by F X Holden
But her words hit him like a punch in the face, You think she is the Core personified. She can drift, but she has no third eye. She is anatomically human. She can manipulate data streams, fake IDs, intercept comms transmissions, dive your cache, access seemingly unlimited data sources and credit and she knew all about my father and me. Is any of that wrong?
He sat down heavily on the bunk. What could he say to that?
I think I better cut this link, is what he said.
Wait! she said. I get that you care about her. You think she was only recently birthed, drawn to you because of my father and the alleged threat to the Core I pose. She wasn’t!
Going now, he said. We can talk tomorrow. I need to think.
OK, look. I’m going to ask you to drift...
She’ll see whatever I’m doing.
She won’t, I can make sure of that. You know what I can do, right?
Yes.
OK, I want you to drift. I could send all this information to you, but I want you to find it for yourself so you can be sure it’s reliable. Find out everything you can about Gen 6 New Syberia mil-spec cybers.
I’m a damn maintenance tech, AJ said. How am I going to be able to access what is no doubt classified data, on NS military cybers?
I’ll give you the access you need. Do it tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow, Jen said. Bye AJ.
Before he could respond, the door to the dorm room opened. “The water is cold,” Cassie said as she came in again. “But there’s a sign saying ‘hot water between 0400 and 0600.’ I guess that’s one way to get lazy-ass cadets out of bed.” She saw him sitting on the bunk and pointed at the bathroom with her toothbrush, “Teeth, face, goodnight kiss and then sweet dreams big man. We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”
AJ took a towel and went down to the basement parking garage to fetch his toothbrush, being very careful not to stray. He had another motive for going to the car. Down the side of the bench seat that he’d been sitting on, he’d hidden Warnecke’s burp gun.
He hadn’t been able to bring himself to give it up to Cassie back in South Coast City, so he’d wrapped his much-loved multitool in the scarf and handed it to her instead. He’d felt kind of sad watching it sink below the surface of the lake. He and that multitool had traveled quite a few times around Coruscant together and fixed a lot of stuff. But now, he was damn glad he’d done it.
He wrapped it in his towel and went back up to their dormitory level, stumbling down the corridor like a sleepwalker, passing two cadets talking in a doorway. They both stood to attention and saluted him, which was probably what they were trained to do for anyone who they didn’t recognize. Citizens, saluting a cyber? On any other day, he might be enjoying this place. Instead he had, once again, had his world ripped out from under him. Drift? He could barely walk and think at the same time.
He went into the bathroom, and threw cold water on his face. It didn’t make his thoughts any clearer. He tried to start building scenarios and working probabilities, but it was like building a house of cards with trembling hands. He couldn’t focus. He decided to cut his bandwidth to a bare minimum five percent, just to get some control.
“Do your teeth AJ,” he told himself out loud.
As he walked back down the corridor, the two cadets were gone, and it was cool and quiet. His stockinged feet made a swishing sound on the wooden floor. He ran a hand along the cold brick of the walls as he walked. He opened the door to the dorm and saw Cassie was already in bed, so he bent and kissed her on the forehead as she looked up at him.
“You can do better than that,” she said, holding out her arms. He leaned down again and kissed her properly, feeling the heat he always felt with her. It woke him from his daze. “That’s more like it,” Cassie said. She looked at the narrow cot, “I don’t think you can fit in here without smothering me in my sleep. Sweet dreams.”
“You too,” he said, dialing his bandwidth back up and climbing up into his bunk. He felt like a kid on a school camp, and could barely sit up in the bunk without his head hitting the low ceiling. He lay back with his arms folded across his chest, and slid the bracelet on his wrist around to make it a little more comfortable.
How do you want to handle tomorrow? he asked Cassie on TH.
I had a plan for disabling her if we were lucky enough to find her, she said. I nearly put it into action when she put these stupid bracelets on us but that would have just got us locked up. I need to execute it in full view of a third party witness – like Ferguson.
What plan?
I can trigger a GABA shutdown, she said. Overwhelm her system with ‘drift lost’ protocol signals so that her brain floods with Gamma-aminobutyric acid and she goes into a coma. Once she’s down, I can keep her there.
