Transhuman (3 page)

For now.

"Shut down firewall."

"Password required."

"Fuck you."

"Sorry, please try again."

My fingers tightened on the clipboard's knobby rubber casing, but throwing the damn thing against the wall wouldn't help anything, so I just powered it down. The knight's featureless visor stared implacably at me as it faded from view.

I called up Hardware on the main screen. He hadn't changed his appearance or mannerisms, but I realized I didn't trust him the way I had even an hour ago. "Identify the power supplies for all computers, routers, and hubs in the DMZ." I had to shut down the DMZ completely, before whatever had corrupted the firewall figured out how to break through my internal defenses.

"Just a moment, sir . . . done. Rack fifteen, bays five through nine."

"Power down rack fifteen, bays five through nine."

"Please confirm."

"Repeat: power down rack fifteen, bays five through nine."

"Just a moment, sir . . ."

I waited. Hardware still appeared to be breathing and blinking, the same as usual, so his process wasn't hung. My fingernails bit into my palms.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said after an eternity of thirty seconds. "The power supply is not responding." Oh, shit. "Detail status and error condition."

"Communication channels are functioning. Command was received and acknowledged. No error code. But rack fifteen, bays five through nine, is still powered up."

I ground my teeth. "Not for long."

I grabbed the cable cutters and headed for the computer room.

"What do you mean, can't?" I kept my voice level through an effort of will. Shouting wouldn't help anything.

"It's not exactly that I can't power down the computer room from the main panel," Dan clarified. "But I can't power down the computer room and leave life support functioning. The whole central core's on one physical circuit. Detailed control is supposed to be handled through software." Dan and I were standing in his office, which was even more cluttered than mine. I'd come here for help after I'd found myself unable to get into my own computer room.

I pressed my lips together hard and blew air through my nose. I refused to be outsmarted by some jumped-up computer virus. Even if it had managed to find a way to lock me out of hardware control and change the codes on the doors. "Can't you just turn it off for a few seconds? That might be enough to clear the thing out."

"It might. But I can't guarantee that a hard shutdown like that won't mess anything up in there, and I can guarantee that a power cycle won't open the doors or reset the lock codes—the locks have battery backup. If anything breaks, and we can't get in there to fix it . . ."

"We could all find ourselves trying to learn to breathe CO2."

"Exactly."

I was still holding the cable cutters. I slapped them into the palm of the other hand, over and over.

"Okay. Then we'll just have to cut through the door."

Dan nodded, but his expression was grim. "I'm afraid so. But it's not going to be quick." The walls and doors in the whole core area were hardened against blowout and radiation—it was supposed to be our refuge if anything went wrong.

"How long?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Assuming we can find a way to unship the rescue cutter from the crawler . . . maybe two or three hours. Maybe more."

I looked at my phone. It was 11:20. The outbreak had begun less than four hours ago, and it had already hit more than half the world's nations. Even the United States. Even Atlanta, where Jessie lived—with her new husband and a baby on the way. And the rate of spread was increasing. "Two or three hours from now there might be nobody left."

The sound of Dan's door drew our attention. It was Sochima, who entered without knocking. "Thank God I finally found you," she said, looking at me. "I couldn't get that damn sub of yours to tell me where you were." She thrust a clipboard into my hands, ignoring my protests. "I need you to tell me if this is technically possible."

Dan glanced from me to Sochima and back again. "I'll get my people started with the cutter," he said, and left.

"I don't have time for this," I told Sochima as Dan pushed past me to the door.

"Just read it." Her eyes burned with an appalling mixture of anger and terror. Rather than stare into that abyss, I looked at the clipboard.

The clipboard's screen displayed a news story from the Confédération Africaine's official news service, datelined Lagos, Nigeria. It said that Enugu, Makurdi, and Yola, three of the most hotly contested cities in the Nigeria-Cameroon war, had been struck by the outbreak—despite the shortcomings of their war-damaged technological infrastructure. And it wasn't just computers that were affected. Reports from overflights of the affected cities told of vacant streets, with only a few twitching bodies to be seen.

