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Charles: As he s been for an hour now. The complex was nearly two
hundred thousand square feet. That was a lot of territory to search,
and too many possible hiding places. We re ready to go. Continued search-
ing is counterproductive. Once we seal the building which was already
sealed, except for the loading dock Brent won t be going anywhere.
Have-Mercy looked about uncertainly, out of the loop and doubt-
less puzzled that the three of them were just standing there.
Morgan, stubbornly: Okay, we ll go, but why shouldn t the others keep
looking for now? It s insurance, in case Cleary tries something we didn t think
of. And it gives us a rear guard.
Brent come up with something they hadn t anticipated? That was
patent nonsense, verging on ancestor worship. Charles sent: We ll need
a way to recall your rear guard.
Understood. Morgan added Have-Mercy to the link. Merry, after we go
we d like to maintain comm with the rear guards here. What s your recom-
mendation?
Merry: Reconnect a router to an incoming fiber-optic cable. Once we leave
the WiMax outage zone in and around Utica, the comm path opens: from our
specs to any functioning WiMax tower onto the Internet. The reconnected ca-
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SMALL MI RACLES
ble brings the Internet into the building, and then it s WiFi and specs as usual
for the guards.
Morgan: Excellent. But first shut down WiFi all around the core of the
building. If anyone in the auditorium has a WiFi-enabled phone, we don t
want them to signal out.
Merry: Can do. So shall I?
It was clear enough how Morgan wanted to proceed and that
Morgan would defer, however unhappily, to Charles s decision. The
transition of leadership had already begun. This was, Charles decided,
a moment to be magnanimous. Do it, Merry.
In minutes, the router connection was restored and tested. The
building periphery had Internet access again. The search for Brent con-
tinued. And Charles, one on one, reconfirmed with Morgan that noth-
ing and no one could interrupt the final cleanup.
Morgan and Have-Mercy hopped onto one of the snowmobiles.
Charles took another. The building sealed behind them, they raced
away, engines growling, in separate directions across the snowy park
to new lives.
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friday, 3:30 P.M., january 20, 2017
After Kim left, more adrenaline surged through Brent s veins. He raged
and strained against his bonds. Without breaking him/them free, One s
latest intervention added to his bruises.
One might have released endorphins against the pain; One chose to
do nothing. Brent asked for endorphins; again, it did nothing.
Instead, it sulked.
Brent s head pounded. His arms and legs ached from being held in
one position. His rear end was petrified from the hard floor. His wrists
chafed from their bonds. His cheeks hurt like hell where the tape gag
tugged at his beard. He was hungry, thirsty, and needed to pee. An ear
began to itch, and then his nose again.
Okay, so One didn t sulk. To sulk required the taking of offense, and
One had no emotions, no values, beyond personal survival. Its silence,
and the suffering it permitted, sent a message: defy me again at your peril.
Or perhaps the only meaning was: try harder.
The longer Brent waited, the more aches, pains, itches, and urges
manifested themselves. He was powerless, and One unwilling, to do
anything about them. When Brent tried to divert himself with some
of the infinitesimal fraction but still many gigabytes of the Internet
downloaded into One s processors, One responded, simply, No.
The punishment wasn t quite sensory deprivation, because Brent
could hardly plan an escape while cut off from his senses. The silent
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SMALL MI RACLES
treatment and the withholding of mental stimulus were meant to fo-
cus him on escape. Part of him tried.
And part of him, in the neglected recesses of the mind that re-
mained wholly his, was able, for the first time in a long time, to make
itself noticed. The imagery it dredged up wounded far more deeply
than any physical complaint.
The lives he had usurped. The blood spilled today. The plague of
transformations the dispersed Emergent would soon unleash. The
crime wave about to be launched, to finance a bot factory in some
Third World haven.
And he had begun it all, sanctioned it all.
Not Griffiss, countered the cool, dispassionate part of Brent most in-
tegrated with One. Others made that decision and overruled you.
Even that was a rationalization. He had transformed Charles and
Morgan and many of the rest. He had agreed to various contingency
plans, and acquiesced to more, and turned a blind eye to yet others the
group might consider, just in case.
For what further atrocities did his creations lay plans just in case
even now?
With bombs and robots and cyberattacks, small groups waged war
against nations. Equip an insurgency with Emergent minds, bulletproof
nanosuits, and Morgan s counterterrorism expertise and things could
get very ugly, very quickly.
Feeling closer to human than he had in weeks, Brent wept.
Kim watched two figures methodically explore the factory floor. A
third checked out the R & D area, disappearing and reappearing cycli-
cally at the ends of successive office aisles.
Brent was right: a search was underway. Barring some change in the
search pattern, she had perhaps twenty minutes before Brent was dis-
covered. Fewer, if there were searchers she had yet to spot.
Her spying had revealed yet another problem: the searchers wore
nanosuits. They didn t use them in camo mode, perhaps so they wouldn t
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EDWARD M. LERNER
surprise each other. If they found her, her nanosuit wouldn t offer any
advantage.
She stood stock still, a yellow suit against a yellow wall. When both
factory searchers happened to face away, she rushed on tiptoe to the
side area where factory supervisors had their offices. Room by room
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