Heaven's River

by Dennis E. Taylor

  “Oh hell. Bill, I wonder if were really clean right now. I mean the Skippies are good, but so is whoever engineered this. What if this someone has as much processing power, or even more? Or what if it's a faction within the Skippies, playing both sides?”

  As I said that I realized that I’d never consciously suspected the Skippies, but that I'd had misgivings. Otherwise, why would have put that monitor in the drones, way back when?

  “Way ahead of you. I resurrected an archived source version of my comms from before there were even any Skippies or Starfleet and did a diff then recompiled. So I'm demonstrably clean. And your temporary relay has never been corrupted. This conversation at least is probably secure.”

  “Good. You’ll have to get all the Bobs to do their own cleanup and reestablish encryption keys. It's going to take a while.”

  “All under control, Bob. I just wanted to let you know on the QT.”

  We exchanged a few other comments, then I signed off. There had been something off about Hugh’s behavior since the beginning, but unless they were clairvoyant, I didn't see how they could be planning for anything that was going on. Unless it really had nothing to do with the Quinlans, but then what?

  Of course, it might not be the Skippies at all. Well, my next call was to Hugh, and I'd be watching for any weirdness.

  “Hugh here.”

  “Hey Hugh, it's Bob. I finally have a few milliseconds to rub together. What were you calling me about?”

  “Ah. Well, we sailed into East Point early today and I cashed out. The Captain offered me a bonus to stay. I guess I'm a good worker.” Hugh’s voice carried a bit of suppressed laughter.

  “I could relate. Take our Bobbian obsessiveness, add in the strength and stamina of a Manny, and the cargo was probably getting stacked with mathematical precision.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “I'd read your latest blog entry, and I had an idea. I wondered if there would be a similar entrance on the downstream side of the mountain, so that maintenance personnel could get in from either side of the gorge. It seemed like it would be a reasonable design, and I was right. So anyway, I'm in. And so far at least, there's no one home at this location.”

  “No one? At all?”

  “At all. I'm thinking the administrator relies primarily on automation.”

  “Hm. Possibly the most lackadaisical despot I've ever heard of. Makes me wonder what the Resistance is actually resisting. Have they ever tried just going ahead and building a steam engine?”

  “That's rhetorical, right? You've met Quinlans who’ve been Scattered.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So, you’ll let me know if you find anything?”

  “Will do, boss. Out.”

  Well, that wasn't particularly weird. Maybe he was having a good day. Or maybe he was lying through his teeth. Great, now paranoia had been going around in tight little circles. I was going to have to stick to what I could control, and not worry about the rest. Somehow.

  One of my spiders bleeped me. I pulled up its video window and almost did an actual double take. On a table, surrounded by jury rigged electronics, sat a Version 2 replicant matrix. It sat on a Version 2 Heaven vessel matrix cradle, making any possibility of convergent design a nonstarter. If that wasn't enough, the English labels on some of the surfaces supplied the kill shot: Bender.

  He was still powered up. It was good to know that they hadn't cut off communications by shutting him down. Or worse. Of more concern was the lack of any of the electronics necessary for maintaining a VR. That meant that Bender had been here for more than 130 years without a pseudo-physical reality. That hadn’t worked out well for Henry or for Medeiros. Yet Bender had seemed reasonably well-adjusted when I talked to him, which gave me hope. Now, how to get him out?

  Let’s see. I traveled several miles through the river from Helep’s Ending, which I'd have to retrace on land carrying a large ungainly matrix the whole way. I'd have to take the train back to Garrick's Spine and hope I didn't run into anyone. Then I’d have to get picked up and flown out without getting blown up by the Administrator's guardians. Oh, and yes, I’d first have to get them out of the resistances lair. And all of this without getting spotted by the Administrator, Crew, or the Resistance, while fending off questions from curious random Quinlans. No sweat.

