Tangle's Game

by Stewart Hotston

  ‘I’m going to ring the number now,’ said Amanda, standing up and going to her room.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AN AI WITH a woman’s voice directed her through a series of menus. It only failed the Turing test when Amanda asked why the speaker couldn’t help her and was met with a word for word repetition of the last set of unhelpful options.

  Nearly every system has a way through to a human being; Amanda held on, slowly penetrating the menus, until eight layers in she was offered an operator. With a nugget of pride at outwitting the service, she waited as the connection was made.

  The man on the other end of the line introduced himself as Manoj.

  ‘I was given your number by the police,’ she said, ready to be laughed at. ‘I met with them yesterday to present evidence of sanctions busting. Reviewing my evidence, they thought it was important enough to give me your contact details.’

  ‘Great. Can you share any more than that with me? For instance, which state is it, and who is helping them?’

  Amanda hesitated, not trusting the ether through which they were connected. But what was she going to do? ‘The Russians. I don’t know who’s helping them, maybe no one. I’ve got evidence they’ve found ways to evade sanctions through the financial system.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the voice on the other end. ‘I’ll put you through to the relevant department.’ And without further comment she was on hold, overloud music distorting through the speaker.

  ‘What have you got for me?’ said a new voice, a man whose accent was Estuary but held too long in the wrong places, like the speaker was unfamiliar with conversation. Amanda explained what she had all over again, then stopped at the chuckling on the other end of the line.

  ‘Hi Amanda,’ he said. ‘I’ve been following your adventures—or catastrophes, possibly. You ready to give me the drive now?’

  Amanda stood up, looking around in panic.

  Crisp.

  ‘You don’t want to share now?’ he asked drily.

  ‘You’re for real?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s no need to be rude. I’m exactly the sort of dick you want doing a job like this.’

  At which point Amanda hung up.

  She stumbled into the lounge, surprising Ichi, moved past her into the kitchen and poured a large gin with a small tonic. Ice cubes fell out of the dispenser, clinking crisply. She passed it to Ichi, who declined but Amanda wasn’t taking no for an answer and pressed the drink into her reluctant hands.

  Having made sure Ichi was fuelled, she repeated the process for herself, taking a long gulp, grimacing and turning to the only other person who knew what was going on.

  ‘I rang them. It was the bastard who detained me at the airport, who searched through my dirty knickers, who wanted me to strip and then assaulted one of his own people.’

  Ichi looked pained, and Amanda explained what had happened at Heathrow.

  ‘He’s a psychopath, Ichi. A proper one. He did whatever he thought he should to get me to comply.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  Amanda pulled up her social credit score, saw it had dipped below seven hundred for the first time ever, a score reserved for people who serially committed adultery, failed to pay child maintenance or had been arrested on political protests.

  ‘He’s watching us,’ said Amanda, certain he was responsible for it all. ‘My social credit score’s falling to pieces.’ She looked at Ichi, ‘How are you still going? After years of dissent and grey-hatting I’d have thought you were persona non grata.’

  ‘Estonia doesn’t care about the same things as English-speaking Anglo-Saxons. They got hacked by the Russians when you were a baby, and it changed how they viewed what was desirable from their citizens.’ She sighed. ‘It didn’t stop them putting a social credit score in place, but what’s acceptable to them might just land you a massive negative score here. It’s still early days, our scores are portable, but not the record of our acts. At some point, though, they’ll be able to trawl through all our records, wherever they were made, and you’ll get different scores in different countries.’

  She put her drink down, came close to Amanda, laid an arm on hers. ‘To your point, though; of course they’re watching, and he’s not the only one. Those two slabs of American muscle and apple pie, the Russians. I’m amazed you’ve not run into the European intelligence service.’

  Amanda stiffened.

  ‘Them too?’ Ichi snorted. ‘I’m impressed you’re still walking about free. Perhaps each of them are watching the others, too, so none of them have dared act.’ She pulled Amanda by the hand over to the coffee table. ‘I’ve got something to show you. I wasn’t sure at first, and I’m still not quite one hundred percent, but you should see. Make up your own mind.’

