The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  I frowned. “What do you mean, not Taharas?”

  “These were not Taharas, or at least not any of the original ones. I think the factory has finally understood how to make them.”

  I cursed. Well, it was bound to happen one day.

  “OK. But what does that have to do with us?”

  “Word on the street is that they want to recover all the remaining prototypes. Recover, and retire.”

  I pondered that for a moment. “‘Word on the street’?”

  “That is what the other Taharas are saying.”

  “You talked to them?” I exclaimed.

  “We are always talking, Luke.”

  He had mentioned this in the past, but it had never made much sense to me. These guys spent their time trying to physically destroy each other, using riders like me, yet they were in constant contact on the net, probably chatting like magpies. Go figure. The A in AI stands for “artificial, “but for me, sometimes it feels more like “alien.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I am thinking about it. The problem is that our assailants are too numerous. It appears Hotoda has carefully waited to have at least a dozen models before it made a move. Several Taharas have already been caught this way, outnumbered. The others have gone into hiding, just like us.”

  I paced across the room, found the minibar, winced when I saw the dismal selection inside. There wasn’t any ice, either.

  “Well, we can’t hide forever, can we? Especially not in this dump,” I said, gulping down the least toxic of the bottles I had found—some vodka. It was lukewarm, to cap it all.

  “As I said previously, I am considering our options,” replied David. “A number of the Taharas recommend that we unite—go massively parallel, so that we can beat the Hotodas by sheer force. The problem is that we would need to be concentrated in one place, which could make us even more vulnerable than we already are.”

  “Doesn’t sound too good,” I observed, thinking that it would also probably mean the end of my employment: no need for physical carriers if they were all grouped in a single room. “What do the others propose?”

  “They do not see any other option than hide and wait.”

  I looked at the crappy room around us. Oh boy.

  “But I am considering a third option,” added David.

  “And what would that be?”

  He told me what he had in mind. After the initial shock, I did my best to dissuade him, but he never relented.

  You try arguing with a computer.

  * * *

  It took several days to arrange everything.

  David already knew who he wanted to contact, but certain protocols were required to approach him. Trawling the net for information, we managed to locate some of his handlers in Bangkok and negotiated terms. A first payment was agreed, wired to a numbered bank account in Thailand, and a meeting was set in Macau.

  A few other calls were made, and the following evening, I walked along the beach in a hidden cove off the coast of Hong Kong’s New Territories. A short distance away, a small fishing boat was anchored, its lights dimmed so as not to attract attention, and at the surf’s edge, two sailors were waiting for me in a dinghy. Under the cover of night, they would whisk us across the Pearl River delta. And when we were done there, another boat would take us all the way to Vietnam, from whence escaping would be easy.

  If we ever got to that part.

  Brooding, I watched the bright, garish neons of Macau’s casinos grow and set fire to the dark red horizon.

  * * *

  I blinked, temporarily blinded by the sun, as the elevator doors opened on the restaurant. Above me, a vast glass canopy gave the impression of being barely there. Below, eighty floors of über-posh hotel and another ten of exclusive casinos separated me from the city, sprawling to the horizon like a gigantic concrete wart.

  A colossus jerked me out of the cabin, and by the bulge under his arm, he wasn’t the maître d’. Resigned, I let him search me while I had a look across the room. Even for mid-afternoon, the place was way too quiet. No customers, no staff, no one—except for one man, sitting at the other end of the room.

  Waiting for me.

  The guard was finally satisfied that I carried no weapon and let me walk to his employer’s table: coffee served for two on an immaculate white tablecloth, and behind it, a forty-year-old dandy in a crisp, cream-colored linen suit, his neatly trimmed beard nothing less than Mephistophelian.

  “Mr. Gianfaria,” he greeted me.

  “Mr. Maker,” I replied. “Or do you have a real name that I could use?”

  He smiled. That probably wasn’t the first time someone had asked him that.

  “Maker will do, for however long we have to deal with each other.”

  * * *

  The Maker was an artisan, one of the last, and handsomely paid for his skills. In a time of dirt-cheap silicon and made-by-the-billions chips, he was one of the few offering custom-made systems and architectures.

  It was all too easy to just take twenty or a hundred of ARM’s or Intel’s cheap brains, solder them in parallel, and let them crunch through a problem with sheer brute force. Most systems, most consumer products did precisely that—not caring about the power consumed, the heat generated, the double, triple, or decuple counting, or the beauty of the algorithms. Human bodies don’t care about nanoseconds; corporations don’t pay for elegance.

  Yet for some jobs, nanoseconds, waste heat, and even elegance did count. You could detect a large parallel attack on your systems by its data take-up, its noise output. You could spot a foreign probe in your nitrogen-cooled super-calculators by its excess heat. You could outcompete a massive system by building an even more massive one yourself.

  But there wasn’t much you could do against a foe that didn’t emit heat or noise and always outfoxed your defenses by a few nanoseconds. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even notice it was there, funneling all your secrets.

  This was what the Maker offered: ultimate, lethal efficiency.

