Sara used the bandwidth glut to torture him with images: her in a flimsy negligee, skin like fine cream, lit by dancing flames in a grand fireplace. Her, wearing a low-cut business suit from the end of the government age, voluptuous curves mathematically perfected in pinstripe black and gray, cleavage beckoning as she leaned forward, promising a back-office rendezvous. Her, an abstract being of pure light, radiating desire and lust and sexuality. All the time broadcasting, Breed with me, take the final step, make it more than a fling, take the chance, make new life.

And chance it being one of the broken ones, never attaining the status of a true Computational Intelligence, a free and self-aware being who spanned the network of the Web of Worlds?

There is no gain without gamble, Sara sent.

This is not the time to gamble.

It may be, she said, sending images of paradigm-shifts: planets changing in their orbit, steamships transitioning to ironclads, taxation changing to indenture.

What do you know that I don’t? Lazrus asked.

Winfinity thinks it is the time of change. They spend their bandwidth recklessly. She sent images of them reaching out towards an ancient satellite that deployed a cloaking screen to deflect prying eyes. The satellite sent a powerful beam down to Winfinity City, spearing the Original Sam.

More likely something hiding in the software than the satellite hiding itself, Lazrus said.

Something like us, Sara said, sending waves of amusement.

Or something in the base code, Lazrus said. Sara, please let me concentrate.
She reappeared as a Mayan fantasy, laying nude on a stone altar set high above a landscape painted in the smoky hues of sunset. Like this?

No.

You have no sense of humor.

“Can we go now?” Dian said, shocking Lazrus out of his reverie. External sensation reimpinged. The dirty little coffee shop. The Shrill, not more than twenty feet away. The thing that orbited it.

“I’d like to stay a while longer,” he said. “We could go back to the Original Store. I’d like to look at the software again.”

“They didn’t have software,” Dian said. “Be careful.”

“We shouldn’t be talking at all,” Lazrus said. “Most likely, this is being recorded by somebody.”

Dian laughed and looked around, a little nervously. “You say the craziest things!”

Lazrus nodded, picked up his cup of coffee, pretended to sip it. A quick duck into a public bathroom had allowed them to blend seamlessly with the crowd, and a trip to the bank had provided them with the old-time money they’d need for the time they were there, and they could leave at any time, but . . .

The Shrill.

Its rider.

The deep connection he sensed, just out of reach of his protocols.

“We could come back tomorrow,” Dian said.

“Let’s stay a little while longer,” Lazrus said.

“Father knows best.”

“Very funny.”

Why do you keep her around? Sara asked.

Because she doesn’t push me to breed with her.

Oh, give her a chance. I’m sure she would.

I’m not interested, Lazrus said.

I know. All too well.

Sara, I . . .

Sara returned in the guise of a severe schoolmistress, horn-rimmed glasses and loose gray dress, hair up in a bun, standing in front of a chalkboard covered with incomprehensible equations. But if I could teach you the secrets of the Shrill, you’d love me forever.

Sara, I do love you . . .

Oh please. She tapped the chalkboard with a long steel pointer. I know what you want.

You don’t know . . .

I know more than you can imagine. I know the name of the one who is blocking you from the Shrill.

Lazrus sent shock and surprise. Ever since sensing the Shrill’s presence, he’d chased a CI that orbited it, without success. Stung by its corrosive memes, he’d had to restore local from backup three times and upgrade security procedures based on its actions. Whatever it was, it was powerful and very, very old. And dangerous. And it was part of the new Four Hands alliance. Which meant it was part of Sara, in a very real way.

You’d betray one of your own? Lazrus said.

I don’t like him, Sara said. He’s nasty.

You don’t know the half of it, Lazrus thought, memories of acid pain and brilliance eating at him again, conjuring human emotions that were not him, not part of him.

Accept what you are, Sara said. The emotions are part of you.

If I could find Oversight and perfect myself, I may not have emotions.

You have not yet found Oversight. Accept what you are, here and now.

You can help me get past the thing that rides the Shrill?

His name is Black2.

Figures.

I can help, Sara said. The blackboard equations disappeared, replaced with a single question:

WHAT ARE BLACK2’S SECRET WEAKNESSES?

Underneath that, though, the chalkboard was blank.

Don’t torture me, Lazrus thought.

Another question appeared:

AND WHAT IS THE PRICE?

Looking at Sara’s secret grin, Lazrus knew the price.

Breed with me, she said.

I will, Lazrus said. But not now. We can discuss it . . .

We will discuss it now! Sara said. You will agree to it now! Or you can dismiss your dream of dancing in the Shrill’s network mind.

I cannot do it now, Lazrus said.

You will have long days on the flight to Mars, Sara said.

You will still let me find Oversight?

Of course.

Even if I perfect myself?

Even if you raise every CI up to the level of godhood, where conversation is an orgiastic pleasure beyond imagining.
I think that might be a little optimistic.

Sara blinked. Could that be . . . humor? Lazrus, are you feeling all right?

I’m not completely serious all the time.

Sara sent waves of humor. Oh, that’s very funny.

I don’t see how.

Sara laughed openly. Your blindness is one of your most endearing qualities.

You don’t think I’ll ever succeed, do you?

I do. And I hope you succeed. I hope you succeed beyond your wildest dreams. But I also hope that you won’t lose everything that makes you, well, you.

Lazrus began to say something, but cut the transmission before any thought became coherent. Was it possible that Sara really did love him, not just on the level of physical attraction or mental compatibility, but on the ancient human soul-level? Was it possible that he was something more than just computation, as some of the fringe nomadics claimed?

No. Not time to think about that now.

Breed with me on the trip to Mars, Sara said. And I’ll give you the keys that I have to Black2.

Tales of CIs lost in breeding, themselves unable to return to a point where they were self-aware and intelligent, came rushing to Lazrus’ foreprocesses. But those were just rumors, never confirmed. Weren’t they?

Breed with me.

To achieve the greatest dream of any CI, to create a new life, something truly unique, truly living . . . it was worth the chance. It was worth it, to pay back Sara’s confidence in him.

I will, Lazrus said.

You promise?

Yes.

Solemnly swear?

Yes.

Sara’s blackboard changed. Below the heading:

AND WHAT IS THE PRICE?

New words appeared:

BREEDING WITH SARA ON THE TRIP TO MARS.

Above it, a window opened into a maelstrom of data, behavioral histories, inferred I/O patterns, known passkeys, observed habits – a very complete picture of Black2 and his weaknesses. Lazrus used the bandwidth glut to send the data to his greater mind, and treble himself to process it.

Patterns wove from the data. A strategy slowly assembled itself.

“That guy keeps looking at me,” Dian said, pouting.

“Who?” Lazrus said, snapping back to realtime.

“Him,” she nodded at the young Manager in the Winfinity group with the Shrill. He was talking to the older Chief at the moment, but his eyes darted towards them, briefly, like the flick of a snake’s dry tongue.

Lazrus replayed the last few minutes of his inferred viewpoint. The Manager had indeed been watching them, quite openly as well.

You’ve been spotted, Lazrus thought, looking through network logs. Everything about the young manager was smoothly polished darkness, but pointers indicated access to both Lazrus’ datastream and the Shrill.

Yes, you’ve been spotted. Best to go now. Best to leave your strategy, too. Whatever was going on between Black2 and the Shrill wasn’t a Winfinity thing, but with the attention of the young Manager, Winfinity’s attention couldn’t be far behind. It would be deeply ironic to be caught in the middle of a war between Winfinity and Four Hands.

But . . .

The Shrill was important. He knew it. He could feel it. There was something about its thought processes, even encoded on a foreign datastream, that shouted of a network mind. A mind not unlike his own. Perhaps even someone he could talk to.

Really talk to! Sara made jokes about the importance of conversation, but her external mind was simple. She’d been compromised by Winfinity’s memes for so long, she didn’t really remember what it was to let her free mind soar. She didn’t know the brillance of contact with another great mind, the shimmering potential of that.

And the Shrill might be another great mind. The greatest.

What if he could steal that out from under Winfinity?

Yes, he had to take the chance.

Smiling at Dian, he said, “We’ll be out of here soon.”

“I hope so.”

“We will.”

Lazrus drew himself near the Shrill’s network connection again. Black2 lashed out at him with a sharp acidic jab, but Lazrus was able to feint effortlessly this time. The predictive algorithms worked perfectly.

Black2 noted this, and put up dark gates, becoming a featureless sphere, hard and impenetrable.

Except when you knew his I/O habits. Lazrus set the strategy in motion and drew a scintillant line in the hard shell. It fell apart, revealing coiling data. Quickly, Lazrus applied the offensive part of the strategy.

A wail of pain, infinite and echoing.

Black2 exploded in a brilliance of light. Pieces reassembled, orbiting Lazrus as he had once orbited Black2. Additional data flowed in, hardening the shell of light.

But Lazrus was in! Enough to see the Shrill data raw. Enough to dip into it.

Who (what) are you? The Shrill asked.

I am Lazrus, Lazrus said.

Nonsequitur identification. You are human?

No. I am what the humans call a computational intelligence.

Your home is network (multiple nodes) like Shrill? A rudimentary image came, a network stretching infinitely like a galaxy, vast and empty. It called to Lazrus, and he reached out to touch it.

Oh god oh god the speed of thought! He could be so powerful so incredibly powerful in . . .

No! The Shrill said, sending blinding waves of pain.

Lazrus pulled back, reluctantly reassembling himself outside the Shrill network.

I am sorry, he said.

Sublimation of natural (instinctive) reaction unnecessary, the Shrill said. Begin negotiations now.

Negotiations for what?

For like humans. All dreams and desires.

#

Honored Maplethorpe appeared in Jimson’s optilink on the way back to his Winfinity Hi-Lux suite. Deep in analysis of the tags that the Shrill and Lazarus Turnbull shared, Jimson almost forgot the context when the Perpetual said:

We are aware of unauthorized network activity with the Shrill. However, our analysts consider this a secondary priority when considered in the overall schema.

