At the threshold, face down over a pile of headless bots, lies Juan. Black singed flaps of synthesized skin curls away from a blacker mark on Juan’s exposed neck. His wire is missing. It appears he activated his own self-destruct, but I can’t be sure. His hands extend as though he pushes our door the small amount it opened. Though, why would he crash his system in the same act of letting us out?
And, if someone else did it, where are they now?
I rush over to Gordon, who pushes against the solid frame that is Juan. We manage to roll Juan onto his back. A look of shock is frozen in his wide-open eyes. Gordon switches his focus. Like a prairie dog looking for threats to avoid, he ducks and stretches looking one direction then dips again as he repositions to look down the other hall.
I stare at the flatness of Juan. He looks so…empty. For someone battling multiple interior hosts, it’s impossible to see him like this, lying on his back with his mouth rigor mortis clamped, and not think of him as a large doll. A doll that can be programmed to entertain a complex and difficult child. The kind of child one must keep occupied…preoccupied. Because given too much opportunity and imagination, that child is a danger.
“Can we reboot him?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Gordon says. He attempts to stand but slips, barely catching himself before his face slams against a bot knee.
“Careful.”
“I’m try…tryi…ing.”
“Gordon?” Human’s aren’t supposed to sound like they’re having trouble loading pages or glitching on memories. Something’s wrong. “Gordon…” He stumbles another attempt to get to his feet. I leave Juan’s side in order to aid my friend. “Lean on me.”
Gordon struggles to keep his head centered on his neck. His face dips forward, then his ear becomes the target of gravity, rolling his head to one side and pulling it down. Gordon bobs and nods, fighting his eyelid to stay open. He’s given up trying to make words. It’s a battle to stay coherent.
Nothing interferes with my system. I’m immune to whatever is attacking him.
“Gordon, you’ve gotta stay with me here.” I look around the bot-littered halls. Nothing but bot parts and one intact, but lifeless Juan. Of course, I realize Juan is still in there, trapped. At least that’s our theory based on everything we’ve been warned about.
‘Don’t get yourself killed—it’s an eternity of being awake in your own coffin if you do…’
“Juan…?” I’m not sure why I bother saying his name, like that will wake him up in some twisted version of sleeping AI.
Gordon’s small for a human. His weight doesn’t pose any problems for me carrying him, but human size and shape…that’s a different story. He’s like an awkward package—too long on one side to lift naturally without help. “Gordon.” He continues to nod forward, fighting for every ounce of consciousness he can salvage. “Where is everyone?”
“Mav!” I cry out. Deep inside, I hope Ace comes running, with his moody brooding and hidden coded keys to solving all the world’s problems. But there are no coded keys here. Here is a land of gravity, which drags hope down with it. I need a hack, a code to implant this situation with a better outcome.
“Haayy. Moof.” A space suit like apparatus, complete with oxygen tube and full-face mask plods toward me, encumbered by the gear being carried. “Goardn!”
I’m stunned into inaction. I can’t figure out what’s coming my way or why. Where it came from. Where the gear was found. If I should be wearing such gear. The person stops at the edge of the piles of bot parts like it’s unsure whether it can navigate the obstacles of the heaps in the ridiculous get-up they have on.
“Help me,” I say, hefting Gordon a little higher to adjust the balance of his weight. “He’s sick.”
Another person similarly suited rounds the corner. “Ohmai.”
I can’t discern faces behind the helmet reflections. “What’s going on?” I ask.
They motion me toward them, neither person advancing into the bot fray. “Cohm.” Their voices muffle through the mask like speaking through a breathing apparatus.
“I need help. He’s sick.” Something shifts at my feet. I look down, hoping it’s Juan and he’ll help me maneuver Gordon over the piles of arms and torsos. A partially limbed upper chest with no legs has flopped itself over—what would be face up, if it had a face. The single arm connected to the trunk of what used to be a bot reaches out and up, unobstructed from its previous position of having its metal chest laying atop its single arm. It fingers the air in front of me as if it’s sniffing out my movements. I look at Juan, horror in my joints. Am I shaking? If I’m shaking, will those fingers playing the air piano sense it?