  Amanda sat down in a daze as Ichi pulled the frames up, stretching them floor to ceiling.

  Her watch buzzed, pulling her attention away from Ichi.

  It was Tatsu.

  ‘Hold on,’ she paused Ichi like a movie, left her gawping at her back.

  She found the earbud, inserted it like a marshmallow into her ear.

  ‘What do you want? Where have you been? I thought you were done?’ She realised she was talking to a glorified learning algorithm and stopped, not thinking of how it might reply.

  ‘I was reviewing the information you provided me.’

  Amanda froze. It couldn’t have accessed the drive. Could it?

  ‘I haven’t accessed the drive. In fact, that is why I am here. While fulfilling other duties, I budded a small piece of myself, left it here in your fridge. And by the way, I’m glad you got rid of the houmous.’

  ‘Not funny,’ said Amanda, equally disturbed at how the AI had anticipated her.

  ‘I am here to offer my services,’ it said. ‘And I’m not trying to be funny; look up morphic determinism if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘What can you do for me?’ asked Amanda. Ichi gave her an enquiring look. Amanda wanted to tell her what Tatsu was saying, but worried if she changed the settings on the earbud it would know that she’d done so. She’d tell Ichi after it was done.

  ‘I’m aware of a number of parties aiming to retrieve the information in your possession for their own use. They are conflicted, their chatter indicates they oppose one another, which has made their approaches to you circumspect.’

  ‘We’d gathered as much,’ said Amanda.

  ‘I am able to access secure storage facilities which would allow you to safely store the material until you’re ready to use it. For the normal fees associated with establishing a smart contract, we can achieve that almost immediately. The real limit to how quickly we can close the transaction is the upload time required for the information.’

  Amanda stared at a wide-eyed Ichi. ‘It’s the AI who helped me find you,’ she said.

  Ichi squinted, wrinkles around her eyes showing her age in a way Amanda hadn’t noticed before. ‘An AI? That AI?’ She didn’t look happy. ‘Amanda, I really need to show you what I’ve found.’

  ‘But if I could upload the material and make it safe, I’d be safe.’ Amanda realised what she was saying. ‘We’d be safe.’

  ‘Ask it if it would be able to access the information if you uploaded it.’

  Amanda repeated the question to Tatsu.

  ‘Of course, in overseeing the layering of the information into the distributed ledger of the blockchain I would glimpse parts of it.’

  Amanda could smell bullshit. ‘Glimpse?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Tatsu.

  ‘But for an AI like you, who is grown by other AI to process information across fractured landscapes I can’t even begin to understand, I suspect that means you could probably see the whole thing.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t even get what that means, would you then know what’s on the drive? Would that mean there were two copies? There’d be one in my head if I read everything. Partial, though. I guess for you it would be perfect, yeah? Where would that piece be stored?’<
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  The AI was silent. Ichi was writing on a frame, fast and furious, as if trying to solve a problem of her own.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘I am. In attempting to answer your question I realise you don’t understand my… biology, I guess you’d call it.’

  ‘You don’t have biological parts,’ said Amanda, not knowing if her claim was true.

  ‘You see the difficultly of explaining what I am in language that conveys meaning to you.’

  Ichi flipped the frame around so Amanda could see. ‘I’m guessing from your side of the conversation,’ she said, ‘but bear with me a moment. Most AI develop their own intraoperating system languages. Highly abstracted. I’ve seen people use Chinese rooms to translate them, but—’ Ichi hesitated. Amanda could see her surrendering to an uncomfortable idea. ‘But even then, the translation is like losing a dimension, like showing a ball as a circle but still calling it a ball. You get the sense of it, but you can see it’s beyond what you’re understanding. If it’s struggling, it’s probably looking for code to help it say something to you which you’ll understand.’

