by Lee Bond
Alyssa, who’d given the nature of the machine a great deal of thought through the years, had come to the personal conclusion that it was the connections. Not physically linked to any single netLINK throughout the solar system, it was somehow nevertheless a part of every machine in Latelyspace. Every computer they used borrowed the limitless bandwidth and connectivity that the First Main somehow created, and Alyssa … feared that. Just as she feared its appearance of inactivity until she put it into use.
Even the cheapest prote or Sheet was always doing something, making some kind of noise or running some sort of program, even if it was only a maintenance subroutine. The First Main –or Sigma Engine, since that was the only thing any one of them had ever got it to do- just sat there.
Quietly.
Doing ‘nothing’. It seemed impossible, but again, tests through the centuries had been unable to confirm or deny any activity in the Main other than during those moments when it actively engaged. The rest of the time, it was just … there.
Doans let herself into the small room and looked warily at the ‘computer’. To her, the ancient machine looked hardly different from a main netLINK system. Larger, bulkier, less modular, perhaps, but the shape would be familiar to anyone looking at it.
That was where the similarities ended. There was no voice activation, no avatars waiting to anticipate need, no holographic representations. This was a Stone Age computer, all right, laughably antique in every way yet still hooked into every single machine in the entire system and capable of such wondrous things. Or so they suspected.
Not even Chairman Robert Zenzen, proven and system-lauded super programmer extraordinaire, had been able to determine the exact method that the Engine LINKed in to the systems around it.
More accurately; he’d developed a way to connect the first of their early ‘wireless’ devices to the bandwidth generated or propagated by the computer and that had been that. Zenzen was also responsible for, ultimately, discovering the string code capable of unleashing the Sigma ‘avatar’.
Zenzen had spent most of his lifetime theorizing that the ancient relic was capable of unparalleled and epic feats, toiling tirelessly to pierce the veil of secrets surrounding their greatest treasure. Through all his years, all his experimentation, all his patience, Chairman Robert Zenzen had learned precisely one other thing in his entire, epic career.
Robert Zenzen had learned –and quite abruptly- that if you even appeared to be in the act of preparing to take it apart, it killed you stone dead and prevented anyone from using it for an inconsiderate length of time, an act oftentimes leading to periods of massive civil unrest and an empty Chair.
Alyssa was a pragmatist, though. The Sigma Engine was -if not Latelian by design- Latelian by adoption; it came from a time before Trinity’s absolute mastery over Trinityspace, so it was most definitely not one of that AI’s machines. Her rationale behind that logic was sound enough. Were the Engine a part of It’s machinations, not a single one of them would be alive today. It would’ve swept through Latelyspace like a scouring wind, grinding planets into dust thirty years or more ago.
The Sigma Engine did what she wanted it to do, and that was that. Maybe one day, when their plotting, scheming, and lying were finished, she’d divert freshly acquired resources into plumbing the depths of the computer’s origins. Until then, the true history of the machine would remain as oblique as The Box’s and she was quite all right with that.
Her prote jangled. The call warning sounded a hundred times louder in the small room, and as she hastened to answer, it seemed to her that Sigma was listening in.
Shuddering, she looked into Vasily’s dark eyes. He wasn’t happy. With Vasily, there was no need to look for subtle clues about his mood; when he was angry, his face darkened into storm clouds and his eyes flashed warningly. “News4You.”
“Yes, Alyssa, News4You.” Vasily bit back a curse. “And Harry Bosch and Chadsik al-Taryin. And Vilmos Gualf and the citizens picking up Trinity weapons. And every single fucking God soldier deployed here today and probably three-quarters of this entire fucking planet. I assume, Chairwoman, you realize the significant impact every second of delays in shutting down the broadcast causes, yes?”
Alyssa remained outwardly calm, even though her heart felt ready to burst out of her chest. She’d never seen Vasily so enraged. “Of course, OverCommander.” This came out in sheer, icy tones.
