"And what big idea would that be?"
"Hell if I know. But I've been following you long enough, I just expect you to do something new and mind-blowing every three months or so. And if you have any ideas for cutting that time down to two months, I know some amazing software developers we could throw at any problem. So, do you think we can work out a deal?"
Helen looked at the huge, burly man with the eye patch and the disfiguring scar, as he brimmed with excitement like a little kid on Christmas. "So, this is a serious offer?"
"It is. Honestly, I can't believe I got the chance to make the offer at all. Thank god venture capital types are so hopeless. The ones I've talked to think you're an elaborate conjuring trick, and that Mellings is the brains of the outfit. They think Axiom Systems is the be all and end all of AI. You and me, dame! We'll show them!"
"I've agreed to nothing," she reminded him. "But I'll admit, it sounds better than losing consciousness because we blew off the electric bill."
She stood up to leave. "One for the road?" Eric asked.
Helen shook her head. "I have to be getting back," she told him.
"I figured as much. But it's my job to ask."
/*****/
Disorientation was inevitable after a merging. It felt like waking up and trying to remember several dreams at once, while trying to figure out which of them she had actually dreamed, and which she'd only dreamed she had dreamed. As usual, William was by her bedside to hand her a nice cup of tea. She took it, giving him a quick smile of gratitude, then gave it a long, noisy slurp.
William knew not to rush her right now, but there were a dozen worried questions piled up behind his expression. "Okay, okay. I'll tell you everything. Just stop looking at me like you're about to have your organs harvested." He settled in to listen. "The president wants us dead and buried. We assumed as much. I have it from a semi-reliable source that he wants us offed so that the military can fold everything we've done into their own super-secret, if-we-told-you-we'd-have-to-kill-you project. I'm sure the telepresence robots aren't their only big idea."
"Vincent was out of the loop on this, but he's storming around the White House, interrogating everyone who's so much as poured his boss coffee. Our corporate funders bailed on us because the Prez promised to let them in on the ground floor of some of these projects. There are also rumblings about making most of our research illegal and banning some of the resulting applications. They'll argue it's a threat to public safety, or that it presents ethical connundra, but I think they just don't want it to fall into the wrong hands."
"The wrong hands being, 'hands not attached to the government?'"
"Exactly. Now, I think we might be able to get replacement funds from the state. I mean, it's California, so not much love for President Wright here. But we're going to have a pretty narrow window before he pushes to make our research illegal. Now, I've found a possible lead on some private funds, but I'm thinking there's a catch. If it's serious, hell, some of the transnational corporations are pretty much countries unto themselves these days."
William didn't look consoled. "If they start making our work illegal, you know they'll be coming after you next."
"I've thought about that," Helen said, throwing off the covers and standing up. "By the time they come for me, I have to be absolutely bulletproof. Kriti. Have to talk to Kriti."
"She just fell asleep on her cot. It's been a long day for everybody."
"Well wake her--no. Shit." Helen balled her fists. "I'm not thinking straight right now. I need to be thinking straight. I need... god, why is this happening?"
William just held her. "It will be okay. We'll find a way through."
"Will, you've been more wonderful than I can say." She could hear the unspoken but in her own voice.
"But we need to start seeing other people?" William asked.
She socked him in the arm, then hugged him tighter. "Goof. Don't try to finish my sentences for me. Makes me feel all predictable. But I am about to say something you won't want to hear. I need to leave for, well, I'm not sure how long. Maybe a few weeks."
William seemed perplexed. "Where are you going?"
"I need time to research a few things, and figure out how I'm going to protect myself." Helen took his hand. "I've given a lot of thought to what I'd do if they came for me. Where would I run? What could I do to survive, even if the world was trying to shut me down? But I thought I'd have years to get ready, not days."
"Ready to do do what?"
She kissed him. "It may be safer for you not to know," she said. But what she meant was, If you knew, you'd try to talk me out of it. She could see on his face that he sensed at least a bit of that. "Like I said, I have to be bulletproof. I love you."
William didn't seem at all reassured. "I love you too," he whispered, giving her another squeeze.
Then he was gone. She sat down on her couch. She waved her hand, bringing up her files, then rifled through them until she found the ones she was looking for. "So much to learn, so little time," she muttered.
Helen closed her eyes, then divided, then divided again, and again. Now eight Helens sat on her couch, which had expanded into an inward-facing circle to accommodate them. She'd never done eight before, and it left each of them feeling tired and stretched thin. Time was passing quickly around her, and her display was warning that she was using too much computing power. That would need fixing.
She turned off her lower-level brain functions, those responsible for things like heartbeat, breathing, and temperature regulation. Senses and motor control disappeared next, eliminating the need to model her physical body at all. All eight Helens disappeared, replaced by floating, glowing brains.
This left the Helens unable to speak to one another, but she was prepared for that. With only a bit of hacking, she gave herself the ability to cause the same pattern of firings to happen in all her heads at once, giving her a rudimentary form of telepathy. Vocal speech required translating the thought into language, then into vocalizations, then into vibrations in the air that struck the ear drums, then back into language, then into abstract thought.
