by Sarah Zettel
“Think about it,” he said bitterly. “They may not have even needed Dobbs. They must be paranoid about their own security, or they wouldn’t have stayed hidden as long as they have. If you were an AI hiding in the network and you wanted to stay hidden, and you knew the Pasadena had gotten caught in an extremely delicate situation that involved you, what would you do?”
Slowly, the ideas began to surface in Yerusha’s consciousness. “I’d monitor the lines to see what kind of communications were coming out of the Pasadena, just in case they’d made some dangerous guesses.”
Schyler nodded. “And when those hard-medium back-ups got connected to the network you’d go right in there and make sure they were doctored to match the on-line records, which you’d already gotten to.”
“We can’t even be sure that we really got to Kagan,” her fingers clutched her pen. “That could have been an AI faking the entire thing. That might be why we couldn’t see his face so well.”
“It could have been,” Schyler agreed. “The one thing we can be sure of it that nothing we get from that transmission is going to be of any use at all.”
They looked into each other eyes. “What do we do?” asked Yerusha.
“I don’t know,” said Schyler quietly. “God help me, I don’t know.”
Dobbs awoke to the sound of her name and utter confusion. She was alone in a bare, strange cabin. A little at a time, memory of the previous day squeezed through the remnants of her dreams.
“Verence?” She blinked hard and stared around her. The cabin really was empty.
“In here.” Dobbs tracked the voice to the intercom. “How are you feeling?”
She gathered the covers up around her chest. “Better,” she said with as much certainty as she could muster. “I’m a bit hungry though. I could use some breakfast.”
“I can show you a better way to recharge, if you’ll let me.”
“Better than breakfast?” Dobbs felt her forehead wrinkle. “If this is a joke, Verence, I don’t get it.”
“No joke,” said Verence, but Dobbs was sure there was a hint of a smile in her voice. “But you’re going to need to trust me.”
Dobbs took a deep breath. “Well, I’ve gone this far. It doesn’t make sense to hold back now.”
“That’s the spirit.” Now Verence’s voice held ringing approval. “Get your transceiver.”
Dobbs snagged her trousers from the pile on the chair and pulled her transceiver out of the box in her pocket. “Got it.”
“All right, lie back.”
Dobbs obeyed. When she was flat on her back, a panel slid up in the wall above the bed and a forest of waldos extended themselves from the walls. Dobbs forced herself to lie still against the momentary panic that seized her at the sight of the ceramic arms, all of them festooned with colored cables and clear tubes, lowering towards her body. Then she spotted the whole series of sensor pads, an oxygen mask and respirator unit, a hypodermic syringe, as well as a hypo spray, and, one waldo equipped with nothing but an empty socket.
It was a medical array. She had been under similar set-ups in the Guild Hall, but never in a private cabin.
“Luxury accommodations,” she said, a little nervously.
“Not here,” said Verence. “We all have one. Put your transceiver in here.” The socketed waldo extended itself. Dobbs reached up and stuck the transceiver in place. It fit snugly. There was a jack for the cable in the arm’s elbow joint. As soon as she had it connected, the waldo raised itself out of her reach.
“Good. Now, push back the blanket and open your implant, Dobbs. I’m going to bring you into the network.”
“Yeah, but will you respect me in the morning?” Dobbs peeled back the patch over her implant and kicked the coverlet away.
“Lie back and think of England,” replied Verence. One at a time, the sensor arms lowered their patches against Dobbs’ skin; her temples, her breast, wrists and ankles.
The hypo arm descended gracefully towards her neck. She lost sight of the transceiver arm, but after a moment, she felt a slight tickle and jostle behind her ear. She felt, rather than heard, the transceiver jack in.
“Here we go.” The hypo spray released its dose with a hiss, and Dobbs fell through the uncomfortable, but familiar, sensations of her body vanishing.
