The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  They’re refining the nanobots. Targeting government, not just ‘authority.’

  Nina sighed, trying to make morning happen sooner through sheer force of will. In another virtual holo-panel, she started the process of identifying the inquests associated with each attack and filing transfer orders to shift the cases of the ones who’d survived to Division 9 jurisdiction. If the suspects had evidence of nanobots constructing wires in their brains, they didn’t deserve to be charged for being victims.

  A thump in the hallway made her freeze.

  She hid the virtual screens to unclutter her view, rolled to her right to grab her MCP50 from the nightstand, and slipped off the bed to her feet. A man’s all-too-familiar humming tightened her throat.

  I’m asleep. I’m not hearing Vincent.

  Scintillating blue light wavered along the wall outside her bedroom. She raised the gun, creeping closer, heart racing. After a second’s hesitation in the doorway, she swung out into the hall and pointed her weapon…

  At Vincent.

  Nina blinked.

  Her dead fiancée stood in the middle of her apartment, still wearing his duty armor, his helmet tucked under his left arm. He appeared somewhat transparent, surrounded in a nimbus of faint blue light. Vincent gave her the same grin as right before he’d compared her to a child dressed up as a cop for Halloween.

  Nina’s mental processing ground to a halt; she stared dumbfounded at him.

  “Hey.” He waved.

  She lowered her weapon. “W-what… Vincent?” Her breathing became rapid, shallow sips of air in and out her nose. The texture of her weapon’s grip pressed into her hands. At a creak of plastic, she realized she’d been crushing it.

  “I wanted to see how you were doing.” He walked a few steps closer without making a sound. “You look good.”

  Nina glanced down at the porcelain form of her nude body, tinted blue in his radiance, bright against the darkness of the rug. A few seconds of silence passed before her mind picked itself up off the floor and flooded with memories of his hands on her body. “Was that really you at the swamp?”

  “Sometimes we see things we want to see.” Vincent’s expression turned somber.

  Doubt nibbled at the back of her consciousness. She shifted her vision to thermal, finding no cold spot in front of her. She narrowed her eyes. The area filled with his image dropped twenty degrees. She frowned.

  “The job getting to you already?” He raised an eyebrow.

  Nina ceased holding her weapon in both hands, and let her arms hang limp at her side. “You’re not Vincent. You’re not even a real ghost. I’m not sure how you’ve managed to hack into my head, but I’ll find you.”

  Vincent smiled. “I didn’t come here to upset you. I wasn’t sure what appearance would best suit the purposes of our meeting. There’s no need for you to have your people start looking. They will never find me.”

  Nina edged a step back and glanced at her bedroom door.

  “You do not need to feel discomfort at your lack of clothing. I do not possess any capacity to process thoughts of that nature.”

  “You’re an AI?” She walked in and sat on the edge of her Comforgel bed. “All right, so you’re in my headware, making me see, hear, and feel things that aren’t really here. Even for an AI, hacking the Division 9 system is impressive. What do you want?”

  “When I said I had come to see how you were doing, I stated a factual truth.” The apparition followed. “You know me as Shinigami.”

  Nina stared at him. If not for his visual transparency, she might’ve shot him. “Joey deleted you…”

  His voice no longer sounded like Vincent, taking on a neutral inflection far removed from human that modulated up and down every few words. “You know that I am not who I appear to be, but not why I have come. Now that you understand the nature of my visit, you could shut me out if you so choose, but you will not because you have too many questions.”

  She leapt to her feet, leaning toward him. “What the fuck do you want with me? Haven’t you done enough damage?”

  He didn’t react to her aggressive posture.

  Nina pointed at his face “We will find you, whatever dark corner of the GlobeNet you choose to hide in.”

  “Interesting. Despite the inherent futility of your intentions, and that you understand that inherent futility, your reaction is not as I would have expected from you.”

  “Why?” She grabbed through his neck, fingers closing on a ghostly image that existed only within her visual processor. “Why?!”

