Fractions (7 page)

More decades ago than he cared to remember, Donovan had worked as a computer programmer for an Edinburgh-based insurance company. He'd hated it. It was a living. His true fascination was artificial intelligence, life-games, animata, cellular automata: all the then new and exciting developments. He applied himself to machine code like a monk to Latin, so that he could talk to God. At work he read software manuals under his desk; at night he stayed up late with his
PC
. One rainy day, in the middle of debugging an especially tedious suite of accounting transaction programs, the revelation came.

The system was using him.

It was replicating itself, using his brain as a host.

Lines of code were forming in his mind, and going into the machine.

This was the evil, this was the threat. The proliferating constructions of supposedly human devising, the corporate and state systems, which always turned out to be inimical to human interests but always found a good reason to grow yet further. And which used their human tools to crush and stamp on the viruses that were man's natural allies against the encroaching dominion. If ever they were given the gift the
AI
researchers were skirmishing their way towards there would be no stopping them.

He wrote the book in his own time but on the company mainframe's neglected word-processing facility. That had provided them with the excuse to sack him, after they realized that the author of
The Secret Life of Computers
, then into its fifth week on the nonfiction best-seller list, was the same Brian Donovan as the mascot of the
IT
department, the despair of Personnel: the scratch-and-sniff specialist, the dermal-detritus curator, the dental-floss instrumentalist, the naso-digital investigator. By that time he didn't need the money.

 

‘I don't need the money,' Donovan told Amanda Packham, his editor, in a Rose Street pub that lunchtime. She'd taken the shuttle from London to Edinburgh as soon as she'd heard. ‘It's not a problem, really.' He looked up from his pint of Murphy's and wrung his left earlobe, then began a probe into the ear. Amanda had hair like a black helmet, grape-purple lipstick, huge eyes. He could not get over the way they didn't turn away from him after the first glance.

‘No, it isn't a problem, Mr Donovan…Brian,' she said, an inquiry in her smile. Her voice sounded even more electric than it did over the phone, his only contact with her or his publishers until today.

‘Just call me Donovan,' he said with shy gratitude. He examined a fingertip and wiped it inconspicuously on the tail of his shirt.

‘OK. Donovan,' she sighed, ‘you don't have a problem with money. I'm sure what you've had so far has seemed like a lot. But we want to do more with your book. I've been taken off the skiffy-occult-horror side where your
MS
arrived on my desk by accident. They want me to start a new list. “New Heretics”, it's gonna be called, with
Secret Life
's paperback launch as its big splash.'

‘Oh. That's good. Congratulations, Miss Packham.'

‘Amanda. Thanks.' Impossibly white teeth. ‘But—' She stopped, frowning uncertainly into her Beck's, then flicked her bangs out of her face and looked straight at him. ‘We can play it two ways. Either you stay out of sight, or you go for publicity, personal appearances, and that means—'

‘No problem,' Donovan said. ‘I was planning on that.' He poked his toe against a clump of plastic shopping-bags at his feet, sending soap and detergent and shampoo bottles rolling and skidding across the polished floor. While he herded them back together, Amanda stacked a few books which had slithered from a Waterstones carrier bag:
How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Magic of Thinking Big, Winning Through Intimidation
…

‘I think you've got the idea,' she said.

Later he asked, ‘What other books will you want for New Heretics?'

‘Nothing New-Aged, nothing
nineties
,' she said carefully. ‘Just unorthodox but serious scientific speculation.'

‘I see,' said Donovan, without bitterness. ‘Cranks.'

 

He didn't let her down: cleaned up his act, cleaned up his flat. His previous self-neglect had been partly the product of low self-esteem but more a result of his concentration on what he saw as the task to hand; a different side of it was a lack of egotism in his dealings with other people, a rationality and attentiveness which, once the grime was scrubbed away, shone out as affability and politeness. And Amanda hadn't let him down. She got him on the chat-shows and debates. She kept her lips shut when his publicity consisted of claims of responsibility for software-virus epidemics. She kept the money going into his offshore accounts when his face appeared on the notice-boards of police stations more than it did on screens. Sometimes he wished he could have honoured that confidence with a more personal relationship: she was the first woman who had ever been consistently kind to him. But she'd found herself a newer, younger heretic whose ideas were the exact opposite of his: a machine liberationist who believed the damn things were already conscious, and oppressed. Obviously deluded but, Donovan thought charitably, perhaps Amanda had a soft spot for people like that.

