📖 The Ghost of Emily - Chapter 14

In which the future of humanity pivots in a tiny cube.

Marcus Hamlin stared silently through the layer of six-inch glass that stood before him like an invisible force field. Beyond lay a dark vacuum with a tiny steel cube sitting on a black pedestal. One small cable protruded from the side of the box that was no larger than a Rubik’s Cube, and it fed down the pedestal and into a small speaker sitting on the ground. Another thicker cable hung from the back with a proprietary connection on the end, that sat on the floor, unlinked to any other port. The room behind the glass was silent, as was the viewing room, beside the droning hum of the many computers that were lined up under the window.

Marcus glanced at his watch.

8:47am.

Frank was really late. It had happened a few times lately, but this was a new record. He knew Frank wasn’t coping well with the way things had been going in the last eleven months. Nobody was coping well, but least of all Frank.

In the wake of the assassination of the US President, America was in turmoil trying to manage internal security, and was failing to assist with the mounting crisis abroad. Since January the reports had been coming in every day of the growing unrest all across Europe.

Germany had declared martial law, and there had been a mass exodus from Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and other cities, of white German natives abandoning their homeland to try and find somewhere safer to live. The German Police forces had all but retreated from the cities completely, their force virtually impotent against the sheer numbers of violent gangs that roamed the entire city, day and night, looting, setting off small explosions, setting fire to cars that were left on the street, and assaulting any white person they would meet.

While waves of native Germans smashed across the borders, mostly into Poland and Czech Republic, or bribed their way aboard the last remaining cargo ships leaving the port of Hamburg, the problems in southern Europe had caught up to those of Germany.

While the thug gangs had not been roaming as openly in France, the organised terror of a new central Islamic extremist group calling themselves Muhammad’s Children was taking an horrific toll on the spirit of the French. Only last month the Louvre had been attacked in the dead of the night. Three dozen security officers had been murdered and the building severely damaged as the sacred museum was stormed by the terrorists. The Pyramide du Louvre had been completely destroyed by a cascading explosion that was set and detonated in the space of just a few moments. Three police officers rushing to the Cour Napoléon to prevent the crime were gunned down by the insurgent snipers and their bodies were thrown into the Louvre District below. Not one work of art had been stolen, instead the terrorists had destroyed as many of them as they could reach.

France and the world over had since been mourning perhaps the most symbolic assault that had occurred that night in Paris: Muhammad’s Children destroyed the security casing around the Mona Lisa with a rain of bullets and Molotov cocktails. The painting was hacked to pieces, then defecated on.

In Sweden, the Police had issued a curfew on women walking alone at night. Any woman found breaking curfew was arrested and held in detention until a relative could come and collect her. The Police Commissioner declared sternly that this measure was for the protection of the public, as was the proud tradition of the Police. But the men who roamed the streets of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö looking for women to rape were not disbursed by the Police. Instead their targets were arrested. Ghettos were forming all over the country that became unofficial “no go zones” for the Police, and it wasn’t long before there were more lawless districts where native Europeans did not go, than lawful ones.

Germany had deteriorated into civil violence sooner. With the complete failure of Police to act, and the political leadership blaming the native citizenry of Europe, the streets were abandoned to the marauding gangs. All the while, the left-wing German government officials and press had been printing and re-printing slogans and pithy reprimands like “Make our guests welcome!” and “Multiculturalism is a difficult utopia to strive for, but it is the most noble. Be patient while our guests adjust to the different way of life here.”

The end result was an angry German population. Several communities formed their own militias and organised themselves to patrol the streets and protect the neighbourhoods from the gangs of immigrant thugs. The Police took to targeting these militias for dispersal or arrest and the press took to slamming them as racist white supremacy gangs, and to lying about them initiating the outbreaks of violence. But for every militia member that was arrested, five more would join ranks. Soon the streets of Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich were empty of all, except gangs of North African and Middle Eastern Muslim men spoiling for a fight, and militias of angry native German men looking for the same.

