Scotia pulled at the threads she could grasp. “GAIA is a platform designed, in part, for mankind to fight its wars in an environment where no one would be actually hurt. You want to know how an explosion happened there?” She pushed a hand against her friend’s brow. “What did you take? Did someone sneak you something?”
“I’m fine.” Cindira’s frigid fingers pulled Scotia’s hand from her brow. “I must sound like one of the chipheads in your studies.”
“Not really, you’re not paranoid enough.” Scotia shrugged. “I don’t think anyone becomes a chiphead in just one night. Just tell me what happened, as best as you remember it.”
“Remember that guy that was at the announcement of Kaylie’s promotion? The one you thought might be on the Board?”
“Yeah, the cute one.”
Cindira nodded. Good to know she wasn’t the only one who thought so. “I was at Tybor, fixing up Kaylie’s dress inside The Kingdom—”
“What?” Scotia held up a hand as she pushed her way into the conversation. “I thought we agreed you were going to tell her to go to hell if she did that again. Cindira, you’ve got to learn to stand up for yourself. Stop letting the Terrible Two push you around.”
“That’s not the point. Just listen, please?” Her begging proved pitiful enough to win sympathy. And silence. “I was in Kaylie’s room in The Kingdom, in the simulator, and he showed up there.”
Scotia’s hands went to her gaping mouth. “Did he see you?”
“No, he was like a... like a... ghost, or something.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts. Not in the vreal world, not in this one. Besides, you put up the security parameters around Alsace yourself. There’s no way someone could have gotten in without you having validated their profile.”
“You mean, the way no one could get inside GAIA without the right credentials?” The brunette laughed under her breath at her own rebuke. “There aren’t many as good at hacking Tybor systems as I am, but there has to be a few people out there. But if Frank... Francisco, it actually turns out, were such a crack hacker, why would he risk exposing his identity by coming to Tybor, anyway?”
A diode in Scotia’s memory illuminated. She grabbed her comque from its charger on the side table. “I may be terrible with faces, but I’m great with names. Do you know his last name?”
“Johanna introduced him to Kaylie as Frank Batista, but that was probably a lie too.”
Batista. Of course. Scotia smiled. “One might argue that anglicizing a name isn’t really lying about it; it’s just reinterpreting it. Adapting to an American standard rather than a Spanish one is more redaction than dishonesty.”
“You’re saying he was lying...” Cindira’s head cocked to the side. “...by telling a version of the truth?”
Her red hair bounced on her shoulders as she nodded. “It’s something politicians are famous for. Ah, here we go.”
Only a few weeks before, Scotia had been asked to present a report inside of GAIA on her research, at a session attended by several high-ranking politicians. In general, and for security, the representations of avatars of such elite were kept secret. Still, Scotia managed to get permission to click off one picture, with the caveat that it was for private use only.
“He wasn’t introduced, but he came into the hearing room half way through my presentation, and you could just tell he was important by the way everyone got all awkward in their seats. Afterward one of the congressmen told me who he was. I don’t think anyone realized I got him in my picture, or they probably wouldn’t have let me keep it.” She double-tapped her comque, making the tiny image on the flexible screen on her wrist pop out as a proportional holographic display. “That’s him, isn’t it?’
Her friend’s bloodshot eyes nearly popped out their sockets. Cindira lunged forward, grabbing Scotia’s wrist and angling the tiny projected image to a better vantage point. “It is! Who is he?”
Most people who worked with Cindira Tieg considered her a genius. But as with most geniuses, a surplus of savvy had been paid through a debit against other areas of knowledge. In her case: current events. Scotia didn’t consider it a fault. It was what it was. Cindira could ramble off from memory Pi to sixty places or recite on demand the latest policies adopted by the International Commission on Alt-Reality Standards, but ask who the current mayor of San Francisco was or which two actors were rumored to be dating, and she threw you anime eyes.
