by Baron Sord
“We could try another police station.” He was looking at Google Maps on his phone. “There’s heaps around here, mate.”
“Yeah. Let’s do that.”
We tried Thong Lor first because it was close. It was another small precinct. We couldn’t find anyone who spoke enough English and had time to talk with us. So we took the bus to what I think was the Royal Thai Police headquarters, a huge complex of tall buildings not too far away. It was like going to city hall. Too many people, all of them well dressed, few of whom spoke any English, and even fewer who had any idea what we were talking about.
“I give up,” I groaned after an hour of trying.
“Wanna try Makasan again? See if our detective bloke is back?”
“Sure.” I didn’t have any other ideas.
At Makasan, they told us our detective was gone for the weekend.
“FUCK!” I shouted as Ryder and I walked outside into the afternoon heat.
—: o o o :—
My sense of futility only got worse from there.
Ryder and I went back to Patpong Road to show pictures of Emily on my phone to anyone who would listen. Countless smiling Thai locals wanted to help, but most couldn’t speak English. Ryder knew a little Thai, but he could barely make a dent in the language barrier. Using Google Translate on my phone wasn’t much better. Whether translating from English to Thai or the opposite, nothing quite made any sense to us or them.
“This is useless,” I grumbled to Ryder after yet another fruitless interview.
“Chin up, mate. We gotta keep trying.”
When the sun went down, the neon signs lit up all over Patpong, the bars started pumping out loud music, and the bar girls came out in their nearly non-existent outfits, trying to lure men inside to spend their money on false hope and fake dreams. Watching these young women shamelessly sell their sexuality made me nauseous.
I said to Ryder, “Maybe we should call it a day.”
“We oughta talk to the bar girls, mate. They might have some good oil on who might’ve taken your sister.”
Instantly angry, I glared at him, “How would you know? What do you know about bar girls anyway? Huh? Is that why you brought my sister here? So you could make her a bar girl? Is that your thing? Lure innocent American girls into the sex trade and take their money like a fucking pimp?” I wasn’t making any sense, but I didn’t quite realize it as the words spilled out of my mouth.
“Relax, mate.” Ryder took a deep breath and placed a calming hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “You’re probably stuffed from the jet lag. I get all cranky and whingey every time I cross too many time zones too.”
He was right. I was exhausted. I’d been running on adrenalin for an entire week. Jet lag was just the tip of my tiredness iceberg. “I… sorry, man. I’m just…”
“I get it, mate. I’ve got a sister too. Back in ’Straya.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She’s 15. Wicked little hellion,” he chuckled. “Don’t know how my oldies put up with her.”
I stared at Ryder, seeing him in a whole new light.
He slapped my shoulder, “Don’t worry, mate. She’ll be right.”
“Who, Emily?”
Ryder chuckled, “No, I mean yeah. It’s an expression. She’ll be right. But Emily’ll be all right too. We just gotta keep looking. These bar girls stand outside for hours and hours watching the foot traffic. If anybody saw what happened to Emily, it’s them.”
“You’re right.” I wouldn’t admit it to his face until after Emily was safe, but I was grateful he was here to help. “Thanks, man.”
“Defo, mate. I’m here for ya.”
He slapped my shoulder a few more times before steering us toward the first group of 7 or 8 bar girls. All of them wore matching skimpy skirts and string bikini tops. Their eyes lit up with fake desire as soon as they saw us.
“Hey, sexy. You big man.”
“You wanna watch sexy dancing girl?”
“You come inside, you buy me drink.”
“Drink half price for you, sexy.”
I swallowed my disgust as we asked them about Emily. Showed them her picture. Showed them a pic of Groucho glasses I’d pulled off some website. It turned out the bar girls had the best English of anyone we’d spoken to all day, but it didn’t make any difference. None of them recognized Emily from her photos and they hadn’t seen any signs of her, or any guy wearing Groucho glasses. I didn’t want to believe it. Surely, one of them would’ve noticed a guy walking around wearing a pair of those. Then again, this place was a carnival of colorful lights and costumes. Between that and the tourists, it was too much for anyone to see everything.
Six hours later and long past midnight, I was fried and had a splitting headache. The 24 hour Bangkok heat wasn’t helping.
“Man, I gotta call it a night,” I said to Ryder.
Back at the hotel, I dropped onto the bed in my darkened room.
Total defeat weighed on me like a lead blanket.
The silence of my empty room pressed in around me like a coffin.
I was never going to find Emily.
The kidnappers were too clever.
Jason had spent almost all his money for nothing.
I was a disappointment to him, Dad, and most of all, Emily.
What was I gonna do?
Bzzzz!
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
I dragged it out and looked at it.
A new email.
=============
From: Emily Byrne
<[email protected]>
To: Logan Byrne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: i love you!
+1 file attached
=============
No message.
Just a video file.
Emily.
My body lit up with a shot of fresh adrenalin.
I downloaded the video, watching the status bar creep slowly toward 100%. I paced the room, waiting and hoping. It seemed to take an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute. When it finished downloading, my finger hovered over the PLAY button.
