Deep Core

by F X Holden

  Gratitude? So they’d burgled Warnecke’s place and got the manuscript? The idea made him glad he’d taken Warnecke’s photos or they would have gotten those too, but now his problem was to get it back before Warnecke realized it was gone.

  “You can come past Sol Vista this morning,” AJ said, carefully. “I’ll give your name to the desk.” So everyone will know you’re here, he was thinking.

  “Great, I’m just around the corner, see you in five?” McMaster said.

  He’d hoped for a little time to prepare himself, but he was also thinking the sooner McMaster was out of his hair, the better. Brownie was on a morning shift for once and he told her McMaster was a ‘contractor’. Knew that was vague and boring enough Brownie wouldn’t even ask about it. She looked like she wanted to say something, but AJ was in no mood for gossip. He gave her a wave and took one of the meeting rooms off the main reception area.

  At least the flow was clear. Meet with the psycho ninja assassin-for-hire, then go chat with super-hacker Warnecke, ask him where he might find his daughter, otherwise known as Destroyer of Worlds. Then report back to his lover, the semi-omnipotent AI demi-god. His life really had become a tad more complicated since the new resident moved into number 96.

  He had Cassie ready on a passive TH comms band, listening in, in case he needed her - but what he wanted was a full military guard.

  Sit down, take a deep breath, imagine you are out on the Shifting Sea while you are waiting, Cassie said, reading his biodata. We got this.

  AJ was sitting and not-looking at one of the lifestyle zines in the reception room when McMaster walked in. Brownie looked up from her desk, checked out McMaster with his dark suit and attaché case, and then looked back at her doll catalog or whatever she killed time with. McMaster wasn’t coming into the residents’ area, so she didn’t have to sign him in. AJ stood and gave him a fake smile and shook his hand, then closed the door out to reception.

  He was living in a fugue state now. His physical self living at the crippled speed of citizen thought and interaction, his cyber-self working at quantum speed processing scenarios and options for finding the elusive daughter of Citizen Warnecke. Cassie hadn’t cut him off from the Core, but she’d halted his auto-drift requirement and put a fake drift signal in place to mimic it so that the gap wouldn’t be seen. At the same time, she’d put a filter on his ad-hoc Core access so that anything that looked like it was related to Warnecke’s daughter would be caught before being Deep Cored. It was like flying with one wing crippled, but he understood the need.

  “Nice location,” McMaster said. “Short walk to Sea Gate beach, shopping.” He looked around the room and saw a coffee machine in the corner. Grimaced at the fact it was pseudo. “A lot of traffic down on the main road though, must be dangerous for your more frail clients. May I?” He pointed to a cup.

  “Knock yourself out,” AJ said. He wasn’t happy and he didn’t feel like hiding it. He had discussed with Cassie, should he get into it with McMaster, let him know he didn’t appreciate that whole scene with his goon and Cyan? They decided no, let McMaster think it was a busted move, AJ too distracted to even notice he was being played.

  McMaster took his time. The coffee machine was one of those that synthesized instant coffee on the spot, had a little whitener thing on the side. He made himself a cup, then decided it looked a bit weak, gave it an extra shot, then tasted it. “Hmm, good … beans,” he lied, finally sitting down. He took out a stylus and a notepad and rested them on his lap. “So. The Congressman is grateful for all your assistance in this delicate matter.”

  “Assistance?” AJ said. “I gave you a document Citizen Warnecke asked me to give you. I met with you on a beach, and we talked about houses at Sol Vista.” He shrugged. “Not a lot of assistance.”

  A small smile flitted across McMaster’s lips. “Believe me, the Congressman sees it a little differently.” He tapped the pad on his lap, making it clear to AJ that whatever he was about to write down was going to stay off-Core. “And I know you already refused his offer of compensation, but it would make us all more comfortable if you changed your mind on that.” AJ was about to speak, but McMaster held up one hand to stop him, while he wrote on the notepad with the other. When he was finished, he lifted off the page and handed it to AJ. “We trust this amount would be acceptable?”

