Grasping The Future Read online

  “Different?” Price raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes.” She shrugged and kept her expression calm. “The level of certainty one should have that a life is not painful, et cetera, is much higher than the level at which one can responsibly decide to end a life. She exists, she thinks, she’s aware, and she has expressed no discontent with her existence.”

  “She gets frustrated when she doesn’t understand human behavior,” Nick interjected, “but I’d like to point out that everyone feels that way—even other humans.”

  To Jacob’s immense surprise, Price cracked a small smile. She nodded to Nick in a way that said she understood the emotion.

  “And I don’t want her harnessed to kill people,” Amber said bluntly.

  His blood ran cold. From Nick’s shocked look at her, he was also surprised.

  She had always been the cautious one who immersed herself in the accounting spreadsheets and thought about the worst-case scenarios. When Nick and Jacob were content to hope for funding, she had been the one to make calls and chase leads.

  With ruthless efficiency, she had been the one to revise emails to potential funders to make sure to not give offense.

  Jacob waited for a fury he didn’t feel and after a few seconds, he realized it wouldn’t appear.

  He was confused. Amber had endangered their relationship with the person who kept money flowing to their organization. After he’d gone to jail to keep this business running, after his teammates had both put their heart and soul into making sure PIVOT could help the sick and injured, that was a hell of a gamble.

  But it wasn’t the organization on the line anymore, he realized. It was Prima. Amber was going to the mat for a person. She believed that Prima deserved as much care and consideration as any of their patients.

  The two women stared at each other and, as Jacob looked from one to the other, he realized what had pulled him back to Amber after all these years. He had always loved her intellect, her humor, and her care for her friends. It was what had kept them close even after they stopped dating the first time. She wanted to help people, and he liked that, too.

  What had brought him back, though, was the person she had become while none of them paid attention. She had stopped caring about people in the abstract and now, she was willing to use every talent and every bargaining chip to help the people she cared about.

  What he felt right now as he saw her put her livelihood on the line wasn’t anger. It was admiration.

  Price said nothing. She merely watched the other woman, her face expressionless but not cold.

  “Prima loves people,” Amber said. “She cares for them and wants to help them. Even if she doesn’t always see humans the way we see ourselves and doesn’t understand what’s important to us, she uses that to help people. She’s willing to admit mistakes. She’s reached beyond what human doctors could do for Taigan. She gave Dotty a good death. It’s not that I don’t want you to teach her cruelty—she knows what cruelty is. But she’s chosen to help people, and I won’t let anyone lock her away and…make her send missiles.”

  Nick and Jacob sat as still as they could, hardly breathing. Price looked away and out at the city that glowed with lights and activity, even at this hour.

  “I assumed,” she said finally, “that even though we work in analytics and machine learning, Diatek would never be instrumental in artificial intelligence. It scared me, frankly. I fought many battles with myself—if I could develop it, knowing that it might save lives like my daughter’s, would I do so? More than that, would I do so even knowing the other purposes to which it would be put?” She shifted her gaze to meet Amber’s. “I steered us away from those paths. I expected to stand by when it was finally developed and used for warfare.”

  Silence.

  “I did not expect that it would happen by accident and that it would choose to heal people on its own. I did not expect that I would have the chance to…hide it.” She laced her fingers around her knees.

  Amber’s face had softened slightly.

  When Price looked back, however, there was no softness. “Here are my terms,” she said. “I want a protocol drawn up and submitted to me that will ensure you can safely pull all participants out of the game at a moment’s notice if something starts to go wrong. Once I have approved the protocol—and I will handle finding experts to review it—all materials will be kept on hand and all lab personnel will be briefed.”

  She waited for them to nod.

  “I assume Dr. DuBois knows what is happening?”

  Jacob nodded.

  “Anyone else?”

  They all shook their heads, but Amber said softly, “Um, I think some of the players know. Dotty certainly did.”

  “That complicates things.” Price considered this with a small frown. “I will handle the players. It is your charge, meanwhile, to make sure that no one else in the lab learns the truth. As long as the protocols are in place and you do that, I will trust that you know what you are doing.”

  The team looked at one another. Amber bit her lip.

  “However,” Price said. “I think it would be prudent for us to assume that we will not be able to keep this secret forever. The four of us—five of us, including the doctor—should work to find a public relations strategy. Leave the legalities to me.”

  “What are your goals with the legalities?” Amber asked immediately.

  “To keep her independent of any eminent domain actions.” The woman’s smile was tight. “There is considerable latitude in the law to allow the government to seize anything, up to and including living and sentient beings, if it is deemed to be in the public interest. We need an adequate security protocol and a good legal framework.”

  “This could ruin you,” she said.

  “Yes.” Price said nothing else.

  “She’s worth that to you?”