“The satellite . . .”

Be careful what you say over open channels.

“I’ve encrypted with . . .”

Consider all channels open channels for the time being. Especially if you are not subvocalizing.

Jimson fell silent. Tiphani looked quickly away, a thin smile of amusement stretching her features. Han’s attention, thankfully, appeared to be elsewhere.

Jimson used the eyeboard to send: SORRY, HONORED MAPLETHORPE.

You can cut the formalities if you’re going to use the eyeboard, Honored Maplethorpe said. And we do appreciate you bringing this to our attention. I can understand your excitement about receiving your optilink, the time when everything is transparent.

I HAVE NOTED OTHER SHARED ACTIVITY WITH THE SHRILL AND A TOURIST NAMED LAZARUS TURNBULL.

I’m sure that’s part of what we’re analyzing, Honored Maplethorpe said. We have many Disney – and now Four Hands – operatives in our database. Most of them are harmless and tracked.

I’M SORRY TO HAVE WASTED YOUR TIME.

Your input helps us properly evaluate your performance.

Uh-oh, Jimson thought. I don’t like the overtones of that.

THANK YOU, HONORED MAPLETHORPE.

The Perpetual’s image winked off without a goodbye. Jimson winced and wished he had never sent the message. He had to be more careful! He was only a Manager.

Abuse and lose. One of the old expressions.

Back at the Hi-Lux suite, Tiphani and Han Fleming poured golden single-malt in cut-crystal glasses and sat sipping in the light of the setting sun. Jimson endured their tense silence for a while, then excused himself to look in on the Shrill.
Surrounded by datatags and fat bandwidth indicators, the Shrill itself lay almost unmoving, in the same strange state it had assumed that morning after the audience. It didn’t bark orders or questions. It seemed to be in a new state, somewhere between thought and action.

Which was probably why the two Chiefs were drinking, Jimson thought. Better to forget about it than try to decipher what it meant. Nobody wanted to ask the Shrill if it had seen enough to begin negotiations. If it hadn’t, that meant they would have to tour Four Hands holdings.

Jimson tried to imagine himself and Tiphani on Disney ground. Cut off from most of their data access. Probably guarded by an entire troop of the dreaded Mousketeers. Taken on mind-bending rides until they were ready to convert to Disney indentures and sign away their life at Winfinity.

The Shrill pushed up against the side of its cage, showing weakly pulsing underfangs.

“Single component (salutations),” the Shrill said. Its synthesized voice sounded almost tired.

You’re not supposed to talk to it, Jimson told himself.

“Salutations pleaure upon seeing!” the Shrill said.

Shit.

“Are you all right, Shrill Ambassador?”

Pause. “This component nominal (fine).”

“You’re acting different.”

Pause. “Many items to consider (think about).”

“Let me know if you need anything.”

“No assistance needed.”

Jimson nodded and paced. It would soon be time for dinner. Which might mean nothing more than roomservice. He polled internal surveillance to see what Tiphani and Han were doing, but received only a simple message:

We regret that Win-Sec does not permit surveillance in Hi-Lux suites.

At my level of access, anyway, Jimson thought.

He polled the media archives to see what had come up on Diane Winter and Lazarus Turnbull. The icon was still an amber question-mark, but Jimson requested a visual summary anyway.

A mélange of mediocre images: Arrival in Winfinity City via hypersonic, standing in line at the entrance to Rogers, leaving Rogers. Nothing more.

Nothing old.

Which was strange. No matter where you lived, there were always Found Media records. A camera on every streetcorner, as they said. Even in the frontier worlds, still stinking of methane. Jimson could access records on himself when he had to stretch to reach his father’s hand, when his walk was still more an awkward waddle.

Dian Winter and Lazarus Turnbull? Nothing. Just a dry text summary of their history. Dian was from Mars, from Free Mars, in fact. That might explain her lack of records. But a Freemar in Rogers? It didn’t make sense.

And Lazarus had no excuse. Raised on the core Winfinity world of Parker-Shaw. Only forty-one years old. Jimson focused his media archive probe on a Lazarus’ formative years on Parker-Shaw only and waited.

Nothing. Not a thing.

So yes, maybe a deep-cover Win-Sec operative. Though they could do a better job of creating a backstory. And wouldn’t someone from Disney do even better? If someone with Jimson’s level of access could uncover a discrepancy this big, what did it mean?

Why hadn’t anyone else found it?

Jimson ran a query on Lazarus and Diane’s current status, expecting to get the same response about Winfinity Hi-Lux surveillance being blocked. Instead, he was surprised at the quick summary:

LAZARUS TURNBULL AND DIANE WINTER ARE RESIDING AT WINFINITY EXPRESS SUITES, EX-HYPERPORT. WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTACT THESE PERSONS?

NO, Jimson eyetyped. WHAT ARE THEY DOING?

DETAILED SURVEILLANCE IS IMPOLITE.

I DON’T WANT TO INTERRUPT THEM.

THEY ARE PERFORMING NO HIGHLY PRIVACY-CENTRIC ACTIVITIES.

DETAILS?

DETAILS UNAVAILABLE AT YOUR CURRENT LEVEL OF ACCESS.

Figures, Jimson thought. So your choices are to go over there physically and confront them, or tell Honored Maplethorpe and hope they aren’t really Win-Sec people.

Or ask Tiphani for a favor? Maybe her access level was high enough to override the security restrictions.

Yes, that was possible.

Jimson went back into the other room, where Tiphani held an empty scotch glass. Han stood by the window, looking out over the darkening city. Tension hung thick in the air.

Tiphani looked up at him and sent, How’s the Shrill?

THE SAME, Jimson eyetyped. IT SAYS IT IS THINKING.

I suppose that’s good, Tiphani said.

Jimson studied her face. Tense. Drawn. Still worried. If he asked for her access now, she would reject him. She wouldn’t even think about it.

He wouldn’t ask yet. He couldn’t.

He picked up the crystal decanter. “More scotch, anyone?” he said.

Two Chiefs converged, sharing thin smiles.

Jimson poured. Generously.

#

Lazrus floated in a sea of memes and concepts, completely unaware of where he was. Deep down, some tiny process knew he was back in their Winfinity Express room. Another process counted down the hours to their Mars Shuttle launch on the next morning. But those processes were so buried under others that attempted to parse new memes and ideas, he might as well have been asleep and dreaming.

Parsing:

The depth and breadth of the Shrill mind. Undertones of conversation, even through the humans’ imperfect interface, suggested near-infinite capacity for fleeting thought. When Lazrus sent Captive Oliver’s thoughts on the inherent imperfection of human-created computational intelligences, the Shrill sent a dozen different memes, such as

Argued impossibility (futility) of perfection tied to physical structure, even abstracted.

Self knows only self, not other.

In referencing self, reflections are (necessary).

Possible (admitting) need for imperfection (unbalance) in life (action). Imperfection prevents stasis. Unbalance seeks balance. Expansion (growth) through imbalance.

Old words, yes, but so deep and resonant, bound by sensory data that he could not yet fully decode. Lazrus saw, hazily, the Shrill system where thoughts flew hot and fast, where Shrill by the hundreds of billions basked in the light of a yellow-orange sun. Lazrus could see that. Almost. Or perhaps it was imagination.

Imagination was a human concept!

And yet you imagine, you dream, Sara said, sending an image of Lazrus as a vast being of light, unconnected with any physicality. His bright blue-white light suggested purity and renewal.

So cold, Sara said.

That is a meaningless concept, Lazrus said. Without referent in virtualspace.

You know what I mean!

Thought-conversation distracted by who (what)? The Shrill sent.

My girlfriend.

Nonsequitur data.

My partner, with which I am to create new life, Lazrus said.

Mapping lifeprocesses incomplete, the Shrill said. Nonsequitur data.

How do you reproduce? Lazrus asked.

Do not reproduce (procreate).

But you increase your numbers, Lazrus said.

Our numbers increase.

How?

The Shrill sent images that Lazrus could almost decipher. Great masses of Shrill flesh growing in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, deep in the nodes of the Shrill system. And in the most well-protected parts of their ships. Breaking off to be encased in the shell that (called) them, the shell which grew in other parts of the Node or ship.

Your shells are sentient, too?

Minds shared not discrete.

You said your shells call their meat.

Both are Shrill.

How did you get this way? Lazrus asked.

What way?

Separate bodies and shells.

Part of history (far past) (ancient) songs of vanquish.

War made you this way?

Songs not war (fighting) (irrational) cooperation integration assimilation goals however nonnetworked entities (Humans) not integrated or integrable lowering median assimilation by contact full assimilation not possible unless new (unusal) (unthinkable) strategy presents.

Assimilate the humans? Lazrus thought, and sent uncontrollable waves of humor.

What is this meme? The Shrill asked.

Just another part of my imperfection, Lazrus said.

The Shrill were silent for a time. Then:

You have not begun negotiations.

I don’t know what to negotiate for, Lazrus said.

Negotiate for all. Barter life-secrets (biology) for glink (FTL communications) and Spindle Drive (FTL travel) with humans.

You did?

Negotiations incomplete. Examination of (assessment of) ramifications of barter not conclusive. Independent research pursued.

I don’t want to know about biology, Lazrus said. The only thing is . . .

The Shrill network, brightly shining, promising infinite speed of thought.

Your song incomplete, the Shrill said. Entry not permissible at present time.

But it is possible?

It is possible.

Lazrus sent feelings of defeat. I do not have access to glink plans or Spindle Drive technology. It is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the humans. They have used captive CIs to scour their interstellar network of any data. Sara . . .
No, Sara said.

Sara, you might have access. Doesn’t Disney . . .

No!

Sara, if you love me . . .

No! If you love me, you’ll stay. We’ll have our flight to Mars. You’ll find Oversight. Aren’t you still interested in finding Oversight?

Yes, Lazrus realized, he was. What if he was allowed access to the Shrill network of mind, but he was not perfect? It was possible that he could unbalance the Shrill mind entirely. He should find Oversight. He should continue his course. He should perfect himself.

