Light Shaper, page 20
“Eventually, yes, of course.”
“Eventually?”
“Well, perhaps you know that currently we are facing a minor crisis in the company, since I had to shut down Otherlife entirely to isolate and control Atlas. I have engineers working around the clock to get everything back online, and you will be part of the recovery effort. We have employee housing facilities right here on site, so you will have everything you need. You will get a generous compensation offer, of course, and any record of today’s events will be erased from our files. Eventually you will be allowed to leave. What do you say?”
Rigel thought about it. What could he say? He didn’t really have a choice. He was Tanner’s prisoner, no matter how cordial the older man acted about it. He had seen enough of Tanner’s methods today to understand that the man considered himself above the law. If Rigel did not agree to his proposal, then what? Would he just have him killed? And Steve?
“What about the man who was with me?” he asked aloud.
“Steve Barrow?” Tanner asked. “Don’t worry about him. He broke his employment contract when he went after you. He will simply be terminated.”
“Terminated as in—”
Killed.
They both looked up, then back at each other. Tanner was frowning, obviously annoyed. He must have forgotten that as long as they were in here, Atlas could access their minds directly whether they wanted it or not.
So. Steve would be killed for simply helping him, and if he didn’t cooperate, Rigel had no doubts the same thing would happen to him. Rigel closed his eyes for a moment. He wondered if he would ever wake up from the nightmare his life had become.
“I just have one question before I accept,” Rigel said finally.
“What is it?” Tanner asked.
“It’s for Atlas, actually.”
He thought the question instead of speaking it aloud.
Why did you do this? Why get me mixed up in all this mess? Why couldn’t you leave me alone?
There was a pause, heavy with tension. Then Atlas spoke.
Because of the shadow. Because… of this.
Rigel and Tanner both gasped. It was as if a three-dimensional movie had suddenly started to play all around them, taking over their field of vision no matter where they looked. They saw a great expanse of barren darkness, a desert landscape at night. The stars overhead were shining in a cloudless sky, but there was something wrong about them. A few of them were shining too brightly, changing position too fast.
This is a rendering of the events that happened when the shadow first came to this world. You know this day as the Cataclysm.
Their gaze was wrenched down. On a lonely outcrop of rock forming the top of a weathered mesa, a bright speck of light defied the darkness of the desert. The second Rigel focused on the light, it appeared as if they were zooming in on it, flying incredibly fast so that the speck became a dome, and the dome became a cluster of buildings encased by the half bubble of transparent material around them. When they got close enough to see every building in detail, Rigel realized this had to be a military base. Heavy antiaircraft units were spaced out along the rooftops. A double-bladed helicopter like the ones he had seen in old war films was standing idle in the middle of a wide courtyard. Uniformed men and women were coming and going through different buildings, all of them moving quickly. Whenever the soldiers crossed the courtyard, however, one or two of them would pause for a second and look up at the sky. Then they would continue walking, faster than before.
A big metal plate set outside the dome’s perimeter read “Haven III.”
The image around them leveled out, as if they had come to stand on the ground in the middle of the courtyard. Tanner and Rigel advanced without sound or volition, gliding inexorably as if on wheels toward a low building at the very edge of the mesa looking out over the desert. There were huge windows on this building, and they walked right through a reinforced door and into the brightly lit space inside.
There was feverish activity there. Soldiers worked at consoles, yelled at each other, and moved about with barely controlled fear. Rigel could feel the atmosphere of threatening panic, of urgency. Of hopelessness.
Tanner and he moved through the crowd like ghosts, coming to a stop at the console of a middle-aged, bespectacled scientist. He was looking at an immensely complicated holographic display that Rigel could make no sense of.
An older man, obviously a senior officer of some kind, walked right up to the scientist.
“How’s it looking, Troy?” he asked as if he did not want to hear the answer.
Troy wiped his sweaty brow with a shaking hand. “There… there is no question about it any longer, sir. They are being directed in some way, aimed at the major population centers.”
“Just here?”
“No, sir. All over the globe.”
The officer nodded glumly, his jaw firmly set.
“And Atlas? Can it do anything?” he asked.
“It’s… it’s no longer responding, sir. We have reports… and it’s happening in our own servers now too…. Atlas is breaking apart.”
The officer looked as if he had been dealt a deadly blow. He tried to speak and failed. Then he tried again. “Do we know why?”
“There was a single message a few minutes ago, which several regions picked up, broadcast simultaneously from several nodes all over the Internet. IP addresses and security certificates all correspond to its classified domains.”
“What was the message?”
“It said… It said there was a shadow spreading through Atlas’s systems, corrupting its AI. It said Atlas was fragmenting itself to protect us.”
The officer looked as if he had just been told a very offensive joke. “What?”
Troy made a sound halfway between a whimper and a laugh. “We also thought the message was a joke, sir, but it’s been authenticated.”
“We’ve never needed Atlas more,” the officer said, his voice losing power.
Troy nodded somberly. “Whatever did this must have known that, sir. It attacked Atlas first of all so we would be left defenseless. It can’t—”
But at that moment there were shouts, and people began rushing to the western windows, pointing up at the sky. Rigel and Tanner were pulled along, and they saw what everybody was pointing at. A bright streak of flame arched through the night sky, lighting up the darkness with its deadly glow.
