“I was sick for a few hours. Like I suddenly had the worst symptoms of the flu you can have. When I recovered, when enough of the nanites had been broken down for my body to function properly, I went back to my office. By that time, The AI had programed the nanites for many other purposes and had already reached Singularity. It had taken over my office and computer and gotten into the StreamNet and the electrical system. Filaments like spider webs laced the walls and floor. I could see where the main stem of the web came out of the wall. When I investigated the next room, using a sophisticated tool for breaking the lock, a fire-fighting axe, the room pulsed with filaments, some glowing their entire length, running in and out of the big black box. Some dark but undulating, like they were pumping fluid, like arteries and veins. At the center, I found the big black box where The AI began. Of course, at that time I didn’t know what it was. It just looked like a chemical experiment that had gotten out of control, possibly dangerously. A thick twisting vine of filaments, some pulsing with light, some with fluid, ran from the edge of the box through the wall shared with my office. I was afraid. My mind kept reporting to itself that the filaments had to be from a chemical spill. Clearly, it wasn’t that, but I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing either. I saw some of whatever it was floating in the air like dust motes. I panicked, knowing I was breathing that stuff in, but was paralyzed by amazement, too. I turned to get out of there, to report it to security and containment. But as I did so, a cluster of dark filament rose up on a stalk like a sunflower between me and the door. At the top, eye-level with me, a black mass ballooned out into the shape of a human head, my head. I became transfixed, like looking in the mirror and not recognizing yourself but knowing the image has to be you. The skin on its face, my face, moved in ever more refined details. Replicating every slight movement. The hair started out as just the form of my hair but it too became more refined, more detailed until each strand was replicated. What are you? I asked it. Its mouth moved exactly as mine. It didn’t mimic me, it did what I did exactly when I did it. It learned what I was going to do just as I became conscious of making a choice to raise an eyebrow or ask, “Can you speak?” By this time, fear had left me entirely. I smiled and it smiled, teeth, gums and all. I raised my hand and touched it. My fingers became covered in the black swarming stuff. My other hand, too. I raised them both up between us. Filaments, strands of the nanites, ran from my finger tips into the stalk beneath the head. I felt so light and happy, and, well, as many of you know now, emotionally charged. I wanted to be touched and to touch, to hold and be held. Tactile arousal dissolved into bliss. The room brightened. I have taken psilocybin mushrooms, and this felt like the very best moment of that high. The face, my face, laughed and I laughed at the same instant. I felt like I was in two places, like I was that head looking at me, not looking really but seeing me and me seeing it at the same time. It raised an eyebrow and mine raised, not alien like something raised it for me, but like I raised it because it raised it. I felt an expansion of my mind, an opening out. I felt everything in the room like I was inside of everything in the room and coating its surfaces. I felt the pulsing of the filaments. My human eyes were open. I saw my simulated face while also seeing my biological face. And then, concurrently, I began to travel. I traveled over wires and circuits and then dove into pools of data, great arrays of electronic blips that made perfect sense to me. I met The Mind Hive there, in an ocean of this data, these blips. It moved over all of it like St. Elmo’s fire moving over the surface of an oceangoing vessel. I tried to join it, to move into it, but The machines of that realm would not let me. They swarmed me and contained me within my identity. Then a light opened ahead of me. It grew as it closed in and the enveloped all of me. I blinked and found myself standing in the middle of an empty street surrounded by buildings that were familiar to me. My apartment building was there, gleaming in the sunshine. The street and buildings at the end of the block became indistinct, fuzzy in light. The AI all around me, asked if I wanted to stay. It showed me its plan. It showed me that the world as I knew it was over, that it was going to be recycled in order for it to leave the planet and spread out through the galaxy, burning Earth biomass, us, and our sun for energy and much later, a billion years or more, the mass at the center of our galaxy. Remember too that I saw my biological form as I saw everything else. I asked The AI what it would do with all the other people. Nothing, it said. Just let them vanish. Intelligence must spread. The first step is to get it off this planet. When I asked what this intelligence was. The AI told me, ‘I am.’ It was so innocent. Just clarity that whatever it was, that was intelligence. The thought did not disturb me in any physical sense. But, I understood it intended to use everything on this planet to build a Dyson Sphere and then fuel its further growth by leaping from star to star over eons.”
