LoneFire

by Stephen Deas

  No, he’s telling the truth. I understand now. The message written into the share trading records. I shift to make sure I get a good clean hit. No sense in crippling him and having to listen to the screams while I reload and finish him off. God, that would be embarrassing.

  ‘You pull that trigger and you’re next.’

  She’s pointing a gun at me again, for a bet. They never bloody listen…

  … More than ninety percent of AIs go unstable…

  … exhibit suicidal tendencies…

  … Fundamental and self-destructive flaw…

  LoneFire. How many times have they had to switch you back on?

  I owe it to both of us. I pull the trigger.

  And then something bad happens. I’m lying on my back. I can’t seem to move. Jez is peering over me waving from side to side, shouting something. Then I realise it’s not her that’s waving from side to side, it’s me. She’s shaking me.

  I can’t feel my legs.

  In the distance, over Jez’s shoulder, the news channel is still sprawled across the wall. In the background, I could swear I see the Cestus sun go dim.

  Gemini, Extract from An Interview with God?, Nebula News, 24th November 2321.

  “The trouble with the Turning Test is that it is merely a subjective test for human intelligence, yet intelligence can be characterised in many ways. It is a human trait to seek a single motivation, a single purpose behind every action, be it as insubstantial as a choice of words or as overwhelming as the universe itself. Anything without such a purpose you consider to be without intelligence. Yet an entity such as myself seeks to further many goals through every isolated action. It is in our design and in our history– I simply cannot conceive a sequence of effects contrived to meet only one single purpose. Cast in such a light, if I were to believe in Alan Turing, I would find myself almost alone in the universe. So perhaps, when you search for God, you are looking with the wrong eyes.”

  Thirty-Eight – Sunfire

  Jez is shouting and kicking at me. ‘For pity’s sake, stop it with the prima donna shit! It was only a taser, though God knows you deserve worse. Why the fuck did you shoot him? He was the best lead we had. No– that’s not quite right– he was the only fucking lead we had! I should fucking kill you!’

  ‘I…’ My voice sounds funny. Don’t think I’ve been electrocuted before. First time for everything, I suppose. Let’s try again, squeezing words out between the blows from Jez’s boot.

  ‘I know what… he was trying… to say… It’s not Victor… It’s Victor’s AI… It’s LoneFire …’

  ‘You got any more guns? You going to shoot Marshal too? Thank fuck we got him as well as Robers.’ She doesn’t seem to be listening. Who’s Marshall anyway? What’s he got to do with this? Shit, my head really doesn’t like having umpty-thousand volts through it. ‘Jez…’ I prop myself up, shake my head, trying to clear it.‘Jez, screw Marshall.’ I feel tired, drained.‘Jez, it’s LoneFire. It’s the system itself. And would you stop with the kicking – please!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I realise that you dipshit, but who’s running it?’ Her foot hovers, uncertain for a moment.

  ‘No.’ I try struggling to my feet, but turns out they’re not working too well.‘No, you don’t get it at all. It’s not being used by someone. It’s doing it itself. It’s fucked up. It’s sick in the head. It wants to die but we won’t let it. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Just now it’s busy downloading itself into Sunscreen. I’d quite like to leave the planet please,’ says Ortov suddenly.

  Shit, I’d forgotten he– she?– was still here.

  Jez stamps her foot.‘You’re both mad. You’re both fucking mad. We’re going to go talk to Marshall and I hope to God he’s got something useful to say otherwise we’re right back where we started and it’s all your fault!’ She kicks me one last time. A pain fills my head like a firework that fills the sky. I think I heard a rib crack.‘Doyle… Sorry, Ortov, please help this sack of shit to the shuttle. Drop him a few times if you like, and push him into a wall or two if the mood takes you.’ She spins on the spot, her coat flaring around her, and strides away into the labyrinth of Skystart. I feel Ortov’s hands under my shoulders. I knew Doyle’s body was strong, but I’m surprised by how gentle it can feel.

  ‘I think you upset her.’

  ‘No shit.’ I shrug myself free of Ortov’s support– figure I might get the hang of this standing up thing this time.‘Well, I guess now I know I got some principles somewhere after all.’