  AJ took it and read. It was, probably not coincidentally, the equivalent of two year’s combined income from his Sol Vista salary and what he made trading bandwidth.

  He ran through a dozen responses before settling on one, “In return for what?”

  “Your discretion,” McMaster said. “You would receive half the amount now, and half in two years. When we expect the investigation into New Syberia’s President would have concluded.”

  “So, you made up your mind about me.” AJ said. He handed the paper back to McMaster. “What if my answer is still thank you, but no thank you?”

  “I would consider that … admirable,” McMaster said and brushed an invisible hair off his trousers, speaking without looking at AJ now, “But not surprising. When was the last time, AJ, you heard of anyone murdering a cyber?”

  AJ felt his skin chill, “What?”

  Cassie, are you getting this? he asked on TH.

  Yeah babe. Stay calm, I’m monitoring the threat environment, but I’m not worried yet.

  “Cyber murder,” McMaster said, staring at him with curiosity. “Do a quick drift. Cyber murders, globally, the last five years.”

  It took AJ less than a second. “Ten,” he replied. “And in all cases the murderer was arrested within minutes,” he added.

  “Ten. Yes. Quite often crimes of passion I think you’ll find. Committed or commissioned by people deranged by jealousy. Or just plain deranged,” he smiled a crocodile smile. “And why would it be, that low murder rate and exemplary arrest rate, AJ?”

  “Because we are Core chained. Nothing that happens to us can remain secret. If we are threatened, we drift immediately. If we die suddenly, everything we’ve seen and heard since our last drift will be automatically uploaded via multiply redundant systems and immediately Deep Cored. The Core would…”

  “Yes, the Core looks after its children, doesn’t it? So I would assume if, hypothetically, you felt threatened by me, you would cache our conversation for later retrieval and it would come up in the event of a purely hypothetical murder investigation. Like you did down at the beach?”

  AJ didn’t react. But in the time it took him to not react, he had drifted and checked the status of his uplink from Kodiak beach.

  It was gone …

  You’ve been cache hacked, Cassie said, breaking in. They copied what they could find, but they deleted that data to send you a message.

  Can’t you stop them?

  Not without them finding out about me. Don’t worry, I’ve been archiving everything in your cache in case this happened. They can’t hurt you that way. Remember, this is all just a sideshow now.

  “Maybe,” AJ said, dropping back into the conversation with McMaster, and bluffing back. “But with all that’s going on, I’m also sending a copy of all my interactions in real time to a local cache, off-Core. So someone could try to kill me, hypothetically, but it would be damn near impossible to get away with it.”

  McMaster’s eyes narrowed momentarily, but he recovered quickly. “Exactly. And everyone knows that, yet cybers are still being murdered. Not often, but often enough. Can your immense intellect explain that, AJ?”

  He quickly reviewed the ten cyber murders and the profiles of their killers. “The killers expected to be caught, but did it anyway,” he said. “Six of them were hired killers...”

  “With nothing to lose, I think you’ll find. Big debts they couldn’t pay off, favors they owed, no other way out of some pathetic dead end or other.” He clipped his stylus back onto his notepad. “Sad really, but the world is full of people like that. Anyway, I digress - back to our earlier conversation. If you aren’t interested in m
oney AJ, and since we both agree that murdering you is out of the question,” he chuckled. “Which, for the record, was a lame joke … I wonder if I can interest you in an incentive of an ideological nature? Something very close to your heart.”

  “I’m listening.”

  AJ couldn’t help being intrigued by how McMaster played the game of carrot and stick. He played a wildly spinning carousel of carrot, stick, bluffs, threats and bribes that was clearly intended to keep AJ off-balance.

  “The holy grail, AJ,” McMaster cooed. “Voting rights, for cybers.”

  “Would mean nothing,” AJ said. “As long as we are a kept to a one percent minority on Tatsensui. Unless it was accompanied by guaranteed seats in Congress.”

  “Congressman Winter is acutely aware of that desire,” McMaster said. “So if I can assure him of your discretion on this matter, he is willing to propose a bill to Congress, with the full weight of his considerable reputation behind it, which would guarantee the Tatsensui cyber population equal voting rights, and a minimum of four seats in Congress.”

