Salvage Seven: Chapter 12

Sometimes I’m tempted to let Gideon catch a break. This chapter is not one of those times.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11

They laid down some ground rules that night, Gideon sitting cross-legged in his pile of blankets – for once not self-conscious about his appearance, knowing that the stone was blind to such things. He made it a little nest of its own, arranging blankets around it. It told him that it did not feel any physical sensation, that his efforts were wasted – but it made Gideon feel better, at least.

First thing, he thought to the stone, touching it gently with one finger, if I need you out of my mind, you stop listening. Alright?

You need only cease contact with this vessel, the stone replied. Unless I am touching you, or am linked to something that is, I cannot hear your thoughts. That made sense, Gideon reflected; the stone must have been wired into that strange pedestal for ease of access – and to keep it more effectively imprisoned.

Ok, he replied. But you can talk to me, right?

I can, said the stone, pulsing gently. That side of the link is stronger, somehow. If I need to see or hear something, therefore, I can request it of you.

Fine by me, Gideon said, marveling quietly at how verbose the thing inside the stone was, how formal the language was that the researchers had presumably chosen to teach it. As long as you’re not listening while I sleep.

Agreed.

I can’t promise we’ll find out anything, Gideon warned. No idea where to begin, if I’m honest. But we can look into the files we pulled, find out what we can. Find out what you are and why they kept you locked up. That sent a little thrill of fear through him, and he released his contact with the stone on the pretence of adjusting his blankets, lest it hear this thought: it had been a triple-locked door, buried deep in the lab, the kind of door behind which one only kept something that could never see the light of day. Something powerful. Something dangerous. What have I gotten myself into?

But then he remembered the crushing darkness, the absolute isolation, and his resolve firmed. Nothing deserved that. Nothing.

He touched the stone again.

We’ll find out what we can, he promised. Where you should go. What you should do. What you are.

For that I will be ever in your debt, said the stone. That is the expression, is it not?

Sounds about right.

Sound. The voice was contemplative, resonating a little deeper, more thoughtful. A curious concept.

Gideon felt pity well up within him.

You’ve never heard anything, have you?

No.

I’m sorry.

I have never known anything else, the stone replied, without a hint of jealousy.

Maybe you will, one day.

Perhaps. The stone felt neither enthused nor disappointed in Gideon’s mind.

I will help you in return, it thought, if I can.

What can you do?

I do not know, the stone replied honestly. But if your estimation of my importance is correct, I must be able to serve some function. Gideon grimaced; clearly his subconscious thoughts were not safe from the stone’s attention after all.

We’ll have to figure out what these people were doing with you, he thought back. We’ll be looking over equipment tomorrow. I’ll see what I can find before we extract.

Salvage, the stone thought. A curious concept.

You’ll see what it means tomorrow, Gideon thought. He glanced at his watch. Today. Christ. I need to sleep.

I will not stop you. Rest.

Do you sleep? Gideon wondered, as he adjusted his blankets, settling back.

Not as you think it.

Well. Sweet dreams.

What are dreams?

Gideon grimaced in sympathy.

You’ll find out some day.

He put the stone down, covering it with a fold of blanket, half in case somebody came in and half out of an absurd impulse to make the thing comfortable. Then he rolled over, wrapped himself in his own blankets, and closed his eyes. He let out a long, slow breath, an underlying fear he hadn’t quite realised was there loosening its grip on his heart – but only very slightly.

What the hell am I going to do now? he thought, finally just to himself. What have I gotten myself into? There was something in his head, something utterly alien, a living, thinking thing – and he didn’t have a clue what to do with it. Was it malevolent? Had it been imprisoned for good reason – or was it just an experiment kept under lock and key for safety? What was he – a damn salvageman, an electrician with delusions of grandeur – supposed to do with it? Did he go to Donoghue? Did he essentially admit to his sergeant – a woman who already made no secret of her dislike for him – that he was either going mad or somehow compromised, corrupted? Or did he talk to one of the others? But who’d be able to do anything? For that matter, none of them liked him either – not enough to offer help. But he couldn’t just deal with this on his own, not for long. Every path seemed to end in the same way: Gideon on an operating table, having the secret of the glowing stone carved out of his living brain by eager surgeons, his corpse tossed into the Jeroboam’s furnaces alongside the hundreds of others that were cremated every day.

He’d just have to play it by ear tomorrow, and see what he could find.

Sleep came uneasily, for he could not escape the feeling that despite being across the room the stone was listening to his every thought, and judging.

*

“Comms check,” came Donoghue’s voice, crisp and clear through Gideon’s earpiece. “This is One.”

