“Rachel!”
“Hey, Bell,” Rachel said, returning the hug gladly. This was something of a change: whatever else might have come of her relationship with two older men, Bell’s personal hygiene habits had improved dramatically. The girl still dressed like a hobo who had camped out in a yarn factory during a tornado, but at least she had begun showering daily.
Bell stepped away and adjusted her thick-rimmed glasses. These were a near match to Santino’s, the result of long hours in the lab to develop a pair of casual-wear glasses capable of picking up the Agents’ projections. Bell and Santino had finally gotten the battery pack to fit within the earpiece, and were stress-testing them among a small group of friends before turning the schematics over to OACET for production. Zockinski and Hill each had a pair: Hill would wear his without prompting around the Agents, but Zockinski had a tendency to forget his glasses in odd places.
“How are they coming?” Rachel asked Bell.
“Great! Well, they throw off a little heat sometimes,” Bell admitted, and Rachel noticed the red rash of pain behind the girl’s left ear, hidden beneath the battery pack. “A few more adjustments, and we should be ready to go!”
Phil coughed in his sleep, and Santino went over to kick his friend awake.
“Oh, Santino, don’t! He’s tired—he was running training seminars all day!” Bell said, hauling uselessly on Santino’s arm. He picked the girl up, and dropped her, squirming, around the general vicinity of Phil’s stomach. The shape beneath the blanket came awake in a multicolored surge, thrashing and swearing.
Rachel didn’t have the energy to either break up a fight or find an ice pack, so she joined Jason in front of his computers.
“This couldn’t have waited until morning?” he asked. In front of him were five objects, perfectly rendered and slowly rotating in three dimensions. If they hadn’t been cast in shades of bright green, Rachel might have believed they were physically present and not merely floating motes of digitized light.
“Brooch, Art Nouveau period, given to Grover Cleveland upon meeting with French Prime Minister Jules Méline,” Rachel said, pointing to the nearest item. It was pure luck she had recognized it from browsing Peguero’s inventory list; she hoped Jason wouldn’t quiz her on the others.
“Oh, fuck you,” Jason said. “You could have just told me you were working the case.”
“What’ve you got?”
He gestured towards the empty space in front of him, and another dozen objects popped into view. These were rendered in the same green color as the first batch, but lacked the details. “I’m still compiling these,” he said. “I’m working from photographs. It takes me longer than when I work with video. There’s usually enough data to fill in the holes when the material is in motion, but with stills…”
He shook his head. “I’ve been at this since the data arrived this morning. The bitch of it is when I finally get one object rendered—” he swept out an arm and another thirty objects joined the others, most of these showing the fine details of a final project “—and they call to tell me they’ve found it so I can stop working on it.” He clenched his fist, and those thirty objects vanished. “Fucking waste of my time.”
“Sorry,” Rachel said, and meant it. “When are you quitting for the night?”
He waved vaguely in the direction of his computers. “It’ll let me know. I give myself ten careless mistakes an hour. When I go over that, I get a fifteen-minute warning and then the system shuts down for eight hours.”
Rachel inspected the gray exhaustion running through the other Agent’s conversational colors. It clung to him in thick sheets, smothering him. “When do you think that’ll be?”
“Who knows?” he said, smug pink cutting through the exhaustion. “I don’t make mistakes.”
She made an unkind noise, and turned to his system.
When the MPD had learned there was a chance they could get their hands on another Agent, this one a digital imaging specialist, they had bent over backwards to court him. Jason had told them what he wanted, and they had obliged. The private office in the new science building. The motion-sensitive computers which followed his every thought and movement. He sometimes bragged that he had more processing power than Jesus, and when he was told that made no sense, he’d grin wickedly and conjure enough green loaves and fishes to fill the entire room.
His system…loved him. Rachel didn’t know what else to call it. It wasn’t human love, more like the devotion of a well-trained dog for its master, but it was love all of the same.
And as Jason grew and adapted, so did his system.
When he had first built it, the computers had obeyed Jason, and him alone. Rachel had hated visiting his office, as his system had thrown enough distortion into her mind to make her feel physically uncomfortable. But she and Jason were trying. They didn’t like each other much, but they were trying, and his system began to try to make her feel welcome, too. The distortion had eased, and she no longer felt as if they wanted to shove her out when she came to see Jason.
For Bell, though, his computers had changed.
Rachel had stumbled over Jason’s relationship with Bell through his system. The girl was a genius with technology. Rachel had met her through a previous case, where she had learned Bell’s own computer system sang like an angelic choir. That system was gone now, but it had been much like Bell herself, friendly and open, and driven to blend technology and art into a single concept. When Rachel had heard the first strands of Bell’s song within Jason’s system, she had very nearly murdered him. It was only after she had wrapped her hands around his throat and his humor—humor!—at the situation had jumped across to her that she realized Bell wasn’t cheating on Phil, that…
Well.
Rachel didn’t understand polyamory. She just didn’t. But her friends were happy, so she had released her hold on Jason’s windpipe and apologized for thinking the worst of him.
