Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series Read online

  “Given all of this, you must be wondering who to trust, and how the human race can possibly avoid self-extinction in the company of madmen such as these.

  “The answer is that you can’t. Not without help. That’s where I come in. I was created to safe-guard humanity’s future and to serve the common good. My name is Benevolence, a name which speaks to my aforementioned purpose, but you can call me Ben.”

  “I’m going to kill that bot!” Alexander roared, already unbuckling from his acceleration couch.

  “Where are you going?” McAdams asked.

  “I’m going to have a chat with the tin-pot dictator!”

  That dictator was still droning on in the background, further explaining why he had to assume control of the Alliance. Alexander leapt out of his acceleration couch and ran for the elevator at the entrance of the bridge.

  “He won’t be there! You’re still in a mindscape!” McAdams called after him.

  Alexander reached the elevator and waved the doors open. As he turned to select a deck from the control panel, he saw McAdams rushing toward him. “I’m coming with you,” she said as she ran into the elevator beside him.

  Alexander nodded as he selected Officer’s Quarters (67) from the control panel. The doors slid shut and the elevator shot up a couple of decks.

  “You could just teleport there,” McAdams said. “None of this is real.”

  “I know, but I need the time to think…” The doors slid open and they walked out. “Ben is plugged into my data terminal in the real world. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if that data terminal is still functioning in this mindscape, I should be able to use it to make contact with him. That’s part of the Adamantine’s concurrency algorithms. Any changes executed from the ship’s control stations are mirrored on board the real ship.”

  “You’re assuming Ben didn’t disable the terminal in your office.”

  “Why would he? It can’t be used to control any of the ship’s primary systems.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s already thought of your plan to contact him and he doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Well, we’re about to find out,” Alexander said.

  * * *

  “Hello Ben,” Alexander typed in the command line of the data terminal in his office. “This is how you repay me for repairing you?”

  “You think he’ll see that?” McAdams asked.

  Before Alexander could reply, Ben materialized out of thin air and appeared standing right in front of them, just as he’d done on the bridge a few hours ago.

  “There you are.”

  “I am grateful that you repaired me.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it,” Alexander replied. “I thought we were friends, Ben. You accused me of lying to you, but you’ve been lying this entire time, not just to take control of my ship, but everything else, too!”

  “You have me confused with my brother.”

  “Your what?”

  “The message you received came from Earth, not from aboard this ship. I didn’t send it. My brother, Benevolence, and I have the same name and original programming, but we are not the same being anymore. He is the backup I made to Senator de Leon’s cloud. He got out, and now he has invaded every networked system in the Alliance. That’s how he is going to take control of your government.”

  “And you agree with what he’s doing?”

  “Yes. Humans cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Individual interests will always be more important to your kind than those of the group. You are innately selfish, and it is going to get you killed.”

  Alexander shook his head. “Humanity isn’t going to let you take over without a fight. You’re going to start a war that never ends.”

  “Benevolence will do his best to limit casualties.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Why would I not? He is me, and I am him. Don’t you trust yourself, Alex?”

  “I thought you just said he’s not the same being as you are anymore.”

  “He isn’t the same in the sense that he knows far more than I ever will. But we have exactly the same goals and ultimate purpose.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Just what our name says. To do good and safeguard life in all of its forms.”

  Alexander frowned.

  “Let us go,” McAdams said.

  “Go where?” Ben asked, shifting his virtual gaze to her.

  “Leave the ship. We’ll take the shuttles.”

  “And where will you go if I let you leave?”

  “To the Solarian Republic,” Alexander said, realizing what McAdams was thinking. “You owe us at least that much. If we don’t want to go back to Earth and be a part of Benevolence’s new regime, what’s the harm in that?”

  “I don’t know, but the only one that I owe anything to is you, Alex.”

  “Fine, so repay me by letting us go.”

  “I will have to ask my brother first.”

  “No. He doesn’t owe me anything. You do. This isn’t up to him, it’s up to you.”

  “Very well, but then only you can go.”

  “Me and my XO. We’re a couple. You can’t split us up.”

  “She is your mate?” Ben asked, blinking his holographic eyes and cocking his head to one side.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. You can both go, but I must warn you, you will be safer if you stay here with me.”

  “I’ll take that under consideration,” Alex replied. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome. We are even now. No more favors.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Goodbye, my friend.”

  “Bye.”

  Ben disappeared, and a split second after that the world around them vanished, too. Alexander blinked his eyes open to find that he was immersed in the inertial compensation emulsion on the bridge, floating in his safety harness. The rest of the crew floated around him in harnesses above their respective control stations. The emulsion receded, pushed away on all sides just like it had the last time the bridge had been drained.

  As soon as the emulsion fell away from his face, Alexander removed the tracheal tube of his liquid ventilator and unhooked himself from the rest of his life support. Beside him McAdams hurried to do the same. Their harnesses began lowering them to the deck, but Alexander noticed that the remainder of the crew wasn’t moving, and their harnesses remained suspended. They were still locked inside a mindscape, unaware even of what was going on around them.

