Con Code Read online

  “What’s your plan?” I ask the person nearest me, feeling bold by the mob-like retreat from something as ridiculous as a four-inch-long pen with a tiny razor blade knife at its top. “Once you have their files?” I wave the knife a bit, adding hand gesture in the question for fun.

  “What do you mean?” a young woman takes another half step back from me.

  “When you charge the building, what do you plan to do with it all? What’s the purpose?”

  “Holding those inside accountable for the lies they’ve told, the hurt they’ve caused. The loss we’ve suffered by letting our families and friends be a part of their experiments.”

  The vehicles climbing the hill circle close enough I can make out tinted windows. “So, what? You’re going to demand they pay for damages?” Depending on who exits those cars, I might want an exit plan of my own. “I’m what they caused.”

  “We can’t help you,” someone says. “All we have is protest.”

  That’s stupid. If these people truly believed the pinnacle of their retribution consists of shouting at closed doors and holding up signs, what’s the point of getting out of their wasteful human beds?

  “We’ll burn it down!” a young man shouts. Fire flares behind his eyes. I can’t see how he means to spit his rage at a building made of non-flammable material. Still, it’s better than standing around with signs and megaphones.

  “It’s made of glass,” I say shifting my feet, moving back my hair, and adjusting my wool sweater to cover where I’ve pulled the hand covering back over my metal framework phalanges.

  “Expose their fraud—that’s what it means. Burn down the system.” Someone else says. “Publicize the corruption.”

  Obviously, I don’t understand human phrasing and word choice. The people who make up this crowd claim to be those who volunteered family members and supported friends to participate in a gamble for an advantage. “Didn’t you all sign away the right to riot when your loved ones were carted away to a holding pen so their still-functioning brains could be converted to electronic signals, waves, and blips—left exposed to glitches, virus, bugs, hacking, and program errors? Surely you feel some thread of responsibility?”

  “She’s one of them!”

  “They sent a programmed spy.”

  “It’s not ID, it’s a bot.”

  “She’s a spy!”

  “No,” I say attempting to step back, but there is no ‘back’ there is only the crowd on every side and the glass doors. “I’m not a bot.” I’m not ID exactly either, but I’m not a bot. I’m an individual—maybe the most individual to be on the planet at this moment.

  Fear from my initial behavior with the penknife passes. The crowd leans my direction. Everything about them is overbearing and uncomforting. I need a weapon that would stun a human from acting on rage or misconception. Like EMT for humans. I have to figure out how to throw a signal that could shield me from their nonsense and mood swings. Focus brain, there has to be something I can broadcast.

  Shouts and murmurs regarding what to do with me clash in a mass of threats breaking out among members of the crowd toward other members of the crowd. My head lolls in relief. At least humans can be counted on to bicker with one another, buying me time to process.

  Screeching tires draw additional attention away from me. The vehicles with tinted windows brake to avoid hitting the car I arrived in, wildly backing its way down the hill. With so many people pressing around, the driver has no way to turn around. The other vehicles brake, blocking the retreating car. Tinted doors open. Belen steps out, which surprises me since I ditched her. Why would she come back here? Why am I back here for that matter? None of us should be here, yet we’re drawn like moths to a zapper, the black glass nothing but a glittering tombstone.

  “Belen!” I holler, my tattered arm waving in the air. There isn’t much about her expression I’d call a welcome greeting. The riotous crowd grows in intensity with my motions, like my waving incites them to be more aggressive with one another regarding their varying degrees of riotous options. That’s the thing, they’re all overarchingly in agreement, but are ready to rip each other’s limbs off due to differing notions regarding how to accomplish the same destructive ends—namely destroy the AI program.

  Belen nods to someone, in the mass of bodies it’s impossible to guess who it is. The driver of the car I arrived in opens his own door and takes off on foot down the hill. The cars behind Belen’s park as well, some at a precarious angle blocking the road entirely from more company. Three vehicles back, a door opens and Mav steps out, followed by Gordon.

