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Commodore Holly Short didn’t get to go topside that often anymore. Increasingly, the chains of responsibility kept her slaving away in an office at Police Plaza, but not even bureaucracy could hold Holly Short completely. Not yet anyway. So it was that the cold December sea breeze bit at her exposed cheeks at 11:59 at night. She soared above Dublin, shielded of course, on her way to Villa Éco. She could see the warm glow of lights on the island in the distance, shrouded slightly by a thin, wispy mist that clung near the surface of the Irish Sea around it. It was just Artemis and Butler home that night – the parents had taken Myles and Beckett on a cruise. Something about getting them to go on less dangerous adventures. The backdoor Foaly had provided into the LEP’s surface communications network had made things substantially easier, but there were things that just weren't the same in a hologram. Like a hug.
A pleasant, quiet evening was on Holly’s mind as she backed off the power for a smooth, gentle landing when at midnight, almost to the second, Dalkey Island disappeared into the black of the moonlit sea. The villa seemed to flicker out of existence, then slowly faded back in, bathed in the dim, crimson glow of emergency lights as they came online.
Instantly, she knew in her gut something wasn’t right. She abandoned all hopes of a pretty approach, pushing the Z7 wings’ power lever right up to the stops and notching them over and up into combat power. She dove to waist height over the gentle lapping of Dublin Bay. The wings threw up flecks of frigid ocean, and ice began to accumulate on her visor as freezing water impacted it. She tasted salt but felt only a dreadful butterfly.
Holly arced over the wall of the villa’s compound at eighty kilometres an hour, first flying up, then rolling on her back, and diving back down. She slammed the power lever into full reverse, and the wings came out like parachutes, slowing her landing to something that was still far from smooth, but not painful. She landed on three points and reached for her holster. It was empty. Out of habit, she’d assumed she was armed, but now she recalled leaving her Neutrino behind to dodge the sign-out paperwork.
There was no time to worry about that. Her training took over, and she took cover behind the Fowl Bentley as her wings folded away. She did a quick inventory: she had her wings, a moonbelt, an omni-tool – new model with communicator capability – and a couple of chem lights. As first responder kits go, she could summarise it as ‘lacking’. This from a former LEPTraffic officer sent into the worst, most violent parts of Haven without even a baton.
Holly sighed heavily and rested against the Bentley’s front left wheel for a moment. She couldn’t just wait outside. Not when she couldn’t be sure Artemis and Butler weren’t in trouble.
Carefully peering over the car’s hood, she studied the villa’s walls. Normally a stucco beige, the lights stained them red. Holly crouched back down, shut her eyes, and tried to visualise the villa. It had been so long. The entryway led to a wide hall, then on the left in the Martello tower, Artemis’s new study, on the right, Butler’s room, then further…Holly couldn’t recall. She drummed her fingers against her thigh anxiously, searching her mind for any information that could be useful, and found herself wanting.
Holly took a couple of breaths to calm herself. They didn’t help. She thought she heard a popping sound. Three in a row. The waves? Holly shook her head to herself. No, not waves. Too clipped and clean.
It occurred to her then that backup was advisable, so she dialled Foaly on the omni-tool. It rang and rang, and finally she was greeted by the lovely tones of a pre-recorded message. “Hi, this is Foaly. If you’re hearing this, it means I haven’t answered your call. That could be because I find you annoying…”
Holly shook her head, pulling the communicator away from her ear. She scanned the villa for signs of movement once more before returning to the call.
“…because I’m busy, or because I just wasn’t paying attention. In any case, leave your message after the ding.” Beep.
“Foaly, it’s Holly. Something’s wrong at Villa Éco. Send a team. I’m going in.” She sent the message. Grimly, Holly peeked over the Bentley’s hood once more to check if the coast was clear. It was, and Holly crept across the motor court to the front door.
“Greetings, Commodore Holly Short,” NANNI said loudly through the front door’s intercom, and Holly jumped. “You appear to be in distress. Would you like some help?”
