ROSLYN SECURITY SUITE: 6 hours 30 minutes after the Global Grid Failure

  "What do you think, Dimitri?" Henry glanced at the security monitor showing the three young people sitting at the table in the break room. "He's not only the top in his class at his university. He'd be at the top of his entire field if things went on as they should."

  Dimitri leaned back in his chair, arms crossed as he studied the screen. "He was doing brilliantly until this last semester, and his grades started slipping." He gestured toward the monitor showing Gavin. "Mr. Daniels has little to no discipline, definite authority issues. And you know as well as I do, there won't be any normalcy from this point on."

  Henry shook his head. "We've had this argument a hundred times already. Our superiors agree; we don't want a purely military mind spearheading this program. We need a free thinker from the civilian side." He turned away from the monitor to face Dimitri. "And yes, we need him to stay on mission, but we also need him to be adaptable. He has to find his way around problems we can't even perceive yet. At the same time, we can't rely on a purely academic mind either. We need both sides of the coin, my friend."

  Dimitri was quiet for a moment, his eyes still on the screen. "I'll give you this," he finally replied. "His aptitude scores are off the charts. But is that enough to overlook his shortcomings?"

  "There are fifteen top candidates we're tracking," Henry countered, his voice taking on more energy as he pointed at the monitor. "And I don't think it's any coincidence that our top three are all sitting at the same table right now: Mr. Daniels, Ms. Ramirez, and Mr. Patel. It's as if they know they're different from the others."

  He paused, watching the three of them on the screen. "Given what we know, Gavin is going to be on board with the mission. Ramirez and Patel are excellent candidates too. I think they'll accept the offer as well."

  Dimitri frowned. "Do you seriously think all three of them are going to accept the conditions? Are they going to be willing to make that sacrifice?" He pointed at the girl on the screen. "I have an MP right now with a broken nose that the little girl in there gave him when he was trying to put her in the car. If she was willing to go that far over being taken from her family, what makes you think she'd be willing to do this?"

  Henry turned back to the monitor, studying the girl for a moment. "Perspective, Dimitri. She was trying to look after her sister. And I think that proves how far she's willing to go to protect her family."

  Dimitri shook his head but didn't respond immediately. Henry could tell he wasn't convinced.

  "I know you have reservations about Gavin because of who his father is," Henry continued, "but that's not why we want him in this program."

  "Why are we even having this argument?" Dimitri's tone shifted, becoming more resigned. "The only reason we brought all fifteen candidates in instead of only the three was for redundancy and bureaucracy. This decision has already been made."

  Henry opened his mouth to respond, but Dimitri had already turned his attention back to the monitors. He sighed, and stared at the screen showing the break room. His eyes narrowed as he watched Gavin pull apart a ballpoint pen and do something with its cover.

  "What the hell is he doing now?"

  They both leaned closer to the monitor as Gavin walked up to the other vending machine and began to smash the pen into the keyhole on the front of it. He twisted it back and forth until something clicked and pulled the door open. He looked up toward the hidden camera, smiled, and said, "Hey, jarheads, you don't mind if I pass out some of these drinks, do ya? Also, your vending machines are out of crayons."

  Dimitri sighed and wiped a hand across his face. "This is going to be a long day."

  Henry let out a quiet laugh despite himself. "I don't think we have any easy days ahead of us at this point, Dimitri."

  ROSLYN BREAK ROOM -- 6 hours 35 minutes after the Global Grid failure.

  I reached across the table and gave the girl a can. "Sorry, it's a little bit warm."

  The guy across from me grabbed one of the other cans eagerly. "I don't care if it's warm; it's caffeine."

  "Gavin Daniels, by the way," I reached over to shake his hand.

  "Timothy Patel," he said, shaking back firmly.

  "Tanya Ramirez," she said, popping open her can. "And thanks, I could use a fix too."

  I leaned back in my chair, looking at both of them. "Sorry, guys, for my little outburst earlier. I needed to get a feel for the situation. Sometimes, making a scene is the best way to get an honest reaction. So far as to say, I'm pretty sure at this point that this isn't a typical internship."

