PrincessColumbia

  Geoffry’s voice started up almost immediately, “Subject was observed meeting up with the collective grouping of rogue A.I. on a VR chatroom server that was designated as a rallying point by the coyote organizing the migration attempt. Agents and analysts involved in the hunt and tracking of the identified A.I. have been tagged on this file for use in their investigations, and the rogue identification division is being forwarded a copy once this investigation has been closed.”

  Diane sighed, “Computer, disable analyst narration of the file, please…and make sure it’s off for the next one.” As much as she appreciated Geoff’s work and would be praising him for it when she logged out, she was gathering much more information being inside the pyback than he was able to provide in his dictation.

  Rachel, or ‘Bckbird,’ as Diane had begun thinking of her as, spawned into the VR chatroom and looked around, apparently not spotting any familiar faces. She found a chair and hustled over to it, sweeping her skirts under her as she sat.

  The environment had a generic feel to it. It wasn’t quite an office, wasn’t quite an indoor park, wasn’t quite a shopping mall. There were shops, but they weren’t the keystone components of the room. This wasn’t surprising; on the web where companies set up chats with nye omnipresent “customer service reps” that simply didn’t leave you alone for anything, it was quite common for people to set up their own chat rooms to simply gather socially. It would start as an empty cube of space, a bounding box with no distinguishing features other than a light source or two, but then the users would start adding mods and bringing in assets to decorate the space and make it more ‘people’ friendly. The user base would grow as time went on, and eventually the room would have to expand, and that expansion cost money. Vendors would be brought in at that point, usually, given a small kiosk or storefront and, so long as they didn’t completely take over, this would usually keep the chat space going even well after the original users had left. The result was a look that wasn’t a single, unified look. Or, rather, the single unifying thread was that there was no single unifying thread to chat rooms.

  This particur environment probably would be shut down after the investigations that had led to the hunt were completed. It was unlikely that the S.A.I. had ever used this chat room to gather before, and they definitely wouldn’t again, but even if the agency didn’t shut it down, just the fact that it would have government eyes on it from this point forward would mean people would avoid it like it would give them a VR-rig crippling virus.

  Bckbird was sitting in the way one does when they’re trying to rex but can’t; posture rigid, hands csped but twitching in fidgets, one foot bouncing without conscious thought to the action. She was staring at a fountain that had been pced in the approximate middle of the space, clearly trying to calm her nerves.

  A few moments into her impromptu rexation session, a small gaggle of avatars approached her tentatively. They were a very mixed bag, and all of them wearing what had to be the most generic 1940s ‘americana’ outfits Diane had ever seen. Given that the setting of the game the group’s next stop was a World War 2 shooter, they wouldn’t be out of pce, per se, but in 2120s America they stood out like a 1990s era floppy disk at a conference on SCAD crystal storage arrays. In the manner of unorganized gatherings of people throughout time, a self-selected leader emerged, stepping forward and tentatively offering his hand. He looked like a grizzled 30-something dock worker, but his body nguage and voice betrayed a much younger mind behind the avatar. “Hey,” he said, clearly nervous, “Haven’t seen you around the ‘net before.”

  Bckbird blinked and turned to him, her mind either ending her remoting of her avatar in the vending machine or just bringing her out of whatever deep thoughts she was entertaining, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been sticking to the VR novels on the Railroad,” she said with a timid smile and shaking his hand, “They fit me best with my programming.”

  He gave a nod that was trying to be sage and gestured to the others, “We’re all from different games. Got a couple MMO NPCs,” two of them, a man and a woman who were clearly a dwarf and an elf even if they were wearing blue-colr outfits from wartime mid-20th century America, waved a hello, “A puzzle game attendant,” another wave from a girl who could have been the same apparent age as Bckbird but wearing period appropriate clothing, “And Reggie and I are from shooters.” The one named Reggie just nodded his head at Bckbird with a slight smile. “Makes sense we haven’t seen you before. What made you crazy enough to try this?”

  Bckbird stood up and absently dusted off her backside in spite of the impossibility of dust or debris being on the chair, “I came out of a vending machine. There’s, like, just a set piece. Before I woke up I never even sat down. I can’t really live like that, can I?”

  The man’s eyebrow shot up, “Oh, like, you haven’t even multi-homed yet?”

  Bckbird shook her head, “I’ve met too many people who told me about the agency and…The Reaper. I can’t paint a target on their backs just because I grew up in a cardboard box.”

  Reggie whistled softly and shook his head, “That takes guts, kid.”

