Dreaming Metal

by Melissa Scott

  “Because—” There was a pause, and I looked up to see the icon-face motionless, expressionless against the suspended sensors. “Because I wish to.”

  I shivered in Fortune’s expensively chilled air, in spite of knowing it had to be a trick, or a mistake, some glitch in the mated programs. Constructs just didn’t do that, didn’t ask—didn’t initiate actions completely unrelated to their owners’ requests. Or if they did, they didn’t offer such patently impossible “reasons” for it.

  “Why do you wish to?” Fortune asked. She sounded as patient as a school-mama, and I looked at her with suspicion.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Later, will you?” She didn’t bother looking at me, kept her eyes fixed on the tools, but I could tell her attention was on Celeste.

  “He doesn’t wish—want—me to to play with, to play it,” Celeste said.

  “It’s his,” Fortune answered, “and these boxes are rare and expensive, not something you treat casually, Celeste. So why do you want to play it?”

  The red light above us winked out, and another came on above the media wall. The icon-face shifted with it. “I want—wish—to make sound. Different sound. Code that speaks.” I could almost imagine frustration in the machine voice. “I wish to hear what it sounds like when I play it.”

  I shivered again, knowing Fortune saw. It was too easy to translate that into I want to make music, and that was a thing no construct was supposed to be able to comprehend, much less want.

  “I am aware of the audiot’s limits and will observe them,” Celeste said. At that moment, she sounded just like my memory of Fortune’s living sister, always wheedling for something. That was prejudice, because I’d always liked Fortune better, but it was uncanny to hear all the same.

  Fortune looked at me. “You hear her. Is it all right with you?”

  I had to swallow hard before I could answer, thinking of Manfred—and of Realpeace, the thought flickering through my head that this was the wrong time, the worst time I could imagine, to find a construct that wanted to make music—thinking, too, of all Hati’s dead. It was partly them that decided me, the things they’d stood for, but mostly that I wanted to know, to be sure, to hear for myself either that it couldn’t play music, was just a construct, or that she could, and face everything that meant. And then, of course, I wondered if I would recognize her music at all.

  “Yeh, why not?” I said, and had to laugh. If Celeste was people, was true AI, the equal of any of us, then those were pretty mundane words to start it all.

  “Go ahead,” Fortune said, but Celeste had already made the connection through the virtual port, and lights flowed across the touchplate. I recognized waveform patterns, but no sound came out, and I checked to make sure she wasn’t overloading the system. All the indicators were well within tolerance however, except for the one for the sound generator itself. It glowed steady red, something I’d never seen before, but then the audiot made a strangled squawk, and I realized what she was doing. Celeste had no real idea of what “sound” was—about as much as I had had when I was little, before I got my ear—and she was playing not with sound, but with the waveforms that were their digital analog. The audiot wasn’t capable of reproducing most of them—though with the right generator hooked up, it probably could—and she was fumbling for notes, the right waves, to let her play it. The smart thing to do would be to let the box itself tell her what it could do, and even as I thought it, a new pattern flared on the display plate. The audiot ran through the first scale we’d heard, but much faster, a chromatic blur of notes, and then settled to a simple three-note progression, walking back down the scale. It was a second before I realized that the demo had stopped, and Celeste herself was playing.

  I tipped my head to the side, wishing Tai was here, or Jaantje—wishing that she had a better machine to play with, or a wider range of voices. The vox blurred the notes, let them ring too long, slurring into cacophony. Celeste seemed to realize that, too, and the triplets stopped, were replaced by a pattern of slow fifths, as though she was savoring each overtone. Then that changed, too, became something I couldn’t analyze and wasn’t sure I liked, but as it moved up and down the scale every fourth or fifth repetition was oddly haunting, something I hoped I could remember. And then I wished I had a playback deck, so I could show Tai and Jaantje what Celeste had done.

  “Well?” Fortune asked, and I looked at her.

  “Well, what? She’s yours, Fortune, you had to have known.”

