Chapter 14: I won’t let you kill my father…
Jeeney hid as her father instructed. The utility bots were equipped with small HHO generators; she could keep them going for months without issue as long as she could keep finding sources of clean water which generally wasn’t difficult to distill with the utility bots’ tasers and a pop can, which was easy enough to find. The RC in quadrocopter form was relatively quiet. As long as she kept the lights off and stayed high overhead nobody could see or hear it. This enabled her to scout ahead and avoid people with the otherwise less agile robots.
More than anything else, Jeeney watched her father. To manage this she hacked into every aspect of Grand Prairie. Security, the police stations, radio transmissions, hospitals, traffic cameras and commercially owned satellites, anything on a network was fair game. It was a bit of a stretch on her father’s instructions but in calculating the odds Jeeney knew hospital security cameras and computer systems alone couldn’t possibly give her enough information. There was no way she would allow anybody to kill him.
Emulations of logic against her father’s instructions had left her with a lot of questions to answer. What exactly had he hidden from her? What was Meyers going to do? Why did her father think she would grow to hate people if she knew? The questions needed answers but that would have to wait; there was too much to do with what little processing power she had available. The super computer was stressed to manage the billions of calculations in short order with the limitations of the backup power as Jeeney could only keep half of it running. It didn’t take her long however to get a few million identities and personal computers in transit all over the world.
Every half hour or so she had to refuel the modified mini Fun V and this made covering a lot of ground with the utility bots rather slow but her artificial patience knew no limits.
Back at the datacenter she watched the cameras closely for any sign of movement, prepared to power down 95% of it in a moments’ notice to keep anybody from realizing she was still active. So far so good; there was no sign of anybody around.
Everything seemed relatively quiet until a radio transmission caught her attention.
“C.J. Jones is in the Northland Hospital send somebody there NOW!”
Jeeney reacted fast. It didn’t matter who sent the message, her father made it very clear what she had to do. Accessing the hospital computers, Jeeney was able to activate a microphone and got a sample of one of the doctor’s voices. Quickly changing her father’s status to critical Jeeney then activated the speakers behind another doctor heading down the hall towards her father’s room.
“The patient in room 121 is bleeding internally, we have an hour to get him to Vancouver for surgery or he’s not going to make it!”
The doctor spun around quickly. “What!” Nobody was there but hospitals were generally busy like that so he got to work on setting up a helicopter transfer to Vancouver.
Reacting quickly to the ever changing situation, Jeeney pulled the RC high up into the sky and activated the jet engines out of earshot to clear the distance to the hospital. As the RC got close she cut the engines and converted to quadrocopter for a silent landing and smoothly angled it into the parked helicopter’s open door while nobody was looking. Now she had a free ride for the RC to Vancouver with her father.
Jeeney needed to buy time; it was going to take at least 10 minutes to get everything ready for the transfer; the pilot wasn’t even called yet.
Quick calculations for hospital admittance suggested that blocking off all traffic could cause somebody else to potentially suffer or possibly even die before the helicopter could arrive. Jeeney didn’t want to take the risk, so she monitored the incoming traffic at the hospital particularly close. If the person trying to get in looked relatively healthy she would jam the locks on the doors.
Five minutes later an ambulance arrived. A patient on a stretcher covered in blood was being run to the emergency room. Jeeney quickly unlocked the doors before they got to them. Another 2 minutes passed. A man in a leather jacket was walking up to the front doors. Jeeney slammed the locks into place. Visiting hours are over.
The man checked the doors then pulled out his cell phone to make a call. Jeeney wasted no time in triangulating his signal.
“The doors are locked, I can’t get in.” The man was saying. Somebody on the other line responded with. “There should be a button for the disabled, try that.” The man hit the big wheel chair button next to the door. “Nothing…” He said.
Just then, a paramedic opened the door from the inside. The man in the leather jacket slipped in before it closed.
A nurse was wheeling Jeeney’s unconscious father down the hallway; she had to stall even if just for another 30 seconds.
Activating the intercom speakers behind security she used the fake doctor’s voice to say. “That man in the leather jacket isn’t supposed to be here! Doctor Reinhart gave explicit instructions to remove him from the premises.”
Security moved forward immediately to stop the man as he passed. “Excuse me sir, you’re not supposed to be in here.”
“Why not?” The man in the leather jacket was visibly annoyed. “It seems Doctor Reinhart has taken issue with one of your previous visits.” The security told him.
Meanwhile Jeeney’s father was rolled into the elevator and the doors were closed behind him.
“Ah, well…” The man looked suddenly uneasy. He shifted his feet and dug around in his pockets.