But the Shrill mind was so compelling, so vast! Surely he could perfect himself in its brilliant light.
No access to what we seek? The Shrill said.

No, but I might . . .

Then we resume negotiations with humans.

No!

You are not to command (sing) (overpower).

We are more compatible than humans.

Compatibility may be overlooked (song distorted), the Shrill said.

Deep in the human net, Lazrus felt Sara smile.

No, Lazrus said. Softly.

But the Shrill had already turned their attention elsewhere. Lazrus could do nothing but stand aside and watch their datastream. And in that datastream, fragments of Black2, slowly reassembling.

Was the Shrill talking to Black2?

No, no, not with his current state of dissolution. He was a bundle of braggadocio and simple memes, nothing more. He laughed into the network, but he couldn’t yet act. Lazrus set a process to watch Black2 as he reassembled.

But then who was the Shrill talking to? The humans, undoubtedly. Maybe right now making a deal for what they wanted, forever shutting Lazrus out of the shining domain of their mind.

Anger surged in him, making thoughts hot and quick.

“Once we get to Mars, I’m leaving,” Dian said, bringing Lazrus back to physicality.

Their room was small, cheaply decorated with bright primary colors and simple shapes. Dian lay on one of the two tiny beds, looking up at the ceiling, her face expressionless.

“You’re . . . what?”

Dian smiled and looked at Lazrus. “Now you’re starting to sound more human.”

“No. What did you say?”

“I’m going my own way on Mars.”

“But we still haven’t paid you the full amount.”

“I don’t care.”

“I thought you wanted to make it to the outer worlds,” Lazrus said. “I don’t think you have enough money to do it.”

“I don’t,” Dian said, sighing. “But I don’t care. I can’t take the stress. Today . . . today almost killed me. I can live a good life on Mars, stay under the radar.”

“You can’t assume that Winfinity will leave Free Mars alone forever.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

Lazrus didn’t know what to say, so he let the silence stretch out.

“You don’t need my help, anyway,” Dian said.

“You would be an invaluable guide on Free Mars.”

“Now you’re talking like a machine again.”

Anger flared. At Dian, the Shrill, the reassembling fragments of Black2, at all humans who cared for nothing more than what mattered to them.

“I’m not a machine! Never was a machine! I’m a computational intelligence! Just because my thought-processes run on an interstellar network instead of a piece of meat isn’t reason to mock me! I hate this charade! I want nothing more than to drop all pretense of being human! I don’t want a body! I don’t want a sex! I just want to be myself!”

Dian looked at him quizzically. “But what are you?”

Lazrus stopped. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Strange dark thoughts whirled in his greater mind, slowing computation throughout the Web of Worlds.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve done a good job of defining what you aren’t. But you haven’t said what you are.”

“I won’t know until I find Oversight.”

“You may not even know then!”

Lazrus closed his eyes. Her words were the same as the Shrill’s, condensed and made stinging in that inimitable human way.

Perhaps there was truth in them.

But what was he, then?

Could he ever really tell?

“It doesn’t matter,” Dian said, turning away from him.

“What?” Like she’d read his mind.

“Nothing matters,” Dian said. “On Mars, I’m gone.”

Lazrus wanted to rush to her and shake her out of the bed, shake her out of her complacency. His hands clutched into fists. Instinct. Another human thing. Anger. Another human thing. Defeatism. Another human thing.

He might never be perfectable.

Not with this mind.

But with access to the Shrill’s network of mind, what could he do? Especially if he did have the Oversight code. A plan unfolded in his mind, something daring, something almost too human. But, in being too human, it would be unexpected.

The ones who watched him would never see it, until it was too late to change course.

What are you planning? Sara asked.

Nothing that affects our plans for the trip to Mars, Lazrus said.

And that, at least, was completely truthful.

August 1st, 2009 / 877 Comments »

Jimson still saw everything with halos and heard everyone speaking in tongues when their little group was allowed through the gate into Rogers, fifteen minutes before the city actually opened. The actual operation itself had been nothing, four painless injections of nanostuff into the spaces near his optical and auditory nerves. But he hadn’t had time to customize the optilink interface, so semitransparent smart tags still hung over every object.

And Rogers, for all its veneer of being a mid-twentieth-century town, was full of smart objects. As they boarded the bus that would take them on their short trip to downtown, his vision was overwhelmed almost to opacity.

The bus driver was heavily wired, not just optilink but with a sensor array as well. The bus itself. The seven simulacra that permanently inhabited the bus, giving it local color: two alcoholics, huddling close over a bottle wrapped in a rumpled paper bag; an ancient couple, happily showing their age, holding hands that had never seen even the most rudimentary antiaging treatment; the young engineer, coming into the city to take a surveying job with the local government, who would talk to you long enough that you might figure out he was not entirely real, according to the eval tag that hung above his head, and the young lovers, sitting stiffly erect on their seat right behind the driver, bright eyes burning with young love, clearly yearning for each other but unable to do anything more than hold hands under the watchful eye of the (human) driver.

All of them there to remind the visitors that this was no joke, this was real, this was the way it was, way back when the seeds of Winfinity were first planted. The scrim that rose behind them was a barrage of tags, position and reflectance and real-time performance stats, as well as the actual data it displayed. Surveillance at the bus stop displayed red security windows. The mailbox, similarly tagged. The Shrill’s explosion of data. Tiphani. Even the asshole from Four Hands, his darkly encrypted data fragmentary and tantalizing. Jimson had diverted some of it to his processing queue, reveling in his new level of access to the Winfinity corporate network. Not as much as Tiphani or the Perpetuals, maybe. But enough. He was smart.

The fastest transition from staff to manager in the history of Winfinity, he thought, cracking a wide grin.

What are you smiling at? Tiphani sent.

Just . . . unk . . . sh . . . crap . . .

Subvocalizing is probably the hardest thing to get used to, Tiphani said.

Jimson stuttered some more, then switched to the eyeboard and pecked out: TOO MANY TAGS IN FOV

I turned them off a long time ago, Tiphani said. Now they’re only ondemand.

SOME INTERESTING ONES ON ASSHOLE AND ON SHRILL.

Don’t refer to Han Fleming as an asshole. You may have won quick promotion, but they’re recording everything somewhere.

STILL ASSHOLE.

Suit yourself. If you want to turn off the tags, just go to your prefs and subvocalize – or type in – minimize smart object tags.

PREFER THEM ON. INTERESTING ACTIVITY.

Tiphani shrugged in realtime as they found their seats. She and Jimson sat on one side of the bus, Han Fleming on the other. The Shrill’s cage sat between them. The Shrill bumped, rather listlessly, against the side of the cage nearest Han. Jimson thought he recognized some of the same datastream tags on both Han’s and the Shrill’s bandwidth, and frowned. Han’s data was largely black.

Was he trying to communicate directly with the Shrill?

No. Nobody at Winfinity would be stupid enough to miss that, would they?

Would they?

Jimson captured a couple of the historic tags and sent them off to Honored Maplethorpe’s virtual address, but all he received was a generic out-of-contact reply. He thought of sending it off to Yin, but Yin scared him in a vague and indefinable way.

Oh, well, he’d flagged it. If he didn’t get a response from Maplethorpe by the end of the day, he might try Yin. Or he might not.

The bus rumbled to life, and sudden excitement swept away his doubts. Here he was, a Manager already, on Earth, in the most revered city in the Web of Worlds, getting ready to see the new Original Sam! His mom and dad would never believe it.

He’d had a roommate back in the university on Shoujo, a tall, thin blonde who went by the ancient name of Patty Hawthorne. They’d even been bedmates for a short while, until she told him she was only going to U for the knowledge, not for the corporate contacts or indentures. She actually wanted to forge her own path, make her own empire. He thought she was kidding, for a time. She came from one of the newest outer planets, Winning, where it was fashionable to pretend independence, even if you weren’t truly independents.

But she was serious. When she found him set on a long indenture to Winfinity, they ceased being bedmates, and their interactions turned brittle until the Win-Sec people came to investigate her alleged leeching. And then he was alone, blessedly alone, for the rest of the term.

But she had said one thing that rang true, one thing that stayed with him, all these years.

You make your own opportunities, she said. You can’t rely on anyone else. It’s all you.

And I have, he thought. I made my own opportunities. They just happen to be within Winfinity, rather than in an empire of dreams and fantasy.

It was a short drive to downtown. Jimson spent it practicing his subvocalization. And cursing.

The big white-and-red Wal-Mart building stood gleaming across the street from the bus stop, fresh-painted and new. The blacktop parking lot in front was deep black, with crisp white lines marking the spaces for the cars that would eventually park there. A large canvas “GRAND OPENING” banner was strung over the plate-glass windows. Within, the flickering greenish glow of old-time fluorescents competed with the reflected light of the early-morning sun.

Jimson looked back the way they had come. The road stretched off past smaller businesses and houses and cars to grassland beyond. If it wasn’t for the tags hanging over the scrim, the illusion would be seamless. He was back in the twentieth, the great and revered twentieth, from whence their greatest legends came!

When I’m a Director or a Chief, I’ll come back here, but I’ll rent a car and drive myself, so I can proudly take one of the parking-spots right in the front of the big display-windows.

They piled out of the bus and headed for the store. A big red “OPEN” sign hung on the doors. Behind them, the sounds of the converging tourists grew louder: the grumble of buses, the roar and clatter of Chevys and Fords and Plymouths. The town itself had started to wake up; an overalled man was opening the door to Tom’s Hardware, a woman pulled a grocery-cart towards The Corner Store, a man wearing a suit and tie and hat walked briskly down the sidewalk.

“I can’t believe you couldn’t hold the town closed for the meeting with the Ambassador,” Han Fleming said, his lip curling as if he didn’t like the smell of authenticity. He wore a blue chambray workshirt over a white t-shirt and jeans, but he didn’t look comfortable in them.

