A People's War (The Oligarchy Book 2)

by Stewart Hotston

  A People’s War

  by

  Stewart Hotston

  Copyright © 2016 Stewart Hotston

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0995701938

  ISBN-13: 978-0995701939

  DEDICATION

  Benjamin Burroughs, who makes all this possible by believing in me. For the rest I need to mention Matthew Sylvester, Seymour Jacklin and everyone who read A Family War, you’re the ones who got me this far. Thanks!

  Chapter 1

  TWO DAYS had passed since the bombing. It wasn’t long enough to arrange a flight to her parents’ home in Ille–sur-Tet, at least not during wartime. It was long enough to feel the impact, to see the reports in the news and to wake at night, suddenly breathless. Dreams of bodies exploding like water balloons appearing in the afterlight.

  Helena was confined to London, a city over which the darkness of fear had settled like a permanent gloom. Its nebulous tentacles slithered silently into people’s vision of what the world should be.

  Try as they might, the Families could not hide the cause of the devastation at the station in the south of the city: an entire rail terminal reduced to a smoking wreck of bodies and plasteel. The news that Oligarchs had died was as shocking as a sharp inhalation of ammonia.

  David had been beyond reach since she’d left him there, overwhelmed in the aftermath of the bombing. The right man in the right place at the right time. A hero whose face rapidly came to symbolise hope for those who felt themselves surrounded by a threat whose face was their own. He had been interviewed countless times, his story gently edited for his own sake. None of his appearances answered the question, ‘Why?’

  As the first on the scene, responsible for saving Oligarch lives and believed able to provide some idea of who had done it, David continued to be asked for his commentary on the event.

  The people surrounding him were too inquisitive for Helena to have risked contacting him; the longer she could avoid what the security footage would inevitably reveal the better. She was heading into storms of her own; being linked to each other would only complicate the situation for them both.

  It would be apparent soon enough that they had formed a relationship beyond the purely professional. Her AI reflected that Helena’s body exhibited all the signs of an empty heart. Helena could not bring herself to agree but knew she missed him; there was a hunger in her stomach that calories couldn’t satisfy.

  Her secondary AI accessed and opened the door in front of her. I wonder how long I’ll be able to duck the Lateral Solvers. The computers whose sole goal was discovering the identity of missing Euros assets didn’t know who she was or what network of connections her presence formed in the web of possibilities they were trying to map. Yet. It wouldn’t be long before they linked her to theft, murder and, worst of all, professional misconduct. Helena hoped she could find a way of justifying her actions, of finding her father before the AIs could and recommended her detention as a person of interest.

  I suppose it’s possible I’ll be in northern Europe before my luck runs out. At any other time it would be simple to skip the city and complete my errand before I’d be missed. Yet now, with the takeover struggle lapping at Europe’s gates and a masked menace lurking inside the fortress, no one had the freedom they normally took for granted.

  She was not worried about what she could not control; it was simply a matter of time before someone knocked on her door and began asking difficult questions. Still, she was a Family member and the authorities would have no reason to deny her the right to travel where she wished, even if they would demand the right to scrutinise, examine and authorise her movements.

  In her long lifetime, the European Parliament had only agreed to such restrictive travel measures once before, in the days of the early nanoviruses. Then, as well as now, fear drove everyone to limit themselves in the hope of defeating something they couldn’t identify.

  The viruses were never stopped through restrictions on freedom; in the same way Helena doubted the current round of red tape would stop the war from spilling over into Europe when its sponsors were ready. Fear rarely achieved the safety it set out to secure.

  As Helena entered the room, she took a breath to steel herself; she was there to orchestrate her own undoing. Still, there was nothing for it; sometimes one had to step off the cliff. The key was not to watch the ground approaching.

  Her AI snickered in the background at her cod portentousness. She sighed inwardly. Helena’s recently sentient AI may have promised to stay out of her personality, but it had never offered to be likeable.

  At the site of the bombing, they had come to an understanding, achieving a sense of who each of them was. Since then the AI had been piecing itself together, working out what it believed it was. Helena’s only sense of its progress came when they communicated. Each time, she came away feeling it was somehow more substantial, like a portrait taking form as it progressed toward completion.

  Her anxiety over its independence was slowly being replaced by unease at its growth and evolution. What would it become, what would it eventually demand of her?

  ‘Helena. Come in.’ said the man in front of her. He was sitting in a comfortable, black, mock-leather chair. It squeaked as he shifted his weight, underlining the informality of the meeting. His suit was a soft grey and creased impeccably, as if it were still on the hanger. His hair was swept back and parted to the right and two ocean-grey eyes watched her from under pencil-line eyebrows. The room smelled of bluebells and steel, although a faint touch of tired warmth from the computers inside stole the freshness from the air.

  ‘Thanks, Alex.’ said Helena and her AI shut the door.

  Alex sat up a little and Helena received into her mind’s eye the format of the interview they were about to undertake. It wouldn’t take more than an hour.

