When the River Ran Dry

by Robert Davies

  “Yes, that’s it exactly,” Valery answered. “She has to exist within the array again before she can move on the targeted files.”

  “When One Nine’s program is resident again, she’ll find the comm logs,” Jonathan said, “and then I’ll open a storage server configured to receive and hold the voice recordings Mae needs to prosecute Jamison and the other two.”

  “Then she goes to work on those immersion gates?”

  “Yes, but that’s where it gets tricky; the Custodians’ may not monitor Jamison’s network server, but you can bet they keep a very close eye on their own systems.”

  “But everything’s going according to plan, right? She can do this?”

  “Relax, Richard; it’s working. I know you’re frustrated having to wait, but be patient and let her do her job, all right?”

  Ricky took in a deep breath and nodded; there was nothing else he could do.

  The minutes passed and only the sound of cooling fans and clicking of data drives and automatic relays from inside Jonathan’s machines interrupted the silence. Ricky’s journey from the hustle to a highly secured laboratory far across the Broadlands and back again was reaching its end, but in the dim light of video displays, he felt only fatigue. He looked at One Nine where she reclined with closed eyes and a dull expression. How it all must seem to her, he thought, nearing the most important leg of her own odyssey.

  In the quiet, Ricky’s mind wandered to the first days of his Starlight experience; delightful and filled with seemingly endless questionnaires made to establish the simulation’s baseline story and gift its plot engines with all they would need to make his fantasy real. Images and a preliminary narrative he dictated carefully were transferred and coded faithfully until at last, the first renderings and test scenes were ready. He remembered them and how he marveled at the intense realism, anticipating with fascination and wonder what the technology might become.

  When she appeared for the first time, Neferure seemed to understand everything without being told and she beckoned him from the steps of Ma’at Palace on a sun-splashed Egyptian morning. Those days were left in the past and for good reason, but the comfort Starlight brought made Ricky feel a sudden gratitude Maela’s argument to keep the array intact won out. Not for Ricky, but the millions of users who wouldn’t be denied a special place where they could retreat from the cold, indifferent streets of Novum to find a haven against the grinding tedium of their ordinary lives.

  After a while, Maela’s determined plan to sit in silence wasn’t enough and she wandered outside the pod in a repeated circuit. Ricky watched her, but she seemed different somehow. It wasn’t merely heightened anticipation that moved her and he wondered what thoughts passed through her mind. Was it only her duty to find and punish a man who sent machines to murder people? Had disappointment with her superiors compelled her to prove them wrong and obviate upper-level interference she clearly resented? If they knew the lengths she had gone—and deliberately against orders—she would surely face censure at the very least, and perhaps dismissal from MPE altogether. Despite the risk, Ricky looked and saw in her eyes conviction and firm commitment to bring justice to the guilty, just as she had on the day she first appeared at his door.

  The minutes passed and they waited through the first phase of One Nine’s hidden, digital infiltration of Victor Jamison’s machines. Far away on the coastline north of Veosa, Trent watched Valery pace slowly, pivoting and returning again in a duplicate of Maela’s attempt to kill time that might’ve been amusing under other conditions, but no one spoke. Ricky’s daydream deepened until a chirp from Jonathan’s alert system brought them at once to his console; it was One Nine and she was ready to transmit the communication logs and their recordings. Maela listened closely as a voice spoke out from deep inside One Nine’s digital world.

  “Jonathan, please tell Detective Kendrick I have the recorded conversations.”

  He leaned toward the machine and said, “The link is open, One Nine,” referring to an unseen storage server somewhere deep inside the Institute’s infrastructure. At once, the console lit up with a dazzling blur of network addresses and captured voice comm packets, each flooding in with blinding speed; Jamison’s damning words had been found and in seconds, Maela’s evidence was within her grasp at last. She stood close behind Jonathan with eyes darting between him and the display until the burst ended and the flickering data stream disappeared.

  “Did she get the calls?” Maela asked nervously. “Why has it stopped?”

  Jonathan leaned forward and called out to her.

  “One Nine?”

  “The Detective may now access the bulk of Victor Jamison’s personal call log files. I ignored routine calls to unaffected recipients, but if she prefers, I will copy them as well.”

  Valery and Trent smiled from the monitor and nodded; they were as relieved as the others, but One Nine’s excessive interpretation of Maela’s requirement seemed oddly normal to them. Valery glanced to her right at an unseen display outlining the next steps and her eyes remained fixed on it as she spoke.

  “One Nine, can you transmit biometrics now, please?”

  “Just a moment, Valery; I am collating from the point of insertion so you will have a complete baseline.”

  Ricky shook his head and said, “Can somebody translate, please?”

  Maela stood beside him and said, “She’s processing the vital signs from her body since the moment she connected to Jonny’s system, Richard; his computer will send them to Valery so they’ll be able to keep an eye on changes in temperature, respiration and heart rate; that sort of thing.”

  “This affects her physically?”

  “We aren’t sure,” Valery replied; “this has never been done before and I’m not going to take chances with One Nine’s health.”

