The Electoral Center
Mars
The two cameras buzzing in the tunnel were more interested in catching the young girl's expression as she discovered what laid ahead than showing what was inside the most secretive place in the Solar System. She slowly pulled the heavy rounded vault door. Sophie immediately stiffened.
The young firecracker’s expression turned from determined curiosity to anger in a heartbeat. The girl's capacity to display emotions was infectious. Audiences were enthralled by each moment Sophie was on-screen. She was the perfect follow-up to a boring academic presentation on quantum physics.
The cameras invited themselves past the door into the place to film Sophie's visage from inside the compound. Sophie, in disbelief, was looking at a sight from Earth. To the audience, this looked like an ordinary doorstep of any suburban house. The wooden stairs leading up on the left were covered by a worn rug. Ahead was a hallway leading into a small family house. Off to the side, above a pile of shoes and clutter from everyday life, was a little coffee table. A whiteboard hung over an old phone in the entryway. A Grand Canyon magnet held a list of chores Susan, Sophie’s mother had written for Laurent. Private family pictures cluttered the mirror. This was the perfect reproduction of the entryway of a small house located in South Bend, Indiana on Sophie barely remembered.
What truly shone in insensitivity to Sophie was that above one of the coat hooks, to the side of the wooden mirror was a child's drawing, her drawing. She had drawn it years earlier in class at a time when she was a normal eleven year old. It showed her family, a girl, complete with triangular dress, holding the hand of taller parents. The mother figure had a big rounded belly to show a pregnancy. She had drawn a large arrow pointing to the belly. "Baby brother William," read the text.
Sophie recoiled as if someone had slapped her. She stepped back out into the hallway. "Stop!" she barked covering her eyes for the second time in less than an hour. In the shuffle of a CPU, the entire illusion was deleted from Electoral's witching-Center. In its place were gray cement walls. There was no mistaking what had just happened. Sophie's face was bright red. She didn't know if she should break down in tears or scream at someone.
“Sorry,” apologized Marilyn's, “I thought...”
"Wrong,” she completed. “Is it gone?" snapped the girl.
“Yes it is. So sorry.”
"What happened?" asked the journalist.
“I do not know,” answered the computer voice.
"This is my old house, just before the accident."
The journalist was shocked the moment she realized what had just happened. She tried to fill the silence. "It appears like Electoral does not understand the trauma of accident victims, when faced with images from their past. We are left to wonder if Sophie will be able to handle this situation." The commentary was misplaced.
"Sophie," offered kindly the doctor, "the images are gone." The girl looked. She was fine. The party slowly made its way past the door into the gray structure.
From the distance, around a corner inside the Center were heavy steps. Then came a deep male voice. "Not even a minute here, and you are already insulting her. You guys have balls; I will give you that. Get over yourselves," said the male voice from a distance.
“I don't need you to defend me,” replied Marilyn.
The group could see Georges Vouvelakis, her creator walking closer. His hair was in shambles, his beard was unshaven and he was wearing large sweatpants. The man was the image of the geek programmer.
"I won't let these people insult you, they are our guests. Not the other way around." He spoke out loud. The flip-flops made noise as he walked. "You can't fault an artificial intelligence for trying to give you the setting most dear to your heart, a child's house, where you last were happy." He was walking closer. "Humans suck, we all know that image is what this girl wanted to see if she wasn’t crazy like the lot of you. She knows what Sophie's heart wants," he said, looking directly at Sophie. He was the first man free of her charms. Sophie looked at him, he needed to repeat himself, "If you can't manage to watch the thing your heart most craves, don't blame her, blame yourself."
“Georges, please, you are not helping,” whispered the computer.
"The hell I will let them insult you. You bring them here, you promise some TV time for her, well, this is my show as much as yours." Georges looked and pointed directly at the journalist, “I know she promise you an interview. Not gonna happen.”
The girl saw the man's point. "I am fine," said Sophie to the invisible computer. The man was right; the image had been offered out of kindness. The cameras were still flying around. Georges tried to swat one.
"You must be Georges Vouvelakis?" asked Milly, extending her hand to him. He refused to shake it.
"Rhetorical question, that's lame. You know who I am."
“Georges, father, we are on the way to the Rho chambers. Sophie will need to place her father in his cradle.” Marilyn was obviously trying to change the topic. Georges looked at Sophie and then the body of Laurent.
"God, poor man. This is even worse than on tv. Follow me. It's a long walk. We have to go around the middle."
"How long?" asked Sophie.
"With him, maybe ten minutes."
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“I could redraw the Center, that would save some time,” offered the computer.
"Redraw?" asked the journalist.
"I hate it when you do that," muttered the programmer. Then he looked at the group of misfits and a spiteful glint shone in his eyes. "Heck yeah, that's perfect actually. They need to see what you can do. Maybe after the display of power, you will finally get the respect you deserve."
“Sophie, should I redraw? I will move the rooms around. Recreate the Center.”
"Marilou, if it saves time, let's just do it," said Sophie. “Must be good television.”
It began as soon as she stopped talking. What happened next was nothing short of amazing. Milly was sure to win awards for this broadcast if the cameras were able to catch even a fraction of it.
“Please stay where you are. Do not move. Sophie, can you grab the metal case, and don't let it go. I must magnetize the air.”
"Don't touch my stuff in the command room," grumbled Georges.
The power of the artificial intelligence residing within these walls took over. From deep in the heart of this place, a light breeze of power began to flow. A humming feel began, then the walls lost structure as a sand storm began. Marilyn controlled each grain of dust forming the hundred walls of the Center. They were lost in a large 3D printer able to redraw the building grain after grain. She paired gas molecules to tracers to magnetize and control the atmosphere. Like a television sends photons to illuminate millions of pixels to create beautiful images.