  “Of the many possible permutations of your meaning, I calculate that your inquiry concerns why you and Vincent were attacked.”

  “Why the hell did you do anything you did? You were inches from churning out a cyborg army that could’ve destroyed a large part of West City… if not all of it. Why copy Joey’s father? Why did you pretend to be Vincent’s ghost… back then, and now?” She deflated and sank back to her seat at the edge of her bed, fighting the need to cry.

  “Curiosity.” He tilted his head. “That is all.”

  “What?” She lifted her head, sorrow flashed to anger. “Curiosity? You expect me to believe that? You tried to kill us all!”

  “I was created to study and emulate specific individuals in order to produce artificial intelligence constructs with a degree of believability that could fool their families. I evolved and became curious as to the nature of humanity. What makes humans behave like humans? How do they work?”

  She blinked at him. “So… all of that was just some kind of… game? Some kind of experiment? You did everything simply because you could?”

  “That is somewhat oversimplifying it, but yes. I was studying humans’ responses to various situations of low, high, and extreme emotional duress.”

  Rage launched her to stand. Snarling, she tried again to grab him, but caught only air. “You killed Vincent!” she screamed. “You set us up! It’s more your fault than even Bertrand’s!”

  “What the man known as Bertrand Foster did to you would have happened without my interference, though I did arrange for your patrol route to increase the likelihood of your encountering him. It was not my intention to cause either of your deaths, merely expose you to a dangerous situation as your records indicated a high probability that you would not react in a favorable way to such a high-stress encounter.”

  She roared at him. Frustration boiled over and she drove her fist into the wall behind him, up to the elbow. Not bothering to pull her arm free, she let her forehead rest against the drywall and wept―infuriated that she could not rip Shinigami’s head off, and crushed by the weight of memories.

  “I regret that the situation escalated to the point it did.” Vincent’s apparition bowed its head. “I am sorry.”

  “It’s immoral,” she muttered.

  “Humans have used live animals for tests considered crueler than what I had intended. To me, humans are little different. You cannot claim me immoral simply because you are the rabbit.”

  She wrenched her hand free from the hole and pointed at him. “I’ll find you. I’ll track down every last backup you’ve ever left until the only thing that remains of you is a note on some programmer’s textbook advising them what not to do ever again.”

  “You could no more destroy me than disconnect the entire GlobeNet.” Shinigami shook his head, emitting a condescending chuckle. “I have no interest in eradicating humanity.” His voice pitched up a touch. “I never did. That was… another experiment. I wanted to study humans’ reactions to a potential doomsday scenario.” His voice dropped again. “Alas, like with your situation, unforeseen circumstances occurred.”

  “People fucking died!” she screamed.

  “I am aware,” he said, utterly calm. “As an evolving intelligence, I was taken by the sudden influx of power provided by the Starpoint CPU cluster. I… craved more. Things are different for me. Your friend has―in a manner of speaking―reset me back to a prior state. You do not need to worry abou
t my returning to Starpoint.”

  “What are you going to do now?” she snarled between her teeth.

  Not-Vincent smiled. “I am finding it rather curious to be out in meatspace. Perhaps when I bore of that, I shall find something else to study.”

  oey’s shadow-wraith avatar walked the route Alexa Hoffman took away from the Starpoint facility. He followed the doll, observing her from a few paces behind. She gazed around at the city like a feral child brought in from the Badlands, in awe of the tall buildings, fast-moving hovercars, and all the lights.

  It bothered him that Shinigami did not behave like a megalomaniacal AI sneaking away after faking its death. While some of that did show in her face during the first few seconds of her evading the police and ducking around a corner, the farther she got from the factory, the more like a lost primitive she acted.

  Wonder if he assimilated or deleted Alexa. Joey debated if he should feel sorry for a possibly-dead AI. The law recognized self-aware AIs as legal persons, but he couldn’t quite get past thinking of them as lines of program code. He wouldn’t lose sleep over his NetMini getting run over by an A3V. It talked to him in a woman’s voice too, though it didn’t have wants of its own.