  Tatsu replied to Amanda directly. ‘I am the blockchain, my parts are constituted through it, my processing power relies on the nodes that host it, and I am literally in pieces throughout information space. In uploading the information you’ve been given, I’m offering my body as your host.’

  I’m being offered a sacristy, thought Amanda, reminded of how she grew up, of Sundays dressed in smarter clothes than for school, sworn to keep quiet except when told otherwise.

  ‘Ugh,’ burst from her lips.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Ichi. ‘You don’t have to talk to it. Just take out the earbud.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Amanda, addressing both of them. ‘It’s all a little religious. I’m sure it’s not—forget it—my problem. But I think I understand. There isn’t a second copy; there’s only you.’

  A smiley face appeared on her watch.

  ‘Amanda,’ said Ichi. ‘Please, I need to show you this before you make any decisions.’

  Amanda didn’t understand what Ichi was so possessed by, but she suppressed the urge to accept Tatsu’s offer immediately.

  ‘Tatsu. Thank you for this, but I need to think if that’s the best option. It won’t matter if the information is safe if it’s not used.’

  ‘I understand. Information wants to be free,’ said Tatsu. ‘I will linger in your fridge. If you need me, I will hear you. Also, your digital assistant has been compromised and is recording your conversations and distributing them elsewhere.’

  ‘What?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘Would you like me to secure your flat from electronic intrusion?’

  Amanda nodded, looking around nervously as if she might see who was listening.

  ‘Your flat is secure. I shall monitor for other intrusions from the coolbox.’

  Then it was gone.

  ‘Okay,’ said Amanda. ‘What’s so important?’

  Ichi threw the frames around the room, bringing up dozens of messages between unidentified senders. Networks grew between the messages, viral infection vectors covering the world, describing shapes no sane person would contemplate.

  ‘What is all this?’ asked Amanda, impatient.

  ‘There’s a record of messages on the drive, messages Tangle sent as he was building the cache you received. It’s nothing, really, just a log of how he covered his tracks, trying to dodge those looking for him in the real. He stopped using his augmented reality contact lenses, dropped off social media, began using anonymised cryptocurrencies.’

  ‘All signs of a spiral into serious drug addiction,’ said Amanda tartly.

  ‘But there’s a pattern in it. He was moving around while all this was going on, so it’s impossible to see where he was at any particular moment.’ Her tongue poked out the corner of her mouth as she arranged smaller and smaller pieces of information, zoomed in on network maps, scrolled past lodes of data for specific items she was hunting.

  ‘Ichi. I don’t care what he was doing. It doesn’t help us.’

  ‘Please just bear with me.’

  ‘I don’t want to. He is the one person I won’t live my life around.’ Amanda folded her arms. ‘He left me, screwed me completely and it took me a long time to stop seeing myself in his mirror.’ She snapped her jaw shut, couldn’t hear Ichi as she kept talking. ‘Just stop it. I don’t want to know. I am not about to go back to that—’

  ‘He’s alive,’ shouted Ichi, which shut Amanda up. ‘He’s alive, Amanda.’

  Amanda leaned on the nearest surface. Of the hundred thoughts crashing through her head the one with the most energy was of course he was alive, of course he would torment her like that, send his trouble after her rather than face it himself.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ she replied with a whisper.

  ‘I’ve found him.’ Ichi zoomed in on a map too quickly for Amanda to see where they were. Pointing at the screen, eyes glowing in the light from the frames. ‘There.’

  ‘It can’t be true.’

  ‘You weren’t listening to me,’ said Ichi apologetically.

  ‘How do you know it’s him?’

  With slow precision, Ichi pared the data back, pruning it until just one frame remained. From there she slowly brought online the different sources she’d laid together, pointing and explaining as she went.

  ‘You can’t be sure, though,’ said Amanda when Ichi was finished.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But look, the pattern’s the same. He’s relied on the same methods to cover his tracks every time, in the same order. He’s avoided AI and other kinds of automated aid which could have made it impossible to spot him.’

