by Damien Boyes
I sit quietly, don’t argue with him and let him talk. Even if I don’t believe it, he needs to say it to me.
“You agreed to make a suicide run on one of Xiao’s enemies or competitors—whoever was in that apartment complex when it exploded.” He waits for a reaction and when I don’t give him one he continues. “We even received a tip about what you were up to. It came from Darien Cole, AKA xYvYx, a freelance Rithmist and associate of Xiao’s. Sent from a dead-drop set to trigger if it wasn’t reset every twelve hours. Saying if anything happened to him, to look into you.”
He stops again, waits for me to respond, but I just nod and say, “Go on.”
“You covered your tracks well. There was no evidence linking you directly to Cole’s death. His security system was too well encrypted to get at whatever evidence it held and he didn’t leave us the keys—but you must not have known about the dead-drop. We issued a warrant for your arrest. An hour later you were dead. Yes, we found the remains of a large optical processor array, and skyns that possessed irregular Cortexes. We assumed someone powerful was threatening Xiao. Maybe Fate. Maybe a new rival we hadn’t heard about yet. Either way, they were dangerous. They had custom Cortex design facilities and possibly a low-level AMP working for them. Xiao wanted them eliminated, so you volunteered to do Cole and this mystery group. Hired yourself out as a Revved-up mercenary in exchange for a backdoor restoration. I figured you’d somehow schemed to save your memories, but then, I suppose you might not have wanted to remember what you’d become.”
I take all this in. He believes it, and as ridiculous as it is, it all sounds plausible. This is the person I am to him.
I have to convince him I’m not. For his sake as much as mine.
“Would you have really re-synced Doralai Wii if you’d found her in my apartment today?”
He twitches his cheek. Studies my face. “She’s out of sync, Mr. Gibson. She hasn’t performed a back-up in more than six months. We need to reintegrate her.”
“You mean kill her.”
“No,” he says, challenging. “She may lose some time, but if she hasn’t been shyfting, there should be minimal personality degradation. Negligible. She won’t even notice. And it’s for her own good. For hers and yours and mine. Rithms can become unstable. Have psychotic breaks. Become dangerous. You know this.”
“And if she has been shyfting?” I ask.
His jaw gets stern. “Then actions have consequences. The law is the law.”
“You’d really erase her, the person she is, just to hurt me?”
He starts. Blinks. “This isn’t about you. She is a criminal. You are a criminal. You sure as hell didn’t think about the people inside the cyphers when you were a cop shooting them in the head.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach.
Could Finsbury have done that? Killed people? Judge, jury and executioner with the squeeze of a trigger?
How could he?
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Exactly,” he says, satisfied. “You didn’t, they weren’t people. They were cyphers.”
I’m not him.
I clench my fists, brace to leap over the table at him. His prosthetics can probably crush bone, but I’ll get a few shots in first. My stomach is quivering.
Instead I take a breath, look at him and say, “I know you blame me for what happened to you. For the pain you’ve suffered, for what you’ve lost. For that I am truly sorry. I know how you’re feeling—the pain, the anger—believe me. This skyn, fresh as it looks, is one big scar. But people who do what we do get hurt, Agent Wiser. That pain should be a reminder of why we do our jobs: so maybe others don’t have to feel it too. Go ahead and hate me if you need, but don’t let your pain blind you to what’s really going on.”
Agent Wiser doesn’t respond for a long minute. Doesn’t move, but the colour drains from his cheeks. I imagine he’s having the same war in his head as I did a moment ago: come across the table or listen.
He shakes his head, licks his lips then says, “Fine. What’s really going on, Finsbury?”
“My dying had nothing to do with Xiao. I was trying to find the person that killed Connie. I have to believe whatever I did, I did because of that.”
“And you let Xiao go because…?”
“I don’t know. I can only believe I had a good reason.”
“You and your good reasons,” Wiser says.
“You wouldn’t do the same?” I counter. “To catch the person who killed someone you love? What wouldn’t you give up?”
The anger slips from his eyes a notch. “What did you find?”
I take a breath, drop the attitude, and tell him the truth. For better or worse. “As far as I can tell, a superintelligence.”
His face pulls taught and his breathing gets shallow, I didn’t think it’d be possible, but his face grows even paler. “A superintelligence? How can you—” He stops, the AMP yelling in his ear. He blinks, pulls on his beard. “A superintelligence was driving the TACvan that killed you and Connie?”
“It’s still trying to kill me. It’s been jacking people, hopping from skyn to skyn. It’s in Elder now. It’s responsible for what happened last night. Probably to Dub. Maybe to Miranda and Tala too. It’s still out there.”
“How do you know all this?” he asks.
“Someone hacked my Sküte and told me.” I’ll keep the kid in my pocket for now. No point giving everything away.
Wiser looks up and in as the AMP goes out and checks the Sküte logs. It comes back with an answer almost immediately.
“Yesterday,” Wiser says. “There was a blackout when you were riding.”
“He apologised for killing Connie. Told me part of what he used to be is after me, and doesn’t care who it hurts.”
“What else did he say?” Wiser says, an edge to his voice now. Excitement or fear I can’t tell.
