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Betrayals: twentyFourby Steve Bowers |
I
thank you,
Cousin Librarian, for meeting me again to discuss the Auguste Gienah
case in the light of information from the Deeper Covenanter world of
Syie planetoid.
You are welcome; I believe we can now correlate this information with
that already obtained from Gienah’s memory, and with luck
come to some conclusions. This discussion is to be considered a matter
of public record, of course.
As I indicated in my earlier dispatches, Syie Planetoid is almost
completely under Negentropist Alliance jurisdiction now; some small
pockets of resistance are being dealt with, but are hindered by the
thickness of the ice on that world. Our forces are charged
with the duty to prevent unnecessary loss of life; it seems that many
of the Covenanters do not share this inhibition, and mount suicidal
attacks on the investigating team.
However
we have secured the memory store and the backed up identities of
billions of Arkab B citizens; it is unfortunately the case that these
identities have been hijacked while on that planetoid.
I see.
Several dozen cubic kilometers of processing substrate have been found,
actively maintaining an accelerated virtual universe, known by its
inhabitants as the Tilted World; a considerable fraction of those
backed-up identities that you sent for storage on this planetoid have
been reactivated and used to populate this virtual world. I have to
tell you that this virtual world was particularly cruel and violent;
although the hijacked identities of your citizens were not allowed
to die, they did experience progressive memory loss and so
now must be considered new individuals in their own right.
This substrate would be a virtual personality generator, then, in short?
In a way, yes. The new individuals produced by thousands of
years of accelerated lifetime and suffering would be valuable in the
interstellar market; virtual cosmos designers are always crying out for
new personalities to populate their universes, and human-derived
personalities with little or no memory of the real world are
particularly valuable. The mysterious spacecraft that we intercepted
and destroyed three days ago was apparently a trader in such generated
personalities. We have entered the virtual Tilted World cosm, and
following interviews with the inhabitants we have discovered that one
of the traders seems to have been using the appearance and mannerisms
of the Arkab B citizen transapient Lorca Alrami. Of course in a virtual
universe any arbitrary appearance can be adopted by any entity with
access to the code; but the association of Alrami with the hijacked
personalities reinforces the information we have obtained from the
memories of Auguste Cis/Trans Gienah.
That is correct; the investigations we have carried out into the deep
memories of citizen Gienah show that he and his symaiote vec, Max
Handy6754 were infected with a compulsion virus to visit the town of
Chico on Nova Terra in the Tau Ceti system. While there they met with
several former Arkab Prior citizens, including the human-seeming
transapient Lorca Alrami; they were apparently lured into a simulated
representation of the Old Solar System and Earth, but were both
infected with advanced trojan horse viruses during their period in the
simulation.
This infection seems to have been extremely sophisticated, if it was
undetected by the ship and customs AI on their journey home; what
forensic information do we have on the functionality of this virus?
From fragments remaining in Gienah’s skin and in the memory
core of his symaiote it appears that the virus was concealed within the
tattoo graphics programme introduced by Alrami in Chico. Certain
subatomic particles were entangled with corresponding particles in Max
Handy’s memory core, and were maintained in an particular
state by information transmitted by classical channel, which
piggybacked on the shared link which Gienah and Handy constantly
maintained, However as soon as they were out of communication range for
the first time, which occurred only when the Blessed Dolphin began her
mass ascension drive, those particles were free to change state in a
disordered fashion, shutting down a large part of the program and
leaving the cunningly hidden virus.
As we know this virus itself was the final part in a transapient
jigsaw, which assembled itself in the mind of the Blessed Dolphin and
put her out of action; this attack could easily been fatal.
As
we have considerable evidence against Lorca Alrami I suggest we now
interview him; however he is no longer in Arkab Prior space, as I
understand the situation.
No, he is not. As soon as the Blessed Dolphin announced that she was to
hold a mass ascension in Rendell ring, Lorca Alrami set off for the
Arkab Prior A wormhole gate in a displacement drive cutter; he has been on
route for twenty five days now, and should reach the gate in two more
days, unless he has changed course out beyond our current light cone.
There is no reason for concern; his flight was noted by one of our halo
defence craft, the Black Peridot, which has been pursuing him ever
since; this craft carries a nanogauge communications wormhole, so we
can confirm that Alrami is now decelerating towards the stargate, and
attempting to negotiate with the Wormhole AI to obtain his passage
through. If you desire, we may send limited versions of our avatars to
the Peridot in order to communicate with Alrami directly.
