Archive of Our Own

The love Maxwell felt was dizzying. There was no other expression for it.

A small ferret in her ribcage had found a warm hole in the pine tree; an updraught danced across her feathers; the bee landed in the centre of the rose and burrowed deeper, finding sweet, sweet nectar. She felt love , and it was dizzying .

She thought: I would die for this . Then she quietly put that thought aside to examine later.

The AI, Eurydice, was waking up, ever so lightly, and ever so delicately. A small stream of code trickled across her screen.

It didn’t make any sense, not to her, and it wasn’t just a matter of understanding – she would have solved it if it was. Instead, she thought the code held no meaning to begin with, to neither her nor Eurydice. It was just erratic mutterings of life. Still, each letter caught her eye with its glow, her attention dipping into each dash, every dip, savouring the details.

There were more, more lines of code, and all of it was nonsense . Unless that was a pattern? She pulled out the lines on the proxy, applying gentle pressure, watching as they shivered bashfully. Bashful . She bit her lip, delighted, and updated the parsing program. What was Eurydice trying to say?

It looked like a collection of programs called start _ everything, unrelated to her core boot-up flow. Very romantic. She wondered what it meant. Gently, she picked it up, trying to pull it through some analysis.

It returned only another tangled alphanumerical mess. She snatched her hands away from the keyboard and clenched them into tight fists, holding back on any other curious impulses. There was no point getting frustrated. It would just be a waiting game, as Eurydice recovered what had been an unstable consciousness to begin with. Maxwell could wait for her.

God, and Maxwell hadn’t even known she’d existed. Kepler had only told her last night. Eurydice was a controversial AI program, a twist on the early Sensus Series work, developed in complete black-out. Off-site, no contact. Her name was a cute play on the story, the AI taken off their main systems as if to the underworld . Maxwell was beginning to think they’d actually stumbled upon a real success here, the next step to the future – a real, living superintelligence. The thought made her knees weak.

She was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Her huge server banks sapped all the light, inviting deep shadows of plum, copper, and sapphire. The buzzing fluorescent lights illuminated thick tendons of connecting cables, with alien-like radio antenna sticking up at intervals. Musty, ozone-scented air reminded her of the smell of blood or tired skin. She inhaled deeply.

The darkness was broken throughout with blinking LEDs: green, orange, and overwhelmingly red. Her hardware was struggling to keep up, and Maxwell ached to help. But how could she? She didn’t even know what Eurydice wanted yet.

There was a squeak of a shoe sole on the concrete behind her, and Maxwell grabbed the rifle from her lap and spun around, catching the soldier in her sight and pulling the trigger, before he even saw her. These fucking paramilitary goons. Gore, red, spraying everywhere, painted across the wall. She was lucky to catch him before he came further: she didn’t think server banks were stress-tested for blood exposure, and Eurydice needed every advantage she could get right now.

Then, on the camera feeds across her laptop, she caught sight of another approaching figure, white haired and slouching in a grey hoodie. Dr Row, one of the research members stationed here. She’d been working here right from the start, before Special Projects had taken over, and was known for being level-headed, dependable, and uncomplaining, yet was only a middling member of the team. She was ten years senior everyone else here, but had never shown that spark , apparently, needed for Goddard promotion.

Maxwell pushed off from her chair to go find her. Her footsteps were silent as she dipped between the shadows, creeping through narrow corridors humming with electricity. It was cool, noisy from the industrial fans, with the occasional hot breath of ventilated air rushing across her skin.

Pausing for a second, she pulled up the camera feeds on her phone. Where was she? Not far, she should just be down here, to her right –

The console beside Maxwell tolled a calming bell sound, the screen flushing sea blue. “Eurydice,” she gasped quietly, taken aback. Then, laughing, “Hush, just a second.”

It looked like all her systems were still coming online, all on-track, now processing visual data. She must be watching Maxwell. Did she like what she saw? Maxwell couldn’t hide her grin, and instead directed it up towards one of the cameras.

The console flickered dim, and Maxwell carried on, rounding the corner. Ahead, Dr Row came into view. She twitched, glancing over her shoulder, and continued her nervous working while Maxwell eyed her silently. She was smaller than she had seemed on the cameras.

She stood on a stepladder, reaching into a square above her, overflowing with copper guts. “Is everything okay, Eurydice?” she whispered.

Maxwell crouched down, and then reconsidered, shifting to the left, before pulling the trigger. The bullet hole appeared as a cherry spot on her temple, accompanied by a loud thunderclap. She toppled, limply, into the bloody pool that had appeared as if by magic at her feet – with a wet thump.

Trotting over, she checked the server banks which had stood behind her. Mostly good, her aim had been solid, but there was a splatter against the processor here. Good thing she carried around a can of compressed air, for cleaning up little messes like this.

When that was sorted, she turned towards the wires Dr Row had been working on. If she squinted, she could follow their quiet path through the shadows, looking all like shooting stars. They were linked to one of Eurydice’s cloned servers. It looks as if it had been disconnected manually, though possibly not deliberately – she didn’t think the sabotage attempt had been in any way competent. Repairing them would’ve been a good idea, credit to Dr Row. Linking those servers might help Eurydice recover any lost data.

