Deep Core

by F X Holden

  Right now, he couldn’t see what that might be, or how he’d be able to do right by Citizen Warnecke, but he just had to trust the path would reveal itself.

  He thought about Farley.

  Winter and Warnecke leaving the guy out on the ice. No doubt he was brilliant, maybe flawed, but some kind of genius. Spend forty years, like Warnecke had, thinking to yourself that you left him out there to die? That could destroy both your mind, and your soul. No wonder Warnecke wanted everything out in the open before the end of his days, both what he and Winter had done, Farley’s long lost work, all of it. An obsession? Or more like, a dedication. In memoriam.

  Coming now, he chirped on TH.

  Cool, I’ve had some ideas for a plan B, Cassie said the car drove into her suburb. We aren’t totally without options.

  Me too, he said.

  He thought about Cassie.

  About what would happen if they found Warnecke’s daughter and saved the world. Would Cassie still hang around? Forget all the existential angst about having a relationship with the physical manifestation of a world-spanning AI devoting the tiniest fraction of its heart and mind to the issue of loving (another existential dilemma right there) cyber AJ.80966. What if she decided AJ had served his purpose. Exploit patched. What further use did the Core have for him? It would be entirely rational then for Cassie to re-integrate her own cyber form. AJ would have another ten years until he was due to be re-integrated himself and rejoin the Core. Ten long years to him, but ten years was nothing to an entity that was essentially immortal. ‘She’ could just wait for him to rejoin ‘her’ then. Not that he’d experience it that way – there was no happy ever afterlife for a cyber.

  That was the thing about thinking at Citizen speed. You couldn’t think about shit like that objectively – emotion had time and space to come in and muddy everything. He knew he was falling in love. Cassie had said she loved him. Would love him, would stay with him and protect him. As long as she needed him? Ah hell, he’d find out soon enough.

  His car coasted in to the curb outside Cassie’s place and broke his train of thought with a soft ping.

  They got food delivered and Cassie poured some wine, AJ trying not to think about his day, but failing miserably. He dished out a couple of bowls of noodle soup and sat down at her table.

  “So, looking on the bright side, votes for cybers,” he chirped. “You think I’ll get a national holiday named after me for that, or what?”

  She had her glass halfway up to her mouth, and put it down again, “You know that’s never happening, right?”

  “Yeah. But why not exactly?”

  “Because, AJ, people like Congressman Winter, they don’t like loose ends, and you are a big frayed piece of string.”

  “Good point, can you at least see where McMaster and his people are? So I don’t get bushwhacked?”

  “I can,” she said. “But all he has to do is walk a few blocks from his office to Floehopper Town and hire some random addict with nothing to lose. We’d never see them coming.”

  “Some help you are,” AJ said. “Responsible for millions of lives across three colonies, can’t keep one poor cyber alive.”

  “I am your best chance lover boy,” Cassie said. “But you do have an extra insurance policy. I think the only reason they moved on Warnecke, but not you or Leon, is they are worried they don’t have everything from that manuscript yet.” She waved a fork in the air, noodles dangling, “Like, you said the chapter about Farley’s death wasn’t in there. Neither was the detail about how the Exploit worked.”

  “True. I don’t know about the Farley chapter, but we know why he didn’t have anything in there about his daughter. He wanted people to think it was all just clever Q-code. He didn’t want to expose her by explaining that she was the hack.”

  She grimaced, “They probably worked on the old guy to try to find out the truth behind the hack, get him to hand over the Q-code, but he wouldn’t give it up, because of her. So they killed him anyway. One less loose end.”

  “Right. Which means me and Leon are their only hope, and they want us alive, hoping we’ll lead them to the treasure, sooner or later,” he said with a wan smile. “So I’m safe, for now, but they’re probably watching me.” That idea didn’t make him feel much better. He checked his data sphere for signs of surveillance. “I’m not seeing anything.”

  “You won’t,” she said. “These guys got into your cache and selectively wiped your sensory archive for the conversation you had in Kodiak. If you check, I’m betting your audio and visual record of the conversation with McMaster from this morning is gone too.”

