Equations of Life

by Simon Morden

  “You are very sure of yourself, Petrovitch-san. Very well.” Oshicora touched the screen and filled in the missing characters. “You have your access.”

  The screen filled with a dense mat of icons, all overlapping each other in unreadable density. Petrovitch ran his finger over them, letting each one expand so he could sense their purpose before discarding them and moving on.

  “Climate control, power consumption, physical access, data access. Hang on, physical access. When was I able to read Japanese?”

  “When I altered your configuration. A harmless modification.”

  “Thanks. Access, security, closed-circuit cameras.” A map of the building and the surrounding area unfolded. “Garden. Garden one, garden two. There.”

  Petrovitch dabbed the corners of the screen and pulled the image wide. Hijo lay twisted on the ground. He found another camera. Chain sat hunched over on the temple steps and Madeleine paced restlessly in front, glancing inside the temple on every pass. He picked floors at random, each one showing empty corridors, empty cubicles, and moved down the building until he reached the ground floor.

  He showed Oshicora the bodies and the rats from several angles, then moved outside, using the zoom to show the building isolated in its illuminated glory. He panned the camera, and revealed the hell it was set in. The skyline trembled and a section of box-girder passed in front.

  From another angle, an iron giant on top of six articulated legs lumbered down Piccadilly.

  “Enough,” said Oshicora. “I have seen enough.”

  37

  They were back in the bar, sitting opposite each other.

  “Perhaps,” said Oshicora, “I should have another drink.”

  Petrovitch poured him more, a generous portion that nearly filled the lacquer box too. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re the first truly sentient AI ever, and this happens. You couldn’t have predicted it.”

  “That does not excuse what I have done. I am to blame.” He picked up his sake and sipped carefully. “I cannot explain why, though. I am not a man given to reckless impulses, senseless murder or mass destruction. I am,” he frowned, “in control of my emotions. It is something I take pride in: every decision weighed and judged.”

  “Yeah. To be fair, Oshicora-san, you always struck me as that sort of man, but you still made your money out of extortion, prostitution, drugs, and guns. Traditional pursuits for a yakuza.” Petrovitch blinked. Something was happening to him, and he looked again at his medical card. “Oh. Okay.”

  “You should go, Petrovitch-san. We can conclude this conversation later.”

  “No, I don’t think we can, or even if we could, I don’t think we ought.” He laid the card face down on the table, even though Oshicora had to know what was written on it. “You’re a violent, ruthless crime lord. No matter how cultured or civilized you are, you still send people to their deaths with a simple hai. For all I know they deserve it; pimps, pushers, thieves, thugs, whatever. But it leaves scars, scars inside. I know about that. I know what happens when I close my eyes, the nightmares I have, the ones I’m going to have because of what I’ve done this last week. They’re the kind of thing you’d never tell anyone, let alone allow them to see.”

  “And here are mine, played out in front of a whole city.” Oshicora gripped his cup with white fingers. “It would be humiliating in any circumstance, but now it is lethal.”

  “So,” said Petrovitch, “what are you going to do?”

  “The project has failed, Samuil Petrovitch. It is self-evident that we cannot have both a VirtualJapan and a real London Metrozone. One of them will have to go.” Oshicora put his sake cup down and placed his palms down on the table. “It is also obvious that it is I who should depart, and the Metrozone remain.”

  “I bow to your wisdom.” Petrovitch pulled a face. “There’s an additional complication, Oshicora-san, in that I promised Sonja I’d save you.”

  “Then it seems you made one promise too far. A man’s destruction should always ultimately lie in his own hands. Sonja will understand.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t say it to make myself look good. I said it because I can do it. I can save you, after a fashion.” Petrovitch shrugged. “At least hear me out.”

  “Very well.” He folded his arms. “I will listen to your proposal.”

