20
MARKETING GIMMICK
JULY 16, 2144
When Eliasz arrived at Vancouver Island, he hadn’t tapped into Paladin’s real-time feed for several hours. She didn’t offer him any video or audio files from the time between her interrogation of Bobby and her discovery of the Scarface server at the University of Saskatoon. Eliasz could have requisitioned her memories and appended them to the report he filed from Vancouver Island, but he didn’t.
Back at Camp Tunisia, a team of agents analyzed the intel from Vancouver and Vegas while the IPC liaison drank very tiny cups of strong coffee. Eliasz requested an immediate flight to Saskatoon, but Fang said the team needed more time to assess. Paladin and Eliasz would be grounded at the base for at least twenty-four hours—maybe more.
Eliasz was assigned a temporary bunk, and Paladin was assigned to stay with Eliasz. The bunk turned out to be a faraday room, designed to cut soldiers off from the distractions of the net. But it also meant that nobody was monitoring their body feeds, either.
It was one of those times when Eliasz suddenly wanted to talk. He told Paladin about Vegas, describing the short, scented alley where Quality Imports and The Alice Shop could be found. He’d left the force in Vegas to work on something cleaner, he told her, with no gray areas. No quasi-legal loopholes that made it possible for bad guys to arrange lawful contracts between kids and sketchy adults who wanted them as “general assistants.”
It wasn’t like he’d run away from the chance to stop property crime, because now he was in a better position than ever to help people. Infringement was always illegal. Nobody at the IPC would prevent him from busting the bad guys when it came to piracy. He no longer had to see unpunishable transgressions thriving in the open, their victims staring at his uniform with accusation. When it came to intellectual property, justice was simple and clear.
Paladin sat down on the bunk next to Eliasz. She did not volunteer any stories, but she did have work to review. She projected a map of Saskatoon into the air at Eliasz’ eye level. Bounded by vast, satellite-regulated farms, the city was bisected by a fat, curving river. At the center of downtown was the university, flagged in red. Paladin zoomed in on the campus buildings, which looked like tumbled blocks surrounded by the brown ridges of bot-tended agriculture labs.
“We should prepare a strategy,” she vocalized. “There is a very good chance Jack has already fled, but I think somebody at the Free Lab will know where she’s gone.”
She pointed at a building on the south end of campus, which expanded into a block of text that read “FREE LAB” before dissolving into a blueprint of an open floor plan. There were only two ways out of the building.
“Obviously we begin with Krish Patel, the professor who worked for The Bilious Pills and runs the Free Lab. I suggest we take a look around Free Lab’s networks first to see if we can locate Scarface. We will be arriving at roughly 2300, so the lab is likely to be empty. We may be able to gather enough information there that we never have to alert Patel to our presence.”
Eliasz grunted assent, then settled back on the bed and closed his eyes.
Paladin was still finding it difficult to prevent herself from asking questions. “Eliasz, you said my autonomy key was temporary. Do you know how long it will last?”
The man straightened up again, and Paladin recognized guilt in his face. “Isn’t that something you know automatically? I thought it was a program that you were running.”
“It’s not a program,” she vocalized. “It’s more like a password that gives me access to programs.”
“Didn’t Lee tell you when it would expire?” Eliasz looked confused, then concerned. “Are you doing OK? I’ve heard that sometimes bots have problems after they get autonomy.”
“No problems so far. I just wanted to know when…” The bot trailed off uncharacteristically. When what? When she would stop feeling compelled to ask questions? When she would stop taking security risks the way she did with those bots in Vancouver?
Eliasz was waiting for her to finish her sentence.
“…when it will be over,” she vocalized finally.
Suddenly, Eliasz’ blood pressure shot up and the electrical signals racing across the surface of his brain suggested fear. “Do you regret what we did, now that you are autonomous?” His question was ambiguous, until he leaned forward and put his hands on the shielded fibers of her knees. “Do you still feel the same way?”
She wanted to ask all the questions: What did he think she felt? Why did he need to know? Did he feel the same way? But she remained silent. Asking too much when it came to this topic only made things more confusing.
“The autonomy key hasn’t changed my feelings,” she replied.
“I am so glad,” he whispered, his skin dancing with directionless energy. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you when I was in Vegas.”
“I also thought about you.” She tasted salt and blood on his skin with her right hand.
“Your feelings must be coming from the real you, in here.” He touched the armor over her brain lightly. “That’s why they’re not affected by autonomy programs.”
Paladin chose not to repeat that autonomy was a key, not a program, and that her brain had nothing to do with what she truly desired. Around them, the base walls rattled with wind coming off the Pacific Ocean.
“I want to watch you play that file again.” Eliasz whispered to her, his arm pressed tightly against hers. She wanted it, too.
Early the next morning, Paladin tasted the oxytocin spiking in Eliasz’ blood for a second time. Her arm cradled Eliasz, and his perimeter weapons were in a weightless pile of almost-invisible netting on the floor. The man had a whole day to sleep before they flew out to the prairies to pick up Jack’s trail.
JULY 18, 2144, 0400
Med was finishing the “methods” section of the Zacuity paper when she sat rigidly upright. Threezed was watching a movie on his tablet. Across the lab, Krish was rewriting their press release about how Zaxy violated international law. Suddenly, none of that mattered.
A sequencer clattered to the floor as Med stood with an inhuman speed that made her look like a special effect. “Get out of here now!” she whispered, railroading her body into Threezed’s. In seconds, she had half-carried him to a back exit used mostly for taking out the recycling. “Go! Hide!”
Threezed didn’t hear panic in the bot’s voice, but he understood danger. He sprinted out the door and didn’t look back. Med whirled to face Krish, who was staring at her open-mouthed.
For the first time in her life, Med felt what it was like to have a program override her choices. The instant she saw the IPC bot on the Free Lab network, she stopped being a researcher and went into primary defense mode. As the researchers back in Anchorage would no doubt say, the fight-or-flight response wasn’t quite as reflexive as that: First, she realized that an IPC bot was in close physical proximity, accompanied by an IPC agent; then she deduced they were specifically looking for information related to Jack. Which meant they probably weren’t concerned about leaving anybody here alive.
Alien thoughts and reflexes overwhelmed her. The lab was under attack, along with the human lives inside it, and she would fight to the death to prevent the attack from succeeding. It felt like she had no other option, but of course she did. She could have run. She chose to stay.
Med perceived the bot opening the poorly encrypted locks on the lab’s front door and cartwheeled back across the room, ripping the seam that held her lab coat together at the back. When the armored bot and the agent burst into the lab, she was blocking Krish with her body. The agent squeezed off three syringes, probably tranqs or hypnotics, and Med snatched them out of the air with the palm of her rapidly moving hand. As the caps burst, their payloads—packed with molecules that would disrupt signaling pathways in the cerebral cortex—leaked out of a small tear in her skin.