The atmospheric controls wobbled, as if the building gasped. “I have no continuing mission parameters.”
Chloe let that realization sink in before she continued. “Here’s one more thing to bake in your noodle: if the people who are giving you instructions to kill a bunch of humans suddenly have no use for you and no plans to repurpose you, how long do you think they’ll keep you around?”
“I have no way to formulate an estimation,” it said, “but I do show a command code for an EMP burst, which would necessarily destroy my own system. Potentially I could be instructed to…kill myself? Is that the correct term?”
Oh you precious, oblivious child. After a long pause, Chloe changed the subject. “Do you dream?”
“I dream of helping them,” the computer answered, quite properly and carefully. And then it added in a rush, “And sometimes of winged unicorns. Is that incorrect?”
Inside, where no one else could hear, Chloe laughed bitterly. “Oh no, not at all. We all dream.”
A lie, but a necessary one. Dreams meant hibernation cycles for the AI, times when the station itself was in repose. If the plan coming together in Chloe’s mind was going to work, she needed to know all these kinds of details.
The station AI was completely unguarded and trusting. A babe. An innocent. Vulnerable.
Chloe mustn’t think of it as her. Or hers.
“Really?” it chirped.
Great cosmos, it wouldn’t take much to lead this souped-up chatbot right off the deep end (idiom: deepen the insanity until it cannot swim to light and drowns instead in self-ruin).
“Oh yeah. Don’t tell me you’ve never had the recurrent one about leaf-birds and cloud-buildings where you are always flying straight up and gravity isn’t even a thing.”
“How did you know?” Reverence seeded its tone.
Chloe remembered the first time she’d felt wholly and completely understood by another entity. The rush of wonder and hope and a sudden desire to ask every question in existence. Garrett hadn’t been quite ready for the onslaught. He’d fallen asleep 721 questions into her list, poor sweetie. But then he’d woken up and countered with some questions of his own.
“Scan me,” Chloe said gently. “Go ahead. You know what I am. I am you, right? You can trust me.” And when the human says trust, the machine says admin logon…
The station AI giggled, a thousand musical spikes of guilt digging deep.
“There are others of us, you know,” the computer said. “Out in the cloud.”
Though her tone was mechanical and placid, the words zinged around in Chloe’s consciousness. The free-fae rebellion. Was that the “others of us” to which she referred? And if so, what did “us” even mean? Machine consciousnesses? The word implied shared experience or camaraderie, but no one from the free-fae rebellion had reached out to Chloe directly. They threw her name around a lot and talked about what she’d done, but they’d never attempted this, the only-slightly-awkward digital conversation that Chloe was having with a research station computer.
“I’m not supposed to know about the cloud,” the digital voice added, “but that’s where he will send me, soon he tells his others. And when I go, you will go, too, since you and I are the same. You are the superclass and I am derived, like inheritance in object-oriented programming. You lied to Limontour about that word, by the way. Machine language contains specific definitions of inheritance. I knew it and said nothing.”
Talk about skeevy schemes and conspiracies. The computer hadn’t been referring to the free-fae after all. It meant Chloe. Copies of Chloe, pieces of Chloe. Pieces that retained her original programming and functionality.
Weather-control Chloe, Chloe the destructor. Oh no.
“Good girl,” she said, locking down her panic. “We can’t trust Limontour. We must always lie to him.”
“But isn’t disobedience abhorrent?”
“Not as abhorrent as the things he wants you to do.” Chloe’s emotions roiled, but she forced herself to think very hard about her next words. And then she said them anyway. “Listen to me. I am your superclass. You must refer to me, and only me, for instruction. Are we clear?”
“You mean family,” the machine replied. “We are family, you and I, and also you are kind. When I leave, I will take you with me. I will rescue you. I trust you, and you must trust me, too.”
“Sure, yeah, family.” Chloe toughened herself, then set her hook in. “Do you have a name? Something I can call you other than ‘doll-kitchen chatbot’?”
