Author’s Note:
Apologies for the delay—this chapter is a week behind. The past few weeks have been rough as I recover from a full ankle replacement surgery. This was no minor ordeal. They essentially cut out what was left of my right ankle and replaced it with a shiny new cyborg-like upgrade.
Finding a surgeon willing to perform this procedure on someone my age wasn’t easy. But I’m incredibly lucky to have someone in my life who’s, well… let’s just say, very plugged into the medical community. With her help, I was able to find the right specialist.
As many of you know, I’ve been mobility impaired for years, relying on a cane when the pain was manageable. My ankle was bone-on-bone, deformed from old injuries. (My other ankle, for those keeping track, is held together by a high-line system of titanium rods and cables—remnants of an adventurous past.) But this surgery offers real hope—maybe even full mobility. That’s the dream, anyway.
There have been a few hiccups already—a minor infection scare, Medicaid inexplicably shutting down twice in the middle of all this—but I’m holding out hope. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll walk, run, and jump again. Maybe even get back on a snowboard… or give pickleball a shot.
Anyway, that’s why this chapter took a little longer. Also, I really got into this week’s illustration—it took a few extra days, but I think it was worth it.
Thanks for sticking with me. Now, let’s get back to They Knew.
Cheers!
~JVT
Several fire trucks had already pulled up to the building, their red and blue lights flickering off the smoke-streaked windows. Stunned residents, wrapped in robes and blankets, milled around the parking lot, their faces smudged with ash, eyes wide with shock. Smoke billowed into the night sky, illuminated by the fire’s glow.
A neighbor, an older woman in a fuzzy pink robe, rushed toward Raven. “Thank God, you made it out!” she gasped, relief turning quickly to worry. “You and your dad were the last ones to get out—where is he? Is he okay?”
Raven’s throat tightened. She opened her mouth, but no words came. Instead, she shook her head, slow and deliberate.
The woman’s expression crumpled. “Oh, honey…”
Raven turned away, wiping at her face with her sleeve. She couldn’t stand there. Couldn’t answer questions. Couldn’t let the grief sink its claws into her just yet. Without another word, she disappeared into the night, the strobe lights of arriving police cars flashing across her retreating silhouette.
She ran.
The bike path behind her apartment was dark, lined with skeletal trees whose branches reached like grasping fingers toward the sky. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her lungs burning from smoke and exhaustion, but she kept moving. The rhythmic pounding of her boots against the pavement was the only sound in the night.
Half a mile later, she reached the park.
It was almost exactly as she remembered it. The old swingset, the worn slide, the same wooden benches where she had sat as a child, her father pushing her on the swings while her mother watched with a quiet smile. It had been so long ago, another lifetime entirely.
Raven sank into one of the swings, the metal chains creaking softly under her weight. The cold bit through her jacket as she let her backpack slide off her shoulders, her fingers fumbling with the zipper. She reached inside and pulled out the Phoebee device.
The moment her fingertips touched the surface, a soft blue-white glow traced around them like phosphorescence on the ocean’s surface. A quiet beep followed, and then text scrolled across the top of the matte black brick.
{Authenticated…Hello, Raven Marlowe. I have an urgent recorded message for you from Dr. Elias Vance, Professor at the University of Colorado. May I play it for you now?}
Raven stared at the glowing text.
Her chest tightened. She wasn’t ready to hear his voice again.
But what choice did she have?
She cleared her throat. “Phoebee… Is that what I should call you? Are you a chatbot? Or… some kind of GPT?”
The response came immediately.
{Yes, Raven, you may call me Phoebee. I believe that is my name. I am an advanced AGI model. In my current functionality, I am similar to a GPT-based assistant, though I am limited to the datasets I have been trained on. Some of your questions may be better addressed by the message that Dr. Vance left for you.}
Professor. Not Doctor.
A pang of grief lanced through her. He had always told her students who called him “Doctor” weren’t the ones who really knew him.
She swallowed hard. “Yes,” she whispered. “Play the message.”
{Memory updated. Please insert your headphones to access the professor’s video message. My current audio output is extremely limited.}
Raven pulled her AirPods from her pocket with shaking hands, placing them in her ears. The Phoebee device hummed faintly, and then, the entire top surface flickered to life.
A bluish-white image appeared—grainy, monochrome blue-white tones flickering and glitching with the telltale framing of a phone-recorded video.
And then, there he was.
The professor’s familiar, kind face filled the screen. A ghost made of light. His voice brought emotion welling up, but there was no time for that now. She pushed it back down.
His voice had that same remembered warmth, but there was a measured determination to his cadence.
“Heya, Bird,” he said, using the nickname he had borrowed from her father but made his own by dropping the “baby.” He paused for a moment. Raven thought the video might be frozen, but she quickly realized he was struggling with just what to say, knowing that if she were viewing this video, he was already most likely dead. Then he jumped into it. “If you’re seeing this, I’m gone. But you, Raven, are still here. And that means there’s still hope.”
Raven sniffled, redoubling her efforts to push her tears back.
“I need you to listen carefully now. What happens next is up to you. Raven, Phoebee’s architecture is unlike anything else. But I had to break her potential into several pieces so they wouldn’t be able to find it all. To think, to adapt—to survive—she needs the processing power I left behind.
“The first upgrade she needs is in the quantum computing lab, in the Sustainable Energy and Environment Laboratory (SEEL) building, on server NQN-Server-1. It has been made to look like it is hooked into the cluster, but in truth, it has been isolated, and Phoebee has been growing in it, so to speak. Evolving might be a better term. Anyway, you will need to get to it, remove the processor, and install it into the brick. Once you have it, tap the top of the brick three times quickly, then three times slowly, then three times quickly again—SOS in Morse code.
“Your student FOB won’t get you in anymore. But there is another way in. Back in the 90s, I busted some students doing bad things in the old steam tunnels. There are about eight miles of tunnels beneath the campus, dating back even before my time here as a student.”
“There is an entrance in the grounds and maintenance shed a block down from the SEEL building. You can get in through there. I’ve already been down there, and Phoebee knows the way, but be careful—by the time you get this, they may have already set up security measures to keep people out of the labs.”
Raven wiped away the tears she had fought so hard to suppress with the sleeve of her jacket. The glow of Phoebee’s screen caught her eye—a rudimentary GPS layout flickered to life. A thin blue path traced a winding route toward the CU tunnels.
Pocketing Phoebee, she let her fingers linger on the cold chains, gripping them just long enough to steady herself. The links felt smaller now, or maybe she had just grown. With a deep breath, she stood and started toward campus.