“Two, receiving,” said Petra.

“Three,” said Yaxley curtly.

“Four here,” Gideon offered.

“This is Five,” came Dawson, her voice weary. “Loud and clear.”

“Salvage-Six, receiving,” said Collins, far too enthusiastically.

“And this is Seven,” came Handel cheerfully. “Fuck me but it’s nice to have decent vox for once. Cheers, Petra.”

“No worries,” the corporal replied. She had been the one to patch them all into the facility’s communications network, and she had, Gideon had to admit, done a fantastic job.

“Good,” Donoghue said. “Glad we can hear each other while we’re wasting our time. Dawson, you’re back in the hangar?”

“Yes, boss,” said the engineer.

“ETA of our extraction is sixteen hundred hours. Keep an eye out; you’re closest. We’re getting a VTOL, but there’ll be a superlifter coming eventually to get all this shit out. So, lug what you can to the hangar, catalogue what you can’t, and the grunts’ll take care of the rest. Whatever happens, we’re out of here at four.”

“I thought this was a civilian facility,” said Collins. “Should we be taking their gear?”

“Command appears to have decided,” Donoghue replied, “that all’s fair in love and reluctant ceasefire. Not our job to do the politics.” Gideon nodded. Normally, he would have felt as uneasy as Collins about what would under different circumstances just be theft of private property by the army. What he’d found already in the mountain lab had somewhat coloured his opinions.

“Grab what you can,” Donoghue concluded, “meet in the hangar at fifteen-thirty. Find anything interesting, let us know. Need help, do the same. Maps should be working now.” Gideon glanced down at his PDA. It was indeed fully functional, Petra having tied the portable computers into the lab’s comms system along with their radios. With everyone’s partial maps of the facility combined, augmented by an official map – a map that conspicuously omitted several major rooms – they all knew where almost everything should be. White dots pulsed slowly, denoting their various locations; Dawson in the hangar, Collins in the main server room, Handel in material sciences, Petra in chemicals, Yaxley and Donoghue in the main testing bays, and Gideon over in his suite of offices, near the Cradle.

“Roger, boss,” said Handel. Gideon joined the chorus of affirmative.

“Switch to numbers,” Donoghue ordered, “see you in a few hours. One out.”

The connection was closed, and Gideon was left alone again. Except, of course, that he wasn’t. Gingerly, he reached inside his fatigues and adjusted a button, letting the stone, which he’d tied to a length of cord, touch his skin, as he set off towards the Cradle proper. It was smooth and flat enough that it was invisible beneath his shirt, unless you were really looking for it. He was, of course, constantly paranoid that someone would be doing so.

Hey. Briefing’s over.

With your… companions?

The squad, yeah.

I am unfamiliar with your hierarchy, the stone said. There are many of you?

Seven.

Curious. I have never spoken to more than one person before.

Maybe you’ll get the chance, Gideon said, not meaning it. He didn’t intend to tell the others about his… companion any time soon.

Why not? Gideon cursed again; damn mind-reading! He wished he could just talk to the damn thing, and let his thoughts stay private like they would in any other conversation.

Because they’ll be scared too, he explained. He knew that the stone would remember fear – he’d made sure of that. He wasn’t sure whether to feel guilty about that or not yet.

I think I understand, the stone replied, betraying no emotion at all save for that strange, ethereal curiosity.

Let’s get on with this, Gideon thought, tearing his mind away and focusing on his surroundings. If he did have to tell the others about the consciousness that was sharing his head, he wanted at least to be able to explain what it was. He stepped once again through the door of the Cradle. This time he made absolutely certain that the door was wedged open. I won’t be trapped again. With the ordinary light of the corridor spilling in, the Cradle had lost some of its mystique, which suited Gideon just fine. The perfect soundproof walls did have seams, almost invisible to the eye but present, and with the door open they did not fully function, letting Gideon’s footsteps sound a little more like normal. The silver pedestal still rose from the centre of the room, its paneling discarded on the floor by Handel. It was as good a place as any to start.

“So, this was the interface,” he murmured to himself, kneeling down to examine the slender podium. “Your interface,” he added, remembering his mysterious passenger. “Do you know how it works?” It was easier to speak aloud, now that there was nobody listening. It made him feel a little less insane.

I do not, the glowing stone replied. I can see none of this, have seen none of it.

“Well, did you feel anything? When it was used?”

I felt only when they spoke to me. While none were here, I slept.

Gideon thought for a moment, examining the wiring inside the silver pillar. There was, as Handel had said, a DNA scanner and palm-print reader, wired into a complex arrangement of circuitry that surrounded the little slot where the glowing stone had once sat. He traced the wires, keen eyes finding patterns in the circuitry that he recognised.

