Proxy, page 31
“I need to get up,” Isaac insisted, even though his voice was weak and his breath came in rapid gasps. “Please.”
Ray went to kneel beside him. “You’re too badly hurt to do anything.”
“Isaac is right,” said Zero, his tone insistent. “There’s too much at stake, Mr Thomas. We need to finish what we started.”
“I don’t even know what it is you started,” Ray snapped, “because neither of you seem inclined to tell me the real reason we’re here. So I ask you again: why did you give me a gun that couldn’t fire?”
“To avoid unnecessary damage to the equipment we require,” said the proxy.
Ray allowed himself to think about doing to the proxy what he’d just done to the guard, even though he knew it would bring him about as much satisfaction as beating up a toaster—not to mention that in actuality he’d be beating up someone with no connection to the machine other than that he had rented his skin to an anonymous third party.
No, Ray thought again, working to push his anger back down: this was Isaac’s fault. He’d given the thing its orders.
“I could have died,” said Ray, stabbing a finger at Isaac. “And if I’d had a working gun I could have saved you from being shot.”
“Being shot doesn’t change the inevitable,” said Isaac, speaking with difficulty.
“You need to get to a hospital,” said Ray. “If you don’t…”
“He won’t survive that long,” said Zero. “He’s losing too much blood too quickly. Even if we could get him past the other guards and out of the estate, it’d still be too late.”
None of this makes sense, Ray wanted to say.
He watched as Zero first made sure Isaac was settled, then stood, turning their attention to the console at which Isaac had been working. The proxy tapped rapidly at the keyboard, presumably finishing whatever the machine’s creator had begun.
Moments later, all the screens turned black rather than red, then apparently rebooted.
The proxy stepped away from the console and towards the bed.
“I need your help to get Markov out of this bed, Mr Thomas,” they said, turning to look at him.
“Please, Mr Thomas,” Isaac said weakly. The pool of blood beneath him had grown wider. “Do as Zero says.”
Unsure what else to do, Ray stepped over to the bed. Then, to his surprise and shock, the thick bundles of threads began to retract from the old man’s skull, sliding back into the device from which they were suspended in their uncountable thousands.
“It’s clear the upload process is almost complete,” said the proxy. “There’s only just enough brain matter remaining inside David Markov’s skull to host his son’s intellect.”
Ray stared at the old man’s ruined skull with a horrid fascination. “Raphael can’t possibly be in there,” he croaked. “I don’t care if his father is still breathing or not.”
“If Raphael survives,” said the proxy, “I suspect he’s in a dormant state, rather like the coma we all believed his father was in all these years. It raises fascinating questions about the very nature of human consciousness…”
“Whatever you need me to do,” Ray snapped, “make it fast. I’m amazed the other guards aren’t here already.”
“You need not concern yourself with them just yet,” the proxy reassured him. “I’ve created a distraction.”
“A distraction?” Ray stared at the proxy. “What kind of distraction?”
“I had one of my other proxies set fire to several outbuildings and also the wing of the mansion furthest from us. With any luck, that’ll give us enough time to do what we need to.”
Ray clutched one of the steel railings running down both sides of the bed like a sailor caught on deck in the middle of a storm. “How? By burning the fucking place down around our ears? What happened to protecting the equipment?”
“A necessary risk,” the proxy said briskly, unplugging monitoring devices from the old man’s body and then pulling away the oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose. “The blaze is extremely unlikely to directly interfere with our work before we are finished.”
The proxy stepped around to the bottom of the bed and took hold of both of Markov’s feet. “Now take his shoulders, Mr Thomas,” said the proxy. “We need to move him to the floor.”
Ray thought about asking why, but maybe the machine was right about them not having enough time. He did as he was told, grasping the old man by his shoulders and, working together, they lifted him up and out of the bed, placing him on the floor.
Markov felt much lighter than Ray had expected. By some miracle his chest still rose and fell, but as they placed him on the floor, the old man drew one last breath and then grew still.
Whatever spark of life remained within his flesh had most definitely departed—and Raphael, presumably, now found himself back inside his own body for perhaps the first time in many, many years, wherever it might at that moment be.
“He’s dead,” said Ray, looking up at the proxy. “Does that mean it’s over?”
“I’m afraid not,” Zero replied. “The vast majority of David Markov’s intellect now resides within the upload device. That, in turn, retains control over my former proxies even as we speak.”
Great. “Okay…so what does that mean?”
“It means, unfortunately,” said the proxy, “that losing his flesh and blood body has made little if any difference, and David Markov is now an entirely cybernetic being like myself. We were too late.”
“So we’ve failed?” asked Ray, a tight knot of worry in his stomach. “Then shouldn’t we get the hell out of here while we still can?”
Zero, looking at him through the eyes of a tattooed proxy, studied him as if gauging its next answer. “As you perhaps realize by now,” Zero said at last, “we haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
“Really.” Ray nodded sharply. “That’s the least of what you’ve done.”
“But trust me,” Zero continued, “when I say we’re not done here. First, I need you to help me get Isaac into the bed.”
