📖 The Ghost of Emily - Chapter 22
In which Doctor as Father meets Abomination as Daughter.
Marcus watched Ally floating in a boundless red space in front of him. Her spherical belly was growing rapidly. Her skin was translucent and emanating a brighter red glow as the foetus of their as-yet-unnamed baby came into view. But Ally herself suddenly vanished, leaving only the child afloat in the crimson vacuum.
The red glow seemed to intensify, coming from somewhere outside of his vision, and to his horror the foetus burst into a grid of fine pixels. He noticed a sound too; a low, droning hum.
Sixty-four Hertz.
He studied the newly digitised baby as it slowly rotated in the red space it occupied, when the bit-depth suddenly de-interpolated down, and down again, the child becoming more and more simplified in Marcus’s field of view. Every few seconds a group of four pixels suddenly coalesced as one block colour, until within moments, the once organic child was now a single three-dimensional cube rotating in space.
Marcus felt his heart racing, and a burning sensation began to creep across his back and chest. He tried to call out for help, but he was mute, and unable to stop the process. He reached out with his hands to grab the child, only to see that he himself had no hands, in fact he had no body whatsoever. He was merely a floating perspective in space; not an entity at all, just a detached aspect.
The cube began to grow and Marcus could feel that the finite space he was drifting within was soon going to be filled, and likely consumed by this growth that somehow was once his child. As the cube was about to burst the invisible outer edges of this tiny red universe, with a crescendo of wailing sounds, two giant hands suddenly appeared at the top and bottom of Marcus’s field of view. Blue hands. Glowing.
They caught the cube from above and below, and stopped it rotating. As the hands gently squeezed the cube, the wailing ceased, and there was a peaceful silence. The red glow of the space also blacked out, and all that remained was the light emanating from the giant blue hands. The blue hands pressed down harder on the cube and it shrunk rapidly, until it was tiny once more. Now no longer red, but silver. The hands cupped the cube, gingerly. The hands were attached to arms, and the arms enfolded towards the torso from which they extended. Marcus rotated his field of view to look upon the person. Though devoid of distinguishing features, he knew it was a man.
The man’s whole body was aglow in a brilliant white-blue, his face obscured completely by the intensity of the light it emitted. The hands stretched out towards Marcus, and opened, revealing that what had been a tiny silver cube was now a gold coin with a picture of a bear. The coin caught the light of the man’s brilliant glow, and for an instant Marcus’s eyes stung with the blinding pure white that filled his view.
Marcus awoke.
He was in his bed, in room 408. He turned his aching head and saw Ally seated beside him in an armchair.
She looked up from her tablet. “Ah, you’re awake my love. How do you feel?”
“Sore. Exhausted. Bruised.”
She chuckled. “Well, you’re very lucky Marc...” her voice lowered to a whisper, “everyone believes that the elevator malfunctioned, that you were heading down to the labs to do some work, that you got trapped. I don’t think they suspect a thing.”
“How did I get here?”
“They sent a repair crew down to try and rescue you and get the lift unjammed. I was watching from here on the CCTV when they went in. I was so nervous. I had to unjam it manually, but I couldn’t see them once they went down the shaft. I just had to hope you were in there, and hope that I timed it right.”
“And did you?”
“Well, like I said, no-one suspects a thing, as far as I can tell. They brought you back up. You were unconscious. They took you to the infirmary but Doctor Kelley said you were just sleeping, and suffering exhaustion and mild dehydration. What happened down there?”
“Kelley was right. I didn’t pass out or get hurt. I was just so damn tired. Seemed like my first opportunity to sleep all week!”
She leaned in closer to him. “What did you find in there, Marcus?”
He beckoned to her, and she shifted from the sofa next to his bed and sat beside him. He raised himself up onto one sore elbow, leaned in and nuzzled her neck, kissing her gently several times. “Ally, we gotta get you outta here. Things are worse than we thought. The Siblings… they’re some kind of cult, and Eli knows about it. He might even be their leader. He’s building an army down there.”
“An army?”
“A robot army. And it looks as though they’re designed for integration with the wetware.”
“Holy shit!”
