Shyft

by Damien Boyes

  “As I said, we’re also investigating Xiao.” The woman puts her hands behind her back, steps past me into the living room, kneels and prods immobile cyphers, dusts her hands and rises.

  “Who’s Xiao to you?” I ask.

  “A dangerous man,” she says simply. “A terrorist. He wants to see the world burn.”

  “Why?” I ask, looking between her and her immobile partner. He still stands in the doorway with a passive expression on his face, watching me.

  She raises her shoulders, settles her face on puzzled. “Who can say why anyone does anything. Xiao’s motives are inscrutable and frankly none of my concern. He is an escapee from the Yuanfen, and he is building an army. Does it matter why Genghis Kahn attempted to conquer the world? Or Alexander? Or Hitler? Their motives are inconsequential, what matters is the destruction they caused. The millions of lives they destroyed. I believe you met one of his soldiers yourself.“

  I did. The Past-Standard girl in the Market. She could have torn my head off. If Xiao has an army of skyns like that, he could hurt a lot of people. He could start a war. “How’d you know about that?”

  “We have our resources, Detective Gage, which we’d like to share with you, if you’re amenable.”

  Am I amenable to assisting a secretive, multi-billion dollar international corporation hunt down a criminal fugitive bent on destroying the world? That’s a hell of a question.

  But I’m not the first person she asked. “You already offered your assistance to the Inspector, didn’t you?”

  She nods.

  “And she turned you down, didn’t she?”

  She nods again.

  The Inspector must not trust Fate, or knows something I don’t. Or is afraid to do what she needs to. If Xiao really is building an army, an army of these superhuman skyns, we need to do everything we can to stop him.

  “Why do you think I’ll help you when my boss wouldn’t?”

  “Because I believe you are more pragmatic than your superior. You want to do what’s necessary, whether it's strictly right or not. As is evidenced here.” She casts her eyes at the two cyphers. “I assume you haven’t reported this.”

  I chew on my lip but shake my head.

  She nods, glances at her partner and he looks up and inward. “I thought not. Please, allow us to finish what you have started here. We are equipped to dispose of these bodies—if you’d permit us.”

  I hadn’t gotten far enough into an actual plan to consider what I’d do with the skyns once I put the cyphers down. I figured I’d just leave them here, but then what happens when they’re discovered. There have to be cameras in the lobby. Maybe they’re working, maybe they’re not, but if someone started looking it probably wouldn’t be too hard to trace this back to me. I could call it in now but we’re past that.

  I should have called it in.

  Next time.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll let you clean up.”

  “And with Xiao?” she asks, the look on her face already knowing what I’m going to say.

  “I’ll help if I can. At my discretion.”

  Sòng clasps her hands together. “Of course,” she says. “At your discretion. I have sent you my contact information. Please don’t hesitate to use it.”

  I check my tab and there’s a message from her, directly above one from xYvYx. I had the tab on DND, didn’t even notice it come it.

  He’s finished the ReCog. It’s waiting at a drone depot near my apartment. In less than an hour I’ll have the means to identify the man who destroyed my life.

  “I have to go,” I say, swinging my bag around and depositing the gun inside with the others as I head to the door.

  “We’ll tidy up here,” Sòng says. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I leave without answering her, my thoughts already racing, thinking about the ReCog. I take the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator and bounce down twenty-two stories.

  Outside I take off at a sprint down Parliament.

  My apartment’s only fifteen minutes away at this speed, and after a quick detour to the drone depot I get home and slot the ReCog without bothering to change out of my workout clothes, without reading the instructions xYvYx included, before I’ve even sat down.

  StatUS-ID

  [fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]

  SysDate

  [20:45:25. Saturday, January 18, 2059]

  I leave Yellowbird and Omondi to finish the beers with the promise to share anything I find and head straight for the nearest drone depot, send the chip they gave me express to Shelt and message him to expect it.

  By the time I get back to the apartment, slap on my cuff and arrange myself on the couch he’s messaged me back that the Fāngzhōu virt has been updated with the new feeds I sent, and I cast in. He’s in there waiting, shows me how to use the playback controls and leaves once I kick the virt into life.

  The chip Omondi gave me contained eight hours of security feed from four different cameras around the Fāngzhōu, enough for a complete, lifelike recreation.

  I stand in the middle of the club and skip through the first few hours, watch the staff dash through set-up, watch the lights dim and bouncers set themselves up and the customers fill the tables.

  A man in a black suit—one of Petra’s security team—enters and the bouncer doesn’t move to intercept him. He does a tour of the club and then finds a corner to occupy. Petra and Vaelyn come in to warm greetings from the bouncer and move directly to the table where I talked to them, Vaelyn’s she-goons tromping along beside them. Petra’s other bodyguard comes next and does a reverse sweep and blends into the shadow on the other side of the room.

  No one seems concerned or excited. As far as I can tell, this is a routine that’s played out a hundred times.

  Then Elder walks in. I slow the feedback right down and walk beside him as he weaves through the tables and shuts himself in a private booth in the back of the club. Once he’s out of sight I speed it back up and watch the door until he pops out, takes a cautious look around the club and retreats back to hiding. This happens twice more and then I see myself enter, head to the bar and carry my dusty beer to a table and sit.