  Helena had more experience of the rogues they were hunting down than anyone else. When she had returned to London with the first of them, he had been unconscious. Since he had never recovered, dying only three days later, Helena remained the only person to have officially spoken with him after his escape. However, unknown to all but herself and her former pilot turned extremist, Denholme, even if she had wanted to she could not have helped the investigation.

  She tried not to shiver, to keep her pulse under control. Alex Ivanovich had asked for her help in calibrating the Lateral Solvers. His view was that she knew more than anyone else did about where the other rogues might be and so represented the optimal path for the problem-solving AIs to become familiar with the case, like bloodhounds being given the scent of their quarry.

  Helena’s team was still attempting to gain access to Edward’s guards in London. They were finding it hard work; Euros was giving them access with one hand but removing it with the other. Helena was convinced the left hand did not know what the right hand was up to. She didn’t see any conspiracy in such a situation, content that the dysfunction was more a confederacy of dunces, but it was their job and they were required to soldier on.

  The growing conflict between Euros, its allies and Indexiv escalated the difficulties. Paranoia was seeping into the normally cautious corridors of information; the immediate response was political manoeuvring and internecine conflict. What should have required the authority of a junior director now required the unwavering physical presence of a senior figure willing to stick their neck out.

  Although members of the team had their own tasks, most had become embroiled in Helena’s objective at the behest of the director, Andreas. This had not improved their productivity. Helena herself had been present when, in a single afternoon, Jane had been promised she would be sent information on how Edward had
slipped his guards, only for a third party to initiate contact and deny the request less than half an hour later. Bickering parents never inspire optimism and morale was drooping further with each new frustration.

  The entire department was becoming more suspicious and, even without dots to join up, were developing a picture of Euros’ internal workings that cast considerable doubt on their ability to win the war.

  Who these rogues actually were continued to exercise their imaginations but more than one person had voiced their concern over the identity of persons who provoked such a confused response from their own side. Andreas, the department head, spent much of his time trying to maintain some sense of progress and discipline.

  Helena took a seat in the sunlight, across from Alex, as he completed the boot up of the second Lateral Solver.

  ‘I assume you know the drill?’ he asked casually, not taking his eyes from the screen in front of him. Helena shook her head.

  ‘Sorry, no,’ said Helena, slightly embarrassed.

  ‘Really?’ asked Alex. Helena looked at him curiously; he seemed less surprised than pleased that she had not encountered this type of Intelligence before.

  ‘It’s not something I came across in Dipcorp,’ said Helena apologetically. Because I’m not a nerd, she thought.

  Her AI whispered,Are you OK?

  Yes, she replied. I’m just not sure where I want this to go.

  Or even if you can determine the destination, finished her AI.

  Helena pursed her lips and waited for Alex to explain what was going to happen.

  Alex rolled his shoulders in preparation. ‘Well, you know the format, but the material fact is you’ll be conversing with the Solvers directly. No immersion in the Cloud, no haptic feedback loops. They’ll manifest themselves in this room.’ Alex paused as he tried to finish off the installation at the same time as putting Helena at her ease. ‘Try to be careful with them; these AIs are teetering along the border of sentience as it is. No paradoxes, no metaphysical conundrums, just answer their questions.’ He pointed to the door, ‘If they trigger or fail to initialise properly I’ll be alerted. Otherwise try to enjoy it.’

  The machines which gave life to the Solvers were housed several floors beneath them, just above the maintenance decks in the two twenties. The room Helena was in could have been mistaken for a common room, a place where the team would come to relax. The room was dominated by a table at its centre which was surrounded by the mock-leather furniture in which Alex and Helena sat.

  A large window on the east side of the room offered a panoramic view of the Trade Centre and Euros Spires. The sunlight bathed the room, reflecting off the pearlescent white of Euros’ towers. The weakness of the daylight, the shimmering of its intensity as it focused slurred images of the surfaces from which it was bouncing, invoked the cool feel of evening, regardless of the actual time of day.

  Alex slapped his knees with his palms. ‘Perhaps it’s easier to just show you.’ He turned away from the screen and focussed his eyes on the table. Helena followed his gaze. She was surprised to see a miniature woman standing there, feet planted at the edge of the table. The woman looked around the room, holding Helena’s gaze momentarily as she did so. A simple white robe hung from her neck in loose folds and came to rest on the floor. She looks like a Roman Senator, thought Helena, or the Greek goddess Athena. The woman’s arms were exposed from the shoulder and she held her hands together in front of her stomach.

  ‘We are LS48b and 48c. Good afternoon.’ Its voice was actually two voices, both female but of subtly different timbres. They overlaid one another perfectly so that only the harmonies built from the differences in their voices betrayed the presence of two AIs within the one representation.

  Alex spoke. ‘Good afternoon. I trust all systems are functioning effectively?’ Helena wasn’t sure if he was asking the question or if he was telling the machine that it was installed and could begin its work.

  ‘We concur at this juncture,’ said the simulacrum sweetly. It sat down, cross-legged on the table top, with its hands placed on its knees.

