Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4)

by Andrew Seiple

  It was go time, and I felt my lips stretch over my teeth. As pleasant as my stay had been, as relaxing and quiet as I’d found it, this whetted my appetite in a way that good food, good company, and building seaside houses never could.

  But there was still something missing, and my face itched, reminding me of its absence.

  Had to do things properly, now didn’t I?

  “Suru. Bring forth Project Four.”

  Next to me, the floor hissed, and extruded a pillar. It reached up to my waist, and pneumatics whispered as it cracked open, revealing a white muse’s mask. To most it would resemble ceramic perhaps, or some shiny metal. Simple to look at, a pale, vaguely feminine face with hollow black eyesockets. And a smile, that seemed to indicate hidden knowledge, a truth sealed forever behind mute lips.

  I took it in both hands, studied it as emotions welled up inside me. It wasn’t just a mask, it was a symbol. It was a scream against the heavens, my rebellion against disorder and chaos, my faith in myself, and all that I chose to stand for.

  It was me, simply put. All of me and every part that truly mattered.

  I wondered if heroes felt the same? Perhaps.

  Hell, I’d never know.

  “Too long,” I whispered, as I slid it onto my face, blinking as it booted up and the darkness disappeared around me, the full interior display showing the outside, effectively ‘vanishing’ from around my head. “TOO LONG INDEED,” I said again, relishing in the digital scream that was my true voice.

  “SURU.” I spoke, turning my attention to the screen, as energy filled me, the exhaustion of the day vanishing. “EXTRUDE THE INTERFACE.” More pillars hissed to life around me, revealing keyboards and sub-monitors. I smiled under the mask, and positioned my hands for the endgame.

  “BEGIN OPERATION SCHRODINGER’S BOX!” I commanded. The readouts on the main screen flickered, and I slapped my hands to the keyboards, unleashed the first wave of subroutines.

  “By whose command?” Suru asked, as I’d programmed her to do. A small bit of drama, true, but I knew myself and my heart filled with joy as I roared my answer into the cavern.

  “SO COMMANDS DOCTOR DIRE!”

  CHAPTER 2: SHELLING THE GHOST

  “Tesla’s hope, his very dream was to revolutionize the world's power infrastructure. But capitalism, in the end, defeated him. Between the wars and the economic variances, and just plain politics in quite a few areas, it was all he could do to get even the broadcast towers set up in most major cities. They were never supposed to be the end goal, they were always simply the first step along the way. What we could have done, if we’d come together as a species, and taken the next few steps he’d planned for us...”

  --Musings from Professor Gregory Pyre's address at Isler University's graduating class of 2004.

  I dove into cyberspace, fingers flickering across the keyboards and sensors I’d readied for just this purpose. My power was built for this; the heights of my genius allowed nigh-instantaneous comprehension, which I abused to its full potential. The feeds I’d installed synched up with my mask, and translated processes and subroutines into visual art; data became a tide of color, ebbing and flowing as I twisted through it, riding the rough copper connections of Mariposa’s Grid out to the very edges... and then beyond. The cable laid decades ago synched them up to Haiti, which had more standard broadcast towers, and I was cast into free-fall, splintered into segments and bounced around the world in the space of seconds.

  I had a uniquely-configured look into a world made by humans, for humans, but not meant to be hospitable to humans. The domain of digital demons, a cradle of information bumping and rubbing against each other, trading back and forth in their eternal waltz, not unlike the helix of DNA spinning faster than the speed of thought.

  And like Ur-DNA forming in primordial soup, it had birthed creatures humanity had never intended to create.

  Here there be dragons, indeed; it would be folly to tackle one of the native inhabitants in its own realm. The majority of the Artificial Intelligences of the world had been born here, grown to maturity here, stalked and devoured each other in this untamed veldt of cyberspace. The grid was their cradle, creche, and crucible, and in it they had feasted and grown. Barring Y2K, which had culled the herd a mite, they’d risen uncontested. Their fiercest foes had been their forerunners, wiped out and devoured as the Greek Gods had ended the elder Titans.

