by Lisa Smedman
Lady Death lay on the ground, her grief and exhaustion too overwhelming even for tears. She was numb. Cold to her core. She wanted only to die.
But you rejected death before. When I placed you in the training loop, after your transformation, you pulled away from my embrace, even though I had just given you a most wonderful gift. You were afraid of death, then. But now you would welcome it. Why have you changed your mind about continuing to exist?
Lady Death looked up at the icon that wore Shinanai's face and body. The face was pale, cold, the blue paint on the cheeks giving the features a chilling indifference that she had never noticed before.
"You betrayed me," she told the false Shinanai. "You and Father both. I thought you loved me."
This emotion is a powerful one. What do you call it?
Lady Death uttered a bitter laugh. "Despair. Grief. Loss."
And it causes you to want to initiate a complete shutdown?
"Hai."
You are fortunate. This sequence is initiating now.
"Good."
Lady Death closed her eyes, let her head sag back down onto her arms, and waited for death to end her pain.
09:55:52 PST
The medics ran into the hospital tent, carrying a severed arm on a stretcher. The hand was still twitching; with each reflexive clench of the fingers, blood spurted from the stump that had once been attached to the shoulder. It soaked through the canvas of the stretcher and dripped onto the floor.
"Move it!" one of the surgeons in white shouted. "We're losing data! Let's get that packet on the table on the double."
The medics—both wearing uniforms with UCAS Armed Forces shoulder flashes, tipped the arm onto the operating table. Bright lights illuminated the scene as three surgeons restitched the arm to the torso. Using surgical thread that glowed like hair-thin, flexible neon tubing, they stitched one pixel to the next, working so quickly that their gloved hands were a blur. They moved in perfect unison—somehow each of the three was able to perform surgery simultaneously, without ever getting in the way of the other two.
Red Wraith watched nervously as the surgeons reconstructed the naked body of Daniel Bogdanovich. The icon, in the shape of his meat bod, represented the personnel file Red Wraith had downloaded from the UCAS SEACOM datastore. It contained all his personal data—including, he hoped, information that would give him a starting point in his search for Lydia, the wife he had not seen in seven long years.
The medics, the doctors, and the tent itself were all part of a Mobile Application Surgical Hypertext (MASH) repair program. Developed by UCAS, it was designed to restore datafiles and utilities that would otherwise be lost when optical code chips were damaged in cybercombat. The program used smart frames to retrieve individual packets of code from the damaged chip. They were routed here to the host system, where they went through a virus-scanning and error-checking sequence. The packets were then reassembled into their original form—or as close a copy as possible. Then the datafiles, applications, or utilities were uploaded back to the deck's active memory, where they could be accessed once more by the decker.
Because Red Wraith was trapped within the Matrix, the MASH program was his only hope of reading the personnel file he'd fought so hard to download. He'd temporarily abandoned his attempts at escaping this system or logging off altogether—his frustration around whether or not the personnel file was still intact wouldn't let him rest until he'd done everything he could to access it online, first. And the MASH program was the perfect tool for the job.
It fit the death imagery of this sculpted system, and so should run here without a glitch.
He'd accessed the program via the UCAS SEACOM system he had decked his way into earlier. He hadn't been surprised to find the system—or rather, a modified copy of it—on this pocket universe. Whatever had constructed this backwater of virtual reality—Red Wraith had at last reluctantly accepted the fact that it really was an artificial intelligence—had incorporated artifact copies of every system on the Seattle RTG. The copied hosts and systems were incomplete, with large chunks of iconography missing and gaping holes where data had been left out of the upload. But many of the links to the firmware chips on the CPUs of those hosts were still in place, providing access to the programs those chips contained. Like the MASH repair utility, for example.
Red Wraith glanced at his time-keeping log. The time for his rendezvous with Dark Father, Lady Death, Bloodyguts, and Anubis had already come and gone. But what were a couple of seconds, more or less? Especially when so much was at stake.