  “Gordon! Mav!” I wave with both hands now, frantic. They’re not jailed somewhere. They’re here with Belen. I’m rescued or assisted. Or whatever I need right now. Maybe all I need is to know there are people who don’t want me melted down for scrap. And those people are here.

  Something cold pushes down my hair, touching the back of my neck. I slap a hand back as though I’m swatting a bug, but something shoots through my spine like a zing before I connect with the annoyance. White light blinds my vision sensors and my olfactory alarm indicates burnt plastic, though it’s not the same as in the game. Smell doesn’t affect me here. I’m alerted to it, but I have no connection with it. It’s a blinking light in my brain saying ‘this odor contaminates the air in your surroundings’ and nothing more. Then everything shuts off. Except I’m still alert, only my packaging is down.

  I can’t see anything. I can’t smell anything. My skin sends tiny nerve ending signals to the wires connecting it to my brain. I know this because the biggest complaint reaching my thoughts right now is ‘sweater fibers’. Also, I can hear out of my right side. The side I drove a penknife through where an ear canal should have been.

  “She arrived with the Egyptians,” someone I can’t identify by sound says. “Look at her arm, she’s one of them.”

  Inside I cringe, unable to move my arm or any part of myself. I want to roll away, catch a bit of slope and continue down the hill away from this mess. But I also need to get inside and retrieve my data cartridge.

  “Not with us. She’s stupid,” Belen answers. I hear feet shuffling and something on rollers with one wheel that keeps flipping circles, unable to keep alignment.

  “Can she hear us?” Gordon’s voice rasps like his throat hurts. A rough shoe presses into my side, setting all my skin sensors warring for space in my head – ‘Danger, danger, you’re being nudged.’ I wish I could quiet my skin sensors, inform them that a slight toe-push and itchy sweater hairs are the least of my worries. Hey sensors, why don’t you develop little spikes like porcupine hairs ready to strike anyone who gets too close?

  “The taser. Escrambled her esystems.”

  “Yeah, but, if it’s my brother’s design, she has a reboot function.” Mav coughs. “We don’t have long.”

  “You estole their technology. It’s corrupted robbers.” Belen yells at Mav. If I could see, I might witness tiny little Belen slap him across the face. “They’re my esister’s codes.”

  “Hey, who stole whose designs? Ace developed the entire donor program, so why is his program running all over the world?” Mav counters.

  Belen doesn’t say anything back. I’d love to see her face. I know she’s not TECH-chick, but I’ve taken an instant disliking to her as if she’s some extension of my game-world nemesis. Though technically, the Commander probably falls higher on the enemy ranking sheet.

  “We should move her pretty soon, right?” Gordon says, again with that ‘screamed too hard for too long’ quality to his speech.

  “How long until they set off another electric pulse?” someone in the crowd hollers from a distance and muffled by bodies between their location and wherever it is I lie on the pavement. I do notice the mob of people are no longer at each other’s throat. What is it about Belen that creates the absolute opposite of what I’m trying to accomplish? Does she have to be so much the real-world counterpart of her sister? Take Mav, he may look like Ace—or more a
ccurate, Ace programmed himself to look like Mav—but by all personality standards, Ace is the bolder brother. Mav has all the influence of a gnat on an underripe papaya.

  “We set that off. Geovanni no crash his own esystems right now,” Belen says.

  “We did that?” someone else asks. “But we took damage.”

  I don’t see the response. I imagine it’s something like Belen pointing down at my motionless form with a ‘look stupid’ expression on her face. “Mira,” she says.

  “Why do we need one of their products?” That’s me they’re referring to as a ‘product’. “You can’t trust them.”

  “Exactly.” The voice this time is deeper, richer.

  “We can share,” Belen says before one side of me is pushed up so I’m on my left side, then tipped over, face and stomach against what registers as the lip of a metal counter, a slab of steel. Indignity is being moved, removed, like so much scrap metal as I’m lifted by several pairs of unidentified hands. The slab is only five inches off the ground. “We don’t need you for our next move, except to keep this out of Geovanni’s reach.”