Vasily didn’t even flinch at the clipped words. “I need to unlimber the Gunboys, Alyssa. I can’t rightly do that if every motherhumping prote in that Museum is doing a live broadcast. Harry and Chadsik are decimating our forces. Those two maniacs have either killed or incapacitated a thousand or more of my men, Chairwoman. A thousand! We’ve never lost that many men in a single engagement, and we have fought the bloodiest wars this Universe has ever seen. From what I’ve seen there’s a disgusting possibility those two maniacs may be able to counter the Gunboys and that is a failure I cannot allow to be witnessed.”
Alyssa’s legendary façade splintered for a moment. She chewed indecisively at her lower lip. “There … there is a problem with the relay stations. Even the one in my own office. I needed to come down to … to the place.”
“Damn Guillfoyle.” Vasily’s eyes flashed like lightning. “We need to kill him. He’s too dangerous.”
“I quite agree.” Alyssa had considered letting Ashok –a man so broken she’d never seen before- walk out of the Central City Offices alive and free, but after the growing debacle, there was absolutely no chance of that. They’d shuffle him back onto the carrier destined for The Peak and thrown him over the edge once they got into the mountains. “If you will wait one moment, I’ll get the Sigma going.”
“By your leave.” Vasily made no move to terminate the call.
Alyssa walked up to the cracked, yellowing keyboard and touched the ‘enter’ key. The monitor flickered fitfully to life; a ‘screensaver’ of a ball bouncing back and forth inside the confines of the ‘box’ created by the screen’s edges slowed down to a chunky crawl before resolving into a command prompt line.
Alyssa Doans typed ‘Del: Museum’, followed with a string of time codes and hit the enter key. Greenlit words scrawled slowly across the screen.
Syntax error.
The Chairwoman stared dumfounded at the monitor, heart in her mouth.
That wasn’t supposed to happen. After entering the command, an ‘are you sure (y/n)’ prompt popped up. Pressing the ‘y’ key got the ball rolling and within seconds, the Sigma had done its job. She didn’t even know what a syntax error was! Oh, she was literate and educated enough to understand what both words combined together in this particular incident implied, but to her horrified recollection, no other Chairs had ever encountered ‘syntax error’.
“Uhoh.” Alyssa said quietly.
Vasily, finalizing the paperwork required to let the Gunboys and the Proctors unload themselves, looked up from his tactiSheet. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘uhoh’ before, Alyssa. What’s the matter?”
“One moment.” Alyssa dredged the bottom of her memory for some of the other words you could type into the Engine. ‘Help’ was one. ‘List’ was another. She typed ‘help’ and watched the screen fill with ugly green text. After more than a minute of reading and steadfast patience in ignoring Vasily’s growing consternation, it developed that a user could type ‘help del’ and the programming would theoretically give her a list of additional phrases that would add to the del command’s efficiency.
Command not recognized. Type ‘help’ for help.
A solid core of panic gripped Alyssa. There was no reason to check security tapes to see if anyone had snuck in; there was only one person in the entire system capable of bypassing all the security measures and if anyone had tried, she’d’ve learned of it instantly. To prevent any highly skilled thieves from even attempting the impossible, the First Main was in a tiny little closet sized room nearly a mile under Central in the first place. No, there was
only one other reason why the First Main wouldn’t recognize her commands.
And that was impossible.
“Can you beat the terrorists and everyone else without using the Gunboys?” Her voice was thin and unsteady in the Engineroom.
Vilmos shrugged, his prote feed wobbling with the gesture. “Everything is relative, Chairwoman. If Bosch and Chadsik stop fighting, absolutely. I’m assuming Chadsik will continue killing Goddies only as long as they are in his line of sight. After that, he’ll most likely target any remaining terrorists, which I wouldn’t mind. He seems to be in a bit of a bloodlust right now. Bosch will almost definitely stop the moment we stop, but if we do that, Vilmos and the surviving terrorists will try to run away. With the condition the rest of The Museum is in, they might succeed, especially if we pull our troops out altogether. The men holding the empty portions of the place are ‘secretly’ cycling their way into the Viewing Room as it is.”
