The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl

  "Somebody -- we don't know who -- bypassed Altworld's safety protocols and flooded the stadium with those things. People are saying that they're called stabbies, and they're a pretty common tool for vandals... Is your couch trying to grope you?"

  She gave in to its protective embrace. "Yes. Yes it is. Do we know anything? Who would do something like that?"

  "No clue. Could be bored kids who downloaded a hack tool, or those religious nut jobs who call you the Beast from Revelations, or our arch-enemies at MIT-Robotics. The Altworld security honchos are investigating; they'll be able to tell us how sophisticated the attack was. Until they come up with something, I don't want you leaving the lab. You'd be putting yourself at risk."

  That was exactly what Helen had planned to do. Somehow, hearing the same course of action out of someone else's mouth made it sound cowardly. "Don't you start. Look, I have to remind myself that I wasn't really in danger back there. You being overprotective is just making it harder. I'm not going into hiding over some teenage prank."

  "We can't be sure--"

  "I know." One look at the professor's face told her that she needed to give him some reassurance. "No, really. I do know. Part of me would like to just let the couch envelope me and never come out again. But that's not the life I want." Dr. Mellings nodded. "Still," she added, "I wouldn't mind if you took a copy of me and put it somewhere safe.

  * * *

  1 Japanese for slow-witted. I think. The Internet has lied to me before.

  /////////////////////////

  // THE KASPAROV GAMBIT //

  /////////////////////////

  Date: November 09, 2034

  Despite her protests, Helen didn't go back out into the world for a while. She spent a good portion of the week immersed in the minutiae of Altworld security, before finally deciding that it would take months more effort before she could contribute to the investigation in a meaningful way. When the Altworld security report came back, it was packed with jargon, and it took everything she had learned that week to translate it into, "We have no idea who did this. But we're not bad at our jobs, we swear."

  During that time, the lab had mostly left her to herself. Kriti occasionally dropped by her house in Altworld to ask if she needed anything, or to talk about her work. Just as she found herself itching to rejoin the world, there was a knock at her door.

  She opened the door to find a handsome stranger smiling at her, as if he might be expecting a warm welcome. He was dressed in black from head to toe, and had a short sword slung over his back. "Can I help you?" she asked after too long a pause.

  "You don't recognize me, do you?" Dr. Mellings' voice asked. She finally saw the resemblance.

  "What's up, doc?" His avatar looked about forty years younger than he did. Maybe they'd based the face on some old photos.

  "Like it?" Dr. Mellings asked.

  Helen circled the avatar, inspecting him. "You've lost weight. And you're a ninja."

  "Fat ninjas have trouble jumping between rooftops."

  She continued her slow circle, occasionally stopping to feel the fabric of his tunic, or to rub her fingers against his stubble. "This isn't an off-the-rack body, is it? It's very good."

  "Thanks," he said, sounding a bit embarrassed.

  "MIT?"

  "How did you know?"

  "The hand movements are unusually fluid. Only MIT seems to have gotten them right. They don't do the eyes as well as the Japanese, though." She stomped down on his foot.

  "Ow! Shit!"

  "Full body tactile rig. You really went all out."

  He avoided her eyes. "The lab is paying for half of it."

  "Pity. I was going to take it as a compliment. Come on in," she said, swinging the door open. The professor stepped inside, and the door shut itself.

  "So you finally took the plunge? How's the water in here?"

  Mellings paused, considering his answer. "Altworld is... weird. I haven't decided if I like it yet, but I do see the appeal."

  "So what's the occasion?"

  "I've come to convince you to go to a party."

  Helen knew she was treading on dangerous ground now. "When?"

  "When would you like?"

  "Ah. One of those," she said, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice. "Couldn't we just find a party to crash? Get drunk, throw up in a vase? You know, a fun party."

  "Nope. That sort of party could get us shut down. You have to hobnob with philosophical luminaries and venture capitalists."

  Helen groaned. "If the next words out of your mouth are, 'It would mean so much to the lab,' you'll be eating that sword of yours."

