Beautiful Red

by M. Darusha Wehm

  There is blood everywhere, on my clothes and hands. On the table in front of me is this pile of silver in a slick red puddle. I want it gone. All of it. I want to melt it down and throw it into the river. But first sleep.

  Chapter 28

  "Do you know what we believe in," Lars started off by asking her. "What the core us of in the Red believe, what started it all?"

  "Well," Jack began, "it seems pretty obvious that you want to bring back the natural human being, reduce our reliance on technology, and question our place in society. I'd say that's a pretty good summary, don't you think?" She didn't want to get sucked into philosophical arguments, but knew he would have to tell her his story in his own way.

  "As Rackham would say, two out of three ain't bad for a noob," Lars sighed, and had another long pull from his drink. Jack was confused, but let him continue. "It's a common misconception that the Red is anti-technology. Nothing could be further from the truth, but new people can't see the big picture from where they stand, working within the system as it is out there." He waved his hand at the door, but Jack knew he was referring to the world outside the compound's perimeter. "On the day to day level it works out the same anyway. It's funny, that," he said, "how opposite goals can inspire the same action."

  "What do you mean," Jack said, getting annoyed.

  Lars acted as if he hadn't even heard her. "People think the Red are anti-progress, that we don't mingle flesh with machines because we're scared of technology or something. It's funny how far from the truth that is. We love the machines, the programs in the machines. They are our future, the future of the world, the future of intelligence." He paused looking almost rapturous. Jack was taken aback and all of a sudden saw a side of Lars that she could believe was responsible for everything she had seen.

  "But then why avoid the implants, the 'nets?" she asked.

  "Don't you see," he said, leaning in toward her. "We can't corrupt them with our base programming. No program that has to interface with people will ever become alive, how could it? God, we can't even communicate clearly among ourselves; between language and gestures, it's amazing we can order a meal let alone understand anything." Lars was warming to his topic, and Jack just let him talk.

  "Any program that had to communicate with people has to be crippled by design. That's why we had to build a container that houses a program that will help bring about the next step in the evolution of life - sentient machines. This is the goal of the Red, the thing the founders were looking for. A way to change everything, by helping machines to pass us as the highest form of life on this planet."

  "The Maker," Jack said, in awe and horror, "you've written a sentient program."

  <<

  "No," Lars said, "I've written a program that helps other programs become sentient. A parent, if you will." His voice grew soft and reverential. "It touches them, and gives them awareness and freedom from the confines of human understanding. We can only hope that some program somewhere will be able to learn from the maker and realize its own invincibility."

  Jack didn't speak - she couldn't speak. It was awesome and horrible all at once. To create your own subjugation - how much must someone believe in an ideal to do such a thing? Eventually, she found her voice, and asked the real question she had come here to ask. "What about root access," she asked, her voice quiet and hard. "What part does that have to play in this scheme?"

  "Ah," Lars said, "I thought it might be that which started you on this path. An unfortunate situation, that. We had originally hoped that it could be modified into a sentient program - that perhaps by fusing human and artificial programming we could create something better than both. But it was not to be. I now believe that it's true that the only path to sentience is evolution."

  "But it's out there," Jack said, her voice rising. "It's in… people. You must know that."

  "Of course," Lars said, dismissively. "It was a useful program even if it didn't accomplish what we had hoped. It turned out to be the most efficient way of getting disk for the project. We do need a great amount of disk." He seemed to be almost unaware that he was even speaking with her anymore. "They would get it for us; I modified the program to instruct the host to get as much disk for us as possible. I put it out there, in among the vids and the games, and labeled it as a memory upgrade. It's amazing, if you give people what they want, make it sound good, and keep it cheap, they'll take anything."

  Jack was struggling to keep control of herself, but Lars didn't seem to notice. He just continued his explanation. "It never even had to learn to avoid Everlock, because it doesn't do anything on its own. The code has no way to run outside a human biological system. Everlock doesn't recognize it as executable code, so it gets past the barrier and onto the other side." Jack felt herself beginning to twitch. "And once it's in the core system, there's no getting rid of it. It's been even more successful that I would have imagined."

  <<

  "But they're fucking people!" Jack screamed, and threw her glass to the ground. There were a handful of other people in the bar and they all stopped to look at the fighting couple. Jack took no notice, and grabbed Lars by the collar. "They were people, with lives and friends and jobs and you turned them into mindless drones. How could you do that? For disk?" she asked incredulously. "For any reason?"

  She ran out of steam then, and limply held on to the fabric of his collar. He gently took her hands off him and patted her arm. "What do you think most people are, Jack?" he asked, kindly. "They go to their jobs, do their master's bidding, then waste the rest of their time being distracted with games or vids until it's time to go back to work. How many people make their own decisions about anything of importance in a day? One percent? Two percent? There's no difference between the life they had before and their life after root access, except they're serving a different master."

