by Mark New
In other circumstances, hearing details of Marie Andersson’s work would have been fascinating. She had been one of the world’s leading neuroscientists and a leading light on the subject of brain architecture. She had been, according to Drezler, involved in a serious project with Joshua Martin that would attempt to emulate the workings of a human brain in an artificial construct. Drezler assured me that she had considered the idea workable if there was an advancement in AI tech to accommodate it. She had heard of Martin’s discussions with Winter and was quite excited about the potential.
‘Did she give any indication of a timescale?’ I asked.
‘She was hoping for something significant in as little as ten years,’ he told me earnestly. Unseen by him, Taylor caught my eye and frowned. I shared her concern. A possible breakthrough in a decade was hardly good reason for her to be murdered. I let Drezler continue with his hagiography. As the story of her life unfolded I decided that thinking of it as a hagiography was a little unfair; Andersson really did seem to be a brilliant mind centred in a genuinely nice person. Drezler told us that not only did her entire team love working with her but there wasn’t anyone around who had a bad word to say about her.
‘You must have all been devastated when she died,’ Taylor sympathised.
‘To be honest, we’re really not over it,’ he admitted. ‘You hear talk about people leaving a void when they pass away but Marie couldn’t ever be replaced.’
I felt the return of an aspect to the comms bot in my implants but I couldn’t tell which one. I presumed that the actual AI part of it was stationed somewhere nearby and connected to the bot but I had no idea if that was true. Red had claimed to have solved the communications lag so, for all I knew, the aspect in question could be warming its feet by the fire in Camelot’s Great Hall. Still, it was useful it was here.
‘Why did you link this death with the others?’ I deliberately put the question in its starkest form.
‘It felt like it was related,’ replied Guinevere, defensively and instantly.
‘Define “felt like”,’ I challenged.
‘A hunch like the kind you have yourself.’ The sentience and emotion thing again. It was getting tiresome, to be honest.
‘Paint me a picture,’ I challenged.
‘What?’ I considered that maybe she kept me around for entertainment value as she was always amused at what I said.
‘If you’re so bloody sentient and full of emotional equivalents do something genuinely artistic. Paint me a picture; a visual representation of an emotion and do it in hard copy,’ I said, more out of frustration than anything else. ‘I believe you have my address.’
‘Very well,’ she was still chuckling away, ‘and anything more pertinent?’
‘When you discovered that Andersson was dead what, specifically, made you think it was foul play?’
‘Sir Bors discovered it first among us and as he shared it he commented that the manner of death seemed suspicious. So it was the way she died that led us to hint at a connection.’
‘See? Now your hunch has become something tangible we can test.’
‘Interesting...’ she went silent, presumably playing with the idea that hunches are more than just a feeling per se. As I readjusted to the real world conversation, I discovered that Taylor was way ahead of both of us.
‘Finding her must have been so awful,’ she was saying after Drezler had told her that it was he who had found Marie in this very office. She coaxed the story out of him piece by piece while I sat beside her, impressed at her ability. She was a considerable asset to any organisation, I thought to myself, if you needed someone to interface with actual people. The human element was often lacking in Online society but there were still people around who could overcome that deficiency. Drezler was spilling his tearful story as though she’d turned on a tap.
Marie was in her early sixties and in general good health but she had been working very hard and the team had attempted to get her to slow down a little. She had said she was fine but then Drezler discovered that she had been staying up very late in the office taking part in an Online private discussion forum. Those were like the common social sites but only open to a select invited few that existed to debate, argue or slag each other off (depending on their quality) on specialist subjects. One morning, after poor Matthius had left her late the previous night taking part in one of these forums, he returned to find Marie slumped in her chair, still connected Online, having had a stroke. He had called an ambulance but it was too late. Taylor continued to encourage him to talk about it.
‘She really is good, isn’t she? Is she faking the sympathy to get more information?’ Guinevere wondered.
‘I don’t think so, Queen Cynic,’ I retorted although I wasn’t entirely sure myself. ‘It just happens that her natural sympathies are happily aligned with our objective.’
Drezler concluded by saying that the most difficult part for him was his brief appearance on the private forum to tell the participants of her death. The University and her family had dealt with most of the people who needed to be informed but he had taken this upon himself, thinking of it as a small way to contribute to her memory.
‘Which forum was it?’ Taylor inquired, ‘and how did they take it?’
He couldn’t remember the title but he knew that it had been about psychopathology and the members of the forum had been kind and understanding and passed on their deepest sympathies to friends and family.
‘If you have the Online address for the forum, Argonaut could follow it up,’ Taylor suggested, ‘perhaps by involving them in some kind of professional tribute. The company did, after all, greatly value her work.’
Matthius thought that was a splendid idea and we left the office en route for the airport about thirty minutes later with a slimpad file bearing the Online address of the last people to encounter Marie Andersson alive.
‘I thought it could be useful,’ Taylor told me as the taxi approached the jet sitting on the runway, having been waved through security in the way only the rich ever seem to be waved through.
‘Not bad, Mata Hari, not bad at all,’ I approved. ‘We may make an investigator of you yet.’
