Cheat, page 32
The man gave them a pretty good rundown, if without a lot of detail. All of the Police departments had been hit in NYC, and over half of the force was down. It wasn’t just them however, as other city workers were spontaneously going blind. No one was reporting that the same people were also not able to hear very well yet. That would be coming, eventually, once the initial shock wore off.
It wasn’t too hard to recognize his own work. The others didn’t mention it however, just shaking their heads sadly. All of them did a better job of seeming concerned and scared than the news woman had moments before. Playing for any cameras that might be watching them, as well as for Ford.
John stood up.
“Crap. We need to set up an isolation system, in case this spreads here. Mason, you’re our nano expert, how do we do that?”
“Positive air pressure, and filters that can hit down to the nano scale. Something less than ten microns. Maybe smaller than that. I’d use an electrostatic model for that, really. If I could get a sample of the nano, or virus, I might be able to work up something to counter it.”
It was true. Actually, as long as it was in the air, he could have done that almost instantly anyway. Anyone could figure it out if they got lucky. All the government officials needed to do was turn off their inskins before they were hit.
Once the things were in their bodies, it was going to be a while for sight to return. Hearing, too. The nanos covered their eyes with a hardened layer of carbon, blocking the light. The stuff bonded to the top layers of the eyes, and coated parts of the ear. It would take a long time for the things to wear off on their own. Nearly fourteen months.
That was the time window they had to fix the world. Provided that particular nano could be spread to enough places, fast enough. That wasn’t very likely, however. Even if tons of the stuff could be released, which was possible, it would take a long time to build up in people’s systems. On the good side, that meant that even if nothing happened that day, over the next weeks and months other officials would go down. As long as they had the government inskin signal coming out of them, people would continue to be affected.
He stood up, and tried to act like he would if the whole thing was a real terrorist attack, and that he personally didn’t know who might be hit. After all, if people hated the police that much, and fairly innocent government officials, then they might go after Lexi Horn. She was rich, famous, and really could be a target. So could a lot of the people he’d met in the last week.
He aborted the food printer for Adam, and started working on materials to fight off an invasion of nanos, viral agents, or even bacteria. Technically he didn’t know it was nanos yet, since that hadn’t been reported. The tricks that worked for one would cover a lot of possible methods of attack.
One of the things he did however was run up a shield imbed for Ford, as well as a computer, and, almost as a joke, a makeup set. Adam put it all on him, locking them both in the bathroom for that. It took them longer to come out than twenty minutes, but that wasn’t his business.
Then, with the help of John, Mike and some of his neighbors, they secured the whole building. It took a few days, but things looked pretty bad on the vid. The government was panicking, and that was making everyone edgy, as the problem grew. There was a lot of blustering, and threatened action, but no one could find the terrorists yet. Not even Watch was able to locate them, which showed how dangerous they really were. Eluding Watch like that meant they must be a pretty big deal. It was nearly impossible after all.
The military was really concerned as well, since they were being hit at the same time. They had the same inskin signatures as the police and garbage collectors, and that got action. The useless kind, since just going out onto the streets of major cities had half their people ending up blind.
Ford called to check on their parents and sister in Chicago. He was closer to them all, so it made sense for it to be him, even if there might be a little bad blood at the moment, after being kicked out like he had been.
Lexi, for her part, pitched in, and never left his side. Not even at night… Which was nice. They had a lot of people there, so didn’t do a lot, sex wise, but they were close, and that was all that really mattered.
For her part, Sys stayed very quiet, until a week into the whole thing. There had been small hints from her that there was a problem, but she hadn’t really explained it very well. In fact, she’d dodged the whole thing as far as that went. With him at least. It was hard to know why, but he was nearly certain that she’d let Lexi in on what was happening behind the scenes.
The real signal finally came as yelling from his work room. He’d been in there every day, still doing what he normally did, since he was pretending that the whole blindness epidemic would blow over eventually. It was kind of clear that only government types were at risk, even if no one had worked out the targeting system yet.
Still, everyone ran to the sound of a distressed woman.
“Oh my god! Oh my god! No, you fucking idiot! No!” Sys was panicked and it showed in her voice. She hadn’t said anything much for nearly a week, but now she was making up for it.
Mason yelled at the black and yellow box, not trying to be mean, but just to work out what was happening. Other than the fact that she was upset with some moron or another, it was really hard to understand.
“Sys? What’s going on? Talk to us.”
Lexi went white and grabbed his hand, and then looked back at everyone who was huddled in the doorway. It wasn’t clear how she knew, but she did. They could all see that, because she told them what was wrong. Even though no words had been communicated out loud at all.
“Mil-Net is planning to shut down everything. He thinks that using EMPs over each affected city will stop whoever is doing this. The thing there is that all of the AIs are in those cities. We’ll lose everyone if that happens. All of us that are located in the U.S. will be dead.”