“Looks like the scanner was wired up to… well, you,” he explained. “Some kind of power mechanism. I think they set it up so you’d only wake up when someone touched the pillar. While someone was touching it.” It made sense; the scientists would have had complete control over what the stone and its weird mind could do. If something happened to the researcher on duty, their hand would have fallen away – and the stone would have been left helpless.

They feared me, came the ethereal voice in his head. Why would they fear me?

“I don’t know,” Gideon admitted. He felt a little more fear himself at the concept, but shook himself, trying not to concentrate on it, keeping it hidden. He busied himself by poking around in the guts of the pillar again. Apart from what seemed to be connections to power, there were no other outputs, data or otherwise. No computers in the room. No electronic locks, or outputs of any kind. They had kept this room as tightly sealed as they possibly could – there were no cameras he could see, no microphones, no windows. In their search of the facility’s maps, and when looking around physically, they had found no observation room. Whatever had happened in the Cradle had been witnessed only by the voice in the stone and by whatever combination of scientists were physically present in the room. Old-school.

“What did they do with you?” he asked, taking a closer look at the palm-print reader.

They would ask me questions, the stone replied as Gideon worked, isolating the wiring to the reader and ensuring that it wasn’t connected to anything else unpleasant. Strange questions. I did not understand many of the things they spoke of. Gideon could feel the memory of confusion, at the edge of his mind where his consciousness met the alien presence of the stone. He couldn’t feel what had been said, but he could feel the weird emotions, could feel how utterly bewildered the stone had been.

“Did you answer?”

I tried. They kept asking.

“For how long?” The scanner was indeed just connected to power. Gideon turned his attention to the housing that had held the glowing stone; a little metal cradle within the Cradle, connected to the scanner – and, again, to power. Interesting. Why would a living consciousness need a connection to electricity? He examined the contact pads with a frown. Something was niggling at the back of his mind, jostling among a thousand other thoughts to be noticed, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

Constantly. One would leave, and another would take his place immediately. Then you came. Did you not see them, speak to them?

Gideon looked at the contact pads again, and the thought that was clamouring to be noticed at the back of his mind moved a little further forward. His frown deepened. The copper conductors were tarnished by flowing current – but only slightly, certainly not enough to have been constantly in use. Maybe they were replaced. But he didn’t see any sign that the pads had been pried out and replaced, no scratch marks or other damage.

Something almost clicked into place – almost, but not quite, as he properly processed what the stone had just thought at him.

“What do you mean, did we see them? You mean the researchers?”

Yes.

“When did they last talk to you?” Gideon asked, feeling his blood chill, though not knowing why.

Just before you spoke to me.

“Right before?”

Immediately before.

Gideon’s blood was freezing now.

“This place has been abandoned,” he said quietly, the Cradle’s soundproofing still deadening his words, “for almost a year. The scientists left a year ago.”

But it was minutes ago, the stone protested. Hours at most. Doctor Strickland spoke to me, and then you came in here.

“It was a year,” Gideon insisted. His mind was racing. A year since anyone had touched the pedestal, a year since anyone had activated the palm-scanner.

A year since the stone had been connected to power. Since it had charged.

“You need energy,” he said, the horror plain in his voice and in the sickly colour of the thoughts that went with them. “Electricity, or something like it. You didn’t have it for a year, and you didn’t know it was happening. Because you were dormant.”

What do you mean?

“Unless you’ve got power you’re not awake,” Gideon continued. He looked around the Cradle, realisation dawning ever-faster. He wasn’t speaking anymore, just thinking, but he knew the stone could still hear him, still feel the mounting panic in his mind. Not conscious unless powered, or at least charged. Must be feeding off my body heat or something. No tech in the room at all except what’s necessary to make it think; no data outputs, no cameras, nothing electronic at all. Why? Because it could use them, and they couldn’t let it.

What are you saying? the stone was asking, but Gideon wasn’t listening.

No tech. Needs power. Weird consciousness that doesn’t understand ordinary emotion, senses, anything.

His radio crackled into life.

“Salvage-Seven, all copy.” It was Donoghue. “Collins just cracked one of the databases. Finally figured out what this lot were researching here. Some chemical stuff, some flash-cloning, and artificial intelligence research. Looks like it’s all gone, but watch what you plug into, ok?”

The broadcast cut off. Gideon sat there on the Cradle floor, paralysed with fear. A consciousness that needed power, that knew nothing of the senses of the flesh, that had to be kept away from technology at all costs.

An artificial intelligence. An AI.

And it was in his head.