‘Harvard?’ Guinevere whispered urgently.
‘Yes?’
‘I just traced the forum address.’ She had read it through my ocular implant. It seemed my senses were shared these days.
‘And?’
‘It was a fake site. The several supposed members either weren’t real or were real people whose avatars were fake. It was created by The Ambrosia Promise.’
‘How do you know that?’ An adversary as sophisticated as Ambrosia would hardly leave a trace. Red himself had been unable to find her and his Online resources were far greater than most.
‘Because she left a message for me.’ Oh crap.
‘What does it say?’
‘It says “Black Ice is impossible, huh?” and she signed it.’
I didn’t say anything and Guinevere went quiet as Taylor and I got out of the taxi. The Ambrosia Promise claimed to have found a way to kill someone who was simply Online without any other interface. It was previously thought to be beyond the capability of either the system or the people using it but now Ambrosia had confessed to killing Marie Andersson in precisely that manner. From now on, going Online was potentially deadly to anyone at any time. It was a pity that Online was pretty much the way the whole world worked. From worrying that The Ambrosia Promise had a single method to destroy humankind, we now had to worry about the fact that she had doubled her chances of success.
Chapter Seventeen
There was very little communication occurring as we took our seats for the return journey. Taylor seemed to have picked up on my sombre mood and spoke only to say hello again to the flight crew. Guinevere had similarly gone quiet and I was left with my own thoughts. The size of the task had seemed enormous from the start and when we had discovered that there were already a number of agents positioning themselve
s for the assault it was even more difficult. The revelation that The Ambrosia Promise had a back-up plan made it a vertical climb. Although it seemed like a futile gesture now, I briefly went Online and sent an encrypted message to Sir Edward with a list of the TAGs we had identified in use in New Mexico. His resources were greater than mine and, if anyone could find out who they were, it was him. Other than that, I really didn’t know what to do. There were no bright ideas emanating from my now silent partner in my head either, which wasn’t encouraging.
I managed to smile sweetly at the flight attendant and order tea as the jet started back out across the Atlantic. I had lost track of time completely but, to an Englishman, tea is good for any time zone at any time of day. It helped greatly that the attendant hadn’t forgotten how to make it properly (that is, to my specification - rather like George’s martini) so I sipped at the hot liquid and tried to relax. On the plus side, I was neither panicking nor dropping into the black pit of despair. On the debit side, I still didn’t have a plan. I couldn’t bring Taylor up to date on this latest setback without revealing the existence of Avalon Red and, naturally, I couldn’t share it with the Argonaut team either. I finished my tea with no sign of a solution in sight and reclined the seat a little.
‘What now?’ Taylor had finished her own drink of choice. It smelled like hot chocolate but, once again, I had missed hearing her order.
‘Home, James,’ was all I could offer. She smiled one of her concerned smiles but said nothing further. I closed my eyes and resolved to enjoy the luxury trip in a trans-orbital. Who knew if they would still be flying in a few days?
◆◆◆
I was having a pleasant dream in which I was once again present in the Round Table chamber in Avalon Red’s vir-scene. There was a banquet in progress and the table was covered in tasty dishes fit for... well, fit for the Knights of the Round Table. At the far end of the chamber in a niche which I didn’t recall being there before was a jazz quartet playing merrily away. I remember it crossing my mind that I didn’t like jazz so I couldn’t understand why Merlin would have invited them. Fortunately, the sound of laughter and general merriment drowned them out a bit. Whilst pondering the never-before-seen niche I remembered that I hadn’t seen the serving nymphs there last time, either. They were flitting in and out fetching and carrying dishes of tasty morsels and intoxicating drinks whilst wearing green lacy dresses made of very small quantities of material. I gratefully accepted a mug from one of them and drank deeply of mead. As I was savouring the drink and the scene, I became slowly aware of shouting coming from the ante-room behind me. It was at high volume but I couldn’t make out any distinct words against the background noise in the chamber. In the weird way of dreams, a nymph sidled up to me and looked at me seductively.
‘You have implants, you know,’ she said in a deep sexy whisper and then wandered off to collect a flagon from the table. Cursing myself for an idiot, I activated the implants which - for some dream reason, no doubt - I had turned off completely and tried to concentrate on the shouting. It sounded like two people; one male and one female but, as I listened, they seemed not so much to be shouting at each other but at me. It seemed stupid to me that they would shout outside when they only had to come in to talk to me properly. The female was shouting about waking and the man was going on about the yellow thing. I had no idea what the yellow thing was but - as soon as I thought that very thought - from the ceiling of the chamber a yellow globe slowly descended. I couldn’t make out what it was and was just about to attempt a scan with my implants (which, in real life, aren’t capable of anything like that) when I heard the man shout out one word:
‘Adrenaline!’
I woke abruptly with a scream in my ear, the sound of people shouting, a racing heart and a raging headache.
