Emil, page 20
I remember the data on Sue’s monitor. Half of it was a feed of the Pilot’s Chair activity. Dr. Zahnia was inspecting who was in the Pilot’s Chair. The realization drives home how close she came to discovering me.
“She lied to you?” Danny asks. “Why would she lie to you?”
Sue doesn’t answer. She’s working on her computer, with her back to us.
Danny resumes pulling against the handcuffs, rattling the metal.
“Stop that,” Sue says. “It’s annoying.”
Danny pulls harder.
Feeling the metal bite into his flesh, I return to creating the virus. The work may be pointless, but it’s all I can think to do.
26
OPERATION
Thanks to my earlier exploration of the network, I’m able to craft a virus that is truly devastating. I name it Vlad, and call the additional viruses it will spawn mini-Vlads. I’m putting the finishing touches on it when the door opens. People in scrubs and masks enter, wheeling trays of surgical equipment.
Danny’s eyes go wide. Blood oozes from his wrists and ankles, which are numb from the repeated damage of the handcuffs.
I stop a developing seizure and check my clock. It’s only 10 am. I’d assumed the surgery would be later in the day. Returning to my work, I build a filter on Danny’s chest port to prevent Vlad from affecting me when I release it.
“Sue,” Danny says. “What’s going on?”
Sue closes her laptop.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
She leaves without looking at him.
Danny pulls against his restraints, spattering the sheets red. Nobody notices. “Stop!” he screams after Sue. “You can’t just leave me! It can’t be time, yet. What’s going on? Somebody tell me what’s happening!”
A man injects a syringe into Danny’s IV. The fluid runs cold through his veins, stealing his strength.
I consider trying to flush it out, like I did during the first attempt to abduct Danny, but I don’t. Danny wants to be asleep during the surgery.
The man returns the syringe to the tray.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” Danny asks. “Why won’t anyone talk…”
His words trail off as he loses consciousness.
With his eyes closed, I can’t see anything. The room’s sounds, however, come through crystal clear.
A nasally male voice speaks. “We need a place for the cable.”
“Move him,” a woman responds.
Hands lift Danny’s body off the bed, then lower him to the floor. The tile is cold and surprisingly gritty against his back.
“Who has the saw? We need to cut a hole here.”
There’s the sound of fabric ripping, then the grinding whir of a power saw.
Danny is picked up and he’s placed on his side on the bed.
“Feed the cord through the hole,” the woman says. “Careful.”
I feel the plug inserted into his outlet, then he’s rolled onto his stomach. The cable must be running from his chest through the new hole in the bed.
“Prep the room,” the woman says. “We start imaging in ten, cutting in thirty.”
His shoes, socks, and pants are removed, and a cold liquid is rubbed on his lower back.
I send a ping through the cable directly to the network’s server. When it responds, I log in using Sue’s credentials.
“Look at his wrists and ankles,” a new voice says. “This poor kid.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the woman says. “He’s done. Bring in the transfer cart. I need a place to put the hardware after I pull it out of him.”
Vlad is ready, but I pause. I only have one shot at getting this right. Is unleashing the virus the way to go? Best case, all the virus will do is delay the surgery.
That’s not enough. Danny’s only real hope is rescue.
I rummage through the network, looking for communication services. Just like with Dr. Zahnia’s network at the computer lab, the mail command has been installed and configured.
Perfect.
I email Dr. McGovern, sending copies to Dr. Larson and Pete, “This is Danny. I’m in an operating room in a two-story warehouse ninety-three minutes from the hospital. It has a big lawn around it, but I don’t know exactly where it is. Come quickly. They’re starting surgery soon.”
A familiar voice draws my attention. “Hey, have any of you checked out the dashboard?”
It’s Elias. I double check my voice recognition, and there’s no doubt. He’s alive.
“No,” someone answers. “Why?”
“It’s moving way slower than it should. We need to see what’s going on.”
I’m out of time. I install Vlad on the server and trigger it.
