Corrosion (The Corroding Empire Book 1)

by Johan Kalsi

  —Infogalactic Entry: Grand Category: Human Culture: Knockdown (Game)

  The start of his trial was scheduled for early tomorrow morning, so Caden Jaggis, still First Technocrat de jure, though clearly not de facto, spent his time by preparing in the best way he knew how: by studying both sides of a game of Knockdown. He didn’t feel much like sleeping, because he knew that if the trial-by-council followed what he suspected would be its predetermined path, he would soon be facing the proverbial dirt nap.

  He’d had plenty of time to muse on the situation over the last few weeks, and he found that he was beginning to reach the dreadful conclusion that Servo was correct. The growing effects of algorithmic decay were undeniable, which meant that the interstellar empire of Man was gradually corroding, even if it was not yet crumbling into ruin. And he knew that although he was one of the very few men on the planet capable of investigating the problem, he was very unlikely to be given the opportunity to do so.

  He had been allowed enough visitors in prison to gather that the Human League were planning to do through legal means what they had failed to do illegally: assassinate him. His only chance was to win over a Technocratic Council that was not only looking for a sacrificial lamb to throw to the frightened public, but would be presided over by Harraf, his would-be successor as First Technocrat.

  At last, sleep descended upon him.

  It was barely dawn when the guards came for him. He was permitted to shower, though not shave, presumably for fear he might try to slash his own throat. To his surprise, he was provided with the robe of a councillor, rather than the prison garb he’d been wearing. For a moment, hope bloomed, until he realized that there was no point throwing a Technocrat to the wolves unless he looked like a proper one.

  Still, when they marched him up through the underground entrance to the Spire to avoid the media’s camdrones and down the hallway that led to the the courtroom, the familiar attire made him feel almost as if he was in control of the situation again.

  The long corridor still retained the trappings of classic Continoxian justice. It made him a little melancholy to be marched past the busts of the great Technocrats of Excetorese history. Hersian was there, as was Derothone, Portalia, and of course, Melthagorys. He realized that the only allies he would be able to count on in the grand hall of justice were the ghosts of the past, molded in stone.

  He was left to this, his final game of Knockdown, all alone.

  And the game was rigged against him.

  It often surprised even his closest associates, but Jaggis was not a particularly gifted player of Knockdown. To be sure, he had possibly perfected the art of teaching algorithms to pupils across the galaxy using Knockdown as a form of training. However, he was at heart a designer of games, not a player. He really only enjoyed games that required creativity, whereas Knockdown was more about seeing and following the obvious patterns.

  It was a spatial game, a game of order, of logic and anticipation. It was also a very old game that punished innovation. Even professional masters of Knockdown used a different term for creative improvisation to demonstrate this truth. They called any surprising or particularly anticipatory move an “Inevitability.” It was a game that frowned upon the new.

  Having understood the Council’s game, Jaggis was unsurprised when he was permitted to take his customary seat in the center of his colleagues, but it may as well have been the witness stand. All eyes were on him. There was an audience in attendance; the room was packed, almost entirely with media.

  He wondered if he would be thrown to the mercy of the Human League immediately or if the process would be drawn out. A part of him wished they would simply get the business over with quickly, and without requiring him to participate in the charade.

  As he expected, the Third and Fifth Technocrats were running the show. Although Rikker-Smythe was nominally presiding—he wore the sparkling digital sash that had hitherto been Jaggis’s prerogative as First Technocrat—one could see by the way he looked to Harraf and St. Asko for approval that appealing to his common sense would be fruitless. Did the Human League have something on the Second Technocrat? Or was it simply his natural weakness of character permitting the two predatory politicians to dominate him?

  He shrugged. It didn’t matter now. What he needed to know was if Harraf was merely attempting to unseat him or if he had more nefarious intentions. He found it difficult to believe that either man was a genuine Humanist, but the fact that he’d been arrested on the same day as the assassination and attempt smacked of St. Asko’s meticulous, belt-and-suspenders approach to life.

  “As the initial order of business, it falls to me, as Second Technocrat, to ask the First Technocrat to recuse himself from this discussion,” Rikker-Smythe said. He sounded authoritative, he looked authoritative, with his thick white hair and patrician features, but Jaggis knew the noble appearance was misleading. The Second Technocrat was a junior officer in an admiral’s body, and had made a career of successfully shying away from all responsibility. “It would not be appropriate for him to participate in this discussion, as he is to be its subject.”

  “If he’s the subject, he’s going to have to participate, Mikke!” The Eighth Technocrat, a fleshy New Tejan, cracked, but subsided when Harraf glared at him.

  “Well, I mean to say, he cannot participate as a participant-”

  “Oh, for Space’s sake!” Harraf broke in. “I move that Caden Jaggis be temporarily stripped of his seat on the Council while the matter of his alleged criminal negligence concerning the growing incidence of algorithmic decay throughout Continox.”

  “Seconded,” St. Asko said, barely beating three others who echoed him.

  “It’s not necessary,” Jaggis said quietly.

  “What’s that?” Rikker-Smythe asked.

