The Harmony Paradox

by Matthew S. Cox

  The woman in front of Milton turned aside and stifled laughter.

  “Please make a decision,” muttered Milton. “I’ve only got thirty minutes left.”

  Fern, bewildered, faced forward and said, “Yah,” to Katie.

  “You could order out?” Joey smiled at Milton with a double-thumbs-up.

  “No.” Milton muttered incomprehensible things at his shoes for a moment. “I can’t. I must exit the office for my lunch because otherwise nobody leaves me alone. If I try to eat at my desk, they are constantly walking up to me with issues. You would think these people don’t understand the concept of deleting files. It’s like they rely on the backup system to store data and only keep it in their local data nodes when they’re using it. No, that’s not what backup is for.”

  “Or they forget their passwords,” said Joey.

  Milton’s eyes lit up. “Yes… or the printer is out of thermoplastic, or someone they are trying to vid isn’t answering. Like it is something I can fix that the other person is there and not picking up.”

  “Oh, fuck this guy,” muttered Joey. He gave Milton a ‘one second’ finger raise, and pulled his NetMini out. He leaned forward and swiped at the man, reading his PID, and jumped back to his place behind Milton. Within five seconds, he’d hacked his way into the man’s device.

  “What are you doing?” whispered Milton.

  “I am Lord Kronos, keeper of time.” Joey patched audio from a pornographic holo-vid to the man’s NetMini, forcing the volume to max and disabling all control input for sixty seconds.

  As lustful moans and cries of ‘harder, deeper’ echoed from the man holding up the line, everyone in the room (except for the dolls) stared at him. One woman covered the ears of her five-year-old son. Indecisive-man fumbled the NetMini, trying to find the source of the sound and turn it off. Much to Joey’s amusement, the guy looked embarrassed rather than outraged.

  Hmm. He’s not surprised. Must have quite a stash.

  Unable to shut it off, the man hurried out of the restaurant, his face bright red.

  “Canceling order,” said Maddie.

  Milton twitched, a devious glint in his eyes. A growing smile spread over his face as he turned to face forward. The woman ordered. When the doll asked if she wanted to ‘Ultra-it,’ she gave Joey a challenging look threatening to ask what that meant. He pointed at her, eye twitching. She laughed and said yes, skipping the explanation. The doll set her order up on a tray, and she walked away after a brief glance at Fern got her chuckling again.

  “Two Double Orbitals, a large fry, one Applezinger, and a Fruitsplosion,” said Milton.

  “Wow,” muttered Joey.

  Milton glanced back at him for a second, gnawing on his finger. “Oh, better make that a diet Fruitsplosion.”

  Joey’s face reddened as he tried not to laugh.

  “Ultra it, please.” Milton held up a finger. “Second burger’s for dinner later on.” He nodded at Joey, eyes widening. “They really do last forever.”

  Milton collected his tray and walked off, glancing back at Joey a few times with a bewildered ‘have I seen him before’ expression. Grinning, Joey tucked his thumbs in his pockets and approached the doll.

  “Galaxy combo.” Joey winked. “And a diet water.”

  Maddie stared at him, motionless. After four seconds, the doll blinked with a click. “I’m sorry, sir. We do not offer diet water. Can I interest you in our full calorie water or an alternative diet beverage?”

  “Oh, hell.” Joey patted his concave belly. “I suppose I’ll have to cope with the full calorie water.”

  Joey put his feet up on his desk and opened the clamshell containing his four-patty Galaxy burger. He had to give them some credit, the damn thing still looked like a hamburger after the PubTran ride, and it smelled as good as vat grown beef. Heh. Masaru would cringe and run the other way after one whiff. He tapped his chin, grinning. I gotta give him one of these and say it’s from a new place that charges like six hundred creds a burger… then after he eats it show him the box. He cackled, and dove in.

  Burger and cheesy-tots mashed together in his mouth as he relaxed, staring at the progress meter for the compile.

  “What’cha got there?” DeWinter leaned back. “That smells pretty damn good. No way that came from the cafeteria.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.” DeWinter’s bushy caterpillar eyebrows did their climbing dance of love.

