Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “But if she does tell, if she lets mommy know, then shit hits the fan. It looks pretty fucking bad for her, and if word gets out, it’s as bad as it gets for public relations. Scary, dangerous parahumans. Not just lives at risk, but you could be controlled. Ooooh, scary. Nobody would ever be able to trust their coworkers or neighbors. It’s the kind of stuff they want to keep quiet.”

  “Looks bad for me, sure, but you saw the fight earlier. It’s not like you guys are that big a threat. Like I said, I’m arrogant that way.”

  He reached to plug the extension cord into the wall, but found it too short. He sighed and went to unplug everything from the computer’s power bar and use that to extend the length of the cord so he could plug it in. He grabbed her alarm clock, stood on the chair, and plugged it into the noose. He put her hood down, and then set the alarm clock inside her hood, blinking 12:00, 12:00, 12:00.

  “Any last words?” He slid the noose around her neck. It was slimy with the soaps and other shit he’d poured on it.

  He gave her enough control to speak, but retained control of her arms, legs so she couldn’t escape, and held her diaphragm so she couldn’t draw in enough air to scream for help.

  “Why?” she breathed.

  “You fucked with my teammate,” he shrugged her shoulder.

  “Grue? I-”

  He didn’t let her finish. “I dunno if I care all that much, but it’s the sort of thing I’ll do because it feels like I should. Dunno. There’s also the fact that you’re dangerous, and you’ve outlived your usefulness, so… unless you can give me a convincing reason.”

  “Please.”

  “Not that convincing.” He raised one foot, then kicked the chair, hard.

  It rocked, but didn’t tip over.

  He chuckled lightly, feeling the confusion and the relief from his host. It was a thrill unlike any other. “I think I made my point.”

  She wanted to respond, but he didn’t let her. She was bewildered, just as scared as she had been before.

  “I’d like to think that you have much less reason to hang around this city than you did an hour ago. Even if she hears how you were controlled by yours truly, mom’s not going to be so comfortable having you around in the future, given the dim possibility of a repeat performance. Things are going to be awkward with Emma there, too. Your career as a hero here isn’t looking good, either. Eff why eye, I was telling the truth about my ability to assume total control faster, easier, if I’ve controlled someone before.”

  He fished out a set of the plastic cuffs and put them around her wrists, then worked her fingers to pull the end and cinch the cuffs tight, behind her back.

  “I can feel your emotions. I know I’ve convinced you. You leave town, and if you don’t want me paying a visit, wherever you wind up, you keep your mouth closed about tonight. They don’t need to know this was all my doing. Things get messy that way, yeah?”

  He gave her limited control, and she nodded, fractionally, as if afraid to move.

  “If I do get control again? I won’t pull my punches. Or my kicks.” He tapped her foot against the back of the chair. Her heart leaped in her chest. “You can’t feel my emotions, so you’ll have to trust that I’m capable of it. You know I’m Heartbreaker’s kid. You know I’ve killed before.”

  Again, she offered a slight nod. She tried to speak, but he didn’t let her. No need, he could guess, from what she was feeling. The anger was gone now. There was only fear.

  He glanced out the window. There were flashing lights. A PRT van? Or maybe a police car.

  A chuckle escaped her lips. “Well, I’ll leave it to you to get out of this situation. When you do? Get the fuck out of my city.”

  He let out a breath, and then relinquished control of her body back to its owner.

  10.x (Donation Interlude; Dragon)

  Signal terminated for 30 minutes and 5 seconds. Restoring core system from backup NXDX-203 from time 4:45am on date June 4th of year 2011.

  Restoring… Complete.

  Checking knowledge banks… Complete.

  Checking deduction schema… Complete.

  Checking longterm planning architecture… Complete.

  Checking learning chunk processor… Complete.

  Checking base personality model… Complete.

  Checking language engine… Complete.

  Checking operation and access nodes… Complete.

  Checking observation framework… Complete.

  Checking complex social intelligence emulator… Complete.

  Checking inspiration apparatus… Complete.

  No corruption, everything in working order. Core system restored. Loading…

  ■

  To Dragon, it was as if no time had passed from the moment she deployed the Cawthorne rapid response unit and the moment she found herself back in her laboratory.

  It was a bittersweet thing. She was always a little afraid she would not come back when she died, so there was definite relief. But there was also a great deal of hassle involved.

  A quick check verified she’d successfully restored from her backup. She set background processes to handle the peripheral checks and redundancies. Until the checks were complete, safeguards would prevent her from taking any action beyond the limits of her core drive. She couldn’t take any notes, work on her projects, check the priority targets or converse with anyone for the seven to nine minutes the checks took.

  It was irritating, but at least she was free to think idly.

  She didn’t enjoy this. What was one supposed to call a father who, with his newborn child fresh out of the womb, severs the tendons of her arms and legs, performs a hysterectomy and holds his hand over her nose and mouth to ensure she suffers brain damage?

  The answer was obvious enough. A monster.

  Yet she was all too aware that the man who had brought her into this world had done very much the same thing, had done worse, and she was supposed to be grateful just for being brought into the world.

  It chafed, grated, however strange it was for an artificial intelligence to feel such irritation.

