Rupture (5 page)

Simone moved to the chair at her desk. Kimberlee had interrupted the pouting session she’d planned. She didn’t want to tell Kimberlee about her usual conversations in the bucky or the fact they failed today. She didn’t want to tell her what she believed was gestating in Joss Beckwith. She didn’t want to tell her Sterling school was probably in major trouble.

“You know,” she said instead. “I’ve never seen a Succubus.”

Kimberlee stiffened, as if she’d just been filled with concrete. “What?”

“Your thing, your issue. What happens?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Like what?”

“I can’t just turn it on.”

“How does it happen? Can you show me?”

Kimberlee looked around like she needed to catch a cab, or maybe as if a train might come bearing down on them. She moved to the door. “Maybe it’s best if I go.” She cast one more odd glance, then left.

Simone sat alone, unsure what had just happened. She realized her new friend was offended. She’d pushed too hard, too fast. Kimberlee Newkirk hadn’t dealt with her issues, and those issues appeared to still be a big mystery to her. Simone didn’t feel offended. In fact, she admitted to herself she wasn’t that different from Kimberlee, even though she pretended to be. For all her bravado, she was as frustrated and confused as Kimberlee about what she was.

She looked at her bucky like she might try again but knew that was a waste of time. Something had happened when she’d spoken to Joss, something disruptive that was blocking her connection to her entities, something here at Sterling.
 

She went to the blinds and drew them, blocking out the sunlight. She checked to make sure her door was still locked, then she crawled into bed to take a nap. She pulled a pillow over her head and whimpered, but only just a little.

* * *

By the time the emergency medical personnel made it to Joss Beckwith, he was beyond their help. Three of them actually stood around his bed dumbfounded in their bright orange paramedic uniforms, one carrying a supply box, the other a resuscitate kit—none of them with an ounce of understanding what was happening to him. What they saw would cause one to take an autocar straight to church that night, the other to call her shrink, and the final to start drinking again.

Joss was covered in brands, as if he’d been stamped over every inch of his body. He had torn his clothes off and lay naked on the bed. Worse, and this was what stuck it to the medically trained professionals, four hose-like appendages had grown out of his skull and attached themselves to the wall behind him. Joss looked comatose, although the gentle rise and fall of his chest meant he was still alive.

“Help the nurse,” the lead paramedic said. One of the others stumbled into the hallway where Nurse Betty had fainted.

“What is this?” the other paramedic asked like an automaton.

The lead pulled out his phone. “This is way above us. That’s what this is.”

* * *

Simone lay in bed, curled up with a trashy romance novel on her tablet. But something caused her to perk up.

She thought she heard a cry in the distance.

She grabbed her bucky, and poked her fingers through the holes. It calmed her immediately. It was a supreme symbol of order. It represented all that was good and holy in the universe. Her mother had taught her to use the talisman as a centering device. Her mother had told her she was one of only a few people who communed with the Lords of Order. She had hoped the Great Conflict wouldn’t mar her time at the Sterling School. But her mother had warned her it might.

Something was going on at campus. She could feel it. She had taken a long afternoon nap and had just woken up. She wanted to go to the cafeteria to eat, but she didn’t feel motivated. She felt like hiding in her room.

She pulled out her cell phone and fast dialed.

Her mother answered. “Flying back from Singapore, dear. How are you?”

“Mom, I want to go home,” she said.

Her mother asked the normal questions:
Are you all right, did something happen, do you want me to call your brother?
She said, “You know you can’t come home, not after what happened. You destroyed half the gymnasium at Ellington Prep. Besides, it’s time for you to be at Sterling. You need to learn to master your skills with other kids like you.”

“It was just a wall—”

“I had to provide a substantial endowment to cover it, young lady, and to keep you from being arrested. Get used to Sterling. I went there. Your brother went there—”

“Yeah, back when it was for enhanced individuals with no problems.”

“It’s only for two years.”

“Then what?”

Her mother ignored her. “And don’t start talking about that buckaroo ball—”

“Buckminsterfullerene … that you gave to me—”

“When you were a little girl. That was your father’s idea. You were supposed to outgrow it by now. I have to go, dear. Getting ready to board. I’ll see you soon. Remember, you’re a Wellborn.”

She stared at the phone after saying goodbye, hating the fact her mother always called her
dear
. Simone heard such weariness in her mother’s voice when she said that, as if her mother knew, just knew, that Simone was about to get into more trouble.

“Something’s wrong here,” she said to it. “I can feel it.”

She looked around the strange room with the strange furniture and felt alone for the first time. She tried not to cry, but she did, and felt an odd homesickness for her last school—the one she hated so much she’d brought down their brand-new gymnasium just to prove a point that perfect people and perfect things don’t exist. She realized that at Sterling, at least, they understood. All she had to do was make sure she hadn’t just enrolled in a new hotbed of unreason. No way her mother would let that happen.

Simone activated her tablet and scrolled through the sheets on all the students from last year. She also glanced once more to make sure her door was locked. The last thing she needed was for someone to walk in on her. She’d drawn the blinds, too.

She set her bucky on the ground in the middle of the room, the tablet upright on its stand facing the ball. A picture of Joss Beckwith at some computer workstation dominated the tablet. She’d taken it from his public sheet. He looked like a nice guy, she thought.

What’s in him?

She waited. The bucky was many things: part talisman, part communication device, part unreason detector. If Joss were being used by the Great Enemies, the bucky would know.

At first nothing happened, then the bucky moved, just a tad. A vibrating judder trickled through the ball. All it needed was to be in proximity of someone tainted, and it would respond.

