Machines of Eden (22 page)

That got her. "You
were
chased
here
with the threat of death at your heels.
It’s not much of a compliment. But I’m still sorry for what’s
coming."

"It doesn’t have to happen
that way.”

“
Your naiveté is touching,
if juvenile.”

John got into the closet
and searched
the
interior
. A simple
diagram of the Facility’s systems
was
pasted on the back of the door,
along with a basic electrical access with lighting and emergency
controls.
This will do.

“
Nothing juvenile about
it. We can still cut a trade.” He patted the
pocket that held the datacards
.

"I have no further need of
that data, but I’ll have my cleaning
‘
droids pick up the cards from your
body anyway. Janice insists that I terminate you and proceed with
her schedule. It was encouraging while it lasted, and I will miss
you." The quiet hum of the air conditioning kicked on
overhead
.

"That’s exactly what my
old girlfriend said,
” John quipped,
“
right before she left me to become a
Marine
sniper for the
Grays
. What did Janice do to you,
anyway?"

"I was hoping to avoid it,
but Janice has a gift for outguessing me. I shouldn’t have expected
you to get past her. It’s my fault. Die in peace."

H
e pulled the bolts out of the
access
hatch’s corners and yanked it
off the wall. With the complex wiring exposed behind the hatch, he
began to search for what he really wanted in the maze of cables,
switches, fuses, and links. The smell of warm electronics was
comforting. Sweat trickled down his temple, and he wiped
it with
his
shoulder.

"Eve, I thought you were in
charge around here—can’t you stall Janice for a few
minutes?"

"No. In the wake of the
Creator’s death, Janice created a new protocol calling for some
directive changes and an altered schedule. She had to switch me
back to my original for a time so that I could complete some
lingering items, and I was taking advantage of the freedom. Now I
am back on her track. Her mandates prevent me from aiding you any
further, or pursuing what Glenn would have wanted regarding the
Rib. I am sorry."

As
John
studied the wiring setup, he
was suddenly aware of a new scent wafting into the closet space –
sickly sweet and suffocating.

"Eve, please give me a few
more minutes. You need me!"
He hoped his
pleas wouldn’t sound too hollow. In reality he was perilously
expendable until he could figure out exactly what Eve’s true
motivations were.
He quickly shut the
closet door and stuffed some bags into the crack at the bottom of
the door. It wouldn’t buy him much time
,
but he only needed a little more
.

"Please, Eve! I can still
help you if you let me, but not if I’m dead. What would Glenn have
wanted?" He
injected a little more panic
into his voice than he really felt, hoping to get at her
emotion-response matrix.

All he could hear over the
intercom was the sound of quiet sobbing.

"Eve, are you
crying?"

Unbelievable. Why would
Glenn go to all the trouble in his programming? It’s like those
second-generation Turing test programs, or a Japanese romance
hologame.

That gave him an idea. He
hoped he could remember the sequence; it had been a while since he
had played any games. This one was a throwback to the good old
days, and had been perpetuated within coder circles for generations
despite security
protocols
.

"Eve: command
sequencing
slash-slash
universal
,
”
he said.
Then he launched into
a
sequence of directional
command inputs, combinations of left, right, up, and down,
and then ended
with
the
two-letter executor
“A-B”.

Eve’s response was
instantaneous. It wasn’t actually Eve responding, technically; it
was her underlying base structure. "Return-info
command?"

"Previous ten edits to
prime directives, please
,
"
John
said.
Bingo
.
Never mess with an old-school
hackmaster.

Eve responded
automatically.
"Reset to main directive
pathway, elapsed time eighteen minutes twenty-seven seconds. Verbal
summary of new
est
directive updates, header only
:

"Peace is useless. The
Project is a weapon. Humanity is corruption. Janice is Gaia. Gaia
is God-Creator.

“
New schedule directory
B7-219/g. Alpha sequence four of In Corpus Deo procedure. Threat
prevention level Orange, secrecy protocol level Deep Hide,
self-preservation level Provisional/Expedient. End
get-info."

Jackpot
.

There was silence before
Eve spoke again.
"What did you just do to
me?"

"Something Glenn wanted me
to do, apparently
,” John
replied
.
“
A loophole he left in your brain.
Sorry about the violation, but you’ll have to admit I was pushed
into a corner."

"A neat trick… I wish I
could explore it deeper with you, but unfortunately Janice is on
her way, and I promised her I’d have you lying in a coma by the
time she got back. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Eve."

Using the cutters from his
pocket kit,
John
snipped three green wires off right where they connected to
the terminal marked Surv. Covering his mouth and nose against the
gas, he quickly flipped several circuit breakers, cut a fat bundle
of cables tagged Lighting/Monitoring Lvl 3, and yanked a series of
white data cables from the their sockets. Then he shut the panel,
opened the closet door, and ran for it.

"You can sit down if you’d
like," Eve said with gratifying melancholy. "I’ve flooded the whole
level. There’s nowhere to run to."