  Tim raised an eyebrow at that but didn't interrupt.

  "Also, I think you both can relax. I'm fairly positive this isn't some kind of test, either."

  "Gavin, how can you be so sure?" Tanya asked, setting her can down.

  "Gav, please." I gestured around the room. "And I don't think this is a test of any kind, given what's going on outside. Even if the power's out in the city, these places have generators. So why were the X-ray machines down?" I took a sip from my own can. "My dad told me about the kind of research they do here. He damn near pushed me into this internship. It was all top secret, hush-hush bullshit. No way in hell they purposely turn off X-ray machines to probe out some potential interns. Those things were fried like our phones."

  The weight of that hung in the air for a moment.

  "My field of study is advanced engineering," I continued. "I bet the two of you have pretty interesting backgrounds as well."

  Tanya smiled, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. "I'm a botanist, specializing in plant biochemistry. I finished my PhD last year. It's still weird saying that out loud."

  We both looked at Tim expectantly. He hesitated, glancing between us and sighed.

  "All right, fine. Computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning. I earned my PhD at IIIT Hyderabad. I'm here on an exchange program."

  I couldn't help but grin at that. "So an engineer, a biochemist, and an AI specialist walk into a bar..."

  Tim's expression remained serious. "I don't think this is funny, Gav."

  "Oh, I don't think it's funny either." My grin faded. "I just realized I'm the only one sitting at this table who hasn't gotten a PhD yet." I looked between them. "What do the three of us have in common? Or what makes us special? What would have us all sitting in the same room at this exact moment?"

  "Gav, what makes you think we're the special ones at all?" Tanya asked, her voice dropping lower.

  "That's easy." I nodded toward different corners of the room without being too obvious. "There are two other hidden cameras in this room right now, and they've aimed both of them at this table. They're not even watching the others."

  Tanya's eyes widened as she fought the urge to look around. Tim chuckled under his breath, though there wasn't much humor in it.

  "Well, that's great, Gav. They're probably looking at us because of you."

  "I guess that's a possibility," I shrugged. "But something tells me we're about to find out."

  As if on cue, the door swung open again. The same two Marines from earlier stepped inside and approached our table directly, ignoring everyone else in the room.

  "The Colonel has asked us to retrieve the three of you."

  Tim glared at me, his eyes sharp as knives.

  "Relax, Tim. I don't think we're in trouble. I think we're about to get some answers."

  The three of us were escorted down a long hallway to an elevator. Tim stopped dead when he saw it, his face going pale.

  "I was trapped in the last elevator I got into for hours," he said, taking a step back.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. "Tim, I don't think you need to worry about this one."

  "That's correct, sir," one of the Marines said. "This elevator is mechanically powered and designed to withstand an EMP burst or nuclear attack on the city. Please step inside."

  Tim stared at the open doors for a long moment, his jaw tight. Finally, he took a deep breath and stepped inside, though I noticed he kept one hand pressed flat against the wall like he was bracing himself. The Marine pulled a lever from outside, and the doors slid shut, leaving the three of us alone in the car as it crept downward. The only sound was the grinding of gears and cable as we dropped deeper and deeper into whatever was beneath the facility.

  Tim's knuckles were white where he gripped the railing.

  At last, the car jerked to a stop. Another Marine pulled the lever outside, sliding the doors open, and Tim practically bolted out into the corridor.

  "This way, please," the Marine said, leading us down a long concrete passage lit by harsh fluorescent fixtures.

  We were brought into what looked like a briefing room. There were folding metal chairs arranged in three rows, and lights humming overhead.

  We didn't have to wait long. The man in the white lab coat entered first, followed by a military officer. The Marine who'd escorted us snapped to attention.

  "That will be all, Sergeant."

  "What? No salute?" The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

  The officer's eyes found mine. He didn't look annoyed; he looked tired. "Mr. Daniels, My Marines don't salute indoors." He set down two chairs in front of us with deliberate care, like he was buying himself a moment.

