Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 27

65 million years BC, jungle

Becks stood to one side dispassionately observing the work of the others as they hacked at the slim, straight trunks of the smaller trees they’d already felled, stripping branches from their sides to produce usable lightweight logs for construction.

She had them divided into two groups. One doing this job, the other group lashing the logs together with lengths of twisted vine to form wigwam-shaped frames. On top of these they could layer the big waxy leaves that drooped from the canopy trees. A few layers of those would give them a covering that would almost be waterproof.

That had been Liam’s instruction. Make shelters. But her cool grey eyes panned uneasily across the clearing, observing the area of jungle that had been hacked away, the disturbed jungle floor where the smaller trees had been uprooted. Her eyes picked out the slashes of machete blows on other bigger trees that had proven too difficult to fell or uproot and the compressed tracks of footprints on the ground — the distinct oval of signatures of a human presence.

› [Evaluation: time contamination is increasing]

Every movement these people made, every footstep, every swipe of a blunt blade, was adding to a growing count of potential contamination. Yet Liam O’Connor’s instruction to her was a mission priority, an override. As the mission operative, his orders were as final and non-negotiable as any hard-coded line of programming in her head.

He’d been very specific: that she was to organize the completion of the bridge and the building of a camp. And, for good measure, some kind of small enclosure, a palisade that they could all hide inside just in case any nasty found its way on to their island.

And so she had. Just like their last mission, back when her AI software had been assigned the ident. ‘Bob’, she was once again obediently following orders. There was something vaguely comforting about being in a brand-new functioning body, being on a mission once again with Liam O’Connor. They had functioned together very efficiently last time — successfully correcting a significant time contamination against exceedingly unfavourable odds.

But there’d been something… untidy… about the AI’s learning curve. As Bob, it had discovered that the strict mission parameters could be overwritten with new ones, that under extreme circumstances the collection of software routines was actually capable of making a ‘decision’.

That in itself had been a disturbing realization. As Bob, the AI had learned that its core programming could be subtly influenced, swayed, by something else: the tiny nodule of organic intelligence the computer chip was connected to. The undeveloped foetal brain of this genetically engineered frame. As Bob, the AI had experienced a fleeting taste of something that these humans must all take for granted. Emotion. The AI had discovered something very, very odd… that it actually ‘liked’ Liam O’Connor.

Since that first clone body had been irreparably damaged in the snowy woods down the hill from Adolf Hitler’s winter Berghof retreat and the AI uploaded into the field office’s mainframe — an entirely non-organic, disembodied existence — the AI had had much time to reflect on all that it had learned from those six months in the past.

Conclusions

AI is now capable of referring to the newly developed AI routines as… ‘ I ’, ‘ Me ’, ‘ Myself ’.

‘ I ’ am now capable of limited decision-making.

Within an organic hardware housing, ‘ I ’ am capable of limited emotional stimulation.

And most important of all…

‘ I ’ ‘ like ’ Liam O’Connor.

Becks continued to watch the humans at work and realized that part of her onboard code was insistently whispering a warning to her that a decision needed to be made, and made very soon. The humans were beginning to cause dangerously unacceptable levels of contamination in this jungle clearing with all that they were doing. With every footstep, with every log being cut down, there was an increased possibility that some fossilized forensic clue would survive sixty-five million years to be found in the future, and quite clearly reveal that humans had visited this time.

Unacceptable.

Liam O’Connor’s instructions to her were at odds with the basic protocols of journeying into the past, that contamination must be kept to an absolute minimum. Even now, by simply being here, these people could be causing a far greater time wave than the assassination of Edward Chan in 2015 might have caused.

Recommendation

Terminate all humans, including mission operative Liam O’Connor.

Destroy all traces of human artefacts and habitation in this location.

Self-terminate.

The recommendation was faultlessly logical and strategically sound. But that small nodule of primitive organic matter reminded her software that Liam was a friend.

And friends don’t kill friends.

Becks blinked away the thought. It was an unwelcome distraction.

Decision Options

Proceed immediately with mission recommendation.

Wait for operative Liam O’Connor and discuss.

A decision. Never easy. Becks’s internal silicon wafer processor began to rapidly warm up as gigabytes of data rattled through software filters. Her lifeless grey eyes blinked in rapid succession as she desperately struggled to produce an answer and her fingers absentmindedly tightened round the handle of the machete. She barely registered the blonde-haired female human called Laura approaching her.

‘Hey!’ the girl called out. ‘You going to give us a hand or just stand there and watch us do the work? Huh? Becks? ’

Becks’s eyes slowly swivelled and locked on the girl, but she said nothing. Her mind was very, very busy.