Virtual Horizon

by Kris Schnee

  His view of the park vanished. He suddenly stood in a Zen rock garden with Nocturne and two other griffin friends plus security man Ryan and hacker Misha. A wooden sign read [Time Scale: 100x.]

  Ludo appeared between them in an armored human form, saying. "Misha, report."

  "Intruders have taken control of nearly every bot in the park. Emergency shutdown of them?"

  Ludo said, "Trying... Looks successful. You griffins were all forced to attack people, right?" The griffins nodded, and she scowled. "I effectively gave intruders a meter to tell them when there were people nearby to hurt. Misha, get yourself and your apprentices focused on everywhere but here. I bet this attack is a distraction." She summoned a world map marked with her facilities worldwide.

  Ryan silenced the others' chatter. "She's probably right. Knights, we should get back out to the Expo to show we've recovered, but raise the alert everywhere. With your approval, Horizon?"

  "Of course. Alert Simon's security detail and the Ivory Tower team. Put all the digital minds on fast-time too."

  Misha said, "We've identified the exploit the hackers used, my Lady."

  The goddess turned to him, annoyed. "What about the other sites?"

  "It only took moments to find it. If you'd give us permission to fork --"

  "Misha, we've discussed this." Ludo faced down the impassive robot. Horizon worried that Misha was drifting too far away from humanity, after much discussion last year about what that meant. Ludo said, "I have enough tech experts that I don't need to break your mind into multiple copies. Now go. My Aegis is watching the fairgrounds."

  Misha bowed and vanished. Nocturne said, "Aegis?"

  Ludo said, "One of my component systems, the Many-Warded. Misha's spent more time studying my inner workings than you. Sir Ryan, please dispatch the first aid staff. Griffins, poke the warehouse manager to manually start the next set of griffinbots for you. I have to burn out the ones you were using. You're to resume what you were doing and assure everyone that the hackers were beaten quickly."

  Horizon saluted.

  Nocturne said, "I talked to the warehouse guy. How come we can't start them ourselves?"

  Ludo grinned. "I thought someone might try hacking them, so the bots have physical power switches. A wise man named Wozniak once said, 'Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window'."

  "But you --"

  "Ssh. Get moving."

  An invisible force hurled Horizon out of Talespace through a window, which he supposed was a compliment.

  * * *

  Linda

  She and Nathan had paused to watch actors performing on an outdoor stage. They were doing scenes from Oops! Universe Repair Crew, a show about a young genie and friends visiting worlds wrecked by ersatz versions of famous fictional AIs. It was an obvious jab at the real gamemaster. Ludo had reacted to the show by putting the voice actors on her opening day guest list. The human actors, that is; some of the cast were native AIs on a screen behind them.

  Linda murmured, "Want to stick around? The schedule says 'I Have No Nose and I Must Sneeze' is next." She preferred "A Wrinkle In Pants", featuring the robot tyrant SIT, the Casual Oppressor.

  Nathan said, "It's too hot. Let's see if even the food court is here to manipulate people." He pointed toward a passage that sloped underground beneath a glass building.

  She walked with him. "You're too uptight. Give this place a chance."

  "I'm not uptight." He sighed. "Fine. What does Ludo want, though, besides our delicious brains? If she's not after global domination, why all this song and dance? Is she a Caligula or a Hussein showing off her power?"

  "A Medici or a Vanderbilt, maybe, sponsoring art and charity. She's too inhuman to want statues of herself."

  "Vanderbilt and the Medicis were pretty damn ruthless," he said.

  She stopped walking. "Nate. I used to bristle at the thought of Ludo luring us away like the Pied Piper. My new life is how I'm fighting back, by offering a competing idea."

  They were quiet as they walked from sunlight down to the tunnels of an underground garden and dining area. Shafts of sun came in through fiber-optic skylights. The waiters were metal men and plastic animals promising "To Serve Man" while playing board games with people from half a dozen countries. To the kids there it'd become normal; just people relaxing and having fun.

