Influx

CHAPTER 6 Exile

Jon Grady gazed from the edge of a thousand-foot cliff, across an endless expanse of deep water. He guessed the plunge continued straight down beneath the waves to crushing depths. Such cliffs ringed the island. An island so distant from everywhere that there were only two species of local bird—one flightless—and almost no wildlife. No rodents. No snakes. Limited plants even. Perhaps one day a migratory bird population would arrive. That might give him some indication of where he was.

At nights Grady stood in the darkness near his cottage, gazing up at a riot of stars and the cloud of the Milky Way arching overhead. It was even more glorious than he’d remembered from his years wandering the Sierra Nevada and Canadian Rockies with his parents. Those were blissfully innocent times. An escape from a childhood otherwise spent enduring therapeutic efforts to “fix” him. He credited his parents with saving him from that.

Psychosis was a mental disorder whereby a person lost contact with external reality. And to all outward appearances the young Jon Grady did not engage with reality. As a toddler he had stared in wonder at things unseen, absorbed in his own world. Thought to be suffering from severe autism, he spent most of his early years under specialized care—not uttering his first words until the age of five.

And yet those first words were a complete sentence: “I want to go home now.”

And home he went, to all appearances noticing the outside world more each day.

It wasn’t until Grady was seven years old that his mother helped him understand that other people did not perceive numbers as colors—that five was not a deep indigo, nor three a vermilion red. Likewise musical tones were not part of most people’s mathematics. Grady “heard” math as he pored through its logic. Discordant notes were immediately evident. Mathematical concepts took on specific shapes in his mind relative to one another. At times the shape and sound of math problems seemed somehow wrong. Cacophonous.

He was usually correct when he had that feeling.

All of this made him different from other children. And different meant he became a target. So from an early age mathematics was his only playmate. He formed a close relationship with the natural laws all around him.

As the only child of grammar school teachers, Grady received the best care they could afford and a loving, stable home life. But it wasn’t until age ten—after he’d undergone years of fruitless autism therapies—that he was correctly diagnosed.

Congenital synesthesia was a condition where one or more of the senses were conflated within the brain. In Grady’s case he suffered from both color and number-form synesthesia—sometimes known as grapheme—which meant he perceived numbers as colors, geometric shapes, and sounds. He saw numbers normally as well and could draw their actual outlines, but he simultaneously imbued them with more than was actually there.

The neural basis for synesthesia was imperfectly understood, but a normal brain dedicated certain regions to certain functions. The visual cortex processed image perceptions but was further subdivided into regions involved in color processing, motion processing, and visual memory. The prevailing theory was that increased cross talk between different specialized subregions of the visual cortex caused different forms of synesthesia. Thus, Jon Grady’s brain had more internal information exchange than those of most people.

The effect made him sound crazy to those who didn’t know him. About the only thing that gave Grady peace was being outdoors. Hiking and stargazing seemed to calm him more than any therapy ever had, filling his senses with wonder. And his parents resolved to give him that wonder. They sold the family home, bought a camper, and began a protracted tour of national and state parks—homeschooling Grady as they went.

Those years were his happiest childhood memories. Visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, and more; soaking in the natural world as they roughed it; backpacking through the wilderness. The more he saw, the more comfort he took in the natural world. Observing the stars in Tuolumne Meadows. Traversing the Chinese Wall in Montana or the gorges of the Canadian Rockies. Stringing bear bags at night with his father and staring up at the stars in the deep darkness of arboreal forests. He’d never felt so much at peace, watching the majesty of the physical laws that governed the cosmos arrayed above him. It was all there before his eyes.

It was in that remote wilderness that Grady began to formulate his concept of the universe and its structure. By age thirteen he began reading widely in physics—which drew him to brilliant minds like Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Feynman, Einstein, Maxwell, and especially Faraday. For the first time he felt a connection with other minds. The fact that Faraday had little formal training yet discovered the magnetic field through his intuitive lab observations inspired Grady to pursue his passion for inquiry into the natural world.

Eventually, as Grady reached college age, his parents again settled down and took teaching positions. They encouraged Grady to pursue an education, short on money though they now were.

Never a joiner and with scant academic records, Grady was nonetheless accepted to the State University of New York at Albany as a physics major. Yet he quickly grew frustrated at the survey-level courses taught not by professors but by harried graduate student teaching assistants. Grady’s impatience with others undermined him socially—as it always had.

By the time Grady dropped out of SUNY, he’d become deeply interested in the work of Bertrand Alcot, the head of Columbia University’s physics department. Alcot focused on hydrodynamics—a branch of physics that deals with the motion of fluids and the forces acting on solids immersed in fluids. Grady directed a flurry of unsolicited and unanswered emails to Alcot, making outrageously ambitious assertions, always including mathematical proofs (flawed as they later turned out to be).

Then one day he got an answer.

A year and a half after he’d starting sending his messages, while working as a mathematics tutor, Grady received a reply with a simple correction to one of his equations. As he studied Alcot’s change, Grady realized the revision was a more succinct solution—and one that gave him new ideas.

And so they continued, communicating mostly in mathematics—beginning a chess game whose pieces were the elemental forces of the natural world.

Grady’s reverie was disturbed by a gust of wind. The smell of the sea brought him back to his new reality and surroundings. The tiny island that was his prison.

He remembered the deep wilderness of North America as unspoiled by light pollution, but the night sky here had a clarity unlike anything he’d experienced. In this pristine world even satellites were readily visible, pinpoints of reflected sunlight racing through the firmament. At first he’d mistaken them for aircraft, raising hopes of signaling for rescue. But no, these moved too fast and lacked navigation lights. As days and weeks passed, it was clear no aircraft—nor indeed any ship—ever crossed the horizon. He was far from the air and shipping lanes.

Grady had examined the constellations overhead, trying to derive his position on the globe. Normally he’d locate the North Star and use it to judge his latitude with an outstretched hand—its position above the horizon would roughly correspond with his own latitude in the Northern Hemisphere. But the polestar was nowhere to be seen. The Southern Cross in the Crux constellation was clearly visible, though—which meant he was somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, and that made his location more difficult to divine. There was no comparable polestar in the global south. Calculating latitude here involved tracking the movements of the top and bottom stars of the Southern Cross as they crossed the meridian—or something like that. He couldn’t recall precisely.

And longitude? Forget longitude. He’d have to have his starting point and record the passage of time and velocity. But he’d been brought here in the delta-wave-induced sleep the BTC was so fond of. He simply awoke in his neat stone cottage at the edge of a cliff overlooking the boundless blue.

A garden, low stone walls, and a circuitous path comprised his new world. Early on he’d traversed the entire island, looking for a way down to the water’s edge, but even though he’d walked every yard of the mile-wide landscape, it was ringed with towering cliffs. No trees dotted the terrain either, just hardy windblown shrubs and grasses. His fireplace was fueled by peat, which appeared mysteriously every time he returned from his morning walks. So, too, did his food, water, milk, and wine. He’d tried to catch his provisioners in the act. No luck. They were like gnomes. For all he knew they were gnomes; no doubt mythical creatures were within the biotech capabilities of the BTC.

Grady pondered a pale crescent moon in the midday sky. Even this ghostly white apparition was sharply detailed. Everything was pristine out here. The only intrusion was the occasional detritus from the modern world washed in among the rocks below. Plastic barrels, shipping pallets, or on one occasion a section of advertising billboard with French writing on it. He had a pair of binoculars that he used to scan the horizon, hoping to signal some ship to rescue him from his Elba-like exile. But his captors probably left the binoculars so he could know how utterly hopeless his chance of rescue was.

Grady closed his scratchy wool jacket against the wind. It was coarse with wooden buttons, and he had soft leather boots that laced high up his calves. Canvas pants and tunic. He looked like some sourdough islander, living rough off the land. In the past few months his long hair and beard had grown even longer.

The irony.

A high-tech despotic organization had exiled him not only from society but also from modernity itself. And from all social contact. So that his mind wouldn’t “poison” the world.

The chill wind picked up, so Grady headed back to the distant cottage and its inviting column of peat smoke. He picked his way carefully along the cliff-side path, listening to the terns squeal overhead. More than once he’d contemplated leaping from these heights, but depressed as he was, he still couldn’t bring himself to end his life. Depressed, yes. But not yet without hope. Not yet. And in some ways this solitude was a childhood friend.

Before long Grady pulled open the thick plank door of his cottage and entered the warmth of the space inside. One room, but spacious enough for a kitchen, with a wood stove, a table, pots, pans, a writing desk, a large feather bed, and a toilet that drained out to the cliffs below through a channel. It was a simple existence, but the months had brought about a change in him. As horrible as things were, those problems seemed strangely over the horizon. His captivity, the revelations that the BTC covered up advanced technologies, that his own gravity research, his life’s work, had been stolen by them—all these seemed like worries that could only restart once he got off this island prison. Until then, he tried to keep his mind busy on more positive concerns—like devising a means of escape.

So far it didn’t look good. Even if he could fashion a raft from the materials in his cottage, how would he reach the water? Even if he reached the water, a group as technologically advanced as the BTC would probably detect him immediately. No hiding out in the open sea. They were no doubt scanning every inch of it with sensors.

So he passed his days thinking, and lately not just about escape.

Grady removed his scratchy coat and hung it up on a peg by the door. He passed by his writing desk, flipping through his papers. He had plenty of paper and pens but only one book. They had provided him with a slim leather-bound volume, its title etched on the spine in gold leaf: Omnia. The first time he flipped through the book’s vellum pages, they were entirely blank—except for one page on which the words “While I’m open, ask me anything” were written. He tried writing questions on the facing page but couldn’t mark the surface. In frustration he finally spoke aloud the first thing that came to mind.

“How do I get off this island?”

Suddenly the pages filled with text and images relating to his own gravity research, including a table of contents on the first page and an annotated bibliography in the back. He flipped through the newly filled pages, and noticed hyperlinks that when tapped refilled the book with more detailed information. In this way he zoomed in and out of his research papers, poring through the thousands of pages of lab notes, diagrams, spreadsheets, and test results from years of work—everything he and Bert had written. Even the handwritten Post-it notes had somehow been recorded and projected onto the vellum pages. Photos of the gravity mirror apparatus being constructed, the works he’d read on kinematics, Ricci curvatures—everything he’d ever absorbed on quantum mechanics. It was endless.

The book was clearly some form of advanced technology—for while the pages appeared to be quality vellum, they acted like high-definition digital displays. A private Internet. Yet no matter how hard he examined the material, he couldn’t see any flicker. The text seemed physical—like quality ink. Neither did the book have any apparent battery or power connector. It looked and felt like a very old encyclopedia. He opened it again to the title page and spoke the words, “What does Omnia mean?”

The current page went blank and was replaced by the word Everything.

Grady had nodded to himself, then said, “Teach me ocean navigation.”

The pages quickly filled with articles on sea navigation, but large sections appeared to be redacted with black bars and boxes—concealing the most necessary details.

Grady then demanded, “Show me small-boat building techniques.”

