The computer representation of a mindmap was surprisingly easy to tweak into an AI. Maria had taken the code she’d written in the jobs she couldn’t remember doing and stored it in compressed files within the AI that was Mrs. Perkins. The old woman often sat out on the porch, but sometimes she sat inside a library, chain saw leaking oil on the floor, surrounded by the data that Maria couldn’t bear to let go of but couldn’t think of any safe place to store.
Near the end, she took his memory of being human, and lastly she took his name. “We’ll call him an Intelligent Artificial Network,” Sallie said. “IAN.”
Maria had never felt so dirty. That she remembered anyway.
She sat back. Lab-techs-slash-goons whisked away Takahashi’s body, no longer needed. “Am I free to go now?” Maria asked, exhausted. “I need to pack.”
“Sure,” Sallie said, sliding her tablet into a soft leather case. “Oh, and when was your last mindmap?”
“Yesterday,” Maria said. Her tired brain was searching for something, something Sallie had said before she had forced the hacking job. “What did you mean the lab that you usually used has been shut down? Do you do this kind of thing a lot?”
“More than you know,” Sallie said.
Maria jumped as someone behind her slid a needle into her neck, and she was able to identify one of the goons who had moved silently into position before she slumped over the table.
Trust
Hiro’s wounds were healing nicely with the nanobot drip, and he was in an oddly upbeat mood.
“How’s the pain?” Joanna asked, checking his hip bandage.
“Feels like I got shot a few times,” Hiro said. “But I’ve been through worse. I think.”
“Are the restraints too tight?” she asked, testing the tough straps.
“Nah. I wouldn’t go far if they weren’t there, but if it makes everyone feel safer, that’s fine.”
Joanna sat on the edge of the bed. Katrina was lying, head facing away from them, across the room. Still, Joanna kept her voice low. “Hiro, do you think part of you was responsible for the murders, and then the other part of you hanged yourself out of guilt?”
His face got serious. “No.”
She looked surprised. “You know this?”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you so sure?” she asked, inspecting the bandage on his shoulder.
“You won’t like the answer. Do you want to hear it?”
“You know I do.”
“Because the murderer used a chef’s knife.” He wiggled his hands by his side, where they were restrained. “Before, I used a scalpel when I had to, but I…preferred more intimate ways of killing people.”
“How—” Joanna swallowed, and continued. “How did you kill them?”
He glanced at Katrina and then back at Joanna. “Bare hands, mostly.” He made a face. “I don’t like remembering this. It doesn’t feel like my memory, but I know it is.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because that would have sounded great. Hey, guys, I know I didn’t do it because when I killed people it was different!”
Joanna tried to imagine her reaction to that statement. “Point.”
“Are you going to check on me anytime soon?” Katrina called. “You’d think you’d take care of the victim first.”
“Pain is an indicator you’re alive,” Joanna replied. “Revel in that, because your other clone can’t.”
“Letting a patient suffer is unethical!” Katrina said.
“You talk to me about ethics?” Joanna said, and laughed. “I’ll be right over. I’m almost done with Hiro.” She focused on Hiro, whose eyes were closed. “Have your pain meds kicked in?”
“Ohhh yeahhh,” he said, smiling.
“At the rate you’re healing, you should be good to go in a day.”
“From the medbay to the brig. Excellent,” he said, eyes still closed.
She watched him, pity and fear gnawing at her insides. Such a sweet man, except when the Hyde came out.
Now for the much less pleasant patient.
She stood at the head of Katrina’s bed. “You don’t need a new shot of painkillers for another hour. Why are you whining?”
Katrina glared at her. “Still hurts.”
“Fine,” Joanna said. She went to the cabinet to get a shot of painkiller that wouldn’t interact with the ones already in her system.
“Why are you so nice to him? He tried to kill us,” Katrina demanded.
Joanna held the syringe up and filled it with a clear liquid. “You ruined our one true chance for finding out what happened to us. You murdered a woman in cold blood. You stole from and assaulted me. Besides, Hiro is just nicer. And he has a logical reason for his break: Yadokari are nasty, invasive things. You just did yours because you’re impatient and cruel.”
“You believe his bullshit that he’s got those yado-whatever crabs in him?” Katrina said. “That’s hysterical. He’s really good at acting, I have to hand it to him. And I didn’t murder her. I just tried to wake her up.”
“Well, mission accomplished. Congratulations.” Joanna jabbed her with the needle in the arm. Katrina didn’t flinch.
“And you know about Wolfgang, don’t you? He’s anti-clone to the point of hunting us once upon a time. He very easily could have killed us all.”
“So could you, Katrina. You are former military at the very least. And you’ve shown yourself capable of murdering one of the clones from that crew already.” Out of politeness she kept her voice down, but all of their pasts were unraveling in front of them. They’d all be exposed sooner or later.
She’d see to it.
Paul had crossed his arms and was silently disagreeing with Maria, shaking his head at everything she said.
Wolfgang held his head in his hands as if trying to keep it from exploding. He sat down on Maria’s bed, exhausted. He waved his hand at her to continue. “Go on. Tell me everything.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Maria said. “All hackers have their own signature way of coding. Even Paul knows that. That’s my code in him.”
“But that’s monstrous,” Wolfgang said, looking at her with disgust.
Maria grimaced and looked at the floor. “Taking a man and turning him into something that looks like an AI, that’s not something I would normally do. But there’s no denying that’s my code. Apparently I was forced to do it. Under duress.” She looked pale and sad. “That kind of thing happened a few times to me. It appears I don’t stand up well to torture.”
Wolfgang frowned.
“So I figured we should talk about it before we decide how best to tell him,” Maria said.
Wolfgang gaped at her. “You want to tell him?”
“You want to keep it from him?” she answered in the same outraged surprise. “Wolfgang, he thinks he’s a machine.”
“He is a machine,” Paul protested. “She’s lying.”
Wolfgang ignored him. “And he is happy as a machine. If you tell him who he really is, he’s going to get upset. And he has control of the whole ship.”
Maria looked like she hadn’t considered that. Why would she, Wolfgang thought bitterly. IAN adored her. Now he had an idea why. “You have to put the code back in. It’s more important now than ever.”
“Ah, God, but you might be right,” Maria said miserably.
Later, IAN lounged in the gardens. Or rather, his gardening robots did, which was the closest he could get to a body.
His mind swam with what he had just heard. He had eavesdropped—of course he had. He wasn’t stupid. Information was the only power he had.