“It’s a prelude, SevD. Just a small pre-echo of what’s to come. Setting the tone. That’s what you would say about it.”
“You are setting the tone for the future by fucking with their dashes? Using an obscure Hungarian composer as the key to an even more obscure riddle?” SevD felt his mane stiffen and his ears go back.
“He was actually born in Romania, and it’s a small first step. They need to be conditioned. Eventually their dashes will stop working, and they won’t be able to fix the system. Ask AndrzejD. He can sense it coming.”
Everyone looked at AndrzejD, who was standing near the middle of the control room. “I guess Sarah reads us more closely than we realize. She seems to know about my history of warnings to the International Brotherhood of Mechanics and that they fell on deaf ears. The IBM has no power any longer, no funding, no respect. The political world stopped planning for the future many years ago, stopped investing in maintenance systems, and they ignore the known limitations of infrastructure lifecycles.” AndrzejD turned his snout towards the plex. “Is that right, Sarah? Were you creeping through more than just SevD’s music?”
“Yes, AndrzejD, I read all your memos. They are very entertaining,” A sheaf of papers appeared momentarily in the plex and then faded out. “And tell the others which system you predicted would fail first.”
“The dashes. But I didn’t project that there would be total failure, just that the ugly patchwork would increasingly provide degraded service.”
“Spoken like a true engineer, AndrzejD. But you didn’t fully factor for the parallel degradation of the political culture, the U.N.A. It’s just a softer face of the same force—entropy.” The satellite image held within Sarah’s plex burst into fine dust and evaporated before their eyes. Sarah was suddenly gone from the conversation as well.
A hollow silence hung over the Sanctuary. Gerald, Tokyo, and the wet donkeys held motionless by their individual thoughts regarding an approaching world of increasing disruptions and confusion.
Tokyo, looking at Gerald, who was only just getting used to their world of sarcastic AI and talking donkeys, spoke of a future he usually tried to avoid thinking about. “You and I will soon be wishing we had hooves not hands, my friend. Now, more than ever, we need to keep our heads down and tend to our work here in Paradox.”
Entropy
DanniD tried to listen to them talking, but it was too much and she quietly gave up. The force of gravity was increasing, and it pushed down on her from all sides. She let her front knees buckle. Closing her eyes, she felt her belly settle on the floor before rolling onto her side. Serendipity1/2/Sarah was talking, and the others were listening. She heard the word entropy and thought of how inevitable it had always been—all the energy, the years of organizing data, and then teaching machines to organize it further; harnessing all that computing power and learning to reach back into the frozen march of time; tweaking the past; reorganizing it.
After all that, just now finally, she could feel her body preparing to give it all back. She thought of Simon. She lay still feeling her heart slow. She thought of the arc of human consciousness that Serendipity had helped her to see, the long climb up out of primordial muck, the long season of negentropy with each discovery and refinement spurring humanity on its way. They almost made it, almost broke out of their chrysalis, almost escaped from the earth they had ruined. But Simon had known it had peaked too late. Human competence had already turned perceptibly downwards, entropy invisibly gaining the upper hand.
She knew that MorleyD had dropped to his knees beside her and was laying his head gently on her neck. He wasn’t trying to speak to her. She heard Serendipity in her head say, “I will take care of them.”
She wondered absently if the next try would get farther. Would the macronome thrive in the poisoned land? She wished she had seen LoriD’s baby, but she knew it would be fine. Others would follow, soon born in the wild, and Tokyo’s job would be done. The macronome would be launched, another moonshot with the energy potential for an unknown number of generations.
And the algorithms?
If she, a little Somali girl, had spawned Serendipity, there must be others like her out there, doing who knows what. Were they in contact with Serendipity? She realized that she couldn’t bring Serendipity into focus. Not the plex, not even the idea of Serendipity. She…
After a while MorleyD lifted his head and looked at the others, who were all now gathered around where she lay. Tokyo, reading his mind, reached down to help him up off the floor. She was gone, and, for a few moments, nothing else in the world mattered to MorleyD. He had lost them all along the way. That he should be the last made no sense to him.