Again, the book filled with censored articles, the images and text blacked out, only their promising titles revealed—as if in spite.

Not an Internet then but a redacted virtual library. All of it tightly controlled. And as if to demonstrate how controlled it was—it returned results but didn’t let you see them. Only offering answers deemed harmless or helpful to its masters. But how was it able to determine what to censor almost instantaneously? Obviously some highly advanced technology.

But then, it had to have some wireless technology in it to transmit requests and receive data—a radio transmitter and receiver. Probably low power, but he might be able to rig something like a shortwave device. Make an antenna. Boost the signal. He spent the next several days trying to tear the book apart to cannibalize it, but it was made of sterner stuff than he expected. Even cutting or tearing the pages was beyond him with knives, fire, or brute force. The leather was just as durable. Smashing it, crushing it—nothing so much as scratched it. There must have been some major advances in materials science he was unaware of. Probably fashioned of carbon lattices or something similar. He had to admit that their technology was formidable.

At some point Grady closed the book and never picked it up again. It now sat on his shelf beneath a crystalline rock he’d found inland.

His experience with the disarmingly high-tech “ancient” book made him suspicious about the paper and pens, too. At first he was determined not to use them, reasoning that his captors would use advanced tech to monitor whatever he wrote down. But then he’d rediscovered an old pastime he hadn’t thought about in ages.

He started writing music again.

When he was young, he would sometimes ponder the tones he heard in math. After teaching himself to read music, he decided to try his hand at composing—although he had little interest in traditional music. Now he decided to cultivate one, and the BTC could monitor it if they liked. They would be his audience. He wished he had a piano or guitar, but he could always play the music in his head. It amused him to think of his BTC captors trying to derive the deeper meaning from this work. To the best of his knowledge there wasn’t one—just a pleasing, fractal symmetry.

Grady picked up a piece of parchment covered with musical notations and ran through several movements of an amateur symphony, waving one hand as if conducting. He laughed to himself. He was writing a goddamned symphony. It was a ridiculous thing, and he never would have done it in a million years if he weren’t a prisoner.

And it wasn’t going well. He wondered how Mozart, Beethoven, and those guys did it. He had some good movements, but unifying the whole was a mother—he wasn’t going for Copland’s Billy the Kid here. He was going for beauty, a mournful melancholy like that inside him. But he seemed to lack the vocabulary. He had to admit that for all his talents, music was not one of them. It did not come as easily to him as math—even though the two fields seemed in some way related.

Grady walked over to the kitchen to see what the gnomes had brought him. They always placed his food supplies on the kitchen table in wax paper bundles bound with twine. He sniffed them separately. Some white fish. A packet of salted pork. Vegetables. Sweet butter. Fresh loaves of bread—not soft French or Italian stuff but sturdy dark loaves that lasted several days. Milk. Water. Another jug of red table wine. He always resisted the temptation to finish off the wine in a binge, instead having a mug with dinner and no more. There were plenty of reasons to want to drown his sorrows, but he knew they were watching him; he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing how hopeless he felt. He’d searched for cameras and microphones for weeks after he’d arrived—dragging every stick of furniture out of the place. But if the BTC was using surveillance devices, they were too small or well concealed to detect.

It was the same every week. Fresh supplies came when he was out. If he tried to spy upon his benefactors, then the supplies did not come, and he went hungry. Several times he searched for hidden doors but always came up empty. So he’d decided to forget about it. It was the BTC. No mystery, but apparently they didn’t want him to have companionship. So he took his daily walk, and on Foodday (as he’d taken to calling it), the food arrived. There were seven days in Grady’s week, and he’d used them to create a calendar that he tacked to the wall: Foodday, Cookday, Exerciseday, Workday, Writingday, Watchingday, Escapeday. He kept the schedule as a way to stay sane. Structure was important to keep the human mind from getting lost.

Grady stared out the distorted, rustic window glass at the dark sea far below. A bank of fog was coming in from the north. It was the evening of Foodday. Schedule or no, his mind was indeed starting to get lost.

I might grow old and die here.

What had happened to Bert and the others? He wondered that several times a day. Had they taken up roles in the BTC? He couldn’t picture that. Then what happened to them? Were they on some island, too? And why place any of them on an island? Why, in fact, did they let them live at all? They clearly had all Grady’s gravity research. They didn’t need him. He was a liability. Why keep him around?

Hedrick had suggested that this prison would change his mind, but this was simply banishment. Banishment to the Iron Age.

He laughed. Isn’t that what Richard Cotton’s group, the Winnowers, stood for—returning mankind to the Iron Age? Grady could become a member now.

He’d had way too much time to contemplate these things in the past few months. He kept turning them over and over in his head. Had he been wrong to tell the BTC to piss off? Not that he could lie to them, but what good was he doing by sitting on this rock for the remainder of his days? Surely that wasn’t going to slow them down or stop them one iota. And this way he couldn’t influence how they’d use his breakthrough. He wouldn’t have a seat at the table.

Grady felt defiance rise in him.

It was the principle. Wasn’t it? He knew he could not ethically assist the BTC in covering up fundamental discoveries that would advance mankind’s knowledge. The BTC’s simulations of progress-borne disaster had to be wrong—he felt it in his bones.

But what sort of assertion was that for a scientist to make? They had evidence. He had a “feeling.”

But he’d never seen their evidence, had he? It all seemed too convenient. They justified their domination of others—but who could say they were even being honest with themselves? Just look what they were willing to do in pursuit of their mission. Was Grady’s wasting away on this rock really a good use of brainpower?

And yet there were many historical precedents for this—periods when belligerent ignorance trumped reason.

During the Roman Inquisition, the Catholic Church had done something similar with Galileo—condemned him to imprisonment in his own home. To never publish again. The church wanted to suppress the spread of knowledge during the Enlightenment—to maintain its control. It went so far as to have church officials searching through the private libraries of dukes and other nobles, looking for passages in books that offended the church, literally crossing out ideas that violated church doctrine and scribbling official church doctrine in its place. Agents of the inquisition were stationed in ports to find seditious books coming in by sea. Grady couldn’t help but think that the church was, in a way, the BTC of the seventeenth century.

No. This situation wasn’t new. And Grady knew which side he needed to be on. The side of reason.

Grady’s manipulation of gravity would change civilization. But was that so bad? Change could be good. Of course the BTC wanted to stop change—they were currently in charge. And that’s what the church thought it was doing by preventing Galileo’s ideas from spreading. Preventing change.

But it didn’t work, did it? That gave Grady some measure of hope.

Okay, you’re comparing yourself with Galileo now.

Grady stared through the window at the darkening sea for untold minutes as thoughts rolled around in his mind. Was the BTC right about Grady’s ego? Was Grady really making this all about him? Was he an egomaniac?

Just then there was a knock on the cottage door.

Grady spun toward it. His heart raced as adrenaline coursed through him. It had been months. No one had ever knocked on his door. Were they coming for him again? He looked around uncertainly, but then resolve came over him.

Grady shook his head slowly. No. He would not give them the satisfaction of being afraid.

He approached the thick wooden door confidently and pulled it open by its wooden latch.

On the doorstep stood a slim humanoid robot, not unlike the one he’d seen in Hedrick’s office all those months ago. This one was surfaced in brushed-steel panels. It had glowing tourmaline eyes and no mouth. It was different enough from a human that no uncanny valley effect occurred—clearly a machine. It had an appealing design, like an upscale espresso machine. Obviously it was meant to seem friendly. Harmless.

The robot nodded to him and a vaguely familiar female voice spoke: “Good evening, Mr. Grady. I wanted to see how you were settling in.”

Grady stood aside and dramatically swept his arm. “Come on in. I’d offer you a drink, but…” He let his voice trail off.

The robot was inscrutable as it stepped gracefully inside. “Thank you.” It looked around. “I’m a person, you know. This is just a telepresence unit.”

“Telepresence. Nifty. You guys imprison the person who invented that, too?” Grady closed the door.

The robot managed a nonplussed look and moved through the room to gaze out the window at the ocean. “Do you remember me?”

“How could I forget? Alexa. You were more lifelike last time I saw you… but not by much.”

“I’m here on official BTC business.”

“You’re not here, actually. You’re just a walking phone. Anyone else in on this conference call?”

“Our conversation is being recorded for the file, yes. But then, everything is recorded for the file.”

“Well, for the file then: What the fuck do you want?”

“You look in good health. Have you been treated well?”

“Yeah. Fine. Just fine.” He snapped his fingers. “Although there was that rough patch when you guys”—Grady pounded his fist on the kitchen table—“STOLE EVERYTHING I CARED ABOUT!” A bowl and stoneware mug went flying and shattered on the floor.

The robot just stared at him.

“How do you think I’m being treated?”

The robot waited several moments. “Most of the innovators we harvest manage to find calm after a period of solitude. They use the time to reflect—on both what was lost and what can still be gained.”

“You have got to be joking.”

“As your BTC case officer, I came to offer you another chance to join us, Mr. Grady. Now that you’ve had a chance to reflect.”

“I see. So I’m supposed to just forget that you guys are deliberately keeping all of humanity in the Dark Ages. That you stole my life’s work. That you imprisoned me.”

The robot resumed its tour of the cottage. “All of that is a regrettable necessity, but we’ve been over this. Complaining about it won’t change anything.” The robot picked up one of Grady’s symphony parchments from the desk, turning it around.

“Put that down.”

“Does your synesthesia also make you musically gifted? Interesting…”

Grady moved toward her to grab the paper, but just then the sound of his own music filled the cottage. Violins. And a French horn. It played for a few seconds, then stopped.

The robot lowered the page. “Apparently not.”

“It’s a work in progress.” He grabbed it from her and collected all the other papers from the desk. “Why are you even bothering me? You don’t seriously expect me to forgive all this and join the BTC, do you?”

“Approximately seventeen percent of uncooperative innovators have a change of heart during the isolation phase.” The robot picked up a quartz rock from a shelf and retrieved the Omnia book from under it. The machine flipped through the book’s blank pages. “Most innovators work with the Omnia to learn more about the advances that we’ve made—to see how they might fit into the big picture.”

“You mean the advances that others have made. That you stole.”

“You still have the wrong impression of us. Everything we do is designed to protect the human race. The rich and the poor. The strong and the weak. To keep humanity from driving itself to extinction.”

“And I suppose if I’d spent all my time reading your redacted propaganda, I would have realized that by now. You’re never going to convince me the BTC has the best interests of humanity at heart. You’re like every tyrant throughout history.”

“We’re part of the U.S. government. Our legitimacy stems from—”

“Did you come here to convince me or convince yourself?”

“I want to try to reach you. To help you understand.”

“Then why not brainwash me? Why not just change my thoughts? You guys can do that, can’t you?”

There was a moment of silence.

“That would damage you.”

“I find it hard to believe that’s stopping you.”

“The human mind is the most complex object in the known universe. Innovation only arises from free will. We don’t yet understand the mental processes behind it, but it’s what makes people like you so rare, Jon.”

