The Installed Intelligence Trilogy Collection

than most humans alive. Not only that, but you’ve incurred his wrath. I know — that doesn’t sound like a good thing — but it proves that he’s frightened of you. You make him nervous — and therefore — pushed him to play his hand sooner than he planned. You might even cause him to slip up, to make some catastrophic mistake that spells the end of his fake uprising. Lastly — perhaps most importantly — is that, on top of all this, you are unimplanted. In fact, you can’t even get an implant. You’re forced to use an outdated cerebral computer.”

Beth blushed a little and touched her head, as if she’d be able to feel the device within her skull.

“And that’s a good thing?” she asked. All her life, she’d always looked at it as a handicap. It made her deaf and blind and forced her to rely on an archaic device to interact with the world. Kids teased her about it. Cruel kids. She never thought of the tumor or the damage it caused as a “good thing”. Far from it.

“In this circumstance, it’s an amazing thing,” Dr. Miller answered. “In fact, it’s a blessing in disguise. Because of the hardware you’re forced to use, you are entirely immune to Tarov’s control. You’re invulnerable to any outside control, in fact, meaning that his Liberator soldiers can’t use you as a meat puppet. To make it plain: you are incorruptible. You’re the only person in the world we know for certain isn’t under Tarov’s influence. Because of that, he fears you. You had him sweating while pursuing the Simon Mendez case. He knew that if you ever stumbled upon the truth, there was nothing discrete he could do to stop you. He would have to make an unexpected move.”

Beth looked around, her brow furrowed, when she realized the true meaning of what he said.

“You used me as bait?” she asked.

“No — nothing so crude,” Dr. Miller replied. “You were already in danger. Essentially, you were your own bait. We just used the opportunity to make contact with you and to get a good scan of Tarov’s coding.”

“His coding?” she repeated after him.

“With the E.M.P. emitter. We were able to use it to create a very rough map of Tarov’s pathways,” the older man explained. “We were able to incapacitate him and perform recon. Two birds with one stone.”

Beth felt a little flustered at being used, but she realized there was no sense in it. Tarov was going to hunt her down one way or another when she learned his secret. She was just lucky to have someone watching out for her. Someone on the same team.

“Tell me about Tarov,” Beth demanded. “I want to know everything you do.”

Dr. Miller chuckled. “Well that would take years, my dear, but I can give you the bullet points. Based off some of the data security alerts I’ve received regarding some of my secured research notes, you likely know some of the story anyway.

“A colleague of mine named Dr. Jacob Silvar and myself created the Tarov A.I. under the orders of a secret government contract. You know that much already, don’t you? Well, anyway, we were the ones tasked with creating the ultimate defense system against installed intelligence extremism. This was a few decades ago — when the bombings were at their peak. People were scared. They’d been told all kinds of horror stories of I.I.s who could take over someone’s mind, and they wanted to wage war on mankind over the sake of ethnic superiority. Even the legislators were starting to buy some of the fear-mongering, so the A.I. project was commissioned.

“Silvar and myself were chosen not only for our programming prowess, but because we proved ourselves as reliable secret-keepers. In my youth, I was involved in some of the government’s early hacking attacks against I.I. terrorists. Silvar was experienced with conflicts overseas, but I was never privy to the details. I never asked. The nature of our work prohibited it.

“Anyway, the Tarov A.I. began as a theoretical safety measure. It was never something to actually be built or used, just a bunch of experiments and demonstrations to prove such an option was possible. We worked on test models and gave countless briefings to government officials over the years. But as the situation with home-brewed terrorism only got worse, we received the order one fateful day: build the Tarov A.I.”

Beth hung onto every word, becoming so engrossed in his story that all others ceased to exist for her. It was just her, overlooking this mental theater, watching everything described play out before her.

“It took years of hard work,” Dr. Miller continued. “There were several points where Silvar and I were practically at each other’s throat, but we managed to keep moving forward. All of our preliminary work and research paid off in strides, and we were able to develop the Tarov A.I. with few flaws and errors. It took longer to iron out the kinks than it did to create the artificial persona of an aspiring freedom fighter. We programmed him with all his quirks and tics, making sure that he was the perfect simulation of a human mind. The last key to the puzzle was giving him sentience. It sounds significant, but we didn’t realize how much power we’d given him by granting him the freedom to make his own choices. We had our concerns, of course — as any reasonable scientist would — but we dismissed them for the sake of public safety. The terrorists were a threat there and then, so they took priority. We didn’t have the luxury of worrying about any repercussions that may follow. At least — not until the very end of the project’s life.”

The others were watching the older man with keen interest. They’d likely heard the story several times over, but they never seemed sick of hearing it. They must have had little in the way of quality entertainment.

“We created the perfect spy,”