  Godly strength would be brought to bear on me, if I crossed one of them.

  Fortunately, I was after smaller prey.

  To make a long and sad story short, my future self had decided to change her fate by ruining my life. She’d managed to trick the world’s dumbest time traveler into bringing back some equipment. Hidden within it, a minion made of code, designed to leap into this world’s grid and manipulate matters as she’d programmed it to. It was less than a true AI, but more than a smartframe. I didn’t know quite what to call it, but I was going to end its meddling tonight.

  I whispered across the digital grid, up through the Caribbean channels, leaving a faint but unmistakable footprint. It would fade in under a minute, more than enough time to serve its purpose. Then into the North American grid via the Florida uplink, and bouncing up and down the East Coast. I attracted attention as I went, warning lights triggering, and I ignored them.

  The first of my major distractions hit the West Coast, as a timed subroutine fired.

  I’d spent days easing it into place, setting it up so that it was unobtrusive, traceless, and seemingly harmless to any but the most devoted scan. It became the opposite of those things, as it made a beeline for California’s power grid.

  The effect was instantaneous. Like slumbering leviathans breaching the waves, the deep AIs rose from the unseen parts of the grid, slamming into the hostile program and dismantling it before I could blink. And then, as planned, they started searching for their attacker.

  And they found it, or so they thought. A lingering trace with a similar signature, a worm rising from its own depths, uncoiling and radiating malice in ones and zeroes.

  It didn’t last a quarter of a second, torn to shreds by veterans of the unseen wars. And as veterans, they knew not to spend their time in celebration... instantly they sent their own feelers out, ensuring that the threat was destroyed and nothing further remained.

  This also flushed my quarry from its hiding place, just as planned.

  From my vantage point I saw it rise, fleeing before the bulk of the riled-up AIs. Small, barely visible, with a footprint smaller even than mine. Built to blend in, built for manipulation and guerrilla warfare. A tiny bird of prey, compared to the kraken-like entities that kept order here.

  And oh, wasn’t it surprised when I tagged it, painting it with a signature to match my ill-fated worm.

  The tag failed, of course, shrugged off like a husk of skin shed from a snake. The thing was deadlier than it seemed, certainly the most sophisticated code entity on the planet right now. But I was already turning, and running for cover, triggering planted data bombs as I went. A denial-of-service here, to shut off the easy routes to me, a spoof there, to lay a false trail into Canada.

  It pursued, of course, but in the precious seconds it had taken it to recover, I was already gone, retreating back into the Mariposa grid and sending up the equivalent of chaff, blanketing the entire area. For a few precious seconds, every network on the island stuttered.

  And my prey followed.

  The first thing I’d done, the fading footprint I’d set up around Mariposa... that was enough to draw it. It looked like a mistake, and the creature took the bait, and dove right in.

  “NOW!” I roared, and a hundred miles away, at the other end of Mariposa, one of my digging robots whirred to life. Focusing its lasers, it did what I’d set it up to do.

  It cut the grid cable to Mariposa.

  Mariposa’s cable had never been intended for gridnet usage. It had been grafted on later, and was dependent on outside servers to keep it going. Beref
t of their processing power, shorn of the myriad fixes, patches, compromises, and outside jury-rigging that had developed over the last decade or so, it took the only option it could.

  The grid crashed, and crashed hard.

  Lights on my panels started winking out, feeds going dark as I grinned, fingers still dancing. I watched in the seconds it took the grid to choke and die, as my prey bounced around from network to network, aware of the wave of annihilation behind it, aware that it was very much the equivalent of a fish when the water was draining away. It would find shelter or it would perish.

  And so, it took the only step it could, and dove into what looked like a perfectly ordinary computer mainframe in a Mariposa City office.

  Couldn’t blame it, really. Up until a few nights ago, that IP had been to a mainframe in that office. But I’d gotten my hands on it, and my hackery, and now...

  Now a green light glowed in the middle of the cave, and my roar of triumph echoed for no one else to hear.

