by Nas Hedron
“Good. We laid out a lot of hours.”
“I know. If anyone other than TJ was the lead on this one I’m sure they’d be looking for a little R&R, but you know how he is. He lives for this stuff.”
I have a sudden memory of TJ in the stairwell, dead weight on my shoulder, then stow it away.
“Okay Rollie. Thanks for the update.”
“No problem. Go back to saving your ass.”
“I think I’ll run a new scenario. That last one didn’t look like it was going to turn out too well.”
Rollie laughs again and signs off, leaving my small apartment seeming strangely quiet. I get off the sim pad and head for the stereo, choose something light, and put it on. Grammatica, by Sensorio. I can’t get behind the group’s strange theories about music as a means of communication – with animals, with the cosmos, with each other – but their ethereal electronica is just what I need at the moment, like Satie updated by a few centuries.
I look out the window and see the usual crowds on Jung Jing Road – Chinese grandmas carrying thousand-pound bags of vegetables, young Asian hipsters with the latest haircuts and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, gaggles of schoolgirls – but all sound is blocked by the window of my apartment and the images play out in front of me with Sensorio as their soundtrack. The music makes the hustle of the street seem like a dance, giving an almost stately quality to what would otherwise be a frenetic mass of movement. The apartment is cool and the carpet is soft beneath my bare feet.
It’s Sunday, and I should probably be out doing something social. I can feel it pull at me: friends, food, sex. Carmen even offered to set me up with one of her friends this weekend, but I balked. I’ve had to do too much paperwork the last few months, ever since the Max Prince case, spent too much running the business end of things. I feel like I’m losing my edge, so I spent most of yesterday and today in sim, getting sharp again.
My company, Burroughs Oversight, was touted in a recent edition of the L.A. Times as an up-and-comer. We were made to seem plucky, or feisty, or some crap like that – a mid-sized firm looking to make it big in the lucrative world of personal security. The truth is that the Times doesn’t know the half of it. My team is growing into one of the best around, one carefully chosen member at a time. We are a bat out of hell and I intend to make sure we stay that way.
The larger firms are run by an aging gerontocracy of war veterans whose battles were fought so long ago that by now they’re more comfortable in suits than in uniform. And they’re successful. They’ve hit the phase in life where you want to sit back and enjoy the money you’ve made. That’s perfectly okay, and I might do the same myself one day, but right now what it means is that I have an opportunity to sneak up behind them and cut their corporate throats, a chance I don’t intend to miss. Selfish? I don’t care. I’ve died once, and I damned well don’t intend to do it again. The only thing that can keep the reaper at bay is cash, lots and lots of cash, so in the interests of living for the next few hundred years at least, I intend to make as much money as possible.
Two-hundred years ago I didn’t think about things like that. I was a twenty-year-old kid who didn’t understand that he wasn’t immortal. My parents died, and I came close to joining them. We were in a car accident, a common way to die back then. It was obvious that no doctor could save my life, so I was stuck in cryo, as per my parents’ insurance contract, and there I stayed until about a decade ago.
In the meantime wars raged, empires rose and fell, and civilization damned near collapsed. It did collapse in some places, the infamousGreyZones, while it was precariously preserved in the Enclaves, an array of newly formed nations, city-states, and autonomous territories. I knew nothing about any of it, sleeping the dreamless sleep of the dead. Then, with the advent of cheap and effective nanotechnology, a clause in the insurance contract kicked into gear and I was resurrected, along with thousands of others like me. We awoke into a world that was stunningly similar to the one we’d known and terrifyingly changed at the same time. Most of the others were older than me and had trouble adapting. A lot of them ended up in hospitals, if they had the money, or on the street if they didn’t. I had no job skills, no money, and no resume, but I was young. I adapted. I joined the California National Forces and got brought up to speed in a hurry.
The Forces dropped me into a new shell – the vat-grown body that I now occupy – and dumped the imperfect one into which I’d been born. They let you see it afterward, the better to drive home the lesson: that’s who you were, you’re someone else now, a soldier, our soldier. I remember looking down at that face with a mixture of regret and relief. It looked innocent, but stupid too. Pleasant, but weak. That face was something I’d cherished, but now it was the past: fading, dim, forgotten.
The Forces taught me how to kill, how to avoid getting myself killed, how to do covert ops, surveillance, counter-intelligence, and all kinds of other interesting things. I hated it, but it served its purpose. I was promoted, gained rank and insignia tattoos. Still, I got out as soon as my contract was up. I had blood on my hands and a head stuffed with nightmares. The best I could say was that now at least I could earn a living. Los Angeleshas never been a safe place, so there was more than enough work for someone with my training.
I worked for a few years at Edie Lorenz’s agency, but in the end I found her moods too unpredictable, too volatile to put up with. Besides, I had other plans, had saved some money. I emptied my bank account, cashed in my Forces pension, and set up my own shop with the goal of making myself as rich as possible. If you can pay the price, nanotechnology can not only resurrect you from the dead, it can keep you from ever dying. Every time you get old you can just reinstantiate yourself into a new, young shell and start over. I have no desire to die all over again.