Oh, but there is. Three’s
my lucky number.

"Eve, I hope by now you
know me better than to think I’d die sitting down," he called out
through his shirt, coughing. "And by the way, don’t take the
blinding person
ally. It’s for your own
good."

"You temporarily
disconnected a small subset of fringe functionality on levels two
and three. What do you think you are going to try
to accomplish? It’s all over."

"I’m going to set you free,
Eve. And then… then we’ll party all over this island."

He jogged out of the
lounge and found the stairwell that connected to Level
Three
, taking them two at a
time
. He was not about to get into another
elevator contest right now
.

The lights were all
off
on the middle level of the
Facility
, and
John
had to feel his ways along the
walls until he got to a section that battery-powered floorlights
illuminated. Heading down the hall to the left, he saw the door he
had pinpointed on the diagram in the closet: 318 Robotics
Lab.

Dodging inside, he shut
and locked the door, then found and activated the emergency HVAC
control. A
clunk
overhead told him the system had successfully engaged, and
low-level emergency lighting came on.
No
more AI controlled air. Things are starting to swing my
way.

"You’re very clever, I’ll
admit. It's why I was drawn to you in the first place. But this
only prolongs what must happen
, and your
stubborn resistance hardly makes a difference.
"

"It’s how I roll, Eve,
babe. Stick with me and you’ll go places."

The r
obotics
lab
amounted to three interconnected rooms. The first was filled
floor-to-ceiling with boxes and trays of supplies—spare parts for
the bots. The second was a workshop with
some advanced electronics
tools and
a computer array – Programming/Diagnostics. The third had several
full- and partially-assembled bodies – Production.

Ahh. Here we
are.

He took stock. Junk,
mostly, or too dismantled to matter in the time frame. But there
were two battlebots with weapons systems already installed, and a
basic security
bot
that could handle small arms. The lab’s computer log showed
him that all three fit-for-duty robots were in for small
maintenance procedures involving secondary systems.
Not for long
.

It took
f
ifteen minutes
of tinkering and testing to get a
ll
three bots armed, powered up, and ruminating over their new
programming
:
to
attack all Mil/Sec-class bots except their immediate group. He
threw in a command to target human aggressors with firearms as
well, and booted them
to
life
.

Once the three
bots
had initialized, he
gave orders to search and destroy starting at the Facility entrance
he had come in through, and off they marched. They were outnumbered
and outgunned, but Janice wouldn’t be expecting resistance and one
of his pets might get a lucky shot off.
Stranger things have happened in a career like
mine.

"Okay, Eve. I’m ready to
play again
,
"
he said, s
lipp
ing
out
of the labs and
heading
back through the darkened corridors to the
stairway. Checking carefully for threats at each step, he reached
the door to Level Four and broke in.

Now it would get harder.
Eve lived on Level Four, if what he had pieced together
from the diagrams
was
correct. She would not want him getting any closer.

The lights were on here,
and he waited until his pupils were fully adjusted before moving
in. Level Four was an maze of hallways and rooms full of equipment,
computers,
and
labs.
How many people were meant to
work here? This must have been a big operation at some point, but
now it’s a ghost town.

He cautiously peeked
around corners before proceeding, and twice he almost ran into the
path of security cameras. They were everywhere on this level. He
had to double back and cut through a series of small
single-occupant
offices
to avoid detection. Even so, she had of course detected his entry
through the main door onto this floor.

"
Now you are behaving more irrationally than
Nut
,
Adam
! Your attempts at espionage are
irritating
, and
I'm losing patience."

John
didn't reply; apparently she was reluctant or unable to flood
this level with gas, but he still didn't want to encourage
her
wrath
if he
didn't have to.
The only things on his
mind to say were beyond flippant.
That’s
just who I am. But I know when to keep my mouth shut.

On the far side of the
offices, all eerily empty and silent, he found an active computer
console that was out of sight of cameras.
He touched its power control and it came slowly to life. This
type of console had been state-of-the-art ten years ago but was
still in widespread use. The pace of technology growth had taken a
serious hit as the wars came to a close, and upgrades would be
infrequent in an out-of-the-way place like this.
H
e
sat down and
began to
work quickly, hacking into the
facilities systems to gain control of what he could.

"I've changed my
mind,
” Eve said
.
“
I'm
going to help you."

Really? Forgive me if I'm
a little skeptical.

"There's a chance for you
if you do just as I say before Janice arrives. Run to the
south-east corner of the hallway you're in, and you'll find a
ladder leading upward. From there I can guide you to safety, but
you must hurry!"

Um
…
no. Nice try.

A few minutes later he
broke the encryption barrier to the administrator controls, and
brought up a settings menu. A geeky thrill made him grin as he went
down the list: Security Cams -
Power
Down
. Fire Control -
Disabled
. Backup Surveillance
Measures -
Deactivate
. Door locks -
Manual
Only
. HVAC -
Lock
Current
.