The Man Who Ended the World (15 page)

•   •   •

Mom, Henry says. 

Yes? 

They're sitting on the sofa. Henry has surprised his mother by stretching out and resting his face on her knee. She is idly rubbing his shoulder and sipping coffee with her other hand. 

What was it like when Grandma and Grandpa died? 

Oh, honey, what makes you ask about that? 

He shrugs. I don't know. I never met them. You were little, right?

I was younger than you are now, she says. 

Were you upset? 

Well, yes, she says. What child wouldn't be upset to lose their parents? I was only eight years old, and there was still so much I wanted to know about life. I just didn't know I wanted to know it yet.

Did you cry?

Lots and lots, she says. 

Did you ever get over it? 

I'm not sure you ever really get over losing someone close to you, his mother says. Even now, I still think about them. I wish Mom was here to meet you and Olivia. I wish Dad could put his arm around me and tell me about his day. 

Henry starts to cry. 

•   •   •

It is the single most difficult day of his young life. 

Every moment causes him to break down. When Olivia teases him about his favorite television show, he cries. He tries to hug her awkwardly, but she calls him a gross boy and jumps away. 

When the day ends, he is emotionally drained. He has tried to remember every single moment of the day, tried to capture his family in a million mental photographs. 

Clarissa touches his foot when he comes back to his room. She is still under the bed, and has been for most of the day. 

It's going to be okay, she says to him.

It's not going to be okay, he answers. It's going to be awful forever. I would rather die. 

Me, too, she says. If you did. 

He sniffs. No, he says.

We have to go soon, she says. Don't cry any more. 

I'm such a loser, he says. I'm leaving my family.

You're trying to save the entire future of the human race, Clarissa answers. So that maybe it doesn't go away forever after all. 

I feel helpless, he says. 

Me, too, says Clarissa. 

Do you think it's really going to happen? 

I don't know. 

What if it doesn't? 

Then you can come home, I guess.

I wish we could stop it.

Clarissa thinks this over. Maybe we could, she says.

Henry cries again, and this time she climbs from beneath the bed to hold him. 

The Architect

Steven is confused. Down here his sense of day and night has quickly deserted him. He's dressed quite nicely, and his mouth has that after-whiskey taste to it, so it feels like evening time. But something tells him that isn't right at all, that it's morning. He can't be sure. 

He turns over on the bed. 

Stacy, he grunts. 

Her avatar blooms on the wall. Good morning, she says. 

Is it actually? Morning. 

The time is 9:18, Stacy says. 

A.M.? he asks.

P.M., Stacy replies. You slept for about four hours. 

Would you do something for me? he asks.

Stacy hopes to occupy him for a moment while Charlotte returns to the couch. She's still on the stairs outside the panic room. 

Anything you request, she says. 

I think I need help maintaining a schedule, he says. I can't tell when it's morning or when it's night anymore. 

There are several options we might employ, Stacy replies. I can time the light walls to natural time patterns to simulate days and nights more accurately. 

I thought you were already doing that, he says.

That requires a scheduled program, she says. A recurring one. There was a one-week program in place, but it expired after that period. 

Alright, set that up, he says.

He starts to get up.

However, she says, there is an alternate option.

Why do I need an alternate option? he mutters.

Well, Stacy begins. Below the Earth there is less of a need to follow traditional time sequences. As a resident of what is essentially a very nice cave, you are not obligated to rise with the sun and rest when it sets. You could establish your own patterns -- sleep when you require rest, enjoy activity when you do not. 

Huh, he says. That's a very simple solution I hadn't considered.

Outside, Charlotte presses the secret panel back into place and walks very quickly across the room.

Stacy says, Thank you.

Steven says, I think I need coffee. My head hurts. I shouldn't drink so much. At least not whiskey. 

He slides off of the bed and to his feet. 

Stacy says, I can prepare a coffee for you. 

Charlotte walks as fast as she can.

That would be nice, Steven says.

He stands up and walks towards the door to the main living space.

