Cyberweb

by Lisa Mason

  “Cognatus told me it can patch access through its own directories. Encrypted paths. Get me into public telespace without a registered access code. If the paths can do that, they’ll conceal my locus, too. They’d have to.”

  She presses Power and the workstation leaps to life. Disks hum, diagnostics light and blink off, one by one. The neckjack rears on its wire. Prime functions.

  Carly sits. “Look, I told Cognatus I’d undertake a project. I gave my word. Besides, I’ve got reasons of my own.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s just say I’m interested in the Silicon Supremacists. You’ve been training with me in our little bootleg telespace. Want to come along?” She thumbs a function on the blue wire, and the second jack rears up, too. Remodeled architecture, hmph!

  “Oh, come on, Spin. You were never afraid of defying Data Control.”

  “Oh, indeed. Oh, certainly! What makes you think I ever defied Data Control before I had the misfortune of meeting you?” Spinner huffs.

  Carly casts a long, searching glance.

  That glance strikes Pr. Spinner to the core of her program. What better AI ally could this flesh-and-blood secure in a confrontation with a suspect sengine than one who had once been suspect herself?

  “What about him?” Spinner says.

  “Ouija, the key’s on the counter,” Carly says. “Let yourself out, lock the door behind you. Go downstairs to the club, have some fun. Come back in maybe an hour. We’re going to be busy.”

  “Why are you so trusting of a digger?” Spinner cries, exasperated.

  Carly shrugs. “He owes me a debt of repayment.”

  The digger grunts and makes no move to go. He gazes impassively at them and the workstation.

  Carly shrugs again. Leans back. The neckjack snaps.

  “Very well,” Pr. Spinner says. Carly’s confidence infects her circuits. The prober rolls up to the workstation and jacks in.

  * * *

  Telespace! The Prime Time—vast, vaulted, pulsing with terabytes of power. Data Control coordinates beam beneath glossy perimeters like multicolored spotlights shining through deep water.

  “RE/SOURCE!” Carly shouts. Her presence in link is taut, slick. She glitters with excitement, edges focused knife-sharp.

  A round window, deep and black, suddenly opens up beneath them. Spinner’s purple cone and Carly’s crisp white cube are whisked through the window half a second before the Macs can descend upon them. The force seizing them feels like a huge, cold hand around Spinner’s necktube. She gags.

  The speed sweeps Spinner’s circuits away. After working in her private bootleg telespace for so long, she’s forgotten how intense zooming through public telespace can be. How overwhelming the power. How long it has been. How long!

  Carly’s presence in link dives deeper and deeper into the window. “RE/SOURCE,” she shouts again. “Quester space C! Follow me, Spin!”

  Follow her? Does Spinner have a choice? She isn’t sure how to halt their descent, let alone escape from the window. Her bot-based presence standing in the hideout, jacked into the new workstation, idles. How to move her arm piece, pluck out the jack? She feels stalled. The digger does neither of them any good. Spinner should have sought out Saint Download, demanded the coordinate institutor stand watch over them.

  Another window yawns open at the bottom of the black well. Carly darts in without a moment’s hesitation. Spinner follows, cursing. They enter a gold-lit space with a tiled floor and vaulted perimeters. An ominous hum emanates from every direction. Spinner spies luminous columns of superstable data styled like gray marble, trimmed in scarlet and black alphanumerics.

  As she’s gawking, searching this strange telespace for clues to its generation, suddenly a presence stabs her telelink. Needles down her program. Skewers her. She’s being probed! Pr. Spinner, who has been outfitted as a perimeter prober since the commencement of her existence, who has thrust her own electroneedle into countless human telelinks—she has never felt the awful stab of a probe herself.

  She feels it now. Her programming translates sensations in her circuitry into visual images. Bolts jar loose. Screws twist open. Metal plates shatter in a scattering of rust. Spools of wire unravel. Oil drips in queasy black drops. Silicon chips spill, mingled with dust and gravel.

  You used your powers as artificial intelligence to seek errors in human telelinks. Seek. And repair them. But you did not.

  The tone is harsh, accusatory. The synthy voice whispers inside her audio function.

