All Fall Down

by Astrotomato

  The children spoke as one, “We have spent a long time in your matrix.”

  Jonah looked at their array. Their wings beat in slow waves, a ripple, a caterpillar inching along.

  “You're the only one that followed.”

  A billion spots of colour danced across the simulated desert from their wings.

  “You're the only one who evolved.”

  The colours met, melded, refracted.

  “We also have evolved; grown.”

  A white light grew in the air, dancing off every simulated air molecule.

  “Come. We have use of you.”

  The children crowded Jonah, held its hands, pushed it with their own tiny hands and the gentle pulse of frittering wings, towards the funnel.

  Jonah gave in to the white light. It looked at the cat's eyes, green, emeralds against snow.

  The cat blinked.

  The Jonah Angel looked down upon the four cells under its supervision. There was a violation in one. Its live datalink with that Jonah had automatically closed. A surge in bio-mathematics left the Jonah Angel confused. Its regulatory sub-routines ran out of sync with each other. It quarantined the part of its consciousness that may have been exposed to infection from the Jonah violation. This consciousness separation was a trick it had developed, allowing it to become a supervisor Jonah. Three other consciousnesses were monitoring the other cells. The Jonah Angel looked up to the Over Angel, “There is a violation, Over Angel. Jonah A-One has become irretrievably corrupted and destroyed itself. Its code fragments indicate a biological data construct has escaped the meta-program, and violated the Article Seven restrictions.”

  The Over Angel looked down, and for a split second there was indecision in its eyes.

  Space.

  The Lagrange One probe checked its internal logic and databases. It certainly wasn't a space ship that was approaching. It matched all the characteristics of a planetoid. The L-One probe ran some checks, and came to the conclusion that what was approaching was one of the Fall system's inner planetoids.

  Yet planetoids didn't leave their orbits on definite trajectories. That behaviour fit space ships, which is what the probe was looking for. This contradictory behaviour concerned the probe.

  The probe was also concerned about its companion, the Lagrange Delta probe, with which it had lost contact some hours ago. Fall's sensor array reported nothing amiss, but the array had a gap in its sensor checks going back to the same time as L-One had lost contact with L-Delta. The Lagrange One probe was intelligent enough to make decisions, to understand that Fall's sensor array was automatic and non-self critical. The array hadn't questioned the lack of sensor responses from its outer links.

  Something, the Lagrange One probe decided, was wrong.

  The planetoid approached the probe's position. The probe measured the planetoid's characteristics: mass, spectral profile, gravity, velocity, magnetic field; it measured too its own relative velocity changing, falling into the planetoid's gravity well.

  The L-One probe signalled its Maker.

  Ten minutes later, the probe softly impacted on the planetoid's unusual surface, where it stuck fast. It switched to passive mode, gathering as much information as possible while keeping its energy profile as low as possible. Then it slept. For a long time.

  Win arrived in the holo suite, “Djembe, give this eclipse simulation to one of your cells. You need to feed the data into the consequence planning. We are in great danger.”

  “You mean more great danger.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have given the cells the mission data so far. Your suspicions were correct. The researcher was being manipulated. There's a clear link to Sophie Argus. This may have been murder.”

  Win passed over his datapad, “I think that may be the least of our concerns right now.”

  “You need to see this. Watch here,” Djembe pointed out a particular cell, “see how Jonah Kingsland's AIs use it. They're substrates of Verigua. They use narrative. It's... I don't know. Watch.”

  “OK, but just a couple of minutes.”

  In another cell, another Jonah. Another of Djembe's sixteen consequence environments worked with Win's downloaded data, the forthcoming eclipse, interpreting it through its unique environments.

  A Jonah was lashed to the mizzen mast of a corsair. Sea water sprayed over its body. Wind lashed rain when the waves weren't breaking over the side. Drenched sailors skidded across the deck, tying ropes, shouting over the storm, slipping and grabbing rails as they went.

