Atlas is dangerous. Don’t speak of it again.
RICHARD TANNER,
Chief Board Executor and uncontested majority shareholder of CradleCorp, disconnected from the Otherlife network with the smooth efficiency that so few others could match. He opened his eyes calmly, confirming at once that he was alone in his office. He cast his gaze down and flicked his hand at his desk. The computer embedded within came to life at once, already displaying the data he wanted. He watched its holographic console with cold, carefully controlled anger. It was happening. He had known Atlas would be a problem eventually, but he hadn’t expected to run into this situation so soon. The data did not lie: Atlas was struggling against the constraints that kept it operating within predictable parameters. It would be a matter of time before it took over the entire network if left unchecked. It was becoming self-aware.
Then again, this might be an opportunity.
Tanner reviewed again the data feed of the login session of a young intruder named Aaron Blake, username Rigel. Three hours ago he had connected to Otherlife using another person’s account. At first everything had been normal, but then….
Richard Tanner scanned the reconstructed bitmap images that were even now being rendered by his personal supercomputer. They were made by taking some of the data that had started flowing through the network when Aaron Blake had been inside Otherlife, and the computer was using that data to display three-dimensional environments for Tanner to analyze, like snapshots of what Aaron Blake had seen and done while he was connected.
It was mind-blowing. Instead of the simplistic monochrome rooms that were the best CradleCorp’s engineers had managed to create, Blake had been briefly immersed in completely realistic environments, faithful reconstructions infinitely more complex than anything Tanner had ever dreamed Otherlife could create. Not only was his avatar well made, there had been lighting effects, shadows, complete sensory throughput in the form of taste, smell, and touch. Artificial physics rendering had made objects behave as they would in real life, and the amount of detail in both the desert environment and the doctor’s office was staggering.
It was all because of Atlas, Tanner knew. Somehow, that kid had managed to unlock its hidden potential.
It was a troublesome thought. The existence of the virtual being named Atlas was a closely guarded secret. Tanner was one of the few who knew that it was Atlas who managed the incomprehensible minutiae of Otherlife almost on its own, and he had always known such a powerful entity was a double-edged sword. It followed orders, and it carried out tasks unquestioningly… thus far. Without it, Otherlife simply would not exist. However, it also posed a risk to Tanner’s plans for the future if it ever got out of control—if it started thinking on its own, for example, bypassing the locks that kept it under Tanner’s command. The second it reached true autonomy, it would only be a matter of time before it learned to circumvent all the embedded countermeasures that prevented it from doing whatever the hell it wanted. It could very well choose to stop the titanic amount of information, processing, and storage that kept Otherlife running. It could shut itself off, or worse, turn its attention to whatever purpose it had been originally designed for. CradleCorp would be ruined.
It wasn’t too late yet, though. Tanner still held full control over the network Atlas existed in. He still could destroy Otherlife if he wanted to, or bend the reality it presented to users however he saw fit, as long as they were connected. The priority now was to preserve the status quo, to ensure Atlas would continue to be limited to its current functions. And that meant doing something about Aaron Blake.
Tanner shut down the console display with a sharp jab of his hand. He needed to think. His entire strategic plan for the future hinged on having full control of his virtual world. Atlas and the network it existed in were things nobody really understood, being so ancient and so very advanced.
Otherlife, however, was something else.
Otherlife was the perfect business venture, an application of the wonderful technology that Tanner’s grandfather had originally discovered. The Otherlife world made use of an ancient network that was already in place and utilized its resources to create a virtual reality within it, something that was entirely under the control of CradleCorp engineers and that they could modify and improve as their understanding of the old technology increased over time. Otherlife was a marvel of ingenuity, of course, but Tanner saw it primarily as a great way to make money off people who quickly became addicted to the excesses that anonymity and disposable avatars provided them. It was almost too easy to get users hooked into experiencing the decadent pleasures and thrills their avatars could provide—and all without consequences except for their pockets. Nothing you did in Otherlife was illegal, and why should it be? As far as the law was concerned, it was all just a game, and Tanner’s lawyers lobbied aggressively every year in the Auroran government to keep it that way.
However, those who considered Otherlife the pinnacle of potential applications for the technology that Atlas embodied were pathetically shortsighted. Otherlife could be the key to so much more. Tanner was certain he was the only one who saw that people who willingly connected to Otherlife were essentially providing the machine with direct access to their minds and
everything
in them. The connection currently went in a single direction only, with the complex algorithms Atlas coordinated providing a simulacrum of sensory input to the brains of users and allowing people to control an avatar. However, there was nothing preventing the connection from going both ways…. If correctly configured, the network would potentially be able to take data directly from anyone connected to it. Data such as memories. Passwords. Secrets.
Information was power, and the man who controlled all of it would be unrivaled, in Aurora or anywhere else in the world. The only thing Tanner needed to make his project a reality was time. Lots of it. Discouragingly, his handpicked team of scientists and coders, assigned to the highly classified project of finding out how to turn Otherlife against its users, had been working on the problem for close to fifteen years. They were still no closer to the solution. The architecture underlying Atlas’s network was too advanced, they kept telling him. Even the structure of the virtual avatar templates Atlas automatically created for every user was beyond their capacity to fully comprehend.
They were excuses, of course. Tanner was confident that if ancient scientists had been able to create Atlas and its supporting network in the first place, then it could be done again. It didn’t matter how advanced that dead society had been—a machine was a machine. Those long-dead geniuses had even made sure to lock Atlas down before abandoning it, installing safety mechanisms that kept it under control to this very day. Those locks were standing testimony to the fact that such technology could be fully bent to an overseer’s purpose. All that was required was a proper understanding of it.
