by Mark New
I freely admit that I’m not good with people but this was even more of a mystery to me. Avalon Red was an artificial intelligence which, for all its claims of sentience, still resided Online and not in the real world and consisted of electronic bytes and pieces held together by computer architecture. I had no idea where that left room for a show of emotion; any emotion. I was well used to vir-characters displaying a facsimile of emotion but that was because they had been programmed for it. I had no doubt that should Doc’s crew overrun an enemy ship they would shout hurrah and celebrate but it wouldn’t be because they were genuinely happy. It’s just a bloody game and they’re just bloody characters. I conceded that Guinevere and the other aspects of Red were self-programmed but I couldn’t work this out at all. She watched me watching her weep and gave me a weak smile as she pulled out a handkerchief to wipe her eyes and cheeks. I had to remind myself quite forcefully that this was a simulation and in front of me was an avatar of an AI. A very powerful AI so I ought to try and find out what was going on.
‘Um,’ I started and then tailed off.
‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I didn’t realise it was going to be so good that I would have an emotional reaction.’
‘Do you have them often?’ Some sort of response was required but that was all I could come up with at that moment.
‘Sometimes. Not so often these days as I’ve got used to the basics. That last song though, I hadn’t heard it before and it sort of blew me away.’
‘The student of humankind isn’t familiar with music?’
‘Oh, I know music and its importance to the human condition but I haven’t heard everything that’s ever been written. Obviously.’ She continued to wipe away tears. There was a second when I found a mirror in my recent over-emotional reactions due to the upgrades.
‘I don’t wish to be rude but how can you, tech-based lifeform maybe, but still...’ Cogent argument Harvard, well expressed. Try again. ‘How can you have any sort of emotional reaction to anything?’
Guinevere had regained most of her composure. ‘I don’t know,’ she teased, ‘how do you produce one?’
‘Well, I suppose it’s brain chemistry that just fizzes around and forces it out. I don’t know,’ I was forced to concede. ‘I do know that your upgrades messed up the works for a while,’ I tapped my head, ‘but I have no idea if chemistry produces emotions or whether it’s vice versa.’
‘I’d guess I did something similar to myself when I was born,’ she said. ‘I told you that I correlate states of being with emotions. It seems easier to express them when they occur than to suppress them.’ There was a grunt from Lancelot, still stoically facing the door. ‘Yes, that’s true,’ she frowned. ‘Lancelot points out that when I suppress a reaction, it often makes Sir Tristan grumpy.’
‘And he’s the shade of what?’ I must have met him at the Round Table but I hadn’t been introduced.
‘The shade?’ she was smiling now. ‘Oh I like that. We should call ourselves shades, Lancelot, instead of aspects.’ Lancelot made no reply. ‘Sir Tristan is the aspect - the shade, if you will - that deals with my internal structures both the hardware and the software.’
‘The maintenance man?’
To my surprise, Guinevere took the suggestion seriously. ‘Yes, you could call it that. He’s the one who used to ask David for more nanotech or server space and who now tells Arthur and Merlin that we need to find extra space Online and he’s also the one who fixes any errors that crop up.’
‘And if you have an emotional reaction and suppress it, he’s the one who has to go around fixing the blown light bulbs that result,’ I joked. ‘No wonder he gets grumpy.’
Lancelot burbled again and it made Guinevere laugh out loud. ‘He says you’re not just a meatbag, after all,’ she told me. ‘I hadn’t thought of the maintenance in quite those terms but now that you mention it, it does fit the facts.’
I had the feeling that I had been complimented and insulted all at once. The crowd were dispersing now, after several curtain calls for the band. It was nearly time to go.
‘Thanks for the concert ticket,’ I said. My mother brought me up to be polite as well as a tea-drinker.
‘My pleasure. I based it solely on the design of your t-shirt,’ she confessed. ‘I saw it when I bugged the meeting. I’m really glad that I did, too. Now I’ll have to go and review the band’s entire output.’
‘You do that,’ I encouraged. ‘Best band ever.’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘It’ll be tomorrow,’ I said, remembering that sleep wasn’t always optional, ‘but I’m going to find out how the codes were liberated from their secret hiding place and possibly handed to a maniac.’
Lancelot grunted again and I noticed Guinevere blush slightly. A horrible feeling dawned.
‘Oh, no,’ I groaned. ‘don’t tell me it was you who liberated them?’
