B018YDIXDK EBOK Read online

  “I’m sorry, the killswitch?”

  “Yes, the failsafe our team built in case this happened. It’s essentially a backdoor into the program’s core. We used it a few times during the initial development, to push an update live or fix a bug. It was a much safer way to test on live servers. After the beta trials were deemed ready for public release, we removed access to it. Except in one case…”

  “We built a failsafe? A switch that shuts this thing off?”

  “Yes.”

  Myers sat up straight. “Rand, what the hell are we wasting time for out here —“

  “Myers,” Rand said. “Chill. Take a breather. If we could flip a switch and kill this thing, don’t you think we would have done it already?”

  “But if I’m the only one who has it —“

  “You are. But it doesn’t matter anymore. The System progressed, Myers.” Rand paused, trying to collect the right words and put them in the right order. “We always knew it might advance out of our control, so we built in a mechanism to revert it back to a saved version, an alpha release of the core program that was nothing but a local instance of the basic virus software.”

  “But…”

  “But we assumed that an AGI-type program would make the jump to ASI — Artificial Super Intelligence — and the evidence would be obvious. It would create numerous instances of itself on any linked station or terminal that interfaced with the core servers, then it would begin to develop ever-stronger versions of itself.”

  Rand took a moment to swallow and check their progress out the small porthole-like window before continuing. They were slowing now, but still a few hundred feet off the ground. “We assumed we’d be able to see this happening, so we kept the program connected until some of these red flags were raised. The idea was we’d wait until we saw a red flag — an incredibly-fast non-iterative redevelopment of core systems, for example, or a simple mass duplication of itself. The problem was —“

  “The problem was that there were no red flags,” Myers said.

  “Exactly. The jump from AGI to ASI has been documented well, at least in theory. We planned for just about every contingency, every option, and had an alarm that would be flipped for each one. Sometimes even well before the red flag would show up.”

  “But you didn’t plan for a system that knew where the red flags were, and a system that would stay under the radar and develop newer versions of itself in relative isolation.”

  “We didn’t plan for a system that would purposefully not trigger the warnings and alarms, because it purposefully didn’t improve. The System developed itself inside of its core servers, in virtual instances that it hid from the engineers and security teams, and it laid dormant.”

  Myers stared up at the ceiling, and Rand knew the look. He was trying to piece it all together.

  “So,” Myers said. “When I took office, EHM then won the government contract to install OneGlobal on all our machines, and things started… advancing.”

  “Sort of,” Rand said. “They advanced a little, but that was to be expected. The program was a self-learning iterative development, a computer program that could learn from its host computer user. For the first four or five years things were running smoothly. Too smoothly, actually.”

  Rand saw the understanding in Myers’ eyes. The economic growth, social and political stability, advances in education, science, and healthcare, and evening out of worldwide conflicts.

  “By your second term the System had reprogrammed itself to get rid of the alarms and triggers, but it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. The world suddenly had its first unanimous peacetime agreement, most people had better jobs than they had a decade ago, and crime rates were at an all-time low. Cancer and debilitative diseases were almost non-existent. Poverty-stricken countries and regions had immediate access to the best education, and starvation no longer stifled their survival rates. Cities were slowly being deactivated, but everyone just went with it — it always worked out for the best.”

  “Then what?” Myers asked. Rand could tell he was dreading the answer. The Tracer slid to the ground, gently bouncing once before coming to a rest.

  “Well,” Rand said, standing up, “then you were deactivated, disappeared off the face of the earth, and things started to get a little more exciting.”

  RAVI

  PRESENT DAY

  “YOU’RE RAVI PATEL, right?” the man asked.

  Ravi had instinctively ducked down a bit when he’d heard the voice, but the pain from moving and the realization that it was very likely the most hopeless move he’d ever made caused him to stand up again and face the voice.

  He couldn’t see any features, but the silhouetted outline against the darkening sky told Ravi it was a man. A large, squatting man.

  Not squatting.

  He walked a few steps closer and saw that the man was leaning against a large wooden post that had been sunk into the ground and cemented in place. He was hunched over, his legs splayed haphazardly outward in an impossibly uncomfortable position. His face was turned downward, and his hands were behind him, bound together behind the post.

  “Y — yeah, that’s me. Who’re you?” he asked. He found a bit more confidence and stepped a few feet closer.

  In the last strands of purplish daylight that had mixed with the white glow of moonlight, Ravi saw the man’s face when it raised slightly to look at him.

  The area around one eye was horribly disfigured, swelling to twice its normal size, and dark eyeshadow-like holes framed the pale white eyes themselves. There were cuts and scrapes over the man’s face, and while Ravi noticed there were a few teeth missing, the man’s smile was intact.

  “Wow,” the man said. “Never thought I’d see you again. Glad you’re not dead.”

  “Me too, man, me too. Who’re you?” he asked again, stressing the words a little more. He’d wanted it to come out like, ‘who the hell are you? I’m only going to ask once more,’ but instead he heard the words bouncing out of him like a scared child, as if saying, ‘l — listen, buddy, I — I don’t have any money…’

  The man laughed a little, but ignored the question. “Mind getting me out of these? I’ve been stuck like this for, uh…” he paused. “Any idea what time it is?”