“He said his name used to be Eka.”
Wiser lurches his chair back and stands. He’s searching my face, trying to see if I’m lying or not, then the AMPs in his ear and he’s listening. “Could it be true? You took on Eka…” he trails off.
I shrug. “You knew about him?”
He shakes his head, strides to the door. “No one knows anything about him. No one’s ever come close. Eka was one of the most dangerously unstable things to ever exist. Even a fraction of a superintelligence is a terrifying thing. If anyone could survive an explosion, it’s him.”
“So you believe me?” I ask.
“Whether I do or not, I can’t risk you’re not lying. I have to go.”
“Wait,” I call after him as the door slides open in front of him. “Let me help.”
“Not this time, Finsbury,” he says, and steps out.
Wiser is scared. Terrified.
And if he’s scared, then I should be too.
Wherever Dora is, I hope she’s okay.
StatUS-ID
[a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]
SysDate
[18:06:44. Sunday, April 28, 2058]
I’m on the Triumph. Revved and flat out, heading to nowhere. Racing along side roads north of the city, slaloming around cars at a hundred and forty without a helmet on.
I don’t feel the speed or the sting of the wind on my face any more than I feel the battery drain or the engine torque from twisting the accelerator. I’m sitting back in my headspace, watching for hits on the cypher sweep and re-examining Amit Johari’s dox, while keeping an eye on the outside world as my body drives the bike through a path I’d programmed into the nav.
It stays upright on its own while my eyes automatically scan for obstacles and my hands operate the controls to avoid them.
One of the shyfts I lifted from that cypher I’d hardlocked the other day turned out to be an Atma, a sort of skyn autopilot program. It let me customize tasks for my body and then set them to run on their own. I’ve been riding for two hours, zig-zagging through the back-roads, and haven’t had to zone back in to my bo
dy once.
Reading and rereading Amit’s life story hasn’t provided me with anything new. No clues as to where he might be or why he’d kill a bunch of people. It’s not wasted time though, the more I know about him the better. You never know what obscure fact might come in handy, what to two disparate pieces of information might fit together to form a lead.
I’m headed toward the station now, figure I’ll get there early, see what Galvan needs me to do.
Ever since Kalifa died, all seems to have been forgiven. I’m off the bench. No mention of the Revv at the arKade. Everything looks back to normal. Just have to keep my nose clean.
My body on the Triumph is emerging from a forested valley to hit a long straightaway south to the city when my IMP requests my attention. It says xYvYx wants to see me, immediately. He’s sent an invitation to his private virt. It’s secure, inaccessible to the public.
Whatever he’s found, it’s big.
I accept the invite and the oriel opens behind me, a greyed-out oval void that gives me no indication as to where it leads. I take one last look through my eyes at the newly ploughed fields and stretches of tress around me and, trusting I’ll still be riding when I get back, step through—
—into nothing.
I’m tumbling, spinning head over heels in lazy circles through empty blackness. I instinctively clench my lips together, hold my breath, fight the panic and try to stop spinning, but there’s nothing to push against, nothing to grab onto.
After a moment of frantic tumbling I come to my senses and realize it’s just another virt. I can pull myself out of here whenever I want. I’m a little dizzy but nothing can hurt me. This is just xYvYx’s way of fucking with me, making it clear he’s in control.
He can think whatever he wants, as long as he does what I need him to.
As I get used to flipping over every few seconds and my eyes adjust to the darkness, I begin to make out details as they swing by my field of vision. It only feels dark, there’s plenty of light. Enough I could read, if I had a book on hand.
On one side of me, who knows how far away, a blue star is radiating a sickly ultraviolet glow. On the other side is an edge-on profile of a bright galactic centre, with thick mottled bands of glimmering neon star cloud extending away from it. A massive orange planet sits off my left shoulder.
It takes me a few more minutes of spinning to notice the shadowy angular spacecraft parked off to my right, it’s non-reflective hull a black cut-out on the star field backdrop. As I’m watching, a sliver of yellow light slices through its side, expands to a narrow rectangle, disgorges a small object, then slides closed again. The object grows until I realise it’s a person on some kind of rocket sled.
xYvYx.
Fucking guy.
I cross my arms and wait, like tumbling out of control through zero gravity is something I do for fun anyway. He’s taking his time, stops and manoeuvres his sled so he’s facing me, fires short bursts from the sled’s thrusters and sets himself spinning at the same rate as I am. Now we’re still and the universe is rotating around us.
His face looks like he’s just taken a big mouthful of sour milk and been told he’s not allowed to spit it out.
“Who the fuck are you?” xYvYx finally yells at me from across the void. Apparently he hasn’t bothered to code a vacuum into the simulation, because I can hear him just fine. The arrogance has slipped from his voice. Something’s shaken him.
“I’m paying you,” I answer, with as much nonchalance as I can muster, “so that makes me your boss.”
“Fuck that. That stuff you sent me. Where’d you get it?”
“Doesn’t matter. What do you have for me?”
He’s quiet for a moment, like he’s deciding on whether or not to answer me. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“What you had.”
“Had?”
