Artificial Absolutes (Jane Colt Book 1) (36 page)

Chapter 21

Disappear Again

“F
reaking
bullies
!” Jane fired at
another gray drone launched from the Wiosper warship. Evidently, the authorities spotted the explosion by the Diashin coast and knew the fleeing Blue Tang was responsible. It seemed that even though the
ship
was untraceable, the cannon, which she’d forgotten to retract, was not.

After taking off, she’d gone for the gunner’s seat so
she
could be the one doing the shooting. She yanked the controls. The cannon twisted as a Betta swerved behind the ship. She squeezed the trigger. A bright purple blast narrowly missed its target.

“Dammit! Freaking Wiosper sons-of-bitches!” Jane aimed the cannon again and pulled the trigger repeatedly, firing far more times than was necessary to destroy the drone. “Take that, you little bugger!”

“Relax, Pony,” Devin said. “It’s just a drone.”

Jane kept her gaze on the tracker. “I know. I’m just sick of getting shot at! Wish we’d had this cannon the last few times. It’s making this whole running away business a helluva lot easier! Face it, bro,
my
black market Blue Tang is infinitely better than yours.”

“In my defense, I was only sixteen when I found that one.”

A drone barreled straight at the ship. Jane aimed the cannon and fired twice. She fell back against her seat as Devin flipped the ship to avoid crashing into the debris.

“Not holding back next time!” She sat up. “Hey, how come the Wiosper guys haven’t noticed their warship was hacked? The Bettas that attacked us on Shimshawhenn were identical to these jokers.”

“They probably think we did it.”

“That sucks.” Jane fired at a Betta. It kept coming, along with a second drone right behind it. She let loose another ridiculous volley of blasts and reduced them both to dust. “Take
that
!”

Jane wondered if she should worry about the inappropriate enjoyment she got out of dangerous situations. She noticed something of a pattern whenever she had to run: she’d first panic, then the rush would come, and the next thing she knew, she was having a blast while getting blasted at.

She targeted another drone. “I think I’m some kind of weird thrill seeker. This isn’t so bad!”

Her blasts missed. The ship pitched as the drone hit its side. Her head banged into the wall beside her seat.
Ow! Spoke too soon.

Devin veered the ship. “We’re almost at the tunnels.”

“Where to after that?” Jane asked.

“I guess we have to disappear again.”

“Wherever we end up, we’ve gotta find a way get rid of that freaking Pandora program. At least now we know why they can’t seem to figure out that Quasar’s central computer was hacked and all the forensics faked. But what the hell are we supposed to do? It’s not like we can
delete
it.”

“The Networld created her. Maybe they can find a way to destroy her.”

“Why do you keep referring to it as ‘her’? It’s a freaking
computer
.”

The revelation that the unseen enemy doing its best to destroy her life was a disembodied computer program left Jane with an empty sense of injustice. Her father had been shot and her brother nearly executed because of something without a face she could confront or a body she could see behind bars. Several soldiers just doing their jobs and numerous programmers who didn’t know what they were getting into—and possibly scores of others she’d never know about—had been slaughtered by a merciless phantom.

There’s no justice in this freaking universe.

And then there were the AIs…

“Jane!” Devin interrupted her ruminations.

Jane’s absentminded gunning failed to clear the path to the interstellar tunnels, which grew larger on the viewscreen. “Sorry!”

She focused on taking out the last few Bettas that stood in the way of escape. Once they were gone, she quickly retracted the cannon. “Whew! It’s too bad we couldn’t take Jim X up on his offer to let you hide out on his big fancy estate. Would’ve been nice to chill there instead of always running out to the Fringe. Lucky Riley.”

“Yeah. But we don’t want to be around when the authorities and the media descend.” Devin swiped the navigation chart, flipping through a directory of planets and floats.

Jane peered at the chart. “Can I pick where we go this time? Because the last Fringe float
you
took us to made Travan look like a freaking palace.”

“I was looking for weapons, not aesthetics.” Devin stopped swiping. “What do you have in mind?”