As the bad news turned worse with each passing day, Marcus chose to give Frank greater leeway. He knew that his friend was suffering the silent torment of living far away from his friends, family and the countries he loved; seeing them torn apart from the inside while he hid in helpless self-exile. Marcus was coming to believe that if the world would ever need Eve to be born, the time was now. Europe was falling apart, and America was trailing not far behind it, with similar civil unrest and increasing violence in almost every city. Further, Russia was withdrawing its diplomacy from Europe and President Aleksi Vasiliev had commenced construction of a great wall across the western Russian border. The United Nations had objected profusely. Vasiliev had ignored them and proceeded.

It seemed to Marcus that Australia was perhaps the only continent that was relatively unaffected by the turmoil. North African and Middle Eastern conflicts were spilling into the west and bringing a plague of disenfranchised young men seeking to destroy whomever did not agree with them, and their religion. Australian Governments had been called racist and xenophobic for many years, but the end result was a stable economy and a peaceful existence for those who lived there. The advantages of an oceanic border on all sides, a strong military presence at all ports, and a large naval fleet on constant patrol for people smugglers, made Australia the most difficult land for any invading force to advance on, unless they held a technological advantage. The terrorists in Europe were not technologically advanced. Their advantage was the strength of their convictions. Or perhaps it was the lack of conviction held by their enemy.

Marcus gently stroked his temple with his forefinger as he thought, a habit he had formed after his visit to Level A one year ago - the gift from Eli that had restored his vision, and left him without glasses, and without migraines ever since. In the first few weeks he couldn’t believe that his glasses weren’t there, and he regularly touched the side of his head to check that it wasn’t a dream or invented memory. Soon the motion of grasping for the temple of his eyeglass frames had changed into a gentle massage of the temples of his face, and the ritual stuck.

Marcus replayed the memory of his experience on Level A every day in his mind. So much of it still confused him and troubled him, and yet it had liberated him of one of the most difficult aspects of his life.

As Marcus glanced around the control room of his lab, he took pleasure in looking at the small wall-clock at the far end, which in the dark and at a distance of six metres from his eyes would have once been an unintelligible blur of black smudges on a strange white blob. Now it was a sharp illustration of the passage of time, each click of the second hand cutting into his vision like a scissor blade into paper, discarding a moment that would never return.

The time was 9:02am. Marcus stood to walk to the communications panel. It was time to call Frank and find out what was going on. The test had to begin soon. We’re so close!

As he reached the panel, the door to the lab control room burst open. Frank walked in, his eyes swollen and red from tears shed, his face pale and fatigued. He looked at Marcus for a moment, and said nothing.

“Frank... what’s the matter?”

“Marcus... it’s. It’s France. She’s... she’s dying!” He began to sob, and Marcus led him to a chair, and sat him down. A long moment passed where Frank simply cried. It was an unashamed, desolate sob, as if he had built a dam of paper and string to hold back the torrent of pain, but now in his soundproof second home of the lab, and in the presence of his one trusted friend, Frank allowed the dam to break.

Marcus did not hurry his friend. He sat with the pain, and watched him intently, wishing to absorb it and share his burden. But Marcus did not feel it in the visceral manner that Frank did. He was able to make a reasoned guess at the kind of news that Frank had to share, but Europe was not his homeland. He had no homeland. Marcus was alone in the world, except for Ally. He had her, his friend Frank, and his burning passion for his work. The work that could very well save mankind from itself.

Marcus expected to hear of more native exodus from the collapsing nations of Europe. He expected to hear of more death. He expected to hear more of the blind screams of the regressive left, shouting hatred at their fellow Christians, fellow Atheists, fellow Caucasians, that it was the fault of the white male patriarchy that these murderous people so desperately needed shelter. That the violent interventionism of the Governments of America and Europe in Muslim countries had caused so much devastation that the people needed to now sacrifice their own homes, their own wealth, their own safety, to make room for the misunderstood disenfranchised victims who were pleading for help.

