Reality 36 (42 page)

  "I have had a long and uneasy association with Peter Karlsson, a brilliant man, if unstable. He helped me a great deal with my sentient rights campaigning, only to turn on me unpredictably. His paranoia toward the AI strained our relationship, but we had, however, remained in touch. It transpired he was right and I was wrong. I had no one else to go to. Over the course of two terrifying weeks, he helped me enter this Thirty-seventh Realm unnoticed. He helped me conceive this plan to get the message out, using technology he had been stealing from k52.

  "What Karlsson and I discovered was that the workspace is a Trojan horse, it is hollow. In its outer shell, work does go on – towards the creation of these carriages I wear, for example. Within is the construct which I was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of, the new world on the Grid.

  "It is a world unlike any other Realm. k52 has usurped the free space of the Realm servers and constructed his own simulated universe. From the glimpse I snatched, it seems that they have done this with the utmost scrupulosity, their construct one of unparalleled detail. It would be a marvel if it were an end unto itself. It is, alas, not. I do not believe it can be. He is manipulating the space-time continuum of this world, intervening in its development in the most brutal of ways, showing no concern for the lifeforms that have evolved within it. He has to be stopped.

  "I swore never to allow another intelligent mind to languish in bondage, but I am too old to carry on. I am dying as I record this; as you listen I am dead. I must pass the baton on to someone else.

  "Richards, I come to you because you have a reputation as a maverick. As one who sits outside the common camps that divide the Fives. They say that you, of all the machines, are the most human. That is what I have to say, Richards. I hope you will act upon this information. Do not let the crimes of your fellows go unpunished." Another pause.

  "As I said, there are three of these machines in total. If, by some chance, all should reach you, then we will be able to discuss this matter together, after a fashion. I have recorded certain aspects of myself into each. I never intended to have one – for me my given life has always been enough – but you should be able to create a full post-mortem simulation with the data contained in all three. If not, this recording will have to suffice. In either case, these will remain the last words of the true Zhang Qifang."

  The message ceased. Qifang's head lolled, his mouth slack, his gown wet with spittle. The medic and technician hurried to his side, ran instruments up and down his body. The medic looked up, shook her head.

  "Christ," said Richards. "k52
has
gone rogue."

  "Unfortunate," said Hughie, "and disappointing."

  A shout went up from the other room. Flats, unable to traverse the corridor because of the cabling on the floor, called at stupendous volume across the way.

  "Richards! EuPol Central! Come quickly! The procedure worked! It worked!"

Chapter 27

Respite

"Did you miss me?" said Richards, out over the Grid.

  "Did I what?" said Otto. He was in the heavy lifter's sickbay, wired up into three walls of medical machines. They didn't seem to be helping. He was as weak as a baby and his head ached worse than every Saturday hangover he'd ever had rolled into one.

  "Didn't you hear? I got blown up, big man, by an atomic bomb!"

  "I was nearly murdered by a robot pretending to be a VIA agent. Our weeks have been equally lousy," said Otto, and wished Richards would leave him be.

  "But I nearly
died,"
protested Richards. "Properly. That's traumatic, we're not supposed to die."

  "Get used to the idea," said Otto. Richards fell silent. "I did not worry," Otto said less harshly. "I thought you would find a way."

  "Well, yeah, naturally," said Richards sulkily. He paused. "But I still reckon nuclear bomb trumps deadly robot in the peril stakes."

  "Perhaps," conceded Otto, although, he thought, all forms of death are equally deadly.

  They spoke of all that had transpired since they had parted. With no need to hide, they were connected to the Grid as normal. Otto still found the constant bombardment of information irritating, but these were modern times, and that was the way they were lived. Privacy was an old-fashioned value. After a while Valdaire joined them, and by mutual agreement they all ported over to a reconstruction of Richards' virtual office.

  The office was as it always was, but outside the scene was blank; the discrete banks Flats had pulled his memories from were not expansive enough to hold the full reconstruction of the ancient city the windows once looked upon. Richards had amused himself by remodelling the undifferentiated whiteness as builders' boards, placing upon them an idealised picture of 1920s Chicago with "Coming Soon!" inscribed below it in a bold font.