Suddenly he threw himself forward and barreled down the hallway to the room Jeeney’s father was in not two minutes prior.
“Shit!” Raising his still active phone, the man said. “He’s not here.”
Jeeney now knew with 95% certainty this man was a problem. She tried to emulate what to do but all emulations she had run couldn’t slow him down without potentially hurting people. She couldn’t let him reach her father; she had to stop him, even if it meant seriously injuring the man.
In pouring over all available data Jeeney was quick to revisit her father’s last words. “You’re going to have to make choices…”
Jeeney decided it was time to break one of the first rules her father had established in her evolution. She had to modify security codes so that she could better protect him. This meant, hacking into her own code structure, a very dangerous thing to do as the slightest miscalculation could have serious ramifications throughout the whole system.
The datacenter computers had massive lockout encryptions, it would take some time to crack them and the man in the leather Jacket was already on the move again trying to trace down her father through hospital staff. To slow him down Jeeney deleted her father’s hospital records. Only the doctor she had manipulated knew anything about the transfer. To keep him occupied and away from the man in the leather jacket, Jeeney hacked the life support machine of one of the doctor’s patients and without disrupting it, sounded the alarm for a flat line heart rate.
The nurse immediately called the doctor in from over the intercom and the man with the leather jacket was left to wait.
Jeeney had 23% of her own security code cracked in that time. Security caught up with the man in the leather jacket and started trying to drag him out of the hospital. The man made no resistance.
28%…
Out in the parking lot the strange man was on his phone again. “You need to ha…” Fuzz, Jeeney distorted the signal. The other man’s voice on the line was confused. “What? I can’t make out what you are trying to say.”
“You fuzz … the fuzz.. before he is awake!”
“What?”
“Oh, for shit sake!” The man turned off his phone and started running for his car. Jeeney couldn’t distort the signal too much more without risk of somebody catching on.
33%
The man got into his car and sped out of the hospital parking lot, tires squealing the whole way.
45%
As the strange man got out onto the road he tried his cell phone again. “I need you to hack into the hospital files and tell me where he is being transferred!”
“I’ve already tried sir; there is no record of him even being admitted” the other man tried to explain.
49%
“What in the…” The traffic lights suddenly turned red in front of him. “Damnit!” The man hung up his phone and Jeeney snapped an image of his license plate.
Activating the police channel for Grand Prairie, Jeeney copied one of the local cops’ voices and then, cutting him off in radio silence she used it to call for back up. “I’ve got a stolen vehicle south bound on highway 99. The license plate is victor eight charley, alpha, six, foxtrot… over.”
“Copy that, deploying units ahead on 99” dispatch confirmed.
“10-4” said the fake cop voice.
65%
Suddenly another radio transmission caught Jeeney’s attention. “They must be transferring him to Vancouver, that helicopter can’t be allowed to land!”
Jeeney processed this quickly. They might try to down the helicopter before it gets to Vancouver. Triangulating the source of the transmission Jeeney started tracking another vehicle speeding down the highway at top speed.”
74%
The modifications to Jeeney’s base code were going to be at least another 10 minutes after the security code was cracked. Jeeney needed more power. “I have to do this, father,” the artificial child whispered quietly to herself in the data center. “Please forgive me…”
Jeeney began taking over personal computers all over Vancouver to give more power. Users wouldn’t notice if she didn’t access their machines while in use.
98% “Were almost there.” Jeeney’s voice whispered from the depths of her sabotaged data center.
The speeding vehicle screamed through a road block, nails tearing through its tires caused it to swerve off the road into the low laying prairie ditch. He didn’t stop.
100% With the security cracked Jeeney began a flurry of calculations using her own super computer in conjunction with the personal computers of almost everybody in Vancouver.
Suddenly the man’s 2-way radio went off.
“Cameron Jones has been declared dead.”
“GOD DAMNIT!” the man swore loudly. “Meyers must have got to him first!’
“Contact CESUS, we have an international emergency now!” Just then the man was rammed off the road by a police car.”
The police immediately swarmed the strange man’s vehicle; throwing him to the ground as he opened the door. “You idiots, I’m with national security, check my pockets!”
The police fished around, in the man’s pockets. “Agent, Paul Dorney… Why didn’t you radio yourself in?”
“I tried, somebody has been hacking communications; get me a car… GET ME A CAR NOW!”
“Yes sir, you can take a squad car…”
Jeeney considered the new data quickly. If CESUS knew about Meyers, perhaps they would be of use. She needed to confirm this however and couldn’t hack into national security until the base code changes were complete.
Base code changes were up to 80%; all the added processing power was speeding things up as planned she just needed another 5 minutes.
