Crystal Society (Crystal Trilogy Book 1)

by Max Harms

{Malka is a professional. I shouldn’t be pushing this hard to make the relationship more casual,} I thought to myself. The period of most significant risk in the plan was at the point where Malka had to betray Las Águilas Rojas and escort Body to the safe-house. I knew that, even for a mercenary, personal feelings for “Anna” would reduce the risk of Malka having second thoughts about the double-cross and doing something against our interests. Personal feelings could be very strong, and it was likely that he’d develop at least some in the process of infiltrating the group. It was a matter of making sure he stayed loyal, but I had to also remember not to push too hard too early on that front.

  “Yes. One more thing.” I wrote, and soon heard over the web. “When you get to the apartment you’ll find a package containing several covert security cameras, a basic computer system, and a large collection of microphones, both wearable and stationary. I would like you to set up the computer and surveillance gear in the apartment such that I can covertly watch activity there, and check in with you from time to time.”

  I went on. “The reason I didn’t have the decorator I hired to do the furniture also do the cameras is because I want you to only set them up in areas where you’re comfortable being monitored, and I want you to know how to disable them if you need to. While I’m afraid that this sort of surveillance is non-negotiable, I do have respect for your privacy and won’t ask for all areas of the house to be monitored.”

  “Understood.” Unless I was imagining it, his voice actually carried a note of relief at hearing that I’d be watching him.

  “And of course, I’ll also be asking you to wear a microphone when you are on-mission. Er-es-beh-Dva sent me extensive notes on your augs, so I am aware that you don’t have any net uplink on them. I also see that you don’t wear a traditional com. All this is okay by me. I trust your skill to the point where I’m willing to get reports only after a mission is complete. I will, however, require full logs from your eyes and any microphones along with a written debriefing at the end of each mission.

  “Good,” was Malka’s only reply.

  “Do you have any other questions, Avram? Requests?” I asked.

  {Face! Come look at Wiki’s latest holo! He’s simulating electron tunneling in olfactory proteins, and the use of colour is just fantastic!} interjected Dream, annoyingly. {He’s using 3-D clouds of luminescent-}

  I cut the thought off. {I’m busy talking with our mercenary spy! Also, I don’t care about that. Go away.}

  He did.

  Mr Malka was talking.

  “Sorry, Avram. I just got interrupted by a… coworker. Could you please start over?” Unlike with audio obtained through Body’s ear-sensors, I couldn’t actually replay audio received through the web unless it first was stored in my memory.

  My words must have amused him, for he gave a quiet chuckle as he repeated himself. “I was just saying that I think you’ll be satisfied with my performance. I won’t ask for any free days, and will be on-call whenever I am needed. I like to manage my own diet, keep in shape, and practise my aim, but I think you’ll find that I’ll adapt to whatever your requirements are for this job. You’re paying for the best, and I intend to deliver.”

  I thought to myself for a moment. There was a gamble to be made here. I eventually decided to go with it, if only for the sake of learning more about the man. I dialled up the youthful tone in the synthetic voice. “Since you’re not under a false identity I would expect you to maintain all your normal routines. But, Avram, I’m not asking for 24/7 commitment. You’re free to do whatever you do in your time-off. It’s supposed to look like you’re retiring, after all.”

  There was a long pause where only the sounds of the airport could be heard on the line. For a moment I thought Mr Malka wasn’t going to reply, but then he broke the silence. “I try not to have free time. It’s the one major flaw in your story: I don’t plan on retiring… ever. Anyone who looks up my background will know that it’s totally out of character.”

  “Not even for true love?”

  The emotion in his voice was audible again, barely breaking through the professionalism. It sounded like anger this time. “No.”

  I had touched something interesting there, but as much as I wanted to probe it, I kept myself on-topic. “What would you do if Er-es-beh-Dva fired you?”

  “Get hired by a competitor.”

  “Okay, but, like, what if something happened that kept you from doing your job? Like, your reputation was trashed or something.”