  In some circles, the Maker was famous, but for most of the planet, he didn’t exist. He didn’t advertise; if caught, he would deny any wrongdoing: was it his fault if most of the things he crafted were used for shady purposes?

  The Maker was always paid handsomely, through back channels known only to him: Thai banks dealing with Hong Kong holdings investing in Indonesian plants whose Brazilian suppliers were owned by American and Swiss capital …

  But money was only one half of the equation.

  Because he worked only on projects that interested him.

  * * *

  “So tell me,” asked the Maker, “why should I spend my time with you?”

  I stated the price David and I had agreed with his handlers: “Two million dollars.”

  He waved at the empty restaurant around us—posh, ultra expensive, fully booked months in advance, yet completely deserted for this meeting. “That is less than what I earn in a week on the patents I lease—a perfectly legal business. So I repeat: why should I care about your proposition?”

  I hesitated, even though there was no point. I had discussed this at length with David, and he had demonstrated that this was the only option, the one chance we had to make a bargain with the Maker.

  But still, it was such a lot to give—and without any certainty that he would come up with a solution for us.

  I swallowed, then articulated the words, resenting each of them: “Because this is your chance to see a Tahara design, one of the few that still exist. And you can copy it afterwards.”

  The Maker caressed his beard, unconsciously trying to hide the smile that was forming on his lips.

  “And how did you come to possess a Tahara, if I may ask?”

  I shrugged. “You know very well that one doesn’t own a Tahara. The Tahara chooses you. I’m only its rider.”

  The Maker leaned back in his seat.

  “As gratifying as it may be for you to think that I could do so, I have to ask
: how exactly do you expect me to improve on a Tahara design?”

  “The word on the street is that you’ve made several prototypes of your own, and they work better than most. People think that if someone could do it today, it would be you.”

  I couldn’t suppress a shrewd—if sad—smile.

  “And they say that you’re desperate to have a first-hand look at a Tahara.”

  * * *

  I paced nervously across the hotel room, going through the plan in my mind, over and over, looking for a hole. There was none, as usual. I growled in frustration.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, David?”

  “Certain, Luke. It is the only way to gain an advantage over the Hotodas.”

  “That’s bull! Who would consent to have his brain picked apart by a total stranger? What if he screws up and you can’t be restarted? Or even worse, what if it changes you—if you are no longer the same when you wake up?”

  David took a few moments before answering, possibly to give his social-interaction routines some time to pick their words.

  “It is a calculated risk, Luke. The Maker is the best. If anyone can improve on a Tahara, it is him. And he has been craving one for long enough to be cautious not to break it.

  “As for change … It is true, I will not be the same when I wake up. I do not know how, or what he is going to do to me, but it is safe to assume that any change in hardware will have an impact on the way I think, hence on my personality.

  “But I will still have all my memories. That is also part of what you call ‘sense of self,’ is it not? I will still be your friend.”

  I shook my head, not satisfied with his explanations.

  “There’s also the question of the Maker’s intentions. Doesn’t it bother you that he’s going to make hundreds of copies of you as soon as we leave?”

  “I am fairly relaxed about sharing the world with more of my kind.”

  “Which makes perfect sense, given how many of them we’ve destroyed over the years.”

  “I am fairly relaxed,” he repeated, “so long as their goals do not contradict mine. In fact, I think I would relish the idea. Is this not what you feel when you consider your progeny?”

  “Progeny, sure—but this is perfect replication, not reproduction. Cloning, one might say. Humans aren’t too keen on that, you might have noticed.”

  “Indeed. But I am confident the Maker will keep tweaking and improving on the Tahara architecture, once he gets it, so that will not be pure cloning. It might even qualify as evolution…”

  * * *

  I met the Maker and his goons the following morning in a deserted car park and handed him David. In exchange, as agreed, he gave me ten million euros in €500 bills in a suitcase, to hold hostage until he’d returned the system to me. I could also keep the money and vanish, and that would count as payment for David, no grudges held.

  As they left, I stayed in the car park, the suitcase on my lap, and remembered how I first met David.

  * * *

  In a previous life, I played a bit, local, regional tournaments and the like, but I was never good enough for the big league, not good enough at calculating the odds and all.

  However, my background was in IT, and it was easy enough to write a small program to do it for me when I played on the net. But the stakes were too low, the tables too well monitored for my earnings to take off. Most sites had algorithms of their own and a few even had some of the early AIs, to spot overly rational behaviors and systems such as mine.

  Then I heard about the no-holds-barred games, where everyone was free to bring his own system, and may the best one win. That was a revelation.

  My gains soon became good enough for me to drop everything, the day job, the small-time flat, the lousy girlfriend, and go full time. I had the good life … I quickly replaced my laptop by one of IBM’s new nanoBlues, and of course I kept improving my program. Nothing could stop me.

  But then big money moved in, as always. Some big-league players got sponsored, came in with fat systems from Cray, Lenovo, or Samsung, and started winning everything.

  My gains dropped to zero, then became vastly negative.

  No one had heard of me before, so no one wanted to sponsor me now. And no one wanted to hire me back in a normal job anymore either, not after all this time in the shady world of poker.

