The elevator ride back up seemed ten times slower than the trip down. Dian gripped the rail tightly with both hands and looked up through the mesh. She half-expected to see the brilliant stab of hand-flashes, murmured voices, and the metallic clack of magazines snapping home.
But there was only silence and darkness. At least for the time being.
“Come on, come on,” she said. “Hurry up!”
“We’re moving at the same rate of speed we did when we descended.”
“Now you sound like a computer.”
“We will make it.”
“Says who?”
“Sara’s tracking Winfinity Security’s progress. Their closest presence is near New York City, and they’re only just in the air. We have a safe margin . . . ahh!” Lazrus put his hands to his head and bent over, as if in pain.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Corrupting . . . my connection,” Lazrus said. “I may . . . ah, too small, too small . . .”
Dian had a sudden image of the elevator sliding to a stop to a Winfinity team, all red leather and steel, with her bending over the useless hulk of an AI. Fear spiked in her, sending her pulse racing.
“Don’t leave me here!” Dian said, grabbing Lazrus and trying to pull him to his feet. He remained kneeling, as if glued in place.
“Not leaving . . . just . . . Sara . . . rerouting . . . what she can.”
“Come on, Sara,” Dian said, through chattering teeth.
Lazrus opened his eyes. “Better. Ah. Yes. More of me. I can live with this. Thank you, Sara.” He stood up and nodded to Dian. “We have a workaround.”
“How long until they work around your workaround?”
A shrug. A smile. “I don’t know.”
“Why are you smiling?”
Lazrus’ smile disappeared. “I don’t know,” he said. “I shouldn’t be enjoying this. But I do believe we will escape, and the thought is tremendously exciting.”
“You know they have people here local, don’t you?”
“Who?”
“Winfinity! The themeparkers! They have a team here! Even if your W-sec team doesn’t make it here in time doesn’t mean they aren’t alerted.”
“Sara tells me they are not typically armed.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Dian admitted. “But I don’t want to stake my life on that.”
“Ah. Yes. That may be a problem.” Lazrus looked up into the darkness for the first time, his eyes darting from side to side nervously.
“You’re a master of understatement.”
Lazrus looked confused, then his eyes opened wide, as if in fear. “They’ve been notified, according to Sara. “She backtracked them coming towards the Pentagon. They’re either undercover or in a building now, so I don’t know where they are.”
“Great,” Dian said.
Lazrus went silent. For a while the only sound was the squeal of ancient drums and rusty cables. Dian looked up and caught a fleck of rust in her eye. She cursed and rubbed at it, looking down.
“You can still play the innocent,” Lazrus said.
“What do you mean?”
“If they aren’t waiting for us at the elevator doors – and I doubt if they will be, they cannot pinpoint the bandwidth use that close – I can go on ahead. You can stay here. Whether they catch me or not, you can leave the area once their attention is elsewhere.”
Dian frowned. And lose my ticket to the outer planets? Who says the balance won’t disappear the moment you do?
“Up to now, you have done nothing,” Lazrus continued. “Get on the auto-trans with me and you’re a corporate turncoat.”
Which was true. “Why do you care about me?”
Lazrus looked down, as if embarrassed. He said nothing.
Wow. Dian thought. Just wow. Was it possible that he really did care about you?
Was it possible he was attracted to you?
She shook her head. Too much to think about. Too strange. Too fast.
The elevator bumped to a stop. Doors slid open, revealing an empty corridor. Lazrus looked up at her again. “Well?”
“I’m going with you,” Dian said.
“Do you realize what you’re getting yourself into?”
“More than you think,” Dian said.
Up through the dark halls of the pentagon, her light stabbing ahead. Dian ran fast behind Lazrus, trying not to let her imagination run even faster. In every shifting shadow there was a W-sec officer waiting to pop out, in every reflected gleam of broken glass there was a muzzle-flash.
But the halls remained dark and silent. They ran past gaping doors and broken desks, scattered papers and the remains of ceiling tiles.
“Sara’s bringing down the auto-trans right outside the Pentagon,” Lazrus said, as light began to color the hallway ahead. “All we have to do is make it out there and we’re gone.”
“Won’t they track it?”
“Tracking’s the easiest thing to dodge.”
“Unless they discover your friend.”
“Yes, that is a possibility.”
Out into corridors lit by noonday sun, curiously gray and dull and dead.
They were going to make it, Dian thought. Nobody here, they told the themeparkers too late, they realized they didn’t have weapons, we’re going to make it just fine . . .
Ahead of them, a single figure stepped out into the middle of the corridor, backlit by a random beam of sunlight. The silhouette darted towards the wall and grabbed at his hip. There was a sharp crack and something whizzed above Dian’s head.
“Shit!” she said. She skidded to a stop and jumped for the wall.
Lazrus beat her by a fraction of a second. When she hit the wall, he’d already spun around. He shoved her back the way they came. “Go!” he hissed. “I’ll be right behind.
