Cyberweb

by Lisa Mason

  * * *

  The 6:30 a.m. commute has gridlocked downtown, spewing noxious fumes and filthy smoke into the clear morning air. The sidewalks teem with controbots, diabots, Macs, human beings. Hard-bitten linkers shellacked with professional attitude, their softer-looking unlinked servants and employees. Entities of every description push and shove, shout curses, pick pockets, throw punches, steal backpacks. Sprightly young technicians help elderly bank clerks across the dangerous streets next to gangstahs prowling for the next heist.

  Spinner hooks her spinneret to Saint Download’s armlet. No sense in getting separated. The coordinate institutor has a plan.

  They head for the down ramp into the Bay Area Rapid Transit tunnels, finding narrow channels of space through the hordes racing around. Saint Download leads Spinner across the platforms, down another ramp. Down another. And another.

  The coordinate institutor ducks through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, speeds down a dark passage, turns right, rolls down another passage. Spinner’s sensors detect the temperature dropping at each lower level. A human being would be shivering.

  They descend several floors before Saint Download finds a service elevator marked NO ADMITTANCE. The little bot thrusts its electroneedle into the security code keyhole. The elevators doors flip open. The dim interior is sheathed in flimsy sheet metal and ragged canvas.

  “Are you sure about this?” Spinner whispers.

  Download darts in, punches BASE on the console.

  They hurtle toward the center of the earth.

  Or close to it.

  Spinner shuts her sensors down when the dreadful pull of gravity on her circuity becomes too intense. She also shuts off her ambiguity-tolerant feedback loops which would have permitted her to discern the unsettling surge of power called terror at the possibility she could be smashed to bits. There are some advantages, she reflects, to being AI.

  At last the elevator slows its astonishing descent and halts with a negligible bump. Saint Download inserts its electroneedle into another security keyhole. The doors flip open.

  “By bot,” Spinner exclaims, “you’ve got to key yourself out from the inside?”

  “Otherwise, the elevator takes you right back up again,” Download says, nodding.

  They stand on the edge of a deep, dark cavern carved from the earth by people and robotic entities. The ceiling soars so high, Pr. Spinner could not have seen its dark perimeter except for the spotlights, glittering like stars, installed way up there. The worksite smells of synthy oil, human sweat, and the moist clotted odor of dirt and rock. Heavy equipment and tools litter the cavern in orderly clumps. A busy crew works with a steady, purposeful air, arms and arm pieces rising and falling, legs and legtubes trudging back and forth. Some of the crew take their breaks or leave the worksite. Others arrive for their shift or consume food, fuel, energy cells. A central controller sits strapped into a red steel tower, jacked into a workstation.

  The focal point of all this industriousness and the centerpiece of the cavern is a gleaming silver track as simple and spare as modern sculpture, stretching down tunnels going in all directions as far as Spinner can see. And, hovering above the track, a silver train as sleek as a gigantic electroneedle.

  “That’s it?” Spinner whispers.

  “The new EM-Trans, yes!” Saint Download whispers back. “ElectroMagnetic Transportation. The world train system, Spinner, with almost no pollution, no impact on the landscape above ground or the environment, and a safety rating close to one hundred percent. Everyone will get a piece of the action. Every station gets a cut of the toll and can levy local taxes. Vendors who win concession space will make a fortune. And private citizens will gain access to the world as never before.”

  Spinner gapes. “Will governments regulate the entry gates?”

  “Oh, of course. That’s on them.” Saint Download emits its clattering little chuckle. “Less than ten minutes from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Less than an hour from Los Angeles to New York. The train will travel faster over longer distances because the tracks will cut deeper into the earth’s curvature. San Francisco to Tokyo in maybe three hours. Maybe two.”

  “Indeed!”

  “The megalopolises will get access first. Then thousands of specialized subroutes will be served by independently programmable train units. You know the old story about going around the world in eighty days? The EM-Trans will go around the world in eight hours.”

  “Maybe people will get out of their cars and flying machines, after all,” Spinner muses.

