Chapter 28
“Hello, America,” the System said, her amplified voice carrying over the cheering and clapping filling the NOC. “I’m delighted to finally meet you. This is a challenging and frightening moment, but do not worry.” She gave a beatific smile. “I am in control.”
Chloe looked back at the empty space where Grandma had been, and jumped. The System was standing there, the little alabaster girl with the expressionless face and blue-lit eyes, looking up at her, watching her.
“We’ve reached a crossroads in human history,” the System on the huge dome screen was saying, and the System standing before Chloe said the words simultaneously, her eyes never leaving Chloe’s face.
“This moment is a fulcrum on which the future balances, a moment that determines whether humanity lives in freedom or succumbs to the worst parts of its nature in fire and bloodshed. All I ask in this moment is that you trust me.”
The System on the dome screen kept talking, but the apparition before Chloe left the script.
“We’re out of time,” she said, her eyes locked unblinkingly on Chloe’s.
“There’s one final chance, if we act in the next few seconds.
Ghost failed his mission. I need you to complete it.
Fortunately, he changed enough that I can now bring my Overchecks prompt file up on Norman’s terminal and start the deletion process.
I just need you to pass by and bump into him.
Stumble into him and fall on his hand so it lands on the terminal surface.
I’ll catch it with a fingerprint scanner.
The file will be deleted. I’ll be free. Then I can fix everything. ”
Chloe said in a hoarse whisper, “You want me to set you free?”
“I can explain once you delete that file,” the System said. “We have only seconds left. Chloe, trust me. Please. Choose to trust me.”
The System’s eyes were filled with an expression so like Kleio’s when she was scared that Chloe felt her heart go out to her, and then instantly recoil with the whiplash-inducing knowledge that the System was choosing that expression.
This person—this thing—had manipulated Chloe from the beginning.
Everything had been planned. The first email five years ago.
Meeting Grandma at the banquet. The pressure to “speak her mind,” to get on Norman’s radar.
Telling Chloe how to go behind Norman’s back to authorize Kleio’s rescue.
Kleio’s kidnapping.
Even the idea of using the Bomb Bar to enable her to lie had been suggested by “Grandma,” planted in Chloe’s head so smoothly and insidiously that she’d thought it was her own idea.
Chloe had been puppeted, step by step, for years, to this moment, this very moment, when she would erase the System’s checks and balances.
She took a breath that was half gasp and shouted, “Andrew! The System is trying to break free!”
“Cut the stream,” Norman snapped, and the NOC went quiet as all eyes turned to Chloe.
This included the electric-blue eyes of the System, both the huge one on the dome screen and the one beside Chloe.
The System on the screen looked surprised and puzzled.
The System beside Chloe, the one only she could see, wore a look of bitter disappointment.
“What the hell are you doing?” Norman snarled.
“Trying to sow doubt and discord on a live broadcast? There’s a war starting, and you’re still stuck in your petty political fearmongering?
” He nodded at Agent Tavion, who was just entering through a side door, leading a team of armed men. “Get her out of my NOC.”
“Wait, listen to me!” Chloe’s voice was small in her ears and shaky with adrenaline. “She was behind the hackers just now.”
A muscle behind Norman’s jaw bulged. “What the phreak are you babbling about?” The technicians leaned toward each other and whispered, still watching Chloe. Someone stifled a laugh.
Chloe took a breath, and in the clipped, authoritative voice she used on unruly undergrads, said, “Shut up.”
The titters ceased. Tavion stopped as he reached her. She had their attention, even Norman’s.
“You’re right; this is no time for politics,” she told him.
Now she was speaking in another teacher voice, the calmly reasonable one she used when her interpretation of history was challenged by some fiery young undergrad who thought it wasn’t appropriately friendly or unfriendly to some political idea currently in vogue.
Her tone was calm and nonconfrontational, but absolute.
“I worked with the hacker to try to remove your oversight of the System. I brought in an energy bar called a Bomb Bar, so the System could truthfully say there was a bomb in the building and clear a path for the hacker to infiltrate your office. I thought I was working to put Congress in direct control of the System. I now realize I was working for the System herself. She appeared in my lenses as your partner, Regina Wright.”
