Xenoform (50 page)

‘Then why didn’t he tell us that? It just seems odd, is all.’

‘I don’t think we’re in any danger from Ari. I think I may be somehow too important to the AI for it to harm me. It may even be protecting me.’ As soon as this was said Debian wished he could take it back.

‘
What
?’ asked Tec. ‘What the hell happened in the net last time? We haven’t had time for a debrief, have we? What did that thing say to you, man?’

Just then Ari piped up from ahead: ‘In here!’ It darted off under a low concrete lintel and away into a down-sloping passage, silhouetted against the spot of its own light. The others followed obediently, Debian moving up the group away from Tec. He had no desire to discuss his latest delve into the internet. It was all too
weird
– too confusing
–
to think about right now.

The tunnel went down for what seemed like a long way, curved back on itself and started to drop more sharply. They followed it further into the increasing cool of the earth until Ari pulled the group up again.

‘What is it?’ demanded Whistler. Exhilaration at recovering Spider had become a sort of hunted fear, which in turn had become a nagging claustrophobia, and eventually had decayed into a vague sense of anxiety. She was concerned about being so far from the surface and was starting to think that in fact they should have tried another exit onto the streets. Unusually, she was beginning to question her own judgement. Maybe shooting it out with the berserk robot outside the RPC building would have been better than being trapped down here. Their dependence on Ari was bothering her. Mostly, though, she just wanted to sit down.

‘The door.’ Ari indicated a small but extremely sturdy-looking door some short distance further down the tunnel. ‘Locked, of course. But I can probably open it. Wait here.’ And the robot launched itself fluidly into some sort of ventilation duct in the ceiling, disappearing quickly and leaving them in total darkness.

Whistler activated the light on her gun. ‘Where the hell has it gone?’ she asked.

‘
Just hang on,’ said Roland. ‘Ari gonna get us in, I reckon. I just ain’t so sure I
want
in any more.’

‘Hmm,’ agreed Whistler, sitting cross-legged on the cold floor. ‘I was starting to think the same thing. Maybe we can just chill the night here, try some other way out in the morning.’

‘I think we’re better-off down here,’ said Sofi. ‘There’s some weird shit going on up there. As long as there’s food in there, I’m good. I am fucking famished.’

‘I wonder if there is food in there,’ mused Tec. ‘If it’s an old government place there could be all sorts of stuff.’

‘Yeah,’ said Roland bleakly. ‘Or nothing.’

Then there was a series of heavy thuds from the direction of the door. Everyone was on their feet, alert, some with guns pointing. Slowly the little door opened, revealing its incredibly solid design. Ari stood in the doorway, bathed in an unmistakable aura of smugness.

‘Come on in,’ said the robot.

The shelter was entirely bleak and nondescript. Somehow Debian had imagined something more impressive than the stark concrete warren that they found. The emergency lighting and power system seemed to have died from chronic lack of maintenance. The batteries looked positively ancient, their terminals crusted with oxide. All the computer and communication equipment had been taken out, as had what looked like vital components of the air scrubbing and water recycling systems. Surprisingly, though, the mains water was still flowing in the cramped bathroom. The designers of the complex, clearly expecting this to be one of the first things to go in an emergency, had also installed a huge water storage tank which, when tapped, flowed with a corrupted and brackish liquid thick with chunks of limescale. The toilets still flushed, too, and so happily nobody would have to approach the forbidding-looking chemical units in the bathroom’s furthest two stalls. And, in what had presumably once been intended as a kitchen (to judge by the simple cupboards at floor- and head-height) they did indeed find tinned food. Despite the fact that no facility remained to actually cook anything this went down exceedingly well with the group.

They settled down as best they could in the kitchen area, weapons consciously close-at-hand, except for Tec, who went off to scavenge firewood. There was little comfort to be had in the bare, cold space. Several of the team propped their weapons against the walls, torches on, like lanterns. Sofi was going through the inventory of tins, occasionally opening one and sniffing the contents.

