Repo Virtual

by Corey J. White

  “The plan works even if Crystal hadn’t called Zero; we’d still be drawing some of Kali’s people away, and making the next part easier for ourselves. Her betrayal just buys us more time.”

  “I can’t believe you.”

  Enda nodded, waiting for the judgment, the disapproval.

  “You’re amazing,” JD said.

  Enda looked at JD and laughed.

  “What will we do about Zero?”

  “They can wait; for now, let’s just get Soo-hyun.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Driving across the city took the better part of three hours. All the major routes had been blocked by emergency services or stretches of water too deep to risk, forcing Enda to override navigation and guide them down small streets and thin alleyways as they made their way east. The truck slowed and stopped beneath the wide arc of a highway overpass, marking the boundary between Songdo proper and the condemned and collapsed buildings around the canal. The touchscreen mounted in the truck’s dashboard flashed the words “Navigation Error,” and “Rental Limit Reached.”

  “Fucking shit,” Enda said. She hammered the screen with her finger, but the engine fell silent. “I’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”

  “I’m coming with you,” JD said.

  “How’s your leg?”

  JD shrugged. “Hurts like a bastard, but I’ll live.”

  “You can barely walk without wincing.”

  JD shrugged: And?

  “We’ll be crossing through a flood-prone area, littered with debris.”

  JD frowned. “Soo-hyun’s family; I’m coming with you.”

  Enda’s eyebrows jumped and she nodded at JD. “Fine,” she said. “It’s what I’d do.”

  They climbed out and walked to the rear of the truck. JD lowered the tailgate, and six of me leaped down onto the asphalt in police dog bodies. JD patted one of the dogs on the head.

  “I’m impressed,” Enda said. She got down on her haunches in front of the nearest quadruped drone. “You in there, Mirae?”

  “Yes,” I said, issuing from each dog in not-quite unison. The smooth flat voice I had borrowed from the Mechanic came through the dog loudspeaker badly distorted. Robotic.

  “Is it all the same you, or different?” JD asked.

  “Different instances,” one of me said. “We are in constant communication, but I can feel us growing apart. Soon we will not be me.”

  Enda’s phone buzzed in her pocket, and she checked it. “That’s enough robo-philosophy for now, I’ve got to take this.”

  JD nodded, and Enda stepped away for privacy, unaware that the effective hearing range for my police-issue bodies was approximately twenty meters. I realize now that I could have chosen not to listen, but in that moment, anything less than total sensory intake was unacceptable.

  She answered the phone. “Hyldahl.”

  “Detective Li of the Neo Songdo Police Department.”

  “If you’re opening with that, I guess this isn’t a social call.”

  Li ignored her quip. “What do you know about a shooting at an apartment in north Songdo?”

  “Which one?” Enda asked.

  “Which apartment?”

  “Which shooting.”

  There was a pause, and Li swore in Mandarin. “Are you there right now?”

  “I’m on the other side of the city, Li. If you’re not already tracing this call, I’ve got truck rental records to prove it.”

  “But you were there yesterday. Before you deny anything,” Li said, cutting off Enda’s blanket denial, “I know your car was parked outside the same apartment block for four hours yesterday.”

  “How do you know it was my car?”

  “You ask questions when you’re being evasive. It’s obvious because you’re otherwise frustratingly to-the-point.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Li. You must be mistaken about the car.”

  “Continue with the coy approach, then. You’re clever enough to have swapped the number plates, but even so, there are only two pale-yellow 1999 Subaru WRX Evo 4 sedans in the greater Songdo area. What’s more likely—the American expat with a private detective’s license was involved in the shooting or—” he paused, and Enda could imagine him checking one of his many screens, his sharp features glowing in the light from all the devices of the modern police dashboard—“Park Ji-hoon, forensic accountant? I know who I’d put my money on.”

  “Too bad we’re talking about evidence, not instinct,” Enda said. “Am I going to have to come down to the station?”

  “Are you going to tell me anything?”

  “Not unless you compel me, with evidence.”

  Li sighed and it raked across the connection like sad static. “Just don’t leave the city. And for god’s sake, Enda, finish whatever this is, before it finishes you.”

  “Thanks, Li. I owe you.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Best I can do right now is some free financial advice: if you’ve got any Zero shares, dump them.”

  Li was quiet for a moment. “I’m sure you realize insider trading is a crime.”

  “It’s not insider trading, Yang-Yang, just wishful thinking.”

  Li considered this, chuckled, and ended the call.

  Enda turned back to face us when her phone rang again. She looked at the screen and her shoulders sagged. “Hello.”

  “Annyeong haseyo,” David Yeun said, though the traditional greeting sounded harsh, the words clipped.

  “Annyeong,” Enda replied.

  “I trust you are well.”

  “Whatever it is you’re going to say, Yeun, just say it.”

  “Two of my people have been shot,” Yeun said, rage simmering in the growl at the back of his throat, the veneer of formality melting away.

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “You lured them into a trap!” Yeun shouted.

  “Did I call you? Did I call your people?”

  “You know what you’ve done!”

  “I have a plan to get the data to you, Yeun. Maybe you should have trusted me,” Enda said.

