Avalon Red

by Mark New

  ‘See anything interesting?’ she asked sweetly.

  Peters had been murdered. Brilliantly, actually. The reason I knew that was because I had used the very same method myself.

  Oh, the verdict was understandably misadventure but it was the circumstances that gave it away. Peters had lived on the outskirts of Marrakesh in a top quality apartment block. Moroccan days are hot but the nights can be cold so each apartment was furnished with a domestic AI that regulated all the heating and air-conditioning requirements as well as doing things like re-ordering groceries and household items as directed by the occupier. The apartment could be sealed by the AI to facilitate quicker warming or cooling or for personal security. Most people wouldn’t bother with the function as the heating and cooling systems weren’t much more efficient on full seal. After all, dwellings are already designed to be watertight (though not airtight) so the difference in temperature on seal was negligible and you would only need the security facility if there was a local issue with crime or instability. Morocco was, if one of my old comrades was to be believed, rather a nice country in which to live these days so not exactly one of the world’s trouble spots. To seal the apartment the AI merely had to activate additional panels that dropped into the floor and secured themselves into the receptors below floor level. It turned the apartment into one big panic room. Like I said, nobody would really bother with it in the block. Unfortunately, Peters was South African, from Pretoria, and had grown up during the war. Consequently, because of his upbringing in such turmoil, the apartment AI had been instructed habitually to seal the unit every night when Peters was in residence. This was confirmed by the block AI that oversaw the whole complex when it was deeply interrogated after the death. Being sealed in would generally not be a problem, of course, as it was hardly likely that the occupant would run out of oxygen overnight. Sadly for Mr Peters, on the fateful night the heater malfunctioned and poured carbon monoxide into the apartment for several hours. The automated alarm system in the apartment was apparently offline and the apartment AI was unable to account for the failure the next day. The block AI had no way to know what was going on until the police overrode the seals the next morning when the local Argonaut office reported that he hadn’t shown up for work and they couldn’t contact him. Forensic examination of the apartment AI and systems showed a meltdown in some circuits which may have led to the alarm failure. Officialdom shrugged and put it down to one of those unfortunate things. Deaths by carbon monoxide poisoning were not unheard of even in mid-twenty-first century housing though the numbers were dwindling as more and more sophisticated AIs came on the market. Mr Peters, the inquest concluded, was just unlucky.

  Becky was still looking at me.

  ‘Do you know the model type of the apartment AI?’ I asked, ‘It isn’t in the summary.’

  She shuffled the papers on her lap and produced a sheaf of about a dozen pages which she sifted with both hands while balancing the remainder of the file on her knees.

  ‘Yes, it’s here. It was...’ she scanned the page ‘...a Basking Seventeen, Single Unit AI.’

  I nodded. Same model I’d been able to corrupt myself. It isn’t easy but the base models like this can take direct communications so you can bypass the block AI which has higher level functions. Then if you have the right skills to use an exploit bot you can disengage the safety protocols and then reprogram the heating system to overload. The AI tries to respond but the strain burns out the control board. That was the electronic wreckage found by the authorities. The result was a dead target and little useful evidence. Just make sure you don’t leave a communication trace. Clearly, someone had done a professional job.

  I took another long drink and thought to myself that this was beginning to be interesting. Becky had clearly flagged this up as a possible murder because she had knowledge of what I did in a previous life. So what else led her to the startling conclusion that we were all doomed?

  ‘OK,’ I said ‘I concede that, given what we know is possible, Peters the TAGman was murdered. I’m intrigued as to how this leads to the apocalypse.’

  Becky had put the papers back in the file and took the summary from me to add to the pile. She put the file down on the floor and picked up her soda.

  ‘Given your concession, would you be prepared to accept that other deaths which the various local authorities didn’t consider suspicious were actually murders too?’ She waved at the pile of files as she lifted the soda bottle to her mouth and took a swig. ‘I’ve brought the files and I can go through them one-by-one if you like but it’s going to be easier if we take it as read for now. If you disagree with my overall conclusion we can always re-visit them.’

  She had gone to some trouble to detail the demise of Peters for me and I didn’t think there would be any harm in moving the story along. To tell the truth, I was becoming a little uncomfortable with her sitting so casually in my home looking hardly any older than when we were together. It was a bit too much like the good times. I shouldn’t forget why she left me. It was ironic that the reason she wanted to hire me was possibly the same reason for which she left me in the first place.

  ‘Carry on,’ I told her.

  ‘This is the way the world ends,’ she said, quoting Eliot, ‘not with a bang but a whimper.’

  Chapter Four

  Becky put the file down on the pile beside her. Both she and George seemed convinced of the seriousness of the situation and she had further ratcheted up the tension with tales of impending doom which she claimed not to have entirely shared with the Latimers. It would be a mistake to think that she was the same person I knew more than a decade ago, even though she looked the same thanks to the rejuv. Still, the Becky I had known wasn’t given to flights of fancy and the fact that she held a senior position at Argonaut suggested that she hadn’t changed much. She had persuaded me that Peters met his end as a result of foul play so it would be reasonable to assume that the other cases would bear scrutiny. I couldn’t see where this was leading but despite the discomfort of her presence it probably wasn’t going to kill me to hear her out. Famous last words, I thought wryly.