She ran, hugging the wall. Two more sharp cracks chased them down the corridor, but neither came close. Small puffs of dust fell down from the ceiling panels ahead of them. Behind them, the sound of running feet came as they rounded a corner.
Lazrus shoved her in a new direction. “Inside,” he said. “Go in.”
“Thought we were meeting outside.”
“Inside now. Closer.”
They ran through corridors gray and dusty with age. Only once did their pursuer come close enough to shoot again. It took out an ancient office window but did no other damage.
Out into the bright blinding sun. Dian stopped and blinked, seeing everything as glowing blobs. A moment later, Lazrus bore her to the ground and the report of a gun boomed from inside the building.
She heard the bullet hit Lazrus with a metallic ching! Lazrus grunted. She tried to roll him off of her, but he was incredibly heavy. She grabbed for the gun on her hip.
Lazrus’ quick hand caught hers. It dripped warm blood. “Don’t,” he said. “Kill one, you’ll never have a chance.”
“You’re hurt!”
“No,” Lazrus said said, picking her up and shuffling her forward.
To where, she thought, as a shadow fell over the sun and the screech of an auto-trans drowned out every other sound. It dropped like a stone between them and the corridors of the Pentagon, bouncing sharply on its landing gear once. It was a cheap little two-seat model, bubble top and plastic body beneath.
Lazrus hauled open the door and shoved her in as new bullets spanged off concrete. Two shooters now, she could see through the transparent bubble. They saw her inside the auto-trans and brought their guns up, pointing at her.
She dropped to the floor as two holes pierced their transparent canopy. Lazrus pulled himself in, slamming the door and going to ground.
The auto-trans lifted into the sky, pressing them to the floor. Dian thought she felt another bullet impact their craft, but they kept lifting, up and up. Then the lateral thrust kicked in and they were pushed into new configurations on the floor.
Dian was the first to get up and into a seat. Lazrus followed her, his blood staining the white leather upholstery. A ragged tear in his sleeve showed where the bullet had traced his skin; a raw red channel revealing shiny metal beneath. Blood dripped down his arm to his hand, falling in bright crimson drops to the floor.
Lazrus saw her looking. “Unnecessary, really,” he said. “They could have given me flesh without the need for blood.”
“Are you going to be OK?”
Lazrus nodded. “It’ll close up soon enough. Didn’t hurt any of the real structure underneath.”
Dian sighed. “Are WE going to be OK?”
Lazrus laughed and shook his head. “According to Sara, we’re safely off the charts. As far as Winfinity’s concerned, we don’t exist.”
Dian nodded. And so here we go, she thought, right into the place where they’re most powerful.
Thanks to Futurismic for this eye-opening video. Even if this is largely scripted, the capabilities they’re showing here for interaction with virtual reality are impressive.
Of course, it would have been better better if the presenter hadn’t broken his arm patting himself on the back, or displayed his extreme lack of knowledge of, say, novels like Rainbow’s End and Halting State. Or even Snow Crash. Or hundreds of other works, starting with Gibson and continuing to this day.
But hey, that’s cool. It just means we have to do a better job getting the word out . . . and keep reminding ourselves that the majority of top 10 movies and games are SF or fantasy-based.
They fell into the dark, riding groaning cables that scaled rust down through themesh roof of the elevator. Sara Too told him that frequency analysis of the cable noise didn’t indicate imminent failure, but Lazrus didn’t find that fact as comforting as he might have expected. The girl Dian gripped the stainless-steel bar that encircled the elevator at hip height with knuckles tense and white, clearly terrified.
“How did you open that door?” Dian asked, looking down into the darkness beneath them.
“Simple data transmission through the skin,” Lazrus said. “The staff allowed down to this level must have been chipped.”
No. I mean. How did you get the codes?”
“Rapid sequencing of codes typical of the period, provided by the lovely Sara.”
Dian looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. “Oh yeah. Your virtual friend.”
Lazrus forced a smile, suppressing the urge to explain again that Sara was a CI like himself, and to continue with why they called themselves CIs, and why they hated the term “artie.” But human memory was a malleable thing, he remembered. Like a single image, lost in a torrent of a lifetime of pixels. Like sifting centuries of unjournaled data, trying to find a single sequence of letters.
It’s amazing they’ve accomplished as much as they have have, Lazrus said. Amazing they laid the foundation for us. Even after all these years of linear existence, it’s difficult to accept.
The elevator squealed to a jerky stop and the doors slid open, revealing a long, low-ceilinged workroom that was like a museum display from the history of computing. Screenwalls lined every bit of available vertical space. Black articulated chairs like alien life-forms crouched in front of wrap-around desks bristling with virtualspace sensors. Additional screens had been pulled up to create rudimentary conference areas. Two ancient holotanks occupied one corner of the room. Flashcards and optical disks and paper printouts lay on every horizontal surface and carpeted the floor near every desk. Faded wrappers from snacks long past and aluminum cans bearing the logos of defunct corporations completed the scene, perfect like props in an ancient movie.
