Raine VS The End of the World (26 page)

Lillian countered that to seize Jerusalem alone would bring only a small minority of Earthlings together. There was still no guarantee of a peaceful result amongst the various free peoples of Terra, and that the aim was not for one world government, but to unite all peoples in spirit and goals equanimously, so they might live according to Natural Law, self-governing without genocide or prejudice. Lorelei took issue with her idealism. The discussions went on through the night.

In the end, we never got a chance to try out Lucy’s grand experiment.

The next morning, a red envelope from the future informed us that an attempt at this plan ended in a civil war that split us apart on our individual campaigns and ideals. Rutger estimated the probability of the outcome repeating at about seventy percent.

The matter was a closed case within the week. Jerusalem burned, and we left the stage early, sitting pretty up in the most powerful machine ever built by humankind, made powerless by our own convictions, unable to avert a disastrous campaign that would initiate centuries of division and war.

We vowed to return to that time period once we’d matured a bit. Perhaps it was too advanced of a situation for adolescents to tackle.

Though she had undoubtedly changed in the nearly two decades since the incident, the memory of their utter failure was still a sore spot for General Lacie. While any one of the sisters could have taken the blame for their inaction and inability to agree, she had the power to side with Lucille. If only then and there, she had chosen to support either Captain Lily, who held the forty-nine percent vote, or Lucy and Lorrie, that red envelope might never need have materialized.

Taking an injection of blood-cleaning nanites, Lacie neglected to notice that a beacon on her portable console was chirping loud and clear.

Two thousand miles away, Gerrit was frozen and ready for pickup. It was going to be an overnight run.

This is Lorrie’s plan, not mine,
she reminded herself. Having been tormented by her part in the
Jerusalem Un-Incident
for the majority of her conscious lifetime, Lacie had long since rescinded her own judgment. Although she ended up becoming an agent of deception anyway, ushering in a world of servitude and escapism, she never regretted putting her faith in Lorelei. It was Lorrie who backed dear Lucy when Lillian stood against her, after all.

But was that the real reason, or is that just what I’m telling myself at this point? I don’t need to know anymore. I don’t want to know anymore. When at war, my heart is closed. My emotions are saved for my beloved, and for no one else.

She kissed the picture of Claire on her locket, right beside the brass Time Keeper badge. If the end of the human race was inevitable, fate could not ask for a more merciful pair of shepherds.

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions: that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”
– Alan Watts

Gerrit was gone. That fact’s grim reality proved too much for Raine to digest. She inched along the walls until she was clearly out of view.

“I think we can risk a little perimeter check,” she told Chance, whose fur flickered like a candle’s solitary flame.

The girl was pleasantly surprised, and soon morbidly afraid, of what she’d stumbled upon – an antique toy store.

Ceramic dolls, stuffed animals, and assorted trinkets were stacked up to the low ceiling like worldly treasures in a Pharaoh’s burial chamber. Their eyes followed her every movement. The place was old and musty and she wondered how long it’d been since a customer had set foot inside. She considered calling “hello”, but it didn’t quite seem proper to raise one’s voice amongst such company. The mysterious and beautiful dolls might resent such a hostile intruder, come alive, and devour her.

It wouldn’t be the oddest thing to happen lately.

There might be one hope. She checked her map for Gerrit. Nothing. Raine then pulled out her visor.

No use.
The local Network was down. She tossed the goggles across the floor.

What if this really isn’t a dream?

It wasn’t fair. She wanted to skip out on her lonely life for just one weekend, to achieve something worth bragging about so she could face the world again.

But I took my safety for granted.

Raine felt responsible for Gerrit, terrified that she might have caused something horrible to happen to him, and most of all regretful that she hadn’t told him she actually admired his bravery and devotion.

The anger turned inward caught Raine in a downward spiral – she blamed herself for her past mistakes, for shunning the advice of and running away from every person who wanted to help her, and as Agnes might have famously worded, ‘A-B-C-ing' her way into a situation like this.

What would my birth parents think of what I’ve become?
The silence left Raine humbled and her heart laid bare onto the cold oak floor. Black flecks caught her eye from the window: another data storm, this time resembling soft snowflakes.

Folk rushed into their houses. The luau was cancelled. The storm washed off her wanted posters; pixels piled up in drifts. It didn’t look like she was going anywhere that night. She slowed her breathing and withdrew the polyester sleeping bag from her inventory.

After unequipping her boots, Raine gently squeezed into the bag, and exhaled deeply when Chance transformed into a soft pillow and nestled under her head at just the right angle. She wiggled her toes and was comforted to find that they were warm.

