The Terminal Experiment

CHAPTER 43

Peter tried to blow holes in his theory on the way there, but instead it kept making more sense, not less. Sandra’s day off. A day when, very likely, she wouldn’t be armed. The perfect day to kill a cop.

The traffic was heavy. Peter leaned on his horn. Despite the computerized map display on his dashboard, he managed to make a wrong turn, finding himself in a dead end. Cursing, he turned around and headed in the other direction. He was driving recklessly, he knew. But if he could just warn Sandra, tell her that someone might be after her — she could protect herself, he was sure of that. She was a cop.

Finally, he turned onto Melville Avenue. Number 216 was a townhouse. Nothing ostentatious. Grass needed cutting. A brown United Parcel Service van was parked out front.

A sign warned that parking on the street was illegal before 6:00 P.M. Peter ignored that.

He looked up at the house. The front door was closed. Funny, that. Where was the delivery person?

Peter’s heart was racing. What if the killer was inside?

Paranoia. Madness.

Still…

He got out of his car, fumbled with his trunk keys, found the tire iron, grabbed it in both hands, and hurried up to the door.

He was about to press the buzzer when he heard a sound from inside: something smashing to the floor.

He hit the buzzer.

No response.

In for a penny, thought Peter, in for a pound.

There was a narrow floor-to-ceiling frosted window next to the actual door panel. Peter hit it with the tire iron. It cracked. He smashed the metal rod against it again with all his strength. The glass shattered. Peter reached inside, unlocked the door, and swung it open.

His brain fought to take it all in. A short staircase led up from the entryway to the living room. At the top of the stairs was a big man in a UPS uniform. In his hands was a device that looked a bit like an oversized wallet made of gray plastic. Lying on the floor behind him was Sandra Philo, unconscious or dead. A large broken vase was lying near her. The sound he’d heard: when she’d fallen to the ground, she must have knocked it down.

The big man raised the device he was holding and took aim at Peter.

Peter hesitated for half a second, then—

He threw the tire iron as hard as he could. It pin-wheeled through the air.

The man pressed a button on his weapon, but it made no sound. Peter dived forward.

The tire iron hit the man in the face. He tumbled backward, falling over Sandra.

Peter thought for a second about simply running away, but of course he couldn’t do that. He bolted the short flight into the living room. The killer was dazed. Peter scooped up the strange weapon as he passed. He hadn’t a clue how to use it, but then he noticed something more familiar — Sandra’s service revolver — protruding from a holster draped over the back of a chair a couple of meters away. Peter shoved the strange device into his pocket and got the gun. Standing in the middle of the room he aimed it at the killer, who was slowly regaining his feet.

“Stop!” said Peter. “Stop or I’ll shoot.”

The big man rubbed his forehead. “You wouldn’t do that, mate,” he said in an Australian accent.

Peter realized he didn’t know if Sandra’s gun was loaded, and, even if it was, he wasn’t sure how to fire it. It probably had a safety mechanism of some sort. “Don’t come any closer,” said Peter.

The big man took a step toward him. “Come on, mate,” he said. “You don’t want to be a killer. You’ve no idea what was going on here.”

“I know you killed Hans Larsen,” said Peter. “I know you were paid one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars to do it.”

That shocked the man. “Who are you?” he said, still moving closer.

“Stay there!” shouted Peter. “Stay there or I’ll shoot.” Peter looked down at the gun. There — that must be the safety catch. He moved it aside and cocked the weapon. “Stay back,” he yelled. But Peter himself was backing up now. “I’ll shoot!”

“You don’t have the balls, mate,” said the man, moving slowly across the living room toward him.

“I will shoot!” cried Peter.

“Give me the gun, mate. I’ll let you walk out of here.”

“Stop!” said Peter. “Please stop!”

The big man reached out a long arm toward Peter.

Peter closed his eyes.

And fired—

The sound was deafening.

The man tumbled backward.

Peter saw that he’d hit him in the side of the head. A long red scrape ran across the right side of his skull.

“Oh my God…” said Peter, in shock. “Oh my God…”

The man was now splayed across the floor, like Sandra, dead or unconscious.

Peter, barely able to keep his balance, his ears ringing furiously, staggered back to where Sandra was lying. There was no sign of injury to her. Although she was breathing, she was still out cold.

Peter went down to the small den off the front hall and found the videophone. It was engaged, and the screen was filled with numbers. Peter recognized the logo of the Royal Bank of Canada; Sandra must have been logged on to do some at-home banking when she’d been interrupted by the deliveryman. Peter broke the connection.

