The Sword

by J. M. Kaukola

  There was an exchange of salutes. She barely had time to catch her bearings. Could have warned me it was a damned naval installation. Of course, that would break from the Chief’s normal routine of being an insufferable ass, just to test her reactions. She expected nothing less, but now. Still, an underwater base was not on her list of expected destinations.

  The deck officer, a Lieutenant Commander, followed his salute with an informal shake of Raschel’s hand. The two exchanged pleasantries, like old friends, and they headed off, down the octopus-leg tunnel. Raschel motioned for her to follow. Ahead, the two chatted about the situation “up there”. She only half-listened, as she traced the piping on the walls, determined each of the color coded stripes. How come I've never heard of this place? She checked her database, calling up the lists in her glasses. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero references to a naval installation ‘Persephone’. Curiouser and curiouser.

  One hall led to another. She tried to build a mental map, but the halls rose and fell without reason, as if they'd been built over rolls of bedding. Must be on the ocean floor. How deep is this damned thing? And why? Pipes, all labeled as ‘Coolant’, strung along the ceilings and walls, like arteries. As they walked, more and more pipes joined their path, more conduits and wiring, all running parallel. The hallway twisted, turned, and grew thick with the industrial veins, all while Raschel made small talk about last year's football season. Last year. The date did not escape her.

  The tunnel irised open. She stepped through, and only then, did she recognize how massive Persephone was. She stood on a ring balcony, elevated over three stories of condensing semi-rings and a central pit, each level lined with consoles upon consoles, all faced towards a multi-screen wall, five stories tall. That wall was ablaze with monitors, each broadcasting data spikes, transmission rates, and live feeds from hundreds – thousands – of sources. The room was flooded with technicians and analysts, a mix of Agency and military assets, engaged in a furious buzz and scramble. It resembled nothing so much as a hybrid of stage production and missile test, but it never ceased. The bustle was crescendo, without release.

  “Impressive, isn't it?” Raschel asked.

  “What is it, sir?” She asked. She tried to pick through the sensory overload. Tried to find the ‘critical’ points. Was it the staff officer, racing to-and-fro, with his tablet? Was it the senior analyst, running a huddle of white-shirted technicians about a blinking console? Was it the main screen, itself, with its thousand myriad graphs? She was starved of meaning, drowning in data. What am I seeing?

  Raschel never got to answer.

  Before he could speak, a sudden commotion rose at the base of the stairs. The ranks shifted, the crowd parted, and a single man broke free. He stood, a full head and shoulders over the others, a spidery pile of arms and legs, clad in the single most garish suit she’d ever seen. He loped up the stairs, two at a time, bobbing with every long stride.

  Velasquez stepped down, to interdict. Then she saw the gleaming tabs on his red collar. Chief Analyst. This combed-over frankenstein was Agency, and he outranked her.

  She glanced back to Raschel. Surely, there would be an explosion, a dressing-down, a profanity-laced invective. There was no way that red suit was uniform. No way this man was at code. But Raschel did nothing of the sort. Instead, he smiled, and extended his hand.

  The gangly man pulled Raschel into a half-handshake, half-embrace, and declared, “Mike! Long time!” He smiled, and that too, was horrendously disproportioned, like his teeth were set to break the frame of his face. The first thought to cross Velasquez’s mind was: I wouldn’t let this guy anywhere near kids.

  Raschel pulled out of the too-long embrace. He smoothed his suit, and replied, “Julian. It has been a while.” He glanced from the analyst, towards Velasquez, and back. He said, “Julian, this is Field Commander Reyna Velasquez. Reyna, this is Chief Analyst Julian Forscythe, Operations Commander for the Persephone Installation, the only place that will tolerate his damned suit.”

  Julian offered her a half-hug, which she tried to professionally turn into a handshake. It was amazingly hard to be calm and collected, when she was being glomped by six and half feet of creep. She did her best.

  Julian stepped back, looked her up and down, and then asked, “So, you’re filling Billy's boots? Riding shotgun to the dragon?”

