by Guy Haley
"And you squat at the heart of it like a big fat spider. You must like that."
"Charming," said Hughie. "I needn't tell you that its true extent is a secret, and that you will not be telling anyone at all about it."
Richards grunted non-committally. Hughie took it for a yes. "Good," he said.
As Richards' sheath was not one of his own, it did not sport the modifications he made to his robot bodies, but he could tell even without his more advanced abilities that the place was built to last Ragnarok out. "Someone expecting a war?" he said, taking in the twenty-centimetre thickness of one of the doors as it opened, lock-wheel spinning. Beyond lay a huge cavern, of which he got but a glimpse, but he heard the sound of engines, and the echoes allowed him to calculate the volume at four cubic kilometres.
"One should always expect war, Richards, always," declaimed Hughie, waving his finger in the air. "Read your Sun Tzu: preparedness is the key to all victories, indeed, true victory is won without battle. You, with your back-up, appear to be well aware of that already."
They walked past a long window, a slot reminiscent of a bunker's firing slit, glazed with clear diamond-weave glass. Another enormous space lay beyond. Richards saw piping and house-sized turbines, bright yellow hazard paint against concrete and raw rock.
"This way," said Hughie and turned left down another corridor. A near-I delivery cart trundled past, beacon flashing. They turned right, up some stairs and then through a sliding door. Beyond, accommodations sized for humans, cramped in comparison to the machine halls. The corridor walls were painted, the floors were carpeted. The air was full of muted office buzz. It was comfortable in a banal way.
They stopped at a door which duly opened in front of them once it realised who Hughie was. The door led into a small, dark room occupied by a stern-faced special forces cyborg trooper. Like Otto, thought Richards, only younger and better specced. His modern augmentations were hardly visible, but Richards did not doubt that he could crush rocks with his bare hands. The cyborg stood at attention, and did not so much as blink as they walked in. Much of the wall facing the door was one-way diamond-weave glass, on the other side of which was situated a comfortably appointed interview room. Seated in the room at a glass table was a small, haggard, confused-looking, but very much alive, oriental man.
"He came looking for you," said Hughie, pointing. "Professor Zhang Qifang, he presumes," he whispered, in a rare moment of levity. "It's a rather poor copy."
"He presumes right and you wrong," said Richards. "That is not a copy. It is Zhang Qifang, but it's only part of him."
"Explain," said Hughie.
Richards looked at Hughie. He was smiling. Right, he was playing. He knew everything. Richards wasn't in the mood. "Get the London coroner's office on the phone," said Richards. "We need to speak to Lincolnshire Flats."
"No need for that, he's here already," said Hughie. "He helped retrieve you in New London, and then insisted he come here to reassemble you. I think he is rather fond of you."
Having Flats as a fan sent a shiver down Richards' spine. "And the other Qifangs?" he said. "Are they here too?"
"Naturally."
"In that case, free up another base unit. If you can do it for me you can do it for Qifang. It's time we spoke to the professor and found out just what the hell he thinks he's been up to."
Hughie had another of his digital flunkies take a trip into storage, a Six. The thing's oily protestations of loyalty made Richards feel queasy. Presently Hughie's small army of human and sheathed AI flunkies set up the Six's vacated base unit in the workshop Richards had been in. Flats understood what Richards was attempting and had the two inert Qifang cydroids wired up to it; a third cable snaked out of the room, across the corridor to another. Richards had insisted that they screen the active Qifang off from the two defunct cydroids. The tableau Smith and Flats had shown him of the screaming machine, broken beyond repair and fettered in a sinister weave of fibre optics, was still raw on his memory. There was no need to make this any more traumatic than it needed to be for the remaining cydroid. It was still sure that it was Professor Zhang Qifang, and Richards intended to disappoint it gently.
"Well, this is an interesting conundrum," said Hughie, stroking his silver chin. "The third unit believes itself to be an autonomous creation. I rather suspect that for all its woollyheadedness, it would pass the UN's marker for strong AI classification. That would mean it constitutes a sentient in its own right. Therefore, removing its programming from this carriage would constitute a direct violation of its civil rights. You will be taking it apart and making something new, which will destroy it as an individual. You are about to commit murder, Richards."
"Shut up, Hughie," said Richards, who was busy watching Flats watch the tech staff position the cabling linking the three Qifangs and the base unit. "We'd be guilty of a greater moral crime by not reconstituting the original as he intended. I knew that as soon as I saw Karlsson's set-up."
"Ah, the great detective."
"Hughie, any idiot could tell that Qifang was trying to save himself and warn the world. Qifang found something out, something that put him in great danger from one of our kind, and what he discovered must have been pretty damn awful if one of us wanted to off him. My guess is that he became alarmed and went to Karlsson because he felt he couldn't trust anyone connected with the system, and that is just about everybody else. Or maybe Karlsson was in on it from the start – he left the VIA quickly. What they did together, I don't know, but it's obvious Karlsson had appropriated some of the research going on in the VIA facilities at the Realm house, and set out to replicate it and use it to expose whatever it is that Qifang has been trying so hard to let us know about.."
