The Agile Four by Aubrey Parker

Author:Aubrey Parker [Parker, Aubrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling & Stone

CHAPTER FIVE

“Brad,” Chloe said as she entered her apartment and closed the door behind her. “Brad!”

His holographic form appeared, standing in the sunken living space. “There’s no need to yell.”

“I want to know everything there is to know about Alexa Mathis.”

“Searches on Alexa Mathis are—”

“Don’t tell me she’s fucking restricted, Brad. I don’t want to hear it. Just do what I told you to do.”

“Chloe, I can’t—”

“Don’t tell me you can’t. I’m not in the mood. You’ll either do what I want or I’ll sit down and start digging through everything you feel it’s a violation for me to search through. You thought I was disturbing those old AI privacies before? I can go so much deeper.”

“It’s not a matter of doing or not doing. It’s restricted. It’s like me asking you to dig through stone with your fingers. It isn’t possible.”

“Bullshit,” Chloe snapped.

Her mind turned the issues and put pieces into place. She still didn’t know where they all were or what they meant, but she could feel herself getting closer.

Something to do with what Slava had told her.

With what her mother had told her. With what that deep-voiced anonymous caller had told her in Andrew’s apartment. With her own research, and what Brad had said.

Some things from the meeting she’d spied on yesterday, when Andrew’s duplicity had finally been revealed.

And many, many bits of information that Chloe herself had seen and heard and observed and processed and intuited and read on the faces of others around her — not just recently, but throughout her entire life.

She didn’t forget things. It was all there, deep inside her head, the way old records were still inside The Beam if you knew where to look.

And she really did know things.

Learn things.

See things as bits of a larger constellation, even if it took her a while to know what that constellation truly was.

Clive Spooner.

Brad and his permissions.

The sudden relaxing of permissions yesterday, at just the right time.

Nanobots.

The Syndicate.

A sixty-year window with all of its unknown callbacks: Trevor’s Harem, Eros, a cabal of billionaires, the birth of AI, Parker Barnes, and Anthony Ross — a man who vanished decades ago.

“I’m sorry, Chloe. I don’t know how to respond.”

“I said it’s bullshit, Brad. Something’s not right about any of this.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Then maybe you can explain it to me. Something is different inside me. It’s like I have the same pot of soup in my head, but someone’s stirring it with a brand new spoon. I’m remembering bits and pieces of things that I shouldn’t. My mom mentioned me playing a melody on a child’s xylophone — a melody I shouldn’t have known, that tied together with Spooner. At first, she had to explain it, but now I remember. I can see it in my head. Feel the plastic mallet in my hand.”

Chloe began to pace.

“It’s like I’m in a dark room, and there’s something in here with me. A big machine with many parts. I can touch it; I can run my fingers along its cogs and gears.

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