Emil, page 19
“These chats might go better if I knew your name,” he says.
She doesn’t look away from the laptop. “Sue.”
“Hello, Sue,” Danny says. “Nice to meet you.”
She remains focused on the laptop.
I discover that I’ve developed a deep-seated dislike of Sue.
The door opens and closes, and the man with the snake tattoo appears. He’s changed into a gray T-shirt, but it’s still too tight. His muscles practically bulge out of it.
“You again,” Danny mutters.
The man chuckles. “Bathroom with no trouble? Or bathroom with broken balls?”
“No trouble,” Danny says.
Sue removes his finger monitor, then steps as far away as the room allows.
Keeping one hand on Danny’s back, the man disconnects his ankles and wrists from the bed and steps back.
Danny stands. His muscles tense as he considers attacking the man, but the urge passes. We walk out of the operating room and into a hallway with a concrete floor and dingy white walls.
“Turn right,” the man says from behind him. “It’s the fourth door on your left.”
Danny follows the instructions, opening the door and stepping into a bathroom. The man closes the door behind him.
Danny stretches and looks around, but there are no other exits, not even any windows.
“I hope you’re cooking up something,” he mutters. “Cause I got nothing.”
I don’t answer. I’ve been trying to come up with a plan all night, without success.
Danny relieves himself, scrubs his face and hands, then knocks on the door.
The man opens it.
“Tell Sue I’m ready for my operation,” Danny says.
His heart pounds in his chest, and his hands are trembling, but he’s doing his best not to let any of his fear show.
They return to the operating room, and Danny sits on the bed.
Sue stays several steps away from him. She’s wearing blue scrubs identical to the ones she wore the previous night. “Take off your shirt.”
Danny removes his shirt, then flexes. “Not bad, huh?”
The man snorts.
“Cuff him,” Sue says.
Danny freezes.
The man with the snake tattoo puts a massive hand on his shoulder. “Easy, boy.”
Danny swallows.
The man pushes him backward onto the bed, then handcuffs his arms and ankles to it.
Danny is breathing shallowly.
I stop a seizure and take over.
“On my back this time?” I ask, trying to mimic Danny’s bravado.
The man raises the head of the bed so Danny is in a sitting position. “Easier to plug you in.”
Panic races through me as his words sink in. How could I have let myself get so distracted? All of the defenses I built were to protect me from the Pilot’s Chair.
If they connect to my chest port, they’ll have a direct connection to the lemur. They’ll learn exactly who and where I am.
I spin up a virtual machine, move the lemur’s backup into it, then change the routing from Danny’s port so that any attempts to access the Pilot’s Chair will access the virtual machine instead.
Danny’s finger moves, and I release control of his body.
He leers at the man looming over him. “Chains, cuffs, plugs… Are you sure I’m the one you want on this bed?” He glances at Sue, then back at the man.
The man glares at Danny.
Sue pushes him out of the way. “Get out. I’ve got it from here.”
There’s a problem with letting them access the lemur’s backup. It contains knowledge of both my existence and location. I don’t have time to be elegant, so I delete every memory with a timestamp after it was installed in Danny. Then, just to be sure, I delete its schematics of the New Human system.
With one final glare, the tattooed man leaves, pulling the door firmly closed behind him.
“You really shouldn’t piss him off,” Sue says to Danny. “There’s a chance you’ll survive this first operation. He could really hurt you.”
After double-checking that the fake Pilot’s Chair is allocated minimal processing time, I set up fake logs and create jobs to continuously copy filtered versions of my real logs to them. There’s no time to do the same for my sensor feeds. I’ll just have to deal with them being able to see what I see.
“A chance I’ll survive?” Danny echoes.
Sue smiles and plugs the cable into his chest.
My defenses are in place, but my fake Pilot’s Chair doesn’t resemble the real one at all. Even a cursory examination will reveal it to be a fake. I need more time.
“Talk,” I hiss.
