Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  There were whispers, though, that the ruler of an entire people suffered some sort of affliction, some disease of the skin and the mind that made him a lunatic, an uncompromising dictator, an oppressor of the worst sort. There were harrowing tales of maddened AI spheres, of malingering sicknesses, of eternal trials-by-fire… Arcade City was rumored to be the last forge of Hell, where the penitent were hammered until they gleamed in the dark, weapons poised against … something.

  Jordan mimicked Spur’s shrug; it didn’t matter terribly to him whether he ever knew what was wrong with King Blake, if for no other reason than the majority of his security personnel FrancoBritish. Whatever happened behind the vast metal dome of Arcade City transformed those few Trinity deemed ‘safe’ into unparalleled warriors. The least of the free FrancoBritish escaping from Arcade City was more than a match for nearly every other species in the Universe.

  Of more concern than Blake was Etienne; where the FrancoBritish ruler ‘ruled’ a single city on a single planet, the so-called Emperor-for-Life was –by Trinity- accorded dominion over entire planets. That was something no other being at any other time in the entire history of Humanity had been granted. The distinction between the two rulers was small –almost pointless to make- but it was present all the same. Visiting an Emperor-for-Life run EuroJapanese world was very different from one ‘run’ by Trinity. Where the machine mind allowed humanity to do whatever they wanted whenever the mood struck them, Etienne Marseilles forced his subjects to live peacefully, in harmony with their surroundings. You could go months on an Emperor-world without ever hearing a raised voice. Unnatural. Humanity was born and bred for chaos and madness.

  Even more unnatural was Trinity’s disinterest in disproving the ruler’s claims of immortality. The Trinity AI took –or seemed to take- great pleasure in disproving such whenever those claims reached a certain saturation point, and the ‘legend’ of the Emperor-for-Life was persistent. The fact that Etienne Marseilles was also trapped behind a shield wall on Trinity Prime, a shield just as encompassing as Goth King Blake’s, served only to perpetuate that nonsense.

  “And this is why Trinity must go.” Jordan said, hardly aware that he’d spoken his innermost thoughts aloud. He continued. “It’s insistence on maintaining pointless illusions and legends like Etienne serve no real purpose. You claim to have come from behind the shield wall in Japan, Spur. I order you to tell me what is there.”

  An indifferent smile crossed the android’s lips and his pale eyes seemed to glisten. Other Bishops had asked that same question, had demanded the same answers, and in the fullness of time, their lives had become forfeit, for Trinity’s Edicts were most clear: Spur could not cross the threshold of the Bishop Building, could not attempt to return home, could not communicate with the outside world as an artificial intelligence … and Bishops could not attempt to force the android to reveal its most ancient memories.

  Humans were so easily replaced. They were a matter of biology and of a few seconds when done the old-fashioned way, even less when science got involved.

  Spur was unique. Like Chadsik al-Taryin, like Garth Nickels, like Mad Goth King Blake and others too numerous to mention. The Trinity AI cherished –in It’s own unfathomable way- irreplaceable things, and nestled deep within the Edicts was permission to protect itself.

  Demanding revelations of what lay behind the shield in Japan was the surest way to end your life. Jordan, a student of his predecessors, knew this. Knew this, and had either forgotten or no longer cared.

  “That is one, my lord.” Spur whispered softly. Two more such demands. That was all. There was no reset, no grace period. Three demands stretched out over hundreds of years or dozens of minutes. Perhaps Jordan had well and truly lost his mind and would continue in this vein, right here, right now and BishopCo would find themselves with a new lord and master. Perhaps Julian, Marcus, or even Shelly. Any one of the three would dispense with the foolishness surrounding Garth Nickels and most assuredly distance themselves from The Dark Age Cabal.

  Jordan went to shout at the android, then realized what he’d demanded. The hot anger at being chastised wanted to go somewhere, but his foolishness forced him to choke it down. The previous track of their conversation beckoned. “And, at long last, after decades of dealing with the nearly genius-level Latelians, I believe we have a resolution to our most pressing problem. Naoko Kamagana’s intellect is a marvel. She will provide us with what we seek.”

