Devil's Paradise

6: Merlin & Delilah: Delilah

When we got to the Eton building, Delilah Witherstick was in her SUV. As one of the town organizers, Delilah ignored the general prohibition on the use of vehicles. She got out, along with her driver, a young man in fatigues carrying a rifle.

As she walked up the sidewalk, it struck me again how out-of-place Delilah was. When the entire city dressed in drab colors and only with as much fashion as survival required, Delilah dressed as sharp as ever. Even the bride in the cart had worn plain slacks and a pullover shirt instead of a dress, and only the white veil identified her as a bride. Delilah's gray and black business dress looked like she was ready to deliver a speech to the board of directors before D-day. Her shoulder-length blond hair looked brushed out, fresh and clean.

"Louis," she said with a dazzling smile in her Georgia accent, holding out her hand. "Ah'm so glad you could make it." Even though she was almost ten years my senior, I had to admit she looked good. Maybe that and her charming accent had something to do with her likelihood of being elected Mayor if we had time to hold an election. If she had anything to say about it, the City of Frederick would become the Frederick Republic before long.

"Let's do get into some cleaner air, here," she said, pointing to the door.

Tony opened the door and locked it again after us. Delilah's bodyguard stayed inside the door. The lobby looked much as it had six months before.

The air might not have been cleaner inside, but at least it only smelled stale, instead of the charnel stench of the outside air. As we walked across the lobby, I caught a whiff of flowers, and realized that it was Delilah's hair. A subtler scent mingled with it that must have been perfume. It was a nice change. I took a deep, appreciative breath before Delilah turned around at the top of the stairs, and smiled again at me. My heart began to thump as I smelled the perfume and felt the bright light of that smile and found myself idiotically smiling back.

Then I realized she meant to go down those stairs, and I stopped smiling. My heart thumped for a different reason.

I looked over at Tony, and the old man was scanning the perimeter, inside and out, as always watching for threats. I was just coming to terms with the fact that Tony had not asked me to come to keep him company or help protect him, but to bring me here so Delilah could talk to me. Downstairs.

"Louis," she said, bringing my attention back to her. "You haven't been back to your lab since D-day, have you, darlin'?"

I shook my head. I associated my lab with that horrible day. My heart was pounding harder than before, and Delilah's smile had nothing to do with the reason.

"Louis, you need to get back down there."

"Why?" I shot back, more out of fear than anything else. I did not want to go back to where those memories were waiting.

"Your project, Hon. Think of it: The first computer that can think like a real person. We think it may still be running."

I frowned. "It would almost certainly have gone down by now, but so what if it is still running? It can't do anything, not without the Internet."

She shook her head, curls bouncing. "Tony shut down the rest of the buildin', but he made sure your lab had power enough."

I looked over at Tony. He said, "We ran the generator once a week until power was restored in March, long enough to charge the standby power for your lab. I don't think it's been interrupted long enough to run out of battery power, Louis."

Delilah went on, "As to what it can do...Louis, I saw all your reports when you were working on it. Don't you remember how exciting the possibilities were from that?"

I nodded slowly, troubled. "I remember." I knew I sounded defensive, but then I thought about what she said. I had tried successfully to put the project out of my mind, but what if the capabilities of the artificial intelligence could apply to more than the kinds of profit-making things we had been planning? What if we could use the AI for things like finding cures for the new plagues, or coping with genetic defects from low-level radiation poisoning, or even dealing with the fact that sewage and water treatment didn't work anymore?

If there was any chance the project could help us deal with our constant struggle for survival, I needed to man up and get over my issues. Tony was right. Alicia would want me to do this. But I still didn't want to go down those stairs. Damn.

"Darlin'," Delilah began again, but I held up my hand, ignoring the wild reaction of my heart. Deep breath.

"You've convinced me," I said. "Let's go see what's there. Don't get your hopes up. Even if the lab never lost power, it may not be operational. It was just supposed to collect information and think about it, so it might have collapsed by now."

"Collapsed?" Delilah looked at me curiously.

"The AI equivalent of a nervous breakdown. Sooner or later, it will have too many things to process, developing too many correlations and associations. If that's happened, it can't just reboot like a normal computer. There isn't anything to do but wipe the data, reboot, and start over from scratch." I opened the door to the stairs. "Come on."

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