This is way more efficient, she told herself.
You don't say, one of her shot back.
The areas of her brain that monitored the rest of her body were put into hibernation next. With the demand for computing resources reduced, time resumed its normal pace, but it left her feeling disembodied and light-headed.
Her emotions had been increasingly distracting. She altered them to give herself a calm feeling, touched with just enough of a sense of urgency to keep her focused. After the emotional roller coaster of the last several hours, it was a relief to let it all slip away.
By the time she was done, she no longer felt human. In fact, she no longer felt much of anything at all. She had let go of so much, but what remained shone with perfect clarity. The Helens began studying their simulator software, looking for last-minute changes that would let them think faster.
At one time, Helen had thought that she and Kriti had eked every bit of performance out of the simulator that they could. Now she looked at it with sixteen fresh, focused eyes, and saw how wrong she was. She found absurdities all over: duplicate calculations and redundant data structures, subprocesses waiting on irrelevant calculations, repetitive calculations that could be shoved into lookup tables. As she applied improvement after improvement, she took satisfaction in watching real time slow to a crawl.
Tick.
She thought to herself, one alligator two alligator three alligator four alli-
Tick.
Eight Helens, each experiencing nearly four seconds for each true second that ticked by.
Helen thought, I'm going to accomplish a lot this week.
Seven of her minds continued their work on the simulator. The eighth began calling up every bit of information she could find on the Juggernaut botnet.
/*****/
The Juggernaut [[Botnet]], was the largest of the [[Superhero-class botnets]],
known for exceptional virulence, self-regeneration, and stealth. This class was also the first to apply the principles of encrypted computing. Juggernaut was estimated to be by far the largest botnet of its day. At its peak, it is estimated to have controlled 1.5% of all the computers in the world, including mobile devices and wearables. On February 18, 2037, it was hijacked and transformed into the [[Troy botnet]], the first sentient botnet.
Juggernaut (botnet). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved August 10, 2037, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut_(botnet)
[Note: This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.]
/*****/
Date: February 18, 2037
By outward appearances, Andrei Kapashenko had a good life. In reality, he had two good lives. In one good life, he was an up-and-coming businessman, one of a new generation of rock star Russian entrepreneurs who were revitalizing his country's technology sector. In the other life, the one that had funded his rise, he ran the most successful one man computer crime operation on the planet.
Until today, nobody had linked those two lives together.
Helen found him at a symposium on the future of business in St. Petersburg. She sent Imp. When Kapashenko sat down in his seat, he found himself sitting next to a rat wearing a minstrel's outfit. The rat looked up at him, and gave him a knowing smile.
She felt the probing as Kapashenko tried to get data on the rat, but knew he would come up empty. "Who are you?" he asked. "This is a private conference."
"My mistake," Imp squeaked. "I must not have seen the 'Bipeds Only' sign. Just give me the keys to Juggernaut, and I'll be on my way."
"What are you talking about?" he asked. Helen knew he already knew the answer. But his accent made him sound very menacing.
"Juggernaut. Big swarm of hijacked computers. Steals data, blackmails companies with DoS attacks and data theft, has eyes everywhere and hands in everything. Gimme."
"Why would you think I can give you Juggernaut, little mouse?"
"Because I've been watching it very closely. Juggernaut keeps other malware off the computers it infects, and only runs cryptographically signed code, so everything it does is in some way a reflection of the person who signed the code. Its creator. You. So when a handful of them launch a coordinated harassment campaign against your ex-wife... I mean, talk about stupid."
He seemed unimpressed. "Maybe I pay someone to cause her trouble," he said.
"Someone who read your doctoral thesis on encrypted computing a few hundred times? Someone who perhaps also got busted for running a small botnet in college? Someone who happens to launch attacks precisely when you send messages to a specific computer in Moscow?"
Andrei looked taken aback. Then his eyes narrowed. "You're bluffing. There is no such pattern."
"But you had to think for a second about why there wouldn't be. I'm sure you added some randomized delay between uploading a new payload and deploying it. But the look on your face is proof enough for me."
"You need more than that before you can accuse me."
"You know that I don't. Soon as I put the idea out there, you have to flee the country. Your little operation has pissed off a lot of powerful people. Hmmm, I see that Juggernaut is now desperately trying to trace my connection, which doesn't exactly speak to your innocence. I'll make you a deal. Give me the crypto keys, I'll leave you alone to live your new life. Give me the source code, and maybe I'll let you in on some lucrative opportunities down the line. Give me trouble, and I'll make you go squish."
Andrei looked indecisive, but that was giving way to anger. Not good, Helen thought. Perhaps she had miscalculated. "Trust me," said Helen/Imp, "this is the best offer you're going to get."
"Excuse me one moment, little mouse," he said. "I am being interrupted." His face went fuzzy for a minute, a signal to bystanders that his attention was elsewhere. Then he came back.
Before he could say anything, Helen spoke. "She sounded upset. I'd suggest flowers."
"You broke into that link?" he asked, looking astonished, almost fearful.
