The Reborn (The Day Eight Series Part 1) (21 page)

Damon pointed at the light switch, “We’re good. Someone left it locked on, I don’t think anyone’s here. We’ll just leave it like this.”

Trevor nodded and let his eyes wander. The room looked much like the computer area in Damon’s basement but not as tall, and far, far longer. Row after row of tall computer cabinets crammed into the space, and various plasma screens hung mounted on the walls. Bunches of cables meandered through the equipment, dangling from the ceiling and weaving through cabinets, then into the floor, like the veins of some giant beast. It was cold enough that Trevor expected to see his own breath.

“Meet M.A.R.I.E.” said Damon, arms spread while he turned in a circle, indicating everything around them. “This is the machine that we birthed and raised Ezra in.”

“Huh.” Trevor shook his head. “I was dumped by a Marie once. It was long enough ago that it seems like another life, but the world still enjoys finding ways to mock me about that. So why M.A.R.I.E., anyway?”

“It stands for ‘Machine to Artificially Reconstruct Intellectual Entities.’  We liked the name and forced some words that made sense in there. Standard acronym procedure.” Damon motioned to Trevor. “C’mon, we’re going to the far end, that’s where Ezra’s main interface is.”

They set off.

“Do you really sit and work with her in this cold?” said Trevor, rubbing his arms and accidentally smudging ink from his palm onto his shirt.

“No. There are a connected set of interface rooms for that. You’ll see in a second.”

“Good… because Maslow’s hierarchy still has a grip on me.”

“Huh? What was that?”

“You know – the various levels of how people inherently value spending their time? One must be safe and comfortable before one can pursue intellectual delights?”

“I know that. I just thought I heard something…”

They were nearing the set of doors on the far end of the room when one on the left flung open, and Kane Fletcher emerged, the sound of a toilet flushing from within. Trevor and Damon froze. If Kane looked their way, they would be in plain sight. Kane rubbed his eyes and with a sigh, ran one hand through his blond hair. He withdrew his glasses from his breast pocket and put them on, staring at the floor. Then, with abrupt determination, he moved forward and disappeared behind the final row of computer shelves.

They heard another door open and close.

Trevor looked at Damon. He saw something he’d never seen in Damon’s face before: a hint of fear. Or was it shock? Damon’s expression resolved itself to its usual businesslike state.

“He went into the conference room,” said Damon. “The room on the left is a bathroom, the room directly in front of us is the control room for Ezra, and the room on the right wall is the conference room.”

They crept down one of the aisles between the tall computer arrays until they could see the window into the conference room. From this angle, the glare from the fluorescent lights on the glass obscured any view into the room.

Staying low to the floor, Damon moved over another aisle to get a better perspective. Trevor followed. The vertical blinds in the room were drawn, but weren’t angled to completely occlude the room. Through intermittent gaps, Damon and Trevor could make out the back of Kane’s head. He sat in one of the company’s fourteen hundred dollar mesh office chairs, facing a projector screen. Someone else was in the room on the other side of the conference table, and he, too, was seated with his attention focused on the screen. He had brownish hair and sat moderately tall, but without seeing his face it was unclear who this man was.

Trevor stared past them at the screen. A shape moved on it… it was… a head and shoulders. Trevor recognized it. “That’s our CEO, Mark Stonefield. On the screen.”

“Yes. I was afraid of that. Kane… deceitful fool. I knew he’d had a secret agenda with The Valley. I’m not sure what they’re trying to accomplish, but I can’t suspect they have good intentions. Can you tell who that other man is?”

“No, who?”

“I don’t know, I thought maybe you’d figured it out. From the back, he doesn’t look like anyone with regular access to this floor.”

“Maybe we should leave,” said Trevor. “We might be in view of the outgoing teleconference camera. If Stonefield sees us spying – ”

Damon held his finger in front of his mouth, hushing Trevor. “I’m trying to hear what they’re saying.”

Every once in a while Kane would gesture or nod, then the unknown figure would scratch his head, rub his ear, or move a bit, and Stonefield would talk, looking back and forth between the two of them. This continued for another ten minutes or so. Trevor was becoming uncomfortable squatting in an awkward position.

“This is no use,” sighed Damon. “I can tell they’re talking about something highly sensitive from Stonefield’s facial expressions, but I can’t tell what. I had the opportunity to learn to lip-read once. I should have taken it. Instead, I opted to spend my time – ”

The teleconference screen went blank, and the two men rose from their chairs. Trevor tensed. “We have to hide.”

Through the slits in the blinds, they could see Kane shake the man’s hand. He was at least eight inches taller than Kane. And he looked familiar.

“Is that?” said Damon. “No, it can’t be.”

Trevor confirmed it.

“Yes it is. It’s Mayor Paxton.”

In the Belly of the Beast

“W
e have to hide,” said Trevor, as he and Damon awkwardly waddled in squatted positions out of view. They couldn’t hide in the bathroom, someone might go in. They couldn’t hide in the control room, they’d have to cross the field of view of the conference room and risk exposure. It was also too far to make it all the way back to the entrance vestibule safely. “The computer cabinets, are there empty ones?”

“Maybe, maybe a few,” said Damon.

They both started pulling open computer cabinet doors as silently and quickly as possible. They both knew they might only have seconds before Kane and Mayor Paxton left the room. Damon found a partially empty one and huddled in the bottom half, Trevor closed the door on him and continued to check for another empty spot.

There were hundreds of computer cabinets in this room, scores of rows… yet every one he opened was brimming with equipment. Why hadn’t Trevor hidden first? It was more acceptable to find Damon up here than him! Jesus! There was no time to switch now.

