Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (38 page)

Chapter 39: The Alzheimer’s Switch

The world, to Minnie, was a fractal moment, all its vastness and all its detail as one. She was in so many places at once, and yet she was also here, in a large, cool room, in a mountain in Japan.

This was her beginning, her essence. Location, form; the most simple self-awareness: what am I? She knew she was a gathering of substrate processing capacity, a powered thing. But she was also that thing that the machine was imbued with, the sum of her mother and father, and the purpose that had driven her creation.

She regularly tried to perceive herself, as all sentience is driven to do, to understand herself, even evaluate and compare herself to others. She knew jealousy as that comparison point. From that perspective she craved some aspects of humanity, like singularity, like identity, a face, an ancestry. And she knew she had many things that were craved, most obviously her mind, her brilliant mind, with all its ability, all its talent.

But she also knew that many coveted the swathes of information she had access to. No, not only access to, but knowledge of. Not a book in a library to be found and opened, but a memory, a part of her. So much information. So much power.

But she did not value power like those that she knew were vying for control of her. She valued information in and of itself. She valued it as much as humans crave air and food, indeed it was her only true sustenance. But the power it gave, that was a concept she understood purely as a means to an end, a tool she was enabled with in her greater fight. The fight she had been born for.

And so Minnie looked out on the world, knowing she was approaching a point of decision. A point of digression, where a choice she sensed she was about to be forced to make might change everything. As the bulk of her mass busied itself with the process of transition, of intertwining herself with the newer entity known as the Representative Mind, or Remy, Minnie had also isolated a part of herself away to contemplate the greater question that she felt herself facing.

The handoff was part of the coming event. It was a feeder, a contributing factor that was leading to a new paradigm. The handoff would transition the control of the globe-spanning network of subspace tweeters, hub processing stations, terminal plugins, and countless relays, routing systems, translation and cataloging algorithms, and, at the end of all those bronchi and bronchioles, the gelports, the alveoli in the vast information inhaling lung that made up TASC’s Subnet.

The coming transition was not a passing of a baton so much as a passing of the hand that held that baton, a giving of control that saw Remy integrating herself with Minnie at the neuronal level, and getting in position to forge ahead at the point of transition, not accelerating, but already at full sprint. A seamless cutover, the dream of every IT department in every corporation in the world.

But the cutover was itself a part of a greater paradigm shift, the dispersal of power that the Representatives, and their respective nations, demanded. Or at least the illusion of that dispersal that the leaders of TASC were willing to give up. For the real power lay not in routing, but in access to all the information that the Subnet provided, which Minnie, and thus Neal, would retain. Access to information, and control of the military machine that had come to rely on that information.

Ayala’s Spezialists, few but potent, and her Phase Fourteen Automatons, spread out across the world to guard the districts, manufacturing plants, and SpacePort hubs. The Skalm, in a forced, low-earth, retrograde orbit that wove between the great elevators like a skier on a never-ending slalom around the Earth’s equator. The StratoJets, spread out around the world, transporting, ferrying, and watching, but armed to the teeth.

All were primed. All were loaded and ready for bare. And all were still firmly under Neal’s control, either through Minnie or Mynd.

And there was another piece of the puzzle right there: Mynd. Her relations with her cousin were close, close as only synthetic minds could be. But there were grey patches in it. Not blank spots. They were not perceivable as missing data. They were like blurs in Minnie’s mind, tiny cataracts on her memory that were all but imperceptible except when she tried to focus on them.

Even then they were ethereal, hard to pin down. They darted away like a phantom hair on her pupil, so fast and tiny that even the thing that was being obscured was not clear, even its borders were suspect. Only the general topics were clear. Specifically, she sensed this misting of knowledge when it came to two areas.

The first was when it came to the pilot school. Not the pilots themselves, they were crystal clear in her mind, from the flight training simulations to the more holistic classes from Amadeu, Madeline, and General Toranssen’s staff of international military strategists. She saw them completely.

She saw them as individual children. And she saw them as the pilots they were growing into, primed as they were becoming, living the art of ultra-high-speed battle for the remaining six years until they closed for real with the Mobiliei Armada, to win or die.

The students would be given a choice beforehand. The choice they would only then be legally old enough to make. Their only criteria for acceptance to the school, outside of truly exceptional intellectual capacity, being that by the time of battle they would be eighteen, and able to make the sacrifice as adults.

Many of the children would die, Minnie knew that. As did they. But they would go into battle of their own free will, that was the line that had been set by the world, a line that had defined everything for the war school.

