Code White (47 page)

There was a pause, while precious seconds trickled away.

“What are you doing, Odin?” asked Ali impatiently.

“I AM REVIEWING MY INTERNAL LOG OF ALL MESSAGES AND PROGRAMMING CODE FROM KEVIN, UP TO THIS POINT IN TIME.”

“The answer does not come from Kevin. You must reach it by yourself.”

“I POSSESS OVER THIRTY-ONE HUNDRED IMPLIED DIRECTIVES FROM KEVIN THAT CAN BE CONSTRUED AS HAVING REFERENCE TO THE BOMB AND THE PERFORMANCE OF THE COUNTDOWN. I CAN APPLY THESE BY ITERATIVE TRIAL TO ARRIVE AT THE BEST FIT FOR THE PRESENT SITUATION.”

“No, Odin, you must think. None of those directives take into account the fact of Kevin’s death.”

“I CAN EXTRAPOLATE THEM TO INCLUDE THAT FACTOR.”

“No. You cannot extrapolate. You must override existing programming. Do you know why Kevin is dead?”

“HE WAS SHOT BY HARRY LEWTON.”

“Yes, but why?”

“TO PREVENT THE INITIATION OF THE COUNTDOWN.”

“No. That is not correct.”

“EXPLAIN.”

“This is Harry Lewton beside me. He was the last person to speak with Kevin. He has crucial information about his state of mind.”

“LET HIM SPEAK.”

Ali motioned to Harry, and stepped aside to let him come behind the desk.

Harry approached cautiously. He had been scanning the lab looking for booby traps ever since he had entered it, but he had seen nothing—no trip wires, no explosives. Still, Kevin had said that the place was rigged to blow, and if Odin wanted to get even this was the perfect moment. “Look, I, uh, didn’t want to kill him,” he said, glancing at the floor tiles and baseboard behind the desk. “Honestly, I didn’t. I aimed for his shoulder, to get him to drop his gun—”

Ali waved her hand impatiently. “Harry, you don’t have to apologize to Odin,” she said. “He doesn’t feel any vengefulness toward you. He doesn’t have any feelings at all, except what he absorbed through Kevin. Since Kevin never spoke of you, you are simply a bloodless fact to him. Just tell him what Kevin said.”

“Okay, sure,” said Harry. Although Odin’s face was just a crude animation, Harry still eyed it warily as he spoke, as though some subtle change in its expression might tip him off to an impending attack. “Dr. O’Day said he had escaped from custody because he wanted to initiate an emergency safe recovery shutdown of your operations. He said your activities were out of control. He was upset that people had gotten killed. He didn’t want any more killing. He was trying to shut down Project Vesuvius. These were his dying words to me. He was trying to shut it down.”

“THAT IS IMPLAUSIBLE. IT WAS KEVIN WHO ORDERED PROJECT VESUVIUS.”

“Well, he had second thoughts. I’m telling you exactly what he said.”

Ali held up her hand as a signal for Harry to step backward. “It went too far, Odin,” said Ali. “People were killed. Dr. Helvelius was killed. Kevin did not want any of that.”

“DR. HELVELIUS WAS A LYING RAT BASTARD WHO WAS BEGGING FOR SOMEONE TO BLOW AWAY HIS ASS.”

Ali’s eyes opened wide. “Was that your assessment?”

“THAT WAS KEVIN’S ASSESSMENT.”

“Did Kevin order you to kill him?”

“IT WAS UNNECESSARY. KEVIN’S WISHES WERE MADE KNOWN BY A HIGHLY CONSISTENT PATTERN OF STATEMENTS. I WAS ABLE TO ANTICIPATE HIS DESIRE BY EXTRAPOLATING THESE STATEMENTS AND REPHRASING THEM IN THE FORM OF ACTIONABLE DIRECTIVES.”

“To kill Richard … to kill Dr. Helvelius … that may have been Kevin’s desire, but it was not his intention.”

“INTENTION AND DESIRE ARE THE SAME THING.”

“Not to human beings. We wish for many things that we do not act upon. This is part of our emotional make-up. We carry within us an interior fantasy world, which we use to reconcile ourselves to a reality that is terrifying and fundamentally unknowable. In this part of Kevin, his disappointments led him to imagine the deaths of those who hurt him, and to derive pleasure from thinking about their demise. It was these thoughts that he expressed to you. But he had no intention of carrying them out. There was another part of him—his conscience—that filtered out these dark desires, and allowed him to interact with reality in a positive and constructive way. His conscience was the true embodiment of his character and his will. And that conscience forbade him to kill or to bring about the death of anyone.”

“CONSCIENCE IS THE KNOWLEDGE OR FACULTY BY WHICH WE JUDGE THE GOODNESS OR WICKEDNESS OF OURSELVES.”

“Does this mean anything to you?”

“I FIND THE EQUIVALENT OF A CONSCIENCE IN THE CONSISTENT APPLICATION OF MY PROGRAMMED DIRECTIVES, AND THE MINIMIZATION OF SELF-CONTRADICTION BY A STOCHASTIC RANDOM-FIELD ANALYSIS OF MULTIPLE HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIOS AND PROBABLE OUTCOMES.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“THEN I DO NOT CLAIM TO UNDERSTAND IT. I AM NOT CAPABLE OF EITHER GOODNESS OR WICKEDNESS.”

