Checkmate, p.23
Checkmate, page 23
I took the biggest breath in and resisted the urge to hiccup the air. It burned my chest and made my eyes water. I let the breath out as slowly as I could through pursed lips, just like Mellanie had shown me.
"She's gone," I finally said, looking at the white King, "Mellanie."
Then the white King did something I never would have predicted or ever thought possible. He pulled me into his robotic arms and embraced me. My breath came a bit easier as I recovered from the shock of what he'd done.
"She's not gone," he said.
"She what?"
"She's not gone. Or at least, the white Queen and I don't think so."
The white Queen approached us both cautiously. "That officer," she said, "the one I hurt... the one I thought was like us... I thought they were like us because I read massive amounts of technological interference coming from them. An amount that could really only be in something like us."
"So," the white King continued, "We think that the Nexus is using something to take over the bodies of people, since it doesn't have any physical form. It has to have a way of enforcing something. It's started with whatever it used to make everyone hallucinate and pass out and now, to finish everything up, it's using something to take over people's bodies. But it clearly doesn't have enough to do it to everyone and it obviously isn't that effective... if you remember the police officers that followed you. And even Mellanie. She couldn't walk towards us," he said. The thought of Mellanie hobbling on the ground towards us sickened my stomach.
"Now you're all of a sudden interested in the Nexus," I remarked.
"I have been interested," the white King said indignantly, "No one's just asked me. And any way, conspiracy theories aren't our first priority. Your life is. That's what we're programmed for. You can't fault us for following our own code."
That was true.
"So how do we get her back? Or is that not part of my life coaching?"
I could tell the white King was quickly losing patience with me, if patience was also included in his code. There was only so far I could push them both before they just decided to collapse back into their small forms and leave me sitting in the middle of nowhere alone, with no idea how the hell I was going to get Mellanie back.
"Well, you can start by dropping the attitude," the white King said, "And from there we have to find a way to shut down the Nexus."
I tried not to snort too loudly. "I don't think that's going to be possible. We couldn't even get near it. Mellanie tried and look what happened to her."
"Yes, but she was also human," the white King pointed out.
"And you've got two here who don't fit that description, dear," the white Queen added.
"So... great. Are you going to go back in there and shut it down?"
The white King hesitated, "We don't exactly know how to shut it down."
"Another thing we weren't exactly programmed for," the white Queen said, looking at the ground. She seemed nearly embarrassed by the thought that her programming limited her from doing something.
"Well, I guess we have to try, don't we? I mean, what else are we supposed to do? Just sit around?"
"That wasn't exactly what I had in mind," the white King snapped.
"So what's our plan then?"
The white King stood, crossing his arms and pacing around the log. "If we could just get our hands on our programming computers, I'm sure we could write something that would allow us to find out how to shut down the Nexus... or we could get in touch with someone..."
"Your programming computers?"
"Yes, dear," the white Queen added, "Our program runs partly from within us, but it's main control functions are on the computer that originally wrote our program. So we'd need to find that to edit the basics of our code."
"But that'll be with Mike..." I said.
"Exactly," the white King said, robotic eyebrows furrowed.
"Well that's a bunch of bullshit!" I said, throwing my hands up in frustration, "Why can't you re-write your code yourself? Who the hell designed that feature?"
"Someone very clever, dear," the white Queen said, "It makes sense for us to not be able to access the base of our program and make changes."
"But why?" I shouted, "It doesn't make sense."
"Because," the white King said, eyes boring on me, "Then AI can do whatever it likes. And what if AI decides one day it'd like to take over the world. Sound familiar?"
"Oh."
Yeah, there wasn't much arguing for that.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the Nexus is just some tertiary program like ours, run amok because some genius gave it the power to re-write elements of it's own program!"
I paused for a moment, remembering the mess we left at the careers centre. The sun was near setting, crossing the sky slowly.
"It's getting late. Mike's probably home from the office," I said, "He's definitely not going to give us his computer willingly."
"No, he certainly isn't," the white King said, rubbing his chin, "And we can't take it from him or fight him."
"It's against our code," the white Queen added before I could object, "We're not allowed to hurt others unless absolutely necessary."
"But this is kind of absolutely necessary," I said.
"No, it isn't. The code means life or death situations," the white King said.
"This is life or death!"
"Not in the same way," the white King said, eyes going wide again. He rubbed his forehead with his folded hands, "Look, our code is clear and we can't change it. You're going to have to get involved. Take Mike's computer, fight him up until the point our code allows us to intervene, whatever. But we can't make the first leap. It's not a matter of something we want or not... it's just something we can't do."