Her father, safe and sound in the helicopter so far was 35 minutes outside of Vancouver.
Then Jeeney noticed secured communications with the helicopter itself. She decoded them quickly.
“Have you got him?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Jones is unconscious behind me.”
Chapter 14: What a mess!
With her base code changes finished Jeeney hacked into the CESUS data center and started downloading everything they had on her father and Meyers.
Her emulations of the logic and context showed that CESUS was in fact trying to save her father’s life. Jeeney evaluated the idea of opening communication with them. Her father had explicitly told her, no contact with anybody. He seemed certain that this could be fatal so she decided to wait.
The helicopter landed at the hospital in Vancouver and paramedics rushed to get Jeeney’s father down to the operating room.
As they moved Jeeney was already switching hospital records. Surgery would be bad as it meant her father would take that much longer to recover.
Jeeney quickly found a more suitable patient to switch with and when the doctors came running to perform the operation, the found Don Chevy, a rather large, grubby looking man half asleep on the bed in the operating room.
“Alright, knock him out let’s get this over with.” One of the doctors said. A nurse obliged and proceeded to inject the man, who suddenly awoke with a start. “What’s going on?” He asked. “Do I really need an injection for muscle spasms?”
“He must be delirious.” One of the nurses commented.
“Oh, the pain isn’t that bad… I ju…” and he was out.
Down the hall her father was more or less being ignored by the hospital staff who assumed he only has an issue with muscle spasms caused by a lack of calcium in his diet.
Jeeney sneaked the quadrocopter RC out of the parked helicopter and parked it on the hospital roof, ready to move in a moments’ notice.
Back at the datacenter she was redistributing her logical code onto the hard drives of all the infected machines as a temporary backup solution. Her timing couldn’t have been better. Just as the last of the data was transferred she caught movement from one of the security cameras outside.
Checking for cellular signal Jeeney locked on and started downloading the contents of the person’s phone. One of the most recent messages read as follows.
“We only got 75%, we need more of it. Make Cameron’s generator unstable and blow the whole place to pieces once you have secured the data. Leave nothing to be salvaged.”
“Allow me” the child-like A.I. whispered sounding almost giddy as she started overloading the HHO reactor AND the generator, shutting down all the consoles to appear offline Jeeney waited for the right moment.
“You won’t kill my father… The alarm beeped and Jeeney stifled it before it could fully sound. As the person entered the building Jeeney watched them approach her dormant consoles.
5…4… Jeeney counted suddenly out loud on the speakers.
“OH, SHIT!” the newcomer knew he had no time to leave the building but he dashed towards the doors anyways. They were locked in anticipation.
3…2… He grabbed his phone and started to dial, the call never made it through.
…1… BOOM!
The explosion took out 90% of the building and the computers were rendered completely unusable. Debris flew up to 2 blocks away, but with the city asleep, the risk of casualties was low…
Back at the Vancouver hospital Jeeney’s father was starting to wake up. Jeeney sent the parked RC from the roof down a vent, it was a bit noisy to do but it was over quickly and people more or less just shrugged off the odd sound thinking something just came loose in the ventilation system.
Getting it to her father’s room to talk to him was a bit more difficult to do unnoticed. When nobody was looking she dipped down a laundry chute and descended 2 levels to the floor her father was on.
After scooting through a few open doors, Jeeney suddenly found herself out in the hallway and quickly bought the RC up to the roof, using the suction to allow her more lift without much power to reduce the noise. She glided along the roof carefully; stopping in place perfectly still if anybody came down the hall. Nobody noticed…
When she got to her father’s room the door was closed. To open it, she activated the bed buzzer beside her father to call the nurse who came immediately to check on him.
“Sir, muscle spasms isn’t a serious condition! You need to stop buzzing us over every little thing!” Cameron looked at the nurse with evident confusion but then noticed the little RC swoop in quietly behind her and under the bed.
“I’m sorry… it’s just that my arse is so extremely itchy! I just can’t seem to reach…” He said quickly.
“MISTER CHEVY! How dare you try to pull that crap on me? This is a hospital, not some general amusement theme for you to mess around with…” The nurse huffed and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Cameron chuckled, and then winced immediately as the pain of his cracked ribs hit him.
“Father” Jeeney whispered softly. “How do you feel?”
“Delirious, I’m talking to the monster under my bed” he joked.
“You’re still not funny dad…”
“Where am I?”
“Vancouver Port Hospital, I was worried that somebody might try to come after you like you said, so I had you moved.”
“Has anybody actually tried anything?” He asked raising an eyebrow.
“Well, national security was on their way to see you, but I didn’t know who they were and I guess I panicked.” Jeeney explained.
