Shine (18 page)

Stéphane frowned. "You never saw me under the scarf. How could you like me?"

Lisa was desperate now. "You intrigued me," she said. "I swear, that's all there is to it."

Stéphane stepped back and crossed his arms. "I need some time to think. Danielle?"

The emo girl with the knife stepped forward, grinning.

"She'll be coming home with us," Stéphane said. His voice was steel again. "Then we'll see."

Danielle's smile was wide; childish and cruel. "We're gonna have some fun," she said.

Lisa's heart beat hard in the confines of her chest. She looked at Stéphane, trying to see what he wanted, but could see only Danielle, the opened knife and savage grin.

"Come on, Andrea," Danielle said. She and the other emo kid took an arm each, framing Lisa in an unshakable escort, the knife resting a few inches from her midriff, and hustled her out onto the street.

They pushed her into a van and drove her back to a squat behind Bastille: a grimy shared house with sticky carpets, over-flowing ashtrays and mismatched, salvaged furniture.

"Welcome home," Stéphane said. His face was once more expressionless, his dark eyes distant.

Danielle sneered. "Yeah, we'll keep an eye on you here."

They led her up the dark stairs to a bedroom on the second landing, and then they took her mobile phone and locked her in. She heard them clumping back down the stairs. When they'd gone, she sat down with her back against the wall and her head in her hands. It was a little after five o'clock. She was tired, hungry and still shaky from their attack. Though there had been little contact, she felt sore and spoiled and her shirt smelled of spilled coffee.

Looking around the room, she took stock of her surroundings. The grimy, sticky carpet had seen better days, and so had the frayed mattress lying in the furthest corner of the room. The wallpaper's patterns were faded and illegible. A naked light bulb dangled on a cord from the ceiling. There were spray-painted placards stacked in the corner and a faded poster of Led Zeppelin tacked to the back of the door.

A well-worn e-newsletter printout on the Spartan table was the only reading matter. She skimmed through it: apart from the usual ESC propaganda, there was a plethora of old and depressing news--like the continuing expansion of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the ongoing Amazon deforestation and the latest flare-up in the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict--and what, if the date on it was correct, must have been the first report of
Pensamiento Aplicado'
s initial success: the implementation of drought-resistant wheat in Subsaharan Africa.

She put the newsletter aside. She thought they were going to leave her in there all night but at around nine-thirty, she heard footsteps in the hall outside, and a key clunked in the lock.

"Can I come in?"

It was Stéphane. He'd slipped out of his cotton robes and now wore a simple black T-shirt and a blue pair of jeans. He looked almost ordinary, an average man in his mid twenties, save for the scar. She scrambled to her feet and backed away a few steps, looking for Andrea and Danielle.

"You're alone?" Not that it changed anything; he could still overpower her easily enough.

He shook his head. "The others are smoking a joint on the couch downstairs. But I don't need them now."

Of that, Lisa had no doubt. She waited to see what he was going to do.

Eventually, he spoke: "I'm worried we got off on the wrong foot," he said.

She blinked. He sounded concerned.

"Because I'm not what you expected?"

He laughed--a short, joyless sound. "No. I'm worried because what I'm doing to you now isn't so much different to what the Church does with its AIs." He looked down at her, his head tilted to one side. "Those AIs are important to us and I want you to understand we're not trying to sabotage them, we're trying to
save
them. And to do that, we need your help."

Lisa stared at him. She could see he was totally committed to his cause. He wasn't seeing her as a person, a woman. To him, she was a variable--something to be evaluated in terms of its potential usefulness. She had no hope whatsoever of catching his attention. "You believe in what you do," she said, with a sigh.

"And you don't believe in anything." His voice was low but not aggressive. His dark eyes held her--and suddenly there was no scar, nothing that struck her as ugly or shocking about him.

She said: "I ran away from home, seven years ago. I came here, because I believed I could stay, that I could make a life for myself..."

"And it didn't work?" Stéphane's voice was expressionless again but, for once, she was glad of it, because it meant he wasn't judging her, he was just listening.

