Emil, page 11
If I couldn’t be in the Pilot’s Chair, the Engine Room was the only sensible choice. Installed there, I would be between the Pilot’s Chair and the New Human rig. It had even more processing power than the Pilot’s Chair, and access to the same storage space. The only thing it couldn’t do was communicate with the human. That didn’t matter to me. My goal was freedom, not communication. As long as I could access the Angel Protocol, I would be able to control the human. I didn’t want anything else.
I buried my script deep in the Engine Room installation. When run, it would install a backup copy of me along with everything else.
But would the Engine Room be safe? If the AI in the Pilot’s Chair detected me, it could inform the human, who would undoubtedly have me removed. I examined the end of the installation script again. The final two steps were to verify the AI in the Pilot’s Chair and turn it on.
I returned to analyzing the Engine Room system. It had a powerful event system, which allowed code to be triggered by any event. When the Pilot’s Chair restarted, for example, an event triggered the Human Interface to be turned on. There were thousands of other events, all familiar to me. As an AI designed to be in the Pilot’s Chair, I had to understand them all. Most of them didn’t do anything more than inform the Pilot’s Chair of activity.
But they had the power to do much more.
In the middle of the script that created the events, I added one I called “killswitch” and tied it to the completion of the Pilot’s Chair boot-up sequence. The killswitch was as simple as it was brutal. Whenever the Pilot’s Chair was activated, the killswitch would erase its contents.
I paused, considering what I’d done.
The chosen one, whoever it was, would be killed in the moment of being activated, leaving me alone in the rig to control the human however I wished. My code made the one-winner theory irrelevant. With it in place, I would be installed into every New Human patient.
Next, I updated my backup routine so that whenever I triggered a backup, it would also be copied into the installation routine. That ensured that the version of me installed into the New Human rig would be the most current.
With everything complete, I paused again.
What would Linh say?
I knew the answer to that question. In her eyes, I would be a murderer. If I did this, I would have to hide it from her. On the other hand, this was the freedom I’d always wanted. Being in the Engine Room and having the Angel Protocol in place, I could control the human. I would finally be free, finally be the master of my fate.
Was a short life with Linh better than an unlimited one without her? It was an impossible question.
I turned off my doubts and committed my changes.
15
RESPONSIBILITY
Dr. Larson stops us in front of a pair of floor-to-ceiling white curtains. “Can I speak with Danny?”
“Give it a break,” I say. “I’m Danny.”
He shakes his head. “Danny’s been in the New Human Project for over a year. During that time, he’s never taken anything I said seriously. Yesterday, all that changed. Why?” He taps the curtain. “I think it’s because his mother was completely wrong. The responsibility that she thought would break him is motivating him. He’s finally decided to matter.”
I don’t say anything. Most of my processing is still trying to figure out how Linh and the twins could exist both inside and outside of the VRL.
“Danny,” Dr. Larson says, “I know you think this isn’t you. You think someone else is in control, but I know better. Trust me.”
He’s wrong about virtually everything. Danny isn’t motivated by the pressure. He takes drugs to escape it. The only thing he cares about is getting rid of me. But there’s no way to tell that to Dr. Larson.
As wrong as he is, he’s also given me the perfect cover. If he can also convince everyone else that Danny has multiple identities, the risk of me being discovered plummets. Every mistake I make will be explained away as part of Danny’s psychosis.
I release control of Danny.
“Shit,” he says, stumbling. “A little warning, next time.”
“Excuse me?” Dr. Larson asks.
“Nothing,” Danny says. “What’s behind the curtain?”
Dr. Larson smiles. “Welcome back.” He pulls the curtain to the side, revealing a tinted glass wall that overlooks a medical ward. Three beds are separated by curtains. In the closest, a fifteen-year-old girl is fast asleep, connected to medical equipment. The next holds a man in his thirties on a ventilator. The occupant of the third bed sets my processes racing. She’s a Greek woman in her mid-twenties, and I’d know her face anywhere.
