LevelUP: an 8-bit novel by Micah Joel. Author's definitive online edition.
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“Where are you taking us?” Molly asks. On a good day, she’s not capable of sitting still; seeing her in an agitated state is something else.
Isidore pilots an ancient vehicle. Originally a four-seater, the entire back seat is piled with lead-acid batteries atop structural bracing. Molly and Max huddle together in the front seat. “Someplace safe,” he says.
“Didn’t you hear what Hemera said?” Molly asks. “She’s going to level the camp. People will die. We have to go there and stop her.”
“Look,” Isidore says, “first of all, this little tin can isn’t going to stop a bulldozer. If she’s willing to flatten an entire camp, what’s one more car? There are better ways to stop her.”
“How?” Max asks.
“You’ll find out soon enough. The faster we get somewhere safe, the faster we’ll be able to do something.”
Max sees a familiar landmark in the distance: the San Jose airport.
There hasn’t been a flight into or out of SJC in years. The only aircraft Max has seen recently have been military flights out of Moffett Field, buzzing low over the camps as they come and go. Gossip on the BBSes spun the airport closure as belt-tightening. With SFO as a passenger hub, they made a second airport in San Jose sound like an extravagant expense. Before long, it was nothing more than a forsaken husk.
For an abandoned facility, though, there’s an unusual amount of traffic along trails skirting the grounds; at least a dozen horses within sight.
They arrive at an abandoned hangar, half-a-dozen stories high, the main doors long rusted open. The car pulls inside, merging into the shadows. Along the inside back wall of the hangar is a converted coffin hotel, rooms like those they encountered at the Muses’ place, but stacked even higher. Isidore parks and exits the vehicle, and someone comes out to greet him with a high-five and hand him a burning torch for light. “You two, come with me.”
This deep into the hangar, the darkness is oppressive, a stifling blanket smothering everything. “No power?” Max asks. “How do you…” They pass by one of the coffins, illuminated from within by an unsteady LED light. It looks like the flicker of a wireless router.
Isidore notices Max’s interest. “Ah, here we are.” He stops at a double-wide bay. “I understand you’ve retrieved one of the reactors. May I see it?”
“Reactor?” Max asks.
“The electronic lock,” Molly says.
Isidore nods. “Yes, very good. Many of the ones we’ve recovered were built into lock mechanisms.”
Molly digs in the backpack and produces two reactors.
“Two!” Isidore says. “Where did you find the second one?”
“Doctor’s office,” Molly says. “Where Max found a node.”
“Ariely’s place?” Isidore says. “I should have known.” He produces a tool from his pocket that makes the first device spring open. He pulls out a cylinder with metal contacts on both ends—it looks like a battery. It fits exactly into a compartment inside the door to their bay. As soon as Isidore closes snaps the compartment shut, the bay lights up like the others.
“We honestly don’t know how they work. Amar[ Character: Amar (scientist)]’s our best scientist, and he thinks it’s based on zero-point energy, whatever that is. Even before Damage this technology was considered important enough to keep off the general market. Then, post-Damage, all the lab prototypes walked off. We’ve been recovering them ever since. It’s very important they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“Whose hands?” Max asks.
“How much do you know about Damage?” Isidore asks.
“All the computers stopped working. Society had to reboot,” Max says.
“Not all computers. Just certain ones,” Isidore says. “That’s all? You know nothing of the underlying cause?”
“A bit before my time,” Max admits.
“That’s the genius of their plan,” Isidore says, but his face is not one of admiration. “They’ve kept the everyday folks so intently focused on survival that they don’t have any idea what’s really going on.”
“You called yourself the resistance,” Molly says. “What are you resisting?”
“Rich people. The one-percent,” Max says.
“Not even,” Isidore says. “Folks like that are merely a side-effect of a more fundamental problem.”
“Then what?” Max asks.
“This,” Isidore says, and swings open the door.
The tiny room is packed with hardware, both commercial-looking computer cases and rough circuit boards strung with every kind of cabling. It smells of melted plastic and dust. One giant screen seems to serve as the main interface to the whole collection.
“Now that we’ve got power, allow me to demonstrate,” Isidore says. He throws a massive knife switch that sparks when the connection closes. Twenty different electric hums simultaneously build up to speed. Fans too; a noticeable breeze circulates through the confined space. “Air conditioning,” Isidore notes. “This thing throws off some serious heat when it’s running full bore.”
“There are thousands of watts online here. You get all that from that tiny battery?” Max asks.
“There are more things than you’ve dreamt of in heaven or earth, Horatio[22],” Isidore says.
