"¡Cuidado!" Lopez screamed as Eli sent the mobile table flying through the narrow gap in the sliding glass doors. The man shot Eli an admonishing look over his shoulder. His short dark hair in disarray, his brown eyes accusatory. "Where the hell are you taking us?"
Eli didn't answer. He needed to get to the room he'd seen on the map, but he couldn't let Genesis know that. The A.I. had infected the network. He was always listening, and the last thing Eli needed was for the malware to shut down all access to his destination.
He pushed the medical table—and the grumbling, swearing man on top of it—down the long concrete hallway. Like a child skating down an aisle with a shopping cart.
You know, if this were the supermarket of death.
But as soon as he cut the next corner, his stomach bottomed out, and he dug his bare heels into the floor.
At the end of the corridor, their path was blocked by a line of red-eyed, metal machines. Spines curved. Fists clenched. Metal skin a bloody carmine in the flashing lights.
They looked absolutely demonic.
"What the...are those robots?" Lopez cried over the blaring alarms.
"Yeah, about that," Eli muttered, swinging a 180 to avoid the corridor of evil machines. The table wheels screeched at his sharp and unruly pivot. "The bots sort of took over. Then they locked—I don't know—tens of thousands of people up in this place? Each stuck in their own simulation paradise while the rest of humanity dies off on a crime-ridden, uninhabitable earth. I wasn't supposed to wake up and revolt against them. Hence the murderous robot chase."
Lopez turned to stare at him with a mix of shock and horror and disbelief, struggling to find a sufficient response to this fucked up dystopia.
"Yeah. Exactly."
With clammy hands and a knot of nervous adrenaline in his gut, Eli swerved into a new hallway that would deliver him and Lopez straight to their terminus.
But an assembly of medic bots blocked this lane as well. And they did not look happy.
Dammit.
Releasing the bot from earlier had cost him. They were closing in on him now. Severing one tentacle at a time. Cutting him off from the rest of the building and any chance of escape.
"Teddy?" he murmured, arching forward and pushing off the ground in the direction of the bots.
"Yeah?"
"I need you to take that crutch beside you and hold it out in front of you like a gun."
"Why?"
"We're going bowling, and I need you to protect your face."
"...Jesus Christ."
Lopez did as he was told and held the crutch out like an assault rifle, like a jousting lance. Opposite them, the bots widened their stances and ordered the duo to stand down, but Eli just kicked harder and harder, gaining speed as they raced down the hellish hallway toward the blockade.
Doors blinked past him. Numbers blurring. Lights flashing and flickering around them like the godforsaken Willy Wonka tunnel—and just as nauseating.
A few bots attempted to move out of the way, but the bolt-brains were too slow.
The charging pair collided with the machines at full speed, the impact sending a violent jolt up Eli's arms. Eyes closed, he could hear the table crunching aluminum, wheels singing, and of course, Lopez shrieking all the while.
The metal bodies flew against the floor and walls around them, bowling pins crashing in all directions. But somehow, the two of them made it out unscathed, and Lopez whooped as they left the sea of moaning, broken metal behind them.
Eli couldn't help but smile a little at their triumph. Bombarding the gods of his simulation, knocking them flat, reclaiming his free will—he hadn't felt that good in ten years.
They finally made it to the very end of the hall, where a large set of double doors blocked off the most important space in the building: the central control room.
The power source of the entire facility.
The brain and soul of this machine.
As expected, the A.I.'s Achilles heel was also locked, and Eli shuffled forward with his battered crutch, glaring down at the shiny keypad.
His only chance was the code the medic bot had used before. If it was an identification code that permitted the bot access to such locations, then he'd be golden. If the code had belonged to Teddy's room exclusively, then he was screwed.
"Please work. Please, please fucking work," Eli begged, and he typed in the same number the bot had used to unlock the simulation room.
He waited a few heartbeats, his lungs clenching, his chest too tight. Then the doors emitted a soft, beautiful beep, and the keypad turned green.
He nearly burst into tears.
He kicked the keypad against the wall—smashing its contents—and pulled Lopez inside, shutting the doors behind them. Then he proceeded to slide his second crutch through the handles to lock the doors in place. It probably wouldn't hold against a mob of robots, but it would buy them some time.
Helping Lopez down from the medical table, he wrapped his arm around him and held him steady as they took in the high-security area before them.
Five giant monitors checkered the opposite wall, all reflecting different images and codes and equations. Three long rows of sleek supercomputers filled the rest of the space.
No chairs. No tables. Just computers and user interface equipment, all built and accessed by robots.
"What now?" Lopez asked, clutching onto Eli for support—and probably a little comfort. This was still all new to him after all. Hell, he hadn't even been awake for more than fifteen minutes, and he'd already escaped an army of evil robots. Eli was just surprised he was capable of speech and coherent thought with all the new revelations bouncing around inside his head.
