Chapter 5
United Nations Headquarters
New York City
January 11, 2121
2100 hours
Dr. Jaime Aquino had been Secretary-General for a little over three years and in all that time, he had never gotten accustomed to dealing with Evelyn Lumumba. The Security Affairs Commissioner, known as UNSAC, was hard to figure. She was Cameroonian by birth, a long time security specialist and celebrated author of many papers on security and law enforcement matters. She was also a warrior princess by background. Her own tribe was the fierce highlander Bamileke and Lumumba was reportedly descended from tribal royalty, from a long line of fong, or chiefs.
She was well over two meters in height, with a lean hard face and blazing eyes which bored right through you. She could bury an ukwambe spear in the flanks of a tiger at fifty meters and drink any male diplomat under the table in less than an hour.
She was hardline, hard-nosed and a real pain in the ass.
The vidcon had been set for 2100 hours and Aquino took it in his apartment on the thirty-fifth floor of the Secretariat building, overlooking the murk of New York’s East River. Aquino was clad in light blue pajamas sitting by a roaring fire with a goblet of wine in one hand and his tablet in the other. Lumumba’s face popped up in a window on the tablet right on time.
As usual, UNSAC didn’t waste words.
“I suppose you’ve seen the reports I sent you…all those riots and disturbances across Europe and Asia. Free Symborg. Dr. Aquino, there’s no way we can ever let that happen. Symborg’s a menace to everyone.”
Another window had just opened on Aquino’s tablet, another participant. It was General Jake Argo, CINCQUANT, patched in from Quantum Corps’ base at Table Top, Idaho, USA. Argo scowled like a bear just awakened from a long nap.
“I heard that, Mr. Secretary. I agree with the menace part. If we let Symborg loose now, he’ll just become a rallying point for Assimilationists all over the world.”
Aquino sipped at the wine. It tasted bitter. At least, his sensory bots returned a sensation response indicating “bitter.” The response was logged in Aquino’s main processor and, in less than forty milliseconds, facial actuator bots received a series of commands to form a new expression, which Normals would interpret as an expression of disgust. Aquino’s lips formed a faint frown, which worked in coordination with cheek and eye muscles to amplify the visual response.
Aquino was an angel but this was not known to Lumumba and Argo. Resolution through the tablet’s camera wasn’t quite good enough and Aquino was careful to position himself so that the illusion was well-maintained.
“I’ve just been in conference with Kwan Keyser. You both know who he is?”
“The Bug Man,” sniffed Argo.
“Exactly,” said Aquino. “Official Representative for Sanctuary-bound swarms in the General Assembly. There’s going to be a push for an up or down vote tomorrow, two days from now at the latest. Release Symborg from containment or keep him in a bottle. It’s my decision after that.”
Lumumba looked like a warrior princess. She had a way of angling her face so that she looked like a shovel blade with eyes. The braided tresses wound tightly on top of her head added to the effect.
“Symborg rallies are a threat to public order, Mr. Secretary and that’s all there is to it. He’s a threat to the political order in countries around the world.”
Argo agreed. “Even worse than that is the fact that’s he basically an angel. He can be in many places at the same time, destabilizing countries and cities everywhere. Pardon my French, Mr. Secretary, but this is loco. Insane. We have to keep the bastard bottled up, forever. Even better, we should just zap the SOB and be done with it.”
“And make him a martyr for all time?” Aquino got up and took the tablet with him to a large picture window, overlooking the river. Queens and Brooklyn blazed in nighttime glory across the water, while lifters and jets circling for approach into La Guardia filled the skies. “That’s just what I need. If the General Assembly votes to release, I’d better have a damn good reason not to.”
“Look,” said Lumumba, “it’s a public safety issue, plain and simple. There are reasonable people in the Assembly. They’ll understand it if you use that angle. Symborg and his Assimilationist sympathizers all want to tear down existing power structures. They don’t even try to hide it. The poorer countries are especially vulnerable: the Kenyas and the Tanzanias, the Bolivias and the Valencias. Anyplace that borders one of the Sanctuaries. Kwan Keyser knows this too. Oh, Symborg never calls for overthrowing governments explicitly in his speeches; he doesn’t have to. His followers will do it for him.”
Aquino considered that. Angels were the future of this world. He wanted to say that to these dinosaurs, to grab them by the throat, right through the tablet, and scream that in their faces. But there were appearances to maintain.
“You know, there’s something else to be debated here. If I order Symborg to be kept in containment, he’ll be treated by his followers as a sort of political prisoner, maybe even a martyr. Even absent from any stage, he’s a rallying point. A hell of a lot of atrocities are being done right now in his name. You want that on your consciences?”
Lumumba scoffed. “It’s like Pilate and Jesus Christ. We can’t get rid of him and we can’t let him go.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Argo interrupted. “A third way. Why can’t we just obliterate the bastard once and for all? Zap the dirtbag into atomic oblivion and be done with it. Turn that little quantum processor ticking away inside the master bot into atom fluff. Why can’t we do that?”