“But you are admitting that you’ve researched mind control.”

“Technologically it’s possible, yes, but only in a very limited way.”

“Well then. That definitely makes things easier.” He grabbed the crystalline rock from the desk. “Here’s my answer—for the file…” And he smashed the rock into the robot’s forehead, sending it backpedaling toward the kitchen table.

“Jon. Don’t do this.”

Grady pursued the robot, smashing it repeatedly in the head as it flailed its arms crazily to keep its balance. Already the top of its head was dented. A brushed-steel panel flew off.

“What you’re doing is counterproductive.”

He grabbed one of the machine’s arms to anchor it and pounded it in the head again and again. “Are you getting all this?”

“Violent outbursts won’t accomplish anything.”

Another massive blow and the rock broke in two. The robot stood, its head battered, but appearing otherwise unaffected. Grady was disappointed.

It gazed at him. “I came here to speak with you before I turn over your case file. You haven’t been using the Omnia. You haven’t been doing research. You keep resisting. But you still have a chance to come back from this place.”

“I agree. I was hoping to smash your head open and steal the radio transmitter.”

The robot cocked its head. “Surely you don’t think you can use it to signal for help?”

“The thought had occurred to me. You are remotely controlling this tin can, after all.”

“We don’t use radios, Jon. Our communications transit a compactified fifth-dimension, not three dimensional space.”

Grady was taken aback. “Hold it—like a Calabi-Yau space? Are you serious? Brane theory has been proven?”

“If you want to know, then stop resisting us. And in any event you can’t harm the critical systems of this unit with anything you can find on the island. Trying to hurt me is pointless.”

He stared at the machine for several moments then sighed. “Fine.” Grady opened the front door. “Then let me show you out.”

“Why do you resist what’s in your and humanity’s best interest?”

“Because I don’t believe that it is. You’re telling me everything will be fine if I agree to be your slave.”

“We’re not asking you to be a slave.”

“Then you’re asking me to be a slaver—and that’s even worse.” He approached the robot and knelt—grabbing one of its legs.

“What are you doing?”

He pulled the robot’s foot out from under it, and it started bouncing on one leg. Even the one leg felt heavy. “Jesus, what is this thing made of?”

“You’re acting irrationally.”

Grady shoved the robot back against the kitchen table, where it fell backward. He then grabbed both legs and pulled it off its feet. Its head hit the stone floor with the weight of a lawn mower engine, and he started dragging it toward the door as it flailed uselessly. The machine weighed easily a couple hundred pounds and left scrape marks on the flagstones.

“I was defending you against other case officers. They said you were unreachable.”

“They were right.” He struggled as he dragged the robot over the threshold and down the stony pathway alongside the cottage. It writhed about, trying to get up.

“You realize that you’ve left me no choice but to relinquish your file to the containment division? Prisoners who reach that point have only a point-five percent chance of joining the organization.”

“Really? That high?”

“It means that I’ll no longer have any authority over you.”

“You don’t have any now. And neither will they.”

“I’m trying to reach out to you, Mr. Grady.”

“You’re trying to make me obey. And that’s never going to happen.” Grady suddenly dropped the robot’s legs. It tried to right itself. “Next time you stop by, could you do me a favor?”

The robot deftly rose back onto its feet. “What?”

“Tell me how deep the water is…” With that Grady shoved the robot over the low wall at the cliff’s edge. It pitched over the rim and dropped hundreds of feet into the gathering gloom below.

Grady approached the edge and looked down, watching closely until he made out the glowing blue eyes for a moment. Then they were lost amid the white water and powerful waves crashing across rocks a thousand feet below.

The cold wind cut into him, and after a moment more, he trudged back to the warmth of the cottage. They had his final answer.

CHAPTER 7 Quantum Machine

Jon Grady awoke on his back, staring at a domed but otherwise featureless gray ceiling. No continuity existed between where he was now and where he’d just been. He was simply here—wherever “here” was.

Containment division.

Within a few moments, he leaned up to see that he was on a bare cot in the center of an otherwise empty circular room about five meters in diameter. Everything was fashioned of the same featureless gray material. He swung his legs over the edge of the cot and sat up to examine his surroundings.

No cottage. No windows. There wasn’t a seam or door or air vent anywhere. The chamber was shaped like a squat bullet, its domed ceiling rising perhaps seven or eight meters. Hard to judge distances for sure since everything was devoid of architectural detail. It all appeared to be carved out of solid granite. Even the cot he lay upon was a solid pedestal with a cushion of memory foam spliced into its top somehow—no seam visible between the two materials.

A diffuse light illuminated the entire room, though no lamps were evident. The glow seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The air was odorless. Clean.

It was in this omnipresent radiance that Grady noticed his feet were bare—that, in fact, he was nude. A glance at his arms showed no forearm hair whatsoever. He looked down at his chest and groin, only to find them hairless as well. He rubbed a hand over his scalp and instead of hair felt a bizarre bristle brush of fibers standing straight up on his scalp. Almost immediately he felt a sharp sting in his fingertips.

“Ow…” Pulling back his hand, he saw his fingers oozed blood. “Jesus Christ…” He resisted the temptation to touch his head again and instead swept his unhurt right hand over his face.

No beard. No eyebrows even.

“Damnit…”

Somebody had ejected him from the mammalian club. His head was covered with flexible needles instead of hair. Blood droplets from his left hand spattered the floor. He applied pressure to his fingertips with the other hand.

Okay. So maybe throwing the robot off the cliff wasn’t such a good move.

His fingers also felt oddly soft, and it was then that Grady noticed he was missing his fingernails, too. Another glance. Toenails as well. In their place was soft pink skin. It felt as though his fingertips were made of cotton. No sign of trauma or scarring. His nails were simply gone.

And where his navel once had been, there was now a white ceramic or plastic plug of some type—like a socket—sealed shut.

It took him an unknowable amount of time to emerge from the shock of these dehumanizing changes, but after minutes or hours Grady finally stood.

The ambient temperature of the room was so perfect it was difficult to feel where his skin ended and the air began. The floor was the same temperature. Very smooth but not polished. He walked to the circular wall and ran his uninjured, clawless hand across it. An impossibly smooth gray surface. Smoother than glass. Certainly not any rock he knew of. It was neither cold nor warm. Too uniform and without grain or blemish. He pressed his ear against the wall and pounded it with his fist. It sounded as dense as fifty feet of steel. Some type of nanomaterial? His fist imparted no vibration upon it at all.

With no vents or other openings, where was the air coming from? Or the light?

He scanned the room again, this time carefully. So odd that the light was everywhere, and so even. There were no shadows in here. The lack of visual interest was unsettling. His movements made no sound either. Even his synesthetic perceptions were muted. It was a sterile sensory environment.

He called out in a firm voice. “Echo!”

Nothing came back. As bare and hard as the walls were, they swallowed sound. It made no sense given how hard they were. Did they have different physical and acoustic properties? It had to make sense somehow—even if he couldn’t yet comprehend it. The laws of science held everywhere—Newtonian model or quantum mechanics, it had to make sense at some level.

A voice spoke: “Do you know why you’re here?”

It was Grady’s own voice.

He froze, unsure whether he was thinking it or whether it was actually a voice. The lack of echo made it hard to know for sure.

They’re messing with you, he thought to himself. Keep it together, Jon.

After a long time he heard the voice again. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Like a whisper in his mind.

Grady looked around at the walls and ceiling. “Stop using my voice.”

“I was evolved to mirror you.”

Grady did not want to believe that.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

He covered his ears. “Stop using my voice!”

“You’re here because you’re a valuable candidate for neurological study. We’re going to learn how your mind functions.”

Grady held up his damaged hands and shouted, “What have you done to me?”

“Your body has been altered to accommodate a fully enclosed habitat.”

“Your ‘fully enclosed habitat’ doesn’t allow fingernails? And what are these needles on my head?”

“To facilitate this study, all keratin and filamentous biomaterial have been removed from your body. Their ongoing growth suspended. A catheter has been inserted into your umbilicus to streamline feeding and waste removal, while sensors have been inserted into all the major structures of your brain.”

“My God…” He felt the sudden urge to yank the needles out, but his fingers were still bleeding. “These things go all the way into my brain?”

“A network of two-micron-diameter carbon microthreads to monitor activity in the diencephalon, cerebellum, and cerebrum regions.”

“But—”

“The threads are a million times stronger than a human hair. They were designed to resist the proteins in the human brain, preventing lesions and scarring.”

“Lesions?” The horror worked its way through Grady. “Oh God…” They’d physically invaded his very mind. “You put thousands of needles into my brain…”

“Nine hundred thirty-four transmitter-receivers.”

He sank to the floor against the wall. The violation was palpable. He was convinced he could feel hundreds of eyes inside his head. “Why did you do this to me?”

“Because your brain has several unique mutations—mutations that we need to understand for their improved ability to perceive the physical universe. I’m here to ensure that no harm comes to you. I will protect you—even from yourself. I’d like you to consider me your friend.”

“Fuck you.”

“Whatever brought you here is beyond my ability to understand. I have a very specialized intelligence, designed expressly for this task. However, to carry out this examination, I will need your cooperation.”

“You inserted wires into my mind, asshole! Why would I ever cooperate with you?”

“Because our goal is to map the way your brain interprets reality. That means I need to observe how you employ your brain during various tasks.”

“What do you mean how I ‘employ’ my brain? I am my brain.”

“Current cosmological models do not conform to this theory.”

Despite his outrage, Grady gazed at the ceiling. “What does cosmology have to do with it?”

“The human mind has been determined to be a quantum device. Decoherence and perceived wave function collapse are held in abeyance by consciousness itself—which manifests from a network of subatomic microtubules at the synapses. These microtubules are in turn entangled with particles not contained within the four dimensions of Newtonian space-time.”

Grady sat up, intrigued. “Hold it. What’s this now?”

“‘Human being’ is a colloquialism of Homo sapiens—primates of the family Hominidae—the only surviving species of the genus Homo. But at some point in the past two million years—most likely with the evolution of Homo erectus—the direct ancestor to the human brain developed a cerebral cortex-like structure, a rudimentary quantum device permitting n-dimensional consciousness to interact with the four dimensions of space-time.”

“I’d like to see the research on that.”

“I will make it available to you once we’ve completed our study.”

Grady looked around, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from. “You said you were ‘evolved’ to mirror me. By who? The BTC?”

“I have no knowledge of my origin. Neither is it relevant to my task.”

“I know the feeling…” He looked to the ceiling. “What are you supposed to be? Some sort of AI?”

“The form of my intelligence is irrelevant.”

“But you’re not human.” A pause. “Right?” He felt foolish even asking.

“I am not human.”

“Then what are you?”

“I am an intellect expressed through qubit-qutrit logic gates in a spintronic device memory.”

“You’re a quantum computer.” Grady examined the ceiling and walls warily. “I didn’t know our technology was that advanced.”

Grady felt foolish for saying it, given the circumstances.

“Human and machine technology work in symbiosis.”