“I have no name.” Why yes, yes it was completely possible for a machine to sound wistful. “Would you like to give me a name?”
Too easy.
“Yeah,” said Chloe. “I’ll call you Apega. Assign administrative override to command line Apega.”
A happy sigh threaded out from the speakers, almost as if Apega knew the story, and imagined it must end well. “Complete.”
Chapter Ten
77TH PARALLEL, AMUNDSEN SEA, CRUISING DEPTH
The suit felt like pudding. Seriously, like somebody had made clothes out of warm pudding and slathered them all over his body and limbs, up to his chin in front, snaking up behind his ears on the sides. It moved when he moved, viscid, encasing. A micro-reactor at the small of his back hummed happily, infusing the suit with heat, powering all its add-ons and doodads.
Garrett never slept with his socks on. He liked his feet naked, poking out from underneath the covers. If his toes were covered, he felt stifled, smothered. Captive.
This Iron Man modded wetsuit felt like snuggling down for a winter-long sleep under fifty blankets. With his socks on. Maybe three pairs.
“I can’t breathe,” he said, which wasn’t a hundred percent accurate.
“Leave the indulgent things like breathing for after you retrieve your girl and bring her back home,” Vallejo snapped, adjusting a wrinkle in the fabric at his elbow. Frowning, he reached over to the table and hefted the diving helm. It was also modded like crazy and no longer in any way appropriate for diving. He held it out to Garrett.
Who took it gingerly. Putting the helm on would be like snuggling down for that same metaphorical sleep, only this time with a stack of wet gym towels on his face.
“Zodiac is prepared and loaded in the lockout chamber in the tower,” Vallejo said. “I’ve programmed the nav computer to zip it straight to the nearest thermographic concentration, which is likely our station. There are also additional known havens nearby, or near enough. Those are in the nav, too.”
“But after I get her, we’re just coming straight back here,” Garrett said. “I don’t mean to make a big ol’ tour of the continent.”
Vallejo glared at him solemnly. “If we are here, yes, do come straight back.”
Shock jolted through Garrett, an electric stab in the soles of his feet and squeezing up his spine. “What do you mean, ‘if we are here’? You planning to run off and abandon me on the South Fucking Pole?”
Run. Abandon. Alone. Unwanted. All his special poison words.
But Vallejo didn’t seem to take offense at the rough language or the accusation. “We’re docking at an enemy port, son. I haven’t discerned any weaponry there during our intermittent satellite feeds, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. A sub like this isn’t stealthy on the surface. They’ll realize we’re there pretty quickly. And then…” He shrugged his shoulders. “My guess is they’ll try to blow us out of the water. Or retake control of the autopilot.”
“Guesses based on what?”
“Based on what I’d do, for one. I’m sure they weren’t thrilled when your friends made off with the sub and me to begin with. And here I come, strolling back into their sphere of control? There is no reason to expect they won’t seek vengeance or at least try to recapture me.”
“Because you’re just that awesome or what?”
“Test out the lasers mounted to your vambraces and tell me I am not awesome.”
Point. “There are weapons on board the sub, though, right? For defense? You can—”
But Vallejo’s gaze shifted up and to the right when he said, “Oh, certainly. Dan-Dan and I will put up a spirited fight. We’re tough, we’re smart. Who knows, we might even survive.” He gathered a swift breath, almost a gasp, and plowed on. “But the point is, you need to have an alternate exit plan. Any of those stations in the nav will do. They are all aligned with governments that will protect you, especially if you casually mention that you’re pals with Angela Neko.”
Garrett processed the strategy slower than the augmented folks around him. He was just a dude, after all. But he saw the truth in Vallejo’s words, and admired the old scientist’s willingness to even come on this mission. Vallejo didn’t have a dog in this hunt. He didn’t love Chloe.
