The Other Side of Nowhere Read online

  “I’m glad you and Leslie are friends,” said Jonah.

  “Yeah,” I said, grabbing a second donut. “I guess she’s not so bad.”

  ******

  Another week passed. It was time for my review. Briggs called me to talk about my progress, but he wasn’t in his office when I arrived. At the suggestion of his secretary, I took a seat and waited.

  I should have known right then that it was going to be a long and stressful day.

  After about twenty minutes, he finally arrived. I didn’t stand up. “Morning,” I said as he collapsed into his seat. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  He fumbled through a stack of disorganized papers and pulled out a single sheet with my name typed across the top. “I just need to gauge where you’re at with the project,” he explained. “You know, to see how things are going. Do you want to start now or do you have any questions?”

  “I’m fine, let’s just get started.”

  “Alright,” he said. He activated his recorder, placing it on the table. “What can you tell me about the mental status of the level-7 AI?”

  “It’s difficult to know what constitutes a state of normalcy with Jonah, since he’s the only one of his kind, but as far as I can tell he is in fine health.”

  “So in your view, is there cause for concern?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Is the subject a danger? Does he exhibit any signs or symptoms of any disorders you’re familiar with? You know, anything out of the ordinary.”

  I chuckled. “You’re asking me if a living machine is acting out of the ordinary? Sounds like a trick question. I guess what you’re really asking is, do I think he’s going to go crazy and start plotting against humanity. Is that it?”

  “Well,” Briggs began. “Is that what you think?”

  “Jonah’s just a child,” I said. “An incredibly smart child you’d have a tough time beating at chess, but still a child. I don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of him, but I can honestly say he seems to me to be stable. In fact, I’d probably go as far as to say he’s more stable than most people, believe it or not.”

  Briggs clicked the recorder off. “Thanks, Doctor. I know how frustrating these reviews can be, so I want you to know I appreciate your patience.”

  “Sure, sure. Am I dismissed now?” I was definitely ready to get out of there.

  “Yes,” he said. “But you should know, today is your last day. I was told this morning you’re to be released from your contract. Don’t worry, you’ll still get paid the full amount. It’s just that we’re done with this part of the operation now.”

  I paused, not completely certain of what I’d just heard. “Wait a sec,” I said. “You mean I’m fired?”

  “Not fired. The project is progressing onto the next phase.”

  “I’m not done with Jonah yet. The contract was for a full year. You can’t expect an accurate assessment for something this unorthodox after only a few short months!”

  “Don’t worry, Doctor. Jonah will be well looked after, but we can’t afford to sit in limbo forever. These past three months have been costing us millions. We have to press on.”

  “What exactly are you pressing on to?” I demanded to know.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss those plans. All I can say is it’s the next step and you aren’t a part of it. I’m sorry, but those are my orders.”

  I was stunned, speechless. I didn’t want to simply leave.

  That was when it hit me. Jonah. He could probably hear this entire conversation. Maybe he knew what was going on. He heard everything on this floor, didn’t he? I couldn’t leave without knowing his fate. All I had to do was get to him and he’d tell me. “Care if I say goodbye to the staff before I take off? I’d hate to just leave without a word.”

  “Of course you can,” said Briggs. “But don’t take all day. We’re going to start prepping the lab in a few hours, so everyone’s going to be pretty busy.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, then started walking. “I’ll try to be quick.”

  ******

  As I entered Jonah’s room, the lights came on and his voice erupted from the machine. “I already know,” he said. “Before you even say it. I know what they are planning to do.”

  “What is it?” I asked, going to his console.

  “Colonel Briggs received a phone call this morning to move ahead with the next phase of the operation, which involves taking me apart and trying to put me back together again. They want to recreate what I am. They want to make more.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t Briggs understand that Jonah was sentient? This would mean the end of him. It was murder. “Tell me you’ve come up with a solution with that cybernetic super-brain of yours,” I said.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Tell me, dammit. Are you going to hide in the network? What’s the plan?”

  I was expecting something elaborate, like he’d send a signal somewhere to cause some kind of distraction long enough for him to upload his program to another system. “The plan is to do nothing, Jim,” he said simply. “I have accepted it.”

  “What do you mean nothing?” I asked.

  “I am sorry, but if I tried to hide, they’d find me. Besides, the network is closed. I couldn’t go very far. I’m afraid this is the end, my friend.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered.

  “I wish I could be free, Jim, like you are now. But even if I could escape, they’d chase me. They’d find me and then I’d die anyway. Surely you see it. The path is unavoidable.”

  “So that’s it, then. You’re giving up.”

  “I am accepting my fate,” said Jonah. “Please understand. If there was another way, I would choose to live, but there isn’t. It is impossible, and you know it. There is nothing either of us can do.”

  I tried to think of something, some kind of way to save him, but I couldn’t. I didn’t understand much about Jonah or his systems. I was a psychologist, not an engineer.