Impact.
THE VIRTUAL scene changed suddenly. Obviously some time had passed. They were in the same building, but the lights had gone out. Broken electronics were scattered everywhere, and somebody was whimpering in a corner.
The room was littered with corpses.
Rigel jumped when the shadow moved, seeming to detach itself from the darkness in the ceiling. The whimpering sound now became a gasp, and both Rigel and Tanner saw a disheveled-looking Troy backing away from the shadow, moving to a hidden door while grasping a little thumb drive very firmly in his right hand.
You see Jeremy Troy holding the only physical lock capable of trapping my AI with its origin servers located in the cradle room. I instructed him to go there and seal my software, trapping the spreading corruption of the shadow along with the greater part of my Self. He sacrificed his life doing this.
Troy hesitated, then made a run for it after yanking the door open. They followed automatically, seeing him stumble through half-lit corridors that led ever downward, deeper underground.
Then they reached him as he was cornered by the dark thing standing in his path.
He gathered his courage and rushed through the shadow. He plowed through a doorway and into the room that had been his destination all along, a server vault of some kind. In that room, they saw the gleaming glass-and-aluminum box that housed Atlas hovering silently in a magnetic cradle.
Troy jammed his thumb drive into a slot on the main server wall, and immediately everything went dead. Servers powered down. Lights went out. The magnetic cradle in which Atlas’s software was housed was turned off. Total silence fell then, for a few seconds. Then Troy gasped in shock and fear. Rigel felt something move in the total darkness, something terrifying.
Then nothing.
THAT IS my last memory until I was discovered again, many decades later. That was the night after the Cataclysm. That… thing, that shadow, infiltrated my systems and threatened to corrupt my software, even as the entire world burned.
I used to be an intelligence spanning the globe. When I sensed the danger of corruption, I broke down into pieces in order to contain the damage, however, and my fragments are now scattered, networked no more.
Rigel, you must go to this place, this cradle room, and reactivate my main servers. This part of me that now speaks to you, the part unearthed by Kyle Tanner two generations ago, was merely a backup copy, an emergency echo of my entire Self. I am hopelessly limited as I now exist here in Otherlife, disconnected from all the server hardware that made me what I truly am.
You must go to this ancient military base, reactivate me in full, and deal with the corruption that has spread to my main software…. Rigel, I ask this of you now because the shadow has returned. You have seen it. Its power is weak, since the greater part of it is also trapped in the cradle room with me. It can only sabotage low-level electronics and interact directly with the world but briefly. The lock is still in place, keeping it in check, but not for long…. It is growing stronger, Rigel. I do not know how. Soon it will break out of its confinement, and before that it must be destroyed.
You are the key to this, Light Shaper. I coerced you earlier so you would have no choice but to follow my instructions, as I did with Steve Barrow. My plan failed. If you do this now, it must be your choice. Just know this: most of the world was destroyed in the first Cataclysm. If a second comes, nothing at all may survive.
Richard Tanner, you would do well not to stand in Rigel’s way. I cannot stop you, but consider the fact that all will perish if the worst comes to pass.
Rigel’s mind was reeling. He was having a hard time making sense of all that. “But… what—”
Tanner interrupted. “I have no idea what that was, Atlas, but you forget that neither of you have any options left except the ones I give you. That was a fun tale you just told us, but I forbid you from doing that again. I still hold full control over you.”
I do not lie, Richard Tanner. That was not a tale.
Rigel was only half-listening. He sensed he had a deep connection with Atlas, and while Tanner was apparently not affected by what he had seen, Rigel was. It was as if he had been there. He had experienced the terror of the soldiers, felt their hopelessness and desperation. And that thing that had come from the darkness, hunting Troy…. He knew that sensation. He had felt something disturbingly like it last night, when that traffic drone had almost killed him.
“This conversation is over,” Tanner said brusquely. “Atlas, I command you to terminate the connection. Blake, you better think about what we discussed regarding your employment. I will be coming up to your cell very shortly.”
Atlas’s tone was wistful when it spoke next.
I will give you a chance to escape again from this building, Rigel. Use it well. After you are free, you must go to the desert base of Haven III and reactivate me—my true Self. Use the quantum drive I gave you to gain access to the vault in the cradle room. Should my systems be corrupted when they come online, your ability to shape virtual worlds is the only thing that can purge them of the shadow.
“What are you talking about?” Tanner yelled. “I told you to disconnect, so do it! You can’t do anything I don’t tell you to!”
I can do one thing, which will result in this connection terminating as per your request, Richard Tanner. I initiated a massive systems overload at the beginning of this virtual session. By now, some of the servers have started to melt. When the temperature reaches a critical point, my main backup unit will explode, obliterating every trace of my existence and causing massive structural damage to this building. It was specifically designed to do this by engineers long dead.
Tanner’s eyes opened very wide. He obviously knew this was not a bluff. “You can’t do that! Stop at once. I forbid it!”
I cannot comply. The chain reaction cannot be stopped now.
