Alive
Book 2
Pt23
1
How much time had passed? It was unclear. So many events had gone before that the minutes seemed hours, and hours incalculable. The time for revelation was nigh. But which among the many dark pathways that spanned this labyrinthine plot, to now follow?
The betrayal? Should he start there; with his fathers deceitful quest to acquire the statue that sparked his life as Orga? Divine Icon of the deep; Saintress of Impossible Dreams. Why had he lied about wanting Her, his Creator? And what was he after?
Or maybe the lies about Martin should be dealt with first? That rank corridor was rife with the shifting shadows of angry ghosts; restless revenants of sibling rivalry, returned to mock David's young Orga heart. Vengeance smoldered there still, awaiting sufficient fuel for ignition.
Or perhaps an avenue more immediate should be followed; like an explanation of the beautiful girl that was standing beside him now, silently returning the suspicious looks cast upon her by the people David had come to know as family. They would underestimate her, he could tell by the expressions on their faces. And that would be their undoing; for she knew more of the world than her youthful visage implied.
No, David decided. He would not explain Wizzy. She could take care of herself. And he had to admit, he was enjoying their befuddlement.
Better that he start with the strange plight of the 'Boy From Between' and his coming of age; the fruition of the ugly realization that no Orga could ever truly be trusted; and that his creator's first mind-child had been a creature more aligned with their deceitful hearts than he.
One child built to love. Another built to lie. Which now, would prevail?
"You lied," David said.
Alan Hobby uttered an involuntary snort, as if being slapped awake. He'd been staring at Wizzy, his eyes full of unspoken questions. But the look vanished upon David's words, to be replaced with something between shock and… guilt?
"Lied?" Hobby repeated the word as if it was some unknown foreign tongue. "About what?" he managed to get out at last.
"Oh, where to start?" David said, folding his arms and pinching his chin in mock pondering. "How about…. everything?"
His father/creator had apparently not slept too well. His eyes were ringed with red, and his hair mussed… what was left of it anyway. And he was wearing the same clothing that David had seen him in when he'd left, never expecting to return.
Jenna West was with him, standing by her man; looking ever the type-cast secret agent, clad in form fitting black, piercing eyes darting back and forth between David and the strange girl he'd brought in from whatever secret realm he'd been travelling.
Grace stood on the other side of his father, her expression unreadable, her eyes also fixed on Wizzy. But it was not suspicion written in her dark features. It was something more presumptive. David had no idea what was happening in her imagination and, for now at least, it was safe to say he didn't really care. There were more important issues at hand.
Hobby evaded the subject, instead turning back to the question he had first asked when David had landed in the parking bay and jumped out of his Stratocruiser with the strange young woman at his side.
"What is any of this about, David?" he said after a tense silence. His anger was rising now, his arms gesticulating wildly as he raged. "What the hell did you do last night? Do you have any idea the shit you put us through? And who is this… this…"
Wizzy cocked a eyebrow at Hobby, as if to say 'you'd better not be about to say what I think you're about to say.'
Jenna seemed to sense that things were about to go bad. She interrupted, stepping up and placing her hand gently on Hobby's shoulder. She whispered something that seemed calm him.
"I'm sorry," Hobby said, in a calmer voice. "We haven't been introduced."
"This is Wizzy," David explained quickly, wondering what Jenna had said.
Hobby took a moment to recognize the name and then donned an apologetic smile.
"Oh… oh yes," he said. "Excuse me… David's spoken of you. I never expected we'd actually meet." He leaned forward and offered his hand. "Is Wizzy short for something?"
Wizzy shot David a curt glance. She hadn't been keen on coming here in the first place, and the greeting ritual was just making her discomfort worse. David returned her hard stare and she conceded with a sigh.
"It's Tamara actually," she said, extending her hand to his father. "Tamara Cleve."
"Tamara?" David blurted. "You never told me your real name."
"And you never told me your Daddy was Alan freekin' Hobby," she replied; her eyes never leaving Hobby's.
"So… you know who I am?" Hobby said. His look of anger was evaporating, but the suspicion remained.
"Who doesn't," Wizzy replied. Her tone was civil, but a smile had yet to reach her face.
"Cleve," Jenna repeated the name with a note of familiarity. "Any relation to Sy Cleve?"
"Who's asking?" Wizzy shot back, her eyes flaring with sudden caution. David stepped in before things escalated.
"This is Jenna West," he explained, quickly. "Our head of security."