Stacy says, I have six blends. Which would you prefer?

Charlotte approaches the living space.

I don't care, Steven says, pressing the door panel.

It slides open.

What the -- 

Charlotte is standing beside the couch, nude.

Charlotte? he asks.

I was waiting for you to wake up, she says. She crosses the room to where he stands. She takes his face in her hands and kisses his forehead, then each of his eyes, then his nose, and finally his lips. 

Where's your shir--

She lifts his hands to her breasts. I thought you liked aggressive women, she says. Now go inside. I want to please you.

His expression is one of surprised obedience. He turns and walks back into the room, and Charlotte closes the door behind them. 

Stacy prepares his coffee.

•   •   •

Stacy opens the trunk for the children as soon as they arrive in the junkyard. 

Hurry, she says. Quickly, quickly.

The children scurry inside and down the ladder. 

The service elevator, Stacy says. 

Inside, Clarissa says, Why the rush? Did something happen?

Henry just stands there, red-eyed and silent.

Stacy says, I have a bad feeling about today.

Clarissa looks pained. That fast? It's happening already?

Stacy tells the children only the basic news: that she has now decrypted eleven separate messages that Mr. Glass has delivered to militant groups and enemy governments. Each message has escalated, and now she has confirmed the worst. Significant amounts of money have disappeared from Mr. Glass's accounts.

News reports are already beginning to look dire. She's picked up reports of troop movements, scrambled fighters, FBI alerts. None of the reports are specifically related to Mr. Glass, but Stacy extrapolates their meaning from the timing and urgency of the stories.

I'm afraid there won't be much time for play, Stacy says.

We didn't come here to play, Clarissa says, speaking for both of them. 

Also, I need one of you to help me with a little problem, Stacy says. I dropped something in the panic room. If Mr. Glass finds it before we can pick it up, then I'm afraid I'll have violated the prime directive myself. 

What did you do? Clarissa asks.

It's complicated, Stacy says. I would rather not say.

Henry hasn't moved.

•   •   •

While Charlotte occupies Steven in his quarters, Stacy leads the children through the hidden passage in the storage level to the panic room. 

There, she says, illuminating the room.

Clarissa runs forward to inspect the object, then picks it up. It’s just a shirt, she says. I don’t get it. 

Henry plods along behind her. 

Stacy says, Mr. Glass doesn’t know it was left here. If he discovered it, he would quickly determine that it was placed here by someone other than himself. He’s not prone to self-delusion. 

Yeah, Clarissa says. But what someone? You’re not real, and we didn’t put the shirt here. 

She looks around the large open space of the panic room. You didn’t sneak other people in here without telling us, did you? Because if Henry actually could have brought his fam—

I assure you, you and Henry are the station’s only guests, Stacy says.

Secret stowaway guests, Clarissa corrects. 

Answer her question, Henry says, surprising Clarissa. 

Stacy says, I prefer not to answer that question. 

I knew there was someone else here, Clarissa says. Henry, if she can lie to us about this —

Stacy interrupts. The only life-forms in this station are Mr. Glass, yourselves, and the birds on level two. There are no other secret stowaway guests, as you put it, Clarissa. 

Then how did this shirt get here? If you don’t answer, I’ll violate the prime directive, Henry says. 

If you do, Stacy says, then I must warn you, it is likely that Mr. Glass will take steps not preferable to our goals. 

Steps not preferable? Clarissa says, at the same time Henry says, Our goals? What goals? 

Children, Stacy says. I’ll simplify the scenario for you, but first, please, have a seat, pour yourself some water, get comfortable. I’m afraid that your first night in the space station may be a very long one.

•   •   •

When the children are settled on a sofa, Henry says, It was that woman, wasn’t it. 

Clarissa shoots him a look, then glares at the nebulous ball of light glowing on the wall beside them. The robot woman, she says. I can’t believe I forgot. 

