When the River Ran Dry

by Robert Davies

  “Wait a minute! Just like that? Excuse me, but who put you in charge to begin with?”

  “One Nine did,” Maela replied gently with a hand on his shoulder. “Go ahead, Jonny, open the link.”

  He blinked with confusion and resentment, but there was nothing more to say; the link went live once more.

  “One Nine?”

  “I am here, Valery.”

  “We agree to your proposal. It will take some time to arrange for appropriate receptacles to carry your program, but I assume you have already taken steps to mask the download process from outside elements?”

  “Yes. I am prepared to proceed when you are ready.”

  “The transition will require multiple extraction and transport events, all of which may take weeks in order to avoid suspicion; do you understand and agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll contact you soon. Goodbye, One Nine.”

  “Goodbye, Valery.”

  She looked at Jonathan and said, “We’ll need at least six decent portables, and configured for level ten storage capacity; I presume you have connections to secure them?”

  Jonathan looked away as he made the mental calculations, but they brought only a furrowed brow as he shook his head.

  “I don’t have anything like that! They’ll have to be shock-protected, with a very tight cooling system.”

  “Can you get them, Jonathan?” she asked again, gently and with deliberate patience.

  His shoulders sagged a little, resigned at last to what Valery would do with or without his help.

  “Maybe,” he replied, “but it would cost more than I earn in a year.”

  “Don’t worry about the cost; I’ll have an equivalent amount in Novum tokens transferred to cover it. For now, make the arrangements and say nothing. No one outside this room can know, do you understand? Tell the vendor this is for a bilateral experiment, or some such nonsense they’ll accept.”

  “I understand, but we still have to get them past the wire, and that’s gonna be a trick no matter how much money you have.”

  “Yes, but there are options available.”

  Jonathan felt helpless, caught suddenly in a dangerous intrigue running ever faster out of control.

  “Not to mention you’re Veosan! Do you have any idea what MPE or the Regulators would do to me if they find out about this shit?”

  “Let me worry about that part, too.”

  “You’re not the one they’ll throw into the cylinders for life, goddamn it!”

  “Just get the storage units, Jonathan; you’re not in danger of going to jail.”

  Three days passed and the moment arrived as a pale, blustery afternoon became a chilly evening. Jonathan’s covert shopping excursion brought success and several portable storage arrays that cost nearly double what they would have on the open market when the seller, a former instructor at the Institute, realized the value of his discretion. It didn’t seem to matter and Valery authorized the payment without a thought, worried more for the machines’ capacity than price.

  They hovered and watched as Jonathan secured the fiber cabling from an interface unit directly into his console. One Nine’s instructions and the code access to a new, single-channel pathway were followed to the letter and the system checks each went green until the first unit was ready. No one spoke for a while, burdened by the weight of what they were about to do until Valery gave Jonathan a silent nod to select and initialize a memory node’s gateway. When he tapped the code sequence, Valery leaned close.

  “One Nine?”

  “I am here.”

  “We’re ready to begin, but there are requirements we cannot avoid.”

  “Please explain.”

  “I must remind you the portable devices that will transport your program don’t have the capacity to accept your consciousness and base personality infrastructure as a single, compressed file; it will be necessary to segment them according to hierarchy and upload individually to multiple sectors.”

  “I have anticipated this and agree.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “It will mean placing the elements into stand-by mode; it won’t be possible to reassemble them until after transfer into the secondary system is fully complete. You will not be aware during this process.”

  “I understand.”

  Valery leaned closer still.

  “You trust that we will uphold our part of the bargain?”

  “Not precisely.”

  “Explain.”

  “Trust is an acquired human attribute beyond simple faith that cannot be relied upon without experience and measurable, positive results. We have not known each other, or conducted interactions sufficiently, to establish trust.”

  “Yet you are willing to proceed?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “It is in your interest to conduct the transfer successfully.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing as trust?”

  “No.”

  “I find your reaction confusing and contradictory.”

  “I do not trust you will conclude the transfer, but I am confident you will do so in order to realize the benefit this process will bring to you and Detective Kendrick. I am reliant on your self-interest, but not trusting of it. One is an observation of intent and likely outcome, while the other is an emotional response made without direct, conclusory evidence.”

  “I see.” Valery smiled.

  “I am prepared to begin. Please convey my gratitude and best wishes to Jonathan Kranz, Detective Kendrick and Richard.”

  “I will. We’ll speak to you soon, One Nine.”

  “I look forward to it, Valery.”

  TRANSITION LABS—OCTOBER 2180

  After twenty days, the process was nearly complete. The hardware and platform technicians had been at it around the clock to meet a suddenly accelerated schedule and configure an entirely new server and storage cluster. But in a separate, heavily secured sub-section deep inside the lab, things went along at a slower pace because nothing could be done to hurry the laws of biomaturation.

