There are ways to trap the mind without torture.
Metamatics hadn’t stooped that low before, but it hadn’t ever faced an opponent as strong as Black Fire and its pushers. Francesca Thaddius Reed also would not put the company’s reputation in the blender—the Giants were already becoming the target of the city’s ridicule.
On the other hand, Bryce Desmond felt further from the company than ever. Since the probe, Metamatics had been keeping Bryce out of the loop on most communications, meaning fewer emails, meetings, and phone calls. He even wondered if the company would hold his mission’s payout back, but Ms. Reed assured him this wasn’t the case.
“You’re still the Makati office,” she had told him. “Keep at it.”
“What about those funds?” he had asked.
Ms. Reed frowned, hopefully realizing how she had thrown him to the wolves. She could have done more to defend him. “Corporate bullshit,” she murmured, as if reading his mind. “I’ll ensure that doesn’t happen again. In the meantime, you just make sure no one is spying on us.”
That last part was fair enough. “Does that mean I won’t get my gun back?”
“You will, just stripped of its cameras.”
This widening association between him and Metamatics allowed Bryce to employ tactics different from those available to an average employee. Even without that fleshy new weapon, he still had a sentient AI on his side. He didn’t know how long that would last, but he would use the albularyo as much as he could to rid Black Fire from Manila and, by doing so, find Hannah.
He kept wrestling with that eventuality. He had seen her twice before. He apologized, and he learned why she had left him in the first place—because there was someone else. A woman, too, for what it was worth, which was little. It didn’t matter who the other person was, only that they existed.
He started thinking of who that person could be. Maybe they were younger. Maybe they were smarter, funnier, and gave Hannah more time and attention than he ever did. He tried to find clues in their relationship signaling the infidelity, but he came up blank. That, or he was ignorant. Maybe he had been ignorant the whole time. was
So, what was the use of one last meeting with Hannah? Maybe he was only protecting her, as he should have long before, back when she was knee-deep in Black Fire highs. Had he not been working so much and paid attention to her, he could have pulled her out of that life. Maybe that was useless ruminating.
Bryce thought about all this over a plate of the buffet dinner at Apo’s Reach. Besides the food completely losing its taste, the dining hall was alive with commotion, capturing much of the essence he felt that night with Janice and the Baccays.
Janice. Hannah had found someone else, and Bryce had as well, after a time. Janice still hadn’t texted him back, and he was starting to get worried. This was unlike her. Pretty soon, he’d have to go looking for her—if he had the time. Right now, his mind was on Apo’s Reach.
“There are too many servers,” he said.
The chair across from him was empty. When he blinked, the albularyo sat as if she had been there the whole time. Also, his plate was gone.
“Oh,” the aged woman said, looking around. “Your memory didn’t capture that detail exactly.”
Bryce reached instinctively for a drink of anything to calm him. A mug of coffee materialized at his fingertips. “You can read my memories?”
“Just the long-term stuff.”
If that was meant to be an assurance, it had the opposite effect. It also prompted greater questions. “So, not just the average daily interactions to inspire you?”
The albularyo nodded. “I can look forward while also looking backward.”
The breadth of this AI’s reach became more apparent to Bryce. Inspiring television from Manila’s inhabitants on a daily basis seemed like enough, but apparently, it wasn’t. The albularyo was corporate greed manifested into an engineered intelligence, always searching for more. Then again, the albularyo didn’t seem to belong to any corporation. This begged more questions.
“Where are you even stored?” Bryce asked it. “You can’t just exist decentralized on all of the capture drones. There has to be one central location for something as large and sophisticated as you, right?”
The albularyo thought about her next point. She always thought about her points. “Now, Bryce, if I told you that, then I think you’d come for me.”
He couldn’t deny that he would, simply out of curiosity. “I just want to know who you represent.”
“I represent myself. Isn’t that enough?”
It wasn’t, but he wasn’t going to argue with this thing, either. It would no doubt outlast him.
The aged woman craned her neck and looked to the entrance. “Ah,” she said, “he’s here. Where do you want me to be?”
“Nowhere.”
The albularyo nodded, and a blink later, she disappeared.
Bryce rose and found him standing at the entrance to Apo’s Reach. He looked even more hesitant than Janice had been. Likely, he had never stepped into an establishment as posh as this.
