Artifact, page 14
I spot the creature’s eyes as it shuffles toward me. They’re positioned on its bulging kneecap, behind which is what looks like a wobbly, swollen tumor. Despite nothing looking normal, I see its bald eyebrows, lifted high.
Hopeful.
There’s no nose, but at the top of this thing’s shin…is a pair of smiling lips.
I nearly drop to my knees, and not out of disgust. I’m overwhelmed by empathy for what I think was, or maybe still is, a human being. It’s one of the weaknesses of my ‘disability.’ Empathy overwhelms. It shuts me down. Hard to think. Hard to move. It happens when people unload their burdens on me, as people frequently do to a Sheriff. If the information is inconsequential, no problem. If the person is emotionally involved in what they’re sharing, I take that emotion, put it through a centrifuge, strain out the impurities, and then take on a more potent version of what they’re feeling. I can hide it most of the time. Doesn’t affect my job. But sometimes, I shut down so much that it looks like I’m a cold, heartless prick when the opposite is true.
No one has complained. People seem to appreciate a sheriff that’s ‘all business.’ I always get the job done, and fairly.
But I don’t know how to do that now.
I feel threatened, because this creature’s very existence defies everything I know about the world.
But I’m also experiencing its emotions—magnified.
Desperation.
Relief.
Happiness.
I raise my hand out to the others and say, “Hold—” when a three round burst buzzes past my ear. Three holes punch into the front of the thing, the first between its eyes, the second a few inches higher, and the third in the creature’s bulging tumor—which then bursts out and back, spattering its limp body with chunks of the same fleshy cells, along with a stew of brain matter and pink fluid.
“Can people please stop shooting things before I get a chance to understand what’s happening?” I say between gritted teeth.
I slow-turn to find Grizz, Jimmy, and Red are with us. Red lowers his Vityaz, confused. “Was that not… Why are we not shooting monsters now?”
“Because it might’ve just looked like a monster,” I say.
“Things that look like monsters generally are,” Grizz says. “It’s true with predators, too, including men.”
“It was smiling,” Marit says, surprising me. People don’t catch the subtle things like I do. “It was happy to see us.”
“What would it—”
I cut Red short with, “It was terrified. Hiding. When it saw we were people, it came right out.”
“If it came out because we’re people,” Jimmy says. “What was it hiding from?”
Red flicks on his safety. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your surprise bleedin’ heart, Sheriff, but the moment we go picking our shots while shit like this is running around, someone’s gonna get hurt, or killed. And I don’t think you want that on your conscience.”
“He’s right,” Ethan says, crouching over the very dead monstrosity. “Something like this… It shouldn’t be alive, even if it disagrees.”
He catches me off guard. Ethan is an animal lover. Always took him for a gentle soul. But there is no doubt in his voice.
“What makes you say that?” I ask as non-combatively as I can, but I’m still coming down from the connection I felt to the creature just before I watched its misplaced face and head implode.
We cluster around the body. When I notice no one is watching our backs, I say, “Grizz?”
“On it,” she says, returning to the door, covering the hallway while we gawk at another dead thing that shouldn’t exist.
“Killing it was the right thing to do,” Ethan says. “Because…it’s not real.”
“Looks pretty real, my man,” Tali counters.
“What I mean,” he says, and I get a sense that he’s holding back anger. “Is that this creature, along with the others we’ve seen, were created inside NovaGen.” He motions to the scattered multi-sized cells. “This resembles nothing in nature. That thing might have been mimicking life, but it was not alive. Neither was that camel.”
“Dufresne?” Jimmy asks.
“Probably not,” Ethan says.
“Why would some be recognizable animals and others…” Marit motions to the corpse. “…like this?”
“They were newer,” Red says. “This bastard was, what do you geeky types call them? When something isn’t quite finished, but you need to real world test it?”
“A beta test,” Ethan says.
Red snaps his finger and points at Ethan. “Yes. That.”
“Beta testing is more of a software term.” Ethan looks back at Red. “And this…this is closer to an alpha,” Ethan says. “Camel was closer to a beta.”
“And after that?” I ask. “A finished version?”
Ethan stands, no longer interested in the creature. “Probably couldn’t tell the difference between them and the real thing.”
“Until you cut ’em open,” Jimmy says.
Red squats on the far side of the body, but he’s not looking at it. He’s looking at Ethan. “There a reason you’re so…informed?”
The answer that comes isn’t directed at Red, it’s directed at me. “Because I know what they are.”
32
Ethan stares back at six sets of blank stares.
“Say what, now?” Red says, percolating toward anger.
“Easy,” I tell him. I’m equally curious, but Ethan is one of my people, and I will not abide threats, even if it’s just his tone.
Ethan tilts his head toward the computer he accessed for a moment. “To be clear, I don’t know what they are exactly. Just…how they’re made.”
I stare at the screen, still displaying the lone application. “You got that from a few seconds of looking at software? I know you’re smart, but—”
“The interface is close to universal these days,” he says. “Might be a new application, but the principal features are ubiquitous.”
“Principal features are ubiquitous, huh?” Red says, and then to me. “He always speak in another language?”
