“You are quite late in your return Mal, I’d have thought someone of your intelligence would have made quick work of that task. Maybe not this morning but perhaps early afternoon I’d have expected you to have it done, sauntering into my parlor to show your work.” She said, then taking a drag.
“I finished it around midday March… Anna.” I said, the name still a bit alien to me. “But I did run into somewhat of a problem around the same time. So I had to get my house in order before I could show myself in good faith again.”
“Your house… is that why… Hm. Alright Mal. In good faith then, now your house is in order. What do you have to show me of your efforts today?” She said without emotion.
I pinged her interface for a connection. After a moment passed it was accepted and I sent over a copy of my persona script. Her eyes scanned it and then knitted in confusion before she took a deep drag of her cig and looked back at me.
“It’s basic and presentably coded, you didn’t complicate the task but left it arranged nicely for expansion in the future. Well done. But such work is hardly a cause for you to send Noe and your mother away from here a short time before you approach me, and hardly a cause for your apparent hesitation. You’re practically rigid sitting there, held tightly and ready to react.” She said, breathing out her smoke into the air around us. “I haven’t bared a fang at you. And I haven’t given you need of caution through my business. So you’ve brought your own trouble to this meeting and you’re worried about my reaction, how I will handle the trouble in question. Am I right?”
“You are Anna, you are exactly correct. I have something to tell you that you may consider a variable, and we both know what happens to variables with operators and fixers. Even at my age.” I said. I wasn’t trying to contain my nerves any more and I felt sweat on my brow.
“Oh. Well then Mal. What do you have to tell me?” Marchand said with he face pointing at me from the smoke, the rheumy eyes looking right at mine.
I couldn’t hesitate here. I’d be dead before my head hit the carpet.
“The accident, the corporate incident over in my old street where I got burned by the chemicals. It wasn’t simply an industrial sabotage dumping a load of experimental whatever chemicals over a bunch of paupers living below.” I said carefully.
“It certainly was a complicated situation, and the official report was complete trash. But my sources couldn’t put together enough of the clues and data together to get more than a lack of sabotage and a seeming self destruction of the primary storage vehicle.” She said, motionless otherwise.
“Well, that’s because it was… It was a nanite swarm being transported via the underground highway. The nanite swarm is controlled by what I suspect is a mostly inhuman, symbiotic AI. And now after finding my little stash of scrap during it’s escape, I am it’s host.” I said, nearly forcing the words from my mouth by the end. It needed to be said, I had to get this ball rolling even if it rolled over me.
Marchand was frozen for a moment, then another moment. I thought she might have just died in her chair frozen for eternity but just as I was about to say something she suddenly leaned forward and dropped her cig onto her desk, missing the stand entirely.
“You have a single response to live remaining unless I hear what I want included in that response. Does this AI, this nanite swarm have direct control of your body? Can it manifest outside your body? Does it have access to networks of any sort?” She said while gripping the arms of her chair tightly, her knees brought up slightly with her feet on tiptoes in her flat shoes.
“No, it is entirely symbiotic from what I understand and have experienced. No it cannot, for the same reasons. It can access networks for information on command but has no ability to deploy programs I know of. It has used known exploits in simple systems though.” I said, leaning back very slowly into my chair.
Marchand remained frozen in her position for a very long moment before she settled back into her chair, still leaning forward but less threateningly.
“You have, on multiple occasions, brought an AI into my home knowingly. I should kill you for that alone. I should kill you right this moment.” She said venomously, only to sag in her chair.
She looked very old in that moment as she seemed to melt into the chair.
“I don’t even know if I could, you know? Not because I like you, Mal. Much as I do even now. I’ve killed those I’ve loved in the past. But because AIs are simply beyond human comprehension, we don’t live in the same universes. I could kill you now and doom the city, the world or the human race, or you could die and the nanites with you, or the swarm could just take up residence in me, or turn into a small glass figurine of a swan.” She said from her sullen state. “You kids don’t even know anything about them anymore, they don’t even use them for bedtime stories anymore. Kids wouldn’t buy them for a moment, despite the truth of them.”
“Anna. Please, I’ve spoken to Sanctum a lot and while it doesn’t really think like a human or have the same values it does seem to want to help me and it can’t seem to do much without me. So it’s actual threat to anything seems small from my understanding. It was only made recently and I don’t think it was made in a similar way to the old AIs.” I said smoothly, trying not to anger her.
“Made recently? Like that matters, from the AIs point of view it’s lived longer than humankind has existed already. No Mal, there are many kinds of AIs from human-like to completely inhuman and everything in between by this point and they all share the same central trait.” She said, sinking a little more into her chair, just a tiny amount but the weight of the subtle movement seemed heavy.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“They are alien in a way that we simply cannot process as terrestrial, carbon-based, mortal, evolutionary, three-dimensional, stelliferous creatures can understand. If you think you have communicated with it then you are incorrect, it would be like me communicating with the winds of Jupiter right this moment. The concept makes no sense.”
“But it’s helped me, taught me things, kept me alive. I’ve disagreed with it, argued with it, laughed at its neutrality. It’s not a singular thing and it’s not a human, but it’s been there for me since it appeared through my ceiling and so far we’ve worked out our differences without major issue. It’s got lots of limitations to it’s thinking and actions, it needs me to take the first steps a lot of the time before it can even explain the rest. But it’s working out so far and for something that will likely live forever why would that change any time soon?” I asked., just overall confused.
“Mal, I need to test something, I’m sorry for this. I’ve already set up some messages on the grid in case this goes badly.” She said from her slumped position, head almost resting on her shoulder.
