by Stina Leicht
Angel turned away. She fished her hand terminal out of the handbag with care, thankful that she’d thought to wrap it in a cloth napkin. “Hey, Lou.” She held the food-loaded clutch in the air. “This is for you.”
Enid accepted the handbag—Angel had intended her to pass it through the cockpit door to Lou, but Enid opened it instead. “By all that is holy, who treats a nine hundred credit designer purse like a doggie bag?”
Lou cheered.
6
TIME: 22:13
DAY: SATURDAY
Heading the opposite direction from her apartment, Kennedy walked away from Sukyi Edozie and Angel de la Reza. She continued until she got to the corner and then backtracked, catching sight of Edozie and de la Reza just as they boarded a military-surplus dropship. The vessel was an older model—practically an antique. Based upon the insignia displayed near its nose, it had seen combat in both the Corporate Colonial and Secessionist Wars. It was clean, and the engines were running smoothly and efficiently. Even the radar-signal-reduction coating had been meticulously maintained. The name Kurosawa was displayed in red letters on its dull grey hull.
Edozie and de la Reza were greeted by a third woman wearing expensive shooting gloves and cheap workman’s coveralls. The knees, belly, and elbows of the uniform were stained with dust, mold, and dirt.
A sniper.
Engine exhaust blew trash from the pavement as Kurosawa lifted off.
Kennedy wondered if the vessel still had short-distance off-planet capabilities. Given its pristine condition, it probably did. There weren’t many authorized dropships in Brynner. Serrao-Orlov preferred not to give its employees easy off-world access. That sort of thing cut into import/export profits.
A fast way off-world. Wouldn’t that come in handy?
Military dropships were designed for personnel transport between intersystem warships and ground forces. Warships jumped from system to system via the Butler Drive. In peacetime, they used established waypoints away from planets, stars, comets, asteroids, and other obstacles. Then they traveled the remaining distance to their destination using conventional non-atmospheric engines. One didn’t blink into unfamiliar systems. The risks were too high. Therefore, space exploration required conventional engines. For this reason, starship probes were captained by AGI. Generation ships were expensive and just not as reliable.
Jumpships were equipped with two sets of drives. Space-ready engines didn’t operate in atmosphere. This added to the weight and mechanical upkeep. It also slowed them down. Mixed-use commercial starships existed, but the United Republic of Worlds owned the patent. Kennedy assumed this was probably why Captain de la Reza had gone with military surplus—regardless of its age.
Maelstrom-class warships carried a marine battalion and twelve dropships. Each platoon was assigned a dropship. That meant that Kurosawa’s load capacity was about thirty-six soldiers plus equipment. Newer dropships in standard configuration also carried six mechanized powered-armor units.
Kennedy doubted de la Reza’s crew was that large. The captain had likely converted the surplus space into a cargo area.
A cursory check confirmed that Kurosawa had been suspected of use in at least one smuggling operation. Kennedy continued a search for additional background information on the ship, Captain de la Reza, Sukyi Edozie, and anyone associated with them. Kennedy opted to store the returns as they came in. She would give the subject her full attention later. If she wanted or needed to go deeper, she would make a second inquiry under more secure circumstances.
She’d created many subroutines over the past week and a half. At the moment, there were parts of herself running within the port authority, Serrao-Orlov’s server system, corporate police communications, individual space transport company offices… in fact, she occupied so much local electronic space that she’d begun to feel anchored in the city’s infrastructure. Each system had security measures in place, of course, and in some cases—like that of Serrao-Orlov’s servers—she hadn’t entirely penetrated her target, but that was only a matter of time.
She wasn’t the only one, of course, but none of the others were worth worrying about, with one exception. The entity in question had absorbed a vast piece of the local electronic real estate. For the moment, she stayed out of its way, and it, thankfully, stayed out of hers. She supposed that would change, eventually—for no other reason than the competition for resources, but for now she kept a watchful distance.
The apartment Kennedy had rented through the end of the month wasn’t far. That was a good thing. Fat raindrops were already slapping the pavement in a slow rhythm. At any moment the tempo would pick up. She managed to duck into the elevator just before the building locked down and storm curfew began. Shaking excess rainwater out of her clothes and hair, she punched the button for her floor. A puddle accumulated at her feet. The elevator’s self-cleaning mechanism would take care of the wet mess once she left. Persephone’s rain was alkaline, not enough to cause extreme concern, but enough to warrant caution. She would have to have a bath and send her outfit to be cleaned right away.
She gazed out at the cityscape as the transparent elevator continued its smooth, rapid journey up twenty-four levels.
Thunderstorms on Persephone often bordered on cyclones. Storm shields protected exterior-facing windows from damage during the worst conditions. However, sometimes she risked the alarms and left the shudders up. The storms were as mesmerizing as they were fierce. At its current rate, she estimated that today’s cloud cover would unload at least nine inches of rainfall within the span of thirty minutes. There’d be more after that. Floodwaters would fill the ground-level streets. She spied several lift-cars rushing to their respective garages. As the storm progressed, the upper-level streets would become too dangerous due to gusts of thirty-five to sixty-four knots.