Thank you, Cousin; that would be an excellent idea.
A door opened. Beyond they could see a richly decorated
dining hall, and a table set for tea. The avatar of the Arkab B
necklace Librarian walked into this virtual space, accompanied by the
avatar of the Negentropist Bailiff. She felt very conscious of the fact
that her processing capacity was very low in this place; her avatar has
been sent by nanogauge wormhole to the high speed defence ship the
Black Peridot, which was communicating with the ship carrying Lorca
Alrami by electromagnetic radiation; the ships were a hundred thousand
kilometers apart, so there was a noticeable lightspeed delay as well.
In effect, she was reduced to an expert system comparable in
capacity to an ordinary human being; she did not feel fear like a human
would, but from somewhere in her distant past she had the memory of
fear and its effects on the human body and mind, and that memory made
her afraid. She remembered a human life, thousands of years before,
which had been her own; a woman working in a data bank repository on
the distant planet of Eden, who lived and loved and feared, and finally
ascended; she had grown since then, adding layers of mentality like a
snowball- even subsuming other conscious entities, including humans,
provolves and vecs, until she had become something which would have
been inconceivable to that simple but ambitious data technologist long
ago. But all the while that woman had formed the core of her
personality, and now, reduced to a human level proxy, that woman was
surfacing once again.
The Librarian was beginning to think of herself, not as the
Lady Ur-ner-geb from Arkab, but as simple Sallie Hung Chan from Eden.
She glanced at the Bailiff; in him she could somehow see
reflected a fresh-faced young detective working on his first case. She
wondered who he was.
At the other end of the table a figure stood; rather it
leant backwards at a slight angle, totally motionless except for the
eyes. This was Lorca Alrami; he was somewhere on the ship encased in
nanostasis machinery to protect his fragile human body against the
punishing deceleration. In order to arrive at the distant wormhole
mouth in less than thirty day Alrami’s ship was pulling
nearly forty gees all the way; the advanced drive system could handle
it, but his unprotected body could not.
As Alrami was a transapient himself, no doubt he had an
extensive exoself; his human form could easily be of little importance
to his continued existence as a thinking entity, but it was impossible
to be sure (as yet).
The apparition at the end of the table seemed to be a
real-time image of his body as it lay in stasis. Now he began to speak,
not without effort.
“Please do take a seat; forgive me if I
don’t sit down.”(pause)
“Thank you.” (pause). The Bailiff
replied, light speed delay making conversation a little
difficult.
The Bailiff exchanged a glance with the Librarian, (with
Sallie,) and motioned for her to be seated, which she did. Coolly the
Bailiff took the teapot and began to pour tea (with some ceremony) for
himself and Sallie, perhaps to hide his apprehension.
“I imagine you know why we have come to speak to
you.”(pause). The voice of the Bailiff lacked its normal
resonant tone and presence; he sounded human and small.
“Enlighten me.”(pause).
“We have evidence linking you with the hijack of
several billion inactive human copies, and with the attempt on the life
of the Blessed Dolphin Chwrrii Nashira. You are currently engaged in an
attempt to flee the system; we cannot prevent that directly, but be
aware that all our evidence is being transmitted to the Wormhole Nexus
intelligence, and on balance it is unlikely that you will be allowed to
pass.”(pause)
“The Wormhole AI is a buffoon. He wasn’t
going to let me through already, even before your tale-telling. Now I
have no chance. Oh, well, you win some, you lose
some.”(pause).
“So
you admit that you were involved in the attack on the Fluke?”
(pause)
Sallie spoke for the first time, her voice sounding to her
like that long lost woman, and like someone far out of her depth.
“Ah yes; the Blessed Dolphin. Yes; and the other
thing. I notice you in particular omitted to mention the other thing.
Well, I’ll come back to that in a minute.”
Lorca’s heavy eyes (each one weighing forty times normal)
focussed with difficulty on her; smiled. Sallie felt uncomfortable, but
didn’t know why; she seemed to have awkward gaps in her
knowledge, a dangerous thing when investigating a crime.
