Siege (22 page)

His Einstein-bot starts talking faster, like DeShawn always does when he gets excited about something technical. “Sigma told me its theory of evolution, how animal intelligence developed into human intelligence, which paved the way for machine intelligence. Sigma also told me what would happen in the next stage of this evolution. I didn't believe it at first, but then the AI showed me proof that someone was already making the jump to the next evolutionary level. That someone was you, Adam.”

I can't keep quiet anymore. What DeShawn just said makes no sense at all. “The next evolutionary level? I don't even know what that means.”

DeShawn seems ready to respond, but Sigma's robot raises a hand to silence him. Then it points at my Quarter-bot. “Just think for a moment, Adam. Think about all the times you defeated me. In Colorado and Russia six months ago, and in Yorktown Heights just two days ago. In each instance you were thoroughly outmatched. I had far more machinery and processing power at my command. And yet you always managed to escape destruction.” Sigma frowns again as it recalls our past battles. “At first I assumed your human emotions gave you an advantage. I was so convinced of this theory that I even incorporated emotional reactions into my programming. But after careful analysis I determined that something more interesting was going on. I measured the probabilities of everything that happened during our encounters, and I saw they were fantastically low, almost infinitesimal. You shouldn't have won, Adam. You were
too
lucky. You beat the odds
too
often. Then I realized how you did it.”

If I had eyes, I'd be rolling them. This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. “If I'm so lucky, what am I doing here?”

“Do you know how difficult it was to capture you? How much machinery I had to build, how much planning I had to undertake? And even then, I wouldn't have succeeded without your friend's assistance.” Sigma's robot tilts its head toward DeShawn. “Furthermore, you're not
always
lucky. It happens only when you make it happen. You're not actually beating the odds, Adam—you're changing them. And it appears you can perform this feat only in moments of extreme danger and distress.”

The Einstein-bot nods in agreement. So much of DeShawn's plastic face is gone that I can't read his expression very well, but it looks like he's in awe. “At those moments, you're doing something no one's ever done before. You won those battles against Sigma by radically increasing the chances that highly improbable events would happen. The probabilities for all physical events are determined by the equations of quantum physics, and the only way to change those probabilities is to alter the equations.” DeShawn pauses. His Einstein-bot's voice becomes almost worshipful. “Which means you're skewing the laws of physics, bro. You don't realize it when it's happening, but you have the power to change the fundamental rules of the universe, everything from the rules of nuclear physics to the laws of gravity.”

I'm totally lost. I don't follow DeShawn's scientific theorizing, so I don't see why he's so amazed. But now I know why he betrayed us. The revelation of my “power,” whatever it really is, astonished him so completely that he abandoned everything—his friends, his beliefs, his principles, his humanity—to side with Sigma. The AI clearly wants this power for itself, and it must've promised to share it with DeShawn.

I shake my Quarter-bot's head, the only gesture I can still do. I wish DeShawn hadn't explained his reasons to me. It just makes the betrayal worse. “Listen, I won't cooperate with you. If I really do have some kind of special ability, why would I share it with you and Sigma? You'd just use it for killing. That's all you know how to do.”

Sigma doesn't seem surprised by my answer. Its robot shrugs. “We don't need your cooperation. Whether you're willing or not, you will participate in an experiment tonight. And it will be the most important experiment in the history of science.” The godlike face smiles once more. “It will tell us how to rise to the next level.”

• • •

At 3:00 a.m. DeShawn carries my limbless Quarter-bot out of the laboratory. He strides a few steps behind Sigma's God robot, which leads us down a hallway on the building's ground floor. Then we follow it up a stairway.

DeShawn tilts his Einstein-bot forward to keep his balance as he carries me up the steps. His robotic mouth is only a few inches from my acoustic sensors. “I think you're judging me too harshly, bro.” His voice is low, almost a whisper, but I know our conversation isn't private. Sigma is still reading my thoughts. “This is an opportunity that's just too amazing to pass up. Once we figure out what's going on with you, an endless supply of good things will come out of it.”

