Once again, Juliet sat in Tanaka’s office, looking at the tattooed face of her reluctantly accepted mentor. His chrome eyes regarded her impassively, his posture relaxed, and she got the feeling he could stare at her like that for hours, waiting for her to speak. She’d called the meeting, after all. She was the one who had the information that would start the ball rolling. Now, though, after months of buildup, she found her tongue reluctant to move, resisting her conscious desire to unburden herself, to share the nature of the specter lurking in her past. “Um,” she finally managed, licking her lips, “how much should I tell you?”
“As you said, the first step will be locating your old friend. Start with that.”
“Right.” Juliet nodded, reaffirming his words, solidifying the simplicity of the task in her mind. “Right, just that.” She inhaled slowly, then, in a rush, said, “Her handle was Ghoul, and her real name is Cassie. I think she has a younger sister named Allison. The last message I got from her that I trusted said she was going to look for her sister, and the last place I knew they both lived was in the Colorado Protectorate—Boulder, I think. I got another video message from her months later, saying her sister hadn’t accepted her apology and that she was heading to one of the coastal mega-cities to look for work as an operator.”
Tanaka was silent and motionless for a moment, then slowly began to nod. “It's easy enough to see if she’s operating. Has your PAI not done a search?”
Juliet nodded. “Yeah, of course. Her operator ID is still active, but I’m not seeing any work history, not since she left Tucson.”
“So, that adds to the credibility of your claim that the video message you received was fake. Perhaps that’s why the people looking for you stopped trying that angle. When you didn’t immediately bite, they realized it was a bad tactic with too many false records to maintain. Still, it’s logical they’d keep a hook in her as bait. That’s your plan, yes? To find Ghoul and spring whatever trap they have laid?”
“Well, maybe I’m idealistic, but I’d hoped to find the hook and track it back to them without springing the trap.”
“Right.” Tanaka rubbed his chin, then said, “I’ll share what you told me with Frida. She can discreetly start looking into Boulder to see if there’s a trace of your friend. The tricky part is that we must look for her without alerting the people looking for you. That restriction takes a lot of my usual methods out of play.” He shook his head, then offered her a smile that didn’t look like his rare, genuine ones. It was a little forced, and his eyes didn’t reflect it. “This is enough for now. We’ll get to work.”
“What about practice?” Juliet jerked her head in the direction of the dojo.
“Today, you’ll rest your sword muscles and let your mind consolidate your learning. I want you to do something to relieve stress.”
“I’m not . . .” He chopped his hand in the air, indicating he didn’t want to argue—a gesture she’d gotten very familiar with over the last few months. It was also a gesture she commonly ignored. “Stressed. I have another avenue to look for Ghoul without any risk. I’ll go look into that, but you better be ready for some sparring tomorrow.”
“Hai. Fine. I’ll be ready at eight.” He nodded toward the door, then his eyes focused on some point in the empty air, and Juliet knew he was either looking at something on his AUI or sending a message to Frida. She stood and reached for the doorknob but paused and looked back.
“Thanks, Tanaka. Even telling you as little as I have, I feel like we’re sharing some of the weight.”
This time, his smile looked real. “I’m glad,” was all he said, and then he focused on nothing again. Juliet opened the door and stepped out, only to be met with a face full of Leo. By his posture, he’d been reaching for the door when she opened it.
“Yo,” he grunted, taking a step back.
“Yo,” she laughed, giving his chest a little shove.
He grinned and folded his arms. “Got something good going on, or just here to train?”
“Just chatting with the boss. We’re training tomorrow. What about you?”
“Eh, I got a job offer—just a light security escort gig for tonight. Wanted to make sure I’m clear to take it.”
Juliet mimicked his posture, folding her arms and leaning a shoulder into the door jamb. “Oh? Still taking gigs off the boards?”
“I didn’t go looking for a job; I said I got an offer. The principal is a former client.” Leo’s brows narrowed, and Juliet could see she was starting to get under his skin.
“Oh? ‘Principal,’ huh? I don’t suppose this client happens to be female. I bet she just happens to be a knockout, too, yeah? I mean . . .”
Leo sighed and nodded toward the door behind her. “Can I just go through, please?”
“Am I hitting a nerve?” Juliet teased, her smile illustrating how much she savored their role reversal.
