[IN Cyberpunk] Fire Walk

[pyrephox]

The net was much as Nuria had left it; it appeared that in her discussion with Edison, Ugly Street had drifted towards more entertainment-oriented domains; it had probably just been featured with those keywords on some blog or another. A half-dozen commercial domains floated almost within touching distance, previews of their offerings rising up like smoke through their centers. Mostly coder hideouts, with a couple of porn sites skittering along behind in anticipation of easy prey. Nuria didn’t summon the dolphin immediately; instead, she let herself drift closer to the entertainment domains. Spontaneous user forums, translated by her theme into free floating coral reefs, spun themselves out between the coder spheres, linking them with gnarled and organic constructions. Nuria shifted her direction with a thought, and let herself fall into the nearest.

Tidal Function BORKED! Any clues?
Why the hell doesn’t SingNet Support Crimson Helm!
Wxell819 U SUK!
Need ‘heads for CH bug…
RL meetup WestHem! Any takers?

The sensory information was immediate and overwhelming; the real netheads prided themselves on their ability to handle (and invoke) information overload. Nuria felt a dull throb immediately start behind her temples, somewhere in her real body, as she tried to sort through the flow. Messages screamed and twisted around her, threads growing as fast as a couple of million people could type. She reached for her own code, spinning out a custom search function. As soon as her programming touched the wider environment, it was absorbed; three threads immediately sprang up critiquing the program, and either offering suggestions or mocking its flaws. Private message attempts went off like flashbulbs around her. Most could be disposed of with a wave of the hand, but a few were hacked protocols; they demanded a viewing and response before she could make them go away. Gritting her teeth, she opened the first (boi? GIRL? Herm? Neut? Ur Sexi!), rolled her eyes, and killed it. She reached for the second, pulled it up, and felt a familiar heat blaze across her nerves.

One of Gabriel’s Flames always found it difficult to describe the activation of their attunements. If you asked, the more artistically inclined might say that it was like being a magnet finding true north for the first time, or tasting something so hideous that you know that you’ll never, ever forget it. Nuria was not artistically inclined, and tended to describe it more like static shock in your eyes; one look, and you were hurt and pissed off all at once. However it might be described, it was something that could not be mistaken for anything else, and as soon as she opened the private message, Nuria knew that she had her next target. The timing, she thought, could have been better.

To: NBrandNYC38
From: SpiritusExMachina
Message: Brand. Nice code. Little sloppy on the choice functions. Looking for some help? Let me know. –Ghost.

As unsolicited instant messages went, it was restrained, even polite. And yet, even through the haze of unreality that muffled the Symphony from her, Nuria could feel the cruelty behind it, as if every word had been written in the pain of others. She considered her response carefully.

To: SpiritusExMachina
From: NBrandNYC38
Message: Thanks for the complement. My code’s not the sharpest, and I wouldn’t mind some tips. What does it cost?

Ghost’s reply took the form of a spectre, fading into existence before her, its transparent cowl and robe flowing, pulled by the currents of the imaginary ocean almost as well as it might in real life. Despite herself, Nuria had to admit the truth that the custom work was better than most she’d seen. The eyes of the spectre, glowing with an eldritch green light, flared as it intoned, “You have been invited to The Haunt. Shall I guide you there?”

“Yes.” Unlike her dolphin, the guide did not take her on a pseudo-physical path through the ether; instead, the universe around them both dissolved in a rush of bubbles. With a stomach-lurching jolt, Nuria found herself in a richly decorated room that would not have looked out of place in the mansion of an 1800’s big game hunter. The walls and floor were of dark wood; mahogany, she thought, and decorated with animal skins on the latter, and heads on the former. A roaring fire burned in a fireplace that took up most of one wall. There was a gentleman’s desk, a huge, polished oak thing that dominated the room even with the displays on the walls, and a gentleman behind it. As Nuria’s avatar faded in, the man rose, and directed her to one of the chairs (smaller than his own, and designed more for looking dignified than being comfortable) with a warm, paternal smile.

Nuria stepped forward, standing between the chairs rather than sitting in either, and lacing her hands behind her back in a loose approximation of parade rest. Her expression calmed and emptied as she let the Symphony sing to her of his truth. His avatar was that of a caucasian man in his mid-forties, just approaching middle age. It carried over the hunter theme in a very obvious way; his pupils were feline slits, his hair the striped tawny color of a tabby cat, his low-cut shirt revealed the start of what looked like a pelt of equally tawny fur, and the nails of the hand he extended to her were tipped with small steel claws. And more, as she reached out to take his hand, Nuria realized that this avatar was a Truthful reflection of the body he wore in the real world. He shook hands just a little too firmly, a petty dominance play that she ignored.

“So, Brand,” he looked her avatar over carefully, as if searching for some clue of gender in its bland androgyny, “I’m glad that you accepted my invitation. I don’t wish to be rude; should I call you Ms., Mrs., Mr.?”