  I stay back with Elder, deja vu-ing myself finish the beer. When Elder next emerges and scans the club his head stops pointed straight at me—the me drinking—then stands in the shadows, watching.

  The woman from the Mayor’s office enters the club next—her black hair the colour of dried blood under the red lighting—has her argument with Petra and Vaelyn then storms off.

  That’s when the virtual me gets up and moves to Petra’s table.

  Elder twitches. He takes a step forward but when he sees where I’m headed stops again. Waiting. Biding his time.

  Vaelyn and I go through our pre-recorded routine. Then Petra’s guards step in and put an end to it. She sends them away and we talk.

  When the conversation finishes and I get up to leave, Elder starts toward the other me and I follow. I don’t see a weapon. His hands are empty but he’s moving to intercept me, and just as we make eye contact I’m neuralised.

  I can feel the indecision in Elder’s body. Whatever his intentions were they’ve been blown. He hesitates for a second, watching as I’m dragged away. His eyes flit between me and Petra and he comes to some decision and hurries to Petra’s table. I stick close behind him.

  The noise in the club is too loud to hear what they’re saying, but it’s clear from the looks on their faces that Petra and Vaelyn are surprised to see him.

  There’s a brief exchange, Elder is talking fast, exasperated. He wants Petra to come with him and finally, over Vaelyn’s objections, she does. Vaelyn wants to join them but Elder convinces Petra that she needs to stay here and Petra gets her to agree.

  Elder leads Petra back to the private booth and closes the door behind them.

  They stay in there together for seven minutes, then the door opens and Elder makes a line straight for the exit, keeping his head down.

&
nbsp; Petra emerges a moment later, unsteady on her legs, a burned out shyft in her hand. She seems to remember the shyft, looks at it once and then drops it on the floor with the other discarded caps and carefully walks back to her table.

  Vaelyn starts into her, questioning. Petra doesn’t engage. Just sits and lets Vaelyn’s words bounce off the side of her head. Eventually Vaelyn gets tired of being ignored and spits an insult at Petra and gets up to complain to her goons. Petra stays in the same place. Not moving. Staring straight ahead. Until something across the room catches her eye that energizes her like she just jammed her fingers into a charging station.

  I pause the playback and follow her eye line to the employees-only entrance beside the bar.

  The door is open and bright white light spills out from inside. A small Asian woman—a girl, really—her hair cut short, dressed in loose-fitting grey pants and a leather jacket, holds the door for a much older woman.

  She’s wearing flowing black pants and a white and silver jacket that matches her silver-grey hair. Her hands are folded inside her broad sleeves. Wrinkles line her face but she moves with the grace of a dancer. I couldn’t begin to guess her age. Say a hundred, plus or minus forty years on each side.

  At the back of the group compact bald man with angular features scans the crowd He doesn’t speak to anyone, keeps in ready position on the balls of his feet as his eyes flick from face to face. His clothes are an indistinguishable colour in the red light of the club.

  In between them, a man moves through the room like a politician, stopping at each table just long enough for a smile or short exchange of words. He seems like he owns the place, which would make him Xiao. He’s dressed simply but elegantly, a tailored suit with the back collar popped, crisp white shirt tinged pink by the club’s crimson light. He has a thin moustache and a smear of whiskers across his chin. There’s a smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes.

  Between Xiao and the man at the end of the line is a familiar face. It’s the kid.

  Ankur.

  Then Petra starts shooting.

  She’s disabled her bodyguards, stolen their weapons.

  Her shots are wild, but she’s aiming for either Xiao or Ankur.

  The man at the back of the line draws a weapon from inside his flowing clothes and returns fire, then barks something and the girl in the leather jacket hurries everyone back toward the open door. Xiao puts himself in front of Ankur and the old woman, shields them as they escape.

  More shots are exchanged. Everything I watched at Shelt’s but this time with the back half of the room filled in. I still can’t tell if Petra’s aiming for Xiao or Ankur or both of them. Finally they make it to the door and Xiao gives one last scowl at Petra before the small man puts the last bullets into her.

  By now the room is quiet and her final words echo in the empty club.

  I’m next.

  I don’t bother watching again. Just stand amid the carnage as victims bleed out on the floor, writhing in pain, gasping their temporarily last breaths.

  I can’t explain what I saw, but I know whatever’s going on, Elder’s at the heart of it.

  That fragment’s in him. It almost had me, and when it missed, it took Petra instead.

  If what Ankur said was true, and that fragment of his former self can jump from skyn to skyn, it’s likely there’s a tainted shyft behind it. Something that’ll let the fragment gain access to its hosts. Something that Petra would have had to agree to let into her head.

  Seven minutes in a room, and Petra willingly put a shyft to her cuff and let the fragment occupy her. It was that easy.

  I think back to Dub, to his frustration in the alley as he tried to force me to ack that shyft.

  If I’d said yes, thought green, the fragment would’ve had access to my mind. Been able to manipulate it. Who knows what a pissed off superintelligence would do with the mind that made it mad.

