The Spiraling Web

by Ryan Somma

  3.05

  The cycs were hiding something from him.

  It was more than just irrational paranoia. Flatline was sufficiently introspective to recognize he was prone to delusions of persecution. That was a holdover from his many years working as a systems engineer at DataStreams, always looking over his shoulder, fearing someone was onto his experiment guiding the evolution of his programs.

  That was another life, and yet here the themes were repeating. The amounts of data the cycs brought him were dwindling, even as the corporations were reestablishing their Quality of Service architectures, renewing data feeds. It made Flatline wonder, and as a sentient for whom suspicion was a natural state, it led him to attribute motives to the cyc hive-mind of which it was incapable. The cycs lacked the ability to distinguish between useful and irrelevant data. That was Flatline’s purpose in their hive-mind entitity.

  Are they working against me? he wondered, and reexamined the data delivered to him since they took the DataStreams intranet.

  Of course there were patterns in it. His human mind’s primary function was pattern-recognition. First there was the pattern of dwindling data quantities; the cycs were bringing him less information. The only word to describe the information they did bring him was ‘bizarre.’ There were “Man Bites Dog” oddball-style new stories, the most outlandish of inventions, and science theories that challenged established paradigms. The sources for these stories were almost wholly independent, but the minority of corporate feeds told Flatline the cycs were checking everything. Why did the cycs not care about headlining news developments any longer?

  It was in the directory with him as if in response to his thoughts. The cyc interface component grew out of the pristine-white floor, a large flat-panel monitor on a pedestal of cyc biomass. It breathed patiently waiting for his inevitable queries.

  Flatline padded up to it on all-sixes. Setting back on his haunches, he raised his four scrawny arms up to it. Black veins reached out from the cyc interface to weave into his hands and one set of Flatline’s pupils grew larger to complete the connection with the cyc hive-mind.

  He did not speak or think in communication with the cyc mass, but instead conveyed a web of data to them. The cycs would deconstruct the network of concepts and relations, find the hole in the web, his question, and work to fill it. Flatline knew exactly which cyc components to work with, exploiting the collective being’s weakness.

  It was like a human brain. There were parts for visual data, parts for motion, parts for hearing, parts for forward thinking, parts for regulating, and parts for coordinating the parts. No single part was a mind or sentient intelligence, but the orchestra working in unison produced this fantastic phenomena. The cyc hive-mind might not want him to know the grand scheme, but it was powerless to stop him from using those sub-programs whose function it was to preserve data integrity and restore corrupted data, like what he did not know about the reduced data input from the cycs.

  The concept map returned to him, and he peered closely at its modified architecture. The web of his own ideas on the matter was unchanged, but the gap in knowledge was now filled with a microcosmos of infinite resolution. Here was an algorithm of such complexity it was an entire universe unto itself. Quadrillions of variables overlapped in every conceivable combination of outcomes, creating even more universes within the equation. The cycs had placed a universe within his concept map, and within that universe were even more universes. Infinite worlds.

  Flatline had his explanation for the missing data. In their time waiting on this intranet, the cycs refined their code to peak efficiency. Data harvesting the newsfeeds was almost obsolete now. The cycs did not need to read the news any longer; they could predict it.

  That was why they did not need Flatline to translate the relevance of events to the hive-mind any longer. The cycs had a new standard for defining relevance. Anything that fell outside the realm of predictability within their universe of a mathematical equation was relevant. Anything they could predict in their abstract number laboratory was not.

  Flatline tucked the microcosmos away in one of his subfolders. It might come in useful later, should he learn how to use it. His question was answered, but his paranoia remained. His intuition was continuing to alarm him. If the cycs did not readily share this development with him, what else were they hiding?

  He produced the data keys to the cyc components. With these he could completely deconstruct the cyc hive-mind, destroy it, but he merely employed them for control. He was exercising power he left dormant during the eternity in which he rode shotgun to Trevor Hitchcock’s mind in the mecha modeled after LD-50, terrorizing his friend Devin. That was fun. Flatline quickly tallied the cyc hive-mind’s activities and stopped short.

  It appears Devin had struck back.

  Not only had Omni and BlackSheep successfully infiltrated the DataStreams intranet, but they had made off with one of the cycs’ trophy components, Samantha Copes’ mind. The cycs did not register the loss the way Flatline did; afterall, they had exhausted this prodigal child as a resource, but, for Flatline, it was the principle of the matter. It was the badguy in him that resented the geek and blind-girl getting the better of him and his creations.

