Port Casper (Cladespace Book 1)

by Corey Ostman

Grace winced: that last question was too close to the truth.

  “It startled me when I came home from dinner and found it hovering in my bedroom. That’s all.”

  Grace wanted to rage against the intrusion. Instead, she studied the wall of displays. Tim wanted her to look at the corner, where the displays met the windows. She took a few steps, her back toward Maud, keeping track of Maud’s reflection in a blank screen.

  The window looked out over the spaceport. She saw a cruiser turn to make its final approach, glinting in the sun. There was another near the mountains, gleaming brightly as its drive pushed it skyward. She remembered what Martin had said about Maud’s soft spots. She needed time, and accusing Maud wasn’t going to keep her in the office long enough. But maybe it wasn’t too late to salvage the conversation.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, and meant it.

  “You’re all over the map, Donner. You mean the loafer? Or the view?”

  “The view.”

  In the brief silence that followed, Grace spied the access port. It was a small silver rectangle at waist level, just within reach of her right hand. She couldn’t quite see all of it, but she could verify it by touch.

  Grace turned to Maud, resting her hand nonchalantly across the rectangle as though bracing herself against the wall. Her index finger brushed against the socket in the center and felt the angled tube as it snaked to the right.

  Mango.

  “Look, I’m sorry I barged in here. I know I should have read my contract. Port Casper is just so…different.” She indicated the view in the window with her other hand. Switch and distract.

  Maud smiled. “It is, isn’t it?” She moved toward the windows, toward Grace.

  “Did you ever see the outside before coming to Port?”

  “I went to Cheyenne a few times,” Grace said.

  “Doesn’t count. I mean a port town, or a big city.”

  Grace shook her head.

  “I was able to visit Port Casper my second year at Red Fox Academy,” Maud said, “and I came back more determined than ever to get out of cloister.” She looked out over the spaceport. “But the shock does wear off. Enjoy it while you can.”

  Grace explored the socket area with her fingertips. Tim said there would be gold conductors at the base of the shaft, but her index finger was too big. She tried with her pinky.

  “I think I’ll never tire of seeing cruisers headed to space,” she said.

  “You might go yourself someday, Donner.”

  “Isn’t it cold out there?” Grace crossed her arms. Her right hand dove under her jacket and grabbed the vial of liquid computer in her breast pocket.

  “Once you get to where you’re going, they try to make it like home,” Maud said. “Except for gravity.”

  Grace carefully unscrewed the vial lid using her thumb and index finger, making sure to keep the vial vertical. The lid dropped. She hoped it had fallen back into her pocket.

  “I’ve been to Mars. Shivered the whole way there, but when I got in the dome, it felt just like spring in Port Casper,” Maud said.

  “Mars? Really?”

  As Maud elaborated, Grace played out her next movements in her mind: in one sweep, she could move her hand down to the port and tip the vial into the socket. She could stand there, as if supporting her weight on the wall, and look at the sights. Maud would never know. She let her hand fall to her waist, the vial hidden in her palm.

  Ping! Grace clenched her jaw as the lid hit the floor.

  “What’s that, Donner?” Maud reached down to retrieve the lid.

  Desperately, Grace tipped the vial into the socket as Maud bent down. She tried to think of an excuse for the lid.

  “Oh, that! It’s from an energy drink I picked up in Bod. I haven’t been sleeping too well since the loafer.”

  Grace reached for the lid. Maud handed it to her and Grace screwed it back on the vial.

  Did Raj just giggle in her dermal, or was it more of a choking sound?

  “Not sleeping? Then I truly am sorry,” Maud said. She was in a much better mood than she had been when Grace entered. “You’ll get used to the loafers. Even I get them.”

  “I guess so.” Grace shrugged, adrenaline pumping in her ears.

  Maud looked at the vial. “That’s small. How strong is it? Remember, your contract forbids any type-c substances.”

  Maud extended her hand.

  No! Grace couldn’t let Maud take the vial. Her mind raced through the possibilities. Swallow it? Shove it in her pocket? Then what?

  “I’ve got this one,” Tim said.

  Maud’s ptenda bleated.

