He expected the other man to hit him. Or to run. Or to call for help. He didn’t. Instead, he looked down. “I’m sorry about that. Really sorry. I didn’t want it to go down that way.”
He said it like it was a promotion Javier had been passed over for. Like the wholesale destruction of his entire species was a bad interest rate, or some other unfortunate nitty-gritty detail of life that nobody really liked but everybody had to deal with. Like all the vN were no better than any other failed technology. Like he and his boys were just another Corvair, or Betamax, or exploding lithium-ion battery. Years from now, people – chimps – would talk that way about the vN. They worked just fine, until they didn’t. They were defective. But it’s all fine, now. We got rid of them.
He pulled back and smiled. He looked delighted. “It was you,” he said. “You broke Jack out.”
“Gold star.” Javier looked back at the display. “Now are you going to tell me where Sarton’s cache is, or are you going to make me suck your dick again like that asshole did?”
Now Holberton did pull away. He retied his robe. “God. No. Jesus.” His mouth fell open. Tears rose in his eyes. “Oh, my God. He…” He covered his mouth with his hand. “I’m so sorry, Javier. I’m so, so sorry.”
He tried to hug Javier, but Javier stepped back and held a hand up. “Please don’t. You’ve done enough.”
Holberton went pale. “So, upstairs… ? Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God. I’m so–”
“Upstairs was fun. You didn’t force me to do anything.” Javier sat down on the stool Rhiannon had previously occupied. “But I still need your help.”
“With what? The food? I can get you the clean stuff, that’s no problem–”
“I need you to explain all this.” He pointed at the display. “And then I need you to answer something for me. But this first.”
“Oh, boy.” Holberton paced for a minute. “I’m getting some gin. Hold on.”
Holberton came back with a bottle of Hendrick’s and a glass full of ice. He clutched a lime in one hand and a bottle of soda under one arm. He set all the items on the table and started pouring. When he was finished pouring, he rimmed the glass with a wedge of lime, but didn’t squirt any of its juice into the drink itself. When he had consumed a good third of his glass, he sat back down.
“I don’t know how much Violet told you, but Derek Smythe supervised a whole team. Coders, testers, the whole bit. But he was the one who answered directly to my father.” Holberton took another drink. “And your missionary man, Powell, he brought Smythe in. Convinced him to join. It was a hard sell. So I guess you could say that this whole turn of events, the way the world is right now, that’s all Powell’s fault.”
I could explain it all to you. I could tell you my whole history. I could tell you that I’m atoning for something. Because I am, Javier. I’m atoning. I’m making something right.
“Oh, God.”
“Literally.” Holberton took another long drink. “I honestly don’t know how vN live without alcohol,” he said. “I mean, what do you do when you want to get drunk?”
“We fuck.”
“Well, then.” Holberton raised his glass. Then he finished it. He seemed to be turning an idea over. But when he opened his mouth, he didn’t say what Javier expected. “You should know something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Derek Smythe turned in the finished failsafe. That’s part of the issue.”
“It wasn’t finished?”
“The beta version is the one that went to rollout.”
Javier’s mouth fell open. “That’s… That’s not legal, is it?”
Holberton waved a hand. “This kind of thing happens all the time. The oil rigs in the Gulf, for example, their inspections process was shit for decades. The 2008 housing crisis, the SEC had letters coming in for years warning them what would happen, and no one listened. Chernobyl. Walkerton. It happens.” Holberton leaned forward. “We’re flawed, Javier. And we made you flawed, too. And then we covered it up, the same way we cover up every other preventable industrial disaster.”
Javier sat back in his chair. He understood that this variety of artificial light granted humans a sense of warmth, but he felt none of it. If anything, the thought of all those filaments blinking away toward their inevitable decay made him feel decrepit. “But someone would have found out,” he said.
“No. No one did. Because Smythe was dead, and my father ordered everyone to take a week off to mourn, and then some of my father’s people came in and made it look like suicide from overwork. They made it look like the last prototype was the final one.”
“Made what look like suicide?”
“Don’t you get it?” Holberton poured more gin. He drank. “Smythe didn’t kill himself. He was murdered. By the vN he was working on at the time. The nursing model.”
“Amy’s model.”
Holberton put the glass down. “Yes. Amy’s model.”