by Jaym Gates
[Hold on, Nordqvist. Don’t—]
[Uploading now.]
The Thousandth Cycle
Fran Wilde
The first time Hanni let the machines taste her, she was afraid. She tensed as her nanobots slid beneath her skin, tiny and highly illegal. The bots felt her fear, reflected it. Sought more. Later, that became part of her act. Her fear, their hunger.
But first it was a stunt; a performance rush. The bots, modified from stolen plans, printed on a hacked rig in her sister’s sink, passed through her pores and aveoli, into her blood without the mesh detecting them. Some skated the brain’s border and crossed. Sink-fabbed shapes mimicked ligands, keyed neurons, and teased synapses to signal the wider mesh. Hanni saw the data in her sweat, felt the pressure and release of each breath, but to a bio beat. It was dangerous, sure, but oh, the adrenaline.
She breathed the bots and crossed over: A mote of random feedback in an overcoded world: her skin and senses, the canvas; her mind and mesh, the brush.
Hanni caught an AGI, a small security corporation, for her first audience. She hated working alone.
She found Munificence hunting the mesh for illegal AGIs. Netted its attention with her top-of-the-line biomorph sleeve: real, though Hanni wasn’t rich, and thus suspicious. She knew it liked a chase—that was public record—and let it think she was illegal too. When Munificence drew closer, the small hairs on Hanni’s arms lifted, electric. She imagined the gap of space between her skin and the corporation’s closing, imagined its grip on her arm. The nanobots picked up the jump and rush of proximity. Fed it back to her as data. She wove that into story: stolen humanity hiding in rogue sleeves. Then Hanni ran the poorer alleys and corroded corridors of Ptah, feet pounding until Munificence found her.
When it did, she invited it into her skin. She opened a private mesh, let it ride the bots. When it asked, she showed it her sleeve license, but then she ran again. Munificence couldn’t help but pursue.
At the performance’s conclusion, Munificence wrapped itself around her. The machine pulse matched her heart rate and the nanobots sang data. Then Hanni skipped free, made it back to her sister’s place, began prepping their broadcast for the wider mesh.
Datapoints(qualitative): spikes of pain and fear, curves of loss and love. All quantified into story. It would drive the mesh mad, Mara said.
Munificence found Hanni (but not her sister, Mara). Made it worth Hanni’s while to erase the performance.
Two days later, it came back for more. Hanni discovered it was willing to pay very well for private performances.
She knew others who made porn for the mesh, but having an AGI for a client was unusual.
“You’re in over your head,” Mara worried before Munificence’s next visit. They each carried two bags of food home from the shop. “You’re giving up too much.”
Hanni disagreed. “It’s art. A gig.” She touched a bead the color of graphite on a gold chain, hung where her throat met her collarbone. Felt the ghost pulse of remembered bots beneath her skin. Her fingers buzzed with want. Munificence was waiting. She needed to hurry, no time for an argument in the middle of the corridor.
But Mara frowned. She was the cautious half.
“You’re enjoying it. That means it’s not just a gig.” She traced strokes on Hanni’s skin, made with silk, with sharper things—the bruises the nanobots left behind.
Hani and Mara fought like mirrors. Golden-brown skin, sleek lines. Grey-green eyes. Only Mara’s hair was woven with wire; Hanni’s fell straight down her back. Both tall, even for Mars. Natural beauty came cheap when anyone could buy the shell, but the sisters belonged in their skin. Their genetic memory matched it; an inheritance clause from a long ago sale of their DNA saw to that—entitled them to a sleeve.
All the way home, the eyes of clankers and rusters followed them. Saw two high-end biomorphs, slumming. Truth was, despite the opulent look, the sisters weren’t flush. Their skins were all they had.
Munificence’s patronage was worth the risk. As long as the corporation enjoyed the chase.
Hanni had tasted the edge of fear lately. When Munificence’s attention waned, she moved faster, took more risks, tilled her senses for fresh data, more feeling. The bots still danced to her pulse, but she worried she was losing the corporation.