My mouth got dry quickly and I wished for Mellanie. She wouldn't have any problem sneaking around Mike or getting his computer.
"You're sure this will help Mellanie," I said.
"If we shut down the main computer that's controlling whatever bugs have been put inside Mellanie, it will shut down the bugs. I'm sure of it," the white King said.
I sighed and stood shakily on my feet.
"All right then, take me to Mike's place."
I could tell the white King stifled a grin, but the white Queen's eyes looked like tears would form behind them if it were only possible. She grabbed one side of my body while the white King took the other and they lifted me as they sped through the small underbrush near the warehouse. Shutting my eyes to make the journey easier, I thought of Mellanie again and I tried not to cry.
Chapter 17
The windows in Mike's house were lit and open, but I couldn't see him walking through any of the rooms. His house was tiny, but twice as adorable as his office had been. Maybe he hadn't had the time to normalize everything according to the Nexus' wishes. Connected to an identical looking house just beside it, he had a small brick porch, mint green shingles, and a thousand little figurines decorating every inch of shelf and counter space that wasn't already used or empty for some sort of use at some point. He sat in his living room, oddly with the television on but not working, painting silver paint over another small figurine, sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth.
I tried not to make too much noise laughing at how hard he concentrated on the little figure. I couldn't even recognize what it was, but Mike stared at it like it had threatened him to a duel to the death.
"I don't see a computer anywhere," the white King said, and I snapped back into reality.
"It's probably in his room," the white Queen said.
We snuck around the side of the house, looking into the other windows, one opening into a tiny kitchen that looked big enough to barely fit one person, and another opening into a dark room that I assumed had to be his bedroom. Mike didn't exactly live in a suite.
"Well, this is probably it," I said, looking in. When I turned around they both looked at me expectantly. "Oh you're kidding," I said.
"We can't get in there," the white King said, "It's kind of against the rules, breaking into a random human's household."
"So you can get ideas that are against your code but you can't exactly do them," I said, "that's useless."
"You're telling me," the white King said.
"I don't think they can exactly put limits on our thoughts and conclusions without limiting what we can do in general," the white Queen added gently.
"Well," I said, "I guess I'm the one that has to be the thief then. Are you still allowed to save me if Mike comes in and decides to try and get rid of me once and for all?"
"Yes," the white King said, "We can help you if your life is in danger. But otherwise, we're not allowed to do much against our code. Those are just the rules."
"Yeah, I get it. Rules, rules."
I breathed a sigh of relief when the window popped open easily, thankful for Mike's lax security measures. Nearly scraping my knee on the side of the windowsill, I crawled into his bedroom quickly, landing roughly on my feet. I stabled myself on the side of the window and looked around for some sort of light. Even though it was bright outside, not much had filtered inside of the room. A bright light flooded through the crack I'd crawled through in the window and I looked back to see the white Queen shining something through the crack.
"Isn't aiding and abetting against your code?" I said grinning. She looked back at me with a robotic smile.
The light exposed a small single bed in the corner of a room, neatly made with dark sheets and a purple pillow on the top. I laughed in my head at how incredibly organized it all was, wondering if Mike's skills shone through all of the neatness or if the Nexus affected him in some way I couldn't yet quite sort out.
Next to the bed sat a desk with a black square block sitting on top that felt awfully like a laptop when I went to pick it up. I heard a couple of loud bangs before the handle of the door sounded like it turned and I dashed under the bed as fast as I could, leaving the laptop on the table. I cursed under my breath as two people walked into the room.
"There shouldn't be anyone here," Mike stammered, sounding nervous.
Two feet paced through the room, nearly dragging one behind the other. I could have sworn I recognized the feet, but they moved too quickly and the light was too sparse. The white Queen had shut off the light just in time before the two walked into the room.
"Turn on the light," a voice that I recognized echoed through the room, sounding distorted and garbled.
I peeked through the bottom bit of the sheets of the bed and saw the outline of a figure that I immediately recognized when Mike snapped the lights on. Mellanie. I wanted to cry out but I shoved myself back under the bed and threw my hand over my mouth. My eyes watered so I slammed them shut, hoping against hope that I didn't make another noise.
Mellanie paced through the room with an anxious Mike following her. "I don't know why the neighbors are saying there's been something funny. I haven't seen anything." She looked in the corners but managed to miss under the bed.
"Show me the rest," she said simply and walked out the room. Mike bumbled a bit, shutting off the light and closing the door. I could hear him continuing to explain how he hadn't seen anything and everything was normal.
