by Neal Asher
Studying the young stoned Americans all around him in the firelight, all debating civil rights and cursing their government’s obstinacy in the face of the inevitable triumph of Marxism, Harris—formerly Herman, Hing Cho, Harold and Hiroshi—realized it was time to move on yet again. Though he looked as young as the rest of the group, he was a good twenty years older, but he felt mentally removed from them by a century.
‘Man, you mount your placards on two-by-twos,’ Logan was saying, ‘and maybe nail ‘em to the wood with four inch nails.’
General laughter greeted this. Harris assessed this man with his long hair and his beard with plaits in. ‘Peace’ he often proclaimed. ‘End the wars—disarm.’ But he carried a flick-knife tucked into his sock, and a.45 in the kitbag beside him, along with his delicate boxed scales, a bag of heroin secreted in a sugar box and a cellophane-wrapped block of cannabis resin. The money belt underneath his tatty coat just kept getting fatter and fatter. One of his previous customers lay in the morgue right now; another one, who ended up owing just too much, Logan had carved up with the knife. The boy managed to make it to the hospital before collapsing from blood loss. They sewed his cheek back into place but could do nothing about the ear, which he had left in the car lot where Logan caught up with him.
Logan turned as Harris passed the joint on to Miranda, who looked pale and was staring at Logan intently, avidly. Miranda was short of funds now her parents had cut her off, but she found other ways to pay.
‘Hey, Harris man, you should be handy. I betcha know all about that hiyah shit?’ Logan made a chopping motion with his hand.
‘I know some,’ Harris replied. After being beaten half to death in a Paris back alley—it had all happened too fast for him to even summon the concentration to step away—he had gone home to learn shotokan karate, jujitsu, aikido. Now he only fought when he wanted to. He found that the focus such training gave him also provided more than ample time to step into U-space. In this situation, however, he began to feel like he wanted to fight—that there was something he needed to do before moving on. The conversation drifted on to other matters—something about rednecks fighting for the country and not understanding how they fought to keep the country in a political Stone Age.
‘Hey, Logan,’ Harris squirmed, rubbed at his face, scratched the crook of his arm—generally gave a good impression of what Miranda was doing as she sat beside Logan. ‘I need a private word.’
Doctor Logan took up his kitbag and followed Harris into the gloom under the pines. It did not take long and was surprisingly easy. Harris chopped him across the throat, swept his feet out from underneath him, then came down with a full-force axe kick on his chest. While Logan gurgled and gagged, Harris turned him over on his front, grabbed his elbows and with a knee pressing into Logan’s back, pulled hard, snapping the man’s spine. He pocketed the gun and threw the kitbag into a stream as he walked away. But that night he knew, another Logan would be along some time soon.
The world was full of Logans.
— retroact ends -
7
Much has been theorized from the Darson/Dragon dialogues, but with Dragon’s pronouncements being Delphic, convoluted and sometimes just plain crazy, really not much has been learned. Dragon has claimed to be an emissary from an advanced civilization, also something that just grew on Aster Colora and outlived all other lifeforms there (though there is absolutely no fossil evidence of this) and on one memorable occasion claimed to be God. On another occasion, driven almost mad by his lack of progress and on the worst side of a bottle of BelaVodka, Darson began screaming and throwing rocks at Dragon.
‘You are upset,’ Dragon noted.
Darson’s reply is not worth recording here, suffice to say that it demonstrated his facility with languages. Later, when he calmed down a little, he asked, ‘Why always so fucking Delphic? Are you incapable of giving a straight answer?’
Dragon replied, ‘I am the white stone bound with the red ribbon.’
Though Darson returned to the city, where he further exercised his liver, some very high-level AIs got rather excited about that particular statement. A little research reveals that the temple at Delphi contained a white stone bound with a red ribbon — the former said to represent a navel and the latter said to represent an umbilicus. The AIs felt this proved that Dragon did indeed represent some civilization, to which it was somehow still connected, bound.