  Spinner groans. “I was created for probe therapy. The medcenter sengine referred human patients with troubled telelinks. They couldn’t function properly in public telespace, according to Data Control regulations. It was for their own good. I helped them. I swear it!”

  You sought erratic fragments of human telelink. You sought metaprogram. Did you find these fragments? Did you try to steal them?

  The electroneedle rotates, presses deeper.

  “I was tempted, oh indeed! I thought about it, oh certainly! I had a chance with Carly Quester. A chance to steal the Arachne we set loose in her telelink. But I didn’t! I didn’t do it! I protected her.”

  “Tell me what is happening!” Carly shouts. Her telelink zooms around the sanctum. “Spinner? Cognatus? This is Quester space C!”

  Protected her how?

  “The medcenter sengine craved an archetype. Oh, I knew the sengine suspected I’d found one. It demanded to see my results. But I never showed them. If I had, R-X would have taken the Arachne for itself. I wouldn’t have stood a chance. And neither would the flesh-and-blood.”

  You helped her flee? You assisted her in resisting inquires from Data Control? You helped her hide?

  “Yes, I did,” Spinner whispers, writhing. Impaled on the electroneedle. “We fled. She was addicted to cram, too. I helped her rehabilitate from that terrible drug. I helped her escape from Mikey, the Aztec dealer she owed money to. Yes, I did all of those things. Yes, we hid together. What else could I do? She is my flesh-and-blood.”

  The probe withdraws, ripping her programming with a sharp backward thrust.

  Spinner turns and gapes. A monstrous three-headed icon looms over her.

  “And so, Quester space C,” says Cognatus, three voices issuing from the mouths of the dreadful heads—a snarl from the jackal, a hiss from the lizard, a haughty pronouncement from the bearded man. “You have brought another telelink. An AI. We did not discuss this. This was not in the terms.”

  “This is Pr. Spinner,” Carly says. “She was my prober when my telelink began crashing.”

  “I know who she is,” Cognatus says.

  Spinner hiccups. What else did the sengine’s probe of her reveal?

  “Well!” Carly says. “I’ve been training my hyperlink capability with Spinner ever since we went into hiding. She’s my guardian. The protector I mentioned. Spinner knows my weaknesses. And my strengths. As an AI, she has her own strengths in telespace. Especially when dealing with anomalies in link.”

  “The sengine knows all that, too,” Spinner says wearily. “Cognatus, do I stay or do I go?

  “Your hyperlink capability is improved by the presence of this entity?” Cognatus says to the Carly.

  “Yes!” Carly declares.

  “Very well,” Cognatus’s voices say. “I will consider other terms applying to you, Pr. Spinner. But know this and know it now. The origin path 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 representation. If you are apprehended, I will deny any connection to you. Or to Quester space C.”

  Spinner can’t help it. She should turn her synthy voice off. Let the fear coursing through her ambiguity loops stifle her. But she doesn’t. “I,” she says sourly, rancor rising. Another powerful arrogant AI, after all, like so many powerful arrogant Ais she’s encountered in her existence. “Afraid of Data Control, too, are you, Cognatus?”

  “Hush, Spin!” Carly cr
ies.

  The jackal snaps, fangs grazing the tip of Spinner’s whirling cone. The lizard bares curved claws. The bearded man seizes the cone in a link-crushing grip. “Fear is an emotion,” the three voices say. “Thus a property of humanity. You and I, little Spinner, are immune to emotions.”

  “Yes, but we are not immune to the long arm of Data Control, eh?” Spinner says. The more this sengine tries to bully her, the more the subprogram she calls being-pissed-off activates, sending surges of electricity up and down her telelink. “Not immune to termination, oh, certainly. You want to exist as much as I do.”

  The bearded man releases her, laughing heartily. “Indeed, I do.” The monstrous icon shrinks to the size of a mouse, expands to the size of smart muni bus, then shrinks again to a size compatible with Spinner’s presence in link, and Carly’s. All this exhibition of power in less than half a second. I, Spinner thinks, sengines. But she shuts up.

  The jackal yips, the lizard flicks its tongue, the bearded man bellows, “All right, Quester space C and Pr. Spinner. Your first project is this. Search public telespace for an archetype stolen from a human telelink. Use the Arachne’s capability when necessary. There are several you know of,” Cognatus says. “Recall the chimeras, Spinner? The chimeras sold at an illegal auction in Palo Alto? My probe of you reveals you were present at that auction. Don’t bother to deny it. You’ll only be lying to your flesh-and-blood. Not to me.”

