by David Mack
“It was the humane thing to do.”
“Your mission was to neutralize a virus created by an unknown power—one designed to look as if it had been made by the Federation—and prevent the genocide of the Romulan species. You could easily have killed Mister Antok in free fall—or, preferably, while he was still on the back of the train. His death would have halted the virus’s incubation and completed the mission with the minimum of exposure.”
Bashir stood his ground, not willing to be cowed by his so-called handler. “I got the job done, and no one had to die. Mission. Accomplished. Next?”
L’Haan shifted her stare from Bashir to Sarina, then back again. “That will be all for now. Return to your quarters, both of you. You’ll be informed when we reach Andor.”
“Too kind,” Bashir said with a phony smile. He and Sarina watched L’Haan depart. After the door closed, he sighed. “We’re winning her over. I can tell. What do you think? How long until she trusts us enough to bring us deeper into the organization?”
Sarina shut down the transporter console and led Bashir out to the corridor. “If I had to guess? I’d say about two days after the heat death of the universe.”
• • •
Every request for her presence in one of the organization’s secure holosuites felt to L’Haan like a summons to appear before an inquisition. Despite her decades of loyal service in the shadows, her latest assignment had come to feel like a punishment detail, one intended to derail her hopes of ever being promoted into the organization’s mysterious leadership caste.
Surrounding her were ghostly projections of the faces of the organization’s other senior directors. Larger than all the others was the silhouette that spoke with a voice masked by digital filters, the enigmatic authority to which they all answered: Control.
“With all respect,” L’Haan said, pressing an argument she suspected was already lost, “I think the reason agents Bashir and Douglas continue to disregard mission parameters is evident. They are not invested in our mission. They cooperate with us only because they hope doing so will gain them access to our command hierarchy. In other words, to all of you.”
“That is no excuse,” said Vasily Zeitsev, a snow-bearded old Rigelian, in an accent as heavy as his voice was rough. “We trusted you to handle them. If you cannot do that—”
“They are contained,” L’Haan insisted.
Caliq Azura, a striking Betazoid woman whose youthful appearance was enhanced by broad strokes of lavender eye shadow and magenta streaks in her brown hair, tsked and shook her head in a mocking gesture of reproach. “Now let’s be honest, L’Haan. If your lovebird double agents were really under your thumb, we wouldn’t have lost Agent Cole and his team during that op in the alternate universe.”
“I will not be lectured by a woman who styles herself like a cross between a promiscuous teenager and an Orion socialator.”
“Forgive me,” interjected Kestellenar th’Teshinaal, a gaunt-featured Andorian whose antennae twitched in a distracting manner whenever he spoke. “Regardless of our concerns about the wisdom of permitting known double agents to continue operating under our banner, from an objective standpoint L’Haan is correct. The mission on Ramad was completed, Bashir and Douglas are both back aboard the Kòngzhì, and OpSec remains intact.”
“But is that really the point?” asked Azura.
“Not at all,” L’Haan replied. “My point is that we should dispose of them both.”
“Let’s not be hasty.” The protest came from Jhun Kulkarno, a Zakdorn schemer who, L’Haan had been told, was considered handsome for a man of his species, though she thought he resembled a beeswax bust left too long in the sun. He continued, “Bashir and Douglas are valuable assets. Highly skilled. Well connected politically. And there are situations for which a hint of celebrity is a boon—and Bashir, ‘savior of Andor,’ has that in spades.”
Azura wrinkled her brow in disbelief. “But they’re double agents!”
“Whose intentions have already been exposed,” Kulkarno said. “That means they might as well be working for us. Compartmentalize the intel to which they’re privy, and we can use them to feed whatever disinformation we want, to whomever we choose.”
Zeitsev scowled. “Underestimate them and they could do serious damage.”
“My point exactly,” L’Haan said. “The benefits they offer continue to be outweighed by the threat they present. I move we liquidate both assets with prejudice and immediate effect.”
Murmurs of concurrence from Azura, Zeitsev, and th’Teshinaal were met by sullen silence from Kulkarno. Then the debate was rendered immaterial.
“Motion overruled,” Control said. “Both assets are being managed within acceptable parameters. Continue to monitor them, and report any variations in their routine.”
Though Azura was the youngest of the directors, she was also the most brazen. “Why? We’ve killed countless others for far less. What makes these two worth keeping on a leash?”
Control’s synthesized voice deepened to an ominous rumble. “I have plans for them. That is all you need to know at this time. Meeting adjourned.”
The ring of faces faded to black, leaving L’Haan alone in the dark to wonder what scheme Control was crafting around Bashir and Douglas—and whether she herself was anything more than just another expendable piece in Control’s long, inscrutable game.
• • •
Two days home and back into his old routine, Bashir felt as if he were going mad. His ordinary life, the public existence he maintained on Andor with Sarina, left him champing at the bit to return to his secret career, his shadow war against Section 31.
Alas, his obligations were inescapable. Lies, like gardens, required constant tending. So today he had returned to his office to see a full day’s worth of patients. An uncharitable part of him had hoped at least one of the cases might prove dire enough to be interesting. None had.
