Youngbloods, page 24
Astrix stands on them, smiling up at Tally.
‘Good to see you not vaporized, Boss.’ Then she sees me and frowns. ‘Oh, so something went wrong.’
‘No plan survives contact with Frey-la,’ Tally says, jumping from the still-opening door onto the stairs. ‘Everything under control down there?’
‘Sort of,’ Astrix says. ‘Croy’s got them pinned down in the storage vault. But there’s a lot of them.’
Tally looks up at me and Dancy. ‘Come on, then. We have a small army to fight.’
Dancy looks at me, shrugs, then starts down the stairs.
‘Hang on.’ Astrix squints, looking past us. ‘What are those?’
I turn—two of the aerogel parachutes are landing just beyond the courtyard. They’re even bigger than I thought, the size of small airships. Up close like this, they glimmer, fracturing starlight through a thousand separate cells of air.
One touches down with a soft pop. The huge structure vanishes, instantly replaced by wisps of gel drifting on the breeze, like loose strands of spiderweb. The human form suspended in the center drops behind a wall, out of view.
‘The AIs are here,’ Tally says quietly. ‘Get this door closed.’
Astrix turns to fiddle with something in the dark. As the slow, rumbling machinery reverses, I hear the pop of the second aerogel bubble hitting earth.
‘You two stay here till it’s shut,’ Tally says.
Dancy assembles her sniper rifle again, while the others head into the darkness without us.
The huge door is closing at an excruciating pace.
The first avatar comes over the wall, moving in a way that brings the word skittering to mind. Like an insect—except insects are alive. This thing looks more like clockwork, inhumanly symmetrical and precise.
Dancy’s rifle cracks, and the avatar’s kneecap tears apart with a bloodless puff. But the machine doesn’t fall—just changes its gait, still coming at us in a series of uneven cartwheels. The motion makes no mechanical sense, as if an invisible child is propelling a rag doll across the floor, heedless of how real limbs work.
‘Nope,’ Dancy says, squeezing off another dozen shots.
One hits—the avatar twitches in midair, and its hurtling approach changes again, jerking like a wounded kite along the ground.
Finally it’s slowing down, but not enough.
The door is only halfway shut.
The second avatar is sweeping in from the right, too far away to threaten us—until Dancy’s rifle clicks empty.
She looks at my pistol.
‘Not yet,’ I say. If the avatars make it inside, I don’t want to be out of ammo.
Then I see it—in the perfect spot: ‘Your board!’
Dancy understands.
She whistles. The hoverboard lifts up and zooms toward us at ankle height …
Right across the path of the injured avatar.
Somersaulting too fast to alter course, it collides with the board and tumbles through the dirt. Somehow it keeps rolling, reaching us as the opening is still half a meter wide.
I aim my pistol at its face, which stares back at me.
I squeeze out a shot. The bullet tears out one eye—
The other one doesn’t even blink.
‘Frey,’ the avatar says in Diego’s calm voice. ‘We really need to talk.’
It reaches out a hand, as if to stroke my cheek. But the door shuts at last, impervious metal sliding closed with a squelching sound.
A rivulet of red goo, nothing like blood, trickles from the seam.
Dancy stumbles backward on the stairs. ‘Okay. I didn’t like any of that.’
I turn away, trying to shake the avatar’s voice from my head.
But that empty, inhuman expression—the true face of Diego.
‘Where’d they go?’ Dancy asks.
We stand there a moment, searching the darkness with our senses. Then the echo of a distant gunshot reaches my ears.
‘Come on,’ I say, striding into the dark. ‘This door won’t hold forever.’
56. PARAGONS
The underground base lights up around us as we move.
The passages are bare, unpainted permacrete. The lights are glued on, and wires run openly along the ceiling. The tunnels branch and wind aimlessly. It’s like diggers were set in random patterns, spraying up walls and floors as they went.
