Rupture (6 page)

As bad as the worst Rogues were, they were nothing compared to the Great Enemies of reason and harmony and balance. Simone believed the Rogues AIs were tools used by the Great Enemies. Her mother agreed with Simone on this small point but also thought the Lords of Reason were weak compared to the entities some Alters channeled. But her brother, Rigon, believed the Lords of Reason were cyber AIs themselves, and, thus, supreme creations of humanity. The three of them held no greater difference of belief between them than the nature of these foreign intelligences. Her mother conceded they had to be alien but didn’t go far enough ... Rigon thought they were just evil software with a penchant for wetware. Simone thought they had to be something worse, far worse.

When she found what she was looking for, it was a
New York Times’
article from over ten years ago. It told the story of a man whose essence some people claimed had been sucked into this computer system. The man had been found brain-dead at his desktop. Everything seemed to be normal, until the man’s son suspected that his father was talking to him from inside their home-theater system. The son believed his father was a victim of a nanobot virus that had attacked through his VR visor. The son believed the little critters had dug into the man and stolen his
genosoul
, a mystical term for the essence of a person.

By this point the Cy-wars were in full swing and all the laws protecting people from the new classification of nonpersons called Super Artificial Intelligences (SAIs) were being enforced. The most powerful SAIs were relegated to working behind the scenes for the good of the world’s leading societies, or allowed to manage certain other segments of society, like entertainment, like glad fighting. Simone knew they were so powerful now that they were the new power brokers who ruled much of the world.

She paused as she read something interesting about the story: First, people who knew the dead man claimed he had been a devotee of some strange religious sect that slaved themselves to the SAIs. They called themselves Rogueslaves, a term she had heard once or twice before but never understood, until now. She scanned until she read:
The young man still claims his father is now an old Wurlitzer jukebox he found hidden in the back of the garage. The son claims they never owned such a device, and that his father always wanted one. “It plays all his favorite songs,” the boy said at the end of the interview. “And it won’t stay off ... a Rogue fabricated it and has imprisoned him in there somewhere.”
 

“Joss’s still here,” she said to the monitor. “But where?”

“Who’s still here?”

Hutto Toth stood in the doorway. He looked like he might go to the beach in his flowery shorts and tattered Billabong tee. He wore flip-flops and even had a braided, hemp necklace around his neck. He was tall and muscular and definitely a beneficiary of premium aesthetic, athletic, and physio packages. His wavy blond locks fell into his eyes and onto his shoulders. And he was so good looking she had to stop herself from gaping.

“Uh,” she said. “I was just—”

“Wondering what happened to that guy, Joss?”

She stammered something unintelligible, annoyed he’d flustered her. It should have been the other way around.

He surveyed the small room. “I know who you are: Simone Wellborn, the Terror of Ellington Prep. Isn’t that what they call you?”

“Yes.”

“I guess if it wasn’t for me and the missing student, everyone would be talking about you. Yesterday was my first day too.”

He grinned. She realized she was smiling back. He was just so ...
masculine
. She looked away, quicker than she should have, and he said, “I know. I have that effect on women sometime.”

When she looked back he had such a big smile on his face that said You-Want-Me-I-know-You-Want-Me that she screwed herself up as best she could to give him a tongue-lashing. He moved in a little closer, and she smelled a tantalizing whiff, a heady mixture of clean sweat and something else delicious, but indefinable. He touched the sleeve of the large sweatshirt that she wore.

“A little big, no?” He looked over the rest of her, noticing the rest of her oversized clothes she always wore. “You trying to hide something?”

She regained her composure and told herself not to stare. “Look. I’m new; you’re new. Let’s not make this an issue. You have no idea what I’m capable of. Just stay out of my way.”

“You’re going somewhere?”

She knew he was being facetious. Along with all the physical packages, he was supposed to have been given an intellect package, so he couldn’t be
stupid
, even if he acted like it. “No, I mean, I’m here. And I plan to be here until I graduate.”

“So do I.”

“God. Just—”

“You had breakfast?”

“No.”