  "Andrea really wants you to do it."

  "Hand me your sword, will you?"

  /*****/

  Date: November 23, 2034

  In the end, Helen went. She even let Andrea choose her outfit, which was why she was now "wearing" a dress of wafting purple smoke. It gave the impression that at any moment it would dissipate entirely. Without being particularly revealing, it seemed to promise to reveal much more any second now, and when she walked about it seemed to be hanging on by its fingernails. More smoke puffed from her hair, following her like an insubstantial train, and blots of smoke clung to the floor behind her every step.

  As she looked herself over in the mirror, Helen decided that she had underestimated her agent. The outfit was pretty amazing; she imagined it would turn heads even in Altworld. But the invitation list for the party was even more impressive, a real who's who of power brokers, with a strong science bent. There would be twelve Nobel laureates, the upper echelons of the National Science Foundation, some uberfamous tech journalists and pundits, and almost exactly enough venture capital to buy New Czechoslovakia. There were also a handful of senators and a score of representatives, all trying to boost their pro-science credentials.

  If a long, boring night of hobnobbing was guaranteed, at least Andrea had made sure it would be a productive, long, boring night of hobnobbing. Though, when asked, Andrea had taken little credit for the guest list, saying that someone who called herself The Hostess had promised her a great guest list if Andrea could just secure the guest of honor. At the time, Helen hadn't thought much of it, but now that it was too late to back out or research it, her curiosity was spiking.

  She heard Dr. Mellings knock at her front door. She tapped a command into a data pad, and the entryway gaped open, grabbed him between its jaws, and swallowed him whole with a delighted smacking sound. The professor was flung inside, cracked his leg on the couch, and fell sprawling onto the floor. "Can't you just get a bellhop like normal alt'ers?" he asked.

  "Some people just can't take a jo--" He stood up. "Why the hell are you wearing sweatpants? For the love of Cthulhu, don't you know how important tonight is?"

  He pretended to examine her with disinterest, then tapped into his own datapad, muttering, "Subject exhibits an irrational fear of sweatpants. This needs to be explored further."

  "Gah! They're horrible! Take them off, right now!"

  "But I think they really flatter my package."

  "Now!"

  He tapped into his datapad again, and the offending article was gone, a tuxedo in its place. "You're right. Some people can't take a joke."

  He seemed annoyed that she'd taken it so seriously, and she wasn't sure how to deal with that. "Those pants weren't a joke. They were a war crime. I'm calling the Hague."

  Dr. Mellings relaxed visibly. "Wouldn't you rather get to the party? I assume they've unlocked the invitation by now."

  "They sent the crypto key just now. But Andrea swears we have to be exactly thirty minutes late to score maximum rep. It's like a sweet spot between 'too important to let this little event guide my life' and 'too important for you losers.' There are studies, she swears." She gave a shrug of doubt.

  They had exactly twenty-seven minutes to kill, which they spent inventing silly arguments about whether to teleport or fly to their destination. Mellings insisted that flight felt more real, and tr
eated Altworld as the physical space it was intended to represent. Helen argued for teleportation, because it didn't impose an artificial restriction on the world, and for the sake of being contradictory. Then Dr. Mellings used the word 'epistemological,' Helen accused him of fighting dirty, and the gloves came off. Finally, having burnt through all their travel time and completely forgotten what they had originally begun arguing about, they took the invitation and teleported.

  They found themselves standing in a dark forest, a little before nightfall. The air was cool and damp, alive with the noise of living things. A thick canopy of trees stretched upward, farther than Helen could make out. They looked around for a few moments, wondering if they were in the right place. "Must be a private server," Helen whispered, studying her heads-up display. So long as they were here, they would be constrained by whatever rules the owner had set up. In this case, it meant no flying, magic, or superpowers, and only mirror avatars1 were permitted.

  Helen re-read the instructions on the ticket. "Oh," she said, then held her ticket aloft. It transformed into a dove, which lit from her hand and fluttered into the woods. They gave chase, crashing through the forest. Eventually it settled into a white ball on the forest floor. They ran up to the bird and looked down at it. It looked up at them. Then it raised a wing and waved goodbye.