  “Cyberburger.”

  “Bullshit.” DeWinter scoffed.

  “Ultra. As natural as vat-grown,” sang Joey.

  “No kidding. Hmm. Maybe I’ll break my rule and try it sometime. That almost smells like food.” DeWinter slid out of sight behind the cube wall.

  “Did you say Cyberburger?” Mindy leaned over him from behind, sniffing. She’d added dark red streaks to the front of her bangs. “That smells almost like real food.”

  “I just said that,” muttered DeWinter.

  Joey grabbed the plastic tray of cheddar-covered potato nuggets. “Cheesy tot?”

  She plucked one out of the goo with her longish fingernails and ate it. “Mmm.” She fanned her mouth. “Oh wow. Hot.”

  “Yeah, I think that cheese is radioactive, but it tastes okay.” Joey tossed another tot in his mouth before taking a bite of the burger.

  Mindy returned to her desk.

  Beep.

  Joey looked up at the words ‹Compile complete› and set his half-eaten burger back in the carton. “Okay, moment of truth.” He ran the program. “If this works, it’s time to go hunting.”

  “What the fuck?” asked Mindy three seconds later.

  “Hey,” yelled Abby. “Who cut my process threads?”

  “Ugh.” DeWinter moaned. “Did someone breach the damned firewall again? I just got kicked out of all my sessions.”

  Joey pursed his lips. Oops. Forgot to throttle the CPU utilization.

  Wham!

  He jumped.

  “What was that?” Mindy spun around in her chair.

  Wham.

  “Came from Simon’s desk.” Abby stood and crossed their circular area.

  Wham.

  “Oh, Simon’s banging his head on the desk. Oh… oh, Simon, I’m so sorry.” Abby sighed.

  “Did he just show you his dick?” asked Joey. He flapped his hand at the holo-panel trying to get his program to stop execution.

  DeWinter cringed.

  “No, he had a theoretical simulation running for the past thirty six hours and it just terminated with an”―Abby leaned deeper into Simon’s cube for a second― “’insufficient processor resources’ error. He’s gotta start it over.”

  Wham.

  “Can you like stop smacking your head on the desk that hard,” said Mindy. “That’s kinda unnerving.”

  “Kinda?” DeWinter bugged his eyes at the cube wall separating Simon’s desk from Joey’s.

  Various noises of alarm, outrage, and laughter came from other teams’ cubes.

  Joey sank into his chair. Fuck.

  Beep. A screen popped up showing output from the data comparison.

  Holy shit. It’s done already? He cracked a sheepish grin. Well, I did just take all the processors. He tapped a finger to his lips. Well, I could show Preema the output of that job done in 77 seconds, or I could dive in and erase all the logs of where that lag came from, or I could come up with some bullshit about testing a vulnerability in our instruction set. He nodded. Yeah, I don’t think the operating software should have let me do that.

  Joey’s central holo-panel went black. Two long crimson horns extended from the darkness, sliding past either side of his head. Narrow slits of pale green light, eyes canted downward in a distinctly unhappy glower appeared next. A second pair of shorter horns swooped in long curves below the first pair, ending even with the gleaming onyx face of a black dragon.

  Adrenaline brought an elated smile to Joey’s face.

  “Oh, Hi Penumbras.” Joey
held his hand up to his cheek and waved with his fingers. “I, umm, think I found a bug.”

  ina pored over tactical diagrams of the Laughlin-Reed Innovation facility. As soon as she convinced herself they’d identified all the ACC spies, she wanted to take them simultaneously. Nabbing them at the office would concentrate everything in one place, but also put a lot of civilians in danger. The upside came in that it would only take three teams with a possible fourth as a backup. Going after them at home reduced civilian risk, but required eight teams. Going after the spies at their residences also introduced added danger from unknown factors: traps, defense bots, preplanned escape routes or possible explosives designed to burn away information or evidence.