  Helena was quietly impressed. She’d had no first-hand experience of Lateral Solvers. They were used frequently in the diplomatic corps, but it was the technical specialists, like Alex, who normally ran down the problems and their solutions without ever coming into contact with front-office personnel like Helena.

  Alex finished what he was doing then motioned for Helena to pay attention. Helena waited for him to begin. Alex was also second generation but fifty years her junior. His family had come to prominence sometime after the Families originally secured the high technologies for themselves in the late twenty-first century. Helena had, in the past, come into contact with various other members of his family but the relationship was not one the Woolfs held closely.

  From her conversations with him over the last twelve hours, she knew that, even though his name was common in Normal circles, his family had a strong claim for an unbroken line of Ivanovichs for at least seven centuries. Helena got the feeling Alex was full of his own sense of history and, if she let him, would provide her with the long list of epic events culminating in his own birth.

  She wasn’t particularly interested in him or his story and consequently tried to keep him focussed on his work — an easy enough task, given his fascination with his toys.

  Helena woke from her train of thought to find the Lateral Solvers watching her. She frowned at them and turned to face Alex. ‘Helena, the two Solvers are working as one unit, their intelligences merged. It’s this managed conflict of two into one that creates the space for their prodigious powers of reasoning.’ He waved in the direction of the miniature woman on the table. ‘Hence they share one body and speak with one voice, although you’ll already have noticed that they like to refer to themselves in the first person plural.’

  The miniature turned to Alex and nodded in agreement. ‘This is correct,’ she added.

  Or is it more correct to say they? thought Helena.

  ‘Now the calibration will run through the main elements of your experience both in Africa and subsequently. However, the girls’ thrust will be to explore your ideas of the universe.’

  Helena said, ‘What do you mean? I thought you said no philosophy.’

  ‘They’ll skirt round your thinking on the divine, on justice, on history.’

  ‘Won’t that colour their ability to think independently?’ asked Helena.

  Alex gave a throaty chuckle. ‘No; you see, they’re trying to frame questions of knowledge and being. Your thinking only helps them crystallise their own learning routines. They’ve already digested some of the greatest philosophical works on the idea of self and mind, being and time. They regard them as reference works rather than philosophy, as only true sentience can struggle with the depths of being. They will have a grasp of the technicalities equal to, if not more advanced than, an average reader.’

  ‘So why do they need to know my ideology? Can’t they calibrate on their own?’ asked Helena. Giving them any more information than the bare minimum will only harm my ability to conceal my involvement.

  ‘Of course,’ said Alex dismissively, ‘but that would take a number of days; days which Andreas doesn’t want us taking.’

  Helena shrugged and grunted knowingly. ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ she asked. Helena couldn’t grumble: Andreas was good at everything, but she still wondered exactly whom he’d impressed in order to secure himself the headship of the team. She had been slightly frustrated when she’d discovered she was simply a team member and not the leader. It wasn’t that she hadn’t started new careers numerous times, but she felt she deserved more than some temporary post looking for security risks when her star had been rising so brightly within the diplomatic corps. An increased energy allowance wasn’t everything and Helena felt status anxiety more keenly than she was comfortable with.

  ‘It’ll be good for you Helena, cathartic. I repeat: they’ll skirt round these ideas. They don’t really
care for their meaning, so don’t get bogged down there.’

  ‘Just how close to sentience are they?’ she asked.

  Alex pursed his lips. ‘Not in front of the kids Helena.’ He scratched his chin. ‘They’re at the limit of what’s legal and that’s bloody close.’

  ‘Right, I’m ready for you to begin,’ said Alex, getting up. ‘If you experience any problems or the girls encounter any hiccups, call me. I’m doing nothing apart from this till we’re done.’

  Helena nodded, waiting in silence as he left her alone in the room with the Lateral Solvers.

  ‘Where do we begin?’ she asked the woman once the door had shut.

  The woman stood slowly to her feet, her clothes unrumpling as she stretched out on her tiptoes. Helena mused as to why her creators had spent so much time making her physical representation so realistic. Her stretch evoked refreshment after sleep, invigorating mornings and mountain air. What purpose does it serve?

  They design their own avatar, said her AI.

  ‘Your name perhaps?’ asked the Solver.

  ‘Helena Woolf,’ replied Helena. ‘And what do I call you?’

  ‘Lysander,’ came the response.

  ‘I thought Lysander was a man,’ responded Helena, suddenly wanting to know why the machine had chosen such a name. She wanted to learn as much about it as she would be forced to reveal of herself.

  ‘He was, yet we like it. Gender does not seem a consideration; besides, the letters L and S appear in our designation.’

  ‘Well Lysander, what is it you want to know?’ said Helena, folding her arms loosely across her chest.

  Lysander drew one of her big toes across the surface of the table and placed her hands on her hips as if in thought.

  ‘Why did you ask us why we chose Lysander?’ asked the women.

  ‘Curiosity,’ said Helena.

  ‘How would you define curiosity?’ asked Lysander directly, the tone of her voice changing from casual to firm.