“Don’t screw around.”
“You know you can have your chemicals balanced. It is a really simple procedure. Painless, too. Cheaper than your prescription in the long run.”
Paul gets up to leave.
Shouta grabs his arm. “Relax, Paul. I am not gaming you. You have my word and my honesty.”
They sit back down in tandem, despite Paul’s certainty that Shouta’s “honesty” is yet another one of his words that’s no good.
“Those men are not my friends. They are my employees.” Shouta points: “Haruto, the man on the left—he runs my personal security detail; a wonderfully-loyal import from Tokyo. The man on the right…my sister’s stepson. Slow, strong, and sedulous—very much like a bull. By the way he drinks and spends his free time, perhaps Kobe beef.” He makes a self-satisfied grin. “Since neither of us will be in any condition to drive, I have arranged for Haruto to retrieve your new truck from the police impound once we have finished here, and for my nephew to fly you back to the hotel.”
Observing the finger point, Haruto nods in the doctors’ direction.
“Whatever,” Paul says, blushing. “Would you like another? On me?”
“I am fine for now, thanks,” says a man so beyond the need for charity, the notion of reciprocity likely seems alien.
Paul drains his stein, and waves at an animate shape near the bar, double-checking for any possible Outland spooks.
“You have something for me to look at? You mentioned an aberration of some kind?”
Shouta raises his hands as if readying to slow down a runaway mine cart. “I do not mind troubleshooting your domestic issue first.”
“No, that’s fine.”
Paul intuits-on his Monocle, and a glitchy, parti-coloured visual flits over his eye announcing “NETWORK DOWN.”
“Shit!” Paul growls.
Shouta throws Paul a flat stare.
“I forgot that we won’t have access to the Net in here. Harpos…”
“No need. I saved a recent snapshot of the event.” Shouta fumbles around in his satchel under the table. He pulls out a tablet, and shakes it. Three holograms emerge, especially vivacious against the haze.
“Jeeze.”
“What?”
“Those the read-outs for CLOUD data-trees?”
“Yes,” Shouta states, very matter-of-factly.
“Unbelievable how they’ve grown.”
“Oh yes. But it is just business as usual, as intended.”
The other holographic depicts an ocean of waveform, ebbing and flowing across a gargantuan grid of 3D-clustered bars, depicting innumerable, individual data stores and transfers, with colourful beams depicting regional energy consumption.
“Those’re all the blue zones across the state?”
“God, no. That is just Los Angeles inside the walls.” Shouta shakes his wrist and intuits a command. Another hologram actualizes. “This is the Tri-Angeles Network’s CLOUD. LA, Anaheim, and the Military grid for San Diego North.”
Paul gulps, and slouches back, absolutely stupefied. “It’s huge…it’s,” he leers at Shouta, “untenable.”
“Now, remember, Paul: it has been a while...Outland Corporation now has the reach; it has the means.”
“But when this goes multigenerational—shit, man.”
“That gives me an idea.” Shouta closes his eyes, and a pop-up running scripts and codes peels across the holographic projection.
Key by key, Shouta’s query appears telekinetically: “RACHEL, PYTHIA, ANGELA [SHEFFIELD/ex/custody_transfer:IRHAP]…LOS ANGELES, CA. SECTOR 000000043…” Their profiles appear, followed by shortcuts to financial statements confirming their CLOUD synchronizations. Three PBN sorting numbers hover above their entry-images, indicating PILOT activity and one shared pentabyte of active memory. The family plan.
Paul pushes forward, grasping at the holographic ghosts. “That’s them.”
“Yes, Paul.”
“Can just anybody find this information?”
“No, I have a dual admin-exec account giving me access to pretty much everything. This kind of clearance does not exist at any lower echelon.”
“So you can rain them out?”
“I wish, Paul. There is a ridiculous amount of red tape and privacy measures enabled to keep hackers from dropping clients willy-nilly.”
“But you’re no hacker—you said you have admin-exec access.”
Shouta shakes his head and sips his beer. “If, by sheer, relative capability, I am a Herculean demi-god, then Winchester is the Zeus with the juice.” He seems satisfied to have finally assimilated Paul’s preferred mythology.