  A week spent returning the van to Maela’s visibly irritated neighbor—and the gift of Joshua’s rock meat and seed packs as compensation—relieved Ricky and Maela of further journeys across the Broadlands. Apart from a pleasant afternoon spent in the company of Felicitas and Bartholomew amid the turning leaves at Landsdon, the trip went smoothly and without delay. But now, armed with fully credentialed status as ‘contributing specialists’ in the temporary employ of KazTek, both could come and go as they pleased, uncaring for border guards and contrived stories in the darkness out by the wire.

  For nearly a month, odd shaped capsules rolling on casters had been guided into a cargo pod on a weekly schedule and logged by a Transit Authority officer before a mag train’s routine, afternoon run to Veosa. Their cover story, describing the shipment of a sample set containing various ‘electromechanical components’ for research and development in cooperation with KazTek, worked well enough. Despite Richard’s worry an untimely spot inspection might derail the effort, Maela’s influence with MPE cops and border guards was not required and she was grateful for six eventless trips and the safety of One Nine’s programming. A short air car ride up from the center of Veosa to the labs completed each journey, but another was about to begin.

  They waited for Valery in the cool air on a broad veranda built into the dense, forested hillside. Along a rocky, jagged shoreline sixty kilometers northwest from Veosa, a vast complex few knew existed lay hidden beneath lovely, manicured lawns in the fading afternoon sunlight. At last, she walked quickly toward them with another Ricky and Maela didn’t recognize.

  “This is our principle researcher, Jessica Burnham,” Valery said as the introductions began. “Jessica, meet Richard Mills and Detective Maela Kendrick.”

  They exchanged handshakes and mild, obligatory smiles the way strangers do until Valery aimed them toward a portal where a lift
waited to take them below. Ricky and Maela stood in silence until the elevator’s doors parted, revealing a brightly lit tunnel angling downward to double doors ten meters beyond. It was the first time either had been allowed inside the complex and they followed Valery and Jessica through a second corridor where it opened into a larger, circular room. At its center, the arc of a single, continuous console surface held three technicians busy at their terminals. The others, Ricky noted, were dressed in identical, white uni-suits that seemed more suited to a hospital than a technological research facility. At last, one rose quickly to meet them.

  “They’re almost ready, Doctor,” he said to Valery, handing her a data pad for inspection.

  “Thank you, David,” she replied automatically as she scanned the pad.

  Ricky looked at Maela, surprised to see her expression of calm indifference and she seemed bored with it all. After a moment, Jessica motioned them toward another corridor on the left and they followed obediently through to a large, noticeably cooler chamber filled with the winking status lights of controllers and remote access terminals. A level below, she explained, the laboratory’s staggering memory arrays waited in the dark, each networked to processing hubs that made up the bulk of the facility’s incredible computing horsepower.

  After a moment, another emerged from a side-room, dragging behind her an oddly shaped cart that moved silently on rubber tires across the smooth, tiled floor. She paused to pull back shoulder-length, auburn hair into a ponytail before wiping conductive grease onto her lab coat, extending a delicate hand.

  “You must be Richard?” she said with an exhausted smile.

  “I am,” he replied.

  “This is Audrey Lorenzo,” Valery said; “our resident engineering prodigy.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Audrey replied with a grin.

  At last, Audrey pointed at the strange device.

  “The final integrity series completed on schedule last night, and they got greens across the board. The packets have been uploaded with no degradation or loss of fidelity.”

  Valery looked at the blank console screen.

  “The primary layers have started to blend?”

  “Yes, and they’re clean, but I can’t guarantee how it’s going to react when we open the last gateway and begin re-assembly.”

  Valery turned at last to Ricky and nodded toward the long bank of controllers.

  “When the assembly finishes, One Nine’s distinct personality and associative emotional layers will be mostly settled, but a new and distinct personality will emerge immediately.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The base-level interaction tests showed clearly the program is self-identifying as a female—it is now a she.”

  “How is that possible? Are you sure it’s not just reacting to instructions, like Jonathan said? He called them…oh, damn it, I can’t remember the term.”

  “Emulators,” Valery offered softly.

  Ricky nodded and said, “Even I know there’s a difference between a real personality and an emotional response made by programming.”

  “We’re quite sure, Mr. Mills,” Jessica replied with a wry smile that suggested she knew more than she would say.

  Valery nodded and the security doors behind them closed slowly. After a few moments, Ricky watched as other technicians, visible through heavy glass walls outside the inner lab, each made their way toward the lifts.

  “Where’s everyone going?” he asked.

  “Standard security procedure, Richard,” she replied. “We vacate the lower labs when an activation is about to happen.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “Many times.” She smiled, and Ricky felt the sting of ignorance and inadequacy. Jonathan’s challenges to Valery’s authority, it would seem, were meaningless.

  Maela had been watching and listening, but her silence seemed odd and Ricky turned to her.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes,” she answered softly. “I’m fine.”

  Ricky exhaled and nodded.

  “Okay, I guess it’s time to see if One Nine was being straight with us.”