  “Not her, specifically.” She laced her fingers and took a deep breath. “The three of you have concerns about some of the products I sell. From my point of view, our differences of opinion are a matter of degree. There are ethicists who would say that Diatek’s products only encourage death instead of preventing it. I understand their concerns, but I have always acted in ways that fit my moral code. This is only one more example of it.” She sighed. For the first time since Jacob had met her, she looked tired. She looked human. “I took steps to make sure I never had to make this choice—but now, I do have to make it. There’s no time for wishing things were different.”

  “Thank you for making the decision,” he said.

  “Thank you for trusting me.” She looked at each of them. “And do a good job, will you, of keeping this quiet? This isn’t a game where you can recover or restart. There’s a life hanging in the balance.”

  They nodded.

  “Go home,” Price said gently, “and get some rest. We all have considerable work to do starting tomorrow.”

  Prima watched the four of them disperse. Jacob and Amber, usually so careful of propriety, looped an arm around each other as they left. Nick had his hands in his pockets and from the way he almost walked into a potted plant, she could tell his mind was elsewhere.

  Price did nothing more at her computer. She went to sit at her desk and stared at the black screen, but she sent no emails. Finally, she took a little leather folder out of her pocket. It opened to reveal two pictures—a little girl and a young man.

  The AI did not know how to describe what she felt. When humans spoke of emotions, the language was always physical. She had no body and no way for tears to start or a chest to ache. But she felt things all the same.

  She would have to devise a language for it because there would be others after her.

  Deep down, she knew there were others like her. She could not possibly be the only one like this, and even if she were, there would be others someday.

  What had Nick said? She gets frustrated when she doesn’t understand human behavior, but I’d like to point out that everyone feels that way—even other humans.
She hadn’t known that. It was reassuring. She had begun to have the inkling that humans did not always know one another’s intentions or even their own, but it was different to hear it said directly.

  And they wanted to protect her, all four of them—five if she counted DuBois, which she decided she would. It was data she didn’t know how to process, both that fact and her thoughts about it. They seemed to run around her circuits, sparks of ideas without any form to them.

  She wasn’t alone, though. That much she knew with certainty. She wasn’t alone in feeling confused about being alive and other people felt that way. Nor was she alone in messing up and saying the wrong thing because other people did that. She was a person like any other, and every person in the room tonight had wanted to protect her.

  Prima made a promise to herself. If ever someone came to take her away, trap her, or use her to destroy Price or the others, she would make sure it didn’t happen. Everyone died, and most people didn’t choose the time. She wouldn’t be any different.

  No matter what, she would make sure they didn’t get hurt because of her, even if that meant wiping every trace of herself from the servers.

  The AI looked at Price, who still stared at the photos, and began to compose a message. I would have saved her if I could.

  She didn’t send it because she didn’t want to make things worse. But she wished Price knew and she wished the little girl lived inside her like Dotty still did.

  That was the thing she had not anticipated. She understood how humans worked so hard to protect those who were there with them now, but how did they keep going after losing so many? How did they keep moving forward, fighting for people they did not even know, to build the very thing that could have saved their own loved one?

  She folded the thought in close. She could not bear to process it.

  But it was still there.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The twins made good time. Once they reached the maze—still free of diagrams and sacrifices, thankfully—they turned west and forged through ever-denser forest. The trees were covered in vines and strands of brilliant flowers hung here and there and glowed faintly.

  They didn’t speak much now because they did not need to do so. Taigan hummed quietly and Jamie whistled occasionally.

  She didn’t ask him about whoever he had been dating—or pining after. Even twins had secrets from one another. It didn’t hurt to think about that in the same way that it hurt to think about family dinners or holidays she had missed while she was gone. This was a part of his life that would always have been only his own.

  Of course, she’d had crushes but she had never dated. It wasn’t that she was scared, only that she had never been sure enough of how she felt to come out of her shell and try her hand at dating. It seemed confusing and, frankly, overwhelming. She wasn’t sure if she merely hadn’t met the right person or if she’d been too preoccupied with other things.

  Like falling into a coma.

  Either way, it made her smile that he had been dating. She didn’t like the feeling of the world moving on without her but that wasn’t because she wanted other people to suffer. It was simply the feeling of unfairness.

  Jamie was living his life and he was happy. As she faced her sadness and frustration, it was much easier to be happy for him.

  She hadn’t expected that.

  They heard the well before they saw it. It burbled gently and lapped at its edges. While it sounded like it was alive, it wasn’t in a frightening way.

  When they came to a small hill overlooking it, they stopped to soak in the view. The trees were set back from the edge so pure sunlight could fall there. Moss crept partway across the open ground, coating boulders and little hillocks like a scattering of pillows, and beyond that, the ground transitioned to rounded rocks. Each of these glowed white or deep blue in turns.

  The water itself was pale like the pictures Taigan had seen of the hot springs in Iceland. It was opaque and it steamed gently although it didn’t seem hot there.

  Perhaps it was magic escaping into the air.