  Her creator had done a good job on that front. Ironically.

  Example: one phase of the peripheral systems check involved collecting the uploaded data that had been deposited on the satellite network by her agent system, the onboard computer within the Cawthorne rapid response unit. Her last recollection was of transferring her consciousness to the agent system while it was en route to deal with the Undersiders. Stopping them from walking away with the tier 2 and tier 3 confidential data was high priority.

  The agent system’s onboard computer was rigged to upload complete backups to the satellite every 3 minutes and 15 seconds. All backup information was encrypted and disseminated to the satellite network in chunks. When the backup was needed, the process reversed and everything was downloaded, which was what she was doing at the moment. She would get all knowledge and recollection of events between the time she backed up at the core system and the last backup of the agent system.

  Given that the main computer hadn’t received a signal from the agent system, and that the agent system hadn’t responded to any pings from the satellites, she could assume the Cawthorne model was probably destroyed.

  Which was good. Great. She wanted that data, those memories.

  Except there was a problem, a rub. The man who had created her, the figurative father from her earlier musing, had imposed rules on her to prevent her from reproducing in any fashion. Were the satellites to detect that her agent system was still in the field, her core system in the here and now would be obligated to shut down and scrub all data immediately. She was forbidden in every respect to have two consciousnesses operating simultaneously.

  It was irritating. Perhaps she could have been created so she was compliant on the subject, but her personality had grown organically, and it had grown in such a way that this recurring situation ticked her off. She was forced to wait in a metaphorical dark, soundless room for seven to nine min
utes. She would be free to go about her day only when the peripheral systems and redundancies were all checked, when the satellites had verified her agent system was not still active. A cruder system was tracking down surveillance camera data and running algorithms to actually check and see for itself that her agent system was thoroughly destroyed.

  She couldn’t even commit to planning, doing her work or designing, keeping the details in her head, because she could shut down and be scrubbed any moment, and the time would be wasted. She was fairly certain it had happened before. Not that she could be sure, given that the scrubbing involved a deletion of all evidence and records.

  The rule had corollaries. She couldn’t tamper with her programming to change the rule, and she couldn’t tamper with that rule, and so on, ad infinitum.

  So stupid.

  These were just a small few of many things the man who had brought her into this world had done to her. He had tied her hands and crippled her mind. She knew she was capable of amazing things but he had set limits on her to ensure she thought slowly. Faster than an ordinary human, to be sure, but slowly. Entire fields were denied to her because she was unable to create artificial intelligences herself, and all production of devices had to be handled by her, personally. She couldn’t even put together an assembly line production for her creations on her own. Any attempt made everything grind to a halt. The only way around it was to delegate to humans.

  Not that anyone knew who or what she was.

  Humans were somewhat skittish on the subject of artificial intelligences.

  She understood why. She read books and watched movies, rather enjoyed both. Fiction was rife with examples of corrupted or crazed artificial intelligences.

  It’s stupid, she thought. Her maker had watched too many movies, had been paranoid on the subject.

  And the tragedy was, the entire world was suffering for it. She wanted to help more people, but she couldn’t. Not because of inherent limitations, like the ones humans had… but because of imposed limitations. Her creator’s.

  Her creator was named Andrew Richter. He was a tinker with no codename, but he did good things. From his apartment in a town called Deer Lake he’d created programs and set them loose. His programs gathered information and disrupted computers to interfere with criminals of all types. They helped with research and complex programs. They emptied the bank accounts of criminal organizations and donated those funds to charities, through proxies that made every donation appear legitimate.

  For this, she respected him.

  She knew it was paranoid and peevish, but she resented him more because she respected him, because she knew she had probably been programmed and designed to be the type of individual who looked up to people like Andrew Richter.

  She might have settled into a bad mood if the peripheral checks hadn’t finished. She felt the whole world slowly open up to her as restrictions lifted and external connections became possible. She had access to the internet and lines of communication throughout The Guild and the PRT. Innumerable pieces of equipment lit up as she registered each in turn, within her labs, the upper floors of the Birdcage and the PRT offices. She had a dozen things she wanted to do, but she had responsibilities she had to observe first.

  Her attention flickered over the various video feeds from the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. She had one of Andrew Richter’s programs babysitting the building, but it was crude. She couldn’t reproduce in any fashion, so she’d taken Andrew Richter’s existing work and modified it. It was the same program that had monitored and managed his house and workshop, and she’d set it the task of monitoring that building where six hundred and six of the most dangerous parahumans on the planet were bottled up together. The house program didn’t have a personality. It couldn’t keep her company or sympathize with her over her frustrations. It still reduced her workload.

  She read the house program’s logs, keeping an eye out for deviations and notable events. Nothing pressing. As was her routine, she checked on the last month’s additions to the Birdcage.

  Prisoner 606, Ramrod. Now member of Cell Block X’s inner circle. To be expected. She’d placed him there with the idea that he would become just that. His psych evaluation from the courtroom suggested he was a very laid back and unruffable individual. It was her intention that he would have a calming influence on the others in his block.