It took several seconds to sort through what was happening, like emerging from a thick fog at night and trying to see the details of the landscape despite the shadows and shades of grey. There was a yellow blob in front of me just like the one in my dream. I tried to focus on it but it remained fuzzy. What I thought was screaming became a klaxon demanding urgent attention. I was sitting in a big seat. I wondered where the nymphs had gone. Then I remembered that the nymphs were in a dream but the man who had been shouting at me in dreamland was still doing it. How could that happen? Dreams don’t come with you. I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
‘Grab the mask, John!’ His voice was right inside my head though I didn’t recognise it. With huge effort I deduced that he must be using Avalon Red’s bot. That was how people spoke to me in my head sometimes, I was nearly sure. Avalon Red. That must mean that it was important if Avalon Red was shouting at me. My head really hurt and it was very difficult to work out what mask he could be talking about. Unless it was that yellow blob, stupid. What colour were masks? I tried to focus on it but the fuzziness didn’t go away. I attempted to reach for it and failed. My arm felt like lead. It was so very, very hard and didn’t seem worth the trouble.
‘That’s it! Reach for it!’
‘If it’s so fucking simple, you reach for it,’ I snarled, discovering in the process that speaking aloud was hellishly difficult. It took me a second to recover from the effort.
‘He’s coming around!’ That was the woman’s voice. I knew that one but I couldn’t put a name to it. I tried reaching out again. Every movement resulted in agonising waves in my head. I stopped reaching to take a heaving breath.
‘REACH FOR IT, YOU FUCKING USELESS MEATBAG!’ the man yelled. Charming. I was infuriated. It was enough that I was in utter agony and wanted more than anything to drift off back to sleep to escape it all and see the nymphs again but now here was some unknown aspect (aspect, that was right, they were called aspects) invading my implants without so much as a ‘please, may I?’ and heaping abuse on me. I’d show him!
‘Fuck you, tech-for-brains!’ I spat and made one last huge grab.
To my surprise I found myself grasping the mask solidly in my hand. A mask. A yellow mask. I thought hard through the fog. What do you do with those? Wait - I know! I had military training and there were masks in it. It goes over your nose and mouth, doesn’t it, like... that! It was more muscle memory than conscious thought that enabled me to put it on and secure the straps.
The oxygen supply started automatically as soon as I put the mask on and I began to take great rasping deep breaths. The klaxon was still loud but it was no longer reverberating around in my head. The headache eased but only a little and my vision slowly began to focus. My heart was still racing fit to burst. I continued to take huge breaths.
‘Is he functional yet?’ the woman asked.
‘Give him a minute,’ cautioned the man, ‘he needs to think clearly before he can do anything.’
‘Time is a factor,’ she warned.
‘I know but he still needs to reach a certain level of competence before he can take instruction. I’m amazed he is conscious at all given the hypoxia they’ve suffered. He must have titanium-plated willpower.’
Hypoxia. Yes, that was in the training with the mask. It’s when you lack...something. I couldn’t remember what but it was an important something. My breath was less rasping but still heavy. I clung onto the mask with grim determination. My eyesight was a little clearer and I noticed another yellow blob hanging in front of me but to my left. It took a few seconds to compute that it must be another mask. For someone else. I turned my head very slowly to the left and regretted the stab of pain it caused me. It was definitely a mask like my own. It was so hard to string coherent thoughts together. I thought until it hurt. The mask that was in front of me was mine and for me. That meant that if there was a mask beside me it must be for someone who wasn’t me. I thought about it some more and it made sense. I turned my head a little further and found the pain was a little less than before. That was probably good. There was someone sitting in the seat beside me. A woman. I was pretty sure that I knew her but her name escaped me. I looked from her to the ma
sk and back again with only minimal screaming pain now.
‘Yes, put the mask on her,’ the man’s voice encouraged. I didn’t really understand. I had the mask and I was using it. Unless he meant that other one. I had already concluded that it was for someone else, hadn’t I? So how would I put the mask on her? I had hold of mine and it was making me feel better so I didn’t want to let go of it. Then I remembered that I’d put the straps around my head. That might mean that it would stay there if I let go. I tried loosening my grip and the mask stayed over my face. I let go altogether and it still remained in place. Now my hands were free. I knew that was true because I could wave them around in front of my face and make funny shapes in the air.
‘Put the mask on her,’ urged the man. I released my hands from shape-making duty and reached towards the other mask. I couldn’t get to it. The physical effort hadn’t hurt so much, though. Maybe I could try sitting forward and leaning out. I was suddenly exhausted and I couldn’t understand why my heart was still racing when all I was doing was sitting down. I must have said that aloud because the woman - the one in my head, not the sleeping one - answered me.
‘I gave you an adrenaline rush,’ she said. I thought that she was helpful and kind to answer me and tried to say so but she interrupted me. ‘Put the mask on her first and then we’ll talk.’
Moving very carefully and trying all the time to focus on what I was trying to achieve, I leaned forward, inch by tortuous inch, and took hold of the mask that wasn’t mine. I turned the upper part of my body to the left and tried to line up the mask with the woman’s face. It took three clumsy attempts to place the mask over her nose and mouth and a further minute of fumbling to place the straps correctly around her head. As I finished my eyesight went a bit funny and I sat back with a thump into my seat, still breathing heavily.