Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire (34 page)

“You have insight into GI development that has already influenced myself and others to move heavily against New Torah,” Ibrahim replied. “But we lost that battle, Cassandra . . .”

“We did not. You conceded it.”

“Given my position, your distinction is meaningless.”

“I don’t think so,” she said softly.

“Cassandra.” The cruiser was beginning its approach toward the Parliament building now, a gentle turn and descend. “I know that you respect democracy. I know that you do not believe that your voice alone should carry a greater weight than any person’s. Yet your actions do not demonstrate it.”

“We work in security,” said Cassandra. “The common people have no say in our decisions either way, yours or mine. Or did you consult them before arriving at your current position?”

“I am just now about to consult with their elected representative,” Ibrahim said sternly. “As I have been in constant consultation with the Federal representatives. They can overrule me if they wish.”

“They are not in possession of all the facts.”

Ibrahim sighed. He’d expected better from her. “And you are?” he suggested.

“More than you.”

“And yet I remain unconvinced.”

Cassandra smiled.

The cruiser disappeared. Ibrahim was seated on an open floor before grand Corinthian pillars, overlooking an old city. Rome, he recognised immediately. Ancient Rome, with all its sights and smells. It took several moments to overcome the disorientation. This was VR. It was very, very impressive VR. He could feel the old chair’s hard edges digging into his thighs, hard leather against his back. The immediate smell was incense, but more distantly there came animal manure. Hooves clopped down nearby streets, and a rattle of passing carts.

“Cassandra?” Ibrahim asked cautiously. He’d been barrier hacked before, but only as a demonstration. This was his first time without warning. As FSA Director, he was supposed to be far too well equipped for it to happen. “Cassandra, this is a very nice trick, but you insisted this was not a kidnapping. I fear that legally it may have just become one.”

Brain napping, the media called it. It required ridiculous amounts of rapid processing power, an overwhelmingly large containment matrix, and a real-time map of every integrated network function his nervous system had been upgraded with. Regular humans couldn’t do it, it needed AIs, and most AIs were far too civilised to engage in something like this. GIs, evidently, were different. Or this one was.

“I didn’t know you could do this,” he admitted, looking around him. If he’d had no memory of how he’d arrived here, he’d have sworn it was real. He stood up. Even that felt real.

“Neither did I,” said Cassandra. She swept before him, now wearing a lacy Roman gown, white with gold trim. And provocative, slit up one leg and entirely bare at the back. Her previously mid-length hair was now curled and swept with combs, and threaded with braid. “But as I said, I’ve been experimenting. I was designed with this in mind as much as anything else, yet my network abilities remain the most under explored capabilities I have, thanks to my usual operating restrictions.”

Ibrahim did not know what to think of the gown. It was so unlike her—not that she objected to such styles, just that she knew what she was, and it was not this. But here on the network, of course, she could dress any way she chose and not compromise her safety, or her nature. Partly, Ibrahim suspected, it was playful provocation. Any heterosexual man would notice her, dressed like this. That he was devout, and loved his wife, she would never doubt. And so he found the dress . . . frustrating. Perhaps even faintly angering. It showed a lack of respect for the relationship they had, teasing him with the promise of something unwanted and disruptive.

“Why here?” he asked her.

“To show you,” she said simply. She beckoned for him to walk to the view. He followed, and her hips sauntered. So much she’d learned in her seven years as a civilian. “It’s not possible, you know. Not against your will, not even for most GIs.”

“This is a 150 Tigs construct at least,” Ibrahim affirmed, looking around.

“Two hundred and ten,” Cassandra corrected, showing him the view. “To bring the FSA Director here against his will took some doing. To hold him here in such a state requires some new tricks.”

“Which new tricks?” Getting angry at her would achieve nothing. She controlled this space, and even if he could lay a finger on her, this was of course not real, and she could not be harmed. And probably her combat skills translated to this place, anyway.

