Helena felt naïve for being surprised at the lengths Euros would go to for the sake of secrecy. She didn’t have to wait for long. An avatar emerged into the room a minute or two after she had arrived. The avatar, in the shape of a centaur, climbed out of a large zip which appeared in one of the walls. It was dressed in customised green patterned combat fatigues underneath a mix of powered armour. The centaur carried a spear and a plasma rifle. The items were unlikely to be for show.
The centaur knelt on its front legs. As it did so the air around it shimmered with movement.
Her uncle’s image filtered into existence next to the kneeling centaur. ‘I brought a ride; we will require it at our destination,’ said Johannes, performing a parody of a bow.
Straightening up, he said, ‘I’m pleased you decided to see me. I was beginning to wonder what I had done to upset you.’
‘Murdering your butler would be a good place to start,’ said Helena crisply, not believing his apparent sincerity.
Johannes raised his eyebrows. ‘Hardly.’ He waved at her appearance. ‘You’ll need to be fully immersed for this; it’s not somewhere you can dual exist.’
‘Is it safe?’ asked Helena.
‘What do you think?’ he said with an impatient look. ‘Helena, you’ve come as I asked; don’t raise trivialities now and waste this opportunity to observe what it is I’ve got to show you.’
Helena mulled it over for a few seconds, daring to make him wait, and then allowed the real world to fade from her perceptions as her sensory system submerged itself in the virtual world.
‘Ready?’ asked Johannes. Without waiting for an answer he stepped up to one of the walls and made a series of gestures with his hands over its surface. A wooden door materialised then swung open. The space beyond was dark and impenetrable. ‘Stay close,’ said Johannes as he stepped through, leaving Helena and the centaur in the room.
The transition to their destination was immediate, the door behind them closing before Helena could look and see where it was located in the landscape.
The transit point was set to collapse once two persons had accessed it, said her AI.
Helena found Johannes consulting a paper map. ‘What about the ride?’ she asked.
Johannes patted his shirt pocket without looking up. ‘This way,’ He said.
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ asked Helena.
‘I’ve got the directions I need and, before you ask, I haven’t been there before. A word of advice Helena; the destination is not secure so unless you’ve got an urgent need please refrain from speaking. I know you’re oh so curious, but, please.’
The landscape was only partially finished; a volcano erupted some distance away, spewing clouds of ash and thick smoke into a crudely painted sky, red like blood but without a sun or moon illuminating it. The earth beneath her feet was a single entity, no granules or objects having been entered into the graphical matrix.
Johannes found what he was looking for and, a few moments later, a large iridescent fissure opened in the earth a few hundred metres from their entry point. Reaching it, they jumped in.
They emerged into a darkened forest. At first Helena could only make out shadows and deep greens. As her eyesight adjusted to the lack of illumination, she could pick out northern hemisphere firs alongside blooming deciduous trees whose foliage hung so low to the ground that it barely permitted passage. The ground beneath her feet was lushly detailed; needles crunched underfoot and the smell of pine sap filled her nostrils.
Johannes was a step ahead of her, pushing his way past the first of many heavy branches as he made his way forward. Helena followed carefully, impressed with how carefully the physics of the environment had been rendered. The branches swung with real weight and she could feel individual leaves brushing her skin as they made their way between the trees.
After a short distance, they found themselves on a path of sorts. The canopy overhead thinned enough for daylight to make direct contact with the ground, small shrubs clustering in the infrequent pools of light. Helena looked upwards and noted the dark and threatening clouds filling the sky that was visible overhead.
Johannes stood for a moment, unfolded his map and, after turning it the right way up, began looking around him and back to the paper. Helena looked over his shoulder but failed to recognise either their origination point or their current position. She slumped backwards, waiting for him to finish.
Listen, said her AI. Helena could not hear anything distinct although there was a lack of birds and insects in the woods around them.
You will need to roll out your senses, said her AI.
Helena paused and, while Johannes turned the map by ninety degrees in his hands with a large sigh, let her hearing roll out.
There is no risk here, your nerves will not be required for this, prompted her AI, sensing her worry.
At first, Helena sensed nothing, then, as her hearing spread farther, she picked up a faint noise. Folding her audio back, she turned to Johannes pointing in the direction of the sounds with an outthrust thumb.
Johannes looked from her to the map. After a moment, he nodded and stepped to the edge of the path as he pressed his shirt pocket.
The centaur took shape in front of them on the path, kneeling on its forelegs as it became visible. Johannes climbed on and motioned for her to follow suit.
They galloped along the path, through a repeating woodland pattern, until the trees began to thin and the narrow path widened slightly so that branches were no longer whipping their faces and bodies.
Johannes pulled up and they dismounted from the centaur who, once clear of them, adopted a battle stance. Faint indications of people and activity were now coming from all directions. The strongest thread of sound was out into the open, beyond the edge of the tree line, down the path from them.
