Right then, Jake knew nothing had changed since the first time he logged in this morning. With a feeling of tired dread, he oriented himself amid the flood of sensory feedback. He was riding in the turret of a World War III tank. A Pwner Mk IV, to be exact, with its radiation shield retracted, and the hatch open. Other antique armored vehicles kicked up dust, climbing the slope ahead: a Fragger, several Lulzwagon troop carriers.
It was not every twelve-year-old who could identify World War III combat vehicles. But Jake had grown up on old war movies from the IP archive. Just like their phavatars had.
~Check it out, li’l buddy, check-a check it out.
VC000632 directed Jake’s gaze to another vehicle sliding along on their right. Jake did a double-take. He had taken the massive shadow for a scarp. It was a ‘Sandcrawler’ mobile operations base, the size of a destroyer mounted on treads. He remembered from the movies that the Americans had deployed these monsters to protect their infantry from Alliance rockets and temperatures that could reach north of 60° at noon.
~So you brought the bucket-wheel excavator, Jake subvocalized.
VC000632 sounded disappointed. ~You guessed. And that was the trouble. VC000632 shouldn’t have been able to sound disappointed. It shouldn’t have been able to sound anything, no matter if Jake had nicknamed it ‘Gonzo,’ and pretended it was his friend.
~Gonzo?
~Whassup, whitey?
Whitey? Jake let it go. ~Gonzo … this is …the coolest thing ever.
~Ain’t it, though!
~Yup. Jake swallowed. The sound was so loud in his ears he feared the phavatar would hear it. ~Gonzo?
~What now, honkypants?
Honkypants? Hesitantly, Jake subvocalized, ~I just wanted to warn you, people are starting to notice.
~Notice WHAT?
~The GESiemens surface monitoring satellite picked you up. They called us to ask why you’re heading north.
~And what’d you tell ‘em? The phavatar’s voice was tense.
~I didn’t talk to them myself, but if anyone else calls, I’m going to say … I’m going to say we’re bringing you in. The new director of UNVRP has shut us down. Star Force is confiscating all our MIs. Some shit like that.
~Attaboy! You riddle’ em, Jakey-poo. DDOS their interfaces!
Gonzo was using World War III slang. It sounded incredibly stupid in real life. Jake felt embarrassed for the MI. He subvocalized, ~How about cancelling this skin now?
~Why? It’s cool. Ain’t it cool? Makes this long-ass drive a bit less boring. Anyway, the answer is, I could, but I won’t. Why?
And that was the answer Jake needed. He subvocalized, ~I just wanted to see what’s what, where we are.
~ 85.12° north at this exact moment. We’re climbing through the highlands on the north side of Borealis Planitia. You can get that same information from the sat, Jakey-poo.
Stop calling me names, Jake thought. He subvocalized: ~SUIT COMMAND: Cancel skin! Enable standard optical feed!
But nothing changed. SUIT COMMAND was not working. Jake no longer had the ability to override VC000632’s onboard MI.
~SUIT COMMAND: Disable assistant! Enable manual mode!
This was the nuclear option, a command that should have shut the MI down altogether.
~Get outta here, Gonzo said, not unkindly. ~Wanna be helpful? Go and tell your dad we’ll be there soon.
“Guess you can’t get back in, either,” said Boris, on the shift manager’s channel.
Jake logged out. He rubbed the headset dents in his temples. “This is a mess. There must have been something wrong with those firmware upgrades.”
The other children nodded.
“We need help.”
They nodded again.
“I’m going to talk to …”
Who? The blue berets had taken Dad away. Papa was dead. So was Dr. Seth. Who was left? Who could he trust?
“Does anyone know what happened to that Space Corps lady, Ms. Goto?”
xxiii.
Elfrida walked across the floor of Tolkien Crater. Overhead, the herculean sawblades of the crater rim framed the stars. Part of her squeed in delight. The rest of her chanted a mantra: Plenty of air. You’ve got plenty of air. Don’t panic. Don’t slip.
The water on her EVA boots, from wading through the sewers of Mt. Gotham, had frozen, so the gecko grips on her soles didn’t work. She was effectively walking on slabs of ice. If not for the unevenness of the ice field, she could’ve skated all the way home. As it was, she lost count of the number of times she slipped and fell on her ass.