  ‘Finished your soda?’

  ‘I’m fine. By all means drink more beer.’ Actually, I had a little left in the bottle. I was starting to think that this story was one I probably ought to hear while sober.

  ‘I’m good. So what happened next?’

  The walls reverted to my favourite off-white as I was speaking and the AI reported in.

  ‘Trace completed,’ it said in the familiar monotone ‘Bot originated in Bucharest, Romania. Flash attack was successful. GPS co-ordinates have been sent anonymously to UNTEA.’

  No surprise there. Eastern Europe was the location of choice for many nefarious activities. If you were both bad enough and rich enough and could stay away from the infected areas, the policing was sketchy at most.

  Once upon a time, when I was but a baby, there were constantly large numbers of probing attacks on what was then a very primitive version of Online. In those days it was known as the world wide web and was accessed from a personal computer. It was a far cry from the vir-interactive Online of the 50s. The various viruses, trojans and general malware of those days had dwindled as the TAG system came into being. What had been a to-and-fro battle between security companies and the creators of the malware had tipped in favour of the good guys - at least for now. The result was that attacks on the system grew fewer but more sophisticated. The bot I had traced was no doubt a third or fourth generation model. Just as the everyday AIs running everything from infrastructure to this house were designed by previous generation AIs so the criminals tried to emulate the progress by having new mal-bots built by their predecessors. They were losing the

  war. The house AI had appended a flash program to the trace. The bot had no doubt visited a few thousand locations before returning with its findings to its handlers. It would have amassed details of weak points or soft targets Online which might lead to lucrative returns if followe
d up. The flash program piggy-backed its communication interface. As soon as the bot had returned to report, the flash would have destroyed all information on the servers to which it re-attached and taken out the bot as well. Simple, untraceable, and fatal. Depending on how frail the network had been, it might even have spilled over into a real life firestorm. I had once inadvertently burned down an entire warehouse complex in Colombia whilst taking out a major drug dealer’s support network servers. His Majesty’s Government had spent several months apologising to the Colombian President for my actions whilst quietly giving my unit a commendation.

  Becky was looking at me open-mouthed. ‘You gave your house AI a counterstrike capability??’

  ‘The previous occupant did,’ I lied. ‘I just use it when it seems appropriate.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Just out of interest; how many AIs in the Cook Islands can match that?’

  ‘The one on your little boat, I expect.’ That brought a thoughtful nod.

  ‘So it would be fair to say that you are still what we might term mission capable?’

  ‘Defensive posture only,’ I clarified. ‘I like it here and I intend to live here for a long time. Anyone who wants to mess it up for me will get a surprise.’

  ‘Still, that’s some pretty heavy shit you’re packing, though. Does anyone here know the extent of your... expertise?’

  ‘I hope not.’ To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure. Most people knew I was a cyber-operative in the war and fewer knew it was in special forces. I had no idea if anyone had put two and two together. People have a tendency to assume that the authorities on an island paradise are just mellow and relaxed all the time but it simply isn’t true. The Cook Islands were now a valuable offshore banking hub for governments and major corporations, amongst other clients. I’d seen some of the security infrastructure keeping it together and it was solid. Probably not enough to keep me out but I was exceptional. It was enough to see off the boys from Bucharest for sure and I knew that the local bank security teams took their jobs seriously. I’d got drunk with a good number of them. Oh, and let’s not speculate on what Frisque could achieve if she thought her bar profits might be hit. It was possible - but still unlikely - that someone high up in the Islands’ government had some idea of what mayhem I was capable of causing.

  Becky glanced upwards at the AI interface located on the ceiling. ‘Now that we’ve saved the free world, shall I carry on?’

  ‘Yes, let’s. I believe you were about to talk about whimpering?’

  She gave me her narrowed eyed ‘be serious’ look as she took a mouthful of soda. Putting the bottle back down she retrieved a number of files from the floor.

  ‘The death of Peters was a pain for us,’ I didn’t imagine it was a lot of laughs for him, either, ‘but we were quite pleased to have been cleared by the UN. We spoke to other Argonaut employees who had worked with him but they didn’t really know much about him. He’d excused himself from social events saying he was involved in a long-running Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game competition and didn’t want to let down his team. According to his file-logs he did spend a lot of time playing Avalon but his team story seems to have been fictitious. We think that his TAG dealings were conducted in-game.’

