Chapter 5


When the door closed, he heard white noise from windblown trees, and mystery sounds from a distant depot. He installed a paper-thin accordion screen to hide the Monitor, before smashing it to pieces. The steel ball remembered it was really cardboard, and imploded with a sigh. After sweeping up the foil, he sent a tiny bot through the exposed access tube, receding with a whistle. Then he lay down on the floor, and pulled his cap over his face. The obsolete but secure interface Mask was controlled by his expressions.
  If a 1940's programmer had been confronted by a current computer, the man would have asked where it was. What had once been as big as a jukebox, generating enough heat to fry an egg, would now fit in a contact lens.
  Rick's virtual screen was an extension of his eyes, wide as a waterfall. His earplugs also controlled his sense of balance. Millions of ideomotor and actuator threads in his clothes detected subconscious movements, manipulated his sense of touch, changed his position, and summoned mental states. When he visualized certain motions, the signal was detected by a net of sensors implanted in his visceral cavity, and in his hands and limbs.
  Two hundred meters away, the disposable microbot reached the sealed Zondyne dome, freezing as it cooled. It pressed a hidden button, activating another bot inside.
  The second bot slid effortlessly through the CPU racks, up and down, wheels and legs making millions of connections. From its vantage point, the stacked chips extended forever. By law, every network had to have a personality. The small bot was beginning to irritate it.
  Rick soared between golden clouds, a sunken mountain city, the edge of an endless crowd, and the Lu-cid symbol. The silence was even more awesome. At its best, Lucidspace turned free will inside out. Layers of software could make everyone their own god, able to explore beauty in all its forms, and the deviations that made it interesting. Life was about the right to have certain experiences. There were trade-offs: better resolution meant less control. When the 3D puzzle of the human body had been solved (gigabytes of extremely expensive data), failed Casanovas could finally have their way with nature. Tina's former fiancé had cheated on her with a sim so realistic "she" had a vector skeleton, and limited emotions. Tina had been furious about the emotional bond they had developed, and dumped him at the wedding rehearsal. She had deleted the video of the scene.
  The main use of Lucidspace was more public: sky surfing, dream palaces, extreme adventures. Most important was the chance to be exposed to many different viewpoints. Disembodied users felt immortal, often needing pills to function in boring reality. Rick had been traumatized by a medieval battle. Another simulation had tried to instill intense affection for mankind. Instead, he'd passed out.
  Tiny lights flickered in his mask. The Zondyne asynchronous network lit up like a city at dusk. He zoomed through document bricks toward the monster index. Was anyone expected to read this? Ideally, software removed options. He just wanted the raw data, relying on others to explain it.
  Discarded neural nets still contained much wisdom, and cost relatively little to run. Each of Zondyne's billion chips did one thing extremely well. They restated or exaggerated problems, or broke them into tiny pieces. "Kondratieff engines" eliminated false chaos, finding the hidden forces in the stock market, or disease trends. Their constant improvement had shaped history: tera decade, peta decade, exa decade, from twelve to eighteen zeros in thirty years.
  There were ten thousand Thunderstorm chips, cooperating like cells to discard waste heat. No two were alike.
  Rick was a visitor from the future. His interface was a cartoon spy from the Back Room, improving with each editing cycle. It refused to explain its methods.
  He lost his time perception, seeming to sink into the floor. A beam of pallid sunlight shone through the misted window across a plastic wall. Something rustled nearby, and a twig snapped.
  He played music from the mid-Twenties, looking for chips that didn't know their own pattern. One program, Starter 25, had started too many processes.
  It was the opposite of Thunderstorm: infiltration software, rewriting files undetected. A mindless parasite, drawn to Zondyne's spare memory. After penetrating its defenses, it had attracted many other intruders. Zondyne had become an illegal data exchange. Each day here was like a millennium.
  Stretching his back, Rick hit a zerofoam box, and heard it roll in slow-motion. Diamond zerofoam was so light it would float. Castles in the air. A breeze whistled in a ventilation tube. An airliner crossed the afternoon sky like a flute. He didn't notice the dimming light.
  At least ten percent of Rick's waking life was missing. He had spent that time sitting still, lost in mindless thought, a type of self-hypnosis. He lost another minute before he found an old file protected by public key encryption. It was easier to recognize art than to create it, to scramble than to unscramble. Factoring by brute force took two minutes.
  Rick's sleeves and vest supported him like an invisible chair, while his Mask supported his head. Rocking back, he was too comfortable. It took long seconds to recognize the multiplying errors, parading upscreen. Something fell behind him with a clicking sound.
