Spark: A Novel

  Sitting on the floor, I listened to Emily’s body move around on the mattress. Street light came through the windows on the other side of the room and I could see her face. After a while, her breathing became slow and regular. Her lips opened slightly and her eyes moved beneath her eyelids as if she was watching someone within a dream.

  My Spark analyzed the situation several times and produced the same conclusion: there was no logical reason not to kill her. If I didn’t follow instructions, Lorcan would show up in the morning and do the job.

  I took off my shoes so that the plank floor wouldn’t creak, then stood up, walked over to the pencil machine, and took out the semiautomatic pistol that I had concealed in the housing. The gun had a rail-mounted laser sight and I switched it on with my trigger finger as I returned to the bed.

  The red laser dot burned its way across the floor, and then it drifted up onto the mattress and touched Emily’s leg. It felt as if my Spark had left my body, and now it was floating around like a firefly, touching Emily’s neck and, finally, settling on a spot directly above her left ear.

  I told my finger to pull the trigger, but it refused to obey. Standing beside her body, I could hear her breathing and her humanness flowed toward me in waves. And I wanted more, so I leaned over and smelled the nape of her neck and it was green—forest green—and glowing as if sunlight was pushing through the leaves of a tree.

  Pull the trigger. Now.

  Instead, I turned away from the bed, switched off the laser, and retreated to the bathroom. Red light from the Yangtze Restaurant sign oozed through the frosted-glass window and gave a pink tint to the porcelain sink.

  Since my Transformation I had created an existence that was simple, clear, and logical. But something had changed. I had showed Emily the film about Baxter and she had told me the story of her life. Every Human Unit wandered through reality with its own story. Now I had absorbed a fragment of her past.

  I touched the yellowed newspaper pages that covered the mirror, then ripped them away and let the pieces flutter onto the floor. Placing my hands on the edge of the sink I leaned forward and stared at my face. My body was still a Shell, but now my eyes had lost their deadness. They radiated energy on the lower frequencies—energy that could never be detected by a machine.

  At around five o’clock in the morning, the night sky lost its dark power and began to radiate a soft blue color. Three patches of sunlight appeared on the floor beneath the windows, and these hazy rectangles extended themselves like columns toward the bed, where Emily lay sleeping.

  My current existence was unstable because of this Human Unit. Emily’s mouth was slightly open and her dyed-black hair was wayward and tangled. Her left hand curled slightly as if she was trying to hold on to something. I had saved her life, but perhaps that was a meaningless decision. Lorcan would show up at the loft in a few hours. When he discovered that Emily was still alive, he would take control and finish my assignment.

  I walked over to the kitchen table and switched on my computer. First I checked for e-mail, then I went onto the We Speak for Freedom Web site created by Thomas Slater and made sure that the stolen files from the Pradhani Group still hadn’t been posted.

  “Good morning …” Edward’s butler voice made me feel like he was about to serve tea on a tray. “Would you like a weather report for the New York metropolitan area?”

  “Not now. Please provide information about the computer expert Thomas Slater.”

  Within a few seconds, Edward came up with links to over forty articles. Emily had sent the stolen files to someone who was faceless: the most powerful ghost on the Internet.

  When Thomas Slater was a graduate student studying computer science at Princeton, he invented the “Slater Gates”—a routing system that helped shape the Internet. Eventually he became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he wrote a famous essay called “The Decision and the Choice.” Slater compared machine decisions generated by computational activity and human choices that used nonmathematical factors such as moral values and emotions.

  The issues described in “The Decision and the Choice” motivated Slater’s decadelong attempt to design an artificial emotion program. The program was a crucial step in creating a machine that would duplicate human consciousness. Slater appeared on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine with the headline: WILL THIS MAN TEACH COMPUTERS HOW TO CRY?

  Slater had never been married, but six years ago he went to a dinner party and met Helen McClatchy, an Irishwoman who once worked as a Dublin crime reporter. McClatchy had written a series of articles about the local drug lords, and then was almost killed when a bomb blew up her car. After a long period of physical therapy, she moved to the States and bought two guard dogs. As a birthday gift for his new girlfriend, Slater designed a software program that pretended to translate dog sounds into human language. All you had to do was point a phone at your pet and get him to bark. Seconds later, phrases like “I’m hungry!” or “Let’s go for a walk!” appeared on the phone’s display screen.

  Slater put the program up on a Web site called Your Pet Talks and it began to get views from people all over the world. Eventually, he sold the site for millions of dollars and donated some of the money to groups that defended free speech. He published two political essays—“Machine Thinking” and “Against Authority”—but it was the Day of Rage that transformed his life. When Congress passed the Freedom from Fear Act, Slater became part of the “Fear Not” group that marched on Washington. He was arrested in front of the White House and spent two months in a Good Citizen camp. After he was released, a virus appeared on the Internet that deleted every tagged digital photograph of Slater that was stored on an accessible database. The only image of the former professor that kept appearing was a scanned photo taken from a book that had been published fourteen years ago.

  This was the man who had received the stolen files from Emily. Was there any way he could be persuaded to give them back?

