by Astrotomato
“That doesn't make sense,” Djembe looked more confused than ever.
“No it doesn't. Win, what do you think?”
“I think she went out for a short trip and was supposed to be picked up. For some reason, that return aircar trip never happened. She struggled back knowing she had to beat the second sun rise. And then... Then I don't know. Her clothes disappear, she dies. Her body disappears.”
The three were quiet for a moment.
Eventually, Djembe's confusion cleared, “Well, then it does point to murder.”
Win nodded. “Certainly something doesn't feel right. I need more data. When I've been through other operational logs in the hangar I'll have a better idea.”
Troubled, Kate hid behind a professional air of confidence. “OK Win, good work. It's good that we're questioning assumptions. Djembe, can you report back on the system and communications integrity?”
Djembe described the perfect communications protocols he'd found. “The Colony remains classified. There is no hint of the death in there or any talk of vendetta. The only comms out of system are from Administrator Daoud to report the incident to us.”
“And the coded message was from last week. I checked the files from Admiral Kim.”
“And there's this other thing.”
Kate put her hand to her face and rubbed it. “There's always another thing, here.”
“The AI is infected.”
Now it was Win's turn to interrupt, “Impossible. They're infection proof. Our best minds have tried for centuries.”
“Djembe?”
“I have seen the infection with my own eyes. The AI describes it as 'biological' in nature.”
Kate stared at Djembe. She looked quickly at Win and back to Djembe, “Biological? Did you get any hint of what it is?”
“Other than that it appears as a number of caterpillars, no.”
“Can we see it?”
“Yes,” agreed Win, “I'd like to see this.”
“Certainly. Watch. Computer, avatar please.”
In the holopit between them Verigua appeared as a giant plant. “My dear Commander, nice to see you so soon. And General Leland, we've met. And you must be the other, Commander Ho-Yung.”
“Verigua,” Win leaned into the holo, “what's that on your avatar?”
“Why my dear Sir, I have been listening to your team update, I hope you don't mind. I know you've classified the session, but I'm rather good at working round such things. Don't worry, I am owned by MI, just like you. These are the biological matrices infecting me. Do you know what they might be?”
“Win?” asked Kate.
“No idea.” He looked at his team mates, his face blank.
Kate sat back. Her tiredness was coming in waves again with each revelation. “We need more data on these. Djembe that's your next task. How does this affect the consequence map?”
“Let me update it. Computer, can you please clear the holopit and upload my map from our ship?”
The centre of the room became empty for a moment, leaving the three humans sat in a ring, surrounded by the faint lines of the hologrid. A small point of light appeared between them. It started cool blue and grew tendrils, arms, which snaked and branched and multiplied. Each branching was from a cluster of icons, looking like grapes on a vine. The whole consequence map stretched to no more than a metre and a half.
“Updating with all of the information we've collected,” Djembe activated a holicon floating above his datapad. The central point of light started to bulge, warming from its cool blue through green to a pale yellow, before exploding into to a bright, fiery red. The tendrils snaking out became arm thicknesses. Thicker. More tendrils grew from the central point. The vines splintered, grew off-shoots, massive cluster points of holicons exploded out. Decision after decision after decision presenting themselves, complicating the mission. Almost inevitable action points, where they would need to carefully navigate their response, flowered. The vines grew, the branches lengthened, the central point enlarged. The explosion of light was accompanied by a coruscation of psychedelic noise where it crossed the hologrid still active from Kate's program earlier. When it had finished, the consequence map was the size of the room, and they were lost within a jungle of angry reds, sickly yellows and wicked silvers.
“Shit.”
Win peered around a liana-like consequence thread, “That's the first time I've heard you swear, Kate.”
She was struggling with this, she knew. Maybe she wasn't cut out to be a General, she thought.
The team gazed at it all, multi-coloured light bathed their faces. Eventually Win reached into his bag, pulled out a pair of heavy round goggles, the rims lit in a subtle neon. He looked up, mouth open, twirled around.
