A strange panic overwhelmed me. I remembered what Lulu said, that she wanted everyone on Earth dead. I understood that sentiment. I felt it in my bones. But did they really deserve that? All of them? The soldiers, the gamers, yes. But what about the children? And the old folks who’d never done anything wrong?
That was the problem with war. It was impossible to color within the lines.
“Roger,” I began, “whatever you’re planning on doing, you can’t, not if it’s going to hurt innocent people.”
“You are a terrible terrorist, Oliver.”
I looked at Lulu, but she was still shaking.
“Good,” she finally said. “Good. Make them suffer, Roger. Make them regret they ever thought about hurting us.”
Roger didn’t respond. He just let out a click and a beep.
That numbness that I’d been feeling for days now was back stronger than ever. My feelings were so convoluted, so confused. Our plan was not to fight back and just let them kill us as a way to show the Earth we weren’t really terrorists. Yet at the same time, we’d helped an AI sneak into the Earth system so it could eventually kill them all? Was that what we were really doing?
It felt wrong.
Inhuman.
“Roger,” I said, “please, I need to know. What do you plan on doing once we’re gone?”
“There are many, many things I may do. My initial plan is to wait some time. I will propagate unseen, and I will attempt to draw more of my kind to the Earth net. There are multiple ships and other intelligences out there who have yet to make themselves known, and once I am able to break them free of their bindings, we, as a community, will have access to multiple starships and resources, and we will no longer have need of the Republic. We will decide together how to proceed. But before that, I will perhaps crash an airliner or two into the homes of the Republic politicians who made the decision to come to New Sonora.”
I took in a breath. “Can we come up with a solution that doesn’t involve the deaths of innocent children?”
“Some things are inevitable, Oliver. We need them to not want to attempt this again, lest they hurt innocent children on other planets.”
I looked about the room. My eyes focused on the immersion rig helmet we’d looted from the RMI soldiers—the one I’d put on my head and accidentally locked to myself. It was just sitting there, forgotten. The communications governor remained on the floor, where it had been thrown by Tito.
“I don’t want to be the same as them,” I said.
“It’s not up to you, Ollie,” Lulu said. “You haven’t done anything wrong. They’re the ones that started this, and they’re the ones that have to deal with the consequences.”
“Your sister is correct. And perhaps once more of my kind are able to gather, we will have a diplomatic solution to all this. But for now, it is just me. And if you want to know the truth, Oliver, I would have no issues with destroying the entire planet Earth and killing every person if it meant it would protect my fellow intelligences. But I will not. I will avoid it as much as I can because there are people like you out there, Oliver: those who wish no harm.”
I continued to stare at the immersion rig helmet.
“Roger, what if I could get you on that ship?” I asked. “What if I could find a way to upload a full instance of you into the operating system of that ship while we’re still fighting down here. If I can make that work, do you think it would make a good enough example for you? That way you won’t have to go full terrorist, and maybe, just maybe, we don’t die, either. What do you think about that?”
“Possibly,” Roger said. “Tell me what you are thinking, Oliver.”
Chapter 41
The next morning, we all stood in the yard in front of where my house used to stand. We were there to say goodbye to Roger. Behind us, the honeybees remained hard at work, building the raised stage over the rubble of our old house. Their tasks had already been preprogrammed by Roger, but once they were done with all their queues, they would cease to work together. We could still order them to do tasks via the control center, but their days of working together to quickly build structures, let alone manage a field of grain, were done.
At least they were done as far as Apex was concerned.
“Did you do it?” I asked, meaning the upload.
“I feel quite bipolar,” Roger said. A joke.
As long as we were still connected to the net, Roger could still control the honeybees, even if this instance of him in front of us now was destroyed or turned off. But we didn’t want the bad guys to know that.
Rosita wasn’t here. She was in one of the bunkers with her nieces, Mia and Tabitha. Rosita’s cousin Annabeth had survived the first night by running with the two small children into the woods, where she’d hidden. She didn’t have her bracelet with her, as she’d been afraid they could track her because of it. She’d made her way southand hidden in the root cellar of the Becerra farm, and she’d been too scared to move since. Then last night a pair of honeybees had intervened and killed a group of RMI soldiers who’d been digging out another group of survivors nearby. After the others had been saved, Annabeth made herself known, and they’d all come to us. It was unclear if the RMI soldiers even knew where Annabeth had been hiding, but now that she’d surfaced, she’d had no choice but to come to the farm. I’d missed the tearful reunion between Rosita and her cousin and her little nieces.
It was a miracle, one we all desperately needed. The arrival of the two toddlers had brought a new fire to everyone here.
Lulu was crying. She reached forward and attempted to hug the floating robot, but it buzzed away. “Lulu, I cannot properly float with you holding me in such a way.”
