The Sword

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The Sword Page 13

by J. M. Kaukola


  It wasn't really the Authority's fault, not truly. He didn't hate them, he owed them too much. They'd won the war. They'd issued the test that bought his way out of drone town. They'd gotten him into this fancy school. Hell, they built the net. They were just... slow.

  They were lumbering giants in a world of millisecond corrections, bound up in mass industry and government power and corporate structure. They were fighting to control meat space when the net was what truly mattered. They were sectioning “protest zones” and demanding “patience” and “understanding” with “progress” on Article Two, and then wondering why they couldn't stamp out the wildfire with riot police.

  They were dinosaurs, who saw the vapor trail in the sky, but kept fighting over a patch of good dirt. In a few moments, it wouldn't matter, but they didn’t understand that the world had already changed.

  That was unfair.

  The problem was, they'd done their job too well. They'd rebuilt society. They'd united the world. They'd cracked the Bergman field, and brought about an age of technology that rivaled antiquity. Job well done! They’d just forgot to close the door on the way out.

  It wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't promised, but Article Two was quite clear: When, in the light of years, it has become apparent that no threat is presented to the united planet, and civilization has been restored to the people, the Terran Provisional Authority shall return all power to the rightful civil government. In order to establish a free and universal republic, the Authority shall divest itself of all rights assumed for the duration of the crisis. The rest of the article laid down specifics, little things like the restoration of free speech, the end of universal conscription, the right to mass assembly, the deconstruction of the militarized state, the right to property outside the state, and the return of all power to the Senate. It was the second fucking paragraph of the Charter, so it wasn't like it was hard to find.

  The problem came down to “duration of the crisis”. As far as he saw it, there hadn't been a threat in a decade, ever since the Faction made a go at it, blowing up buildings left and right. Sure, there were some punk gangs that still sported the old 'hooked triangle', but those were just assholes in seedy bars (and Suze), not a legitimate post-governmental transhumanist terror movement. Lost so much style, guys. So much. And the Path? It was beaten in two System Wars, then locked in the DMZ. If they built so much as a pocket calculator, kaboom! It would come right from orbit, courtesy of the Authority. Let them keep their fucking faith. Maybe they can shovel ice with it.

  Ten years of peace, and a generation that had grown up without the wars, and the old guard started to look very old, indeed. Firenze could barely remember the news reports from elementary school, seated on his mother’s couch, while she held him and the aftermath videos played. Those were the fuzzy past, and for most of his life, the biggest threat had been the cops kicking in the door, or not getting enough food, or getting busted running the net. The crisis wasn't some enemy the Authority was needed to fight, the crisis was the Authority failing its people.

  Of course, the men in power saw it differently, like they always did. Suze had made him take “Transitional Government in the Post War Era” with Professor Lyle. The old woman had gone over it in detail, day in and day out, until Firenze started surfing the net on his contact lenses. The Authority saw threats in every corner, because that's how it was designed. To unite the planet, to save civilization, to restore mankind, it had built the largest military force ever conceived. It had worked! (It hadn't hurt that the Path kept jumping up for a conventional war, and then conveniently blew their own power-base to atoms with that damn drive failure.) Still, victory was victory.

  Unfortunately, after they'd won, and it was time to take a bow and get off the stage, they'd found other reasons to stick around. Things were still “too fluid”. There were still “resource crisis” and “stabilization efforts” that required a direct hand, and they still had so many soldiers to employ digging ditches or whatever project came up that week to justify the largest army in mankind's history sitting around and playing dice. No government ever willingly reduces its own power. kendrix had said that. Firenze thought he might be right. kendrix, Suze, they were probably right about a lot of things, but Firenze was more than content to have his opinions, watch the news, and keep his head down. There weren't any laws against that.

