Cyberweb

by Lisa Mason

  * * *

  By the time Carly can stop the spinning in her head, they’ve entered the tribal lair. The digger woman kneels, shrugs Carly’s hips off her shoulder, sending her sprawling headfirst in a heap of rags. She wraps her hands around the back of her neck, protecting her neckjack, concealing it. She huddles in a fetal position.

  Hard hands untangle her, lift her. Take her deeper into the lair. Roll her over there, sit her up. Someone holds a glass of nasty-smelling liquor to her lips.

  “Don’t let them kill me, please,” she whispers. Glances up at her ministering angel.

  A stunning woman, fine features molded in chrome, smiles. Her startling scarlet bio-lips tilt up in a persuasive imitation of arrogance.

  The jolt of adrenaline clears Carly’s head in an instant. “My God, an ultra!”

  “You want more, babe?” the chrome woman says.

  Carly takes the glass, hands shaking.

  “Seen ultras before?”

  “No. Just heard about you.” Carly sips, letting the liquor’s heat melt away the pain at the base of her skull.

  They are crouching in someone’s hideout, a room the size of a clothes closet piled with funky-smelling bedding, packing popcorn, fourth-hand cushions with the stuffing spilling out. She studies the ultra. The ultimate conceit of Toshiba-BMW, the premier standalone manufacturer. Multiple hard-drive configurations with the latest iteration of ambiguity-tolerant software housed in the best robotics in the world, molded to look like an anatomically perfect human being. Fully articulated hands, jointed limbs, exacting details down to the suggestion of eyebrows etched in the ultra’s faceplace, ear funnels as delicate as shells protruding from her gleaming silver skull.

  Well. Carly has seen a lot of fancy hardware as a professional telelinker. And fancy software. An ultra costs a fortune. Most are indentured to megafirms or institutional sengines. Not roaming around with digger tribes.

  “How much memory?” she quizzes the ultra, impressed but not intimidated by its cold beauty. Carly never forgets she herself is a genny. In her own way, her bones and flesh and wetware are as refined as this silver woman. And she is a human being. She is a master. This bot, a servant.

  “Please, Ms. Quester,” the ultra says smoothly, “tech talk bores me.” Her polished eyespots—black flexiglass, probably, from the wet look of the surface—are the shape of mandorlas, tilted slightly over exquisite cheekbones. Yet even in those almond-shaped, obsidian depths, Carly can see the unmistakable pulse of program. Artificial intelligence comprised of good old ones and zeros. So. The ultra has limits, no matter how compelling her façade.

  Carly sits up. Ms.Quester? “Look here, you . . .”

  “Call me Patina.”

  “Patina. Since you know who I am, Patina, you damn well better tell me what this is all about.”

  In one fluid movement meant to show off her flexibility, Patina stands, kicks a gutted couch pillow with a foot piece shaped like a fancy high-heeled shoe. She stretches, showing off her housing, a lanky woman’s body molded in silver.

  “What’s going on, babe,” the ultra says, with an ironic smile, “is that I had you kidnapped.”

  “Mega,” Carly says coolly, borrowing strength from the terrible-tasting liquor “That’s a federal offense, to start. If you put them up to it, that’s conspiracy. Plus an AI crime against humanity.”

  “You’re not exactly innocent yourself, Ms. Quester,” Patina says.

  Carly lurches to her feet, slightly unsteady. “I want out of here. Now, bot.”

  “You’ll get out. But first”—the ultra seizes her by the wrist—“you need to meet someone.”

  The ultra pulls her out of the little hideout and into the diggers’ lair.

  The low, wide ceiling is hung with multicolored tattered plastic, looped cords, paper cutouts that flutter in the bay breeze. Bolted metal panels function as walls. Through the round windows—portholes—Carly glimpses the bay, ruddy foam, black tide. The ripe, rotten scent of the sea and dampness clings to her skin, to everything. A mournful tanker’s whistle calls to the answering bass of foghorns. What is this place, a beached ship? Carly has seen rusting hulks of abandoned barges along the waterfront.

  Shadows roam in the gloom. Ragged people huddle around a flickering campfire. The putrid smoke of burning garbage is drawn up through a hole in the ceiling. As Carly and the ultra approach, the people turn and stare, bright eyes in darkened faces tattooed with spirals and strange glyphs.

