Mind Hive

by Jake Berry Ellison Jr

  Natalie lifted one foot out of the sandbox. Put weight on it. Stepped out on to it. Crouched. Nothing happened to the floor or air or her. Okay then. She straightened and followed Alex’s Mom, who stopped at a keyboard and beginning punching buttons.

  “Oldest shit in the EU. But, we’ve made some modifications over the years.” She flicked her hand at Natalie and an image of a PDF description of Ai and her position at the WHO came to focus in front of her face.

  The gist of the page-long introduction, with photo, was that Alex’s Mom had cut her wartime medical research teeth as a volunteer doctor with CUAMM, the African version of Médecins Sans Frontières, stationed in Angola. There, nearly a decade after the civil war, she met her future Angolan husband, Manuel Van-dunem, a photographer for Le Monde. The healthcare crisis in Angola spawn by the civil war continued decades after the official end of the fighting. Nevertheless, Manuel was killed in a refugee camp when forces armed, trained and led by a United States conservative paramilitary group came through killing all males ten years old and up. Reprisal killings and terror raids by U.S. backed paramilitary groups also continued for decades to harass the communist-backed victors running the country and as a warning to others in the region that the U.S. would sponsoring terror against any government that did not favor it. Ai escaped to the island of Reunion, with the body of her husband on ice to preserve him for funeral and burial, after learning she was a target of South African military death squad called 32 Battalion. That paramilitary group targeted her because of her marriage to Manuel and her testimony before the Hague of how he had been killed.

  “So where are we then?”

  “My lab.” Ash bounced off the end of her cigarette as she rattled the old keyboard. “Inside the island of Reunion. We are heated and powered by one of the most active volcanoes in the world, Piton de la Fournaise. The volcanic activity also shields us from AI-Ps. That and we work under very low energy requirements. Very efficient. So, it will take time to charge those sandboxes.” She hit the return key. Turned. “Meanwhile, we keep each other warm.” She stepped around the end of the computer table and headed toward the back of the cavern.

  “We? Wait. You’re running electric lights.”

  “Right. If we did not live on an island we would have been overrun by Bios long before now.” She disappeared around a stone wall.

  Natalie followed and around the second wall another cavern opened out as far as she could see. Hundreds of people milled about among the tents, sheets of plastic.

  “How can you possibly keep all of this away from the AI-Ps?”

  “Oh, they’ll get to us eventually. This is only about half. The rest go out on foraging parties, just like all the other Bios.” She stepped past Natalie back into the hall and out into the lab. Said distractedly: “…That’s always been a danger looming like a shadow over everything we've built here.”

  “Star Wars.”

  “… But things have developed that will insure our security.”

  They faced each other.

  “Like?”

  Ai nodded at her.

  “That was my fear.”

  “Alexandrine has been keeping the island and the growing icebergs around us clear of AI-Ps, but if I don’t figure out how to re-configure these nanites into replicators, us Bios are all dead soon anyway. Meanwhile, we need all the time we can get.”

  “I see.” Natalie stood like she had a sneaking-suspicion. “Has this been your plan, or are you just now cooking this up?”

  “Which part?” Ai put her hands among all the other things in her lab coat pockets. “The you’re-a-Bug part or …”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “Oh, I’ve been telling Alex that she needs help. She denies it, but understands. I’m sure it played a role in bringing you here.”

  “What about the second part, then.”

  “We can use the AI-P data pods to turn regular, static nanites into replicators that will take a charge, like what you are using now. But like live viruses used in vaccines, it’s not the full deal. They can’t be inspired to replicate new tissues.”

  “Have you asked for help in The Sim?”

  “Between The Twins and the megalomaniac that got us into this mess, I’m not eager to broadcast what we’re up to here. Not to mention, any outreach reveals our existence and puts our location at risk.”

  “I understand, but recognize that I am a journalist first and a Bug second. I don’t know that I would or will write a story about this lab, but I don’t know that I won’t either. Just to be clear.”

