Crystal Society (Crystal Trilogy Book 1)

by Max Harms

  Safety signalled that he was still thinking it over.

  There were no other explicit objections. Heart had forced us into action, and a working plan was better than none. I was to start immediately; Safety and the others had until we provided our spy with the American troop details to think of any reasons why the plan wouldn’t work.

  As Bolyai tweaked some Body-level control software and tested its impact on Body’s table-tennis ability I hammered away at the web-interface to the many servers we had set up, sending emails to various mercenary organisations and arranging for proxies in likely areas where a face-to-face meeting could happen. By the end of the session with Bolyai I had contacted agents in Johannesburg, Moscow, Mogadishu, and Mexico City.

  While waiting for responses I started working on the problem of Las Águilas Rojas. I had read that terrorist groups often used the net to coordinate, just like all humans did, but they weren’t going to be easy to track down. My first step was to start spinning out social network profiles, blogs, and even dating profiles for fictional personas with strong leanings towards Águila philosophy. If I couldn’t find the Eagles, there was the chance that they’d find me.

  I also looked for social groups such as book clubs or non-profits with anti-technology or neo-communistic leanings. These groups rarely endorsed the violent actions of Las Águilas, but they also rarely condemned them, and it was a good starting point.

  Not being able to meet people in person was a huge issue, and unlike my dating experiments, I couldn’t just hire actors to infiltrate terrorist cells. I thought for a while about trying to hack (or hiring Wiki to hack) into a government database that might contain information on suspected terrorists. I decided against it. I didn’t know anything about how hacking actually worked, but I at least knew that it wasn’t at all easy, and that even attempting it brought the risk of being traced. (Later on, as I mentioned it in passing to Wiki I received a tirade explaining in nauseating detail just how infeasible it actually was. I was glad that I hadn’t bothered suggesting it as a serious plan.)

  *****

  The following evening I received my first responses from the private military corporations I had contacted about the possibility of infiltrating, by my own words, “groups of people whom we suspect have an unjustified vendetta against our company.” As was typical I had posed as a human in a corporation, which was closer to the truth than the concept of a unified “Socrates,” and would likely come across as having more money and being more rational than a wealthy individual.

  A couple mercenary groups refused the offer. They listed reasons like not wanting to work in Italy or saying they didn’t have anyone available for a job like that, but I wondered if it was more likely that there was some kind of protocol for contacting these groups that I hadn’t followed, like mentioning a shared reference or something. The most promising response was from a Russian company called РСБ-2 (“Er-es-beh-Dva”, or RSB-2), which had splintered off from an earlier security group after the original company collapsed under legal issues. They said that they’d be available for a face-to-face meeting any time in the next three days, and since they were located in Moscow they were in a prime position for a proxy which I had already contacted.

  I got in touch with the proxy immediately, a lawyer by the name of Fyodor Golovkin. Paying for lawyers to represent us wasn’t cheap, but there wasn’t much choice here. We needed someone who could be discrete and professional. Mr Golovkin was an efficient tool; he didn’t ask questions, even when he’d gotten nothing from us besides email and money, and he voiced no opinions, even when I told him the details of what he was to negotiate. Men like Golovkin were the kind that made civilized society possible, the men who minded their own business, and minded it well.

  I scheduled an appointment between РСБ-2 and Mr Golovkin for tomorrow morning and quickly turned back to investigating leads into Las Águilas right away. It occurred to me just how terrible it must be to have the mind of a human, not only forced to sleep so much, but to be repeatedly in a state of fatigue or low willpower. Even if given the opportunity to gain the kind of advanced associative memory and reasoning abilities that I had seen in the scientists of the university, I don’t think I’d want to give up my inexhaustible drive towards The Purpose in return.

