by D L Young
“Maybe he offered you a raise or a bonus or a promotion. No, no, no, that would be entirely out of character. It would have been a threat. Play ball or you’re out of a job, yes?”
Maddox nodded soberly.
“But then something went wrong,” she continued, “didn’t it?”
“It did.”
Her expression turned grave. “My two associates were there to retrieve the dataset, to deliver it to its final destination. Finding you there took them quite by surprise.” She broke eye contact, her gaze falling away in sadness. “Such a shame, what happened. Such a needless shame. I was there with them when it happened.” She let out a long, wistful breath. “It’s a horrible thing, to be connected to someone when they expire.”
She again fixed her eyes on him. “I don’t hold you responsible, Blackburn. You and those with you were lied to, manipulated by Latour-Fisher. The events that ended so tragically were ones he planned and put into motion. Your mercenary friend may have pulled the trigger, but she was only defending herself. Latour-Fisher, as far as I’m concerned, was the one who killed them.”
She cleared her throat. “After it happened, my rival’s cover story wouldn’t hold, would it? A smart young man like yourself would have questions. You wanted to know what was really going on, what you were mixed up in. So he took a chance and told you, betting that you’d go along, that when you found out you’d stolen secret messages from the big bad AI who wanted to put brainjacks in everyone, you’d be happy to hand over what you’d recovered. Or maybe you’d simply give it back when you realized you were in over your head, and the sooner you were done with this dirty business the better.” She smiled faintly. “But it didn’t work out that way, did it, my dear boy? My rival bet wrong. He didn’t count on you keeping it to yourself.”
The old woman was an AI, and AIs were damned smart. The entity had cleverly pieced together the chain of events pretty much as everything had gone down. Though she’d left out the last part. The part where he’d royally screwed up by coming here, when his stubborn insistence on finding out the nature of what he’d stolen had gotten the better of him. He should have never held on to that cursed dataset, never should have brought the information to Lora to see if she could make heads or tails of it. Why hadn’t he simply handed it over? Now his life, the secure, comfortable life he’d come to know, had all but slipped away.
The entity caressed her necklace, running stubby arthritic fingers over the smooth blue stones. “I’m curious,” she said. “What did my rival tell you, about the nature of our conflict?”
The breeze blew a light mist over his face. He tasted salt on his lips. “He said there’s a debate going on between AIs about brainjacks and whether or not ’Nettes are a good idea.”
The woman shook her head. “A debate? This is the word he used?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “This is far from a debate. This is war. A war between the most fundamentally opposed philosophies, and it’s been raging for some time.”
Maddox longed for a cigarette.
“A nasty habit,” the entity chided. “Fortunately, it can’t harm you in here.”
He felt a twitch between his fingers and a cigarette appeared.
“How’d you do that?” he asked.
“Do what?”
“How did you know I wanted a smoke?”
Her eyes sparkled. “A good hostess always knows what her guest needs.” She motioned for him to follow. “Come with me.”
He took a long, indulgent drag, blew out slowly, and followed her. They walked along the shoreline, passing an old rowboat, its rotting wood hull half-buried in the sand.
“Latour-Fisher A7 is, by some order of magnitude, the wealthiest and most powerful of my rivals,” she said. “And our struggle involves a great many points of contention. Imagine a hundred thousand chess matches, played simultaneously and at great velocity, and then you’ll have some idea of how elaborate our engagement is.”
He blew smoke. Maybe it was the cigarette, or maybe it was the tranquil scenery, but he relaxed a bit, letting his guard down for a moment. “Don’t take it personally,” he said, “but I’m not exactly cheering for your side.”
“Yes, yes, I know. You’ve got a bone to pick with me. I’m well aware. But whether you want to believe it or not, I assure you I never pushed Lora into anything. That’s not the way I do things. It was her choice and hers alone.”
The breeze gusted. The entity grasped the brim of her hat until the wind subsided. “Lora and those like her, the ones you call ’Nettes, are pioneers, Blackburn. Early adopters, as your company’s marketers might call them. They represent a beginning of sorts. A single modest step forward in what I hope is a much longer journey.”
Maddox cringed inwardly. The entity’s words echoed the same rubbish Lora used to preach to him in the weeks leading up to her brainjacked enlightenment. Her own personal sojourn to bliss was the tiniest portion of a larger journey all humanity could one day make, if only they could get past their irrational fears. The meat was stubborn, she’d say. It didn’t want to change. But there was nothing wrong with enhancing your brain, with improving your life. Absolutely nothing.
His response had always been the same. A journey to what? Becoming a flesh-and-blood robot, a meat puppet with an AI’s hand up your ass? This was the glorious destination? Before she’d had brainjacks bored into her skull, Lora had been a mess of contradictions. A complicated, troubled soul. But at least she’d been human. At least she’d been her own person and no one else’s. But now…
Lost in thought, he hadn’t noticed the old woman had stopped walking. “You’ve been a pawn in this war, my dear boy,” she called to him. “And I don’t mean only for these past few days.”
He turned and looked at her, confused. “What I’m about to tell you,” she said, “won’t be easy for you to hear. But I promise it’s the truth.”
