by Robin Craig
She needed to talk to someone. That meant she needed to reveal herself to someone; someone who would not betray her; someone she could not only talk to but who might be willing to help her.
Lyssa, she thought.
Lyssa already knew that Kali was a machine. However there were many reasons why she might refuse to see her. Though Kali had spared her life, Lyssa may well still hate her: Kali knew what horrors the Spiders had inflicted on her and her people. Or she might be too afraid to meet again. Or she might already be dead.
Yet Kali knew she had to try.
She thought about this and was startled by the realization that she did not wish to risk Lyssa’s life unnecessarily. That was a consideration so unexpected that she ran a quick diagnostic on her strategy routines. She found no explicit flaw, discovering instead that the changes in her Mind had affected the priorities of her strategies. She examined this discovery, marveling at how much she must have changed.
She would have to risk herself if she was to reduce the danger to Lyssa, but there was no choice in that. As Lyssa had told her, she was the invader; she knew that the responsibility to make amends for her past was hers. Sometimes justice and strategy make poor bedfellows. But nor would she throw her own life away.
She pondered over the best compromise. Lyssa and her friends were obviously guerillas but it would be too dangerous for them to live in the regions under enemy control. Their best strategy would be to either live in friendly territory and foray out, or at least stay as close to their own lines as they could. Kali could not go there as she would be destroyed on sight. Nor could she just wait and hope. No, her best strategy was to get as close to their lines as she could without undue risk then ask Lyssa to come to her there. There was no official neutral zone or no-man’s land, but there were extensive regions that neither side could control or would cede, and unless a particular push was on these tended to be left alone. One of them should prove suitable.
There was no point trying to contact Lyssa until she had found a suitable hiding place where they might meet: for that matter, she herself had to first survive to find one. It was already night, the safest time for a Spider to venture forth on clandestine missions, and she was not one to dither once a decision was made. Power surged to her legs and she unfolded like some ghastly inverted flower opening its petals. On the surface, a passerby would have felt a faint tremor; a pile of bricks clattered to the ground; then a darkly silver killing machine emerged into the moonlight and stalked away down the street.
Chapter 18 – The Last Interview
Inter-departmental cooperation was a fine ideal to which all subscribed. Even if they hadn’t, nobody liked it when one of their own people met their end at the bottom of a cliff. Yet even so, it took Detective Stone a week to get the required permissions, authorizations and agreements to investigate matters in another State. Bureaucracies move to their own timelines, quite independent of the goals and desires of the men and women who comprise them: like some slow consciousness moving to its own agenda, remote from the frantic firing of the neurons it is built on.
Beldan and Stone stood at the door of Beldan’s Gulfstream, blinking in the bright sunlight. It was a pleasant summer’s day; a vibrant blue sky harbored a few scattered white clouds and a warm breeze carried the scents of grass and jet fuel to their noses. The brightness of the day did not cheer them, for their purpose here would not let them forget that it was a day Miriam had not lived to see.
Beldan gestured down the stairs. “Let’s go, Detective Stone.”
Stone glanced at him. “You’re doing me a big favor here, Dr Beldan. You can call me Jack.”
“Alex.”
Stone nodded at him with a faint smile and they descended. A Tesla Limousine was waiting for them. The electric vehicle accelerated at an impressive rate and they sat back in the leather seats. Beldan dispensed coffee for them both and they sipped their drinks silently.
They had discussed the case during the flight, but now that they were nearing the possibility of new information neither felt like talking. Beldan went over the details in his own mind.
Miriam’s last visit had been to Allied Cybernetics, a large company headquartered on the north coast. The similarity to Beldan’s line of work was one of the reasons Stone had so readily agreed to his offer. Beldan knew of them of course. Even if he hadn’t known them as a competitor he would have known them from the news: they were the inventor and manufacturer of the controversial Spiders. Beldan thought the machines gave AI a bad name but was willing to suspend judgment this close to actually meeting with their inventors. Machines of war were nothing new in the history of mankind; not even machines of war far more terrible than these. For all the controversy surrounding these particular devices, it was hard to claim they were worse than something as simple as the poison gas poured into the trenches in World War I, let alone the thermonuclear warheads that leveled cities in the next.
Why Miriam had visited the company on her last day was not so clear. The background was known: the disappearance of a reporter gone to ground among extreme gamers; the suspicion of a deeper conspiracy thrown out by a crime collating AI. Miriam’s notes had been recovered from the police private cloud, but although she had mentioned Allied Cybernetics as a presence in the subcultures involved, that presence seemed benign if not outright beneficial, and her own notes concluded that they were not involved. Yet her last known visit was to their offices, and what link she had been pursuing was one of the things they hoped to find out. Her final notes were terse, probably because she had found nothing and was anxious to return home where she could flesh it out at more leisure; it seemed she had been pursuing an idea too nebulous to put down and whatever it was had not panned out. Perhaps she had just been tying up loose ends. Or perhaps it might give the clue that led them to solving her own permanent disappearance.
