by Ben Lovejoy
2184
Beneath the Steel City
Ben Lovejoy
Contents
Acknowledgments
A note on language
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About book 2
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Michael Anderie and Kathryn Bax for creating supportive communities, and the Wednesday night gang for the vital role they play, both with and without wine.
Making a move from lengthy technothrillers into SF shorts was greatly assisted by beta-readers who provided early reassurance that it was enjoyable read and some really helpful feedback: Adam Goulding, Andrea Drake, Andy Taylor, Dave Langridge, Dean Sherman, Dorene Johnson, Henry Cooke Smith, Henry Dahl Jensen, Joe Smith, Kasper Ambroch, Mike Cater, Thijs Leufkens,
Finally, special thanks to Moira Harrison for encouragement and assurance that her father would have been amused by a series inspired by Slippery Jim himself – and of course to Harry Harrison for providing the inspiration in the first place.
A note on language
I’m a Brit, and the story is written in British English. Americans can expect to see some unfamiliar spellings which may appear to be typos. Examples include:
- ‘ou’ instead of ‘o’ in words like ‘colour’
- ‘re’ instead of ‘er’ in words like ‘centre’
- the ‘ise’ suffix instead of ‘ize’ in words like ‘specialise’
- similarly, ‘yse’ instead of ‘yze’ in words like ‘analyse’
- ‘ogue’ instead of ‘og’ in words like ‘catalogue’
English being English, there are also a whole bunch of cases where British English follows or doesn’t follow one inconsistent rule, while American English follows or doesn’t follow a different inconsistent rule (though American English wins the consistency battle overall).
The story is set in a future London, England.
1
Robots are dumb. Actually, that’s unfair, Saira isn’t dumb at all – as Self-propelled Artificially Intelligent Robot Assistants go, she’s pretty smart. But they are very literal when it comes to behaving the way they’ve been programmed to behave. Which is problematic when they’ve been programmed to obey the law and you would very much like one not to.
I’d planned for her to remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was here without invitation. I’d had the door codes, the keycard pass loaded onto my pocket terminal, the fingerprints. Not my own fingerprints, obviously, but latex moulds good enough to persuade the entry system that they were real, and that was almost the same thing.
At each of the three security doors through which we’d passed, I’d sauntered up to them with the air of a man very much going about his lawful business, his robot companion at his side, and then breezed through them without so much as the flicker of an amber light. All I needed Saira to do was plug herself into the access port of the safe door – the final barrier between me and my prize – and transmit the 256-character authorisation code.
The code would be accepted. My possession of the previous generation of this chip guaranteed that. What I hadn’t counted on was the automatic verbal warning system triggered by Saira plugging herself into the communications port.
“Attention!” it had said, in that imperious way government systems always spoke to citizens and their electronic companions. “Only duly authorised robots are permitted to interface with this system. Please verify the credentials of the person under whose authority you are operating before proceeding by requesting sight of their government employee access pass, grade Alpha Four or above. Removal of any property from the safe without lawful authority would be theft.”
Saira paused, and a countdown timer next to the access port began doing what countdown timers do. I wasn’t exactly sure what would happen when the timer reached zero, but I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to like it. Right now, it was reading one minute and thirty seconds.
“It’s ok,” I said, in what I very much hoped was a reassuring tone. “I wouldn’t have been able to get us into the facility without the correct pass. You may proceed.” One minute twenty-five seconds.
It was a logical-sounding argument, I thought. Saira had seen me use a keycard pass to unlock one of the security doors. That should, I felt, be sufficient. I was wrong.
“I am required to perform sight verification of the pass,” she replied. This was problematic because, while my keycard coding was correct in every detail, and the on-screen visual resemblance good enough to fool a fellow human, my failure to anticipate the possibility of Saira being required to inspect the pass had left it without the embedded microdot coding that would verify my specific access rights.
I dislike unexpected problems. I especially dislike unexpected problems arising at inconvenient times – and that countdown timer suggested to me that we were now one minute and twenty-one seconds away from a time which would qualify as such.
I thought quickly. But not particularly successfully. I was just going to have to bluff my way through this as best I could. And I was going to need to talk rapidly.
“Due to the urgency of the task with which I’ve been charged, there wasn’t time to quite finalise all of the detailed paperwork pertaining to this operation. It appears that the particular pass you are being asked to verify was inadvertently omitted from the pack I was sent.” One minute eleven seconds.
“I am required to perform sight verification of the pass,” she repeated. She doesn’t always make for the greatest of conversationalists.
I mentally counted my options. One ... Hmm. Looked like it would be that one, then. I had to reason with her
Robots like being reasoned with, but they are, frankly, way better at it than we are. Still, I had to try. I somehow had to persuade her to break the rules. One minute seven seconds.