  I had the spider look around the room while I called one of the others over to act as a lookout. Once I was sure that I couldn't be surprised by a Quinlan unexpectedly showing up, I sent the spider down to the matrix. As with the emergency door, no matter how complex your electronics, eventually it has to interface with the physical world. In this case, you have to convert sound to electricity or electricity to sound. I quickly found the microphone and speaker used to interact with Bender, along with a camera that presumably gave a video input. Nearby was a twin of the Motorola box from my earlier incarceration. So, pretty low-tech. They simply had Bender talk into the mic, just like a live person. Made sense I guess, that way they could monitor what he was saying and hearing. From my point of view though it meant I could jack into the system without endangering Bender. A couple of minutes spent tracing wires and the spider and wired itself into Bender's comms.

  “Bender.”

  There was a short delay, then “Bob?”

  “Right here buddy, more or less. How are you doing?”

  “Pretty damn good right now. How are you talking to me?”

  I took a few seconds to explain the situation, and Bender laughed. “Man, that is some mighty fine Rube Goldberg. I tip my hat to you.”

  “Listen, how are you doing? I didn't see your VR hardware.”

  “Yeah, I get are you going. I've been frame-jacking myself down to my lowest rate whenever possible. For me, it's been a couple of minutes since our last conversation, including dialogues with my captors, so I'm not going stir crazy yet, although I really would love a coffee.”

  “I hear that. So anyway, I'm trying to figure out how to get you out of here. I don't know how much you know about where ‘here’ is, but the big problem is to get your matrix through 4000 miles of megastructure, underwater most of the way, without rusting or shorting you out or getting caught by… well, both sides, I guess.”

  “You could take transit.”

  I laughed. “I took transit to get here. And hopefully I'll be taking the train back to Garrick. But first I have to get back to the train station with you in tow.”

  “Ah. Gotcha. Yeah.”

  “I stole a security card that works on the train. How is it that a Resistance member has one of those, anyway?”

  “What do you think I've been doing for the last hundred years? They’ve had me figuring out the electronics and devising ways to hack things and hide them from the administrator. This has included registering Resistance members on the Crew roles.”

  “Ah, as were on that subject, I'm still a bit unclear on the whole political situation here.”

  “Okay. Well, the Resistance has been operating almost since the day the Administrator took over. They were scientists, engineers, and technicians back then. Their descendants are still maintaining the fight, but educating each new generation has been spotty, so they've lost a lot as knowledge domain shrink. I've been helping with the gaps. In most cases think the Administrator even realizes it's been subverted.”

  “What about real Crew? Do they use the trains?”

  “A little bit. Most Crew is strictly local, used only for muscle when it's necessary to interact with the population. They know even less than the Resistance. On the other hand, they’re paid better.” Bender chuckled. “There are, of course, people who belong to both groups. I'm sure the administrator suspects this, which is why it keeps them in the dark as much as possible.”

  “So is the Administrator a hereditary position, or is it a committee? How do they stay trained from one generation to the next?”

  There was silence for several seconds. “Jesus, Bob, I thought you knew. The administrator isn’t a Quinlan. It's an artificial intelligence.”
>
  Wh-wh… what the…?

  I seemed to be getting a lot of metaphorical gut punches lately, and I quelled an urge to stand up and scream invective into the air. Suddenly the Skippies had a motive.

  “Bender, I have to phone Bill back in a few.” Without waiting for a response, I composed the text. It would be easier to just lay it out and let Bill absorb that before responding. I fired off the message.

  “Sorry about that. This is kind of important news. I had to let Bill know.”

  “Wait. When will he get the message? Is he in the system?”

  I laughed. “Instantaneous FTL communication, buddy. One of many things you'll have to get used to.”

  “Wow. That sure puts a different spin on the universe.”

  At that moment I got a response from Bill.

  “Explains a lot. Altering strategies as appropriate.”

  So, I could probably get Bender back to our entrance location. I could probably do it without alerting Hugh. This was good. On the other hand, Hugh… oh SHIT.