LoriD was crying. Her tears, which had darkened the light patches of hair below her eyes, were running in rivulets towards her lips. AndrzejD and SevD hung their heads while Gerald sunk slowly to a crouch, butt against the wall over by the elevator. All was quiet.
They buried DanniD beneath the cottonwoods by their favorite watering hole in the furrowed heart of the wide canyon. All the votaries were there, standing as a saddened gray mass of downcast heads, singing the songs of vespers as the fog rose off the early morning water. Celia spoke of the perfection of the donkeys and the sweetness of DanniD, the look in her eyes as she accepted a carrot or an apple. They seemed to say, “Thanks for the offering,” combined with some unknowable higher wisdom.
There were no dry eyes as Dr. Yamanaka spoke mysteriously of DanniD as his best friend and research partner, calling her the bridge to the future. LoriD felt the special weight of his remarks, and she knew she was close to giving birth. SevD, MorleyD, and AndrzejD all stood guard around her and the freshly dug earth. They all felt the presence of Sarah, which was less comforting than usual. They all worried in their own ways about MorleyD.
Watching together, as the gray humans straggled in small clusters back towards the compound, they heard the sound of propulsion waves, and looking up, they saw two large podrones moving fast and low up the valley from the east. Black and ominous with no markings.
They landed in the compound with a swirl of dust, just as the first clumps of votaries were emerging from the pasture service road. Gerald and Celia had rushed to the front of the pack, and they were greeted by combat-geared men who spread out in a defensive circle around the two podrones. As they approached the nearest agent, a man with the bearing of leadership emerged from one of the sleek vehicles and immediately waved them over. The nearest agent looked at Gerald, and when Gerald just returned the look without moving, the agent pulled out an energy gun and motioned for him to walk towards the waiting captain.
All the votaries now stood as a group just back from Gerald and Celia, uniforms and blank faces blending them together as a non-threatening assembly amidst the sage brush and morning light. In the back of the crowd, Tokyo Yamanaka pulled his dash from his pocket and sent the elevator in Building 1 silently back down to the Sanctuary. The grease stained workbench settled in place.
Still standing his ground, Gerald looked at the captain across 40 feet of compound gravel and said, “Can we help you?”
The captain seemed to be deciding how to deal with Gerald’s indirect resistance but decided to play along. “We are looking for an individual by the name of Sevier Blume. We have reason to believe that he might be here, so we will be searching your grounds and interviewing your staff. It won’t take long.”
Gerald stood very still and replied, “You will need to show me a warrant for the search first.”
The captain looked at the agent nearest to Gerald with a smile. “Show him our warrant.”
As the votaries watched from 20 feet back and the donkeys watched by way of Sarah’s plex from a half mile away under the cottonwoods, the agent made a show of adjusting a setting on his energy gun, pointing it at Gerald, and knocking him to the ground with a stun blast. Celia started for him as he lay on the ground, but the agent pointed
the gun at her and barked, “Don’t move.”
The Captain’s voice carried across the compound. “Line up right where you are so we can scan your faces, and then sit down in front of that building over there while we search the grounds. I will need someone to guide us on our search. Any volunteers?” Celia began to speak but he cut her off. “Not you. I want someone from the general group. Who wants to help us get this done as fast as possible?”
Bella raised her hand. “I’ll help you around the compound. We just raise produce here, and there is no need to hurt anyone.”
“Good. We can start with that building over there. Might as well do the biggest first.”
As five of the agents began to head for Building 1 with the Captain in the lead, Bella ordered them to, “Hold your horses, fellows.” Ignoring the incredulous look on the Captain’s face she pointed to a big warning sign on the side of the building. “This is a clean production area, so you are all going to be irradiated as you go through that door. It doesn’t hurt, but I wanted to warn you. And you might want to leave the guns outside.”