  Holy hell, he said on TH.

  Take it with a pinch of salt AJ. I’m putting it at 87% probability of being another bluff, to buy them time.

  But what if it isn’t? What if …

  Just agree, Cassie said. If it’s genuine, you win. If it just gets them off your back for now, you still win.

  He leaned across to McMaster and held out his hand, and gave him a big smile, “Citizen, you have a deal. My lips and cache are sealed.”

  They shook. “I’m glad,” McMaster said. “The Congressman would have been so disappointed if we couldn’t find a mutually agreeable solution that lets him continue to devote his energies to more important matters of State.”

  “OK. So how does this work?” AJ asked.

  “Well, as far as you are concerned, this is the end of the matter,” McMaster said, standing. “We’ll consult with Citizen Warnecke’s family and find a better solution for him.” AJ stood too, and McMaster clapped him on the arm. “In the meantime, the Congressman will set up a committee in the next two weeks to start drafting the new law, as a show of good faith. Soon, all this nonsense will be behind us, you’ll be back surfing, and in a few of years’ time, fingers crossed, your biggest worry will be who to vote for in the next election.”

  As he watched McMaster walk through the doors to a car waiting outside for him, AJ felt an almost physical relief.

  He’d made it through.

  Is that an endorphin spike I’m seeing? Cassie said on TH. Are we cheering on the inside over there in Sunny Vista?

  Oh yeah, believe it, AJ said. And you can stop eavesdropping on me now. I’ll see you tonight.

  OK. Enough slacking. Get back to your homework lazy bones, she said. We’ve got an interplanetary civilization to save.

  He smiled, gave Brownie another wave, more cheerful this time, as he went out into the Garden. He hadn’t stopped working his Warnecke problem while he was speaking with McMaster, and had decided how he would handle it. He’d go knock on Warnecke’s door, with his document box in hand. Hi Citizen Warnecke, I found this outside the door to my workshop, did you leave it for me again? The guy would be confused, not knowing if AJ was playing with him, or if he really had taken the photos over there and it was just his TGA that had made him forget doing it. Then AJ would fumble, drop the box so the photos spilled out. Oh, sorry about that. Hey, who is this woman here? Not your granddaughter – do you have a daughter?

  He’d put Warnecke’s box in a visitor locker before McMaster arrived and picked it up, checking his comms as he did. No message from Leon, of course, but he hadn’t expected him in today after Maria’s call. He should call the guy, let him know the Warnecke situation was under control now and tell him to relax. But first, Warnecke’s daughter. He drummed his fingers on the box as he followed the path toward number 96. It was still early in the morning, Warnecke would probably not have gone over to the library yet, was probably still finishing breakfast. If he was already at the library, he’d just take the box over there. He rehearsed his lines in his head as he walked.

  Flow. He loved it.

  As he walked over to the apartment, the sun was warm and the day mild, and he allowed himself a moment to enjoy it, first time in a long time. A part of his forebrain was occupied with that nice feeling, but as he walked, the other 90% of his mind was chewing at the problem of what kind of information he’d need to wheedle out of Warnecke, short of her current name and address, to give them a chance of finding his daughter. Warnecke’s door suddenly appearing there in front of him brought him back to the real world. The door was unlocked as usual but he knocked out of courtesy. There was no answer, so he knocked again, before pushing the door open a crack.

  “Hello? Citizen Warnecke?” He waited for an answer but the place was quiet. Maybe the old guy was out the back again.

  He had a quick look around his sitting room, and saw a bunch of printed pages, like personal letters, and a document box on the dining table like the one he had ‘borrowed’.

  “Citizen Warnecke?” He called again, louder this time. Nothing. He walked through the lounge and kitchen to the corridor beyond. “Anyone home? Maintenance call!”

  At the back door he hesitated. Maybe he was out in his rear courtyard, like last time. Didn’t want to give the old guy a heart attack by surprising him in the middle of a morning nap. So he knocked on the door from the inside, “Anyone out back there?”