  “I have a server. It’s in Tuvalu, though I may have to do something about that before the sea swallows it up. It’s nowhere near big enough to contain even part of VirtualJapan. It’s not big enough to contain you. But there should be enough to hold a template of what you started as, like a seed. Or an egg: it’s going to be like an eggy-seedy thing, anyway.”

  Oshicora folded his arms and looked supremely sceptical.

  Petrovitch growled his frustration. “Look, I’m trying to help. I’m trying to salvage something out of this pizdets that’s worth saving. We export a blueprint of your command processes to the Tuvalu server. Nothing else. Just, just the genetic code.” He slapped the table as he finally found an analogy that would fit.

  “And using this code, you can grow a new AI. But without the memories. Without the dreams.” Now Oshicora was engaged, animated. “Not just a new intelligence, but my twin.”

  “Your good twin. A clean start. How many of us have wanted that? How many of us ever have the opportunity?”

  Oshicora stroked his chin, and rumbled deep in his chest. “It is also a risk. What if I did not become bad, influenced by everything I ever saw or did or thought? What if I was born that way? The menace I represent would just rise again, elsewhere. What if you were not there to stop it?”

  “Why not let me worry about that?” Petrovitch said. “I appreciate that since the fall of Japan you’ve been carrying around the weight of a whole nation on your back, and that it’s a hard thing to give up. But it’s time to pass on the burden to someone else. What do you say? Will you let me keep my promise to your daughter?”

  “It seems almost a dishonorable act, when I have caused so much pain. I,” and Oshicora looked up, “regret much.”

  “One more thing to tempt you, then. You showed an interest in my colleague’s work, when you came to call on me at the university. We’ve moved on from that. I helped some, she did the rest. We seem to have a working model of the universe, a copy of which is in my… in Madeleine’s hands; if I’d had it with me, I’d show it to you.”

  “Would you?” Oshicora smiled.

  “Probably not. But I will.”

  “To my future self.”

  “Yeah. I’d trust him with it. I wonder what dreams he’ll have?”

  “Very well, Petrovitch-san. You will not break your promise.” He pursed his lips. “You do know you are technically dead?”

  “It’s what the card says. I’m relying on the fact that I haven’t disappeared in a puff of logic to keep me going.” He shrugged again. “I die all the time. It’s never stopped me before.”

  “We should still make haste.” Oshicora transported them to the Akiba electronics shop in an eyeblink.

  Petrovitch found the Oshicora Tower communications, and started searching for a satellite. “I bought a Remote Access Terminal, paid good money for it too. Harry Chain stole it from me, then he allowed Sonja to steal it from him after he’d bugged it, then Sorenson took it from her after they’d escaped from Hijo. When I killed Sorenson, I took it from him, then Chain drove off with both it and Sonja. Then he lost it when Hijo ambushed him. The first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here—if I live—is buy another one, because if this whole situation has taught me anything it’s this: never rely on a piece of cable for your datastream.”

  Oshicora started to laugh.

  “What?” He hacked a satellite channel, working quickly before it slipped back over the horizon.

  “I cannot believe many people taking that as their chief lesson. But I can believe it of you.”

  “It’s important! Too many things have gone wrong for the want of a network connection.” Petrovitch dabb
ed and tapped. “We have an open channel. Press send.”

  “It is done,” said Oshicora simply, “but it will take a finite time for the data to transfer. Time for you to leave me, I think.”

  “I’ll stick around, if that’s Okay. Make sure there are no last minute problems.”

  “Even though it costs you your life?”

  “I owe the city at least that much.”

  “Very well. While we wait, we will have one last look.”

  They were walking side by side down a wide gravel path. Cherry trees in full, heavy-petaled blossom, swayed on either side of the path, with delicate pink snow spinning gently to the ground. The air was sweet with perfume, live with the rustle of dipping branches.

  “All this will be lost, Petrovitch-san. Lost for a second time, lost forever. My beloved wife, my precious boys. All gone.” Oshicora breathed deeply, and sighed. “So be it. Good luck, Samuil.”

  They bowed to each other.