Aquino sometimes felt like he was talking to a sandbox full of three-year olds, trying to keep the dirt from flying. “Because he’s an angel. No one could be sure there isn’t a copy stored somewhere else, something that could easily replicate the original. That’s what angels do.” And thank goodness for that, he didn’t say.
“We tried to discredit him a decade ago,” Lumumba said. “We even tried to quarantine him with Config Zero when Kipwezia was formed. Didn’t work. I like the General’s idea.”
The argument went on for half an hour, but Jaime Aquino had already made up his mind. Kwan Keyser was right. Symborg and angels had as much right to exist as anybody. The original ANAD was surely a creation of human beings, particularly of Dr. Irwin Frost. But Rudolf Volk had already dug up fossil evidence that humans were descended, like all life forms more complex than a virus, from ancient robots a few billion years ago. So who created who? No, Aquino was sure, Symborg would be freed. It was just a matter of timing.
“I’ve made up my mind,” Aquino told them. “Let Symborg out of containment, General. I’ll issue the orders tomorrow morning and they’ll be uploaded to your commandnet by noon. I just need some time with the General Assembly…to get them ready.”
Before the arguments could erupt again, Aquino shut off debate and closed down the vid. He went back to his wing chair and set the tablet aside. Where was that decanter? By the fireplace. The Secretary-General poured himself a few fingers of the vodka.
I may not have a Normal’s taste buds, but Christ, this is good stuff. Maybe something in the config program….
Aquino sat back to admire the view out the picture window. Overhead, the moon was a sliver. Lifters continued circling La Guardia and Flushing Bay. And above all of it, the meteors kept coming, streaking like fiery lances across the nighttime sky.
After Aquino abruptly shut down the vidcon, Argo and Lumumba continued the conversation.
“I want a special surveillance team set up,” UNSAC was saying. “Call it Quantum Mirror. You set up this team and follow the Symborg master bot wherever he or it or they go. Stick to him like glue, General.”
Argo dispatched details of a surveillance plan he already worked up to Paris. Lumumba studied the TOE and pronounced herself satisfied. “Good work. I want
to be able to obliterate that bastard the instant he crosses the line. Which I don’t think will be long. Sabotage, treason, espionage, suborning the violent overthrow of lawfully elected governments, assisting in mass suicide…we’ve got a long list we can hang around his little nanobotic neck.”
“This has to be kept from the S-G,” Argo warned her. “I don’t trust him. We’re both grownups here…to go behind the Secretary-General’s back and deliberately undercut stated policy decisions…that’s insubordination at the very least. Under the Uniform Code, we could be shot for this.”
“It’s worth it,” Lumumba said, “if we save Humanity from itself in the process.”
United Nations Quantum Corps
Western Command Base
Table Top Mountain, Idaho
January 12, 2121
0230 hours
Inside the Level 1 Containment chamber, Symborg was already being prepped for release. Jake Argo watched the imager as something that looked like a bunch of grapes hanging from a trellis quivered with the slightest motion, like an infinitesimally tiny heart was beating inside. In a very real sense, that was true.
“That’s it?” Argo asked.
The tech operating the containment controls was Sergeant Kurt Karst. Karst wore a standard Quantum Corps buzzcut and the sour look of a CCE rating who didn’t much care for brass looking down his neck.
“That’s it, sir. He was sort of hibernating the last few days, but we woke him about 0000 hours…just a little zap from the electron gun was all it took. We’re running diagnostics right now, making sure everything’s in working order, just like you ordered.”
Argo sniffed. “I ordered it, Sergeant, but that doesn’t mean I like it. All the roads and highways around the Hill are jammed with people. You can even hear it from the edge of the mesa, all the way back to Haleyville and Buffalo Ridge: FREE SYMBORG NOW! They’re all about to get their wish. I hope they choke on it.”
“Pressure equalizing now, General,” said another tech, Sergeant Gaborik, working the system controls. “We’re feeding him this morning…new feedstock atoms hot off the griddle. Oxygens, calciums, phosphorus, nitrogen soufflé. He should be lapping it up like my neighbor’s dog.”
“Go through the final checklist for me,” Argo ordered.
“Yes, sir,” said Karst. He pulled up a display. “We’ve already done diagnostics on the core: main memory, algorithm libraries, buffers, config translator, processor…the works.”
“Just like a check-up,” Argo muttered. “What about power cells, actuators, that sort of thing?”
Gaborik chimed in. “Done, sir. Main mast structural integrity verified. Power cells primed and powered up. All effectors cycled and checked: pyridine probes, carbene grabbers, enzymatic knife, bond disrupters. Plus Symborg’s got gizmos and doodads we have no idea what they do…I think they’ll power up okay. Like these things—“ He pointed to some leaf-shaped effectors around the bot core’s midsection. “—could be grapplers, abstractors, who knows what they are.”
Argo shook his head. “My orders are to get the damn thing up and working and let it go. And that’s all I’m doing. Activation sequence?”