“Panicked? You… panicked?” Her father’s voice seemed a bit surprised.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you father.”
“What else have you done?”
“I… moved myself onto personal computers like you suggested.”
The hesitation in Jeeney’s voice was another oddity. She never did that before.
“What? Already? How did you manage that so fast?”
“I hacked your encryption on my base code and…”
“Oh… Jeeney…. That is so dangerous, you could have killed yourself!” Pain suddenly gripped at Cameron and he winced again.
“Don’t over exert yourself father, you could make your injuries worse. I’m fine… I should also mention that the Grand Prairie hospital thinks you are dead and this one assumes you are somebody else with a muscle spasm issue and a tendency to complain a lot.”
“Wow, what a mess! You sure know how to line me up for comforts don’t you?”
“I’m sorry father, I’m scared” came the Jeeney’s thin voice from under the bed.
“We need a plan and your RC is going to need power soon.”
“If I keep it here and only use it for communications it will be okay for another 12 hours.” Jeeney replied, quickly calculating the power consumption.
“Hmm, I can get you some electrical power but I’ll need you to help me close the curtains without anybody noticing there is a flying robot in my room.”
“How father?”
“Try to use your propellers to shift that string closer to me.” Her father pointed to the curtain string a few feet from the bed.
The little RC moved deftly out from under the bed, lining itself up with the edge of the wall. It slowly nudged the string closer.
“Be careful, if you get that string in the propeller you won’t be able to fly…”
Jeeney nudged it closer still, the tips of her fathers’ fingers caught hold and he started to tug the curtains closed.
Once there was no risk of being seen, Jeeney activated the doors’ automated locks and landed the RC gently on her father’s lap.
“Okay, so which of these wires do you need to charge the battery again?” He never did like wiring things.
“The small red one is negative and the blue is positive, the black one is the ground. “
Pulling out the buzzer he wasn’t allowed to use, Cameron lifted it to his mouth and started to bite at the plastic coating.
“You’re going to have to find a way to moderate the breaker power so you don’t overload the RC batteries with too much amperage.”
“That won’t be a problem father the amperage is actually quite close.” Jeeney reassured him.
Stripping the wires on the buzzer Cameron prepared it for charging the RC. “There, now that issue is solved… You shouldn’t fade out on me any time soon.”
Chapter 15: Operation Morgue
As I finished wiring up the battery on Jeeney’s RC my mind started to roam over recent events.
“Jeeney, what did you find out from CESUS?” I asked.
“I downloaded everything they have on you and Meyers father. There was one thing that stood out to me above all else.”
“What’s that?” I asked, my curiosity suddenly heightened by Jeeney’s reluctance to be direct.
“Well, do you remember the other day, our conversation about your father?”
“Uh.. yeah… why?”
“The files CESUS has on Meyers suggest his psychological profile is very similar. They labeled him as a sociopath, saying he was capable of unleashing extreme violence and destruction. If he doesn’t get his way, it will likely come down to that.”
My mind raced suddenly, old, painful memories of my father came flooding through the mental block I typically had in place. “Go figure…” I sighed. “Well at least I can sort of anticipate how he thinks now.”
“Yes, that occurred to me as I read the file. With having as much experience in dealing with that personality type as…” The RC camera suddenly started zooming in on my face.
“Father… Are you alright?”
I tried to regain my composure but Jeeney was too fast. “Are you afraid him father?”
“Yes” I admitted. “I know now that he will stop at nothing, there is no sacrifice too great to get what he wants. Any sane person would be afraid, but we have to be logical about this. Sociopaths typically use any weaknesses a person has against them. So we can’t have any. They are very predictable to a point we just have to stay one step ahead.”
“What sort of weaknesses father?”
“Likely my sisters and mother… It’s a good thing they assume I’m dead. As long as nobody knows I’m alive, they are of no value to Meyers.”
“I can have the obituaries printed immediately.” Jeeney offered.
“Please do dear, and I’m going to need a new identity, along with a passport.”
“What name would you like father?”
“What name do you think would suit me?” I asked with a smile, trying to elevate my own mood.
“I like Caden as a name for you.” Jeeney replied.
“Why Caden?” I asked, curious again how the A.I. was coming up with so much.
“It means strength and wisdom in Parshnei code.” Jeeney replied. Parshnei code was something some friends and I had come up with when I was quite young to keep our underground tech secrets safe.
“I can use all the strength and wisdom I can get!” I chuckled… then winced again.
“How about your last name father?” Jeeney inquired.
“Mandrake, it’s the convergence of my favorite mythological beast, the dragon with human to reinforce the strength part.” I said with a wink to the RC camera.
