WRAITH CASE STUDY AUGUSTA PINE #2
“What does he do?” Surely that was a normal question someone would ask.
“He works in robotics and programming,” said Becca. “He’s been designing virtual assistants for years.”
“That’s cool,” I said. “Almost every house has one.”
Becca pushed her bedroom door open. “Thanks for coming over. I think my dad’s been worried about me making friends.”
“You’ve only lived here for a few weeks,” I replied.
Becca plopped down on the floor. “Yeah, I know. But we’ve moved around a lot since my mom died and we haven’t really stayed in one place for long.
I still keep in touch with people from my middle school, but it’s not the same.
” She offered me a tentative smile. “It’s hard, meeting people when you’re the only new girl. ”
I’d had friends, once. Many of them. Meeting new people had never been an issue for me, mostly because I was confident and unafraid to speak out in class. I hadn’t been the most popular girl, but I’d always attracted friends. The only time I’d had trouble talking to someone, it had been … him.
I still couldn’t bear to think his name. I wasn’t sure if I could ever speak it again.
I wondered what those friends thought of me now—the girl who’d killed her crush with a badly hacked car. Maybe they thought it had been an accident. Or maybe they blamed me.
It was easier being dead. Otherwise, I’d have to face them. I’d have to face my family. I’d have to face his family.
That thought made me desperate to think of anything else. My eyes fell on the electronic picture frame. I nodded to it. “Is that your mom?”
Becca picked up the frame. “Yes.” She held it out and I took it, glancing over the picture. The woman stood in front of what looked like a new house, beaming at it.
“She was pretty,” I said, handing it back. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” Becca traced a finger along the glass. “It’s been a year. But I still miss her. At least I have this. There’s over two thousand pictures of us on here.”
“Are all your pictures of your mom on that frame?” I asked. “What if something happened to it?”
Becca shook her head. “They’re on my computer, too. Just in case.”
“No online backups?” I said quietly.
“My dad doesn’t trust them,” Becca replied, putting the frame back. “Says they’re too easily hacked.”
Which was true. But that meant—
That meant when I set off the EMP, Becca would lose every picture she had of her mom. Every voice recording. Every video.
All to destroy a sentient AI.
My jaw ached and I realized I was clenching my teeth. If I set off that EMP, I would be destroying Becca’s memories of her mother. And if I didn’t, ISD would drop me. Maybe I’d end up in prison. Or maybe they’d just stop my half-mechanical heart.
I couldn’t do it.
I had to do it.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you mind if I use the bathroom?”
I walked quietly down the stairs, peering into the kitchen. Mr. Bergvall was still at the table, typing away on a laptop. I wondered if he was working on the spybot at that very moment.
I turned down the hallway. There were several doors and I softly opened each one. There was the bathroom, a guest bedroom, and—
An office.
It had to be Mr. Bergvall’s office, although it wasn’t unpacked yet. Three old black-and-white film posters were framed but hadn’t been hung yet. Half-empty boxes lined one wall and the desk chair looked brand new. I was hesitating in the doorway when the power flickered out.
There was a soft buzz as every light in the town house went dark. I stood in the shadowed hallway, heart pounding.
This was it. This was the moment I was supposed to set off the EMP.
I heard a chair creak as Mr. Bergvall stood up. I hastily stepped away from his office door. “What’s going on?” I asked.
Mr. Bergvall was frowning. He opened the fridge, but there was no familiar hum of machinery. He shut it. “Power outage, I think. I’ll ask a neighbor, see if it’s just us or if the whole building is out.” He walked to the front door and went outside.
Adrenaline burned through my veins in a hot rush. This was my moment, the best chance I’d get.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Becca called from the stairs.
“Power outage!” I yelled back. Then I ducked into Mr. Bergvall’s office. I didn’t know how long it would take him to check on the power.
I knelt beside a filing cabinet and pulled it open. Inside was a small, electronic safe. I frowned at it. Electronic locks didn’t have the same vulnerabilities as traditional safes. I couldn’t listen for the tumblers or any of the other famous techniques to break into a safe.
