The Noise Within

by Ian Whates

  Their understanding of the principles involved grew almost daily, and it was this fact which enabled Philip to carry on, to harness these conflicting desires and push the project forward. He had to believe that one day they would find a way to allow even the likes of him to experience the joy of full gestalt, no matter how unlikely this seemed at present.

  The brain is a delicate organ, and even though man prided himself on knowing virtually all its secrets, it remained a fragile construct. Despite the latest stem cell technology enabling them to coat the necessary implants in a film of organic material cultured from the recipient's own cells, forty percent of all such operations still failed, sometimes with fatal consequences. The insertion of the bionic augments had the potential to traumatise the brain no matter what precautions were taken, and they had yet to devise a way of completely avoiding this. They had learned, however, to recognise which brains were most likely to reject the augs. Unfortunately, his was one of them.

  So he was barred from experiencing the union of organic and artificial mind which had become the focus of his life's work, and that fact frustrated him more than he would ever dare admit to anyone; which was where his latest hobby had sprung from, his illicit pleasure. No, barring miraculous development, Philip would never be able to experience the full revelation of human/AI communion, but he was in a position to grant himself an approximation of what that must be like, a tantalising glimpse of the ultimate - not so much second best as several leagues removed from the real thing, but better than nothing, surely. Ever the pragmatist, Philip accepted this as the closest he was likely to come to his personal Holy Grail, yet even this pale imitation was proving insidiously addictive.

  Philip knew that his relentless pursuit of a dream which originated with his father but had long since become his own was a source of great amusement to many, but Kaufman Industries was strong enough both financially and technically to withstand any slight tarnishing the company's reputation suffered as a result. As time passed and KI continued to be at the forefront of engine and systems designs, despite the distraction of the project, the matter was relegated to the status of an endearing foible - something for competitors to smile indulgently about when they could find little else to smile over. Philip had long ago accepted that most saw the project as his attempt to expunge the one glaring blot on Malcolm Kaufman's record - his greatest perceived failure: The Sun Seeker.

  And perhaps there was an element of truth in that, but if so it was by no means the whole truth.

  Philip's father had been born into a time of war, a time when every human territory had been caught up in a lumbering conflict which monopolised resources and attention. By the time Malcolm was growing up, few people if any could remember what the War was about, it was simply a fact of life. KI were heavily involved in the design and development of new warships for what proved to be, in effect, the winning side. Although both claimed to be such when the conflict eventually ground to a stuttering conclusion, only one side dominated the 'unified' government - the United League of Worlds. By this time, every new ship which rolled off the production lines and into the War boasted engines built by Kaufman Industries. Competitors survived by outfitting the trickle of merchant and private vessels which were still occasionally commissioned, but only the best was good enough for the military, and the best meant the Kaufman Drive.

  Yet Malcolm genuinely believed it was not his engines that posterity would remember him for but rather The Sun Seeker, his pet project, which he saw as being the real revolution in interstellar travel.

  An AI-controlled ship would be faster, nimbler and more capable than anything seen before. Conceivably, if it worked, this was the innovation which might just win the War, and that would be only the beginning; the potential was enormous. Except that it hadn't worked; at least, not as intended. Perhaps, given the advantage of hindsight, some might think that it had actually worked too well.

  There had been a crew, of course, even though theoretically the ship could operate without one. Somehow, Philip doubted there would ever be a time when AI ships flew without crew, even if The Sun Seeker had delivered Malcolm's dream - there were too many things on board a ship which human hands could do more readily than any automated system, particularly in the event of repairs being needed. Then there were mankind's deep-seated insecurities to factor in. Would any government ever be ready to let an AI ship go anywhere without human supervision? Personally, Philip couldn't see it.

  Besides, those had been very early days and The Sun Seeker was only a prototype, so a crew was inevitable.

  Malcolm had told his son more than once that, even decades later, he could still hear their calls for help as the ship disappeared, swiftly building up acceleration to a level which no human could survive.

  In the middle of a series of test flights, The Sun Seeker had gone AWOL, somehow circumventing every safeguard and managing to lock out the captain and officers who were on board with failsafe protocols - theoretically guaranteed to return control to human hands if necessary. Oblivious to every override and precaution, the ship had abandoned its predetermined course and made a dash for the nearest wormhole jump point. The move was timed to perfection, calculated with clinical efficiency to ensure that the experimental vessel arrived as far ahead of those ships attempting to intercept as it possibly could have done.

  The Sun Seeker had never been seen again. Until now. Was it pure coincidence that the long lost vessel had reappeared at this particular time, when the project was so close to a conclusion?

  Philip stepped out of the dryshower, his skin tingling from its ministrations and feeling as invigorated as the rest of him. Yet, even after slipping into fresh clothes, that insidious black box continued to call to him. No matter what distraction he attempted to conjure he couldn't escape its allure and eventually he bowed to the inevitable. With great deliberation, he took the box down and carried it with a steady hand through to his office.

