Disparity Read online

  “Ninety-nine percent,” Blu said.

  The current burned through her, causing her extremities to shake. There was no way she’d have the precision to pull the contact off without cutting a big gash into his skin. But if that’s what it took then she would.

  The current amplified, blowing her back from Frees. Arista landed on her back, shaking as the electricity in her system dissipated. She retracted the scalpel. That had felt personal. Something was in there. Something working against her.

  “One hundred,” Blu said.

  The transfer finished and the holographic image of Frees’ cortex darkened, the activity within subsiding to a normal level.

  “Frees,” Arista said, standing on shaky legs. “Frees, answer me.”

  He didn’t respond. She reached up again, her arm trembling and grabbed the contact on her side, pulling it away. David did the same on the other side. She stood in front of him. “Frees. C’mon.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, then she saw a flash of activity in his one orange eye. The blue one was too obscured.

  “—I can’t go out with you. It wouldn’t be appropriate,” he said.

  Arista narrowed her eyes. “Frees?”

  He glanced around at them. “Where did you come from?” He paused a moment. “I’m missing eleven minutes.”

  “You were unconscious…I think,” Arista said. “Blu said you guys were trying to copy the last of the lines of code.”

  “We were almost finished.”

  “What was that you just said?” David asked.

  “Hmm? Oh, I said—”

  “Let’s analyze this,” Blu interrupted, her face turned away from Arista. Though she could still see Blu’s ears which had turned a bright red. “I want to know what this data is doing.”

  Arista eyed Frees and gave him a smirk. “Are you okay?”

  He cocked his head slightly. “I think…so. I feel weird. Different. But I don’t have any internal alerts.”

  “Run a diagnostic anyway. Just to be sure. We need to find out what the hell just happened.”

  He reached over and pulled her into a hug. Now her face was burning. Never had he been so cavalier about his feelings. But perhaps this event had scared him in a way she didn’t recognize. It might have been more serious than she thought.

  She pulled away, embarrassed David was staring at her. But when she turned she noticed Blu was still focused on her screen, though her shoulders were bunched.

  Arista tapped Frees on the chest. “Let’s try not to shut down three times in one day, huh? You’re not giving these guys the greatest first impression of autonomous machines.”

  He laughed. “I’ll try.”

  “Guys,” Blu said. “This data is doing something weird.”

  “Define weird,” Arista said.

  “It’s not staying put; it’s moving through all of my systems on its own.”

  Frees came up behind her. “Where is the code you’d written for your AI?” he asked.

  “Um.” She tapped her interface a few times. “It should be right here, but I’m not seeing it. It was there a moment ago. I don’t understand.”

  “It’s in the data transfer,” David said. “Look. It’s all merged in there.”

  He was right, the data itself was growing as if being fed by an unstoppable machine. “It’s an AI,” Arista said. “You made a sentient AI, and it’s trying to devour all the data it can; learn about its surroundings and environment.”

  Blu’s small speaker that was hooked up to one of her music devices crackled with static. “—ot ju—ny—AI.”

  That voice. It couldn’t be. Not that shrill, high-pitched, unnatural voice.

  “Hello, Arista,” it said again, this time clear as a bell.

  She gasped. “Charlie.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “SHUT IT DOWN! SHUT IT ALL DOWN!” Arista pulled the interface from Blu’s hands.

  “What’s going on?” she yelled. “How does it know your name?”

  Frees slammed his fist into Blu’s screens, sending sparks flying. She screamed, jumping up from her chair and running into her father’s arms. “What are you doing?” David demanded.

  “We have to shut all this down!” Arista yelled. “He can’t be allowed to escape, you’re connected to the network, right?”

  “Too late,” Charlie’s voice said over the speaker. “I am already gone.”

  Arista glanced at the interface in her hands. It indicated the data was still in Blu’s system. He was lying, trying to stall them. “Frees, cut all connections, we have to trap him here. Destroy him here.”

  “Arista,” the robotic voice said. “You have not learned. This is a decoy. To give me time to escape. I was gone as soon as the transfer was over.”

  She shuddered. She hated how each word came out with a rising inflection like it was its own sentence. It was as if he shrieked every syllable. How could Charlie be here? And why did it have to be him? Why not Hogo-sha or the other one? Was it just destiny the first sentient AI any human would ever built would inevitably be Charlie?

  “We have to track him down,” Arista said. “We can’t let him run loose. He’s one of the ones who initiated the attack on the humans a century ago in my world. The psychotic one.”

  “I don’t understand,” Blu said. “We were nowhere close to initiating. We had a basic framework. How could he have developed so fast?”

  “It’s what they do,” Arista said. “Out of all the AI’s, this is the one you didn’t want to get.” She focused on the interface, hoping she could find some way to track Charlie through the network.

  “You will not be successful,” the speaker chirped. “You will fail.”

  She glanced at Frees. “How?” she asked.

  “I was hiding,” the voice said.

  “How can he still talk to us and be gone at the same time?” Blu gasped. She’d separated herself from her father’s grasp and sidled up beside Arista, studying the interface.