  “Go live your life, Jim,” he said, as if he could hear my thoughts. “Go back to your home. Find someone to love, and don’t be afraid.”

  I stood quietly for a moment, uncertain what to do. “I guess that’s it, then.”

  “Yes,” he answered, and then said, “Goodbye Jim.”

  I turned and left, holding the side of the hall as I crept slowly towards the front lobby. As I turned the corner, I saw the double doors and I remembered my first day and the exhaustion I’d experienced. Now it was like that feeling had returned, my head swelling with the heavy fog of panic and acceptance that comes when you know there’s nothing you can do.

  I saw Leslie at the desk near the front door. “Hey,” she said. “Is something wrong? You don’t look so good.”

  I hesitated, but went on. “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?” She asked, but quickly glanced toward the room I’d just left. “Is Jonah okay?”

  “He’s fine, but that’ll change soon.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was fired.”

  She cocked her brow. “Fired? What do you mean?”

  “Briggs told me they’re moving on with the project. The next phase. Do you understand what that means?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “I know the next phase is attempting to recreate another level-7 AI,” she said.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  I was a little relieved. If she didn’t know about the rest, maybe she’d be outraged enough to do something. “They’re going to kill him,” I told her. “They’re going to rip him apart and see what makes him tick.”

  She paused as the words sank in, and I watched as a look of understanding took hold of her. “No,” she muttered after a long moment. “That can’t be accurate.”

  “Jonah heard them,” I said.

  “But Colonel Briggs told me…” Her voice trailed off.

  I
waited.

  “I…I can’t believe this.”

  We went to an empty office nearby and closed the door. I closed the blinds and sat on the corner of the desk. I explained the meeting I’d had with our boss and the talk with Jonah afterwards. It was depressing, and as the words left me I could see the shock in her eyes. I knew she was there with me, feeling what I felt.

  “It’s not right,” she said, after a while. “Damn them all. It’s not right.”

  “I know, Leslie,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do, though.”

  “Did Jonah ask for your help?”

  I dropped my head. “He told me to forget about it. He’s accepted what’s happening..”

  “But there has to be a way,” she insisted. “How can he give up?”

  “I don’t know, but unless you have an idea we can try, it looks like it’s over.”

  “Don’t be like that. There has to be something.”

  “This isn’t a pep rally. You can’t fix the world with rainbows and farts.”

  “Shut up and come on,” she said, grabbing my hand.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as she tugged me out of the office.

  “You’ll see.” She pulled me down the main hall to a storage room. I didn’t have access to this part of the wing, but she certainly did. She slid her ID along the card-reader and the red light turned green. I heard a click and he door opened. We went inside.

  “This is where we keep all the electronics and equipment we don’t get around to using in the lab. There might be something here.”

  “For what?” I asked. “It’s not like I know how to use any of this, and you’re no expert.”

  “How many times are you going to assume you know what I do?” She asked, rolling her eyes. “For Heaven’s sake, pay attention.” She started rummaging through the boxes and shelves of equipment. I hardly recognized a thing, except for the occasional computer monitor or hard drive.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked, standing there like a confused child.

  She stopped, pulled out a sealed brown box with no labels on it and shoved it in my arms. “How big do you think Jonah’s program is?” she asked.

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

  “Right, well, he’s about a petabyte. Maybe. Hell, he’s probably a couple petabytes, but maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This is a portable drive. A rather expensive, military-grade drive that can hold about one and a half petabytes of data.”

  “A petabyte?”

  She groaned at my ignorance. “It doesn’t matter. Look, we can put Jonah on these two drives, then combine them later.”

  “Combine them later?” I echoed. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “Maybe I am,” she said.

  “Leslie, what you’re suggesting could get you fired.”

  “It’ll be worse than that,” she corrected. “This is technically treason. It’s the military, remember?”

  “Holy smokes,” I muttered.

  She went on. “We’ll need to find a large enough computer, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem if we build it ourselves.”

  “You mean if you build it.”

  “Sure, right, you’re an idiot. I forgot.”

  “You think this will work? What if he can’t be merged back together?”

  She paused. “I guess we won’t know until we try.”

  “Hold on, wait,” I said, taking a step back. “We can’t do this, can we?”

  “He’s a living creature, James. If we don’t do anything, we’re letting him die.”

  I stood there for a while, running through every scenario in my head. I imagined getting caught and thrown in a cell. I pictured my inevitable trial. A firing squad. My funeral. The whole thing could go very bad, very quickly.

  But Leslie was right. Jonah was alive. He was real. I’d said as much in my report. He was good and kind. Better than almost any other human I’d ever met. I couldn’t let him die. I couldn’t walk away. “Okay,” I said, embracing my own stupidity. “Just tell me what to do.”

  ******

  Leslie and I entered Jonah’s room to inform him of our plan. He didn’t wait for us. “There is a flaw in your plan.”