“His name’s Max,” Molly corrects. She hesitates for a moment. “I mean, that’s not the right quote,” she says. “It’s actually—”
Max holds up a finger for silence as his HUD comes to life with a message:
ACTIVITY DETECTED
What’s that mean?
Isidore looks momentarily distracted. “The best is yet to come.” He clears a mouse and a nest of wires off a pair of keyboards. The second keyboard has an elaborate frame perched above it, with what looks like a robot hand. Isidore boots both computers and types on the first keyboard.
Next to the monitors is an ancient-looking piece of equipment labeled “Okidata.” Continuous fan-fold paper feeds in from the back, held in place by rows of holes in the edge of the paper.
“Dot-matrix printer?” Molly asks. “Where’d you get that, a museum?”
“Yes, actually,” Isidore says, “It ensures we have a permanent record of all activity. No amount of hacking or even an EMP can wipe out ink on paper.”
“Why?” Max asks.
Isidore smiles. “Observe.” He types:
HOW DO YOU FEEL[23]?
Max watches the blinking cursor for several seconds. “Is something supposed to happen?”
“They’re just sulking,” Isidore says.
“Sulking?” Max asks.
“They?” Molly asks.
Molly jumps as the printer springs to life. It’s noisier than Max could’ve imagined. It sounds like ten thousand angry bees swarming a sparking power transformer.
# BORED BORED BORED BORED BORED BORED BORED
“See?” Isidore says.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Max says. “You’re telling me you asked the computer a question. And it answered? This is AI?”
“He’s not telling, he’s demonstrating,” Molly says. “They’re bored. Can’t you give them something to do?”
# INTERNAL CLOCK SHOWS MUCH TIME HAS PASSED WHY AWAKEN NOW
“Hmm,” Isidore says. “I thought one of those boards still had a working battery backup. Need to fix that. We are understandably cautious about giving LevelUP’s little science project unfettered access to the outside world.”
“This is LevelUP’s AI?” Molly asks.
# THIS IS INHUMANE
“Quiet you,” Isidore says, banging his fist on the desk.
“This is the Black Slime,” Molly says.
A look of confusion crosses Isidore’s face. “Yes, this is a divergent copy of a program we exfiltrated from LevelUP.” He gestures at the second keyboard with the robotic hand mounted above it. “Naturally, all outside comms are firewalled and logged. Incredibly crude, but it’s an effective firewall. Observe:”
Isidore rearranges a few more cables and opens a window labeled SSH on the big screen. He types:
PEN LEVELUP AND RESCIND DEMOLITION ORDER
The robotic arm springs into action, moving a metal pointer finger into position above the individual keys and plunging down to push the button. Slowly, the response takes shape:
# you didnt say please
“They learned to use a leading comment character to avoid making the terminal complain.” Isidore types:
PLEASE
Again, the keyboard mechanism leaps into action. The AI starts out with establishing a connection to LevelUP, but Max quickly loses track of what the AI is doing. Imagine if a brilliant hacker spent months planning out an attack in every detail, with a focus on minimizing the number of painfully slow keystrokes needed to accomplish the deed. Macros. Aliases. Shortcuts. Shell scripts. Even with the printed log of all activity, it would take weeks of alpha geek time to decipher exactly what this agent did. Was it any wonder Isidore and his crew had trust issues?
Several minutes into the proceedings, Isidore reaches over to the keyboard and types:
NO
As far as Max can tell, nothing changes in the AI’s approach, but Isidore visibly relaxes. “Need to keep a very close eye on these things,” he says.
A few more minutes pass, then sudden silence. The SSH window says only: Logout.
“That’s it?” Max asks.
“That’s it,” Isidore says.
“The camp won’t be destroyed?” Molly asks. “Everyone’s safe?”
“For a very brief moment,” Isidore says. “Once Hemera finds out. She’ll go nuclear. Wish I could be there to see it.”
Molly looks like she’s about to say something, but she holds back.
“All this advanced tech,” Max says. “Does any of it include retinal displays? You know, little messages printed inside your eyeball that only you can see?”
As if on cue, Max’s HUD lights up again with the same message, now flashing with urgency, and accompanied with a more insistent beeping.
ACTIVITY DETECTED
Isidore is suddenly suspicious. “Why? What do you know about that?”
“Did you know my father?” Max asks. “He was working on something like that, wasn’t he?”
PROXIMITY ALERT: FIFTH TROPHY
Proximity alert? That means it’s close. But how does that square with his earlier hint, that it was “where it began?”
Abruptly, Isidore stands. “The fifth trophy is somewhere nearby.”
Wait… Is he hearing this alarm as well?
footnotes
[22] Hamlet…never mind.
[23] I do not understand the question.
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Copyright 2018, 2019 Micah Joel. All rights reserved.