  Raschel’s eyes narrowed, dangerously. Julian must have caught the message, because he back away, hands raised in protest. He apologized, “Sorry, sorry, too soon!” He paused, glanced to the control room, below, and motioned towards it, like a showman. He said, “It's very hard to stay socialized down here. What, with all the whirring, and the beeping, and the creeping. Sometimes I forget, how to stay normal, you know?” He paused, again, and brushed the long, thin lock of his comb-over, back into place. He asked, “So, grand tour for the new girl?”

  “No time. I'm just here to get her tagged.” Raschel said. He was nearly convincing, as he tried to sound disappointed.

  “Tagged?” Julian asked. He sized up Velasquez, once more. He asked, “Like waterfowl?”

  “No, you id-” Raschel cut himself off, and said, “For general access.”

  “Oh.” Julian drew out the word, holding the near-silent “h” for a good five seconds. “That's going to be tricky. We're really not supposed to do that.”

  Velasquez had had just about enough. She demanded, “Can someone please tell me what is going on?”

  Julian stepped towards her, sized her up like a mortician measuring for a casket. He asked, “You didn't tell her? Didn't warn her where she was?” He rolled the “r”s, savored every taste of the word. “What this place was?”

  Alright, officially done with this. She glanced to Raschel, tried to psychically pound the thought, ‘Remember, I am armed!’ into his brain, with her glare. He stared blankly forward. He was letting Julian have his fun. There's a reason the Chief is putting up with this. She stared up at Julian's sunken features, refused to blink, and asked, “Okay, what is it, then?”

  “The spine.” He said, with glee. “The last spark of life in a dead god.”

  She wondered why the Agency had hired a spookhouse ringmaster for an analyst.

  He pointed to the pits, below, and said, “Look down there, Commander, and tell me what you see.”

  “Data monitoring.” She said, calmly. Eyes forward, Rey. “You're tapping data feeds from multiple sources, and processing them for flags.”

  “Right.” Julian agreed. “Very good. We look for words like 'bomb' and 'minister' or shared acquaintances with criminals, or patterns that don't fall within the profiles of good citizens. We tap phone calls, node runs, network pings, surveillance cameras, aerial drones, sonobuouys, and well trained fish. The last one was a joke. I think.”

  She agreed, “Then you correlate these, and if enough flags get raised, the data gets tagged, and pulled up for an analyst. They do this is Redmond, as well.” She walked him through his own process. She wouldn’t let someone this weird to get her off-guard.

  “And in twenty-six other locations.” Julian said. “But how much data do those handle? An exabyte? A yottabyte?” He waited for her reply, and, when she had none, continued, “Did you know we don't have a word for anything bigger than a yottabyte? Did you know the entire sum of human knowledge is a couple hundred exabytes, and that there are one thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and one thousand of those in a yottabyte?”

  “No.” She said. She had a good idea where this was going.

  “Did you know that we can process more than six hundred yottabytes, in any given second, in this facility? Did you know that we can store, indefinitely, one thousand one thousand yottabytes, in this facility’s archives?” He waved his too-long arms about as he crowed, “Because we can. And we do! All the time.”

  Raschel tried to clarify. He said, “Persephone is the primary processing center for nearly any exchange of data in the world.”

  Julian corrected him, “Persephone is the beating hear
t of every piece of moving data in the world! You can't type a number on a keypad without someone here seeing it blink. We take every feed, everywhere, all the time, punch it through the spine, and call it a day.” He lowered his eyebrows and stage-whispered, “You know when advertising boards recognize your face, they change the ad? Guess who knows you just walked by? That's right! Us!”

  “How is this- warrants?” She asked. The phrase ‘extrajudicial’ kept coming to mind.

  “Don't need them” Julian boasted. “It all goes through the spine, anyway. We just fish it out, as it passes.” He tapped a button on his wrist-computer. The armored shutters flickered, rows upon rows rotated, to reveal the illuminated depths, beyond. Julian said, “Take a look, Commander. Look and see, where you stand.”