Finding that her restless mind forbade her to sleep, for what seemed like hours Raine just focused on breathing. She half-noticed that when she took a deep breath, the black pixels seemed to slow, and when she exhaled, they fell in torrents. Unsure if she possessed weather-controlling powers or was simply imagining things, this curious development helped lull her into a soothing reprieve.

A faint hope entered her heart.
If anyone knows how I might be able to help Gerrit, it’d be SBB.
He supposedly saved an entire galaxy, after all.
No, Raine. Stop this nonsense; sixteen is too old to still have faith in fairy tales, even if you happen to be stuck in the middle of one.

That’s the other thing: as much as I want to continue believing it, for my own sake, and for Gerrit’s, I can’t afford to deny reality any longer, to ignore what my senses are telling me – that this is more than just a dream. But there’s not much else I can do tonight. I need to accept what I don’t yet have the power to change… and bide my time.

She recalled one of Agnes’ favorite Longfellow quotes:
“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.”

Humming the theme from
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
, Raine found, calmed her down a bit. Eyes shut, she let the call of exhaustion take her, half-hoping that she’d wake up and forget this whole misbegotten adventure, quietly sad that she hadn’t gotten to see her dream version of Stonehenge.

Ω

The virtual monitor went crashing through the one-way mirror in one of the
Nebula’s
hundreds of interrogation rooms. In keeping with the Queen’s personality traits, Miss Guggell was absolutely livid, and the Templars standing guard did nothing to stop her.

“You couldn’t find her? What do you mean, she practically disappeared?”

Thibo Resa, Ground Ops Commander of the Templar Special Forces, was on his hands and knees; digital sweat pooled from the Developer’s brow into a puddle on the glass floor. He saw his face distort in the ripples as each new drop added to the mirror of shame. Judgment at the hands of this radical AI was hardly fair. The father of two wished that he could have been enlisted centuries ago, when human courts – not virtual megalomaniacs - dealt with matters of military law. This could be the last time he saw his own face.

“It was the data storm, milady. It wasn’t scheduled and it wasn’t on record, it simply appeared out of nowhere. We could see nothing. The entire town was shrouded in darkness and fog. Ghost images flooded our vision. Before long, we were frozen in place and couldn’t even log out. The very code of the
‘Verse
spoke to us; we started to hallucinate. It was maddening. We could only wait ‘til our surface team pulled the plug.”

Miss Guggell slammed her fist down onto the desk, smashing it. She held a digital shard of pewter from the surface up to Thibo’s neck.

“How were you not protected by my firewalls?”

“I wish I knew, ma’am. May I have an audience with Her Majesty about this? How about Doctor Hoshua, or Doctor Marco?”

“Negative. I am your judge, jury and executioner. Due to your incompetence, the data storm has managed to isolate Pagoda. None of us can get in there! I doubt that bag of meat you call a brain can even comprehend the magnitude of your failure. Wipe his platoon’s memory,” she directed.

Thibo was most relieved.

“Oh, and put him in deep,” she added, virtual lips curling into a twisted expression.

“Please! Is there no justice?”

“Fairness is not one of my directives,” she replied with finality, giving him a cold stare.

Thibo bit his lip and trembled, his heartbeat doubling the click and clack of his boss’ heels as she stormed out of the room. He let his body hang limp as one of the guards approached with a small box. There was no use fighting now. If the tales were true, as soon as Miss Guggell entered the elevator and closed the door, he would breathe his final breath as a free man. His mind was being put into hibernation, his real-life body stored in a cryogenic freeze, probably never to be thawed.

The resplendent ‘ding’ came. The heels clicked once more. And when Miss Guggell turned around again, he caught a glimpse of her cold countenance. Her gaze was somewhere far, far away. Knowing that the end was near, Thibo closed his eyes in time with the elevator doors. Ejected from the virtual world, he felt the stinging needle from his
M-Gear
prod against the back of his head, and then swiftly penetrate. There was a paralyzing pain, and it was all over.

▒

Several hours later, two men reclined at a private meeting room in the executive lounge and watched the top-secret footage of Thibo Resa’s fate.

“Geez, that was rough,” Henry whistled at Dr. Francesco Zarifian, who hung his head in disappointment.

Henry crossed his long legs atop the desk and sat as calmly as he could after watching such a horrifying recording.

“I really didn’t think she’d do that,” he continued. “Not on Hawaiian barbecue day, at least. Talk about job security.”

“This is not okay. Either the Guggell program’s finally lost its marbles,” Dr. Zarifian argued, “or it’s onto something, testing our resolve. It’s got its creator’s instincts, all right. I say we take a step back from this, just think about what we’re doing here.”

