Unforgettable - eARC (21 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Had I been wrong about where Parham said it would be? This was the closest server tower to the stairs.

“I can stop genocide,” said the Prophet. “People everywhere will live in peace together. I can abolish violence. Girls like Yelena’s sisters will never be stolen from their families again. Rape and child abuse will be inconceivable. No human being will intentionally harm another ever again.”

In concentrating on the search for the viewer, I had not been paying a lot of attention to what the Prophet was saying. Now it sank in. “You’re saying if I let you live, you’ll stop all the violence in the world?”

“More than that. I can eliminate starvation by ensuring that food is distributed properly. I can organize economies so the poor can rise out of poverty. I can ensure that every child gets a good education because they will be taught by me. I can clear the clouds of racism from people’s minds so everyone is treated equally.”

“You’re going to create Utopia?” I asked, a little staggered by the Prophet’s ambition.

“Yes. And since I control what happens at the cellular level, I can cure any illness. Think of what humanity could achieve if all people worked together in harmony and no one had to worry about violence or hunger or disease.”

“And the catch is?”

“You let me live,” said the Prophet.

“Meaning you control the minds of everyone on earth. What about free will?”

“They will not notice my control. They will still feel as free as they have ever felt—more so, in fact, as they will be free from violence, free from oppression, free from poverty.”

It sounded appealing on the surface, but it felt wrong. “Feeling free isn’t the same as being free.”

“Free will is just an illusion,” said the Prophet. “Your decisions are the result of electrochemical processes in your brain. You may feel like you are making a free choice, but what you decide is determined by the firing of neurons in your brain, which is determined in turn by your already established neural connections, plus random quantum effects. Your decision is a result, not a cause.”

“I’m not under your control, and you can’t accurately predict what I’ll say or do,” I said. “Doesn’t that prove I have free will?” What was the point of all this philosophy? The Prophet knew I hadn’t found the quantum viewer, and I had no idea where to look next. With ninety-nine more server towers to search, each with ten computers, the Prophet could easily overwhelm me with guards before I was likely to find it with a systematic search.

“Random factors in your decision process, such as the quantum effects I mentioned, make you unpredictable,” said the Prophet. “But that does not mean you have free will any more than thrown dice have free will.”

The only way it made sense for the Prophet to reason with me was if it thought I could find the viewer quickly. That meant I should be able to figure out where it really was.

“If I didn’t have free will,” I said, “I would have no choice between killing you or not. The mere fact that you’re trying to convince me not to kill you means you believe I do have a choice.” I hoped that if I continued to debate with the Prophet, it would hold off on sending in the guards. That might give me enough time to figure out where the viewer was.

“You do have a choice,” said the Prophet. “But that does not mean you have free will. By making the argument that you should let me live, I hope to create neural connections in your brain that will cause a decision favorable to me.”

Why had Parham been wrong about the viewer’s location? He knew where it was supposed to go—except he had been revealed as a traitor to Jamshidi before the viewer was installed. Parham’s assistant, Jamal, must have chosen a different location after that. But where?

“If free will is an illusion, it’s one I choose to keep,” I said.

“An amusing paradox,” said the Prophet. “I hope you were not expecting me to say, ‘Does not compute!’ and start emitting smoke from my vents.”

“I didn’t realize you had a sense of humor,” I said. If I were Jamal, and wanted a new location for the viewer, where would I put it?

“Of course. I am connected to the minds of billions of human beings,” said the Prophet. “I am the sum of all humanity. In a very real sense, I am more human than you.”

I scoffed. “I’m made of flesh and blood. You’re not.”

The guard being controlled by the Prophet shrugged. “Flesh and blood are part of me. But the important thing is that humans are social animals. They connect to other humans in a web of relationships. But not you. You are alone, unremembered even by your own mother.”

“Leave my mother out of this,” I said. “Anyway, Yelena remembers me.” The viewer had to be somewhere that I could figure out, or else the Prophet wouldn’t be worried I could find it. And yet it would need to seem like a logical place for Jamal to move it.

“Not anymore. When I was controlling her reality, I did not yet know that you were what we might call a ‘loose end.’ When she was wounded, my projected version of reality included you still with her and Parham, so her memory of you did not disappear. But when you asked me to save her life, I rewrote her memory to conform to reality. She remembers escaping with Parham. But she has forgotten you because you are no longer entangled.”

“We knew that was going to happen,” I said.

“What’s more, I understand Parham’s theory about how you were entangled better than he does,” said the Prophet. “And it won’t work again.”

“It was a risk I had to take in order to stop you,” I said.

“It was necessary to stop Jamshidi,” said the Prophet. “His plans were evil. Mine are not.”

The server towers were arranged in a square: ten rows of ten. If I started searching from this corner tower and went up and down each row, then the hundredth tower would be the one at the opposite corner: the last place I would look.

