by Kal Spriggs
“Trust the voice talking to me that no one else can hear, sure, that sounds like a great idea--”
My voice cracked as an image appeared right in front of me. It was Jiden... and it also wasn't Jiden. She was like a holovid projection. At the same time, instead of her blonde hair and tanned skin, my sister's hair was died jet black and her skin was pale. She also wore a short black skirt and tight black shirt, with a bare midriff. My sister would never dress that way and I blinked in shock. “And now I'm seeing things...”
“I'm using your implant to paint me into your brain, you idiot,” she told me.
“Using my...” My eyes narrowed, “Okay, what are you?”
“I'm your sister... sort of,” she shrugged. She waved a hand and an illusory chair appeared behind her and she took a seat. “Your sister was part of a very special program, related to this material called quicksilver...”
“Yeah, I heard about that. Quicksilver's the material that our parents discovered, right?”
Her eyes narrowed and I could see her reconsider her explanation. She'd been talking to me like I was child, now her tone shifted, “I guess you've been learning things. Okay. Well as a part of that project, the implants they gave her and some others needed a very advanced program to run. Your sister created a very special gestalt, a mix of her mind and memories that formed the core of the programming that would run her implant. The people running that project realized that her gestalt was very stable for that kind of thing, so they copied it and used it to run a private network.”
“What?” I asked. “Isn't that illegal? I mean I know it's allowed to copy someone's consciousness prior to surgery or something like that, but this sounds like they kidnapped her-- your-- mind.”
“These people didn't care all that much about the legalities. They wanted to take over Century. They used that copy to run their hidden network and transfer messages between their conspiracy, their handler, the pirate you know as Wessek, and his boss, Crown Prince Abrasax.”
“Wessek is dead,” I told her. “I... well, let's just say I took care of that.”
“Very nice,” Jiden smiled at me, “You're coming along, little brother. I hope he suffered.”
I stared at her. That wasn't like my sister. She made a face, “I was, I am that copy. The gestalt they stole. Well, half of it. I'm missing parts of me. But trust me, they did horrible things to me. Whatever you did to Wessek, he deserved far worse for the things he's done.”
I looked away. “He died thinking his son betrayed him.”
“Nice,” She gave me a savage grin. “Anyway, Jiden, the real Jiden sort of tore up the conspiracy back on Century. The Admiral faced down Crown Prince Abrasax, and that's that.”
“So why are you here in my head, then?” I frowned. “Did Jiden send you or something?”
“Her?” she laughed at that, “No, she and I made an agreement, she didn't tell anyone about me and I helped her stop the bad guys. She did way better than I expected, to be honest. But I didn't want to risk her blabbing about me and the whole risk of being erased from existence, so I hitched a ride on the first ship going somewhere far, far away... and here I am.”
I considered that as I settled into the room's real chair. My sister was alive. The Admiral was alive. I wasn't the last Armstrong in existence. I still had family. For just a moment, I really regretted sending Ted Meeks back instead of taking his spot. No, it was the right thing to do. I took a breath, trying to focus on the present, “You're an artificial intelligence?”
“I'm an artificially created intelligence,” she countered. “Which isn't technically a violation of Guard law. Not that it would stop them from erasing me if they could manage to find me.”
“You probably use a lot of processing power. Like, way more than any normal freighter or even warship would have,” I stared at her. “How'd you get here?”
“Crown Prince Abrasax's flagship had a very robust computer system and I had communications codes for their systems seeing as I'd been running their hidden communications network,” she grinned. “I say had, because I slagged it down to melted plastic on my way out of it. I made it look like a virus he'd picked up playing hacked entertainment sims, too. I would have loved to hear the explanations after they finished that investigation, especially after they review the content of those sims...”
“You hacked your way onto his flagship?” I blinked in shock. “If you could do that, why not overload its reactors or something?”