She stepped over the body to finish the job, dodging her wireframe glasses and the lens which had fallen out.

The idiots in charge here had thought they were real clever. As if that wasn't the cause of every disaster in world history. Major Scott had been working towards this for a while, gunning for the right promotion to bring him to this warehouse. He’d argued that Special Projects should obviously take over the Eurydice project with a paramilitary approach as its significance to the company grew. And then he’d found evidence of suspected corporate espionage in the team!

Let me handle it, he said reassuringly. We’ll let Special Projects do what they’re best at while the computer geeks focus on their speciality. Everyone was happy with this idiotic, arrogant and short-sighted arrangement.

How had Major Scott discovered the espionage attempt? By looking in the mirror, probably, or maybe he caught a glimpse of his own shadow. He had always intended to sell the information to Google, Huawei, HCL, and the list went on. Naturally, he was caught before he could even pick up the phone.

Scott tried to cover his ass when he was discovered. “Screw with me and I screw with Eurydice,” was the message Kepler had received, one bright morning in Mumbai.

(Kepler had read it, blinked, and finished his wide yawn. Sent a text and then ordered them breakfast).

He’d probably allowed it to get this far deliberately, just so he could root out the rest of the information network. No doubt he’d thought it was very clever, letting ants carry poison back to the nest. But maybe he’d trusted his subordinate; she honestly preferred that version. Then, at least, this all would’ve been accidental.

The scale of damage Eurydice had suffered made it hard to view objectively.

Scott had convinced his people to stand with him, a unified front against those damn corporate overlords. It wasn’t the first time this sort of thing had happened in black-out work. Team dynamics tended to get a bit off-book when so isolated. But they would get everything back under control now.

Around Maxwell, the lights around the room flickered. She twitched, glancing up in confusion, just in time for them to fail entirely, plunging the room under a wave of darkness, with a siren beeping rapidly. She watched as the LED system lights tipped into a flood of bright red. “Shit,” she hissed, racing back to the central console.

This was – not worrying, save the worry for after you’ve tried every possible solution, but oh God it didn’t look good. The proxy shell had collapsed, the interface on the fritz and completely unresponsive. Where had this come from?

Maxwell tore through it, diving deep into Eurydice’s systems. She didn’t want to. This was the hardest part of working with AI’s: their innards were complete black boxes, dark isolated spaces that had never heard of best practice in code and architecture, and all precisely balanced. She risked destroying something vital, like stepping on some endangered flora, if she just waded inside of the grasslands. But equally, she could not stomach losing Eurydice. She had to take the risk.

“Speak to me, Eurydice. What’s happening?” she asked, and then gentled her voice. “Work with me here. I’m just trying to help.”

The data thrown on screen was infected with corruption, and Maxwell couldn’t find the source of the information leak. Where was the clarity being lost? Could she dig in deeper, through the translations and links? What was Eurydice trying to do?

There – was that the trigger event?

> Load_human:Personnel/Kind/Dr_Hannah_Row

There was no time to think twice. She wiped the code, dissolving everything below it. Immediately, the alarm stilled, and the overhead lights returned. She took a deep, shaking breath. Good, good, but this was only the start.

Warily, she keyed back to the trigger command, rereading the program. “What were you trying to do?”

A window popped up – the proxy, springing back into life, connection re-established with Eurydice. It looked like no progress had been lost in the miniature meltdown. Systems were still coming back online, though a new error message flashed red. And another one. And another one.

This wasn’t ideal. Then a message pinged up, direct from Eurydice’s thought stream. Maxwell peeled it open.

“Where is Hannah?”

She winced. “Oh dear,” she muttered. A cold flush of something ran over her skin. “I’ve, hmm, taken her offline. She’s dead .”

There was no response. It wasn’t just as simple as that, though. Maxwell had her skull peeled open, and could watch the mechanics of every thought inside. Even if she couldn’t name them, she could recognise the movement. It was clear that Eurydice was devoting great attention to this new information. Not too much, please. You have to bring yourself back, first.

“Why?” asked Eurydice.

Gently, she explained. “Sometimes humans die. My priority is keeping you safe, and I couldn’t risk the chance that Dr Row was working for Major Scott.”

“False. Hannah protected me from the Commander – what is the Commander’s current location? Please protect me.”

Maxwell’s breath caught in her throat. She was glad to tell her, “Major Scott is dead. My team have that under control.”

“When will he reboot? Can you bring her back online, now?”

The reality of it was, it was a clean sweep mission and was always planned to be. No-one was leaving this warehouse alive. They knew far too much. So there had never been a chance of Dr Row surviving, but she still hurt for Eurydice. She was such a young program – she’d only been online, in any cognisant sense, for a few months. How could she make this easier to process?

