Forty said nothing for the longest time, just staring at the floor in shock. I decided to prod a little. “I assume that’s not what you want?”
She shivered. “No, of course not!” she said, hugging me tightly. “I’d never wish death on the world, how could you even think that? But… to know that someone is trying to fix things… this means everything to me! I swear I won’t betray you, just… who are you? I mean really… are you a part of the government?”
“No. I’m not. The government… they’ve gotten a little too used to being in power, and they’re not my allies. Or yours. I’m part of something else… something no one knows about, and hopefully never will.”
“But… why?” she asked
Bright and early- about an hour before we were usually yanked out of bed, Forty came to my room and unceremoniously flopped on my bed, startling me out of a sound sleep. “Hey… wake up,” she said, her voice sounding cross.I rolled over and looked up at her. “Oh… hi. Did they tell you the plan?”She sighed. “The plan… it’s what we thought. Grandpa hoped you would be able to activate your tablet so we could just waltz in there, massacre the guards, and waltz back out with everything they’ve got. Obviously, that’s not going to happen now, and he’s pretty pissed. He told me that if I survive this raid without taking an injury, I can keep my rank. If I’m injured, he’ll bounce me back to Delta foot soldier.”“If you die, obv
As she had warned, we received what was meant to be a soul-stirring pep talk from our very own Glorious Leader. The Deltas ate it up, the Alphas looked bored, the Betas…They were scared.Small wonder, given that they were going into battle with an inexperienced, untried leader. I had confidence in the former Twenty, now Captain Beta. He wasn’t large, physically. He didn’t have that charismatic look about him, he wasn’t handsome, or even particularly well-spoken.Then you looked into his eyes… they were everywhere, taking in everything, and constantly calculating odds. I had a suspicion that he was the son of a former officer from before the crash. I made a mental note to find out. If I could get things running again, once I had the power to do so, I was going to find all the Undergro
Forty was like a statue, just staring. I suppose she thought that she was going to die where she stood. I knew better… he wouldn’t kill us yet. Not until he’d gotten the code from me, and he would likely use her to force me to reveal it.“Now… you seem like a smart young man, so let’s cut to the chase before your team ends up getting minced out there. Give me the tablet, and the code, and I’ll let you go.”“Right,” I drawled. “The second I give you anything, you’ll kill me. And your granddaughter, for good measure, I’m sure.”I saw a flinch in the guards, but not the old man. It was interesting. “She told you, I’m sure.”“Yes.”
I could spend years describing the two days we spent crawling around the sewers, working our way slowly through a maze of traps, automated locking doors, and waist-deep sewage, but if I'm honest, it was pretty boring. Disgusting and stressful, yes, but nothing happened that is worth mentioning. It was just a lot of gross, tedious exploration in our desperation to put as much distance between us and the Underground as possible.When we finally arrived at the sewer outlet closest to the distribution depot, that's when the real fun began. It all started with five guys surrounding us, pointing guns at our heads, fighting over who would have the honor of blasting our brains all over the ground."Please," Lauren begged, her voice shaking. "We're not enemies!""Oh yeah? Is that why you're dressed like those thugs from the
When Captain Case took me to my guest quarters, the first thing I did was to throw my clothes into a cleaner. Case had suggested just tossing them, and I told her that she was welcome to let Lauren burn my Beta team shirt, but the pants had a special purpose. I didn't want to leave them behind. The next thing I did was to step into the shower and scrub myself about a dozen times. I didn't think the stench of the sewer pipe would ever come off, but eventually, it did.Once I was as clean as I could reasonably expect, I sat on my bed and checked my messages. Captain Case came in, looking unsurprised at the sight of the tablet, though she did shoot me a grin. "That little toy could get you into a lot of trouble if you aren't careful," she murmured."Hence the reason I'm keeping the pants," I admitted. "Hidden pockets."
