by Guy Haley
She hunched over the notebook just the same, covering as much of it from view as possible. She flipped the lid and her brow creased. There was a paper inside, covered in what looked like New Mandarin characters, but the ideograms were all wrong, nonsense apart from Qifang's neatly blocked signature at the bottom. She scrutinised it. Anomalies leapt out. Hidden within each character were sigils created by some of the inhabitants of the Thirty-sixth RealWorld Reality Realm, the ex-game world Qifang's department were currently studying.
There were about three sentients on the planet that understood that language. Veronique was one. She read it, slowly and with difficulty.
"We have been made victim to set-up. Get out now. Serious Realm anomalies. VIA think it is us. Get the v-jack. Get away before they get you. Meet me in Reality Thirty-six. Can explain no more. Data speaks for itself."
Very carefully, she activated the notepad. A presentation began to play, no audio. A graph. Lines tracked energy output, Grid resource assignation, second world traffic, the measures of the worlds locked within the Realm House out in Nevada. All looked normal. She continued to watch. All of a sudden it didn't. All of a sudden it didn't look normal at all.
"Shit."
"Language, Veronique," said Chloe from her purse.
"Shut up, Chloe." The presentation continued. Power and resources were being drawn incrementally off over a period of six months. Scrolling information ran along the side, detailing which packets came from where, giving the story behind the graph's simple lines. Somebody was using the Realm spaces without permission. It had been very skilfully hidden, but when you saw it, clear as day.
The presentation stopped and looped to the beginning.
Veronique ran a finger over a seam in the notepad's casing, and its memory module slid out. The screen went blank. The module was rough, homefabbed, not quite like anything she'd ever seen before.
"Chloe," she said as normally as she could manage. "Check out this data, Cameron wants us to look it over."
"Cameron can do his own work."
"Just look at it, and give me it visually, on the screen, not 3D! I'm tired of your chirpy voice."
"Charming."
She popped the memory module into Chloe's slimport. Quickly she typed on Chloe's touchscreen: "Sorry, play along. Trouble. Is this genuine RR data?"
The screen blinked one word.
"Yes."
"What is this module?"
A tick, and another word: "Trouble." The screen blinked. "Faked key and access codes for the v-jack cabinet."
So he really meant what he'd said. Unless it was Cameron – she wouldn't put it past him delivering her a fatal practical joke. "Message Qifang," she tapped. "I have your message. Explain."
"No response."
"Call him."
"Number obsolete."
"That's nonsense," she spoke aloud. "How can it be 'number obsolete'?"
"Perhaps he has deceased," said Chloe, also aloud.
"Chloe!" she breathed.
"Then perhaps his phone is damaged or out of Grid," replied the phone. "Archimedes?" said Veronique.
"I am at your beck and call, Ms Valdaire, as limited as I am feeling."
"Locate Professor Zhang Qifang, please."
"As you wish," said the Six, then practically immediately: "Location unknown."
"What do you mean? Has he invoked privacy?"
"No," said the Six patiently. "I mean the system does not know where he is."
"That's impossible."
"Yes, it is rather curious," said the Six. "Do not be alarmed. I have informed higher entities than myself. The dispersal of a Grid signature is not unheard of. I am sure they will clear this up as soon as soon can be. Is there a problem, Veronique?" said Archimedes, its voice oozing solicititude. "Only my monitoring of your biological process indicates that you are nervous."
"No, nothing's wrong. It's the caffeine," she said, and wondered just how compromised Archimedes really was. Did it suspect her? Whoever had put the notebook and key in her locker had almost certainly been responsible for deactivating the Six's sensor and services grid. She slurped coffee, thinking.
A chime came from the phone, the front desk. Veronique stared at it numbly for a long second before answering. "Audio only," she said finally. "Hello?"
"Hi there, Vera." Vera? No one called her that. Idiot. "It's Guillermo from the front desk. Your 7am appointment is here. I thought I'd give you a quick heads-up. You looked a little sleepy-eyed this morning!" he brayed like a drunk relaying a lame joke.
"Qifang is here?" Relief flooded her.
"Er, no," said Guillermo, chuckling. "No, why would he have me ring up?"
"Right, yes, you're right. Sorry. I don't have a 7am appointment."
"Hey, Vera, you sure are grumpy today! Sure you do, it's right here in the diary. Check your phone."
On cue, the phone burbled, projecting a meeting reminder into the air. Only she hadn't made any appointments for today. She keyed all her own engagements in, and she did not forget them. Qifang had taken her on in the first place because she relied on her own mind. He might have been the world's preeminent authority on AI cognisance philosophy, but he preferred it if those around him weren't dependent on them.
Something was seriously wrong.
She muted the call. "Chloe, how long has that appointment been there in my diary?"
"Appointment made June 1, 2129."
I must have forgotten it then. Her finger was halfway to ending the call when Chloe beeped.
