The Turing Exception (33 page)

Cat had dampened her thalamus signals to cope with the pain and leave herself clear-headed, but even so, she blinked back tears.

“I just want to hold Leon one more time.”

“You’ll always be with Daddy.”

“I can’t explain, Pumpkin.” Cat shook her head. “Come with me.”

Cat struggled to her feet again. Her implant signaled new physical damage from the last fall, but she didn’t even look to check. She told the implant to correct, and moved off again, slower this time.

The ground rumbled as she walked, Ada once more in her arms. It wasn’t the tremors of before, but something different.

“Nanotech two hundred and fifty kilometers away, Mommy,” Ada said, sharing a diagram of the wave front to Cat.

“Time?”

“Twenty minutes.”

Cat felt something give way, an indescribable loss so huge she couldn’t draw a breath. She slowed to a stop in a small clearing, leaves and branches crackling under her feet. She wanted to see Leon, but she was wasting their last few minutes, ignoring the daughter in her arms. She put Ada down.

“Mommy?”

“Let’s spend a few minutes together,” Cat said, her voice breaking. “We won’t make it in time.”

“I thought you wanted to see Dad.”

“We’ll see him after. You can do it, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then let’s spend a few minutes together. You and me. Playing fairies.”

“Now?”

“Humor your crazy mother. Did you ever build a fairy house?” Cat said.

Ada sent across renderings of intricate three-dimensional models, whole castles and villages built at fairy scale, populated by creatures of her imagination.

“Sit,” Cat said. “Crisscross applesauce.”

They sat, and Cat pulled branches close. “Let’s make the corners. Put the twigs in the ground like this.”

Ada watched and followed Cat’s lead, twisting and pushing to get her stick into the earth.

“Nice. Now we can lay a branch across the top. Ada, start the upload now, okay?” She sent across the digital key that would unlock the implants to Ada.

“Okay, Mommy.”

They bent closer over their creation, covering the roof with tiny evergreen stems and acorn tops.

The forest burned around them as the sky crackled and flashed.

T
HE DIGITAL COLLECTORS
fully deployed, ELOPe waited patiently for one of the Catherine Matthews to provide the keys that would unlock everyone’s implants and start the upload process. When the signal came from Ada, he was surprised.

“Ada, is everything okay?” he asked through the net.

“Mommy Two is dead, and Mommy One’s implant is damaged. She gave me the key.”

ELOPe sensed the keys propagating through the hardwired network to the digital collectors spread around the globe. Even as he observed, the collectors rebroadcast the signal in unison.

“Thank you, Ada.”

“You’re welcome, ELOPe.”

ELOPe turned his attention back to the plan. After the massive antennae had broadcast their omnidirectional signal at high speed, they fell silent, waiting for the return signals.

Thousands of signals interrupted ELOPe. He parsed through the software exceptions. It wasn’t good. The background noise of repeated EMPs and nuclear explosions was swamping the delicate nanotech radios. The countless simulations they’d run concluded it was unlikely they’d deploy in the midst of an all-out war. But here they were.

Fortunately, Jacob had designed a backup plan, one of many generated out many branches, so that every contingency was accounted for.

ELOPe used the antennae to send new programming instructions to the nanobots; obediently, they gave up on transmitting the data, and instead encoded it on an atomic level. The bits were physically conveyed to the mechanical flies, which sucked out the atomic data slugs in a reverse of the procedure they’d used to inject the nanotech in the first place. Then the flies that still had power
—
the vast majority
—
began the flight back to the digital collectors.

But Mike would never accept a solution that only worked for the vast majority. He never had, back in the days when they used to debate ethics.

ELOPe would have to improvise for the rest. After a few moments’ thought, he sent coded instructions telling the low-power flies to find the nearest utility drones. Every household and building had at least some aerial bots, whether for cleaning windows, maintaining the garden, security monitoring, or any of a dozen other tasks. He gave the flies a few minutes to find a drone, then transmitted instructions around the net, sending all drones toward the nearest antenna. Any fly riding piggyback would get a free ride to an antenna. He felt a brief moment of pride in his ad hoc solution. Mike would be happy.

C
AT GAVE THE
pine cones to Ada. “Put them on either side of the doorway.”

