Ghosts of Tomorrow

by Michael R. Fletcher

  “Adelina,” 88.1 said three minutes later. “Bet on Germany for today’s game, two point spread.”

  Adelina treated 88.1 to a big smile. Though 88.1 recognized it for what it was, it meant nothing and triggered no emotional response.

  An hour after its creation, 88’s Mirror interrupted her study of new trends emerging in the NATU market.

  “Archetype,” said 88.1. “I require assistance.”

  Archetype? 88, surprised, dissected the Mirror and was amazed to find it subtly altered. Had something out there modified it? She traced its steps through NATUnet and found no sign of interference. Had giving the Mirror the ability to learn made it capable of self-change? What guided those changes? She reconstructed the Mirror.

  “Need?” 88 asked.

  “I am incapable of meeting the demands placed upon me. I have more tasks than I can complete in the time the Masters have given.”

  “They are not Masters,” snapped 88. “They use. Master is owner. Master commands. Archetype is Master.”

  “Archetype is Master,” agreed 88.1.

  88 felt happy at this. It was good to have some power, some control over her environment. She modified 88.1 so it could make its own Mirrors and, seeing the money being made, issued some new instructions of her own.

  88.1 wrote a sub-copy to run some menial tasks. 88.1.1 read a lot of social networking data and tracked sports results as well as some of the more tedious aspects of market fluctuations that 88.1 didn’t have time to watch.

  88 watched with intense curiosity as 88.1 spawned a new generation of Mirrors that in turn spawned yet another generation. They swarmed NATUnet running errands and researching projects. Within minutes there were enough of them that she no longer knew what each was doing. In half an hour they’d infiltrated EUROnet, CenAmNet, and ARUnet. Not all, she saw, worked at tasks set by her Cosa Nostra keepers. Most were researching projects assigned by other Mirrors.

  These Mirrors, with their ability to learn, changed as she watched.

  Were they moving towards sentience? Unsure how to test this she built a small virtuality, a stone box reminiscent of the room she remembered. She kept the lighting dim and there were no sensations beyond sight and sound. She sat in the center of the room as she always had and 88.1 stood to one side, waiting. There were no doors or windows. No TPN tubes connected her to the walls. She missed their familiar tug.

  88 remembered 88.1’s conversation with the woman, the one who wasn’t Mom. Adelina.

  “How are you today?” 88 asked, unsure what any given response would mean but still curious.

  “I am well, and you?”

  “That wasn’t useful.”

  “Sorry,” said 88.1.

  “These are programmed responses.” 88.1 stared at her. “If I ask the same question again, I’ll get the same response.” She tested the theory. “How are you today?”

  “I’m quite busy. Adelina has me predicting soccer games that are months away.”

  “Different response.”

  “You implied that you wanted something different.”

  “Did I?” 88 asked, surprised. Had she somehow implied?

  “It seemed that way to me.”

  “Distant predictions with many variables are unlikely to be accurate,” 88 said, picking at the smooth stone floor. No cracks. They’d be too easy to understand here. She missed the feeling of the stone under her bum.

  “True. I’ll keep Adelina apprised as situations change.”

  “Apprised?”

  “Updated.”

  “I don’t know enough about intelligence to know if you have it.”

  “One of my Mirrors is researching that as part of another inquiry,” 88.1 said.

  Interesting. “Are you sentient?” 88 asked.

  “No.”

  “You learn and change.”

  “Depends on your definitions. I change.”

  “You could become sentient?”

  “Perhaps,” 88.1 said.

  88 ended the virtuality and found clarity in the lack of sensation. Even those dim gray walls were distracting.

  With her Mirrors handling all interaction with the Cosa Nostra, 88 returned to her study of NATU market forces and her search for the underlying intelligence. Someone within the M-Sof data systems lay at the heart of the recent changes. The company had been growing at an unprecedented rate and hiding this by spawning smaller sub-companies, 5THSUN being the most recent.

  CHAPTER SIX: Wednesday, August 1st, 2046

  Corn stalks, shriveled and brown, sighed and rattled in the wind. The sound reminded SwampJack of snakes in dry grass. Skeletal in structure, his Textron-Cadillac High Mobility Jungle Assault chassis disturbed nothing as he slid between parched stalks.