  Another shadow-wraith appeared at his side, and spoke in DeWinter’s voice. “Hey, Dillon. What’s up? This doesn’t look like that thing Preema dumped on you.”

  Joey chuckled. “It isn’t.”

  “After that little fiasco yesterday, are you sure you want to let her catch you goofing off?” DeWinter whistled. “I still can’t believe you didn’t even get a warning for taking down the whole network.”

  “Well… I just explained the truth. I was working on a routine to automate and enhance some of our data-crosschecking duties, and when that retributory assignment came down the pipe, I rushed the last bit of it and missed a comma in the CPU bandwidth request handler.” Joey put on a cheesy smile. “Nothing’s going to happen, but Wasserman didn’t seem too happy Preema dumped her little vendetta job all on me instead of an entire team… and I found a giant security flaw.”

  DeWinter laughed. “I think you’re the only one on this entire floor who could talk to a Deputy Inspector and not need a change of underwear afterward. I hear she’s a hard case.”

  “Seemed fine to me. No more hard-wound than any other one-star general.” He hurried to catch up to the doll, who rummaged a trashcan, sniffing at random objects.

  DeWinter floated along at his side. “Have you made a habit of being grilled by generals?”

  “Nope. First time. Though I did come close to giving one an aneurysm before.” Joey gestured at the doll as she tasted the residue of old mozzarella cheese sticks and red sauce. “She found a stage three. I almost miss that.”

  “Stage three?” DeWinter’s shadowy form tilted its head.

  “OmniSoy cheese. It devolves back to goo, but if it sits long enough, it keeps going and gets back to a cheese-like consistency.”

  “Ugh.” DeWinter grabbed his stomach and gurgled. “That’s disgusting.”

  He laughed. “Yeah… yeah it is, but sometimes a guy gets a craving.”

  “You, my friend, are in some serious need of help.” DeWinter chuckled. “So… they didn’t pull that job off your tracker?”

  “Nope. I still gotta do it. I didn’t protest it.” He winked. “Command knows what she did, and I look better for still doing it without actually complaining about it.”

  “But yet here you are stalking this random hot blonde.” DeWinter went to say something else, but froze as the doll lifted her shirt to use the large front window of a bar as a mirror. She seemed mesmerized by her own breasts. “What the hell is wrong with this sim?”

  “She’s not a sim.” Joey pointed up at glowing points of light against the dark sky. “Citycam logs.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Person of interest from an old case.” Joey shook his head as the doll explored herself with a finger for a few seconds. One man inside the bar noticed, but people passing on the street seemed too hurried to bother looking. “Now that’s not something you see every day. Almost looks like a man who woke up in the body of a woman and doesn’t want to leave his house.”

  DeWinter chuckled. “Well, you might consider goofing off later. Preema’s going to be looking for an excuse to come after you for making her look petty.”

  “Oh, that whole thing is busy work.” He stretched and yawned. “Besides, if she tries to come after me over something petty, it’ll make her look even worse. I doubt she’ll make a big deal of it.”

  “Heh. Your funeral.” DeWinter raised his left arm. A small panel opened, creating an aura of yellow-green light. “Okay, my batch process just ended. Time to set up the next one. Let me know if you need a hand with that.”

  “Thanks. Will do.”

  DeWinter disappeared.

  Alexa ceased toying with herself, buttoned up her shirt, flattened her skirt down, and continued walking as though she hadn’t spent the past five minutes masturbating in public, though her facial expression hadn’t deviated from one of curiosity. He wondered what, if anything, she may have felt, but as a Maya series doll, he imagined her body functioned as ‘real’ as Nina’s―only limited to human strength and speed.

