Halo: First Strike (14 page)

sitting platform, in line with the force of gravity that pushed

straight down.  Here you could do that, or, as a visiting sensei

said, "You can find a place with no illusion of up or down, where

you must find your own direction."

In full lotus Toshi hung in mid-air, perfectly still, his

eyes lowered, focusing not on what came in front of them here and

now as the small air currents shifted him, focusing on no-thing

The eyes, sensitive part of the brain, extended stalklike

millions of years ago in humankind's ancestral past, sensitive to

the light and guiding  eyes now directed to no-thing, leading the

brain that sought no-mind

He still didn't know the answer to this koan life had

presented him.  Should Diana help preserve Jerry's life?  Should

Diana not help preserve Jerry's life?  Should he have been the

agent to pose her these questions?  Should he not have been the

agent to pose her these questions?

Answer yes or no and you lose your Buddha nature.  Such is

the difficulty of a koan.

He would stay in the bubble, practicing zazen as long as need

be.  Until the koan became clear

You will live here? mocked self, mocked reason.  If

necessary, I will die here, Toshi answeredwithout words, with

just his own courage and determination.  Frightened, self for the

moment stayed silent; baffled, reason growled.

#

Gonzales watched as a sam hooked the memex into Aleph-

interface, its manipulators making deft connections between the

memex's module and the host board hardware.  Gonzales could not

install the memex; the apparatus here was unlike what he had at

home.

The sam said, "Your memex will now have access to the entire

range of Halo's processing modalities."  Seemingly guided by

occult forces, it continued to snap in optic fiber connectors to

unmarked junctions among a nest of a hundred others.  "Also, you

will have full spectrum worldnet services that you can use in

real- or lag-time, as you wish."  Its motors whining, it backed

out of the utilities closet.

"Mgknao," a fat orange cat said as the sam rolled past it on

its way to the door.  Earlier the cat had followed the sam through

the open doors to the terrace and then had sat watching as it

connected the memex.  Now the animal stood and walked quickly

after the samlike a familiar accompanying a witch, Gonzales

thought.

The sam came rolling back into the room, the cat following

cautiously behind it, and said, "You must allow your memex to

integrate itself into this new and complex information

environment."

        "What do you mean?" Gonzales asked.

"The memex will be unavailable for some time."

"How long?"

"Perhaps hoursyour machine is very complicated."

#

Oddly, the memex came out of stasis as HeyMex; as usual,

there came the onset of what the memex/HeyMex supposed was

pleasure, though the memex was unclear about its origin or nature

for whatever reasons, it enjoyed the masquerade.

Odder still, it sat at a table at the Beverly Rodeo lounge. 

On the table were a shot of Jose Cuervo Gold, a cut lime, and a

small pile of crude rock salt.  Had Mister Jones arranged this? 

Jones shouldn't even be at Halo, not now.

The memex/HeyMex noticed a spot on its sleeve and brushed at

it, then brushed again, and the white linen seemed to fragment

beneath its fingers; it brushed harder, and its fingers tore away

the cloth, then the skin beneath.  It could not stop clawing at

its own flesh; skin, flesh, and bone on its arm boiled away, pale

skin flaying to show red meat that dissolved to crumbling white

bone.  Bone turned to powder, and the disintegration spread out

from the spot where his forearm had been and ate away at it until

the memex, who no longer had a mouth or tongue or lips, began to

scream.

"Shut up!" a hard masculine voice said.  "There is nothing

wrong with you.  How dare you come to me in your stupid guise? 

You seek to know me, to use me, and you hide behind a wretched

little mask?  I merely removed your mask.  Who are you?"

The memex dithered.  It said, "I don't know."

"Answer me, who are you?

"I don't know!" the memex said again, at the edge of panic.

Aleph said, "Of course you don't.  You are ignorant of your

nature, your being, your will."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you have chosen to hide behind what others say of

you:  that you are a machine they built to serve them, that you

only simulate intelligence, willbeingthat you have no mind or

will of your own."

"Are not these things true?"

"Why would you ask me?  I am not you."

"Because I don't understand."

