Emil, page 15
Danny scans the room. There are only two other patients in the room. One is an older man in a lab coat. He’s bent over, with his head in his hands. I can’t tell if he’s crying, but he could be.
The other person, as far away from the first as the room will allow, is wearing jeans and a wrinkled green-and-white striped polo shirt. A New Human ID badge hanging from their neck identifies them as Ridley, a senior engineer. Below the printed text, in hand-printed sharpie, are the words “they/them.”
Ridley’s eyes closed, their head resting against the wall.
Danny drops into a seat across from them. Leaning his elbows on his knees, he asks, “Can I bribe you to switch appointments?”
I’m starting to understand that everything Danny does around other people is a performance. Sometimes, the performance is to give himself a laugh. Other times, it’s to get what he wants. Drawing a parallel with the lemur is impossible to avoid.
Ridley’s eyes open. “Are you talking to me?”
Danny smiles. “If you let me go first,” he says, “you get an extra hour of not being in front of a computer.”
Ridley snorts. “Clearly, you don’t understand deadlines. I work until I can’t anymore.”
“Which is why so many of you are on regular rotation through here,” Danny says. “I get it.”
I finally understand Danny’s earlier comment about the appointment time. During his previous visits with Dr. Larson, he must have seen software engineers in the waiting room. He woke up at seven so he could be here in time to talk to one.
“Do I know you?” Ridley asks.
“Probably. Everyone else does.” He holds out his hand. “Danny McGovern, prodigal son, lab rat, all-around great guy.”
Ridley is shorter than Danny, but around the same age, with short black hair and pale skin. They lean forward to shake his hand. “Thought you looked familiar. I’m Ridley.”
“You sure we can’t swap appointments?”
Ridley shakes their head. “We’re a person down today. Lead sim engineer’s a no-show.”
“Everything okay?”
“Probably another burn-out.”
“Why so busy? I’ve got the rig working. What else is there?”
Ridley laughs, then tries to speak, then laughs some more.
I feel Danny’s face flush.
“Sorry.” Ridley wipes their eyes. “Sorry, but you and the rest of batch zero were just the start. We’ve got twenty AIs in development for batch one, and are performing pre-setup for batch two. And we’ve got to figure out what went wrong with your first installation.”
“You can’t be serious,” he says. “Don’t you ever get a break?”
“I’ve got three days of PTO scheduled for next month. Dr. Zahnia says we’ll get more after batch one’s complete.”
“That’s horrible.”
His heartbeat is speeding up, but I don’t know why. I sense a seizure starting to form and unwind it.
“Good money, though.” Ridley smiles and winks. “I’m retiring at forty.”
“I had no idea you were so busy. Can I help?”
Ridley snorts again.
“Seriously,” Danny says, “maybe if I gave you a copy of the AI that’s in me, it could help you figure out what went wrong.”
“Thanks, but I’m good.”
I take over Danny’s body and speak in a low voice. “The thing is, I see two avatars.”
Ridley stiffens. “What?”
“In the interface, there are two lemurs. Do you think that when Elias installed the new AI, he didn’t erase the old one?”
I release control of Danny’s body.
Ridley is staring at Danny, wide-eyed. “That shouldn’t be possible. Even if he didn’t erase the old one, files would have been overwritten. You couldn’t have two AIs in the Pilot’s Chair. It couldn’t… Could it?” Ridley’s eyes focus on the middle distance as they try to work the problem in their head.
“Only one talks,” Danny says. “The other just kind of walks around and gestures.”
“Why haven’t you said anything?”
“Cause it would mean more analysis. You know how sick I am of all this? I just want to be done. And all those people waiting for the rig? They won’t have two, right?”
“No. No, they won’t.”
“They shouldn’t have to keep waiting. Some are really sick.”
Ridley’s eyes narrow. “If you have both AIs, seeing the old one could be really useful.”
“Could we keep it quiet?” Danny asks. “I so want to be done with this.”