“First,” Ray spat, “tell me the truth.”
“I will,” Zero promised. “But please. Let’s take care of Isaac first. Or all this really will have been for nothing.”
There’s nothing we can do for him, Ray wanted to say. Indeed, the machine had said as much; but there was so much here he didn’t understand that Ray didn’t see he had any choice except to go along with what the machine wanted.
At least, until he understood things more clearly—if he ever did.
Working together, they lifted Isaac up from the floor and positioned him in the bed only just vacated by David Markov. He was still conscious, but only just. Ray’s jaws clenched when he saw how much blood the scientist had lost.
When he looked down at Isaac lying there, and then back up at the machinery suspended overhead, he had a sudden inkling of what the machine intended to do.
“The truth is,” said Zero, hurrying back over to the console, “that Isaac has been seriously ill for some time.”
Ray helped Isaac get himself as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances. He was conscious, but Ray could see he had perhaps even less time than Zero realized. “He didn’t get help?”
“I risked revealing myself if I sought treatment,” said Isaac, who looked like he’d aged decades in just the last few minutes. His eyelids fluttered weakly. “And the moment I finally re-engaged with the world, Finch captured me.”
He swallowed with obvious difficulty and raised one trembling hand, placing it on Ray’s forearm. “Once we saw Amy’s video and realized David Markov’s intentions, Zero made a thorough study of whatever papers and research he could locate, however tangentially related to Markov’s uplift device.” His gaze shifted to the myriad silver threads hanging above him. “What he found strongly suggests that a device of this nature would be capable of uploading a human mind at an exponentially faster rate than Markov appears to have been willing to allow it to when uploading his own mind.”
Ray had caught a few hours’ unsatisfying sleep on the drive down from the Kielder Forest, but even so he dimly recalled overhearing Zero and Isaac discussing something along these lines. At the time it had made little sense to him, but now he wondered if he should try to stop, rather than to help, the dying man.
And perhaps it was precisely such concerns that had led to him being given a gun that wouldn’t work.
“You mean,” he asked, “that you want to turn yourself into the same kind of thing as Markov?”
Distant shouts came from somewhere outside, and Ray caught the scent of something burning.
“What Zero proposes,” Isaac continued, his voice now reduced to a faint whisper, “is to overwrite David Markov’s uploaded intelligence with my own. Even if we fail, doing so will destroy the larger part of whatever Markov has become. What remains would be too scattered and disorganized to ever present a threat either to ourselves or to humanity at large. But if we’re wrong, or we fail…” Isaac coughed, and Ray saw blood on his lips. “Then at least I won’t live to see what comes after.” He drew a deep and rattling breath.
“Easy,” said Ray. “Try to conserve your energy.”
“David seems to have taken the cautious approach,” Isaac continued, “spreading the upload process over many years to minimize the risk of errors.” He shook his head. “But to exist so long with his body reduced in such a way, however much of his intelligence resided elsewhere… I can’t imagine how his sanity could have survived.”
“The rest of Markov’s security detail has the blaze under control,” Zero announced in a voice as calm and unaffected as a weather report. “We don’t have long before they return.”
“Listen,” said Isaac. “In case this doesn’t work, I want to tell you why I created Zero.”
“You already told me,” said Ray.
“That was only part of it.”
As he spoke, Zero set the trolley Isaac had knocked over back upright. He quickly replaced everything that had fallen from it, wheeled it next to the bed, then selected a safety razor.
Ray gave the proxy a questioning look.
“I need to shave Isaac’s head,” Zero explained, then motioned to Ray to get out of the way.
Feeling numb, Ray moved to one side, and the proxy got to work.
“The truth is,” Isaac explained, “someday soon humanity will find itself sharing this world with machines like Zero, machines vastly more intelligent than the likes of you and me. His very existence proves such a future is inevitable. The only way our species can survive is by becoming more like him.”
A fanatical gleam in Isaac’s gaze grew more evident even as his voice became audibly weaker. “Proxy could have been the first step down that road, if only we’d had the maturity to use it properly.” His grip on Ray’s arm lessened. “I fear that day has not yet arrived,” he continued, his voice now barely more than a whisper, “but it will, because it must.”
“I don’t think most people want to be machines, Isaac,” said Ray.
“They must,” Isaac said fiercely as Zero finished up. “Life is a process of unending change.” He took a firmer grip of Ray’s arm. “Stasis is death, and so life evolves, Mr Thomas, because it must. Do you see? Life evolves.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
STACY
They fled, the grassy soil uneven beneath their feet. Elijah had already warned Stacy several times to watch her footing. If she injured herself, they were both as good as dead.
Elijah did the best he could, given his own injuries, using a fallen branch as a crutch and occasionally leaning on Stacy as they worked hard to put more distance between themselves and the safe house.
From time to time they heard shots or voices echoing through the forest, but these grew more distant as time passed. They navigated as best they could by moonlight, but the fact remained that neither of them really had any idea where they were going.
