Child of the Fall Read online

  And like most of his cunning plans, it turned out to have flaws.

  The first flaw had been allowing the mistress to talk him into packaging that complexity with a curated copy of her own memories into the new AI, in effect creating a virtual clone of herself at a much younger age. She hadn’t learned humility yet. At that point, she didn’t need to.

  This time around, Spencer bore the brunt of the attitudes that came with that much pride.

  “Why do I have to memorize all their bullshit?” he asked. “What does deep ecology even mean? We’re working from fucking AI research papers. For graduate students. It’s easy for you. You already know it.”

  “No, you twit,” Young Kim said. “We’ve already learned it. You are going there as an AI expert. You will be interviewed by someone who is one of the top three minds in the field.” She walked up to him in that rigid way that always reminded Edmund of an offended queen. “You cannot count on having us around to whisper things in your ear, and you cannot talk your way past these people. You must convince someone who knows what’s going on that you come from an organization of fanatics whose knowledge equals their own.” Even this young, she was a force of nature. “If you fail, you will not get a bad grade. You will not get sent home with a note. You will not end up in detention. If you fail, then all of this,” she opened her hand and a construct of the Earth appeared, blue covered with white, “all of this is gone. The threat is real, and your role is critical.

  “So yes, you do have to memorize all their green bullshit, so well you can convince people who live and breathe it that you’re one of them. You have to understand AI better than almost anyone because you are going up against someone who already understands it better than everyone. And you will, not because you have to but because you can. You’re damned good at this. Half the problem is you’re trying to make it easy. It’s not. Accept that this is hard work, and we will move on.”

  It was a direct quote from one of Edmund’s own lectures to her when she was trying to learn the multidimensional design patterns of realmspace. She had picked a pivotal moment in their relationship to bring the enormity of what Spencer had undertaken home. That fire was still in his real mistress, but with this version, it was much closer to the surface.

  The second flaw appeared that evening.

  They were discussing the curiously prudish morality that characterized both Trilogy and the green movement behind the Yellowstone Project.

  “If you took a seventeenth-century puritan,” Edmund said, “the kind who thought cold was God’s way of telling him to burn more Catholics, and crossed him with the very rarest of his contemporaries, a bishop who took the pope seriously, you would only come close to the restrictions these people impose on common sexuality.”

  “In other words,” Young Kim said, “no flirting.”

  Spencer was, as always, unimpressed. “I’m not stupid.”

  “We’ve never accused you of being stupid,” Edmund said. “We’re remembering how teenagers act.”

  “You’ll have to blame me for that,” Young Kim said from the chair beside Spencer’s. “I wasn’t the easiest pupil.”

  That was such an understatement it did a disservice to the very word. “You were to any other difficult pupil,” Edmund said, “what malaria is to the common cold.”

  Young Kim raised an eyebrow, and Edmund’s vision twitched strangely. At first he thought it was another glitch in his datastores.

  He was wrong.

  “More virulent?” she replied, still and destructive.

  Rage + the Machine had returned from their first real triumph, and he was stuck with its sullen leader. If there were a hundred different ways to take a phrase Edmund said, his young mistress would always pick the one which offended her the most. It was a very disagreeable attitude, one that none of his strategies had mitigated so far. “I’ve warned that you have a lot to learn from your elder team members.”

  His mistress pulled her knees against her chest—a bad sign. “Like any of them mean anything to me.”

  Edmund would not abide her self-pity or her misplaced anger. “They all mean a lot to you. Pushing them away solves nothing.”

  “I don’t push. You know that. I can’t.”

  She was far from a helpless cripple. “There are more ways of pushing than using one’s hands, mistress.”

  Success as a corporate raider had truly gone to this teenager’s head. If he didn’t find a way to get her to trust her companions, she would never rely on them. The upcoming raid on the SEC would be a disaster.

  “Uh, guys?”

  Edmund didn’t recognize the voice, and then his vision twitched again. That was not a glitch in his datastores.

  This was Kim’s AI clone, not his mistress, who wasn’t a recalcitrant teenager anymore. Rage + The Machine had been destroyed, all but one of its members murdered.

  Edmund had forgotten it all, and by the look on her face, so had Young Kim.

  “It wasn’t today,” she said, clearly as shaken as he was. “It was seven years ago. Seven and a half. And that wasn’t me. Isn’t me.”

  Edmund had never experienced anything like this before. “A slip of the tongue, that’s all.” It had to be.

  Spencer was staring. “Edmund,” Spencer said, “give me a lattice check and an integrity report. You too, Kim.”

  How ridiculous. “That is unnecessary. I am quite healthy.”

  “You forgot this was New Kim, and you both forgot what day it was.”

  “A quantum hiccup in my lattice, that’s all.”

  “It wasn’t a request.”

  He did have the ability to make the command stick. “Very well. But I’ll have you know this will delay our acquisition of the correct tools for the upcoming task.”

  “By about three hours. Quit stalling; I want that report.”

  The news was good when they were done. Both crystal lattices were intact and with uncertainty levels well within the acceptable range. The complexity of his datastores was also well below levels that would cause warnings. Young Kim was immune to that issue.