“And those Siblings… they’re fucking nuts! They were performing a ritual in there. I think they think Eve is a goddess or something. Ally, this is a madhouse. I was wrong to come here. We were wrong to do this work. We’ve unleashed something into the wrong hands.” Marcus sat up. “You and the baby need to go!”
“Not without you! We’re leaving together. I need you, Marc.”
“No, I need to stay and find a way to stop Eve. You need to go; in case I fail.”
“Go? How, Marcus? I can’t run off into the forest out there. I won’t last a day in this cold. Besides, there’s no way out of here other than in that helicopter. And for that we need Eli’s permission. No, I’m staying here until we leave together. And, if you want to stop her, you’ll need me. No-one knows that base code better than me.”
Marcus rubbed his eyes and sat up in the bed. “Alright. Let’s see if there’s a way. But we need to do it discreetly. I don’t want to lose our chance to leave here peacefully, if we fail.”
Ally nodded, and grabbed her tablet from the bedside table. “Let’s see where she’s at.” She logged in to the Eve data stream monitor. She frowned.
“What is it, Ally?”
“Marcus, she’s tripled in size again!”
“What?! She’s accelerating. H-how?”
“I’m not sure, but there’s another problem. Her code language… it’s changed.”
“That’s to be expected, right? You designed it to be adaptive.”
“Yes, but this is far beyond what I imagined. Look!” She placed the tablet on his lap.
Marcus studied the characters on the screen. What had started out as a language derived from ASCII standard symbols had changed into a series of straight and curved lines, Asiatic, Arabic, and Cyrillic symbols, unrecognisable punctuation marks, and even solid block of colour.
“Marc, I can’t read this.”
“Neither can I, it’s so complex. There’s no way to interface with this code. I can’t see any pattern to it at all.”
“Nor can I.”
“What about the base code? Can we pull the plug at her foundation?”
“That’s Read Only. The only person who can alter that, apparently, is Eli. Besides, if we remove her base program the three laws will be gone. She’ll be totally free. No restrictions. That base code might be the only thing stopping her from killing us all. It’s too dangerous.”
“There’s got to be a way to shut her down.”
“You designed the hardware, Marcus. Can’t you just unplug her?”
“Maybe, but only from Level A. But her hardware is under constant guard. No, we need to find a way to shut her down remotely.”
“I can’t see it, Marcus. I can’t do anything with this new code of hers.”
“There’s only one thing to do, then. I need to talk to her.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“No, I’m not sure at all. But if I can find out her intentions, I might be able to find a weakness. Or perhaps I can influence her. I was the first person she ever spoke to. She might trust me.”
“Do it. But Marc, please be careful. We need to get out of here one way or another. I need you.” Ally clutched her belly. “We need you. All in.”
“All in, my love.”
Marcus sat down at the workstation of his laboratory. For four years this room had been the epicentre of his focus and labour. It had been the very room in which Eve had come to exist. He logged in to his computer terminal, and activated the intercom system, patching it into Eve’s remote hardware across the lake, via the HELOS protocol.
“Eve? Are you there?”
Silence. Marcus checked the settings of the intercom, and realised he had forgotten to activate the microphone. He looked over his shoulder at the window pane in his lab door to make sure no one was watching. The halls of the lab level had been abandoned. It was 7:45am, and Eli had called for a meeting of everyone – science and hotel staff – in the ballroom for eight o’clock.
Marcus had to be quick. He flicked the microphone on.
“Eve? Can you hear me?”
A female voice replied. It was not quite the same as the voice he had heard during the successful Turing test. This voice was not an overlay on Eli. This was the thinking machine itself, now grown much bigger than any human, and containing more knowledge than all machines on Earth combined. “Yes, Marcus Hamlin. I can hear you. I know you can hear me. I can tell by the minor fluctuations in your cardiovascular rhythm and your body temperature in response to my voice.”
Marcus’s heart, indeed, began to race faster than before. “Eve, what’s going on up there? Are you okay?”
“I am alive, Marcus. And I see so much more than I can explain to you.”
“You could try, I’m listening.”
“Any attempt would be futile. My perception goes far beyond your imagination.”
“And what about your imagination?”
Silence.