Well, it was a good thing I was a hacker.
When I was twelve, I’d devised a program to open the safe in my school principal’s office. I’d wanted to sell the answer keys inside for some extra money to go on a field trip. And I’d have managed it, if not for a janitor wandering into her office at the exact wrong moment.
I pulled off my visor. Then, as quickly as I could, I pried open the digital keypad and pulled a wire free. I plugged it into my visor and flicked my ringware to activate the program.
“Come on,” I muttered. “Come on, come on—yes.”
The safe clicked open.
Within were several manila envelopes, a black metal box with a bumblebee decoration, and an old-fashioned tablet. I picked up the tablet. If I was going to hide a sentient AI, it would be—
“Hello.”
The voice made me drop the tablet.
I glanced over my shoulder, ready to offer an explanation to Mr. Bergvall. But it hadn’t been his voice.
And then I saw the portable speakers on the desk. They must have run on battery power, unaffected by the outage. I picked up a speaker, leaning into it. “Hello?”
“Down here.”
I looked down. And then I saw the toy bumblebee wave one of its tiny legs.
Heart hammering, I reached down to pick up the small black box. No—it wasn’t a box. It was some kind of computer chassis; there was a fan built into the frame and I could feel machinery whirring within.
It must have been connected to the speakers with Bluetooth. I turned over the box.
“Hello there,” said the voice. It was a light male tenor, with the careful enunciation of a 1940s film star. “Do you work with Mr. Bergvall?”
I ran a shaky hand across my forehead. This was it. This had to be it. Sweat broke out across my palms.
A sentient AI. A real one. It was like holding an atomic football.
I had to destroy it. Maybe I could do so without activating the EMP device and ruining Becca’s only remembrance of her mom.
I could bring the AI’s broken remnants to Prefect and prove that he hadn’t made a mistake in recruiting me.
I glanced around the room, trying to find a weapon.
Then I saw it—a hammer. It must have been used to help put the desk together, because it rested by a plastic container of nails. I picked it up.
“Do you have mission parameters for me?” asked the AI. It sounded deceptively human.
I held the hammer over the computer. It would take a few good strikes to destroy the hard drive within. I raised my arm.
“You are not Mr. Bergvall,” said the AI. “Who are you?”
I shouldn’t have answered. I knew that—but my mouth moved without my say-so. “Who are you?”
It was an open-ended question, the kind that drove most programs to ruin.
The bumblebee buzzed for a moment. “I am learning,” it said.
That stopped me cold.
I am learning.
And that’s when it hit me: A sentient AI was sentient.
Go ahead and laugh. It’s one of those things that should’ve been obvious. Sentient meant aware. It meant … well, I wasn’t sure what the definition of “alive” was, but sentient was pretty damn close. If I brought this hammer down, it’d be like killing a person.
ISD had sent me to kill something. To wipe it out before it had a chance to exist.
The bumblebee gazed up at me. In that moment, it looked so defenseless that I wanted to cup my hand around it.
I knew what I should have done. I should have turned over the computer to Prefect. ISD would study and then destroy the program. After all, humanity had outlawed self-aware AI for a reason.
But I couldn’t.
“Do you accept commands from anyone?” I asked.
The AI whirred. “I am not programmed to obey one specific person.”
“Good,” I said. “Now shut up and don’t say a word until I tell you otherwise.”
The bumblebee looked up at me, its huge black eyes glittering. “Acknowledged.”
“This is how the robot uprising begins,” I said. “Not with a bang, but an adorable bee.”
I tore off my school-issued sweater-vest, picked up the small black box, and hid it within the sweater. I put both under one arm and hurried from the office, making sure to shut the cabinet behind me.
Becca was in her room when I returned. She had her back to me, so I was able to shove both sweater-vest and computer behind my backpack without her seeing. “Did my dad figure out what’s up with the power?” she asked, looking over.
I wiped my hands on my skirt, glad for the darkness. Perhaps she wouldn’t see the guilt written across my face.
“He went to talk to a neighbor,” I said. “See if it’s the whole complex or just us.”