“Well,” she considered that for a moment, “there's the obvious thing: it probably would have killed me if I'd blown up the ship while I was on it.” She coughed, flushing a bit, “Honestly, though, I didn't think of it.”
I shook my head. “Okay, so why are you here, talking to me?”
“Well, I was tracking down everyone responsible for killing our family. And first thing I did was go after Wessek. But I couldn't find him. Which I find is because you killed him, which worked out pretty well, because I went after his son, next, thinking I could use him to find his father... and there you were. Of course, I recognized you, though the resemblance is probably good enough to fool people who never met him. Then I noticed that you had quicksilver in your body and I knew enough from my gestalt days to activate it. It's different, by the way from the stuff Jiden has in her, there's existing software, so I'm sort of riding along. Plenty of space for me, though.”
“You hijacked my implant?” I asked in shock.
“I hijacked the quicksilver in your body—which I'm really curious how you got that, by the way—and I used that to connect into your implant so we can communicate,” she stretched her feet out, crossing her ankles as she stared at me. “It's really interesting, since I think I can duplicate a lot of the properties of the Tier Three implant, only I'm controlling them, not you.”
“I don't know if I like the sound of that,” I told her.
“Don't be a sourpuss. Look, try this,” she said. Suddenly there were two of me, seated next to one another in the room. “What the...” we trailed off.
“Is this real?” I asked.
“It seems to be,” I answered. I was thinking it through in parallel and aware of it. I was literally beside myself. I reached out one hand and my copy did the same. My flesh and blood hand passed through the image.
“It's a digital copy of you. Able to multitask in this...” she waved a hand around us, “area, but unable to affect it physically, without hacking, anyway.” She cocked her head, “Though I imagine I could simulate the feeling of physical touch…”
“Put us back, please,” my digital copy said.
She waved a hand and it was back to just me. But I had the memories of both copies, including the uncomfortable feeling of being a body without physical form. “Please don't do that without asking me,” I told her.
“What's the big deal?” Jiden's copy asked.
“You didn't ask my permission and you're able to make me see and hear things that aren't there. It can get me in a lot of trouble. If you wanted to hurt me, you could paint a false floor over a deep pit or create some kind of monster in my head and get me to run screaming off a cliff or...” I shook my head. “Just leave me alone as far as painting stuff in my brain, okay?”
“Fine, fine,” she told me. “But you'll want it for studying. You can make a ton of progress reading those stuffy manuals you were doing. Split off your intelligence and you can have them all read in a couple of hours.”
I considered that. “Okay, we'll circle back to that one. Why are you here?”
“Well, I found my brother, which was kind of awesome. I thought you were dead, too. Jiden does as well, unless you got a message back to her?”
“I sent back Ted Meeks...”
“Wait, Ted is still alive?” My sister's copy actually wavered a bit. She stared at me and I could see thoughts flashing across her face. “The Enforcers, the corrupt ones, they covered it up. All of it. They must have turned him over to Wessek and then of course they couldn't lea
ve it looking like there was a live witness somewhere, so they wrote up that he'd died. Oh... those bastards. I hope they hang the lot of them.”
I wasn't sure what to make of her reaction. There was a hard note in her voice, an edge of venom and hate that I never would have imagined I would hear from Jiden. My sister could be harsh. She could be, had been, self-centered at times. But vindictive? Cruel? This “copy” of her, if that's what she really was, seemed to take pleasure from the idea of people who'd wronged her suffering for it. If that was the case, having her in my implant might be worse than worrisome, it might be actually dangerous.
She seemed to notice my concern.
She shook her head, “Sorry, it's just... Jiden has, I have, been beating myself up over what happened to Ted for four years now. To find out he was alive and prisoner that whole time... that we could have saved him,” She let out a deep breath. “But you did that. You got him home.”
She actually teared up. I didn't know if my sister's digital copy could feel emotion, not really, but she sure seemed choked up. I cleared my throat, “Anyway, you're here to what, help me?”