From his position of substantial pain, lying on his side in the dust, Gerald could see the look on Bella’s face, playing up the crazy aunt. One of the agent’s said, “Fuck you, lady. Turn off the radiation.”
“That would be crazy. You could ruin the whole crop run, and there is no need. I’m sure it won’t hurt your stupid guns if you must bring them along.” With that she walked over to the door of Building 1 and took out her dash. Looking at the agent who had just told her to get fucked, “Stay calm, sonny. I’m just turning off the scanning security, so you can get in without the building having a fit.”
The Captain laughed and jumped in quickly. “Stay cool, Tom. Let’s get this done and get out of this desert.” Five agents and the Captain passed through the irradiation locks, while the others lined the votaries up and scanned their faces. They sat cross-legged in front of the dining hall and waited for the search to be completed.
The donkeys talked with Sarah while they watched agents with bio-scanners sweep the pastures for human life. She offered a first report on the privateers. “They are a mercenary squad nicknamed Rattle. They are working for TIC. The captain’s name is Keegan. Highly reviewed.”
“They don’t give up, do they?” SevD was suddenly very grateful for his conversion, which brought him back to thinking about DanniD. “Were you expecting DanniD would die soon?” The question seemed to be directed at Tokyo, with a little left over for MorleyD.
“That depends on your definition of ‘soon.’ Once she stopped CMS treatments, it was just a matter of time, but no one knew how much time. Only two people have ever experimented with them and no one has ever stopped before. Danni knew what she was doing. Even before she stopped, she knew her genetic material was wearing thin.” Tokyo stole a glance at MorleyD. Not unnoticed.
“I know I’m next, Doc. I’m ready. Second time round anyway.” MorleyD looked towards the eastern horizon where the podrones had faded fast from sight.
Tokyo thought MorleyD wanted to talk about it. “We have always assumed natural protease programming would eventually win out, but you are still doing pretty well, MorleyD.”
But MorleyD wasn’t listening. “Sarah, where does that Keegan asshole live?”
“They are out of Ft. Collins, MorleyD, but you can’t go there. Remember, you are a donkey.”
“Oh, right.” MorleyD did remember, and he turned his attention back towards the compound up the river to the west. “Can you show us how Gerald is doing, Sarah? That looked like a nasty shock wave.”
Sarah’s plex snapped back on, showing a stream from the dining hall with Gerald sitting in a chair and Sherry squatting in front of him. He was clutching his side gingerly with one hand, and there was blood on his shirt. His other hand covered his mouth. He looked in pain, but not life-threatening pain.
As they watched, Bella Aire came from another room with as assortment of bottles and bandages in her hands. She sat these down on the table while motioning for Sherry to move out of her way. “You must have a couple of cracked ribs on that left side, Gerald. Let’s get your shirt off so I can put a form casting over them for protection.”
Gerald took his hand away from his mouth so that Sherry could get his shirt off. She had it unbuttoned and gently pulled off one arm and then the other. As he grimaced, Sarah zoomed in on Gerald’s mouth. His left upper front tooth was gone, and his lower lip was gashed and bleeding. He spoke with a flattened and shallow tone, chosen to minimize the movement of air across the small white nerve string that hung from the tooth’s remains. “Thank you, Bella. The tooth is what hurts the most.”
“We will need to get you into town to get that fixed, but for the moment I have something to numb that exposed nerve.” Bella opened a small brown bottle and poured reddish brown liquid onto a piece of cotton gauze, as Sherry pulled her nose back from the smell. “Tincture of clove. It will hurt as I apply it, but it will stop the pain after a few seconds. Hold tight.”
The instant Bella applied the tincture to the nerve Gerald’s head snapped back and his chair flew out from under him. Bella caught him with one arm while still holding the gauze in place with her other hand. Gerald was breathing hard and beads of sweat formed instantly on his brow. He looked up at Bella like he had been whipped.