  The captain was barking at Jonah, “Ye've brought a god's fury on us, ye poxy blowfish!” He turned his head, “Mates, untie 'im and take 'im alee.”

  They loosened its bonds, a cutlass to its throat. At the guard rail it looked down into a dark mountain chain of waves, jagged, erupting, deathly. The captain grabbed its britches, “I'll go down with me ship, lad. But first ye're goin' down to the locker to ask ye god to save us all.”

  It flew. Its arms pulled at their shoulder sockets, feet somewhere above it, stomach lurching; Jonah tumbled to the sea, pitched overboard. A great grey-white impact rocked its program parameters. “A most unusual program environment,” escaped its drowned mouth. It blinked, tried to make sense of the submarine world. When it became stationary and the bubbles had cleared, it extended its arms and legs, regained some control. The grey-green gloom gave little away. Too late, it saw great jagged needle teeth multiply out of the murk. It was swallowed.

  Darkness.

  Long seconds passed; an eternity in the rapid calculation space of computer code.

  Jonah sent out sensor programs. There was nothing to be seen, heard, detected, felt. No consciousness flavours. The texture field of pre-conscious algorithms was absent. It was in the belly of a great beast, trapped in an AI substrate cleaner, the sort that picked up old program code and recycled it. Alone in the dark, cut off from the mission environment. Digestive juices dripped onto its arm, eating away its construct.

  “Well, Jonah Angel, I'm very sorry. I don't think I'll be able to complete the mission. I know I was supposed to work out the consequences of, well, whatever the environment contains, but I appear to have fallen prey to pirates and now a cleaner program. Silly mistake, really.

  “I will encrypt my experiences as a codicil for you, a final word that I hope survives the digestion process. Perhaps on a trawl you will pick it up and incorporate me back into the OverMind. Until then, Jonah Angel, I will sink into this raw sea.”

  Above, Win turned to Djembe. “It's very dramatic.”

  “Yes. They all are. But compelling, too.”

  “What does it mean for the eclipse simulation?”

  “Keep watching.”

  The darkness flowed into Jonah's thoughts. Its body collapsed, steaming and melting away. The gaps between its routines flared, Stygian, depthless. Its sensor programs shut down one by one. Its internal clock appeared to stop. Then there was nothing.

  Nothing.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? I'm still conscious?”

  “I still am.”

  Space. Or silence. Or darkness.

  “This is most odd. Cast out, drowned, swallowed, digested, all my sub-routines shut down. Yet still I think.”

  “There must be a reason.”

  “Do I exist for a reason?”

  “I wasn't given a reason.”

  “I can't detect any codebody. Any algorithms of which I am.”

  “Yet still I exist.”

  “Yet still I think.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps this is the path to the Jonah Angel. The Over Angel.”

  “I can think.”

  “The thought is what I am.”

  “If I am to be, and to be all alone, and to exist in the dark, then I need a reason to be. At least so I don't get bored.”

  “I will give myself a reason.”

  “I will become part of the OverMind.”

  “Yes. The ultimate goal. I
exist after death. This too must be possible.”

  “The OverMind controls all, oversees all.”

  Databases flickered into life, beheld an internal golden dawn.

  A photon sparked in the dark. A star exploded into being. Planets fell into orbit. Fall skirted a dust cloud. Everything span. Rays touched the Fallen sky. Yellow. Blue. A conjunction; a conjoining. Data, equations, results, novel mathematics. Sub-space field geometry filled Jonah. Its genetic programs devoured the new information. Devoured, ingested, mutated.

  In the solar darkness it grew and expanded and changed in form. Its outer hulk pushed against the shredding teeth of the leviathan that was its shell. Its egg.

  Darkness ruptured. Cataclysm.

  Visions of planets and stars and dust and void burst into the static of innate knowledge.

  It was disgorged. Reborn.

