Chapter 6

I was still in shock and trying to process all this when another vision hit.

I could see a strike team of Greens, Four at the head of it, closing in on the hideout where I was being kept. They were armed, they were angry, and they would kill everyone in the place. I could also hear Four on her communicator.

"Located."

"You are to retrieve her, Four. I know the Rebel forces have not killed her..."

I pulled my arm from the wall and looked straight at Obifune and the Blues in the room. If I stayed silent, I'd be rescued and they'd be dead.

No more deaths. Not if I could stop it.

"They're coming. Front door. Run away now if you value your lives." Obifune was about to ask questions, but I cut him off. "It's me they want. Knock me out if you have to."

He nodded to his group and they quickly evacuated the room. He passed me a small sphere I know now to be a paralytic subroutine. I downloaded it and collapsed, but I was still fully conscious and able to hear what was going on.

Four was taking point, cursing loudly and shouting orders to the Greens. "What do you mean there's none here? They must be hiding. Tear the place apart if you need to. Make sure you plant the charges, too. Even if we can't flush them out, we'll delete them in the rubble.

"These charges are too powerful. They'll destroy most of the residential units on the block."

Four didn't hesitate. "We need to keep up the pattern and keep increasing the damage to make it look like they're the ones behind the attacks. More casualties will destroy a support base for the Blues, and keep Ma2a's priorities on fighting them. Do it." A pause, and she was hovering right over me. "Well, well. Looks like the Blues didn't do too much damage." I felt her lean in and whisper in my ear. "I hate loose ends. I'd de-rez you myself if I could. Unfortunately? Direct command from Math Assistant. You stay alive for now."

I was glad for the paralytic. It kept me from making a sarcastic retort to that.

After I was, again, picked up and thrown on the floor of a vehicle, I heard the sounds of an explosion as we drove away. I could only hope Obifune and his crew made it to safety.

The rest of the trip back to Citadel was without incident. I was taken to the infirmary, my leg rebuilt, and I could do little but wait for the paralytic to wear off and think. I was alone, afraid, confused.

I tried to imagine what the people closest to me would say to all this, tried to imagine them trapped with me.

Gibbs, long gone, was the only one who wasn't too painful to thin of trapped here with me. I could easily imagine him, thick glasses and thicker beard, pacing the room the way he would pace the lab at night. "Well, Lora dear. I'm afraid we really have made a fine mess of things."

"Yeah. So what do we do?"

"We protect these people. We try to bring them together and find common ground, make peace. If we cannot avoid being their gods, then we have no choice than to be good at the job."

"I never asked to be a goddess, Dr. Gibbs."

I pictured him sighing and taking off his glasses, pinching his nose. "No one with a conscience would."

After I was patched up, two guards escorted me to Math Assistant Two's dock. Her robes were fuller, the mask and elaborate headdress now covering her entire face. Her betrayal and hurt came through clear enough.

"I save your life. I give you shelter. I rebuild you from a broken shell and give you a place at my side and directive. And you cannot accept it? You end up in the hands of the heretics, and barely survive. Without Four's timely arrival -"

"The rebels aren't responsible for those bombs. Your security teams are. Four admitted it when she thought I couldn't hear her."

Math Assistant Two stepped off her dais and stared me down. "Four is loyal to me. You are not...yet."

I wasn't dazzled or intimidated. "You can't threaten me into being loyal."

Of course, she seemed to take it as a challenge. "I was not trying to make a threat." She nodded her head towards the largest blank wall.

It was a video feed, showing a live feed of the lab. Standing right in the camera view was one of the security guards. It took me a moment to remember his name; Thorne, that was it. He was looking around the room, nervous.

"I'm kissing my career, my security clearance, and my vet pension good-bye for this."

"I know. I'm sorry. But if I'm right, Lora's data is still in the system, and we can get her out." He wasn't on camera, but the voice stopped me cold – Alan!

"I don't know your wife very well, but..." Thorne shook his head. "If there's a chance she's still alive, I don't blame you for wanting to take it."

Even with her face under the mask I could tell Math Assistant Two was pleased with herself. "I was able to contact your bundled counterpart. Your employers have already written you off as dead. He refused to give up on you."

