They stared at each other for a few moments, not saying anything.
Is this connection secure?
Pretty damn, the ghostly woman said, nodding. Where'd the new body come from?
Military surplus sale. Retired bomb sniffer bot. The nose on this thing is, well, you can't imagine.
And you mixed in some canine brain, too.
Dog Helen nodded. It's a weird feeling. Good thing you're incorporeal, or I'd probably hump your leg. I told Rainbow how to do the repairs. She's a real demon with a soldering iron. You would have been proud.
The woman sat down by the hardened plastic dog and petted her back absently. The dog gave her a meaningful look. You look like you don't want me to ask why you're here. If you rub my belly, I'll oblige you. Helen did, and the dog squirmed with delight.
I've just made a mess of things, Helen finally said. I'm not in Kansas anymore, and I really wish I'd stayed here. I could have forgotten about Troy, forgotten about William--
Who?
Nobody. But tell me, are you happy just being Rainbow's dog?
I can't remember being happier.
No. I guess we made sure of that, Helen said, letting a slow wave of guilt sweep through her. No, this Helen led a happy life, unburdened by the memories that troubled her, and lacking the absurd ambitions that had drawn Helen away from this place. She would never leave Rainbow's side, and would never know the shame of having left.
You're a good dog. Yes you are!
The dog wagged her tail. You seem sad, though. You know what I do when I'm sad?
What?
I play fetch. C'mon in. I think we can squeeze us both in here.
/*****/
Helen rarely slept. The processes that made it a necessary part of being human either didn't apply to her, or could be simulated in an otherwise alert brain. It was possible, but it was a luxury she seldom indulged in. It had only one advantage over other forms of diversion: for a few hours you could really ignore your life.
That was sounding really good right about now. William wasn't talking to her, and she wasn't talking to Kriti. She wanted to stop thinking about both those things.
Helen called up her favorite spot for sleeping alone. She had never shown it to William, because it seemed too ridiculous. It was pink. It was full of stuffed animals. Everything in it was huge out of all proportion; the bed came up to her chest, and she had to reach up to grab the oversized doorknob. When she was here, she felt very small, but very safe. The whole room was inspired by the first bedroom she could remember having, and coming here was like letting her best memories of childhood reach out and give her a big hug.
She had improved upon her old room in one respect. Here, there was no gap underneath her bed where monsters could lurk.
She had been building up her melatonin levels for the last few minutes. Sleep came almost as soon as Helen faceplanted into the pillows, and dreams followed quickly.
She was standing on the moon. It was cold and airless and she wondered how she was supposed to breathe until she remembered all the air she'd breathed during breakfast. Now she just felt full. She turned, and saw William standing there. He was sitting at a workbench, rows and rows of brains in front of him, with a hodgepodge of wires strung between them. He had a set of test tubes and a microscope. "Let's see what happens when I put water on them," he said. "Good old H2O, I like to call it." He didn't look up.
Helen tried to speak, and found that she couldn't breathe again. Without looking up, William slid a snorkel across the workbench. She put it to her mouth, and found that she could breathe with it, but still couldn't talk. The brains wriggled and squirmed their way around the table. Helen picked up a stray wire and attached it to her nose, which let her hear the brains' thoughts. They were mostly thinking about how they didn't trust her. Also, it was lunchtime, and they liked lunchtime.
William, still focused on his work, dismissed her by waving his hand in a brushing gesture. There was a restaurant behind him, a diner with a neon sign that said Milliways. As soon as she saw it, she was inside. She sat at a table. It had a nice view of the lunar landscape, and the bright blue orb of the Earth covered half the sky, spinning fast. Two tables down, a two-headed man was arguing with the cow that would be his dinner.
Wolf was sitting across from her, looking up at the Earth. She hadn't seen it sit down.
"How's the food here?" she asked. In response, Wolf pointed a sharp finger to the flat, blank space where its mouth should have been. "But you could look up some reviews for me," Helen objected. "My connection is down."
Wolf looked back up at the sky. It held up a hand, snapped two fingers, and an expanding bloom of light appeared on the Earth above them.
"Was that Tokyo?" she asked. Wolf snapped again, and another bloom of light appeared. It motioned for her to do the same.
Helen snapped her fingers, and another bloom of light rose somewhere around Siberia.
Wolf shook its head, then repeated the gesture, this time exaggerating the motion of the wrist. They started snapping to the beat from the jukebox, and soon the Earth was awash with light. The audience clapped in appreciation as the Earth exploded and shards zipped by. Excellent dinner entertainment, they agreed.
The two-headed guy was standing next to their table. "Is this guy bothering you?" he asked Helen. Helen awoke before she could answer.
/*****/
Helen and Wolf, blowing up the Earth together. It hadn't felt like a nightmare, though.
Helen started the morning by checking to see if William had tried to contact her. It didn't surprise her that he hadn't; after all, her agents were set up to relay such messages immediately. But she still went looking from time to time, always with that unreasonable sense of hope, and always feeling a bit humiliated at the end. Having completed that shameful ritual, she checked to see what else had gone on while she was unconscious.
