But she didn’t turn on the first block or the second or even the third. When she came to the fourth corner, she crossed against the light — there was no traffic, and she didn’t even have to pause. Ghadab continued on the opposite side, watching out of the corner of his eye as she went down the block, turning onto a side street.
I’ve come this far. Why not?
He waited a moment, then crossed. He remembered the feel of Shadaa’s hips.
God sent her as an angel, to give me a glimpse of what waits.
Small stores, cafés, and bars clustered on the next block. Picking up his pace, Ghadab saw her go up the steps to a bar that called itself Angels Hideout.
Surely that was a sign, he thought. Ordinarily he would never go into a bar, but surely that was a sign.
His hand trembled as he put it on the rail going up the steps. He was more nervous than he’d been at the airport.
The noise hit him like a physical thing, pounding at his head. He’d been in places like this before, in Europe, in Argentina, yet this felt completely new, unknown. The interior was divided in half, with tables on the right and a long bar on the left. It was a college hangout; undoubtedly many of the patrons were underage, though clearly no one cared.
The place smelled sweet. Ghadab walked to the far end of the bar before turning and scanning the crowd. She’d sat at a booth alone close to the front of the room. He’d taken a step in her direction, debating how he might introduce himself, when a young man about her age came up from the back and sat across from her.
Ghadab stepped back to the bar, watching. The girl put her hand on the man’s hand; he didn’t remove it.
“Whatcha gettin’?” the bartender asked.
It took Ghadab a moment to realize the question was meant for him.
“Seltzer,” he said.
“Somethin’ in it?”
“No.”
“Lime?”
Ghadab shook his head. The man stepped away. Ghadab looked back at the table but his view was blocked by a waitress.
“Two bucks,” said the bartender, sliding a tumbler toward him.
Ghadab reached into his pocket and fished out a five-dollar bill.
So this is what we must have looked like, he thought, watching across the room as the couple talked. The girl seemed reserved, formal — as Shadaa was. She sat with her back straight against the bench. He liked that; she had virtue.
The boy — they were all alike, Westerners. He was trying to get her into bed, clearly: Look how he pets her hand.
Ghadab couldn’t blame him. But she wasn’t having it.
She laughed, and the laugh stung Ghadab.
His thoughts turned dark. He would kill her in the worst way possible.
Ghadab missed something. In the moment he’d blinked, the girl had gotten out of her seat and begun to walk away. She was upset. The boy didn’t follow.
She walked like Shadaa.
Ghadab left the drink and money on the bar and started outside, dodging a group of men as they entered. One of the men didn’t like something about the way he looked or moved and put his hand out as if to stop him; Ghadab tightened his eyes into a glare. He had a folding knife in his pocket, but it wasn’t necessary: the young man moved out of the way with a sneer. Ghadab brushed past.
You’ll be dead soon anyway.
The girl turned to the right when she reached the sidewalk. Ghadab started to follow, his pace gradually increasing.
His heart began to pound. He needed her now. He would have her now.
He quickened his pace. She was a half block ahead, ten yards, five. Ghadab glanced left and right. They were alone.
She crossed the street, angling toward a set of porch steps. Ghadab slipped his hand into his pocket, grabbing the knife as he stepped off the curb.
A horn blared. He jerked back as a car swept up behind him. A college-aged student was leaning out the driver’s side window, cursing at him.
“Hey, asshole!” shouted the kid.
Before Ghadab could react, the night erupted with a blue strobe light. A police car was just down the street.
Run!
Ghadab took a step back to the sidewalk, unsure what to do. He slid the knife back into his pocket. The car that had nearly hit him stopped abruptly. The police car pulled up behind his left bumper, blocking traffic in both directions.
“You all right?” asked the policeman as he got out.
“Yes,” said Ghadab.
The cop motioned with his hand, thumbing back in the direction of the bar. Then he walked toward the car he’d just stopped.
Go! Go!
Ghadab put his head down and walked swiftly away.
This was a warning. I need to focus on only my mission. I must move quickly, before I make another mistake.
93
Some people watched TV to relax. Massina worked out problems.
Or tried to anyway. And the problem that he kept coming back to was Peter.
The bot and its autonomous brain had been their biggest success story… until he became Hamlet, thinking rather than doing.
Why? It wasn’t a mechanical problem, nor an error in coding as far as either concept was generally understood. The bot had chosen to think rather than act.
Was it afraid?
Massina dismissed the notion out of hand — machines did not know fear. The bot considered the possibility that it would be damaged every time it was given a task, but even an assessment of 100 percent would not prevent it from carrying out a task. And neither in Syria nor in any of the exercises had the probability of destruction come close to that.
He wasn’t necessarily thinking about danger. He was running memory routines against present simulations — essentially comparing his history to his present situation. Which made sense: it was a way to find a solution to a problem. Except he didn’t solve out the solution and act on it.
Was he thinking about who he was?
Literally, yes.
It took Chelsea several hours to change the base parameters Socrates used to conduct its searches; inserting the new programming with the requisite debugging took two more. But the change yielded immediate results — the computer matched a cash withdrawal at an ATM near a hunting store in suburban Montreal, and from that match, discovered a pair of credit cards used to buy clothes. Chelsea had just off-loaded details of the clothes — three of the bar codes included reasonably detailed descriptions — when Massina surprised her.
“I thought you went home,” he said, looking over her shoulder.
“Not yet,” she said.
“I have an odd theory about RBT PJT 23-A,” said Massina. “I’m wondering if he’s becoming self-aware.”
“It knows where it is.”
“True, but more than that — gaining another level of introspection. Why it doesn’t act?”
“How would we test that?”
Massina shook his head, as if he were apologizing. “I haven’t figured it out yet.” He shrugged, honestly unsure but clearly intrigued by the problem.
“It’s philosophy more than coding,” said Chelsea.
“No, it’s always coding. We just haven’t caught up with him yet.” Massina’s wry smile changed to something more serious. The intrigued wizard disappeared, morphing into the concerned and rigorous boss. “What are you working on?”
“I had an idea,” said Chelsea. “We’ve gone back and figured out some clothes Ghadab might have been wearing. If we can match that to visuals, maybe surveillance cameras—”
“We? You and the program?”
“Socrates.”