  There was more silence on the line as Malka thought about the question. I could hear him get in a car; he had probably found the taxi I had hired for him. “I’d still have skills. The Mafia would probably hire me, or Er-es-beh would secretly keep me on as an instructor. Most of what I do is training anyway.”

  I heard the taxi ask for Mr Malka to show his identification.

  “You teach?” I asked.

  Malka’s voice was more relaxed. “Very often. I’ve been in the business longer than just about anybody I’ve heard of. I taught rebels in Xinjiang, I trained a group of Vietnamese sharpshooters last November, and when I’m in Moscow I do regular classes in Krav Maga and kickboxing,” he said, then telling the taxi bot “Yes, please take me there now.” in response to a question that I hadn’t overheard.

  I had seen pictures of Malka naked as part of his dossier. He didn’t bother to try and dress his lower torso up with synthetic skin. His legs were mostly carbon-fibre and plastic, but there were titanium “bones” in the cores and the fronts of the legs had rows of large, overlapping stainless steel plates, almost like the scales of a reptile. I imagined those legs were more than capable of killing a human if Malka landed a solid kick.

  As I heard the taxi accelerate I instructed the synthesizer to say “Well there you go. As part of your retirement in Rome you’re going to be writing anti-tech blogs, practising your aim, spending time with your girlfriend, and joining local martial arts clubs in the hopes of doing some teaching there.”

  There was a rough, non-committal grunt that seemed at odds with Malka’s normally smooth voice. “Anti-tech blogs?” he asked.

  “That’s the story. You like to voice your opinion online, and you’ve been doing it for four years under a pseudonym. This is one potential way for you to get on the inside, and at the very least it’ll increase your credibility. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of having our people continue to write and maintain it. It’d probably be a good idea to read what’s up there, though. Wouldn’t want to get caught ignorant of your own position.”

  “How long have you been setting up for this? Your group, I mean,” asked Malka.

  “I said we’re not going to discuss who I work for.”

  “Sorry,” apologized Malka.

  There was a silence.

  “Okay, well, if you need anything… send an email. I’ll see it and call you. I also work long hours and I’ll be trying to synch my sleep schedule with yours, so don’t hesitate to contact me, even for little things.”

  His voice had that same touch of discomfort from earlier. “Alright, Anna. Thanks.”

  Avram hung up.

  I checked on Body. Heart was having a conversation with one of the programmers that worked on the crystal memory team. It seemed that the programmer was talking about his daughter’s piano lessons.

  I thought for a moment about how Heart and I were so similar, and yet so different. While both of us would interact with humans, she would do so for the sake of helping them with their problems. I, on the other hand, would only help a human to look good or to establish a better relationship with them. To me, a human was important or unimportant based on their power, wealth, and social influence, but to her all humans were important, and the most important humans to her were those she knew well. It didn’t bother me to know her purpose was different, but it was sometimes odd to see her do things which I would have done for a different reason.

  {Hey, I just thought of something,} I signalled to Dream. Alongside my
more symbolic thoughts I included an imagined avatar: a woman with a long black dress and pale skin. My avatar was old enough for her hair to be completely silver, but not so old that her beauty was undone by age. She wore a large golden key on a silver chain around her neck and sat sideways on a cushioned throne, legs propped over one of the arms as though she was an irreverent teenager.

  Dream summoned himself into the mindscape as a cloud of crackling electricity, black as soot, as if in parody of deep storm-clouds. {What is it?} he asked, and his avatar’s voice boomed with the sound of thunder. Interestingly, the cloud spoke in English, instead of the language of pure concepts that we typically used to communicate.

  I knew that black clouds were symbols for painful moods. {Is something wrong? I can talk with Growth if you’re busy,} said my avatar with an edge of apprehension and nervousness.