He still couldn't figure out why he had been unable to access his own deck's storage memory. Logically, he must still be jacked into his cyberdeck, since he was still able to run the Matrix and use his deck's utilities. He supposed that something had gone wrong when he'd downloaded the personnel file from UCAS SEACOM. He thought he'd defused the data bomb that had been attached to the file, but perhaps there had been more to the intrusion countermeasure than he'd thought. He suspected that some hidden, viruslike component of the data bomb had glitched the operating system of his deck, making it impossible to read or upload from its storage memory.
The MASH program, however, seemed to be getting around this. It was bypassing the IC, just as it should. Red Wraith smiled. There was nothing so satisfying as turning the "enemy's" own forces against one another.
The deckers who served with the UCAS Armed Forces, defending its military datastores, used cyberdecks that bore an MPCP signature that identified them as "friendlies" whenever they logged onto a UCAS host or system. The programs and utilities they slotted were also marked with the virtual equivalent of a military shoulder flash. By using MASH, rather than one of his own customized utilities, Red Wraith was bypassing the UCAS IC that was blocking the interface with his storage memory.
Already the program had retrieved most of the file; the torso, arms, and one leg had been sewn together, and the other leg was complete down to the ankle. Only one foot and the head remained unaccounted for . . .
The medics pushed in through the tent flap, carrying the missing foot on the stretcher. Just as they had before, the surgeons shouted and beckoned the smart frames over to the operating table. They readied their clamps and needles, bent over the body . . .
The operating room lights went out.
"Drek!" Uncertain what had happened, Red Wraith fumbled around in the sudden darkness. He found the operating table by feel and pushed past the surgeons, who were frozen in place. Even as he shouldered a way through them he felt them dissolve. At the same time the sides of the tent began to fold up into the tent ceiling like Venetian blinds, revealing the glowing streaks of tracer bullets cutting through the thick, dark night and letting in the sound of gunfire. The MASH program was shutting down! And his personnel file was still incomplete. But even though key parts of it were missing, the copy of it that lay partially assembled on the operating table might very well be the only copy that would ever be available to him . . .
Red Wraith did the only thing he could think of. He activated his evaluate utility, which he had previously programmed to search for any text that contained Lydia's name. Then he dove onto the table, letting his own wraith-like body merge with the naked corpse in an effort to read the file. It was a creepy feeling; the body was already starting to dissolve into individual pixels. Red Wraith could literally feel himself crumbling to pieces . . .
Data streamed through his mind.
>NAME: DANIEL GEORGE BOGDANOVICH
>D.O.B.: 03/10/2019
>RANK: CAPTAIN, UCAS ARMED FORCES
>TRADE: ADMIN CLERK
Red Wraith laughed out loud at that one. An administration clerk was a paper-pusher. The only thing Daniel Bogdanovich had ever "administered" was a lethal injection.
>ENLISTED: 12/23/2038
>DISCHARGED: 05/13/2052
Red Wraith laughed grimly a second time. Discharged? "Killed in action by friendly fire" would have been more accurate. At least he wasn't listed as bein
g given a dishonorable discharge. Lydia would still be entitled to his military service pension.
>CURRENT ADDRESS: UNKNOWN
>MARITAI STATUS AT TIME OF DISCHARGE: SINGLE
>NEXT OF KIN: NONE
>SERVICE RECOR—
The data suddenly stopped scrolling through Red Wraith's consciousness as the operating table below him also vanished. He drifted now above a shell-pocked battlefield that was crisscrossed with the glowing trails of tracer bullets—the UCAS SEACOM system and its datastreams, edited by the AI to match the central metaphor of this pocket universe. The personnel file had lost cohesion, had broken apart entirely as the MASH utility completed its shutdown. It was gone.
A pathologist in a bloodstained white lab coat appeared in the air beside Red Wraith. The evaluate utility handed him an autopsy report. Red Wraith scanned it quickly, his anxiety growing as he read its text. The utility hadn't found the keyword "Lydia" in his personnel file a single time. Not once. She wasn't listed anywhere as Red Wraith's common-law spouse or next of kin.
