Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

“Jonathan!”

He stopped short at the base of the staircase. He turned toward the sound of the voice-a shout, sharp as the call of a bird of prey.

Takara was standing on the far side of the platform. There was a wide, black smear of oil across her immaculate coat. Her perfect, long, sharp hair was disheveled, and he saw a patch of blood coloring one cheek.

She was too far away to capture him. In the next instant there was the horn of an oncoming train, and as it surged into the station, it hid her from view.

Jonathan didn’t hesitate. He was out of the station and back in the bright sunshine of a spring afternoon before The B line to Pentagon City departed from Track 3 and gave her a chance to follow him.

He didn’t see her again, but he knew she would return.

Spector Safe House

Hayden sat in his own personal cavern and drank. And thought. And then drank some more.

He never felt dwarfed by the size of the place, even now, when he huddled in one corner of the secret, massive, four-story hangar. This was so much larger-grander-than the Oxford installation: the huge buttresses of the dome soaring over him, the vast concrete floor scattered with electronic gadgets of multiple sizes and shapes, some as large as cars. Somehow it still felt normal to him-manageable-even when the sound of his own voice echoed through the cavernous, deserted space like the sound effect from a bad horror movie.

“Check,” he said to Teah, who leaned and bobbled in the space across from him.

“I think not,” Teah trilled, her visual sensors focused tightly on the holographic chessboard that floated between them.

Hayden knew that. He knew her next move, and his next move, and her response three moves ahead. He just didn’t know why he continued to automatically, unalterably, refer to the ever-shifting concentration of metal and digital technology that ‘sat’ across from him as a female.

Teah was many things, but female was not one of them. Hayden was constantly upgrading Teah, so he barely gave her the proper outward appearance that more conventional robots were fashioned with. No silicone outer layer nor a proper adjustment of the wiring modules. In Teah’s mind she was female, and that was all that mattered.

“Andrew is calling again,” Teah said. “Something about a dinner you’re invited to?”

“I had no recollection. Ignore it,” he instructed. “You can’t get hold of me.”

Teah gave him the robotic equivalent of a non-committal shrug. “As you wish.”

He swept up his chipped ceramic mug from its precarious perch on a stack of broken modules and drained the last of the scotch from it in one long, grateful pull. He often wondered why he bothered with the intermediate receptacle; when he got in moods like this, he should just grab the bottle of Glennfiddich and suck it down straightaway. But no, he told himself as he filled the mug to the rim again. That’s what drunks do. Not me. I’m just a certified genius with a bit of a drinking issue. That’s what everyone says, anyway.

He looked away from the chess game, up and out at the three enormous platforms that always made him think of three cocoons. They were vast curved cradles, each one wider than a house, two of them filled with the curved hulls of his enormous, half-finished vehicles, all gleaming metal plate and bursting tangles of fiber optic conduits. They were his greatest creations.

One held a construct that was quite nearly complete; the gaps in its superstructure were few and far between. A few more parts and a few more hours of cybernetic assembly, then diagnostics could begin on that one, he knew. The other scarcely half-done, awaiting new components and materials.

The third cradle was empty. Clean. Nicked and scuffed from recent activity, but otherwise…abandoned now.

And maybe forever, Hayden thought as he took another solid swallow from his mug.

He tapped at a glowing patch next to the chessboard.

“No word yet?” Teah enquired politely. He had asked her to keep him company while he ran a set of benchmark tests on a key cavitation module; he’d even powered up the unit so it displayed an impressive array of twinkling lights and holographic status charts. But it was all a sham. He was running tests, that much was true…

…But he was running them, very quietly, on Teah.

His attention was pulled back to the chess game as she made the countermove he had expected. He knew she could have made it an instant after his own move, but she had waited what she thought was an appropriate amount of time before reacting, just to seem more human. He countered swiftly this time, just as he had planned. She responded with her own counter, equally anticipated. And now it was Hayden’s turn to pretend to stop and think.

Where does reasonable caution end and paranoia begin, he asked himself. He had to stifle a smile. Probably right around the same place that social drinking ends and alcoholism picks up the slack. Nevertheless, simply cautious or paranoid, drunk or sober, it was true: he didn’t trust Teah anymore. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he simply did not trust her.

So far, however, her diagnostics were clean. No hidden programs, no spiders or worms. Not even an old-fashioned virus. She was clean and in optimal operational mode. Everything you would expect from a seventh-generation AI in 2039.

Then why does she keep asking so many questions? he wondered. Why was she always there, whenever he was working on some crucial element of the project, and especially whenever his colleagues, like Simon or Andrew, were nearby or online? Why did she seem to be present all the time? He was sure-well, almost sure-that she had never been like that before; she had been his personal assistant, his companion and his AI test platform for years now, but she had never pushed before, never injected herself into conversations or decision-making.

Or had she, he asked himself, and I just never noticed? Maybe I want her to become more involved, and she’s simply responding to words, gestures, cues I can’t even see? She’s designed to do that. I made her that way.

It was maddening. Distracting. And perhaps dangerous.

He made his next move; Teah waited a beat and then countered. “Hayden,” she said carefully. “I’m worried about you.”

“You?” he blustered…but a cold spot blossomed in his belly. “About me?”

“Ever since that visit from Simon, you just haven’t been yourself.”

He humphed at her. “I’d say you were imagining things, but that would be giving you too much credit,” he grumbled.

“What was it he said to you?” she asked-and not for the first time.

“It’s not important.” They exchanged another set of moves.

“Whatever it was, you’ve been off your game-literally and figuratively-ever since. If it’s something I can help with, please, let me-”

“It’s nothing, Teah. Let it go.” A memo appeared at the edge of his vision and he turned to look at it: confirmation of a request for modules to be transferred from Spector II to Spector III. Just as he had ordered. He touched his thumb to the bottom of image to confirm the instructions, and they fluttered away.

“And what are you doing with the Spectors? I thought everything was on hold since the shutdown-”

“What is this, a bloody quiz show?” he snapped. He made his next move-a bold little foray with the queen’s knight-quickly and furiously; she countered in kind. He did the same, so did she. And once more, back and forth.

The diagnostics patch next to the board flashed yellow for a moment, then turned a steady deep green. A string of report figures skittered across it, angled so only he could read them.