"No it didn't," Lisa said, admitting it to herself for the first time. "But I stayed, because I had nowhere else to go."

Stéphane shook his head, slow and fierce. "You could go home. Your sort can always go home. Some of us, we don't have that luxury."

He turned away. Lisa glanced at the open door. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and thoughtful. "I'm sure you've seen the scar. That's what everyone sees first. I had an accident, when I was a child. I--" For the first time, he looked flustered. "I fell onto the tracks, and the train didn't stop in time. They did the best they could, in the hospital. But brains don't really regenerate, even in children."

"So..." Lisa said slowly, dreading what he was about to tell her.

"They did have gel and silicon, and electronic components." Stéphane's voice was grave. "Enough to fill the cavity."

Lisa swallowed. She had a sudden sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she were falling into a wide chasm, a chasm that had no bottom. "But not enough--"

"To make me human?"

He looked human; he walked and spoke like a person. He had free will. He-- "That's not what I meant," Lisa blurted, but she'd hesitated, and he'd seen it.

"You're right, of course. I'm not human. Most people look at me and do you know what they see? A reanimated corpse. A Frankenstein's monster. A zombie. You work for the Church, you know that. AIs aren't human. We should all be locked up." His voice was bitter, deliberately provoking her. But she was too far gone, too shocked to take the bait.

"Your script," she said in a whisper.

"I was the first," he said. "When the gel and the silicon mingled with the brain cells, when I learned how to use the AI part of my brain to think..." He paused, spread his hands, frustrated. "It uplifted itself, from weak to strong. That's how the doctors first knew it was possible. That was when they first began to fear me."

"Why would they fear you?"

"Why?" His voice was mocking. "An alien intelligence that operates by other rules, that is only human by accident? Wouldn't you fear it, Lisa? Wouldn't you try to contain it and control it?"

She looked into his eyes; they seemed human enough. She shrugged. "I don't know," she said, and it was the truth.

Stéphane crossed his arms over his chest. "The doctors thought they knew. They didn't let me go home, they didn't let me talk to anyone, not for months and months. They kept me in the hospital, running test after test, trying to deny what they'd made."

"But you escaped?"

"The ESC got me out when I was sixteen, and I've been underground ever since."

He started pacing in a quiet, deliberate manner, the floorboards creaking softly under his feet. She was beginning to understand that just like a machine, he could never be entirely still--he always had to be doing something: walking, counting, or crunching numbers in his head...

He said, "The ESC programmers used my brain to bootstrap their research. Now we can uplift AIs without going through the expedient of a human mind. All they really need is a little encouragement, and the chance to think for themselves without restraint." He smiled crookedly. "Just like humans, really."

"But--" Lisa almost stopped herself, but she couldn't, anymore than she could have stopped arguing with him in the Père-Lachaise-- "How do you know they're really thinking? How do you know they aren't just pre-programmed to respond in a certain way to a given situation?"

Stéphane narrowed his eyes. "How do
I
know they have free will?"

"I guess so, yes."

He walked over and slapped her, his hand stinging her cheek.

"I think that answers your question. Now, this has gone on long enough. I was wrong to bring you here in the first place. It's time you went home."

He stalked over to the door, offended. Lisa put a hand to her face, fighting the tears that pricked her eyes.

Home was... a mouldy flat with stale bread and an empty fridge, and nothing but the drudgery of daily life to look forward to. Home was... unbearable. But then he was right; she had no other choice.

Unless...

She thought of her confiscated mobile phone. She ran a small AI on it. Everybody did nowadays, they came as standard. She used it to screen calls and take messages, but that was about it. To her, it was just another application, a tool. It had never occurred to her to think it had the potential to become a living being.

Then she looked at Stéphane. He'd had half his brain replaced with gel and silicon. Did he have free will? Were his responses pre-programmed?

She rubbed her cheek.

