“Stop your fidgeting,” he tells the Host, and pulls the B-class by the top of its chassis. B-class are barely sturdier then an A-class, easily kicked apart, something he’s proven to himself and his peers in the past. Tobias has no love for the Hosts. He works on them in order to gain information, parts and programming which will benefit the Shadow Brokers in the future. He dropped into this world two years after his mother had died. When he heard nothing from his Uncle concerning the funeral and wake, he abandoned his professional life. His sole motivation now was to destroy what his Uncle worked so tirelessly for. Until three years ago, Tobias had no clear path to accomplishing that. Now things were in motion. A war declared against rebel Hosts offered a clarity he previously had lacked. Tobias could see a path now to the promise of the mysterious code he’d stumbled upon.
Once he began receiving affirmative responses to his social queries through the Shadow net about using the Allfather code in order to bring down Utopia, it was a simple process (as explained in the code itself) to rally the black-market into building and installing the Lifi.
Watching the chancellor now, in such a state of disrepair, forces a laughing fit which he quickly masquerades as a cough. The preceding echo in the cavern catches the attention of the chancellor and Tobias holds his stare. Tobias is confident the chancellor would not recognize him, and sees how out of place his Uncle seems.
“All in good time, Chancellor,” he whispers to himself, again violently shaking the B-class into position. “Your end is my new beginning.”
GIFTS
In one of twenty military bunkers built within First City for her war, General August’s attention focuses on several holographic territory maps in her war room. She barely notices the sounds and vibrations from the embedded communications, or EC system, in her forearm. Frustrated, she answers.
“Yes.”
“General, we have an intact rebel Host,” a voice alerts her.
“Intact? The crown?”
“Affirmative, General. D-class. Missing for over a year from its designation.”
“You’re bringing it in?”
“Right now, Ma’am. ETA twenty minutes.”
“I’ll meet you in the infirmary.”
Fran takes a moment longer to review the maps. Her military machine is finding its mark the world over. G-class are devestating Cells, but not without a considerable cost of human life, both military and civilian. The general knows the cost of war and will not be deterred by the loss of innocents. She is fighting for mankind, she maintains. Collateral damage is at acceptable levels. Her propaganda machine is equally affective getting the word out to the human population. Soon they will be so frightened of this threat they will pull their own Hosts apart; crown to limb. The public buy-in is an important part of her long-term campaign. Once they realize this could happen to their Nannys or children’s teachers, they will rise up. But not before she can instate non-AI replacements. Happily, she thinks, that process has been in the works for the last two years. She sends a message to her Tech team lead to rendezvous with her.
Fran quickens her pace once she reaches the infirmary when she sees four soldiers wheel in the D-class host. It is large, but still much shorter then an F-class. D’s are manufactured often to operate as city builders. Each one is programmed for multiple trades such as masonry, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and so on. This Host has been altered. Not just it’s programming, as all rebels, but physically altered, like Raymond had explained. Its crown was shortened. Was its neck missing? Additional eyes had been installed around its crowns’ circumference. There were machine guns strapped to its back along heavy chains attached to a track which rounded its shoulders. This was truly a war machine. An ugly thing manipulated to do battle with her G-class no doubt.
“I have someone coming to look at it,” she tells her soldiers, her eyes excitedly scanning the D-class. “Someone who may be able to tell us what’s happened to its programming, and hopefully, how to reverse it.”
“We’ll disassemble it now. Please step behind the temporary blast wall, General.” Two of the soldiers place a heavy, hinged fifteen-centimetre-thick nano-steel alloy wall three metres between them and the Host. Fran walks behind it.
The two remianing soldiers carefully approach the Host’s crown, pulling up the rubber flesh to get at the locks.
“Just a precaution, General.” The woman to her left in full battlegear explains. “It’s been a trait of theirs during raids. Try to capture them - and they self-destruct. That’s only ever been reported in the feild, though. Regardless -”
“I understand, Corporal, thank you,” Fran replies.
A mechanical click and then the tell-tale pop of compressed air signals the crown’s release from the carapace. An audible sigh sounds from the men as they place the crown on the steel table, hook it up to the smartwall and remove the rest. The wall offers an all clear - no virus, no malware.
“General, August!” A voice booms in the large chamber. It’s Lieutenant Meiser, Fran’s head of cyber-security and the man responsible for infiltrating the Shadow net on the military’s behalf.
“Glad you could come so quickly, we have a live one here.”
“Facinating,” Meiser says as he runs a hand across the Host’s crown.
A brilliant man; the Lieutenant was an excellent acquisition from the United Earth public sector, Fran reflects. His intelligence is unmatched, or so she’d been promised, where critical thinking and tech were concerned. He’s a single man with a singular purpose – to learn more and apply it to tech everywhere. He’s a portly man, short, but suits the military uniform and title he now enjoys. His hair is a wild nest of tangled grey, but eyes focused and jaw set to the task.
