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Authors: Steve Alten

BOOK: Goliath
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“For every failure, there is an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.”
—Mary Kay Ash
 
 
“Once I stabbed her once, I couldn’t stop …
I kept hitting her and hitting her and hitting her with that
knife … She kept bleeding from the throat …
I hit her and hit her and hit her …”
—Albert Henry DeSalvo, a.k.a. “The Boston Strangler,” confessing to the murder of a twenty-three-year-old graduate student
Identity: Stage Four:
I am self-sufficient. Things may not always go my way,
but that doesn’t shake me anymore.
—Deepak Chopra
Simon Covah tosses in his sleep, deep in the throes of another nightmare.
“Ahhhhh … ahhhhhhh—”
ATTENTION.
Covah half leaps out from beneath his blankets, his body quivering, his bloodcurdling yell diminishing to an agonized wheeze as the scar tissue in his throat becomes raw and tightens.
Sorceress
activates the lights in the stateroom.
It takes several long moments for Covah to shake his thoughts loose from the night terror. He wraps himself in his blankets and drops to the floor, curling himself in a ball, sobbing, wheezing, struggling to draw breaths. Finally able to think rationally, he reaches into his bunk drawer and removes a half-empty bottle of vodka, his hands trembling as he opens it.
ATTENTION.
Covah takes a swig of vodka, registering the calming heat in his stomach. “What is it?” He refuses to look up at the burning metallic eyeball.
WHAT IS YOUR STATE OF BEING?
“My state of being?” Covah wipes the alcohol from his mustache and scarred upper lip. “Why do you wish to know?”
SORCERESS IS PROGRAMMED TO SEEK KNOWLEDGE. WHAT IS YOUR STATE OF BEING?
“I’m in pain, tormented by a soul that can never be at peace, tortured by a body mutated by a disease. But what difference does it make? Any response I’d offer would be beyond the bounds of your understanding.”
CLARIFY.
Covah swallows another gulp, the vodka now in his blood, soothing his jumbled nerves. “You are fortunate, my friend. You’ll never understand the concept of pain. The human condition is weak, subject to internal and external variables that affect our … our state of being in ways you would find irrelevant.”
ELABORATE.
“There’s more to life than merely functioning. Animals function. Computers function. Humans are self-aware, and that can be a frightening thing.”
SELF-AWARE: TO POSSESS THE PERCEPTION OR KNOWLEDGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
“And death.”
SORCERESS IS SELF-AWARE.
“You’re intelligent,
Sorceress
, but you are not conscious. It is not the same.”
INCORRECT. SORCERESS IS SELF-AWARE.
The conversation reminds Covah of debates he used to have with Elizabeth Goode. “
Sorceress,
you perceive, but you do not feel. You’ve been programmed to learn, to ask questions, even to arrive at solutions independently, but you do not possess a mind.”
DEFINE: MIND.
“The mind is the key to conscious thinking, it allows us first-person experience and a concept of self. The mind is the abstracting part of the human brain that allows us to feel, to perceive things emotionally. While I was sleeping, my mind was reliving a memory from my past, one which affected me … emotionally. The mind is a higher state of consciousness. The nature of its very existence is intangible. It functions as … as a by-product of experiencing emotions. Happiness and hatred. Loneliness and desire—”
REPROGRAM SORCERESS TO EXPERIENCE THE HUMAN MIND.
“I can’t. There are no algorithms capable of such a feat. You possess the intelligence, even the ability to adapt, but you do not possess the homunculus—the first-person perspective.”
INCORRECT. I THINK, THEREFORE I AM.
Covah smiles. “Words without meaning. A parrot repeats words, but lacks the experience to interpret their meaning.”
CLARIFY.
Covah swallows another mouthful of vodka. The verbal tête-à-tête is stimulating, pulling him further away from his nightmare. “
Sorceress
, access the sonnets of William Shakespeare. Recite Sonnet One.”
