Face Smuggler

by Matthew Sills

  On a side note, Grayson wondered how the AI didn’t trip the IPTA scans. He didn’t do anything that would have masked it. He had only altered the memories so they couldn’t be read.

  “I just don’t understand,” Alice was saying. “If it has been almost twenty years, why hasn’t my family been looking for me?”

  “That’s another good question,” Grayson said. “Maybe they did back then. We can search the nets. You said you are Alice Liddell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Let’s see then.” Grayson keyed in the search, which returned several biographical entries from open source encyclopedias. The first one was a stub:

  Alice Liddell of the Liddell family. Youngest of three children born to Carter and Genevieve Liddell. Currently lives a reclusive life in Taiwan. Alice is a noted silent partner with a minor interest in Axios Corporation whose shares vote by proxy with the other members of her family who together hold a controlling interest in Axios.

  “It says you’re alive and well in Taiwan.” Grayson said.

  “I can see that,” snapped Alice. “This can’t be right. It’s obviously wrong.”

  Grayson pulled up other entries with the same information. “Why would all the entries say the same thing, then?”

  “I don’t know. They’re just… wrong!”

  “Come on, think hard. What’s the last thing you remember before you woke up like this?”

  Grayson still had the engram reader running on his tablet as they were talking. It tracked which engrams were being read. A block of files flashed and prompted a notification bubble:

  Files cannot be read. Access denied.

  “I don’t know,” Alice replied. “I’m just… drawing a blank. The last thing I remember was an ordinary day like any other. I remember doing to watch the sailing teams prepare for the regatta and thinking I might be coming down with a cold. I hoped I wasn’t, because I always enjoyed watching the regattas with my father, but that’s it.”

  That piqued Grayson curiosity. There was a chunk of engrams stored that were read protected with encryption so that they could not be accessed. That was curious and warranted a closer look. “You have a set of memories that are encrypted. Do you know why?”

  “No. Can you decrypt them?”

  “Maybe. I’ll set the tablet to work on it in the background. Maybe some of the answers are locked away in there.”

  “Thanks. I don’t like the thought of not having all my memories. I don’t have much else these days.”

  “I overheard the people after us talking on Mariner Station. They mentioned something about ‘corporate’. Like they were agents of a corporation. Do you think that could be a reference to Axios?”

  “Why would Axios be killing people?”

  “I don’t know. Come to think of it, they didn’t seem to have a high opinion of your existence. The leader referred to you as an ‘abomination’.”

  “That’s friendly.”

  Grayson laughed.

  Alice continued. “I thought maybe they could be the ones who kidnapped me.”

  “You remember being kidnapped?”

  “No, but it’s kind of logical. It could be someone looking for blackmail or leverage of some sort to use against my parents or the company. I remember that Axios had been filing a lot of groundbreaking cybernetics patents. What if they’re after those trade secrets?”

  Grayson sighed. “That was eighteen years ago. Would they still be after you for those now? We’re just stockpiling questions with no answers.”

  “It seems that way.”

  “Regardless,” Grayson said, “Right now we’re both in danger. That’s apparent. I also think we need to get off Mars. Those people are still looking for us, and I for one don’t intend to be found.”

  “Maybe we should try getting in touch with Axios,” Alice suggested.

  “Why wouldn’t you have done that back on Earth, what was the need to get off planet?”

  “I - I don’t know…” Alice said. “It was just important to get off Earth. I had an intuition.”

  “AI’s don’t get intuitions,” Grayson remarked.

  “I AM NOT AN AI.” Alice said.

  “Sorry,” Grayson said without much sincerity. “Regardless, there is too much you don’t seem to know - that we don’t know - to go risking coming out publicly by announcing ourselves to anyone - Axios included. I say our first priority needs to be getting away to safety somewhere. The belt is a tried and true place to lay low until we figure out out next move. Maybe we’ll be able to figure things out better if we can buy some time.”

  Alice thought for a long moment. “Agreed. We’re partners then?”

  “Partners? How so?”

  “It only makes sense that we work together. I may not have a body, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help. I have funds we can use. Regardless of what the internet says or what you think, I am Alice Liddell, and right now I can see my account balances. Woah.” She paused. “They’re a bit bigger than I remember. Keep me running and hooked in to your tablet, then I can stay with you. If you have a cochlear implant, better yet. No one will be able to hear me except you.”

  Grayson did have one. He usually kept it off. “That’s not a bad idea. Any other thoughts on a plan?”

  “I agree that we need to get off Mars. How do we head to the belt, or beyond? I’ve always heard there are a million places out there to hide if you need to. I think that is safest for now…”

  Grayson was ready to put the inner planets behind him. “We can’t exactly buy tickets on the next transport off this rock, but you say you have access to your accounts?”

  “I do.”

  “Great. Then I have an idea.”