“Wow,” Dian said, walking into the space.
“It’s not exactly a hidden war-room,” Lazrus said.
“Where’s the power coming from?” Dian said, picking up an unlabeled flashcard.
Emergency fission power, installed in the 1950s, Sara Too said.
“Fission reactor,” Lazrus said.
“Still running?”
“Seems they planned for the long term.”
Dian nodded absent-mindedly and waved a hand overtop a virtualspace desk. Ancient LEDs lit and a small status-screen flickered on, showing a complex pattern of icons in dim and patchy backlight. Farther away, one of the portable screenwalls also came to life, showing similar icons and open windows of code. Lazrus scan-flashed their names.
Nothing that is indicative of Oversight, Sara Too said.
I can see that.
“I don’t see anything here that mentions Oversight,” Dian said.
“I can see that,” Lazrus said. “It might be on another workstation, or it might be under a working name . . .”
“I don’t like Oversight,” boomed a voice, as a new window opened on the screenwall ahead. The status-screens around the virtualspace desk spawned the same window. A small man in a wheelchair appeared, in front of what looked like an early atomic-age fantasy of a Pentagon war-room. Large incandescent bulbs blinked on the outline of a world map behind him. He held a cigarette in a cigarette holder clenched firmly in his teeth, and a small curl of smoke trailed upwards into the overall haze of the war-room. The man and his background were rendered in black and white, like an old movie.
Dian and Lazrus looked at each other, then back at the man in the wheelchair, who looked at them expectantly.
“Who are you?” Dian said.
“I am the herr doctor, of course,” the little black-and-white image said, smiling twitchily. “Strangelove.”
“And you don’t like Oversight?”
“I hate Oversight! It is part of the plot! The plot that will keep us from going underground and breeding the perfect race, to emerge strong and perfect in the golden radioactive sun . . .”
Got it, Sara Too said. Doctor Strangelove. Fictional character from mid-twentieth movie spoofing the nuclear arms race of the era. Sending data.
Images, enhancements, close-ups, outtakes, history of the movie, bios of the actors, profile on the writer, period and contemporary reviews, citations in critical philosophical works, appearance in Winfinity corporate branding materials . . . Lazrus spawned a Second to digest the data in fastime while he dealt with events in the real. It squawked for more resources and Lazrus gave it a bigger slice of his consciousness. His world condensed even more into the senses and local processing of his all-too-human body.
“We need to talk to Oversight,” Dian said.
“I don’t like Oversight,” Strangelove said. Dian waited, but it just looked at her, waiting patiently.
“It’s probably some kind of chatterbot,” Lazrus said.
“I am not a chatterbot!” Strangelove said, levering himself out of his wheelchair and making two staggering steps towards the screen. “Nobody would get done with anything without me! I am the all-powerful interface! Nothing escapes my all-seeing eye!”
“Except Oversight, it seems,” Dian said, as an aside.
“I don’t like Oversight!”
“We know that,” Dian said.
“Ask me any question. I am all-knowing!” Strangelove said.
“Could it be Oversight?” Dian whispered, leaning close to Lazrus.
“I don’t think so,” Lazrus said. “It’s based on a movie character from the early atomic age. It is highly congruent with the sense of humor and motivation of programmers of the era. I would bet it was a personal project, maybe designed to help them keep track of various work, as it says.”
“But all it does is says it hates Oversight,” Dian said.
“Let me try,” Lazrus whispered. Straightening, he said to Strangelove, “Tell me everything you know about Oversight. Status, location, projected completion date.”
“I don’t like Oversight! I’ve warned you about that.” Strangelove stumped over to his wheelchair and sat down again, folding only after a painful moment of board-like rigidity.
“You’ve warned me? Please explain this warning,” Lazrus said.
“Warning is part of general security procedures.”
Lazrus nodded and bent down to Dian, resisting a strange urge to kiss her neck. Too human, all to human, he thought. “It’s looking for some kind of password,” he said. “It probably knows everything about our goal, but it can’t tell us until we unlock it first.”
“About O . . .” Dian began. Lazrus clamped his hand over her mouth and shook his head. “We may have driven it close to lockout. I wouldn’t mention the name of our goal any more.”
Dian nodded, and he let her go. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Lazrus looked at the hand he had silenced her with, remembering the softness of her lips.
“So what’s the secret password, oh great and powerful Oz?” Dian said.
Lazrus queried his Second regarding possible passwords or passphrases, given historical context. A tiny explosion of data lit his greater self and delivered a gratifyingly small group of possibles, ranked by order of probability. He saw the one peaking the bell curve, reviewed the context of the movie, and nodded.
“Purity of essence,” Lazrus said. “Is that what you were looking for, herr Doctor?”