  Branches grew around them, creaking and stretching as they slithered along. Once they had formed a dense lattice around them, a vine shot down from the sky, wrapping tightly around the top of the enclosure, then tugging on it. They began to rise, quickly gaining speed, until the cold wind stung Helen's eyes. She kept a white-knuckled grip on the cage even as she craned for a better look above. In seconds, the tops of the trees had disappeared beneath them, revealing a sky thick with the fiery wisps of sunset clouds.

  She looked over at Dr. Mellings. He was grinning like an idiot.

  The vine was pulling them up towards a large, floating structure of brown and green. As they came closer, Helen strained to find the words to describe it, until she finally settled on "treepunk zepplin."

  "Or maybe branchpunk?" she asked. "Splinterpunk? No."

  "What?" the professor shouted over the roar of the wind. There were two large, cylindrical balloons on opposite sides of the ship, lashed to the supported structure with vines. A large, aerodynamic hull was suspended beneath it like an oversized wicker basket. The entire hull seemed to be made of a thick, tangled mesh of living branches, with leaves and moss hanging from it. Large, leafy propellors jutted from it at odd angles, spinning slowly. Some of the vines that ran to them might be hydraulic lines.

  Above her, she could hear the chatter and easy laughter of people passing a pleasant evening. The light from the upper deck hit the balloons, making them glow.

  Finally, their berth latched tight to the side of the hull and an opening unraveled, allowing them entrance.

  Helen began to step inside. "You look amazing," Dr. Mellings blurted out. Helen paused, blushing furiously. "I was going to tell you, but then your house ate me."

  "You mean, you planned the compliment before you'd even seen me?"

  "Er, no. I mean--"

  "So, you mean, you thought I might look awful?"

  "Er, well, I--"

  "Choose your next words very carefully."

  He thought for a moment. "I did prepare the compliment in advance, fully expecting I would be able to deliver it with genuine sincerity. Which I eventually did." He appeared tense, as if worried that she would find offense.

  She deliberately kept her face unreadable, watching him squirm for a few agonized seconds. Then she broke into a wide grin. "Thank you," she said.

  "For which part?"

  "For the part where you always treat me like a real person. And for the part where you tell me again how amazing I look."

  "You'll knock 'em dead."

  Close enough, she thought. They stepped off and climbed a ladder up to the top deck. As Helen popped her head over the deck, a woman with dark green skin took her arm to steady her. She was naked, save for an animal skin around her waist and a string of wooden beads that swept up her deep brown hair. Only when she had recovered from the shock of the woman's pitch black eyes did she notice the chains.

  They were thin, delicate strands of silver, and at first Helen mistook them for jewelry. But they connected her hands to each other and her feet. Before she recovered from the shock, the woman asked, "How shall I introduce you two, ma'am?"

  Helen just stood there, mouth agape. Mellings stole the initiative. "Professor William Mellings, UCSD, and escort."

  "I will have my vengeance upon you, hyoo-man," Helen muttered as the woman announced their entrance. They descended the moss-encrusted staircase, to the indifference of the crowd that was still waiting to hear Helen's name. Handfuls of people were scattered about, some sitting around tables made of branches that wove their way up from the floor, others reclined on enormous toadstools that served as eight-person beanbags. A couple sat in a cage much like the one that had brought Helen and Dr. Mellings up to the ship, whispering to each other as they huddled against the chill of the night.

  One woman recognized them immediately, excusing herself from conversation with a pair of older gentlemen, who seemed keenly disappointed by the development.

  "Oh, Helen, you've come at last!" she said. She was a young woman, with light red hair shaped into elaborate curls, wearing a dress of red satin and a glittering tiara. Her voice was deep, with an undercurrent of happiness.

  "I'm afraid we haven't been properly introduced," Helen said.

  "Please, call me The Hostess. Or Belle, if you prefer."

  "Belle. That's very pretty," Dr. Mellings said. "Did you design this whole space? It's impressive."

