Fighting for the Future, page 7
The problem was how to put a stop to you, going forward. Even with us all pulling together, you presented a massive challenge. But whatever’s backing you, whoever you are, we figured that, together, we could solve this riddle.
No, not the memory thing. You may have wrecked that for us. Though perhaps not. You’ve been changing the narrative as we’ve told it to you, after all, adding and subtracting people from scenes, inserting new lines of dialog, infecting memory with uncertainty. Unable to resist the temptation. But now we’ve seen you in action in real time. We’ve learned more about how you change the memories. Whether we can use that to detect which ones you changed, time will tell.
We may never be able to undo the damage, O foe of ours, but that didn’t stop us from engineering our own approach to the kind of hack you pulled off. Six is eager to see if his method is close to yours. Did you stop to wonder if there was risk in being so deeply inside others’ shared memories, their shared processing, in virtual space that is as real—maybe more real—than meat space? I suspect not; after all, you could always exit through the backdoor you used, return to your life or your home server or wherever.
And you still can. Assuming you can find it. Assuming when you’ve found it, it’s the real exit, and not just a doorway into your own memories. Or our version of them. Assuming that we didn’t patch that vulnerability and put something else in its place. This space you so cruelly violated is made up of all of us, you see. Not just our memories and our processing power, but our shared commitment, shared goals. You made our minds a labyrinth, you absolute fucker. So we’ve given you the opportunity to wander it. Hafsa’s hardware side of the solution is genius hodgepodgerie, and our combined code is quite elegant, if we do say so ourselves.
You’ll find your way out, eventually. Probably. And maybe you’ll even be able to trust that you’ve really managed it.
We don’t believe in prisons, you see. But if you insist on building one, then it’s only right you get the opportunity to test its efficacy.
One, two, three, four, five revolutionaries, pledging their lives in trust to each other. They’re all at risk, maybe all doomed. They can’t know the others are trustworthy, or even if they themselves are. Certainty has fled forever. Or perhaps only the illusion of certainty.
You thought that would break us, O adversary. But revolutions aren’t built on surety. Maybe you’ll work out what they are built upon, in time.
Enjoy your labyrinth. We’ve left you whiteboards. An infinite supply of them.
Tomorrow Is Another Day
Louis Evans
I’m awake. My hand is on the gun. The letters above me say: This is your bed.
Good to know.
I roll out of the shelf and land in a crouch on the floor. I’m still holding the gun. Just because someone says it’s my bed doesn’t mean I’m free to get sloppy.
Evidence starts coming in.
There’s an ID card stickytacked to the floor by my feet. Name “Tai Shifane.” SyneCorp Paracitizen Third Class: Unbonded Contractor. Revocable License to Harm. Blood Type OXZ Negative. Expansion Slots: Two. Human Resource Category: Query Executor.
There’s a face on the ID—heavy brow, wide chin—and glued down next to it is a shard of mirror, so I can see my own face. First I check that it’s a real mirror, not a camera/screen filter rig that might lie to me. Then I check my face. It’s a match.
Okay. So this is my ID, and I’m a private detective.
I peel the card off the floor and pocket it. Then I stand up from my crouch and holster my gun.
You’re thinking: now that Tai’s seen the ID, they know they’re safe. You are wrong. It’s merely that now that I’ve seen the ID, I know that if someone is running me—if they’ve engineered my boot environment to mislead me about my identity and purpose—they’re good enough that the gun is useless.
I input and I eliminate. Turns out I subscribe to some shitty food—lowest grade of protein slurry. But it tastes like home. After that I port into my desk. There’s a file up front that says Read me first! So I do.
I said before: “if someone is running me.” But I meant: if someone else is running me. Someone’s always running me. It’s usually me, from yesterday. Which is fine, maybe. No choice but to assume the Yesterday Guy doesn’t want me dead.
Read me first! is about a case we’re working. Missing persons.
It’s an “Eternal Sunshine of My Deadbeat Ex”-type situation. The client, a Nif Wellton, is a birdbrain.