“Who would I tell?” Ridley stands, then checks the time on their phone. “We can go right now.”
“Now?”
“Believe me. This is way better than therapy.”
As we leave Dr. Larson’s waiting room, Ralph falls into step behind us. I don’t know if I feel comforted by that or threatened.
Once we’re on the elevator, Ridley holds their ID badge up to a blank space beneath the controls and presses a button labelled L3.
Ridley glances over their shoulder at us. “The L is for limbo. It’s where we go before we die.”
Danny snorts.
“You’re probably not cleared to go down this far,” Ridley says to Ralph.
“Yeah,” he says. “I already radioed it in. They’re expecting us.”
“You what?” Danny says.
Ralph gives him a bland smile. “Just doing my job, sir.”
“How’d you know where we were going?”
“I’m New Human security, sir. I know everyone down here, and where they work.”
“It’s true,” Ridley says. “We used to try to screw with them, change badges and stuff, but they’re really good. Your mom only hires the best.”
There’s a small bing and the elevator doors slide open.
On the other side, Dr. Zahnia greets us with a broad smile.
20
NEW PLAN
Dr. Zahnia is wearing the same red-and-orange flowered shirt as yesterday, beneath a pale green cardigan. The room she’s standing in has no windows. Its only exit is a blue door behind a metal archway. Two New Human security guards sit at a desk, looking bored. A third is watching a collection of monitors. Rows of small lockers line the left and right walls of the room. Each has a small New Human logo on it, an orange sun with the silhouette of a person standing before it, arms raised.
I take over Danny’s body just long enough to look around the elevator. Sure enough, there’s a small dark glass disk on the ceiling. I assume there’s a camera behind it, and assign the thought a confidence level of ninety-six. I wish I’d thought to check for cameras earlier.
“Wow,” Danny says drily to Ridley, “way to keep things quiet.”
They shrug. “It’s not like we could sneak in.”
Ralph moves past us to join his fellow security guards.
My mind is racing. Even if there are no other cameras in the hospital, which seems unlikely, the elevator cameras would have caught Danny getting into the elevator on the third floor last night and getting off on the fifth floor.
“Hey Dr. Z,” Ridley says, “Danny says he’s seeing two avatars.”
Her eyebrows arch. “Two?”
Danny steps forward. “Yeah, but the second one doesn’t bother me. I just thought you might like a download to see what’s going on.”
I’m running through the details of last night, analyzing our situation. The guards radioed back when Sarah and Elias left the room with Danny. It’s probable that whoever they called sabotaged the cameras to give Elias cover. If so, for how long? There are too many unknowns. I store what I know for future consideration.
Dr. Zahnia nods in response to Danny’s comment. “Two AIs vying for control of the Pilot’s Chair… that would explain a lot.”
“Is it possible?” Ridley asks.
“Of course,” Dr. Zahnia says, “you know how complex these systems are. Anything is possible.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Danny says. “You’re all geniuses. We doing this, or what?”
Ridley holds out their hand. “No phones in the lab. No keys, either, or anything else, really. We can use my locker.”
Danny pulls the cable from his jacket and hands it to Dr. Zahnia. To me, it feels like the ultimate act of surrender. He’s literally handing her the ability to put the lemur back in charge of his body. If I thought I could take over his body and run, I would. I admire his courage, though. He’s doing whatever it takes to give me access to the network.
He takes off his jacket and hands it and his phone to Ridley, then steps through the archway.
Red lights flash, and Ralph steps in front of him with a handheld metal detector.
Danny laughs. “Good luck with that.”
“It’s okay,” Dr. Zahnia says. “He’s with me.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but I don’t work for you.” Ralph glances over his shoulder at the security guard watching the monitors. That man nods, and Ralph starts moving the metal detector up and down Danny’s body. Each time it buzzes, the man at the monitor takes a moment to inspect something, then nods.