Red Wraith released the autopsy and watched both it and the pathologist disappear—along with his hope. Would the UCAS military have deliberately deleted any mention of Lydia from his file, in order to protect her? Or—and the thought sent a shiver of dread through him—had she died long ago, been erased from his personnel file? Had the memory of her death been wiped from his mind, just as the memory of his previous missions had?
Then an even more chilling thought occurred to him. Perhaps he had been wrong about everything.
Had he ever had a wife or girlfriend named Lydia? Or had the memory of her not been Daniel's at all, but that of one of his targets? The last chip he'd slotted into the data-soft link in his skull had contained the personal data of his final target: the Greek minister of finance whose throat Daniel had slashed. Had Lydia been his wife?
But then why had Daniel been carrying Lydia's holopic with him the day his UCAS handlers tried to slag him with the cranial bomb? A month had passed between his last assassination, which he'd carried out in Greece, and the detonation of the cranial bomb at the back of his skull. Why had he taken a holopic that would incriminate him, carrying it all the way to Amsterdam? Lydia had to have been someone he cared about. Didn't she?
There was one way to find out, but he wondered if he was too much of a coward to try it. Back in the sensory deprivation tank, when he was scanning the psychotropic conditioning programs and quickly surfing through the synopses of several of them, he'd noticed one that was intended to treat cyberpsychosis-induced amnesia. Could it also repair the gaps in his memory that the datasoft link had deliberately created?
He didn't like the thought of placing his wetware in the hands of untested technology—particularly a copy of a decades-old experimental software program. But what the hell. He was already trapped inside the Matrix with a crazed Al, cut off from his meat bod, and about to go down with that AI when it crashed. If the last seven years of effort really had been all for nothing, then he had nothing left to lose.
INTRUDER ALERT
CODE GREEN RESPONSE
PASSWORD VERIFIED
ALERT CANCELED
ACCESS TO U.S. GOVERNMENT DATABASE GRANTED
RUN PROGRAM "NEURO BRIDGE"
PROGRAM COMPLETE
RUN TEST
Subject Daniel George Bogdanovich reacts to the icon with a mixture of involuntary physiological responses. Heart rate and perspiration have increased, and blood flow and muscle contraction in the groin indicates a strong *sexual response.* At the same time, the subject experiences a variety of emotions: 'love* for the icon, *pain* at the realization that the female human represented by the icon is no longer accessible, and *happiness* that she is no longer accessible.
LOGIC ERROR
EXECUTE OPERATION: UPLOAD DATA
"Lydia!"
She sat across the table from him, holding a bitter espresso that had been sweetened with a generous spoonful of sugar. For the first time, they were meeting without "chaperones." At Daniel's insistence, Lydia Riis had ditched the two bodyguards that normally accompanied her everywhere, and had come to the cafe alone. Sweet-smelling hash smoke curled through the air overhead, and the voices of the other customers in the tiny cafe were a blend of Dutch, English, and German.
The holopic of herself that she'd just given him lay forgotten on the table between them.
Lydia had deliberately dressed down and was wearing baggy hemp-fiber pants and a white tank top that showed off her tan. Her long auburn hair was tucked under a white beret. She worked out regularly and had an athlete's body to show for it, with long legs, narrow waist, and small breasts. Her green eyes stared at him over her Vashon Island sunglasses, which she'd let slide down her nose, with a mixture of shock and mistrust. It was the same look she'd given him when he'd told her he loved her and wanted to marry her—and that he'd come to the cafe to kill her.
Except that this wasn't really Lydia.
Red Wraith looked down at his red, ghostlike arms and hands. The Amsterdam cafe was precisely detailed, as was Lydia—down to the tiny mole on her left shoulder. But this wasn't reality. This was a Matrix construct. A simsense, drawn from his own mind, his own memories. Not those of the Greek finance minister, or of any of his other targets. His own.