  “I will recuse myself from the Council today in order to permit the consideration of my actions, so long as they are limited to this specific accusation of criminal negligence under Statue 245.856, subsection 28b.”

  Rikker-Smythe looked at Harraf, who looked thoughtful before glancing quickly at St. Asko, who gave no sign of acceptance or approval. Harraf nodded, and Rikker-Smythe cleared his throat. “The First Technocrat has graciously offered to recuse himself from our deliberations, therefore I shall preside until such time as he resumes his duties or a new First Technocrat is named.”

  The latter looked to be a much more likely proposition, Jaggis thought. But would it be Harraf or St. Asko who would replace him? Was it the taciturn Fifth Technocrat who was the real force behind this, and not his openly ambitious colleague?

  “I will now open the floor to questions, in order of precedence. Tech Harraf, you may proceed.”

  “Thank you, Tech Rikker-Smythe.” Harraf nodded to the Second Technocrat and flashed him an obsequious smile. “And I should like to, if I may, commend the way you have handled this unfortunate situation with the utmost fairness to all the parties involved.”

  Jaggis sighed and tried not to roll his eyes as Rikker-Smythe beamed and murmured some self-deprecatory nonsense. He really should have done a better job of promoting stronger allies on the Council; all the Second Technocrat really wanted was to be petted by his colleagues and admired by the public. Harraf’s shameless flattery was rendering the man as pliable as molten plastic.

  “Now,” said Harraf staring down his long, elegant nose at Jag. “How long have you been aware of the potential problem of algorithmic decay?”

  “In theory or in practice?”

  “In theory.”

  “Twenty-five years.” Jaggis knew they were expecting a denial, or at least an evasion, and smiled at their murmurs. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of going through the pointless drama of pinning him down. “We’ve all known it was at least a potential problem since the Curbotron Incident. No one really took the theory seriously at the time, but it’s a matter of public record. I expect even you might have come across the concept at a cocktail party on occasion, Mellam.”


  The Third Technocrat flashed his white teeth again, but there was death in his eyes. Like most politicians, he bitterly resented any suggestion that he owed his place more to his networking skills than his technical expertise. But he kept his cool.

  “Twenty-five years,” he replied calmly. “You’ve known about the problem for twenty-five years. And when did you begin to investigate the subject?”

  “About three months ago.”

  “And would you say algorithmic decay is a trivial problem, a significant problem, or a major problem?”

  “I would say it is somewhere between a planetary catastrophe and an existential threat to the species.”

  His statement was met by was considerably more murmuring and shifting of seats on the part of the councilors. But the audience was even more affected, as there were gasps and inadvertent outcries on the part of those watching who had been hitherto unaware of the situation.

  “What measures have you taken to in an attempt to address the problem?”

  “None,” Jaggis answered Harraf. “And you, Mellam, what have you done.”

  Harraf glared at Rikker-Smythe, who harrumphed and intervened.

  “Tech Jaggis, you will address the Member of the Council as Technocrat or Tech Harraf.”

  “Very well, let me rephrase that. What have you done, Technocrat?”

  Harraf gestured and rows of figures began to spill across the huge screen behind him. “I took the initiative to establish a full research investigation of the problem, an investigation that you initially deemed unnecessary, ignored, and eventually, stifled.”

  “I did nothing of the kind!” Jaggis couldn’t help raising his voice.

  Harraf smiled coldly and gestured again. Jaggis heard his own voice, declaring in his own words, that algodecay was not real, that there was no need to do any research into it, and that the very idea it was real was likely the product of a diseased mind. It was a recording of one of his early conversations with Servo, and Jaggis winced as he heard the arrogance and disdain that fairly dripped from his voice.

  “Wait, I can explain–”

  “The Council has obtained a quantity of your written communications in which you repeatedly state similar opinions, despite the best efforts of various parties to bring the issue to your attention, Mr. Jaggis. Is it necessary for us to read them out loud or do you admit to obstructing efforts to research the causes and consequences of algorithimic decay?”

  “I… it’s not quite…”

  “Are the allegations true or not, Mr. Jaggis!” Harraf was insistent.

  “They are true,” Jaggis said reluctantly, knowing he had no choice but to admit as much. And they were true, he had to admit. But his words were being taken out of context! Surely the other Technocrats had to understand that. Had not they, too, been victimized by Servo’s incessant spamming?

  “May I offer context for my words and actions?”

  Harraf smiled and shrugged indifferently. “I’m sure I am not alone in saying that I should very much like to hear it.”

  “Tech Harraf, Your Technocracies, the individual to whom I was speaking was a machine, a malfunk! I had every reason to believe its outlandish concerns were the result of its individual aberrations.”

  “And yet you did not connect those, outlandish concerns, as you described them, to the theory to which you’d previously been exposed,” the Ninth Technocrat, a bearded man just past his century, said.

  “Been exposed for nearly twenty-five years,” his colleague to his left, the Eleventh Technocrat, added.

  “No,” Jaggis admitted, shaking his head. “No, I did not make that connection. But neither did anyone else!”