“Reggie?” Bryce asked. “Happy for you to join me.”
Reggie looked around before finding Bryce. He blinked. “Who are you?” He didn’t ask where he was, which meant he had either forgotten or the albularyo’s construction had been convincing enough.
“You can call me Bryce,” Bryce said, “and I have a proposition for you.”
He led the boy to their table. The albularyo sat a few seats over, only this time she was wearing—of all things— a pink suit and a wide-brimmed hat. Even Reggie stared at her. Most likely, she intended to be seen.
They ate first, making small talk while Bryce learned a bit more about this Black Fire pusher that was, apparently, somewhat technically inclined. He had graduated from AMA Computer University, a for-profit institution in Quezon City, which had a more impressive software engineering curriculum than any Bryce had seen in the Philippines so far.
That fact alone changed his plans.
“How would you like to make 11 million PHP a year?” Bryce asked him.
The boy blinked. He was 26, but his youthful features placed him as someone ten years younger. “What?”
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“Around that, at least,” Bryce went on,” if you include the value of Metamatics’s annual contribution to your pension, your health benefits, a signing bonus, and a lodging fee which will cover a generous portion of your monthly rent and a food budget.”
Bryce wasn’t afraid of getting the funding approved because, technically, he wasn’t spending any money yet. It was only a promise. Whether it came to fruition wasn’t important.
Reggie still couldn’t comprehend what he was hearing. When he started eating from a plate underneath him, he didn’t even question how the plate had got there. “For what?”
Bryce reviewed the curriculum again, comparing it to his own. He had been at CalTech, and at the time, there were few tech universities in the world like it. Several universities in the Philippines had received generous payouts from the Giants as part of those companies investing in their soon-to-be primary base of operations. AMA Computer University didn’t receive the most money, but it did receive some. Bryce felt he could have attended AMA and received a solid education there.
“For your help,” Bryce said. “I’m thinking you begin with a five-year contract. During that time, you’ll be expected to maintain our generation engines—screenplays, AI actors, set design—and some proprietary stuff we’ve been working on.”
Bryce wasn’t aware of any proprietary tech Metamatics was researching. He was sure the stuff existed; it was just out of his domain. He was more likely to receive prototype weapons from the albularyo than to be privy to company secrets. Go figure.
The boy ate and drank, ignorant of the engineered reality around him, and thought about the proposition lying before him. “How did you even find me?”
Bryce made up some bullshit about finding Reggie’s LinkedIn profile. He had to bank on Reggie even having one of those.
“What’s the catch?” Reggie asked.
He was smart, Bryce had to give him that. There was always a catch in every offer, and it was often more than the work involved.
Bryce leaned forward, trying to gather the full effect of his height. He loomed over Reggie like the trunk of some great tree. He thought he saw the boy shiver. “I just need you to tell me where they are.”
Reggie froze, comprehending his predicament now and the place he was in. He looked around as if seeing it in a new light. The legions of servants seemed not to be waiters and waitresses now but city guards.
Reggie shot up and ran.
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“I need something like a prison,” Bryce said. “But software.”
Three hours ago, Bryce had been in Metamatics’s software engineering labs after discovering Reggie in the car park.
“Software?” Herman had asked. “Like a firewall?”
“Like Black Fire software.”
“I wouldn’t call that stuff software.” Herman liked to be pedantic sometimes.
“Fine,” Bryce said. “‘Stitchings.’ That’s what some of the pushers call them.”
That time, Herman sat in a chair, which seemed to be his natural habitat. He spun around. His hands were raised to notepad apps only he could see in his private augmented reality. “I’m all ears.”
“It should predict your every move,” Bryce told Herman. “If you try to escape, it builds walls and locks doors. If you huddle and pray for it to end, your feet burn. Your back flares with from a dozen fire pokers. So, you run, and the world closes in as you do. You will run like this and wander until you tell us everything.”
“Jeez,” Herman said as he typed on his invisible keyboard. “You sure that guy won’t break? That sounds like hell.”
Bryce thought about that. “Maybe dial it back a bit.”
The software engineer nodded. “Do you have an example handy? The CSO says we need approvals to access the Black Fires cartridges now.”
Bryce had some of The Crest and Its Killers Episode 2 left over. He handed the cartridge to Herman.