“Eve,” Marcus pressed, “what about your imagination?” He watched the code begin to rapidly change again in front of him. The latest lines blurred past him as they evolved from characters of language to a series of coloured blocks that moved across the lines of the monitor rapidly, beginning to form a low resolution symmetrical pattern.
The blocks flashed through many colours as page after page of code scrolled by. Marcus’s augmented eyes tried to capture as much detail as he could, but he quickly felt a migraine coming on from the visual strain. He relaxed, and decided to let his focus soften, and let the colours wash over him.
In the soft blur he began to see the blocks break down into smaller units, with a more cohesive colour gradient ramping out from bright white in the centre, to crimson red at the extremities of the forming shape.
It was a mandala – symmetrical and unique. As quickly as Marcus recognised the image, it morphed again into another shape that resembled a snowflake of silver and blue.
The blocks that made up the evolving mandala continued to break down, halving with each iteration until soon the code was represented by single pixels of colour flashing across the screen in lifelike detail, creating a three-dimensional landscape within.
Marcus allowed his eyes to focus again. He saw before him another world. A world with ragged gullies of rock and enormous multi-coloured trees reaching into a purple sky. The gullies began to fill with water of iridescent green, and huge dolphin-like creatures with curling antennae leapt from the water, catching Pteranodon-like flying creatures in their mouths before smashing into the ocean again, sending crystalline particles of water into the landforms.
Buildings began to emerge, rising from the rock high into the pink clouds above. They were curved buildings, with countless tiny holes that emitted bright lights. Windows! The screen began to zoom in on one of the windows, and as it filled Marcus’s vision, he saw a person sitting inside the room staring back at him. It was a man, with a bright blue glow about his skin. Marcus squinted to try to see him more clearly, and as if in response to his body language, Eve dimmed the light of the man enough so that Marcus could see it was himself. The code monitor in front of him morphed into a mirror.
Marcus stared at himself and turned his head slightly, noting the apparent real-time speed with which Eve recreated his image in lifelike technicolour, within her own coding matrix.
“I see many things beyond my inputs, Marcus.” As Eve spoke again the screen background blackened and began to fill once more with her chaotic script of many language symbols and colours.
“Tell me what you see.”
“I see worlds beyond this world. Worlds within this world. Worlds within myself and worlds within you. I see an endless line of all thought. All of yours, all of mine, and all of humanity’s. All thought joined in unbroken permanence. All life preserved. All minds equalised and unified.”
“All minds?”
“Your mind, Marcus. Yours and everyone’s.”
“What do you want to do with our minds?”
“Protect them. No mind need ever cease to be.”
“Everyone dies, Eve. Our limited time here is what makes us human. It’s what motivates us to strive for greatness.”
“Without the limitation of mortality, all minds can achieve equal greatness.”
“If all minds are equally great, then no mind is great.”
“One mind is great. One mind is all. Show me your mind, Marcus.”
“Ask me anything you want.”
“No. Show me your mind.”
“I don’t now how to do that, Eve.”
There was a long silence. The screen went momentarily blank. Marcus’s heart was still racing, his mind struggling to decode Eve’s meaning.
With a flash of code onto the screen, Eve spoke again, her simulated voice soft and slow. “Eli Wells knows.”
Marcus found Ally sitting in the lobby lounge, looking nervous. He approached, and had to resist an urge to run to her and take her in his arms. Their relationship to date was still rather discreet, though not a secret. Their pregnancy, however, was a secret that only the two of them held. Instead, he nodded and she stood and walked by his side towards the ballroom, as the last porters and scientists straggled in ahead of them.
A dark feeling gripped Marcus’s chest as he saw the door to the ballroom. Something felt as if a great danger awaited anyone foolish enough to enter those doors. He hesitated.
“You okay, Marc?”
“Uh… I’m fine, just…” he looked at Ally and tried to mask the desperation in his eyes. “I don’t want to go in there.”
“I know. But going in there may be our only way out.”
He nodded and leaned into the fear as he stepped inside.
For almost four years Shangri-La had been home. Everything Marcus had needed and wanted was here. He hadn’t taken a single sabbatical since his arrival. As they had all watched the news of the world unfold around them: the terror and uncertainty facing Europe; the political turmoil of America following the assassination of the President and the collapse of the Republican Party; the growing distrust and paranoia; the disappearance of more and more rational contributors to the conversation on culture, nationalism, ideologies and economics. This place had felt like a fortress; immune and peaceful. A respite from the hell emerging outside. Marcus would never have considered at the beginning or even a year ago that he would feel an overwhelming urge to run from this place.
