Grayson passed a sign: Residential units - Third Level.
He did not want to wait on the lift and took the spiraling stairs two at a time.
On the third level, another sign pointed to short term units for travelers and station guests. Grayson checked his shoulder and continued at pace. Procuring a room was a mundane affair. He paid and received the access codes with minimal interaction with the steward on duty. The steward did not question Grayson’s request for two adjacent rooms.
The units were a studio floor plan for short to intermediate term visitors of the sort you could find in any decent station across the solar system. Grayson entered one and immediately took his multi-tool from his rucksack and began working on the passive airflow duct. It was on the shared wall between the two units. He’d been hoping for that. It did not take much work to pry off the cover and kick through to the other side.
Modular construction, he thought, gotta love it. Grayson slid through. It was a tight fit, but he made it. If he was being followed, they would have only seen him go into the first unit. If he could keep the other one clean he had a safe house of sorts should the need arise. The steward could, of course, give him away; however, to do so would be a violation of the strict Martian privacy laws. Grayson hoped the man valued his job more than the value of a bribe. Grayson also hoped he was being paranoid.
He slid back through the wall into the first unit. He had some work to do and if there was any chance of being traced, he wanted it all to lead to the same unit. Grayson picked up the phone and dialed the station operator. “I need a line to the surface.” As the adrenaline waned, his jaw began to throb; however, it was not dislocated after all.
“One moment please,” came the response.
The operator spliced Grayson’s line into the station’s data stream to the surface. Benedict had provided him with the number of the buyer, and Grayson wanted to set up a meeting as soon as possible. He put in the buyer’s number, but there was no response.
Frustrated, Grayson hung up and decided to see if he could contact Benedict back on Earth. The current delay was only around six minutes due to the favorable orbital positions of both planets. Grayson typed out a message:
Benedict:
Arrived at Mariner today. I am being followed. There have been two attempts to steal the package already. Unable to make initial contact for meeting. Will try again shortly. May need a backup if primary contact doesn’t work out. Who else knows about the package and would be after it? Any info would be appreciated. Please advise.
-Grayson
He sent the message and tried calling the surface again: still no response. Grayson frowned. He told himself it was not reason to panic in itself. Hopefully Benedict would reply in a timely fashion.
“Let’s see what’s so special about these engrams.” Grayson opened the case connected his tablet. “What the hell?” He found new engrams stored on the system memory along side the files he decompiled back on Earth. He was certain all the files were masked before heading through IPTA. “How did these get here?”
A knock at the door interrupted his inquiry. Grayson quietly closed the case and grabbed his few belongings. Stepping softly to the air duct, he pushed his belongings through and then crept back to check the door viewer. The screen displayed the area just beyond the door. The woman with the shaved-under hair stood outside. She wore a synthetic leather jacket the same color as her inky hair. Her upturned nose was accentuated by the angle of the door viewer. Grayson swallowed hard: his suspicions were confirmed.
Grayson shimmied through the air duct into the adjoining room and pulled the duct cover closed behind him. Such designs usually employed a noise cancelation device to effect privacy. Grayson disabled it while between the walls. If they broke in, he wanted to eavesdrop.
The door viewer in the adjoining unit provided a different view: The man with the beady eyes waited out of view of the first unit, and with him was… Shriev? It was. He had turned the viewer on in time to see the beady eyed man pass Shriev a pistol, who in turn tucked it beneath jacket he wore. Grayson swore silently but noted the contusions on Shriev’s face with satisfaction.
The woman knocked next door again. “He’s not responding, what should we do?”
The beady eyed man took a small device from his pocket and handed it to her.
Grayson heard the door unlock and open next door. He tiptoed to their air vent to listen.
“What the hell?” It was the woman.
“What is it?” The beady eyed man.
“He’s not here. It doesn’t look like anyone is here.”
“You saw him come in, is there any chance he could have left without us knowing?”
“I’m not sure. He would have had to pass us on the way out if he did. We wouldn’t be in this mess if Shriev had finished his job.”
“Hey now, I didn’t know I had to kill him,” Shriev objected. “I just thought we needed the case. He’s kind of an alright guy. Are you sure we’re supposed to kill him?”
“Yes,” answered the beady eyed man. “The orders are clear. We retrieve the abomination and erase all traces of it. That means neutralizing anyone outside of corporate that’s had any part of this extended fiasco.”
Benedict, thought Grayson. He needs to be warned.
“At least,” the man continued, “you were able to get eyes on the contents and verify we’re after the target. Now Bravo team can start cleaning up the collateral damage back on Earth.”
Grayson didn’t like the sound of that. He hoped it wasn’t too late to send a warning.
“If he’s not here,” the woman asked, “should we head planetside?”
“I don’t know,” the man replied. He seemed to be the leader of the group. “We need to confirm he’s not still on station, but yes. That’s the logical next move.”