  Oh, not bloody Avalon. I hated vir-games with a passion. Was there ever such a waste of time? I suppose as technology progressed it was an inevitable development from the early twenty-first century video games. Once it became possible to access vir-rooms realistic enough to make you think you were actually there, it was big money time for games developers. Avalon, the first of a series of massive multiplayer Online role-playing games, went live when David Winter perfected the format about thirty years before. Put on your goggles and gloves and waste three days being Sir Lancelot. Millions couldn’t wait to do just that. You started as a minor serf or something and worked your character up into one of the star players and, if you were good enough, were invited to join the Round Table in Camelot. It was such a hugely popular format that games designers plundered old movies, television programmes and fairy stories to turn them into ‘experience it yourself’ vir-games. After immersive vir-shows it was the most popular form of entertainment on the planet. I didn’t understand people who spent their day jobs in vir-rooms yet wanted to go back Online in the evening to slay dragons or whatever. Each to his own, as they say, but it wasn’t for me. And who would have thought that pornographers would quickly see the possibilities? I didn’t know what the games industry was worth in global terms but it must have been in the trillions. The odd merchant bank goes down the tubes? No problem! But don’t take MetroSim Challenge offline or there’ll be a revolution. ‘Merlin’ Winter must be in his seventies by now. Actually, wasn’t he the one in a coma? I’d met him a couple of times at tech conventions when I was still in the military and he’d been an entertaining speaker, though he had some outlandish ideas about the future of tech. He’d been a pioneer in AI design before he’d made a pile in the games market. Using one generation of AI to build the next had been largely down to him. No wonder they called him Merlin.

  A thought occurred to me.

  ‘So did the UN just hand over his file-logs to you?’ Presumably even the UNTEA had been required to obtain a court order to unseal them after death. Personal privacy was a major preoccupation in a world that was increasingly bound up Online. Becky looked me in the eye.

  ‘I got a look at them on the quiet. From Peter.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She didn’t exactly blush but she did turn a little more pink in the cheeks.

  ‘We’re...close, lately.’ I could see that she was watching me, waiting for my reaction. Terrific. My ex and my former best friend. This was going to make the list of my all-time favourite days without a doubt. Mind you, that was some admission from her; telling me how she came to see restricted records. It would get Peter sacked - if not jailed - if anyone found out. I’d thought that his name in George’s recital of keywords had been because of his pet theory. Maybe he was personally involved as well. If Becky was prepared to spill confidences like this I had a new respect for her assessment of the situation. Something really serious was going on and I’d only just been given a glimpse of it so far.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to him in a while.’ About three years, I’d guess. ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘Fine. You know he heads the UNTEA Investigation Team?’ I nodded, ‘He has a new PMV which means he can get out and about a bit better these days.’

  ‘Good for him.’ I meant it. Peter Houghton was paraplegic and it was almost entirely my fault. To be fair, he didn’t blame me. That almost made me feel worse. It hadn’t been often that our unit was required to deploy in theatre as we were mostly active Online but that one time in the South African bush had been an unwelcome exception. As unit commander I’d been the one Online in the truck taking out the many and sophisticated improvised explosive devices en route before we reached them. I’d got them all but one. It had been a new design and invisible to the search-and-destroy program and it went off as we passed it. Our driver died, Peter was critical for months and I’d got away with only a very small scar on my back. To make matters worse, Peter’s injuries were so extensive that even the new stem-cell treatments couldn’t help him walk again. The best that the doctors could do was mostly eliminate the pain. They all held out hope that new nanite treatments would be able to restore the damaged parts of his central nervous system but it was a solution still a few years away yet. In the meantime, it seemed, all he could get was a new set of wheels. A Personal Mobility Vehicle, however smart-tech it might be, was no substitute for the Mark 1 pair of legs. Peter and I had kept in touch for some years afterwards, which was how Becky came to know him. I had found it increasingly difficult to overcome my guilt enough to treat him as my best mate in the way I used to do and over time we had drifted apart. The gradual separation was entirely down to me; he had always been smiling and cheerful and non-judgmental. I had kept up to date with his career progr
ess at the UN and sent him congratulatory messages with each promotion. He was still a skilled Online operator where his lack of mobility was irrelevant and he was undoubtedly a huge asset at the UN. I decided that details of Becky’s romantic life could wait, probably forever.

  ‘So Peters is dead. Then what?’

  ‘That’s when it got interesting.’ She referred to the top file on her lap, ‘Three weeks after the UN report cleared us I got a call from the Head of Research and Development at Argonaut Chemical Industries. It’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent company and is based in a facility about a hundred miles north of Quebec. He had asked HR if Jan Peters was an Argonaut employee and they had referred him to me as they knew I had conduct of the inquiry. When I asked him why he wanted to know, he said that one of his team had been involved in a road traffic accident in Quebec whilst on leave and, according to his Online will, Peters was a beneficiary. Apparently, the will gave an address for Peters that this man,’ she consulted the file for his name ‘Professor Michael Green - he’s been with us for upwards of twenty years and head of research at ACI for the last five - thought he recognised as an Argonaut office.’

  ‘Who was the traffic victim?’

  ‘He was Pierre Meille. I knew him slightly as he was a cybersecurity officer working for ACI rather than directly for our team. Our paths had crossed once or twice. The legacy was nothing much; a cash gift of about two hundred dollars US. I told Green to send me a copy of the will and I’d take care of it. I passed it to the legal team and I think all that happened was that they transferred the money to the Peters estate and it went to his relatives.’