The Hive Construct

by Alexander Maskill

  Zala felt faintly sick, her usual visceral response to the thought of bio-augs and the human body. ‘But they’re not body parts,’ she insisted, ‘they’re … things. They’re outside things that people take inside them. They’re not you.’

  ‘So suppose you have a computer, a portable terminal or something. After a year, you switch out the memory for a larger hard disk. You upgrade the RAM. The next year, you get a new, faster graphics unit and processor. The year after, you get a new case and baseboard, something with a few new attachment ports. After those replacements, there’s not a single part in it which was a part of your original portable terminal. Is it your portable terminal? Is it the same portable terminal? If you were asked how long you’ve had it for, would you hold it up and say “I bought this three years ago” or would you specify for each of the parts?’

  Zala didn’t really know how to answer this. Her silence lasted long enough that a nearby waitress took it as a cue to clear the cups from the table. Eventually Matsuda continued. ‘At this point, we’re not stuck with the physical body parts we were born with, but the new ones are still a part of us. They respond to our own internal systems. Pretty soon, we may have to go back to soul– body dualism. People used to think of consciousness itself as the essence of humanity, and the body as a separate, finite thing the soul operates. I don’t really have a problem with that, but they still thought of their bodies, tools of the soul though they were, as their bodies. As time goes by, we’re becoming less and less biological, turning our bodies into tools in truth, or even just switching them out for the latest ones. Maybe a body is already just a tool, an extension of the true self. Hell, natural bodies replace so much of themselves so often that even an unaltered body still isn’t really all the same body for ever. Maybe diseases are adjusting. Maybe they’re learning to see little difference between the tools we’re born with and the tools we choose. Maybe they’re ahead of the curve,’ he said, pointedly.

  Zala couldn’t help grimacing at the thought. ‘So you think it’s a regular disease that’s just crossed over into dealing with bio-augmentations?’

  Matsuda smiled. ‘Not quite. I think that the disease is making people’s bodies reject the bio-augs. Viruses work by inhabiting cells and hijacking them, forcing them to take on and reproduce their own properties. What happens if a virus can disrupt your compatibility with a bio-aug?’

  ‘I guess the body would try and get rid of it, like it does with unprocessed bio-augs that haven’t been acclimatized to the host’s body.’

  Matsuda sat back and shrugged lightly. ‘I think it’s that simple. I think it’s a disease that makes bodies reject the parts. The read-only memory corruption is a result of the bio-augs’ internal programming not being written to expect sudden, catastrophic rejection out of nowhere – they’re powering down before they have a chance to shut down normally.’

  Zala leaned back in her seat and exhaled heavily. ‘Look, I need some fresh air and we both need to get back. Let’s go.’

  They left the café and started to make their way back towards the cemetery.

  ‘Do you have any new bio-augs yourself?’ Zala asked.

  He pointed just below his ribs. ‘I got diagnosed with diabetes about three years back, so they put in a few artificial implants. They replaced the islets of Langerhans, to boost the hormone-secreting bits. Less importantly, I’ve got a few muscle implants and some corresponding implants in the movement parts of my brain. When I’m operating on someone, they keep my hand entirely steady, amazingly precise.’ He tapped a few keys on his portable terminal and lifted his right arm out in front of him, fingers pointed forward towards Zala, the hand uncannily still. ‘There’s no such thing as an off performance now, which is good because I have a career that’s really not great for those. Then there’s the regular stuff – eye correction and display processors. I’m going to assume from your whole “They’re not a part of us” thing that you still don’t have any bio-augs?’

  Zala laughed self-consciously. ‘Nope. I’ve even still got those old contact lenses. These days I have to reprogram my operating systems just so that they’ll work with them, they’re so outdated.’

  ‘Well yeah,’ Matsuda said, ‘they became obsolete the moment they invented eye display processors thirty years ago. Add back five years to allow for laggard users and you’re still using tech that’s almost as old as you are. I swear, the lengths you’ll go to in order to accommodate your anxieties …’ His tone was so patronizing Zala couldn’t help but get annoyed at her old friend.