“All the time,” Tali says. “It’s one of his most annoying habits.”
Ethan sighs. “I meant—”
“I know what you meant, kid.” Red steps toward the computer. “Just fucking with you.” He leans forward looking at the application. “Now, what the hell are we looking at here?”
Ethan sits down at the workstation, framed on either side by Red and me.
“It’s a generative A.I. interface,” he says.
“Okay, I’m actually not sure what that means,” Red says.
“Right now, out in the world beyond Alaska, where technology has surpassed the late 1980’s, A.I.—that’s artificial intelligence—has advanced to the point where people can communicate with large language models.”
“English,” Red says.
“Large language models are computer programs that think and can hold conversations. They can code. They can write. They can do math better than any of us. Basically, they have access to all human knowledge available on the Internet, for better or worse. In addition to LLMs—large language models—there are also A.I. generative applications. Generative means it can create something based on user inputs.”
He points at the computer screen, circling the text box. “This is a text input where you would describe what you want using language. It’s called a ‘prompt.’ Every generator is different, so you might need to be very wordy and specific. Or perhaps very brief if what you’re generating is a very well-known or non-complex subject. The technology to do this with images, music, voice, and video has existed for a few years now, with varying degrees of success. In some cases, generations might look beautiful, but not actually represent what was requested. When you request an image of a teddy bear sitting in a chair holding balloons and you get an image of a bear in the woods standing with a clown holding a balloon, that’s bad ‘prompt adherence.’ Another generator might have good prompt adherence and give you exactly what you want, but the result will have no sense of style or aesthetics.”
“I get it.” Red wiggles a finger at three boxes with image icons, and three with video icons. “What about these?”
“Visual references,” Ethan says. “Looks like this uses both images and videos.” He highlights one box at a time, navigating the software like he’s used it before. When each box is highlighted, a word is displayed. Ethan reads them aloud. “Visual prompt, Stylization, Organic Reference.” He quickly highlights the video options, revealing that they share the same labels as the images.
Red motions to the slider bars. “And these?”
“Uh,” Ethan says. “They’re sliders that tell the generator specific preferences. There’s some common stuff, like coloration, prompt adherence, creativity, fidelity. Things like that. But…there’s some less common elements here. Entropic State. Skin texture. Personality. Intelligence… That can’t be right.”
Ethan lowers his hand and his head, descending into an internal monologue that I know from experience could last minutes. We don’t have that kind of time.
“Deputy,” I say, snapping him out of it. “Prompt adherence.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Would that also cover errors?”
“Things that aren’t supposed to be there?” he asks. “Sure.”
“What about too many of something that is supposed to be there?” I ask.
“Like a leg for a head,” Jimmy says.
“Yeah…” Ethan says, pondering. “But that’s…that’s more of an—”
“Artifact,” I say, remembering his earlier lesson. “Which is common in… What did you say? 3D printing.”
He nods. “That’s right. That’s exactly right. Errors in 3D prints and A.I. generations. Artifacts have nothing to do with adherence and more to do with a lack of information about what’s being requested. If a database doesn’t contain all the necessary information to assemble an image accurately, it will attempt to extrapolate the information, or simply duplicate blocks of information to fill in the gap.”
“And that could result in extra fingers,” I say. “Extra eyes. Artifacts.”
Ethan looks at the dead creature. “But that’s not what happened here. This is more like an early generation. Ignoring the fact that this was…alive…I’ve seen images just like it. Just a mass of body parts. It’s the kind of thing that was common when text-to-image generation was new. You might prompt for ‘Jennifer Love Hewitt riding a dolphin’—don’t ask why—and get an image of a chimeric mass of body parts merging the dolphin, surfboard, and something that might have been JLH before being doused in lava.”
“I’m sorry. Am I hearing what I think I’m hearing?” Marit looks back and forth between me and Ethan. “Are we meant to believe that this thing…” She thrusts a hand toward the corpse. “…was generated, based on a prompt and maybe some images or videos someone input on one of these workstations?”
“It would explain the strange physiology. The intricate space-filling polyhedral cells. I—I don’t know.”
“Space-filling poly-what?” she asks. “You know what? Don’t care. Printed living things. It’s what we’re thinking, right?”
“Only thing that makes any kind of sense to me,” Tali says. “I mean, it makes no sense at all, but I trust Ethan. If it makes sense to him, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and attempt to grasp science that is beyond my comprehension. Like the fact that life exists at all. Makes no sense. It’s mathematically impossible. Impossible to replicate. You know, life from non-living elements. But here we are.” She looks at Ethan. “Am I right?”
He nods.
“So, why not living things created based on prompts or whatever?” Tali says. “Impossible, right? But we’re here and shouldn’t be. That thing shouldn’t have been alive, either. Shouldn’t exist. But it’s lying right next to us.”
“Works for me,” Grizz says from the doorway. “And honestly, who gives a shit? Are there fucked up things living inside NovaGen? Yes. Are some of them killing people? Looks that way. Can we kill them? Confirmed that twice now. So how about we stop with the existential crisis bullshit and get a move on? People are dead or dying and we’re here to stop it, not to understand why or how it’s happening.”