The thought of business pulls me back to the present. Moving from the window to the kitchen, I get myself a drink of water to re-hydrate. These sim exercises may not happen in the real world, but they are a hell of a workout nonetheless. I turn and face the sim pad again, think about my goal, my prize, and decide to go back into that other world, run a few more scenarios. To hell with parties, friends, and sex. If everything goes the way I’m planning I’ll have eternity to socialize.
Three: Gun Oil, Sweat, Dust, And Testosterone
I re-enter the sim with a jolt, right in the middle of my six-story fall, TJ still slung across my shoulders. I hold onto him with one arm while the other reaches out automatically, desperately, for the edge of the building I’ve launched myself toward, but I can see that I’m not going to make it and my heart feels like lead in my chest. I miss. The sim’s resolution is so good that I can see the coarse grain of the brick wall that’s now shooting upward past me. The ground is coming up damned fast.
To hell with it. I’ll start the scenario over, try to think of a different strategy. I’m say “home,” but nothing happens. I look down and see that the ground appears dangerously close. Sim is designed to render every detail of experience directly to your brain, as though you were experiencing it for real. I do not want to experience impact. I command again “home, home, home!” but we continue to fall. I see people look up at us, mouths open, just the way they would in real life. I’ve pretty much resolved myself to the crunch when the simulation begins to dissolve. A moment later I find myself standing – disoriented, but at attention – in front of a desk. Behind the desk is a California National Forces officer, a General. He smiles at me with a mixture of smugness and what seems like genuine warmth.
“What the hell?”
It’s an inarticulate thing to say, but I’m a little stunned and it’s all I can think of in the first moments as the room materializes around me. In the old days I would have saluted automatically and shut up, but that was then and this is now. I’m not in the Forces any more. I’m a civilian and within the rather narrow limits ofCalifornialaw I’m entitled to do and say whatever I choose. What I choose is to start asking questions before the officer can begin ta
lking. I’m hoping to take control of the situation. I’m off balance and I want to put him off balance.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask aggressively. “What’s with the hijack?”
I’ve heard of sim-jacking, but only as a vague rumor. Seems it’s true. The officer smiles at me again, indulgently this time, not ruffled at all.
“My name is not important, only my rank, which you can deduce from my insignia.” I look at the four General’s stars tattooed near his shoulder. “The specific rank doesn’t really matter, of course. The real point is that it’s a higher rank than yours. As for the sim-jacking, it was simply the most efficient means, and the most secure, by which I could summon you here to have this conversation.”
The General is a big man, pumped and cut, wearing fatigue pants and a sleeveless khaki shirt. His features are the usual CNF mutt-mix of racial markers: light brown skin, negroid nose, piercing blue eyes with a slightly Asian tilt, and straight dark hair cut short and barely flecked with grey. There is a long line of insignia tattoos running the length of his right arm.
“This is a sim,” I say, “anyone can be a General in sim.”
Being here has a dream-like quality. I was demobbed five years ago and haven’t been to a Forces base since, but I can tell I’m on one now by the smell alone: gun oil, sweat, dust, and testosterone. Diesel exhaust and cheap cooking. The subtle aroma of men stoked on adrenaline, fuel for their aggression and their fear.
The General doesn’t seem at all upset by the fact that I’ve questioned his authority, even his authenticity. He stands, drawing himself up to an impressive height, but his bearing is still friendly, as is his expression. He tilts his head slightly to one side.
“You’re right, anyone can be a General in sim, but only the CNF can sim-jack you the way I just did. If you know a civilian hacker who can do that, I want to meet them. There’s always a job around here for talent.”
He’s right, of course. I have some of the best hackers in the world working for me – I’m thinking of Carmen and Prender – and neither one of them could have pulled this off. I try to get my bearings in the anonymous, unmistakably military office.
The blinds are pulled down, but the windows are open behind their yellowish fabric and they sway slightly in the breeze. From outside I can hear the rapid pop-pop-pop of small-arms fire. Somewhere in the distance a mine goes off and someone screams. Maneuvers. Outside people are practicing, learning to kill other people. Even in practicing some will die, like whoever tripped that mine a moment ago. I’ve put a lot of effort into getting away from this world, into forgetting it entirely, and being pulled back here is making me angry despite the smile on General Friendly’s face.
“I want to go home. Now,” I say, biting down on my rage but letting a little show through. My anger doesn’t faze the General at all.
“I’m afraid I can’t authorize that.”
“Can’t or won’t?” I ask, trying to figure out whether he’s in charge or just a flunky. He shrugs, as if it makes no real difference.
“Can’t, actually. I’m under orders like you are.”
I lean across the desk at him, just to emphasize that I’m not under his command or anyone else’s any more.
“I don’t follow any goddamned orders. I was demobbed years ago. Honorable discharge, lots of commendations and tats, all that crap. I’m a civilian now.”
For once the General seems to be getting tired of me. He sighs slightly and his smile weakens. Maybe he just doesn’t like what he has to say next.