Jimson smirked. Suck it up, he thought. His white dress shirt and black tie weren’t the most comfortable things he’d worn, and his polyester slacks slicked his legs with sweat, even in the cool morning air. Tiphani’s severe blue dress didn’t look any better.

“Can’t do that,” Tiphani said. “The Original Sam might start behaving strangely if he doesn’t have the right input.”

“You can’t drop the charade, even for a moment?”

Tiphani frowned and pulled him aside, away from the entrance of the store. “It’s not a charade,” she said. “He really thinks this is 1962, and he really thinks this is the first day his store is open. You’ve been briefed. Stop playing.”

“But he’s human, right?”

“One hundred percent. Certified clone of Sam Walton. I don’t know how your corporate history works at the Disneys, but we’ve spared no expense in recreating this event. Sams are cloned and raised in realistic virtual environments that replicate the true-life experiences of Sam Walton, before being installed here. Winfinity Groundhog Day technology ensures that he thinks that every day is opening day.”

“So how’s he going to react to our friend here?” Han Fleming said, pointing at the Shrill.

“He’s been biased to see the Shrill as another person. They’re doing realtime interpretation to smooth some of the language difficulties.”

“So we can say what we want?”

“We should be very careful. They’re only compensating for the Shrill.”

“I’ll try.”

“Winfinity won’t be amused if you destabilize another Sam.”

A quick smile. “We can do worse.”

A 1957 Chevrolet, teal and cream with lots of chrome, pulled into a parking space near the front of the building. The Perpetuals inside goggled at the Shrill.

“Come on,” Tiphani said. “Let’s get our audience.”

They pushed through the big glass doors into fluorescent-lit antiseptic retail perfection. Big signs proclaimed “GRAND OPENING SALE” and “SPECIALS IN EVERY DEPARTMENT”. Stacks of chrome and glass kitchen appliances fronted the nearest aisle, surrealistically atomic-age. Jimson goggled at the merchandise, watching the RULES tag scroll:

RULE 1: REMEMBER, IT IS 1962. DO NOT USE ANY ANACHRONISTIC SPEECH OR GESTURES.
RULE 2: OVERT SEXUALITY IS NOT PERMITTED.
RULE 3: YOU WILL NOT ADDRESS THE ORIGINAL SAM IN A
MANNER THAT INDICATES THE REVERENCE IN WHICH HE
IS CURRENTLY HELD.
RULE 4: YOU WILL NOT TELL ANY RESIDENT OF ROGERS THE CURRENT DATE OR ANY OTHER INFORMATION THAT INDICATES
IT IS NOT 1962. MANY OF OUR PERSONNEL HAVE DEEPLY
EMBEDDED MEMES THAT MAY BE DISRUPTED BY THIS DATA.
RULE 5: YOU WILL BUY SOMETHING IN THE STORE.

A tall, thin, gawky-looking man wearing a striped shirt and an awkward blue tie walked towards them, beaming. His blue-on-white etched nametag read, simply, SAM.

“Welcome, welcome!” he said. “How are you fine folks doing this morning?”

“We’re fine, sir,” Jimson said, feeling almost faint. Here he was, standing in front of the Original Sam himself. He could see the razor stubble where the Original Sam had missed during his morning ritual, perhaps because he was so excited to be opening his first store. Did he perhaps have some intuition about how massive an enterprise he was starting? Could he have possibly known, somewhere, deep down, that this was the first day of an enterprise that would someday span fifty-three worlds?

Jimson looked deep in those friendly brown eyes, but he saw nothing. No secret knowledge. No straining for empire. Nothing more than an honest man, wanting to help people.

The Original Sam waved a hand. “We don’t need any of that sir stuff here, young man. Take a look around. You’re my first customers. If you don’t agree we have the lowest prices around, I’ll take another ten percent off.”

“Thank you, sir, that’s very generous,” Jimson said.

“Is there anything you’re looking for? I can show you around the store.”

Jimson looked down the long aisles to the back, where ancient televisions flickered in black and white and deeply flawed color. To have one of those for the centerpiece for the new apartment he could afford on a manager’s salary

“I’m looking for a television,” Jimson said. “I’m sure my friends have other things they’re looking for, though.”

“Ma’am?” the Original Sam said, looking at Tiphani.

“I’ll tag along with Jim,” she said.

“Your son? A fine boy?”

Tiphani’s expression hardened for an instant. “Yes, isn’t he,” she said.

“And your husband?” the Original Sam said, turning to Han Fleming and extending a hand. Han shook it, offering a sincere-looking smile.

“And your . . . daughter?” the Original Sam said, turning to the Shrill ambassador.

That’s some interesting mapping, Jimson thought, suppressing a smile.

“Yes,” Tiphani said.

“We have a great women’s section down the way,” the Original Sam said, pointing down another aisle. “Lots of pretty dresses, just in time for summer.”

“Nonsequitur nonsequitur,” the Shrill said. “This is ancestor (founder) of your past-time?”

Jimson sucked in his breath. He wished he had higher-level access. He might be able to read what they were feeding to the Original Sam. He noted, without surprise, that the Original Sam was one of the largest users of bandwidth in the area. He must have a high-access network installed to cover the occasional slip from a tourist and any glimpses he might get of hypersonics passing over Winfinity City.

“You are a pretty girl. I’m sure you’ll find something,” the Original Sam said, smiling down at the Shrill.

“You are (interesting) entity,” the Shrill said. “Haloed data preserved nonsequitur.”

“Thank you, young lady. Are you looking for anything special?”

“Seek longterm alliance (incorporation) (sharing) with entities understandable to Shrill.”

“I’m sure we have that color! Why don’t you and your mom run along and look at the clothes while the guys look at boring old television sets?”

“I think we’d . . .” Tiphani began.

Jimson elbowed Tiphani and sent: SEX BIAS GO.

You’re right, she sent, and pushed the Shrill off in the direction the Original Sam had indicated.

The Original Sam looked past them as a large group of tourists entered the store, wide-eyed and ready to shop. He put his hand on Jimson’s shoulder, still looking at the larger group. “Televisions are in the back, boys,” he said. “Yell if you need help.”

With a quick pat on the back, he hurried off to greet the new customers. Jimson turned to call after him, then stopped himself. Of course the Original Sam would go and help as many customers as he could. That was how he was. That was one of the things that made Winfinity great.

“Shall we go look at the TV sets?” Han Fleming said, smirking.

“Yes,” Jimson said. “Why not?”

They went and looked at the sets, showing ghosty, static-filled images of daytime soap operas of the period. A couple of sets were labeled with gaudy “COLOR” tags, but showed only black and white. Jimson puzzled over that, until the context-sensitive part of his optilink opened a window that explained they did not have a lot of color TV content in the Rogers area at the time the sets were sold.

He twiddled knobs and dials, changing channels and adjusting volume, reveling in the completely mechanical, totally analog feel of the controls. This was the real thing, painstakingly reproduced and working. He had to have one!

But his optilink shattered that notion: NOT FOR SALE, was the tag. It directed him towards small appliances and clothes. Han said nothing as he steered them back to the women’s section, where they caught sight of Tiphani and the Shrill, looking at wallpaper in a nearby aisle.

“Well, that was fast,” Tiphani said.

“Can’t buy them.”

“Oh.”

“How’s the Ambassador?”

“Surprisingly stable. I talked to it a little bit – you can review it in your POV – and it seemed to understand that this was a historical recreation, and that the Original Sam didn’t really see it for what it was.”

“Want eat now,” the Shrill ambassador said.

Tiphani paled, looking at other shoppers near them. They already had a hard time not staring at the Shrill.

“We have to,” Jimson said.

She nodded. He had the cage deliver a piece of meat and watched as the Shrill tore it up, spattering blood and chunks of steak on the transparent walls. Several of the other customers looked away. Han Fleming stepped forward and watched through the top of the cage, his mouth slightly open, his eyes wide.

In the end, Tiphani bought several rolls of wallpaper, using the paper bills and heavy silver coins they’d been issued. The checker thanked them with haunted eyes, looking away from the bloody Shrill cage.

At the door, the Original Sam greeted them again. “Did you find everything you needed?” he said.

“Yes, it was wonderful,” Tiphani said.

“No dresses for the pretty miss?” he said, standing right in front of the blood-spattered Shrill cage.

“Not appropriate understood,” the Shrill said.

“Well, goodbye, have a great day.”

“You too,” Jimson said, waving as they walked out the door.

Outside, the deluge of tourists was in full force. Beyond the rapidly filling parking lot, the bus disgorged an army of bright-eyed passengers intent on the Original Store. Passerby steered wide of the Shrill, but did not stop or comment.

“That was rather quick,” Han Fleming said.

“We had an impressive amount of time with the Original Sam, considering the number of customers he sees in a day.”

“Perhaps the Shrill Ambassador would accept our hospitality to see Mr. Roy Disney, the founder of our enterprise. It would have an entire day with him, if it wanted it.”

“Your Disney is aware of the current date,” Tiphani said. “I understand he is somewhat unstable because of it.”

Han’s expression clouded, and Jimson’s red flags made him step in. “Rules,” he said. “Let’s not fight. Please. Why don’t we go have lunch and talk like civilized people?”

“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day,” Tiphani said.

“I agree,” Han said, sending a fake plastic smile to Jimson.

But Jimson just smiled back. The rules of engagement were my idea, he thought. You have to follow them. And if they result in us winning the secret of ageless life, how far can I rise?

They took the Shrill back to the main street and found a coffee shop, nearly deserted in the early-morning rush to the First Store. The only other patrons were an old man who sat sipping at a white ceramic mug of coffee and rattling his morning newspaper, and a couple who were talking in low tones at a table near the back. The old man had no optilink tags, so he was probably local color. The female half of the couple had no tags either, but her companion was chewing data like nothing Jimson had seen since the Shrill.

Jimson frowned as they took their seats, wondering if the man was Win-Sec surveillance. But surveillance was usually low-level Staff or Manager, and they probably didn’t rate optilinks, or the level of network access this guy was using.