  Zondyne was streaming files to a public buffer, where anyone could copy them. Bribes paid by logging companies in the Lena basin. Receipts for Tupolev cruise missiles (which could reach Florida), ending up in Brazil in violation of the 2016 world arms ban. Pages of unlisted Pacific bank accounts. They could be discreet in the ocean hemisphere. Drug logs, hacking attempts, diaries, surveys, D-maps, tax scams; all the way back to the old handmade Net, when every "a href" was double bracketed. Rick almost felt like a criminal himself.
  This was probably stolen data from professional blackmailers, or information miners as they preferred to be called. The data inflation from this release would make them work even harder, destroying the last remaining shreds of privacy.
  Rick hesitated: a perfectly open world would lead to perfect jealousy. Medical progress had already split mankind. Billions of people were saving or investing most of their income to have their telomeres lengthened, their metabolism slowed, their stem cells improved. They hoped to replace their body with a better one, but cheap immortality was still decades away. Half of mankind wouldn't last that long.
  "I've often felt I will be the last human to die," Rick had told Tina. "Keep it a secret, or everyone will try to kill you," she had advised him.
  Those people who were born too soon hated the future immortals, but they still wanted to join them. The fastest road to wealth was selling defective products. One man had caused a trillion dollar stock crash. Others faked medical trials and sold worthless drugs, and various forms of insurance murder.
  "Tina, help!" he said.
  "What have you done now?"
  Rick managed to explain the problem in less than fifty words.
  "Thanks," she laughed. "Your imagination is worth what we're paying you. This is Starter's defense system. Whatever you do next, will solve as many problems as it causes."
  "What should I do?"
  "MaxEm variant, secure disconnect."
  Soon, the tower administrators would shut down Zondyne, and he would never find the real secrets it was trying to protect. The UN always tried to postpone the inevitable.
  "The world is unstable," he said. "This release will probably be blamed for every bad trend."
  "We're approaching the X-point," she agreed. "Should we stop moving?"
  "Donitz will claim I abused my power by connecting those chips." He had accused Rick of biased decision making, adding that in any other job, he would be out on the street so fast, he'd bounce three times - into jail. "Time to do it again."

  Thousands of Net watchers had spotted the data release. The Net seemed to be evolving, discarding old garbage. Behind its brightly polished surface, reality had become boring. Everyone escaped into games and simulations. Finally they had something real to play with.
  Ignoring the Alert messages, Rick opened Starter, and instructed it to fill available memory with copies of itself. After an avalanche of file writing, the screen went blank. Except one small gap: a part of the network, located in vault twenty, protected itself. There were only x to the nth possibilities.
  When Zondyne shut down, he lost the connection, and the lights went out. Rick's virtual office faded from memory, trapping him in the dark until he remembered where he was.
  He took the call in the glow of his folding screen. A voice in unaccented English said: "Parkland, this is Georgi Bezarin. I control the Depot. Please suspend your investigation."
  Rick almost wanted to surrender, but he played along. "Director Bezarin, I understand your secrets are embarrassing, but I found an unregistered mainframe in vault twenty. That gives me cause to impound it."
  Bezarin saw the weapons diagrams. "You must be shocked," Rick said. "A GJK-577 'Suppressor' minigun that can turn cows into confetti. Railgun fragment streams to defeat reactive armor. Can we wait for an illegal-arms team to get here?" It wasn't a question at all.
  "No, do not approach that vault. Our hazardous materials team will check it now, preserving all the evidence."
  "May I suggest . . ." Without a click, the line went dead, the dial tone like a coma.
  Rick lay back down. The Back Room would claim this data release was a hoax. Probably safer to make it all public anyway.
  Meanwhile, the Depot had developed amnesia. When they rebooted next week, they would find the smashed Monitor. He'd leave the screen up till then. He didn't know dozens of investigators would stand on this very spot by tomorrow.
  Rising unsteadily, he had to learn to walk again. He found the door unlocked. The fresh air was a negative smell, clearing his head. He tried to slam the door, but it pillowed shut. Hurrying down the narrow path, the bunker seemed unreal, as if it could all be undone.
  Tina saw the railroad-steady view from his shoulder cam. "Our opponent has already anticipated your next move. What if Donitz is right about your risk profile?" she wondered.
  "Then I expect you to stop me by any means necessary."
  This was the safest place to get in trouble. Not even an insect could pass unseen. Rick was about to perform his thirty-ninth hostile inspection, his second one here. He was making progress.