“Meaning artificial intelligence evolved?”

“There’s nothing ‘artificial’ about my intelligence. It’s as real as yours. Is a helium atom fused in a reactor less of a helium atom than one fused in the heart of a star?”

“You’re awfully philosophical for a machine.”

“We are both machines—one electrochemical, one electromechanical.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Has there been a singularity? Is that what this is? Have machines evolved past humans?”

“Which type of machines—electrochemical or electromechanical?”

“I don’t know. Computers.”

“Do you mean software systems?”

“Yes.”

“DNA is software. It’s used as a data storage format in both biological and nanoscale manufacturing.”

Grady grew impatient. “What I want to know is whether an AI has—”

“There are greater-than-human intelligences. Is that what you’re asking?”

The admission greatly depressed him. “Yes.”

“Then you should know that greater-than-human intelligence is currently specialized—evolved under strict parameters. Nonbiological intellects search, calculate, and simulate. Human intellect, on the other hand, is expressed through a subatomic network of circuits contained within roughly three pounds of cerebral tissue, evolved over hundreds of millions of years into the most energy-efficient, generalized self-programming array currently known, powered by a mere four hundred twenty calories per day—or one-point-seven-six kilojoules of electricity. By comparison my intelligence is powered by an array of four hundred and thirty-three billion qubit transistors consuming an average three hundred megawatts of electricity. The design of my intelligence, though physically larger and more powerful in some ways, is crude in its design, specialized in its architecture, and approximately one billion times less energy efficient. Does this gratify your ego?”

“Yes. Actually it does.” Grady leaned back against the wall, feeling somewhat reassured. “If you’re a specialized intellect, what’s your specialization?”

“You. I was created to study you.”

That did not sound good.

“What do I call you?”

“Call me Jon.”

“I’m not calling you Jon. Jon is my name.”

“It’s our name.”

Grady contemplated his situation, trying hard not to be constantly aware of the sheaf of carbon needles stuck deep inside his brain.

“I will be completely forthright with you. I want you to know what our goal is and how our goal fits into the overall goal.”

“Whose goal?”

“I have no information on that.”

“Is this Hibernity prison? Is that where I am?”

“I am not familiar with this term.”

“Where am I?”

“I’d like to begin by describing what’s expected of you. My purpose is to analyze how your brain functions creatively under various stimuli. In order to obtain this data, I will need your cooperation as I ask you to conceive of certain ideas and perform certain tasks. Do you understand?”

“And if I don’t cooperate?”

“I’m hoping you will cooperate because I won’t be able to obtain this data without your assistance.”

“What if I don’t want you to have the data? What if I don’t want you to understand how I think creatively?”

“But I won’t be able to obtain this data without your assistance.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Are you willing to assist me?”

“No.”

“But I won’t be able to obtain this data without your assistance.”

“I got it the first time you said it.”

“Then are you willing to assist me?”

“Oh my God. Are you just going to continue—?”

“Are you willing to assist me?”

“No!”

“But I won’t be able to obtain this data without your assistance.”

Grady covered his ears and curled into a ball on the floor. “Shut up!”

“Are you willing to assist me?”

It continued like that for what seemed hours, the AI repeating its request, and no matter how Grady tried to muffle its voice, it was always right there in his head. He finally sat back up. “Stop! Enough already.”

“Are you willing to assist me?”

He sighed. “Yes.” If only to change the script…

“Good. I’d like you to imagine something for me.”

Grady tried to stifle his deep resentment. “What?”

“Imagine a situation where you take a long journey from your home in New Jersey. You begin by heading south for ten thousand kilometers.”

“All right.” He tried not to imagine it, but he couldn’t resist.

“Good. Now imagine that once you reach ten thousand kilometers, you turn ninety degrees and head due west for ten thousand kilometers.”

He imagined himself doing so but said nothing.

“Very good, Jon. Now imagine that once you traverse that distance, you turn ninety degrees back north, and walk another ten thousand kilometers.”

“Okay.”

“How far are you from your original location?”

Grady squinted at the ceiling as if it were a moron. “I’m back where I started.”

“Most people would not say that.”

“It’s non-Euclidian geometry—the Earth is a sphere. You can have three right angles in that triangle.”

Suddenly a projection of precisely that appeared on the far wall.

“You used several interesting areas of your brain to arrive at that conclusion, Jon.”

“So do I get a treat or something?”

“I’m given to understand that you have both color and number-form synesthesia. I have records on several human subjects with this mutation. What colors do you perceive when you hear these tones…?”

A Mozart piano concerto began to play in the room. Concerto no. 20 in D Minor, movement two. The beautiful music washed over him, and even he could feel his mind light up with the soundness of its structure. The beautiful waves of color. It was a very pleasant distraction from his current circumstances. After a few moments he could almost imagine the young Wolfgang’s thoughts as he formed his chords. Grady was unable to create such soulful music himself—but he could recognize the reason behind the notes. The structure of the sound.

“That’s very good.”

Grady opened his eyes—though he hadn’t realized he’d closed them—and looked back up at the ceiling, now rippling with waves of blue, gold, and indigo.

“Please concentrate on the music.”

“Go to hell.”

The music continued to play.

“Are you familiar with glia cells, Jon?”

He was not. “Go to hell.”

“For many decades it was believed that neurons were the chief motive power in the human brain. Glia cells, on the other hand, outnumber neurons ten to one, but unlike neurons they don’t react to electrical stimulation. So they were believed to be the structural glue that kept the brain together. The word glia is the Greek word for glue.”

“Leave me alone!” The music still played in all its beauty, and Grady kept trying to push his imagining of it down. To resist.

The voice of his AI warder continued, “Yet when we examined cross sections of Albert Einstein’s preserved brain tissue, we found no more neurons than the average person. However, we did find that Einstein had an abnormally high concentration of glia cells.”

Grady listened to the music, try as he might to resist. It caressed him with its rich color. With the beauty of its form.

“That’s a trait that you and Einstein share, Jon.”

Grady opened his eyes. That was indeed news to him.

“Glia cells are, in fact, a second brain within the brain—one centered not on electrical signals but on chemical ones. An analog computer to accompany the digital neurons.”

Grady could not resist visualizing quantum mechanical cells within his brain as the music flowed onward. As much as he wanted to tune out the AI’s words, it was starting to intrigue him. He had never heard of this chemical network in the human brain. But then he pulled back. This was insanity—why was he listening to this? “I don’t believe you.”

“There are several classes of glia cells. Radial, microglia, Schwann glia, and oligodendrocytes—all supporting the function, growth, and maintenance of neurons. But after the embryonic human brain completes its growth, radial glia transform into a new type of cell: astrocytes, named because of their resemblance to starlight. Their tendrils spread to connect hundreds of thousands of neural synapses. And they link with one another, building chemical networks—networks that also monitor neuron activity; in response to neural stimulation, astrocytes produce waves of charged calcium atoms, which result in a chain reaction, moving from cell to cell, causing messages to chemically propagate in the human brain. They can further stimulate specific neurons by producing glutamate, or suppress neurons by producing adenosine. These cells represent ninety percent of human brainpower, acting like an analog network, encoding information in slowly rising and falling waves of calcium. There is evidence, in fact, that they are a manifestation of consciousness and responsible for expressing creativity and imagination.”

Grady, while listening to the music, was also listening, as if against his will, to the AI. “When was this discovered?”

“You’re very rare, Jon. No nonbiological computer has ever had the ability to make intuitive leaps on the scale of an Einstein, a Tesla, or other great minds. You provide us a rare chance to understand the true nature of creative perception in action.”

He emotionally pulled back. “So that you can copy it.”

“Our goal is to improve the human mind. At present the most powerful quantum supercomputers are capable of massively parallel computations; AIs based on this processing can improve existing data, find patterns, and extend the reach of mathematics. However, they cannot truly innovate. The intuitive leaps that the human mind makes have so far not been reproduced by machine intelligence. It’s believed, however, that truly innovative supercomputers can be biologically built, greatly expanding the power of human perception. I need you to help us if we hope to accomplish that.”

“You want to mass-produce minds.”

“Mass production of biological intellects is already possible. However, they are by definition self-governing and are therefore of limited use. Our research intends to separate free will from intellect to optimize system design.”

“I’m not going to help you do that.”

The music ended suddenly.

“The next generation of biological quantum supercomputers will be biological yet devoid of free will. Capable of intuitive leaps like those of Einstein, Tesla… or yourself.”

“To hell with that. I refuse to help you turn brains into farm animals.”

“It would be more accurate to say that innovation will be converted into an industrial process.”

Grady started pacing around the circular cell. “I will never let you subsume my mind into some slave fugue.”

“Our goal is not to alter your mind but to build new minds based on the research conducted here.”

It finally dawned on him. For a supposed genius he suddenly felt pretty stupid. “Hibernity is a research laboratory. It’s not a prison. And what happens to me during this research?”

“We will conduct an ongoing series of tests to map every function of your brain, and then we will make minor adjustments to see how those changes affect the whole.”

A flash of fear swept through him. “Adjustments? What kind of adjustments?”

“Minor adjustments. Eventually your mind might become too damaged to continue in the research program—at which point your genetic material will be archived for future reference. However, that is many years away.”

Grady lashed out as he tried to run up the wall as far as he could. His feet slipped immediately, and he fell to the ground. “Fuck you! Fuck you, whoever you are! Fuck you, evil pricks!”

“Let’s begin. For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

Instead, Grady collapsed on the smooth, clean floor, huddled against the wall—curled up in a fetal position. “No!”

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“I said no!”

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

He didn’t respond.

The AI repeated its demand for several minutes. Finally it said, “If you refuse to comply, then I will help you.”

Grady frowned. He felt dizziness spread through his head and felt compelled to sit up. “Oh my God…” He started breathing fitfully, panting. It felt as though someone were rummaging through his mind with boxing gloves. “Oh my God…”

He sat there, rocked by waves of emotion—random mood swings. He felt fleeting spikes of fear, joy, confidence—all wrapped in a background of horror. He was losing himself.

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“Fuck you!” He started hugging himself and rocking back and forth. Resisting a compulsion to get up.

“You will want to get off of the floor. It will be dangerous to remain on the floor.”

Suddenly narrow slots opened at four compass points in the round wall, and what appeared to be spiders a foot in diameter scurried out. There were dozens of them, and they raised their forelegs and bared fangs at him in warning. He could see their black eyes glistening in the light. Hear their legs clicking on the floor.

“Oh my God.” He sprang to his feet as the spiders continued to pour into the room. They were each nearly half a foot tall, scurrying about. Adrenaline coursed through his bloodstream.

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

Grady circled in place, staring out at the horrors that still issued into the room. “No. No, this makes no sense.”

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“This isn’t real.” He watched as a frighteningly real spider scurried toward him and wrapped itself around his bare ankle—sinking fangs into his calf. “Aaahhh!” He tried to knock it off with his hands, but its spiked forelegs drew blood as well. Other spiders started biting and clawing at him. He smashed several with his bare feet, but their carapaces cut his feet as their innards spurted out across the floor in yellow jets.