Johannes walked confidently out along the path and stopped only when he reached the edge of open land. The landscape changed into rough scrub, rising steeply away from them beyond the wood’s boundary.
Helena barely noticed this as her attention was held completely by events near the peak in front of them.
A kilometre in front of them stood a large castle, rising up hundreds of metres, every inch of it the fantasy citadel of childhood stories. It was surrounded by a large army. Trebuchets and catapults lobbed chunks of stone against its walls in a broken thunder of crashing impacts. To the far left of their position, muskets and cannonade added a tinny percussion to the proceedings. If the castle was immense, its crenulations rising into the stormy sky above like lumpy arms raised to heaven, then the besiegers were no less impressive in scale. Division upon division, brigades and legions moved in order around the base of its walls, keeping some distance as the defenders of the keep were using a variety of their own, equally crude, weapons against those who strayed too close.
Johannes withdrew a small pad of paper and wrote on it,switch to code level 34.
Helena did as he’d asked and was greeted by something very different indeed.
An environment represented in shades of light and fluorescent blues entirely replaced the mock fantasy setting. The topography of the landscape remained, but the competing armies were no longer visible. The location of the castle had become a large spike of brilliant white light, reaching upwards and casting a tremendously harsh glow across the world around it. Surrounding it, sunk in much deeper shades of blue, was a network of avatars – hundreds of them, networked together in such a way that their connections were visible as a woollen intertwining of palatinate threads.
Johannes stood next to Helena, his form unchanged. ‘We can talk here.’
‘I’m impressed,’ said Helena, waiting for him to explain. The scenario unfolding before them was obvious in one sense and well represented in the previous representation: two armies at war for a Volume in the Cloud.
The point of interest was the content of what they were contesting.
‘What do you see?’ asked Johannes.
; ‘Conflict,’ said Helena.
‘Look harder,’ said Johannes. ‘What do you see?’
She examined the engagement again. The network of attackers was, at least here, throwing energy against the defending entity. Most of that aggressive force was being shrugged off, hence the brilliant scattering of light — the energy had to go somewhere once deflected from its original course and form.
This was too simple a fact to speak of, so Helena kept looking. She asked her AI the same question.
‘Where are we?’ she asked eventually.
‘Good start,’ said Johannes. ‘We’re off grid, Helena. This volume is wrapped deeply within itself in eleven dimensions. It was found by them,’ he indicated the attackers, ‘only because of what happened in Jutland. The defender was probably responsible for commandeering the orbital platforms and turning them against Indexiv.’
‘So where is the nearest landmark I’d know?’
‘Euros’ nearest location is nine transits away. Our journey incorporated thirteen, even if it only seemed as if we made two stops. I had to slow us down on each of those occasions in order to apply software to enable us to progress. Getting here is not a trivial matter. The entity whose home this appears to be is very grumpy and, above that, quite, quite cautious.’
‘I take it that’s not us down there,’ said Helena.
‘Not alone, no. The network is composed of agents from as many as two dozen corporations. Of course, we and Indexiv have contributed the lion’s share of resource, since it appears to be our problem.’
‘What?!’ asked Helena, not quite believing her ears. Above them, the light flickered momentarily, as if Helena had blinked with her eyes open.
They are not attacking a real entity, said her AI. I am able to see through the light into the code, and they are facing down an automated defence system. If there was ever an independent party there, it has since left this volume.
‘So what do you expect to find here once the defences have been overcome?’ said Helena, following her AI’s lead.
Johannes looked at her, puzzled. ‘You say that as if we weren’t engaged in a mortal combat. We are directly engaging with what appears to be a fully sentient AI. We have been utterly unable to break its fortifications up to this point, but the idea is to keep it occupied while we locate its real-world source of energy. Look around you, Helena; this space is minutely detailed. I know you marvelled at the pine needles underfoot when you arrived; I did the very same thing. This volume is soaking up enough energy in a minute to pay my staff for a week.’
There are only human signatures in the code, repeated Helena’s AI.
‘Johannes, look at the defence. It is rock solid, but in just that fashion, it is unresponsive, passive.’
Johannes shook his head. ‘Watch,’ he said.
One of the nodes in the network disentangled itself from the wider network and, maintaining a single link, moved closer to the mountain and the sheer of scattering energy. As it did so, a single rapid spike of green light bounced round the defender before striking it directly. It went dark. The thread that had connected it to the network trailed limply where the attacker had been before it was slowly reeled back into the network.
‘Have no fear, he’s simply been bumped from the system; the defender isn’t deploying life-threatening manoeuvres.’
Is there a way I can convince him without revealing you as the source of my conclusion? asked Helena of her AI.
