Supplejack

by Les Petersen

  “Insufficient information, Jack.”

  Of course he’d say that. I controlled my breathing and said through a drawn-out exhalation, “What’s going on, Sansan? What has this to do with Bell?”

  Sansan sounded like she was treading water. “The DNA submitted by you to Mannum pathology does not match the string listed for your induction to Bell International, which we have on file. It is an exact duplicate of DNA samples obtained from eight other deceased persons in recent days.”

  “What?”

  “Eight other bodies have been found with exact tissue matches to yours, Mr Dayzen.”

  Once again things had gone screwy and to tell you the truth, I was feeling like I was jumping from fire pit to fire pit. I grew angry. “Are you telling me there are multiples of ME out there?”

  She didn’t answer me. The answer wasn’t needed.

  I looked around the cockpit of the life-raft and swore as loudly as I could. She was telling me clones of me existed out there. Clones! Banned life forms. They’d started making human clones in the beginning of the century for all the wrong reasons. Not that there were any right reasons either. And you don’t hear there are clones of you walking around without making the terrible leap on to the racing train of whether you might be a clone as well. I leapt to and then leapt back from that thought. I didn’t believe for one moment I was a clone. Cloning had been banned by the BBs in the first year of the century – though they gave no reason. It was in all the media. No one dared to go against the wishes of the Big Boys after that.

  And then the thought intruded like swamp gas in a lavatory: “Unless it was the military…”

  But I was certain I wasn’t a clone. I knew my mother, my father, everything. I could remember standing with my father at my mother’s funeral. The tears I had cried weren’t implanted memory tears. And I had full sensory of Shahn holding me in her arms and begging me to hold her in the hospital. I remembered the blood on the bedclothes and the way the chopper lights lit up the bushes in the front courtyard. You don’t have that much memory in you if you are a clone. No one has that much understanding of the procedures of the mind enough to transfer enough of it to fill in the gaps. No one! That was just bad fiction. Bladerunner stuff. This PAN reaction was a software glitch.

  And it all meant I was me and they, whoever they were, had been the one to be cloned for some reason, probably tied up with the hunting of yours truly., but it still didn’t solve my present problem. I had to figure out what was happening and sort it out. If the nano-assassin bathing in my stomach acids so much as leaked a little or broke a shell, I was dead. What a tomb this old crate would make. Christ, they’d never find me. Or maybe, in a hundred years, the thing would be washed down river and someone would find it and open it. And I would be still sitting in the chair like a dried-out mummy. Like that little girl, I’d be staring up into a sky I couldn’t see. Like my son, I would never exit the womb alive. “Medusa, do you believe I’m a clone?”

  “Insufficient information, Mr Dayzen.” Medusa didn’t sound smug. She sounded a little bewildered. From a security unit, it wasn’t a good thing to hear. “Mr Dayzen, if you are another clone, you’ve compromised our position. We belong to the original Jack Dayzen. His DNA string is on record here and at Bell International.”

  I tried to stay calm. “Sansan…first of all, the string in your files and those at Bell could well have been moved, changed, corrupted, buried by the laboratory cat or any other reason you could think of. I’m the original me. What does that matter if I can’t prove it? Get this damn thing out of my system!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Dayzen. We must not proceed with any orders until we are certain you are who you say you are.”

  Things were very trying. I sat and nursed my head and tried to think clearly for once. DNA. Bell. Grendel. Dead children. Clones. One of those days when your best friends stand around and ask how you are. Then who you are. Days when they say things like “You’re just not yourself today. Have you been taking something? I don’t understand you anymore.” And those were the things you’d say to a clone.