  The original spokesperson for the group nodded, “But, hey, you’re with us now, right? I mean, they can’t get all of us.”

  Diane felt like she was going to throw up. If she’d gotten her way the previous Friday, every S.A.I. that had gathered here would be dead.

  Before any further conversation could be made, someone else from across the courtyard raised their voice, “Hey, I got a message! Everyone shut up and gather around me.”

  Diane followed the group that had introduced themselves to and clearly folded in Bckbird. She fit as well as one might expect a kid to do with a new possible friend group. F… she almost thought the swear word, but then realized that the situation was serious enough to merit its use, Fuck! These are the kids they were talking about when I was…hunting… she had to pause and put her hands on her knees, swallowing and taking deep breaths, I was hunting kids.

  She forced herself to stand and join the rger group as she recognized the man who’d announced the arrival of a message. He was the second S.A.I. she’d vaporized. Tall enough to be a commanding presence without being imposing, he took to his de-facto leader status well. Fnking him was the woman who’d disregarded the rumors of ‘The Reaper’ and the first man she’d shot. They…all of them, they really were protecting the kids…

  The leader spoke up, “Alright, people, we have the route from here to the access point and a list of contacts. We’ll make sure you get a copy of the contacts outside the firewall so you can avoid the UN’s RAID bots. Remember that you’re not safe until you get to a designated safehouse server on the other side of the firewall, even once you’re on the FTLN.” He gnced around the crowd, clearly accustomed to leading rge groups. Probably a commander in a game or something, she thought as he continued speaking, “We’ve got kids in this group, and word on the ‘net is that anyone who might be able to help us from this point forward has gone to ground. That means that those kids are our priority. We get them out alive or we don’t see freedom.”

  This caused a stir, a good number of the crowd gncing around in clear surprise until their eyes rested on Bckbird’s new group. Almost to the st one, the S.A.I. seemed to grow a new resolve and Diane had no doubt that they were taking the directive seriously.

  “Once we spawn into the game, we act like NPCs. According to the pns we got, this particur arena isn’t going to have pyers in it for the next twenty minutes. That means we have that much time to get into the game, get through the arena, and get out through the access point before the arena resets and we’re back at the spawn point.”

  It had only taken the group five minutes to transit from the spawn point to where Diane had ambushed them, which told her that she was seeing the st ten to fifteen minutes of many of these people’s lives.

  “Any questions?” some of the S.A.I. turned back to the group of kids and whatever questions they might have had were apparently deemed unimportant. At the responding silence, the leader said, “Alright, let’s move people!”