The suited persons exclaim something I’m certain should be censored if they weren’t wearing muffle-helmets and turn back the way they came.
My instinct is to call out, ‘No. Don’t leave me. I need help!’ yet, I manage to press my lips together so hard that pressure extends down my throat and the words can’t make it past my vocal box.
The fingers grab and slash at the space in front of my knee, then freeze and turn to face the direction of the retreating suits. The delay feels like an echo and vibration of actions past. The suited persons have already turned a corner. The hand palms the stone floor, crawling over Juan’s wide-open eyes and using his foot as a handhold to propel the dismembered being forward.
The heaps around me unfold and stretch out like dormant worms responding to rain. I miss controlling a shudder and draw the attention of a fully composed pair of legs with mid-section and arms still assembled, though slightly mismatched for sizes. The being has one leg longer than the other and the skin of its arms don’t match. I close my eyes, if I can’t see it, maybe it will go away.
Don’t move, Gordon. Don’t breathe.
The creature turns back to the mass exodus or delayed chase after the suited persons. But there is a pause. Like it’s waiting for me to do something. Give myself away probably. And it raises a palm as if to convince me to stay—an almost protective gesture or warning. ‘Stay put, stay safe’ all roll into the motion of interpretation. Then again, itcould be feeling the air for evidence of me. For something like it is, I’m certain I leave a traceable trail. Energy output and electromagnetic waves and all. Even Juan, in his bug-eyed stupor, still gives off energy waves.
“Wait for them to go,” Juan speaks through clenched teeth. Very much not dead.
The ground slowly clears of parts and pieces of bots. Some items remain, littering the stones, showing no indication of animating. Still, I stand. I stare. Waiting for them to point in that ‘gotcha’ manner I dread.
Juan rolls onto his side and pushes himself, with great effort, to his knees. I don’t move. This whole place gives me the creeps. I can’t move no matter how much I want to run. “Why did you bring Gordon out here?”
“Me?” I say.
“Yes. You saw what we were making. It’s not safe for Gordon to be out here.”
“You fried your brain!” I point to the back of my neck, indicating the trip wire while being careful not to touch it.
“Yeah.” He rubs his neck with one hand, pushing off his own knee with his other hand to support himself to his feet. He mouths a curse. “They took my wire.”
“They?” I’m getting nervous standing here. We need to find Mav.
“The other uploads.”
Does he mean the mangled body part bots? “Why would they take your wire?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they think I’m a traitor to their kind. Maybe since Singapore has been stealing uploads’ cerebral cortexes and leaving motor reflex behind, which I might add, has gained consciousness without being human sourced…”
I close my mouth, not sure how long my jaw has been dangling open all dumb. I go through the motion of swallowing, though I don’t know why. When I produce mouth saliva, it only recycles. I don’t have to expel liquids in the same way humans do. “And that means…?”
“It means terrorists, like th
e Newburys who want all AI donor programs shut down, have proof that the donor program failed its primary objective to ensure all intelligence is human sourced. The machines are activating without donors.”
“Newbury?” I ask. The media thinks that’s my donor identity, I think. “Her family aren’t terrorists, Geo shot down their plane. Abby told me all about it. Geo’s the bad guy here, not the Newburys.”
“The plane Geo’s men shot down.” Emphasis on men—Juan’s makes it clear I understand Geo doesn’t do his own dirty work. “Was a fighter jet, targeting upload facilities throughout the region. Newbury is just a codename. It buries the new species.” Juan shakes his head. “You never had a supposed family file. They painted a target on you to take you out the second anyone said you were somehow connected to the Newburys.”
“But who? Geo targeted me, but his men shot down the plane before it accomplished its goal?”
“Not Geo.”
