Horizon's End, Part Four: Etherium

“Hello, Miss.”

     Hannah gasped, but her shock quickly turned anger. “You! You dare invade my home? WHAT ARE YOU?”

     “Really? Is this your home? Is it anyone's?” He didn't laugh, even though Hannah expected him to. He actually sounded serious.

     Tab turned to Hannah. “You know Jack?”

      Hannah started to reply, but was cut off by loud crashes and a man shouting “Stop where you are! Colony Security! Hands where we we can see them!”

      Eight men had emerged seemingly from the woodwork in a half-circle, automatic rifles pointed at the cloaked man (Hannah wondered if “man” was really the right word) by the fountain, each wearing a black uniform with “U.S.C.S.” on the shoulder, matte black armor, helmets with tinted visors, and bouquet of hand grenades on their belts. She had only seen them on two occasions, both of which ended in colossal gunfights. She grabbed the kids by their collars and dove behind a pagoda. “Stay down!”

      She heard two or three muffled sentences, then a moment of silence, and then the security officers opened fire in a deafening thunderstorm, emptying their magazines into the unarmed cloaked man, who twitched as each bullet hit him, and then fell, smoking, to the decorative brick pathway. The men in armor walked carefully over to his body and kicked him. His cloak the billowed in the artificial breeze, and it sailed and spiraled for a bit, like the ocean's distant typhoons, revealing nothing underneath, not even stains from the flying blood that Hannah was sure she had seen. Tab whispered in her ear.

     “Do you know why he was here?”

       Hannah frowned, not angry but concerned, looking from children to the security men to the cloak flying about like a memo caught in a squall, or a bird in an intangible dream. She closed her eyes and thought for a bit, but Tom interrupted her, pointing at the cloak that sailed past the lights like a cloud. Hannah watched as an idea dawned on her.

     “I....think I know.”

Fugue in D Minor, part 7: Philosophy and the Pariah

Part One   
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
[Part Seven] Part Eight

"How did you program a computer to think? They only process things in ones and zeroes, like you said earlier. That doesn't leave much room for 'why am I here,' 'who am I,' or 'should I make a sandwich."

"I didn't," Ana mumbled through the cold.  "I programmed them to learn, and as Al and Genghis learned, they could program themselves.  Humans think of mental processes in ones and zeroes, so computer programs, being human-created, suffer those limitations.  When allowed to create themselves, they had none of our flaws.  They had flaws, to be sure, but not the same ones."

She took a deep breath and continued before I could get a word in edgewise.  I don't know what I would have said anyway, since this was all news to me.
"This sort of evolution has had people afraid of computers since that play about robots in the 20's.  Genghis, my first Artificial Intelligence, wasn't malicious, but he was idle.  And idle hands are the devil's workshop, so they say.  And it's true.  Just look at me."  She laughed.  "Al is benevolent, but when plugged into the facility in Lazero Cardenas, who knows?"

I cupped my hands and exhaled into them, trying in futility to warm them for more than a second.  I gave up and shoved them into my armpits, and we kept walking through the deluge.  "Why is Lazero Cardenas so important?"

Ana started talking, but a peal of thunder cut her off.  She looked up at the clouds that spat rain on us and frowned grumpily, as if the sky could see that it had annoyed her, and would promptly stop its tactless behavior.  It was a reflex, almost childlike in its frustration, not angry because of the downpour but because she had been trying to talk.  She rolled her eyes and waited fr it to pass, and then began again.
"Destroying the infrastructure of the information age wasn't just my idea.  I got in with the wrong crowd a while back.  They built the facility with drug money, following my blueprints precisely, and once I realized I was in over my head, it was too late."

      "So who was Jen?"