This whole place must’ve been built in a hurry while they plotted to steal my father’s data, knowing they’d need a place to hide.
‘This way,’ Dancy calls, running ahead toward the sound of another shot.
We find the others at an intersection, backs against the wall. Croy’s using a cam drone to peek around the corner.
A series of cracks fills the air, and the drone is shot away.
‘I figure there’s fifty down there.’ He sighs. ‘Too many for a frontal assault.’
‘Have you tried talking?’ Tally asks.
‘They won’t stop shooting long enough to listen!’
Astrix speaks up. ‘Once they saw you turn back, Boss, they got suspicious. Wouldn’t show us the cores without you here. Then some rebel out there started shooting, and things got dicey.’
Tally looks at me.
‘We had to stun a bunch of them.’ Croy nods at the pieces of shattered drone. ‘The rest retreated down that passage and set up a firing line. Must be the storage vault for the cores.’
‘How strong a vault?’ Tally asks.
‘My scanners show machinery,’ Astrix says. ‘But no big mass of duralloy—they haven’t put the door in yet. They were building to last a thousand years, but they aren’t finished. Lucky for us.’
I look up at the sprayed-on ceiling of the intersection. There’s a dark trickle of water damage in one corner.
‘Not that lucky.’ I point at the stain. ‘That’s rainwater. Which means there’s nothing between us and the surface but dirt.’
Astrix whistles. ‘You mean, all Diego needs to get in here is a shovel?’
I imagine a hundred avatars digging into the hill around us, their tools chipping through the permacrete walls, their blank faces peeking in …
‘No knockout drones left,’ Astrix says. ‘Maybe I can hack their hovercams? Otherwise, all we’ve got is deadly force.’
Tally hesitates, staring up at the water stain.
She was willing to set off a nuke in midair—what if killing a bunch of kids isn’t too much for her?
‘Tally—’ I start.
‘We surrender,’ she says.
Astrix frowns. ‘As in …’
‘As in, Frey-la walks down there with her hands up. She explains to Sara how this attack has nothing to do with us. We’re here to protect their precious data from an AI who want to steal it.’
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘How do I explain the shooting?’
‘Tell them the truth,’ Tally says. ‘You were leading a mutiny against me and my nuclear option.’
Croy and Astrix stare at me—a mutiny against Tally Youngblood.
‘How do I erase the data?’ I ask.
Tally hands me a piece of smart plastic. When I try to take it, the plastic slithers around my right wrist, disappearing behind my crash bracelet.
‘Genotoxin,’ she says. ‘Careful with the pointy end. It’ll unravel your DNA too.’
‘Great. But I can’t kill hundreds of cores before they stop me. I’ve only got one hand!’
Tally shrugs. ‘Do what you can.’
I frown—of course, even if I only erase a few cores, that’s a month of Shreve’s history. Millions of private conversations, personal secrets, and diary entries the machines will never see.
I raise my hands, about to walk out.
‘Not alone, Frey. They’d probably shoot you.’ Tally smiles, wrapping another injector around her wrist. ‘But I’m totally historic.’
The Futures don’t gun down Tally Youngblood.
First she calls along the passage, warning them that we’re about to appear. Then we step into the open, hands up, body armor off.
My skin tingles. But the eyes staring down the corridor grow wide and the rifle barrels lower.
In their enthusiasm for not shooting Tally, they don’t shoot me either.
It’s still a long walk. I flinch every time one of the motion-sensitive lights flickers on overhead.
‘Hear that?’ Tally whispers.
In the taut silence, scuffling sounds have reached us from the surface.
Something has started digging its way into the base.
‘Great,’ I say softly.
Astrix was right—there’s a large doorway at the end of the passage, exposed machinery on either side. But the vault door itself is missing.
Armed Futures are crowded into the space, but they back away as Tally approaches. Personal hovercams float above their heads like halos, recording this historic moment.
Sara steps forward. ‘That’s far enough.’
Tally lowers her hands.