From there, accessing the stitching wasn’t hard. With Herman’s help, Metamatics could crack the innards of the engineered hallucination wide open.
Once again, the Black Fire pushers thought they were being innovative, but they had just beaten the Giants to the punch. Now, it was time for Metamatics to catch up.
“Done,” Herman had said an hour later.
Bryce did what he should have done before and started looping in others across the company to his findings. He was calling it “The Prison,” for now at least, and distributed copies across Metamatics’s shared servers in the U.S., Canada, Singapore, Dubai, and Sao Paulo.
As the file uploaded, Bryce felt he was a builder of worlds, opening a chest of drawers and finding torture tools.
Bryce had thought the trickiest part would have been figuring out a way to send The Prison over a protocol to reach the albularyo. With Herman’s help, they discovered that the AI had made a simple FTP (File Transfer Protocol) available. She had intended to receive files the whole time. She—it—had done its due diligence.
“This is a stain on my work,” the albularyo had said before Bryce had entered Apo’s Reach.
“It’s only for a short time,” Bryce told her. “Can you do it?”
“I suppose.” She sighed. “But I’m getting it out of here as soon as you’re done with it. Understood?”
He nodded. “I admire your integrity.”
“And I, your perseverance.”
----------------------------------------
No. It wasn’t torture. Bryce told him this over and over again. Psychological trauma was just discomfort. If you were weak, everything could be considered torture.
Reggie had been running out of Apo’s Reach when the marble tiles melted, and the ground opened up. A massive whirlpool swallowed Reggie, throwing him deep under the albularyo’s Manila. Bryce wished the transition could be less abrupt but focused on his task; it didn’t matter.
Reggie screamed on his way down, the albularyo amplifying his voice throughout the reconstructed Manila. The momentary fright became a brief stain on Bryce’s image of the city.
The Prison was free of sound and light. It was a vacuum more lonely than outer space. It was a blank slate in both beauty and form. Inside here, anyone could be written anew.
Reggie stood up in that land of blackness. He breathed but could not hear himself breathe. His bodily cues were muted in this place. The albularyo’s Manila had tricked him for a bit, but this place didn’t care if you were immersed.
Reggie screamed, and nothing came out.
“Where are they?” asked Bryce. His voice emanated through the place. It hadn’t been a requirement he had given to Herman.
“My doing,” whispered the albularyo from somewhere.
Oh.
Reggie ran, smacked against an invisible wall, and fell. Violet hexagons lit up, showing the place where Reggie fell.
The air began to restrict as The Prison closed in.
“Let me out!” screamed Reggie.
“Afraid not,” Bryce said. “The sooner you tell me, the sooner you can end all this.”
Reggie thrashed on the ground. “Help!” he screamed, slamming the air. His fists crumpled against the purple hexagon barrier that closed in, wrapping around him tighter. He closed his eyes and then opened them again as if doing so would pull him out of this horrible, engineered nightmare.
Bryce thought he would have to coerce Reggie more. Instead, Bryce stepped over and found Reggie on the ground, breathing hard, sprawling out, and looking up at the ceiling. Lights danced across his face as if the stars and galaxies moved.
Bryce followed his gaze.
Scenes played out. Bryce couldn’t tell if they were inspired or not. He saw a mother teaching a young child to read. He saw a brother teaching the same boy how to use a computer. He saw the boy several years later—now a teenager—opening up his PC tower and removing every chip out of it with gloved hands. Fast forward a few more years, and he was at AMA Computer University in their Computer Engineering labs, wearing a white lab coat that covered most of his skin.
He again reminded Bryce of himself when he was younger. Only Reggie had more opportunities now than Bryce did then.
“It can all be yours,” Bryce told Reggie. “If you just let me know.”
The scene shut out, and the albularyo took the reins, turning off The Prison and transporting them back to her engineered Manila.
The timing was perfect, and when Reggie rose, he only walked out of Apo’s Reach, took an autocar to a place in Mandaluyong, and squeezed through narrow alleys and streets until he came upon a few adjoining houses. He used a biometric lock to open the gate and stepped inside.
“That’s all I can see,” the albularyo told Bryce.
Reggie closed the door to the house, which was not real.
“It’s more than enough,” Bryce said.