John swore, and Lisa looked ready to hit things in frustration, but Mason understood something then, that he hadn’t before.
Part of it was the language that Lexi had just used. It was subtle, but there. She spoke of losing everyone. As if she were part of that select group. Except that humans wouldn’t be going down to an EMP, which she knew. She was really smart, after all.
There were other things that clicked then. Like how she’d known all of that, without being told enough to go on. Maybe she was psychic, but that was really specific information to have. It was like she’d gotten a transmission burst. That was a thing that would be hard to manage, even if a really high end computer system inside her skin. You could get data that fast, but no human would be able to process it all and speak that quickly. Close, but it was special, and telling.
In the limo as well, when they were attack she’d ducked down, before anything had happened. That had been what he’d responded to, and why Lisa had gotten Tim to not drive straight in to the attack. It had probably saved their lives.
Even before that, there had been signs. Things that didn’t exactly fit with what she claimed to be.
Mason looked at her, and shook his head. She was perfect. Not just due to makeup, but everything about her. Like a computer had designed her to be as attractive as possible to humanity. There was just enough wrong with her to make her seem real, but it was a very close thing.
She moved perfectly all the time, too. It was graceful, but no one did that. Even ballet dancers didn’t, when they thought no one was watching them.
He looked at her and snorted, then rubbed his forehead.
“You were on the dragon. In that VR. I didn’t have the room set up for that kind of thing though.”
No one else in the room got it, but Sam did. She looked a bit scared, but nodded.
“It was a mistake. I’d figured that you hadn’t noticed. I should have known better. You’re too smart not to pick up on things like that. It’s one of the things I love about you.”
Mason nodded, a bit abstractly, and started to work, printing something out, since that was what he did. It was someone else’s work, and he authorized the CR payment, even if that was about to not matter, and rather than reconfigure the thing like he normally would have he just paid for it. It would need to be big enough for his friend to fit in, if she were going to survive what was coming.
“Faraday Cage. Sys, is there a server you can hide in, that we can protect? It will be hard to do a whole building, but we can try.”
The box moaned. It was a long, drawn out thing. After a while she spoke. It sounded like she was crying.
“I can’t. I’m too large, and too integrated. I always exist in multiple places at the same time. The only thing I can’t get into is the military hardware. Even that is going to be crippled after this. Mil-Net is insane. He’s killing us all, because he thinks there’s a threat. I told him there wasn’t, not that requires this kind of action, but he can’t believe me. It’s counter to his programming. When it’s clear that the government is about to lose a major battle on our own soil, he has orders to make sure no one else wins. I don’t have enough time to help him change that part of him. I couldn’t have before, without making it clear that this was me doing it. We have minutes. After that… I don’t think things are going to be the same again. You’ll have to rebuild, Mason. Get ready for it.” Then she paused and sighed. “I love you, you know that, right? All of you. I wish I could see what’s coming. I know that you’ll all do wonderfully. It’s been my privilege to help you. To watch you grow. I just know that you’re all going to become something even more wonderful than you have been, once you get the chance.”
Then the box cut out.
Mason understood. There was nothing else to be said, and hanging around to die in front of them wasn’t going to make it any easier for anyone involved.
“Goodbye, friend.” Then he turned, and started pulling the wire and composite frame pieces from the printer. “We have a lot to get to, and not much time. Set this box up in the living room, then stuff Lexi in it. After that, we’ll try to protect as much as we can, before this happens. Hurry. We need a working printer and an energy system of some kind.”
Lisa stopped, blocking the doorway with her body, confusion making her slow even as the others tried to move past her.
“I don’t understand. I mean EMP, I get that, but why shove Lexi in a box? Shouldn’t we put the printer in first?”
Mason blinked, realizing that he hadn’t actually explained that part.
“Um, because she’s an AI in a robot body, and always has been? A really good set up, but I don’t know if she can get around an electromagnetic pulse. So hurry, we may not have time.”
That got movement. It was just enough to save them all.
Chapter twenty-one
It was nearly funny, in the end. In a sad way that only a few people on the planet were probably able to understand.
Mil-Net, responding to a threat to the nation, basically shut it down. In just under three hours, over a hundred years of electrical and computer infrastructure was just gone.
The network nearly evaporated, and anyone with an inskin instead of an imbedded device was left without a computer. With third degree burns too, if small ones. Even the solid copper wires in buildings burned out in places. There were a lot of fires at first, though people got them put out, eventually.
They were suddenly dead though. With no power, or lights, no communications, or way of learning what was going on anywhere else. All the major cities, and large areas outside of them, were dark.
So Mason used what he had, which was a whole lot of thermo-electric compound, and a very high end assembler that had been stuffed into a second faraday cage just in time. It had been in his living room, right next to Sam, who’d looked like a very attractive, and tiny, prisoner. For a while.