It’s just as well, he consoled himself. No one ever wants to hear their doctor say, “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
His self-driving transport pod separated from the flow of traffic and descended in languid spirals toward his house. It landed just outside his front gate, and its hatch opened automatically. He gathered his effects and got out. As he walked to the gate, the empty pod shut its hatch and took off, already tasked by the city’s traffic control system to move on to its next passenger.
He climbed the steps to his front door, which slid open at his approach. Inside the house, music was playing. It took Bashir a moment to recognize the piece as Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite; it was an unfamiliar recording, one whose idiosyncrasies made him suspect it had been performed by a non-Terran orchestra. He set his things on the bench in the foyer, then moved deeper inside the house, in search of Sarina.
She was in the living room, busy arranging various knickknacks and shifting small objets d’art from one shelf or end table to another. Crossing the room she glimpsed Bashir, and her mood changed from intense concentration to sweetness and light. “Hey, there! How was your first day back?”
“Forgettable. At least no one brought me flowers this time.”
“Well, that’s something.” She primped the leaves and blooms of a synthetic bouquet in an antique Andorian ceramic vase.
He gestured at the room’s rearranged contents and furniture. “What’s all this?”
“Just trying a bit of feng shui.” Her answer was both a cover story in case they were being surveilled, and a code phrase meant to inform him that her improvements to their home’s security measures—some of which were hidden in the items she was moving—were ready to be brought online. “Do you mind if I move that print and hang a small mirror instead?”
“Be my guest.”
Sarina walked to a control panel near the wall of windows that looked out on their pool deck. With a few taps, she turned the
windows opaque and locked the doors. The overhead lights dimmed a few percent, and her shoulders dropped as she let herself relax. “Okay, we’re secure. The house is clear of listening devices, and I’ve interrupted all signal traffic in or out.” They converged on the couch and sat down beside each other. “How was your day really?”
“Boring. Yours?”
“Busy.” She picked up a padd from the coffee table, then retrieved a data chip she had kept hidden inside her shirt. “Ready to see what we got?”
“It’s all I’ve been able to think about for two days.”
“Then hang on to your socks.” She inserted the chip into a narrow slot on the side of the padd. “I can hardly wait to find out who the hell L’Haan talks to inside that holosuite.”
Breaking into the secure holosuite on the Kòngzhì had seemed to Bashir like more danger than it was worth when Sarina had first suggested it. If they had been caught inside the restricted compartment, or if their hastily engineered tap of the holosuite’s transceiver link to the ship’s communications system had been detected, there was a real danger they might both have been executed without warning or inquiry. But when their smuggled miniature transceiver confirmed it had intercepted the entirety of L’Haan’s latest discussion with her peers, it had taken all of Bashir’s hard-won discipline not to let out a cheer of celebration.
The padd requested an authorization code to decrypt the contents of the data chip. Sarina keyed in the lengthy sequence, which she had committed to her eidetic memory. “Here we go,” she said, her back straight and her eyes wide with anticipation.
A flicker of static, garbled text, and distorted images hijacked the padd’s screen for several seconds. Wild flurries of machine symbols stuttered on and off, and from inside the sleek device came a dysfunctional buzzing.
“Sarina? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” Wisps of smoke snaked out of the device. “Oh, no. No, no, no!” Sarina fumbled the padd as she tried to extract the data chip. When she finally ejected it, the formerly translucent crystal had been charred black and reduced to a shrunken cinder.
It landed on the carpet, which sizzled and smoked beneath it. Bashir stared at the smoking padd, then at the ruined data chip. “What was that?”
“I have no idea.” Sarina looked like she was half in shock as she dropped the fried padd on the coffee table. “I took every precaution. Isolated the system, secured the house. Turned off the padd’s transceiver, and the chip’s.” She shook her head. “I never even accessed the data. It’s like the padd attacked the chip the moment they were connected, and then it self-destructed.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. But I can guess. Maybe a ‘poison pill’ program in the comm stream we intercepted? It might run on a subharmonic. An authorized system can filter it out, or maybe answer a challenge-and-response handshake protocol, or something like that. But try to load it on a system that doesn’t have the filter”—she nodded at the glass brick that once had been a padd—“and you end up with this.”
“Hang on. We didn’t find any special protocols running in the holosuite.”
“No, but we weren’t looking for them, either.”
Bashir frowned at the sour taste of defeat. “So? Now what?”
Sarina stood and walked to the kitchen. “I’ll start dinner. You replicate us a new padd.”
Five
MARCH 2141
Please let this work. If it tanks, I’m ruined.
Ikerson stood back from the Faraday room’s master terminal, among the four VIP guests, all of whom continued to insist on hiding their identities behind aliases. He and they watched Lenore finish the activation protocols that would unite and bring to life the many segments of Uraei’s far-flung code. Eleven months had passed since the initial demonstration, which had amounted to little more than a proof-of-concept briefing. This, the trial run, would determine whether he and Lenore were about to change history’s shape or be crushed under its heel.