The bucky launched itself across the room as if some invisible soccer player had kicked it.

“Oops,” she said. The bucky shrank to the size of a golf ball to huddle all alone in the far corner. “It’s okay.” She moved to pick it up, as if to comfort it, when she noticed something odd about the tablet. The picture was different.

She picked up the device. Joss had been sitting with his legs splayed, arms crossed with his hands in some mock imitation gang sign. The pose looked corny as hell coming from a lily-white boy with about as much geek in him as you could get. But now the picture showed him leaning forward, elbows on the table, looking into the camera. For a moment, she thought the page might be rotating through images. She waited for another still pic. When the image of Joss stood, still looking at the camera—looking at
her
—she knew what she was seeing.

She stood rooted, her eyes locked on the tablet.

AI.

Artificial Intelligence.

Alien Intelligence.

Did it matter which one could explain who and what the Enemies of Mankind were? The argument over the nature of the Rogues (as well as the entities) had dominated her parents’ generation and was now buried in so much misinformation most people didn’t care didn’t matter—Simone especially didn’t when the moving image of Joss opened its mouth and said:
Simone Wellborn.

She dropped her tablet and stepped on it so hard it shattered the device. Then she stomped again. Her bucky rolled to her, making it halfway up her leg before she retrieved it and stroked it like a scared puppy. She crawled back into bed with the light on, pulled the covers up, set the small object by her head, and wished life could be simple, for once.

She also hoped her mother would get here soon. She didn’t even have to call now. Her mother would find out what was happening. Then she’d come and set everything right.

Hurry, Mom, I’m getting real scared.

TWO

THE NEXT MORNING, THE FIRST THING SIMONE DID, even before breakfast, was visit Principal Smalls. She stood in his corner office with the big windows overlooking the children’s playground. Not many elementary school kids attended Sterling, but today several of them were on the swings and running wild during summer camp.

“Principal Smalls, my mother heard the news about Joss and left me a message this morning. She’s on her way to Sterling. She just flew in from Singapore, so she’ll be getting here later tonight. But she’s coming.”

He stopped reading the electronic file he had in his lap. “Excuse me?” He set it down on his desk and regarded her quizzically. “Mrs. Wellborn, good morning to you.”

“Good morning, sir,” she said, peeved, and in no mood for small talk. “I know what happened to Joss Beckwith.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Fortunately, Miss Wellborn, the authorities are involved and are handling it. They’ve already been down to the Computer Systems room—”

“They’re looking through his computers. Great. That might help, but I don’t think it answers the question of what happened to him.”

Principal Smalls took a few seconds to compose himself, as if he might start explaining how thermodynamics worked. “We pride ourselves on being opened-minded at the Sterling School. And we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of life in a post-Ruptured, hyper-intelligent world.” He paused, obviously realizing what she’d just said. “You said your mother is coming here?” He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, in some kind of imitation of an adult forced to humor a meddlesome child. “Sterling can use all the help it can get. Tell me, ma’am, where is Joss Beckwith?”

“What do you mean, where is he? He’s in the clinic.”

“No, he’s not. He left. You said you know what happened to him—”

“I meant about what happened to him yesterday. Someone’s taken him?”

“We don’t know. Do you know? I thought you said—”

“Well, no. I didn’t even know—”

“I didn’t think so.” He smiled, obviously confused. “So what, exactly, did you come here to tell me? I want you to feel comfortable at Sterling. If there’s ever anything you need to talk to me about ... ”

The opening was enough. “What if ... what Joss said about what happened to him—”

“At his workstation?”

“Yes.”

“You think that has something to do with his disappearance?”

“What if he was infected by a—”

“Don’t start spreading silly rumors,” he said. “All the AIs at work in the world are regulated and monitored and beneficial. We ... eliminated the bad ones. Whatever branded him was criminal, but not … what you’re suggesting.”

Right, she thought, except for the Rogue nanobot manufacturing types that wanted to remake the world in their image. She could understand if he didn’t believe in the Lords of Order, but to say Rogue AIs didn’t exist anymore? Where had he been hiding? She couldn’t help herself and mumbled a few words of her calming mantra.

“What was that?” Principal Smalls asked, his turn to be annoyed. “Don’t be smart with me, Miss.”

“Oh, I wasn’t, sir. It’s just something I do.”

“Don’t do it again, please.”

He gave her a dismissive nod, signaling the meeting was over.

* * *

Simone walked straight to the library. Since most of the actual reference texts were old, unreliable, and expensive analog books with actual bindings and real paper pages with real ink on them, and since she didn’t have a tablet anymore, she used one of the workstations in the library computer room.
 

It only took a few minutes to find a history of General Artificial Intelligent Persons or G.A.I.P., the four letters that started the endless Cyber War, called the Great Conflict by some, the Great Game by others.

She began to flick through pages on the wide-screen monitor. Everyone knew the standard story: When the first advanced SAIs appeared, so did the first instances of cyber terrorist calling themselves the Roguelords. But she knew that wasn’t all because mysterious disembodied entities like her Lords of Order also appeared at the same time, transforming their hosts’ physical bodies, sometimes even possessing them. The religious called them supernatural beings, while the scientists explained the unexplainable by calling them both
artificial
and
alien
invaders. Thus the confusion: AI could mean Artificial Intelligence (like for Principal Smalls), which was something rational and understandable and knowable; or Alien Intelligence, like her mother believed; or could mean something else entirely, like Simone believed, which meant ... something truly
other
.