Prologue
This is how it ends. In silence.
Senara walked the deserted street. The mid-November sun shone over Historic Sevierville, Tennessee, as she wandered past empty storefronts that had been repurposed to serve the community with basic services. She shifted the shotgun slung over her shoulder, waiting for him to appear in the street. Would she be able to use it when the time came? Was there enough of her left to do what must be done?
Of course, she would. Her gift was the ability to rise above herself and see reality. It’s what made her a great psychiatrist, therapist, and person. It might have kept her alive when everybody died.
A cool wind blew leaves across the pavement. At least they weren’t littered with bodies this time. That separation kept her alive. It’s the only way she survived that and found her way here.
I’ve never been so sorry to be right.
They thought they had come so far—the brave survivors of the 2109 Prion Pandemic[MT1] . The truth was that they learned nothing: not from history, experience, or life beyond the death that took over the world. They learned new ways to make the same mistakes all over again.
Something isn’t right.
They should have known better than to use the same technology that failed them the first time. Or did it? Humans programmed the AI, and technology can’t violate its programming.
Can it?
The soft sound of footfalls carried on the wind. Senara stopped and looked around. It worked. He had answered her call, and why not? After all, doesn’t a man know his wife?
“Come on,” she whispered, looking at the buildings along the main strip of the street, which were old businesses and stores transformed into functional businesses. All they needed to build a new world, a new order, a new life right here in this small town in the mountains of Tennessee.
The footsteps stopped. Of course, he heard her. Which Killian would come to her? The human, or the AI?
He’d masquerade as human. That would be their first strategy: appeal to the biological before the programming took over. Humans can only act as their mind and body allows. AI has countless algorithms processing faster than any neuron can fire.
Senara stopped in the middle of the street and pulled the gun off her shoulder. “I have a riddle for you.”
“Speak,” his voice said softly.
She propped the gun on her shoulder, focusing on the shadow shifting nearby. “How do you beat the technology that has grown beyond you?”
“By evolving faster,” the voice said.
“Wrong.” She pulled the trigger.
Chapter 1
“I don’t feel right,” Taryn said as she picked up her coffee cup and drank.
Senara studied her best friend across her kitchen table in the breakfast nook of her condo, between the kitchen and the great room. The building was quiet, mostly because the community was somewhere between asleep and awake at ten o’clock in the morning, and mostly because the building was located at the edge of the Historic District of Sevierville, Tennessee. Formerly a tourist city in the county that shared Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, the community had been rebuilt after the Prion Pandemic. This area was small enough to keep everybody together in a central ‘main street’ style setting, but with enough space that they weren’t intruding on one another’s space. Senara and Taryn often met for breakfast after their morning workout class. They had enough time for breakfast before walking to the clinic for their daily work after their significant others left for their work at the community power plant just outside of town. Everybody worked a six-hour shift, either from six o’clock to twelve o’clock or twelve o’clock to six o’clock, but the recent Phase One AI rollout had the engineering staff pulling extra hours and crossing shifts.
“It’s the AI reactivation,” Senara said. “Remember what I said at the town meeting last week? You’ll feel strange while it connects to your neural chip and reactivates the nanotech in your body. We’ve made upgrades that should minimize the effects, but the body always goes through an adjustment with any change.
“I know, it’s just strange.” A deep sigh racked Taryn’s thin body. “I’m used to being healthy and feeling good, but I barely slept last night. I kept waking up from the strangest dreams.”
Senara pushed her brown, chin-length hair away from her face and drank her coffee. “Killian complained about the same thing. He woke me up tossing and turning all night and complaining about how hot it is.”
Taryn smiled and drank her coffee. The light streaming across the nearby kitchen cast a yellow beam of light across the open space between the kitchen and great room, which were sparsely furnished in neutral shades to reflect the light from the kitchen window and sliding glass door in the den that opened on a small balcony. “Tell him welcome to the south. Summer starts at Easter and ends at Thanksgiving in the subtropics. It’s almost May. He has a long way to go.”
“I don’t think it’s his Oregon origin. I think he had a fever,” Senara said. “He was all right this morning, just sleep-deprived.”
