Electric Church

XIX WHY AM I STILL ALIVE?

I stepped into the gutted kitchen area, where Milton and Tanner had scrounged a few crates together into a makeshift table and stored our meager food supplies. Food was hard to come by. Mostly, we had nutrient tablets, the kind they handed out now and then in New York when local aristocrats were moved to keep the peasant population alive for a few more weeks, for whatever obscure reasons really rich people had. The tablets kept you going, but left hunger gnawing at you. It was like starving to death forever.

Milton sat on some boxes, taking a pull from a gleaming flask. She glanced up at me from her spot at the crates and grinned. “Cheerful fucker, isn’t he?”

I gestured at the bottle she was drinking from. “Give me a blast.”

She handed it over. “Gearing up for the interrogation, eh? That’s what we figured you’d do.”

I nodded, sitting down on a box and taking a long swallow of liquor. It tasted like gasoline. I held it in by sheer will and after a moment the burning was replaced by warmth and I risked a second swallow before handing it back. “Kieth can’t guarantee West’s brain will last very long once it’s unfettered from the mod chip. Gatz seems to be able to force lucidity onto it, but who knows how long he’ll be able to manage. We need information.” I coughed. “Someone will need to sit in and take notes. Kev’s illiterate, I think, and Ty will be busy, so that leaves you or your sister.”

She winked. “Way ahead of you, chief. Why do you think I’m in here getting drunk? It’s like talking to a ghost.”

I stared at the rough wood of the crates. “You believe in shit like that?”

She slid the bottle in front of me, and I took another drink. It was starting to taste better. “Like ghosts? Like a soul?” Milton’s voice disappeared under the edge of the crate as she stretched out on the floor. “Sure I do, Mr. Cates. How can you not? All those prophecies are coming true.”

I swallowed wrong and had to cough to clear my windpipe. “Prophecies?”

“Fucking pagan.” She sighed. “Revelations. Catholic dogma. Most religions have something similar. Isn’t it obvious? We’re in the End Times.”

I stared at the bottle. Milton’s hand appeared over the edge of the crate and waved around lazily until I handed it back.

“Think about it, Cates. The dead are walking the Earth inside those air-cooled Monk bodies. You can’t get a doctor to look at you or buy something high-end unless you have one of those chips under your scalp. I’m telling you, it’s near over.”

I stood up. “Well then, we have nothing more to worry about.”

“Hey, Cates?”

“Yeah?”

“Make me a promise. I know we aren’t friends or anything, but promise me something human to human. Promise me you’ll blow my brains out before letting them Monk me. And my sister. Okay?”

I nodded immediately. “Honey, I thought that was understood, for all of us. Fuck, that’s a standing order.” I swallowed. “Be in the Assembly Room in five, okay? Take notes.”

“Keep calling me honey,” she called out after me, “and we may not have to wait for the Monks to arrange it.”

I tried to find my way back, but got lost in the twisty tunnel-like hallways of the place. It gave me an opportunity to search out more of the boobytraps they’d set up in case we had to fight off a small army of SSF or Monks or whatever huge, global organization was going to decide to kill me tomorrow. They’d been busy little bastards, and the work was first-rate. Aside from the guns and the drop-plates, there were electrocution wires stretched across the floors at key intersections, ready to snap taut and murder a half-dozen men simultaneously. There were small charges embedded in the seams of the floor, ready to blow and tumble another dozen into a newly born pit. Anyone trying to force their way into the place was going to pay dearly for it.

Eventually one of the Droids found me. Sputtering programmed politeness, it led me to where everyone except Milton and me had gathered. The four of them huddled around the Monk, which stood exactly where I’d left it when I’d fled: ramrod straight, staring directly ahead under the dual influence of its mod chip and Kieth’s custom instruction set.

“Well, well, the Boy Gunner,” Tanner said as I approached. “Traveling in style while the hired help suck fumes all the way across the ocean, I see,” she added sourly.

“I’ll kick in an extra yen to your share for pain and suffering,” I announced, pulling off my coat. “Now shut the hell up and let’s get started. You said you didn’t think we had much time?”

Kieth nodded and danced around checking his equipment. “The brain appears to be in good physical shape, but something is decaying in there. The personality? Soul? Subconscious? Ty doesn’t know. Maybe he’s just too crazy, after all this time. Every time Ty unhooks Brother West from the mod chip, Brother West goes more apeshit than the last time. Mr. Gatz has been able to control West to an extent-maybe a substitute for the mod chip-but that also appears to be decaying. Ty thinks you have about five minutes before Brother West goes fatal error on us.”

I stared at the Monk. It looked like a prisoner awaiting execution, head held high. I’d noticed that Kieth’s third-person royal status got worse when he was under pressure. “When that happens, you can kick the mod chip back in with your new instruction set, yes?”

“Yes. I think. We won’t know until we do it.”

I looked around, taking stock. We were in a mothballed factory, in an abandoned neighborhood, thousands of miles from what I thought of as home, and more than likely near death. I felt a strange sense of calm, of fatalism. If the Monk jumped up and slaughtered us all, it wouldn’t surprise me, and I wouldn’t, I thought, mind all that much.