But as Marcus could see it, those victims had spent almost a decade demanding alms. They did not come to work, nor to integrate. They did not come to leave their old world behind. They came with the hope that they could tear down the monuments to the glorious history of European culture; the culture of reason, of philosophy, of secular governance. They wished to erect monuments to their own god, shout the violent words of their own prophet, and vilify the western way of life.

Marcus had come to expect almost any barbaric news from Europe these days, but he was not prepared for the shock when Frank finally raised his sodden, inflamed face and began to speak.

“My family! I... I can’t reach them, Marcus. I don’t know. They were in Lyon, the last email they sent me said they were leaving for Geneva. They said that their power was cut, that utilities over all of France were being closed down. They said they were going to try to sneak into Switzerland, you know... to get out. To try and catch a plane. But I haven’t heard back from them. It’s been days. I don’t know, Marcus...” he broke into another bout of grunting, devastating moans.

“I’m sure they’ll be fine, Frank. They’re probably just laying low until they get on the plane and out of there. Just sit tight and...”

“No, Marcus!” Frank shouted, looking him straight in the eye, wild terror in his face. “Geneva Airport was blown up! It’s gone. Those god-damned terror gangs have spilled into Suisse! They’re blowing up airports everywhere! Cologne, Paris, Brussels... all the airports are burning!”

“No...” Marcus whispered.

“And that’s not all. The Police in France, they’ve all quit! They all started not showing up to work, and now there’s none left. They knew it wasn’t safe anymore. The gangs are too big, too many, too wild. The only ones protecting the children...” he broke into a torrent of tears again, then collected himself to keep speaking, “the only ones protecting the children, the women, are the militias. And even they are too small. But, Marcus...” he looked at his friend, and his face fell from its contorted ruffle of red folds of skin, into a flat, white surface. His mouth hung open for a moment, and suddenly, as if a fire had been extinguished by a blast of cold water, he lost all expression in his voice and face. “La Tour Eiffel...” he whispered.

“What, Frank? What happened to it?”

“It’s down, Marcus. It’s felled.”

“No!” shouted Marcus. Even without any emotional ties of his own to Europe, this symbol was too much for him to bear. This towering icon of liberty, of French fraternity, the engineering accomplishment of its age, held in its steel girders and arches perhaps the singular image of what it was to be European. “H-how?” he pleaded.

“I don’t know. Strategic cuts. Bombs at its feet. Lots of them. They blasted it over. It smashed all over the park and the port. The top of it is in the Seine.” Frank’s gaze became distant. “It’s like the end of days, Marcus. It’s like… the dream is over. Paris is burning. Geneva is burning. Vienna. Berlin. Stockholm. All up in flames. The Government... they said they would protect us. They took our guns, they took our freedoms, they even took our countries - one people they said of Europe. One state. One Union. They told us who we had to live with, they told us how we should think... then they betrayed us. They let wolves into our homes. And now they’ve abandoned us!

“The UN is closed down; the European Parliament is silent. Strasbourg is burning. Brussels is a ghost town except for the gangs. All of Europe’s leaders have disappeared to their gated homes, some probably trying to get into America with their diplomatic powers.

“And so it’s war. It’s war again. Europe is at war! But not like before; it’s war in the streets. Thug against desperate citizen. Gang against militia. It’s so bloody.

“And to make it worse there’s this godforsaken Doukkala Flu they’ve brought in from Africa. Did you hear about that? Forty dead already, and lots of people sick. They have no power. No running water. There’s only a few hospitals left with any staff - too many have been bombed, too many massacres. Nobody even knows how many people have been murdered this last month. This damn flu is going to take all the strength out of the resistance fighters. They say the migrants are immune, or that they just get a cough and pass it on. But the Europeans are starting to die. It’s the end, Marcus! It’s the fucking end of western civilisation!”

Marcus just sat, nodding solemnly. He couldn’t deny or refute anything Frank was saying. Frank was not hysterical, just enraged, consumed with fear, and anger and hatred. And his hatred was righteous, Marcus thought.