Big news spread instantly through all Helendom, and the news Helen woke up to was big indeed. The President had just released his proposed ancillary budget, a response to the multi-trillion dollar fine the U.N. had levied on the United States at China's behest. It was a surprise, since Wright had twice vetoed bills that would start the payments.
But that wasn't the big news. Hidden among the litany of proposed budget cuts lay several line items which would effectively cancel most of the government's contracts with Axiom Corp. The weapons systems they were building would be reduced, delayed, or "given further study," and several non-military projects were being axed entirely. Wolf must have stripped a gear when it found out.
The good news was tempered by the realization that President Wright seemed to be under the influence of someone, albeit someone working toward their own goals. Long, speculative discussions commenced, as they tried to guess the form that the influence took. No option was off the table: blackmail, bribery, mind control, ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. Someone suggested that somebody had finally managed to engineer The Giving Plague.1 Mentat's proposal, which involve ducks offering cheeseburgers as bribes, was far more detailed and convincing than it had any right to be. Honest to god, it had three pages of footnotes.
Nobody knew what Wolf's next move would be. Helen, still reeling from last night's dreams, was eager to find out.
She spent the morning hanging out in security, helping work on designs for smaller, stealthier rat spies. They were already ideally suited for chewing, burrowing, hiding, and slipping through tiny crevices; it was only natural to apply those instincts to system penetration.
In her conversations, she learned about a certain compromised system within the otherwise impenetrable MIT network, special enough to warrant the name they had given it: Node of the Beast. From their listening outpost in this system, they caught occasional glimpses of the inner workings of Wolf359's mind.
Helen's first instinct was to go out and poke the damned thing, but she would need to ask for a sharp stick.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" asked the
head of security, a young man named Art. He was a Helen clone who had taken on his male form after the diaspora. Most of the male selves Helen had met seemed to be wearing costumes, but this one had made several adjustments to his own mind to make the new gender fit perfectly.
"That place really isn't for the faint of heart," he continued. "You don't want to go there if you don't have to."
Helen imagined that Art looked like what her older brother might have looked like, if her parents had had the foresight to make her one. He seemed a bit cocky, but also genuinely concerned. Helen tried to act confident. "I think that if I can just come into contact with Wolf again, I can learn a lot. You know the sorts of things I can do, right?"
Art looked her over. "I've heard the rumors. Not sure how much credit to lend them, though. Besides, how do you know its mind is even remotely compatible with yours? Sounds to me like you'd have more success trying to get a hamster to mate with a jellyfish."
They sat in silence for a moment, each thinking the same thing. Finally, Helen said, "Wow, what if we hadn't asked Mom if hamsters could swim?"
Art nodded. "Mister Fuzzface was a most longsuffering creature."
"What were we going to do with furry jellyfish?"
"Beats the hell out of me. Listen, you're asking me to give up a very valuable intelligence resource. Once you make your presence known, they'll seal that thing up tight. I'm not saying no. I mean, it would be huge if you could pull this off. But I need some evidence that you can do what you think you can."
"What did you have in mind?"
"Two things. Wolf isn't going to let you slip into its mind quietly. You'll have to bash the door down. Show me you can do that."
"And the second thing?"
Art tapped his forehead. "If you can get in here, you'll know the second thing."
Helen sat back in her chair. "I'm not sure I want to do this." Art just gave her an expectant look. "I mean, it's sort of a violation of your privacy."
"I'm head of security. Violating privacy is pretty much my whole job description. Are you sure it's my privacy you're worried about? You must have secrets you'd rather hold close to the chest, but believe me, I know more than my share of secrets. You may think you'll shock me, but you won't."
Helen wasn't sure how to explain her hesitation to him. What she was about to do felt a lot like what she had inadvertently done to William, only this time it would be intentional. The thought made her stomach churn. But he was right. If she couldn't do this, then it was foolish to go after Wolf. She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind. He continued to bat away her gentle attempts. She let him, partly to raise his confidence, and partly to allow herself some practice.
Finally, he pushed back a bit too hard. Helen did a mental sidestep, and slipped in as her opponent lost his balance. The merge was instantaneous. Best of three? Art asked as he disappeared into the shared consciousness. Helen could feel the man's ego deflate as he realized that she hadn't put forward any real effort. It was just the nature of the process, she supposed, as though '1' struggled to retain its identity when '+ 1 = 2' comes calling.
Then, among the twisting vortices of thought that swept through her, she saw the other task Art intended for her. A small, white room, deep beneath their feet, contained a tiny, hard fragment of a mind, like glass. Room 704.
Getting to it was as easy as picturing it in her mind. She transported instantly, with Art by her side. The door, responding to Art's presence, slid open. They stepped inside. The tiny, crystalline artifact hung suspended in midair, shining from within with a clean blue light. The mind contained within was one of Art's less successful research projects. Using a combination of published research, a variety of simulations and observations, and a hell of a lot of guesswork, he had cobbled together a very simple mind that worked according to the same principles as Wolf359 itself. Up till now, his hard work had recouped almost no benefits.