All that was left was for Scotia to state the obvious. “Cindira, you were talking to Francisco Batista de la Reina, the Prince of GAIA.”
Denial took control of Cindira’s body, making her hands shake. “Impossible. Why would the prince make his avatar look exactly like he really looks?”
“Why indeed? Not that I’m complaining.” Scotia bit her lip as she again double tapped the device on her wrist. The image disappeared, as did Scotia’s patience with middle-of-the-night intrigues. “Questions, I’m afraid, that will wait for a more respectable time of the morning. We both need to get some rest. Stay here, at least until sunrise. We’ll start figuring it out together. If you need something to help you sleep...”
“I don’t.”
Scotia set her comque back on the charger. “Good. You know, it’s too bad I didn’t know about that avatar you had. I might have wanted to borrow it. Hardly anyone gets to go into the high security zone. Why haven’t you visited GAIA all these years?”
“Because I don’t belong there, Scotia. I’m just a code writer. I’m not a diplomat, and I’m certainly not a warrior.”
Scotia smiled. “Yeah, tell that to Barrel.”
11
Try as she may, sleep refused to come. Cindira lay on Scotia’s pull-out sofa, her hands laced over her stomach, her eyes making patterns of the random blots splotched all over the textured ceiling. Questions were demanding hobgoblins, ones which seem to double with every answer she suggested.
Why had Batista shown up at Tybor alone, claiming to be nothing more than a detective? Why not just send an actual GAIA security agent? Was the prince in the habit of traipsing about the real world without guards? Maybe he couldn’t trust his own security detail? But if he wasn’t communicating with them, who had helped him get into such a secure part of The Kingdom? Why was he so interested in the source code?
Why had getting booted from GAIA felt like an explosion?
Cindira wished she could shut down her mind the way she could shut down one of her computers. As she heard the sound on the floor beside her, however, she was glad to be awake. If not, the shock of something scurrying across the room and leaping up on the end of the mattress might have set her off screaming. Instead, she moved with the stealth of a ninja, slowly extending her arm to the side table where the cup of water Scotia had given her before going back to bed sat empty. Fingers curled around the plastic vessel. Rat or mouse or squirrel even, she’d probably miss hitting it, but hopefully she could scare it away.
The creature began to scuttle, zipping left, then right, inching up the bed. Cindira gave herself a moment of pep talk, drew down a lungful of courage, and sprang up as she simultaneously heaved the tumbler.
Lamps flickered on overhead as the sensors along the walls tripped. The light brought no meaning, and only further illuminated her confusion.
The mouse stared at the intended weapon where it had landed on the mattress next to him. Turning to Cindira, his tiny black eyes blinked twice before he opened his mouth and did the impossible.
“Well, that was uncalled for!”
Cindira scrambled back against the couch cushions. “I’m going crazy.” Hallucinations were common among the chipheads. She didn’t jack in that much, did she? She pushed fingers into her forehead. “Maybe I have a tumor? Oh my god, I have a tumor.”
“Madame, you do not have a tumor. In fact, I was able to complete a full diagnostic of all your vital systems when you logged into your avatar last night and can confirm that, other than typical aging, your health has experienced no significant
changes in the last fifteen years. By the way, it was about time you showed up. I was beginning to think you were never jacking in again.”
“You ran a diagnostic? When I was in...” GAIA. Which she hacked into illegally. Well, technically, entered without direct authorization, which was basically the same thing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. More than that, I don’t know how you’re talking. Mice. Don’t. Talk.”
“That’s true.” The mouse blinked twice, wiggled its little nose, and took a few steps forward. “But then again, I’m not really a mouse, as you’ll recall. It’s me, Laporte.”
“My issue isn’t remembering your name. The issue is that you are talking and I am crazy.”