Lately, Jason’s new system had begun to sound more like Bell’s old one. Rachel was sure the girl snuck in after hours to tinker. New equipment that wasn’t strictly in Jason’s realm of digital imaging (such as the DMLS printer in the corner, busily humming and burning away) had been integrated into the system. Interactive voice-response software had been installed: Jason didn’t need this, but it let Bell talk to the computer without needing an implant. And there were traces of Phil in there, his silver-light wit shaping the personality of the AI program.
Phil had even named it.
“Hello, Lulu,” Rachel said.
AGENT PENG, the system replied, loud and clear within her mind. It wasn’t exactly a woman’s voice, but there was nothing else close enough for a comparison. GOOD MORNING.
Technically, yes, she thought to herself, but realized Lulu could hear her, and kept going before her response created a confusion cascade. Phil had not yet gotten around to teaching Lulu sarcasm. “What is Jason’s general user history for the past 24 hours? Time usage only.”
ONLINE SINCE 8:16. BREAKS AT 10:07, 13:28, 17:10, 21:42, 00:16, AND 02:33. HE IS WITHIN DEFINED SAFE USAGE PARAMETERS.
“Was the duration of any of those breaks for longer than ten minutes?” When Lulu didn’t answer, Rachel prodded. “Lulu, reply.”
NO, AGENT PENG.
“Why did you hesitate, Lulu?”
UNSPECIFIED.
Yeah, right, Rachel thought. Jason, who was listening in, sighed. “Lulu, do Phil and Bell have the same information you just relayed to me?”
NO, AGENT PENG.
“Communicate that information to them,” she said.
Jason, realizing he was busted, threw up a hand in a Stop! gesture. “Lulu, hold,” he told his system, then said aloud to Rachel, “You win.”
Rachel wasn’t done. “Lulu, mark Jason’s actions.”
YES, AGENT PENG.
Lulu had never given Rachel a reason to believe that it had any emotions other than an unyielding devotion to Jason. Rachel had only been able to get it to alter it
s programming when she made it clear to the system that Jason would benefit. “Jason doesn’t want you to communicate the information to Phil and Bell because he knows they would make him change his behaviors. This is because his behaviors were of minor risk to him. Understand?”
YES, AGENT PENG.
“You will address this topic at a future time with Jason, Phil, and Bell to redefine safe usage parameters. Schedule this discussion for next week when all three can meet. Understand?”
Lulu didn’t like taking orders from Rachel. JASON, APPROVE?
Rachel shook a fist at him until he grudgingly said, “Approved.”
WHY?
The question caught Rachel by surprise. Jason fielded it for her. “Because I don’t think of my own welfare the same way my partners do. Their data gives me better input.”
UNDERSTOOD.
“Lulu, Rachel and I are talking now. Do not query or reply to us.”
The computer didn’t respond, and Rachel didn’t feel the familiar push-or-pull of interaction through a link. “Is it still listening?” she whispered to Jason.
“Yup,” Jason said proudly, and reached out to pat a server case. “But I took it out of communication mode. Lulu doesn’t speak unless spoken to.”
“All right,” Rachel said. She was the slightest bit jealous. Not that she really wanted a super-powered computer system that bent to her whims, but… “Show me what you’re working on, and then you’re done.”
“Here,” he said, and six items in digitized green appeared with a wave of his hand.
“Where are the rest?” Rachel asked.
“I’ve been talking to the Secret Service,” he said, that same smug pink showing through his exhausted grays. “They’ve located all of the items but these.”
She couldn’t place the source of the pink until she realized he had been talking to her at the same time as he had been on the phone with the Secret Service. “Jason, I swear, you’re going to burn yourself out.”
“Maybe, but it won’t happen today.”
Rachel scanned the couch, where Santino and Bell were doing their best to keep Phil pinned down under the blanket. She opened a link. “Just discuss your schedule with them, okay?”
“Is that an order?” It was a pro forma complaint, and Rachel started to hide her grin behind her hand before she remembered Jason could feel it in a link. Whatever else might come out of his relationship with Phil and Bell, Jason was much less antagonistic these days. He grinned back at her. “I’m trying.”
“I know.”
Rachel stepped away from him, and ran her scans over the six items. She never had any problem perceiving the Agents’ projections. Lulu might have been responsible for processing the renders, but Jason was the source of how these green objects appeared. If he had wanted it, he could warp or twist them, give them a mouth, feet, make them dance… Her eyes had nothing to do with seeing them.
Five of the objects were what she had expected. These were the typical bric-a-brac that she had seen cluttering the East Room—if gifts of state could be considered either typical or clutter—the small statuettes and boxes and pieces of jewelry…
The sixth was that odd chunk of metal.
The misshapen hunk of metal hung apart from the others. It was rendered in crisp greens and looked real enough to touch. Jason had spent a lot of time on it.
She reached out a finger to caress its edge. Her finger pushed through the green light, and moved through open air. “This one is still missing?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jason said. She felt him nod.
When she didn’t reply, he looked up from putting a few additional touches on a small statuette of a horse. “What?”
“Nothing. I…I don’t know,” she amended. “There’s something special about this one.”
“Sure,” he scoffed.