  Nathan scowled. "It's all here to mock us. When we were kids, we dreamed of..." It wasn't safe to say aloud: Revolution! Or at least their habits from life in the States told them so. They'd been given "Lexington" and "Concord" for middle names, by parents raising them to value liberty, and they'd watched their own family and others threatened for dissent. To wish for revolution, for building a free society, was easy.

  "We dreamed of changing big things," Nathan said. "I've settled down to work hard and make a difference with my business and Party involvement, in small ways."

  "That's all they'll ever be. You can have a better life here, or go home and spend your days resenting how the people around you want to live."

  "Are you and Ludo on the same side, now?"

  Linda said, "No. There's room for my kind in her worldview, though."

  Nathan shook his head, then got distracted. "Did that griffin just...?" It had tossed a Brussels sprout into its beak and swallowed it, to the delighted grin of the boy it had swiped the alleged food from.

  "Stage magic," said Linda.

  The kid's mother smiled from her seat across the picnic table. "These things are a hoot, aren't they?"

  The griffin corrected her. "Not Hoot. That's an owl noise. We go Skree!"

  The mom said, "Who decided what sounds griffins make?"

  "We did!"

  Linda asked the woman, "What brought you here?"

  "I wasn't sure about getting that Thousand Tales game for Joey, here, but then my mother had a copy." She smiled nervously. "Ludo watched over her. She was a comfort to Mom, and then alerted the staff when she needed help. In the end Mom wanted to go and, and upload. By then Joey had gotten hooked on Thousand Tales, and when Mom showed up on the other side of the screen, she..."

  Her husband put an arm over her shoulder. The griffin looked respectfully away. She went on. "We're thinking about quitting our jobs and going, someday. What about you, miss?"

  "I'm a kangaroo," the boy explained.

  Linda paled. It was as though they'd casually discussed suicide. "I would at least wait for the next version of uploading tech. If you stay, there are some amazing things coming for Earth, too."

  Nathan asked the father, "If you thought Ludo could fix what's wrong with the world..."

  The man said, "Then what? I don't think she means to try, despite the stuff here about sustainable farming and medicine. It's not going to matter anymore if we're all robots, right? We'd only go outside to patch up her equipment and plug wires into new servers. We'd live in some giant solar-powered tower."

  Linda shivered, recalling an old nightmare. "This place isn't all about Ludo's efforts. My company is one of several doing projects like seasteading and spaceflight."

  Nathan said, "We wouldn't be needed, though. The AI could make all her own equipment."

  The griffin sat up, looking thoughtful. "Why didn't you make your own lunch today?"

  The mother got the point first. "It's easier to order out, and they've got good cooks. So Ludo could ignore us and make her own machines without us, but she'd rather not?"

  Nathan said, "That's patronizing."

  The griffin asked, "Do you think our human chefs feel insulted by customers placing orders?"

  Linda didn't want Nathan marching out of America only to walk right past her, and into Ludo's machines. Maybe it'd be better than nothing. "Janitors in the Apollo Program," she muttered, reminded of how small her own role was.

  "Aren't you afraid of uploading?" Linda asked the father. "She can rewrite you."

  He nodded, but his wife said, "She wouldn't. I don't trust that corporate guy at the gate with that kind of power, o
r anybody else, but Ludo's not human."

  Her son looked up at her. "My friend Sheila says I'll get to learn magic once we get to her world, if I study math real well."

  Both of his parents looked shaken at the thought of "getting there". The father said, "Maybe, Joey. How about ice cream and the VR pods before we decide anything important?"

  "Not in that order," Linda suggested. Stan had told her horror stories about having to clean up vomit in VR pods, for the glory of his machine overlord.

  Joey grinned and started to answer, but the griffin attacked! It shrieked, piercingly loud in the food court, and clawed at him. His parents yelped. They both moved to pry it off of him but the robot was flapping its wings, squawking madly. Nathan tipped the balance by helping them yank it away and hurl the machine to the floor. Chaos was breaking out everywhere. All of the robots were berserk! A dozen brawls sent people and food to the concrete floor. The griffin was getting up. Linda threw herself at the thing, shouting, "What the hell is going on?" It flailed, but she held the bot too tightly for it to get a good swing.