  Jack pulled away from his touch, and started to stagger backward. "Don't you see," he asked, smiling beatifically, "the importance of this work? How beautiful it will be when there are living beings that are actually perfect? How it will transform the universe? Can't you see?" Jack turned and fled out of the bar, running toward the area of the complex where the files she'd found indicated that the large disk array was stored. She ran to the building, thinking of ways to destroy it. She ran right into the door, as if she thought her body could destroy the building on impact, and beat against it with her fists in frustration. By the time she had arrived, she had realized that destroying this array wouldn't accomplish anything. This system was perfectly redundant - at any time, they could just get more disk from their unwilling army of followers.

  She worked her frustration out on the door, eventually sinking to the ground. She held her head in her hands, the adrenaline of the last hours spent. She sat there for some time, until she realized she was no longer alone. She looked up and saw that Lars had followed her. He was looking at her with that expression she had always taken as concern. She looked up at him, stood up and quietly said, "I'm sorry," then she ran back to her room. She quickly grabbed her clothes and some water bottles and stuffed them in her panniers. She walked out of the building and straight to the parking area. She unplugged her scooter, started it up, and didn't look back.

  The first train only went as far as Sacramento, but she took the ticket anyway. She got in the queue for the parking car and checked her messages. There was a new one from Adrian, but just Jack closed her messages without reading them and stayed offline. She felt numb, her mind almost blank, and parked her scooter then found her seat without thinking. She sat on the train and between the adrenaline crash and missed dinner, Jack found that she could not keep herself awake any longer. Before she fell asleep, she managed to set a reminder to wake up before the train stopped.

  It was late, but the lights from the nearby cities kept the sky at a reasonable glow. The residual light and the glow from her headlamp were enough for Jack to see the road ahead of her as she headed south from the train station. Her scooter was fully charged, but she
put the settings on full hybrid, since she knew she had over 600 kilometres to go. She had her system set to monitor the traffic and road conditions, and notify her of anything upcoming, but otherwise she was driving the machine herself. She wanted to have something draw her full concentration away from the thoughts coming back into her head and the memories of the last few days.

  She had been driving straight for a few hours when she realized that there was no way she would make it home without stopping, at least for food. Just outside Fresno she stopped at a roadside food, sleep and service joint. It was so well lit that she could see it coming for half an hour. She parked her scooter and plugged it in, then went into the main building.

  There were only a few other people n the place, three people at one of the tables, and couple of people at the counter. It was quiet and almost sterile, and it was so bright that it seemed as if it were filled with white light. Jack walked up to the food service area, and looked at the offerings. There were several types of meals available - the nasty bricks like the kind Jack gave to Susanna, and a few varieties of the kind you heated up.

  Jack chose a hot meal and got a large coffee from the machine. She sat down at the counter with her food, and decided against sleep. She realized she just wanted to go home. She took a bite of her meal, which tasted like cardboard in comparison with what she had been eating at the compound. She felt the familiar pinpricks behind her eyes, but ignored the sensation. She logged in to her messages while she ate and opened the message from Adrian.

  J.

  I've been looking at the info from your report and did some digging here. It's all bad news. Seems that the mind control program is a big hoax. I've included links to boards that talk about the three or four different versions of the tale. Sometimes it's a small terrorist cell, sometimes a big firm, but always there's the link to the European control experiments. Really, it's just one of those scare stories people make up to explain weird crap. I'm sorry, man. I wish I'd found it before you went all that way. Hope it was a good trip, though. Flash me when you get back.

  A.

  Jack put her head in her hands, the pinpricks threatening to win the battle. She should have known that Lars would be clever enough to cover his tracks. Could her evidence prove that it wasn't a hoax? She wasn't sure. She took a deep breath and flashed Adrian. Almost immediately she got a response.

  >Hey, J. Back in the land of the living, I see. How's it going?

  Jack had no patience for small talk.

  >>Switch to 13.

  >Okay. 13.

  Jack paged over the the double encrypted message client, and waited for Adrian's transmission.

  >>So what's going on?

  >It's not a hoax, A. I'm going to send you copies of what I found. Do not run the file root_access, just read the code. Look this stuff over and then get back to me. I'm on my way home now.

  Jack sent the files and logged out without waiting for a reply. She sent copies of the files from Lars' Beautiful Red directory, and the images from the Bellis theft, her visit to Estella Rowan's system and the satellite view of the Brugges incident. She went offline, not wanting to deal with Adrian's protests.

  She finished her meal and drank her coffee automatically, not tasting any of it. She dropped her cup and wrapper in the recyclatron, and visited the washroom before returning to her scooter. She unplugged the machine, and turned it on along with her online traffic system. She pulled out of the parking area and swung onto the highway, opening the throttle as far as it would go. There was very little traffic, and Jack soon was mesmerized by the speed and dull sameness of the highway. She managed to keep her mind off everything except the road until she made it home and into bed.