“Brand is fine,” Nuria replied, her lips quirking into a slight smile as he accepted that with a reluctant nod. “I assume you invited me to talk price?”

“You go right for the throat. I appreciate that in an associate,” Ghost replied, with a grin that bared his lengthened canines. “Won’t you sit down?”

“I’d rather stand. I should not stay long.”

“Okay, then, I’ll be quick.” He took his own seat, then, relaxing back in the large leather chair. The Symphony whispered truth to her; he really was as confident as he projected. He steepled his hands in front of his chin and began to speak, “I run…I suppose you could call it a collective…of individuals who enjoy coding and working on building the future. We share our teachings with others, and the only price that we ask in return is that, in your spare time, you help us with creating and compiling fragments of code for our larger projects. Basically, it’s a humble little brain trust,” he said, with a self-depreciating chuckle. The lie set her brain on edge, but the Symphony’s deeper melodies were obscured and muffled by the virtual world. She knew he knew he lied, but not why or what the truth might be. Her eyes narrowed.

“That sounds altruistic.”

“…and you don’t trust altruism, I hear from your voice,” he said, grinning as if they shared a secret joke between them. “I’d be lying if I said that we extended this little offer to /every/ promising young coder. You were searching for threads on emergent AI, weren’t you?”

She shrugged. “My code’s not difficult to decompile.”

“No, it wasn’t. Then you might be interested to know that the greater project we’re working on is the creation of an AI,” he said, leaning forward slightly, his pupils flaring with excitement. Unlike the confidence, however, it was faked. It was a good fake, though, hitting all the cues; his voice lowered, became more intense, he raised his hands and gestured as if his interest had overcome the poise he’d showed until now as he said, “The Holy Grail of the computing world, a self-aware, self-directed, organic program. One capable of learning and developing on its own, of being an equal to humanity. Hell, maybe we can even make it /better/ than humanity; a being that knows nothing but compassion, is eternally just and merciful. The coding required to do so has been called impossible. No one could create a program complex enough to challenge humanity in all respects. Thousands of sub-routines, complex interactions, a far greater undertaking than any individual could achieve and riskier than any company would fun. So, we’re doing it on our own. We’ll teach you how to code like no one else; you’ll learn things that you can find nowhere else. And in return, we’ll send you subroutine goals, and you’ll use your skills to code them. Then send it back to our compilers, and we’ll work on constructing the rest of it. The first true AI in existence, and YOU can be a part of it.

It sounds a bit kooky, I know, but I think it can work. I think that we can do it. And there’s no risk to you,” the lie here was like a slap in the face, but Ghost never noticed her sudden tension as he drove his pitch home, “and you can pull out anytime you like. Just say that you don’t want to do any more subroutines, and you’re golden.” He took a deep breath, sitting back with an air of surprise, as if he hadn’t expected himself to get so worked up about it. He even had exactly the right sheepish note in his voice as he said, “What do you say, Brand? Interested?”

She smiled, broad and sharklike. Her voice was soft as she said, “Oh, yes. I am very interested in your work. I’d like to know more…and if that spectre or this domain is any indication of your technical skill, I think I might get the best of this bargain.”

Ghost laughed, and stood up again, thrusting his hand out for hers. “Well, then. I think we have a deal. Where could we—“ His question was interrupted by a trilling from Nuria’s head. She blinked, her attention turning to t he side as she accessed the alarm.

“My search has finished. I need to go check on these things. But I’m certainly interested in what you’re doing, so here’s my address.” A blank business card appeared in her hand, and she placed it in his, where it still hovered between them. “Do you have…ah,” she watched her generic marker be replaced by a torn piece of shroud, glowing dust clinging to the edges. She plucked it up, and it dissolved into dust, leaving an entry in her address book. “Nice. Talk to you later. I can find my own way out.”

She didn’t wait for his goodbyes, feeling the need to remove herself from his presence—even his virtual presence—and cleanse her soul of his lies. The domain bled into a brief, vertigo-inducing blackness around her before her own personal refuge appeared in its place. She considered logging out; she’d been assigned to the human world long enough that needing a shower to feel ‘clean’ after being in contact with scum was not quite as much of a metaphor as it might have been.

Work came first. Nuria laid herself out on the floor, and called a screen into place above her. “Display search results.” The screen brightened, highlighting the threads that met her criteria. The little program had gotten through five full forums before self-destructing, and there were over 2000 potential posts of interest. She scowled at the list, flicking her finger to send it scrolling down, then touching and discarding all of the obvious spam, erotica, and urban legends. And then she went and put the urban legends back in a separate folder, because you never knew what form ripples might take. That left 438 good possibilities; 1200 if you counted the other folder. She sighed. “Why do they talk so much?” As the universe at large presented no immediate answer, Nuria settled down and began to read.