  I switched off the computer, checked Emily’s phone, and discovered text messages and e-mails from Sean.

  // Are you safe?

  // Call me.

  // If I don’t hear from you by 9 a.m., I’m contacting the police.

  “What are you doing?” Emily was awake and sitting up in bed.

  “I’m reading your messages. Sean will call the police if he doesn’t hear from you.”

  “Let me handle that problem. You can read the message before I send it.”

  I brought the phone over to the bed and gave her the phone. Emily typed some words with her thumb.

  // I’m safe. Don’t call anyone. E.

  I took the phone back and slipped it into my shirt pocket. “Did you sleep well?”

  “It was okay. I woke up once and watched you for a while. Your eyes were closed and you didn’t move. You looked like a bot charging its battery.”

  “Sleep isn’t important to me.”

  “Lucky you. Right now I feel like I’ve got a hangover, which is weird because I didn’t drink any alcohol last night.”

  I sat on the edge of the mattress, and then stood up immediately. It was uncomfortable to feel the warmth from her body. Emily held the pillow to her chest as I circled the bed.

  “Jafar sent you information about the Pradhani family, but he also sent three coded files.”

  “That’s right. I saw them during the download.”

  “These files are very important to Alexander Serby. And because of that, Miss Holquist … the woman you talked to last night … told me to kill you. A man named Lorcan Tate is going to show up later on this morning to pick up your body.”

  Emily glanced at the door as if Lorcan was about to burst into the loft. “Then we should get out of here as soon as possible.”

  “Running away is only a short-term solution. They’ll find you eventually.”

  “A short-term solution is better than being dead.”

  “I checked We Speak for Freedom and the stolen
information still isn’t up on the Web site. Maybe they haven’t figured out how to read the encoded files. Could you contact Thomas Slater and get the files back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Slater is famous for living off the grid. Have you ever talked to him?”

  “Twice … using FaceTime. Sean’s growler friend Tech slept with a daughter of Ned who knew a hacker named C-Section who gave me a phone number in Stockholm. Of course Slater isn’t really in Sweden. The call passes through different servers. He could be living in this building.”

  “We have two or three hours. See if you can contact him.”

  Emily took a tablet computer out of her canvas shoulder bag and placed it on the kitchen table. Her call took about a minute to work its way through various Web sites and servers. Then a bot voice—mechanical and precise—delivered a message: “Leave a message if you wish, but we rarely call back.”

  “Mr. Slater, this is Emily Buchanan calling on Monday at seven twenty-two a.m. East Coast time. I’ve got a serious problem and need to talk to you as soon as possible.” She ended the call and looked up at me.

  “Now what?”

  “We wait.”

  “It would be easier to deal with this if I had a cup of coffee and some blueberry muffins.”

  “What about a bottle of ComPlete?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sounds delicious.”

  I took two bottles from the cupboard and we consumed the necessary nutrition together.

  Emily kept glancing at the door.

  “So why didn’t you kill me?”

  I decided not to tell her that she created a glowing green color in my mind. “I don’t really know. It wasn’t a rational choice.”

  “So what happens if it becomes rational? Do you pull the trigger?”

  “Right now I feel like I’m in a foreign country without my Shadows. I don’t know the rules and I can’t speak the language. All I can do is—”

  Emily’s computer beeped and the phone app showed that an unregistered number was trying to contact her. She activated FaceTime and an image appeared on the screen—not a face, but a plaid shirt, arms, hands.

  “Hello, Emily.” It was a man’s voice. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “The bank found out what happened. There’s some important information on the three encoded files, and they’re very angry with me.”

  “What are you—”

  “Let me finish. There’s a man here from the bank named Underwood. He has a gun.”

  Before I could stop her, she picked up the tablet with two hands, pointed it at me, then moved her arms slowly and gave Slater a complete image of the entire room.

  “I sent you a flash drive. Someone is going to kill me if you don’t give it back.”

  “I understand,” Slater said. “So where are you, Emily?”

  “New York City.”

  “Will Mr. Underwood let you go somewhere alone, then return with the flash drive?”

  “No.”

  “He says—”

  “I heard him,” Slater said. “I can meet you and Mr. Underwood, but it’s not going to be in the city.”

  “That’s acceptable,” I said.

  “Give me a few minutes and I’ll text you a location and a meeting time.”

  Slater typed a command on the keyboard and the FaceTime chat was over. Emily stood up and pushed back her hair. “Do we have enough time for me to take a shower?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Emily skated across the smooth floor in her stocking feet. When she reached the bathroom door, she stopped and smiled at me. “For some reason I like you, Underwood. And that’s a little bit crazy, because you almost killed me. But life is like Dice Night at Crawley’s bar. You never know what number they’re going to pull out of the bucket.”

  I waited until I heard the shower running, and then I called Miss Holquist. Her phone rang for a long time before she answered.

  “Lorcan just rented a van at the airport,” she said. “If the merchandise is still flexible, he’ll tie it up with rope and carry it out in a large suitcase.”

  “She’s not dead.”

  “What?”

