Metal Fatigue

by Sean Williams

  "Wait a minute," said Barney. "Isn't disrupting the government the idea? Send it in, get it to become the local mayor or whatever, have it initiate a take-over from within and — ?"

  "No," O'Dell said. "That's not the idea at all."

  "But it can be used that way. And if it can be, then it will be one day. Isn't that the way the military mind works?"

  "Not everyone's." O'Dell sighed. "But I take your point. You have to understand that without the old bunker files the Reunited States' expansion would have been much slower than it was. On a small scale, the weapons and tools in the archives provided an invaluable means of combating biomodified enclaves. The rogue packs had an edge over us norms that we could counteract only by superior weaponry. We've had no choice but to develop new weapons.

  "But we required something more sophisticated when dealing with larger communities — biomodified or not. Some of the collectives, west and south of here, are as large as the original states. Outright war is expensive, not to mention bad for public relations. We are attempting to avoid the mistakes of the past, after all, and that makes negotiation our most important tool of all.

  "Yet at the heart of all negotiation lies information, and information is often best gathered by espionage. We needed a way to infiltrate rival states without arousing their suspicions, and preferably without risking our own people. The best way to do this was by exploiting internal corruption, but that can take time too. And General Stedman wants to reassimilate the continent peacefully before what remains devolves too far — or other nations dig their heels in and force us to fight."

  "The Mole is a kind of middle ground?" asked Roads.

  "Exactly. The pacifists like it because it reduces loss of life; in the long run, it might even encourage peace. The expansionists, on the other hand, admire its efficiency, its ability to keep campaign costs down."

  "So you sent one into Kennedy. Can I ask why?"

  "For several reasons. The obvious one is to assist Reassimilation. Things aren't as perfect on the Outside as you've heard, and official military policy is delicately balanced at the moment. There's been a lot of resistance to our expansion in recent years, so much that some of General Stedman's colleagues are calling for a big push: one single offensive that will crush everything in its path. If that happens, we will be betraying everything we've stood for — so it's all the more important that the Reassimilation of Kennedy goes ahead smoothly. If it doesn't, then the warmongers will have even more leverage."

  The image of the Reunited States Military Corps sweeping across the face of North America like some fiery angel of the Apocalypse filled Roads' mind for an instant before he could banish it.

  "So the Mole followed me," he said, "broke into my house, studied me in enough detail to allow it to become me. But why go to so much trouble for so long? You didn't put the Mole into position until the envoy arrived; even then you must have had a fair idea that the Reassimilation Bill would be accepted. Why continue with the operation when you knew you'd have complete access to the Kennedy datapool in just a few weeks?"

  "Because the information we needed wasn't in the official datapool," replied O'Dell simply.

  "It wasn't? Neither the MSA nor the Mayoralty have any obvious secrets, as far as I know."

  "That's right. They don't."

  "Then — " Roads broke off as a thought suddenly struck him. "Wait," he said. "I think I'm beginning to understand now."

  "The thefts," O'Dell said.

  "Yes. The EPA44210s, and the explosives."

  "And much more besides."

  It was Barney's turn to be confused. "Will someone please tell me what you two are talking about?"

  O'Dell sighed. "To put it succinctly, one of General Stedman's purposes in coming to Kennedy Polis was to hunt down a criminal and bring him to justice. That criminal wasn't the Mole — although he was a thief — and he wasn't Cati, either. He was a smuggler in a small town who made the fatal mistake of underestimating his opposition."

  "You mean — " the tone of Barney's voice effectively conveyed her disbelief " — the Head?"

  "Who else?" Roads said. "The EPA44210s stolen from Old North Street had to have come from somewhere, and their disappearance would have been noted."

  "Noted, and responded to," added O'Dell. "The thefts began over five years ago. A major trade route between Philadelphia and our southern frontiers passes near here, and I guess it proved fairly easy to arrange a few 'accidents' along the way, with help from allies on the Outside. At first we thought Kennedy itself was behind it — until we actually contacted the city and realised how entrenched its isolation was. You didn't even know we existed. Later information relayed by Project Cherubim suggested that an independent person or organisation was responsible."

