by Nick Thacker
As Julie pondered Mrs. E’s feelings she considered her own. She and Ben loved each other, that much was clear. But they had done very little talking about the future, at least as it pertained to them. The man she had fallen in love with was quiet, reserved, and a bit reclusive, happiest when he was a hundred miles from civilization in the middle of the forest. She’d found him to be witty, rugged, and intelligent in all the right ways, with a dash of daring and humor to counterbalance his somewhat brooding character. Having fought for her life alongside him more than once now, there was no question they would spend their lives together.
And that, Julie knew, was the problem.
Both of them expected they’d be together. Enduring the hardships they’d faced, traveling around the world to chase a criminal organization, and seeing their lives flash before their eyes on more than one occasion solidified their mutual love and respect for one another. But they rarely talked about it. Ben would disengage as soon as he heard the words ‘marriage,’ ‘wedding,’ or ‘future,’ and she didn’t even know what he might do if she used words like ‘children,’ or ‘family.’
Their unspoken agreement seemed to be that Julie would live with Ben, in the cabin, for the rest of their lives. She wasn’t opposed to that plan, either, but she couldn’t help but think about the next step. In her career at the CDC, and all of her adult life, she had been driven to accomplishment, sometimes to a fault. She couldn’t rest, slow down, or take a break. There was always another problem to solve, another answer to discover.
Ben, on the other hand, was probably the slowest man she’d ever met. He was far from lazy, but he lived by his own clock. Chopping wood was a day-long cathartic and relaxing activity to Ben, not a simple ‘chore’ only required for the stove to remain fed.
So she knew that their unlikely partnership would eventually lead to a natural schism in perspectives, and Julie was adamant she would overcome this problem as well. She needed to sit him down, force him to talk, and figure out the next steps for their relationship.
She couldn’t think of a single thing the man would want to do less.
CHAPTER TWENTY-six
The staircase ended at a metal door, its frame bolted directly into the ice around it. The bubble-pack walls pressed inward, forming a seal around the edge of the frame and the ice while maintaining the moderate air temperature inside. The system worked well, and now Julie felt the tingling warmth of sweat dripping beneath her layers of clothing, and hoped they’d be able to strip down to something more reasonable when they got to the barracks.
“Everyone should be packed and gone by now,” Colson said, “but just in case there are stragglers, don’t make eye contact or do anything suspicious.”
“Do anything suspicious?” Reggie asked. “What is that supposed to mean? Don’t dance around and yell obscenities at people?”
“Uh, yeah, don’t do that,” Colson said. He lifted his ID card to the door’s locking mechanism and waited until a green light flashed. Colson pushed the great metal door inward and Julie felt a rush of air from the widening gap. Colson glanced around left and right, then stepped in, followed closely by Hendricks, Kyle, and Joshua. The trained men aimed around the room, each grunting their confirmation that the way ahead was clear.
“We’re in,” Colson said when they’d finished. “They obviously haven’t deactivated my card yet, but if anyone’s still monitoring the security systems, my name will flash an alert. They’ll know you’re with me.”
“So they’ll bring the artillery,” Reggie said.
“Do you know how well-armed your security force is?” Joshua asked.
“No,” Colson said. “Just that there are a lot of them. I’ve never seen anyone walking around armed with anything bigger than a pistol, though.”
“Until today.”
“Right.”
Hendricks sighed. “So that means they brought weapons with them, or they’ve got a cache somewhere on the base. And someone has it stocked, probably with enough firepower to outfit all of your rent-a-cop force.”
“They’re probably getting ready for the Chinese,” Ben said. “They had to have seen them coming, right?”
“Those little drone shits saw them coming,” Hendricks said. “I wonder if they were able to get past them.”
“Fifty professional soldiers?” Mrs. E said. “Those drones could not even make a dent in a platoon, much less an entire company.”
“They made a dent in us,” Hendricks said, grumbling under his breath.
“Okay,” Ben said. “So the Chinese are getting in, we know that. They’ll plow through the rent-a-cops, then come for us. That what we’re saying?”
Hendricks curled his lower lip slightly, then answered. “Sounds like you’ve got a plan, Bennett. Colson, get us into one these rooms first so we change clothes and get out of this sweatfest, then we can talk. Take off your outerwear but leave everything else and don’t lose your pack.”
Ben nodded, and the group continued down a gently curving hallway, barely lit, that formed the break between the rooms along the circumference of the level and a wide, plaza-like central room. There were entrances to the plaza every twenty or thirty feet, and Julie could tell from the array of long folding picnic tables that the area was used by the employees as a lunchroom. Across from where they were now, Julie saw two computer stations, set up exactly like the point-of-sale systems used in schools and hospitals and other office building cafeterias.
Colson directed them to the third room on the left, and again lifted his keycard. Again it flashed green, and he pushed the door open. Colson and Hendricks moved in, followed by Joshua, who took up a defensive position just inside the door near the corner of the room. Ben and Julie entered next, followed by Reggie and Mrs. E, and last to enter was Hendricks’ man Ryan Kyle, who waited in the open doorway to watch the halls for any movement.