  ‘Hey, if I can make it work, it doesn’t matter, right?’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Matsuda. ‘So how did you get back into the city?’

  ‘I found a scanner in a dump. I got an admin account with code injection on some obscure government agency site. Replaced someone else’s biometrics with my own. As far as the city knows, Selina Mullur returned home yesterday. It was embarrassingly easy.’ Zala laughed.

  ‘Christ, just like that? I guess they wouldn’t have replaced the scanners in all the stations just yet. Makes me wonder how many holes there’ll be in the quarantine of the high-infection areas if that has to go up.’

  Quarantine of the high-infection areas. Something about that – maybe the dismissive tone, maybe something deeper – turned Zala’s stomach, but she shook it off. ‘Oh, this was a replaced one. I guess it uses the same protocols, it just counted the older scanner’s readings.’

  Matsuda paused for a moment contemplatively, before visibly dismissing whatever his train of thought was. ‘If only fixing your criminal record was that easy, eh?’

  ‘Honestly, it still makes me laugh that, with all the illegal shit we were getting up to back then, they nailed me with a fabricated charge as a trap for my dad. A brief scan of my home computer would have been more than enough.’

  Matsuda chuckled. ‘I guess so …’ Then his face fell and his voice became softer. ‘I miss it, you know? I’ve never felt as powerful as I did back then.’

  Zala realized he looked genuinely sad. ‘You save lives almost every day, yet you felt more powerful back when you were going through databases or messing with web pages?’

  ‘I guess it is kind of silly. There’s just something about disengaging from all that high technology that’s left me feeling kind of disempowered. Every time I lose a patient on the table I remind myself of how, back in the day, I could change things halfway around the world, reach through walls and over oceans. There’s a lot of power in it all that you never really think about. Soucouyant victims say the same thing.’

  Zala leaned across and touched his arm. ‘That’s nostalgia talking. It’s not that great. I mean, I’d do anything to have your life.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Matsuda replied. The two of them had arrived back outside the graveyard and they slowed. ‘My car is over there. It was great to see you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Zala, ‘it was great to see you too. Thanks for everything.’

  She stood for a moment, watching him go, and then turned away and headed back towards the city centre.

  Zala lay on the apartment couch in a tank top and shorts, trying her best to unwind. Her funeral clothes had been returned to a still weeping Polina and she now had her portable terminal’s projected screen illuminated in front of her. She was working on some fragments of code her father had left before his death. Most of what she had found she’d had no trouble identifying, and had reconstructed entire programs: the remains of an unusually complex firewall here, a powerful network analysis tool there. Others had presented a challenge. One remained a mystery; unlike the other fragments of code, it was written in such alien language and syntax she had been unable to decipher it, and had only just enough structure for her to be sure it wasn’t merely corrupted or encrypted with a cypher. But almost all the rest had made themselves useful in some way.

  Eight years ago, Zala’s father had been a project leader at the IT department of GeniSec, but had been forced to flee after being accused of corpor
ate malfeasance. He’d never told her what it was, but she had always assumed that he had attempted to steal something from the project he was working on, something valuable enough to risk his and Zala’s safety. Six months after they had fled, GeniSec released a number of very important computer programs, which fit Zala’s theory closely enough that she’d taken it as confirmed. These included the revolutionary IntuitivAI protocol, a new generation of simulated artificial intelligence which ended up being used everywhere from navigational systems to enemy behavioural programming in video games. Of course, that would mean that Zala’s father had been trying to steal something huge, but she was always unsure just how much credit to give the man. After all, his greed, his selfishness had landed her with three alleged murders to her charge and made her a fugitive in her own right, which had lowered her expectations of him.

  The lines of code blurred and Zala realized her gaze had been focusing on the terminal itself, a small black unit strapped to her wrist. She thought about all the things Matsuda had said.