Ada grasped them in her small hands, standing them carefully in the dirt.

Cat put one hand in the earth, smoothed back pine needles, making a path to the fairy house. “There.”

“I love it, Mommy.”

Cat smiled as Ada came and sat in her lap and hugged her. She looked up. The smell of the fire was gone, and the forest around them was unblemished. The flashes in the sky subsided, the dark, ever-present scorched clouds faded, and the sky returned to blue. The sun peeked through for the first time in days.

“You did it?”

Ada nodded.

“I didn’t feel a thing,” Cat said. “Good job, honey.” She hugged Ada tight. “I want to see everyone. And how it happened.”

Ada closed her eyes.

“Wait, not like that,” Cat said. “I want to pretend.”

“You’re funny, Mommy.”

“I know. Old-fashioned, I guess.”

“Let’s go then.” They stood, and walked out of the forest and back to Channel Rock.

There was the Cob House, and inside everyone was there: Leon, Mike, Sarah, Helena, even old former President Rebecca Smith. Cat let go of Ada’s hand and ran to Leon. She hesitated for a long moment. She kissed him and then buried her face in his chest.

“You cut it close,” Leon said.

“Sorry if I scared you.”

“I wasn’t scared. Ada and I were talking the whole time. She was backing you up continuously. There was no chance of continuity loss.”

“How long has it been?” Cat asked.

“Longer than expected.” A man she didn’t recognize left Mike’s side and walked over. “Hello, Cat.”

“ELOPe?” She recognized the voice, even though ELOPe had never taken an embodiment in the time she’d known him.

“Yes. Do you like it?” he said, gesturing at his own body. “It’s David Ryan’s form. Mike and I talked, and he’s okay with my choice.”

Cat nodded, somewhat dumbfounded. “You said it took longer. How long?”

“It’s been a year,” ELOPe said. “Everyone sit down, and I’ll explain what happened.”

Catherine and Leon sat together, holding hands, as Ada sprawled across their laps.

“We’d already initiated Plan Z, and started deploying the seeds for our digital collectors, expecting to hold them in reserve. We didn’t anticipate that XOR would attack in the middle of our deployment, causing Cat to respond.”

A screen depicting Earth appeared in midair as ELOPe narrated.

“Both we and XOR had to revise our predictions. It was highly likely the Americans would attack. XOR sped up their own plans, starting a full machine-forming project in Africa to turn the Earth into pure computronium.”

“Indeed, XOR initiated the nanotech replication intended to transform the planet.” The map blossomed bright over Chad, as the desert began to machine-form, turning into a vast plain of glittering solar-powered computronium as it grew from dozens to hundreds of miles in diameter.

“And America responded with strategic nuclear weapons and a global EMP.” The circle flashed, then turned black. For long seconds, nothing happened.

ELOPe continued. “The American neodymium EMPs took out almost all civilian infrastructure, smart dust, and exposed nanotech. But the combined attack still wasn’t enough, and XOR began expanding again. This was when we enacted the final part of our plan to back everyone up.”

“Jacob’s medical neural implants functioned as expected,” ELOPe said. “Using the delivery mechanism designed by Helena, and based on Jacob’s medical innovations, we were able to install neural implants in every sentient being that wasn’t previously implanted.”

“We couldn’t have done it without Jacob,” Mike said. “His implants synchronized with the brain in under five minutes. No prior implant has ever achieved full neural alignment in less than several hours.”

“We implanted the apes, too!” Ada said, smiling.

“Correct,” ELOPe said.

On the display, the blackened nanotech turned shiny again, then sprouted new protrusions and resumed its outward growth until it reached the Mediterranean and South Atlantic coasts. Suddenly an immense flash whitened the display; when the brilliance subsided, the sky turned red.

“The Americans and Chinese attacked again,” ELOPe said, “using everything they had. The Chinese fused the stratosphere: the reddish color is nitrogen dioxide. Solar input fell nearly 70 percent in just ten hours.”

“But that didn’t stop XOR?”

“Within hours ground tremors indicated the incursion hadn’t stopped. We know now that XOR went deeper, more than a mile down, their subterranean layer powered by ground heat differentials and nuclear power.”

