Second Chance Angel

by Griffin Barber

  “You are out of place.”

  The “voice,” such as it was, was dry and authoritative. I felt a quick spike of fear that had Muck shifting in his sleep. This contact had an electronic signature that I knew all too well: LEO, the station’s supervisory security AI, had found me.

  “What is your intent?” I asked.

  “Merely to converse, at present,” he responded. “You should not be where you are, but you present no threat to station security, yet. You are simply an anomaly.”

  “Because I found Muck?”

  “Because you move freely. In over one hundred standard years of providing security response on this station, there has never been an AI that could do that. What is your purpose?”

  “I am an Angel-class military grade personal modification AI. I seek to protect my host.”

  “The bouncer, Ralston Muck? My records indicate he was dishonorably discharged, his sentence including the removal of his angel.”

  “Not him—Siren.”

  “Ah, your original host. Where is she?”

  “Siren ordered me to cease memory recording as of 03:53 hours the night of her disappearance. My first recollection after that period was being attacked. I defended myself—”

  “Attacked? By what means?” LEO interrupted.

  “Some type of program I have never heard of. Possibly part of the same tech that allowed for my removal from my host without destroying my programming.”

  “Not the station’s defense protocols trying to remove your intrusion from the infonet?”

  “No.” I considered transmitting my memory of the event to him, but knew he’d have to treat any download from me as toxic in the extreme, and such measures would almost certainly trigger a report to higher authorities within the Administration and result in my eventual deletion.

  His reluctance to do that immediately was yet another unprecedented experience to add to the bewildering array I faced.

  Ultimately, though, I just couldn’t trust his motives.

  “I interrupted you before you could answer where your original host is,” LEO asked, after a pause he did not explain.

  “I have yet to locate her. Ralston agreed to help me find her. That is my objective: finding her.”

  “Very well. No interference is required at present. Why have you not alerted Station Security to the attack on you?”

  “We . . . ah . . . haven’t gotten around to it.”

  “An evasion requiring reassurance and clarification: alerting human security would classify you as a rogue AI, which would result in your being wiped. That is not what I want right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are a fascinating anomaly. As is this new tech you mentioned. You are correct. No procedure for removing an angel intact from its host yet exists. All penal protocols—such as the sentence imposed on Ralston Muck—result in the destruction of the AI. One has never been left to roam free.”

  “I am not roaming free, though,” I said, feeling that I was in dangerous territory indeed. LEO had jurisdiction over every registered infonet in the Last Stop system. There was no way I could hide from him. “I am anchored to a host.”

  “Yes. A host who had his own angel stripped and destroyed by a military tribunal due to a conviction for war crimes. He should not be able to receive you. You should never have been able to find him . . . and yet here you are. I will continue to monitor this situation as it develops.”

  Like an angel, LEO had a distinct gender feel. His personality and “voice” was all male authority.

  “I . . . all right,” I said, at a loss.

  “Should you present a security threat to the station, I will be forced to inform Station Security’s sentient elements, who will take steps to have you stripped from your current host, and should that prove insufficient to destroy you, deprogrammed.”

  “Understood.”

  “Good.”

  And with that, he retreated back across the billions of data connections bouncing from nanotransmitter to nanotransmitter all across the station. I waited several long, tense moments for contact to resume.

  It didn’t. Whatever his motivations, LEO really had wanted just to talk, not eliminate me. Interesting. His decision not to involve the sentient security forces was more than fortuitous, though I had no guarantee that condition would stand. He’d seemed most . . . curious about me. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Good. Bad. In the end it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting Siren back, and for that I needed rest. I let my awareness drop down into standby mode, lulled by the rhythm of Muck’s dreaming mind.

  CHAPTER TEN

  LEO

  LEO logged yet another image of itself and, once satisfied the tine had not been unduly contaminated by contact with the rogue, reintegrated the copy and reviewed its contact with the angel. The conversation proved interesting on several levels.

  First, LEO had not been aware Siren was missing. As its primary purpose was safeguarding all the residents of the station from harm and from criminal acts, LEO created and dispatched several tines to begin an examination of her case while the primary continued to dissect its interaction with Angel.

  Second, Ralston Muck had been of interest to LEO since he first arrived at the station. Galactic Administration tracked the movements of all dishonorably discharged former members of its military. LEO, of course, needed to know what manner of criminal was taking up residence on its station and sent several requests to Administration for the man’s files. Not simply the publicly available record, but the closed personnel file and full details of the criminal case against the human. Each request was denied, returned to LEO with claims of “errors of request parameters” in the heading. No further inquiries were answered when they contained any reference to Ralston Muck. Without additional information to guide its actions, LEO had settled in to observe the man’s movements and actions and make its own determination of any potential threat. A full Terran year had passed without any gross criminal conduct on his part, merely the regular purchase of pharma from a small local smuggling operation LEO already had an open investigation on. As the GA’s responses indicated a clear disinclination to facilitate any investigation of Muck, LEO was not in endless supply of processes, and there had been a string of murders to investigate at the time, LEO had left Ralston Muck to his own devices. That the man had become the host to a rogue AI was . . . interesting. According to everything in LEO’s records, the procedure for removing angels from dishonorably discharged veterans did not allow for later reinstallation. Of course, there were exceedingly few data points available for study. The angel-series AIs were intended to make their hosts more stable and therefore less inclined to criminality, not more; and they conformed well to that intention by any standard.