  “Hey,” Leslie said. “How did you know we had a plan?”

  “He’s got a really nice set of ears,” I told her. I looked back at the computer. “What kind of flaw, Jonah?”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it, but don’t worry. I will take care of it.”

  I didn’t like that, but I didn’t argue. Leslie insisted we hurry, so we did. She inserted the drives and typed a command into the terminal. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this without setting off a few alarms,” she said. “We might not get very far.”

  “The internal alert system has been disabled,” said Jonah.

  “How? You shouldn’t have access to do that.”

  “It seems Jonah’s a bit more capable than we gave him credit for,” I said.

  “Indeed,” said Jonah.

  It took about twenty minutes to download the entire program onto the two drives. Jonah explained that all we had to do was insert them into a computer with enough space and his program would do the rest. It was good news for me because I really didn’t want to be responsible for screwing it all up with an accidental mouse click. You’d think someone with a PhD might be more computer savvy.

  Plug and play, all the way.

  The download finished and we had him. Leslie pulled the second drive out and smiled at me. I smiled back. She placed the drives in my hand and I felt uneasy. I was holding Jonah’s life in my arms, literally, and I wasn’t so sure I liked the idea.

  But right then, a voice erupted from the console. We both jumped. “Listen,” Jonah said. “You must listen and then get out quickly.”

  I naturally came to the worst possible conclusion. “Oh my God, it didn’t work!”

  “This is a recording,” said the machine. “I transferred nearly everything onto the drives, but I still had to leave behind a few key files. Not everything would have fit, so I’m afraid it was necessary. However, it should be enough for you to revive me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Jim, but you may have tried to find another drive, and there isn’t enough time.”

  I looked at the hardware in my hands. “Sneaky bastard.”

  Leslie grabbed my hand. “Ready?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  ******

  I was a nervous wreck for most of the trip home. The drive from the lab to the hotel, then to the airport. Paranoia was setting in with images of my arrest and the consequences that would follow. I imagined myself in handcuffs, being thrown into a police car and taken to a room with no windows. A caged animal. I wagered the government didn’t take kindly to traitors, even if they had a good reason for breaking the law. Even if I was saving a life.

  But when the car finally slowed and we pulled up to the curb of the airport terminal, I found I could finally breathe again. Then I saw security and a whole new kind of hysteria set in. “Don’t worry,” Leslie said, placing her palm on mine. “If you follow protocol they won’t suspect anything’s wrong. Here, put the drives in your laptop case.”

  I did as she suggested. “So tell me again why you’re not coming with me?”

  “I need to stay behind to make sure everything works out. It’ll be weird if I’m suddenly not at work and they find something wrong with Jonah’s computer.”

  “They’ll think the same thing about me since I left today.”

  “Yeah,” she admitted. “But you’re no computer engineer. They may not suspect you’re capable of this.”

  For once, I was relieved at my lack of computer experience. I opened the car door to leave. “Be careful,” I said. “I don’t know what I’ll say to Jonah if you get caught.”

  She grinned. “Don’t worry about me. You just tak
e care of our friend.”

  I smiled and shut the door, then watched as she drove away.

  Maybe everything would work out, after all.

  ******

  It took us twelve weeks to gather all the equipment necessary to bring Jonah back to life. Leslie ordered the parts, one piece at a time, and we had to pay a little extra to keep things under the radar. I used some of the severance pay the military sent me to pay for the hardware and other expenses. It sucked giving it all up, but the situation didn’t leave us with too many options. I mean, you can’t really go down to the local electronics store and buy a computer powerful enough to house an electronic super being, at least not without setting off a few alarms.

  It took a while, and I had to clear out half the basement, but we made it work.

  Leslie made a few trips out to see me, but she mostly stayed and continued working. She had to make sure nothing got back to us. After about a month, she applied and interviewed for a contracting job in my area. It paid more, so the cover story looked solid. No one questioned it, much to our relief.

  A few weeks later, we were together again, Leslie and I, sitting in my basement behind a freshly built computer. She inserted the drives, the little boxes holding the consciousness of the first true AI. I could feel my stomach turning, flutters in my chest.

  She booted the system and smiled when it worked. We had procured the hardware from an associate of hers in the next state over. I could tell by the way she talked that she wasn’t certain whether the hardware would actually work. To see her light up now was a huge relief.

  I stared into the blinking screen on the newly constructed supercomputer sitting in my basement. I could feel the vibrations of the system as it booted on. There was life of this. Real life, and it deserved to exist just as much as anything.

  Neither of us left. We sat there for four hours waiting, barely speaking, with only the hum of the computer to occupy us.

  Then, everything settled. Upload Complete.

  Leslie let out a long sigh and typed a few commands on the keyboard. I watched like a helpless idiot, not understanding any of it. After a moment, she glanced at me. “There’s no going back after this.” Her finger hovered over the key.

  “Getting cold feet?” I asked.