The Last Firewall

by Hertling, William

  “But you own one. A twelve millimeter Beretta, a caliber designed specifically for stopping armored bots.”

  Mike leaned back in his seat and stared at the ceiling.

  “This is common knowledge among the Class IV. How do you think it makes us feel that the creator of AI carries a gun designed to kill us?”

  Mike crossed his arms.

  Leon grabbed his armrest, stunned. It was their life’s work to develop the relationship between AI and humans, and with one dreadful action Mike had sabotaged that foundation, driving a wedge between them. He stared out the window trying to gather his thoughts, and swallowed his resentment. It wasn’t the time to get into this. He cleared his throat and Shizoko pivoted to look at him.

  “Shizoko, I acknowledge you just raised a very important issue. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but given the urgency, can we get back to the woman Catherine? You think she can manipulate the net. Is she using some kind of device to do it? Does she have an AI partner?”

  Shizoko built a collage of photos and data in their shared netspace. “Catherine Matthews has a neural implant, but the device is unregistered. That’s not uncommon. It took a year before registration was required, and even since then, there’s a gray market.”

  Mike grumbled but didn’t answer.

  Leon stared at the photo of Catherine, then remembered to breathe. She was beautiful. With a thought he grabbed a copy of the photo out of shared netspace and pulled it into his implant.

  “But she’s been on the net with her implant since immediately after YONI,” Shizoko said. “Her pattern of traffic matches someone who has years of experience with an implant.”

  Leon thought back. The Year of No Internet was the result of the virus-based AI he’d created ten years earlier. To stop a world-wide confrontation, he’d shut down the entire Internet by disabling packet routing. “But that’s not possible,” he said. “There were no implants prior to YONI.”

  Mike looked at them. “That’s not true. We know ELOPe implanted people.”

  Leon thought he saw a tic in the older man’s eye when he mentioned the first AI, the one that he’d created.

  “But ELOPe drove those people insane.” Mike crossed his arms and went back to staring out the window.

  “What if he didn’t drive this one insane?” Shizoko asked. “What if she has a genuine pre-YONI brain implant, with no regulators and a totally unique architecture? She could be capable of anything.”

  “How old is she?” Leon asked.

  “Twenty.”

  “It’s possible, just barely,” Mike said. “She would have been a young kid. Since we don’t allow implants on anyone under fourteen, there’s not a lot of data on what the effects might be.”

  Leon looked at Shizoko. “Why do you think this is anything more than a coincidence, Catherine just happening to be in San Diego?”

  “We suspect a powerful AI is carrying out a long range conspiracy involving political parties,” Shizoko said. “We have a woman who can do things with her implant no one else can do. Both of them are suddenly in San Diego, and as of an hour ago, both are incredibly active. More than twenty percent of the data traffic in downtown San Diego is being perturbed in some way, and the amount is increasing rapidly.”

  “They’re working together?” Mike frowned.

  “Or against each other. Either way, we need to get there as soon as possible.”

  Leon flipped back to the photo of Catherine, dwelling on her eyes and nose. She had to be innocent. She was too carefree and wholesome to commit murder.

  33

  * * *

  SLIM SHOOK HIS HEAD at the waitress, a hand over his coffee cup. While Tony worked steadily on a greasy burger, he glanced across the restaurant.

  The hired mercenaries, minus the robot, sat in their own booth. Helena didn’t eat, and there was no point bringing five hundred pounds of armored nightmare into the restaurant other than to terrorize the diners.

  The three sat in their booth, motionless, making Slim nervous. He was sure they were speaking to Adam.

  He screwed in an earplug so he could talk semi-privately, and started a connection to the boss. It took a few seconds, bouncing through onion routers and the firewall, before Adam appeared.

  “The extraction team says the girl’s in San Diego,” Adam said.