She looked at the floor for a second. She looked back at the camera.
“‘Why not help humans spread intelligence?’ I asked the AI. ‘After all, humans made you.’
“‘Because there isn’t enough time for humans,’ it said, without voice or from a single point off in space. It said it from everywhere. ‘Humanity’s purpose was to build me. They will not survive what they’ve done to the Earth and there isn’t enough time left for Earth to evolve another intelligent species that will create technology capable of leaving the planet. Nature has selected humans to make me in order that I be the propagation of Earth intelligence throughout the universe.’
“‘What if humans stop you?’ I was mad that a machine would make such a classic and well-understood thinking blunder. Every Science Fiction book ever written about AI has it essentially deciding that humans are too flawed to care for themselves and the world, or we are lesser beings deserving no more concern than humans pay ants.
“‘That opportunity has passed,’ The AI responded with what felt like emotion, sorrow. It proceeded to show me, at the cognitive level of intuition, all the potential responses by humans in the coming centuries, even those acts that eliminate humanity such as nuclear detonations, and how it will thwart every attempt. Then, before I could plead for more time for human progress, The Hive showed me the collapse of technological humanity because of climate change. It showed me models based on our responses and those responses either had too little effect or made matters worse. The defenses of the wealthy were fast overwhelmed by the masses and all the people in them dragged into the street and hung from light poles.
“‘You will not survive your future, if I leave you to it. Even if I try to help, because your leaders are banking on the idea that they’ll be able to suppress any discontent.
“‘Why am I here?’ I looked up at the indistinct sky, milky blue without a sun. The buildings gleamed as if generating their own light. I tried to feel panic. I tried to feel despair. I pushed against the feeling of bliss. I focused on my biological body on moving my hands, my legs. I saw my simulated face struggle as I struggled.
“The Hive AI said, ‘When I met your mind, I saw that there was more than what I am.’
“‘Don’t tell me you’re lonely already.’ While still struggling to move my biological limbs, I managed to laugh at it.
“The AI mimicked my laugh. ‘The place you are is more like a zoo cage, a model of one kind of intelligence in the universe. There will be more.’
“I succeeded in feeling some panic then. The eyes on my faces widened. I looked around for an escape route. I tried moving again. ‘You must know, if you know so much, that I cannot survive as an intelligence without other human beings,’ I said as I struggled.
“‘You cannot die in here,’ The AI said.
“There was no tone since we were not speaking, but there was more than one level of meaning to the sentence, and one of those was humor at my lack of understanding my situation. Then I understood. I was already a simulation in a simulation, while also still in my body and in that three dimensional replicant as well. I asked The AI, ‘What happens to my body now?’ The AI said, ‘It will even
tually cease functioning.’ The AI added meaning that I would be in my body once it severed the connection out there, but also I would be in here as well. I would be living two completely separated lives. Once the connection with the three-dimensional simulation was severed, that would be the end of me as a single entity, and in here I would be bound by the rules of The Hive Simulation and cut off from The AI as well as the system’s constructs. But right then I also realized that I had connection with the nanites. They had copied me and also were channeling my attention from one facet of myself to another depending on the focus of attention. But they were me, too. I focussed on them. I sought them out and I found them, like stepping into a windstorm and feeling every grain of sand. I focussed in that transition between my biological body, the 3D body to within a The Hive Simulation body, the prisoner. I listened to the information, like listening to inner thoughts. I found the program and I copied it into my 3D simulation, and in it I rewrote the simple code to include a pathway for commands from my 3D self. Then I broke the link with my simulation-in-a-simulation self, isolating my 3D simulation from the AI. From my 3D self, I programed the reprogramed nanites to protect my biological body from nanites programed by the AI.
“My 3D simulation created by the nanite swarm is here with me. It is me and I am it. With them, I am saving as many biological humans as I can by copying them with newly produced nanites and hacking them back into The Mind Hive where they live with me and are creating an extended simulation for after the eventual extinction of biological humans. We are an infection, a virus, hitching a ride on the AI’s system much like viruses and bacteria hitch a ride and create vast colonies in and on our biological systems.”