 "My contact in Arizona.  That's where I'm from.  Her 'airport' remark was supposed to tell me that she's ready to pick me up at the bus stop near the lab."  She stuck her thumb out as a vehicle approached.  "I never thought that the fate of the world would depend on whether I could hitch a ride with a stranger.  Never refusing a hitchhiker again."
     Ana shivered, but I couldn't tell if it was from the freezing rain or from the dark fate that might befall the civilizations of Earth.
     I sighed as yet another pair of headlights passed us by, ignoring the two waterlogged shapes with their thumbs extended.  "Yeah, well, I'm sure these drivers would be sympathetic to the cause of two known criminals if they knew that all their cat videos were at stake."  What Ana had told me about the Internet did very little to assure me of its importance.  "Maybe we should try the porn angle too."
She switched her hands like she had been for the last hour or so, keeping one in her jacket while the other froze into a thumbs-up position.  She had been alternating them about every five minutes.
     "I thought I was supposed to be the sarcastic one."
I switched my hands as another set of lights approached.  "Call me a cynic, but the cold starts to eat at my attitude right around the time it starts to freeze my ass off."
    "....No argument here."
The lights came closer, and Ana and I stretched our thumbs out farther, willing the car to stop.
     It threw on the brakes a little too late, screeching past us with a spray of  mud in its wake, but it did stop.  I looked at Ana.  She shrugged, trying to downplay the situation, the grime on her face topping off the desperation that she tried to hide but simply couldn't manage to.
     The car's passenger side window rolled down a crack, enough to talk through but not enough to let the frigid downpour snap-freeze the driver.  "You folks need a ride?  Awful wet to be hikin' right about now.  Dark, too."  We shivered in response.  "Git on in, don' worry about the seats.  Gonna get 'em cleaned soon enough anyhow."
     Our teeth chattered as we sat huddled on the damp vinyl bench seat, the radio's jaunty country tunes the punchline to an existential joke.  Ana tried to thank the man through her convulsions, which ended up sounding more like a seizure than anything else, but it got the point across. 
    "No prob'em," said the man by way of response.  "Where ya headed?"
     We looked at each other.  Ana shrugged.
     "Mexico," I said through mutinous teeth, chattering in time with the car's squeaking windshield wipers, making a symphony of hink-honk, hink-honk and muh-muh-muh-Mexico, with the occasional burst of rain adding a cymbal-like chhhhhhhhhhhh. 
     "Really?" said the man with audible surprise.  "I'm goin' down there m'self.  Whereabouts?"
I wasn't sure if this stranger was trustworthy.  Friendly, yes, but I didn't think it was wise to throw our destination at anyone with poor enough judgement to pick us up.  Ana decided that didn't matter.
   "Lazezazezazero Cahcahcardenas," struggled Ana.  "Don' think I caught that," said the driver amiably.

Horizon's End, Part Two: Rabbit Hole

     “Ma'am, are you all right?”

      Hannah looked around in panic. “I've got....find...switch! Where...is...WHERE IS THE THING?”

She rose to one knee and slowly stood, being careful not to fall, as she was very light-headed.

She looked around for a moment. “Wh...who are you?”

      The two children, a brother and sister of very similar age, explained that they were new, and just showed up a couple weeks ago, having moved in with their aunt. They also called her 'Missus' several times.

     “My name is Hannah, and I'm not married. Stop calling me 'Missus,' it makes me feel old.”

“And Ma'am too. I'm just Hannah.” She pressed the button for the pinnacle's elevator, and the door opened, just as she expected. She was really the only person who used it anyway, so it was always where she left it, except the time when the maintenance team decided to work on it while she was topside, and she was left on the surface for two days with nothing but birds and the quietly stunning view for company. She made a point to return on a regular basis, but not to sleep up there.

     The children looked very apologetic. “Sorry, Miss Hannah.” They looked so comically sorrowful that she would have struggled to keep a straight face, had she not been in a rather foul mood. “It's all right. Just try to remember that.”

     They brightened instantly. “Ok! We have something to show you!” said the girl in the tone of a child with something Important (with a capital I) to say. Hannah reluctantly followed, shaking off the vestige of her dream. Get your attention, be more receptive. She shivered again.

     They were named Tabitha and Thomas, (“But call us Tab and Tom, we like it better”) and they were twins. Hannah thought their parents must possess a pretty simple sense of humor, or perhaps they were just...simple.

      The three of them entered the colony's foyer, Tabitha playing the overenthusiastic tour guide as Thomas pointed to whatever it was that his sister was talking about. The prefabricated structure's builders did their best to mimic a peaceful environment back on Earth, which ended up making colony #4's insides look like a giant garden estate, or a country club. Shrubs, benches, and shaded pagodas dotted the landscape, with each plaza dominated by a fountain or statue of some forgotten or just irrelevant hero. Mercury lamps embedded in the cavernous mirrored ceiling gave an impression of sunlight, while periodic oscillations in their intensity allowed a resident to imagine clouds sailing high above.