"Correction. Appointment made retroactively. Appointment true log today, August 4, 2129, 4.26am. Someone has deliberately tried to falsify these records, Veev."
A chill forced itself down her spine. She hesitated, then keyed off the mute on the phone.
"Sorry, Guillermo, another call. Yes. Of course. I am sorry, I must have forgotten. Could you ask them to wait?" She forced a smile into her voice. "I kinda got my hands full up here!" She was no actress and cringed, reining in the false jollity. She was in danger of sounding hysterical.
"Sorry, Vera. They said they were from the VIA and Archimedes let them in. They looked real serious. They're on their way up now. Are you OK? You sound really jumpy."
"Yes, yes, I am fine. See you later, Guillermo." She ended the call, quickly,
"Archimedes? Why didn't you tell me the VIA were coming?"
No reply but a smug, expectant silence.
"Give me the beadcam feeds from the atrium to here. Parse for unknown personnel. Track."
"Yes, Veronique," said the phone. Hundreds of tiny thumbnail vid-pics filled Chloe's phone screen, including the few operating in the lab, showing her hunched over her phone. The images rippled, resolving themselves into three stacked feeds following five men. Four were bulky, over-muscled in a way that suggested biological or cybernetic augmentation. They wore the uniform of all who wish to appear conspicuously inconspicuous: suits, dark glasses, expensive shoes. The one to the front, the leader, was different, unmodded and foreign. He was dark-skinned, bearded – not unusual, the majority population in the southern states of the USNA was Hispanic – but he walked with a swagger alien to the local culture, a cocky Latin strut about him long gone from Norte Americanos. He turned to say something to one of his colleagues, and Veronique caught sight of the uplinks curled round both ears, the kidney-shaped auxiliary mind nestled hard to his occiput. Modded then. AI personality blend. She thought. Big fish VIA spook.
"Veronique, why have you accessed my camera network?" asked Archimedes.
Veronique ignored it. "Are they genuine?" she said. She made off over the lab, toward the polycarbon cabinet set into its innermost wall, surrounded by hazard flashes and notices.
"They are from the VIA." Reams of data, inter-system communication between layers of high-class AI Grid managers, scrolled across the screen, numbers running the lives of millions. "See?"
"This department is funded by the VIA, why are they coming here?"
"Veronique,"
said Chloe, "the VIA protect and police the very minds you study and collaborate with. They would give no indication that they are coming."
"Archimedes should have told me," she said pointedly.
Qifang had warned her that the department's line of work was chancy, open to industrial espionage, Neukind-activist sabotage, malicious hackers and federal cessation orders if things got out of hand. Their department could not work without the authorisation of the supra-national VIA, and the VIA, unlike the FBI and other USNA law bodies, were not averse to disappearing those whose research took them too close to places they should not go. The Five crisis had made the UN cautious, sometimes murderously so.
The risks had made the job seem exciting. She'd missed the challenge of The InfoWar Divisions, she'd wanted something to lift her out of the day-to-day grind. Be careful what you wish for, she thought ruefully. What the hell had Qifang been up to? He was the world's foremost Neukind rights activist. She couldn't imagine him pulling anything so bad the VIA would come down on him; he was whiter than white.
By the cabinet she booted up software on Chloe that was less than legal and started up an even less legal search, if she could find Qifang, maybe she could clear all this up now.
"Veronique? I asked you a question. If you wish to use my camera network, you had only to ask." There was a tone to the AI's words that made Veronique feel like a mouse taking tea with a cat.
Veronique bit her lip. Qifang's Grid signature was nowhere to be seen, just as the Six had said. Not even a deceased rating.
She ran a deeper search. The first was a low-level sweep, of the kind the local law used. She shouldn't have been conducting it. She certainly shouldn't have been using the deep search that was restricted to Federal agencies, government stuff, off limits to civilians. But she kept her reservist access protocols up to date. That and a few custom hacks and huntwares kept her hooked in to the most useful USNA data clusters and Grid toolsets.
"Veronique! We have been noticed!" Warnings to cease and desist came rushing out of Chloe's screen. Before the search was cut off, Veronique thought she caught a glimpse of Qifang, in not one but three places. She couldn't be sure; they were faint, not like a proper Grid lock, weak. A malfunction?
"Ms Valdaire." Archimedes' voice sounded smoothly. "What on Earth are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"Oh, a lie. How very disappointing, but true to your recently revealed character. I have informed the police about the illegal device in your possession, your usurpation of my surveillance network and the two unauthorised searches you executed before you thought to ask me if you could or should. Asking me would have been the proper course of action, and polite. Your precautions were impressive, but I'm no slouch at this kind of thing. How you got hold of the v-jack key I have no idea, primarily because my sensor grid in your lab is down. And that, I am rather annoyed by," it said impassively. "My initial probability calculations suggested you have something to do with that. Owing to your current behaviour, it appears I was right. You are a thief."
