Code of Vengeance: The Complete Collection, page 48
Because of the attack, several donors had stepped forward to pay for Diamond’s protection. The services were limited, but there was always a trained professional near the candidate, and one of Nat’s most demanding tasks was no longer a concern. Nat didn’t believe for a moment one guard would be enough, but the service did give her time to build the team Diamond really needed.
Step one was to figure out everything required to rebuild Br00-S. From previous repairs, Nat already had several limbs that were lighter and stronger than traditional parts. All that really remained was to get a torso and a head with a blank architecture for a seed AI.
Contacting Maxx, her supplier of everything illegal, was step two. As usual, when she received his reply, she could almost hear the questions in it. She liked to imagine she submitted the most interesting requests. Though the tone of his response was questioning, the text of the reply was as helpful as usual. He promised everything within two days.
Nat wondered how much Maxx guessed. During their last transaction she had revealed she was working with Br00-S, whose exploits Maxx had been following on the internet. Given the nature of her request and his own intelligence, she suspected Maxx knew roughly what she was intending.
They met out in another empty field. Maxx was so paranoid that he kept track of all the satellites in the sky and knew when particular locations would be unobserved. It was during one of these windows that he scheduled his meeting with Nat.
Her van pulled close to his, surrounded by growing stalks of corn. Taking enough time to make sure Maxx’s sensors could scan her closely, Nat stepped out of her van and came around.
After a moment, Maxx stepped out as well. The grin on his face was wide. He extended his arms as though to give her a hug, and she stopped dead in her tracks.
The hesitation was only for a fraction of a second, but Maxx noticed it and sheepishly brought his arms back in. In all their time working together, the relationship had always been strictly professional. Nat suspected, especially after their last meeting, that Maxx’s feelings might be more involved than her own, but her life had been so busy that she had never really taken the time to consider it.
“Nat, it’s great to see you,” he said, trying to cover up his faux pas with all of the grace he could muster.
She felt a twinge of regret. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Maxx. She did. Especially now, in hindsight, she saw how much he’d done for her that he probably never did for others. He was an honest criminal, and Nat appreciated that.
For the first time, Nat looked at him with new eyes. He wasn’t unattractive. His long, blond hair was tied in a ponytail currently, and he looked like he kept himself in shape. She had visited his home before and knew him for a bit of a slob, but that was neither here nor there, she supposed.
Nat started to raise her arms to embrace him but stopped less than a heartbeat later. She wasn’t good at this shit. Perhaps that was why she had enjoyed living with Br00-S so much.
“Maxx, it’s good to see you again, too. Thanks for all the work to get this stuff.”
Maxx shook his head, as though finding parts that would fit Br00-S’ needs and contain the blank architecture for an AI was something he did every day. “Oh, it was nothing.”
She had never seen him this sheepish before. In their prior engagements, he had been nothing except professional, but it almost seemed as though he had talked himself into believing they had a different type of relationship that didn’t actually exist. Nat pushed the thoughts out of her mind. She was here on business. “Don’t be so modest. I know some of those parts had to be almost impossible to find. Thank you.”
Maxx shrugged. “They aren’t all an exact match, but they should work. The neural architecture I found is actually a small upgrade on what your friend had.”
Nat frowned. “You have any idea what kind of a difference that will make?”
Maxx didn’t. “I don’t know enough about AI, and the architecture and the software are so closely linked that it would be highly dependent on the seed that you’re planning on loading in. The processing gains could be enormous, or they could be negligible. Unfortunately there’s just no way of telling, at least for mortals like us.”
So, he had figured out what everything was for and decided to help anyway.
On an impulse, Nat stepped up and embraced Maxx. It was awkward, and for a moment he was as stiff as a board, but he slowly relaxed and returned the gesture. She broke away before he could get any ideas. “Thanks again, Maxx.” With a sly grin that she had picked up from her time with Diamond, she turned away and gave him a wave goodbye. “Don’t be a stranger.”
Back in the cave, Nat began the repairs on Br00-S. Fortunately, Radius Robotics, the mega-corporation responsible for designing most AI-based robots, believed in modular parts as a way of keeping maintenance costs low.
Nat assembled Br00-S one limb at a time, following the instructions found online even when the process seemed intuitive. She double-checked schematics and wiring until she thought her eyes were going to be permanently squinted from staring at the small diagrams. But limb by limb, a robot formed in front of her.
The process took Nat a few days. Even though she had more flexibility in her work schedule, she was still needed on the campaign and couldn’t dedicate entire days to the project. She told herself it was for the best, allowing her to turn a fresh eye on the process every time she returned.
When she believed she was finished, she checked, double-checked, and triple-checked her work. After the second day of performing nothing but checks, she realized she was delaying for no good reason.
Nat chastised herself for lack of courage and went to the hidden wall safe. Her biometrics unlocked it, and she gingerly pulled out the seed AI and held it in her hands. The seed was a small cube, the connections inside far too small for Nat to make out with the naked eye. Inside was the core of her friend—or so she hoped.