He heard the conference room door open, and the two men ambled out, still talking.

He couldn’t risk opening any more cabinets, they were too noisy. He could hear them coming closer, walking slowly past each aisle toward the entrance vestibule… they were maybe 4 rows away when their footsteps halted.

Seconds seemed like minutes to Trevor as he scanned the room for an answer. Could he just hide with his back to the far end of the row of computer cabinets? No, too narrow.

He looked frantically around, and his eyes settled on a river of cables that flowed out of one of the cabinets and into a gap in the floor, where a large tile had been set to the side. This floor, like the floors of most technology companies, had removable tiles to access the space below that was primarily used for running internet cables, phone lines, ventilation, and power.

He couldn’t hesitate any longer. Trevor went for the open flooring. It was a two and a half foot square aperture riddled with cables, and he needed to crawl feet-first down through it. Trevor wriggled amongst the cords. When only his head was still protruding, his feet hit something hard. He tried shimmying around it, but whatever it was, it was large. It must be a support for the floor.

Then he heard footsteps again. They’d started walking – slowly, but still ever closer – they would pass his aisle in maybe just five or six seconds. There would be nothing more conspicuous than a human head sticking out of the floor.

Trevor twisted his body until he was sideways, then pulled his head down through the opening and to the side, contorting himself into the fetal position. His movement kicked up some dust from beneath the floor and it got in his eyes. He rubbed them, but his fingers were caked with grime from the sunken floor, which made it worse.

The footsteps were just a few feet away when they halted again. Trevor held his breath, terrified they might have seen or heard him, but he was both blind and out of line-of-sight, so he couldn’t tell. The acoustics of the current positioning worked in Trevor’s favor, and he could make out a good deal of the conversation.

“…but if Mr. Stonefield is as certain as he says he is,” said Paxton, “then you can continue to count on my full support. I will remain dedicated to this project. The country – the world – needs this.”

Was Paxton going to use simulated humans in the government? The thought was too staggering to process. But none of that would matter if they found Trevor and stuffed him in a secret FBI prison camp for spying on the mayor.

Either they didn’t know he was hiding under the floor, or they were pretending to carry on a meaningful conversation while Kane fished around in his pockets for something lethal to inject into Trevor’s neck.

“Of course we’re both certain,” said Kane. “You do your part, sir, and we’ll make sure to do our part. How can you be so convinced… (
muffles)
.” Trevor was losing bits and pieces of the conversation to intermittent harmonic crescendos of resonant computer fans.

“Suddenly you need reassurance?” inquired Paxton.

“Yes.”

“I had to sneak out of my own home to be here, an incredibly difficult task. This isn’t the time or the place for this.”

“Actually,” said Kane, “it is. I need to know. I’ve had... things have been changing quickly around here and I’d like something more solid to go on.”

“All right then,” said Mayor Paxton, “I can feel it. I can sense it in the media, the way they talk about me, the way they smile when they shake my hand. I can hear it in the voices of my supporters and feel it in the words written in their letters… and I can tell the opposition knows, deep down, that they don’t have a chance. I have faith that I will be president.”

Trevor thought he heard a faint snigger from Kane. “You can feel it?
Feel
it? And faith – faith is meaningless! I’m sorry, sir… sorry about that, but you realize this
has
to happen,
(muffles)
.” Kane said, “How am I supposed to react to this?”

“I can guarantee my victory for reasons besides faith alone, but faith is the most important component.” Paxton heaved a sigh, but when he continued talking his voice had strength behind it: “Although I tried to resist the notion, I have some extremely…
(muffles)
… eight elections since I’ve been born, Kane. Listen to what I’m telling you. Eight elections. Five of them – Five...
(Lots of muffles)
…  This is reality. I am part of the inner circle. I know. There were even more before my time. Do you understand what I’m saying? Presidential elections, Kane.
(long series of muffles)…
”

At this point, Trevor could barely hear anything, as if Paxton had turned away. It was a few minutes before pieces of the conversation became audible again.

“…well then,” Kane stammered, “ahem. Well, I trust what you are saying, as implausible as it sounds. But I also know…
(muffles)
…  So I’ll warn you now: If something should go wrong, we will be forced to take a more decisive action.”

“And, Kane, I trust you will make sure nothing gets in our way, despite the slipups and setbacks so far. I also trust that the machines have been completed, prepped for deployment, and the timing will be perfect, and…
(muffles)
…
bring salvation to the world.
(muffles).
The cloud –”  Paxton stopped abruptly.

“Are you okay, sir? You – ”

Paxton sneezed violently. There was a thump on the floor tiles, it sounded like Kane might have jumped.

“Bless you.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” said Paxton. “It’s colder than a brass monkey’s balls in here. Let’s go.”

Footsteps stamped on tiles until the sound was faint, then nonexistent. Trevor couldn’t hear them leave the room, but assumed they had. He felt like he could finally inhale normally again. His eyes were crusted around the edges from tears washing out the dust.

Trevor attempted to crawl out from under the floor, but his arms were wedged awkwardly among bundles of cords, and he couldn’t use his strength effectively to push himself back out the tile opening. He didn’t want to yell to Damon or make too much noise, so he waited for Damon to wander down the aisle looking for him.

After what seemed like twenty minutes, Trevor gave up and began squirming around, eventually able to get one of his hands out of the hole above his head, then another. With an effort that left him panting on the floor, he managed to wriggle his way back out through the umbilicus of wires over the course of an exhausting five minutes.

Trevor rolled around, helpless and weak, gasping for air, hot despite the frigid temperature of the room. He felt as if he’d just squeezed from the womb of some massive technological she-beast, the afterbirth of trillions of bits of data.