An hour an half later, she had discarded all posts but 80, and could feel her limbs begin to tingle and throb with the protracted exposure to virtual reality. She ignored the latter and studied her results. At least fifteen people had seen evidence of a ‘ghost avatar’, a code shadow that seemed to be appearing with more frequency lately. Of course, the phenomenon itself was not unusual; a lot of things could cause a one-time ghost: sudden disconnects might leave a ghostly impression, some visualization bugs could make you see avatars that weren’t there, and lag was still a problem from those connecting from the most remote regions of the planet. But what was interesting about these sightings were that none of the witnesses could pick up any public data, VP address, or anchor domain for the shadow, which lead to speculation about AI technology existing independently in the web. Additionally, there were reports of bugs and/or spontaneous code revisions in the vicinity of the sightings. Reactions to these witnesses ranged from the skeptical (“It’s probably a bug in your operating system. Try a purge and restore.”), to the hostile (“n00b! u prbly saw a fukkin Eliza skrpt!”), the credulous (“Maybe it’s ghosts. Like…real ghosts, y’know? Ghosts are energy, the Vworld is energy. How do we know that it hasn’t started catching the ghosts of people who die on the net?”), and even to the religious (“God is the ONLY CREATOR! MAN has USURPED HIS creation. The ghosts are a SIGN of the DECAY of the decadent VIRTUAL world. HIS TIME IS COMING”). She made a separate note of the posters in the last two categories. Those were the kind of people demons loved to play with, so if she had time, she might check up on them.

She ran a quick map program; it displayed a visual representation of the virtual world, then superimposed the ‘locations’ of the sightings. Multiple people reported the same sightings, so when it was all done, she had about 25 glowing crosses on her display. She brought up the timestamps of the forum posts, then revised for actual time when the poster gave it. “Display sequentially in daily ratios until threshold of four sightings a day is reached. Then display in hourly ratios.” She paused, then added, “Also display length of event, where available.”

The first sighting was three weeks ago, lasting only three seconds. A mere blip up near the corporate domains. The duration between that and the second was five days. Then three days. Then three sightings, once per day, and finally multiple events in different places in the same day. She noted with interest that none of the events took place simultaneously, although several of the most recent ones took place within less than a second of each other. The path moved slowly from the corporate domains into the public entertainment domains, where it seemed to explode and flourish. In the last day, there had been seven sightings, all in the same general area. She highlighted that area. “Search for sites, domains, and user colonies.”

A gratingly cheery voice blared into her ears, “Welcome to Futureworld, where the future happens today! We are a family friendly collection of entertainment and educational resources, recommended for ages from 8 to adult! Please come and visit our many sites and attractions, including the latest in procedurally generated gaming content! Futureworld’s subscription rates are low, and our free content is extensive! Please don’t wait; visit us today, and experience…the Future!”

Nuria killed the spiel with a wave before it could start over. “Well, it is, at least, appropriate,” she muttered to herself, then shut down the screen with another wave. She had a space to look, perhaps, but Futureworld encompassed at least three corporate domains, several of which were pay sites. And she had neither the time nor inclination to troll around, hoping to stumble onto an electronic ghost. Instead, she reached for her e-mail, then hesitated.

She really should check the inbox. Now she was on a mission from Gabriel herself, which made it nearly impossible for Soldekai to strip her vessel from her. And if she did well, then she might be able to ask for a new Role as a reward…but unless she wanted to spend the next few years as a sewer worker, she’d better get right with her Archangel’s second-in-command. Gabriel, after all, wouldn’t likely see anything WRONG with being assigned as a sewer worker. Right, then. E-mail it was.

First she dashed a message off to Edison with a copy of her search records, asking him to see if his own data confirmed anomalies in that area, and if so, to try and nail something—anything—that could be searched and tracked. And hopefully apprehended, although she left that part out of the text. She could trust him to figure it out on his own.

Then, with an entirely unangelic reluctance, she turned to the inbox. Most of it was routine or spam…after a moment’s thought, she forwarded the viral spam to a Cherub of Creation working with Fire for the time being; he had a Thing about the makers of viruses, especially head-cases, those nasty little bugs that could infest your cranial implants and—at their most harmless--make you see and hear nothing but advertising slogans until they burned themselves out. At their most harmful, your brains would boil until they dribbled out from your nose and ears. It was certainly Cruel, but not really her division, so she’d let him deal with it. The routine stuff got marked, replied to, or deleted as needed; that left only five messages, all from the local Tether.

She read each one of them, grimacing at the increasingly frustrated tone. The last one had audio, and the roar of an infuriated Cherub was not a sound to be forgotten easily. It was to this one that she replied, dashing off a quick message; “My apologies. Will be there in two hours. –Nuria”

Then she logged out, and got ready to face the music.

Comments

[jkivela.livejournal.com]

still very cool...