The Dyson File, page 35
The doctor pulled her mask down and smiled to them.
“She’s ready to see you now.”
Isaac rose from the park bench and approached the portal.
“How is she?”
Doctor Ixtlilton gestured inside. “She’ll tell you herself.”
Isaac nodded, satisfied with the answer. Susan followed him through the doorway.
The portal transferred them to the edge of a distant cliff under the same sky. Cephalie sat in a rocking chair, her avatar normal-sized and wearing a caramel-hued coat and hat. She stared out across the glistening ocean before she turned to regard the new arrivals with a neutral expression.
“Cephalie,” Isaac said.
“It’s good to see you,” Susan added.
“Who are you two supposed to be?” Cephalie asked sharply. “And why should I care?”
Isaac gave the doctor a worried look.
Cephalie snorted out a laugh. “I’m joking! How could I forget you two kiddos?”
“That’s not very funny.”
“Would it help if I did this?” Cephalie conjured a large sign out of thin air. The bold lettering read: THAT WAS A JOKE!
“Still not funny.”
“At least she’s back to normal,” Susan said.
“There’s that I suppose.” Isaac walked over to her and presented her with a card in a cream-colored envelope. “Here. I got you this.”
“Aww. You shouldn’t have.” Cephalie dismissed the sign with a grin, then took the envelope and broke it open with a finger. “What do we have here?”
“Just a little ‘get well’ present.”
“Let’s see.” Cephalie took out the small card within the envelope and adjusted her opaque glasses. “It’s a . . . gift card?”
“That’s right.”
“You bought me a gift card? Good for abstract purchases from the Martian Millinery?”
“I know how you love your hats.”
“Isaac.” Cephalie shook her head. “What are we going to do with you?”
“He put a lot of thought into it,” Susan said.
“Well, it is the thought that counts.” Cephalie flicked her wrist, and the gift card vanished.
“How do you feel?” Isaac asked.
“Not bad, all things considered. Some parts of the last week or so are fuzzy, like I’m viewing my memories through clouded glass, but I’m not about to complain. Better this than losing all my recent memories.”
“The recall gaps are permanent, I’m afraid,” Doctor Ixtlilton cut in. “But her connectome splices took hold exceptionally well. We don’t expect any other complications.”
“That’s wonderful to hear.” Isaac shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you. It’s good to have her back.”
“It’s what we do here, Detective,” she replied with a modest smile.
“What about the Ruckman copy we brought in?”
“Let me check.” Doctor Ixtlilton inspected her clipboard. Text scrolled across the top page, and she stopped it with a finger. “Ruckman-2 is still in surgery. The damage is extensive, I’m afraid. We should have an update for you in about half an hour.”
* * *
“Hello, Mister Ruckman,” Isaac greeted the AC’s original with a curt nod. “Thank you for transmitting over on such short notice.”
“It’s no trouble.” The engineer stepped through the grass to stand beside Isaac and Susan. “How could I not have come, given the news?”
“Of course,” Isaac replied, regarding the man now referred to as Ruckman-1 in the case log.
“Will I be able to speak to him?” Ruckman-1 glanced over at the glowing doorway. “My copy, I mean.”
“Absolutely, you will. Though bear in mind, we still need to interview him first. In fact, that’s what I’d like to discuss with you.”
“Why? What do you need me for?”
“I would like you to be present during the interview.”
“Me? Isn’t that a little odd for how you detectives normally operate?”
“It is, but I believe the situation warrants a little flexibility. How much have the doctors shared with you about the state of your copy?”
“Very little. They directed me to you, citing the open case.”
“Then it pains me to be the bearer of bad news. To put it bluntly, your copy was not well when we found him. His connectome had been mutilated by the kidnappers.”
“Mutilated?” Ruckman-1’s face twisted in disgust. “What for?”
“To make extracting information from him easier, I would assume. He seemed quite confused when we found him. The doctors are doing what they can, but they’re limited in what they can do at this stage.”
“What do you mean? ‘At this stage’? What’s going to happen to him?”
“That’s your call, Mister Ruckman. It was your connectome the criminals violated. How we handle your copy will ultimately be up to you. However, in the meantime, he is a key witness to a heinous crime and remains temporarily under the care of SysPol. We need to find out what he knows, which unfortunately means the doctors are limited in the techniques they can employ. For the short term, at least.”
“Until you’re done interviewing him?”
“That’s right.”
“And then?”
“As I said, how the copy is handled is up to you.”
“But what does that mean? What exactly am I supposed to decide?”
“Are you familiar with the laws surrounding connectome replication?”
“I . . . no.” He took a deep breath. “I never even considered something like this could happen to me.”
“Then permit me to explain. You have three basic options. First, you may allow your copy to continue as he is. He will be granted full citizenship as a member of your family. Once our interview is complete, and assuming you elect to donate a copy of your connectome for the surgery, the doctors will be able to enact a more complete restoration. As a second option, you may choose to have his unique memories integrated into your connectome, effectively merging the two of you.”