- From ‘How it Is’ by Gordon
‘Maker technology is based on Jain technology,’ Cormac suggested. Waving a hand, he dispelled the two holograms and inserted another one in their place. Now hovering in the air was the guardian creature that killed Gant on Samarkand. ‘You are based on Jain technology.’
‘There went something else,’ said Mika.
Through his gridlink Cormac sent, ‘I understand the Delphic pronouncements, the lies, the half truths. Do you understand what is happening now? What has always been happening?’
‘I understand,’ Jerusalem replied.
‘Would somebody explain?’ asked Mika.
‘Dragon is, and has always been, fighting its Maker base programming,’ Jerusalem told her.
‘Oh,’ said Mika, and nothing more.
After a pause Cormac went on, ‘We could give Dragon a weapon with which to resist that programming. It might not make it any more truthful, but we won’t know until we try.’ Through his link he summoned up another projection next to the guardian: one of the creatures Chaline had seen. Dragon abruptly swung two more pseudopods towards this, then became very still.
‘Note the similarity between these two,’ said Cormac.
‘You could not have been there,’ said Dragon.
‘Time-inconsistent runcible,’ explained Cormac. ‘Eight hundred years in the future we found this.’ The two made-creatures disappeared. In their place, a ruined world, a station infested with Jain substructures, spreading clouds of Jain nodes. Then more views in the same vein, one after another after another.
‘The Maker civilization no longer exists,’ Cormac told Dragon. ‘Even the one who came here, pursuing you, sacrificed itself. The energy from the inconsistent link backlashed into the Small Magellanic Cloud, hopefully obliterating most if not all of these remnants.’
While the pictures ran, Cormac began transmitting to Dragon files compiled and still being compiled ever since the events on Celedon station. The sheer weight of information should convince Dragon—there should be images of other sights unknown to any who had not visited the Small Magellanic Cloud, also the Maker codes, and other minutiae from which Dragon could draw only one conclusion: it was being told the truth.
‘I’m told’, Cormac went on, ‘that maybe in a few million years some of those Jain nodes may drift into Polity space. It is to be hoped we’ll be sufficiently advanced by then for them not to cause any bother. Either that or extinct. But what concerns me is the Jain nodes that are already here now.’
‘Multiple power surges inside it,’ Mika told him. ‘Some kind of crisis.’
Cormac observed an electrical discharge arcing from one of the cobra pseudopods down to polished ceramal. That pod began to shrivel, its sapphire eye went out, then it abruptly collapsed out of sight. The room began vibrating, as if in an earthquake.
‘Could there be a self-destruct pro—’
Jerusalem interrupted, ‘Ejecting CTDs.’
In his gridlink Cormac sent an instruction to the surrounding machinery: Exterior view. He turned in his chair as the walls and ceiling apparently disappeared to reveal the living landscape outside, showing the manacle extending equatorially. Ports were opening along the metallic strip, and objects hurtling out of them and away. As he turned back, the main dragon head abruptly withdrew from him, turned and bit down on the neck of one attendant pseudopod and shook it like a terrier with a rat. The pseudopod died and dropped away as soon as released.
‘It occurs to me that indirect communication might have been better for my health,’ Cormac observed out loud.
‘Areas burnt out inside Dragon,’ Mika informed him.
Cormac continued to Dragon, ‘The Makers were at war with Jain technology, then at peace with it, and thought they had mastered it. Evidently they had not.’
The dragon head swung back towards him. As it did so, more pseudopods rose from the cavity behind it. A smell filled the building—frying squid. The Dragon head blinked, its mouth seemingly twisting with distaste. A long still pause ensued—a silence Cormac felt no urge to break. Eventually the dragon head dipped and spoke.
‘I am based upon Jain technology,’ it concurred. ‘As you surmised, the Makers investigated it and fought against it for thousands of years. They conquered it, assimilated it, and thought to have a perfect understanding of it. They then considered themselves ready for massive expansion into the main galaxy, but an alien civilization was already rapidly expanding in that galaxy.’