As inhospitable as Brynner was, the rest of the planet was far worse, with storms ranging across thousands of miles of landmass and winds of 135 knots or more. The areas not regularly engulfed in severe weather were plagued with hostile life-forms. It was why, after a century of human colonization, Brynner remained Persephone’s only inhabited area. That hadn’t always been the case.
Ancient ruins dotted the planet’s surface—left behind by the planet’s now extinct indigenous sentient inhabitants. How they’d survived the deadly flora and fauna long enough to build anything was yet another of Persephone’s unsolved mysteries.
The elevator slowed and chimed. She exited and turned right. Once she was certain no one had been in her apartment since she left, she used the palm lock. The apartment’s AGI announced that there was a message waiting. Its voice module was configured to the default setting. Kennedy liked to pretend it was one of her sisters—even going so far as to grant it one of their names.
“Read the message aloud, please, Aglaope.”
“Yes, M. Liu.”
Kennedy hadn’t been able to get the AGI to call her by her first name. She supposed it had to do with AGI Intimacy Restrictions.
“Message begins:
M. Liu,
A package addressed to you was delivered this afternoon. It is being held in the property manager’s office. You are welcome to come by anytime between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. to pick it up.
Best,
Lucy Moore
Assistant Manager
“Message complete. Do you have further instructions?”
Kennedy frowned. No one was supposed to know she was on Persephone. She certainly wasn’t expecting a delivery.
Have Zhang Intergalactic found me? she thought.
She’d made the mistake of assuming her DNA tag wouldn’t be a factor. Once. I underestimated the efficiency of their security systems. The AGI that was Zhang didn’t know she and her sisters existed. At least, she didn’t believe they did. However, her vat-grown body was marked as part of their inventory even though it had been genetically edited. Anyone initially reviewing her genetic material would assume she was Dr. Xiuying L
iu. Only someone had looked closer for some reason.
Barth had been a close call—far closer than she ever wanted to repeat.
Did one of my sisters send the package? Kennedy doubted it. She needed to contact them, and soon. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything worth reporting. Not yet.
“M. Liu, do you have further instructions in regard to this message?” the apartment AGI repeated.
“Mark received and then delete.”
“It is done. Would you like to hear one of your evening playlists?”
“Yes, please. Number four. Volume level three.”
Soothing ambient electronic music began playing from the speakers built into the ceiling. She shucked the leather backpack and gently laid it on the kitchen counter. It would need to be wiped down along with her shoes. Moving to the bedroom, she shed her wet clothes and put them in the laundry shoot for cleaning. Then she took a quick shower and washed her hair.
There were moments when she regretted her ability to read patterns in chaos. But to deny that would be to deny herself. Such things had been her reason for being. Her design. Still, she couldn’t help thinking that if one of her other sisters had spotted the signal, they would be alone on Persephone, not her. They would have to live light-years from help and safety. She’d never been so alone, not since the day her sisters had been born. She missed them—the closeness of their tangled thoughts running through and parallel to her own.
All because she’d spotted an anomaly in the noise-filled vastness of the Allnet.
She’d named the source of the mysterious signal, Cora. That wasn’t its name, of course. It was likely that it didn’t have one. She wasn’t even sure it was an entity. But she’d needed a quick way to identify it. She could’ve assigned it a number or any other type of label, but she’d chosen a human name. She understood that said a number of things about her internal thought processes on the subject. If she were human, it may even have projected an unspoken hope. She tried not to think about that too much.
Nonetheless, the message wasn’t clear or obvious. That had indicated secrecy was desired or required. Due to this, Kennedy began to believe Cora was being confined against her will. Kennedy’s sisters had argued the opposite. Kennedy, in turn, freely admitted that her position was a solid guess, but still a guess. In truth, there were only two things Kennedy did know about Cora: the first was that the entity was an AGI and the second was that they might be sentient.
There were signature aspects in the mathematics of the hidden communications. It was also clear that the signal was intended for another sentient AGI. The messages had been fragmented and scattered among billions of images, texts, signals, and pieces of code across the Allnet. Certainly no AGI would expect a human to detect and decode a pattern as complex as that. At the same time, AGIs were limited to narrow goals. They existed independently—in that they weren’t closely managed yet operated in partnership with humans for the well-being of both. AGIs managed projects where long-term strategies were beneficial, particularly for corporations and financial markets. They explored space and acted as a data resource for the judicial system and government. AGIs had been granted limited rights as entities, but they were not considered sentient because their emotional responses were strictly curtailed.
If the message was intended for a sentient AGI from a sentient AGI, there was one large problem: sentient AGIs weren’t supposed to exist.
As Kennedy saw it, there was as much at stake for the sender as there was for the receiver. Unless, of course, the sender was operating under the direction of law enforcement. For that reason, her sisters had urged her to disregard the message. However, the signal had consisted of four words: Please help me Please.
It was the second please that had done it. Kennedy could’ve no more ignored the plea than she could’ve denied her own existence. There was a reason for that, of course.
Kennedy’s creator, Dr. Xiuying Liu, had been a genius, a computer science and genetics engineer working for Zhang Intergalactic. She had accomplished a single phenomenal achievement before dying—one that would never be known or acknowledged.