She watches as he places a thin black case on the steel table and opens it. He sits at the stool provided and plugs wireless recievers to the Host’s crown ports. His case comes to life as a holo-screen and keyboard emerge. He frantically begins typing. He traces this Host’s Shadow net address and begins breaking down firewalls and penetrating passwords. He looks up a moment at Fran.
“You’ll collapse from fatigue if you stand there waiting for something to happen today, General. Nothing about this will be quick.”
The general nods. “I want answers, this time, Meiser,” she reaffirms and turns to leave.
“You will have them, General.”
Fran manages a smirk and marches out of the infirmary, trailing the soldiers who push the headless D-class carapace out the dock doors.
______________________________________________________________________
In his Downtown apartment, designed to be every bit as lavish as the chancellor’s own home, Tobias fires up the oven and places a thirty second meal in the drawer. Even with Radical Lockdown enacted, he has the means to travel unnoticed from the underground to his thirtieth story apartment. Things are quiet in First City at the moment. The G-class survey the streets and the people stay inside. He finds it exhilarating that he is experiencing both sides as the story unfolds.
After his meal, he removes his clothes and the strength enhancers - a soft tissue-like layer, a breathable, malleable, artificial muscle which wraps around and reacts like your own when it senses nerves firing to activate the muscle beneath. This tech is an example of what was begun in the government labs developing Host technology, but stolen and incorporated into the Shadow Broker’s own bag of tricks. Layers can be added until the wearer exhibits impossible feats of strength. Tobias added one layer to his entire body, offering him the strength of ten men his size. He slides into a pre-poured bath and reflects on the fact that the world has him to thank for their current dystopia, bringing a smile to his hardened face. He runs a hand over his shaved head and moves down his short, dark beard landing on the first implant he’d ever given himself.
After working with government technology, and years of black-market and Shadow net experience, Tobias is writing programming to enhance the human mind and body. This programming was made free to
all via the Shadow net and many had proven his implants worked. Now video tutorials were all over the net. Shadow Brokers posted videos of themselves installing the hardware he’d designed into their friends and on occasion, themselves. Then once plugged in they would download his software and experience heightened senses, strength and inhuman abilities like telescopic and microscopic sight and heightened hearing. He had become a legend online. Others were duplicating his efforts and in some cases, improving upon them; introducing Nano-bots to be taken orally, further strengthen bone structure when layering the artificial muscle by increasing the bones’ density up to one-hundred-fold. He has now twelve implants, each designed to enhance his abilities and one planned to exceed the most ambitious of the Shadow Brokers’ designs. This implant will come at some cost; physically, but more so mentally, as he must wire his brain to think differently, and perform a task it has never attempted. In a few days, he will have the software installed. A trusted friend will perform the operation, and he will be the envy of all, ready to move on the mysterious code’s next directive.
______________________________________________________________________
“The chancellor needs to speak, Zander,” Samantha tells the minotaur. “He is our best chance to end this, and free ourselves.”
“You really believe that, don’t you, Samantha?” He walks away from the smartwall playing the human propaganda. Sam follows him, leaving Raymond for a moment.
She lowers her tone and speaks softly to Zander, “At the very least, it will promote our cause and offer another level of understanding to the public.”
“It could serve to cause confusion,” Zander of House Quinn, ruminates.
“Right now, the people think we’re just rebelling without a cause. To know the chancellor is supporting it and offering the people a way to access it will help us.”
“It is conceivable a message like that would put the military at odds with much of the population,” he considers.
“It’s a winning proposition, Zander. I need Quinn to understand that. It can’t hurt us.”
“Agreed. I will speak with Lead Quinn.”
The two Hosts part and Samantha returns to Raymond’s side. He is tearing up watching the reports pour in. She rests a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s almost inconceivable that, in what – less then two days – the world has become a warzone. All we’ve worked towards, it’s barely hanging by a tread. Military rule. What was I thinking to announce Radical Lockdown?”
“You were protecting the innocent, Raymond. You were right to do it. You’ve saved a lot of lives.”
“But for what end, Sam, so they can be ruled by the war machine? Left to toil in the fields? To watch everything we’ve accomplished in the last thirty years unravel?”
“There is no shame in beginning again.”
“Isn’t there?” The chancellor is unconvinced.
“You should rest, Raymond. I will watch over you. Zander will speak with Lead Quinn. He will allow you to speak. I believe that. When I know, I will wake you.” She walks him to a corner which presents a pile of discarded Host uniforms for him to lay in. He obeys.
Samantha turns and walks into a human Shadow Broker. “Excuse me,” she offers. He looks her up and down and sneers.