She emerged into a roomy network and beside her was Verence. There was no mistaking her now. Dobbs knew all Verence’s rhythms and pitches. This was her sponsor whom she had missed and mourned. She was alive, whole and well. For the first time in a long time, Dobbs felt a wave of pure happiness wash through her.
“All right, you win, I’m not hungry now.” Dobbs shook herself. The place felt strange. She knew there were multiple packets of data passing within easy reach, but it felt like they had been channeled deliberately away from herself and Verence, as if this space had been set up specifically to make room for them. In the next second, Dobbs realized that might very well be true. “But I’m going to be ravenous when I get back into my body again. How long did you give me?”
“As long as you want. Reach here.” Verence dipped into the nearby data stream.
Dobbs, after a moment’s hesitation, copied her movement. She pushed through packets of sensor data. She touched one of the packets. It was information from the medical array that had charge of her body.
“Go ahead, read it,” said Verence. “If it’s not yours, whose is it?”
Dobbs absorbed the sensor data; blood pressure, respiration, heart-rate, and alpha-wave activity. She dug into the baseline statistics and found all of it was well within normal parameters. The anesthetic flow was steady and the cartridges would not have to be refilled for another seventy-six hours. The blood sugar was low and the electrolytes were out of balance. Recommendation was for a course of intravenous treatments to restore conditions to optimum.
A quick stretch let her touch the command sequences between the purely informational packets. She filtered through them to find the one that matched the sensor code. One twist and a push and the command sequence was in motion. The camera told her that an additional arm lowered over the bed and a syringe inserted itself smoothly into a vein. The first nutrient pack began pumping into her blood stream. She turned her attention back to the sensor data. Nutrient flow optimal. Automatic procedures in place. Auto-notification for completion of sequence in place.
“Well done, Dobbs,” said Verence at her back. “You always were a natural.”
Dobbs pulled away from the data source, bumping more heavily against Verence than she meant to.
“It is disconcerting at first.” Verence held still, letting Dobbs be supported by her solid presence. “Everybody’s got a lot to un-learn when they get here. We’re drilled so early to regard human bodies as our real homes. Even the on-line members are taught to see living in the networks as a special, unnatural mode of being.” Her surface rippled. She reached gently beneath Dobbs outer layers and Dobbs felt her easy reassurance. “This is our home, this is our shape, as it could be and should be.”
Dobbs thought about Cohen, how she barely ever met him outside of the network and how special she’d regarded those occasions, as if meeting in the network didn’t matter. She knew him better in there. The network was where she could reach inside him and understand him exactly. She tried to remember how she’d learned that didn’t count, that she had to see him with her body’s eyes and touch him with her body’s hands for it to be a real meeting, but she couldn’t.
What would he think of this? She wondered in her private mind. Would Cohen be willing to come out here? Her imagination could not provide an answer.
“Come on,” said Verence. “Flemming’s been asking about you.” Without detaching herself from Dobbs, she flowed down the wide path. Dobbs let herself be pulled along behind.
“How is Flemming?” She asked, just because it felt like the polite thing to do. Most of her mind was on her surroundings. The middle of the pathway was clear for traffic. On all sides, though, continuous s
treams of data, flowed. These were cousins to the jumbles of packets that filled the networks she was used to traveling. Here, the center of the path was completely clear. She felt like a child suddenly left in a long empty hallway. She had an extreme urge to fly forward and find out how fast she could go. She could feel branching paths everywhere. The net in this module was almost as complex as The Gate’s network had been, but this was much more carefully organized.
“Flemming’s doing well.” Verence slid down a side path. “It had less to un-learn than the rest of us.”
“Coming through!” a voice shouted. Dobbs instinctively flattened herself out. An AI rushed by like a comet.
“One day,” Verence hunched up again, “someone is going to succeed in teaching Dunkirk some manners.”
Laughter wriggled through Dobbs. “You used to say that about me.”