Alyssa typed the delete command in again and got the same answer for her paltry efforts. She wanted to pound away at the keyboard, but refrained. The First Main didn’t like overt physical contact: it was just one more reason why many previous Chairs imagined it to be intelligent in some way. She sighed. “And the Orbiter?”
“Destined to be functional soon.” Vasily shook his head. “But I’m reluctant to use it unless there are no other options, Chairwoman. Fallout from a blast of that magnitude will destroy at least ten city blocks, possibly more. We’ll be using older equipment in … twenty minutes time, and those targeting systems have always been a little dodgy. It’s why we switched to Guillfoyle’s equipment in the first place. There is a thirty-five percent chance we’ll miss with the first shot, even if the Orbiter is right over the target.”
Furious and growing furiouser, Alyssa tried again, hoping that perhaps the Engine was just being … moody. “How badly?”
“Chairwoman?”
“How badly could we miss with the first blast?”
“Up to fifteen miles in any direction.”
To keep from slamming her hands on the keyboard, Alyssa tucked them primly onto her lap and stared at the wavering neon green text with some new emotion, some feeling that she doubted any Chair had ever experienced. ”Sigma is down, Vasily. Use whatever you can. I’m going to have to come at this from another angle if I want to contain the situation.”
“Sigma … Sigma is down?” Vasily’s forehead furrowed deep enough to plant corn. “But the news, si. There will be coverage and the outcry when we begin a full cleanse … the new OverSecretary will be Chairman by dawn. And that is with me taking full blame for the debacle. It is one thing for everyone to know what happens when you disobey the laws or if you become exposed to alien thoughts, but it is quite another to see it live.”
“I quite agree. It won’t do you or me any good if we are publicly roasted over this. If only Harry Bosch and Chadsik al-Taryin hadn’t gotten involved …” she mulled over some thoughts. “Very well. Do what you need to do to ensure very few additional citizens are killed.”
“Harry and Chad? Garth Nickels?”
“The first two are non-issues. Or will be once they’re killed.” The Chairwoman smiled. “As for Nickels? As you pointed out, all this is going out live. Not even Trinity can imagine I’d be able to protect It’s precious asset in that charnel house. Besides, I think there is a way to turn this to our advantage.”
“Oh?” Vasily saw no way out of the mess they were in, but that didn’t mean much. He’d been trained to bash his way out of any difficulty from birth and that was it. Alyssa Doans was capable of thinking around corners in ways that made normal people seem like moths slamming into light bulbs.
“You will just have to wait and see, dear heart.” She ended the conversation on that note.
Alyssa sat in silence with the Engine for a time, going over historical documents stored on her prote concerning the ancient relic. There was nothing definitive on file to explain why the Engine wasn’t working. The best she could discover was that there were a variety of hypothetical reasons why it should suddenly stop being cooperative, ranging from a change in the weather to a perceived threat to its own safety.
Alyssa accepted how it was plausible that with everything happening at The Museum, the Sigma Engine might very well seek to protect itself, but that was also to ascribe some level of sentience to the machine. Sigma would remain down until the crisis was past, leaving her with nothing but her own intellect to turn the catastrophe around.
What to do, what to do.
xxx
Vasily grunted. He hated it when Alyssa called him that, but in this particular instance, he took it; the sweet nothing was a sign Alyssa was feeling in control again. He was deeply troubled about Sigma being down. If people learned that one of their most vital control mechanisms was no longer working, Alyssa would be in a world of trouble.
Outside, the enormous transpo vehicles started shuddering violently.
The Gunboys were getting ready to move.
The Gunboys Howl and the Conflict Grows
Griffin was surprised at his eagerness to see just what the Latelian ‘Gunboy’ project was all about; given the Latelian military scientific adherence to the ‘bigger is better’ policy and their straight-out inclination in using people for their projects, there were only a few directions they could go without turning to Trinity science. Regardless of his intentional ignorance, the Enforcer had a firm idea of what the Gunboys were.