  There really isn’t an ‘us and them’ at this point.

  Zala closed her eyes and imagined wires slithering out of the back of her terminal and into her arm, under her skin. The cables branched out like roots, spreading further and further up her arm like great swollen arteries. The skin around the terminal began to creep up the sides of the terminal itself, enveloping it into her arm.

  Zala felt a huge, disgusted dry-retch coming, and held her hand over her mouth. As she brought it away, her eyes fell on the outlines of veins in her wrists. She couldn’t help but imagine them as thick, dark wires.

  Chapter 5

  AS IF A fire were being lit in the darkness, Ryan Granier slowly returned to consciousness.

  Thoughts filtered into his mind, a low, steady vibration, becoming louder and clearer. He became aware of a cold, hard, dusty floor beneath him and of a deep ache in his muscles from lying face down on it. Something was wound around his head – what felt like a blindfold. He tried to bring his hands round to pull it off, but found himself straining against tight plastic ties which resisted his attempts to break them. His wrists had been bound, he realized, as had his ankles. He tried rolling onto his side using his shoulders and knees, but failed. The blind thrashing disoriented him and for a moment he lay there, trying to reestablish which way up was. Then he twisted and pushed again, this time succeeding in balancing on his side. Now his weight no longer restricted his breathing, he let out a yell.

  ‘Hey!’

  Moments later, he heard a shuffling noise in front of him. A muffled voice said, ‘Is he awake?’

  A second voice replied, ‘From the sound of things, yeah.’

  Ryan lowered his head and rubbed it against the floor. The blindfold loosened. He pushed again, and it lowered just enough that one eye was exposed. He looked around. He was in what seemed to be a small office. The windows had been painted black, but a little light came through gaps and cracks in the paint. He appeared to be alone in this room, but someone was standing just outside it.

  ‘Hey! Who’s there?’ he shouted, louder this time.

  Almost immediately, the door’s lock rattled and it opened. Standing in the doorway was a tall, worn-looking woman with a cigarette in her mouth, wearing what looked like old Security Force overalls.

  ‘Good morning, Councillor,’ she said, leaning on the door-frame.

  Ryan shifted himself round to face her properly and said, ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You, Councillor, are in a safe house of the New Cairo Liberation Corps, where you’ll be staying until further notice.’

  So I’m a hostage.

  The woman crossed the room, grabbed a chair and dragged it in front of Ryan. Before sitting down she took a deep drag from her cigarette and let the smoke leak out from the corners of her mouth.

  ‘What do I call you?’ Ryan said.

  ‘Call me … Matron.’ She snorted with gravelly laughter at her own joke. ‘I’ll be the one looking after you during your stay with us. I’ll be seeing that you get fed, keep an eye on you to make sure you don’t overstep any bounds and I’ll be discouraging any ill-advised escape attempts.’ She motioned to the pistol in a holster on her hip.

  Ryan nodded. ‘Okay, okay …’ He gathered his thoughts. ‘So … how long am I going to be here for?’

  ‘Matron’ brought up the holographic screen of her portable terminal and opened up a newscast. She rotated the screen so that Ryan could see it.

  The headline read:

  QUARANTINE VOTE STALLED, CLLR RYAN GRANIER TAKEN HOSTAGE

  The picture showed the outside of the Council building crawling with police, reporters and onlookers. The voice-over said ‘… captors released a series of demands earlier this morning, including the scrapping of the quarantine bill, the reactivation of the shuttle elevators in and out of the city and an end to the existing moratorium on the emigration of citizens from high-infection areas. The council has put its vote for the quarantine on hold for the moment, as Councillor Granier was considered a major force on one side of the debate. In the meantime, the High Councillor made a statement outside the Council building.’

