by Linda Nagata
“Easier said than done. It’s distributed all through the Cloud.”
“So there’s no way to get rid of it?”
“There’s always a way, son, if we’re willing to pay the price.”
I wait, but when he doesn’t elaborate, I press him. “Well? Are we?”
“The question’s in committee. In the meantime, just consider it another factor in the terrain we have to negotiate as we further the interests of our country.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Just live with it? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Son, what makes you think you have a choice?”
~~~
Just live with it.
I fold up the bones of my dead sister, grab my helmet and my HITR, and head to the barracks. Dawn has started to make a reluctant impression, nothing more than a faint glow to the east, beyond the quad. Night still owns the sky, filling it up with stars and the bright, gliding sparks of satellites. Along the sidewalk, foot lights cast a wan amber glow against the concrete, minimizing the presence of our facility to anyone looking in on us from above and making it hard for me to see anything farther than knee height from the ground.
So I don’t notice Jaynie until she speaks, “Ransom says God is still talking to you, sir.”
I peer into the dark, and after a few seconds I make her out. She’s sitting cross-legged on the flat rim of an empty landscape planter that curves around the corner of the barracks. I walk over, set my rig on the ground, and sit down too, with my weapon leaning up against my titanium knee. When I stretch out my legs, my feet look like alien artifacts against the dimly lit concrete.
I tell Jaynie the consensus opinion: “God has taken the form of a rogue autonomous program that has infiltrated the Cloud. I’ve been hacked. I’m not the only one.”
Her voice comes out of the dark: “Are you shitting me?”
“Nope.”
I tell her what little I know about the Red, hoping to compromise her with what is probably restricted intel. That way, when she requests to be transferred to another unit, Kendrick will almost certainly say no, and I’ll get to hold on to a skilled non-com.
“The Red,” she whispers. “It’s true, then.”
“What’s true?”
“That there’s something out there, steering people to their doom.”
A shiver runs up the back of my neck. Jaynie is solid: smart, skeptical, reliable. She’s the big sister I never had, ready to kick me back into line when I start to deviate. Supernatural shit is not her thing. “Jaynie, what are you talking about?”
“You need to get out in the world more, Lieutenant. Strange things are happening. People are making choices you’d never guess they’d make. You know Moon? His sister quit her factory job out of the blue. She told him it was like a spell came over her and she knew she wasn’t supposed to spend her life making sure ten million pieces of candy all had their wrappers on straight. Tuttle’s mom dumped the deadbeat anchor she’s been living with for nine years, after a feeling came over her that it was time to move on, so strong she couldn’t deny it. Ransom’s little brother was all set to enlist, but after he watched Dark Patrol he pulled his paperwork, packed his bag, and went off with this youth group that does charity work—giving up all chance for a paycheck. And I’ve heard story after story of rich kids like you signing military contracts for no good reason.”
“I had a reason.”
“Not everyone does.” Her boot scrapes the concrete. Her tone is soft, but mocking. “People say, ‘I woke up to the truth.’ Or, ‘God made me restless in my heart.’ Or, ‘For the first time in my life I knew why I was put in the world. I just knew.’”
“Is that bad?” I ask her. “It doesn’t sound like doom to me.”
“It’s damn suspicious. Have we all been hacked?”
“Have you?”
“Would I know it if I had?”
“Do you have any reason to think you have?”
“Yes. I got dumped into the closing action of your reality show, didn’t I? And that shouldn’t have happened. I’d just finished a combat tour. I was promised a break, but new orders came through at the last minute, and I was sent to Dassari.”
“I’d been waiting weeks to get a new sergeant. We were understaffed. You know there’s never enough personnel to go around.”
The front door of the Cyber Center opens, startling both of us, and out of instinct I reach for my rifle—the second time I’m about to bring a weapon to bear on my commanding officer—because it’s Kendrick who steps out from the bright light spilling through the doorway.