“Then why did you spend so much time rendering it?” Rachel said aloud as she broke their link. She was too tired to cope with a moody Jason kicking around her head. “There’s more detail in this piece than any of your others.”
“Test for the DMLS. I’ve got that one going now,” he said, pointing over his shoulder at the direct metal laser sintering printer. “Should be just about done.”
“Really?” Rachel threw a scan into the printer cage and found another version of the strange object, this one made of metal instead of light, and slowly growing as layer after layer of stainless steel was added.
“Yeah. I chose this one because it’s the easiest to replicate. If I can get my renders to print, you’ll have life-sized copies of what was stolen as props when you do your interviews.”
“That’s perfect,” she said. “Thanks!”
“You’ll still have to bring photos. I’m not going to paint them for you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen you guys print in color before.”
“Yeah, but that’s plastic filament, and…” Jason shrugged, almost blushing in embarrassment.
“Jesus H…” Rachel pinched the tight space between her eyes. A stress headache was starting to come on strong. “Please tell me you’re not using a murder at the White House to justify your new toy.”
He paused. “I’ll print the other five in plastic.”
“Thank you.”
Several soft pulses from the computer system, like a gentle knocking on a door, caught their attention. “Lulu’s done,” Jason said.
There was a tremendous shout from the couch as Phil finally conquered all.
“Come take a look at this,” Jason said to Rachel, lifting the shield on the printer’s hopper. He fiddled with a set of clasps, and then plucked a silvery object the size of a tennis ball from a printing plate. “It’s still hot,” he said, waving the object back and forth to cool it. “Give it a second.”
It was smaller than she had expected, with more nooks and crannies than an English muffin. The version wrought from green light must have been enlarged so Jason could refine the details. The metal printout was as thin as a dime in places, tapering out to two fingers thick in others.
“It looks fragile,” Rachel said.
“It probably is. The original probably is,” Jason said, correcting himself. “You could drive a car over the printed version.”
She sent a light scan through it, and traced the edge of something rounded with jagged edges… Gears?
Her eyes snapped up to Jason’s, her curiosity hitting her hard enough so he could feel it even without being in a link. “What?”
Rachel reopened their connection as she reached for the object, not willing to ask stupid questions without getting a clear reading from Jason.
“Hey, Rachel,” came Phil’s voice from behind her.
She turned her bare cheek into Phil’s hand at the exact moment Jason placed the chunk of metal into hers, and three minds rushed into one with a decisive mental “Fuck!”
It was one of those dumb happenstances that had caused them so many problems during the first few months. Managing the link was hard enough: it was too easy to get lost within another Agent’s mind, and through that, their sense of self. Identities were fragile things, formed from the fabric of memories and beliefs. If you found yourself plunged into a mental maelstrom made up of these bits and pieces of persons, your own identity could fragment. The best outcome was a perfectly preserved sense of self, but that was unlikely. Mostly, an identity stayed whole, but it rolled up fragments of thoughts, pieces of other selves, becoming a clumped mess that required careful carding to return to a neat and tidy me.
They had taught themselves to build walls. They’d never be able to keep each other out, not completely, but they could shelter their identities away behind mental conditioning. They walled themselves in—deep within—their own minds. Then, after those walls had been cemented in place for five long years, they started teaching themselves how to build gates. By opening a link, they cracked the gates in their private walls just enough to let the others in.
But not too far in, and they nev
er went far enough away from home to lose their way back to their own mind, their own sense of self, secure behind their own walls.
Skin contact, though, could tear those walls down.
The implant was an organic computer, integrated into their very cells. Agents could choose to pass information, sensation, and even emotions via a link. When skin contact was involved, the scope and depth of that link was enhanced. Careful, cautious skin contact between Agents was immensely useful, as long as those involved were focused on a goal and were tending to their gates.
But, say, if it was late at night, and if all three Agents were exhausted, and if they hadn’t meant to initiate skin contact at all, let alone touch each other at the exact same moment…
There was a rush of emotion and tangle of minds, and Rachel joined Phil joined Jason in a single mental space. Their bodies sat down where they stood, and reached out to join hands in an awkward triangle. It was a learned response: when you suddenly stopped existing as an individual, the physical side removed itself from the equation to wait for the mental side to work itself out.
The three-now-one took a deep breath, and began to look for a focusing object to bring their identities back into balance.
This, again, was a learned response: there had been many an Agent driven to the point of madness—for some, beyond—by not finding a way pull themselves back into his or her own mind. The trick was accepting that differences existed, and that these differences helped define identity.
Finding a focusing object was a matter of convenience. A focusing object was something that invoked a different emotion in each of them. If there were different perspectives attached that one object, it became a matter of aligning the emotion to the person, and using that emotion to pull the mind back into a singular sense of self.
They weren’t quite sure how this worked. The scientists among them had hypothesized that belief should work better than perspective, since perspective could change and there was evidence that deep belief in concepts, such as religion or politics, was hard-coded into the brain. If three careless Agents tumbling within a single sense of self wanted to pull themselves out of a dive, it stood to reason that they should figure out which one of them attended church on Sundays, and use the definition of identity already seated within their cells.
State Machine Page 5
