by Neal Asher
There are datafeeds here, though. My wristchip sentinels tingle: feeds that are alien, in a language I could not parse. At first, I thought nothing of this: of course they have feeds in unintelligible code-forms and protocols – this is the future.
I captured feed snippets, though, and later, when I was alone, I started to explore.
Now, I lie back in my room, my head reeling.
My wristchip is seeing those emergent patterns in the feeds, just as I was starting to do with the Rep code-streams back on the voidship. The same patterns. In my own time, the Rep codebases diverged from ours maybe a hundred years earlier, but languages evolve. Now, thousands of years on… why is it that my examiners’ code-streams have made no progress at all? Why have they frozen in time?
I lie here and lose myself in data-dream, following the shapes and patterns of my captors’ code, wandering through a now-familiar architecture.
I am not a time-delayed prisoner-of-war after all.
I am just a prisoner-of-war.
“So tell us, help us to understand your time, your war…”
“It wasn’t my war,” I snap. “It was never my war.”
I swallow, then plunge on. “It was a job. It was the world I grew up with. I never had anything at stake except a living and saving my skin from Rep attacks. Hell, what did I have against the Reps? For all I know they were the good guys. The closest I’ve ever come to meeting one of them is now, with you guys. You find me in space, you fix me up, you try to understand me and my time. Hell, if you guys won, then maybe that was the best thing after all. I don’t know much of your world, but if it’s all like this…”
They call it the Stockholm Syndrome. Keep someone captive for long enough and they become psychologically and emotionally attached to their captors. They switch sides, often with an intense zeal. It is a phenomenon that has been established since the twentieth century.
Another time…
“Geno… he was never a public figure because he had far more power if he stayed behind the scenes. There wasn’t a single government that took office without Geno yanking their chains. If the Reps had taken him out the planet would have been theirs within months and then it’d have been like dominoes.”
My examiner nodded. “So how would they have done that? Despite the rumours, they never had anyone planet-side – look at us: our kind would have been detected immediately. Our difference goes beneath the skin. We are hard-wired different.”
I shrug. “Long-range strike like they did with the Slash,” I say. “Get someone who’s not so obviously a Rep to either take him out or target the strike. I don’t know. I’m not a military strategist, I just write and remix code.”
Another time…
“Geno… he destroyed people. You either went with what he wanted, became the person he needed, or you ended up getting wiped out. People were disposable to Geno. He had no conscience, no ethics other than that he should only ever look out for himself.”
“Himself and his sister.”
“And Elsa,” I agree bitterly. I have already told them all about Elsa. “He thought he was protecting her, but he was stifling her, smothering her. He dragged her back from Earth so he could keep a tighter rein. She could barely breathe without his say so.”
“You worked for Geno for twelve years. You were loyal.”
“But he would have squashed me under his heel,” I say. “Hell, he did, or at least he nearly did.”
“You did not like Geno.”
“I hated him,” I say. “I’d gladly have killed him, given the chance…”
Another time…
“If you could take revenge against Geno, would you do so?”
I nod.
“There may be a way…”
I save them the trouble.
“We’re not in the far future, are we? We’re not way on forwards, looking back and trying to understand the war. We’re here and now and the war is still going on and you’ve been trying to trick me into spilling everything to give you an inside view of the people you’re fighting.”
Silence.
“It’d have been far easier if you’d just told me,” I say. “This isn’t my war. I just wanted to live a life. It was never my war.”
After a long silence in which my examiner communes with others, he says, “Everyone has a war.”
I shrug.
“So which war is yours?” he continues.
I pause. Then, “Geno,” I say. “Geno is my war.”
They change me.
They change me so that no one will recognise me. Elsa: you will not know me. I am no longer your geeky Chinaman. I am taller, my features diluted to that cosmopolitan mix – still a little oriental around the eye, but my skin is dark, my hair thick black. My facial geometry has changed, my voice lowered, my gait been reprofiled… all the identifiers modified. They cannot change my DNA, but they can mask it so that any DNA tests will give me a different graph.
It is only what is in my head that remains, and what is in my heart.
I am going home, with my own war to fight.
I am coming back, Elsa.
Will you still know me? Will you still care?
The Soul of the Machine
Eric Brown
We were a day out of Sinclair’s Landfall when I left my cabin and climbed to the flight-deck.
Since lighting out from the pleasure planet I’d slept for twenty hours solid, leaving Ella in charge of A Long Way From Home. As I neared the hatch I could hear Ella and Karrie chattering away. I paused outside.
“Sounds tough…” Karrie was sympathising.
“My parents were very strict,” Ella said.
“So you just upped sticks, took the first outbound ship, and ended up on Sinclair’s Landfall?”
“I’d dreamed for years of getting away.”
“So why the haste in leaving Landfall? Sounds like you were being chased.”
Ella fell silent.
I stepped onto the flight-deck.
“Why don’t you tell Karrie the truth, Ella?” I said. “We’ll be spending a long time together from now on. I don’t want lies coming between us.”
I slipped into my sling between the women. The viewscreen showed the marbled expanse of void-space. Ella pierced me with her midnight eyes. She murmured, “I think the fewer people who know, the better.”