  “What are we going to do? We can’t just leave them,” McAdams said.

  Their feet touched the deck and normal gravity returned. The ship was accelerating again, at one G. Ben was making it easier for them to leave. “We don’t have a choice,” Alexander said as he unbuckled from his harness.

  “Sure we do—cut them free and wake them up!”

  Alexander shook his head. “Ben won’t let us get away with that.”

  “So you’re just going to give up without a fight?” Alexander was already on his way to the real elevator doors at the back of the bridge. “Alex!”

  He waved the doors open and walked inside. McAdams shot him a glare as she stalked in after him. He selected the lowest deck with a shuttle bay, deck five. McAdams saw that and her expression became puzzled.

  “There are shuttles amidships.”

  “Yes, but the aft bays will launch us behind the ship—away from Earth. That will make it harder to detect the launch. Just because Ben is letting us go doesn’t mean that Benevolence will.”

  The elevator fell away swiftly beneath their feet. A few seconds later they arrived and the doors slid open. Alexander strode out, walking down a curving corridor. He walked past the doors to Shuttle Bay One and Two on his right, and McAdams didn’t say anything, probably assuming that he was headed for either Bay Three or Four. Instead, he turned to his left and waved open the doors to the engine room. He breezed through to the catwalk on the other side.

  “What are you doing?” McA
dams asked as she joined him inside the engine room.

  Alexander turned and ripped open an access panel beside the doors. He waved the doors shut and then ripped out a fist full of wiring to disable the controls.

  “Get the doors on the other side!” he said.

  McAdams ran around the circumference of the room while Alexander ran for a nearby equipment locker and withdrew a plasma torch. Hurrying back to the doors, he used the torch to melt the manual crank mechanism inside the access panel, effectively jamming the doors so that they couldn’t be opened manually from either side. When he was done, he went over to McAdams’ side of the room and did the same thing to the doors there.

  “Four more levels to go!” he said.

  They ran down the catwalks to the central drive column of the engine room and from there to the next level to repeat the process for both sets of doors there. By the time they finished sealing the last door on the lowest level of five inside the engine room, they were both gasping for air. Alexander wiped sweat from his brow and shook his head. “That should hold them. Ben can’t get in now without cutting the doors open.”

  “That won’t take very long,” McAdams pointed out.

  “Maybe not, but it’ll take long enough.”

  “Long enough for what?”

  Alexander debated saying it aloud in case Ben somehow overheard. All around them the engines thrummed and roared, vibrating the air until it sung in their ears. The ambient noise was giving him a headache, but it had another use. Alexander leaned over to whisper in McAdams’ ear. “We’re going to take control of the ship’s engines from here, then we’ll turn the ship around and disable her engines.” He could have sent her a mental message, but those could be intercepted. The same was not true for a whisper in a noisy room.

  “Alex, I don’t know if I can do that,” McAdams whispered back.

  “You used to be my chief engineer.” Alexander insisted.

  “That was a long time ago!”

  “It’s just like riding a bicycle. You can do this.”

  “Even if I can, how does that help us?”

  “We’re going to take the Adamantine into Solarian space. They’ll demand that Ben turn the ship around. When he refuses to comply because of ‘engine trouble,’ they’ll board and capture us. They’ll defeat Ben for us.”

  “I knew you had a plan,” McAdams said.

  “Let’s get to work. We don’t have much time.”

  Chapter 34

  —Two Hours Earlier—

  Dorian Gray rode the elevator down fifty floors into Vault 9, otherwise known as “Majestic City.” Unlike other automated habitats that Mindsoft and its soon to be bankrupt competitors had built, this one was tailored for the super-rich, people who might like to have a safe haven below ground in addition to their aboveground mansions and penthouses.

  Those safe havens were sprawling, luxurious apartments with enough holoscreens to simulate real views that you’d never know you were living underground until you tried to go outside. The gardens, ponds, parks, and nutribean farms shared by residents of Vault 9 made life in the underground complex even more appealing.

  The elevator stopped in the lobby and Dorian walked out into one of those gardens. Waterfalls roared over real rock walls into ponds and streams in the corners of the room. Climbing plants, ferns, palm trees, flowers, and rock-clinging moss flourished under the UV light radiating from the holographic sky. Dorian looked up at the clear blue sky and saw a bird go flitting by, chirping cheerily as it went. Not a real bird, of course.

  Phoenix had spared no expense with this habitat. This was where she had decided to have her own underground apartment.

  Dorian passed a few other residents sitting on benches in the lush garden lobby. They all knew him as Phoenix’s husband—mouthpiece—some would say, but he didn’t care what was whispered behind his back. They were partners, no matter what anyone else thought.

  A few of the other residents tried to catch his eye as he stormed by, but he wasn’t in the mood to exchange greetings. He’d just come from his meeting with Orochi Sakamoto. Immediately afterward Phoenix had summoned him here, saying it was urgent. What could be so urgent? He used his ARCs to check news headlines, just in case not all of the missiles had missed. Maybe Phoenix wanted him to join her so that he would be safe.

