“I’ve seen the VR fragment,” Ben replied absently, examining the wraparound VR shades with particular interest. An e2v2—electrode-ensemble virtuality visor. This VR interaction glassmask was fancier than he had thought. Not just electrode-linked, but fully electrode-connectable, with dermal-pin interfaces. Total ’trodeshades.
Staring at the mask, he thought of how Reyna used to tease him about his intense dislike of any and all technologies that got under the skin. More than just a strong aversion to needles, it went back to when he’d had his wisdom teeth removed, during college. While rooming with Jaron, actually; they both had their late molars taken out that same semester. Maybe they’d have gotten along better and been less cross with each other if they’d had their wisdom teeth taken out earlier, instead of trying to tough out the pain.
“Any impressions concerning that broadcast, Doctor?” Wong asked warily.
“Crazy stuff. Then again, it takes a certain type of personality to be a DIVEr.”
“True enough,” Wong said, staring levelly at him. “We have been trying to determine whether the virtual-reality fragment is somehow a product of Jaron Kwok’s own subconscious mind, or of the computational system with which he was interfaced at the time. Or perhaps some synergy of the two. Any suggestions?”
Ben continued examining the shades, trying not to appear surprised. The reflections in the shades weren’t the only mirror images around here. He was more than a little taken aback that the NSA’s opposite numbers here in China were following up the exact same speculations as his employers in Crypto City.
The phrase “looking-glass war” rose unbidden into his mind.
“There did seem something associational and unconscious about that scenario, now that you mention it,” Ben said at last, trying to sound casual. “That would tend to support your first theory. Certainly this is intimate hardware. Too intimate for me. But I know of no physical hardware that taps directly into the human unconscious.”
Wong nodded.
“Can you explain the areas that scenario drew from, then? Why genetic research? Why the search for extraterrestrial intelligence? Streaming media? 3-D rendering?”
“Those are all important applications for internet-scale operating systems,” Ben said, returning the ’trodeshades to their place on the man-shadow and picking up the laptop. “Grid computing. The very type of worldwide computer-sharing Kwok was involved in at the time of his demise. Perhaps it wasn’t coincidental.”
“That would tend to support the second hypothesis,” Beckwith put in—more to reinsert himself into the conversation than out of any other motive, Ben thought. “That it was somehow a product of the computational system with which he was interfacing. But how could this gear produce something as complex as that VR fragment?”
“It didn’t. Not by itself, anyway. This laptop probably contains only a microkernel.”
“A what?” Adjoumani asked, her brow furrowing.
“A computer operating system that provides only core functions,” he replied, carefully examining the laptop. “Like resource allocation. Scheduling. Basics for distributing and executing application programs. The real computational power comes from communicating via the net with a super-node, a coordinating server complex of networked supercomputers and, through that, with a myriad of other ‘host’ computers—like this laptop. A host of hosts. Potentially tens or hundreds of millions of machines like this one, shifting resources among themselves.”
“I’ve heard of that sort of thing,” Beckwith said, nodding. “You think this shared computing power might have been able to generate the VR holomovie we’re talking about?”
“Easily. That is, if Kwok had enough money or barter in the coordinator’s accounts to allow his system to exploit the entire constellation of hosts that way. Or if he scammed the worldwide computershare into believing he was some kind of superuser—zombied it into providing him with enough info-crunching power for grid-based tele-immersion, at little or no cost.”
Wong seemed impatient to bring their conversation back to the question, if not to the body, at hand.
“But do you know of any way in which such a system might have backfired, so as to reduce Jaron Kwok to ashes?”
Ben Cho bent down and took up some of the gray-pink stuff. If it was ash, it wasn’t like Reyna’s ashes. More like fuzzy grit, like a cross between sand and staticky lint….
Realization blossomed in his jet-lagged brain like petals of lightning. Lint. ELINT. Not so much ELectronic INTelligence as electronic lint.
“To ashes?” Cho replied at last. “No, I don’t see how his gear could have burned him to ashes.”
Wong and Beckwith nodded, both looking deflated. Ben felt sorry for them. Even if he hadn’t lied outright, then he’d spoken a half-truth at best. Staring at the fuzzy, gritty “ash,” he wondered if it might contain coherent data.
“Probably be best to keep some samples of these ashes for examination, and ship the rest home to the relatives,” Ben said as casually as he could. “Mighty considerate of Jaron, to provide for his own cremation. I’ll take samples now, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes,” Wong said. “That should be permissible. Detective Lu and the coroner’s man already took some.”
Adjoumani handed Ben several small plastic bags and an implement like a tiny trowel. Using the familiar yet unfamiliar tool, he scooped samples from different regions of the shadow body into the bags, made note of where each had come from, then handed off each in turn to Adjoumani.
“I’d like to talk with your Detective Lu before I leave Hong Kong,” Cho said, straightening up. “Right now, though, I’m very tired from my flight. I’ll be happy to contribute further to your investigation as soon as I can, but I really must get some sleep.”
