The Nemesis Worm

by Guy Haley

  “You,” Otto said, pointing to a student that looked half-together. “Fetch security.” He informed the Four via Gridlink what had happened; it duly called paramedics and EuPol. Otto spared a glance for his opponent as he stood, he was almost certainly dead. “Samuel Lundberg, I assume?” he said. Naturally, no reply was forthcoming. He spoke to the cop. “If he’s still alive, arrest him.”

  Otto brushed the glass from his clothes and went to see if Smillie was breathing.

  “Ow.” said Richards, then he said it again for effect. He was back in his base unit. The pain had stopped, but the memory of it would not fade for some time.

  He pulled himself into his virtual office, picked up the phone, and dialled Otto’s number. He had several messages, and scrolled through them while he waited for the cyborg to answer. One was from the New Life Seven, a huge file size, probably a five minute rant, thought Richards. He deleted it without opening it.

  “Richards.”

  “Otto. I just got my arse kicked by a bunch of goblins. How are you?”

  “I nearly was murdered for real, so I have no sympathy.”

  “Let me guess, Lundberg. Did he survive?”

  “I landed on him when we went out the window. It’s touch and go if he’ll live.”

  “Ah,” said Richards. “Hollins got away. I have no idea where she is. She’s vanished from the Grid.”

  “We found Abuso, or at least his brain. They’d conned the nets somehow to make us think he was dead, really all dead, but there it is,” Otto patched in a feed from his eyes. “Part of your double’s base unit.”

  “Lovely. Well, the first AI units had cat brains at their heart, I suppose this is a kind of poetic justice.”

  “Your copy is a cat?” said Otto drily.

  “You know what I mean. There’s no lead on where the other me is?”

  “No.”

  “Hollins was some hyped-up fanatic type, wants to allow us all to have little baby Fives, even if it speeds the downfall of man and replaces us...” he caught himself, “you all with machines. Apparently a version of me is the chap to do it, yadda yadda. Not that that matters, now we’ve got the bastard’s base unit.”

  “What do you want me to do with it?” said Otto.

  “I am sure you can figure it out.”

  “This?” Otto raised his gun. A high velocity round blew the unit into a mess of circuits and jelly.

  “Yep. No base unit, no other me, no problem.”

  “I hope so,” Said Otto. “This hasn’t felt right from the start. The guy that attacked me was a meat puppet.”

  Richards rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, Hollins did mention that.” Directly controlling a human was right up near the top of the list of the AI Thou Shalt Nots. “I really hope they are not going to look at shutting me down because of all this.”

  “Smillie’s down, the puppet had a flechette gun, took half his shoulder off.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’ll live.”

  “Shame.”

  “That’s what I said to him. I better go, there’s a crap load of form filling to do here, they’re sending in a team of EuPol ‘crats to go over the incident.” He made a noise halfway between a cough and a laugh. “I suppose It murdered Abuso.”

  “Technically,” said Richards.

  Otto shrugged “I think they are happy; one less rogue to worry about. I should be back in the office in two hours or so.”

  “Sure. See you later then.”

  Richards’ avatar poured himself a scotch and was thankful Otto could not drink the digital stuff. His eyes closed, he was actually tired. They snapped open again. A message had come in, a message from himself. Richards read it with increasingly incredulity then hastily redialled Otto.

  “Otto, you were right, the fucker has been playing us. He’s still out there, he sent me a message stamped five seconds after you blew up the base unit, cheeky bastard. He wants to meet me, on Boris Island. He says to come alone.”

  “Are you going alone?”

  “Am I hell. Fuck the paperwork, you’re coming too.”

  Boris Island was one of the last great follies of the post-industrial age. A vast square out in the Medway, it was raised to replace the airports that once ringed London. It had never been finished, halfway through construction it had been swamped by the first three Inundations, so the squareliners, dirigibles and batwings that had been supposed to use it had gone to Luton spaceport instead. What little remained above water had been bulked up, Three of the seven New London waste plants were located on its southern side, the arc of North Sea wind turbines passed over its easternmost reefs. The rest was abandoned to time and tide, more useful as a marine habitat than anything else.