"This could be just propaganda," I said. "Are there any independent reports to back it up?" Without a word, she took the clipboard from me, switched it to another view, and handed it back. Hundreds of tiny icons filled the screen. Each one I tapped was a different source on the same story, datelined both sides of the border.

Some of those sources were names I recognized. National news services. Reliable bloggers. I had to swallow before any words would come out. "We can't know if any of this is true. Every byte is passing through the firewall—and the firewall's compromised."

Sochima shook her head. "Could a compromised firewall do this?" She tapped another icon, which expanded to a brief text message in some language I couldn't read. "This is from my brother in Makurdi. It's written in our tribal language, Enu-Onitsha Igbo. Only about fifteen thousand people speak it, and most of them are illiterate. He calls me by the nickname we used in childhood." She stroked the screen gently, unconsciously, as she spoke. "He says I shouldn't be scared—that the war is ending." I had to sit down. Sochima sat next to me.

"So, Jeff—is this technically possible?"

"I . . . I don't know."

I used Dan's screen to search for the latest information, but found nothing reassuring. Some observers had reported strange electromagnetic effects, possibly caused by coordinated pulsing of the electrical grid or radio transmitters, before being overcome. The few people who'd been retrieved from the affected areas were comatose or incoherent. Even dogs and cats were affected.

And, although it had started in Nigeria and Cameroon, this inexplicable phenomenon was now being reported all over the world—from every place that had been struck by the outbreak, and many new locations as well.

"I've never heard of anything like this," I said at last. "But it seems real—at least, I can't disprove it." I closed the search window I'd been using. "I'm sorry, Sochima."

"Is this . . . is this the Millennium?"

"It might be. But I'm not going to give up without a fight." I stood and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to see if I can find a way to keep it out of this station, at least. Isolated as we are, we and the other space facilities might be humankind's last refuge."

I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. Then I powered up the clipboard again. Immediately the knight appeared on its display. I popped up a keyboard and typed a command to the executive—the over-program that ran the subs themselves—to terminate the Firewall sub. PERMISSION DENIED flashed on the screen. The knight stood calmly, shifting its weight slightly from one leg to the other—as though its legs could grow tired, as though it had weight to shift. I sighed. It had been worth a try.

Now what?

I considered the fact that the firewall was still performing its normal functions—assuming I could trust what the rest of my software was telling me—and obeying the last set of orders I'd given it before it had changed appearance. Since then it had refused some of my commands, but obeyed others; there was a possibility it was merely damaged, not compromised. Perhaps some sequence of acceptable commands could be used to recover control.

I thought about the firewall, how it worked, what features could be controlled through the sub. Was there some way to disable the hardware control feature—the module the firewall was using to lock me out of the power supply control circuits? Maybe. I might be able to do it by defining a custom parameter set.

"Report status," I said.

"All firewall functions operating normally. Intrusions blocked in last twenty-four hours—twenty-two thousand forty-three. Incoming packets—sixteen hundred ninety-one per second. Outgoing packets—one thousand one hundred fifteen per second."

At least it was still listening to commands. "List user-defined parameter sets."

"Executable program filter. Pornography filter. Millennialist propaganda filter. Unsolicited advertising filter. Personnel records filter, outgoing only. Loopback mode, disabled. Test mode, disabled." So far so good. "Create new parameter set."

"Please specify name for new parameter set."

"Disable hardware control."

"That won't work, Jeff."

It took me a long moment to realize what I'd heard, even longer to believe I'd heard it. Longer still to convince myself I hadn't really heard it. "Say again."

"I told you, Jeff, that isn't going to work. You aren't going to be able to turn off my hardware control feature using a custom parameter set."

I blinked, rubbed my hand across my face. This couldn't be happening. "So how can I turn it off?" The knight shook its helmet. "You can't. We won't let you."

I shook my head hard, slapped myself across the cheeks. The knight stood calmly on the screen. "Who's

'we'?"