“We’re all in this together, Ella. Now tell Karrie the truth.”
Karrie looked from me to Ella, bemused.
Ella leaned forward, looking around me, and stared at Karrie. “I am an AI construct, Karrie, designation MT-xia-73, running on an integrated self-aware paradigm. Technically I am the property of the Mitsubishi-Tata combine.”
She lay back in the sling, her face serene, and gazed into the void.
Karrie was open-mouthed in astonishment. “So all that loveless childhood shtick… the strict parents?”
“My cover story.”
Karrie turned to me. “She’s an AI? A robot?”
“I am not, actually, a robot. I am a biologically nurtured entity constructed around a self-aware matrix core.”
Karrie nodded. “That’s good to know.” In a whisper she said to me, “And you let this… this thing aboard the ship?”
I shrugged. “What else could I do? There were spider-drones after her. They’d’ve taken her back to a life of servitude.”
Karrie just shook her head. She hissed, “One, it’s not a ‘she’, it’s an ‘it’! Two, it’s a goddamned machine, and that’s what machines are built for – servitude.”
“She’s self-aware, Karrie. To me, that means she has rights. She can make choices. She wanted out. She wanted freedom. And I decided to help her get away.”
“Ed, she’s a soulless machine, a self-serving mechanism lacking in the slightest humanity.”
“That’s nonsense,” I began.
“Jesus…” Karrie breathed. “Listen to me, Ed. If Miss Universe here had been a Lyran cephalopod, would you have helped it
then?”
I stared through the screen. “Of course I would.”
“Bullshit, Ed! She’s sex on legs and when you met her your balls were bursting after six months banged up on this tin can – that’s why you helped her.” She barked a laugh. “And then you find out she’s a machine!”
“Karrie!” I snapped.
She slipped from her sling and hurried to the hatch, muttering to herself.
When Karrie was gone, Ella turned to me and said, “I’m sorry if my presence has caused distress between the two of you, Ed.”
“Karrie’ll be fine. She gets hot-headed from time to time. She’ll calm down soon enough.”
She reached out and squeezed my hand.
A couple of hours later Ella left the flight-deck, saying she wanted to take a tour of the ship and familiarise herself with its features. She hadn’t been gone long when Karrie climbed up and slipped into the sling beside mine.
“Calmed down?”
“I still think you’re one goddammed fool, Ed. You realise Mitsubishi won’t take kindly to having their property kidnapped like this?”
“I’m not exactly kidnapping, Karrie. She came of her own free will.”
“And let’s see how that defence’ll stand up in a court of law.” She looked across at me. “You’re smitten, Ed. Admit it.”
“Don’t talk rubbish.”
“You should see your eyes when you stare at her–”
“Karrie. Look… She reminds me of my kid sister, okay? She died when I was–”
“You told me.” She shook her head. “But, Ed, she isn’t real. She’s no more a personality than… than the ship’s smartware core. She just looks a lot prettier, that’s all.”
I shrugged. “What’s real, Karrie? Ella seems real enough to me.”
Footsteps sounded on the rungs of the ladder. Ella inserted her slim form through the hatch and padded across to her sling.
After a short silence, she turned to us and said, “I can be of immense benefit to you, Ed.”
Beside me, Karrie snorted, “You bet!”
Ella continued. “Not only can I pilot this ship, and assist you, Karrie, with repairs – but my memory cache can be of benefit in locating the wrecks of starships.”
I looked at her. “It can?”
Her Venezuelan features remained neutral, watching me. “For instance, I know the precise location of a cargo vessel abandoned in the Dzuba system five light years from our present position.”
I blinked. “You sure? I’ve heard nothing–”
“It was never made public. The Nakamura was chartered by the Mitsubishi company to ferry classified products from one of its manufactories. When its ion drive exploded and the ship emerged into real-space near Dzuba, Mitsubishi decided to empty the wreck of sensitive materials and destroy what remained.”
“So why haven’t I heard about it on the grapevine?”
“Mitsubishi scorch-earthed the ship, but thought it wise not to publicise its whereabouts. I suspect they were hauling contraband, but I cannot be sure.”
“When was this?”
“Five years ago.”
“And you say you know where the wreck is situated?”
Ella nodded. “To the precise metre.”
“Lay in co-ordinates to Dzuba,” I said. I tried not to look too smug as I glanced at Karrie, but she was busying herself with the controls.
We were a few hours from Dzuba, and still in void-space, when Karrie looked up from her com-screen and murmured, “We’re being followed, Ed.”
“You sure about that?”
“Well, the same ship’s been on our tail for the past hour.”
Ella said, “Longer than that, Karrie. I noticed it a few hours after we phased into the void, a day ago.”
“Great,” I said. “Why didn’t you mention it then?”
Ella stared at me with impassive eyes. “Your knowledge of the situation would have made no difference to the fact of our being followed.”
“But I might have been able to do something about it.”
She opened her mouth to contradict me, but thought better of it.
I said, “Karrie, can you get a visual of the ship?”
