Equations of Life

by Simon Morden

“Yeah.”

  “Promise?”

  “Have I ever let you down?”

  She looked puzzled. “No. No, you haven’t.”

  Chain looked up at Madeleine, who asked. “Can you stop it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I have to trust you, don’t I?”

  “Not if you don’t want to. If you think I’m going to betray you—now or at any point in the future—it’s probably best that you kill me now. It’ll save a lot of heartbreak.”

  “Faith is a decision,” she said. “Not a feeling. Go and do it. Go and do the impossible.”

  “There’s something you can do for me, too.” He reached into his inside pocket for the envelope Pif had given him. “Chain, have you still got my rat?”

  “I… I lost it when Hijo jumped me.”

  “You balvan. Really.” Petrovitch pressed the papers on Madeleine. “Look after this for me.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The secrets of the universe laid bare. That’s all.” He watched her hold the envelope open and peer curiously inside, then went with Sonja onto the temple platform.

  There was the table, and the screen, and the keyboard.

  “This isn’t what you’re looking for,” said Sonja, and she walked through the temple to the other side. She laid her hand on one of the lions heads, and part of the wooden platform in front of Petrovitch popped up. “But this is.”

  The square of wood rose into the air, and underneath it grew a tight spiral staircase. Petrovitch leaned over the gap and looked down. It was dark inside, and cool air rose from it, making his skin prickle.

  Sonja pointed her sword to the floor and started down the metal steps. “Hijo never came down here. If he had, he’d have known.”

  “Known what?”

  She was already below the temple. Lights tripped on, and Petrovitch descended, clinging on to the narrow handrail. When his head dipped beneath the level of the ceiling, the meaning of Sonja’s words became clear.

  The room was Oshicora’s shrine to everything he’d lost, and to everything he hoped to regain. Books, scrolls, statuary, a hand-painted silk screen. Lacquerware, sandals, a kimono, a flag. A skin drum. A full set of samurai armor displayed on a mannequin. A black stone bowl containing faded pink blossom. A hanger on the wall, displaying a short sword and an empty scabbard.

  “So,” she said, “Hijo didn’t know. He thought I was doing what he wanted. Instead, I’d tricked him into doing what I wanted.”

  Petrovitch ran his hand over the cold stone, bright metal, smooth wood. He touched the thin pages and the soft silk. He caught fibers in the rough skin at the ends of his fingers.

  “Where’s the interface?” he asked.

  Sonja wiped Hijo’s blood off on her sleeve and resheathed the katana. “Through here.”

  There was another, smaller room, shielded by the folding screen. Petrovitch saw a clinically white room with cupboards all around. In the center was a dentist’s chair and a coil of cable that ended in something like a modified network connector.

  His eyes narrowed, then went wide. “Oh. You’re joking. So that’s what your father needed Sorenson for.”

  “I know what to do,” said Sonja, “if that helps.”

  “Not much.”

  She busied herself with the stainless steel cylinder that was the length of a shock-stick and had the bore of drainpipe. She plugged it into the wall to let it charge, and opened a drawer. It was full of sealed plastic bags, each containing a T-shaped device, a disc with a spike like a giant drawing pin.

  Petrovitch picked up one of the bags and turned it in his hand: he knew where that spike was going.

  “Do you have…?” he asked.

  “No. My father would not allow me one until he’d tested it thoroughly.”

  “And did he?”

  “You’ll have to ask him when you get there.” She washed her hands up to her elbows, then tore a bag open and slotted its contents into the steel dispenser. She closed the access slot, and a light winked from red to green.

  “In the chair, right?” Petrovitch could feel his courage failing. His legs were buckling, his fingers numb, his insides cold.

  He shucked his coat off and climbed into the chair before he could collapse to the floor. The headrest had been altered: there was a gap which exposed the nape of his neck.

  Something cold touched the back of his head. It trickled down his back.

  “Iodine,” she said.

  “It’s a little late for that.” He shook with fear, and his teeth chattered as he spoke. “It’s a little late for everything.”