Milton arrived and saluted me.“Go ahead, then, Mr. Kieth,” I said.

Kieth leaped up, mopping his head with the same filthy rag. “All right, then. Ty will be recording the whole episode, of course. Just in case. I will disconnect the behavioral modification chip, Mr. Gatz will assert his, uh, influence, and then you can question it.”

I nodded and addressed them all. “What we need most from Brother West is information about the security at Church headquarters. Anything else is gravy. Okay? So everyone else shut the fuck up until I’m finished.”

“Yeah,” Tanner drawled. “Or Mr. Cates will shoot you.”

I was starting to like the sisters. It also reminded me that I needed a weapon, fast. I felt defenseless and confused without something to defend myself with. “Kieth? Gatz?”

They both nodded. Kieth gestured a command carefully at his equipment, Gatz removed his glasses, the Monk spasmed again, and we all stood in silence. After a moment, the Monk shivered and turned its head, the sound of the tiny motors clear and sharp.

“Why am I still alive?” it said, turning its head back and forth. “I know Mr. Gatz. I know quite a lot about Mr. Gatz. I know the names Cates, Kieth, Milton Tanner. I do not know you.”

Kieth dashed around his black boxes adjusting things with waves of his arms and subtle flicks of his wrist. “Amazing, Mr. Cates. Brilliant, really. They’re using the brain’s lower functions as-is-saves them the trouble of trying to program all that stuff in. They’re using the brain’s memory as primary storage, though it looks like a stream dump is sent to the EC on a real-time basis. They’re saving themselves tons of money and time and effort by just using the human brain. If they tried to replicate this electronically they’d still be designing the fucking nano. The upper functions of the brain are filtered to the mod chip, which is just a null point.”

“That’s interesting, Mr. Kieth,” I said. “Can I ask it questions?”

The Monk twitched its head like a bird, and oriented on Kieth. “Questions?”

“Will you answer questions?”

Gatz nodded. “He’ll answer.”

I cleared my throat and stepped forward. “I’ve done some preliminary research and a few walk-bys. It looks to me like the EC headquarters has a single entrance, controlled by wireless handshake, correct?”

“Probably the Amblen Protocol,” Kieth said with a nod.

The Monk twitched and shivered again. “Amblen Protocol… modified. Custom. Dr. Amblen himself provided the algorithmic adjustments.”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Mr. Kieth, that means there’s a transmitter chip that beams the authentication code when the Monk approaches the HQ entrance. It’s probably write-twice media, programmed to flush itself if tampered with.”

Ty looked outraged. “Did you just explain the concept to Ty? Ty’s designed these systems, Mr. Cates.”

“There is,” the Monk said slowly, jerking its head twice, “a random frequency shift as well.”

“Ah,” I muttered, ignoring Kieth. “One entrance-what are the deterrents to herd you through?”

“The authentication handshake is wide-field. You must supply the correct response no matter where you attempt to enter.”

“The response to a failed authentication?”

“If no… response is… transmitted, a suppression field is deployed. That is all that is necessary. There are of course brothers on guard duty.”

“There you have it. Thank you, West.” I turned to Kieth and smiled. “We can get in. Ty, find the transmitter chip, but don’t fuck with it. It will be hidden, possibly camouflaged as a different type of chip altogether. Then we can start plotting.”

Kieth twitched his nose. “I can get into it. Ty can get into anything.”

I nodded. “Ty’s a genius, yes, yes. But if Ty fucks up even a little, the chip will burn itself and will be so much char, okay? We’ll have one shot at getting the algorithm out of it. Fuck it up with your itchy trigger fingers and I’ll have to shoot you. Brother West,” I said, “are there any other security features we need to know about?”

The Monk oriented on me jerkily, twitching. “The power and network feeds for the handshake system are located within the HQ building. They do not connect outside the building. There is no way to cut power or intercept the feeds. If you approach without authorization, the suppression field is invoked, and you are held until the guards can respond and eliminate. Response time averages six seconds.”

“Are you observed while entering?”

“Digital analysis software examines every frame of security cams, which cover every foot of the perimeter, yes.”

I swore. For a few seconds we were bathed in complete silence. I looked at Kieth, who just stared back. Then I glanced back at the Monk.

“Will you help us?”

It twitched violently. “Help you?”

“Will you help us to get in?”

Another few moments of silence, marred only by the trembling hum of the Monk’s motors. It was vibrating slightly.

“Will you kill me?”

I blinked, and swallowed hard. “Kill you?”

“Yes.” It took a step forward awkwardly, and then stopped. “If I help you to enter the Abbey, will you kill me?” With apparent effort, it spread its hands.

Glancing around the room, I found no one willing to look me in the eye, no one willing to offer even an unspoken opinion. Finally I made fists with both hands and looked back at the Monk.

“Done.”

The Monk didn’t move at first. Then it nodded its head, once, the motors humming. “Done.”