  Ravi shook his head. I don’t have time for this.

  Another competing thread of conversation in his mind had another thought: I’m walking into a trap.

  He didn’t take the time to argue with himself about which thread was right. He came to the same conclusion both threads did: get out of here, now.

  He turned and walked toward the hills.

  “Woah, hey there — “ the man said, raising his voice to a semi-whisper. “Seriously, I’m sorry I left you back there. We thought… well, we thought you were dead. What with the gunshots and all.”

  Ravi stopped. What’s he talking about? How does he know there were gunshots? He felt the shards of pain from his gunshot wounds as the memory crept back up. It was pretty obvious Ravi was wounded — he had a massive layer of bandages wrapped almost completely around his upper body — but the gunshot wounds themselves weren’t noticeable.

  He turned his head slightly. “Who was I with when you found me?”

  The man didn’t hesitate. “Myers Asher.”

  Ravi turned back around as the man continued.

  “And that’s who they’re trying to find, and why we both need to get out of here.”

  Ravi raised an eyebrow.

  “They —“ the man said, motioning with one huge swollen eye and one more normal-looking black eye toward the camp. “Grouse’s men. He’s trying to find Asher, since they didn’t pick him up back at Umutsuz.”

  Ravi walked back over to the man and looked down at him. He was in his late forties or fifties, in shape but obviously pretty beat up, so it was hard to tell exactly. The man had short-cropped gray hair, and even slumped against the post he seemed to exude dignity, confidence.

  “Fine,” Ravi said, stepping behind
him. “You take one step toward me though, and I drop you, got it?”

  “Got it,” the raspy-voice said from the other side of the wooden post.

  Ravi saw the bindings they’d used — a thin cord of sharp, frayed string that was cutting into the man’s wrists — and worked it loose. He didn’t have anything to cut it with, but the man didn’t hurry him.

  Ravi caught a glimpse of the man’s fingers as he undid the last wrap of cord. All five of the fingernails on the fingers of his left hand were completely missing, and three from the fingers on his right.

  “Shit, what’d they do to you?” Ravi asked. He pulled the last bit of cord free, realizing too late that it had gotten caught on some of the sticky, festering open skin from the man’s wrist. He didn’t even make a sound. The man stood up and turned to Ravi.

  “You don’t want to know.” He looked down at his hands. “This is nothing, though. It’s a good thing you weren’t awake for the past few hours.” He extended a hand, careful to not approach the younger man at all. “Thanks, kid.”

  “I’m not a kid, old man,” Ravi said. He caught a glimpse of Myers as he said it, and allowed himself half of a grin from the side of his mouth.

  The man towered over him, at least six inches taller than Ravi, but his face, even with the pockmarks of recent wounds and hard-earned scars, was gentle. He looked down at Ravi.

  Ravi took his hand quickly and shook it once. “We need to get going,” he said.

  “Right. Thanks again.”

  Ravi nodded once and turned to the hills. He hoped the man was smart enough to walk next to him, not behind or in front of him where one of them might have the advantage. “Never caught your name,” he said.

  The man fell in beside Ravi, keeping his three-foot distance out of respect, and smiled again.

  “Merrick. Solomon Merrick.”

  PETER

  “PETER, WHY DON’T YOU COME to bed? You need to get some sleep.”

  The woman, naked, was lying on top of the sheets, and she clearly wasn’t in the mood to ‘get some sleep.’

  He smiled, a genuine grin that spoke volumes. “I can’t, I really can’t. I wish I could, but they —“

  “You can find them tomorrow,” she said. One of his assistants had alerted him on his terminal that both their high-value suspects had vanished.

  Ravi Patel and Solomon Merrick were gone.

  He knew that whoever was on watch was already being reprimanded, so he shifted his focus to the larger problem. He had to find them.

  “Come here.” She took a finger of her left hand and let it crawl, menacingly, down her chest and over her stomach.

  He watched it — he couldn’t help it — but he didn’t feel anything. She was absolutely beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the camp, no doubt, but she wasn’t his.

  She wasn’t her.

  He sighed, turning away from the woman on the wide cot and looked out again at the dusk light beyond the edge of camp. This is the end of the world, and I’m at the edge of it. He wondered how many other camps were out there, how many others were like this one.

  His camp was small, but it was just a temporary field presence while they completed their mission. A larger camp had been erected ten miles north in the valley, but he’d taken a detachment of his best squads to the south, near Umutsuz. His total reach spanned the entire geographic area in sight, and then beyond that another 100 miles. His total headcount — the total number of mouths he was burdened with feeding — was over 50,000. Mostly men, but there were women and children, too.

  Peter rubbed a palm over his bald head, thinking long and hard about the future. If there was going to be a future, he wanted to be a part of it. He enjoyed leading, but that wasn’t what he was interested in.