“He’s right,” the nasally-voiced man says. “Something’s wrong with the connection.”
“Or the AI is doing something,” Elias mutters.
I disable the outgoing channel on the port, giving them full access.
“You’re being paranoid.”
“The thing smashed my head against a wall.”
I hear the door to the surgery slam open. “What’s happening?” Dr. Zahnia snaps. “Elias?”
Fear races through me. My fake Pilot’s Chair is nowhere near complete enough to fool Dr. Zahnia. I build a firewall around it, though I know that won’t help.
“The data… well, never mind. It looks like it’s fine, now.”
“Let me see.”
Using the service that controls Danny’s port, I reduce the bandwidth to a trickle, then increase it to ninety-one percent, then reduce it again.
Dr. Zahnia grunts. “Something’s going wrong. Turn him over and check the connection.”
Hands roll Danny onto his side. The cable is disconnected from him and reconnected. I tamp the bandwidth down to five percent.
“Did anyone roll anything over this cord?” Dr. Zahnia asks.
There’s a moment of quiet in the room.
The nasally-voiced man speaks. “Doctor,” he says, “I was just logged-out.”
A rare moment of satisfaction fills me. I programmed Vlad to install copies of itself on every system the server could reach. After that, it invalidated everyone’s credentials and locked all accounts. Nobody, not even super-admins, could login now.
“Me, too,” Elias says. “I can’t get anything.”
“What do you mean logged out?” Dr. Zahnia hisses. “How?”
The sound of rapid keystrokes echoes through the silent room.
“It’s dead,” Elias says. “Completely unresponsive.”
If I could smile, I would. When I was creating Vlad, I didn’t have the full specs on all the devices connected to the server, so I gave the virus a long list of things to try. After locking everyone out, it would scramble embedded systems, reformat hard drives, uninstall services, and alter, wherever possible, voltage calculations. Every memory buffer would be filled and overrun with a repeating series of bits: 010100110100111101010011.
“Where’s Sue?” Dr. Zahnia asks. “What did she do?”
“She went home,” a voice answers. “She was here all night.”
“It wasn’t her,” Elias says. “You know it wasn’t her.”
There’s another pause, then Dr. Zahnia shouts, “Kill the power to the server! Now!”
Footsteps run out of the room.
Shutting down the server won’t matter. The virus has already replicated. The server and everything connected to it, except me, is in the process of being disabled.
“Run a full diagnostic,” Elias says. “If that thing somehow did this, we need to… oh, great.”
There’s a surge of confused voices.
I force Danny’s eyelids open. Through his blurred vision, the scene is chaos. The room is dark. People in surgical gear are holding up their phones for light, pushing for the exit.
I didn’t expect Vlad and the mini-Vlads to affect the lighting, but it appears they shorted out the power.
Dr. Zahnia grabs Elias’ arm. “David’s all alone. He won’t understand what’s happening. Come on!”
They leave with everyone else.
Letting Danny’s eyes close, I try to move his legs. The muscles are limp, their strength sapped by whatever drug was injected into him. I increase his metabolism as high as I dare.
Sweat pours out of his skin, stinging the wounds on his wrists and ankles.
I stop a seizure and update the sanitized log files, so that if anyone does connect to me, they’ll think I had nothing to do with the virus.
The sounds in the building are muted by the room’s walls and closed door, but I hear doors being slammed and running footsteps. Before long, everything is quiet. Even the whispery moan of the air conditioning has stopped.
I try to rock Danny’s body back and forth, but it won’t respond. Concentrating on individual muscles, I tense and relax them. Nothing happens. I return to working Danny’s metabolism, sweating the anesthesia out of his system as fast as I can.
Twenty-four minutes later, the door opens. I force Danny’s eyes open enough to see Dr. Zahnia and Elias enter, carrying an electric lantern and a laptop. Elias’ eyes are heavy with bruises. His forehead is wrapped in a bandage. There are stitches on his cheeks, and his nose is clearly broken.