Beckwith and Wong allowed him to beg off, both assuring him they’d be in touch with him soon. The steady presence of DeSondra Adjoumani moved him out of the room past the guards, down the hall, and back toward the elevator that had disgorged them earlier.
“Sorry you’re stuck babysitting me, DeSondra,” he said as they walked to the elevator.
“No apologies necessary,” the agent said with a smile. “Legats, legal attachés, normally only work leads, not cases. You’ve given me a chance to work a real case. Even got a gun permit, and I like that. I much prefer criminal investigation to international intrigue.”
Ben agreed wholeheartedly. He, too, was here to investigate, not to spy. Riding down the elevator, to his own room, conveniently booked in the same hotel, Ben was sorry to think that he had lied again, however. Yes, he was jet-lagged, but he wasn’t about to sleep. Tired yet wired, he was glad to have avoided the binotech question, at least for now.
Other questions, more pressing and strange and immediate, would not go away—no matter what lies he told.
PROJECTIVE RETROSPECTION
CRASH VILLAGE
As usual, Don Sturm had to hack his way to the Crash site. On other days he had enjoyed puzzling through the arboreal algorithms and epiphytic encryption-protection that made up the virtuality’s rain-forest flora. Today it was annoying mental drudgery, tedious as swinging a dull machete through the low brush, tree limbs, and hanging lianas of an actual jungle.
Coming to a clearing near the middle of Medea πrate’s lush paradise island, he found the crashed jumbo jet, vine-draped and overgrown. The backdrop to Crash Village, it was home to a shifting crowd of intelligent agentware, metaphoric and metamorphic knowbots, flexible complexes of algorithms e-bodied as feral children. Nearly all of them wore headdresses of feathers and foliage, with body paint of rust-colored ocher here and there, as well as necklaces of abalone shell, airframe fragments, and flower garlands. Otherwise they were naked.
Moving in the midst of the virtuality, Don focused himself so he wouldn’t get too caught up in the seductive imagery. Shifting the scale of his interaction down toward machine-language level, he watched the graphics dissolve and resolve into equations and algorithms.
Too much. Maybe Karuna had been right when she said Medea’s virtualities processed information through a sort of “tantric mathematics”: working from the zero/one of data and sexual difference—the Pythagoreans’ female (even) and male (odd) numbers—up to the divine undifferentiated unity.
However it was doing it, every detail of Crash Village’s imagery was working on some aspect of a great problem. What that great problem might ultimately be, though, Don doubted even Medea could say.
Returning to the level of visible graphics, Don approached the crashed jet, watching wary urchins and waifs scamper before him, up bamboo ladders, toward the jagged remains of the jumbo’s second-floor lounge. As he came in sight of the lounge platform, Don found more such childware, toiling away at hand-driven winches, bringing something up from the well of what was once presumably the “downed” jetliner’s helical staircase.
Still other postapocalyptic putti sounded trumpets. Before his eyes Medea, on a throne of glittering flotsam and jetsam, rose with her entourage from the bowels of the jet. Dressed in the extravagantly plumed headgear and fat feather boas of a rain forest princess, she looked a good deal less pneumatic and more lithe than she had at the Cybernesia party—though she was once again surrounded by a crowd of nubile young women and agile young men. More “data exchanging,” Don thought grumpily. At last the trumpets finished their fanfare.
“How’s that for a grand entrance, my sweet little blue-haired boy?” Medea purred.
“Very clever,” Don replied, “but I don’t have time for all this ‘Dragzilla, Queen of the Jungle’ nonsense right now—”
“My, my, Donnie,” the feathered regina said in mock-horror, “aren’t we testy! Have I ever said anything about the crypto-imperialist implications of your Easter Island virtual? What could I possibly have done to put such a burr under your saddle?”
“I think you already know, Medea πrate. Or Media Pirate. Or Indahar Marwani. Or whatever it is you’re calling yourself today.”
“Now don’t tell me you’ve worked yourself into such a great lather over that little Kwok posting—”
“There’s nothing ‘little’ about it! You’ve blogged and flogged your capture of that webcast so hard it’s up on sites all over the infosphere!”
“So? How does that wound you?”
“First of all, it’s an embarassment. You said it yourself—pirates being pirated.”
“Donny, the thing was a supervirtual, a ’cast in a bunch of different formats. It went out everywhere. Lots of people besides me preserved it in their triddyviddy systems. I just happened to post first because a number of the views it put forward ‘speak to my condition,’ shall we say.”
“Information wants to be free, multiplies by dividing, blahdeblahdeblah,” Don said, no less annoyed. “It’s still not right, airing our dirty laundry that way.”
“Hmm! Now we’re getting somewhere. Surely the little blot of ‘getting pirated’ isn’t enough to dirty your laundry. What’s this all about, really?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“No? Well, I hope you don’t, sweetie. On those sites where the ’cast is posted, I’ve got a hit-tracer program running. A nice little de-anonymizer. Tells me a lot of the home addresses of people who come to check out the Kwok stuff. And some very interesting types stop by to visit that weird little movie, everywhere it shows up.”
“What kind of interesting types?”
