Chapter Forty-One

September 20X6, Stanford

“I can’t believe you shot me.”

Recognizing Garrett’s voice, I clamp my hand over my mouth as a warm burst of relief floods my brain. I’m lying on my back on the lab floor and, blinking my eyes open, I push up my AR visor. The bright white lights embedded in the ceiling blind me, but a giggle bubbles to my lips. “You were being a dick.”

He laughs. “Yeah, but I didn’t deserve a mortal wound.”

I sit up. He’s lying on the floor across from me where he fell after I shot him. I’m so glad it’s not real.

He clutches his chest, like he’s checking for injuries. “A simple ‘no thank you’ would have been fine.” Propping himself up on his elbows, he lifts his visor and takes me in. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

Tears prick my eyes. It’s Garrett. The real Garrett. He wouldn’t press that button. Some part of the Simulation must still be active in my mind because I know that wasn’t him in there. I did the right thing.

The glass wall slides open and Dr. Nasif appears.

Garrett shuts up and scrambles to his feet. I do the same.

Dr. Nasif walks over to me, beaming, and unstraps my helmet. “That was fascinating.”

“Did you get the information you needed?” I slip into Kerri-mode, affecting her Irish accent.

“I did.” She exhales, lifting the helmet off my head. “I’m proud of you.” Her eyes are glassy as she removes the electrodes from my hands. “She passed.” She looks over my shoulder at Beau/Garrett.

“With flying colors,” he says, and to my surprise he’s in full Garrett mode. I don’t detect a trace of Beau anywhere.

I freeze, my gaze bouncing between the two of them. “Passed what?” I ask, still Kerri-fied. “Did I do what I was supposed to do?”

“You did everything perfectly. Just as I hoped, you listened to your instincts.” Dr. Nasif’s eyes crinkle as her smile widens. She moves over to Garrett and unstraps his helmet but keeps talking to me. “Your intuition should have been unmistakable because I muted your doubt receptors.”

“Muted my doubt receptors?” I poke my tongue into my cheek. “Were you manipulating my emotions, too?”

“No. Everything you were feeling was real up until the end.” She discards the transcranial helmets in a bin. “I had Garrett help me with that part.”

His name lands with a thud and my jaw falls open. “Wait.” Garrett? Dizzy, I press my palm to my forehead to steady myself. “What’s going on? To build this game you had to know about the Warhol tape…”

Garrett and Dr. Nasif look at each other.

“Let me explain.” Dr. Nasif returns to me and squeezes my shoulder. “This way, you two.” She gestures for us to follow and leads us out of the glass room.

We fall in line behind her and I glance at Garrett, my eyebrows raised.

“What is going on?” I mouth.

He shrugs, his lips sealed in a straight line. “We’ll find out.”

I squint up at him, positive he knows more than he’s letting on.

We arrive at Dr. Nasif’s desk where two three-dimensional holograms of our brains hover in the air, their complex fiber networks reflected in vivid rainbow color like mirror images.

“When Garrett first arrived at Stanford, he took a bias test, just like you did, Kerri,” Dr. Nasif explains to me, pointing at his hologram brain on her left. “And as soon as I saw his abilities, I protected him, just like I protect you.”

I stare at her, my jaw slack. “But you said you gave Dr. Schilling Beau’s—Garrett’s”—I correct myself, still unable to fathom how she knows his real name—“brain to upload.”

“I lied.” She raises her shoulders in a tiny shrug, the corner of her mouth twitching. “To you and Dr. Schilling. She believes she uploaded Garrett—Beau’s—brain, and I wasn’t sure who you were loyal to, so I let you think he’d uploaded his brain as well, to keep the secret safe.”

“So, he never uploaded his brain? It was all an act?” I scratch my cheek.

“It was.” Dr. Nasif nods. “I gave Dr. Schilling a fake scan, just like I did for you.”

“And the surgery?” I ask, my shoulders slumping. “Did you fake implanting the computer chip?”

She leans back against the desk and crosses one ankle over the other, seeming like she’s enjoying herself. “I implanted a chip—it was important to me that Nash believed Garrett uploaded his brain, too—but it isn’t connected to anything. It’s also a fake.”

