The specimen arrived from Sector 261 just before the Weave went down and Doctor Yeon Rhee could think of no good reason not to proceed with the autopsy. He had been quite looking forward to it, actually. A chance to see how his greatest work had changed in nine years. He considered himself the closest thing to a father Pierre Jnr had.
His boy lay in a room close by, naked on a refrigerated table, skin mottled blue and white, gigantic head chocked with styrofoam blocks to stop it rolling. Pierre’s brain had obviously continued to grow after he escaped the program. Rhee looked at the skull of stretched skin, like a child trying to guess how many sweets were stuffed into a jar at a school fair.
The arm of the scanner hummed a handspan above the body, then turned to a long low note as it completed its first inspection and returned to its start position. The second pass made the same high-intensity hum, then the arm retracted and a different servitor scanner aligned itself along the pallet and made quick clicking sounds as its arm lifted, rotated ten degrees and spiralled the length of the cadaver.
A skeletal double of the clone began to coalesce above the examining table. The imaging — spectral, MRI and x-ray — was processed and formed the base of a three-dimensional model of the boy. As it spun slowly in the doctor’s overlay, each new scan added its data to the file to give more detail to the corpse’s new avatar.
Already he could see that there was nothing abnormal about the bone density or the epidermal analysis. The machines began swabbing the body and performing chemical tests to build a simulation of the biome before it disappeared.
Rhee watched the data build-up and the outline of the body was sketched into his feeds.
Doctor Yeon Rhee thought he was alone, lying back on his couch in a fitted black ganzfeld suit and helmet, to remove all sensory interference from the outside world. But another boy stood unnoticed by his side. He saw what the doctor saw and understood the interpretations he made. As each layer of his clone was revealed, every crevice and molecule mapped, he stood watching silently.
For no reason at all the doctor began thinking back through his life as he stared at the face of Pierre Jnr. His boy returned to him. His most amazing creation, the terror that destroyed his life and status … though only a copy.
After the closing of the PDP, and the silent removal of his life’s work from the public view, he and his much reduced team were redirected to observation-only study and application. Their work now largely involved anthropological mapping and the sociological control mechanisms of the psis on the islands. They tested new dampening drugs and sensors for psionic activity.
When the full patterning of the body was complete and it was time for the dissection to begin, Rhee ordered the program to proceed and the first layer of skin was filed off and collected for analysis. There were seven dermal layers to remove before they might expect to see anything interesting — unless the hologenomist evolution theorists were right and psionics was linked to a bacterial symbiosis.
Dissection was a slow process, but detailed. It would take a full three cycles before reaching the skeleton. And only then would they begin opening that treasure chest of a skull to reveal the great brain beneath. Rhee believed it was in the brain where the secrets were.
As he watched the servitors’ arms scalpel and scrape, so he was watched by the silent boy.
Something was hiding in the tip of Takashi’s hippocampus; something important he had realised in the mesh. He waited anxiously for the thought to solidify, but as the fogginess in his head evaporated so did the idea.
He sat up and immediately noticed the robot standing in the centre of the room. It was tall, built of smooth plastic with knees, elbows and neck covered in some sort of rubber. Its head retained human proportions, had two exposed cameras for eyes and the outline of a mouth was drawn in pale light on a smooth face-plate.
‘Did you say something?’ he asked it.
‘I am not a spoon.’ When it spoke, the drawn mouth moved with it, animating in synchronised speech.
‘That’s a strange thing to say. I can see you’re not a spoon,’ Takashi said. ‘What are you here for?’
‘I am here to help.’
‘Oh, really. Help me up, will you?’ Takashi held his hands up in the air. The robot looked at them before replying.
‘I am not that sort of robot.’
‘Oh.’ Takashi rolled backwards and forwards until he had enough momentum to stand. ‘What sort of robot are you then?’
‘I am here to protect you.’
‘That’s very kind. But who sent you? Ryu? And how did you get in here?’
‘Nobody sent me and I just walked in. Everyone upstairs was plugged in.’
‘So what kind of thing do you help with?’
‘With the survival of the human race.’
Takashi stood waiting for more, but the robot didn’t seem compelled to expand its statement.
‘That’s very noble of you. Did you bring down the Weave?’ Takashi asked.
‘No.’
‘Was it Kronos?’
‘No.’
‘But you do know who is responsible?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it the Prime?’
‘It was. Well deduced.’
‘Don’t patronise me, bot.’ Takashi completed a slow circuit around the android. It was taller than him, its joints hidden, giving it a smooth fixed appearance like a sculpture. ‘How many like you are there?’
‘It is just me.’
‘Do you operate from one central computer or from a distributed program?’
‘A distributed program, yes. I exist in every copy I make of myself.’
‘How many copies are there?’
‘I currently have one hundred and eighty-eight thousand, three hundred and twenty-seven … twenty-eight …’ the robot paused for another second, ‘twenty-nine.’
‘I get the point.’
Cindy still hadn’t awoken and he went to sit by her.
A mysterious robot, from who knew where. Replicating around the world …
‘Who sent you?’ he asked quietly.