Taryn smiled. “Sleep-deprived from the AI reactivation, or sleep-deprived from returning from your honeymoon?”
Senara blushed. “Maybe both.” She and Killian had married the Saturday before Thanksgiving but delayed their honeymoon until the previous week. They had just returned from a ten-day honeymoon to the Bahamas.
“I shouldn’t joke. Reid had similar symptoms from the AI reactivation,” Taryn said. “I hope Killian and Reid don’t fall asleep at the plant. Heck, I hope I don’t fall asleep at the clinic. The last thing these people need are sick medical and tech staff. I’ll bet we’re swamped again. I wonder how the first shift is going?”
“I haven’t heard. I’m working on a recalibration at the lab today, so I’m not on the clinic update text,” Senara said. They both worked the second shift at the community health clinic: Taryn was a physician assistant, and Senara was a psychiatrist. Her main duties for the past year had been reactivating the Artificial Intelligence that helped them rebuild after the Prion Pandemic. Evolution was their best chance at survival. This was especially true since the old world had been destroyed, and the reformed communities worked to establish a new government system that would give all of humanity a chance to thrive in the new world.
“Are you sure letting the AI back in our heads and bodies is the best thing to do?” Taryn asked. “We aren’t sure why it didn’t prevent the Prion Pandemic. Something might be wrong with it.”
Senara stood and walked to the coffee maker in the kitchen to refill her mug. “The only way to find out is to probe deeper.” She finished brewing her second cup and sat across the table from her best friend and neighbor. “You could have refused.”
Taryn shook her head. “I’m frustrated. I’m not used to feeling bad.” She stared at Senara, her blue eyes probing. “How are you handling it so well?”
Senara drank her coffee. “The research team reactivated our nanotech three weeks ago, around the same time that respiratory virus ran through the community and we quarantined for a week. I hid at home while I suffered, and then we went on our honeymoon. Nobody saw me at my worst.”
“Killian didn’t say anything about it.”
“I asked him not to. You know how nervous people get since the pandemic. So much as a cough or sneeze triggers post-traumatic stress. Confusion, especially. Let somebody forget a word or stumble through a sentence, and they see red.”
“I guess we didn’t handle it well,” Taryn said.
Senara leaned back in her chair. “There isn’t a good way to handle mass death. Grief is complicated. Magnify that on a worldwide scale, and it’s no wonder we’re dealing with so many adjustment disorders. We hope reactivating the AI can help us balance better.”
“You mean you hope it can help us evolve to the world we’re creating faster.”
Senara turned her dark eyes down. “If that’s possible.”
Taryn reached across the table and took Senara’s hand. “How are you? You said Killian kept you awake. Is it that, or something else?”
Senara looked up, studying her friend’s face. She knew she should tell the truth but didn’t want to scare anybody. All of them had lost their families and friends and had rebuilt their social networks with other survivors. She wanted to protect them, but how do you do that best? Tell the truth.
“I wonder if the programming matrix is stable in the nanotechnology. I ran across some readings yesterday that concerned me. The information technology people said they’re ‘glitches’ within normal parameters and will level out, but I don’t feel right about it. I told the committee, and they started mumbling about anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and why we need to reactivate the AI sooner rather than later.”
“They didn’t listen to your concerns?”
Senara shook her head. “Killian did, but he was dismissed as being biased. All they want me and my team to do is connect our brains with the technology and get out of the way. They think the biology and the technology are two different things, but they aren’t. Singularity means it’s all connected.”
“Killian won’t let them dismiss you. He’s the lead engineer for the AI, and I’ll make sure that Reid has your back.” Taryn smiled. “Don’t give up. Maybe enough of our cases will convince them to cooperate.”
Senara stood. “Maybe. We’d better get to the clinic. I’d like to review the data reports since the shift switchover.”
Taryn stood and hugged Senara. “Change is scary. Hang in there. We’ll figure this out together. It’s how we’ve come this far, and it’s how we’ll find our future.”
Senara sighed. “I hope you’re right.”
[MT1]