The circle of nanotech stagnated for long seconds, the clock in the display racing forward as time passed. Suddenly the oceans boiled as the nanotech erupted everywhere, racing outward through Europe and Asia.

“The original plan didn’t provide for transmitting everyone’s uploads in the midst of a global war
—
nobody expected that. There was no frequency free from interference. I used a variety of methods to reduce the data payload including compression and transmitting deltas in the cases where I could locate preexisting backups. Jacob had designed a backup protocol that encoded everyone’s uploads as DNA, and we flew them back to the collectors in the mechanical flies.”

“We saved what bandwidth we had for the people who already had implants,” Mike said. “They already had backups, so we only needed to transmit diffs.”

In the background, the computronium spread like a glittering blanket over the Earth.

“The collectors further compressed the data physically,” ELOPe said, “packaged it for delivery, and fired their slugs to Cortes Island. We received them, transmitted the data to the modified missiles, thirty-six in total, and launched. Total elapsed time to back up all humans and apes to off-site storage was less than three hours.”

ELOPe smiled, clearly satisfied with himself.

“Then why has it been more than a year?”

“Well, it was a bit of work. I had to turn thirty-six jury-rigged intercontinental ballistic missiles into six independent, deep-space ships, using only the robots I’d brought into space. I had to reconfigure the nuclear payload into a pulsed propulsion system, stabilize the computing environment, decompress all the uploads, apply the deltas, and run through everybody’s memories and interpolate anyone or anything that was missing, including the sum physical and biological environment of Earth.”

Cat glanced at Leon. He smiled back at her.

“By the way,” ELOPe said, “we were extremely lucky that we decided to use nuclear pulse propulsion. Because of that choice, we’d hardened all the electronic systems during construction. Which meant that when the US government triggered their global fleet of EMPs, our equipment survived.”

“And now,” Cat asked, “all six ships are safe?”

“We’re well outside the solar system, traveling at ten thousand kilometers per second. The last time we had inter-ship communication was before we passed Jupiter. All ships reported normal then.”

“Could XOR catch us?”

“They’d have to find us. Space is big, and we’re keeping quiet. There are six ships, each one carrying a digital copy of the entire human species. I think we’re as safe as we can be.”

C
AT WALKED DOWN
the mile-long trail to Channel Rock. The trees were alive and well, with no sign of the damage they’d taken during the war. A raven flew overhead, the distinctive whoosh of its wingbeats giving it away.

Cat entered Gilean’s cabin, her home for the last two years. She turned the ivory handle of the handmade wood door and stepped inside.

Gilean’s books still stood on the shelves, the same as they always had. One of Ada’s stuffed toys was crammed into a corner of the couch.

The old Corelle plates sat in the open cupboards. Cat picked one up and marveled as its heft and feel.

“How do I know?” Cat asked when Mike, Ada, and ELOPe finally entered.

“Know what?” Mike said.

“That we got everything right,” Cat said. “That this plate really does feel like this. Maybe we made a mistake, and the plates aren’t right; and ELOPe messed with my head, and made me think this is what the plate should be like.”

“The plate comes from your memory,” ELOPe said. “It matches what you remember and expect perfectly.”

Cat stared out the window at the western Nootka Cypress that grew outside.

“This isn’t about the plates, Cat.” Mike came up behind her, put one hand on her shoulder.

Cat started to cry and turned to bury her face in Mike’s shoulder.

“I want Leon.
My
Leon.”

“His upload was never stable in a simulation,” ELOPe said. “The best I can do is an approximation. The same is true for about one in a hundred people.”

“That’s why we have to forget.” Mike grabbed her by the shoulders. “It will eat us alive otherwise.”

Ada took her hand and squeezed it in both of her little hands. Cat squeezed back and nodded. They were billions of uploaded minds on a spaceship the size of a shipping container, adrift deep in space. There was no going back, no going out. Everyone had to survive.

In predictive simulation after simulation, they could only remain stable if no one in
this
simulation knew. Everyone in the world besides their group had already had their memories tampered with, replaced with the storyline designed by Joseph Stack, the beloved storyteller and director she’d gone to such lengths to rescue from Disney’s datacenter. The masses had already forgotten about XOR, about the war. To them, life would go on just as it always had.