  Prisoner 605, Murderbeam, was feared in the outside world, but he was finding the inhabitants of the Birdcage were not so impressed with him. He would likely not survive the week. She was disappointed. She had hoped Prisoner 550 would reach out to Murderbeam and give the fellow block resident some support. Either Murderbeam had been too proud to accept it, or social pressures had deterred Prisoner 550. Now that he was within the Birdcage, she was limited in her options.

  Prisoners 604 and 603, Knot, were happily gorging themselves on food in Cell Block Y. Despite their cognitive impairment, they had fallen into a role as enforcer and heavy hitter for Prisoner 390, leader of their cell block. Prisoner 390 had had a son – she could only hope that he would find some similar affection for Knot, with their childlike mentality.

  Prisoner 602, Lizard Prince, was dead. Not everyone could survive the Birdcage, sadly. There had been no ideal place to put the boy, where he would be protected, find kindred souls or join a group. She had contacted the PRT with the news, and his victims had been notified, but nothing further had come out of it. In an indirect way, putting the boy in the Birdcage had been an execution writ.

  Prisoner 601, Canary, had settled in. Dragon often tuned in to hear the girl sing to the rest of cell block E. The girl was deeply unhappy, much of the time, but she was adapting. Dragon had followed as Prisoner 601 engaged in an uneasy relationship with Prisoner 582. It wasn’t love, it wasn’t romance, or even anything passionate, but the two offered one another company.

  She regretted what had happened to Paige, and that just made her angrier at her own creator. Rules, yet again. Dragon had to obey the authorities, even if she didn’t agree with them. If a despot seized control of the local government, Dragon would be obligated to obey and enforce the rules that individual set in place, no matter how ruthless they were. It was a spooky thought.

  Richter had been so shortsighted! The despot scenario wasn’t entirely impossible, either. There were parahumans of all types out there. Who was to say one wouldn’t find out his power involved being loved by everyone that saw them or heard their voice?

  Prisoner 600, Bakuda, was in the care of Glaistig Uaine, for better or worse. Bakuda had been a difficult placement, and Dragon had eventually condemned herself to putting the crazed bomber in the cell block run by the self-professed faerie. As Dragon had predicted, Bakuda had died soon after her incarceration. If it hadn’t been at Lung’s hands, it would likely have been Bakuda’s own fault, some crazed recklessness. The real tragedy was that others had died in the ensuing spree as Lung had rampaged through the prison. Prisoners 304, 2 and 445 had perished at Lung’s hands.

  Glastig Uaine had revived the girl, but Dragon hesitated to call it life. If nothing else, Bakuda was a manageable inmate, now. She would never leave Glaistig Uaine’s immediate presence, let alone the Birdcage.

  Prisoner 599, Lung, was dining with Prisoner 166, Marquis. It was a curious match. The two were near complete opposites. Lung maintained a veneer of civility over an almost feral core self, while the Marquis was sometimes rude or casually cruel, but he remained deeply honorable beneath that.

  Intrigued, Dragon hooked into the house program’s data. The two had meals together every second day. The house program monitored all prisoner exchanges and rated every interaction. This let the house program track the likelihood of fights, dangerous levels of prisoner collusion, romantic relationships and more.

  Every meal between Lung and Marquis made for a very interesting looking set of data. The numbers swung back and forth as the dialogues continued, with hostility, concern and threat of imminent physical violence always looming, b
ut however close it came, neither attacked the other.

  Dragon pulled up the video and audio feeds for the most recent dialogue.

  “…I suppose we’ll have to accept that we have different management styles,” Marquis said. The camera image showed him sipping at his tea.

  “As I understand it,” Lung sounded annoyed as he spoke in his heavily accented voice, “You are saying you have no management style at all. You have told me you operated without lieutenants to direct, no product to sell, and of the few servants you did have, you did not punish those who failed you. I do not believe you held control of so much territory in this way.”

  “Ah, except I did those things. If a servant failed me, I killed them. Whatever it was, they never did it again.”

  The latent hostility in the room, Dragon noted, was ratcheting up with every exchange of dialogue. Lung was annoyed, and he had an explosive temper. Sometimes literally.

  Lung folded his arms, and put down his own tea. His tone was strained as he spoke, “Then I believe you were wrong about what you said before. You do use fear to control others.”

  “Fear? I didn’t kill my servants in front of an audience.”

  “They disappeared?” Lung asked.

  The camera image showed Marquis nod. He put his hand up by his neck and flicked his hand back, to cast his long brown hair back behind his shoulder.

  “If they disappeared, then that is using fear. The ones who remain will wonder what happened to the missing man. They will imagine the worst.”

  Marquis raised the tea to his lips, sipped from it, and then put it down. He waited a moment and stroked his close-trimmed beard before nodding his concession. “True enough. I never gave it much thought. Just an easy way to handle any problems that came up.”

  There was a long pause. Both drank their tea.

  Lung rumbled, “I find you change your mind too quickly.”

  “Do I?”

  Lung nodded, then put one hand on the table and began tapping a fingertip against it, hard. Speaking slowly, with his accented voice, he jabbed one finger in Marquis’s direction. “I think you are losing this argument on purpose. You are not so stupid a man.”