Proxy, page 13
They emerged in the rear of a charity shop. Walking out through the front entrance, they found yet another car waiting outside with yet another driver.
Isaac guided Stacy into the rear of this new car and, to her increasing consternation, also addressed its driver as Zero.
He did the same with the driver of the next car as well, finding it inside a multi-storey car park.
By then, she was almost too afraid to ask Isaac what was really going on. Fear sank long, sharp claws deep beneath her skin; something was going on she didn’t understand, yet she was clearly at the centre of it.
By the time they finally exited the city, Stacy and Isaac were ensconced within a sleek silver bullet of a car, the hum of its batteries barely audible, if at all. It seemed to glide over the road, as if it couldn’t bear the thought of coming into contact with crude tarmac. The windows were tinted and entirely opaque to anyone trying to see in.
They passed through farmland and small towns. This time, Zero—whoever or whatever the Zeros were—took the form of a young man barely a few years older than Stacy. Expensively if casually dressed, he looked to Stacy like some young hotshot lawyer or financial consultant on his day off.
The regular hum of the batteries sent Stacy into a deep and, for the first time in days, entirely natural sleep. When she next woke, the sun had moved a long way across the sky and they were rumbling down a long driveway lined on either side by trees.
A mansion or perhaps a hotel became intermittently visible through branches and they soon pulled up outside the front entrance of a huge, rambling edifice of a house. Most of its windows were boarded up.
‘Zero’ stepped out of the car and opened the door for her. From the way the light slanted through the trees, Stacy guessed it was early evening. The lawns surrounding the mansion were unkempt and overgrown.
“Where are we?” she asked Isaac, getting out and looking around.
“Somewhere safe.” He frowned, then turned to their driver. “It is safe, isn’t it?”
The latest Zero nodded. “I can’t guarantee it’s one hundred percent secure,” he replied, “since that would be statistically impossible. However, it is very remote.”
“Remote or not, if Raphael wants to find us, he can,” Isaac warned the younger man. “Remember, he found me.”
Zero nodded. “Which is why I recommend that we get you both inside and out of sight straight away.” He nodded towards tall wooden doors that stood partway open, a darkened vestibule visible beyond. Figures, concealed by shadows, moved within. “I’ve made some preparations in advance of our arrival,” he added.
Isaac stared at the mansion and then back at the younger man. “For God’s sake, how many people are you using now? And where did you find all of them?”
“There are a dozen either in or near the house under my control,” Zero replied. “Far less than I used in the Peartree.”
“And the ones here came from where, exactly?” Isaac demanded.
“There are several villages within a twenty-mile radius,” Zero replied. “Unemployment is high in this part of the country, and so I had little trouble locating a number of habitual users of hopscotch whom I could hire directly without having to co-opt any live proxy sessions they were engaged in. I assure you, Isaac, I’m making use of them only out of necessity. They’re being well compensated for their time.”
Isaac didn’t answer at first, his expression flat and hard. “Compensated how?” he asked. “Where is the money coming from?”
The younger man blinked at him. “I’m drawing on certain discretionary funds within Telop. The money should be untraceable.”
“We will not make a habit of this kind of thing,” Isaac informed the younger man. “Is that understood?”
“Of course.”
Stacy listened, utterly baffled. There was something curiously childlike about the younger man. The way he spoke and the way he looked at Isaac gave her the distinct sense he was determined to win Isaac’s approval.
It had been much the same with all the others whom they had encountered following her escape from the hospital. They all spoke the same way, as well as sharing the same name.
Stacy shivered without knowing why.
Isaac turned to her and gestured towards the house. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”
The smell of mildew made her nose wrinkle as she followed the two men inside the mansion, which was clearly derelict. From inside a doorway came the sound of shuffling feet. A broad staircase set at the centre of the hall led up into darkness.
The building was most likely another casualty of the post-pandemic years. Empty and abandoned buildings that belonged to those who had succumbed littered the countryside up and down the British Isles.
“Where did you find this place?” asked Isaac, gazing around.
“It belongs to a Telop subsidiary,” Zero replied. “Or rather, the land does. They intended it for some research project or other, but the plans fell through years ago.”
Isaac frowned. “Why Telop? Isn’t that risky?”
“It’s more a matter of hiding in plain sight,” Zero replied. “Telop own thousands of such properties all across the country, many unused and many acquired in the years following Pandemic Two. My hope is they won’t expect us to be hiding in one of their own properties.”
Isaac nodded, his manner distracted. “It’ll do for now.”
Stacy stepped away from the conversation and towards a door through which she could hear movement. Past the door, she saw a kitchen with an old-style log-burning stove, now silent and cold. Cardboard boxes and bundles of discarded shrink-wrap lay scattered about the floor, and two men and a woman were busily opening yet more boxes. They had placed a kettle and a portable battery unit on the floor, along with various pieces of camping equipment and a pair of new-looking rucksacks that still had their sales tags on them.
There was a kitchen table that looked new, and four wooden chairs, also new. Assembly instructions lay on the floor near them.