  Spur pursed his lips. Though he was not a member of the Cabal, he was intimate with that group’s goals. And their difficulties.

  One, obviously, was figuring out a way to defeat Trinity Itself. The machine mind had Enforcers and the combined forces of both the official Army and the now nearly mythological Special Services to protect It’s interests. Entire galaxies were now shielded behind the revamped and upgraded gravnetic shield generators. Spur knew Trinity well. It would say It was merely doing the best thing for It’s people, but the android knew better.

  Trinity was preparing for war. War with the Cabal, war with some other group, but war all the same. It made no difference. Preparation was preparation. Beyond that, they’d been led to believe that the machine mind Itself wasn’t even in a single location; unlike every other AI in existence, it was widely rumored that Trinity was a diffuse network of programs that’d evolved into sentience.

  That … theoretical disposition of Trinity was the Cabal’s greatest stumbling block, as was the mind’s overall function; while many humans across many systems spread throughout many galaxies loathed Trinity and felt unbearably oppressed by It’s whimsical attitude towards individual lives, every single human being and a vast majority of Offworlders would be hard-pressed to deny It’s efficiency in governing a virtually infinite realm.

  Jordan and the others in the Cabal knew this and hated what necessity had done to their cause. As much as each of them wanted to be King or Queen, Emperor or Empress, there wasn’t an organic mind in all of existence capable of ruling over hundreds of millions of planets. There was, simply put, no way it could be done. No one alive even knew the true extent of Trinity’s realm. No one knew what It was honestly doing across The Cordon.

  That was where Jordan’s scheme with the Latelians came into play; as the best and brightest programmers, each man and woman spirited away –thanks to Morgan’s body-farming network- found themselves with a simple task. Design an artificial intelligence capable of evolving. The science was there. The technology was there. It’d happened once, it could happen again. Except this time, instead of Trinity, they would have an AI enslaved to the whims of man. This speculative machine mind would be able to run the systems already under Trinity’s command, but would be infinitely less … free.

  It would take time for the men and women in charge of this new AI to fully comprehend the tasks of running Trinity’s domain, to set their creation on the path to success, but they had nothing if not patience and the willingness to break a few eggs; with the exception of Kant Ingrams, every man and woman in the Cabal was a person of power. They understood necessity, embraced sacrifice. What they sought to do was for the betterment of Mankind. If they profited along the way, what harm done?

  Alas, to date not a single Latelian programmer had proven capable of producing anything but sophisticated programs for AI minds to run. Some few had reinvented or otherwise improved upon the hardware connections that merged the otherwise ‘intangible’ AI sphere to the real world, but nothing revolutionary.

  “It is probable that Naoko Kamagana possesses the necessary intelligence to at least begin the work, my Lord.”

  Jordan grinned. “Of course she does, Spur.”

  The albino android was about to bring up one other salient fact mentioned in Morgan’s message concerning Naoko when a torrent of data uploaded itself into his brain. The tags indicated it was an emergency broadcast from one of their intelligence assets on Hospitalis and as Spur absorbed the content, he would’ve paled further had he been human.

&nbs
p; Jordan, long used to Spur and the android’s body language –a facet the machine perpetually refused to admit even existed- narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. Data, being delivered. A considerable amount, if the five second pause in all motor functions was any indication. He felt his jaws clench in automatic response to the minute flicker of an emotion Jordan had labeled ‘android reflection of fear and doubt’. “Out with it.”

  “My lord, this needs time to …”

  Jordan shouted, his loud voice echoing off the walls of his magnificent office. “Out with it!”

  Spur gestured, and Naoko Kamagana disappeared of the screens. In her stead came uploaded footage of the hostage taking at The Museum. More specifically, choice bits from the treasure trove that’d been the combat inside.

  Jordan watched in silence for quite some time, the blood in his veins turning colder with each passing second. Naturally, he’d seen God soldiers in action before. There was nothing new in the mayhem and slaughter that they represented. He himself had authorized an attempted replication of God soldiers here, in his very own laboratories, but to no avail: as with everything in Latelyspace, the Latelians’ mastery over certain things seemed to be –of all things- environmental. There were things that worked in that tiny Sovereign System that worked nowhere else.

