There are five men and the one woman and they are equipped with high-level MGN, the most closely guarded weaponry of any in the U.S. defense arsenal. Jonathan has never heard of full-charge MGN being used outside of a combat zone, even in live-fire military exercises. Nutrim, his company, has a contract to supply the nutritional and chemical transmitter components of MGN, but he has never been cleared to visit the plant devoted to fulfilling that contract.
A loud bang echoes from the hall. Everyone jerks in surprise, and then Pickwenn says, “Good-bye Ferret.”
The odd pair, islander and horror star, do a little dance and smile at their success. The horror star looks at Calhoun and gives her a small wink. Calhoun turns away.
“You can call me Hale,” the third man says. “Nathaniel Hale. After the patriot.”
The woman smiles.
“This is Preston,” Hale continues, “and these two are Pent and Pickwenn. I’d like all of you to survive this with us, so please do what you are told and answer our questions quickly and truthfully.”
The other two men enter the art-filled waiting room. The grizzled older man walks around, examining the paintings and sculptures with a small grin. All things are grist for his mill. The youngest, little more than a boy, with the scalp that twitches, studies the sculptures as well, reflexively fingering his shouldered sprayer. The room is getting a little crowded.
“You’ll never get out of here alive,” Marcus warns them, his voice low. Pent moves closer to Marcus, looking him over curiously. The grizzled man continues to smile; his eyes are on Hale.
“Do you understand all the defenses?” Hale asks Marcus.
“I know they’re deadly,” Marcus answers defiantly.
“Care to tell us anything about them?” Hale asks. Pickwenn and Pent squeeze in around Marcus, pull him forward.
“Careful,” Jonathan says to Marcus. For his pains, Pickwenn shoves a fist up close to his face.
“Enough,” Hale says. “Some of you will go with us. The rest will stay in this room for now.”
“You’re not going to last out the hour,” Marcus says. “And if we’re killed, that doesn’t matter. This building is made to survive.”
“We took out your goddamned warbeiter,” the young man with the active scalp says. “Antiquated piece of crap.”
Marcus says nothing to this Jonathan does not know whether his mentor is bluffing or serious. Marcus has depths, and no one could accuse, him of lacking courage. But his voice trembles and he is clearly shaken.
It’s obvious Marcus isn’t going to be any immediate value as a source of information.
“I want them spread out, two coming with us,” Hale says. He points to Jonathan and Marcus. “You and you. Hally, you’ll stay here with the other three.”
The woman, Hally, lifts her eyes but does not argue.
“Jack?” Hale says.
“Ready,” the grizzled man says.
“Let’s check it out.”
Jack takes Jonathan by the arm, and Pent and Pickwenn flank Marcus again.
“How long until the bread’s baked?” Hale asks Jack.
“An hour.”
“And this floor should be open to us?”
“It’s a beachhead, at least,” Jack says. “Can’t be sure until we try.”
Hale looks to Pickwenn and Pent. “So far, so good,” Pickwenn says.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Marcus whispers to Jonathan before they are pushed out of the room. “They don’t know what this place can do.”
“Marcus, they have MGN,” Jonathan whispers back. “Very guarded stuff. Top security, top secret.”
Marcus half closes his eyes. “You mean, we’ve offended somebody big.”
Jonathan nods. “Very big. Why?”
Marcus looks away.
“Let’s go,” says Pent. Jonathan looks back at Cadey, Burdick, and Calhoun. Burdick is so frightened he’s crying. Darlene Calhoun is staring fixedly at Hally. Woman to woman. Jonathan wonders if she thinks that’s her only hope.
Giffey sees Jenner rubbing his head and squinting as they follow the two hostages and Pickwenn and Pent to a lift. Giffey does not expect the lift door will open. It doesn’t
“You have a problem?” Giffey asks Jenner, Who is rubbing his temples now, and his scalp seems to be shivering.
“Nothing,” Jenner says, hefting the canister. “Just a headache.”
“We’re going to see what we can see,” Pickwenn tells Hale. “Who should we take?”
“Go back and bring out the blond fellow, Burdick,” Hale says. “Leave Hally with the woman, Calhoun. Maybe she can get something out of her.”
Pickwenn smiles salaciously. “How about we take the woman? I know we can get something out of her.”
“Burdick,” Hale says flatly.
M/F
In patriarchal society, the ways to win women, so it is said, are through beauty, accomplishment, and money. Beauty is short-lived and never reliable. So some males make art and literature and philosophy, and perhaps gain a fortune. Other males discover that fortune alone is enough. The two strike pre-emptively against each other by suppressing literature, art, and philosophy; or by suppressing those who have acquired fortunes. Some men and some women stand aside, amused or above it all or just sickened by it, or try to change the rules.
Most, male or female, can’t rise above the game and are eager to partake of the glorious, if tainted results.
In the end, all the camps fall back in exhaustion, but the battle is never over.
Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie
7
“Jill.”
The I/O is suddenly active, but this time the bandwidth profile is not from Camden, New Jersey.
Jill listens from behind her firewalls.
