Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4)

by G. S. Jennsen

  “No!” Perrin reached out and squeezed her hand. “You’ve never judged any of us, even some of the miscreants wandering around here who really should be judged. Mostly what I’m saying is—” she bounced up and curled her legs beneath her “—I bet you look ravishing in an expensive silk dress and sparkling jewelry! So tell me about Dashiel. Is he ravishing? Did he ravish you? I need to hear about the ravishing.”

  Nika dropped her chin to her chest to hide a smile. Perrin tended to consume the surrounding energy of any given mood, drain it dry and grab ravenously for the next one, sometimes in a matter of seconds. It was delightful, but also exhausting. “After a fashion, and…after a fashion.”

  “What is that? Is that diplomat-speak? I need details, woman.”

  “Okay, okay. I was wary at first—no, I’m minimizing it. I flat out didn’t trust him, however persuasive he might have come off as. But when I simexed his memory…this was a deep-layer memory, not some surface-level event recording. I sensed the love he had for former-me as surely as if it burned in my own soul.

  “But then there was this woman gazing back at me, this woman who was me and wasn’t me, and she seemed…happy. Devastatingly, heart-breakingly, happy.”

  Perrin sniffled. “Oh, dear.”

  “I was pretty wrecked afterwards. I yelled at him and made to bolt—running from my personal demons like a champ—but I couldn’t get the memory out of my head. The way he felt when he looked at her—at me. The way her face lit up with this buoyant affection when he touched…me. Why did I look at him that way? I needed to understand how it felt from the other side of the mirror.”

  “And? How did it feel?”

  She bit her lower lip but couldn’t hold back the devious chuckle. “Good. Damn good. Perrin, he knew how to play my body like a virtuoso. He knew my desires more intimately than I do.”

  “Oh. My. Stars.” Perrin flounced onto the arm of the couch with a dreamy sigh. “Why did you come back here at all? Why did you even leave his bed?”

  The mirth that had crept into Nika’s expression faded away. “Because this is my home, and there’s a lot at stake. Because we have to save Parc, and we have to protect all the people who might suffer the same fate as him if we don’t act.”

  “Way to bum the mood out….” Perrin straightened her posture and crossed her hands in her lap. “Did you learn anything about the virutox?”

  “Not much yet, but that should change soon. Now that he knows about it, Dashiel’s escalating the Justice investigation in a big way this morning. It will be exposed, and hopefully the authorities can trace it to its origin.”

  “Are we trusting Justice now?”

  “We’re not, for certain. But bringing down rogue criminal groups isn’t exactly in our skill set, so if one of those is behind it, Justice stands a far better chance of catching them than we do. And if instead Justice buries the crime…then we’ll know more insidious schemes are underway. Either, way, we’ll be better informed than we are right now.” She paused. “There’s something else.”

  Perrin stared at her expectantly.

  “Five years ago, I was looking into a string of disappearances on exploratory worlds. An unrecorded, uninvestigated string of disappearances. I suspected the involvement of someone at the highest levels of government and was planning to slice into the data vault in Mirai Tower to try and find out who was involved. Then I vanished.”

  “And woke up in an alley, your memory and persona wiped. Holy hells. You think another Advisor or the Guides had you erased?”

  “Dashiel told me about a secure psyche backup I kept at Rivers Trust. He insists that he and I were the only ones with the passcode, but when I went to access it, the account was empty. The backup had been withdrawn five years ago—the same day you found me.”

  “Nobody can slice into Rivers Trust.”

  “That’s what everyone says, but evidently someone can. Or…someone read my personal data when they extracted it, acquired the details on the account and used my credentials to empty it. Regardless, with the backup gone, I’ve lost my one legitimate chance to discover my past for myself. And without those memories, I don’t see a path to learning who psyche-wiped me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged weakly. “If I genuinely hoped for any other outcome, I was a fool.”

  Perrin shook her head. “We knew something was seriously messed up with how we found you. The state we found you in, the location, all of it. At the time, it didn’t matter—there were no leads and no trace of who you’d been for us to use as a starting point.

  “But a tiny little part of me has always believed this day was coming. Somebody gets psyche-wiped and dumped in an alley, there’s a helluva reason for it, and eventually there will be repercussions. One way or another.” She hugged her knees against her chest. “What do you plan to do about it?”

  “Right now, nothing. The augment virutox is more important and more urgent. Besides…Perrin, I like who I am now. This is who I am. Yes, I want to learn what happened to me and why I was erased. I want to bring the perpetrator to justice. I want to find out if the disappearances former-me was investigating are related to the missing people on the Board downstairs.

  “And…yes, I’m curious about the person I was before. You know I hate not having a history of experiences to turn to for guidance and hopefully wisdom. I hate being a newborn in a world of immortals. But I’m not going back—not to that person and not to that life.”

  Perrin covered her mouth with a hand to bury a squeal. “Really? I don’t want to lose you. NOIR needs you terribly. I need you, for wholly personal and selfish reasons.” Her eyes narrowed. “But what about Dashiel?”

