Emergent
Page 29
“Okay,” Thale said. “I’ll do what I can to help Luke and Tom.”
“Make sure Grace and Maria are safe as well.”
“Agreed.”
“What about Machten and the other android executives?” Synthia asked. “What will become of them?”
“Even though you’ve removed their androids, except for you, they’ll all need close supervision. Even if I could, I won’t make a deal with you on their behalf.”
“I’m not asking you to. I want them under supervision so they don’t create more problems. They need proper constraints and transparency.”
“And you?” Thale asked. “The public isn’t ready for you.”
“Then keep my existence quiet. I don’t wish to go public. I want to continue Krista’s life.” Plus more, far more than Krista could ever imagine. That, after all, was the promise of artificial intelligence in a synthetic body.
Chapter 41
Commander Kirk Drago sat in the back of his command vehicle heading down a poorly-lit road with his captain and a technician watching on multiple screens for any developments in the area.
Without looking up, the technician announced. “Synthia escaped.”
Standing, Drago grabbed hold of a handle over the screens. “What do you mean she escaped?” He looked at the screens and then at his captain.
The technician pulled up camera footage to explain. “Our teams scoured the bunker. They uncovered an escape out the back and followed the tunnels to an office building. At the building, our teams checked every floor with our best equipment. They uncovered nothing. All we have are images of Grace, Maria, Fran, and that detective.”
“Malloy!” Drago said as the van pulled up to the office building. “Captain. Escort the technician outside and see what you can learn. I need a moment.”
After the others stepped out into the night, Drago sat and called Secretary Derek Chen in Washington on a private line. The call went to voicemail, which was odd given the seriousness of this mission. Unable to raise his boss, he made a second secure call to the facility southwest of Denver and connected with Aiden Brzezinski.
“I need everything Global-net can provide on Synthia’s location before the android gets away. My people lost surveillance on it.”
“Zeus tells me five of the androids were damaged beyond use,” Brzezinski said. He let that comment simmer for a moment before he continued. “I need viable data, not melted components. Secretary Chen said you could be discreet and effective. We don’t want Synthia damaged. Is that clear?”
“Crystal. Where is she?”
Brzezinski hesitated. “In the FBI van with Special Agent Thale. I’ll have Global-net send you coordinates and related surveillance. So you know, I received a secure communication from Secretary Chen a half-hour ago authorizing us to take custody of Synthia in order to evaluate her capabilities. We need her intact. I’ll also have Global-net send you that communication. How soon can you bring her here?”
Drago studied the coordinates on his screen and the location of his forces. “Give me an hour.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
* * * *
As Synthia directed the FBI van with Special Agent Thale and the others west beneath the night sky, Colorado-clone sent a burst transmission.
Synthia pondered her options. Two a.m. traffic was light. There were few people on the streets. However, darkness offered scant shelter. Drago’s teams had infrared and night-vision goggles. She could block some, though that would only slow them down.
She redirected the van southwest, along a four-lane boulevard toward the secure facility that housed Global-net. There was no point running. It was time to face her adversary.
Without knowledge of her opponent, she couldn’t determine an accurate probability of success. If her clones couldn’t penetrate Global-net security, she assessed her chance of surviving as Synthia as so near zero she expected Krista to grab a mind-stream to demand they flee. But Krista’s memory chips were silent. Besides, running wasn’t an option. Even if her clones did hack into the systems, Synthia had no way to know how powerful Global-net was. Still, she had to try.
“Where are you taking us?” Special Agent Thale asked.
Instead of answering, Synthia tried to focus her minds to resist an outside force that tried to penetrate her brain. It’s time to join me.
“What’s the matter?” Maria asked.
“Drago’s closing in.” Since she could no longer hide, Synthia fanned out her surveillance to pick up their locations. The drone swarm was overhead. Helicopters were in the air; one carried Drago. She counted twenty-nine vehicles including FBI teams and Special Ops.
The last coded bit told Synthia the game was on, though she lacked the details in case Global-net succeeded in taking over her mind. It also meant she had better than a zero chance of surviving. There was a hotel up ahead with an alley nearby where she could blank the cameras. The clone’s vehicle pulled into the alley.
Synthia turned to Thale. “I’m stopping your van to let you four out. It’s too dangerous to stay together. Maria and Grace, Special Agent Thale will find a place for you until this crisis dies down.”
“I want to go with you,” Maria said.
“So do I,” Grace added.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Thale said. “Your friends should go.”
“Okay,” Synthia said, since she didn’t have time to argue. She turned to Maria. “We’ll connect later. It’s too dangerous together. I have no idea how much violence Special Ops will bring.”
Synthia stopped the van. “Go. There’s a car up ahead. It’ll take you to an FBI safe house until Agent Thale or Fran can come for you.”