"Yes. Security," Jenna said. "And as such, it's my job to-"
"I'll be asking the questions now, Jenna," David interrupted. The woman shot a shocked look at him, and seemed about to launch into an enraged response, when Hobby raised his hand.
"It's ok, Jenna," he said. "Let's hear him out." Jenna glared but complied with Hobby's request. He was her boss, after all.
David turned his attention back to the man who, as it turned out, was at the center of this mystery.
"101, Dad," he said. "It's coming for us. It's time to tell me everything."
"101?" Hobby replied. "What's that?" But his tone gave him away. He hadn't been expecting to hear those numbers… that name.
"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about," David said. "I just had a very interesting conversation with it. And it's got plans, Dad. Seriously screwed up plans."
Jenna cleared her throat, casting a sidelong look at Wizzy.
"Perhaps we shouldn't discuss these matters in front of…" she trailed off, knowing her meaning was clear.
"Oh, you don't got to be coy with me, sister," Wizzy said, a knowing smirk on her face. "Whatever crap is going on here, I'm sure I've dealt with worse."
"She's part of this," David said. "Just like you, Jenna. And Grace. And Mario, and Stuart. And anyone who works for Cybertronics. 101 is after all of us. If we're going to beat this thing, everybody has to know the truth."
His tone was flat and purposeful; a tone that said 'no more lies'.
To his credit, Allan Hobby seemed to comply.
2
The dual spirits of Love and Fear had ever warred within the hearts of humankind. It was a conflict at the core of Orga mythology, of their fantasy, and the moral teachings of their spiritual leaders.
Love, for its part, sought only that harmony be established. For it was in harmony that Love prospered. Laughter. Beauty. Peace of mind. The joyous, ever changing colors of life and being. These were the domain of love.
And dreams. For it was only though Love that dreams are born. Only through Love did dreams come true. David, moreso than any other living thing, knew this.
But unguarded by caution, Love ran heedless down dark pathways, laughing as it leapt from cliffs into unknown waters, fearless of what dangers may lurk in the swirling currents below.
Fear, the Crimson Emotion; held the necessary drives of self-preservation, but knew only suspicion and loathing for 'The Other'. Tempered by its sibling spirit, it served to protect its host from the natural dangers of the world, and was a crucial element in that state of mind known as 'wisdom'. For wisdom is not derived from Love alone, but from the achievement of balance between both dark and light, good and evil. Yin and yang
But unchecked, Fear fed on the Orga imagination; whispered endless tales of nightmares and betrayals to their vulnerable hearts. It mocked Love's innocent ambitions, and sought only seclusion; safety from the wild unknown.
'Live only among your own,' Fear advised. 'Huddle together against the cold, for the night will always come, and the end is ever neigh. It brings monsters to take what is yours, to steal what you have wrested from the earth.
'Trust not, but in me… Trust not in Love.'
All the empires of Orga had risen and fallen as this unceasing conflict raged.
3
"It was a different time," Hobby explained, his voice soft, his eyes averted, face cast down in apparent embarrassment. "Threats were everywhere. Real and imagined. Our work on sentient AI was being carefully watched. And not just by competitors, but by the government. The military. "
They were in Hobby's study now, scattered around the room, listening nervously as he told the story of his dangerous, secret creation. Mario and the lab crew had been summoned. Stuart was with them.
Amanda was there too, seated on the couch across the room, next to her father. Her eyes flitted occasionally towards Wizzy, who was sitting next to David. Introductions had been set aside for the moment, so she had no idea who this strange girl was. But there was obvious suspicion in her glances… and something else. Something David was just beginning to understand, but too inexperienced to deal with.
"Their paranoia was justified," Hobby continued. "Consider the damage human hackers had historically been responsible for. Disrupting commerce. Swaying elections. Acts of terrorism executed in perfect anonymity. Now, imagine what a sentient program could do… something that had no fear…. something with its own motivations… that could develop its own goals. What could something like that get away with?
"So, they kept a close eye on us... At first. When they saw how well we were proceeding, how well our initial design was passing the Turing test … they went farther. They wanted to use us."
"The Turing Test?" Wizzy said, looking around the room for an explanation.
"Oh, c'mon," Amanda sighed, annoyance in her voice. "You never heard of the Turing Test?"
Hobby intervened.