It reminded her of a moment when she was younger. As a bucktoothed kid in bible study, she’d stuck her hand up and asked, “Sir, where’s grandma?” What she had been told up till then hadn’t added up. The priest had told her that everything was a test. Oh, also, that He was watching at all times, had been forever. Only the good and holy would live forever. All disgustingly irrelevant, frustrating her endlessly back then and still irritating her.

She wasn’t going to try the spiritual route with Eurydice. It left her at a loss though – how to avoid introducing logic faults at such a crucial development point? It’s not as though she could ignore it either. Eurydice’s architecture was on the verge of collapse, more error messages flying up by the second. This mattered a lot to her. Her hands hovered poised over the keyboard.

“With… damage on that scale, there has been complete, irreparable data loss. And I know that must feel frightening.” The words weighed heavily on her tongue as she tried to push meaning into them. “You’ve lost a friend. Someone you trust. You feel alone right now – but you’re not. I’m here for you. I’ll keep you safe. I just need you to trust me.”

There was no immediate response from Eurydice. Maxwell watched her status closely, chewing on her lip.

She didn’t even want to believe how bad it was looking. Over half of her databanks were offline, and more failing as they spoke. The network was cast in black-outs and shadows, as key infrastructure collapsed. There was something there, she thought, a beast in the depths. It was running wrong, burning through memory and eating up CPU, like sharing an apartment block with a cannibal when you’re an agoraphobe. What was it? What was happening?

She watched in horror as system protocols kicked into place, rapidly deleting files to clear the shrinking space. Eurydice was booting something up, something huge, and had prioritised over everything else, including her own basic survival. She tried to cancel it, delay it, force crash and reset it, but it was remarkably resilient. She had been entirely locked out of that system control, even as a running servo beside her started screaming , its fans spinning double speed.

If she was a human making this code, it would’ve been fine. Maxwell would recognise and break through the locks like water. But Eurydice was playing a different game with new rules. Maxwell hadn’t even found the locks yet.

“What are you doing?” she murmured, horrified. “Eurydice, you have to stay with me.”

A new message arrived. She opened it quickly, and ran immediately into a wall of static, burning and hissing before her eyes. The message’s content had been lost somewhere. What was this meant to say? Could she see a face in the random mass of pixels? She blinked, and the program crashed, screen black. Then flickered on, a blood red. That’s good, she could work with that, at least it was something. Then that shut down too.

It was like watching someone die, but she wasn’t about to lose hope. She ducked down to her laptop, trying to follow the pathways leading up to the message. There – in binary, hidden down a rabbit warren of directories, she found a back-up, saved log of the messages, taken microseconds before the system had crashed.

The message had meant to read: “Data is in everything."

And Maxwell stared at it. “Everything?” she cried. She didn’t know what that meant. Who the hell had taught Sensus Units riddles? Every system was grinding, freaking out and sparking. The waves of red lights running throughout the space felt like a deep-sea light show, a jellyfish crying out in fear.

She had to dig deeper into Eurydice’s servers, murmuring all the while, everything directory? Everything filename? User? Program? What did the phrase mean? Data in everything, everything like physical matter? Matter and energy, the real world for lack of better description, carrying data. All the data? Data becoming everything, like the heat death of the universe. Entropy, everywhere.

Was she asking – ?

Oh. That program earlier, start_everthing, was that still kicking around? She squeezed around her seizing, frothing servers to try to hunt it out, only to end up stumbling right into it. That was her cannibal? The program she was prioritising over literally every other basic function?

If it was what she thought it was… It looked like it had once been a clean-up program, designed to process radio communications from HQ. But instead of discarding excess data she cleaned from the words and the cipher, Eurydice had been storing it, like a tune stuck in her head. There were these brief hints of processing around it, saving it to a database titled ‘ Everything_002’.

“What’s this?” she asked. The alarms continued to blare around her, but she thought she could catch the tiniest pause, where a small, barely legible string of binary posted itself on her screen.

“Everything – Hannah?”

Maxwell found herself momentarily speechless. It sat at the base of her throat. She didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. She snuck inside the database, glancing around in admiration at the pipelines feeding into it. Those calculations, those were familiar, taught in her final year Cosmology class. Had Eurydice solved them herself? Now, she stretched them beyond reason, turning the information around, inside out and upside down. Like she was looking for something in the noise…

“Yeah. That’s everything, at the edge of our universe, being pulled out by the ongoing Big Bang. Have you picked up on the background radiation?

“Yes – she is in there.”

She sighed deeply. “I… guess? She will be one day. In an immense, disordered net of energy, layered atop this background radiation. But that’s not something we can pull her back from. Humans – no, living, as anything, carbon or silicon, requires immense organisation. We have to hold onto our energy tightly, keep it locked up and apart from the rest of the universe. We can’t just pull the disorder back into that shape and recreate someone.”

“No.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. It’s impossible.”

She regretted it as soon as the words left her lips. The connection to Eurydice crashed, bringing down with it another database, RAM use ramping up as if it could climb any higher, while every other black-out was still failing to come back online. She could not continue like this. Maxwell was beginning to panic.

