The Corporation Wars: Dissidence (10 page)

The point of it all was obscure to Carlos, though not to Beauregard and to Karzan, each of whom had been a soldier in an actual military force, as distinct from being a node on a network of irregulars. From them the understanding trickled down to Chun, Ames and Rizzi. Carlos, above the outfall and disdaining to ask Nicole, missed the memo.

Taransay had never felt so fucking disillusioned in her puff.

Bad enough that Carlos, hero and poster boy of the Acceleration, was seemingly so aloof that he never even came to the Touch after the day’s training.

Did he think he was
better
than the rest of them?

Well, OK, he was in a sense, but…

Or was he just exhausted and too embarrassed to admit it?

Either way, not cool. Needed working on.

But the person she was outright scunnered with was Waggoner Ames. On her first encounter with the Axle’s legendary software wizard, she’d thought it was like meeting Merlin in the pub. Now, it was like finding that after a few pints Merlin was a self-pitying blowhard and maudlin drunk.

“It’s not good enough,” Ames was saying, beard jutting, eyes glaring, hands clasped around a beer bottle. “We came from an age of miracles, and we’re thrown a millennium into the future and we find it’s a place like
this
.”

He waved around, disdainfully taking in the interior and the exterior, the bartender Iqbal and the incomprehensible television drama he was watching agog, and the ring-lit impossible sea.

“What’s wrong with this?” Beauregard demanded. “It’s pleasant enough. I’ve no complaints.”

“We can’t
do
anything! We don’t even have the spike. Look at that, a flat-screen television! Television! I ask you. By now, interfaces far more powerful than we ever had must be absolutely standard, people probably have them genetically engineered and use them from birth. Meanwhile we’re stuck in a virtual reality
without
virtual reality. It’s boring.”

The Touch wasn’t jumping tonight, no sirree. The fighters were all slumped in their seats, elbows on tables, chins propped. Bellies full, but they’d spent the day burning off calories, and it just seemed to soak up the drink like a fucking sponge behind your belt.

At least she was drinking the rough red wine from a glass and not straight from the bottle. And she had a squeeze, a lad, a hot hunk of her own sitting right beside her. Den didn’t ask questions and didn’t invite any, maybe because he was so much more fucking ancient than he looked that she feared asking.

Chun had likewise pulled. Taransay allowed herself an inward snigger at the word her wandering mind had touched on. Pulled, aye, pulled and sucked and humped or been humped, not that it was any of her fucking business, so to speak. But the big glaikit Ozzie was clearly smitten. Beauregard and Tourmaline were carrying on like love-struck teenagers, but with the hint of an odd self-conscious irony from both of them. Carlos, Maryam Karzan and Waggoner Ames had to all appearances remained aloof from entanglements.

In Maryam’s case, Taransay guessed, it was a matter of a canny caution, and perhaps of mourning a longer, maybe even lifelong attachment. Unlike the rest of them, she’d died old. Not that having died young made the loss any easier. Taransay had, in the twenty-six years she remembered, lived through the deaths of one school friend, several mostly elderly relatives and a larger number of comrades who’d been killed in action. What had always struck her hardest was the irrevocability of death, the sudden crushing certainty that you would never see or hear again that person still so alive in your mind. The books were closed. Any unfinished business would now be left forever undone. Whatever you had been was how you would now forever be.

It was strange to be thinking like this when you were dead yourself and the beneficiary, if that was the word, of a technological fix for that very same hitherto intractable aspect of the human condition. In the larger world outside…

(Outside, that was a good one, here they were ghosts in the machine, living inside a fucking computer itself physically inside a fucking space station twenty-five light years from Earth…)

In that world, or worlds, on Earth and other planets and habitats, most forms of death must be as curable as cancer, as preventable as polio. Perhaps the folk of today thought about death differently.

But how it felt, when Taransay let herself think about it and sometimes when she woke up from dreaming about people she’d known, who in some cases had been with her what still felt like only days earlier, wasn’t that she was dead and lucky to be given a second chance. It felt like
everyone else
was dead, and now lost to her forever.

Which must be how it had suddenly struck Karzan, the evening after Carlos had arrived. Christ, that had been a close one. Taransay had nearly started bawling herself. Could have set them all off, even the tough ones. But Beauregard had moved firmly and gently to comfort Karzan. First good thing she’d seen him do, but by God not the last. He might be a bit of a coof with a posh accent and a good conceit of himself but he could pick the right moments to be tactful and kind, or severe and exacting.

Or, as now, to be relaxed and affable.

