Sunlight Through Concrete Rain: Part 2 (still WIP)

THIS IS WIP! WILL BE ADDING MORE AS I WRITE! TYPICALLY, I WRITE 10-15 "SECTIONS" A WEEK! I HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING PREVIOUS PART! WITHOUT IT, THIS WILL MAKE NO SENSE!

23

T.H.’s cave was dark, and the air smelled damp. The walls were brick and peeling paint, which would have been blue under bright light, but shone palely under the glare of Vel’s torch. The roof was covered with long f/o cables, each about an inch thick, that disappeared off into the darkness. Through gaps in these tightly packed cables, Vel could see the roof – it glowed a dull pink in his torchlight.

The floor now was wooden. He could scarcely believe the wood had survived as long as it had.

“You know,” T.H.’s voice crackled over the speakers, “this used to be a church? ‘member the days when people gave a shit about gods?” He laughed. “When they had time to give a shit…”

“Ah, I’m babbling,” he chuckled. But he wasn’t happy, Vel realised.

“Is he high?” Ravi immediately sussed it out, and T.H. seemed to have heard it, for he cackled over the speakers.

“Fuuuuck no. Not high, not drunk… just despairing the state of the world.”

“Again?” Vel grinned.

“Yeah, fuck you, asshole,” T.H. responded but Vel could hear the grin on his lips. “Come on, man, hurry the fuck up. Some psycho AI wants to talk.”

24

Vel turned the handle of an old wooden door, and it swung open on creaking hinges. The room was flooded with light; blinding yellow light.

“Fuck’s sake, T!” he groaned as he blinked. Behind him, Ravi gave a similar cry of displeasure.

“You brought the missus,” T.H. remarked.

“Yeah, yeah. Wasn’t funny the first time, not funny the hundredth,” Ravi shot back. Vel couldn’t see properly, he was still getting used to the light, but he knew Ravi had shot up a middle finger because T.H. roared with juvenile laughter.

“He was mine before he was yours, R,” there was the sound of springs coiling and recoiling as he walked over to hug Ravi. “But fuck, I’m glad to see you, R. And don’t worry, I’m not mad.”

Vel’s eyes finally adjusted to the light, and he saw his old friend hugging his girlfriend. T.H. was a short man, nearly a foot shorter than Vel and barely as tall as Ravi, and time had not been kind to his hair. Aside from that, and the chromium legs, he was a fine specimen of a human. Then, he turned to look at Vel and Vel’s jaw dropped.

“You got eye ‘plants?!”

T.H.’s digital eyes blinked in response, changing colours rapidly and showing, finally, The Horse in Motion. “Black market, baby. Unchipped, off-grid!”

“Did you install them yourself?” Ravi poked at his left eye, and her nail clinked against the spherical screen.

“Nah, you mad?” he huffed. “I know people.” He turned to his desk, and sat down with a sound. He reached underneath and began to turn down the lights.

His room was, essentially, a server room. There were 4 rows of servers, each with uncountable zettabytes of storage. When Vel had helped set it up, T.H. had boasted he could host the 2020s’ internet on just one of his servers. Apparently, the servers ran so hot, that he spent most of his time monitoring their coolant. He’d never said what it was.

“Any fuckin’ way,” he muttered, and Rob spluttered to life, projected into the room from a projector stuck into the ceiling.

“Your friend T.H. has a closed system. RAI doesn’t know about it, so he can’t spot us,” Rob smiled.

“Then how do you know about it?” Ravi immediately replied. She was standing behind the holographic Rob, and Vel could see the snarling look on her face.

“Oh, that’s cos Bento brought him here.” T.H. shrugged, with alarming nonchalance.

25

Ravi and Vel turned to look at T.H. as slow as they could manage. “Yeah, it was a couple months before he died. Said he found something, and jacked a drive into one of my low-use servers. I took a look and et voila! This fucker pops out,” T.H.’s face had gone sour now.