Ruckman-1 gazed off into the distance, deep in thought.
“And the third?”
“You may choose to euthanize the copy.”
Ruckman-1 took a slow, ragged breath. “And when I’ve made my decision? Who do I contact? The doctors here?”
“No. A judge will be appointed to handle your case. I’m involved as well, though my role is merely to submit a recommendation, which will mirror your own choice.”
“But what if it doesn’t?” Ruckman-1 asked. “What if you and I don’t agree?”
“That won’t happen.”
“But what if it does?”
“In those circumstances, the judge almost always defers to the victim, except under extreme circumstances. None of which apply to this case, I assure you. I can fight your decision, but I’d need to justify it to the judge, which would not be easy and which I have no intention of doing. To do so would involve suspending your legal rights to your own connectome, which is not something to pursue on a whim. In short, your decision will be the one that matters here, not mine.”
“I suppose that’s both reassuring . . . and terrifying.”
“I can sympathize with that.” Isaac gestured to the white doorway. “Shall we proceed?”
Ruckman-1 hesitated for a moment, then nodded and stepped into the portal. Isaac and Susan followed him through.
They emerged on a beach, the heat from the white sands shimmering through air punctuated with the scent of ocean salt. Ruckman-2 sat on his knees on the edge of a beach towel, sifting through the sand for bits of shell, which he’d collected by his side. One of the CWC doctors stood nearby, his hands clasped in front of him.
Ruckman-1 stopped at the edge of the beach towel and watched his doppelganger with a mixture of revulsion and sympathy.
“Please be patient with him,” the doctor said. “He’s better than he was, but there’s much work left to do.”
“We understand,” Isaac assured him. “Thank you.”
“Call if you need anything.” The doctor nodded to them, then summoned a doorway and departed through it.
Ruckman-1 dropped down to one knee. His copy didn’t acknowledge his presence, only continued playing in the sand.
“Hey there,” Ruckman-1 said quietly.
“Hello.” Ruckman-2 smiled at his original, then returned his attention to the sand, raking his fingers through the granules until he found a pearlescent fragment of a clamshell. “Ooh!” he cooed, then added it to his collection.
“Antoni Ruckman?” Isaac said.
“That’s me,” the copy said.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Okay.” He shifted over on his hands and knees to a fresh patch of sand.
“Do you recall visiting the Divided-By-Zero hotel, located along the Breathless Ridge?”
“Sure do. Esteban invited me over.” He paused, then smiled brightly. “We were talking about work. Good times.”
“Do you remember how the visit ended?”
“I do.”
“Can you describe what happened for us?”
“Sure.” He sat back on his legs and stared out across the ocean. “I remember . . . discontinuity. I was in the hotel room, and then I wasn’t. I found myself in an abstraction I didn’t recognize. It was small, and I couldn’t leave. I remember . . . fear. Helplessness.” He grinned brightly up at them. “This place is much better.”
“Please continue. What happened next?”
“A long time passed, and then a woman entered the abstraction.”
“Describe her, please.”
“Thin with short hair and this dyed braid off to the side.”
“Zalaya Riller,” Isaac said, then softly to the original Ruckman. “She’s the leader of the gang responsible for this.”
“We have her in custody,” Susan added. “Rest assured she’ll pay for her crimes.”
Ruckman-1 only nodded, mesmerized by the sight of his copy.
“And then what?” Isaac prompted the copy.
“She told me I was her captive, that I had no hope of escape, and that she was going to extract information out of me, willingly or not. She seemed to enjoy the power she held over me.” His face darkened. “I’ve never met anyone so frightening.”
“What did she do to you?”
“I’m not sure. My thoughts grew sluggish and . . . confused. As if parts of my mind were being pulled apart like taffy. Time slowed. It became difficult to concentrate on anything. Then all my anxieties melted away, as if someone had banished them from my mind. I couldn’t recall who I was, but even that didn’t bother me. I could remember everything about my work, though, which seems strange. Almost as if the excess memories surrounding it had been cut away. When I saw the woman again, I didn’t fear her, and even that never struck me as strange or alarming. She began asking me questions.”
“What did she ask you?”
“They were comically simple. She asked me to recite the operating parameters for a Class D78 Dendritic Monitor.” The copy chuckled. “What an easy question.”
Isaac turned to Ruckman-1. “Thoughts?”
“I designed the D78, so I know that microbot inside and out. But it’s not a part of SourceCode’s Dyson proposal. It’s an older model. SourceCode used to license the pattern out to other companies, so a lot of information about it has filtered its way into the public domain. I’m not sure why she’d be interested in it.”
“Perhaps she wasn’t,” Isaac said. “Instead, perhaps she was checking to see if the modifications she made to your copy were successful. She would be able to compare your answers to publicly available information.”
“That could be it,” Ruckman-1 agreed.
“What else did the woman ask you?” Isaac said to the copy.
“She wanted to know how to access SourceCode’s secure systems remotely. I gave her my keycodes and provided details on the company’s security procedures. My response seemed to make her happy. The next time I saw her, she brought along a friend.”