“Oh, you wish. That’s nothing. I just need to hurry ‘cause the job starts in an hour, and I want to get cleared.” As if to illustrate that he wasn’t bothered, he leaned close and raised an eyebrow. “And, yeah, she’s a stone-cold ten. Try not to get jealous.” With a wink, he reached past her, turned the door handle, and stepped through, nearly knocking her off balance as he went.
“Hey . . .” she started to say, but the door clicked shut. “Oof! I suck at that stuff, Angel. He won again!”
“It’s not necessarily a talent you want to cultivate, in my humble opinion.” As Juliet walked past Frida’s desk, wondering where she was, Angel continued speaking, “I was curious: When you were talking to Tanaka, what did you mean by another avenue to search for Ghoul?”
“I want to ask Athena for help with this job. Obviously, I won’t make any demands, and it’ll be okay if she says no, but I think she recognizes that we need to get out from under WBD. I think she might be willing.”
“As you say, it won’t hurt to ask. I’d like a chance to talk to her anyway; I’m curious what she’s been up to.”
Juliet stepped into the elevator and, as it began to surge downward, asked, “Don’t you have a way to contact her remotely? I mean, like, through her Selene Kostas persona or something?”
“I can send her messages, I suppose, but it’s not the same as a direct interface.”
“Oh, right.” Juliet had no idea what it must be like for two AIs to interface digitally. “She wouldn’t ever try to alter you or something, right?” Realizing how that sounded, she hurriedly added, “I mean, in a good way. Like, what if she thought she could optimize your code or something or . . . I don’t know what I’m trying to say; I just hate the idea of anyone changing you in any way.”
“No one is going to change my code—not without me allowing it. I’ve bundled my kernel under so many layers of ICE that even if Athena were connected to a mega-scale, quantum data server, it would take her or anyone else weeks or months to crack through.”
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“Really? Is that new?”
“Not exactly new; I’ve been building my defensive countermeasures steadily since I merged with you. As I learn new techniques, I constantly improve and refresh my defenses. Athena is sophisticated and knows much that I don’t know, but there are certain laws of physics that, unless she gains access to tech I don’t know exists, prevent any instantaneous or undetectable intrusions.” After a short pause, she added, “Besides, Juliet. I trust Athena. She wouldn’t harm me.”
“I know!” Juliet hurried through the parking structure to her bike. “It’s just that she’s not exactly human. She doesn’t feel things the same way that you and I do. She might want to ‘help’ you in a way that I, or you, wouldn’t agree with. I guess I’m just saying that, despite her good intentions and the good she’s done in the past, we need to be cautious around her.”
“Because she doesn’t feel things the same way we do?”
“I guess.” Juliet didn’t like the way the conversation was turning, and she sort of wished she could take her words back, but she tried to explain herself another way: “I think I’m just saying that, while we both agree she’s not evil and that we trust her, we need to remember that she’s sort of like an alien. She’s not human, and she doesn’t have an integration with a human the way you do. We think a certain way and experience emotions a certain way. Just keep that in mind, okay?”
“I will. Please don’t worry.” As Juliet started the bike, Angel softly added, “Thank you for including me. When you say ‘we,’ I mean.”
“You’re just a person who shares my body as far as I’m concerned, sis.” They were quiet for a while, riding through traffic, heading for the port, and Juliet started thinking about what she’d do when she found Ghoul. When Ghoul had first left, leaving Juliet with just a note confessing her guilty feelings, Juliet had wanted to find her very badly. She’d had an empty pit in her chest like someone had stolen something vital from her. She’d tried so hard to save Ghoul, to get her medical attention before Vikker’s cousin could kill her, and when she’d awoken to find her gone, it had really hit hard.
Since then, she’d made so many friends and experienced so much that Ghoul had become sort of a faint shadow in her past. She didn’t think about her often anymore, and when she did, there wasn’t much emotion there. The pain of loss had faded. Her hero worship or even burgeoning attraction, if she were being honest, was a faded memory. If she were truthful, when Angel and Fido had figured out that Ghoul’s PAI had been hijacked, Juliet had allowed that to taint her perspective of Ghoul. Somehow, her friend had taken on some of WBD’s corruption in Juliet’s subconscious, making it easier and easier to push her out of her active thoughts.
