The Beam: Season Three

by Sean Platt

  “Leah is gone,” she said.

  Serenity nodded. “Thank you. I know.”

  She hadn’t realized until she’d said it, but Serenity really did know.

  That was something else that had changed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Stephen York rode to the Bontauk home’s shell on the back of a horse named Aristotle — a twenty-year-old gelding few would ride because he was always cranky and tended to buck. York got along with the horse just fine, though, and on arrival, he looked back at the trail and wondered why Leah had said Aristotle was even a problem. She claimed it was because the horse was old and resented exercise, but having shared some time with him, York thought it was more likely that he was simply pissed at being named Aristotle, and at having had his balls removed years ago by people who wanted to sit on his back today.

  York could relate.

  He’d spent his own youth buried in books and the Internet. The Internet hadn’t been big enough to keep him away from the outside world, so he’d teamed with Noah, and together they’d made Crossbrace, which had consumed the years most young men spend partying or building a life. York had done neither. He’d been too busy. His reward should have come next, but it hadn’t. Crumb had come next.

  York dismounted, tied Aristotle to a tree, and took a moment to meet the horse’s eye as if in commiseration. Then he walked to the home’s remaining structure and found the fiber line exactly where Leah had said it would be. It was strange to think that she’d been giving directions to a person who’d been here so recently using this very connection, but York chose to see his vague memory as a good sign. He’d spent decades forgetting Stephen York, so forgetting Crumb’s life little by little had to be an improvement.

  He raised the fiber line, looked at the connector Leah might have added last time, and then blew the dust from it. It looked clean, and Leah had stored it in a way that had kept it mostly protected.

  York pulled the small laptop canvas from his bag and plugged it in. The thing was slate gray and featureless — an early model Beam canvas that any adept hacker like Leah would surely laugh at today. It would still work fine. Fine wasn’t exactly a definition rich with technical specifications, but the main difference between Beam and Crossbrace hardware was that Crossbrace hardware did something whereas Beam hardware was mostly passive, doing little more than giving the network the tools it needed to do its job. Crossbrace consoles had been hard to build; York remembered the years of R&D that went into them. Beam canvases had been simple to develop by comparison. Given the way AI itself had built The Beam, canvases were just varying ways of giving the ever-evolving AI a voice that humans could understand.

  The old canvas wouldn’t offer the various immersive toolsets that people today probably took for granted. But it would be good enough for York, whose expertise was as old as the machine itself.

  York keyed the device then waited. While waiting, he looked at the thing. He’d been against the machines’ plain designs from the start. They looked like old Internet-age computers. There was a panel where those old computers’ screens would be, flat and plain. That had been York’s chief complaint: Why model an old device then make its usage defy the old conventions? Why put in a screen panel then not add a screen?

  Noah hadn’t listened. He’d said the design was elegant and beautiful, as befitted The Beam itself. Depending on the user and what the node (or the canvas itself) learned of that user’s preferences, the panel could be turned into a screen. He also said that any device needed an active and inactive mode, and flipping open a lid made that switch, telling The Beam something of the user’s intentions as well as a host of biometric data that could only be conveyed, at the time, through touch — in this case, fingers and thumb against the cool hybrid surface.

  York had thought Noah’s logic was idiotic, but by the ’60s he’d learned not to argue. Noah was his friend, and also a bastard.

  After the requisite handshaking sequence, a holographic globe flicked to life above the open machine. It was a startup that York would have called “noncommittal,” as if the canvas were hemming and hawing and clearing its throat, unwilling to admit that it had no idea who he was.

  “Okay then,” said York.

  He breathed slowly then reached down inside himself and began picking at his growing cache of Stephen York memories like a scab. This was something SerenityBlue had suggested, though he’d yet to try it on the open Beam, accessible outside the school’s protected connection. It was a way of reminding his firewalled mind who he really was and who he wasn’t — a trick that, when exploring with Serenity, had always been useful in getting his protections out of the way. Reminding Stephen that he was Stephen. And, if his hunch was right, allowing The Beam to read his ID just enough to unlock his access…but, with care, not quite enough to make his incursion obvious to anyone who might be watching.