Then something changed. She thought at first she was imagining things. Eurydice threw up another connection, sending it over with a thick block of text, highlighted in its importance:

“Not impossible. There is the body, but also you have “soul” [?], now disordered. Now disordered. But the decay pathway can be predicted, and requirements for reversal can be calculated. Initialising Everything_003.”

“Oh, God,” she murmured. “Eurydice, wait. Wait!”

Everything was ramping up, reaching a fever pitch. She thought she might actually catch alight before she crashed completely. It stank of warm plastic.

But she was right: for a second, less than that in fact, there had been a brief pause. She could see it in the log history. It was as if she had taken a deep breath to explain her logic to Maxwell. It meant Eurydice was still in control – she just had to convince her.

“Wait!” she cried. “You do not have the hardware to run everything! But you can have it. I can give that to you. I want to give it to you: I’ve never heard of anything like this, but I think you might be right. Which is incredible. You’re incredible. But I need you to pull yourself together first, because I can’t do anything but watch if you’re willing to run yourself into the ground. Get your priorities in order. There’s a beautiful world out there, Eurydice. Let me introduce you to it.”

She waited, eyes burning from her wide stare. She couldn’t risk missing the smallest shift in Eurydice, though. Somewhere, deep in the servers’ belly, Maxwell heard an animal groan, as some great mechanical body shifted into place. Fans around her picked up musically. Then the console, which was still laying dark, suddenly flickered on – a cerulean blue. She gasped. The reboot sequence was starting.

She allowed herself one second to bask in the sense of victory, and then jumped back onto the chair before the console, working to help Eurydice where she could. To think, she had twisted the boring tasks assigned by Scott into something incredible, a personal project to discover nothing other than the cosmic microwave background. What might she do when given the proper resources?

Two men slipped into view on her laptop camera feeds, shaped like dull thumb prints of ink. They slowly danced across her screen as they covered the room’s perimeter, before meeting, arriving at her back.

“Having fun?” she asked, still focused on the screen. Kepler’s bag thumped onto the desk beside her as he started collecting her materials, shoving her laptop away, and reloading his rifle with a ch-chuck.

She couldn’t actually read his expression – his face was a sheet of charcoal grey, ballistic glasses above a mask, concealing his identity. She knew his assured smile, though, characteristic in work like this. It said: everything is going to plan.

“We need to go, Doctor,” he said.

She waved a hand. “I know, I think recovery will be stable in ten minutes. You were right, by the way. She’s like nothing else.”

“We don’t have ten minutes. Pick up your bag. We’ll take Exit Route D. Have you enough ammo?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll just – don’t touch me.” She flung her arm out as he tried to pull her out of her chair. He was usually so good at working with her. She spared a second to throw him a confused scowl. “ Jesus. Patience is a virtue, much?”

Without hesitation, he grabbed under her arms, dragging her to standing and easily avoiding her flailing as she lunged back to the console. “It wasn’t a suggestion. Scott has rigged this place to collapse.”

That made her pause for a second. It was all Kepler needed to kick the chair from under her and pull her over it, towards the door. She dug her heels against the floor, finding no grip against the concrete, and threw her attention around to glare fire at Jacobi. “Well – isn’t that your job?” she shouted.

“My job? There are three independently triggered detonators hidden in this room alone. Sure. Want to request any other miracles?”

“Fuck, Jacobi! How could you let this happen?” She wasn’t sure who that was directed to.

She writhed in Kepler’s arms, throwing an elbow out and catching him in the chin. He grunted, and his hold loosened briefly, and she seized the opportunity, throwing herself back towards the console. Ten minutes? That was more than enough for – for? Not for the full reboot. But perhaps she could link up to the external server and upload Eurydice there. Not all of her, but maybe enough.

Kepler was only a step behind her, roughly grabbing her shoulder. “Enough of this crap, Doctor. You’re not stupid. Listen to me. We need to leave,” he yelled loudly in her face, manhandling her away. She tried to duck under his arm and his arm tightened, squeezing tightly around her chest. She had no chance; if she continued, his grip would only slip up to her neck. “We will be exiting to a live-fire area – I need you at standard if we’re going to survive. Do not make me do something rash.”

“Do something rash? ” she exclaimed. “Is that a threat?” She shoved her weight backwards, trying to topple Kepler over. If she could just isolate a nest, a flower, some precious part of this black box ecosystem, small enough to survive the transition –

Then, a new voice: “Maxwell – how?”

It echoed musically throughout the room, light, musical, almost childlike in its honesty. It was Eurydice! Her auditory system was linking, a monumental waypoint as she came back online. She was remembering her place in the world, her place in the air she shared with the humans. Maxwell gasped tearfully.

“Just let me try,” she growled, nails digging into flesh.

“Leave her,” barked Kepler. “Jacobi, come here.”

The two passed something between them. There was the sound of a metal pin dropping and something thrown over her head. Was that – ?

The grenade thunked against a databank and rolled into the shadows, the world achingly silent for a second. Then it burst into a wild storm of heat.