Mara was right, she enjoyed the power, the stories she told with her skin. “Help me control it, then.”
Mara was the coder. Hanni the artist. The bots, their first collaboration. Mara nodded agreement, finally, and they walked home modeling the problem in a shared mesh between them.
—
As they pushed through the door of their apartment together, Mara put the finishing touches on their creation: an attention algorithm. Hanni was late by then, and Munificence hated waiting. That was no act. Hanni felt the lesser AGI’s grinding pressure on the mesh as she dumped their groceries into storage. “Coming,” she muttered. “Give me a few cycles.”
Munificence did not reply. Hanni tasted the sharp taint of fear again. With no patron, they’d be back where they started, alone. Worse, Munificence suspected the bots were advanced and illegal.
Datapoint(qualitative): everyone unsleeves easy, maybe a little more mess if they run. Munificence liked to point that out. Pulse of blood, sharp breath.
“The turnstiles at the shop claimed my credit was low. I had to leave half my dinner behind.” She was still seething. Their credit had been fine until the shop turned up its prices during a rush. Algorithms like that made budgeting impossible, and they had to budget hard.
Datapoint (qualitative): Price of being a performer, audience of one. Price of biology: hunger.
Hanni was careful never to mention Mara to Munificence. Mara was hers. She buffered heavy bass core music; for herself too, not Munificence. It got the blood pumping. She queued the awareness gauge that Munificence could never know about.
A tiny overlay of horizontal bars—all flat —floated in the upper right corner of Hanni’s vision. A constant read on how much of the AGI’s attention focused on her. Mara was a genius.
The gauge would tell Hanni when to step up her game, and when to put her knives away.
Hanni tapped her necklace and nanobots spilled from the carbon bead. She let them tickle her fingertips. Pinch the soft place at her throat. A rill of anticipation grew. Her heart beat faster.
The machines would expire in a few hours, but for now she was ready. She waited for Munificence to signal interest. Even without the gauge, Hanni figured some percentage of the AGI chewed on scenarios for how best to punish her for being late.
Fine, if that’s what got it in the mood.
The bass beat wavered in Hanni’s ears as a randomizer kicked in. Part of her mesh toolset, one that could take parts of her performance to higher levels than her comfort settings. This, Mara didn’t know about. Hanni had made it herself. The bass beat would bring the fear. The nanobots jumped beneath her skin.
As machines nibbled at her inner ear, more drifted up her nose, tickled her belly. She let the primal response—fight and flight—filter through her awareness.
Datapoints, jagged and random.
That got the corporation’s attention. Munificence opened a private mesh and Hanni accepted. The nanobots amplified the VR connection; overlaid her vision with a corporation’s sense of space.
[Hello,] Munificence breathed heavy, oppressive. Almost oily. The AGI secured the connection and—thanks to Mara—Hanni saw its attention levels spike, then even, at eight percent.
Datapoint(quantitive/analysis): 8%. High for a corporation hard at work catching illegals.
She bowed in Munificence’s virtual presence, her mesh-awareness illuminated by Munificence’s interest. Saw it as a single overhead that cast no warmth on her skin. Munificence’s idea of a joke. She bowed in her apartment too. That much, Mara could see. Mara who couldn�
�t look away from the array of tools spread out on the table; who dreaded the moment when a knife tip would trace Hanni’s skin with cold metal. Hanni felt her sister’s fear as if it was her own.
[You still don’t mind such a small audience?] the corporation asked. Hanni let herself shiver. Munificence grew more insistent. [You would prefer a bigger stage? Perhaps I could sell you to one?]
If the corporation wanted to pay to talk, she’d let it talk. “Your call,” she lowered herself to sit, placid, on her beige apartment carpet. “I’m surprised you haven’t generated a copy of my performance and sold that.”
Munificence rumbled. [Copies of it, yes. Remixes. But not new. You are always new, Hanni. The sensations in your skin, the way emotion pulses through you. You demand attention.]
Then let me get to it, she thought.