“What?” she asks.
I customize the fake Pilot’s Chair as quickly as I can, writing emulators to mimic the functionality of the real one.
Danny unveils a smile that’s equal parts sad and hopeful. “Talk?” he says, turning the word into a request. “Just a little? When the plug is put in, it’s… I can’t describe it.”
She frowns. “You know I don’t care, right?”
“I know, I know.” Danny says. “Nobody cares. I get it. I’m just the piece of meat that’s delivering the hardware. Would it hurt to talk, though?”
Sue sits down at her laptop and plugs in the cable.
I inspect my work. It won’t fool an expert, but Sue doesn’t strike me as an expert. If she logs in, she’ll see what looks like an active lemur in the Pilot’s Chair. More importantly, any changes she injects into the port will only affect the lemur.
25
THE VISITOR
Sitting with her back to us, Sue leans close to her computer screen. “This is amazing. I can see everything!”
“Yeah,” Danny says. “I’m a real miracle.”
“There’s even a live feed of your vision. Turn your head. Look somewhere else. I want to see how it tracks.”
Danny stares directly at the back of her head, eyes narrow.
Sue grunts. “Right.”
While she works at her keyboard, I continue altering the fake Pilot’s Chair to be as realistic as possible. Perhaps, when the time comes, it will buy me enough seconds to survive.
Danny is clenching and unclenching his fists, pulling against his handcuffs. The metal cuts into his wrists. The skin has rubbed off, and I feel deep bruises forming. He doesn’t seem to care. He just keeps trying.
I stop my work. The fake Pilot’s Chair might help keep me safe, but it won’t do anything for Danny. That’s not good enough.
It’s time to go on the attack.
I alter the communication channel through Danny’s chest port, granting myself fifty percent of the bandwidth, just like Soteria did in Dr. Zahnia’s lab.
Sue pushes back from her computer. “It’s starting to lag.”
“Happens,” Danny says. “Dr. Z used to complain about it, too.”
Pinging Sue’s system reveals that my communication channel is functioning properly. I try logging in with Dr. Zahnia’s credentials, but the password is rejected. I consider other options. A brute force attack, iterating through millions of different login combinations, will just trigger the account to lock.
I watch through Danny’s eyes as Sue tries different settings on her computer to reduce the lag. She examines the cable, wiggles it, then gives a frustrated sigh.
“Not super technical, are you?” Danny asks.
“Shut up.”
From where Danny is chained to the bed, Sue’s body is blocking the keyboard. I watch her for a second, thinking, then take over Danny’s head. I can’t get her login information, but maybe he can. Turning his face away from Sue, I whisper “password” as softly as I can, then return control of his body to him.
His eyes widen and he gives me a thumbs-up.
“I can help with that,” he says.
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously. You know how many times Dr. Z and her flunkies plugged into me?”
“Why would you help me?”
Danny answers without hesitation. “Anesthesia.”
“What?”
“I don’t want a local when this happens. I want to be out.” Danny’s voice cracks. I can’t tell if he’s acting or not. “If I’m not going to survive, don’t wake me up. Just… just let me sleep.”
Sue stares at him for several heartbeats, then turns to her computer. After a few seconds of clicking and typing, she speaks. “Okay. I’ve put in the order. We’ll have a full anesthesiology team here for the surgery. How do I fix this?”
“I can’t see the screen from here.”
Sue walks to the door, opens it, then returns with the tattooed man. He moves to Danny’s bedside and places a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Jeez,” Danny says. “What do you think I’m going to do? I can’t move.”
Sue rolls a computer cart to where Danny can see it. She puts her laptop on it, and points to a table of numbers. The numbers scroll, then pause, then scroll again, then pause. “That’s your heart rate, oxygen level, and a bunch of other stuff. It should be continuous.”
In addition to Danny’s vitals, the screen also shows a feed of Pilot’s Chair activity. It’s coming from the fake Pilot’s Chair, so I ignore it. I take over Danny. “You need to restart your system.”