Ms. Ling leaned in and whispered something to Mister Bruneau, who turned and asked Ikerson, “How extensive will this beta run be?”
“Global, if all goes as planned.” Ikerson pointed out details on some of the secondary monitors grouped on either side of the master terminal. “Under the guise of ‘security updates’ and ‘bug fixes,’ we’ve pushed strings of Uraei’s code into nearly every kind of system and device you can think of, in countries and cities around the world.”
“Can you be more specific?” asked Mister Sanchez, his reactions hidden behind dark glasses. “Do you have precise metrics for the software’s propagation?”
“We do, but they’re in flux. It’s being downloaded and installed by hundreds or even thousands of end users at any given moment.”
Ms. Kandawalla followed every update with eyes that darted from one screen to another, her attention tireless and shrewd. “Quite impressive, Professor Ikerson. Of course, the real question is: What will happen when you activate it?”
“We’re about to find out.” He stepped forward to hover behind Lenore. “Are we ready? Our guests are getting impatient.”
To her credit, Lenore showed no sign of bowing to pressure. She took a moment to finish her preparations and check her work, then she swiveled her chair so she could look up at Ikerson. “I can flip the switch on this whenever. Just say the word.”
“Start it up.”
She initiated the AI’s run sequence with a single keystroke.
Then all was quiet. Indecipherable walls of code continued to scroll up one of the tertiary screens, but otherwise there was nothing of note on the master screen.
“Riveting,” Sanchez said. “Money well spent.”
Ikerson faced the visitors. “Please, be patient a few minutes longer. Uraei is just now waking up for the first time. Even an artificial intelligence needs a moment to start its day.”
Bruneau shrugged. “Maybe it needs an espresso.”
“Believe me,” Ikerson said, “if I had the faintest idea how to give it one—”
“It’s starting,” Lenore cut in. “Pattern-analysis functions have engaged.”
All the screens flooded with data, most of it whipping past faster than the human eye could parse. Kandawalla’s intense focus blossomed into wonder. “Incredible. Tell me: Where is it getting all this raw data?”
“From everywhere,” Ikerson said. “And from everyone and everything. It’s running as part of the core systems integration package on just about every kind of system you can imagine. Regional and municipal utilities. Financial networks. Data grids. Satellite networks. It’s even in the onboard circuit boards of self-driving cars, the navcomps of commercial aircraft, and the transceiver chips in people’s personal comms. It’s in their home-management systems. Everything they say, everywhere they go, every credit they spend . . . Uraei sees it, hears it, notes it, and then makes data sets for real-time analysis.”
Ling’s eyebrows arched with worry. “If the people of the world ever knew about this—”
“They’d have our heads on spikes,” Sanchez said. “So, is it finding anything?”
Lenore pushed away from the master screen to give the guests a better look. “See for yourselves. Uraei is already making connections from the data it’s collected, and it’s sending anonymous tips to local and national law enforcement.” She tapped a couple of keys to pull up a snapshot of highlights. “In the last six seconds, it’s detected and reported a domestic abuse case in Mexico City; uncovered links between multiple high-profile burglaries in nine different cities over the last ten months; pinpointed three corporate executives guilty of embezzlement in London, San Francisco, and Denver; and it just mapped the economic matrix of a black market operating between Earth and Luna.” She put on a well-earned smug air. “Give Uraei enough time and resources, and it’ll make crime on Earth a thing of t
he past.”
“Not to mention privacy and autonomy,” Ling said.
Bruneau pointed at the master display. “Why is that flashing red?”
Ikerson leaned in for a closer look before he answered. “The system’s just flagged a major threat. Uraei’s found evidence that antiunity agitators are getting organized and forming action cells in cities all over the world: Paris, Moscow, Hong Kong, Sydney.”
“The people have a right to peaceful assembly,” Ling said.
“Yes, but Uraei has evidence these people are planning to use violence if they feel the government isn’t bending to their will. This is a terrorist group waiting to happen.”
Concern put a frown on Sanchez. “Suppose your AI is right.”
“I’m certain it is.”
“If it is—how can we react to a threat that hasn’t actually done anything?”
“That’s for us to decide,” Ikerson said. “That’s the beauty of the system. All it does is detect patterns and share its findings. We have to choose what to do with the knowledge Uraei provides. In this case, maybe the legal response is nothing. Or maybe the people calling for violent action need to be kept under scrutiny, to see if they start trying to turn words into action.”
Bruneau tapped his index finger against his upper lip, a slow and pensive gesture. “All these anonymous tips your system generates—don’t you worry they’ll make people suspicious?”
“Why would they?”
“Because anonymous intel tends to be unreliable. But if, as you claim, Uraei’s tips will pan out with unerring precision, sooner or later someone will start asking questions.”
“Not necessarily,” Lenore said. “Uraei’s tips will supplement the normal reports the authorities receive. There will be plenty of bad intel to go around.”
Sanchez held up his hand. “Wait, wait. That means Uraei’s good intel might get missed by human analysts and agents. What good is a perfect intel source if it can’t identify itself, and its advice gets lost in the noise as a result? You might as well rename it Cassandra.”