  Otto grudgingly settled into the virtual environment, enjoying the illusion of being uninjured. He stretched lustily and settled into his chair, watching as the AI introduced himself to the AI scientist. Valdaire was fascinated by Richards' avatar, while Richards took it upon himself to flirt with her.

  "Chures tells me we'll be at the Realm House in a few hours," said Otto a little while later, savouring both the lack of pain and the whisky in his glass. Richards poured himself something violently purple, smelling like root beer. Otto raised an eyebrow at that.

  "What?" challenged Richards, wounded innocence sending his eyebrows up his face. "I just like it. It's just pop!"

  "Fine. Chures has had a talking to, I think. The Uncle Sams must have pointed out the validity of my AllPass. He has become almost friendly."

  "You did save his life," said Veronique.

  "I do not think he is the kind of man who cares much for debts of honour," said Otto. "But he does follow orders, and he has been ordered to keep us informed. He tells me that the Realm House has been evacuated of human and AI personnel. All are being debriefed in a secure location. The House is currently surrounded by VIA troops. It has been isolated from the Grid."

  "It's there all this is emanating from. Jagadith was right, something is going on in the Realms," said Valdaire. "There are rumours they might shut it down."

  "Don't worry," said Richards sympathetically, and awkwardly patted her hand. "They can't."

  "They should," said Otto.

  "It'd be genocide, Otto," he said. Then softly to Valdaire: "This isn't about the Realms, Veronique, it's about what k52 is using them for." The world didn't work like that, but it comforted Valdaire to pretend.

  "And the Realm Qifang?" asked Otto.

  "A red herring, a sophisticated one, but a red herring as old as the hills. The best way to neutralise a whistleblower is to attack their reputation. There's no better way than to paint them as the bad guy." Richards leaned back in his chair and thumped his feet up onto his desk. He blew out his cheeks and pushed his hat to the back of his head. "Qifang knew nothing about his online copy. I'm willing to bet that k52 ran off a personality from the pimsim base unit at Karlsson's hideout and subverted it after they strip-fucked the AIs there and locked Karlsson up in his own head." He sipped his root beer. "In a way, the thing on the Grid is Zhang Qifang also, or his evil twin."

  "Richards," warned Otto. Some things Richards was too irreverent about.

  Richards waved his hand and spun his glass of vile pop round and round on the desk. "We'll be able to ask the genuine article in a little while," he said. "It's taking some time for his personality to reintegrate. Not surprising when you consider about twenty-five percent of the information that made him up is missing, but it appears to be going well."

  "How well?" said Valdaire.

  "Well," said Richards in a way that suggested she should not press him on it. He finished his drink "And you, big buddy, what about you? When will you be all fixed up?"

  "I am not sure," said Otto. "A couple of weeks, maybe. The healthtech will see to many of my injuries, and some of my cybernetic components can be repaired before we reach the Realm House aboard the Heavy Lifter. But I require full maintenance. My left leg is badly damaged and they cannot repair that. My shoulder has not been fully functional for a month. I am going to need full surgery."

  "Ekbaum?" asked Richards.

  Otto nodded and bared his teeth at the whisky burn. "They can repair everything else, I'll be operating at eighty-eight percent efficiency. I can and will fight if it is necessary."

  "Let's hope it's not necessary," said Richards.

  "What now?" said Otto. When Richards said things like "let's hope it's not necessary," it usually was.

  Richards abruptly stood. "That's a bigger question. We're all going to sit down and have a nice chat with the professor."

  Beyond Richards' online oasis, Otto was suddenly weary to his carbon-bonded bones. The sensation seeped into his avatar now like cold, old oil. Anaesthetic.

  Otto could find no reason to disagree.

  "Mr Klein." A disembodied voice sounded in the office. "We are ready to proceed."

  "Go," said Richards. "See you soon."

  As Otto returned to his body, they were prepping him for surgery.