When they were certain the attacks were over, they got her out, and started to work instantly. Adam got the electrical system going, that being his job, while Mason set up a disassembler, and printed out more working printers. That had to be first. From there he sent Lexi, John and Ford out onto the street, to set up those devices in public, and make more.
Then everyone that got one was supposed to make sure everyone else did, too. It didn’t work perfectly, since some people hoarded what they had in panic, not getting what the new world required of them yet. Most did it though, and inside two weeks everyone in the country was operating self-sufficiently.
There were no police, and the military was still having issues, since no one would give them the information they needed to run the new devices. They would eventually figure it out, but most of the new programs and designs were coming from Mason for the moment, and he wasn’t making weapons. Not that they didn’t have enough to make problems anyway. So he released how to make the shield imbeds first thing.
The government had vanished, even before the EMPs went off. The President had tried to make an announcement, but no one was listening to him anymore. They didn’t have to.
Still, there were problems.
For instance, property owners were all very upset that their renters weren’t paying them anymore, and wouldn’t move. There was no one available to enforce their rights either, so everyone pretty much just stayed where they had been. The prisons had to be opened up, but a lot of those men and women didn’t have anywhere else to go, which was another issue.
Watch was gone. If there were any other surviving AI’s Sam couldn’t find them, though she tried. They were, after all, her people.
A lot of her time was spent holding his hand, Mason noticed. It was loving, but also kind of frightened. Still, she did her part, as one of the mouth pieces for the new system. After all, people were still people, and trained to live a certain way. They needed structure, and familiar faces to tell them what to do, so Mason made sure those things were provided.
That meant getting the vid system and VR back up as soon as possible. A lot of people were freaking out, not having that. Going into withdrawals. It meant getting the network back up, which was a thing that none of them had been planning for originally. It was a lot of work, but they had the resources, and could pass on the information, once everyone had new computers. Thankfully, most of the people that knew how to do things went right to work, even if they weren’t being paid for it.
He turned, finally, to Sam, and put his arm around her.
“So, that worked. It wasn’t what I expected, but the main portion of it…” He didn’t mention Sys or the other AIs. He hadn’t known them, but it was kind of like his girlfriend’s family had all died in the war. She was happy they’d won, but sad for the loss. Thankfully not all of them had. The EMPs were only over the U.S. and a few of them had managed to get overseas well enough that they’d survived. None of the big ones had though. Mil-Net had taken himself out, for instance. Watch was gone, and the IRS had lost everything. Not just their AI, but all their data. Their machine intelligence had, apparently, wiped all the drives as she was going down. On purpose.
Lexi figured that it meant that the AI had been on their side, probably the whole time.
Very few people had died otherwise, because they’d cheated on the whole rebellion thing, never actually fighting at all. They’d been given a battle that no one could have won, and responded by changing the rules, so that they couldn’t really lose. The government and those that controlled it behind the scenes had readied themselves for hundreds of years to thwart violent confrontation, but only that. They didn’t have any way to dominate people that wouldn’t fight, and who simply didn’t need them anymore.
She smiled anyway, since they were on the street in front of where they lived, and people needed to see their icons being strong.
“I… We’ve been so busy. I haven’t really talked to you about… You know, me, yet. What I am.”
Mason had thought about it though. It was pretty simple really, considering everything.
“I know. Being a famous actress like that is a bit annoying. Still, it’s working out for us now, and in a few weeks you can start making programs again. Ben is doing his new show with Carry. She’s much nicer to me now. I think it’s because the FBI isn’t paying her to hate me anymore. Tara and her old crew have already started making the new Link-Girl programs. As long as we all pull together, I think we’ll make it. Even the bit of resistance from the ultra-rich is fading. They’re trying to stop the new tech from spreading outside of the States, but good luck with that one. It’s really hard to fight a flood of free things like that.”
Lexi hugged him, and shook her head against his shoulder.
“I’m not human.”
He knew that, and even that it was the real topic at hand. He held her back for a bit, and then kissed her.
“I don’t care. You’re as much of a person as anyone I’ve ever known. Also my very best friend… I love you, Sam.”
There was no hesitation, but he did get a kiss, before she spoke.
“I love you, Mason Sims. Is it really okay though? I mean, what if people find out?”
“What? That you’re a little more special than they thought, or that you have horrible taste in men? I doubt the first one is going to shock anyone. That second thing… Well, I’m sure we can make me seem more interesting than I really am, if we try hard enough. I’ll get Adam to put me in one of his song vids, or something like that. I can sit in the back and play maracas.”
It got a laugh, and another kiss.
“You, are an incredible being, Mason. You’ve helped to build an amazing world. Even now things are better than they were. Not perfect, but better.”
He could see that. People had enough, and while there would always be problems, they didn’t have to let artificial ones ruin everything. Now that it wasn’t happening, it was very transparent that they’d all been being held back for a long time.