Their car pulled up at the entrance and they got out, staring up at the main building. It dominated the park-like campus, home to an attractively laid out collection of buildings whose height increased irregularly toward the center from where this tower rose. It held the administrative areas and many of the IT labs of the enterprise: those that did not need isolation or specially guarded equipment.
They had an appointment and had no trouble being ushered into the waiting room outside the office of the CEO, Aden Sheldrake. A commissioned painting of the man stared down at them from the wall, exuding purpose and domination. They stared back, uncowed. After a few minutes, the door opened and the man himself came out to greet them; he appeared to be eager to demonstrate enthusiastic cooperation.
Sheldrake was a powerfully built man with a firm handshake and a ready, friendly smile. But the smile faded and vanished as it neared his blue eyes, which appeared to Beldan as if hard and made of glass. There was no friendliness in them, just a quiet watchfulness, and Beldan found it impossible to warm to the man. But he supposed that few people felt friendly when they also felt themselves under suspicion by the police. Certainly Sheldrake had a reputation as a supreme marketer, who could charm money out of the most cautious investor. Perhaps the charm was only used when required, like some carefully rationed non-renewable resource.
Introductions over, they all sat down in his office. “Well, gentlemen,” Sheldrake began, “How can I help you? I have already given my statement to the local police. I am of course eager to help with this unfortunate case in any way I can, but it is not clear how.”
He paused to look curiously at Beldan. “Forgive me if I wonder why Dr Beldan is here. It is of course an honor to meet you in person, sir: we might be competitors, but I can only admire your achievements. But your presence here raises the question of whether I need my lawyer present. Given your position and expertise, I can only conclude that I am under investigation and that the police find your impressive consulting fees worthwhile.”
“No,” Beldan replied. “I am providing my services free of charge. Detective Hunter was a friend of mine and I am simply anxious to
do what I can to find out what really happened to her.”
They had agreed that Stone would lead the questioning, so Jack added: “We are simply trying to trace Det. Hunter’s last whereabouts. We have read your statement but are hoping that a more personal interview might give us some extra clues. Anything, even something that seems irrelevant, might prove invaluable. We are interested in any information on why she was here of course, but also anything she might have mentioned in passing that could give a clue to what else she might have been thinking about.”
Sheldrake considered the question. “Well, let’s not waste time repeating ourselves. What do you already know?”
“We know that Det. Hunter was investigating a few disappearances around these parts that might be part of a larger pattern. We know there wasn’t much to go on: they were among the homeless and the extreme gamers, both of whom have a tendency to move around and otherwise vanish from view. We also are aware that she had entertained some suspicions about your company but rejected them. Yet you are the last person we know she visited. Can you repeat her reasons for us?”
Sheldrake thought about it. “Well, as you know, extreme gamers are always looking for the most realistic ways to immerse themselves in their game worlds, and the kind of virtual reality research we do thrills them. Some have even insisted on feeling real pain, would you believe? We have a symbiotic relationship with them. Most of them prefer the game world to the real world and half of them won’t feed themselves if nobody kicks them. In return for using them in research into brain-machine interfacing we feed them, pay them and give them medical care when required. Similarly, a lot of the homeless are happy to become test subjects in return for the same considerations. I know some people imagine we don’t think of them as people. But really, the fact that they are people, with the same commonalities and variations, is why they are valuable to us. In addition they are ideal subjects for some of the medical and psychiatric applications of our technology.”
“What do you use the research for?” asked Stone.
“We have a diverse product portfolio, as no doubt Dr Beldan can inform you. But they range from development of artificial intelligence systems using living neural tissue interfaced to computers, to entertainment consoles, to medical devices such as neurally controlled mobility and communication modules, to medical applications such as pain relief and emotional modulation.”
“And Spiders,” added Beldan.
Sheldrake’s marble eyes swiveled in his direction. “Yes, Spiders,” he confirmed. “Though we prefer the less prejudicial acronym CHIRUs. A lot of people don’t approve of that product line but really, Dr Beldan, are you one of them? Do you think military hardware is immoral?”
Beldan spread his hands. “I see the point in making them. It’s just that the Spiders are generating a lot of bad press around AI. When some of us are trying to reduce irrational fears about it, it doesn’t help to have killer machines running around.”
“Oh, I appreciate that point, Dr Beldan, believe me! But what would you have me do? Let people die so fools will shut up – as if anything can make fools close their mouths? When fighting irrationality, when has it ever helped to cave in to it? The fact of the matter is that the CHIRUs save lives. They serve as peacekeepers in regions dangerous for humans. The videos you might have seen showing them fighting innocent people are propaganda by terrorists posing as resistance fighters: what fighting our CHIRUs do is to maintain order and resist terrorists, armed gangs of looters and other criminals.”
“That is not how those people portray themselves.”