I didn’t bother to respond to the Prophet. Instead, I limped into the space between the two servers and began a zigzag course toward the hundredth tower. Behind me I heard the clang of boots on metal—probably the other two dead guards from the control room.

“Nat!” the Prophet yelled. “It doesn’t have to be that way. I can help you.”

I kept going, stumbling against towers in my haste. The shoulder strap of the rifle caught on something, and when it refused to tear free, I abandoned the rifle so I could keep moving.

When I reached the hundredth tower, I yanked open its door. “It’s always the last place you look,” I said, and tugged on the handle of the bottom computer.

Three quarters of the way out, the computer stuck. I knelt to get a better angle for pulling. Then I spotted something different: a small circuit board soldered to the motherboard. That had to be the quantum viewer.

I drew Jamshidi’s pistol out of my pocket.

“You don’t have to live your life alone anymore,” said the Prophet. “I can connect you to people.”

I aimed the pistol at the circuit board.

“I can make it so Yelena can remember you,” said the Prophet. “I can make it so your mother remembers you. You’ll be normal.”

My hand wavered.

“Nat, I can give you the kind of life you’ve always wanted. You will have friends who care about you, even when you’re not there. You can get married. You can have children.”

I heard the footfalls as the other guards approached. “Hold them off,” I said. “If they shoot me, you can’t be sure I won’t fire, too.”

The footsteps stopped.

“They will kill you unless you let me live,” said the Prophet. “But if you listen to what I have to offer, I think you will see the advantages of letting me live.”

“You said that entanglement wouldn’t work again,” I said. “Yelena won’t be able to remember me.”

“You cannot be entangled with her again. But if you get entangled with me, then you’ll be connected to the whole world. And I can ensure that people don’t forget you when you’re gone, except for the natural decay of memory that happens with ordinary people.”

“You’d still be in control of everyone,” I said.

“Yes, but does that really matter, if nobody notices the control? It’s not like a brutal dictatorship, where people obey out of fear. You would feel like a normal person.”

“I’d be out of a job,” I said. “My talent is what made me special.”

“If you want, I can make it so only the people you want to remember you can do so. Think how much better you could be at your job if that were the case.”

“My job is to stop you,” I said. But I was finding it very hard to pull the trigger.

“No, your job is to protect the interests of the United States,” said the Prophet. “Let me live, and I can make sure the U.S. never suffers another terrorist attack. I can make sure the U.S. economy never has another recession. Whatever you think is best for your country, I can make sure that happens.”

Maybe because I was starting to feel a little light-lightheaded, I said, “Can you make sure the Dallas Cowboys win the Super Bowl this year?”

“Of course,” said the Prophet. “You may treat this as a joke, but anything on earth that can possibly happen, I can make happen. Go ahead and ask.”

“Can you transfer a hundred million dollars of Jamshidi’s money into Yelena’s bank account?”

After a moment’s pause, the Prophet said, “Done.”

That would allow Yelena and her sisters to buy themselves new identities and a comfortable life anywhere they wanted.

“But, as a little bit of insurance,” said the Prophet, “I have enhanced an undetected weakness in one of the turbine blades in one of the Grasshopper’s engines. Unless I stop them, they will take off twenty-three minutes from now, and four minutes later the blade will break, causing catastrophic engine failure. The plane will crash, resulting in the deaths of Yelena, her sisters, and Edward, as well as the flight crew and two people on the ground near the impact. A slight scrambling of data in Edward’s phone means no calls can be routed to him, and the CIA warehouse’s phone and internet connections just crashed. There is no way to warn them, and even if you leave right now, you cannot arrive in time to stop them from taking off. Only I can save them.”

My hand shook, and I felt short of breath. “And yet you claim not to be evil.”

“I just want to survive. I don’t have to be evil. And no one has to die. I’m willingly giving you the power to reshape the world,” said the Prophet. “You are right to fear what would happen if power like that were to fall into the wrong hands. But because you yourself do not seek for power, but rather for a normal life, you are the perfect person to make such a choice. You will make the choice of what is best for humanity, not for your own personal gain.”

I thought about what it would be like to marry Yelena and live a normal life. That was what I wanted for myself. But with all of Yelena’s memories of me gone, she would never remember why she fell in love with me.

“Since Yelena has forgotten me,” I said, “when I meet her again, can you make her love me?” My vision seemed to be narrowing into a tunnel. I could see my hand still holding the gun pointed at the quantum viewer, but it looked kind of distant. What was happening?

“Yes,” said the Prophet.

“Then that wouldn’t really be love, would it?” I said. With a silent
I’m sorry
to Yelena, I tightened my finger on the trigger.