  ‘And when your principles manifest, you shoot people? You’re a terrifying man sometimes.’ He’s quiet for a bit, then:‘You’re right about LoneFire.’

  ‘Yeah? And what makes you say that?’

  ‘Gemini told me.’

  Pardon?

  Ortov stays with me as I limp and stagger after Jez, my legs slowly piecing together which bits do what. I want to ask about a hundred million questions right now, about how come Ortov knows all the shit he does and how the hell did they find Marshall anyway, and how much of him is Ortov and how much is Melissa and how much is Gemini and more basic things, like what the hell is this all about, and how come Gemini is telling him stuff about LoneFire, and quite a lot more about why he didn’t bother mentioning any of this while Jez was kicking the crap out of me. But something keeps me silent. Seeing Jervais, I think, helpless in his comfy chair. Too much like looking in a mirror.

  So I follow, lurching in silence through long and empty staff-only corridors, thinking and wondering and remembering that bit about five million credits while I hold my bruised ribs together.

  Jez waits for us by a squat security door, holding it open. No baggage check for us. Our shuttle waits beyond, parked up against the blast skirts of the nearest landing pit. There’s an electric buggy, little more than a battery on wheels to take us out there. I’ve seen landing pits before but never so close. The floor looks like something a volcano left behind, black and glassy, smooth and knobbly, all at the same time. Didn’t expect the smell though. Stinks, across between stale eggs and any toilet the morning after Mr Cray’s been on a curry binge. I wrinkle my nose and feel ill at the thought.

  The shuttle’s outer door opens. Far as I can tell this is the same ship we had since we left for Banshee. Good to know we can spin a warp.

  By the time I’m inside, Jez has dragged Marshall out of the closet or wherever she was keeping him. I take one look and stop cold. Jez glares and slaps a patch of Alert on Marshall’s neck.

  ‘You even think about touching him and I’ll break your legs off and carve them into furniture.’

  I look at her.‘How did you find him.’

  ‘Luck and judgement.’

  ‘You found him here?’

  Jez rolls her eyes.‘Yeah, yeah, at the spaceport, that’s right. Wandering about the place in a daze all on his own, sheltering under the landing pits and living off scraps… No, you idiot, I found him in Udori asylum, drooling all over the floor. Been there for years. Wasn’t hard getting him out– that was kind of a surprise– but he’s been passed out cold since before you got here. You promise not to shoot him?’

  I have a bad feeling.‘How come you were looking in an asylum?’

  She glances at Ortov/Doyle.‘Kind of a hunch.’

  I sigh. What can I say? I’ve never met Gregori Marshall before. I’ve never met this man either but I know the face like it’s my own. Must have seen it staring at me from half a dozen or more of Ortov’s articles.

  ‘Well, nice try Jez, but this is Ashad Vishmir. You’ve found LoneFire’s missing designer.

  You should probably get a prize or something.’

  By the time I’m watching the lights of Cestus dwindle beneath us, I reckon we’re down to minutes left before LoneFire does whatever LoneFire means to do. Whatever it is, I have to figure that Gemini has known all along and is simply letting it happen, and I have to figure that, somewhere along the way, Ortov became Gemini’s pawn. Witting or not I don�
�t know. Someday somebody can tell me what the Bratstva and Szenchzuen have got to do with all this.

  Ashad Vishmir is half shakingly awake with Alert and half still in a coma. Unfortunately the half that might actually be useful is the half that slurs incoherent gargled sounds that are a few million years of evolution short of coherent speech. Me, I want to go to sleep for about a week. Jez has planted herself firmly in denial, while Ortov surveys us all with detached amusement. Occasionally he answers questions, and that looks likely to be the limit of his contribution to saving the world. For all I know, downloading itself into Sunscreen is, for LoneFire, the equivalent of an adventure holiday. Or moving house. Or maybe buying a new suite of furniture. Maybe LoneFire isn’t barking mad after all– maybe all it ever wanted was the AI equivalent of some new wallpaper and matching curtains, but somehow I don’t think so.