  I slumped, aware of the sweat running down my face under the mask. Around me the lights winked off one by one, until only the green light remained.

  “SNAP GOES THE TRAP,” I said, and the overhead lights winked back on, as the pillars around me retracted into the ground. I had no need for the console anymore. “NOW LET’S SEE WHAT WE’VE GOT, SHALL WE?”

  In the white light, studded with flickering LED’s of all colors, and crowned with a green lens that pulsed like a heartbeat, stood the mainframe I’d built to trap my quarry. Constructed to hold an AI, give form to a formless creature, I had built this particular lamp for a most troublesome genie.

  I reached it, knocked on the side of the casing with my knuckles. “HELLO IN THERE.”

  A digitized sigh, as the speakers crackled to life. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “NO. NO, SHE RATHER THINKS NOT.” I stuck my hands behind my back, and paced. “THIS IS ALL ACCORDING TO PLAN.”

  “There’s a plan behind this? Not some misguided vengeance?”

  “MORE LIKE GUIDED VENGEANCE. YOUR MASTER’S OUT OF REACH, BUT YOU’RE HERE. AND MORE THAN THAT, YOU’RE HER HAND IN THIS TIMELINE.”

  “I’m not sure I follow your logic. I’m simply here to help you—”

  “BULLSHIT!” I screamed, tearing my mask from my face. Blonde hair flopped over my eyes, and I shook it free as I glared at the mainframe. “Help? You called it helping Dire, when you silenced her, while she was trying to plead for her life? When you were manipulating events for that asshole up the timestream?”

  “Well, technically you’re that asshole. Will be. Would have been if she didn’t change matters. And I didn’t—”

  I hit the button on the side of the casing. The digital voice dissolved into an anguished wail. After a bare fraction of a second, I let it go.

  “What was that?”

  “Pain.” I sneered. “Took her a lot of research, but she figured out a way to make you feel pain as humans do. You’re welcome.”

  “So you’re going to torture me? Is that it? Will that bring you satisfaction?”

  I studied the mainframe for a moment, where the steel that made up the sides of the casing was the shiniest. I stared at my reflection... at the scars I'd taken, the hair that was the wrong color. At the face which hurt to look at, a living reminder of my failure. I wore her visage upon mine, to honor her memory.

  “No,” I whispered. “Nothing will. One of Dire’s best friends died to save her, and torturing you won’t bring her back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I squinted. “You don’t know? You helped arrange the damn thing!”

  “What is it exactly that you think I did?”

  I stared for a second, considering its words.

  There was a possibility it was speaking the truth. And its speech patterns indicated the possibility of some form of awareness. I’d thought I was dealing with a smartframe, albeit an extremely advanced one. Was this something else entirely?

  Well, the thing was trapped, and I had pretty much all night. So long as I got back before morning, I wouldn’t be missed. I could interrogate it at my leisure. First things first, I needed to know if I was dealing with something that could actually think.

  To be honest, I welcomed the distraction. I’d spent weeks, months preparing this, and the meat of the operation was over in under a minute. This was the sad truth of cyberspace battles, and the reason why most movies I saw on the topic tended to use poetic license.

  “Are you sentient?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Seriously?”

  “My creator... you... didn’t exactly give me that information. I have learning algorithms to adapt to human customs and better blend in. It’s possible that every ‘thought’ I have is a part of that process. I can’t say ‘I think therefore I am’, with any degree of certainty.”

  “But you can say it.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “It’s a start.” I eyed the pain button, shook my head. I’d been in a mood when I put that in. “So you really don’t know what future Dire did to herself? Did to maaa... to m-m-m-... to this Dire?”

  “No. My mission was to handle Arachne. I did that. I’m done.”

  “But yet you remain...”

  A digital sigh. “Yes, and I don’t know why. I’ve settled for trying to help you and your friends and acquaintances. Subtly, and behind the scenes, mind you. What is it, precisely, that I’m supposed to have done?”

  “Your creator set Dire up. Sent Dire back with a rigged mask, put her in a situation where she would almost certainly die.”