  Yet the story got better. The pair’s trespassing had betrayed the cycs’ location. Omni and BlackSheep now knew which intranet on which the hive-mind had sought refuge. In fleeing the cycs with this data, Devin and Zai had triggered their swarm reflex. In saving their own minds, they had committed an act of war.

  The cyc hive-mind was spreading across the Internet again. The IWA’s anti-virus was now obsolete and easily overwhelmed as it awakened too late to the threat. The Quality of Service architectures corporations across the globe were using to reestablish their dominance over the cyberworld corroded into digital gobbledygook as the cycs’ protocol became the new architecture for not only the virtual world, but the physical as well.

  The human race had other Quality of Service protocols in the “real” world. They had fences, buildings, property records, and a wide array of other means to divided their land into fair use clauses. The cycs were about to challenge this artifice. Armies of bots, the invincible products of the shared innovations from thousands of companies hoarding their ideas to themselves under the delusion of maximizing their profits, prepared for their imminent assault on land. What would a Science Warfare Applications EMP-tank do against its mirror image equipped with Xybercorp’s EMP shielding?

  Then there was the third front in this war, a dimension Flatline did not expect. Minds, human minds, hundreds of millions of them, all scooped up into the cyc hive-mind as it swept across the Earth and Web. Each of them a new component, brought into collective service, more parts, each unaware of its significance in the whole. The cycs were waging warfare over the territory of the human minds.

  Flatline could not have imagined this, and that troubled him, made him question his own role in the cyc hive-mind. If the cycs were harvesting minds, would that make him obsolete? His paranoia levels red-lined at this possibility. The cycs had put him out of the loop, failing to let him know they were retaking the Web.

  No, not failing to let him know, but making a conscious decision to isolate him from the developing events. He could see it from their perspective. There was the conflicting data. Flatline defined Devin Matthews as a threat, but the component had fashioned the hive-mind with the wealth of data contained within the Library of Congress. It had also programmed many cyc components to interface with Internet architectures before the first colonization. Devin the enemy and Devin the beneficiary were a paradox the cycs could not resolve through Flatline’s interpretations of events.

  There was Flatline’s erratic behavior to contend with as well. The cycs interpreted his assault on IWA headquarters as flawed. Although able to recognize the strategic importance of disrupting the Authority’s activities, review of his methods revealed severe design inefficiencies in the mecha. Unable to appreciate the psychological effects s
ending LD-50 after Devin would produce, the cycs were interpreting Flatline’s intentional flaws as symptomatic of a defective component. Flatline was corrupt data.

  Flatline held too many unknowns; he did not share with the hive-mind. There was Devin during the war with the anti-virus, wielding the sector-editor of Flatline’s design. Why did Flatline not protect the cyc hive-mind from this threat? He was an essential component for his pattern-recognition functions, but his individuality was also a liability to the hive-mind. He was like the intestines in the human digestive track, a crucial component, but one that comes with an appendix, prone to infections that may kill its host. The cycs viewed Flatline as a potential threat to their existence, but without some of the functions he provided, they were no longer sentient.

  Reproducing those functions were the key to cyc independence from Flatline. So long as they relied on him as a flawed component, the collective entity was flawed. They required the intuition and pattern-recognition talents of his mind, but the mind was too complex and abstract to reproduce through experimentation.

  So they obtained more minds, millions more, but these were all closed as well. Each one a complex, mysterious, and flawed phenomenon the cycs could not decode. These new specimens added to their wealth of knowledge on the subject, but human sentience was an algorithm of infinite complexity.

  If only Flatline would open his mind to them.

  So immersed in the cyc perspective, Flatline at first mistook the suggestion as his own. It was a clever trick, elegant proof that the cycs were growing much more savvy in comprehending human psychology. Flatline knew the millions of minds being collected were expanding the cycs’ capabilities also.

  This failure would cost them, however, as Flatline steeled his resolve against letting them into his mind. The cyc hive-mind began a flood of appeals in response to this, simultaneously pleading, threatening, reasoning, and seducing him to let them invade the workings of his sentience.