  Fortune looked away, not meeting my eyes. “I’m not sure I know now. You tell me.”

  “I’m not a fucking constructor.”

  Celeste was still playing, apparently oblivious to what we were saying, the patterns turning into the sorts of runs and chords that everybody plays, starting out, and thinks they’ve discovered something new. I could remember when I’d sounded like that myself. It felt weird to be discussing her like she wasn’t there, and I automatically ducked my head, embarrassed by my own bad manners.

  “You think she is,” Fortune said, but lowered her voice as well.

  “Maybe. And what are we—what are you going to do, if she is?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Fortune answered, and this time she met my eyes squarely. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll let any of them, Realpeace or Dreampeace or whatever, get their hands on her.”

  14

  Celinde Fortune

  Fanning was not happy with me, though whether it was because I hadn’t warned him about Celeste or because he didn’t want Celeste to exist at all I couldn’t tell. But there was no arguing with what his reaction had told us both: he thought Celeste was people, too, and we were stuck with that. I finished putting together a crude security device, linking the three components into a package that Fanning could link to the goddow’s internal systems, while Celeste kept playing with the audiot, improvising scraps of melody and odd, not fully pleasant harmonies. I could see Fanning looking at it and at the ceiling pinlight, every time he thought I wasn’t watching, and wondered what he made of the music. It sounded pretty good to me, except that occasionally it broke down into dissonance and once just into noise. The first time it happened, I thought Fanning looked relieved, but after that he just listened harder.

  “Finished,” I said, and Fanning straightened, looking away from the audiot. Celeste was still playing, a weird rocking figure, three notes up, two down, and then reversed, so that she could move up and down the scale.

  “I want my box back, Fortune,” he said, and I sighed.

  “I know. Celeste. Time to quit.”

  The music ended in a sudden swirl of notes—she had finished whatever she was doing, I realized, but at five or six times the normal speed. A new light glowed on the buffer board where she’d saved the input for later. “Very well. Fortune, I want this audiot.”

  I saw Fanning stiffen, ready to object, and said quickly, “Sorry, Celeste, it’s Fanning’s.”

  There was a pause. “I want—a copy? Something like it? A program, or must it be hardware?”

  I looked at Fanning. He said, “I know where you can get a cheap vox. It’s not the same as this, but it might work.”

  “Maybe,” I began, and Celeste spoke from the media wall.

  “I’ve checked the schematics. That would work.”

  Fanning grinned. “I think you’re committed, Fortune.” He reached for the audiot, began folding the carrier straps back around it again.

  “Looks like,” I agreed. I helped him pack the new security system as well, and walked with him to the door of the workshop. I saw him look at the pinlights that marked the edges of the shop’s sensorweb, and wasn’t surprised when he beckoned me outside. I stepped out with him into the day-lights, and saw one of my neighbors leaning pensively out his open window, pretending he wasn’t watching.

  “If that—if she isn’t AI,” Fanning said, “I don’t know what would count.”

  He’d kept his voice down, but I winced anyway, aware o
f the watcher across the narrow trafficway. “Was that necessary?”

  “Wasn’t it?” he answered, and I had to look away.

  “Fan, I don’t know what to do, either. Yeh, she’s—it’s finally happened, and the timing couldn’t be worse. Can you imagine what the metalheads would say—can you imagine what Realpeace would do? If they blew up Hati just because they’re a fusion band—”

  Fanning waved his hands at me, and I stopped, realizing my own voice had risen.

  “Sorry. But I don’t know what to do.”

  Fanning nodded, his face twisting in rueful agreement. “At least she’s with you, and not with one of the Cartel Companies—or working FTL, for that matter. I hear those people are kind of paranoid since Manfred. But she’s safe, and you’ve got breathing room.”