I wasn’t asking her to do anything too nefarious. I wasn’t trying to murder anyone, or even steal anything. Well, ok, a less legally-educated person might be convinced I was trying to steal something, but strictly speaking, I wasn’t. And robots relate well to strictly speaking. I could pull this off.
“Saira,” I began. Then wondered what I was doing beginning with social niceties. Robots don’t care about social niceties, and I just used up one second addressing her by name and two more seconds berating myself for the fact. One minute four seconds. I resolved to be more efficient in my language. That resolve took another second. One minute three seconds.
‘The information provided to you by the safe was incorrect. Even if we don’t quite have all the paperwork in order, what we are doing does not amount to theft. Theft requires the intention to permanently deprive the owner of their property.” I emphasised the word ‘permanently.’
“Agreed,” said Saira. Fifty-three seconds.
“Temporarily depriving someone of their property is not theft.”
“Agreed,” replied Saira. See, Saira knew how to have a time-efficient conversation. Forty-nine seconds.
“My intention here is merely to borrow an item for a short time.”
“The temporary acquisition of government property without appropriate authorisation is still Wrongful Appropriation, which is itself an offence,” said Saira, with the relaxed air of a robot completely unconcerned about the thirty-eight seconds within which we needed to satisfactorily conclude this conversation.
“Unless the person doing the appropriation has a good faith reason for believing that the owner of the property would grant permission had they been asked,” I replied, feeling that there really were better times to have a
legal debate with a robot. Thirty-one seconds.
“Do you have such good faith belief?” asked Saira.
“Yes,” I told her, hoping that would settle the matter. Robots do not accept the truth of whatever they are told, but they will use their knowledge of a person to judge the likely veracity of a statement. Saira had known me a long time, and I’d told her a lot of lies, but she was for the most part unaware of this fact.
“What is the basis of your belief in this instance?” she asked. I did say ‘for the most part.’ Twenty-four seconds.
“Could you possibly take my word for it just for the moment?” I asked. “We could then continue the discussion at a more appropriate time.”
Saira considered this. There was no way to know that she was considering it, of course, since it didn’t take an appreciable amount of time. Thankfully. Eighteen seconds.
“But I would be assisting a criminal if I were mistaken in my decision to accept your word on the matter,” she said. A criminal, indeed! I was not a criminal! I was merely an entrepreneur with an unusually efficient business model.
“Not if you believed at the time that I was telling the truth, and you reported the matter to the authorities as soon as you became aware of the deception,” I argued. I had never spoken so rapidly in my life.
“True.” Eight seconds.
“So if I promise to explain my reasoning in, say, 30 minutes’ time, would that allow you to render the required assistance right now?”
I was again grateful for the apparent zero time required to evaluate the reasonableness of my request. Of course, I as yet had no clue what argument I might make in 30 minutes’ time, but that was a problem for later. Albeit not much later. Why hadn’t I asked for a couple of hours? Or a day? A day would be good. I was sure I could come up with something good given a day to consider it. But now wasn’t the time to attempt to renegotiate terms. Especially when there were just three seconds left before the debate became academic.
“Agreed,” said Saira. Two seconds.
“Do it!”
“Done,” she said. A whole second remaining. Don’t know why I allowed myself to become concerned.
“Thank you.” Robots are indifferent to thanks, but Saira had been my constant companion for several years now, and it was hard not to think of her as a person – albeit a pedantic person somewhat lacking in a sense of urgency.
The door opened, and I grinned broadly as I walked into the safe and picked up the single item stored within it: a transparent box containing an unimpressive-looking circuit-board. A quick pass with my portable 3D scanner and I’d have it back where it belonged within a couple of minutes. Another few minutes to exit the building and I’d have a comfortable twenty-something minutes to think of an explanation that would persuade Saira that there was no need to draw this matter to the attention of the authorities.
‘David Lafferty,’ I told myself, ‘the Stainless Steel Rat himself couldn’t have handled this better.’
Quickly unfolding my 3D scanner and setting it down on the floor, I carefully removed the circuit board from its case and set it gently down on the scanning bed. The scanner was an extremely sophisticated piece of equipment with a fairly unsophisticated control panel, namely a single green button that powered it up and commenced the scan, and a single LED that indicated the status of same. I pressed the button and watched the LED light up red. Now all I had to do was wait 90 seconds. A number that had, until recently, not felt like my friend. But these 90 seconds were very definitely my friend.
I could resist another grin at the thought. In days of old, London used to honour certain dignitaries by ceremoniously granting them the freedom of the city. All pomp and nonsense. But the freedom afforded to me by this chip … that was anything but nonsense! It granted me not just the freedom of the city, but the freedom of the country. Using the power of the existing chip to provide easy access to its planned replacement was, I felt, almost poetic.
The LED turned green. I quickly replaced the circuit board in its case, and put it back into the safe. No-one would ever know that it had briefly been in my possession. I pushed the safe door closed and it locked automatically. I refolded the scanner and slipped it back into my pocket.
