At the end of the hall, Jo came face-to-face with the door she and Wayne had only a day earlier speculated was where the Bone Carver did his work. This time, it wasn’t shut tight, but left halfway open as an invitation. Gathering her courage, she stepped inside.
They hadn’t been wrong, but they also hadn’t been right.
This was where Charlie did his work, but that work was not chopping people up. The recreation room came to mind as Jo stepped into Charlie’s workspace. There was an entire wall of server stacks, each of them cooled by dedicated fans, no doubt why he usually kept the door closed. Charlie sat in front of five monitors, all of them propped up on the wall. Wires protruded from his side, extending out from under his shirt. Jo was no expert on androids, but she had done enough research to know they had ports on their sides, just under their armpits and hidden by a removable flap of biomaterial. This was the edge above regular humans Jo admired, the ability to plug-in directly.
Charlie glanced over at her, his hands stopping. Even though he was no longer paying attention to the monitors, things still ran on them. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was still working on her query and controlled it through the hard wires—or at least, that’s what Jo reasoned.
“I’m doing as you asked, but I see you haven’t done the same.”
“I have.” Jo motioned to Takako.
“I—“ Charlie paused, squinting slightly. For the briefest of moments Jo held her breath, wondering if he would see Takako too with his incredible sensors. Yet he leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “You said initially that you were supposed to be invisible. Is your friend currently?”
Jo looked to Takako and gave a small nod. Takako gave her a long, hard stare in return, and for the briefest of moments, Jo was afraid she would refuse. But if Takako had drawn a line in the sand, Jo had yet to cross it; she pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped on the screen.
Charlie gasped. “Y-you, that was incredible!” He came to his feet. “Do it again.”
“I’m not—” Takako began to protest.
“Indulge him,” Jo requested, gently. “Please. He’s helping me research information about the Society. I don’t trust doing it in the recreation rooms anymore. Pan has information she shouldn’t. I’m worried she’s watching everything we do in the Society.”
Comprehension dawned on Takako’s face. She gave Jo a nod and tapped her phone again. Charlie stared with rapt attention as Takako blinked in and out of reality.
“What does it look like to you?” Jo couldn’t help but ask. Wayne had speculated about what he thought people saw during their first wish, but Jo didn’t want to pass up a chance to hear it from the mouth of an outside source.
“It’s like a blink,” Charlie said, sitting back down in his chair. “I would say like a glitch on the screen, but it’s too smooth for that. It’s the sort of transition that makes me wonder if I had looked too quickly to begin with and missed that she had been standing there all along. Magnificent, really. If I wasn’t witnessing a demonstration, I would likely miss it.”
“Why are you doing what you’re doing?” Takako said suddenly, reminding them of her presence in the most jarring way possible.
“What I’m doing?” Charlie glanced at the monitors.
“No, not that—why are you killing people?”
Charlie leaned back in his chair, pushing his fingertips together and pursing his lips. The silence suddenly felt heavy and tense; it was not the shift Jo had wanted, but she had no idea how to regain control of the situation.
“The lives I take,” Charlie began slowly, “are not innocent. I suppose, since you are helping me, and you have shown me your secrets, I will share mine with you. I was made in a facility, illegally. My core programming, Primus Sanguis, violates several articles of the Artificial Intelligence Accords of 2040.”
“How?”
“The Accords were designed to cap artificial intelligence and the UNA imposed further sanctions of their own. Effectively, it was to ensure that artificial intelligence never exceeded the mental capacity of humans and that there is always a backdoor failsafe. Primus Sanguis violates this principle area. Not only do I have the capacity for reason and feeling, but my programming is also able to adapt such that I cannot be killed—so long as a kernel of my core data remains stored somewhere.”
“So why are you killing people?”
“People do not think programs like Sanguis exist in general, and especially not in the UNA. It is the basis for shooting down acts like the ACA.”
“You’re trying to use your murders to expose Primus Sanguis?” Jo deduced. “Why not just share the code?”
“If I share the code, anyone could use it. There would be truly no regulation or cap. The ability to create life at my level would be in anyone’s hands. I’m not sure if that’s the right choice for my kind or humanity, either.”
“Then what do you want?” Takako asked, sounding genuinely intrigued.
“I want what any citizen should want, to bring this injustice to the attention of my elected officials via discovery in the justice system, and allow them to make regulations knowing the full facts.”
“You want the police to find Primus Sanguis by connecting the dots on their own as they hunt you down.”
“That is my hope, and that is why I cannot and will not stop until it’s done.” Charlie looked back at the monitors. There was clearly something unsaid, some grudge that hung onto his shoulders, pulling them down. But neither Jo nor Takako asked. His answer had been satisfactory enough for each of them, enough to quell their worries over working with a serial killer vigilante.
“Have you found anything so far?” Jo asked, shifting the topic.