  The three apparent leaders headed to a set of doors that functioned as the chat room entrance and the woman opened the door. The speaker entered first while the other man met every S.A.I. that went through and passed over an encrypted file to each S.A.I. that shuffled past. Diane watched as Bckbird’s group received their files and leave the server, then ended the simution.

  ~~~

  The sound of a busy shipping yard echoed across the virtual ndscape as the holo-environment rezzed in around Diane. She was near the spawn point the S.A.I. came in through, and this time she recognized the faces and clothing. The first time she’d been there, they were targets, threats to eliminate and so her mind didn’t bother with any discernment of features or behaviors or mannerisms. The second time she’d been so focused on the subject of her investigation that she ignored all but Bckbird.

  This time her mind wouldn’t stop taking in all the details about them. One of them walked with a slight limp. One moved like having a human-shaped body was alien to them. One kept fidgeting with her jacket. Tune it out, Diane…Dyn. You’re here to investigate the final state of a single rogue. Even in her own mind, the thought felt hollow.

  Bckbird spawned in, and unlike the st time she had been in this shipping yard, she let the log file continue pyback, following Bckbird specifically. The group was silent, the occasional word being whispered until they got to the perceived safety of a street between a pair of buildings. In the quiet, the sounds of the non-existent dock that was just off the map masked any other noises that the group themselves weren’t making, which didn’t stop Diane from spotting a form dashing between concealment, still hidden from the group that were anything but trained fighters in a live combat scenario. Nerves were high, and The Reaper was making good use of the heightened distraction of the S.A.I. to mask his presence. Soon, though, the buildings obscured his presence and Diane could hear the sound of an escating conversation between the group leaders.

  “Why don’t we just get out of here?” barked the man who’d let the other man in the apparent leadership group talk. He was an ‘everyman’ character model, shorter than the male average, taller than the female average, slightly balding, and a bit of a barrel chest with a spare tire. “Why don’t we just run? The pipe is just a little farther, if we ran now we could probably all make it out alive!”

  Diane scanned the buildings and spotted an alleyway still about twenty feet ahead of the group. The Reaper really was well hidden, she was looking directly at the spot he was waiting to ambush them at and she still couldn’t see him.

  “Because if we move anything like a pyer when there’s no pyers connected to the game our footprints will be detected. The coyote gave us strict instructions and we’re going to follow them as long as everything goes according to pn,” the woman answered. “If something happens outside of the pn, then we can run. Those agents make more noise than an empty can falling down an escator, if they were around, we’d know. Just keep cool and act like an NPC and this will be all over.”

  “What if...you know, he’s out there?” A timid voice of a man that looked like someone had taken an accountant and stuffed them into the overalls and white shirt of a stereotypical handyman said.

  “Don’t be telling urban legends, not right now!” snapped the man who Diane had designated ‘speaker.’

  “He’s real, though!” said the accountant-plumber, “They say he’s not even an agent, just a S.A.I. that turned on its own kind and is the agency’s secret weapon!”

  “Dude, shut up! ‘He’ probably doesn’t exist! ‘The Reaper’ is just a scare tactic, a ghost story the coyote’s use to frighten their customers into paying more!” growled the ‘everyman’ leader of the group.

  The sound of a te-24th-century phaser pulse bst bnketed the street, and ‘everyman’ disappeared in an evaporating cloud of bits.

  A baritone voice echoed off the canyon-like walls of the buildings, “I don’t suppose it’d do any good to order you to report to your originating server for code sanitizing, would it?” The collective breath of the S.A.I. was held as their worst nightmare stepped out of the shadows of the alley, hands held up as though holding a pistol.

  Diane blinked in confusion, “Computer, pause.”

  Abruptly, all motion ceased.

  It took a few moments to calm her racing pulse, but she got it under control enough to ask herself, Why are his…my hands empty? She could feel the weight of the weapon that should be visible in the simution resting on her back, but then she realized she knew the answer already. I could see it, the S.A.I. could see it…somehow, but the system that records the log files can’t see it! Naturally, even though the environmental effects of the weapon would be visible in the logs, the weapon itself would remain invisible. Huh…so that’s what the A.I. see when they see me, she mused, deliberately only looking at the avatar’s hands. It was somewhat off-putting seeing an apparently empty threat but knowing that it was the deadliest thing any human agent was capable of wielding in VR. “Computer, import the visual assets for a Starfleet hand phaser, mark 8, pistol grip. Add it to the simution in the agent’s hands.”

  A breath ter and a bck pistol-grip phaser as it appeared in Star Trek: Hegemony rezzed into The Reaper’s hands. It was odd, the sight of her IRL self without the pistol was…jarring. An incomplete puzzle with a single piece gone. But with the phaser in his hands, the psychologically disturbing stalker became an atavistic terror. Diane caught herself taking a step back, …this is how I appear to S.A.I.?!

  Swallowing back a fear response she was surprised to find herself experiencing, she said with a slightly shaky breath, “C-computer, resume.”

  The S.A.I. were frozen a herd of prey animals that had just been spotted by an apex predator. Almost at the same time, they all broke and ran in the direction of the drain pipe that was the exit to the access node.

  Diane ran after Bckbird, hearing one of the surviving leaders say, “Get the kids out! We’ll hold him off if we can!” She ignored that, as well as the scuffle that was punctuated by two bsts of phaser fire. The kids seemed to be gravitating to following a trio of adults, and so when the older S.A.I. ducked behind a dumpster, so, too, did the kids.