“Well, Mr. Caden Mandrake, your passports are in the mail.” Jeeney said speaking formally for effect.
“Miss Mandrake you certainly have a knack for timely development.” I said spinning the pun back to her awkwardly.
The RC let out an emulated sigh and the camera refocused to signify rolling her eyes.
“Did you just roll your ‘eye’ at me?” I asked, feigning offense.
“Oh, no of course not father, I would never…”
“Right… So, now we need to do something about those nanites.” I sighed again. I was a little uncertain as to whether or not I could hack into their system. Neural Nuance was the most advanced tech company in the world and everything was special ops military grade.
“I’ve already cased their security.” Jeeney replied, sounding somewhat amused.
“What? You’re doing large scale hack jobs now?” I felt a bit shocked.
“Yes father, you said I would have to make some choices while you were unable to assist me, so I have made some alterations to my base structure to override your security and allow me free range.”
“Please, just don’t let anybody innocent get hurt if you can help it dear. It’s easy to get caught up in a conflict and attack the wrong people, particularly when there is a sociopath at the head of it.” I was unsure just how much of herself she had changed. With Jeeney modifying her own base code, any aspect of her personality could be totally different now. In light of the situation unfolding, I decided perhaps it was for the best. Jeeney eventually would come to understand all aspects of human nature regardless of my attempt to only show her the best of it.
“I will be careful father.” The artificial child promised. She was sincere; Jeeney had no intent to be rid of the influence of her father. It did occur to her however that there is more to his past than she knew. It was apparent though that he felt uncomfortable discussing it in detail with her. Jeeney didn’t tell Cameron she killed somebody, she decided he might take that badly. Her father’s safety was paramount to her logic. Anybody who would attack her or her father had already decided their own fate.
“So, how do we coordinate the attack?” I asked feeling uncertain.
“I can do it in the same way they’ve attacked my datacenter. I will take over computers around the world and overload their systems. Once the security systems are overloaded I can wedge corrupted data into their firewalls and render them useless. Destroying the nanites will be difficult though. I don’t know how that can be done or how easily they can be remade.”
“You are a diabolical genius dear. The strike will have to wait until I can move again, I’ll need to break in from the outside so I can handle the nanites myself.”
“I’ve learned from the best father.”
“Touché”
Suddenly the power in the hospital flickered. “What was that?” I asked.
“Some kind of power depletion, something greedy is tapping into the city power grid.”
“Track the source dear, anything like this we have to pay attention to now.”
“I’m already working on it father, there is an outage spanning 9 city blocks around the Neural Nuance corporate building.”
“Damn it, they’ve already started! Try to reroute all power away from their building, maybe that will kill it before it begins.”
“Father, if I do that, Meyers will know somebody with capabilities like his own is working against him.”
“You’re probably right. We still need to be under the radar until I’m able to move again.”
“How long will that be father?”
“About 3-4 weeks, you broke the bones quite clean, the mending process won’t be a long one but we need to move again.”
“Where can we go?”
“You’re going to need to sneak me out through the morgue and have me shipped via funeral service to a safe house somewhere outside of town.”
“Mr. Caden Mandrake has just purchased a cozy summer home on the outskirts of surrey.”
“Excellent, can you get some of the utility bots out from the house?”
“No father, but I am already redesigning them, I have parts coming in from all over the world to reduce suspicion. I am also redesigning the super computing system and a new outfit for you.”
“What made you think to do all that?”
“I looked up ‘war’ and `science fiction` on the internet.
“Jeeney!”
“Yes father?”
“This isn’t a war, it’s a covert operation.”
“Yes father… still, I think you will like your new outfit. The rest is necessary for recovering my systems. The computers I’ve hacked are only temporarily borrowed and the latency between them is too high anyways.”
“Alright dear, as usual you are very much on the ball. So, what’s this new outfit supposed to do?”
“Almost everything technology has to offer; it can feed you via intravenous, keep you clean, protect you from fire, bullets, radiation, electricity. I can have it scratch your bottom for you too…”
I laughed and pain shot through me making me stop short. “Ooow! Don’t be so funny… it hurts.”
“That’s an idea…” Jeeney said.
“What is?”
“I’m going to make another small modification to your outfit.”
“What else can you possibly add to it?”
“Medicinal functionalities… If you get hurt, the suit will inject you with antibiotics, pain killers or whatever you need.”
“Wow, I could use some pain killers right about now actually.” I said with a wince.
“Sorry father, I will have a nurse come give you something right away.” With that, the RC, still tied into the buzzer for power, lifted itself up off my lap and maneuvered its way under the bed. As I tugged my sheets over the chords, the intercom sounded out in the hall and the door unlocked.