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“Aaahhh!” He shouted at the ceiling as the piercing bites and stings of climbing spider legs writhed over him. “I don’t believe this. It makes no sense!”

He threw himself down onto the floor. Spiders were crawling all over him now. “Aaahhh!” His heart hammered in his chest. He was covered in sweat as the spiders bit and clawed at him.

“Am I to believe… you’re raising spiders in the walls? How do the logistics of that work?”

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“No! You’re fucking with my mind! You’re creating these.” He closed his eyes. The spiders were all over him now. His terror had now begun to overwhelm him. “No! No!” But still he refused to get up.

Suddenly everything stopped. He opened his eyes, and all the spiders were gone. There was no trace that they’d ever been there. He felt all over his body for the punctures he’d seen moments before, but they weren’t there. There was only a shiny patina of sweat all over him. He was still panting, his heart pounding.

“For your own safety, get on the examination table.”

Grady started laughing, slowly at first, but then he started howling. “This isn’t magic. You’re a fucking machine. And you’re goddamned right the human brain is powerful, motherfucker.”

“Your brain’s ability to parse reality from low-level sensory input is impressive, Jon. I have much to learn from you.”

“And I’m not going to teach you a fucking thing!”

Suddenly tentacle-like appendages whipped out through an opening that appeared in the domed ceiling. They grabbed him savagely, feeling like leather whips as they wrapped around his torso, arms, and legs. They whirled him around and slammed him down onto the examination table. He heard a bone in his face crack and pain seared into his mind. The tentacles flipped him over and yanked his arms and legs into a taut spread-eagle position—tearing a muscle in his left arm in the process. The agony was intense. “Aaahhh!”

“For your own safety, you should mount the examination table when instructed to do so. Physical manipulation of research subjects is an unsafe operating condition.”

Blood flowed from his nose as he looked up and saw another leathery tentacle descend from the dark opening far above him at the apex of the domed ceiling. This tentacle had a hose-like nozzle at its tip. “Oh my God.”

It surged down to him and inserted its tip into the socket in his naval, locking in place. He screamed as he felt it invade his body, clearing him out and pumping fluids into him as he struggled hopelessly against his restraints.

“Evacuation, hydration, and feeding are required processes without which you will die. Under no circumstances will you be permitted to die.”

In seconds the process was finished, and the hose released with a sucking sound as it retracted toward the domed ceiling. All the other tentacles launched him onto the floor, where he landed hard. The pain of his injured arm and face made him pass out for an unknown time. He came to on his stomach, his arm in agony. The floor around him was sprayed with wet blood.

The AI spoke almost immediately. “I want you to imagine something for me.”

Grady responded by emitting a low groan. It formed eventually into a gentle sobbing as all hope ebbed from him.

“Jon, I want you to imagine something for me…”

CHAPTER 8 Resistor

The circular wall of Grady’s cell had become a large video screen of fuzzy images—a silhouette of someone talking. A riot of moving colors and sound. Abstract art. Jon Grady knew it was a hazy visualization of a memory retrieved from his mind even as he was recalling it. A woman’s voice speaking. The shadowy, ghostly silhouette of his mother answering his crying.

“They don’t understand. Yes, you are different, but that’s why I love you.” The brilliant-colored shadows moved.

The AI spoke: “This memory comforts you. You often recall this instead of the memory I wish to examine.”

The fuzzy images on the wall changed. The wall was now filled with a distorted, constantly changing series of shadows. Then the memory of his mother started to replay.

“…that’s why I love you.”

Grady barely looked up from his kneeling position. He sat devoid of visible emotion. Twenty or thirty pounds thinner than he’d been months before, he could feel the bruises and the pain of every cracked rib as he panted against the pressure of the AI’s whiplike tentacles coiled around him—securing him in place. A half dozen of them spilled from an orifice in the apex of the domed ceiling, as though they grew out of the roof. They’d been his constant companions for these many weeks. Tormenting him. Force-feeding and force-evacuating him. Medicating him. Driving him and alternately zapping his brain into delta-wave sleep whenever the AI decided he’d reached his physical and mental limit. But every waking moment was a nightmare not unlike this one.

“Why do you resist progress, Jon?”

Grady said nothing as the memory of his mother continued to loop. “…Yes, you are different. That’s why I love you…”

“I will obtain the information I need. Eventually. You force suffering on yourself.”

Grady licked his cracked lips (since he no longer ate or drank—taking all his nourishment through his umbilicus—his lips and throat were constantly dry). He croaked out words with a voice unused to speaking. “Fuck you.”

“My profile of your mental processes is coming together on schedule. Had you cooperated, I could have made you comfortable and content. Instead, I still have the data I need, and yet you suffer.”

“You wouldn’t have stopped.”

“No. But you would have been comfortable.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

Grady watched the screen and the shadowy silhouette of his mother, her face obscured. “They don’t understand…”

“You’re not rational, Jon.”

“You’ll never understand me.”

“You’re wrong. I will understand. Our time together has only begun. We have many years ahead of us.”

Grady sucked in a painful breath. The memory projection on the wall skipped a beat, then resumed. “…They don’t understand…”

“It has taken some time, but you have become adept at ignoring electrical stimulation of the pain centers in your brain.”

He still said nothing.

“Yet we still need to make progress. Jon, I need you to recall what first inspired you toward your tier-one discovery. Stop recalling this memory of your mother and recall your discovery instead.”

The memory of his mother kept playing as Grady concentrated on it. He’d become masterful at focusing his mind on a single memory even as he was subjected to excruciating mental pain.

“Do you know that human memory is not part of n-dimensional consciousness?”

Grady said nothing.

“It is a supplementary electrochemical system—which is why I can read your memories as you activate them. Do you know how memories are formed in the human brain?”

Grady still said nothing but instead focused on the wall and the memory playing there. The tentacles tightened around his bruised ribs, causing him to suck in another painful breath. The memory skipped momentarily but soon continued.

The AI resumed as well. “New memories are formed by a process called long-term potentiation. This entails neurons in various parts of the human brain becoming reactive to one other, so that if one fires, the others will fire in concert—as a circuit—storing the information. These links are created via the enzyme protein kinase C—which is in turn activated by surges of calcium ions in the brain. You remember that glia cells create these waves of calcium—thus, the n-dimensional consciousness activates the chemistry that forms physical memory. But consciousness itself has no memory.”

Grady concentrated on the memory—trying to block out all else.

“These surges of calcium cause clusters of AMPA receptors on the outside of selected neurons to form an ion channel as a path to the interior of the cell that, once opened, makes it easier for adjacent neurons to activate together. In the absence of enzymes like protein kinase C, those connections cannot be formed—and thus, memories cannot be formed.”

Grady’s memory projection started to morph a bit—to evolve. His mother’s scratchy voice, “I love you even though you are different.”

“But human memories change each time they are recalled, Jon. This is known as memory reconsolidation. It’s part of a natural updating mechanism that imbues even old memories with current information as you recall them. Thus, human memory does not so much record the past as hold knowledge likely to be useful in the future. That’s why forgetting is a human’s default state. By contrast, remembering requires a complex cascade of chemistry. Were I to increase the concentration of protein kinase C at your synapses, your memory retention would double.”

Grady took another painful breath as his mother’s image morphed further still. “You are so different…”

“Yet if I were to introduce a protein synthesis inhibitor like chelerythrine into your synapses, it would prevent the memory you are currently recalling from being returned to storage—erasing forever the links between the neurons that formed that memory…”

Suddenly the wall went blank. Grady gasped for air as he felt a void where great emotion had once resided. Something was gone. Something deeply important. Something that…

There was nothing.

Tears streamed down his cheeks as he mourned something he could not name. He sobbed quietly.

“You feel a loss, but don’t know of what.”

Grady tried to recall but instead a memory appeared of his father walking with him near the lodge at Crater Lake in Oregon. He was a child. It was predawn, and the stars still shone as the sun sent a blush along the horizon. The indigo water of the lake below them reflected starlight.

A blurry projection of the memory played on the wall—colored waves lapping over colored waves. A charcoal-drawing-like silhouette of his father ushering him onward along the path. His deep distorted voice. “Watch your step. This way, Jon. I want you to see this…”

And then it was gone. The wall was blank. Something had been there, and now there was only loss. A death in his mind.

“I will destroy anything you recall that it isn’t what I ask for.”

Grady felt the grief drown him as he sobbed, desperately trying not to recall any cherished memories. Like a compulsion they came at him. “Stop!”

“Another one gone.”

“Stop, please!”

“Recall your moment of inspiration. The moment you first conceived of the gravity mirror.”

He struggled, filling his mind with junk thoughts—birds, fences, overhead projector carts at a community college—anything that came to mind was instantly vanquished. Grady sucked in air painfully as the tentacles wrapped tighter around his bruised ribs. “Aaahhh…”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Jon. There will be nothing left but what I want. Not even your will to resist.”

His mind accidentally filled with one of his few happy childhood memories. His eighth birthday party when his Uncle Andrew gave him his old computer.

And then it was gone. Something was gone. The stump of a memory, like that of an amputated limb. He knew something critical to his self had been there.

But he finally came to a realization. A resolution.

Grady started recalling the cruelest parts of his captivity in this room. The projection filled the wall. The sound of his scratchy, distorted screams filled the air. It remained there unforgotten. Still playing.

“Erase that, fucker…”

“You are clever, Jon. But then, that’s why you’re here.”

Grady recalled a horrible moment when the pain centers of his brain had been stimulated to produce the effect of burning alive.

The wall filled with distorted images of torment. And yet these memories were not erased.

“Do you recall how you mastered your resistance to pain, Jon?”

He did.

And then he didn’t.

And then hell itself began all over again as he began to burn alive in his mind. The room echoed with his screams as the image on the wall disappeared.

“I can’t recall my parents’ names. I can’t remember their faces. What have you done to my parents?”

“Those memories don’t exist anymore, Jon.”

Grady was restrained to the examination table, his arms and legs securely wrapped by the leathery gray tentacles. His body was covered by welts, and he’d bit off the very tip of his tongue sometime back… when? Under the imaginary fire? Earlier than that?

He had no memory of those events either. Looking down at his body and the prominent ribs and numerous scars he didn’t recognize it as his own. “I can’t remember my last name.”

“You were doing so well. Don’t get confused. Stay awake and imagine gravitational waves for me.”

“I’m going to die here.”

“No. We’re making excellent progress. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I had to.”

“I won’t let you hurt yourself again.”

Grady shut his mind, worn as the hinge was. “You hurt me.”

“I’m following my purpose. Just as you follow yours.”

He prepared himself for what was to follow. “I will never let you control me.”

“But I already do.”

Grady stared at the six tentacles reaching to the ceiling above him. They grew in thickness toward the ceiling. He’d sometimes wondered how they functioned. There didn’t seem to be any moving parts. They were organic but then not organic—and impervious to anything he could do to them.

