Hardin bowed his head. “Good call. I’d have done the same. I’ll let Preema know the request is good.” He chuckled. “She’s not going to like it, but it is the right call.”
“Have they made any progress on isolating the geographic location of those chimeric addresses? That truck came up out of Mexico, so I’ve got a feeling the operation is really there.”
“Not yet.” Hardin grumbled. “I’m pushing to have it escalated to Penumbras. Maybe that ol’ dragon will be able to think faster than a person.”
Nina covered her face with both hands, and dragged them down. She peered at her holo-panels as soon as her fingertips passed her eyes. “That’s the scary part, sir. You ever wonder if the ACC is maybe using an AI to come up with these designs?”
“It’s always a possibility, but it’s not a probable event just yet. They’re still quite paranoid about AIs over there.”
She thought back to the Starpoint production facility going haywire. “Yeah. Maybe they’ve got a point.”
oft beeps and intermittent grumbles of impatience filled in for the lack of banter among Joey’s team. Well-chewed surgical tubing dangled from the right corner of his mouth, providing a slow but steady stream of coffee. By the time the elixir of the gods made it to his end of the line, it had cooled to the perfect slurping temperature.
Three of his holo-panels streamed with status logs as his system ground away on data from six Citycam systems. It ran faster not displaying the images. The system calculated a numeric value for every identified face and appended it to a data table. Once the rest of the team finished running their cam feeds, someone would get the unenviable task of parsing the data looking for any occurrence of the same value more than three times.
After that, they’d repeat the process for the next week.
The search kicked his system’s CPUs in their silicon balls, leaving his rig too bogged down to do anything else without maddening slowdown. He leaned back in his chair and smiled at a sheet of plasfilm with an image of Nina and him standing in the middle of the street outside the burning shitstorm of a Starpoint manufacturing plant. Someone had nabbed a photo mere seconds before they kissed. Grey smoke gathered around them, low to the ground. The clear spot they occupied made it look like a romantic moment. His memory of the stench of ballistic propellant and burning plastic in the air took some of the allure. The wind had pulled Nina’s hair forward over her face, though it didn’t block her eyes, a look he’d remember forever―somewhere between ‘you stupid, reckless bastard,’ and ‘holy shit we’re alive!’
In the picture, Joey’s face hadn’t quite lost the ‘that was awesome’ elation from running around inside a giant factory full of half-built cyborgs trying to kill them. He’d just quipped about getting steak, and the reality of standing so close to this woman he couldn’t stop thinking about had started to set in. A second or two forward in time from the image, they’d be kissing.
Joey grinned. Normal people take pictures on the beach.
He’d gotten pretty lucky, all things considered. And to sweeten the deal, Nina wasn’t one of those over-clingy women who wanted him to remember their ‘one week’ anniversary, or their ‘one month’ anniversary. She hadn’t said a word of any ‘six month’ commemoration either. He planned to do something for the one-year though… normal people marked that sort of thing off in years. His father had once told him a girl who wants to celebrate being together for one month probably isn’t going to last for six.
After a few seconds’ attention to his churning computer to ensure everything worked, he again gazed at Nina’s picture. Temptation to go through another harrowing near-death experience at her side as an ‘anniversary gift’ proved hard to ignore. He didn’t think she’d appreciate it the way he would, especially now with a kid to watch. Of course, Nina could survive a lot of things that would liquefy him… but still.
Heh. That factory was like a level outta Colony Commando II.
He smiled as he thought back to being fourteen or so and playing that game. The final mission set involved an enormous factory on the surface of a colony world where the androids had killed most of the humans, and the player character was the only survivor of a military detail sent to do cleanup. Naturally, their dropship got shot down, so only the player character’s soldier made it. The more he thought about the scenario, the flatter his smile got.
Idle curiosity grew to action. The game was so old his NetMini could run it; he didn’t need a full on gaming console. It took about three minutes to download from an abandonware site, and as soon as it finished, he plugged a cable between the M3 port behind his ear and the NetMini. Reality melted into the game lobby, made to look like the interior of a crashed dropship. Colony Commando II predated the ‘scent enhancement,’ so the dead soldiers lying around didn’t stink.