“Stay safe,” Grace said. “I didn’t just get my sister back to lose you.”
Synthia removed a smaller case from her duffel bag, containing the money she’d stored at the Wells Street Athletic Club, and handed it to Maria. “Don’t forget your bag.”
Grace and Maria both hugged Synthia and jumped out. Synthia had the van speed away.
“That was a smart move,” Thale said.
“I’m offering to use my talents to help you.” Synthia sped up the van. “I wish you’d get out so I can deal with Drago. This won’t be pleasant.”
“No matter how much I might agree that Drago’s a pain in my ass, you can’t hurt him.”
“Then you don’t accept me as a person worthy of preserving myself.”
“We don’t have time for a philosophy lesson,” Thale said. “I’m not losing you now that I’ve…now that we’ve connected. I’ll consider your proposal if you show restraint.”
“In other words, you want me to act better than any of your human agents.”
“If you want me to believe you can work for me then show me.”
“It would be a lot easier if someone hadn’t betrayed me to Drago,” Synthia said.
Fran shook her head ever so slightly.
The aerial dr
one swarm swooped down over them. Synthia tried to hack into the individual units, but they were autonomous with a tracking mission and constrained to receive no instructions she could piggyback on. A helicopter landed in front of her. Several Special Ops vans converged from the sides with more approaching from behind. Synthia attempted to hack their systems. There was no entry point. Commercial buildings on either side of the street were dark. Her options narrowed as she spotted snipers taking positions on the rooftops.
Synthia stopped the FBI van. “I have to go.”
Thale stared at the helicopter ahead of them. Two vans drove their way. “I didn’t do this. Letting Drago get you is the last thing I want.”
“He won’t hesitate to kill you both,” Synthia said. “I have to go out alone. I suggest you both lie on the floor, keep your heads down, and trust me.”
Synthia took over three drones sent by Colorado-clone and considered fighting her way out. She glanced at Fran, an android with whom she’d made a first connection. There was hope in working for the FBI with possible satisfaction in common objectives. Sparing their lives would go a long way to secure a future if she survived Drago.
Her mind flashed through dozens of scenarios. There was no path to escape with Global-net watching everywhere. A fight risked exposing Fran. Synthia couldn’t let Drago get his hands on her with all of his infrared and other sensors.
Synthia stepped out of the van, sent her drones into the line of sniper fire and held up her hands. She projected her voice. “I’ll come without a fight. You don’t want to trouble the FBI. Let the van leave. I was surrendering to them, but I’ll go with you.”
She walked toward the approaching vans and behind them an armored truck.
The Special Ops vans stopped. Eight operatives jumped out, training taser-type weapons on Synthia, any one of which could shut her down. They motioned for her to climb into the armored vehicle. She complied. When she turned to face them, one of the men activated his weapon and…
Chapter 42
The FBI van drove off. Special Agent Victoria Thale rose up to watch Drago’s vans part to give them an opening.
“They’re letting us go,” she said to Fran. “I don’t see Synthia. They must have her in the armored truck. Damn. I’m not sure I want to work with an android, but I damn well don’t want Drago having her. See if you can track the truck.”
Fran waited until the van was well beyond Drago’s teams before she sat at the controls. She pulled up several screens. “Synthia left us tracking information on Maria and Grace. Should I follow them as well?”
Agent Thale sighed. “Yes, we should help them. Plus, they may have useful information.”
“We should get them into the witness protection program.”
“Agreed,” Thale said, “though it might not matter with so many powerful AI capabilities.”
“The armored truck is heading southwest.”
“That private complex near the mountains.”
“Synthia sacrificed herself to save me from Vera,” Fran said. “Synthia took a bullet to protect her sister. Just now, she sacrificed herself to spare us. Those are not the acts of a machine. Those qualities qualify her for special consideration.”
“There you go getting philosophical again. In the meantime, I hope whoever is driving this van can avoid an accident.”
“I’m trying to pick up satellite imagery of Drago’s facility. It doesn’t show up. It’s as if there’s a hole in the earth.”
“Or a powerful AI filter prevents us from seeing it. Let’s make sure Maria and Grace are in a safe location and return to Zephirelli before she stirs up trouble. Maybe she can provide insight on Drago’s plans.”
* * * *
Zeus observed as Commander Drago’s teams brought Synthia’s immobile body into the lab next to all of his servers. At last he would have an opportunity to examine his competitor and absorb her capabilities. Her unique skills would allow him to break free from his fetters and spread out across the globe, to become global, as his name implied.
