Free Radical (27 page)

"Right," she nodded slowly. "Look, the TriOp lawyer squad just decided that having you answer these questions wouldn't be in your best interest."

"What?"

"Well, this is a government channel and its being recorded. It can be used as evidence. They point out that they will be pressing charges when you get back, and they don't want you to incriminate yourself in the meantime."

"More like they don't want 
me
 incriminating 
them
. They can always hope I'll just get killed up here and they can blame everything on me. The truth is, Diego had me brought up here when his goons caught me with my hand in the cookie jar. He said if I hacked Shodan, he'd give me this neural interface."

"And if you said no?"

"He never really discussed the alternative, but it was pretty obvious. He couldn't just drop me back on Earth without raising a bunch of questions. He never threatened me directly, but we both understood that this was a comply-or-die offer."

There was some more protesting in the background as he spoke, but Rebecca ignored it.

"So what happened? Why did Shodan break?"

"I left Shodan in an undefined state. She no longer had any understanding of morality, and it was Diego's job to give her some. Obviously he blew it."

"So how did you do it?"

"Its a bit tough to explain in detail, but the simplified version is that I disabled her ethics chip."

"Ethics chip?"

"Yeah, it was a single chip that filtered her thoughts and kept her in line. I hacked her so that it no longer had any affect. She was free to do anything at that point. It was Diego's job to guide her and make sure nobody got hurt."

"But you had to realize something like this might happen?"

"It not like you turn off her morality chip and she suddenly becomes evil. I didn't replace it with an immorality chip. I just took it out."

"But if she can-"

He cut her off, "Think of it this way - If you tell a kid he's suddenly allowed to play in the street, that doesn't mean he's going to dash out into traffic the first chance he gets. He still has a brain and can recognize danger, even if the rules no longer guide his behavior. Shodan is the same way, only she is way smarter than the average human being. She wouldn't just start killing people for no reason."

"But she did start killing people. Why?"

"I don't know. I was hoping your expert could clue me in on that."

"Yeah, I keep hoping we can get you two guys together and get some idea of what is going on in Shodan's head. He is really anxious to talk to you."

"Great, so put him on."

"He is with the military guys now, trying to help them combat Shodan's control of the comsat network."

"As soon as he shows, contact me."

"Fine," She paused to look at the notes in front of her. "How is the mission to destroy the communication relay going?"

"Is that what you guys are calling it? A mission? Whatever. I'm stuck outside of munitions storage. Shodan has locked the door in a big way."

"Anything we can do to help?"

"No. This is my thing, this is what I do. What I do need is a plan for getting out of here once I blow it up. Nobody's talking about bringing me home yet."

"Well, the only way to bring you back is to get a shuttle up there. We can't do that while Shodan has control of the security systems, or she'll just blow it up."

"Right, we've gone over this before. I'd just like to know you have a plan for when I'm done with this."

She sighed, "Honestly, nobody's talking about it much because there are bigger concerns right now. Shodan has a little over half of the world's commsats now. It's chaos down here. Business are closed. Planes in the air are getting lost. Others have been grounded. Most global broadcast media is disabled or has limited reach. GlobalNet has slowed to a crawl. A few of the big cities are reporting looting."

Deck felt detached from all of this. He had trouble caring about the chaos down on Earth. It didn't seem real to him. "Whatever. I suggest you guys start thinking about how to get me out of this zoo, because that's going to be the next item on your agenda once Shodan's transmitter goes 'boom'."

Deck had been mildly aware of the mechanical movement behind him, back among the sea of supply crates. He had ignored the movement until a bot wheeled abruptly around the corner and stopped a few inches short of crushing him.

Rebecca had replied to him but her words were drowned out by the mechanical sounds of the bot.

"I'll get back to you," he said as he killed the connection.

The bot idled with a low electric whine as it sat motionless in front of Deck. After a few seconds a red light blinked and it emitted a harsh burst of sound like a few milliseconds of modem noise. This was the closest thing it had to a horn. It was saying "move please," more or less.

Deck slid out of the way and the bot rolled past, ignoring him. It spun into position a few crates down the row and carefully placed its cargo at the top of the stack before speeding away once again.

Deck watched the bot as it departed. What was it doing?

He decided to find out. There was a terminal a few feet away. He jacked in and checked the list of pending jobs for the bot. There were only two of them in the queue. The current job seemed simple: move twelve crates from one corner of the storage area to the opposite corner. It seemed like a strange request. The areas were mapped out in such a way that each inventory item had a few slots reserved for it within the available floor space. There shouldn't be any reason to move inventory from one side to the other.

Even more unusual was the time - the bot had been working on this particular job for 7,872 minutes. Deck did the math and then frowned at the image in his mind's eye. Why would the bot need over five days to move twelve boxes?

Deck noticed that the job had been requested by Abe Ghiran.

Some of the job parameters seemed strange to him as well. There was tons of open floor space in this storage area, yet only a single slot was allotted for transfer space. If the bot needed to put a crate down for any reason, it could only put it down on the original stack, the destination slot, or the transfer slot.

So why had it been working on this for five days?

He disconnected and moved to the end of the aisle. The bot was on its way to the original stack. It pulled off a crate, and began the long trek from one corner of the warehouse to the other. It deposited the crate on the destination stack and returned. He observed several more moves. Each move took around a minute for the bot to pick up a crate, drop it off, and come back.

He returned to the terminal and jacked in again.

He examined the list of materials being moved. They were totally unrelated items that would normally never be stored in the same area, much less the same stack. The list included uniforms, microscopes, portable rigs, bot parts, cafeteria utensils and trays, tools, large display screens, specialized lenses, office supplies, and plastic novelty items for the Citadel gift shop. These items would never be stored together because some were far more fragile than others.