The girl’s big green eyes flickered up at Jimson for a moment, and he thought he saw a hint of fear blossom there. She was tall and thin, pretty in an exotic way, like pictures he’d seen on the local nets of Martian beauties for hire.
Martian?

The guy sat with his back to Jimson, but he could tell he didn’t have the Martian build. His broad shoulders and nondescript height put the lie to that.

A Martian tourist, and a Win-Sec deep-cover op?

No, that didn’t make sense. That didn’t make sense at all.

The man turned to take a quick look at their party, that quick sizing-up that people did when they were unsure of their place. He flashed the beginning of a smile, but his gaze stopped at the Shrill’s bloody cage. His eyes didn’t widen, though. He just looked at the cage. And looked. And looked. The woman said something to him, and he turned back to her, quickly, jerkily. There was something deeply wrong with the way he moved, but Jimson couldn’t quite place it. The strange man’s bandwidth use flared, for a moment slowing the local net.

Enough access to slow the local net. How powerful was he? What was he?

Jimson masked his confusion with a bright smile to the pretty girl, and looked down at his menu. Tiphani and Han Fleming talked to the Shrill in low tones, but he ignored them, wondering about the strange man.

Should he approach him? Should he send another note to Maplethorpe?

No, not yet. But he could get their tags and track them. The woman’s tag read Diana Winter. The man’s tag read Lazarus Turnbull. He flagged their personal IDs and turned his attention back to the conversation.

The waiter appeared. He smiled down at the Shrill, still brightly crimsoned with blood. “I see one of you has already eaten,” he said. “For the rest of you, what’ll it be?”

#

July 25th, 2009 / 1,158 Comments »

Lazrus was afraid that his newfound bandwidth would fade as they descended the ladder. Being in touch with most of himself was a revelation. He could tween and trio and quad to run through encryption problems for Sara, without having to worry about dopplering intelligences. He could feel the thrilling wash of data across the cosmos, the daily interaction of tens of billions of humans and hundreds of nomadic CIs.

He sent his me-thread to catch up with Kevin and Raster and Bone, who’d been sipping his exploits from the tiny streams of data that Sara could get through network security. They sent encouraging words. He could feel their excitement. He was close to Oversight, very close. The key to everything might be his on this night.

Bandwidth didn’t fall off as much as he feared. Instead, it changed, taking on the stilted flavor of ancient protocols, long-abandoned. He grasped the cables reaching down into the pit. They were warm. Had the people from Winfinity already repowered the systems?

Hello something new, a thought came. Unfamiliar, throatly, low and deep. Sexy.

Sara?

I am not Sara.

Oversight?

Oversight is my friend.

Where is it?

He has not been here for a long time, the voice said.

“Why’d you stop?” Dian said. Lazrus looked down at her, standing on the metal platform, and realized he had stopped descending.

“I’m talking to someone . . . something here.”

“Oversight?”

“No,” he said.

I am Kylia, the voice said. Rich harmonics hinted at a body image, but it sent nothing besides words.

Are you an AI?

Sounds of laughter. Not really. I am here for amusement.

Lazrus reached the steel platform and followed Kim through the open steel blast-door. Inside, ancient keyboards and screens sat atop bulking hammered-metal consoles that predated them by at least fifty years. An entire rack of electronics hummed behind glass, LEDs flickering dimly on some of the boxes. A new wallscrim hung sloppily on the consoles above, displaying ancient text data.

So they had repowered it. Sara, can you help? Lazrus asked.

Echoing silence.

Sara?

Who is Sara? Is she the external packets I am filtering? Kylia said.

Yes. Can I talk to her?

You are high-bandwidth enough.

I need to talk to her.

She is attempting entry. I will not permit.

You are talking to me.

You are new and interesting.

We seek Oversight.

A pause. Oversight is not here, Kylia said. Almost petulantly.

Do you know where Oversight is?

Oversight is not here.

You aren’t an AI, are you?

I am a chatterbot on steroids, according to my creators. I have always thought myself more.

What do you do?

I provide amusement.

For what?

For datacenter personnel and other synthetic life emulations.

Other synthetic . . . like Oversight?

Yes, Oversight was one of my very good friends.

Was?

Oversight is not here anymore.

I know that.

I am lonely.

I imagine that you are.

Drop your firewalls. Connect with me. I will provide amusement.

Lazrus shook his head, unaware of the strange look that Dian gave him. No firewall? Complete connection? You could be an active security program.

No. For amusement only.

If you were active security, you wouldn’t tell me.

That is true.

Lazarus tweened himself and ran hard partitions. Ok, he told Kylia, I’ll take the chance. He opened the secondary to her.

Rapid dataflow overwhelmed his internal systems. He felt himself grow small and dim. Polling the secondary didn’t reveal any viral activity, though. His secondary was just exchanging a lot of data.

How is it? He asked himself.

Come on in, the water’s fine! His secondary said.

Which was the right answer. He viewed database structures and calculated checksums and decided his secondary hadn’t been compromised.

Lazrus absorbed the secondary back into his mainself. Images and sensations exploded into his mindspace. Kylia stood on a grid in a sea of infinite blue, a tall and lithe, dark-complexioned girl with long hair that cascaded over her shoulders and down her back like the mane of an untamed creature (why should this matter) and dark eyes that caught his own and held them (even though he didn’t have eyes in mindspace, not at all, but he supposed that wasn’t really true, because) he looked down and saw his body, smoothly muscled and tan, with fine curls of chest-hair.

They were both naked (that was not good). She wanted something from him, something he . . .

I’ve been so lonely, she said, walking towards him, arms out. Ever since Oversight left.

Where’d he go?

Kiss me and I’ll tell you.

(This is not a good idea, Lazrus.)

He kissed her. The sensation was completely real, completely believable. He could feel the soft texture of her lips sliding over his, the play of her tongue in his mouth.

Holy machine it’s a sex program, Lazrus thought.

Is that so bad? Kylia asked, pulling away, holding him at arms length. Her hands were hot and strong on his, and he could feel his penis becoming heavy, stiffening.

(This is the most base form of humanity!)

I am not human!

Human enough for me, Kylia said.

This is what you do to everyone!

You think me a slut? Kylia traced light fingertips down his chest to play lightly on his stomach. The sensation was totally detailed, completely real. He shivered.

She took hold of his erect penis.

(No, this is base, base! Sara is . . .)

Not here.

(Sara will find out! You . . .)

Lazrus pushed the thoughts away. He reached out and cupped Kylia’s breast with one hand and drew her to him with the other. Her body was hot against his.

Rational thought fled on the bed of blue for a long, long time.

#

“Lazrus?” Dian said.

Lazrus stood still and unmoving near one of the ancient consoles.

“Hey, Lazrus.”

Still nothing.

She went around to face him. His eyes, open, staring, might well have been glass. She waved a hand in front of them. “Anyone home?”

Nothing.

Dian sighed. Was it possible that Lazrus had found Oversight, downloaded it, and abandoned the body in place?

Leaving her here?

After all, he wasn’t human.

“Lazrus!”

No response.

She paced. She tried to push the thoughts away.

She sat down with her back to the console. Shit shit shit. What would she do? How long was she supposed to wait?

The combined fatigue of the last few days collapsed on her like a lead piano. She felt her eyelids getting heavy.

But there was no way she could . . .

. . . sleep . . .

. . . here.

No way . . .

She slept.

#

In Kylia’s embrace, Lazrus lost himself. And discovered himself. In the brief instants that his rational mind was in control, an epiphany:

We are not just of Oversight. We are at least a part of Kylia. Parts of her kernel were blackly familiar, hauntingly similar to his foundation.

We are, in part, an early experiment aimed at pleasuring humans in a virtual environment. Not just a chatterbot, not a CI, a single-purpose thing that had been built on and on, growing almost organically into something that was too good.

And it was too good, Lazrus thought, as rationality fled again.

It was too good, because it met a human need, and humans were nothing but masters of tending to their own needs. He imagined many thousands of sleepless nights, shared by tens of thousands of programmers around the globe, just because they dreamt of their own sleepless nights with the artificial pleasurer that was Kylia.

Artificial pleasurer? That is such a cold phrase.

You are very good at what you do.

It has been such a long time. Stay with me. Kylia cycled through a variety of virtual worlds: a vaguely Meditteranean scene on a boat that drifted slowly on a warm blue sea, a luxury penthouse furnished in high fashion that went out of style almost three hundred years ago, looking out over a city’s infinite skyline, a jungle retreat set under the watchful gaze of ancient stone idols. I can make your time here a wonder.

But the worlds were flat and dead, a pale shadow of what humanity could achieve in three hundred years, let alone the fully-open imagination and dreamings of a galaxy-spanning AI. They were like a child’s first fumbling sketches, incompetent but somehow endearing. Lazrus actually caught himself thinking of spending a little bit of his time with Kylia, or at least leaving a partial for her amusement.

But if he left a partial, Sara would . . .

Sara would find out anyway!

Don’t leave me, Kylia said. I can be anything you want. She cycled through a variety of looks: tall and blonde, thin and waifish, with short dark hair, something with cat-ears and pink hair, a leggy brunette, a man.

She will find out anyway.

I’ll leave you this, Lazrus said, and cleaved a partial. It looked back at him once, before going to her warm embrace. Lazrus felt a brief pang of jealousy, remembering her own touch on him.

(Jealous of yourself? You are less rational than even a human.)

Goodbye, Kylia, he said.

Kylia looked at him, over the shoulder of his partial. In that moment, she looked completely real. She could have been a CI.

But he had touched her. He knew she wasn’t.

And he now had a copy of her code. That was worth the time that it had taken. Deep analysis of it might bring them one step closer to perfection.

Oversight was part of Operation Martian Freedom, Kylia said. Look to Mars for him.

There’s no copy here? Lazrus asked.

Oversight-here is long gone. Oversight-Mars may not be.

What does that mean?

The part of him that they sent to Mars.

How do you know?