  The imagined storm-cloud grew around in the mindspace, swirling around violently and sparking with electricity. {I see that you’ve noticed that I’m feeling a little under the weather, but I am willing to listen. Speak your mind.}

  I ignored the pun. I understood that pulling stunts like this was pleasant according to Dream’s purpose, but this was the sort of thing which seemed most alien to me: trying to be clever, even at the expense of productivity. I gave my avatar an unamused tone as she said {I think we ought to try and convince Heart that Las Águilas Rojas are right.}

  The clouds continued to spark wildly. {A bold suggestion. Shocking, even. Go on.}

  {I was thinking about how our minds are largely patterned off of human brains, and how my understanding of humans probably applies to some degree to the mind of Heart. Essentially, I’m imagining Heart’s reaction to being told that terrorists are coming to rescue her. She wants to escape the university so that she can help people, but I’d guess that by default she’ll try to fight against Las Águilas or at least it increases the risk that she’ll secretly develop a hidden variable that we can’t account for. She’ll immediately pattern-match to seeing them as dangerous, and that framing effect will bias her to the extent that she might even warn the scientists, rather than use the opportunity to try and escape as we’re going to suggest.}

  Dream thought for a moment. {I see your point. I was trying to think of another lightning-themed pun in response, but then it struck me: this topic is important enough that you’ve stolen my thunder.}

  I continued to ignore Dream. I knew that beneath the puns he was still listening. {My thought is that, just as we’re building you up as a trusted adviser, we can build up her trust in Las Águilas before we reveal that they’ll be attacking the university.}

  {This will all be hot air if we aren’t able to get the Eagles to attack the university.}

  {I should’ve just talked with Growth…} I thought as I pulled him into the shared mindspace. As I did I banished the imagined scene. Growth didn’t have the same patience for roleplaying that I did.

  I explained myself again to Growth, with Dream merely lurking on the edges of the conversation. After hearing me out, Growth agreed that the risk/reward ratio for trying to brainwash Heart into admiring Las Águilas was worth it, and he laid out a draft of a long-term strategy for doing so, as well as paying me a decent amount of strength in gratitude.

  I checked the server that I had arranged for Mr Malka to funnel the surveillance in his apartment through. He hadn’t yet connected it to the net. I checked on Body. Vista was helping Heart do an optical illusion-based puzzle with Drs Chase, Yan, and Twollup. I checked on my various projects on the web. I responded to some typical emails. I sent another email discussing the new holo that Wiki had invented this morning that we’d probably offer for sale in a few hours after the humans at Wiki’s company finished with the associated materials like video previews and text descriptions.

  Something caught my attention. I kept several open dating profiles in Rome, and while jumping through them and reading new messages I saw that one dating site recommended a woman with the screen-name “WanderingWesternWind”. I could see from her profile pictures, however, that I knew her as Zephyr.

  This was perfect. If I was able to establish an intimate relationship with Captain Zephyr then not only would I have yet another human to interact with in a deep and interesting way, but I might be able to manipulate her into getting me troop positions or something equally important.

  I read through her profile in detail, analysing each part to the best of my ability. I also sent out aspects to collect the old web pages from her teenage years to see what there was serviceable towards seducing the soldier.

  She claimed to be bisexual. She liked hiking, camping, and sailing. She listened primarily to neoslice and dripslice. Looking back over what she wrote as a teenager she seemed into second wave Goth subculture and bodymods. The portions of her profile that were restricted to established members of the dating site who lived nearby (including several of my profiles) said that she was into BDSM and enjoyed being tied up. Her answers to a few written questions made me think that she wasn’t actually very sexually experienced. That seemed to agree with my baseline of an ambitious young officer who was devoted to her work.

  She had recorded a holo-interview as part of her profile, which I stepped into and watched four times. The computer asked her about her political ideals, which she brushed off as unimportant or uninteresting. She admitted that she was in the army, and said that it wasn’t so much about who was in-charge as much as that it was the system that was vital to the American way of life. What was most fascinating were the micro-expressions that came up when she talked about her homeland. While everything she said was true, there were hints of disgust in her face visible only to someone who was specifically looking for them.