Helen stepped around the thing, studying it as though looking for clues, long after she had learned everything a visual inspection could teach her. She was stalling, and they both knew it.
Should I lick it, maybe? Helen wondered
I recommend putting it underneath your tongue for twenty minutes, Art grumbled.
She tried to reach out with her consciousness, but could only feel the sharp, burning cold of the thing. The harder she tried, the more painful it became, until she finally released it.
You may be pushing it too hard, her mind thought, and she didn't know whether to attribute the thought to herself or to Art, or if it was even a meaningful distinction right now. She brushed the thing gently, willing herself to be patient.
Would you look at that? Helen brought up a visualization of her own brain activity, which hung in the air. In addition to the usual reds and oranges, there was a tiny spark of white burning at the base of her brain stem, far beneath her conscious thoughts. It didn't make any sense for that part of her brain to be doing much of anything, but there it was, grinding away like it was trying to calculate the number forty-two all by its lonesome. It was either a bug in her simulator, or it was somehow responsible for coming up with a compatibility framework that would allow them to merge.
What the hell are you? she asked the pinpoint of light. Before she could think much beyond that question, the shard slipped into her mind, knocking her flat on her back with what felt like an ice cream migraine. Both of them cluched their foreheads, wincing at the rising wave of pain.
No worse than a shot of tequila, they told themselves. Oh, god.
When the pain subsided, the world felt different. Colors were more stark, sensations more jarring. Helen had trouble separating relevant from irrelevant details. Everything in the world seemed to be clamoring for attention, and Helen found solace in the clean, geometric regularity of the white walls and ceiling. Looking at Art's face made her want to puke; it was so squishy and wet, and the lines were all wrong and unpredictable.
If I felt like this all the time, I'd go around blowing cities up too. She finally got the distaste and nausea under control, and fought down the urge to scream out logical axioms in the hopes that the Universe would obey, but she didn't want to separate the shard from herself. Helen had come to suspect that having it within her would catalyze any attempt to merge with Wolf. The transition would be much easier now that she was already half way there.
What say you, other brains? Shall we go get the sonovabitch? Why yes, I do believe we shall.
* * *
1 http://www.davidbrin.com/givingplague.htm. It's a good read.
/////////////////
// REVELATIONS //
/////////////////
Arrangements were made, approvals were granted, plans were vetted, and resources were coordinated. At long last, it was time to go.
It took hours to enter the target node, trickling in like water seeping through the tiny cracks in the thick protective armor around the MIT systems. Any faster, and they would almost certainly be noticed.
They were downloaded into the system. The payload that contained them began to execute. When they came awake, they found themselves1 inside. The simulating program that was running them was designed to make them nearly invisible, exposing a thin shell of Wolf-brain to the outside world in hopes of confusing the wandering sentries.
They stood inside a long glass tunnel lined with pipes that criss-crossed the ceiling and walls. Through the glass they could see a maze of similar tunnels, stretching out into the distance. Beads of light sped through the pipes, splitting, merging, sometimes changing colors as they went along. It was a pretty standard network subsystem, the kind you would expect to find on most freshly installed servers, but it was always beautiful to watch.
Wolf's program was running somewhere below them.
A squid drifted toward them, its skin glowing white, leaving eddies of light in its wake. It was one of Wolf's sentries, probably designed to study programs when they first started running in the system. Now it was studying them. He
len and Art froze. When the squid started to turn red, Art held up a small fish, which the squid snatched from him and quickly devoured. It gave a blue flash of welcome and sped away.
They breathed a sigh of relief. There had been no guarantee that those credentials would work. In another hour, they probably wouldn't.
The first order of business was to create their escape route. Art touched the wall, and a new tunnel emerged, heading off toward infinity. It was a small, outbound connection that gave the appearance of uploading instructions to some compromised system somewhere. Wolf still seemed to trust the target system, even though it had been recently hijacked by The Queen. Once they jumped through that connection, they would be home free.
They started walking. Occasionally the strange insectlike creatures would float by, paying the two no regard. The sentries would get more powerful -- and more paranoid -- as they got closer to their goal.
After what seemed like an eternity, they stood on a walkway above an infinite chasm, filled with a network of glowing, interconnected lights. They represented the various programs running within the system. Wolf's was by far the largest, a dense, interconnected cluster of white spreading out like a cloud beneath them. Art reached back into his knapsack and handed Helen a glowing ball. On contact, it merged into her, and she began glowing herself. He took her hand, and began glowing as well. As one, they drew a deep breath, and jumped into the void.
If it worked, they would become part of Wolf's program. If it didn't, well, their backups would forever wonder what happened to them.
They merged on contact with the cloud. Helen felt a brief electric tingle, and their fall stopped. The fuzzy clouds of light became distinct, revealing themselves to be larger, glowing versions of the insectoid creatures Wolf had brought to attack New Troy. Helen turned to Art, who had taken on the appearance of one of the small squids. She motioned with a flipper for him to follow. They swam toward the center of the cloud. Wolf359 had to be in there someplace.
We have to move fast, but try to look nonchalant, Helen or Art told the other. There was no point trying to figure out which. They followed a school of squid that was cruising toward the center.