     “Hey Hannah, are those your kids?” A plain-looking girl waved at her from behind a shrub she was pruning.

      “I'm nineteen years old! No, they are not!”

       “Oh. Ok.” She went back to pruning the shrub, which was engineered to be a perfect precise sphere, and definitely did not need any clipping, although this didn't stop the plain girl.

Tab gestured for Hannah to bend down, and whispered into her ear. “Do you know her?”

“Never met her. I don't care to either.” Hannah suspiciously eyed the plain girl, who was now singing a song to herself as she worked. “I don't like stupid people.”

      Tab and Tom pulled at Hannah, and they continued their exhibition.

Horizon's End, Part One: Dichotomy

     “So, Miss, what do you choose?”

     The sentence trailed off in a serpentine hiss. She said nothing, green eyes locked on the horizon as Pollux sunk lazily through the sky, stoic as a wall but for a small shudder as the pinprick pain on the back of her neck grew stronger. The wind around her didn't so much howl as it wept, as if it knew what was occurring on the peak of Prefabricated Terramorph Colony #4 at the very edge of dusk on the planet Sunrise. Her modest blue skirt waved a bittersweet goodnight to the fading sun.

     The reptilian voice picked up again after a few moments. “I can hear your thoughts as if you spoke them aloud. Your silence is admirable, but ultimately meaningless.”

      She remained silent anyway, probably more out of sheer stubbornness than restraint.

     This time it sounded like a friendly brown bear.

     “You're running out of time, little lady. Tick. Tock.” She bit her lip, eyes darting around as if to search for some deus ex machina salvation. The point dug deeper as the sun dropped lower and lower in the sky. She found the sunset fittingly beautiful today, and although they generally made her uncomfortable, she felt almost at peace.

     “Tick. Tock.” The gentle bear's voice brought her back to her present predicament.

     The light dimmed as the sky faded to a dark burnt orange dotted with purple clouds tossed about by the spindly cyclones that whirred across the vast ocean, and desert beyond the ocean, bracketed by snowcapped mountains thousands of feet high. Perhaps the tornadoes traversed the land beyond the mountains, too. She shivered, although the cold had yet to set in.

     The voice returned to its sibilant serpentine tone.

     “There is no other choice, Miss. Only two options. I know your thoughts, you know, and as much as you try to hide them, I can still hear them as if they shouted at me through a megaphone. I know you think I've offered you a false choice between only two of a vast number of options, and that you aren't sure if old Jack is lying.”

     The sun was less than half visible now, and its light was waning, painting the sky the rich dark gold-maroon of a king's robes.

     “If you don't make a decision soon, I'll make one for you. And I guarantee you won't like it one bit.” There was silence broken only by the wind sobbing through the steel struts and whispering through the moss covering them. She spoke, and although she trembled almost undetectably, her voice was strong and unwavering.

     “Why are you here?”

     There was no noise from behind her, but she could tell by the change in the pressure on her neck that she had caught the thing off guard. It recovered just as quickly as she expected it to.

     “Just helping out a neighbor. That's all. Jack's gotta do what, well, nobody else will do, I guess.”

     She spoke again. This time her voice shook from the pressure of the situation, but Jack didn't notice.

     “What do you want from me? I'm just supposed to flip that switch! I don't have anything valuable! Leave me alone!”

     It sighed.

     “This was the only way to get your attention. I just hoped that you would be more receptive.”

     Her almost-cool demeanor evaporated in an instant. She began to turn to face the other for the first time. “Wait, wh-”

     The pair of spiked electrodes plunged deep into her spine and she collapsed, one arm still reaching in vain for the switch.

- - -

     “Hello? Hello? Ma'am?”

     “Missus, please wake up.”

     She blinked once, but kept her eyes closed against the harsh sunlight. She stretched her arms until her elbows made a slight popping sound, rolled her shoulders, opened her eyes, and started in shock as she realized she had been sleeping on the control deck of her colony.

     “Ma'am, are you all right?”