  "I can't believe it," said Barney. "You came all this way to deal with Morrow?"

  "Why not? Most of the supplies were intended for a campaign in South Texas. He was hurting us, hurting the expansion; we had to do something. And he was hurting you too, don't forget."

  "How?"

  "By letting things in that should have stayed outside. Like Cati."

  "Eh?"

  "Morrow's a high-tech pack-rat, Barney," O'Dell said. "He never would have been able to resist something like that for his collection."

  "Of course." Barney groaned bitterly down the cyberlink. "That's why his face appeared in Cati's diary. The bastard."

  "My sentiments exactly," said O'Dell. "Which only makes me wonder why he's helping us now."

  If Morrow was listening, he made no comment.

  "So the Mole did what it was supposed to do," Roads said, bringing the subject back to its intended focus. "It followed me everywhere I went in order to learn my behaviour, then raided datapools using my face as a cover. But I'm still here. Why didn't it substitute itself for me at the first opportunity?"

  "Because this is only a trial run," explained O'Dell. "Cherubim had never been used in an uncontrolled environment before."

  "We're guinea pigs?" asked Barney.

  "Yes. Kennedy was chosen as the testing-ground because it was isolated, and any mishaps could be quashed more easily. Add to that the fact that we needed to know for certain who was behind the thefts before we entered the city, but didn't want to make any overtly hostile moves until — or unless — we absolutely had to. The Mole's substitution imperative was therefore disabled: it was instructed, in other words, not to harm you or to allow you to come to harm, although it would continue to perform all other tasks unimpeded."

  "Is that possible?" Roads interrupted. "I mean, its fundamental purpose is to imitate someone. By removing the condition required for it to do that, surely that violates its core programming?"

  "And why didn't you call it off when you knew the truth about the thefts?" interrupted Barney.

  "I couldn't." O'Dell answered Barney's question first, obviously a little overwhelmed by the interrogation. "By the time I guessed what we were dealing with, it was too late."

  "Bullshit."

  "I'm not lying, Barney. I knew we had a source in Kennedy, but didn't suspect what it was until Blindeye, when I first saw the Mole in action. And even then I didn't know for certain until I finally squeezed a confession out of my superiors."

  "At which point," Roads leapt ahead, "they ordered you to take the case from me, to avoid a diplomatic incident?"

  "Partly. They also ordered me to do everything I could to find the damn thing ..."

  There was a long, contemplative silence until Roads said: "Are you telling me you've lost it?"

  "More or less. It seems that even from the beginning things weren't going well. First, it failed to deliver a convincing version of your speech. Second, it transmitted data but didn't respond reliably to instructions beamed into the city. Then, when it was finally cornered during Blindeye, it stopped transmitting altogether. No-one's sure exactly why, but the technicians we brought with us think it might have been because of Cati."

  "How?"

&n
bsp; "Well, part of its mission as a Military Corps tool is to detect and eliminate biomodified agents. As soon as it saw Cati, it reported the discovery to its human controllers. Some damn fool ordered it to dispose of the threat, thinking that Cati was a berserker and a possible threat to the General. They should have known better. The Mole ceased transmitting immediately, and now refuses to respond to all priority codes, including self-destruct."

  "I don't get it," said Barney. "Why would telling the Mole to kill Cati make it refuse to respond to orders?"

  "As Phil suggested earlier: its original program included the urge to kill the person it was impersonating. In an ordinary computer, that wouldn't be a problem — but the Mole is anything but an ordinary computer. Its processing core is modelled on the human brain, with numerous independent cognitive modules acting chaotically as units yet combining to give one coherent response. That makes it more flexible than a machine, but also less robust. Complete reprograniming takes time and, due to the elasticity of consciousness, can give rise to greater chaos than before. The usual method is not to get rid of what's already there, but to map a new equilibrium over it: to take a given state and nudge it in a slightly different direction. This is very tricky, requiring chaotic tendencies to be ordered first, and then ordered again; the risks of destabilising the system are very high.

