Her soft warm body pressed against his.
Her voluptuous curves following the dance of the shadows on the walls.
Their dizziness, plunging them into a timeless oblivion.
All night.
The sharp morning light hits the man in the eyes. He gets up reluctantly, opens the shutters wide and remains charmed in front of the small shell-shaped fountain. Water gurgling, goldfish. A swallow is wheeling in the clean sky, twittering.
He reaches the shower, runs the water at full speed. Icy water lashes his body. He massages his muscles vigorously. He goes back to the room, sits down on the edge of the bed, runs his hand through his hair, closes his eyes and concentrates.
The bug he inserted into the woman’s neck is working.
In his visual field, the map of the town appears with a moving point: Linnh.
On the right, few, simple controls stand out. He magnifies the image, adjusts the volume. Linnh is announcing to Widman she is arriving at the Agency in a few minutes.
SPACE AGENCY
Linnh steps into Paul Widman’s office without giving her name. He is sitting with his legs stretched out on the desk, intent on following, through his neural chip, the latest news about the collapse of a skyscraper in Sydney. A disaster of appalling proportions, transformed into a media event. The journalist is at the disaster site, in front of a smoking pile of rubble. He explains excitedly that the accident has been caused by a hydrogen leakage in the basement.
Widman cuts off the transmission. She sits on the desk, just in front, and points out that it is dinner time.
They go outdoors and make their way along an avenue bordered by peach-trees in bloom. This year spring has arrived earlier than expected, coloring nature with pink and white and the temperature is so mild that even a light overcoat is unnecessary. The night wind has swept away the haze, revealing the mountain range in details, with its sides covered by patches of snow.
Linnh heaves a sigh. A few weeks before Eve contacted her asking to access the archives of the Alpha Centauri project, in exchange for a large sum. An attractive proposition, because with the proceeds she could solve her partner's financial situation and boost her own finances, but also highly risky. A crime punishable by many years’ imprisonment.
To avoid taking any risk, Linnh asked her ex-university friend for an explanation. After her assurances, she informed Paul, who hoping to solve his problems, accepted the proposal. The man entrusted Linnh with the security management, in order to find out its weak points. She developed a system to penetrate the archives and transmitted it to Eve. The intrusion took place a few days later.
Linnh looks behind her; they are two hundred meters away from the Agency. She touches the man's hand lightly. “In the institute everything is quiet.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t stand this stress any more.”
“Stop worrying,” replies Linnh quietly, having erased every trace of the intrusion. A smile hovers on her lips. It had been an exciting experience, that made her relive the years at university, when she belonged to a group of hackers, together with Eve.
“Your friend…” whispers Widman. “I dislike her.”
“We can trust her. I know her well.”
“How can you be so sure?” he insists. “You hadn’t seen her for ten years. Apart from what she told you, you know nothing about her! And then, who is the person she came with?”
Linnh stops. “I already told you I trust Eve and her friends.”
The two start walking again.
But Linnh doesn’t feel at ease. Paul’s objections are well-grounded: a terrorist would introduce modifications into the software with terrible consequences. She slackens her pace.
“Are you OK?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I feel a little tired.”
Meanwhile the car parked a hundred meters away, recognizes its owner. It leaves the parking and comes towards him slowly.
“Last Sunday I made the money transfer,” announces Widman in a low voice. A large sum is now deposited in an anonymous account of the Cayman Islands.
He seizes her by the waist, but she wriggles out of his grasp. “Keep clear of me!”
Until a few weeks before, Paul devoted very little attention to her. Outside work, only occasional meetings: some weekend together, far from the man’s wife and sons, in the semi-darkness of a hotel room. Communication reduced to the minimum, no projects together. A disappointing relationship, that she has not interrupted yet for lack of alternatives, the work absorbing her too much and most of all, because Widman is her boss…
She was really surprised by the change in Paul, when they started organizing their plan. Sensitive and thoughtful for the first time. She reacted with enthusiasm, but slowly an idea crept in.
Paul knew he depended on Linnh.
He also knew she didn’t need that money and suspected she intended to break off their affair…
He had to win her back, at least till he would receive the money.
A matter of survival for the man. Nothing but cynical opportunism, according to her. From that moment, Linnh started frowning at him.
“You don’t have the nerve to face your wife!”
“I will have the documents prepared by the lawyer.”
“I’ve heard that before! Why don’t you meet him tomorrow? Anyhow, I don’t want to have lunch any more.”
The woman turns and sets out for the institute.
“Come back!”
But she quickens her step.
The man shakes his head and begins following her, his car behind, doors open.
A cool breeze caresses Linnh’s face. But she doesn’t notice anything. Her face is streaked with tears.
“We don’t have much time for lunch,” protests Widman. “The meeting with the governor for the grants-in-aid is at three o'clock. Get into the car!”
Linnh stops. As stiff as a poker, she waits for the vehicle. Then, without deigning to look at him, she gets in.
“To the Red Lily!” orders Widman.