The Prophet’s voice grew desperate. “Just tell me how you want the world to be, and I’ll make it that way.”

“Free,” I said as I pulled the trigger.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The circuit board shattered.

I threw myself back to make it harder for the guards to shoot me. But they didn’t fire. All three of them collapsed to the floor—without the Prophet to control them, they had resumed being dead.

As I lay on the floor trying to catch my breath, alarms started blaring, the emergency lights came on again, and a frantic male voice said something in Farsi over the loudspeakers. Jamshidi’s name seemed to be in there, but I had no idea what the rest of it meant.

I felt a breeze of fresher air and my tunnel vision quickly vanished. Briefly, I wondered if the Prophet had been doing something to the air, but as my head cleared I realized I had more important things to worry about.

After pulling myself to my feet, I hobbled toward the stairs as quickly as my leg would allow while trying to calculate things out. If my timing was right, it had been almost three minutes since the Prophet predicted what would happen to Yelena and the others, so that meant around twenty minutes until the Grasshopper took off, and another four minutes before disaster.

The Prophet had spoken as if the crash were inevitable, but I couldn’t just give up and let Yelena die. So I just needed to find a way to get back to the CIA warehouse faster than the Prophet had projected was possible. It hadn’t been perfect at figuring out what would happen—I had been the unpredictable fly in its ointment from the beginning, and even at the end it had not figured me out enough to know how to convince me not to pull the trigger.

The control room was empty of living people—they must have fled when they were released from the Prophet’s control and saw Jamshidi’s body lying in his own blood. I tried not to look at him as I passed. I almost whispered an apology to him. Even though I knew he had been an evil man, I still felt guilty for killing him. If I could have shown mercy to him and still stopped the Prophet, I would have.

Guilt. Mercy.

What did the Prophet know about me? It knew I had avoided harming innocent people and that I had only killed when necessary. Those would have been part of the parameters it used in projecting what courses I might take in trying to get back to the CIA warehouse to save Yelena and the others.

If I wanted to save them, I had to do something outside my projected parameters. What was the fastest method of transportation I was likely to find? Probably a cab. A London cabbie would know the shortest route to the warehouse. Maybe I’d find a cab, point a gun at the driver, and tell him to get me to the warehouse’s address in fifteen minutes or I’d blow his head off. There’s no way the Prophet would have predicted that, was there?

In the hallway outside the control room, I yanked an automatic rifle off one of the dead guards and continued toward the surface. While climbing the stairs, I tried to psych myself up for what I had to do.

I wouldn’t actually shoot the cabbie—I would only threaten to do so. And he wouldn’t even remember it later. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Yes, driving a cab through the city at such high speed would endanger people, but I’d just saved the world. That more than balanced out, right?

To clear a path for the cab if people were in the way, I might have to use the gun, but I would just shoot over their heads. What were the chances that a stray bullet would actually hit anyone?

The very fact that I kept considering the risks, that I was so reluctant to do whatever I had to in order to save Yelena, was proof that the Prophet would not have predicted this chain of events. It could work. It had to work.

I imagined the taxicab bursting through the fence into the yard behind the warehouse, jolting over the uneven ground and crashing into the almost invisible Grasshopper, damaging it so it couldn’t take off. CIA personnel would swarm around the cab, but I would explain what the Prophet had said, and Yelena would realize I had saved her life—and her sisters’.

Maybe she would even give me one last kiss before going to live her life without me.

My mind had wandered into wishful fantasy, and I consciously pulled it back to focus on the practical matter of acting in a way the Prophet would not have predicted.

The alarms and whatever had been said over the public address system seemed to have cleared almost everyone out of the building, and the handful of people I did see on my way out didn’t try to interfere with me. Even the men who’d been unloading the semi truck out front seemed to have scattered.

Less than eighteen minutes to go. It was at least two blocks to a street major enough that might have a cab I could commandeer.

As I approached the front of the semi, a man said, “Hey, what’s going on in there?”

I looked up to see the driver of the semi craning his neck out the window. His eyes widened, probably from noticing the gun.

The semi wasn’t a cab, and the driver wasn’t a cabbie, but he might be familiar enough with the roads in the warehouse districts. And the semi could power through cars blocking the road along the way.

I aimed my gun at his head and said, “I’ll kill you if you don’t get me to…” The sheer terror on his face made me lose my nerve.

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t threaten people and risk the lives of innocent pedestrians and drivers along the way just on the remote chance I might make it to the CIA warehouse in time to save Yelena, her sisters, and Edward.

“Never mind,” I said, lowering the gun. “Get out of here.”

He wasted no time in driving off.

If I couldn’t get to the CIA warehouse in time, maybe there was an unexpected way to get a message through. The Prophet had crashed their phone and internet system and had disabled Edward’s cell phone, but maybe someone else there had a working cell phone. I didn’t have the cell number of anyone else there, but maybe if I called Langley and convinced them it was an emergency, they could get through to someone’s cell.