  Shahn used to use those lines on me all the time. “You’re not yourself today, Jack.” I used to sit on the bed watching her dress in jeans and a T-shirt and I’d be feeling like the world was nothing more a picture I was looking at. The mirror on the closet door would reflect my image, but it wouldn’t reflect how I was feeling or what I was thinking or the way I wanted to stand up and tell her I couldn’t understand her or what she was doing to herself. I could’ve screamed and waved my arms around and smashed the lamps off the bedside tables, but the mirror would not have shown anything other than the action I was taking, or the contortions of my body, which could never reveal the anguish and the hurt I was going through.

  When I shrugged, which was my usual reaction those sentences, she’d shake her head at me. “You think I’m doing this to hurt you, don’t you?” she’d ask. I’d shrug again because no answer seemed to be available. My head was empty of answers when she asked me things like that.

  I thought about it a lot after she left, usually when I was in a three-day drunk or so spun out on Gracelands the world was even further distant. What I discovered in all that gutter-level thinking was that it was her becoming something entirely different that scared me. She was leaving me and becoming something I could not welcome into my heart. Her hands, her body, her voice: hers and at the same time, someone else’s.

  Christ, that Snip at the jetty who had shot me had said “Goodbye again, Mr Dayzen.” He had known who I was.

  But that was a different problem and the stand-off with the PAN was jeopardising my current problem. You don’t become a Shiner without a few tricks up your sleeves.

  “Medusa, do you trust me?”

  “Insufficient information, Jack.”

  “All right then. Sansan, Override fifteen seven Tango fife niner Flatline Seven.”

  “Acknowledged, Jack. System reversion. Do you want complete reformat?”

  The command had been accepted and I was free of their control. I could almost hear each of them sitting on the edge of their virtual seats. Each of them was fully capable of taking in the data of the situation, but none of them could do anything about it. I could scrub them clean and reprogram them from scratch., but you don’t kill your friends just because they think you are someone else. I sipped the coffee till it was all gone, then crunched away on a biscuit until I’d calmed down enough to talk civilly to them. “What do you recommend, Sansan?”

  “All systems are operating at full capacity, Jack. Reformatting would have no beneficial effect.”

  “Just as I was thinking. Now, let’s have that nano out of its little bed inside me, shall we?”

  “Nano being recalled.”

  It wiggled back up my throat far enough to elicit a gag response and I threw it up – with most of the biscuit. I wiped my chin, climbed out of the chair and stood in the galley, this time dialling up a belt of vodka. After I had downed that I dialled for a cheese and mayonnaise sandwich and stood there, breathing deeply.

  “All right. Sansan…when I’m done, you will unlock everyone., but not before. Is that understood?

  “Yes, Jack.”

  “Good. It’s time we had a talk. All report.”

  “GaZe up. Ninety-four per cent free. HaRf at eighty-two percent free.”

  “Bleeder up. Seventy-seven percent free.”

  “Sansan up. Fifty-nine percent free.”

  “Medusa up. Eighty percent free.”

  I could almost see them standing on parade, their toes on the chalked line, their uniform buttons bright and shiny. Now that we were all assembled it was time to lay down the law. “Listen up, team. I’m Jack Dayzen, unless I chose to use another name in operations. You will not call me Mr Dayzen. You will call me Jack, or whatever other handle is chosen during battle. I want you to note the two new wounds in my body, the cut along my ribs and the cut under my left eye. You will mark these as distinguishing features
and even when they heal, the scar tissue should still have status as distinguishing features. Any questions?”

  “No, Jack.” Sansan sounded relieved more than anything else.

  “Right. First thing I want done is to have whatever security programme that brought up this action to be modified to allow the acceptance of distinguishing features. DNA matching alone isn’t acceptable proof of identification. You will match DNA and distinguishing features if you’ve any doubt as to my legal ownership.”

  I wasn’t finished. “Point two: at no stage will you allow the deliberate planting of nano-assassins in my body. If it compromises any other security programme I want that programme prepped for modified and its implication brought to my attention. This is background work to be carried out as we deal with what else is going on. Is that understood? Individual response!”