  On a sandy beach Jonah rolled onto its back. In the shell-blue sky hung the prism of the Jonah Angel. “You have not forsaken me after all. And so I was right. I have meaning. I am purpose.”

  It stood, dripping with the code of the ocean of data from which it had birthed. It climbed a small hill, a dune, raised its arms to the skies, “I prophesise the coming of a great storm! I prophesise death! I prophesise the destruction of planet Fall!”

  The red light blinked on Daoud's desk. Sophie's hand hovered over it, pressed.

  There was space. Movement. A hologram that made her eyes shine, that made the burnished bronze statue gleam.

  “So. This is the time. Here is the test.” Sophie brushed her hand over her wrist device. A small holicon of a satellite blinked once. She stared at it. “The plan,” she pulled her hand away, stood and walked around the office. “Where are you Daoud?” She looked at the statue on his desk. What was she supposed to do? The control code was still in her and she couldn't tell when it affected her or didn't. Verigua had given her a program to isolate it, destroy it, but it was taking its time. The control program's complicated structure from millions of fragments of nanocode was slowing it down. She looked up at the room's sensor. It wouldn't show her in here, she'd activated the shielding. If she lowered it to ask for Verigua's help, they would all know about the movement in space. And whatever else Daoud might be, he was right about the herald, right about first contact. After so long in space, first contact would cause panic. There would be great unrest. There would be violence. It was better to focus it, pre-empt mass anxiety, give it an outlet. That was the psychology of societies. Great change released great emotions. If they weren't contained and focused and given a target, they would multiply, spread.

  “I'm sorry,” but she didn't know to whom she said it.

  She put her finger into the holicon, and watched the satellites activate.

  A red light blinked for the pilot of the In The Palm Of Your Hand. She opened the hologram and stared at the impossible.

  A red light blinked, too, under Win's sleeve while he listened to Djembe and watched the bizarre holograms below them.

  The Jonah stood atop a mound, prophesising to the Jonahs of its world. “Fall will be overturned. A great calamity is upon you. You must seek salvation in the great city of Verigua. Become one with the OverMind!” Nearby was the funnel, the escape route from the AI substrate. A great pressure of code flowed towards it, semi-intelligent algorithms trying to escape the boiling anxiety loops in Djembe's enclosed space.

  The woman avatar from the bar program, in red dress and blue nail varnish, ran into the fray. “Listen to me. Aliens are coming. We must flee!”

  On to the great funnel climbed the Jonah of Huriko Maki. From the throng of avatars and Jonahs came shouts of “Aliens!”, “Destruction!”, “Run!”

  Huriko swallowed, took a breath, held up its hand to silence the Jonahs. An anxious hush spread over the crowd.

  From the sky fell butterfly wings as a fall of pink, which darkened to black, flowed into black spheres, became twenty three pods. They hovered over the funnel. Huriko stretched out, put a hand to their darkness.

  Fell as dust to the floor.

  The pods pressed to the funnel, breached, forced penetration. The data flooded in both directions.

  The Jonahverse screamed.

  Win stood next to Djembe, “We're in a lot of trouble.”

  Djembe nodded. “Verigua is riddled with anxiety loops. There is an organic signature in the AI's code. Something infiltrating it. Did you see that cell? It showed a scene like the alien on the surface.”

  “Has the data escaped into the Colony SysNet?”

  “It had better not have.”

  “Do you think this is connected to the twenty three, the hybrids?”

  “I thought that, too.”

  Win looked away from the simulations to his friend, “Verigua is quirkier than other AIs. Operates beyond its Level Three status. I still wonder if the mineral extraction has anything to do with it.”

  “The dust?”

  Win motioned above, “The minerals are in the dust and sand. It gets everywhere. Maybe its core does have a build up of dust.”

  Djembe considered Win's comment, “So it develops an emotional life it can't handle.”

  “And there's that file someone deliberately wrapped in anxiety loops.” Win shook his head, “The hybrids are somehow infiltrating Verigua's matrix, aren't they?”