The interior of the room was about what Julie had expected. More bubble walls, plenty of bunk beds along each of the two longest walls, and a small bathroom at the far end. It wasn’t much more than the types of facilities she remembered from summer camp as a kid, but she knew these employees weren’t here for the luxury accommodations.
There was little decoration, either. Some of the beds had posters or pictures affixed to the bubble walls, and there were a couple military-style rucksacks lying beneath a few of the beds. Tangled strands of extension cords spidered out from a central hub of black wires, but other than those subtle features, the room could have passed as completely devoid of human life.
“My bed is near the back, but like I said, everyone’s gone. The stuff left behind is either unwanted or forgotten.”
“Where do they go? After they are evacuated, I mean?” Mrs. E asked.
“Home, eventually. By way of Uruguay, strangely enough,” Colson said. “The airports in that country don’t ask as many questions as some of the airports in others, I guess, so a plane-load of folks from Antarctica doesn’t raise much suspicion.” He paused, but no one seemed to care about this tidbit of information, so Jonathan Colson continued explaining. “When you’re hired, you get a one-way ticket purchased on your behalf into Carrasco International Airport, and then another purchased from there to wherever you came from when you leave.”
“When did you get here, Colson?” Hendricks asked.
“I’ve been with the company for five years, but I’ve only been in Antarctica for a year. Still, that’s about as long as anyone.”
The answer seemed to satisfy Hendricks, so he moved on to Ben. “Bennet, you said something out in the hallway. You have a better idea than ‘wait it out?’”
Ben nodded, looking at Joshua. “Yeah, though I gotta give this guy the credit for it.” Joshua looked confused, but Ben continued. “In the Amazon. He was leading a team of mercenaries to our location, and grabbed Julie and one other person we were with, Dr. Amanda Meron. Meron was part of what they were looking for, but the other half of the puzzle was out in the jungle somewhere. That’s
what we were looking for.”
Hendricks nodded along. “I read the brief, so I’m following. Go on.”
“Well, we knew that as long as we kept one step ahead of Joshua’s group, and found whatever it was that was hidden out there, we weren’t the main target.”
“And it bought us time,” Reggie said.
“It did,” Ben added, “but not much. The mercs were well-trained, well-equipped, and more prepared. We had Reggie and a couple other bright minds on our side, but if Joshua hadn’t abandoned ship —“
“To the good guys’ ship, I have to add,” Joshua said.
“Well, right, of course. Anyway, if he hadn’t come over to our side, none of it would have worked. His brother — we didn’t know he was at the time — was leading them to us the entire time, so without Joshua stepping in, and —“
“I get it,” Hendricks said. “You’re all regular heroes. The point is you think that same plan will work here?”
“I think it might,” Ben said. “It’s worth a shot, anyway. The Chinese far outnumber us, and they probably outnumber the station’s security force. But either way, they’ll keep each other occupied for bit, and then turn their attention to what they came here for.”
“You think they’re looking for something here, too?” Kyle asked.
“Without a doubt,” Julie said. “Think about it. A Chinese army drops from the sky the moment we get here, heading for the same location in Antarctica.”
“She’s right,” Reggie added. “I’d be flattered if they came all the way down here for us, but it does seem like overkill. They know there’s something here, and they’re going all-out to get it.”
Hendricks and Mrs. E listened as the group spoke. Julie wasn’t sure what the man and woman were thinking — she still had a lot of questions about both of them, and their involvement here — but so far they’d kept the group alive. No sense giving up on that now, she thought. I can trust them a bit longer.
“Fine. Julie and Colson,” Hendricks said, turning to her. “If we’re going to stay one step ahead of the Chinese and have any hope of escaping this place alive, we need to get whatever it is they’ve come all the way down here for. That means you two need to let us all in on the secret.”
Reggie grinned. “Nerds.”
Hendricks flashed him a glance, then continued. “What caught you off guard down on Colson’s computer? What do you think it is?”
“Well,” Julie explained, “it’s an artificial intelligence, just like we’ve always suspected. No doubt a strong AI.”
“We knew all of that already,” Ben said. “But your reaction…”
Julie swallowed, then nodded, realizing the weight of it all once more. If this is real…
“I mentioned a callback script,” Julie said. “Remember? What Colson’s working on is an artificial intelligence program, one that’s larger than any other ever attempted. It’s a neural network; a web of interconnected machines all working together, in tandem, or parallel.”
Colson jumped in. “And the callback script is ‘calling back’ to something we can’t fully understand, at least not yet.”
“Hence all the confusion surrounding this project,” Julie said. “The callback script shouldn’t be there, right?”
“Right. It should be straightforward — we receive the transcriptions, turn them into streamlined code, and then check them for accuracy. All a little bit at a time. One piece, then another, until a subroutine is completed. Then we move on to the next one.”
Hendricks held up a hand. “Listen, folks. I don’t need to remind you that time really is of the essence here. I need you to explain this, as dumbed-down as possible, so we can figure out what the real next step is. Got it?”
