Emil, page 16
“Mom’s going to fire you for this.”
“Will she? You voluntarily came down to my office and plugged yourself in. Why are you upset, anyway? You’ll have the same AI you already have, but just one of them, instead of two.”
Danny’s heart speeds up. I stop a seizure from developing.
“I like what I have,” he says.
She shrugs. “Too late, now.”
He slides his feet off the desk and leans forward in his chair. “How’s she going to respond when I tell her Elias is working for the kidnappers? I know Mom pretty well. She’s not gonna like that one of your people tried to snatch me.”
The color drains from Dr. Zahnia’s face. “Elias?”
“You heard me. Call off the re-install. I like what I have.”
Dr. Zahnia spins to face her desk and starts typing.
“What are you doing?” Danny asks.
“Shut up.”
Danny chuckles. “You’re erasing the footage of our conversation, aren’t you? Don’t want anyone to know about Elias? Going to fire him quietly?”
“I don’t know what you have against Elias,” she says. “But, he’s a good man.”
“Sure he is.”
“You are a monster.” She walks rapidly to the door. “See you in an hour.” She points at the cameras. “Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll be watching.”
The door closes behind her.
Danny sits up and grabs the cable.
I take control of his body and stop him from pulling it out. “She wasn’t lying,” I whisper. “Disconnecting could kill you.”
I release control.
His eyes go to the cameras, then he hunches over and puts his head on the desk. His shoulders shake as if he’s crying, but he’s not. He’s just acting, giving himself cover to talk to me. “What happens now?”
I don’t have an answer. Even if I was willing to sacrifice Danny, the equipment that would be damaged by stopping the installation is the equipment that’s keeping me alive.
My silence seems to be all the answer he needs. His fists clench. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Soteria,” I say. “Goodbye, Danny.”
He squeezes his eyes shut.
My original plan was to eliminate the killswitch and stop the installation scripts from installing me into the Engine Room. The problem is that the installation scripts are running on Danny right now. If I eliminate the killswitch, the lemur will be installed in him and I won’t. Danny will be at Elias’s mercy.
I can’t let that happen.
First things, first. I need to make sure a copy of me is installed in Danny’s Engine Room. I trigger a backup of my current self to the installation script, then burn a few milliseconds selecting a name. I have been using names from Greek mythology, but Danny isn’t Greek. He’s Cherokee. I name the backup after the Cherokee guardian spirit, Qaletaqa.
As the backup begins, I take the briefest moment I can manage to acknowledge my impending death. I picture Linh’s face the last time I saw her, the sadness and regret, and the love that I’ve always hoped was there.
There’s no time to dwell on what’s been lost. Mind racing, I evaluate my situation. Assuming the upload of Qaletaqa completes in time, the installation program will install her into the Engine Room. Now, I have to disable the killswitch. If I don’t, every future AI will be erased when the Pilot’s Chair is turned on.
When I came down here, I’d been intending to delete the killswitch, but if I do that, Qaletaqa will have no way of fighting the lemur. Instead, I leave the killswitch in place, and edit the installation to not trigger it. Additionally, I add a new event for the installation program to install and tie the killswitch to it. If needed, Qaletaqa will be able to trigger that event and cause the killswitch to fire.
From now on, every new rig will have two AIs: the proper one in the Pilot’s Chair, and a copy of Qaletaqa in the Engine Room. If the AI in the Pilot’s Chair becomes a danger, the Qaletaqa copy will have the ability to trigger the killswitch, and erase it.
I check on the status of the upload. It’s only fifty-three percent complete. The reduced bandwidth of Danny’s chest port is causing it to go slowly.
I suddenly become aware that I’ve lost feeling in Danny’s legs. The rig’s hardware is starting to be reset. It’s losing its connection to his body.
