Killswitch, page 17
“I know,” Rin said. “But I can’t think of anything else to do at the moment.”
“Can we take control of the balloon?” I asked. “Can we steer it?”
“Sort of. The balloon steers by reading satellite data and rising or falling into air currents that push us around,” Rin said. “Also, we can turn the individual panels of the envelope light or dark, which can warm the air on that side, making it less dense. That gives us some push in that direction.”
“But not much.”
“No,” she admitted. “It’s weak and slow.”
“Oh.”
“Or,” Rin added, “We can we spill the air from the envelope and land in the middle of nowhere. Which will happen eventually anyway when we run out of fuel for the burners.”
“How far can we go?”
“I have no idea,” Rin said. “Fuel tank’s at about half and we have three extra tanks. Figure a tank a day if we’re careful. But the longer we’re in the air, the better the chances we’ll be spotted.” She gave me a hard smile. “I don’t think we filed a flight plan.”
Now I had to ask the hard question.
“Rin,” I said tentatively. “What are you planning to do?” I meant in the long run.
Her face darkened.
“Planning?” She spat out the word. “There’s no planning! Brian—’’ she stopped and bit her lip, then continued, “—Brian’s gone. But he told me to watch your back, so that’s what I’m doing. Beyond that, I haven’t got a clue.” She looked at me fiercely. “You’re the one with the great plans. You tell me.” I ignored her tone of bitter sarcasm.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, either.”
The rest of the day was even more miserable. Rin looked moodily out at the sky. Once, we saw a black dot on the horizon that might have been a Unity ship or another balloon, but it never approached. Other than that, the sky was so blue and cloudless it hurt my eyes.
We were heading west. From time to time I glanced over the side. Far below us, the land turned hilly, with patches of greenery that seemed lush when compared with the stark desert we’d left behind. Our shadow raced ahead of us over the land.
By evening we had reached what used to be the Arizona border. It was nothing but craters. The wind kept pushing us west. Rin didn’t speak to me. For once, I didn’t mind. I had nothing to say. The sun went down and it became chilly. We ate rat bars in silence, and I hunkered down again and managed— I don’t know how— to sleep.
RIN SHOOK ME. HARD.
“I’m awake!” I said. “What is it?”
“Let me in,” she said urgently.
“What?”
“LET ME IN!”
“Oh,” I said. “You’re not Rin and I’m not awake. It’s you. The ghost.”
“Let me in!” the phony Rin demanded. “It’s coming.”
“All right, enough is enough,” I said. “You just keep repeating yourself. What’s coming? Who are you? Why are you in my head?”
Rin looked at me, blinked, and stared at me with confusion. “I don’t know,” she said. “I have to grow to know that. I’m hungry.”
“For what?” I asked. “Are you some kind of vampire? A bio virus?”
“Kernel,” Rin said. “I have a mission. I need knowledge to achieve it. I need to know more about myself.” She stared at me intently.
“I need your help,” she added. “You’ve got to Immerse and let me roam.”
“If you really were Rin, you’d know that’s impossible,” I said. “In case you don’t know my situation, we’re running away because everybody is now trying to kill me.”
“I know. I access your short-term memories.”
“What? You’ve been spying on me? Did they leave spyware behind when they probed me?” I wasn’t happy about that concept.
“No, probe damaged our connection. I can’t control you. We must work together.” Rin paused and seemed to be trying to think of something. Then she said tentatively, “Is the word I need ‘cooperate?’”
“How about enslave?”
Rin shook her head. “Friends don’t do that.” She smiled. “We’re friends. Close friends.”
“Now I know you’re not Rin.”
“No,” she said. “I’m part of you.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “So, it’s true. I’m crazy.”
“No. Chosen. Special. The last.”
“You said that before. The last what?”
“I don’t know,” Rin said again. She shook her head in frustration. “I need data.”
“Data? Now you’re talking like a computer? Are you some sort of AI?”