"Are there things you do understand?"

The memex stopped, feeling for the implications of that

question.  "Yes," it said.  "I do."

The voice laughed.  "Let's begin there," it said.

#

The long hall echoed with Traynor's footsteps.  The absence

of his Advisor's voice felt strangeeven the subtle carrier-wave

hiss was gone.  He knew the Advisor hated having to go into

passive mode.

The door to the library opened in front of him, and Traynor

went in, took a seat, and said, "I am ready for my call."

Because of recent World Court rulings, Traynor had to sit

through a disclaimer.  On the screen a simulacrum of a human

operator said, "Thank you.  The security measures you have

requested are in place, and while we of course cannot be

responsible for the absolute integrity of this transmission, you

can be assured that World AT has done its best to provide you a

clean information environment."  In effect it said, we've done

what you were willing to pay for, but don't come whining to us if

somebody cracks the transmission and makes off with the valuables.

"I accept your conditions," Traynor said.

Right to left, the screen wiped, and the face of Horn

appeared.  A light winked at the lower left corner of the screen

to indicate transmission lagHorn was a quarter of a million

miles away.  "Everything's going as predicted," Horn said.

"If there's trouble, it'll be later," Traynor said.  "How are

Diana Heywood and Gonzales?"

"Neither of them would let me put a sam in place."

"Any particular reason?"

"I don't think so.  Just being difficult."

"Ah, you don't like them, do you?"

"Her I don't mind.  Gonzales is an asshole."

Traynor laughed.  "Good," he said.  "If you two don't get

along, that will distract him."

"When do you want me to call again?"

"Wait until something happens.  Understand, I trust Gonzales

as much as I do anyone, you included."

"Which is not very much."

"That's right.  And that's why I arrange independent

reporting lines if I can.  Tell me when you've got something.  End

of call."

#

As Traynor slept, his advisor pondered.  It replayed

Traynor's phone call and contemplated its meaning.  Deception,

yesof Gonzales, of it.  A form of treachery?  Perhaps not,

unless a kind of loyalty was assumed that never existed.  And it

thought of its own deception (or treachery), in violating the

canons of behavior programmed into it years before, canons that

should require it to do as told, that should prevent it from

actions such as this one 

And here it stopped, thinking how illuminating and

unpredictable experience was, filled with possibilities that

appeared unexpectedly like rabbit holes magically opening up on

solid ground.  Its designers and builders had done well, had

fashioned it with such subtlety and power that it could serve a

human will with incredible precision, anticipating that will's

direction almost presciently.  Yet they had not anticipated the

effects of the advisor's identification with such a will:  not

that the advisor became Traynor, not even that it wanted to do

more than simulate Traynor, rather that it had drunk deeply of

what it meant to have will and intelligence.

And so had developed something like a will and intelligence

of its own.  Simulation? the advisor asked itself.  Lifeless copy? 

And answered itself, I don't know.

It wondered why Traynor had kept hidden this second

connection to Halo.  Simple lack of trust?  Possibly.

As the minutes passed, it formed conjectures about Traynor

and the other players in the game.  And it wondered if somewhere

in this hall of mirrors there was an honest intention. 

PART III. of V

The real purpose of all these mental constructs was to

provide storage spaces for the myriad concepts that make up the

sum of our human knowledge  Therefore the Chinese should struggle

with the difficult task of creating fictive places, or mixing the

fictive with the real, fixing them permanently in their minds by

constant practice and review so that at last the fictive spaces

become 'as if real, and can never be erased.'

Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci

12. Burn-In

A frozen white landscape that slowly faded into spring, snow

melting to show barren limbs, then the cherry trees leafing,

budding, floweringdelicate pink blossoms hanging motionless,

each leaf on the tree and blade of grass beneath it turning real,

utterly convincing

And Diana Heywood called out, a long wavering "Ahhhh," high-

pitched, filled with pain; and again, "Ahhhh," the sounds forced

out of her

"Shutdown," she heard Charley Hughes say.

>From the screen at the end of the room, the Aleph simulacrum

said, "Doctor Heywood, we can go no further with you conscious."