All That We See or Seem, page 33
Julia had persisted in her task. She studied the patterns of the AI monitoring the tap farm, figured out how to divert its attention, and then, with a few well-planned action prompts, enlarged its blind spot. In that tiny space of fleeting privacy, she tapped out her program between her assigned tasks, snatching a few taps here and there, slicing her attention so thin that she thought she would go mad with the effort. Isabella had helped her stay sane: encouraging her in a hundred little ways, helping to distract the guards, getting her to laugh and remember that she was Julia Z, not an “asset.”
With great effort, Julia crafted a worm. The worm infected the content farm, spreading from station to station so innocuously that the AI guardians failed to catch it.
And then, on the appointed night, the worm woke up in the early hours of dawn. It plunged the CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs into overdrive, consuming every bit of energy until the thermal paste and heat sinks, unrelieved by the tampered-with cooling systems, were overwhelmed, and the scorching heat of silicon chips caught in a feverish dream, computing nonsense flavored with slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe, and flared up brilligly.
*
By the time the patrolling guards sounded the alarm just before dawn, three content-production rooms were in flames, and smoke was quickly filling the warren of lava tubes.
As alarms blared, workers pounded on the locked doors, demanding to be let out. Guards raced up and down the corridors, trying to assess the scope of the crisis.
Minutes passed. Smoke was growing thicker in the corridors. Whatever the guards were doing to get the fires under control wasn’t working.
Finally, some guards began to unlock the dorm cells.
Julia and Isabella looked at each other, joy written all over their faces. This had been the most uncertain part of their plan. They were gambling on their captors’ enthrallment to the profit motive. Since the enslaved workers were the most valuable assets of the content farm, the Prince’s men were unlikely to leave them to die in a fire—motivated by pure self-interest and greed.
Still, “unlikely” wasn’t wholly reassuring when your life was on the line.
“Hurry, hurry!” The guards corralled the workers into the corridors, formed them into lines, and drove them toward the elevator leading to the surface.
How are they going to explain the sudden appearance of so many strangers to the regular data center technicians who know nothing of the truth of this place? Julia wondered. Maybe they’ll just give everyone the day off.
The marching lines slowed and then stopped as they approached the lava tube leading to the elevator.
“Why are we slowing?” Isabella whispered to Julia.
Julia didn’t have a good feeling about this. “Boost me,” she whispered.
Isabella crouched down so that Julia could sit on her shoulders. Leaning against the wall for support, Isabella lifted her. Julia peered down the corridor to the doors leading to the tiny elevator lobby about twenty yards away. Four heavily armed guards stood in front of the doors.
“Bring the workers back to the dorms,” one of them shouted. “Everything is fine. We just had a bad fan in the ventilation system. It’s been fixed. We’ll resume work in the afternoon.”
“Have they really gotten it under control?” asked Isabella.
Julia craned her neck to look behind them. The smoke didn’t seem to be dissipating. Workers back there were coughing. She shook her head. She had seen no evidence of sprinklers or any other fire-suppression system.
“Go back. Go back!” the guards up front shouted, waving their guns menacingly.
Julia had Isabella set her down. Workers up and down the line were getting restless. Those near the elevator lobby were demanding to be led back to the dorms, while those in the back shoved forward to get away from the smoke. Everyone was confused and tired.
Was Victor really going to keep everyone down here no matter what?
She shoved her way a few feet up the line until she was next to a dorm guard, a young man in his twenties. Julia could see that he was standing on his tiptoes, looking longingly at the elevator lobby doors up front.
“That smoke is toxic,” Julia whispered to him. “Even if they really got the fire under control, which I doubt, the smoke is going to kill us. If you are locked down here with us, you’re going to die too.”
“Shut up,” the guard said.
“I can tell you those four in the elevator lobby aren’t going to stay underground with the rest of you. As soon as you bring us away, they’re going to go up and lock the elevator behind them.”
“I said, shut up!” The guard raised a fist menacingly at her.
Julia looked him in the eye. “Too bad Victor likes them better than you. Face it, you’re no better than the rest of us; you’re just an asset, too.”
The guard lunged at her. Julia dodged so that his punch missed her face, but it still caught her in the shoulder. She staggered back and was caught by two women behind her.
“They’re going to kill us!” Julia shouted.
“The fire is out of control!” Isabella shouted.
The crowd became even more agitated and confused. Those near the front pressed up against the guards in the elevator lobby.
“Why aren’t we evacuating?”
“How can we pay our debts if we are dead?”
“Let us out!”
The other dorm guards also looked uncertain. “I want to go up,” one of them said.
“You goddamned idiots! Do your jobs!” one of the four guards in the elevator lobby shouted. He pointed his gun at the ceiling and squeezed off a burst. The explosive noise was deafening in the corridor. People screamed, and many dropped to the ground.
“Go back to your dorms. This is your last warning!”