  "So, when our programmers started mucking around with the Mole's basic tenets, by subverting the original 'kill' direction with a 'don't-kill', they deliberately disturbed the balance slightly. The Mole was allowed to steal data and mimic to a certain extent, but couldn't dispose of Phil even if it wanted to. The new equilibrium it found was unstable, however, and caused it to behave erratically in some areas.

  "Then, when it was ordered to hunt down and destroy Cati, matters only became worse. The 'don't-kill' was supplanted by another 'kill' and the system had to find yet another equilibrium. Unfortunately, this new path was even more unstable. As you saw, Phil, when the assassins ambushed you outside your apartment, it was behaving in a highly violent manner in order to protect you — which it was still trying to do, even though we had ordered it to kill Cati. Now it appears to have found a new compromise: it wants Cati to kill you for it."

  "It still wants to impersonate me?"

  "That's what I think. This evening, when it attacked Katiya, it was trying to arouse Cati's anger. If Cati had killed you, then it could have taken your place without violating its overrides. After which I imagine it would have wiped the slate clean by killing Cati itself."

  "I can't believe the Mole is really that intelligent," protested Barney. "I mean, it's only a machine — "

  "It's far more than that, Barney. It has to be. Quite apart from the way it thinks, the Mole has a Cyc-type common sense knowledge base that we designed especially to help it know what it's sensing. The computers you're used to wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a cat and an atomic missile, but the Mole can. Two years of development brought it to the point where it was able to complete its tasks independently of its controllers — and although the bugs obviously haven't been ironed out completely, I think you'll agree that its performance is pretty impressive. To comprehend and interact with an environment as varied and ambiguous as a city requires more processing power than that contained in all of Kennedy itself, and — "

  "Sorry, Martin," Roads butted in. "We're almost out of time. After we've neutralised Cati's controller, how do we bring the Mole to heel again?"

  "To be honest, I don't know," O'Dell admitted. "Maybe seeing Cati in our hands will bring it back to a state in which we can control it. Failing that, we can attempt to trace its processing core. It'll be hidden somewhere in the city, smuggled in by the Mole itself and placed well out of sight. The signals between the mobile units and the core will be hard to locate, though; the artificial intelligence will have relays everywhere, casting false transmissions in every direction. It might take us weeks to track it down — "

  "By then it'll be too late," said Roads. "We have to deal with this before it gets even more out of hand. If we can't bring Cati to heel, we could be in the middle of a war before the night's out. The last thing we need is the Mole on top of that." Again Roads' voice faded for an instant, then returned: "Are you two on your way?"

  "Fifteen minutes, minimum," said Barney. "Things are still messy at Mayor's House. No word from the Mayor or DeKurzak, although shots have been fired inside. I couldn't get sense out of anyone until I found Roger. He was out of the building, and able to put a squad together from a few people loyal to Margaret. We're coming as fast as we can, so don't feel abandoned."

  "And I'm not far behind," said O'Dell.

  "You're not together?"

  "No. Barney's in a squad-van, using the cyberlink bead you gave her to keep in touch. I'm in one of our transports with a dozen personnel, connected by radio to the control van. We'll be there in about twenty minutes, if we don't get lost along the way."

  "The rendezvous is scheduled for two minutes." Roads thought for a moment. "I'll go in ahead of you and see if I can keep the controller busy until you get here. At the very least, I should be able to find out who he is. When I do, I'll let you know. Until then, keep the line clear. Use the PolNet channels Keith has given us to talk to each other, and don't drag your heels. When Cati arrives, if he hasn't already, I'm going to need all the help I can get."

  "Understood," O'Dell said.

  "We're on our way, Phil," said Barney, her voice gravelly. "Just don't die or anything before we get there, okay?"

