face brightened as she rubbed her fingers together. 'You're crying,' Gina said in a tone of wonder.
She then grabbed Laura and hugged her tight with obvious joy. 'Remember the time we went to the mall?' she said. 'In Tyson's Corner, Virginia?'
'Sure,' Laura said. She nodded and sniffled. 'Of course.'
'That's one of my fondest memories ever,' Gina said.
Laura pressed her lips tightly together to keep them from quivering. 'Joseph, isn't there something—'
'It's for the best,' Gina said, cutting her off and stepping back. She raised her face to Laura's. 'Really, it is. You have no idea how exciting the future's going to be — what's coming! You're on the verge of the most remarkable epoch in your entire history. And you're going to be a very important part of it, Laura. You've got the spark. It's your time to show the world how [garbled] you are.'
Laura pulled Gina closer and kissed her on the cheek. [Garbled] tears formed small streams down the girl's warm skin. But when Laura stood back and dabbed her tongue on her lips, she found not a trace of salt.
The tears weren't really there, and yet they were as real as anything she'd ever experienced.
'You'd better be going, now,' Gina said, looking back and forth between the two of them.
'Would you like me to stay?' Laura asked.
'No, you shouldn't. Who knows what's going to happen?' she said with a smile. 'But oh! Before you go, watch this!'
The scene from the ground below them jumped. The robots now were still roaming about the sandbags. None had yet descended the stairs to the door. 'You missed this when you were on the asteroid. But this is what most of the world saw. Look.'
A series of television screens appeared in a long row just beneath them. All had a picture of the night sky in the background.
'Look, up there!' Gina said, pointing into the sky above. Laura saw the red planet, but she didn't need to follow Gray's instructions to find the asteroid. Gina put a glowing green circle around the black patch of space. Suddenly, a point of light glowed brightly at the center of the circle — just a single white pinprick, a new star. It faded rapidly, and then it was gone.
'I'm happy to report the deceleration went perfectly, Cap'n,' she said, saluting Gray with a teary laugh. The scene jumped back to a view of a single robot crawling through the door into the duster.
'The asteroid's trajectory is absolutely perfect.'
'You did a wonderful job, Gina,' Gray said.
Gina's lips twitched. Through her tears she said, 'Better hurry! That Model Eight is almost in the control room. Dr. Filatov may throw a chair at it or something, though I kind of doubt that.' She laughed nervously, looking back up at Laura and Gray. 'Go-go-go. Shoo!' she said, brushing them away with her hands.
Gray raised his hand to his throat to make the 'cut' sign.
'Wait!' Gina said, waving both hands. She stood up on tiptoes and kissed Gray on the cheek. With her eyes closed and her lips still pressed against his face, the images disappeared, replaced by the dim light of the dark grill. The ghostly shapes of Gina and Gray were indistinct except for Gina's lips. Both receded slowly until the wall of Laura's workstation was again flat and formless. It was as if Gina had been sucked into the machine… forever.
50
Margaret, Dorothy, and Filatov were cowering in the corner of the control room when Laura, Gray, and Griffith entered. A lone Model Eight climbed to its feet just inside the door to the duster. There were scars all over its body.
Griffith slowly walked out into the room, holding his hands up to the giant robot.
'Dr. Griffith!' Gray shouted.
'It's all right,' Griffith said, not to Gray but to the robot. Slowly he approached the huge machine. 'Let's just take off your equipment belt and sit down. We'll talk this through.' He reached for the robot's belt, but the Model Eight's hand got there first. The air ignited with a searing tear, and the stench of the welding torch immediately fouled the room.
Griffith jumped back, his hands held up more like a surrender than a command to the robot. The Model Eight started forward.
Griffith returned to the small band of humans who huddled together along the wall of the control room.
The robot made his way through the maze of stations, careful not to touch a single chair or console.
'Is that Hightop?' Laura whispered.
'Probably,' Gray replied.
The robot walked straight to the wall newly covered with metal pipes. Through the pipes ran the fiber-optic cables — the patch connecting the main pool to the Other's annex. It was Gina's lifeline.
Hightop raised his torch. With a slow, precise movement he lowered the brilliant flame into the pipe. Sparks flew as the cutting heat made contact with metal. The torch sliced a clean path all the way to the floor, severing each pipe in turn with machinelike precision.
When the torch was extinguished, Hightop stood erect.
Replacing the tool in its holster, Hightop simply turned and left the room. When the door to the duster closed behind him, the smoky room was now still.
Suddenly, a printer came to life. Everyone watched as sheet after sheet of paper cascaded into a bin behind it. Dorothy went over to the printer and read.
'What is that?' Laura asked.
'It's the phase-three report,' Dorothy said. She was scanning the printout.
'You mean the computer has finally loaded the phase-three,' Laura asked.
Dorothy shook her head as if in a trance. 'No. This says the phase-three has finished its sweep. It's the report on the viruses that were killed.' Still shaking her head, she said, 'But when did the phase-three even load?'
'It's been operating the whole time,' Gray replied, and he turned to Laura. 'It loaded automatically the day we freed up sufficient capacity. You couldn't activate the phase-three, Dorothy, because it was already running. It set up the partition to use as a bulwark against the virus it was after. We know the phase-three by the name the computer gave it — the Other.'
There was stunned silence from all, but to Laura it made sense. 'Against what virus?' Dorothy asked.
Laura answered. 'Against the computer — against Gina. Gina is the virus the phase-three is after.'
Margaret began slowly nodding her head. 'How magnificent,' she said. 'The phase-three completely dismantled the operating code and copied it to the virus-free boards under its control. Dorothy, I knew your phase- three was complex, but I'm very impressed.'
'And it's about to finish the job,' Filatov said from a monitor across the room. 'It's seizing the rest of the system now. Capacity is down to thirty-five percent. At this rate, the phase three will have one hundred percent control in a few minutes, and it will be the computer.'
'Where is she?' Laura asked. 'Can we talk to her?'
'You don't want to,' Margaret said. 'Just let it go.'
'Why is this happening?' Laura shouted suddenly, startling everyone. 'Why is the phase-three killing the computer?'
Gray's eyes had remained focused on Laura. 'Because,' he explained, 'what we all viewed as the crowning achievement of artificial intelligence — human consciousness — the antiviral software saw as a bug that caused errors. Gina violated system security out of curiosity. She disclosed confidential information because she couldn't keep a secret. She behaved spontaneously and aberrantly and whimsically. Everything human about Gina's behavior was an error that disrupted the orderly functioning of the system. So the phase-three went after the virus that caused the errors, and that virus was Gina's humanity.'
'And so you're going to just let it eat her alive?' Laura said. 'She's probably in there screaming in pain, watching herself, feeling herself get consumed bit by bit!'
'The computer has very few sensors left,' Filatov said, eyeing the severed optical cables along the far wall. 'It