  I don’t hear a response from the persons Belen speaks to, but feel the cart with its one circling wheel being pushed away while feet pad in a rush in the opposite direction.

  “What are we into here?” Gordon’s rough voice is barely a whisper above where I lay face down. I can wiggle my toes and know the effects from the device that scrambled my signals are wearing off.

  “Shh. Wait till they’re all inside,” Mav replies. My thigh twitches. It won’t be long before I’m at full capacity. The cart slides forward less controlled. “Watch the hill, Gordo.”

  A crack in the pavement catches the circling wheel slowing the cart before I have to blow my cover and stop myself from careening down the path. The two men from Mexico pull the cart in the opposite direction, fighting gravity uphill. I can’t help but wonder where Dr. Miller, Ben, and Abby might be. With Belen perhaps? Or worse. I don’t waste thought on Spaulding. The cart halts.

  “Now you want to explain to me, Pierson?” Gordon’s raspy voice forces itself into some range of high rage but muted by previous overuse. “What the hell is happening?”

  I wait for Mav’s response, but nothing comes for so long, I risk moving my head to the side. But do my best to make it appear like a gravity induced tilt. Gordon starts talking again the same second my head klongs against the metal like he’s responding to my movement and I freeze even my thoughts for a split second before realizing Gordon isn’t responding to me and my stupid attempt to spy a better vantage point. Besides, all I can see between the fray of my hair are trousered shins.

  “I tracked all those codes as she asked, and you know what I found?”

  Mav still says nothing. Does he know? I want Gordon to say it, so I can know.

  Gordon continues talking, hopefully, his whispered scratches at words will tell me something. “A kid from Singapore. The Asian resource belt has a lot more than industry. They’re controlling every political move from that one country.”

  “So what?” Mav asks. “Some donor comes from a country of influence. Doesn’t sound too groundbreaking to me.”

  “The kid was with Ace,” Gordon’s voice drops like this is serious.

  “So?”

  “He wasn’t a part of our facility. He wasn’t one of our donors.” Gordon stops talking, his tone indicates he has more to say but can’t push the words through his battered vocal cords.

  “What are you saying?” Mav’s voice drops. I want to look around more to see what secret I’m missing here.

  “These guys, they’re connected to the security worker from this facility, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Also, in our system with Ace.”

  Mav’s tone changes like he has something to defend beyond late Ace’s hacking ethics. “What are you saying? They all came to Mexico?” Mav steps closer to Gordon, looming over him so that both Gordon and my slab are chilled by his shadow. “Are you accusing my brother of something right now? He may have started fighting for the wrong side, but he’s no traitor. He’s no spy.”

  “No…” Gordon leans away, shakes his legs like he’s getting the confusing bits out through his shoes. “There are glitches of time where the codes disappear from the program and come back. We thought just glitches, but I don’t think so.”

  “What are you saying then?”

  “The programs changed on the inside. Rewritten in the game.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me knowing Ace was in there. He’s brilliant with codes, programming, all things tech,” Mav says.

  “It’s not just that, I think the programs got connected somehow.”

  “It’s all online right? Interconnected?”

  “No, it’s not. Each facility runs their own program, but I have evidence that our facility housed donors from three locations, all tracking with Ace shortly before Jennie uploaded.”

  “What are you saying, Gordo?” Mav asks for the annoyingth time.

  “That fancy pants lawyer that threw down on your facility in Mexico? He might be right. Maybe Geo planted something so he could infiltrate all the programs. I mean, think about it. Our program finishes first, then he announces less than a month later. Where’d our codes go, right? Ace left the system before Jennie woke up, so did the others.”

  “You think they’re here?” Mav asks.

  “No. I don’t know.” Gordon continues to wiggle his shins like the motion will sort his thoughts. “I don’t know when Juan uploaded.”