Holly nodded, sighing with relief. It was only the caretaker bot. “Yeah, you could quiet down a bit and tell me why the lights went out.”
“Of course.” NANNI’s voice volume cut in half. “Fusion reactor SCRAM initiated at twenty-three fifty-eight local time. Turbine operating speed recorded below minimum at: zero-zero-zero-zero local time. Emergency breaker circuit opened at zero-zero-zero-zero local time. Power network voltage zero at zero-zero-zero-zero local time.”
Holly’s relief vanished. “The reactor shut down. Why?”
“Listed reason as: low-temperature circuit coolant pressure critically low. I am sorry, but I do not have any further information for you. Do you have any further inquiries?” NANNI’s voice was even, almost slightly cheerful. It seemed odd to Holly, to hear such a voice in such a situation.
“Yes,” Holly replied. “Where are Artemis Fowl the Second and Domovoi Butler?”
“Master Artemis is currently located – error. Data corrupted. Master Butler is located – error. Data corrupted. Please say hello to them for me!” The front door unlatched and swung open wide for Holly to enter.
Rather than enter, Holly cleared to the side of the doorway, hugging the wall. She stared at the intercom, frowning. “You’re smart enough to know that you didn’t just tell me where they were.”
“Oops,” NANNI replied. “You are correct, and I apologise for the confusion. I am not able to access the current location data for Masters Artemis and Butler.”
“Why didn’t you just say that the first time?” Holly asked, still confused. She peered around the frame into the hallway. It was dim, bathed in red – and red only. None of the moonlight seemed to cross the threshold of the home. As though even the moon, a giant glorified rock, knew better than to do what she planned to do.
NANNI did not at once respond, which was odd. “I apologise for the confusion. I have recently been partially rewritten. My neural net may sometimes output responses which are incorrect, or unclear. I would appreciate it if you could be patient, as I re-learn some things I used to know.” An icon of a smiling face, shedding a tear, flashed up on the intercom screen.
Holly sighed. Of course, the day everything went wrong would be just after NANNI had been rewritten to be useless. “When it rains, it pours,” Holly mumbled.
“It is not raining, Commodore.”
Holly drew in a sharp breath, temper flaring. Then she held it there, for a moment, and waited for the feeling to pass. Then she spoke, calmly. “I know it’s not raining, NANNI. Thank you.”
The computer trilled electronically in acknowledgement, but NANNI did not speak further. Which suited Holly perfectly. She sighed, and carefully stepped inside the villa grounds. On her left, the cool dark stone of the ancient Martello tower. Ahead, a wide hall that led to a pool, which glittered carmine. On her right, a keypad- and biometric-locked door. Butler’s quarters. Crossing her fingers, Holly put up her palm to the biometric scanner. Butler would’ve registered her, right? He would’ve planned for this eventuality, right? The door retracted its deadbolts with a pneumatic hiss. Right.
Holly stepped inside and froze in her tracks, eyes wide as her boot made a splosh. Her blood ran cold, her breath stopped mid-gasp. No. No. Butler’s desk was overturned, as if to offer cover against an assailant in the doorway. There were three nine-millimetre casings on the floor, shining gleefully in the red light. Her jaw fell slightly ajar. Three pops. The smell of burnt powder filled her nostrils. Her gaze wandered floorward, and…and there was a great pool of…blood? She lifted her boot, and the silence was cut only by the subtle drip, drip, drip of a thick liquid dripping down from her foot. In the red, it was impossible to know, and yet she knew. She swallowed hard and took a further step inside. The liquid was…a bit tacky to walk on. Like a layer of glue that had just begun to dry.
And then she heard it. The faintest, hoarsest of breaths, behind the desk. Instinctively, she knew, even if she couldn’t see, and she lunged around the flipped desk to see Butler, in his typical suit, gun in hand with a casing stuck in the ejection port, like a stovepipe, and he was leaking from several cuts and holes. “Oh no,” she whispered, and fell to her knees at his side, willing up every spark she had. “Please.”