The car gets onto the motorway. It covers two hundred seventy kilometers in half an hour and at a wrought iron gate, enters the park to a villa. The driveway runs through flowery meadows, rose-bushes and sequoias, then the car parks in front of a colonial style building. The couple gets out of the car next to a granite fountain. Widman opens Linnh’s door. She casts him an icy glance, then without saying a word, takes his arm. Stiffly, they go up the flight of steps of the colonnade and walk into the restaurant. As they pass, the door man bows his head. The head waiter runs up to them. “Welcome Mr. Widman. I have reserved the usual table. Today the view over the lake is splendid.”
ATTEMPT
Three days later.
“I want to speak!” cries Linnh, bursting into Widman’s office.
The man puts his forefinger to his lips to silence her. He takes a tiny device with a green light out of his pocket. He approaches and starts passing it over the woman’s body. Almost immediately the light turns red.
He articulates without emitting a sound: “This is a wave detector. Someone is spying us!”
Linnh is petrified. Her companion continues searching, following the direction where the light flashes more frequently. He stops above a little spot on her neck. He takes a magnifying glass out of a drawer, observes the dot for a few seconds, then gently scratches her skin with his nail.
He extracts an object smaller than a grain of sand that he puts inside a metal box. When he closes the lid, the light becomes green. He hands the container over to the woman.
They go outdoors and take a path along the river, between dense shrubs. The only noise, the crackle of the twigs as they pass.
“Who inserted the bug?” wonders Linnh.
“Eve, to make sure we don’t betray her!”
They stop in a dry grass clearing surrounded by a reed thicket. The Agency is not visible any more.
At this point Linnh bursts out: “I came to tell you that Eve has modified the so
ftware of the Caravels. She promised me not to alter it!”
Widman goes pale. “You trusted your friend blindly!”
They look at each other in the eyes, without saying a word.
When they reach the avenue, Linnh stops. “It could be a virus. I don’t want to have a slaughter on my conscience! Let’s tell Security we made the discovery casually…”
They discuss the idea. It may work. If something goes wrong, their information will be considered as extenuating circumstances.
They head for the parking lot. The car meets them halfway. They collapse into the seats and leave for the Security Headquarters.
Very soon the downtown skyscrapers remain behind, replaced by lawns, interrupted here and there by patches of snow and by a thick wood of chestnuts and firs. The exit is on the top of the hill, about a kilometer more, next to a panel. Ten minutes to arrival.
The vehicle slows down. Silvery dot on a black ribbon, in the middle of uncontaminated green. A muffled blow. From the hood, a clear blue cloud comes out. The car shakes. It veers, looks crazy… It bends sideways, and turns over and over and over, hurling metal parts and broken glass all over the place. Brake squealing. The nearest vehicles edge past the wreck wrapped in flames, and continue their run, the others stop few dozen meters back. An imposing cloud of black smoke is rising towards the clear sky. Shortly after a Security ovoid lands. Five robots get out. With them is a man with dark curls, giving orders to the group. They rush to the wreckage, put out the fire with foam jets and start looking around. While the man is following the edge of a ditch, he quickens his steps. There is a passenger at the bottom, still fastened to a seat! He flings himself down the bank. He pushes his way through high reeds, in the mud. His boots in the dirty water.
Her face is only just above the surface of the water.
“Linnh!”
Soaked to the skin, the young man bends down and straightens the seat.
She is still breathing, but her face is disfigured by a mask of blood.
Linnh opens her eyes. “You?”
“I couldn’t arrive before.”
“You belong to Security, then...”
The woman coughs up some blood. She gropes…
He looks for the button binding her to the seat. “Quick!” he shouts to the rescuers descending the bank.
He remains next to her up to the ovoid and stares at the aircraft till it disappears on the horizon.
From behind, an android calls him: “We have found the woman's bag.”
The man takes it. A lipstick, some hankies, a tiny metal box. Inside is the bug. Thanks to it, he had forced her neural chip open. He had penetrated into Linnh’s mind, learning her secrets day by day.
The man gets into the ovoid, sits down stretching against the backrest. In his visual field appears a menu. He reaches Linnh’s thoughts section. He searches among the recordings. He finds the one he is interested in and starts it.
The woman's disappointment overwhelms him.
"Paul is only an opportunist."
He feels Linnh’s hope.
"I have met a wonderful man; maybe he will change my life."
When he opens his eyes again, the aircraft is flying over a conifer wood. It skims the treetops, bending down for the air displacement, and continues over a glade where a herd of fallow deer intent on grazing, scatters at its arrival. Every so often, a refuge lost in the green or isolated on a crag appears.
“We are arriving at headquarters in an hour,” announces the automatic pilot.
REPORT
Bogart raises his head from the desk. C573Y’s hologram approaches briskly, while his eyes, two spheres hovering in mid-air, film every detail.
“Widman and Yung died in the explosion of their car less than an hour ago. They were the informers. Eve Dirac organized the intrusion.”
The Head of Security gives a start. “Up to what point is the brain digitization?”
“Just started. The forensic department confirmed me ten minutes ago.”