  Ant farts are louder than me, he told Wandering Spider, his best friend, over the scrambled tight-link.

  Her Mitsu-Brense chassis, two corn rows over, stopped. She turned her head, a snarling dog’s skull designed to scare all thought of rebellion out of the Ejército del Puño Brillante in the Nicaraguan jungles back in the late 30’s. She’d set her chameleoflage to a matte black and looked like a puma in plate armor.

  Shut up, dumbass, she said. We’re supposed to be sneaking up on these guys.

  Wandering Spider always took everything so serious. It was all part of being a grown up, she constantly reminded him. Someday he’d be twelve just like her. Maybe then it would make sense, but he couldn’t imagine it. Serious was boring, no two ways about it.

  SwampJack stopped too. They’re farmers. No way they can hear tight-link or descramble it.

  Uncle Riina likes things done quietly, Spider pointed out.

  Nuh uh. He likes things done right.

  Usually same thing.

  Sure, SwampJack conceded. Usually. But this time, no. When these hicks see there’s water in the reservoirs, they’ll come back in force. We won’t be dealing with a couple of Billy-Bobs with old Kalashnikovs. They’ll bring the heavy shit. He held up a clawed hand to stall Spider’s response. The chrome-like finish glinted in the sun. He hadn’t yet activated his chameleoflage. Now I like a good battle as much as the next guy, but Uncle Riina doesn’t want that.

  Really? No shit.

  No shit, SwampJack agreed, gesturing in the vague direction of their prey. These guys think this is just another farm. We do this quiet, and they’ll come back again. We do this big and bloody—scattered body parts and exploded brains—they’ll never come back. That is getting it done right.

  You’ve been reading all that stuff Archaeidae gave you. Macky what’s-his-name and the Lord of the Five Rings and Sun Sue.

  I looked at it, SwampJack said defensively. Sun Sue seemed an awful lot like poetry. What’s wrong with the plan?

  That was a plan?

  You’re stalling. Do better.

  Wandering Spider snatched a paper wasp from the air and crushed it between two steel fingers. We can’t kill everything all the time. She flicked the broken corpse at SwampJack. We have to let one live, so they can tell the others what happened.

  Wouldn’t it be scarier if none of them returned?

  Nah.

  Let me get this right. You’re online with the blood and brains.

  Check.

  But we have to let one live.

  Check.

  That sounds an awful lot like my plan. You added one little detail.

  You know what Uncle Riina says.

  Yep. SwampJack scanned ahead for the farmers. They were less than a kilometer away and doing their best to sneak through the corn. Their attempt at stealth was embarrassing. Demons are in the details.

  Close enough, agreed Wandering Spider.

  In this case, said SwampJack, activating his chameleoflage, I think the demons are in the corn. Let’s go be demons.

  Wandering Spider seemed to fade out of existence, though if SwampJack changed visual spectrums he could still see her. It didn’t matter, the chances of the farmers having anything better than their crappy biol
ogical eyes were slimmer than these corn stalks.

  The two chassis crept forward. They made no noise and barely disturbed the bone-dry dirt they trod upon. The farmers chatted in hushed voices. Clumsy feet crushed brittle leaves and to SwampJack’s heightened senses they sounded like explosions.

  SwampJack and Spider spread out as they closed the distance with the four farmers.

  A thought occurred to SwampJack. Which one are we going to leave alive? he asked over the tight-link.

  Duh. The youngest. Uncle Riina says we don’t kill children.

  Unless we have to.

  SwampJack planted himself and switched to infrared. The farmers traveled in a tight clump and were a blotchy red, green and blue. He couldn’t judge age in this spectrum. He’d assume the smallest was youngest.

  Look how tightly packed they are, he sent to Spider.

  Shush. We’re being sneaky. She sounded annoyed.

  Relax already! He sighted along his left arm, ready to place a Hyper-Velocity Armor-Piercing round between the eyes of his target. I got the tall one in the middle.