  "I'll try not to," said Roads, and brought the conversation to an end.

  * * *

  He slowed to a halt a dozen metres short of a gash in the road, and parked the car in the shelter of a ruined wall. Peering through the window he saw no sign of life, apart from the occasional night-bird or bat wheeling above the water.

  The suburbs near Patriot Bridge had been abandoned for ten years. Once it had housed refugees, as had the warehouses in Keith Morrow's jurisdiction; later it had been rebuilt to accommodate the unemployed. Once the population had stabilised, however, most of the area's inhabitants had moved inward, away from the cold damp drifting off the river and closer to the Rosette. Most of the buildings, temporary structures at best, had slumped upon themselves or collapsed entirely. The southern arterial freeway wound for a full kilometre through an uninhabited wasteland of rotten E. coli plastic building materials and concrete before finally coming to a halt at the base of the bridge itself. There, the tarmac ribbon had been severed with explosives early in the Dissolution, just as the span across the river had been blasted by mines to prevent easy access from the far side of the river.

  "This is it?" asked Katiya from the passenger seat, her arms crossed across her chest. She had hardly moved throughout the short trip, locked in her personal misery.

  "I'm afraid so," said Roads. "If you'd prefer to wait in the car — "

  "No. I want to come."

  Roads sighed. "Then keep well back. I'll go first to make sure it's safe. Don't join me until I call you, okay?"

  She shrugged, then nodded.

  "Good." Roads opened the door, swung his legs out. "Wait five minutes before following, and for God's sake, keep quiet."

  Climbing out of the car proved a painful exercise. Every muscle complained and his head throbbed. A cool breeze brought the smell of a blocked sewer across the wasteland of empty buildings. The erratic, high-pitched squeaking of bats was the only sound. Ahead and up, the rusted spans of the bridge hung clearly visible against the night sky.

  Hugging his coat tightly about him, Roads started off along the road. The bridge had once housed a hundred or more squatters, unofficial entrants to the city unable to set foot on Kennedy's banks but stubbornly refusing to return to the far side and the ruins it contained. Roads' night vision enabled him to pick out the remains of a handful of old habitats in the tangle of metal. Little more than scraps of cloth fluttering in the breeze, they looked like flags: a constant reminder
of the dispossessed who had once lived there. The squatters had been evicted at gun-point or killed outright in the first decade after the War, when the bridge had been mined.

  But the bridge had been made to last, and its pylons remained more or less intact. Some sections of the road were still in one piece, and the walkway along one side seemed mostly complete. He imagined it would be possible, with luck, to cross the river unimpeded.

  Forgoing the direct route onto the bridge, along the shattered freeway, Roads followed an access road to the base of one of the massive pylons. A rusty ladder took him to the underside of the bridge. After testing his weight on the ancient structure, he climbed rapidly upward. With every step, his unease grew. Gambling his life on a handful or two of corroded metal wasn't his idea of a good time — and it was likely to get worse the further along the bridge he went.

  At the top was an unsteady walkway which led to a flight of stairs. The stairs dog-legged up to the western walkway, the one that seemed most complete from the ground. More slowly this time, wincing every time the stairs groaned in complaint, he made his way onto the road-level of the bridge.

  There, as his head broached the concrete surface, he stopped and checked his internal clock. He was overdue for the rendezvous by three minutes. If Cati and his controller were nearby, then there was a fair chance they had heard him arrive. Holding his breath, he crawled over the final step and rolled behind the nearest cover: a rubbish bin dented on one side.

  The breeze was stronger from his higher vantage point. He could hear nothing over it but the occasional creak from the bridge's infrastructure. He moved in a crouch to the walkway, glancing along its length as he did. The metal platform ran parallel to the road with rails at waist height on either side. Subtle warps not visible from the ground had twisted it like a snake, making it difficult to see very far — which ultimately worked to his advantage. Breathing shallowly but evenly, he began to move south along the bridge, away from the city and into the darkness.