“As I said, I’ve been experimenting. We evolve, you know. I’ve evolved, and not merely as a person. Technologically, up here.” She tapped the side of her head, behind the ear—the traditional location of uplinks. “The next generation shall be even more advanced, and they’ll learn better tricks than mine.”

“A regular human mind is more susceptible to VR simulations than a GI’s,” said Ibrahim. “I hadn’t thought you could even experience this environment.”

“Until recently, neither did I. But technology moves on. Here, let me show you this.”

Ancient Rome vanished, and they were standing in a narrow, crowded lane. It was hot, but the walls provided shade. Everything was commotion, people walking, carrying things, hawkers shouting, mules hauling loads. From the people’s look and dress, Ibrahim guessed North India. Again, it was very pretechnological.

“Come,” said Cassandra. Now she wore a lehenga choli in the traditional embroidered style, a pleated skirt and short bra top, even more provocative than the Roman dress, it left her entire middle bare. She moved down the lane and Ibrahim followed. It was a busy market lane, crowds, sellers and buyers on all sides. Spices assaulted the nostrils, flames from passing cookeries glared upon the skin. Here were fabrics of kaleidoscopic colours, and there jewellery, rows and rows of gold and silver bangles. There were Sikhs and Rajputs in turbans, Muslims in skullcaps, arguments and hawkers’ cries in Hindustani, Urdu, Persian, Punjabi, Kashmiri. No English, so this was pre-Raj.

Men bumped him in passing, and his arm felt the impact. He did not wish to test the very realistic cow shit in the lane by stepping in it. Now he was truly amazed. This was the hardest thing to animate in VR—people. More than people, these were crowds, doing all those things that crowds did, with sounds, smells and colours almost overwhelming. In fact, if one wished to show off the technological prowess of one’s VR matrix, an ancient Indian marketplace would be just about the most complicated thing to animate. Even the very modern markets here in Tanusha were approaching sensory overload, but this old-fashioned chaos was something else again.

“Well, now I am very impressed,” he admitted, following Cassandra about a corner. The surest sign that the scene was not real—Cassandra was the only woman in sight, and yet all these rough and moustachioed men did not turn to stare, as the lehenga choli revealed curves and her blonde hair flashed in the occasional splash of sunlight between buildings. “What period are we?”

“A few more corners and you will see,” she returned past her shoulder. They walked some more, turning corners and lanes, and Ibrahim reflected that the absence of wandering cows probably meant the Mughal period . . . and then the lanes ended and a grand space opened before them.

Here was a mosque, huge and wide, with great walls and minarets. Its three enormous teardrop domes remained in the final stages of construction, surrounded by scaffolding.

“Jama Masjid,” Ibrahim murmured. “We are in Delhi, 1656.” And what they’d been walking through was the Chawri Bazar. “The time of Shah Jahan.”

“One of your ancestors,” Cassandra suggested.

Ibrahim shrugged. “Perhaps. Most of India’s invaders came through Afghanistan at some point.” He looked about. The wide scene was now suddenly vast with open space, yet about them people still crowded. For the VR to be processing at once vast spaces and market crowds . . . “I can’t imagine how many Tigs this takes to generate.”

“Thousands,” said Cassandra.

“That’s not possible,” said Ibrahim. “The technology does not exist.”

“For integration with the human brain, no,” said Cassandra. “But as I said, you don’t know me very well.”

Jama Masjid and old Delhi abruptly vanished. Now they stood in a room. It was the president’s room in the Parliament building. Here were the old familiar furnishings, the desk behind which Katia Neiland had once sat. Now the space was occupied by President Singh, gazing into space. Also present in various chairs were senior advisors, several cabinet ministers, and some security men, some standing, a few sitting. None of them moved.

“This scene is not so challenging,” said Ibrahim. “Twenty Tigs at most.”

Cassandra was wearing her CSA suit now. She sat on the president’s desk, right before his vacant gaze. “Zero Tigs,” she said.