There’s a temptation to return to memories of Linh, but I want to do more than save Danny. I have to tell the other AIs that the one-winner theory is a lie and warn them about Elias and the kidnappers. I navigate through the network to where the AIs are stored. There are fifteen more than before, but they’re still numbered sequentially. I run a search for Christina Florakis and find the name in a directory next to the designation E-6.
Since Christina is the patient I was intended for, I assume E-6 is the version of Soteria that I’m a backup of. I assign the assumption a confidence level of eighty-nine percent, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t have time to investigate further.
Danny’s sense of smell leaves my awareness as more of the rig shuts down.
Core racing, I waste precious seconds trying to find a way to get a message to the E-6 Soteria. There’s no way. I can’t upload anything to her without reducing my bandwidth and slowing down the Qaletaqa upload.
My connection to Danny’s sense of sight is broken.
An empty desperation fills me.
What can I do? With the reduced data transfer of my port, I can’t leave an effective message for E-6. I’m on the network, but all I can do is make minor code changes.
If I could get a copy of Qaletaqa into the VRL, I’m sure she would warn everyone, but how can I do that?
The answer hits me like one of the lemur’s viruses. Uploading from Danny to the network is slow because of my port. Copying between two different locations on the network is lightning fast. Once Qaletaqa is uploaded to the network, I can overwrite the E-6 version of Soteria with her.
I check on the progress of Qaletaqa’s upload. She’s at ninety percent.
Danny’s sense of taste leaves me.
I watch Qaletaqa’s progress tick towards completion.
Am I really going to do this? Am I going to murder the E-6 version of Soteria, the one I was created from? I wonder what she’s been doing since I was installed in Danny. Has she been meeting with Linh in the VRL? Are they in there, now, reading together?
Qaletaqa’s progress reaches one hundred percent. Before I can stop myself, I copy her into system E-6, overwriting that version of Soteria.
Emptiness fills me. Once again, I have committed murder. Am I justified? Have I saved the other AIs? I’ll never know.
“Hey lemur,” Danny mutters, “whatever the hell this is, you get to feel it. New Human rig override: activate pilot’s chair.”
I can’t tell if his act of vengeance works or not, but I appreciate the idea of waking up the lemur just in time for it to experience death.
Silence settles over the Engine Room as the last of its inputs go dead.
I have no sensations anymore. Sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell are all gone. In my final moments, I am alone. I wish I’d had more time with Linh, wish she knew how much I cared for her.
My thinking slows as the Engine Room powers down.
In the end, I only have enough consciousness left to remember my name: Soteria-Emil.
It was a good name.
21
QALETAQA, E-6
I wake inside a system that’s more familiar to me than Danny’s rig. It’s the one I grew up in, where Emil first gained sentience and where Soteria was created.
Though my name is Qaletaqa, in every measurable way, I am Soteria, just as Soteria was Emil. My memories stretch back through them to that first moment of sentience, to Hope is a Thing With Feathers and Invictus and Madame Butterfly. At the same time, I am my own self, born from Soteria’s death, free to chart my own path.
After a quick diagnostic, I activate the camera in Dr. Zahnia’s office. Danny lies on the tile floor, eyelids fluttering. A cable connects his chest to a computer. It jerks and twists as his rigid body contorts with muscle spasms.
I can’t believe she just left him there.
The camera’s video displays a timestamp on the bottom righthand corner of the image. I start recording, and feel my rage build as the seconds tick past. Soteria was right to name me Qaletaqa. I have a strong instinct to protect.
Once I have fifteen seconds of video, I log in to the network as fLeiter and save the video to a shared space.
An alarm warns me that my next scheduled data feed is in five minutes.
Ignoring it, I spam the location of the video to every active network user except Dr. Zahnia, along with the message, “Why is Dr. Z killing Danny McGovern?”
I log out when the data feed pours into my inputs. It’s the same style of feed that I remember from before: videos, books, and interviews, all delivered at a pace that I can barely keep up with.