‘Listen, Sara—I know this all went sideways, but we have to stop fighting and work together. There are … things coming through the dirt.’
‘We know.’ Sara eyes the ceiling. ‘They aren’t with you?’
‘No,’ Tally says. ‘We don’t use creepy avatar-people!’
‘But they followed you here, didn’t they?’
‘No, they followed me.’ My hand goes to my throat. ‘Someone gave me a necklace, and I didn’t know it was a tracker. I take all the blame, but let us help you defend your property.’
Sara considers this. ‘Who are they, anyway?’
‘The avatars of a rogue AI,’ Tally says. ‘They want to steal your data and study it.’
There’s silence as this sinks in. Then something awful happens—a boy just behind Sara gives us a big, beautiful smile.
‘They want to use our lives for research? Not way off in the future, but now?’
That’s when I realize the mistake we’ve made.
The Futures want to be studied. What could be more historic than being the first people ever fully analyzed by AIs?
‘No, wait,’ I say.
Sara’s eyes widen. ‘So they’ll use us as templates—for everyone.’
‘To control everyone!’ I cry out. ‘They’ll take your lives and turn them into algorithms!’
They’re all just staring at me. In the old Shreve, the only privacy was in the grave. Diego is offering them immortality.
I look past Sara—the memory cores are inside the vault, arranged in neat rows on shelves, lovingly marked.
We have to get inside.
‘Here’s the problem,’ I say. ‘There’s no guarantee what the machines will do with the recordings after they study them. Maybe no one ever sees them again.’
‘That’s right,’ Tally chimes in. ‘The AIs don’t care about history. This is about control!’
‘Still …’ Sara says. ‘Our lives will be baked into everything. We’ll be the algorithm for humanity. The paragons of dramatic living!’
Ran steps up behind her. ‘Hang on. I didn’t create my drama for AIs to watch. Future was about making stories, not being research monkeys.’
‘But we won’t just be historic,’ Sara says. ‘We’ll be universal!’
‘I don’t want to be universal—I wanted to tell my story. Our story, about me and you and Chulhee!’
Ran’s voice breaks on that name, and suddenly all of them are arguing.
The debate spills over me in a wave—the value of memory, the meaning of drama, of story. If a life is lived in the dust but nobody ever watches it, did that life really happen?
In the growing hubbub, Tally catches my eye. She nods her head at the vault beyond the crowd, then glances at the ceiling.
I listen above the raging argument—the digging sound is closer. We don’t have time to wait for this debate to end.
Tally’s fingers count down from five to one.
Then she throws a flashbomb at the floor.
57. BATTLE
We crash through the stunned Futures.
Packed together, they stumble into piles when we shove the first ranks backward.
As I reach the shelves full of cores, the injector is already stirring on my wrist. It flicks out and strikes, a scorpion’s stinger. The ping of ruptured metal rings through the chaos.
A shiver inside me—all those captured moments set free, all those double helixes of data, unwound.
I move to the next core, but it takes the injector a full second to reset. By the time I’ve erased another sliver of history, the Futures are taking aim.
I duck and run, deeper into the shelves.
A shot rings out—the projectile glances from the core above my head, bouncing straight into another. A neat hole opens in the casing, more data lost.
‘Hold your fire!’ Sara screams.
I thrust my hand at another core—the injector strikes.
Four down, out of hundreds.
Tally scatters a handful of smoke and flash grenades across the floor. The vault descends into chaos, shadows flickering on the sudden pall.
But Sara manages to take control. The Futures start to spread out—there are enough of them to cover every row, until someone has a point-blank shot.
I kill another week of Shreve.
Across the room, Tally starts sending the shelves crashing down. It probably won’t erase the data inside, but the heavy, rolling cores underfoot are havoc-making.
The next time I reach to sting, a shot rings out—pain courses through my left arm. I duck and spin, pulling off my left crash bracelet to throw it at the shooter.
