Proxy, page 27
The video jerked into life, the point of view zooming in on the bed until Stacy saw a tiny, crumpled-looking old man adrift amidst its sheets, an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Raphael, his back to the lens, applied an applicator first to his father’s neck and then to his own.
There was something wrong with the old man’s head. Stacy squinted, at first unsure what she was seeing. Then her stomach flipped, and she swallowed back a sour rush of acid: much of the old man’s skull above the hairline had been removed, and much of his brain matter appeared to be missing. The filaments in their thousands reached inside the brain cavity.
“There’s a message from Amy as well,” said Ray, once the video came to an abrupt end. He took his bracelet back from the elderly proxy. “Here.”
Ray played back the last voice message he’d received from Amy.
Stacy put her fork down, her stomach churning as she listened. The video had been bad enough, but whatever sliver of appetite she’d retained had by now fled her entirely.
“Who was that in the bed?” she managed to ask, breaking a silence that had fallen across the kitchen.
“That was David Markov,” said Isaac, his voice full of grim finality. He had stood and moved closer to the screen. “Or what’s left of him, judging by what I saw. Zero,” he asked, turning to the elderly proxy, “what did you make of all that machinery? It looks like it’s directly wired into his brain—or what’s left of it. An interface of some kind?”
“An interface, yes,” said the proxy. “I believe Amy’s analysis was correct. It appears David Markov is indeed proxying through his own son’s body. But neither, I suspect, is he human any longer.”
“Explain yourself,” said Isaac, his tone sharp.
“It’s clear to me,” the proxy replied, “that the apparatus in the video is the likely end result of the secret project Markov and Finch were working on together. Rather than building an artificial intelligence like myself, I now believe that David Markov has been uploading his consciousness piecemeal into a cybernetic substrate modelled after my own.”
Stacy stared at the proxy. “Are you saying that machine is David Markov?”
“More that the machine is the conduit by which he has uploaded his memories and the structural ontology of his mind to a series of qubit processors designed to mimic the human neural network, but in essence, yes. The process destroys the individual neurones, as is clear from the video, but creates a symbiosis between the organic and machine parts, allowing the consciousness they contain to act as a single and cohesive whole.”
“You can’t possibly figure all that out just from a few seconds of shaky video,” Elijah protested.
“But I can,” said Zero, still speaking through the same body. “The machinery we saw just now is clearly derived from the same principles underpinning my own construction.”
“Zero isn’t human, remember,” Isaac warned. “He doesn’t make random guesses. Zero,” he asked the same proxy, “is the upload process complete, in your opinion?”
“No,” the proxy replied, “but I believe it will be soon, perhaps within days, or even hours. The greater part by far of David Markov’s intellect by now almost certainly resides within a mainframe. It may even already be too late.”
“Too late for what?” Elijah asked.
“You’ve seen for yourselves that Zero can control an effectively unlimited number of hopscotch-linked bodies,” Isaac said. “If David can’t yet do the same already, he’ll be able to, soon enough. When that happens, he’ll be capable of hunting all of us down. All he’d need to do is locate us, then remotely take over anyone linked via hopscotch in our vicinity and use them to try to kill us.”
“Jesus,” Ray muttered. “The gorillas.”
Isaac gave him a piercing stare. “Excuse me?”
“Last night,” Ray explained, “we followed Finch. He met with Raphael—well, David—at a wildlife park. A bunch of gorillas appeared out of nowhere, killed Finch and nearly killed me and Elijah. They acted the same way as the proxies at the Peartree did. Most of the time Markov just stood there watching us with a blank expression.”
“Then that’s it,” said Isaac, his voice hollow. He sank slowly back into his chair, staring off into space. “We’re too late.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
STACY
“Listen,” said Elijah, “I’m only here because I want the answers to some questions. Like, who was trying to kill me, and why, and who Finch was. That’s all I really want to know. All of…this,” he said, waving one hand towards two proxies at that moment occupied with washing and drying dishes, “is beyond me. So why would David Markov want to kill me or anyone else?”
“To protect himself,” Isaac replied, his gaze focused on some far-away point. “Once the transition is complete and he becomes a fully cybernetic organism, he’ll be effectively immortal, and the one thing he’ll be the most concerned with is ensuring his long-term survival.”
Elijah shook his head. “What makes you so sure you know what he’ll do or won’t do?”
“Our species,” Isaac replied mildly, “was born from blood and conflict. We’ll carry that inheritance into the future, whether it’s as flesh and blood humans or something closer to what David Markov is in the process of becoming—if, as I say, he hasn’t already.”
Elijah stared at him, then gestured at several of the proxies with his chin. “So shouldn’t you be worried about Zero?”
Isaac shook his head. “Zero shares none of our petty human foibles. He wants nothing because he desires nothing.” He leaned towards Elijah and tapped the table between them with a finger. “Evolution hasn’t given him desires because he didn’t evolve, at least not in the way we normally think of such processes.” He sat back and shrugged. “There are certainly people in the world deserving of machine immortality. It may even be the future of our species. David Markov, however, is the last man I would wish to have such power.”
