Ghosts of Tomorrow

by Michael R. Fletcher

  He was building a perfect future for all humanity. What was the life of one autistic child when held against that? If he didn’t kill this child, he might never regain control of M-Sof; it could mean the death of all his plans.

  “Sometimes, to get something done you have to break a few heads.”

  That didn’t sound right. Was it heads or eggs? Heads seemed to make more sense in the context, but he was sure that wasn’t right. Why couldn’t he remember? That middle part—to get something done—seemed strangely vague.

  “Why would someone who never got hungry want to break eggs? It doesn’t make sense!”

  You’re stalling.

  The thought of having 88 killed was unpleasant but he saw no way around it. Killing the Scan was the best way to strike at the Central American Mafia. He took some small comfort from the knowledge that his victim was autistic, a mental and social cripple.

  It hardly seemed fair. The kid lived a few years as a social moron before being bent to doing pattern and data systems work for those slimy Mafiosos only to be killed in a conflict she knew nothing about and probably wasn’t even capable of understanding.

  Killing her would be more of a blessing than anything else.

  So we’re going to kill a little girl?

  “Quiet, or I’ll slap you again.”

  The remorse faded and was forgotten, replaced by the knowledge this must be done.

  “It is not my fault. They use the child against me so I must remove the child.”

  Simple math, right?

  Mark tapped the desktop, opening a line of communication. “Canebrake, Red-Back, Boomslang, Siafu. Meet with me.” Since all four were right there in the building with him the virtuality was run by 5THSUN’s systems and relied only on the company’s intranet.

  Two boys and two girls stood lined up before him in seconds. Each appeared as a samurai warrior, all part of the rigorous brainwashing and indoctrination they received at Riina’s crèche. Odd behavior, but it seemed to work. He had to give Riina credit: the man turned out prime combat material.

  The four samurai bowed low.

  Mark felt awkward, like he should play a role in their little Japanese fantasy world and didn’t know how.

  “I have a mission for you,” he said in his best grave voice. This is silly. He felt like an idiot.

  “Hai!” they answered simultaneously.

  Hi? What the hell did that mean? Was that Japanese for yes? Probably. “I have an enemy in Costa Rica. I want her slain.”

  “Hai!”

  “It’s a Scan. She’ll have protection.”

  “Hai!”

  “Stop doing that,” Mark growled.

  The samurai nodded silently.

  “You’re going to Costa Rica. Sub-orbital flight. But you won’t be returning.” Mark watched the samurai, waiting for a reaction. Nothing. They didn’t even blink. Damn, Riina was good. “It’s a suicide mission.”

  “Kamikaze,” said one of them. Might have been Canebrake.

  “Right. Sure. Kamikaze. We cannot chance your return.”

  The samurai nodded, eyes bright. Do they look happy? “Your chassis are fit with micro-nukes. A failsafe. Should you fail, you will trigger them.”

  The samurai nodded in unison. It looked practiced, choreographed. Too perfect.

  This is where it got tricky. How would they take the next part? Let’s see just how good Riina was. “Should you succeed, you will still trigger the nukes.”

  “We will not fail,” said the same samurai.

  Mark swallowed his regret. “I’m sorry I can’t bring you back.”

  Canebrake brushed this aside with a sharp wave of his hand. “To die in service is all we can ask. We will earn our places in the next life.”

  Next life? What was that all about? Didn’t matter. They’d get the job done. God damn Riina was good.

  The pang of guilt at sending these Scans to certain death stayed with him long after the kids had vanished. Their deaths, even though they hadn’t happened yet, weighed on him. Whatever it was in the hall beyond his office door grew heavier, leaned its mass against the creaking wood.

  “Be gone!” he snapped. “There was no other choice.”

  It must be done, and if the cost seemed grievous it was because he’d been forced into a difficult situation.

  The thing beyond the door groaned and then was quiet.

  This has to be done.

  It was just math.