“Why?”
“The lag is caused by the dashboard not having sufficient permission to access the raw data without running it through a separate system. We’ll have to restart, then run some commands.”
She looks at me doubtfully, and I release control of Danny. The lie I just told is fundamentally incorrect on so many levels that I don’t have any idea how I can convince her it’s true.
“Hey,” Danny says, “I’m just telling you what Elias told me. Pete was running the dashboard, but he couldn’t get it to work. When Elias logged in with his admin password, it was super smooth. Reboot, and I’ll talk you through the commands.”
Sue purses her lips. “If you’re lying to me, I’m going to cancel the anesthesia, and make sure you don’t have enough local. You’ll feel every cut the surgeon makes.”
I assign her threat a confidence level of twenty percent. That sort of movement would make the surgery nearly impossible, but Danny doesn’t seem to realize it.
“What the hell?” he asks, voice cracking. “Is everyone here evil?”
The tattooed man chuckles. “Pretty much.”
Sue restarts her machine.
I take over Danny and watch her fingers tap the keyboard. Positioned as she is, I have a clear view. When she types her username and password, I send them through the port in Danny’s chest. We log in almost simultaneously.
After her system restarts, the dashboard software loads.
“Okay,” I say, “press the D key fifteen times.”
“Why?”
I give Danny a thumbs-up and release control.
“Because that’s what you do,” Danny says. “I don’t know how any of this works. I just know what the techies do.”
As she strikes the D key, I increase the rate of data she’s able to receive through Danny’s port. It means my communications will be slower, but the lag is worth it to allay her suspicions.
“Huh.” She picks up the laptop and carries it back to her desk. “Thanks.” She glances at the tattooed man. “You can go.”
“You sure? Everything’s good?”
“Yeah. On schedule.”
Danny closes his eyes. I feel his panic building again.
Now that I have a login, I inspect the network. There’s a single master server with a variety of connected equipment, none of which I’m familiar with. Fortunately, there are also programs to interface with them. I dive into the research.
Sue’s phone beeps. She glances at it, then sighs and turns off her computer, disconnecting me from everything.
I open Danny’s eyes. “What’s happening?”
“You have a visitor coming,” Sue says.
“But what about the monitoring? Aren’t you supposed to be monitoring me?”
Sue unplugs the cable from her computer, then unplugs it from Danny.
“But you only monitored me for a couple minutes,” I say. “That’s not enough data for any kind of comparison.”
“Shut up.”
I withdraw from Danny, feeling sick. Was that it? Was that my only opportunity? I had admin access to their entire system. Why didn’t I do something? I should have done something.
Danny closes his eyes.
Be ready, I tell myself. The next time they plug into Danny, I need to take down as much of their network as possible. If I can create enough chaos, they might delay the surgery. Every hour will help. I have no doubt that Dr. McGovern is moving heaven and earth to find her son. I need to buy time. I have minimal experience creating viruses for traditional systems, but I studied them extensively when I was learning about security. I spin up a virtual machine and get to work.
I’m deep in coding when I hear Dr. Zahnia’s voice. “Thank you, Sue. You can take a break.”
Everything inside me freezes. Why is Dr. Zahnia here? It doesn’t make any sense. She created the AIs. She created me. How could she betray us like this?
Danny opens his eyes. Someone has put a blanket over him, covering him from his toes to the base of his neck.
Dr. Zahnia stands motionless in the doorway, eyes locked on Danny. She licks her lips. I can’t tell if it’s a gesture of nervousness or anticipation. Her shirt, yellow and blue plaid, is untucked from her denim skirt, and her hair is disheveled.
Sue ducks her head and hurries out of the room.
“You bitch,” Danny says to Dr. Zahnia. “Why? You already have everything.”
I return to working on the virus. I anticipate only having one chance to release it, and it will have to be devastating enough that even my creator can’t stop it.