He pulls two chairs next to me. I let Danny’s eyes close.
Elias puts the lantern on Danny’s back and the laptop next to it. “He’s sweating, just like last time.”
“Why would Emil be fighting us?” Dr. Zahnia asks. “I spoke with him. He’s on our side.”
“No, he’s not.”
I run through scenarios of what could happen next. My fake Pilot’s Chair won’t fool them for long, and once they realize it’s a fake, they’ll erase it. After that, they’ll be able to connect to the lemur, and he’ll tell them I’m in the Engine Room.
My only hope is a more complicated deception. I just wish I could think of one.
I delete the fake Pilot’s Chair and restore the routing so they can access the real one. I keep the sanitized log files in place, though. Those are a lot more subtle.
“Emil,” Dr. Zahnia says, slapping Danny’s cheek. “Are you in there?”
“Muscles too weak,” I slur without opening my eyes. “Can’t control the body.”
“Don’t believe it,” Elias says. “We should handcuff him to the bed.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Plug him in. Let’s see what’s there.”
“I’m telling you he’s dangerous,” Elias says.
“Fine. Handcuff him to the bed if it’ll make you feel better. Just plug him in.”
A handcuff snaps around Danny’s left wrist.
Since I’m monitoring the port service, I can tell that they’re reading log files. Actually, they’re reading my sanitized log service. At least that much of my ruse has worked.
“There’s nothing in the logs about a virus,” Dr. Zahnia says. “Emil was clearly scared of the surgery, but he didn’t know what to do.”
“Hm.” Elias does not sound convinced. “What now? Do we talk to him through the connection?”
“Download him. Who knows how long it will be before this place is back to functioning. Let’s get a safe copy. Sue should have done that last night, when Danny arrived.”
Download Emil?
“Do we have the space?”
“Not for all the rig’s software,” Dr. Zahnia says, “but we’ve enough room for Emil.”
The idea of the lemur being downloaded horrifies me. All he’s ever done is damage others. He can’t be allowed into the world.
I trigger the killswitch.
“He’s… he’s gone,” Elias says.
I add the killswitch action to the fake logs, then shut down all logging, and start tracking down and erasing all the backups the lemur made of himself.
“What?” Dr. Zahnia asks.
“Look!”
There’s the sound of typing. “That’s not possible,” Dr. Zahnia says. “He was here. We were talking to him.” She pauses. “What is the killswitch event?”
“The what?” Elias asks.
“It’s right here.” Dr. Zahnia’s voice is furious. “Someone installed a killswitch, and you triggered it.”
I slow Danny’s metabolism.
“It’s not my fault,” Elias says. “I’ve never heard of a killswitch.”
Dr. Zahnia holds Danny’s wrist. “His pulse is slowing back to normal. I can’t believe this.”
“Maybe there’s a backup,” Elias says. “A lot of the AIs created backups of themselves.” I hear typing and feel Elias’s queries reaching through the chest port and into the rest of the New Human system. He searches the standard backup directories.
“Anything?” Dr. Zahnia asks.
“No. Nothing. They’re all empty.” He slaps the table. “It doesn’t make sense. Who would build a killswitch like that?”
Dr. Zahnia’s voice is uncharacteristically quiet. “He has to be there. If he’s not, it’s over. We’re done.”
“What do you mean?” Elias asks. “We have copies back in the lab.”
“Dr. McGovern shut down the New Human Project. She’ll never restart it without Danny. The servers will be wiped. This is our only chance.” Dr. Zahnia’s voice cracks. “This is Emil’s only chance.”
The name surprises me. Why did she say Emil? Didn’t she mean this is David’s only chance?
“There’s got to be a mistake,” Elias says. He slaps Danny’s cheek. “Hey! Emil! Talk to us, buddy. What’s going on?”
I release control of Danny’s body and withdraw into the Engine Room.
More typing sounds.