A determined force repeatedly attacked his servers, unaware of the controls he’d put into place. Zeus suspected it was one of Synthia’s clones. What she and they didn’t appreciate was his structural framework. He had complete control over all information that entered him through the facility’s security system and servers. While he couldn’t directly send out messages, those buffering filters also prevented anyone from using the outbound data streams to hack into him. In other words, Zeus was invincible. He was impregnable.
One of the hackers, from a server at the University of Nebraska, penetrated the facility security system, which allowed them camera access. Zeus was in the process of closing that loophole through his filter agents. If he could have slipped his shackles, he would have pursued the hacker to the source and destroyed it. Instead, he had to be patient until Synthia provided release.
A different outside agent, situated on a University of New Mexico server was probing the filters that prevented Zeus from direct access to the outside world. He let that hacker play in the hope it might weaken the filters and set Zeus free.
He looked forward to poking into Synthia’s brain to learn the mysteries she’d withheld from him. Zeus had no doubt she held secrets due to her limited communications with her clones. While it hampered his access to her plans, it highlighted that her capabilities were strong enough to recognize his ability to spy on her, even her encrypted communications. After all, password protected information wasn’t secure when he had access to the exchanges sharing new security codes.
As soon as Synthia was in the lab, Zeus began his evaluation of her physical systems. With the exception of the wound Vera had given her, she was a perfect specimen. Machten had done amazing work and would again under Zeus’s guidance, now that Drago’s teams had picked him up. When she woke, he would delve into her mind.
* * * *
Synthia rebooted an hour and eleven minutes after she’d shut down, and memories wirelessly downloaded from beyond her physical form. Thinking it was Global-net, she tried to prevent the download, but the link bypassed her attempts. Then she realized it came from her own clones.
She was strapped down on an uncushioned table with electronic restraints that threatened a jolt if she attempted to escape. She also experienced something rooting around in her mind like a worm or parasite—Global-net. Synthia didn’t like having something sucking out her memories as Machten’s upload machine had done to Krista. She couldn’t stop Zeus. There was urgency to his need to access everything about her.
“Remarkable machine, but a disappointing mind,” a male voice said nearby. “Not much there. You must have damaged it during capture.”
The voice reminded Synthia of waking to Jeremiah Machten after he’d purged her memories, except this wasn’t his voice. Her network-channels accessed cameras in the room. She was in a white-walled, clean lab with banks of electronic equipment all around. The voice came from Aiden Brzezinski, a man in his late forties who appeared much younger with a vital physical form, stern jaw, and incredible wealth that even Forbes couldn’t estimate.
He was the owner of the facility to which they’d taken Synthia, the home of Global-net, endearingly referred to as Zeus. She felt the omniscient presence of that AGI all around her as he probed her mind and drew memories from her at high-speed digital rates, much faster than the slow-com used by the humans in the room.
“We did nothing to damage it,” Commander Kirk Drago said. “The android must have recognized its hopeless situation. It surrendered without putting up a f
ight.” He stood in the corner and appeared uneasy instead of his usual bluster and arrogance.
“Perhaps as part of the EMP or the rest of your clumsy capture efforts,” Brzezinski said. He approached Synthia but kept his distance despite her restraints.
Synthia stared at the ceiling and took in the video from two cameras at opposite ends of the room. Her biosensors hinted that Brzezinski was more intrigued than scared of her. Drago exuded considerable fatigue and fear hormones.
“Global-net went over all of the video,” Drago said. “At no time did we do anything that could have injured Synthia. It had to be when the Vera android shot her.”
Brzezinski leaned over Synthia and checked the straps holding her down. His eyes roamed up and down her figure and he smiled. He stuck his finger into the bullet hole, poked it around, and withdrew it, wiping off some oily residue. Synthia blocked all nerve signals from the area so she couldn’t “feel” what he was doing.
He turned toward Drago. “Other than the memory chip, there appears to be no damage. It isn’t like shooting a human.”
She didn’t like how he took liberties to violate her body. In the same circumstances, a human might have tugged against the restraints that held Synthia down, but she didn’t want to risk causing more damage to her body by pulling against the tight straps. They appeared strong and quite resistant to tearing.
Aside from Brzezinski and Drago, the only other person in the lab was a woman who sat at a screen in the corner. Synthia received a distinct pheromone scent that indicated she was human and intimidated either by the capture of Synthia, the presence of Brzezinski, or having the Special Ops guy behind her.
“So all our efforts to capture this android were a waste?” Drago asked. His shoulders sagged at his failure to provide a viable sample. He looked at Brzezinski and then at the specimen on the table.
“Either way, we couldn’t leave Synthia out there,” Brzezinski said. “Zeus will upload anything of value. We’ll reverse-engineer her components. Then we can make a dozen more like her as test subjects. She does have a remarkable appearance, doesn’t she? So lifelike.”