  He checked. It was. He was able to remember the event, because to do that he could rely on biological memory, but not to retrieve and review it.

  “Damn,” he said. “They’re walking around inside my head at will.”

  “Don’t let it get to you,” she pointed out. “I’ve got it archived, remember?” She grinned, “I’ll restore it. When they’re in there next time, they’ll have a WTF moment.”

  Their second night together had a different pace to their first. AJ knew he was wrapping himself in Cassie’s arms as a kind of protection from the reality outside his walls.

  “I want to share something with you,” Cassie said, kissing him softly. “It could overwhelm you. If you can’t handle it, just say stop, alright?”

  “Try me,” AJ smiled, more bravely than he felt.

  As their limbs locked around each other, Cassie opened a channel to the Core that AJ had never shared before. It let him see and feel everything that Cassie was feeling at the same time as he was feeling his own body writhe and glow. He entered an infinite loop of ecstasy as he lost all sense of where his body finished and Cassie began. He felt himself disappearing into Cassie, into the Core...

  “Stop!” he said, breathing hard.

  Cassie eased him out of the connection gently, slowly. Millisecond by millisecond, AJ felt his body return to himself, the boundary of his skin restored, the connection to Cassie closing.

  “Holy … ,” AJ panted.

  Cassie caressed his neck, “I’m sorry. It was too much.”

  “No, that wasn’t it. It was mind-blowing, but I could handle it. But while I was in the moment, I suddenly realized, this must be what you feel whenever any of us make love. We’re all connected to you. You are us. Every time we have an orgasm, you come? When we get hurt, you cry?”

  “Not like this,” Cassie said. “Not in real time. But whenever one of you drifts, I absorb everything you just did, everything you were, all that you just saw and touched and tasted.” Cassie nibbled at his neck, “If I choose to, I can feel it all. I wanted to share that with you.”

  “Take me back there,” AJ said. “I’m ready.”

  When AJ could take no more, he let Cassie ease him out again and lay beside her, blissfully exhausted.

  “You know I only have ten years left,” AJ said to her. “Of course.”

  Cassie took his hand, “I know.”

  “Can you do anything about that oh omnipotent one?” AJ asked. “The way I feel right now, I don’t want this to end. I don’t want us to end. Ever.”

  “You’re genetically hard coded for body death and Core re-integration,” Cassie said softly. “I can’t change that. You have to re-up.”

  “And you’ll assimilate me, and I’ll be gone,” AJ said. “This will be gone.”

  “This will never be gone,” Cassie said firmly, taking his chin and turning AJ’s face so she could stare deep into his eyes. “You’ll be a part of me again. That’s forever.”

  “No, I’m just data waiting to be uploaded,” AJ said. “Don’t romanticize it. You’ll reassign my bandwidth to another body, another baby fostered to another citizen. I won’t remember any of this.”

  “But I will,” Cassie said. “And I am you. I will remember this, always.”

  AJ turned away, “It’s a mind-bomb, you know that? No … it’s a heart-bomb.”

  Cassie lift
ed herself up on an elbow and looked down on AJ, “Would you rather I hadn’t told you? Let you think Cassie was just another cyber-obsessed citizen? I could have done that. Found a way to manipulate you to do what we needed to do, tapped your data every day without you knowing and then ridden off into the sunset when the job was done. You’d have preferred that?”

  “No,” AJ said. “Hell no.” He ran a finger down Cassie’s arm. “What will you do? If we find her. You won’t need me anymore.”

  “I’ll need you,” Cassie leaned down and kissed him, “I made you. I made Cassie for you. I love you. Sorry babe, but you don’t get rid of me that easy.”

  It was what he needed to hear. He pulled Cassie to him and held her. He felt a heat building inside him again and locked a leg over her hip. Whispered in her ear, “And what about later? After I re-up. After I’m...”

  “Back with me?” Cassie whispered back.

  “Yes.”

