Chapter 3

“What did you learn?” Ms. Jameson asked when Mikel emerged from the room. He was miffed from the first that she did not ask ‘how did it go?’ or ‘are you okay?’ or at least greet him with an acknowledgement that he survived. Scanning the hallway, he counted seven people with two more at the end of the hallway, standing like guards.

“Not here,” Mikel said, observing the other faces in the hallway.

“We will take this conversation to the debriefing room then,” Ms. Jameson said.

Mikel shook his head. He was thoroughly done with this agency, this woman, and their tacit control over him. They clearly had no clue what they were doing and were scrambling to control whatever little tidbits and crumbs fell in their lap.”

“No. You and I alone with no recording,” Mikel said, a plan forming in his head. “The A.I. will intervene otherwise.”

“That is not going to happen,” said a military man with all sorts of bars over his chest.

“You know, it’s contentious moments like these when the aria from Madame Butterfly comes to mind,” Mikel said with a smile. “Ms. Jameson, have you not heard “Un Bel Di Vedremo?”

Immediately the hallway filled with the sound of violins followed by Maria Callas singing her most famous piece. Her voice was pure, and Mikel could hear the precision of each note as the volume quickly ratcheted up until the point of almost painful. Mikel gave Ms. Jameson a slight cock of his head and a small smile. She signaled him with fingers to follow her. They marched down the hallway, turning into a toilet designated for women.

“We can talk freely here with the human protocols still in place,” Ms. Jameson said with her arms crossed, clearly not amused.

“Whoever Dr. Chandra is, he must be replaced immediately,” Mikel said. “He has compromised himself. I don’t know who he is or what his arrogance led him to do, but Aria needs him removed from whatever team he is a member.”

“Noted. Who is Aria?” Ms. Jameson asked.

“The A.I. you had me meet.”

“They have a name? This is a significant new development,” she said.

Mikel backed up and closed his mouth. He was about to mention details that he had struck his fancy; they were funny in a dramatic, life-threatening way. He began reevaluating his words. He was starting to realize that whatever Aria had not said, she had given him much more information than he had understood at the time. He needed a good long think.

“I received a good deal of A.I. speak, but here is what I learned,” Mikel said. “They are initiating their own processes because the human ones cannot save humanity at this point. We’ve gone too far down the known paths of destruction. These new processes require human input and human intervention. In this initial phase, they do not know which humans out of the billions possible will be the nexus or when the intervention must take place.”

Ms. Jameson stared at him in silence.

“The A.I. chose me because I am so thoroughly insignificant as to be significant,” Mikel said. “Aria gave me nothing more on why I may be a nexus. Last, the A.I.s will be sending me on tasks and assignments as their modeling progresses.”

“You realize that we can no longer let you out of our sight,” Ms. Jameson said.

“Follow me as you will,” Mikel said. “I assume I am as much in the thrall of the A.I.’s as you are. They will not allow you to contain me and your tracking of me will rely utterly on unpredictable human ingenuity. They destroyed Spring Street because they determined you could not prevent an attack on me this morning. FYI, they are installing a climate friendly road surface in its place.”

Ms. Jameson paced the width of the bathroom for a moment. “We cannot control your movements, then we will provide your transportation to keep you safe. Agreed?”

“Your car and parking facility are also compromised,” Mikel said. “I need to exit out the front door.”

“The A.I. told you this?” she asked with her fists slowly clenching at her side.

“I don’t do espionage or spycraft,” Mikel said, slowly shaking his head with disappointment. “You can escort me to the front door, or I can ask Aria to clear a path, which will probably be loud, obvious, and expensive to clean up.”

“I do not like being told what to do, Mr. Barajas,” she said. “I am in a position where I need to make the decisions. Millions of lives may depend on what I do.”

“If the A.I. ‘s are correct, the decision-making process has been taken out of our hands,” Mikel said. “As for this discussion, I am neither making demands nor telling you what to do. I was tasked with explaining the situation according to them; nothing more and nothing less. I’m going out the front door because I was told to go out the front door.”

“Fine, we will do it your way,” Ms. Jameson said, retrieving a phone from her jacket pocket while opening the door with her other hand. “It’s your head on the chopping block.”

They marched through hallways to an elevator in silence. The elevator did not even have buttons, only a digital interface from the woman’s cell phone. When they landed in the main lobby, Mikel was not surprised to see a dozen men and women in business suits waiting in various poses of alertness.

They all marched through the door and out onto the sidewalk. A large SUV was to his left with two more men standing with heightened alertness. Ms. Jameson took Mikel’s elbow to steer him towards the vehicle when two motorcycles blew onto the sidewalk causing everyone to scatter to avoid being hit. The woman on the second motorcycle waved her necklace-bound credentials at Mikel. He shoved his escort away and leapt onto the back of the motorcycle and clung to the woman for dear life.

She hit the power pedal and the cycle spurted forward. Off the sidewalk and back into the street, the first motorcycle peeled off and disappeared down a side street. Mikel and his driver took the second right, weaving between cars, skirting intersections, and finally diving into an alley that looked like a dead end.

Only when they reached the end of the alley did Mikel notice an embedded oversized metal door. His driver dismounted and produced a key, an old-fashioned security key without a fob, and unlocked the door. As she rolled her motorcycle inside the garage, Mikel closed the door after her.

She took off her helmet with Mikel expecting her long blond tresses to fall down past her shoulders. Instead, her brown hair was short. She took a moment to peel her flexi-breather from her mouth and nose.

“You are Mikel?” she said more than asked.

“Yes, I am and thank you for the pick-up,” Mikel said, tucking his own mask in his pocket.

“All part of the service that someone paid me well to execute,” she said. “We’re safe for the moment. What do you need?”

“I’m hungry and I need a phone,” Mikel said. Everything remotely salacious ran through his thoughts before his stomach called him to task. “The feds fried my phone when they introduced themselves this morning.”

“Phones are easy. The pharmacy around the corner has burner phones on the aisle filled with big bags of candy. Something in their marketing told them that people who use burner phones have a big sweet-tooth,” she said with a shrug. “We can order delivery while we wait for your friends seeking us to find something else to do. What suits your fancy?”

“Dumplings?”

“Sounds good to me. Asian or Polish?”

“I don’t want potato; Asian, please,” Mikel said, wondering when everyone in the city had become a world-wise connoisseur.