When the River Ran Dry

by Robert Davies

  “You wanted to know about my simulation and now you do,” he said firmly. “Are we finished here?”

  Maela stood, too, but his tone had gone suddenly dark and challenging. She faced him squarely and leaned close.

  “Look, Richard, I don’t care what kind of action hero adventure you made for yourself in a Starlight program, and I have no interest in how you got off doing it, so save the big talk, understand? There’s a reason Elden saw and noted this character of yours and I mean to find it. If you’re embarrassed, I suggest you get past it because his killer is still out there!”

  She pushed past him and walked quickly toward the lab when Valery met her abruptly at the twin doors.

  “I was just coming to get you.”

  Maela stopped and said, “Did you find anything useful?”

  Valery nodded silently and motioned for them to follow. When she sat again at her terminal, a paragraph from Elden’s personal notes blinked in highlighted text.

  “I suspected something like this, and my father’s direction has confirmed it; I know what he wanted to do.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Maela said.

  Valery pointed them to her console as she continued.

  “As I told you earlier, my dad wanted to create a program to advance human interaction with the hard technologies we use today. He wanted to build a bridge between us and the machines so that one could help the other.”

  Ricky frowned at the notion.

  “Elden envisioned a fully integrated world? A synthesis of humans and machines into one?”

  “Not entirely,” Valery answered. “My father never agreed with the idea of complete integration. He believed technology and humanity might evolve along mutual pathways at some point in the future—the famous ‘platform fusion’ theory—but he saw no reason why the two couldn’t co-exist in the present.”

  “Sentient AI?”

  “That was part of it, but his programs were only first steps in a process and that’s where it became dangerous.”

  Maela sat carefully on a padded stool.

  “Dangerous enough to get him killed?”

  “Apparently so,” Valery replied sadly, “and you were right; he knew what he was doing would make him a target.”

  “Go on.”

  “These files are specifications and procedures he developed over the past few years regarding VI interfaces and possible pathways that might lead to one of them becoming self-aware, but they contain data and notes from other researchers long ago.”

  “Before the Fall?” Ricky said.

  She nodded and said, “I don’t know how he came by it, but I do know having anything like this in your possession is a capital offense in Novum. Here, it’s different; we can access archives from the Old Time without breaking laws, but your city is intolerant of even seeing it, let alone having it at your disposal for review.”

  “Are you saying he used those old processes to make Starlight?”

  “No, not at all. My father developed the pathfinder software on his own, but somewhere along the way, he acquired the old data and incorporated it into his design.”

  “No one knew,” Ricky said; “They would’ve arrested him otherwise.”

  “Yes,” Valery replied, “but it was during that period he was cut out of the Starlight project completely.”

  Ricky remembered.

  “They bought him off and forced him to retire.”

  Maela understood, too.

  “The Commission lured him with promises of unfettered research and money, but when he got them close enough to create Starlight, they kicked him out.”

  “On his own,” Valery continued, “my father kept up his research, even as your Commission took Starlight from him and made it into something entirely different than what he wanted.”

  “Everyone knows what Starlight became,” Ricky said, “but what did Elden have in mind?”

  “He still envisioned a tool to make life better for people, but the Commission and its backers saw an opportunity to make money. Much later, something must’ve changed.”

  “In what way?” Ricky asked, prodded to the question by a growing and persistent worry he couldn’t explain.

  “From his notes,” Valery continued, “you can see his frustration and anger with the Committee build over time, but it was your unfortunate experience that finally sent him past his breaking point.”

  “My Walk.” Ricky frowned. “It’s what happens when you get into debt so badly…”

  “I know what it is,” Valery interrupted softly.

  “What did my Walk have to do with Elden’s research? This doesn’t make any sense!”

  “I can’t see it in these notes,” Valery continued. “But he had several conversations with somebody called Victor Jamison just before he compiled his notes with the specification data. Do you recognize that name?”

  Maela stood quickly.

  “He’s a heavy hitter and principle member of the Commission now. Behind the scenes, he runs one of the biggest rackets in Novum. Jamison is a powerful man, too; no one crosses him and lives to tell about it.”

  “Konstantinou belongs to him,” Ricky said as Maela nodded knowingly. “If he was talking to Elden, it must’ve been about Starlight.”

  “Yes,” Valery replied, “and that conversation obviously ended badly; my father put this package together shortly after.”

  “He knew what was coming,” Maela said, as the pieces to a confusing puzzle began to take shape. “Jamison is the key to this.”

  Valery waited as the image firmed in her mind, suddenly taken away by a profound sadness she couldn’t hide as the tears gathered in her eyes.

  “You believe it was this man who killed my dad?”

  “Probably not, at least personally,” Maela answered, “but it’s a good bet he ordered the hit. The only question is why.”

