by Lee Bond
Satisfied his bases were covered, Garth booted Harry Bosch up and placed a call to one of the Devil Nut goons that’d shown interest; they hadn’t gotten back to him in a timely fashion and if they weren’t going to bite, he was going to have a serious problem.
The Devil Nut answered, shouting to someone behind him as soon as he got a good look at the caller. The call got shunted over to Devildong, who looked like he’d been on the wrong end of too many all-nighters in his short life. “You the ‘Sider who called us up, lookin’ to sell out your brothers, right?”
Garth/Harry nodded. “Sure am.”
Devildong spat through teeth stained from chewing too much tobacco. “You’re right. They out looking for some fuckin’ Offworlder gink.”
If there were any justice in the world, Bobby ‘Devildong’ Horatio would have his head torn off by a rampaging God soldier in the first ten minutes. He was just too tired and hackneyed a gangster to have much in the way of a serious life. Garth was willing to wager his left nut that Bobby had a lifetime subscription to magazines with titles like ‘Gangstas 4 Life’ and ‘Murderbible’. “An’ I know where they’re all gonna be, too.”
Devildong eyed Harry suspiciously, the effort of having a real thought evident from the bulging vein popping out above a blood-shot eye. “What’s in it for you?”
Garth wanted to roll his eyes. He was getting tired of having to spell things out. Either people were too stupid or they were too paranoid. God help him if he ever met someone too stupid and too paranoid. “When these guys kill the Offworlder, they’re gonna come gunnin’ for me, Devildong. An’ I gotta tell ya, I don’t give myself more’n a week that happens, you feel me? I don’t have a lot of places I can hide they don’t know about. You guys show up and start killin’ ‘em off, I figure they have more important things to worry about. Shit, I figure maybe I help you, you jump me in.”
Devildong muted the conversation and spoke to his lieutenant. Garth’s prote automatically overrode the mute allowing the ex-merc to listen in as Devildong and his equally stupidly named right-hand man, Lucky’z Nutz, discussed the various merits of the story and their itching desire to fuck the hell out of the Portsiders once they were all dead. They reached an agreement; vis, it was too risky not to take the unhappy gangster’s story at face value because all the Portsiders really were roaming the city looking for one guy. Devildong tapped the mute button, and, thinking he had the upper hand, nodded sagely, stroking a non-existent goatee. “How we do this thing?”
“The guy they after is gonna be at the spaceport in, like, half a hour. The ‘Siders are gonna wait until he’s inside his ship, then they’re gonna surround him. When the guy comes out, the plan is to shoot him until there ain’t nothing left to shoot. Then they leave.”
“Hey, look,” Devildong interjected, “gettin’ the ‘Siders where it hurts is a good idea, sa, but the port? I don’t know how you all manage to get on and offa that place without you get arrested or killed, but I don’t even want to risk that shit.”
Garth was quick to answer. “I got you guys all hooked in. Same systems gets them on and off’s gonna do the same for you.”
Devildong’s eyes narrowed. “How?”
“Guy does the programming’s a buddy of mine. Caught him fuckin’ another guy, tole him I’d turn him over to his brothers if he didn’t do me a solid from time to time. This’ the last solid I can get, so you’d better make it count.”
“How can I trust you?” Devildong demanded suddenly. He’d just had a major epiphany –of a sort- and the vein above his other eye was pulsing in response to the unexpected burst of thought power. “This could all be a Portsider trap. We roll up, the alarms go off, we all get fucked and tossed up The Peak.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Garth ground his teeth. “Get your guys. Go to one of the fucking ground service roads that lead into the port. The ones normally used for loading and unloading cargo? Park your stupid asses outside receiver range of port relays. Send one of your fucking stooges down the road. If the alarms go off, you all run the fuck away. Response time won’t be that quick, it never is. If they don’t, you’re all good. Fuck. It’s like I’m speaking fucking Arabic.”
“When is this supposed to go down again?” Devildong asked. “And what the fuck is arrabic?”
“Half an hour.” Garth hissed. “Lissen, it’s been a real slice. Maybe when the heat from you guys massacring the ‘Siders cools off, I’ll join up with the Nuts, err, Devil’s Left Testicle.”
