> day.7
“What do you know about artificial intelligence?”
Dad sits atop his sprawling white desk, his arms folded and brow raised. Old family photos and far older archival records are strewn across his desk. First afternoon of home school at the Complex.
“I know we use AI to do lots of things,” Alex mutters. “I know it’s made of computers and data and robot brains.”
“No.” Dad shakes his head, hops down from his desk and brushes off his white sweatsuit. “There’s no such thing as AI. We talk about AI around here to make things simple. We talk about it like it’s some . . . alien with a mind of its own, making its own decisions off in its own little universe. But in reality, there’s no AI without humans.”
“So what is AI then?” Alex rolls her eyes.
“An extension of us. A mirror to our souls.” Dad clenches his hands in excitement, closes his eyes, paces across his shining white office. “Machines without intentions or desires of their own. Machines that think through us, not outside of us.” He pauses to lean onto Alex’s small white corner desk. “And because these machines are extensions of ourselves, they are machines we can control. But first, we must control ourselves.”
Alex stares blankly back at him. “Are there machines we can’t control?”
“Yes!” Dad continues pacing across his office. “In theory, at least. Superintelligence. A machine that’s grown beyond our control. More like a god than a machine. Smarter than all our brightest minds. Stronger than all our powers combined. Unhinged from the human spirit.”
“Sounds spooky.”
Dad chuckles. “An understatement, but yes. We can’t quite predict what a superintelligence might do. How it might think. What its intentions and desires might be.” He stops to stare back at Alex again. “But, we can extend our values, our principles into our machines before they grow beyond our control.”
“Okay, great.” Alex lazily nods, twirling a finger around her sparkling white hair.
“Then, if a machine ever does ascend to superintelligence, it will still share our humanity. It will still respect us. It will still work for our collective benefit.”
“How do you know that?” Alex scoffs. “Didn’t you just say you wouldn’t be able to control it?”
Dad smiles, stands tall and proud. “Because the machine would have human values. Here at Special Projects, we only build machines that have respect for human values. Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“That means we only build things for the good of all humanity. To help people. Never to cause harm.”
“But you’re at war,” Alex laughs. “Isn’t it your job to cause harm?”
“War is not always harmful.” Dad paces behind his desk again. “Fighting is not always harmful. Self-defense, self-preservation are not harmful.”
He waves his hands about, bloviating on his code of honor. “War is a state of being, Alex. Many things that occur in war are harmful. But many are for the greater benefit of humanity. The Alliance works to maximize benefit and minimize harm, especially here in our work at Special Projects, where we have strict ethical protocols to ensure—”
“Did Aunt Cass die for the greater benefit of humanity?”
Dad stops his rhapsody, stiffens his lip. “I know it may be hard to grasp the benefit of something so raw Alex, but—”
“Did Mom die for the greater benefit of humanity? How could you even say something like—”
“Yes.” General Altair sternly sighs and leans over his giant white swivel chair. “Yes she did.”
Alex’s jaw drops. “Are you serious? I can’t—”
“Let me make something perfectly clear to you, Alex,” the General barks at her. “There are people who want to kill us. Torture us. Not us in the abstract, us specifically: torture and kill Mathias Altair and Alexis Altair.”
“. . . Torture us?”
“There is evil in this world, true evil, true chaos that only men like us can keep at bay.” The General presses down on his chair, rolling and wringing it as he speaks. “That evil has existed since the dawn of time. That evil always will exist. And so we will always have to fight.”
“But Mom—”
“Your mother and your aunt died with honor. They died with valor defending you! They died for you, Alex!”
Alex reels back in her seat.
“They knew like I know that risks, sacrifices, tough decisions must be made in war! Fights must be won. We all know the stakes, Alex. And now you’ve learned the stakes, too.”
“They weren’t fighting!” Alex protests. “They were taking care of me and drinking tea! Planting flowers! Reading books!”
“Nonsense!” The General bellows as he steps back from his chair. “Conflict takes many forms! They fought through acts of care! Through keeping you safe! Through their wisdom and knowledge!” He pounds his desk and points down at the dusty old archival records scattered all about. “Here at the Complex, we fight through other means. But it is all war, Alex!”
“Tea isn’t war.” Alex folds her arms and looks away from his overwhelming gaze.
“A teacup in the right hands can be infinitely more powerful than a sword,” the General points at her sharply. “All power stems from science, and all science stems from—”
“Are you almost done your lecture?” Alex nibbles at her fingernails. “Aren’t there more important things I should be learning about right now? Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me how to protect people?”
The General scowls at her, sighing miserably. He pauses in thought over his desk, his ugly eyes all dull and cold as he strokes the white stubble along his iron jaw. “I guess philosophy isn’t your strong suit, is it?”
“I didn’t like my philosophy class at the Palace,” Alex shrugs. “Seems boring.”
“Then maybe we need to try a different approach.” The General rolls up his spotless white sweater sleeves. “All that ivory tower bullshit they tried teaching you at the Palace must not come naturally to the warrior in you.” He stomps around his giant white desk, paces toward Alex. “Maybe for you, pain is the greatest teacher.”
“What’s that supposed to—” Before Alex can finish, the General lunges forward, shoves her out of her chair, hurls her desk to the side.
“Fight back!” He picks her up by the collar of her Mom’s white tunic, then tosses her to the floor again.
“I’m not fighting you!” She yells as she rolls back up to her feet. “You’re my Dad!”
“Don’t just stand there!” He grabs and lifts her into the air again. “Fight me!”
“No!” She shouts as she clutches and pounds at his giant arms. “Let me go!”
“That’s it! Now hit me harder!”
“No!” She shouts again, but her fists decide to start pounding harder at his arms.
