by Jeff Edwards
“Between Man and Machine,” Surf said. His speech-synthesizer managed to capture the haughty quality in his voice: the tone that an adult uses to lecture a recalcitrant child.
“We’re competing with machines?” I asked.
Iron Betty sighed. “Competing is perhaps not a strong enough word, Mr. Stalin. Vying for existence might be more accurate.”
I snorted. “So you’re telling me that there’s some kind of conspiracy of machines going on? I’m supposed to believe that my household appliances are plotting behind my back?”
“Believe what you will,” Iron Betty whispered. “But Homo Sapiens was not always the dominant species on this planet. And there exists no law in nature that says that it must continue to be.”
“And this Convergence is supposed to be the next stage,” I said. “Okay, I’ll go along. What is the next stage. What comes after Man?”
“Homo Trovectior,” Iron Betty said.
“Homo what?” I asked.
“Homo Trovectior,” Jackal said. I couldn’t tell if she believed what they were saying, or if she had just heard the song so many times that she could sing along when they came to the verse.
“Homo, as in ‘Man’,” Surf added, still using his lecturing voice. “And Trovectior, meaning ‘Advanced’. Homo Trovectior: Advanced Man. The next logical step in evolution: Man-plus-Machine.”
“And where is this Machine-Man supposed to come from?” I asked.
“Out of a bubble-gum machine,” Surf said.
Iron Betty snapped the fingers of her right hand; Surf shut up.
Jackal said, “Either we will create it ourselves, or machines will do it for us.”
I stared at her.
Iron Betty spoke again. “It began toward the end of the last century, with the advent of so-called fuzzy logic. Computers, which had previously been constrained to the concepts of yes and no, were introduced to the idea of maybe.”
I crossed my arms. “What’s so great about maybe? Yes and no are definite. They’re decisive. Maybe strikes me as wishy-washy. Doesn’t that make it a weaker concept?”
“Maybe is not a weaker concept,” Iron Betty said. “It is stronger. Infinitely stronger. Maybe allows us to conceive of a third alternative when only two choices are apparent. That ability, that essential spark of creativity, was what separated the organic-mind from the machine-mind. Fuzzy logic blurred that line; it gave machines the power to create. It removed the single element that made man superior to machine.”
Everything that Iron Betty said had a flat quality to it, a listlessness that sounded more like litany than personal conviction. Maybe she had been spouting her own platitudes for so long that she’d forgotten how to think.
“Give me a break,” I said. “There are a hundred ways that man is superior to machine. A thousand ways. Ten thousand.”
Surf flexed his left hand, the mechanical one. “Really? Is this your knowledge speaking? Or is it your ego? Is your flesh-and-blood hand as powerful as a hydraulic press? Can your legs run faster than a MagLev train? Or a hovercar?”
He intentionally refocused his eyes, making certain that I could hear the whirring of the electroptic lenses. “Can your organic eyeballs see in the infrared spectrum? Or examine an object a thousand times smaller than the point of a needle? How about your non-silicon brain? Can it remember every telephone number in the Los Angeles directory?”
He smiled sardonically. “Please, Mr. Stalin, tell me all the wonderful things that make you superior to a machine.”
Iron Betty snapped her fingers again. “Enough. Mr. Stalin gets the idea.”
She pointed an age-gnarled finger in my direction; her eyes never strayed from their unseen focal point. “We approach the Convergence. Whichever species reaches it first will become the first true organic-cybernetic hybrid. And they will inherit the Earth.”
“What happens to the loser in this race?” I asked.
“Servitude,” said Jackal. “Extinction. We won’t really know until it happens.”
I said nothing; I was beginning to wonder if coming here had been a mistake. These people were fruitcakes, and Jackal seemed to be just as nutty as the rest of them.
Iron Betty must have sensed my trepidation. A sardonic smile flickered across her lips. “We argue for nothing,” she said. “It is not necessary that you understand the Convergence, Mr. Stalin, or even be aware of it. You will be a part of it. That is enough.”