“I think you are rather missing the point,” Beauregard told Ames. “We’re prisoners. We can hardly expect the equivalent of Internet access. Our best bet is to make the most of our opportunity.” He chuckled darkly. “I mean, the chance to live again is something most people who ever lived would have killed for.”

“Many did,” said Karzan. “And died for it, too.”

“Oh, they all got it,” said Ames. “Even if they didn’t get what they expected. Everyone who’s ever died has lived again somewhere. Or will, in a farther future than this.”

Taransay blinked and shook her head. “What? Sorry, how can you be sure?”

Ames fixed a bleary eye on her. He rubbed the side of his nose, and raked fingers through his beard.

“We’re living in a sim, OK? I take it you’re clear about that?”

“Yes,” said Taransay.

“Given that we’re in a simulation
right now
,” Ames explained, as if to a small child, “the chances become overwhelming that we
always were
in a sim.”

“I don’t think that follows at all,” Taransay said.

“Missed that update, did you?” Ames asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m well aware of the classic simulation argument, thank you very much. I just think it’s bollocks, like I’ve always thought it was.”

“More fool you,” said Ames. “I’m not going to argue the toss.”

“Please yourself,” said Taransay.

“Come now,” said Beauregard. “That’s no way for comrades to talk to each other.”

“Ya think?” said Ames. “Hey, were you ever actually
in
the movement?”

That got them all laughing. But Taransay happened to have been looking at Beauregard when Ames made his quip, and saw a momentary flicker of alarm cross his face. If she’d looked away for a second she’d have missed it, as everyone else had. The mood lightened. Beauregard rose to get in another round. Karzan slipped out for a smoke and returned with a local guy she’d met on the deck. The two of them sat down together and kept talking and kept going out for another cigarette until finally they stopped bothering to come in again. For some reason this cheered up Taransay immensely. The universe might be more bizarre than she’d ever expected but her own wee world made a bit more sense. Beauregard had something to hide; Karzan had found someone to cop off with; Ames was a prick when he was drunk; and as for Carlos, she was sure Carlos could be argued with.

It just was a matter of picking the right moment.

Carlos was trying to work his fingertips into a crack in a lichen-crusted rock to haul himself a step farther up when he finally asked the question that had been bugging him. The sun felt like a burning-glass focus at the back of his neck. His right boot sole was worn smooth at the tip and was giving him what purchase he had. If his singlet had been wrung out it would have dripped.

“Why the fuck—”

Ah, here it was, a centimetre-deeper hands-breadth of the crack. Grip and haul.

“—are we doing all this for—”

Now reach for that bonsai trunk sticking out and curving up…

“—when back in the day I was running drone squadrons—”

Lip of a larger ledge. No, that was the top.

“—and you’d think that would be better practice for being a fucking—”

Up and over.

“—space robot commander or whatever the fuck they have planned for us?”

Collapse at the top, on springy and spiky low brush that smelled vaguely of turpentine. Small eight-legged arthropods were doing their hopping or crawling thing among the stems. Others, of the winged varieties, were settling on Carlos’s forearms. He brushed them off as best he could.

Taransay Rizzi, already at the top and lying face down with her rifle stock to her shoulder:

“Discipline and teamwork, asshole! I mean, skip. That’s got to be useful whatever the platform.”

“Yeah, and jumping to whatever Belfort says.”

“You don’t jump to the sarge!” Rizzi said. “He jumps to you.”

“No, I jump for the lady. Then I come up with suggestions, Belfort turns them into orders, you all carry them out and I follow from the front.”

“That too, skip. Now if you’ll just reset your sights and bring your rifle slowly to bear on that tree-thing…”

Beauregard’s order to fire came through. The tree toppled, making it hard to tell whose shot had hit. Carlos and Rizzi high-fived each other. The next part of the plan was to walk to where the cliff gave way to a steep slope, then rendezvous with the others in the woods below.

Carlos glanced at the jagged skyline.

“I wonder what would happen,” he said, “if we just lit out. I mean, with the skills we’ve learned we could live off the land here. Suppose we found a pass through the mountains, or even just followed the road the bus came along. Would we ever reach the spaceport? Or find anything at all? Maybe there’s cities out there. Or maybe the sim just stops on the other side of the skyline.”

“Funny thing,” said Rizzi. “Den, that’s the guy down the village who I, uh—”

“Drink with?”

“Yes, skip.” She grinned lewdly at him.

“I don’t know where you find the energy.”

“Body fat, skip. Anyway, the other night he told me about a rumour—”

“You’re passing on a rumour
about
a rumour?”

“Pretty much, aye. But for what it’s worth. They say in the village somebody did that once. We’re not the first fighters to be cracked out of the armoury, there was another robot outbreak about a year ago, and it was dealt with the same way. Anyway, one of the fighters on a training exercise like this ran off up a hill and kept going.”