  Given the potential to lose valuable insight in how they all managed to get in, trusting the op teams’ ability to be surgical around the office full of civilians seemed like the better bet from a purely analytical perspective―but Nina couldn’t justify it to herself. While she had confidence in her people, who knows what the spies would do if cornered, and information did not trump lives.

  “Eight teams it is.” She closed the LRI schematics and pulled up the list of addresses each operative had on their employee records. She’d be happy if even one of them turned out to be the actual location of where the person stayed. At least if the addresses were worthless, she’d have less guilt going into LRI in the middle of the day. “Damn.”

  “Nina,” said Hardin from the terminal. His head appeared in a small window. “My friend across the hall is going to send you something in regards to that question you had. Be right there.”

  He hung up.

  Two seconds later, a file arrived in her departmental inbox with her as the sender. She stared at the icon, hesitant to touch it. Hardin walked in and took a seat facing her desk.

  “Sir, did I just send myself mail, or is that your friend?”

  He smiled. “It’s safe.”

  She grasped the icon and pulled it open across the holographic screen. The face of Daniel Stirling appeared, and right next to it a different man with similar facial geometry, blond, and a touch effeminate.

  “Michel De Merlier, born in Lyon, France, February fourteenth, 2381.” Hardin spoke while she read the text. “Enlisted in the Department of Motherland Security, 2399. Promoted to management July first, 2402. Transferred to the Office of Operational Intelligence six months later.”

  He memorized this file already. Or maybe not… he’s gotta have implants. Nina leaned back in her chair, which emitted a soft creak. “I’m surprised they didn’t DNA mask him.”

  “I don’t think they meant this to be long term enough for that. They didn’t turn him into Daniel Stirling, just made him look like the guy. Reconstructive nanosurgery without a genetic alteration.”

  She paged over Michel’s dossier. C-Branch had been tracking him after he popped up on their radar in India. Since Pakistan had sided with the ACC, relations between India and the UCF had gotten cozy out of necessity. “I spent most of the morning going over Stirling’s files at LRI. I couldn’t pinpoint anything that suggested a significant disruption. I started on the date the son called to report ‘alien abduction,’ and worked back day-by-day from there. They must’ve grabbed the real Stirling and made cortical chips of his core knowledge. This De Merlier appears to be performing the man’s job without an issue. Personality too. He’s fooled the wife.”

  “Well, he is an executive. I’m not sure we can call what they do work.” Hardin chuckled. “All kidding aside, Daniel Stirling is likely dead, or at best out of the country and as good as.”

  Nina exhaled. “It’s possible De Merlier may know more about the real Stirling. I’d prefer to take him alive.”

  Hardin smiled. “I was going to ask you to do just that. But we can’t exactly kick down the door.”

  “No… the others will scatter. He lives far enough out from the city… I could take him at home. He’s got a habit of picking up women. As much as it makes my skin crawl, I could possibly get in that way.”

  “Not enough time to set that up… and what if he doesn’t show any interest in you?” Hardin rested his chin in his hand, one finger sliding back and forth over his lips.

  Relief and annoyance in equal measure occupied Nina’s thoughts. “I’ll do it the old fashioned way then. Maybe I’ll even bring a black bag for his head.”

  Hardin laughed. “If you’re clean, the others won’t realize anything unusual has happened until at least Monday morning… assuming they keep up appearances by having no contact during the weekend. An SVP wouldn’t buddy up with middle management, techs, and laborers.”

  “We have to assume they’ve got some way to communicate without raising suspicion. Online games with aliases even.”

  Hardin nodded. A slight hint of a smile curled his lip.

  Always testing me… “They probably won’t expect him to be in contact when he’s asleep. We’ll have a chance to chat with him all night. If he confirms we’ve got all the operatives, we can move on them right away.”

  “I like your plan.” Hardin patted the armrests of his chair and stood.

  I should have enough time to slip away and drive Elizaveta to my parents’ place. Probably ask them to watch her overnight.