"Ambrosia!" the white Queen whispered through the door, "Get the laptop and come on! We need to get out of here!"
My limbs unfroze and I dashed out of the bed, grabbing the laptop from the counter, stepping through the windowsill out into the cold air.
--
The apartment felt like a ghost town without Mellanie there with me. She'd only spent a couple of days, but it had seemed like home for a short period of time, rather than just a place I'd lived. We didn't exactly have anywhere else to go and none of us really thought going back to the warehouse was a good idea. But the apartment distracted me somewhat, pulling me back into memories of Mellanie and I eating sad oatmeal breakfasts, of her lying with me and rubbing my head or my shoulders to make that overwhelming feeling of panic stop.
The white King groaned loudly, "How the hell do you turn this thing on?" he said, picking up the laptop and turning it on its side.
"The button the top I believe," the white Queen said, patting his hands down and showing him the power button across the top.
"Oh," he stammered, "I knew that."
The white Queen grinned at him and I couldn't help but smile. I guess it didn't really matter if the white Queen or the white King loved each other in real life, if this life felt real enough for the both of them. It seemed almost nice, the thought of being made to go with someone like a pair of socks or shoes. But then obviously if you could never find your match, that seemed like a pretty crap deal to get stuck with.
"We've at least got it working now," the white King said, peering at the blue screen. "I... think that's the sort of screen we want."
He picked up the laptop awkwardly and handed it to me like a baby that had soiled its diaper. The concept of a robot being terrified of technology made me giggle and I took the laptop from his terrified hands happily, setting it down on the bar next to the kitchen and watching it boot up. Once it finished, I stared at it blankly, realizing I had no idea what exactly to do at this point.
"So... how do we reprogram you then?" I asked awkwardly.
The white King stared at me blankly, "You mean... you don't know how?"
My stomach dropped. "No, of course I don't know how. I barely remember things from the past five years, remember? Amnesia? And any way, even if I did remember everything from the past couple of years, Mike pioneered artificial intelligence. He's supposed to be some sort of prodigy and you two were his huge big projects and secrets. How on earth am I going to compete with that?"
The white King passed his hand over his perfectly molded hair. "You mean you don't know how to work this thing?" he said.
"Um, well I can do an internet search for 'How to reprogram a robot' but that's the extent of my techie skills, I'm afraid," I said.
The white King sunk onto the sofa, burying his face in his hands and the white Queen patted him on the shoulder.
"Don't you think dear," she turned to me hopefully, "You might be able to... you know, wing it?" Her eyes widened so intensely and realistically, I didn't want to dampen her parade.
"I'm afraid not. I don't know how to reprogram you. You can't reprogram yourselves?"
"Now what would be the purpose of making it so we needed to be reprogrammed to violate our code if we could just reprogram ourselves?" the white King shouted.
"I don't know! You're the ones who came up with this brilliant plan to steal Mike's computer! I didn't even want to do it!"
"Well why don't you come up with something better than!" the white King shouted, standing immediately, "Instead of clinging to us all of the damn time! You're the one with the brain, we're just a pile of subroutines!"
"Now, if we could all just-" the white Queen began before I unapologetically cut her off.
"Aren't you so much better? Isn't that why you want to rule the world? Because you're far more intelligent than us pathetic fleshy beings?"
"The Nexus, whatever the hell it is, believes that! Not us! Our purpose is to aid you to the best of our ability in making life choices."
"Well you're doing a shitty job!"
"Can we PLEASE!" shouted the white Queen and we all got silent. I knew it hadn't been fair to shove the words of the Nexus into the white King's mouth, but at that precise moment I hadn't cared. I knew I was pretty useless and had been this entire time. I was useless to Mellanie and now I was useless to two robots. A ball grew in my throat and I wanted to shut myself in my room and sit there until everything came crashing down on my head like I knew it would. Why was I so freaking pathetic?
"Look," the white Queen said, "Obviously, we've misunderstood each other's abilities, but that's not a reason to get discouraged. If we just put our heads together maybe-"
The front door shook from a violent bang.
We all froze on the spot and turned towards it, pausing for a moment when another bang made it shake. It sounded like someone was throwing themselves repeatedly against the door, not yet hard enough to break it, but eventually I knew the cheap lock wouldn't take that kind of pressure.
"Hide!" the white King said before dissolving down into the size of a chess shape, sitting on the small table by the couch. I couldn't see where the white Queen had landed as another loud bang echoed through the room. Grabbing Mike's laptop, I ran towards my room and shoved myself under my bed. A few loud bangs came from the living room before I heard the sound of the hinges breaking and the door flying open.