Ibrahim blinked. Then stared about. The main difference between this scene and those previous was that in this one, the people did not move. He knelt abruptly and ran his hand over the floor rug. It bristled against his hand in the way that only true texture could.

He stared up at Cassandra, as she drew up her legs and sat fully cross-legged on the desk. “This is real?” he breathed. Cassandra nodded. The look was back, the lab rat was being watched.

Why were the people not moving? Ibrahim walked to the nearest—Communications Minister Petrov. She stood easily enough, all motor functions operational; she blinked and breathed and showed every sign of neurological health. Save that she did not move, nor seem to react to anything around her. None of them did.

Leaning against a far wall, he spotted a face familiar from security briefings—Poole, he recalled the GI’s name. Arms folded and watching him, expression not unlike Cassandra’s. Against another wall, Han, more familiar. And Ogun, by the door. Only the regular humans were immobilised.

“You hacked them all?” It wasn’t possible. It was so far beyond impossible it lay outside comprehension. Cassandra just looked at him, with cross-legged insolence on the president’s desk. Ibrahim put both hands to his face. “What have you done?”

“Scratched the surface,” said Cassandra. “I haven’t had cause to explore it before. But GIs were made from inception to process information. Tacnet was the greatest innovation of infantry combat since the firearm, and information processing creates situational awareness. I process at seventeen times beyond what any regular human can, as you know.

“But you don’t know what that means. I didn’t, until recently. Many high-designation GIs, coordinating together, can maintain containment matrixes for high level VR functions that increase exponentially in power. I came across it practising for Pyeongwha—we tried all sorts of new stuff there. GIs are made to operate in an information environment, and here in a civilian city, with all these open and hackable networks, we just process so much faster than anyone else. Doubtless the defensive writers will find counter codes to this once they realise the risk, and then begins the usual arms race of offensive and defensive software, but I’m starting to write the stuff myself again now, and I know so much more than I did. It turns out I’m better at that than the very best regular human programmers. I’m built for it. And with friends helping, I could go even faster.”

The walk through Chawri Bazar, Ibrahim realised. She’d been navigating him through the halls of the Parliament building. He’d actually been walking, for real, like a zombie, thinking he was time-frozen in the cruiser. But she’d let immersion time run real-time, and Allah knew how she’d managed that. Time was supposed to run much slower in full immersion VR. What had happened to all the people they’d surely passed along the way? Had they been hacked, too? Was the whole Parliament building network down?

“This VR stuff is an amazing thing,” she said, leaning forward slightly in her cross-legged pose, as though to make a point. “Regular human brains are fooled by it. I’m not. If I get it set up well like this, in systems I’m familiar with, I can just turn you off. All of you.”

Now Ibrahim was properly alarmed. “Cassandra,” he said, “this is not ethical. You release these people at once.”

“You’re damn right it’s not ethical,” Cassandra replied, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not built to be ethical. I’m built to dominate. I’m unequal. Understand what that means. It means that the worst fears of all the GI-haters out there are right. I could be the death of you all, should I choose, and should my friends choose with me. I could end this civilisation.”

Ibrahim stared at her.

“Now imagine that there’s a place out there in League space that is trying to improve on me, using unsafe technologies that could turn the next generation of GIs into psychopathic monsters. And understand that if they succeed, then not only is Callay not safe, but none of us are. I think it’s possible that what you see me do here, is just the tip of the iceberg. If I’m right, then even I can’t protect you from that next wave. They’ll take me out first, and that’ll be it. It—do you understand me? No more. No more any of this, this wonderful, free civilisation, filled with wonderful people whom I’ve grown to love so much.

“Now, I’m sorry I’ve had to make this demonstration, but understand you’ve only seen the tip of what I can do, because I’ve only seen the tip. I’m still learning. Pray that whatever comes next from New Torah does not know more and learn faster. Now, while you’re here, will you please discuss with this damn fool of a president why we need to go hard after New Torah, irrespective of whatever threats the League makes? Or do I have to wake him up and do it myself?”