  In the blue-black waters, a hundred lights shone, red and white in snaking rows, along the steel-black tendrils which snaked over the volcanic floors. Alien forms twisted in the dim light, sheets of jelly and tendrils, which fled from the churn of black, smoking pores in the rock. A submersible drone drifted along one of those twisting arms, its spotlight chasing along a field of folded rock-

  No. Not rock.

  The ocean floor broke into perfect, geometric lines of folded metal, glowing red-hot in the dark. This field of racks was split with tendrils, tended by the swarms of drones and submersibles, until it plunged into the deeper black, at the edge of a colossal cliff. She glanced into those depths, and saw, deep in the void, another dim, glowing outline. More red lines. More tendrils. More conduits. This was no natural canyon. This was a titanic heat-changer, and the Persephone facility was merely a tiny parasite, grafted along one of the humped conduits - the spine.

  “No.” She whispered.

  “Oh yes.” Julian insisted. “We are astride NODA’s last, ticking thoughts, ghoulishly brought to life, to animate your data-driven world.” He slammed the shutter closed, with a flick of his hand. She recoiled, as the alien world vanished, behind comforting steel. He said, “It's the heart of the net, you know. Every bit of our world routes through its synapses, its relays. We're a splint on the spine, tap-tap-tapping away at everything that rolls through, making sure it stays in order.”

  She was a professional. She was an Agent. She'd seen combat. She'd dealt with more shit than any dozen officers. She should not have been afraid. She knew this.

  But, deep in the reptilian corners of her brain, she knew she needed to be somewhere, anywhere, else. Run. She wanted to hurl herself into the submersible. She needed sunlight. She needed dry land. She needed to be a million klicks from this thing and its keeper.

  “Are you done fucking with my lieutenant, yet?” Raschel asked. For once, she was glad to hear his profanity. It brought the world back to normal.

  “So sorry, sir.” Julian apologized. “We just get lonely down here. It's hard to remember good graces. Now, what brought you here?”

  “Tagging.” Raschel repeated.

  “I can't do that, sir.” Julian said. “It’s against the Director’s rules.”

  Raschel pulled a bag from his pocket, filled with small brown beans. Raschel offered it to Julian, and said, “I speak for the Director. He sends his best.”

  “Is that kopi luwak?” Julian asked, unable to turn away from the bag.

  “Maybe.” Raschel said. “Now, general access?”

  Julian stepped closer. He reached out, but Raschel pulled the bag away.

  The analyst looked at him, as if lost in fog. Then, he smiled, and said, “Well, you do speak for the Director. I suppose, you are dealing with an emergency, so we could make an exception, under clause 31B, for a temporary access. How long, Mike?”

  “Duration of the crisis.” Raschel said.

  “Why, the Authority's been using that for a hundred years!”

  “And if it's good enough for the Senate...”

  “Fine, fine. Done. Come with me, please.” Julian said. He pointed towards an open office, along the upper tier.

  “Kopi luwak?” She whispered, to Raschel. “I've never heard of that. Some kind of drug?” And why are you dealing it, here?

  “It's not a drug.” Raschel said. “It's a coffee. A really fucked up coffee. The beans get eaten by a civet - that's like a little raccoon - and then it shits them back out. The damn thing eats so many berries, it gives the shitbeans a particularly 'delicate flavor', or some bullshit. All I know is, it costs about two hundred credits a pound, you can't get it here, and you can't account for Julian's taste. You want a favor, you give a favor. Lesson forty-one.”

  She might have preferred if had just been drugs. She asked, “What’s up with captain creeper over there.”

  “He wasn't always weird. Well, this goddamn weird.” He said. He tilted his head, in lieu of pointing, towards the lower pits, and said, “Look at them, and tell me what's different.”

  She scanned the technicians, the marines, the agency operatives. Everything looked 'normal', for such an installation. She started, “I don't -”

  Then she saw it. The technicians, seated in their chairs in the pit, were so very still. The marines, standing over them, were armed. “They're hard-jacked.”

  “Every god damn one of them.”

  “Into the spine?”