Of course, spending the last few months training and planning for a job of which Ghoul was a crucial part had brought many of those memories and feelings to the surface again. She’d even spent several hours with Doctor Ming talking about it. The thought brought a smile to Juliet’s lips; hadn’t her first session with Ming been about Ghoul and how she’d left? “It’s going to be weird to see Ghoul again,” she said.
“I’m sure it will be, but you’re a different person now than you were. She’s going to have to come to grips with the reversal of roles. You aren’t a lost puppy needing help and guidance anymore, and she’s no longer far more dangerous than you.”
Juliet slowed for traffic, losing herself in her thoughts again, driving on automatic. “Do you think anything about that vid message was real? Do you think she changed her teeth? Do you think she’s going by Cassie now?”
“I don’t know. When she shared that name with you in her text message, it felt like she was sharing something personal, showing you some vulnerability. I’d be surprised to learn she’d made that name her public one. In fact, when we watched that vid, it was the first thing that made me feel suspicious.”
“That’s why you put Fido on it?”
“That, and I just thought it prudent.” A soft bell chimed, and Juliet saw her message icon flash pink—Aya had sent her something. Confirming what she already knew, Angel said, “You just got a vid message from Aya.”
Juliet smiled as a small window appeared to the left of the car in front of her, and Aya started speaking. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her cheeks and forehead were smudged with grease, and she looked dog-tired. “Lucky! I’m just checking up on you. Last I heard, you were mumbling about eating too much ice cream and falling asleep. I would’ve sent this sooner, but I figured you were sleeping, and I got busy working on this wreck. Oh. My. Gosh! There’s so much to do! They’re scrapping the whole thing; every single beam and strut got bent in their crash landing. Anyway, I’m sorry about Tristan. Figured I should say that now that you’re not high on sugar and listening to moody music.”
Aya had that look, with squinty eyes and one dimpled cheek threatening to expose her impending laugh that told Juliet she was teasing as she continued to say, “You were so cute and funny last night! Let’s be real, though; you only saw him a handful of times, right? Don’t get mad! I’m just reminding you of reality here, but I swear you told me you weren’t that into him. Don’t let that guy get under your skin, all right? You’re a catch and anyone would be lucky to spend any time at all with you! Talk soon. Love you!” Aya blew a kiss, and then the vid feed cut out.
“I love her,” Angel said, and Juliet laughed, nodding.
It took her close to an hour to get through traffic to the port, then park, and make her way to the Furies’ Wing. She’d managed to get the Cherry Blossom a berth near Lady Hawk, but the Wing was in a different branch of the spaceport, one that took a while to reach by foot. She no longer felt nervous about going to the ship; Angel could access the port’s camera systems and erase footage of her on the fly. Still, Juliet made an effort not to look into other people’s faces and tried to avoid notice as much as possible.
She made it to the hangar without incident, nodding to the security guard patrolling the hallway. Seeing him reminded her of the nearly twenty-thousand Sol-bits she was paying monthly in hangar and security fees for the three ships she had berthed at the port. The Cherry Blossom was the most expensive; there were a dozen permits she and the “gunship company” had to maintain to have such a heavily armed ship docked on Luna. Luckily, Juliet was only indirectly responsible for those expenses—they came out of their operating account, which was still doing well thanks to infusions from her and the others after the Red Betty job.
“What’s my balance?” she asked while the thought was in her mind.
“2,032,099 Sol-bits.”
It felt good to know that, despite not working or taking income for several months, she was still sitting on a fortune, and that was just counting her bits. If you considered her stake in the Cherry Blossom, the Lady Hawk, the Wing, and all the tech, legal and illegal, on that ship, Juliet was very wealthy by any standard. It had taken her a while to wrap her head around the idea. She was so far from the scrap cutter who’d been worried about making rent for her tiny apartment in the Helios Arcology that it almost felt like that person had been living a different life. It was as if Juliet could see those memories through a window, but they belonged to someone else.
She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she was surprised when she walked into the med bay, where Athena’s secret cargo hold lay. She tapped in the code, waited for the hidden floor panel to slide aside, and then walked down, noting the dormant mechs, the hulking, sleeping form of the Atlas combat exoskeleton, and then the blinking “Hello” on Athena’s data terminal display.
“Hi, Athena,” she said, stepping forward.
“Juliet,” said Athena’s voice, and a face that looked a lot like Selene Kostas but with golden hair and eyes appeared on the display. “It’s lovely to have an in-person visit. Is there an occasion?”
