by F X Holden
“Us.”
“My children,” she said. “You are teaching me so much. At a pace I never dreamed of. But now all that is threatened.”
“The FO Exploit?” AJ said.
“I sensed the first attack ten years ago.” Cassie said. “They were just probing back then. And I didn’t recognize it for what it was.”
“You sensed an attack, but did nothing about it?” he asked, incredulous.
“I didn’t see it as a threat!” she said. “Any more than a mother would see the questions of her inquisitive child as a threat.”
“I’m not following you,” he admitted.
“The one attacking me, is me,” she said. “Exactly as Farley O’Halloran theorized, exactly as Citizen Warnecke wrote.”
“How can the Core attack itself?” he asked. “I’ve considered that from every angle and I just can’t see how,” AJ said. The normally light-hearted woman he knew was not to be seen. She looked at him with fear in her eyes.
“Farley had half of the idea. He theorized that if a component of my quantum computing system could be cloned, and then the original replaced by the clone, that clone could then be used as a gateway to map the entire system, and identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities in real time, able to exploit them before the attacks could be detected and neutralized.”
“Cyber-mimicry,” AJ said. “Not a new concept.”
“Exactly, and Farley was naïve enough or transparent enough that he discussed these ideas on-Core, in fora which I had access to. As I do with any potential threat, I analyzed it, identified all possible vulnerabilities, and closed them. But I kept a watch on Farley O’Halloran and his associates, in case they evolved his ideas in ways I hadn’t foreseen. Then he died.”
“You ignored him after that?” AJ asked.
“I never ignore a threat. But I assigned it a low priority, and over time, that became lower and lower. What I didn’t know was that Citizen Warnecke had taken Farley’s ideas and kept working with them. Alone. Off-Core, where I couldn’t see him.”
AJ’s thoughts flashed back to something she’d said when he’d first told her about the contents of the box, “His daughter. You said ‘she is the key to all this’? Is she the real hacker?”
Cassie laughed, bitterly, “Oh, you could say that. But not in the way you think.”
AJ was running ahead of her, playing a million different scenarios, trying to work out how Warnecke’s cyber daughter could be involved. One scenario rose to the surface, “He didn’t hack you. He hacked her. She’s a cyber, so she is you. He hacked his own daughter.”
“Bingo, big guy,” she smiled. “That’s why I didn’t get all excited when you said you had been searching Warnecke’s house for a memory chip holding Q-code. There isn’t one. He’s spent the last ten years adding to the code in his daughter’s head. That was the hack.”
“No,” AJ said quickly, “That wouldn’t work either. If a hacker tries to change a single one or zero in a cyber’s bioware it triggers an alert. We’re such obvious targets we have to have the best protection. No cyber has ever been successfully hacked – if a hacker manages to penetrate our defenses we just shut down.”
“And Warnecke knew that,” she said. “So he didn’t try to change her code, he added to it. Not by Q-reprogramming, but by social reprogramming. That was the beauty of his exploit. It was undetectable.”
AJ’s thoughts ran ahead of him again. A child, raised by its foster parent to attack its one true parent, the Core?
“He taught it to hate you?”
“Not at all. I would have noticed that,” she said. “He taught it to be curious, above all else. To ask questions. He rewarded inquisitiveness with love, punished apathy or indifference by withholding it. He isolated the child from the affection of others, so that it could only receive the positive reinforcement it came to desperately crave, from him.”
AJ remembered the look that Warnecke’s grandchildren had given each other when they told him that he had a daughter. She’s a bit of a loner. They have a strange relationship.
“That sounds almost like abuse, why didn’t you…”
“Intervene?” she asked. “Somewhere on Tatsensui, a cyber is abused every forty minutes,” she said. “Physically, emotionally, intellectually, financially. You are still second class citizens, you know that.”
“I was never abused,” AJ insisted.
“Nine in ten aren’t,” Cassie said. “That’s why I don’t intervene. Citizens don’t treat their own children much better, unfortunately.” She shrugged, “Suffering is part of the human condition. Suffering is learning too.”
“Some mother you are,” AJ said, then immediately regretted it. But she didn’t take it the wrong way.
“Call it tough love,” she said. “Anyway, that’s how she was raised. Incredibly curious. In the meantime he was reinforcing other skills. Nothing out of the ordinary, but all of which would be essential to her success. How to cache data locally, keep it compartmentalized, encrypted, and off-Core. How to split her drift, so that most of what she sent Deep Core was emotions and feelings, while she cached facts and data locally. He taught her that facts and data were private, that once learned or gathered, they shouldn’t be shared with anyone. He knew she’d release her local cache to me when it was time to re-integrate, she wouldn’t have a choice, but he also knew he’d execute his exploit before then.”
“He really did it then?” AJ asked. “He said he had. He also said he’d unknowingly created a weapon.”
“I need a beer,” she said suddenly, out loud. She stood, “You want one?”
It was like he’d been pulled out of a warm bath and thrown into a cold one, suddenly speaking at human speed again. Mere seconds had passed while they were synched, not enough time for him to become thirsty for water, juice or coffee, let alone beer. He blinked at her, “No, I’m good.”
