Exin Ex Machina

by G. S. Jennsen

  “Halt!”

  She spun to find an Asterion guard rushing through the lobby from the far side, Glaser raised.

  Nika (Team 1): “Retreat.”

  Ava (Team 1): “But—”

  Nika (Team 1): “Retreat.”

  Her hand went to her utility belt as the guard fired on her, sending an energy pulse to sizzle across her shielding. She unlatched a grenade and tossed it into the lobby. It sailed through the air for two seconds, then exploded above the guard’s head with enough force to electrify the entire room.

  She twisted around and dove through the open door for the grass outside; the balls of her feet parted ways with the lobby flooring an instant before the cascading electrical charge spread to the doorway, and she landed in a combat roll beyond its reach.

  The next second she was back on her feet, Glaser pointed at the doorway—but the guard lay on the lobby floor jerking like a marionette from the electricity still coursing through his body.

  Ava appeared at her side wearing a scowl. “Now who’s showing off?”

  Nika shrugged and re-holstered the Glaser. “Me. Let’s go.”

  They wound around the facade to the rear of the building, where they met up with Parc and Carson. On reaching the promenade separating the Dominion Transit Headquarters from the city streets, they spread out to cross the open and exposed space. As they neared the far side, their kamero filters gradually faded, and they blended into the pedestrian traffic.

  Nika paused in the entryway to take in the flurry of activity spreading across The Floor in the aftermath of the operation. Though chaotic at a first, uninformed glance, over time she’d learned to discern the flow beneath the chaos. Now she sensed the concentric circles of data and thoughts put into action as they rippled out from clusters that had drawn adherents. Occupying the negative space in between were quiet spheres carved out and cordoned off from all the activity.

  She’d arrived back home—‘The Chalet,’ as it had been affectionately dubbed—well after everyone else, having opted to stalk the streets along the various exit routes to ensure the others made it back safely. Only when Perrin confirmed everyone’s return had she headed to the #3 door and returned home herself.

  Five separate d-gate entrances to The Chalet lay scattered around Mirai One, each one disguised as innocuous architecture—windows, artwork, ordinary doors and unadorned walls. They each required a special passcode to activate, and providing those passcodes to an individual was the last and most momentous step in their initiation into the group. All the d-gates led to an entry anteroom in the interior of The Chalet, which had no obvious external, physical door of its own.

  Only three people knew where on Mirai the building was located: herself, Perrin and Joaquim. In a yet further security measure, the entire building was warded by a signal interference field. While inside its walls, a person could not pinpoint their own geographic location, and neither could someone on the outside.

  Because living in a tomb wasn’t healthy for anyone, there were windows, but they displayed idyllic visuals rather than the actual outdoors. The precautions were drastic, but they protected every person here, not to mention the group as a whole.

  Nika walked The Floor as soon as she arrived, before putting up her gear or showering. It was important for her to check in on those who had taken part in tonight’s operation, but also, arguably even more so, those who had not. It was important for them to see her—sweaty, messy, sometimes bleeding, but above all working, and working for them—and for them to know that she saw them as well.

  She spoke to several people on her way to the alcove in the far left corner of the expansive room, where Ryan lounged at one of their two repair benches. Together with the advanced rehabilitation tank upstairs, the equipment ensured that most physical damage short of decapitation or catastrophic electrical overload was not permanent.

  Two modular appendages swept around Ryan’s left arm, patching up a nasty cut above his elbow, and she arched an eyebrow as she approached. “If I had realized you spilled blood to win over the security dyne, I might have let you keep it after all.”

  Ryan winced as a clamp pinched the treated skin together and held it tight. “Shit, really?”

  She laughed. “No. If we have any more pets buzzing and skittering around in here, we’ll have to start calling it a zoo.”

  He reached down with his other arm and stroked a canary yellow spiderbot circling his feet. “I know. But the dyne wanted a more fulfilling life.”

  “Did it tell you this?”

  “Not in so many words, but I saw the longing in its code.”

  “Perhaps after meeting you, it will find a new path to follow on its own. Good job tonight. Turning the dyne kept your teammates safe and kept it from calling the cavalry down on us.”

  The clamp released its grip, and another mechanical arm swept in to paint on a top layer of sensory nanofiber. When it had finished its work, Ryan peered down at the seamless, healthy skin left behind. “Thanks for taking me. It was fun, if occasionally painful.”

  “I think you just summed up our lives here.” She patted him on the shoulder and left him to wrap up the repair sequence.

  Next to one of the structural pillars, Ava sat cross-legged beside Maggie. Ava had opened up the pseudo-skin covering of her weaponized forearm and was showing Maggie something among its inner workings, but Maggie’s confused-yet-skeptical expression provided no clues as to what it might be.

  Ava and Maggie were siblings—co-equal up-gens from the same psyche. Together they served as walking proof of how much a single up-gen could change a person…and all the ways it didn’t.

  Nika offered them a supportive nod, mostly grateful Ava wasn’t currently beating up her teammates. She continued on toward where Parc sat at the center of his own personal command center, which he had built smack in the middle of The Floor. Anyone was free to wander through it and touch the exterior of the equipment, but he protected the access passcodes with the fervor of Charon guarding Hades.