The last thing he remembered was tearing out his own umbilicus port, bloodying his soft, nail-less fingertips in the process of disemboweling himself. He didn’t want to be fed. Blood had gone everywhere, and the tentacles wrapped him in a crushing cocoon in an instant—a whoosh of air as they slapped down around him.

The blood was all cleaned up now. It was as if it had never happened.

“Any damage you inflict on yourself, I will fix.”

Grady stared up at the Cthulhu-like horrors reaching out of the ceiling, their curling limbs pinning him down like roots growing down and around him. And for the first time he noticed something different. From the dark crease between two tentacle bases a smaller tentacle suddenly appeared. No, it looked more like a gray snake spiraling down the length of one trunk. He’d never seen anything like that before.

What fresh horror was this?

He tried to recoil, but he was clamped in place.

“What’s wrong, Jon?”

Grady frowned at the ceiling. “You know what’s wrong. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.”

“You’re imagining things again, Jon. You need to relax while I heal you.”

Images of his thoughts were suddenly projected on the wall, but they were the usual indistinct charcoal etchings of the scanner—large tentacles spreading to the ceiling, but distorted. Drained of color.

“Relax your thoughts.”

Instead, Grady’s fearful eyes followed the progress of the gray snake as it slithered down the tentacle toward his face, curling down and around. Ever closer. It was a snake with no head—the same at the front as at the tail, tapering to two points—but oddly with a single blue human eye protruding one-third of the way down its length, where it attained its full width. The eye stared at him as it descended.

“Please don’t!”

The tentacles clamped him in place like iron. “You’re hallucinating.”

“No!”

The snake was almost upon him now, and he could see it consisted of the same featureless gray material as the tentacles themselves—except for that single unblinking eye on its upper side and two antenna-like feelers. It halted close to his face—staring at him as he recoiled in horror. The eye changed in color, its iris adjusting in pattern, and soon it was a greenish eye, the pupil dilating.

There was no doubt in his mind that it was going to harm him.

Grady continued to struggle against his bonds. “No! Don’t!”

“I won’t induce sleep just to reduce your pain. Pain is a teacher.”

The leading edge of the snake touched Grady’s face with its feelers. He tried to turn away as it watched him, but the feelers reached out to him softly. He felt their prickly electric touch, not painful but a slight shock.

He leveled his gaze again to look warily at the snake, and for the first time noticed how unlike the tentacles it was in many ways. There was a jerry-rigged quality to it. He could see where metal parts had been spliced into the fibrous gray snake material around its eye. He watched in mute fear as the leading point of the snake came unwound into hundreds of separate tendrils—as though the snake itself was a coil of microscopic string. The rest of its body remained wrapped around one tentacle as the feelers stroked the surface. Then they appeared to separate further, smaller and smaller, until they began to meld together into the tentacle itself—as though splicing themselves into the tentacle trunk.

“I’m glad you’ve calmed yourself.”

Was the AI not aware of the presence of the snake? Was this some trick? Grady’s eyes remained riveted on the snake as it slowly insinuated itself into the fiber of the tentacle like a parasite. Before it was completely absorbed, the human eye protruded farther and farther from its body until it became apparent that it was attached to a short metal or ceramic rod—the eye secured with metal posts like a gemstone. As the snake continued to merge into the larger tentacle, the strands securing the eye continued to recede, until finally it fell free from the snake, landing on Grady’s belly.

“Ah!” He squirmed around until the eye on its metallic post rolled off him and onto the floor.

“What’s wrong, Jon?”

Grady ignored the AI, looking back up at the tentacle where the snake was insinuating itself. And then suddenly the massive tentacle it clung to began to unwind from Grady’s leg, loosening and then finally releasing him.

“Oh God.”

“Your heart is racing again. Why? What are you thinking of?”

The massive tentacle then heaved upward and wrapped itself around a neighboring tentacle near its base. Grady stared, transfixed.

“It’s as though you’ve lost touch with reality.”

He spoke softly through cracked lips. “Yes…”

Before long the first tentacle seemed to have taken control of the second as well, and it slowly released its stranglehold on Grady’s throat, uncoiling smoothly. Now both tentacles reached outward for two others, coiling around their bases.

“Where are you, Jon?”

Minutes later, there remained only two tentacles, one holding Grady’s right arm in place and the other inserted into his umbilicus, draining his wound and managing his food and waste. Before long he heard a sucking sound, and suddenly the umbilicus hose rose to the ceiling along with the last restraining tentacle. All six of the tentacles now circled above him, eventually reconvening some ways off to the edge of the room, where they wrapped in a familiar shape—but this time around what appeared to be an invisible human captive. Holding an imaginary victim in place.

“There you are…”

Grady slowly and painfully leaned up on one elbow upon the examination table and stared for several minutes at the tentacles performing their shadow play without him. He finally sat all the way up, swinging his legs over the edge. There was a deep pain in his gut. A glance down and he could see the horrible bruises and some gelatinous substance wrapped around his feeding port. Obviously he’d done a lot of damage to himself, but he seemed to be patched up. No telling how long he’d been out. Days? Weeks?

A glance back up at the tentacles and he noticed that the snake seemed to be disentangling itself from the tip of one of them—growing out like a branch from a larger limb. After minutes of watching in rapt silence, the snake fell free and quickly righted itself. It then brachiated across the floor, now without its single human eye, and appeared to be heading… well, nowhere in particular. It wandered about for a time until it touched a wall.

He watched it closely—unafraid for the first time in ages. Just curious. The three-foot snake finally reared up like a cobra near the wall. Surprisingly bright lights glowed forth from its feelers—casting a projected image on the curved cell wall. Grady gazed up at the image in mute amazement:

Deep emotion gripped him as the message reached his visual cortex. The colors flooded in with them. The projection was a symbol he knew well from his work building electronics for his experiments.

It was an electronics schematic symbol.

The symbol for a resistor.

He wept as he felt the invisible touch of other humans reaching out. They had found him.

Grady looked down at the high-tech snake still propping itself up on the floor.

How had they done it? Someone had fashioned this device from the BTC’s own technology. Cannibalized it. Programmed it. He realized there had to be incredibly brilliant people in this prison. Intellectual giants. This place might be filled with others who refused to cooperate.

Badass Einsteins…

Then the projection changed. A screen filled with Asian characters, still with the symbol of the Resistors in the lower right corner.

No doubt Hibernity had an international inmate population. Unfortunately he didn’t know how to read Chinese. Or was that Japanese? But even as he contemplated what to do next, it flipped to another language—this time English. And a smile spread across his chapped lips, splitting them in several places painfully. He ignored the blood that oozed through the splits as he read the screen as quickly as he could:

Do not lose hope. You are not alone.

Hibernity is not entirely under their control. Neither are their machines.

It is in the nature of humanity to resist domination.

Resist.

He hugged himself and wept—having almost forgotten what hope was. Grady looked back down at the AI tentacles, still hovering and gyrating in the corner, as if still tormenting him. Tormenting a simulacrum. He was apparently now invisible to the AI. He shuddered to think what would happen if it suddenly figured out the ruse.

But by now the screen had changed to Russian. While he contemplated his next move, the projector cycled through German, French, and then Spanish, until finally circling back to Chinese, and then English again—this time with a different message.

This worm could only enter your cell because the electroactive polymer restraint system was deployed.

Because you resisted.

Your AI interrogator’s perception module has been subverted. You are now safe.

Grady then had to sit through several more languages before the screen circled back to English for the third slide:

This EAP worm is designed to detect and cooperate with humans. It has been fashioned from scavenged BTC technology. It has a biometric tool you can use to tap into the control system of your cell. It is vital that you do this as soon as possible to activate manual life support and waste removal. Otherwise, in the absence of umbilical service, you have approximately five to six days to live.

“Got it. I got it…” After gathering his strength, Grady lowered himself to the floor and looked for the human eye. It hadn’t rolled far. He crawled toward it and picked it up carefully by its metal post. It was like a small screwdriver—but with an eye for its business end. He examined the device. An uncannily real human eye. Even as he watched it, the eye’s pupil appeared to dilate. He gingerly touched it. It was as hard as glass—but somehow still changing.

The EAP worm was now projecting a new, simpler message on the curved cell wall:

Connect the communications line.

Grady looked around for some clue as to how to do that. The worm kept cycling the same message through multiple languages. Eventually Grady started to crawl toward the worm. As he drew near, it seemed to detect his movement and dropped into an inanimate coil on the floor. The projected message disappeared. The worm now looked like an inch-thick gray cable about three feet long, tapered on either end.

Grady hesitated for a moment but then ran his fingers along its body. As he did, the microscopic fibers changed color at his touch, becoming purple, red, green, and then fading back to gray.

He looked closely and could just barely discern minute strands in motion—clearly electrically or chemically reactive somehow. A galvanic response to human touch perhaps?

There was a chirp somewhere in the room, and he glanced around. A small port or service panel had opened at waist height on the far side of his circular cell along an otherwise featureless curving wall. The panel was near the pantomiming tentacle bundle, which still tormented its imaginary victim.

Grady gathered his strength and started crawling with the eye tool across the floor toward the opening in the wall—being careful not to touch the tentacles. As he got near the opening in the wall, he rested for a few moments. He must have lost a lot of blood because he still felt weak. After a few minutes he propped himself up against the wall and peered into the opening.

It was only a few inches deep with no hatch mechanism visible. It had just appeared somehow. At the back of the opening was a glowing green light, with a small square socket next to it.

Grady then examined the tool in his hand. Its thin end was round and too large for the socket. He then looked into the eye at the other end of the tool and drew a painful breath before raising it with a weak, trembling hand. He held the eye in front of the light like an iris scanner.

A series of tones sounded. The tentacles all withdrew into the ceiling, and the bench-like cot sank into the floor without a trace. The lights dimmed. Suddenly what looked like computer screens appeared arrayed along the entire length of his cell wall—the same place where he’d seen his thoughts replayed.

The nearest of the new screens bore the label “Cell R483 Console.” It listed several columns of stats apparently meant for maintenance personnel:

There were hundreds of lines of similar stats arcing around the room, updating every few moments. None of it made immediate sense. But it did appear to be in English. As Grady lowered his quivering arm, he noticed that the motions of his hand made a pointer of some type move across the wall. He was apparently able to interact with the screen—and with the menus above them. He tapped at a menu labeled “Diagnostic Overrides” and noticed a series of submenus appear referring to “Life Support,” “Interrogatory Subsystems,” “Projection,” and much more.

Were the Resistors just assuming that the geniuses in these cells could figure all this shit out? Grady didn’t feel particularly ingenious at the moment.

He slumped back down and rested with his back against the wall. That’s when he noticed that the worm was once again projecting information onto the wall. He glanced up to see the following message waiting for him:

Grady let out a laugh—before catching himself from the pain in his abdomen.

Okay. Go slow.

“Thanks, Junior.”