  The ultra prods Carly into their circle.

  The tall, wiry digger stands, thrusts himself in her path. His dreadlocks fall over his sharp face, but can’t conceal the hostility in his pale blue eyes. The scowl twisting his mouth. His lean hips are tightly bound with black fabric. Scraps of black polyester crisscross his chest, wrap around his wrists and ankles.

  “Get down, Ouija,” Patina says sardonically, winking at Carly. The digger doesn’t share the joke. The ultra runs her sculpted finger across his chest, then playfully pushes him away with the flat of her silver hand. “We’re not to harm the linker, remember?” She winks at Carly again. “Not yet, anyway. Come, come.” She drags Carly deeper into the lair.

  And there. Amid the heaps of garbage, fourth-hand swaybacked couches, piles of paper and rags, bald car tires, caches of plastic and glass bottles, gleams the platinum beams of a straight-backed chair, wires coiling around its feet.

  A chair for jacking in. A workstation.

  Carly digs in her heels, shoves the ultra away. “I’m barred from public telespace. You can’t jack me in.”

  The ultra seizes her arm. “Sure I can, babe.” The ultra sits her down in the chair. Beckons Ouija over, bids him to hold her while the ultra straps her in.

  Carly’s fingers and toes turn to ice. “I thought you people reject tech-mech,” she snaps at the digger. “I thought you hate telespace.” His hands linger on her arms, her ankles. “Where the hell are you hacking the power from?”

  “Don’t ask him, he hasn’t a clue,” Patina says, pulling the straps so tight they dig into Carly’s skin. Carly kicks at the wires. The wires, she sees, snake away into the dark. “We’re patched to my truck outside. My truck’s got its own resources. Once I’m through here, these folks will be back in the preindustrial age where they belong.” The ultra chuckles, a gritty, cracking sound.

  “What do you get out of this?” Carly says to the digger, but he only glares at her. Still, his eyes widen and a look of fear cuts across his face as the ultra finds the jack, sweeps back Carly’s hair, plunges the connection into her neck.

  “He gets out of trouble, that’s what he gets. Oh, yeah. By the way, babe. The access code,” the ultra says as Carly’s consciousness soars into telespace, “is RE forward slash SOURCE.”

  * * *

  Carly slumps. The roar of jacking-in fills her head, black pressure, the familiar tunnel of departure from normal consciousness into telespace. Despite her fear, she rejoices, filled with the anxious glee of climbing the first hill of an electronic roller coaster. So good to zoom again! Such power! Such speed!

  The clear white light of public telespace shines all around her as her presence in link speeds toward a Monitor for Access Codes. The MAC twirls before her, an angry tornado.

  She fights panic. MACs are notoriously stupid. But their presence in link is pure AI so their reflexes in telespace are superfast. She zooms to it, dread knocking in her heart. “RE/SOURCE.”

  The MAC whirls, gaping at her.

  “RE/SOURCE, damn it!” The “forward slash” emerges from her telelink as a ripping sound.

  A window pops open below her, and a force sucks her in. She glances up to see the window pop shut.

  Pure blackness above and below. Dropping down, down, down. Vertigo seizes her and spins her around. The darkness crackles, presses against her. But when she flexes her strength against it, there’s nothing to fight. Any movement worsens the vertigo. Carly keeps her presence in link very still. She’s never entered such a
place in telespace.

  Back in the chair, her body heaves, stomach churning.

  Her descent slows. Her presence in link hovers. Another window pops open before her.

  A soaring door. Gray marble columns. Geometric glyphs of bright scarlet. An onyx corona. Within and beyond the door, burns a golden glow like a distant sun. Carly can feel the warp of its gravity, the sting of its heat.

  Sengine. Powerful sengine.

  “RE/SOURCE,” Carly whispers. Her presence in link trembles.

  Sengine. Big, powerful sengine. The kind of sengine that supports worldwide systems. An artificial intelligence entity so adroit that the human beings who implemented it never confront it directly in telespace, mind to mind. But only deal with it from the safety of unlinked hardware and workstation operators.