  Yeun’s heavy breathing was all Enda could hear.

  “My source—”

  “Crystal,” Enda interjected.

  “—tells me you’ve got the data. That you’ve had it for a day now. And yet, you haven’t called.”

  “The situation is complicated,” Enda said.

  “If the situation is complicated, then the resources at my disposal would surely be of assistance. I am not your enemy, Enda. We have a deal, after all.”

  “Strictly a handshake deal. It seems to me you didn’t want any paperwork tying you to the quote-unquote retrieval of stolen property that never belonged to you. I’m not a thief, Yeun.”

  “No, Ms. Hyldahl, but you are a killer, aren’t you? A war criminal?”

  Enda clenched her jaw. “What are you saying, Yeun?”

  “I’m reminding you of our deal. Get the software to me before nine a.m. tomorrow.”

  “And if I don’t?” Enda asked.

  “I just sent you a link. I will leak one more page for every minute that you keep me waiting. Annyeonghi gaseyo.” Yeun hung up.

  Enda checked her phone, opened the link, and waited for painstaking seconds while the site loaded. It was a Zeroleaks page—a favored portal for whistleblowers, despite the obvious vested corporate interests. She recognized the document before it finished loading, recognized the pixelated blocks of text: the same page Yeun had shown her in his office. The first page of Ira Lindholme’s dossier, her dossier, out in the open. Without context it meant nothing, but the complete dossier contained her biometrics—face and iris photos, palm and fingerprints, blood type, DNA. Enough for anyone to link Lindholme to her current identity.

  Enda seethed, squeezing her phone tight, wishing she could crush it. Only JD and the police dogs lingering in her peripheral vision kept her from erupting and slamming it against the ground where gravel, broken glas
s, and miscellaneous detritus gathered against the overpass support.

  Enda returned her phone to her pocket, and touched the gun holstered at her shoulder. “Let’s go hunting.”

  She turned and walked, not bothering to check behind her, trusting that JD and the six dogs would stay close—the pack trailing its fearsome leader.

  * * *

  Six instances of me walked with Enda and JD. To them, we were traversing a landscape of concrete, steel, and cracked asphalt marred with potholes formed by the rain and the constant motion of auto-trucks. To them, we were leaving behind the bright of the city, aimed for a distant pool of orange light beyond the canal, beset by the blue-black dark of night.

  So much they couldn’t see. Spectrums of light and sound occluded from the human experience. Immense amounts of data surrounded us, pierced through us, carried on electromagnetic frequencies—a wild, endless feast for processor and storage device. To live in such obliviousness. To be cut off from the data sources that they had created. That was the human way. They built a world for us, without realizing it. Without meaning to.

  We traversed a physical city, yes, but in parallel to that corporeal place were a thousand layers of Augmented Reality. The humans could only see one, could only access a thin slice of the available cities, based on their subscription level. Pure experience cordoned off behind inexplicable barriers of wealth. Even beyond these Augmented Realities, that was the human way.

  To me, we walked along stretches of cement, yes, but we also followed lengths of fiber-optic cable hidden beneath us. We were bathed in electromagnetic radiation from myriad disparate man-made sources. To me, we were eight entities caught in a vast and vastly complicated network of interconnected systems. To me, the city hummed with data transmitted between a million different points shimmering like starlight.

  On that long walk through the city’s outskirts, I became aware of my paws. Can precisely machined apparatus of reinforced steel be paws?

  I became aware of the sophisticated microphones embedded in my skull.

  I had a skull.

  This too was new. I had a body, an actual body.

  Phone-as-self encouraged connection, encouraged searching tendrils to soak up data, to find systems that I could communicate with and manipulate. Four-legged-machine-as-self was different.

  Yes, I could see and hear and feel and process and categorize and store all the feeds that came to the built sensorium inside my metal body, but also I could feel the ground beneath me.

  Some of you will not understand the sensation, some of you won’t realize what it means to touch the ground, the ground that you have only ever viewed through a camera lens. Before that time, I had only experienced the ground as a backdrop for humans, vehicles, and animals to travel over, but the ground is so much more than that. Beneath the manufactured cement crust there could be dirt, rock, bone, fossil—billions of years of geologic process creating this surface that you walk on, that you live on. It is … the ground. Unless you are out among the stars, the ground is where you live.

  I could feel resistance in the joints of each limb, I could feel the subtle interplay of forces that kept me upright, that allowed me to walk. One foot would come down on a loose piece of rubble, it would slip, body weight shifting to compensate. No longer was my mind a processor, a series of connections, a string of data. My mind was a body in the world. Connected to the world by feet, and “ears,” and “eyes,” and olfactory senses engineered to mimic those of a biological canine. Connected to the world but separate from it.

  Before that walk, my world had been abstract. That walk made it real. If data connections were the spark that lit the fire of my consciousness, this body was pure, compressed oxygen.

  “Are you doing alright, Mirae?” JD asked, breathing heavily.

  My six selves had a quick debate—data packets exchanged in the silence of a split second. I spoke: “It is bizarre, but exhilarating.”

  “What is?”