“The issue here is time,” said Zero, speaking through the mouth of a young, scruffily-dressed man at that moment rinsing a plate under the tap. “It’s clear by now that he developed hopscotch as a means to place unlimited numbers of human beings under his control for increasingly lengthy periods of time. I have little doubt he’s already working on ways to make that link last indefinitely, and that his ultimate aim is to place as many people as possible under his direct control so that he can use them to shape the world as he desires. That way he can ensure his long-term survival, not just for the next hundred years, but for the next thousand.”
They were all silent after that.
Elijah shook his head violently and slammed the table with a fist. “This is bullshit!” he shouted. “It’s just speculation. You can’t know any of this!”
“Super-intelligent AI has been an inevitability for decades,” Isaac countered, his own voice growing louder. Stacy heard the conviction in his words. “Zero is proof that there are machines smarter than we are, and with the long-term vision that comes with an indefinite lifespan.”
Isaac lifted his shoulders and let them drop again. “The real question is, what kind of AI will that be? Something ultimately benevolent that helps us solve our existing and future problems, or something that takes the worst parts of us and combines it with nearly unlimited power?”
He turned to Stacy. “Your mother lost her life getting this information to us, and we need to make sure her sacrifice means something.” He shifted his attention back to Elijah and to Ray, sitting side by side. “All of us here in this room, right now, are the only people in the world with any idea what Markov is planning. Now we have video proof of what he’s become, we’ve become an active threat to his plans. If we don’t stop him first, he’ll kill all of us, without hesitation, to protect himself.”
“He’s a billionaire who destroyed all our lives pretty much on a whim,” Elijah sneered. “I don’t think we’ve got much chance against someone like that.”
“On the contrary,” said the proxy at the sink, drying his hands on a towel. “The video Miss Cotter provided makes it evident that the upload process is not yet complete. That makes him vulnerable to attack—but not for much longer. We must act now.”
“You and whose army?” snapped Elijah.
The young man through whom Zero was proxying replied with a thin smile. “I would think that was obvious.”
Stacy saw Elijah’s skin pale as the several other proxies gathered in the kitchen all turned to stare at him in silence.
“Holy shit,” Elijah muttered under his breath, slumping lower in his seat.
It struck Stacy then just what Zero and her father were driving at. “What are you talking about?” she demanded of her father. “Launching an assault on him?”
“Anything’s better than waiting for him to come and find us,” Isaac replied. “Which he will, and soon, if we don’t act first.” He looked around at the rest of them. “I know the layout of the Markov estate well enough I can get us in there.”
“You’d be risking these people’s lives,” said Ray, gesturing at the proxies.
The elderly proxy who had been there earlier reappeared at the open kitchen door. “This is unfortunately true,” she said, “hence I’m taking the step of recruiting proxies with military experience to take their place.” She looked at Elijah. “If you’re willing, Mr Waits, you and Mr Thomas can help keep an eye on Stacy here while Isaac travels south to confront Markov with my aid.”
“No way,” said Ray. “I’m going with you.” His tone implied he would brook no argument.
Elijah stared at the ex-cop. “You’re going along with this bullshit?”
“You wanted answers,” said Ray, nodding around the kitchen, “and you got them. What Isaac says makes sense. We know Markov’s a cold-blooded killer, and he’ll stop at nothing unless we act. He sure as hell knows who I am.”
Elijah shook his head. “I didn’t come looking for anything like this.”
“It would be best if you remained here, Mr Waits,” said Zero, “since otherwise your proxy would be at risk of further injury. You’ll have my full protection until matters are hopefully resolved for the better.”
“I don’t understand,” said Stacy. “Military proxies?”
“Professional soldiers—mercenaries, really—willing to rent their bodies out to those who can afford it,” Isaac explained. His voice carried a hint of disgust. “By which I mean they’re paid a very great deal of money.”
Stacy gaped at him. She thought she’d heard it all when it came to proxy, but apparently she’d been wrong.
“They come with military-grade hardware and motor reflexes refined over decades of experience,” one of the other proxies told her. “If they’re seriously injured or crippled, they get enough to live off for the rest of their lives. If they’re killed, it’s enough for their families to do the same.”
Isaac’s mouth had twisted up like he’d tasted something sour. “I don’t like it either,” he told Stacy. “I quite abhor violence of any nature.”
“They’re necessary for their and our protection—” Zero began.
“I know that, Zero!” Isaac snapped.
The proxy fell silent.
Isaac sucked in a breath, darting his head down as if embarrassed by his sudden outburst. “But the cost of failure is so great,” he added more quietly, “I can’t see that we have any choice.”
Elijah dragged himself upright from his chair, leaning heavily on his good leg. “I’m leaving,” he said. “This isn’t my body, and I’m no use to you or anyone else with a fucked-up ankle anyway.”
He limped around the table and extended a hand to Isaac. “Good luck,” he said, grasping the other man’s hand. He nodded to Stacy and then to Ray. “And the rest of you.”
Stacy watched him hobble out of the kitchen without another word. A few seconds later, Stacy heard the front entrance open and close again.
“Why do I feel like he’s abandoning us?” she asked, looking around at the rest of them.