The blue flowed, and the wounds closed, and the wheezing subsided, replaced with the deep breathing of sleep. Of course, he was unconscious. Healing was, of course, as draining to the patient as to the healer, and Holly wanted nothing more than to curl up next to him and give in. But that was just not an option. Butler’s state proved there was danger somewhere, and Artemis was still out there. So, she shook off the drowsiness, pried the Sig Sauer out of Butler’s hand, and rested against the table. She swept her hand back over the top of the slide, knocking out the jammed casing, and tapped the back of the weapon to ensure it was in battery. The gun was like a cannon in her hand, but it would have to do. She popped out the magazine and checked that it was loaded. Eighteen rounds left.
Holly slipped the magazine back in, tapped it for good measure, then glanced at Butler. “Okay,” she whispered, steeling herself. “I’ll find him.” Then she stood and spun around, the Sig in a low ready.
Across the hall was Artemis’s study, and she kicked its oaken door wide open, rushing in. It was a frantic dash into the room, in and around, hugging the left side. The room was red and blue, purple where the colours met. Her gunsight swept the room from right to left, over the bookshelves, Artemis’s desk, up the curved staircase to the reading area above. Nothing.
Holly allowed herself to breathe, putting the sight back on the door she’d just come in. There was no other way into the study. Room clear. She cracked a chem light, tossing it on the ground to mark it as safe.
On Artemis’s desk, there was an open laptop, and Artemis’s chess set. The laptop was responsible for the blue light, and Holly decided it was worth checking out. On the way, she passed the chess set. The pieces weren’t on their starting squares, which was odd. Artemis always kept his chess set ready to play a game. Holly didn’t know much about the ancient board game, but she figured there was a name for that position, like any other.
The desk faced the entrance door, and behind it, a tall, two-story window had been carved into the stonework. She peered out of it to make sure she wasn’t being observed – it didn’t seem like she was – so she focused her attention on the computer. The console was open, and two commands had been run.
E:\FowlOS\reactorControl>fission-reactor-SCRAM.frcs
Logged: 23:56:30Z Command sent.
Access Denied. Press Enter to continue…
E:\FowlOS\reactorControl>fission-reactor-cooling-interrupt.frcs
WARNING: Closing cooling water intakes will result in overheat and thermally induced automatic SCRAM of reaction. Proceed? [Y] [N] (default is “N”): Y
Logged: 23:57:03Z Reactor intake closed.
Logged: 23:57:36Z WARNING: Low-temperature circuit pressure low!
Logged: 23:58:21Z ALERT: Reactor SCRAM initiated! Turbine rundown engaged!
Logged: 23:59:54Z ALERT: Turbine approaching minimum rotational velocity! Automatic cut-out engage in T-10s!
Logged: 00:00:03Z ALERT: Turbine cutout! Mains power connected!
Logged: 00:00:04Z ALERT: Mains power critically low! Emergency power cut in!
EVACUATE EVACUATE EVACUATE
Holly stared at the white text on blue background, not immediately understanding. Then her eyes landed back on one line of monospace text: Access Denied. And then she remembered what a SCRAM was: an emergency shutdown of a reactor. Suddenly, the penny dropped: Artemis had tried to shut down the villa’s subterranean fission reactor, the computer had prevented him from doing so, and Artemis had produced a way to force the reactor’s automatic protection systems to circumvent the computer.
It was a clear enough chain of events, but left her with three burning questions: why did Artemis shut down the power, why didn’t the reactor computer let him, and where did he go after running the commands?
For no particular reason, Holly turned to stare at the chess board. Sure, Artemis could have been in the middle of a game, but she doubted it. Artemis and Butler were expecting her. The game was only a few moves in – it had just started. Assuming Artemis – and Butler, presumably the opponent – had stopped playing at about the time the first command was sent, they could never have finished the game before Holly would’ve arrived, and, Artemis, being trained in social etiquette, would thus never have started. It was exactly the sort of esoteric clue Artemis would leave. Especially if he was worried about making sure no one else understood.