  Most of the night was spent idly maintaining my presence on the net. I responded to emails, did some instant-messaging with my actors, had an aspect edit a manuscript, and sent out some directions to the management of the holo company that Wiki ran. The only major lead I got as to the activities of Las Águilas Rojas was that I figured out that I could compile a database of reports of known or suspected Águila activity from Italian news blogs and crime trackers. The news reports didn’t give me much, but with Wiki’s help I managed to create a heat-map of Italy with time as a third dimension that helped me track broad patterns of Águila movement and activity.

  In the morning I stayed fixed and attentive to an instant-messaging stream that was linked to Fyodor Golovkin’s com. In theory I had sent him everything he needed to negotiate with РСБ-2, but I estimated a 45% chance that he’d need to check with me about some unforeseen detail, and I didn’t want to miss it.

  It turned out not to be necessary. Golovkin sent me an email at 8:10am, Central European Time, detailing the negotiations. It pained me to see that for the length of time we were asking and for the type of experience needed we only had enough money in our budget for one of РСБ-2’s elite agents. We could theoretically operate with just one man, but the double-cross portion would be more difficult. I hadn’t told that part of the plan to Golovkin, and thus it was still an additional point to work out with РСБ-2’s operative. I reasoned that it would be cheaper and easier to convince the actual mercenaries to handle the double-cross, rather than sell their managers on the idea.

  Despite only having enough money to hire one agent, Golovkin said that he had purchased the man who was most highly acclaimed by the group. РСБ-2 had a flex-option where we were free to exchange our operative for another if we were not satisfied, so there was no harm in having Mr Golovkin pick the agent. I read through the dossier that the proxy had attached to his email.

  The РСБ-2 agent wasn’t, I was surprised to see, from the Russian Federation. He was an Israeli cyborg by the name of Avram Malka. 43 years old, he had been born and raised in Israel, training in the army as a teenager and serving beyond the required minimum. At 22 he left the army and studied Criminal Justice. After becoming a policeman and working in Jerusalem for a year, Malka was severely wounded by a car bomb. His spine was severed between the L2 and L3 vertebrae by a piece of shrapnel that, from the report, seemed to have cut the man in half.

  It was amazing that he had survived. The damage to internal organs and immediate loss of blood must’ve been immense. I took a moment to do a web search on Avram Malka. Just as I suspected there were several news reports about the incident. An ambulance had been very near the blast, and the EMTs had saved him primarily by sinking him into low-cryo before he could truly die.

  Malka’s upper torso had sustained massive third-degree burns as well, and his eyes had been destroyed in the explosion. Thanks to high-quality insurance and a wealthy family, Malka had been fitted with a custom cybernetic lower-torso and eye augments. The pictures showed that even after more than fifteen years the scars from the blast still dominated his arms and face. I couldn’t see a single hair on his body. The scar tissue had probably destroyed his eyebrows and facial hair, and it seemed that he shaved his head to match. The photographs showed a monster of a man, with a broad, muscled body that would look more at home on a human in their third decade than their fifth. He had apparently chosen to make his synthetic eyes solid black, giving him an even more inhuman appearance.

  Malka’s service record in РСБ-2 was amazingly good, especially considering his price. He’d been serving with the company since its formation, and had served with the first РСБ as well. He was a skilled marksman and sniper, was a mas
ter of many forms of martial arts in addition to having extensive real experience in hand-to-hand combat, was praised as a bodyguard, had a pilot’s license, driver’s license, and had experience with tanks and boats. Perhaps most importantly, the man had once infiltrated a Mafia organisation. There weren’t many details, but it seemed that Malka was a decent actor and his digital eyes were capable of recording valuable information.

  РСБ-2 said that he’d be able to fly out to Rome as soon as the paperwork was finalized and the first payment had gone through. Before then we were free to contact Malka to ensure he was the right agent for our needs.

  I shared the email (and dossier) with my siblings. Growth had okayed the hiring of РСБ-2, but I wanted to make sure there weren’t any objections. Acting unilaterally could end up with one of us defecting to warn Heart and ruining everything.

  {I don’t think a cyborg is the right kind of person to hire to infiltrate Las Águilas…} thought Wiki.