She opened up the control port in the back of the robot’s head. As she brought the cube towards the port, she froze on the spot, hesitating once more. Frankenstein had been driven to death by his creation. Who was she to think otherwise?
Shaking her head at her foolishness, she inserted the seed through the control port in the back of Br00-S’ head, then sealed the port and turned on the main power.
She wasn’t exactly sure what she was expecting, but she thought something would happen. Instead, the robot’s body just sat there, as still as it had been five minutes before.
For a few brief moments, Nat worried that even with all her checks she had screwed up. Perhaps she had connected two wrong wires, or maybe she hadn’t pushed the seed in far enough. She was just about to turn the power off when the robot’s eyes opened. Nat jumped backward, startled by the unexpected movement.
“Hello, Nat,” the robot said.
A wave of emotion crashed over her, and she sat down, hard, on the rocky floor of the cave. The voice was his, the vocal patterns close enough to be the same. How long had she waited to hear that voice again? She fought back the tears that were welling up, then wiped them away roughly as she realized she was about to cry over a robot.
“Is something wrong?” asked the robot.
Maybe it was her imagination, but this time, something in the robot’s voice was different. The change was hard to pinpoint. Maybe the pause between the words was slightly off, or maybe it was something else. Her human instincts told her the voice was just a hint too robotic for Br00-S, as though it lacked the warmth he once had.
She chastised herself, embarrassed by her emotional reactions. The new robot had been active for less than three minutes and she was already judging it. Br00-S himself had said that the personality that came from the seed wouldn’t be an identical duplicate. That had been the whole point: to create a better being.
“Hello, Br00-S,” she finally replied.
A dozen questions threatened to spill from her. She immediately wanted to know everything. Why had he thought this was the only way to defeat Sapiens First? How similar was he to the original Br00-S? Had she done the repair work correctly? But she held back, remembering the barrage of questions she used to receive from foster families every time she returned home as a child. Sometimes silence and presence were exactly what was needed.
“I know there will be many questions,” the robot said, imitating Br00-S’ voice. “For now, I must let you know that my systems will require a significant amount of time before any functions operate at a useful capacity. During the time of reconstruction, I will be unable to move or to speak. Before I begin, do you have any instructions?”
Again, Nat should not have been surprised, but she was. It had taken courage just to get this far, but the work was not yet done. “Can you estimate how long the reconstruction will take?”
“Approximately seventy-four hours.”
Nat released a small sigh of frustration. Three days was a long time to sit and worry. But attempting to rush the reconstruction, if it was even possible, seemed foolhardy. Three days it would have to be, then.
“I have only one instruction. If, after the restoration is complete, you find yourself in this cave by yourself, you are not to leave this cave until I come down and grant you permission. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
“Then you may proceed.”
The robot closed its eyes again, and again Nat was left alone.
Should she remain? There was nothing she could do, but she wanted to stay, just in case she was needed. She felt like a family member waiting and worrying in the waiting room of a hospital, believing that somehow her very presence would improve the outcome. She knew it was foolish.
Nat sat there for a few minutes, tapping her fingers against the cold rock. She stood up. She couldn’t stand having this robot sitting silently in the same room as her. She had a few days. There was no rush. She could leave and check in again, after she had thought this through. When she returned, she would be prepared.
With one last look at the robot who was not Br00-S, and might never be, she turned and walked away.
Chapter Five
The day was blissfully cool. Last night a storm system had passed through, pushing out the warm, muggy air that had enveloped the city for days. Today there was a stiff breeze coming from the north, the cool Canadian air a blessed relief from sticky shirts and constant sweat. The sky was partly cloudy and the temperature wasn’t predicted to rise above eighty. In short, it was a perfect day to be outside.
Bryce sat inside a police vehicle, scanning through the files he had on Felix’s case. The windows were down, and the car had left Minneapolis proper ten minutes ago. A glance at the car’s display told him there were still twenty minutes of invaluable silence ahead of him before he reached the detention center. For a moment, he closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of the wind through his graying hair. As a child, he had enjoyed sticking his head out of open windows, much to the dismay of his over-protective mother. Here he was, more than fifty years later, thinking he should resume the practice.
He scanned the files again and closed his eyes. There wasn’t anything worth learning inside them. The detention system and the police system were no longer linked, and the detention centers had always been stingy with information. If Felix hadn’t been a person of interest in several open cases, Bryce wasn’t sure the police even would have known of his death.
Bryce didn’t even realize he’d dozed off until he woke up to the car slowing down. The feeling of the sun on his skin, the wind through what was left of his hair, all of it had soothed him right to sleep. There was no harm in it, though, and Bryce didn’t mind getting paid for a few minutes of shuteye. His mind was sharp and fresh, thanks to the short nap.