“He could…”
“Secreted in the corner of his office is the only device capable of accomplishing what you are asking for: the Baal Deck storm machine. Only his biometrics can turn it on. With it on, any or all subscribers could be rained out—maintaining connection with their exo-cortices, of course.”
“So he can!”
“But he will not; not if he can help it.”
“And when he passes the torch?”
“I guess you will have to ask the next bearer.”
“Haven’t I, already?”
Shouta sits back silently.
Pythia and Angela’s faces glimmer on the haze. Paul’s trembling hand falls through the hologram. “There must be a way…Some sort of alternate fail-safe besides Winchester’s—an ejection algorithm…You’ve got to protect your subscribers.”
Shouta sighs, reading the piteous look chiselled into Paul’s face like a disposable pamphlet on a rare disease. He exhales—not to be mistaken for a sigh—and intuits-closed the Sheffields’ profiles. “Prior to the Purge, we had individual reset options. The problem was that the resets were approximate, and—granted the plastic and erratic nature of the human mind—also prone to error.”
“What sort of error?”
“The reset algorithm would often mistake pre-CLOUD stimulation and memory for data obtained whilst synchronized. It is, after all, nearly impossible to impose such distinctions on the human mind…Anything from cherished childhood memories to basic motor function could be lost. We learned our lesson, unfortunately, from one-too-many mistakes.”
“For crying out loud.” Paul hunches over the table, crowning himself with flat-palmed hands. “God-damn-it.”
“There was also the matter of assassinations. If a hacker got a hold of your reset codes, they could erase your sentience. Why use a bullet to accomplish what you can do with an idea?”
Paul tries to fully comprehend the horrible concept. “Assassinations.” His voice sinks into a forlorn drone of despond.
“We retained a mass-reset function, should an Extinctive Event be discovered or forecasted.”
“An Extinctive Event?”
“We are calling it an Anomaly.” All emotion vacates Shouta’s face, and his eyes seem especially clear.
“An Anomaly?” Dread dictates Paul’s posture. “Not anything like the one you brought me here to see, huh?”
“Well, old friend; that is exactly it: I am not completely sure.”
Paul keels forward. Shouta has too much pride to admit ignorance, unless he’s really screwed, and by that point it’s already too late.
“And that is precisely why I would love it if you would take a look.”
Angry yawps exhale from the kitchen, tucked behind the bar. Select words amongst the quarrelling bass and mezzo-soprano find Paul. “’Bitch’, ‘fetcher’, ‘thief’.”
Shouta rolls his eyes at Paul, whose posture has hardened around the resolve to intervene.
“Tell me, old friend,” Paul says, feeling the testosterone rise on the heels of the overheard bawling.
Shouta tilts his head, receptively.
“Will I catch hell for this? I’ve already breached the terms of my restraining order...”
“Consider all bad-blood leeched.” Katajima tries to hide his hesitation behind a sip of beer. “Outland cannot be compromised. This
Anomaly has to be stopped. Winchester will see it in his best interest to clear your slate, now or after.”
Interesting phrasing. “And if he doesn’t?”
“If he cannot concede that point, we will have to work on our solution privately, without his knowing or his blessing.”
Shouta intuits a new query, which bands across the hologram: “SCREENSHOT 4302: EPIC, DELOCALIZED DATA TRANSACTION>>>…” On the grid, towering above all the other 3D clustered bars on the graph, stands one labelled: “UNKNOWN SYNCH.”
Paul leans in. “What’s the measure, here, terabytes?”
“Decabytes.”
“That’s impossible.” Paul spins the hologram to get a better sense of scale. “Empty data?”
“No.”
“It’s got to be some kind of data-mining group. Hackers…or a super AI.”
“My team is absolutely certain that it is not an AI. As for hackers...”
“Yeah?” Excluding himself, the list of people Paul’s aware of with the ability required for this sort of attack has been narrowed down over the years by bullets and overdoses.