“Did you find out the motive?”
C573Y sinks into the armchair in front of the desk. “The two didn’t know. But Widman was worried… Very worried. Once I heard him speaking about terrorism… Only suspicions, obviously.”
“What about a virus?”
“I had the software of the Caravels checked. No anomaly.” The virtual being pauses. “Last Saturday Widman flew to the Cayman Islands. I had him followed. He went into the Overseas Bank, to withdraw a money transfer from a company that belonged to Nihil fifty years ago...”
“The Head of the Elects!” shouts Bogart.
It seems like yesterday when the collective suicides happened. A sensational case that kept an audience of forty billion glued to their screens for over a month. On which Security concentrated its investigative force. Every day new deaths were discovered, scattered all over the world: America, Europe and Asia. At the end more than one thousand corpses were counted. All of them headless. Brain digitization, clearly. An unprecedented hunt started in Net. They arrested most of them, but when the operation seemed to be ending with a complete success, the few still free vanished. A mystery, as well as the reason of their transfer.
“Nihil has reappeared in a sensational way. To begin a new phase of his plan, I fear,” goes on Bogart. “Eve Dirac is allied with him!”
“I asked the Defense about her,” says C573Y with a perplexed air. “I had to threaten them with talking to the President, to obtain an answer: she belonged to the Red Helmets!”
The Special Forces of the Army. Perfect training. Unequalled technology. Great successes. The best in the solar system.
THE ELECTS
Suspicions concentrated on a secret organization, which many years before had stained its reputation with horrible crimes. But not all those beings seemed to be evil. Two different natures cohabited in the same community: good and evil, heaven and hell.
0101 010101001
IDEALS
@
The sound of footsteps echoes. Ten figures in black, their head covered with hoods, descend a winding staircase, cross a narrow corridor and arrive in a crypt lit up by the torches hanging on the walls. They arrange themselves in a ring and keeping silent, cross their hands on their chests. A young woman in a white tunic and long honey-colored hair, enters and goes to the center.
“We have not received news from Nihil for several days now,” Eve Dirac begins. “The mission we have been pursuing for decades, for which we have endured so many sacrifices, risks failure. Just when we are so near our objective. We must find him, but we have only two weeks at our disposal. After, it will be too late.”
She inspects the participants. “The one who knows him better than anybody else will be in charge of finding him out.”
She fixes her eyes on a long-limbed black man, who comes forward and stops in front of her. The woman takes his hands and presses them to her chest. She stares at him serenely, while her eyes start brightening. “Let us know if you need help. Now go!”
The man vanishes. The group takes a step towards the slim figure, which now is shining with a dazzling light. They strike up a sweet but sad melody, the story of a community that fights to realize its dreams. Shortly after they become silent and remain still till she disappears, followed by the other participants. All of a sudden, darkness swallows the room.
Eve Dirac, Master of the Elects, reappears in a Net tunnel. It is here she lives, far from the surface where billions of beings spend a normal existence. She is well aware of difficulties and dangers, supported by her ideals and by the responsibility of guiding the small community. Certainly, her existence is very different from the one she imagined forty years before, when after graduating in computer and information science, she enrolled for the exam to join the Red Helmets: a coveted goal for many young men but almost impossible for girls to achieve.
A smile appears on her lean face. She got through the examination brilliantly, exciting admiration and envy among her fellow soldiers. Dur
ing the course, she showed unusual determination and a spirit of sacrifice. At the passing out ceremony, the Director mentioned her as an example to follow and there was a long burst of applause. She hid her emotion. Her missions were an uninterrupted series of successes.
She passes by an Elect and exchanges a greeting.
When she was about to undertake a successful career, she opted for the other great passion of her life: research. A choice she had been considering for a long time. She wished to give a purpose to her existence beyond self-interest; she wanted to contribute to the development of civilization. The studies had convinced her that the souls could evolve only overcoming their human limits. To achieve this, a deeper and deeper integration with artificial intelligence software would be necessary. She wanted to contribute to this process.
The Defense asked her to stay. But notwithstanding the proof of friendship from her colleagues and of the esteem of her superiors, she followed her own way, without hesitation. At AISI, the Artificial Intelligence Superior Institute, she distinguished herself for the quality of her research.
The door opens with a whistle. Eve steps into a white room and walks towards the equipment in the middle.
They had been wonderful years, till she was invited to join the Certification Committee (*).
She frowns a little. The body that should have distinguished itself by its impartiality, was subjected to the interests of major industrial groups. Her colleagues had accepted the situation, some of them for the sake of a quiet life, others to take advantage of it. But she didn’t want to give in for a matter of principle. She had ideals to defend, and she didn’t want to lose her self-respect.
Within the Committee, she stood up for a few innovative programs proposed by the Open Source community (**), whose application was strongly opposed by multinationals. The Ethical Commission, which is in charge of addressing the evolutionary choices of the species, tried to take the matter away from the Committee, affirming that this decision was within its own competence. The media jumped on the case, involving politicians and journalists in the dispute, with the effect of dividing the population into heated factions.