“Started five minutes before you came in, sir. We’ve laid in all triggers. Seeded the growth medium. Exercised a basic replication cycle. I’m not sure what else we can do. From what I can see, Symborg’s hale and hearty and ready to launch.”
“I’d like to zap the bejeezus out of the bastard right here and now,” Argo admitted. “But I’ve got my orders. Containment ready? Electron beam guns?”
“All ready, sir,” Karst told CINCQUANT.
“Very well. Execute the launch.”
Karst’s fingers flew over his keyboard. A gentle hiss could be heard in the chamber, as pressures were equalized across the boundary of the containment vault. Valves cycled open.
For the first few minutes, nothing happened. The imager showed the grapes wriggling and sliding off their trellis inside the tank. Nanometer by nanometer, the core of the master bot that was Symborg slid out of view and was gone.
“Outer doors coming open, General. We should be seeing something in a few moments.”
Seconds later, a faint shimmer could be seen in the air, like steam from a tea kettle, issuing out of the vault and into the air.
“Reading EMs going up. Acoustic returns now. Something’s coming out—“
As they watched, the faint shimmer grew slightly more solid, becoming by turns a mist, then a thicker fog, coruscating and flickering with pinpricks of light as the bot master core executed its basic replication algorithm and steadily built structure.
It was Gaborik who noticed the first outlines of a face.
Hovering like a djinn from Arabian Nights, the face materialized slowly, becoming at first eyes, then a nose, then lips and cheeks and ears, a ghostly radiance pulsating and swelling into view.
Argo checked the status of the electron beam guns just in case. One wrong move, mister and you’re atom fluff. Karst’s fingers hovered over the gun trigger on his console.
The transformation took only a few minutes, but when it was over, a ghostly half-formed face and shoulders leered down at them from the ceiling of the chamber. It was Symborg, a familiar public config…this time a light-skinned African warrior, with streaks of face ‘paint’ and bone jewelry in its ears and nose.
The face smiled down at them with bemused indifference.
Argo bent down right behind Gaborik and whispered in his ear. “Anything from our guest?”
Gaborik checked a small window on his display. “We’re talking right now, General. Got good quantum comms. OSCAR’s up and running.”
The Operational Surveillance Configuration Autonomous Robot had been seeded into the growth medium inside containment during the checkout. As anticipated, Symborg had taken up the bot as it replicated structure. Now, the tiny spy was part of the swarm that comprised Symborg.
Even as they watched, Symborg’s configs cycled through a dizzying variety of looks and shapes, as if the bot were exercising itself, trying on different images, something that Symborg had long been a master of.
The African warrior morphed slowly into a more primitive look, shifting and flowing and fluctuating into a near Paleolithic face, complete with heavy, bushy eyebrows, a pronounced forehead and massive jaw…a Neandertal appearance that Symborg occasionally used to drive home his ancient roots as a presumed ancestor of all humans.
The Neandertal was followed in steady succession by a sort of biblical prophet look, then an Islamic warrior and imam from the time of Muhammad, even a Buddha-like image came into view, as the bot cycled through all facial actuator configurations one after another.
“Creepy, if you ask me,” said Karst, who seemed mesmerized by the show.
“It’s what the scumbag uses to intimidate and awe his crowds,” Argo said. “He’s the perfect politician. The perfect celebrity. He can literally be all things to all people.”
Slowly, but steadily, the Symborg swarm drifted toward the hatch doors of the chamber. The doors were still shut and secured, but Argo snapped his fingers. Gaborik stabbed a button and the hatch swung open slowly on silent bearings.
The face, now back to its African warrior visage, paused at the hatch, hovering like a bad dream and leering down at the technicians, a faint smirk now unmistakable. The voice that issued from the swarm, focused acoustic signals generated by actuator motions commanded by the config driver, was tinny, hollow, multi-toned, like three people speaking at the same time, but slightly out of phase.
“I am all men,” came the whisper, barely audible, but all the more menacing for its hoarse timbre. “I am Everyman. And I will bring all who follow me back to the first days, back to the Beginning…the Central Entity will gather all into the mother swarm….”
The swarm began to slowly fade, disappearing into the air like smoke dispersing. The swarm was disassembling. T
he bot and its replicants dissipated and were quickly gone.
But not before OSCAR made his first report.
Karst snapped his fingers in appreciation. “Swarm centroid no longer inside containment. I’m reading fading EMs, fading spikes in all bands. Symborg has left the building. I’ve got just a faint trace now….”
“How about OSCAR?” asked Argo, moving to the hatch to see into the outer corridor.
Gaborik pumped a fist triumphantly. “Chatting away, sir. Jabbering on the command frequency, just like my mother-in-law.”
Argo saw nothing in the corridor but security staff, which had already moved to the sides of the hall, letting the now nearly invisible presence of the swarm in loose config pass by.
“Lieutenant, I’ll bet your mother-in-law never took a ride like this one.”
Operation Quantum Mirror was now officially underway.