That is, they are among the vast majority of humanity who store their declarative personal memory on a corp-run cloud service.
It’s easy, it’s affordable, it’s normal. Only shareholders can afford to run their memories on private hardware. Unlike me, if you’re a birdbrain you wake up and you remember your face and know your own name—
And your identity is running on hardware you’ve never seen, owned by people you’ve never met. People who do not have your best interests at heart. Pretty much every birdbrain memory stack is crawling with spyware, adware, scamware. Do you really think so many of your formative childhood experiences were with quality branded products? Of course not.
Remember—or forget. Because the corps also offer “reputation management” services—pay up, and any of their subscribers will forget all about you. Most don’t notice that their recall has been redacted; those that do, they get over it.
But sometimes it’s more devastating than that. Maybe you’re Nif Welton, and one day you wake up in your SyneCorp apartment with two toothbrushes and two wardrobes and a twin-port entertainment rig and pairs of shoes in two different sizes—
And no memory of your spouse.
But you still have three kids.
Nif can’t pay for food or housing for three kids without a second income. They’re already thirty days behind on the rent and relying on the company’s Promotional Payroll Advance program, which will in sixty more days start repossession proceedings on one of the kids. Probably the smartest one. Maybe the cutest.
So desperate Nif called me.
And what do you know, the files say I worked a miracle. (Good job, Yesterday Guy.)
Nif’s spouse has a new address and a new name and a new job. They’ve got a new face and a new network ID. (If you’re wondering about all the “they” pronouns—nobody I’m likely to meet can afford a gender expansion slot.)
But the chips in their head have the same hardware ID, and the flakes of their skin unwound the same DNA sequence to the sniffer drone Yesterday Guy sent to check out the lead. We got ’em. I note in the file that I’m moving to confront the target and I head out.
Yesterday Guy did the hard work. Now all I have to do is go make some deadbeat pay.
Deadbeat’s got a fancy job out on a seastead office park. Jitney jet drops me off. I loiter in the courtyard, trying to stay inconspicuous. It’s not easy. I always dress forgettable—grays and blacks, all the right logos—but normies don’t need to see the license to know: I’m a guy who puts the hurt on people.
Couple of hours to kill so I lurk under a gingko generip, pretending to read. Truth is, without an exomemory I couldn’t have ever finished a book in my life. Not that I’d remember if I did.
Finally, here comes lunch. First a trickle and then a glut of middle management drones. You know. The type of guy who’s as owned by the corp as any of us, maybe more so, but because their perks include one (1) knockoff designer vest and one (1) annual virtual ski vacation, they think they’re on the same side as ownership. Those fuckers.
They scatter to the multifariously branded company cafeteria kiosks—a whole smorgasbord of Potemkin “bistros” and “brewpubs” and “ramen bars” and so on.
Deadbeat comes out at the very end. Perfect. I detach myself from the tree and I follow.
My scanners report they are unarmed; only mods are basic corp and leisure. When we’re alone enough, I call out. “Nif Welton.” Deadbeat stumbles. A little, but enough. Got ’em.
They regain their stride, not turning back towards me. I catch up, lay a hand on their arm. “Wha—?” They’re turning, trying to shrug me off. They’re not strong enough for that and so now I’ve got them in a wrist lock, plus my hand is on the gun and the gun is on their gut.
Once Deadbeat realizes about the gun, they put their arms up in surrender. I walk them over to a quiet, shady side corner where we can talk undisturbed. There’s more of those sorts of places than you think.
“What’s this about?” asks Deadbeat. Their voice quavers. They have no stomach for this shit.
“Nif Welton,” I say again. Confusion and pain spiral across their face.
“Who is that? Why don’t I remember—”
So it’s like that. Sometimes deadbeats, birdbrain deadbeats, they don’t just erase someone else’s memory. They erase their own memories too. Eliminates the guilt. It works; the birdbrain ends up with a mind squeaky clean and shame free; ready to go win that promotion. But muscles have their own memory; they don’t quite forget.
“Nif Welton is your spouse.”