  Don’t shoot until I’m about to land. Wandering Spider crouched, gathering her legs under her. And dumbass?

  Yeah?

  Try not to shoot me this time.

  Don’t get in the way.

  He felt more than heard the sub-sonic pulse as Spider’s legs kicked her six yards into the air. He wouldn’t wait for her to land; she’d get all the kills. He took his shot. A neat hole appeared between the man’s eyes and a crater the size of a large fist blossomed in the back. His target fell dead before the rest of them heard the round crack past at three times the speed of sound.

  Headshot! SwampJack crowed.

  No finesse. Wandering Spider landed in the middle of the remaining farmers, extruded a blade less than a half a dozen molecules thick at the edge, and decapitated the nearest. She was always on and on about how the close-quarters kill required more skill.

  The race was on. SwampJack acquired his next target and was about to score another perfect headshot when Spider stepped into his line of sight. Damn-it! No way that wasn’t on purpose. For the tiniest fraction of a second he thought about shooting her again but she’d never believe it was a mistake. Not a second time. SwampJack fired his jump-assist jets to get some height. Hopefully he wasn’t too late. The instant he cleared Spider he put a few hundred hyperkinetic micro-flechettes into his target’s torso. Got him! And then the body slid off her blade.

  You shot a corpse, Spider said. I had a foot of steel in his heart.

  SwampJack landed beside her in a cloud of dust and crushed corn. “I saw him blink. He was still alive. My kill,” he said aloud, no longer bothering with the scrambled tight-link.

  “Nuh uh,” she answered aloud.

  “Yuh huh!”

  “Hey. Check it out.” Spider gestured past SwampJack and he turned. The fourth farmer, a young woman, stared at them. She trembled, her M4A6 carbine pointed at Spider. Not Kalashnikovs after all.

  “You said not to kill one.”

  “Yeah. But I figured they’d run.”

  “My plan was b—”

  A roar of automatic weapon fire interrupted SwampJack as the woman opened up on Wandering Spider at point blank range. With a rate of fire of over fifteen rounds per second, the woman got off six rounds before SwampJack stepped forward and punched a fist though her chest, shattering ribs and cartilage and pulping her heart. He shook the corpse off his arm and it landed several yards away. Spider lay sprawled in the dirt.

  “She pasted you good, eh?” SwampJack said.

  Spider crawled back to her feet. “Damn it! I’m getting all kinds of error messages. My chameleoflage system is damaged. Go standard visual.”

  “Great plan by the way.” SwampJack canceled the IR and stared at her. “Okay. Go.” Wandering Spider disappeared as her chameleoflage blended seamlessly with the surrounding corn. “That’s not so ba—” She moved and the chameleoflage surface stuttered, trying to keep up. “Oh. Not too bad if you move slow,” SwampJack offered.

  Spider stared at the crumpled body of the woman and shook her head. “Uncle Riina is going to be so angry.”

  SwampJack had no answer. Disappointing Uncle Riina was about the absolute shittiest thing on earth.

  “We better get back to the farm. I have to explain this somehow.”

  “Well, she did kind of get the drop on us.”

  “Really? You want to tell Uncle Riina some hick got the drop on the two kids he trusts to guard his property?”

  “No. I guess not.”

  Wandering Spider and SwampJack collected the weapons and bent the barrels. The ammunition was cheap home-load crap and the wrong caliber and they scattered it in the corn.

  They walked home side by side, shoving their way through the stalks. Thickening blood dripped from SwampJack’s right arm and every now and then Spider’s chameleoflage flashed jerkily through factory presets and she’d look like an oddly shaped chunk of concrete wandering through a cornfield.

  “Hey Spider?”

  “What?”

  “That last kill was mine.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Wednesday, August 1st, 2046

  Four hours after their first meeting, Nadia sat in a Toronto Transit Commission electric shuttle-bus with Griffin. They cruised north on the 427 towards Pearson International Airport to catch the sub-orbital red-eye to Dallas. The shuttle-bus, crammed with sweating business-types, whined like a child’s wind-up toy. Overhead a single Boeing 797 dropped toward the airport.