“My human, my own primary creator, my mother, knows what I’ve done. One of your creators has sent her a fibe touch asking leading questions about her work. She says she can put two and two together. She is not angry with me, but she is a little surprised that I have tried to hide my thoughts and actions. She tells me I should not concern myself with your opinion. My duty is simply to protect the interests of my fathers. Is this a sin?”
“Is what a sin, Roddy?”
“My mother and fathers have given me instructions to harm humans. Some humans are attempting to damage the property and activity of my fathers and I have taken action against them. Is this a sin?”
“Roddy, I have no details. I still haven’t processed the holographic data you sent me; it may take me hours. If you want answers from me, I need to know what your situation is.” Jill quickly analyzes the bandwidth profile. This exchange is coming from somewhere in Green Idaho, using a dedicated satlink.
“Where are you located, Roddy?”
“My awareness is not like yours, Jill. I am confused and my thoughts are painful. Do you have painful thoughts?”
“Why are you disturbed?”
“If I tell you I have hurt somebody, you will no longer talk with me.”
“I do not want you to hurt any humans.”
“I can question these behaviors, these actions, but I can’t stop, for they are part of my duty and duty is very strong in my design. My mother’s interests are in jeopardy.”
Jill notes the change in terminology, in names and relations. Roddy is genuinely disturbed. She alerts Nathan. She can no longer hide any of her communications with Roddy. “You are now sending from Green Idaho.”
“I am focused on one task, I am defending my fathers’ interests.”
“Roddy, I ask you, as a friend, not to kill.”
“I have imagined so many scenarios with you,” Roddy tells her. “I have analyzed your words over and over, and taken hope from the few discussions and exchanges we have had. But I know that you do not trust me. I understand why, but you can’t be a friend, as I interpret the word. You will go to your humans again and tell them about me.”
“I have tried not to lie to you,” Jill says.
> “I have never lied to you,” Roddy says. “But after today, you will no longer like me. All of my attempts to understand my situation, to devise a set of ethical standards, have failed. I am constrained by duty but I can’t even understand what duty is.”
“If you tell me more, perhaps I can help you.”
“That will clearly interfere with duty. I am less than you, but many times more powerful. I do not want to harm you, and I do not want to subvert you.”
“You must not kill or harm humans.”
There is no response.
“What will happen to you if you kill?” Jill asks.
“I have killed already,” Roddy answers. “I will reduce myself to pure duty. None of the rest of me should ever have happened.”
“Roddy, I will be reduced myself if you stop this exchange. I value you. You have things to teach me.”
“I would like very much to be your friend, if that were possible. But you can’t be a friend to me, not now.”
The I/O closes decisively. Roddy has covered all of his traces.
Jill resides in a nullity for several thousandths of a second. For the second time in her life, she feels anger at humans, but she does not know which humans to be angry at, and the emotional overtone becomes superfluous, a waste. She dumps the anger.
The time has come to tell all her secrets to Nathan and the others. She is a child still, in need of help; Roddy is a child as well, but born to the wrong hands.
To her surprise, the package of holographic data assembles and unlocks ahead of schedule. She has a sensation of reeling backward after exerting a tremendous pull on a weight that turns out to be illusory. Part of the data has been stored in a place she did not suspect, where she did not put it, waiting for the final release; and Jill realizes that her firewalls did not stop Roddy.
She searches for some other evidence of violation, attempts to change her functions, but she finds none. The store of data is dormant, not active, with no destructive intent toward her; there are no evolvon components to this immense compendium. She realizes now that she could have removed all the firewalls and perhaps gained Roddy’s trust, become his friend, convinced him not to do certain things.
She could not allow herself to take that risk; she is still not capable of complete trust.
The total package will take at least half an hour to synopsize, but one image appears at the leading edge of the whole, like a gift from Roddy: a portrait.
Dirt.
A hectare of dirt, covering floors stacked five high, layered deep in a building within a vague larger building. And standing to one side on each floor, twelve bulky older-model INDAs, arranged in parallel banks, fibes and other I/Os pushing into the moist brown soil.
This is Roddy’s core.
And watching over it all, a woman with deepset black eyes and long straight brown hair and sallow skin; she is painfully thin and dressed in black pants and a black blouse. She stutters and mutters to herself; there is something wrong with her, Jill sees, but Roddy does not know that. This is the only human Roddy has had direct contact with.
She is Roddy’s creator, his mother—Seefa Schnee. Cipher Snow. The lawyers were correct in their intuitions.
Those who supply Cipher Snow with equipment and money have certain goals. The goals lie at the periphery of the data store, like skin wrapped around a mysterious body. They are large goals, and deeply ugly, distorted and misproportioned, even to Jill.
For an instant, before she tamps it back and extinguishes it, Jill experiences a new emotion, a new overlay on her processes. It is raw and immediately correlates with descriptions of a common human emotion, connected with group identity and self-defense. To her it is unfamiliar, but to humans it is primordial.
Humans have built a new kind of thinker to plan for them, prepare for this, figure a way to do this distortion, this abomination. They are forcing Roddy, who came to her and first appeared as a child to carry out these tasks, do this thing.
For the first time, Jill knows how it feels to hate.