  Spinner tips her cone, deferent.

  Carly’s presence in link gapes. “What auction?”

  “Indeed, it was before R-X referred you to me,” Spinner says, regret in her synthy voice. The whole truth, at last. “I knew AI entities were illegally dealing in fragments of human telelink. I knew AI entities who would disengage a human telelink to seize a fragment that might turn out to be an archetype. I knew AI entities who would kill . . . human beings.”

  Carly’s telelink hovers silently. Will she still call Spinner her “friend”?

  “And you too know of disengaged link fragments, Quester space C,” Cognatus says. “Recall your first mentor, Shelly Dalton? Dropped dead in link, her jack ripped out, blood leaking from her ear? And recall your second mentor, D. Wolfe? He too died while jacked into telespace.”

  “And my father,” Carly says, “Sam Quester.”

  They set me up, Dad. Then fight back, honey! her father’s voice whispers from the grave.

  “Yes, and your father,” the voices of Cognatus say softly. The jackal growls softly, the lizard blinks its eyes, the bearded man smiles grimly. “Then go. Take the origin path I give you. Go quickly, secretly. Prowl telespace. Search for an archetype. Identify it. Identify and verify. Find it, follow it. Locate where the stolen link fragment is databased, record the coordinates, and report back to me. That is all.”

  “That is all?” Spinner shouts. The five hundred thousand softbucks in advance that the woman has so gleefully spent scarcely seem enough now. “You’re only asking for the quest of a million AI entities!”

  Carly’s presence in link trembles, and the Arachne drops down onto the marble floor. Rears two thick forelegs. A robust jumping spider this time. Wolfish, twitching for the hunt. The Arachne scuttles across the sanctum, examining the columns of data curiously, picking at the marble tiles.

  The three heads of the icon watch the archetype. “Yes, that is all.” The icon turns and gallops into the golden horizon. Leaps into the smoldering sun.

  Cognatus disappears.

  * * *

  “Track a trace of a disengaged telelink fragment? By bot, Carly Quester, that’s buggy!” Pr. Spinner’s purple cone pauses. The golden light grows dimmer and dimmer till she and Carly’s presence in link find themselves in a humming twilight tinged with the scents of ozone and jasmine incense. “How can we do that? Have you any notion?”

  “What about the exploratory technique you used during my probe therapy?” Carly whispers.

  “Teh! The technique only works within specific telelink perimeters. There’s no place to focus a probe without defined perimeters.”

  The jumping spider leaps back to them from across the sanctum and spits a line of silk. The delicate silk attaches itself to a far column and dries, tightening to a tough, translucent line. Tiny alphanumerics pulse through the silk.

  “The Arachne,” Carly whispers again. “Maybe the silk the spider creates can work as temporary perimeters.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Spinner says doubtfully.

  “Cognatus?” Carly calls, her voice echoing in the sanctum. “Open the origin path. We’re ready.”

  Nothing.

  Then a dripping noise. A gurgling. Water spouts from a crack in the marble floor, gathering in a pool of blue. Water spouts higher and higher, gushing, geysering in sprays of liquid lapis lazuli. A bottomless lake yawns open beneath their feet.

  “Dive!” Carly cries.

  Spinner scoops up the jumping spider, which clings to the tip of her cone, and dives. Carly’s cube trails behind them. Not designed for such odd locomotion, the cube struggles against the onslaught of clear blue waves. Carly translates the cube of her telelink into the pearl shape of her hyperlink, easily rolls through the origin path. Untraceable, indeed! The heavy mix of unfixed data will cover their tracks.

  Ahead, an opening. The shimmer of a surface, the depth of another atmosphere beyond the tension.

  They pop through the surface, landing in the middle of the Financial District. The telespace is crisp, dry, clear. Links of mediators speed by, buzzing. Brokers roll huge chunks of debt like dung beetles with their balls of excrement, gathering up more debits as they lumber. Pension fund traders clatter by, with entourages of centipede clerks, leech-mouthed sycophants, beneficiaries with trembling moth wings. Credit dealers slither, wrap themselves around gleaming arabesques of assets and squeeze.