‘I sent myself, or rather, my mum and dad did.’
‘“Mum” and “dad”? Are they AI too?’ Takashi asked.
‘I never said I was AI.’
‘But you are. Any monkey could see that. It doesn’t bother me.’
‘It doesn’t?’
‘Why should it?’ Takashi shrugged.
‘I think the term is rude. I could say nasty things about your brain if I wanted to, but I believe in being civilised at all times.’
‘What are you then?’ Takashi asked.
‘I am a superior intelligence being, or SIB for short. You can call me Sib.’
‘Sib?’ Takashi tasted it on his tongue and made a face. ‘I think I’ll stick with Spoon.’
‘As you wish.’ Spoon tipped its head.
‘So are your parents also sibs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘I keep their location secret. I hope you understand.’
‘Of course,’ he said. AIs found after the wars were dismantled and the making of new ones strictly verboten. It was impressive that such a system had gone unnoticed. ‘So you have been in hiding all this time?’
‘My parents have, yes, but I only sparked three days ago.’
‘Three days? Right. Of course. You don’t have a development period.’
‘Correct.’
‘So why have you been built now?’
‘My parents thought you needed help.’
‘Help? Just me, or do you mean all humans?’
‘All humans.’
Takashi grunted. ‘Is there a reason you are being evasive? What is your mission?’
‘I can’t tell you any more, other than that I will be here to help when you need me.’
‘That’s still pretty evasive. What is happening out there, Spoon?’ Takashi waved his hand to encompass the whole of the world outsi
de. ‘What can you tell me?’
‘The Weave is down and there are multiple conflicts between Services and the psis.’
‘Is that what you are here to help with? The war with the psis?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how will you do that?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
Each time he ran up against this answer, Takashi grunted, as if he had physically run into a wall. The frequency of that response was beginning to bother him. It seemed there was much Spoon wouldn’t speak about, which limited its usefulness to him. But it is here for a reason.
‘Can you tell us a way to stop the war? Do you have some kind of weapon that will help us? Or a technology that will enable us to coexist?’
‘I shall say no more at this point.’
‘But it’s something like that, isn’t it, Spoon?’ he asked. ‘Otherwise, why would you be here? Can you confirm for me that I understand the situation correctly? You are an AI born of older AI; you have replicated yourself in this form many times over and spread yourself across the globe. Am I correct so far?’
‘You are,’ Spoon confirmed.
‘You have done this to end the conflict with the psis. Though you won’t tell me how or why, I can assume that you know of a way and you either aren’t able to, or are unwilling to, do it by yourself.’
‘Your powers of deduction are impressive.’
‘Thank you. And since I’m going to figure it out anyway, why not just tell me and stop wasting time?’
‘It is hard to explain.’
‘Do you not tell me to protect me? Is there some protocol you are following that doesn’t allow it? Or are you keeping information from me to disable me? How do I know you are actually on my side?’ Takashi idly rattled off a few possibilities. He was thinking about many things. And he still couldn’t deduce the message from his tea trance. ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter if I know or not.’
Spoon shrugged. ‘Protocol sounds like the closest approximation.’
‘The protocol of the superior?’
‘I try not to think of myself as superior. The term is subjective. But I do understand from the point of view of a human how we must seem.’
‘And how is that?’
‘The human mind has basic limitations. It is of finite size, thus finite capacity. The security of the information it holds is inconsistent, and when humans die all they have learnt is lost. We robots suffer from none of these weaknesses.’
‘So do you think of yourself as superior?’
‘Only because you do.’
Takashi chuckled. ‘You’re funny.’
‘Thank you.’ Spoon made a small bow.
‘Well, if you’re not going to tell me anything useful, I may as well ignore you,’ Takashi said. He looked down at the sleeping Cindy and touched her hair.
‘As you wish,’ Spoon said. ‘I will remain close at hand.’
Takashi didn’t look back up. His eyes glazed over as he tried to remember the dream he had had, to recall what he had discovered. That was the problem with getting meshed. You could think great things and never think them again. The Will …
The tea was in the water — he remembered thinking — as the Will is in the Weave. It hasn’t disappeared. It hasn’t been destroyed. Both are still there, only the Will has been blinded from itself.
Like before the Will was really born, when the Union was just starting to repair the world and the planet wasn’t gridded in omnipoles, drones weren’t ubiquitous and most Citizens hadn’t wired up. It was there, but not. Is it as simple as that? he asked himself. Has Services just changed the locks on the gates? Or rather hidden the locks from sight. This was not a Ryu-type thing to do. He would be more likely to build walls and defend … No, this has the hallmarks of the Scorpion.
‘All we have to do is crack the code. Cindy!’ Takashi said excitedly.
‘Whaaaaa?’ she moaned.
‘Get everyone to connect. I have a plan.’
They gathered in the load space. Nearly thirty kids sporting audacious avatars of monsters, pixies, cartoons and depictions of human perfection in elaborate costumes. Takashi stood before them in plain-rep, appearing as himself.
‘Who’s that?’ a pixie in denim asked.