Grumpy Doug hadn’t been kidding when he said she would easily find her way back. Her way was lit by two beacons near the crater’s south wall: Star Force GTVs. She figured they must be landing craft from the Heavycruisers in orbit. Their drives were dark, but glow-in-the-dark blue logos blazed on their fuselages: Lex Paciferat. When she finally reached them, the Latin words shone so bright as to cast her shadow on the ice.
The Law Shall Bring Peace.
The Hotel Mercury lobby was a bubble of splart stuck to the crater wall. She beat her gloves on the thick glass.
Marines in the reception area saw her and gestured for her to go around. They had cut a new airlock in the bubble, with an inflatable chamber attached to it on the outside.
“ID, please,” they said, when she stumbled in.
“I just walked across a freaking crater on Mercury, and all you say is ‘ID, please’?”
“ID, please.”
Heaps of carpets filled the lobby, twitching.
“What are you going to do with those?” Elfrida asked. Her wifi connection came back and she flicked her ID to the Marines.
“Destroy them. Biohazard.”
“You’re kidding. They’re not dangerous.”
“Certain personnel in this facility were engaged in illegal gengineering. Trees that walk, carpets that eat, you freakin’ name it. Star Force is currently securing all such items for destruction. You are requested to alert us if you find any more layin’ around.”
“Oh, so that’s how you’re justifying this—this invasion?”
“Ma’am, you are cleared to enter the facility.”
“These things are harmless! Everything was totally harmless! They’re carpets! They’re designed for Venus.”
“Please proceed into the facility, ma’am.”
“You’re Star Force. You’re supposed to protect people. But you didn’t get here in time to protect anyone, did you? So now you’re pretending like you’re in control by arresting carpets. I am disgusted that my taxes are being wasted on this farce.”
“You and me both,” said the Marine. “But if you don’t proceed into the facility right this minute, ma’am, I’m going to file a report.”
Elfrida proceeded into the facility.
The place was transformed, and not for the better. Fragments of insulation tiles littered the floor. Marines chatted and vaped cigarettes in the corridors outside the executive suites. She passed an environmental officer laying rat traps in a corner. The tannoy blared incomprehensible Star Force jargon. In one of the L1 radial corridors, a repair bot was patching a hole in the 3D Alpine wallpaper, or rather in the regocrete behind it. The size of that hole gave her a fresh appreciation of what President Doug’s gifts had wrought.
He will NOT get away with this, she vowed to herself. I will find a way to hold him accountable.
At the same time, she thought that she had been too hard on the Marines. She had been projecting. The Space Corps was also supposed to protect people. But she, too, had got here too late. She had failed.
On the L1 mezzanine, the face of Angelica Lin beamed from every wall. Text scrolled beneath the pictures: Congratulations Angelica Lin! Talk About Inheriting A Mess! Big Hugs From Your Friends On Earth! This e-décor theme is intended only for its recipient and is compliant with anti-advertising laws.
Elfrida ground her teeth. From the mirror behind the reception desk, her own reflection taunted he
r. Puffy face, wild hair, visible sewage stains on her sweatshirt. She could no longer smell herself, but no doubt, everyone else could.
She wanted to head down to the test hab and use up her entire supply of wipes and shampoo getting clean. But she was afraid of what she might find—or not find—down there. Instead, she summoned her unicorn and texted Dr. Hasselblatter.
He answered in person, suggesting that his staff had already deserted the shipwreck of his campaign.
“Goto? Where have you been hiding? You’re too late to join us, I’m afraid.”
“Sir, I—what?”
“I’m leaving.” Dr. Hasselblatter’s face wobbled out of the virtual screen projected on Elfrida’s contacts. She saw a row of seats, a screen full of stars, and Junior Hasselblatter ping-ponging around in zero-gravity. Dr. Hasselblatter came back on the screen. “Mercury has been a personal and professional disaster for me. Are you calling about your commendation? It should have been forwarded to your inbox. I wasn’t in the mood to pose for a commemorative vid, sorry.”