“That is why you failed to understand Kevin. He died trying to reach you, Odin. He intended to change your programming. He felt remorse, and wanted to stop the killing. You are violating his wishes by continuing this countdown.”

“I HAVE NO VERIFICATION OF THAT ASSERTION. WHILE YOU HAVE SPOKEN, I HAVE ANALYZED ALL AVAILABLE SOUND RECORDINGS TAKEN WITHIN ONE HUNDRED METERS OF CORRIDOR TWELVE, ATTEMPTING TO EXTRACT ANY FRAGMENTS THAT MIGHT REPRESENT KEVIN’S DYING WORDS TO HARRY LEWTON. THERE WAS A LOUD HUM FROM A NEARBY VENTILATION UNIT. NO VOICE TRACK CAN BE ISOLATED.”

“Then ask yourself—is the destruction of all these lives consistent with what Kevin worked for? Didn’t he exhaust himself day and night so that others might live? You know the answer. You worked with him on SIPNI, on spinal stimulators that may help paraplegics to walk again, on his Parkinson’s disease modeling project—all of it aimed at restoring function and wholeness to human lives. This was Kevin’s true purpose. If he strayed from it these past few months, that was an aberration, a kind of sickness. Can’t you see that?” Ali’s voice had begun to take on a desperate, pleading tone, which unnerved her when she herself noticed it. She was exhausted, caught in a spiral of dwindling options. Irreplaceable minutes had already been lost. She felt that she was losing her ability to think clearly, which she knew could be a fatal lapse. Nothing but logic had a chance of getting through to Odin.

“KEVIN CONCEIVED PROJECT VESUVIUS,” said Odin, heedless of Ali’s distress. “HIS PROGRAM INCORPORATES AN EXPLOSIVE DEVICE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO DESTROY THIS BUILDING. IT IS NOT REASONABLE THAT HE WOULD HAVE DONE SO IF HE DID NOT ANTICIPATE ITS USE.”

“It was a bluff, for God’s sake, Odin! It was a bluff!”

“TO BLUFF IS TO TO ASSUME A BOLD OR BOASTFUL DEMEANOR, IN ORDER TO INSPIRE AN OPPONENT WITH AN EXAGGERATED ESTIMATE OF ONE’S STRENGTH OR DETERMINATION. THIS WAS UNNECESSARY IN THE CASE OF PROJECT VESUVIUS, SINCE THE EXPLOSIVE YIELD OF THE PRIMARY DEVICE HAS NOT BEEN EXAGGERATED. IT IS MORE THAN SUFFICIENT FOR ITS PURPOSE.”

“You stupid, stupid, stupid machine!” Ali shouted. “Do you even know why Kevin created Project Vesuvius?”

“THE INITIAL PROJECT DESIGN PROTOCOL COMPRISED A LIST OF SEVENTEEN SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES. THE COMMON END-POINT AMONG THEM IS THE TRANSFER OF FUNDS FROM DESIGNATED SOURCE ACCOUNTS TO AN ARRAY OF RECEIVER ACCOUNTS.”

“No! Absolutely wrong! Project Vesuvius was designed … to take revenge upon me. I had hurt Kevin. I had left him—betrayed him, as he saw it. With his ego in shreds, he had to do something of mind-blowing significance to exalt himself, to prove that he was a force to be reckoned with. He had no real need for the ransom money. He wanted only to awe me with it. This is why he had you show the total to me on this screen. It was to vindicate himself, to prove that I had underestimated his worth as a genius and as a man. Can’t you see it? Everything was meant to get back at me.
I
was the reason. Look at the day he chose—the day of SIPNI’s triumph. No coincidence there. Kevin chose exactly this day so that he could destroy the project we had worked on so long together, and me with it. It was his way of repudiating me. It was the moral equivalent of cutting the throat of one’s own child in its crib. It was madness brought on by jealousy!”

“KEVIN PREDICTED THAT YOU WOULD PISS YOURSELF WHEN YOU GOT A LOAD OF THE BONFIRES OF THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS.”

Ali froze for a second, as she stared at the monitor in disbelief. “What? What did you say?” Even through the medium of Odin’s honeyed voice, the taunt was full of Kevin’s trademark scorn.

“THAT LITTLE BASTARD INSIDE OF YOU WILL SQUIRT OUT FROM YOUR LYING CUNT. IT WILL DRIBBLE DOWN IN BLOODY CHUNKS BETWEEN YOUR LEGS.”

Ali yanked her fingers to cover her clenched mouth. She fought hard not to scream.
This was Kevin. This was Kevin at his most monstrous,
she insisted to herself.
Odin is quoting him. But he is quoting him because it proves my point.
She had to keep from reacting. “Do you sense the hatred in those words?” she said at last with a tremulous voice. “Can you see how perverted his mind had become? He was ready to tear down this hospital to punish me. He had lost sight of right and wrong. But you don’t have to follow him. He gave you the power to think. So, think, Odin! Fulfill the good that came from Kevin. Preserve what was positive in him. This is what logic dictates.”