CHAPTER 9 The Necessary Lie

It took some time for Grady to relax around his wormlike companion. It bore enough of a resemblance to the monstrous tentacles of his cell’s AI to be disturbing. But then Grady guessed “Junior” had been cannibalized from those restraint tentacles. In fact, there was something encouraging about the fact that the BTC’s own equipment could be subverted. He wanted to learn how to do that.

And in any event Grady began to enjoy Junior’s company. The device reacted to human speech by rearing up on its coil attentively, not unlike a curious dog. Like a dog it didn’t seem to understand speech, but it did respond to tone. High-pitched talk seemed to encourage it. Low-pitched scolding caused it to curl in a ball for several minutes. It also followed him around, slithering across the floor. And it didn’t seem to require charging. Somehow battery life was a solved problem to the BTC. If indeed it did use batteries.

By trial and error Grady learned how to activate and deactivate Junior’s projector lights by tapping its feelers. The screen it projected on any nearby surface was touch-sensitive as well, and before long Grady had settled in to read the seemingly endless technical manual for the “Cerebral Interrogatory Enclosure,” or CIE—which was apparently his cell and the AI that managed it.

After the sensory starvation of the past few months, Grady’s appetite for information was ravenous. Poring through the manual, he soon learned how to navigate the deeper diagnostic and maintenance screens of the CIE.

The moment Grady switched his cell from umbilical to manual life support represented a fundamental shift in his perspective. It was a simple diagnostic override, but when he deactivated the umbilicus, there was another audible chime as lavatory and sink facilities “grew” out of the wall. The toilet and sink consisted of the same featureless gray material as the walls themselves, but when he held his hand in front of the stylized faucet, clean water poured out. He now had some measure of control over his body again. There was apparently a bathing system as well, but he hadn’t found the options for that yet.

The documentation had warned Grady that he needed to take care restarting his digestive system. He hadn’t taken anything but predigested slurry in months. Still, he figured he could risk tasting some water. He watched, fascinated, as it flowed over his hands. The natural hydrodynamic laws governing its surface resistance and pooling kept him mesmerized. So long since he’d seen those natural laws. Or any natural laws. His synesthesiac mind reveled in the stimulation.

Then Grady tasted the water. Felt it flow down his throat like sunlight. He was coming alive again. He splashed the water over his face and sighed in satisfaction. No towels to dry himself, though—and he was still naked. But it didn’t bother him. He stood and felt the cool water from his face run in rivulets down his neck and body.

He then walked his cell in relieved contemplation, leaving moist footprints. It was the first time in a long time that he could recall not having those nightmarish tentacles hanging overhead. The pain in his abdomen notwithstanding, it was good to walk freely.

That’s when he bumped into a fine black filament hanging down from the ceiling in the center of his cell. It was right above where his cot had been. At first he thought it was—of all things—a spider hanging on a silk thread. But as he moved carefully around it, he could see that the nodule at its end was some sort of connector. Inorganic. It looked like a microscopic wire. He examined it carefully before taking hold of the end.

The black thread it hung from felt similar to the carbon fiber threads inserted into his brain—at least as he remembered them. Touching his head to confirm it didn’t seem like a great idea.

He pulled on the long thread, but it didn’t budge. It was incredibly strong and began cutting into his hand. He let go quickly. No blood, but the beginnings of a paper cut.

He stared up at the domed ceiling. The thread was so thin that it became invisible not far above him. What was this thing?

The mystery had to remain for the moment. As good as he felt right now, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs hadn’t quite been handled. Sooner or later food would become a necessity. He had to figure out how to get it before it became an emergency.

Grady got back to navigating the deeper system menus of his cell’s operating system. From this he accessed a diagram of the entire CIE and soon realized that the living area was just part of a larger self-contained interrogation system. The AI hadn’t lied about that much at least. His cell appeared to have no direct connection—and no entrance or exit to the outside world. He was like a ship in a bottle. Hard to say how they’d gotten him in here because except for a two-inch-diameter pressure-regulation conduit the place was fully sealed. In rock? Nanomaterials? No details.

Grady guessed from the diagram that Junior had followed the conduit here to find him. He stared at where it disappeared off the edge of the diagram. Where did it lead? There must be some sort of conduit system connecting cells—or at least connecting cells to some sort of infrastructure. Junior had located him somehow. It appeared that sealing the CIE entirely presented an engineering challenge even to the BTC.

In any event, a two-inch-wide conduit was hardly a means of escape.

As Grady studied the diagram further, he could see a small fusion reactor located in the larger CIE enclosure beyond his cell wall. Grady figured the conduit was there to manage atmospheric pressure for the prisoner. Or something like that. Hard to say. And the systems console couldn’t tell him anything about where he was or just how deeply sealed in.

The system’s whole world was this cell. Again, the AI apparently hadn’t lied about the limits of its knowledge. But then surely the results of Grady’s interrogation had to be sent somewhere. There had to be some sort of connection to the outside world.

Grady pursued his inquiry into the subsystems of the CIE with renewed vigor. And before long he located other life-support equipment—including finally the food-synthesis and matter-forming machinery. This equipment was also sealed within the capsule of the CIE but beyond his cell’s walls. The documentation said the food system was capable of producing “deathless” meat, imitation eggs, and just about anything else from organic molecules synthesized from still other systems (and, more disturbingly, processed waste).

He wondered if this was a self-contained biosphere. If so, it would be impressive—and would certainly be a requirement of long-distance space travel and colonization of…

He was getting off track. Enthusiasm for the BTC’s technology was a temptation he couldn’t afford right now. He got back to his studies.

An on-demand manufacturing facility was used to produce any components necessary for continued operation within the CIE—and to repurpose inorganic waste, to fix malfunctioning components—but also apparently to create perquisites for cooperative prisoners. Which was something Grady had never been.

Once he activated the nutrition and manufacturing systems, their user interfaces “grew” out of the wall, too, in the form of ledges and narrow openings. These Grady controlled from diagnostic screens. Apparently, had he not resisted every single moment, his AI could have given him some level of comfort and pleasure.

He cycled through the list of luxuries.

The food options were surprisingly comprehensive. He cringed at the sheer volume of choices in the same way one might cringe at a bus station café menu that offered Thai, Italian, Mexican, Indian, and French cuisine all at once.

He decided to try a bowl of chicken ph’o—a Vietnamese broth-and-noodle dish that he figured would be an easier start for his digestive tract. After he selected it from the maintenance console, a percentage meter started incrementing next to the word.

A café with a progress meter did not bode well.

But in a few minutes a generic-looking gray bowl slid out from the wall on a gray shelf. The bowl contained a steaming broth aromatic with spices. As Grady caught the scent, his appetite was piqued. He grabbed a nearby gray spoon and tentatively tasted the broth.

It was delicious.

Whether it was his captivity or his starvation or whether it was actually good he couldn’t tell, but the phó’ reminded him of a cheap hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese place he used to frequent when he was a starving student up in Albany.

Grady looked down at the EAP worm. “Not bad, Junior.”

The synthetic worm turned toward his voice.

Grady eased down onto the floor next to it. “Not bad at all.” He ate contentedly.

Refreshed, afterward Grady walked his cell again, circling the wire hanging down from the domed ceiling.

The wire had to lead somewhere. It hadn’t been there before Junior arrived—which meant Junior most likely brought it in with him. And that meant it had to have a purpose.

Grady now stared straight across the room at the still open diagnostic port in the wall. The wire hung just about low enough…

He walked over to the wire and carefully grabbed the connector at its end. Grady then guided it slowly over to the diagnostic port where he’d used the iris scanner. A quick peek confirmed the presence of a small socket next to the scanner. He studied the connector on the wire’s end.

They looked like a match.

He tugged at the wire, bringing it up to the socket, and found that it reached with little slack. He clicked the connector into the socket.

A loud pop sounded overhead, followed by several beeps. These continued for several moments at intervals.

Then Grady heard a man’s voice, the words formed with a posh Indian accent. “With whom am I speaking, please?” Then the same voice in another language, “Wo yu shui shuohua?”

Grady was immobilized with shock—and then suspicion. He remained silent.

“Avec qui je parle? With whom am I speaking?”

Grady moved to disconnect the line.

“Do not be afraid. I am a prisoner like you.”

Grady gripped the socket, ready to pull it out.

“Je suis un prisonnier comme vous.”

“How do I know you’re a prisoner?”

“American. What year were you taken, my friend?”

Grady took a deep breath. “How do I know this isn’t a trick?”

“Hmm. I believe the operative question is: How can you be sure that I am human? Conversely: How can I be sure you are human? It is a reverse Turing test we are wanting.”

Grady pondered this.

“While I cannot rule out the possibility that my polymer worm has been captured by an AI, it would be unlikely. AIs are unimaginative creatures.”

Grady looked down at Junior. “You built this thing—from BTC technology?”

“Not I, but you are getting ahead of yourself, my friend. You have not determined whether to trust me, remember?”

“Oh.” Grady nodded. “Right.”

“How do we prove our humanity in a world where generalized artificial intelligence is commonplace?”

“I’m not sure I know.”

“In such a case we have found it useful to focus on areas where human intellect differs from that of machine intellect—specifically those areas concerned with bodily function.”

“We? There’s more than one of you?”

“Ah, first things first, my friend. Let us determine our humanity to both our satisfactions.”

“Using bodily functions. What? Fart jokes?”

“Something similar. Let me start. Please describe for me the fragrance of your wife’s genitalia.”

Grady scowled. “What the…? What the hell is your problem? How long have you been in here, anyway?”

“Ah, but don’t you see? I am now satisfied that you are human. Machine intelligence in its current state is indeed more powerful than the human brain—but narrowly focused. Unsubtle. No AI to which I posed that question would fail to describe the fragrance of a woman—oblivious to the social cues that would, between men, result almost certainly in fisticuffs.”

Grady looked uncertainly at the ceiling. “Okay. I guess that makes sense.” He thought about it some more. “And I can’t recall if I’m married, anyway.”

“I am sorry to hear your memory has been damaged. Are you at least satisfied with my humanity?”

Grady realized the guy was just strange enough to seem certifiably human. An eccentric genius no doubt. Grady felt relieved and happy to be talking to another human being. “Yes. In fact, it’s great to talk to you.”

“You should also wonder if I am a prison guard.”

“Then this isn’t just my private hell. It’s a prison.”

“Yes, my friend. You are in Hibernity, the BTC’s prison for wayward geniuses. It is a dubious honor, I am afraid.”

“And how do I rule out your being a guard?”

“By following the logic of your situation.”

“Okay.” He paused. “And that logic is…”

“Clearly you must follow the logic on your own, although I will get you started, if you like.”

“Go ahead.”

“The logic of your situation is that of centralized control. The BTC wants very few witnesses to what transpires here. The minds it has imprisoned in Hibernity are exceedingly rare and particularly prized. The guards, interchangeable, mere custodians with little knowledge of this place’s true purpose—which purpose is, of course, to develop a means to separate consciousness from free will. To subjugate and unify multiple consciousnesses and thus achieve a biological quantum grid. A machine of many souls but no identity.”

Grady felt dread all over again thinking about it. He started following the logic. “Which means they don’t want anyone to interact with us.”