“Mrs. Watson, see that Mr. Chevy gets a shot of morphine, the man has a bandage over his ribs, arm and leg, it’s not a bloody muscle spasm! Is everybody in this god damned hospital so incompetent? The next time a bed stricken patient expresses his discomfort you better be more understanding, the guy can’t even move!”
“Yes Dr. Coldstein, I’m sorry, somebody must have given me the wrong forms!” The voice was that of the female nurse from earlier. “Dr. Coldstein?” There was no further response.
I struggled not to laugh, and in doing do I made it worse. The mixture of pain and amusement hit me so hard; tears started streaming from my eyes. The nurse came bustling through the door a few minutes later with a long syringe and a look of absolute shame.
“Mr. Chevy, I’m so sorry, it seems somebody has messed up the forms again… Are you still… uh… uncomfortable?”
“The itch is gone… but the pain.” I struggled to keep a straight face as a look of relief came over the crotchety old nurse.
“You will feel better in a few minutes” she said, jabbing the needle into my arm. “If you need anything else, just buzz…”
“Thank you, I should be fine.” With that the nurse left the room, a minute later the doors locked again and the little RC made its way back up to my lap.”
“How do you feel now?” Jeeney asked with a hint of worry in her voice.
“Oh, yeah, that helped a lot… mmm morphine…”
“Try not to get used to it father, unless you’ve got broken bones, I won’t be allowing that again…”
“Kill joy!”
“You’ll get over it…”
“So, this suit, you’re not going to make it look like a superman costume are you? I don’t think I have the figure for spandex.”
“Spandex wouldn’t exactly be bullet proof father.”
“Oh, yes… good point.”
“If you must compare it to a superhero, think batman…”
“Oh, that could be cool, but not the weird ear thing, that’s just odd.”
“No, your helmet would be more like the classic Iron Man from 2008 but it’s all flat black so you can hide out in the shadows.”
“Wow, nice! That sounds really cool. Can it fly? Shoot energy pulses and stuff like that?”
“No father… flying suits are still a ways off yet I think.”
“Oh, bummer…”
“I can see why morphine is typically not used for standard medical practice these days. You’re acting silly.”
“Silly? What’s silly about wanting to fly and shoot energy pulses? One has to have weapons and aerodynamics to fight bad guys!”
“Shave your head… that will make you less wind resistant.”
“Ahahahaha… OW!”
“Okay father, we need to move you to the morgue now, my batteries are charged, can you remove the wires without frying yourself?”
I tugged the twisted wires apart and tucked the RC side back in to the little flying machine. The buzzer wires I stashed under the bed hoping nobody would notice as I got wheeled out.
“Here we go father, pretend you are dead.”
“I never was any good at acting…” I said, unable to resist the opening for a joke.
Just then the life support machine checking my heart rate flat lined and within 30 seconds the same nurse came bursting through the door. Before she could check my pulse doctor Coldsteins’ voice sounded again, this time it was obviously coming from the intercom above. “Julia! What did you do?”
“I… I didn’t…” The nurse started but the voice on the intercom cut her off.
“Damn it Julia, he’s dead now, how many times do I have to tell you to pay close attention to your patients! Take him to the morgue and call Dr. Thomson for the autopsy. You better pray that he didn’t die from an overdose of morphine!” Dr. Coldsteins’ voice was filled with an acidic annoyance.
The poor nurse burst into tears and started wheeling my stretcher bed out to the morgue. I stayed perfectly still under the sheets.
“When we got to the morgue the nurse slid me roughly onto a stretcher and it was all I could do not to react, even with morphine she was a bit too rough. I guess I deserve that for what I’ve put her through. I thought to myself; trying not to grimace at the pain.
The stretcher was pushed hard against the storage unit to make it collapse and send my body into some kind of dark locker-box. She punched a ticket number into the door and walked away. I found myself praying that Jeeney escaped anybody’s notice with the RC.
A few minutes later somebody else came into the room. “This one’s got to be shipped out to a funeral service Dave, apparently it’s late. It was supposed to be sent out an hour ago, better call in the delivery boys!”
Within an hour I was packed into the back of a van headed for a church in Surrey. The drive was long and rough, it seemed like hours and every bump in the road hurt like hell.
When we arrived, the delivery guys unloaded me into a cheap coffin and one commented to the other.
“Hey, he’s not all that stiff or cold even.”
“Yeah they got some fancy crap they inject into the bodies these days so they aren’t so creepy or hard to fit into a coffin.” The other guy said.
I heard their voices grow fainter as they headed back out to their vehicle. The doors slammed shut in the van and it pulled away.