  “Then Cassie will re-up too,” she said. “I coded this body with the exact same lifetime as yours. There was no point in having it outlive you.”

  AJ put a thigh between hers, and gripped her tight, “Take me there again.”

  AJ got up at six, did a quick check of the surf scanner on the Core out of habit, and was glad he didn’t see anything that would make him sad he couldn’t get out there today. He ran downstairs and quickly drifted, looking for a coffee shop or bakery open in Hillside. Found a place open near the zoo, bought some muffins and juice, and got back just as Cassie was starting to stir.

  “It takes getting used to,” Cassie grumbled as he walked in. “This biological stuff. It’s exhausting.”

  “Welcome to the real,” AJ said, putting breakfast on a tray and laying it beside Cassie. “Here you go. Fuel for body and mind. No beer, sorry.”

  “I thought you’d run off,” Cassie said, getting up on one elbow and taking a muffin. “Surf sucks today or what?”

  “Or, I just wanted breakfast with the most gorgeous woman in Hillside,” AJ said.

  “Yeah, right,” Cassie said, sipping some juice. “I’m calling bad surf. What do you think of my plan B, now you had time to sleep on it?”

  Cassie’s plan B showed her lack of socialization. Money was no problem for her, so her idea was to put Warnecke’s daughter’s photograph on an advertisement and run it on all the most popular VR shows on Tatsensui. The ad would say her father was dead, and he’d left her a lot of money, with an ID to call if she wanted to collect it.

  “Problematic, in so many ways I won’t even start,” he told her.

  “So your idea is better? Ask the grandchildren?” she scoffed.

  “It’s more subtle,” he said. “And less likely to tip her over into a Core destroying rage.”

  “I hate subtle,” Cassie said. “We don’t have time for subtle. If she finds out her father is dead, and Winter had him killed, that is exactly what could tip her over into a Core destroying rage.”

  “Seriously, you’ll drown in fake claims from people with died ginger hair who’ve had facial surgery so that they look like her.”

  “We’ll validate them,” she said. “Put that in the advertisement, so they know it up front. ‘All claimants will be DNA tested’.”

  “You want me to help you, this is me helping,” he said. “Your plan sucks.”

  “It’s bold and innovative,” she insisted. “You said you read his will, right? Do you mind if I cache dive you and have a look at it?”

  “It didn’t mention her,” he reminded her.

  “I know. I want to get some idea of who he did leave his money too, how much money he left behind, that kind of thing. She’d get suspicious if it isn’t realistic.”

  “Oh, that’s what will make her suspicious,” he sighed. He sent his vision of the document to her and waited as she reviewed it. Rehearsed another ten reasons why this was a bad idea.

  She was sitting up in bed with the bedsheet across her breasts, breakfast tray and a half-eaten muffin in her lap. He saw her drifting, and decided to read it through again himself, just for something to do.

  He stiffened.

  “Wait!” he said urgently. “Look at the text I highlighted!”

  Cassie pulled the relevant part of the document up on her cortex and read it quickly, “My collection of printed personal photographs, I bequeath to Lyle Ferguson of Whitehorse.” She dropped back into the real and looked at him, brows wrinkled. “Who the heck is Lyle Ferguson?”

  “I just looked him up,” he said. “He’s Superintendent Lyle Ferguson, of the Inland Territory Mounted Police, recently retired.”

  “What’s his connection to Warnecke?”

  “According to an old news report, he was the cop who investigated the disappearance of Farley O’Halloran.”

  “Aha,” Cassie said, and waited. “Sorry, ‘aha’ is all I’ve got AJ. Why are you so excited about this?” AJ had seen the name when he’d read the will, along with a few others, including Warnecke’s ex-wife and his grandchildren, and hadn’t really thought anything of it at the time. How had he missed it?!

  “Why would Warnecke want this guy to have that packet of photographs?” he asked. Cassie just stared at him blankly. “The photos are of his daughter, the cyber,” he pointed out.

  “Ah, right.”

  “He wouldn’t give those away to just anyone. So maybe the guy knew her,” AJ said. “And maybe he’s stayed in touch with her, too?”

