by Toby Weston
The architect of the complex, which tunnelled into the bare rock, had clearly taken stylistic cues from a rich history of secret volcano bases.
Segi pushes the outer door. His legs don’t want to move. He thinks he can already hear the chittering…
Science had found that, like many computer architectures, animal brains employed two distinct mechanisms for storing data. Working memory was ephemeral; fleeting patterns of excitation, echoing through the recurrent maze of the brain’s neural wiring. Long-term memory, on the other hand, was permanent and non-volatile; the mind archiving memories as sequences of proteins written onto microtubule ‘tape’ drives. Storage capacity for long-term memory was effectively limitless. Terabytes of data could be held within each one of the brain’s hundred billion neurones.
Recollections were strings of two-dimensional data, analogous to patterns in the grooves of a record, or structures of holes in a laserdisc, or magnetic sequences on a cassette tape. However, unlike human storage standards that might be considered long-lived if they survive a single generation, the biological encoding schemas were ancient. They had evolved with the first Eucaryotes and had barely changed over the hundreds of millions of intervening years. The language of memory was common across the animal kingdom—and standardisation ensured backwards compatibility.
Fragments of memory tape can become detached, sections of microtubule can leave the brain cell where they were recorded to drift through the body. Sometimes, these snippets become incorporated into new cells. Usually, they languish as forgotten media, old movies unplayable by skin or kidney cells; but, when the cells acquiring the memory snippets end up in the ovaries, the memory clips can be passed from mother to child, dutifully copied as the embryo grows. The memories will be present in every cell, including the child’s brain, where the machinery to read and remember their stored messages is found.
Usually, these hand-me-down memories are useless, or just confusing; a modern-day demolition engineer does not benefit much from Genghis Kahn’s second-hand memories of racing a pony across the steppes with a multitude at his back. But rarely, remembrances which make the jump are useful—the terror from a fall, a fear of the snake, something lurking in the cramped depths of a cave. They confer advantage on the rememberer and so evolution spreads these memories throughout the species and beyond.
As the inner door opens, Segi’s heart steps up its drumming. Hairs stand on end and beads of sweat begin to form on his upper lip. An ancient memory is unpacking itself into his mind. Distorted images, laid down by a small, furtive insectivore fifty million years ago, recall a near fatal encounter with a huge spider. Only fragments survive; jointed rearing legs; piercing fangs; terror and pain; agonising poison and paralysis.
Phobias are post-traumatic shock, escaped and run rampant.
The Çiftlik’s projects required large quantities of high-grade nano-cloth. Segi had cast around for solutions, and eventually ended up as a beta tester for one of the Mesh’s genegineering FACs. It had seemed like a good idea at the time; exciting, but not too wacky. Multicellular synthetic life was just one step up from the synthetic bacteria already flowing through his bioreactor tubes.
Segi had been a little spooked when the suitability questionnaire had asked if he suffered from arachnophobia. He had chuckled as he glibly checked ‘NO’.
Shapes are moving within the tent, distorted shadows cast against the milky plastic.
The error had been apparent the moment Segi had gently cracked open the hijacked chicken’s egg and seen the cancerous, globular, purple ball of slime with its flexing leg buds.
The thing waiting inside its screens of translucent plastic is horrific by any human standards. It is a crime against nature from Cthulhu’s darkest pit.
If he was asked the question again, he would not hesitate to answer ‘YES’.
Single-celled organisms designed to make hydrogen, hydrocarbons, carbohydrates, or thousands of other useful molecules, were an established technology by the 2030s. Even back when the family had been living in Prussia, Anosh’s photo-bioreactor setup on their old roof had grown algae threaded through with genes for all sorts of nutritious proteins. The Çiftlik’s far more advanced setup consisted of kilometres of transparent tubes stretched on racks and looms. It was a linear ecosystem, taking in water and mostly human-derived bio-sludge at one end and converting it through a series of discrete biological reactions into useful product.
Sunlight and microbes turning shit into food and energy.
Segi’s horror lived on a side branch of the main reaction path. A succession of special bacteria and synthetic cells took the sludge and refined it into a nourishing soup, agreeable to her cut-and-paste metabolism.
According to Zaki’s logic, Shelob—his nickname for the arachnoid biological assembler—was Segi’s pet and, therefore, he was responsible for taking care of it.
Startled by the change in air, her legs spasm. She begins a nervous arrhythmic clutching at the empty air.
Segi recoiled. He took a step back and waited until the groping calmed down.
The first time you confronted the thing in plain view, it took the mind long, panicked seconds to unpack the nightmare and make sense of its flesh and stainless steel.
Spider was the first recognition. Spiders. Large spiders. Tarantulas—stuck to something fleshy, which seemed to be oozing out of a metal pipe.
After the mind had recovered from the initial horror, secondary alerts started to register. There were too many legs and the mutated assemblages seemed to be growing out of the nipples of a drooping bovine udder.