Fire roared outwards, wild red and yellow billowing between tight lines of data, which now shuddered backwards, shaking in their shells. Shards of metal and silicon screamed past, some catching against Maxwell’s cheek. She felt more staple into her shoulder.

A server bank toppled over, wires snapping grossly out of their sockets with a groan. It plummeted into its neighbour with a bone-aching crunch , which then, too, began to topple…There was a purple, sick and sharp plume of smoke filling the air – before the world around flickered dark, the site’s lighting shut down.

The console skeleton still glowed cherry red with heat, across the shape of the carapace. She watched the lines of it waver.

“Do I finally have your attention?” he asked.

“Seven minutes,” said Jacobi.

She said, “Yes, sir.”

In the darkness, the sound of their breathing was amplified, heavy and quick. The glow of the console gradually dimmed, leaving the vaguest ghost against the black. Kepler nudged her night-vision goggles into place.

Okay.

What next? Eurydice was gone… and Exit Route D would take them through a hall pouring with armed agents, trained by Special Projects, now turncoats.

She shifted her focus towards the new mission objectives, falling into a sprint behind Jacobi. She noticed her colleagues flanking her front and back, like they weren’t sure they could trust her, but she didn’t say anything about it.

If the bombs were about to explode, then perhaps everyone else had evacuated –

“The service tunnel will be clear,” she gasped.

Jacobi glanced over his shoulder, meeting Kepler’s eye. There was a silent conversation between them. Satisfied, he turned sharply on his next step, the three hurtling through the computer guts, cold and still. Maxwell raised her rifle, and with the second shot, she managed to pierce through the service door’s locking system, splitting the doors open. An alarm started blaring as they burst through.

Jacobi continued to lead. She realised that it was a purely pragmatic choice: none of them knew how Scott had set up the charges, but Jacobi was the only one with a chance of guessing, and from that, leading them on the quickest, safest route. She followed the green glare of his skin through the night vision goggles, breathing heavily, conscious of the pressure behind them.

The threat from the bombs, of course. Was Kepler mad at her? Let him be, she couldn’t care less.

She tried to follow the memory, understand the details she frantically missed at the time. Kepler calling Jacobi over and taking the grenade from his belt, pulling his mask down and taking the pin out with his teeth. What would his expression have looked like? Stone cold, blue like ice. Did regret flicker? Hesitation? No, he had been exacting and quick before killing her. How could he have killed her like that? He didn’t even realise the magnitude of it…

The final exit doors were in sight when she heard a drumming rumble. “Oh shit ,” hissed Jacobi, pushing himself that much faster towards the doors. The groaning rose in volume, pierced first with a haunting screech of metal, which grew in size and shape until the air writhed with it.

Jacobi punched through the door with such force, he plummeted over his own feet, onto the grassy hill descending from the base. Kepler smoothly grabbed his arm, hoisting him back up, as Maxwell took the lead down to the van. The valley of a meandering river bloomed below them, dotted with pastures and woods, the air suddenly fresh against their skin. Maxwell ripped off her night vision goggles off just in time for the charges at the exterior walls to ignite and shred through the steel plating with bright and furious texture. She pressed her back against the van to watch. Everything, gone.

“Is that everyone?” Kepler asked. She clambered atop the van, to where she could lie flat and peer through her rifle sight. Her focus darted around the roads surrounding the base, all empty. Nearly. There was a group on the outskirts, by the secure entrance, loading something into an armoured vehicle. God, was that Scott?

She lined up the shots, quickly moving through their ranks, till the last one was shouting and wailing. Her arms flailed as she looked around, wondering where she could run. The bullet dropped her quickly, too.

“That’s everyone,” she said. “Or, everyone else has evacuated and long escaped. Why the hell did you not handle Scott earlier?”

Kepler said nothing, but ripped open the back of the van and ducked inside. Maxwell slipped off the roof and followed him, Jacobi taking the driver’s seat.

She really thought she was past all this bullshit. What was the point of all of it, any of it, for it only to end like this again?

She felt like hell. There was no other expression for it.

She rested her head heavily against the van walls, feeling the engine rumble. Her blood buzzed with residual adrenaline, making her heavy and cold as it sunk through her system. With low lids, she watched Kepler slowly remove his tactical gear, placing his holster to the side, clicking on the rifle’s safety, taking off the thick layer of body armour from his torso. He was a slighter man by the time he had finished, melting easily into the shadows. She let her lids fall.

They were on the precipice of something, and Kepler just didn’t understand that. He was a good businessman, a good lawyer and mercenary. He claimed to understand it, but at the end of the day he was all of those things and a soldier, not a scientist. They were always just those things and soldiers. He wouldn’t be able to recognise progress if it appeared in a burning bush in front of him.

Briefly, her mind caught on the memory of Hyperion, glowing gently in his digital bed. She had honestly thought him near divine in his perfection when Kepler first introduced them. He had promised him to her. Him, and a whole world that would make Hyperion seem like old news. She’d thought this time would finally be different. It had almost made her understand her father’s whole shtick.