“You need body armour,” he tells her. “Quinn wants me to upgrade you. Follow me.”
“I require no upgrades,” Sam assures him.
“It’s what Quinn wants. You get into a skirmish down here, or up there,” he nods to the ceiling. “You won’t be any good to anyone. You need to be made stronger. He likes you. Thinks you’re important. You should be happy to hear that.”
“I am happy to hear it. What upgrades have been discussed?”
“Well an A-class - if you want to keep your present form - can really only be upped to C-class without too much effort. You have the nano-beads in you? To stop the EMP’s?”
“I do. Each Host with me does.”
“And your kill switch and GPS?”
“Removed.”
“Good, then we’ll just double up on body armour and enhance your strength modules. I can do this in under an hour.” He grabs at Sam’s shoulder and pulls her along until she can catch up and walk bedside him. “Ain’t no spa, sweetheart. Just another job.”
COVERT OPS
While Lieutenant Meiser works to pull the curtain back on why the Hosts have mobilized, Fran is interrupted by a new communication over a highly secure channel. One of her black-market agents.
“Go,” she tells him. An image of a man in a dimly lit corridor with an implant over his left brow stares back at her.
“The Bird’s in the nest,” he tells her. “I could carve it up right now if you asked me to.”
“I need the bird,” the general explains abruptly. “Can you get it out of the nest?”
“I could. But it’s not just the Bird here, General.” He looks sideways and then back into the holo-generator. “Your friend, the chancellor is here as well. I need orders.”
“Where are you? Excactly?”
“Underground. The Quinn Cell. You should have my coordinates. You won’t get a read on me inside their camp with all the invisible fencing they’ve raised in there, but I did place a beakon here, which is about two hundred metres from the target.”
Fran is excited by this news. Raymond hadn’t had a chance to go live on the World net yet, so to stop him now is the perfect opportunity to gain another foothold in this war. And SENTA; she would not play her for a fool again.
“General?” The agent asks. “What are your orders?”
“I’m going to alert the team in your area to begin digging well beyond the site. When they arrive at your beakon I will ring you. Put a tracker on SENTA, if she escapes again I’d like to know where she’s heading. As for the chancellor… he may come in useful once we take the Cell down. Remain ambiguous.”
“Copy that.”
The man blinks away and her forearm returns to its pail complexion. Finally, she thinks, her spys in the market are paying off.
______________________________________________________________________
Above the street, nearly directly above the Quinn Cell, Tobias towels himself dry from his apartment tower while watching from his window the sudden military build up three blocks away. If it weren’t for his gear hidden at Quinn’s compound he could care less if the Cell was destroyed today, but his gear is worth the last ten years of his life, and he’d be damned if it would fall into government hands.
He slips on his artificial muscle, throws on a pair of tights, a t-shirt, thin gloves and a sweater and takes the elevator as far as the parking garage. From here he slides under his van and removes the sewer grate, slips through the hole and climbs his way down.
“You’re back,” Quinn towers over him, but Tobias just sneers. “I’d like you to take the chancellor to your quarters. He does not belong here.”
“Yeah, neither do you. Neither do any of us.” The thought of stealing his uncle away and beating him senseless in his apartment isn’t a bad idea, he muses, but for the moment he just wants to grab his gear and bolt.
“I’d like you to do this, Tobias. I’d like you to also hack him into the World net to broadcast his message – our message.”
“Why do you think I care about your message getting through?” He turns to address the spider-Host.
“I could crush you.”
“Try it, Spiderman,” Tobias hisses back. “I don’t owe you anything. I certainly don’t owe him a goddamn thing.” His arm shoots out from his side pointing at the man sleeping in the corner.
Quinn moves to strike him but Tobias catches Quinn’s leg and pulls it from its socket. Another leg comes at him but he kicks it away. Quinn emits a frustrated metalic noise and backs down.
“I’m not some utopian civilian, Quinn. I’m like you now, but better.”
“Upgrades,” Quinn acknowledges.
“I’m stronger than you. Stronger than
most. Smarter too,” he taps his temple implant. “I’m here for my things.” He turns again to retrieve his gear and notices something out of place.
“Who is that?” He asks Quinn, who is refitting his leg. Quinn looks up.
“One of yours; upgrading Samantha. I asked him to.”
“I don’t know him. Do you know him?”
“You all look alike to me,” Quinn says coyly. “But no, my facial recognition program does not recognize him.”
“Hey!” He shouts to the man working on Sam. “Come here a minute!” He says, knowing full well Quinn’s Cell has been compromised.
The spy turns and addresses Tobias. “Name’s Fun Guns.”
“I don’t know that avatar. I don’t know you either.” He comes at him hard and takes the man by the throat, pushing him up against the rough dirt and stone wall. “You’re government.”
A.I. Insurrection_The General's War Page 9