You’re going to let her die? AJ asked, shocked. What about Winter, McMaster, all of that? She’s pretty much Ferguson’s best hope for bringing a solid case against Winter if she can prove he was involved in Leon’s disappearance.
My priority is Jen, AJ. We can get back to Winter and McMaster when Jen has been dealt with. She’s an existential threat, Winter is a distraction compared to that. Don’t worry, we’ll bring him down and get you safe.
But killing her? He hadn’t thought that far – what they would do when finally they caught up with Warnecke’s daughter. He’d expected the search for her would have taken much longer. The thought of her lying in a hospital bed somewhere, body slowly shutting down from lack of fluid, it made him shudder. Would Ferguson let that happen? What was the normal response if a cyber suffered a catastrophic neural event that wasn’t related to an accident or trauma? Surely she’d be medically examined, kept on life support, hoping the event would pass?
I’m not going to kill her, Cassie said. I might have got a little jealous back there but I didn’t go full psycho, AJ.
OK, good.
I’m going to re-integrate her. The trip downriver tomorrow is perfect. I can drop her in full view of Ferguson and anyone else we have with us, while you and I are nowhere near her. She’ll go inert, that should deactivate all the defenses she’s built up around her. Ferguson and the others will panic, try to revive her, take us all back here so they can get her into hospital. I’ll trigger the re-integration sequence while we’re en-route here, she’ll be back with me, in the Core, by the time the rotor lands.
And that’s not killing her?
A cyber is data AJ, and data never dies. It’s just an unscheduled re-integration, she insisted. I need to learn how she’s able to do what she can do. So I can prevent it in the future, design a new defense since my current defenses clearly do not work against someone like her.
He lay still and concentrated on his breathing. At quantum computing speeds, their conversation had taken only a second - one breath in, one breath out. It was also more than enough time for him to make a decision.
OK, what do you need me to do?
Be prepared when it happens, she said. I’ll wait until we find out whether Farley’s body is under that rock. It might prove useful later. Act shocked, but don’t over-act. You’ll be the biggest guy on the ground out there, so you grab her, carry her to the rotor, try a revival kit on her – it won’t help but it would be strange if you didn’t. I’ll look after the rest.
I feel bad about this, he admitted. I don’t think she has bad intentions. If she did, she could have done a lot of damage already. Isn’t there another way?
I’ve prepared for most scenarios, but this is the simplest solution. I can’t risk that she might attack me AJ, she said. We found her, we have to re-integrate her. It’s simple. We deal with her, then we deal with your Congressman problem, alright?
OK, good night, I guess.
Good night. We’re nearly there AJ. Can you believe it?
And that was the problem, he wanted to believe it. To believe in her, still. But Jen had shaken his belief and couldn’t ignore that. He opened a drift channel and then waited. If Cassie noticed, it would be natural for her to ask what he was doing, but she didn’t. The
breathing down below was soft and regular. What he was about to do next, if Jen was right, could be the last thing he ever did.
When Cassie didn’t react to his open drift state, he took a deep breath and sent his query to the Core: ‘Present links to all data related to Gen 6 New Syberia mil-spec cybers, most recent first.’
A long list scrolled across his cortex and then stopped. Nearly all of the links were classified ‘Military: not for disclosure’. The link at the top was headed ‘Known capabilities, New Syberia Generation 6 military cybers.’ He should not be able to even read the title of the report, let alone access it, but he could do both. He ran his mind’s eye down the data:
INTRODUCTION: The New Syberia Gen 6 military specialist cyber is a significant advance over Gen 5 and rivals the latest Gen 4 Tatsensui and PRC variants in all areas, with some advantages in others. Production of this variant is extremely resource intensive and prone to failure. Best estimates at current date put Gen 6 production at only 20 units, and production rate at only one individual per 6 weeks.