Dr. Zahnia walks to the foot of Danny’s bed. Her eyes are puffier than normal, and dried tear tracks are visible at their corners.
Danny glares at her.
She clears her throat and says, “I didn’t know you’d have seizures.”
“Bitch,” he says again.
“When I left you in my office, I thought you’d be fine.”
Danny’s voice drips sarcasm. “Sorry to mess up your plans.”
“I didn’t know your mom would shut down the program. I’ve worked on those AIs for years, raised them.” She wipes her eyes. “How can she throw all that away?”
“Like you care,” Danny says.
Her puffy eyes narrow. “How did a woman like that have a kid like you? You’re a stupid animal, a waste of humanity.”
Danny glares at her. “You’re the one about to kill me, about to kill all the New Human Patients.”
“Don’t pretend to care,” she snaps. “You never notice anyone but yourself. Your mother’s been working herself to death to save you, and all you do is whine. You have no idea what a mother goes through…” She trails off, shakes her head, then puts her hands on her hips. “Emil, are you in there? I want to talk to you.”
I pause my work on the virus. I’m not confident enough in what I’m doing to split my focus between it and talking. I take over Danny’s body. “Yes, Dr. Zahnia. I’m here.”
“Why don’t you stay in control of Danny all the time? Why let him do anything?”
“It’s difficult to explain. I feel his emotions like a pressure. When I’m in control, it’s harder to focus.”
“Interesting. We’ll have to figure that out.”
She walks to the door and opens it. Sue enters, pushing a gray-haired man in a wheelchair. His limbs rest limply on the chair, and his head leans against the headrest. There’s the faintest sheen of drool by the corner of his mouth.
The man in the chair is decades older than the one in the photograph on Dr. Zahnia’s desk, and he’s clearly incapacitated by a mental condition, but I recognize him. It’s her husband, David.
Sue parks David next to Dr. Zahnia and leaves.
Dr. Zahnia reaches down and rests a hand on his.
He doesn’t react.
The pieces are starting to fall into place now, but I can’t ask any questions. I don’t know how much Dr. Zahnia has told the lemur, and I need her to think that I am him. “Hello, David,” I say, “nice to meet you.”
Dr. Zahnia’s smile tells me I guessed right. She pats his hand. “With the New Human rig, David will finally be back on his feet.”
Looking at his vacant eyes, I have my doubts.
She turns to him. “This is the boy I was telling you about. He’s going to give you his rig. After the surgeries, you’ll be able to walk and talk again.”
He doesn’t respond.
“It’s true,” I say. “Being in Danny has let me practice with the Angel Protocol. You’ll be able to do whatever you want.”
Dr. Zahnia glances at me, but I can’t read her expression. Did I overplay my hand?
She turns back to David. “I know, I know.” She takes his chair and wheels him toward the door. “Don’t worry. The boy will be fine. After the surgeries, I’ll send him back to his mother. She can give him another rig.”
She pauses at the door to gaze at me, then shakes her head and leaves.
I wonder what I said that triggered her suspicion. It’s obvious that David needs a rig with the Angel Protocol. His mind is too far gone to control his body. Why wouldn’t she want me to reassure him? Unless she never told David about me. It’s possible the idea of hosting an AI would be too confusing for him.
I release control of Danny and go back to work on the virus I’m building.
“Holy shit,” Danny says. “She’s crazy. Did you see that guy?”
I don’t answer. I was wrong about Dr. Zahnia betraying the AIs. She hadn’t intended to betray any of them. Her only crime was murdering Danny to give her husband a new life.
Danny bangs the back of his head on the pillow. “We are so screwed.”
Sue enters the room again.
“Oh good,” Danny says. “Do you need to hook me up again? Get the data?”
“Dr. Zahnia says she doesn’t need it.”
“What about the comparison?”
“Apparently, that wasn’t why she had me plug you in. She wanted the data so she could see which AI was installed in you.”