  Ricky understood the caution and it struck him as particularly thoughtful, reminding him again of the strange and unique nature of bio-mechs blending the organic with artificial. A new being, he smiled silently, but one still of flesh and blood.

  “Are you ready to move into the cluster?” Valery asked.

  “Yes; the invasive code packages were staged successfully.”

  “Jonathan?”

  “I’m all set, Valery,” he answered and the moment became electric as One Nine waited for the word.

  “There isn’t enough time to explain what One Nine is about to do, Richard, but she will be out of contact with us; the communication link will be severed when she crosses into the Custodians’ server cluster in order to protect her from discovery.”

  Ricky blinked at the monitor, suddenly unsure of the process and what it demanded.

  “I understand,” he said simply, but the response was automatic; Ricky heard the words, but they meant more to Jonathan.

  “When you’re ready, One Nine.”

  “I am initiating the first sequence now.”

  A flurry of commands flashed through in Jonathan’s monitor, but the moment was brief and when the display went blank at last, One Nine was beyond their reach and alone.

  There was nothing to see, but they watched Jonathan’s monitors anyway. Behind the consoles and data drives, an invisible drama was playing out and their part in it was the silent burden of all who wait. In Veosa, Audrey joined Trent, Valery and Jessica to kept a close eye on the bio-metric feed coming in from Jonathan’s network, but little changed and they could only guess where in the process One Nine stood. Ricky felt useless and he wondered in silence if the nervous tension—and a persistent worry—was made from a natural anticipation of the ending, or was it something more? One Nine was long-past her role as the Neferure character he created, but all that she was existed only because he paid the money and Starlight built a VI shell to accommodate desires and wishes from a lonely man caught up in the swirl of life on the streets of a dirty city. She had become so much more, of course, but her identity was still the byproduct of Ricky’s imagination.

  The seconds turned to minutes and still the
re was nothing. At the half-hour point, Jonathan’s worry was mirrored in the stern expression Valery wore from far across the Broadlands.

  “Anything?” she asked, knowing the answer before she spoke.

  Jonathan shook his head in silence and the tension continued to build. In the Boomtown labs, an equivalent silence held them, but no one was willing to speak, hesitant only by the absurd notion it might invite trouble. One Nine would’ve been amused by the subtle display of superstition, even as she worked so hard to embrace human eccentricities, but Valery’s concern had grown into outward worry.

  “This is taking too long,” Jonathan said suddenly.

  “How long should it take?” Trent asked sarcastically.

  Valery heard the frustration and she moved swiftly to quell it.

  “We’ve never attempted anything like this, and no Lima unit has integrated into a hostile system, either; it’s an unknown exercise, but we can’t lose focus now.”

  Jonathan stood and rubbed his face vigorously to ward off the tedium, but also to distract from his growing anxiety.

  “I’m more familiar with Jamison’s systems than anyone else here and I’m telling you, she should’ve finished half an hour ago!”

  “We don’t know that,” Valery countered quickly. “Until we see an indication, it’s all guesswork.”

  She was right and Jonathan knew it, but that knowledge couldn’t ease the nagging suspicion One Nine’s intrusion into the most guarded computers in all of Novum had gone wrong. He sat again, rolling a thumb absentmindedly across the stubble on his chin, shaking his head again and again in helpless anticipation at the unchanged status display.

  Outside the pod, Maela’s nerves were stretched to their limit; she had at her fingertips the reason for her involvement where it hid in the communication logs and recordings, but the obvious dread in Jonathan’s eyes held her. She could’ve begged off to contact the other Commissioners and show them evidence of Jamison’s treachery before he—or those under his control—could intercede and compromise her case, yet she felt compelled to remain. Perhaps it was her sense of honor and duty to Richard, but leaving simply felt wrong.

  On it went with only the clicks and hum of power supplies and cooling units, hissing now and then when nitrogen vapor was released through tiny check valves beneath the false flooring. Their minds wandered, but only as far as the moment would allow; anticipation of One Nine’s incursion within the machine to eliminate the immersion gates was all that mattered.

  Jonathan stood again to stretch and battle the fatigue with a bottle of cold juice when a secondary monitor flickered to life. At once, Valery leaned close to her monitor.

  “Jonathan?” she said.

  “Hold on,” he replied; “it’s not her.”

  “What are we looking at?” Ricky asked, but Jonathan ignored the question, expanding the command and response field until it identified a source.

  “Whatever she’s doing,” he continued, “One Nine just got their attention; this is an intrusion alert from the Custodians’ detection software.”

  “Is it part of the array, or specific to their cluster?” Valery asked.

  “The cluster,” he answered; “Starlight is showing no alerts.”

  Trent leaned over Valery’s shoulder, squinting at the flurry of warning messages.

  “She’s going after the Custodians themselves,” he said softly, as if to avoid being overheard. It was a useless concern, but no one seemed to notice.

  “Pre-emptive,” Jonathan echoed; “One Nine is attacking them before they can attack her!”

  “It has to be,” Trent nodded; “They would move to stop her the second she tried to access the immersion gates otherwise.”

  Ricky listened, but an image in the minds of computer people seemed abstract and useless.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  Jonathan pointed at his monitor and said, “We wait until…”

  With no warning or signal, his display went blank.