  “I figured out a way to get the files. Emily and I are driving to another location. She’ll retrieve the flash drive from Thomas Slater.”

  There was another long silence. I heard waltz music in the background and realized that Miss Holquist was sitting in the bleachers at the ice rink, watching her daughter skate.

  “I get annoyed when my employees don’t obey my instructions.”

  “You told me that our goal was to get the files back. I’m trying to solve that problem.”

  Another pause. The waltz music changed to a saxophone solo.

  “All right. It’s worth a try. Stay with your target the entire time. If she tries to run away from you, then—”

  “I know what to do,” I said, and switched off the phone.

  A minute later, the bathroom door creaked open and Emily came out drying her hair with my only bath towel. “You actually have hot water. That’s a pleasant surprise. Now all I need is a cup of coffee.”

  “Get your boots on. We’ve got to get out of here before Lorcan shows up with a suitcase.”

  By the time we reached the car, Emily received an e-mail that said:

  // 1300 hrs. Today.

  Attached to the message was a Google image of the parking lot at the Westerly, Rhode Island, train station.

  We left Chinatown and headed north on the parkway. There was a lot of traffic in both directions and it felt as if I was fighting my way through an obstacle course of delivery vans and tractor-trailer trucks. Finally, we turned onto the interstate highway and crossed the border into Connecticut.

  The trees lining the thruway were bare and shivery from the wind. We stopped to buy gasoline in West Haven, and then took a bridge across a tidal estuary to a harbor with clapboard houses and sailboats resting on sawhorses. Gulls circled around a fishing boat, cutting through the cold air, as a man wearing green boots dumped a gunnysack onto the wharf. Something was alive inside the sack, and it pushed and wiggled and flopped around. That was my future—an unseen creature fighting to get out.

  Trucks in the left lane roared past us. In the distance, a church steeple jabbed at the sky. About four hours after leaving the city, we saw the signs for Westerly and Laura guided me to the train-station parking lot.

  I parked the car facing the arrival platform and, a few minutes later, a train clattered into the station and let out several people carrying shopping bags or pushing wheeled suitcases. It took only a few minutes for them to get into cars and taxis, and then we were left alone.

  One o’clock came and passed. Nothing happened. But around one-thirty a mud-splattered Toyota Land Cruiser pulled into the lot and a middle-aged woman got out. Helen McClatchy’s photograph could still be found on the Internet and I recognized her right away. She was a stocky, solid-looking woman with a broad face and frizzy hair. Perhaps she had been stylish and slender as a young journalist, but now she looked like an Irish farmer who slaughtered pigs.

  “That’s Slater’s girlfriend,” I said. “Let’s go talk to her.”

  We got out of the car and Helen approached Emily. “Are you the young lady I’m looking for?”

  “Yes, I’m Emily Buchanan.”

  “Helen McClatchy.” Helen shook Emily’s hand, then turned to me. “And you must be the little ferret from the bank.”

  “All I want is—”

  “I know what you want … the files. So shut your mouth and follow directions.” Helen turned to Emily. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Once you walk down this road, it’s hard to go back.”

  “I’ve made my choice.”

  “Good. That’s the right answer. I’m in love with a man who worships free choice.” Helen slapped her hands together and headed toward the Land Cruiser. “All right. That’s enough chatter. Leave your car her
e. You’re both coming with me.”

  She led us across the parking lot and I saw two black dogs sitting in the storage area of the Land Cruiser. Both had massive heads, cropped ears, and powerful legs and shoulders. I remembered reading about the car bomb that had almost killed Helen. This breed was a large enough guard dog to take on any intruder.

  Emily smiled at the dogs. “Mastiffs?”

  “Yes. They’re Cane Corsos … Italian mastiffs. We named the male Newton, after Isaac Newton. The bitch is called Hildy—which is short for Saint Hildegard of Bingen. She’s one of my heroes.” Helen reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out two bandanas, and offered one to me. “You need to put this over your eyes.”

  “No.”

  “It’s just temporary. You’re going to meet the man no one gets to meet. I don’t want either of you to find out where we live.”

  “I don’t care who he is. I’m not going to wear a blindfold.”

  Emily took one of the bandanas and began to fold it into a strip. “This is no big deal, Jacob. I’ll put on a blindfold. You can just lie flat on the backseat so you can’t look out the windows. Is that okay, Helen?”

  “I’ll be glancing into the rearview mirror,” Helen told me. “If you look at anything other than your nose, I’m turning around and we’re returning to the train station.”

  “That sounds reasonable, Jacob. Don’t you agree? You’ll still have your guns.”

  Helen raised her eyebrows. “He’s got more than one?”

  Emily placed the blindfold over her eyes and sat beside Helen. I got into the back of the car and lay on the seat. Helen started the engine and the Land Cruiser splashed through puddles on the way out of the parking lot. Newton and Hildy gazed down at me with their massive heads and black muzzles. These dogs weren’t like Baxter, and my right hand touched the weapons concealed beneath my clothing. The nine-millimeter automatic was held in a paddle holster that was clipped inside my waistband. I carried the .38 Special in the ankle holster.