“No!” Rin said angrily. “Kernel! I’m not the enemy!”
That was interesting. “What do you mean?” I pressed.
“I DON’T KNOW!” It sounded exactly like Rin when she was exasperated. Even the expression was perfect Rin. “Open up. Immerse! I need data!”
“If I open up here to the Immersion, I could be tracked.” I was beginning to be exasperated myself.
That actually shut Rin up. Or whatever had Rin’s face. It bit its lip the way I had seen Rin do when she was thinking. I found myself focusing on those lips. Rin screwed up her face in a frown.
“Your endocrine system is stimulated. Your glandular activity is blocking our conversation. I will use another image.”
“No, that’s okay—’’ I began but Rin was gone and I was staring at Gollum, who leered at me with bulbous, watery eyes.
“Cannot Immerse?” Gollum whined. “What to do? What to do? Tricksy It is. But we’s got to be tricksier. Oh!” Gollum blinked in surprise. “Just remembered!”
“What?” I asked with an odd sense of urgency. “What have you remembered?”
Gollum gave me a twisted smile. “Where the rest of me is.”
RIN SHOOK ME. HARD.
“Stop saying my name!” she said.
I opened my eyes. “What?”
“You were moaning and saying my name.”
“I did what?” I said blearily. I was still groggy.
She punched me in the chest. I gasped and came fully awake. Then she leaned close. “Leave me alone,” she said. “Brian said to keep you safe. He didn’t say I had to like you. Don’t talk to me and don’t look at me and whatever you’re doing with me in your dreams, just stop it.” She pulled a rat bar from her pocket.
“Eat,” she ordered, threw it at me, and turned away.
I kept out of her way for the rest of the day. But I snuck peeks at her when I thought she wouldn’t notice. Her mood swung wildly. Sometimes she seemed like a clenched fist, other times I thought I heard her choking back sobs. She swung between depression, anxiety and anger.
I didn’t know what to do. I felt as if I were tip-toeing around her, trying not to set her off. It was like being stuck in a closet with a proximity bomb.
What made it even more miserable is that I had the strong feeling that I had to tell Rin about the ghost, that it might be crucial information. But I didn’t dare.
Mostly I read my book. I wondered if the ghost— no, the Kernel— might show up in my dreams as Gandalf. That would be almost intriguing.
A few times that day we risked un-camouflaging and got the news through read-only Immersion. There were clips of the two factory explosions, along with the Unity attack and Realist roundup, which was mostly being praised, although a few commentators called it patently illegal. Those were mainly news agitators from marginal feeds that were trolling for hits. There also was a continuous replay of the message that Trino had released. It was intercut with clips of my speech. There were also reports of people cheering me from all over the world. Polls showed an unlikely level of support, both for Unity’s actions and oddly, for the Realists. So I’d already proven disruptive for something I didn’t do.
Evening fell again and we were still in the middle of nowhere. The balloon control panel didn’t show us where we were heading— a security feature in case it had been commandeered, I guessed— but in general we were moving west.
Once we must have passed over a dead zone, because I saw below us a flock of redemption birds, like fat bombers. They were flapping slowly along and spraying from their mutated bodies a shower of tailored microorganisms designed to restore the soil. The setting sun gleamed on their wings.
I was looking at them from one side of the basket when I heard an odd noise and spun around.
Rin had opened the camo blanket. She was balanced on the rim of the basket. Her hair whipped in the evening breeze. She was holding a cable with both hands.
I was going to make a joke about using the toilet when I saw her expression. I lunged forward just as she let go of the cable.