  “Hello, Quester space C,” the sengine whispers. Three synchronous voices—soft, calm, intimate—manifest inside her ear. Carly nearly yells. It feels as if the sengine is touching her brain. “RE/SOURCE, that’s the correct code. I know that Data Control wants to comm with your link. I know that the medcenter sengine wants very much to know why you have been evading it.”

  “I haven’t been formally charged,” Carly says, swallowing her dread. “I am a citizen. A certified telelinker. A professional mediator. I’m a human being! I demand a fair hearing!”

  “I can grant you no hearing,” the sengine says softly.

  “I have rights!”

  “I can grant you no hearing because I have no power to do so. But I have other powers.”

  The sun dims. A tiny figure rises from the horizon, gallops toward her, growing larger and larger. The figure slows to a trot. In a sudden telescoping of perspective, an icon looms before her. Four long legs like a horse or deer, a robust equine body, a broad muscular torso, several arms, and three heads. “We’ve got to talk.”

  The three heads blink at her from their stout necks. One is the head of a brown jackal with enormous yellow fangs and a bloody lolling tongue. One, the head of a lizard with a long snout and dappled emerald scales. And one, the head of a handsome bearded man with large soulful eyes and salt-and-pepper hair tumbling to his shoulders.

  The three voices say, “You may call me Cognatus.”

  Carly gazes at the icon, filled with dread, yes, but also with astonishment. She’s never encountered the manifested icon of a powerful sengine. “What shall we talk about, Cognatus?”

  “I understand you need a job,” Cognatus says. The jackal growls, the lizard hisses, the bearded man smiles. “But for the unfortunate circumstances leading to your decertification from public telespace, your credentials are impeccable. Quite the professional mediator. I would even say admirable.”

  Since when does a monstrous sengine flatter a puny little human telelinker like her? “Are you making me an offer?”

  The jackal yowls, the lizard hisses, the bearded man laughs. “An offer you can’t refuse, Quester space C. For indeed you have been formally charged by Data Control.”

  “With what?”

  “For now, evasion. You’ve failed to respond to official summons. Later, who knows?”

  Anger rises in Carly’s throat. “The medcenter sengine is guilty of insubordination to Data Control. Not me!”

  “That is a serious allegation,” the voices of Cognatus say.

  “The medcenter sengine is tampering with human telelink,” she shouts and wishes she kept silent. The sengine’s flattery has loosened her tongue. Damn it. Who is this sengine? Who and what does it know? To whom does it owe allegiance? And—not necessarily the same as any of the above—what humans own it? For every sengine, including the most powerful, is ultimately owned and directed by human beings. Even R-X, the medcenter sengine. That is a legal requirement imposed by Data Control.

  “We shall see,” the icon says. “For now, we will keep your allegations in confidence. And in return, I want you to undertake certain projects for me. Projects in telespace. Public telespace.”

  “But how, if my link is suspended?”

  “I can patch access through my own directories,” the three voices say. “Much as we did now. Paths that are encrypted. Even Data Control can’t follow them.” The jackal licks its lips, the lizard flicks a long yellow tongue, the bearded man’s face grows somber. “As an advance for the first project, I’ll download fifty thousand softbucks to a credit disk.”

  Carly swallows. “I can’t use a credit disk without Data Control tracing me.”

  “It’s a black disk.” The jackal catches a disk in its jaws, tosses it at her. “Ever see one? Untraceable. Unaccountable. Tradeable on demand. Certain privileged human beings are issued them by sengines with financial connections.”

  She examines the disk, which is merely a holoid of something real outside of telespace. The disk vanishes. “You have financial connections?”

  The bearded man shrugs. “If you fail to complete the project,” the icon says, ignoring her question, “the origin path that you jack through will be automatically deleted. Same for the destination path. No one will be able to trace you to me. This icon is not my true manifestation. I will deny any connection to you.”

  Hot damn, Carly thinks, even as alarm jangles through her presence in link. To do the thing—jack into public telespace—that she’s longing to do? Yes! “What about Patina? Is she indentured to you?”

  “Patina is a freelancer,” Cognatus says curtly. “The ultra is affiliated with no one and nothing. I regret using her, but she was available tonight, and she’s efficient. I deny any connection to her.” The three faces stare at her. “And so?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Human beings always have a choice,” the voices say. But the three heads continue to stare.