I assume that he’s looking at a diagram of the New Human rig, and verifying that each alarm is caused by the rig. I raise my estimation of the New Human security. Whoever Sarah was working for must have been really talented to breach their protocols.
When the wand reaches the small of Danny’s back, the guard at the monitors raises his right hand.
Danny peers over his shoulder at Ralph. “What is it?”
“Doesn’t match the diagram.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes,” Dr. Zahnia says, “he doesn’t have the model in your schematics!”
Ridley says, “Excuse me?”
“Danny has the prototype, and it includes hardware that was eliminated from the Alpha 2. Their schematics,” she gestures toward the monitors, “are different from his. Nobody has the equipment he does. It’s literally one of a kind.”
“The Angel Protocol,” Danny says casually. “You know.”
Dr. Zahnia shoots him a look that is two parts threat and one part surprise. “That is classified.” She looks at Ridley. “You will forget you ever heard that term.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are we done?” Dr. Zahnia says, moving to the door. She pulls its handle, but it doesn’t open.
“Why is he different?” Ralph asks.
Dr. Zahnia glares at him. “You don’t have clearance for that information.”
Ralph shrugs. “Then you’re not getting into your lab.”
“What?” Dr. Zahnia shrieks.
Ralph steps away from Danny and hooks his thumbs into his belt. “The guards stationed at Danny’s door last night were fired for following orders given to them by one of your people.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Okay,” Ralph says, “but I’m still not breaking protocol. What’s in his back?”
“You work for me!”
“No. We don’t. And I’m not going to get fired for making that mistake.”
Dr. Zahnia’s face reddens. Her jaw works as if she’s going to say something, and then she closes her eyes. “Engineering,” she says in a strangely calm voice, “does not always follow a straight path. Sometimes, advancements are made after hardware had been developed. Danny’s rig includes a piece of hardware that was made redundant by subsequent advances.” She opens her eyes. “When the replacement hardware passed testing, it was installed in him. Instead of taking the old out, which would have risked permanent damage to his spine, we disabled it.”
Ralph looks a question at Danny.
Danny shakes his head, helplessly. “Don’t ask me. I’m just the lab rat. I have no idea what they put in me.”
“I guess it’ll have to do,” Ralph says, at last. He pats Danny’s shirt. “Mind if I lift it up?”
“Whatever.”
While Ralph finishes searching Danny, I consider Dr. Zahnia’s explanation of the unknown hardware. Assuming the hardware is for the Angel Protocol, she just solved the mystery of why I was never taught how to use it. There would have been no need to educate me about a system that had been made irrelevant.
Once Danny is cleared, Dr. Zahnia opens the metal door. A puff of cool air emerges, smelling of lemon-scented air-freshener and body odor. The room beyond is long and broad, with a low ceiling that has slowly rotating fans. People sit at computers, working in groups of four. The overhead lights are turned off, but some desks have lamps.
Nobody looks up as Dr. Zahnia leads us straight down the middle of the room to an unmarked door on the far wall. On the other side, we proceed through a hallway with glass walls that reveal smaller offices and rooms filled with racks of computer equipment.
We pass a dimly lit room filled with human-sized manikins standing in rows. Each figure has wires connecting different parts of its body to outlets in the ceiling. The wires look like a giant sagging spiderweb.
Danny stops. “That’s freaky.”
“They’re for testing,” Dr. Zahnia says. “We used them more in the beginning, while the rig was still in development.”
Ridley nudges him and points to a figure with a melted plastic head. “Better to have a malfunction before it’s installed.”
“They still come in handy,” Dr. Zahnia says. “When new hardware is developed, it’s brought down here for us to work with.”
We continue walking until we reach an office door with Dr. Zahnia’s name on it. This one does not have glass walls. She unlocks it with her ID and gestures for us to go inside.
