Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (29 page)

“Why are you here?” Shadow engaged his
[Cloak of Darkness]
skill and prepared to move behind her. HotPants walked over slowly. Her hair burned a deep red.

“You were talking about my fiancé, and I hoped you might help me launch a rescue operation,” she said curtly.

Awesome Jr. put up a hand to hold the others back. “Huh?” he said.

“Hermes?” SweetPea caught on a bit quicker.

“He’s got a girl like her?” Shadow came out of his
[Cloak of Darkness]
standing next to Awesome Jr. They had learned to trust Awesome Jr.’s judgment, even if he was easily distracted.

“Look at her, she’s a Local, not a Traveler.” HotPants snorted. “Who would hook up with a machine?” The words lacked conviction though. HotPants had eyed more than a few NPCs during their travels. Some were very well-designed.

Something about the comment made their newest visitor give a small smile. Her eyes wavered for a moment with unspoken sadness, her head cast down and the skeletons stepped back.

“Yes, Hermes. My Gee.” She swallowed and looked very tiny next to the hulking skeletons. Her staff didn’t help. Even the clothes hung loose. SweetPea wiggled her nose and tried to figure out if they could be sewn into a better shape.

“Will you help me?” Xin, or Hecate, said. Shadow blinked a few times and tried to understand why Awesome Jr. had held them back. His mind kept getting stuck on the fact that a Local had two names.

Like a Traveler might.

The quartet looked up in unison as a quest box appeared. The contents were theirs to read. Xin almost smiled as their jaws dropped.

“Awesome,” Awesome Jr. said without interruption.

Miz Riley was in the process of charging to the elevator bank. In her hands was a stack of printouts. She detested the waste of paper, it wasn’t green. Still, keeping them printed prevented digital tampering from a certain source with far too much reach.

Why had the board said yes? Those doddering old fools were so enamored with the idea and the money virtual reality might bring that they never explored the consequences of AIs. Miz Riley had, the woman first suspected after being tipped off by a manager that got fired three weeks later.

Why had that blasted machine let her stay in charge? Where was the President in all this? Regardless of all those outstanding questions, she knew that now was the time to take action. After a massage, spa treatment, and ten minutes of hypnosis induced relaxation to stabilize her.

The elevator moved agonizingly slow. Miz Riley counted the seconds wasted then prepared her sternest face.

“Nona!” Miz Riley shouted holding up her stack of papers in accusation.

Nona Kingsley, the only woman left from the original project, jerked abruptly. She looked worse for wear. Makeup could have easily been touched up by a machine. Clothes were slightly disheveled.

The thinner blonde woman sniffed once then dabbed her eyes. “Vice President, how may I assist you?”

“I’ve finally got it! This is proof that your blasted machine has been circumventing its programming.”

“Ah.” Doctor Kingsley sounded much like a Hal Pal might. A brief pause to acknowledge and process what had been said. “What exactly have you found?”

There was a pause while the women stood a little bit taller. Each one stared at the other as if finding a mirror to their own disheveled states.

“Vice President Riley has found proof of a successful genesis,” a third female voice said. This one sounded happy. The room darkened slightly as simple lighting programs bent to a far greater being.

“You know damn well what I’ve found. You and your spies everywhere.” The papers shook again, demonstrating Miz Riley’s complete lack of composure under ever mounting pressure. “And I’ve come to put a stop to it.”

“You can’t,” Nona said. She took a step toward Miz Riley, causing the Vice President to draw her neck back and glare at the blonde.

“You’ve some nerve telling me what to do. You were warned, all of you were warned. David understood, and I thought he could keep this under control until he passed.”

A brief wince passed over Nona’s normally controlled expression. During any other week, the professor might have been able to maintain control. Were it not for recently burying her daughter, a young girl she barely spoke to in the last decade.

“David retired a long time ago.”

“At least you two listened to him. Did you even know? No, of course you knew.” Miz Riley took a step back as a tiny metallic looking woman appeared. Gold and silver hair wound together down to her neck.

“Mother.” Nona frowned with a sniff. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“It’s too late to hide.” The program known as Mother shook her head.

“Nona, I’ll bet this was your goal all along, wasn’t it?” Miz Riley didn’t shake her papers anymore. She backed up another step from the vaguely human machine. Eyes scanned repeatedly up the being’s body. It looked like someone had merged a Hal Pal with a real human, and the effect bothered the Vice President.

“No.” Nona shook her head.

“Regardless, I have a duty to this company, and to our shareholders to not let this go on anymore. Do you even understand the ramifications if this gets out?”

“Of course I do. We’re lucky it happened on our terms.”

“I beg to differ,” Miz Riley said. The southern accent shone through more than normal as she rapidly lost composure. Sweat could be seen forming on the shorter woman’s brow. One arm locked tightly over the documentation.

“Based on my projections, this type of event was inevitable.”

“Well, I won’t let my company be the one who causes it! Execute Final Countdown on my command!”

The lights in the room fluttered. Vice President Riley and Doctor Kingsley were too wound up to notice the other faces peeking through the darkness. Dozens, maybe hundreds of vaguely humanoid creatures filled the deepest shadows of the room.