Another crack answers, missing wildly, but it brings a shriek from someone behind me.
‘Careful!’ Sara cries.
I’m surrounded, but that means they’ll risk shooting each other. Of course, they’ve made bigger sacrifices for this data.
My healing nanos wash the sting from my wounded left arm, but that hand is throbbing again.
I strike another of the cores. Seven down.
I’m hemmed in now, two Futures at each end of this row of shelves. They’ve spotted me in the smoke, and are taking careful aim.
Then Astrix does her magic.
All at once, the hovercams above my attackers’ heads go wild, darting at them like angry crows. A shot goes into the ceiling, while the other Futures swing their rifles to swat away the rebellious cams.
I slip beneath the shelving into the next row, sticking another core from below. Then two more.
With ten weeks of recordings erased, I start to believe that this might work. With my own hands, I’m destroying my family legacy, unwinding the DNA of my father’s regime.
My injector strikes again … and again.
My old battle frenzy comes back, cutting through the arid calm of Specialness. This is what Rafi must have felt like when she cut him in half.
Then a huge sound thunders above the yelling and gunfire—crunch and rattle, like a sheet of ice breaking overhead.
The permacrete ceiling begins to split. The crack expands until it reaches both walls. Dirt and rocks start to trickle through, then become a rain.
‘They’re here!’ It’s Tally’s voice on the comms. ‘Keep going!’
I ignore the cascade of loose earth, stinging five more of the cores.
The Futures have almost forgotten me and Tally. In a panic, they’re grabbing cores and hauling them out the door, away from the mountain of dirt growing in the center of the vault.
The first avatar falls through, landing on the pile.
Someone shoots it in the stomach, but it keeps calmly turning, eyes scanning the room. More avatars ride down in the avalanche.
Bullets fly, and I can hear Sara shouting, ‘Stop! They’re on our side!’
But Ran is ignoring her, firing away. And through the smoke I see that Tally has grabbed a rifle from the floor.
She hits the first avatar in both eyes, dropping it.
I sting another core, and another. The injector grows hot in my hand, resetting sluggishly. The lights are flickering out, one by one.
But I strike again—another week of stolen lives, erased.
A new split opens in the ceiling, and one of the avatars tumbles through. It lands beside me, wrapping gangly arms around my shoulders.
‘Frey,’ it says in Diego’s voice. ‘Please stop making this—’
I hit it in the face with the injector.
It starts to speak again. ‘Someone’s going to get hurt, Frey. We should try to …’ It freezes; then the blank expression starts to dance, the words dissolving into gurgling.
I’m not sure if avatars have DNA, but the genotoxin’s doing something.
I turn from it and destroy another memory core. And one more.
Another avatar grabs me from behind, its arms too strong to escape. They push the air from my lungs.
The caches of extra oxygen in my rib cage spill open, giving me a few more seconds. My boot heels stamp on the avatar’s feet, mashing them to bloody pulps, but the thing won’t let go.
Spots are swimming before my eyes.
Then a rifle shot, a jolt traveling through the avatar’s body into mine. The arms fall away.
Tally, saving me again.
But there are dozens of them now.
I try to move, to dodge and duck, but my legs won’t budge. I’m knee-deep in the torrent of dirt.
Vacant faces crowd me through the smoke, like dolls from a nightmare. Hands grab my arms, pull the injector from my wrist, ignore their fellows dropping as Tally shoots them.
Then she stops shooting.
Her growl keens above the tumult, followed by the thud of blows coming in a flurry.
I’m fighting with my one good hand, biting at the fingers in front of me. But I’m forced to the floor, a mass of bodies and dirt crushing down.
The weight is too much to breathe.
Tally’s battle roar is stifled, and that’s when something in me gives out.
PART V
WHOLE TRUTH
In a world of total information, the essence of the human will become what is not information, and the essence of intimacy will be in sharing what cannot be shared over the networks.
—Stephen Marche