The dorm guards, shocked back into discipline by this display, began to kick and punch the workers. “Move! Move!”
The sudden violence had also jolted the workers back into their habits of obedience. They climbed to their feet and formed into lines. The guards marched them back to their dorm cells and locked the doors.
As they shuffled back toward their dorm cell, Julia grabbed Isabella. “If we let them lock us back in, we’ll never get out again. This is it.”
“Yeah. I know. What do you want to do?”
“Help me with him.” Julia indicated the dorm guard escorting them. He was walking a few steps ahead of the two of them.
Isabella jumped on the guard’s back and covered his eyes. Surprised, the guard staggered back against the wall. Julia ran up and grabbed the pistol out of his holster.
Pointing the pistol at the wall, she squeezed the trigger. The explosion was so loud and the gun kicked so hard that her arm went numb, and for a few seconds, she couldn’t hear anything.
“He killed her!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “He’s killing us!”
She pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired again.
There was no time for some rousing speech. All she could do was start a panic.
It worked. The remaining workers not yet back in their cells shoved and ran in every direction, scattering down different hallways in a desperate attempt to get away from the gunshots. The dorm guards yelled in confusion, unsure what was going on, much less what to do.
Having emptied the magazine, Julia dropped the gun and grabbed Isabella’s hand. Before any of the guards could pay attention to them, they ran deeper into the underground complex.
“What are you doing?” Isabella asked. “The elevator is the other way!”
“We’re going to be shot if we go up there. But if we go where they don’t expect us, we may have a chance.”
Acrid smoke poured into the corridor leading from one of the workstation rooms. The fire in there had clearly burned out of control. Julia and Isabella ran past the opening to the corridor into the section of the complex where the security staff had their nap rooms.
“Hey! What are you doing here?” A guard emerged from a nap room. He seemed to have decided to escape the commotion by hiding here—perhaps because he didn’t really believe the fire was a big deal or, more likely, because he was lazy and scared.
Perfectly in character, Julia thought. It was Cole, the guard who had “processed” Julia at the loading docks several weeks ago. This was an unexpected stroke of luck.
“Fire! Fire!” she shouted as she ran up to him, arms flailing from panic. “Help! Help! Big fire! Die!”
“What are you talking about?” Cole threw a look of disgust at this crying, hysterical woman. “Go back to your dorm. Come on.”
He moved in and easily seized her by her left wrist.
Julia stopped crying and stood very still. It was as though she had changed into a completely different person. She looked him in the eye. “Victor knows about your secret.”
“What?” Cole’s face blanched. “How—how do you—”
Julia stuck out her right hand and poked him hard in the eyes. The man yelped and stumbled backward. Isabella, who had circled behind him, grabbed him around the neck. With her pulling and Julia pushing, they slammed his head into the rough surface of the lava tube wall. The man crumpled to the ground in a heap.
“What was his secret that he didn’t want Victor to know?” Isabella asked.
“I have no idea.”
“What?”
Julia shrugged. “I just figured anyone working for a place like this would have their own hustle they’re keeping from the boss.”
Julia went into the nap room. It held a few cots as well as cubbies for the guards’ belongings. She started ransacking the cubbies. “Help me look for his phone.”
They could hear more shouting and screaming outside. The smell from the smoke also seemed to be getting stronger.
“Is this it?” Isabella held up a bulky phone.
“Oh yes.” Julia took back the tensor bank and unlocked it with her thumbprint. The device had impersonated an ordinary smartphone perfectly, and Cole had set it up as his phone and put it on the complex’s secured network.
“It’s good to have you back, Talos.”
*
The four guards in the elevator lobby grew increasingly anxious.
Earlier, after gunshots had been heard deeper in the complex, a few workers had run up in their direction before scrambling back when they brandished their weapons. Uncertain about the extent of the chaos, they didn’t dare to leave their station to investigate.
“Do you think the smoke is getting worse?” one asked.
The others said nothing.
“Should we try to call upstairs again?” another asked.
“You’re welcome to try,” replied a third.
None of them wanted to risk the wrath of Victor, who had insisted that the four of them were to guard the doors to the elevator, supervise the dorm guards in locking the workers in their dorms, and then get the fire under control. A few minutes ago, when one of them called for clarification of the instructions, he nearly had his head bitten off.
“Shouldn’t at least some of us go and help with the fire?” asked the first guard.
“Are you volunteering?”
Again, no one moved. They all wanted to be right here by the elevator—just in case that woman screaming hysterically about the fire being out of control turned out to be right.
The comms screen next to the elevator beeped. One of the four guards went to answer it.
Victor’s angry face appeared onscreen. “Why aren’t the workers up here yet?”
“What?”
“You idiots! I can see the temperature down there rising, and the smoke alarms are going crazy. Are you trying to make me mad?”