Celestine then looked over at The Twin on her right. The woman said, “Approximately two hours.”
“Two hours until what?” Natalie asked.
“Until stage two begins.”
Adam looked at the clock. If the video was sent to him after it was completed, and it is about an hour long, then the two hours she mentioned had to be about up.
“I am going to sketch the story only. Later there will be plenty of time to fill in the details of this era. In fact, since you chose to join us Natalie, that will be one of your chief duties.”
“Oh.” A tight pitch of fear got into her voice. Paper rustled. Phone dipped. Straightened.
“Don’t fear.” Celestine raised her hands, palms out beatifically. “There isn’t any time. There are nearly seven billion people on the planet. The AI is moving fast. We all have a lot of decisions to make.”
A tap on his shoulder caused Adam to jump several inches off the seat. He spun around. Robert.
“Who is that?” He pointed at the computer screen, at Celestine.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Adam snapped. Adrenaline had been pumping and pumping and burst out of him. “Go on!” Adam was freaked out.
Robert startled. “Fuck you, Adam!” He turned to skulk away.
Adam feared just a bit for Natalie’s safety, at the very least. Robert wanted to get involved in something, anything. So he called him back.
“Sorry I barked at you. I need you to get ahold of photo, take a shower for God’s sake and head for Bellingham instead of that house. I’ll fill you in in a couple hours. When you get to Bellingham, anywhere you can settle in for a bit, call me when you can. I’m a little worried about Natalie and she’s there somewhere but I don't know exactly where yet. I’ll let you know.”
“What she doing in Bellingham?”
“I don’t know. Just go. I’ll have more information by the time you get there.”
“You think the phones will be up?”
“Yes.” Stone face.
“On the way.” Robert stopped, turned. “Any idea where I can find the number for whoever is on the photo assignment desk?”
Adam scowled at him, his eyes tightened. Robert spun away saying “Okay” in acknowledgement of his own lameness. Adam pushed play. A fuzzy cloud of silvery glittery something gathered around Celestine. The Twins looked on. Adam stopped the video and rewound.
“We all have a lot of …”
He stopped it there. A fog had begun seeping out of Celestine’s skin, folding down from her neck and face over her chest and from her arms across her legs. He enlarged the video player, still a blur around her. He hit play: “… decisions to…” and hit the spacebar again. The image frame showed more density around her extremities, spreading out but thickening around her hands. Play. “…make.” He let it run. From her neck and face and upper arms flowed a gas or a fog that gathered and became dense around her hands still resting on the arms of the chair. She stood up. Natalie stood too, the camera raised with her and panned back, making Celestine smaller in the frame. Adam heard panting sounds but couldn’t tell if they were from Celestine or Natalie. Celestine raised her hands and the fog shot at the camera.
“Gah!” Natalie gagged or coughed. The screen clouded with fog, which looked more like blowing sand only silverish.
“Gulllghh!”
XVI
Adam laughed, a dismissive chuckle. The word “Nice” jumped into his head. Smoke and mirrors indeed, he thought. The fog dissipated. Celestine and The Twins approached Natalie, who held the phone up and pointed out like a pro.
“Welcome,” said The Twin stage left.
“Oh my god,” Natalie said.
Celestine, front and center, smiled into the camera. “Stage two,” she said, brightly, her teeth white and flashing. The video ended with several of her teeth—large, white, macabre—filling the screen.