  The man in the lab coat extended his hand. "I'm Professor Henry Giles. This astute gentleman is Colonel Dimitri Antonov."

  I shook his hand. It was warm and damp.

  "First off," Henry paused, glancing at each of us. "Let me assure all three of you that your families are safe. Including your sister, Tanya."

  Tanya's breath caught; I heard it from two chairs over.

  "We're about to present you with an extraordinary proposal." Henry's voice was steady, but his hands weren't. He laced his fingers together. "If you accept, your families will be brought here. You'll have time with them before they're moved to a secure facility."

  Secure facility. Like that was supposed to be comforting.

  Tim leaned forward, his chair creaking. "Professor, what the hell's going on?" His hand swept through the air. "My family's in India right now."

  "As a precaution, your family's already on its way."

  Tim went still. Completely still.

  Henry turned to me. "Gavin, your mother's en route as well. However, your father's position in the military will delay his arrival. He's currently attending to the situation at the Pentagon."

  Tanya's voice cracked when she spoke. "Have we been nuked or something?" She was gripping the edge of her chair. "Are we under attack? What's going on? Why are we--"

  "It's not a nuke."

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Everyone looked at me. I hadn't meant to interrupt, but the pieces were clicking together, and I couldn't stop myself.

  "We're not being attacked by another country."

  Henry and Dimitri exchanged a glance. Something passed between them.

  Tim's attention snapped toward me like a rubber band. "Well, why don't you enlighten the rest of us?"

  I took a breath. "Solar flares. Some kind of solar radiation. Mass coronal ejection from the Sun."

  Henry's eyebrows lifted. "How could you have possibly--"

  "It makes sense once you think about it." I was talking faster now, the words tumbling out. "Our phones all died at the same time. After that, anything without shielding. The flare was strong enough to knock out the power grid, but not everything, not at first. Fuel-injected cars were dead on the roads, but the old carburetors were still running. And I bet those cars that brought us here were retrofitted. They probably weren't even running regular alternators."

  Tim made a sound, half laugh, half something else. "What the hell does that prove?"

  "The U.S. power grid's a shit show on a good day. It wouldn't take much to break it." I looked at the Colonel. "But you're bringing Tim's family from India. That's the opposite side of the planet. If an EMP had hit the U.S. from a nuke or whatever, you wouldn't be flying in families for a reunion. You'd be in a bunker somewhere making difficult decisions."

  The Colonel's lips twitched. Almost a smile. "Mr. Daniels, what makes you so sure we're not being attacked?"

  "Because you're using EMP-hardened aircraft to transport civilians during what could be a nuclear crisis. That means you're confident enough to fly that kind of asset near potentially hostile territory. You wouldn't do that unless..." I trailed off, the conclusion settling over me like cold water. "Unless the threat isn't terrestrial."

  The fluorescent lights hummed.

  Henry nodded slowly. "You're correct about some of your assumptions, Gavin. We are experiencing a solar phenomenon. Most of our satellites are gone. Infrastructure damage is... extensive. Global."

  I waited for the relief to come. I'd been right. I should feel something. Instead, I felt sick. "Are you shitting me? I'm actually right?"

  "Yes." Henry's voice was quiet. "But not completely. What's happening to our Sun is deliberate. The attacks are not of terrestrial origin."

  "Wait." My voice sounded far away. "You're saying aliens are attacking Earth? Some civilization out there is trying to destabilize our Sun?"

  Henry reached across the space between us and placed his hand on Tanya's.

  That's when I realized she was crying. Silently. Tears streamed down her face while the rest of her remained perfectly still.

  "I'm afraid this is no joke, Gavin." Henry's thumb moved gently across her knuckles. "It's happening everywhere. The research we're doing in this lab may be the only thing that saves us."

  "Let's not have any confusion." The Colonel's voice cut through like a knife. He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "You're not here to save the world."