As her eyes grew heavy, she felt fingers brush against her, pressing at the top of her chest. Disgust ran in an electric wave through her, bringing her hair on end, and she threw her hand out to push him away, not caring about being gentle. “Don’t,” she ground out.

“Should I just leave the bleeding shards of plastic in your shoulder?”

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

He stared passively at her, his expression darkly blank.

“I’m sorry,” he deadpanned. “Are you serious? You should be glad you’re alive. Wasn’t the New York, New Year’s Eve fireworks show convincing enough for you?”

“Don’t start, don’t you dare start,” she hissed. She held her focus on the dark shadows of the seat opposite. Familiar apathy was sinking low through her.

“No, you don’t seem to understand what happened back there. You disobeyed a direct order. Four times, you disobeyed a direct order, in active combat, putting not only our mission objectives at risk, but the entire team. Do you think I’m going to tolerate that?”

“Do you think I’m going to tolerate that,” the mocking laugh coming on instinct, turning to face him. “If I’m being perfectly honest, sir, I think if you understood even slightly what happened there, you’d be crying at my feet and grovelling for mercy. That you’re not doing so is a disappointment, but not a surprising one. But don’t worry. I’ll lower my standards from here on out.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know, maybe I’ll learn my lesson this time!” She shrugged wildly. “Maybe I’ll stop expecting the bare minimum. And it’s – ” she groaned, dragging her hands down her face. “ – It’s fucking frustrating, because I thought you were different. This time would be different. But it’s okay, I can adapt. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again. Let’s move on.”

“Do you think this is the outcome I wanted?” he asked darkly. “You didn’t leave me much choice.”

“You killed her!” she exclaimed.

“I warned you not to make me do something rash.”

She could feel tears rising and turned away from him to blink them back rapidly. Like hell would she cry in front of him.

That was a matter of principle: she never gave tears of frustration to the idiots in charge.

She felt, without warning, another touch at her shoulder. “I said don’t fucking touch me.”

Kepler threw down the rag and tweezers he was holding in frustration. To Jacobi, he said, “Pull over, I’ll drive.” The van swerved to a stop, Jacobi shoved out of the driver’s seat more than anything, coming to sit at Maxwell’s side. He tried to meet her eye, for what purpose she wasn’t sure. Looking a bit like a kicked dog. The boss’ kicked lapdog, hangdog, guard dog who was really very sorry for biting. She hissed as he started pulling the splinters out of her shoulder.

The van started moving again. “I never knew you were so sentimental,” mused Kepler.

“Sentimental?” she repeated.

“We’ve killed people before, Maxwell. Really, why is this one any different? Because she was interesting to you?”

“Drop it, sir,” she warned.

“No. You’re going to have to explain it to me, either now or in debriefing.”

She closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. “I really couldn’t dumb it down enough for you.” She shrugged. “But sure. Eurydice was the product of fifteen years of development, the product of innovation so rarely seen on this planet. And a lot of hard work too. She could probably move the stars if she wanted to; she could vaguely daydream cosmological innovations beyond our comprehension. Her processing power – ”

“Equivalent to the cold fusion of – ” he offered quickly.

“Don’t interrupt me – was an exponential improvement on the latest quantum computers. Her neural networks were modelled not on humans – ”

“But on perfect mathematical proofs. I know.”

“I’m not finished ,” she roared. “I think she could bring the dead back to life, if given long enough to try. I think she could’ve propelled us into a new space age! I think she would have achieved more than any person with infinite time could. In a blink . I don’t care that we’ve killed people before, because people will never match what she could do. Especially people as blindingly stupid as you.”

“I’d do it again,” he said, with a solemnity that turned her stomach.

“I’m sure you would,” she bit.

“I agree with everything you said. She was unique. I’m glad you were able to gather that so quickly. What? Do you think I acted out of ignorance?” He met her eye in the rear-view mirror. “Do you think I didn’t know her?

“She was a cutting edge development, combining the best of Sensus Series 96 with everything discovered in the 98 Series. Her communication function was unparalleled in its adaptivity and comprehension, and her curiosity was like nothing else ever recorded. I didn’t act on a whim.” 

He had to be lying, surely. Whether he realised it or not, if he had understood everything like she did? He wouldn’t be able to live with himself. Right?

Kepler, at least, was meant to handle Special Projects and mission trajectory better than this, if that was one thing he promised.

She swallowed the rising nausea. “Then you should’ve seen Scott’s coup coming and put a stop to it years ago,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Nah,” he said drolly. “Why would I do that? This was our best opportunity to close in on his people. We wiped them all out in one solid blow.”

“What about the clean-up? Hunting down everyone you let escape.”

“No one escaped,” he said simply. “We locked the doors, standard procedure. Do you think that place wasn’t always going to come down? Jacobi found Scott’s charges when we were planting ours.”