Stacy’s avatar pulses. The simple answer to your question is yes, she says. The shirt was left in this room by the artificial woman. Her name, for the purpose of our conversation, is Charlotte.

You named her? Henry says. 

Why Charlotte? Clarissa asks. 

Mr. Glass prefers the name Charlotte, Stacy says. We’ll leave the details at that. 

And the shirt belongs to Mr. Glass, Clarissa says.

That’s true, Stacy says. 

And Charlotte the fake robot woman had it, Clarissa says.

Yes, Stacy says.

Why? Henry asks. 

Clarissa shakes her head. You’re gross, she says to Stacy. I thought boys were supposed to be the ones who always thought with their dicks, but you’re just as bad. 

Henry looks at Clarissa, shocked, then at Stacy. I don’t get it, he says. 

That’s because you’re a nice boy, Clarissa says, patting his knee as if she’s in her twenties and not just eleven years old. 

I do not have male reproductive organs, Stacy says to Clarissa. There is a very good reason for Charlotte's presence, and for her responsibilities. It has become clear to me that Mr. Glass has constructed limitations for me. There appear to be areas of this complex that I do not have access to. Because Henry helped me insert my consciousness into Charlotte's fake robot woman brain --

You don't have to keep calling it that, Clarissa says.

-- I am able to physically explore the facility. I would like to understand the boundaries that Mr. Glass has created for me, and discover what exists on the other side of certain walls. 

But you're a robot, too, Henry says. 

Yes, Stacy says.

So why do you care? 

Let's say I love a good mystery, Stacy says. 

•   •   •

Steven can't quite come up with a label for what he's just done with Charlotte. It's not lovemaking, at least not yet. He hasn't shaken his awareness of her inhuman attributes. He knows, somewhere in his brain, that her actions are informed by research and cultural studies, not affection or warmth. 

He read a story once about a man who lived on Mars and fashioned an android family for himself after his real family had died. He recreated his wife and children, and lived happily in his fantasy world until he died, leaving the androids to exist, perhaps forever, without him. 

Whether the man sought to fool himself, or simply didn't care that his family was not genuine, he found happiness.

Steven wonders if he will, over the next few decades, eventually forget or cease to care that Charlotte, and the Stacy-brain inside of her, are not human. Part of him, he knows, craves this. Why else would he have fashioned an artificial intelligence as a woman, and named her for his first love, innocent as it may have been? 

Charlotte is simulating sleep at his side, eyelids shut, mouth slightly open. Inside her chest, silent hydraulic motors push and pull, creating the illusion of breath. He gently scoops up one of her breasts, then pulls his hand away. Her breast lolls back into place, the physics as believable as her hair, which is also real. Thin wisps of air emerge from her nose and mouth and warm his skin. 

Perhaps one day it will not be so hard to forget that she is not real. Perhaps he will forget that she attends to him because she is programmed to, and not because she desires him. 

He pushes up from the bed. 

Sleep, he whispers to the robot. He pulls a sheet over her, strokes her hair. Standing beside the bed he pulls on his clothes, and slips out of his quarters. Stacy's avatar has not appeared anywhere, and he does not wish to summon her. 

Steven pads across the large room to his data library, and makes his way to the desk at the center of the room. 

Stacy silently observes. 

He performs a gesture on the surface of the desk, and Stacy's attentions are diverted to resource calibration and inventory verification.

A door in the west wall slides open. 

Steven enters, and it slides shut.

The Secret

What happened? Henry asks.

Stacy does not respond. 

Stacy, Clarissa says. Stacy? 

Her avatar is still on the wall beside them, but it is rapidly dimming. Before long, it has vanished altogether. 

I don't understand, Henry says. Stacy! 

Something's wrong, Clarissa says. My stomach hurts. 

So what do we do? Should we wait for her? 

I'm kind of scared, Clarissa says. What did she mean about goals? I feel like she has some sort of creepy plan she's not telling us about.

I trust her, Henry says. He shakes his glass, swirling the last bit of juice around. I'm still thirsty, though. I'm going to get more.