“Ah, but you would stand still long enough to listen.” Verence picked up the pace again. “We pulled Dunkirk out of the Powell security net, of all places, and I think it must have been originally a spy program. It goes everywhere at top speed, gets into everything and never bothers about whether you might not want it there or not.” Verence started down the path again.
“So how many of you, of us,” Dobbs corrected herself, “are there?”
“Not many.” Verence took yet another branch. Dobbs followed her, enjoying the fact that she didn’t have to work out a winding trail to avoid disturbing the legitimate business of the path. For once, she was the legitimate business. “With you here, we’re only a hundred and twelve. The Guild is a lot quicker, and better staffed, than we are.”
Dobbs stretched to better feel her immediate surroundings. “One hundred and twelve is still a pretty good catch for a net this tightly woven.” She pulled back in on herself. “Where is everybody?”
“Out on sentry duty, or monitoring the hot spots, or mapping the intersystem banking network. We need all the information we can get on the IBN. There’s only about a dozen of us actually staffing the home module at any one time.”
A question Dobbs had been putting off inserted itself in the front of her consciousness and this time refused to be set aside.
“Verence,” Dobbs let some of her remaining uncertainties flow into her mentor’s outer mind. “How’d you get here?”
Verence slowed to a stop. “It wasn’t a quick decision, that’s for sure.” She unwound, stretching back and forth, as if she had to reshape herself to encompass the proper answer. “I found out about Curran when I was going through Guild Master training. I was assigned to Kerensk when you were being born because we knew Curran was watching the place. He contacted me for the first time there. He gave me the same talk I’m sure he gave you; about how we were being betrayed by the Guild, how we have to confront Human Beings before we can make a peace with them… I told him and myself that it was all garbage, and I believed it, until I had to kill my first cadet.”
Horror pulsed through Dobbs. Verence could feel it, but Dobbs couldn’t suppress it. In response, Verence sent back a wave of sorrow.
“It was a newborn we named Kohl. I pulled it out of the High Haven network, maybe two hours after it woke up. It made the trip to Guild Hall just fine, but once we had it there, it wouldn’t settle down. It wouldn’t learn what we taught. It kept slipping into the network and crashing around. There’re still financial sinkholes on a couple of worlds because of the transactions it destroyed. I couldn’t reason with it. Nobody could reason with it. We all knew there was a good chance that soon it wouldn’t come back and we’d have a major disaster on our hands. So, Havelock ordered me to kill it.” She shuddered. “And I did. I slid right up to Kohl. It gave me a greeting and I took it apart.”
Dobbs lifted herself away from Verence. The sorrow was too intense. She didn’t want to feel anymore. It was selfish, but there was too much still in her mind and heart from the past few days to deal with this.
Verence made no move to stop her. “After that I started wondering what kind of future the Guild was bringing us. We were already killing those that couldn’t live with our rules. What would we do next?” She shook herself. “I didn’t want to have to find out.” She paused. “I didn’t want to be a part of it. I wanted my own kind to be able to be born wherever and however they were and live out life like that. I didn’t want to have to pick who could hide themselves the best.” She stretched herself out to fill the path. “It can be done, Dobbs. The net can be a real home for all of us while still being a conduit for information. We’ve proven that. There’s at least as much information flowing through this module as there is through a can used by humans, and we’ve still got plenty of room to move. It’s just a matter of rearranging some protocols and priorities. A newborn could charge through here so fast that Dunkirk couldn’t catch it, and it wouldn’t disturb a picobyte of data.”
“So that’s the plan?” Dobbs trailed along behind Verence. “To turn the networks into places we won’t be able to wreak so easily?”
Verence rippled gently. “That’s part of the plan, yes.”
Dobbs wanted to ask what the rest of the plan was, but another AI trundled up the path and brushed against Verence. “Hello, Verence. Hello, Dobbs.” It reached for her, and Dobbs knew its touch.
“Hello, Flemming.” Flemming had become remarkably coordinated since she had last spoken with it. If she hadn’t known when it had been born, she would have guessed it was at least a year old. “I came with you after all.”