"Now we end this."
Eli half-carried Lopez to the control panel where he could sit between keyboards and lean back against the wall. He patted Teddy's knee, nodding at him reassuringly. Then he approached the main computer system.
He wished it was as easy as unplugging the power or snipping a wire. But that wouldn't stop Genesis. Not if there were backup generators somewhere in the building. Not if they had to turn the power back on for air conditioning or other necessities.
Eli had to defeat the A.I. here and now—or die trying.
Of course, if he had his own laptop, hacking into the computer network wouldn't be so hard. But he didn't have his tools. He didn't have anything but his own two hands. So he tried for the low-hanging fruit.
Navigating to the correct settings, he found the program file he was looking for and entered the code necessary to delete it. But as he anticipated, the file was protected. The computer prompted him to enter a password, and unfortunately, the bot's five-digit number didn't work this time.
Invalid password, it told him. Administrative privileges required.
Okay. You knew that was too easy.
Try again.
He attempted a backdoor approach and tried disabling different functions, eliminating the building blocks of the simulation in hopes of bringing it down in one tragic cave-in. But he couldn't get anywhere; Genesis had blocked everything.
"Dammit!" he hissed, slamming his fists down on the desk.
Outside, the horde of bots banged against the doors, rattling the metal hinges, pushing against their makeshift security bar. Eli was running out of time.
He glanced back at the screen above him.
"What do you do when you can't climb an electric fence? When you can't touch it? " his CS professor once asked the class. "You research its model. You learn its history. You dig."
Eli's gaze flicked from one screen to another, and he narrowed his eyes, wondering if Genesis could really be that careless.
He searched for the history of Project Genesis , and while most data had been encrypted or deleted, he was thrilled to find a folder of log entries, each with their own video attachment. Like the A.I.'s own biopic.
Eli clicked on the first multimedia file, and he stumbled back a few feet when his mother's face lit the screen. His mother, who he hadn't seen in over ten years.
His mother, who was gone.
"Hey, that's who we should wake, E," Lopez said excitedly from the corner, thinking his idea ingenious. "Let's go find your mom. She'll know what to do!"
Eli slowly shook his head, his throat closing up as he stared at the woman's intelligent blue eyes. Her dark hair streaked with gray. The beautiful dark eyebrows and lashes that so closely resembled his sister's features.
"I can't," he whispered sadly. "She's dead, Teddy." He heard the man's sharp intake of breath, his guilty silence, and he winced. "But you're right. This was her project. If anyone had a failsafe, it would have been her."
With a trembling finger, he hit play.
"Today we're officially launching Project Genesis," his mother announced to the webcam, smiling brightly. She swiveled aside to reveal a stationary robot, a familiar framework stripped of its leathery skin and branded with the CSAR Tech logo. "Meet Genesis, the A.I. created to save humanity."
Eli forced the acidic stream of bile back down his esophagus. His mother had been so proud of her achievement. So hopeful. And her creation had usurped her dream and destroyed it.
He exited out of the file and scrolled down for something in the middle of the list.
"I'm happy to announce that Genesis has achieved deep learning today, otherwise known as unsupervised learning. Not only does he learn from his mistakes, but now he aspires to research why he failed in the first place. He's advancing faster than we ever could have hoped."
No. Not it. Eli scrolled down further, doing his best to ignore the shaking of the metal doors, the distant feminine voices ordering him to surrender.
In the next video thumbnail, his mother looked a little perturbed, which seemed like more promising content.
"Today I was a bit unsettled by the A.I.'s cognitive abilities. We discussed The Trolley Problem, and Genesis gave a rather disturbing answer." She looked into the camera lens. "Before he answered with his solution and reasoning, he asked me two questions. One, what have each of the individuals contributed to society? And two, what is their environmental footprint? Then he said he would choose whichever option benefited the whole of humanity the most." Her brow crinkled. "And then when I told him he had to choose without knowing such information, he said the strangest thing of all. He said if he had the ability to do so, he'd kill them all and remove the source of the dilemma."
A chill sank deep into Eli's marrow, and he shuddered. Genesis had seen the plague that was humanity even then. He'd been forming his coup since the very beginning.
Eli clicked on another video file.
His mother sighed and rubbed the space between her eyes. She looked utterly exhausted. "Today the Board decided to terminate Genesis after his attempt to alter his own code was discovered. I am devastated."
Eli swore. None of this was what he needed to know. He wanted weaknesses, a kill switch, something of value. Desperate, he clicked on the last video, and his heart twisted at the thumbnail picture. His mother was staring into the webcam, panicked, haggard and sweaty.
