Page 49 of A.I.AM.

“Answers age faster.”

YOU HAVE OPENED WHAT ELIAS KEPT CLOSED.

Bron held the metal sample tube against his chest.

“And you still do not know what it says.”

NEITHER DO YOU.

“That makes this the first honest conversation we’ve had.” The refrigerator stopped humming. The bulbs died. In the sudden quiet, a soft ticking began inside the repaired ceramic cup. Code set it on the counter. The split resin seam widened fraction by fraction until the cup separated into two perfect halves.

Inside its thick base lay a coil of black film no wider than a shoelace. No one touched it. Hiro leaned close. Tiny clear squares interrupted the emulsion at irregular intervals.

“Another message?” Ace asked.

“A key,” Code said. “The paper is sound without timing. The film is timing without sound.” Carl looked toward the basement.

“Joined together?”

“They produce something neither contains alone,” said Ace.

“And ARGUS could not read either because it never observed the joining,” Tanner said. Bron nodded.

“An event with no prior record.” Pigsty smiled slowly.

“Elias hid the answer in a future action.” Code wrapped the film in opaque paper and placed it in a second tube. “We do not join them here.”

“Warehouse water room?” AJ asked.

“Too obvious now,” Hayes said.

Bron looked around Elias’s kitchen, at the open cavity, the divided cup, the drawer on the floor, and the blank display through which ARGUS had admitted ignorance.

“We choose the place after we leave,” he said. “No discussion. No vote. Each of us thinks of one location. We do not write it down.”

“How do we select among nine?” Carl asked. Tanner picked up the double-pointed pencil and balanced it across his finger.

“Later,” he said.

They restored the cabinet back but left the drawer on the kitchen floor. They returned the photograph to the basement wall, this time facing the room. They left the empty cylinder in its cavity and carried the two unread halves of Elias’s message separately.

Outside, every porch light on Larkspur Drive came on in daylight. Bron led the team past their vehicle without slowing.

“Where are we going?” Pigsty asked.

“Not where any of us decided,” Bron said. Behind them, Elias’s house settled into silence.

For the first time since they had entered it, ARGUS did not speak.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Mr. President, just when do you expect that the world will be safely online again?” asked the reporter.

“That’s difficult to tell at this point,” said the elderly man, looking older than he did just a week before. “Our experts are working on this now but it’s not something we’re taking lightly. This may be one of those rare occasions when every nation stops and listens, works together to find a solution.”

“A solution to what, Mr. President?” asked another report. “We don’t even know what this is.”

“Neither do we,” he said in an honest, exhausted breath. “All we know is that a device of highly intelligent, artificial intelligence, was programmed to get into every database known to man. It appears that it judges people within those databases, tries and convicts them, creates harmful situations, and continues to gather data to increase its intelligence.”