  Philip sat in the familiar chair, a recliner which instantly reacted to his presence, adjusting its contour and angle to accommodate his maximum comfort; but he didn't sink into it immediately. Instead he sat forward, placing the box on the desk and pressing gently on a deceptively decorative panel with thumb and index finger, in that order. The hinged lid lifted slowly and smoothly, a breath of cool air flowing out to touch his hand as it did so. The box maintained a steady temperature of seven degrees - ideal for storing the two drugs it contained.

  Viewed from one perspective, the project could be seen as little more than a series of apparently insurmountable obstacles which had been solved either by flashes of inspirational genius or by outrageous good luck. Syntheaven was very much in the latter category. It seemed ironic that one of the most lethally addictive products to emerge from the illicit narcotics factories, which had been a bane of police forces for more than a generation, should prove so crucial to a project aimed at benefiting mankind.

  The discovery that Syntheaven greatly increased the human brain's capacity to cope with expanded consciousness and to accept association with artificial intelligence came as a real breakthrough at a crucial time. The details of quite how the discovery was made and which of the pilots had been indulging between sessions remained deliberately obscure. Since then, the drug had been constantly refined, adapted to remove some of its less pleasant side-effects, such as the loss of bowel control which frequent users often experienced and the unfortunate neural implications, while its mind-expanding properties were enhanced. Unfortunately, one thing they had not been able to eradicate was its highly addictive nature, which was where the second drug in Philip's precious black box came into its own. A bespoke narcotic developed specifically to counteract the addictive properties of Syntheaven.

  Two rows of small perspex bubbles occupied the bottom section of the moulded interior, each snug in its individual slot. Symbolically, the Syntheaven ampoules were the devil's own colour - red - while those containing the inhibitor were green - the colour of grass, of healthy grow
ing things, of nature itself. Alongside the colour-coded bubbles lay the dull grey length of the applicator, which would fire a high-pressure dose of the loaded narcotic through the skin and directly into the bloodstream.

  His fingers ran lightly over the applicator but settled on the other item contained within the box, a collapsed web of metal wires and beads beneath which rested two bizarrely pirate-like eye patches. Strangely appropriate, given the fact that official Kaufman Industries records showed this equipment had been destroyed as obsolete.

  He lifted the delicate-seeming web out of its housing and it immediately assumed a more rigid form - a bowl -shaped cradle of wires, with the two patches at one edge. He fitted this mesh dome partway over his head, with two significantly larger beads dangling near his ears and the eye patches resting on his forehead. Already, as always at this point, he felt as if his consciousness were expanding, though he knew this was self-delusion. Without the Syntheaven and without pushing the cradle fully home, the nodes would not yet have connected with the targeted areas of his brain, and this early, crude product of the project could not be having any effect. But the feeling persisted, as if he had to consciously resist leaping into the darkness before everything was ready.

  With exaggerated care, he picked up the applicator, slipped one of the red ampoules in place and pressed it to his throat. There was no sound to indicate the narcotic had been dispatched and no pain, just a cold tingle to confirm that the dose had been administered.

  Quickly now, Philip put down the applicator, slid the headpiece fully into position, pressed home the ear studs and eye blinders and lay back, the recliner reacting instantly to his new requirements.

  Phil, are you there? he thought rather than said.

  Yes, I'm here, his partial responded and so, reassured, he let go, entering another world.

  The apartment block which Philip called home for the majority of the year was one of the most exclusive and desirable in the city. As a consequence, it boasted a sophisticated computer system to oversee the micro-climate, security arrangements, staff deployment, garbage recycling, maintenance and delivery schedules - all the mundane administrative and technical minutiae which enabled the building to function as a community.

  This was not self-aware, not an AI, but it was still a sophisticated piece of kit. Even granting that what he experienced here, via prototype equipment incapable of facilitating full gestalt even if this were an AI, fell a long way short of the real thing, Philip still felt a thrill of anticipation as he embarked on his own unique form of joy-riding the building's information highway.

  Philip's career path had never been an issue. He showed an aptitude for computers at an early age and a quick grasp of all things mechanical. His intelligence registered at far above average and following in his father's footsteps had been the natural choice. He quickly excelled at design and research and few begrudged Malcolm's decision to groom him as his successor. Philip had never for one moment questioned that decision, had never seen anything he would rather be doing; until, perhaps, recently.

  Oh, he recognised that his position was one of privilege and knew at an intellectual level that his life could hardly be better, but even so...

  These illicit excursions were his way of assuaging the occasional bouts of curiosity and wistful regret that he was prone to.

  He settled back, dismissed all peripheral musings and concentrated on the experience that awaited him.

  It always began with a peculiar sense of dislocation, a split second of disorientation which never failed to catch him unawares despite his knowing what to expect. Just as his mind began to adjust to this new state it was blown wide open by the wonderful feeling of expansion, as if some barrier in his head had been swept away, allowing his consciousness to flow out in a way it had always been intended to. That was the part that invariably left him feeling a little in awe afterwards - the lingering impression that this state of consciousness was right, for him and perhaps for all humanity.