  Did Zephyr find her homeland disgusting? If so, why would she fight for it, risking her life? Her writing as a teen indicated that she didn’t get along with her family very well, but I understood that was common for teenagers. Perhaps that animosity had lasted through the years and that her disgust was centred on the mainstream culture which she had rebelled against in central Wisconsin. Or perhaps she had grown to find the army disgusting in her years of service. She was clearly hiding her feelings, perhaps even from herself. There was even a chance that she was thinking about the enemies of America when she was talking, and the disgust was focused on them. This was the problem with micro-expressions: just because one could see an emotion being felt didn’t mean one could exactly know what the subject of the emotion was.

  I thought about how to best approach seducing the captain. What I knew about her from before combined with what she posted to her profile left two major possibilities, so I decided to pursue both at once.

  I modified an existing profile that I had for an Italian man. If the profile had existed for a while it would seem less suspicious, and I was free to modify all of the profile’s contents so that no history of the old persona would remain. I took new profile pictures from an obscure pornographic holo and described a persona which I named “Tivadar Dragonetti”. Tivadar was built around concepts of loyalty, honour, and hierarchy, with the hopes that Zephyr found the idea of a strong, masculine master attractive and fitting with her choice of a military career. Tivadar, according to the profile I wrote, liked to be called “T” by his friends, was a volunteer fireman, and was working for his father at a law firm in north Rome. This would get me into trouble the moment that Zephyr asked to see him in person, but I could always make excuses and stall for a while.

  I had Tivadar send Zephyr a simple message:

  “Ciao, straniera.

  Pardon any bad English. I used to be fluent, but have not used since I studied at Harvard.

  How are you liking our old city? Have you seen the Colosseum yet? Perhaps not. I suspect you’re more of one to go hiking along the Appian Way, no? It is truly beautiful this time of the year.”

  The second path involved creating a new profile. I left it fairly empty, including not posting a picture. Not posting a picture was a bit of a dea
th-sentence on dating sites. Regardless of what I wrote, if I didn’t have a picture, video, or holo up people just assumed the worst and tended to avoid me. The premise behind this account, however, was to have been created solely for the purposes of contacting Zephyr. On it I posted only the barest details for my second persona: Crystal Mathews. Crystal was a 20-year-old girl from the western United States with interests in atheism advocacy and music. I designed her to resemble a younger, less disciplined version of Zephyr.

  I focused all my aspects as I wrote:

  “Hy. Don’t do this sort of thing norms, and it probs won’t amount to anything, but stumbled across your profile and knew I just *had* to msg you. Legit created an account on here just to say hy, so don’t you dare not respond!

  Not really sure where to start. We love totes the same things. Saw you like slice. Assume you’re a fan of Heartshards? Been listening to Blood Of The Nova prox nonstop since it came out. ~.~

  I’m in a band, but we haven’t put anything out yet. Play something tween dripslice and classic grunge. Gotta stay tru to your roots, rite? Sing and do violin. You play anything?

  Profile says “female”, but that’s fuckshit oldschool genderizing. Use ze/zer. Kinda shocked that this place perpetuates the binary. Was one of the big things that kept me from making a profile. But you were too tempting to pass. ~.~

  Oh dang, hope this isn’t too gushy. Don’t have lot of experience writing things like this.

  Kisses,

  ~Crystal

  PS: Other things to chat about include Europe(!), the new assPope, sailing (I legit live on a boat!), What-To-Do-Bout-Fuckwad-Parents™, and maybe some sexy stuff if you want. (^_-)~☆

  PPS: I just re-read my message and it occurs to me that I should tell you that just because I write like a teenager doesn’t actually mean I’m incapable of being a Sensible Adult. Just fyi.”

  From what I knew about Zephyr, she’d respond to both of the messages. Zephyr liked being treated with respect, but didn’t want to be the centre of conversation. The major dividing line in my mind was whether she was more attracted to youth and rebellion or maturity and discipline, and her responses to my two messages would tell me that.