  The video feed switched to show Ryan’s father on the podium, addressing the mob of reporters in front of him. ‘Yesterday a beloved public servant was taken from this very building. He is being held hostage by a terrorist group who are intent on destroying this city. But we will not bow down to the will of these loathsome thugs. They have killed and butchered innocent people, they have started riots which threatened to tear this city in two, all for the sake of saving themselves while inflicting upon the world a virus which would cripple all of humanity. And now they have taken hostage a great man who has fought tirelessly for the very people these terrorists claim to represent. I can assure you all that these base criminals will be brought to justice.’

  As the clip was replaced with a round-table of pundits ready to pick apart the speech, Matron turned off the screen. ‘So, to answer your question, it all depends on whether or not your dad plays ball. And he can huff and puff all he likes, but so long as he’s not pushing forward on the blanket quarantine, you’re all right.’

  ‘But I was going to vote against that. I was the leader of a push to stop that bill. Why do I get taken prisoner?’

  ‘This isn’t really about you, Councillor, though, for the record, you didn’t have the amount of votes you thought you had. We’ve taken you as our guest because of your father’s position as High Councillor, and for the pressure it puts on him.’

  She strode over to the doorway and motioned to someone standing outside. A stocky, bald man walked in and grabbed Ryan’s legs. Matron moved behind him and picked him up around the waist, and the two of them carried him through the door, depositing him on a chair.

  The room he was now in was larger, a central hall with many doors around the perimeter. Whatever sort of business this building had once housed, the barred windows and the two-layer arrangement of heavy doors over what looked like the entrance suggested he was in Naj-Pur. Ryan’s heart sank. Naj-Pur had been a no-go area for the police since the riots had started and, depending where you were, even the Council’s military police organization, the Security Force, seemed reluctant to enter. The windows in this room too had been painted over in black and the walls were bare, though mounting brackets suggested that computer terminals had been set up there until recently.

  ‘I’ve got work to do. Try not to swallow your tongue or anything,’ said Matron, as she sat at a desk near by. The bald man had walked off to Ryan’s left, through a door that appeared to lead into a long passage.

  For a while she typed and Ryan Granier sat in silence, thinking things through and trying to move his arms enough to keep circulation going. As a teenager, he’d received training on what to do in a hostage situation; his father had insisted on it. The thought of it had at the time seemed scary to Ryan. Back then, it was as if the concept of kidnapping children of business magnates had only just been created, and
Ryan had found it hard not to resent his father for not letting him live in ignorance. Rule One, the first thing he’d been told, was to under no circumstances try to escape. Matron was armed, and the doors were locked, so that wasn’t a possibility anyway. From then on, he’d been taught, the steps to surviving a hostage situation were all in the mind. He thought back to his training all those years ago and checked down the list of rules he’d committed to memory.

  He’d been informed of the motive for his kidnapping already, and had gained a sense of time and location. For now, cooperation and civility were important, but beyond that, actively being sociable and empathetic towards the people holding you hostage was the most useful thing. When it was decreed that he’d undergo hostage training, he’d expected an ex-soldier or police officer, someone who would teach him to defend himself, but instead he’d been placed under the care of a smiling young woman who specialized in psychology. She’d taught him that the greatest danger to a hostage was the threat of dehumanization, where a captor’s empathy is lessened to the point where abuse and violence becomes easier and easier. The ability to engage and form a bond with your captor was the surest way to ensure that you stayed alive. Rule Two, she’d told him, was to make them like you, respect you and make them care what happened to you. The idea was almost a reverse Stockholm Syndrome. In addition, conversation and mental stimulation were essential for keeping the mind active and stopping the onset of depression. Ryan realized that the silence surrounding him was doing him no favours on this front.

  ‘I voted for you, you know. We all did round here,’ said Matron, looking up from her monitor.

  Ryan had not expected that. ‘Thanks,’ he replied.

  ‘The fact is, Councillor, we have similar goals. There aren’t many hostages who can say that.’ Matron lit another cigarette. ‘So we figure you’ll be more cooperative. Might even get that quarantine bill scrapped. We want the same thing.’