  Nina stood in the back of Whisper 7, a narrow walkway between the two sunken pods where the long-boom sniper operators sat. Everything except for the air in front of her face was black. Bulky, enclosed electronics engulfed the heads of the snipers, a man and a woman. The helmets had no external surface that made any effort to appear to be a visor, and connected to the hull via several cables and an air hose, creating an overall effect that she shared the craft with a pair of aliens.

  Intermittent creaks passed overhead as the airframe adjusted to changes in pressure from speed and altitude. The walkway continued forward, past a small bulkhead door, into the cockpit compartment. Four people in somewhat smaller helmets sat in silence up front: two pilots, an electronics warfare operator, and a comm officer. Both pilots matched her rank of first lieutenant, while the rest of the crew all held the rank of second lieutenant. Whispercraft crews came straight over from the military after training, and still used the standard rank titles.

  “With all this butter on board, we should have popcorn,” mumbled Nina.

  “Huh?” asked the starboard-side sniper.

  The other gunner chuckled and flicked his rank insignia.

  “Time on target: two minutes,” said a voice from a speaker overhead.

  “Thank you, lieutenant,” said Nina.

  “You’re welcome lieutenant,” replied the pilot.

  “Umm, lieutenant,” said a woman, “you’ll want us to loiter over the target area, correct?”

  “Correct, lieutenant.” Nina grinned.

  “No problem, lieutenant,” said the woman.

  The snipers snickered.

  Nina closed her eyes and pictured herself flying. The Whispercraft’s engines made so little noise, even inside the aircraft, that the sound of the wind passing over the wings and body seemed loud.

  “Lieutenant?” asked a man. “What’s the drop height tolerance on those legs of yours?”

  “Ten stories, but leaving an impact crater would be the opposite of stealthy.” She sighed and opened her eyes, abandoning her daydream of being a bird.

  “Understood, was just curious is all.”

  “Got visual,” said the female pilot. “You want the front yard or fancy a walk through the woods?”

  Nina laughed. “The Whisper might be invisible, but I’m not.” I don’t feel like stripping today. “Woods, please.”

  “Roger that.”

  Her weight shifted to the right. The pilots hadn’t enabled the cockpit viewscreen, leaving the space in front of them blank black armor instead of an image of the outside. Whatever the pilots needed to see reached their eyes by virtue of their helmet optics. No light contamination broke the darkness inside. The one Nina had flown to Louisiana had been a training craft, an older
model with resin windows instead of viewscreens, a wider hold in back, and no long-boom rail guns.

  “Tee up, lieutenant,” said the male pilot.

  Nina walked backward to the rear of the hold, where four seats, two per side, folded up against the wall. She stood on one of four grey spots and pulled a plastisteel cable down from the ceiling, which she clipped to a recessed bar in the center of the circle. After shrugging out of her coat, she draped it over one of the folded chairs and grasped the cable with both hands.

  “Hey, lieutenant,” said the male sniper. “Mind if I take a pic for the spank bank?”

  She glanced down at her ballistic stealth armor, which made her look like a statue of polished black glass. “You have issues, lieutenant.”

  The crew erupted with laughter for a few seconds.

  “Target in three… two… one,” said the female pilot.

  “Go,” said Nina.

  The disc popped out of the floor; she plummeted straight down through pine tree branches while standing on it, clinging to the cable. Her descent slowed rapidly in the last two feet, bobbing to a halt inches off the ground. Nina stepped clear and the line retracted back up into nothingness. If she had kicked her speedware on, she might’ve noticed a faint Whispercraft-shaped distortion of light gliding away, but she didn’t bother.

  She set up a Mission Tactical Overlay Feed, and the four crew of Whisper 7 appeared as a line of faceless black helmet icons. 「Whisper 7, comm check.」

  「Copy, lieutenant,」 said the male pilot.

  The MTOF screen expanded to the right, giving her an angel-eye view of the manor grounds.

  「Whisper 7, let me have thermal on the house. Overlay ultrasonic.」 Nina advanced at a brisk stride past trees. The tactical map showed her even with the side of the house along the north, so she veered left to take up a spot behind the place, faster access to the back door.