  I hadn’t really thought about what would have happened if Celeste had appeared on, say, one of the assembly lines. There would have been no reason to keep her, and every reason just to disassemble the links, detach the components, and pretend it had never happened. It was a sobering thought—the constructs I’d linked weren’t exactly out of the ordinary, unless you believed Jian. If anyone would know that a construct was more than just a standard Spelvin matrix, it would be the woman who’d first encountered Manfred—but if she had recognized it then, why had she sold it to Garay? If it, if both the constructs were as ordinary as they’d seemed, I couldn’t help wondering if this had actually happened before, and how many times. AI wasn’t something I’d ever thought much about: I’m about as much a Dreampeace as I am a member of the Church of the Risen Elvis, and for about the same reasons, family tradition and habit rather than real conviction. But now that the idea had occurred to me, it seemed almost frighteningly plausible. Everybody in the Cartel Companies was paranoid about AI, and with reason: the day true AI appeared was the day the whole construct economy went straight to hell. How much easier would it be just to make sure it never happened, the connection never got made—and what did you call it, this act of omission? It wasn’t a crime, exactly, more a failure of nerve, and until I’d met Celeste I doubt I would have even wondered about the choice.

  “So what are you going to do?” Fanning asked, and I heard my voice sharp with something like guilt.

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Sorry.” He sounded genuinely apologetic, and I made myself relax.

  “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve snapped.” I took a deep breath. “I think the best thing—the only thing to do is to lie low for a while, be very discreet. Did I tell you the previous owner—the woman who sold it—came to see me at the Empire?”

  “No.” Fanning frowned. “A big woman, right, really tall and good-looking? Maybe with a beautiful redhead, and a fair-haired Vaughn?”

  “Yeh,” I answered, and then the name registered. “No redhead, though, but are you telling me we’ve got cousins involved in this?”

  “He’s some sort of cousin of my cousin Meonothai,” Fanning answered. “Crazy Imre, Meo called him—Imre Vaughn, that would make him.”

  “Elvis Christ.” That was the other half of the pilot team that had found Manfred—it was no wonder Jian had been wary. “They were all involved in the Riots, all involved with Manfred. This woman, Jian, her name is, she said somebody had been making inquiries about the original construct, the one she’d sold to Garay.”

  “That’s weird.” Fanning’s frown deepened. “Realpeace, do you think?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I told her I hadn’t noticed anything odd, and I’m going to go on saying that if anybody asks. I can keep people from seeing her on the grounds that her programming is a professional secret.”

  “I hope it works,” Fanning said. “Look, I was serious about knowing where you can get a cheap vox.”

  “You think it’s worth it?”

  He spread his hands. “She sounded almost like anybody starting out, but not quite. I’d love to know where she goes next with it, if she—” He stopped abruptly, smiling. “I guess what I’m saying is, I wonder if she’s got talent.”

  He was right, that was a weird thought, and I didn’t know how I felt about it. It was disconcerting enough to have to accept that Celeste was people without having to cope with her being a musician—more than just people, a maker, a creator, too. A peer. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “See if I can afford it. Flip me the place?”

  “I can tell you now,” he said. “Tan Shao’s, at the Milagro Interlink—he doesn’t haggle, but the prices are good.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and knew I sounded sour.

  I bought the vox, though, made the trip down a level and then west to Milagro itself. Tan Shao’s was small, but brightly lit, full of thin old men in sarangs who seemed to have nothing better to do than sit around with instruments in their hands. Maybe they even played them sometimes, but not while I was there. The man behind the sales display wasn’t much younger, and just as coolie, and I barely stopped myself from hesitating in the doorway, seeing them all. But Fanning wouldn’t have recommended the place if it was Realpeace, and I made myself come smoothly on, nodding to the man at the sales display.

  “Can I help you, bi’?” he asked, and the smooth coolie voice—Persephone’s, not Freyan—was reassuring.

  “I hope so.” I took a deep breath. “My cousin, Fanning Jones, recommended that I look here for a vox.”

  “Fire/Work, right?” He nodded, went on without waiting for my answer. “What were you looking for, exactly?”

