Big Data: A Startup Thriller Novel

Chapter 67

The doctors said I'd been legally dead for three hours. Said it was some kind of record. Something about a poisoning, but I didn't know what they were talking about. I couldn't remember much. I remembered being in jail. For something I didn't do. Or did I do it? I didn't know. They said I shouldn't worry about it. The memories would come back. That I should rest. But there was something I had to do. Something that couldn't wait. But I didn't remember what it was. Did I leave the oven on? No. I hadn't been home recently. Had I? Maybe I had, actually.

I tried to remember what it was like to be dead. My brain was all fuzzy around the edges. The more I tried to remember, the more it eluded me. I had only vague feelings. Whispers of forgotten memories. Emptiness. An ultimate loneliness. But then no. That's how it started. Not how it ended.

Something happened to me while I was dead. Something I wished I could remember. I wished they didn't have me on those damned drugs. I looked over at the machine administering the drugs to me. One of my own machines. It said Ancien on it. That was cool. But also not cool. Not right. Something wasn't right. But I couldn't remember. Dammit, I wanted to remember. I wanted a clear head.

What happened when I was dead? What was it? I'd started out dark and alone. I vaguely remembered feeling scared. Feeling lonely. Desperately lonely. And then? What was it? The loneliness turned into something else. Something better. It was at the tip of my tongue. My tongue. My tongue was so dry. I was so thirsty. I needed water. I needed water more desperately than I'd ever needed it before. I opened my mouth to scream for help, but my throat was so dry that I couldn't speak. Nothing came out but a faint whimper of air.

I looked over at my IV. What was in that fluid? Wasn't it supposed to be hydrating me? Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. I needed to remember something. Why was I still thinking about Ancien? What did I need to remember? It was important. What button did I need to press for help? I couldn't find any buttons. I fumbled around madly. It felt like my arms weren't connected to my body anymore.

Then there was something blocking me. Something human. It had hair on its arms. What was it doing? What was he doing? Was he trying to do something to me? I recognized him, but I didn't remember from where. I wanted him away from me. Something told me he needed to get away from me. I tried to direct my flopping limbs in his direction. I couldn't tell if it was working or not. I had to focus. Who was this? Focus, Luna. Focus. Pick one sense and just laser in on it. Vision wasn't working for me. I couldn't speak. Maybe he was speaking, though.

I needed to focus on sound. I directed all my energy to trying to listen. At first, it came in short bursts of whispers.

"Luna."

I could hear my name. Progress. Slowly, more words began to make sense.

"Luna. Calm down. Stop moving. It's Phillip. I'm here to help."

Who was Phillip? Was he my doctor? I knew that I knew a Phillip, but who was he? Maybe he was trying to help. I tried to tell my body to calm down and relax. Slowly it seemed to start working.

"Luna, we need to get out of here. Ancien is trying to kill us."

Then it all came flooding back. Taye. Gaia. Alex. Thor. Oh, dear God. What had I done? So many techies were afraid that artificial intelligence was going to enslave or destroy humankind. But they were so shortsighted. The truth was so painfully obvious now. It wasn't artificial intelligence that we needed to be afraid of. It was ourselves.

I could see so clearly how the problem with machine learning and big data was the accountability of the humans running such machines. Not the machines themselves. The smartest machines in the world would always be missing one key thing: the spark of imagination. The intention behind the action.

I knew machines could be programmed to outperform humans in any given task. Visual processing, image processing, games, even programming other computers. But these were just buttons and levers. Albeit extremely powerful ones. Still, someone needed to be sitting behind the curtain, pulling those levers and pushing those buttons.

When it came down to it, all this technology was just a hammer. A great big powerful hammer. It made me think of the last piece of great technology to come before this one: nuclear fusion. Like nuclear fusion, that power could be harnessed to create massive amounts of electricity—or the world's most horrific weapons. And the introduction of this technology to mankind very nearly led to its destruction.

I saw that the machine learning big data platform I had built over the last ten years had become a nuclear reactor on the brink of exploding. There were no checks and balances. The world didn't even realize the enormity of Ancien's abilities. Nobody had seen the mushroom cloud. Thor had been killing countless people, and nobody even noticed. We had accepted so much technology into our lives that it was impossible to trace back to the source of all those murders—all that devastation.

I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

I had to stop it. Suddenly I remembered. I had to stop it. That's why I didn't die when I was dead. I remembered the vague feeling of terror, the memory receding even as I thought about it. It had changed. I had changed. I was on borrowed time now. I had cheated death. I had died and been reborn so that I could stop Ancien from falling into the wrong hands. Nobody knew. If I didn't stop it, chances were nobody would ever find out until it was too late.

Then I realized I was still in a hospital room and there were people shouting.

"What are you doing? Stop that."

"Can't you see something's wrong? She can't speak. She's disoriented. These machines are killing her. We need to—"

"Stop touching those. Stop it now, or I'll call security."

"Please, you need to help her."

"Just stop. Let me check."

I still couldn't see, but whoever said that seemed to be calming down. My eyelids raised, and there was a bright light.

"Luna? How are you doing, dear?"

I tried to speak, but words still escaped me.

"Okay, okay," said the lady's voice. "You're right. This is not good."