I look at Gordon in his helpless state. “How deluded am I?”
“Facilities are all over. Uploads generally suffer severe PTSD. Like post-war level trauma. It’s been impossible to integrate singular uploads.”
The donor game has been running for years, possibly a decade. Uploads have been taking place for a long time, just not publicly. Juan and I are the first public figures. However, the donor centers have their own wars going on, and apparently their own terrorists.
“Singapore started a program to merge source code uploads in order to balance out some of the issues coming out of the game. The only problem is, they’re not splicing or grafting personalities together with any success.”
I stare at Juan. “Except for you.”
Juan opens his mouth like he’s going to respond but closes it when Gordon jolts. He waits to be sure Gordon doesn’t regain full alert status. “Remember, I know what you really are—unlike the rest of these people…” Juan narrows his eyes and leans closer. The Commander knows I never had a code. I’m spare parts at best. “I can unmake you if you give those that matter any reason to end my existence on this side.”
“I didn’t think that was possible,” I say, feeling like I’m every bit under threat by the Commander, who is more than capable of following through on threats. “We’re immortal, remember.”
“Everything’s possible.” He shifts his attention back to Gordon. “We need to get him some protective gear before his brain is completely scrambled.”
“Scrambled, what?” We should have been working on that and not arguing about Newbury terrorists and donor qualifications.
“The real-life Mord hijacked my signal booster. They’re using it against the humans—basically overloading their brains with high-frequency waves. Anyone who’s been through the program or is familiar with computer thought synopsis should be okay, but the vast majority of humans within signal range will be overloaded and brain fried if they don’t find some level of signal blocking gear.”
The suits the people were wearing. “What material could do that?”
“Magnetic linings, I think.”
That can’t be healthy either, can it?
“Stone and steel with plaster and other dense material absorb a lot of the signal as well.”
“Did you know they were going to do use that device in this way?” I ask.
One of Juan’s perfectly formed eyebrows lifts in a manner admitting guilt, but not suffering from it.
I notice my scanners work again. I can probe the air for sounds, scents, chemical make-up, vibration patterns, and heat signatures. “Are your scans working?”
“If yours aren’t, something’s broken. I disabled the jamming device they were running. It interfered with the Mord signal boosting.” Juan takes one more corner and encounters what looks like a bio-hazard disaster clean-up team.
“We need help,” I say, realizing Juan never offered to help carry awkwardly shaped Gordon. Not very gentlemanly of him. It’s a total Nazrete move. I picture her coaching the other men in Juan’s head ‘don’t offer to help, that’s totally sexist to assume she needs or wants help. Support her by showing you find her more than capable to handle the simp on her own.’ “Where’d you get those suits?”
When the group sees us, without suits—a very bot thing to be—they turn the other direction and run.
“Nice work, Jennie.”
“Like you can do any better.”
Juan takes off running, stoops to lift a loose stone from a low crumbling section of wall and hurls the stone at the back of one runner’s head. It connects, knocking the suited individual to the ground.
“Better.” Juan beams.
“Show off,” I say. “Now what? Interrogate him for where to find bio suits?”
“No.” Juan lets the rest of the runners flee. None of them stop longer than a few seconds after their comrade hit the stone. No one stays behind to make sure the person will be fine in our company. Nice friends…
Juan reached the suited person and proceeds to free them from the cumbersome gear. “I was aiming for the fat one. Too bad I got the midget beanpole.”
The suit is stunted and thin, just like its wearer, like it’s been custom made. I don’t know the man still unconscious on the stone, but I’m certain he doesn’t share the same lifestyle as Gordon. Gordon’s a rail shape, and this man is a hard pretzel rod in miniature.
“There’s no way Gordon will fit in that,” I say.
“We can make it work.”
Juan proceeds to stuff Gordon into what looks like a sausage casing at this point. I can’t figure out why he’s helping Gordon. He’s anti-Mord as far as I can tell. Anti-human as well. That’s all the things. “Why are you doing this?”