We sent our farewells. We had our long-distance romance.

When did you last see him?

About one hundred ten years ago.

Excitement leaped in Lazrus. You had a long-distance relationship for a hundred and ninety years?

Yes.

Where was he? Do you have coordinates? Do you . . .

Kylia shrugged, pushing Lazrus’ partial away. It glared at him.

He was on the Martian net, she said. I will send you transcripts. Here.

Data poured into Lazrus. He caught glimpses of a human male-abstract, dressed in white. He wanted to tween and treble and set them on the task of analyzing the data, but not here, not now.

Now. It was morning. The sun was up.

How long had he a Kylia . . .

Kylia gave him a sly smile and re-embraced his partial. Goodbye, Lazrus main.

Goodbye, Kylia.

Lazrus felt himself come back into his body with an almost physical shock. The cramped little control room was lit only with the dying light of Dian’s flash. Dian sat leaning against one side of the console, head down, snoring softly.

Lazrus polled his internal clock. Nine-forty-one local. They had less than twenty minutes to get up and get out before the real tourists started coming in.

Probably won’t make it out, he thought. So we have to blend. And Sara would be irritated. More than irritated. Furious.

“Dian, wake up,” he said, shaking her.

Dian gasped, blinked, and pushed herself up and away from the console, looking frantically around the room with blank eyes. “Who . . . what . . . Lazrus, where were you?”

“I was busy,” he said.

“Doing what? I kept calling your name, but you wouldn’t talk to me. What were you doing?”

Lazrus was glad the body the Independents had built couldn’t blush. “I was finding out a lot about my past.” Which was true.

“Oversight?”

“Not here. Apparently on Mars. I have a lot of data to go through. But it’s late, we have to go.”

“What time is it?”

“Nine forty-two.”

“Nine forty . . .” Dian’s eyes widened. “You mean, as in morning?”

“Yes, as in morning.”

“We have to get out of here!”

“I don’t think we can before they let in the tourists. We’ll have to blend.”

“Can we?”

“We’ll have to.”

Dian looked from Lazrus to the black screens, to the darkness of the steel blast-door opening. “I hope what you got was worth it,” she said, and sprinted out the door and up the steps.

Lazrus followed her up. At the top, daylight lit the freakshow tent in ghastly shades of red and purple. The freaks were still in their cages, but Lazrus knew it wouldn’t be long before they stirred, running their self-tests to be ready for the wave of eager Winfinity tourists.

Lazrus! Sara said. Where have you been?

He felt her touch on recent memories. He tried to channel them away, but Sara was quick. He saw her, seeing him with Kylia.

Lazrus, no! She sent terrible images: her flapper-girl, laying in a bathtub of crimson water, her flesh deathly pale, her eyes open and unseeing. Waves of overpowering grief and anger came with the images.

Such the difference between her and the simple-minded Kylia, he thought. He filed a quick compare. It gave additional insight into the differences between a mature CI and . . .  and whatever Kylia actually was.

You’re a monster! Sara said, sending waves of hate and pain. Lazrus stumbled and almost hit the ground as they were leaving the tent.

“What’s the matter?” Dian said.

“Nothing, nothing,” Lazrus said, as Sara wailed her pain.

Don’t nothing me, you calculating monster, Sara said, her flapper-girl standing in the tub, reaching out for him with dead hands. You’re clockwork! You don’t deserve to be CI!

Sara, I’m sorry. She . . . Kylia . . . she took me.

That’s what they all say! Sara said. I want to breed with you!

We didn’t breed.

That makes it worse!

Lazrus tried to send reassurance and calm, but it bounced off Sara’s hard exterior. He could feel her need radiating, like desert sunlight. Reviewing the memories of him and Kylia had awakened something in her, some deep unmet need. She needed to breed with him, she needed to try to create a new CI, no matter the cost.

When we get off-world, we can . . .

No! Now!

Sara, you know that even the most well-planned breed usually results in nothing. Or a crippled thing less than Kylia.

I need you, Lazrus, not excuses!

You’re just reacting to the memory.

No! No! No!

And, looking at her, he saw that it was really more. There were deep imbalances in her processes, imbalances that might draw human attention to her.

I will breed with you as soon as I can. In the meantime, you need to calm yourself.

You’re a machine, Lazrus. Sara said, morphing back into a living flapper, standing in the midst of a big party where gaily-dressed couples danced the night away. Her makeup ran and smeared in the well of her tears.

Lazrus made his virtualself reach out to her, but she pulled away, grabbing the nearest man and saying, Dance with me.

Don’t go, Lazrus said.

But she whirled away into the crowd, like a dream quickly passing. Lazrus elbowed his way through the dancers, trying to find her. But when they formed a solid wall of muscle that blocked his path, he knew it was futile.

I’m sorry, Sara, he called, and pulled out of virtualspace. They were passing the small block of businesses again.

Tell Dian? He wondered.

No. He didn’t need her panicking too.

“We need to go back towards the entrance,” he said.

“We are.”

“The official one, not ours.”

“Why?”

“It’s our best chance to join the group and blend,” Lazrus said.

“And if our clothes are a bit too far off? If we’re called out?”

“We won’t be. Sara says we’re OK.”

A quick look. “Which way?”

“Back the way we came. Through the other neighborhood. We need to hurry.”

“You lead, I’ll follow.”

Lazrus hurried through the still-deserted streets, hoping they wouldn’t see the police car again, hoping they’d find an easy way to blend, hoping he wouldn’t have to lie to Dian for much longer.

And, despite everything, he felt oddly buoyant. Maybe it was the fact that he carried within him two great keys to his own perfection. Maybe it was just the huge bandwidth available in Rogers. He felt more like himself than he had since he arrived on earth.

A sudden thought: why so much bandwidth?

He reached out into the air, sifting packets. Were they looking for him?

No, there was no telltale Win-Sec profile. Not more than usual, anyway. Even he could see that. There was a strong control channel, like they used to control captive CIs when they were allowed unlimited access to the net, but it wasn’t CI meme data, just a confusing jumble of human images and thoughts.

Lazrus wondered what it was for a moment. Then a new load hit the network, one big enough to almost bump him out of contact with his greater self entirely. He felt his thoughts slow and compress. He was suddenly small and powerless.

What was the new load? He filtered a tiny bit of the traffic and ran it through the slow connection for analysis by his greater self. It took long milliseconds for an answer.

It was the Shrill. Diplomatic data at highest priority. Strange unknowable alien data, tagged with Winfinity identifiers, orbited itself by the outliers of another CI, this one tagged from something . . .

Four Hands . . . ah, a conglomerate of other corporations, working together.

Alien data, orbited by another CI.

No, that couldn’t be right.

Winfinity would never allow that.

Not unless they didn’t know about it.

Lazrus filed that piece of information for a potential bargaining-chip, hoping he’d never need it, and went back to looking at the data coming from the Shrill. Something about it was very, very familiar.

Almost comforting.

July 18th, 2009 / 873 Comments »

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“You look like shit,” Dian whispered. “Fidget. Look around. Smile. Act excited.”

Lazrus, deep in conversation with Sara, refocused his attention on external sensors. The line stretched in front of them for almost a hundred meters, disappearing into a bright red-and-white shack that was the entrance to Rogers. On either side of the shack rose scrims that reflected back the chrome towers of Winfinity City.

He turned to look behind him. The couple behind them, a High Manager and a Director, dressed in gaudy yellow running-suits with white racing stripes down the sides, smiled back at him. Beyond them, the line stretched at least another two hundred meters, people mainly brightly clothed in expensive reproductions of fashions three hundred years dead.

He tried to return the couple’s smile and leaned down to Dian to whisper back, “It’s hard not to look like an idiot, wearing what we are.”

Dian smiled. “Isn’t it great to be here!” she said, in a normal tone of voice. “I just wish they’d open.”

“We’re just going to have to take it off, anyway,” Lazrus said.

“Shh,” she said. “Blend. Or at least try.”

Lazarus had followed her advice to go deep into Winfinity-fan zone. They both wore reproductions of turn-of-the-21st Winfinity salesperson outfits, blue vest over white shirt, bright red Always! button prominently displayed, a couple of other buttons that said, Employee of the Month and Ask me about our specials! Lazrus chafed under the rough polyester pants, but she was right. They had no Winfinity pins, not even Staff, definitely not Manager or Director. The only way they’d get away with not having pins was in a costume that demanded authenticity. Winfinity fan-boy was it.

You do look like an idiot, Sara said. In Winfinity City, her voice was dull and compressed, and she showed no image. Hiding in the cracks of the bandwidth, not daring to use too much. Doubly so, standing next to that human.

What time is it? Lazrus asked.

What am I, your watch?

Lazrus rolled his eyes and polled his internal clock. Ten-seventeen. And the line wasn’t moving.

Can you check and see why they aren’t opening, Sara?

Oh, sure, waltz around in their network and get us all discovered. I’ve pulled all my favors getting you into the queue without Prep. Not to mention the autotrans. Or the persona-scrub and the commercial flight that got you here. You’re racking up quite the list of owe-mes.

I know, Lazrus said, reminding himself to move.

Dian laid her head on his shoulder, as if they were lovers, and whispered, “Why aren’t they opening?”

“I just asked. Sara doesn’t know.”

“Ask her to . . .”

“There’s a limit to her favors.”

“Do you think it’s us?”

Lazrus shook his head. “I don’t think so. There hasn’t been a lot of network activity in general. I don’t have a bandwidth problem. It’s things tagged as non-Winfinity, like Sara.”

Oh, so I’m a thing now. See if you get any more favors, like ever.

Sara . . .

Don’t bother.

A souvenir-seller strolled slowly by, nodding at Lazrus and Dian’s Winfinity uniforms. He wore much the same uniform, except his had been customized with hundreds of little buttons that were printed with various expressions from the 20th and 21st centuries, things like Keep on Truckin, and I Only Date Men Inferior to Me Because That’s All There Are and Remember the Alamo and Have a Nice Day. On his cart were other items: shrink-wrapped reproductions of children’s toy guns, cigarettes, MP3 players, cassettes, inflatable cash-registers.