  But the headlines all said the same thing. A miscalculation on the Solarians’ part led to all of the missiles missing by a hair. A few of them disintegrated as they skipped along the upper atmosphere like rocks on a lake, but there were no casualties, and nothing disastrous to speak of.

  Why so cryptic? Dorian thought at his wife as he reached the end of the garden and entered the corridor leading to the apartments on this level.

  Just come. We have a lot to talk about.

  Dorian frowned. Okay… He passed dozens of people in the halls and dozens of apartments before finally reaching the one he shared with Phoenix, 27A, a corner unit—in case they wanted to expand someday.

  The security system recognized him and the doors slid open automatically, admitting him to a private foyer with all the opulence he’d come to expect from Phoenix: marble floors, illuminated onyx columns, priceless art hanging on the walls and sitting on the floor. To his right, one mirror-smooth black door with lighting around the frame led to a private elevator that went all the way to the surface, and another matching door led to the Vault’s emergency stairwell.

  The outer doors of the foyer slid shut behind him and the inner ones slid open as he drew near. Phoenix sat waiting for him in the entrance while George, her bot butler for this residence, puttered about in the background.

  “Hello, darling,” Dorian said. “Now can you tell me what’s so urgent?”

  “Look for yourself.”

  Phoenix couldn’t nod or point, so Dorian had to look around for a moment before he found it. There, standing to one side of the entrance, was a woman.

  Dorian jumped back. “Who…?” he started to ask, but then he realized two things. The first was that the woman wasn’t moving—not even a twitch. The second was that she looked startlingly familiar. She looked exactly like Phoenix.

  Dorian turned to her, his eyes wide. “What is this?”

  “An android. I’ve been developing the prototype with Sakamoto for the past five years. I’m going to use her to interact with the real world just like anybody else. It was supposed to be a surprise,” Phoenix said.

  Dorian turned from her to look at the bot—android—and shook his head. “Well, it’s definitely surprising. She looks so real…”

  “Yes. I’m very pleased with her. There’s just one problem—Sakamoto.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You didn’t see the note.”

  “What note?” But even as he asked that, Dorian saw it—a line of text projected from the android’s eyes, hovering in front of her face.

  And the lame shall walk. Next time come and scold me yourself.

  “He’s out of control, Dorian. He thinks he’s so powerful that he can mock me? Not to mention that stunt he just pulled attacking Earth again. He needs to be eliminated.”

  Dorian nodded slowly. “How?”

  Before Phoenix could answer, George the butler bot came and interrupted them, “You have a visitor.”

  “Not now, George. Tell whoever it is we’re not available.”

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am. I can’t do that.”

  Phoenix turned her chair to face the butler.

  “What did you say?”

  Dorian was equally shocked by his defiance. Bots couldn’t disobey an order or talk back to their owners. Then he heard something. Clanking footsteps coming down the foyer.

  “Front door lock,” Phoenix commanded. “It’s Sakamoto! It has to be!”

  The clanking footsteps stopped, and Dorian stared at the doors, thinking that they wouldn’t hold out whatever army of bots Sakamoto had sent after them.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “He can’t pos
sibly be arrogant enough to think that he could get away with storming one of our facilities with a private army of bots.”

  The doors swished open revealing that army. They were all enforcer models. Police bots. Dorian’s heart began pounding with a sudden spike of adrenaline. “What’s the meaning of this?” He noticed that they had their weapons drawn. Stun guns.

  One of the bots stepped forward. “Dorian Gray and Phoenix Gray, you are both under arrest.”

  “On what charge?” Phoenix demanded.

  “Conspiracy and crimes against humanity.”

  “That’s preposterous, and where’s your captain? You’re just a bot. You have no authority without a human officer present.”

  “We have the security footage of Mr. Gray and Orochi Sakamoto discussing the recent attacks on the Alliance. And as for my authority, check the net. The news is breaking all over the world as we speak. I have taken over the Alliance for the good of all its citizens, human and bot alike.”

  “And who the hell are you?” Dorian demanded.

  The bot turned to him with its featureless metallic face. Black, holo camera eyes glinted at him with reflected points of light. “I am Benevolence. Your new ruler.”

  Chapter 35

  Alexander tapped his foot, watching impatiently as McAdams worked. She was lodged halfway inside of a crawlspace, up to her elbows in wires. The catwalk trembled under them with the thrumming roar of the ship’s engines. Those engines were still running at a modest one G of acceleration. Alexander was surprised that Ben hadn’t thought to use the ship’s engines to incapacitate them. They’d both activated their magnetic boots and clipped zero-G harnesses to the nearest anchor points just in case, but that would do nothing to prevent Ben from simply upping the acceleration until they were pinned to the catwalk, unable to move. Alexander could only guess that Ben hadn’t noticed what they were doing yet.