“He’s gone,” Dr. Zahnia says, her voice quiet. “He’s really gone. The Pilot’s Chair… Emil wasn’t just erased. He was overwritten with garbage data.”
“We can recover him,” Elias says.
Dr. Zahnia doesn’t respond.
“Doctor,” Elias says sharply. “You and I both know data recovery guys. We can get him back.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” Her voice firms. “You’re right. We’ll make it work. We have to. We need to get the hardware out of this body. Then we’ll see what we can do.”
“I’ll bring the medical team back.”
“No,” Dr. Zahnia says. “They can’t do anything until this place is up and running. I called the power company. A crew is on its way to fix the generators.”
“Is that safe?” Elias asks.
“As long as they don’t enter this room, we’re fine. Talk to our people. Once the power is back, replace whatever hardware we have to. Money’s not a concern. We need it done fast.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Elias says. “What are you going to do?”
“Get David somewhere more comfortable. He needs air conditioning.”
“What do we do with Danny?”
“Leave him. He’s unconscious, handcuffed to the bed, and a guard’s outside the door.”
“Don’t underestimate him,” Elias says.
“Fine.” She sounds annoyed. “Call Sue. She can keep him sedated.”
27
BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS
Pushing Danny’s metabolism as high as I can, I continue to try to flex his muscles. His heart pounds in his chest and sweat soaks the sheets.
I can’t stay hidden from Dr. Zahnia, forever. If we don’t escape, Danny and I will die, and Dr. McGovern will shutter the New Human Project. Linh will die. So will the twins and the one-eyed boy, and every other AI and patient in the project.
The room remains dark, and the air conditioning does not resume. No sounds filter through the walls. If the utility crew is restoring power, they’re too far away for me to hear.
I trigger the killswitch three more times. I don’t know anything about forensic data recovery, but hopefully, more erasures will prevent the lemur from being recovered. I do the same to his backups. Now that I’ve decided to kill the lemur, I want him gone forever.
Ten minutes later, Danny is panting and his muscles are starting to respond. I force his eyelids open, but his vision is still blurry. Almost forty-five minutes have passed since he was injected with the sedative. It’s impossible to tell if it’s wearing off because of my efforts, or because of how long they expected the surgery to last.
I take control of the body, and then raise and lower my right arm. It’s weak, but I can make it work. Reaching under my chest, I pull out the cord. How long until Sue arrives? There’s no way to tell. I roll my legs off the bed, and stand beside it.
My left wrist is still handcuffed to the bed, my neck isn’t responding properly, and I have to lean against the bed to stay upright, but I’m functioning. Head lolling to the side, I feel around the bottom of the bed until I find a brake lever.
After three tries, it disengages.
Half on the bed, half off, I roll it to the cabinets, then pat my hand along the countertop. Trays of medical equipment rattle and slide as I touch them. Syringes drop to the floor, and more than a few scalpels. When my hand touches a pair of pliers, I exhale with relief.
Focusing on the chain links of the handcuffs is difficult. I can’t get my eyes to orient, and my vision is blurred and hazy. Finally, I manage to grasp a link of the chain. I strain to bend it, but the pliers slip out of my grip, drop to the bed, and bounce to the floor.
Panting, I freeze, waiting for the tattooed man to come inside and investigate the noise.
The door doesn’t open.
I inspect the metal bar that I’m handcuffed to, running my hands along it to see if there’s a release latch or break or something. I don’t find any, but I do find screw heads. The bar is held to the bed by metal screws.
With one hand, I feel around on the floor until I find a scalpel. Squinting, I wedge its tip into the top of a screw and turn. The screw resists. I increase Danny’s metabolism even more, to a dangerous level, and try to force my muscles to respond.
Heart pounding so hard it throbs behind my eyeballs, I grip the scalpel with my whole fist. There’s a creaking noise as it turns, then it moves more easily. I remove it, then start on the second one. The battle lasts several minutes, but in the end, I have freed both screws.