“He got the answers he wanted,” said Ray. He turned to Isaac. “I came in his car. Have you got your own transport from here to Markov’s estate?”
“I should go with you,” said Stacy, before her father could answer. “I’m not sitting around on my arse like some damsel in distress while you ride off to fight the wicked king.”
“No,” said Isaac, his tone final. “If anything goes wrong, at least one of us has to survive to tell others what happened.”
Stacy looked to Ray for help, but he shook his head. “Under any other circumstances,” he told her, “I’d be on your side. But you don’t have the training or experience for this kind of thing. I do.”
“Neither does my father!” Stacy replied, her face growing warm.
“No,” Ray agreed, “but like he said, he can get us in and out of there. And he knows better than any of us what we’re going to be dealing with once we’re there.” He nodded to Isaac. “We should get moving.”
“Agreed,” said Isaac, standing and moving towards the kitchen door.
Stacy felt a churning in her stomach. She didn’t want to lose Isaac so soon after finding him, but she knew by now how wilful he could be, how driven.
He wasn’t, she could see just from the set of his jaw, going to back down.
Instead of pressing her cause further, she stood as well and embraced her father in a hug, burying her face in his jumper. “Please come back alive.”
“I have no intention of doing anything else,” he said softly, his breath warm on her skin.
RAY
Ray followed Isaac outside and into the cool night air. It had stopped raining, bar a few errant drips falling from the branches of the twisted oaks and pines that surrounded the decaying building. Elijah Waits and the Audi they’d arrived in was gone, although Ray caught a flicker of receding headlights far off amidst the woods.
“What about weapons for the rest of us?” Ray asked, glancing back at the boarded-up house. For the moment he and the scientist were alone.
“Zero has made his own choice,” said Isaac, “but I choose not to indulge in such things.”
Past Isaac, Ray noted the silent figure of a proxy standing some distance off amidst the trees surrounding the house and watching them both with a blank expression. He suppressed a shiver.
“You said yourself Markov won’t hesitate to kill us,” said Ray, turning back to Isaac. “You need to be able to defend yourself.”
“No.” Isaac’s face twisted up in defiance. “I will not stoop to his level.”
Christ. “If you want to walk into Markov’s estate unarmed, fine,” Ray spat. “That doesn’t mean I have to do the same.” He stepped towards the edge of the drive and cupped his hands over his mouth. “Zero,” he called over to the watching proxy, “can you spare any weapons?”
“Of course,” said a voice from behind him.
Ray whirled around to see another proxy had appeared at the door of the house. This one was male, with shoulder-length white hair and an affable expression. As Ray watched, the proxy gestured to its counterpart in the woods.
The shadowy figure emerged from the woods to join them on the driveway. Ray saw that the proxy was a boy barely out of his teens, his skinny frame half-hidden beneath a dirty grey parka that drooped to his knees. He withdrew an enormous handgun from the depths of his parka and held it out to Ray, butt-first.
The sooner he left this place with its ghost-like proxies, Ray decided, the better. He took the offered gun and cracked it open, inspecting its chamber.
He looked back up. “Ammunition?”
The young proxy wordlessly reached back inside his parka and lifted out a box of ammunition, handing it to Ray before turning and disappearing back the way he had come.
“And here’s a car for you,” said the white-haired proxy, pointing along the road.
A minute later a driverless panel-van came around the side of the mansion and drew up next to them.
“I want to be clear about one thing,” Ray said to Isaac. “Until we get down there and you figure out how to fix this mess, I’m in charge. Agreed?”
Isaac nodded warily. “Agreed.”
STACY
When Stacy woke late the next afternoon in an upstairs bedroom, eyes gummy and mouth dry, it took a few seconds to register that something was different. Where before the house had always been filled with the sound of murmuring voices and shuffling feet, it was now inexplicably silent.
It was so quiet that, for one terrible moment, Stacy imagined that Zero and his multitude of proxies had abandoned the house and her with it.
She dressed quickly in the fresh set of clothing Zero had left her; heavy boots, camouflage trousers and a thick, knit jumper, as if the machine anticipated they would be doing a lot of walking.
Zero had removed the plaster from her arm, but it was still covered with visible bruises, as were her ribs. He’d also given her another couple of shots of something that further dulled the pain, although that was fading fast, too. She knew she’d been lucky to emerge from her experiences relatively unscathed. At the very least, it was now much easier to get herself dressed.
On her way to the stairs, she glanced inside a room and saw a new female proxy with a buzzcut standing at a window, peering out at the forest through binoculars. She was dressed in camouflage and had a soldier’s bearing.
“Zero?” she asked. “Where are all the rest of you?”
The proxy lowered her binoculars and turned to look at Stacy with a distracted expression. “Good, you’re awake. I’ve sent most of the proxies home.”
Stacy felt a small thrill of alarm at this. “Why?”
The proxy returned her attention to the window. “I lost contact with several of them in the early hours of this morning,” she explained. “Just prior to losing contact, they—or rather, I—sighted a number of unknown people moving through the woods.” The proxy paused for a moment. “I’m…not sure what happened to them.”