  3

  THE BELT

  Mars was not the best place to buy a spacecraft if you were looking for something new and flashy; however, even poor men could feel like kings at the salvage yards which often boasted more than a few serviceable crafts. Spacecraft sent to work in the various industrial enterprises of the belt took a heavy beating, and Mars was the closest body with a clean orbit. This made it the ideal destination for trading in or retiring used spacecraft. Many an entrepreneur cargo hauler started out his career flying a beater pulled out of the Martian salvage yards, and this was exactly the role Grayson played as he looked over the inventory at the Salvage Authority’s depot in Candor Arcology.

  Alice whispered in his ear as he went, and so he affected the habit of a stream of conscious monologue as he went in order to describe the details to her. He would have to find a way to give her eyes in the future. “This next one is an old C-Class mid-range Porter, registered as the Eunoe,” he said as he came up to the snub-nosed fuselage. The hexagonal design allowed additional cargo mods to be attached on the exterior bulkheads, which with some configurations, garnered the chassis the nickname of the “flying asterisks”; however, it was a solid design, durable, and their best bet so far. The major drawback of the C-Class generation of ships was the tucked-in fusion engines were not designed for sustained G flight, meaning it took bursts of high G acceleration to get up to speed followed by periods of weightlessness while coasting on inertia.

  That particular drawback didn’t matter much for their purposes, and Alice agreed it would be a suitable craft. Grayson played it up anyways as he haggled with the salvage manager. “Suppose I’ve got livestock -”

  “Livestock!” The manager’s flushed jowls wobbled at the suggestion. “In space?”

  “Yes, in space!” Grayson continued. “You know what kind of premium fresh meat commands on Triton?”

  “Triton?!” The manager’s flush deepened. “You’ll run out of feed before you’re halfway there.”

  “That’s why it commands such a premium,” Grayson calmly retorted. “Look now, it’s a reliable looking ship, but how much longer do you think it’s going to sit on your lot now that sustained G engines have been the norm for twenty years. I’m doing you a favor.”

  The manager sputtered. �
�Favor, you say, I don’t know about all that! I can drop the price another 5%, but that’s it!”

  “Deal.” Grayson punched in the wiring numbers Alice whispered to him. The numbers were valid and the money appeared in the Salvage Depot’s account. The Eunoe was now theirs under a phoney registration. He wondered if they might wind up on the lam for wire fraud as well.

  A planetary tug assisted them into Orbit; the Eunoe’s C-Class engines were not designed for planetary liftoff, but functioned perfectly once in space. A blast of neck-breaking acceleration pushed them out of Mars’ gravity well and on course for the asteroid belt. Mars’ present orbital position meant a straight burn placed them about midway between Ceres and Juno. It made for a good situation. It was an uninhabited area of the belt, but it was not entirely devoid of all activity as several companies engaged in mining operations there. That meant they could hide for as long as they wanted but also be quickly found later on if needed.

  Grayson was able to hook Alice’s program into the ship’s computer and give her access to the onboard sensors. The C-Class’ internal sensors were utilitarian to say the least, but for Alice it was “like having eyes and ears, hands and feet again.” It was as happy as Grayson had heard her sound. Indeed, the more time he spent with her the more he found himself thinking of her as a person instead of as an AI.

  While they were still in data range of Mars, Grayson took the liberty of downloading as much information about the Liddell family and Axios Corporation as he could find onto the ship’s memory banks. He spent his time pouring over it to try and find some more answers. Alice often chatted as he did.

  She told him of her life as she remembered it: Her first love was sailing, and that for as long as she could remember the water had been part of her life. Her fondest family memories growing up were on the water, whether it be the lakes or in the ocean. She explained in detail how to rotate the boom and the purpose of the jib, and she recounted the first time she was allowed to handle the tiller. The first thing she wanted to do when she got her body back was go to the water to feel the ocean breeze on her skin and smell the salt spray breaking off the waves. Grayson found himself hoping she would get the chance.

  Grayson couldn’t remember the last time he smelled the ocean. It was probably at the Malecon, but he didn’t notice it then. He used to savor small things like that when he was with Sarah. Unfortunately, there were no oceans of water where he and Alice now went.

  Alice talked on while Grayson chased down dead ends in the information he downloaded. He asked the occasional question to follow up on something Alice said, but for the most part she talked and he listened. He got the impression she was glad to have someone to talk to. AI or not, he couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to spend those years in cyber-oblivion being passed from one smuggler to another.

  So far, what he learned did little to clarify their situation apart from suggesting that a return to Earth or otherwise making direct contact with Axios was a bad idea. The real life Alice Liddell was definitely alive and well on Earth. He wasn’t sure what this immediately meant for the Alice speaking to him over the ship’s PA system, but it strengthened his AI simulacrum theory.

  He chose not to belabor Alice with this line of thought; however, that would certainly justify Axios having a vested interest in capturing it and eliminating the evidence of its existence. He was no securities expert, but Grayson was relatively certain an autonomous simulacrum of a major shareholder would not bode well for shareholder confidence in the board or stock price. However, it was hard to imagine a rival creating the simulacrum just to cause damage. The effort to create Alice must have been enormous, and a major violation of the Turing Codes. Moreover, the choice of Alice seemed an odd one. Of all the members in her family, the records indicated she was the most reclusive and least involved in corporate governance.

