Unbound by Lance Erlick

Author:Lance Erlick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Synthia didn’t have the resources to delve into the source of Drago’s insight and so passed that puzzle along to her clones to sort out.

She parked her SUV in a lot south of Northwestern University campus and altered her appearance to a plain female form with an unremarkable face and a dark wig. She put on her blue jacket and made her way down the street among students and locals. She hacked into every camera throughout Evanston and froze images on static scenes.

Using her biosensors and social-psychology module, she studied everyone within sight to make sure they all were human. They were. She assessed the level of danger they presented, based on evaluating their blood pressure, heart rate, eye dilation, and facial tension. Most hurried or shuffled along, their faces indicating absorption with their own lives or their mobile devices.

A man and a woman in plainclothes stood by the corner, watching. Synthia identified them as police, matching a file she’d created of all law enforcement personnel in the Chicagoland area. She hacked a jewelry-store security system down the block and set off an alarm, catching the attention of the police while she crossed the street.

Synthia headed for Machten’s underground facility, making her way across the parking garage to the secluded inside entrance. Since he was in FBI custody for the purpose of regaining control of his androids, his secure compound was empty and represented a possible refuge while Synthia planned her next move. As confirmation of its vacancy, the garage cameras confirmed no one had come in or out since the FBI searched the place and Machten left.

Before entering, Synthia synchronized information with her Illinois-clone, located on servers at the University of Illinois. She’d chosen that as her primary contact for the time being. It seemed innate, yet unnatural, to have a complete electronic copy, one with whom she could have a confidential dialogue or coexist with no need for conversation.

So far she’d created five copies: Illinois, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Chicago, and Roosevelt. It took more mind-streams to keep track of what each knew so they could coordinate, but with Wisconsin-clone now silent, she needed other backups. If Malloy, the FBI, and others had only left her alone in Wisconsin, she would have been content with just one electronic clone.

Harmonization complete, Synthia and Illinois-clone were the same consciousness in two places, so if one ceased to exist, Synthia would continue in the other—at least the mind would. To ensure her sustained existence, she had her clone establish other full and partial electronic copies on university, government, and business servers across the country, securing them with quantum encryption.

Synthia wondered if two clones starting with identical directives and data would have the same thoughts and make the same decisions. They might not, since they resided in different environments and experienced different inputs. Even if their situations were the same, their neural networks approached new information by incorporating random variation. They could come to different conclusions about how to suppress the other androids. This line of thinking consumed valuable resources, so she filed it away for later.

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