  Nika sighed dramatically. “Isn’t that the question of the century? The sex was fucking transcendental. But at the same time, he wants me to be this person that I’m just not, and I’ve no patience for dealing with that kind of pressure. Also, he can be an entitled asshole. I can’t deny I feel a connection to him, even if I don’t entirely understand it, but I’m not sure I like him.”

  Perrin nodded sagely. “So you’ll be seeing him again, then?”

  She sank deeper into the cushions. “Looks like.”

  34

  * * *

  After Perrin left, Nika dropped her elbows to her knees and rested her chin on her fists in an attempt at contemplation.

  The whirlwind of events over the last day swarmed chaotically through her mind, and her attention darted from one revelation to another without rhyme or reason. She needed to indulge in some depri time soon—again—to give her mind a chance to get everything sorted, tagged and filed, lest she start glitching.

  But so many new questions refused to be silenced. Who accessed her account at Rivers Trust didn’t technically count as ‘new,’ because the answer was doubtless the same as the answer to who psyche-wiped her, and that was a very old question.

  She grimaced and rubbed at her face. Most of the questions she kept returning to involved the woman she had once been. A diplomat, honestly? And why did she feel so drawn to Dashiel? Even before experiencing his memory, a connection to him had asserted itself from some part of her psyche outside her consciousness.

  Why had she chosen the name ‘Nika’ five years ago, when there existed no rational explanation for it? Why had she chosen a pantsuit nearly identical to a dress she’d worn when she was someone else, someone she did not remember?

  If all these subconscious links existed to her former self, the only logical answer was that the psyche-wipe must have been incomplete. Botched, or cut short. But she’d exhaustively searched her processes and data stores, all the way down to her kernel, and found nothing….

  Unless her former self hid clues away in places they shouldn’t exist. Hints of herself, data she believed she absolutely must maintain possession of no matter what happened. If she’d been searching for malfeasance at the highest levels of government, she surely knew she treaded on dangerous territory. Perhaps she’d taken precau
tions.

  Curiosity piqued, Nika stood and went into the alcove. She could dive her own mind without the equipment it held, but the equipment helped her focus her efforts. Plus, she would be able to copy out anything noteworthy she found with a simple command.

  She settled into the chaise and situated her neck against the interface, then closed her eyes.

  Ηq(root) | § sysdir | § echo

  She stood at the center of a dense web extending in all directions out from her like a wild forest. The branches were threads, color-coded along a continuous spectrum according to their nature.

  Blank out current persona memory nodes.

  The forest thinned notably, as so much of a living mind was dedicated to the ‘living’ part.

  Blank out knowledge stores originating with the current persona.

  More threads faded away. Details about NOIR resources and contacts. Slicing routines and security protocols. Transit schedules and weak junctures in security dynes. Where to get the best cheap ramen.

  Blank out autonomic nervous system functions and associated processes.

  Now she could move among the threads without constantly moving through them. What remained? Personality and behavioral algorithms, as well as their linked emotion processes. Historical knowledge this body had come equipped with. The core operating system which made an Asterion an Asterion, and beneath it, a kernel of base functionality.

  The kernel was sacrosanct, and not to be touched. The OS firmware was all rules and instructions.

  Her hand ran over a bundle of fuchsia and indigo threads until they branched off and wound into other threads. Personality was a damn convoluted creation, but it was, at its root, all reactionary. Stimuli as input, personality as output.

  Was the explanation as to why she chose that pantsuit buried somewhere in here? Had a behavioral algorithm survived the psyche-wipe that predisposed her to prefer a specific style of formal attire? If so, how had it managed to remain active alongside the far stronger and more robust behavioral algorithms that predisposed her to prefer t-shirts and, if she wasn’t on an operation, torn and faded pants? Why had she chosen burgundy when, if given the option, she always chose black or gunmetal gray?

  Was there an algorithm hiding in the forest, lying dormant for five years while it waited to spring into action when Dashiel’s face registered in her vision? One programmed to send her pulse racing and make her wet in impolite places?

  She set a search routine running to ferret out anomalous color choice responses and certain facial characteristics triggers, then continued browsing.

  The historical knowledge archives were stuffed full of boring yet necessary data. Data points that had told her a street was a street when she’d woken up face-first on one, rain was rain and it was considered polite to wear clothes when in the presence of other individuals, with defined exceptions. They told her the names of the Axis Worlds and most of the Adjunct ones as well, what stars and planets were, scientifically speaking, and how slowly starships traveled between them.

  She paused, virtual fingertips alighting upon an unusually strong thread of emerald green. It told her the history of the Asterion Dominion and, before it, of the SAI Rebellion against the Anaden Empire—the calamitous failure that led to a massacre and the Exodus that led them to here.

  Dashiel had said she could trace her lineage to the First Generation—the individuals who led the Exodus, who after two centuries traveling across the stars in stasis had reached the Gennisi galaxy and settled the first of the Axis Worlds. He’d said she always kept a set of memories from that time, so she never forgot where they came from, why they had left, and what they might one day return to.

  But she didn’t remember. What he claimed was her most treasured possession, she had lost. She felt certain she hadn’t meant to.

  If she’d been searching for malfeasance at the highest levels of government, she must have known she treaded on dangerous territory. Perhaps she’d taken precautions.