  “Yeah. We’re tracking her with the new hardware.” After they’d lost Cat two days ago, Adam had sent yet another black box, this one able to detect the girl’s machinations on the net. “She’s in the Gaslamp Quarter. We should have her in two hours.”

  “When they get her in the aircar, make sure you’re in there. Catherine is too valuable. They might take her to the highest bidder.”

  Slim would have been honored at the implied trust if his sphincter wasn’t clenched in terror. If the ex-military team decided to double-cross Adam, how was he going to stop them?

  Adam must have seen his hesitation. “Once you’re in the aircar, kill them. Don’t wait for them to make a move. Trigger the stunner.”

  Slim nodded, too fearful to speak.

  “Slim?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t let the girl get away again, or I’ll be displeased.” Adam disconnected, his image swirling away like water down a drain.

  Tony looked up. “Everything OK?”

  Slim stared into the distance, the roar of his pulse thick in his ears. “Fine.”

  34

  * * *

  THE DAY BEFORE, CAT had flown into the desert in a rented aircar to practice with live ammunition. She quit when her arms went numb and ears started ringing, then flew down to the border to figure out how she’d cross. The network traffic surrounding each person’s transit was dense, triple-encrypted stuff that hurt her head. She didn’t see any obvious way to hack the exchange, but she wasn’t ready to give up.

  Today, about to go back to the border checkpoints again, she noticed an uneasy itch in her skull. Vulnerable in the enclosed hotel, she left to wander the Gaslamp Quarter and sample the net.

  Walking down Sixth Avenue, the itch intensified until she was sure someone or something was searching for her. Paranoid, she explored in all directions. After homing in on a blonde, Cat wondered if it was the same woman she’d seen a couple of blocks ago?

  As Cat turned onto G Street, the suspicion grew. She checked her implant and found it locked down in anonymous mode, all interfaces closed except the false identity. There was nothing to point to Catherine Matthews.

  Still, someone sought her, and it was time to flush them out.

  She turned in at the neighborhood pub she’d found last night, now sparsely populated with afternoon customers. She breezed passed a Korean man with tattoos and a trim beard flirting with a woman flaunting cleavage, heading for the bathrooms.

  A stack of beer kegs formed the far wall of the short hallway. No one behind her. She pressed open the keg door, revealing a hidden speak-easy. Unless local to San Diego, Cat’s followers were unlikely to know the trick. With luck, they’d go into the outer bar, look around, and leave.

  She took a booth in the corner with a view of the door.

  The bartender, swarthy and chiseled with shirt-sleeves rolled up to display muscled arms, came over and tossed a coaster on her table.

  Right guy, wrong time. “Herradura, neat,” she said to get rid of him.

  She overlaid her vision with video feeds from street cameras and the pub’s security cam and discretely slipped two guns out of their shoulder holsters and onto her lap.

  On the street cam, the tall blonde she’d suspected before approached with a confident, steady stride. As she drew closer an aircar landed and a man exited, followed by an armored robot like nothing she’d ever seen, all eyes and tentacles.

  The bartender delivered the tequila, smiling and lingering, his intention obvious.

  Cat didn’t have time for the distraction. “Thanks, now go away.” His face fell and she felt a momentary remorse, but the weight of steel in
her lap focused her.

  The bot stopped at the corner with a clear view of both streets and pub, while the woman and man, in matching black flak jackets, continued toward the bar.

  Cat’s grip tightened around her guns. These people were after her. But to shoot when there was even the slightest chance they didn’t mean her harm? She couldn’t.

  She tried to hack their implants, hoping data would prove them innocent or complicit. They were locked down tight with a tang of military encryption reminiscent of the border.

  With a twinge, she realized how foolish she’d been. She could have run anywhere and yet she’d stayed within a few hundred miles. Dumb.

  The two would be inside in seconds.

  Cat explored the net and found the Korean she’d passed on the way in, his implant wide open. She rooted him in milliseconds and her vision flipped to his perspective, leaving her staring at his partner’s cleavage. The man and woman in black drew near.