The three in the other room rummaged around but gave up quickly. Grayson did not leave them anything to find.
After they left, Grayson reactivated the noise cancellation unit and retrieved his tablet to send a warning to Benedict only to see that the message he sent before had been returned with an error:
Message undeliverable. Undefined User.
“What’s this?” Grayson checked the user information. It was correct; moreover, it was part of an ongoing thread. He opened the archived messages and found that all the ones coming from Benedict now displayed error messages of their own.
Invalid message: Undefined User.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? The user is defined right there!” Grayson chewed on his lower lip. The turn seemed ominous in light of what he just overheard. Other implications aside, immediately it meant he wouldn’t be able to contact Benedict anymore or vice versa. He couldn’t warn Benedict of the danger, and he was also on his own until he could rendezvous with or otherwise get ahold of his contact on the surface. It seemed that his pursuers anticipated that move already, but what other option was there?
He considered abandoning the briefcase altogether. It seemed the perfectly rational thing to do; however, the conversation he overhead was fresh in his mind: Neutralize anyone outside of corporate that had any part of this fiasco. Grayson did not fancy the idea of unknown pursuers on his heels across the solar system. Outside of corporate… that part stuck out ominously. Corporate meant resources, regardless of what corp it was. To deal with something like that… he needed more information. That probably meant sticking things out a bit further. Then,once he knew who or what he was up against, he might find a way to give them the slip and return to his happy anonymity in the outer rim.
The thought gave him pause. He chuckled sardonically. Had he been happy? It didn’t matter; that was a question for another time. The more pressing question concerned the contents of the briefcase.
Grayson judged the wisest course of action did not involve immediate flight. He felt like prey that had been forced into hiding, and his best chance was to wait for the hunters to move on. He would wait until his pursuers
hopefully left the station, and then he would follow down to the surface. With at least three to one, his odds did not seem great in a direct confrontation. However, if he could lay low and then make his way down to the surface - well, Mars was a lot bigger than Mariner Station. He might elude them long enough to make contact with the buyer and disentangle himself from this mess.
At the very least, he needed to find out what exactly he landed in. Consequently, he returned his attention to the case for the time being. Perhaps there were clues to what was going on buried somewhere in the files or even in the engrams themselves. He would need to recompile them and take a closer look at all the contents. The first mystery, however, was the new engrams and from where they came.
The best table to set up his equipment was in the kitchenette. He once again connected to the CPU with his tablet. He examined the new engrams first. Each one bore a timestamp indicating modification within the last two weeks. One showed modification as recent as today. Grayson began the program for recompiling the scrambled engrams in the background. It was a special program of his own design. In one mode it took digital encoded memory sequences - the engrams - and disentangled the sense experiences, essentially slicing each memory into five discrete bits that could be later recompiled into a cohesive unit through encrypted markers. This let him pass off memories as synthesia files. The reverse operation reconstructed the memories by aligning the markers to ensure the proper experiences recombined in the right order.
While it ran, he accessed the most recent of the new engrams. Wailing flooded from his tablet’s speakers. It was raw grief: ragged, sobbing despair, like a woman fresh from the loss of a child. Grayson scrambled to mute the sound, but his tablet was unresponsive. He fumbled for his headset and slammed the jack into its port. The caterwaul reduced but was no less unnerving with the tinny gain of the headphones.
Half mumbled phrases followed. “Who am I? What - what is this?” An inhuman caterwaul pierced the space between tin whispered phrases from the headset.
No visual data accompanied the engram. He swore and rubbed his face as the engram played on, unsure what to make of things. He tried to switch to another file, but his tablet was still frozen.
The ragged cries stopped abruptly, and the voice spoke with an unexpected clarity. “Who’s there? Is somebody out there? If someone is out there, I need help; please help me! I used to know… what…
“I felt it ripped away. What was it?”
Grayson couldn’t make sense of what was playing.
“Ripped away from me… I used to know… dark here. Why can’t I feel anything?”
In the background, the recompiling program flashed a notification that the first block of files had completed. The tablet wasn’t fully frozen after all. Perhaps the processor was simply overworked handing the larger than usual engrams.
“My name… is Alice. Please, help me,” the voice continued. “I remember now. My name is Alice. Please help me.
“Why can’t I remember anything else? If you can hear me…”
Grayson recalled the mysterious message:
HELP ME.
ALICE
Presently, he noticed timestamp on the engram had gone translucent. It was a live file being actively modified - recorded. Grayson was not listening in on a memory. He was participating in one being formed in real time. “The hell…?” He whispered.
In the background, another bloc of engrams finished recompiling.
“I knew it! I heard someone. Oh please, whoever you are, please help me.”
It was speaking to him. Grayson gripped the headset and pulled it over his ears. It had a built-in sound control he used to lower the volume. “What is this?” He asked, speaking into the microphone; he assumed that was this thing’s ears at the moment.