Nash? My blood turns to ice.

“Told you so,” Garrett mutters and my body temperature returns to normal.

I raise my eyes to the lab ceiling. Please deliver me from conceited thieves. “But why are you protecting us?” I return my attention back to Dr. Nasif. “Are you a Disconnect?”

“No.” Her eyes sparkle. “I’m something else. Like I told you, I’m a Wayshower. So is Garrett. And the test we just gave you suggests you are, too.”

The revelation refuses to penetrate my thick skull and my eyebrows pinch together.

“I know this a lot to take in,” she says, scooting a stool toward me. “Why don’t you sit?”

I slide onto the seat and grip the edge, my mind racing. Garrett stands behind me, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders.

Dr. Nasif hops up on her desk so she faces us with the two brains floating over her shoulders. “Before I met Garrett, I suspected there were others, like me, who wanted to put a stop to the Super Brain. A big part of making the Simulation work is programming brains to obey the messaging they receive. To keep peace, certain impulses need to be muted and others amplified. Most of the time it worked in our student simulations. Once doubt was removed and students trusted their instincts, they would do whatever we programmed their instincts to tell them to do. But, occasionally, someone would override the programming, like you just did.” She focuses on me.

“I’ll tell you more about that in a minute. With our students we wouldn’t see a difference in brain function on their scans. That’s why we’ve had so much trouble proving free will. It never showed up in the brain, so we’d chalk the glitch up to an algorithmic malfunction or a computer speed issue. But in addition to free will being a problem, I started to wonder if someone, like Simon, was purposely writing bad code so the Simulation wouldn’t work.”

My eyes bulge. “Simon doesn’t want the Simulation to work? But he’s the one using Quinn to convince the world mind uploads are a good idea.”

“I know it’s hard to believe.” Her forehead puckers as she shoves her hands into her lab coat pockets. “I couldn’t make sense of it, either, until Garrett gave me the tape you stole from the Warhol. Once I listened to it, I realized Simon would love to take the world back to a time before technology and is actively finding a way to do it.”

My lungs contract and I sip in air, having trouble breathing. Stewart was right. Simon is exactly who would benefit most from an EMP. And where do Garrett and Dr. Nasif fit in? All I can hear is my heart pulsating in my ears, relentlessly thundering, making it hard to comprehend all the moving pieces at play, the massive implications of Simon’s involvement in the apparent dueling schemes to dictate the future of humanity.

“No offense, Dr. Nasif, but Garrett, how did you know you could trust her with the tape?” I finally manage to ask, looking up at him over my shoulder.

“I had a hunch.” He squeezes the back of my neck, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s holding back a grin. “We’ve just proven you’re not the only one with instincts, Ellie.” His eyes flash.

I fake-smile at him. He’s as irritating as ever, but deep down, I can’t deny it’s comforting to have the old Garrett back. Not that I’d ever let him know that. “And where is the tape now?” I flutter my eyelashes. “In your headboard?”

“No, but I still have it.” His chin juts forward. “We have to keep it out of Simon’s hands.”

“If Simon knows how to find the detonator, he’ll put it to good use,” Dr. Nasif says, making me jump. I’ve been so laser focused on Garrett and his headboard I forgot she was there for a second.

“Does he know where the detonator is?” I return my attention to her.

“We don’t think so.” She shakes her head. “But we believe the tape contains clues that could lead to its location—even though we haven’t been able to decipher anything concrete yet. It doesn’t say where the detonator is—only that it exists—and maybe there’s a map to its location out there somewhere.”

“My parents told me Operation Disconnect has always been a legend, a conspiracy theory with no physical proof,” Garrett says as he pulls up another stool and sits next to me. “Some Disconnects have been actively seeking to prove the EMP network true for years, and it was a disagreement over its validity that made Simon leave Keystone. Sides were chosen long ago but they’ve been dormant. It wasn’t until the Warhol tape was uncovered and the theory was proven that the old alliances reengaged. There are two factions of Disconnects now: the Wayshowers and the EMPs. The EMPs want to take the world back to a time before computers and the Wayshowers believe in free will, in human worth, that we can evolve to a level of authentic universal intelligence instead of using technology to manufacture it. We want world peace through self-actualization.”