The mouse fell into deep completion. Which, of course, a rodent could probably manage if he could also talk. “You must have blocked me out, associated me with your mother around the time of her death. I’m not sure how to proceed now. The possibility that you would have no recollection of me is not one for which I made any contingencies. Human memory is such a horrendous design flaw. In light of that, the best option, in my opinion, would be to enact the parameter of the least likely scenario, for which I did prepare.”
Despite the idiocy of engaging in conversation with a figment of her imagination, curiosity got the better of Cindira. “What was the least likely scenario you thought of?”
“That you would attempt to smash me with a large, heavy object. With your permission, may I run that scenario?”
Why did she nod?
“Very good. Madame, I beg you, put down the name of heavy object and listen. I’ve come to warn you, you are in great danger.”
12
Muscles tight, pulse racing, nails digging into the heel of his hand, drawing blood.
Medics descended as soon as his consciousness shifted realities, but that moment—the one the blaze blew away his skin and shredded his body—held eternity on the balance of a crescent.
Francisco seethed as the real-world reclaimed him. He had not been in an explosion. He had not been blown into a dozen pieces. He had not just watched an intruder masquerading as a child be killed. Dios, he prayed it hadn’t been an actual child. It was mere vreal world illusion. His avatar had been sacrificed at the altar of peace, not his mortal form. Avatars were replicable, rewritable.
But wired into the system, his mind still processed the pain as though it had happened, and it hurt like a son of a bitch.
Flailing arms and a wracked body surrendered as his guards pinned him down, keeping him from hurting himself and any others trying to attend him. Carlos’s voice gave him a beacon on which to grasp.
“You’re back, Your Highness. It wasn’t real. This is real. This is the world.”
He clung to the truth as his lifesaver, conquering his panicked mind. “Explosion,” he gasped out. “Another explosion.” His hand went to his father’s old watch on his wrist, as if the destruction of it in avatar form had somehow destroyed the real one as well.
“Yes, sir,” Carlos confirmed. “How many times have I told you, you’re going to work yourself to death, coming in so early and staying so late.”
The attempt at humor fell flat as Francisco’s heart rate began to stabilize. The building could be recoded. Not that it would need to be. Blessed Omala’s world was so well fashioned, all the original structures healed themselves. Eventually. Usually. Avatars, required to be recoded from scratch, took actual human labor to reconstruct, though Francisco found the process faster by not requiring his people to make too many modifications. An hour or so in a whole-body scanner, a few more by his designers, and the prince would be reborn. As often as he was coming under attack these days, it was the only practical solution—even if it did mean it consequently exposed his real-world likeness.
As the tension began to ease and Francisco regained his senses, his thoughts turned to the consequences. He pushed the security guards and doctor gently away, assuring them that he was okay.
“Damage?”
“A few buildings in the immediate vicinity, and the street, of course. The architects estimate Congressional Hall will fully restore itself in twelve days.”
He doubted it. Whatever strips of code the rebels had used to blow up Ferreira Square left the area unrepairable. The explosion had destroyed it down to the source code, a play that Tybor itself admitted it couldn’t touch. Francisco expected the Congressional office buildings would prove to have sustained the same kind of damage.
Someone was trying to destroy GAIA piece by piece. Only this time, the fact that they’d sent in an agent to intercept him in the target area suggested their goals might not end with the platform; they might extend to the Congress itself.
Carlos slid shoes on to Francisco’s feet. “We’ve called off sessions for the day and alerted both Congress and their staff, as a precaution.”
“Damn it, Carlos, tell me about the girl!” He sat up, shaking the sweat from his hair. “Do we know who she was yet?”
Carlos’s dark brow fretted. “The girl, sir?”
“The one whose arm I was holding when the explosion hit. We need to find out how she wandered so far into the secure zone alone. Get out across the wires, too, and make sure no one hears about this latest attack.”
Maybe that was what that girl’s role had been: a witness. After GAIA officials had been able to squash the news of the previous three attacks in the city from leaking, the rebels must be growing frustrated, not getting the righteous outrage they had expected. If there was a witness, however, one who likely had been backing up her POV on some external source so she could run to the media with it later, that cat would soon be out of the bag. Unless they found her first.