  His men — around 35,000 soldiers from the neighboring camps that were now under his control — respected him. He could be ruthless, cutthroat even, but he was fair. They respected that he didn’t treat everyone equally, but he treated everyone fairly.

  Discipline was swift, but the punishment always matched the crime. He’d practiced that philosophy from day one, when he was just a straggler trying to keep up with a small band of Unders who’d come by his land. He respected the hierarchy of the army he’d built, but he knew the power within it was a facade for something far more important: influence.

  And he had massive influence. That was why he’d been elected, only months ago, to lead them. His group was the largest of its kind, a fully-operational and self-sustaining Unders colony, living and thriving away from the System’s tentacles. They worked together, slowly building a society around the “new world” they’d all found themselves living in.

  Peter’s most recent mission had been a failure, at least in his eyes, but his men and supporters quickly found a way to turn it into a positive. They told the rest of the groups that he’d been overcome by Tracer fire, caught beneath the rubble of the fallen city of Umutsuz.

  It was partly true, and the fact that he’d picked up the hunter, Solomon Merrick, and the kid, Ravi Patel, was a bonus. Both would be valuable for information, if not Current from trading them on the Boards. But he’d lost men in the process — a failure, no doubt.

  “Peter, I’m getting tired.”

  He turned back around, flashing another toothy smile. “I’m sorry, I’m just — it’s just that I’m concerned for our future.”

  “You spend too much time worrying about our future,” the woman said. She was young, but not young enough to raise any eyebrows — he wouldn’t have allowed that, and he didn’t prefer that, anyway. That sort of debauchery was disgusting to him. He enjoyed women, not girls.

  Peter sat down at the edge of the cot, the hard support bar immediately digging into the bottoms of his thighs. It was uncomfortable here. Different. He started thinking about home.

  Of her.

  She wasn’t there, of course, but that was the last time he’d been with her.

  His wife was home when San Francisco was deactivated, waiting for him to return from a deployment. She and their children — three boys and a girl — were all waiting for him to walk through the wide doorway of their downtown apartment when the news broke.

  He had just landed, and the plane was taxiing, and someone turned on a terminal broadcast with the local news. “…City-wide deactivation to take place in nine stages, over the course of the next three months…”

  When the System deactivated cities, it usually did it slowly, over the span of months or even years, and this deactivation was one of the quicker ones they’d heard of. He wasn’t sure what his wife’s reaction would be, but he knew she’d wait for him there.

  He started to sweat, suddenly more anxious to get home than he’d ever been. They disembarked from the plane, and he raced home.

  “Peter, are you okay?” she asked from behind him. She started rubbing his back, gently, the same way she used to. He drifted back to the memory.

  The front door had been beaten in, smashed to pieces by some sort of heavy, blunt object. He stepped through the broken hole and into the living room. He called out for them, grabbing a chef’s knife from the kitchen to his right.

  He carried the knife with a purposefulness only taught from years of military training. It was too heavy all around, and the balance wasn’t great, but it would do. He’d make it work.

  He walked farther into the living room, staying close to the walls, ready for the attack that never came.

  It looked like she was asleep on the couch. Waiting for him, just like she’d said. But he knew better.

  He stepped in front of her, knowing what he’d find. Her face was tilted back at an odd angle. Her clothes were matted with sweat, or…

  He coughed, a sudden rage coming over him. The coughing fit turned into crying, a fast, hyperactive sob that overtook his entire body.

  She’d been shot, three times in the chest, and left to die on the couch. The kids, gone. He’d never seen them again, even after a year of searching. The authorities
had their hands full with deactivation requests and peacekeeping, and the military only wanted him to return to active duty.

  Peter had done a full search of the large apartment, finding nothing but trashed and broken furniture and clothes and toys strewn about. They’d come for food, provisions, and anything of value, and his wife and the kids had been in the way. They’d taken the kids, he was sure, but had no use for her.

  He still didn’t understand why.

  Even today, in the middle of a dusty, dirty, temporary camp on the outskirts of nowhere, people respected the chain-of-command, and they respected everyone’s right to life. They killed only when necessary, when there was food to put on the table and needs to provide for, but never for fun. Never for sport, like the Hunters.

  Peter felt the combination of rage and pain sliding back up his throat, the intensity of the woman’s eyes on the back of his head suddenly too much to bear. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hide from the world. He was familiar with this feeling — depression and anxiety combined with a rage that drove him mad — and he was familiar with the typical MediLathe diagnoses. None of them worked, except for one.

  He’d found a way to package the feeling into something useful — something beneficial. He turned it into focus. He needed to grow his influence enough to build real power. The snowball of influence-power would lead to even more influence and power, and eventually he would leverage it to accomplish the greatest thing any human would ever accomplish.

  Peter Grouse would bring down the System once and for all, taking out anyone in his path at whatever cost, including Myers Asher.

  He’d almost killed Myers Asher once, back between Istanbul and Umutsuz, for the massive amount of Current on his head. He would have provided sustenance for his camps for almost three months, but something he saw in the man told Peter to wait.

  Something he recognized.

  Myers Asher, while confused, scared, and completely out of his element in the middle of the desert, was focused.