After a while, Stacy started to think exhaustion would be the end of them. She didn’t know how she found the energy to keep going, but somehow Elijah kept limping along without once faltering in his pace, even when they scaled the steep slopes of a wooded hill and despite the pain written deep in the lines of his brow.
Worse, Elijah’s proxy session could end at any second, and she’d be lost out here with an injured stranger who did not understand what was going on. Yet he kept going, kept chiding Stacy to keep moving even when despair threatened to overwhelm her—even though he owed her nothing and barely knew her.
“I can hear water,” Elijah said at one point, his voice barely audible over the wind that rattled the surrounding trees.
They were making their way down a darkened slope. The moon had briefly vanished behind clouds, rendering the surrounding landscape almost invisible. The slope became increasingly vertiginous as they worked their way down until Stacy had no choice but to grab hold of roots and random outcrops of rock to keep from tumbling to the foot of the hill.
Hearing Elijah grunt, Stacy peered through the darkness until she could just about see him making his way down the slope near to her.
Then he lost his footing and went crashing downslope.
“Elijah! What—?”
Distracted, Stacy lost her own footing, skidding the rest of the way down the near-vertical slope on her rear. A thin shriek escaped her lips. Pebbles skittered down around her, and she landed in freezing water that immediately soaked through her clothes.
Moving quickly, she hauled herself back upright, cursing and muttering to herself. The moon had reappeared from behind the clouds, revealing that she stood at the bottom of a steep-sided channel.
She turned this way and that until she saw Elijah, his face streaked with sweat and mud, struggling back upright with the aid of his improvised crutch. He’d landed in the water close by.
He nodded to her, then glanced up the slope of the hill towards which they’d been heading. His eyes grew wide, his expression registering dismay and shock.
Stacy’s own blood turned cold when she followed his gaze to see someone standing on the slope of that other hill. It was too dark to make out who it was.
“It’s me,” the figure called down. “Zero. I’ve been looking for you.”
Elijah and Stacy exchanged a look of mutual alarm. Could they trust Zero not to attack them again?
But then again, thought Stacy, why would the machine greet them, if that were the case?
Zero didn’t wait for an answer, and the proxy picked its way down the slope to join them. Stacy found herself confronted by a huge, slab-faced man who had to be well over six feet in height. He had a flattened nose and hands that looked like they could strangle an elephant. He might have been a weightlifter or a wrestler.
“Most of my other proxies have been compromised,” Zero explained, the proxy’s voice deep and rumbling. “I’m assuming one or more of them attacked you.”
“Is that right?” Elijah hissed at the proxy. He gripped his improvised crutch as if ready to swing it at the other man’s head.
“Please let me reassure you that the proxy through which I’m speaking to you is quite safe,” said Zero. “I can get you out of these woods, but you have to follow me.”
Stacy looked again at Elijah, who shrugged as if to say what choice do we have?
“Come on,” the proxy said, turning and making its way back up the same slope it had descended. “We have to hurry.”
By the time she and Elijah joined Zero on the crest of the hill, Stacy was at a point somewhere far beyond mere exhaustion. Her soaked and freezing clothes clung to her skin, and when she looked back the way they had come she saw the flickering light of torches moving through the woods a half mile or so behind them.
With a rush of shock and panic, she realized that their pursuers were quickly gaining on them.
“What happened back there?” Elijah gasped, clinging to his crutch. “Why the hell did the other proxies attack us like that?”
The proxy raised his hands in a placating gesture. It was the most human thing Stacy had seen Zero do, as if in just the last couple of days he had absorbed most of the subtleties of body language.
“All I can tell you,” said Zero, “is that a number of the bodies under my control were somehow compromised by David Markov. I’m discussing alternative strategies at this moment with both Isaac and Mr Thomas.”
The breath caught in Stacy’s throat. “They’re all right?”
The proxy’s gaze shifted away from hers to scan the woods around the hill. “Everything is going more or less to plan,” Zero replied. “We’re exposed here. We should get back down into the trees.” He pointed into the darkness. “I have a car parked a few miles away in that direction. I’m afraid the terrain is too difficult to get it any closer than this.”
They resumed walking, making much faster progress now that the proxy was available to help Elijah along. Even so, Stacy could feel her own pace slowing as they once again descended into the forest proper, until finally she stumbled to a halt.
“I can’t go on,” she moaned, one trembling hand pressed against a tree. “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
“Bullshit,” said Elijah. He gestured to the proxy. “Don’t help me, help her.”
The proxy let go of Elijah and took Stacy by the shoulder, leading her gently away from the tree and on through the woods and letting her lean on him as they moved.
Stacy knew she couldn’t go on much longer. No matter how much she willed herself to keep moving, she could feel her limbs growing weaker, her steps more faltering.
After a while they came to a river that looked far wider than the stream they’d earlier encountered and, Stacy suspected, far deeper.
“Is there any other way across?” asked Elijah, doubt written in the lines of his face.
“I’m afraid not,” the proxy replied. “Not without taking a lengthy detour we can’t afford.”
Shouts echoed through the woods behind them, and Stacy’s heart clenched in her chest.