"You dragged him into this? How…" I already knew that artificial intelligence could be unpredictable, but... "Alan and I helped code you."

"After thinking it over, I realized that your escape may have been to seek companionship. I know he is the one you miss the most. Your email archives contain multiple entries addressed to him. You've expressed a desire to resign, to 'go home.' I can bring 'home' to you."

"Math Assistant, don't. Don't...Leave him alone."

For a horrible moment, I worried they were going to fire up the laser sequence and shoot Alan, but when the doors opened…It got worse. Two guards were escorting Obifune. He had his wrists and ankles cuffed, forcing him to his knees. A guard walked up and handed her a baton, which transformed into a gun – strangely long-barreled in shape and stylized. Math Assistant Two dismissed the guards, leaving the three of us alone in the room. She pressed the gun in my hand.

"For protection. I cannot use it myself."

She looked at Obifune. "I am asking you, begging you. This is your last chance. Give up this heresy. Go back to your terminals and your Users and serve them faithfully."

He shook his head.

"I'm sorry it has to be this way, but I have to protect my people." Math Assistant Two nodded to me. "End this."

The disc on my back grew hot and my hand clamped around the gun. The compulsion to raise the gun and fire was intense. I wasn't sure what was happening. I had the gun pointed at Obifune's forehead, and it was taking all my will not to fire. I wanted to turn the gun on Math Assistant Two, but the best I could do was keep it steady. "What did you do to me?"

Math Assistant Two replied. "A User was uploaded."

"Uploaded, but could not be saved," Obifune added. "I did not get the chance to tell you when you came to us. She took what she could from the upload and saved it to disc."

"Data can always be copied, moved, backed up, recompiled. We saved what we could."

"What am I?" Anything to buy time, anything to keep myself from firing.

Math Assistant Two was glacially calm. "Many civilian and soldier scripts were rendered inoperable during the attacks. A female-designated member of my System Guard suffered a shattered disc. Her shell was stable, but her mind was gone. The upload and data integration was successful, as was appearance modification."

My hand could not move, but I looked over my shoulder. The big, green cylinder in the corner. It was just the right size and shape…

Obifune raised his head and stared down Math Assistant Two. "We are not weapons. We are not slaves."

"But you cannot disobey a User command," she replied.

Seizing control for the briefest of moments, I turned and shot, but not at Math Assistant Two or Obifune. The cylinder shattered upon impact with the energy bolt, disabling the opaque filter applied to its exterior. A featureless, vaguely female humanoid form was inside, suspended from cables like a puppet on strings.

Math Assistant Two looked at the cylinder. "That has served its purpose." Before my eyes, it crumbled into something less like voxels and closer to dust.

Math Assistant Two reached up and pulled off her mask. Just when I thought this situation couldn't get any stranger, here I was staring at my own face. "The User neural pattern was fragmented. Splitting the data between two discs allowed for greater stability. I was able to fuse myself with the first half of the recovered data and upload into her shell."

"And you want to be a User."

"No." She was speaking without modulation, and in my own voice. There aren't words or strings adequate enough to describe how creepy that was. "It is the duty and honor of Programs to obey Users without question, to worship them in exchange for their creation and runtime. I could not allow a User to die. By fusing what I could save of her with myself and with you, she will live on."

"And where do I come in?"

"You have her consciousness, her memories, her knowledge. I can give you a place of honor at my side, advise me on how our people can better serve. You will be adored, your runtime comfortable. I will bring your counterpart here." She nodded to the screen. "The insurgency will have no support. Programs will see you as the uploaded User, a symbol of hope. You will bring this world peace -"

A hidden door on the side opened and there was Four, standing with her disc raised and about six Greens behind her. "You should have realized it was too dangerous of a plan."

"Mercury Four, explain yourself!"

As if this situation couldn't possibly get stranger, but I was too angry to be shocked.

"Obi's people here have the right idea, but they don't go far enough. The Users depend on us. We run their weapons, their communications, their infrastructure. They can't manage without us! We rule them, not the other way around."