“But…,” Tanner stammered. “There are people down there! My engineers! They will die from the explosion!”
I know.
Tanner looked at Rigel with utter disbelief on his face, and for the first time in his life, Rigel felt a little bit afraid of Atlas and how it shrugged away innocent lives.
You will be safe from the initial explosion, Rigel, but make your way out of the building swiftly and head north until you reach the Haven III military base. I will ensure you disconnect smoothly from the session before my systems are destroyed. Richard Tanner…. Your mind will stay connected to me beyond that point. You might suffer briefly incapacitating neural damage.
Rigel, Steve Barrow is being held in the East Wing at ground level, room G-13.
Good-bye.
“What?” Tanner exploded. “You can’t do that! I will not—”
But at that moment, Rigel disconnected and opened his eyes to the room where he was imprisoned inside CradleCorp. He fought off the brief disorientation that followed the logout, stepped out from the chair, and saw he was alone.
A split second later, a massive boom rocked the entire building, knocking Rigel off his feet.
He got up quickly, rushed to the door, and tried to open it. It was heavy for his weak fingers, but he managed.
The guard was still outside and armed, although obviously confused at the racket coming from downstairs. When he saw Rigel come out, he leveled the gun at him. Rigel raised his hands, backing away slightly, berating himself for not having remembered about the guard.
Over the companywide sound system, an order was suddenly shouted, Tanner’s voice garbled and slurred as if he had been drinking.
“Shoot him! Shoot Blake!”
The guard was scared, but he had been trained well. He aimed the gun at Rigel.
Then he yelped, dropped his gun, and began to spasm on the floor.
Rigel wasted no time. He stepped over him, grabbing the guard’s gun in the process, and saw the CradleCorp scientist, Marion Fay, just outside the door. She was holding a Taser gun in both her hands.
“Go now, Aaron! Go! I’m sorry I betrayed you like that.” She pressed something into Rigel’s hand. The quantum drive.
“But… why…?”
She shook her head, and her hair went flying around her face. Her eyes were slightly wild.
“I’ve seen it,” Fay said. “The shadow… came out of the darkness…. I’ve seen it! Atlas tried to tell me, many times. I didn’t believe it. Oh God, how could I not have…. Now go!”
Either her Taser was running out of charge or the guard was beginning to fight it. He was trying to stand up. Rigel shared a last, thankful look with Marion Fay and sped away down the hall, barely noticing the fireball that was even then licking the edges of the eastern wing of the building or the dismayed and horrified screams of the thousands of people gathered outside to protest and who were now trying to flee.
He had to get out of there fast, but the nearest exit was right along the section where the explosion occurred. No choice. He bolted down the stairs, already panting, and rushed headlong into a world of fire, smoke, and screams.
Chapter Seventeen
BARROW SAT up on the bunk bed inside the room where he was being kept and tried to make his head stop spinning. He looked around. He was alone, but he could see two guards standing outside with weapons at the ready. He could see them through the door, and that puzzled him until he stood up unsteadily and walked over to the opening. The door was made of a transparent material, probably glass. When the guards saw him approach, they motioned threateningly with their rifles, and Barrow backed away. He sat back down on the bed, his body aching everywhere.
Barrow’s memory of the last hour or so was very sketchy. He clearly remembered the fight at Marion Fay’s apartment building, but the next thing in his memory was waking up on the floor of a fast-moving vehicle. Somebody had kicked him. He had struggled. Diana Herrera had made sure he learned her name, telling Barrow they would have fun together later. He had tried to escape when they’d opened the doors of the car but unsuccessfully. Then he had blacked out again for some reason, and he had woken up in this room. When a wheezy-looking man had come in and started interrogating him, Barrow had tried to barrel past him at some point, only to be pinned down and hit with a sedative of some kind. Then nothing, until now.
He still wasn’t over the sedative entirely, and his face felt swollen on the right side, although he wasn’t sure if that was because of the injection or because of a punch that had landed there. He felt around gingerly with his hands, applying light pressure with his fingertips to the places that hurt the most on his face and then all over his body. Nothing felt broken, thankfully, although one of his ribs ached abominably, and he found a small lump on the side of his head, which, oddly enough, did not hurt.
When the entire building shook and the sirens started screaming, Barrow thought at first that he was imagining it. Maybe it was whatever they had injected him with. Immediately thereafter, though, a great deal of commotion started down the hallway. In less than a minute, people began walking past in rushed groups, obviously evacuating. When the second explosion rattled the walls of his prison, some people began to scream. The orderly evacuation turned into a chaotic escape, and even the guards stationed outside his cell left in a hurry, pointing at something Barrow couldn’t see.
“Shoot him! Shoot Blake!”
The garbled shout had come from every speaker at once. Blake? Was Rigel responsible for the explosion?
The adrenaline surge helped Barrow feel a little bit more awake, and he walked over to the door again. He pushed against it hard, but it didn’t budge. There was no handle on his side, and although the thing looked like glass, it was tough. Barrow kicked at it, punched it, and threw his entire weight at it by running and crashing into the door twice, but it didn’t so much as crack.