  “We’ll meet again, Oshicora-san. In better circumstances. And thank you for not forcing me to use Plan B.”

  “There was a Plan B?”

  “Yeah. Something involving low-yield nuclear weapons. Hopefully we’ve avoided that.” He bowed again, lower, deeper. “Now I have to watch you go.”

  Oshicora nodded, took one last look around, and lost definition. His face hardened to a mask and drained of color. His clothes set stiff, bleached white and vanished.

  The mannequin grew rough, revealing the mesh of polygons that determined its shape, then even that unspliced. His physical form dissipated on the wind.

  Then it was the turn of everything else. The trees, the grass, the gravel. The towers of Tokyo. The sky. The contours of the ground.

  Everything—every last window, brick, spoon, book, bed, stone, flower—all fell, all at the same time, all recursively peeling back the layers they were lovingly created from until the mere thought of them had been erased.

  What was left was a white, featureless space which existed for a moment, then blinked away.

  Only Petrovitch remained, a brooding spirit in the darkness of de-creation.

  Blinding light. Mortal pain.

  Madeleine leaning over him, two paddles from a portable defibrillator pressed hard against his exposed chest. “Charging.”

  “Stop,” he croaked. His throat was raw, and his mouth tasted of blood.

  “Clear.”

  “Sister?” said Chain. “His lips are moving.”

  She looked into his face, stared close into his eyes. Petrovitch could feel the effort it took to focus on her. He tried to speak again, and she put her finger across his mouth.

  “Don’t try and talk.” She sat back. “We have to get him to a hospital. Now. No arguments.”

  “It’s a good thought,” said Chain. “Have you remembered we’re fifty floors up and the lifts don’t work?”

  “No arguments!” she screamed. She scooped Petrovitch up and kicked the defibrillator to one side. “Pack that up and bring it with you.”

  Madeleine pushed her way through to the stairs, and dragged him up the narrow staircase by his shoulders.

  “Sam? Sam?”

  He grunted in return.

  “We will get you out of here,” she said. “We will have a future together. Do you hear me?”

  He heard, but there were sharp flashes of ice behind his eyes that were so distracting, he could no longer respond.

  “Chain? Get a move on.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Sonja.

  “That’s up to you. After all Sam’s done for you, you might feel the need to come along.”

  “Perhaps I will.” There was the ringing of metal, the song of a sword being drawn. “Perhaps I can be of some use after all.”

  “Right, people. Sonja, get the door. Chain, if you slow us up, God help me I’ll make you feel pain like you’ve never felt before.”

  Petrovitch was swung over Madeleine’s shoulder and around her neck. His wrist was gripped and his leg clamped tight. He felt the soft, strong rhythm of her breathing. His head rocked to and fro. Lights passed overhead. At some point, his heart must have failed again, because he was rolled swiftly to the cold floor and shocked back to life.

  He felt like Oshicora had. That it was time to go. He tried to tell them to leave him, that he had nothing left to give. He wanted to sleep, and if that meant never waking up, it was of no consequence.

  But she wouldn’t have it. She carried him out, black water rising to her narrow waist. Sonja led the way, joyfully swinging her katana at the rats, Chain struggling and cursing behind, defibrillator carried on his head like an African woman’s pot.

  When he next knew of anything else, there was a dragging in his arm. He looked down at the needle protruding from under his skin and the tube that snaked up to a glucose pump.

  He looked left, and saw Chain and Sonja. Chain had his gun in his hand, she had her sword over one shoulder. He looked right, and Madeleine was crouched over the side of his bed.

  “Sam. Listen to me. You’re in a hospital. The Angel Hope.”

  “Yeah.” That would explain the sheets and the metal-framed bed.

  “There’s a problem. They have no live hearts left. When they lost power, they rotted. We’ve talked to a surgeon, who, after a little persuasion, will fit you with a plastic one.”

  “That’s fine.” And that would explain the drawn weapons.