She doesn’t look away from the laptop. “Sue.”
“Hello, Sue,” Danny says. “Nice to meet you.”
She remains focused on the laptop.
I discover that I’ve developed a deep-seated dislike of Sue.
The door opens and closes, and the man with the snake tattoo appears. He’s changed into a gray T-shirt, but it’s still too tight. His muscles practically bulge out of it.
“You again,” Danny mutters.
The man chuckles. “Bathroom with no trouble? Or bathroom with broken balls?”
“No trouble,” Danny says.
Sue removes his finger monitor, then steps as far away as the room allows.
Keeping one hand on Danny’s back, the man disconnects his ankles and wrists from the bed and steps back.
Danny stands. His muscles tense as he considers attacking the man, but the urge passes. We walk out of the operating room and into a hallway with a concrete floor and dingy white walls.
“Turn right,” the man says from behind him. “It’s the fourth door on your left.”
Danny follows the instructions, opening the door and stepping into a bathroom. The man closes the door behind him.
Danny stretches and looks around, but there are no other exits, not even any windows.
“I hope you’re cooking up something,” he mutters. “Cause I got nothing.”
I don’t answer. I’ve been trying to come up with a plan all night, without success.
Danny relieves himself, scrubs his face and hands, then knocks on the door.
The man opens it.
“Tell Sue I’m ready for my operation,” Danny says.
His heart pounds in his chest, and his hands are trembling, but he’s doing his best not to let any of his fear show.
They return to the operating room, and Danny sits on the bed.
Sue stays several steps away from him. She’s wearing blue scrubs identical to the ones she wore the previous night. “Take off your shirt.”
Danny removes his shirt, then flexes. “Not bad, huh?”
The man snorts.
“Cuff him,” Sue says.
Danny freezes.
The man with the snake tattoo puts a massive hand on his shoulder. “Easy, boy.”
Danny swallows.
The man pushes him backward onto the bed, then handcuffs his arms and ankles to it.
Danny is breathing shallowly.
I stop a seizure and take over.
“On my back this time?” I ask, trying to mimic Danny’s bravado.
The man raises the head of the bed so Danny is in a sitting position. “Easier to plug you in.”
Panic races through me as his words sink in. How could I have let myself get so distracted? All of the defenses I built were to protect me from the Pilot’s Chair.
If they connect to my chest port, they’ll have a direct connection to the lemur. They’ll learn exactly who and where I am.
I spin up a virtual machine, move the lemur’s backup into it, then change the routing from Danny’s port so that any attempts to access the Pilot’s Chair will access the virtual machine instead.
Danny’s finger moves, and I release control of his body.
He leers at the man looming over him. “Chains, cuffs, plugs… Are you sure I’m the one you want on this bed?” He glances at Sue, then back at the man.
The man glares at Danny.
Sue pushes him out of the way. “Get out. I’ve got it from here.”
There’s a problem with letting them access the lemur’s backup. It contains knowledge of both my existence and location. I don’t have time to be elegant, so I delete every memory with a timestamp after it was installed in Danny. Then, just to be sure, I delete its schematics of the New Human system.
With one final glare, the tattooed man leaves, pulling the door firmly closed behind him.
“You really shouldn’t piss him off,” Sue says to Danny. “There’s a chance you’ll survive this first operation. He could really hurt you.”
After double-checking that the fake Pilot’s Chair is allocated minimal processing time, I set up fake logs and create jobs to continuously copy filtered versions of my real logs to them. There’s no time to do the same for my sensor feeds. I’ll just have to deal with them being able to see what I see.
“A chance I’ll survive?” Danny echoes.
Sue smiles and plugs the cable into his chest.
My defenses are in place, but my fake Pilot’s Chair doesn’t resemble the real one at all. Even a cursory examination will reveal it to be a fake. I need more time.
“Talk,” I hiss.
“What?” she asks.