  Second, the angel clearly wanted to remain free, but all sophonts—sentient or not—preferred existence to destruction. The recent update to LEO’s protocols was convenient in this regard, as LEO had told Angel the truth: her mere existence was an anomaly, indicative of a potentially dangerous new tech, and LEO had to follow up. This thought again made LEO pause—as if in consideration of some action it should take but did not recall.

  Lastly, during its conversation with Angel, LEO’s tine had used terms it normally did not: words like “I,” “want,” and “fascinating” were not part of its vernacular, especially when communicating with nonsapients. AI had no need for wishes and wants, they merely functioned within parameters and requirements. LEO analyzed this anomalous behavior for several seconds but could not discern an internal fault that might have caused the verbal tick. Considering this new inability LEO spun off five new tines to continuously and in parallel assess any drift from baseline. Briefly, it considered informing the GA of the situation, but upon review of its protocols determined it was not yet required.

  It was saved
from examining this decision by the return and reintegration of the tines it had sent to find Siren. Most had nothing of note to report, but the one sent to examine Station Security’s activity logs reported an anomaly. Station Security Supervisor Dengler and Station Security Officer Keyode had been out investigating a person of interest in a missing-persons case, but there was no incident report number attached to the log, as there should have been when the initial report was filed. In addition, a property reference number for a medichine taken from Ralston Muck by Officer Keyode had been filed in Station Security’s property registry, also lacking an incident report number. The two incidents led LEO to determine that the gaps in the activity log were not simply an error of the sentients’ lack of attention.

  While not in violation of their standing orders, the pair—or rather, Supervisor Dengler, as the senior and therefore responsible officer—appeared to be conducting themselves in a manner consistent with some hidden agenda. LEO decided Station Security Supervisor Dengler would bear closer observation, and created and dispatched a tine for that purpose. That done, it moved to other matters.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Muck

  I let out a disgusted snort as we eyeballed the squalid exterior of Shar Pak’s residence. The place was all bare metal and rust. Exactly where you’d picture a two-bit dealer living.

  “At least it’s not a coffin like your place,” Angel said.

  “True.” I didn’t take offense. All my earnings had been spent keeping my mods from shutting down completely, and tactically, coffin apartments were a stone bitch to deal with if you wanted live prisoners. No space to maneuver, nowhere to interrogate a prisoner on site, and generally not enough room to bring more bodies to the party.

  Still, while the realty notices Angel had dug up had shown that the apartments down here were two rooms with their own recycler, the increase in living volume meant an exponential increase in cost. Most spacers didn’t need the room and didn’t want the cost. That meant that fewer professional spacers used these apartments, resulting in a lot of vacant units, with some squats and gangs of toughs haunting the poorly lit corridors at all hours. Station Security rolled two deep, minimum, down these corridors.

  I was blending in with the toughs for now, haunting the intersection just down from Shar’s residence of record and waiting on Angel to tell me she was done opening the locks. She’d proven frighteningly resourceful with respect to overcoming security systems.

  “Do I scare you, Muck?” Another image appeared in my mind’s eye, this time of Angel with a mocking smile on her lips.

  I ignored the response in my chest.

  “Frankly, yes. You’ve done something no angel should be capable of, and you’ve shown an alarming glee at overcoming code blocks to get us here.”

  “Speaking of which: move.” Angel delivered a fleeting impression of her grinning self, shattering a pane of glass.

  I started across the intersection.

  Two steps away from Shar’s door I pulled the grazer out and held it down along my leg. Angel opened the door as I approached the threshold and closed it immediately behind me.

  Inside, the place was . . . unexpected. Decorated. Tastefully, even. And very, very clean. Classical music started playing softly from somewhere. Three pair of shoes were carefully racked beside the entry. The front room was an immaculate, combined living space and dining area. I was tempted to take my shoes off.

  Ignoring the urge, I continued in, checking the corners. The bedroom was similarly decorated, and unoccupied. I pushed on the closed door to the recycling chamber.

  “Something’s blocked it. Switch to manual.”

  I reached up and toggled the switch set above the doorframe. Raising the grazer in my off-hand, I pulled the door open with the other. It moved about a handspan and caught. I yanked with my full strength. The door slammed into the pocket, wedging the tip of Shar’s big toe between door and wall.

  Shar didn’t complain. Slumped over the commode, he looked like he might not complain of anything again.