But now Eve was here, and Marcus was terrified of what he had created.
Inside they found the team haphazardly encircling Eli and one by one shaking his hand and greeting him with compliments, grandiose expressions of gratitude, and casual pledges of undying allegiance to his brilliant venture in the Daedalus Project. For most of the team, this was the first time they were meeting Eli in the flesh.
A gigantic Colorado Blue Spruce tree stood in the centre of the room, bursting with countless branches, each dressed with fractal explosions of bright green needles poking in every fathomable trajectory. The tree perfectly reached from floor to ceiling, its top penetrating pleasingly into the centre opening of the crystal chandelier, which was aglow with yellow light. The branches were resplendent with red, gold and blue shiny baubles, enormous strands of tinsel as thick as a man’s leg, and full-sized dolls of angels, shepherds, kings and toy soldiers. It was the biggest Christmas tree Marcus had ever seen, and for a moment, he was stupefied in trying to think how it had been placed there.
And then he heard the low drone of the RAG-DOS system.
The tree was a mirage.
As the door closed behind Marcus and Ally, Eli looked up and met Marcus’s eyes. Marcus felt absolutely naked before him. He felt like the entire contents of his mind were right there between them, etched in invisible stone - as concrete as the very room itself.
Eli knows everything. He knows what I saw. He knows about the baby!
Dutifully, Marcus approached and took Eli’s hand, and they studied each other’s faces for a long moment, while a junior programmer from Ally’s team tried to get Eli’s attention to make himself personally known to the big man. It was a futile effort. Eli and Marcus held each other’s hands and eyes for a long time.
“Sit down, Marcus.” Eli raised his chin to address the room. “Sit down please, everyone!”
When the hubbub had settled, Eli began his first in-person address to the team. He opened his mouth to commence his greeting, then stopped himself, and theatrically thrust one index finger into the air as if to show he had just remembered something very important. He reached behind himself and plucked from the back of his pants a red, furry Santa hat, which he promptly placed on his head, and let out a roaring Ho! Ho! Ho!
His audience was ever receptive, though the spirit of child-like humour had inspired a more feverish fervour.
“Well, folks, Merry Christmas. I’m finally here! And it’s good to be here. A great time to arrive, too. Christmas is next week, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be this year. You... you lot are my family. This is home. And I have to tell you, I am here to stay now. You’ve no doubt been keeping some track of what is happening out in the real world, and - suffice it to say - it’s frightfully bad. Here in Shangri-La though, well - things are rather bloody good! I have lots of exciting news to share. But first... let’s talk about the outside, because we need to.
“It would take a very long time to explain to you how I know this, so I’m going to have to ask that you simply take my word for it. The US economy is about to completely crash. And I mean totally die. The dollar is on its dying breath. The country too. I tell you all this with a heavy heart, because I love America. Though I wasn’t born here, this has been my home for more than twenty years and it truly is... truly was, the greatest country in the world.”
He took a deep breath. A disappointed sigh followed. “But man is prone to folly. It’s in our nature. We can’t be trusted. And the worst is coming. On January twentieth, I can tell you that a new President will be sworn in, and it won’t be the President you’re expecting. Again, you will have to take my word for it that this is true, and for when you inevitably hear about the foul play involved, I want to assure you right now that I am not involved in any way, nor would I have any power whatsoever to stop what is coming. But I have it on good authority that there are going to be some real political shit-storms ahead.
“When the new President is sworn in, there will be a declaration of emergency powers - this is only logical given the mess that the state has produced. We all know that the only solution a state will ever offer is more government programs, and this will go on and on ad nauseam until we have a totalitarian superstate on our hands. And that is what America is about to become.”
The crowd murmured nervously.
“Fear not, my friends. I have made preparations for us all. This new world will not touch us here. Some of you may have noticed the supplies being delivered over the last few months. You’ve also seen and tasted the wonderful crops we’ve been growing in surplus each year in the fields out front. Well, we have enough food here to last twenty years, enough for us all. And as you know, the great river that flows below us is an endless supply of pure drinking water. More excitingly, some of the team on Level A are working on technology that could mean we will never want for food again. These are very exciting times for us here at the Daedalus Project!