  She controlled the Korean like a puppeteer, holding his drink out into the aisle, where he bumped into the woman. “I’m sorry,” she said, as the drink spilled. “Let me get something.” Cat moved the Korean toward the bar, blocking their way.

  But the two shoved him back, the motion exposing firearms they held low and close to their bodies.

  She snapped back to herself with the sharp realization that they had weapons out. She let out a breath and stood, aiming both guns at the door.

  To her left, a woman screamed and people scrambled to get away. The bartender looked like he might tackle her. Kuso! She spared just enough attention to root the bartender’s implant and freeze him in place. Then the door started to swing open.

  At a glimpse of black jacket she fired, the shots deafening in the small bar. The woman spun and disappeared behind the door, leaving the entrance empty. Cat swore and shifted sideways for a better view.

  Where was the man? She kept her guns up. More screams, barely audible over the ringing in her ears.

  She needed a better vantage: the bartender was close to the door. Still rooted, she added his perspective as another window, adding to the clutter in her vision.

  The man in black crouched behind the door. His female partner scrambled away on the floor.

  A squirt of encrypted traffic gave away the tentacled robot’s approach, even as a second car arrived, a Honda, with the fat guy Tony and a skinny one too. Christ, how many were there?

  Taking control of the bartender, she grabbed two bottles from the counter and threw them overhand at the man in black.

  Startled, he fired at the bartender, hitting him in the leg.

  A flash of pain forced Cat to disconnect. She rolled to her left, putting the distracted attacker in her view, and fired, two point blank shots to his chest.

  A roar came from outside and Cat turned. The blacked out window exploded in a hail of glass as a groundcar crashed through and ground to a halt, wedged halfway through the exterior wall.

  She dove for the shelter of the bar.

  The door of the Honda opened, and Cat’s heart sank as still another woman in tactical gear peered out. Cat opened fire, then ducked down as the robot took advantage of the opening to let loose a storm of bullets.

  Initial screams gave way to hushed sobbing.

  Cat wanted to join them, to curl up into a ball and disappear. She wasn’t meant for this, hadn’t trained to battle soldiers, had never expected that she’d be fighting for her life in a fucking bar in a strange city.

  The man she’d shot had gotten back to his feet, protected by his body armor.

  She almost dropped her gun in defeat. Cornered by trained killers, she had nowhere to run and couldn’t fight them by herself. She needed options.

  She focused on the net, the attackers solid nuggets of iron, locked down tight by military grade security. She couldn’t hack them, but by comparison, the civilians were soft.

  She took a meditative breath, let her awareness encompass all the implants in the bar, sixteen people. She exerted her will, twisted and pulled in the net. The corner of her mouth twitched up as she rooted them all.

  When the woman in the car and the robot opened fired again, Cat didn’t panic.

  She looked at them through sixteen pairs of eyes plus her own, total panopticon awareness in three-dimensional space. She didn’t know how, but she could see from every perspective simultaneously, with perfect knowledge of every object’s location. Time slowed as she aimed with millimeter precision at the woman crouched in the doorway of the Honda. A single shot and her forehead exploded in a mist of blood.

  Even as she pulled and released the trigger, she also controlled every person in the bar. The Korean and others pounded the first woman attacker, still on the ground, with chairs and legs.

  The waitress and others went en mass after the man, clawing for his eyes and face like brainless zombies. He fired at the crowd, hitting them, forcing Cat to action.

  She dove toward the doorway, and rose up to shoot him again and again, until both guns clicked on empty cylinders. The body armor stopped the rounds, but he was forced back against the wall. She ran after him and gave a snap kick to his knee, buckling it backwards. Before he could drop, she hit him in the face with the empty gun and he crumpled.

  The robot and the men outside responded to the sudden activity by firing a steady barrage.