  Sonja hefted the dispenser, and walked around behind him. The cold open mouth pressed against the back of his skull. “Ready?”

  “No.”

  “Just don’t flinch.”

  “Yobany stos, Sonja! Just do it before I change my mind.”

  The whine started high and got higher. As it reached the limit of his hearing, he heard the b of bang. Everything went black.

  36

  Petrovitch woke up in another place: an empty, echoing hall paved with white tiles. The walls were a series of backlit adverts and brightly lit booths, punctuated by escalators that clicked and hummed to the space above. Kanji signs and pictograms hovered holographically over his head.

  He was inside the machine.

  He had hands that were marble, forearms of glossy white, a torso that was as featureless as the space between his legs. He was a model, a primitive shape which needed to be overlain with skin and clothes, morphed to his height and weight and color, meshed with his features.

  Unfinished as he was, he could feel. The coldness of the stone, the movement of the air. He reached out and pressed his fingertips against the plastic cover of one of the advertising panels: it gave slightly to his touch, and popped out when he released it.

  He caught sight of his reflection. His face, smooth and indistinct: pits for eyes, a ridge for a nose, a slit for a mouth. The bumps on the side of his head were ears. He stared closely at himself, in awe, in wonder.

  Then, for pleasure: something he hadn’t been able to do since his first heart attack. He ran without guilt or shame or hesitation. He held nothing back. He tore through the underground corridors, his feet eating up the distance, and nothing could stop him.

  He turned right for the information bureau, left down the escalators, taking two, three steps at a time. Vaulting the ticket barriers, he ran through the concourse and up the stairs again to street level where it was a brilliant day.

  The sun had just risen into a baby-blue sky, and the towers of lost Tokyo basked in its heat.

  Petrovitch paused. Nothing ached. He wasn’t out of breath. He wasn’t breathing at all. So he ran again, down the center of the wide, tree-lined boulevard that led directly to an expanse of parkland that extravagantly covered several city blocks.

  It was perfect. Too perfect, for certain: not enough inconsistency for reality. Each blade of grass was straight and green, each leaf fluttering in the wind intact. Paint was even, every light worked, and no doubt litter would vanish where it lay.

  Not VirtualJapan, then. NeoJapan, Japan made new.

  Its architect was waiting for him in front of the Imperial Palace. He stood facing the green-roofed buildings across the deep moat, hands clasped behind his back. No default texture for his avatar. He looked like he did in life; blue jacket with a turned-up collar, matching trousers, close-cropped hair with a short queue.

  Petrovitch slowed to a walk and admired the view with him.

  “Well, Petrovitch-san, what do you think?”

  “I am speechless, Oshicora-san.”

  “In a good way, I trust.” He smiled to himself. “There are a few minor details to fix, but do you think the nikkeijin would come as it is?”

  “If they were able, they’d come.” Petrovitch hesitated. “Oshicora-san, I’m afraid that there’s been… well. Do you know what pizdets means?”

  Oshicora pursed his thin lips
. “Something has gone wrong?”

  “Yeah. Look, there’s no easy way to say this.”

  “Then,” said Oshicora, “we should drink sake and talk. Yes?”

  Petrovitch nodded. “I have no idea how this is going to work, but sake sounds good.”

  There was no sense of motion or the passage of time. They both stood next to a booth in a bar. On the table stood a swan-necked bottle of rice wine, and two shallow lacquered boxes which each contained a squat porcelain cup.

  “Please, sit,” said Oshicora, and bent himself to slide along the red leather seat.

  Petrovitch found himself better rendered. He wore a crisp white T-shirt under a battle smock, and his combat trousers tucked into the top of his black lace-up boots. He had skin tone, and fingernails, and glasses, which he instinctively pushed farther up the bridge of his nose.

  He sat down opposite Oshicora, who poured sake into Petrovitch’s cup until some of it overflowed into the box. He put the bottle down and allowed Petrovitch to serve him.

  “Kanpai!” Oshicora lifted his dripping cup and drank deeply.