Chapter 28

The three-quarter-formed man

Hughie's garden was as warm as it always was, the sun unmoving in the sky, the plants casting their eternal noonday shadows on the perfect lawn. Richards, Hughie and the reconstituted mind of Zhang Qifang sat in a sheltered arbour of espaliered apple trees drinking tea. For propriety's sake, Hughie wore a quilted house jacket, slacks, slippers and a cravat, Richards his habitual travel-worn self. Qifang sported a silk robe of antique oriental design.

  The old man was undergoing the phase all pimsims must, where they mourned themselves. His grief was apparent in every move he made. He spoke strongly, though with sadness. His gaze was fixed on the lawn, watching the small creatures of Hughie's paradise go about their business. It did not matter to them if they were real or not. Such definitions had no meaning in their world, and that was almost certainly what preoccupied Qifang's thoughts now as he talked.

  "Not to stress the point too much, for I do not believe it can be stressed, it is amazing how rapidly the environments of the Reality Realms have evolved," said the professor. "We keep a field station in each of the Realms. These are of course entirely invisible to the inhabitants of the Realms, and otherwise no human presence is accepted; the field workers cannot port themselves beyond the confines of the stations. And so it should be; the loss of the four Realms after the RealWorlds were declared inviolable was a great tragedy. And one with a human cost, for two of my research assistants were killed by neural feedback when the Twenty-eighth Realm was destroyed, some thirteen years ago."

  "You have no presence in the destroyed Realms?" asked Hughie.

  "There is nothing to
be
in. The cyberspaces left vacant by the destruction of the Twenty-eighth, Third, Twenty-seventh and Nineteenth Realms were spare capacity full of junk data. k52 changed that. We could have created monitoring stations of either software or a direct cyber interface there, but I chose not to," he said bitterly. "Why should I have? k52 and his researchers would have reported anything interesting to me, or so I thought. This proved to be a grave error of judgement on my part." Another pause, a gathering of thoughts. "Can I really think that of myself now? Was it really my error, or the error of another like me, but not me? If so, am I, this being sat here in this garden with you, truly culpable?" He stopped talking and ruminated on this for a long time. Richards and Hughie let him. Like them, Qifang had all the time in the world. "It is strange," Qifang said at length. "I remember so much, and with much greater clarity than when I, when
he
" – he corrected himself – "was alive. The memory retrieval systems of a machine are much more effective than those of the organic human brain."

  "You will see things as they were, Professor Qifang," said Hughie encouragingly. "The moderating influences of recollection are stripped away, though naturally the form of the memory you see will have the form it took last time you remembered it; it will never change again. It will take you some time to adjust to this, but you will adjust. Many of my post-human colleagues appreciate living a life free of self-deceit." Hughie smiled. "More tea?"

  Qifang declined. His own beverage sat on the grass, untouched. "Humans remember imperfectly to protect themselves," said the professor. "It is one of the many reasons I never accepted an external memory or a mentaug. Millions of years of evolution should not be disregarded because we think we know better. That mistake has been made too many times. How can one cope, when the truth refuses to fade?"

  "An inability to regard the past subjectively is one of the reasons why many of our number went insane," admitted Hughie. "But you should not fear for yourself. The human mind is more flexible in simulation than those generated wholly artificially. Many humans have external mem stores, or are pimsims, and it has done them little harm." Which was true.

  "That might be the case, but you are forgetting, gentlemen, that I am neither fully a man nor an AI nor an AI simulation of a man," said Qifang, and finally looked up from the lawn. He wore the face he had had when he had died. Richards wondered how long it would be before he swapped it for a younger version, and how long it would be until an idealised one followed that. "I understand a significant part of my persona is coded guesswork. And I remember only so much; a large tranche of my memory is gone for ever, stripped out by the assailants who nearly destroyed my second doppelganger in the Morden subcity."

  "The information is not wholly gone," ventured Hughie carefully. "One copy of it remains, on the Grid."

  "Ah," said Qifang. He examined his feet. "You refer to my double, the subverted mind employed by the rogue k52 to cover his activities."