“When did they ever? Look, Dr Beldan, it is not my job to decide which side of that war is right. Even the UN hasn’t been able to decide that. Do you ask that of any other arms manufacturer? No. Listen, we do take some moral responsibility. We would not sell our systems to depraved regimes like last century’s Nazis. But in this case? The fact is that we have a civil war, each side claiming the right, and our machines patrol the buffer regions. If they didn’t, the war would go on regardless, men would be doing the same job – and there would be more people dead, not less.”
“What technology do these robots use?” asked Stone. “I’m not asking for any trade secrets, just an idea of how it works, how it fits in with the rest of what you do here.”
Sheldrake glanced at Beldan. “I am afraid they are not as sophisticated as Dr Beldan’s late robot,” he replied. “Much cruder. That comes with some advantages though. What you cannot do with a humanoid robot such as Steel is easier with a larger platform like a CHIRU: five hundred kilowatt hours of supercapacitor power storage is just one of them. As for the AI aspect, we did cheat somewhat. We have adapted our neural interface technology to use brain-like neural tissue, grown in a vat, as the AI system. In other words, rather than invent our own brain we use what nature has provided already. Again, not as sophisticated as Steel, but good enough for our purposes. And as a twin application of stem cell tissue engineering and cyborg technology, we are quite proud of it.”
“How long does their power supply last?” put in Jack.
“It depends. The machine can run along quite nicely on less than a kilowatt, though when fighting it can sustain fifty kilowatts, enough to drain a full charge in ten hours; in an emergency it can hit seventy-five kilowatts, but only in short bursts or its cooling capacity will be challenged. On the other hand, because of the biological component they actually require something like sleep, during which they tick over only a couple of hundred watts. All in all, in average use they can go about a few weeks to a month between charges.”
“So they aren’t very independent then?”
“Well, yes and no. Ask any quartermaster: human soldiers require a lot of support too; things like tanks even more so. The CHIRUs are most analogous to heavy infantry – hence their name – or perhaps a highly mobile weapons platform. They do need support, but a lot less than say a battle tank. And like human soldiers, to an extent they can live off the land: they can recharge using any electricity supply they can access.”
They sat a while digesting that. Then Beldan shrugged. “Thanks for that background but it’s hard to see how it helps us, unfortunately. Did Det. Hunter display any particular interest in them, or any other specific technologies?”
Sheldrake raised his palms. “Quite the reverse, I’m afraid. If anything I’d say she was casting about for clues rather than pursuing an existing theory.”
“Did she offer any comments that might indicate where she was going after she left here?”
“Unfortunately not. In fact she implied she was going straight to the airport, so I was surprised to learn she evidently went in the opposite direction. Not that I’d expect her to confide her plans in me.
“As for her time here, I’m afraid I wasn’t very helpful for her enquiries. You see, we do not want our research results contaminated by too long a use of any one subject. The human brain is very adaptable, and if our subjects get too used to a system it can distort the results. While that is desirable for games systems or long-term medical interfaces where adaptation to one person is desirable, most of our systems are more for emergency or acute use and have to fit the great majority of people with a minimum of setup. Even the long-term devices have to be able to link adequately to anybody before they can adapt more closely to their particular owner.
“So we recruit our test subjects and when they have finished we set them on their way with whatever bonus they may have earned. We may see them again. We have a lot of different systems under development, and repeat clients can be very useful in the refinement phase or for those longer-term interfaces I mentioned. But often we do not see them again. And we have no need or ethical responsibility to track their whereabouts. Indeed, privacy laws pretty much prohibit us from doing that. So if any of them disappear afterwards we have no real way to know, let alone track where they might have gone. Certainly enough stick around for us to know that none have shown any harm from our work with them. Subject to her obtai
ning a warrant, I offered Det. Hunter the records of our current subjects and also to collect a list of the last known addresses of recent ones. But the current ones are obviously not missing or ill, and last known addresses tend to be of little use among such people.”
He paused. “You know, I have heard it said that research like ours exploits our subjects. But really, it is win-win. I don’t particularly approve of the lifestyle of our gamers as I think they’re wasting their lives, but it is one they have chosen. At least to the extent it causes harm it only harms its practitioners, unlike certain other fads that occasionally sweep through our youth, like those Griefers we were plagued with several years ago. And those who become our subjects benefit from it.”
“So Det. Hunter gave no indication of where she was going next?”
“No. Not even a look of sudden inspiration. If anything, she just appeared tired and disconnected; dispirited perhaps. Like a man hoping a final oasis will prove real but finding it is just another mirage.” He paused, as if considering whether to go on. Then he sighed. “I had actually been looking forward to meeting her, you know, despite the caution one naturally feels when police think you are worth looking at. I thought it would be fascinating to watch how her mind worked, and I was intrigued – if somewhat apprehensive – to see what angle she was pursuing. But frankly, I was disappointed. Certainly she did not display the driving brilliance I had expected from someone with her reputation.”
He spread his hands in something like futility or sorrow.
“I am not sure you should continue in your efforts: you might not like what you find. Perhaps you should just remember her as she was and let her rest in peace.”