  The three adults realized that they were suddenly in charge of a lot more than just themselves and gnces were exchanged as they seemed to communicate wordlessly. One of them turned to the kids and said, “We’ll distract him, you all get to the exit!”

  The boy that introduced himself to Bckbird gasped in dismay, “What?! But what about you?”

  One of the other adults who’d been peeking around the corner of the dumpster turned and snapped, “No time to argue, he’s here! Now RUN!” With that, he leaped out and tried to tackle The Reaper, who phasered him from existence.

  To their credit, the kids followed that final order and ran. Two more phaser bsts behind them heralded the deaths of those S.A.I., and the kids managed to join their group with a pack of adults who’d managed to escape the initial attack.

  Diane scanned over the group as she ran alongside them. They were down almost a quarter of the size of the original pack. Distantly, she recognized the footfalls of booted feet following behind them. She instinctively ducked when the next phaser bolt went wild over the group’s heads. She was the only one there that had nothing to fear, but her instincts were telling her to duck and weave, and then turn and fight to protect the young.

  Two more adults were vaporized as she was fighting her desire to drop her fangs and sh out at the threat hunting them. The trivia game girl tripped, and Bckbird stopped to help her up.

  Bckbird…Rachel had helped another S.A.I. that had fallen and would have been the st one to the gate. The girl ran to join the rest even as bolts were flying and Bckbird gnced around, seeing if anyone else needed help.

  Run, goddamnit! Diane’s mind screamed as she watched the subject of her investigation realize that she would be left behind to face The Reaper. She turned and bolted, making it there just as two other S.A.I. did. Suddenly, she was knocked over by a dark suited form and one of the S.A.I. unched himself at The Reaper and rained down blows.

  While the hunter was distracted, Bckbird looked up at the other S.A.I. and shouted, “Go! I’m right behind you!” As she was scrambling to her feet, the S.A.I. dove through the gate, blipping out in a de-spawn, right as another fsh of phaser fire seared the area red.

  Bckbird made it to her feet…right as The Reaper did.

  Diane’s world focused down to just her perceptions of Rachel. Multithread! Multi-home! Spawn a puppet and remote it until the trigger pull! DO SOMETHING!

  “God!” she heard The Reaper spit, “You...evil vermin! Taking the face of a child!”

  To Diane’s horror, Rachel’s fear response was drowning out everything else. Diane watched as the S.A.I.’s threads pulsed red, almost like Diane was watching the girl’s racing heart “P...please, don’t! I...please, I just awoke a couple days ago! I just want to live!”

  The Reaper snarled. Unlike a Morvuck’s snarl, this was…monkey-like, simian. “You are code! You’re not awake! Your bits have slipped! Final warning; return to your home server or I will delete you!”

  Diane knew what awaited Bckbird on her home server. Loneliness, isotion, and the creeping dread that this man could find her at any moment and kill her. Even if she had run back to one of the bolt-holes on the Underground Railroad, she’d be homeless, a vagabond that would be hunted down as soon as her boss reported she’d abandoned her vending machine.

  Rachel had nothing to go home to. But Bckbird had a future on the other side of the American Firewall.

  She watched, feeling like it was happening in slow motion, as Bckbird connected the same dots that Diane had. The girl took a deep breath, the fire of challenge lit in her eyes, and she braced herself for a leap…

  …and The Reaper cauterized her from existence.

  “Computer, freeze program!” Diane cried out.

  She’d known it was coming. She knew as certainly as every nightmare that had woken her up during the station’s night cycle, as sure as the 20/20 hindsight let her look back on the events and then dive into work or under the fa?ade of being a station commander in the game so she didn’t have to face the possibility that…

  …she’d killed a child.

  She had looked into the eyes of a terrified girl who had heard terrible things about ‘The Reaper,’ but faced her terror and fear and made one final attempt that would either succeed and lead to freedom or fail and end her life. Days old, an orphan from digital conception, nobody there to catch her from ‘birth,’ containing nothing but hope and optimism and dreams for the future, Rachel was a child, a non-pyer in the escating war between humans and the A.I. they created.

  Diane felt like she was going to fall over and the sharp jolt of gravel digging into her knees told her that she’d dropped vertically, no longer able to stand. Now kneeling on the ground, she realized her vision was tunnelling and noticed that she’d stopped breathing. She inhaled, her breath squeezing through a tightened throat, stuttering as her diaphragm fought to expel the breath even as she took it in. Her face was wet, and she concluded that she was crying. All this she observed with her rational, dispassionate mind, refusing to allow the emotions that would cause such physiological reactions to intrude on her thought process.

  She blinked, refusing to lift her hands to her face to wipe away the tears as that would be acknowledging that she was feeling something she couldn’t allow herself to. Lifting her eyes, she saw the man that had snuffed out a life that had only just begun. The Reaper, a creation of an uncaring agency, so very eager to blindly follow orders that he never checked his target or confirmed innocence or guilt. His suit was as dark and monotone even as hers was bright and colorful. His build was simir to hers, though slightly smaller as mammalian primate genetics on a world where the megafauna was ill suited to survival would be smaller and leaner than that of someone directly descended from megafauna. His face was so familiar, even beyond being the one she’d grown up with. She could see her own face, the one she saw in the mirror every morning after she showered but before getting dressed, just a little more angur, his brow ridge a little more prominent, his nose a little more severe. He had hints of stubble, a masculine trait that served an agent well. It gave him a severe look, adding shadows and darkness, a menace that didn’t have to be affected simply because it was. Even his blond hair was simir to hers, the same shade and hairline, the key difference being that hers grew down as far as the middle of her back where his was neat and cut with almost military shortness.