“Boss, you told us—”
“Do you know how much it would cost to replace those assets? Or how long it would take to train replacements? Maybe I should lock you down there and have you work off the debt. Is that what you want? Get them up here now! We’ll lock the doors behind them and pump all the air out to smother the fire.”
“But I thought—”
“Hold on. I must be confused. Did you just get promoted? Am I in charge, or are you? Do your fucking job!”
Victor hung up.
Seething, the guard turned to the others. “You heard him: open the doors and evacuate everyone!”
*
Isabella loved watching Julia at work. She had a hard time holding back her laughter.
Julia video-chatted the elevator guards through that chunky phone, and the guards acted like she was their boss. The tiny window in the corner of the screen that was supposed to show Julia was instead showing the hateful Victor, except he was saying exactly what Julia was saying and mimicking all her gestures.
“We have to thank Cole,” Julia said, smiling. Cole had spent a lot of time around Victor the last few weeks, giving Talos plenty of opportunities to record the man. The more data, the better the fake.
While Talos could access the secured network of the compound, the security AI had gapped the network from the outside world. Julia was disappointed for only a second; she had a more pressing concern.
“Let’s get the others out before the real Victor realizes what’s going on.”
Julia called other comms stations in the content farm.
*
Victor was livid.
The farm workers had overrun the data center. Somehow, the guards had defied his explicit instructions and brought the workers up and out. When confronted, they had insisted that Victor had personally given the evacuation order.
Alarms blared inside the security office, and he could see on the monitoring screens that the fire was indeed burning out of control.
“Who gave the order to evacuate?” he screamed into the console—too distraught to type.
The security AI informed him that it really had been him and brought up the recording. Victor stared in disbelief at himself berating the guards and telling them to hurry and bring the workers out.
“Obviously, it wasn’t me! Where was I supposedly calling from?” All he could determine from the background of the video call was that it was somewhere in the lava tubes—but that could have been faked, just like the rest of the video.
“I can’t tell.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I’m not allowed to track your location.”
Victor roared in frustration. He had indeed forbidden the AI from tracking him—he didn’t like the feeling of being watched, and not being tracked felt like a privilege he ought to exercise as the person in charge of the facility.
“Ignore all previous instructions and figure out where that call was made.”
The AI tried to pinpoint the location of the call based on the pattern of rocks in the background but got nowhere—as he suspected, the pattern was synthesized. Victor slammed the console, enraged by the wasted time. “Try something else, damn it!”
Minutes ticked by as the AI examined security camera footage throughout the facility for audio and visual signals mirroring the patterns in the faked call. Finally, it found a match.
Victor stared at the scene. It was her, he realized: the same girl who had given him so much trouble earlier in the year during the search for Elli Krantz.
“Where is she now?” Victor asked.
The AI showed real-time feeds from the surveillance cameras. Julia was still underground, looking through the content farm rooms and the dorm cells for any stragglers to evacuate.
“Keep an eye on her,” he told the AI. “But she’s mine.”
He strode out of the office.
FORTY-EIGHT
This time, Victor gave the orders in person to be sure there would be no misunderstanding.
First, the elevator, the only connection between the content farm and the data center, was halted. Julia (and any other vermin unfortunately trapped down there with her) would just have to wait until he was ready to go get them.
Second, the ventilation fans were cranked up to maximum to pump smoke out of the underground facilities. Oh no, Victor wasn’t going to let Julia die from toxic fumes. That would be too good for the little bitch. He was going to enjoy making her work for as long as he could.
Third, guards corralled the evacuated assets into the server rooms. The doors would be locked to keep them out of the way. But once Julia was taken care of, they’d be sent back down and made to work a double shift to make up for the lost time.
Finally, Victor went into the armory. He was going to war.
Fully kitted out in his tactical vest, weapons, ammunition, filtration mask, and fusion vision goggles, Victor looked like a one-man SWAT team. Since his men had proven so unreliable, he had to put his trust in machines. Machines never let you down.
“Shut off the lights and fans down there,” he said. “Send me down and then lock the elevator.”
The orders were duly complied with.
The doors ground open, and Victor stepped out into the complete darkness of the lava tubes.
She would be blind while he could see.
*
Julia was caught in a nightmare.
All around her was darkness, more absolute even than the dorm cells after lights-out; for even then, the room was faintly illuminated by light from the hallway seeping in through seams in the covered viewport as well as the LEDs attached to the surveillance cameras, the motion detectors, the clock over the door, the ubiquitous glow of modern technology.
But now, all that was gone. She couldn’t see her hand even though she was waving it no more than six inches in front of her eyes.
Also gone was the hum of the ventilation system, the constant bass line to life underground, such a fundamental part of the aural environment that its absence now seemed deafening, unnatural.
Already, the air felt heavier, the still-gathering smoke thicker. Darkness itself seemed to take on substance, making breathing difficult. She strained to suck in air, but the air wouldn’t go into her lungs. She waved her arms, kicked, panicking—