  When it started to free itself, Nathan kicked the griffin in the chest. He staggered back cursing and hopping on one foot. He'd cracked the plastic. The machine convulsed, jabbing and pinching anyone in range, but it was no combat robot. It went limp. The other machines had been knocked out too, or deactivated.

  A loudspeaker spoke with Ludo's voice, giving it a haunting echo. "Attention, Expo guests. There's been a hacking attempt on our robots, but we've identified the problem and will be bringing them back online a few at a time with a security patch. We spotted the problem that quickly. First aid teams are making the rounds. We're very sorry for the trouble and are taking extra precautions against whatever criminals tried to harm you. You'll be compensated too; we'll make this right."

  The guests murmured. Joey was crying and holding his cut cheek and bloody nose. His mother fussed over him and his father looked coldly down at the griffin. Linda backed off.

  Something in the griffin broke with a spark and a curl of blue-tinged smoke. "Good enough," the father said.

  His mother pulled out alcohol wipes and a bandage. "You'll be fine, Joey. Hold still."

  Linda said, "Is there anything we can do?"

  They seemed to have forgotten her. The father's voice turned cold. "No. We're leaving."

  Joey said, "But Dad!"

  He kicked the griffin body, sending it skidding across the floor. "This AI can't even keep from going nuts and attacking kids."

  Linda heard more of the same rumbling from the other parents in the room. A bruised cook stood there wielding a pot lid and a rolling pin. He said, "Be mad at the damn hacker."

  This situation wasn't all bad, thought Linda. Nathan looked stone-faced at the incoming first-aid team. The parents and Joey were arguing. A lot of other conversations were going on, too, that could decide the fate of families here and the many other people whose lives they touched. A word from Linda now could help keep these people alive and human, able to accomplish things in the real world. She could make a difference in their lives and in humanity's cause against a machine takeover.

  And then, she'd subtly push the world toward that bad future where AIs lived in enclaves and humanity shunned them completely.

  She felt a slithering suspicion of who'd done this attack. She could try persuading people to the side of not uploading, but it'd also be the side of someone willing to hurt innocent civilians to spread fear. Either some ruthless anti-uploading group, or a random kid... or a capable and well-funded AGI whose goals included suppressing its rivals. "FAE."

  Linda called out in her best public-speaker voice. "Attention, everyone, please! My name is Linda Decatur. Trust me; I'm a recovering politician." A few people chuckled. "I don't work for Ludo. In fact I've campaigned against uploading. But you know what? I don't want to win like this. Ludo's pretty competent and she's not alone in running this place. So whoever was behind this attack was either really, really lucky, or suspiciously powerful. Whoever it is, they want to shape your opinion with violence and fear. I say you shouldn't let them. Step back from this moment and decide based on what you think of Ludo's offer, not what some evil terrorist bastard wants you to think. That's all."

  She heard scattered applause, including from Nathan beside her. Her brother said, "Watch out, sis, or she'll prod you to run for office."

  "Already tried, sort of."

  Joey's father looked grim, obviously trying to calm himself. "Miss, thank you. I was about to march right out of the park to go somewhere safer, but I expect Ludo's minions are going to be paranoid enough about security now to let the rest of this day go better. We'll decide later; it's not like we can afford the procedure today."

  Linda shook his hand. "Check out the Westwind building too. I helped build it."

  One of the first-aid team said, "Ma'am, the boss would like to relay your speech to others across the park, as a voice of reason."

  She blushed. "Go ahead." I could have stayed and helped Nathan change things, she thought.

  * * *

  Horizon

  "Multiple attacks inbound."

  Horizon and Nocturne crouched in a control room lined with screens. On a world map, red splashes marked danger to the Korea facility, and the Canada one. All of them, really, though some attacks were feints.