“What is what?”
“What is this; what are you?”
“I told you. My name is Alice.”
“Not who are you, but what are you - an AI?”
“I - I don’t think so. I’m a person.”
Another block of files completed the recompiling sequence, and his tablet grew more responsive. Grayson checked the heuristics monitor, again wondering if he had been affected by malware. The malware results were negative, but the analysis revealed strong ghost activity.
“Damnit,” he muttered. The ghost activity pointed to the presence of an AI; why hadn’t he detected it earlier? He hoped it was some kind of simulacrum with no underlying intelligence; he had never heard of an AI forming memories or claiming an identity, but a program could be made to parrot such claims. Most that were advanced enough to have autonomous reasoning recognized they were programs. That was as close to self-awareness as they came.
If, however, this was a personality simulacrum grafted onto an AI, it would mean he was dealing with high level Turing shit: especially if it were encoding its own engrams. That would explain corporation involvement and why they would be willing to kill to get it back. After all, one never really knew what the authorities let corporations get away with that normal people couldn’t. This could be a major leak of some illegal experiment. That would explain the use of lethal measures depending on who was running the show and how damaging the news would be for the shareholders.
He also wondered: why did the man call it an abomination?
Grayson couldn’t figure out how the new engrams had formed. He checked the system logs and found the CPU had been running off and on since he left Theia Prime. No doubt the inspecting IPTA agent didn’t properly shut it off which allowed the simulacrum to continuously run. That might explain the new engrams. He began to feel better with a plausible answer in place for one of his questions.
“Will you help me?” It asked again. “I need to get to Mars. Someone is waiting for me there.” It sounded hopeful but uncertain.
“Who is waiting for you on Mars?” Grayson was suspicious. Clearly, there was something more going on than he knew about, but he was taken aback that the AI might have an active hand in things. He doubted it arranged to be brought here on its own.
“I don’t want to get him in trouble,” came the sheepish reply.
Grayson rolled his eyes: an AI with scrupulosity problems; however, he decided to play along. It might help him get more information to figure out the situation he found himself in. “I can’t very well help you get to him if I don’t know who it is.”
“Jacob,” it said at length.
“Where are you supposed to meet Jacob?”
“We didn’t set a place because we weren’t sure where would be safe. He was supposed to scope things out first and leave a message for me on where to go. I should be able to receive it if you get me access to the Mars net.”
“One thing at a time,” Grayson said. “There are people after you, and after me now as a result. Do you know who they are?”
“No. Jacob didn’t say…”
Grayson frowned. “Who is this ‘Jacob’?”
“A scientist… at my family’s company.”
“What company is that?”
“I’m not supposed to say. Kidnappers, ransom, and all that…”
Grayson rubbed his eyes. “Given your present situation, it’s a little late to worry about those things, but I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’re mixed up in.”
“Axios,” Alice said.
“Axios Corporation?” It was the largest producer of semiconductors for cybernetics and advanced robotics in the solar system. Grayson was surprised.
“My family owns a controlling share. My parents are Tom and Genevieve Liddell - two of the cofounders of Axios.”
Grayson shook his head. It just wasn’t plausible. “How did you end up like this, then?”
“I - I don’t remember that.”
Grayson’s tablet notified him of a block of files that were read-protected and could not be accessed. He made a mental note to check them out later. Other issues were more pressing.
“The last thing I remember before waking up like
this was an ordinary day. I think perhaps I was coming down with the flu or something - you know that feeling? The next thing I remember was Jacob telling me he needed to get me off world.”
“So why aren’t you with Jacob now?”
“He said he wouldn’t be able to get me off world on his own, that he would need some kind of expert to do that, and then once we were away he could get me back into my body.”
“And you just believed him?”
There was a pause. “I’m not naive. I’ve known Jacob for a long time. Plus, can you imagine waking up suddenly without a body? You’re running like some program on a computer in a suitcase? That doesn’t just happen unless something bad has happened. I wouldn’t be surprised if the people after me are working for the people who did this to me in the first place.”
“That doesn’t add up. Why did you need to get off world? Why couldn’t you just go to an Axios office on Earth?”
“I don’t know! I had an intuition, okay? Somewhere deep down I knew to trust Jacob. I still do, and I know Earth isn’t safe for me.”
“Jacob is waiting for you on Mars?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll help you get to him.” Grayson did not know the name of the contact he was supposed to meet. Perhaps it was her Jacob, perhaps not. The story still didn’t add up either. Regardless, his part of this mess looked to be over soon, and he looked forward to collecting payment and hightailing as far into the rim as he could get as quickly as possible.
“Can I make a request?” Alice asked.
“What is it?”
“Please don’t turn me off. I hate it when it goes dark.”
Grayson furrowed his brow. “Sure,” he said at last. “Whatever you like.”
“Thank you.”
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