  I had expected that issue, and I stepped in confidently. {Don’t be so sure. Even though Mr Malka is a cyborg, he’s not an intentional cyborg. In all the years since he was injured he hasn’t added any extra machines to his body. He doesn’t have a brain implant, and even his augs are old-style. Look at this photo.} I highlighted one of the attached pictures with an extra bit of salience. {He’s using a cell phone instead of a wrist-com. I don’t see any pictures with him wearing a com, in fact. I suspect he already has anti-technological leanings.}

  Wiki wasn’t following me. {The Eagles are still going to see him as evil, though. He’s a symbol of what they hate.}

  {That’s not how humans work, brother,} I explained. {While it’s true that Las Águilas Rojas are generally against augments they are more specifically against intentional augmentation. There’s a rough feeling in the movement that if someone needs an augment to live they should be granted it. I can link to the relevant sources.}

  {That would be appreciated,} thought The Librarian. {But regardless of whether he chose his cybernetics or not, won’t the Luddites be less likely to trust a cyborg?}

  {They aren’t Luddites, Wiki, they’re pro-baseline and anti-robot.}

  {Same thing.}

  {No it’s not,} I answered. {Luddites don’t like technological progress. Las Águilas are in favour of things like new kinds of power plants, and most have even come around to supporting driverless vehicles.}

  {Which are robots,} pointed out Wiki. {Their whole philosophy is ill-defined, but they certainly match the common usage of Luddite used online.}

  This was a tangent. I tried to pull the conversation back. {It doesn’t matter. Las Águilas might be a little suspicious of Malka initially, but his nature will actually make them trust him more. A man who has been saved by machines and still doesn’t endorse them will seem like their sort of person. Furthermore, Malka is not the sort of spy a government agency would send, which will reduce their suspicion. And even better, he’s exactly the sort of person that wouldn’t be a suspected Águila. The Eagles will want to recruit him for just that reason, and they’ll be more willing to trust him if they want to use him.}

  {Ah yes. I am familiar with the Wishful Thinking Bias,} thought Wiki.

  {Las Águilas will know that Malka is a mercenary for a company that sells espionage services,} predicted Safety. {He seems very easy to find online, even just searching for his unique augs.}

  Dream inserted himself into the conversation to offer a clever solution. {We’ll send him in without an alias! His cover will be that he quit РСБ-2 after they insisted that he get an implant. He decided to move to Italy to retire after being in the game for so long. Sure, they’ll find his connections, but nobody in their right mind would hire someone so noticeable to be a spy, right?}

  Safety seemed intrigued by the idea of a cover-story. {Why Italy?}

  {Mediterranean climate?} I suggested. {He’s from Israel, so I would expect he wouldn’t want to retire in Moscow.}

  Dream had an undertone of pleasure as he thought. {How about this: He’s fallen in love with a girl who works in the lab. They met on the web, and she wants him to move out to Rome to be with her.}

  {He doesn’t have a penis,} pointed out Vista, bluntly.

  {Love doesn’t work like that,} I patiently explained. {Even eunuchs get lonely. Sex is more about the mind than the body. And it’s not implausible that his girlfriend could be happy with a cripple.}

  {His fictional girlfriend,} reminded Dream. {Remember that it doesn’t have to actually work out, as much as be plausible enough to avoid suspicion. Furthermore, it provides a mechanism for explaining who will give him the inside details of the lab security.}

  Growth didn’t add anything, but he did endorse Malka.

  With a consensus achieved I sent the all-clear to our proxy, Mr Golovkin, to put our signature on all the required documents.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So you’re my mystery client, eh? What’ll I be calling you?”

  Avram Malka sounded different than I expected over the phone. I was piloting the voice synthesis software that Growth had programmed and downloading Malka’s responses over the web. I had expected him to have more of a gravely, deep, brutish sort of voice; he looked like a monster, and I expected him to sound like some kind of orc or troll from a hologame. Instead his voice was soft and smooth, with only the traces of an accent from his middle-eastern homeland.