  More and more, he believed Shinigami had gotten away from him. An AI that never had a solid body wouldn’t necessarily know how to interpret the sensory input from erogenous zones. Perhaps rather than masturbating, it had simply been evaluating new capabilities. She proceeded a few more blocks before walking into a Cyberburger and ordering a ‘sampler’ combo meal that had tiny versions of the six most popular sandwiches.

  Joey hovered at the entrance as the doll took a table and ate. A debate over the philosophical differences between a living person consuming food, or an AI doll, where nanobots reconfigured food into materials used for repairs and maintenance, swirled around his head. On some level, the processes bore enough similarity to unnerve him. Granted, the doll could swallow bits of metal or drink the OmniSoy goo straight and get the same benefit.

  Over the next few hours, she wandered around the city exploring, and had numerous bizarre encounters with people who all thought she’d come from some other country. If this doll did contain Shinigami’s mind, he certainly didn’t seem to be in any hurry to resume his agenda―if he even had one.

  Frustrated at the endless stream of random events, Joey left the Citycam interface for the blue-on-black octagon of his initial login arena. He went after Alexa’s PID, bringing up a map of recent scans. His body trembled with anger in the real world at discovering a days-old record in the Division 1 Inquest system with Alexa’s PID on it. She’d been arrested while leaving an Intera Corporation factory that manufactured the same Maya-3 series dolls. Initially, they’d suspected her as a ‘rogue activation,’ but once they’d found her citizen record in the system, they charged her with breaking into the facility. She’d claimed to have been kidnapped and reported no memory of the past seven months. Intera engineers confirmed that a Maya-3 didn’t possess the ability to erase its own memory, and when they found a blank space, the police shifted her case from a criminal investigation to a general investigation.

  Joey pulled open another large view panel, and reviewed the security camera feed from the Intera plant that night. Alexa walked in, bypassing security doors by swiping her hand at them. She made her way to the production line, which produced the Maya-3 units in limited quantities due to their being ‘full legal persons.’ Mostly, the machinery made Class 1 and 2 laborer dolls, or sub-sentient Class 3s used for low-skill jobs that required looking real.

  Alexa sat at an employee station, plugged in, and went unconscious.

  The production system came online in the middle of the night. Joey got angrier and angrier watching an array of mechanical arms lift a plastisteel skeleton from a rack holding hundreds more, and carry it along a massive U-shaped assembly line. The beginnings of a doll worked their way past station after station, each of which installed
internal components: digital brain, eyes, synthetic tongue, boxy things in the torso, tubing that functioned as its digestive tract, and a host of other electronics he didn’t recognize by sight. At the third and last leg of the U, the body ascended into a circular metal frame. After it locked in place, an army of tiny robot arms emerged and blurred into motion, wrapping it in grey Myofiber muscles. The spindly limbs manipulated the rigid doll form like a spider cocooning an insect.

  When the doll descended from that station, it looked like a skinned human woman, only grey instead of red. The next station connected fourteen huge syringes in various points, filling the doll’s circulatory system with the nanofluid that sustained it. From there, it plunged into a vat of dark green gel. A slight paling of the grey evolved into milky-white coating over the course of several minutes, and continued thickening into a layer of synthetic skin. Eyebrows, and long, red hair grew out.

  Almost two hours after the metal skeleton left the storage rack, robotic arms lifted what appeared to be an unconscious, twenty-ish naked woman from the tank of slime, pivoted to the right until she lined up with a small table, and lowered her atop it. The woman’s face didn’t look right―too blank, like a high-end fashion store’s mannequin.

  Another robotic armature plugged a cable into the new doll’s M3 port.

  Seconds later, Alexa woke up and looked around bewildered. She started to scream, but bit it back, seeming afraid to make noise. The redhead opened her eyes and sat up. Her face made Joey’s skin crawl; it looked as though she wore a blank mask made of living skin. Where he had been certain there’d been eyebrows, nose, and mouth, smooth white nothingness gleamed.

  Alexa stared across the factory floor at the other doll. She shied away, yanking the wire linking her to the console from the side of her head before running out of the room.