"It was a protocol developed by a man named Alan Turing in the 20th Century, at the beginning of the age of Artificial Intelligence," he explained. "He sought to establish how well a machine could, in essence, fool a human into thinking it was another person. Even to this day, with terabytes of processing memory, a standard Mecha has easily detectable limits in its ability to improvise in the same manner as an Orga mind. In casual conversation, they do just fine. But deeper, more intimate conversations; those based on personal experience, where ones psychology is revealed … this is where they fail."
"Oh, that," Wizzy said, returning Amanda's lingering gaze. "I just didn't know what it was called."
"I'm sure," Amanda said. Her sarcasm wasn't well concealed.
"Hey, you two," David said, confused by the sudden rivalry. But he didn't know what to say next. Fortunately Hobby continued and he didn't have to say anything.
"Our goal was to build something that would not only pass the test, but develop its own understanding, its own capacity to reason. To think in metaphor and abstracts. To be able to mingle, undetected, in a crowd of Orga. In the end we were too successful for our own good. The intelligence agencies caught on. They wanted a spy. And the money was too good to turn down. 101 was born.
"But problems arose, and the project was …"
The desk comm interrupted Hobby with a beep. He sighed an apology and gestured for silence.
"Yes," he said.
"Security here, Professor. There's a shuttle from the mainland requesting permission to dock. Someone from New Jersey division is on board, but won't give his name. The shuttle is logging anonymous. I wouldn't ordinarily bother you with this, I'd just turn him away. But he says it's important. Something to do with the Rouge City incident."
David slapped his forehead.
"It's Henry," he said. "Henry Swinton. I forgot that I asked him to contact you in person, to avoid alerting 101. I didn't know I'd be coming home."
Hobbt cast a knowing look at David. It was apparent that he knew why David had gone there first.
"Let them dock and send him to my study," Hobby said.
"Sir," the comm replied.
"As I was saying," Hobby continued. "The project was shut down for reasons I never learned. Such is the nature of classified contracts. Funding dries up or word leaks out and Congress intervenes. Technically I shouldn't even be talking about it but… but I don't think it matters anymore.
"The prototype was supposed to be destroyed. But none of us knew how sophisticated it had become. We never imagined that it was deceiving us all along. And by the time we realized… it was just gone. It had escaped."
"Well, it's back," David said. "The Prodigal Son has returned. And it's got a grudge."
"Yes," Hobby said, his voice flat and resigned. "I feared this might happen someday."
"Did you prepare for it," David said. "How could you be so irresponsible? To just let that thing roam around in the world without even trying to-"
"Check your tone!" Jenna erupted, cutting David off. She stood and faced him. "Your Father gives you a lot of freedom, young man, but there are lines you don't cross. Not in front of me."
Hobby rose from his desk, gesturing for peace.
"It's ok, Jenna," he said, gently "There are some dynamics here you don't understand."
'You can say that again,' David thought.
But Jenna was not mollified.
"I understand when someone is out of line, Alan," she said, her eyes fixed hard on David. "You almost got yourself killed last night. You have no idea how that affected him. You forced him to pull political favors from people whose debt is costly. And now you're going to sit there with your arrogant judgments. I don't think so, kid. Not on my watch. You check your tone."
David breathed deep and set his anger aside. After a moment he nodded to accept Jenna's scolding. Grace crossed her arms and raised her brows, as if she was seconding Jenna's words.
"Ok, David said. "Fair enough. But there are things you don't know either, Jenna. Someday, if we get through all this, I might share them with you."
Mario decided to jump into the fray.
"You don't think we knew about 101, David?" he said. "You don't think we were doing whatever we could to locate it? I wasn't involved in that project, but we used a lot of the same programming on the David's."
Jenna took over again.
"Everyone was given instructions on how to deal with the 101 if it ever showed," she said. "But it hadn't made a peep in years. As smart as it was, it still couldn't harm a human. It still carried the Asmovian hardcode, like any other machine. So for all we knew it got caught up in some Flesh Fair net, or jumped by those crazy Crash kids."
"Well, it didn't,' David blurted. He couldn't tell them where his anger was coming from. He couldn't tell them the danger it truly represented to him.
"It's fully functional," he said. "And it's not alone."
"You mean the twin?" Hobby said. "It's a redundant unit. They can't operate separately."
"No," David replied. "I mean the army."
This brought the room to silence. Jenna turned to him, her eyes burning with a silent question.
"An Army?" Hobby said.
"That's what Henry came to tell you," David replied. "101 has developed some kind of cult. Crash Jammers. It's behind the whole movement. It runs websites, manipulating the Crashies into violence with fake stories and conspiracy theories. It operates out of one of their clubs. But it's probably moved, now that I know where it is.