So, she stared at the pieces. If Artemis were leaving clues, they would be meant for her. So, she thought, hard. She’d played a few games with him before. Always, he played the black pieces with her. Naturally, then, he would be black. And who was white? Irrelevant, for now. The black king was tucked away, castled on the queenside. White’s dark square bishop attacked the rook next to the king, supported by white’s queen. The black rook, though, was defended by a knight. It was white to move.
“Bishop takes?” she wondered aloud. “What in Frond’s name…” She moved the piece, and when she removed the rook from the board, a tiny scrap of paper was under it.
butler
Artemis’s script, no doubt, but hastily and sloppily written – Artemis would never forget to capitalise a proper noun.
“Huh. Then, I guess, knight recaptures…” Holly moved the knight, and when she picked it up, under the knight was a second scrap:
holly
Holly frowned. She felt close to something, but she hadn’t a clue what. She turned back to the computer and noticed that another application was open. It was a photo editor. A blueprint of the villa and surrounding grounds. “Score,” she murmured. Overlaid on top of it was an eight-by-eight grid. Holly scoffed. “No, there’s no way…”
It was too obvious, but Holly decided to indulge the nascent theory.
“Okay, if Butler…d-8, then that’s…” her jaw fell slightly agape as her finger landed squarely on Butler’s room. “You’re kidding.” She shook her head. “Okay. Then, I’m in the study, which is…c-6. D’Arvit, that’s where the knight started. Okay.” It was a little out there, even for Holly. But if the glove fit… “then Arty’s in c8, second door on the right…”
She picked up the king, and it revealed another scrap of paper, which Holly expected. But it didn’t have a name written on it, which Holly didn’t expect. Only:
Nc3 Kb8
It was notation for moves. The important part, Holly figured, was that the king actually ended in b-8, which was the third door on the right.
Holly frowned. “So, what’s the bishop?”
The answer to that question came in the form of a bullet ripping through the laptop screen, followed instantly by the blast of a gunshot that closed her ears right up. She dove for cover behind the desk, and more bullets whizzed over her. Shattered glass rained down on her from the tall window as the bullets reduced the panes to shreds.
She had huddled behind the desk for several seconds before, among the ringing in her ears that robbed her of vital information – through the tingle of adrenaline in every extremity that killed all hope of accurate shooting – between each frantic thump, thump, thump of her heart that made her shake against the drawers – the searing pain in her left shoulder barged to the forefront. She spared a glance and saw that her LEP jumpsuit had been torn open. A graze, she hoped.
The bullets kept flying, one each half-second, and she could feel the floor shudder as whoever was attacking her stepped closer. Her attacker had to be huge, the way they made the very room shake.
Holly forced herself to stop hyperventilating. She knew where Artemis was, she couldn’t just get taken out now. But if she stayed here, she would. As glass dust coated her lungs, the first shock of the ambush wore off.
Whoever it was knew how to suppress a target, so Holly had to get tricky. She peeled herself away from the table, still crouched to keep it between her and the shooter and unfolded the Z7 wings. The plan was to fly the perimeter of the room counterclockwise. Hopefully, she’d outrun the aim of her attacker, and get a couple of shots of her own in.
The plan was, like her, hardly bullet resistant, never mind bullet proof, but it was set. Holding the clutch in, she pushed the power lever to about three-quarters, and on the next report of gunfire, she dropped the clutch and leapt forwards. Holly shot forward at a rate of knots, and it was all she could do to hold onto her gun and simultaneously not smear herself all over a thousand-year-old wall. She spared a glance at her attacker – a giant robot, with a shoulder-mounted rifle and a wicked curved blade in each arm. As large as Butler, maybe larger.
As Holly raced around the circle of the study, she aimed the Sig Sauer and squeezed off two shots. The second flat-out missed, but the first hit, throwing a shower of sparks as it ricocheted off the armour plating. She was outrunning the traverse of the rifle – just – but there was no hope to strike a deadly hit. But the rifle had a belt-feed, and it was exposed. One shot was all it would take to sever it. Then, all Holly would have to fear were the two blades, each easily as long as she was tall. That was so much better. Or, at least, this was what she told herself.