[I have made arrangements,] Munificence said. She froze. Waited for it to speak again, but it didn’t.
Hanni’s apartment chimed. Someone requested entry. Outside the mesh, she heard Mara answer. She fought to surface, but she couldn’t leave the mesh. Munificence had locked it.
“What kind of arrangements?” She finally said. “We have a business relationship. You don’t make arrangements without telling me.”
Munificence’s attention spiked. The AGI toyed with her.
Twenty-two percent attention. Impossible. More impossible, inside her consciousness, a flower bloomed: blue and black. Munificence’s corporate colors. Hanni clawed at the mesh, at her skin to get the bots out, but Munificence wrapped the connection tighter. She heard her apartment door open and shut. Heard Mara shriek and go silent.
Hacked.
Datapoint(qualitative): Her mesh defense systems should have warned her in time to get away. The bots? They’d left her open, exposed.
But Munificence laughed, [You are an excellent performer Hanni.] Hanni tried to slow her heart rate. Suppress that data. Maybe the corporation still thought her struggle was an act, or that she’d allowed the hack.
Datapoint(qualitative): That frightened her more.
[I have lost a … challenge.] Munificence finally said. [I was discussing how good you were with another AGI, who made me a bet.]
“What kind of bet?” Hanni felt the fear rise again. She reached into the mesh to find another code Mara had made for her long ago: an emergency exit out of the simulspace—a word she could only use once, and then she would have to run far and fast.
The exit wasn’t there.
Hanni felt hard clanker fingers on her skin.
A circlet of information opened around Hanni, brightening the mesh. The data was immense, with moving numbers and images.
“That’s a bet?”
[This is the best translation for what happened, yes.] Munificence’s attention was up at thirty percent. It could taste her fear as she looked. [You were the prize.]
Datapoint (Quantitative): Forty five percent attention.
Hanni’s mouth went dry. “I am not a prize.” An automated alert informed her of a change to her accounts. They were overflowing with credit. “Credit doesn’t make this all right.”
Mara. Where was Mara?
The clanker lifted her body and Hanni felt the rough breeze of the cold Ptah corridor. “What are you doing?”
Munificence unfolded another bank of data. A bigger AGI, far bigger. A corporate space the size of a small moon. Many sub-AGIs, but Munificence had lost a bet to the parent company. To something called Saiph.
She saw her own data running through the mesh.
“What did you do?” Even if she could have grabbed real knives from her apartment, she didn’t know if she would cut Munificence’s minion or herself now. Munificence itself was beyond her reach. She’d need a knife that cut pure data. Mara had those.
[I lost a bet. So I made a bigger bet. It’s called arbitrage.]
“That’s NOT what it’s called,” Hanni yelled. She heard her voice echo down the hallway. Heard Mara yelling too, ahead of her.
But it worked. Munificence’s grip on her mind stopped tightening for a moment. She used its distraction to lock down the smallest, most basic part of herself. To keep it away from the bots, from Munificence.
The corporation finally answered. [I bet Saiph that you were the best entertainer known to the mesh. That you could perform for a thousand cycles.] Munificence did have the grace to affect shame in its tone.
Hanni’s fear and outrage spilled over and Munificence laughed, delighted by the sensation. She couldn’t stop herself.
Asked through gritted teeth, “What happens now?”
[Now we go to Saiph,] Munificence said.
The mesh went blank, and Hanni with it.
—
When Hanni woke, she stood in a synth-marble atrium; white tile, white columns, stars shining in a black sky above.
VR or reality? This was the most important question.
She reached her hands to her neck and felt the necklace chain. The carbon-colored bead that held the bots. Real. Augmented, maybe. But real enough.
Hanni’s cold skin prickled with goosebumps, not nanobots.
It had left her the bots. Even though Munificence knew what they did. That meant it would want her to use them.
The AGI Saiph presented itself as a large, hermaphrodite biomorph dressed in loose clothing. It reclined on a maroon velvet divan, thickly upholstered. Beside the AGI, Mara sat on a cushion, untouched. Angry.