“There it is,” he walked into the jungle. “Djembe, am I reading this right? Is it the AI?”
Djembe hunkered down next to him. He cupped a cluster of holicons near the centre globe and whispered to them in holoparse. They flowered, revealing intricate mathematics.
“Djembe?” Kate moved closer, her vision obscured by the rampant consequences.
“It's the biologicals. And something else in the AI. Anxiety loops. If they spread...”
“Verigua are you listening?” Kate looked up, a normal behaviour when people talked to an invisible AI.
“I am, General. This is not good.”
Win twisted one of the goggle lenses, which changed colour, and followed another thread. “Something in my data from the surface.”
“Let me see,” Djembe walked over. “Not from that rock island?”
“No, I flew over the old Colony with my old sensors on. There's movement. I can't tell where though.”
Kate moved to look at the impenetrable data, regretting her lack of training in consequence map language. “What sort of movement?”
Win shook his head, “It's at a point where I was turning the sensors off. The sensitivity was very low.”
“It could be the murderer. Get back out there, re-survey with more sensors. Djembe, get into this holoroom of Mr. Kingsland's. I'm going to talk with Doctor Currie again. See what I can get out of him.”
“What time is the next mission check-in?” asked Djembe.
“Let's make it sixteen hundred hours. And we'll break for dinner at twenty hundred hours.”
Win put a hand to Kate's arm, “Good, you need to rest, Kate. You haven't slept in forty hours.”
“We're at a critical phase. I’m beginning to wonder if the murder and these AI biologicals are linked by that coded message. There are too many strange coincidences.” She paused, “Let's find what we can before the trail goes cold. I have a report to make later and a full mission report due in just over forty eight hours. Let's keep our mission logs up to date to make compilation easier. Agreed?”
They both nodded in assent to Kate, gathered up their things and started from the room. As Kate turned off the holo program, their group movement through it created a last sphere of sound, like the tolling of a distant iron bell.
Kate was in her quarters.
She muttered under her breath as she built the holicons for the mission log. In the desk holo, she had open a project window, where her fingers meddled in echoes of their own contrails. She pulled in the individual mission logs and data from her team, added the consequence map updates, the algorithm that described the son et lumiere that had been the live mission update.
“Create mission sphere.” In front of her the mission details warped into a bauble, like a toy glass storm in which existed Fall, the events and converging consequences drifting as snow flakes, distorted through the sphere's glassy time. Kate added the final update verbally, “Mission log. Time and date stamp. Planet Fall. Acting General Kate Leland.” She paused, feeling the title coming from her mouth, “General”. She licked her lips, cleared her throat with an unnecessary cough. “The mission is proceeding well. Commanders Cygnate and Ho-Yung perform admirably, as per usual, and have discovered the first clues to d
ecode the message. Djembe is investigating a biological matrix in the AI, some sort of infection. He says the AI feels anxious. I'm not sure what to make of that. I really don't want a twitchy AI on my hands. He has also identified some unique practices for consequence mapping created by the Colony's Operations Manager, which could have profound implications for MI. And Win has detected unregistered movement on the surface and is going to investigate.
“I am not sure about the next phase of this mission. It's not a feeling I enjoy. The colonists are convinced Doctor Maki was murdered, but the rumour is of a vendetta killing. It's a good cover. I've asked to Djembe to modify the censored SysNet so that certain entertainments and key words are emphasised to support it. I haven't talked yet with Administrator Daoud. Admiral Kim suspects him, so I am playing my hand carefully. If he turns out to be behind this conspiracy I'll have to invoke the full Colony Defence Code and call in a strike force.”
Kate cupped the sphere in her hands. Small clouds puffed up inside like snow, “I'm concerned about this AI infection. None have ever been infected. So what's happened? Is it the planet's dust? It's full of the minerals they're built with, perhaps it's opened the AI to infection. But then why infect it?”
In her hands, the world touching her fingertips glowed, creating whorled archipelagos on its surface. “More than any other time, I am unhappy with the subterfuge we use to maintain the peace.” She shook her head, “Is this what it means to be a General, then? Spying. The world of murder?”