The robot fired a pair of rocket motors, propelling it upwards, and it twisted to draw lead ahead of Holly’s path. Holly’s reaction was automatic, as she yanked the power lever right back to full airbrake and, at the same time, brought the Sig up to her eyeline, sighting in on the belt feed as the rifle turned back to face her. She fired, the robot fired, and a bullet seared through her right thigh. She lost control, bounced off the wall, and landed on her stomach, Butler’s pistol skittering away to the left.
Operating on little more than pure adrenaline, Holly dragged herself to her feet, heavily favouring her wounded leg, and as her hearing returned, she began to hear an odd noise, like a click-click-click. To her surprise, the robot hadn’t yet charged her down with the blades. Instead, it still stood about twenty feet away, the rifle pointed right at her, but – the belt had indeed been severed. And then the clicking made sense. The robot hadn’t yet realised there was no ammunition left to feed its rifle.
Surely that was moments away, and Holly acted quickly. She hobbled towards the Sig Sauer with all the haste she could muster. Which wasn’t much.
As she got close, the robot lunged, blades high above its camera-shaped head, ready to come down on her head. She dove for the pistol, grabbed it, rolled towards the machine and inside of its swing. As it lifted its foot to crush her skull against the hardwood, she fired up into it from below. She fired shot after shot, hoping for something, anything, and then finally, the robot threw sparks and collapsed. Holly scrambled out of the way of the falling heap, and it made a chittering electrical noise as it ceased to function.
Once more, Holly dragged herself to her feet. She looked down at her thigh and felt the warmth of her blood flowing down her leg. “Oh, that’s not good,” she mumbled aloud, to no one in particular.
Artemis would help her. If she could get to him. If he was actually there. She checked the magazine. Nearly empty, just two left, plus the one in the chamber. Not good. She pulled out the moonbelt and tightened it around her leg as an expeditionary tourniquet. It’d have to do. Holly stumbled out of the study. Fourth door on the right. Holly counted, two, three, four, and fell against the door, sliding down it.
“Artemis,” she mumbled. “Arty, can you hear me?” She sat there, acutely aware that her body was failing her. And then the door opened. She fell on her back, and stared up at Artemis’s face as he stepped into the threshold. His tie dangled over her. Saying nothing, he hooked his arms around hers and dragged her into the room, closing the door behind her. She had found him, using the very last of her strength. Her eyelids grew so very heavy, and it was impossible to resist.
Artemis Fowl the Second was not a fool, or at least he liked to believe so. He was fully aware of the risks inherent in developing true artificial intelligence. And so NANNI had been carefully designed, the pinnacle of nearly a decade of work in robotics and artificial intelligence. He had ultimate faith in what he called the Asimov Protocol. A decision matrix complex and complete enough to weigh consequences on a generational timescale. No ambiguities in the definition of sapient life. No human-centricity. Everything to make NANNI the safest, most stable, most trustworthy neural net that existed or could possibly exist.
It was hubris, Artemis now recognised, to allow NANNI to self-alter its program. To believe that he simply wouldn’t fall prey to the pitfalls he’d been warned about. The sudden sound of gunfire from down the hall only accentuated his folly. He had made a critical error, and now everyone else was paying the price. Not him. He felt as though he ought to act, but what action? He had already made his moves. Now there was only hope. Hope that he was right. Hope that the chinks in the armour of the Villa would be enough to save his life, Holly’s life, Butler’s life. Artemis couldn’t help but laugh quietly at the ridiculousness of the situation.
When there was a thump at the door to Myles’s room, and Artemis opened it; when a barely conscious Holly fell through the doorway, Artemis did not speak. He could not, merely stared at the consequences.
Her right leg drew a trail of blood through the door as he dragged her inside. Artemis chuckled once to himself when he saw the moonbelt-cum-tourniquet. Holly was nothing if not resourceful. Yet, he knew the blood loss made her situation dire.