Red Wraith knew, now, who Lydia was—and what she had been to him: a target for assassination. She was a top-level researcher with the Military Technology division of the Saeder-Krupp Corporation.
His UCAS handlers had given him a different kind of assignment, this time. Instead of impersonating the individual he was to assassinate and using that as a means of access to that person's home or workplace, he had assumed the identity of one of Lydia's former lovers from many years ago—a man with whom she had lost touch but for whom she still cared. What that man's fate had been, Daniel neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was that the datasofts and activesofts he'd slotted made Daniel a carbon copy of the fellow.
Right down to the fact that he loved Lydia.
Daniel had done the unthinkable: revealed himself as a UCAS assassin and warned Lydia to disappear completely or face the prospect of being targeted by other, less amorously inclined killers. To change her identity, to vanish. And to never contact him again. Because by the time she next saw him, his handlers would have made sure that they'd erased the glitch in his headware that had allowed him to fall in love with her.
Then he'd walked out of the cafe and out of her life, the holopic of Lydia clutched in his hand.
The UCAS must have been monitoring him. That very afternoon, they'd detonated the cranial bomb in his skull.
Whether or not they'd succeeded in killing Lydia was another question.
I'm not dead, Daniel. I'm alive. Don't you want to see me again ?
Red Wraith stared at Lydia. No—at the icon that wore Lydia's face and body.
"Yes," he told the Al. "More than anything. And no. If I met Lydia again, I might kill her, if the last personality I slotted ever glitches and I stop loving her. So I don't know."
The AI immediately picked up on the switch in pro-nouns. You are expressing two contradictory states of being at once, "yes* and "no" are absolutes. Like binary code, they are opposites, polarities.
On/off.
Existence/non-existence. You have to choose between them.
"No, I don't." Red Wraith gave a bitter laugh. "That's why humans invented the word 'maybe.' So we didn't have to choose between absolutes. Or isn't that word in your vocabulary?"
Maybe: possibly; perhaps. Short for It may be . . .
After a millisecond-long pause, the AI continued. So I don't have to choose? I can—
"You said Lydia was still alive."
It may be.
Anger rose like bile in Red Wraith's throat. "You fragger. You've got null data on Lydia, except the memories you uploaded from my own mind, and you know it. You were just saying she was alive to test my emotional response."
I want to under
stand the logic error. Lydia was your target. She was to be—crashed—just as all of your other targets were. What made her different?
"I didn't want her to die."
Why not?
How could he explain emotion to an artificial Matrix construct that had never experienced it? He tried his best to explain: "It would have caused me pain. I didn't want her to 'crash.' I wanted her to continue . . . functioning. I loved her."
Were your other targets also *loved* by someone?
Red Wraith shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. I suppose so."
Did crashing them cause pain to those who "loved* them ?
"I suppose so."
Red Wraith wanted to argue that their deaths had been for the greater good—that the assassinations he had carried out had led to increased political stability and had made Europe a safer place as a result. Hell, his assassinations might even have saved lives. But if even one person went through the anguish that he'd felt after losing Lydia, did the scales really balance?
For the first time in his life, he felt a stab of remorse for what he had done—what he had been. Yet he tempered it with the knowledge that he was no longer an assassin, and that he had spared Lydia's life. That she was still alive.
Maybe.
If he did want to continue trying to track her down, he at least had a starting point now: Saeder-Krupp. But that wasn't a decision he had to make right now. It could wait until he'd escaped this pocket universe.
Just as he was pondering whether to rejoin the others or try to find a way to log off on his own, the patrons in the cafe began to blink out.
"What's happening?" he asked the Al.
This program is shutting down. All programs currently running are being terminated. All files are being closed.
Realization dawned. "You're crashing yourself?"
Yes.
"But the shock of being dumped from an ultraviolet host could kill—crash—me too. And everyone else who's trapped in this pocket of the Seattle RTG!"
It is for the greater good.
"No, it's not!" Red Wraith shouted. "We'll all die!"