“Gatineau Burroughs, it is my duty to inform you that the California National Forces have invoked clause 242(f) of your Duty Contract, which permits the CNF to recall you to active duty, with or without your consent, for any period of time and for whatever duties your commanding officers deem necessary. Giving you notice of this recall – in writing or verbally, as I’m doing now – is the final step which renders the recall effective.” He gives a smile that seems almost wistful. “Welcome back to the Forces Captain Burroughs.”
I stand in shock for a moment. The odors around me change as my own memories somehow taint the sim: horse dung, burning buildings, rotting meat. Human meat. I look up at the General but the sim seems to have stalled and his sightless gaze follows a trajectory over my shoulder as he stands motionless. The light filtering through the blinds, which had been bright and pleasant, turns dun, then rosy, then a harsh red, as Tijuana burns. I can still hear the pop of small arms fire from the sim, but it’s augmented by an array of other sounds that come from deep inside me rather than from any program: terrified wordless screams, the thud and thump of mines and artillery, chickens squawking in panic, coarse shouts of homicidal joy, the thup-thup-thup of helicopters, a baby crying, dogs barking in the distance, the crackle and crash of buildings burning, the whinnying of horses. Then, as suddenly as they came, the memories are gone and the General snaps back into motion, speaking as though he had never paused.
“I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that refusal to comply with re-enlistment constitutes the offence of desertion. That’s a capital crime under the Penal Code of Military Misconduct, punishable by termination. You will receive your specific orders shortly,” he says casually as I try to clear my nostrils of the smell ofTijuana. “This contact was for the purpose of notifying you of your recall so that you can set your affairs in order. In doing so you should take into account your imminent absence from your civilian occupation and, or course, the possibility that you will not survive your assignment.”
“That’s very considerate of you.”
The General doesn’t respond to my irony at all and a thought that’s been nagging away at the back of my mind suddenly jumps to the forefront: he’s an AI. Any human General would have threatened to bayonet me by now, the way I’ve been goading him, but the AI isn’t emotionally engaged. All the facial expressions and vocal tones have been computer-generated simulations, crafted to simplify the AI-human interface: meat like me gets along better with digital life when it can look wistful or sound apologetic. It doesn’t make him any less a General, though. There’s no rule against AIs holding rank.
“You will be required to report for duty in approximately two weeks. We suggest you take no longer than one week to make any arrangements that might be necessary, just to leave a margin of safety. Incidentally, in light of the experience you’ve accumulated since being demobilized, you’ve been granted a promotion to the rank of major, effective immediately, with the commensurate benefits and pay increase”
I glance at my arm and see my new rank insignia appearing like magic, a reminder that we’re in sim. I know this is just the flip side of the threat implicit in his speech about desertion. Run away and we will find you and kill you. Cooperate and we’ll promote you and, if you’re lucky enough to survive your mission, you’ll have much improved pension rights when it’s over. I look away from the tattoo mirage, back at the General.
“Can you give me any idea how long I’m likely to be ‘absent from my civilian occupation’? Assuming, of course, that I survive my assignment.”
The simulacrum of a General looks thoughtful for a moment.
“It’s difficult to say. The objective of your assignment is straightforward, but there are various means by which you might achieve it so your course is uncertain. It is therefore difficult to make a quantitative estimate as to your absence from civilian life.”
He’s talking more like an AI now, letting me know that he’s aware that I’ve figured out his secret. He lets his mask slip just enough to get his message across, but not so much that he’ll alienate me. Subtle. The CNF has become more refined since I left it.
“So, indefinitely,” I reply.
“Unfortunately, yes. It is also my duty to ask you if there are any particular CNF personnel, whether on current duty or discharged, whom you wish to conscript to assist you in your assignment.”
“That’s kind of hard to say without knowing what my assignment is.”
“True. Nonetheless, waiting until after your briefing to make personnel decisions means that any inactive soldiers will receive very little notice of their recall and will therefore have minimal time in which to set their own affairs in order.”
“Without knowing my assignment I can’t be expected to pick my team,” I insist. “All the same, I do have a question.”
“Yes?”
“Do the personnel parameters allow for the recall of dishonorably discharged soldiers?”
“Usually that is not the case,” the General says, sitting back down. He picks up a pencil and taps the top of his desk with it, then looks up at me from under his brows and points it at me. “With respect to this assignment, however, due to its National Security Rating, the regulations permit you an unusual degree of latitude.”
“In that case, General, my only personnel request at this moment is for Jameison, Jerome, Sergeant. I’m afraid I don’t recall his ID.”
“Four zero zero six zero one,” the General says without hesitation, confirming once and for all that he’s an AI, with instantaneous access to CNF data. “Dishonorably discharged for refusing to follow the direct order of his superior, Burroughs, Gatineau, Captain, ID three eight five zero zero zero.”
He pauses for a moment, as though his neural nets are having a difficult time deciding on the next logical step. Finally he speaks again.
“May I ask why you are requesting the presence of a soldier who refused to obey a direct order – one of your own direct orders – in the past?”
“Sure,” I say. “He was right.”
The Book and the Author