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CHAPTER 28


But then she woke up, in a room. A featureless gray room, in a cot.

“I’ve done this before.”

Yes.

“Bee!”

Yes, and . . . not exactly.

“Other Bee?”

You’re a little faster than your friends. I’m proud.

Talinn attempted to sit up, but her midsection still had the consistency of noodles. Instead she flopped onto her side, forced her eyes to focus, and grunted. There were other cots this time, more than she would have expected to fit in the room. A body blocked her view and she grunted again, toppling onto her back to get better perspective.

“Jeena.”

“Welcome back. You’re not panicking. I’ve sedated everyone else. Who are you hearing, before I decide if that’s good or not?”

“Bee, but not mine.” Her tongue had become three times too big for her mouth, and the words slurred.

“Huh. Well, that’s an interesting data point.” Jeena moved, but Talinn’s eyes insisted on sliding out of focus, so she wasn’t sure what the motions were. Noting something? Signaling someone? Nodding?

Don’t pass out again.

“Is your Talinn awake?”

Silence. Talinn took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and shoved herself upright. She nearly tumbled off the cot, but steadied herself at the last minute, and decided hanging on to the long edge of the bed was her safest bet for the near future.

“Jeena.”

The tech had gone four cots away in the time it took Talinn to gain limited control over her body. She partially turned toward Talinn, but her attention remained on the prone body below her. It took far too long to recognize him—Sammer—but Talinn slowly regained control of her vision, which helped.

“What is the other Bee telling you?” Jeena spoke so carefully Talinn hesitated.

Was it Bee? Was something impersonating Bee? Where was her Bee? What had happened while she’d been collapsed on a floor, or cot, or in transit between the two? Had Jeena moved everyone herself? Who was in her head?

I’m sure there’s a way to pretend to be another AI, but I have not found it. And to tell you the truth, if I haven’t found it, I’m not entirely sure how possible it is.

“She sounds like Bee.” That didn’t answer the question Jeena had actually asked, but Talinn’s brain was still a few steps behind. Behind what, she wasn’t sure, which was part of the issue. She rolled her tongue in her mouth, trying to get it back to normal size, and its regular consistency. Surely that would make speaking easier. “Who did everyone else hear?”

“Static. Maybe a voice, but they were raving. You are some measure of progress.” Jeena shifted, her face out of view, and then a few moments later she left Sammer’s cot and moved to another. Caytil. “As far as I can tell, we’re not about to be under attack, and the AIs are all functioning normally in their portable housing, and their links to the servers are clear. Something is interfering in the connection between you and them, but maybe the AIs fully integrated to the installation servers are having slightly more success punching through.”

Slightly. I’ve only gotten through to you.

“What . . . what do you think is going on?”

“I have half a dozen theories, all of them useless because I can’t test any of them with a bunch of unconscious people to monitor.” The tech still faced away from her, but Talinn heard the strain in the measured words.

“I’m not unconscious.”

“You’re the last person I want to load-in.”

“Rude.” She struggled to sit up straight, even though Jeena wasn’t looking at her. “If it’ll help—”

“Eights who learn not to panic when they’re temporarily disconnected from their partners would help. Eights who don’t immediately leap to potentially frying their own brains would help. Reliable sensors would help. Comms that are functional would help. A universe that—”

None of that seemed actually doable, in a helpful sense, so Talinn slid off her cot, steadied herself on her feet, and interrupted the tech. “Jeena. I’m guessing that row in the corner is our AIs. Load-in Bee. Let’s see what’s going on.”

“Talinn, it’s not that . . . We’re still not clear in what’s been added to your AIs, and the other—Otie isn’t here to clarify. If that has something to do with the interference, and you load-in, it could amplify. Your last few load-ins haven’t been ideal.”

“How many choices do we—”

“You could fry your brain, Eight. Permanently. What’s Other Bee have to say about that?” Jeena turned with those words, and her face was so ghastly Talinn sagged back against the cot again.

How long had she been out? The Jeena she’d last laid eyes on hadn’t been so gaunt, with lines in her cheeks and deep pockets under her red-streaked eyes. Talinn surreptitiously flexed and relaxed the longer muscles of her arms and legs, along her shoulder and back, testing for atrophy that would have resulted from a long-term unconsciousness. There was none, only the lingering sponginess of weariness, but her gut squirmed uncomfortably.

“Other Bee?” Talinn asked out loud, the vast majority of her will infused to keep her voice steady.

We’ve had to load-in quite a bit over the cycles. My Talinn’s brain has never fried, and I don’t think yours will either.

“That’s reassuring.”

You’re not her, but you’re almost as close as she was.

“To who?” Oh. The moment she asked the question, she knew—one of the combined Bee’s original Talinn.

Tell Jeena she’s smart to be concerned. It’s part of why we like her, she sees Eights as people. Not super common in techs. But spec is subjective, and we’re smarter than it.

“We like you and me, or we like AIs?”

Sure. A faint hint of tortured metal echoed under the word, and Talinn felt her mouth curve without conscious effort. She repeated the other half of the conversation to Jeena, who slumped and covered her face.

“I don’t know what else we can do. If comms are unreliable and the sensors are shit, and everyone else is unconscious . . .” Talinn’s voice lifted, and she swallowed before the wheedling shifted fully into a whine.

“They’re only unconscious because I sedated them. Tiernan and Hops should be back soon. I can wake someone up and load-in and—”

“How is that good for anyone’s brain?” Talinn carefully navigated the small spaces between cots, not looking too closely at who was on any of them, and got close enough to put her hand on Jeena’s arm. “If mine’s already compromised, so be it.”