  ‘Because he didn’t trust them,’ said Amanda, putting the pieces together, seeing Tangle making the decision in her imagination. ‘He’s smart enough to think he could do it as well as a neural net.’

  ‘And dumb enough,’ said Ichi acidly.

  Amanda nodded.

  Taking control of the frame from Ichi, she enlarged the map. He was hidden in a valley in western Wales at the edge of Great Britain. ‘Not far away,’ she said to Ichi, tilting her head at the location, ‘but he may as well be in deepest Montana. Why are you showing me this?’

  ‘It seemed important,’ said Ichi without any of her usual sarcasm.

  ‘You think he’s there now?’ She imagined finding him, surprising him, smashing his face in with her bare hands. Her vision narrowed to a point surrounded with blurred motion and echoes of violence.

  ‘I can’t say. But he has been there recently, and there’s no evidence he’s moved. I think he’s hiding.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ said Amanda. ‘“Tangle Singh Hides From The Consequences”, probably the most predictable movie ever. I’m going to go there and shove this drive down his throat.’ The idea was as clear in her mind as the room around her.

  ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ said Ichi. ‘He’s hiding for a reason. You think they won’t kill him if they work out where he is?’

  Amanda huffed, building up to a rant.

  ‘You—we—are alive because we’re here, in London, obviously without a clue,’ Ichi observed. ‘They won’t hesitate when we act.’

  Amanda wasn’t listening, swept up by fantasies where she pulled up in front of Tangle’s cottage and of what she’d do to him once he opened the door.

  ‘Amanda,’ said Ichi forcefully. ’You can’t go to him. You can’t show them where he is. I showed you because I wanted to you to believe you could do something about all this, that we could change the world.’

  Amanda laughed, hysteria threatening to take over. ‘You’re not asking a lot, are you? “Change the world,” she says. Two women whose main skills are finance and computing. Of course, it all makes sense. Why didn’t I leap on this before? My bastard of an ex-boyfriend writes a piece of code that threatens the security of half a dozen countries and of course I’m the one who
picks up the pieces.’ She needed to breathe.

  ‘When will you stop defining yourself by him?’ asked Ichi.

  ‘Fuck you!’ shouted Amanda. ‘I was fine. I was better than fine.’

  Except the moment he came back into my life my world went into orbit around his, she thought. She hated him, then, as much as she could ever remember, the power of it flowing through her veins and making her want to shout until her throat gave out.

  ‘Forget him,’ said Ichi.

  ‘I wasn’t the one who went out and found him!’

  Ichi sighed. ‘I did it because I wanted you to know we could do something about this. We could change things.’

  ‘Yeah, because that flows obviously from finding out Tangle isn’t dead, he’s actually just a manipulative shit.’ Amanda stood up. ‘I’m going.’

  But she wasn’t, and she couldn’t sit down again without looking like an idiot.

  ‘Amanda, we can stop the Russians. I have an idea.’ Ichi turned back to her frames. ‘It’s not all the Russians, just one part of one agency. I’m pretty sure the rest of their government knows but isn’t directly involved, watching carefully for when they’re discovered. They lose nothing by letting it unfold, denying it as fake news when their goons are paraded across the world’s televisions.’

  ‘It’s my information, right?’ said Amanda. Ichi stopped talking, frowning. ’Which means I get to do with it what I want.’

  Ichi closed the frames, her face grey in the daylight left behind.

  ‘So you can stay, or come with me.’ I don’t care, she thought.

  Ichi left the room without replying.

  Amanda tasked her digital assistant with hiring a car while she packed an overnight bag. When she was done, the car was waiting outside, dropped off sight-unseen and the keys left with the concierge.

  She checked her accounts before leaving, her social credit score continuing its steady decline into the five hundreds and still without any published explanation for its nosedive. The car hire cost her substantially more than normal because the biggest hire companies wouldn’t lease to her without a large deposit and increased rates; she was ranked as ‘typically untrustworthy’ by their booking AI.