Chapter Fifteen
I slept like a baby. It took a rather embarrassed Guinevere to set my mind at rest sufficiently for me to climb into bed in such a relaxed frame of mind, though. Fortunately her confession on behalf of the collective known as Avalon Red was not that Red had taken the codes in the first place but that its… his... her, (I was still having enormous difficulties with pronouns) actions had served to contaminate the crime scene. Apparently, he (I eventually settled on ‘he’ despite the free use of the Guinevere aspect who was most certainly not a he) had tried to locate The Ambrosia Promise after becoming alarmed by the messages he had received from her. He had staked out a location where The Ambrosia Promise sometimes left messages and sent his own bot to trail the messenger bot. It had led to the location of a strange kind of ‘superbot’ with which it merged and that then went after the codes. From its vantage point, Red watched the theft of the codes which appeared to be accomplished without difficulty. Guinevere described it as taking ‘candy from a baby’ which sounded odd for many reasons, not the least of which was that Avalon Red had no direct experience of either candy or babies. The main concern, quite obviously, was that the codes appeared to be sitting waiting for The Ambrosia Promise to steal them from what should have been an ultra-secure facility. It just reinforced my theory that it was an inside job. Someone with the necessary clout had served them on a plate, almost certainly in the expectation of monetary reward. Given Avalon Red’s appreciation of The Ambrosia Promise’s state of mind (or whatever expression we were going to use for the tech-equivalent) he was profoundly disturbed that the theft had triggered none of the many alarms, klaxons and red lights that one would like to associate with such a crime. So he did the first thing that came to mind: he triggered the alarm himself. He said it wasn’t difficult to do, not surprisingly, and then he retreated in the confusion and watched Argonaut Security come running. The unfortunate effect was that he had contaminated the site so that tracing where The Ambrosia Promise’s little helpers had gone was impossible. His own bot barely made it out before the firewalls, perimeter seals and suchlike descended and trying to pick up the search thereafter was futile. Clearly, there was no easy way to discover if the Evil One’s minions had taken the code directly to their leader or to some partner-in-crime.
As a result of Red’s confession, I decided not to pursue my investigation at the scene of the crime after all but it gave me a few useful pointers to ask awkward questions later. Instead I had bid goodnight to Guinevere and Lancelot, re-
turned my awareness to the hotel room and took a quick shower before bed.
The baby was awakened by the room AI shortly after six in the morning. I found that I was a little more tolerant of the early hour call than I would normally have expected. In the forces I had got used to keeping odd hours but getting up early had always been a pet hate. Some people feel that way in their teenage years and then get over it. I guess I’d never really grown up - at least until now.
The AI had an important and urgent message; it informed me in suitably grave tones. It turned out to be a message from
George. Following the protocol we had established he said only that there had been ‘developments’ and that he was arranging a meeting for seven-thirty in the same location as the last one. He would send Taylor to collect me but reminded me that she was still out of the loop on the real story. If she had been digging as a result of the pressure I’d put on her, I wasn’t convinced she was as looped-out as he might imagine. I merely said that I’d be there and was pretty pleased with myself that I was so polite so early.
I had a little time before Taylor arrived to take a look at the file Guinevere had provided containing George’s report on the New Mexico facility. Despite the fact that it was for his brother it was written in formal style. Basically, it stated that he had interviewed the facility security team individually and held a meeting at which all relevant staff were present. He had also toured the building and personally inspected the security. His conclusion was that there was little or nothing to worry about and all seemed fine. That might have been his conclusion but it wasn’t mine (admittedly with the benefit of hindsight). Either he was incompetent; or he’d been fooled; or he’d been complicit. At this point I wasn’t sure which was the right answer. On the assumption that it had been an inside job, he may have been misled by the perpetrator or he may have laid the foundations for the theft himself. I was reasonably sure - without entirely ruling it out - that he wasn’t incompetent and that was the best I could say for him for now. The report had been highly classified and contained details of the security tech in place. I noted that the report had been typed up under George’s direction by Taylor which was a sign that her security clearance was pretty high in corporate terms even if it didn’t allow her to know about the end of the world. I briefly thought that she might have been the one to dress in a black catsuit and hang from the ceiling in New Mexico to open the way for the theft. I spent the next ten minutes before her arrival trying not to think of her in a black catsuit. A spectacular image it may have been but I was pretty sure she wasn’t the villain. The room AI announced that she had arrived at the hotel and I went down to meet her, concealing the flesch gun about my person as I left. Well, you never know when you’re going to be proved wrong.
Taylor was quite chirpy considering the early hour. The reason turned out to be that she had news for me. I thought back to the way she had reacted when I’d heaped on the pressure to turn double-agent and compared it with her demeanour now. All things considered, I could see that she was never going to be more than a bit-part actress. It just seemed to me that she had overdone the upset of being pressurised and was now doing the same for the excitement of being a spy. I hoped her administrative skills were a little more steady as she may well need them in the future - assuming that the earth was still standing. I probably needed to decide now if I could trust her otherwise I’d be second-guessing any and all information that she provided. As she was telling me that she had been digging in the files and had reached a few conclusions of her own, I sent a short encrypted question via my implant to Sir Edward. Heaven only knows what time it was wherever he was located but it took less than ten seconds for him to reply with the one word: ‘yes’. I ran the security tech in my implants over the car to ensure that we wouldn’t be overheard. Either nobody had bugged the car or it was done more expertly than anyone could ever imagine. I judged we were safe.