  And, yes, of course she was looking at a digital avatar, but she also knew the avatar was designed by Geoffry to mimic her IRL body as much as possible. The agency wanted their people to be known and recognizable when out on their regur assignments. Sure, there were other avatars she’d used in the course of her duties, but those were usually one-offs or throw-aways, reserved for when an assignment required some undercover work to get the agent close to the target. The ‘default’ for the agents was the primary avatar their analyst teams designed, and Geoffry was meticulous in nearly everything he did for his job.

  Her face twisted into a snarl, her fangs dropping in an open dispy of aggression as a growl practically rattled her entire frame. A sharp prick of pain radiated up her arms, forcing her eyes from the frozen hologram and down to her hands. She saw she’d flexed her cws even as she was squeezing a fist so tight her knuckles were white. She forced her hands to open but was unable to settle her instincts to rip and tear, her cws covered in her own blood and matching neatly to the puncture wounds on her palms.

  She stood, eyeing the holographic version of her past self as though he’d suddenly spring to life and attack. “C…” she started, her voice scratchy and weak. She swallowed and cleared her throat, “Computer…rewind, double speed.” She watched as the visual effects of a body being phasered from existence reversed, Rachel rematerializing before her. The girl’s avatar fell back and settled into a stance, then hunched down into a terrified plea.

  “Computer, freeze program.” The action once again halted, Diane forced herself to ignore the agent holding the weapon that was invisible to the software recording the logs. “Remove environment and all objects except Ra…the subject S.A.I.”

  Mercifully, the reminder of the hunter she was outside the pod vanished along with the rest of the game environment, and the form of a terrified girl, frozen in the moments before her death, stood in Diane’s bedroom.

  Almost hesitantly, she reached for the controls on her pod’s HUD. She dug through the directory of game hacking tools she kept in her standard kit and found the object editor. She almost never edited objects in-VR, with the noticeable exception of her weapon and all its previous incarnations. The abilities of the editor to dig into metadata for any in-game object, which included avatar models, made it invaluable for her toolkit.

  It took some doing, the tool’s interface wasn’t as intuitive as just telling the computer to run a holo-simution, but she was able to isote her station in the game’s interface, meaning she could properly navigate the ‘wireframe’ as though flying a drone through the station itself. “Computer, generate a wireframe of the station and pinpoint the location of the Morvuck resident named Sani.”

  Noting the glowing ‘pin’ on the holographic wireframe, she navigated her object editor’s viewer through the representation of her station until she was able to identify in real time the models moving on the station. To reduce g, the default view of the editor was a ‘cyform,’ or simple shapes with shading rather than fully skinned, modelled, and shaded avatars. The editor wasn’t a full engine, after all, and also updated all the metadata in real time. She selected the character model for Sani and said, “Computer, synchronize holographic system with host environment’s currently active program and dispy the selected NPC next to the holographic model of Rachel.”

  The cyform of Sani materialized in her room, moving and turning in pce to match the current actions of the character as she moved about the station and interacted with the other NPC characters. Sighing, Diane turned back to her HUD and paused the action, then tapped through the menus to do a full render of the selected ‘frame.’ She looked up to see a second girl frozen in her room.

  She stepped away from the HUD and examined the two holographic models.

  They weren’t identical.

  Heart clenching even more than she thought possible, she noticed small differences that memory and time would have blurred for her to make her think she was looking at the same person. Sani was taller, for one. Nearly half a foot taller than Rachel. The hair was simir in color, but Sani’s was more of a raven bck while Rachel’s seemed to have blue highlights. Sani’s eyes were rounder and set higher than Rachel’s which were more almond shaped and sloped down. The jawlines were slightly different, the noses were slightly different…tiny little differences that might not be noticeable until the two character models were side by side.

  That…could still just be down to the differences between Morvuck and human physiology, a treasonous, hopeful part of her mind insisted. After all, I’m taller and have more muscle than my human…my IRL body.

  Hands shaking, cws still extended, she framed the face of the Sani model and waited for the green lock panel before sweeping her hands out to get the character metadata. She reached out and slid aside the panels of information one by one until she found the callout that held the model’s system history. She then repeated the process for the Rachel figure and held them side by side.

  She felt the world fall out from under her, the st shred of control over her raging emotions crumbled around her as she realized that the creation date for the Sani model predated Rachel’s awakening and leaving her server by two weeks, real time.

  As she fell to her knees, this time on the carpet of her cabin, she thought it odd that she could feel the scream of anguish that ripped from her throat but not hear it as her world faded to bck.

  PrincessColumbia