Nevertheless, Griffin was excited beyond mere words. Never afflicted with the soul-crushing blanket of a Dark Age or held at bay by Trinity’s more … excessive … restrictions on scientific advancement, the Latelians were more of a threat than they realized. So great, in fact, was his temporary obsession in waiting for the arrival of the mysterious and terrifying Gunboys that he was missing everything happening in The Museum; to use his scanners to see what Garth and Chad were up to was to invite curiosity to peer at the vessels carrying the Latelian Omega weapons.
When that first gauntleted hand -easily large enough to pick up a tank and throw it around like a baseball- gripped the side of the transpo’s bay door, a rush of excitement flushed through Griffin.
He hadn’t been this thrilled since putting on the Enforcer suit for the first time!
A second gigantic hand reached out of the dark transport ship’s holding bay to grab hold of the other side of the cargo truck. Reinforced struts on the vehicle’s bay doors crumpled slightly under the Gunboy’s grip as the behemoth literally pulled itself out and into the rain.
The Gunboy stood in the shower, blinking idiotically, water already streaming down it’s armor. It opened a mouth large enough to swallow hundreds of people in a single gulp and emitted a low, rumbling sound that seemed to make the earth jump; the clamor bounced off buildings miles away, undoubtedly filling Latelians –who were already terrified- with an extra dose of fear. Information blackout or not, there was no ignoring that sound.
Astonished, Griffin switched to deep scanners, eager to get a better look at what made the damned thing tick. His heads up displays flashed and burned with an endless litany of surprises, starting with what the undeniably human monstrosity was wearing for armor. It seemed that -while the Latelian Regime was publicly voluble about the infection of Trinity technologies- they had no problems whatsoever in using it for their own ends, so long as AI Itself wasn’t involved; the hundred-foot tall giant was clad in reworked Conquistador-class battleship armor.
In all his travels, Griffin had never once seen the immensely thick, resilient composite metal used for anything except battleship plating, and even then, only rarely; the stuff going into Conquistador-class armor was hard to get, harder to make, harder still to mold.
The technical genius going into reworking the stuff to build a suit of armor and to bolster duronium-made bones and cybernetic joints alone was worthy of applause. Griffin himself was personally astounded their efforts had paid off. Given time and unlimited access to Trinity materiel, t
he Latelians could transform their Regimist society into something … demonic. In true Latelian style –which was boring as hell- the Gunboy’s armor was the same drab color as a Onesie’s outfit. Griffin snorted and continued taking stock of the Gunboy: as if any Latelian looking at the perversion would blindly accept it as a willing volunteer in the God Army.
Moving past the literal invulnerability to everything except Hand of Glory missiles the armor provided, the Gunboy was a repository for every advancement developed by the Latelians over their five thousand year reign of freedom, bloodshed and unfettered research. Griffin’s Enforcer suit was having no problems deciphering everything it was looking at, but it was having a tough time determining an actual threat level, which raised the hair on the Kin’kithal warrior’s back. If his suit wasn’t able to determine a verifiable threat level, it meant –however improbable- that the fucking thing was probably on par with an Enforcer, just ten times the size.
Festooned with all kinds of gun and missile ports, each arm carried enough firepower to level cities, battleships, planets. Strapped to it’s back was a laser cannon based on the VapoRaptor’s wall-crushers, only infinitely worse; the power output on that cannon was enough to burn through to the earth’s core. Beyond that, built directly into it’s massive front and back were … well … ‘lasers the size of a building’ were the only thing that resonated in Griffin’s mind. The ports struck the Enforcer as a kind of apocalypse gambit, only powered up only when it was evident that the Gunboy was going to fail. Typical Latelian response, that.
The arms of the beast were freakishly long in comparison to the rest of the body and segment twice, implying the damned thing had two sets of elbows; armed with his suit’s endless catalogue of explanations, neither Griffin nor his onboard computers could determine any specific reason for the second, reticulated joints. The legs were thick all the way down to the jet-booted feet and again, there was a second joint there to allow the large beast to get very low to the ground without having to compromise the ability to run.
