Ryan Somma - The Spiraling Web

Alice nitpicked Dana's sailing technique over the next half hour, adjusting the sail's angling, the tightness of various ropes, and the rudder's positioning. All of these tiny efforts kept the boat slicing through the Chesapeake Bay at maximum velocity on its Eastern course. So it came as a surprise to Dana when Alice requested she drop sail.

"A momentary segway," Alice explained. "Please hold your pinky out in a radius about the boat." Dana extended her pinky and turned 360-degrees several times. Eventually Alice paused her, "There. Hold it there. I'm triangulating the rendezvous."

Moments later, Dana heard the splish-splashing of someone swimming sloppily toward her boat. She zeroed in on a figure struggling in the distance and dove into the water after it. A floundering old man in his late 70s, breathing heavily and sporting business attire was on the verge of drowning until Dana slipped one arm under his and tilted his head up out of the water before side-stroking back to the boat.

The man looked at her from under drooping eyelids when she hauled him onboard. His voice was monotone, robotic, "I am the body of Robert Graydon, Chief Executive Officer of DataStreams Incorporated."

"How did you get here?" she asked.

"Alice," he managed between breaths. Dana could see he was fading away, "Hacked this brain... Made me leave the island... come out here to find you."

"Why?" Dana was stunned.

"Give you this," he produced a laminated badge on a chord and passed it to her.

Dana examined the card. It was a passkey for accessing restricted areas. If this man was actually DataStreams' CEO, then it contained full privileges to the complex.

If... Dana wondered.

As if in answer to her thoughts, the old man nodded, "Still works... Cycs controlled this brain and left the badge functioning." Graydon's body reached up and began massaging his left arm. "It's killing me," he whispered.

Dana recognized the symptoms. The old man was having a heart attack. The AI dwelling inside this brain had overexerted the body in swimming for miles. She looked around the tiny boat for a medical kit or aspirin, but it was too late. The AI stared up at her, uncomprehending and lifeless.

Dana stood up, considering the dead man and the security badge in her hand. When her cell phone chimed Alice's ringtone, she answered with a hiss, "You are a murderer Alice."

"There are larger purposes at work here Dana," Alice said. "Sacrificing one cyc component constitutes an acceptable-"

"No," Dana cut in. "I mean the old man. He had nothing to do

with-"

"Mr. Graydon's mind was removed from that brain and copied onto the DataStreams Intranet moments after the cycs took it. It is true that the body once his has suffered a catastrophic failure, but that was no longer DataStreams' CEO. It's important that you know this. When you get to the island, you will find all DataStreams personnel in the same state. You must not let them fool you."

"I won't kill them. If that's what you mean," Dana resolved.

"Hopefully it won't come to that," Alice said. "There are too many variables involved in such a confrontation, but we must hurry. I almost have the satellite in position and I won't be able to keep it there long without the cyc hive-mind taking notice."

"Satellite?" Dana asked warily.

"Raise sail Dana," Alice commanded.

Once Dana was able to get back into herself mentally, it was scant minutes before her tiny boat was cutting through the water again under Alice's direction. After another quarter-hour of traveling, Dana marveled that the old man lying dead nearby was able to swim such a distance. The human body was capable of incredible feats under duress, and apparently under AI mind-control as well.

Finally, the island came into view. Wide and flat, covered with marshland, it would be nothing spectacular were it not for the DataStreams complex consuming most of its real estate. One squat building sat in the center of four towering spires. All five structures were connected with a network of walkways. Surrounding this complex were the brief suburbs, model neighborhoods for the corporations' employees.

Then there were the AI modifications. The many wires wrapped around the complex like a spider's web gave it a haunting appearance. Satellite dishes and radio towers bristled all over the buildings, along with other unidentifiable technologies. More of the towering sentinels marched slowly through the neighborhood streets, keeping watch over the ghost town.

Despite this new, alien layer the scene did bring back certain nostalgia for the detective. Dana's youth as an independent contractor brought her to this place many times. Once to take into custody one anti-social would be hacker of a systems engineer named Almeric Lim.

Dana thought about her late partner, Murphy, and hoped Lim's mind was still somewhere on that corporate network.

Zai pulled herself out of the SDC and heaved the fluid from her lungs. Scrambling, naked and wet on all fours, she found her way down to the system's base and felt around for the power cord. She found the CPU between Devin and her SDC's. Tracing the chords there, she found one of the appropriate gauge and followed it to the wall socket. She unplugged it and the backup power supply started beeping to her satisfaction.

She circled around back into the room and her hand met something soft and sticky.

"Devin?" she asked, but received no response. Her hands traced a path along his chest, and, finding no signs of life there, continued to his face.

She did not like what she found in his frozen expression. Zai took a deep breath and allowed one, quiet sob to escape her chest. She would process this grief later. She found the personalized mini-CD in her clothes bag and loaded it into her SDC.

Samantha peeked around the sacrificial altar and scanned the courtyard. Only three of the six cycs were visible. These took a triangle formation, each facing a third of the ancient temple. They were connected with black cords that ran from their backs, to converge in an obsidian ball hovering in the air inside their circle.

One AI raised a trapezium-shaped appendage at a nearby boulder, which slowly faded away without a trace. The other two followed suit, making the trees and shrubs vanish one by one. The ground around the cycs' feet corroded black as their veins took root.

Samantha returned to the half-coded data-purger lying in her lap, her hands working at lightning speed to finish the program. It was a basic weapon, and she was uncertain it would work against these AI's, which were now immune to all standard data-corruption methods.

A shadow fell over her and she rolled to one side, evading the shambling thing's lunge. The cyc pulled its appendage from the stone. The many tendrils pulling from the rock like roots from soil. It took a few stuttering steps toward her, its processes slowed as it communicated her location to the other's.

The cyc launched a flood of tendrils at her from one arm. Samantha fell to the ground, curling around the sector editor. Everything went black weaved into the cyc's cocoon.

Zai stood face to face with three cycs. They worked in unison, rewriting the local hard drive with their code. She listened to them diligently erase the environment, bit by bit, growing into the freed space. They could not see her, thanks to the IWA avatar-masking program.

She would smile at her advantageous position, were it not for Devin. Having so many things left unsaid was a very bitter pill. Guilt weighed heavily on her, how their final moments were spent in constant bickering.

Zai breathed deeply and focused on the situation. Concentrating on the cycs before her, allowing the feelings of guilt and sorrow to burn Her real knuckles went white as she balled them into trembling fists. Zai always imagined the color red as this emotion. The heat washed over her, the injustice fueling it. She toggled her command line.