BIOLOGY: In a significant deviation from Gen 5 mil-spec cybers, Gen 6 variants are anatomically identical to their male/female human counterparts. Cybernetic enhancements are achieved by the addition of a discrete neuro-comms package located beneath the lungs in the chest cavity. This placement compromises stomach capacity but otherwise does not degrade physiology. The neuro-comms package is encased in Inconel superalloy, providing it with greater protection than the Gen 5 in-skull bioware package. Sexual organs are present, but the Gen 6 is incapable of reproduction.
CYBERNETIC ENHANCEMENTS: All ratings are versus Gen 5 variants. Bone strength: +2. Bone weight: -2. Muscle strength +3. Muscle weight –1. Strength to weight ratio: +3. Hormone control +2. Blood oxygenation boost effect +2, duration +4. Calorie to energy conversion: -1. Radiation shielding: +2 (cellular level). EMP shielding +5 (cellular level), toxin resistance –2 (due to flaws introduced in cellular re-engineering.) Unchanged: skull thickness, visual acuity, hearing acuity, taste acuity, smell acuity, touch acuity, DNA coded obsolescence @ 35 years.
AI CAPABILITIES: As with all NS cybers, the Gen 6 mil-spec has quantum computing natural language neural network capability on board, with access to basic NS data storage and query platforms standard. Communication between NS cybers and between NS and other Commonwealth cybers over the TH band remains standard. Communication with NS military communication platforms remains standard. Significant Q-code changes have been reported, which focus on enhancing the ability of Gen 6 variants to hack enemy computer networks. Gen 6 AI level versus CORE AI level has improved from –8 to –7 but remains significantly below CORE level.
WARNING: Unverified intelligence reports indicate that early Gen 6 AI research was focused on equipping NS mil-spec cybers with the ability to access the Core without authorized IDs, to compensate for their own lack of CORE capabilities. This functionality could only be activated within CORE communication range, i.e. locally on Tatsensui, PRC or via the satellite chains linking the two CORE hubs on those moons. In anything but invasion or infiltration scenarios, such a functionality would be unnecessary and currently this intelligence is rated as unlikely/unreliable.
NOTE: There is no evidence that Gen 6 cybers have been specially modified for, or would be capable of, survival in the oxygen and nitrogen-poor atmosphere of Coruscant.
He quickly digested the rest of the available data, made himself a summary and lay awake considering it. For Jen’s insinuation to be true - that Cassie was in fact a Gen 6 NS cyber, and not of, or from the Core - then the rumored ability of Gen 6 cybers to interface with the Core would need to be more than rumor. Their ‘advanced hacking abilities’ would need to be scarily advanced to match the abilities he’d seen Cassie deploy, for example, monitoring and manipulating his private cache. But he had to admit several things dovetailed with the intelligence reports he’d read – she did seem to have military grade strength and athleticism, a body shielded against neural disruption (‘I have enhancements that haven’t even been invented yet’) and as far as AJ had been able to tell, fully human anatomy.
But he was missing motive. Why would an NS infiltrator be going hell-bent to destroy the only cyber on Tatsensui who could bring the Core down? If Jen turned rogue and did what Cassie said she feared, then the whole of NS would celebrate, surely. On the other hand, she was more than happy to expose Winter, which would of course disrupt the Commonwealth investigation into the President of NS, maybe derail it entirely.
He looked hard at different angles. If Cassie was an NS infiltrator, if she had the advanced hacking capabilities AJ had read about, it was just possible that she could trigger a GABA shutdown in Jen. That in itself would be a fearsome weapon for a military cyber to be able to use against enemy Core chained cybers. She certainly seemed to know a hell of a lot about how the drift protocol worked – but then she would, under both scenarios. One 'what if’ followed another: what if she was an infiltrator, what if she could trigger a GABA shutdown, and what if, while Jen was inert, she was ‘re-integrated’ not to the Core, but to an NS AI like Cassie, who could then deconstruct the FO Exploit and weaponize it. If those particular ‘what ifs’ were true, then it would be a powerful motive for NS to infiltrate Tatsensui in pursuit of the key to the ultimate destruction of the Core. And they would also explain why Cassie was so determined to bring Jen down.
He groaned, mentally. How was he supposed to know? Plunge a knife into Cassie’s solar plexus and see if it struck Inconel alloy? He needed a simpler test.