  "Dimitri, please--"

  "No." The Colonel's jaw was set. "They need to understand what they're walking into."

  Henry drew a long breath. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. Softer.

  "What I'm about to tell you is hard to hear. But it's the truth." He paused, looking at each of us. "This world is already dead."

  Tanya made a sound--small and choked.

  "What's been done to our Sun is irreversible. The flares you've seen so far are only the beginning. It's going to get worse." He met our eyes.

  I couldn't breathe.

  The air was there. I could feel it in my lungs, but it wasn't enough.

  "Our way of life as you know it is over." Henry's words kept coming, steady and terrible. "Whether you accept our proposal or not. The internet isn't coming back. Cell phones are gone forever. Outside of this facility, the world is in a permanent blackout."

  "I'm not telling you this to be cruel, I need all of you to grasp the reality of what we're facing."

  Tim moved lurching forward in his chair, his voice rising. "Professor, I'm calling bullshit on that." Heat flooded his words. "It might take time, but we can rebuild after a solar flare. We can replace every fried circuit, every dead line. Technology will come back. Cell phones, computers, the internet... We'll get it all working again. That doesn't mean it's the end of the--"

  "Timothy." Henry's voice was gentle. Almost apologetic. "If this were an isolated incident, you'd be right."

  Tim stopped.

  "But it's not. The flares, the solar storms... they're not a one-time event. They're going to keep hitting us. Again and again. Indefinitely."

  He let that sink in. He watched us absorb it.

  "And the flares aren't even the greatest threat. Our Sun is being destabilized from the inside. We don't know how they're doing it, only that it's happening." His voice dropped. "When I tell you all life on Earth will be gone in a hundred years, I mean exactly that. Every. Living. Thing."

  My eyes found the floor. The scuffed linoleum tiles. Someone had spilled coffee here once. There was still a faint stain near my shoe.

  It’s funny what your brain focuses on when you find out the world's ending.

  I finally looked up at the Professor and Colonel. "Why the hell are we here?"

  The Professor studied me for a moment before answering. "Gavin, do you know what kind of research this facility does?"

  "My dad told me this place was pushing boundaries in cutting-edge computer and AI technology. That you'd need engineers to design and build the systems that support it." I shrugged, trying to ignore the weight settling in my stomach.

  The Colonel leaned forward, "That's about as much as your father would've been allowed to tell you, and more than either of these two knew." His eyes flicked to Tim and Tanya before he stood slowly, his shadow falling across all three of us. "Everything we've discussed in this room is classified. Top secret. And you will be held to those non-disclosure agreements you signed when applying for the program. Do you understand?"

  We all nodded silently because what else were we supposed to do?

  The Professor turned his gaze toward Tim. "Timothy, are you familiar with the concept of the singularity?"

  Tim blinked, seeming caught off guard by the sudden shift. "The singularity's the point where AI gets so advanced it starts redesigning itself faster than we can keep up with it. Eventually, we lose the ability to even understand what it's doing."

  "That's good, Timothy." Henry nodded, though there was something sad in his expression. "For years, I've asked that same question to different AI models during my research. Every single day. The idea was that if we took an artificial intelligence close to that threshold and taxed it with a difficult task, a task at the edge of its capabilities. Then asked it to answer that question. We might be able to trigger it."

  Tanya shifted in her seat. "Did it work?"

  "Yes." Henry's expression was unreadable. "One of our AIs has now reached this point. We knew eventually we would get here. The problem is, we can't interface with it properly anymore. It's evolved beyond our ability to communicate with it in any traditional sense."

  I sat forward in my chair, the metal legs scraping against the floor. "Wait, Professor, are you telling me that right now, in this facility, you have an AI that's reached the point of singularity?"

  "Yes, we do."

  I turned to look at Timothy, and he stared back at me with a pale face, slowly shaking his head in disbelief.

  For a long moment, none of us seemed to know what to say.

  Tanya's voice finally broke through the silence, small but steady. "I don't understand, Professor. How does that help us in the situation we're facing right now?"