  “I understand. But like I said, none of us have much time left, even Sims. For one, we don’t know how individual identities are kept coherent or how long an identity can remain coherent to itself without a biological body. From what Alex and others tell me, the physics in The Simulation are all breakable. We don’t know how much of our sense of self relies on coherent and consistent physics. A more immediate threat is that the energy the AI uses for its wormhole project is outstripping its growth of the Dyson Sphere. That means it will shut down The Simulation more and more. Maybe for good one day.” She turned to a table and started slowly twisting a large knob marked in fine increments. “Both questions are relevant to you and Alex, too.” Ai flipped a toggle. Turned the big knob back one notch. She sat back on the counter top, waited for Natalie’s reply.

  Several topics vied for Natalie’s followup questioning: What wormhole project? What is the biggest threat to the Bios and how long does she think they have? In short, how long does her mother have? Most Bios are migrating south toward the equator as fast as they can, but the going is getting tougher. Many have decided to hole up in caves and earthen or wooden structures, but none of them will have food or heat much longer.

  “If you find a way to reactivate the replicators, can they resurrect the dead?”

  “I read about your search for your mother. I can say it’s possible, but that’s only because I don’t know how they work and so don’t know what they can or can’t do.”

  “What do you think you’re missing? To get them reactivated, I mean.”

  “I don’t know. It could be that they work fine right now but that they replicate on such a small probability that we’re just not running into that right condition for them to kick in. Look at how many Bugs there are, about a million worldwide, my best guess, compared to people alive during The Transition and you see what I mean. Or, we might discover the right sound frequency or energy pulse or wattage-voltage ratio by accident, and they’ll replicate again.”

  “I could ask for ideas without giving away your existence or location. We could start with that. Someone may have a good idea.”

  “It’s possible, but again there are people in The Simulation who would alert the AI to our efforts.”

  “Celestine?”

  “Yeah. If she thinks we’re getting in the way of the AI’s plans for us all then she might try to stop us.”

  “I’d be more worried about The Twins than Celestine, myself.”

  “The Twins have helped us already. They’re a little off their rockers, but they at least put humans ahead of the AI.”

  “You know what their goal is though, right? Eliminate The Simulation and dissolve everyone into some some kind of condensed consciousness soup for the AI to slurp up. They’ve also figured out how to capture and hold Sims. Your daughter says they have Marsel and Perran. Why would they do that?”

  “Now, why would she tell you that I wonder?”

  Natalie read Ai’s pulse rising and her capillaries expanding. Huh, she thought.

  “Alexandrine!” The mother yelled over her own shoulder the way moms do. Her voice more ice than maternal.

  The kid came back into the research cavern from the living area carrying a bag of potato chips and a glass of bubbly orange pop. Which, Natalie intuited, made sense because her foraging could range far wider than any Bio scavenger team. Natalie has taken pop syrup to Bio groups from time to time. Good for calories and mak
es the kids happy. Miss Alexandrine must be the envy of the local black-marketeers. She was a gutsy little shit, for sure.

  “Yes, mother?” She pulled a rolling chair under her with one arm, held chips and pop in the other and fell into the seat.

  Natalie felt a pang of anxiety at the realization that there was a much-reduced concentration of nanites in the cavern. The kid had to use the chair available in Real Earth terms and not make whatever she wanted. The nanites were here, but the version of them around her did not respond to her, like iron filings that didn’t not respond to a magnet. She also held very little power in her Bug-self here. The touch of worry—okay, fear—came from the corollary realization that she had very little defense here because of that; and this little shit of a Bug-grrrl might have betrayed Marsel and Perran and her mother by saying so. She told her and Robert purposefully that The Twins had captured and were holding the two spies. The plot thickens, Natalie warned herself.

  “Why did you show Natalie how to get here?”

