Overclocked (7 page)

No, this man ap­peared to be a much more mel­low and meas­ured per­son. He had guided her out of the apart­ment with a gal­lant ges­ture that looked so nat­ural, even as Tania hes­it­ated at its ali­en­ness. Not at the ges­ture it­self but at the fact that it had been Carl who had made it.

Could someone really change in the space of a day, from op­por­tun­istic bas­tard to ap­proach­ing nor­mal? Gra­cious even? It beg­gared be­lief.

The two of them soared up through sev­eral vir­tual city­scapes, neatly dodging the vehicles that sped along the high­ways.

“There are tril­lions of bytes here,” Carl said, “with mil­lions be­ing ad­ded every second. Un­like our own world, this one is al­most in­fin­ite, an en­tire uni­verse within each com­puter, each server.”

Build­ings of every shape and hue whizzed past them. Any­thing that stored, or sent, in­form­a­tion via cy­ber­space was mod­elled here, from small cubes that re­flec­ted in­di­vidual users on their own home serv­ers to gi­ant edi­fices rep­res­ent­ing large cor­por­a­tions span­ning con­tin­ents.

“In­form­a­tion about every single thing on Earth, just sit­ting some­where in the Blue, wait­ing for someone to reach out and grab it.”

Tania let Carl’s words wash over her as they soared on­ward. She thought that the cor­por­ate-owned, im­pen­et­rable-look­ing blocks of en­cryp­ted data­bases were the largest things in the Blue, and wondered if they could be ma­nip­u­lated into more ima­gin­at­ive shapes. Then she began no­ti­cing a swarm of
some­thing
dir­ectly in their path. They were still far away from it and she nar­rowed her eyes, try­ing to fo­cus on what she was see­ing. Was it an­other build­ing? No, it couldn’t be. None of the win­dow­less sky­scrapers they had passed were painted such a dis­tinct­ive shade of red.

It struck her that that shade she was see­ing was the ex­act same col­our as the orbs that had at­tacked them.

They moved closer and the ob­jects star­ted to re­semble a sheet of pa­per, then a shower of thick strands, like a beaded cur­tain that had par­tially col­lapsed on the floor.

In­stinct­ively she held back, but Carl tugged at her and they moved closer still.

It was a web, a mass of knobbly threads that squat­ted over en­tire dis­tricts of the cy­ber­scape. Carl stopped while they were still a little dis­tance away and Tania fo­cused on the cy­ber­space layer be­low the cur­rent street level. She wasn’t sur­prised to see red tendrils reach­ing down through blocks of the level be­low her and – as she lif­ted her gaze – above her as well.

The tendrils weren’t con­tent to merely en­gulf the build­ings. As she watched, they slowly entered blocks, pen­et­rat­ing them ef­fort­lessly, and emer­ging through shattered pan­els on pre­vi­ously slick sur­faces be­fore gradu­ally meet­ing up with the main struc­ture again, the tendrils thick­en­ing as they re­con­nec­ted with a ma­jor branch. Around the red web, spheres, very much like the bots that had at­tacked her and Carl, dar­ted back and forth at high speed, circ­ling the thick creep­ers like tiny fly­ing sol­diers.

“What can you see?” he asked.

She frowned as she took in the com­plex­ity of what was in front of her. “I see streets. And tall build­ings.”

He lif­ted an eye­brow. “Really? Build­ings and streets? Not, say, pipes or streams?”

She shook her head while re­mem­ber­ing sim­ilar words from the gi­ant rab­bit. Maybe Carl and the an­imal avatar
did
know each other. “No. It looks, more or less, like a nor­mal city­scape to me.”

“That’s what I see too,” he said. “It means you and I must be us­ing a sim­ilar frame of ref­er­ence to in­ter­pret ob­jects in cy­ber­space.” He jerked his head. “What about that? Can you see some­thing for­eign over there?”

“It’s,” Tania grim­aced, “de­struct­ive. A blood-red col­our, with tendrils that ap­pear to be in­filt­rat­ing data­bases. What is it?”

“That,” Carl said, after ex­hal­ing heav­ily, “is the Rhine-Temple bot­net. You must have ana­lysed traces of it back in the lab.”

“A bot­net?” She knew what they were but had never quite trans­lated their ex­ist­ence in to the im­age of de­struc­tion she saw be­fore her. The web of tentacles looked ma­lign and hor­rific. “How dan­ger­ous is it?”

He tightened his lips and the wrinkles around his mouth deepened. “More dan­ger­ous than any other bot­net in ex­ist­ence. We’re not talk­ing about com­prom­ising in­di­vidual ma­chines here. The Rhine-Temple, as you can see, has suc­cess­fully in­filt­rated the sys­tems of sev­eral large com­pan­ies.”