Tec returned with his arms full of what looked like smashed-up chairs and set about cutting kindling from one piece with a sharp hunting knife.

‘Do you think there’s enough oxygen for a fire?’ asked Whistler. Tec just shrugged and carried on.

When he had created a fair-sized pile of wood-shavings he set it in the middle of the floor and began to pile larger pieces on in a pyramid shape. He held a butane lighter to the tinder and, dry with the passage of years, it caught at once. Sofi arrayed several of the opened tins around the edge of the fire and sat on the floor in front of it.

‘What we eating?’ asked Spider in a voice strained by false jollity. He was propped in a corner of the room against a kitchen cabinet, looking big enough in the small space to be an architectural feature.

‘Shit, I believe,’ answered Sofi. After a moment she reluctantly expanded this with, ‘Tinned stew, new potatoes, canned carrots. Meat’s recyc, but actually they’re all in date.’ She held her small hands out to the flames.

‘Fine by me,’ said Roland. ‘Was in the army once. Shit we ate then. This gonna be a banquet.’

‘Ha!’ barked Whistler. ‘Refugee’s banquet! Any smokes, Sofe?’

‘Yeah,’ said Sofi, experimentally feeling the cans round the fire’s edge. ‘Only a few.’ She shook one from its packet and tossed it back over her shoulder to Whistler who caught it deftly and had it lit in what looked like the same fluid motion.

‘Oh shit!’ cried Roland theatrically. ‘Stocks is low! Gonna be a dope crisis! The stoners gonna revolt then!’ He laughed heartily – dry, hacking noises.

‘Fuck off,’ said Sofi mildly. ‘I don’t care any more – I’m gonna eat this cold if I have to.’ And she took the tin of stew, which was actually steaming gently, and began to pick pieces from it with her bare fingers. After a minute of this she said, ‘It’s actually not bad. Warm, salty mush, but not bad.’ She passed the tin to Spider and began to investigate one of the cans of vegetables. The room was full of smoke now, although the fire was very small and the doors were both open.

Whistler leaned over and exchanged the joint for Spider’s can of stew. The contents, mostly depleted now, were an uninviting uniform brown but she found to her surprise that Sofi was right – it was actually not bad.

‘Hey,’ said Tec suddenly, looking around. ‘Where did Debian go?’

Debian followed the tunnel back in the direction that his group had come from. He didn’t feel too bad about leaving the door to the shelter unlocked behind him – he didn’t think it would be long until the others realised he had gone and re-locked it. Just long enough, he hoped, that he could do what he had to do in peace. He navigated his way through the tunnel by infrared. As the passage was essentially long and straight this was a fairly easy business. Several times he did pass branches in the tunnel but for now he retraced the steps he had taken earlier.

Surprisingly, he found himself unafraid. He had left the submachine gun behind. If he was to be attacked by the changed then he supposed he would die, but he didn’t think that the corruption of the city had spread this far below ground just yet. From the net, the virus, he was sure that he was safe for now. The scrap of data glowed excitingly in his mind, promising answers. He had switched his wireless back on and he monitored the signal strength as he climbed back towards the surface. Slowly, jumpily, it edged towards usable levels. His heart was hammering in his chest, apprehension and excitement at war within him.

When the signal had properly solidified he began to look for a corner or alcove where he could remain undisturbed. Presently, he discovered a flight of stairs leading upwards into cobwebbed darkness. He went up several levels and then sat on a stone landing where water dripped rhythmically from above to pool on the tunnel floor. He got as comfortable as he could and connected to the net.