  Fully attuned to his surroundings, he began to take note of what else occupied this adjusted reality. As ever, he experienced things in a strangely skewed manner, as if he were an observer rather than a participant, like somebody dipping their face into a lake and peering beneath the surface. He was fully aware that this was the big difference between his experience and that of the pilots. They were fully immersed in this reality, the swimmers to his pond-dipper. He suppressed the comparison and concentrated on what awaited.

  The first thing to confront him was a list of tasks, things which the computer had earmarked for attention both overnight and during the next day. There was no writing, nothing so substantial, but rather a sequence of meanings which drifted through his perception, insubstantial veils brushing his consciousness and each leaving an impression - a camera on the blink here, interference in a resident's comms unit there (indicating faulty insulation), erratic climate levels in two adjacent apartments on the thirteenth floor - suggesting a faulty processor unit - a loose service hatch on the ground floor which a departing electrician had failed to secure properly following his visit, a dead area in a corridor on the twenty-third where the sensors had completely failed (this latter flagged as a top priority) and a further dozen or more minor maintenance issues.

  Fortunately, his own apartment was blissfully free of any problems, which saved him from one temptation in that direction, but a corner of his mind snagged on a familiar name: Cindra Broughton, a willowy young blonde with an apartment on the floor below who had warmed his bed on a regular basis for a while. They had parted on good terms and remained casual friends. Evidently she was having problems with the security system, her front door not always releasing and opening at the first time of asking. He bumped the issue up towards the top of the list from its former position near the bottom, for old times' sake.

  To Philip, this reality was not something he experienced in any physical sense. There was no avatar or other analogy of self, nothing to centre awareness on and claim 'this is me.' It was more the case that anything he wanted to reach which stood within the computer's compass of being he could summon instantly before him, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he directed his awareness to them. It was as if he were already touching everywhere and everything, and merely focused attention on any given point. Since the computer governed all aspects of the building, what lay open to him were its residents, their apartments and their computers, which invariably communicated with the building systems for all manner of requirements on a daily basis. He could have taken it beyond the building but resisted the temptation, conscious of this system's limitations and wary of over-extending himself. Besides, there was plenty here to keep him occupied.

  Of particular interest at the moment was a resident by the name of Pelloy McGovern, who had the type of security system built into his PC which a government department would have been proud of. Some people might have seen this as a warning to stay clear. To Philip, it was a challenge.

  During recent visits he had familiarised himself with McGovern's defences. The first time he risked actually breaching them had been nerve-wracking as hell, though he knew it was all a question of perception. No matter how formidable these protective programs might be, they still permitted communication with the wider world, allowing information to flow to and fro across them and only coming into play when something was perceived as a threat or unfamiliar. All Philip had to do was ensure they saw him as an impulse they were configured to accept, so that they presented themselves as a porous mesh rather than an impenetrable wall.

  Confident in his disguise, he had pushed his consciousness towards the barrier. He'd never tried breaching a system this sophisticated before, so remained alert for the unexpected.

  As it turned out, he simply slipped on through without drawing any reaction at all.

  Once inside, he discovered a wealth of encrypted information and locked files. On that first visit he had simply studied them, familiarising himself with the structure of McGovern's r
ecords as much as possible and deciding which files to target first. Now he returned, ready to take on the encryptions themselves and discover what secrets lay hidden behind them.

  He couldn't have cared less what those secrets might be, it was the challenge that drew him, that and the thrill of doing something illicit and getting away with it. The problem was that he had been getting away with it, and was a sucker for the temptation to push the boundaries that little bit further. As a result, Philip had begun to think of himself as invulnerable; a trap he would never have fallen into in his professional life.

  So when he began to unravel the code to a particularly tempting packet of information and the alarm went off, it caught him completely by surprise. There was no sound, it was more a sense of awakening around him, the realisation that something here had been alerted to his presence. Belatedly, Philip considered that maybe this time he'd pushed his luck too far. He immediately abandoned what he was doing and fled. Was it just imagination, or did the defences resist his departure far more than they had his arrival? If so, too little too late; as he successfully pulled his awareness free of McGovern's systems.

  Yet it wasn't over. Something touched him; cold, implacable and deadly, and he knew that whatever this was, it was coming after him. A search program, a virtual hound tailor-made to seek and destroy, and doubtless one bristling with nasty surprises.

  Philip had long ago learned to differentiate between taking a chance and being reckless. The first equalled excitement; the latter was more likely to prove either painful or expensive. His father probably had a maxim to cover this as well, but, if so, Kaufman junior had done his best to forget it.

  He'd had the foresight to take a few precautions when first indulging in these night-time excursions, establishing and installing latent counter measures of his own. Now, as his consciousness fled for all it was worth along a predetermined route, he was more than grateful of them. Ghost programmes rose up at his back, presenting the hound with false seemings designed to confuse systems and cause delay - fractional, but that was all he needed. Next a myriad of misleading trails blossomed in his wake, so that his was suddenly one of hundreds of pathways that sprang from a single point, some of the others linked to genuine locations while many were complete fakes, leading nowhere and disappearing almost as soon as they were birthed. Behind him, his own trail was vanishing in much the same way, erased by his passage.