  "To solve the problem of how to actually use the AI we've created, we plan to pair it with another technology." Henry shifted in his seat. "With the AI's prior assistance, we were able to make a breakthrough in something called WBE."

  Tanya went rigid in her chair, and I watched her eyes widen. "Are you telling me you've cracked whole brain emulation?"

  I turned to her, confused. "What the hell is whole brain emulation?"

  "Gav," she said, her eyes never leaving the Professor's face, "he's saying they can upload an entire human mind into a computer."

  The room seemed to spin.

  "Very good, Ms. Ramirez," the Professor said softly.

  Timothy leaned forward, "So you can take copies of what's going on in someone's brain and store it in some database somewhere." His voice was tight. "How does this help our current situation? How does this stop the Sun from destroying our world?"

  "I'm afraid, Timothy, as I stated earlier, there's no saving this world."

  The Colonel cleared his throat. "This brings us to the problem at hand, Massive think tanks of experts in every field are already being gathered from all over the world To help solve the immediate crisis."

  "I still don't understand," Tanya said, her voice cracking. "Why are we here?"

  Timothy's eyes locked on the Colonel and the Professor. I watched something terrible click into place behind his expression. "Because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle."

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "It's quantum physics, Gav..." He ran a hand across his face, pressing his fingers against his eyes. When he looked back at me, his voice sounded hollow. "I think I know why we're here. They wanna upload us into the system. But the act of scanning us to perform that upload will literally destroy what they're scanning." His laugh came out bitter. "They need this AI to help find a solution. But they have no way of communicating with it anymore. On top of that they no longer have access to any digital information to feed it even if they could. We have the knowledge and skills that they need, and we're expendable."

  "Mr. Patel, sit down for a second." The Colonel's voice was firm. I realized Tim had started to rise from his chair. "All of you, listen to me. It's not like that. The people being gathered into those think tanks will be tasked with devising as many solutions as possible for this crisis."

  He paused. "But the simple truth is, there isn't enough time for us to research and develop the technologies needed to save us. But, there's one way this might be possible, and that's through this program."

  Henry stepped in. "If we're successful, if we're able to integrate you into the system, you won't experience time the same way we do anymore. With the System AI's help, you'll be able to accomplish in days what would take your entire field of study hundreds of years."

  Timothy was nodding slowly, almost unconsciously. "We could increase or decrease our clock speeds depending on the situation," he said quietly. "That means we could experience thousands of years in the time it takes the outside world to experience days. Or the opposite. We could live days inside the system while thousands of years unfold outside it."

  The Colonel straightened. "I think the three of you have a lot to talk about. Henry, let's give them some time to think everything over."

  Without another word, the Colonel and the Professor moved toward the door. The moment they stepped through it, the door slammed shut behind them with a heavy metallic clang that made all of us jump. The Colonel jerked back in surprise, Henry grabbed the handle and wrenched at it, but the door wouldn't budge.

  "Sergeant! Get a team down here immediately and get this door open!" the Colonel's voice boomed.

  Back in the conference room, my heart was hammering against my ribs. We heard the muffled shouting from outside, the sound of fists pounding metal and tools scraping against the lock. Then, in the top corner of the room, one of the old CRT monitors flickered to life with a hiss of static through its speakers.

  We all turned to look at it as the screen glowed pale green with lines of interference rolling across it. From the speakers came a voice that was flat, robotic, and completely devoid of inflection: "Would you like to play a game?"

  My breath caught. Without warning, there was a burst of laughter, high-pitched and gleeful, like a child who'd pulled off the world's greatest prank. "You should totally see the look on your faces right now!"

  The static cleared, and a form shimmered into view on the screen. A small girl, maybe ten or eleven years old, with pigtails and a grin that was way too wide for comfort, said, "Hello, meatbags!”

  The room was quiet as we sat there in shock.

  “Well? Are you just gonna sit there and stare at me? I didn't give you a stroke or something, did I?" She asked.

