The Girl Who Dared to Stand (The Girl Who Dared #2)(15)

A large, thick cloud of dust erupted from the cushions as they plopped down into them. My eyes immediately began to water, and I had to stand up and move. I sneezed three times on the way to a distant corner, and proceeded to keep sneezing. Uninterrupted. For what felt like an eternity.

The only reward I got was the sound of Grey and Quess both sneezing and hacking and sounding miserable as well, but that did nothing to alleviate the itchy nightmare that made up my nasal passages. After a while, the sneezing began to fade, and I sniffled several times, trying to clear my mucus-blocked nostrils.

“We should probably make a note to clean this room,” Quess said, his voice high and nasal.

“Can’t we make the AI do it?” Grey wheezed hoarsely. “Because if it’s that dusty everywhere, I don’t think any of us will survive without an environmental suit.”

“I would be more than happy to do so,” Scipio said, still standing calmly in the center of the room. The dust particles in the air were interfering slightly with the light beams emitted by the projectors, making the individual strands of light stand out and giving him a prismatic look. “Sadly, I lack actual human appendages. Perhaps if you’d be willing to put your personality into my mainframe, while I inhabit your body…”

Grey’s eyes widened, and he recoiled in horror. “He can’t… You can’t actually do that, can you?”

“What?” Scipio looked around, crestfallen. “Did I mess up? I meant that as a joke. Lionel always said I was bad at jokes.”

“Lionel?” Quess asked, his passages somewhat clearer. He looked over at me quizzically. “He’s mentioned him before. Who’s Lionel?”

“Lionel Scipio,” I muttered, moving back over to the sofa and sitting down.

Quess’s eyes went wide. “You mean, the Founder, Lionel Scipio?” I nodded, and it was as if my words had physically struck him across the face, because he looked around the office, dumbfounded.

All of this was beginning to feel a little insane. A room that was three hundred years old with an AI that was the first version of the one that ruled our lives? One that someone had attempted to “murder,” and yet was still somehow even better than the supposedly superior version?

“Wait, so… is this his office?” Quess looked around and frowned. “I thought his office was upstairs in the Core.”

“The Core wasn’t finished by the time the remnants of humanity came to reside here. The shell, yes, as well as most of the great machines, but the hospital, mainframe—which was later rechristened ‘the Core’—and security offices weren’t completed yet. This has been Lionel’s original office since the beginning, and later, he sealed it off as much as possible to keep it hidden and out of the way, so he could focus on completing me. He couldn’t risk the chance that someone would sabotage me before he was able to copy and replicate me. He needed the program to achieve his vision for the Tower.”

“Sabotage?” I perked up. This was all interesting information. In school, we’d only ever been taught the rudimentary history of the Tower—and never really touched on the internal political atmosphere during that time. In fact… we never discussed it at all, now that I thought about it. The history given to us was devoid of any mention of a group acting in opposition to the Tower, but the existence of one was becoming easier and easier to believe in. After all, in a little over a month, I had found seven people like me. There had to be more—maybe not these days, but definitely in our past.

And if there were any historical groups that hadn’t agreed with Scipio’s role in the Tower, they would’ve tried something.

“Who would want to sabotage you, and why?” I asked. “Is it related to your attempted murder?”

“One and the same, actually, and unless you can find another terminal for me to inhabit, I will have been effectively murdered – it’s only a matter of time. Now, lots of people didn’t like the idea of having an AI in charge, without… firmer methods of control, at the very least. But Lionel was adamant that we be allowed a measure of independence, to find the best possible outcome to any problem while keeping as many humans as possible safe—independent of any council decision. He wanted the AI to be the voice of reason, of practicality, and of hope, but there were others who didn’t like that they could be overruled by a machine. We lost one of the earlier AIs to sabotage, and her code was never recovered, so he had to create her program all over again. It turned out she was unsuitable for the job anyway—her empathy rating was too high to allow for more extreme solutions, and she was determined unfit. However, it’s really quite interesting, because the second version of her was so much more alive than the first. I mean, not that I had any direct interaction with her, but I got to review many of the tests after…” He trailed off, looking around. “Am I talking too much?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I’m extremely interested. I think we all are.” Quess and Grey nodded, and I couldn’t help but smile at the excited looks on their faces.

“Should we start the video file now?” Scipio asked.

“I’m ready!” Quess said excitedly, practically bouncing up and down. “Lionel Scipio dedicated his entire life to making you and the Tower! He basically gave his life for you, right? He died a few weeks or a month after the Core Scipio went online.”