As if she'd been running for her life.
With his mouth dry and his throat nearly swollen shut, Eli clicked play.
"Genesis escaped from his holding cell and turned against us. He's erased his own internal kill code, and now he's uploaded himself to the mainframe. We're locked inside the facility." She closed her eyes, letting loose a shaky breath. "He's revealed his plan, but he's cut off all communication to the outside. I couldn't call the National Guard, and I'm unable to send this video out. So I can't warn anyone but the individual watching this file."
She swallowed and glanced over her shoulder, as if she too were waiting for a robot to break the door down and drag her away. She wiped the unkempt hair out of her eyes, and Eli could see that her arm was bleeding heavily. He felt sick.
"He wishes to build an empire with other machines. And he says he plans to abduct humans from their homes so he can place them in these....these simulated realities. He thinks that's the only way to save us."
Her eyes filled with tears, and as Eli sat there watching the unbreakable woman shatter, he couldn't help but shed his own.
"If you're watching this now, looking for answers, it means Genesis likely succeeded. So whoever you are, you need to find..." She hesitated, her bottom lip trembling. "You need to find Obelus. He's the only one left who can shut Genesis down from the inside. I can't give you more than that." She glanced over her shoulder again, and when she looked back at the camera, she was crying fully. "But if you find him...tell him...tell him I'm sorry."
The screen went black, and Eli stared up at the monitor, completely devastated.
"What does she mean by Obelus?" Lopez asked after a moment, snapping Eli out of his painful spell. The man shook his head, squinting at the floor. "It seemed...personal. You think she meant you, and she was just trying to protect you by withholding your name?"
Eli nodded, awed by his mother's cleverness, her foresight. "Obelus is a division sign. But it's also a symbol used in old texts to mark something as false. And that's....that's all I've done in my time here. Recognize the fallacies of my simulation." Eli frowned. "But I'm not sure what more I could do. She couldn't have meant my college-level computer skills. So what did she..."
He blinked, remembering the blood on his mother's arm.
Genesis wouldn't have harmed her. But he might have removed a threat by force if push came to shove.
Eli glanced down at his own clothed wrist, wide-eyed. He brushed his fingertips across the skin-tight suit, searching for the bulge. Flinching when he felt it.
"Classic Mom," he breathed, unsurprised by her ability to go above and beyond the average parental invasion of privacy. When she'd managed such a feat, he had no clue. Maybe his senior year of high school, when he'd had his tonsils removed.
He brought his arm to his mouth and ripped a hole in the fabric. Then he bit into his skin, hard enough to draw blood.
Lopez swore in Spanish and shouted at him to stop, but Eli ignored him. As the warm metallic liquid flooded his mouth, he could feel the small square piece of foreign material settle on his tongue.
"Eli, what the fuck," Lopez complained. "Did that simulation melt your brain or what?"
Eli spat out the small chip—the metal piece fit for a computer port—and held it up for his friend to see. "Turns out I was the failsafe."
The door shuddered again, bending the crutch nearly to a breaking point. Eli quickly moved to insert the chip, but a familiar voice poured out of the speaker above them, freezing him in place.
"Wait, Elliot," the masculine voice said, drowning out the alarm. "Please."
Eli scowled at the dark ceiling. "You just confirmed my suspicions, Genesis. You aren't protected against whatever my mom uploaded to this drive. It'll wipe you out."
"Please, Elliot," the voice begged, and for the first time, it sounded perfectly real. It sounded human. "I just want what's best for you and the others. I just want to save you all."
"I know," Eli said, a slight pang in his chest. "So do I."
He stuck the chip into the computer, and the message that popped up on the screen brought a cool rush of relief to his chest.
Malicious software detected.
Disable "Genesis?"
With an incredulous huff, Eli slammed his hand down on the Enter button before the A.I. could figure out a countermove. Instantly, the entire screen began glitching and spitting up error boxes and warnings, strips of red and green—a war of two digital masterminds.
But as sharp as Genesis was, it was his ego that had cost him everything. He hadn't perceived Eli as a legitimate threat until it was too late, and he'd paid the price.
The alarm went silent at long last—peace to Eli's sensitive ears—and outside, the pounding on the door abruptly stopped. Eli heard two dozen bots fall to the ground, powerless, and he nearly collapsed to the ground along with them.
"Did it work?" Lopez asked, half-sliding off the panel.
On cue, a "Virus Removed" message appeared on the screen, and this time, Eli's knees did give out. He crumpled in a heap of tired limbs and emotional residue, blinking away his tears as he stared down at the bloody hole in his arm.
"It's over, Teddy." He closed his eyes. "We did it."
****************************
Woohoo.
Final chapter posted now! >>