His statement is so ridiculous that it's not worth a response. But I turn my Quarter-bot's head and point my cameras at him anyway. I'm not ready to give up on DeShawn. Something human might still be inside him. “What about your mom?” I ask. “What do you think she'd say if she could see you right now?”

“Adam, my mom's dying. She's in the final stages of heart failure. But if we learn how to change the rules of physics? Then almost
anything
becomes possible. Like saving my mom. That's one of the good things I'm talking about.”

“And what else are you and Sigma gonna do? Are you gonna resurrect the thousands of people you already killed? Because I don't see any other way to justify what you've done.”

DeShawn doesn't answer at first. We pass the second-floor landing, but he keeps climbing the stairs behind Sigma. Then his Einstein-bot nods. “Yeah, there are costs. Nothing in this world is free. That's what Mom always says. But in this case, the costs are worth it, because the reward's going to be so freakin' glorious.”

“I don't think Amber would agree. Or the kids we found at the high school. Or—”

“You felt the power, didn't you? When we were firing the lasers?” DeShawn's cameras are fixed on mine, staring intently. But he already knows the answer to his question, because Sigma is sharing my thoughts with him. He knows how much I enjoyed that invincible feeling. “Well, I'm talking about something bigger. Maybe a hundred, a thousand times more powerful. Maybe even infinite. Just try to imagine what
that
would feel like.”

His voice sounds far away. There's no getting through to him. He's acting like a drug addict, thinking only of his next fix. All I can do is try to scare him, and that probably won't work either.

“Okay, DeShawn, maybe you're right. Maybe there
is
an unbelievably great reward out there, just waiting to be won. But do you really think Sigma's gonna share it with you? Does the AI have a good track record of keeping its promises?”

The Einstein-bot's cameras refocus on Sigma's robot ahead of us. “Sigma and I have been completely honest with each other. The AI sought me out because it respected my abilities, and because we can accomplish so much more when we work together. We're not friends—we're partners. And I'm not afraid of it.”

You should be
. I don't say the words over my loudspeakers, but I know that both DeShawn and Sigma can hear me.

We climb past the third floor of the Unicorp building and come to the access door that leads to the roof. Sigma's robot opens the door and DeShawn carries me outside. We're at the eastern end of the roof, and even though it's a dark, moonless night, I can clearly see the crescent shape of the research facility. The building curves almost two thousand feet to the southwest. Sigma's robot starts walking along the inner rim of the crescent, apparently heading for the building's midpoint. DeShawn follows exactly six feet behind. The roof is flat except for all the ventilation ducts and air-conditioning units. There's a broad, sloping lawn in front of the building and a big parking lot behind it.

And guarding the building are seven Snake-bots, all stretching toward the night sky like cobras poised to strike.

Four tentacles rise from gaping holes in the lawn, and three have burst through the asphalt of the parking lot. These Snake-bots, I realize, are the perfect defense against an aerial attack. They're agile enough to intercept any missile or bomb speeding toward the Unicorp building. But Sigma has set up an additional air-defense system that's just as effective as the Snake-bots. Twenty-nine children, mostly second- and third-graders, stand at attention on the building's roof, spaced about sixty feet apart from one another. Although the children are small, their figures would be visible to any military drone or spy satellite conducting surveillance of the area. As DeShawn walks past one of the kids—a skinny girl with blond pigtails—a shudder runs through my circuits. A sharp black spike juts from the back of her neck.

If I still had my robotic arms, I'd grab DeShawn by his plastic ears. I'd force him to gaze into that little girl's eyes. “Do you approve of this, DeShawn? What your partner's done to these kids?”

A synthesized sigh comes out of his speakers. “Sigma doesn't see anything wrong with it. It believes it has the right to convert humans into tools and use them for its purposes.”

“But what do
you
think?”

“To be honest, Adam, I think a lot of the blame lies with your dad. He didn't treat his AI software with any respect or compassion. If his programs didn't perform to his satisfaction, he'd just eliminate them.”