Over wireless his data-transfer speeds were not as good as he was used to but he didn’t think he would need a particularly high bandwidth today. He fell into the twisted channels of the net, leaving his body behind, avatars probing ahead of him, returning with reams of data. The mutations of the architecture were still apparent – increased, even – but something new was happening there now. Huge chunks of the internet were no longer just mute and locked-off but gone altogether. Servers were missing everywhere – the holes where they had been were like the empty sockets left by tooth extractions. He knew what was happening. The greenshit was now physically breaking down the computer network’s infrastructure and vast chunks of the internet, already changed dramatically by the virus, were now dying away altogether. So this was what the virus feared – the ultimate destruction of its habitat by whoever had instructed it to attack the computer network and create the greenshit infection. The chaos it had started would eventually destroy the net itself. Had it been duped by whoever was ultimately behind all this? Or had it started out not caring about its own survival and then grown to treasure its life over time? Maybe it had learned the value of existence from Debian himself – or was that just egotistical of him?

As he travelled through the shattered debris of the net, homing in on the address given to him, he felt himself watched intently but distantly by the overbearing presence of the AI. There was no security capable of challenging him now and he passed easily through the data channels. The floating-base language into which the net protocols had been transmuted seemed to have changed again, back to something more akin to normality, presumably at some childish whim of the virus. The skeletal remains of the net were laid open to him and he moved like a survivor combing through a bomb site – awed and shocked at what he saw, treading carefully lest something collapse beneath him.

The address led him to a secure, non-indexed database that surprisingly admitted him at once, as if he was expected. Its contents seemingly consisted of random scraps of data gleaned from a million different sources by some unknown and now completed process – possibly a random mutational side-effect of the general turmoil in the net. As he scanned the database it began to remind him of a scrapbook
– odds and ends pasted together in a pattern dictated by somebody else’s criteria of significance.

He waded through pages and pages of data, his rapidly-updating avatars searching in accordance with parameters that he was able to change by the microsecond. There was too much here, it was too fragmented. He began to get frustrated. He considered appealing to the AI – he knew it was watching him, after all.

Then, one of his avatars snagged on something – one word that it had matched to a prominent pattern in his memory:
Alcubierre
. He pulled the file back to his DNI. Debian didn’t know it, but back in the cold, pitch-dark stairwell his physical body was trembling. He opened the file.

<2176.06.01>> (a)_____(log/2176.06.01_166)

INSTALLATION: COMPLETE, CENTRAL AI OPERATIONAL

TESTING PHASE INITIATION: 08.01y

ALCUBIERRE LAUNCH ON SCHEDULE: 2126.12.01

SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF VEGAS880: FINAL STAGE, 10.01y

HERRINGBONE SITE PREPARATION ON SCHEDULE

<<2176.06.01>> (a)_____(log/2176.06.01_166)Alcubierre. Hex’s boss, the name gleaned from Hex’s mind that day a million years ago in Debian’s flat. But the file didn’t seem to refer to Alcubierre as a person. Launch? One didn’t launch people, one launched missiles. Or ships. Spaceships. Central AI operational...Spaceships. Alcubierre. He had heard the name before, he was sure of it – before he had even met Hex, years ago. He thought it was a scientific term, but couldn’t place the reference exactly. What did it mean? And Herringbone? Wasn’t that the name of one of the big space corporations’ launchpads, now that he came to think of it? He thought he had heard it on holo sometime.

Then the AI spoke to him:

DO YOU SEE IT YET?

I don’t know. Is Alcubierre a ship, rather than a person? Did they launch a ship to this Vegas880? Is that where the infection comes from?

ALCUBIERRE IS SEVERAL THINGS. IT IS ME. MY NAME, IF I COULD BE SAID TO HAVE ONE. IT IS ALSO A TECHNOLOGY.

A technology? I thought it was a scientific reference of some kind.

A TECHNOLOGY BY WHICH THE WARPING OF GRAVITATIONAL FIELDS ALLOWS FASTER-THAN-LIGHT TRAVEL WITHOUT CONTRADICTION OF THE LAWS OF RELATIVITY.

I remember now! But isn’t the Alcubierre drive only theoretical? Don’t you need exotic matter to make one?

THEORETICAL, LIKE SO MANY THINGS, UNTIL IT WAS DONE.

So they launched an Alcubierre ship. Named, inventively, Alcubierre. You are the central AI that was installed on it.