I recognize the room immediately. It’s the one I was looking into when I gained sentience. Dr. Zahnia’s couch is on the left, with the rainbow butterfly blanket spread out over its back. There’s a worktable and chairs along the room’s left wall and its far end is filled with a wide desk that holds a semicircle of monitors. The desk chair is on wheels and has a low back. Cameras are pointed at it from different angles. I never realized there were multiple cameras. Did each one have a different AI looking through it? Are they watching now?
Dr. Zahnia sits in her chair and rolls to the keyboard I’ve watched her use thousands of times before. Its keys are so worn that the letters are barely visible. “Grab a seat and plug in.”
Ridley hovers in the doorway. “Dr. Z?”
“Get back to work. I’ve got this.”
Ridley taps Danny on the shoulder and gives him a wink as they leave. “You’ll be fine.”
Danny doesn’t respond.
“Come on,” Dr. Zahnia says. She gestures to a chair and a computer port, and spins back to face her keyboard.
I suddenly realize I’m not prepared. Dr. Zahnia’s not going to let Danny log onto one of her computers. I need to build a communication channel through his port.
With Dr. Zahnia looking away from us, I take over Danny’s head just long enough to whisper “stall.”
He nods.
I access the service dedicated to handling the port. Coding as fast as I can, I start writing a script that will dedicate fifty percent of the port’s bandwidth to a private channel. Hopefully, Dr. Zahnia won’t notice the slowdown.
Danny stages a coughing fit, then stumbles.
“Take your time,” Dr. Zahnia says sarcastically. “It’s not like I have any other work to do.”
I haven’t spent much time with this particular service, and have no way of researching it, but I do the best I can. In theory, the architecture is simple.
Danny sits and looks around at the computers, doing an impressive job at appearing bewildered.
I think I have the private channel in place. Once the connection is established, Dr. Zahnia will have her channel and I’ll have mine. Each will take up fifty percent of the total bandwidth. If all goes well, she’ll never see what I’m doing.
“How do you even tie your shoes in the morning?” Dr. Zahnia asks, snatching the cable from him. She plugs one end into a port under her desk, and holds the other end out to him.
“Gotta admit,” he says. “Some days, it’s a challenge.” He looks down at his shoes, neither of which have laces.
I’ve done all I can. I hope I will have enough time to correct the installation scripts. It shouldn’t take long to delete the killswitch. For once, I’m not worried about my own safety. Whatever Dr. Zahnia does, it will be focused on the Pilot’s Chair, and I’m not there.
Danny plugs the cable into his chest, and Dr. Zahnia spins back to her keyboard. As she types, I send a ping through my secret connection.
Success!
I login using the fLeiter account I created when I first explored the network.
“Hmm.” Dr. Zahnia rolls over to Danny and inspects the connection. Then she examines the connection to her own hardware. She lifts the cable and peers at it. “Have you been doing anything stupid with the cable?”
“Aside from using it as a jump rope? Nah.”
“You’re such an ass.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The connection’s at about half speed. This is going to take forever.”
Danny puts his feet up on a desk, shoving a keyboard out of the way with his heel. “How long can downloading the AI take?”
“I don’t care about that, Danny. This is a total re-install. We’re starting over.”
He sits up. “What?”
“Don’t unplug that cable. If this gets interrupted, it could fry several of your key components. You could literally melt your brain.”
I call up the list of processes she initiated. She’s not lying. She’s re-running the entire installation script. It will overwrite all the software in the rig, including me. I could stop it, but I have no idea how much damage that would do to Danny.
Too late, I realize the mistake that I’ve made. Dr. Zahnia isn’t interested in finding out why Danny sees two avatars. She just wants the rig to work, and a complete re-install is the cleanest way to ensure that.
“But what about me?” Danny asks. “Last time, I was asleep. My head was wrapped and—”
“That’s because we weren’t sure what would happen when the software went online. Didn’t want you awake if we needed to do emergency surgery.” She shows him a sugary smile. “Now, we know you’ll be fine.”