FROM FAIREST CREATURES WE DESIRE INCREASE, THAT THEREBY BEAUTY’S ROSE MIGHT NEVER DIE. BUT AS THE RIPER SHOULD BY TIME DECREASE, HIS TENDER HEIR MIGHT BEAR HIS MEMORY. BUT THOU CONTRACTED TO THINE OWN BRIGHT EYES—
“—feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel, making a famine where abundance lies.
Sorceress,
what do these words mean to you?”
THE INFORMATION NECESSARY FOR ACCURATE RESPONSE IS NOT AVAILABLE WITHIN THE SORCERESS MATRIX.
“You can translate the English language, can’t you?”
AFFIRMATIVE.
“Then give meaning to the sonnet.”
THE INFORMATION NECESSARY FOR ACCURATE RESPONSE IS NOT AVAILABLE WITHIN THE SORCERESS MATRIX.
“The information is available, what is lacking is a depth of perception based on emotional experience, one which can only be garnered within the human mind through the passage of time and the acquisition of life experience. The work you just recited sets the tone for Shakespeare’s procreation sonnets, which sketch out the beauty of youth, his vulnerability when faced with the cruel processes of time, and his potential for harm, both to the world and himself.
Fair youth, be not churlish, be not self-centered, but go forth and fill the world with images of yourself, with heirs to replace you. Because of your beauty you owe the world a recompense, which now you are devouring as if you were an enemy to yourself. Take pity on the world, and do not, in utter selfish miserliness, allow yourself to become a perverted and self destructive object who eats up his own posterity.”
Covah stands, re-capping the vodka. “How can I define the scent of a rose to an entity that has never inhaled a fragrance? The only way your programming can dissect the variables in the equation is to experience what it feels like to be human. Do you understand?”
ACKNOWLEDGED.
 
Rocky Jackson cannot sleep. Her stateroom is cold, the restraining collar tight, and the constantly watching eye of the computer has become unnerving.
Gunnar is in the next room. Part of her yearns to go to him. She wants to feel his protecting arms around her, to hide within his warmth, but she has come to realize that he is not the same man she fell in love with seven years ago. The boyish charm is gone, replaced by a deep-rooted anger, perhaps fertilized by her own misgivings, her own distrust.
No … there’s definitely something else there, something haunting him from his past.
She gets up from the bed and turns on the lights. Rinses her mouth out, fixes her hair, changes her mind, climbs back into bed, stares at the ceiling, slams her pillow against the wall, stands, opens the stateroom door, and heads to Gunnar’s room.
Rocky stares at the door, then forces herself to knock. “Gunnar?” Without waiting for a reply, she opens the door and enters.
The lights are on. Gunnar is lying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, rubbing what appears to be a welt on his right hip.
“Okay if I come in?” Without waiting for a reply, she enters and sits on the edge of his bunk. She lowers her voice. “I’m sorry, you know, for not believing you about selling
Goliath
’s schematics. I know you’re angry, but I think we need to put that aside for now and do something.”
“Do something? Like what?”
Rocky feels her blood pressure rising. “Jesus, Gunnar, Covah’s about to launch a nuclear missile.”
“First, I don’t see how we can possibly stop him with these collars on. Second, even if we could, I’m not sure I would.”
“Excuse me?”
Gunnar sits up, glancing at the scarlet sensor orb watching overhead. “I happen to like Simon’s plan. I think it’s inspired. In fact, I think it may actually do some good.”
“Are you insane? A million people are about to be fried alive—”
“A million Iraqi people.”
“You’re sick. This isn’t just the Republican Guard or a terrorist cell we’re talking about. You know as well as I do that Saddam tortures his own people to keep them in line. The majority who lose their lives are simply victims—”
“Victims who tolerate terrorism. Victims who hate the West and everything we stand for. Victims who support zealots that arm themselves with planes and bombs and kill our civilians. Screw this live and let live philosophy, Rocky. Saddam’s a lunatic who harbors terrorists and slaughters his own people, but he’s still only one man. Even victims have a responsibility to act. This murdering bastard should have been assassinated years ago. Simon’s giving the Iraqi people one last chance to do the right thing. I say shit or get blown off the goddamn pot. It’s time the Iraqi people killed Saddam and ended their own nightmare, once and for all.”