  Valery stood at the edge of her console, drawing an absent-minded finger along its edge as the horrible scene played out in her thoughts. They were apart for years, but she always held out hope for a reunion. At once, she thought of her mother and a task of telling a wife her husband had been murdered. Vasundhara Sharma carried her anger with Elden’s choice to leave Veosa, but Valery wondered if the sting of abandonment might fade under the weight of a widow’s grief. In her privacy, Valery hoped it would be so, if for no reason than sharing the burden of their loss.

  Ricky looked at the data stream and said, “Elden made it pretty clear in his message that ‘powerful people’ would be angry with him for what he wanted to do.”

  “Angry enough to order his execution,” Maela echoed.

  “Yes, but I need to know what he planned and how any of it connects to a character in my simulation.”

  Maela turned to Valery.

  “Elden said you would know what to do. He didn’t send us on this journey for nothing, so what was it, Valery; what did he want you to do?”

  Valery touched a command pad and the display screen went suddenly blank. She turned to them, pausing for a moment to gather the words.

  “His notes provide clear and unmistakable rules for interacting with advanced VI platforms, so any competent behavioral engineer would do just as well. But as I read further, it became clear Richard’s simulation character is a fundamental part of this mystery.”

  “Neferure?” Maela asked reflexively.

  “So it would seem. For some reason, he became fixated on that particular VI construct and over time, nothing else seemed to hold his attention so firmly.”

  “I never spoke with him about this,” said Ricky. “I still don’t understand how he knew about Neferure.”

  Valery shook her head slowly.

  “The references in his open notes weren’t very helpful, but I found a file that may hold the answers.”

  “What’s inside?” Ricky asked.

  “I’m not sure, to be honest,” Valery answered. “I tried to open it using all the hacking software we have, but it’s so heavily encrypted, no penetra
tion attempt has worked.”

  “What makes you think that file has answers if you can’t see what it holds?” Maela asked.

  “The reference title for that particular file was ‘1911-A.’ When I ran a systems search through my dad’s notes, I found it in only one place; a Starlight infrastructure glossary.”

  “Yeah, and?” Ricky asked, growing weary of a search suddenly side-tracked.

  “1911-A is the original build designation for the Neferure character profile in your simulation.”

  “I don’t understand,” he replied. “Why was Elden so interested in Neferure?”

  Valery sat at her console and continued the description.

  “His notes point to your simulation again and again, but everything leads back to the locked Neferure character profile. Wherever he was going with this must be hiding inside that file.”

  “A file you can’t access.” Maela frowned.

  “The intrusion software I have is powerful, but it’s still not enough to break my father’s encryption blocks.”

  “Then what good is it? Why would he point you to a file you can’t open?”

  “I wondered, too, but later, I found something buried in an ordinary maintenance log; a single line that looks very similar to a scheduler’s time stamp, but…”

  “But?”

  “When I went through the code structure a second time, I finally saw it.”

  Valery scrolled the lines of data, stopping to highlight a series of numbers.

  “What are we looking at?” Ricky asked, hoping for more than another jumble of indecipherable data.

  “The first number sequence is my birth date, then a second sequence which is my mother’s birth date. The next series is a comm address, followed by my father’s birth date. He highlighted just that line of data, otherwise, I would never have seen it.”

  “No chance that was coincidence,” said Maela with a grin. “Elden wanted you to find that address.”

  “Yes, but when I tried to access it, the reply was a denial due to out-of-system connectivity.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It’s not an address Veosa’s network can reach.”

  “It won’t accept a query from outside Novum’s networks?”

  Valery nodded and returned their attention to the blinking data line.

  “It gets worse. The address link is also heavily encrypted—you can’t access it simply by trying from any terminal inside Novum. I have programs that could defeat the blocks from this lab, but not by remote.”

  Ricky smiled and said, “We know somebody who might be able to fix that problem.”

  Maela looked at Ricky.

  “I guess we’ll be paying Jonny another visit.”

  “Will he agree?”

  “When he sees a new hack challenge, nothing else will matter.”

  “Who is Jonathan?” Valery asked quickly.

  “He’s a friend,” Maela replied, “and a very capable intrusion specialist at the Novum Technology Institute.”

  At once, Valery tapped a command into her machine and waited until a prompt asked for additional information.

  “Full name?”

  “Jonathan Lloyd Kranz,” Maela answered.

  Another command brought back the data Valery needed.

  “Yes, I see him here. We have connections to a few people at your Institute; they come out to Veosa from time to time, mostly to participate in seminars or other academic pursuits.”

  They watched her fill out the blank fields with acronyms and codes neither of them recognized until she sat back with a smile.

  “Done. Mr. Kranz has been extended an invitation to meet with me tomorrow. We only have to wait for his confirmation, and then I’ll authorize his ticket on the mag trains.”

  It didn’t take long. Moments later, the arrangements were finalized, although Ricky knew Jonathan’s acceptance would include a measure of confusion.

  “Will he know it’s coming from us?”

  “Maybe,” Maela answered, “but a free trip to Veosa will be impossible for him to resist. He’ll be here, don’t worry.”

  “I have him reserved for a seat on the 9:30 express,” Valery said.