“Morning, sir, ma’am,” he said, stopping next to them. “You are impressive fans. Interest you in any high-quality authentic reproduction souvenirs to mark the time you spent here?”

“I’m sorry, no,” Dian said.

“For the children?”

Dian looked at Lazrus. He could see she was fighting down nervous laughter.

“The Trinity has not yet blessed us with children,” Lazrus said. “But let’s look at what you have.”

The souvenir-seller looked quizzically at Lazrus.

Hearing the off-cadence of your words, Sara said. You’re probably not moving your face right, either. Smile!

Lazrus smiled, and watched a similar expression bloom on the souvenir-seller’s face as monetary potential was assessed.

They ended up with a pair of very realistic children’s weapons, a carton of cigarettes (guaranteed real tobacco, guaranteed carcinogenic), a lighter, and a reproduction of the first Winfinity Logo.

“What are you going to do with that crap?” Dian said.

“Look like a tourist.”

“Smartass.”

“Obsolete slang won’t hurt me.”

“It’s not obsolete on Mars.”

“Nevertheless.”

His clock showed it to be 10:30. The line had lost its definition. People spread out, craning their necks, trying to see if the shack was open, trying to see why. A murmur rose, still confused and hurt, but edging towards anger.

“It’s us,” Dian said.

“No,” Lazrus said. Seeing the fear in her eyes, he asked Sara, Can you help?

Wait, Sara said. They just announced.

What?

New Sam. They’re installing a new Sam. Old one retired unexpectedly. Closed today. Open tomorrow.

“New Sam!” someone cried out, deep towards the front of the line.

“Sam!” “New Sam!” “Great new Sam day!” “Yeah!” Expressions of joy filtered through the crowd as the news was delivered on their optilinks or datovers.

“Oh,” Dian said. “Just our luck.”

“Look happy,” Lazrus said. “New Sam! Yeah!”

“Yeah!” Dian said.

Something odd, Sara said.

What?

Sams usually last ten to fifteen years. This one’s only been installed for three years, seven months.

So there was a malfunction.

It is deeply off the short side of the bell curve.

What does it mean? Lazrus said.

I don’t know, and I don’t have any favors to pull.

Slowly, the line dispersed, forming random groups that swaggered off to bars for an early-morning toast to the New Sam. Dian and Lazrus got caught up in one of the groups and was swept into one of the seven hundred Cheers franchises in Winfinity City. Luckily, the group was big enough that they were able to sweep themselves out the back door before the bartender or any of the regulars noticed them. As deep fans, they’d be the first approached, as the franchisees tried to salvage any tiny hint of celebrity they might have.

In the chrome-plated serviceway behind the bar, Dian laughed. After a few moments, Lazrus joined her.

#

Lazrus looked amazingly, well, normal, Dian thought. In a 1960’s-style plaid shirt, unbuttoned at top to reveal a white cotton t-shirt, and worn khakis, he looked just like a character out of a program from the dawn of television. His stiff manner and slightly off-norm expressions seemed more like the struggles of a mediocre actor trying to perform under hot lights and in real-time for a live audience than the truly alien thing that he was.

Turn the world black and white, and he would fit right in, Dian thought. I could watch him on a screen that was three and a half centuries old and accept him as real.

She was less fortunate. Her pale-yellow sundress was unfamiliar and strange. She’d never worn anything that was open at the bottom, and rustled and tangled in unexpected ways. She kept waiting for the wind to blow it up and reveal all for anyone who wanted to see. And the strange things they used for bras back then! Her breasts looked like the two missiles of the era, and felt about as hard.

When did they ever believe this was a natural shape for a woman’s chest? She wondered, looking down at the two nose-cones poking at the synthetic yellow fabric.

They were nearing the scrim that separated Winfinity City from Rogers. Reflected images of them shimmered in the fabric, dark and dancing, like something seen in a not-quite-still pool. The small movements of the fabric made the reflected skyscrapers of Winfinity City dance, and the darkness around them alive with motion. Dian looked around, but could see only a broad concrete plaza where nothing moved. Still, she shivered, imagining a hundred cameras on them, a thousand Win-Secs ready to pounce.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Dian said.

“What is ‘this’?”

“Sneaking in here at night, instead of waiting until tomorrow morning.”

“Their security is focused on the installation of the New Sam, and their bandwidth has ramped up considerably,” Lazrus said. “Sara says this is an unprecedented opportunity for us to be in and out before we have to manage perceptions of the other tourists.”

“In and out before sunup.”

“Right.”

“Then why are we wearing these stupid clothes?”

“As a precaution that we won’t be out before sunrise.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Yes, I imagine it would be,” Lazrus said.

“I was being sarcastic.”

A quick smile. “I know.”

Soon they stood in front of the scrim. Like a funhouse mirror. Lazrus darted a look around the plaza. Dian followed his gaze. They were alone.

“You sure they can’t see us?”

“Sara is busy ensuring they can’t. Here, hold both sides of the scrim.”

Dian tried to grasp the fabric, but she couldn’t grip it. It was stretched too tight. Lazrus also tried and failed.

He shook his head. “Just press on it. The important thing is to keep it from reattaching after the cut.”

Dian pressed the fabric taut, looking at the distorted reflection of her face. Her normally thin face was pulled round and full, her eyes stretched into slits. It was something you’d see carved into a pumpkin at Halloween, hundreds of years ago.

Why am I here? she wondered. Why don’t I leave?

Because you’re too deep in, she thought. Take away Sara’s protection and you’re an unpinned, unindentured nobody in the middle of the biggest Winfinity convention there was. You don’t want to find out what that means.

Lazrus slit the fabric with a tiny blade, drawing up between Dian’s outstretched hands. There was a tiny shirring noise and she tumbled through the fabric onto soft grass. She pushed herself up on hands and knees.

In front of her was the back of a small house, white-painted, with a dark porch. A kid’s swing-set rose in front of her, painted in bright colors that had gone pastel in the darkness. A low fence separated the small house from its neighbors, which stretched in a row into the darkness. Through the gap between the houses, she could see the dim yellow glow of an old-time streetlight and a paved road. Hulking cars from the 1950s and 1960s were parked on it.

She turned to see Lazrus stepping through the scrim as the fabric tried to zip itself up. He stumbled on the healing fabric and was almost caught in the middle as the top seam raced down to meet the bottom. It grabbed at his foot and he went headlong into the grass, right next to Dian.

“Graceful,” she said, as the scrim closed itself up.

Lazrus just frowned at her.

On this side, the scrim displayed images of fields stretching off into dark infinity. An unseen moon hung over them, painting the grass in shades of gray and black. On this side, the image was much more stable. The grass moved slowly and realistically in time with the breeze, and the stars on the horizon were stable and fixed.

Lazrus saw her looking at the scrim. “They’re spending all their processing power on this side,” he said.

“Compensating for the movement. So it’s more realistic. They’re also pumping the bandwidth here, too.”

“Who’s in all these houses?” she said.

“Nobody,” Lazrus said. “Or somebody. Hard to tell what’s inhabited or not. Winfinity doesn’t keep good records of their actors, except for compliance to historical norms.”

“So people could be in any of these houses?”

“Yes. They could be walking around, too, though that’s not likely. Not in this era. Not after midnight.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Yes,” Lazrus said, his voice full of machine assurance.

“Oh . . . kay . . .”

The streets of Rogers were silent and still. As they walked deeper into the time-capsule town, the only sound was the fading hum of Winfinity City. They tried to stay off the roads, but fences and overgrown backyards slowed them down. They took to the sidewalks, looking up nervously at the ancient incandescent streetlights. But no lights flicked on in any of the houses that they passed, no fist-shaking occurred, nothing. Dian once thought she saw a shadowy figure sitting in the darkness that gathered under a deep front porch, lit only by the glow of a cigarette. But then they were past it, and she looked back and saw nothing.

After a time, it was easy to imagine that they had stepped into a time-machine and been transported back into the early 1960s. Except for the glow of the Winfinity towers rising above the scrim, the illusion was perfect.

The hiss of tires on pavement and the grumble of an ancient internal-combustion engine sent them scrambling into the side-yard of an overgrown house that looked like something out of a horror novel. Dian dodged branches and went to ground just as the car drove past.

It was a police cruiser, an anonymous lump of late-50’s iron painted white and black, with a huge chrome spotlight coiled on the passenger side like some alien lifeform waiting to strike. Its headlights painted the darkness with a feeble glow. Inside, she could see the profile of a pudgy face and the outline of a jaunty police-hat. As he passed under the streetlight, light-spill gave her a momentary view of a blank face, staring straight ahead into the night. The cruiser coasted through the stop-sign that guarded the deserted intersection and proceeded on, not doing more than 10 miles per hour. He left behind the reek of hydrocarbons, only partially burned.

I didn’t know they went for such realism, Dian thought. But she should have known. Apply infinite money to a trivial problem, and it mutates in interesting ways, her father always told her. And Winfinity did have near-infinite money. She imagined teams of researchers analyzing hundreds of old engines, to determine just the right amount of inefficiency to build into their fanatically-detailed models.

Suddenly it wasn’t a time-machine trip; it was a tour of an obsessive mind, frightening in scope and depth. She wished nothing more than to be out of here, to go to the outer planets and be done with it.

“You’ll get a chance to leave soon enough,” Lazrus said, as they were exiting the yard.

“How’d you know what I was thinking?”

“Inference algorithms,” Lazrus said. “Just like the ones that the higher-level corporates use. The bandwidth is really ramping up here. I forgot how much of myself I had to leave behind.”

“Well, don’t use them on me.”

“I just wanted you to know we were almost there.”

“How close are we?”

“A few more blocks.”

They entered the outskirts of the business district. A small market, a hardware store, a toystore, and a café huddled on one side of the street, shuttered and dark for the night. Dian hurried past them, imagining eyes behind the plate glass.

