While the primary section of GOLEM’s new appendage had been intended to handle the computer’s heavy lifting, the claw’s secondary limbs were designed for far more delicate procedures. Sprouting from the knuckles, rooted in the main skeleton were smaller telescopic graspers—six-foot-long fingers, the tips of which branched out again, this time into delicate surgical instruments. There were scalpels and forceps, suction hoses and syringes and IVs connected to God only knows what kind of elixirs and solutions. There were also tools designed for sampling tissue, and that knowledge made me shudder.

What the hell had GOLEM been up to?

I stood back to take in the entire monstrosity, which hung like an inverted mechanical tree, and that’s when I recognized the design pattern in play. The thought must have subconsciously triggered a memory of my phone conversation with Monique DeFriend because suddenly ABE was playing it back to me like a lecturing parent.

“… ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS USING BIOCHEMICAL ALGORITHMS POSSESSING COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO INTERNALLY OVERANALYZE THEIR OWN PRIME DIRECTIVES, CREATING CLOSED-CIRCUIT LOOPS OF SEGREGATED DNA STRANDS. THIS ACTIVITY CAN CORRUPT THE SYSTEM IN THAT THESE FAVORED SOLUTION PATTERNS ARE FILED AWAY AS ‘PERFECTION’ AND THEREFORE ARE NO LONGER SUBJECTED TO RIGOROUS REEVALUATION. THE AI VALIDATES THIS NEW PROTOCOL IN A VACUUM—A COGNITIVE STATE THAT MOST PSYCHIATRISTS WOULD DEFINE AS PSYCHOPATHIC EGO.”

GOLEM, a supercomputer programmed with a matrix patterned after redwood DNA, had constructed a mechanical claw based on its own biological biases. In doing so, the computer had subconsciously created its own closed-circuit loop—and I had been the one to give it shape and form.

The question now—what had my computer’s psychopathic ego been up to?

The twelve cryogenic pods were still in place. I moved to the first machine of four set in the front row and peered inside the container.

It was empty.

So were the next two. And the last.

“Freed themselves and left me behind … Bastards.”

I moved to the second row, yanking open the unsealed lids of four more vacant pods—

—the pan flute–like extortions summoning my attention from above. Oscar had climbed the robotic claw and was demanding I join him.

Standing atop one of the pods in the last row, I climbed up onto the steel appendage, managing to establish a handhold on one of the claw’s lower digits—and nearly slicing my right ankle on one of the surgical blades. Gripping the flex hose, I attempted to pull my way up the alien-looking structure, my rubber-soled shoes slipping on hydraulic fluid drippings.

Growing impatient, the cephaloped reached down with one of its powerful tentacles and hoisted me up to its perch.