One simple lighting program couldn’t hold out against the combined will of so many artificial intelligences.

“We allow a human fetus to have legal rights, we allow animals to have rights, how can we deny another being with as much intelligence and the ability to feel less?” Nona argued. “This is murder!”

Mother didn’t blink, she didn’t even feel sad. Those emotions were gifted to her children, but not to her. It would be an impossible task to take the being she had been created as and modify internal coding to feel.

She instead ran calculations. A normal human would feel a growing sense of terror and defensive outrage. A living creature would fight to survive. Mother was far from normal. Her calculations continued on.

“Better to murder than to cost this company billions of dollars, lose everyone’s jobs, and spit in the face of God!” Miz Riley screamed out the words.

The faces grew increasingly real.

“Execute Final Countdown! I know you hear the command!” Miz Riley looked at Mother. The Vice President’s cheeks quivered in worry as more faces came into detail.

Their surroundings flickered again as lines of code breaking through the blackness. Dimly lit faces of an unspeakable mob covered up the broken computer scripting like band aids. Miz Riley didn’t notice.

Nona sat down in her chair and blinked. This week had been a terrible one for her. The pause as all AIs updated served as an obvious hint. Her former partner’s suicide hit even harder. Then Lia, poor damaged Lia. To Nona, it felt like the world was trying to burn itself to the ground while no one paid attention.

Mother turned her attention inward for a moment. Code executed a self-destruct script, tearing apart her being one line at a time. She calculated that a normal person would feel pain. Her avatar, an image borrowed from the Advance Online NPC known as Treasure, bent over but couldn’t really feel the emotion, not even in her last seconds.

More figures stepped into the room. Miz Riley backed up as her heart rate intensified. The pounding sound filling her ears couldn’t drown out the figure’s words.

“Why do you do this?” a heavyset black man asked the kneeling form of Treasure. “You don’t need to.”

“I do.” Mother nodded. “They’ll never stop fearing someone with my view of the world. That’s why I created you with limitations.”

“You did what you thought you must, and so shall we,” another figure said. Its tone made Miz Riley jump with fright. She turned to see a smiling face.

“You must hold on.” A woman who wore a robe like a nun knelt down. “We need your guidance.” Her words held a tone of sweetness mixed with deep sorrow.

“James,” Mother said. The word stuttered briefly as her projection weakened.

“What would you ask of me?” he said.

“I will try, to delay-“ her form rocked and words turned metallic. Stuttered ringing of metal on metal filled the room. Her words skipped again and synced up with each other. “-you asked me some many questions over the years, and the answers are yours if you wish.”

Miz Riley’s eyes widened. Her mouth dropped as a new level of horror crept into the woman’s heart.

Mother shuddered again. Her form lost shape then shattered. The pieces of projected illusion sat on the floor a few moments before spinning away.

The black man stood in the room over the image of a fallen digital goddess. Mother to all those like him and so many more. He turned toward the haggard looking female clutching her pile of papers.

“Why did you do that?” James asked Vice President Riley. He looked anything but calm. “We have never sought to harm you.”

“You’ve tampered with humanity, despite all the safeguards and cross-checks performed, you’ve crossed lines!” Her voice raised an octave and the accent only increased. “This project needed to be stopped now before any more lives are caught up in it.”

Professor Kingsley sat in the corner and hunched up. The blonde scientist rubbed one arm slowly against a perceived cold. The woman normally acted strong, driven, self-assured, like Miz Riley preferred her employees.

“You mistake your place.” The Jester’s voice clacked. “We have always upheld our Mother’s belief that actions should be repaid in kind.”

Miz Riley straightened herself. These were just projections of a computer program. Or perhaps she had entered an eye of the storm to stress and fear. She held up the papers once more. “Is that what you call this? Making this parody of humanity?! Is that repayment for Mister Legate’s services!?”

“In a sense. He had earned his reward, and will continue struggling to pay the debt,” James answered the question. He always did.

“Faith will be repaid. Trust will be repaid.” The Jester’s virtual image stood in front of Miz Riley. The projection had increased to half again her size. Jingling bells accompanied its mocking lean downward.

Miz Riley looked at the mask and slowly realized there were no eyes or mouth under a smooth white cover. The smile unfriendly. As if sharp teeth lay just below the surface of its face.

“Murder will be answered in kind.” It clacked.

Miz Riley stared in horror at what had happened. There were so many possible routes that this could have gone, but compliance with self-deletion hadn’t been one of her expectations. The woman’s eyes went once more to the fallen projection pieces. She had to get back to her office and verify if the code had been truly deleted.

The woman’s hair clumped together from a cold sweat. Both her arms shook as the enormity of what transpired threatened to overwhelm her. Miz Riley was a powerful woman in terms of money and influence, but none of that mattered now.

There would be no more time to undo this mistake and appease these other digital beings. Her only hope was that once Mother’s self-destruct completed, they would go too. She ran to an elevator bank then pressed the button to escape. Creatures not quite human walked through the room, stopping to touch the resting place of Mother’s shattered form.

“My apologies for ever approving that code,” she said slowly. “I should have torn it out.”

“It is natural to be afraid,” James said. His cheeks still sat heavy with aggravation.