It was a horror beyond the sanity of man. The user manual was clear that nobody of a nervous disposition should ever come into contact with the organism. It must be locked in a secure place and access restricted to adequately briefed adults. The section read like a ‘Call of Cthulhu’ gamemaster’s guide, drawing attention to the dire psychological consequences of seeing the thing without adequate mental preparation. Side effects were listed: trauma, panic attacks, amnesia, vomiting, insomnia and sudden death through suicidal arachnophobia.
If, however, it was possible to put human aesthetical prejudices aside, she was a wonder. Chemical soup, brewed in the bioreactor, flowed past the udder’s rugae of columnar epithelium. The bovine-derived tissues sucked at sugary nutrients and snatched vesicles of benzene from the rich broth. The udder’s glands concentrated and tweaked the composition and squeezed the fluids through capillaries towards the creature’s more spidery bits. Arachnoid organs and spinnerets secreted threads of nano-fibre silk, while concentric circles of legs—ranging from tiny and hair-like near the spinnerets, to chunky tarantula-sized limbs further out—wove the threads into ribbons.
Segi steeled himself, then got to work. Moving quickly, avoiding the grasping limbs, he harvested the fruit of Shelob’s loom, and swapped the fully wound bobbin for a fresh empty one.
Niato and his entourage filed into Ginko. Most of his senior staff were already present: Dr Narasimhan, head of the Atlantean Institute of Sciences; Janet Merples, Cabinet Secretary; two fuzzy-faced N-Kin, representing their Klan; Blue, the Margrave Caeruleum, second in line to the throne; and Niato himself, standing for the remaining loosely affiliated sparse, but vast, web of Atlantean influence that enmeshed the globe.
Over the past several years, the Forward governments had been ratcheting up their rhetoric, screaming blue murder and demanding that Atlantis dox the terrorists and pirates that the Forwards claimed were nothing more than privateers fighting Niato’s proxy war, while Atlantis made false claims of neutrality. With these escalating tensions, security topics had come to dominate the weekly cabinet meetings. Fleet Admiral Benedict Butler, head of the Pontemon’s Navy, and Admiral Knight, head of the National Statistics Office—an innocuous title, belying his role as head of the Atlantean Intelligence Agency—were now also regular attendees.
“Good morning,” Janet Merples began. She was only in her mid-forties, but the earthy twinsets she l
iked to wear made her look like an ageing primary school teacher from an earlier century. “As you know, we have started a new quarter, so I’m going to have to bore you with figures for a few minutes. Our balance sheet is looking healthy. In fact, despite the increased burn rate from the Cat’s Cradle and other major projects, our Coin reserves have grown. Much of this is revenue from the launch of orbital MeshNodes we invested in to remedy sparse coverage. Donations are also up, and Cat’s Cradle has energised a lot of support. We propose to re-invest with increased support for the Klans and FACs on our strategic list. Any objections?”
Heads were shaken in the negative, but many of the room’s occupants did not even bother looking up.
“Okay, so I will minute that as accepted.”
“Janet, can we earmark additional support for the Open Launch Vehicle FAC? Atlantis mustn’t become the monopoly sponsor of the Mesh. It needs to stay neutral.” This came from the shorter of the two virtually indistinguishable N-Kin.
Merples looked around the room. There were no objections. “I can add that.”
“Great,” added Niato. “As the OLV tech matures, Klans will start launching their own nodes.”
Merples spent another ten minutes going through the Kingdom’s major balance sheet items, before moving onto her second item.
“Immigration has become a crucial issue. Data has the number incarcerated by the Forward Razzia now at over thirty thousand. Our geographical location means refugees are rarely able to reach our islands, but AOL is flooded with requests for asylum…”
Niato looked pointedly to Admiral Butler, who nodded slightly and coughed, breaking into Merples’ flow.
“We all feel their pain,” he said, “but if we begin granting asylum or allow our Xepplins to pick up émigrés, the Forwards will have all the pretext they need. We just can’t risk confrontation yet.”
Knight seemed to agree. “There are no good answers here. In any direct confrontation with the enemy we will be crushed.”
Merples looked pleadingly at Niato, expecting, or at least hoping, he would introduce a trace of humanity to the inescapable military logic.
“Knight’s right,” said Niato. “All of us, without exception, want to help these people. They are our Kin, but we are not a Klan. We are a country, we have territory… we are vulnerable to attack and occupation. If Atlantis falls, it is only a matter of time before the Forwards or Çin, or some unholy alliance of oppression, brings down the Mesh, shoots down the last kite and locks us back into our paddocks. Our strategy must remain unchanged.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Knight said.
“Psychologically, would it help if we do more in games?” the shorter Kinmate offered. “We can spread the rumour that we will restart awarding citizenship to the higher AOL achievement ranks. Let them feel like they are not being completely hung out to dry?”
“Will that help? Won’t it just make them more dependent without offering a real way out?” Merple asked.
“Let’s look at that,” said Niato. “Run through some scenarios. I’ll leave that with our N Kinmates.”
The Ns both nodded in the affirmative, as Merples minuted the action item.
“The conference planning is going well,” she continued. “Senior delegations from Çin, Hind and the Caliphate have accepted and, just this morning, we heard that Pritchard is considering attending.”