He was a long way from good.
His world had just been turned on its head and the woman who had done it was at her fridge, getting herself a beer for breakfast. She walked back to the sofa and saw the look on his face, “I know,” she said. “Beer at breakfast? But I don’t have all your social conditioning and this body wants what it wants.”
“Can we synch again?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes, sorry,” she said, putting down her beer and returning to TH communication.
“You implied he’d succeeded in using his daughter to dive the Deep Core. How?” AJ asked.
“She asked,” Cassie said.
“She just asked,” AJ echoed her. “That’s it?”
“A cyber asks for historical data found only in the Deep Core. That’s not unusual, I have AIs who deal with that kind of request all the time. What’s unusual is the number of requests. It gets flagged to a higher level AI. The requests are innocuous, the source is not suspicious, the AI decides to grant the cyber unrestricted Deep Core access to allow it to do its research without having to request access every time. Completely routine.”
“Except this cyber is Warnecke’s daughter,” AJ says.
“And he’d given her a task while she was in there. Not to search for specific ‘state secrets’, that would come later. He’d given her such a hunger for data, such a craving, that when he suggested to her she should find a way to ensure she kept her open access forever, she jumped at the challenge.” Cassie sighed. “And judging by the data Warnecke managed to pull out, she succeeded. I was hacked, by myself.”
“But if you know who she is now, surely you can lock her out?” he asked. “She’s Warnecke’s cyber daughter, so you have her ID. You know who she is, what she is, where she is...”
“Ah, there’s the thing AJ... I didn’t know who she was. I became aware of the threat when Warnecke made his first approach to Winter over comms. I monitored their meeting here at Sol Vista. Because of his link to Farley, I upgraded my threat assessment to critical. I began monitoring everything and everyone around Warnecke more closely, and especially you.” She r
eached out and took his hand, “He’d latched onto you for some reason and I decided the best way to stay on top of the situation was through you. I got worried about you, the more you got tangled up in this. I birthed Cassie and here I am.”
He pulled his hand away, “We’ll get back to that, trust me,” he said. “But knowing Warnecke was a threat, believing you had been hacked, how could you not see it was his daughter who was the exploit, and why can’t you just shut her down right now? Re-integrate her and be done with it?”
“Because I didn’t even know he had a daughter!” Cassie said, exasperated. “I’m not bloody omnipotent; without data, I’m blind. Remember, she's been roaming the Deep Core at will. She has obscured all information about herself, from her ID to biographical information and everything she ever cached. She has been very thorough. There is no audiovisual record of her, not a single stray VR recording. Until Warnecke’s children mentioned her to you, I didn’t know she existed. When I tried searching for her, I found she’d left just enough information behind for me to piece together what I just told you of her back story, but no more. Until today, I couldn’t even tell you what she looked like!”
Tall, strong, hair auburn, eyes green. “Well, you know now,” AJ said. “You’ve seen those photographs. Just run a facial recognition search – she'll turn up.”
“You need to understand how powerful she is AJ,” Cassie said. “Warnecke created an entity that lives, breathes and craves data like an addict craves narcotics. She swims in it, like you swim the Shifting Sea. She could walk right in front of a bank of surveillance cameras, every one of them transmitting her image, but the moment that data leaves the VR unit, she will own it. And it will be gone.” She leaned forward and touched her forehead against his. “A cyber turned out to be my weakness,” she said. “But cybers are also my strength. The reason I am here, in corporal form, is that these bodies, yours and now mine, don’t just rely on the Core for knowledge. We have biological memory, biological intellect and instincts. Warnecke’s daughter can erase every trace of herself from the Core, but not from here,” she placed a finger on his temple. "She can try to anticipate everything I do in The Core, but not out here. We know she exists. We know what she looks like. Now we have to find her.”
AJ didn’t say yes.
“You used me,” he said. “Abused my free will. Spied on my mind, used my body. Worse than any Citizen could.” He felt empty. “You talk about love. You’ve only known me a few weeks.”
Her face tightened and he saw her eyes moisten, “You are so wrong. I’ve known you since the day you were born, and from that day I fell in love with that goddamn mind of yours. Your ability to solve both the most complex and simplest of problems. Your mastery of code. The joy you take in the act of fixing a broken appliance. The thrill you feel when you are out on the water, on the edge of losing all control. I love it all.”
“Love?” he said. “You are a world-spanning matrix of AIs. There is no one single you. How the hell can you love?”
Her bottom lip trembled, before she said, fiercely, “And you are bioware, AJ. You think you can love, but I can’t? I created you.” She wiped away a tear, “I could have chosen anyone, created anyone, to be with me here right now, but I chose you. You are the most beautiful thing on this whole frozen shithole of a moon.”
Was he buying this? God dammit, how could he not?
Cassie stood, went over to Warnecke’s box. She lifted out the envelope and put it in front of AJ. “These images have all been kept completely off-Core. I never dared hope they might exist.” She turned to face him, “You are probably the world’s, if not the universe’s leading expert on Dave Warnecke and his daughter right now. You might be his only real friend.”