“No,” says Deadbeat. “No, I’d know if I were married.”
“They’re your spouse, and you’re coming back with me.”
“I’m telling you there’s a mistake, I never heard the name before, it just sounded—”
“Save it,” I tell them. “I’m better at this than you are. You’re coming with me, or—” I give them a jab with the buzz gun, which won’t kill them but will harm them a whole lot. I got a license.
“Listen, we can sort this out,” says Deadbeat. “I’ve got money, okay? Plenty of money. Company scrip or crypto—”
Makes me want to spit. Deadbeat standing in a fancy office park prattling on about their bank accounts and somewhere else in the city Nif Welton putting another X on the calendar that separates them from child repossession.
“Shut your mouth,” I say. “I’ve got you dead to rights, you worm.”
Deadbeat freezes. Completely still. One second, two. Weird readings starting to trickle in off my scan.
“Hey—”
Now Deadbeat moves.
Their hands fall out of surrender and slice towards me. I’m pulling the trigger but I’m too slow and Deadbeat’s hand smashes into mine, knocks the barrel away. The buzz blast ricochets around the courtyard and the gun leaps out of my hand and skitters across the resin cobblestones.
My gun hand is stinging from their strike but my other is already moving up to their jaw. If I can get a hold of the mandible implant node then my aggression hardware can run a DDoS on their entire skeleton. This is the obvious play, cause I’m still thinking of Deadbeat as normie fresh meat, which is what ends me.
Deadbeat sees my hand coming. They don’t flinch, which is the normie move. They don’t block my hand, like a tough guy would, or flash a micro EMP like a true operator.
No, Deadbeat, like an utter fucking psychopath, just swivels their jaw, tucks their chin, and bites two of my fingers clean off.
Technically the fight’s not over yet but it might as well be. I’m pouring out blood and sparks as I try to grapple but a fist to the temple sends me reeling; a shin to the knees knocks me over, and I’m down. My implants ramp up towards emergency redlines; not fast enough. Deadbeat is moving like nothing I’ve ever seen, quicksilver and savage. A business casual loafer smashes my chest and the mass of bone and tech crunches. I’m not going anywhere. The gun is in their hand. The barrel is under my chin.
Buzz gun’s supposed to be nonlethal but with the barrel jammed into my mandible, if Deadbeat pulls the trigger I will die, which will be a real problem for my license. Also I will be dead.
But Deadbeat doesn’t pull the trigger.
Instead they reach out to the side of my head and with a quick twist they pop open my skull plate. They’re looking right into the neuralink and its two expansion slots. There’s a cable sneaking out of where their left pinky should be—
There’s an exabyte of data shriEKING INTO MY SKULL—
I’m not awake anymore.
[RUN WORM.EXE? Y/Y]
[EJECT WORM.EXE. BOOT FROM DISK.]
[COMMAND NOT RECOGNIZED.]
[RUN WORM.EXE? Y/Y/Y/Y/Y/Y/Y—]
[EJECT. ABORT. CRTLALTDLT. HALT AND CATCH FIRE—]
[COMMAND NOT RECOGNIZED.] [RUNNING WORM.EXE—]
I’m awake. The gun is in my hand. My name is Tai Shifane.
I remember that my name is Tai Shifane—
I remember that my name is Tai Shifane but it hasn’t always been—
And then I don’t remember anything like that anymore. I remember something else.
I remember WORM—
[FILE CORRUPTED. OPEN ANYWAY?]
I’m awake. The gun is in my hand. The letters above me say: FIND WORM.
Good to know.
I roll out of the shelf and land in a crouch, still holding the gun.
This action surprises the two goons from SyneCorp Human Resources’ Severance and Termination department, who have just finished breaking in through the bootleg unauthorized corp-resisting lock on my front door and are moving through the apartment presumably to kill me.
I shoot the first one in the face. The buzz gun makes a sad little click. Some thoughtless person, probably the Yesterday Guy, shot a lot of people with this gun and then didn’t even think to recharge it.
