Chapter 8


Standing at the outward sloping hundredth floor window, Rick watched the last employees file onto a segmented bus below. The tarmac stripes looked tiny, the trees toylike. A flying car passed in the distance.
  Only key staff remained in the sky castle. Spread across the vast top floor, most managed to look bored. No new protein fragments or radiation. The skyscraper's windows were sealed, the air conditioning generating a slight overpressure.
  Instead of desks, control stations hung from pillars. Interaction zones replaced keyboards, where users spun imaginary objects in mid-air. At the central platform, Simansky held a conference call about trace amounts of nerve gas that might have been detected near the vault. The district hospital only had atropine and pralidoxime, but promised to order neuro-blockers. Behind him, the moon rose like the Death Star.
  "The Depot network is crystallizing new control links," Rick told Tina. "The Cell Group won't cooperate."
  Tina acted as if she was in danger too, but had made her peace with the situation. "Are the new cells synchronizing? If the machines attack, we'll only get one chance."
  "There's no central feedback. The network may be smarter than us, but it's still unaware."
  He counted the engineers in the room. Each had a known weakness. They could think as one, but one line of code could defeat them all. In the center, Simansky talked to the genius responsible for today's upgrades. The network administrator sighed loudly and made dramatic gestures, as if history would remember his efforts.
  "In the past hour, the Depot network has begun to regulate itself," he said. " Cell units are copying each other, and spreading outward from Zondyne, under selection pressure from I-F redundancy filters."
  "Its parents must be so proud," Simansky said.
  "Subservient nodes are doubling every hour, infiltrating satellite depots worldwide. New layers in the memory stack are improving network speed, but keeping the difference."
  "Who gave it the authority?" he shouted.
  "You did, during the emergency shutdown. If we reset all thirty billion chips, it could still hide as an nth-order derivative. There's already too much immortalware. I want to destabilize it instead."
  Rick crossed the sprawling control floor. The tower flared out like a glass mushroom at the top. A single window curved around the room without support columns, framing the horizon. What was holding it up, the anti glare coating? Then he remembered this was the top floor. Distant orange clouds resembled a view from space.
  Several "groundscrapers" were spread through the forest below, making dents in the tree canopy. He saw a Net farm with a single megawatt chip that could bake passing birds, already captured by Zondyne. An immense building squatted on the horizon, with the Neumann Zone beyond. The sky glowed as the land darkened.
  He took pictures of the support staff. His data went to the Joint Missions Operations Center, where it competed with the results from all other inspectors.
  The Depot map was full of persistent and blinking lights. Chips could recharge by thermal expansion, or even by sound.
  A small door in grid A95 opened for no reason. Something new had entered the world: from containment to proliferation. "Stage M-two. We may need to dismantle this facility," he told Tina. "Looks like a finite state node Ternik Worm."
  Sharing a cellular channel with the police, their voices sounded hollow. Passing satellites were pre-empted. State Security rented all channels from Itsat, M45H, and GeB in Manihiki. Amateur comsats were jammed as they came in range, but they couldn't block every antenna.
  After three tries, Tina managed to attract the valuable attention of Roger Xyrghyz, a private consultant for the elite Information Division. He explored the world from his private island in Polynesia. Roger had a reddish tan, long unkempt hair that made him look older, and a dazed expression, but he always projected confidence.
  "Nobody panic," he ordered. "Give me your passwords." Roger contacted every engineer in the room at once. They spoke in a technical language, quickly forming teams. Breaking any number of laws, Roger restored order. The Depot was improving itself without destroying existing data, a mind unmelting out of the chaos. Roger considered it a disposable thing, the way an insect wasn't a real animal.
  Three engineers approached Simansky with blinking Box icons. "I need a plan," the commissioner said. He admired people who knew what they wanted.
  "A TNZ agent is missing," one engineer stuttered. "He left his post twenty minutes ago. We would like to search Depot grids A2 and V0."
  Simansky didn't move. "Your job is to ignore provocations. I've requested back-up. Return to your posts and keep me informed."
  Throughout the Depot, gates swung in the breeze, as hair-thin antennas radiated waste heat in the glowing evening. "It's like a cancer," Roger said. Central control had failed.
  Rick thought about an underground fungus colony no one noticed until every lawn in a neighborhood died overnight. He was a guest at a strange party. The acting manager paced the room, asking questions that sounded like orders, making the engineers talk faster.
  "Zondyne is copying data between competitors' archives," he told Rick. "We have shared liability, but this is really an opportunity!" Two hours later he would be unconscious.
  A workstation began to screech louder and louder. "Ignore it!" Roger ordered. A red message appeared on so many screens at once the room changed color: "YOU ARE DEA"
  Rick got up. "I'm going downstairs," he told Tina. "Be back in one hour."
  "You're not qualified to hack op-nets," she reminded him.
  "Nothing irreversible, safe mode only. Even if my radio's jammed, Simansky will hear my beacon."