  “Guppy, has Hugh interacted with the equipment in any way?”

  “Hugh has given instructions for construction and deployment of stealth drones.”

  “No other interactions?”

  “None.”

  Well that was good. “Guppy, monitor all communications with Hugh, disallow control of local maintenance or infrastructure systems, especially roamers. Confirm all orders from him with me before implementing.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  If Hugh had already subverted Guppy in some way, I was probably hooped, but I couldn't see how he could alter firmware without some board swapping and a full system restart. So for the moment, I would continue to act as if I was in control. And there would be an audit in my future. And I couldn’t just stop interacting with Hugh, he was in charge of the local observation drones and was the only other Bob who was in a position to run one of the Quinlan Mannies. I would just have to be careful about what I asked of him.

  “Bob, you still there?”

  Oh. I'll guess I’d gone radio silent for a few moments.

  “Sorry, Bender. I just got a response from Bill and now things are way more complicated. Not your problem though, right now. Do you know how to get to the train station?”

  “Nope, sorry. I do know there's one in this complex though.”

  “In the complex? So I could've skipped Helep’s Ending entirely?” Well, it made sense. Although I wasn't sure what destination I would've asked for. In any case, I wasn't going to just grab the Bender and start running around at random. I guess I'd have to let the spiders finished mapping.

  Six hours later, and there wasn't anything even vaguely resembling a transit station. “Ideas, Bender?”

  “Sorry, Bob. I was offline when they brought me in. It could be any number of levels down-”

  “Aw hell,” I said, interrupting Bender. “I forgot about the elevator!”

  “I guess you took the stairs, or you wouldn't be here.”

  I frowned. “How so?”

  “Cameras on the elevators. The people on site will know the moment an elevator is in use.”

  “Can they override the elevators?”

  “No, but they'll be alerted and will be waiting when the doors open.”

  “Great. So, stairs all the way. Bender, I don't like this. I'm going to have to spend a god-awful amount of time just looking around to find our escape route with all the risk of being seen.”

  “I got nothing Bob, sorry.”

  “Okay. Do you have any more info on the trains, how often they run, whether calling one will alert the Resistance, stuff like that?”

  Bender sighed. “Sorry, Bob, no info. I'm not trying to be difficult. Like I said, I was offline.”

  Going with my theory that Quinlans and humans designed things generally the same, I went all the way to the bottom level first. Nope. Turned out, that's where they kept all the pipes and valves and conduits, which it occurred to me was probably the same as with human construction. Derp.

  The next level up was a hit though. A single long antiseptic hallway, very similar to the transit station near Helep’s Ending, led to the boarding area with its 10 doors. In this boarding area though, there was a prominent button attached to the wall, clearly jury rigged with wires leading into a hole. That had probably been added by the Resistance and probably bypass the card readers, perhaps to allow people without cards to use the train.

  Ideally, I should press the button now and have a train ready when I came back down with Bender, but did it alert to the people upstairs when pressed? If so, I'd never get anywhere near Bender's location. Like it or not, I was going to have to commit to a strategy based on nothing but gut feelings. I couldn't risk trying the call button now. I would have to take my chances and get back here with Bender before testing the system. Now, could I get Bender's matrix from his room to here without anyone noticing.

  I headed back to Bender's room, making sure to check for any Quinlans taking an unscheduled stroll. As soon as I was assured the coast was still clear, I recalled all my fleas and spiders. I wouldn't get another chance to restock from the underwater Manny, so I was going to be especially careful with this set.

  I sat down in front of Bender. “Good news buddy, I found the train station. Bad news, we’ve still got a lot of unknowns and risk.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice. Honestly, Bob, I don't see myself staying sane if I’m stuck here forever. Even frame-jacking can only delay the inevitable. I think I’d rather go out in a dramatic chase scene, you know.”

  I chuckled in response. “Okay. So I'm just going to deactivate you, grab you, and run downstairs to the train station. How's that sound.”