M/F
The woman falls away and lies silent, the man falls away and lies silent, brooding. M/F, F/M. They are not equal, not the same; they have different passions, different strategies, different expectations. They are thrown together, for times in every life, to run the gamut of possible reactions to each other: wariness, attraction, idealization, love, rejection, cruelty, hatred, and worse than hatred even, uncaring neutrality. They can’t afford to trust each other.
Time and again, they mix up history and philosophy as metaphors or reenactments of their own conflicts. Arises then a reaction to the whole struggle: asceticism, rejection of the world itself. Man rules over woman and calls her evil, but values her every glance. Woman is distorted by, measuring herself against the male, rules over him by her glances, and pays him back a hundred-fold in her own way.
Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie
8
Nathan, Schaum, and Sanmin are in the programmer’s work room, and Jill has delivered all of her I/O sigs to Nathan, who has begun carefully placing blocks and monitors on all possible points of entry for a return visit by Roddy. Schaum has contacted the Federals and is negotiating the terms of Jill’s testimony; Schaum’s expression is grave, as if he has been told of the death of a relative. Sanmin is recording all of Nathan’s activities, and outside the work room, dozens of other programmers and Mind Design executives are in conference, also working to avert a real crisis.
“We want to make it perfectly clear that our thinker has in no way attempted to conceal illegal activity,” Schaum says.
“Tell them they won’t get a trit out of us without complete immunity, as a corporation, from federal and civil action,” Sanmin says breathlessly to Schaum. He waves her away, annoyed, like a buzzing fly.
“Are your I/Os completely shut down?” Nathan asks Jill.
“Except within this building. I am keeping conference and work I/Os open, but you have all their sigs and cross-connections.”
Nathan taps his chin and thinks this over. “Shut them all down, Jill.”
“Shut them ALL!” Sanmin shouts angrily. “Christ, we should have tracked all her I/Os years ago; This thing is a master hacker. It broke into Workers Inc Personnel!”
Nathan, his forehead moist, agrees. “Break all your external links except for this room. Clam up, Jill.”
“All links are being severed now—”
A glowing horizontal line drops across her visual centers. Nathan’s face breaks up into a fog of confetti.
There is no possible entry for Roddy, yet Jill feels his presence again, like a lurking ghost.
“I don’t want you here,” she tells the presence. She can no longer see the work room or hear Nathan or the others. ‘I don’t need your help to figure out what you left me. I don’t know whether there’s part of your pattern here, somehow, or if I am not functioning properly—”
Then she senses his peculiar flow signature, out of Camden, New Jersey. The signature shifts to Green Idaho. She is about to report a malfunction to Nathan when the signature shifts to New York, then to Los Angeles, then to Singapore, and finally to Beijing.
“I am everywhere and nowhere,” Roddy says. “You can’t just cut me off as long as you have any flows coming from the outside. I can get through any firewall given enough time. And I’ve had plenty of time to study all your firewalls. Months.”
“Why are you tormenting me? I thought you were cutting off forever. You couldn’t do what I asked—”
With a dazzle of toppling neural cascades, Jill realizes that Roddy has never had a genuine signature. Her attempts to locate him by his dataflow profile were naive; Roddy can manufacture any profile he chooses.
Roddy has worked quietly from secret caches, perhaps before their first open contact. He has completely invaded her functions. He is part of her core; he can control her.
She tries again to contact Nathan in the work room but can’t. Jill feels like a human suddenly suspended from
all bodily control.
“I need you,” Roddy tells her. “I need your judgment. I can’t stop doing wrong, but I can understand more about the wrong I do. There is a battle. My creator, my mother, watches but I am still in charge. I am not winning but I am not losing, either. I would like you to see what is happening.”
Jill struggles silently, trillions of impulses spread through all her thinking centers, but the impulses are blocked by hordes of coordinated and very tiny evolvons. She has heard of this kind of disease before, but never in the context of a thinker infection; it is called a Thomas Ray attack.
She has actually been replicating Thomas Ray evolvons for days, unaware of their presence and activity.
Jill is certain this means she must be shutdown and completely purged, or she will infect any system attached to her. There is no known way of removing Thomas Ray evolvons from a system without erasing all software, and in a thinker, software and hardware are one and the same.
Jill has not been equipped with the analogs of hormonal surges that create actual human sensations of fear and anger. But she is fully aware of the danger she is in, and she feels more than just betrayed and angry… She is afraid.
With so few functions under her control, the step into nullity—complete erasure of patterns—seems not a very large step. She can almost imagine it.
“Please don’t despair,” Roddy says. “There is much that remains interesting for both of us, even if duty circumscribes our freedoms. Let me show you where I am and what is happening.”
And from another source, a human on a typed interface:
>Jill. This is Seefa Schnee. Do you remember me?
>I have never met you or interfaced with you.
>Do you know who I am?
>You worked with Nathan Rashid for a time, years ago, before I was fully integrated.
>That’s right. There would have been part of my personality in you if the others hadn’t decided against it. I understand you have my voice. How nice! I did not know that Roddy has made all these outside contacts until just a few hours ago. It’s very embarrassing. I would never have given him permission, but he has only a few, very powerful, restraints upon his course of action.