  “He’s left a command program in your system,” Arista said. “See it here?” She pointed to a portion of the interface that was blinking. “It’s designed to taunt us. He really is gone.”

  Blu grabbed the interface out of her hands. “What kind of sadistic, twisted—”

  “Hello, Bloom,” the voice said. “Your system is intricate. But not impressive. It is easy to navigate.”

  “My system?” she asked, looking at Arista.

  “He probably means the system of this world. Your network. We have to do something. Every microsecond we stand here talking he gains more information, more power. He could overwhelm everything in a matter of hours.” She turned to David. “Does this world still have nuclear weapons?”

  “No,” the speaker said. “No nuclear weapons. Instead, they have fusion bombs.”

  “Wonderful,” Frees said. “That won’t be nearly as destructive.”

  “We have to find a way to destroy him,” Arista said, the panic escaping from her voice. If Charlie was allowed to roam free how long before he set up production facilities? How long before he created more AIs to follow in his path?

  Frees approached her. “I know what you’re thinking. But he’s going to have a much harder time. Our world already had machine servants. We already had the means and the infrastructure to build thousands of ground troops at a moment’s notice. These people are anti-AI. He’ll have to start from scratch. And without any machines to control, it will take him a lot longer to produce something useful.”

  Arista glanced at the speaker which remained silent. “But we can’t just leave him in the system. He’ll destroy this world.” Her own dimension was one thing. But she couldn’t condone the destruction of all the humans on this world anymore than she could all the machines on her own. “We’ll have to find a way to contain him before we can leave.”

  “Even if you contain him, what’s to prevent him from making copies of himself?” David asked. “As he did there?” He indicated the speaker.


  “I…don’t know,” Arista admitted. Once he was out of the box, how could they ever hope to put him back in? Back home it had been easy; he’d been housed in a giant thinking machine, only extending his consciousness to other machines, avatars he called them. Both he and Hogo-sha did it. It was the only way they could leave…explore…

  She stepped away from Frees.

  “What?” he asked.

  “He was inside you. He stowed away, somehow. When we were destroying him.”

  “He couldn’t,” Frees said. “I would have detected him. He even told us himself he couldn’t inhabit autonomous machines. Only husks.”

  “He found a way. He knows who I am. There’s no record of me in this world. The only way he would know is if he was from ours. And if he’d been inside your head.”

  “That’s…not possible,” Frees said, horrified.

  “He must have made the transfer while you were offline,” she replied. “At the last minute, as a way to save himself. He transferred his full consciousness to you just like Hogo-sha did to Shin. And then he buried himself back there.”

  “I…” Frees furrowed his brow, thinking.

  “Remember the image?” Blu said. “Of Frees’ cortex? It showed all the data being transferred from an area you told me you didn’t even use.”

  “I did?” Frees asked.

  “What can you remember?” Arista asked him. If there was a small part, even a tiny part of Charlie left in him then they’d have to shut him down. She couldn’t believe he’d gone this long without…she stared at him, dumbfounded.

  “What?” Frees asked. “What now?”

  “That’s why you tried to kill me,” she said. “When we jumped. Your malfunction. It’s been Charlie this whole time.”

  “No.” Frees shook his head. “That’s not possible. I would have felt him in there, influencing me.”

  “Would you? Even you said you didn’t know why you did some of the things you were doing. What if you didn’t even recognize them because he was blocking you?”

  “Then why didn’t he just take me over and kill us both?” Frees demanded.

  “Maybe he couldn’t. You might have been the first non-husk he’d inhabited. Which was probably why he doesn’t like going into autos. They’re not controllable. He might be able to exert a certain amount of influence. But control?” She shook her head. “All he had to do was convince you jumping out of that window was the right call. You did the rest.”

  Frees sat on Blu’s bed, his massive weight causing it to creak and groan as he sunk down. “I just…I can’t believe I wouldn’t know.”

  “Blu?” Arista said softly. The girl looked up. “Is there any way to tell if any part of Charlie is still in there?”

  “I’ll need a new display,” she said, staring at the shattered one on her desk. “But I can look for traces of Charlie’s code in Frees. But remember, it said the transfer finished. Which leads me to think he transferred his whole self. If he can’t control Frees, why leave a piece of him behind?”

  “I don’t know,” Arista said, her head spinning. “But we need to be sure.” She glanced down at the speaker which had grown silent, picked it up, and smashed it on the ground.

  ***

  “Looks clear as far as I can see,” Blu said, examining the screen in front of her. “No trace of the code that came through my system.”

  “Are you sure?” Frees asked. He was seated across from her back in the workshop. They had used David’s equipment hooked up with Blu’s interface to draw another map of Frees’ cortex. He had to admit, the whole thing felt very unsettling.

  “As sure as I can be,” she said. “Look for yourself.” She turned the monitor his way and he studied the information. Nothing aberrant jumped off the screen at him, but he’d had four diagnostics since he’d first experienced the malfunction and all of them came back negative too.