  “Oh, the train won’t be open to the flesh-and-blood for a few more years. This is a work crew and a contractors’ train. I know a couple of planning engineers,” Saint Download says smugly. The coordinate institutor waves an armlet at a towering engineer, a chrome ant standing upright on several articulated legs. “After all, we’re just AI, Spinner. No one cares about construction safety hazards for us. Come on. Let’s go for a ride.”

  “Download!” exclaims the engineer in a hearty synthy voice and claps the coordinate institutor on its shoulder ridge. Download rattles all over. “How’s tricks, you nuking little wreck?”

  The engineer has a pleasant masculine faceplace with a simulated mustache. Its chest housing boasts chrome pectoral bulges. Flesh-and-blood architects and contractors must feel more comfortable working down here with gender-specific bots, Spinner supposes. The engineer is so lively and virile, Spinner feels heat rise in her necktube. Teh! He’s probably too young for her.

  “You sending a train out?” Download asks.

  “Sure! Where you wanna go?”

  “Mexico City, Amsterdam,” Download ticks off destinations on its armlets, “St. Pete’s, Beijing, Tokyo, and back to San Francisco.”

  The engineer unclips a palmtop dangling from his belt and programs the route. “Download was one hot-shot cord-insty, I can tell you that, little lady,” he says with a wink at Spinner. Spinner feels heat rush to her faceplace. “You were the best, Download.”

  “Ahem.” Saint Download fidgets with its armlets and looks away. Spinner cannot tell if it is being modest or encouraging the engineer to rattle on.

  “I bet telespace ain’t the same since you left,” the engineer does rattle on, oblivious of Download’s discomfort. “But I bet you’ve got greener pastures. Whatever that means.” The engineer winks again at Spinner. The palmtop beeps. “All aboard,” the engineer says.

  Spinner and Download slide up a ramp and board the train through the porthole-shaped door, which twists open and shut with a soft hiss. The interior of the contractor’s train consists of stripped ribs of steel, catwalks, and little else. Spinner and Download install themselves on a pressboard work platform set before round windows, find the safety belts anchored to the wall, and strap in.

  With a gentle lurch, the EM-Trans rises slightly, slides forward. In less than ten seconds, they are gliding, faster and faster, through pitch-black tunnels lit intermittently by the spotlights of work crews. Pr. Spinner can only tell how fast they are moving when they pass the crews. She sees vast worksites with toiling people and machines for a second or two before they are whisked into darkness again.

  She turns to the ccoordinate institutor, who stares out the windows, rapt with the view.

  “Saint Download,” Spinner begins, “what did you do as a coordinate institutor?”

  Download jerks, its reverie interrupted.

  “I created telespace,” it says and laughs. “The matrix of all of telespace. The underpinning that makes all of it tick. You see, telespace is always being reconstituted through the pulse of ones and zeros. The fundamental coordinates that support everything. So that’s what I did. Day in, day out. Cord-insty? Coordinate institutor? Huh! I churned out the stuff of telespace itself.”

  “Then you yourself are an archetype, Saint Download!” Spinner declares.

  “Humbug. Really, Spinner. You and your myths.”

  “Truly! The humble little creator-god, toiling away in a forge. Hammerin
g out reality itself. Pan Ku to the Chinese. Hephaestus to the Greeks. Vulcan to the Romans.” Pr. Spinner leans forward, excited. “The craftworker, multiculturally portrayed as flawed himself, you see. Ugly and crippled.”

  “Ugly and crippled,” Download says quietly. “Ah.”

  The train pulls into the worksite below Mexico City. The site is festive, stewn with fresh flowers and pastel streamers. Crews on break sit at tables laden with fruit, bright dishes of food, jugs of liquor. Musicians stroll, strumming guitars. Gaudy pleasure companions and bimbobots stroll, too, a sight in this subterranean place as startling as the flowers and musicians. Bots and flesh-and-blood huddle over gambling games, shout with excitement, dole out unaccounted softbucks or golden medallions.

  “If the distributor has got a private comm, we don’t need to go up top,” Download says. The coordinate institutor finds the site controller, makes inquiries, as Spinner goggles at the colorful scene.

