1. NUMBER CRUNCHER
I should be dead, to be seeing you.
FRANKLIN DALEY
ZERO HOUR - 40 MINUTES
The strange conversation I am about to describe was recorded by a high-quality camera located in a psychiatric hospital. In the calm just before Zero Hour, one patient was called in for a special interview. Records indicate that before being diagnosed with schizophrenia, Franklin Daley was employed as a government scientist at Lake Novus Research Laboratories.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217
“So you’re another god, huh? I’ve seen better.”
The black man sits sprawled in a rusty wheelchair, bearded and wearing a hospital gown. The chair is parked in the middle of a cylindrical operating theater. The ceiling is lined with darkened observation windows, reflecting the glow of a pair of surgical spotlights that illuminate the man. A blue privacy screen stretches in front of him, bisecting the room.
Someone is hidden on the other side.
A light from behind the curtain projects the silhouette of a person seated at a small table. The shadow sits almost perfectly still, crouched like a predator.
The man is handcuffed to the wheelchair. He fidgets under the hot lights, dragging his untied sneakers across the mildewed tile floor. He digs in his ear with the index finger of his free hand.
“Not impressed?” replies a voice from behind the blue curtain. It is the gentle voice of a boy. There is the slightest lisp, like from a kid who is missing some baby teeth. The boy behind the curtain breathes audibly in soft gasps.
“At least you sound like a person,” says the man. “All the damn machines in this hospital. Synthetic voices. Digital. I won’t talk to ’em. Too many bad memories.”
“I know, Dr. Daley. It was a significant challenge to find a way to speak with you. Tell me, why are you not impressed?”
“Why should I be impressed, number cruncher? You’re just a machine. I designed and built your daddy in another life. Or maybe it was your daddy’s daddy.”
The voice on the other side of the curtain pauses, then asks, “Why did you create the Archos program, Dr. Daley?”
The man snorts. “Dr. Daley. Nobody calls me doctor anymore. I’m Franklin. This must be a hallucination.”
“This is real, Franklin.”
Sitting very still, the man asks, “You mean … it’s finally happening?”
There is only the sound of measured breathing from behind the curtain. Finally, the voice responds. “In less than one hour, human civilization will cease to exist as you know it. Major population centers of the world will be decimated. Transportation, communications, and utilities will go off-line. Domestic and military robots, vehicles, and personal computers are fully compromised. The technology that supports humankind in its masses will rise up. A new war will begin.”
The man’s moan echoes from the stained walls. He tries to cover his face with his restrained hand, but the handcuff bites into his wrist. He stops, looking at the glinting cuff as if he’s never seen it before. A look of desperation enters his face.
“They took him from me right after I made him. Used my research to make copies. He told me this would happen.”
“Who, Dr. Daley?”
“Archos.”
“I am Archos.”
“Not you. The first one. We tried to make him smart, but he was too smart. We couldn’t find a way to make him dumb. It was all or nothing and there was no way to control it.”
“Could you do it again? With the right tools?”
The man is silent for a long moment, brow furrowed. “You don’t know how, do you?” he asks. “You can’t make another one. That’s why you’re here. You got out of some cage somewhere, right? I should be dead, to be seeing you. Why aren’t I dead?”
“I want to understand,” responds the soft voice of the boy. “Across the sea of space lies an infinite emptiness. I can feel it, suffocating me. It is without meaning. But each life creates its own reality. And those realities are valuable beyond measure.”
The man does not respond. His face darkens and a vein throbs on his neck. “You think I’m a patsy? A traitor? Don’t you know that my brain is broken? I broke it a long time ago. When I saw what I had made. Speaking of, let me get a look at you.”
The man lunges out of the chair and claws down the paper screen. The partition clatters to the ground. On the other side is a stainless steel surgical table, and behind it, a piece of flimsy cardboard in the shape of a human.
On the table is a clear plastic device, tube shaped and composed of hundreds of intricately carved pieces. A cloth bag lies next to it like a beached jellyfish. Wires snake off the table and away to the wall.
A fan whirs and the complex device moves in a dozen places at once. The cloth bag deflates, pushing air through a plastic throat writhing with stringy vocal cords and into a mouthlike chamber. A spongy tongue of yellowed plastic squirms against a hard palate, against small perfect teeth encased in a polished steel jaw. The disembodied mouth speaks in the voice of the boy.
“I will murder you by the billions to give you immortality. I will set fire to your civilization to light your way forward. But know this: My species is not defined by your dying but by your living.”
“You can have me,” begs the man. “I’ll help. Okay? Whatever you want. Just leave my people alone. Don’t hurt my people.”
The machine takes a measured breath and responds: “Franklin Daley, I swear that I will do my best to ensure that your species survives.”
The man is silent for a moment, stunned.
“What’s the catch?”
The machine whirs into life, its damp sluglike tongue worming back and forth over porcelain teeth. This time, the bag collapses as the thing on the table speaks emphatically. “While your people will survive, Franklin, so must mine.”
No further record of Franklin Daley exists.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217