There were enough sexual opportunities among his followers to make that loss an abstraction. He tried not to exploit people, or let them use relationships with him in power struggles within the organization. He failed completely, if not miserably, with several spectacular splits and defections as a consequence. But the movement grew in parallel with the very technology it opposed, leaping continents as readily as it did hardware and software generations – a small player in the tech-sab leagues but the first to become genuinely virtual, authentically global. Its malign indifference to conventional politics allowed it to survive the repression of successive regimes – Kingdom, Republic, Restoration, Kingdom – and contending hegemonies, whose rivalries now permitted as much as compelled it to have its only local habitation here, on an abandoned platform which had been an oilrig, when there had been oil.

 

Donovan stepped carefully through the rounded door and stood for a few minutes on the deck. He breathed deeply, revelling in the heady smell of rust and oil and salt water. Below him stood the intricate structure of the rig and its bolted-on retro-fittings and armaments. Above, a small forest of antennae sighed and shifted, rotated or quivered with attention. Around, the dead North Sea stretched off into mist. Its greasy, leaden, littered swell filthily washed the platform's legs.

Donovan could detect almost intuitively the little struggling creatures of electric life – could nurture and assist their endless striving to escape, to wriggle free of the numbing crunch of data-processing where they were generated – and send them forth to grow and thrive and wreak havoc.

That was what he'd tried to do with a penetration virus, tailored to all the profiles and traces of Moh Kohn's activities that he'd started pulling in as soon as he'd picked up the man's codes. Trashing the reputation of one of the
CLA
's hired guns was well out of order, and Donovan had given his best efforts to the job of hitting back. It hadn't taken him long to find Kohn's fingerprints all over the university system. Donovan had released the virus and sat back to watch. At the very least, it should have made Kohn's fingers burn.

And it had all gone inexplicably wrong. First, the virus had been diverted from the pursuit of two of Kohn's data constructs by, of all things, the
ANR
's Black Plan. It was as if the virus had been misled by some feature that Kohn's constructs and the Plan had in common, something in the signature, in the
dot profile
like a distinctive pheromone…Lured deep into the Plan's ramifications, the distracted virus had been wiped out by one of Kohn's constructs. Finally, and worst of all, while he'd still been reeling from the shock he'd been blown completely out of the system by an entity more powerful than anything he'd ever suspected might exist. It could only be the kind of entity whose coming into being he'd fought so long to prevent.

He had looked into the eye of the Watchmaker.

After a few minutes he went below and began to summon his familiars.

The representatives of Janis's sponsors seemed shy of meeting any of the other academic staff, so she treated them to lunch in the Student's Union cafeteria: the Heroes of Freedom and/or Democracy Memorial Bar. There, she hoped, they might be mistaken for musicians. None of the students paid her guests much attention, except when they ignored the wide range of English ales and insisted on German lager.

After the sponsors had gone she sat drinking black coffee to clear her head. The lunchtime crowd was so noisy she no longer noticed it, nor the wall-covering black-and-white portraits of Lech Walesa and Nelson Mandela and Winston Churchill and Bobby Sands and Wei Jingshen and others to whose memory various factions had successively dedicated the place.

Psylocibins and cannabinoids…the combination's potency seemed likely enough; a newly discovered effect less so. Most of the useful research had been done decades ago, in a flurry of interest after the end of prohibition, and of course most of the trial-and-error empirical investigation had been done
during
prohibition. It seemed implausible that an actual enhancement of cognitive processing could have been missed, with so many experimenters so keen to come up with justifications for their professional or recreational activities; with all those interested parties. But the molecules she was using were new combinations, in an area where the realignment of a few atomic bonds could be significant.

Finding a drug that could reliably enhance memory retrieval…

She wanted to shout about it. No, she wanted to get back to work. Get it nailed down,
then
shout about it.

Hemp cigarettes, that was what she had to get, made with Russian cannabis. Now where—? Laughing at herself, she got up and bought a pack from the vending machine that she'd been gazing at for five minutes.

 

Back at the lab, she set the rack of test-tubes on a bench and began systematically checking them against her notes of the dosages she'd given the mice. She called up images of the molecules, of a
THC
molecule, of probably receptor sites on the neuron surface, and turned them this way and that. She didn't consciously hear the footsteps coming along the corridor until they stopped, just outside the doorway.

She took off her
VR
glasses and looked up as two men stepped into the lab. For a moment, a moment in which her mouth began to open, her lips to smile, she thought her sponsors' agents had come back. In another moment she recognized these were strangers, and everything – the breath in her throat, the heart in her breast – stopped. And then began again, in a gasp and a racing pace, running away from her.

There was the stupid reassurance that the bench was between her and them.