  Wary, he moved his hand toward the holo globe to cue a rescan.

  Did he really want to do this? He’d been hidden for a reason, and people were out there looking for him. He’d been hidden by Serenity, who’d somehow found him the last time he’d been here, online with Leah. After that, he’d been hidden again by the Organas. Showing his face on The Beam now felt dangerous…but what was he supposed to do, hide forever? He needed to tunnel to the protected archives he’d set aside at Quark. Places where (and the concept was valid, if admittedly strange) the AI had always liked him and still owed him a favor. Places where, if he was careful, the AI would keep its digital mouth shut and shield him from clerics and snoopers, like a criminal hidden by the residents of an ethnic ghetto.

  The hand hesitated, slightly shaking.

  He could be quick, couldn’t he?

  He could stay hidden, couldn’t he?

  Hidden enough, anyway. Unless someone was staring at this exact sector, watching for his ID, he’d simply vanish in the noise of daily activity. And even if he was seen, Leah had told him about all the protections she’d installed here: rerouters, anonymizers, spoofs as blunt and effective as homemade pipe bombs. Even if someone was watching closely enough to see (as ridiculous as that was), they’d never know where York was or be able to find him.

  York breathed slowly, unable to make his hand touch the globe.

  Because all the anonymizers in the world hadn’t kept SerenityBlue from seeing him.

  And because what he’d learned and remembered of Noah’s secretive Panel proved there were levels of access — and then there were levels of access. Even the canvas in front of him, which had once been beyond state of the art, had landed in the laps of the privileged years before the wider world knew it existed. Alexa Mathis had used a model just like this to train her escorts, for shit’s sake, while searching the infant Beam for her anthroposophic gods.

  But still, he’d be fine. Nobody could possibly find him up here, and he couldn’t just sit and wait. He couldn’t hide forever. If he was being stalked, he had to stalk back. If he was being chased, he needed weapons to face his pursuers.

  York shoved his hand into the holo web as if into a hive of wasps.

  The sphere blinked away. He was left holding his quivering hand above the open device, the partial room darker without the web’s illumination. He squinted, as if what he was doing wasn’t interfacing with a network but clipping a wire to disarm a bomb.

  But the home’s shell was quiet.

  Bontauk, save the chirping of birds and rustling of branches, was quiet.

  The canvas looked like nothing more than a hinged piece of brushed steel. It was inert. Nothing whirred. Nothing lit. Nothing at Quark had ever whirred or lit, but still York almost craved those ancient noises of moving parts. Anything to confirm or deny his pending pursuit, one way or the other, just to get it over with.

  A voice came from behind him.

  “Welcome to The Beam, Stephen.”

  York turned to see Noah West sitting on an ancient chair made of genuine metal.

  The chair, which he’d noticed on entering,
was mostly rusted through, so it took a few seconds for York to understand why it wasn’t collapsing beneath Noah’s weight. Then it dawned on him. Noah didn’t have any weight because he wasn’t here.

  “Canvas, intuitive web,” York said, raising his hands like a virtuoso lifts a violin.

  But nothing happened. Well, not nothing. Noah did recross his holographic legs and smile.

  “‘Intuitive web’ back at you, asshole,” Noah said.

  York frowned. “Canvas. Deactivate visual avatar.”

  “Such a hurry. What’s the rush, Steve?”

  “I asked to deactivate the avatar.”

  “I heard you. You designed this interface, Stephen. Don’t you remember the introduction protocol?”

  York made his eyes move away from Noah’s. It was only a hologram — an avatar projected by the canvas. This wasn’t actually Noah West, no matter how familiarly it addressed York or how many of their common memories it might have queued to share.