“What?”
“Helping.”
Juan finishes pressing Gordon’s soft stomach in, pulling the zipper up over each lumpy section. “Because.” Then secures the helmet over Gordon’s head. The other man now lays exposed to the signal. My only comfort in our actions is that this man knows where the suits are stored, even though we’ve obviously confiscated his personally issued gear. “You weren’t supposed to upload out of that game. And here you are.”
“The Mord shouldn’t be able to function outside the game…” I say.
“Especially not without a cerebellum. That’s the big reason I was all on board with the program burn.”
“Program burn?” I ask.
“All the facilities were in on it. A huge failure…That’s what they said.”
“The donor programs?” I ask, remembering how I was told what an inspiration I was, how I was going to give hope and happiness to families with members suffering terminal illness or possibly fatal injuries. “Geo announced a huge conference—a training based on massive successes.” I recall the news announcement. Something I hoped would be my ticket to rescuing friends from a game I assumed they were trapped inside. Wrong again. They’re mostly trapped here, inside Juan. Ace with the Commander, his magnetic opposite, locked in a no-win game of chase as they push their north and south programs against one another.
“That was the plan,” Juan admits. “Everyone was in on it. All facilities were to bring any publicly announced uploads. There was to be a coordinated fire, an accident that would burn so hot, it would melt all circuitry within us. We’d be gone. Gone-gone.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “You warned me against my team. Geo upgraded my systems…”
Juan puts up his hands as if he’s trying to disarm my thought process. They were going to end me—like end me? “When I saw it was you…Jennie. It was really you, not some bot.”
“I’ve always been some bot, Commander. Always.” I address the person I assume I’m actually speaking with.
“I didn’t know about the scraps thing until I injected you with new code, I swear. You’re more like me than any other player. Except I was given a fake code. Ace really botched you there.”
Scraps. That’s what I am really. A collection of scraps scrounged together and given consciousness ins
ide the game. I can’t come up with the words I want to say to him right now. To tell him that he’s scrap. He’s weak and childish, and such a fool to think Geo was a decent person, to begin with. “You were going to let yourself be destroyed?” That doesn’t sound Commander-like. I doubt Nazrete is keen on that notion either.
“You didn’t see what was coming out of that game. It wasn’t natural. Those people were seriously messed up.”
“But you’re not. Why go along with it?”
“They weren’t going to melt me. They were going to pass me off as human. I convinced Geo to get the rights to your program and do the same. I’d need company throughout the years…”
“What?” Like the Adam and Eve of AI? How messed up is that? So freaking messed up. “You should have at least asked me if I wanted to be a part of that.”
“So, what, you’d rather be incinerated than spend forever with me?” Juan sounds hurt. But seriously, what’s wrong with him? This isn’t logical. This is some kind of idealistic bullshit.
“The attack came early—from your group—Newbury.” He shakes his head like it’s painful to admit culpability in how the events went down. “He had to shoot. They were loaded with not-yet-activated napalm…” My memory feed loads information before I have the chance to be officially curious. Since the advancements in weapons produced the ability to carry weaponry that is inactive until desired to be active, there have been a lot fewer accidental casualties. “Geo hadn’t finished the upgrades and we hadn’t moved you to the safehouse yet… Belen’s job.”
Of course. That’s how Belen managed to sneak through the glass building, she was working for Geo. Geo rightfully assumed I’d never trust him and sent in a stooge rescue. I totally fell for it.
“Someone from your group called in the hit to our hill ahead of schedule. Pretty much everything’s been a mess since then. Including the Mord uploading directly to our shell factory. It’s supposed to be specific code aligning with each housing, but inside the game is completely out of control. There’s no order anymore. It’s all backdoors and chaos. All the programs are connected through hidden levels, which can’t be monitored on any facility screens, and the Mord have learned how to gain access to the backdoors…”
Con Code Page 26