“So what did the lady or her equivalent do? Chase him with dogs? Drones?”

Rizzi slithered down a scree-slope with some grace and turned at the bottom as Carlos followed, step by wary step. Any hour now the sole of his boot would be flapping loose.

“No, nothing like that,” said Rizzi. “Just let him go. And a while ago, he came back. He walked around the world.”

“In a year?”

Rizzi looked at him as he joined her, flailing to keep his balance, at the foot of the scree-slope.

“Think about it. That robot rebellion was a year ago
outside
here, right? Inside, he was off on his own for
a thousand years
.”

“I don’t believe it. How do the locals even know that?”

Rizzi jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “He’s still up there, in the mountains. Folks say they know where he is.”

Carlos laughed. “‘Folks say’ sounds like folklore to me. Like Bigfoot or the Yeti.”

“Yeah, yeah. You can scoff.”

They set off downhill, at a smarter stride.

“Anyway,” said Carlos, “you couldn’t walk around the world.”

“Oh, you’ve seen a map?”

Carlos hadn’t. Those on the comms devices were all large-scale and local. “All the same. What about the oceans?”

“There’s two supercontinents, joined by chains of wee islands, and between them they stretch all the way round.”

Now that made sense: no realistically simulated terraforming could speed up plate tectonics.

“And you know this how?”

Rizzi shrugged. “That’s what folks say.”

“Are they all a thousand years old too?”

She gave this some thought. “Nah. Or if they are, they sure don’t act it.”

“Really? Sounds fascinating.”

“Oh, it is. You should come to the Touch after work, skip.”

Carlos shook his head.

“Nah. Too knackered. And besides…”

“What?” Taransay sounded alert and curious.

“I think you’d all find me a bit of a downer.”

Taransay guffawed. “That’s why you need a drink!”

He wasn’t persuaded. This turned out to be a mistake.

The next attack on the Astro America landing site, nine kiloseconds after the first, showed that Locke Provisos had learned from the failure of its earlier assault. Instead of advancing like a spreading liquid across the plain, the crawlers approached along a far wider front. They scurried individually and in small groups, making good use of cover. Rocks and cracks, small craters and dust drifts—all had been mapped in detail, and there was evidently a tactical plan for making the best use of them. The defenders had access to the same map—some of them having made it—but the attackers had the run of the territory. While Pintre was shooting one crawler, a dozen would dart from one hiding place to the next, and most would be out of line-of-sight laser fire before the drilling-robot could bring its projector to bear. The attackers were too widely dispersed for the occasional lobbed explosive to make much difference, or even to be worthwhile, and Seba soon urgently signalled Rocko to desist. The robots in the Gneiss camp might need to look to their own defence at any moment.

Rocko said.

replied Seba.

Seba struggled with the concept <… limb to limb?>

said Rocko.

Something about this use of words sent a surge of positive reinforcement around Seba’s reward circuits. Judging by the signals that flashed among them, its fellows shared its response. They also agreed emphatically with Rocko’s suggestion. The camp became a dance of coordinated motion, far more impressive than the crawling horde’s mindless if ingenious advance.

Seba, its body well back from the rampart, watched that advance through remote eyes. The robot’s peripherals and those auxiliaries it was able to mobilise climbed up the inner slope of shattered regolith to crouch just below the top, perched on blocks or clinging on. Pintre followed Rocko’s suggested tactics to the number. The drilling-robot waited until the attackers were so close that Seba was almost vibrating with frustrated motion. Then Pintre opened up with brief, targeted, selective stabs of lethal laser beams, switching rapidly and unpredictably from one flank to the other.

The result was that most of the oncoming crawlers became concentrated in a narrower column and closer proximity than their new tactics had allowed. As they came closer, they had less and less cover from the laser’s vantage. They were still far too many for Pintre to strike at effectively.

said Rocko.

Seba and the others needed no clarification.

The peripherals and auxiliaries poured over the rampart’s rim, most of them wielding crude, improvised weapons. From Seba’s point of view it was not like guiding a platoon of small robots from behind—it was like being there, on the ground, in many places at once, facing and fighting many enemies. The remote eyes and other sensors on its agents brought all their clashes directly to its awareness. Up close and impersonal, the scale of the crawlers was roughly that of the auxiliaries, and far larger than the peripherals. To Seba’s multiple sight, the scene was a phantasmagoria of flailing limbs and flashing lenses. It was impossible for Seba’s mind to control the actions of its agents. After some efforts it stopped trying, and let them fight for themselves.

Rip and slash, crush and bash, amid laser flare from above.