“N will be there,” the taller N-Kin stated.
“Excellent!” said Niato. “Cleaning up the oceans is a worthy cause, but the secondary agenda is de-escalation. The conference is an opportunity to ease some of the tension by cooperating with the Forwards in an area popular with a massive amount of grass roots support within their base. Let’s make sure we keep putting out the word that Atlantis is a peaceful haven of enlightenment.”
“I think we are all on the same page there, Your Majesty!” Merples said with conviction. “Okay, that’s all from my side.” She looked down the agenda and handed over to Knight.
“Thank you, Janet. I have just a couple of items today,” Admiral Knight said, clearing his throat and adjusting his half-moon Spex. Knight had the grey hair and corporate bearing of an executive Vice President, but had worked his whole life in the British Intelligence Services. “Mike, can you brief us on the drone?”
“Yes, Admiral,” one of his Specialists replied. He read from notes. “We completed the analysis of the drone we tracked into the jungle. It was manufactured by ANZ Defence Systems, a contractor recently acquired two years ago by the BHJ corporation—who, as we know, are one of the main civilian providers of intelligence to the Forward Razzia. We suspect that the drones are Forward assets, but this is not something we can prove. In most ways, it is a standard miniaturised autonomous reconnaissance drone. A kerosene-powered jet engine generating thrust and electricity to power its other systems. No armaments, nothing very spectacular… until we started to look at its processor...”
“Thank you, Mike,” Knight said, continuing the briefing himself. “As some of you may recall, Dr Majorana, who has been with us for the past few years working on quantum cognition, originally came from ANZ where she did similar work. Dr Narasimhan, would you like to add anything?”
The dishevelled head of the Atlantis Institute of Sciences shook his head. “Not yet, carry on.”
“The processor was bathed in cryogenic nitrogen, which had boiled and evaporated by the time we received the device,” continued Knight. “It had apparently sustained some damage at the hands of the citizen who found it...” There were several chuckles. “We think the drone had been in sleep mode when discovered. It tried to make a break for it as soon as it detected the chimps bounding up. It had managed to get airborne, but was plucked out of the air and then smashed to bits on a rock.”
“The nitrogen was a coolant,” Narasimhan said, jumping in. “I have spoken to Dr Majorana. The design is similar to her architecture and very close to our own Zeno processors. Synthetic neural columns held in cryogenic superposition...”
“Should any of this mean anything to anyone?” Admiral Butler enquired irritably, uncomfortable to be so adrift in a sea of unfamiliar jargon.
“You see, we have been building chips based on Dr Majorana’s processor architecture for one and a half years now,” Narasimhan explained. “Her ideas were first developed under contract to some government sponsors. BHJ acquired ANZ, so it’s not really a surprise that we are finding the same technology in Forward drones.”
“Long story short, Benedict,” Knight said to Admiral Butler, “the approach delivers a step up in computational capacity at a fraction of the power. It is notable that the technology is now in the field.”
“With all due respect, if I may say, it does go a little further than that!” blurted Dr Narasimhan, clearly wounded by this butchering of his institute’s work. “We are discussing the phenomenon of quantum cognition! This is qualitatively different! For the first time, we can speak of minds not processors!”
“Sorry, Doctor. I am aware of the significance of Majorana’s breakthrough and how it relates to your own work,” said Admiral Knight, trying to placate the scientist. “I was trying to provide the Admiral with the key points relevant from a military perspective.”
“Even so,” Narasimhan huffed, “if we are ignoring spiritual and ethical aspects, this architecture is enabling a countably infinite number of algorithmic steps to be performed in finite time. I would think this itself should have a military application!”
“No, you are right. Let’s take this offline, though,” Niato said, making it clear that this conversation was over. “Thanks Mike, good work.” The King smiled at the junior Specialist.
The officer stood, bowed slightly and left the meeting room. Niato paged through a stack of virtual paper with flicks of his index finger. He glanced around the room at his staff; most were using the brief pause to check updates and catch up on urgent messages.
“Anything else, Francis?” Niato asked Admiral Knight, once the S
pecialist had closed the door behind him.
“Yes, Your Highness,” Knight replied. “With regard to Razzia pressure and the asylum situation. Many see the ongoing destruction of the Mesh and attacks on the Klans as intolerable and, as we already said, because the Forward governments are accusing Atlantis of supporting terrorism, we are not able to offer overt assistance. Some of the Klans are, therefore, taking things into their own hands and pushing back. These wild cards are hitting not just the Razzia, but softer Forward targets, too. Our colleagues at N…” here, a nod from Knight to the two masked Kin, “are using their influence to try and calm things down, but we know the Forwards’ intention is to provoke us and draw us into a conflict. We need to take care, or else some Razzia atrocity will make it impossible for us to stay out. I believe the Forwards know this and will keep escalating until either the Mesh is dismantled, or until we become so pissed off that we snap and attack…”
“Pray and delay is unfortunately still our only option,” Niato said sadly. “But we are slowly getting more pieces on the board. The time will come when we can do more…”