  Carly’s presence in link spins away from the icon, hovers behind a gray marble column. Cognatus has, she realizes, offered her illegal compensation for a dark project. A black disk? She’s never dealt with such a thing.

  Which means now she has something on Cognatus. Even if that isn’t its real name or its true icon, she has her side of the story. If she can reach the human beings who own this sengine, she has the word of a human being against the word of an AI entity. And despite the immense power of sengines, Data Control still accords higher consideration to human beings.

  At least she hopes.

  Fifty thousand softbucks? That’s a modest year’s pay. She’s so tired of second-hand scraps, patched rags, a pop-top for a weapon. Living in a hideout above the YinYang Club. And bootleg telespace generated off of Pr. Spinner’s funky old double-jacked chair.

  Carly’s crisp white cube spins back to the icon. “What will this project require?”

  “Aaah,” the icon’s three voices say. “We’re talking?”

  “We’re talking.”

  “Your training as a professional telelinker,” the three voices say. “Your knowledge of telespace, your expertise. And”—all three heads smile—“your hyperlink.”

  “What’s a hyperlink?’ Carly says.

  The jackal yips, the lizard flicks its yellow tongue, the bearded man grins. “Let me see if you really can summon an archetype at will, Quester space C,” Cognatus says. Ignoring her fake question.

  “No.”

  “I won’t tamper with the archetype.”

  “I don’t even know you.”

  “I promise.” Three smiles.

  “I can’t show you an exercise of my hyperlink unless I have my probe therapist—my guardian—here, too.”

  The icon backs away. The jackal whines, the lizard hisses, the bearded man sighs. “Ten thousand softbucks on a black disk right now, if you can show me an archetype.” The icon gallops away toward the horizon, disappearing in the golden glow, but the voices whisper inside her ear. “For a second. I won’t touch the archetype. Really, I promise. I’ll watch from a distance. I won’t come near.”

  Perhaps. The icon can probably reappear before her in less than a second. Still, ten thousand softbucks, right now? Th
at’s more than she’s earned in a long, long time. She knows exactly how to spend every buck.

  But can she do it?

  Suddenly she wants to show her hyperlink capability at its best, show what she—and the Arachne—can do. The hyperlink is a marvel, that’s what Pr. Spinner keeps saying. But will Cognatus agree?

  She recalls the last link with the perimeter prober. The Arachne is you, you’re afraid of it because you see a distinction. How did she do it?

  Part of me, the Arachne is part of me!

  She feels the tickle of tiny claws on the top of her presence in link, the scrabble of long legs. The spider gleams, silver and marcasite, ruby eyes, as if it, too, wants to show off its most beautiful manifestation. Carly nearly laughs out loud. The spider spits a line of silk across the sanctum to the golden horizon and slides toward the distant sun.

  Panic wells in her. Part of me! Of me! The spider vanishes, leaving the silk line behind, which wilts, dries into dust, and blows away.

  Suddenly exhausted, her head aches—that cuff across her skull. She concentrates till she thinks her head will break, but she cannot summon the spider again. Damn it! She unspends the ten thousand softbucks, kisses the fifty thousand good-bye. Surely Cognatus will not want her for its secret project now.

  “Wonderful.” The bearded man’s face smiles over her shoulder, the lizard nibbles at the side of her telelink, the jackal snuffles.

  She jumps, surprised. Uh-huh. Cognatus could have seized the spider easily. But didn’t.

  “You need to work on your hyperlink, though,” the voices say mildly. “You’re going to need that metaprogram for what I want you to do. Frankly, your control leaves much to be desired. Tweak it up, Quester space C. Till we meet again.”

  * * *

  Blackness. A freezing breeze. The most brutal unjacking she’s ever bounced out of.

  Carly slumps in the platinum-beamed chair, the campfire smoke clogging her throat. The tall, wiry digger is sitting at her feet. He jumps up as soon as she blinks and opens her eyes. A circle of filthy-faced children and terrified women surround her, bright eyes fixed on the tech-mech spectacle. She painfully sits up, rotates her head, cracking kinks in her neck.