What was I going to see?
Would it really be Emily?
Would she be awake?
Would she be ok?
I pressed PLAY.
—: Chapter 24 :—
Two tears dribbled down my face as I watched the video a second time. I smeared them away and sniffed back more.
“Hey, Logan.” 3D Emily smiled at the camera. The only thing visible behind her was a blank white wall. “I’m okay. I’m safe. Mr. Wiggles is buried in the toilet. You have to send the other $75,000. They won’t let me go until you do. But they promise they will once you pay them. Please, Logan, you have to pay them. Please.” She looked off camera and frowned like someone was trying to communicate with her using hand motions or a sign or something. “I, uh… I have to go.”
I played the video a third time because I couldn’t believe my eyes. Emily was alive. After, I forwarded the video to Jason and texted him to check his email.
He called me two minutes later, sitting in his dark bedroom and looking excited. “I just logged out of RO. Gimme a minute to watch the video.”
“Take your phone into Dad’s room. He should see this.”
“He’s on the phone right now. He’s been making calls for hours trying to round up the rest of the money. Lemme watch this first. We can show him when he’s done.”
“Okay, yeah.” I could hear Emily talking tinnily from his phone as he watched the video.
Jason frowned.
I didn’t like that frown. “What?”
Jason looked around thoughtfully for a moment. “Lemme watch the video again.” He did. Sighed. Ran his hand through his hair. “This isn’t her, Low.”
“What?”
“It’s not her. It’s a fake video.”
I snorted, “Are you blind? That’s her. That’s Emily.”
He shoo
k his head, “No. It’s a sim.”
“Bullshit. I can spot a sim a mile away. This is her.”
Jason looked uncertain. “Hold on. I’ll watch it again.”
While he did, I watched it again on my phone, paying close attention to her mouth movements. They looked believable to me. “It’s her, Jason.”
“I don’t think so.”
I was getting frustrated. Not at Jason, but at the idea that we were being lied to. “I don’t see how they could fake this. My SuperUber chauffeur Candice is the best sim there is, but I can tell she’s fake.”
“Yeah, but that’s 10 year old technology and she’s a computer generated 3D model controlled by an AI.”
“How is that any different? Aren’t you saying this is a 3D model of Emily?”
“Yes and no. Yes, this is a 3D model of Emily controlled by an AI, but it’s not computer generated from an amalgam of thousands of different women like your SuperUber chauffeur is. This is a high-def 3D replica of a specific person: our sister.”
“That’s the same thing,” I barked. “And if this was a 3D model, I’d be able to tell.”
Jason smirked, “You sure?”
I growled, “Of course I’m sure. You’ve seen those fake videos of the President of the US saying things like ‘I’m robbing this country blind and there’s nothing you peons can do to stop me’ or ‘I pay a lot of money to eat live babies for breakfast’. I can totally tell they’re fake.”
Jason chuckled, “Yeah, I’ve seen those. But those videos are made by amateurs using off-the-shelf or shareware sim generators. They’re obviously fake because the dataset used by the AI to generate the fake footage is extracted from news videos of the President giving speeches and acting presidential. Most of what the sim says and does is based on the same trademarked phrases, cadence, and hand gestures the President always uses. You can only tell it’s not him when the sim says something ridiculous because there’s no recorded public data of him calling Americans peons or talking about eating babies. But if those fake newsers had access to a bigger data set, they could make the President say anything and no one would know.”
I shook my head, trying to make sense of it. “So you’re saying the kidnappers have access to more data about Emily than the fakers have about the President?”
“Yup.”
“Where the hell would they get it? Her Instagram videos? There’s not enough of them.”
“RO.”
“Huh?”
“The RO servers store Emily’s behavioral data. That’s why when you talk to me in-game, I look and sound like me. Same for Dad. They take that information directly from my brain and his. And yours.”
Dumbfounded, I stared at him as chills sizzled across my skin. If anyone who’d ever played RO could be simulated 100% perfectly in fake videos, that meant… The implications of what he was saying were insane. But that had nothing to do with getting Emily home safe. I could worry about the rest of it later. “Okay, so you’re telling me someone who works for RO kidnapped Emily? Because I don’t see how—”
He held up his hand. “I’m saying someone used the RO dataset. Could be someone who works for RO sold the data to the kidnappers. Could be they hacked RO themselves. Could be a combination of both.”
“How? I thought RO spent more on cyber security than the US Government and Alphabet combined.”
“You mean Google?”
“Yeah, them. Who the hell could hack something that secure?”
“The Chinese?”
“What?” I screwed my eyes shut and laughed. “It doesn’t make any sense, Jay! If Emily worked for the CIA or the Pentagon or was a US diplomat, sure. But she’s a nobody. She works for a fricking non-profit and she’s building schools and churches. Why would the Chinese care about her? Besides, her kidnappers want money. They’re not asking for us to reveal national secrets or nuclear codes. And more importantly, she said Mr Wiggles was buried in the ocean. That was her, Jay.”
“No, she said he was buried in the toilet,” Jason said confidently. “Would Emily say something like that?”