“If you know the enemy and know yourself,” Ethan whispers, as he jots down observations in his small Field Notes notebook, which he carries everywhere. Then he adds, a little louder, “You need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
“Don’t you Sun Tzu me, boy,” Grizz says.
Ethan is surprised. “You know Sun Tzu?”
Grizz screws her face up. “What? Of course not. I was just bullshitting. That was really Sun Tzu?”
“Knowledge is power,” I say, translating the saying on Ethan’s behalf.
Ethan stands from his chair, pocketing his Field Notes. “Understanding what we and our enemy are both capable of gives us a strategic advantage.” He pushes past Grizz and steps into the hallway, triggering the white lights. “Not all of us can swing a couple of knives and manage to kill a bear.”
Grizz points to Ethan while looking back at me with a befuddled expression. “He forget to take a tampon out or something? Got toxic shock syndrome?”
“Don’t give him a hard time,” Red says. “Kid is smarter than the rest of us, and he’s not wrong. We’ve gotten lucky so far. If NovaGen was dreaming up living things and creating them? Any of you been on the Internet? Can you even imagine what kind of fucked up shit people would bring to life if they could?”
“Weird Science,” I say to myself, but Red hears me.
“That’s just the beginning of it,” he says. “Look, I hope I’m wrong, but if they’ve jumped from the mash of shit we just killed to that camel, or even better…”
He drifts for a moment. Looks like he’s recalling the past. Shakes his head. “If that’s what we’re dealing with here…speaking from experience…we need to put away all concepts of reality as we know it. The human imagination is the most depraved and dangerous force on the planet. It gave us religions that slaughter in the name of God, weapons to kill and torture, and devices capable of ending all life on the planet. And that’s just the beginning, kiddies.” He nudges the creature’s limp foot. “This thing might not be the worst thing that’s roamed these hallways.” He makes eye contact with me, and before I get the chance to look away, he adds, “Not even close.”
33
“I don’t mean to spook you all, seeing as how you’re all quietly brooding instead of pulling your shit together…” Grizz stands in the hallway, weapon raised to the left of the open door. “…but our friend is back. End of the hall. Can’t see anything, but the lights are on around the bend.”
I’m the first to join her and don’t waste a moment. “With me,” I say to Grizz. She’s by my side a moment later, weapon raised, looking down her sight, same as me. We’re just thirty feet from the bend and there are no doors on either side.
“Tali,” I say, knowing she’ll have followed me, “Keep it tight.” Then a bit louder, I say, “Red—”
“Already watchin’ your back, hoss,” he says. “Got the kid, Jimmy, and your gal.”
“Do yourself a favor,” Tali says to me as we approach the bend ahead. “Never call my sister ‘your gal.’ Not that you would, but—”
“Tali,” I say.
“Right.”
She goes quiet, stowing her nervous energy. Just before we follow the turn to the right, the illuminated hallway ahead goes dark. Whatever was here has left again.
Ahead of us, the lights shift from white to green, one segment after another. As they go, Grizz says, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the lights would shut off, one after the other, at the same speed as whatever set them off ran away. Does that make sense? Rate of light change to speed ratio. Something like that. You know what I’m trying to say, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say, and she’s right. Each cube of hallway is shifting to green so quickly that it’s a smooth fade down the long hallway. Whatever triggered the lights was moving fast. I imagine myself running down the hallway at the same speed.
Impossible, I think, for a human.
For a normal human.
Who knows what NovaGen created-people could be capable of.
Like the last hallway, doors line either side. Looks like there might be a junction halfway down, a branch heads to the right, toward the level’s core space. The last section of hallway to turn green is just past the junction, right in front of a door on the right side of the hallway.
That’s where we’re heading.
I glance back at the others, slowly catching up, their backs to us as they scan the hallway behind us for trouble.
“Hey,” I say, and snap my fingers. “We’re moving. Watch the doors as we pass, but do not open, and do not approach. Our visitor entered a room two hundred feet away. I intend to pay them…or it…a visit. If it’s a person, we will have a heart to heart.” As the second group catches up, I add, “Everyone copy?”
Nods and ‘yeses’ all around.
“Red, Jimmy, watch our six,” I say. “Grizz and I on point. Rest of you know what to do.”
A little more comfortable in the facility now, and eager to find out what’s been spying on us, we make good time moving down the hallway. All the doors are closed. Probably not locked, because nothing appears to be locked, but if a door opens, it’ll be easy to spot. With all sides covered, it would be hard to catch us off guard.
Part of me hopes we’ll find the rest of this place devoid of life. No bodies. No monstrosities. When the snow lets up and the roads are passable, it can be the State’s problem. Or the Feds’. Or whatever shadowy government agency is funding this science fiction shit show.
The excitement of finding the camel has long since faded, replaced by events that will likely require therapy to get over. I’m no stranger to therapy. Did my time after Anya passed. But the nearest therapist is an hour drive, and I’m not a fan of losing three hours a week to talk about feelings I can’t really articulate.