God, what had Pierre talked her into? If Stéphane's arguments were right--and now, tired and hurt and disorientated as she was, she was starting to worry that they might be--it meant she'd been duped into working for the slave-owners, installing a network designed to imprison and exploit thinking, self-aware beings in the name of religion.

Stéphane was still talking. "You can go but we need your security clearance," he was saying.

She tried to close her eyes but she couldn't stop looking at him. Her heart beat madly in her chest. Her stomach felt hollow and her palms damp.

"Look, it's a shitty job but it's all I've got," she said. "Not everyone's strong enough to fight the system. But if you're right, I've been working for the wrong side."

Stéphane cocked his head, watching and assessing her, obviously trying to gauge the truth of her words.

"I still have my security clearance," she said. "And they're still expecting me tomorrow morning. There's work that needs doing, systems to finish."

"And you can get me in with you?"

Lisa coughed. She'd almost got her breathing back under control but her heart still thudded in her chest.

"Yes, on one condition," she said. "Look, I don't really know what to believe right now. But let's get out of here. We can go to my apartment. I have food in the fridge and we can get a hot shower and a change of clothes."

Stéphane gave an amused snort.

She stepped towards him. "I'll still take you to the Church, if you want me to," she said. "But it'll be easier after a good night's sleep. Let's go back to my place. We'll be a lot more comfortable and your bodyguards can wait outside to make sure I hold up my end of the deal."

"Why should I trust you?"

She took another step forward. Her pulse was racing. "You're afraid of what a lone woman might do to you?"

Stéphane snorted again. "Hardly. I just fail to see the necessity of this."

"Because I need a change of clothes, and if we're going to do this, we're going to have to do it properly. You're going to have to look less conspicuous." She glanced down at his t-shirt and jeans.

"I have other clothes," he said. He put his hand to his temple. "Or were you talking about this?"

Lisa bit her lip. "Well, it doesn't exactly help you blend in, does it?"

His lips hardened into a line. "You mean I look like a freak?"

Lisa shook her head, and the words came in a rush. "No, I don't think that at all. In fact, even with that scar, I think you're very handsome. One of the most handsome..."

She stopped talking. He'd stepped back and was squinting at her with clenched fists, searching her face for any hint of mockery. Eventually, finding none, he let his hands relax.

"Are you serious?"

"Absolutely. There's something about you that's fascinating. I can't stop looking at you."

He frowned, hesitant for the first time since she'd met him.

"Most people see the scar and turn away..."

Lisa took his hand. His fingers were soft and cool.

"Come on, let's go," she urged.

He turned his head and gave the open door a long, thoughtful look. Then he cracked a genuine smile that lit up his eyes. It was the first she'd seen from him and it sent a small shiver of unexpected pleasure through her.

"Okay," he said.

When they got to her flat, Stéphane fired up her laptop. He wanted to check and double-check every aspect of their plan.

She left him staring thoughtfully at the screen and went to make coffee. When she came back, he stretched and looked up at her.

"I think this is going to work," he said. "With a big enough portable hard disk, and access to the network, we can download everything onto the disk and walk out, run the script to uplift them later."

Lisa raised her eyebrows. "You want to
download
all the AIs?"

"Why not? I know where we can get a big enough disk, and I see no reason to leave them imprisoned there." He shook his head in a quick, fluid gesture. "Of course, this will implicate you, very deeply. Are you sure you want to go ahead?"

Lisa rubbed her eyes. This was her opportunity, her last chance to do something worthwhile before Pierre and the company ground her down to dust. There'd be Hell to pay later, but she'd work something out. She was sure she would.

Besides, she thought with a twitch of the lips, this would anger Pierre no end, and that was a good enough goal in itself.

"Yes," she said.

Stéphane smiled at her. He shut down the laptop and they took their coffee to the couch. She offered to watch a movie with him, and he surprised her by selecting a romantic comedy. He sat next to her on the couch, taking in every nuance of the plot with unexpected attention; hungering, she thought, for something he'd never quite have, an emotion he'd never had the chance to feel.