  It could have been an internal project that got loose somehow, supposing the real Alice volunteered her memories - but that kind of transcription procedure was so incredibly risky. That was why Grayson’s engram harvesting always took place within a few minutes of death when there was no more risk to the person but the synapse degradation had not set in yet. He couldn’t imagine someone in good health volunteering for the process. Yet, Alice did mention all the cybernetic patents her parents had been filing at the time.

  He remembered that years ago, when he had been a student, Axios was a major proponent of revising the Turing codes until the Anthropos movement gained popularity. The smart money was betting that Axios had a major breakthrough in cyberization they were trying to get legalized. A lot of hedge funds lost money on that one when the code revisions fell through.

  “You don’t talk very much about yourself, do you?” Alice observed, disrupting his train of thought.

  “Huh?” Grayson began looking into Axios’ cybernetic patents from that time. They were remarkably similar to the work he did in school, yet far more complex and ambitious in scope.

  “I was asking about you. I’m still not sure what it is you do when you’re not running across the solar system saving damsels in distress.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean your job, your work, what is it you do.”

  “I’m a smuggler.” It was the easiest answer.

  “Obviously.” Her tone seemed droll. “Don’t most smugglers have some sort of specialty, though?”

  “What?”

  “What. Do. You. Smuggle.”

  “Identity, generally speaking.”

  “How can you smuggle an identity?”

  “There are lots of different components to an identity. Legal documentation, for instance, is the least important. If you think about it, only strangers ask you for identification. It is important if you’re trying to get away from some kind of legal trouble; however, what people know you by, primarily, is your face - and other characteristics. That’s what you need to change if you want to truly start over.”

  “So you smuggle… faces?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Personal likenesses, biometric data, even memories. If it is a part of who we are, then it’s worth a bundle to someone trying to start over and create a new life. Of course, there are the identity laws that stop the use of someone’s likeness or data without their consent, but there are plenty of people willing to release those rights for the right price.”

  “Like who?”

  Grayson shrugged. “Old people, dying people, who don’t need it anymore and want to profit while they still can. Unimportant and insignificant people who are hard up and figure there’s not much value in keeping the rights to their likeness for themselves. Those are the two main categories.”

  “And memories? How do you come by those?”

  “I’d prefer not to talk about,” Grayson said.

  “But that’s why you came by me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would people want with someone else’s memories?”

  “How better to change an identity than by going to the very core of one’s existence?

  “Sounds like lovely work.”

  “It is what it is.”

  “Isn’t that kind of like lying?”

  Grayson shrugged.

  “It is hard?”

  “It can be,” Grayson said. “Anyone can craft a face. It’s just a mask we put on to show to the outside. I include biometrics and anything else external like that. Memories are trickier. They need to be seamless. Two people can share the same appearance, even down to genetic details like identical twins, but what really makes us unique is memory.”

  “I don’t know if I would like walking around knowing some of my memories are fake. How would I know what was real and who I really was?”

  “That’s the trick,” said Grayson, “implanting the memories in a way they aren’t recognized as fake. Most don’t want to remember they had it happen, so when they wake up, I make sure they don’t. They just go on with their lives living a modified or entirely new identity. “r />
  “Speaking of memories, have you made any progress decrypting the ones you found?”

  “The program is still working on them, but it is making progress. I don’t know when it will finish. Luck is a part of these things.”

  “So, memory expert, how did you manage to get me off of Earth after all?”

  “I…” Grayson paused, remembering his first encounter with Alice.“I had to decompile your engrams to mask them from the IPTA scanners.”

  “You mean you took them apart?”

  “Essentially.”

  “Oh… So that was you. I remember them getting pulled apart, but I didn’t know what was happening. When they were gone I was just left there. I didn’t know why I was floating in that darkness. I didn’t even know who I was.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” He shouldn’t feel bad for an AI. “I didn’t realize you could feel that - that you were aware.”

  “It’s okay,” she said slowly. “You didn’t know.” A pause. “Have you always done that?”

  “Done what?”

  “Smuggled. Have you always been a smuggler?”

  “No, not always.”

  “What were you before then?”

  Grayson sighed. “I was in school to be a doctor. Cyber-neurology, actually. Hence the…”

  ” - The smuggling, yeah. Makes sense. So what happened - what stopped you from becoming a doctor?”

  “I was kicked out and barred from obtaining a license. It’s… not something I enjoy talking about.” Neither did he enjoy thinking about how he got from there to here. It would have been unimaginable for his younger self. He didn’t even know that person anymore.

  The Eunoe entered the belt in the vicinity of 93 Minerva on its second week out from Mars. Nearby freighter lines ran ore from the Minerva fueling depot to the smelters and refineries on Io, Jupiter’s volcanic moon. Not even the Jovian rebellion and its associated embargoes had managed to disrupt such an important trade route. Their course took them away from the shipping lanes and toward a cluster of metal-poor asteroids another day or two away. They would be able to hide there virtually undetectable on minimal power for as long as they wanted.