Shouta wipes his brow, and sips his beer. He thumbs the condensation on his stein thoughtfully. “After the Purge, we went after the hackers, big time. Spies, oligarchs, and saboteurs—the lot of these so-called noosphere gods had forgotten about their meat. Now, it was not as simple as sorting them out at one of the cypulchres; most of them synchronized remotely. It would, after all, be foolish to subvert Outland whilst living in an Outland Outpost. Nevertheless, we managed to restrain what was sleeping, and publicly relished in their Titan-fall.”
“Outland Security took ‘em down?”
“Outland Sentinels, the military, cyber mercs. A lot of private detectives retired off that pay-day.”
How’d I miss that memo?
“Remember, Paul: everyone is invested in the CLOUD. Anything with a mind to threaten the whole needs to be lobotomized.” Shouta traces a window between them, and his Monocle quickly side-projects a criminal record into the prepped-space. “Including our old friend.”
A photograph of a slim-chinned, raven-haired woman with mascara spikes cutting to her cheeks appears on the porous screen.
“Is that…?”
“Oni Matsui, PhD. A highly capable hacker and an ideological extremist. Followed your example and made a fuss when leaving Outland. We ascribed her radicalization to a personal loss she blames on CLOUD tech. Only, instead of whistle-blowing like her predecessor, she blew up your old lab. We have kept bad company, you and I.”
“Did you get her?”
“No. We subpoenaed her memex for review, but she scrambled the file and then rained-out. Clever girl.”
Hiding his satisfaction, Paul responds only with a guttural “Hmm.”
“Fortunately, we got most of the others. Key targets, anyway. Outland tracked down and secured their air strips, waited for them to land, and eliminated them with extreme prejudice.”
Uncertain if he’s hearing things, Paul cuts Shouta off. “Hold on—when did you transform from a limp-dick scientist into a warlord?”
Shouta makes his dissatisfaction over Paul’s statement known, shuffling his jaw side to side. “Necessity. It is not like they had forgotten to pay their bills. They threatened to destabilize everything we have worked for. Everything you built.”
Paul drowns his skepticism in a glut of beer. He’d written-off the Sentinels at Q’s as a Winchester initiative, but now he’s not so sure.
“Regarding this Anomaly, we are looking at a completely different genera of malignancy.”
“But if this new problem plighting the CLOUD isn’t hackers or gods…”
“It is a data bubble—a heavy store—with a sentient director. It is constantly growing, replicating all of the available user data—memories, stimulation, knowledge...Think Moore’s Law, just apply it to a virtual conquistador. At the current rate of expansion, this thing will be globally wired—hooked into everything with a wireless signal or a hardline—by the end of next week. The internet of everything will have one master, and we do not know who or what it is.”
“Why’d you say sentient?”
“It is not a bug, a script, or a virus. It has an epicentre, a definitive pattern of behaviour and specific foci, and it manipulates the feed in ways our AIs simply cannot or will not. It is a hacker unlike any we have ever encountered.”
“And at this rate,” Paul says with his hand in the hologram, “It’s going to overload your infrastructure.”
“Forget the infrastructure. Like I said, it will have control of both worlds by the end of next week. Government and military secrets, passwords, launch codes…you name it. It can effortlessly turn off our taps, burst our dams, turn-off life support on Europa, or hijack battle bots; anything with a feed, whether it be pinging the net or the CLOUD, is fair game.”
“Jeeze.”
“For all we know, our food extruders might be printing poisoned meals.”
Or cancelling SIK prescriptions…“This is an Extinctive Event…” It hits Paul. “Oh my god, my girls.”
“Relax, Paul. Like I said—”
“To hell with ‘what you said’. You’ve got to track this thing down and dump that data. Somewhere, someplace, someone’s synching, and you have to ice ‘em.”
“We are working on it.”
“Bullshit.”
“We have agents in 190 countries breaking-down doors and dropping nets, and there has yet to be any sign of the enemy. Whatever is doing this does not have a digital footprint because it walks with the feet of others. It does not even cast a shadow.”
Paul’s eyes widen. “Oh dear lord.”
“What?” asks Shouta, timidly.