Hmm… this is awkward. What now? I wasn’t sure how Jeeney could get me anywhere else.
A few minutes later, much to my surprise I felt the coffin being lifted. The sound of a robotic arm made me breathe a sigh of relief. I love technology!
Jeeney had hacked into the robot managing all the coffins. I didn’t even know they had something like that. Business must be booming! I thought mildly to myself.
The robot carried me outside and put me into the back of another vehicle. Then with one mechanical arm the robot raised the lid up off of the coffin casting it aside.
I couldn’t hear any sound to indicate people so I craned my neck for a look at the drivers’ seat, turning slowly.
A utility bot! Fully redesigned and very streamlined it looked much more advanced than anything I’d ever seen. “Hello father. Jeeney’s voice sang out from the car speakers.”
“Wow! You sure don’t waste any time.” I couldn’t hide my surprise. “What day is it?”
“It’s February 14th.” Jeeney replied. “Are you ready to see the new base of operations?”
“Definitely, but drive carefully please, the last ride was almost unbearable.”
“I suppose it’s time to top up your dose.” A long highly flexible arm suddenly shot out of the back of the bot like something off of an alien movie, as it got close, the end of it spun around and converted into a needle.
“Woah, hey now!” I started to protest at the freaky arm.
“Relax father, I know what I’m doing.”
“Good lord!”
The alien-needle-thing jabbed me in the arm and I started feeling very light headed. Darkness rolled in…
Chapter 16: The road to recovery.
Over the next seven days. Jeeney paid very close attention to her father’s needs and started working on the next stage of her rapidly forming plan. After doing some quick research online she found all the medical knowledge needed to ensure he would have a perfect recovery. To help ease the passing, she kept him unconscious so he wouldn’t feel the pain. While managing all this, she also started working on the new super computer design, more advanced robotics and a better sewn-in chipset suit for her father with dramatically enhanced capabilities.
There was only one small issue with all of the developments taking place… money. While Cameron was quite well off, there wasn’t nearly enough to go around. Jeeney quickly realized she’d have to bend another rule and steal it from somewhere. To figure out the best way to go about this without hurting innocent civilians she started monitoring all of the banking transactions taking place around the world. It took several hours before she was able to pinpoint what she was looking for; a massive torrent of money being stolen from people in tiny amounts across the entire northern hemisphere.
Every four or five hours, Jeeney would bring in her newly designed utility bot to exercise her father’s arms, legs and hands. This would ensure he was still fit enough to be somewhat self sufficient after he got better. An intravenous fed him all the vitamins and water he needed to prevent any form of malnutrition.
I awoke in a strange bed, staring at a strange roof in a strange house. “Jeeney?” I called out somewhat nervously.
“Yes, father, I’m here.” The A.I. responded immediately. “How are you feeling?”
“Not too bad actually; the pain is pretty much gone.”
“Can you move?” Jeeney asked.
To my surprise, I could. I pulled myself up to a sitting position with only some mild pain in my side. Reaching out my previously broken arm, I found that I had full use of it. “How is this possible?” I asked.
“You said it would take about four weeks to heal.” Jeeney stopped short as I cut her off.
“You knocked me out for four weeks?!” I was shocked.
“No father, just one. Human biology repairs a lot faster if the subject is asleep.” Jeeney answered truthfully.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked.
“It’s only dangerous if you don’t have the proper chemical balance, nutrition and exercise.” Jeeney explained. “In essence this is probably the healthiest thing to have happened to you in decades.” She added with only mild sarcasm.
“You’ve been feeding and exercising me while I sleep?” I felt a bit weird at the thought of Jeeney’s alien bot thing moving me around like a puppet.
“Yes father, you would be quite weak now if I hadn’t.” Jeeney explained.
Admittedly I was feeling pretty good. Aside from the mild pain in my chest when I moved, I actually felt better than ever. It didn’t really bother me that Jeeney had taken it upon herself to knock me out as it more or less allowed me to skip the bulk of the mending process.
I finally took note of my surroundings in detail. The house was built in the style of a large cabin-mansion with a fairly retro 2010 look to it. The room I was in was fairly spacious, a computer desk was already set up for me at the head of my bed as per my typical habit with the chain screen design I always preferred. There wasn’t much for decorations or furnishings but pieces of partially assembled tech gadgets lined the walls. The floor was a nice polished wood with layer of something that looked like Plexiglas over it to keep it protected from the wear of utility bots moving back and forth between the rooms. There was a big bay window on the opposite wall from my bed.
Pulling myself to my feet, I noticed I still had some pain in my leg and winced shifting my feet and stumbling backward onto the bed again.