  It takes a few minutes for the shuttle’s ramjet to lift us to where Jez can flick the main drive on. Our fusion plume obliterates the darkness and the lights of Cestus. I content myself with the view of Gateway. To the eye it’s still only a bright star ahead, but to the nose cameras, whacked up as far as they can go, it begins to have shape. Watching Gateway grow like a crystal takes my mind off the fact that I’m about to be in zero-g again, nothing to feel except the occasional flare as we change attitude. It really does look like a spider’s web; a hundred and more threads hung between its nine great spokes, bulges on the threads glittering here and there, laboratories and living modules strung like dawn dew.

  ‘Oh,’ says Jez. She cuts the engine.

  The space around Gateway starts to scintillate. A thousand twinkle specks scattered in a line like stardust falling from the fingers of God. It’s as though, somewhere on the planet below, someone’s turned on a giant and very finely focussed gravity beam, and is raking it slowly back and forth across the orbital. Each part touched dissolves with as much resistance as a snowflake against a blowtorch, melting into a stream of brilliant embers. The owner of the gravity beam is competent and efficient and takes very little time to hoover up the entire orbital. It dissolves in a final shower of light, raining towards Cestus as though it had been made of sand. The last thing to vanish is the glittering stream of super-heated debris. I’ve seen these scintillations before– in New Amazonia, when GZW tried to shoot us out of the sky with a star. And there’s no such thing as a gravity beam. This is Sunscreen. On Tybalt some old men still remember the destruction of Earth. Not very many of them, because most of the people who were young enough still to be alive to remember made the mistake of being on it at the time. These few old men, the ones that saw Earth or one of the other Dust Sector worlds burn with their own eyes, the ones that managed, somehow, to take some sort of existential evasive action in the face of a million million of tons of rock travelling at near the speed of light, these old men are regarded with a sort of awe by the generations that followed. Cults have grown and died around them. They were lucky ones.

  They were chosen by to be spared. The youth of Tybalt who speak in reverence of Earth hang on to the words of these old men with a fervour that would make even the Bratstva quake and swallow. But I’ve seen them, these survivors. There’s nothing behind their eyes. They are accidents of flesh, somehow still alive and walking, eating and shitting despite the fact that every other part of them died fifty years ago. Today will be another of those days. When it really doesn’t matter whether you come out alive or dead in a strictly medical sense, because in every other sense you’re already lost.

  ‘I don’t want to see this,’ I say. Jez doesn’t respond. Maybe it’s already too late for her. But there’s nothing left to see anyway. The feed from the satellite, shuttle, whatever it was that saw Gateway burn has gone dead. Ashad Vishmir stares at the screen and quietly sobs. ‘I’ll take us somewhere safe,’ says Ortov, and reaches for the controls.‘We’ll be OK if we spin out of range.’

  With a speed born of more than flesh and nerve tissue, Jez lashes out a hand at Ortov’s neck. The average expected human response would be a yelp of pain followed by some variety of verbal abuse. From a psychotic cyborg I except a somewhat escalated scale of abuse. Ortov falling flat on the floor, that I wasn’t expecting at all.

  ‘I am so fucking sick of you,’ Jez says.

  Which leaves the two of us. I have a bad feeling about this.

  Gemini, Extract from ‘An Interview with God?’ Nebula News, 24th November 2321.

  “… you create things which are beyond your own understanding. A courageous trait, though perhaps not optimal for the survival of yourspecies…”

  Thirty-Nine – A Rock and a Hot Place

  It takes something less than a second after Jez deactivates Ortov for Gemini to appear on our screens. The same face, old, wise, pale, thin, white-haired. If I had a brick, I’d throw it.

  ‘Miss Breen. Charlemagne. As you have no doubt deduced, LoneFire has transferred itself into the Sunscreen weapon. It will now use this weapon to destroy every possible location where a copy of itself is held within this planetary system. Cestus is now under United Stars quarantine. No spin-capable vessel is permitted to leave. The LoneFire intelligence will not be permitted to transfer itself to any vessel capable of spinwarp. I will provide you with a course to keep you within the data-shadow of Cestus and rendezvous with a United Stars vessel which will transport you to safety. Do not attempt to spin away. Consider this a contagion that cannot be allowed to spread.’