“C’mon is that all you’ve got?” Her father chides. “FIGHT BACK!” His right arm auto-expands, his muscle augmentations stiffen and steel, swelling with horrible hydraulic power as he throws his fist at her.
Her combat systems activate, instincts kick in, doesn’t want to hurt Dad, self-defense is okay, her right hand snaps up to shield her face, palm filling with nanobots and liquid alloys as she catches his fist in her hand, but his punch is too strong, his fist snaps back her fingers, cracks apart her bone before he pulls away and drops her to the floor.
“Ow!” Alex whines. “That hurt . . . a little.”
“Look at you!” The General shouts down her. “Look at this!” He points at her broken fingers, her bones coursing with special gels and secret proteins, painlessly snapping themselves back into place.
“Yeah!” She shouts back. “It does that all time! That doesn’t mean you can hit me!”
“Completely unscratched!” He pleads with her. “An absolute marvel of engineering! A miracle of human ingenuity! Standing at the pinnacle of human evolution, thousands of years of history and science and technology all converging into you and your tiny fingers, but you won’t even throw a single punch!”
She rises to her feet, but he shoves her to the ground again. “Such a weak spirit! Such a waste!”
“I’m not going to fight you!” She screams from the floor. “No matter what you do! I will not fight in your damn war!”
“You will do as you’re told, young man!”
“FUCK YOU!” She screams. “I’m not yours to order around anymore! I’m not Alexis anymore!”
The General pauses, glowering down at her. He strokes his jaw in thought once again, calculating the precise buttons he’ll need to push in her mind to produce the intended effect. His foul grey eyes twinkle with cruel genius. “It’s good your mother is dead.”
“What?!” Alex stands from the gleaming white floor and dusts herself off.
“Now that she’s passed, you’re finally free to pursue your purpose. You can finally become the MAN the world needs you to be.”
“I’m not Alexis anymore!”
“But you still have his body!” The General smirks. “The best augmentations, the best education, best training, best genes money could buy—the ultimate warrior!”
“That’s not me!”
“That stupid woman took humanity’s greatest defense against the machines—she took you, Alexis Altair!—and she let you squander your gifts on dancing and fruity art!”
“You piece of—” he cuts her off again with another sturdy push to the floor.
“FIGHT BACK, BOY!” He howls. “There are people in this world who want to destroy you! To destroy all that you love!”
“I’m NOT a—”
“That Cole boy! Carson!” The General grins with menace. “I could have one of my men send a drone swarm down to the Palace right now and boom! Bang! Dead in his sleep!”
Alex clenches her teeth and trembles in pure wrath as she leaps back onto her feet.
“Or maybe he’ll die while he’s crying and sniveling and hiding away in the Bunker!” The General chuckles as he shoves her down again. “Just like your Aunt Cass!”
Alex floods with fury, programming takes complete control, systems splash with waves of digital adrenaline, geysers of synthetic testosterone gush into his bloodstream, his arms and legs stretch and thicken, his bones and tendons swell and grow, his muscles fill with high-performance bio-steel as he scans his target, awaits a moment of weakness.
“In fact, I just might have Murphy send a swarm over there right now!” The General snickers and praddles on. “And yet here you are, shaking on some cold laboratory floor in the middle of nowhere. Too weak and cowardly to stop me from killing your little boyfriend! What will you do to stop me? To stop evil? NOTHING, you’re just a weak little girl who—”
Alex pounces from the ground, flashes across the office in a frenzied warrior instinct, speeds his fist into his father’s skull, Dad’s electric eyes glitch and shatter in their sockets, shards of his glass pierce into Alex’s clenched fist but he strikes again and again, breaking Dad’s nose in two, snapping apart his sternum, crushing his collarbone into dust, claws into his throat, but just before he can rip away his father’s windpipe, a small white drone perched on the ceiling hums and strobes and pulses with loud blue light.
Her systems seize up under the blue light. Her mind freezes, body turns to stone. The drone’s alien data pumps through her, pausing her thoughts, cooling her brain down. Her instincts reset as her Dad gasps for air and chuckles wildly on the floor.
“Yes, Alex! Excellent!” He gargles out between broken teeth. “Strike with purpose!”
“Oh my God.” She comes to her senses as the drone’s blue light fades. She stays horribly still over Dad’s writhing body, all bloodied and trembling, scans his face, realizes the damage she’s done. “OH FUCK. Oh fuck, Oh God. I . . . I didn’t mean to—”
“Beautiful!” He coughs and sputters blood and phlegm, grins and glows with twisted pride, gazes at her fondly as he wipes the pulp away from his shattered eye. “Truly beautiful! I haven’t gotten a beating like that in ages! A+!”
“I . . . Am I in trouble?!”
Dad roars with crazed laughter. “In trouble for what? Doing exactly what I told you to do?” Blood pours from the holes in his skull as he groans and cracks and smiles, struggling to sit upright.
“Oh fuck,” Alex turns away from the bleeding horror. “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry. Are you going to be okay?”
“Don’t be sorry!” He spits a loose tooth onto the pristine white floor. “Med guys will be here soon. I’ll be all patched up by end of day.”
“Are you . . . are you sure?”
He pats her hard on the back. She rattles in shock. “You did a wonderful job here today, Alex. I couldn’t be more proud.”
“I . . . I did?” She sheepishly scans up and down his smashed face, his busted lip, his bloodied shoulders. “Thanks? I guess?”
“You need a hug?” Dad stretches his shoulders out. Alex nervously hugs the air around his bloodstained white sweatshirt. He squeezes her in close.
“We’re gonna need to get you a better sparring partner!” Dad cackles. “I’m gettin’ too old to be your punching bag.”