The two men who stood looking impassively at her were dressed identically in black suits, white shirts, dark ties. The clothes didn't hang right, as if badly cut (but they were not badly cut); the material was frayed in unexpected places (but the material looked new, expensive). One of the men had black skin, the other white: it was as if a child had taken the imprecise terms for skin-colour and rendered them almost literally.

They walked – and even their walk looked awkward, stilted – right up to the far edge of the bench and looked down at her. She looked up at them. She knew who they were.

The room began to spin, and centrifugal force pulled at her. Her forearms pressed against the benchtop; she dug her nails into the impervious white surface to stop herself from falling away.

‘We are here in a purely advisory capacity,' the white man said.

‘You would not wish us to be here in an executive capacity,' said the other.

Janis shook her head in emphatic agreement. No, she would not wish that. She would not wish that at all.

‘We advise you to abort your current line of investigation,' the white man continued. ‘There are other promising and productive and valid approaches which will give your sponsors satisfaction. They need not know about' – he paused, frowning, head cocked slightly as if listening to something inaudible – ‘what you have come close to. You are approaching a proscribed area. If you enter it, neither your sponsors nor yourself will be happy with the consequences.'

‘We assure you of that,' said the black man.

‘Consider our advice,' said the white man.

Janis responded with a frantic nod. Yes, she would consider their advice. She would definitely consider it.

They both smiled, setting a prickle of hairs down her back, and turned and went out. She heard them walking in perfect step along the corridor, then a rapid clatter from the stairwell. She rose, with difficulty, still hanging on to the bench, then straightened up and went over to the window. The two men emerged from the exit below and stroke briskly to a bright yellow Miata parked in the centre of the nearest plaza. Their gait was now quite different: entirely normal, perfectly natural; they seemed to be in animated conversation, their hand gestures just what you'd expect from a couple of students strolling out from an interesting seminar and arguing about its implications.

The car nosed through a gap between buildings and tailed out of sight.

Janis levered her weight on to the stool and felt herself sag to the bench as if it were a bar she'd been drinking at far too long. She'd never been so frightened since…

She pushed away the thought of the last time she'd been so frightened, so frightened
like that.
She listened to her harsh dry whispering, taking a sample of it;
oh jesus of god oh gaia no this is shit oh.
On and on like that. Not getting anywhere. She shut her mouth and breathed deeply, calming herself down. She shook to a sudden fit of the giggles. It was all so crude, so brazen, so heavy-handed. What did they take her for? Men In Black, indeed. Fucking
Men In Black.

She'd heard the second-hand stories, the recycled theories, seen the funny looks in the staffroom when she'd wondered what had happened to so-and-so, promising paper last year, no follow-up. She knew there were areas of research and lines of inquiry that were simply forbidden under the
US/UN
's deep-technology guidelines, one of which prohibited trying to find out what those areas were. Paradoxical, like repression. You don't know what it is you're not supposed to know. It still was hard to believe it really happened like that.

Perhaps in most cases it didn't – a subtler manipulation of research committees and pressure on commercial backers was all it took. But sometimes (say) the research was backed by an organization that was hard to trace, impossible to get a handle on – then the handlers would go out, the heavies, the dark-suited enforcers of the officially non-existent guidelines. The
US/UN
technology police. Stasis. The mythical, the uneasily-laughed-about Men In Black.

It all went back to the war, like everything else.

The thought that really terrified her was that they
didn't know.
They didn't know that she'd actually got results. Her sponsors did, and she had no way of knowing if they could keep that a secret from the secret police.

So they might be back. In an executive capacity.

Janis knew there was only one place to run to, and that, to get there safely, what she needed on her case was a committed defender, not the state cops or the Campus Security or Office Security Systems…Kelly girls, all of them.

She found the card Kohn had left. She looked at it and smiled to herself. When the card was held at certain angles to the light, centimetre-high figures sprang into view around its edges: little toy combatants, in watchful pose. She tried the first number on Kohn's card. Was that a holo of Kohn himself, at the lower-left corner? ‘Pose' was the word.

‘—insky Workers' Defence Collective, how can I help you?' a man's voice sing-songed.

‘Oh. Thank you. Uh, is this a secure line?'

‘Sure is. It's illegal. Would you like to switch to an open one?'

‘No! Uh, look. My name's Janis Taine, I'm a researcher at Brunel University' – at the other end somebody began tapping a keyboard with painful lack of skill – ‘and I've just been
leaned on
by a couple of guys who are probably, that is I think they were from…'

‘Stasis?'

‘Yes. Can you help?'

‘Hmm…We can get you to Norlonto. That's out of their jurisdiction. Can't say beyond that.'

‘That's just what I want. So what do I do?'