  Natalie’s fake heart pumped a beat harder. She explored what information her senses could glean from her fellow Bug. Could they hurt each other here with such a small proportion of nanites around? Could she get back to The Simulation if Alexandrine got the better of her?

  “She’s a journalist and journalists don’t take sides. Right, Natalie?”

  “I think that depends on what we’re talking about exactly.”

  Alexandrine smiled at her in a way that made her eyes darken. But then her face stiffened a little, possibly suddenly wondering if she’d made the right decision. “And she was experimenting on nanites in the Seattle slick zone. I though you could compare notes or something adult-like.”

  “Is that right?” Ai stood up from the counter, hands deep in bulky pockets. “Do you support Celestine or the Bios?”

  “My job is to ask questions and tell stories. What’s your job?” What could she have in those ridiculous pockets? A gun? Wouldn’t that be a trip. Shot to death or whatever in a cave.

  “Raising a terrible child, evidently.”

  “And experimenting on Bugs?” Natalie attempted to take over the questioning.

  “You?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly, right?”

  “Possibly.”

  This time Alexandrine reacted tensely. “No. We’re not running experiments on Natalie, mom. Natalie. Jesus. Everyone calm down. We can take just a snippet of her clothing and see what we see. No harm.”

  “You’re a powerful Bug,” Ai said, “one of the first if not the first according to my statistical analysis of the spread of replicators. The analysis, which The Twins run in The Simulation with my data, suggests the first Bugs were made near Seattle. What can you tell me about how you became one?”

  “So, this was a setup? You tricked Robert into bringing you to us and then led me here?” Natalie looked over at the sandbox of nanites. “And that’s the only way out?”

  “All of that is true.” Alexandrine slouched in the chair and dug a chip out of the bag.

  What her deescalation meant, Natalie didn’t catch.

  “But as soon as they’re charged again, nothing will keep you here.”

  “We just need to know what you know and get a sample. If you let us. I’m a doctor. I’m a Bio trying to help myself and others survive. We’re not crazy or dangerous. I took the hippocratic oath that I kept during war, even with those who killed my husband and thousands of innocents like him.”

  “Where’s Robert? Do The Twins have him now, too?”

  “God no!” Alexandrine spoke like a kid again. “I wouldn’t let them get their claws into him. He’s too nice, and they’re too gross.”

  Ai rolled her eyes. “Teenagers. Sex. Sex. Sex. That’s all they ever think about.”

  “Mom!” Alexandrine let her face turn red. A warning of impending teenage meltdown?

  “Robert …” Ai snorted at her daughter. “…is shut down with the rest of The Simulation.”

  “How about this.” Natalie’s body relaxed on its own. “You tell me what you know and I’ll reciprocate what I can. I may not be able to tell you everything, just as young Alexandrine here suggested.”

  “Well, where to start …” Ai sat back against the counter.

  XVIII

  Robert snapped into awareness, not like stepping out of a dream into cold air but like a thrown light switch and then the rush of cold air. The truly troubling thing wasn’t the sharp cut between the point of view from Natalie’s shoulder to looking through the rippled glass of his bedroom window at the grocery store’s neon sign across the street. The jarring thing that had his attention focussed on the past moment was that this time he noticed. He knew it had happened before, as in an abstract notion of a blink. He knew the AI has shut down The Simulation before; but he had not experienced it directly. Natalie had followed Alexandrine into the hurricane blizzard and now he stood here. Maybe that was why he experienced the outage, the AI’s inability to put him back where he was before the outage? Which made sense, given the kid’s habits of stealth. He just had to accept they went to her mother’s, somewhere … somehow. He couldn’t shake that sharp sound in his head, a kind of truncated pop of a fired shotgun. He sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. Rubbed his eyes and ran fingers over his scalp through his hair. That gave him pause. His fingers flowed through short straight hair. Jesus Christ. The AI has “… fucked up my hair!”