I turned and headed back to the lab door. There was no need to say anything to Saira – without instructions to the contrary, she would follow me automatically.
The security system was a decent one: it needed authorisation for exit as well as entry. I applied my latex glove fingerprint to the reader by the lab door. A light turned green and it swished open. Two more doors to go.
At the door between the lab complex and the lobby, I touched the keycard to the reader. This was a heavier-duty door and it swung open more ponderously. Almost home free.
Finally, the exterior door. That needed a simple 6-digit code, changed daily. I’d memorised the day’s code and entered it on our way in. The same code would re-open the door to let us out.
Except it didn’t.
I pressed the Clear button, took a deep breath and ensured that there was no possibility of mis-keying the code. Seven. Four. Zero. Nine. Three. Five.
Nothing.
My memory is nothing exceptional. I’m as capable as the next person of forgetting little details. But the only way in and – crucially – out of a secure government facility is not something I consider a little detail. When I memorise an important code, I do it properly. There was no question that I’d entered the correct code.
There was also no question of the door being programmed with different entry and exit codes. I do my research carefully, and there was just one code. One set of six digits. The six digits I’d just entered twice, without success.
I was reluctant to enter them a third time for two reasons. The first was that I like to think I’m a logical thinker. A code is either correct or it isn’t. If it is, it unlocks the door. If it isn’t, re-entering it isn’t going to help. The second was that I knew that entering the wrong code three times in succession would trigger a full lockdown and alarm. I was reasonably keen to avoid that.
I’m also a pragmatic thinker. I had no idea why the code wasn’t working, but there was no sense in wasting time attempting to solve that mystery just at that moment. My immediate need was to exit the building, and if one route was blocked, then another would need to be used.
Not for the first time, I had cause to be grateful for my deeply-held religious beliefs. In particular, my deeply-held religious belief in Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong will go wrong – and the obvious corollary that any Plan A requires, as a minimum, a Plan B. Where practical, I preferred to get even further through the alphabet, but in this case I’d been unable to think of any options beyond B. Time to put it into action.
Whoever designed the security for the facility wasn’t stupid. Much as sensitive information should be made available on a strictly need-to-know basis, so passage through the building was granted on a need-to-go basis. My code, keycard and fingerprint were good for one particular route through the facility, but no others. Fortunately a second keycard identifying me as a maintenance worker would allow me access to the elevator to the top floor and then to the roof. As I headed to it, I dictated a brief message to my watch.
“Tell Skycar, Plan B.”
“Acknowledged,” it replied.
As I entered the elevator, I slipped off the latex gloves, stashed them in a pocket and replaced them with a new pair with a completely different set of fingerprints.
I waited for Saira to enter the elevator behind me and quickly tapped in 104. The elevator would take 26 seconds to reach the top of the building. By that time, my Skycar should be hovering just outside the air exclusion zone for the building, awaiting my signal.
As we exited the elevator, I took a moment to lean my hand against the control panel. So far there had been no great hurry. No alarms had been sounded. No robot guards had come running. No Policebots had been alerted. No drones had been tasked. All that was about to c
hange, big time.
Having access to the circuitry that generated the access codes to every public and government facility in the UK enabled one to do many things. A great many things. Walk casually into the lab containing the reference copy of the next generation of such circuitry, for example.
What it didn’t allow you to do was rewrite standing rules. When there was an air exclusion zone around a sensitive building, and policy required a minimum of four Police Skycars to be in attendance any time it was necessary to penetrate it, no code was going to prevent an automatic Priority 1 alert when a Skycar landed on the roof
Opening the door to the roof would be fine: my keycard would unlock the door without complaint. But the moment my Skycar swooped in to collect us, all hell was going to break loose.
Nothing was going to change by delaying things, so I exited onto the roof, pressing my hand against the keycard reader. It was a clear day, and there’s a pretty majestic view from the 100th floor, allowing you to take in the whole of the city, from the surrounding skyscrapers to the South Downs hills on the horizon. At any other time, I might have taken a moment to drink it all in.
At that particular moment, however, I was rather more focused on my Skycar, which had been waiting patiently for me to emerge before swooping in to land gracefully in the centre of the landing area. The moment it did, I went bounding toward it. Robots can outrun humans by a considerable margin, but Saira followed dutifully behind.
“Halt!”
The voice was an automated one, and I’d been expecting it, but I still had to work hard to pay it no heed as the Skycar’s gullwing door lifted up and I leapt aboard, Saira half a second behind me. I picked up a small package from a holder next to the door and tossed it onto the roof before slapping the button to close the door.
“Status report!” I yelled as I strapped myself in. Saira snapped herself into the docking station in the rear left-hand corner of the cabin. The Skycar leaped into the air and performed a hard right bank.