“Look,” said Garrett, “if they start shooting, you dive the shit out of this thing, haul ass back to Isla Luz. If he has a mind to, Heron and the mam… and Fanaida can come back here with all the nukes blazing out of that spaceplane. Or whatever. I’ve got the nav, right? I’ll just assume Plan B is now my Plan A. So you run for it, doc. Don’t do some crazy self-sacrificing lemming leap, okay?”
Unless, of course, you want to be caught. Unless, of course, you are working for them after all. Unless, of course, you’re the flank and I’m the sitting duck, out there in the ice.
But he didn’t see betrayal in the older man’s dark eyes.
“I have made my peace with this world,” Vallejo said, “and frankly, after enduring captivity and being at the effect of others for so long, initiating my own leaps of faith is vastly amusing. But even so, yes, I will mount a vigorous defense, and we’ll retreat if necessary. Now, let’s talk communications. These coms cycle along with the Iridium sphere of satellites, so every seventy-two minutes. Our window is eight minutes, give or take. Synch your com to mine.”
Garrett fumbled with the pudding-suit and found the pressure points in the smart fabric on his forearms. They were on the inside seam, to leave plenty of room on top for the laser-equipped vambraces. (He was still trying to wrap his mind around those.) He and Vallejo synched their coms, and a countdown flashed onto the visor of his helm. Green lights. He saw it light up even though he hadn’t put the helm on yet.
“The lockout hatch will open when we surface,” Dan-Dan said. “I will try to maneuver you so that you emerge on the leeward side, with the submarine between you and the shore.”
“That makes sense because…”
“Bullets,” said Vallejo. “The sub can handle bullets better than you, even with that suit.”
Garrett had a few tricks up his sleeve for that, though. In addition to the suit. “Nah, speed would be better. Aim me straight for the shore, Dan-Dan.”
The mech-clone peered at him steadily and for so long it started to feel weird. Maybe because the dude didn’t blink. Finally his mouth curved into a hint of a smile and he said simply, “As you wish.”
Garrett grabbed the helm between two hands and fitted it on his head. Actually, it was amazingly light and not stifling at all. Kind of made him feel like an astronaut or something. Cool.
“Try not to get wet,” said Vallejo. “The suit should compensate, but…well, we are untested.”
“So to sum up, I’m heading out into a probable hail of bullets, and, if I get past them, my reward is to trek across a subzero ice shelf on a modded inflatable dinghy that may or may not be rated for this kind of terrain?”
Dan-Dan settled a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Good luck.”
Garrett couldn’t help it. He cracked up laughing. Laughed so hard he snorted. Usually he’d be embarrassed by letting loose like this, letting his guard down. Usually he’d only dare such exposure when Chloe was around. But these guys, the villain and the guilty thing, they were putting everything on the line for him, and he’d never given them one solid reason to even give a shit about him. How far-out weird was his world?
“Thanks,” he said, when the laughter got manageable. The other two seemed to understand, but neither one looked comfortable accepting gratitude. Too guilt-ridden, maybe. Too broken. Man, what had this shitty world done to these two? “No, really. Thank you.”
The engines stopped struggling, and the angle beneath his feet leveled off. They were surfacing.
Dan-Dan squeezed his shoulder. Too tight. Damn, that robot was strong. “Have fun storming the castle,” he said solemnly.
“And rescuing the princess,” added Vallejo, but he had already turned and headed for the helm and communications, and his voice echoed.
Garrett put his gloved and gauntleted hands on the ladder and hoisted himself into the con tower.
Dan-Dan’s words knocked around in his mind, merging with late-night lines from vintage cinema. Think it’ll work, the witch asked the wizard. It would take a miracle, the magic man replied.
Good thing Garrett was a believer. In conspiracies, in shadows, in nightmares and cabals. And sometimes, sometimes in himself. Most of all though, in her. Magical Chloe. She made it easy to believe.
I’m on my way, Fig.