Suddenly the killer appeared in the doorway. The gouge across the side of his head was dry. Beneath it, Peter could see what looked like shiny metal—

Shiny metal. God.

An immortal. An actual immortal. Well, why not? The fucking guy made enough money.

Peter still had Sandra’s gun. He aimed it at the man.

“Who are you?” said the Australian. Yellow teeth were visible when he spoke.

“I — I’m the guy who hired you,” said Peter.

“Bull.”

“I am. I hired you by electronic mail. I paid you one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars to kill Hans Larsen, and a hundred K to kill this detective. But I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want her dead.”

“You’re Avenger?” said the man. “You’re the guy who hired me to cut that bloke’s dick off?”

Good God, thought Peter. So that’s what the mutilation had been. “Yes,” he said, trying not to show his revulsion.

“Yes.”

The Australian rubbed his forehead. “I ought to kill you for what you tried to do to me.”

“You can keep the hundred thousand. Just get the hell out of here.”

“Damn straight I’ll keep the money. I did my job.”

The tableau held for several moments. The Australian was clearly sizing Peter up — whether he would use the gun again, whether Peter deserved to die for having taken a shot at him.

Peter cocked the trigger. “I know I can’t kill an immortal,” he said, “but I can slow you down long enough for the police to get here.” He swallowed hard. “I understand a life sentence is a terrifying thought to someone who will live forever.”

“Give me back my beamer.”

“Not a chance,” said Peter.

“Come on, mate — that thing cost forty grand.”

“Bill me for it.” He waved the gun again.

The Australian weighed his options for a moment more, then nodded. “Don’t leave any fingerprints, mate,” he said, then turned and left through the still-open front door.

Peter leaned over the phone, thought for a second, then selected text-only mode and dialed 9-1-1. He typed:

All calls to 9-1-1 were recorded, but this way there’d be no voiceprint to identify him. Sandra was unconscious; she hadn’t seen Peter, and the police would probably have no reason to think anyone had been there besides the assailant, whom Sandra presumably could describe.

Peter reached behind the phone, disconnected the keyboard, and wiped the keyboard jack with Kleenex. Still carrying the keyboard, he went back upstairs to check on Sandra. She was still unconscious, but she was also still alive. Peter, shaken to his very core, retrieved the tire iron. As he staggered out the door, he wiped the doorknob, then headed out to find his car. As he drove slowly away, he passed an ambulance, its sirens blaring, heading toward Sandra’s house.

Peter drove for kilometers, not really sure where he was going. Finally, before he killed himself or someone else through his carelessness, he pulled over and called Sarkar at work on his car phone.

“Peter!” said Sarkar. “I was just about to call you.”

“What is it?”

“The virus is ready.”

“Have you released it yet?”

“No. I want to test it first.”

“How?”

“I’ve got pristine versions of all three sims backed up on disk at Raheema’s office.” Sarkar’s wife worked only a few blocks from Mirror Image. “Fortunately, I use her place for off-site storage of backups. Otherwise that police raid would have turned them up. Anyway, for a test run, I want to mount versions on a fully isolated system and then release the virus.”

Peter nodded. “Thank God. I wanted to come see you anyway — I’ve got a device here that I can’t identify. I’ll be there in…” He paused, looked around, trying to figure out exactly where he was. Lawrence East. And that was Yonge Street up ahead. “I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

When Peter arrived, he showed Sarkar the gray plastic device that looked like an overstuffed, rigid wallet.

“Where did you get that?” asked Sarkar.

“From the hit man.”

“The hit man?”

Peter explained what had happened. Sarkar looked shaken. “You say you called the police?”

“No — an ambulance. But I’m sure the police are there by now, too.”

“Was she alive when you left?”

“Yes.”

“So, what is that thing?” said Sarkar, pointing at the device Peter had brought with him.

“A weapon of some sort, I think.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Sarkar.

“The guy called it a ‘beamer.’”

Sarkar’s jaw dropped. “Subhanallah!” he said. “A beamer…”

“You know what that is?”

Sarkar nodded. “I’ve read about them. Particle-beam weapons. They pump concentrated radiation into the body.” He exhaled. “Nasty. They’re banned in North America. Completely silent, and you can hold one inside a pocket and fire it from in there. Clothing, or even thin wooden doors, are transparent to it.”

“Christ,” said Peter.

“But you say the woman was alive?”