  With nothing more to do, Valery moved the van to a modest hotel near Veosa’s city center. After more than a week on the dusty road out from Novum, Ricky and Maela looked forward to a shower and a full night’s sleep in a proper bed, but in the morning, they knew, Jonathan’s arrival would take them into the last leg of a long and strange journey.

  They waited at the top of a bank of escalators inside a conspicuously clean and modern Veosan transit station. Ricky smiled to himself, knowing no equivalent scene could be found near the sweltering and crowded streets of Novum. Above, a pleasant, three-tone chime signaled the arrival of the day’s first train, streaking at that very moment across the wide moat dividing the walled borders of Veosa. Moments later, the glistening, bullet-shaped machine knifed its way through parked trains awaiting maintenance, humming to a gentle stop along a high platform.

  Ricky watched them step slowly from the train, looking left and right like factory district moles on their first trip to the surface. Among them, Jonathan made his way to where they waited, a single bag slung over a shoulder and wearing the expression of wonder and excitement that mirrored Ricky’s when he and Maela came in from the Broadlands. At once, he saw Maela and shook his head knowingly.

  “I should’ve guessed,” he said with a sad smile.

  After introductions, Valery guided them to her air car and a brief ride across the city to her apartment building, slipping neatly once more into the shadows of her building’s cavernous parking garage. When she keyed them through her door and took Jonathan’s bag, the anticipation had taken him over.

  “Thank you for inviting me out,” he began, “but I get the sense it’s not for some coding seminar?”

  “We found something,” Maela said at last. “The logs you opened led us out here, but we need your help again.”

  “I figured as much, but why? Investigating a murder isn’t exactly in my line.”

  “No,” Maela replied, “but computer access blocks are, and that’s where we’re stuck. Valery has a comm address she can’t open from the Veosa networks. We were hoping you could take it back to your apartment and try it from there; it’s specifically restricted to a Novum network node, but it’s also encrypted.”

  “I see,” said Jonathan knowingly as their request suddenly became clear. “You want me to bust another system.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Maela replied.

  “Couldn’t you just bring the address back with you? Why pull me all the way out to Veosa?”

  Maela looked first at Richard, pausing to consider her answer carefully.

  “You can come and go on the trains without anyone noticing, Jonathan; Richard and I cannot. It will take more than a week for us to drive back overland as it is, but you could get this done in a day.”

  Jonathan’s confusion was obvious.

  “Who’s stopping you from riding the trains?”

  “The Watchers, for one thing. I’m supposed to be on administrative leave right now; if they see my name on a round trip passenger list from Veosa, it will make them wonder why.”

  “Are you in trouble, Mae?”

  Jonathan’s voice changed—lower, and with a tone of dread.

  “No, but if they see our names in the transit registry, I could be. Take the address back to your apartment and break it, will you please? I can’t explain more because we don’t know where this will lead!”

  He looked at Valery, hoping for more, but her silence made clear the urgency.

  “All right. You have the address on a reader?”

  Valery nodded and handed over a simple data pad. Jonathan stuffed it into his shoulder bag and said, “I’ll call you back on your lab channel when I have something.”

  “Thank you,” Valery replied. “I know this must seem strange to you, but…”

  Jona
than shot a glare only at Maela.

  “Yeah, a recurring theme these days.”

  Valery called a taxi for Jonathan’s ride back to the transit station and then he was gone.

  In the afternoon’s fading light, Ricky and Maela walked along a winding path made of smooth stones coursing through a lovely park squarely in the middle of the city and Valery left them to explore Veosa on their own while she worked through administrative tasks from her office. There was no way of knowing how long Jonathan’s search would take, but passing the rest of the day in pleasant, evening breezes seemed preferable to waiting it out in a hotel room.

  They watched a city going about its daily routine, but it was nothing like the dirty streets of Novum. Here, Ricky thought aloud, there was no rush or palpable sense of caution or urgency that drove the Flatwalkers. Instead, ordinary people were clearly in no special hurry, nor did they search the faces of strangers for signs of ill intent. No one was afraid, he noted; Veosans smiled and laughed more, too.

  “We’re a long way from home,” Ricky said at last.

  When the sun disappeared beyond sculpted buildings to the west, Veosa’s lavish public lighting dazzled in swirls as it washed over gleaming white buildings, creating artificial rainbows for no apparent reason beyond simple, pleasing aesthetics. Once more, Ricky and Maela found their way to the bustling outdoor café where they first dined after coming in from Landsdon. At least, Ricky noted, they could eat well as they waited for Jonathan’s reply.

  An hour later, Maela’s communicator chirped from her wrist signaling Valery’s call.

  “Did he find something?” Maela asked in a low tone so as not to be overheard.

  “Stay where you are,” Valery said, “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Once more, they slipped quickly into the air car and settled as it sped them on a meandering course toward her apartment complex. When the machine reached its cruise altitude, she turned to them.

  “We need to pack; I’ve arranged for tickets on the late express to Novum.”

  “Jonny got through, obviously,” Maela said.