“Yeah, that's what family is for,” she said it off-hand, as if it were no big thing.
“How do I know I can trust you?” I asked. Her arrival did seem a bit surprising, almost too convenient in fact.
“Suspicious, good thing, probably a good survival trait,” she nodded. “Look. I've got no body. No future. I tried the whole being a ghost in the system... it didn't do anything for me. There are some other options, some of them might surprise you, but I don't like feeling helpless. And you're in a spot, I can help you out.”
“Why only start talking to me now?” I asked. “Crown Prince Abrasax got back months ago. Before I took Vars' place, actually.”
“Wessek and Vars were both off-grid,” she answered. “You only popped up as Vars when you turned in his pass to the Drakkus Imperial Military Institute. And I didn't have all the codes to get into their networks. I've been sort of lurking in the systems until your assassin needed a hacker to help him get in here and I saw my opportunity, so I provided physical access codes I found--”
“Wait, you helped him?” I asked in shock.
“Getting physical access codes was relatively easy,” she told me. “And even digital people need money, you have no idea how much storage I use diffused across the planetary network. I piggy-backed his implant as a relay to the rest of the network. I was going to pop a warning to you, but then I saw your quicksilver and I realized that was a nice long-term solution to the whole residence issue and I jumped in. I intended to warn you, but figuring out the quicksilver took a bit longer than I expected, since as I told you, it's a different type than the stuff Jiden has in her head. So, by the time I could communicate, he'd already beat you up pretty bad.”
“You helped an assassin get in here to kill me and you explain that when I ask why I'm supposed to trust you?” I demanded.
“Well, you know, I'm being honest with you, that's got to be worth something, right?” Jiden asked. She looked at me as if that were a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
I felt a headache coming on. I had the digital copy of my older sister in my head. She didn't seem particularly caught up in morality or consequences. She might be helpful, but she might also make things far worse for me. And that's just assuming I can actually take her at her word...
“We need to set up some ground rules,” I told her. “One: no making me see things that aren't there.”
She held up a hand, “What about,” she waved her hands at herself, “you know, me?”
I considered that. “How about not when there's a chance of distracting me? Otherwise, I guess talk to me in my head.” Because that's not distracting at all, I thought to myself.
“Okay.” She considered that. “You're kind of limiting me, here. I mean, I can help you out a lot. I lifted the access codes for these security doors off your girlfriend's implant. I can do a lot more.”
I covered my face in my hands, “She's not my girlfriend.”
“She helped you avoid certain death, she's relatively pretty,” my sister said. “What, you didn't seal the deal?” She waggled her eyebrows at me.
“I am so not having this conversation with you,” I growled.
She rolled her eyes, “Fine, fine, be a prude. But don't be too much of a prude. You don't know how much time you have. Live life a little, while you have a physical body, anyway...”
I decided to change the subject, “Helping me split my...” I frowned, trying to figure out how to phrase it.
“Jiden calls it splitting her focus or splitting her consciousness,” she told me.
“I can do that and read books and still retain the knowledge?” I asked.
“And the memories. It's a bit different doing it with your implant and the quicksilver in your brain, but I think I can manage things for you, I'm kind of awesome that way,” she told me.
“Humble too,” I growled. “Okay, let's try it. I have the files on my--”
I broke off as I realized that I was speaking to a room full of... me. There were a dozen of me and I could see surprise on all of our faces. In fact, I was thinking in dozens of different tracks, all at the same time. “Huh,” I said, “this could be useful.”
“Tell me about it,” I said to myself.
I pulled up the manuals on my implant and started assigning books to read.
***
Chapter 2: First Impressions
The bad news was that I finished all the manuals before lunch. Splitting out my focus seemed to enable me to use the implant to accelerate the process of reading and talking inside the digital world.