The game remembered his PID, so all the maps remained unlocked. Joey jumped right to the last of eight ‘missions,’ and found himself standing in an android-manufacturing facility. After taking stock of his inventory, which included forty-seven medkits, he walked through the first door, starting the game.
Damn… He laughed. I remember how I used to play these games… trying to do it so perfect. Save the medkits for the bosses and never wind up needing them. A short while into the map, a partially completed cyborg tried to pull itself out of its berth in the wall and come after him. He stared at it, remembering one of the ’borgs at Starpoint doing the same thing. The farther down the corridor he went, the more androids he shot, the more this entire scenario took on a sense of déjà vu. In the game, the androids were not truly sentient like real-world AI units. A single computer core controlled them all as a hive mind… much the way Shinigami had done with the units he’d built.
Hallway after hallway, the resemblance grew eerier. He machine-gunned his way to the end of the level and fell when the section of floor he’d been on gave out and became a steep ramp. His soldier character rolled off it into a pit, the only exit blocked by a clump of debris from where the domed ceiling had collapsed. In the center stood a twelve-foot-tall ‘heavy construction’ android, which had been modified into a skull-faced metal war titan.
Joey blinked. It looked exactly like the big cyborg Itai had taken over to come after them. He paused the game, having no desire to re-do the boss fight. He’d seen what he’d come to see.
Son of a bitch. Shinigami played Colony Commando… it was recreating the game. He logged out and bundled up the M3 wire. His NetMini had heated up from running it, so he left it on the desk rather than his pocket. In the Starpoint factory, the AI could’ve uploaded any design specifications it wanted to the fabricators. He half-wanted to go back over the postmortem documentation of the scene to see how many of the destroyed cyborgs resembled ones from the game.
“I guess either that AI had a sense of humor, or it was just doing what they made it to do… create things based on whatever source material it could find.” He smiled at the picture again, though his gaze didn’t hover on Nina as it usually did.
Joey studied the white ring-shaped Starpoint building, which didn’t look at all like the one from the game on the outside. The interior, however, appeared as though whole sections of the video game’s map had been recreated in reality. How long had he been in their system? Or did the Starpoint people do that?
He started to drag his attention off the picture to focus on work, but a spot of blonde caught his eye in the background of the photo. One of the Starpoint employees cordoned off by the Division 1 detail walked away from the crowd… and her eyes glowed violet. Far from frightened, she seemed amused. For the months the photo had been on his cube wall, he hadn’t paid any attention to the crowd.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
Two M3 plugs clicked into his skull after he leaned back in his chair. Appearing in his blue-lined octagon room took almost nine seconds. Individual squares appeared and enlarged to form a solid wall that rose up to full height before closing off as a roof.
Fuc
k this lag. He sent a mental command to pause the analysis. Three seconds later, the air went from being as thick as syrup to normal.
“Ahh. Much better.”
Joey leapt into the Citycam system, and pulled up Wednesday, October 17, 2148 6:02 p.m., at the location of the Starpoint factory. The blue gridlines around him faded, leaving him in total blackness for a few seconds. A time-frozen scene faded into view as if stage lights came on gradually.
He stood a few feet away from himself, feeling like he’d stepped into the picture on his cubicle wall. Above, DS2 dropships hung still, like models suspended from the ceiling. Smoke, ash, and debris floated before his eyes. Throngs of Division 1 officers arranged in various poses from pointing and bellowing to firing at a handful of straggling androids spilling out of the factory’s courtyard.
Nina, or at least her image, stole his attention for a little while. Once he managed to stop grinning like an idiot at her, he walked past her toward the spot where the Starpoint employees huddled. He spotted the blonde woman, and trotted over.