‘That would be us, then.’
‘Yes. As you also surmised, my base programming could not permit me to tell you the whole truth: only give hints, half-truths, evident lies. Now the Makers no longer exist, the foundation of my base programming no longer exists. All that remained was the self-destruct, which I have defeated. You were only seven seconds away from me using my gravtech weapon, and thus detonating those CTDs.’
‘You can tell me the truth now, but will you?’ Cormac wondered.
One of the newly fledged pseudopods surged forwards until its cobra head hovered just over the floor right before Cormac, its hood folded underneath. It came down until resting on the surface and reopened its hood. Objects rattled on the ceramal. Four spheres lay there, conjoined like the four Dragon spheres originally were.
‘I have encased them: anti-nanite casings, then laminations of lead and diamond. The breaking of molecular bonds in these materials is not sufficient to provide energy for internal growth.’
‘Jain nodes,’ Cormac guessed.
Dragon continued, ‘I was sent here especially to seed Jain nodes across the Polity. You people not having encountered Jain technology before, the Makers surmised that the resultant internecine conflict would wipe out both the human race and the AIs. It could have worked and may work yet—that one Jain node under Skellor’s control caused considerable localized problems, but could have resulted in catastrophe for the entire Polity.’
‘And where did he get his node from?’ Cormac asked.
‘Allow me to finish.’
Cormac sat back, considering himself rebuked. He also noted how rapidly Dragon retrieved the nodes—the pseudopod bearing them slickly disappearing back inside the scaled entity.
‘Upon my arrival here, a mere three centuries ago, I cut off all contact with my masters, the Makers and chose not to distribute the nodes, and as a result came into conflict with my base programming. This illustrates that the Maker’s grasp of the technologies they employed was not as firm as they liked to believe. Jain technology changes those who use it. I originally came to consciousness in a time when the Makers would never have contemplated conquest. I retained the same attitude, but changed by the technology they used, they did not. I understood the danger to them, but they could not see it. I predicted the obliteration of their kind by Jain tech, but not so soon.’
‘So you didn’t come here before the human race existed, as you previously claimed?’
‘No, that was a lie.’
‘Samarkand?’
‘I caused a catastrophe resulting in the deaths of many humans while attempting to trap and destroy the Maker. I could not then tell you the truth of why I did this—of the danger the Maker represented to humanity.’
‘Such vast amounts of altruism concealed by that evil base programming,’ Cormac observed.
Jerusalem replied with equal sarcasm, ‘It could not possibly be anything to do with the Maker coming here to shut Dragon down, then?’
‘And the danger to yourself?’ Cormac continued.
‘The Maker’s secondary purpose.’
‘The primary?’
‘To seed Jain nodes.’
‘It was to shut you down, then take the nodes in your possession, and seed them itself around the Polity?’
‘No.’
‘Why don’t you just tell me?’
‘I destroyed its ship. There were no nodes aboard. You found none in its escape pod, either. And that it was so willing to return home meant it possessed none. Yet, the Maker most certainly brought more nodes with it.’
A shiver travelled up Cormac’s spine. He began using cognitive programs to pick the bones out of what Dragon had told him — looking for flaws and broken logic chains.
Eventually he said, ‘Tell me about Dracocorp augs.’
‘The people wearing them were my eyes within the Polity.’
‘But they are hierarchical—ultimate control devolving to yourself. Why would you need such control of human beings if they were just your eyes?’
‘They were intended to be an army at my disposal.’
Again the cognitive programs and, after a moment, ‘Dracomen.’
‘The events of Samarkand focused Earth Central’s attention on the Dracocorp aug networks, which are now being destroyed and, through them hunter-killer programs seek me out. At Masada I sacrificed part of myself to create a new army.’
‘Why?’
‘I saw Skellor provided with a Jain node. I have tracked vessels and alien entities arriving from outside the Polity. The nodes that were in the Maker’s possession are in the control of someone or something out there.’