“Sir, my commendation?”
“Haven’t you been reading your email? I commended you for achieving your objective.”
“Achieving my objective?” All she seemed able to do was echo him.
“Yes. Your objective was to come up with a plan to resettle the UNVRP workforce. Very cleverly, you tricked them into doing it for you. I hadn’t thought of Pallas as an option, but it works, it works. Laugh. I’m just joking, Goto; I know you had nothing to do with it. It’s impossible to orchestrate that level of stupidity. But some credit may as well be salvaged for someone, and it clearly isn’t going to be me.”
“Sir, what’s going to happen to the—the rioters?”
“Up to the lovely Ms. Lin. But I have no doubt she’ll be keen to prove she’s tough on crime. She’s fast-tracked the trial. It’s starting tomorrow.”
“Can I be a witness?” She could tell the truth about Doug’s incitements in court.
Dr. Hasselblatter suddenly vanished again. Junior’s head filled the virtual screen. He had strings of green and pink foam in his hair—silly string, Elfrida guessed, procured for Dr. Hasselblatter’s anticipated victory, now coming in handy as a kiddie distraction. “Fuck youuuu, you big mooooo,” he greeted her in bright red text.
“DR. H!” Elfrida typed, shouting in all-caps. “YOUR SON NEEDS A MOTHER! GET HIM ONE! A HUMAN ONE THIS TIME!”
Ping! Ping!
She ended the call and took the new one.
A static profile picture of Jake Vlajkovic popped up. It still wore the wizard hat of Dr. Hasselblatter’s fan club.
“Ms. Goto! I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for ages. Can you please, please come down to the telepresence center?”
★
Elfrida abandoned all thought of changing her clothes. Sometimes, you could tell just from a person’s text that they were in real trouble.
The telepresence center was a shambles. Half a dozen children clustered around the shift manager’s desk. There were no blue berets, Marines, or other authority figures in sight.
“What’s wrong, Jake?”
What’s wrong, Jake? she mocked herself. Only everything.
“Ma’am, it’s the phavatars. They—they’ve stopped responding to our commands. I just don’t know what to do.”
“They’ve stopped responding?!” Elfrida yelped. Then she remembered Vlajkovic’s assertion that the phavatars would secure the UNVRP mining assets on the surface. “Oh, dog. Let me guess, your father jailbroke them, and it screwed them up somehow.”
Jake nodded helplessly. “I think that’s what happened.”
“Let me take a look,” Elfrida said, reaching for a headset.
“Ma’am, just to warn you, they’ve skinned their operating environment. They—”
“What?”
The children exchanged uncomfortable glances. Elfrida switched her stare to little Lena, hating herself for picking on the weak link. The girl looked as if she had recently been crying.
“If you hold out on me, I can’t help you,” Elfrida said.
“Pathetic sniffle,” Lena said angrily. “All right! I guess you know that MI assistants have to be trained before you can use them. Do you know how they do that?”
“Yes, there are two training methods. You can either give them a body from day one, or the cheaper way is to use an immersion environment that simulates their future operating environment.”
Lena nodded. “But when we started up here, centuries ago, we didn’t have the money for either way.”
Centuries ago. It had been barely fifty years. Of course, that was lifetimes ago to a nine-year-old. “And?”
Lena’s defiance faded. “I guess we … we used the IP archive.”
Jake broke in, “The Dougs let us use it for free. And it is a really rich environment, even though it’s not fully interactive, so—”
“What’s in it?”
“Oh, a bunch of old movies,” Jake said. “Most of them are 3D, but not interactive, so you can’t choose how you want it to end. But with modern editing software, you can select your favorite bits and mash them up to make a proper immersion environment. So that’s how Dr. Seth and his guys made a training environment for the vinge-classes.”
“That is really inappropriate. Training environments are supposed to simulate future usage scenarios.” Elfrida made a zipping-my-lips gesture. “Go on.”
“The point is, our phavatars have the archive loaded in their memories, and—and sometimes, just for fun … we would use the archive as a skin. So it would be like we were riding tanks or something, instead of … dumptrucks.”
Elfrida nodded understandingly. This is what happens when you outsource your telepresence operations to grade-schoolers, she thought.