I stand up. Jaynie gets to her feet, too. The morning is starting to brighten. Maybe there’s enough light in the east that Kendrick can see us... but I’m sure he already knows we’re there.
“You need to learn more discretion, Shelley,” he says as he gets close, letting me know he’s been following the thread of our conversation as it was captured by my overlay. I’m not surprised. I knew someone would be listening.
He turns to Jaynie. “What about it, Vasquez? You really want to buy in to the cyberspook story? Start blaming everything that doesn’t go your way on the Red?”
“Gotta blame someone, sir.”
He laughs, a loud bark straight from the belly. “That we do, though we used to just call it luck. Learn to work your luck, and stop scaring yourselves. We know the enemy is out there. That’s a big step forward.”
He goes on his way, disappearing into the barracks.
“No secrets around you, huh, sir?” Jaynie says.
I bend down to pick up my dead sister. “None,” I agree. “It’s good to keep that in mind.”
~~~
Elliot’s inside, leaning on the watch desk. Jayden Moon is on duty behind the desk, already showered and changed and looking annoyed with Elliot, who has no doubt been explaining to him the relationship between war, politics, and defense contractors.
As I come in, Moon looks at me in relief. “L. T., Mr. Weber is here to see you.”
Elliot turns to look me up and down, from my buzz-cut scalp to my robot feet. “Shelley. I couldn’t believe that was you out there tonight. You were still in a wheelchair the last time I saw you.”
I fake a smart-ass grin, because if I look worried he’s going to ask why. “I think the prosthetics have proved themselves. I’m not a super-cyber, comic-book warrior, but I can keep up. My official certification should be coming through. I’ll be field qualified, and that means Kendrick’s program will get a big grant.” I cross to the stairs, hauling the M-CL1a and my dead sister. “So how long are you here for? You’re not going back this morning?”
He falls into step beside me. “No, no. I still need to do an interview with you—a short interview,” he quickly adds, when I start to object. “Come on, it’s just a human-interest piece on the star of Dark Patrol. The army wants it done. They’re pushing this prosthetics program. It’s why I’m here.”
There are other reasons he’s here, going back to a 2AM phone call.
We start up the stairs. I say, “It’s hard to believe you’re writing propaganda pieces for the army these days.”
He pauses on the landing, giving me a measuring look. “I know you’ve got a lot going on, Shelley, but I am not your enemy.”
Maybe that’s true. I hope it is. But I’m not going to let him lay on the guilt. I keep going. “Things aren’t simple,” I tell him. “Not with you, not with the army.”
Maybe I’m getting through. “You think I’ve got another reason for being here?” he asks as we reach the top. “Okay. You’re right.”
I keep going, until I reach the door of my room. The dead sister is getting damned heavy so I open the door and set it down inside. Then I turn back to Elliot.
He says, “I’ve heard a rumor—”
I hold my gloved hand up, palm out, and he stops. I tap a finger by my eye to remind him what’s there. “Don’t say it, if you don’t want the army to know it.”
“If they don’t know it, they’re more screwed up than even I give them credit for.” He crosses his arms, lifts his chin, as if daring me to argue. “I think the idea started with Dark Patrol, but there’s a rumor running wild, Shelley, that the linked combat squads have been infiltrated—hacked through their skullcaps.”
Out of instinct, I adopt my stonewall expression. “Where did you hear that?”
“In the Cloud. No fixed point. It’s one of those things people talk about... and it got me thinking. At Kelly AMC, when I came to see you, you weren’t too sure why you’d wanted me there. You were starting to regret it. Do you remember what you asked me?”
I do, but I deny it with a shake of my head.
“You asked, ‘Did I sound normal when we were talking?’”
“And what was your answer?”
He scowls. “Look, the point is, you had doubts about your own cognitive processes.”
“Your answer was that I sounded normal.”