  “Za vashe zdorovye,” said Petrovitch, and did the same. He swallowed and waited for any after-effects. “This is so completely believable, I’m having all kinds of problems. I can taste it, yet I can’t get drunk on it.”

  “If we ordered food, you would never eat your fill.” Oshicora topped up Petrovitch’s cup again. “That will have to wait for another day, I believe. Now, tell me about pizdets. Has that old goat Marchenkho been bothering you again?”

  “Can we just go back one step?” Petrovitch took the bottle. It had weight. The liquid sloshed around as he moved it to refill Oshicora’s cup. “Do you know who you are?”

  “I am a facsimile of Hamano Oshicora, set up in the VirtualJapan as the administrator function for the entire system. God, if you like.” He watched Petrovitch’s expression with amusement. “There are moments when I forget that I exist within a machine. I had not thought that possible, but they are there all the same. I look around and wonder where everyone is, and only then do I remember.”

  Petrovitch took a long pull at his sake. He scratched at his chin and pulled at his earlobe. “This,” he started, then changed his mind. “Look, Oshicora-san. You’re dead. Hijo shot you. I had hoped you knew all this.”

  Oshicora pushed his drink aside and leaned his elbows on the tabletop. “He killed me? My original? Interesting.”

  Petrovitch sat back. “How can you be unaware of everything that’s happened? Helping Sonja escape, killing almost your entire workforce in the process? Taking over the Metrozone’s communications? Driving cars and flying drones? You phoned me up! Now half the city’s under water and the other half is being demolished by giant wrecking machines that you control. I’m here in a last-ditch effort to stop you, and all you can say is ‘Interesting?’ Yobany stos, man: there are millions dead and dying because of you.”

  “I do not see how that can be true. I have been here, all this time.”

  It was Petrovitch’s turn to look completely blank. He covered his confusion by draining every last drop of sake in his cup. “So if I said the words New Machine Jihad to you, it would mean nothing?”

  “How did you hear of that?” Again, he looked amused, as if it were a matter of no consequence.

  “The New Machine Jihad is the name of the… thing that’s destroying the Metrozone. But when I called it Oshicora-san, it answered. The New Machine Jihad is you.”

  Oshicora shook his head. “No. That is simply not possible, and I will explain to you why. There is no connection between VirtualJapan and the wider network. This world is a bubble, sealed off for the moment. No data will get in or out until it is completely ready.”

  “You can say that, but I know it’s not true. Why would the Jihad tell me that the shinkansen would run again? Why would it tell me to save Sonja? Why would it remember the promise you made to me? Why would it do any of these things if it wasn’t you?” Petrovitch stared hard at Oshicora’s faint smile. “So you have heard of the Jihad.”

  “I dreamed of it, of a world where there was a revolution in technology: a new machine age.” He raised his eyebrows. “I had never expected to dream.”

  “What else?”

  “I dreamed of Oshicora’s daughter. And I dreamed of you. And a city, not like this one,” and he looked around him at the dark wood and burnished chrome, “but one made of steel and concrete, alive with movement and noise.”

  Petrovitch understood at last. “Okay. What if I were to say to you that it’s your dreams that are leaking out into the real world? Your subconscious is running out of control, trying to create Tokyo from the ruins of the London Metrozone. Did you ever want to drive a train when you were younger?”

  “Of course. I still do.”

  “That little fantasy nearly killed me. You drove an express train at full speed into St. Pancras station while I was walking along the track. How about Sonja? How do you feel about her?”

  “Protective. She is my creator’s child.”

  “It’s more than that. You think she’s your daughter. Not up here,” Petrovitch said, tapping his head. He moved his hand to cover his heart. “but here. You told me to save her. I’ve rescued her from Sorenson, lost her to Chain, only to get her back from Hijo. And if I could, I’d show you what’s happening outside the tower. How it’s surrounded by water, choked with bodies and thick with rats feeding on the corpses. How there are fires everywhere, vast slices taken out of buildings as your monsters tear up the city. Oshicora-san, you might be sane in here, but out there, the New Machine Jihad is mad.”