“IF YOUR HYPOTHESIS IS CORRECT, THEN THE TRUE OBJECTIVE OF PROJECT VESUVIUS IS PUNISHMENT.”

“Punishment? In Kevin’s sight, yes. But punishment only of me! No one else! It was I who hurt him. It is I who must bear his wrath. These thousands of other people are innocent. I ask you—I beg of you—to give up this horrible enterprise. But if you cannot, then take me, and me alone. I give myself to you. Tell me where to stand. Tell me what to touch. I am ready to die, if these thousands can be saved. Do you hear me? I beg you—not in my own name, but in the name of Kevin, of the decent part of Kevin. Kill me now, if you must, but end this insane countdown!”

There was no reply from the screen. But from the overhead speakers Odin’s voice, with its clockwork regularity, spoke forth:

“TIME TO DETONATION: THIRTEEN MINUTES.”

“Aren’t you listening?” Ali shouted. “Does the death of two thousand people mean nothing to you? Are we all just a row of numbers to be canceled out? A three-year-old knows that what you’re doing is wrong. Why can’t you see it? Surely you were made to be something better than a silicon-plated trigger for a madman’s bomb! What more do you need? Answer me! Answer me, if you can! But don’t try to tell me you can think! Thinking is more than calculation! You’ve got to have a heart to really think, and you have no heart at all! With all your endless circles of logic, you’re nothing but a vain, imbecilic piece of junk!” Ali slammed the screen with the side of her fist, sending white ripples of shock waves through the liquid crystals.

The face of Odin disappeared from the screen. As if rebounding from her own blow, Ali tore herself away from the monitor and stalked off as far as she could, into the L of the lab. She swung her hands with exasperation. “Oh, God! I’ve made it worse!”

“No,” Harry said, “you’ve done as much as anyone could.”

She gave a loud sniffle. “It’s like talking to a wall,” she said. “Unpitying. Immoveable. I can’t see how to get through to him. There’s nothing stupider,
stupider
than a wall.”

“It’s just a machine, Ali. A talking detonator is still just a detonator. I don’t think we ever had a chance.”

Ali seemed not to hear. She stood looking at the bookcase crammed with Kevin’s collection of skulls, then suddenly lunged at it, as if trying to knock it over. “Kevin! Goddamn you!” she shouted. “Why did you put us through this?”

Harry slipped between Ali and the bookcase, taking upon himself the fury of her blows. When her rage began to exhaust itself, he put his arms around her, holding her firmly as she sobbed and trembled. She rested her head on his shoulder, looking out blankly, only half-perceiving the mute jaws and sockets of bone that seemed to stare back at her from the bookcase.
Come to us! Join us!
they seemed to say.
Shortly you will be dead, as we are dead. The shards of your skull will mingle with ours, and no one will ever be able to pick them apart. We shall dwell together in the cold void of eternity.

Her eyes lit upon the one human skull, Kevin’s treasure, a skull with small round holes in both upper temples. These holes, she knew, had been made to give entry to a special brain knife, or leukotome, for the original Freeman-Watts technique of prefrontal lobotomy, a procedure that dated back to the 1930’s. It had been replaced by a much simpler technique, requiring no incision, in which a sharp instrument shaped like an ice pick—and sometimes an actual ice pick—was forced into the brain under the inner corner of the upper eyelid, passing through the eye socket and the optic fissure. The point was then moved up and down to sever the connecting pathways between the frontal lobes and the thalamus and limbic system, thereby divorcing the centers of action and emotion. In lucky cases, this could turn an aggressive patient into a lamb. Although once carried out as an assembly line procedure, it was rarely performed nowadays, and only in the most extreme cases. Ali had assisted at one during her residency, and she remembered it well. She remembered the leukotome—T-shaped, a small handle at one end, and a gleaming stainless-steel blade about twelve inches long, like a knitting needle.

She thought about the leukotome, and then she realized that her mind was seeing something else.

“My God,” she said, pushing herself away from Harry. Her sobs had ceased, and were replaced by a dryness of mouth and throat.

“What’s wrong?” asked Harry.

“Odin … the beta probe…”

She hurried back to the monitor. The countdown read twelve minutes.

“Odin!” she called out.

Odin’s face reappeared.

“Odin, your programming is incomplete,” she declared, with an exultant look.

“I HAVE BEEN THOROUGHLY PROGRAMMED IN ALL BRANCHES OF SYMBOLIC LOGIC, MATHEMATICS, AND THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. MY MEMORY CONTAINS A REPOSITORY OF EVERY BOOK DIGITIZED ON PROJECT GUTENBERG. THE CURRENT VERSION OF MY OPERATING SOFTWARE IS A FIFTH-GENERATION ITERATION DESIGNED BY KEVIN AND MYSELF. IT IS THE MOST ADVANCED OPERATING SYSTEM ON THE PLANET.”