  “Dammit,” Maud said. “Now what?” She fingered the display and frowned. “Donner, we’re done here right? I’ve got a meeting with the CEO.”

  Good, Grace thought. You go to your meeting.

  “After you,” Maud said, pointing to the door.

  Chapter 21

  When Grace inserted the gel, his gel, into ITB’s network, Tim’s first sensation was of the smooth, polished public persona of the Italitech-Bransen company, Tadi Varghese. He stretched deeper into the network and heard echoes of a speech Varghese made last quarter. The accent bothered him. The words sounded like Varghese, but the accent was wrong. Wasn’t it?

  Tim explored other ITB media pathways, troubled. He found speeches on file he knew he had witnessed, spoken by strangers. Or people he knew to be gone speaking in voices not their own. He checked the file dates. Old. New. Few of them matched his memory.

  Simone Pastore. Oh, the voice. That perfect voice. And to see her eyes again, though it was a trivial news conference for the new Belt route. He could still smell her hair. Wait. He had been standing next to her at the news conference. He wasn’t there. His initial joy crashed into sadness and confusion as Simone faded. He could still hear her voice.

  Maud Van Decker. Tim brushed against her security protocols in his confusion. The work steadied him. He catalogued Maud’s simpler encryptions: those, he could coax open in his free time. She also had tunnels that linked far-flung storage units via quantum encryption. Impressive. A challenge. He would like to meet her.

  Wait. He should have known her. From before. He looped back to the media files.

  “Hey, T. It’s been three days. Grace is getting antsy. We need to figure out a plan.”

  Raj’s daily interruption. The same question, slightly rephrased. Yes, they did need to figure out a plan, Tim thought. But first, he needed to figure out himself.

  Tim pulled back from the ITB system. Through his closed eyes, he saw Raj’s apartment in reflected ultrasound. Grace wasn’t there. Raj was bending over him. There was a furrow in his brow. Ever since he woke as a PodPooch, Raj had stayed nearby, constantly fussing. He remembered Raj’s worry when his speech was initially slurred and his gait was wobbly. Raj was there during his panic after bootstrap. Tim supposed he was grateful.

  Snap.

  Tim hated when Raj snapped his fingers in front of his snout. No matter how many times he told Raj, the man needed eye-to-eye contact. Too normal a preference for a Bod Town inventor.

  Oh well. Tim opened his eyes.

  “What did you find?” Raj asked, no preliminaries.

  “Much,” Tim said. “But it’s the disjointed memories that bother me.”

  Raj sat down on the floor beside Tim. “Example?”

  “Tadi Varghese. His voice is wrong. It makes me feel like I’m hearing an imposter. And others. They aren’t right.”

  “Well, Tim, you know how you were initialized. I couldn’t let you cook forever. The error function asymptotically approaches zero. It never reaches it.”

  Yes, Tim knew. But it troubled him. If Raj had doubled the permutations presented to his gel, perhaps the set of initial conditions would have had much lower error. Of course, Tim knew that was folly, too. He had seen the charts. The error function had nearly flattened out when Raj turned on his consciousness.

  “You even thought my voice was different, rememb
er?”

  Tim tried to remember his initial reaction on hearing Raj. “Yes, but it was the new hearing, not your voice.”

  “The structure of your old brain was completely replicated in the gel. You know that. And to the best of my ability, the potential across every single synapse was recorded. But at the quantum level—”

  “I know,” said Tim. “You could only approximate.” The differences unnerved him. What bothered him the most, he realized, was himself. In what ways had he changed? How could he possibly know? I’m no longer who I was, Tim thought. But that’s what I wanted, right? I’m Tim, not—

  “Talk to me, Tim.”

  Raj stretched out and touched Tim’s furry head. It was a strange gesture to Tim, now, but only because he was grasping at being human. It calmed him nonetheless.

  “It’s just disconcerting that the most important memories seem to have the most uncertainty,” Tim said.

  “Important memories have the most connections. They are the ones in which you’ll find the most flaws,” Raj said. “But I know your memories are intact. I hear my old friend every time you speak.”