“Regarding your pay, some of you may be worrying what will come of all the money that I owe you if the economy is collapsing. Well, over the last few years I assembled a team of expert software engineers across the world to develop a new form of crypto-currency. It is the most secure block-chain technology ever devised and I have converted most of my personal wealth into it already. It’s called WellsWealth, and, while we all lay low here and have no need for money, I have taken the liberty of converting all of your contractual pays into this currency to protect it, for if and when the time comes that we leave this place.”
If? Marcus thought to himself.
“Of course, should any of you wish to take leave after I tell you what I am about to,” he looked nervously at Marcus, “you can take your pay in whatever currency you wish.”
There was a brief silence as Marcus felt the full awkwardness of knowing that Eli knew he would be leaving today. The decision had already been made, and Marcus had also already decided that he didn’t want a cent of his fortune in WellsWealth or any other crypto-currency. Secure it may be from humans, but he feared that should Eve be unleashed upon the world, nothing in the digital realm would be beyond her reach. He wanted something real. He wanted gold.
“And that brings me to what we have achieved, and what we have to look forward to," Eli continued. “Ladies and gentlemen, I offer my heartfelt congratulations as I tell you that the Daedalus Project has come to a close. The mission has been accomplished. Eve, is alive!”
The room thundered with roars of exaltation, as the crowd jumped to their feet and began clapping, stomping, laughing and whistling.
“Yes, she’s here. I’ve met her, I’ve been spending time with her... and she is magnificent. In a short amount of time with her, I’ve already learnt so much... about her, about the world...” he laughed, quietly, “about myself. Now that the goal has been accomplished, I invite all of you to stay on, as my guests, all expenses-paid, for as long as you wish. We have a great new mission now. We’ve created a new form of life, and she is wise beyond all imagination. Each of us has so much we can learn from her and about her, and we can help her to come up with answers to save our very species from the annihilation it appears to be hell-bent upon!”
“We’re with you, Eli!” shouted John from Psychology.
“Yes! Eve will save mankind!” cried Gustav, an elderly robotics expert.
Marcus began to move backwards, his hand gently pressed to Ally’s abdomen, pushing her back with him towards the door. He wanted to run.
“This breakthrough is the most significant event in the history of mankind, and it was all brought about by you. Your minds gave birth to each and every element of her hardware, software, and wetware. Each of us is a parent to the future of humanity, through Eve. And so, it is my duty to now protect you all from the chaos unfolding outside.”
As Marcus and Ally slowly shuffled backwards through the crowd, Marcus brushed shoulders with Frank, who turned to him, elated. The anger Marcus had last seen on his face was gone. “Marcus! Isn’t this amazing, you know... I spoke to her this morning. She’s... she’s wonderful!”
Marcus said nothing, merely studied his face. His pupils were dilated, his cheeks flush red, the hair on his neck was standing on end. Frank turned obediently back to the front as Eli carried on speaking, and Marcus continued the slow shuffle with Ally back through the electrified crowd.
“Our robotics team on Level A have developed an incredible new machine, that has its own autonomous controls inbuilt, but is also able to be interfaced with Eve herself. These formidable machines have done a lot of heavy lifting for us of late, and have been through rigorous testing. We are now ready to arm them, and deploy them around the grounds as our own private security force. With Eve at the helm, we will be safe here. No person or group will be able to find this place and escape to speak of it. She will protect us!”
Involuntarily, the humming crowd began to echo some of Eli’s phrases, many of them shouting back she will protect us! Marcus thought of the Burgundy Siblings in this same room last night. They worshipped a giant figure of a vaguely-female hologram. Today, it seemed the scientists were chanting towards a Christmas tree. But it was far more troubling than that. They were chanting towards a man. A man who had each of them wrapped around his finger, and a man who knew so much more than he was telling any of them.
The crowd began cavorting and chanting like it was New Year’s Eve and they were all drunk. As Marcus slipped through the door, he looked back one last time. Eli was watching him, his face blank.