One man was barely more than a boy, with a pencil-thin neck and a prominent Adam’s apple. The second man was large and burly with tattoos beneath his rolled-up sleeves. He looked to be in his late forties. The woman, perhaps thirty- or thirty-five, wore a dark- and expensive-looking wool suit.
Once again, Stacy found herself struck by the disparity of the people she had encountered since fleeing the hospital, as if each of them had been selected entirely randomly from out of the general population.
The boy with the prominent Adam’s apple saw her standing just outside the open door and stopped working. Then his tattooed companion, and the woman in the business suit, turned to regard her as if alerted to her presence by some unseen signal. All three wore the same supernaturally calm expressions.
Stacy took a step back, then turned to see Isaac’s companion regarding her with that same look of calm curiosity.
If not for Isaac’s presence, she would have fled the house immediately and taken her chances in the surrounding woods.
“They’ll make you some tea if you like,” said Isaac’s companion. “We’ll be able to cook something soon as well.”
“I guess it’s time we talked about Zero,” said Isaac, his expression sympathetic.
Together, Isaac and Stacy explored the mansion, starting with the upper floor. They set up camp in a room that had a single, huge floor-to-ceiling mirror mounted on one wall. The glass was filthy, but intact, but more importantly the room was in better condition than any other.
Gazing at her reflection, Stacy could see how hollow-eyed and exhausted she looked. When they went back downstairs, another of Isaac’s seemingly endless supply of silent helpers gave them each cold faux-beef sandwiches that they ate by the light of a kerosene lamp in the kitchen. They drank tea made with the kettle, now wired into the battery unit, with water from a six-gallon canister.
Isaac’s helpers shuffled out of the room and closed the door to give them some privacy. The moment they departed, Stacy let out a sigh that rattled against the back of her throat.
Isaac gave her a knowing look. “Giving you the creeps?”
“A lot,” Stacy admitted. “Sorry. But who the hell are they? And what’s with them all having the same name?”
“Look,” said Isaac, “you know I used to work for Telop back in the 2030s.”
“Sure,” she said. “From before I was born. You told me.”
Isaac’s expression grew intent. “But I didn’t tell you much about what I was doing there. I didn’t talk about it because I was afraid our messages to each other, encrypted or not, might be intercepted by algorithms designed to recognize specific keywords.”
“Intercepted by who?” asked Stacy. “Raphael?”
“By people working for him, yes. My primary field of research was in artificial intelligence.”
“Sure.” She nodded. “Automated planes and cars, that kind of thing? I knew that already.”
“That wasn’t my real work,” Isaac explained. “They put me in charge of a blue-sky research team.”
The kerosene flame flickered, sending the shadows around Isaac’s face briefly dancing. “The aim was to build a true thinking machine,” he continued, taking a sip of tea. “Specifically, I was doing work on synthetic neural networks designed to mimic the higher-level reasoning skills of a human being.”
“So…a computer?”
A pained look crossed Isaac’s face. “To put it crudely, yes. The machine we created needed a name, an identity. I intended it to be a prototype for a first generation of higher-level fully cognitive AIs. So I called it Zero.”
It took a moment for what Isaac was saying to sink in. Stacy’s eyes grew round. “But…those people are human. Aren’t they…?”
“Let me finish,” said Isaac. “I designed Zero not just to mimic humans, but to be smarter than them. Smart enough to look at the problems facing the world and come up with solutions we mere humans couldn’t possibly conceive of.” He shrugged. “One of the first tasks I set Zero was to find some means by which people might see the world through each other’s eyes. Something that could reduce conflicts and misunderstandings, whether cultural, political or otherwise.” His mouth curled in a gentle smile. “Smart or not, I didn’t expect him to create a solution that so literally matched my request.”
Stacy put down the remains of her sandwich, her hunger gone. “Wait...are you talking about proxy? You’re making it sound like you’re the one who invented it.”
Isaac grinned and shook his head. “Not me, no,” he corrected her. “Zero created proxy.”
With a shock, she saw that he was entirely serious.
“But according to everything I’ve ever heard, someone anonymously uploaded the recipe to some website.” She swallowed, her throat suddenly paper-dry. “Are you saying that was you?”
“I’m getting to that. Naturally, I was excited Zero had come up with something so astonishing in response to a simple request.” Isaac’s smile grew wan. “Unfortunately, I underestimated David Markov, Raphael’s father. He was still in control of Telop at that time, and his only interest in proxy lay in its potential military applications.”
“…military applications?”
Isaac’s smile faded. “A spy could proxy with an enemy soldier, for instance, then walk his body onto a military base and wreak havoc. Or the same spy could take over the body of the leader of an enemy nation and have him do or say just about anything. Or simply take over one of his advisers and assassinate that same leader. Nobody would know who to trust ever again.”
Isaac’s mouth twisted up in disgust as he spoke. “I should have seen it coming. But I let myself be blinded by what I’d achieved with Zero.”
If not for everything she’d witnessed in just the last few hours, Stacy might have struggled to believe him. Instead, she nodded mutely.
“Anyway,” he continued, his voice fractionally brighter, “I threatened to disrupt the research and prevent it from continuing. David reacted by barring me from any work to do with either Zero or with proxy. I swore then that I would do anything to stop him and Telop misusing either Zero or proxy. So I did.”