Colson and Julie nodded, and Julie saw Ben look in his direction. He was questioning, silently asking her if she knew something she wasn’t quite comfortable sharing.
I’m not even sure I’m right, she thought.
“The problem is that the company Mr. Colson is working for did not create the original files they are using,” Julie said, looking at Jonathan Colson.
“Correct,” Colson said. “That’s what I’ve been afraid of, and when I saw the encrypted script, I knew it for a fact.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Reggie said. “Where did the files come from?”
Julie and Colson both looked slowly around the group. Julie hoped Colson would jump in answer, but after a moment she spoke.
“The files the company is using are coming from a biological source. Not a digital one.”
Ben’s eyes snapped up to stare at Julie.
“Come again?” Hendricks said.
“That’s right,” she continued. “The files Colson and the programmers here are working from aren’t ‘files’ at all. They’re transcribing slices of a human brain.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-seven
REGGIE HAD SEEN AND HEARD a lot of strange things in his life, but nothing like this. They’re pieces of a human brain? The absolute absurdity of the statement took the air out of any coherent response he could have come up with.
Instead, his mouth fell open and he slid out a single, half-discernible word.
“Brains.”
Colson and Julie looked at him, and Julie spoke again. “Well, um, one brain, probably. But they could be working from multiple data sources —”
“Multiple data sources?” Hendricks said. He pointed an index finger at Jonathan Colson. “You’ve got to be shitting me. This is a joke. You mean to tell me that this company — your company — is slicing up human heads and turning them into computer code?”
“Well, I didn’t know —”
“Bullshit,” Hendricks said, nearly spitting. “Colson, I’ve been around for some time, but I’ve never heard of anything this far-fetched.”
“It is theoretically possible,” Mrs. E said. “There have been many tech companies in the recent past attempt to build stronger neural networks using similar structures. After all, the brain works like a computer, using electrical impulses and building bridged connections between —”
“But you can’t turn it into a computer,” Hendricks said. He was almost shouting now. “You’ve been working on a ‘computer program’ that’s really a brain? And you’ve been building it by studying a real brain?”
Colson gulped down a mouthful of air.
“Hendricks,” Julie said, her voice calm. “Mrs. E is right. This actually isn’t some half-baked theory. It’s real science, and it’s even been used successfully on a small scale, like in mice and rat brains. The phenomenal part — the part that took me by surprise — is, again, the callback script.”
Ben looked as confused as Reggie felt and as Hendricks sounded, while Joshua and Kyle stood idly by, half-listening and simultaneously watching the doors to the level.
“What about the callback script?” Hendricks asked. “It’s just an encrypted line of code that communicates with whoever originally developed —”
He paused, and Reggie thought he could see Hendricks’ face flash white. On the tall, thin man’s face, Reggie couldn’t tell if it was anger or fear he was seeing.
Hendricks cursed. “But, how? The ‘original developer’ would be…”
Colson and Julie were nodding, but Reggie still felt like he was in the dark.
“Ages and generations of evolution, and ongoing advancement in intelligence can create a brain as useful and efficient as ours,” Colson said. “But it cannot account for the fact that we are human. Living, breathing, thinking. Feeling.”
“The callback script is the key feature distinguishing a human brain from any other animal’s brain,” Julie said. “It’s the missing piece.”
“What missing piece?” Reggie asked.
“It’s the part we couldn’t account for in the lab, or why any artificial intelligence we’ve been able to create, while powerfully fast, falls short of actually being able to think.”
Hendricks was now rubbing one of his temples with long, wiry fin
gers. His eyes were closed, and Reggie sidled closer to the man in case he fainted.
“So this ‘callback script,’” Julie continued, “is the piece scientists have been looking for. It’s a link back to — whatever it is — that governs our conscience. Right from wrong, good from bad, those aren’t instinctual, but they’re intuitive. Animals don’t feel one way or another about killing another animal, and they don’t murder, steal, cheat, or lie.”
“They don’t have the callback script,” Colson said. “They don’t have a conscience.”
“I started putting it together as soon as Colson told me it was a callback script, and as soon as I realized how they’ve compartmentalized the program. These ‘subroutines’ they’re working on, one at a time? They’re the different components of the human brain — the parts that control speech, emotions, rationalization, motor control, etc.
“They’ve been building a perfect computer-based copy of the entire human brain, and this was the very last piece they needed. Thanks to the transcription being in a different ‘style’ than the rest of the code — encrypted, we’d say — Colson spotted it. It’s the piece that they needed, because it’s the piece that turned their huge program from something unwieldy, yet powerful, into something human.”
Reggie still wasn’t getting it, but he was now more in tune with another feeling he’d noticed creeping up on him. As an ex-Army man with plenty of combat experience, he felt the pangs of restlessness setting in. He knew firsthand how dangerous it was to hang around and talk during an operation, and while they weren’t being directly attacked at this moment, they were still in enemy territory with plenty of people nearby who wanted to kill them.
“Hendricks,” he said. “We should get going. I think we’ve got a good idea of what we’re looking for now. No idea what it looks like, though, but we can’t really stand around and discuss it.”