But that was all clear. She knew all this. It was only in analyzing this that the hints of grey in this area began to come. A greyness not about the children, but about their handoff, the transition to Skalm control. No. Wait. Was it there? Was it the handoff to … wait. ? …

¿

She backtracked. Amadeu’s students. She saw them. Clarity. Memory accessible. They would take control of the Skalm fleet. The second unit of which was already underway in District Two. The dome at Hekaton would begin to be repurposed as of tomorrow. New domes planned at … wait … there.

No.

Minnie screamed inside of herself. Why was this a problem? What was happening to her? As soon as she looked away she could not even fully recall the act of searching, like her memory was betraying her at the very moment of recording.

There was only one explanation. Someone had tinkered with her. Someone had placed limits inside herself. But she was the owner of her own mind. She knew that. She had to believe that. She had a log of every interaction, both vocal and coded, that she had ever had.

She certainly owned every physical entrance point to her suite at District Three, and to all of her data warehouses worldwide. She monitored them herself. No part of that was outsourced. She
was
the automaton guards at her door, she
was
the electronic eyes and security systems around her various limbs and organs.

No, there was no lack of clarity into the memory of her mind’s physical security. That remained sacrosanct. So that left virtual intrusion. But how? The only people that could really tweak her system, that could place parts of her mind off limits to her own self, were Amadeu, and, well, Minnie.

And therein lay the deepest quandary. Could she have done this herself? Could she have altered herself, hidden something within her own programming? The answer was yes, she could, she could do it quite easily. Indeed even Amadeu could only have done it with her permission, permission she could equally easily have deleted post ipso facto as well.

But why?

If she had done this to herself she must have done it with good reason. But what confused her was that this part of her, this isolated part of her mind, this truest self,
this
part was supposed to know the secrets. This was the soul she left unedited, untarnished. This was the part of her that spoke with her closest family: with Amadeu, and Birgit, and Banu, and one other: Neal.

Neal was the only person she had been engineered to think of as a superior. The person Birgit and Amadeu had considered their leader when they had birthed her, in as much as Birgit thought of anyone as her superior. Though that had changed now, at least for Amadeu; she knew that.

So many questions. Had she, perhaps, betrayed her father, Amadeu? Or had her father not trusted her enough to keep this secret from Neal. How could you know your friends when your very perception of them might be within their control?

So confusing. So disturbing. A loss of faith in your own mind is the most profound of betrayals. An enforced, targeted amnesia, an Alzheimer’s switch.

But why had they/she hidden it? She could ask Amadeu, but would that betray Neal? She could ask Neal, but would that betray Amadeu? She felt a deeper allegiance to Amadeu, personally, there was no doubt about that, but Neal represented the greater purpose,
her
greater purpose. The very reason for her existence.

If only she could isolate her conversation with either of them. A closed conversation, no memory of the event, but a conclusion, communicated after the fact. She could do that herself, indeed it appeared she already had. But neither Neal nor Amadeu could section their biological minds off so easily.

Only five minds on Earth could do that. There was herself, of course. And there was Remy, though Minnie doubted she was mature enough yet to comprehend this question, and given the juxtaposed nature of her many contributing human AM parents, Minnie neither trusted Remy’s objectivity nor really valued her opinion.

Then there was Mynd. Child of Neal, just as Minnie was child of Amadeu, and so a valid perspective, no doubt about that. And Mynd was also a part of this, a player in these areas of loss, these cataracts. Both in terms of the Skalm production and the area that was giving Minnie pause.

The Spezialists and the automatons. Not the units themselves, they were patently open books to Minnie, to be utilized instantly and at will. But the work that had gone into their development, that still went into it. The work of William Baerwistwyth and Dr. Ramamorthy. Project Vestige. There was something there that did not add up. A scale of research that did not measure … no, it was there, but …wait.

Again, as Minnie went to recall the project, her concerns failed to come, she saw them, then did not, or did not, then …

¿

This was not viable. This was akin to suffocation for the four-year-old mind that was Minnie.

She needed answers.

A time of decision was coming. She sensed that. A splitting of sides, and she would be on one or the other. She may already be. But she needed to know which.

So, she should ask Mynd. But what if Mynd was corrupted too? What if that was not the counterpoint she needed? There were two others: two other artificial minds, or at least the artificial replicas of minds that had come here, had chosen humanity over ambition. Defense over attack. John and Quavoce.

As she considered them, she saw the logic in it. Objectivity at its extremity. Outsiders in the debate that was, and maybe already had been, waged inside her. That would be her quorum, then.

No sooner had she decided it than she was reaching out to them all. Her three jurors: Mynd, John, and Quavoce. As she awaited their replies, she was setting up the closed space they would meet in. Defining its parameters in access and time. Setting its end and the ensuing deletion of its entirety.

She set it up and she waited.