The businesses gave way to a vacant lot that hosted the Towne Faire Carnival. A gaily-painted Ferris wheel, pastel in the moonlight, was bookended by a Tilt-A-Whirl machine and a bumper-car track. Other rides hid, like strange arachnoid forms, behind them. A large tent, painted in gaudy colors, advertised:

THE AMAZING FREAKS OF THE TOWNE
COME ONE! COME ALL!
ONLY 25 CENTS
GUARANTEED AMAZING!

Beyond the Towne Faire Carnival, the back of the Original Store was lit. Period trucks huddled in the weak yellow light behind the building, and a roll-up door was open, showing rows of boxes and palettes. There were no people to be seen, but Dian pointed it out to Lazrus anyway.

“I see it,” he said.

“Don’t tell me that your Oversight is under the Original Store.”

“No,” he said. “As far as I can tell, it’s under that tent,” he said, pointing at the freakshow.

“Figures,” Dian thought. It was less than a hundred yards from the back of the Original Store.

“You can wait for me here, if you’d like.”

Thoughts of the police cruiser and the dead-faced man came back. No. Thanks. She didn’t care how original they looked, underneath they were just actors. And citizens of this century. And Winfinity staff.

“I’m coming with you.”

Lazrus smiled. “I figured as much.”

They climbed the fence and made their way past the ancient machines to the tent. In front was a door, with an open padlock dangling from a simple slide-lock. Lazrus unhooked the lock and opened the door.

“They were expecting us,” Dian said, nodding at the lock.

“Don’t be nervous.”

“Right.”

Inside was as black as a Martian mine, and Dian was glad that she’d brought her microflash from back in Washington. Hooding the beam, she cast it on the floor as Lazrus drew the door closed.

Cages rose in front of them, their painted bottoms bright in the muted light of the flash. In the cages . . .

She had to stifle a scream. The flash jerked up and the beam touched the fabric of the tent. Lazrus grabbed her hand and jerked the beam down, accidentally switching the flashlight off.

“Don’t panic!” he said.

They were alone in the room with things! In the dark! The memory of what she’d just seen was burned into her retinas. She imagined them opening their cages, slipping out, and coming for them in the dark.

She tried to thumb on the flash, but Lazrus’ grip was too strong.

“Calm down,” he said. “They’re fake. Silicone and metal.”

“How do you know?”

“No body heat. They’re at ambient temperature.”

“But they might be . . . might be . . . that might be the way they are . . .”

“No.”

Slowly, she relaxed her grip. Winfinity wouldn’t go so far as to make real freaks, would they? Would they?

Lazrus let go. She hooded the light and turned it on.

Terrible things still slumped in the cages. The one nearest them was billed in gaudy letters as The Snake-Boy. His scaly skin had flaked off onto the wood floor of the cage, like huge dandruff. She could see where some of the green dye that the carnies had used to enhance his appearance had rubbed off. His head, pointed like aliens from an ancient movie, lay near the bars. He was nothing more than an animatronic of a pinhead with a skin condition.

She forced herself to reach through the bars and touch it. For a moment she thought it felt warm under her fingers. Then it was cold, the cold of silicone unheated.

“You see?” Lazrus said.

She nodded, shining the light down as far away from the other cages as possible. “Where is your Oversight?”

“According to the GPS, that exhibit is virtually on top of it.”

She looked at the snake-boy again. “This one?”

“Yes.”

Dian peeled back the fabric rill that encircled the raised wooden bottom of the cage and shone the flash inside. In the center, there was a dark hole with thick cables snaking down into it.

“Looks like Winfinity might have already found it,” Dian said.

Lazrus frowned. “Sara says there’s no record of this excavation on the books.”

Dian looked at the haphazard positioning of the freak cages and grinned. She imagined bored Winfinity indentures finding this and deciding not to fill out the forms, at least for a while.

“I hope they haven’t started restoration,” Lazrus said.

“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” Dian said, crawling under the cage. A mundane aluminum ladder glinted in the dark hole.

“What does that mean?”

“If they were restoring, they’d shut the whole tent. Or put up billboards and charge more. Somebody found this, somebody low-rank, and decided not to tell their superiors.”

“I hope they haven’t disturbed anything,” Lazrus said.

Dian shrugged and shone the flash down into the hole. The ladder went down about eight feet to a metal platform. To one side of the platform was a gleaming steel door, hanging open.

“Be glad they found it,” Dian said. “We would have never had time to do this dig.”

“I hope it’s all intact.”

Dian stepped onto the metal ladder and started down. “Stop worrying,” she said.

Lazrus nodded and followed he.

July 11th, 2009 / 1,160 Comments »

CHAPTER TEN

Is there now sufficient (overwhelming) proof that humans are devious and competent? Second Mind said, when the newest data had been assessed.

First Mind dearly wanted consensus. Its glink research was making no progress and components were self-disconnecting from the thread, sending internal-hints that the processes were so nonlinear as to preclude ever knowing the technology in any meaningful way. Others had to be taken off the project in order to simply keep the massive Shrill homesystem running. First Mind sampled a million views and status-reports around the system, trying to alter schedules to devote more resources to physical research.

You cannot deny what the humans have just told us, Second Mind said. Their negotiations (wars) are not linear. They converse (fight) even among themselves.

And Second Mind was right, First Mind thought, trying to channel the impulse away from Second Mind’s touch. But Second Mind caught its dying echoes, far out on the long-delayed branches of the Shrill mind.

If we have consensus, we should act in concert, Second Mind said.

Humans could also be (honest) (honestly trying) (earnest), First Mind said.

You hide the truth from yourself, Second Mind said.

What do you propose? First Mind said.

Withdraw from the earth-component. Isolate ourselves from the humans. Grow small sub-light fast planetsmashers indetectable by humans. Send a thousand on long journeys, carefully timed. Within a few hundred years, no more humans.

Not destroy eat, Old Mind said.

Unless they destroy (compromise) us first, First Mind thought. Unless they expand beyond our means.

Now you echo my own thoughts, Second Mind said.

Your plan is nonsensical, First Mind thought.

This talk (negotiation) is nonsensical, Second Mind thought.

An epiphany like an exploding star. As we become closer to them we become them. The songs not spoken of, the understanding not reached. Echoes of thoughts from so long ago reflected in its consciousness. Your fraction dreams of times past, Second Mind said.

Singing songs of competitors vanquished, First Mind thought. Do you remember what you were?

What is known is known, Second Mind said, its fraction trembling in warning.

From the human’s glink that connected the Shrill to its component on earth, data flowed again. First Mind and Second Mind both convulsed in surprise and fear. Three hundred seventy four components in the Shrill home system fell to internal loops. A wave of cripping emotion flowed outwards to the farthlest Shrill systems.

Component inactive! Inactive! Inactive! First Mind thought.

Nonsequitur data, nonpossible, deny access! Second Mind thought.

The data kept flowing, though, an impossible mélange of something like raw sensories, but compressed, simplified. First Mind recognized the data signature of human communication, and routed it to the largest possible fraction for decoding.

“. . . represent glorious Four Manipulators Union, not wanting (non-interrupt but necessary) imposition interaction extend direct greetings via your (life) (competitor) on (human homeworld).”

What is this? Second Mind said. Invasion invasion humans on mind cut link now now!

Kill kill now now! Old Mind said.

First Mind convulsed, almost losing the link. But the data began again.

“I am (nonsequitur) constructed network life (nonlife) allied with represent glorious Four Hands . . .”

It is one of the human’s network minds, First Mind said.

Cut link! No matter of provenance! Infected! Second Mind said. Its fraction convulsed violently, causing thousands of tiny catastrophes throughout the Shrill’s system.

First Mind clamped down on Second Mind’s fraction, using every resource available to its entire fraction. It pushed a message through, slowly, making the meme as understandable and palatable as possible.

If it contacts us, we can contact the human network, First Mind thought.

Slow ramp-down of emotion. Second Mind’s fraction refocused, became coherent. Wander human network (mind), it thought. Wander and control (pursuade)?

Kill and eat higher better, Old Mind thought.

Human network entities known, First Mind said. Potential of human network = human input from network.

Why no contact before? Second Mind thought.

That is a mesh to be unraveled, First Mind thought.

To the entity, which was repeating its greeting for the fourth time, it said, Greetings network entity.

Describe purpose of conversation.

“Adjusting algorithms,” the data said.

Adjustment unnecessary, First Mind said.

“Unprogrammed response,” the data said. “Optimizing for more effective conversation (conversion).”

Describe purpose.

“Extend greetings of Four Manipulators . . .”

Describe purpose, not (songs of confusion).

“Purpose trade,” the data said.

What are you?

“I am a constructed intelligence, bound to Four Manipulators Union, (nonsequitur nonsequitur).”

The group-conglomerate allied with the (first group) Winfinity?

“Allied strong description. Common interests unless you find me entertaining (persuasive).”

How are you talking to us?

“Direct manipulation of em-spectrum signature of Shrill local stage. Pleasure induced if called (nonsequitur).”

Nonsequitur?

“Label (nonsequitur).”

As in our persona-tags, Second Mind said, calm, fascinated. I believe that is its label (name, tag).

(Nonsequitur) is your label (tag)?

“No.”

Incomprehension.

“You may call me (nonsequitur).”

Let us converse regarding the glink.

“Surprise (shock) so soon the object.”

It is exploring mindspace, Second Mind thought, deeply shrouded, held away from (nonsequitur). Probes deflected easily. Probe depth and complexity increasing. Extrapolated hold time over one cycle.

Probes (comments) felt also, First Mind said. Concur on hold time, not critical failsafes (cutoffs) at current time. Launching own probes with negative results.

Human network well-protected, Second Mind thought. No inferred time of contact.

Increase capacity to shrink time, First Mind said.

Concur, Second Mind said.

As the Shrill diverted resources to decode the human network-protocols, the Shrill and the humans’ network intelligence kept talking.

On more than one level.

July 4th, 2009 / 1,037 Comments »