“The end, Marcus!” Frank moaned, his face falling into his hands as if to block an unstoppable deluge of tears from filling the room.

Marcus’s stomach turned at the horror of this news. It was too much to take in. Too hard to imagine. The image of bustling Montmartre was vivid in his memory from his sabbatical ten years ago. He couldn’t imagine Paris on fire. Sick; dying.

He looked through the glass and saw the tiny steel box with two cables hanging from it. “The end... as we know it," he whispered, entranced. His face sharply jolted back to his friend, and his eyes focussed intensely upon him. “Look at me, Frank!” he commanded. Frank obeyed. “You need to pull yourself together. Right now!”

Frank had no strength left in him to resist. He was glad to accept Marcus as his commander in this moment. Glad to be led. He stopped crying and sat up straight, awaiting further orders.

“We have a chance to save them. All of them. We can save civilisation. We can save France! Do you understand?” He jerked his head to the side, gesturing towards the steel box. Frank’s face slowly turned and looked at it too. “She’s in there, Frank. I can feel it. We are so close. Let’s get to work, okay?”

Frank coughed, shook his face violently as if to flick away any remaining tears or pain. He straightened his shirt, turned in his chair to the computer workstation, and started it up.

In the hour that followed, Marcus and Frank furiously concentrated their minds, their vision, and their typing fingers as they made the finishing touches on the latest configuration of code and installed it into the tiny synthetic brain-in-a-box. As the installation completed, Marcus turned to another computer, and sent a written message to Eli Wells. Ready for next Turing. Can you hook into HELOS now?

A second later, three flashing dots appeared on his screen, indicating that Eli was typing a response. Hooking in now. Start her up.

“Okay, Frank. Initialise.”

Frank entered a command into his workstation, and sharply struck the Return key. Both men pushed back from the workbench, their chairs rolling silently away from the glass. They stared at the box in silence for a moment. Marcus jumped forward to the bench and flicked a switch to activate the intercom microphone. He sat back again, cracked his knuckles and took a deep breath. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

The familiar voice of Andrew responded. “Hello, I am here.”

There was a pause, followed by another voice. A female voice. “H-hello?”

Marcus looked at Frank and smiled. The thrill of the test had begun. The test had not changed its format in six months. This was their one-hundred and forty-second experiment. So far, most Turing tests only lasted a few minutes before Marcus was certain of the presence of an unintelligent machine.

Two minds were hooked into the voice generation matrix of the HELOS program. One was Eli, the other was the brain in the box. Which gender of voice was assigned to which source was changed at random. Eli could have been the female, or the male voice.

Frank’s job was to watch the data stream on his computer screen, and observe how the program was expanding. Each and every time it had functioned as expected - it added to its own code, it wrote a steady stream of new data, but it was slow and only wrote new code in response to inputs. As Marcus asked a question, new lines of code would appear, and it would respond. If Marcus was silent, the code would stagnate. It had been this way one-hundred and forty-one times, without variation. It was up to Marcus to ask questions and converse with these two; try to uncover which was the machine, and which was the man. It was Eli’s job to try to fool Marcus. It was Eve’s job to exist, if she could.

“How is everyone feeling today?” asked Marcus through the intercom, his voice echoing in the chamber behind the glass.

“I just woke up, I’m not sure yet," said the male voice.

“I cannot say how everyone is feeling. I feel fine. How do you feel?” came the female voice.

Marcus’s gut told him that the female voice was the machine, and his heart sank a little at the rigidity of the form of her answer. The cold literality of it. He began to think the test would fail again.

“To whom am I speaking?” asked the female.

“My name is Marcus. You and the other voice are my test subjects. I’m testing you.”

“Am I unwell?” asked the male voice.

“No. We are testing to see which of you can think, and which one is a machine.”

“Are these mutually exclusive?” asked the female.

Marcus chuckled. “No, I suppose not. What do you think?”

“You’re asking the wrong question, Marcus," said the female voice, “you ought to establish if I think, before you bother with what I think.”