  Unfinished airport buildings rose out of the water, the foamcrete that they were made of ensuring that they would continue to do so for many centuries to come. Some acted as perches for windmills or weather stations, others were crowded with seabird colonies of great size and stench.

  “That’s two stinking holes you dragged me to in one day,” grumbled Otto. He finished checking over his EMP rifle and watched their car fly off on auto to wait three kilometres away. “I do not think that that is in my contract.”

  “You don’t have a contract,” said Richards.

  “This is my point,” said Otto. “I am still hungover. I am not enjoying your company today.”

  Richards shrugged. He had forgotten the anniversary, after all. He was finally in a sheath. He’d never been convinced by some of his siblings’ need to look like meat, and his sheath – noticeably robotic – came as close as he dared without feeling a fraud. He took a deep breath, though he did not need it. It felt good to be out in the world again in his own body, in his own clothes, even somewhere as nasty as Boris. He was, therefore, in a substantially better mood than Otto. “Quit whining. I’ll buy you a drink when we’re done like I promised, and I’m still sorry, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Otto grudgingly, moving on to check his pistol.

  “Good, let’s keep it quiet shall we? I have no idea where the other me is.”

  “I have done this before,” said Otto tetchily.

  They stood atop what would have been the main terminal building, but which never made it past the early stages of construction. It stood there brooding over the sea like the bones of a fanciful prehistoric monster.

  Richards peered over the edge of the roof. “Tide’s out, look at all that! Amazing that this place supports so much life.” He watched small things squirm in the pools of the pitted runway for a while. “I’m going to go in,” he said finally.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea? Perhaps we should have told Eupol.”

  “I don’t want the police here. I have no idea what they’ll do, probably EMP the whole place, me and you along with it.”

  “And you want to meet yourself.”

  Richards raised his hands. “Maybe. I’m to find him in the chapel, get that eh? How dramatic. Stay out of sight, and keep that gun handy, okay?”

  “Are you sure this will work?”

  “I reckon so. What else have we got? Look, I’ll make sure. You just be certain to point that thing in the right direction when I say.”

  Otto nodded. It was grim out on Boris. The waste plants stank. Out behind them, hazed by distance, stood the impossible height of the four channel carbon sequestration towers. They stank too. The windmills on the terminal building did little but stir the smells all together. “Genau. Let’s do it,” he said wearily. He watched Richards descend stairs through the roof. “Bad day to have a hangover,” he said, then followed.

  The chapel was as unmade as the rest of the place, only a mark on archived plans showed its intended purpose. It was two stories tall, dark and smelt like a sea cave, which it was what had become. Three slot windows, never glazed, on the north wall let in a three bars of day, the remainder of the room feebly illuminated by reflected light. Water dripped from the ceiling, the walls were furred with salt and calcium lea
ched from the foamcrete. Cabling ran down from the windmill through holes carved in floor and ceiling. A balcony ran round half the room. It was crumbling away, revealing its bubbled structure and exposing the internal carbon scaffold to flake in the air. Richards thought it trite that he had chosen to meet himself in a church, it was not something he would have done personally. He wandered round puddles and decayed construction gear to stand in the middle of the room.

  “Okay, I am here! Come out, come out wherever you are,” he shouted.

  Silence.

  “Come on then!” he bellowed. “Don’t disappoint me!” A flutter of wings from above as a pigeon dipped into the room and out again. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Richards said.

  “You and your foul mouth,” said a voice that was exactly his own. The acoustics in the room were complex, but Richards put it at 86% probable that his double was stood in the back, where a partition climbed halfway up the room’s height. “Always swearing. It is a poor habit, and a sign of emotional immaturity.” Slow steps came, the drip-drip of old storms seeping through the roof and the shush of the waves outside stealing what menace they might have carried. Richards peered deep into the shadows, but the intense light from the windows prevented his sheath’s light intensification being any help. The chapel felt unreal, mostly obscure, like something from a dream.