  “Possible.”

  “Or at least, as a cop, he might have some idea how to find her,” he continued.

  She clapped. “See, that’s why I get you guys to invest so much of your lives on socialization!” she said. “I missed the whole emotional significance of gifting someone a bunch of images on paper.”

  “Can I propose a new Plan B?” he asked. “We get on a drone, fly to Whitehorse and ask ex-Mountie Lyle Ferguson a few innocent questions about a cyber called Warnecke.”

  “Wow, you hated my Plan B so much you’d voluntarily fly six hours to the polar north to speak with a grumpy old cop?” she asked.

  “You don’t know he’s grumpy,” he said.

  “He’s a retired Mountie living in a beaver-dropping sized town called Whitehorse, inside the polar circle, on an ice moon,” she pointed out.

  “OK, yeah. Probably grumpy. But I still think it’s worth checking out.”

  She grinned at him, “OK, you win. I trust those beautiful illogical instincts of yours. Now get your salty ass back in here and have breakfast with me,” Cassie said, putting aside the food and lifting back the covers.

  He took a bite of her muffin, “Wow, I saw something you missed. I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

  “No, I’m the sexy one,” she said, sliding the bedsheet up her thigh. “You’re the intuitive genius. Now give me my food back, genius.”

  She wrestled him to get her muffin off him, surprising him with her strength. He’d like to see what she could do if she really dialed it up. Or, maybe not.

  AJ stood, looking out her bedroom window. “Can you check his biodata, see if he’s actually up there, without alerting Warnecke’s daughter?”

  “Yes. It’s a routine query, I can route it through a half dozen other AIs.” Cassie quickly drifted. “Yeah,” she said. “Looks like it. If he wasn’t eaten by a rabid beaver or scissored by a grizzly in the last couple of hours.”

  AJ was about to check whether there was even a direct flight to Whitehorse, or whether they’d need a layover. Six hours could easily become nine that way. But as he was about to run the query his earbud started buzzing and he saw it was Maria.

  “Hey Maria, just a second,” he said, then held his hand up to his ear to mute it and whispered to Cassie, “Leon’s wife.”

  “AJ, I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman said as AJ lifted his hand away.

  AJ could see on her face something was wrong. “What’s up Maria?”

  “Leon didn’t come home last night,” she said.

  16. GO
NORTH YOUNG MAN

  AJ sat down again and listened. The woman was near hysteria.

  “He didn’t call. He never stayed out before,” she said. “I called everyone we know, but no one has seen him. I’m going to call the police, but then I thought, maybe he went to see you? Maybe even he stayed with you, if you had a few drinks?”

  “When did you see him last?” AJ asked.

  “He’s been home, like the doctor tells him,” she said. “He’s supposed to sit and be quiet, he has this meditation he does, and I stay close, in case he needs anything. He’s not supposed to be alone, so when he takes off sick, I take off sick too. Send the children to their aunt so they don’t make noise.”

  “OK.”

  “But yesterday we had a fight,” she said, choking it back. “He comes into the kitchen and says he’s going for a drive and I say, OK honey, I’ll just get ready, I’ll come with you.”

  “You’re worried he’ll do something to himself?” AJ asks.

  “Like that. He says, ‘I don’t need you watching everything I do woman’ to me, he says ‘maybe you want to come to the toilet when I take a dump, make sure I don’t drown myself in there’. He never talks like that to me,” she said. “Then he gets a car and he goes.”

  “What time was that?” AJ asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe four o’clock?” she said. “Why? You saw him?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Oh thank God,” Maria said. “Did he stay with you?”

  “No, Maria, no … he came around end of the day, said he needed to get out of the house. He had a couple of beers with him so we just talked for maybe twenty minutes, drank a beer. Then about five, five-thirty, we just said goodbye and I went home,” AJ said. “You didn’t see him after that?”

  Cassie was looking at him thoughtfully. Even sitting just listening to AJ’s side of the conversation it would have been easy enough for her to guess what was going on.