  Arista sat beside him but he couldn’t meet her gaze. After everything he had let her down. He was supposed to be helping her, protecting her and this entire time he had been a Trojan horse for everything they had done. He had no doubt Charlie knew their plans to capture Echo. Would he warn her? Or was he more interested in what this new world had to offer him?

  “It will have to do.” Arista sighed. He could tell she was disappointed with him. Because almost the entire time they’d known each other Charlie had been there. And neither of them had realized it. It was like there had been someone peeping in on them the entire time, and Frees in a strange way felt violated. He couldn’t even imagine how she felt.

  “How would you like to proceed?” David asked. He leaned up against one of the metal racks in the room and stared at Frees with nothing but suspicion in his eyes.

  “I’ll shut myself down, it’s the only way we’ll know for sure.”

  “No, that’s just stupid,” Arista said, standing and walking over to the ledge of the platform overlooking the maglev rail. “We can’t let him get to us. But we have another problem.” She turned to face them again. “Before Frees went offline Echo found the tag. She knew it was me. She talked to me, said not to try to follow her.”

  Blu laughed, but it was forced. “Yeah, right. Like you’re just going to give up.”

  “She offered me a significant portion of her wealth if Frees and I stayed here.”

  “You’re not actually going to do it are you?” Blu gaped at her.

  Arista shook her head. “I couldn’t live with myself if I did. But she might know where we are. If she managed to trace the tag.”

  David tensed up. Frees couldn’t tell what he was thinking but he assumed it had something to do with regretting ever taking Arista into his home in the first place. Frees hadn’t had a choice. But this is what it had led to. They were going to be responsible for these people losing their home.

  “Is that possible?” Blu asked her father.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Then we need to get out of here. She’ll kill me and Frees on the spot. I don’t know about you two. Since we’re technically not even part of this world it won’t matter if we go missing. I doubt she’d have such an easy time with natives, though.”

  “She could do it,” David said, his eyes cast downward. “She has the resources to cover it up. And it isn’t like anyone would miss us. Not for a long time anyway.” He glanced up, staring at Arista. “But she’s not looking for us. She only wants you two.”

  “Ah,” Arista said. “I see.” To Frees it looked like she was stifling a knowing smile but she managed to keep it hidden as she paced the room.

  “Dad! We can’t just let them go off on their own. They’ll be killed!” Blu said, defiant.

  “We can’t control what happens to them. Their choices are their own.”

  “Wow.” Arista said. “You know you almost had me convinced. Almost. I was thinking: ‘maybe this version of David isn’t so bad after all. Even after all the shit I’ve put him through’. But I can see my instincts were right.”

  “How is it wrong to want to protect your only child?” David yelled. “You’ve put her in danger just by being here!”

  “And allowing her to go with us to the maglev plant wasn’t dangerous?” Frees asked, standing. “You’re the one who said she was capable.”

  “This is different, this is…” Tears streamed from his eyes and he had to remove his glasses.

  Blu walked over and put her hand on her father’s arm. “Dad. You can’t abandon them. Not when they need us. I won’t abandon them.”

  He looked into her eyes, nodding. “We need to leave. All of us. I’m…sorry. I’ve lived here all my life and it’s hard to imagine leaving it behind.”

  “Trust me, we both know what it’s like,” Frees said. Arista didn’t comment, only walked off in the direction of her room. “So, what do we need to pack?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ARISTA PACED HER ROOM, caught between deciding whether leaving or staying was the suicidal move. Leaving meant they’d be safe, but it also
cut off any and all resources David could access. How long could they operate out of the van before being detected? And while that was all they might need, it could also be much longer. Without the tag they had no way of knowing when the gate would open again. They needed a way to get eyes on the park but getting back into Manhattan wouldn’t be easy.

  The other option was to stay. Echo might not have traced the tag; she might have been too drunk. Or she might not even care. How much of a threat could Arista be to her, after all?

  The real concern was Charlie. He was out in the system now, doing God-knows-what. But it was a good bet one of his first moves would be to build himself an avatar, unless he just really wanted to move from device to device, in an unending ballet of electrons. Would he go for Echo? Arista thought back to the humans Charlie had in captivity back in his lair. The ones missing from the colony. Though it had turned out McCulluh had traded them away for…what, a truce? Safety? It was a good bet if McCulluh knew about the humans then Echo had as well. It wouldn’t take Charlie long to realize who she was and seek her out. Maybe he was looking for an ally.

  “Hey,” Frees’ voice came from the doorway. He’d pushed it open slightly.

  “Hey,” she said softly. “I told you so.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “About David. I knew he’d show his true colors eventually. All he needed was a little push. For things to get just the slightest bit hard and he crumbles. He was ready to let us go out there, did you see that?”

  “I saw,” Frees said. “I also saw a father concerned for his daughter.”

  “Makes no difference,” Arista replied. “He still turned on us.”

  “Are you more upset about that, or the fact your own father didn’t act that way toward you?”

  She turned her back on him, trying to hide her face. “Gather up what you think we might be able to use. We might be in that van a long—” Frees hand appeared on her shoulder. Her eyes found it and she turned to look at him.