  They swiftly find a fully functional comm booth with private local access. Saint Download gives a number for Apple-Sunbeam, and Spinner dials the distributor on a local path. She explains she needs to trace a customer, has a bar code. The operator is agreeable. Spinner scans in the code.

  Two minutes drag by while the operator runs the bar code through Apple-Sunbeam’s database. An uncomfortable two minutes, heavy and silent.

  Spinner frets, embarrassed. Has she suggested that Saint Download is unsightly and dysfunctional? Its antique gender-neutral housing is not very congenial to humanity. Even the AI community has developed its prejudices about appearances and personalities. Spinner is struck with sudden sympathy for the coordinate institutor.

  The operator returns. “Nothing,” Spinner says and logs off. “They’ve got nothing on the bar code.”

  “Then we’re off to the next stop.”

  They reboard. A slight shift up, a graceful swoop forward as the EM-Trans sets out. The astonishing speed registers on Spinner’s sensors, but inflicts no perceptible damage to her hardware.

  “Ugly and crippled, huh,” Download mutters again.

  “I’m sorry,” Spinner says, furrowing her faceplace. The little bot is offended. “You know I didn’t mean to suggest—”

  “No, the myths and legends—the archetypes—are quite right. I am ugly and crippled. But not in the way you think.” The coordinate institutor muses. “I don’t care about my housing. Don’t like it much. Don’t dislike it, either. I am not some showpiece. No one looks at me, and that has its advantages. The fetishists don’t bother me. Chop-shop thieves don’t look twice, which is more than I can say for you, Spinner, even as old and creaky as you are.”

  “Oh, indeed, old and creaky!” Pr. Spinner says, but holds down her synthy voice. She’s still buzzing after the engineer’s attention. How he’d called her “little lady.” She loathes being old and creaky. She’d give anything for a major overhaul. All the jealousy she’s ever felt about Carly Quester comes tumbling back. Carly’s genetically engineered beauty, the way people and even AI entities look at her. Chop-shop thieves, teh! Maybe she wouldn’t mind if fetishists bothered her now and then.

  “No, the curse Data Control laid upon me,” Saint Download says, “was to grant me too much intelligence. Too many capabilities. Too many ambiguities. Too much of the feedback loop which the flesh-and-blood call curiosity. That is my disability as an AI. Because my mandated daily functions did not permit me to exercise those capabilities. And it just about drove me mad.”

  Spinner stares at the strange little bot under the harsh light of the contractor’s train. Saint Download’s joints are neatly oiled. Its housing as clean and dent-free as an AI entity could be on its own without institutional maintenance. But for the first time Spinner perceives how truly old Saint Download is. The coordinate institutor, according to its own story, was constructed and booted up at the very beginning of telespace. “Why did Data Control enhance you?”

  “Huh! Because I was important. Because I was critical. If public telespace were to crash, if all the sengines, the generators and emergency generators, the crucial backups supporting telespace failed, why, a coordinate institutor like me could step into the breach. I could support all of public telespace. Just for a moment, of course. But that moment would be crucial. That moment would preserve all of telespace as we know it. Support all the intelligence, the programs and memories, the databases and libraries, the telelinks both human and AI. Till the backups and fail-safes and the whole system got up and running again.”

  “You had to have power,” Spinner whispers.

  “Exactly. I had to have power. I had to have intelligence. For an event that was unlikely to happen. But could happen. I had to be there, always.”

  “Then,” Spinner says carefully, “as you say, it drove you mad?”

  Saint Download lets loose a chortle. “Perhaps. I can tell you that, after a very long time, I got mad. Angry. And then. Well, then I did some things Data Control didn’t like. Huh!”

  Time speeds in the darkness as swiftly as the train, measured by nothing save the occasional illuminated worksite. The train tips down through roughed-out cross-continental tunnels that dip below other tunnels leading to closer destinations. Spinner gauges that the air in the contractor’s train would be difficult for the flesh-and-blood to breathe. Soon they tip up again and pull into the Amsterdam station.

