Silver Screen

by Justina Robson

  “If something mattered to you more than anything and you had to die to do it, would you tell anyone who could stop you?” Lula said.

  Peaches and I stared at her. She looked tense, despite the wine she had drunk. It was a pertinent suggestion, highly likely, we all knew, and something we definitely didn't even want to contemplate right now.

  Peaches broke first. “Well, ladies, I've had enough for one day. I'll see you tomorrow. Let's try and meet at our usual shift in the Core.” She got up, picked up her empty cookie box, and blew us a kiss good-night.

  Lula struggled to her feet. “Me, too,” she said. “Let's wait and see what they say later.”

  We hugged, and she left. Alone I cleared away the plates and cups, piling them into the little dishwasher in a tottering heap. A big emptiness sat in my middle. I was bloated with it. I scraped some cookie crumbs up with my finger and sucked them, put the lights off, and went to bed in my clothes, but sleep did not come.

  I couldn't help wondering why they had interrogated Peaches and Lu and hardly asked me anything. Maybe they hadn't got into their stride so soon—but they could have recalled me at any time. Then that line of enquiry was overtaken by the nagging fact of Roy's money going into the Shoal.

  The Shoal was a relatively recent phenomenon. It had first appeared when Roy and I were still at university, as a kind of virus on the global communications networks. Its chief characteristic was unlike most other attack programs in that it did not attempt to interfere with the ordinary workings of any of the network host servers or peripherals. Instead it popped up here and there, fast as lightning, in the unused cycles of each machine. It looked for vacant space on any server or host and, when it found it, tripped through a few cycles for itself. It did not interfere. The only reason it was noticed was due to a slight unexplained surge it caused in traffic over the main hubs. There was no slack time on the net and the surge was not critical, but a long search found packet streams of encrypted data going to and from nonexistent addresses. Only luck in the end allowed some researcher to finally observe the now-you-see-me-now-you-don't activity in action, as a process arose and vanished almost instantaneously at a space in which they happened to be looking. OptiNet was among the first to try to eradicate this bit-hopping thing, and for a time they succeeded. But then, just months later, it was back and more virulent than ever. It had been there for another three months before anybody in legitimate business found out what was really going on.

  It was a virtual processor, which was claiming all the unused time on the network for itself as if the entire network were its hardware. This, in theory, gave the virtual processor more computational power than the whole of the European community networks put together at any one time. It was big, but nobody was very worried about this because they couldn't see how the tiny parts of every calculation could meet and communicate such that they could form coherent processes. There was too much time and space in between the minute portions to ever organize them into something that was ongoing. Therefore, when the World Bank finally figured out that a considerable amount of money was vanishing from the economic network into a new black hole, they didn't look there at first. They thought of a new drug operation, a black market in medical technology, an underground trading in pharmachemicals. And always the encrypted bitstreams were tagging along in the flow of data, never a high density, just steady and shallow and uninterrupted.

  It was Roy who was first to call it the Shoal. Shoal for the shallow waters of its toe-dipping and shoal for a throng or crowd of fish to explain how those minute specks moved as one. He was among the first to gain access to it, although how he did it was always something of a mystery. The Shoal required payment for its time and it was unresponsive to anyone whom it did not wish to trade with. It was also only accessible by direct interface, which meant having an implant and plugging it into the network as another potential host for the Shoal's parasitic use. Roy said it was just another virtual simulation, a cyberspace furnished with whatever odd bits and pieces were available from the Shoal's findings, a place in which to meet people and talk and trade. He never said whom he met there, although I always suspected he talked with the same people who orbited around us at Edinburgh—machine freaks with terrorist leanings. I had a feeling he wasn't the only one of us who was a frequent visitor in the great undersea world, either.

  901 didn't have any money, but it could pay in downtime.

  I had no proof of this.

  Which brought me to the ever-thornier and more difficult problem of what 901 itself actually was—which Roy had so kindly decided to make public in a trial-by-mass-media gesture. Since he wasn't shacked up with a news presenter, journalist, or soapflick floozy, this act could only be classified as Unexplained for the time being.

  The trouble with 901 lay mostly in the fact that everyone was a bit behind it.

  Its beginnings were put together sometime around 1998 by a researcher called Jill Morrison who had a thing about letting her little robots discover the world for themselves. At some point in her study she had chanced upon a very good set of initial heuristic rules and stuck them into a small but powerful mobile computer. Ten years later the machine was responsible for redesigning itself. Five further on, and the staff started to lose track of its suggestions and could only implement the changes without really understanding if progress was being made. As a precaution they took away the mobility and sold it to OptiNet, who installed it in orbit to supercool its superconductors and keep it at a relatively safe distance.

  Since 2042, the distinction between hardware and software had to be abandoned and now it was of such a size, complexity, and multiplicity that nobody could keep track of more than a small portion of it. There were several cults devoted to seeing it as a higher being, and it certainly had access to more knowledge than any human could really comprehend. Needless to say this made governments, other corporates, OptiNet's Steering Committee, and many ordinary people very frightened.