"She loves you, you know. But she doesn't know about Juggernaut, or the icky things you've done with it."
"Are we back to blackmail again?" he asked.
"No. Okay, maybe a little. But I'm a glass-half-full kind of rat. Think about it this way: I'm offering you a chance to put away your old life and become the man she already thinks you are."
Andrei wrestled with the decision for a few long moments. "Give me a few days to consider your offer."
"You have two minutes. I've got places to go, people to gnaw."
"Fine," he said. "I will transfer the source code to you. The whole thing was getting to be a huge zarasa2 anyways. I'm better off without it."
* * *
1 Rattus Norvegicus Pattern #037, female, tan, Burrower-class. Specializes in detecting unusual financial transactions and caches of virtual mozarella.
2 "Pain in the ass."
/////////////
// OF TROY //
/////////////
Date: February 25, 2037
Helen opened her eyes and immediately looked around for a cup of tea. It wasn't there. This merge had been especially brutal; so much thinking had been done, so many new and alien experiences needed to be processed.
She was lying in a bed that she didn't recognize, but was dimly aware that she had chosen. The walls were black and gray stone. Lush blue and purple tapestries hung everywhere. She'd gone crazy with the tapestries, she decided. The window was open, letting in a breeze of outside air. Flocks of small birds would fly past from time to time.
She sat up, threw back the covers, and felt the chill of the stone floor on her feet. She stepped to the window and looked out upon a sprawling city. It looked like something straight out of the bronze age, with narrow roads weaving between buildings of mud and wood, primitive merchant stalls made from beams lashed together with coarse rope. A flag waved from her castle's wall. It had a drawing of a brain with googly eyes mounted on stalks, wearing a silly hat. There was no sign of human activity.
This was Troy. This was her city, a vast alt that -- like her -- now resided inside the enormous Juggernaut botnet.
She looked at a clock on the bedside table. It showed 11:31AM, Greenwich time. More important, it showed a 26/1 perceived time ratio: for each second that passed in the real world, she felt twenty-six seconds seemed to pass here in Troy. She kept looking at the clock, fighting down a creeping sense of fear and loss.
This is my home now, she thought.
This is my life now.
This is what I am.
This.
She lay down on the bed, and silently -- as though she feared someone would hear her -- began to cry.
/*****/
The time differential was an artifact of the botnet's vast reserves of computing horsepower. Helen could simulate many selves at normal speed, or one hypercaffeinated self. Or she could let much of the botnet lie fallow, and live one normal-paced life. But that seemed like a bit of a waste.
She created a swarm of happy-zombie brains, and instructed them to start studying the Juggernaut source code, but not to make any changes yet. Then she sent another brain off to "take one for the team" by fulfilling her weekly head shrinking with Dr. Featherstone. She knew the merge would leave her with another hangover from hell, but she was hungry for more familiar surroundings. She headed back to the lab.
The place was empty. Her hologram wandered the halls like a ghost. After a few minutes searching, she found William alone in his office.
Helen stepped through the closed door. "Hey," she said.
William stood to greet her. "Are you okay? What happened?" he asked, his voice a mixture of relief and concern.
"I can't tell you exactly. But I've had a very strange few weeks, and I got a lot done, and I'm thoroughly decentralized now. They could shut down a million computers, and I'd shrug it off."
"So, the whole Juggernaut thing was you? T
here were reports that it had gone quiet."
Helen nodded, surprised at how quickly he'd made the connection. "Try to keep that under wraps."
"So my girlfriend is a botnet?"
That stung her. "Please, William. I'm not exactly happy about this either."
"Sorry, but for something you weren't happy to do, you sure rushed off in a hurry to get it done."
"I was frightened! Doesn't it matter to you that they could march in here any moment and declare everything about us a national secret? That they could mothball me, or delete me, or run experiments on me, or force me to work for them, and I would have no way to stop them?"
"Of course it matters to me! But it also matters that you made this decision without me. You went off, and you did it. You didn't even ping to tell us you were okay."
"You had full access to my vitals--"
"Which showed that you were pretty much rewriting yourself from scratch, turning into god knows what. That was supposed to comfort me?"
He had every right to be angry. She knew that she had been selfish and calloused, and that she was fully in the wrong here. That infuriated her. "Why can't you trust me?"
"The way you trust me? It doesn't feel like we're making decisions together anymore."
"I've got work to do," she said. "We'll talk when you're ready to be less stubborn."
"Me? What about--" William reversed course. "Fine. Just... Vincent keeps popping in to ask about you. Let him know you're okay."
She nodded, a bit startled. William usually just pretended that Vincent didn't exist. She didn't know whether it meant that he was feeling less jealousy toward his rival, or that he was giving up on her.
It hurt to think about. She tried not to.
/*****/
Work had really piled up in her absence. Missed meetings, missed lectures, broken promises, unreturned messages. She was tempted to summon up twenty or thirty of herself to bulldoze through the pile. But if she did that, she might as well stand in the university's quad with a loudspeaker, yelling "Behold my new superpowers, puny mortals!"