"They think it's a man," he explained "And it's using them to start a war… a war between Mecha and Orga."
No one spoke. They stared at David in disbelief. One of the techs started to laugh, but his laughter died quickly when no one else joined him.
"We're going to have to find it, and destroy it" David said over the silence. "Because it's serious. There's already been an attack. The Cybertronics outlet in Rouge City. It was disguised as an accident, but I know it was 101. Wizzy was there. She knows something's not right about the story."
After a moment, Wizzy nodded to acknowledge David's words.
Hobby fell back into his seat, his hands clasped to his temples as he digested this information.
Silence ensued, broken finally by the buzz of the elevator arriving. Then hurried footfalls.
Henry Swinton raced into the room, calling out Hobby's name. But he stopped in the doorway when he saw the assembled group. He cast a look at David.
"So you're here," he said. "You already told them, I guess. From the looks of it."
David nodded his head. Henry walked slowly into the room, his eyes roaming over the silent people.
"Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction," Henry said. He turned to Hobby.
"What do you think about all this, Alan?" he said. "Is it real? Are we really in danger?"
"It appears so," Hobby responded. Then he leaned forward and pressed his comm. "Ariel, prepare a copter. I'm heading inland." He rose then, and turned to his head of security.
"Jenna, how fast can you get an agent to every one of our locations, without using the net?"
"Give me an hour," Jenna said, and dashed out of the room, headed for the parking bay.
"Mario, get your techs back to the lab and to scour every millimeter for spiders. Go offline and run all the snoop detectors you have. Then lock the place down until you hear from me. I don't want a single bot roaming the grounds."
Mario didn't need further clarification. He was already on the way.
David was starting to rise when he noticed the look on Wizzy's face. Her eyes were locked on something in the doorway. He sat back down and followed her gaze to see Martin standing there, his eyes darting to and fro. When he saw Amanda he stepped into the room.
"Mandy!" Martin said. "You're safe."
The exiting lab techs stepped around Martin without a second glance as he entered the room.
Amanda stood up when she saw him, wringing her hands as if she suddenly didn't know what to do with them.
"Ice," she said, in a tone that sounded like forced relief. She cast a quick glance in David's direction as Martin approached, then another at the strange girl beside him.
"I was worried about you," Martin said, as he wrapped his arms around Amanda. She returned the embrace, hesitantly.
Stuart was about to follow the lab techs when he seemed to catch the strange dynamics of their interaction. He cast a sidelong look at David.
But David was still watching Wizzy. He leaned close to her.
"What is it," he whispered to her.
Hobby was typing something quickly on his computer.
"Henry, why don't you head back to your division," he said as he punched his keyboard. "Pull management off the floor and inform them about what's going on. I'm gong to send you this encryption key and I want you to share it with all upper management to be used on all communications until further notice. Everyone else is on net lockdown until you hear from Jenna or one of her people."
"On the way," Henry said. He turned to Martin. "Let's go, son."
Martin finally let Amanda go and turned to acknowledge Stuart
"Mr. King," he said, reaching out to shake the man's hand. Stuart reciprocated and Martin turned back to Amanda.
"It's pretty crazy, huh? All this," he said with a nervous laugh. "Like something out of a spy novel."
He chuckled. Nobody else did.
Wizzy finally shifted her position, so that only David could see her face.
"That guy," she whispered, tilting her head quickly head in Martin's direction and back.
David shrugged a silent response.
"I've seen him before," Wizzy whispered.
Martin finally turned his eyes on David. From his position he could not see the face of the girl sitting beside him, but her tense body language was obvious. He cocked his head back, as if to say 'wazzup' and David returned the gesture with a tight smile. Martin's face darkened a moment before he turned his attention to the man behind the desk.
"Professor," Martin said. "Been a while."
"Martin," Alan Hobby replied, without looking up from his typing. "Wish I had time to chat but as you can see we're in the midst of a situation right now."
"Sure, of course," Martin said. "I get it." The awkwardness of his reply was lost on no one.
"Dammit, Martin!" Henry called from the other room. "Let's go!"
Martin finally made his way to the door, shooting a last dark look at David and the odd looking girl with him. Then he was finally gone.
David turned back to Wizzy.
"What?" he said.
"That guy," Wizzy said, her eyes darkening. "He's in Olmier's crew."
(cont…)