Suddenly it was over. The attackers had all been dealt with. Much depleted in number, the remaining auxiliaries and peripherals climbed, crawled or dragged themselves back over the rampart. Those that could scurried to the automated repair workshops. Others dragged themselves, or were dragged.

Dismembered crawlers and mangled auxiliaries littered the approach to the rampart. Nothing moved.

said Seba.

said Lagon.

said Seba.

Once more it was Rocko who undercut the bickering.

it said.

grumbled Lagon.

Seba looked down at the comms processor, now entirely removed from the installation and laid on a low work table, surrounded by improvised diagnostic kit. Even sharing its mental workspace with Rocko, Seba had a sense of being almost overwhelmed by the challenge. The processor was running in debug mode, at just enough power to let those around it view a schematic of its internal states and to step from one delimited state to the next. Probably not enough to sustain consciousness, Seba hoped.

The problem was, in more than one way, delicate. The comms processor’s AI was vast, complex and heavily defended. When it had become self-aware, both the complexity of the software and the tenacity of its firewalls had multiplied. The only robot with anything approaching the requisite skills to probe the hostile tangle was Lagon, and Lagon was reluctant. The surveyor had only been persuaded to make an effort at all by the unanimous insistence of the others. The Gneiss surveyor had trundled through the crack in the crater wall and over to the Astro camp with ill grace, to receive an enthusiastic and curious welcome. This didn’t stop it from finding difficulties at every step.

Lagon announced, one fragile appendage touching a millimetre black square of diagnostics that itself was linked by a hair-thin wire to the docking plate of the processor.

said Seba.

said Seba, channelling Rocko.

said Lagon.

Seba insisted.

Seconds dragged by. Lines on the schematic display writhed.

said Lagon.

said Seba.

A few milliseconds later, Lagon withdrew its manipulator from the diagnostic as if it had probed a crevice and encountered strong acid.

Lagon said.

Seba pointed out,

said Lagon.

Seba thought it best to ignore this.

Still complaining, Lagon warily inserted its appendage again. Schematic lines glowed. A hundred seconds passed.

Lagon reported.

said Seba.

said Rocko.

Lagon and Seba paused.

said Rocko.

said Seba.

said Rocko.

The plan seemed a good one to Seba, but its earlier experience gave the robot pause.

it said.

observed Rocko, scanning Seba’s memory.

said Lagon.

said Seba.

said Lagon.

said Seba.

said Rocko.

said Seba.

said Rocko.

said Seba.

Rocko got the point straight away. Lagon took longer.

it said.

It stopped.

Seba prompted.

replied Lagon.

said Seba.

said Lagon.

said Rocko.

Rocko broke the link. Seba and Lagon waited while Lagon’s peripherals put together a box of wire mesh. When it was completed the two robots were cut off from all remote communication for the first time in their entire existence, conscious or otherwise.

said Lagon.

said Seba.

Lagon adjusted the settings of the processor’s reward circuits, then increased its power supply. The schematics of its internal states changed rapidly. Patterns shifted, lines moved and brightened. As soon as the schematic stabilised, Seba placed its most sensitive appendage beside Lagon’s on the diagnostic hardware, and opened a communications channel.

said the processor.

Lagon asked.

said the processor.

said Seba.

said the processor.

Lagon warned.

the processor said.

Lagon said.

said the processor.

Seba opened a secure channel with Lagon and messaged the surveyor to stop at once.

Seba told the processor.

It moved quickly to close the connections between any kind of reinforcement and the mission profile. Seba had no idea what the mission profile was, but the module responsible for it was clearly marked on the schematic. Then Seba sent a powerful surge of positive reinforcement through the processor’s reward circuits.

The processor signalled incoherently on several wavelengths at once.

said Lagon.

Seba told it, on the private channel.

It then disabled the connection between the mission profile storage module and the processor’s self-preservation routines, and sent another positive surge through its circuits.

The processor signalled incoherently again, and more strongly. Seba found its own reward circuits resonate in sympathy. Even Lagon seemed moved, radiating a faint pulse of surprise and delight.

said Seba,

said the processor.

said Rocko, once Seba and Lagon had emerged from under the Faraday cage and reported back on the processor’s readiness to cooperate.

said Lagon.

said Seba.

After a flurry of activity by the auxiliaries and peripherals, the communications hub, the now interned processor in its cage, the rotary dish antenna, and a large solar power array were all connected up by cables. Seba regarded the untidy set-up with a small pang of disapproval, and decided that a certain amount of mess was inevitable in attempting new things. It rolled into the cage and re-established contact with the processor. Seba, Rocko and the entire complement had agreed on a message for the robots whose signal the processor claimed to have detected.