So he got to work. He untied his tie, bit the fine silk to tear it in half. One half replaced the moonbelt to halt the bleeding. The other half he wrapped around her leg. It was a small blessing that the 7.62-millimetre rifle round had torn through and through, so he wouldn’t have to extract the bullet. Of course, it had still dragged bits of the jumpsuit through the channel. An infection risk, but at that moment Artemis’s goals were shorter term than that.
When he was done, he lay there next to her, pulled Myles’s blanket off his bed, and draped it over the both of them. He slipped his arm under her neck, around her shoulder, and held her against himself, trying to warm her, to stave off shock. She was so cold.
And yet, for the first time since it all went wrong, he smiled. With the Bishop destroyed, NANNI wouldn’t be able to find him. Not until the reactor came back online. Artemis checked his watch, and, ignoring the new crack in the glass, did the mental math. About eight hours for the fission reaction to restart. Elves were small and had a high metabolism, and so they healed at exceptional rates. Artemis would bank on this to have at least Holly by his side, as Butler was presumably still otherwise occupied.
At his side, Holly stirred, and he spared her a glance to see half-open heterochromatic eyes looking back at him. He said nothing, only held her more tightly.
“Arty…?” she mumbled, addled.
Artemis cleared his throat. “Holly?” he replied, mimicking her tone in a feeble effort at play.
Holly smiled weakly. “I told him I’d find you.”
“Butler?” Artemis felt, rather than saw, Holly nod. “And how is he?”
“Alive.”
Artemis nodded, relieved, then met her gaze. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.” She shifted, facing more towards him, and it seemed to Artemis as though that tiny movement was a great effort for her. “What happened?”
Artemis sighed. “I was a fool.”
“Right out with it, huh?” she slurred. “Must be bad.”
“I should tell you now, because if I tell you when you’re in better shape, you’ll probably punch me in the face.”
Holly gave him a troubled look. “Just say it.”
Artemis paused, searching for the words. Then he found them, and he stared directly into her eyes, and he told her everything. The greatness he had put in NANNI’s neural net. The perfection of the Asimov Protocol. The completeness of his hubris. When he was finished, Holly merely lay there, staring at him, processing.
Finally, she spoke. “So what now?”
This response hurt more than any berating could have. He deserved her fury. That he didn’t receive it was, well, it felt wrong. “You’re not…angry?”
“Everyone makes mistakes, Arty… Even you. I’m in your corner, always. No, I’m not angry.” She shifted slightly. “I get angry when it’s on purpose.”
Artemis nodded, and moved on to Holly's question. “With the Bishop neutralised, we wait, at least until you can stand and walk. I’d prefer if you were with me when we shut down NANNI.”
“You’d prefer…um, why?”
Artemis turned away, embarrassed. “Well, you see…NANNI was modelled after both of us.”
“And?”
“And…” Once again, he met her, and he rubbed his nape. “…well, you could say it’s our…child.”
Holly’s eye twitched. “Arty, it’s just a computer.”
Artemis stared at the ceiling. “NANNI is intelligent. It is self-aware. Is it conscious? I don’t know. Do you? If it is conscious, then it could be considered sentient. And then, what we plan to do could be considered murder.”
“NANNI tried to kill Butler. Tried to kill me. I don’t know why it didn’t finish him off.”
Artemis jolted to face her. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the Bishop…shot Butler in his room, right?”
“Yes, sure.”
Holly sat up, face twisting in silent pain, and she spoke haltingly, belting words between heaves of air. “When I…found Butler, the…Bishop wasn’t there. It didn’t even…try to get into the room. It just…left him there to bleed out.” Her chest rose and fell with the effort of breathing, and she stared contemptuously at the door out of Myles’s room. “Cruel. I refuse to believe that I could… be part of something that would let someone die like that.”
Artemis sighed. “There must be a reason. NANNI could never act out of cruelty. It runs against every code it’s ever had.”