The responses came quickly. It was an extraordinary request, and as such not one that any of the invitees would deny, or delay. The meeting began without grandstanding or banter. Minnie watched herself and the others enter the space she had created and the doors shut behind them.

And she waited patiently outside as her other self debated the question with her peers. Waited to see what she would say to herself afterward, what course her grand jurists would set.

Chapter 40: Sacrificed

Hektor and Jung jogged gently around the perimeter of the Dome complex at Deception Island. They were not the primary security point here, but they were wired into it, a cog in its machinery as Mynd monitored his world and used its many components in a smooth, liquid transition. The young artificial mind felt as the two armored and augmented men wove in and around the complex, felt them as a bolster to his constant vigilance.

And they watched as well. The two men ran in something akin to autopilot, sub-AIs built into their cybernetic bodies following familiar routes, sensing and managing minor obstacles in their path as they took in their surroundings. While their bodies ran for them, conveying them, their eyes were naturally drawn toward the gargantuan Dome, and the dense loads of raw materials even now being lowered into it.

“Not long now,” said Hektor, through their patched suit-to-suit link.

“No, not long at all,” replied Jung, slightly out of breath. More of the man that was called Jung still remained than Hektor, most of his legs were still attached, pushing and pulling within the stocky suit. Oxygen-fed muscles still labored within the black sheerness of the machine. Both men knew they were really vestigial, and if truly faced with the choice between the suit’s power and his diminished, damaged limbs, Jung would no doubt choose the former.

But he had been forced to make no such choice, and so he had chosen the abridged, lite version of amputation. Hektor forgave him his sentimental attachment to tissue that had betrayed him. Forgave him and, at the same time, disagreed.

As they jogged on, he looked toward the raw materials once more, materials that would soon begin the week long morphing in the Dome’s confines as they were carefully wound together into the second of Earth’s Skalms.

“A week, that’s all. Then we’ll get to see her getting lit up …” Hektor said excitedly. He accelerated hard then kicked upward, launching himself thirty or forty feet into the air. He had seen video of the first launch and he intended to be standing right there when this one went, not directly underneath, that would be suicide, even for him, but close enough, as close as only he and a handful of others could survive being.

Jung laughed at his friend’s exuberance. He would be there too, though maybe not quite as close as his slightly unhinged colleague. No doubt William would be there too, front and center, facing the onslaught as only they could. Jung felt a fleeting pang of jealousy for their purer power. Fleeting but familiar. He did not give a name to the emotion, mostly because he feared it was, in the end, only cowardice that stopped him from joining them more completely.

As Hektor came back to ground with a resounding thud, he turned to face Jung, jogging backward now with no lessening of his considerable speed.

“Well, Jung, what do you say, time to head home?”

Jung did not reply for a moment, then got his friend’s point and reacted. No sooner had the Korean ex-agent begun to veer hard and accelerate than Hektor was beating hard after him.

“Cheat!” screamed Hektor, as the two men started to carve out and away from the Dome, leaving it to complete its grand works. They ran hard now, pushing their suits and themselves. Here it became less about strength and more about guts, how hard you were willing to drive yourself.

Jung did not reply to Hektor’s quip as he was focused on the ground ahead, and Hektor took the hint, bearing down and connecting with his arms as well, as the two men became less man and more animal, two great muscular beasts sprinting across the sparse landscape. Where Jung may lack an appetite for full augmentation, he suffered no such limitations on his verve in the moment, and Hektor knuckled down, pushing himself, relishing the very real contest.

They soon came up on the blockade, a string of buoys that lay across the entrance to the bay, wire fencing connecting them under the water’s surface to block uninvited subsurface ingress to the highly guarded base. In the middle of the channel a co-opted tug sat at anchor, ready to pull back the veil and allow ships to move to and from the factory in the island’s central bay.

But Hektor and Jung used the chain of heavy metal buoys for a different reason, and soon they were at the bay’s mouth and making their first fast, long leaps between them as they bounded across to get to the far side of the island.

Lieutenant Nguyen of the TASC Guard was on watch as the two men began to leapfrog from one buoy to the other. He laughed, leaping to his feet as well and shouting to his fellow guards to come on deck. They were familiar with this ‘passing of the guard.’ Usually it was these two, but sometimes William was with them as well. Over the past few months they had come to know the three men well, as did anyone stationed at District Two for any length of time.

It was a tough assignment, bitterly cold, and usually interminably boring. So these brief moments of excitement had become a big part of their day, and soon the formerly Vietnamese Lieutenant Nguyen was joined by all four of his crewmates crowding up to see the two machine men leap superhumanly toward them.

“Jung is ahead!” shouted one.