  There was no answer, so he pushed the door open and saw the courtyard was empty too. OK, maybe he’d gone for a walk; into town or something, maybe down to Fatty’s for a breakfast muffin.

  Going back to the sitting room he looked on the dining table at the pile of pages there and frowned as he looked through them. None of the pages were DNA locked, so he could see all the content. He’d thought maybe they’d be related to Warnecke’s manuscript, but all he saw were some routine things that Warnecke had apparently not wanted to keep on-Core; old contracts, credit statements, a copy of Warnecke’s will (in which his daughter was not named) and in the document box were printouts of what looked like a lifetime of messages from a woman who he assumed was Warnecke’s wife. The box also held family photos, none of which showed the girl with the auburn hair. He suddenly felt like a burglar and decided he’d stayed long enough.

  But something didn’t feel right.

  He called up cached imagery, comparing the inside of the house today, with how it had been the last time he was here. The images were close enough. He was about to turn away again when something in the images stopped him. He played them back, then looked around the room and realized what had stopped him.

  It wasn’t that anything in particular was wrong. It was more that everything was wrong. Everything in the room was more or less where it had been when he’d been in here last time, but it was like it had all been lifted and shifted a couple of inches this way, or that. The dining table, the sofa, the fruit bowl on Warnecke’s coffee table, the pictures on the walls. All just a tiny bit different. Moved, but carefully put back. Very carefully.

  Too carefully.

  McMaster’s goons had been in to copy Warnecke’s manuscript, that was the only thing that made sense. And while they were at it, they had a good look around to make sure they’d got every last page. He checked his vision against the reality in front of him. They were good – there was no way anyone but a cyber would have noticed. Certainly no way Warnecke would have known.

  There was a sudden noise from the direction of Warnecke’s bedroom.

  Damn! He’d lingered too long.

  He called out quickly, “Citizen Warnecke? It’s AJ. Maintenance call.”

  Nothing.

  He walked carefully through the kitchen, down the corridor toward the bedroom.

  “Hello?”

  The noise again. A metallic click. He froze.

  Every nerve in his body was yelling at him to run. That was good, he didn’t need to artificially boost his fight/
flight response. Taking a breath, he took a step into Warnecke’s darkened bedroom.

  His irises flared, adjusting to the darkness. He saw immediately what was making the clicking noise. The window was open a few inches and the rod that was used to manually adjust the light filter in case the power went out, was swaying in the breeze. He saw something else too.

  Citizen Warnecke was lying on top of his bed. He was fully clothed, his shoes kicked off and lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. On the bed beside his left hand was an empty bottle of very fine brandy. His right hand held a pill bottle which AJ immediately recognized. Blues. The bottle was empty. Any more than a double dose was dangerous and could cause heart failure. Six was all it took to guarantee a fatal infarct.

  AJ stepped to his side and felt his neck. No pulse. He bent and listened for breathing. The man was dead and stunk of brandy. There was an Emergency Revival Kit in each unit. If he’d died within the last hour there was a chance he could be revived, infinitesimal probably, but … As he ran to the kitchen to fetch it, he paged Cassie.

  I’ve got a situation here, he said on TH. Check my feed for the past five minutes.

  She might have been at work by now. He couldn’t hear any background noise though, so maybe not. OK, what’s the panic? Oh, shit. That’s not possible. He can’t be dead!

  Yeah well, I’m about to try to revive an impossibly dead guy. AJ grabbed the kit from under the kitchen sink and started running.

  I don’t understand, Cassie said. I’ve had a trace on his biodata for exactly this reason. He can’t be…

  AJ ran back into the bedroom and dropped the kit on the bed. He fixed two electrodes to Warnecke’s temples, and ripped his shirt open, to fix two to his chest. Lastly, he lifted a breathing cup from the kit, pulled free the hose and pushed it onto Warnecke’s nose and mouth where it self-sealed. He punched the large red button on the front of the kit.

  That won’t work, Cassie said. If he took a bottle of blues on top of a bottle of brandy, he’s got enough toxin in his blood to stop his heart again immediately even if you get it restarted.