  He couldn’t have been back and working for longer than ten minutes, and he’d already attracted an audience.

  Nika didn’t push her way through the crowd to reach him, instead leaning against a pillar on the periphery to watch the show.

  “So then, what I did was I set loose this smart worm I wrote into the Dominion Transit database. Wiping the database would’ve been easy, but selectively altering and scrambling existing data while inserting new data? This required a higher and more refined level of skill.”

  One of the newer people, a tall guy with auburn hair named Cair, leaned in toward Parc. “But the manipulations will leave traces. Even if the traces don’t expose the details of what you did, they’ll announce which data points you diverged.”

  Parc not-so-subtly nudged Cair out of his personal space. “You’re cute. See, the worm touched every piece of data, leaving behind an identical trace whether it altered the information or not. There’s not a person or algorithm running that’ll be able to spot the difference between altered and unaltered entries.” He grinned over his shoulder in her direction. “Right, Nika?”

  She wondered how long he’d known she was in his orbit. “You’re the expert on data worms, not me. I bow before your genius.”

  “Oh?” He considered her with new interest. “I don’t suppose you could? Bow, I mean. It would bring a huge increase in my cred around here.”

  Those closest to Parc scooted back to clear the way so she could step into the inner circle of his command center. She dropped a hand on the top of his chair, then shifted to face the onlookers. “What do you all think? Does Parc deserve the knee?”

  A chorus of boos and grumbles answered, along with a few whistles and some color commentary.

  “He’s good, but not that good.”

  “An ego boost is the last thing the prick needs.”

  “He’ll be insufferable—oh, wait.”

  She chuckled and turned back to give Parc an exaggerated shrug. “S
orry, but I have to respect the will of the people.” She leaned over the top of his chair and made a show of inspecting the plethora of code spilling across multiple display panes. “Maybe one day.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He sounded exasperated, but his expression remained one of amusement. “I sent my operation report to Joaquim an entire six minutes ago.”

  “I wasn’t checking up on you, but thank you for putting work before play. I’ll let you get back to showing off for your adoring fans.”

  She left the command center and eased into the crowd reforming around him. By the time she reached a bubble of empty space, Parc was full into another demonstration of his coding savvy.

  As she turned to head upstairs, activity near the Board caught her eye.

  The Board kept a running record of the missing and the lost— individuals who had done something once thought impossible in Asterion society: vanish. Some fell victim to Justice, were sent off to prison to serve their sentence and never returned. Others signed up to work at one of the outposts on the wild frontier of the exploratory worlds—and never returned. A few had simply been living their lives one day, and the next day were gone.

  Most of the names belonged to friends, co-workers or loved ones of the people here. The troubling implication of this was that the true number of missing people could be exponentially higher.

  Cair had slipped away from Parc’s demonstration after getting snubbed, and now he paced in front of the Board. A hand repetitively came up to his chin then dropped to his side while his lips enunciated silent words.

  She sighed and went over to check on him. “Do you see something here that bothers you? Do you need to add a name?”

  “Damien Soljitsen and Monique Palade shared a former employer. Monique and Francis Quelle lived three blocks apart. Francis and—”

  She carefully placed a hand on his arm, but he still jumped in surprise.

  “Sorry. Listen, we’ve run the names through dozens of algorithms looking for connections. There aren’t any. The surface-level similarities you’ve identified don’t lead to anything concrete.” She glanced at the Board and the subtle glow of the names on it. “I wish they did. If we could discover what links the disappearances, we could figure out why they happened and stop it from happening again. Maybe even find the people who are lost.”

  Cair nodded distractedly. “I’ll work on a new algorithm.”

  2

  * * *

  Nika settled onto one of the two couches in her room, next to Perrin and opposite Joaquim. She draped her shower-damp hair behind her shoulders and poured herself a drink from the pitcher on the table. “What’s it look like?”

  Joaquim instantiated a data sphere between them. “We were successful in accessing and corrupting the primary Dominion Transit passenger database. By altering or deleting sixteen percent of the existing records, we obscured the insertion of twelve new simmed identities. We should be able to use them, paired with their morphs, for a minimum of four months before they stale.”

  “This will make travel so much easier, as well as safer.”

  “Which was the idea.” Perrin didn’t sound enthused, however. “I do wonder, though—would it have been better to do this on the sly rather than announce our presence with explosions and artwork? Now they know their database has been corrupted.”

  Joaquim snorted. “As well they should. We need to be in every institution’s face, and thus in the Guides’ faces by proxy. They need to know we can get on the inside. They need to know their precious data troves aren’t so infallible.”

  Joaquim’s passion for the cause was both his best and his worst trait. Nika leaned forward and propped her elbows on her knees. “You’re both right. Yes, Perrin, it would’ve been more prudent to stay under the radar, and it might have bought us an extra month or two of breathing room. But we’re never going to change laws without changing minds first. We have to be publicly disruptive. We have to act as a beacon others can see and believe in.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  She shot Joaquim a quick smile. “I know. The point is, we’re always walking a tightrope between ensuring our safety and pushing the cause forward. Tonight, we successfully furthered both interests…or that’s my hope.”