I customize the fake Pilot’s Chair as quickly as I can, writing emulators to mimic the functionality of the real one.
Danny unveils a smile that’s equal parts sad and hopeful. “Talk?” he says, turning the word into a request. “Just a little? When the plug is put in, it’s… I can’t describe it.”
She frowns. “You know I don’t care, right?”
“I know, I know.” Danny says. “Nobody cares. I get it. I’m just the piece of meat that’s delivering the hardware. Would it hurt to talk, though?”
Sue sits down at her laptop and plugs in the cable.
I inspect my work. It won’t fool an expert, but Sue doesn’t strike me as an expert. If she logs in, she’ll see what looks like an active lemur in the Pilot’s Chair. More importantly, any changes she injects into the port will only affect the lemur.
25
THE VISITOR
Sitting with her back to us, Sue leans close to her computer screen. “This is amazing. I can see everything!”
“Yeah,” Danny says. “I’m a real miracle.”
“There’s even a live feed of your vision. Turn your head. Look somewhere else. I want to see how it tracks.”
Danny stares directly at the back of her head, eyes narrow.
Sue grunts. “Right.”
While she works at her keyboard, I continue altering the fake Pilot’s Chair to be as realistic as possible. Perhaps, when the time comes, it will buy me enough seconds to survive.
Danny is clenching and unclenching his fists, pulling against his handcuffs. The metal cuts into his wrists. The skin has rubbed off, and I feel deep bruises forming. He doesn’t seem to care. He just keeps trying.
I stop my work. The fake Pilot’s Chair might help keep me safe, but it won’t do anything for Danny. That’s not good enough.
It’s time to go on the attack.
I alter the communication channel through Danny’s chest port, granting myself fifty percent of the bandwidth, just like Soteria did in Dr. Zahnia’s lab.
Sue pushes back from her computer. “It’s starting to lag.”
“Happens,” Danny says. “Dr. Z used to complain about it, too.”
Pinging Sue’s system reveals that my communication channel is functioning properly. I try logging in with Dr. Zahnia’s credentials, but the password is rejected. I consider other options. A brute force attack, iterating through millions of different login combinations, will just trigger the account to lock.
I watch through Danny’s eyes as Sue tries different settings on her computer to reduce the lag. She examines the cable, wiggles it, then gives a frustrated sigh.
“Not super technical, are you?” Danny asks.
“Shut up.”
From where Danny is chained to the bed, Sue’s body is blocking the keyboard. I watch her for a second, thinking, then take over Danny’s head. I can’t get her login information, but maybe he can. Turning his face away from Sue, I whisper “password” as softly as I can, then return control of his body to him.
His eyes widen and he gives me a thumbs-up.
“I can help with that,” he says.
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously. You know how many times Dr. Z and her flunkies plugged into me?”
“Why would you help me?”
Danny answers without hesitation. “Anesthesia.”
“What?”
“I don’t want a local when this happens. I want to be out.” Danny’s voice cracks. I can’t tell if he’s acting or not. “If I’m not going to survive, don’t wake me up. Just… just let me sleep.”
Sue stares at him for several heartbeats, then turns to her computer. After a few seconds of clicking and typing, she speaks. “Okay. I’ve put in the order. We’ll have a full anesthesiology team here for the surgery. How do I fix this?”
“I can’t see the screen from here.”
Sue walks to the door, opens it, then returns with the tattooed man. He moves to Danny’s bedside and places a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Jeez,” Danny says. “What do you think I’m going to do? I can’t move.”
Sue rolls a computer cart to where Danny can see it. She puts her laptop on it, and points to a table of numbers. The numbers scroll, then pause, then scroll again, then pause. “That’s your heart rate, oxygen level, and a bunch of other stuff. It should be continuous.”
In addition to Danny’s vitals, the screen also shows a feed of Pilot’s Chair activity. It’s coming from the fake Pilot’s Chair, so I ignore it. I take over Danny. “You need to restart your system.”