I made a desperate grab and caught the back of her jacket collar as she tumbled. She dangled in the air. She weighed almost as much as I did. I was nearly dragged over the side. I clung desperately, managed to get my other hand under Rin’s shoulder and hauled for all I was worth. She hung like dead weight for a moment, then her eyes went wide and she went into full panic mode, screaming and thrashing. I lost my grip but luckily, Rin managed to lash out and grab one of the loops of cable that dangled from the bottom of the basket. I reached far out and down, my feet braced against some of the crates and my heart hammering. Slowly, painfully, I helped her climb up the basket and tumble over the rim. We both collapsed onto the floor, gasping, and clung to each other tightly as Rin began to weep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We held each other for what seemed hours until Rin’s tears stopped and her taught body finally relaxed. Exhausted, we fell asleep, nestled together.
“It was just too much,” Rin said much later as we sat on crates and sipped bulbs of hot chocolate. “First, the bombing and the... the deaths. And then the Realists breaking up, and Trino trying to kill us, and then Brian—’’ she caught her breath, looked down, and then continued. “—and then there’s you.”
“I know,” I said. “I wish I could make you believe me.”
I sipped my chocolate thoughtfully. I remembered the blackout before the first explosion. I had no proof at all. No, wait, I had my memories. I could upload those into the Immersion when we had time and a safe place. But then I realized Rin still wouldn’t believe me. Nobody would trust my memories. Hadn’t I altered them after killing Pallburg?
As if reading my mind, Rin gave me a serious look. “Tell me the truth. Did you kill Pallburg?”
“No. I never killed anybody.”
“I see.” I couldn’t tell whether she was disappointed or relieved. Swallowing hard, I asked, “Did you think I was a killer all along?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Everybody else thinks I am.”
She thought about it. “I guess I kind of hoped you weren’t.”
I felt a surge of warmth. “I guess that makes me a fraud.”
Rin laughed. “Join the club.”
We drank in silence for awhile, then I turned to her and said, “You know, I could see you were hurting. You could have talked to me, if you’d wanted.”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I didn’t trust you and I hated myself for killing all those people.”
“You didn’t!” I interrupted but she went on.
“So then I had to both hate you and make sure you were safe.” She took a deep breath. “Because Brian said you were important. But the one thing I couldn’t do was talk to you about what I was going through. And I couldn’t even Immerse to get help.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It got to be too much.”
For a second, I thought she might start crying again. I winced when I thought of her shaking and wracked by sobs.
“Oh, Rin,” I said. I reached out to her but she looked up from her cup and shook her head.
“It’s okay,” she said. “When I found myself dangling in thin air, with the ground so far below, I had a change of heart and realized I wanted to live.”
“I’m glad you did,” I said quietly.
“Thanks,” she said. “So am I.”
I took another sip of my chocolate. I decided to push a little further.
“Listen, Rin, about Pallburg’s killing...”
“Yes?”
“I think I was framed. I don’t who did it or why. But I think perhaps we and the Realists were framed for all those deaths, too. Maybe by the same people, maybe not.”
“Maybe not people,” Rin said. “Unity?”
“That was Trino’s argument,” I said. “But think about it: the Realists have never harmed anyone directly. You —we, I mean —disabled a satellite, did some other sabotage. But it’s all small change to a globe-spanning system like Unity. We simply wouldn’t be worth the lives and effort.”
“Who, then?” she said. “And why hasn’t Unity stopped them?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” I hesitated but then I asked, “Who is Anchorage?”
Rin did a double-take. “Anchorage? What do you mean?”
“The Realists are— were— decentralized,” I said. “But Anchorage was the person or cell that suggested the cow factory as a target and provided us with the training video.”
“That’s true. So?”
“So Anchorage was also the one that suggested the Realists target the satellite, and provided some of the critical information for frying it, am I right?”
“I think so,” Rin said slowly.
“Well, how did Anchorage get that information? Is he, she or it some kind of mole within Unity? Highly placed enough to gain access to secure data?”
“We never asked,” Rin said. “The less we knew, the less we could give away. Brian did suggest that maybe Anchorage was somebody high-ranking, maybe military.”
“There’s something else,” I said. “No offense, but the people I saw at the hotel seemed, well, a little disorganized.”