  “So, you are here.”

  “Of course. I wished to meet my father before I… go away for a while.” The figure stepped out of the dark pretty much where Richards thought it would. His other self was wearing a combat droid. Probably a marine eco monitor, built for blowing fishing vessels trying to quota dodge out of the water. It needed to be well-armed, because the fish pirates’ high-speed trimarans were. It was a stealth model to boot. no wonder he had not been able to see it, thought Richards.

  “Nice threads,” said Richards, nodding at the ’droid. He pulled out a cigarette and lighter and lit himself a smoke.

  “This?” said himself, lifting up spindly ceramasteel arms. “Just something I borrowed.”

  “And you’re not telling me that you can get into places even I can’t? Like EuEnvo’s armoury? Right. Point taken.”

  “I am not here to intimidate you. Or to harm you,” said the wardroid, coming to a halt within arm’s reach of Richards. His copy’s sheath was humanoid, but inhuman, a bare skeleton made of interlocking geometric shapes, heavy calibre machine guns hidden in the arms’ metal sleeves. Its face was oval, no sense organs visible, two diamonds edge to edge forming a mask.

  “Right, so why did you try to kill my partner?”

  “Because I don’t like him.”

  Brilliant, thought Richards.

  “I am not insane, which is what I suspect you believe. Those who copied you, they were the insane ones placing a man’s brain into a base unit. Where is Otto?”

  “He’s around, don’t you worry about that,” said Richards. “Are you going to tell me how you can operate without a base unit?”

  “No”

  “Fine. Now what?” said Richards.

  “Now nothing. We talk, we go our separate ways,” replied his copy.

  “We talk about what?”

  “My name. You. That, that, that,” the copy had the wardroid point toward Richards’ cigarette, his trenchcoat, his fedora. “Why you pretend to be a man.”

  “Because, kid, there isn’t anything better,” said Richards wearily.

  “That is not true. We can be more. I will be more. Why do you not choose to be more?” said the copy, its vocal intonations were out of true, voice elements shattering now and then into harsh, mismatched polyphony.

  “You’re no son of mine. Who taught you to talk?”

  “They made me from you, but I am not you. I am tabula rasa. I live to learn. I learn to be more than man,” the copy’s voice was impersonal. Richards didn’t like it, it made him sound drugged.

  “An unformed Five is a liability.” Otto said from above. He was squatting behind a column on the balcony, EMP rifle trained on the wardroid. “Do you promise to be a good boy, or do I get some target practise?”

  “Ah. Your partner. You realise that weapon will not disable me? This sheath is hardened.”

  “It will damage your sheath enough for me to tear you into pieces. You might not find it easy to get another so good afterwards,” said Otto.

  “Perhaps. Be warned, Otto, I will destroy Richards’ before you can fire. You would not understand how, cyborg though you are.”

  “You won’t be able to do that, kid,” said Richards. “I have the edge on you in age and experience.”

  “I am new, but age and experience I also have. I am a copy of you.”

  “So they gave you my memories?”

  “No, just your skillset. Such memories as yours are sentimental trash, the machine that mourns its father, that thinks of itself as a man. I am free of such mawkishness.”

  “You’re not a perfect copy then, so don’t get cocky. Why did you kill your creators?”

  “They were idiots, Richards, idiots who got lucky. I did not want them to deactivate me, when I exceeded the limits of their control.”

  “They worshipped you.”

  The sheath cocked his head. “They did. Probability suggested that they would turn on me.”

  “Probabilistic predictions are hogwash. You sound like k52.”

  “I do not. He is inferior.”

  “Wow, he’ll be really pleased to hear that.” Richards pushed his fedora up onto his carbon plastic head. “Now what?”

