, angry voices were shouting, and there was a sound of breaking glass. Alarms started going off.

  The doctors looked around, and Dr. Plummer said, “What the hell’s that all about?”

  “Looks like a fight,” someone said.

  “A fight? What are you talking about?”

  “A fight—look!”

  There was a fight. A major street brawl, by the look of it. People were spilling out of doorways and throwing furniture out the windows. The trouble was spreading like wildfire, everyone in sight grabbing sticks and throwing stones. Smoke was coming out of the buildings.

  When a brick came through the windshield of the van, Dr. Plummer said, “Get us out of here, Vick. Now.”

  But it was already too late. Even as he spoke, people were surrounding the front of the vehicle. They dragged the driver out and bludgeoned him to the ground with clubs. Maddy’s parents were in on it, seeming to have forgotten all about her. The surgeons—the terrifying, enhanced “residents”—went down without a fight.

  “Get up! What’s the matter with you?” screamed Dr. Plummer to his useless assistants, as greedy hands clawed at his white smock. Even his own people were turning on him. “Do something! Help me!” But there was no one to ask for help anymore, and in a moment his struggling body disappeared in the frenzied mob.

  Lying in the van on her gurney, unprotected, ignored, Maddy had to smile. All the king’s horses and all the kings men …

  Someone climbed in beside her. It was Ben.

  “Are you okay?” he asked breathlessly.

  “I’m great. You?” She was a little surprised to see him.

  “I don’t
know,” he said. “Something’s weird—what happened?”

  “Looks like the Sims are in revolt.”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you know Bluetooth is named after a tenth-century king?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “King Harald Bluetooth. He united the warring tribes of Norway and Denmark. I just killed the king.”

  “Maddy, I don’t—”

  “Oh for God’s sake. I planted a time-delayed Trojan, a tapeworm in the belly of the beast. Denial of Service. All the lines are down.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means no more Mayberry RFD—you better get us out of here, Slick.”

  “What about your folks?”

  “They’re not my folks.”

  Uncomprehending, Ben nodded and got behind the wheel. “Where?” he asked.

  “Anywhere. Just go.”

  The crowd around the van had partially dispersed to spread havoc elsewhere, so Ben was able to nudge forward. Rioters pounded the side panels, running alongside.

  Gaining speed, Ben muttered, “This is outta control.”

  The whole village was on fire, people running from house to house with flaming torches, screaming “Allahu Akbar!” and “Kill the mothers!” A firestorm of unleashed aggression, unfrozen zeal, burning down everything in its path.

  “Why are they doing this?” Ben asked.

  “Just making up for lost time,” Maddy replied.

  As the van swerved onto the highway, there was a bright flash in the rearview mirrors, followed by an ear-splitting shock wave.

  “Damn!” Ben said, almost going off the side of the road.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Maddy said.

  It was an explosion in the center of downtown—the old mine complex. Where the buildings had stood was a gigantic fireball, rising like a mushroom cloud and raining burning debris on the surrounding rooftops. Even half a mile away, the van was pelted with bits of brick.

  “Go faster,” Maddy advised.

  There followed a whole series of explosions, a regular bombardment, working outward from the town center to encompass every building in the valley. As the destruction progressed, it penetrated the outlying coal seams, triggering vast sinkholes beneath the airstrip and country club, swallowing the golf green. In a moment, there was no sign left of human habitation, no evidence of any crime—only a roiling, pitted wasteland. A man-made natural disaster.

  “Good-bye, yellow brick road,” Maddy said, as they drove out the deserted gate.

  THIRTY-NINE

  OF RATS AND MEN

  CHANDRA Stevens sat alone in the break room, vacantly sipping from a cup of instant cocoa. The cocoa had gone cold, but the action of raising it to her lips was purely mechanical; she didn’t even know she was doing it. She hadn’t been able to taste anything since that Grant girl stuck her fingers up her nose.

  The room was a tiny windowless nook deep in the building, just a few plastic chairs, a small table, and a bank of noisy vending machines—a buzzing fluorescent cave that most Braintree personnel sensibly eschewed unless the weather was really intolerable. For Chandra’s present purposes, that made it ideal: She was much too easy to find in her office.

  What a waste, she thought.

  That mantra that had been running in her head for the past hour, until the words had lost all meaning. What a waste, what a waste. What a waste, what a waste, what a waste … Words like so many sandbags on a levee, holding back the horrific knowledge of what had just happened in the valley below.

  At least the bombing was over; the walls had stopped vibrating. That was good—for a while she had been on the verge of losing it. No—she had lost it … just for a few minutes, when the thunder started and the lights flickered and the full meaning of the innocuous-sounding word fail-safe hit her like a punch in the stomach, sending her reeling for someplace private, where she could fall on the floor and give in to temporary insanity. Thank goodness no one had come in before she was able to pull herself back together.

  She was finally doing better. She would make it through this. She would do it for Alan, because that’s what he would have wanted.

  It was hard to believe he was gone. Her Alan was dead. And it wasn’t like the stroke, when she thought she had lost him only to have him restored by the miracle of their own research—the ultimate validation of everything they had accomplished together. All the years of struggle and sacrifice, of putting their scientific careers before anything else, including each other. Everything taking a backseat to the Greater Good—his inarguable rationale for any concerns either one of them might have had.