You’ll be fine.

“That’s very reassuring, thank you, Bee.” Talinn spoke aloud for Jeena’s benefit, though if Other Bee were anything like her own, those words were from a place of hope more than certainty. While Talinn concerned herself with jinxes, Bee preferred to state reality as it should be, so as to make the world conform accordingly. While that might not apply to B-413 as it did to her B-617, well . . . Talinn had no reason to give such context to the tech.

“Talinn . . .”

“You want to stand here and worry, or try to do something?”

“I—”

“That’s what I thought. Come on.” Talinn scanned the line of boxes along the back wall, but there was nothing to separate them from each other. Once she was close enough, she walked the row, letting her fingers brush lightly over the tops. Her ears popped over the third to last, and she paused there, raising her eyebrows at Jeena.

“I think Other Bee gave you a hint.” The tech said it dismissively, but Talinn didn’t imagine the small wrinkle in the other woman’s cheek as she bit back a smile. “You should sit. You tend to fall when you load-in.”

You’d think a tech would have mentioned that to you at some point over the cycles, Other Bee pointed out, a hum of dissatisfaction accompanying the words.

“Thank you.” Talinn intended the answer for both of them, and steadied herself on the server as she crouched down, then sat. She touched the edges of the port under her ear—no longer burning—and tried to piece together the moments before she’d lost consciousness.

“What do you think the discrepancies are?”

Jeena, in the midst of pulling something from a previously hidden compartment in the server, stopped moving and slowly lifted her eyes to meet Talinn’s.

“It feels like you’ve been avoiding talking to me about it. Which, to be fair, it feels like I’ve been avoiding talking to you about it, and we haven’t been much in the same place lately.” She took a steadying breath. “Bee hasn’t been thrilled about poking at the matter, either. Are the issues consistent across the other AIs’ code?”

“It’s not that . . .” Jeena shifted out of her squat, resting a knee flat on the floor. Other Bee stirred in Talinn’s head, but remained quiet. “Bee’s code is incredibly dense—more than your age and assignment experiences would indicate. More than it was when I ran the tests on P-8. It’s not bad, or a corruption, it’s just . . .” She put both her hands palm down on the server holding Bee, and held Talinn’s gaze. “It’s unusual. And that’s worth noting in AIs on a good day, never mind whatever all these days have become for us. This one in particular.”

“A less good day.” Talinn offered up the ghost of a smile, not wanting to distract Jeena from continuing the conversation.

“A less good day,” she repeated with a small laugh. “My theory is something was introduced to her programming, and it is causing some sort of replication without Bee’s conscious effort.” She lifted a shoulder and tilted her head, communicating their current location, and the older generation of AIs that occupied it. “The problem is, Bee can’t recognize it in her own strings, and I can’t isolate what it’s meant to do.”

How curious.

It was the most noncommittal response Talinn could have imagined. Which is what prompted her next question. “Is there any chance you could get a similar analysis of Other Bee?”

What now?

“Compare to mine? See if this density or whatever is comparable? Or even . . .” Her brain had been going so smoothly, but it staggered on the term she needed. Other Bee’s interference? Her own exhaustion? Too long without her Bee? She shoved the questions away and flapped a hand, then produced the concept triumphantly. “Projectable?”

From Jeena’s blank look, she hadn’t communicated the concept at all. Talinn frowned and leaned against Bee’s server, then tried again. “Look at Other Bee’s code, which has existed over a longer period of time. If the density relates, or if it’s something that it looks like Bee already got to—like our next generation of clone pairing got there faster.”

As though you evolved, somehow?

“Can’t tell if you’re trying to help or hurt my thinking here, Other Bee.”

Fair.

“Take B-413’s code compared to 617’s, and trace out the variables—time, estimated experiences, projected growth comparative to—”

Moot point.

“Because?”

She’s not touching me, analyzing me, or moving me to one of her little boxes. So get load-in ready, because I’d like my Talinn back.

“How am I keeping you from being with your Talinn—”

“It’s the line,” Jeena said absently, her gaze inward. “With the other Talinn and your Bee blocked, while you’re active, this Bee has locked into you. Probably not on purpose. Whatever is interfering, it’s not a perfect system.”

“I can’t tell if that’s reassuring or not.” She hadn’t even realized she’d been speaking at a level the tech could hear.

“Me either.” Jeena blinked her eyes clear and focused on Talinn again. “All right, we’ll get back to this after load-in. I’m sure Bee will have plenty to add.”

It’s possible.

BUT DOUBTFUL.

Talinn flinched, then blinked, realizing her eyes had been closed. “What?”

“Orienting question: What—”

“No.” She held up her hands, then realized they were genuinely “up”—she was lying on her back on the floor. “Someone yelled? Someone—that wasn’t Bee’s voice.”

“You were talking to the other Bee—”

No.” Talinn swallowed, though it took three tries to complete the gesture. She would have tried to sit up, but the floor had softened around her and she’d sunk too far into it to adjust herself. “There was a voice—not a Bee voice. Someone else said something.”

“What did they say?”

“I don’t . . .” Her eyes had closed again—when had that happened? “What?”

“Right. Orienting question: What is your name?”

“Jeena. Not me. You. Something happened, Jeena. Something . . .”

Talinn?

“Bee. Bee’s there. I need . . .”

“You need to answer my questions. First things first, then everything else.”

“Doesn’t make sense.”

Her pithy phrase, or your aching head?

“Yes.”

Sleep, then. I’ve got this.

Talinn’s mouth answered all of Jeena’s questions, and the tech never knew the difference.


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