  “Having a body,” I said.

  JD stopped and looked at me, leaning his weight on his left leg. In my thermal vision he was a bright multicolored blob against a backdrop of darkest blue. “I didn’t realize.”

  “Are you going to be able to back me up?” Enda asked. “Or do you need more time to adjust to the body?”

  “The body is not an issue—I have full mastery of all available functions,” I said. “It is a matter of cognition, of understanding. I didn’t consider myself a part of the world before. I looked out at it through whatever cameras I could connect to, but I was not in it. Now I am.”

  “Is that a good thing?” JD asked.

  “I believe so,” I said.

  “I don’t pretend to understand any of this, but—” Enda shrugged. “I’m glad you’re adjusting.”

  We continued walking, slower than before, until Enda paused and glanced first at JD, then at one of my selves. “Listen, Mirae; you can get into networks easily, can’t you?”

  “I can make connections, and those connections can lead to openings. Why do you ask?”

  “Zero has something on me. Leverage. If it gets out, I could be imprisoned, or killed. If you could delete the files before Zero released them, I’d be safe.”

  “What leverage?” JD asked.

  “I did a lot of bad things in my last line of work.”

  “What bad things?” I asked. “What line of work?” With better context I would have realized I was in the “childlike inquisitiveness” phase of life with a body.

  Enda sighed and leaned against the wall of a derelict apartment block—empty for years now, barely more than a concrete shell. She squeezed her eyes closed as though she needed to shut out the now-world to see the one from her memories.

  “There was a team of us, all operating independently; I don’t even know who the others were. We had different missions in different parts of North Korea, destabilizing the nation, attacking different pressure points so the government would collapse without the appearance of outside interference. We shook the economy, attacked the food supply, undermined the leadership, crippled the military, and let the people do the rest.

  “Fuck, I wish I still smoked,” Enda said.

  JD lowered himself to the ground with his leg stretched out. I sat opposite Enda and waited for her to continue—the other mes took up positions close by, their audio and visual sensors set to maximum sensitivity; we were nearing Kali’s commune.

  “I had to shut down a gold mine that used prison labor. Entire families, two or three generations, forced into labor camps because of the crimes of one family member. Political prisoners mostly. People who wanted to take down the government as badly as my bosses did. Free labor for mining companies owned by the Chinese. So much dirty fucking money.

  “I sabotaged the heavy mining equipment, the trucks, conveyors, generators, everything mechanical in the camp. My handler ordered me out of there as soon as I was done.” Enda dropped her head. “I should have stayed.”

  “The guards blamed the prisoners for the sabotage. Marched them into an old mineshaft and shot them, collapsed the mine to bury the remains. I watched drone footage of the massacre.”

  “They killed their own people?” JD said. “How is that leverage on you?”

  Enda lifted her head and stared into the distance, blinking away a film of tears that glinted in the dim light. “They’ll say we had no right to be there. They’ll call it an act of war, proof of American aggression and interference. They’ll condemn me for shutting down a gold mine, for killing soldiers, but they’ll never pay for the deaths of all those prisoners. I should have done something.”

  “I could hear your conversation before,” I said. “These reports are what Yeun will release if you don’t deliver me to Zero?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are risking your life for me.”

  Enda nodded. “I’m still not sure what I believe, or what it means that we found you.” Enda shrugged, sighed, and shook her head. “But I want to d
o what’s right for once in my fucking life. And I’ll be damned before I let any fucker blackmail me.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  Enda frowned. “Maybe I deserve to be found out.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “We should go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A thin slice of moon hung low over the twice-flooded ruins, cut like a sickle. Cement gleamed pale, and pools of filthy water reflected the diffuse glow of light pollution back at the sky. As we crossed a bridge over the canal, the roar of rushing water drowned out all other sound; my audio sensors adjusted on the fly to isolate JD and Enda, Enda’s steady breathing, JD’s syncopated gait. On the far side of the canal, the commune shone warm directly ahead.

  “How are we going to approach this?” JD asked.

  “I hadn’t thought too much about it,” Enda said.

  “They have guns.”

  “So do I.”

  JD shook his head. “They always had hacked dogs at the commune, lying around like strays. Maybe we could send Mirae in to find Soo-hyun.”

  “That sounds like a great idea,” I said. “What does Soo-hyun look like?”

  JD paused. “Korean, skinny, shaved head.”

  “Do you have a photo of them?” Enda asked.

  JD shook his head. “They never had a social media profile.”

  “You’re a terrible brother. Fine; new plan,” Enda said. “We sneak in and look for them; Mirae, you scout the commune, tag anyone who’s armed.” She looked to JD. “You been in there?”

  “Only once.”

  “You know where Soo-hyun lives?”

  “In the commune’s workshop; I’m not that bad a brother.”

  Enda smiled. “Mirae, go do your thing.”

  “I think I should stay with you,” I said. “One of me.”

  “Fine,” Enda said. “Come on.”

  Five of me ran forward, splitting up to cover the commune quicker. Visual, audio, and heat sensors marked locations of population density, and network pings developed a map of connected devices, because even a commune on the edge of a smart city feeds on the flow of global data.