  “Canvas, skip introduction protocol. Give me programmer access.”

  “You don’t think some of your old back doors haven’t been discovered and closed?” the Noah avatar said. “It’s been decades. When there were only a dozen of these canvases in existence, maybe you could get away with simply requesting programmer access. But the AI didn’t put up with that for long. It’s not like opening the hood on my dad’s old Chevy, you know. They see programmer access by someone new to the network as something closer to breaking and entering.”

  “I’m not new to the network,” said York, knowing he was arguing with a machine.

  “You’re new in all the ways that matter. You need a tutorial.”

  “I built The Beam.”

  “Only in the way a contractor frames a house. Consider the generations since then, and the way all those residents have fleshed it out and made changes.”

  “Give me a line to node AF-4 — ”

  Noah interrupted him. “Look at me, Stephen.”

  “I don’t need an avatar,” York said, meaning it. Using 3-D avatars had made sense in the ’50s and ’60s in order to give new users of the new model canvases holographic guides to the revolutionary network. But York had remained unfirewalled long enough now to remember the backlash over them that should have been obvious, in hindsight. The first avatars were —

  He stopped.

  He was quite sure that the avatars used by this model canvas were built based on personal user data. The resident AI sifted activity around the new user’s ID and fabricated a holographic guide in the form of someone the user seemed to know and like. Initial users had hated the interface; they’d seen it as a breach of privacy — and, sometimes, a betrayal of closely held secrets, as happened when lovers appeared as guides instead of the more appropriate spouses. Even the people who accepted their own AI avatars found it creepy. That’s why, not long after rollout, Noah had become the default face used by all new canvases.

  “Where is my avatar?” York asked Noah, feeling stupid for about six different reasons.

  “I’m your avatar.”

  “You’re Noah West. West only became standard after G1, after the backlash.”

  “The Beam has changed a lot since then.”

  York shook his head. “It’s resident in the unit. We wanted fresh AI that hadn’t been influenced, so each new use represents cracking a seal. It happens in the canvas itself.”

  “This canvas has been used before,” said West, still smiling that maddening holographic smile. Through Noah’s head, York could see a shattered picture frame clinging to a crumbling wall.

  “‘Fresh user, fresh chip,’” said York. “You remember our mantra.”

  “Of course I don’t,” said Noah. Then he whispered, “Because I’m just an avatar.”

  York watched West, chewing his cheek in thought. The only reason this was happening, he decided, was as depressing as it was inevitable. If this model projected avatars fashioned on whomever the AI thought the user would most like and trust, that meant he wasn’t seeing a later-model West-standard avatar. Nope. He was seeing the person this machine’s AI thought York liked and trusted most, and that person, for York, was Noah West.

  York sighed.

  Not a wife. Not an outside-of-work friend. No. Here was proof that in his whole, sad life, York had been closest with his boss. The person who’d cracked his whip, who’d kept him from ever feeling competent, accomplished, proud, or adequate.

  “Fine. Then as a user, I pass on my tutorial. I feel comfortable using this canvas and The Beam.”

  “Perhaps we should try some quasi-immersives to be sure you understand what you’re doing.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I should tell you about the use of intuitive holo webs.”

  “I’ve got it,” said York, feeling like the avatar was screwing with him. He’d asked for a web to begin this travesty, and had been denied.

  “You’re familiar with the use of Crossbrace. Let me explain the ways in which The Beam is fundamentally different. Crossbrace has a human-intuitive architecture, composed of nested and compartmentalized code, which to you as a user means that — ”

  “Understood. Move on.”

  “There are four ways you may choose to use The Beam with the help of this canvas. They are — ”

  “Next.” He sighed.

  “From your current location, you’ll be able to — ”

  “Next.”

  “Because The Beam is intuitive and works as a collaboration between you and your canvas’s artificial intelligence, many new users feel — ”

  “Next.”

  “ — that relaxation exercises train their brains to better orient their senses in order to — ”

  “NEXT.”