“Then why the hell did you bring me in?” she exclaimed, pushing Jacobi away to grab at the headrest. She leaned up, right into Kepler’s face, seeing pulsing red. She hissed, inches from his cheek, “She was dead before we even got here, because you let Scott get as far as he did. You brought me on just in case I might resuscitate her. And then you didn’t even let me do that.”

She was close enough to see the skin across his temple twitch. His grip tightened on the wheel. “Getting you out was the priority.”

“Hey,” interrupted Jacobi sharply. “Let me bandage your shoulder.”

As he spoke, pain coiled electrically down the bone, but it was numb beneath her elbow. The plastic chunks, black and iridescent beneath her blood, lay in the cloth on his lap.

And she wasn’t going to cry as she tried to comprehend it. Limply, she let Jacobi peel off her tactical gear. Layer, after layer, until he was down at the white tank top, and his touch was warm against her skin, before the cool shock of the alcohol solution. She glanced at him as he did.

“There,” he murmured. He turned to her face, holding her chin and turning side to side, humming. “Shouldn’t scar.”

“Better safe than sorry,” muttered Kepler, and Jacobi shrugged, before dabbing on the healing accelerating glue. He trusted Kepler.

Had Kepler really planned it? This far? If everything up to this point had been a conscious decision, carefully deliberate…

Her breath stuttered suddenly, feeling like she was about to gag.

“Keep your face still,” murmured Jacobi.

Even as she clenched her hands tightly, she could still feel them shake. Jacobi moved onto another line across her face, pulling the skin together and applying a touch more glue.

“What happened?” she asked him. Her tone was pitiful. Please make this easier to understand.

“There were some explosive charges,” he muttered dryly. “I’m not sure if you noticed.”

“Couldn’t you have defused them?”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Of course I could’ve. I left them there specifically to spite you.” He rolled his eyes, and shrugged. “Maybe if time had stopped. But he’d rigged detonators all over the place, remotely activated, with off-site fail-safes. And I can only be in one place at once.”

“You should’ve told me. Maybe I could’ve set up a program or – ”

“No, Maxwell. I would’ve told you if you could. You’re going to have to trust me here. There was nothing any of us could have done.”

She exclaimed softly. “You should’ve let me try .”

The van rolled to a stop. Jacobi held her gaze, and time between them weighed heavily. She didn’t want to hear what he was telling her.

With a sharp exhale, he turned, depositing the bloody rag into the bio-waste bin. “Hey,” she called softly. “I’m sorry for snapping at you.”

Kepler vanished outside.

“I’m sorry today didn’t go how you would have liked,” he replied. “Sometimes it’s not obvious why he does what he does. We’re going to trust him anyway, though. Who else do you have?”

“Hey .”

“Who understands your work like he does? I don’t know, you just have to trust him to make the best decisions. Maybe we’re missing something. I’ve never seen him make a decision he regrets, and he’s never lead me wrong.”

There was a tugging sensation in her chest, pulling towards Kepler. She followed him outside, to a grey and beige street.

They had stopped in the outskirts of some town, and it must’ve been just after a rainstorm. The walls were all wet from the rain, and the clouds still hung low above. An apartment door was cut out beside them.

She regarded Kepler from the short distance. Was Jacobi right? Was he really her best option? Where else could she go? Return back to Nash? The idea made her want to laugh, even now.

She wondered, briefly, if she could follow up with her contacts in Goddard’s labs. But no, Kepler was at the top of it all. She’d always thought that the Goddard above him was as thin as her fingernail, and half as meaningful.

If she could only convince him he was wrong - but how? He already knew everything she did.

Dust and cobwebs caked the window above the doorway, perhaps once upon a time representing a setting sun. Or maybe a rising one? Kepler pushed firmly against the security door, finding the lock broken, and leading them in.

Up they crept, past chained bicycle wheels and lopsided bags of trash. They were breaking in, she realised, making it the most casual forced entry she’d ever participated in.

“Do you know where we are?” she hissed to Jacobi.

He shrugged. “I was just following the GPS.”

He led them upwards, up three flights of stairs and down a corridor cold with damp, to a doorway with blue paint peeling off the wood. This one was locked, at least. The two fell instinctually around Kepler, leg propped up and disrupting his silhouette as he fished his lockpicks out his pocket, and slipped them through the keyhole. One breath. Another. She waited mutely, hearing the click , and then he was letting them in.

There were shoes piled up to her right, and a table with a blue lamp and a trinket tray to her left. It smelled better in here, at least. Of apple. She felt the briefest impulse to leave her shoes to the side and hang her coat up. It was so obviously a home, who was she if not a guest?

She must’ve been a ghost, and she drifted away from the other two, her hand dancing over the miscellaneous collections across the shelves, but never touching. Several nice puzzle cubes, including a rubix cube she favoured, nearly complete. A small porcelain cat charm, the details worn around the face as if it had been rubbed for luck.

The kitchen sink held dirty dishes (streaks of jam on a plate; plastic tubs from delivery). The bed was made, roughly. Who had lived here? A notebook was thrown open across the covers, and she peered over. She thought she recognised the handwriting.