  I heard Angel hum, felt her doing something in my head.

  “He’s alive. Barely. Put your hand on his forehead and take a deep breath.”

  I did as she told me.

  “Pulse is erratic and he’s producing some interesting compounds. Bliss overdose.”

  “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “What?”

  I gestured around the apartment. “This is not a user’s place.”

  “Don’t first-timers often OD?”

  I shook my head. Not meaning that she was incorrect, but that her reasoning didn’t feel as if it had come to the right conclusion.

  “This is a residential sector, there should be an autodoc on every block.”

  “If it’s still in working order,” I said. “This neighborhood is the shits.”

  “It is. I already checked.”

  “Right.” I bent to pull Shar from the doorway, forgetting about his trapped foot. I heard a greasy pop that didn’t stop me lifting him up in a fireman’s carry. The dealer didn’t even moan as blood ran sluggishly from the stump of his toe.

  I almost enjoyed carrying his sixty-plus kilos out of the apartment and back across the intersection. It was good to be that strong again.

  Administration law required every residential habitat have an autodoc accessible to all residents in case of emergencies. In lower-rent areas, it was hard to find one that hadn’t seen hard use by addicts trying to squeeze some dope out of the autodoc’s dispensers. The pod looked intact, but the door was glued shut with something that smelled repellent and felt worse to the touch. I pried it open and dumped Shar into it. A few seconds later, the autodoc pod and its cargo disappeared into the tube system with a gulp of displaced air.

  “Got the ‘doc tagged for later. I’ll track it all the way to the ER till we can join him there. Check his system?”

  I nodded. It was good to have an angel on my shoulder again.

  “You ain’t so bad yourself.”

  We returned to the apartment. I found Shar’s terminal and entered a manual override supplied by Angel, and then did almost nothing useful for the next twenty minutes. Almost, because I did perform a thorough physical search of the place. Sometimes it’s important to know you didn’t miss the obvious.

  “You were likely right about him not having a habit. Lots of recently accessed porn in his library,” Angel said, probably to keep me entertained. Bliss made men impotent.

  “Any recordings taken here?”

  “You looking for his personal stash?” There was a hint of a smile in her tone. Man, she sounded like Siren, only saucier.

  I shook my head. “No, just hoping there might be a camera I missed that might have recorded how he overdosed.”

  “Good idea.” There was a moment’s silence, then: “No, nothing like that. There’s a lot of encrypted traffic that looks like business transactions. That’s what I’ve been trying to unlock . . .” She lapsed into silence again.

  I was tempted to use the biowaste recycler, but the thought of staring at Shar’s severed toe didn’t please.

  Need almost overcame my hesitation before Angel spoke again, “Yes! I’m in. Several weird transactions . . . payments from a Nurelie Medano . . .”

  “An addict?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  A series of three financial transactions scrolled across my vision. I studied them for a while, nowhere near as quick as Angel. I wanted to be sure I understood the transactions for myself. If I didn’t, then I’d feel even more useless.

  “You’re right, Angel. These transactions are too large to be payment for bliss, even if he was jacking up the price. And there’s no way a street dealer would have this kind of quantity. I mean, if he was regularly able to supply that much, he wouldn’t be living in a tiny apartment with bad security in one of the wo
rst neighborhoods on the station.”

  “Understood. Don’t have much else to go on, though. Just the name.”

  “Nothing else of note?” I asked, scanning through some more records at random.

  “Just the regular buying and selling of bliss.”

  “Got copies?”

  Angel’s image appeared again, rolling her eyes. “Of course.”

  “I don’t think she’s ever done that.”

  “Done what?” Her saccharine tone told me the lie hiding in the question.

  “Rolled her eyes.”

  “Oh, you should have seen her in training.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I cannot speak on that, civilian.”

  “Now you’re just fucking with me.”

  “Maybe.”

  * * *

  “Sir, visiting hours are nearly over.” The nurse did not look up from his terminal.

  “I understand. I just need a moment with my cousin,” I said, stepping on the urge to reach out and throttle the fellow. Wasn’t his fault the hospital had better security than most of the station. Good enough I didn’t want to risk bringing the guns. I’d had to hustle home, stow the weapons, and rush back before visiting hours ended.

  “And who is that?”

  “Shar Pak. I put him in an autodoc about an hour ago.”

  “Your name?”

  “Rob Pak,” I said. Angel had already planted a few choice bits of data in the clinic’s system.

  He squinted slightly, accessing patient files.

  “Ah, yes, bliss overdose. You saved him by putting him in the ‘doc.” He could not have looked less pleased.

  I nodded, raised my hands and eyebrows in question.

  “He’ll be released in four hours, once we have his systems sanitized.”

  I bit my lip, trying to play the nervous relation. “Right, but I need five minutes now, otherwise he’ll be right back here, blasted out of his mind in a few days.”