  First one in my family to not end up in jail, and I'm not gonna lose everything cause of a damn rally. He'd done his time in Old Chicago, a slum carved out of hell itself. No jobs since automation, no dole because of the gangs, and no one gave a damn cause, well, fuck 'em. Single mother raising six kids, working three jobs and abusing corner store amphetamines to stay functional, it was just another sad little story out of drone town, and one that he wasn't petty enough to ruin on account of misguided idealism.

  When his brother went to prison, he'd left all his credits to mom, told her to get out of drone town. At first, she'd refused, didn't want his money, and just buried the chips in her mattress, but after Tom died in the work-yard, she decided to do something. Grant had always been good with computers, and maybe he could earn his way out. She'd save one of her kids, at least.

  That money got him into secondary school. His performance got him into college. No way he'd be anything but the best, not what got him here. He'd prove mom right. He'd prove everyone else, wrong.

  He'd been out here six years, and done it. Not enough money to buy mom out, but enough to send a little home every few weeks. She said he'd done enough, he'd made it out, made her proud. By the bootstraps. That was the saying, pulling himself along. But she'd pushed before he could pull, and he never forgot that, so like hell he was going to let some dumb rally send him to prison. Suze could go rant and rave in all she wanted, and kendrix could post his rants all day long, but Firenze was going to squirrel money, butter up every professor on campus, and spend his free time safely inside the net.

  His glasses chimed, the countdown in the corner letting him know that it was time to conference with the prof. He gave one last glance to the street below, to the blackshirts and the banner they’d hung across a scrubber unit, two stories over the water: the brass-on-blue eagle of the special police. Stay classy, guys.

  Firenze closed the door behind him and returned to the matress. He crawled over it, tried to nestle between the lumps. In the reflection of an old viewer screen, he could see his matted hair, the pale tint to his skin. Time to clean up a little. He slid the IV into his wrist port, clamped his arm to the side of the mattress, and plugged in. He laid back, closed his eyes, and waited. The chimes came from the computer. He braced. One long tone sounded. Two. Three.

  There was pandemonium. An explosion of light that echoed like color, and sounds that tasted of flame. He seized, thrashed about on the padding. Everything was alight, freezing in the rain.

  There was tranquility. Like the moment before sleep, there was darkness, warmth, and the slight sensation of sinking into soft pillows. His body vanished as the hard jack disabled motor functions. It was very much like sleep. He drifted through a silent sea, felt a gentle breeze ripple through him.

  He was back. Or rather, he was in the net, deeper and truer than most could dream of, in their pathetic little virtual goggles or soft jacks. He was in his sitting room, in the deep leather seats and the windows over the ocean, with the warm breeze of summer that danced between the rolling tides and glimmering starlight. The colors were deeper, richer. The feelings were truer. The counters gleamed, the feel of the plush rug under his feet was immaculate, as he moved his toes through the loops and tassels. He could smell the fire in the hearth, a fire that never needed logs, feel the waves of heat as wood broke and burned at seperate intervals, heard the sizzle and pop of moisture pockets in the beams.

  He was alive, more alive than he ever was outside. He stood from his chair, felt the shift of his clothes. Fine clothes, too, not the Bazzers discount shelf. Why settle for anything but the best? He turned to the mirro
r on the mantle. He cut a better figure here. He wasn't arrogant enough to give himself a full body-lift, but made sure he was always groomed, a little tanned, and a little toned. Why not, when he could edit the foundations of the world with a whim?

  “Giving yourself a show?” Lauren asked. “Because I think Narcissus wants his pond back.”

  Firenze turned, making a show of “holstering” his gun. “No worries, ma'am, just making sure the information highway is safe for awesome.”

  “Oh, my hero.” She replied, flatly, before taking a bite from a flat biscuit.

  “I'm making sure I'm suitable before the meeting.” Firenze clarified.

  “Oh, and it's not for talking with little miss 'I'm so bad at network design, please come over and show me your pointers'?” She asked.

  “Look, Misty needs some help with networking two-oh-two, and I'm available, so I can drop to her private channel and help her out.” Firenze explained.