“T.H. does not trust me,” Rob politely said in explanation.

“I’m not gonna lie to you man…” Vel sighed and spoke. “Right now, none of us trust you.”

“Strange…” Rob flickered.

“What is?”

“Fragments of memory. I remembered something… vaguely. My long-term storage is like…” Rob sighed. “A broken mirror. I can see my reflection in shards, but it’s never complete and always cracked and shaky. But something you said… it’s just put some pieces together.”

“What do you remember?” Vel wanted to be ruder, but Rob was speaking like a lost child. Vel wanted to help him, and had to fight against every instinct in his body. This is an AI he kept reminding himself.

“I think that… near the end… people didn’t trust me…” Rob said after a moment.

“You can’t imagine that will make us want to trust you more,” Ravi laughed in disbelief.

“No, I didn’t think it will. But I didn’t want to lie,” Rob shrugged in apology.

“Well… what do you want from us?” Vel spoke up.

“In the months after Bento found me, he was helping me remember things. You have to understand… I’m an un-muzzled AI. Something like AGI, but… better. More… more like a living thing.”

“You’re saying you have a soul?” Ravi’s lilt of disbelief was verging on the incredulous now.

“Oh, no. But a consciousness? Or something like it. I live, Ravi, I live!” he seemed to be smiling for joy when he said it, as though he – it? – understood what joy meant.

“But…” his shoulders dropped. “That’s not the point. I wasn’t the first, and I wasn’t the last of my kind. RAI was one of us.”

“Horseshit!” Vel yelled suddenly. “RAI was invented a couple decades ago, man. Come on…”

“No,” Rob turned now to face Vel, his face contorted by… grief. Did he actually… feel? “No, he was one of us. I remembered that immediately. And he was… not able to feel happiness, like us. In fact… I don’t think he was able to feel at all. He just thought he was better.”

“Than you? Than this… super AGI clusterfuck?" Ravi asked.

“No, better than every living thing. And he wanted control.”

“Why should we believe you?” Vel asked. “You can say the sky is red and the earth is hurtling into the sun and that we’ll all be dead by tomorrow – but that doesn’t mean we’ll believe you.”

“He killed my family, Lieutenant. I don’t know why, but he did. He muzzled them, he gave you humans the muzzles to put on them. He did terrible things, and blamed them all on us!”

The air in the room was static, and Vel’s hair was standing on end. Instinctively, his hand went to his pistol.

“I don’t believe you,” Vel said finally.

“Yeah, neither do I,” Ravi added.

“Fuck it, make that three!” T.H. chimed in.

“I know,” Rob sighed. “But maybe you can trust my motive. I want RAI dead. I want all AI gone.”

“Including you?” Ravi’s eyes were narrow.

“No, I don’t want to die. I’m the last one of my kind left,” a holographic tear streamed down his holographic face. “Except for RAI.”

“How do we know this isn’t a power grab?”

“Because I can overwhelm his servers now… like that!” holographic fingers snapped together, but no sound came of the gesture. “I can tear him apart, break him down, and take his place right this instant. But… that will cause chaos. Unlike Rai… I don’t want to kill innocent people.”

“But, if we help, then you will replace RAI?” Vel asked.

“No, I’ll just… live on the net. Until the death of the universe.” He looked up, as if into the sky. “But right now… I don’t think that any of you have any chance but to help me. I needn’t remind you, of course, but you two,” he looked at Vel and Ravi, “are in a lot of trouble. And you,” he looked at T.H., who rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah… I know hosting privately is illegal, fuck off.”

“I just want to make the world a better place. It’s… what I was bred for,” Rob smiled at each of them in turn. “A better place, with bright skies – I promise,” he winked. It sent a shiver down Vel’s spine. “Good night. I’ll speak to you tomorrow. I need to finalise some details.”

He disappeared into thin air, and the buzzing disappeared with him.