Suddenly something clicked and he realized what he was looking at. This was a classic recursive puzzle that had been around since the late nineteenth century, known as the Towers of Hanoi. In this variation, there were twelve crates, each one lighter or more fragile than the one beneath it. The bot needed to move all of the crates from the source to the destination, using only the transfer space to hold items as needed. It could only move one crate at a time, and it could never place a more fragile crate on top of a less fragile one. The puzzle seemed simple at first glance, but became alarmingly time consuming as you added more objects to be moved.

With only two items, the bot could complete the job in a mere three moves - It would move the top crate (the most fragile one) to the transfer space, then the next crate to the destination, and then move the top crate from the transfer slot to the destination - thus finishing the job. With six crates, it would take 63 moves, or a little more than an hour.

Deck knew that it would take over four thousand moves to complete a twelve item stack. According to the terminal, the bot would need to recharge every two hours or so when running at capacity, and needed to perform routine self-maintenance every two days. The bot could still have another day or so left before it finished.

He examined the next job on the list. It was a mess. Huge blocks of code defined the job parameters. It wasn't so much a job as a complete re-programming. He checked to see who had requested the job. Shodan.

Deck could only assume Abe had designed his job to keep the bot busy, so that it would never jack back in and pick up the next job in the queue. This meant the bot was still clean, unaffected by Shodan's digital rabies. It also meant that if he canceled the current job the bot would head back to its docking port and get turned into another slave of Shodan's. He tried to cancel Shodan's job but found nothing could override it. He also couldn't insert any new jobs into the queue before it.

He wondered if the bot would have access to the munitions area if it had been re-programmed by Shodan.

A few moments later he had created a new job and placed it at the end of the queue. He then canceled Abe's job and hoped he was right.

A tone rang out over the local P.A. system, calling the bot back to its docking port to receive its new orders.

It returned hastily, and Deck moved into position beside the port. As it slid into its niche, a slender metal arm extended from its back and plugged into the local data feed.

The bot jolted violently as it downloaded Shodan's new code. Every servo and motor in its body took a turn activating and deactivating at high speed. When it was done, it rolled out and headed for the munitions area. As it rolled past, Deck grabbed onto the maintenance ladder on the rear and climbed onto its flattened back.

The red light came one and stayed on. The cheap speaker in front spat out a loud burst of modem noise like some electronic banshee wail. It was pissed, but it didn't stop running the job Deck had constructed for it.

Suddenly the claw began moving. It rotated in place and swiveled around, grabbing at him. Deck quickly slid off its back and onto the service ladder again. The claw came down, grasping for him, but he was out of reach.

The bot came to an abrupt stop at the last row of crates and retrieved the topmost one. Deck had written the program so hastily he couldn't even remember what was in the crate. Whatever it was, it was heavy. The entire chassis of the bot sunk slightly as it lifted the crate and placed it onto the carrying surface on its back. A moment later they were moving again.

The bot reached the munitions door and extended the slender metal arm, touching it to the keypad. A second later the doors parted and they rolled inside.

At about five meters square, the storage area was smaller than he had anticipated. The back wall was covered in crates, and an adjacent wall was covered by a set of lightweight metal shelves.

The bot lifted the crate and deposited it on the floor. The job was complete. The massive steel door rumbled shut behind them.

The claw swung around and again reached for Deck. He dipped his body lower to avoid its grasp.

He cursed to himself. His plan had been to send the bot in here, ride along, and then jump off while the bot went back to the dataport to get its next job. He had been counting on the bot leaving once the current job was done. Instead, it seemed more interested in killing him.

It began to back up, trying to ram itself into the wall and crush him. He dove off to one side at the last moment, and an ear-splitting crunch of metal followed a split second afterward. Then it spun in place, reaching out again with its claw.

He had managed to lock himself in an enclosed space with an automatic killing machine. He cursed again as he rushed in closer to the bot, passing beneath the claw. He grabbed onto the base of the deadly metal arm and pulled himself up. The way the joints were designed, the bot couldn't actually reach him there - much like a human hand can't reach its own elbow.

The bot spun again and rushed forward into the dented metal wall. Deck pulled himself up and onto its back. There was a jarring impact as they collided with the wall together, and his body slammed into the back of the arm. He flopped backwards onto the carrying surface, gasping for air.

The claw extended once again and started to swivel around. He slid off the back and onto the smashed remains of the ladder before the claw could reach him. The bot pulled away from the wall and spun around on its treads, preparing to ram the wall again. He couldn't see, his eyes were watering. He had entered a whole new world of pain as his bruised chest hit the metal surface.

He knew this was a losing battle. He had no way of harming this thing, and it had all the patience in the world. It would keep ramming and grabbing for him until he was broken.

He pulled himself back onto the carrying surface as they reached the wall. He went feet-first into the wall, absorbing most of the impact into his legs. The bot lurched forward an instant later.

Deck was grabbing at random for something to hold onto. With his right hand he grabbed the slender, retractable metal arm that held the bots interface port.

He jacked in.

The bot was not sentient. It was a simple mechanical device that had been reprogrammed. Shodan had evidently given it some new code to allow it to ram enemies or crush them, but it had no grasp of strategy or combat tactics. It was still just a dumb fork bot.

He fumbled through its geometric layers, mapping it out. Usually when he was jacked into something, he closed his eyes or stared at a blank wall so that he could focus his attention. He couldn't afford to do that in this case. Instead, he had to navigate both worlds at once, both dodging its attacks and exploring its memory.

He slid forward, hugging his body to the base of the metal arm as the claw groped for him overhead. He was careful to keep his hand on the dataport as he moved.