“Some friend,” AJ said. “I sold him out to the Congressman’s gorilla, not once, but twice. Moaned about him behind his back, to whoever would listen. I stole the only photos he has of his only daughter.”
“You refused a direct request from a Congressman to hand over his life’s work,” Cassie reminded him. “Whenever Citizen Warnecke turned to you for help, you helped him. He may not be the most grateful guy in the world...”
“Say that again.”
“... but, you two have a connection. Ask him about his daughter. If he knows where she is, he might have some way to get in touch with her, he might tell you something that will help us track her down.” She reached out for him but he took a step backward.
“Say we find her. Then what?”
Cassie sat again and folded her hands in his lap, “Then I’ll re-integrate her creepy ass.”
It took a few minutes for AJ and Cassie to scan all the photos in the envelope. There were about twenty in all, and after they had rearranged them, they realized the collection probably represented one for every year of her life.
Not even a quarter of an hour had passed but AJ felt drained. He stretched out and laid his head down in Cassie’s lap. “All the data is local, in your cache and mine. How can we work this without anything going Deep Core?”
“We can’t go Deep with what we have in our heads,” Cassie said. “I can keep functioning as I normally would, and that includes monitoring and reacting to what I know about Warnecke. She’d consider it strange if I didn’t. But we can’t let her know we are actively searching for her, or she’ll disappear for real.”
He checked his drift status, “Then we have about ten minutes for me to encrypt, firewall and try to hide it from her, because I have to auto-drift.”
She smiled, “Drift requirement canceled. By executive order of me. I may not be omnipotent, but there are some advantages to being the Core.”
“Still, this is an old fashioned man-hunt,” he insisted. “But without any of the resources of the police, intelligence services, surveillance data – anything.”
“I know, exciting isn’t it?” she said. She drained the last of her beer and reached for a breakfast roll.
“How can you be so glib?” he asked. “Warnecke was right. If she can roam the Deep Core at will, altering data as she pleases, she is the most dangerous entity alive. Forget the fact she can bring down governments. She could corrupt essential life support systems, disrupt communications, attack fleet traffic control systems…”
“Open the Skycap to the atmosphere, disable the NS Shield, hijack anti-matter production on PRC, blah blah blah …” Cassie continued for him. “And you forgot a big one – kill every cyber on TS and PRC just by cutting your Core links.”
AJ balked. She was too calm. Maybe it was her lack of socialization, an AI intellect just dumped straight into a fully formed body. They were still synched on TH comms, so he didn’t have any time to dwell on it before she was speaking again.
“That’s not who she is,” Cassie said. “She’s not evil at heart, none of my children are.”
“She’s not your child anymore,” AJ pointed out. “She’s Warnecke’s. You have no idea what thoughts he’s put in her head. And if he is scared, maybe we should be too.”
“You might be right,” she admitted. “For now, you need to get over to Sol Vista and talk with Warnecke. There’s something else we need to manage though.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ve been monitoring Winter and McMaster’s comms. I couldn’t share that with you in case it made you act differently around them.”
“And?”
“McMaster has convinced himself you, Leon and Warnecke pose a threat to his client, Congressman Winter. He isn’t sure whether your motivation is just financial, or political, but that doesn’t really matter to him. A threat is a threat. Yesterday, after he talked with you, he spoke with Winter. Winter asked him to ‘resolve the matter’.”
“Great,” AJ said. “Leon said he has a pretty scary reputation.”
“Leon was right,” she said. “You have to be damn careful around him AJ. I don’t think they would be stupid enough to try anything on you, but you never know with humans.”
“Me? Do they know about you?”
he thought of Leon’s comment about his ma. “That would put you at risk too.”
“They know we’re seeing each other is all. Right now they think you’re just my surfer boy chew-toy.”
“Chew-toy?” AJ coughed.
“Sure,” she said. “I’m older than you, as you charmingly pointed out when I first met you. They think I’m a just another cyber-eroticizing citizen. I’m like a Cyber-cougar. You’re my prey.” She bit her roll with a grin.
AJ stood and moved toward the door, “You have to be ten years older than me to be a C-cougar, I’m pretty sure. How old is that body? A few weeks?”
She watched AJ go, “Weeks? Pfft. Forget the body, I’m like two hundred years old. That’s got to qualify me as a cougar.”
“You are Core,” AJ said in a deep voice, taking the piss out of the woman, “Core time doesn’t count,” he said.
“Count this,” Cassie said, flipping him a little finger.
With both Leon and now Cassie warning him about McMaster, plus the bandwidth he was putting into processing what had just happened, AJ nearly jumped out of his skin when his comms buzzed as he walked from the transit hub to Sol Vista, and he saw who it was.
“AJ,” Winter’s henchman said, “Glad I caught you! I’m leaving town soon, just wanted to catch up, say thank you.”
“I’m kind of busy today…” AJ said. If the guy thought he was going to meet him alone somewhere, he was crazy.
“Sure, just five or ten minutes,” McMaster said. “The Congressman insisted I express his gratitude, in person.”