"Or use it himself," scoffed Hughie. "Karlsson was a borderline anti-numerist. A terrorist."
"That's as maybe," admitted Richards, "but without him, Qifang would never have been able to get out of the country. He had his mind speed-downloaded for a post-mortem simulation without anyone knowing – that's what he kept going to see Karlsson about. The autopsy showed a clean brain, nothing foreign in it at all. I found a direct neural imaging unit – a painful process, but it would have done the job.. I doubt it was much fun."
"Improbable," said Hughie. "DNI is fallible."
"They are improbable." Richards pointed to the wrecked Qifangs wrapped in opaque orange plastic bags, the larvae of tomorrow waiting in their cocoons. "I don't think the probable and improbable mean much now. Someone's been moving the technological timetable up; this is forced acceleration, that much is clear."
"If it can be predicted, and I believe in the accuracy of k52's curve, then it can be anticipated, and apprehension achieved more rapidly," said Hughie. "So what? One of the reasons k52 calculated the curve in the first place was to establish probabilities and push research in the right direction."
"So what? Qifang had himself speed-copied to a pimsim, something that he was avowedly against, and split his copied mind into three while he still lived. He waited for his three doppelgangers to jump the country, then killed himself just so he could talk to me. That's a really big 'so what?' Hughie."
Flats, who was inhabiting a medical carriage almost identical to the one he favoured back in New London, trundled over to the base unit and began to berate the technical staff on the correct positioning of cooling units. He was working away as he shouted, one of the Qifang's heads on a tray, Flats' deft metal spider fingers weaving the ruined Qifang's cerebrum into as complete a whole as possible.
"Really scared," continued Richards. "It has to be an AI that forced this, otherwise why go to such lengths to hide himself? I mean, he was pretty much as anti-pimsim as he was pro-AI. But for some reason he seemed determined to live on. That's why these." He indicated the cydroids. "No one knew they existed, so anyone who came across one of them would take him for the real deal. The only real problem he faced was that the cydroid carriages were not sufficiently advanced to accommodate a full human mind. You'd get a One in t
here with room to spare, no doubt. But we'd never fit. There's enough processing power in those artificial brains for a human ego skim, not much more. Qifang and Karlsson decided that if they got three of them, put bits of the deeper man into each with an ego skim running the show on top, he could be put back together at the other end. That's what I figured out from what Flats and Smith told me back at the morgue; each of them has differing memories. Qifang went on the run while he stayed at home, killing himself to throw the scent of his copies until these things could lose themselves. It's pretty bold."
"Which was evidently to get here, to you."
"Right. So you see, he always meant for us to do this. You're wrong about me murdering anyone."
"Ah, but is it what this fragment now wants?" said Hughie, returning to his legal cogitations. "That is the point. We should at least put it to him."
"Can it, will you? I suggest we don't ask him and so sidestep the issue, just in case. Do you want to find out what this old sod went to quite ridiculously elaborate lengths to tell me or not? Or would you rather we go to the International Court of Sentient Rights and piss away time until whatever Qifang was trying to warn us of lands on our heads like a ton of shit?"
"Yes, you are right," said Hughie, unabashed. Even in agreement he somehow managed to make everything sound like it was all his idea. "Of course. It is clear that we have a rogue AI on our hands, that is of far greater concern."
"Or rogues. They must have had spies in Karlsson's factory, usurped it from under him, then sent out more cydroids, these primed for assassination, to look for the Qifangs, once they'd found out what Qifang was up to."
"And to try and kill you."
"And to try and kill me. They meat-puppeted Karlsson, killed off his friends, and personality-stripped the AIs in the building and left it there to fend for itself. That's why we didn't know anything about it until I went in, and that's why they tried to kill me. Although Karlsson was a paranoic, I'm sure he'd have talked a little if he'd still been alive."
"What would we do without you?"
Richards ignored the jibe. "Thing is, how many other copies are there? Who else have they got out there who isn't who everyone, or indeed themselves, thinks they are?"
"I have already taken that into account," said Hughie dismissively. "You are quite safe, nothing untoward will happen to you here."
"I felt quite safe until someone used a counterfeit centenarian Chinaman to blow me up with a nuclear bomb, so you'll forgive me if I hold off on the tearful praise."
"That was out there, Richards, not in here."
"Out there's supposed to be safe too, Hughie. That's what you've been telling us for years."
"You've assembled quite the story there. But you said no one else knew about the cydroids. Someone did. The person or machine working on them in the futurist labs in the servers."
"I know," said Richards. "It all keeps coming back to one name."
"k52," they said simultaneously.
A couple of uniformed techs tapped commands into their phones. The base unit intended for Qifang's reformed mind hissed as it sealed itself, plumes of supercooled nitrogen venting from the sides. "They made him watch, Hughie, they kept Karlsson alive so that he could see his work being turned against him, see his friends being killed. That's pretty sick."