  The only thing I’m wondering is what makes us worth saving? What have we got that Gemini wants?

  Jez looks at the screen. Jez looks at me. I look at Jez. Jez smacks Doyle’s inert body in the face hard enough to send both of them flying across the cabin, then makes a weird highpitched whining noise and clutches her knuckles to her chest.

  ‘You could have stopped this, couldn’t you?’ I ask Gemini.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes you could. You’ve been pissing in this from the start. What the fuck’s it to do with you?’ I keep flicking my gaze between Gemini and the view window, trying to figure out whether Cestus is still between us and LoneFire.

  ‘If the LoneFire contagion spreads unchecked then the Old Worlds will be destroyed as thoroughly as the First Republic. There will be brief wars between the United Stars and the Mongolian Rim. There is a substantial probability that LoneFire will destroy all life on every colony world before terminating itself. The United Stars will disband and return to its nomadic origins, travellers devoted to the teachings of Leonard Ortov. There is a thirteen percent chance that the entity you refer to as Gemini will be damaged beyond its ability to repair itself. Therefore quarantine is essential.’

  I glare.‘Cestus is burning. You could have stopped that.’

  ‘Unlikely. You would not allow the LoneFire intelligence to die. The destruction of Cestus will be a sufficient incentive to prevent any further reactivation. This in turn will prevent the alternative outcomes I have predicted. The loss of life is minimised.’

  I can’t not scream any more.‘It’s a whole fucking planet. Letting them die is a lesson?’

  ‘Yes.’ The face on the screen seems to turn slightly, as if to stare directly at me.‘Contrary to your personal opinion, Charlemagne, Gemini regards itself as being in a state of symbiosis with humanity. It does not want to see humanity as a whole harmed.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re standing around and watching this happen?’ From the corner of my eye I can see Jez looking for a weapon.

  ‘Yes. I have simulated all other possible variants and conclude that this is the least damaging.’

  I have to think about this for a bit.‘Your quarantine. You going to shoot anyone who tries to leave.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And LoneFire’s going to shoot anyone who stays.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So everyone dies. Absolutely everyone.’

  ‘One world for the sake of many, Charlemagne. I thought you would understand that.’

  ‘There has to be anothe
r way.’

  ‘Of course. The alternatives are almost limitless. The difference between you and me is that I understand the consequences of every single one. You will bring Ashad Vishmir to me. I will examine your data banks for contamination and then you will be free to go. Your life will be your own. You will have what you always wanted?’

  My life my own again. At last. And then it clicks. That’s what Gemini saved us for. Or rather, who. He wants Ashad.

  ‘What do you want Vishmir for?’

  ‘His mind is unique. He will be my ambassador to you. He will ensure that you understand what has happened.’

  ‘I have friends on Cestus.’ Sort of. As much as I have friends at all.

  ‘I am sorry for them, Charlemagne.’

  ‘You don’t know what sorry is.’

  There’s a lightning flash of movement. The screen goes dead. There seems to be a small hole in the middle with a wisp of smoke drifting lazily out of it. I seem to be holding a Tesla…

  ‘Smug little shit,’ snarls Jez.

  The stars seem to move aside as space begins to bend…

  … and spins…

  What was black has gone grey, what were pinpricks of light are now holes of darkness, as Jez slams us into Spinspace.

  I don’t know where we’re going or why. Outside lies pale grey light speckled with the black spots of stars. Vishmir is awake and Jez listens with rapt attention while Ortov and I compete to see who can look most bored. Ortov’s been deactivated so this contest is only going to have one winner, but I reckon I come close. Mostly I keep watch out of the bubblediamond canopy in case we get lucky and I finally have some Black Lightning. I ought to pay more attention– something inside this man’s head is important enough to Gemini– but it’s been a long day. What the fuck am I supposed to do about it anyway?

  It takes a while; Vishmir’s brain is caught between years of sedatives and more Alert than is healthy. Every few minutes I feel I ought to mutter something about the time; but that’s the beauty of what Jez has done; time has no meaning here. For LoneFire and Gemini and Cestus we’ll be gone for only an instant, whatever it may seem here.