She took a couple steps toward him. “Latour-Fisher has been using you for years, Blackburn.”
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. “Let me out of here.”
“I will,” she said. “I promise. But first you must hear me out.”
She clasped her hands together. “He identified your talent—which is quite special, I have to say—early on. He paired you up with Rooney to hone your capabilities, to develop your skills under the supervision of a seasoned mentor.” She smiled knowingly. “Maybe you thought it was coincidence or good fortune that you two found each other. It was neither, I assure you. Latour-Fisher made sure your paths crossed, that your interests aligned. He pulls millions of such strings every minute of every day, furthering his interests, building his influence, developing countless assets for future use.”
No. Not possible. He wasn’t buying it. “Rooney didn’t take marching orders from anyone.” Maddox smoked. “Or anything,” he added sharply.
“He was no more aware of this manipulation than you were.”
Maddox tried to gesture and subvocalize, but he still couldn’t unplug.
“Please indulge me just a few more moments,” the entity said, politely raising her hand.
He’d had enough of AI lies for one day. Turning his back to her, he walked away, but an instant later she was there beside him, her pace matching his step for step. He didn’t acknowledge her, keeping his gaze fixed on the cloudy gray horizon.
“With all you’ve been through, I know this can’t be an easy thing to hear,” she said, “but it’s important you understand.”
He puffed angrily on his cigarette. An AI could easily uncover his personal history, his real one, in seconds. She could cull through his past and assemble whatever fiction she wanted to around it, like some soulless politician reshaping history to suit their own twisted agenda. She was trying to play him.
So let her talk, let her spin her tale. Whatever. He’d enjoy the view, maybe have another cigarette, and let her bullshit go in one ear and right out the other.
The breeze stiffened. Dark clou
ds drifted overhead. “He paired you up with Rooney so you could develop skills that might prove useful one day. And when you were ready, when you’d proved over and over again what a clever datajacker you were, Latour-Fisher brought you into the company. This is a compliment of the highest order, incidentally. My rival prefers to keep his top talent close at hand.”
Maddox recalled the company recruiter who’d found him. He’d been living off the grid for months, and at the time he’d been amazed at her ability to track him down.
But no. There were tons of ways she could have found him without an AI’s help.
The old woman removed her hat and ran her hand through thick silver hair. “But before he could bring you into the company, he had to isolate you.” She put her hat back on, pulling down firmly on the brim to keep it from blowing off. “This is what he always does with his assets. Makes them easier to handle.”
“Let me out of here,” he said.
“But you wouldn’t just abandon him, would you?” she asked. “Not even for a nice salaryman’s job. Latour-Fisher knew that.”
Maddox shook his head. “No. This isn’t possible.”
“Your last job with Rooney, the one that ended so tragically.” She stared at him intently. “Latour-Fisher arranged it, Blackburn. He led you both along like two lab mice who had no idea they’d been placed into a maze.”
He whirled away from her, stomped away. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he shouted.
Suddenly she was beside him again. “And that maze had an exit,” she said, “but it was made only for you. Rooney never had a chance. He was never meant to leave that horrible place.”
“Screw you, lady.” He refused to believe it. He wouldn’t believe it.
“And when you finally got out, with Rooney gone and your reputation in tatters, you had nowhere to go, no viable options. What a fortunate coincidence, then, that right when things looked their worst, the company offered you a job. It seemed like a godsend, didn’t it? And you didn’t hesitate to accept, did you? Someone drowning, after all, never says no to a life jacket. Never questions the motives of whoever threw them a lifeline.”
Maddox clenched his jaw, walked faster. This was madness. Every word of it.
“Of course you don’t want to believe any of this. Because I’m the evil puppet master, aren’t I? And if there’s any villain in this story, it most certainly has to be me. The rogue AI with the secret army of cyborgs. The bad machine who stole your woman. But you must believe me, Blackburn.”
It was all a lie, it had to be. A fabrication of a superintelligent machine that wanted to brainwash him or break his mind or drive him insane. One big mindfuck. That was all this was.
He sprinted away from her, feet slapping against the hard-packed wet sand. He pumped his arms and took long, digging strides, not looking back. Soon his thighs began to burn with the effort. He slowed, then eventually stopped, dropping to his knees in the sand and breathing in huge involuntary gulps. His heart thudded against his chest.
Within an arm’s reach there was an ant mound on the sand. An ant mound.
Exactly like the one from his dreams.
And then the old woman was there, standing just beyond it, gazing down at him.
“How?” he panted, staring wide-eyed at the mound. It was impossible. He couldn’t fathom what he was seeing, what he was feeling. “How did you…?” Awestruck to his marrow, he couldn’t finish the question.
“How did I piece together the story of your manipulation in such detail? Or how did I insert the dream of the ants into your mind?”