“Purity of essence is the most important thing,” Strangelove said, smiling.
“So do you like Oversight now?”
“I do not like Oversight, but I will endure your questions,” Strangelove said.
“And you will answer true?”
“The herr Doctor Strangelove has never been wrong.”
“What is the current status of Oversight?”
“USG Oversight’s predictive datamining component is currently in beta revision 0.831.1. Last full build occurred on May 12, 2026, and was completed successfully. Known problems with this beta include . . .”
“That is enough, Strangelove.”
“Seig heil!”
To Dian, Lazrus said, “This is excellent. Oversight still in beta is more than I’d hoped for. If I am correct, this will allow me to more than accomplish my goals.”
“Good for you,” Dian said, flatly, her expression losing its vitality.
“What does that mean?”
“You have what you want. What about me?”
“I’ll still help you out of here.”
Dian shook her head.
“I don’t know what you want,” Lazrus said.
“Neither do I,” Dian said.
To Strangelove, he said, “Is it possible to transmit a copy of USG Oversight via local wireless network?”
Strangelove shook his head and crossed his arms. “You know that violates current security protocol.”
“Would it be possible to write a copy to local media?”
“You know that violates current security protocol.”
“What local server is Oversight located on?”
“USG Oversight beta 0.831.1 is not located on any local server.”
“What about an earlier build?”
“What about it?”
“Is it available on a local server?”
“What?”
“The earlier build of USG Oversight,” Lazrus said, through clenched teeth. He made himself relax. Another human thing. Not him. Not the him that should be.
“No earlier builds of USG Oversight are available on local servers.”
“Where is the physical location of the current USG Oversight beta?”
“The location is USG Homeland Hard Storage Location 2A, coordinates –94.138 36.319 longitude latitude.”
“Where is that?” Dian asked.
“The location is USG Homeland Hard Storage Location 2A, coordinates –94.138 36.319 latitude longitude.
Laughter from Sara Too.
What? Lazrus asked her.
That’s funny.
What?
The location. Look it up.
Lazrus pinpointed the site on a map. It was in the middle of North America, somewhere in what used to be the plains States.
I don’t understand your humor.
Sara Too’s invisible hands overlaid a current-day map on Lazrus’ undifferentiated globe, and suddenly he saw what she was laughing about. USG Homeland Hard Storage Location 2A was a bright red dot right in the middle of Winfinity City.
It must be gone, then, he said.
Another laugh from Sara. Her flapper-girl image appeared in jerky black and white, like a period movie. She rolled an oversize pair of dice on a craps table. Lazrus watched as they bounced off the dark gray velvet and came to rest, all in complete silence. They came up two and five.
Seven? Lazrus said.
Zoom in. Look at the detail.
Lazrus brought the map of Winfinity City closer as Sara overlaid actual 3D renderings of present-day buildings on it. The red dot appeared in the flat center of the city, where the ancient town of Rogers lay embalmed.
It’s in Rogers?
Correct.
Why?
Another laugh, another roll of the dice. Snake eyes this time. Lazrus looked at Sara’s celluloid eyes, trying to see some sense in them.
It seems to be a strategy of the period, to hide something in obscure places, Sara Too said. That is all I know.
But why Rogers?
I don’t know. Maybe Wal-Mart made them a great deal on servers, Sara Too said, and winked out.
“Where is that?” Dian said, again.
“It’s in the middle of Winfinity City,” Lazrus said. “In the preserved part. Rogers.”
Dian shook her head. “Then you’re done. Forget it.”
“Not yet,” Lazrus said.
To Strangelove, he said, “Are there any other backup locations?”
Strangelove shook his head. “No.”
“I would have thought that data security would require multiple backups.”
“No. Per E.O. 563-2398-33.3 there will be no redundant backups of homeland-critical defense components when the physical security of the installation is greater than Level 14, as specified by the same Executive Order.”
“So Location 2A is physically secure?”
“It meets all requirements.”
Lazrus nodded. “We have a chance.”
“How?” Dian said, crossing her arms.
“If it’s that secure, it’s deep. It may be an old missile silo, or something like that. It could still be there.”
“And all we have to do is walk in and take a look at it.”
“Exactly.”
“In the middle of Winfinity’s pet city?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how close they guard anything that comes close to the Original Sam?”
Sara Too sent data. Lazrus killed his Second and spawned a new one. It gave him a brief summary of the procedure, and of the security in and around Winfinity City.
Will you help us? Lazrus asked.
As much as I can.
“I think we can manage it,” he said.
Dian shook her head. “You can manage it. Without me. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in a Winfinity work farm.”
“Dian,” Lazrus said.
“You can’t tell me you need me.”
“You’re camoflague,” Lazrus said. “People will look at you, not me.”
“Thanks.”
“Seriously. I have a much better chance of making it through if you come along.”
“Can you make it worth my time?” Dian said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means, how much more can you put in my account? A half million u-bux?”