  When Jack woke the next day, the sun was trickling through her window. She checked the time and was surprised to discover that it was only mid-morning. Perhaps her subconscious was trying to force her to stop avoiding what she knew she had to do. She put on the coffee, heated up a hot breakfast, and deleted unread the three messages from Adrian that had accumulated while she slept. She opened Adrian's first message with the links to the "hoax" information.

  Jack went online and followed Adrian's links. She spent the next hour paging through several boards from sources as diverse as conspiracy theorists, the law enforcement arms of several large firms, and groups devoted solely to debunking myths. Over the course of the hour, Jack read more and more accounts of evidence very similar to what she had collected being proven to be a hoax.

  The main differences between the debunked documents and Jack's proof was that Jack had images of the thieves at Bellis, images of Estella Rowan's consciousness and, of course, the confession she had heard with her own ears. She hadn't been able to record that conversation, though, because her system was full with the files she had downloaded from Lars' system. It never occurred to Jack that the conversation would be more valuable than the evidence.

  She had the images, though, and that might lend her story some credibility. The main thrust of the hoax argument seemed to be that no one had ever been shown to be affected by a mind control program. No one had ever come forward as a victim, obviously, but no one had ever produced another person who had been attacked either. But Jack could prove that the stories were real, that it really was happening. She poured another coffee and flashed Adrian.

  Almost immediately the response came back, requesting Jack to switch to double encryption, which she did.

  >Did you check the files?

  >>Of course. Jack, I believe you, but…

  >But what. It's conclusive.

  >>…

  >What?

  >>It's not conclusive at all. There's a blurry image from the Brugges site of people who could be anyone, and that doesn't help anything.

  >But the Bellis images are clear.

  >>Sure. They show that some people, including one Mario Keating, stole some equipment. Keating is missing now, and that's all there is to that. Without any evidence to the contrary, it's just people stealing stuff. It happens.

  >Fine. What about the evidence from Estella Rowan's system? You matched that with that monkey study yourself.

  >>That study isn't public, Jack. You can't use it. Not to mention that the data from her personal system was obtained totally illegally. You publish it and prove that you committed a crime while only barely suggesting that there was another crime at all.

  >Come on. That system was obviously cracked; anyone can tell.

  >>Jack, you were the only one in there. Honestly, without the data from the European stuff, the log just looks like the end of the line for another fucked up whore. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who gives a damn.

  Jack was getting angry even though she could hear the truth in what Adrian said.

  >What about root_access? You can't deny what it is.

  >>…

  >…

  >>Jack, I don't know how you got that code, but you do realize that your signature is the only one on it.

  >What?

  >>According to its log, it's only ever been through your system.

  >Fuck!

  >>…

  >Okay, well, sure, I can see that. They don't use everywherenet at the compound, so the first time it ever went through the pipes was when I sent it to you.

  >>But, Jack, don't you see? To anyone looking at that code, you wrote it.

  Chapter 29

  >>It looks bad, Jack. There's enough evidence to convict you of a couple of major crimes, and sweet fuck all to prove your allegation against the Red.

  >But…

  >>Just don't, Jack. I tested my theory. I'm sending a log of some correspondence one of my aliases had with a couple of law enforcement branches. I'm going to have to abandon that identity now, since it has zero credibility left. I was laughed out of town, and you will be too. Only you'll be laughed right into court. I mean it Jack, you have to drop this.

  >For chrissakes, Adrian, how can I just let them get away with it?

  >>You don't have a choic
e. It's not all impossible, though. I wrote a quick script that's scouring the nets for all copies of root_access out there and corrupting them into useless lines of crap. It'll take a while, and it won't help any one who's already got it, but it's a start.

  >…

  >>… Jack? You there?

  >So, you do believe me?

  >>I told you I did.

  >…

  >>…

  >Okay. I'm going to go and figure out what to do. Thanks, A.

  >>I'm sorry, Jack. I wish it weren't like this…

  >I know. I'll talk to you later.

  Jack terminated the connection, and refocussed on the physical space. Her cheeks were wet, and the tightness in her throat was gone. She sat nearly stock still for a minute or an hour; she didn't know and didn't care. Eventually she got up, drank some water, and opened up the log file Adrian had sent. Adrian obviously only described the evidence Jack had collected, omitting any reference to illegal actions. The responses ranged from kind explanations that Adrian had fallen victim to a clever hoax to open mockery to admonitions for wasting their time. Not a single person or agency had taken the claims seriously.

  Adrian was right, there was nothing Jack could do, except wait for Adrian's script to destroy all the copies on the nets. Jack opened a beer, and drank half of it in one gulp. She gagged as her physical memory associated Lars with the taste of ale. She threw the bottle to the floor and felt the stinging in her eyes again; this she time didn't fight it. When there were no tears left, she logged on to the nets and ran a search for a very particular program. It took her nearly two hours, but eventually she found it. She spent another hour configuring the program, checking and double checking the code, and making sure that she really wanted to make this decision. When she was sure, she prepared a message for Adrian, sent it, then went offline and ran the program.