  That was when I met Blake, who introduced me to the art of the con.

  Seven years, it lasted. Seven good years. During that time, AIs became smarter and ever more present, but I didn’t pay much attention. I was dealing with humans now, hacking not silicon but carbon brains thanks to all the backdoors and quirks left by good old Mother Nature.

  Then Blake met that girl. It was in a roadside motel, what should have been a one-night stop on the way from Seattle to Sacramento. She was sitting on a bench outside with empty hands and a vacant stare. With her eyes and her dime-store clothes, I guessed she was trouble, presumably drugs, and I gave her a wide berth.

  Blake thought she was cute and went to talk with her.

  She was waiting for a technician to repair the TV in her room. My partner offered to have a look. They stayed inside for two whole days.

  On the morning of the third day, I knocked on their door and discovered they had gone. They’d left me like a dog, without even a word. I mean, who does that? Throwing away years of profitable partnership for some cheap, probably drug-addicted piece of ass found on the kerb.

  Because of that, I could no longer run any two-man cons, the tricks where one guy’s story confirms and reinforces the other’s. It was all down to my good looks and my glibness, my charisma, but to be honest, that had also gone down the drain. I was too bitter to put any effort into what I said and the marks noticed. None of them fell for it; in fact, more than a few called the cops on me, so I had to keep on the move, and that added to my costs.

  I was in a rough spot, down to my last dime, and I would have done anything for cash.

  That’s why I returned to my previous skill, poker: for that, I didn’t need to talk, didn’t need to cajole.

  I dusted off my old system and earpiece. It was completely outdated now, but if I focused on small-fry, Friday-evening players and kept a low profile, I could break even, more or less, even rebuild some savings. I did that for a few months.

  Until one evening in Atlanta, when the invitation came.

  I knew from the start that something was off. First, I should never have received an invitation to that game. The envelope had come through the mail—physical mail, who still did that?—to the hotel where I was staying for only a few days. Who could have spotted me, on such short notice?

  As soon as I stepped into the room they had rented for the game, I knew this was too high-stakes for me, too high-flying. The suits these guys wore cost more than what I made in a month. If I got fleeced here, it would be for way more than my entire savings. This was a car crash waiting to happen.

  I turned, pretending I had entered the wrong room, but the two guards at the door closed my escape route. And behind me, the voice of the host boomed:

  “Take a seat, Mr. Gianfaria. My name’s Sergey Vadirovich. We were waiting for you.”

  I was trapped. Reluctantly, I walked to the table and took the only chair that was left, right in the middle. The dealer and the guests stared at me, appreciatively. I noticed that the host—Sergey—had a bulge under his jacket, and he didn’t look like a cigar smoker to me. This stank, this stank badly.

  Then it started, the weirdest game I ever played.

  The dealer used an automatic shuffler, which meant that basic card-counting tricks were out, but that was business as usual.

  We played a few hands with low bets, just to warm up and gauge each other’s style, though no one went for flamboyant, certainly not me. This wasn’t the place for that kind of bull.

  I checked out the four other players. They all looked like decent guys—business types, low profile, probably the host’s usual sparring partners
. Next to them buzzed state-of-the-art systems—Huawei, Sony, Panasonic, good names all, but I was ready to bet that all of them were running widely available algorithms, with all their well-known vulnerabilities. Albeit slower, my custom nanoBlue would have no trouble crushing them.

  I was more concerned about the small dark case lying next to the host. It was connected to him by a pair of those brand-new media glasses which superimposed data and analyses over his view of the room. A tiny camera on the frame told the system what was happening. This was similar to—though vastly more expensive than—my camera-augmented earpiece. I couldn’t see any brand name on the box, which suggested it was homemade, artisanal. That could be a good thing or a bad one. In my usual circles, I would have felt relieved—homemade boxes meant whatever hodgepodge of chips a guy had soldered together in his garage and typically led to quirky, hard-to-predict games, but nothing my system couldn’t deal with. But among these high-flyers, I had a very bad feeling.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Gianfaria. You are quite the accomplished player, it appears.”

  How could he have heard about me? I had always kept under the radar—out of sight, out of fright, fewer problems that way. So how could he know about me?

  “I’ve had a few good games in the past,” I replied equivocally.

  “You’re being modest. I heard you were ruling no-holds-barred before the big money arrived. Is this the system you used back then?”

  I nodded. So this was what it was all about: a pissing contest. Mr. What’s-his-name wanted to see if his brand-new custom-built box could beat a former champion’s, seven years outdated.

  Well, he could have his victory, I didn’t care—as long as I escaped with minimal losses.

  We started a new round. Glancing at my cards, I discovered I had a seven of diamonds and a nine of hearts. A player in an early position made a small raise and was immediately called by two others. I saw calculation in the host’s eyes as he considered upping the ante, but he finally decided to follow with the same bet.

  My hand was not premium, but I had equity and not much to lose either way. I called.

  The dealer showed the flop, the first three cards anyone on the table could avail themselves of: seven of spades, king of hearts, queen of diamonds. I only had one pair, the weakest on the table. My system advised to bet small, and so I did.