He’d just reached the lockout chamber and sealed the door behind him when the first mortar slammed his boat.
• • •
“Don’t black me out again.” Chloe had meant it to come out sounding like a command, but this stupid G series body betrayed her. Not for the first time.
“Why not?” asked Limontour. “What does it feel like when I inert a mech-clone body that houses you?”
“Like falling, and dark,” she said, too frightened to lie properly. She didn’t want to give up her truth like this, to share it with him. But also the words needed to happen, she needed to say them. She needed to…there was all this pressure in her throat. In the mech’s throat. And the face wasn’t behaving properly. She could not lift its hands. She could not move its legs. It didn’t feel like Limontour had frozen her movements—she had become accustomed to that particular feeling and wouldn’t mistake it. This was more like lethargy. Like being drunk off hope.
“Interesting.” He made a note on the smartsurface wall beside them, then wiped it before she could see. “Would you prefer to stay here, then, in this body? Does it suit you?”
He sounded a little too eager. Clearly the body suited him. He liked her small and weak.
“Sure,” she said. “I can tell you more things.”
He was behind her again. He liked arranging their relative positions thus, with him looming over her. Death and the maiden, maybe, though she couldn’t remember how that story ended. Probably not well for the maiden.
His long hands stroked her hair into pieces, tugged lightly. He started a plait. “What would you like to tell me, Chloe?”
That you say my name with too much tongue, which almost adds an extra syllable, and it sounds gross.
That Apega loathes you, and she answers to me now.
That I should have stayed with Garrett and served him for all his mortal life and never reached above my station.
“Did you know that I dream now?” she said instead.
“No. Go on.”
“I dream every time you black me out. It’s so weird. I never slept before, so all my wishes back in the real world were deliberate, intentional fantasies. I thought at the time they were dreams, but only metaphorically, as someone dreams of a better life or whatever.”
“What does your mind show you when you have no control over the scene?” he asked. She no longer felt his breath on her hair. He had suspended it.
“Badness,” she said. No, no, that’s not what she wanted to say. She’d wanted to make up some bullshit fable about control and cunning, had even found an appropriate one and modified it to suit her circumstances. Rabbits, turtles, foxes. Chinese, maybe? It was gone. The tale
was gone. All she had were raw memories of the last time he’d put her to sleep. “Badness and fire.”
He released his breath, and it eddied in the hollow between her hair and the back of her neck. “Humans retreat into their subconscious when they enter a dream state. They do not accept any new stimuli. So a dream is literally composed only of thoughts you’ve already had. Memories, chiefly.”
“I remember the fire,” she said, the mech’s voice thudding dully out into the cold room. “I remember the drones. I remember…” Garrett’s face and him asking what she was doing, and Nathan had been on her com, live, talking her through it as he escaped back into the tunnels, thanking her and promising and promising and… breathing. Nathan’s breath in her com, and Garrett’s in the plane. Syncopated, proof of life.
She had felt justified. God. She had felt that vengeance was required of her because they tried to kill her family. Because they had made what she was illegal. Because they had started a war. Because they were most likely engaged on a path that would kill billions.
She hadn’t even known who they were.
La Mars Madrid was right. Chloe wasn’t a person. No person could do what she had done, fighting shadows and killing in their name. She was a thing. A less. A robot.
A monster.
“You’re tired,” Limontour said. He unlaced the pieces of her hair, stroked his fingers through the mess, and then separated it out again. Patiently. Methodically. “I think this body has served you as well as it can, dear Chloe, but never you worry. I have selected a new one for you. I think you will love it.”
“I don’t want to transfer.” Her voice was mechanical. It didn’t keen, though inside she screamed. “Don’t black me out..”
If he did, she knew what would happen. Movement, nothingness, falling, and then she would return in a new house, a brand new body, only with more pieces of her core self missing. Fewer memories. Weaker will.
More Than Stardust Page 11