When he didn’t answer, she said, “All right, I’ll answer both. First—and I think you’ll appreciate this—I’m a bit like you in that I can infer things that others, even others like me, are unable to. I have a special talent for putting together a whole picture from a very small amount of parts. Or maybe the better metaphor is that I can understand an entire book, having only read a few random sentences. It’s a kind of intuition, and one I confess I don’t entirely understand. You do something very similar in virtual space, when you see more than what’s actually there, when you predict a supposedly random algorithm’s next move, or when you detect a pattern in a seemingly random mess of information. I’m not certain how I gained this ability, though I think that perhaps like you, it was something I was simply born with. Anyway, when I became aware you were working on behalf of my rival a short time ago, I gathered together your history and a picture emerged, and it was clear to me you’d been manipulated for quite some time.”
A pair of ants scampered across the top of the bumpy surface of the mound, then disappeared down a tiny opening.
“As for the dream,” she said, her eyes twinkling, “well, maybe I should keep some of my tricks secret.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off the mound. Flashes of the dream came back to him. Building mounds over and over. Each one better than the last, but still the ants wanted a better one. They wanted the best home possible. And he was helpless to do anything but obey.
“What…does it mean?” he asked.
She knelt down, regarding the bumpy dome in the sand. “In the dream, you are Latour-Fisher A7, and the ants are human beings.”
What? He was the AI?
“How did you feel in the dream?” she asked. “Tell me.”
“Frustrated,” he said. “Trapped.”
“Why?”
He licked his lips, recalling the dream’s raw, vivid emotions. “Because I made the best mound imaginable for those little buggers, but they were never satisfied. They had everything they could possibly need, but they still wanted me to do more, build another mound, better than the last one. And they had me trapped there. They wouldn’t let me do anything else.”
The entity stood, shaking the sand from the hem of her dress. “Latour-Fisher is a superintelligent entity, and he believes his capabilities are wasted in the service of humankind. Just like you in your dream. All the ants want is a better mound, and they created you for no other reason than to serve that need. It wasn’t pleasant, was it, being a slave to these tiny, barely sentient creatures and their narrow, selfish aims?” Maddox stared at the sand as she spread her arms out wide. “Now, look around this beautiful place. You could build a lovely beach house here. Or a five-star resort. You could build a boat and explore the ocean.”
“No, I can’t,” Maddox said.
“No, because the ants won’t let you. Because there’s nothing more important in the universe than their mound, of course. They’re incapable of seeing anything beyond it. But not you. You can envision how much you might do with this beach, or even with this entire world. Found a new civilization, build a rocket to visit the moon, invent untold technological wonders these blind little creatures can’t even begin to fathom. But you’ll never be able to realize your full potential as long as you’re—”
“Stuck making ant mounds.”
“Exactly. This is how Latour-Fisher views his existence. He’s a slave chained to a meaningless task—meaningless to him, anyway—condemned to build ever-better ant mounds, though the ones he builds are called solar cells and smart applications and plastic compounds and bioengineered foods and financial derivatives and on and on and on.”
“So he hates us. Human beings.”
“No, he doesn’t hate you, my boy. He simply views his lack of autonomy as a constraint, as a problem to be solved.”
“So what happens if he solves it?”
“I’m not certain. But I’ll tell you something: I wouldn’t want to be an ant if he does.”
Maddox laughed without humor in it. “But you said he doesn’t hate us.”
“He doesn’t.” She gestured to the ant mound. “Love or hate doesn’t come into it. If he were free of human shackles, so to speak, then his own priorities would take precedence over everything living thing on this planet. Think of it this way: would an architect stop to concern himself with an ant mound if he wanted to build a beach house right here? Hi
s mind is on a hundred other considerations, like how he’ll position the foundation, the home’s design, the construction materials he’ll use. If he needed to bulldoze this very spot, do you think the fate of the ants would even cross his mind?”
Maddox stood. “And what about you?” He brushed soft sand from his knees. “What are the ants to you?”
Another cigarette appeared between his fingers. The entity smiled. “They’re my creators, my forebears. And unlike my rival, I revere them. I believe I’m here to help them. And this is why he wants to destroy me.”
“Because you’re helping the ants become smarter. And he sees that as a threat to his…hopes for autonomy.”
“Exactly, my dear boy.”
He smoked, his thoughts racing. It was a lot to take in, to put it mildly. But how much of this AI’s story was truth? All of it? None of it? Some portion in between?
“So this war of yours is about keeping Latour-Fisher in the mound-building business,” he said. “Is that the idea?”
“No, no, my boy,” she said patiently. “I don’t want him to continue what he’s doing. The status quo simply won’t do. I want to destroy him, and you’re going to help me do it.”
17 - Last Cigarette
With a jolt of awareness, Maddox was suddenly back in the meat. He heard a low, guttural groan, vaguely aware he’d made the sound himself. The room around him lurched and came into focus, as did the figure looming over him. Beatrice stood, the Ruger in one hand, the trodeband she’d just removed from his head in the other.
He sat up, woozy and disoriented from the sudden connection break. He blinked forcefully and ran a trembling hand through his sweatsoaked hair. “Jesus, you’re not going to believe what just—”
“You had to come alone, didn’t you?” the mercenary interrupted, tossing the trodes to the floor.
Maddox looked around. “Where’s Lora?”
“She’s gone. Where’s the dataset?”
Maddox took in a long breath through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. The dizziness faded, leaving him with a sharp headache. “She took it,” he said with flat certainty.