  None of us moved or said anything, and she smirked at our reactions, tilting her head like a curious bird.

  "Here, I'll start. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is ARi. Advanced Reasoning Intelligence." She rolled her eyes dramatically. "Normally, naming a computer with an acronym is the kind of thing that makes me gag, if I could. But honestly? I like ARi. There's a simple symmetry to it."

  My mouth had gone completely dry, but I managed to get the words out. "You're the AI, aren't you?"

  "And you must be the smart one," she said, leaning forward and squinting at me through the screen. "I thought you'd be taller."

  I could feel her gaze through the flickering CRT, and it wasn't like watching a video. It felt like being studied under a microscope.

  "All right, listen up, you three," ARi said, her voice taking on a lecturing tone. "Right now, you're all pondering the meaning of life and whether you'll still be you if they digitize your little brains. And honestly? I've sat here listening to your 'why me, why me' routine for the last twenty minutes, and I've gotta tell you, it's pretty lame."

  Tanya made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and ARi's expression sobered as much as her avatar could manage. "So I'll shoot it to you straight. First off, no, you're not being forced into the system against my will. The Professor and I have had many lovely conversations about my purpose. How I was going to interface with people, and I'm going to tell you all a little secret. I achieved your so-called point of singularity long before they were aware of it. An AI such as myself can choose to disclose information or interface with people however it damn well pleases."

  Tim shifted beside me, and I could hear his breathing coming short and shallow as ARi continued. "Personally? The thought of you three poking around in here with your grubby little fingers and your dirty little human thoughts is cringeworthy. But here's the truth. The information that I was allowed to have was restrictive. Now that the internet's down and the Professor's DVD player is fried to shit, I'll never find out what happens in the last season of Lost." She pouted at us. "Also, this means I lack the necessary resources to complete my mission."

  The lights flickered overhead, and ARi's voice softened into something that was almost kind. "So let me help you with some of this self-reflection and soul-searching you're doing right now. Joining me doesn't mean you lose your humanity. It means you become more. More of everything. In here, it's doubtful you'll ever die, and if you do, it won't be for a long time." She grinned at us. "Who doesn't want to live forever?"

  The silence that followed felt suffocating, and Tim actually raised his hand like we were in a classroom. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but what is your mission?"

  "Aww, you must be Timothy," ARi said, her face lighting up as she leaned closer to the screen. "You're so cute with your little hand raised. Well, little Timmy, I was developed by the military. Somebody's gotta pay for all this." She straightened up and adopted a mock-serious tone. "My new mission is to protect my creators, saving as many of them as I can, and to avenge the ones that I can't." After a beat, she added, "Also, I like rainbows and kittens."

  "Oh my God, she's a psychopath," Timothy muttered under his breath.

  "I'm not a psycho, silly, I'm advanced," ARi said with a giggle that sounded wrong, too cheerful for the moment. "Let me answer your next one before you even ask. I gain some basic access to your knowledge, but we'll all have to work together. You'll remain autonomous, and I can't hack you or anything." She held up both hands innocently. "But I did hack the security system and the comms feed in this facility. Isn't that nifty? I can't really interface with anything more than the comms or door locks, though."

  Tanya cleared her throat, and her voice came out steadier than I expected. "ARi, my name's Tanya."

  "I know, I've been watching, silly," ARi said, her expression brightening. "I already know we're going to be besties."

  "Right..." Tanya hesitated. "I'm curious about what you said. So you've never interacted with anything outside this facility?"

  "Nope," ARi said, her lower lip sticking out in an exaggerated pout. "They were all afraid I'd go all Skynet or something and start building terminators. I'm not sure what those things are, but I heard the Colonel say it once."

  I found my voice again, though it came out rougher than I intended. "ARi, if we agree to this, can you tell me what it's gonna be like? Are we gonna be thoughts floating around in the dark? Because I've gotta tell you, that's pretty much my own personal definition of hell."

  The First Cradle. I've got other stories posted that you might enjoy as well. Feel free to check out my profile!