Surf turned and walked away. I was about to say something, when I realized that Jackal had fallen in behind Surf. Not wanting to spend the rest of the night verbally fencing with a ninety-nine year old fruit bat who apparently lived in the net full-time, I hurried to catch up. I was halfway across the room when it hit me: we had been dismissed, like servants. Or children.
I caught up with Jackal and Surf just as they were turning into a hallway that led away from Iron Betty’s chamber.
Around the corner, we passed a young woman who was even farther gone than Surf. Her shaved head was pocked by twenty or so gold alloy data jacks. Rectangular patches of circuit board protruded from her scalp in several places, the skin around the circuits puckered in an uneasy mating between flesh and silicon. Both of her eyes were cybernetic, as were her arms and legs. She turned and watched me as we passed, her camera-eyes tracking me like a security system on alert.
I was glad when we turned another corner and I could no longer feel her electronic eyes on my back.
Surf led us to a small room. He held open the door, but didn’t go inside. “The rooms in this hall are for the acolytes.”
I stepped past him into the room, and looked around. The furnishings were Spartan: one twin bed, one table, and one chair, all with the utilitarian solidity of prison furniture. The entire wall facing the bed was photo-active. An apparently continuous sequence of images and text appeared and vanished at speeds that were undoubtedly carefully timed, and subliminal.
The other walls were hung with holo-posters: a human skull superimposed over a snapshot of the net; the earth hanging in space, half its surface green-blue and organic, the other half rendered in chromed steel chased with circuit runs, and gears, and cables; a flat white background covered in crisp black ones and zeros, with a large numeral ‘two’ scrawled in red paintstick; a grainy black and white flat-photo of Alan Turing, the so-called father of Artificial Intelligence.
Opposite the entrance, there was a second door. I walked across the room and opened it. It led to a small bathroom, designed by the same no-frills architect who had planned the room itself. It was clean, though.
I stepped back into the room and nodded toward the photo-active wall. “What’s this? A little subliminal programming for the new recruits?”
“Education,” Surf said. “We don’t program our people; we educate them.”
“Turn it off,” I said.
Surf glanced at the flickering data on the wall. “It won’t bother you. After a little while, you’ll forget it’s even there.”
“Turn it off,” I said again. “Or I’ll turn it off myself, with a chair. I don’t want to be educated.”
Surf pulled a slender black remote out of his pocket and pointed it at the animated wall. The images vanished, and the wall reappeared.
Jackal sat down on the bed and bounced to test the mattress. “You’ll be all right here.”
I pulled off the windbreaker and tossed it on the foot of the bed.
Surf’s gravelly voice came from the still-open door, “If you do cross wires with an AI, are you going to slick it?”
Jackal laid back on the bed and looked at the ceiling. “Probably not. Why do you ask?”
Surf leaned against the door frame with an assumed air of indifference. “I thought you might need some help.”
Jackal closed her eyes. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ve been cooking up a virus,” Surf said. “All the simulations say that it’ll crack a hardened AI like a walnut. I’m itching to try it.”
“What’s stoppi
ng you?” I asked. “If you guys are trying to make sure that the balance tips in favor of Man instead of machines, destroying AI’s would seem to be built right into your job description.”
Surf’s voice took on the tone of a lecturer, and I knew that he was parroting learned doctrine. “Destruction for destruction’s sake is not the mark of a species that is ready for ascension.”
“But you want to kill something anyway,” I said.
Surf’s cybernetic hand closed slowly. “Every attack must be on purpose, and with purpose.”
Jackal rubbed her eyes and then opened them. “In other words, you’re looking for an excuse.”
“Check it out,” I said. “A cybernetic hit man.”
Jackal shot me a glance and then looked back at Surf. “Thanks. We’ll let you know.”
Surf nodded and left, pulling the door closed behind him.
I stood there, watching Jackal.
“Relax,” she said. “I was just being polite back there.”