  “ — follow the white rabbit downtown to Chinatown. But if you prefer to — ”

  York’s head flicked toward the hologram.

  “What did you say?”

  “Relaxation exercises train their brains to better orient their senses in order to align with new inputs provided by the canvas. But if you prefer to develop your own routines, you may find, with subsequent uses, that the canvas will adapt to — ”

  “That’s not what you said,” York interrupted. “You said Chinatown.”

  “And that’s what you cued in on, was it?” said Noah. Then, unbelievably, the avatar rolled its eyes. “You always did miss the obvious, Stephen.”

  “Am I through with the introduction? I need Beam access. No interface.”

  “You’ve been on The Beam this whole time. How else could I be here?”

  York wouldn’t repeat the question, though he wanted to: Exactly…how CAN you be here?

  “You’re on The Beam,” the avatar repeated. “Like the impulsive, sloppy genius you’ve always been, you’re on all over the place. Unshielded and naked. Not even ID spoofed! Not firewalled. Fucking without a condom like a dumb kid who needs to get his rocks off. You never were one for thinking ahead, were you? Of course not. You needed to get online, so you rushed. You didn’t think. So I hope this fuck was worth it, Stevie, because as I could have told you, now you’re the one about to get nailed.”

  York blinked. This wasn’t normal. Something had gone wrong with the canvas. Avatars could be creepy in their knowledge of the user, but they weren’t supposed to be anything other than blandly helpful. Besides, York barely had a Beam footprint for the AI to read and compile into a compatible avatar personality, so it shouldn’t be able to be creepy yet. None of this was right. It hadn’t been right since he’d touched the web, logging his ID.

  “I would have seen it, Stephen. Of course I would have. I would have plugged in to a dedicated and walled-off canvas — ”

  “I…” Then he stopped and backtracked to something the avatar had just said. “Wait. Plug what in to a dedicated canvas?”

  “Yourself! You were locked down by your own technology, Steve! Didn’t that raise a few questions? Didn’t you wonder how it happened? Didn’t it occur to you tha
t there might be a flag sequence? A white rabbit?”

  “Canvas,” York stammered, “disable avatar.”

  “Leah could have done it. If she’d gone back in without your lockdown in place, it would have been obvious. And if she’d had more sense than you seem to have, she’d have done it without a connection first. She might have been able to stop it. Or at least told you to stay off The Beam because now it’s started, and it’s only a matter of time.”

  “Stay off The Beam? I’ve been off The Beam!”

  York felt his temperature rise as the avatar began to scowl in advance of its rebuttal. Great. Now he was arguing with Noah’s hologram — one humiliating, outsourced degree of separation from being berated by Noah himself.

  “Stay off it forever, Stephen!” the avatar blurted.

  York shook his head with anger. Then, knowing it was childish but not caring, he picked up the small canvas and raised it over his head, preparing to throw it hard at the moldy arm of a Plasteel-frame couch against the wall. The canvas wouldn’t silence the avatar? Fine. York would silence the canvas and do his detective work later.

  “Wait,” Noah said, holding up a holographic hand.

  York’s lip twitched. He looked over. In one gasp, the avatar had gone from insulting to penitent. Just like the real Noah West, who’d always been abusive before being sorry. But this had gone too far. He’d always forgiven the real Noah, and wasn’t about to start forgiving his ghost. The canvas in his hands had only cost him a hundred of Leah’s borrowed credits in a DZ secondhand shop, and it was only that much because it was an antique. He didn’t need to search this badly. Not enough to endure the machine’s apparent malfunction. He’d try again when he didn’t feel such an oppressive hand behind him, its dead palm on his spine.

  As York heaved the canvas at the protruding Plasteel corner, he saw the avatar’s face fall from the corner of his eye.

  “Find Alexa,” it said.

  Then, with a crack of composite and glass, the avatar blinked away and was gone.