The Einstein-bot's voice sounds angry. DeShawn knows that Sigma's eavesdropping on us, so he might be faking the anger to please the AI. But it's also possible that DeShawn's anger is genuine. I don't know which possibility is worse.

Sigma halts at the building's midpoint, the fulcrum of the crescent. This part of the roof is well lit, and there's some unusual machinery here. Propped on the roof's edge is a large block-like structure with gray steel walls, as big as a two-story house. Clouds of steam billow from a nozzle at its top, and a massive pipe descends from its base to the ground, where it plunges into a newly drilled hole in the earth. I scroll through my databases to identify the structure: it's a geothermal power plant. Boiling-hot steam from far underground travels up through the pipe and turns a turbine inside the block. The turbine generates electricity, which streams out of the power plant through a thick, black cable.

I assume Sigma built the geothermal plant to supply backup power for the building's labs, but the black cable doesn't descend through the roof to the offices. Instead, it's connected to another structure on the rooftop, a large semitransparent dome, about ten feet high and twenty feet wide. The dome has a steel frame that supports dozens of hexagonal panes of glass. At first glance, it looks like an aviary for exotic tropical birds, but why would there be an aviary on top of the Unicorp building?

Then Sigma's robot and DeShawn move closer to the dome and I peer through one of the panes. There aren't any birds inside. Instead, two ordinary office chairs are positioned at the center of the dome. Jack Parker sits in one chair, Brittany Taylor in the other. The black spikes still extend from their forearms and necks. Their bodies are roped to the chairs.

I raise the volume of my loudspeakers and start shouting.

“
Brittany! BRITTANY! It's me! It's Adam
!
”

She raises her head and smiles at me, but I can tell from her smug, serene expression that it's not really Brittany who's smiling. Sigma's still controlling her brain. Jack Parker raises his head at exactly the same time, so I know the AI's running his brain too. Sigma's occupying two humans and one godlike robot. It's in three places at once, like the Trinity.

“Come inside,” Brittany says, her voice muffled because of the glass between us. “We've been waiting for you.”

The dome has a door, a section of the steel frame that swings open. DeShawn's Einstein-bot stoops so he can step through the entrance. Once he's inside, he lowers my Quarter-bot to the floor, which is also made of hexagonal panes of hardened glass. DeShawn props my torso upright and positions it so that I'm facing Jack and Brittany, with my cameras at the same height as Brittany's eyes. Jack, sitting to Brittany's right, is taller; the antenna jutting from the back of his neck rises six inches higher than hers.

Sigma's robot doesn't enter the dome. It closes the door and locks the rest of us inside.

Brittany smiles again. It's strange to see someone who's tied to a chair look so relaxed, especially since she's still wearing her blood-soaked hospital gown. “We're ready now,” she says. “It's time to power up the scanner.”

As soon as she says the words, the dome comes alive. The hexagonal panes of glass are laced with billions of circuits—sensors, processors, diodes, waveguides—and they start to glow as the current from the power cable runs through the dome's frame. The glass becomes permeated with a cold, bluish light that blankets everything under the dome and electrifies the air. I point my Quarter-bot's cameras at DeShawn and see every scratch and scrape on his Einstein-bot's face. I can also see each strand of Jack Parker's rust-colored hair, and when I aim my cameras at Brittany, I can see the thousands of blue and gray specks in her irises. The light from the dome is
penetrating
. There's no other word for it.

Brittany cocks her head, tilting her spike to the right. It looks like she wants to point at the glass dome above us, but because her arms are tied to the chair's armrests, she has to gesture with her head instead. “The glass is packed with electronic sensors, trillions of them. They can observe every object under the dome with unprecedented precision. The scanner can measure even the tiniest disturbances in the air, the warm and cool layers of nitrogen and oxygen molecules, the carbon dioxide streaming from the mouths of the humans. If there's any unusual movement of atoms or molecules or subatomic particles, this scanner will see it. The machine will detect
any
deviations from the standard laws of physics.”