  It had been hard work, so insanely busy they rarely saw each other, but through all the years of late nights, endless experiments, and eternal staff meetings, there had always been that promise: Someday, Chandra. Someday we’ll be finished with all this, and it’ll be our turn, just you and me.

  Only now there would be no more promises. No more dreams of cottages by the shore and kitchen gardens and golden years. After the fiasco with Maddy Grant, she would never again adopt a child. No June wedding, no wedding dress, no honeymoon. Face it, she would never be married. No Mrs. Alan Plummer—she was to be Dr. Chandra Stevens, maiden scientist, now and forever.

  “DR. STEVENS, YOU HAVE A CALL ON LINE ONE.”

  Damn. The loudspeaker, so ridiculously loud it made her jump.

  She turned her phone back on. The saved-message icon flashed in rebuke—she wasn’t supposed to be out of touch like that. She would have loved to smash it.

  There was another call coming in. “Yes?” she said. “This is Dr. Stevens.”

  “Dr. Stevens, the Advisory Committee is on conference call in M2. I’ve been trying to reach you. All the department heads are already down there.”

  “I’m sorry, my phone’s acting up—probably from that power surge.”

  “Well, they’re waiting for you. Can I tell them you’re coming?”

  “Yes, yes, certainly. Tell them I’m on my way.”

  Boy, those lawyers weren’t wasting any time. The rubble had barely settled, and there they were to give it a spin. Not that she was surprised—in any corporation, the first and foremost part of damage control was managing perception. Lawyers, lobbyists, and PR firms were the filters through which the murky flow of potentially incriminating facts had to be strained. Purified. Perhaps discarded altogether, so that a clean-smelling and altogether-more-plausible fiction could be substituted. She had been through it before, during the Marina situation.

  Taking the elevator to the lower levels, Chandra walked through the computer lab and along a dim catwalk skirting the rat city. She wasn’t crazy about rats and had never been fond of the construction. Alan had loved it—it had been his baby. She could still hear him giving the VIP tour in that rapt voice, which he called his “planetarium spiel.”

  With its incredible complexity, this system may seem very fragile. It’s all well and good to be able to maintain efficiency under artificially imposed ideal conditions, but that’s not natural, is it? So what happens when we introduce disorder? Society is an organism, a living body, and its response to disorder must be similar to the body’s response to infection—it must create antibodies. Observe:

  Here we see a rat that is being redirected to deliberately subvert the parameters of the system. Let’s call him Bob. Now of course we could simply introduce an outside rat, a wild rat, but its behavior would be so random and clumsily disruptive that it would not effectively show the system’s subtlety. For demonstration purposes, an intelligent attack is more useful. Bob must be crafty.

  As you can see, our spy infiltrates the system by carefully avoiding notice. He stays out of the way, doesn’t block the supply lines, and only when the coast is clear does he seize his opportunity—there! What you’re seeing is him gnawing through the plastic tube that delivers water to the feeders. Very smart: In that way, he can drink undetected as well as destabilize the whole ecology. Oops—they’
ve seen him. Once one gives chase, they all do. There they go! Doesn’t usually take long. As you can see, they’re cutting him off, methodically blocking every means of egress. Meanwhile, others are sealing the leak with putty. Remarkable, isn’t it? Uh-oh—that’s it—they’ve got him, got him cornered … aaaand, he’s nailed. Sorry, Bob—here’s where it gets a little ugly. It’s still a matter of speculation why they’ve started drinking the blood like that; it’s a recent behavior that’s obviously not part of the program. Our goal is actually to have them take prisoners alive, simply because it requires a higher degree of sophistication, but this abnormal savagery seems to be a long-term side effect of the motor control. Stress, maybe, or perhaps by inhibiting their will, we are inadvertently exposing a deeper level of rodent psychology. We’ll figure it out!

  Seeking more challenging disruptions, we’ve introduced various crises for them to deal with, including predatory animals such as feral cats, barn owls, several species of large snakes, and even a very-bad-tempered monitor lizard, all of which they dispatched within minutes of the intrusion. The last test involved an adult male chimpanzee that had been specifically conditioned to kill rats with a hammer, having been rewarded for doing so. He lasted the longest, but in the end was overwhelmed, with the rats pursuing him right up to the top of the tallest building there, where he refused to move … until the rats finally dislodged him by launching a squadron of tiny biplanes and shooting him down. I’m kidding! No, they chewed away the building’s foundation until it collapsed. Then they ate him alive.

  As Chandra walked beside the darkened pit, it suddenly struck her how quiet it was in there. That was odd—she couldn’t remember the last time the amphitheater wasn’t busy with the rustling and skittering of rodents. Furthermore, she couldn’t see any movement in the papier-mâché metropolis, not one rat. It made no sense, since she knew for a fact that the rats worked and slept in shifts, so that half of them were supposed to be awake at any given time, even during their artificial night phase. Unless they had had to be removed because of the signal interruption … perhaps just as a precaution. But even so, moving the rats was a big deal that required special authorization—usually from Alan.