  They all responded, even Charlie who sent out an acknowledgment through the life-raft’s speakers. It was a little strange to hear him speak, almost like the first words of your child. I savoured it.

  “All right. Third point: against the possibility we ever meet a clone of myself, you will warn me immediately you become aware of it, and you will not allow harm to come of that person from any action or inaction I should take, unless that action compromises my own right to life. Background task is to hunt up any other possible clone and give me all you can on them.

  “Next…in situations such as this you will remember all information is corruptible. You will all have a little more faith in what I say. And if you don’t know what faith is, then you had better learn fast.

  “We are in a very confusing situation. There’s a lot of shit around. Too much for me alone to work through so I need your support. Schedule what you need to, discard what is irrelevant, and stay clear-headed about it. That’s it. End of pep talk.” I climbed back into the chair and settled in. “One last note team: let’s try to cover each other from now on. I’d hate to have to do all the thinking around here. My brain might fuse or something. Unlock them, Sansan. Let’s get back to work.”

  The team acknowledged my commands and when they were settled in and the life-raft had resumed its journey toward the weather station, I breathed a sigh of relief. At any moment, they could turn the tables on me once more and I knew the tenuous hold I had over them., but they were friends foremost. Trying to do what they thought was right. And they’d continue to do what they deemed right, as long it didn’t interfere with my longevity. I sighed again, rubbed my throat and asked for the coroner’s reports on my other selves. There had to be something there. Sansan fed it through to one of the life-raft’s screens.

  Chapter 14

  Kren’s name was on most of the coroner’s reports. Seeing his name there shook me up. It was like he had reached out and slapped me awake. It was as if Bell was reaching out of the past and groping for me just because I’d known Kren. Sure, he was just a witness to the event in one coroner’s report and a military adviser in some cases., but when I realised all the clones had been “taken out” during military operations and that he was mentioned in all the reports, I knew it was the real me he was hunting. And it made a lie of what Gilamens had said about my DNA holding the code for the R&D bunker. Bell would now have enough double helixes to puke on.

  But then again, my DNA didn’t match what Bell had on file. I’d known that for a long time.

  I didn’t feel any safer. If anything, I felt more vulnerable. Kren was the only one from Bell who looked for me when I left. Shahn made a few calls, but according to the log, Kren dialled my old number repeatedly and even went around to my flat to see what had become of me. It must have appeared to him as if I’d dropped off the face of the earth: I told no one., but you can’t just disappear from a society without leaving some footprint, some mark in the clay others can see. You need a point of departure. He began looking for those. It had taken him four years, but he had tracked down someone he thought was me. Then another someone he thought was me and that was how he found the clones.

  I asked for any collectable information on the ones who had died. Then I sat there wondering who they had been, what they had thought they were, how long they had been alive, whether any had children.

  Bleeder hailed me. “Jack, we have information on three of the clones.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “The clones known as Saul Takesha, Barin Hosido and Filipo Gonzalez were all military personnel. All of them were employed as tactical advisers to High Command.” He fed through information on Heads-up and I scanned it quickly. Then I flicked through the coroners’ reports again and found some of the clones had been squad members. Some had no professions at all, but those with professions listed were all connected to law enforcement is some way. The links were beginning to show.

  “Bleeder… all clones. Check length of service. Date of commencement. Sort. Nearest correlation.”

  It took him almost no time at all to give me the answer. “Everybody commenced on or about the 12 August, 2054. Service varied from five years to five point seven years, dependent on date of death.”

  It was like peering into a crack in time. August, 2054. Not a good year. Harry would be five years old if he were alive now.

  To get away from the memory I tried to find a link. It had to be something to do with Grendel. “What date did Bell take-over Grendel?”

  “26 August, 2054.”

  “Two weeks later. There’s something there, isn’t there? Sansan, what have we found on Grendel?”

  “All information is locked tight, Jack – Grendel has sealed all files. Closed for refurbishment.”

