Grady almost reflexively ran his hand over his scalp but stopped before he injured his hand. “Yes. I’d like my thoughts to be my own again.”
“You sound young. How long have you been a prisoner, son?”
Grady concentrated on that. “I don’t know. I was brought here… it was sometime in 2016, I think. I’m fairly certain. After the…” The trail of his memory ended there.
“Well, then you are the newest prisoner we have found thus far. I am certain the others will want to hear of current events in the outside world.”
“Others? There are more of you?”
“Yes. We call ourselves the Resistors.”
“I saw your symbol.”
“Then you are an electrical engineer?”
“Sort of. A physicist really. Among other things.”
“Renaissance people are very common here—those whose ambitions do not fit neatly within the categories of society.” There was a pause. “But I’ve been quite rude. Let me introduce myself. My name is Archibald Chattopadhyay, nuclear physicist and researcher. I also have an abiding passion for Greek poetry—but I suspect the former, not the latter, was the reason for my incarceration.”
Grady laughed. “Good to meet you, Mr. Chattopadhyay.”
“Do call me Archie. Everyone does.”
“Okay, Archie.” Grady grimaced in concentration. “My name… I’m pretty certain it’s Jon. The AI called me that. I’m not sure about my last name. Maybe Gordon? Or Garrison?”
“You are an Anglo then—American from your accent.”
“Yes. That sounds right.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Jon. We’ll obtain your true identity from your cell support system.” He paused. “But we will also need to give you medical attention. You must have consistently refused to cooperate. In such situations interrogatory AIs attempt to isolate you from your past, to break down your reasons for resistance. In my experience such strategies seldom work. The human psyche runs deeper than our four dimensions.”
“I’ve been hearing a lot of that sort of thing.”
“Consciousness is more durable than they believe. And you are safe now, Jon. We will never abandon you now that we’ve found you.”
Grady felt suddenly emotional—whether from post-traumatic stress or some other cause he couldn’t tell. He started breathing fitfully. “May I join your group, Archie?”
“You are one of us already, or we would not have found you.”
Grady nodded to himself. “I want to learn everything I can. I want to get back at these bastards.”
“For what reason did the BTC imprison you?”
“My mentor and I developed a gravity mirror. A way to redirect gravitation.”
There was a low whistle. “Oh my. I am most honored indeed to meet you, my friend. What a wonder that must be. And what was your mentor’s name?”
“Doctor Bertrand Alcot.”
“Hmm. I do not know of him. Certainly he is not among us, but we have only located a small minority of the prison’s cells. Rest assured we will do everything within our power to locate Doctor Alcot.”
Grady felt reassured. “Good. Strange how I can recall Bert’s name so easily, but not my own.”
“Not at all strange. These AIs eliminate specific memories. Some people have no memory of their wedding or their children, but complete recall about the contents of their automobile glove compartment.”
“Why did the BTC lock you up, Archie?”
“I had the misfortune to perfect nuclear fusion back in 1985.”
Grady frowned. “Nuclear fusion? But…”
“Yes?”
“The head of the BTC, this Graham Hedrick guy, he—”
“Claims he invented fusion.”
“Yeah.”
“This is one consequence of unaccountable power. Graham Hedrick was born into the BTC. He did not join it. His father was head of their biotech division in the ’70s and ’80s. He clawed his way to the directorship and now seeks to revise his own past as well as ours.”
“How the hell can he do that?”
“Compartmentalization is deeply ingrained in the BTC. Very few in the organization have the whole picture. And a policy known as ‘The Necessary Lie’ makes it even easier. Deceit is viewed as necessary to ‘protect against social disruption.’ That gives Hedrick broad discretion to perfect his own history—to make himself a legendary figure with work he’s appropriated from others. Those who know the truth have been disposed of—or, like me, sent to Hibernity. It was Hedrick who urged the previous director to build this prison—because he wanted to erase me.”
“That son of a bitch. He actually claimed he invented fusion.”
“I am more concerned with future generations than my own scientific credits.”
Grady looked over at Junior coiled on the floor next to him. “You said you took over the AI in your cell. How did you do that?”
“I had a great deal of time on my hands. And a strong incentive not to let these damn AIs get ahold of my mind. Back in the ’80s the AIs were not as capable as they are now. The equipment not as reliable. There were weaknesses that no longer exist. But once I had control of my cell, I set about finding other prisoners. Organizing us. And now, decades later, we have taken over whole sections of Hibernity. Turning the machinery against the guards. The security turrets, the surveillance cameras, and many other systems. The guards do not dare walk their own prison now, for they have no idea which of their machines are trustworthy and which are not.”
“Hedrick allows this?”
“In order to ‘allow’ it, Director Hedrick would need to know about it. And he does not. Hibernity’s systems are monitored from BTC headquarters. No alarms ever sound there. We have the power to make wardens of this prison look very incompetent if we wish. And the garrison is considered quite expendable—most of them are clones of some notable commando.”
“I met the guy they’re copied from. Morrison.”
“Yes. The guards very much resent their lowly status and the ubiquitous surveillance by AIs. Any discharge of their weapons is carefully tracked. Trouble must be explained to their superiors. No, we have far more leverage over them than they over us. They are, thus, complicit in our charade that Hibernity is fully under BTC control. And by making them look good, they in turn inform us in advance of inspections and internal reviews.”
“But what about the research data these interrogation AIs are supposedly producing? Doesn’t anyone at BTC headquarters ever look at it?”
“They read reports. We’ve tasked our AIs with falsifying reports. And new orders are issued from BTC headquarters based on those findings. Orders that are never carried out. And so the cycle repeats. Sadly, we can only falsify our own AI’s reports, and I fear that the majority of prisoners here in Hibernity are subject to actual research.”
“Do you ever consider—”
“Escape?”
“Yes. If you’re so organized—if you’ve taken over parts of the prison and gotten the cooperation of the guards…”
“Gaining control of our cells and portions of the prison is one thing. Effecting escape from Hibernity another entirely. It is not sufficient for just one of us to escape. And we are, all of us, encased in hundreds of feet of solid rock. Even the guards do not know where our cells are or how numerous we are. It is a secret known by very few. I am nearly a thousand feet below ground by my estimation. We have so far been unable to get our physical bodies out of these interrogation modules. They have a shell of aggregated diamond nanorods that’s a hundred and fifty times harder than steel. When the prisoner is sealed in, the shell is sunken into molten rock, and then a probe burns its way to the surface to create a narrow pressure channel—the same tube that my polymer worm followed to you. But that narrow conduit is all that connects us to the outside world. And we lack any material capable of penetrating our prison wall.”