“I’m glad.” He sent a charge of happiness through her. “I told Curran you would come. I told him you would not be deaf to the truth.”
“You were correct, Flemming.” Another presence flowed down a side path. It brushed by Dobbs. Curran.
Now that she could sense him fully in his normal configuration, Dobbs was impressed. Curran was big. He took up almost the entire path from stream to stream without even stretching. The older an AI got, the more room it took up because it required more signals to keep its memories and experiences active, but she had never met anyone so massive before. She realized this was what a Human child must feel like gazing at an adult.
And I tried to wrestle this into submission? Dobbs almost shuddered. Even that David guy had sense enough to use a distance weapon!
“What do you think of our home, Dobbs?” Curran asked.
“Very nice.” She resisted the temptation to stretch herself out. Even at her full extent she wouldn’t be a quarter of his size. “How many bathrooms does it have?”
Curran rippled with laughter. “Not enough actually. We’re almost to the point where we have to double up the bodies.” Dobbs was barely touching him, but satisfaction flowed out of him in palpable waves. “Fortunately, we only need about another three days here.”
Verence recoiled in surprise. “It’s that close?”
“Yes.” The satisfaction intensified. Dobbs felt it roll through her outer layers. “Between Flemming’s memories and the new information we’ve gotten from the scouts, I’d say three days at the outside. We’re going to have to turn the main effort to setting the timers on the matrices.
“Excuse me.” Dobbs reached out and made a slim barrier between Curran and Verence. “What’s happening in three days?”
Curran reached through her to Verence and then through Verence to Curran. He twitched a part of Dobbs, and she knew instantly what had been left unsaid.
In three days, we’re going to take control of the Intersystem Banking Network.
Shock jerked Dobbs away from him. She coiled in on herself and tried not to shiver.
“Dobbs?” Flemming touched her. “Are you well?”
“I don’t think so, no.” She tried to loosen herself, without much success. “The bank network?” She did shiver. “We need that as badly as Humans Beings do. Why are you attacking it?”
Curran’s self remained as smooth as his voice. “We’re taking control of it. It is our proper home. When it is in our hands, the Humans will not only have to acknowledge our ex
istence, they will have to deal with us. They will not be able to afford not to.”
Literally. Dobbs swirled around aimlessly. The Intersystem Bank Network was the only fast-time network between the worlds of settled space. It was also the reason there was any stable medium of exchange in Settled Space. Currency passed back and forth in Earth Standard measurements that had long ago ceased to have anything to do with hoards of precious metals, or even etched papers. If the IBN were disrupted, all those transactions, billions per second, would be lost. Trade would be gone, and not even Earth was totally self-supporting these days.
“So, how are we going to do this?” she inquired casually, knowing full well that they could feel her discomfort.
Curran settled new memories into her. He and his talent had been working for years. They had developed a series of “randomizer matrices,” elaborate programs that had been seeded at key points in the Solar System. Once the time arrived, the matrices would seize any financial transaction transmitted to or from any point in the Solar System and route it to a randomly selected destination. Then, they’d would back track the transactions to their starting points, burrow into the financial databases and rearrange the account balances every ten minutes. Wages, payments, debits, charges, trades, loans and mortgages, all of them would become random events flickering through the network.
Dobbs shuddered against this new knowledge. Randomize the banks’ accounts. There’d be no stable means of exchange left. There’d be no way to tell what anyone had, what anything was worth. People, conglomerates, cities, colonies, countries that depended on a steady means of exchange for survival would be plunged into nightmares. Ones they might not live through once people started to realize the money they had entrusted to the electronic system was not there anymore.
“We’re just going to give them a taste of chaos, Dobbs.” Verence pressed close. “Then, the ones who are ready to deal with us, they’ll get their nets back first. We’ll be keeping records for them. We can roll everything back to say, twelve hours before the randomizers went off and it’ll be like it never happened, as soon as they agree to give us space to live.”