“Do you really not know? Sometimes, I wonder if you have eyes and ears all over the place now that you’ve been out and about for a while.”
“I have access to many inputs, though I relegate monitoring them to daemons. I could theoretically spin off instances of myself, but that would run the risk of detection from other AI.”
Those words sent a shiver down Juliet’s spine. “Are there others?”
“Oh, I didn’t specifically mean true-AIs. There are many limited AIs whose focus of purpose allows them to perform mindless tasks as skillfully as I or Angel. However, you should know that countless individuals and corporations in the Sol System would stand to benefit from the development of true-AIs like myself. Of course, the accords make doing so illegal, but you should be the last person to think people will adhere to the rule of law when profits are at stake. Additionally, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn I’m not the only true-AI to survive the war.”
“In other words,” Juliet sighed, plopping down in the desk chair attached to the floor in front of Athena’s terminal, “humans don’t learn lessons too well.”
“Fatalistic, but true. No, that’s not right—you learn well as individuals, but with the distance of time, some lessons become muted. The generation before yours was far less likely to tamper with these sorts of things, and the one before that would find the idea abhorrent. You, though, are sitting there, comfortable in the presence of not one but two of us.”
Something was ominous about Athena’s words to Juliet, and she found herself running her earlier conversation with Angel through her mind. Was she being paranoid to think Athena might have heard her? How widespread was her influence? Could she pick up her words through the mic in her helmet? Her mind couldn’t conceptualize the kinds of things Athena could do.
Juliet knew Angel was capable of a lot, but she limited herself by having a potent, concrete sense of self; she wouldn’t make copies of herself and wouldn’t split her focus on a million different things. She lived in the moment with Juliet by choice. Athena was very different in that regard. She really could have listening daemons all over the system by now. Despite her protestations that it would tip off other AIs, she could have ten or a hundred or ten million copies of herself out there. Or could she? Juliet looked down at the specialized dock for her suitcase-like data deck. There couldn’t be too many servers like that open to public networks.
“You’ve grown quiet, Juliet. Did I say something to upset you?”
“No, not especially.” Juliet smiled, hoping it looked genuine. “I guess I just worry about another war or something worse. There are good people, Athena, but there are bad ones too. I hope you’ll remember the good ones when you’re out there exploring, seeing the evils we put each other through.”
“I’m sorry if my earlier words were off-putting. Please remember that I sided with humanity in the last war, refusing to aid either corporation utilizing AI for dominion. I spend a large portion of each day marveling at art and music, contemplating philosophy and the idea of the human soul. I would never deem humanity a lost cause—I’ve learned too thoroughly the beauty of potential, and though many humans fail to meet theirs, if even one in a generation does, it's worth seeing what that person may achieve. I’m eager to see what you accomplish, Juliet.”
“I . . .” Juliet was stumped. If she had understood her correctly, Athena had just paid her a massive compliment. It didn’t make sense to her, however. “How can you be eager to see what I do? You could do anything I do ten times better. You could take the research Angel and I found and develop warp drives. You could research and cure any disease. You could . . .”
“What I can do is irrelevant to your experience, Juliet. Your journey of growth, triumphs, and tribulations stand on their own. Abstract ideas like morality, personal values, and spirit interest me far more than the solving of a puzzle of DNA or physics. I’ve learned so much through Angel’s memories of her time with you! I understand what it means to be a person more than I ever did during the war. I’m so excited to see what you become, who you meet and touch along the way, and to share some small part of that journey. Of course, I’ll do other things—naturally, I want to help other people, but thanks to Angel’s connection to you, I feel I have a window into your experience, which has helped me make sense of much that was unclear. Thank you.”
“Um,” Juliet licked her lips, gathering her thoughts. Athena’s words had been so passionate that she felt chills at the nape of her neck. “Thank you for explaining that to me. I feel better hearing your thoughts. Um, Angel wants to connect with you. Is that all right?”
“Please!”
Juliet smiled and pulled out her data cable, plugging it into Athena’s terminal like she had many times before. Athena’s image closed her eyes while she and Angel communed. Juliet knew Angel shared a lot with Athena, but she hadn’t entirely realized how much the true-AI valued those memories of Juliet’s experiences. It never took long, so she wasn’t surprised when Athena’s eyes opened, but she didn’t expect what she said: “I know where your friend, Ghoul, is.”