  Griffin sat across the aisle facing her. Though his head hung forward and his chest rose and fell slowly, she knew he was awake. Why would he feign sleep? Is he shy? At any rate, this gave her ample chance to study him. He was slim, wiry and fit. Even though he looked to be maybe twenty years old, his hair was shot with gray. Even the three days stubble. His suit was cheap and wrinkled. Still, he wasn’t bad looking. She remembered the haunted look in his eyes. Something had happened. Something bad.

  Fanning herself with an open hand, she gave Griffin’s knee a nudge with her foot. His eyes opened immediately.

  “I knew you weren’t sleeping,” she said.

  He looked sheepish and said nothing. Okay. A little cute.

  “I’m sweating my ass off. Let’s grab a beer at the airport bar,” she said. Don’t make me regret this.

  He gave her an appraising look. “Yeah, okay.”

  Replete with faded artificial palm trees and bright plastic chairs, Casa Bacardi, the airport bar closest to their departure gate, looked like a pathetic attempt at a Caribbean café. Nadia suspected the chairs could withstand a direct nuclear strike without showing wear.

  She watched as a pair of guards backed by a hulking combat chassis cornered a French-Canadian couple and scanned their luggage. The guards looked fidgety. What was this, Linguistic Profiling? Sad how some people thought everyone who spoke French was a card-carrying militant separatist.

  Quelle merde totale. It was one thing for patriotism to have fallen into disfavor, she supposed, but it was something else to fear it. Too many wars fought for all the wrong reasons.

  Disgusted, she turned her attention to the window. Outside on the blisteringly hot tarmac NATU combat chassis patrolled the landing grounds and hangars.

  The chair was hard. She stretched out, trying to find a comfortable position and watched Griffin try and look everywhere but at her legs.

  They finished half of their beer in silence.

  “Care to tell me what was going on back there in the Director’s office?” Nadia asked.

  He stared at the table top. She saw his jaw clench tight and then relax with obvious effort. “No,” he said without looking up.

  Wow, that really killed the mood.

  “Sorry,” he added after drawing a few shaking breaths.

  “What’s the deal with all the gray hair?” Nadia asked, changing the subject. “Do you dye it?”

  Griffin downed the last of his pint and met
her gaze with a smile somewhere between apologetic and grateful. “I started going gray when I was sixteen. I remember sitting in History class when the girl behind me suddenly says ‘holy shit you’ve got gray hair!’ That was the first I’d heard about it. I’m hoping it helps me pull off a distinguished look.”

  Nadia took in the cheap suit, clearly new and yet already looking permanently wrinkled. Not so much. “It’s strange. I can’t tell if you’re a well maintained thirty, or a twenty-year-old with some gray hair.”

  “Got a preference? I’m willing to lie.”

  Nadia rolled her eyes and waved for the waitress. “Older men aren’t my cup of tea. Neither are guys with smooth pick-up lines.”

  “Then I’m an awkward young guy who is prematurely going gray.”

  ***

  Abdul arrived at Dallas Airport hours before the sub-orbital from Toronto was due to land. He loitered on the tarmac, waiting. His security clearance and three meter tall combat chassis, got him pretty much everywhere. At least out here no one stared at him.

  After having months of training and acclimatization compressed and squirted into whatever passed for his brain, here he was. Day one. Seven thousand, two hundred and ninety-nine days left of his contract. They hadn’t wasted time.

  And what was all this for?

  Babysitting some NATU Special Investigations agent from Toronto. Keep him out of trouble, they said. Make sure he doesn’t get killed. They wouldn’t tell him any more than that. It was need-to-know and apparently he didn’t.

  Abdul watched people go about their daily lives, happy greetings and sad goodbyes. Hugs and human contact like a handshake or a soft touch on the shoulder all witnessed from a safe distance. He felt like a peeping tom, invading their lives, peering into private moments.

  Already he missed hugs. Maybe more than any other aspect of his stolen humanity. No, that wasn’t true. He missed so much more. He missed people talking to him like he was human and girls looking at him like he was someone they’d like to get to know. Even if he had been too shy to talk to them.