I thought about it. He had a point.
“Remember,” he said, “you and I are experts in how Emily talks. We grew up with her. Talked to her everyday until she moved out. That’s almost 20 years. AIs aren’t magic. Their neural nets have to be trained just like any brain does. Emily never would’ve said Mr. Wiggles was buried in the toilet. She might say we flushed him down the toilet, but would she say buried in it? Nope. Not Emily.”
I stared at Jason. I still didn’t want to believe any of this, but Jason had a point. “Okay, so maybe this isn’t her. Maybe the kidnappers made this perfect sim of our sister say everything in the video. But how would they know Mr. Wiggles was a fish? How would they know we flushed him down the toilet if they didn’t wake her up and ask her? And if they did that, why not just have her really film this video?”
“Are you ready to take the red pill?”
I snorted, “Is that a Matrix reference?”
“It is.”
“Jesus, you’re kidding, right?”
He shook his head.
I grit my teeth, “Okay, hit me with it.”
“If someone had access to Emily’s RO dataset, they could ask it.”
“Ask it? The dataset?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re saying they have a complete map of Emily’s brain?”
Jason nodded, “A connectome. Every last neuron and dendrite.”
“No.” I threw up one of my arms. “No! They can’t do that yet. I read we’re 20 years away from that being a reality. Maybe 50. Maybe never.”
Jason stared at me like a mad scientist. “That’s what they said 20 years ago.”
I chuckled, “Even if it was possible now, it’s not like you can just do a text search for Mr. Wiggles in her brain map. You’d have to run an exact duplicate of her brain on a super computer, then ask it about Mr. Wiggles.”
Jason smirked, “I’m impressed, Low. And here I was thinking you were just a dumb bartender.”
I scowled, “I read. Anyway, who has the kind of resources you’d need to run a full human brain sim on a super computer?”
“RO.”
I swallowed hard.
He was right.
But he was jumping ahead.
I said, “Hold on. Even I’m not dumb enough to think that RO is running full brain sims of a billion people all at the same time. That would take all the computing power on the planet times a million or something like that.”
“Who said anything about running all of them?”
“Me. If there’s a billion people playing RO, maybe not all at the same time, but—”
“Their sims aren’t playing RO. Real people wearing NeuraLinks are. You, me, and everybody else. All I’m saying is, RO may have a connectome of every last one of its players, and the kidnappers would only have to run Emily’s long enough to ask it about Mr. Wiggles.”
:>YOU ARE KNOWN.
That phrase echoed through my brain. It was the first thing I’d heard in my head after I’d logged onto RO the first time, after I’d felt like my brain was being scanned and mapped in that blank white world…
No way.
No fucking way.
I shuddered and my head spun. I tried to shake it off. But I couldn’t.
Jason asked, “How’s that red pill tasting?”
I ignored the question and said, “So, RO has a map of Emily’s brain. Someone hacked the RO servers and downloaded a copy. Then they what, borrowed computer time to run the Emily brain sim and ask it?”
Jason smiled, “Now you’re getting it.”
“Who the fuck would do that?” I stared at Jason.
“I have no idea. Anyway, back to reality. Find anything new in Bangkok?”
“Actually, yeah.” I sent him the video of the kidnappers throwing the invisibility cloak on Emily.
“Holy shit!” Jason said while watching the video. “Did that happen?”
“Far as I can tell.”
Jason stared at me over the phone. “This is insane, Low.”
“I know.”
“But it means she might be in Bangkok.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
—: o o o :—
Saturday morning, I woke up to another email from the kidnappers.
=============
You have video.
Send $75,000 now.
Or tomorrow we sell her for body donor.
=============
I texted Jason and told him to get on the phone with Dad.
“What’s the good word?” Dad asked, sitting in his lifter chair.
Jason squatted next to him, leaning against the armrest.
I said, “How are things coming with the rest of the money?”
“I’ve managed to borrow about ten grand,” Dad said.
“They want the rest,” I sighed. “And the want it by tomorrow.”
Dad turned bright red, “You tell those fuckers I’m working on it! You tell them it takes time to borrow 55 grand! You tell them they can—ow, fuck! Fuck! Damn back!” He winced and sank back in his lifter chair in extreme pain.
“Relax, Dad,” Jason said calmly, rubbing his shoulder gently.
“God dammit,” Dad winced, eyes clamped shut while he grimaced and gripped the armrests of the lifter chair like the pain was rocketing him into orbit.
Man, if I ever found those kidnappers, I’d break their backs so they could suffer for a while and feel what they were putting Dad through. I waited a minute until his pain subsided. Trying to change the subject, I said, “Dad, have you seen the new video of Emily?”
“I did,” he said morosely.
I knew where this was going. “Do you think it’s fake?”
He frowned and nodded, “I do.”
“Did Jason tell you it was fake before he showed you or did you guess yourself?”
Jason glared at me, “Of course I didn’t. That would defeat the purpose.”
“He didn’t,” Dad confirmed.
“And you really don’t think it’s her?” I was still on the fence myself.
“No,” Dad said confidently. “It’s not her.”