  Tim appreciated that Raj cared enough to reassure him, but they both knew it wasn’t entirely true. Tim supposed his choice had been a kind of suicide, after all. Would that have pleased him, before the bootstrap? He didn’t know. He didn’t grieve as much now as he thought he would, looking at all of the familiar faces. It bothered him, but he didn’t want to feel the way he remembered. Tim supposed, for perspective, that he should remember how much he had hated the idea of gene therapy. Gene therapy altered a person far more than his uncomfortable immortality.

  “Tim?”

  Tim shook himself like a wet dog, letting the thoughts spray out and away. To business.

  “Have you got an uplink? I found things in there.”

  Raj sighed and shifted. “Yeah. What did you find?”

  “Varghese is spending a lot of money bribing the compstate,” Tim said. “Most of the R&D budget is going elsewhere. Bribes and surveillance.”

  “I don’t think that will help us, Tim. The specifics you’re seeing might be news, but everybody knows it’s going on.”

  “True. But it has me thinking. ITB is interested in the gel, but they won’t be able to use it on Earth. The stigma against artificial intelligence is too great. So where would they have to go?”

  “They aren’t thinking that far ahead, Tim. They just see better computers.”

  “Maybe the shareholders see it that way, but someone in ITB is thinking ahead. I keep coming across the codename, ‘Hopper,’ and it’s involved in a lot of Mars-directed inquiries.”

  “Is it a person, or a project?”

  “A person, or a small project with only one person interfacing on its behalf. And if it is a project, it isn’t official.”

  Raj considered for a moment.

  “You mentioned bribes before—” Raj began.

  “Hopper isn’t associated with bribes.”

  “I don’t care about the bribes. What was the other thing you mentioned?”

  “Surveillance? ITB is spending thirty-seven percent of its R&D budget on it.”

  “Yes, surveillance. Tim, don’t you see?” Raj snapped his fingers.

  Tim winced. At least Raj wasn’t snapping in his face this time.

  “Tim, access Maud Van Decker again. Instead of going for specific files, see if you can use your memory fluidity. Get into ITB and start thinking about Hopper, Mars, and Van Decker. What memories does it trigger?”

  Tim sank back into ITB. Memory fluidity. A fancy name for a search function in his brain. He hadn’t tried it before, afraid of tripping alarms or leaving unexplained errors.

  Focus. Hopper. Nothing. The encryption he saw before, and an outline of Mars. Mars. The two were mostly linked. Nothing new.

  Maud Van Decker.

  It felt like he had been trying to remember a song, and with a crucial phrase, the song sang in his head, end to end.

  “Oh,” Tim said, as he processed the information.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Maud Van Decker wants to develop the liquid computer on Mars. Hopper is her project codename. And as far as I can tell, it’s not sanctioned at ITB. She’s going to double-cross the company.” Tim blinked. “Raj, how did you make the connection?”

  “I knew if you treated it as your own memory, you’d be able to find something! Ha!” Raj grinned like a Cheshire cat. “And it made sense that she’d want the liquid computer for AI. That’s where the real money is,” Raj said. “Hell, it’s what I’d do. And not here on Earth. Strict laws, and too many outdated ethics. But there are plenty of ready customers on Mars.”

  Tim saw the activity bubbling up behind Raj’s eyes.

  “Tim, remember a few days ago when you said you’d have bidirectional access to ITB’s network?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you tried it?”

  “No. It would leave tracks, and we don’t have a plan yet.”

  Raj stood up and started to pace.

  “Tim. I have an idea. But we need to run an access test first. Can you make an innocent little change?”

  “Sure,” Tim said.

  He retrieved a two month old press release about an ITB cruiser in the Belt. He felt a sense of wicked glee as he included a low crew morale report.

  “Done.”

  “You sure it worked?”

  Tim’s mimic surface shimmered as he pulled up the press release on his flank. “Last quarter reported low crew morale.”

  “What was it originally?”

  “High, of course. But it was probably a lie anyway. No one likes working the Belt.”

  Raj chuckled, a slow smile spreading across his face. “And now for a less innocent change. Time to call Grace.”