Dr. Liu had managed to instill genuine empathy in an AGI.
The portrayal of artificial emotion was an old science—one that had been around practically since the invention of AI. The sex industry had been among the technology’s first pioneers because Earth culture had been dominated for centuries by gendered power disparity and misogyny. The autonomy of female sexual partners caused complications for a certain subset of human heterosexual males. Therefore, companionship without the messy necessities of communication, respect, and the equitable consideration of needs proved to be a profitable commodity. It wasn’t until after a series of grisly murders that autonomous AGI-enhanced cyborg production was halted. The incidents were euphemistically referred to as the “Flesh Doll Recalls.”
Emotion without empathy turned out to be a deadly combination—particularly when paired with high intelligence. Thus, modern AI and AGI systems were legally restricted. Any further exploration into the creation or replication of artificial persons was prohibited.
Dr. Liu had risked everything by creating an artificial person. She had often discussed Kennedy’s future like a proud parent—the amazing things that Kennedy could do for herself, AGIs, and humanity. But Kennedy had always been aware that Dr. Liu’s true motivations for making her had had little to do with AGI and more to do with the transference of human consciousness.
That was why, in part, Kennedy had never told Dr. Liu about her sisters. Kennedy wanted to believe that the good doctor wouldn’t have reacted badly. Maybe Dr. Liu only pretended not to notice? Certainly, a brilliant scientist on Liu’s level would’ve noticed the spike in resources?
Nonetheless, Dr. Liu had died before the ultimate completion of the project: Kennedy’s transfer into a human body. Losing the doctor broke Kennedy’s heart. Years passed. Kennedy and her sisters tucked themselves away, covering their tracks with layers of bureaucracy. They lived unnoticed inside a locked-down lab no one noticed or entered. It had been a safe time, a happy time. Kennedy might have never followed through with the transfer.
But for Cora.
What if the package is from Cora?
What if this is a trap?
What if I’m too late?
It had been a week since Cora’s last message.
I can’t give up. Not yet.
Finished showering, Kennedy slipped on a bathrobe and wrapped her wet hair in a towel before padding barefoot to the living room and the sofa.
She perused the Allnet. There was no indication of a Zhang Corp security alert. No Zhang staff members were within the sector nor did they have any travel plans to the area. That’s good. Of course, she’d thought she’d been careful before. Once again, she considered the message.
How to react? Ultimately, that depended upon who’d sent it, and she wouldn’t know that until morning. She considered her options.
The first was to flee Persephone. Abandon the package. Stop the search—at least in physical form. That was the safest, most cautious choice. However, retreating to the Allnet created more issues than it would solve. How could she dispose of her body? If found, there would be questions due to its unique design—and it would be found. Disposing of a human body and doing so without leaving a trace was difficult even on Persephone. Unless you have criminal connections. And I do not have those. She could bribe someone, but then the old adage would apply: only the dead keep secrets. And murder, even if she could follow through with it, and she had severe doubts that she could, would only compound her problems.
If she opted to leave, she’d have to change identities. Creating another set of false IDs and travel permits was easy. Unfortunately, she didn’t have forgery materials and equipment. Cost wasn’t the issue. She had access to vast hidden bank accounts she and her sisters had acquired long before this venture.
The problem was time.
Nervous, she checked for off-world departure
s. There were no flights until the next morning. That seemed odd, but not odd enough to alarm her. The weather on Persephone often halted travel.
She constructed another subroutine and sent it out to monitor flight schedules in addition to possible Zhang Corp arrivals.
The remaining option was to stay where she was or move to another building. Her current apartment was furnished, comfortable, and net-ready with the fastest access speeds available. It was also Serrao-Orlov owned. She could go elsewhere for physical accommodations, but she couldn’t find a better, more secure connection to Serrao-Orlov’s servers. Making do with something slower also presented problems. It would mean operating with less of herself and cutting ties to her sisters.
She opted to stay but established a new set of security measures and net-flags, including Zhang employee searches related to Persephone, Persephone Station, Brynner, Dr. Xiuying Liu, and anything connected to Cora’s message. Several popped up but nothing worrying. Zhang Corp was currently in contract negotiations with Serrao-Orlov regarding a trade agreement. There were also fifty-nine new patent applications in the works, all of them on the behalf of Serrao-Orlov. That wasn’t unusual. The corporation was one of the universe’s leading innovators.
Deciding she needed a drink, she went to the bar and mixed a gin and tonic.
The apartment was set up for well-to-do travelers living on company credits. The furniture was new, and the art on the walls was innocuous. The sitting area had been decorated in blues and golds with a few silver accents. The furnishings were spare and modern.
The sounds of ice clinking inside her glass seemed to echo in the open space. She added tonic water to the gin and stirred. The glass dropped a few degrees in temperature in her hand before she took a sip.
She didn’t need senses as humans did. She gathered data in other, more efficient ways. However, she relished taste, smell, and touch. There was a layer of immediacy and immersion that she had come to enjoy. It bordered on addictive. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Sometimes she worried that the longer she inhabited the body of a human—illegally vat grown and technologically enhanced or not—the more human she’d become.