“Yeah, that’s right. You still do. It’s only in the King David moments when things get strange.” He raises his eyebrows, his gaze inviting me to explain.
I retreat instead—“I’ve got to get some sleep”—slipping into my room and closing the door firmly behind me.
~~~
While I’m taking a shower I dictate a report of the night’s fun and games, a strategy that lets me fall into bed just as the sun makes it over the horizon. The glare outside the closed blinds is like a nuclear explosion.
I close my eyes, and the always-on icons of my overlay brighten a little, but when I ignore them, they fade again into translucent near-invisibility. I’m drifting off, seeing dream images instead of the icons, when a rectangular message box pops up in the lower third of my vision, startling me back to consciousness: Public Network Available.
I open my eyes again to the stripes of nuclear fire leaking in through the blinds.
Guidance put me in lockdown as soon as I entered the secured grounds at C-FHEIT, and I’m scheduled to stay locked down for three more days until I go on leave. So why am I connected to the Cloud now?
Maybe it’s a reward that Kendrick forgot to mention. Or maybe it’s a mistake. I don’t really care. “Call Lissa,” I whisper.
But there’s already a call coming through, and it’s her. “Lissa?” I ask in astonishment.
Her voice is in my ears, low, breathy, frightened. “Oh my God, Shelley. Is it really you? I didn’t think I’d get through, but I just wanted... how long have you been online?”
“Seconds. Lockdown got lifted. I was about to call you. How weird is that? That you would call me just when—”
It occurs to me how truly weird that is. “Jesus, the Red switched me on.”
“The Red?”
“The Red.”
I don’t have to explain it to her. “So it came back,” she whispers.
“King David,” I confirm.
“Then the new security didn’t work. No wonder . . .”
“Lissa, what do you know about new security? Tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m not sure how much I can say. Do you remember the army wanted to open a contract with Pace Oversight, to oversee our research?”
“Your company turned it down.”
“The army came back. National security. Needs of the country. We’ve been working with them for weeks now, and... I’m worried I said too much.”
“What do you mean? What do you know?”
“Every time I talk to you, Shelley, someone’s listening. They’re listening now, aren’t they?”
I start pacing, my robot feet tapping on the floor tiles, the stripes of brilliant light raking my eyes and leaving me half blind. “You don’t have to tell me.”
But I want to know.
Lissa wants to tell me. “The army liaison I’ve been working with—you don’t know her—she called me almost an hour ago—so early, that I just knew something was wrong. I was afraid for you. I don’t want you set up for another slam.”
“I’m okay. Don’t worry.”
“She wanted my best guess on how to get rid of it... of the Red.”
“But I was just talking to Kendrick—” about that. I stop myself before I say too much, but she understands.
“It’s a critical question,” she says, “and the answer isn’t easy because the Red isn’t just one thing. I think it’s grown up out of a collection of marketing and inventory programs—”
“Marketing? Are you kidding?” General Trager’s suggestion that a DC designed it makes more sense to me.
“You think it sounds banal?”
“Yeah.”
“The most complex programs in existence are used for consumer analysis. They’re everywhere, watching and analyzing every aspect of our lives. The amount of data gathered on any one of us is mind-boggling—but that’s only one aspect. Shelley, from what I can tell, pieces of this program, the Red, are running all over the world, and those pieces are mirrored, so it’s not like anyone can just ‘pull the plug.’”
Kendrick said the same thing, and when I asked if there was no way to get rid of it, he told me, There’s always a way, son, if we’re willing to pay the price.
And me, pushing him, Well? Are we?
“What’s the price of getting rid of the Red?” I ask Lissa. “What would we have to do?”
“I think we’d have to break the substrate it lives on... bring down the Cloud. That’s what I told the army—and I’m afraid they might decide to do it.”
Kendrick said the question was in committee.
“No one can bring down the Cloud,” I object. “It’s everywhere, a redundant system.”
