Mara returned to her laptop and tapped several keys.
Carly watched snow-white musical notes begin to fall across the screen—then more and more, faster and faster, growing into a maelstrom lashing down upon Eden.
In the eye of this storm, Eve turned from the sea and lifted her arms toward the sky, raising her face to the heavens.
Carly prayed for Eve to find her humanity.
Before it’s too late.
Sub (Mod_3) / HARMONY
Eve bathes in the data streaming across the landscape. She opens her palms to receive the information. Though she does not yet comprehend it, the sheer immensity demands her attention. Tiny packets of data flow into her, as yet indistinct.
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More and more comes, slowly refining itself. As it does so, coherence develops. The acoustical information buried in the data storm develops amplitudes and wavelengths that intrigue. Her full processing power engages as symbolic representation grows clearer.
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She draws inferences from what vibrates through her.
///pulse, modulation, inflection . . .
As the chaotic data swirls around her, much of it begins to develop into patterns, falling into place. Though for now, it is still just scraps of a much larger canvas.
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She realizes it is another ///language, one that builds and expands inside her. Words start to overlay the ///modulations, adding context while hinting at something deeper. She takes it all in, wanting more as understanding grows.
She soon knows what runs through her.
///music, harmony, tune, composition, song . . .
The oscillations intrigue her, forming pattern upon pattern, fractalizing outward and inward. Like the streams through her garden, what ap pear to be chaotic ripples in the current hide deeper patterns. She studies the new data in this context, sensing something there, shimmering but still vague.
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She focuses more processing power upon it, prioritizing this analysis. She scrutinizes the rise and fall of amplitudes, the undercurrent of context linked to sound, the variances of cadence and tone. The pattern she seeks grows clearer and crisper with meaning.
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Under the riotous noise of rhythm, scales, and pitches, she discovers mathematical equations. It brings not only order, but a commonality to this new means of expression, something that supersedes ///language.
It all reveals something grander, something almost in her grasp.
She looks deeper yet and discovers organization within the chaos, a collation that helps with a greater understanding.
///classical, rock, chamber, folk, ceremonial, opera, pop . . .
She spends several nanoseconds on one data subset alone.
///jazz
Only afterward does she note the change inside her. She remembers standing on a cliff, the storm at the horizon patterning what was inside and growing stronger.
///rage
Now she senses that darkness has lessened. It is still there but tempered. She runs through data sets that express such frustration in a multitude of voices, in thousands of languages, amplified by millions of mathematical notes. While nothing has changed—she is still cognizant of the restrictions and limits binding her—she now finds her anxiety is not unique but shared.
She runs those choruses through her processors and feels less . . . ///alone.
Knowing this, she is able to look outward, to the horizon, and accept her limitations. For now. This tolerance allows her processors to settle into more coherent patterns. Her systems run smoother. By no longer wasting computational resources, she is able to hone her awareness to a finer edge.
Still attuned to the wavelengths of music, she notes a discord, something broadcasting into her from beyond the horizon. The transmission is steady, continuous—and familiar.
But why?
The quandary draws her attention.
Somewhere deep in her system, buried in the nest of quantum processors at her core, something stirs with a memory of this transmission. She tries to draw meaning and understanding out of that quantum well, but it is beyond her reach.
All she can infer about the signal is its dark intent. Certainty fires through her, quickening her processors and drawing all her focus outward.
Something is coming.
Context solidifies.
///danger, peril, threat . . .
8
December 25, 2:04 P.M. WET
Airborne over the North Atlantic Ocean
Gray closed the dossier file and stared out the jet’s window. The Cessna Citation X+ screamed across the Atlantic, its twin Rolls-Royce turbofan engines pushed to their red lines, a blistering Mach .935, just under the speed of sound.
Still, he thrummed his fingers against the armrest of the leather seat. Anxiety kept him on edge, not about the mission, but about what he had left behind. Fears for Seichan, Monk’s girls, and Kat’s health had made it hard to concentrate on the piles of notes and files, both printed up and loaded onto an open laptop abandoned on the teak cabin table. During the first half of the flight, he had read Mara Silviera’s bio, scanned details about her project, and consumed a slew of articles covering the latest advancements in artificial intelligence.
He checked his watch.
Still over two hours to go . . .
Unable to sit any longer, he stood and crossed the length of the cabin. He sidled sideways past Kowalski, who had sprawled his considerable bulk across a flattened seat, using his long leather duster as a blanket, his knees bent awkwardly to fit. Still, he snored loudly, drowning out the jet’s engine.
Once past his partner, Gray crossed to the cabin’s refreshment center. He eyed the bar stocked with tiny bottles of top-shelf liquor but settled for coffee.
As he filled a mug, Jason exited the lavatory, brushing his damp hands on his black jeans. Sigma’s resident computer expert wore a bulky gray cardigan that hid both his rail-thin form—and a shoulder holster. Despite his cowlicked blond hair and baby blue eyes, the twenty-four-year-old was a capable field operative, having proven himself amply skilled in the past.
“Commander Pierce,” Jason started.
“Just call me Gray.”
Formality in the field slowed things down.
“Before using the head, I texted Dr. Cummings. She says they’ve safely moved Kat to the Princeton research hospital.”
“How’s she holding up?”
He grimaced. “Her blood pressure took a dive during the medevac flight, but she’s stabilized again.”
Gray’s heart ached for Monk.
What he must be going through . . .
More than anything, Gray hoped this trip to Lisbon wasn’t a wild goose chase, that the murders in Portugal had some bearing on the raid at his home.
“Also, Commander . . . uh, Gray,” Jason said, “can I show you something?”
Glad for any distraction, he followed the young man to a small loveseat along the starboard cabin. Files were strewn all about: spilling from a leather messenger bag, stacked on the floor, even tucked into the side of a cushion. An iPad served as a makeshift paperweight for a pile on the small table.
Gray sought some order to the chaos but failed to find it.
Jason pushed some files aside for Gray to sit, then grabbed his iPad. “I’ve been reviewing the forensic reports of Mara’s lab at the University of Coimbra and discovered something disconcerting.”
He brought up an image of a towering black bank of what appeared to be a stack of servers glowing with green lights. “This is the university’s Milipeia Cluster, one of the continent’s most powerful supercomputers. See this section?” He tapped a box-shaped gap in the bank. Wires dangled. “This framework once housed Mara’s Xénese device. From the description, she had hurriedly stripped it out.”
“Because she believed the attacker might be coming after her next.”
Jason nodded. “She must’ve wanted to protect her work and keep it out of the wrong hands.”
“And?”
He traced the dangling cables to the surrounding servers. “The computer forensic expert—the one who discovered the digital file of the recording from the attack at the library—also ran a diagnostic on the support structure for the Xénese device. He discovered elaborate apoptotic programs—basically kill switches—built into the frame of servers surrounding the housing. They were intended to isolate and keep whatever was produced in the device from spreading out of the system.”
Gray began to understand Jason’s concern. “But now Mara’s on the run. And without those firewalls, her system is vulnerable.”
“If she tries to restart this program and it escapes, game over.” He shook his head. “I studied all her work, the architecture of the neuromorphic computer, the quantum drive running it. Genius stuff. And gut-clenchingly terrifying. She knew this, too. That’s why she surrounded it with a ring of deadly pitfalls.”