“Political terrorist types. Organized-crime types. Free Zone types. Corporate-security types. Intelligence-community types, like Kwok himself was. You know any reason why thuggies and pluggies might be interested in that stuff?”
“Aside from what’s in the holo-cast itself, no.”
“Too bad. I thought you might have some insider information.”
“What made you think that?”
“Oh, just something Karuna said at the party. That Kwok had contacted you. Did he? Hmm?”
“I admit it. Yes, he did.”
“What about? Come on, Donny. You can tell an old friend.”
Don sighed loudly enough for it to be picked up by his virtuality software.
“At first we thought Kwok was just some sort of researcher. A scholar. An eccentric academic, but one with money behind him. He presented us with a proposal—more of a challenge, really.”
“Well? What did he want? Karuna mentioned a ‘deep hack,’ as I recall.”
“Yes. A hack that would streamline control and communication between binotech implants and worldwide computershare systems. Get those systems to do what he wanted without them charging him up the wazoo for that service.”
“You mean zombify the computer grid for him.”
“That’s not what I would have called it, but yes, I suppose you could describe it that way. Karuna did most of the work on that part. She’s good at getting diverse systems to talk to each other.”
“Like getting Cybernesia’s islands to join together as a continent, eh? See? I remember. But whatever did Kwok want it for?”
“To simulate the massive parallelism characteristic of quantum computing. A pentaflop supercomputer, say, has to try a quadrillion different keys, one after another, to open a complex cipher ‘lock,’ but a quantum computer would try all quadrillion keys simultaneously. He wanted to simulate that kind of simultaneity. That’s what he told us, anyway.”
“Heavens! As impressive as that quantummy stuff sounds, why would it be sexy enough for hit men and terrorists and spies—oh my!—to be so interested?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. He paid us well enough that we didn’t ask too many questions.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would have. Sometimes you and Karuna amaze me, Donny. How can two people be so tech-brilliant, such ‘good friends’ to Mister Obololos—yet so clueless when it comes to the Big Picture? Did you ever stop to think that, if Kwok’s missing or dead, those nasties checking out the holo-cast sites might trace their way back to you and Karuna? You were both working with Kwok. That makes you logical targets.
“You haven’t even considered that possibility, have you? Lord, I can’t figure out whether you’re perversely naive, or naively perverse!”
“Look, if you—”
“I know, Donny, I know! You came here to berate me, and here I am scolding you. More proof of what I just said, although I doubt it’s needed. Quod erat demonstrandum. Go home to your island, Donny—and tell Karuna not to worry, either. You have no idea of the full implications of the mess you may have gotten yourselves into. I suppose I have to take some responsibility for that, though. Go home, and let Mama Medea look after you.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring,” Don said, frowning, “when you consider what the Greeks say Medea did to her children.”
“Donny, how you can be such a wily Ulysses, and still be such a Cyclops—well, it amazes even me! Fly away, now.”
With a wave of Medea’s hand, Don Sturm was blown out of the crash zone. When the senseworld stabilized around him, he found himself back home in his Easter Island virtuality, seated beside one of the great tilting moai heads alongside the Hanga Roa town wharf. Reaching out and touching the simulacrum, he felt it push back against his hand reassuringly, with an appropriate level of tactile force–feedback.
He took a long
slow breath. The massive stone figures carved from lapilli tuff, the unbroken code of rongorongo pictorial writing—Don’s entire virtual rendering of Easter Island, of the place anciently known as Rapa Nui, possessed a familiar mysteriousness. He found it strangely comforting after his visit to Medea-Indahar’s placeless space.
Don thought about the real-world place that had provided the basis for his own virtuality. Over the thousand years or so following the arrival of the first Polynesian settlers, the émigrés from the Marquesas had overpopulated Rapa Nui. They cut down trees until deforestation and drought turned Rapa Nui into a desert island. The more trees they cut down, the worse the droughts became. The smaller the number of trees left, the smaller the number of new canoes that were built. The fewer the canoes, the fewer the fish to eat and the greater the famine—until at last the stonecarvers’ civilization had collapsed into chaos, carnage, and cannibalism. The island’s population had plummeted by more than ninety percent by the time the first Europeans showed up, on Easter Sunday of 1722.
That was the theory, anyway. Don wondered whether it was true, or whether the theory was a sort of projective retrospection—an interpretation of a lost civilization’s mysterious collapse reflecting the interpreting culture’s anxieties about its own future.
Then again, Don mused, maybe it wasn’t only cultures that unconsciously did that, but individuals, as well.
The thought was disturbing enough that Don decided to depart virtual space entirely. Life in meatspace, however, was just a more stubborn simulation, a harsher taskmaster less forgiving of mistakes.
THREE
MUTUAL ASSURANCES
VICTORIA PEAK
Meeting privately for dinner at Cafe Deco on Victoria Peak was Detective Lu’s idea. The rendezvous, set up over e-mail, seemed like a good plan. Ben Cho had been thinking for some time about what he would say to the detective—about how much he might disclose, and how much the detective might be able to tell him.
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