Destiny: Quantic Dreams Book 3 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (dark books to read txt) 📕

within range of the city.” Eleanor was quick to offer the consolation but it was too late. If I had figured it out, so had Eliza. The ‘trial’ was a sham; a show of so-called cooperation between humans and A.I. that would end the same way, no matter the evidence presented. Our hours in this place were numbered. The trick now would be to play along until we had a chance to make it back to the colony. If there still was one. Would we even hear the sound of a weapon being launched? Physics had little to do with reality when you were in possession of stealth tech leagues beyond human capability. I started to sort the androids into ‘friendly’ and ‘not friendly’ categories in my mind; Eleanor was clearly trying to deal with the problem peacefully. Zohei and Tenzen were a little more ambiguous. All three made measured decisions, that much was obvious. This was the true “intelligence” in artificial intelligence. Not the ability to repeat back memorised information but to think through consequences and make decisions as a human would. If that human had a nearly unlimited resource of knowledge in their mind.

“Very well. We’ll inform Jacob of your terms. In the mean time, I need assurances that my people will not be harmed and that you are indeed sending aid to our colony. If I find either of these conditions have been violated, no trial.” Eliza’s foot was tapping lightly on the floor, a sign that she was anxious. I thought about placing a hand on her knee to warn her to calm down but the androids probably noticed her stress levels the minute they started going up. You can’t lie to a thermal scanner.

“Your people will not be harmed, as long as they don’t go wandering about. I will get you live drone footage of your colony within the next fifteen minutes, and you will be connected via video with one of the humans you left in charge—Jason, wasn’t it?”

How much did they know? I rolled my eyes inwardly as I answered my own question. No doubt that every piece of machinery and computing technology was accessible to these people. For all we knew, they had been listening to our activities for years.

The meeting was adjourned and we were escorted back to the one hundred. They had been served a hot meal in our absence, the building full of the scent of chicken and herbs. Two unopened meal packs lay on our respective cots as if they had always been there. Eliza begged off the crowd until we had finished our meal. That wasn’t just for practicality’s sake; when my wife didn’t get regular meals, she gave credence to werewolf myths. Only once the last bite was gone did anyone dare to approach Eliza.

“What’s the story?” Dad sat just a few feet away from us, his fingers drumming on his pant leg. “Did they change their minds and now they’re planning on drawing and quartering me?”

I shot him a look. “It’s complicated. Go get me a pen and something to write on.” We had no way of knowing how tapped our tablets were, never mind how many bugs were in the building. It took him a while, but Dad managed to find a scrap of thin cloth.

Building bugged. Tablets bugged too. I wrote. Calls for your blood. Trial a sham.

Dad swallowed hard. He motioned for the pen and flipped the cloth over. Escape? Eliza shook her head. “Come on Jacob, you know we have to play nice with our hosts. After all, they've been so very good to us.” A crowd had gathered around us and I handed the cloth to Marcus who read it and passed it to the next person. Word made its way through the group like a flame and soon the noise level was so high that no bug on this planet could have picked out individual threads of conversation, never mind anything important. The din was interrupted by a buzz from Eliza’s tablet. Eliza stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled.

“Everybody shut up!” A hundred heads turned our way. Eliza lifted the tablet and Jason’s face appeared on the screen.

“Eliza? Holy shit, it’s so good to see you! We thought you were dead!” He cracked a huge grin.

“It’s good to see you too. Listen, I don’t know how long I’ve got with you-the people here have done something to connect our tablets. There should be aid arriving to you, extra food and medical supplies. How are things going?”

“They’re all right. The aid did arrive. Scared the absolute shit out of me when a small army of androids came over the horizon. I thought Gabriel had come back to kill us all. Yes, they’ve brought us food, water, and medical supplies. We’re doing snug as a bug in a rug here.” Jason panned the camera around to show happy, smiling colonists. The whole thing was a little surreal; it was hard to believe that the androids kept their word, given the barely concealed hostility we were met with. Someone had our back, but was it enough? “Are you folks doing all right?”

“Yes.” I took the tablet from Eliza, giving Jason a big grin. We were having enough trouble keeping the people “It’s a little—all right, it’s a lot weird, but we’re hanging in there. The rules are strict, but I understand why they’re a little jittery. After all, we are practically aliens to them.”

“I suppose so. Will you be returning to the colony soon? We could certainly use you coming back. We need to figure out our next steps, if we’re going to move the colony. That is still the plan, isn’t it? Unless the androids have presented you with some miracle cure for the blight.”

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m hoping that they’ll have more for us soon. Until then, they seem happy to continue sending aid. You should be able to contact us anytime you’d like. Eliza made that