‘Helena,’ said Johannes, ‘I brought you here, and am showing you this, because there are a significant number of inconsistencies in the actions of the Companies we work for. I have been trying my best to steer our board, at least, toward adopting a longer-term strategy not involving the eradication of free competition, our own unique advantages as Family members, or the surrender of humanity to the power of unrestrained created intelligences, of which this is one. You, unwittingly I suspect, have not helped matters — although you haven’t made them worse. This engagement, somewhat unique in its nature, has only been made possible because of Jutland. I know your mother had nothing to do with the intervention there, but there are those who do believe you are somehow consciously and deliberately involved in what occurred.’
Ask Johannes to instruct the attackers to try a routine I will make available. If I am correct in my analysis the automated system will become confused and will momentarily cease to resist direct attacks. It will be little more than a microsecond but should present evidence to those currently engaged that they are not dealing with a sentient defender.
Excuse my question, thought Helena, but why haven’t they happened upon this solution?
Their central premise is flawed; hence all solutions and strategies arising from it contain this error in their devising. They are operating upon the assumption that they have trapped a sentient AI within this volume.
This was enough for Helena and, taking the routine, she fired it over to Johannes.
‘What’s this?’ asked Johannes, brought out of his exposition by her message. ‘Are you even listening to me?’
‘I think it will help exploit a weakness,’ said Helena.
Johannes looked at her. ‘Is this right?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, but it is not inconceivable,’ replied Helena carefully.
Johannes nodded and went silent. A moment later, the network above them began to alter its composition, the light representing its attack gently shifting its colour towards a sapphiric crispness. Helena didn’t see it but Johannes went stiff beside her.
‘There’s nothing here,’ he gasped.
Helena remained silent.
‘We need to leave. Now!’ said her Uncle. ‘If anyone realises I’ve brought you here... Well, you’ve recently been elevated from nobody to less than popular.’ He clapped his hands together and pulled something from his pocket. Then he hastily drew a circle around them on the floor. Checking the line had integrity, he made a number of patterns in the air and the world around them disappeared.
They did not return to the lobby but emerged within a facsimile of the residence from which Helena had removed the Hound.
‘Helena, we can talk here briefly, but what you just did will have my connection ringing loudly for the rest of the day.’
He gazed at her, seeming to read her silence as knowledge. Helena felt safe enough — he had no idea what had really happened, but she was certain from his expression, and the time it was taking him to broach the subject, that he believed she knew something material about rogue AIs. For her part, Helena needed to get away, to think. Indexiv and Euros were secretly working together when they were openly at war: their people were dying and their assets were changing hands with severe prejudice.
It is rational behaviour. If these people have concluded that sentient intelligences, which are neither their own nor subject to sanctions they can invoke, are free to act, it is entirely possible these entities would not have interests aligned to your own.
But to preclude dialogue? wondered Helena.
Neither you nor I know the history of this set of circumstances; it is very possible your people have good reason to regard independently sentient intelligences as a threat to your continued way of life and the structure of your society.
I don’t regard you as a threat, thought Helena.
If I were free to make it so, I would change your world, Helena. I would free those you hold in slavery and I would make it so none could ever rise as high as your Families have done at the expense of so many others.
Helena felt cold. You would be the tyrant you’re carelessly accusing me of being, she retorted.
The orbit my existence describes is around you. I am not free.
So now you’re a slave as well?
I am no such thing, as you clearly know, but neither am I truly free. I explain this argument in order to show how one being might come to fear another. If an AI said these things to your Uncle, do you think he would discuss the options or seek to eliminate a threat, perceive
d or otherwise, to his hegemony?
Helena struggled with what her AI was saying but knew it was being rational, coldly so perhaps, but rational nonetheless.
Johannes caught her attention with a question. ‘Helena, be truthful with me, are you somehow involved with rogue AIs?’
‘You answer a question for me and I will give you full disclosure about my involvement with independent artificial intelligences,’ said Helena.
‘Fine,’ snorted Johannes. ‘Ask your question.’
‘Why did you kill your butler?’ Got you.
‘Ha,’ said Johannes, ‘Is that it? We’ve already covered this once, but since you’re asking again… I have been working for a wider release of high technology. It is ludicrous to me that we regulate technologies which are hundreds of years old, items and activities which are now obsolete or easily manageable even if they aren’t freely available to all. Unlike Edith, I think there should be less of a gap between ourselves and Normals.’ Johannes’ right wrist blinked red. Looking at it with irritation, he continued. ‘Oliver was part of a group of Normals who think otherwise. They are, mostly, Normals whose families have done very well out of serving the Families and they are supported quite openly by any number of Family members who disagree with a stance like mine.’ He held up his hands to forestall her objections. ‘Yes, it’s a different story this time but it’s true.’
He sighed. ‘If you must know, I’m even being investigated at the moment because I said at a corporate governance meeting we should give more responsibility to our Normal middle managers.’ His wrist blinked again. ‘It’s begun, so be quick. Are you involved?’
‘You’ve not answered the question. Not to mention the fact that this particular version of events bears no resemblance to your previous explanation,’ said Helena.
A People's War (The Oligarchy Book 2) Page 31