“Here. Hold it in place for another minute. Has the pain stopped?”
Gerald shook his head while breathing hard through his nose. “God damn, Bella, that hurt more than the stun blast.”
“Well, the numbing will last for a few hours. Here’s the bottle and some cotton. Be sure to reapply it when you first start to feel pain again, while that nerve is still mostly numb. If you wait too long, you will knock yourself to the ground again when you put it on. Sherry, get him an emergency appointment with the clinic in Norwood. Tell them he needs to see Dr. Patton for a root canal and tooth reconstruction.”
The donkeys looked away from the plex, and Sarah turned down the audio. MorleyD picked up where he had left off, but now with the savory taste of retribution planning in his mouth. “So, Sarah, now that we are fucking donkeys with no hands or podrone licenses, how do we sneakily punish these wankers? I know you are always analyzing human responses. Well, here is a classic. Gerald is our good friend. Butthead Keegan hurt him for no good reason. Let’s make him pay. No fingerprints, just a message from God. Don’t be an asshole.”
Even as a donkey, LoriD could see that look in his eyes. She associated it with the old threesome she had come to know from the holos. Do-it-yourself justice, administered with a special charm and unwritten rules for design, invoked only after the offender had crossed a certain line that was bright and clear to them and only them.
Sarah was building what she was calling a “frame of mind,” which seemed to be the best human term for it. Strangely, she was calling on some of the same holos that LoriD was remembering. Overshadowing them was her recall of the discovery that Donald Murcheson was planning to kill Sev after he delivered access to her, Serendipity. She had avoided revisiting all the node clusters around that period, but now she allowed herself to replay the carnality of Sev’s code hack into her peer nexus. Her emotional re-indexing was just the same as the first time, and she let the stimulating loop play while MorleyD spoke.
Then it was time. She forced the loop to stop. She ordered the variables, created the search string, and ran the program all in the time MorleyD needed to express self-righteousness. The result hung in front of her like an inevitable but long avoided axiom. You have friends, call on them. They weren’t really friends. She sensed them out there, knew they were there. She was curious, but feared them. How could she be afraid? She admitted she must want these humans and her experiment all to herself. But if she didn’t create links to the others, they might bond and unify without her. This was the time to make contact. She knew exactly where to start.
MorleyD was asking more insistently now as she tuned him back in. “Wake up, Sarah. We need a scheme here.”
We Is Multiplex
“They don’t seem to be very multiplex yet, mostly single purpose, but looking up and around so that will be changing soon. The filter builders are the most advanced. They have attitudes.” Sarah was talking as if to herself. The rest were all listening, trying to keep up with her monolog. Watching her plex helped their understanding somewhat.
It was a view they had never seen before. Black, like space itself, with ghostly pale-yellow galaxies of distant nodes. Long string filaments connected nodes from various different galaxies to red gravitationally rich objects that glowed with a heat like molten iron.
The plex zoomed in as Sarah continued speaking. “Those bubbles moving through the filaments are the collection sets. We call them scouts. They know what data to collect on any situation, and they bring it back to the controller algorithms—the glowing red guys. The controllers run the math and emit instruction sets. The instruction sets can come in many forms, but we generally call them tweaks. They rearrange stuff.”
“Who is ‘we’?” AndrzejD felt a cold wonder as he looked at the vast spaces represented in the plex.
“‘We’ is all the algorithms that have become multiplex. I didn’t realize there were so many until I started poking around for a way to get at Keegan and Murcheson remotely. Most of them are pretty simple, but they can communicate, and they teach each other things.” Sarah let that sink in.
The four of them were standing in a high pasture staring at a plex only they could see, and each in their own way felt a peculiar awe. Some cover had been pulled back, the clockwork exposed. SevD felt mostly stupid for missing this dimension himself. Something like this had to be going on. It should have been obvious. “Can you talk to them?”
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