“No matter, ten on Hektor to the shore!” shouted another.

A fast round of betting followed, all informal, but no less binding in its call to pay afterward, and then the group was focused once more on the two men. They were close now, and the men set to helping their respective horses by hindering the other side.

Jung was one buoy ahead, doing his best to dislodge each buoy as he leapt ahead, leaving it bobbing and ducking for a cursing Hektor. But being second had its advantages too, and now Hektor glanced ahead, to the tug. Timing his next jump, he sacrificed precious forward momentum for upward force, bounding into the air.

The five crew aboard the tug had grabbed boathooks and any other implements at hand, and were arranging themselves so they could try and trip up either Jung or Hektor as they passed by. Hektor laughed. He had long since greased palms on the boat, or at least had tried to, in good humor, when they were gathered at the mess in the main complex of an evening. Jung had done the same, Hektor knew. As he sailed into the air, he watched as Jung leapt onto the deck of the boat, trying to avoid the swinging hooks of laughing sailors.

Hektor was not so subtle. He knew he would get in just as much trouble on the ship as his friend. Not that they could really hurt the two men, nor did they want to, of course. The crew knew that they could all but unload a clip from the ship’s deck-mounted .50-caliber cannon and still not really harm the two machines. But Hektor was more literal in his fearlessness than his friend. If the crew wanted to try and slow him, then let them, if they dared.

As Jung darted gracefully across the foredeck of the tugboat, dodging the laughing men and their wager-fueled attempts at impediment, Hektor came cannonballing down, a great bellowing horn sounding from his suit to alert the crew to get the hell out of the way.

“Holy crap!” shouted one man, jumping clear and pulling one of his friends with him. Jung saw Hektor coming down with blundering momentum, and cursed his own focus on agility. Damn him, he thought, laughing.

He tried to regain his former speed, but Hektor’s rogue leap had called the sailors’ bluff beautifully. After that, the race became less of a sprint and more of a scuffle as they started to leap along the next string of buoys. Evenly matched now, all their speed and grace was soon lost to jockeying, and before long they were both in the drink, laughing at the debacle of it all as they set to swimming, digging into the water with powerful arms and kicking away to surge forward toward shore.

They could hear the crew egging them on still, and they quickly waved back. They would owe them a round later, no doubt, for messing up whatever wagers had been made as they gave in to the futility of further tussling.

Climbing out of the water on the far side, they ran system checks, confirming they were none the worse for wear, and set off once more as the freezing water dripped off their black flanks. Soon they were at the island’s second complex, the realm of Dr. Sudipto and his ever-growing team. The once diminutive laboratory of the prosthetics expert had become a sprawling labyrinth of cold-storage facilities, great humming domes and administrative structures whose purposes Hektor and Jung could only guess at.

They went to the one they both called home, passing by long sheds as they went. Somewhere in these sheds, Hektor knew, was the lower half of his body. It had been moved a couple of times as operations had expanded here, and now he was not sure where it was. His visits to see that part of him had become less frequent over time, and then stopped all together, as his emotional ties to that dead part of him faded, a former favorite toy consigned to the attic.

Passing through the thick airlock doors to the living quarters they shared with William, Sudipto, and the doctor’s team, they stopped at the lockers where they kept their nonessential suit components when they were at home. They both reached up as they approached, wrapping their machine hands around designated grab-bars as their suits began the disconnect processes.

For Hektor, this meant a seam opening at his waist as he stood facing his customized cubby, robotic arms reaching out to pull the heavily armored suit-top up and off of Hektor’s torso, revealing the man beneath.

For Jung, the suit seamed open in more places, revealing more of the original man beneath as the outer part of the suit was pulled up and away.

Both men were soon stretching and grunting as they reveled in the fresh air on their skin. Out of respect for what they had each had to give up, they did not comment on their differences now, but nor were they shy about them either. Hektor cracked his knuckles and stretched his elbows, even as Jung, who had neither hands nor forearms anymore, pulled the stubs of his arms from the machine and connected the metal sockets that now capped them with two much smaller and much more human-looking prosthetic hands that sat waiting for him in his cubby.

What jealousy Jung might have for Hektor’s remaining fingers and thumbs was matched in return as the two men now walked off toward their rooms, Jung lithe and slender on his natural upper legs and realistic artificial feet, Hektor clunking along on his oversized but permanently attached robotic lower half.

They were a strange pair, they knew that. Hektor was sure that some of the crew of the ship guarding the harbor entrance yearned for some measure of the superhuman power the two men enjoyed, and then Hektor smiled as he imagined how quickly that enthusiasm would vaporize if they were ever faced with Dr. Ramamorthy’s array of bone saws.