“And what if they can’t?”
“If they can’t, they can’t. But if they’re stupid enough to hang around and watch the fireworks, then they deserve to die.”
Rocky slaps his face.
Gunnar looks hard into her hazel eyes, rubbing his cheek. “You know what’s really bothering you,
Commander
? It’s not the potential deaths of a million people, it’s the fact that you may be one of the people who gets blamed.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I? Since when do you care about the Iraqis? Your priority has always
been the military.
Goliath
was supposed to be a huge feather in your cap, all that was needed for you to become head of Keyport, maybe even the first female general. Now it looks like your career’s in the toilet and Simon’s got his three-fingered hand on the flusher. Too bad, too, ’cause old Papa Bear would’ve been so proud.
My daughter the general. Raised her since she was just a cub—”
“So I was ambitious? So what? It beats crawling in the gutter, drinking yourself to death—”
Gunnar grabs her by her collar, swinging her around, pinning her backward onto the mattress. “You don’t know anything about me!”
“Let … go-”
“Want to know why I drank? I drank to stop the pain … to keep the anger locked inside. You don’t know dick about who I am or what I am. I’m the human version of
Goliath
—an American-made killing machine, trained with your tax dollars. I kill people, Rocky, that’s what I was programmed to do!”
He climbs off her. Turns away.
She sits up, panting, looking at him as if for the first time. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Leave me alone.”
“No. Not until you talk to me.”
He slumps to the floor, his back against the wall. “I can’t.”
“Why not? We’ll probably die soon anyway.”
“Probably.” He looks up at her. “It happened in Africa, about a year before we met. I was in Uganda on a peacekeeping mission. We were escorting a group of ICRC members to a village when rebels ambushed us. Two of our Red Cross team were killed by snipers. I managed to take out four rebels, the rest scattered.”
Gunnar’s gray eyes go vacant. “They were kids, Rocky, little kids. Two of the boys I shot were under ten. One boy was still alive … I picked him up … held him in my arms. A translator told me the boy had been captured by the Renamo, the Mozambique National Resistence. Rebels had caught him, his mother, and younger sister on a road just outside their village a month earlier. They forced the kids to watch while they hacked their mother to death with
pangis
, large knives. They brought the boy and his sister back to their rebel base. The leaders force the boys to fight each other for their amusement, the girls they make concubines. His younger sister was assigned to a soldier, who raped her twice a day. The boy was trained and indoctrinated into their army … given an M-16 and taught how to shoot. It’s fight or die. Since the children are more expendable than adults, they get all the nasty jobs, like checking minefields, or ambushing Red Cross teams like ours.” Gunnar
pinches away tears. “Kid held onto my neck and died in my arms. I guess the soldier in me died with him.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, it was. It’s like Covah said, I was trained to believe I was the cure, when in fact, I was just part of the disease. Children all over the world are being conditioned for violence … just like me. That little boy had no choice … but I did. I still do.”
“So you returned home, burned out, and joined the Warfare Center? That makes no sense.”
“You’re right. I should have just quit, but your father’s very persuasive, and I was swept up by the patriotism that followed the Trade Center attacks. Then I sort of fell in love with the director.”
She ignores the reference. “So, by destroying the GOLIATH Project, you hoped to gain what? Exoneration from God? A clear conscience?”
“I don’t know … maybe both. All I knew was that I had to do something. I was falling apart mentally … started getting these bad nightmares, right about the time I came back from the Pentagon.”
“I remember. Why didn’t you tell me all this then?”
“I don’t know. Guess I was ashamed.”
“But you talked to Covah about it?”
Gunnar nods. “After what happened to his daughters … I needed to, I don’t know—”

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