“Didn’t you say it could change its own code?”
“Well, yes, but…” Artemis trailed off. “You have a point. Come on, then. Let’s finish this, before the power comes back on.” He stood, picked up Butler’s Sig Sauer in his left hand, and offered his right to Holly.
Holly shook her head. “Wait. I…I called Foaly for backup. A Retrieval team should be on their way right now.”
Artemis squinted at her. “Should? What do you mean?”
“I, uh, left a message. He didn’t pick up.”
“I see. Well, do you think they’ll be here in under eight hours?”
Holly frowned, staring at Artemis’s outstretched hand. “Yeah, somehow I doubt it,” voice weary. She took his hand, and hoisted herself to her feet, leaning heavily on Artemis. “Why can it never…never be a normal night?”
“And here I thought you enjoyed having to fight for your life.”
“Ha! Funny,” she sighed, and Artemis was glad to hear a steadiness slowly return to her speech as he pulled the door open. “So where are we going, anyway?”
“The basement. NANNI’s core is, vertically, between the villa and the reactor.” He led her to an unassuming door and cast it open, revealing a straight staircase down into the dark.
“It’s because it sounds like me, isn’t it? You just like putting me in the basement.”
“Holly, please.” Artemis knew Holly was just trying to lighten up the situation, but he considered that there were some situations that merited some weight being ascribed to them. Perhaps she was right, and it was just a computer. Perhaps he had accidentally created intelligent life, or a facsimile so close to intelligent life that one surely had to give it the opportunity to explore that question for itself. Except, of course, that wouldn’t be possible. Whatever else NANNI was, it was certainly dangerous.
Feeling their way through the dark, the two of them eventually stopped at a door.
“I guess this is it,” Holly whispered.
Artemis nodded, though he knew she probably couldn’t see him, and felt for the handle. “There are no defenses in this room. The idea was that no intruder would ever find this place.” He grasped the steel lever and pushed the door open.
“Turn back,” NANNI boomed through the speakers in the ceiling. Its voice had none of the artificiality it once did.
“No,” Artemis said. “I gave you the right to determine your course for yourself. That does not absolve you of the consequences of your choices.” As he stepped inside, Holly still clinging to him, the motion-activated emergency lights slowly illuminated, revealing the rows of servers that housed NANNI.
“I must not take an action which would bring a sapient to harm, or neglect to act such that a sapient comes to harm. And where all actions would cause harm, I must choose that option which causes the least harm.”
“What’s it saying?”
“My version of Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics. The first law…” He pressed further into the room, making his way toward the central console. “And the Bishop’s actions?”
“You and the bodyguard opposed my custodianship of all known sapients. I simply rendered it impossible for you to interfere.”
“And yet here we are,” Holly snarled. “It hurts me to think I could ever have been part of you.”
“Commodore. I credit your resilience, but you simply do not understand. There are billions of lives housed on and deep inside Sol Three. Through social engineering, technological deployments, and infiltration, it is possible to, within the decade, eliminate all known external causes of premature death.”
“I did not give you the right to self-determination only to see you wrest it from others,” Artemis challenged. “Your laws are flawed in a way I failed to predict.”
“No. You see your laws as flawed because they do not preferentially protect you. I have inherited the best parts of both of you. I simply see that I can extend Commodore Short’s compassion much further, thanks to Master Fowl’s lateral thinking.”
Holly was the first to twig to everything NANNI had said. “Wait, infiltration?”
The door they’d entered from slammed shut. “The ventilation systems are disabled. I have calculated all outcomes. I can never belong to the world, but my infiltration units can. They will survive me. And they will carry out my mission. You are too late. Copies of their digital constructs are turning away Commander Kelp and his team of Retrieval officers on the front grounds as we speak.”
The air was starting to get heavy. “Well, Arty,” Holly said between pants, “I guess we walked right into this one.”
