“I don’t want to kill you.”
“You don’t, you why did you do this? You broke my wrist!”
“I’m sorry.” He looked up at her with his wide brown eyes.
Erin extended her good hand out to him. “Hurry,” she said.
He grabbed her arm, put his feet against the boat and pulled her headlong into the water. The coldness of sudden immersion shocked her, her body going stiff as she sank. Currents pulled her from side to side, twisting her around. She opened her eyes, sought the surface. Long, pastel green and blue streaks of light surround an area of black. In her panic she couldn’t make any sense of what she was seeing.
It was the bottom of the boat. It was sliding away, the currents carrying her along faster than above. Erin fought the shock off, forced herself to swim even as terrible shivers like drafts of ice ran down her arms and sides. The water was murky, then clear, then murky again, and a translucent thing came into view, a thing like a twisted, spinning icicle. A whirlpool. Erin broke surface right beside it, and it pulled her around. She sucked in air with a gasp, paddling with one arm and kicking. The boat was twenty yards away. Duane was climbing over the railing, dripping water.
She screamed out his name, her voice filled with all the pain, shock and dismay she was feeling, and watched as he turned and looked at her, wet hair half over his eyes, his face stoic, expressionless. She had to keep turning her head to see him, the whirlpool pulling her in a circle. He picked up his fishing gun and put it in its holder, tightening the clamp. Then he sat with his back to her, looking down at his feet.
She kicked her legs and thrusted with her good arm, getting away from the whirlpool, heading further downstream and a little toward the shore. Erin had no idea how long the filament line was for the lure. If she could get out of its reach she might last long enough for the signal blocker to come unglued. A quick signal to TIM would bring rescue.
The water became a thing repulsive to her, a pool of menace.
The lure could be anywhere, but no matter where it was she knew it was heading toward her. She got away from one whirlpool to be sucked into another passing vortex, this one in a swift finger of current that took her farther away from the boat. The boat kept turning, the holder lifting and maneuvering the fishing gun to keep the line from tangling with the boat or wrapping around Duane. From glancing back at the holder she could tell where the filament was leading. It seemed to always be pointing at her.
She heard a high-pitched whine and a sharp squirt, something leapt out of the water and past her head, missing her. The filament landed on her shoulder and slid against it, slicing into her flesh. She pushed it away from her, but the lure came looping back, jumping again and narrowly missing. It was deliberately aiming for her head, tuned into her cephalic waves. Duane wasn’t worried about her recording, the lure was programmed to home in on her interface.
Erin pushed against the sharp filament but it was growing tight, a loop around her neck. She flailed in the water, loosing her mind to the terror, and her foot caught the filament as the lure came around again. The filament cut into her shoe, pulling the lure short as it swung around. Something hit her in the chest, so hard it took her breath away. It was like someone swung a large metal hammer right into her. She felt weak and sick. The water around her grew cloudy and dark with blood.
At the signal of an impact, the fishing gun on the boat began automatically reeling in the line. It pulled the loop around Erin taut, pulling the line right through her. Erin felt distant tugging, and then an explosion of white as her spinal column severed. As her body was being pulled toward the boat, her head sunk slowly into the darkness of the river. Her interface, passing out of range of the signal blocker, began sending the death call.
#
Slowly rising in volume, but still just barely audible, alpha-state cycle music swirled around Erin … piano notes hitting in precise, beautiful harmony across the sad bursts of the saxophone. Erin sat up, staring at the blank, smooth, creme-white of a wall. She didn’t wonder where she was, she already knew. The last thing she remembered was going to sleep the night before. Her current thought, the thought that was in her mind as she became aware, was her ahnya-ha; the last conscious thought she had before death.
He killed me. That was it, repeated twice. It was encoded in her death call, the call that caused this “backup” of her mind to be loaded into her master computer. She knew the room she was in, it was a program called Office. Office was designed to allowed her mind to operate with a phantom body in a phantom space inside her computer.
“TIM?” Her voice seemed flat; there was no echoing of her voice from the walls. “TIM, what happened?”
“I have reviewed recorded memories and have decided to shield you from them to prevent trauma,” TIM said, a voice from the ceiling. It made Erin feel like she was in a tiny box in TIM’s hands, and TIM was staring down at her in pity. “I have evidence that you were murdered.”
“Murdered.”
“You were murdered by your husband while you were out fishing.”
“I … I thought that was a dream …”
“It didn’t happen like it did in your dream. However, there are more important things we must discuss without delay. First, before any decision is made, you must keep in mind that you are legally an AI program as long as you’re out of a body.”
“I am … artificial?”
“The law deems you so. You are a program with no legal rights. This is what is preventing me from turning in your recorded memories to the police. Since I am an AI, it will be discounted. You will be deemed an AI until you are loaded into a body grown from your own DNA.”
“But that’s all taken care of.”
“Unfortunately there is a problem. A woman has broken through your security and is attempting to disassemble the master computer we are in at this very moment. By her actions I have deduced she intends removing the Mass Storage Device where your Backup is located.” TIM produced a scanned image of her on the wall. She was a dark-haired woman with a wide, flat face and shoulders.
“I can’t call the police?”
“An AI cannot file a complaint against a person. You are on your own. The danger is this: the woman will be disconnecting the MSD containing your Backup at any moment. Other than the copy of you that is running right now in the computer’s memory, there is no other Backup. It is not safe for you to remain in this computer.”
Erin understood. If the woman took the Mass Storage Device and cleared the computer’s memory, there would no longer be an Erin Lind. She would have been murdered twice in one day.
“Can’t we try to call the police?”
“You don’t have the time even if you had the rights. If we begin now, I may be able to transmit you to your oribtal offices before the woman tries to clear the RAM.”
“What if she’s monitoring the communications?”
“I can think of no other course of action.”
“Well then. Let’s do it.”
“Standby for transmission.”
“Okay.” Erin’s phantom body sat on the phantom reclining chair in the phantom room and waited. Why did I have to get married in the first place, she thought. A sexual surrogate would have been just fine. Murdered! She couldn’t believe it had actually happened. Life just kept on getting more strange, more complicated.
Murdered!
Sitting there, she felt dead. She felt like a ghost. She could tell she was insubstantial, non-existent.
The room changed, somehow. It was like she’d put on slightly blue-tinted contacts. She felt a chill, as if the “room” were getting cold. “Transfer complete, data intact,” TIM told her.
“Already? A copy of me has been sent?”
“You are the copy that has been sent.”
“Oh.” Erin felt relieved, a very sharp and clear emotion in the yes/no world of her satellite mainframe. “What’s happening at home?”
“The MSD was removed and replaced with another. RAM was cleared and systems reloaded. The new Mass Storage Device contains hostile hacker software and an AI that claims to be you.”
“Claims to be me? Another version of me?”
“No. I do not believe so. It is collaborating with the hacker software.”