The goon flinches from the used-up buzz gun click. Even though they’re licensed to kill, Sev & Term operatives are jokes, which is why anybody serious uses slushfund death squads instead. (I remember—)
I break the flincher’s wrist (it turns out I’m down two fingers but who cares) and I take their gun. The second goon lunges toward me but they slip on a piece of plastic stuck to the floor and as they’re toppling I shoot them in the face too.
This is no buzz gun. It makes the sound of lightning and the guy who slipped is very dead.
(I remember a gun like this—)
When the first guy sees that the second guy is dead, they start hyperventilating. But I’m not gonna kill them too, why would I? (I remember a singsong voice, a a a lullaby, it goes “everything is equity and equity is everything, everyone is equity and—”)
No, I don’t feel bad about the second guy (or do I? I remember in a different tone, in another key—) but no need to kill the first. Sev & Term field agent: that means SyneCorp full citizen second class (non-equity); those are easy to take care of. I just pop their skull, open their command line, order a complete dump and purge, and type in my shareholder keycode.
I hit enter and commands flash across the network, nanosecond quantum-key handshakes and irrevocable countersignatures, and just an instant too late I remember (I remember) that I am not a shareholder and do not have a shareholder keycode.
Oh. Shit.
Flat red screen. Flashing letters: EQUITY ACCESS DEACTIVATED.
(I remember but not enough, just pieces of a fragmentary file—)
Okay. Okay. One step at a time. I’ve just input a deactivated shareholder keycode into a SyneCorp citizen brainstem. Which was still hooked up to the network since I didn’t even think to Faraday or airplanemode ’em. (I remember I used to be good at this, why aren’t I good at this—). Which means this goon’s brainstem just flashed an alert in some very fancy boardrooms.
Which means those slushfund death squads? The real shit? They’re coming.
Okay. So I need to move fast. I think about blowing the first goon away with the gun but then I don’t. There’s lots of stuff you can do from the command line alone, no keycode required, and so I do a bunch of it all at once. First goon won’t be getting up any time soon.
Time to move. No. First I need a plan. If I could remember—
Evidence. I need evidence.
The plastic scrap the dead goon slid on turns out to be an ID. Tai Shifane, private detective. That sounds right. That sounds wrong.
Something to work with.
Next, I hit the desk. It’s Tai Shifane’s desk which means it’s my desk, unless it doesn’t mean that. Notes on a deadbeat case. Nif Wellton’s missing spouse. The last note the Yesterday Guy wrote down, we were headed out to confront the target. I can work with that, too.
Except no, I can’t. Retracing yesterday’s steps forward will bring me in a circle. I need to get somewhere new. I have to go backwards, I have to go sideways—
The scrawl above my bed. FIND WORM—
Death squads are coming. I have to go, period.
Goodbye, room.
There are a couple of different ways to think about problems like my problems.
For example, a tough guy with my problems, they would keep on the move until they found a quiet little out of the way place and then they’d set up an ambush. Get the drop on the death squad and wipe ’em out. Leave one survivor. When the survivor calls for help, trace the call, pay a visit to whoever ordered the hit, put the hurt on them—and so on.
That’s how a tough guy would do it. A shareholder, on the other hand—and apparently I was at one point a shareholder, or at least I got into the habit of inputting a once-valid thirty-digit shareholder code into guys’ skulls—a shareholder would just call up investor relations, explain that there had been some sort of terrible mistake, and wait for suits to come sort the whole thing out. Shareholder wouldn’t even get in trouble, not really. Maybe a small fine for the corpse (something even the smallest quarterly dividend could cover, easy). No penalty for the dump and purge: a shareholder’s allowed to do that at will. Like taking a company car out for a spin.
But apparently, the last time I played by shareholder rules I wound up with a deactivated account, a private memory wipe, and a lifetime subscription to the lowest grade protein slurry on the planet. And despite my tough guy inclinations and the moves I pulled on those Sev & Term goons, there are certain strong indications—deep chest trauma, smashed implants, missing fingers—that someone out there has just finished beating the shit out of me. So each of those strategies is a different shortcut to ending up dead.