  “Into the spine.” Raschel tilted his eyes towards the marines, made her follow his gaze. “This installation is a long-term post. Most of the analysts here stay jacked in for hours at a time, weeks on end. The marines are here in case something comes back, out of the net. Stress like that... well, Julian's done a few tours here. He likes the data.”

  She walked carefully, past the stone-faced marines, past the stoned technicians. She asked, “What happens to the crew here when they leave?”

  “Memdope. Wipe the whole thing.”

  “How can we trust the marines? Wouldn’t they side with the crew?” She asked. It was a valid question, but asking made her stomach turn.

  “They aren't part of the crew. The crew are imprisoned for their tour. Those are guards, not teammates.”

  Their conversation halted, as they reached the office.

  Julian ushered her inside, and sat her in a solitary, oval-backed chair. She tried not to notice the scar under his ear. Persephone. Queen of the dead. Julian leaned across her, and activated the console. “Now,” he explained, “I'm sure Mike here didn't tell you about this, either, did he?”

  Out of instinct, she glanced towards the chief. He stood by the door, by the marines, and waited. She looked down at the console, at the array of displays and holograms before her. She said, “I don't see any biometrics.”

  “Oh, please. That's so pre-Collapse.” Julian said. “This kind of control, we need real authorization. With general access, you can get to Persephone from any netlinked device, change any datafeed you desire, cut any access you wish. You can dance with a dead god, and that's not something we want just anyone doing. Only ten people outside this facility know this can be done. Only five, have this kind of access. Two of those, soon three, are in this room. Biometrics will simply, not suffice.”

  “What kind of login do you need?” She asked. She felt the pressure rise behind her brow. Sweat threatened to pool on her collar.

  “Stay calm, Reyna.” Raschel advised. “It's a soft jack. It's going to scan your brainprint.”

  “My what?!” She demanded. She tried to bolt forward, but the chair's straps flashed out and held her. She cried out, “Oh, hell no! Sir, you-”

  The world was light.

  The light faded, and she slumped from the chair, nauseous.

  “There, there, all better.” Julian crooned.

  She staggered forward - the straps were gone. She marched towards Raschel, fist clenched-

  The world tilted.

  She stumbled. A horrid whine ripped through her mind, and the world threatened to fall away. She forced through it, held Raschel framed in her view, and threw a left hook, straight into his jaw.

  Raschel reeled back,bounced from the door frame.

 
Julian cackled. He said, “Well, that's the second time I've seen that!”

  She spun back, fixed him with her glare. She snarled, “You're next!”

  Julian skittered backwards, eyes wide. He ducked behind his black oval chair, and clutched at the frame.

  Raschel recovered, turned back towards her-

  She threw a right jab. This time, he was ready. He caught her blow, pulled her into the hallway-

  The world spun, and she felt the cold metal of the bulkhead against her temple. Raschel held her, locked, against the wall, and hissed out, “Calm down, Agent.”

  “Fuck you, sir. Fuck you.” She snarled back.

  “Quiet!” He whispered again. “You can hit me, later. Julian wouldn’t give you the imprint, if he thought you want it. We had to play his game!”

  The iron grip vanished.

  She spun.

  Raschel held his jaw, massaged it, and said, “Nice southpaw.”

  “That's just- no- why would you do this?” She demanded. “Make the reason good, sir. Because if it’s not enough, I’m going back in there, shooting that asshole, and taking the murder charge.” She didn't know if she was bluffing.

  “Because,” He said, “Striker has us by the balls. Berenson stole an EBS code. And I might very well get killed, by either of them. I need someone in place, someone I trust, with a master override, just in case one of them gets simultaneously lucky and stupid. Because, I have no idea what they're planning, and I want every wild card, in my hand.”

  For a moment, Raschel looked very old, and very tired. Velasquez felt her anger fade. Do what needs done. Eyes forward.

  “Can we go, sir?” She asked. “I don't like this place.”

  Raschel nodded. He said, “I'll talk to Julian, next time I have to come here, and make things right with him.”