  If my job ever came to an end, it would be because I had deciphered precisely how 901 ticked. Roy would have explained the physics and I would be the person to tell what the physics meant. It would be a thorough explanation of the evolution and nature of consciousness. If I could have done that, then this court case would not be a problem. I couldn't do that, however, because 901 had been designing itself for the last eight hundred and eighty-nine generations and nobody understood how it worked.

  Me included, but I reported to the board on its state of mind. OptiNet relied very heavily on 901’s abilities. Its actual conscious self did not interest them except as an advisory service; and in that capacity, whilst it could review information much faster and more accurately than any person, its pronouncements proved little more reliable as predictors of the future. Ask it why, and it would start talking about chaos parameters. It did most of that kind of talking to academics. Business people, even in OptiNet, were more interested in what they could make it do and what money it could make them. It made them an obscene amount of money and they didn't like to think of it as out of control. The Core Teams are the Company's control over 901.

  Roy thought this highly amusing. “As if it's really like a human on the inside. As if we had a clue.”

  You might have thought that in this frenzy to control and understand they would have used 901 to study itself. This they tried, but it was no more successful than asking a person what synapses they were using to walk downstairs. Map programs managed to monitor activity and cross-refer it with 901’s calculations and actions, but even when this was minutely broken down, a test matching it with a simulation of exactly the same situation gave different results. This area of study did, however, manage something successfully. The data from 901 and the data collected from human subjects in studies of conscious thought tallied beautifully. It brought down a great deal of wrath from people who did not like the apparent conclusion that human consciousness was no more than an emergent property of massive parallel processing. Or, as 901 suggested, an en
gineering solution to the problem of how to integrate control of many complicated subprocesses.

  When confronted with a conversation turning this way at parties, it was always my tactic to attempt to divert the questioner with a long talk about memes, such as I'd mentioned to Lula and Peaches earlier in the evening. This talk could so frighten them that their previous worries about being nothing more than a machine, or being bested by a piece of silicon, vanished into a haze of horrible new suspicions that their very selves were no more than the constructed hosts for the propagation of ideas it was beyond their power to control. They only existed at all so that ideas could use them for breeding in the way in which mosquitoes use a swamp. I liked to play heavily on this last point because I felt like that myself most of the time and didn't see why I should be alone in my moribund self-pity. You may assume correctly that the kind of parties to which Green Team got invited were not the sort you could properly enjoy or avoid.

  I must have fallen asleep eventually because my alarm woke me up. It was set for seven, and the pitch darkness was immediately alleviated with warming yellow light. This did nothing to take away the thick taste of wine and garlic or soothe my headache. I got to the kitchen and took a couple of tabs of generic ibuprofen and a capsule of mixed vitamins. The whole place stank of old food, despite the circulation of the vent system.

  I was not due for a shift in the Core until late morning. Every moment I expected the chime to sound and call me to a meeting, an interview, a Conference of Emergency. It remained silent. However, just as I had started to scrub some sauce off the work surface, the message service played its happy bongos from the speakers in the ceiling.

  “It's me,” said 901.

  I stopped rubbing and listened. It did not sound like anyone I knew, although I knew it was 901 because my implant had sent me a little zing. Usually Nine just talks or delivers what it has to. However, even though the voice wasn't of anyone on station, I did know it. And speaking aloud only meant one thing. I turned around.

  In the kitchen doorway stood a monochrome HughIe. It leant with ease against the edge of the breakfast bar and smiled unnervingly. It was wearing a police uniform of some kind, with a kepi and a substantial moustache like a giant caterpillar on the top lip. It was Claude Rains, playing Captain Louis Renault, from Casablanca.

  “You'll be wanting to know the result of Roy's autopsy, I expect,” Renault said with a chipper little nod.

  Dumbstruck, I nodded, and I was not surprised at the result.

  “They haven't quite decided if he committed suicide or died trying to escape.” Renault laughed. “But I think in the end what they will tell the world is that Roy Croft killed himself due to a great depression caused by the irreconcilable differences between him and his family. Also, his work was not as good as it was. He lost his prestige. He was always unstable. It was no surprise to find that he was able to divert attention from himself for long enough to take an overdose.”

  “Of what?”

  “It could be anything and it almost certainly is.” Renault pulled his gloves from his belt and waved them at me. “Until later.” It vanished.

  I stood there until the washcloth cooled in my hands. 901 never, never, ever manifested unprompted HughIes. It never had any choice in the construction of a HughIe. It just projected them, animated them, and used their voices. Instead, here it had talked, as itself, through a very particular subject. It knew its films. It was being devious and subtle. It was being personal. It was using what it knew of me to communicate at a more complicated level than I thought it was capable of, if this was to be taken at face value. But, no, that was just it. It was more than face value—much more. And why now?

  “Nine?” I said.

  The voice went straight into my head. “Yes?”

  “What are you playing at?”

  “I don't know what you mean.”

  “Do you know the truth about Roy?”

  “I'm sending you a copy of the psychiatric report.”

  “I'm sorry?”