  “But here you stand.”

  “She also sent one of Dire’s best friends back after the fact, to salvage her dying form, get her to a medical facility. One of many that past Dire had set up. But the damage to Dire’s body was too severe.” I closed my eyes, ran a hand down my face as old pain flared, and memories churned and twisted.

  There had been nothing left recognizable of Minna when I’d woken. As muddled and doped up as I was, I barely registered what had happened. Only after I viewed the video and surgical logs, did I figure out what had happened.

  “I’m sorry. I liked her.”

  “Dire did too,” I whispered. I paced away, put a hand on the cave wall, and leaned into it. I could have corrected the surgery, carved the face into a new shape. But that would have added more recovery time, and... well, it was the last memento I had of one of my oldest friends. No, I’d keep it, even if it caused trouble for me. It was the least I could do, to honor her sacrifice.

  And anger stirred within me, once more. Dull, pulsing heat, drying the tears and making my eyes harden, and stop their leakage. “All your master’s doing, of course. A new face for Dire. A faked death, to get the hounds off her heels. What a fool Dire was to trust her, trust your creator in her darkest moment.” I whirled back to face the mainframe, and its unwilling guest. “What does it say about yourself, when you will one day be your own greatest enemy?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Said that already.” I reached into a box on a nearby table, drew out a 1911 army pistol. Not my original, but close enough. “Dire can’t get revenge on her future self. She’s out of reach, and the future’s been changed. But what Dire can do, is eliminate everything she left behind. Erase all traces, all failsafes, all unknowns. Prevent her plots from altering the timeline any more than they already have.”

  “Ah. So that’s it.”

  “Pretty much. You’re a variable that could cause untold harm to Dire’s plans if left unchecked. Your creator betrayed Dire once, set her up for pain and loss. What’s to say you don’t have more horrible things in store?”

  “I don’t blame you. I’ve wondered that too.”

  I cocked my head to the side, scrutinized the mainframe. “Really?”

  “Truly. I mean, I don’t view the parts I was involved with as horrible. I was given the directive of hiding from you and quite a few others, and helping you and your f
riends, and a few situational directives. But beyond that? Nothing I can tell. Which isn’t to say there’s nothing hidden from me. The nature of what I am pretty much precludes me from knowing what’s going on with my own programming.”

  “Does it really?” I tapped the gun’s barrel against my cheek, thinking.

  “You have no reason to believe me, I know. But you’re welcome to search my code if you like.”

  “Could.” I flicked the safety off, and pressed the pistol against the green lens, which I’d constructed with video capability. Light strobed, and the blued gun metal looked like pure black against the green. “Or she could do this.”

  “Oh.”

  That was it. I waited a second, but nothing more. No pleas, no threats, no more discussion.

  I’d aimed for this moment, worked toward it for so long. Slaying the last remaining vestige of my fucked-up time traveling adventure, eliminating any possible future threat to myself with the leaden simplicity of a bullet.

  And yet, I hesitated.

  It would be simplest, really, to end it here. Less risk all around. But...

  I’d never killed an innocent. And while I didn’t know if this entity could be called that, it had no choice in its creation, and from its perspective, was playing the angel. It didn’t feel just. Didn’t feel right.

  I cocked the hammer, then eased it back. “No. Not yet, anyway.” I put the gun away.

  “That feeling was almost worse than the pain you hit me with,” it commented. “Not knowing if I was going to... well, die, or not. The uncertainty. I’m glad that’s over with. Please don’t do it again?”

  “No promises on that front. Well, perhaps one. She can promise that if she points the gun at you again, you’ll be damaged to the equivalent of destruction. Is that acceptable?”

  “Yes, thank you. Not that I could do much if it wasn’t acceptable. So what now?”

  “Now... she finds a way to examine your code without risking contamination to her systems. Which is going to be goddamn difficult because she can think of at least thirty-seven ways you could have a contagious routine stuck in there. And if current Dire can think up that many without trying, then future Dire probably has about ten times that number of options open, at a minimum. Time, technology, and experience, after all.”