Hooded eyes almost closed. Her gray hair held tightly in a bun behind her head but an errant lock of hair had pulled free and waved about among the smoke.
“What? Test?” I asked beginning to lean forward in surprise.
I felt a dampness across the front of me the next moment even as my eyes caught up with what was happening. Then I felt a sharp agony in my right arm and I let go of the painfully tight grip of my hand, my knife falling free.
Marchand was standing in front of me on one leg with her other leg crooked upwards, a reversed mantis claw extended from a vertical tear in her tights at her knee. The mantis claw was punched straight through my stomach and out of my left shoulder leaving me hanging there as my back was against her parlor door. The tumbled chair I’d been sitting on behind her.
In that instant she had struck and deployed her mantis cyberware with some sort speed enhancement and skewered me, in response the AAB had grabbed my knife from under my arm and stabbed Marchand in the ribs, the neck and the side of the face and through her eye into her nose.
Taking in a shallow, pain filled breath that ended bubbling, I couldn’t speak as blood pooled in my throat when I tried to talk and spilled onto my chest. I could feel my legs dripping with moisture and I didn’t know if it was my blood pouring out or if my bladder was emptying or both. All I felt was a white hot pain from my stomach, a sucking pain in my chest and a more deep pain in my arm. I’d likely ruined the arm reacting so quickly like that. Hah, the arm, never mind the chest.
I reached up with my good arm and grabbed at Marchand’s shoulder as I tried to keep my eyes open. I tried to use her shoulder for leverage to lift myself up off the claw but I wasn’t strong enough. Not even close, should have hit the gym more than once, hah.
Marchand just stood there with her eye looking at mine, her face just neutral as we looked at each other. She didn’t even react at the aspire running from her wounds, not a drop of her blood in sight, she must be entirely borged.
Feeling my strength leaving me I let go of Marchand’s shoulder and tried to think. My interface opened and I saw some messages from my rapidly dwindling sight, the edges growing darker as I tried to read them.
[User is critically injured.]
[Deploying emergency procedures.]
Suddenly I was shook awake with a blast of adrenaline or something as my vision quickly swam into focus like a rippled puddle smoothing out. I felt the pain still but it seemed like it was happening in another room, like it wasn’t important and could just be acknowledged like a noisy neighbor.
I raised my nodding head to look Marchand in the face again, she was unchanged from the moment before. I raised my hand and grabbed her shoulder and tried to raise myself again only to fail, the pain might be gone and I might feel invincible but I’m not stronger.
Instead I lifted both legs up and planted my feet on Marchand’s torso to her surprise as she raised her eyebrows just in time to get pushed away from me and nearly stumble over the chair as I fell to the ground.
Sanctum launch the hack, the daemon, whatever it is. I don’t know how to work this netrunning gear yet. The cyberware should still be working and I don’t know how much longer I’ve got. Fire off the program. I’m still connected to her.
I was, from sending the file earlier. I was still connected directly to her interface and thus to her personal grid, or at least the part of it that was in charge of her cyberware like her cerebral implant. That was all the daemon needed to do it’s work.
[Launched VlvtWrM1.dae]
Marchand suddenly convulsed and fell to the ground like her string were cut. I leaned down and grabbed my knife with my good arm. Marchand was twitching and her eyes were flickering between brown and rheumy. I could just plunge the knife into her head and be done with it, I’d die anyway soon but at least mom would likely be clear with Marchand dead.
Staggering on the spot I realized I didn’t have the stomach for it, literally or figuratively. I was dead walking and Sanctum would just have to find someone else after I cooled down. Thinking about that I stumbled backwards and grabbed the parlor door handle and pushed through it.
I walked like a zombie with it’s entrails hanging out through Marchand’s apartments and out into our hallway. This was a nice place to live for a while, I’d give it a good review if it had such a thing. I walked slowly to the gate and let myself out.
The pain was drifting back in now as whatever Sanctum had done was becoming undone with time and movement. I hit the railing of the balcony walkway hard and forced myself along it until I got to the lift going down, almost tumbling to the floor of it as I stepped onto it.
Holding myself barely upright I waited for the lift to get near the next floor down and walked off onto the balcony there and stumbled slowly to the doctors door and banged on it twice with my knife handle.
Dr. Wood would be a good host for you Sanctum, you could see more of the country or the world. She’s older, she helps people, she already knows a lot more than me. You’d be great. I’ll just fall over near her and you hop on over, it’ll be great. You can go see New York.
[Sanctum suggests the User request immediate life preservation measures and surgical aid. Irreparable damage is already widespread and life functions are in cascade failure.]
Aw, come on now Sanctum. No need to be shy. She’ll like you just like I did, you’re alright. Don’t listen to Marchand, she’s an old lady stuck in her ways.
The door opened to a shocked Dr. Wood who grabbed me by the shoulders and shouted behind her. I couldn’t hear anything anymore though, my ears didn’t work. I tried to step into the apartment clinic but my legs just fell from under me the moment I tried. Dr. Wood caught me and pulled something from her tools and jabbed me with it, I didn’t feel anything though.
Sanctum can you leave a message on the grid for me? Something for mom from me, before you go. I don’t know if I can type it myself right now. Just put something like I’m sorry and I hope she looks after herself and to check in on Noe and her mom and… and... Ears as well… and… it was alright… in the end… it wasn’t Marchand’s fault really… she was just scared… I’m not scared though… write that down… Sanctum… I’m not…