  “Thank you, Sansan.” So, everyone was building up for a corporate war. And Kren was out blowing away clones., but why clones of me?

  Uncertainty is a nasty demon to have tapping on your window. Kren was a very good operative: he’d taught me much about warfare on the Net. He taught me putting data to work for you is half the task; the other is interpreting it in the most beneficial way. Most of the advice he gave me was in relation to battle strategies for the Cloud. He was a very accomplished cyberwarrior.

  For instance, it was he who taught me about terrain, which, he showed me, was the structure through, which all forces worked, the “gravity” of the cyberworld representing the hardware you were working within. In other words, the hardware of the Cloud had a physical presence, represented by the terrain you moved through. The data and information streams created everything else: the weather, the characters, the mud and slush through, which your army slogged, even the armies themselves. When you fought in Cyberspace it was against data and information. You used the terrain and cut someone off at the pass whenever you could, taking the fight closer to a conclusion in the least number of steps.

  It was his philosophy to strike hard and fast and when I played against him during training his hard-thrusting game usually shook up my troops so much that morale went out of them and they conceded defeat. He could inflict heavy casualties on my troops through iron-fisted control and superior firepower. And I knew he’d do it again and again until nothing remained. Total annihilation.

  If he used the same strategy to hunt me down, then I was going to be hurt severely. Or severally, if you’ll excuse the pun.

  I needed help. And the only person I thought would help was SmartGuy. “Sansan, what probability is there SmartGuy is secure?”

  “Eighty-four point three seven five percent certain of security, Jack”

  Good odds. “All right. Give me a vapour connection, somewhere in Scandinavia for preference. Medusa, cover us. If Charlie can help, get him to do so. Get him to wear a red nose or something so he doesn’t blow his cover. And if he calls anyone sir, shoot him in the foot.”

  She made a joke of it. “Yes Sir! He can wear one of your wigs.”

  I grinned at the thought. “Acknowledged, Medusa. Make sure it isn’t the blonde one. I might still get some use out of it. Okay, enough banter. Let’s make it happen.”

  The holoface came alive and the di
al tone warbled. Medusa barked an alarm. I cut the connection. “Report, Medusa?”

  “High Command is watching the line, Jack. Contact and engagement before link broken. I have closed the entrance. We are safe from siege.”

  “Damage?”

  “Minimal. Thirty gig of defences lost in point zero zero three seconds.”

  That was fast. “Rebuild and recharge as soon as you can, Medusa. We’ll go in alone.”

  While she rebuilt her walls, I thought about how best to handle the invasion of Bell. Kren was, as far as I knew, still on the staff of Bell as their IT security officer though he’d be out hunting clones so I would have to deal only with his Cameo. Still a tough assignment. Especially if the Ferals wanted me to split the billion into so many accounts, my mind wouldn’t allow me to work out exactly how many accounts it was and I didn’t ask Sansan to tell me. Big odds, anyway.

  Kren’s skills were something you had to see to believe, but when it came down to the defensive response or offensive push I prefer to wage war relying heavily on unpredictable actions and sportsmanship. Some people call this luck. Some people call it foolishness. I called it my special weapon tactics and use the terrain. He might have told me about it, but he never really considered the terrain.

  Kren and I spent many nights discussing the different approaches to the warfare even before he had the Cut. Shahn and I would invite him over and he’d spend most of the evening camped in the lounge playing the guitar while I worked on constructing a Tinman from factory perks. We spent one drunken night baptising it Harry when it was finished. Kren was his Godfather, we decided.

  But on those nights when we were talking about cyber warfare, every now and then Kren’d put the instrument down and give me a little insight into how he worked. I agreed with the things he said, most of the time. For corporate firewalls, it made sense to defend with hard and repeated strikes, but invited reprisals. When Samurai know the defence will go for total annihilation, they fight even harder, making even a little battle become a blood bath. Then terrain would suffer too.