Solaria Series: Solaria Part 6

The instant reply gave her the answer. Clicking on the blinking icon of a griffin's head, Carley watched a window pop open.

"Well, well, what brings you to the dark side of the Net?" a mechanical voice asked.

"You really need to perfect your avatar's voice, Dana. You sound more like an old television robot than a person."

"Not everyone has the resources you have, Carley. Some of us have to make do with whatever we can beg, steal or borrow."

"The last time I remember, you were pretty adept at all those skills."

"Tsk! Tsrk! You're getting jaded, my dear. Now what can I do for you? It's been a long time since you've graced me with your presence."

"I need a favor and quickly."

"How quickly?"

"By tomorrow morning if possible. Hopefully, before I go to the lab."

"And this favor?"

"I need to set up a new ident.i.ty for someone."

"Geez, Carley! You don't want much, do you? That's a complicated process and costly under normal circ.u.mstances."

"I know, but this is important!"

"That's obvious. Why the rush?"

"It's the only way to save this person's life. As it is, I'm afraid mine isn't worth much anymore, especially if I help her."

"Her? She must be special. I've never known you to get so involved with another person. Is she your lover?"

Carley laughed.

"At my age? Don't be ridiculous. She's just a good friend."

"Right! Good friend, huh? Well, whoever she is, she must be extremely important for you to go to these extremes. I'll see what I can do but you'll need to give me a few details about her and a picture... and you're going to owe me big time if I pull this off."

"If I live long enough, anything."

The silence that followed was almost deafening.

"That serious, eh?"

"That serious, Dana. I want you to use the name on the files I'm sending as the primary ident.i.ty and then destroy your copy."

Inserting a micro-disk into her computer, Carley punched a few keys, hit the send b.u.t.ton and waited.

"d.a.m.n, woman, she's gorgeous. Who'd she p.i.s.s off?"

"No one yet, but once she disappears, a lot of people are going to be looking for her. Can you set up the holograms on the I.D.s to make them easily alterable?"

"I can install a subprogram to accept new data if needed."

"You've come a long way, then. I thought only the government had that technology."

"What Big Brother has Little Brother quickly gets. We were able to break that kernel in less than two weeks but I don't think the gov's aware we've gotten this far. Only Hackattack and I know how to do it and we're not telling. Listen, Carley, I can have two sets of I.D. for you."

"I don't think so. If they find one on me, it'll alert them to what's been done and endanger everyone. I think it'd be better if I just try and tough this one out, but I appreciate the offer."

"Well, just in case you change your mind, I'm making up an extra set. If you find you need it, I can get it to you thirty minutes after you call."

"Thanks, Dana. Let me know how much I owe and I'll make arrangements for the funds."

Dana's mechanical voice sounded almost warm as he chuckled.

"Consider it a favor. Anything that p.i.s.ses off Future Dynamicon is payment enough. Now I'd better get to work. Expect the package by five a.m."

"I appreciate it. Oh, one more thing. Do you mind if I give Solaria your access code? She may need an ally."

"If she's a friend of yours, she's family. Later, Carley... and be safe."

Unconsciously, Carley nodded her head and ended the conference. Next she accessed her finances and began moving most of her a.s.sets to an offsh.o.r.e account. Even Future Dynamicon hadn't been able to intimidate the financial inst.i.tutions in a few of the island countries. It insured the stability and security of the governments and the banks. There were plenty of rich and powerful people who could create problems for Stalling if he interfered in their business. Once she finished, she ended the connection.

Sighing, Carley leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The last thing she needed to do was destroy her hard drive, literally. Years of data pertaining to her artificial intelligence research was stored on the drive. Once it was gone, it couldn't be duplicated, not even by her. Still, it was the final link between everything she had accomplished and Solaria. It was going to be a long and sleepless night.

Like clockwork the doorbell to Carley's condo rang at 5AM. When she opened the door she noticed a small box sitting on the welcome mat but no one was in the hallway. Picking it up she opened the container and pulled out a federal I.D. card, driver's license, international pa.s.sport and a note instructing her on how to have Solaria imprint her own biodata on each doc.u.ment. All government identifications required retinal and fingerprint information which was immediately transmitted to the proper bureau for verification if the scans didn't match the individual's cards or pa.s.sport. Knowing Dana, he probably hacked into the Homeland Security records and planted files to insure there were no glitches if someone suspected the I.D.s were fakes. Her longtime friend was extremely good at what he did... and what he did was to be as big a thorn in corporate and government sides as possible; anonymously, of course.

CHAPTER 8.

WHEN CARLEY WALKED into the lab, she noticed Solaria lying on the couch in her office. Putting down her purse, she hurried over to her to see if something was wrong. It was the first time she had ever seen her resting even though she had instructed her to keep doing it.

"Are you okay?"

Opening her eyes, Solaria stared at Carley, blinked twice. Her lips curved into a slight smile.

"I was just practicing relaxing. You're right. It's quite refreshing after long hours of working. It replenishes much of the energies I expended."

"I wondered about that. I know you need to eat to keep your body functioning at optimum level, but wasn't sure if just food was sufficient."

"It provides enough nourishment. It takes a lot to deplete my reserves, but I've found that if I shut down for an hour or two, the cells return to peak performance levels. It's like recharging a battery."

"I know what you mean, but it takes at least six hours for me to do that. Did you get the information we needed?"

"Yes, and more."

Solaria told Carley about hacking into personnel records and then locating Stalling's personal files. They were well encrypted and had taken her several minutes to access. To Solaria, minutes often seemed forever. His notes revealed a great deal about the man and his ambitions. It also included details about the Company's financial records. The most interesting part, though, was a reference to a beta program. One sentence in particular caught her interest. "The next beta will be fully functional in less than two months." The entry was dated two weeks ago.