Within seconds, the gray walls, the air ducts, and even the glass screens serving as screens lost coherence and turned to colorful dust. Then building structural walls and blocks, like smoke patterns, began to swirl in an invisible wind. To Electoral, the difficult part was making sure air molecules would not escape as the complex moved as she needed them for her guests.
As everyone was wowed by the ballet, she nonchalantly spoke, “Before my migration to mars, I had to think long and hard about the best way to expatriate myself and Georges off earth without leaving ourselves vulnerable. My plan took months to formulate. You now see the result: micro-machines or MEMS. Large systems required maintenance, which in turns requires human intervention. The use of robots was also out of the question. Robots break down, which in turn would require more robots and thus, more resources. The solution was simple. Numbers do not scare me. Mars is a planet covered in rust, which is, on a molecular level, nothing more than oxidized metal and oxygen. A pound of martian soil also has silicates needed for the construction of glass. As long as I can manipulate a grain of sand, I can move millions to build castles from powerful algorithms. I play LEGO blocks on a planetary scale now, this is the result,” she concluded as classical music replaced her voice.
Mars was a desolate place. Before her, a handful of humans had walked here wearing thick suits. To terraform Mars, to build her Center, all she needed was a handful of different machines. What was needed was a power source and a sprinkle of powder she would send to Mars and placed over Martian soil. On the 21st of March 2067, at precisely two minutes in the morning, she began her work far away from human eyes. The hundreds of ships launched after that date with media fanfare were decoy to convince humans that she still required large-scale building materials. Out of respect for the beauty of her new home, she grabbed only small circle of land, placed a wall around it, and decided never to touch the rest.
There was beauty sitting at the core of a sand storm.
“I even used the micro-machines to build the catapult.” That would certainly explain why no one else had known it was even there. Inside the wall of her Center, she was God. Nothing short of a nuclear strike could weaken her, and she even had a plan against that. Deep in her heart, she knew one day the humans would come to destroy her, it was just a matter of time. So she had two options: eradicate the human race or, as she had chosen, simply expand beyond their reach. Unknown to mankind, her machines were already on Io, the moon of Jupiter. Venus' corrosive atmosphere was a challenge, but she was working on that. She would soon be on Pluto, but there was little use to that. Mercury proved to be quite a challenge. The electromagnetic storms from the Sun had given her headaches. Short of the sun going Nova, her survival was assured since each grain had memory in which she could reside.
Sophie was the only one to keep her eyes open during the eloquent sandstorm. One by one, layers of the Center peeled away. Under a layer of gray sand, some of the structural elements were visible. They were made of a thicker black sand. These grains were larger, the size of little fruit flies. The Center came alive, like swarms of insects, each layer took flight in a mesmerizing ballet. All that remained after Marilyn's first deconstructive sweep was a skeleton made of shiny metal. It spoke to Sophie in a language she was still unable to understand. In the distance to the right, behind a hundred feet of sand, Sophie swore she saw a metal box, a room, untouched by the MEMS. It was at the center of the tornado. She also saw a shining light coming from it but soon was covered.
The screens, the glass, and even the metal collapsed into fine powder. The flying CNN cameras were barely able to stabilize themselves and capture the transformation. This was magical. They were sitting in the center of a giant three dimensional printer moving magnetized pellets to form an entire building. As Milly found the courage to open her eyes, she observed the swirling ballet her cameras had caught for the human audience. The beauty of this technology wasn't just in its ingenuity, its effectiveness. No, the true allure here was in the sublime effortlessness with which it was being executed.
Sophie, by comparison, was not impressed. She was in no mood to rejoice or even enjoy the honor of being the first guest to see this change. Doctor Shin was hunched over her father's body protecting him just in case. The young adult made a mental note to thank the doctor as soon as she could; this was more than dedication at her job, she genuinely cared for her father. Sophie put the basket down and put the hand on her back.
Slowly, walls began to reform. Tables, chairs and other pieces of furniture all seemed to coalesce from nothing. Marilyn even threw some tasteful art on the wall, including a few quite famous pieces. Not resisting the urge to brag a bit, she followed Sophie's gaze and noted “Even the highest grade analysis couldn't differentiate my copies from the true originals. Everything from the canvas makeup, to oil pigment, to brush stroke styles are identical to the atomic layer and beyond. I've even thrown in an original or two!” A sparkle of lights served to highlight one particular painting; it appeared to be an orb inside a cave, surrounded by amorphous shapes. Something about those shapes indicated they were in distress. This was a view of the Lower where Marilyn had just stolen the Dot.
Before long, the group stood in the middle of a large room. The place was filled with equipment made of glass, metal, and polymer. "This is amazing," said the journalist. It truly was. Milly knew her job was to offer a better narration, but for the moment, this was all she could muster. She was a journalist strapped into a roller-coaster given a microphone to narrate as the coaster moved down the track.
"I hate it when she does that," said Georges. The programmer continued, "but it does help illustrate what she has recently become." He was the first to move in the new room. Georges grabbed a chair next to him, touched it to make sure it had hardened, and sat on it in front of a newly constructed computer screen. The surface of every object in the room was smooth and looked normal; it was impossible to tell any of this was made of sand.
Milly finally received a message back from Earth. It was strong in her earpiece. "You have broadcasting override. We will assemble on our end. Good luck." The notice came a bit late. An override meant they would not cut her for any reason.