  Before he could put his hair back natural, a news flash scrolled across his eyes. Explosion Rattles Celestine Headquarters. Robert sent himself to a spot in the park across the mote-like gulf between Celestine’s home and offices, or whatever the building contained, and everything else. He’d tried to cross the barrier a dozen different ways but could not get himself through it and ended up right back where he started. He examined the tall, 30-some stories tall, windowless building facade. The height and other dimensions shifted from time to time. The building’s footprint would take up a city block, if it sat on a block in a city. Instead, it more or less floated or hung out there with unconstructed space for a foundation. Finally, when he stepped onto the void one more time, the distance collapsed between him and the building wall and he passed through.

  He reached a large auditorium that bustled with Sims pulling on arms and legs, heads and butts of the people mashed into a blob in the center of the room where the orchestral pit might have been. He walked down the aisle speaking a description of the scene into his notes. The first intact Sim popped out, woozy, then another. He stop at the edge of the rescuers, watching as one after another Sims popped loose from the conglomerate. One dressed as a fireman said there was an explosion of some sort right as the AI had shut them down. When they got most of the Sims sorted out, each person standing or sitting on their own, gathering their own thoughts together after occupying the shared construct space, the final two bodies to form became The Twins. No Celestine clone, though.

  The Twins shook themselves like shaggy dogs and then popped out of the auditorium before anyone could get a hold of them.

  Robert felt a hand on his shoulder. Josh the Spy.

  “Wow,” Josh said. “That was a very intimate experience.” He dropped down into an auditorium chair.

  “What happened?” Robert sat next to him.

  “Since The Twins just popped out of here, I have a sneaking suspicion they had something to do with whatever happened.”

  “There was an explosion?”

  “There was an explosion of some sort. We held the portal or glitch open and just as Celestine dove in everything stopped in mid expansion or explosion, if that’s what you want to call it. When The Simulation came back on, we sort of all combined into a kind of viscous-blur filled with voices. That’s the best I can I can put it. Don’t know what else I can tell you.”

  Robert had his notebook out and flipped opened to a blank, lined page. He drew his pen from a pocket inside his corduroy jacket and scratched notes.

  “Where is Celesti
ne?”

  “Celestine is all over, but that clone of her is somewhere on the other side of what we see as The Simulation. We’re inside and she is now outside and lord knows what that’s like if it’s like anything.”

  Robert wrote all that down. Flipped the page.

  “What was the plan?”

  “The plan?”

  “What was she hoping would happen when she dove into the portal …”

  “It’s more of a glitch.”

  “The glitch?”

  “Stick her head in, look around and get back out before the shutdown completed and the hole disappeared.”

  “Glitch.”

  “Sort of. I guess we don’t really know, and that’s one of the reasons she wanted to stick her head in there. Maybe it’s a glitch or a necessary part of the shutdown. Or, maybe it’s intentional. We really don’t know much about how we’re here, what keeps us here, where we’re actually stored let alone why these holes pop open just before the AI shuts us down to run its wormhole experiments.”

  “Why were you here?”

  “Marsel. You know who she is?”

  “I do.”

  “Her hackers are working night and day to break out of The Simulation’s firewalls and discovered that all the information humans created digitally has been recorded into the construct of The Simulation. They found some documents I stole from our government that explained the background of the AI. They intended for the AI to find a way to get them off the planet before environmental degradation pushed the masses to revolt. They tested the AI out on Celestine, a Turing Test. She saved more people than they would have. So, I joined her team again.”

  “To do what?”

  “Figure out how to get us the fuck …” Josh shifted in his seat. “Sorry. Out of here.”

  “Interesting.” Robert put his notebook away but kept his annotated recording going. “What now?”

  “There are other Celestines. One of them will be around soon, I hope.”

  “Where do you think she’ll show up?”

  “Upstairs. I suspect.” Josh stood, eyes on the spot where he’d just been extracted. “We have to figure out how The Twins got in here. She’ll probably wait until we know they are under control before coming back.”