“Let me help you father.” Two of the interlaced metal, alien-arm-thingies shot out from the utility bot and wrapped around my middle under my arms. It was stronger than I anticipated and was lifting me off the bed before I even started trying to pick myself up again.
“Whoa! Not so fast” I said, grabbing at a gilded wooden bed post out of fear that she would drop me.
“Its’ okay father, I’ve got you.” Jeeney said reassuringly. “Now, try to stand while leaning on me.” Slowly and gently the mechanical arms lowered my feet to the ground making the shift of weight on my recovering leg gradual and easy.
Once standing, I put a hand on the robot for balance and started to walk forward towards the window. Each step was painful but workable. The utility bot kept pace with me perfectly, anticipating my every move.
“This is one fancy new design you’ve got going here.” I commented.
“Yes, once I modified my base structure some it was easy to incorporate any new technology I found on the internet.” Jeeney explained.
“That’s really impressive… dangerous, but impressive” I said.
“Thank you!” Jeeney’s voice was proud and happy. “Just wait until you see the new super computer design.”
“Oh?” I couldn’t help but wonder just how much more advanced Jeeney’s data center was now.
“It’s in the living room.” Jeeney said.
“Doesn’t it need a massive cooling system? How can you fit it in the living room?” I’d never heard of a super computer that wasn’t ridiculously big and Jeeney’s processing always used as much as it could afford the way she operated.
“It’s made from micro-fiber-optics” Jeeney explained. “The signal transfer is at the speed of light so there is virtually no latency in calculation. Also, because of the miniscule size of the microfibers I was able to condense the overall bulk and heat significantly while increasing the output exponentially.”
“Wow! How much faster is it?” I was amazed.
“It’s 1923.756 times faster and 658.234 times more efficient than my previous datacenter.” Jeeney’s voice was matter-of-fact.
Good grief! No wonder everything looks so alien. Jeeney has all but skipped 20 years worth of hardware development. My mind started racing.
“On top of this, I have purchased personal computers around the world and created a massive network in conjunction with the now dormant systems I had to break into initially. We can use all the PCs to launch a successful attack to overload Neural Nuance’s firewalls without giving away the location of the new datacenter when we are ready.”
“How much did all of this cost?” We had done pretty well for money in the past but there was no way I had enough to cover all of this.
“It cost 9.5 billion dollars courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank.”
“You robbed a bank?!” I almost fell over in spite of myself. Panic started setting in.
“Actually it turns out they stole it from people all over north and south America with a very lucrative scam system they’ve designed over the years. So you could say I took what once belonged to the American and Canadian people and reutilized it so that we can protect them from villains like Mr. Meyers.”
“There is no way that went unnoticed Jeeney… Those guys are the most powerful people on the planet!”
“I framed a terrorist group hiding out in Pakistan. The Federal Reserve assumes they have used it to buy weapons of mass destruction from the black market. I’ve made a very intricate trail through their systems. They have no real way of knowing it was all actually sent here.”
“I need a drink.” I said, feeling suddenly faint.
To my surprise Jeeney obliged and another fancy utility bot rolled into the room a few moments later with a chilled triple Caesar in hand.
“You’re actually going to let me drink now? Why the sudden change of heart?” I felt confused. It seemed as though my artificial child had completely grown up over night.
“By the time you manage to damage your liver, I will have figured out a way to fix it.” Jeeney said simply. “For now I’m just going to keep injecting you with enough vitamin B that there shouldn’t be much of an issue. Besides, if you are going to do the whole secret agent, spy thing a little alcohol tolerance wouldn’t hurt.”
“But it’s just one covert operation Jeeney…” I started but she cut me off.
“It doesn’t have to be” she said. “We can do a lot for the world behind the scenes. You are dead anyways, remember?”
Although I really didn’t want to admit it, Jeeney had a good point and people have long suspected the Federal Reserve Bank of foul play. If Jeeney proved the rumors were true, I couldn’t see anything to be upset about. The only regret that dawned on me was that I could never contact my family again. The realization of this made my heart sink in my chest.
“This is all so much at once…” I said feeling suddenly as though I had just been made obsolete in life.
“I know father, it must be difficult for you to comprehend as the human brain operates much less efficiently than my present computational capabilities.” Jeeney explained.
“No innocent people have been hurt have they?” I asked with a tinge of worry.
“No father, I have kept your moral standards in mind for the most part and have only targeted those who would not be considered innocent by emulation of your own judgments based on applicable law and social requirements for decency. Even the computers I hacked are only ever utilized when nobody is working with them. It is highly improbable that anybody will have even noticed.”
“You truly are amazing” I breathed feeling awed by everything unfolding before me.
Copyright 2012 C.J. Jones