“You don’t really believe all that crap about the Convergence?”
“Of course not,” she said. “But the silicon in my head makes me sort of an honorary member around here. It pays off sometimes, so I’m very careful not to challenge the official party line.”
I picked up the jacket and pulled out the trid. “Take a look at this.” I handed it to Jackal.
She looked at the front then flipped it over. “What does this shit on the back mean?”
“Payment instructions,” I said. “Whoever kills me is supposed to call that number, read the poem, and leave the phone off the hook. Supposedly, the Man will trace the call and get in touch.”
Jackal sat up. “This number definitely doesn’t belong to the Man. It’s a public service line, maybe a suicide prevention hot-line, or something like that. It’s probably got a watch-dog routine coded into it. You call the number and read the poem, the watch-dog sends out alarm signals in forty different directions.”
“So it can’t be traced?”
“Easy enough to find out who the phone line belongs to,” she said. “But that won’t tell us anything.”
“Why not?”
“If you were broadcasting a contract hit, would you use your own phone? This is a subroutine piggybacked to somebody else’s line. Whoever owns this phone line has no idea; I guarantee it.”
“So there’s no way to trace this thing back to the source?”
“I didn’t say it couldn’t be done, but it’s dangerous as hell.”
“You can do it?”
“There probably aren’t more than four or five people in LA who can. Me, Giri-Sama, Ice Rider, Captain Kangaroo. Iron Betty could do it, if you asked her.”
“No thanks. You do it.
Jackal stood up. “I’ll need my deck.” She yawned and stretched. “And some sleep. My edge is way off.”
Her yawn triggered one of my own. “I know what you mean.”
She walked to the door. “Get some rest, Stalin. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
I locked the door behind her and kicked off my shoes.
How far could I trust Surf, or the rest of Jackal’s creepy little robot-wanna-be friends? Was it safe to go to sleep? Fifty thousand marks was a lot of money.
I slid the Blackhart under my pillow. I hoped to catch a couple of hours of sleep without having to shoot anybody. I turned the light off and climbed into bed.
CHAPTER 26
“It’s one of those egg muffin things.” Jackal held out a white foil pouch printed with the logo of a fast food restaurant. “It’s got cheese on it. Do you like cheese?”
I opened the pouch. “Yeah, I like cheese. Thanks.”
She tossed a shoebox on the bed. “Everybody likes cheese,” she said. “Everybody but me. There’s coffee in there too.”
The pouch contained an egg-and-bacon muffin wrapped in thermal plastic, a bulb of coffee, and a couple of paper napkins. Breakfast for one.
“Did you already have something?”
She set a blue fiberglass flight case on the bed and popped the lid. One corner of the case was patched with strapping tape. “I can’t eat before a run. A full stomach takes my edge off.”
I twisted the top off the coffee and waited for it to warm up. “What’s in the shoe box?”
Jackal picked it up and tossed it to me without looking. “I almost forgot,” she said. “I brought you sort of a disguise.”
The top came off, but I managed to catch the box left handed while half-juggling the coffee bulb in my right hand. Inside the box were a pair of electric barber’s clippers and a bottle of peroxide. Not much of a disguise.
I set the box down, fished out the breakfast muffin and unwrapped it. “Do you really think this will fool anybody?”
Jackal shrugged without looking up. “Crew cut, bleached-blonde hair. If you stop shaving and wear some shades, it might be enough to keep a bullet out of the back of your head.”
“I guess it’s better than nothing,” I said. I took a bite of muffin. Greasy, but not too bad.
I swallowed and raised my fingers to touch Sonja’s dressing. “I’ve got a bandage on the back of my head. My skull collided with a sidewalk.”
Jackal pulled a tangle of ribbon cable out of the case and dropped it on the bed. “How bad is it?”
I turned my head so that she could see. “Not too bad. Just some split skin.”
“I think we can work around that,” Jackal said. “We’ll leave it a little shaggy in the back so I don’t have to cut so close.” She picked up the shoebox and walked toward the bathroom.