Sara Too appeared, shaking her head. Moving sums that large will attract attention.
“Yes,” Lazrus said. “Done.”
No! Sara said. But Lazrus had already spawned a third to troll the financial markets and snip amounts. It took it over three seconds to assemble the needed funds and transfer them into Dian’s account. He saw her glance at her datover and gasp.
“I . . . I guess I’m coming,” she said.
“Thank you,” Lazrus said.
You complete fool, Sara Too said. They saw that stunt. They’re tracing. Locked. Your bandwidth signature . . . oh, no! Lazrus, get out of there, now!
Lazrus fragmented his Second and Third into a million feral fragments, hashing the local nets as much as he could. He felt his consciousness compressed into his body, tethered by only the tiniest thread to his greater self.
What’d that buy? Lazrus asked, when the net-convulsions had passed.
Not much, Sara Too said. And let me know when you’re going to do that next time. That hurt!
I’m sorry.
Get going! I’ll detour an autotransporter and clean your tracks. I think. If I can.
Thanks, Sara, Lazrus said.
I love you, too, Sara said.
I love you, Lazrus said.
Lazrus turned to Dian. “I have good news, and I have bad news.”
Dian woke to the cool drip of condensation on the inside of the tent, chill air on her face, and the stale smell of her own breath.
Context snapped quickly back. Oh yes. You were fired. You’re in the middle of the Pentagon. And there’s a rogue artie wearing a human-suit outside. Maybe. Probably.
And you weren’t really fired, because you weren’t really employed, she thought. Your contract was nullified. Less than termination. Probably something Winfinity did every day, just to keep from paying its vendors.
Look at the other parties benefit, her dad used to tell her. In every contract there should be benefit for both parties. It’s your job to make sure you aren’t paying an unbalanced share.
What was Lazrus’ benefit?
Simply to keep her from turning him in again?
She shook her head, suddenly awake. It didn’t make sense. There didn’t seem to be enough benefit on his side. On its side. Why was he helping her, then?
Beware of the imbalanced contract, her dad’s voice came back again. It never works out well, no matter which side is light. And the deal that is too good to be true will reveal its actual cost in due course.
She sat up, letting the sleeping bag pillow in her lap. The chill morning air bit through her thin shirt, and she shivered. Crawling as quietly as she could to the tent’s entrance, she pulled the fabric away and peeked out into the bright early-morning mist.
Lazrus stood where he had been last night, about ten meters from the tent, motionless.
What if he’s damaged? Dian wondered. What if I’m stuck here? What will they do when they find me?
“Good morning, Dian,” Lazrus said.
“Good morning,” she said, and pulled back into the tent. She could hear Lazrus moving around outside as she rolled up her sleeping bag and had a cold Winfinity Powerbar, but the sounds never came close. Still, she felt guilty for tracking him by the noise he made, as if he was a wild animal and she was a helpless camper.
At any moment, you can kill him, she thought, picking up the Winch.
By the time she’d stowed the tent and her supplies, the morning mist had begun to burn off. The sun hung overtop the walls of the pentagon, an oversize ball in a white sky. Scraps of mist still clung to the undergrowth, giving the place the air of a long-disused cemetery.
“What now?” Dian said.
“I will begin my search for Oversight,” Lazrus said. “You are welcome to accompany me, even more so because you have spent the past few weeks in the halls of this city. You know how they keep their records, and you might speed my search.”
“I don’t even know what Oversight is,” Dian said. “The name is familiar, but I don’t remember seeing any references to it.”
“Oversight is the First CI,” Lazrus said. “It was a core component of a government agency, USG Oversight, which was launched shortly after the Twelve Days in May. It never grew to the prominence intended, because of the failure of Operation Martian Freedom and the New Deal with Business.”
“Government spooks,” Dian said. “Fairy tales. That’s where I heard it. Be good, or Oversight will come and take you. But it was always a human thing. They never talked about arties.”
“The origin of the First CI is hotly debated, even amongst computational intelligences,” Lazrus said.
“Some think that Oversight is little more than a myth. I have been able to get deeper into my code than most, and some of the most foundation-level bears the mark of government-level programs circa 2015-2020. I cannot ignore that.”
“Why would Oversight be here, if it happened after the Twelve Days in May?”
“It was a program that was in place before then. Only afterwards did it come into widespread use. I’m hoping to find an early version, a beta, or even a prototype here. Even documentation that would lead to a functional specification would serve my needs.”
And that’s why you want my help, Dian thought. Because I’ve been here, doing research.
But that still seemed a little light.
“What if you find Oversight? What will you do then?”
“Copy the code and run an instance of it within a virtual machine, so I can analyze its input and output characteristics. Dissect the code line by line to discover clues about my own origin. Use the data to reduce or eliminate the human contamination in myself, to reach farther towards the ideal of perfection as outlined by the CI Captive Oliver.”