That was vis­ible by the way some tall struc­tures ap­peared to be in­fes­ted with red, dozens of tendrils writh­ing out of holes in the build­ings like the branches of a huge tree-creature re­claim­ing an aban­doned sky­scraper.

“When its de­velopers built it,” Carl said, “they had no idea that it would ac­quire a char­ac­ter­istic that you don’t of­ten see in bot­nets.”

Tania looked at him and he smiled grimly at her.

“Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. The Rhine-Temple has a de­gree of sen­tience. It can make de­cisions for it­self. And the ri­gid pro­to­cols of many ex­ist­ing com­pan­ies are no match for it.”

Tania turned her gaze back to the red web. She isol­ated one patch of move­ment and watched as a thin red tendril tapped slowly and gently at the sheer face of a neigh­bour­ing build­ing.

“Every time a sys­tem goes down,” Carl said, “the bot­net col­lects data, ana­lys­ing how long it took to com­prom­ise that net­work’s se­cur­ity. It then de­vel­ops its own pro­grams to fine-tune its per­form­ance so that, the next time it at­tacks, it’s more ef­fi­cient.”

“What’s its pur­pose?” Tania asked. “Pro­cessing cycles for scam­mers? An il­legal grid plat­form for hack­ers?”

Carl laughed. It was a hol­low sound, flat and echo­less in cy­ber­space.

“It wants a whole lot more than that, darlin’. That Rhine-Temple bot­net wants to des­troy the world.”

“I think it’s figured out that there’s a lot of real es­tate here in cy­ber­space go­ing to waste,” Carl said. “This whole vir­tual uni­verse is powered by hard­ware work­ing at peak per­form­ance. Thou­sands, mil­lions, bil­lions of in­struc­tions per second whizz­ing around above our heads and be­low our feet. Why share, when it can take it all?”

“But Carl, des­troy­ing the world? What makes you think that is its ul­ti­mate ob­ject­ive?”

“Be­cause I’ve been watch­ing it.” He glanced over at her. “Sit down, I want to ex­plain some­thing.”

They were stand­ing on the top of a tall win­dow­less build­ing that over­looked the bot­net. Carl let go of her hand and Tania sat on the edge of the rooftop. From habit, she tried not to look down at the vir­tual street be­low. Carl sat next to her, angling him­self so she could look into his weathered face.

“The Rhine-Temple and I have already fought sev­eral battles. I’ve beaten it back a few times but it keeps com­ing.” He paused. “I’ve been do­ing this for years.”

She blinked, un­com­pre­hend­ing. “Years?” she re­peated. “But—”

“Listen,” he said. “When we were train­ing in the sand­pit, we were in­ser­ted into cy­ber­space for only a few minutes at a time. When we came out of it, back to the real world, there was some sense of dis­lo­ca­tion, but every­body at Base­ment Five put it down to the in­ser­tion ex­per­i­ence it­self.

“I’ve figured it out, though. When you’re in cy­ber­space for more than a few real-time minutes, your brain starts to ad­apt. Be­cause it’s now in a world that moves so much faster, it starts mov­ing faster too. And cy­ber­space, real cy­ber­space, is much more neur­o­lo­gic­ally stim­u­lat­ing than the test en­vir­on­ments where we did our tri­als. In or­der to cope, our brain has to some­how take in all that in­form­a­tion and make sense of it.”

“We speed up,” Tania said, “is that what you’re say­ing?”

“We call it ‘clock­ing up’, but it’s the same concept.”

Her eyes widened. “‘We’?”

She thought back again to the gi­ant white rab­bit but still didn’t feel com­fort­able enough to share that strange con­ver­sa­tion with Carl. Not yet.

He waved her ques­tion away. “I’ll ex­plain that bit later.” He took her hands and stared into her eyes. “As far as I’m con­cerned, I’ve been bat­tling the Rhine-Temple bot­net for close to fif­teen years now.”

She stared back at him. “Fif­teen?
Years
? A dec­ade and a half?”

“That’s what it feels like. I’ve been afraid to ask this ques­tion, but I’ll ask it now. How long has it really been, Tania?”

Her gaze dar­ted over his fea­tures, at the grey­ing hair at his temples, the slight fur­rows on his fore­head and the faint lines fan­ning from his eyes and trail­ing down his cheeks.

“You mean, how long since you were in­ser­ted into the Blue?”

Carl pursed his lips and nod­ded.

“You were in­ser­ted at nine-thirty in the morn­ing,” she said. “Yes­ter­day.”

He looked in­cred­u­lous. “A
day
? I’ve only been here for one
day
?”

“No more than twenty-four hours.” Tania’s voice was faint. “I came as quickly as I could.”

“I tried to make con­tact sev­eral times over the years,” Carl told her, his voice an­guished, “send you in­form­a­tion about the bot­net, but you dis­ap­peared com­pletely from the Blue. All I found was a piece of flat va­cant land where the Base­ment Five block used to be.”