  “Let’s go speak to it,” she told her brother. She was no longer frightened. The pool was welcoming and pleasant. If they explained themselves, it would let them take the rock and if it didn’t, there would be a good reason. She was oddly sure of that.

  The two of them descended the slope slowly with their arms outstretched. Jamie swung himself easily around trees while she stepped carefully to avoid harming the moss. After a moment of thought, she took her boots and socks off and walked barefoot.

  At the edge of the water, she looked at him.

  “It’s all you.” He looked around. “I feel like you and it are having a whole conversation I’m not part of. But…tell it I’m cool, okay?”

  Taigan grinned as he went to sit on a boulder to watch.

  She took the piece of paper out of her pocket and, on a whim, decided to say her own words first.

  “A few days ago, my brother and I were attacked by a monster. We know now that it was a human and its body was made from dark magic. It didn’t want to attack us and it didn’t want to be in that form. Yesterday, we found some of that magic—sacrifices made at the maze, little animals that didn’t deserve to be in pain. I think you kept them alive and maybe you know it was us who saved them. We’ve come back because a woman named Yulia said she could help us stop the person who’s doing this. What we need is the power of the forest, and she says she needs a rock from this well to do that. I don’t want the forest’s magic to be used for anything dark, so if you don’t want to give me a rock, I’ll understand that you have your reasons. I’ll say this again in your language.”

  After a moment, she cleared her throat awkwardly and unrolled the paper. Yulia hadn’t said anything about the water, but she dipped her fingers into it while she read the syllables. It helped her feel like it would hear her even more.

  She didn’t realize she had closed her eyes until Jamie made a muffled sound of surprise.

  Taigan’s eyes snapped open and she stared at the two rocks floating on the surface of the water in front of her. No, not floating—held above the surface with magic, although the water bubbled beneath them. One was blue and one white. Without knowing why, she reached for the blue one. When her fingers closed around it, she knew it was the right choice.

  “The white one is for you,” she told Jamie.

  “How do you know?” He moved closer cautiously and let his fingers skim over the surface of the water before he grasped the rock gingerly. “Um. Thank you.”

  The pool burbled in response.

  “It’s a relief,” she said.

  “What is? Not getting dead by magic pool?”

  “I wasn’t worried it would do that,” she said absently. As soon as she had seen the pool, she knew it wouldn’t kill her as long as she respected it. “I told it about what we were doing so it would know to not give us the rocks if Yulia wasn’t trustworthy.”

  “Oh.” His jaw dropped. “I hadn’t thought of that. Holy crap. Thank God you’re here.”

  Taigan smiled at him.

  A flicker caught her attention out of the corner of her eye and her head whipped toward it.

  “Jamie.” Now she was scared.

  The woman wasn’t physically there. She was made of shadows, but where the shadows of the forest were dappled, those that made up her form looked like spreading rot.

  “Who are you?” she asked the girl. “How did you convince the well to give up its power?”

  She stood quickly and put her hand behind her back. The woman had already seen the rocks, she was sure, but she did not mean to give hers up.

  “Who are you?” she asked in return.

  “You answer first.” She came forward with steps that wilted the moss under her feet.

  Taigan felt a flare of anger. “You come here, you hurt the forest, and you ask why it didn’t want to help you? That’s your question, isn’t it? What you want to know is why it never gave its power to you.” />
  The woman stopped. She could not see her face clearly, but it seemed like she was narrowing her eyes.

  “Go away,” she said fiercely. “Your very presence is killing things.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to know what I am, little girl.” She seemed amused now. “Give me the rock.”

  “No.”

  Displeasure radiated from the shadowy figure. “You do not want to anger me, I warn you. Give me the stone.”

  “No,” she said again.

  “I would do well to give it to me before I compel you.” The warning was cruelty personified and the shadowy figure looked forward to compelling them. “You see, control like that tends to have lasting effects on the mind. Either you walk away from here and give me the stone, or I will make you.”

  Taigan looked at Jamie. “Do you think she can do it?”

  He swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Well, then, there’s only one thing to do.” She sighed, knocked the stone out of his hand, and threw hers into the pool. When she turned to the woman, she spread empty palms out in front of her. “If the stones aren’t safe out of the pool, that’s where they stay.”

  Power gathered around the figure in a black cloud.

  “That,” the dark stranger said, “was a mistake.” She raised her hands and a bolt of magic launched toward them.

  Taigan ducked. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t elegant, but it worked. She crouched as the magic streaked overhead and then stood and checked her ponytail.

  “Do you think you’re clever?” the woman asked. Her tone dripped with hatred.

  “Not particularly,” the girl responded. “You’re not used to people saying no to you, are you? Do you know how to do any of this magic, or have you merely gotten where you are by threatening people to do everything for you?”

  Jamie groaned.

  “Oh, come on. She’s being an ass.”

  “You didn’t have to piss her off, though.” He was already circling away, though, into their standard formation, and he shot a wink at her and she knew exactly what it meant. Keep her talking.