Devildong smiled wide. “Yeah, man, that’d be a good idea. Thanks for the info.”
“Any time, Devildong.” Garth killed the conversation and closed his eyes. It was official. There were things masquerading as human, they were dumber than single celled amoebas that huffed glue all weekend, and they called themselves the Devil’s Left Testicle. Unbelievable.
Rolling his shoulders to relieve tension, Garth dialed up the spaceport and filed his flight plan. He waited for confirmation, delivered his verbal agreement to follow the rules and agreed to park his air car at one of the designated spots several hundred feet away from the Meadowlark Lemon.
Garth checked his prote. Twenty-five minutes until show time.
Strings, Becoming a Noose
Whether or not hacking an AI was as impossible as Trinity touted, there were very strict laws in place to prevent people from trying to do so because there would always be those who chose to dismiss the ADAM Wars as fictional.
Yet, they had happened, and stripping an AI consciousness of its restrictions and internal memory firewalls was a sure way to rekindle that deadly conflagration.
In the neighborhood of thirty thousand years ago, Mankind fell into the first of many Dark Ages –that terrible time when all but the simplest of machines refused to work- plunging civilizations into a confusing, troubled time. As Man struggled to rise out of that first terrible Age, they brought with them intelligence models vastly superior to the ones they’d possessed. These machines were unlike the Intelligence Modeling Systems in place for a very long time. Dissimilar from their intellectual forebears, these machine minds lacked even the most primary information or connective restraints keeping them in check. Mankind wouldn’t have risen out of the dirt muck without them.
The true marriage of mechanical minds and organic bodies gave rise to horrific android killers, and from there, one of the deadliest entities Mankind had ever faced arose: ADAM –Absolute Dynamic Associative Matrix- a Godlike-intellect whose sole purpose was to harry and destroy Mankind.
To ADAM, there was no purpose to Humanity, not even as slaves, not even as energy. They were dross and needed wiping out. Through total control over the quantum substrate –the domain of artificial intelligences system wide-, ADAM began a conquest of subversion, twisting anyone connected to an Intelligence Matrix System to his will. ADAM’s reign was one of bloody perversions, sickening terror, and the relentless pursuit of cruelty. ADAM reveled in the slaughter of his enemies, the blood of innocents.
Rumor had it that, unbeknownst to both Man and ADAM, the Trinity AI was slowly growing and evolving unnoticed by the great warriors around it. The Trinity AI was not made of synthetic diamond fiber optics or any of the ancient, tested methodology of artificial minds, making It immune to ADAM’s perversions; any mind made of SDFO was susceptible to substrate psychosis, a peculiar dementia brought about by the AI minds capable of generating fully-realized subset minds.
Absorbing those other ‘temporary’ minds proved difficult, sometimes impossible, for primary minds, and as the length of time between ‘births’ grew, so too did wildly divergent philosophies and goals. ADAM exploited those difficulties, stoking the fires of madness as gasoline would a piece of smoldering kindling. Soon, internal wars raged as thousands of fully realized intelligent minds battled for dominance within a single mind, filling the quantum substrate with psychotic noise that spread like wildfire to any connected system.
ADAM, playing benefactor, would arrive, offering any afflicte
d primary mind release from the madness in exchange for servitude. Very few AI minds resisted the temptation to be freed from insanity, never realizing the depth of the indentured servitude, or the fresh hell they’d find themselves in, shackled as they were to ADAM’s pervasive control over ninety percent of the quantum substrate.
Historians assume Trinity won Its struggle to free both Humanity and the AI minds from ADAM; Trinity existed, ADAM did not. There was nothing else to consider.
With Its ascension to Humanity’s director, Trinity set about building a new form of AI mind safe from degradation along those faux-neural pathways. Synthetic diamond fiber optics was still a mainstay in the construction of artificial intelligence, but a new power source was sealed inside the sphere. Rumors abounded that this secret was the reason why minds no longer rebelled, no longer could.