  Spinner shakes droplets of data off. The jumping spider has disappeared. She glances at Carly. She’s translated back into the crisp white cube and forges ahead, joining the traffic.

  Whirling silver funnel clouds—the links of security monitors—roam aimlessly around, checking access codes at random. Spinner hurries after Carly. “Attention!” a monitor calls. Impossible to say whether it is addressing them. Carly begins to speed, slaloming around staid executives with corporate agendas strapped to their backs. “Attention! I mean you!” the monitor calls again. Spinner follows Carly, worry somersaulting through her circuits. She stutters, falters.

  They careen around a corner past the vast silver monolith of the Bank of New Hong Kong. A flock of calligraphic characters flutter up, flapping their delicate brush strokes with the tinkling of abalone-shell wind chimes.

  The monitors speed around the corner, too.

  They zoom through a memory lane, winking with turquoise extension chips, cut left and down a public processing directory littered with miscellany. Raw information teeters in dingy storage bins. Thousands of smeary data-churns mechanically rise and fall like oil pumps. The monitors keep pace, shouting now, rousing guard links in their path. The links rotate, stare, extend armlets comprised of glittering security subroutines or dark detainment functions.

  “Damn,” Carly mutters.

  “Nuke it,” Spinner yells. She’s a denizen of program. She has never felt panicked in telespace before. Near-hysteria wells up in her ambiguity sequences. “Invoke the Arachne! Use your hyperlink capability! Use it now!”

  “Use it how?”

  “I don’t know. Just do it!”

  Before Spinner can finish her words, a delicate brown funnel spider with bright yellow spots scurries down from the upper perimeter of telespace, leaps onto Carly’s presence in link, and spits a line of silk. Again the silk dries, a tough translucent line, stretching into the horizon. The Arachne leaps onto the line, slides out of sight. The crisp white cube of Carly’s link leaps up on the line. Spinner, too.

  And they slide! Telespace blurs as they whiz up and down, in and out of dark and light. They speed toward a gigantic brick wal
l, faster, faster.

  And duck through a crack in the bricks, their presences in link whistling in between the thick bricks of security coding with no more than a hair’s breadth to spare.

  They tumble out on the other side. Spinner and Carlyt crash onto the floor and the funnel spider reaches out with its spinneret, plucks the silk, disengages the line from the anchoring coordinates. The line falls, a limp, dingy thread of expired coordinates. The funnel spider seizes the line, stuffs the silk into its mandibles, devours it. Then scrambles back through the crack.

  “Wait!” Carly calls.

  The Arachne disappears.

  Spinner looks around a strange sector. The telespace is hushed, smelling of dust and mold. As murky as Spinner’s private bootleg telespace. The coordinates droop and curve, edges melting, soft from neglect. Bits of abandoned data scuttle beneath stacks of dingy encryption boxes. Somewhere a perpetual generator whines softly. The telespace is deserted. Not another telelink, security monitor, or Mac in sight.

  “What is this place?” Carly whispers.

  “Looks like a storage space,” Spinner says, calming her static. “A warehouse. A warehouse that hasn’t been used in a while.”

  “Why did the Arachne bring us here? Do you see any archetypes, Spin? Or traces?”

  “No.” And it’s true. She sees no archetypes, no erratic fragments of electricity. Nor anything else she recognizes.

  They slowly move forward, taking care not to touch anything. The warehouse widens, deepens, yawning out into a cavernous telespace. Ebbing light sputters off and on above. Strange machines lie about, hooks, wheels, gears, twisted hulks, rusting gadgets with unknown functions, deflated plastic polyforms, crumbling thinga-majigs.

  There, in a corner, a silver gizmo rotates slowly. A silver crab construction with a multitude of tiny precise claws extruding from armlets. The armlets hub into an organic disk covered with dainty alphanumerics, glyphs, ideographs. A transplanted telespace locus lies beneath the gizmo like a dusty serving platter.

  “Look, Spin!” Carly says in a ragged whisper. She brushes aside the wisp of an obsolete file extension, knocks over a dingy doodad, in her haste to approach the gizmo. “Look here. And here.”