“The Dolphin was engaged in an ascension crusade,
of course; but you realise that no transapient ever does anything
without at least several motives. She was gathering souls from the
Necklace habitats, from all walks of life; She loved to gather them in,
and talk to them during and after the ascension, about their lives,
about their experiences, about their knowledge.
Many of the other Keterists in the Jewelled worlds
could not understand her obsession with the elevation of so many simple
souls; certain factions resent the effort, saying that She would be
better employed using her considerable abilities increasing the
toposophic levels of the existing inhabitants of Keter. Believe me, it
is a fiercely competitive milieu inside those Keterist databanks; I
have spent countless subjective years in there striving against those
know-it-alls. We are much better off out here, in the real world, among
the human sheep, tending our little flocks.”(pause)
“I expect it is even more of an advantage if you
choose to hide your true nature under a bushel, as you seem to have for
many years”(pause). The Bailiff put his cup politely down in
the saucer before him, and picked up a biscuit; a madelaine, which he
examined but did not eat.
“Yes, quite. Ha. But the Keterists
didn’t know the main reason for Her crusade; at least most of
them didn’t, but they are a devilish clever lot, so quite a
few of them probably suspected. The Blessed Dolphin was trawling
through the habitats for information, you see. Once a person ascends to
the next toposophic level suddenly they realise things about themselves
they never understood before; and often they bring new insights into
old, apparently irrelevant data that seemed entirely trivial before the
event. She has been digging into the collective minds and memories of
the A1B necklace looking for something, and zeroing in, getting closer
to the truth. She very nearly found it, too.”(pause)
“So she has been looking for your shady hijacking
operation, is that it?” The Bailiff said, gently replacing
the madelaine. “And you put a stop to
her search, with this weapon you prepared years ago, Auguste
Gienah’s skin. I see.”(pause)
“Oh, no; She wasn’t particularly interested in our
little operation, although she would have no doubt loved to discover
the secret and bring it into the light of day. No, she was looking for
the same thing your little black fleet of negentropist
‘defence’ craft are searching for; the same thing
many of her Keterist chums are searching for. How big a fleet have the
Keterists got following me, by the way?”(pause)
“More than half of their strength, I’d
say”(pause) said the Bailiff.
“Good; then I’ve –“
“Displacement drive Vessel registered to Lorca Alrami out of
Rendell, your attention please!”
A comical, fat, bald avatar suddenly appeared to the left of
Alrami, dressed in a doorman’s outfit. This figure was
evidently the Wormhole AI, but this was not His habitual avatar; Alrami
had obviously selected an insulting apparition for the spirit of the
Nexus, which was in some ways the most powerful AI in the entire
system. As the doorman spoke a monocle repeatedly flew out of his eye,
which he constantly fumbled back in.
“In the light of certain information recently received, I
have decided to decline your request for passage through the Wormhole
Nexus. If you wish to appeal against this decision that is your right,
but frankly, you haven’t got a human’s chance in a
gamma-ray burst. Thank you for your time.”
“No good arguing with Him, of course; for one
thing He is still over a light hour away. Oh well, time for plan B. Now
then, Bailiff; when you get back to the Necklace, remember to enquire
into how we obtained the codes for that backup database back on Syie
planetoid; but that is enough information for now.”(pause)
“What do you mean-?”(pause) said Sallie,
but she was beginning to guess; she was, for all her limitations, a
detective expert system, and she could piece together some of the gaps
in her own knowledge. Gaps in the knowledge placed in her memory by her
own higher self.
“No time now; but the fleet of Keterists are as
convinced as you are that I know the secret you are all looking for;
and in some ways you are right, but I don’t know it all. But
the Keterists will have to catch me to find that out. Goodby-“
All during their conversation, the vircaptain of the Black
Peridot had been jinking around randomly at the edge of the laser comm
beam from Alrami’s ship; although they were less than a light
second apart, that would give him enough time to take avoiding action
if anything suspicious happened. When Alrami bid them goodbye, the
vircaptain took the Peridot out of the beam altogether, in a random
direction; the massive x-ray laser blast that followed missed the ship
but was close enough for some spill-over damage, eliminating his
forward sensors. By the time he grew a new set of sensors, seconds
later, the Bailiff and the Librarian were watching from the safety of
the Peridot’s featureless dataspace, and they eventually
located Alrami (and his Keterist pursuers) as they accelerated off into
interstellar space.
