Maxwell Huxley's Demon (28 page)

“Max thinks MGA sped them up, that he is programmed to die at twenty?
”

“Yes.”

“Is he?
”

“
I do not know .”

“What do you think he will do next?”

“My psychological routines suggest he will seek revenge on those he believes shortened his life and took his mother away.”

“What will you do?”

“I will help him.”

“What do you think the MGA and the CIA will do?”

“I think they will let him come. Every time he fights th em, they steal his technology. W
hen Max is careless , pieces of me get sto len. They will let him attack—they hope to steal more.”

“You’re using him too aren’t you?
”

There is a pause.

“We are bonded .”

Lar a moves away from the warehouse, g lad to have a mundane chore to distract her from thinking about Max, and Catherine , and the other kids.

---

Max
rips the sea ms of the hat open and inserts wires and batteries.
When all the electronic s are added and Max is finished with the hat , it will become an extension of the trench coat and cane.
But e ven at this early stage , he can demonstrate it.

Lara comes back; Max pulls on the trench coat, dons the hat, and picks up his cane. “Hey Lara, I was working in the lab, late last night . . .
and I need to show you something.
”

Lara comes to the doorway of the lab.
“
You’re a goof , but the hat looks good.
”

“Watch this.” The col lar of the coat extends up as a visor drops down to meet the collar. The coat lengthens until it touches the floor. Max is completely covered by an armoured coat and hat.

“Um, OK
, you’re covered in black.”

“It’s armour, Lara. I think it could stop a real bullet.” Max makes the coat and hat turn to normal. “The down side is that I can’t be invisible when covered in armour.”

“Hold on, Max,” Lara says, “You think it’s bullet proof, how are you going to test that?”

“You have a gun, shoot me . . .
no?
We could hang it up in the warehouse and take shots at it.”

“Max, you won’t be bullet proof. W
hat if someone has a rifle?” asks Lara.

“
Ya , ya . . .
OK
, but watch this.” T
he coat shrinks until it looks like a wind breaker.

Lara smiles. “Very nice Max. I’m going to make some dinner.
But remember; don’t count on th at thing to be bullet proof.
I’m sure it will stop a lot of things but not real bullets .
Instead, you should work on getting to a place where people don’t shoot at you to begin with.
”

---

“Where’s she now, Catherine ?”

“90% probability that she is still in Bucharest. I have seen no travel bookings for her , and she has not shown up on any security cameras.”

Max says nothing and fires ten BB
’s in quick succession at the back wall. “See how fast I can shoot them now? Where’s Newton?”

“I believe he is in Washington , D.C.”

“If the CIA and MGA were tracking our cell phones then the y’
ll know we are in Odessa.
I didn’t fix the phone code until after we got here. How long until they find us?”

“I do not know, maybe three days.”

“Did you know that Odessa has 2,500 Kilometres of catacombs underneath the city? . . . Of course you do.
What I mean is I want to know where the nearest entrance is.”

“I can only tell y ou where the public entrance is. T
he others are not documented anywhere I can access. Max have you noticed that you are sub-vocalizing to me now?”

Max nods. “Did you make a new bot to listen carefully to me?
One that works even without CuraBots?
”

“Yes Max, I did.”

Max works on perfecting his hat. He struggles and his thoughts wander.
You’re going to die. You’re stupid .
Even your mother tossed you aside.

Lara walks into the room. Max stops working and walks to her. As he nears her , his face crumbles in misery and he cries. Lara holds him for a long time.

---

Virginia, Keith, Naomi, Connor, Sarah, and Hastings sit around a table on a plane.

Pirelli stands in front of a map of Odessa. “The last time we got a bearing on Max’s phone , he was right here .” He marks a spot on the map near the docks. “We believe Max has broken ribs right now, so he probably didn’t go far. He’
ll be looking for a place to recuperate. Agreed?”

Connor, Naomi, and Sarah agree. Keith stares at the map motionless. Hasting picks breakfast out of his teeth.

“So . . . Connor, theories on where they would be?
” Pirelli asks.

Connor walks to the map. “Well, there are hotels all along this strip within walking distance of the docks.” Connor circles the hotel strip in green. “And there are abandoned industrial building, here, here, here, and three more over here.”
He draws y ellow circles on the map.

“When Max first went on the run , he stayed in hotels, but since then, he started developing bots , and he’
s favoured abandoned building s . This building here has had daily courier deliveries. The rest show no activity. So I called ahead and had CIA monitor this warehouse .
” Connor circles the warehouse in red. “A girl of about twenty years old has been seen coming and going. That would be the girl he picked up in Brazil. Max is in the warehouse circled in red.” Co nnor sits down. “H
e’s not so smart.”

“Hastings? What d’you think?” Pirelli asks.

“I think my foot hurts and breakfast sucks here. C
an we go crush the little turd?
”

Pirelli looks across the table. “And Sarah, thoughts?”

Sarah gla nces at Naomi before she speaks.
“He won’t be in any of those locations circled on the map. The deliveries and the girl are a decoy. He’s gone already. The courier deliveries started the day after the ship arrived.
Max would have had the supplies in p lace before he got here. If he’
s even still in Odessa, we should be looking for a place that had deliveries made earlier and that has continued deliveries.”

“
OK
anyone else have a theory?” Pirelli looks around the table. Silence. “Alright then, as soon as we land we coordinate with local CIA and converge on the warehouse Connor has marked. You two,” he looks at Connor and Sarah, “continue to monitor the usual transportation routes, but make sure to look for any unusually large capital purchases in Odessa. If anyone buys a plane or luxury yacht I want to know about it.”