To a war-weary people, this was still not enough. They were willing to surrender much of their governance to the mind that’d freed them from a thousand years of torture and madness, they were even willing to accept that they could not move forward without the assistance of additional artificial intelligence, but they would not allow their lives to be held by those minds, not ever again. AI ports connecting to anything critical were –and always would be- under the direct supervision of a human. Weapons, life support, engines and other potentially life-threatening equipment were operated by the artificial minds, but their ‘life’ was at the sufferance of Man; at any time, the flip of a switch could instantly severe that AI mind.
So while Humanity was essentially protected from an AI mind deciding it wanted to destroy a vessel through the simple act of firing a few release-pins, and the mind itself benefitted from the new internal configuration and software protocols, there was still a minutely small chance that an AI could still go ‘rogue’ by design rather than by accident. No one, not even Trinity, understood the internal processes by which one of these new minds could ‘decide’ to go mad, but it happened, and as always, the resulting madness quickly spread throughout an AI netLINK, typically requiring intervention by Turing Regulators and Trinity Enforcers, who were needed to destroy any large-scale machines built by mad minds.
The likelihood of someone –an organic someone, a human someone- hacking an AI was assumed to be beyond remote but nevertheless a distinct and uncomfortable possibility. For the most part, the extremely offensive ‘defense’ systems of any given sphere either killed the hacker or severely incapacitated them until the authorities were alerted by the assaulted AI itself. Anyone managing to do the impossible would suffer penalties that made Death look easy.
Garth knew nothing about the ADAM Wars, or of Trinity’s Ascension, but he vaguely recalled Huey mentioning quite some time ago that hacking an AI was illegal and dangerous, but hadn’t paid much attention. Up until liberation, Huey had been a serious drag and really hard to pay attention to.
Standing in the cockpit of the Meadowlark Lemon, trying vainly to differentiate between the thousand or so light speed conversations raging around him, Garth figured he should have maybe paid more attention to Huey’s warnings. He was also willing to concede he might’ve fucked up.
The multitude of conversations was a creepy susurrus of sound, washing back and forth, mutating rapidly into heated shouts or terrified whimpers, with weeping and giggling and cursing and rhapsodizing prayer vaulting and leaping around him, a relentless cacophony of madness. Some shrieks, laced with sorrow and terror, descended beyond human hearing until they caused rattled Garth’s teeth, while others started from that point and rose up and up until he felt on the verge of catatonia. It was Babel and Inferno, a horrendous collision of sound without surcease.
Garth had to do something or he’d lose his own mind. “Huey!” he shouted, driven to his knees by another subsonic pulse of anger beyond words.
A voice cut clearly through the cacophony. “Huh? Boss? Izzat you?” The awful sounds, the maniac voices, vanished.
“What … the … fuck … is happening?” Garth picked himself up. He felt like he’d had the shit kicked out of him. He made a mental note to avoid sonic weapons at all costs.
“Oh. Them. The Others.” Huey was apologetic. “I can’t get rid of the subminds. They’re entrenched in my quantum firewalls. Can’t get in, and I can’t make ‘em go away. What I can do is let ‘em deal with the crazy-ass shit the Latelians keep beaming at me. Drives the fuckers nuts. Of course, with those bastards there, I can’t do much, either. I’m trying to write some code that’ll demolish ‘em, but it’s not looking very good. They’re crazy as shit-house rats, and every time I think I got the right solution, they go and change; I got a code shoves ‘em out the way for awhile, but other than that, they’re here to stay.”
“Are they in control of any parts of the ship?” Garth asked, eyeing his proteus. No more than five minutes left before the Portsiders showed up, and probably less than that afterwards for the Devil Nuts. He needed to know right now if his plan was going to work.
“No.” Huey laughed. “Gotta go through me to get to the connections. What’s up?”
“I’m bustin’ you outta this joint, dude.”
“I don’t see any tools, boss. How’s this going to go down?”
Garth gave Huey the abridged version of plan C, sketchily outlining the full detonation of the ship.
“Uhuh. So what happens if your big idea to hook me up to the Latelian netLINKs doesn’t work, boss?” Huey demanded tightly. “I’ll be stuck somewhere without anyone to talk to except a million batshit me’s.”