“They’re mine now.” The sneer is creeping back. I ignore it.
“Would I be here, flipping my ass in circles if I did?”
“Have you ever heard of Eka?” he asks.
“I’ve heard of him.”
“The shyfts? They contain very early versions of his original Revv build. And the drive? It took some doing, but when I got into it? Even earlier versions. Neuromods of all kinds. Pre-alpha code. Deep archaeology shit.”
Eka?
Amit Johari is Eka.
The sudden realisation hits me so hard, it sets my ears ringing. I’m surprised it doesn’t break my nose.
Of course. Evidence neatly sliced from the link—it would take a supernatural coder to accomplish something on that level, someone who was born talking to computers, a human who’s almost a computer himself, or turned himself into one. And the messages I’ve been getting—Eka must know I saw him, know I’ve been restored and can identify him. He’s threatened, thinks I’ll be coming for him.
But why hasn’t he acted? Why all the bullshit threats? He sent a couple skyns after me and tried to crash my Sküte but why stop there? Why not disable the brakes on an elevator I’m riding in, have it plummet thirty stories? Or tell the housebot to kill me while I sleep? If he can edit SecNet footage, he could have eliminated me a hundred times by now.
But he hasn’t.
Which means he can’t.
I need to figure out why.
Then another thought: Eka’s working for Xiao, protecting him. That’s the only explanation why none of Xiao’s men ever show up on the sweeps. Eka’s blocking the Service's view of them somehow. If he can erase evidence from the SecNet he can surely shroud Xiao and his gang from our view.
But he can’t shield them from me. The cypher in the Market, I could see her on the sweep, even though Galvan couldn’t.
Eka has the entirety of the link flayed open before him, exposed to his touch.
Except me.
“—fuckhead.” xYvYx is waving his arms at me. He’s been talking the whole time. “Am I boring you?”
“I have to go.”
“What?! You’re not going—” I think open my console and eject myself from his virt, check to make sure my skyn is still racing toward the station, then get the IMP started on sourcing everything it can find about Eka.
***
SysDate
[18:31:44. Sunday, April 28, 2058]
The IMP comes back quick. There isn’t much to find on Eka—he’s more link superstition than actual fact—but what there is all fits perfectly.
While there was plenty of linktime devoted to Amit Johari, almost none of it came directly from him. Unlike most hi-reps, he earned his status. He didn’t need to rely on SecNet’s Total Awareness boost to get there like other people who want a decent rep, so he wasn’t forced to open his life up to the link.
Everything I learned about him was produced by someone else. His coding prowess was widely reported on, as was his parents’ decision to try to rewire the ‘broken’ parts of his brain.
In the entirety of his twenty-four years he never once contributed to the link’s endless maelstrom of data. Never once publically sent a much as a smiley face to a friend.
Until two days after his restoration, when he made his first and only feed post.
He talked about how his world had changed. How the process of making him normal had the side effect of turning him into a different person, one he barely recognizes. He tells his parents he loves them, but that he can’t be the person he is anymore. He ends with this:
I walk now among the dead. I see my former self as through the eyes of an anthropologist, searching the remains of my life for who I once was.
Eka appears three weeks later, communicating in untraceable, targeted bursts.
He releases the first amateur thoughtmod and the source code for bypassing the Cortex firewall.
He analyses and explains fragments of psychorithm, their function annotated and the underlying algorithms laid bare.
He’s even attributed to a twelve-hour symphony containing parts for instrume
nts that don’t yet exist.
This continues up until the accident, when Eka goes silent. After that, the IMP can’t pinpoint a single bit or digit that leads back to him.
He’s been hiding ever since.
If Eka created the Revv code, what must his mind be like? He can manipulate the link like he has it hooked to an editing suite and lives in limitless bodies.
How am I supposed to fight something like that?
I’ll worry about that later. First, I have to find him.
But I’ll never track down an invisible man, he could be anywhere. Anyone.
I need to draw him out. Lure him into showing himself.
That I can do.
I get the IMP to find the nearest automart, jump back into my skyn too fast and disrupt the Atma controlling my body. The front tire wobbles at ninety and I wrench it back straight, my heart rate spiking, then shift deep into the Revv and regain my balance.
Once I’m back in control, I increase the speed toward the closest town, get there five minutes later.
The automart’s small, grungy vestibule is empty as I walk in. Just me, an off-white tile floor with dingy corners the cheap utilibot can’t reach, and the silently humming dispensary waiting for my order. I step up to the dimmed screen and ask for the cheapest tab it stocks, credited with a day’s worth of linktime and pay for it out of the anonymous account I’d set up to deal with xY.
A few seconds later a flimsy strip of plastic encased in even flimsier plastic is waiting in the drawer. I take it outside, unwrap it, power it on and create a throwaway StatUS-ID full of bogus data. The rep is through the floor but it doesn’t matter. I’m only going to use it once.
I poke at the on-screen keyboard to compose a text-only message, addressed to Eka:
Now I’ve found you. Your Mom and Dad want me to tell you they miss you, and want their baby to come home. They’re sorry for what they did. Your Dad even let me take a look at your old room. I took some stuff.