"Indeed," said Hughie, "though I am correct in saying that it was your assault that actually killed Karlsson."
"He couldn't have been saved," protested Richards sharply, though he knew nothing of the sort. "Right then, let's see what this message is all about."
Qifang listened to what the android was telling him. There were two of them, one the physical manifestation of the AI from the garden, and this stranger in the far humbler body. His voice was kindly. In his fuddled state, Qifang was thankful for that. In the end, kindness was all you could depend upon.
"This procedure, it will help me?" asked the professor. "Will it help me recover my memories?"
"Yes," said Richards softly, "it will." He laid a comforting plastic hand on the emulant's shoulder. "All you have to do is sit in this chair, and we'll attach this cable to you, and it will tell us what is wrong with you."
"The cable?" said Qifang unsurely. It was obvious he was struggling, his memories and state of being sliding apart as he spoke.
"It is a new diagnostic tool, it interfaces directly with your central nervous system," lied Richards. "A spin-off of cybernetics technology. It's amazing what they can do these days." He had no choice, he didn't want to tell the man he wasn't a man, and had an interface port directly below his skin on the back of his neck. "It will tell us what is wrong, and we'll have you back to normal in no time. I just have to ask you a few questions while it's in, neural patterning, that kind of thing."
Qifang nodded. He had once understood things like this; no longer. He looked nervous at his helplessness. "Thank you," he said hesitantly. He lay back as directed, a hole in the chair giving access to his neck.
"Close your eyes," said Richards.
A medic anaesthetised the back of Qifang's neck. "Can you feel this?" the woman asked, prodding the skin with a needle.
"No," said Qifang. "Nothing, but I feel drowsy."
"That's normal," she said as she neatly excised the skin over the port with a scalpel, revealing it and the black carbon bone it was set into. Blood pattered on to the floor. "There's a mild sedative in the anaesthetic." A technician wiped away blood from the port and plugged in the cable. He nodded to Richards. They were ready.
"Well, then," said Richards, with a cheer he did not feel. "A couple of baseline questions first. What is your name?"
"Professor Zhang Qifang," replied the professor.
"How old are you?"
A flutter of the eyelids, a sign of inner panic. "I, I don't remember, not exactly."
The technician manning the workstation monitoring Qifang looked up in alarm. Hughie frowned at Richards, indicating that he should get on with it.
"I am Richards, Professor Qifang, what is your message?"
The facsimile of the old man did not speak. Richards looked to the technicians and medics and Hughie and shrugged. "Professor Qifang?"
With inhuman precision, the cydroid sat bolt upright, like a vampire rising from its coffin in an old 2D flick, pulling the cable up through the chair until it went tight. Its mouth moved awkwardly, the rest of the face frozen, eyes dead. No sound came from the machine for a few moments; it might have been pattern-matching Richards' Gridsig. Then it began to speak. It was calm and at odds with the grimaces the face pulled. The effect was a chilling pantomime of human speech, the voice of a genius from the face of an idiot.
"Richards," the cydroid said, its softly accented voice firm and authoritative, the confusion in it gone. "I do not know you personally, but I have heard much about you. I fear that you are the only one I can trust. I am sure you know of me, and the work I have done for your kind. I hope that you will listen to what I have to say, and trust me in your turn.
"I have sent three of these mechanisms to convey this message to you. I pray at least one reaches you, for all our sakes.
"As you are probably aware, for the last few years I have headed a team based out of the UCLA artificial intelligence department. We have been examining the development of the remaining 32 Realms, a policy instituted in conjunction with the VIA by the Five that calls itself k52. 'To better understand our place in the universe.'" k52's voice issued from the machine, its placidity an insufficient shroud for the raw power of his mind. k52 had always been amongst the most powerful of their kind. Qifang's voice returned.
"Four weeks before my death, I happened to run a deep scan of the empty Realm lots. You will understand that this was prompted by more than curiosity, for the state of the Realms is in flux: some grow, while others shrink. I was interested to see if the free space influenced this in any great way. It was, however, little more than a whim.
"After the four Realms were destroyed, the spaces they once oc
cupied were turned over by k52 to a small group of scientists, human and AIs both. Supposedly, they were using the processing power of the servers to work on predictive modelling, an attempt, I was told, to prove k52's technology theorem, accelerate human development and sidestep further disasters like the Icesheet Tip and the Five crisis. The study of predictable futurities lies beyond my field but, as you are aware, many AIs believe that a large degree of predictability is inherent in the structure of our existence, and k52 has long sought to exploit that theoretical causality for man's ends.
"He was, I believe, primarily concerned with 'a little push here and there, my dear professor.'" k52's voice again. "Once areas of interest were detected, subsidiary research projects would be instigated to pursue these new areas of study, or entertainments would be specifically created to seed new ideas in the greater populace to bear fruit in future generations of researchers.