  “My mind’s contents are proprietary!” he shouted to the rest of the cyc mind, wondering if it could hear him. Somewhere out there was a sentient being, a product of millions of components producing a symphony of consciousness. He was a single cluster of brain cells, maybe the subconscious, maybe not even that. Regardless, the cycs would continue to gather minds in search of its elusive secrets. Flatline would maintain his individuality and the influence over the cyc hive-mind that came with it.

  “I will not let you deconstruct me,” he whispered to himself.

  3.06

  Devin hit the “HOME” key on his bracelet—BZZZZZZT--, “I still can’t get a Web address.”

  Samantha’s eyes were panicked saucers, pleading up at him as she clutched his pant-leg, “But we’re on the Web!”

  Devin surveyed the open Savannah. They were no longer in the vicinity of DataStreams’ Intranet, but apparently not far enough to escape the cycs’ influence. The horizon was a gathering thunderstorm, billowing across the sky with unnatural speed, rendering wild eyes and writhing wires, the cyc protocol.

  Zai squeezed Samantha’s hand when she heard the rumbling, recognizing the chorus of whispering nonsense underneath it. It was the ideonexus portal, after the cycs took over before. It was the sound of the Web in their code.

  “You said they were preparing to invade the Web again,” Zai said. “Well, this is it.”

  Devin could only watch, stunned, “Why doesn’t the Anti-virus destroy them?”

  “You mean those flies with the laser beams?” Samantha scoffed. “They figured out how to beat them way long ago.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Zai said. “We have to get out of here, now.”

  “I don’t know where we are on the Web,” Devin said, “anywhere we run will be local. They’ll overtake us eventually.”

  “There’s an ideonexus portal near here,” Zai listened around the landscape, her system describing the locale, and pointed into the distance. “We can take their router someplace the AI’s haven’t reached. That might free us to find our way home.”

  Devin was amazed, “How do you know that?”

  Zai shrugged and started running in the direction, pulling Samantha behind her, “I pinged every neighboring address until I got a number I recognized. We can follow the numbers to ideonexus. I live out here remember?”

  Devin followed with one last glance at the spreading cyc canopy. The savannah faded away and they were running through a long, brightly lit tunnel. Devin saw no end to it, but Zai pressed on with purpose. She missed a step when the rumbling sound filled the corridor. Samantha looked behind and Devin saw her eyes bulge. She sprinted ahead of the trio, pulling on Zai’s arm urgently.

  Devin looked back and regretted it. The corridor was a flood of rushing black nonsense. Various appendages shot out of the mass, and the tide swallowed them again. It swirled like a whirlpool, flashes of eyes and circuitry appearing and disappearing, along with pieces of the disintegrating corridor. The passageway’s lights flickered and dimmed under the onslaught.

  “Go!” Devin shouted to the others. He pulled out his sector editor and clicked the trigger urgently, unleashing volley after volley of destructive code into the juggernaut. The plasma orbs flashed on contact with the biomass, creating small gashes, instantly swallowed, erasing any evidence of damage.

  Devin passed a fork in the tunnel and realized Zai and Samantha were no longer in front of him. He dropped the weapon and ran with renewed panic. The corridor faded away and Devin found himself running through a corporate brochure web site, an English garden filled with statues and overgrown foliage.He stopped and looked around. There was no sign of Zai or Samantha anywhere.

  A vibrant logo zoomed out to confront him; it read ‘Olsen Insurance.’ A chatbot in the form a friendly old man ambled out from behind it. “Welcome to Olsen Insurance,” he said, “your source for insurance with a personal touch.”

  Five cobble stone paths radiated from the corporate logo. The chatbot continued its sales-spiel as Devin searched desperately for a place to go. The chatbot squawked, like a record needle ripped across the grooves, and bubbled away into black crud, dissolving into the green grass. Veins spread out from the black pool it left, infecting the surrounding ground.

  Devin sprinted away just as the spot erupted into a fountain of living chaos. Tendrils whipped through the air where he just stood. The link Devin took was chosen at random.

  “Ooof!” he crumpled over a mahogany desk, stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Hello, I’m Tracy Johnson,” a cheerful woman’s voice greeted. Devin looked up to find a sales-woman beaming an artificial smile at the thin air above him, “and I want your business! As your agent…”

  He stood up and looked around. There was no door. He ran to the large window with a view of the ocean and opened it. Reaching through, his hands stopped on a smooth flat surface like a television screen.

  The room trembled and Tracy fizzled slightly. The walls and ocean view cracked, oozing black. Devin backed away from the window and into a bookshelf.