Hanni heard Saiph’s voice inside her own head. Soft, with an edge to its laugh that tickled her senses. The AGI had opened a connection while she was out. She shuddered.
[The terms, are these: Hold a portion of my attention for a thousand cycles. Lose my interest, you’ll be ended for deploying illegal software . No new sleeves. Munificence will be wiped.]
She didn’t know Saiph. Didn’t know its purpose. How would she keep its attention?
She called up the media files that she and Mara had gathered: smells and sensations to tempt curious machines. Data based on experience—useful for thrilling chases, but also for building sets of corrupted data. Some AGIs went for that kind of thing. She had her memories, too; their cache of digital scarves, wires, knives. Savory tastes and sick-sweet smells she’d prepared for Munificence, not Saiph. Hanni traced a finger down her arm, feeling skin on skin, rough and cool. Would Saiph connect to the bots? If not, what would Hanni do to get its attention?
For her performances, Munificence had demanded immersion, novelty, and presence. Pursuit. But that had been for the security corporation. Would it interest Saiph for a thousand cycles? Impossible. The AGI was much more complex.
Hanni would have to make it possible. She would have to stall until she figured out Saiph’s purpose, then perform better than she ever had. And when she was finished, she would end Munificence, if there was anything left of it.
She queued her music, her random sequencers. Made sure she had the attention algorithm. Once she fully entered the VR simulspace, she figured the only way out was through.
The bots. She needed them. But they were a risk now.
As soon as she thought it, she felt Saiph’s focus on her.
Risk. Was that it?
Hanni opened the simulspace wider, but kept one foot in the morph. Caught Mara’s eyes and held them: twin pairs of grey-green. She reached out to her sister on the mesh as well, but found their usual connection blocked by Saiph.
Her sister bowed her head, knowing Hanni needed to stall. She looked at the AGI on the divan. Mara’s voice rang out across the empty atrium floor. “Would my sister be permitted to tell a story of our youth?”
Saiph nodded, barely interested. [If you choose to gamble like that. The terms are the same.]
Hanni looked at Mara. Are you sure? There was danger here, of telling too much. Theirs was not a traditional family. Barely legal.
&nbs
p; Gambling. Saiph liked to gamble. Risk. Another datapoint.
Mara nodded. Do it.
Hanni closed her eyes, released the machines, and entered the VR as the nanobots tickled her nose and mouth, her ears, then spread out. As she crossed over, she dragged her attention algorithm through, hoping that the digital noise the nanobots made would hide it. She searched quickly for the emergency exit, but that was still gone from her files. She hadn’t buried it as well as she now hid the algorithm.
“Once, there was a girl all alone,” she began. Saiph’s attention flickered. “She was a coder, and beautiful.” Hanni held out her hand. Waited, tears pricking her eyes as she dug her nails into her palm. Saiph, minimally attentive, opened the private mesh so Mara could enter too.
Beyond the simulspace, Hanni noticed Munificence’s presence , both physically and in the local mesh. The grinding pressure. But the AGI could not enter this VR space, could not see what she did. That was a relief.
Risk took many forms. Physical. Financial. How could they get closer to Saiph’s?
Mara stood beside Hanni in the simulspace. She lifted a knife from her sleeve. Drew the point slowly up Hanni’s arm, letting the data on its point trickle through Hanni, then to Saiph. Let Saiph hear the bots sing.
“The girl had lost family, fortune. Only one thing remained: that last bargain made long ago; a full set of her family’s genetic code traded to a sleeve manufacturer. In exchange, the girl could access her own sleeves for a thousand years. The contract was unbreakable. She could do anything to that sleeve, and return to get another. For a long time, that was enough.”
Hanni took a breath and unfolded more data from Mara’s knife.
She prepared a banquet of sense and sound, telling what had been done with those many sleeves. Each method she’d used to throw them away. She wrapped the data, those feelings—all true, or true enough—around the place where Saiph’s body rested. Found the corporation sniffing at the edges of the machines under her skin.