“Working on it…” She tapped her touch-pad. Seconds later the viewscreen before us flickered, and the vista of marmoreal grey was replaced by the close-up of a small, sleek ship.
Ella said, “It’s the same vessel that tracked me to Sinclair’s Landfall.”
I looked across at her. “I thought we’d got rid of the spiders.”
“We accounted for three of them on Sinclair’s Landfall. The Watson Interceptor carries a complement of twelve.” She stared at the screen. “Just nine to go.”
I considered our options. “Right… How about we phase from the void and make for Dzuba? If we head around the sun at maximum speed and then phase back…”
Karrie said, “That’s a Watson Interceptor, Ed. We’d never outrun it in a straight race.”
“I have a suggestion,” Ella said. “We phase from the void, as Ed says. But instead of rounding the sun, we take refuge in the Mitsubishi wreck.”
“And they’d just follow us in there and flush us out.”
Ella turned her wondrous gaze on me. “Ed, the wreck is vast. The ship was Titanic class. We could insert ourselves in the wreckage and they’d never find us.”
“This is madness!” Karrie said.
“We have no other option,” I said. “What do you suggest, we let them catch up and take Ella?”
Karrie stared at me. “You said it,” she muttered to herself.
I nodded to Ella. “We’ll phase from the void. As soon as we’re out, lay in co-ordinates to the wreck.”
“Good God,” I said, “will you take a look at that…”
Dzuba burned in the right of the viewscreen like a naked furnace. Before the sun, centre screen, the wreck of the Mitsubishi ship hung like some demented sculptor’s schematic representation of an explosion in a scrap yard. At its centre was a solid tangle of concertinaed chambers, bulkheads and decking, warped and blackened by the blow-out.
“Okay,” Ella said, “I suggest we make for the core.”
I nodded. “Do that.” I glanced at Karrie. “Have the spiders emerged from void-space?”
She checked her com-screen. “Not yet, but I reckon they won’t be long.”
“Let’s accelerate. If we can get to the wreck before they phase-out–”
I was silenced by the sudden thrust, pitching my sling backwards. I hung on as the ship careered through space towards the wreck, dodging peripheral shards and scraps of metal.
I glanced across at Ella. “You doing this?”
Tight-lipped, she nodded. “I am considerably faster than your smartcore drive.”
“That’s good to know,” I said as a blackened engine nacelle tumbled past the viewscreen with metres to spare.
Five minutes later we slowed our slalom ride as Ella eased us past great chunks of debris that resembled metallic icebergs. We made for a relatively intact section of the ship which I guessed must have once been its cargo hold and storage decks. Wreckage hung all around us, eerie in its stillness.
“Still no sign of the other ship?”
Karrie shook her head. “We’re in luck.”
We slowed even more and inched between sections of buckled decking. The glare of the sun cut off suddenly. Ella activated searchlights, which picked out hanks of Medusa cabling and jagged superstructure. We were near the centre of the explosion.
We emerged into sunlight again, the glare dazzling.
“Okay…” Ella said, her tongue showing as she inched the ship onto a vast shelf that had once been a cargo deck. “If we hole up here, switch off the operating systems and hang silent…”
I nodded. “Do it.”
We settled gently and Ella powered down the ship little by little. Soon we were running just enough energy to keep the viewscreen operating, showing the view back the way we had come.
A few minutes later Karrie said, “There is one big flaw in this scenario, you realise?”
“Which is?” I asked.
“So we sit tight, twiddling our thumbs. Hoping the spiders get bored and go home. Only, ah, they’re machines, right? They don’t get bored. They have mission goals, and they stick to them, whether they take days, years, or decades to achieve.”
I looked across at Ella.
She said, “Karrie is right.”
“So…?” I asked, a little exasperated.
“So… the spider-drones will wait.”
“Which,” Karrie pointed out with sweet malice in her tone, “is all very well for non-human entities like you, Ella. But for me and Ed here, meaties – isn’t that what you call us? – we, like, need food and drink. That might run out after a year or so, no?”
“I have considered that eventuality, Karrie. That’s why I’ll be going out there to apprehend and destroy the spiders, when the opportunity arises.”
Karrie looked across at Ella. “Back on Sinclair’s Landfall,” she said, “you were running from just three of the critters… Now you’re talking about confronting a whole shipful of the bastards.”
Ella regarded Karrie impassively. “Back then running was an option, Karrie. Now there’s nowhere to run. I have to fight.”
Fear fluttered in my chest. “Is this wise?”
“It’s the only option.”
“I don’t want you to come to any harm.”
“Your concern is unwarranted. I’m perfectly capable of ensuring my own safety.”
Karrie interrupted, urgently, “When you two have quite finished – we have company.”
I looked up. The viewscreen showed a narrowing vista of decking, terminating in a wedge of dark, star-flecked space. As we watched, the Watson Interceptor settled at the far end of the vanishing point, facing us.
I said in a whisper, “Have they seen us?”
“Pretty much looks that way,” Karrie said. “So much for their never finding us.”
I wondered, then, if Ella had meant the spiders to find us, all along. Perhaps she wanted the ensuing showdown?