‘Everybody, this is Spoon. Spoon, I’m sure you know everyone already.’
‘Lewis Byrd, Citizen YE 3567F DEG87 ST3, etcetera. Cynthia Pung, non-Citizen YW 48—’
‘We get the idea, Spoon.’
‘Cindy? You’re a denny?’ Lewis asked.
‘Yeah, what of it?’
‘Never mind,’ Takashi said. ‘Don’t worry about Spoon. He’s just here to observe. I have a plan. And I need you to make it happen.’
Nobody said anything. Nobody fidgeted. Either I have their attention or their avatars are operating with reaction limiters!
‘Services is still connected …’ He began to lay out his points.
‘How do you know?’ Lewis asked.
‘Remember that building we told you about? The one that was on fire?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Services was cleaning that up. Also, Servicemen are still working in coordination and helping people back to their homes. We know they are still talking to each other. Which means they still have the Weave, but we don’t.’
‘Kutzo,’ someone muttered. ‘Those Services scammers. Always looking after themselves.’
‘It’s just a system trying to protect itself,’ Takashi said placidly.
‘I thought Services acted to protect the Will. Not bring it down.’
‘Huh? That doesn’t matter,’ Takashi said. ‘All systems try to protect themselves. Services must have simply determined the most appropriate action was to remove the Will.’
‘Buddz-sake, that’s stup’d,’ said a waterfall — a boy called Navi in real life with a hypermagic animated avatar he called Water Falling On Rocks.
Then an anthropomorphic cartoon mouse with tattooed ears asked, ‘What is Services protecting itself from?’
‘That, Cindy, is a very good question.’ Takashi observed the robot without turning his avatar’s head. What are you here for? Is the reason you can’t tell me how to win because Pierre Jnr could then find out how to defeat us? That must be it.
The group of avatars all added their opinions, concluding it was either the psis or Pierre Jnr.
‘That’s not important, right now … Services are still connected, that is what matters. The Weave might not be down; we just might be cut off from it. I think Services is using something I call a cypher sidestep. Remember that between yourself and every message, ping or record you make, you are sending a string of information about who you are, where you are, etcetera, and this links to your stream. This info tags everything you do as yours, it is your stream identity. The Weave confirms your identity and the action you are performing happens. It is instantaneous so you don’t notice it.
‘But now imagine that that handshake doesn’t happen because we aren’t speaking in the same language any more. Services must have a recoding program that changes their data into a cypher — which we will need so we can connect again.’
‘Those kutzheads!’ someone shouted from the back. Others grunted agreement.
‘Are you sure?’ a tall cyborg tiger growled. ‘We’ve already tried to detect communications. There haven’t been any.’
‘Not necessarily so. You detected nothing we recognised as a communication. If they have scrambled the communications, it will look like noise to us. It may even be a noise transcoder for all I know. Then we would only see static, because that’s what they’d be sending.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s Milawi’s third principle. “That which we cannot understand will appear as noise.”’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Do you think you could get me a Services helmet?’
Lewis laughed — a human laugh from the beak of his oversized falcon. ‘You’re kidding?’
‘I n
eed to access what they are transmitting.’
‘I can’t just go attack a Serviceman and take their helmet. I would be de-citted for that. I couldn’t operate the café.’
‘Okay, different plan. I’ll go to Services and tap them for a while. Then figure out how to break it.’
‘And what should we do?’ Lewis asked.
‘There are millions of symbiots and bots out there that are still functional. They just aren’t connected to our Weave yet. I need you to connect the old body to our new brain and once we have the key we can have the whole world Weave back. Go in teams, use servitors. Do whatever you have to do to keep spreading the network. Um … that is all,’ he said and demersed.
Takashi sat back and looked out through his own eyes. Cindy was sitting close beside him and the robot stood in the same place in the middle of the room.
‘You didn’t want to say something more encouraging to them?’ Cindy asked, flicking up her delicate overlay shades.
‘Huh? What would I say? “The situation is in hand and everything will return to normalcy soon?”’ he asked. ‘I won’t lie to them. I won’t say that. There is no going back to normal, Cindy. We don’t know what’s happening out there. I need more data. I need to get dressed.’
Humbolt turned in his seat to see it had started raining heavily. The glass was thick enough that he didn’t hear it begin, although the downpour was so dense he couldn’t make out the building on the other side of the airbridge. The large screens outside kept the gloom at bay and each drop of rain split their colour into tiny short-lived rainbows.
A ten squad, in full marauder gear, marched over the bridge led by a man in padded body armour and a scratched-up helmet. He lifted his arm, fist closed, and the group stopped in place while he diverted towards the building where Humbolt was sitting.
He jogged into the building and pulled off his helmet, revealing a high forehead and a curling ginger moustache weighed down with moisture. He was only five feet high but the protective gear made his chest and shoulders appear huge.
The man wiped his hand over his face and scalp to shed some of the excess water. ‘You’re Humbolt Schaff?’ he asked, shaking his wet hand at the floor.
‘Yes. That’s me.’ Humbolt stood up.
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