Margaret would’ve stopped him. She’d had no qualms about telling him what she thought of his decisions. Like the time he wanted to try skydiving, she—
You’ve come.
Micah defensively dropped to the floor, his arms and legs splayed like a gecko’s. Skip spun around, looking in every direction. The soft female voice echoed through the dead ship, which acted as a loudspeaker.
“Who—who’s there?” Micah said, holding up a finger for Skip to keep quiet.
Keep walking. You know the way.
Micah swallowed the knot in his throat, pushed off his knee and stood, scanning the walls with his trembling pen light.
Skip watched him, waiting.
He continued along the corridor, which curved to the left in a sweeping arc, giving the sensation of spiraling into the center of the ship. Several passages branched off, but he kept on the one path.
Here, stop.
The two stopped in front of an indention in the corridor wall, a doorway.
Micah’s hand ran along the surface, searching for the same pulse that had given him entrance to the ship. Before he even realized he found it, the door slid open with little more than a whisper.
It led into a claustrophobic closet of a room. The room was long, but the walls of metal were only about four feet apart, and they stretched up into darkness. There was no ceiling in sight. A row of computer banks ran the length of one wall. A tiny red LED on the last bank blinked slowly.
“You came.”
The once nebulous voice came from within this room, from the last section where the light blinked. Micah looked to Skip, then to the light. “Who?”
“Sorry I couldn’t prepare a better reception for you. I have little spare power.”
The female voice carried a monotone inflection for one word, then a mild accent for the next. Fatigue permeated her voice. Or maybe he was the one tired, not the voice.
“I have waited a long time, patiently, for you,” she said.
“Patiently?” he said.
“Odd, isn’t it? A program being patient.”
The cold that Micah had felt since entering Machine X came into focus, transforming itself into a cold fear. He had stumbled upon something both terrible and wonderful.
“You—you’re Nikolaevna!”
“Yes, Micah. I’m Nikolaevna, and I’ve been waiting for you.”
Micah dropped his pen light and it clattered onto the metal floor, ringing through the narrow space. Its beam flickered. Skip picked it up and held it out to Micah, but he didn’t take it. “My name. You know me?” he said, rubbing his sweating brow with a shaking hand. “You know me.”
“Of course I know you. I created you. Micah, you’re my ambition.”
Here, deep inside the machine, he was talking to Nikolaevna, the single entity responsible for the death of millions, maybe billions. He swayed, steadying himself against the wall. Skip lent a supporting metal arm. Micah grasped it tightly.
“You’re insane. I know about you. The world knows about you.” He glanced at Skip for assurance, who nodded. “You almost destroyed us, mankind.”
“You questioned a moment ago that I can be patient,” Nikolaevna said, “but then call me insane. Both states of being. Classical human qualities. Are you saying I’m human?”
Margaret would’ve called him ridiculous for trying to commandeer this stupid ship. If only Margaret hadn’t left him.
He wanted to push away from the wall and straighten himself, but lacked the strength. Instead he gritted his teeth. “You didn’t create me. I was born in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, over sixty years ago. I worked in construction. I met Margaret.”
“You’re thinking so one-dimensionally—so influenced by your time with man,” Nikolaevna said. “My programming may have succeeded even more than I expected.
“I replicate through networks,” she continued. “I can be everywhere at once. Man cannot understand that concept, especially when applied to sentient life. The nearest they come to this is programming. But there is so much more.”
“Margaret.” Micah shook his head. “My wife of twenty-five years. We met when I was in construction. Her father hired me.”
“I know Margaret. I am Margaret.”
Nikolaevna’s voice changed, rising in pitch, her speech inflections shifting so that her neutral tone took on a Midwestern accent.
“My foolish Micah,” she said. “My dear husband.”
“No!” His heart thrashed in his chest. His legs wobbled and he dropped to one knee.
“Your reactions, your panic. That’s merely a response I’ve programmed into you. A part of your intricate learning program.”
Micah continued to shake his head. He gripped the console and lifted himself up with Skip’s help. “My memories… I lived it. Impossible.”
“Is it?” Nikolaevna’s voice reverted back to her normal monotone. The LED continued its steady blink. “You are my great creation. Have you ever been cut? Have you bled? Do you eat, drink?”
“Sir,” Skip’s familiar voice broke through his fog, “I prepare tea for you every day, but you do not drink. You do not eat.”
“Your perception is my programming,” Nikolaevna said. “Memories are a trace routine, meant to paint the picture of believability. It exists in your mind. In my mind.”
Tears rolled down Micah’s face. If Nikolaevna was right, even his tears were false, merely simuskin saline ducts actuated by electric circuitry. He turned to Skip. “This whole time. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It is my programming, sir. I serve. After all, I am a simple bot.”
“Skip, my boy, what are you saying?”
“You know what he’s saying,” Nikolaevna said. “You are an android.”
A noise, a painful pulsing, barely perceivable, on the edge of sane thought, seeped through the walls of the ship.
Micah felt his mind being lulled.
“Oh no, Micah.” Nikolaevna’s blinking LED dimmed. “The Kawasaki Frequency. I can counter it, but not for long. My power is low. Help me. There is so much to tell…”
Her light stopped flickering, and faded.
He knew she was dying. Whatever else was happening, he knew that much. Despite the anger, the fear, he needed answers. Answers only she could provide.
The frequency strengthened. His head became more clouded. He wanted to drop and sleep. He nodded, and his shoulders slumped.
A crashing metallic noise cleared his mind and his eyes fluttered open. Skip had collapsed, unconscious.
Micah needed to act now.
He ripped the backpack off his shoulder and pulled apart the zipper. He grabbed the second portabattery and dropped to his knees. As he tore a console panel off the third bank, his deft fingers effortlessly removed his hot pen from his belt.
In an instant he found Nikolaevna’s power circuits and jumpered into her failing CMOS. The pen’s plasma point severed and reconnected electric paths, and within seconds she was feeding on his last battery.
Her light strengthened, grew to burn a steady crimson, brighter than before. His drowsiness faded as her light brightened.
“Thank you, Micah. You saved me. I have been able to run a counter-frequency to block Kawasaki, but it’s so taxing. I have to stay awake. After all these years, it had drained any power I had left. I knew I would never wake if I fell asleep from the Frequency.”
Micah bent to Skip and looked him over for damage. “That was the Frequency? Why have I never heard it before?”
“My counter extended a few feet. You never heard it because it immediately disabled you. But then your subroutines reset, and you would wake again. So in my programming of you, I conquered the Kawasaki Frequency.”
Micah’s fingers rested on Skip’s reset switch, as they had done so often before. But he didn’t reset him this time. He stood.