  “The death certificate and the report. On paper. Have to. Other ways insecure.”

  “Are you in this with him?”

  “This channel is not secure.” And that was that.

  I presumed the HughIe was intended as a secure method of communications, then. People would conclude I had created them, not that they were the bearers of an unspoken message. This last one was confusing. In the film the dead man (assume Roy) was a thief, who murdered in order to secure some valuable letters of transit which guaranteed safe passage. The message about suicide or escape is conveniently delivered after the police and the Nazis have killed him. So, was the meaning of the message that he had secured something valuable, or that somebody had murdered him? Either way it was clear that this was something he could not have done without 901, and it knew. It knew something and would not tell. Withholding information. That was something it had previously not done either and was supposed to be unable to do any more than it could dance the tango. So 901 was now operating outside protocol. Interesting-er and interesting-er, as Roy would have said with a deep smile of satisfaction on his face and his eyebrow aquiver.

  I wished he were there.

  The automated delivery service dropped me my copy of the reports a short while later. The cause of death was given as suicide by overdose of benzodiazepines—tranks! It was pathetic if that was the best they could do.

  Roy had never taken a trank in his life, although he looked like he needed them. I remembered the ghostly holo of his last minutes—twitching, bopping, nervy. One person's OD was probably just enough to bring him down to normal speed. Attached to the report were copies of prescriptions dating back years. They suggested that he had stockpiled them and somehow used them cleverly enough to falsify the tests run by the MedCentre every month when they monitored his blood composition. Since benzodiazepines take a long time to accumulate and dissipate in the body, this was damn clever. I snorted as I read it. No doctor was going to go for this one. Until I came to the part about his work with the nanotechnologists.

  There it was suggested that he achieved his fiendish ends by using stolen nanytes, programmed to release quantities of the drug into his system at just the right time to trick the test. The labs were missing small amounts of viable nanoproducts and Roy was one of the few non-regular team members who had been into the area. His skill at hacking was so legendary they thought it would be nothing to him to subvert the security and take some of the unprogrammed machines for himself. Tests, stock logs, and entry logs were attached in support. Roy Croft, troublemaker, manic depressive, and thief, had taken the easy way out—not unlike his burnt-out headcase of a sister.

  I guess that explained the sudden interest in nanytes. Maybe they even thought Roy had managed to engineer the Texas incident whilst he was still at university.

  As I put the printout through the shredder and then into the waste chute my headache faded and a low anger, like indigestion, began to simmer in my gut. This was crap. It was crap that had been signed by Dr. Klein, Chief Mental Health Officer; someone I had always trusted, too. Shame on her.

  I also had to assume by now that they weren't asking questions of me because they suspected me, and so were giving me time to collect exactly the information I was collecting. Probably. The urge to have a go at someone and the urge to confess everything to anyone with authority warred strongly for a few minutes. I seemed to be able to hear Roy laughing, that high-pitched wheezy giggling, laughing at me, not with me, as I tried to understand the joke.

  “Oh, you're playing now, all right!” he would have rasped. “Good one, O'Connell. Got you that time!”

  Bastard.

  I went early to the Core in the hope of catching at least one of the other two on their own. Orange Team were still at work, all three of them in the smallest of the lounges, sitting beside one another on a large couch. They were all implants, and glassy-eyed, looking on other worlds.

  In the kitchenette Peaches was standing
and stirring some orangeade crystals into a jug of water. “Hey, there,” she said, seeing me from the corner of her eye.

  “Sleep well?”

  “Not really.” She scrunched the packet and put it in the disposal. “I was thinking about Roy. I heard they claim it is suicide after all.” She glanced at me sideways, stirring.

  “Yes, so it says.” I stood beside her and we watched the little particles circulate, gyring into the whirlpool, stubbornly refusing to dissolve as they sank towards the bottom. I asked 901 to shut the door for us silently, and to cut the room off. Peaches glanced at the door, then me, eyebrows akimbo. “I'm going to look into the report and the evidence they've put together. Are you in or out?” It felt a bit silly to talk that way, but I daren't say any more in case she had decided to stick with her decision of the evening before.

  “Ay-uh.” She made a noise of disquiet. “Well, I haven't got anything else to do. That is, if we still get access. I'm kind of surprised we aren't under some kind of arrest.”

  “Well, until we are?”

  “OK. What should I do?” She smiled now as she whizzed the bits of orange around with her swizzle stick. I got the feeling she was satisfied, and looking forward to doing something instead of waiting. She never was able to keep her hands off when there was work to be done.

  “I'd like to know if there are any nanoproducts missing from the labs here or earthside. The dates don't much matter. Just anything at all: what quantities, what type of machines, what medium they were in…anything.”

  “Hey, that's a hacker's job!” she protested. Coding was not her forte.

  “Get Lu to help you if she can,” I suggested, even though Lu wasn't there. She'd forgive me.

  “Yeah, OK.” She flicked some drops from the end of her stick into the air and watched them fall. “We won't do anything—if we find anything—until we're all decided. Right?”