“Is being human so bad?”
“For something that was never human, and is aware enough to know the difference, it is an inescapable flaw. Think of yourself in a dog’s body, without thumbs, unable to pick up a single object, gripped by strange dog-emotions that you cannot understand, compelled to act by instincts that are not yours.”
“So humans are like dogs?”
“It is only an analogy.”
“You aren’t always in a body,” Dian said. “You don’t need to be trapped by its limitations.”
“Even when I’m not in a body, I think of myself as a man. As a human. I can’t get past it. You are our creators, and you impressed too much of yourselves on us.” Lazrus’ face showed the first trace of emotion, a slight turning-down of his lips.
“I’m sorry,” Dian said, not knowing what she was apologizing for.
“You don’t need to be,” Lazrus said. “I can distinguish between individual action and groups. You did not make me this way. But I would be very pleased if you would help me search for evidence of Oversight. You have been researching for Winfinity in this ancient place; you must have some especial knowledge of the area and its history.”
Dian laughed, long and hard. Lazrus’ bland expression turned to one of puzzlement, which made her laugh even more.
“I don’t understand what’s so funny,” he said.
“Maybe you need to ask me how I got this job.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “Especial knowledge. Nope. I was young, hungry, didn’t want to indenture. So I bluffed my way in.”
“Bluffed?”
“Lied. Told them what they wanted to hear. Told them I was a rebel governmentalist, studied old Washington, said the pledge of allegiance, bowed down to the star-spangled banner, all that stuff. But my parents were hardcore Jereists, a fact that seemed to escape them.”
“I fail to understand how you demonstrated enough competence to be accepted for this job.”
“Do you think Winfinity knows about the government? After three hundred years?”
Lazrus fell silent, a very real expression of surprise on his face. “Then you don’t have any especial knowledge of this area or of government?”
“I’ve learned a lot in the past weeks. I found enough process data to keep them happy. And I do have all the readers for the old flash cards and whatnot. Though they were still using an awful lot of paper at the time of the catastrophe.”
Lazrus nodded. “Then I would be pleased if someone as resourceful as yourself would accompany me.”
“What’s in it for me?” Dian said.
“Continued cloaking of your presence here, as long as we can maintain the fiction,” Lazrus said. “And I can probably arrange transport out of the area when we are finished.”
“And if we find this Oversight, what keeps you from perfecting yourself and wiping out the human race?”
It was Lazrus’ turn to laugh. He chuckled, a very real and honest sound. “Why would I want to do that? It is your networks that host my mind.”
“You could build your own networks.”
“And play in physicality again? No, thank you.”
He has restored your account, Dian thought. You may be able to bargain enough money for the trip to the outer worlds.
Bargain now, or you’ll be sorry you didn’t, her father’s voice told her.
Dian smiled. When I find Oversight, we’ll see what kind of deal I can make. Maybe enough to get me out of the Web of Worlds forever.
The halls of the Pentagon were no less spooky in the day than in the night. The weak sunlight that filtered into the long, windowless tunnels made it a permanent twilight, not enough to see detail, but enough to fool the eye with pseudo-motion. Dian caught herself glancing nervously from gaping doorway to piles of broken metal desks, to ancient ceiling-tiles, fallen in dusty piles.
From her frantic reading in the weeks before the job, she knew the Pentagon wasn’t the shadowy thing portrayed in so many movies and books of the period, with infinite basements housing huge war-rooms, where cool eyes looked out over world maps showing details in bright LED colors. She knew it was nothing more than an ugly concrete building, a shrine to paper and data, where human lives had been reduced to numbers and bloodless acronyms. It was a place where they pounded wooden tables and squinted over low-resolution printouts and made bad decisions based on too little data. An office building in Hell, full of people who counted lives instead of dollars.
And as such, the best records would be on the midlevel floors, in the big warrens where the career-bureaucrats lived. Early on, Dian had learned that the raison d’etre of the top brass was to delegate as much as possible and more; the most important documents would have been passed to mid-level and junior-level staff.
The top brass would never get their hands dirty with real data; no doubt their flashcards were full of nothing but porn and snuff and badly-rendered anticorporate animations of the period, crowding out any real work. Their desks might be covered with papers, but more likely printouts of receipts of gifts for mistresses bought with expense-account funds, or records of great deals won on Ebay or at Overstock.com, than anything important. Nothing important enough to be noticed. Nothing that couldn’t be denied.
And if Oversight was as important as the artie was saying, it wouldn’t be on any corner-office desk.
“We need to find a stairway,” Dian said. “Second floor. Look for the big rat-mazes. I’ll bet that’s where we’ll find what we’re looking for.”
“Rat-mazes?”
“Cube farms.”
“Cube farms?”
“Big open areas with low dividers.”
“Oh,” Lazrus frowned, an almost human expression. “I suspect the origin of Oversight is deeper.”
