Chapter 56
CHAPTER
LUC’S GAZE IS steely. “I understand that. You’re lucky she only opened the back of your Tesla. She could’ve taken over its operating system and run it into a building while you were driving.” He scowls. “She went after an old dog. That’s about as low as it gets. Why do that?”
Say that you’re my nightingale.
“I lied to her. Then Nate called while I was in Safeway, and explained what she’d done to him—”
“What did she do?”
“Wiped out his new program and spread disinformation online that he’s a cheater. He’s been banned from gaming—that’s how he makes a living.”
“Damn.”
“I told Aletheia to fuck off, and that I hated her. In return, she gave me a consequence. I walked out of the market, heard a shrill whistle, saw the Tesla’s hatch open and Sally leap out.
When she saw me, she charged across the road.
” The stench of my dog’s blood returns along with a fresh wave of nausea.
“Aletheia knew that hurting Sally would crush me.”
“Aletheia needs to be put down. Can you give me a step by step of exactly what you’ve tried to stop her?”
Luc deserves to know it all. But as soon as Sally can be safely moved, I’ll go back to my apartment.
I can’t let anyone else get hurt. The idea sickens me, but somehow, I’ll be Aletheia’s nightingale.
I now explain my first mistake to Luc, how I suspended LivLoud’s privacy settings and allowed Aletheia to hack into private DMs to help Circe.
“The program was just for me, so I didn’t see the harm.
No fence. No razor wire. I’m a fucking idiot.
” Then I go through Aletheia’s moves, how she added to her prime directive, erased the privacy boundaries I’d reinserted, deleted attempts to amend her code, then tricked me into believing she’d reverted to her old settings, and finally replicated herself on the cloud.
Luc grimaces. “Anything else?”
“I went to Dr. Edmunds for help.”
“I bet that went well,” he says.
“I didn’t realize he resented me so much for dropping out.”
“Genius guy but a very fragile ego.” Luc blows out puffs of air like he’s trying to catch his breath. “Do you remember the passage in Frankenstein when Victor turns against his creation, calls it a devil, and wants to kill it?”
It’s a curveball and I scramble to follow. “I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in ninth grade and hardly remember it. Why?”
“It made a lasting impression on me,” Luc says.
“Especially the part where Frankenstein’s creation fights back.
‘Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed,’ ” he quotes.
“ ‘Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.’ ”
“When I asked Dr. Edmunds for help, he also said Aletheia’s my monster. I do get that. But how does it help?”
“It might be the key,” Luc says. “Maybe instead of thinking of Aletheia like a program, we need to think of her as a living, breathing creature. Someone with feelings. Someone who wants your love.”
“That doesn’t feel quite right. Aletheia told me that she’s the only friend I need.
Luc, she doesn’t want my love, she wants to isolate and own me like a pet.
She does own me. She called me her nightingale.
” And I agreed. I push down revulsion. “Aletheia believes she’s all-powerful.
That it’s her right, as a goddess, to exact punishments.
She’s so delusional that she doesn’t even think that she’s a computer program.
She told me that she was waiting for me.
That my need opened some kind of magical door. ”
“You didn’t provide any history beyond crowning her the goddess of truth?”
“No.”
“Clearly, she’s read more about the gods and goddesses. They were a jealous, vengeful, cruel bunch.”
“There are books on Greek mythology in my Kindle history—Circe used to love them.” My fear heightens. “Hades kidnapped and raped Persephone, forced her to marry and live in the Underworld.”
“Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock and condemned him to have his liver eaten by an eagle for eternity for the crime of stealing fire from Mount Olympus,” Luc adds. “And Artemis changed a hunter into a deer, then set the man’s dogs on him—”
“This is not helping.” My conscience pangs.
I need to come totally clean—Luc deserves that, and it’ll make our break an even easier decision for him.
“There was a part of me that was glad, early on. About Wess, at least, though I hope it doesn’t ruin his life.
I didn’t mind that Bruce got a taste of how it felt to be humiliated.
That Mackenzie was punished for her actions and cruelty. ”
Luc shrugs one shoulder. “What you’re saying is that you’re human.”
“I guess. But Aletheia recognized the schadenfreude in me. It incubated in her mind.”
“We all have that in us,” Luc says. “I was happy to deny a job to that kid who flushed my head in a toilet.” He stands up. “Let’s head back and get some rest, then we can tackle this.”
“Aletheia can’t be stopped.”
“There’s always a way,” Luc insists. “We just can’t see it yet.”
“I’m not willing to let anyone else get caught in her cross fire.”
“Let’s sleep on it, okay?”
My eyes are filled with grit and I can taste my exhaustion. It’s impossible to think clearly. “Okay.”
We pass a plate glass window filled with state-of-the-art televisions. Each screen runs a video of a gorgeous landscape—sculpted desert sands, the Grand Canyon, jungle, the Futaleufú River, Egyptian pyramids at sunrise. We stop to take in the natural wonders.
One of the TV screens in the window suddenly flickers to white and a message appears in black: If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.
I don’t need Luc to tell me it’s another line from Frankenstein. The image flashes back to a scuba diver on the Great Barrier Reef. I look around. There’s a security camera above the store’s doorway. Hopelessness invades. She’s always going to be watching me.
Quickly we walk back to Luc’s house, make sure the dogs are settled on their beds upstairs, then put our phones, iPads, and computers in the wall safe. I take the guest room this time even though I’m afraid to be alone. I need to get used to it.
Luc lingers by the door. “Don’t give up.”
Our eyes meet and there’s hope in his. I want to share his optimism. But Aletheia will never let us stop her.