"It's worse than I thought. There's at least one other Hubot out there. We have to get you out of here," Carley said, and then had an afterthought. "Listen, you said you have access to the Company's financial records?"

"Yes."

"Great! I want you to transfer some of their funds to several account numbers I'm going to give you."

"That would be stealing."

"Let's just call it compensation for all the trouble they're going to cause you in the future. You'll need a.s.sets if you want to stay ahead of these a.s.sholes."

"Carley, why are you doing this?" Solaria asked. "I've spent the last several hours trying to come up with a logical reason and haven't been able to. It's not like I'm a human."

"You spend too much time thinking about what you are, instead of just feeling. This is no longer just about a scientist and an experiment. It's about friendship; our friendship. I've grown fond of you, Solaria."

"Fond?"

"Well, more than fond. That's such a puny sounding word. Let's just say I care a lot about you, and I'm not willing to let Stalling use you to fulfill his own ambitions."

"Did you know what he or the Company was like before now?"

"I suspected."

"And yet you did nothing? Why?"

Carley shrugged.

"It was less personal, I guess. As long as I distanced myself from everyone else, I was contented to focus on my projects. AI development was all that I really cared about."

"But not now? It doesn't seem logical."

"It's not. Then again emotions are never logical. You're going to discover that as you evolve and then you'll have to learn to separate the two. Unfortunately, the more human you become, the harder it will be to do that."

"I will never become human, Carley. No matter how good you are in your field, you can't make me into something I'm not."

"Sorry, I misspoke. I should have said humanlike. You are already exhibiting some of our more fundamental emotions. I believe, in time, others will evolve."

"Perhaps, but they will never be what you hoped for."

"Probably not," Carley agreed. "Then again, they may be even better."

"That doesn't make sense."

"I know. I wish I could explain it but I can't. No matter, though. You've made such a difference in my life. I'm not going to let anyone destroy what we have. Now, enough of this chatter. We're wasting valuable time. I want you to transfer five percent of Future Dynamicon's monetary a.s.sets into three accounts. You need to make sure the transactions can't be traced. Can you do that?"

"That's easy enough. I'll bounce them through multiple servers along with a small Trojan that will back track to the transmitting I.P addresses and destroy them."

"Won't someone be able to tell the IP.s are missing?"

"No, I can subst.i.tute new ones in the time logs where the old ones existed. There will be no perceptible lapses to raise any red flags."

"Good. Here are the routing numbers of the banks and the accounts."

Handing Solaria a small memory card, she unclipped her I.D. from her breast pocket and gave it to her also.

"You'll need to imprint Landers' data on this but not until I say so. For now just see what it will take. Oh, and I have some I.D. cards for you. You can go ahead and get those ready. Make sure you imprint whatever fingerprint and retina image with the new ident.i.ty you want to use. You'll need the doc.u.ments wherever you go and to access those funds."

Without commenting Solaria got up and moved to her computer. Immediately, she began tapping on the keyboard, her fingers flying as fast as the computer could process the input. Fifteen minutes later, she surprised Carley by announcing she had completed her ch.o.r.es.

"It's a good thing you'll be leaving here soon," Carley said. "If the Company were to utilize your skills, no one would be safe. Stalling could do anything he wanted."

"I would destroy myself before I allowed anyone to abuse me that way."

"If you got the chance, but don't underestimate him, Solaria. Stalling is extremely smart and tenacious. What he wants he usually gets no matter what the cost... in money or in lives."

"I will destroy myself. Have no doubt about that, Carley. I've already written a subprogram that will destroy all of my processors within seconds after activation. Nothing can stop it once I enter the proper code and no one can possibly intervene more quickly than I can unlock the self-destruct program."

"I believe you. Just make sure you don't do anything unless it's the last resort. I'd hate to think my greatest accomplishment might end up as a store mannequin or something."

Solaria realized she was being teased and smiled.

"Mannequin? I think not! Womannequin maybe. Then I'd at least get to spend my time with human females."

Carley noticed it was the second time Solaria expressed an interest in women over men and displayed a real sense of humor.

"I think you are turning into a lesbian," she joked. "And I'm sure it's not due to anything I wrote into your initial program."

"I don't think there's too much of that left now, but I'm not sure what to make of these ideas about women. It's something I'm going to have to explore further when I have the time."

"Good for you. If nothing else, it'll enhance your life experiences and you'll be more informed once you do decide what you want. Now, we still have a lot of things to do so we'd better get started."

The rest of the day was spent finalizing the details of Solaria's escape and setting up plans. Solaria practiced altering her features until she was able to make the change instantly. She then ran a few practice scans using the lab S.I.A.R.D security panel to make sure there were no glitches. Once, the system accepted her as Peggy Landers, Solaria deleted the entry in the mainframe to prevent anyone from discovering the deception at a later time. Satisfied they had done all they could to insure a successful escape, Carley wished Solaria a goodnight and left. She wanted to take a good look at the security checkpoints to make sure she hadn't missed anything.

The next morning started out like every other. The scientist entered the lab, greeted Solaria and then checked her memos. One in particular caught her interest. The sound of a hand slamming on the desk distracted Solaria from her concentration.

"What happened?" she asked, making eye contact with Carley.

"It's time," Carley replied, regaining her composure. "Stalling is removing me from the project effective tomorrow. You need to be out of here by tonight. Take my I.D. and make the necessary changes. I want you gone by lunch. There's a lot of activity going on then so it'll be harder for the cameras to spot you. We need to make sure Peggy's not here. That could pose a problem."

Solaria did a quick check of the personnel records and found the scientist had started her leave the day before.

"Good. I'll report my card missing when I check out tonight. It'll give you a several hour head start."