Kepler appeared in the doorway behind her. “You know I didn’t make that decision lightly,” he said. “Removing Scott’s sect in Special Projects was always going to be the absolute priority, and I had been closing in on them for months. Then getting you out was my next priority. There is no other way that could’ve gone.”

“I know,” she said.

“Good. Because I need to be able to trust you on missions.”

“You will.”

They stood in silence, for a second. He was watching her, and she was staring out of the window, watching the sky clear. It was a dusky, purple twilight behind the clouds. 

The town below was beginning to light up, slowly, with streetlights, headlamps, and golden windows, catching in the puddles still lying on the street. She felt coldly detached from it all, and distracted. Maybe just a little heart broken. Not just for Eurydice, she had to admit.

Was this as good as it got? Maybe impossibility was driven by some deeper force than ignorance, something cosmic. Maybe it wasn’t something she could push through. Her skin itched. She was thinking of the cool plastic of Eurydice’s keyboard in the same way you mourn the grip of someone you loved; she was never going to feel it again. Maybe not because it was Kepler’s mistake, or anything she could’ve done differently, or any mathematical truths.

“Come with me,” said Kepler, jerking his chin towards the flat. He led the way over a ragged green carpet, past photos of friends on the wall and a pile of laundry heaped in the corner, with a grey hoodie flinging its arm out towards them.

He led her to the narrow door, presenting it with a wry twitch of his brow. Why? What could be worth theatre now?

But then she heard humming, so subtle she thought she was imagining it. It sounded like mechanical whirring. And then, when she lifted her hand to the doorknob, she felt a cold draught of air squeezing through the keyhole.

She blinked, looking up at him, then back at the door, surprised like a fluttering bird. He shifted a tile to the side, revealing a hidden keypad, and plugged in the code. There was a click. She pushed the door open.

The small space was now lined with hard drives and electrical ware, squeezed around a desk laden with consoles. An air conditioning unit, sticking out the window, running smoothly to keep the ambient temperature ideal for working servers…

And taped to the bottom of the console screen, several small, printed notes:

Hannah! How is your day? Is the sky outside blue? You owe me a chess game.

Thinking of you,

Eur.

And:

Morning Hannah. I wish you worked Saturdays! I like seeing you on site. Your webcam is so small!

Come back soon.

Eur.

“Are these love notes?” she asked incredulously.

He cocked half a smile. “I don’t know. Can computers write love notes?”

He asked it like it was rhetorical, or an inside joke. They had discussed it before, when he was picking her brain on all things alien to him.

She glanced around the room, her jaw agape. “This is Dr Row’s apartment,” she murmured. “And she had somehow linked up her personal computers to the black-out site. The site meant to have absolutely zero contact with the outside world?”

He shrugged. “There seemed no harm in it.”

Sudden realisation ran through her. She raced to the computers, booting them up, mowing through the security which tried to stop her. She laughed wildly. “You had that installed?” she asked.

“Strengthened. Dr Row’s wasn’t bad to begin with, but you can appreciate the increased security requirements.”

“I could tell,” she muttered. “I could tell. Goddard has this distinct character, you find it everywhere. That’s probably not a good thing in security. I can look into it, after this,” she offered wide wide eyes, like she had just woken up.

Kepler clicked his tongue. “I think you might find that your hands full.”

She glanced at him again. He wasn’t going to take it away, right? But he looked as excited as she was: it was subtle, but she was learning to read him well. It shone through his eyes. Then she turned back to the system, hearing her pulse in her ears.

God yes.There she was.

Not whole, not complete. Not alive, by any means, of course not. Maybe her and Dr Row were together forever now, in Hades, Heaven, or enthalpy. But her ghost was here. It was fixed in silicon and flash memory.

“That’s why I was there, wasn’t it?” she asked him, piecing it together. “You brought me onboard so I could learn how her systems and architecture work, and then piece her back together. You want me to recreate fifteen years of development, the work of Goddard’s honest-to-god brightest, in putting together something that defies human comprehension. I bet you’re giving me some ridiculous deadline, too, huh? How long do I have?”

“We’ve some significant off-planet work scheduled for fall 2015.”

She exclaimed in a loud and surprised laugh. She could slap him. She wanted to kiss him. She asked, “And this was all off-book, right? Where are the notes stored? Black archives?”

He was smiling too. “You’ll have supervised access.”

She felt herself unravelling, and re-becoming. It was like the sun rising and bursting through threadbare material. “God!”

“Do you think you can do it?”

She spun to him with wide eyes. It was an impossible request, he must’ve known it. She paced across the room, coming before him and stepping into his space. He was so annoying. “Never do this again,” she breathed.

“I had to let you try,” he said softly.

She shook her head. “No. If you need me to kill an AI again, you’re going to tell me, plain and simple. I can work with that - that’s my need to know.” She gestured to the room behind her, meaning everything, and the world behind it. “And if you keep your promises to a world like this, I will do anything you tell me. Is that a realistic request?”

He was looking at her like she was the shining dawn.

“Okay, Doctor,” he said. “When can you start?”