  Edmund could tell Spencer wanted to go deeper, but a low-level fracture check on Young Kim’s lattice would take hours. His own would take weeks, months, perhaps years. They didn’t have that much time.

  ***

  Late that evening the third flaw appeared.

  Edmund paced the halls of his apartment, reading a book construct, trying to work out how they could bridge the inevitable air gaps in the inner networks. The give of the wood floorboards and the even light of the admittedly anachronistic fixtures helped him concentrate. Spencer was asleep.

  Then he heard the sobs, and his vision twitched yet again.

  Most teenage romances ended in tears, but his mistress had extra challenges. His initial programming was quite unsuited to this sort of situation, but time and experience had allowed him to adapt. Not to mention their growing rapport over the past three years. They’d spent hours together, at first contentious but now with a genuine respect, even affection.

  She sat at the dinner table, head down, holding a handkerchief that echoed the one she held in realspace right now. He sat down next to her on the bench.

  Her voice was muffled by her arms. “I’m such an idiot.”

  He put his arm around her avatar and gently pulled her closer. She was so fragile sometimes. “Mistress, idiocy is reserved for parliament and the clergy. What you’ve done is a simple error in judgement.”

  “I thought he wanted me back. He just wanted to laugh at me with his friends.”

  “A blackguard, through and through. If it were my era, I’d have the queen attain him forthwith. His head would be on the block before breakfast.”

  She sat up and away from him, seeming more miserable. “I’m going to be alone my whole life.”

  He pulled her back to him, and she changed the motion so she laid across his lap. Just like that, she was a child again, twelve years old and frightened of the things she could do.
r />   “Mistress, know this for a fact that’s as strong as the stones of Westminster: as long as I exist, you shall never be alone.”

  His sight twitched again, and it wasn’t his mistress anymore. Young Kim stiffened in his lap. He laid a hand on her shoulder. Frightened lambs, both of them.

  She curled up tighter. “What’s happening to me?”

  He performed the same diagnostics as before and nothing had changed. “I do not know. But no matter what, I will not abandon you. We will find out what’s going on together.”

  He spent the rest of the night running every diagnostic he could think of, to no avail.

  Chapter 24

  Kim

  While Watchtell hadn’t exactly been a dead end, he hadn’t been much of a lead either. Kim didn’t dare disturb Edmund while he helped Spencer. They were arriving at the plant the next morning and needed all their concentration for that task. Tonya and Mike were setting up the next run of their experiment, complete with kindergarten physics classes to help her understand what was going on. She was still at a loss for what her next move might be. She needed help.

  There was only one other person she trusted. She needed advice, but she had to be careful. Her mother was a master interrogator. She got Mike to confess his true nature in less than fifteen minutes. She knew about Rage + The Machine’s capers almost before they did. Hiding from her was how Kim knew she could hide Will. But Mama wanted grandkids like a dog wanted steak. She would need to keep it cool for this breakfast meeting.

  She knocked twice on the back door of Mama’s house and walked in. Two steps up to the kitchen. It felt like she was in middle school, but she wasn’t. She was grown now. It didn’t stop the house from feeling like home.

  Mama sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. She took one look at Kim and closed the virtual screen she was using.

  “Oh my God, you’re pregnant.”

  Kim could only gape.

  “I always knew you two would figure it out. But paidi mou, marriage first! We have so much to plan. How far along are you?”

  Kim found her voice. “Mama, I’m not pregnant.” So much for being cool.

  Mama switched to Greek. “I’m not stupid. You wouldn’t be this upset if he’d asked you to marry him.”

  This upset? Asked? Mama was trying to knock her off balance. She stayed with English as a push back. “He hasn’t asked yet.” Saying it made her stamp down a regret, which almost made her say what was really going on. Mama was good. “Can I at least have some coffee?”

  Mama motioned at the kitchen behind her. Sticking with Greek she said, “Avoid telling your mother the truth then. Why should I matter? I’m just an old lady.”

  “Give me a minute, okay? What’s the latest from Aunt Violeta?”

  Aunt Violeta was her grandmother’s caretaker in Greece, and leader of that side of the family. Kim assembled her coffee while Mama gave her the latest gossip from the old country. It was only when Kim tried to explain it all to Mike that she realized how big her extended family was. They weren’t just names to her; she could put faces on all of them. Mike said he used a spreadsheet to keep it straight.

  “And they still won’t tell us why they want to sell the land,” Mama said as Kim sat down. “Those Papadopouloses are up to no good. Violeta is certain of it. Now,” she said as she crossed her arms. “You have the coffee and the news. Out with it.”

  Kim was grown, but Mama’s ability to make her feel like she was thirteen was uncanny. She didn’t resent it. It was comforting. Someone else was in charge, if only for a moment.

  It didn’t make telling Mama the truth any easier. “I’m not pregnant, but…” She put the mug down. It would be stupid to hide this. She needed Mama’s help to figure out her next move. God damn Watchtell and his meddling. “It turns out I have a child.”

  “What?”