  Cat hid behind the bar, reloading. The bot pushed against her mind, like hundreds of needles pressing into flesh. She struggled against the mental assault, holding her interfaces closed as she reeled in pain, dropping the gun and ammo. Her body convulsing, she crumpled to the ground. She clamped down her network connection, bringing immediate relief, but her video and geospatial feeds shrunk and dissipated, leaving her hopelessly unaware of what was going on.

  Grabbing the gun off the floor, she slammed a new clip home, then peeked around the corner. The fat man, outside the newly opened hole in the wall, held a large gun in both hands. Cat remembered their encounter in the noodle shop two days ago. She didn’t want to kill him. She took careful aim, hitting him mid-thigh.

  He collapsed with a scream, but the robot and the thin man heard and saw the shot and sent a new storm of bullets into the bar, glass and wood splinters showering Cat. She curled up in a ball, sure that she’d be dead within seconds, but miraculously nothing hit her.

  The robot renewed its cyberattack. Her vision dimmed and brightened as weird tastes floated across her mouth and even her sense of balance distorted. On the verge of passing out, the total vulnerability of pending unconsciousness scared her into motion.

  She fumbled under her jacket for the guided projectile gun, pain hindering even the most basic action. She shut down her vision altogether and the torture faded to a distant throb. Blind now, she reached around to the small of her back and groped until she snagged the holster release. The big gun with its single smart missile dropped into her hand, giving her a surge of confidence.

  Knowing the robot used the visual channel to attack, she instead built a three-dimensional wireframe from street and security cameras, calculated the bot’s location, and pointed the muzzle in the direction of the window.

  The three-inch rocket whooshed out, guidance fins snapping into position. It exited the bar at two hundred miles per hour and twisted hard, gunning for the bot.

  Cat’s wireframe fuzzed out, right in the middle where the robot should be, and the rocket veered off. Her heart sank as it exploded against a neighboring building.

  “Catherine Matthews,” boomed the robot. “Surrender. You are surrounded. I am a military-grade combat bot. You cannot hope to succeed and we do not wish to harm you.”

  35

  * * *

  LEON PACKED NETSPACE with research on Catherine Matthews and street camera video feeds from the bar in San Diego until the walls of the cabin disappeared. Shizoko helped by adding visualizations of the massive fluctuations in the net.

  “Five minutes until we arrive,” Shizoko said over the roar of wide-open engine
s.

  “You’re sure Catherine is not on their side?” Mike asked.

  “The timing doesn’t match,” Shizoko said. “Her public data feed reveals a perfectly ordinary life for ten years. While she’s recently done peculiar things with the net, they’re different than the disturbances surrounding the chain of murders. Nothing, until the attack in the park, would suggest she was anything but normal.”

  “And this group,” Leon said, pointing at the video, “following and attacking her, puts them on opposite sides.”

  “We can’t be sure that makes her the good guy,” Mike said. “Maybe they’re undercover.”

  “No,” Shizoko said. “Their reputation scores suggest they’re hired mercenaries, and they mounted an assault on the bar without calling for police backup. “

  “Undercover cops use faked IDs with bad reps,” Mike said. “Look, we’re trying to rescue this girl without knowing enough about her.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Leon said. “She’s being attacked. Why wouldn’t we help her?”

  “You think she’s cute and you want to play the hero.” Mike shook his head. “You’ll keep playing with the data until it tells you what you want.”

  Leon felt himself flush with embarrassment and anger. She was pretty and smart, and nothing would be better than riding to her rescue. But that didn’t change the facts: she was literally surrounded. He decided to ignore Mike. “Shizoko, what will you be able to do against the mercenaries? You’re not a military bot.”

  “I’m armed, but I also hired private security to meet us. I tried to notify the police, but another AI, a big one, is blocking me.”

  “Another Class IV?” Leon asked.

  “No, it’s bigger. After this encounter, I’ll analyze the network traffic to determine point of origin.”

  Leon and Mike stared at each other. There shouldn’t be any AI more powerful than a Class IV.