“We think we can keep our humanity and technology, too,” Dr. Nasif says, a pretty flush rising in her cheeks. “But we need to ban AI, like we banned nuclear weapons, and reward human ingenuity and creativity. Access to information and truth needs to be universal and accessible to all. For free. Only then can we even the playing field. It starts with equality. No more labels—Influencers, Laborers, Unrankables. We need to take care of each other and the earth and find a way for all humans to have the opportunity to pursue what brings them joy, what creates meaning in their lives. We need to foster an environment where succeeding at one’s purpose is attainable.”

“That sounds wonderful.” I sigh. “Like a dream. Is it possible?”

“We think so.” Dr. Nasif’s eyes are practically glowing. “If we have the right leadership in place who are establishing the right policies. But that’s down the road. For now, we need to stop the EMPs and the Super Brain.”

“One weapon of mass destruction at a time.” Garrett mimes slam-dunking a basketball.

At a loss for how to solve this impossible puzzle, I rub my temples. “So, you’re Wayshowers.” I test the word, liking the feel of it on my lips, but then another notion strikes me, and my spine stiffens. “And you were in Pittsburgh to steal the tape from me.” I spin on my stool so I’m facing Garrett.

He winces. “Yes. My parents asked me to steal it,” he says quietly, staring at his fingers that form a steeple in his lap. “I didn’t know what was on the tape—or anything about it—then. They kept me in the dark—the less information you have about what you’re stealing, the safer you are and all that—but now I know they saw an article in a small print Disconnect newspaper about how a misplaced Warhol Time Capsule had recently been uncovered, and there was mention of a tape that proved Operation Disconnect. With Simon’s past and with the way he’s been grooming Nash, they weren’t sure who to trust and wanted to keep it from falling into the wrong hands, so they sent me to get it.”

He looks up at me from under his eyelashes, his gaze scalding. “I didn’t know you were after the tape, too, until I saw you casing the Warhol a few days before the heist. Even though I knew I should get the tape and get out, I was so happy to see you I couldn’t resist saying hi. I missed you. Please believe I meant everything I said that night except that my parents sent me to protect you. They would have trusted you with the heist on your own. You didn’t need me. And I wasn’t just staying close to you to get the tape. I promise.”

I bow my head as relief shoots through me. My hands tingle as my confidence in my abilities and instincts is restored. My gaze finds his once more at his next words.

“But since you and Nash have a past, I also didn’t know for sure if you were the wrong hands.” A shadow darkens his eyes, and he lets out a long, slow exhale. “If you were trying to play me.”

That he thinks I’m capable of deceiving him is a huge compliment and butterflies flap to life in my belly. But then a shudder sweeps through me that tamps them down. There’s so much else to unpack in what he just said, and everything I need to say to him reels through my mind. I want to tell him I’m loyal to him above everyone else, that I’d never choose Nash over him, but that I can’t blame him for being cautious. I’ve been so afraid of getting hurt, of getting played myself, that I haven’t trusted my instincts. I’ve done nothing but push him away. My chest aches with the need to make it right.

Unfortunately, the words won’t form on my lips, so I latch on to the thing that has been bothering me since the night it happened. “If you thought Nash might be on Team Simon, why would you show him the tape?” I grit my teeth, part of me still unable to fathom that he was faking being brainwashed the whole time.

He sucks in his breath and explains in a rush. “I was testing him to see if it sparked recognition. I wanted to see whose side he was on for myself.”

“And?” I cock my head.

Garrett nods, confirming what I’ve already concluded. Nash is an EMP.

Even though I’ve suspected Nash’s allegiance to Simon on some level, my stomach still lurches. I cup my palm over my mouth and breathe into my hand. “He wants me on his side. Simon’s side. But I would never—” I choke on the words, but I don’t have time to finish my sentence or process the full ramifications of Nash’s role, because right then the power fizzles out, plunging the room into darkness.