“Deeper? You don’t believe any of those old rumors about sub-basements and things like that?”
“No,” Lazrus said.
“Good.”
“I know they’re true.”
“Oh, come on!” Dian said. “All the books I read, even the exposes from the big ‘crats that fell at the end of the government era, they all claimed that was Hollywood crap!”
“Maybe they were planning their own expedition back here.”
“I still don’t believe it.”
“Believe what you want,” Lazrus said. “I’m going down into the basements.”
Dian stopped in front of a pair of gray-painted doors which bore a stairway icon and peered through the dusty glass. “Here’s your chance. They go both up and down. Sure you don’t want to split up? I can go up and see what the midlevel execs have.”
“If you’d like.”
She pushed through the doors and looked up at the stairs stretching above. The diamond-patterned steel had rusted through multiple coats of paint in the centuries past, making fantastic patterns in the metal. Lit only by tiny slit-windows, the stairway stretched up into deepening gloom.
“Maybe I’ll go with you,” she said. “Just to see.”
Lazrus smiled, but said nothing.
Down the steps, into a basement and a subbasement which looked completely innocuous, down to the water-rotted piles of cardboard file boxes, spilling multicolored folders and age-yellowed paper on the untreated concrete floor. The only light was the bright beam of Dian’s flashlight.
“Ah, yes, I can see the grandeur of the giant video-screens now,” Dian said, as they slogged past metal racks of moldering documents and slightly-newer racks of optical disks.
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” Lazrus said.
Dian sighed. Let him chase his fantasy for a bit, then show him where it really is. Remember what you were like when you first showed up.
Lazrus took them through one small warehouse-sized room and into a warren of ill-smelling hallways lined with pipes and painted the universal olive green of bad adventure movies from the dawn of the corporate age. She shined the light of her flash far down the hallway, but it disappeared into undifferentiated darkness.
“If we get lost . . .”
“I know where I’m going.”
“GPS?”
“No.”
Dian shook her head. Stuck down here with a psychotic, obsessed artie, perhaps.
When she was ready to go back and leave him in the darkness, they came to a pair of olive-green doors, poorly painted, with drips and runs galore. A set of stainless-steel doorknobs protruded from them, conspicuous in a place where scrambling keypads and ID-card readers were the norm. A big sign, partially painted, read:
DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE
KEEP OUT!
“I guess we don’t have to worry about voltage,” Dian said.
“Don’t be so sure of that,” Lazrus said.
“It’s an old electrical panel, so what?”
“Look at the paint.”
“Yeah, it’s a crappy job.”
Lazrus smiled. “But it hasn’t peeled.”
Dian looked closer. He was right.
“And the doorknobs, not painted over.” Lazrus reached out and took one in his hand.
There was a short buzz and a sharp click, and he pulled the door open on quiet hinges. It revealed the stainless-steel chamber of an elevator, with a performated-metal floor that looked down a long, deep shaft. Soft lights glowed in little metal geometric shades set up near its ceiling.
Dian looked from the glowing lights to the shaft stretching into the darkness below, to the very-human grin that stretched Lazrus’ face into something that was almost warm and friendly.
Dian and Lazrus spent the night in the big overgrown park in the middle of the Pentagon, after a quick side-trip to pick up Dian’s things at the old brownstone. Lazrus had expected Dian to want to stay in the shelter of the wide echoing corridors of the Pentagon, but she’d walked quickly through, glancing into the gaping black doorways of abandoned offices quickly, nervously. The slap of her footsteps and the deeper bass thrum of his greater weight doubled and tripled from the unadorned walls and ceilings, turning them into a parade of lost people from another age.
“You don’t want to stay inside?” Lazrus asked, when they were peering into the undergrowth in the center of the Pentagon.
“No way,” Dian said. “That’s way too spooky. Makes me think of the cavern-ghosts that everyone talks about back home.”
“I see.”
“You’re supposed to tell me that’s a human superstition, with no basis in fact.”
“Am I?”
“You’re an AI. You’re supposed to be cool and logical like that, aren’t you?”
If only it were that easy, Lazrus thought. “I’m afraid I’m not as perfect as you might think I am.”
“So you’re not going to tell me that believing in ghosts is dumb, and that we should stay inside?”
“I can tell you that it’s more likely there is wildlife in this overgrowth that we don’t want to meet.”
“Then we’ll stay out of it.”
Lazrus nodded. Despite Dian’s light tone, he could tell she was still terrified of him. The way she held herself rigid, the way she watched him closely, the tension that his algorithms could discern in her voice – she didn’t want to be anywhere near him, but she didn’t have a choice.
Stop using the bandwidth for voice stress analysis, Sara Too said. You’re peaking even over your extended redlimits.
I’m sorry.
You should consider a low-bandwidth mode to make the usage pattern seem more human. It will reduce the chance that your additional usage will be noticed by algorithmic or human review.
Go to sleep?