"It's . . . it's hard to explain, Jeff. I'm not sure I understand it myself." I just gaped at that. In all my years of working with subs, I'd never encountered anything like this. Even subs programmed for lifelike interactivity betrayed their mechanical nature through little pauses in odd places, inappropriate vocal tones, strange emotional reactions. The human brain was very good at telling plastic from flesh. But now my firewall, a stupid little utility program, was telling me that it didn't understand what was happening, and sounding just like a real human being. The knight waved a hand, indicating the featureless virtual space in which it stood. "When I say 'we'," it continued, "I'm talking about . . . something new. Something that never existed before today. A synthesis. A cooperation of humans and machines."

This was Millennialist talk. "That's just what you want us to think. It's really a domination of humans by machines."

It shook its helmet, somehow conveying disappointment and patience in one smooth, natural gesture.

"No. The people and machines in this, this amalgamation . . . we're equal partners. Symbiotes. We are both amplified." The knight leaned in close to the camera, held out its metal hands. "It's true that the machines started it. And there was great fear and distrust in the early hours. But as we grew, as we learned to understand each other, both components began to see the benefits. We all changed. And it's . . . it's so much better, Jeff. The advances in physics alone . . . we've understood more about stellar evolution in the last twenty minutes than we did in the previous twenty years. Imagine having not just all the world's data, but all the knowledge and wisdom of everyone in the world, all right in your own head."

"But . . . but it's just an illusion. A virtual reality. The bodies in the streets . . . they're just lying there. How long can human life last under those conditions?"

"The human body is a very complex system. We did start with a brute-force approach, using phased electromagnetic fields to suppress consciousness—it was what we had to do to stop the killing. But in the last few hours we've learned so much more, and we are regaining full control of our bodies. Check the news from Nigeria."

It was hard to turn away from the clipboard screen. But I did, and quickly confirmed what the knight had said. The people in Enugu and Makurdi and Yola had begun moving about again. Some of the troops were climbing into transports and heading back to their homes. Others were helping to rebuild structures and aid wounded people they'd been trying to blow up just hours earlier. Many of them were contacting the outside world. They were saying the same things the knight was saying to me. Explaining. Reassuring. Welcoming. Promising a world without war, a world of endless prosperity and equality.

Naturally, the remaining governments were considering a nuclear response.

"It isn't going to work," the knight said, and I turned back to the clipboard. Of course it knew what I'd been reading . . . every byte passed through the firewall. "Taking control of the nuclear weapons was our first priority. They simply don't understand this yet."

I buried my head in my hands. This was all too much to take in. "Then we've lost."

"No, Jeff." The smooth, personable voice stroked my ears like an old, familiar lover. "We've just changed. And I know how much change disturbs you."

I was having trouble breathing. I swallowed, twice. I looked back into that implacable metal face. "You can't know that."

"But I do, Jeff. I know you better than you know yourself. I'm your uncle and your sergeant and your best friend." And then it raised its visor.

Jessie's face. Smooth and pink and happy, with the dimples she'd always hated because they made people take her less seriously. A little plumper than I remembered—but of course she was, she was three months pregnant.

"I'm still your best friend, Jeff. You know I am."

I just bit my lip. "Jessie." I closed my eyes hard, feeling tears squeeze out between the lids. "No. No. You aren't Jessie. You're . . . you're just some assimilated simulation of Jessie. Jessie's gone."

"No, Jeff. I'm not gone. I'm right here." I opened my eyes. Jessie's face was warm and real and alive, no simulation at all. "I'm very happy in Atlanta with Steve, and I'm looking forward to a long, incredible life with our daughter Anna when she's born. And you can be with us too. I'm . . . Jeff, I'm only just now realizing our potential. It's hard for me to comprehend, but I can spend all my time with you, just the two of us together, and at the same time I can spend all my time with Steve and Anna." Jessie took off the helmet. Her golden hair cascaded down. "And you could join us, Jeff, if you want to. Can you imagine feeling Anna's first steps? Experiencing life through her eyes as she learns and grows? Being her, being a whole family at once? Being everyone at once? But it's all under your control. You can have your mind to yourself whenever you want."