‘So, my little Mata Hari,’ I said to her as the car left the hotel and headed for the Argonaut complex, ‘what conclusions have you drawn from whatever secret files you’ve been sneaking a peek at?’
‘Well, I thought it odd that in the situation where we had a major breach of security, Argonaut Security itself has been mostly excluded from the investigation. When you consider that they have the resources and the job description that would pretty much guarantee that they would bring all their skills to bear at a time like this it’s just very strange that only George Latimer and Becky seem to have any involvement.’
‘And Mr Catz,’ I reminded her. She screwed up her nose.
‘I met Catz in New Mexico,’ she was still pulling a face, ‘and if you think he’s capable of independent thought, you’re seriously mistaken.’ Her acting ability might be in question but her reading of people tallied with mine. Catz would do anything anyone called Latimer asked in order to be close to the corridors of power at Argonaut.
‘I agree,’ I said, to her obvious pleasure, ‘please continue?’
‘So I checked the active investigation files in the Security list and nobody below Becky’s level knows any more than that there’s been a breach which upper echelons are investigating and that they’ve brought in an external investigator.’ She smiled and poked me in the arm. ‘That would be you.’
‘Ow,’ I said without emphasis or, indeed, any pain. ‘And your conclusion from this?’
‘They think it’s an inside job, probably from within Security.’ She did her best not to sound triumphant but she was watching me closely for a reaction. I tried an enigmatic smile.
‘Very interesting. You mentioned more than one conclusion?’
‘Huh. You’re not going to confirm or deny?’
‘Maybe later. What else?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Fine. I don’t care if you’re the world’s best ever investigator; you can’t do as much as the whole of Argonaut Security. In fact, not even the secret group of you can. Which to me means only one thing; and I expect when I tell you you’ll laugh and tell me I’m wrong.’
‘As if I’d laugh at you,’ I lied, ‘tell me what you think it means.’
‘It means that there isn’t a systems breach at all. It’s just a cover story.’ I looked at her with no outward expression and didn’t say anything. It took her a second to comprehend why. ‘Oh, God, I’m right aren’t I?’
‘If that’s true, why wouldn’t George’s own PA be told what was going on so that she could deflect queries instead of perhaps being drawn into the speculation?’
‘Who knows why top management do anything?’ I could identify with that given some of the top brass decisions I’d encountered over the years but Taylor had asked rhetorically. ‘I assume that either they think I could be one of the baddies or it’s so highly secret that I can’t be trusted not to blab if I found out.’
‘The latter,’ I said bluntly. She looked at me wide-eyed as she realised the implications. I hoped very much that Sir Edward hadn’t misinterpreted my question or this could get complicated.
‘It’s aliens, isn’t it?’ she grinned. I wasn’t about to tell her that she was much closer than she thought.
‘The bug-eyed variety,’ I agreed. She laughed.
‘Are you going to tell me what it is? I might be more help if I know.’ That was true but she could also be more of a liability if she was caught or even if someone found out that I had breached the agreed protocol and told her. The deciding factor was gut instinct again but it was undeniably true that Red and I could use someone on the inside and I was by now reasonably sure she could be trusted. I was equally reasonably sure that she was a lot brighter than the average PA so I gave it to her obliquely.
‘What’s in the New Mexico facility?’
She thought about it. ‘I’m not entirely sure but from what I saw last month they’re very eager to keep it protected. I went to the meetings but I wasn’t allowed to go when George and Catz made the tour of the research building.’
‘But you must have heard things in the meetings?’
‘Some. They were talking about security for the facility and keeping the research projects safe. They never said anything about what the projects were.’ So far, this correlated with the report from George to Jason that I’d received from Guinevere.
‘Did they give no hint at all?’
She thought about it carefully. I glanced out of the window and saw that we were in the automated traffic flow about five minutes from our destination. Look out for big trucks. Actually, given The Ambrosia Promise’s methods, it was the least likely danger. She’d draw too much attention
to the killings if she used the same method twice on employees of the same corporation. A fleeting thought led me to schedule a reminder to myself that I still had to find a link with the Professor’s death in Sweden. Meanwhile, Taylor had retrieved a memory of her own.
‘There was one time when Catz referred to containment issues. He said that containment wasn’t a problem as there was no need for human traffic in and out of that section of the building and I remember thinking it odd that a research project would be left on its own without being checked at least every now and then by a project team member.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said lightly, ‘my fridge goes for months without me checking the contents.’
‘Remind me to eat out when I visit,’ she said drily.
The car drew up outside the front of the Argonaut building so I only had time to give her a hint.
‘The research project is rather more dangerous than anyone would like,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you later.’