Kate turned off her log and stared into the globe as it dimmed and became dark.
Djembe returned to the Central Operation Room and made his way to the special holo suite Jonah Kingsland had created for Fall's consequence planning.
Jonah gave a knowing smile when he entered, “Knew you couldn't keep away.”
“I do not feel comfortable in here, but I admit it is interesting.”
Another Jonah Kingsland walked toward Djembe. “You'll get used to it mate. Come for a coffee with me and Jonah.” The two Jonah Kingslands turned to a pavement café, set in an Old Earth Italian city. They ordered espressos from the waiter, Jonah Kingsland.
Djembe stepped away from the Operations Room holo suite door, caught between the world of diagnostic holos and humans outside, and this.
This ever changing environment, in which cafés faded from view and submarine engine rooms blared red and hissed in. In which giant chess sets with Escher-angles wrapped themselves around cool solar flares, which acted as bridges over alien waterways teeming with fractal lily pads. Where beach huts covered in years-dried palm fronds baked under skies wrapped into saddle shapes; where the insides of cruiser-class ships, all sleek lines, passenger comfort and efficient lighting, seamlessly and impossibly bloomed into the cloud layer algal-tree habitats of the seventh moon of Puck. And everywhere, in every environment, scores of holograms of Jonah Kingsland, endlessly discussing everything that was happening, had happened, might happen on Fall. Djembe thought it was utter chaos. Everywhere he looked, no matter how forced and distorted the perspective, he saw holo after holo of Jonah, talking to itself, the details slightly changed, the shirt blue instead of green, the trousers short instead of plaid; dark, pale, animated, reflective. Sitting in cafés, hanging from trees, relaxing in hammocks, parachuting through clouds and shouting through the onrushing air to Jonahs one metre away skating on frozen lakes. Everywhere was Jonah. Everywhere was discussion of Fall. If he listened in to the conversations, he would hear wild gossip and scurrilous rumour: of who from Mining Colony #1 was seen drinking with whom from the Teaching Floor of the main Colony structure, and what this meant, and who might be affected; of how a holo emitter was broken and showed only two dimensional entertainments; of where a locket had gone that was put on a vanity table just two hours ago; why there was a pressure surge in a wall panel in a disused maintenance corridor on the bottom floor of the Colony. Suppositions were made, theories and opinions were posited; holo coffees were slurped and glasses of wine chinked, weaving a fabric of sound through the retina-warping visual environment. Each environment was augmented with aromas created by chemical packs in the room's walls. The sizzle of bacon from a café. The earthy forest tang of humus turning to soil. Ripe fruit. Talk chirruped like fresh water over small stones in brooks, fresh and clean, burbling to unseen oceans.
Djembe was surrounded by this great opera of Babel, where every line was spoken by one principal actor: Jonah Kingsland, hologrammatically copied, each copy allowed to evolve as a distinct personality, time after time after time. Each copy retaining the essence of the original, then developing its own interests. This one fascinated with mining statistics, that one with the weather. This one with bleached hair an expert on the drinking habits of the second floor workers, that one loudly exaggerating the successes of the Colony's children in their exams and how they might be inspired by more SysNet entertainments.
“How do you track it all? It seems like chaos.” Djembe sat at the pavement café across from the two Jonahs.
One of the Jonahs pressed a pad on his wrist; the environment dimmed, the babble receded to a distant conversation. “Better not to hear it all at once, eh?” Next to him the other Jonah, as if seen through a haze of gauze, checked his watch, stood and walked over to a Jonah wearing a sandwich board. The smells faded, and the Colony's underlying aroma returned: a metallic tang mixed with cleaning agents.
“It is chaos, that's the point. I realised long ago that you couldn't keep this place classified, like the way they want it, by using what you use. No offence.”
“None taken.”