Zarifian twirled his pen, taking deep breaths. Francesco was Admiral Lily’s eye in the sky. He’d fished out this footage at great risk to himself. Henry grabbed the pen, and with a stern, wordless look instructed his senior to keep his cool.

“Hey, Doc. This isn’t some software deadline we can just mess around with. These are the orders from up high, and when we get an order, we have to carry it out. Hundreds of millions of human lives
are
already
in the balance.”

“I didn’t ask for reassurances. You haven’t got kids, Henry. How could you possibly understand how I feel? Even if we pull off a miracle, will the cavalry even show? Because if they don’t--”

“That won’t be an issue. Keep that chin up, mate. I may not have spawned, but you know I love your tots. Can’t imagine how you’re feeling. Just… please. Don’t forget, we’re all in this together.”

“Course, man--” Francesco looked over his colleague’s shoulders.

“Don’t tell me. It’s the Natasha to my Boris,” Henry mused.

“On time for once, too. And it looks like she picked up something nasty.”

Dr. Karuishi, the slender Japanese prodigy and the most renowned non-royal female programmer in
Neo Eden
, and the portly, managerial Avidya Lead, Dr. Alphonse Hoshua, always dressed in a tweed jacket and suspenders, passed the door’s biometric scans and entered the room to join their colleagues for the impromptu meeting.

“Not that I care, but Marco’s wondering why you three are eating lunch together, especially since there’s a party going on,” Hoshua grumbled. “Can we please get on with it?”

“You won’t be sorry for your time, sir,” Henry replied. “The data I’m sending you now shows that Miss Guggell has been infected by the quote-unquote Raine virus. It just put Doctor Resa in the icebox to cover up holes in its firewall. You can watch the video evidence if you like--”

“I don’t have time for that. None of MG’s watchdog programs have been triggered. If the AI wanted him out, he deserved what he got. The Queen stands by its judgment,” Hoshua countered.

“Of course the Queen trusts Guggell,” Karuishi said, rolling her eyes. “The AI can’t suspect it’s gained the upper hand. It’s a war game within her mind. Should Miss Guggell’s emergent strain of the Raine virus infect the Queen’s nano-machines, well… that’s the end of the Queen. Her entire rule could fall into question if she can no longer make logical and moral decisions.”

“Which is why we’re here,” beamed Henry as Ayumi played footsie with him under the table.

Hoshua immediately stood from his seat.

“What is this, some sort of anarchist gathering? Because I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

“No, no, no, sir, nothing of the sort,” Henry pleaded. “We’re merely discussing what is to be done about Guggell’s access and administration privileges should its AI become even more unstable.”

“That’s… it’s blasphemous. It goes against the wishes of the Queen,” Dr. Hoshua asserted.

Ayumi’s stockings distracted Henry by rubbing up against his ankle, but he kept his cool.

“On the contrary, sir. One of the personal duties given to me upon my recruitment was performing routine maintenance checks on MG,” he bluffed, without blinking or batting an eyelash. “With all due respect, I’ve shadowed the AI since my first months with QC; I’d like to imagine that I’d be the first to spot a malfunction.”

He sent a few files over to Hoshua, who switched on his Holo-Lens to check over a chock full of carefully doctored reports. The man thumbed a few charts.

Glad that he was taking the bait, Henry continued. “The Queen can’t fix this virus without the risk of corrupting her nano-bots. She can’t even connect with the system directly, or the virus may continue to evolve and even warp her by proximity. This is a top-secret assignment. And therein sits our dilemma. We’re in the middle of dealing with a very prickly situation as it is.”

Dr. Zarifian cleared his throat. “I concur with Holdfast on this. Guggell automatically reads its master’s thoughts. The less the Queen suspects Miss Guggell, the less resistance we’ll meet. This is a matter that can’t wait.”

Hoshua scratched his head. “What do you need me for? Approval?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Henry bowed. “I need a ‘go’ from three A-ranked Devs to take the precaution of temporarily swapping
Avidya’s
instance of the AI with last week’s backup, so we can repair it in a controlled environment and safeguard the Queen, all the while allowing her to operate and monitor the
‘Verse
at this crucial juncture. As you’re Lead for
Avidya
, I thought it natural to approach you first.”

“I’m not entirely convinced,” continued Hoshua. “Unless you’re all pulling my leg, I had no idea that Her Highness has always been so vulnerable. However, I do recognize that Miss Guggell is most definitely not operating properly. So I’ll back you on this. But what if the Queen wishes to interface with it?”

“The backup should be fully operational, sir. I will personally deal with any bugs, should they arise.”