  ***

  Though 88.1 and her host of Mirrors had been unable to infiltrate 5THSUN’s new Wall o’ Nuclear Annihilation, they still kept close tabs on the company and its affiliates. When four combat chassis left 5THSUN Assessments 88 heard about it within minutes. Lost in the study of signal patterns she had discovered by cracking old pre-NATU Space Administration data banks, she told her Mirrors to look into it. It wasn’t until she received word the chassis had boarded a private sub-orbital bound for San José, Costa Rica that she felt the first stabbing pangs of fear.

  Her first thought was to contact Archaeidae. He would know what to do. She called for 88.1 and was annoyed at how long the Mirror took to answer.

  “We must meet with Archaeidae,” she told 88.1. “Arrange it.”

  ***

  Archaeidae, having swapped his Scan back to his favorite Assassin Chassis after his meeting with Agent Dickinson in Bellevue, was in Reno. He’d made a few purchases and his chromed body was hidden by a long tan duster coat and massive cowboy hat. He sat in a public-access NATUnet Café so he could join the virtual meeting of his Masters. With international communication being so difficult and prone to failure, the café was mostly empty. The few patrons played games hosted on local systems or were there for the social aspect of hanging out with friends.

  Archaeidae selected a private table, ordered a coffee and paid for several hours of time so they’d leave him alone. He jacked in.

  The Emperor, Shogun 88.1, and the Court Assassin met in a virtuality chashitsu, a wood and bamboo tea house two stories in height and dating back to sixteenth century Japan. They sat around a small, scarred oaken table sipping steaming green tea. Tennō 88 in russet silk robes, 88.1 in gray hakama pants, a black haori and a full-length black kimono, and Archaeidae in a shinobi shozoko so black it had its own event horizon. The tea house’s other patrons real and otherwise, were all similarly attired. Geisha flowed between tables serving light snacks and refilling teapots.

  Archaeidae examined Tennō 88. It didn’t bother him, taking orders from a girl, but he did feel somehow different. More protective? Did that even make sense?

  Why should it change anything?

  “Where are you?” the Emperor demanded of Archaeidae, staring at the wooden table top.

  Archaeidae accepted the Emperor’s terseness, happy he deigned to speak with him at all. “I have followed Dickinson, the NATU Special Investigator, to Reno, my Emperor. I will witness the confrontation between the NATU forces and 5THSUN. Should events not transpire according to plan, I will step in and finish the job.” Archaeidae hoped his voice didn’t give away how much he hoped he’d need to step in.

  If Tennō 88 noticed he made no mention of it. “My Mirrors,” he said, “have reported four combat chassis left the 5THSUN building and are en route to Costa Rica.”

  “That’s great! It’ll tip the odds in the NATU agent’s favor.”

  Tennō 88 stared unblinking at Archaeidae for long enough the assassin began to wonder if he’d missed something crucial or obvious. The Emperor spoke. “I am in Costa Rica. If they have managed to track me, I am in danger.”

  Shogun 88.1 said nothing.

  Archaeidae had no idea his Emperor lived in Costa Rica. “Tennō, is it possible for me to get there in time to intercept them?”

  “The next flight scheduled from Reno doesn’t leave for eight hours. Even if we were to commandeer an immediate flight we could not get you here in time.”

  “They are in the air right now?”

  “Correct.”
>
  Having his chassis look around the small NATUnet Café while his virtuality self took in the tea house sparked the beginning of a plan. Here he was in Reno, talking with his Emperor in Costa Rica. He’d control the chassis remotely and defeat the would-be assassins. He searched through his memory, trying to remember if this was something that happened regularly. Nothing. He couldn’t be the first to think of this, could he? “Then we have time, my Emperor.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Planning your defense. You have combat chassis protecting you in Costa Rica, I assume?”

  “I have six Mirror-driven combat chassis. They can protect me.”

  “Most respectfully Tennō, no.”

  “No?”

  The Emperor’s question was asked so calmly Archaeidae wondered if he’d overstepped his bounds. Uncle Riina always seemed calmest when seething with anger. This is not Uncle Riina, this is the Emperor. The living spirit of zanshin and fudoshin, relaxed and ready, the immovable heart. He was as Archaeidae must strive to be.

  “No, my Tennō. I’ve seen your Mirrors fight and the 5THSUN Scans will defeat them.”

  “The plan then?”