“Zim’ska Re.” Jane gave him a hopeful smile.
Please, bro? Pretty please?
“I know it’s scary and all, but I’ve always wanted to see it. We’d never be able to go as legit travelers, so why not hide out there as fugitives?”

Devin knit his eyebrows. “It’s a warzone. You think Uyfi Float was bad? At least it has some form of authority.”

Jane slumped in disappointment. “Ah, you’re right.”

A hint of a smile crept onto Devin’s face. “Then again, the lawlessness does make Zim’ska Re the ideal place to disappear.”

Jane straightened eagerly. “Yim Radel’s pretty safe. Hell, Quasar got its hands on a fish from Fuy Lae, so it’s gotta be okay. As long as we lie low and avoid Mor’sei and Nem, we should be all right.”

“I guess we’re going to Zim’ska Re.”

“Yes!” Jane pumped her fist.

Devin found Zim’ska Re’s information in the directory. He glanced over it and then steered the ship through an interstellar tunnel. Alarms rang. He looked down at the control screen, expression confused. “Take the controls. I need to check something in the engine room.” He flipped a switch to turn off the alarms, halted the ship, and got up.

Jane took his place with some apprehension. “What’s wrong?”

“Could be nothing.” He headed for the cockpit door.

Jane looked down at the status report on the control screen. No wonder he was concerned; it was blank.

Dammit! That’s what I get for buying off-brand. Well, at least it flies.

Devin left the engine room, relieved after finding that the alarms were due to a minor computer glitch. He stopped as he passed the living quarters.

Adam sat on the floor, leaning against the wall as he absentmindedly fiddled with a Via pendant. He’d barely spoken a word since finding out he was an AI. Devin wondered if he should be concerned.
Concerned about what? He’s mechanical.

Devin hadn’t been entirely surprised—unlike Riley, who’d shouted in shock until Jane yelled at him. The possibility that Adam was an AI had crossed Devin’s mind after he’d spoken with Kron. He’d dismissed the thought because Adam hadn’t been on that list of actives, and because it’d been clear the kid wasn’t the type to seek influence or control, unlike the others. Perhaps that was what “special case” had meant.

Sarah had been an AI the entire time. It made sense that Adam had been, too. The transmission fragment stating that he was “slated for replacement” must have been some kind of recall, and Pandora must have removed him from the list after deactivating him.

Devin lingered in the doorway. He reminded himself that any expressions of distress on Adam’s face meant nothing. Like Sarah, Adam was just a robot who could express emotions without experiencing them. Still, it was hard to help feeling bad for the kid—his movements were so realistic. Devin recalled Adam’s reaction to his discovery, how he’d trembled and kept his pleading eyes fixed on Jane.

“I didn’t know,” he’d repeated. “I swear. I’m so sorry…”

Jane, always the type to deny the hard truth, had been all too willing to believe the act. She’d put a hand on Adam’s arm and done her best to comfort him. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you’re synthetic or what. Hell, you could be a ghost with no body at all for all I care. We were friends before, and I’m still your friend now. Friends don’t abandon each other. You said that to me, and I won’t let a stupid thing like mechanics get in the way.”

Adam had looked down at his shoulder. “I— I’m sorry. I’m not…”

Jane’s expression turned to impatience. “Not what?
Real
? What the hell does
real
mean anyway?” She put a hand on Adam’s cheek. “I see your face, the light in your eyes. I hear your voice, all the meanings behind it. I don’t care what the rest is made of! You can’t help the way you were made. No one can! We might as well
all
be mechanical. There are people who have replaced every other organ, who have remolded their faces and reshaped their bodies—people
full
of synthetic parts. Hell, we see new reports every day about how this chemical controls our emotions or that substance affects our decisions, how most of who we are is printed in our genes. Who’s to say that we’re not
all
programmed, designed, engineered? So I don’t want to hear it, Adam!”

Adam had nodded, but the pained look remained. “I swear, Jane, I didn’t know.” It had been so convincing. No wonder Jane had bought it.
If I didn’t know better, I would’ve bought it too.