  Or why, if the fragment is after me, it would bother to infect Petra and try to take out Xiao. Or was it aiming at Ankur, its new incarnation?

  How am I supposed to understand the motives of a vengeful super computer? How am I supposed to fight it?

  I did though, once. Back when the fragment was attached to something much more powerful. If I were able to find it again—could I somehow clear my name? If everything I did last time was because I was hunting for a superintelligence…that would have to go a long way toward explaining my actions. Maybe get my rep back.

  Maybe get my life back.

  I come out of the virt into my headspace, blinking my simulated eyes at the change in simulated brightness and send a message to Omondi, asking him, if he hasn’t yet, to check out all the dead shyfts on the floor near the booths and see if anything out of the ordinary shows up in the code residue. And that he’s looking for one with Petra’s fingerprints on it.

  If Elder is possessed by Ankur’s fragment and jumping from skyn to skyn, that shyft could be the key.

  I move over to the waiting representation of myself sitting on my couch back in my apartment, get control of my skyn’s arm and pull the cuff off.

  My apartment snaps back into existence with Dora standing in front of me.

  StatUS-ID

  [a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]

  SysDate

  [18:19:23:52. Saturday, April 27, 2058]

  Back at the apartment, anticipation trilling through me, I ack the ReCog and get ready to finally see the face of the man who killed me.

  A console appears, a flat slab of simulated controls hovering at my waist. A large three-dimensional display curves behind it, occupying a third of my vision, and shows an infinitely recursive image of what I’m currently looking at—the console overlaid my living room with a 3D image of my console overlaid with my living room over and over until it’s too small to make out. I turn my head and the tunnel into reality swims and I have to hold my eyes still to keep the nausea at bay.

  Instinctively I cast my thoughts back to walking in the door and the display changes to show me that, the screen a window into my memory. The controls allow me to set tags, move backwards through my ride up the elevator, my trip home in the Sküte. Lets me freeze and zoom in on faces in passing cars, creep the memory ahead slowly, rotate it to the extent the capacity of my stored memory allows.

  I get it. Now to find what I came for.

  I think back to the accident, hit a moment just before we caught up with the UV, force myself to fast forward past the images of Connie, past the UV hard-braking, and slow it down just as the van rounds the bend ahead of us. Then I creep it forward, step-by-step at the millisecond limit of my memory’s framerate, until the driver is visible. I mark it there and inch forward until the face is no longer distinct, place an endpoint and tell the console to save, render out a vid.

  Moments later, I have a point seven second clip of the man who killed me. The man who killed Connie.

  It’s all been leading to this. Everything I’ve done. The rules I’ve broken. Even going alone into the arKade helped get me here. I’m so close.

  I ignore Chaddah’s directive to stop using Service resources for my personal investigation, call up the Service AMP and ship it the vid, tell it to run an enhancement and then a bio/kin lookup. I don’t bother watching it myself. I’ve seen it enough already.

  It takes one minute and thirty seven seconds to come back with a 99.7% probable match, shows me a Second Skyn record. A bit-head.

  The man who killed us was restored too.

  His name is Amit Johari.

  I’ve found him.

  A sob wracks my chest. Erupts in a fissure of compressed joy and grief and anger and explodes out my mouth.

  My eyes blur, but even through the tears I can’t stop staring at his Status-ID image. His eyes are vacant, lifeless, just like the first time I saw them. His skyn is light brown with a wide-brow and a short sweep of jet-black hair. Slight but handsome in a square-jawed, full-cheeked, Bollywood-extra kind of way.

  I wipe m
y eyes with the back of my hand.

  Amit’s Second Skyn image is completely motionless, except for the blink every twenty seconds, twenty seconds exactly.

  Blink.

  He doesn’t look evil. Doesn’t look like a killer, like someone who would maniacally blast through the lives of seven random people.

  Blink.

  I’ve finally found him.

  I’m elated, ready to act, my head light. I did it.

  Now that I know who he is, I can figure out where he is.

  I pull my eyes from his, tell the AMP to bring me everything publicly available on him, and when it returns comes back with more than thirty-thousand hits. I get the AMP to summarize and it still takes three hours to skim through Amit’s story. I even vaguely remember reading about him before the accident.

  Amit Johari was a superstar programmer on the competitive coding circuit, the first person ever to win the Prime Coder championship in each of the ten years he was eligible to compete.

  There are hundreds of profiles on him; tens of thousands of individual mentions across the link; hours of video that highlight his brilliant, time limit-obliterating solutions to programming challenges, or situations where he created an entirely new programming language on the fly to develop the optimal solution to the supplied problem. He took the championship every year in a career that spanned a decade and earned him millions in prizes and sponsorships.

  All the attention he received wasn’t notable only because of the sheer number of wins, or the decisiveness—he did it all while being severely autistic, unable to care for himself, to dress or feed himself, to express himself in any conventional way. He could speak computer in every dialect, with every accent, but was unable to carry on the simplest conversation with another person.

  Amit Johari went digital on his 24th birthday—and in certain circles it was a very big deal. Not just because he went digital, but because his restoration utilized a new technique designed to normalize the ‘damaged’ parts of his brain, to purge the autism from him—to make him just like everyone else.