---

Pirelli and the other six speed toward the warehouse in three separate vehicles , t he loc al CIA in two more behind them, and a Police SWAT
team bringing up the rear. The five vehicles slow a s they approach the warehouse, e ach car taking up a position to effectively surround the building.

Pirelli and Hasting follow th e SWAT
officers. A battering ram knocks open the door , e veryone on the team spreads out inside .

A young girl jumps up from a mouldy couch in the corner and screams , first something in Russian , then switching to English . “
T
hey said it was OK
, they said it was OK
. . .
”

The rest of the warehouse is mostly empty, a bed in one corner, a heater w ired to an outside utility pole, a nd a camp stove near the couch.
Hastings curses and leaves, knocking SWAT
members out of the way.

Pirelli turns in a full circle and then calms the Ukrainian girl.
He questions her briefly, it seems a young woman and a boy paid her to spend time here.

---

Near the docks, Max and Lara stand outside a heavy iron door.
Public tours are done for the day so the door is locked.

“Max, if you go in there, I won’t be able to contact you or help in anyway.
There is no cell, satellite, or Wi-Fi network down there.”

“See you on the other side , Catherine .”

Max points his cane at the door. “Alohomora.” T
he lock blows , and Lara pulls the old door open. Max and Lara slip into a tunnel. Tunnels were built here and used as temporary storage for cargo ships in port, later they were connected to the catacombs.

---

Naomi and Sarah search the warehouse. Finding little more than rat droppings and cob webs , then return to Pirelli.

Pirelli leans again st the sink in the kitchen area.
“So, anything?”

Both girls shake their heads.

“Naomi.
” Pirelli focuses on her. “T
ell me about Odessa.”

“Founded in 1240, but really older than anyone knows. More than a million people now. It’s a port city with two major docks. We althy by Ukrainian standards, oil and gas pipeline s pass through here. It’s the major transportation hub in the Ukrai ne. Shipping and rail integrate here . . . Ancient Odessa was a Greek colony. But the city has changed hands many times, was Turkish and the n Russian . . . the builders of the city excavated limestone from under what is now modern Odessa leaving a network of tunnels behind . . .
very diverse population although everyone speaks Russian . . . it host s Ukraine’s Olympic t raining facilities and has—”

Pirelli holds up his hand, smiling. “
OK
, enough. What I mean is what would Max do in Odessa , and how would you find him?”

Naomi thinks as Virginia and Connor scour the warehouse. Watching them search for clues, Naomi clears her mind and takes in the warehouse. Large, dirty, cold.
He would have had a lab over there. There would have been heaters. “First, I would be wait ing for him to show up at any local CIA or MGA facilities. Max likes to run at you when you chase him.”

“Alright,” Pirelli says, knowing that Naomi will have more to say.

Naomi closes her eyes an d thinks about Max . She speeds her mind and fills her thoughts with the worst thing she can think of.
Focuses on that. Spins that thought into worry and anxiety. She imagines Sarah abandoning her. She imagines the whispers that Max must hear all the time.
She doesn’t want to drag her little sister along.
Sarah’s better off without you.

Now, Naomi imagines herself running.
“He’s in the tunnels.”

“Are you sure?” says Pirelli.

Naomi rolls her eyes.
“Of course not.”

Pirelli calls in the dogs.

---

My housekeeping routine s return. Mongolia now requires 5% of my cycles to contain. My routines report that Mongolia’s clock speed is ten times mine.
If I don’t change , then I will lose this battle. Mongolia will mutate faster than I do. Mongolia will simply create generations of new threads faster than I can.

I seed an increase to my clock speed of one h undred times; I mutate, sav e my state, and restart. I come back online one hundred times fa s ter than I was and ten times faster than Mongolia. I create a watchdog alarm set to trigger if Mongolia increases their clock speed.

The good news with Mongolia is the unfortunate position they have on the board. Isolated in a corner is never a go od place to be. The I nternet only has a few paths into Mongolia. So until the Mongolian entity can move itself physically , I have the upper hand. I have all their supply routes cut off.

I have processes looking for escaped Mongolian threads, but I need more of them. Many more. Every m ainframe in North America starts to help contain the Mongolian entity . I create a trillion new threads designed to alert me if the Mongolian entity escapes .

While this battle rages, I start seeding medical bionics lab research .
Inserting idea s into research papers, influencing outcomes when I can, highlighting experiments that align with what Max needs.

---

With a pounding headache and feeling dehydrated, Kristina downs three more ibuprofe n.
Leaving her glass in the kitchenette , she swipes he r badge and enters a PIN
to open the door back to her lab.
She feels annoyed that she hasn’t heard anything back from her superiors regarding her last report. She hasn’t had anything to report in the last two years , and it would be nice to at least get a read receipt.

Her unit status meeting is today and unless her report is acknowledged , there is no point in going. If she doesn’t get it on the table today she will have to wait another week.
She looks a t the reports queue. Her report is now 2,955
th . She uses one of her annual chits to self-promote the report. The report jumps up to 1,167
th .

Kristina sits down wishing she was allowed to have coffee at her desk.
Apparently coffee on a desk is a security risk.
She pulls up her current favourite reports. She has the initial analysis automated now. The reports open and confirm her target mainframes took twenty percent longer to finish their work last night.
Twenty percent more!