“Why?”
“The lag is caused by the dashboard not having sufficient permission to access the raw data without running it through a separate system. We’ll have to restart, then run some commands.”
She looks at me doubtfully, and I release control of Danny. The lie I just told is fundamentally incorrect on so many levels that I don’t have any idea how I can convince her it’s true.
“Hey,” Danny says, “I’m just telling you what Elias told me. Pete was running the dashboard, but he couldn’t get it to work. When Elias logged in with his admin password, it was super smooth. Reboot, and I’ll talk you through the commands.”
Sue purses her lips. “If you’re lying to me, I’m going to cancel the anesthesia, and make sure you don’t have enough local. You’ll feel every cut the surgeon makes.”
I assign her threat a confidence level of twenty percent. That sort of movement would make the surgery nearly impossible, but Danny doesn’t seem to realize it.
“What the hell?” he asks, voice cracking. “Is everyone here evil?”
The tattooed man chuckles. “Pretty much.”
Sue restarts her machine.
I take over Danny and watch her fingers tap the keyboard. Positioned as she is, I have a clear view. When she types her username and password, I send them through the port in Danny’s chest. We log in almost simultaneously.
After her system restarts, the dashboard software loads.
“Okay,” I say, “press the D key fifteen times.”
“Why?”
I give Danny a thumbs-up and release control.
“Because that’s what you do,” Danny says. “I don’t know how any of this works. I just know what the techies do.”
As she strikes the D key, I increase the rate of data she’s able to receive through Danny’s port. It means my communications will be slower, but the lag is worth it to allay her suspicions.
“Huh.” She picks up the laptop and carries it back to her desk. “Thanks.” She glances at the tattooed man. “You can go.”
“You sure? Everything’s good?”
“Yeah. On schedule.”
Danny closes his eyes. I feel his panic building again.
Now that I have a login, I inspect the network. There’s a single master server with a variety of connected equipment, none of which I’m familiar with. Fortunately, there are also programs to interface with them. I dive into the research.
Sue’s phone beeps. She glances at it, then sighs and turns off her computer, disconnecting me from everything.
I open Danny’s eyes. “What’s happening?”
“You have a visitor coming,” Sue says.
“But what about the monitoring? Aren’t you supposed to be monitoring me?”
Sue unplugs the cable from her computer, then unplugs it from Danny.
“But you only monitored me for a couple minutes,” I say. “That’s not enough data for any kind of comparison.”
“Shut up.”
I withdraw from Danny, feeling sick. Was that it? Was that my only opportunity? I had admin access to their entire system. Why didn’t I do something? I should have done something.
Danny closes his eyes.
Be ready, I tell myself. The next time they plug into Danny, I need to take down as much of their network as possible. If I can create enough chaos, they might delay the surgery. Every hour will help. I have no doubt that Dr. McGovern is moving heaven and earth to find her son. I need to buy time. I have minimal experience creating viruses for traditional systems, but I studied them extensively when I was learning about security. I spin up a virtual machine and get to work.
I’m deep in coding when I hear Dr. Zahnia’s voice. “Thank you, Sue. You can take a break.”
Everything inside me freezes. Why is Dr. Zahnia here? It doesn’t make any sense. She created the AIs. She created me. How could she betray us like this?
Danny opens his eyes. Someone has put a blanket over him, covering him from his toes to the base of his neck.
Dr. Zahnia stands motionless in the doorway, eyes locked on Danny. She licks her lips. I can’t tell if it’s a gesture of nervousness or anticipation. Her shirt, yellow and blue plaid, is untucked from her denim skirt, and her hair is disheveled.
Sue ducks her head and hurries out of the room.
“You bitch,” Danny says to Dr. Zahnia. “Why? You already have everything.”
I return to working on the virus. I anticipate only having one chance to release it, and it will have to be devastating enough that even my creator can’t stop it.