"Archimedes, this is nothing to do with me. Download this information from Chloe, something's not right."
"And have you fill my mind with a bouquet of viruses? No, thank you. You have my sincerest regrets if you are not guilty, although I doubt that very much. Now, will there be anything else before your imminent arrest?"
"No. Thank you," she said sarcastically.
"You are welcome. Have a nice day. Your Grid access has been disabled. I have locked the doors. Please wait here for the VIA. One of them has the name Greg and, as regarding your specific tastes, he's hot, so that's lovely for you, isn't it? I reiterate: have a nice day."
Chloe's screens projected an enormous legal notice in front of Veronique's face.
That cinched it.
"Chloe, crack the cabinet."
"Don't do it, Veronique," warned the AI.
This was what Qifang had intended. The cabinet's systems were still all functional, but with blockers on the paths from the Six into it, the cabinet ran according to what it knew, and it recognised Veronique's key as legitimate.
You had to hand it to him, turning the failsafe against itself like that.
She reached in. It was just a cupboard, really, with a fancy glass front. No dry ice or amber lights flashing, just a moulded recess occupied by a smooth dense-carbon box. She drew this out. This too, had its own autonomous locks, but the Six was powerless to prevent her key from opening it.
Inside the box was a neat, adjustable skullcap, big enough to cover the topmost quarter of her head, not unlike a dreamcap in size, clunkier looking, perhaps, but then it had to be, for rather than directing the dreams of the wearer, it was capable of fooling the conscious mind into contructing an entirely immersive virtual environment. The technology was similar to a dreamcap, similar in the way that ox carts and racing cars have wheels.
Insectoid legs dangled from it. The top was studded with magnetic manipulators. A braid of cable trailed from the rear – old, clunky pre-gridpipe tech. Very rare now, and illegal outside of departments like this, but only a decade ago many homes had had them.
She had one of the department's two v-jack units in her hands, a device that required three signatories to sign out, and approval from the complex Six, all neatly circumvented by Zhang Qifang.
A hundred and twenty-seven years old, she thought. Don't mess with that kind of experience.
She almost stopped then. If caught with the v-jack, she was looking at a stretch in cold storage, five, maybe six years, with a three percent chance of brain damage for each twelve months under. You could double that if they went for corrective surgery, shitty odds for a supposedly humane form of punishment.
She almost stopped.
The v-jack went in her bag.
"Veronique, this is not good!" shrieked Chloe.
"Right. Thanks for clearing that up," Veronique said back.
"Your sarcasm is unnecessary."
"Be quiet."
Her phone began to ring again, an unknown number.
"Go to voicemail," she said, then turned it off. She thought quickly. "We have to get out of here. Chloe, retrieve Kitty Claw off the Grid, load it up, I want it primed."
"Really?" said Chloe hesitantly.
"Really."
"Oh," said Chloe. The phone's cooling system stepped up a gear as the phone downloaded the programme from its hideaway on the Grid.
"Quiet now, Chloe, we have to get out of here."
"Yes, Veronique."
She went to the lab door. The Six had been as good as its word. Locked. She had Chloe hack the door via the shortrange wifi that flooded the building and undo the lock.
"Ms Valdaire…" the Archimedes' attention returned to her. It sounded weary and annoyed. "I advise you to stop. The warning displayed upon your phone is legally binding. Read it, don't read it. Whatever, just cease and desist."
"I'm past desistence," said Veronique. She went through the door and began to walk faster. The corridor was empty. The building had only three public entrances but a dozen emergency exits. She made for the nearest.
Also locked.
The Six's voice emerged from nowhere, always as if it were standing just behind her left shoulder. Her ear tickled in anticipation of non-existent breath. "Miss Valdaire, I now urge you to stop. Your actions are indicative of guilt. If you are not guilty, you are bringing suspicion upon yourself; if you are, then you are making things worse. Halt. My advice is final. Upon my next insistence, I will employ force."
Chloe could not open the door. Veronique's fingers slid over the touch screen, quickly shifting program modules. It was no good. She'd need to make something from the ground up to tackle the Six's locks.
"That is a fine friend you have there, but I am not falling for the same trick twice," said the Archimedes. "Please, I implore you, do stop."
"Archimedes, you better let me out."
"Are you threatening me?" A strain of malevolent amusement entered its voice. "Yo
u are very gifted, Ms Valdaire, but…"
"Chloe, pull the plug."
"Oui oui, Veronique," said Chloe.
The Six's voice cut out as Chloe slid Kitty Claw into the Grid, an off key for the Six Veronique had crafted some time ago, just in case. Her military file said mild paranoia. She liked to think of it as being careful.
Around her, lights and wall terminals flickered and died. Up the corridor, a robot cleaner slid gently into the wall, brushes spinning to a halt. All machine activity stopped. It became so quiet all she could hear was the building's passive aircon whispering away.