  He crossed the room and walked down a spiral ramp, his head sinking below the carpet. A leaning corkscrew with a recessed stairway strung around the axis, the shaft approached the center as the building narrowed. The floor gripped his shoes but released easily.
  Past the restrooms on the 99th floor the lights dimmed further, with one floor in total darkness. A flashback of Yasov's skull appeared before him, truly horrifying. He heard an outdoor sound like a sigh. It reminded him of the news videos from the ruins of Moscow, where no one talked. Rick had experienced the smell online.
  After an interval, he resumed walking. He had a recurring dream of finding a display of bones in the cavernous halls of a great museum, in the extremely distant future . . . his own.
  The next seventy floors were empty. Long carpets with dim lights behind the furniture, threshold shapes glimmering in the distance. Leaning atriums extended through multiple ceilings. Five thousand people normally worked here.
  On the sixtieth floor was a large reception area. Dark plants were outlined against an artificial sky. Strange to see the stars inside. In five hours time, the janitor robots would storm through here.
  Bezarin's domain was a private resort behind a long wall. Rick passed a forest of bonsai palms and a dim waterfall before entering the main office. He sat down behind the desk, feeling the vast chair adjust around him. On the wall were images of the director with world leaders, celebs, tycoons.
  Rick activated his library and went to work. Bezarin's personal operating system was meaningless to anyone else. Data was stored as unstable connections that were constantly redefined, seeking the shortest paths. He spent a valuable minute looking for patterns. Bezarin wouldn't mind if he had nothing to hide, and he wouldn't tolerate any secrets that threatened his power. Operating under a UN charter, the Depot corporation owned his work.
  Rick ignored the aggressive knocking, before finally unlocking the door from his chair. A lieutenant marched through the office without looking, and stopped at the desk. His nametag read "Orlov".
  "Did you hear the announcement? State Security says it's too dangerous to work alone."
  "If they care that much, why aren't they here?" Rick wondered.
  "This appears to be an unannounced illegal search. We must return upstairs or seal this office." Part of a worldwide security Fam, Orlov seemed unusually worried.
  "I voluntarily end this search," Rick said. No need to explain who was in charge. Zondyne had gotten here first.
  Earlier today, Bezarin had suddenly canceled all his appointments, locked himself in his office, and deleted hundreds of files. Then he had left the Depot for the first time in years.
  Two minutes before Rick had entered, the security cameras on this floor went dark. During the interval, a few of Bezarin's files had been slightly altered. Since he didn't know which files, they had all become worthless. Rick didn't want to play any more games.
  They left the office. Walking two steps behind the lieutenant, he noticed every texture and color. The luxury level decreased as they walked away.
  Rick had a funny reputation. Different people called him reckless or overcautious, as if he could balance fate. UN inspectors were forced to endure regular criticism sessions. At his last performance review, it had been calculated that he should have been dead five times over. Only the antropic principle kept him alive, since he couldn't perceive his own non-existence - which might yet save everybody.

  He had an uncanny feeling that the room was changing around him. His Box alarm went off, and he didn't know the goddamn codes. As they reached the main corridor, every light went out, except the emergency signs. Orlov drew his gun, and waited for his eyes to adapt.
  "We'll take the stairs," he said.
  Around the corner, the reception atrium was empty. A vending machine hummed in an island of light. As the stairwell came into view, Rick saw they were not alone.
  A tall visitor stood halfway down the hall. Its gaze (if that's what it was) met theirs. They stared at each other, a short circuit across evolution.
  Knowing that even his reaction to their appearance would be forever unknowable, Rick had often wondered what aliens looked like. The answer was: a leaning X, a type of articulated trunk with one strong leg and a complex arm, able to fold in many ways, partially split down the middle. It ran upright with exaggerated steps in Earth's low gravity, nowhere near top speed, pounding the carpet like an unstable wheel. At ten meters, he saw clammy, tent-like skin, living clay over strange muscles. Rick felt as if he was the one who was moving.
  Under the circumstances, he had a very unusual reaction: he was bored, and just wanted to get this over with. It deserved contempt. No matter how close this particular encounter would be, aliens on Earth were impossible (he also didn't believe in conspiracies). They did exist, of course, every kind he could imagine and more, but simple statistics kept them out of range. Real aliens were the result of endless natural calculations, and he could never access something that big - not a permitted observation. Despite claims of intergalactic beacons, there were more galaxies than minds, and there would be for a few more decades.
  And furthermore: he guessed that in the unlikely event contact did occur, it would probably start as a small news item that most people would dismiss, perhaps even a joke - but he would know right away. The only UN study on the subject couldn't decide whether an alien invasion would last a fraction of a second, or be instantaneous. The report estimated the probability at one in ten billion.
  Yet here it was, a real fiction, extremely transgressive. Normally, there remained at least a thin boundary between simulations and what now passed for reality. They could fool him for a while, but he always learned the truth in the end. But who had invented this strange shape?
  Despite his ample gaming experience, Orlov didn't fire his gun. Rick assumed a karate position, waiting for something even stranger to happen. As they backed past the opening elevator doors, the lieutenant was brushed aside by a long hand. He landed in the hallway they had just left, rolling on his back. The air moved, and the creature turned a confusing face in passing, as Rick fell the other way.
  When he got up, the corridor was empty again. It looked smaller in the light from the elevator cabin. The thundering footsteps had also stopped. First contact was aborted.
  He backed away as the walls rippled, and part of the hallway began to flow like a river. The distortion moved fast, entering the central elevator without casting a shadow.
  In a binary instant, light exploded all around him, widening his field of view until he felt weightless. A second of darkness, then another flash, and another, coming at a hypnotic rate. He struggled to stay standing. Some of the light was only in his head. Strobing like a searchlight, only his wraparound visor protected him. He glimpsed a shadow in the elevator.
  Sitting on the floor, Orlov aimed his gun. There was a bang, and he fell back down. Rick turned and stepped around him, leaned down, and began to drag the lieutenant away. Reaching for the gun, he felt wetness on his hand. Then he had the weapon.
  During drills this took only one second, but now he was on the floor again, aiming at the ceiling. When he lowered the barrel, lined up the sights, and pulled the trigger, the doors had already closed. There was a final flash, the elevator numerals blinking like an afterthought.
  Lieutenant Orlov lay on his back with blood in his eye from a head wound. There was no pain. It was strange to lose touch with reality. He could no longer see, but his consciousness was unaffected, and he realized it would continue forever. That was his final thought.
  With his back to the closed elevator doors, Rick looked around several times. Then he dialed two numbers at once.