The Hard Reset (The Inevitable Book 3) by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant

Author:Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant [Platt, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling & Stone
Published: 2018-08-24T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lincoln paced.

Now that Zelda knew he was a robot, she found everything he did curious. When he stopped at the artificial bunker window to look at the projected scenery, she wondered if he felt the pacification the architects had intended when they’d argued for the windows, same as humans supposedly did.

The place had once been a missile silo. Later it became a hideout in the event of attack — be it nuclear or biological or robotic, should the singularity sour. It was equipped and stocked to provide self-sustaining shelter for ten years without losing power or running dry. Contemplating that much time trapped underground gave her the willies. She’d rather die. But that was the point of the false windows. They spanned entire walls in places, so vast that you could see the curves at the edges revealing the silo’s sweeping circumference.

She looked at the window across a catwalk from her now, feeling no calmer. Then she looked at Lincoln between her and the screen, wondering if he felt any calmer. Did robots experience claustrophobia? Why shouldn’t they? Everyone knew that when they got old enough, most could experience fear.

Lincoln noticed Zelda standing thirty feet behind him and turned to face her. Techs scurried along the catwalk between them. The Readiness Center was bustling, full of people whose purpose was to follow orders. That’s how Lincoln had described it when they’d arrived from the Oval Office. Everyone here had a sense of duty to the larger mission, and a first glance, each “larger mission” — of which there were many in the Center, each a piece of a whole — seemed to make sense.

Only once the many duties from within the many departments inside the Readiness Center were plotted on paper and examined did it become obvious that purpose ran in an incestuous circle. One department covertly monitored pastoral security so the one next door could compile them and ensure the nation’s safety.

That department shuffled digital paperwork to the next group, who liaised with — and, rumor said, spied on — both friendly and suspicious nations, using the national security briefs to compare against external threats.

Reports from that group were broken down and disseminated to the first group so they could brief the pastorals in appropriate ways about the world’s state as a whole, in the form of news and school-based education. Propaganda, Lincoln had said, though nobody would look that one in the eye.

There were several cycles of reporting like that, all up and down the Readiness Center, but confidentiality insured that only those at the zenith knew what each cell was doing. And nobody asks, Lincoln had added.

The Loop’s primary purpose was to ensure its continued existence. The secondary purpose — and this was the only real way to fulfill the primary aim — was to squash curiosity.

“Have you decided?” Lincoln asked.

“Do I get to decide?”

Lincoln came closer. For the first time, Zelda saw the way he looked at her.

Had he always looked at her like this,

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