“Want to get some?”

* * *

And that’s how she found herself walking to the cafeteria with Hutto Toth, fuming the entire time, but somehow not saying no. By the time they were done eating, she was on her feet and yelling at him that he was “a big-headed male idiot with too much testosterone.” He laughed and blew her a kiss. And she almost threw her orange-juice at him. She stormed out in a huff and told herself not to be so gullible again.

She continued to fume like a steam engine after she left the cafeteria, especially since the few people who’d been there saw Hutto get the best of her. She had other things to worry about besides him, but, damn, if she couldn’t have shown a better game face.

Kimberlee cornered her in the hallway on the other side of the building. “Did you hear about Fonda Drummer last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh My God.” Kimberlee looked horrified. “She farted so bad in her car she almost killed Wally Dorsey.”

As they walked, Simone listened to Kimberlee’s version of the story. More people were talking about this, obviously, than Joss’s disappearance.

“I think I saw her during my tour of campus,” Simone said.

“You can’t miss them. She and Martina are almost twins.”

“Yeah, I saw her. These Barbie beau Tranz should be taken down a notch. I wish they all had some socially reprehensible defect like that.”

“Tell me about it,” Kimberlee replied. Simone guessed Kimberlee knew how hard it was being a regular-looking girl in a world where you were always reminded of your invisibility. “We’re smart enough, at least.”

“Not cyber smart, like Joss.”

Kimberlee nodded. “I know, but who cares about that? You want to be hooked up to a computer all the time, or become a cyborg?”

Simone didn’t respond to that because both her mother and her brother were augmented humans, in one way or another. Her brother, Rigon, was about as gung-ho for the cyborg revolution as you could get. She guessed Kimberlee, and everyone else, would meet the rest of the Wellborns, sooner rather than later. She knew her mother and brother would be here soon. Simone wished she had something to tell them before they arrived, something that could show them she understood what was happening.

They stopped at a classroom with an open door.

Simone peeked inside. “Empty.” She walked in and surveyed a standard classroom that looked like history was the subject. There was a map of Ancient Athens with the Areopagus and the Acropolis, a portrait of Abe Lincoln, and an old twenty-first century Apple Computer logo. Beside it was a wireframe face of a computer AI looking benign, even Buddha-like.

“Mr. Hoover’s class,” Kimberlee said. “I had him last year.
Boring
.”

Simone walked up an aisle, looking around. “What do know about the missing guy?”

“Joss? Cute, brainy, weird, funny. Has most of the good stuff, but he’s ... separate from us, an actual cybernetic Interfacer and all.”

“I bet.”

She considered the fact he was also a secret Alter in hiding branded by the Rogues. “Besides computers, what’s he into?”

Kimberlee walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and began doodling flowers on the board. “Two years ago, he asked me to freshman prom, but I said no because I was scared. We became friends after that. But he spent most of his time in the basement. You should ask Wally about him. They’re buds. Joss stays down there most of the time except when he comes out for some big announcement, like when he reworked the PA system so that Principal Smalls could make mobile announcements.”

Simone glanced at the audio speaker in the ceiling and turned her nose up. Not so impressive, she thought. She walked to the classroom door and shut it. There was a narrow glass window in it, so that they could see who might peek in.

“Over here,” Simone said. She took Kimberlee to a far corner. “You know what happens if Sterling has AI problems?”

“Problems?”

“I went to a girls’ school for the enhanced in middle school. We got censured when an Interfacer ... attracted something nasty. It took over the cyber systems and unleashed a bot attack through several human Rogueslaves.”

“That really happened? Those aren’t just rumors? That they can do that?” Kimberlee paused, as if realizing what she’d just heard. “Wait. Did you say Rogueslaves exist?”

“I didn’t know that’s what they were called. But I just read an article about them in the library, and it all makes sense. I was there. We were quarantined for a month after the school was cleaned. It shut down for a year. Four girls almost died.”

“Computers can really use little bugs to infect people—”

“Nanorobotic technology, yes.”

“They can use those to hurt us?”