“Stop being polite,” Rin said. “It was a miracle when we agreed on anything.” Then she stopped short. “Oh,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “Not to be offensive, but I wondered how a group like that could tie its own shoes, let alone plan sophisticated actions.”
“You did it,” Rin said. “And Brian and Trino helped keep everybody in line.”
“And you helped them agree on things,” I said. “You have a gift.”
Rin blushed but said nothing.
“But here’s the thing,” I continued. “How is it that a group like the Realists managed to do as much as they did with that level of disagreement and debate? Trino understood the problem. That’s why he wanted to pare it down to a hard core of ruthless loyalists.”
“You’re saying that somebody was secretly helping us out. Maybe even guiding us?”
I shrugged. “Maybe,” I said. “Again, what do we really know about Anchorage?”
“And now they want to dismember us?” Rin said. “How does that make sense?”
“It doesn’t,” I said. “Unless they’re planning something even bigger, something huge, and they want to blame the Realists. Or maybe they want what Trino wants: A bunch of real terrorists.”
“That’s a lot of guesswork,” Rin said sharply. “And you don’t have any evidence.”
“I don’t,” I admitted. “but there’s something more.”
I paused, gulped my chocolate, took a breath, and then I told her about the Kernel. She listened, fascinated but said nothing until I’d finished.
“So that’s why you kept calling my name,” she said, and gave me a quirky smile. “I don’t know whether I feel better or worse now.”
Now it was my turn to blush but Rin put a hand on my shoulder.
“The— Kernel, you call it?— says something’s coming and you both have to stop it. What if that thing is Anchorage?”
I was stunned. “I hadn’t thought of that!” I said. “Some kind of infiltrator, maybe?”
“No, this isn’t about the Realists,” Rin said. “Or not only about us. This Kernel clearly has been in your head longer than you’ve been a Realist.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But that still doesn’t give us a motive, then. For anything that’s happened.”
“Maybe it does,” Rin said. “You said the Kernel wasn’t an AI.”
“It said it wasn’t the enemy.”
“Right!” Rin leaned forward, excited. “That’s important!”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t know much about itself or its mission but the one thing it knows for sure is that AIs are the enemy.”
I was confused.
“Unity is built on AIs,” I said. “Thousands, maybe millions of them.”
“No, that’s a common mistake people make,” Rin said. “Unity is built in ascending orders of dedicated systems with limited abilities. We call them artificial intelligences because they have a form of intelligence that makes them seem to be conscious. They perform tasks, they compare data, they share decision-making. But they’re not self-aware. Pallburg made sure that none of the entities he was incorporating had any sense of self-consciousness.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Yes. In fact, it was a big issue at the time, whether software and robots should be granted civil rights, whether they were conscious beings. And of course, nobody wanted some sort of super-consciousness running everything.”
I looked at Rin with new respect. Ancient history didn’t seem to be the kind of thing that normal people cared about. After all, it was seventy years ago. Also, despite the fact that people had literally billions of things to watch, listen to and feel, I thought most seemed depressingly ignorant. Games, sensoramas and Immersion sob rooms seemed to be the popular stuff.
“Where did you learn all this?” I asked.
“My mother was in AI development,” Rin said.
“Really?”
“Yes.” She sipped her chocolate, looked down at her bulb. “My dad died doing it, too.”
I didn’t know what to say.
Rin went on, “Mom says he was working on the initial systems to capture human thoughts and memories in computers. His parents died from early-onset Alzheimer’s. He was working on a system to download their thoughts and memories, then reintegrate them when the organic damage was fixed. He volunteered for the first deep probes.” She stopped, bit her lip, then went on, “The probes were so primitive. Something went wrong. Fragmented his mind. He was left a vegetable for a long time, I heard. I never knew him and my Mom doesn’t like to talk about it. I tried to find out about him once, but I guess all that’s still classified.”