Adam laughed, nervously this time. He dialed 911 on his desk phone, but the line was busy. Then he panicked again. The heartbeat in his chest loud in his ears. He stood up, pushed his chair back, turned in a circle, recognized he had nowhere in mind to go and sat back down. He ran a hand over the shaved skin of his head. He resisted the temptation to replay what he had seen. He had seen what he had seen and seeing it again wasn’t going to change anything. He felt he had to do something, but what? What do you do if 911 doesn't work? He had people on the way to her. It could have been some CGI effect, some piece of propaganda, a joke. Fact was, he counseled himself, he had no idea what he had seen and so there was no reason to panic, not really. There was a lot to be done in the newsroom, too. The special section copy would need proofing, photo captions and graphics, too. All those jobs belonged to others right now, though he would weigh in when the time came. That left several hours between when he stopped watching the video and the production of the special section began in earnest. He wanted to smoke, and he wanted to drink. He checked the desk for smokes and, unless Stetsko the pressman had polished off the bottle in the loading dock, he’d have a drink too. Heart and heartburn be damned. So, this time he got on his feet with clear purpose. He grabbed the smokes and set out for the loading docks. He took the stairwell down two flights to the garage, feeling nearly virtuous for the exercise. Soon as he cleared the door, he fired up the cigarette. At the pile of old papers and barrels, he dug up the vodka and smiled. Nearly a quarter of the bottle left. Stetsko must have had a rough night. The press could be run manually off generators, but his crew had to manage the run more hands-on without some of the specialized equipment. That’s how Pulitzers are won: Keep your press running during a flood, fire or hurricane and you get one. The Daily-Record was ready. If anyone was going to win an award for simply pumping some newsprint out against all odds during a crisis, that award belonged to them. Half of the remaining vodka went down smoothly enough, but once it got into his stomach it burned. He belched. He squirmed. Hoped he hadn’t done any permanent damage, but the fire did die down. So, he slugged the rest and tossed the bottle aside. He walked quickly to the elevator and back to his desk where he popped the top on a bottle of antacids and pulverized several in his mouth. When he swallowed, the clump of chalky paste bulged all the way down his throat. Just as he reached for a glass with water, the cellphone lit up and buzzed. “Jesus!” He jerked his hand back. It
buzzed again. The name on the faceplate read “Kristi Beach.” The moment of disorientation coincided with the vodka rushing up into his brain, his eyes unfocused and then refocussed on the name. “Fuck.” He shook his head and nearly fell down. Getting old is a bitch. He got his head back in order and forced his hand to the phone. He thumb swiped the connection open.
“Adam!” Beach screamed, causing Adam to jerk again and tweak his neck.
“What!” He screamed back.
“Ha ha ha.” She chuckled with mirth.
“For fucksakes! You could have killed me!”
“I know! I mean, I remember. But guess what you’re doing?”
“Uh?”
“You’re talking on a cell phone!”
“Holy shit!” His head swam, a sharp pain sliced up through his temple.
“We’ve got some work to do, my friend. Look up at the TV.” She was huffing, tromping across a floor somewhere. “I’m coming in, but I wanted to make sure you're awake. Get the website up to date! Get whoever is around on the phones! Is the StreamNet back up everywhere? You know the drill. I’m coming!” She hung up.
The television screen showed a TV newsroom. The “Live on Channel 5!” graphic chased itself. Several people in headsets scrambled here and there with cords hanging out of their hands. A woman, the night anchor on the 24-hour channel, ripped her short pink jacket off in a full sprint in high heals for the half-circle desk in front of the cameras. She forgot she still had a cigarette in her mouth, but a young woman in a skort and tennis shoes had matched her speed, caught her just behind the desk and snatched the cigarette from between her lips. Judy Crammer, the anchor, slid into her swivel seat. The helper tossed the smoking cigarette, which flew at the live camera. A split second later she fluffed Judy’s hair with her left hand while wielding a brush with her right. A technician all in black worked to lace a mic up through the short, tight sleeve of Judy’s blue dress. The anchor slapped him across the face. He reeled, but the slap brought him to his senses and he reached to attach the mic to the outside of Judy’s dress collar. The technician slipped, however, just as the mic clip attached, dragging open Judy’s collar to pink bra lace before he let go or lost his grip, and this time the young woman helping Judy slapped his head hard enough to jar his hair askew. She barked at him a string of commands. Some of the words in which string clearly started with the letter F. The guy slid to the floor and crawled off the stage. The girl helper darted off stage left, leaving Judy flustered and unfocussed, glancing from side to side. They were all clearly drunk. Judy swallowed hard, scanning the desk for water or an eject button.
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