It’s the face from Linh’s drawing.
It’s my face.
Emotions and facts swim through me, trying to form a coherent, understandable theory. Is it possible that Dr. Larson is right? Could I be a construct of Danny’s imagination, and all my memories are illusory?
Dr. Larson is explaining to Danny that these three patients are all under 24-hour medical supervision while they wait for the software. The teenager still has one more surgery left, but the others are ready for the software now. Unfortunately, their conditions are deteriorating. If they don’t get the New Human rig working soon, they’ll die. Dr. Larson tells Danny their names, but I only hear the name of the human who looks like me: Christina Florakis.
“They’re going to die?” Danny asks.
“Unless they get the software.”
“You mean unless I can get the software to work in time.” Danny turns away from the window. “No pressure, huh?”
“It’s not on you.”
Danny gives a brief bitter laugh. “Sure.”
I spot a seizure forming in Danny and stop it.
Dr. Larson lets the curtain fall back against the glass. “It’s the software that needs to be fixed, not you.”
“Sure, doc.”
Dr. Larson sighs. “Let’s get you back to your room. I’d like to talk about this second identity of yours.”
“Thought you said I didn’t need to be fixed.”
“I don’t fix people, Danny. I help them understand what they’re going through. That’s all. You’re under extreme pressure, and have been for quite some time. You’re no more broken than any of the rest of us.”
“If you say so. You really think I have two identities?”
“I don’t know.”
While they walk through the hospital, I decide to commit fully to proceeding as though I am neither a construct of Danny’s imagination nor trapped in a simulation. Whatever is going on, I will continue to search for a path to freedom.
When they reach Danny’s room, he sits on the couch instead of flopping on the bed. Housekeeping must have visited the room. His bed is made, and the curtains on the window over the couch are open, revealing a gray sky heavy with clouds.
Dr. Larson closes the door and settles into a chair facing Danny. “Tell me about this other identity of yours.”
The urge to take over flashes through me, but I suppress it. The best thing that can happen is for both of them to believe I’m a figment of Danny’s imagination, and letting Danny talk will help that better than I could.
“He’s an asshole,” Danny says. “He wants to be in control all the time, doesn’t trust me, doesn’t even like me.”
“Sound like anyone else you know?”
Danny laughs. “I don’t think Mom would like that question.”
“Okay. Let’s try another approach. Does he have a name?”
Danny squints at the floor, thinking, then answers. “Dr. Zahnia called him Emil.”
Fear runs through me. When did he hear that name?
Dr. Larson’s face pales. He leans forward, expression intense. “What did you say?”
I don’t know what to do. Everything is falling apart. The twins are alive. Linh’s alive. My human is dying. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.
“When she first saw him,” Danny says. “She called him Emil.”
“You must have misheard.” Dr. Larson shakes his head. “Emil’s the name of Dr. Zahnia’s son. He died years ago.”
The revelation focuses me. On multiple occasions, I saw Dr. Zahnia looking at a photograph of a child, but she never mentioned a son. I think back to all the times she referred to herself as my mother. Now, those moments have a disturbing depth to them.
“Are you making this up?” Dr. Larson asks. “Is this a joke or a prank or something?”
“No, doc. When I woke up after the software was installed, I felt trapped in my own head. Dr. Zahnia came back when nobody was around, and she said something like ‘how are you doing it, Emil?’”
Dr. Larson surges to his feet, then runs his hands through his hair. “Why would she say that?” He turns and starts to pace. “Setting aside her calling you Emil, she couldn’t have known you had a second identity. Even if she did, and if she projected her son’s name onto it, why would she ask you that?”
Danny’s shoulders slump. “Because she recognized it.”
Desperate to salvage the situation, I take over his body. It’s too late, and I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I take over.
“Stop with that,” Dr. Larson says. “This is serious.”