When Carlos stayed mum, Francisco’s anger finally broke. “Come on, people, it’s a basic username query. I know you don’t know code, but you can handle a whois request, can’t you?”
“Sir, it’s not that. It’s just...” The valet swallowed his nerves. “As I already said, you were the only user in the vicinity at the time. There wasn’t a child. There wasn’t anyone else.”
“But that’s impossible. She was...”
A dark truth hit the prince’s mind all at once. “She was the bomb, Carlos.”
“Sir?”
Francisco slid off the bed and hurried to one of the system panels in the control room of the GAIA jackpod. A few taps in the historical ledger brought up the stories he remembered reading a few weeks ago in the dossier prepared for him. Since GAIA’s launch, so few real-world skirmishes occurred, the practice of many of the ways of resistance and war had been forgotten in the previous generation. At last, he found the file and pulled it up.
“A suicide bomber,” Francisco declared, enlarging the article so his deputy could see. “Innocence, Carlos. It’s probably the one trap that works on me.”
“But sir,” the deputy continued, “even if she was a suicide bomber, she would still show up in the records. There were no other avatars in the region of the explosion.”
Francisco gnashed his teeth. He knew what he knew, no matter what the system reported. “I’m almost starting to think your advice to activate my bodycam inside the platform wasn’t so crazy.”
Hope lit Carlo’s eyes. “I’ll do so immediately, sire.”
“No!” Francisco held up a hand. “I said almost. I’m just going to have to figure out some other way to document these things, but I still don’t understand why the system didn’t detect that user.”
Had it been a glitch? Had the child not really been there? She couldn’t have been a VAPOR, could she? As far as he knew, Virtual Automated Persons, Objects, and Relics only existed in the later iteration of Omala’s world structure, not in GAIA. In The Kingdom, the programs which resembled animate beings, be it a person, a dog, or a fairy, were used to flesh out the experience, so to speak. But humans who were programs were marked between the eyes, a mirrored bhindi revealing them as what they really were. The child had no such marker.
And that fact left only o
ne other possibility.
Francisco grabbed a bottled water from the fridge under his desk and took a swig. “A ghost in the machine.”
“Sir?”
The prince turned. “Omala Grover wrote about it in some of her early theoretical work, the ones in her university files that were never published. She theorized that if a person were to die in the real world while they were logged in to a robust platform, the neural emulator would effectively allow their avatar to carry on without any knowledge that the body and soul it was based on had passed. There would no longer be a connection from outside the program; our current interfaces wouldn’t see the user as being in the space because, technically, they wouldn’t be, just their avatar would.”
Every additional word made Carlos’s features twist a little more. “But what you’re saying then, is that this girl who approached you...”
“Was already dead,” the prince completed the conclusion for him. “She was a suicide bomber, but she’d probably actually died hours before. Maybe her avatar’s presence was meant to trigger the bomb when she made sure I was actually in the area. But that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t have found a way to lift her POV data and store it somewhere. Damn it, come to think of it, she might have been an innocent all along. She sure did seem surprised when I turned on her.”
And when the building exploded, he had seen the panic in her eyes.
He dropped the empty bottle into the recycling bin and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “We’ll figure that part out later. For now, just make sure the story doesn’t get out. If I find out Johanna Tiegs knows how far the rebels have been able to damage us, before I tell her myself, I’m going to be pissed.”
13
“Asla, you here?”
The house kept its silence. Cindira hadn’t expected the old nanny to be home at this time of day; she’d be in the main house, working until five or six. Despite the fact that Cindira begged her to stop, that she didn’t need to, that she’d beg Johanna to hire a different housekeeper. But if there was one thing Asla refused to do, it was to put Cindira into a position where she’d need to ask “the old harpy” for anything, even asking her to employ Asla as a favor to her.
City of Cinders Page 7