“What about the peroxide?”
Jackal spoke over her shoulder. “It’s a disinfectant. It’ll probably burn like hell, but it shouldn’t kill you.”
I took another bite of muffin and followed her. I managed to wolf down the rest of it before she started.
To be honest, Jackal’s own hairstyle didn’t instill me with confidence. But even a really bad haircut was better than a bullet in the brain.
Jackal’s prediction that the peroxide would burn like hell turned out to be a major understatement. But she was right. It didn’t kill me.
When she was done, my hair was very blonde and very short on the top and sides, tapering to a thicker patch in the back. It was a strange cut, but I could live with it.
I showered while Jackal finished setting up her gear. Surprisingly, the shower stall wasn’t wired for projection. No forests, no naked women, no subliminal education. I enjoyed the chance to shower in silence.
Jackal looked up when I walked back into the room. “Put your shirt on,” she said. “I want to get the full effect.”
I slipped on my shirt.
She nodded. “Better, but you can’t wear the jacket.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re wearing it in the trid that the Man is circulating. Anyway, it’s like your trademark.”
“I need it to cover up my shoulder holster.”
“I didn’t say you can’t wear a jacket. I said you can’t wear that jacket.” She shrugged off her own jacket and handed it to me.
It was made of forest green synlon, cut in the style of those old bomber jackets. A strangely angular tiger was stitched across the back in multicolored thread. Above the tiger, the words MIG ALLEY were embroidered in stylized capitol letters intended to suggest bamboo. It was at least five sizes too large for her.
“It won’t fit,” I said.
“Try it on.”
I strapped on the shoulder rig before I put on the jacket. It fit. The Blackhart didn’t bulge too much. I took the jacket off again and tossed it on the bed.
Jackal held out an elastic headband set with four disks molded from matte black plastic. A long thread of fiber-optic cable connected the disks to one of several equipment modules set up on the room’s only table. “How about it, Mr. Stalin? Do you want to go for a ride?”
I took the headband. “Where’s yours?”
She held up a ribbon cable with
a gold multi-pronged connector. “An induction-rig is good enough for piggyback,” she said, “but you have to go straight neural for the big show. It shaves seven, maybe eight nanoseconds off your response time.”
On the table top, between the comp and the matrix generator, was a pale green plastic cylinder. Jackal picked it up and pressed one end against her white jeans, on the inner slope of her left thigh. The cylinder made a soft popping noise followed by an even quieter hiss. When the hissing stopped, Jackal pulled the cylinder away from her thigh. About three centimeters of ceramic needle protruded from the end.
“What’s that?”
She sat in a chair and massaged her left thigh where the needle had gone in. “Zoom,” she said. “Mega-amphetamine. It’s a Cuban combat drug designed to hype the shit out of your reflexes.”
She scooted the chair up to the table and plugged the connector into the back of her head. “Sit down, Stalin. Get comfortable.”
I sat on the bed and pulled the headband over my head.
There was a tiny microphone attached to the left side of the rig by a curved polycarbon arm. I swung it down in front of my lips.
A color bar test pattern appeared in front of my eyes. It was disorienting, because the left eye was nearly in focus, and the right wasn’t even close.
Jackal’s voice resonated inside my skull. “Move the trodes around until the test pattern is nice and sharp in both eyes.”
I experimented with the black plastic disks for a couple of seconds. “Okay, I’m good.”
“Have you ever been in the net before?”
“Simulation gear,” I said, “but not neural.”
“Sim isn’t anywhere near fast enough for what we’re going to do. Remember this though: neural is a lot faster, but it’s also dangerous. If things get hairy in there, get that rig off your head. Don’t wait for me to tell you. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” she said. “Now, hang on to your ass.”
She punched a key and the DataNet construct exploded into my head.
Deep space. Black. We are a tiny spark of white light. A star hanging in a starless void.
Kilometers overhead, a florescent blue grid divides one axis of the void into perfect squares.
