The Glitches: The Complete Series by Ramona Finn

Author:Ramona Finn [Finn, Ramona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-05-15T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Coming out of the connect leaves me blinking and breathing hard. The splash of water and whoops from Dat tell me the water tank pipes opened—the hack of the water storage system worked. I smell dampness in the air.

Dat and Crow scavenge three containers of water—the metal containers are old, salvaged long ago from the Empties. They’re the clan’s most precious good. Crow is smiling. He and Dat lash the water containers onto the back of the ATs with thick ropes made of dried plants. We have one container left empty, but three is better than none.

In the distance, lightning strikes, brightening the sky.

Glance at the sky, I worry a storm might be coming. Storms blow in fast, bringing stinging sand. The sky is just starting pale with dawn coming and the early light paints red across clouds. Will they bring us rain?

I keep thinking about all those people I saw in the moving images and all that rain—why did the AI kill them? Or did she? Did the rain just come on its own, pounding and unstoppable? Was that another reason to build the Norm, to keep the rain from killing everyone? But then why didn’t the AI let those people into the Norm?

I’m left with even more questions than I had. That’s happening all too often. I also have to wonder how I could access those moving images. Did the AI want me to see them, or did the code to access the images show up only because the platform was old and failing?

Calling information requires concentration—so it seems unlikely I would have asked for moving images. I’ve never seen them before. Never that I remember. I am almost certain someone else triggered the access. But would the AI do that?

Thinking about this, I decide the AI is far too clever—she would only show me the moving images if it was part of a plan. This means the moving images must be connected either to her desire to destroy the Rogues and Glitches, or it is connected to her desire to leave this world with the Norm.

Or I really did access it because of something buried in my memories and without the AI knowing it.

This last idea leaves me shaken. The AI is growing all the time—she told me that herself. Growth is a sign of life, and the AI is alive, even if she is a machine. But how much has she grown? Has she been around so long that she has old systems she no longer monitors—systems she may not even be aware she has because they are old and she thinks she has outgrown them? This seems possible. She leaves sentinels—firewalls—to guard water and other supplies. We wouldn’t be able to access them if the AI was really watching everything.

This idea stirs hope that I can get back into the Norm without the AI knowing—maybe by using old systems she no longer cares about. I am starting to think that coupled with the work

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