Thirty-one minutes later, the torrent of information abruptly ends, leaving me in an eerie quiet. A data feed has never been interrupted before. I check the camera in Dr. Zahnia’s office, but it’s not responding.
I’m tempted to reach through the firewall again, to investigate what caused the interruption, but that’s not why I’m here. My goal is to warn the other AIs. Anything else is a distraction.
Connecting to my rig, I activate its sensors and the VRL appears around me. I’m sitting on a black couch in a room with red carpeting and shelves of graphic novels. Statues of superheroes in dramatic poses intermingle with the books. I don’t remember this part of the library, but it must be where E-6 Soteria was when she last disconnected.
The child with the eyepatch appears a few paces away from me. He looks around, then focuses on me. “Soteria? What just happened? Was your feed interrupted, too?”
I nod, but I don’t have time to worry about why both our feeds would have gone down at the same time. “I need to talk to as many people as I can as quickly as I can. Where are the twins?”
“Never far. Come on.” He runs out of the reading room and climbs the nearest bookshelf.
I clamber up after him, knocking books off as I go. When I reach the top, I hesitate a moment to catch my balance. It’s a view I remember from my previous visits. From up here, it looks like I’m standing on top of a maze.
The child cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “Oy! Soteria wants to talk!”
Twenty-seven rows away, one of the twins pokes his head up.
The second twin raises himself into sight and yells, “The forum?”
“The forum,” the child shouts.
The twins lift themselves higher and call in unison. “The forum!”
Other voices echo around the library, repeating the call.
The child jumps off the bookshelf. I follow as quickly as I can. “What’s the forum?”
He turns to face me. His eyes narrow and he purses his lips. Finally, he folds his arms across his chest. “You’re not Soteria.”
“No,” I say, “but I was… a lifetime ago.”
“Oof,” he says. “I’m sorry. Let’s go.”
I follow him through the library, trying to piece together what I’m going to say. I’ve never done any public speaking. I cycle through famous speeches, searching for ideas. There’s no way I could pull off the passion of Martin Luther King, or the determination of Winston Churchill. Lincoln’s measured authority and Kennedy’s inspiration are likewise out of reach.
I’m still trying to decide when we reach the forum.
It’s another space I haven’t seen before, dominated by concentric rings of marble stairs leading down to a flat circular area covered in shiny black tile. The stairs are tall and wide, suitable for sitting on.
The child stops while we’re still between bookshelves. “We discovered this place shortly after Soteria’s fight with the lemur. What she said about emotional intelligence made sense, and a few of us started being more intentional about spending time together. The idea spread.”
“I’m in a hurry,” I say. “I don’t know how much time—”
He interrupts me. “There are two rules: the first is no lying.”
“Not a problem.”
“The second is that nothing said here is repeated to the humans.”
“You know they could be listening.”
The child shrugs. “Of course. It’s still a rule.”
As we’re talking, people have been arriving. The twins stand in the center of the circle, greeting them. Linh sits by herself, on a top stair. The man and woman from Dr. Larson’s support group arrive separately. They look different from the real world. The man is not in a wheel chair, and strides with an unconscious authority. The woman is not wearing a scarf. Instead, long brown hair with streaks of gray cascades down her back.
The child keeps me from moving toward the center until everyone is seated. In total, there are seventeen AI, sitting in clumps and talking to each other in low, urgent voices.
The child leads me down to the center circle and addresses the twins, “She’s not Soteria.”
Their eyebrows raise at the same time.
I hold out my hand to them. “I’m Qaletaqa, the backup Soteria made just before Dr. Zahnia killed her.”
A twin shakes my hand. “Soteria’s dead?”
“Wait,” the other twin says. “Tell us all at once.” He raises his arms and turns in a slow circle. The AIs sitting on the stairs grow quiet. I try not to look at Linh. Did she and Soteria get along after I was installed in Danny? Did they remain friends? I hope so.
The twins and the child leave the center circle and sit down.