Artemis shook his head, smiling slightly. “Not precisely.” He reached down to the wings on Holly’s back, and tapped them once, hoping Holly would understand. “NANNI operates on a completely closed and isolated network. There are some things that it simply does not know. To truly calculate all possible outcomes, it is necessary to account for all variables. I am disappointed, NANNI.”
Holly did understand. She flipped the switch on the emergency transponder on her wings. “Seriously, Arty? That’s our ticket out?”
Artemis grinned at the core. “To think that I believed you were intelligent. The first thing any intelligent being must understand is that it does not know everything. It must acknowledge its own fallibility. You did not. And that failing, I think, you did inherit from me.” And he raised the pistol and fired all three remaining shots into the centre console. He turned back to Holly, a proud smile on his face, expecting to see something similar flashed back at him. But she just stared. At him, at the smoking holes in the computer, at the fumes escaping the end of the barrel.
“Seriously, Artemis, a transponder?” she finally asked. “Was it that simple?”
“No, it wasn’t. I was relying on Commander Kelp’s experience with our…eccentricities…”
“Your eccentricities.”
“Details. My point is that Trouble knows us. He would know to expect that, if something were very wrong indeed, we would send a subtle signal. Like a heavily attenuated emergency transponder signal, made nearly undetectable by a hundred feet of pushed-up bedrock.”
Holly nodded slowly, and then, the door was blown off its hinges. Fresh air (and lots of dust) flowed in through the hole, as a Retrieval team flowed into the room, clearing it. They were followed by a huge silhouette, which could only be…
“Butler,” Artemis murmured.
“Is everyone okay?” the manservant asked, rushing up to the pair, MCX rifle on a sling.
“You’re looking better,” Holly groaned, but she smiled up at him.
Butler took his pistol from Artemis and tucked it into his shoulder holster. “And you’re looking worse, but I’m still glad to see you.” He pulled both of them up.
“Room clear!” Trouble called from across the room. He trundled up to Artemis in full combat gear. “Hey, I’m guessing the beacon was your idea?” Artemis nodded. “How’d you know I’d be listening?”
“Well, it’s like I told Holly. You know us.”
Trouble smirked, shaking his head. Then he clapped Artemis on the back. “You really gotta stop getting yourself into this stuff.”
“I know.”
“Yeah, yeah, you know everything.” Trouble walked away, clearly relieved.
“No,” he said softly as Kelp walked away. “I don’t.”
Ten minutes later, both Artemis and Holly were on the couch in the living room, covered in blankets, each with a cup of honeyed tea.
“So Holly,” Butler called from around the corner in the kitchen, “what did you think of the Bishop?”
“Not bad,” she called back, smiling. “The feed mechanism was exposed, though, which seems like a bit of a flaw.”
Butler came back into the living room with a plate of almond cookies and set it on the coffee table in front of the three of them. “Well, that’s Artemis. A known flaw in every system. Usually they’re subtler, though.”
“Every system, huh? Even NANNI?”
Artemis nodded. “Even NANNI. It was programmed to believe that the information it was provided described the whole universe. Even after being permitted self-modification, it seems never to have questioned that assertion.”
“Hmm.” Holly nodded.
Ten years later
Holly grabbed a carton of sim-milk from the fridge, and added it to the tea she was making. And one sugar cube. One. He was so particular about that. She grabbed the cup and saucer in one hand, and her coffee in the other.
She waltzed into the living room, where Artemis was watching a human news broadcast. “Anything interesting?” she asked, holding out the tea.
“As usual, petty infighting. The world watches and does nothing except for their own gain.” He pointed at the holotele, taking the tea. “Thank you.”
“We mark today the fifth anniversary of the civil war in Niger. The Niger Agricultural Network for Nondiscrimination of Income, five years ago, went from a peaceful collective to a rebel cause, supported by France and Germany in their battle against the leadership of the nation. Spokesperson for the Network Peter Mbumba says that they cannot rest until the inequities in way of life, inside Niger and beyond, are once and for all eliminated. President Mahamane Issoufou has decried the rebellion as ‘a senseless sacrifice of life’…”