  “She's a whore.” Lauren stated flatly.

  “Whoa! Hey, that's really uncalled for- she just needs a hand!”

  “I've analyzed her social posts and applied heuristic analysis to determine with relative certainty that she is, in fact, a floozy.” She reached up into the air, and pulled down a chart, with a giant pie with a ninety-nine point eight percent “chance of being a whore” slice. Firenze opened his mouth to object, but Lauren cut him off, “Her name is Misty. She draws a heart over the ‘i’.”

  “Hey, hey.” He objected. “I'm a grown man, I can take care of myself, thank you, very much. Now, let's go talk to the Prof.”

  “You're not wearing any shoes.”

  “Oh, come on-” He glanced down at his feet. “Thanks.”

  She shrugged, and gave an ‘I try’ grin.

  Firenze reached forward, imagined a wardrobe in his mind, pictured a pair of shoes. At a high level, what he was doing was searching directories to call forth a mapped object for overlay onto his virtual avatar, a series of textures and properties that would render into varying levels of detail for himself and other users based upon their degree of integration into the net, be it goggles, soft-, or hardjacks. For an amateur, each line of code would have to be applied or activated through user interfaces and menus. For a proficient node runner, it was far simpler, yet deeper.

  In the physical world, he was slumped unconscious on the couch, eyes flickering, the wires hanging between the assist box on the floor and the prod stuck in his arm. Inside that needle was carried the seductive mathematical rhythm which bore him from the confines of reality towards liberation. For an amateur runner, even this wouldn't be enough to overcome their own mental limitation. Any particular motion intended for the meat-world would translate as the same motion in the virtual. Attempts to raise an arm would raise your avatar's arm, and walking through the virtual world would be much the same as walking through the physical. Certain codes, certain commands, would open interfaces that changed the operating field, but for all intents and purposes, they would have to use a computer, inside a computer.

  For an expert like Firenze, with a well synced mask, there was so much more subtlety and power. He could see the pieces of code tucked into the wardrobe, inside each shoe or sandal. He could see handles and pointers that were barely there, glimmering beneath the surface. He could reach out, manipulate any of them directly with the slightest thought, translated over by an assist box and mask that had been trained and adapted to his every pattern and trait. He could bound the world on a whim. With merely an intent to be somewhere, the mask would execute, and they would arrive.

  This was not skill. Sure, programming mattered, the ability to read and think in strings of data, code, and raw math all served as a foundation. But few problems required on-the-fly scripting, and the mask would fill in the pseudocode, so long as he gave valid directions. More important, he knew, was the broad and deep connection between the runner and the mask. Every assist box required adaptive code, the best ones verged on the harsh legal line of AI. To reach the peak of man-machine interface required weeks, months, of training, getting the mistranslations worked out, establishing a unique shorthand to interact with the virtual world. Firenze had been working with Lauren for years, upgrading the hardware while maintaining the profile. At a certain point, the assist stopped being merely a tool. After a while, the runner and mask were more than a user and interface, but instead a single unit, determining function and execution as easily as any person in the physical world might reach over and pick up a stone. That person wouldn't have to think about the electrical codes in their nerves, or the chemical instructions to their muscles. The movements were automatic and complete, as movements should be.

  Firenze chose a pair of casual shoes, and he wore them. The wardrobe vanished, the directory folded away into the net.

  “Looking good, cowboy.” Lauren said. She sprawled sideways across the chair, and flashed him a thumbs up. For just a moment, she wore a cowboy hat, jauntily cocked, and silver-spurred boots. Then those were gone, back to business-professional.

  The personalities of masks were emergent. Most came with a set of default profiles to choose from, professional and friendly. Some could be customized for various roles. Some were more adaptable than others, and there was always a gray market for more disreputable models. They all shared certain similarities, certain functions. The mask's priority was to interface between runner and net, but also to act as a guide and safety. They were interface and assist in one, and the longer a user ran with a single mask, the more proficient the relationship became. Usually.