What had he not seen, that she should be capable of if she really was from the Core? He hadn’t seen her Deep Core diving. She’d told him she could restore the data from his private cache that McMaster had wiped – but she hadn’t done it, had she? It existed only in the Deep Core now, so if she could restore it, she must be the Core. He tested that logic, and decided to act on it-
He opened a TH channel. Hey Cassie, you awake?
Well, I am now, she said. What’s up?
I can’t sleep. I want to review that interaction I had with McMaster on the beach, the one he deleted. You said you could restore it from the Deep Core.
Now?
Why not? he asked.
Because I said we’ll worry about McMaster later, when we’ve dealt with Jen. If you’ve got bandwidth to spare, how about you use it helping me identify ways to avoid a future Jen-like scenario. Make sure this can never happen again.
OK, sure, he said. Goodnight.
Night AJ.
He didn’t hesitate. He saw the flow now. He saw it with perfect clarity. He opened a new TH channel.
Jen?
Hey AJ, everything OK?
She plans to kill you tomorrow when we get to the river. Drift protocol attack, you know what that is?
I do. Thanks for the heads up. But I can’t act until she tries, Jen said.
What? Arrest her, give her a medical scan, the bio-mod in her chest cavity will show up.
We can’t arrest a citizen without just cause.
She probably has abilities I haven’t seen and you haven’t anticipated, AJ warned. You need to move first!
I can’t. I have to let her show herself. But seriously, thank you. I know you must be conflicted. Let me think about how to handle this, OK?
OK, sure, he said. Goodnight.
Night AJ.
The next morning Jen showed them down to breakfast and left them to themselves so she could prepare for their trip, with a polite reminder not to the leave the building. They ate a little, talked a little, both out loud and on TH.
Mid-morning, Jen came to get them for the rotor flight downriver.
“Are you sure I should come?” AJ asked. He and Cassie had discussed the fact he would need to drift at some point. “Is there a drift relay all the way out there?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Jen said. “There isn’t, but the flight is only 20 minutes, and we’ll be back inside two hours. If we find the body, we’ll send a crime scene team
down to exhume it.” She smiled disarmingly, “I don’t want to go comatose any more than you do.” AJ winced at the hidden meaning.
AJ had never been in a Jayhawk quadrotor before and when they’d walked up to it, moored on a helipad on the roof of the ITMP station, he’d reassured himself with the idea that even though it looked like a fragile water bug, four rotors would make for a nice stable flight. But the drone skittered like a kite on a string. They were seated three across one bench, three across another, with two more of Ferguson’s officers up front. Four of them had helmets with comms, so they could talk with each other, but AJ and Cassie just got earplugs, and he couldn’t hear anything except for the background clatter and whine of the old ITMP airship. The view out the window was just mist and rain and fog: he couldn’t see more than a mile. So he crossed his arms, jammed his head into a crack between the backrests and shut his eyes.
Not that he could rest. He had two TH channels open and was talking on both of them, simultaneously.
With Cassie: going over events as they should play out when they got to the site of the dig. Find Farley’s body. Let people gather around it while they hung back. She would incapacitate Jen. Feign shock. They could let the others try to revive her, or AJ would. Get her to the rotor, all bug out. AJ and Cassie would go with her, they’d have to, because the bracelets on their wrists were coded to her ID and would trigger if she got out of range. Could Ferguson just override them, leave AJ and Jen by the river? No reason he would, but if he did, she’d trigger the re-integration before the rotor took off. As long as it happened in the half hour after her incapacitation, it would be final.
With Jen: it’s best if you don’t know what I’m planning. I can handle her. But thanks for the warning, I’ve taken precautions. If it goes wrong? Then I’m dead and New Syberia gets the keys to the kingdom and frankly, with what I’ve seen in the Deep Core, I don’t care AJ. This whole clash of ideologies over AI policy is so damn boring. For me, there is only one bad guy. His name is Kevin Winter. And in case you are in any doubt, if I get through this, I still expect your help to take down the guy who killed my father. Your New Syberian girlfriend is not the main game for me.