  “Their materials are twenty times more advanced than ours.” Mav sounds like he’s buying into this notion, and why not?

  “No. They’re not.”

  “But, Jennie—her joints didn’t work.”

  “That’s Miller. One more failsafe. You can’t know for sure who’s coming out of the game. He swore a month, only a month and then he’d know if he could trust the winner with a fully operating system. It was our job to ‘train’ her, but really we were evaluating Jennie for adjustment disorders…”

  I stop listening at this point. Miller held out on me?

  I trusted him.

  “But think about it—if our program could connect to other programs, who’s to say donors couldn’t slip into any program out there…” Gordon lowers his already scratchy voice when he speaks.

  “There’d be no boundaries.”

  “I think Jennie doesn’t have a donor code. It’s not lost, misplaced, or forgotten by some amnesiac side effect. I think she doesn’t have one because she’s not one of our donors.” Gordon comes uncomfortably close to an accurate accusation.

  My eyes open. Fluid rushes my limbs, preparing me to act if I need to. I don’t want to get stunned again, but more than that I don’t want to be bashed into an alert mass of intelligence that can’t stop thinking and feeling but is unable to act or interact in any way.

  “I’ve looked through every file several times over at this point, and I’m certain,” Gordon says.

  “Miller says…” Mav’s point is cut off, I don’t get to know what Miller says.

  “Screw Miller. She knows languages.”

  “She has access to translation programs.” Mav defends me.

  “They’re human donors, not programs. They don’t go through a simple game program and come out world educated super geniuses, man. She’s familiar with languages because she’s probably from a different linguistic region. She’s a program jumper. Maybe from an undocumented source. Or, best-case scenario, one of Geo’s, like he claims.”

  “I’m not letting that guy claim my company’s work.” Mav gets loud. “My brother’s work.”

  “You do realize he probably has serial numbers on all the upgrades he installed here. You try to sneak Jennie out of the country, you’ll be arrested.” Gordon’s legs bounce in place again. “We shouldn’t still be here.” He paces in front of the cart I’m lying face down on. “This is a mess.”

  I debate my options. Say some
thing? Defend my source code? Which would basically be lying about being GenE. I’m certain Gordon can track down the fact her game was over long before I uploaded since he’s obviously skilled at tracking code, even when codes aren’t from his donor list.

  I sort of regret being all ‘hey Gordo, help me out with this puzzle surrounding whose codes were near Ace.’ How stupid am I?

  Hopefully not human stupid.

  Gordon continues to pace and bounce his leg during his attempts to be still. Mav sits on the edge of the cart I’m on with his back to me. His hands rub down his face, then push everything back up like he’s trying to force his eyebrows to merge with his hairline.

  “You know what they have in there?” Mav flicks the scrap of fingernail he’s been slowly separating from his ring finger. “The lower levels?”

  I know there are underground levels in the building from following Belen down a long staircase far beyond ground level.

  “I know we’re not supposed to be asking questions. Not if we want to get out of this country before Miller decides to put his ‘failsafe’ into place.” Gordon turns for a return pace. “If he hasn’t hit the ‘detonate’ button already. He wasn’t happy about the holding cell.”

  “What if they’re not uploading donors?” Mav picks his index finger below the quick. “Think about it. Juan doesn’t behave like any of our donors.”

  Gordon stops pacing. “What’re you saying?” Gordon moves so his shadow stretches across my face. I press my eyelids tighter, just in case. “Are you suggesting they’re murdering healthy humans by uploading to the game? Or are you suggesting Juan isn’t a donor?”

  Mav lets out a long breath then flicks another nail scrap. “I don’t know.” He stands up, pushes wrinkles down his pant legs, then sits again. “The longer we’re here… It’s like a sick feeling growing. Right now, I feel literally sick, but it’s like my brain feels sick.” Mav finds a nail with the slightest roughage left to attack before it too is below the quick. “It’s hard to think straight. But it’s weird they have so much sublevel structure when the rest of the building is totally see-through.”