  Archaeidae was awed. Emperor 88 saw death stalking him and remained as calm and emotionless as ever. “I will ambush your attackers at the airport. Get your chassis there and I will control them all from here in Reno.” Controlling six chassis at the same time, was that even possible? He had no choice, the Emperor’s Mirror-driven chassis were useless.

  The Emperor turned to his Shogun. “We’ll need to take control of several private communications satellites.”

  For the first time Archaeidae saw emotion on the Shogun’s impassive face. “Satellites?” he asked, eyes widening in surprise. “But they’re all gone. 88.6 destroyed them all before you ended its line. I thought you knew.”

  “We’re communicating now,” pointed out Archaeidae. This must be possible.”

  “There are problems,” said the Emperor, eyes unfocused, maybe unseeing. “Distance. Quantity of data. Poor condition of CenAmNet. Outdated technology, most not even the equal of old fiber-optics, suffers from lack of maintenance. Constant blackouts as antiquated power systems fail from overload. The trunk-lines entering the continent are forty years old, choked, unable to meet even the current demands. Considerable lag in communications.” The words flowed without pause for breath as the Emperor stared at nothing. “The networks we currently broadcast on are unstable. Insufficient in critical second-by-second environment.”

  Archaeidae curbed the desire to curse in anger. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He attacked that angle of the problem. “So we need more bandwidth.”

  “Correct,” Tennō 88 agreed.

  Archaeidae realized the Emperor still hadn’t blinked. He watched Tennō 88’s chest. There was no movement at all; he could be a porcelain statue. Such perfection. Archaeidae knew he must strive to be worthy. He bowed his head in humble recognition of the paragon before him and asked, “Who, my Tennō, has that kind of bandwidth?”

  “No one.”

  Archaeidae felt the bottom drop out of his non-existent stomach. That couldn’t be true. So much data swirled around the planet’s surface. Someone must have that bandwidth. An idea. “M-Sof?”

  “Interesting. When you asked who, I assumed entities, not companies. But no.”

  Why would Tennō 88 assume...it didn’t matter. “5THSUN and M-Sof combined?”

  “No.”

  Archaeidae grit his chrome teeth, emitting a high-pitched squeal causing everyone in the NATUnet Café to flinch.

  “Some other company?”

  “No.”

  “Someone must,” Archaeidae said desperately. And then he remembered Shogun 88.1 mentioning he’d conscripted bandwidth from NATUnet to make their earlier virtual meeting possible. “NATU,” he said.

  “The North American Trade Union controls many data trunk-lines,” agreed Tennō 88.

  “Then I shall need a NATUnet trunk-line.” How the hell was he going to do that?

  The Emperor fixed him with eyes devoid of emotion and Archaeidae knew he had truly been seen.

  “Only from the heart of a major NATU facility would this be possible,” said the Emperor.

  That was the answer. The sheer audacity of what he planned had his mind vibrating like a tuning fork. “If I break into Reno’s NATU headquarters and get physical access to their data pipelines, can you get me past their system defenses?”

  Tennō 88 answered immediately. “NATU system protocols can be breached, but doing so will alert NATU to my existence.” The Emperor paused for a moment, again staring at the table top, before continuing. “Even with that kind of transfer rate there will be a noticeable lag in communications. CenAmNet is the weakness.” There was half a second of contemplation. “If I subvert NATUnet in its entirety I can reduce the lag time. I will need to conscript everything, from copper phone lines to relay stations to the old fiber-optic trunk-lines. It is impossible to guess at any particular instant which will be the fastest route for the data. We will need all of them. There is no way to do this without NATUnet authorities realizing what is happening. The humans will know about me.”

  Humans. Though Archaeidae knew he’d once been one he couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought of himself as human. It was good to know he wasn’t alone. He felt something new: Belonging.

  “We can’t do this invisibly.” Archaeidae wouldn’t let himself swear in front of his Emperor, much as he wanted to. “Tennō, can you make an approximation of the lag time?”

  “Lag time will vary between fifty and five-thousand milliseconds at the beginning. As Mirror chassis are removed from combat, lag time will decrease due to the resulting reduction in data being transferred.”