“You did it,” said Stacy, her voice a mixture of awe and horror. “You’re the one who put it online.”
Isaac nodded. “I modified the recipe so it could be reproduced using only the most advanced 3D medical printers available at the time. That way, I thought, rather than being locked away in some mil-tech lab, proxy could enable humanity to see its commonalities rather than its divisions.” His expression grew grim. “Instead, it became a tool for exploitation and murder.”
“Did David Markov find out what you’d done?”
“It couldn’t have been anyone but me. David knew that. By then, both Zero and proxy had been classified as military secrets, and that made me the subject of a manhunt the moment I released proxy into the public domain. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision, you understand—I did a lot of preparation in advance. When the time came, I went…off-grid, as they say.”
“Where did you go?” Stacy asked, rapt.
“First, I went to Mexico, later Chile. They’re good places to disappear, if you know how. I’d sequestered money in anonymous accounts and used it to build myself a new identity.”
“This is a lot to take in,” said Stacy, staring down at her sandwich.
“Of course.” Isaac nodded. “I’ve waited a long time to tell you all this. And there’s more.” He stifled a yawn and Stacy saw just how exhausted he was. “Much more.”
“But these people,” she reminded him. “You haven’t explained why you call them by the same name as your machine. Unless they’re…” She paused a moment, her eyes growing wide. “Oh.”
Isaac nodded. “Proxy.”
“But…a machine! How could it proxy with people? And so many all at once!”
“Excellent questions,” Isaac agreed. “And ones with very technical answers.” He yawned openly this time. “All in good time.”
“But if Zero’s still operating from inside Telop,” Stacy pressed, “then why doesn’t Raphael know he’s talking to you or using it to control all these people?”
Isaac stood and stretched. “More questions! I need to sleep, and so do you.”
Stacy shook her head. “Like you expect me to sleep with all this going through my head?”
“Well, all right then,” said Isaac. “During my years on the run, Zero was effectively mothballed when he failed to provide the Markov’s with any further miracle technologies they could exploit.” Despite his fatigue, a grin spread across Isaac’s face. “But they never shut him down entirely. I can only imagine what Raphael might think were he to learn what Zero’s been up to behind his back all these years—starting with remaining in constant contact with me. I did create it, after all.”
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
RAY
Ray had to navigate his way around half a dozen narrow village roads before he finally found the address he was looking for. The GPS of his hire car appeared to have difficulty believing any such place existed.
After some exploration and asking random people for directions, he at last pulled up outside a cottage on a lane lined with tall ash trees, a nearby motorway rumbling with London-bound traffic. Stepping up to the front door he saw a doorplate that read ‘COTTER, A.’.
There was no response when he knocked on the door. After a minute he tried again, and then again.
Just when he was ready to assume Amy Cotter wasn’t home, Ray heard movement from around the rear of the cottage. Making his way through a low wooden gate set to one side of the cottage, he spied Amy Cotter kneeling by a row of plants in a small garden to its rear, trowel in hand.
She glanced up, clearly startled to see him. Standing, she brushed dirt from her jeans.
“Mr Thomas.” Her voice sounded tight and nervous. “How did you know where to find me?”
“It’s probably best you don’t know the answer to that question,” he replied. “I’ve got some news for you.”
Amy regarded him warily. “Is it anything to do with the mob that kidnapped Stacy?”
Ray nodded.
“I see,” said Amy, gripping her trowel as if she expected to have to defend herself with it. “I…saw some of what happened on the news. Naturally I’ve been very worried.”
“I tried to call you several times today, Miss Cotter,” said Ray, taking a step closer to her. “I came all the way out here because I felt concerned for your safety with everything that’s been going on. Why didn’t you answer my calls?”
“I was quite inundated with calls from journalists,” said Amy, looking away. “Fortunately, they didn’t find it as easy to locate my home as you seem to have. But since you’re here, I regret to inform you I no longer require your services.”
She said it without once meeting his eyes. Ray saw how flustered she looked, the words coming out tight and clipped.
“Why?” he asked her.
“Does it matter? You’re welcome to keep the retainer I paid you, Mr Thomas, so long as you—”
“Ray is fine.”
“Please leave,” she said, her voice taking on a harder edge. Clearly, she’d recovered from the shock of his unexpected appearance. “You had no right to come to my home without my knowledge or permission.”
“I’m here because I don’t think you’ve been honest with me,” said Ray, pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans to show he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Nonsense,” Amy spat back at him. “I’ve been nothing but entirely straight with you!”
“You weren’t there when that mob swarmed the building,” said Ray, stepping close enough to her that she flinched back slightly. “I was, and I’ve seen nothing like it in my life. They acted with a common purpose, snatching Stacy from out of her bed before…vanishing with her.”
“Well, I can’t explain that,” she said, her shoulders sagging.
“When you first approached me, I thought it was nothing more than some domestic issue. But after what I saw happen inside the Peartree, it’s clear there’s a great deal more than that going on here.” Ray stepped closer again, fixing her with a hard stare. “Then I began to think maybe you hadn’t told me everything I needed to know.”