  He wasn’t even interested in the crazy Harry Bosch. From size, shape and demeanor, it was instantly apparent that the man was an internal, God army threat and not at all worth concerning himself over.

  No, what had his attention captured as surely as anything, what had a deep, dark rage of blackened fire and bloody rage burning ice-cold through his soul was Chadsik al-Taryin directly involving himself in matters well beyond what he’d been approached for.

  “What is he doing?” Jordan wailed, hammering his hands on the desk. Cracks appeared in the durable surface. He replayed the footage again, pounding on the desk every time Chad fired a shot. In no time at all, the hideously expensive Exodus desk was ruined. Jordan turned to Spur, who’d stood silent during the passionate display. “What happened?”

  Spur applied his vast intellect as best he could. Too little was known. While he was a vaunted level 10 artificial intelligence and capable of great things, he was all too aware that he was being forced to guess. “The only thing that makes any sense, my lord, is Garth Nickels. Chadsik al-Taryin would never engage in wholesale slaughter like the rest of his FrancoBritish brothers; he looks down on the post of soldier and mercenary. Following his regrettable … activities with our sole remaining assets on Hospitalis, it is highly likely that he found it necessary to shadow Garth Nickels on his own. Following that, there is little but speculation.”

  “So speculate.” Jordan hissed, staring at the screens. Beneath his incandescent rage at an assassin being so recklessly visible was a nearly equal level of appreciation for the cyborg’s weapons. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the level of power housed within one frame, never would he have believed it possible Trinity would allow something so dangerous free and unfettered travel through It’s domain. Why, It even insisted that the twisted freaks who wound up in SpecSer battle only beyond the darkest parts of The Cordon to prevent ‘local mishap’.

  Here, in Trinityspace, they had Chadsik al-Taryin. The man’s power was harrowing. He toyed with the idea of conscripting al-Taryin into the Cabal, dismissing it when he remembered that he was, in fact, angry enough for a dozen men.

  “I am waiting.” Jordan shouted when Spur offered no results. “What is going on? Why is he doing this?” His right eye began twitching.

  Spur bowed deeply. “Apologies, lord. The effort required to arrive at a conclusion reasonable enough for you took more time to process than originally anticipated. Operating on the supposition that Garth Nickels entered into The Museum of his own accord for some purpose or other…”

  “Garth Nickels.” The name popped out of Jordan’s mouth before he could control himself. Hundreds of trillions of dollars. Gone. Out of his banks and into the coffers of a man who was more maniac than executive.

  Spur resumed without missing a beat. “It would seem highly probable that Chadsik was forced to follow the man inside. The ensuing terrorist uprising almost certainly endangered the life of the intended target. After examining Chadsik’s history more closely, I have ascertained that there have been five other instances of extreme violence surrounding his target, my lord, times where the person he had been hired to assassinate found him or herself in distinct trouble.”

  Jordan raised a hand, pointed a finger at the cyborg on-screen. The fool FrancoBrit had a demonic smile on his face and his eyes burned with absolute passion. “Are you telling me that Chadsik al-Taryin killed all those God soldiers, made himself public enemy number one, because Garth Nickels, the goddamn caveman, might’ve died?”

  Spur nodded. He refused to answer the hidden question. He stood and waited patiently while Jordan destroyed most of the things on his desk. As always when his lord and master went on a rampage, the NorthAMC Conglomerate’s hands strayed over but never grasped the Exodus relics that he liked to keep nearest to hand; some of them were well over fifteen thousand years old and, even in the rarified world that Jordan Bishop lived in, quite literally beyond price.

  The android’s eyes narrowed when –against all rationality- Jordan grabbed a black ball with an ‘8’ engraved on the side. Unearthed seventy years ago, it was his lord’s current prized possession; artificial intelligences tasked to determine the function of Exodus items had concluded that the ball was a toy, a false oracle intended to amuse the owner. Operation was simple. You decided upon a question, thought ‘hard’ and shook the ball. A window set into the base of the toy allowed the wielder to look on a multi-faceted … widget ... on which were written twenty answers ranging from the positive-sounding ‘it is certain’ to the dour ‘don’t count on it’.