“If you’re asking me, you must really be in trouble. What’s the military doing? The government?”
The sound of crunching shells alerts both doctors to a tall, red-haired woman, buckled into a black leather skirt and torn fishnets. She gracefully anchors her glowing-blue jackboots, and hammers two beers through the hologram to the center of the table, hiding the wet rings left by their predecessors.
Shouta looks to Paul. Together, they simultaneously adopt the same fake smile.
In a warm and lyrical voice, the waitress addresses Paul: “Ay love, just a heads-up: Manuelito’s ending all lines of credit. It’s not personal; it’s politics. We’re only taking yen and rubles now.”
Paul concentrates on her bright xanthous eyes, striking in their war-painted coffers. “Sure, Maxine.” He ratchets his mirthless stare downwards, trying to sustain his plastic grin.
Her face lights up. “Paul!” she exclaims, deviating from her script. She clasps his neck affectionately. “Man, it’s been a while.”
“Glad to see you’ve stuck on the right side of the wall.”
“You know me. Always looking for something to steady me so I don’t get lost in the rest of it.”
Paul’s plastic grin slackens to a genuine smile. “Was that your alter ego who served us earlier?”
She giggles. “No, I just hadn’t yet thrown my face on.” She strains a mischievous smirk and leans forward to grab Paul’s empty glass. Bending over, she looks Katajima dead in the eyes.
“Say hi to Frank for me,” Paul mumbles, noticing the attention Maxine’s giving Shouta.
“Sure, sweetie,” she says, turning to Paul. “P-S, comm me when you have the time. I want to run an idea by you.” She winks at him, and swaggers back to the bar, tracking the forest of eyes trained on her.
Watching people watch Maxine, Paul shakes his head, and returns his attention to Shouta.
“Military and government are searching for the person or group responsible. They have thrown resources and money my way to devise a counter attack.”
“And here you are,” Paul whispers.
“Here I am.” Shouta looks around, as if readying to divulge some hot gossip. “The Empty Thought, P-S.”
“Huh?” Paul sputters, clearing his throat. Shouta
remembers or he knows. Either way, I’ll have to walk on egg shells from here on out.
“Your virtual black hole.”
Paul mouths ‘black hole’. “Yeah, great help it’d be if only Winchester hadn’t deleted it when he gave me the boot.”
Deleted what he thought was the only nearly-finished iteration. I copied the Empty Thought. The version Shouta’s referring to attacks an entire data tree and destroys it, whereas my beefed-up version back at home will destroy any data it comes in contact with. Forget data trees; my Empty Thought will fell forests.
“Delete? Heavens, no. I am not even sure that is even possible. Dr. Matsui saved it, notwithstanding internal protest. It has been quarantined ever since.”
“Ah-ha!” Paul flattens his palms on the table. “Good for her...So, what are you waiting for? Give it a try.”
“I have, or rather I would, but you never finished it.”
Amused, Paul raises his eyebrows, tauntingly. “But you did try?”
“Yes. Would have been nice of you to inform me you had encrypted it. Destroyed my ciphers, not to mention wasted hundreds of man-hours.”
“I encrypted the activator, is all. And I did the world a favour. The Mossad and the CIA wanted to use it for regime change. Hieronymus would have used it to reset the lower class’ credit scores…I guess that if you haven’t cracked it, the government’s still stuck murdering the old-fashioned way and the poor are still poor.”
“Even if I could play around with it, I would be hesitant on account of having absolutely no idea what it is capable of…no idea of how to employ it properly.”
“You bring it up thinking it might be a solution to your extinction problem?”
“Our extinction problem. Yes.”
“Say I helped you. Say I completed work on the Empty Thought, found a way to transport it and decrypt its activator. What then?”
“We target the Anomaly.”
Paul furrows his brow. “How much collateral damage are you willing to incur?”
“Why? Can’t we specify a target? Would it damage the CLOUD?”
Paul can’t tell if Katajima is playing his cards close to his chest, or if he simply doesn’t know. “Well,” Paul turns his glass to distort the candlelight, “It might, but that doesn’t matter.”
Cypulchre Page 10