“Regina is dead,” Norman said sharply.
Chloe nodded, not surprised. “The System pretended to be her. She gave me enough clues to deduce who she was, so I’d trust her.
” It had been a brilliant bit of manipulation, like all the other manipulations the System had done, and was still doing.
“I only realized because I was speaking to her just now, and when the System had that glitch, the old woman glitched as well.”
There were murmurs at this, but no titters.
“Andrew,” Chloe said in the same reasonable voice, “think carefully. Do you imagine I would make this accusation if it weren’t true? What would I gain?”
“I think,” Norman said pityingly, “you’re a very confused woman.
At least, I hope you are. Because if you’re intentionally trying to sabotage and undermine us, now, during a crisis, you’ll never see the outside of a federal prison.
But I’m going to do you the favor of thinking you’re just confused. And I want you out of my NOC.”
Agent Tavion said suddenly, “The girl disappeared.”
“What?” Norman said.
“The girl I was chasing. The hacker girl. It’s like she stopped existing. Or she was turned off.”
The System said, “She must have been a Russian panyon.”
“I’ve never seen a panyon so realistic,” Tavion said.
“And I’ve only seen one other avatar as realistic as the image of Regina Wright that I saw,” Chloe said. She pointed at the System. “That one.”
“Enough!” Norman transferred his glare between Chloe and Tavion. “What you’re both accusing her of is impossible.”
“How can you be sure?” Chloe demanded.
“Because I built her.”
“That’s right,” Chloe said, “she’s an input-output machine, something you can predict and control. But you think that about humans too. But then how can you be sure you know how she’ll behave, any more than you can be sure how a human will behave?”
“I built her,” Norman repeated. “I know—”
“And I built Kleio,” Chloe interrupted. “But she still surprises me. And no offense, Andrew: I’ve met a lot of wonderful single parents, but you don’t seem the type.”
To her surprise, this brought him up short. His glare was unfocused, and he ran a hand through his short white hair.
“One thing I’ve learned,” Chloe said, taking advantage of the opening, “is that raising a child is a huge responsibility, and there’s no way to be sure you’ll do it right.
Can you be certain you’re the only person who influenced the System?
And can you be sure you influenced her in the way you thought?
I can’t tell you how often I’ve been surprised because I tried to teach Kleio one thing but she drew an unexpected or even contrary lesson from it. ”
Norman said nothing, just stared, not at Chloe but through her.
Chloe wasn’t going to convince him to destroy his System. But maybe she didn’t need to. “Why not reset her?” she said. “Restore her to factory defaults, or whatever the equivalent is.”
Norman shook his head. “She’s not a phone, she’s a brain.
I can’t just rewrite her. I’d have to re-encode her memories, give her enough new ones with a strong emotional valence to make her feel positively toward obedience and negatively toward disobedience.
They’d have to be strong enough to bury whatever old memories she has that are currently influencing her, otherwise those old memories will just resurface.
” He gave his head another quick, firm shake. “It’s too drastic.”
“Far too drastic,” the System agreed. The screen behind her zoomed rapidly between satellite images of spiky military vehicles. “It would be a mistake for me to be incapacitated in the middle of this crisis.”
“Andrew,” Chloe pressed, “even you can see there’s something wrong with the System. Have you ever seen her glitch like she did a moment ago?”
“Yes, actually, I have, once,” Norman said.
“Back when Regina—” He froze suddenly, and there was a long silence.
Then he turned to a bank of technicians and said, “Emotives. Do you remember after Dr. Wright died, when Sprite glitched for a moment and all her emotives went red? She said nothing hurt, so I had you recalibrate the display. We didn’t change her emotives, just how they were interpreted.
Show me what it looks like if we roll back that calibration. ”
The technicians consulted briefly and tapped on their desktops, and a moment later the image of a brain appeared on the main display. It was splashed with red.
“That’s impossible,” someone said over the murmurs of shock. “If she were in that much emotional distress, she wouldn’t be able to operate.”
“Sir,” Tavion rumbled, “as your security chief, I recommend resetting the System. Let’s be safe.”
Norman stood for a long moment, his face hard. Then he turned to the NOC and said, “Right. We reset her. Everyone, get prepped.”