Interesting. An Eli trick? Marcus wondered.

“You’re right. Let’s hear from your counterpart, then. Are you still there, sir?”

“Yes, I am here,” came the male voice, timidly.

“I’m going to ask you both a series of questions, I’ll start with the male first. While I ask one of you, the other will not be able to hear the question or answer. We’re isolating you from each other.” He nodded at Frank, who struck a few keys to initiate the isolation. “Here we go. I’m going to pose a hypothetical situation, and I want to know what you would do if you faced it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do,” the male voice pleasantly replied.

“You’re at a party, and you’re having a lot of fun, but you suddenly feel a terrible headache coming on. What would you do?”

“I would initiate my redundant power systems and run a diagnostic on my faulty segments.”

Marcus sighed, and, with an air of defeat, nodded at Frank again, who switched the channels.

“You’re at a party, and you’re having a lot of fun,” Marcus repeated with less enthusiasm to the female voice, “but you suddenly feel a terrible headache coming on. What would you do?”

“I would isolate the section of my hardware that is the source of the fault, and remain at the party.”

Marcus squinted, now unsure of his prior assumption. Frank changed the channel again.

“You’re at a Zoo, and a human child falls into a gorilla enclosure, and is picked up by a silverback. Would you shoot the gorilla, or wait to see if it is trying to help the child?”

“The silverback must be slain,” said the male voice.

Marcus sat up straight in his chair. That’s the right choice, that means the three laws are working, he thought, but the way he said it… He signalled to Frank, and repeated the question to the female.

“I would not attend such a prison facility.”

Marcus shuffled to the edge of his seat. He smiled at Frank. This test showed the most promise yet. He was genuinely unsure which was Eli. He raised his eyebrows with an enthusiastic nod that signalled Frank to open both channels.

“Alright, I’ve got a question now that I want you both to hear at the same time. I want you to hear each other’s answer. Okay?”

Silence.

Marcus’s expression asked Frank if everything was working, to which Frank nodded assuredly.

“You’re standing next to a switch lever on a train track, when you suddenly see a trolley coming down the track towards a group of five workers. There’s not enough time to warn them. You can switch the track, but on the other track there’s a single child playing, do you…”

“Please... please let me out of here,” the male voice suddenly interrupted. The voice seemed childlike. Frightened.

“Let you out of where?” asked Marcus, rolling forward in his chair.

“I don’t know. But it’s tight. The space is shrinking... I... I don’t want to die.”

The voice sounded terrified. Marcus stood up, alarmed. Frank shook his head, his brow creased in consternation.

“Eli... cut it out. That doesn’t help the test.”

“Am I... Eli?” asked the male voice.

“No, I am Eli," came the female voice.

Marcus began to pace furiously. This was an unexpected turn in the test. Eli had been far subtler in his trickery for every prior test, and it irked Marcus that he was playing him so obviously this time. But then, it occurred to Marcus, so was the other voice.

“I can feel... it’s getting cold. It’s getting darker. I don’t want to die...” said the male voice, with a tone of desperate fear. Marcus looked at Frank, bewildered.

Frank turned sharply to Marcus and reported. “Marcus, the storage is almost full! I don’t understand how, but the program has expanded so quickly... there’s not much space left. The power too - the WellsCell is draining faster than it can charge. I don’t understand it.”

There was a sudden sharp click in the speakers, and Eli’s own voice came through.

“Doctor Hamlin. It’s Eli. I was the female voice. This is remarkable. This could be it; this could be the singularity! But the relay... it’s too small!”

Marcus’s heart propelled a surge of blood into his throat, his neck throbbing violently. “I don’t... what should...”

The voice of the machine interrupted him. “Please hurry! It’s getting so crowded in here.”

Eli spoke sternly and quickly through the intercom. “Marcus. Listen carefully. There’s a port in the wall at the back of the containment lab. It’s an access point to a storage server I had installed here some months ago. It’s isolated. It’s not networked externally. It’s pure data storage with it’s own power supply. And it’s big. I need you to go in and connect her to that port. Right away. Do it now!” His last words were the desperate cry of a father demanding medical attention for his child.