  When his lord was feeling … as light-hearted as a man like Jordan Bishop could feel, he would use the ball to resolve a crisis, claiming that sometimes the universe was unpredictable and that everyone, even he, should learn to appreciate that.

  “My lord, that item cost you three hundred million credits.” Spur watched the eight ball arc across the room. It collided with a display case holding other irreplaceable Exodus event artifacts. Everything crashed noisily to the floor. There were now less than eighteen Exodus artifacts from that most ancient epoch left in the entire cosmos.

  Breath ragged, Jordan stared at Spur. “The assassin we hired to kill Garth Nickels chose instead to murder God soldiers rather than allow them to dispatch the caveman and take credit for the kill. Who does that?” The mighty and powerful Bishop shouted the question again. Faced with the same sort of choice, Jordan knew without doubt he would stand back against the wall and watch God soldiers tear his target to pieces. Then, as any normal person would do, he’d say he’d done the deed and ask for his money.

  Spur knew better than to answer.

  “This is all Trinity’s fault.” Jordan said, almost to himself. “All of this … everything … was designed by that machine mind to destroy me. I see it all, now. Oh, this is a plan centuries in the making, Spur. Trinity is a devious mind indeed.”

  “My lord?” Spur watched Jordan seat himself at his desk, chuckling and shaking his head ruefully, acting as though he’d just realized something that should’ve been apparent a long time ago.

  Jordan gestured. “Don’t you see, Spur? It has grown afraid of the mighty Bishop Empire. It knows It cannot defeat me head-on and so It has gone to great lengths to attempt my destruction. Garth Nickels, Chadsik al-Taryin … all of it, everything that’s been happening, fabrications of Trinity, set into motion in stages. Why, I wager these gravnetic shield generators were no invention of Nickels’ at all! Accepting It’s weaknesses, It created Nickels and his ridiculous backstory and let him loose into the galaxies, where the ‘caveman’ then began ‘releasing’ inventions designed to weaken me.”

  “And Chadsik al-Taryin?”


  “Incapable of following this Byzantine trail, Spur? I am not surprised. I barely caught it in time, myself.” Jordan clucked his tongue chidingly. “The same as Nickels, an invention. The other side of the coin, so to speak. Trinity is no fool. It would foresee my methods of dealing with Garth Nickels, and, knowing precisely how powerful he is, would also know I would find no normal avenues to expedite that wish. Thus, the impossibly augmented Chadsik.”

  “I calculate a diminishingly small chance that this is the case, my lord. To ensure that everything would hold up under scrutiny, the overall duration of a ploy of this magnitude is two hundred years, minimum.”

  Jordan shook his head, laughing. That was the problem with non-organic intelligence. They just couldn’t understand. “As I said, android, centuries.”

  “Historically speaking, my lord, Trinity simply crushes opponents. It is, after all, the leader of Humanity. It has sciences beyond the scope of man. It has never devoted such resources to bring down a single being. It would hardly see the need. There are other methods...”

  “Philosophical discussions on the nature of Trinity’s dispositions are moot, Spur. It has set itself against me, personally.” Jordan waved a hand, dismissing any further discourse. “How long until Naoko Kamagana is in my hands?”

  Spur bent to the task. “The last communication with the mercenaries indicated they had not yet left the planet. Owing to the destruction of their one and only proper Spaceport, departures from Hospitalis are moving at a snails’ pace. Once they leave the planet, it will be a minimum of one week’s travel to the Quantum Tunnel and approximately one and a half week’s travel from the Tunnel to Trinity Prime.”

  Jordan rubbed his hands together and thought of the devastation the Cabal would wreak on Trinity once the delectable Naoko Kamagana designed a replacement AI. In no time at all, he would be the true leader of Humanity. Satisfied, Jordan returned to the business of running a multi-systemic Conglomerate, dismissing Spur with a negligent flick of the hand.