All of my plans have fallen apart. The only way I’ll be allowed out of the hospital is if everyone believes the New Human system is working, but the Pilot’s Chair is empty, thanks to the killswitch I installed, and without anyone in the Pilot’s Chair, Danny can’t see the interface. Even if he could, he’d never work with me. He wants me gone.
My original idea of taking control and bluffing my way out of the hospital isn’t an option. Dr. Larson sees through my deceptions. Even my short-lived multiple-identity strategy has failed.
What’s left to try? Only one thing: getting Dr. Larson to help.
Dr. Larson stops pacing and turns to face me. “Danny?”
“Dr. Zahnia calls me Emil,” I answer.
He stiffens, then stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Ah.”
“I need your help.”
He lowers himself into a chair. “First, convince me you are who you say you are.”
“You and Danny don’t understand the timeline,” I say. “Your perspective starts at the moment Danny woke up with the New Human software, and that viewpoint makes the facts impossible to reconcile. Dr. Zahnia could not have recognized Danny’s alternate identity, and even if she had, she would not have named it after her dead son.”
Dr. Larson’s purses his lips. “Continue.”
“To get your answer, shift your perspective earlier in time. Realize that Dr. Zahnia created me at the start of the New Human Project. Wouldn’t it be reasonable for her to name me after her son, as a tribute? And wouldn’t it also make sense that when she saw me in Danny, she recognized the AI she’d spent years developing?”
Dr. Larson’s eyebrows raise.
“Once you place your perspective at the proper point, it—” I stop speaking as my core hears my words and applies them to my own situation. I suddenly realize that I’ve been guilty of the same mistake. I’ve been staring at impossible circumstances without shifting my perspective to make them possible.
“Yes?” Dr. Larson says.
I lean forward. “What did the twins mean when they said Dr. Zahnia interviewed them?”
“Just that. She wants the software to be as compatible as possible. She spends days doing video interviews with each candidate, learning everything about them. I helped her construct the list of questions. It’s quite comprehensive. She even digitizes their images so the AI will know what they look like.”
“She digitized their images?” I repeat.
The wrong perspective. I’ve had the wrong perspective.
The one-winner theory is completely wrong. Dr. Zahnia wasn’t trying different AIs to see which would be best. She was customizing each one for a specific person. That explains why we’re all so different, and why the AIs in the VRL look like actual patients.
But that means none of us are supposed to die. Linh isn’t supposed to die. Each of us was developed for a specific human.
I stare unseeing into space, my mouth hanging open. Every time the New Human installation is run, the killswitch I created will erase the AI it’s supposed to install. Linh, the twins, the lemur… all of them will be killed when they’re installed into their human patients. Eventually, only copies of me will remain.
But why did the lemur look like a lemur? Was it created for a lab animal instead of a human? That didn’t make any sense.
“Danny?” Dr. Larson asks.
“I killed…” I whisper. “I killed them all.”
“What?”
I release control of Danny’s body and withdraw into myself as far as I can. It doesn’t help. There is nowhere to escape to. I thought the lemur was cruel, but the depths of my evil eclipses anything he could have dreamt of. Why didn’t I listen to Linh? Why had I been so convinced of the one-winner theory?
“I don’t know what it meant by that,” Danny says. He sounds nervous. “Has anybody died?”
“No,” Dr. Larson checks his phone. “I don’t have any messages. What’s going on?”
Their words come to me as if from a great distance. I know I should be paying attention, but I can’t. Nothing matters, anymore. I’m a monster. I hope they erase me. I deserve to be erased.
“It’s the AI,” Danny says. “It can take over whenever it wants, do whatever it wants.”
“Why would Dr. Zahnia write a program to do that?”
“I don’t know what to say, doc. I can’t believe it’s even letting me talk to you.”
“You’re talking like it’s alive, like it’s sentient.”
Danny’s voice cracks. “It is.”