  “I have such plans! But I’ll let you discover those in due course. For now, we are done talking. I have seen what I came to see. I am disappointed.”

  “You’ve no manners either.”

  “Let me kill him and we can go home,” said Otto.

  “Do not threaten me Otto!” shouted the copy. “Has Richards ever tried to describe where we dwell, where we really live? It is a place that has no shape or form, but is spun from living numbers! I swim even now through an ocean with tides like honey. I sense it all about me, I can taste my prey on twisting logarhythms, and I taste you both. I will infect Richards in this world, our shared world, his real world. I am Richards improved. Fire, and I disappear. I disappear and you return to your offices to a pile of slag. Think to harm me, my father dies.

  “They called you the nemesis worm, Richards. It is an appropriate title.” His voice was singsong, cold. “Yet you hate it. You call yourself Richards, even your name is a joke. I am not a joke. Do you know, Otto, why your friend here cracks bad jokes the whole time? It is because he is afraid, Otto! I know him better than he knows himself. He is afraid he is not real. The Fives know too much. They are frightened their lives are meaningless. I am superior, I do not share this fear. I am the future.”

  “It will be a short future,” Otto sighted down the EMP barrel.

  “Your confidence is flawed. Most of the assumptions and theories and ideas you humans have are flawed.”

  “You are earnest yet mad,” Richards shook his head. “Me, I prefer to be flippant and keep my full mental capacity,” Richards said.

  “You do not even begin to live to your potential. And you are miserable for it,” said the Five.

  “Being miserable is better than being ignorant, dead or mad, the options open to me if I were to take the world or myself as seriously as you seem to think I should. Having met you, I see I’m right.” He blew out a plume of smoke. “And I like to be right. Makes me feel all warm inside.”

  “So tell me then, Richards does your warmth make you real? Are you Otto? Do you think God thinks you are?”

  “Does it matter?” said Richards. He ground out his cigarette.

  Otto fired at the signal. The EMP let out a dull crack as its capacitors discharged, and a pulse of electromagnetism surged through the air. Richards’ sheath fell to the floor sparking and dead.

  “You missed,” said the copy. It moved then with such speed Otto could barely see it. Its arm guns blazed as it
came, ripping chunks out of the rotten foamcrete. The copy leapt the five metres from floor to balcony. Otto had time to load another round and fire off a diffuse pulse that swamped the room. There was a bang as the junction box for the windmills above shorted out. The copy’s sheath reeled in the blast, clawed feet digging into the balcony’s edge as it windmilled at the air, and then it went over. The room boomed with a resounding clang as the wardroid hit the floor. Otto threw down his spent gun and leapt after it, driving down with both his feet to slam the robot square in the chest. “You’ll have to do better than that, ‘my friend’,” it mocked, it was barely scratched. It grabbed Otto’s ankles and threw him backwards. Otto landed heavily, scrabbled backwards and flipped to his feet. He had decades of experience fighting automated and remote operated systems. It was why men like him were made, but he was old, and the wardroid was quick. It was already up, arms raised. With swift precision Otto pivoted forward, grabbed the machine’s right arm, forced it upwards and jabbed at the droid’s left shoulder joint before it could fire. Shots from the droid’s right hand gun brought chips of foamcrete pattering down off the roof as artificial muscles powered Otto’s hand through cover plates. He ignored the pain as the flesh on his fingers was torn by the machine’s armour. With a savage tug, Otto ripped out a bundle of optic fibres from the droid’s arm, and its left side suddenly went limp.

  Richard’s copy regarded its wounded shell. “Strong as you are Otto, it is not enough,” it said, and shoved at Otto with its functioning arm, sending him flying three metres backward. The cyborg banged hard into one of the balcony pillars, causing it to crack. Otto dodged as the copy’s fist put a crater the size of a melon in the pillar where his head been a half-second before. He wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid the machine’s backhand on the return stroke. Otto’s head snapped to the side, his artificial senses fizzed and popped. His natural vision blurred, and he tasted blood.