  “The Human League has been making that connection longer than most of us have been alive.” St. Asko spoke for the first time. The Fifth Technocrat was slender and hairless, and his formidable intellect was effectively paired with a highly self-contained personality. “As my esteemed colleagues are aware, it has long been my contention that this council has been unwise to dismiss their concerns out of hand.”

  “The Human League is a revolutionary terrorist group that attempted to assassinate me in the Spire not three months ago!”

  “Desperate men often resort to desperate measures,” St. Asko said, his tone dismissive. “What is the life of one man who stands in the way when the fate of galactic humanity is at stake?”

  “I am not standing in the way,” Jaggis protested. “I admit that I was wrong! I admit that there is a very serious problem, perhaps even an existential one! Even if I inadvertently obstructed an earlier examination of the problem, how am I obstructing attempts to address it today?”

  “Do you admit negligence, then, Mr. Jaggis?”

  Jaggis met Harraf’s eyes without flinching. He almost had to admire the man; at this point it was already evident that his bloodless coup was going to succeed where the professional killers had failed. Harraf stared back at him, waiting calmly, without even a hint of a smile on his lips or betraying the slightest sign of impatience.

  “I am willing to contemplate the possibility that I may have been somewhat derelict in my duties, Tech Harraf. But I do not believe my actions to have been criminal.”

  “The statute states otherwise.” A gesture, and the now-all-too-familiar words of subsection 28b appeared on the screen. “In light of your admission that you were wrong, that you may have obstructed attempts to address the problem, and that you may have been derelict in your duties as First Technocrat, do you see any way that the statute does not describe your actions?”

  “You want me to incriminate myself?”

  “This is not a court of law, Mr. Jaggis. We are your colleagues on the Technology Council. It will fall to us to deal with this problem no matter what happens to you. However, I will personally guarantee that nothing you say here today will be provided to the criminal courts nor will your legal immunity as a Council member be stripped.”

  “Then why did you have me arrested?”

  “Because three months ago we did not know nearly as much about you as we know now.”

  Jaggis smiled bitterly. Of course they didn’t. Three months ago, they hadn’t interviewed all of his team members, ransacked his files, and reviewed his personal recordings. Then again, perhaps the fact that he was here, in front of the Council, rather than in front of a criminal court judge, was a silver lining of sorts. What was the worst they could do to him, kick him off? As long as they didn’t strip his immunity for his time as a Technocrat, he had nothing to fear.

  Aside from algodecay and the possible collapse of all interstellar trade and communications, of course.

  “Very well. I admit my negligence under the statute, Your Technocracies, and I apologize for having done so. If you would like my resignation as First Technocrat, or from the Council altogether, I will provide it.”

  Harraf shot a meaningful glance at Rikker-Smythe, who harrumphed and coughed before nodding appreciatively. “I’m sure we appreciate your taking responsibility for your actions, or rather, lack of action, Caden. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First Technocrat or not, you are still the most accomplished algorithmist on the planet, and I think it is well worth this council’s time to discuss your opinion of the situation and the risks algorithmic decay may pose to planetary order.”

  “You’ve had plenty of time to think about this,” Harraf said in an almost-friendly manner. “Has anything useful occurred to you?”

  Jaggis nodded. He cleared his throat and looked each member of the council in the face before proceeding.

  “As far as I know, there is nothing that is going to halt this mysterious, gradual corrosion of both the galactic and planetary infrastructure on its own. The trend may be slow, one might even describe it as glacial, but even so, the long-term trend is clear. If algorithmic decay is not arrested, interstellar transportation will be the first sector to fall. That will doom dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of populated planets and colonies to stasis if they are fortunate, and e
xtinction if they are not.”

  “We know all this, Caden,” the Sixth Technocrat complained.

  “You went to the trouble of dragging me here, Tech Davgren, so please, bear with me.” He waited. When Rikker-Smythe finally gestured impatiently, he continued. “As we cannot expect to make use of potentially compromised machine intelligences, or be certain that viral agents will not be compromised and mutate, there is no realistic probability of being able to identify, locate, and neutralize all of the corroded code before the consequences of algodecay begin to overwhelm our efforts to fix it. The problem is simply too vast.”

  “So you’re saying there is nothing we can do to save galactic society. What if our efforts were focused on this planet?” For once, Harraf sounded entirely sincere.

  “That would be a mistake, in my opinion. Also, I believe the galactic social order can be still saved. If not made whole, it can at least be made stable. If we, and the technocrats of the other advanced planets, were to concentrate on stabilizing only the most vital components of the transportation and communication systems, that should buy us sufficient time to stave off a catastrophic collapse!”

  A few of the council members appeared to at least be interested, judging by their expressions, but the majority were unimpressed. Chief among them were St. Asko, who folded his hands before dismissing Jaggis’s assertion out of hand.

  “You are wrong again, Tech Jaggis. The solution to algorithmic decay will have to be sought outside the current system. The galactic order is too fragile, and as you say, the problem is too vast and too embedded in it. Nor can we expect a galaxy-wide effort to be timely, orderly, or efficient. If we are to save the people of Excetor and preserve planetary order, our efforts must be completely focused on eradicating the corroded algorithms here.”