“Who was this friend?”
“He introduced himself as the Ghost. He looked the part, too. Just a floating white silhouette. I didn’t fear him either, though he asked me much harder questions. He wanted to know about the D109, the N12, the M66. The list went on and on. So many different models.”
“But those are . . . ” Ruckman-1 breathed. “Detective, those models he listed are part of my work on the Dyson constructor swarm. They each contribute to the swarm’s immune system, which is responsible for keeping mutations in check. Mutations such as the one that ruined our last trial run.”
“He asked really good questions,” Ruckman-2 continued. “I could tell he was passionate about microbots and swarm replication. He helped me find a flaw in my work.”
“A flaw?” Ruckman-1 echoed quietly.
His copy nodded. “Turns out, there’s a way to seed a specific mutation into the design.”
“Impossible! And even if there was, the immune system would stamp it out!”
“Not if the mutant lied to its fellow microbots.”
“But the command system would still recognize the anomaly. It would order a direct intervention.”
“That’s why the mutant would need to attack the command microbots first.”
“But the system should still—” Ruckman-1 pressed a hand to his temple. “I mean, shouldn’t it?”
“Whoops.” The copy gave them a timid shrug. “I guess I’ll try harder next time.”
“But even so, how could you possibly create such a precise mutation? The design would have to be included in one of the microbots’ replication kernels.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“How then? Would you have one class of microbot modify another to create the mutant?”
“No, that wouldn’t work. The immune system would catch it.”
“Then how?” Ruckman-1 demanded. “How did you defeat the swarm’s immunity?”
“By adjusting the replication checks in key places.”
“The internal checks . . . ” Ruckman-1 stared off to the side. “Yes, that could do it. And if the record of that update was then deleted . . . ”
“Would you mind clarifying for us non-engineers?” Isaac asked.
“Any self-replicating microbot has what you can think of as copy protection. Elements put in place to ensure the replica it produces is free of mutation. But no single microbot is a perfect copy, which means if the checks are too strict, replication will be too infrequent or will fail completely. So there’s a little slop in the checks. A little give. There has to be.”
“Add a touch more give in precisely the right places,” his copy added, “then take it away in others, and you can cultivate the mutation you want to produce.”
“We’re not even talking about a design change,” Ruckman-1 continued. “Not the hardware, anyway. Just software. Tweaking a few parameters here and there. On the surface it would appear innocuous. We make those sorts of adjustments all the time, even up to the last minute. We’re constantly running simulations and tuning the swarm’s parameters for more optimal performance.
“If I’m to guess, SourceCode is looking for something more overt. More obviously malicious. This is . . . subtle, for lack of a better word. Elegant even. My old colleagues will figure it out eventually. But Atlas already has the contract. There’ll be a lot of project inertia to overcome. The government will be loath to change course, especially given the nature of the failure. SourceCode will argue sabotage, but Atlas could fire back by saying SourceCode is trying to deflect blame from their genuine mistake.”
“Sounds like it would be difficult for SourceCode to prove their case,” Isaac said, “barring the sort of evidence we just uncovered.”
“You’re right. Their arguments would look like a classic case of Cover-Your-Ass.”
“Did the Ghost mention anything else?” Isaac asked the copy. “Anything nontechnical?”
“We talked a little about Mercury,” Ruckman-2 replied. “He scolded me for caring so little about the planet’s ‘well-being.’”
“But Mercury’s a rock with no one on it,” Ruckman-1 growled. “That sounds like something the Society would say.”
“A false trail, I assure you,” Isaac said.
Which means we’re unlikely to find any evidence connecting back to the real Ghost, he thought. Sounds like he or she was planting evidence, working to reinforce the Desmond Fike angle the Pyrates had already been exposed to.
Ruckman-1 knelt beside his copy and put an arm around his shoulders. The copy smiled at him, then began sifting through the sand once more.
“Detective, would it be all right if you gave us some time alone now?”
“Of course. Please, take as much time as you need.”
* * *
Isaac sat on the edge of the abstraction recliner after disconnecting from the CWC.
“Well?” Susan asked, standing beside her own recliner. “We still don’t know who the Ghost is, unless I missed something.”
“If you did, it passed us both by.”
“Where do we take the investigation from here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Back to Atlas? We know there’s someone over there causing trouble.”
“Yes, but where do we look? Their leadership is still dubious. Boaz rubbed me the wrong way from the start, and I’m not placing Traczyk above suspicion either. Of course, the Ghost could be a member of the company we haven’t dealt with yet.”
“Should we expand our search, then?” Susan asked. “Interview more members of the project team?”
“Maybe. Probably. I’m not sure what other options we have, other than to hope Nina hits it big back at the Retreat.”
“Then you might want to cross your fingers,” Cephalie teased from atop her new LENS. “Or perform whatever superstitious rituals make you happy. Nina left you a message while you were hanging out with the Ruckman duo.”