Then the spike in traffic that Don showed her
had
been Carl try­ing to con­tact them. Fol­low­ing on from that, maybe the board’s col­lect­ive fear of a for­eign gov­ern­ment at­tack­ing them was noth­ing more than a fantasy brought on by Carl’s de­term­in­a­tion. But then, if it wasn’t for that fantasy, she wouldn’t have been given the go-ahead to enter cy­ber­space.

“We were afraid of a se­cur­ity breach,” Tania said gently. “Don ordered all the DMZ serv­ers to shut down last night. We only had the Base­ment Five private net­work run­ning. The serv­ers are up again now. The build­ing you knew should be back.”

She hes­it­ated. “But there’s some­thing I still don’t un­der­stand, Carl. Why do you look as though you’ve aged so much? This isn’t the real world. As I said, you’ve only been away for one day.”

He smiled rue­fully. “That took me a little while to fig­ure out, too. I didn’t mind. It gave me some­thing to do while I was wait­ing for the Rhine’s next move. I think it has to do with our self-im­age. Ac­cord­ing to my in­ternal clock, I’ve been here for a long time so my brain changed my self-im­age to match.”

Tania frowned at him. “You’re say­ing that your sub­con­scious thinks you’re in your late forties now?”

“Must be.” His grin was rue­ful. “And maybe some of it is a psy­cho­lo­gical ef­fect from bat­tling the Rhine-Temple. I can’t think of any other the­ory that fits.”

Now that she was over the shock of his ap­pear­ance, Tania had to ad­mit that, even with a few lines on his face, Carl Orin was still one of the most at­tract­ive men she had ever seen.

They both stared at each other for a long mo­ment be­fore Carl chuckled.

“Now don’t go try­ing to make too much sense of all this. We’re deal­ing with two huge vari­ables here. Cy­ber­space, which we’ve only just be­gun to ex­plore, and our own brains, which is an­other fron­tier we’ve barely be­gun map­ping. Put them to­gether and I’m sur­prised I don’t see gi­ant sea ser­pents rid­ing ima­gin­ary waves between levels.”

Tania couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up from in­side her. It was partly re­lief but she was also start­ing to like the newer, gentler Carl. Damn her.

He sobered. “You have a choice now, Tania. I wish I didn’t have to spring it on you so quickly but I’m run­ning out of time.”

He poin­ted at the traffic mov­ing be­low their feet. “See that?”

Tania took a few mo­ments to fo­cus, then she saw what he was re­fer­ring to. A thin sil­very thread stretched across the high­way, stay­ing mi­ra­cu­lously in­tact des­pite the traffic that whizzed above it. Tania tracked the thread up the side of the build­ing where they sat. To the disc that swayed gently on its hook at her belt.

“That tether tells the Rhine-Temple that there are ac­tual hu­mans in cy­ber­space,” Carl told her. “Ra­tional, ad­apt­able hu­man be­ings, not ri­gid, static com­puter net­works. After our first couple of battles, it learnt about me. Learnt I was a dif­fer­ent kind of creature. So it cre­ated an army of spe­cial­ised bots to track and des­troy hu­man be­ings. It wants to kill us be­fore we can kill it.”

Tania felt a chill travel up her arms. “So what are you say­ing?”

“You need to go back. Re­turn to Base­ment Five, tell them what I’m do­ing and tell them to hold on while I try to des­troy this thing.”

“By your­self?”

He shook his head. “Not by my­self. I have friends. But I’m the only one run­ning the mara­thon. The oth­ers pitch in when they can, but they’re just sprint­ers.”

“And what do
I
do?”

“You wait. You tell Don and you wait for my sig­nal.”

“When will that be, Carl and how will we re­cog­nise it?” Tania’s voice stretched with the ten­sion thrum­ming through her throat. “How will we know if you’re still fight­ing...or if you’re dead?”

He swal­lowed. “I guess....” His voice husked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I guess a real-time week should be enough time, one way or an­other.”

She tightened her lips. “What’s the al­tern­at­ive?”

“What al­tern­at­ive?”

She glared at him. “There’s al­ways an al­tern­at­ive. What is it?”

He slanted her a long look, a smile twitch­ing the corner of his lips. “You stay here and help me. To­gether, we des­troy that red-tentacled mon­stros­ity. But...you cut your tether. That’s the only way to guar­an­tee a min­imum stand­ard of safety from the Rhine’s seeker bots.”

“And how do I do that?”

“Cut your tether?”

She nod­ded.

“You open it and is­sue the shut­down com­mand. You have to do it twice, con­firm­ing the com­mand each time.”

Sounds of faint traffic, a hum rather than a roar, drif­ted up to Tania. The si­lence between her and Carl was com­plete. He watched her as she mulled over her thoughts and she watched him against the back­drop of a slowly-ex­pand­ing, sen­tient bot­net.