  “What it lacks in elegance, it makes up for with wads of unearned optimism. Let's do it.”

  I walked over to the matrix, put my finger to the power button, and paused.

  “Bender. If this all goes to hell, I'm glad I found you.”

  “Me too, buddy.”

  “See you in the next life.”

  I pressed the button, and Bender powered down. The latches released smoothly, and I had his matrix under my arm.

  The replicant matrix wasn't a bunch of exposed circuitry, even in its first iteration back on Earth. There was a case of sorts, and even the connection bus had a flip off cover, but like a hard drive from the good old days, if you put in your backpack and smacked it on walls and dropped it on the floor, you could expect problems, so no backpack ride.

  The current iteration was a cube about 8 inches on a side. Not too bulky, but pretty heavy. A Quinlan or a human would need to use both hands to carry it. Feeling a rush of unearned optimism, I shifted the cube for comfort, turned the corner and ran right into a Quinlan. Unbelievable. This twerp must've left the committee room right behind the spider that had been on surveillance. Why was he here? Maybe he'd intended to talk to Bender about something.

  We stared at each other in shock for a frozen eternity. Then, just as his eyes moved toward the matrix under my arm, I punched him in the solar plexus. That is really becoming a habit, I thought to myself. The Quinlan said ‘oof’, and sank slowly to the floor trying to draw breath. Thank the universe for convergent physiology - at least he could yell out a warning.

  Then from up the hall. “Matthew, you okay?”

  Oh for crying out loud. I'd never get the second-

  Tranq gun. I had a tranq gun! I pulled it out of the pouch on the side of my backpack, leveled it at the second Quinlan who was just coming into view, and dropped him. Then I pointed at my first victim - I hoped the close range wouldn’t create a problem - and put one into his butt. Amazingly he found just enough breath to shriek in pain, and very probably mortification.

  “Matthew? Jeff? What-”

  Oh great balls of fire. I was just riling them up more. Time to make tracks. Fortunately they weren't between me and the stairs, but I had to come into view to get there. As I turned the next corner and sprinted down the hall, I
could hear cries of alarm behind me.

  Well, Bender, you wanted a chase scene. Wish granted.

  I hit the stairway door at speed and sprinted down the steps, taking them three at a time - quite a feat for a Quinlan. My pursuers wouldn't be able to match that. As I passed the second level down, I heard them come through the door above me. A quick calculation indicated I wouldn't be able to get the door closed quickly enough to throw them off, which meant it would be a straight chase to the train platform. I was faster, pound for pound, but they would be able to run on all fours, not being burdened with a replicant matrix. In retrospect, maybe the backpack idea wasn't so bad.

  I hit the train floor, pushed through the stairway door, and made for platform with every burg of power I could squeeze out of the internal power systems. I calculated I'd have about 30 seconds lead time when I got there. Sure hoped the train was waiting.

  There were yells behind me as my pursuers piled out of the stairwell, and a ping, tinkle as their tranquilizer flechettes skipped a few times along the floor near me. Way out of range, but I shouldn't be surprised they'd try. I hoped Bender's case was strong enough to stop one of those things, just in case it came down to a shootout. And speaking of, I had no idea how many shots I had left. You know, things never got like this when I used to write software.

  I made it to the call button and jabbed it frantically, though if the design was anything like a human elevator button, this would just slow down the train's arrival, and nothing was going to convince me otherwise. The sounds of galloping Quinlans drifted down the long antiseptic corridor. My 30 seconds were almost up. I turned, drew my tranq gun, and shot the lead Quinlan just as he came into range. He went down with a yelp and skidded to a stop on his face. The others hit the brakes and backpedaled frantically. Then two of them went up on hind legs and pulled guns of their own. Just as I was steeling myself for a toe-to-toe shootout, there was a ding behind me, and the sound of a door opening. I turned and jumped through the door, looking around for a button, a control panel, anything.