  Chapter 22

  Raj pushed a heaping bowl of jasmine rice toward Grace. She scooped two large domes onto her plate and then motioned for more sautéed vegetables and nuts. He knew she appreciated honest cooking: it would remind her of home. Raj hoped she found his cooking decent, though it was certainly too slanted toward grains and vegetables for a ranch-raised carnivore.

  “You’re hungry,” Raj said, popping a sesame ball into his mouth.

  “Hearing about Maud’s plans gives me an appetite,” Grace said, digging into the food. “It’s hard to believe she plans to steal the liquid computer and run off to Mars. She’s at the top of her game as it is. And it’s not like she’s a programmer.”

  “Successful as a protector,” Raj noted. “You’d be happy with that, Grace, but Maud appears to have larger ambitions.”

  “Does she know about Tim?”

  The PodPooch piped up from the floor. “I don’t think so, Ms. Donner. I’ve found no records at ITB to indicate that they know what the computational gel looks like, let alone that it’s in me.”

  Grace frowned. “But I told you there was still gel visible after Huber smashed your dermal.”

  “I engineered it with pirates in mind,” Raj said. “The gel in the dot was basic stuff, a very crude mesh. It’s nothing compared with what Tim’s dancing with.”

  Grace frowned. “So they’re looking for the gel, but really they’ll want you, Raj.”

  Raj nodded.

  “As I stretched deeper into the ITB network,” Tim said, “I encountered eight protectors tasked with new product surveillance.”

  “Who are the other protectors on product surveillance?” Grace asked.

  “Their names are not included. Maud uses coded entries instead. You are known as ‘Third Try.’ Does that mean anything?”

  “Not to me,” Grace said.

  “The others are: Broken Hawk, Dirt Road, Sunset, Zebra Fang, Snake, Thirty-Seven, and Badger.”

  Grace shrugged.

  “I will send the names to your ptenda. We will be able to identify them soon enough, now that we can correlate their movements with Maud’s entries.”

  “Look. We’re stuck in the weeds. L
et’s think bigger,” Raj said. He popped another sesame ball into his mouth and swallowed. “Maud is at the center of a vast, ordered web. With so many leads, she’s bound to have trouble multitasking. So let’s create a little chaos.”

  “But we just established that she cares more about getting to Mars than being a protector,” Grace said around a mouthful of rice. “What’s to keep her from zooming in on you, Raj, and letting ITB flail?”

  “She isn’t like that,” Tim said quietly. “I know her activity in ITB. She’s patient. Dangerously patient. She won’t move until all of the pieces are in place. If that means dealing with chaos at ITB, she’ll do her job. But we’d better have another plan by then. She will trace it back to us in time.”

  “I only need a little more time with UU,” Raj said. “I have to review the patents before they’re filed and assigned. And I need to do battle over the licensing agreement.” Raj grabbed the teapot and poured himself a cup. He squirted agave for good measure. “Anyone else?”

  Tim snorted.

  “No thanks,” Grace said. “So. Chaos it is, then. What kind?”

  “Simple,” Raj said. “We know Maud calls her plan ‘Hopper,’ and she’s secretive about it. What would she do if she heard Varghese talking about Hopper in one of his speeches?”

  Grace stopped eating. “She’d freak. Either cut her losses and run for it, or lay so low she wouldn’t be a bother to you for months.”

  “Bingo.” Raj looked down at Tim. “You said Varghese will be preparing several speeches for Wyoming Compstate over the next few weeks, right?”

  “He is.”

  “But how do you know Maud will hear it?” Grace said. “Even if she were present, she’d be busy coordinating the protectors, not paying attention to speeches.”

  “Tim will make Hopper a bold new initiative for ITB,” Raj said. “Then, even if Maud doesn’t hear it, she’ll hear about it.”

  “What sort of initiative?” Grace asked.

  Raj grinned. “Our kind of initiative. The goal of Operation Hopper will be to remove the stigma of AI on Earth.”

  Tim barked a laugh. “Chaos in the name of freedom? It’s your idea, all right.”

  Grace smiled. “You’re becoming quite the revolutionary.”