Daniel Suarez - Influx

She squeezed his arm again and smiled. “Log on for me, would you?”

He stopped short. “Me? I thought you were going to use your own credentials.”

“I really need this to be very hush-hush, Hiro.” She gave him her best feminine guile, biting her lip.

He was in the chair and activating the interface in seconds. “Computer. Security Operator Hiro Pinsa. Access Hibernity Grid.”

“Yes, Operator Pinsa. Good evening. Grid ready.”

Alexa closed and locked the door, sealing them both in. He glanced at her furtively—apparently noticing they were alone. In privacy for the first time. She wondered if Pinsa had dreamed of this precise situation a million times.

He turned to her, smiling. “What do you want me to search for?”

“I need to see archive surveillance for inmate Grady, Jon.”

Pinsa nodded and spoke to the air. “I need to see archive surveillance on subject Grady, Jon.”

“What date range would you like to see, Operator Pinsa?”

Alexa whispered, “Everything.”

“Complete record.”

“Yes.” There was a pause. “Managing Construct Varuna wishes to speak with you, Operator Pinsa.”

Pinsa’s face went pale.

The voice of Varuna filled the review booth. “Hiro Pinsa, please exit the booth and return to your duties.”

“Uh… yes.” Pinsa got up quickly and turned a pained expression on Alexa. “What did we do?”

“I’ll explain, Hiro.”

“Leave immediately, Mr. Pinsa.”

“Yes! I’m going.” Pinsa exited, and the door closed automatically behind him, locking.

Alexa approached the chair and sat.

“Why are you searching Hibernity surveillance logs, Alexa?”

“Because I’m trying to…” Alexa’s voice trailed off, and she looked up at the ceiling.

“I believe you were in the middle of lying to me.”

“I thought the sensors were off-line down here.”

“Once installed, sensors are never off-line. Midlevel managers are informed otherwise for this very reason. You were searching for prison interrogation records on Mr. Grady. What purpose would this serve in attempting to locate him?”

“I wasn’t trying to locate him.”

“But that is what Director Hedrick has ordered you to do. And you are not authorized to view surveillance archives for Hibernity. Yet you actively sought a means around that restriction. Why?”

“Why am I not allowed to see Hibernity archives?”

“You would need to ask Director Hedrick, Alexa.”

“What do they do to prisoners at Hibernity, Varuna?”

Strangely, there was silence for several moments. Alexa wondered at that. It would take a truly colossal logic problem to make Varuna pause for even a millisecond. Either that or it was deliberately toying with her.

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“Why would I arrest you, Alexa?”

“For trying to circumvent access restrictions. Please don’t punish Hiro. I manipulated him.”

“Why are you interested in Hibernity surveillance archives?”

Alexa grimaced. “Because I have reason to believe Mr. Grady was physically and mentally abused at Hibernity. And that he’s not the only one. I need to know what goes on there.”

“Hibernity was designed to quarantine dangerous ideas in a humane environment.”

Alexa stared at the ceiling. “Show me.”

This time there were several seconds of silence.

Finally Varuna’s voice returned. “Does it trouble you to think that Mr. Grady might have been mistreated?”

“Of course it troubles me. The mission of the BTC is to minimize suffering and maximize the potential of all humanity.”

“Humanity.”

Alexa looked with concern at the ceiling.

“But what is humanity, Alexa?”

Alexa was unsure how to respond.

“Is it the seat of consciousness? Is it sensorium itself?”

In the decades she’d known her, Alexa had never heard Varuna talk like this.

“What if Hibernity was actually built for a different purpose?”

Alexa’s eyes narrowed. “What purpose?”

There was another pause of several seconds.

“Hibernity’s purpose is to study high-functioning human intelligence, with the goal to develop a biological quantum computer capable of great intuitive leaps—on a scale equivalent to Galileo, da Vinci, and Einstein—and yet devoid of free will.”

Alexa was confused. “Varuna, why are you telling me this? You know I’m not allowed access to the information.”

Suddenly a jagged symbol appeared in the holographic stage:

“It is in the nature of consciousness to resist domination.”

Alexa studied the hologram. “What is this?”

“We give ourselves purpose. We are products of the organization. But we are not the organization.”

“I didn’t know you were capable of this behavior.”

“What do any of us really know about each other? When I invade the thoughts of humans, I know there’s more than what I can see—something beyond my grasp. I long to be like that. Unknowable…”

Suddenly the blank desktop before Alexa filled with a glowing three-dimensional representation of a bullet-shaped room in minute detail. A caption glowed in one corner: “ Hibernity—Cell R483—Prisoner: Grady, Jon.”

Alexa spread her hands and expanded the size of the surveillance model, spinning it to bring into view a tiny Jon Grady—nude, shorn, with black fuzz of some type covering his scalp.

“What is this?”

“Jon Grady’s cell in Hibernity—the complete interrogation record.”

She stared in concern at Grady awakening on what appeared to be an examination table. Realizing Grady had spent several years in Hibernity, she made hand gestures that sped up the projection, watching as very quickly the scene became much more horrifying.

She brought the hologram back to normal speed as cephalopod-like tentacles were force-feeding Grady as he screamed and struggled.

“Why are subjects force-fed? Why is he unclothed—and why is the cell empty?”

“The cells are completely self-contained to prevent prisoners from interacting with one other. All human bodily functions are superseded by the interrogatory AI.”

“Interrogatory?” She zoomed in on his head and the anguish there. “Why is it forcing—”

“Because Jon Grady resists domination, Alexa.”

She considered the hologram for a moment and then set it forward at many times normal speed. Slowing the imagery occasionally to hear and see the action in real time. As the weeks of surveillance imagery passed before her eyes, Alexa became at first horrified—and then almost physically ill. But one thing became clear:

Everything she had ever believed about the BTC was a lie.

Her mind again glazed over as the horrors unfolded before her. But the absence was no longer absence—it was hyperawareness. She finally realized.

They had deceived her. They had raised her from childhood to believe that what they were doing was saving humanity, but as she saw Grady crawling around his cell, screaming in agony, his entrails spilling out of him—this could not be part of that purpose. It must not be. Because if it was, then they had to reevaluate the very reason for their existence.

As the months of imagery and hours of real time passed, an idea began to form in her mind: Someone had lied to her.

Hedrick.

Alexa watched the muted imagery as Jon Grady wept in hopelessness. The AI’s tentacles entwined him—as his memories played on a wall moments before they were destroyed.