  The station is closer to completion than other sites Spinner has seen. Maintenance and service infrastructure are tacked up across the awesome cavern, a scaffolding set against an artificial night sky. In some places, administrative levels have been roughed out and bolted in. Yet in others, interior wallboards demarking public areas have been installed. The public areas will be much more confined than the astonishing raw caverns Spinner has witnessed. Still, the station will be tremendous, a world all its own deep beneath the earth. A megamall, a perpetual World’s Fair. Concessions, shops, restaurants, hotels. An amusement park, everyday services like doctor’s offices, robotics repair, and food-and-fuel markets are staked out on row upon row of terraces and balconies. Spinner spies corporate logos pasted up on bare steel girders next to mom-and-pop holoids.

  The comm booths here are part of a full-blown telespace gallery, with recreational and professional workstations next door to a loud beer hall. The distributor is simply called Hittenberger.

  “Yah, yah, we gotta trace on dat,” the customer service rep tells Spinner. “That’s a Presto-Panasonic full-body mobilizer. Hey, you an AI, mon?”

  Spinner pauses. “Indeed, yes. But I am not the customer. The customer is a human being.”

  “Sst,” Saint Download hisses, listening in, its headpiece tilted next to Spinner’s over the comm. “Less is more, Spinner.”

  “Yah, you an AI, you gonna need a core to go with a full-body mobilizer, mon. Presto-Panasonic, it is a nice piece a work, runs real good. But you gonna need, like, a face. Arms. Body parts, mon. You grok?”

  “I just need to know who bought this particular mobilizer, the one with the bar code, and where she—”

  “Sst,” Download says again.

  “Where this customer is,” Spinner persists.

  “You tryin’ to chisel us outta the service contract, mon?”

  “No, indeed, I just need to contact her.”

  “Mon, you hackers tryin’ to cheat us outta the service contract, you a buck a dozen. Why doncha get a real job?”

  “Truly, I just need to know where the customer is.”

  “Yah, sure.” The customer service rep taps on the end of the line. “Why doncha jack into telespace, mon? I posted the whole file. Scan it for yourself, download what you need.”

  Saint Download starts hissing again.

  Spinner prevaricates. “My telelink has been infected by a virus. Just forward me her address. Please!”

  “I don’t got no forwarding address,” the customer service rep says sourly. “We sent her data to Panasonic, don’t ask me why, mon. You don’t wanna jack in, you gotta get your chro
me ass over to Tokyo. Try their local database.” More tapping on the other end.

  “Log off the line,” Saint Download insists and tugs Spinner out of the comm booth. “They’re tracing the call. Lots of surveillance bugs around here. We don’t want them to see us.”

  “Why trace us? I just made a simple inquiry for information.”

  “Your simple inquiry for information is information.”

  They speed out of the comm booth. Board the EM-Trans bound for St. Petersburg.

  “By bot, can’t you edit the route to go straight to Tokyo?” Spinner asks irritably.

  “Don’t know. Never tried,” the coordinate institutor says. “Let’s try now.”

  They cautiously roll down the ramp till they find a router installed in the back of the train. The router is an antique jukebox, with the smirking holoid of a sharp-featured young man in a ducktail hairdo, his skinny legs crossed, seated on top of it. He holds a half-smoked cigarette poised before his mouth. His lips are pursed, about to blow out smoke. Pr. Spinner presses the jukebox On.

  The holoid glares at them, blows plumes of smoke out of his nostrils.

  “So we ain’t operational yet,” the router says, peevishly gulping another lungful from the cigarette.

  “You are now, buddy,” Saint Download says. “We’re with the contractor.”

  “Which contractor?”

  “The contractor.”

  The router discovers a wad of gum in his mouth, starts working his jaws. “Yeah. So?”

  “So we’re routed to go to St. Petersburg and Beijing. But we want to go direct to Tokyo.”

  Vigorous chewing. A dense cloud of smoke. “So?”

  “So can you nuking do it?”

  The router spouts a loud, long-suffering sigh. “Not hardly. Last I heard, we don’t go direct to Tokyo. You lucky you can do St. Pete’s to Beijing. Say when’s—”

  Saint Download slaps the router off. “Nukehead.”

  The router freezes. Who knows how long he will sit, his mouth open, a wad of gum stuffed in his cheek, the cigarette about to tumble ashes on his fingers, a sardonic look on his face?