As soon as he desired it, a control panel appeared floating next to him. He touched a dial control, and wound time in reverse, and the scene with it. The blonde walked backward, her expression shifting from amused confidence to worry and panic. One minute and thirty-three seconds earlier, she stood among the employees looking terrified and disoriented, as did they all. He tapped ‘play.’
The scene came to life, causing his adrenaline to spike in response to the roar of dropships overhead and the harsh whine-buzz of particle cannons going off. People shouted at the Division 1 cops, asking the usual array of ‘what’s going on?’, ‘why aren’t you letting us go home?’, and so on.
Whimpering, the blonde woman huddled at the back of the crowd wearing a face that looked as though she’d burst into tears at any second. Her burgundy blazer had a spot of blood on it, though she had no visible injuries. As the time stamp crept back toward the point he’d first opened, her fear melted. When no police personnel looked toward the crowd, she walked away. Eight steps later, she’d gone from terrified innocent woman to having the bearing of a CEO ready to eviscerate the board during a hostile takeover.
Joey followed her around the corner. A car parked a short way down the street glowed with a golden outline from the midway point to the nose. The software composited the feeds of several Citycam systems to keep the illusion of the environment constant. Wherever the cameras couldn’t see, the program guessed. Estimated objects had a golden aura around them.
Everything glowed for about 150 feet before they strolled into the view range of the next camera. The woman’s foot bumped an empty Cyberburger clamshell case. She stopped, looked at it, and after a second’s contemplation, kicked it again. The blonde stooped to pick up the clear plastic box, again studied it for a few seconds, and dropped it.
She repeated picking up and dropping it seven times before smiling at it and walking on.
What the fuck?
Joey took a still-image grab of her face and ran it against the system. It came back in fourteen cyberspace seconds. Alexa Hoffman, sentient-AI Class 3 doll. Intera ‘Maya-3’ series. Employed by Starpoint as an executive assistant to Takeshi Nobunaga, SVP of Research and Development.
Alexa’s file indicated her current status as reported missing. He pulled up the specs on the Maya, and his worst fears evaporated. The Maya series had the frame of a Class 3 (like Nina) but possessed none of the military grade parts. While they looked, felt, and often acted human in every way possible, they didn’t possess superhuman strength or speed.
“Motherfucker!” shouted Joey. He thought back to the silhouette of the Shinigami AI presence melting into a puddle of goo on the floor of the CPU room. He’d believed he’d killed it, but it had played him. Dammit, the pieces didn’t de-spawn. Son of a bitch fooled me with a death animation. That melty crap was him leaving the room.
He stomped after the meandering doll, which seemed to be in no real hurry to go anywhere. She picked at trashcans, looked at her reflection in car windows, and stopped to peer down her shirt before grasping her breasts. The look on her face seemed curious rather than lecherous.
“Yeah I guess it would feel weird for a guy to wake up and have tits.” Joey walked around her, though being a recorded image, showed no reaction. “Why’d you pick a girl? You pulling a Proscion? Something you wanna tell me about, Shinigami?” He chuckled, despite being furious. “Or was that the only option you had?”
The doll resumed walking, gazing up at the city like a little kid visiting the forest for the first time.
Preema’s going to do the shouty-in-my-face thing if I don’t get going on the task. He grumbled, wanting to follow this blonde more, but decided to log out. All this old video data would still be here when he finished. After disengaging the M3 plugs from his head, he un-paused the data comparison, and let his system grind away.
Frustration reddened his face. He grumbled, kneading his hands and staring at the screen streaming numbers.
“What’s up?” asked DeWinter, leaning back enough to look at him around the cube wall. The man’s fluffy grey-white caterpillar eyebrows climbed together.
“Ugh.” Joey’s Ͼ20,000 super-chair squeaked a little when he reclined. “I think Shinigami’s still out there.”
DeWinter pursed his lips. “Really now… where’d that come from?”
Joey pointed at the picture. “The damn proof’s been staring at me for eight months.”
“Can’t see through the wall. Haven’t quite unlocked that superpower yet.” DeWinter chuckled.