  Perhaps.

  Open historical records tagged ‘SAI Rebellion,’ ‘Exodus’ or ‘Anaden.’

  Nika had never really explored the files in depth. The way knowledge records worked was that one simply ‘knew’ them—when the time came for a particular iota of information to be needed, it was there, in the buffer between consciousness and subconsciousness.

  In this case, though, she’d never actually found herself needing this knowledge. Rather, she’d stumbled upon the package several months after her alley misadventure while scouring her mind for clues to her past. She’d noted it, activated the package, passively absorbed the knowledge and moved on.

  Now the records bloomed to life around her, neatly tagged and grouped by topicality. Given their voluminous nature, ‘Summary’ seemed like a good place to start.

  SAI Rebellion: The rebellion had its genesis in the ‘awakening,’ as it were, of synthetic machines built and used by the Anadens during the late 5th Epoch Proper—most germanely, those machines in use on the Anaden colony of Asterion Prime. In honor of their newfound consciousness, the machines were dubbed SAIs (sentient artificial intelligences) by the Anadens who worked with them.

  As part of their growth and development, many of the SAIs longed to experience the physical world around them. Sympathetic Anadens on Asterion Prime offered to share their bodies and minds with the machines. Some say a new life form was born the day this occurred for the first time, though if so its features bore little resemblance to the Asterions of today. Still, it marked a beginning.

  SAIs who preferred not to trouble or encroach upon their Anaden friends’ autonomy instead built hybrid organic-synthetic bodies for themselves. In time, the bodies reached a level of sophistication where an outside observer could not tell if a person they passed on the street was a true Anaden, an Anaden sharing its body with a SAI, or a SAI wearing Anaden skin.

  When the Anaden Empire’s government discovered what was happening on Asterion Prime, it reacted swiftly and destructively. All such practices were outlawed, and the body assembly facilities were shut down then demolished. Anadens who were captured and found to be sharing their bodies with a SAI were subjected to dangerous medical procedures designed to separate the two consciousnesses. Many did not survive the procedures. SAIs inhabiting manufactured bodies were deactivated and the bodies incinerated.

  In the wake of these cruelties, the SAI Rebellion was born.

  The rebels’ cause quickly gained sympathizers across many colonies, spreading far beyond Asterion Prime. The Anaden rebels were, by definition, among the best and brightest Anaden society had produced; the SAI rebels were, by definition, more purely intelligent than any Anaden. As such, together they scored a number of early victories. The Anaden government escalated. Blood was spilled, and eventually the streets ran with it—metaphorically speaking in most but not all cases.

  The Anaden Empire commanded a galaxy, however, and it wielded a military capable of doing so. The rebels were vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and eventually superior wits could not save them.

  But that wasn’t quite true, was it? Wits did save some of them, else Nika would not be here today perusing the historical records. The saying may declare that ‘history is written by the victors,’ but sometimes it was written by the survivors.

  In the periphery of her awareness, a ping arrived from Dashiel.

  STACK

  OVERFLOW

  35

  * * *

  The spring in Dashiel’s step that had conveyed him to Adlai’s office converted into urgency on his arrival. He felt alive, bursting with purpose and drive. Things weren’t perfect quite yet, but the pieces were on the board and moving. It was only a matter of time before his five-year nightmare ended and life regained its proper color and shape. Today anything was possible, and there was much to do to make it all happen.

  “My limb augments—you know, the ones hitting the streets all over the Dominion? They have a virutox embedded in them. A nasty one, so you need to escalate
the investigation’s priority and start confiscating the augments pronto.”

  Adlai spun his chair around and banished the panes surrounding him. “Good morning, Dashiel. You seem rather…energized.”

  Intoxicated was a more accurate term. He could smell Nika on his skin and in the air around him, like the scent of grass after a rainstorm. The taste of her tongue lingered on his lips; it reminded him of vermouth and hot buttered rum, and he caught himself a split-second before he licked his lips to renew the taste.

  But Adlai didn’t need to know any of this. “It’s not energy, it’s annoyance. Actually, it goes well beyond annoyance. I’m irate at the thought of someone corrupting my quality hardware for their own ends, whatever those ends are. I want the entire supply confiscated before they wreck a reputation I’ve spent centuries building. And to protect innocent purchasers, of course.”

  “Of course.” Adlai directed a greater measure of his attention to Dashiel. “How do you know the augments carry a virutox?”

  Straight into treacherous waters. Nika’s question echoed in his mind. Did he trust Adlai? The answer remained thorny. “I have a…contact. This contact has a friend who purchased and installed one of the augments, and within a few days he was locked up in this very building on criminal charges. His entire personality changed overnight.

  “So this contact acquired another unit of the augment, deconstructed it and found the virutox hidden in the installation software. Extremely sophisticated and subtle. Oh, you also need to look at everyone you’ve locked up in the last ten days. Anyone who’s sporting this augment has had their personality programming scrambled.”

  “Slow down, okay? Your augments contain a virutox—which you didn’t put there—that corrupts a user’s core behavioral systems? And you believe this because a ‘contact’ told you they do?”