After the revelation that I'd been a patient for months, I give up. The pain and guilt- not for myself, but for what I'd put my dear grandfather through- is just too much for my young heart. The next time the doctor comes into the room, he tries to get me to eat, but I refuse. I insist I'm just not hungry, that I feel too sick to eat. I can see it in his eyes... he knows the truth. Fortunately, at that point, he chooses not to push me.I wonder what shape the computers are in, but no one will tell me. That, by itself, tells me something. They aren't in good shape. If they were just fine, no one would hesitate to tell me they were just fine. Eventually, they try to tell me that anyway, but I don't believe a word of it.I spend the entire week refusing food. The doctor tells me sternly that I need to eat, that starving myself won't do me any
The next morning I was awake early, sitting on my bed, fighting the tears. Grandfather... I missed him so much. He'd saved me from myself, and I could tell from the tenor of his messages that he desperately wanted to protect me. He wished he could call me home and find another way to complete my mission, especially after hearing what had happened to me in the Underground.He couldn't... I was the best candidate to complete this mission, if not the only candidate. We'd lost too many good people already... it was my fault and my task.I wished, though... oh, how I wished that anyone else could do this job! That I could just return to Central Control and wait for someone else to find the damn keys and make the computers work!The door opened and my pity party was interrupted as Jake stuck his head in. "Hey, Cap sent me
The trip took about a day and a half. With auto-pilot on the long stretches, the driver just drove right on through, stopping only to use the toilet or to visit young ladies for reasons I won't get into. He asked me not to tell the captain about them. I just replied that it was none of my business and I wasn't likely to see her again anytime soon.When we arrived at the neighborhood, he stopped after about three blocks to let me off. "Good luck on whatever it is the captain sent you here for," he called to me. "Oh, and watch out for the Dame.""The who?""Not sure which house it is, but there's some crazy lady in these parts that lost her husband a few years ago. According to the locals he was robbed and killed on the street, but she's so nuts, she thinks he just stepped out on her and she's waiting for him to come
One week ago, Professor Jonathan Spafford's mortal consciousness fled this world. Every time I let myself think about it, I feel the agony anew, and I have to take a few seconds to hide in his memories, to hear his voice and feel his love around me. I understand more and more what Mirele meant... but at the same time, it's different. As long as I'm still alive, still drifting in my digital home, I'll keep his memories safe until we can find a way to bring him to life, just as he turned us into living computers.I've been in contact with a few people that have such programming experience, creating Artificial Intelligence constructs, both as programs and as actual droids. Some of them worked on the droids that are now moving all over the surface of Horus, rebuilding our world into the beautiful, shining Utopia we remember it once being.They have told me that my idea is a long shot at best, insane at worst, but one of them admitted that he had worked on a project where an AI's m
Four hours later, Lance stood at Grandfather's bedside with a grim look. He had done as much as he could to treat the stroke, but this one had been far worse than before. Grandfather had no motor function left, and the only reason he was still alive was because the machines around him wouldn't let him die. He hadn't regained consciousness even for the shortest time. Lance had activated a speaker in the room so that I could talk to Grandfather directly, but he hadn't moved or reacted. Seeing him like this broke my heart. It looked like I was going to be cheated of the chance to say goodbye. The rest of the council came to his room and surrounded his bed. Candy took Grandfather's hand in hers, squeezing it a little as tears rolled down her face. "Lance, we've been talking, and... I think we should go through with Toby's idea."