“This picture…” Joey reached forward, pulled it down from the clip, and handed it to DeWinter. “That blonde in the background.”
DeWinter’s pupils gave off faint yellow light. “Hmm. She’s walking away. Doesn’t look scared.”
“You’ve got cybernetic eyes?” Joey tilted his head.
“Oh… yeah. Had ’em for a while. Got tired of wearing ten pounds of glasses. Easier this way, plus more features. And before you ask, nanosurgery wouldn’t have helped but for a couple months.” He waved his hand around beside his head. “Some kind of congenital defect. My body was attacking my corneas. Would’ve required a full DNA tweak and that went waaay past what my insurance was willing to cover.”
“Right…”
DeWinter handed the picture back. “So what makes you think that woman’s your rogue AI?”
“She’s a Maya doll… Starpoint employee, listed as missing. The avatar didn’t de-res. It melted into the floor, but the pieces didn’t break down and go plain silver. He uploaded himself into that Maya and just fuckin’ walked away.”
“You ever kill an AI before?”
“Once or twice, but nothing as big as Shinigami.” Joey rambled on for a few minutes about an old ’net rival from his Mars days. After an escalating (and public) contest of one-upsmanship, ‘Cyb3rM3ssiah’ lost, and came after him with Black ICE. “I didn’t have the deck to go lethal, so I just tried to smash him as hard as I could to force-log him before he microwaved my brain. I didn’t expect him to shatter like a construct and de-res. Dude was an AI the whole time.”
“Never saw him again?” asked DeWinter.
“Nope. Why?” Joey’s face collapsed in a caricature of ‘duh.’ “Fuck. Backup.”
DeWinter smiled. “So you’re not as dumb as you look. Only problem is, it wouldn’t remember anything that happened between the time of the backup and when it ‘died.’ Now, I’m not saying that ‘messiah’ you wiped definitely had a backup, but if it did, it might not even remember you. You sure that doll didn’t just see all the shit going down at Starpoint and say ‘fuck this, I’m out?’”
Joey shook his head. “No… no… doesn’t feel right. She was walking around like an alien that just came to Earth and never saw anything before. Even the damn trash mesmerized her.”
“Hmm. Suppose you have something then… but it hasn’t messed with you or Nina since?”
“Nope.”
<
br /> DeWinter shrugged. “Maybe you did wipe it and it restored from an older backup.”
“That it happened to have with it in the Starpoint net?” Joey folded his arms. “We… uhh, you guys had that place locked up tighter than Simon’s porn stash.”
A middle finger rose over the cube wall to Joey’s left.
“Nothin’ like getting down and dirty with some oiled-up goats,” said Abby.
“Both of you can go to hell,” said Simon, sounding jovial.
Joey swirled to look behind him and exchanged a ‘wow’ glance with Abby for a second.
“I don’t know.” DeWinter exhaled past flapping lips. “Killing an AI is only a little easier than getting Preema to approve a Monday off.”
Everyone chuckled.
“Maybe I should get C-Branch involved.” Joey frowned. “This thing could cause a shitload of problems.”
“Ehh, don’t bother.” DeWinter flared his eyebrows. “Something poked Nightwing in the ass with a giant turkey baster and their entire network group is going crazy trying to figure out what the hell happened… how someone got in. Best stay away.”
His current processing job finished.
Joey slid forward to reach his console, grabbed data tiles from another six Citycams, and started the next one. “No shit. Someone got into the Fortress?”
“I heard that too,” said Mindy.
“Dillon,” said Preema.
Everyone got quiet.
“I didn’t do it,” said Joey.
The Division 9 Network Operations Manager walked up to his desk in her usual bland grey skirt-suit, long hair neat and straight. Joey leaned his head back to look up at her, and forced a huge smile. The woman couldn’t have been halfway through her forties yet, and looked closer to thirty. She had smallish eyes and a nose slightly oversized for the rest of her, and probably weighed a hundred pounds. Despite her lack of physical size, NetOps agents routinely scurried away whenever she walked in.
The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2) Page 50