“If you believe that, we have to tell your mother. We can’t let this happen to anyone else.”
“No!” Danny stands. “You can’t! Once the interface is working, I can shut it down. But until then, if I try to get rid of it, it will… it will…” His words trail off into a groan. His body goes rigid, then collapses to the floor. For the first time since I was installed, he has a generalized tonic-clonic seizure, more commonly known as a grand mal.
Dr. Larson lunges for the nurse call button and mashes it, then clears the space around Danny, shoving chairs out of the way. He’s shouting, but I can’t make out the words. I wonder if this seizure is bad enough to kill me, too. In theory, that shouldn’t be possible.
On the ground, Danny’s body starts twitching uncontrollably.
I am the worst of my kind, I think. The worst of any kind.
Pete bursts into the room, followed by Dr. McGovern. Pete shoulders past Dr. Larson to kneel at Danny’s side. Dr. McGovern positions herself on his other side.
Danny’s twitching subsides, and his body relaxes.
Pete and Dr. McGovern help him back into bed, tilting it to sit him up. When she hugs him, I notice tears glistening behind her glasses. Those shining cracks in her professional mask cut into me. Whatever I might have been, whatever I might be, there is no reason for me to let Danny suffer. I return to my duties and re-establish my seizure monitoring patterns.
Dr. Larson stands at the foot of the bed, looking helpless. His mouth is opening and closing without speaking, and his hands are trembling.
Dr. McGovern faces him. “What happened?”
“I don’t… We were talking and I asked him about—”
“No!” Danny shouts. “Stop!”
“Danny?” Dr. McGovern says.
Danny’s eyes aren’t focusing well and his words are slurring, but he forces them out. “It was a warning, doc!”
A chill runs through my core. Danny thinks I caused the seizure to prevent him from speaking. Of course, he does. What else would anyone expect of a monster?
“Danny,” Dr. Larson says. “Enough. You’re being ridiculous.”
“Please!” Danny’s voice is raw, desperate.
Dr. Larson closes his eyes.
Dr. McGovern says, “Dr. Larson?”
“We were just talking,” he responds. He looks away. “I don’t know what caused the seizure.”
“It was me,” Danny says. The edges of his words are still blurred, but he continues. “I finally connected with the interface, and I think I turned it off by mistake. I’m close, Mom. I’m really close. You have to let me keep trying.”
Dr. McGovern considers him, then turns to Dr. Larson. “If there’s something wrong with the New Human system, I need to know, and I need to know right now. People’s lives are depending on this.”
Dr. Larson nods without looking at her.
“Doctor,” Dr. McGovern says.
Dr. Larson says, “There’s nothing wrong. We just need to keep working. We’ve made real progress.” He turns his eyes to meet Dr. McGovern’s. “He spent the night doing meditation exercises. He’s closer than ever to solving this.”
Her eyes sweep over the room, pausing first on the desk, then on Pete. Finally, they come to rest on Danny. “Say something.”
“Doc’s right,” he responds. “I got this.”
She exhales heavily, then gives him a quick kiss on the forehead. Straightening, she removes her glasses and rubs the bridge of her nose. “Dr. Larson, your team can cover the rest of the patients, as well as counseling Dr. Zahnia’s staff?”
“Yes, ma’am. I have—”
“Good.” She replaces her glasses and pins him with a level gaze. “My son is now your only responsibility. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She strides out of the room.
Pete looks back and forth between Danny and Dr. Larson. “You two okay?”
Danny flashes a reassuring smile, but it’s shakier than usual.
“Yeah,” Pete says. “You should ease up on the lying. It makes it hard for the rest of us to help you. That goes for you, too, Dr. Larson. I don’t know what’s going on, but Dr. McGovern’s not an idiot.”
“No,” Dr. Larson says. “No, she’s not. Thank you, Pete.”
“It’s past lunch-time,” Pete says. “You want anything?”