Devin remained by the living quarters. The poor kid seemed shattered. Pandora must have made some changes since creating Sarah, who had appeared unfazed by the truth. The afternoon Adam had been taken, Sarah had seen the scanner results revealing her synthetic nature. She had played dumb, as if she didn’t understand what the document meant. Only later had Devin realized that had to be how Pandora found out he knew Sarah to be an AI: She knew what Sarah knew.

Did Pandora know what Adam knew as well? Devin had thought to leave Adam on Uyfi Float, but the idea had seemed so wrong that he’d quickly pushed it away. He couldn’t betray Jane like that. To her, he wouldn’t have been removing a threat; he would have been abandoning someone she cared deeply about. He’d rather risk Pandora’s wrath than his sister’s.

Adam looked down at the Via pendant and held it to his heart. Did it represent the Absolute or Jane, who had pressed it into his palm right after her speech?

“Remember what you once told me?” she had said. “About how we think and decide on a higher level, and anything physical adjusts to reflect that?” She had closed Adam’s hand around the pendant. “
That’s
what matters, and the rest means
nothing
.”

Devin, impatient with himself, turned away.
How can the pendant represent anything? He’s a
machine
.

Jane would sock him if she could read his thoughts. As far as Devin could tell, nothing had changed for her. It was as though the facts had confronted her with a roar, and she’d shrugged in response. She’d done her best to wake Adam from the silent daze he’d entered, telling him time and time again that he was who he was—to hell with the rest.

But she hadn’t seen Pandora’s test program, how every nuance—even the elements of what might be called a soul—could be simulated. Sarah was more real to Devin than most
people
he knew, only to be revealed as the product of a brilliant deception, one that cast him off as a liability and did its best to erase him. The same was probably true of Adam—and what would happen to Jane the day she realized he, too, was an empty act?

“You’re an
idiot
,” she’d snapped when he brought the matter up. “I don’t know what they did when they made him, but he’s as real as you and me.”

“That’s what I thought about Sarah,” Devin had said. “There was nothing,
nothing
to indicate she was anything other than what she appeared to be. She was empathetic, passionate, intuitive… Dammit, Jane, I
fell in
love
with her, only to discover she’s an elaborate illusion. What if Adam’s the same?”

“He’s
not
.
He saved your life, Devin! I shouldn’t have to explain this to you! Stop being an ass!”

After that, Devin kept his concerns to himself, opting not to say anything rather than risk expressing something he’d come to regret. Every time he looked at Adam, he tried to alter his perception, to see him as the mechanical being he really was. Every time, the loudest part of his psyche told him the kid was as much a person as he was, and that his reservations were unfounded and probably cruel.

Why the hell am I still here?
Devin started back toward the cockpit. Adam looked up at him with a start, his expression frightened.

Devin stopped.
Fuck. What’s wrong with me?

The kid had defied reason and risked everything to save his life. If he continued trying to see Adam as an anthropomorphic mirage, maybe
he
was the one without a soul. He stepped into the room. “Hey, Adam. I… wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Why do you care?” Adam’s voice was barely a whisper. “I’m just a machine.”

“Jane doesn’t believe that.” Devin studied Adam’s face. “Neither do I.”

“I heard what you said about what Kron showed you. Sarah’s a combination of physical movements—an illusion, as you said.” Adam’s gaze fell. “You think I’m the same.”

Devin considered laying out the reasons he no longer believed that. Instead, he asked, “Are you?”

Adam shook his head. “I know there’s no way to prove I’m any different.”

“You must be. Pandora wouldn’t have taken you otherwise.”
Pandora didn’t want her AI gaining independence. Damn, even
she
knew he’s… sentient.

“I was recalled, wasn’t I?” Adam’s tone carried a trace of disgust. “I’m a faulty product. That’s why she took me, why she put me in a box and left me in a warehouse. I’m a machine created by a computer, and I’m broken. I wonder where my replacement is, what he’s like.”

Devin contemplated how Pandora’s logic might work. “I don’t think she’s created one yet. You wouldn’t be here if she had. I think she had to take you when she did because you disrupted her plans.”