Eve heard the voice in her head as if someone was yelling from a distance. She shook her head to dislodge the connection. It didn’t work and she heard the reply commanding the owner of the original voice to, “follow her.”
Eve stopped right in front of a white shutter. She shook her head again, but the connection remained. She tapped at her ear, behind it, and then her temple, but she still heard someone ask for the access codes to the angels inside the garden.
A bang behind her had her turning to see a large man standing on the opposite side of the transparent doors she had just passed. His fist was still connected to the plexiglass separating them. His red eyes shone bright enough to reflect back on his shaven face. The two second-generation angels that should have been guarding the doors were nowhere in sight.
The light beside the door controls was red with a single line of text on the small screen above it: decontamination in progress.
The man’s lips moved and Eve heard his voice in her head.
“I see her. She’s right in front of me.”
“I’ll get you the access codes in—"
The light flashed green. A shutter came down blocking Eve’s view of the tattooed man. It also finally severed the connection. The shutter behind her came up, revealing the same transparent doors on the other side. This set opened for her when she leaned into it.
Eve had never seen so much green before in her life. Before she had been put to sleep, Eve had only seen so many plants together in the library records that her father had loaded into her database. She stepped through the doors. They closed behind her and the shutter came down.
As she walked among the flowers and plants, she reached out. She touched the leaf closest to her and her hand came away wet. She sniffed it. Water. She licked it—it had no taste though her sensors did pick up a few extra chemicals in it meant to help the plants’ growth. Nothing harmful for her body. She curled another leaf and put her mouth under the tip of it, letting the drops fall into her mouth.
The entrance she had gotten into led her directly into a room filled with plants. Through that one, she entered another room. In this one, everything towered over her. She had to crane her head back to see the tops of the trees. Above them was the same plexiglass and more plants above that. When she looked down, she realized that this room was also situated on the same transparent material. It looked like she was standing on the tip of a pink petal from one of the flowers in the room below her. She scanned the petals that made a path for her to the door. Not too far, a fruit had fallen to the clear ground. It looked like it was floating in the air.
Eve skipped from leaf to leaf until she got to it. She picked it up and the juices covered her hand immediately. She could smell how sweet it was. The soft flesh tore under her teeth and more juices flooded her senses. The pit was too hard to bite into. She walked to a small space between two trees. The soil was soft and moist between her fingers and got stuck under her fingernails as she left the pit behind. She patted the soil back into place and then left the room.
This time, she was on a metal walkway that stretched far into the distance with clear rooms on either side. Instead of going down the walkway, she entered another room. In this one, the light was the same red as that man’s eyes. Eve’s sensors told her that it was techluminscent, a specific wavelength meant to promote plant growth. Based on her own data, she compared it to the light that a nearby star would have given out, if it could reach the city. The red light from the computers was better for the plants.
She had thought leaving the main city sectors would help her see her stars and the entrance way to the gardens was so close. Her thoughts were wrong. No matter which room she entered in the gardens or how many floors she climbed, the only thing she saw above her were more plants and the same red light used to help them grow.
The latest garden she entered was humid. It made her flesh break out with the same wetness as the plants from earlier. It made her hair stick to the back of her neck and itch. She didn’t like it. She found a way out as fast as possible and was back on the metal walkway.
This time, Eve didn’t enter another room. She walked alongside them instead, stopping to peer into the ones that looked colourful and bright, or crouching low to look at the healthy soil and growing roots that stuck close to the room’s walls. She couldn’t keep her hand from trialing along the plexiglass and the plants protected behind it. There were so many. The artifical lights and irrigation systems inside each garden helped grow food for the entire city of over five-million citizens. But those systems weren’t all that made the processes so smooth.
Most of the work in the garden fell to third-generational angels.
One of the garden doors slid open not that far ahead of her and an angel walked out. This one was a fourth-generation. It had a human shell and mannerisms—small ticks that made the humans who built it comfortable to be around it at all times—even if its white fuel made its skin appear unnaturally pale. The angel’s shell looked male, its short hair and eyes brown, its stature tall and straight. Eve barely reached the angel’s chest in height.
The angel registered her and seemed to glitch for a moment—one foot raised to take a step toward her and mouth open to speak—yet it froze, rocked back, and then settled right at the entrance of the room it had left.
“Access to this area is restricted,” the angel finally said. The fourth-generation angels had the most advanced AI in the city. They were able to interact with others without needing prompts or commands. “How did you get in here?” Able to ask questions. Able to emote. To sound human.
“Entrance from the fifteenth,” Eve responded.
The angel finally started moving again, coming closer to her. Eve reached for it through her wireless link and once more the machine glitched. This time, it took two steps away from her before it stopped.
“What are—” the angel’s words cut off as Eve dug into its code and froze it. She could tell from a glance about its generation and knew about its limits from before she was put to sleep, but it had been close to a decade. This angel was the first advanced AI she encountered since leaving the lab.
This one’s sensors were harder to control than the second-generations. She couldn’t erase her existence from them. This one did, however, at least try to talk to her.
As she dug into the angel’s code, she walked closer to it. She could enter its code wirelessly, but it was so much easier to have a hard connection. As soon as it was within reach, Eve touched the angel’s bare skin. She switched over to the hard connection and went right for the angel’s core.
It immediately started fighting her.
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