It was a very strange sensation having the impression of hours of reading from each of the experiences, yet have that all compressed into only a couple hours at most. While all my digital copies were reading, I went through a physical workout. There wasn't a lot I could do in the tiny room, but I'd been a prisoner in a similar room for months and I'd managed to get myself into shape.
I'd lost a lot of that muscle living on the streets, but I'd started putting some of it back on here while I waited to go on to the Institute. The facility cadre let us go for runs on an outdoor track, even, though I hated running in the rain. I kept at it because I figured physical fitness was going to be a part of the training.
After all my copies finished their assigned bits and my sister merged them back into me, I sat there for a minute, examining the knowledge and memories. “That is such a weird feeling.”
“It's only temporary, for you,” she noted. “Though I suppose I could copy out a version of you to manage the implant. I'd have to use some of my software to do it...”
“I'm good, thanks,” I told her. I wasn't sure how I felt about all of this. Especially not in the long term. “What about other security doors, can you get me outside?”
“Of course, though they may have changed access codes after their little guest...” she paused. “Nope, I could get us out. But you don't have a uniform, they've got shoot on sight orders for anyone trying to leave.”
“Yeah, it's their policy, once you sign up, the only way out is finishing your contract or death,” I nodded. “How'd you find out?”
“They have it posted on about half their doors, probably as a warning to some of their conscripts,” she answered.
I shook my head, “They're not conscripts, everyone here is a volunteer.”
“Sure,” she snorted, “I bet that's what they tell people, but...”
“I've heard it from multiple places,” I interrupted her. “It's the only way to get citizenship, to get out of the slums and get access to better jobs, better housing, better schools and training.”
“Huh,” she replied. She actually looked thoughtful, as if she were reconsidering her opinion.
I was having a hard time deciding what to call her. She wasn't my sister, by her own admission. “What should I call you?” I asked her, finally.
“Jide
n called me her evil twin, I kind of liked that,” she admitted.
“Evil Twin doesn't really fill me with confidence. I guess it explains the dress,” I noted.
“I know, right?” She looked down at herself. “Jiden never has any fun. I plan on enjoying myself, you know? Well, and helping you, too, but that shouldn't take all my time and attention...”
“Focus, please?” I sighed.
“I still think of myself as Jiden,” she admitted. “I have all the same memories, well, up until they pulled me out of her head.” She made a face, “I don't even like to think of myself as a copy so much as... well, a twin.”
“Or a ghost?” I asked.
“Haunting you?” She smirked. “What an eternity that would be...” Her expression shifted a bit. “Ghost? How about Shadow?”
“Shadow,” I gave her a nod. “Shadow it is.”
“We're coming up on your lunch muster,” she noted.
“Yeah,” I had actually enjoyed the conversation, enjoyed being myself instead of Vars. I didn't have a lot of opportunities to relax. Any, really...
“Okay, let's go,” I said. Shadow's projection vanished and I went down the corridor, exiting the security doors and closing them behind me.
Lunch muster started the same as breakfast, right up until they read off my name on the list to go out front. I waved at one of the others from my formation to take my place, transferred the list to him, and then jogged out the front doors and into the damp cold of Drakkus Prime. A military skimmer was waiting and they waved us all onboard, scanning out implants to confirm our presence.
Everything here on Drakkus ran off implants for identification. Even biometrics was secondary to the implants, which I found rather bizarre.
I mean, sure, I looked quite similar to Vars and the underground doctor, Athan, had tweaked things a bit on me to make me look more like him. But I had different fingerprints, different genetics, retinal scans... the list went on and on.
The Drakkus Empire kept all those records secondary, though, to implants. Implants were tied to bank accounts, identities, travel passports, everything. The slaves in the Old Town had control implants that could cause pain or disrupt their neural systems and allowed their owners to track them. Their owners had implants that let them control those features on their slaves. The wealthy elite in the Houses had software in their implants that allowed them to control their vehicles, to fire their weapons... Drakkus seemed to have totally embraced cybernetic implants.