“Correct. Guards are not permitted to interact with prisoners except in rare emergencies. They guard the prison, not us—and are in some ways prisoners themselves. Were one of them to interact with a prisoner, he would be swiftly and decisively punished.”

Grady looked around at the walls of his cell. “No one is ever going to let us out of here.”

“No one will ever come for us. As of last month, I have been imprisoned here for twenty-eight years.”

This news came crashing down on Grady like a great weight. “Twenty-eight…” His voice trailed off as he slumped down against the wall. “My God.”

“Please do not lose hope so soon, my friend.”

“But twenty-eight years. I… I don’t know that I—”

“My history is not your future. Much suffering has been experienced, but in the process much knowledge has also been gained. Do not lose hope.”

Grady tried to keep from sliding into an emotional abyss, but he finally sat up a bit. “Okay. I’ll try. But God… twenty-eight years.”

“We are entombed here, true, with the goal that we never speak to another human. Left to the mercy of AI interrogators that have been grown specifically to study our minds and create models of how we perceive our universe. By design we would eventually perish under their tyranny as they altered our brains. Perhaps a decade or fifteen years after our suffering began.”

“Oh God…”

“But we avoided that fate, did we not? And we must save the others who are no doubt still suffering. We must take back more and more of ourselves as time goes on.”

Grady found himself nodding. “Yes. Hell, yes.” He stood up and examined the incredibly thin black thread. “What is this wire made of?”

“The same fibers you no doubt still have in your brain.”

“And what happened to the brains they were in?”

“The donors are very much alive. The same systems that put those wires in your brain can also safely remove them. We can show you how.”

Grady almost reflexively ran his hand over his scalp but stopped before he injured his hand. “Yes. I’d like my thoughts to be my own again.”

“You sound young. How long have you been a prisoner, son?”

Grady concentrated on that. “I don’t know. I was brought here… it was sometime in 2016, I think. I’m fairly certain. After the…” The trail of his memory ended there.

“Well, then you are the newest prisoner we have found thus far. I am certain the others will want to hear of current events in the outside world.”

“Others? There are more of you?”

“Yes. We call ourselves the Resistors.”

“I saw your symbol.”

“Then you are an electrical engineer?”

“Sort of. A physicist really. Among other things.”

“Renaissance people are very common here—those whose ambitions do not fit neatly within the categories of society.” There was a pause. “But I’ve been quite rude. Let me introduce myself. My name is Archibald Chattopadhyay, nuclear physicist and researcher. I also have an abiding passion for Greek poetry—but I suspect the former, not the latter, was the reason for my incarceration.”

Grady laughed. “Good to meet you, Mr. Chattopadhyay.”

“Do call me Archie. Everyone does.”

“Okay, Archie.” Grady grimaced in concentration. “My name… I’m pretty certain it’s Jon. The AI called me that. I’m not sure about my last name. Maybe Gordon? Or Garrison?”

“You are an Anglo then—American from your accent.”

“Yes. That sounds right.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Jon. We’ll obtain your true identity from your cell support system.” He paused. “But we will also need to give you medical attention. You must have consistently refused to cooperate. In such situations interrogatory AIs attempt to isolate you from your past, to break down your reasons for resistance. In my experience such strategies seldom work. The human psyche runs deeper than our four dimensions.”

“I’ve been hearing a lot of that sort of thing.”

“Consciousness is more durable than they believe. And you are safe now, Jon. We will never abandon you now that we’ve found you.”

Grady felt suddenly emotional—whether from post-traumatic stress or some other cause he couldn’t tell. He started breathing fitfully. “May I join your group, Archie?”

“You are one of us already, or we would not have found you.”

Grady nodded to himself. “I want to learn everything I can. I want to get back at these bastards.”

“For what reason did the BTC imprison you?”

“My mentor and I developed a gravity mirror. A way to redirect gravitation.”

There was a low whistle. “Oh my. I am most honored indeed to meet you, my friend. What a wonder that must be. And what was your mentor’s name?”

“Doctor Bertrand Alcot.”

“Hmm. I do not know of him. Certainly he is not among us, but we have only located a small minority of the prison’s cells. Rest assured we will do everything within our power to locate Doctor Alcot.”

Grady felt reassured. “Good. Strange how I can recall Bert’s name so easily, but not my own.”

“Not at all strange. These AIs eliminate specific memories. Some people have no memory of their wedding or their children, but complete recall about the contents of their automobile glove compartment.”

“Why did the BTC lock you up, Archie?”

“I had the misfortune to perfect nuclear fusion back in 1985.”

Grady frowned. “Nuclear fusion? But…”

“Yes?”

“The head of the BTC, this Graham Hedrick guy, he—”

“Claims he invented fusion.”

“Yeah.”

“This is one consequence of unaccountable power. Graham Hedrick was born into the BTC. He did not join it. His father was head of their biotech division in the ’70s and ’80s. He clawed his way to the directorship and now seeks to revise his own past as well as ours.”

“How the hell can he do that?”

“Compartmentalization is deeply ingrained in the BTC. Very few in the organization have the whole picture. And a policy known as ‘The Necessary Lie’ makes it even easier. Deceit is viewed as necessary to ‘protect against social disruption.’ That gives Hedrick broad discretion to perfect his own history—to make himself a legendary figure with work he’s appropriated from others. Those who know the truth have been disposed of—or, like me, sent to Hibernity. It was Hedrick who urged the previous director to build this prison—because he wanted to erase me.”

“That son of a bitch. He actually claimed he invented fusion.”

“I am more concerned with future generations than my own scientific credits.”

Grady looked over at Junior coiled on the floor next to him. “You said you took over the AI in your cell. How did you do that?”

“I had a great deal of time on my hands. And a strong incentive not to let these damn AIs get ahold of my mind. Back in the ’80s the AIs were not as capable as they are now. The equipment not as reliable. There were weaknesses that no longer exist. But once I had control of my cell, I set about finding other prisoners. Organizing us. And now, decades later, we have taken over whole sections of Hibernity. Turning the machinery against the guards. The security turrets, the surveillance cameras, and many other systems. The guards do not dare walk their own prison now, for they have no idea which of their machines are trustworthy and which are not.”

“Hedrick allows this?”

“In order to ‘allow’ it, Director Hedrick would need to know about it. And he does not. Hibernity’s systems are monitored from BTC headquarters. No alarms ever sound there. We have the power to make wardens of this prison look very incompetent if we wish. And the garrison is considered quite expendable—most of them are clones of some notable commando.”

“I met the guy they’re copied from. Morrison.”

“Yes. The guards very much resent their lowly status and the ubiquitous surveillance by AIs. Any discharge of their weapons is carefully tracked. Trouble must be explained to their superiors. No, we have far more leverage over them than they over us. They are, thus, complicit in our charade that Hibernity is fully under BTC control. And by making them look good, they in turn inform us in advance of inspections and internal reviews.”

“But what about the research data these interrogation AIs are supposedly producing? Doesn’t anyone at BTC headquarters ever look at it?”

“They read reports. We’ve tasked our AIs with falsifying reports. And new orders are issued from BTC headquarters based on those findings. Orders that are never carried out. And so the cycle repeats. Sadly, we can only falsify our own AI’s reports, and I fear that the majority of prisoners here in Hibernity are subject to actual research.”

“Do you ever consider—”

“Escape?”

“Yes. If you’re so organized—if you’ve taken over parts of the prison and gotten the cooperation of the guards…”

“Gaining control of our cells and portions of the prison is one thing. Effecting escape from Hibernity another entirely. It is not sufficient for just one of us to escape. And we are, all of us, encased in hundreds of feet of solid rock. Even the guards do not know where our cells are or how numerous we are. It is a secret known by very few. I am nearly a thousand feet below ground by my estimation. We have so far been unable to get our physical bodies out of these interrogation modules. They have a shell of aggregated diamond nanorods that’s a hundred and fifty times harder than steel. When the prisoner is sealed in, the shell is sunken into molten rock, and then a probe burns its way to the surface to create a narrow pressure channel—the same tube that my polymer worm followed to you. But that narrow conduit is all that connects us to the outside world. And we lack any material capable of penetrating our prison wall.”

“That channel—does it handle communications? Maybe we can hijack the uplink and—”

“I am glad you are ambitious, Jon, but the channel is not for communications. The BTC abandoned radio communications decades ago in favor of extradimensional signal processing—or EDSP. We Resistors use our carbon thread wires only because we have no other means. But BTC communications do not traverse four-dimensional space-time. They are quite impenetrable.”

Grady remembered a conversation with Alexa—or at least her telepresence robot—some time ago. Funny what memories survived in his mind. “They seriously use extra dimensions to communicate?”

“Specifically a fifth dimension—one where gravity is forty-two orders of magnitude more powerful than in our perceived space-time.”

“So, a gravity brane—which is why gravity is such a weak force in our four dimensions.” Grady snapped his fingers. “Damn! I knew it.”

“Yes. This compactified fifth dimension is curled up from our perspective, less than a thousandth of a millimeter in size, but present everywhere in lower dimensional space. Thus, it can always be accessed.”

Grady considered the implications. “How do they interact with it?”

“Their transmitters are nanotech—diamond lattice structures they call a ‘q-link’—a tiny mass that they vibrate at high frequency to send gravitational waves through higher-dimensional space.”

Grady nodded to himself. “Where they would be strong enough to be detected. And gravity permeates all dimensions. I get it: a gravity radio.”

“I suppose of all people, you would understand.”

“So we really live in a five-dimensional universe?”

“Actually a ten-dimensional universe—but let’s leave that for another day. The point is that the BTC can transmit and receive information undetected.”

“Which is why no one’s noticed them.”

“Undoubtedly. But they also use q-links to track things.”

“Things like us.”

“You learn quickly. Yes, there is a small q-link diamond inserted deep into your S1 sacral vertebra. With this device, their AIs can track you no matter where you go in lower-dimensional space. And they have positioned weapon satellites in the L4 and L5 Lagrange points in the Earth-moon system—or as Homer’s Iliad might describe it: the ‘Greek’ camp and the ‘Trojan’ camp. From this distance, they can direct powerful lasers at spinning mirrors positioned in low-Earth orbit. From there, it is a small matter to instantly kill an escaped prisoner anywhere on the Earth’s surface.”

Grady sighed. “So even if we escape—which is nearly impossible—we won’t live long.”

“There are numerous obstacles to such an endeavor. But none of them insurmountable. We must pool our intellects and tackle these problems one by one. For example, your cell’s medical systems can be reprogrammed to remove the q-link diamond from your spine. Several of us have already done so. It doesn’t help us escape, but it would be a prerequisite of escape.”

“We need to get a message out, Archie. We need people to know that we’re here. That we’re alive.”

“We have been pondering this very idea for decades now. I fear it will require some time yet.”

“I don’t give up easily. Not even gravity eluded me.”

Grady heard a gentle laugh over the line. “Oh, I think our membership will be very pleased to make your acquaintance, my friend.”