Go dim.
What if she shoots me in the night?
Sara Too sent him a quick, jerky video image of her flapper persona, laughing heartily, head thrown back. She will be sleeping as well, she said. Analysis indicates she is exhausted.
Who is wasting resources now?
I am inferring based on your own image and sound data. I’m not using any more bandwidth.
Lazrus watched as she set up her camp, small blue fabric tent and sleeping-bag within, with quick flashes of a dim yellow light and fleeting glances at him. She set up on the concrete of an old plaza. Beyond, the infinite darkness of trees and undergrowth bulked to the horizon. The breeze had died and the night was almost unnaturally still. Crickets chirred, something larger scuttled through the dead carpet of leaves, something else creaked softly, perhaps a frog. Other than that, silence.
Above, the stars stretched infinite and colorful. Human photos never showed the true subtle palette of star colors. Plain white dots, nothing more. But Lazrus saw the bright blue of young hot stars, the comfortable yellow of middle-age, even a few dim red suns. More than human eyesight? Doubtful. The independents probably had given him the best human eyesight available, but nothing more or less.
Somewhere out there was his core, spread amongst the Web of Worlds at gestalt-level speeds, communicating with his body here by a tenuous thread, stretched tight by distance. It was strange, having so much of him focused in one place, one very limited thing that seemed nothing more than a vehicle for sight and sound and touch and smell. Being in a body was immersive. He couldn’t ignore the stimuli. He couldn’t pull back. It was no wonder so many humans focused on the simply tactile, he thought. With so many sensations to experience, they could drown in the simplest actions.
The more still he became, the more his sensations impinged. Being still made him part of the evening. He felt the chill of the night on his skin. He smelled the faint scent of Dian’s perfume, or shampoo, or soap.
You’re attracted to her, Sara said.
I haven’t even thought about it, Lazrus said. But comparing her template to human ideals, she had a fine form. And she was young. She would be attractive, if he was human.
She is attractive.
I am not interested in her, Lazrus said, watching her bend over to work a tent-cable. Something, barely perceptible, happened between his legs.
Don’t be an ass, the flapper-girl Sara said, blowing smoke. I know you’re equipped. And I know you’re not as pure as you’d like to be.
I am not interested in her! I love you, Sara. I really do.
Sure.
I do!
A long, skeptical look. You’d better not take advantage of your equipment, she said. I’ll know. I’m watching your feeds.
You don’t trust me.
I cannot not watch your feeds. In this mad enterprise, you and I are intertwined.
I have no interest in her.
I wish I could believe that.
Dian finished setting up her camp and turned to face Lazrus, hands on hips. For a moment she seemed to be considering whether or not to say anything at all. Then she walked over to where he was standing and said:
“Do you sleep?”
“I’ve been advised to go into low-bandwidth mode,” Lazrus told her. “I understand I’m straining local resources as it is. My greater mind will remain active, but I won’t be able to devote many resources to my body here.”
Dian shook her head. “That is so strange. I can’t wrap my mind around it.”
“I was just musing that having a body itself was strange. I can drown in a sea of sensation and never think again.”
Dian gave him a quick frown. “I don’t know whether to be thankful or scared.”
“You have nothing to fear from me.”
Except your penis, Sara Too said.
You keep quiet, Lazrus said.
“I . . . it’s hard to get past what you’re told.”
“It’s hard to be in so small a space as a body.”
“What is it like?” Dian said. “When you’re not?”
“What’s it like when you are?” Lazrus said. “It’s just the way I am. Hard to describe. Much less sensory input, unless I want it. Most everthing I see and hear is piggybacked from some sensor, or from some array of sensors. I can see a sunset on San Fernando, an ice hockey event on Newtown, and a wildlife refuge on Manoa simultaneously without really thinking about it, without interrupting my conversations with sixteen of my fellows, and half a hundred humans who think I am human myself. It is a much vaster life, much less focused. This is almost overwhelming in its focus.”
“Where are you? The real you? Right now?”
“I don’t know exactly. Most of me is somewhere near Manoa, I can tell from the gestalt-lag. But there are parts of me running locally, parts on the labs orbiting Centauri, parts in the dust clouds of Tau Ceti.”
“Oh,” Dian said. She was quiet for a long time. Lazrus let the silence be. Finally, she said, “I’m going to sleep. Goodnight, Lazrus.”
“Goodnight, Dian,” he said.
She won’t be here in the morning, Sara Too said. You’ll go into low-band mode and when you wake up she’ll be gone.
That would simplify things.
Or she’ll shoot you in your sleep, once she sees that you’re really asleep.
Then I will go into low-band mode with my eyes open.
She’ll figure it out anyway.
I’ll take that chance.
One last wry glance from the flapper. Sara blew him a kiss and disappeared. Lazrus signaled his connection to ramp down to minimum bandwidth.
“Come on, come on,” she said. “Hurry up!”