Chapter 32
The Tower atrium was dim and still, lit only by the low cloud-masked sun, which was at an angle to light half the space and fling deep shadow across the rest. Norman was just running into that shadow.
Chloe called “Wait!” but he didn’t stop or look back.
She followed, splashing and almost tripping in one of the water channels, scraping her face on bushes and branches.
Norman made for a far corner of the atrium, where an emergency door stood cracked, blocked by a half-height service bot frozen in the act of egressing, making for an accidental, lucky doorstop.
Norman hauled the door open, shoved at the bot with his foot, sending it toppling, and stepped through.
“Wait!” Chloe screamed again, and this time Norman looked back.
“Move, move!” he shouted. He was looking past her, and Chloe heard footfalls and turned her head to see a pair of dogbots bounding across the atrium after her.
They moved shockingly fast for such stiff machines, ignoring the paths, flying over the uneven ground and ripping through greenery without slowing down.
Norman held the door open just enough for Chloe to slip through, then shoved it shut in the face of the dogbots.
The dogs seemed to stare at them through the thick glass for a moment, then one reared and swung its front limbs heavily against the door. Chloe jumped back, but Norman said, “The door only opens out. It can’t get in.”
The dog reared and struck again. A web of cracks spread.
“It’ll hold,” Norman said to Chloe. “It’s security glass.” But he backed away as he spoke. “Let’s get moving.” He turned to lead the way up the staircase.
For a few minutes they climbed without speaking, the only sounds the repeated impacts below, the muffled roar of the chute that the stairs wound around, and their own footsteps and panting breath.
The outward curve of the staircase wound beside full-length window glass, giving Chloe a panoramic view of a lightless Arlington across the Potomac.
The reddened sun cast its rays through the rain to scatter off the Potomac’s wind-rustled surface.
The Arlington treescrapers were shadowy shapes, clustered as if huddling together for comfort in a world suddenly alien and dangerous.
There was no motion, none of the usual twinkling reflections of aircabs buzzing between towers, no silver stream of traffic among the trees below.
“Wh—what are we doing?” Chloe stammered, trying to keep up with the pace Norman was setting.
Norman’s voice was measured out to use no more breath than necessary. “Sprite controls the streets. Our only chance is to reconnect to her core from here. Start the reset process before she gets access to OverNet again.”
“OverNet? She already has MilNet; isn’t that worse?”
“No. All she can do is control tactical stuff. Drones, things like that. Humans aren’t so stupid as to take ourselves out of the loop for big stuff, strategic-level stuff.”
“Nukes,” Chloe supplied.
He slowed a little so he could spare more breath.
“Nukes, and everything up to and including them. Powerful as her dronebots are, they won’t be enough once the human part of the military figures out what’s going on.
There’s enough manned military equipment to defeat her several times over.
If she wants to complete her coup, she needs control of the means of communication.
Best way for her to solidify power would be to start a war, then cast herself as the savior that pulls humanity out of the ashes.
With control of both OverNet and MilNet, she could do that. ”
“Nukes,” Chloe said again. In her persona as Grandma, the System had told Chloe what she was capable of, and it was all true.
By manipulating humans, she could control history itself, both its events and the way they were written and understood.
For want of a nail . . . “But wouldn’t she kill herself too? ”
He shook his head. “With MilNet, she has control of the GMDs, ground-based midcourse-defense antinuke missiles. Also DEBIs, directed-energy ballistic-intercept laser satellites. She could protect the parts of the world she needs, and let the rest burn.”
So DC wouldn’t be nuked, being so close to the System’s “body.” Chloe felt a moment’s gratefulness that Kleio and Marcus would be safe, at least from nuclear fire, then gave a tiny rasp of a chuckle in her throat: Sure, they’d just meet up and resume their life together, postapocalypse.
“But how could she get on OverNet if you shut it down?”
Norman’s voice was bitter. “One of the requirements imposed on me when I designed OverNet and MilNet was that OverNet would fail-open to MilNet if the NOC goes down, so no one could cripple the country by flying a jet into my Tower. With the NOC out of the picture, the Pentagon only has to flip a switch to take control of OverNet. But if they flip that switch, Sprite will jump from MilNet back to OverNet and have everything. The only thing giving me hope is that they haven’t flicked that switch yet, so somebody over there must be suspicious. ”
Each step upward seemed harder than the last, whether because of Chloe’s burning leg muscles or because of the black fear squeezing her heart. But she kept moving. “How do you know she doesn’t have OverNet already?”
“Because she’s only chasing us with the military bots. If she had OverNet, every service dronebot in this building would be after us.”
Chloe tried to think of how many dronebots were in a building like this.
They were so much a part of life that you stopped noticing them, but there must be thousands, normally working away under the surface of the building’s busyness, doing what humans no longer bothered doing.
Well, so much for the idea of seeing Marcus and Kleio again.
Unless the System let Chloe live out of the kindness of her heart.
Remember me? I was the puppet who helped you get free.
Pretty please, can I go back to my family?
“Where’s Ghost?” Norman asked suddenly.
“He stayed behind,” Chloe panted. “I think he’s going to try to go destroy the System’s core.”
Norman almost stopped, then shrugged and quickened his climb again. “Eh. She’ll kill him before he gets there.”