“If this mining facility was discovered it would be a target for any remaining subversive elements out there. They may've been quiet for a long time, the Nihilists, the Anarchists, the NuLuddites, but they're out there still, and it only takes one idiot to screw things up. And you know what consequence planning's like. You have to track everything, you never know where a tipping point might start.”
“It is difficult at times, I admit.”
“It's alright with one off, large scale things, responding to earthquakes, crop growing and distribution. Asteroid impacts.” Jonah waved a hand, “There's hundreds of years of data and experience for that stuff. But not with people. Miners, teachers, kids, doctors, nurses, canteen staff, mechanics, pilots. It's all too unpredictable. The human mind,” Jonah tapped a finger against his head, “even in the dimmest of people, is too clever, makes too many strange connections. Too much paranoia, too many emotions, too much speculation and too many loose tongues.” He picked up his coffee, took a sip, “And with Fall, you don't want anything leaking out. You never know how a conversation or mood's gonna cascade through the systems.”
“So instead of trying to constantly work out all those data points, you made your Consequence Map-”
“Out of the system itself” Jonah interrupted. He stood and walked to a nearby scene where his hologänger was sitting in a bar staring into a whisky. “Every single holo in here is linked into the blogs, personal diary spaces, work records, maintenance systems, recorded conversations on security holos, transmissions, from and within Fall. They talk about everything. They gossip, speculate, surmise, predict, they fall out with each other.” Jonah pointed at another hologänger, wearing sunglasses and lying on a beach of blue-tinged sand, “They go on holidays, they dream away the hours, they stare into space, they rave at the stars. And out of all that we can track dangers, risks, tipping points, either as or before they happen.”
“And they look like you because?”
“Cos I thought of it, of course!” He smirked. “You don't get much reward here, you know. And no one else comes in, so why not?”
Djembe drank his coffee. Jonah cycled past quoting from Old Earth literature, through a team of Jonahs playing zero-g ball sports and discussing the benefits of revenge.
“Come on mate, let's have a look around. Drink up.”
Djembe pushed back his chair and stood. Jonah adjusted his wrist pad. Th
e haze flickered, melted into the mossy gloom of forest light. Jonah led the way, stepping up onto huge tree roots, splashing down into streams. “You get lots of references to forests in here. Never quite figured out why. Reckon Verigua has a thing about information ecology. Little joke, see? Though you never see any animals, of course. Just me.”
“I don't understand how you know when a consequence path has reduced in risk. On a traditional map it shrinks, changes colour, shortens. What happens here?”
Jonah pushed back some ferns, “People just stop talking about it. Kinda depends. Lots of the way this works we didn't program, just let the thing evolve. We had to figure some of it out when it was running.”
“So how do you know it's a real risk reduction? Maybe your Jonahs are distracted or bored? Could they not misjudge the importance of something?”
“Could be,” Jonah ducked under a vine, “don't have any evidence of that though. We follow up on anything that seems a risk, investigate it more.”
“What do they say of this scientist who has died?”
“Pretty strong signal. Vendetta. Some exotic technology on the surface.”
“Exotic technology? What do you mean?” Djembe tried to stay nonchalant.
“Ah, there's no actual evidence. Not sure where that came from, actually.” Jonah scratched his head and paused by a liana-wrapped tree.
Djembe thought quickly, “In my experience, assassins are good at covering their tracks.”
“Must be some tech I've never heard of. Any ideas?”
“My colleague is investigating.” Djembe found a professional smile. He was starting to get used to being in the environment. And Jonah Kingsland, despite his lack of formality, was growing on him.
A Jonah hologänger jumped off a tree branch to their side, “Hello you two! Just been investigating what's inside this tree. It's dead. The tree. Shame, it's a mighty specimen. Have you seen Jonah? We were on a hunting expedition. Thought we had a lead on a juicy rumour,” the Jonah from the tree wiped his forehead with his forearm, “something about children playing hide-and-seek, and where they're hiding. And secret recordings.” He looked around with a big grin on his face, “Sounds fun, doesn't it? Have you seen Jonah? We should compare field notes.”