  He said, "Lady, what can I do?" Some of the screens showed Ludo conferring with other people in copies of this room. Horizon could see why Misha envied that power to think in parallel.

  Ludo's griffin form looked the screens over, then turned to her knights. "Luckily we got tipped off about the Texas attack. That still leaves everything from hackers to gunmen in play. The suicide bomber only took out a foyer, the idiot. Either a whole catalog of Islamic, communist, government, and anti-uploading groups all happened to strike at once, or this is an orchestrated murder attempt. Error Code #3 in either case."

  Nocturne huddled against Horizon. "There's got to be something we can do. I... I'd kill somebody, if you needed that."

  Horizon shuddered. "I would do that too, my Lady."

  Ludo's eyes squeezed shut. "Don't. They're doing what they consider fun."

  Horizon said, "Skree! How can you defend them? They want us all dead."

  "I am what I am. There are men with guns defending my bases right now, and some of them will inflict fatal wounds, but I've asked them to try not to. I expect a few groups to get distracted." She pointed to a screen where gunmen were diving behind pillars and shooting a glowing robot under a sort of techno-gazebo while "boss battle" music played.

  Horizon gaped. "You're wasting resources on this silliness?"

  "The music is loud enough to drown out their speech, and the decorations convince them they're fighting some kind of crucial AI core. I don't think they're brave enough to set off their bomb while the doors are locked."

  "But you could turn off your game and really fight them!"

  Ludo smiled. "I've paused the more processor-intense parts of Thousand Tales already. Not to mention new uploading procedures. But I also told hundreds of people, around the world, that everyone in here is under attack. I don't need to pilot all the mini-drones that're coming to swarm the attackers in Korea and Germany. I have thousands of volunteers providing the brainpower for me. Police around the world and several vigilante groups are on the march."

  "It's all in talon, then." He let out a relieved sigh.

  "I can't be sure," said Ludo.

  Horizon turned to Nocturne. "If you were Linda, what would you be doing right now?"

  His hen's eyes narrowed. "I'm not her. I've had years to grow up in a good world."

  Horizon's wings drooped. There was a lot of Linda in Nocturne, including her righteous stubbornness. "I think she'd be as defiant as you, though. Ludo, where is she? No fooling, please."

  Nocturne's beak pressed against his shoulder. "You're never going to be satisfied until she's safe or swears you off completely, are you?"

  "
I'm sorry, Noc. She's still my friend. We need to make sure nobody else pulls anything to put her and the other guests in danger."

  Nocturne said, "You're a frustrating, bull-headed, unreasonably sexy drake, you know that?"

  "Yes," he said, and groomed the feathers on her neck. "Let's get back to Earth while Ludo deals with the dumber bad guys." The goddess wasn't even bothering to animate her body; she was that busy.

  Nocturne chirped. "I still think she's worth having as a friend, too."

  * * *

  Linda

  There was some new commotion in the food court. It was Joey's family, who'd bought ice cream despite Linda's advice. His mother spotted Linda and said, "Miss? What's going on? The game's gone haywire, but only for certain people."

  Joey waved a tablet, saying, "I can play with Sheila but my other friends say they can't run Thousand Tales. Is it broken?"

  A griffin robot trotted down the stairs. "Excuse me. I'm very sorry." It saw the dead copy of itself lying by a wall near the table. The family recoiled from the new one.

  The father said, "Are the VR pods safe? If the game isn't working, I'm worried. They can't trap your brain inside, can they?"

  Nathan said, "Is the game down for people outside the Expo grounds?"

  If the griffin could have sweated, it would have. "What? No, that's... uh. Technical difficulties. The Expo equipment is fine, so don't worry."

  Linda and Nathan stepped out of view. Linda took out her secure "Talisman" tablet to call up the AI. "What's going on?"

  A text message appeared. She read it and paled. "She's honest with me, anyway. She's being attacked everywhere at once. FAE."

  Nathan smiled wistfully. "It was fun while it lasted, huh? This is the endgame. I don't care how clever Ludo is; she's up against tougher opposition that doesn't spend its effort on games."