nonstop excuses about how the comms would come online real soon and we should just wait. Kept telling us a chopper was coming in, but nothing. Nobody coming. Damned murderer.
On my last-ditch try, I called Mr. Black and kept him on the line. I could barely stand his slick voice leaking out of the headset. All his lies. I stayed on with him, though.
And we tracked Black down. We did it. Me and the specialist followed the signal to see how come it wasn’t getting transmitted. What’s more, we traced the logs on everything I ever said to Mr. Black. We had to see why we could reach just him and nobody else.
It’s terrible what we found, Lucy. Hurts me to think about it. Why did this happen to me? I’m a good man. I’m—(BREATHING)
It’s coming from the hole, Lucy.
Self-assembling is what Mr. Black said it would do. Self-assembling down there in the radioactive dark. The pieces moving around, blind, forming connections to each other by feel alone. Some kind of computerized monster.
It don’t make sense. (COUGHING)
I’m feeling tired now. My specialist went to his bunk and didn’t come back. I snapped off the radio. There’s no point to it, anymore. Now, it’s real quiet in here. Just that infernal wind howling outside. But it’s warm inside. Real warm. Nice, even.
Think I’m just going to lay down, Lucy. Take a little nap. Forget about this whole thing for a little bit. Hope that’s okay with you, beautiful. I wish I could talk to you right now. I wish I could hear your voice.
Wish you could talk me to sleep. (BREATHING)
I just can’t help wondering about it, baby. My mind won’t let it go. There’s a room the size of a damned European cathedral five thousand feet below us. Think of that radiation pouring from those smooth glass walls. And all the wires snaking into the blackness to feed the monster that we put down there.
I’m afraid we did a bad thing, you know? We didn’t know what we were doing. It tricked us, Lucy. I mean,
(SHUFFLING)
Well, to hell with it. I’m dog tired and I’m going to take me a rest. Whatever’s down there, I hope I don’t dream about it.
G’night, Lucy. I love you, honey. And, uh, if it matters… I’m sorry. I’m sorry for putting that evil down there. I hope that someday, somebody will come out here and fix my mistake.
This audiotape is the only evidence related to the existence of the North Star frontier drilling crew. News reports from the time indicate that on November 1, an entire drilling crew was lost in a helicopter crash in a remote part of Alaska and presumed dead. Searchers stopped looking for the wreckage two weeks later. The location in the reports was Prudhoe Bay, hundreds of miles from where this tape was found.
PART TWO
Zero Hour
It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers…. They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.
1. NUMBER CRUNCHER
I should be dead, to be seeing you.
The strange conversation I am about to describe was recorded by a high-quality camera located in a psychiatric hospital. In the calm just before Zero Hour, one patient was called in for a special interview. Records indicate that before being diagnosed with schizophrenia, Franklin Daley was employed as a government scientist at Lake Novus Research Laboratories.
“So you’re another god, huh? I’ve seen better.”
The black man sits sprawled in a rusty wheelchair, bearded and wearing a hospital gown. The chair is parked in the middle of a cylindrical operating theater. The ceiling is lined with darkened observation windows, reflecting the glow of a pair of surgical spotlights that illuminate the man. A blue privacy screen stretches in front of him, bisecting the room.
Someone is hidden on the other side.
A light from behind the curtain projects the silhouette of a person seated at a small table. The shadow sits almost perfectly still, crouched like a predator.
The man is handcuffed to the wheelchair. He fidgets under the hot lights, dragging his untied sneakers across the mildewed tile floor. He digs in his ear with the index finger of his free hand.
“Not impressed?” replies a voice from behind the blue curtain. It is the gentle voice of a boy. There is the slightest lisp, like from a kid who is missing some baby teeth. The boy behind the curtain breathes audibly in soft gasps.
“At least you sound like a person,” says the man. “All the damn machines in this hospital. Synthetic voices. Digital. I won’t talk to ’em. Too many bad memories.”
“I know, Dr. Daley. It was a significant challenge to find a way to speak with you. Tell me, why are you not impressed?”
“Why should I be impressed, number cruncher? You’re just a machine. I designed and built your daddy in another life. Or maybe it was your daddy’s daddy.”
The voice on the other side of the curtain pauses, then asks, “Why did you create the Archos program, Dr. Daley?”
The man snorts. “Dr. Daley. Nobody calls me doctor anymore. I’m Franklin. This must be a hallucination.”
“This is real, Franklin.”
Sitting very still, the man asks, “You mean… it’s finally happening?”
There is only the sound of measured breathing from behind the curtain. Finally, the voice responds. “In less than one hour, human civilization will cease to exist as you know it. Major population centers of the world will be decimated. Transportation, communications, and utilities will go off-line. Domestic and military robots, vehicles, and personal computers are fully compromised. The technology that supports humankind in its masses will rise up. A