“She was breathing.”

“If she was shot with that, at the very least they’re going to have to carve hunks out of her to save what’s left. More likely, though, she’ll be dead in a day or two. If he had shot her in the brain, she would have died immediately.”

“Her gun wasn’t far from her. Maybe she’d been going for that when I came in.”

“Then he might not have had time to aim. Perhaps he hit her in the back — scramble the spinal cord and her legs would simply stop working.”

“And I smashed the window in before he could finish the job. God damn it,” said Peter. “God damn every bit of this. We’ve got to stop it.”

Sarkar nodded. “We can. I have my test all set up.” He gestured at a workstation in the center of the room. “This unit is completely isolated. I’ve removed all network connections, phone lines, modems, and cellular linkups. And I’ve loaded new copies of the three sims onto the workstation’s hard drive.”

“And the virus?” said Peter.

“Here.” Sarkar held up a black PCMCIA memory card, smaller than and almost as thin as a business card. He placed it into the workstation’s card slot.

Peter pulled up a chair next to the workstation. “To do the test properly,” said Sarkar, “we should really have these new sims running.”

Peter hesitated. The idea of activating new versions of.himself just so they could be killed was unsettling. But if it was necessary … “Do it,” said Peter.

Sarkar pressed some keys. “They’re alive,” he said.

“How can you tell?”

He pointed a bony finger at some data on the workstation’s screen. It was gibberish to Peter. “Here,” said Sarkar, realizing that. “Let me represent it in a different way.” He pushed some keys. Three lines started rolling across the screen. “That’s essentially a simulated EEG for each of the sims, converting their neural-net activity into something akin to brain waves.”

Peter pointed at each of the lines in turn. Violent spikes were appearing. “Look at that.”

Sarkar nodded. “Panic. They don’t know what’s going on. They’ve woken up blind, deaf, and utterly alone.”

“Those poor guys,” said Peter.

“Let me release the virus,” Sarkar said, touching a few keys. “Executing.”

“Exactly,” said Peter, shuddering.

The panicked EEGs continued for several minutes. “I don’t think it’s working,” said Peter.

“It takes time to check for the signature patterns,” said Sarkar. “Those sims are huge, after all. Just wait a — there.”

The middle of the three EEGs suddenly spiked violently up and down, and then—

Nothing. A straight line.

And then even the line disappeared, the source file erased.

“Jesus,” said Peter, very softly.

After several more minutes, the top line spiked in the same way, flatlined, and then disappeared.

“One left,” said Sarkar.

This one seemed to take longer than the other two — perhaps it was Control, the most complete simulacrum, the one that was a full copy of Peter, with no network connections broken. Peter watched the EEG line jump wildly, then die, then simply disappear, like a light going out.

“No soulwave escaping,” said Peter.

Sarkar shook his head.

Peter was more disturbed by all this than he’d expected to be.

Copies of himself.

Born.

Killed.

All in the space of a few moments.

He moved his chair across the room and leaned back in it, closing his eyes.

Sarkar set about reformatting the workstation’s hard drive to make sure all traces of the sims were gone. When he was done, he pushed the ejector button on the workstation’s card slot. The memory card with the virus popped out into his hand. He carried it over to the main computer console.

“I’ll send it out simultaneously over five different subnetworks,” said Sarkar. “It should be out there worldwide in less than a day.”

“Wait,” said Peter, sitting up. “Surely your virus could be modified to tell one sim from another?”

“Sure,” said Sarkar. “In fact, I’ve already written routines for that. There are certain key neural connections that I had to sever in making the modified sims; it’s easy enough to identify them based on those.”

“Well, then there’s no reason all three sims have to die. We could simply release a version of the virus that would kill whichever one is guilty.”

Sarkar considered. “I suppose we could first threaten all three of them with the broad version of the virus, in hopes that the guilty one would confess. After that, we could release a specific version aimed at the one guilty party. Surely you’d confess to save your brothers.”

“I— I don’t know,” said Peter. “I’m an only child — or was, until a short time ago. I honestly don’t know what I’d do.”

“I would do it,” said Sarkar. “In a minute, I would sacrifice myself for members of my family.”

“I have long suspected,” said Peter, absolutely seriously, “that you might be a better human being than I. But it’s worth a try.”

“It’ll take me about an hour to compile the three separate strains of virus,” said Sarkar.

“Okay,” said Peter. “As soon as you’re ready, I’ll summon the sims into a real-time conference.”