  There were occasional hostile models that required a purge, but by and large, the adaptive code produced a friendly personality suited for the individual user, reflecting back exactly what the user required in order to interface properly. However, even the most regulated models eventually developed issues.

  Emergent personality was a real problem. The longer the mask ran, the longer it emulated, the more the program would build inefficiencies and artifacts, bits of code accrued from abandoned evolution, scoured from an errant thought of the user, or plucked from the miasma of the net. This was why masks were constrained to an assist box, not permitted to flit about the open web, for fear of a virus being transmitted through wetware into the user, or of shattering the function of the assist. This was why masks were purged at regular intervals, the emergent personalities reset and the unit requiring a retraining session.

  Firenze had not done this.

  He told himself it was for the increased speed that they'd worked up to. He insisted that it would be too large a hassle to rebuild her. Too much work, really, and he was kind of lazy. Besides, he didn't think he was going crazy from any feedback loops. Not yet. He'd just keep his eyes open for any of that sort of behavior.

  She winked at him, and he smiled back, despite himself.

  Too much damn work. “Alright, I need you to go into stealth mode.”

  She scowled, and said, “Right, right. I get to prep the party, but once it's started, 'oh no, make sure you go hide yourself before you get the vapors'.” She flipped him off. “Chauvinist.”

  “That's not what it's about.”

  “Racist.”

  “Probably closer! Look, it's not me, it's the professor- and you're not listening to me, are you?” He finished his statement to empty air. “Damn it.” He always managed to piss her off.

  The phone rang.

  Network connections dialogged, translated the attempted contact from Professor Neland's softjack into Firenze's hardjack. The Professor wished to establish host at Firenze's location. Firenze saw the contact info, and picked up the archaic rotary phone.

  Neland sat opposite him, in the big leather chair that Lauren had used. The Professor wore his sport jacket open, his tie off, looking more set for golf than the meeting he'd surely just left. Neland's craggy face broke into an open smile as he looked about the room. He said, “Nice place you've made here, Grant.”

  You can only see and hear it. You should grok
the real thing. “Yeah, it is, thanks. I put a lot of work in it.”

  “It shows. You’ve got an eye for this. That's why I'm contacting you.”

  “What's up?” Firenze tried not to show his anxiety. He'd heard rumors that the Professor was trying to get funding for a big AI experiment, and was picking up doctoral students to assist. Truly, he'd heard more than rumors; he'd cracked into the database and taken a peek. Right now, though, he had to be unknowing and calm, no matter how much he wanted to jump up and down and scream, “Me! Me! Me!”

  “Well, I loved the work you did on false rendering and sensate feedback, for the softjack project. At first I thought there'd be too much drain on processing cycles in low-end units, but the scaling was spot on. Heat, voltage, timings, everything. Really impressed Doctor Kusowa. He wouldn’t stop talking about it, told me to take a look. It impressed me, too.”

  “Thank you, professor. It's really a passion of mine, the growth of integrated virtual worlds.” You have no idea. In the physical world, he'd have been shaking from nervousness, hoping to get asked to be on the team. In here, he was totally cool.

  “Like I said, your work shows. I'm about to start a certain project involving adaptive code and AI comparison, it's a crossover with some of Doctor Singh's people from technoethics, and we're looking at some of the lines between technical and social conflict thresholds. Would you be interested? We could use you on the technical side. I can tell you more once you've signed onto the non-disclosure agreement.”

  “Yeah, absolutely.” Hell yes! “Sounds interesting.”

  “Great, great. Good to have you aboard. Just a head's up, we're going to be looking at a dumb AI and self-modifying code, we're running at the edge of rampant development, and this will involve government sponsorship. This will look great for your doctoral.” Neland extended his hand to shake, and Firenze took it eagerly. “I look forward to having you on the team.”

  “I look forward to being there! Thank you for the opportunity, sir!”

 

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