The car turned off the highway, now southwest of Minneapolis by about thirty miles. When the local Recovery and Detention Center, or RDC for short, opened up back in 2042, the founders had decided to stay far away from the urban core. Part of the reason was security, of course. It was far easier to monitor open fields than a busy city street. But their stated reason had been that they didn’t want their clients distracted by the larger world. To hear the owners talk about their centers, one could be forgiven for thinking they were listening to an ad for a new high-tech retreat center.
Bryce didn’t know much more about the centers than the average citizen. His job was to get the criminals off the streets. What happened to them afterwards had never been his concern. But given what little he knew of the centers, he approved. Their recidivism rates were lower than anything America had come up with before. Whatever happened inside an RDC, when their “clients” returned to normal life, they tended to get back on their feet and become productive citizens. In Bryce’s mind, what more could you ask for?
So Bryce had to admit that he was more than a little curious what it would be like inside the compound. Would it be a prison by any other name, or would it really be something different?
As the car rounded the bend and Bryce got his first glance at the facility, he realized just how little he knew about the place. The main building was three stories tall but didn’t look much different from some office buildings he had seen. It was made of concrete and glass, and while it certainly looked official, it didn’t look like a prison. The only physical boundary Bryce could see was a chain link fence, just eight feet tall and without barbed wire circling the top. Even in his advanced age he could probably climb it.
Bryce knew the grounds were secure, and he assumed there were more sensors on the ground than he could see, keeping track of movement. But even so, the small fence almost felt like a dare. As the car approached the gate, there were several clients out wandering the grounds, but none of them were anywhere near the fence. Granted, it was the middle of the day. How often did prisoners try to escape?
His car stopped a hundred yards from the gate, its advance halted by a narrow one-lane guardhouse. At the moment, a large truck was exiting through the guardhouse, and there seemed to be a bit of commotion surrounding it. Bryce sat and watched with interest as robots swarmed the vehicle, scanning it from all sides. After a few minutes, the robots dispersed and the truck left, passing by Bryce’s car with nearly silent acceleration.
A guard stepped out to look at Bryce’s identification. His glance was cursory; the real check was being conducted as the guard swiped the badge through a reader attached to the guardhouse. “Sorry about that,” he said. “They’re taking the trash out, but it always throws the scanners for a loop. Takes a while for the trucks to clear. They don’t leave often, but when they do, it slows down traffic for a while.”
Bryce glanced in the rearview mirror. His was the only car in the area. He wondered what slow traffic would look like. He gave a sympathetic nod to the guard.
After a few seconds, the guard received permission to allow Bryce onto the grounds. “Just keep your badge on your person, sir. It’s pretty calm in there, but there’s no reason to get lazy about security.”
Bryce nodded again, thinking that last line sounded a lot like a speech the guards themselves received frequently.
The car pulled into a small parking lot and Bryce stepped out, looking around. Although he was in a detention center, the place did have a relaxed vibe to it. Perhaps it was closer to a retreat center than a prison. He was disappointed for a second, the primitive part of his brain that desired justice and punishment let down by the comfortable atmosphere.
He followed signs to the main offices of the compound, his eyes continually drawn to the features of the center. The doors were heavy and metal, painted in flat colors, but the spaces were wide and open, and there were paintings and photographs scattered around the walls. Not only did it look like an office from the outside, it felt like one on the inside.
He was greeted by a young woman who couldn’t have been more than in her early thirties. Her curly, black hair belied her piercing gaze.
“Detective Lewis, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Your reputation proceeds you, of course.”
He gave her a weak grin, letting her know that flattery wasn’t going to work on him. He saw the way she noted his response and noticed the corner of her mouth turn up just a bit before settling back to normal.
“Ms. Anderson. Thank you for seeing me. I’m sure my visit isn’t going to be your favorite part of the day, but I’m grateful for your cooperation.”
“I appreciate your honesty, Detective, and I hope that we can be of help to one another. As you can imagine, my superiors aren’t pleased.”
Bryce frowned. “That surprises me. Deaths happen in the centers. It’s to be expected when you house the number of people you do.”
Her look was confused for a moment, but it passed quickly. “Ahh, I suppose you haven’t been given the full details yet. You see, Mr. Benham didn’t just die. We suspect that he was murdered.”
The statement, issued as a simple declarative, surprised him. He had considered the possibility, of course. It was the reason he’d come out here. That, and to see if the detention center had come up with any evidence from Felix’s rehabilitation he could use in his own investigations. But he hadn’t really expected it. Murders in detention centers were exceedingly rare. Offhand, Bryce could remember a few of them from when the system had just started developing back in the twenties, but he couldn’t think of any in the past several years. Ms. Anderson wasn’t lying. Her superiors had to be furious. A part of Bryce, the part that was naturally suspicious of all corporations, was a little surprised they weren’t trying to sweep it all under a rug somewhere.
When his thoughts caught up with the present, he switched immediately into his investigative frame of mind. He hadn’t come here expecting to solve a murder, but after decades on the force, the tricks and tools of an investigator were second nature.
He pulled out his phone. “Do you mind if I record our conversation? Everything is off-record for now. I just don’t want to miss anything.”