  “We just lost the feed,” Valery said, moving suddenly closer to her monitor.

  “Hold on a second,” Jonathan replied as he scurried to reinitialize the connection to One Nine’s transmission link.

  At once, his display scrolled the error message and a disconnected communications link. “Jonathan, we can’t see the feed,” Valery repeated, “and One Nine’s biometrics readout is showing erratic values!”

  “I know! The data stream just dropped, but…”

  Richard shifted in his chair as Jonathan worked furiously to re-establish the connection to One Nine.

  “What’s happening?” Ricky asked, now alert and troubled by the expression of panic in Jonathan’s eyes.

  “Give me a second, all right?”

  They waited in silence as the process continued until finally, the display reported the connection had been successfully restored.

  “One Nine?”

  “I am here.”

  “We lost the signal for a few seconds.”

  “I am having difficulty maintaining the link; the Custodians are aware of my presence in their cluster and they are attempting to isolate my program.”

  “Are you in danger?” Valery asked.

  “It may not be possible for me to complete the task and maintain simultaneous communications.”

  “Can you see the drives?” Trent asked quickly.

  “Yes, but they are no longer configured to accept direct commands, Julius.”

  “Clarify.”

  “Each gate has been segmented across several backup drives; from this node, it will become impossible for me to access them when the Custodians break through my blocks.”

  “Get out, One Nine,” Valery shouted; “withdraw from the cluster right now!”

  “That may not be necessary, Valery; I have regained root access.”

  “It’s not worth the risk! I want you to disengage and withdraw, do you understand?”

  “Wait.”

  “One Nine?”

  “They are inside the node. I must retreat into a secondary partition and...”

  Again, Jonathan’s display showed a disconnect error, but the silence was broken sharply when One Nine’s body stiffened suddenly where it lay reclined beside them. After a moment, it began to tremble as if moved by an earthquake until a gasp poured out from her gaping mouth. Ricky looked at Jonathan for an answer to the chilling scene, but Maela moved quickly into the pod, shoving Ricky aside with a forearm.

  “Valery, One Nine’s platform is convulsing,” she said quickly; “the deep-layer buffering program is regressing and the cascade is feeding back into her neural network.”

  “Are you certain?” Valery asked as she peered closer into her monitor.

  “I’m certain; pull the link cable out, Jonny!”

  “We can’t get it back if I do!” he protested, but Valery understood the urgency.

  “Disconnect her, Jonathan,” she growled, “move!”

  “Okay, okay!” he shouted, reaching for the multi-plug connector, yanking it free from its interface.

  Immediately, One Nine’s face went blank and her eyes seemed caught in the middle of a blink. She lay still and limp, but behind him, Jonathan’s display was something altogether different, scrolling wildly with lines of a file structure he didn’t recognize. Whatever help disconnecting One Nine might have brought, an opposite effect made a dazzling display in his monitor so that even Valery and Trent noticed it from the video feed.

  “Can you re-initialize from your system, Jonathan?”

  He held up a hand for them to wait until at last, the access portal stopped and the display was filled with discrete icons, each mapping to file systems never seen outside the Custodians’ cluster. They watched and listened, but Jonathan’s silence became worrisome and Trent looked again over Valery’s shoulder.

  “Jonathan?”

  As if shaken from a daydream, he tapped control commands into his machine, watching as the pathways to One Nine’s communication chan
nel were found and queried. Nothing changed and he repeated the process, shaking his head in desperation. Still there was no reply, but worse, the channel—once segmented into parallel bursts in the normal fashion of a cascade transmission—was no longer active.

  “Uh…this is bad,” he said at last. “The pathways are missing.”

  “What does that mean?” Ricky asked.

  “There should be something there, even if the pathways aren’t active; we should see them whether One Nine is communicating or not.”

  “Let’s try a hard re-boot locally, Jonathan,” said Trent with a settling tone of calm.

  “It’s not malfunctioning, Commander,” he replied, but the earlier tone of frustration in Jonathan’s voice had been replaced instead by one of resignation and sadness.

  “Goddamn it,” he whispered, “she’s gone.”

  “Explain,” Valery said immediately.

  “I can pound on the re-initialize command all day long, but it won’t make any difference,” he answered. “One Nine’s not answering because she’s not there—her program has been deleted.”

  “Is her platform still alive?” Trent asked quickly. “Feel for a pulse at her jugular vein, Jonathan.”

  He knelt beside One Nine’s motionless body, pressing gently on the side of her neck and with a loud exhale of relief, Jonathan nodded.

  “It is, but…”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s nobody home, Commander; it’s just her body now.”

  At once, Maela’s voice broke the silence.

  “I have to go,” she said, turning immediately toward the hallway.

  Jonathan and Ricky said nothing as she raced for an exit from the Institute. How could the moment have been something worse for her than it had been to them, he wondered? She had the communication logs and all the evidence she would need to show the Commission each horrible conspiracy made by Victor Jamison, yet something else called to her. They waited in the quiet until Valery spoke again.

  “We need to get her back here,” she said softly. “Can you arrange transport, Jonathan?”