  “I appreciate the efforts you have made, Petrovitch-san. But I still do not see how this can possibly be.”

  There was an envelope on the table in front of Petrovitch. It had his name on it in Cyrillic. It hadn’t been there a moment before.

  “Is that for me?”

  “Yes. I suggest you open it.”

  Petrovitch picked up the envelope and slid his finger under the heavy paper flap. It tore open, and he eased the card out from inside. It was gold-edged, embossed, and had a big red octagon printed beneath bold words. “Yeah. A message from the monitoring software. I’ve gone into ventricular tachycardia.”

  “Do you wish to leave and seek medical attention?”

  He tapped the card on the table. “There’s nowhere to go. Any hospital that hasn’t been burned down to the ground by now is locked up tighter than the Lubyanka.”

  “I have been trying,” said Oshicora, “to work out why you believe you are telling me the truth despite the impossibility of your claims. Now you seem to be prepared to die for what might well be a delusion. Normally, I would judge you to be mentally ill, but I know you. Do you think you have time to convince me otherwise?”

  “You know, it’s not meant to be this hard.” Petrovitch poured himself more sake, and proffered the bottle to Oshicora, who politely declined. “But then again, what do I know? I’m lying in a dentist’s chair, in the only building with power in the entire Metrozone, with experimental cybernetics jacked into my brain, talking to a copy of a man who’s ignorant of the fact that he’s been dreaming the destruction of an entire city, while my heart finally fails.” He picked up his drink and threw it back in a single gulp.

  “But would you have missed it?”

  “Not if I’d have lived to be a hundred. Let me show you how we do things in Russia.” He tossed the cup in his hand, then threw the cup against the bar. It shattered, and shards of china spun away. He got to his feet and slid the emergency card inside his breast pocket.

  “Take me,” he said, “to your firewall.”

  The scene changed again, instantly and without any sense of motion. They were in an electronics shop, deep in the sideways of Akiba. They were surrounded by densely-packed shelves of components; plastic bins brimming with chips, fans, heat pumps, connectors, cables and cards. At the far end of the aisle, a glass case displayed the very latest hardware.

>   “Will this do?” asked Oshicora.

  “Yeah.” Petrovitch squeezed past and picked up a slim console with a holographic screen and virtual keyboard. He powered it up and watched the commands scroll past in the air. “Gesture recognition too. So, what’s on the other side of the firewall: the Oshicora intranet or a web-accessed network node?”

  “VirtualJapan is within the Oshicora system, as I understand it, which has its own security.” Oshicora peered over Petrovitch’s shoulder. “Do you feel any different yet?”

  “Not dead yet, if that’s what you mean.” His fingers typed rapidly. “Log me on in God mode. Let’s see if we can change some settings.”

  Numbers flowed across the screen, and Petrovitch scanned them as they flew by.

  “Prime number encryption keys,” said Oshicora. “I had to allow—my creator had to allow—for the presence of very many otaku who would attempt to hack the fabric of this reality for their own perverse obsessions.”

  “No animé cat-girls? Though I do see your point.” He made a gesture, dragged and pointed at an icon, which bloomed into life. “Okay, so here’s the firewall controls, and I can’t move them without another password. Any ideas?”

  “This is kinshino. Forbidden.”

  “Oshicora-san, can I remind you that not only are you dead, but you’re also a quantum computer? You could crack this in a second if you wanted to, and your subconscious mind has already done so. It’s shoveling out a stream of commands and receiving vast oceans of data in return. You just don’t know it.” He tapped his finger in the air. “See?”

  A graph appeared, measuring data transfer over time. He expanded the axis to read in days rather than seconds, and showed Oshicora the past week.

  “You died on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, and there’s a rise in activity. Information is starting to seep out. This spike here, that’s when you helped Sorenson and Sonja escape Hijo, then you killed all your employees, and it just climbs from there. More and more until you’re running in the terabyte range. For something which is forbidden, it’s happening an awful lot. Take the firewall down for five minutes, have a look around outside. Slap it back up and leave me to die if I’m not telling the truth.”