Chapter 69: 69 Suspicious Minds, Part Three

Angharad dropped into the hospital the next morning to see if she could help with anything, but Tsuyoshi was angry because Tabitha wasn't where she should be, and Dr Yeoh was busy interrogating Niall Turner, so it didn't seem like there was anyone remotely calm to talk to. Calm in Zapville was in increasingly short supply.

So she wandered about the camp. It was early; nobody was going to stop her. She wrapped the loose-knit scarf she'd borrowed from Sophie more tightly around herself and stepped right into the field of industrial equipment.

Was anyone using it? What was it there for? For all she knew the mysterious person in charge just used it all to decorate and it was all just one giant, pointless mood piece. She'd seen worse art decorating people's offices, though usually not nearly so large.

The piles of metal tubes were high, intimidating. Taller than her, so nobody would see her walking through the spaces between them unless they already knew she was there.

There was so much equipment she couldn't decipher. She wasn't going to touch things to find out what they did, in case that went horribly wrong. After all, the only things she could understand the point of were the metal press and the soldering equipment she'd seen Spark with, and neither of those were safe to use without precautions.

Spark was an engineer before he was an ultra rich businessman and inventor, so he'd know what all these things were for, but she wasn't going to ask. He was slimy and gross. Ignorance seemed a small price to pay for avoiding that anger she felt every time she had to talk to him.

When she neared the end of the maze of equipment she heard footsteps behind her, the sound present but not too heavy. The light crunch of gravel being walked on turned into the tap tap tap of a jog. She stopped walking and just breathed the cool air.

A shadow came around the corner, casting itself twice across the large tubes to her right. And then the blur of a faint red light at another angle.

When she turned around Ibrahim stopped his jog, rubbed a hand across the base of his neck, and laughed, an awkward noise.

"I hope I didn't startle you," he said.

"No, I kind of guessed it was you."

"I'm not sure it's entirely safe for you to be walking here alone."

She crossed her arms and squinted at his expression of concern. "Would you say the same thing to Neo?"

"Absolutely I would. Neo is not a nice young man, obviously, and he has been a danger to people around him, but even he doesn't deserve the horrors this place can provide. Even if I couldn't prevent him being hurt, at least if I found him in danger he wouldn't have to be alone."

"Oh." She dropped her arms and tried not to fiddle with her hair. "Well, that's super nice of you. Way more nice than me."

"You shouldn't be so down on yourself. I've seen no one here more open to showing compassion to strangers than you. However, my real reason to follow you in here was to make sure Milo and I didn't make you uncomfortable yesterday. I'm sure it's a bother to be surrounded by annoying men."

"No, I mean it's... I guess."

"I'm sure my back and forth with Milo came off a little, uh... The word escapes me."

"No, I got it. You tease him because you're friends. It's just kind of different to the way I tease my friends. I mean, I'm sure you haven't actually stabbed him."

He laughed that nervous laugh again. "Well, in fact I did, however that circumstance is unlikely to be repeated here. There were reasons for... You needn't worry. I have no impetus for such violence to be repeated."

He smiled wide like they were just having a laugh.

"Okay, I wasn't actually worried before you said that," she said.

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"Oh, dear. Well, shall we walk beyond the labyrinth of terrifying equipment waiting to crush our souls?"

"Sure," she said, and led the way.

Okay, he was actually super weird but she was willing to accept that. She didn't get the feeling he wanted to hurt her and she liked to trust her own instincts on that. They walked slowly beyond the field of heavy machines and large steel shapes, the barrier buzzing like a reminder to their right.

"I was intrigued by that idea you introduced me to the other day, that this place might, in itself, be some large conscious machine. I know that you and your friend meant it as a metaphor but I haven't been able to stop pondering the idea."

"Really?" The day brightened and warmed up as they walked, but her mind felt sluggish now that she had someone to talk to. "I guess it's not impossible, but it's not like AI works the way people think it does. I mean, it's not the singularity. Machines can be intelligent but that doesn't mean they have a sense of self. Or so I'm always being reminded. I mean, okay, maybe I wonder about some machines some times, and maybe I treat some robots like they're people or pets, but, I mean, how would you even program consciousness into something?"

"I can't say that programming is my area of expertise."

"Okay, it's like... I mean, daddy tried to do it but he said it never really worked."

"I'm sure these things are complicated. Could a machine not do all these things by itself without having to, uh, have feelings?"

Angharad thought for a minute about the possibility. She was quiet while she let it run around her brain, what that might mean to her, and all the people in Zapville around them as they slowly woke up and moved around the camp, their lives determined by some mysterious force. "I mean, sure. Like Rod Spark's legendary overzealous prison AI that over-committed to its duties and had to be shut down."

"And this place is a prison," he said.

He wasn't wrong. "I don't know, maybe that's worse than someone doing this to us just because they're evil. Human evil I don't like but I get. At least that means there's something we can fight back against. If this is just a machine going through the motions then how can we fight that? What if that means there's no way out and we're really all trapped forever? I hate that. It just really super sucks."

"I understand what you mean." He was quiet for a while beside her, and she didn't mind.

The day grew lighter. More people moved around Zapville, trying to make something of their lives.

When he spoke again his voice was calm. "Before I was caught I heard many rumours about an off-world prison camp designed for a rich Western government by private enterprise, a place to abandon prisoners and leave them to rot. I took no real notice, of course, because it seemed to me that such a thing would be wildly expensive, hardly economically efficient. But it occurs to me that many governments spare no expense at causing suffering. It wouldn't be the first time a foreign government action filled my life with suffering."

They wound their way near to the storage shed she knew Jin was always looking in, full of dumb army boy stuff. The dirty pool of water behind it came into view, shining faintly grey-blue under the weirdly artificial morning light. Mac called it Lake Zapville, as if it weren't only five metres by three.

And next to it, an electric cord, frayed at the end, slowly snaking its way toward the pool.

Angharad caught a faint flash of red and stepped faster, worried. That was Tabitha swaying, stumbling toward the water. Ibrahim dashed forward to catch Tabitha before she could drop straight into the pool.

The frayed cord plunged itself into the water just as he pulled them flat against the wall.

Angharad froze, watching.

"I believe it would be a good idea for us to return your friend to the safety of her room," Ibrahim said.

"Yeah, I think this is a sign to be careful where we step," Angharad said.

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