“I think that’s what happened to Joss.”

“A computer got him?”

“Not just a computer. A Cy-intelligence that lives in computer systems. A disembodied being.”

“A what?”

“An RAI. A Rogue.”

Now it was Kimberlee’s turn to laugh. “Come on. Rogues? Those are all scary stories. My dad said so. We don’t have to worry about getting infected, or changed, or droned by evil intelligences. That’s movie stuff.”

“I saw Joss in my tablet. He said my name.” Simone waited for the moment of truth. Would her new friend walk out and tell the principal, or would she listen? Simone closed in. “I just need you to help me understand who he was as a person. I think I can find out what happened to him.”

She retrieved her buckyball from her pocket.

Kimberlee looked at it like a child looking at a new toy. “Cool, what is it?”

Simone mumbled her mantra and the bucky lifted off her hand and began to rotate.

“Oh my god!” Kimberlee said. “You are what they say—”

Simone grabbed the bucky and closed her hand around it. “What is that they say?”

Kimberlee backtracked. “I meant ... ”

“What?” Simone put it away, thinking she’d made a mistake. Kimberlee was looking at her with a knit brow full of condemnation. Simone wanted declaim how dangerous Rogues really were. You see, Kimberlee, Simone thought, I’m a Wellborn, and my entire family has dedicated itself to fighting the good fight. I even lost a brother and father over it. So, I know what I’m talking about … even though there are many questions that I need answering. But, please, please don’t look at me like that, not when we’re just starting to become friends. “A witch? A devil child? What?”

“No. Well. I’ve never actually seen an Alter do something like that.”

“We can. I can. We’re the lowest freaks of the low. Remember that, because it’s power. Even the ugliest, meanest synthetic Nonhuman boogeyman like Frankenstein doesn’t scare people like we do. And no matter what they tell you, we are more—that means you—than the result of some Rogue computer AIs programmed for fantasy and science fiction trope sims. Those are lies told in the name of science—”

“Okay,” Kimberlee said and backed away a little.

Simone closed the distance between them. “I need to know a more about him. What was he into?”

“He likes computers …”

Simone quieted. “Come on, let’s walk and talk.”

* * *

They left the building and walked over to the track field. The Sterling School’s main campus sat snug between the track and football field on one side and the baseball field on the other. The school also rested in the shadow of a gentle ridge lined with tall, thin Ponderosa pine trees that swayed in the wind. Beyond it, in the distance the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains rose up to ring Sterling’s agriculture farm land, thousands of acres of regulated dairy and cattle pastures. Simone talked the entire time, enjoying the smell of honeysuckle in the air and the cool breeze coming in off the mountains. She and Kimberlee circled the track four times, an entire mile, before resting at the snack shop for a juice—no soda at the Sterling School.
 

After their refreshment, Simone followed Kimberlee to the Visual Arts Center, which, like the clinic, also abutted the main campus building. The Visual Arts Center looked a bit hipper than the other buildings with its exposed industrial struts along the ceiling and stout pillars with big rivets painted a deep crimson. Student paintings hung all over the place in a variegated mishmash of subject matter from portraits and still lifes to abstract and even political art. Sculptures lined an entire wall. It looked like one big heterogeneous gallery dedicated to all things Art.

“Impressive,” Simone said. She thought she might spend the rest of the day browsing the student projects on the walls, hoping for a clue where to find Joss, when Kimberlee said, “Hey, that’s a new money machine.”

Kimberlee walked over. “I need some cash.” She pulled out her phone to send her PIN. “That’s weird. It won’t accept my info.” And then, “Hey, look.”

On the screen, Simone saw a simple question:
Does 2 + 2 = 5
?

“Use alpha-numerals,” Simone said.

Kimberlee punched the numbers for
no
.

Wrong answer
appeared in the middle of the screen.

“Type yes,” Simone said.

“But it doesn’t—”

“So. Do it.”

She did.

Correct Answer
displayed on the screen.

A twenty-dollar bill popped into the tray.

“No way,” Kimberlee said, retrieving the crisp bill.