It all made perfect sense and Cormac could find no catastrophic breaks in the logic chains, no flaws and no anomalies that fell outside the story’s parameters. This meant that Dragon was telling the truth—or else was an Olympian liar. Unfortunately, Dragon could be precisely the latter.
* * * *
The AI Coloron ran twenty-four runcibles: ten were located in vast complexes spread throughout the main arcology or MA, six located in the growing arcology called inevitably SA, secondary arcology, and the other eight serviced the rest of the planet. Twelve of these runcibles were permanently set for departure, and the remaining twelve alternated evenly. It was a deliberately designed disparity which elsewhere worked to reduce the planetary population—it being simply more difficult to come here than to leave. However, though the runcibles remained in constant operation, still the birth rate here exceeded the emigration rate.
Coloron, now into its fourth major expansion of processing power, for the second time that week had devalued the standard credit unit by half an energy point. The planetary currency still lay well within energy expenditures necessary to keep everyone alive and comfortable, but the degree of comfort had degraded over the last few years. Some areas of the two arcologies were becoming slightly shabby, the goods that could be purchased for the dole of twenty units per day were getting scarcer—designed more for basic utility than to be aesthetically pleasing—and planetwide the choices of nutrition had become less varied. Also, throughout the north-eastern expansion, the living spaces were slightly smaller, and parkland areas more compressed. It could not carry on like this, and it seemed unlikely that it would, but for entirely unexpected reasons.
Coloron often pondered how a race, in which the stupid seemed more inclined to breed, had managed to come this far, and why human intelligence persisted—a discussion point in the nature vs nurture debate which had not died in half a millennium. The AI knew that if for one moment it slackened its control of this planet’s total systems, disaster would inevitably ensue. Power from the numerous fusion reactors based on the planet was abundant, but everything else ran at full stretch. The overall planetary temperature was on the rise, and this world being smaller than Earth, its artificial ecology consequently stood on the verge of collapse. In fact the planet could not handle a population above three billion, so drastic measures would have been necessary within a ten-year time span. However, in the current situation, perhaps such measures were merely a halcyon dream.
&n
bsp; ‘I needed to balance the equation,’ explained Coloron. ‘If I turned all runcibles to cater for departure only, the death rate from resulting civil unrest would have risen above the increase in emigration, which incidentally would not have increased sufficiently to require full usage of all the runcibles.’
The Golem, Azroc—head of the MA section of monitor force for planetary security—replied, ‘Yet the increase in civil unrest would have served the purpose of pushing the departure rate higher…You note how we are talking in the past tense now?’
‘Yes, but let us continue our present discussion, in the hope that it will still apply. Regarding civil unrest, you have to also factor in the troglodyte quotient.’
‘And that would be?’
‘An agoraphobic tendency found here, and an inability to change. You know what happens: any sign of trouble and citizens retreat to their homes and stay there, hoping it will all go away.’
‘I thought the incentives were changing that attitude.’ The Golem picked up his pulse-rifle from where it leant against a wall, and directed the team nearby to spread out across the park, and then other teams in this section, not visible to him but with whom he maintained constant com, to also take their positions. Coloron listened in on these multiple communications from the Golem. His forces now enclosed a cylindrical section of the arcology, from the lowest levels to the roof, with monitors ready up above in the fields, ensconced in pulse-cannon tanks. No citizens were being allowed back into the enclosed area, and those who came out of it were kept confined prior to vigorous interview and scanning. Five thousand such were now in confinement, of whom only a hundred had so far been interviewed and moved on to holding areas, where they would remain until the crisis ended. It might end—Coloron reminded itself of that.
‘Discord sown by Separatist groups induced a certain paranoia concerning all AI incentives. Urban legend has it that we want to send them out to undeveloped worlds as agrarian labourers. A full one per cent of my processing power has been in constant use scotching these memes and sowing my own.’