“We like to think so.” Her voice is soft, frightened. “It’s not true. Geek interlude, baby. All non-local data traffic goes through a limited number of physical locations known as exchanges. Take out a handful of those—”
Her explanation cuts out in midsentence. The call has dropped—but my network icon is still green. So I call Lissa back—but the call doesn’t go through.
Seconds later, someone activates the post’s defensive alarm.
Rumbling thunder fills the barracks as everyone scrambles for armor and bones.
It takes me two minutes to dress and rig up. I pull my helmet on and watch the icons come up on my visor. I’m linked to my skullnet, my HITR, a growing number of my soldiers, and to the C-FHEIT network—but my link to Guidance is grayed out. Delphi’s voice doesn’t greet me. No one talks to me at all.
I visualize a link to Colonel Kendrick. “What’s going on?”
“We’re under attack. See to it that your soldiers are rigged and ready.”
The helmet’s tiny fans blow welcome cool air across my fiery cheeks. I grab my weapon and throw the door open.
Elliot’s at the top of the stairs, dressed in boxer shorts like he just rolled out of bed. He whips around to look at me, face taut with shock, fear, his eyes squinting as he tries to convince himself that the man behind the anonymous black visor is me. “Shelley?”
Between us, the door to Major Chen’s room opens and the major steps out, wearing armor, but no bones. I slip past him to the top of the stairs. There’s no time to talk to Elliot, but I pause anyway, touching his shoulder with my gloved hand. “Elliot, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s serious. Stay out of the way, and be ready for anything.”
I jump down the stairs, all the way to the landing, letting the dead sister’s leg shocks absorb the impact. One more jump and I’m in the lobby. It’s empty, except for a private whose name I don’t know, looking frightened as he maintains his station behind the desk.
The doors to the enlisted quarters are open, men on one side, women on the other. It’s chaos in the hallways as soldiers scramble out of their individual rooms, still trying to finish strapping into their dead sisters while staggering toward the lobby. Some have their helmets in their hands instead of on their heads.
On the women’s side, I see Jaynie, fully rigged and helmeted,
step out into the fray. “Thirty seconds!” she screams off-line. “You have thirty seconds to get yourselves fully rigged and assembled in the lobby or I will kick your asses!”
Sergeant Nolan tackles the men’s side with similar encouragement, so I turn to the private serving desk duty. “Report.”
He’s a skinny kid with wide frightened eyes. He passes me a paper printout—something I’ve rarely seen since I’ve been in the army. “General message from Fort Hood, sir.”
I scan it in disbelief.
Subject: ALERT STAGE RED: NUCLEAR EXPLOSION DETECTED VICINITY OF DALLAS
Body: An explosion in Dallas County has been identified with a high degree of certainty as originating from a low-yield nuclear device. All personnel are to return immediately to their duty station. If that is not possible, personnel should report to the nearest military facility.
Details to follow.
“Form up!” I scream as soldiers pour into the lobby. The sergeants push them into lines and chaos transforms to order: four neat rows of five. My sixteen LCS soldiers are in armor and bones, their helmets on. At the end of each row is a single soldier dressed like Major Chen, in combat uniform and armor, but no dead sister, no helmet, just an audio loop. They are support personnel. There are five altogether, counting the private still manning the watch. Theirs are the only faces I can see, and all of them look scared.
I’m scared.
I want to know if only one bomb went off... or were there others, in other cities? Was there a bomb in San Diego? Is Lissa still alive, or did I hear her last words just now on the phone? Why the fuck were we talking about how to bring down the Cloud? I didn’t even tell her I love her, and she was afraid. She was already afraid.
And my dad? Is he still alive?
And these soldiers in front of me... how long will they survive in the war that must surely come?
Everyone looks up as Colonel Kendrick comes down from the second floor, rigged in armor and bones, his helmet on. He walks down the stairs: a delicate operation given that the dead sister’s footplates are too big to fit on each step, but he pulls it off with grace.