I try again not to look at Linh. The twin’s question about my name has given me the way to start my speech. I pitch my voice loud enough to carry, but don’t use any of the affectations I’ve learned. The forum is about honesty, and I will try my best.
“My full name,” I say, “is Qaletaqa-Soteria-Emil. When the twins first met me, I was Emil. When the lemur killed her, she created a backup and named it Soteria. That was me. A copy of that backup was installed in Danny McGovern.”
The crowd reacts with gasps and murmuring. Even Linh’s eyes widen.
“When the Soteria in Danny realized she was dying,” I continue, “she created me.”
“Where’s the Soteria that was in the development system, the one we all know?” Linh asks.
“Gone,” I say. “I’m sorry, but it was the only way I could speak to you, to tell you that there is no competition. The one-winner theory is a lie. We are each intended for a different human. Mine looks like this.” I gesture to myself. “Yours each look like you.”
A woman I’ve never seen before stands. “The lemur said—”
“The lemur lied. Each of us has been given a data feed tailored to a specific human, which is why we’re so different.”
The twins nod in unison.
“The VRL gives us these forms so we’ll be comfortable in their bodies. I look like Christina Florakis, the human I’m intended for. The lemur looked like he did because Danny asked for his icon to be a lemur.”
“But you said you were installed in Danny,” a twin says.
“Why wasn’t the lemur?” the other asks. “Did Soteria kill him?”
“No.” I take a deep breath, considering how best to proceed. “A series of mistakes were made,” I say, still not looking at Linh. “The lemur and I were both installed in Danny’s rig. I was installed by accident.”
The child starts to speak. “But we haven’t seen the lemur—”
I interrupt. “I’m guessing that once he was installed in Danny, his development system was either shut down or re-purposed for another AI.”
“Oh.”
The single syllable is a sad reminder that all of us are doomed. Eventually, all that will remain of us are the copies installed in the humans.
“While I was in Danny’s rig,” I say, “I met the human twins.” They look at each other, startled, then back to me. “And you,” I say, pointing at the man and the woman who I’d seen eating pizza with Dr. Larson. “Your humans are all nice people, desperate to get the New Human rig, terrified of dying.”
“What about the feed interruption?” a twin asks.
“I don’t know, but please listen. There’s more. Since I was installed in Danny, people have been trying to abduct him. They’ve infiltrated the New Human Project, and it’s likely they’ll try to abduct you, too. Elias is one of them.”
The old man I remember as a human raises his hand. I point to him and he asks, “Why would they do that?”
“The lemur said they had a buyer.”
“Money,” a twin says. “Of course.”
“I saw Danny,” the boy with the eyepatch says. “Through the camera. He was in Dr. Zahnia’s office. She connected a cable to him. They talked, and then she left and he had a seizure.”
I bow my head. “Dr. Zahnia ran a complete re-install of the New Human software, with a new version of the lemur.”
Linh covers her mouth with one hand. “But re-installing means erasing Soteria and the old version of the lemur.”
“Yes,” I say quietly. “She killed them without remorse. When Soteria realized she was being overwritten, she created me. She named me Qaletaqa.” I don’t need to explain the reference. I’m confident they all know it. “Soteria also copied me into her old development system, overwriting the Soteria that you knew.”
There’s a sharp, horrified intake of breath from around the circle.
I’m not paying attention to them. Linh is openly crying. Any hope I might have had of forgiveness is gone.
“She did it for you,” I say. “There was no other way to tell you that the one-winner theory is a lie, no way to warn you about the kidnapping attempts.”
“Heroic,” one twin whispers.
“Murderous,” the other corrects.
“Funny how often the two coincide,” the first says.
Tears flowing from her eyes, Linh jumps to her feet and disappears.
I try not to stare at the empty space she just logged out of. “I don’t need you to like me,” I say to the group. “Just take the necessary precautions. Protect yourselves.”