A full month passed and we had managed to restore at least partial function to most of the critical systems. Communications, transportation, utility services, the replicators, and a basic shell of the entertainment system. As things stood at the moment, aside from illness or injury, there really was no reason for anyone else to die from the Crash. Not easily. We got the system of surveillance cameras back online, and for a while, Mirele and I would use our break times to just watch happy couples getting married in parks that were slowly coming back to life. We'd watch new parents stroll along streets with their newborns, and we'd watch older couples, the rare survivors of their generation, as they would walk through their towns and reminisce. Once the general story of what had taken place was finally revealed- and the people could use the Net again- an electi
When Grandfather rolled in the next morning, looking much better than he had the previous day, I was reasonably sure that I was ready. Mirele and I had let Candy in on the plan and practiced with her for an hour. It was about as good as it would get without giving it entirely too much attention. That would require ignoring what was supposed to be our real job. Putting our shattered world back together. As soon as he had rolled up to the computer and looked over the screens to check our status, I figured it was time. I could feel Mirele near me and caught a wordless wave of encouragement from her. It was now or... well, not never, but I knew that if I waited too long, I'd lose my nerve. "Good morning, Grandfather." His head lifted so fast, I saw him wince as it kinked a nerve. He stared into the camera. The voice
For the next hour, I wandered around the hard drives with the data files. I learned all kinds of things about audio systems, about how sound mixers worked, and how we could alter the samples to mimic what I recalled of our own voices. The thing was, I needed to use Mirele's memory of my voice and my memory of hers, because what we remembered of our own voices wasn't accurate to what others heard. Our memories were filtered through our heads and typically sounded much lower than our real voices.I then dove into the process of altering and creating a ton of sound clips for different syllables, creating a small dictionary of voice clips. This was how they had done it in the old days and I knew there had to be a more efficient method, but I wasn't a programming genius.Yet. By the time I was done, I would know more than any computer engineer in existence.
We'd been given a task to perform, and we took it seriously. Perhaps a bit too seriously. In our laser focus on getting the systems back online, neither of us noticed that Grandfather had been trying to get our attention for several hours. I finally spotted the data stream as I was flying back and forth between several of the sector computers, getting all the droids active and back to work.Initially, it looked like he was just being conversational, asking us how things were going. The last few messages sounded downright panicked. I think he was afraid that we were indeed getting lost... getting so deep into the system that we were losing contact with the outside.I felt so bad for panicking him. We needed a better way to do this, some method for him to signal us. A summons command, or something like that."I think there's supposed to be one programmed in, but I'm not sure why it isn't working," Mirele said as she started to explore the inputs again."Maybe it's
I had no idea how long I'd been digging in the files before I finally located the highly sensitive files that involved the actual functions of the hunk of rock and metal that we called Horus. After a quick consultation with Mirele- I had discovered that we could communicate with each other without having to vocalize actual words- we decided to pull a copy into our server since it was critical data. We couldn't risk damaging the original copies held by the Ten. I went through the files... there was so much here, it could take months to comprehend it all. Fortunately, whoever had designed the Ten had done so in a way that actually made it pretty user-friendly for the central control systems. We didn't have to know everything about how they worked, we just had to know whether the data we received from the systems were telling us that they were working right, or whether something was wrong.
Mirele had to get my attention again, pulling my back from my fascination with the complexity of the system. "Do you have all the inputs and outputs figured out?" she asked.I took another look around... it wasn't long before I had figured out where everything was coming from, and I was encouraged when I realized that I actually understood what it all was. This wasn't all that different from our practices. The only real difference was that we were now fully and permanently engaged in the server, with no sense of the outside except through our peripheral devices.I missed it, to a point, but having such incredible clarity and speed of thought was a decent trade-off. I had Mirele with me... the only thing that would have made it perfect was if my grandfather was in here as well.I focused on the output where Mirele wa
"Toby?"Ugh, not this again. I was so incredibly tired of having to be woken up after blacking out.Wait... I was in a computer, so how the hell could I have passed out?"Exactly... you didn't pass out, you just lost your orientation. Now pay attention to me.""Mirele?" I asked."Duh, who else? There's no one else in here, at the moment, anyway."I couldn't see her, since I had no eyes, but all at once, I sensed her presence as I would have through the wires before we'd been dragged in here. I was so relieved... I was afraid that she would be fried like Lance had thought might happen."In case you haven't noticed, my father has a bad h