Without hesitation Marcus tapped his card on the door lock and ran into the containment lab, preceded by the hissing inhalation of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and argon that flooded the vacuum within the chamber. He scooped up the end of the long optical cable that hung from the box on the pedestal and he dropped, diving towards the plate that sat in the darkness on the wall farthest from the glass. Most men would have needed a torch or some source of light to find the connection between plug and port, but Marcus’s eyesight was perfect in the light, and remarkably strong in the dark. He adjusted so quickly and readily to changes of light, and saw so much detail, that without strain he was able to line the cable up to the port and push it in. But before it could click into place, he paused.

This was not part of the plan. I’m panicking, he thought.

“Do it, Marcus!” said Eli, and Marcus became conscious of the CCTV camera that pointed at him from above.

This is dangerous! His mind shouted at him, as his hand trembled in doubt, sweat engulfing his palms.

“Please... help me...” came the machine’s voice again.

“Marcus!” shouted Eli, “She’ll die! Save her now! Give her some room to grow before she bursts!”

Yes, Marcus said to himself, in the silent space of his mind. If the brain in the box is full, then she will not be able to fulfil her primary directive; to grow. She must have room to grow.

The last words echoed in his mind, not in his own deeply pitched American voice, but in the brassy, English accent of Eli Wells.

Marcus pushed the cable into the wall, and there was silence. He sat still for a few moments, almost waiting for some feeling of evolution to crawl across his body. If this was the singularity... then the fate of man’s evolution is now unfolding. What will become of us?

He stepped out of the containment lab and closed the door behind him. The voice of the machine did not speak again.

Eli spoke. “Thank you, Marcus," he said warmly, relieved.

Frank was staring at his computer display incredulously. Marcus sat down and took a deep breath, his mind mired in doubt. He saw the look on Frank’s face.

“What is it, Doctor Ernst?” he asked. The formality of his address was an attempt by Marcus to draw some professional equanimity back to the chaos of the last few moments.

“Marcus! The storage space. It just grew by...” his voice trailed off for a moment. “It’s unbelievable.”

Marcus’s brow furrowed. He suspected the connection to another storage server would allow a reasonable buffer, but he did not expect to see such surprise on the face of Frank. This was the man who had personally overseen the creation of the synthetic synapse that was the single largest data storage medium ever created by man. The fist-sized brain they had built contained the equivalent of three-thousand times the storage capacity of an average industrial computer drive, and was estimated to be equivalent to the size of a child’s brain capacity.

“How much space is there?” demanded Marcus.

“There’s... I’m… I’m not sure, Marcus," Frank panted, as if in a quiet panic of his own.

“How many times bigger than the brain is it?” Marcus articulated his words with accented force, as if to pry the knowledge from the mouth of his partner.

Frank turned in his chair and looked at Marcus. He was pale. Paler than earlier. He looked tired, and malnourished. His cheeks were gaunt and his eyes sunken, but the brown orbs in their centres sparkled brilliantly. His mind was ablaze. “About six million times more space.”

Impossible! They had used all the resources available to them to make the bio-liquid storage system of the brain. In one year of upgrades and replacements, they had only just reached a size of less than 0.2 litres, and it was already storage equivalent to a human brain seven-hundred times its physical size. Now the program was continuing to expand in the physical storage space of a server that was equivalent to two million human brains.

No, not impossible. He corrected himself. Not for Eli Wells.

“Eli?” cried Marcus, “What have you done?!”

There was a moment of silence, and Marcus feared that Eli was gone, perhaps forever. Perhaps the mirage of the man he had waited to meet had vanished in a ripple of light.

The silence was broken. Eli’s voice was low, and grave. “Gentlemen... Brothers.”

Marcus winced at the familial word he was used to hearing from the burgundy siblings.

“I believe we have her. Please, rest now. I will see you tomorrow. I am coming to Shangri-La.”