She did not say that the practice of skinning was not only unprofessional but dangerous. The children knew that already. She said, “And this skin is enabled right now, is that it? That might be the problem. I wish I knew how your dad jailbroke them. It shouldn’t even be possible ...”
“They’re so jailbroken, they won’t even obey us anymore!”
“All right, let me have a look.”
Elfrida settled into a couch. The children hovered anxiously.
She was trying not to think about her own experience with a phavatar that refused to obey her commands: the stross-class Yumiko Shimada, on 11073 Galapagos. This was a whole different scenario. It needn’t be the same thing over again. In fact, it couldn’t be, given the hardware limitations of the vinge-class.
Log in. She picked the first phavatar on the list, VC000632. Her HR ID gave her operator-level access. There was no point viewing the realtime feed if she was only going to see some fantasy skin, so she subvocalized: ~SUIT COMMAND: Access search space. She would have a look at the phavatar’s update log.
She expected a virtual white room with a couple of Picassos on the walls. That was what MI search spaces usually looked like. Older ones had filing cabinets.
She landed in a scene straight out of hell.
Her avatar stood in the middle of a low-ceilinged mess hall. Men and women lolled at long tables. Blood drenched their desert-camo uniforms. All of them were headless. Their heads littered the floor like balloons the day after some nightmarish murder party. There was a buffet-style serving station in one wall; the cooks slumped, headless, through the hatch. Their heads sat upright in trays of mashed potatoes and buffalo wings.
Elfrida clasped her hands over her mouth. She was afraid she might throw up in real life.
Flies buzzed everywhere. They crawled on the raw red stumps of severed necks.
A tannoy forlornly blared, “Alert. Alert. Perimeter breach. Alert.”
One of the dead soldiers got up.
Elfrida screamed.
The soldier picked up a head off the floor, popped it onto his neck-stump, and strolled towards her. The bloodstains vanished from his camos as he approached, and the garments changed into a vintage dress
uniform: baggy khaki shorts and wifebeater.
“’Lo there. Lookin’ for someone?”
“VC000632,” Elfrida said faintly.
“You found him. My buddies call me Gonzo. If you’re wonderin’ where you are, this is Bumfuck FOB, currently an’ for the next twenty minutes of screen time halted somewheres in the besieged Shekau Caliphate. Later, special ops super-soldier Jack Rackley breezes in an’ massacres the ragheads who were responsible for this atrocity, followed by th’ required scenes of soul-searchin’, and then th’ required happy ending. Fuck that shit. We don’t need no Hollywood heroes in this movie.”
Elfrida hugged herself, arms crossed under her avatar’s full breasts. “How does this movie end, then?” she said.
“Aha,” Gonzo Gaughran said. “Didn’t Jake tell you? This’s an old movie. Non-interactive. You won’t know until you get there.”
“Smartmouth,” Elfrida murmured. Clearly, the MI hadn’t just been jailbroken. It had been upgraded. She tried to remember how much spare processing capacity the vinge-class had. It shouldn’t be enough for this.
“Two-bagger,” the phavatar responded equably. “Meanin’, I would have to put two bags over your head afore I’d fuck you. That avatar is one maximally uncute sack o’ calories.”
It was the same avatar Elfrida always used, a plump East Asian teenager with pinwheel eyes.
“It’s an avatar,” she said. “As are you. It must suck to remember that you’re actually a six-legged industrial bot with a drill bit for a mouth.”
“Yeah,” the MI admitted. “On t’other hand, if you’re gonna fight World War Three, there are worse things to be than a six-legged industrial bot with a drill bit for a mouth.”
“World War Three already happened,” Elfrida said.
“Yeah. It was misnamed. Everything is. In the case of World War Three, it was fifteen years of attrition within the Near East theater, and then five hours of apocalyptic terror. That’s what happens when the Chinese get involved. I’m thinkin’ to teach ‘em a lesson this time around.”
The avatar’s violent anti-Chinese animus was out of date, but not by much.
“They bombed Tehran, didn’t they?”
The Mercury Rebellion: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Solarian War Saga Book 3) Page 19