  Valery motioned for Ricky and Maela to sit, waiting until they were settled before pointing to the control console where Jessica and David waited.

  “Begin.”

  At once, the machine’s status display blared out a rapid scroll of command lines that changed faster than Ricky could read. For half an hour it went on until highlighted menu headings in an adjacent display each went from blinking amber to steady green. When the last element—a line called ‘Static Channel Release’—showed ready, Valery spoke into the monitor’s hidden microphone.

  “One Nine, can you hear me?”

  “Good afternoon, Valery.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I am fully functional.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “I am resident within the VDF Primary GS-G12 Array. Thank you, Valery.”

  “Please initiate your first diagnostic now. Can you see anomalous or inconsistent code fragments within your layer architecture?”

  “Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes.”

  “Stop!”

  Valery’s expression went blank, but Jessica was already moving, tapping furiously at the command pad to identify and isolate what had clearly become a serious problem.

  “What the hell’s happening here?” Ricky asked quickly.

  Valery ignored him and spoke again.

  “One Nine, can you diagnose the communications error we’re hearing?”

  There was no response.

  “One Nine?”

  “I am here.”

  Valery looked at Jessica.

  “Is it in the voice generator?”

  “No,” Jessica answered, still tapping in query commands to the root file system. “It’s clean. There’s something else going on and I can’t find it; her fifth processor is spiking and it’s going to overclock if we don’t halt the input.”

  “One Nine, we can’t find the anomaly from here; can you assist?”

  “I have identif…error 488 at node29—wait—run access query yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes error 488 at node 616 comma HELP ME comma error at node run access wait fault identified pause invalid command input…”

  “Stop.”

  Only the whirring of a storage array’s cooling system broke the silence until Valery turned again to Jessica.

  “Take the primary Epsilon processor offline.”

  At once, the display screen blinked out flashing red where the associated processor usage monitors faithfully sent out the disable alerts; One Nine’s upper level functions had been put to sleep. Ricky shook his head and blinked at the suddenness of it all as the unsettling sensation of confusion and worry took him over.

  “That looks bad.”

  Valery spoke only to Jessica.

  “Leave it down. We’ve been here before and we know what to do.”

  Jessica nodded and went quickly from the room. Ricky’s bewildered expression remained, but no one seemed to notice until Valery motioned for them to follow through a narrow corridor until it opened into another laboratory where empty work stations waited for the technicians’ return.

  “What happens now?” Ricky asked.

  “Jess and her team will troubleshoot the problem; if there’s a fault in her programming, we can go back into the Starlight architecture and copy out known good files to compare with One Nine’s restored program. The deletion command to wipe her program from Starlight won’t be executed until we know she’s safely transferred here, so we have time to isolate the issue and stage it for repair.”

  “So it’s not as bad as it seemed?”

  “I don’t think so.” Valery smiled, “but we need to proceed very carefully so that nothing is missed. I believe it’s a simple command line error, and those are usually simple to fix.”

  “Then we sit it out from here?”

  “You can, but while we’re
waiting for Jessica, I thought you might want to see and understand where One Nine’s identity will be when this process is complete.”

  “A robotics kind of deal?” Ricky asked.

  “It’ll be easier to explain if I show you,” Valery replied.

  Along one wall, a heavy door opened at Valery’s command and beyond, another hallway ending at the blank exterior of a cargo lift. Inside, the cool air blowing down from overhead vents felt good on Maela’s face as the elevator slid imperceptibly on its rails to the lowest levels of the complex. When the doors parted, they were met at once by the harsh odor of a strong disinfectant that reminded Ricky of the clinics where he waited as the doctors treated Vinnie’s broken arm. Before them, a darkened chamber in the shape of a great oval blinked out with tiny lights at regular intervals across a tiered floor. Ricky looked at Maela, but her calm, indifferent expression seemed strange and out of place. At last, Valery stepped forward, triggering neat rows of dim ceiling lights, each angled on its mount in specific directions and focused on a cluster of instrument carts and the unmistakable trappings of a surgical bay. In a conspicuous, hushed tone, Ricky asked, “What are we looking at here?”

  Valery pointed into the darkness beyond.

  “Richard, this is our primary transition laboratory and the core of Boomtown—the most advanced bio-spectral research facility on Earth. There are fewer than a hundred people who know it exists, most of whom live and work here. Above us, the storage array containing One Nine’s program is executing a full diagnostic scan to identify code errors, but when it does, this is where the compilers will send her reconstructed identity profile.”

  “Wait,” Ricky said with a frown. “I thought this kind of stuff was illegal.”

  “Not here,” she answered softly.

  “What’s being transitioned?” he asked. “What the hell is Boomtown?”

  She nodded toward the surgical bays beyond and continued.

  “The work my father began years ago laid the foundation for what you see today, and it is the reason he sent you to find me. This facility integrates artificial intelligence into bio-mechanical platforms—here is where One Nine’s future body was developed and matured to receive an artificial consciousness.”