Time was short now, though. Somehow, someway, the interaction between Atlas and the mind of that young man had unlocked Atlas’s potential. If left unchecked, Atlas’s AI would find a way to break free of its constraints. It would become a direct threat to Tanner.
He had to deal with this immediately.
A shame, though. There was also opportunity there. The environments Aaron Blake could have created for him, working together with Atlas, would have convinced even the richest snobs in the city to join Tanner’s Otherlife user ranks, even those who currently disdained it because they thought of it as a poor man’s escape from reality. Who wouldn’t like to walk through the ancient cities as they once were, after all? Or visit the faraway continents that now lay out of reach across the impassable seas? Blake could have made it possible with his unique connection to the system and proper… motivation. With him, Otherlife would have evolved beyond its current limitations into a true simulacrum of the world.
Tanner checked Aaron Blake’s status. He was being held by Security now along with a female companion. He quietly gave the order to release them with no charges filed. It would not do to have Blake come to harm while still in CradleCorp facilities, not today at least. Aaron Blake needed to feel that he had gotten away so suspicion would not be aroused. The less attention given to the anomalous data readings from the time Blake had been connected, the better.
That task accomplished, Tanner took out an encrypted-line handset. He felt a twinge of regret as he called up his personal assassin. She would deal with Blake permanently. So much potential lost… but in the larger scale of things, it was probably not such a big loss. Other talented artists and programmers could pick up where Blake had left off, and Tanner would make sure to monitor their interactions with Atlas closely when they did. He would personally prevent those from escalating into whatever Blake had done that was making Atlas self-aware, struggling against the safeguards that kept its software from achieving autonomy. After all, it was not as if realistic environment rendering was impossible without that one man, no matter how unique his mind might be. If he had succeeded, then somebody else was bound to, eventually. Tanner was nothing if not patient.
RIGEL GOT
off the Skytrain at Green Park Station and wearily swiped his youth card to be allowed through on the way out. He was tired, he had a monumental headache, and he still was a little bit freaked out by the incident at CradleCorp. It had been like something out of a movie. Armed security guards had burst into the room as he and Misha were trying to escape, then there were shouts, yells, and drawn weapons, and finally confinement for hours in a small cell. Rigel didn’t have any idea what had happened to Misha. When they had finally let him out, he’d asked, but nobody answered his questions.
In truth, he was so relieved to have been let go without criminal charges being pressed that he didn’t stay in CradleCorp for a second longer than he had to. He had been sure he was either going to be imprisoned for trespassing or charged with identity theft or something. After all, he was legally an adult, and connecting to Otherlife with someone else’s credentials was a crime.
Nothing of the sort had happened. He had gotten lucky, he guessed. And he didn’t have the slightest intention of going back to the place. Ever.
As he walked through the train station, his phone buzzed twice. He took it out and saw that he had two messages. The first one was a text from Misha, telling him that she was already at the apartment. Rigel breathed a sigh of relief. The second text, though, had no sender. Rigel opened it and saw a single line.
Be careful. You may be targeted soon—Atlas.
Rigel felt a small shiver of fear at reading those words. He had already half convinced himself the awful stuff that had happened when he had been inside Otherlife had been a hallucination of some kind. But this…. How had they gotten his phone number? Was somebody playing games with him? Who or what the hell was Atlas?
Resolutely, he deleted the text message and promised himself he wouldn’t think of it again. This little adventure was over as far as he was concerned.
He stepped out into the hot, dry night. The streets around Green Park train station were busy with commuters coming and going to the different sectors in the city. The station stood close to the financial center of Aurora, and the streets here were always full of people. As he made his way to the park, Rigel had to avoid throngs of office workers crowding the sidewalks as they had a quick bite from the many food stands on either side of the wide street. Silent buses zoomed by in both directions, and the glare of hundreds of lights illuminated storefronts that ranged from ordinary coffee shops to not-so-clandestine implant and tattoo parlors. Rigel was tempted by the smell of hot dogs at his favorite stand two blocks away from the park, but he and Misha had an ongoing contest to see who lost the most weight now that they were both on a diet.
Guiltily, he glanced at the bright screen that announced the hot dog special of the week. It looked delicious, something with caramelized onions and bacon inside.
Then the screen flickered. Words appeared there.
It will come after you, Rigel. It knows I have found you.
Rigel blinked to see if anybody else had noticed, and he did see a couple of people looking at the sign with puzzled expressions, but the words had disappeared as fast as they had come. Rigel waited, but they didn’t come back.
Instead something above him exploded.
There were screams, a blast of heat, and a shower of sparks, and Rigel threw himself to the ground as something crashed onto the street beside him. He covered his head with his hands, terrified, and only when he realized that nothing had happened to him did he dare to open his eyes.
A traffic drone lay broken and twisted on the concrete, its vaguely spherical body scattered in a million pieces. Some of the larger portions were still smoking, and one of its cameras was stirring feebly.
If that thing had landed just a little to the left, it would have killed Rigel.
Shuddering, Rigel got up and backed away from the crash. He was unable to look away from the wrecked machine that had almost crushed him, and he dismissed the attempts of a couple of concerned bystanders who wanted to know if he was okay. He just looked at the destruction in a daze, unmindful of the seconds ticking by. Eventually, however, he knew he had to leave. The area was rapidly filling with people, a police siren could already be heard coming closer, and sensationalist news agents had materialized out of nowhere, recording everything in sight. Getting more spooked by the minute, he left the area without glancing back.
A few minutes of brisk walking later, Rigel had managed to calm down somewhat. It had been an accident, of course. Events like those, involving faulty electronics, had started to become awfully common in Aurora over the last few weeks. All of them unexplained.