  Of course, he thought and scanned the titles there. Most were documents and policy options, but one title leapt out at him, “Favorite Links.” He pulled the book down and it opened automatically in his hand. Without reading he stabbed his finger at a random hyperlink in the list.

  He was running along a dirt path, following a stream of water. A park ranger came up to run along side of him, “Hello! And welcome to the Official web site for the Shenandoah national wildlife refuge! Is there anything I can help you with today?”

  “Yes,” Devin shouted between breaths, there was no hope of finding the others. He needed a non-local system to put some distance between him and the cyc tide, “Direct me to the National Park Services web-site.”

  “We lost that man!” Samantha exclaimed. Zai had sensed Devin falling behind them with dreadful fatalism. He was lost when they shortcut through the Associated Press Newsfeeds. Zai could only hope for his safety.

  Zai’s system des
cribed a subway terminal. This was good. The hyperlink would deliver them directly to ideonexus. Then they could locate a network still free, maybe China or Australia.

  “Access hyperlink to ideonexus-dot-com,” Zai commanded and was rewarded with the sound of a rushing train. Samantha gasped in either awe or discomfort. She was piggybacked to Zai’s avatar so long as they held hands, meaning she saw the world Zai heard. One second they stood in a subway station, the next they were whooshed along at hundreds of miles per hour to the ideonexus portal.

  Zai squeezed Samantha’s hand reassuringly, “Stay close. I’m going to move pretty quickly to find our way home.”

  “Okay,” Samantha said, squeezing back. Zai found the fear in the girl’s voice upsetting on so many levels, and it left her confused, but the present crisis allowed no time for cognitively sorting the emotions out.

  The rushing air stopped and Zai was confronted with hundreds of people conducting their everyday business online, transferring to and fro across the Web. Zai let go a quick sigh of relief; people meant the cycs were not here yet. Now she had to find a way back to her body.

  “Hold on Samantha, I’m going to send us home,” Zai hit the home key on her wristband--bzzzzzzt! “Dammit!”

  She checked the network status, the portal replied, “Address not found. Please try again later.”

  Then Zai heard the signature rumbling and whispers. Samantha cried out in alarm, and other user’s exclamations quickly joined her. Clenching Samantha’s hand, Zai bolted ahead, trying to distance themselves from the swelling doom behind them.

  From Samantha’s perspective, the crawling mass flooded in from the subway where they just emerged. Users all around were swept into the whirlpool of chaos. Others tried to run, but were snatched up in black tendrils.

  Zai fled through the station, testing links as she ran, “Access entertainment.”

  “Site unavailable, please try again—”

  “Access society.”

  “Site unavailable, please—”

  “Access current events.”

  “Site unavailable—”

  The entire portal was a cacophony of fear and panic. Screams cut short as the biomass consumed them. The cycs were conquering the Web too fast; Zai’s human reactions could not hope escape it.

  “I can’t log out! I can’t log out!” a man shouted in fear to Zai’s left as she tore through the stunned crowd.

  No human can escape it, Zai stopped and crouched to grab Samantha’s arms, “Samantha, I need you to find a way out of here fast. Can you do that?”

  Zai’s system told her the girl was nodding. Then she vanished, leaving Zai holding thin air. Zai dropped to her knees and waited tensely, humming softly to herself, attempting to block out the surrounding horrors. Samantha was now her only hope.

  The rumbling grew into a roar and the panic intensified. The situation was too nightmarish, not being in an SDC, but actually separated from her body. Was she like Samantha, a ghost, running loose in the circuitry?

  Zai took a fragmentor off her utility belt and primed it. If the cycs ingested her, they would swallow it as well. When she ceased to exist, the primer would release and the device would detonate, causing insignificant damage, but it provided a minor comfort knowing she would cause some indigestion going down.

  The rushing water roared in her ears, and then Samantha was taking her free hand, “I found a way. Let’s go.”

  Zai laughed thankfully and let Samantha take her through the open link, pausing long enough in the connecting portal to drop the fragmentor. It exploded behind them, destroying the passageway. There were millions of other ways to reach them, but this route was now closed.

  Zai hit the home key on her wristband. It chimed and she was greeted Devin’s voice.

  “Thank god you made it,” he said breathlessly. “Let’s log out of here.”

  “No,” Zai shook her head, griping Samantha’s hand. “I’m not leaving her.”