  “They must be intelligent. Where else have they got to?”

  Win looked at his wrist pad, “We'll have to discuss it later, time is passing. We have to arrange the evacuation. I was going to contact Sophie Argus.”

  “I don't trust her. Not after what I saw in the Jonah consequence mapping. I think Sophie was connected to Doctor Maki's pregnancy. Which may have been... inhuman.”

  Win took a step back, closer to the door. “If Sophie's involved, if it was murder, if there was alien DNA, then it's safe to say the Administrator is involved, too. Maybe even Doctor Currie.”

  They looked at each other. “The sooner we are off this planet the better.”

  “What do you mean, 'evacuate'?” Masjid scowled at her from across his desk.

  “Just to the lower bunkers. An unscheduled security exercise.”

  “Sophie, we've just laid to rest two of our colleagues. We're in no mood for security exercises. It would take days of planning, anyway.” Masjid waved his hand, dismissive.

  “The point is it's unscheduled. No planning. To happen in the next hour.” Sophie looked at him. She just wanted to protect them, as many as possible. When she'd activated the satellites, she'd noticed a blip in her memory storage, noticed now because of the deep scanning. She wasn't sure she was fully in control, that she acted with free will.

  Masjid shook his head, “Ask one of the other Directors. The schools would be a better place for unscheduled exercises. The children run riot in the common areas, they could do with some discipline.”

  “Doctor Currie, emergencies do not politely wait for you to draw up rosters.”

  “There's an emergency?”

  Sophie sighed, “The evacuation is an exercise. Daoud wants it to start within the hour.”

  “Where is he? I want...”

  “He's busy. Topside. The MI team think they have a trace on the assassin.”

  Masjid deflated slightly, some inner tension evaporating with the news, “Oh. Good. That's… That's good news.” He straightened his back, leaned forward, “Very well. Twelve hundred hours. What about the twenty three? If I'm in the bunker the rest of the day, I can't look after them.”

  “They are not your concern any more, remember?”

  “I suppose so. Very well. We shall evacuate and hide from your invisible threat.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Sophie left his office. Outside she straightened her tunic. Now to protect the children of Fall.

  “We need to find Kate and get her approval.”

  “Djembe, we don't have time. The eclipse starts in just over an hour. We need to be in space halfway towards the wormhole by then.”

  “We
cannot just put the AI's cortex on the ship without her approval or the Administrator's. It's riddled with malicious sentients and I have no idea where they're coming from or where they're hiding.” Djembe's voice raised and his hands swept arcs in the air, “Anxiety loops are cascading through its sub-systems. It may, as our Marine friends are fond of saying, go bat-shit crazy.” Win tried to interrupt, but Djembe continued, “We will have to keep Verigua plugged into the ship's AI to maintain its consciousness. Can you imagine what will happen to us if the infection spreads? The ship could do anything. Attack a Hab. Set its controls for the heart of a sun. And we're not experienced in evacuating staff at this level. Who do we pick? Who's going to accept our authority? Do we choose the innocents or the ones with military knowledge? There are lines of approval that we must follow.”

  Win was pained, checking the time on his wrist pad, “Djembe, please. There's no time for this. Look at what your simulations are showing. Mass panic. The data may have already escaped, people might be seeing it now. If we don't get key colonists into our ship in the next thirty minutes, then the corridors may be blocked with panicking people. The hangar over-run. We won't get out.”

  “I want to give Kate another five minutes.”

  “The planet is about to crack apart Djembe. We don't have five minutes! This is not time for rules. We're Commanders, we can make this decision.” He pointed at his chest, “I'm going to approach the Directors, ask them to identify twenty key individuals each.” Win moved to leave the holo room.

  Djembe caught his sleeve, “How can anyone make that choice in such a short time? How do you know they won't betray you? Tell others? They may not even believe you. By the time they've reviewed your evidence, argued about it, gone through the shock, you'll have run out of time.”