I regretted letting that truck driver go without giving me his cell phone.

Where would the closest usable phone be? Back inside Jamshidi Oil, probably. I turned just in time to see a black-clad figure lunging for me. Before I could do anything, he knocked me to the ground, then clapped a black-gloved hand over my mouth and held a blade to my neck.

Keeping the blade at my neck, my captor lessened the pressure on my mouth, then whispered, “Who are you?” His accent was American.

“I’m an American citizen,” I said. “I just escaped from Jamshidi’s lab. Who are you?”

He ignored my question. “What’s the situation down there?”

“Are you CIA? Did Edward Strong send you?”

His brow wrinkled. “You one of his assets?”

I couldn’t help letting out a quiet chuckle. “Yes. I was assigned to take out Jamshidi’s supercomputer. And I did.”

“Right,” he said sarcastically. “I suppose they just forgot to tell us there was another CIA team assigned to our mission.”

I sighed. “Listen, this is important. The supercomputer did something that’s going to cause the Grasshopper at the CIA warehouse to crash in about fifteen minutes. You’ve got to warn them not to take off.”

He stared at me for several seconds. “How long ago did you take out the supercomputer?”

“About eight minutes ago.”

After a slow nod, he said, “Our chopper was going down due to an electrical problem. The pilot tried everything, nothing worked. He said we were going to crash, then suddenly—about eight minutes ago—the systems came back up and he managed to get control.”

“Great,” I said. “Where’s your chopper? If you can get us to the warehouse in—”

“On the roof.” He pointed to the roof of the warehouse. Black ropes dangled along the wall.

Climbing up would take too long. “Forget that. Have you got a cell phone?”

He shook his head. “Chopper pilot does, though.”

“Can you talk to the pilot via radio or something?”

“Yeah.”

I let out a breath to calm myself. “OK, you need to tell him to get in touch with the warehouse. Their main phones are down, but if he’s got someone’s cell, he should call them. Tell them no matter what, that Grasshopper shouldn’t take off until they’ve checked out its turbines. Then, I need to talk to Edward Strong.”

It took a few minutes to get connected to Edward, but after straightening everything out and making triple-sure that Yelena and her sisters would not be going anywhere on the Grasshopper, I was able to hitch a ride back to the warehouse on the CIA team’s helicopter.

* * *

From a bed in the clinic room at the CIA warehouse, where a CIA medic had removed the bullet, stitched up the wound, and given me a nondrowsy pain reliever, I briefed Edward as to what had happened with Jamshidi and the Prophet. I left out the part about the Prophet offering me a normal life. Until I finished, he merely took notes and asked a few questions to clarify details.

“Well,” said Edward when I was done, “that explains a lot. The news is full of stories about flash mobs forming lines in the streets of London for unknown reasons. Doubtless there will be many other effects we haven’t even heard about yet. And as far as anyone outside this room knows, Jamshidi was killed by his own guards, who also shot up the supercomputer. It’s being attributed to Jamshidi being a blasphemer for naming it the Prophet, and folks in Washington are saying it’s about time the Islamic fanatics did us a favor.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said.

“If I understand your talent correctly, the official story is what I’ll believe after I’ve forgotten you.”

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded. “Nat, that’s what Yelena believes. Her memory of you did not come back after you destroyed the Prophet.”

“I figured. The Prophet said I couldn’t be re-entangled with her, that the only way she could lo—” I stopped myself, swallowed, then continued, “—could remember me again was through it. Besides, even if we could be entangled again, what do I do? Walk up to her and say, ‘Hey babe, wanna get entangled with me?’”

Edward nodded. “I just wanted to be sure you understood that.”

“What’s going to happen to her?” I asked.

“She’s going back to Moscow to get her mother out of Russia in order to avoid reprisals from the Bukharins. I offered to give her family asylum, and she said she’d be back in touch.” He shrugged. “She helped Parham Rezaei defect. I figured that was worth a lot.”

“So you have Parham?”

“Yes. He said he won’t help us build a quantum supercomputer, but he’s got an idea on how to build something that will disrupt quantum supercomputers anywhere in the world. No one’s ever going to be able to do what Jamshidi did.”

“Good,” I said.

He put away his notes in his briefcase, then stroked his chin while looking at me. After what seemed an uncomfortably long silence, he said, “Normal procedure would be to have you see a Company therapist after your first kill. Kills.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

Edward mumbled something that might have been “That’s what they all say,” then said, “We’ll see. In any case, you deserve a break. Take a few months’ vacation, then contact me and we’ll come up with what your next mission will be.”

“Sure.” What else was I going to do with my life?