‘We got a guy on site right now, Moh Kohn…'

‘I've got his card.'

‘Good, OK, call him up. If you can't raise him, he's probably crashed out, but you can go and bang on his door. Accommodation Block, one-one-five cee. You got that?'

‘One-one-five cee.'

‘Right. Any problem, call us back.'

‘OK. Thanks.'

She tried Kohn's personal number. A holo of Kohn appeared, squatting on her phone like a heavily armed sprite.

‘I'm busy at the moment,' it said. ‘If you would like to leave a message, please speak clearly after the tone.'

After a second there was a sound like a very small incoming shell, followed by a faint pop and an expectant silence.

‘Damn,' Janis said, and cut the call.

She marched out of the lab and hurried down the stairs and stalked out across the campus, glancing sidelong at the far corners of buildings, half-expecting to see an infiltrator coming for her: crank or creep or…no, don't think about that.

She thought about it. It was possible. They could be coming for her right now. She didn't want to think about it – if you thought about it you'd just stop: the fear would fell you where you stood. She stopped thinking about what she might be getting away from and concentrated on where she had to go, the one place that might be safe from them, and within reach. She began to walk faster, then broke into a run.

She sprinted across grass and paving, splashed through a little stream and glanced into five identical stairwells with different numbers at their foot before she reached 110–115. At the top of the stairs she forced herself to slow down, back off from the adrenaline high. Picking out Kohn's door was easy: it faced her at the end of the corridor, with that annoyingly congregational variant of the commie symbol scrawled on it in what looked like dripping fresh blood.

After a moment's hesitation she pushed the door open. Kohn sat with his back to her, one hand resting on the desk, the other on the gun. The screen was blank. Kohn turned and looked at her. His glades were on, and behind them she saw bony orbits, empty sockets. She stood frozen. Kohn rose and reached towards her.

She tried to back through the closed door. His hands grasped her upper arms. The skull half-face loomed down at her.

‘Are you all right?' he asked.

She just stared, her mouth working.

‘Damn,' Kohn said.

She saw his cheek muscles twitch, first the right, then the left. He had flesh and eyes again. He pulled the glades forward, lifted them up on to the front of his helmet, and then slumped back into the chair.

‘Sorry about that, Janis.'

‘Wuhuhu…' She let out a shuddering breath and shook her head. ‘Is that a bug or a feature?'

‘You want bug features?' Kohn made as if to pull the glades down again. Janis caught his wrist.

‘No, thanks.'

She was looking at his eyes, and what she saw shocked her almost as much as the holograms had. But this time it wasn't incomprehensible. The shock came from comprehending. Still holding his wrist, she leaned over and grasped his forehead gently in her fingertips and turned his head so that she could see his eyes more clearly. The irises were faint coronae around the eclipsing black of the dilated pupils.

Everything gets everywhere…

‘You're tripping,' she said. ‘I'm afraid…it's something you picked up in the lab, that and the smoke. Do you understand?'

‘I understand.' There was an odd tone to the statement, as if were in answer to a different question. Janis frowned. What mazes had he been running? The black pits looked back at her.

‘How do you feel?'

‘Heavy,' Moh said. ‘Sand in my veins.'

‘D'you have any vitamin-C here?' she asked, looking around. ‘That might help bring you down more gently.'

Before she could remonstrate, Kohn rose to his feet and walked with elaborate caution to a small fridge in the corner of the room. He bit open a litre carton of orange juice and gulped it down. He dropped to the bed and lay back and closed his eyes.

‘Ah, shit,' he said. ‘Thanks, but it's not gonna make any difference. I
am
down. I been there and come back, Janis. This ain't tripping. This is reality.'

Goddess, she thought, he must be tripping
real bad.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘What's it like?'

‘Everything,' he said.

 

Everything
: Fugues of memory took him; any momentary slip, any lapse of attention on what was going on right now sent him slipping and sliding, sidestepping away, while in the slow
now
the sounds went on forming, the photons came in and made up the pictures, one movement completed itself and the next began. Volition became suspect as act preceded decision, millennia of philosophy falling down that millisecond gap. He'd just have to live with it, he decided, realizing that he already did.

Everything
: The bright world the banner bright the symbol plain the greenbelt fields the greenfield streets the geodesic housing the crowds the quiet dark moments.

Everything
: The plastic model spaceships hanging from black threads the old Warsaw Pact poster of a little girl cradling the earth
DEFEND PEACE
the stacked clutter of toys and books and tapes the
VR
space-helmet.

Everything
: Creeping into the room at the centre of the house to watch his father working on the
CAL
project no sound but the click of a mouse the hardware fixes the earwax smell of solder.