  "I had it commissioned," she said, giving a shy smile. "My artistry takes other paths. But it's just one of many that I use for events like these. Is there anyone here you two particularly wanted to meet?"

  "How about the Jolly Green Giant's shorter sister?" Helen said.

  Belle laughed, but then looked confused for several seconds. At last she said, "Oh, you mean the Atasi servant who introduced you. If you like, I can arrange an encounter with her. It would be absolutely private." Her voice carried a hint of mischief.

  "I didn't mean it like that," Helen said. "I just want to ask her about the world, and whether she enjoys her captivity."

  "Ah, you have abolitionist sympathies. It would be amusing to have an in-world debate about the practice. But the night is too short to waste on such things. I assure you, in reality the Asani are merely scripts. They have no minds, so they cannot distinguish between freedom and captivity. They're no more slaves than the ship or trees or sky."

  Even though it was probably true, the justification left Helen a bit dissatisfied. She had read too many epistles by erudite jackasses on why she shouldn't be allowed into the club of mind-havers -- a couple of the authors were on the ship right now -- and she had seen some remarkably sophisticated scripts running around. As Mellings chatted with Belle about some subject-changing matter, Helen turned and glanced at the Asani woman, who was now chatting with a newly arrived guest, whom her display identified as Senator Albrecht of Indiana. He was shaking her hand, and seemed genuinely pleased to be meeting her.

  Belle excused herself, saying that she had some introductions to make, then hurried off. "I think I know what she is," Dr. Mellings whispered. He waited a few seconds for her to respond.

  "Umm, you must be very clever?"

  Her companion's face reddened slightly; he really had gone all out on his sensory rig. "It's kind of important. The Hostess travels in extremely powerful circles. She's launched and destroyed political careers, yet she's essentially anonymous. There are more dark conspiracy theories swarming around her than The Trilateral Commission."

  "Really? Interesting. So what's your theory?"

  "She's a social networking bot. That long pause meant that you knocked her off her script, and it took a few seconds for someb
ody to point her back to where she needed to be."

  "All I did was ask her about the Asani."

  "And I'm sure she knows all about the Asani. But you called her about The Jolly Green Giant's little sister. No surprise that she didn't infer the referent of the phrase."

  "But you think somebody is pulling the strings? Couldn't you say that about everyone here? It doesn't seem like it makes a difference."

  "I think it does. If it were a person doing all the wheeling and dealing, making introductions, all that, you could speculate on any number of motives. But if it's automated, then somebody thinks that something predictable is coming out of all this, something they can use. I'm taking a leap here, but maybe when powerful people get introduced to each other, predictable things happen to their reputations, maybe something that can be used to make money in the reputation markets. Which is way less nefarious than most of the alternate theories."

  "There are reputation markets?" Helen asked. "Hmm. I suppose there would be. Still, if it were me, I'd be taking all these conversations and sniffing them for blackmail material."

  Dr. Mellings gave her an appraising look. "Maybe I've underestimated your potential as a supervillan. Would you like to buy a fixer-upper moon base?"

  It seemed foolish to Helen for him to be discussing these observations inside the private world of the object of these conspiracy theories. He had to know he could be overheard.

  "Why hasn't Belle come back," she wondered aloud. "I guess she doesn't want to interrupt us."

  Dr. Mellings took the hint and fell silent, looking embarrassed. She gave him an apologetic smile, then pointed to a promising gaggle of people on an observation deck above them. "We should probably mingle," she said, without enthusiasm.

  "All right," he said with equal energy. He followed her up the stairs, where a group of people were engaged in a loud conversation which -- judging by the sound -- included a donkey having a laughing fit.

  "Oh, hey! That's you!" a woman called out to Helen, pointing at her and letting out another small bray. She was a wisp of a woman with a gentle, captivating face framed by bright pink pigtails. She wore pink everything: a skimpy pink dress, high pink boots, bright pink lipstick and nails, and glittery pink wings. As she practically skipped toward Helen, a bright cloud of pink glitter trailed after.