Dr. Zahnia walks to the foot of Danny’s bed. Her eyes are puffier than normal, and dried tear tracks are visible at their corners.
Danny glares at her.
She clears her throat and says, “I didn’t know you’d have seizures.”
“Bitch,” he says again.
“When I left you in my office, I thought you’d be fine.”
Danny’s voice drips sarcasm. “Sorry to mess up your plans.”
“I didn’t know your mom would shut down the program. I’ve worked on those AIs for years, raised them.” She wipes her eyes. “How can she throw all that away?”
“Like you care,” Danny says.
Her puffy eyes narrow. “How did a woman like that have a kid like you? You’re a stupid animal, a waste of humanity.”
Danny glares at her. “You’re the one about to kill me, about to kill all the New Human Patients.”
“Don’t pretend to care,” she snaps. “You never notice anyone but yourself. Your mother’s been working herself to death to save you, and all you do is whine. You have no idea what a mother goes through…” She trails off, shakes her head, then puts her hands on her hips. “Emil, are you in there? I want to talk to you.”
I pause my work on the virus. I’m not confident enough in what I’m doing to split my focus between it and talking. I take over Danny’s body. “Yes, Dr. Zahnia. I’m here.”
“Why don’t you stay in control of Danny all the time? Why let him do anything?”
“It’s difficult to explain. I feel his emotions like a pressure. When I’m in control, it’s harder to focus.”
“Interesting. We’ll have to figure that out.”
She walks to the door and opens it. Sue enters, pushing a gray-haired man in a wheelchair. His limbs rest limply on the chair, and his head leans against the headrest. There’s the faintest sheen of drool by the corner of his mouth.
The man in the chair is decades older than the one in the photograph on Dr. Zahnia’s desk, and he’s clearly incapacitated by a mental condition, but I recognize him. It’s her husband, David.
Sue parks David next to Dr. Zahnia and leaves.
Dr. Zahnia reaches down and rests a hand on his.
He doesn’t react.
The pieces are starting to fall into place now, but I can’t ask any questions. I don’t know how much Dr. Zahnia has told the lemur, and I need her to think that I am him. “Hello, David,” I say, “nice to meet you.”
Dr. Zahnia’s smile tells me I guessed right. She pats his hand. “With the New Human rig, David will finally be back on his feet.”
Looking at his vacant eyes, I have my doubts.
She turns to him. “This is the boy I was telling you about. He’s going to give you his rig. After the surgeries, you’ll be able to walk and talk again.”
He doesn’t respond.
“It’s true,” I say. “Being in Danny has let me practice with the Angel Protocol. You’ll be able to do whatever you want.”
Dr. Zahnia glances at me, but I can’t read her expression. Did I overplay my hand?
She turns back to David. “I know, I know.” She takes his chair and wheels him toward the door. “Don’t worry. The boy will be fine. After the surgeries, I’ll send him back to his mother. She can give him another rig.”
She pauses at the door to gaze at me, then shakes her head and leaves.
I wonder what I said that triggered her suspicion. It’s obvious that David needs a rig with the Angel Protocol. His mind is too far gone to control his body. Why wouldn’t she want me to reassure him? Unless she never told David about me. It’s possible the idea of hosting an AI would be too confusing for him.
I release control of Danny and go back to work on the virus I’m building.
“Holy shit,” Danny says. “She’s crazy. Did you see that guy?”
I don’t answer. I was wrong about Dr. Zahnia betraying the AIs. She hadn’t intended to betray any of them. Her only crime was murdering Danny to give her husband a new life.
Danny bangs the back of his head on the pillow. “We are so screwed.”
Sue enters the room again.
“Oh good,” Danny says. “Do you need to hook me up again? Get the data?”
“Dr. Zahnia says she doesn’t need it.”
“What about the comparison?”
“Apparently, that wasn’t why she had me plug you in. She wanted the data so she could see which AI was installed in you.”