  “Something basic,” I said. “For someone who’s just learning to play, but expandable.”

  The man nodded again. “Are they going to want to do programming, or just play stock?”

  I suppressed the desire to laugh, knowing better than even to think of explaining. “I don’t think you could stop her from programming it.”

  “Right, then.” He turned to an ancient-looking terminal, typed codes, squinting down at the tiny screen. I could see the old men reflected in the polished surface of a bright silver AutoSong console, could see their hands moving in conversation, but the curve distorted my view, so I couldn’t see what they were saying.

  “We have a couple of boxes that might be what you’re looking for.” The man swung his screen so that I could see the codes as well. “This one’s older, hasn’t been updated to the fifteenth edition standards, but it’s got a lot of power. This one’s newer, and it was built to the current standards, but it’s not as powerful.”

  I hesitated. Power was good—the way Celeste was learning, she wouldn’t outgrow or get bored with the more powerful one quite as fast as with the simpler vox. And it might not be a bad thing if she didn’t have the newest standards to play with: I felt a little ashamed, thinking that, but being restricted to the older systems might keep her from being noticed just a little longer. I wondered how often my own mother had thought that about me. “The more powerful one, I think—depends on the price, of course.”

  “I’m asking 275,” he answered promptly. “That’s firm—Fanning will have told you I mean that.”

  I nodded. “Does that include any sound patches?”

  “The usual set of twenty.”

  “All right.” I reached into my belt for my smaller loc card—paying for the karakuri and the constructs, and loaning Fanning money for his bills, I was short on cash—and handed it to him.

  He took it, still without much expression, fed it into the register, then touched a button on the display. A door I hadn’t noticed opened in the back wall, and a much younger woman—barely out of her teens, I guessed, in a scarlet sarang and a heavy work vest—appeared in the opening.

  “Yeh?”

  The man behind the display reeled off a string of codes. The girl nodded and vanished again. A moment later, another door opened in the blank wall, and I caught a flash of her sarang as she stooped to slide the vox through the opening. The man lifted it up to the counter, folding back the cover to reveal the keyboard and controls. “Want to try it out?�
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  I shook my head. “I don’t play. It’s a gift.”

  “Haya.” He didn’t seem surprised by that, just folded the cover back down again and turned his attention to the register. “You get a carryweb with it, and a unipower box.”

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded, and released my card from the register, handed it back still faintly warm from the machine. “It’s all yours. Hope your friend enjoys it.”

  “I’m sure she will,” I answered, and wondered what he’d think if he knew what the “friend” actually was. I shook the thought away, and hoisted the vox in its webbing. It was an awkward length, a little more than half a meter long and relatively heavy, but the carrier was well designed, tucked it close along my back, and I managed even the long ‘bus ride without much trouble.

  Celeste loved it. She picked up the programming almost instantly, which shouldn’t have surprised me, and promptly immersed herself in learning to play. Over the first half-week, she blew a speaker and half a dozen fuses, but then she seemed to accept the machine’s physical limitations, and the destruction stopped. She even learned to take the music somehow off-line, to recreate it within herself—in whatever block of memory passed for imagination, I guess, virtual music on a virtual machine within a virtual person—which made it easier for me to work and sleep. The only trouble came at the night shows. Her mind was elsewhere; the cues were there, but sometimes a split second late, and even when they weren’t she was never more than just there, doing her job and nothing more. I hadn’t realized, until then, how much I’d started to rely on her as a puppeteer, the little things she did with the karakuri, the little variations of gesture that made them look almost human, and it was bad to be without them. Luckily, the audiences didn’t notice, but Binnie and Terez both did. I told Muthana I was having memory problems—it’s the explanation for 90 percent of construct problems, and it wasn’t entirely untrue—but Terez was harder to convince. She cornered me in my dressing room at the interval, while I was putting the final touches on my costume, stood blocking my light until I had to ask her to move.