  Perrin clinked her glass against Nika’s then leaned across the table to do the same to Joaquim’s, apparently accepting Nika’s defense of their strategy. “We’re all back safe and sound, and we got what we needed. Looks like a win to me.” She brought her glass to her lips, but paused it there. “Did it look like a win on The Floor? I was too busy confirming everyone was accounted for and any damage got taken care of to get a good sense of the mood.”

  “I’m relieved to report that spirits are actually high, for the moment. Parc’s spreading tales of his gallant heroics as we speak, and the newer people are lapping it up. Some of the veterans, too, even if they’re pretending not to be impressed.”

  Perrin rolled her eyes dramatically. “I’d chastise him for showing off, but it’s all true.”

  “It is. He deserves the accolades.” Nika took a long sip of her drink. “You said the new guy, Cair, showed a penchant for derive-and-diverge work, right?”

  “Yep. He’s crazy talented—just standoffish and shy.”

  “If you can, try to get him working on some experimental routines we can slot for use in future operations. He’s interested in the Board, but I worry obsessing over it will just lead to more frustration on his part. We need to give him something real to do, something he can take pride in, because right now Parc is running all over him. If he produces good results, hopefully it will diffuse any burgeoning friction between them.”

  Perrin nodded as she refilled her glass from the pitcher on the table. “Will do. There’s no shortage of work. Ever.”

  “Thanks.” Nika crossed her legs and considered each of them in turn. “So, do we need to talk about what happened tonight?”

  Joaquim spun the data sphere, pretending to study its contents. “We do not.”

  Perrin’s nose wrinkled up. “Talk about what? I thought we decided the operation went really well.”

  “It did. I’m referring to the brief but highly public bickering between the two of you.”

  “Oh…it was fine.”

  Nika glared at the ceiling. “Am I really the only one here who thinks it wasn’t fine?” She returned her attention to the pair and found two averted gazes waiting on her. “Well, this time you’re both wrong.”

  “Her squad was acting like it was on a play date instead of an operation.”

  “It was an easy operation—”

  Nika set her glass on the table with a firm thud. “We aren’t going to rehash the argument now. Perrin, it was only easy because nothing went wrong. Operations are dangerous, and the wrong slip-up means R&R for anyone caught. Given the stakes, a little more discipline is probably called for.”

  Perrin sank deeper into the couch cushions. “I get it, but I hate to dampen their enthusiasm.”

  “Their enthusiasm will get them retired if you don’t start making your team be more careful.”

  “Jo, you’re not being fair—”

  Nika was of the personal opinion that if the two of them would just sleep together, they could perhaps get all this angst out of their system. Perrin insisted they never had and likely never would—something about friendship being a stronger bond—but they had been at this for as long as she’d known them….

  She didn’t offer it up as a suggestion, but she did wave a hand in Perrin’s direction to cut her off. “Joaquim, it was a minor quibble, and it didn’t need to be handled on the main operation channel. If you felt strongly that the issue needed to be dealt with immediately, you should have pinged Perrin.”

  He shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is, by making a gentle suggestion in a private ping, you help her to become a better combat leader. By instead scolding her on the operation channel, you devalue her authority in fron
t of her team—and you set an example for the others. A bad one. I almost had to pull Ava off Carson tonight because you made it okay to snap at your teammates.”

  “That…wasn’t my intent. Perrin, I only wanted you to take the operation seriously. I want everyone to take operations seriously.”

  “I do, Jo. This is my life as much as it’s yours, remember?”

  “Of course I—” He pinched the bridge of his nose and stood. “I realize it is. Fine, I’ll try to work on my discretion. If we’re done, I think I need some depri time.”

  Nika eyed him for a second. “We’re done. We can decide on the ID distribution protocols later.”

  He nodded vaguely and disappeared out the door.

  She studied the door after his departure. “He seems more ornery than usual tonight. Is he tweaking around with his processes?”

  “I don’t think so. This afternoon he found out his best friend from a prior gen got arrested for assault. With the new, tougher penalties, a conviction will mean a decade at Zaidam Bastille.”

  Nika frowned. “Does he want us to look into it? See if we can help his friend somehow?”

  “No. I asked, but he said he’s not comfortable barging into a former friend’s business, not when he doesn’t know much about who the guy could be now. People change when they up-gen, and sometimes they change a lot. That’s why we do it.”

  Nika directed the continuing frown at her glass. Unlike everyone else here, she hadn’t existed in a cognizable form for long enough to watch people she knew up-gen and change overnight. “Is it?”

  “Yeah. We don’t want our processes to grow stale, our personalities jaded or, worse, our minds mad.”

  “I understand the philosophical justifications behind up-genning. It’s just…why is it mandated? And why a minimum of every three hundred years? Did scientific analysis produce this length of time as the outer safe limit, or was it picked because it’s a round number? And why are the Guides exempt?”