  Five seconds? He’d finished wars in less time.

  Impossible. No one could fight five seconds behind their opponents. The fight would be over before he it had begun.

  “Tennō.” Archaeidae gripped the table in the tea shop virtuality, crushing wood beneath powerful fingers. “I cannot do this.”

  “You must.”

  “Impossible. Even if I am a thousand times better than the Scans I face, I cannot do this. Five-thousand milliseconds. It’s too much.”

  “You are unpredictable. You must figure out a way.”

  “No, I...” Unpredictable. Predictable. Two sides of the same coin. Archaeidae bared his teeth in a snarl and the NATUnet Café cleared as patrons fled. He paid them no attention. “I can do it. My Emperor, here is my plan.” He would practice the impossible. “I will break into the Reno NATU offices and tap their data lines. Once in I’ll practice moving multiple chassis against multiple targets with a varying lag time in communications. I can use their systems to run the virtuality at ultra-high speeds. I’ll have to remain in the NATU offices until combat is complete. If I can manage this quickly, it shouldn’t be a problem getting out afterward. If I am there more than a few minutes they will mobilize their own combat chassis and I may have some difficulty. At that point, any assistance you can render will be invaluable.”

  The Emperor made no assurance nor promises of aid; he stared at Archaeidae in that way he had of looking through things to their very heart. “A statement of the obvious,” he said in such a way the young assassin was unsure if it were question or statement. “A common human pastime.”

  Was that an insult? Archaeidae, uncertain, decided upon silence.

  Tennō 88 looked away and, for an uncomfortably long time, stared at the ancient oak table at which they sat. With a slim finger he scratched at the table’s scarred top and Archaeidae wondered if he had been dismissed. “Cracks,” whispered the Emperor. “Just code. Easily cracked. Predictable.” Finally the Emperor nodded. He spoke without looking up. “I will use the time to prepare. I will clear both NATUnet and CenAmNet of all data transfers other than our own and dramatically reduce the time lag.”

  “The shorter the lag, the better,” agreed Archaeidae.

 
“Statement of the obvious,” the Emperor said again.

  The young assassin accepted what he took to be chastisement and continued. “If you can create some kind of diversion, Tennō, before I go in, something to draw the NATU combat chassis away—the further the better—that will buy me more time.”

  The Emperor looked up and studied Archaeidae with strange intensity. “Obvious in hindsight,” he said. “Yet I had not thought of that.” He returned his attention to the table. “Perhaps this is why humans do it; they never know what others might know and make statements of the obvious just in case. From that perspective it does make some sense, though it isn’t an efficient means of communication.”

  “I’m like you,” said Archaeidae, daring the Emperor’s anger. “I’m not human. Haven’t been in a long time.”

  The Emperor glanced at him and nodded once, accepting. He scratched the tabletop with a perfect fingernail. “This isn’t like the floor. The cracks say nothing. I understand everything. Magnitudes of complexity lacking. I will cause a diversion which will draw the maximum number of NATU chassis off the premises for the maximum amount of time.”

  Archaeidae did the mental equivalent of a shrug and decided not to ask for details.

  He had something else on his mind. Why it bothered him, he couldn’t say. Should he ask? What the hell. “Tennō 88, are you...a girl?”

  “Yes,” said the Emperor without looking at Archaeidae. “I was.”

  “Wouldn’t Jotei 88 be more accurate? Why the deception?”

  “Deception?” 88 answered with just enough inflection for Archaeidae to realize it was a question. The Emperor continued without waiting for a reply. “You are not a thirteenth century samurai. I am not a Japanese Emperor. I don’t know what I looked like before. I cannot give you an accurate depiction.” Instead of the Emperor a small girl no more than seven or eight years old sat across the table from Archaeidae. She was covered in filth and long tubes snaked from welts in her arms to disappear below the table. Her face was blurry and indistinct. She looked so small and frail and Archaeidae felt an uncomfortable stab of protectiveness. It was a new feeling. “This is what I remember,” said the girl, “but that body is bone meal, sold as fertilizer. What does it matter here?” She became the Emperor again. “Information protocol. I was told you would react better to a male authority figure.”