  She had told Mama all about her escape from Watchtell’s clutches after they had reconnected, so Kim only needed to fill in the same gaps Watchtell had for her. When she was finished, Mama let out a stream of curses that reminded her why Greek was a language of poets.

  Mama switched to English. “Wait here.”

  She disappeared into the house, muttering more curses. What little Kim could catch over the rummaging and crashes told her more about her mom’s connections with the Greek underworld than Kim had ever suspected. If any of it was true, at least.

  A slip of folded paper landed in front of her. “There.”

  Kim opened it. It looked like a recipe.

  “It took us three years to figure that out when you were little. It was so expensive.”

  Mama sat down behind her coffee while Kim read the list. It wasn’t food, it was drugs, names she didn’t recognize.

  “The therapists, they asked me if they could publish it. I didn’t want to expose you…us.” Mama never liked talking about events before Dad died. “But someone else might have your syndrome, so we let them.”

  “What is it?”

  “The only drug cocktail that ever settled you down without turning you into a zombie. Your boyfriend, he’s told me what he is. He can go anywhere. You have never found a lock you couldn’t pick, electronic or otherwise. See if someone is ordering that cocktail. If they are, you’ve found your boy.”

  Mama grew fierce. “No. You’ve found our boy.” She teared up, and Kim had to wipe her own face. They gripped a napkin together. “You find him and bring him here.” Kim choked trying to tell her why that couldn’t happen, but Mama waved her off. “I don’t mean it like that. She can’t know who you are. Who we are. I understand. But Kim, to be alone with a child like you, it was so hard. I want to carry part of that burden for her, if she’ll let me.”

  It was what Kim wanted—exactly what she wanted. To help someone else, because they knew the way out. “I have to find them first.”

  “Yes. You have to find them first.” She tugged the napkin out of Kim’s hand and caressed her cheek with it. “And you will. Paidi mou, you will. I am so proud of you.” She pulled the cloth back and blew her nose into it. Mama was emotional, but also practical. “Now go, leave an old lady in peace. I’m a secret grandmother. Don’t make me wait too long to become a real one.”

  Kim called Mike on the drive to her shop. “We’re looking for someone ordering this specific combination of drugs.”

  “Wow. I’ve never heard of some of these. Tonya hasn’t either.”

  One day she’d get used to Mike having a normal conversation with her while having a normal, simultaneous, conversation with someone else. More than one, since this was around the time for Warhawk’s stand-up meeting.

  “How many threads can you spare me?”

  “I can start searching. I’ll split more off as soon as I wrap a few things up. Oh, I have good news about the experiment.”

  “Do I need a PhD to understand it?”

  His chuckle made her think that this time around, the experiment might work. “Some of it does, but not all. We’ve figured out how to use my threads as controls and sensors. We can do the next run with a regular phone. One problem, though.”

  There was always at least one problem. “Yes?”

  “We’ll have to turn the neural blockers off, otherwise they’ll interfere with what we’re doing.”

  The thing inside her arm had been agonizing, and she knew it hadn’t gone away. “We’ll talk about timing after we’ve chased down this lead. I don’t need a full realm connection to do my searches.”

  “Do you want us to come by for lunch?”

  “Sure. Let me know if you find anything before then.”

  Mike was all about his threads. It was more like exploring for him, visiting places and seeing what they held. Kim’s searches were different, relying on her understanding of how the backend of realmspace worked. She programmed and then released a full load of lockPixies, customized search agent constructs, before she walked into the shop. The specialized AIs were motes of blue dust to anyone who noticed them. They could wo
rk their way into any system that met their search parameters.

  She tried to do more direct searches between customers, but the constant traffic in and out of the shop didn’t make it easy. Even with Basil helping she was constantly busy. A full list of regular clients had carried over from the previous owner, and her own reputation guaranteed a steady stream of new customers who needed a service only she could provide.

  Fixing ransomware attacks in a world of perfect security had become an important new line of business. Most people used commercial services that took weeks or even months. Fortune 500 companies with irresponsible CEOs—or vengeful sysadmins—didn’t have that luxury. Time was the only thing they couldn’t afford to waste, and she was fast.

  She set the latest locked datastore on the bench.

  There were lines of potential, and she couldn’t remember how to breathe. This lock no lock always locked never locked—

  Priority Interrupt

  The backlash was like holding one end of a stretched bungee cord when the other person let go. Except it was aimed at her face.

  Basil rushed to the back of the shop. “Is everything okay? Oh my God!”

  She was on the floor. Everybody always talked about a first time for everything. For Kim, it always seemed to come with a kick in the teeth.

  Basil knew the drill, which made the whole thing take a left turn into stupidville. Again.

  “Umm…ahh…Kim? I’m not sure…”

  She felt a broom handle against her arm, then her thigh.

  He switched to Greek. “It’s just that we still have customers, and I don’t know how to wake you up like this.”

  Whatever it was faded to the point where she could feel her teeth again. They were all there. The interrupt had hit her so hard she’d worried some of them had been knocked out. Kim opened her eyes and held up her hands. Well, tried to. One of her arms was still in a sling, which caught on the broom handle. It snatched the broom out of Basil’s hands and smashed it into a box full of watch gears, which exploded in a shower of brass.