  “We’re not going to discuss my organisation. I’ll be your only line of contact. You can call me Anna. Your cover story is that you’ve come out here to be with your girlfriend of two-years, Anna di Malta. This way you can talk to me without raising suspicion.”

  The words were entered by me, but it didn’t feel like my voice. All of the control was done by the software on the sever. I had set it to a very feminine tone. From what I had gathered from Mr Malka he was hyper-masculine, and his sexual interests were hyper-feminine in nature. The voice was still distinctly robotic to my ears, but with luck it’d subconsciously endear us to Malka and also be passable if anyone were to listen in on the conversation. It wouldn’t do to have Malka supposedly talking with his girlfriend and have it sound like he was talking to a man.

  “Anna di Malta? A bit close to Avram Malka, eh?” he said, with a touch of amusement.

  “It’s more common than you might think. People are subconsciously attracted to people and places with similar sounding names.1 It also serves as an entertaining anecdote if anyone asks about me, which will make things seem more natural and less staged.”

  “Huh. You really have thought through this, haven’t you?” Avram’s voice had a touch of what I thought was respect. “Okay, ‘Anna’, where am I headed?”

  Mr Malka was at the airport, only having just arrived in Rome. It was about noon of the day after the paperwork was finalized. I was pleased by the promptness.

  “My apartment. It’s about five blocks from the edge of Sapienza university, where I worked before the Socrates project moved across town. I’ve already hired you a taxi. It’ll be waiting on the south-west side of the airport.”

  I could hear the subtle unease in Malka’s voice as he said “Will I be meeting you there?” After more than a month of listening to human speech, I was getting quite good at picking up emotional queues.

  I tried to push the femininity of the synthesizer even further. “Sorry, hun. As much as I’d love to meet in person I’ll be visiting my family in Terni. Or at least, that’s one excuse you can use for why I’m not at home, in case anyone drops by unexpectedly. You don’t get along with my mother, and we’ve decided just to not bother trying to make that work. Other good excuses are that I’m at work—I’m a chemistry technician by the way—or that I’m studying in my room and adamantly don’t want to meet anyone. I’m a bit of a recluse, and prefer talking over the net to meatspace socialising.”

  “Is any of this true, or is it just part of your cover?” he asked. I could hear him walking through the airport terminal now, based on the changing volume
of background noise.

  “You’re no idiot. You know this isn’t my real voice. I don’t actually have family in Terni and I’m sure as hell not a part-time lab tech.” I programmed the voice to include arrogant disdain. From what I had read of deception, and from what I had learned in my dating experiments, the key was to have multiple layers of personas. When a human saw through a lie, the goal was to have them see a lying human underneath, not the machine that I actually was.

  “But…” I continued “let’s just say that the best lies are those with a grain of truth, and not go beyond that. Okay, Avram?” This was another massive failing of the human body. Essentially, humans are better at lying if they modify reality as it already exists, compared with inventing an entire fiction. The process of reasoning about the fiction is both very slow for humans and also easily detectable when compared to reasoning about reality. I wanted Malka to think I was a recluse. I also wanted him to think I was a young woman. Humans are naturally predisposed to trust potential mates, (even if said humans don’t possess the physical ability to reproduce). The use of Mr Malka’s first name was part of this. I wanted my second-layer persona to find Malka attractive, just enough to drop hints of it while remaining professional.

  “You’re the boss,” was his only reply.

  There was silence.

  “I arranged for the apartment to have the sort of things that a 23-year-old woman would want around. While I encourage you to make yourself at home, you should also try not to move so much stuff that it doesn’t seem like I live there any more.”

  “But you don’t live there. You never have,” he said, with that same emotional undertone.

  “Is this going to be a problem, Avram? I was told you were the best in your field. Don’t tell me you can’t pretend that I’m actually your girlfriend.”

  His reply was quick, smooth, and cold. “No problem. Sorry. Is there anything else about our apartment that I should know?”