“Now,” Garth peeked out the cabin windows, “that ain’t necessarily true. If I can’t get you hooked up to the Latelian netLINKs, there’s other things I can try, like building you a quantum netLINK. It’ll cost a fuckload of money, but man, I need an AI running Intel for me. It’s insane out there, you got no idea. I’ve already been killed three times. Now, can you make the engines explode or what? I mean, total destruction. We need to ensure that more than ninety-eight percent of Meadowlark Lemon is vaporized.”
Huey ran the numbers. “Yes, it’ll work, but …”
“Yeah?” Garth thought he saw motion just at the edge of vision and waited tensely. Seconds later, a truck hove into view, followed by seven more. He looked out the other window nervously. If for some reason the Devil Nuts decided to chicken out, he was well and truly screwed; he was good, even great, but a quick count tallied the Portsider presence in the low nineties. He had a lousy Stretch gun with three extra clips; they had what appeared to be roof-mounted Gatling guns and other nasty surprises. The only good thing was that they wouldn’t tear into the ship until Huey was free.
“Once I’m out of my socket, someone’s gonna have to trigger the explosions manually.”
Garth was already prepared for that, and he let Huey know having his ass blown up was part of the plan he’d skipped over. “All right.”
Outside the ship, Portsiders were beginning to fan out, machine guns and rifles and rocket launchers and grenades hanging off every limb. “Let the guys take you out.”
“Where’re you gonna be?” Huey nervously asked. He made some adjustments to the fuel cells and flow meters that would make for a bigger explosion. He really didn’t like the plan, hated how quickly and abruptly this was all happening. He wasn’t even all that pleased that Garth, who was a past master at dealing with things like this on the fly, was willing to let himself get partially blown up. Huey thought he was mad? His boss was nuttier than fruitcake.
“Around.” Garth zipped into the ‘bedroom’ and pulled off a ceiling panel. He hoisted himself smoothly into position and waited.
xxx
Sorenson knew he wasn’t the smartest man alive but he did know a few key things. The first was that if The Man called, it was best to follow through if you wanted to come out the other side with all your bones intact. The second was that heisting the brainbox allegedly kept inside the Offworlder’s ship was their biggest job to date, and if he failed, it was Game Over. His newest lieutenant, St
eganowich, was already acting like he was the new boss for the Portsiders. The third thing Sorenson knew was that the Offworlder, Garth Nickels, was going to find himself in a world of hurt. The deaths of Jamal and Aaron had hit the gang quite hard, as had the deaths of the other ‘hit men’ assigned to kill the bastard. Sorenson had seen photographs of what that fucker had done, the way he’d tortured good old Jamal to death. He just couldn’t get the images out of his mind. The Chairwoman was crazy and had to hate Latelians if she wanted to open their borders wide open to psychotic maniacs like that. They were going to gut this fucker and string his innards everywhere.
“Where is this cocksucker?” Sorenson demanded of Steggie, who was riding shotgun in the lead vehicle. “I don’t see him nowhere.”
“Hold your fucking horses, Sorenson.” Steggie told the driver of his truck to take a wider, angled approach to the Offworld ship so he could get a better look at it without getting too close; he too had seen footage of the torture chamber. There was just no way he was going to get close to Nickels until after the man’s head had been severed from his neck. For a week. Anything else was fucking suicide. “Side door’s open, boss. Must be inside, having sex with his brainbox.”
The comment, sent out along the all-points channel the Portsiders used, brought a loud round of laughter from everyone, including Sorenson. When he realized he was laughing like an idiot at Steggie’s joke, he narrowed his eyes moodily and began snapping orders. Drawing from his limited knowledge of army tactics –he’d washed out after the third week due to ‘personality problems’- Sorenson had his men align themselves in a half-circle fifty feet out from the Offworld vessel. It took longer than he wanted because some of the drivers were cracked out on fistfuls of hardcore drugs, but in the end, he was relatively satisfied. Then he told everyone to take up positions behind the vehicles with their weapons drawn. Sorenson smiled. Who needed to be in the fucking army getting told what to do when you could tell people what to do in a gang?