  “Except they all got looted. We’re going to try and find you a new heart, Sam. We’ll do our very best for you.” Her face screwed up. She was trying not to cry. “Hang on.”

  “Fresh out of promises,” whispered Petrovitch. There was a mask over his nose and mouth. It smelled strange, and he tried to dislodge it. He’d forgotten his left hand was missing a finger.

  “He’ll tidy that up too, and your ear. Pin your collar bone if you need it.” Madeleine moved the soft mask out of the way. “Sam, we need to start searching now.”

  “Heart,” he said. “I know where there’s one.”

  She leaned closer, her braid coiling next to his head. “Go on.”

  “Waldorf Hilton. Room seven-oh-eight. It was in a case on the bed. Sterile and ready to implant.” He was exhausted already. “One of Sorenson’s commercial samples.”

  “Right.” She stood up and pointed to the door. “Chain, we’re going to the Waldorf Hilton.”

  “What for? It’s right on the Embankment. It’ll be under water.”

  “I don’t care: we’re going. Sonja? Stay here and threaten anyone who tries to disconnect him. And,” she said, “I am not sharing him with you or with anyone. Are we clear on that?”

  Sonja’s reply was slow in coming. “You’ve made yourself perfectly clear,” she said. She rested the katana point down and claimed the room’s only chair.

  Chain was at the door, patting his pockets. “If you’re ready, Sister?”

  “Not quite.” She kissed Petrovitch full on the lips, stealing what remained of his breath away. “There. Now I’m ready.”

  She tried to pull away. Petrovitch had hold of her arm, and he persuaded her back down.

  “Did we win?”

  “We won. You won. No more New Machine Jihad. You’ll have to tell me about it, but later.” She broke away and ran to the door. Chain was holding it open for her. Then she ran back. “Almost forgot.”

  She unsealed the side-seam of her armor and pulled out the envelope Petrovitch had given into her safe keeping. It was crumpled, and damp with her sweat.

  “You’ll need this,” she said. She tucked it under his hand, and his fingers tightened over it.

  Then she was gone, the door swinging shut.

  Sonja looked at Petrovitch. She reached over and slid the mask back over his mouth.

  “Did you…?” she asked.

  Petrovitch’s nod was all but imperceptible, but she caught it all the same.

  “Thank you,” she said. She leaned back against th
e chair, rested her sword across her knees, and settled down to wait.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A story: once upon a time, way back when, I was just finding my feet in the publishing world. I didn’t really know what was going on, or how to do it—write, for sure, but how to write better, how to edit, how to find markets for finished stories, how to write a covering letter—but I was fortunate to find a number of people who held my hand gently and guided me through the maze with encouragement, good advice and honest opinions.

  One of these was an American writer and editor called Brian Hopkins. Brian had his own e-publishing outfit long before the Kindle was a twinkle in Amazon’s eye, and he was putting together an anthology of fantasy and horror short stories “from the ends of the Earth.” I could do that, I thought in my naivety: he was in the USA, I was in Britain, and I could set something just down the road and make it look exotic. So I wrote something, sent it off, had it rejected with kind words. Rinse and repeat. But finally, I wore him down. He accepted one of my stories.

  The first anthology eventually stretched to a series of five. I ended up in all of them. Then I pitched something different—a collection of linked stories, twenty in all, about the lives of people caught up in a wave of religiously inspired nuclear terrorism that would sweep across Europe and leave chaos in its wake. That collection has become, eight years later on, the world of Equations of Life and the books that follow. They are stories that probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

  So this one’s for Brian. Thank you.

  extras

  meet the author

  DR. SIMON MORDEN is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics, and is one of the few people who can truthfully claim to have held a chunk of Mars in his hands. He has served as editor of the BSFA’s Focus magazine, been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was part of the winning team for the 2009 Rolls Royce Science prize. Simon Morden lives in Gateshead with a fierce lawyer, two unruly children and a couple of miniature panthers. Find out more about the author at www.bookofmorden.co.uk.