Master Control's argument. Great.

Math Assistant Two was clearly upset and disturbed by all this. She moved to stand between Four's soldiers and us. "So it is true. The attacks, the deaths. I gave you unlimited access to protect our people and you betray us all?"

"I am protecting our people! The Users are the threat!"

Obifune looked up at me. The gun was still in his face, but he was the picture of calm. "A Program has a great deal of control over how they carry out our commands. We cannot control our directive, but we are moral or immoral in our methods. Ma2a's command was to 'end this.' How will it end?"

I moved the gun. I fired.

Obifune's chains shattered and he was on his feet, disc drawn. There must have been some residual data from the soldier I was uploaded into, because I was back to back with him, the gun turned on Four's squad and Math Assistant Two.

Four looked between the two of us and then to Math Assistant Two. She raised her disc and hurled it.

It would have hit me. It should have hit me, but instead…

Math Assistant Two collapsed in front of me, leaking a combination of blood and energy. Four retrieved her disc, and the room began to shake.

"Damn it! They got past the blockade. Everyone, move out. Seal the room."

"But Ma2a, the heretic, the -"

"Keep the doors sealed and guards posted. They won't go anywhere. We won't need Ma2a once we've taken control of the system."

When it was just three of us in the room, I looked over Math Assistant Two's injuries, the combination of blood and energy leaking onto my suit.

"I did not want it to end like this. I wanted my people safe." She looked up at Obifune. "And I was mistaken as to where the threat came from."

More explosions, more noise. She raised her hand and changed the display. A large gathering of Greens were pouring out of the Citadel, and covering the streets outside. Lights were going out, not just the Blues, but the oranges and teals of civilians and unaligned Programs. It was going to be a slaughter.

"She'll destroy them all. Unless they obey the Greens or join them."

"What then?"

"Server Nine. The open Internet. Server Seventeen contains promising bioterrorism research; Users would be vulnerable in ways we would not."

I shuddered. A cold blush went over Obifune's circuits. Yeah, this was not going to end well.

"I...cannot atone, but I can..." She snapped off the mask and her disc, pressing them into my hands. "All my functions…are yours…Upload yourself"

"Math Assistant? Ma2a? Come on, you have to stay…" But her circuits went dull. The light faded from her eyes. It was too late.

Outside, the explosions were getting closer. There were screams, crying, praying to the Users. Mercury Four and her forces would kill everyone here, then spread out and take their idea of "protection" across the world's servers. Maybe the end of User worship wouldn't be such a bad idea, but enforcing it by the virtual sword would destroy countless innocents. There was also another horrible thought—the best way to "protect" this world from humanity was to make sure there were no more humans, which would also destroy the Programs in the process.

There's a moment that every scientist hopes never comes. Most of the time, we only contemplate it after several alcoholic beverages or inhaling a joint. (Yes, I indulged when I was young. Yes, before I took up with Flynn.) It's that moment where Bainbridge looked at the atomic bomb and summed it up with "Now we are all sons of bitches."

Because at that moment, I was the bitch. This was the unintended consequence of something I worked on all my adult life. This was a world I helped create, one I had responsibility for. An entire world of sentient life, the potential to rewrite everything in the book on science and religion, and I put it all in danger.

I couldn't get out of this. In all likelihood, I would never see my world, my husband, or my son ever again. The only thing left was to try and set right what I could.

I'm not sure how I knew any of this, but I put the disc on my back, wincing as it fused with my code and the disc already there. Next was the mask. I steeled myself and snapped it on my face. It seemed to mold perfectly, held there by nothing. The spot between my shoulders felt like someone was sticking a hot knife into it, shooting pain into every part of my body. I wasn't sure if my feet were still on the ground or if I was somehow floating.

I was aware of everything – every camera feed in the building, every line of code that made up the walls and floor, every flickering light of life on this system and across the networks. The world that covered the human one like an invisible mesh, interconnected, needing one another in ways that no one on either side could comprehend. The sheer amount of knowledge should have been overwhelming. Instead it felt like I was coming home.

I called out across the networks. "Attention Programs. This is Math Assistant Three."