Lisa Smedman - The Lucifer desk

Carla leaned closer. The scrap of paper hadn’t moved when her hand brushed against it. it wasn’t just a tiny scrap-instead it was the corner of a larger piece of paper that had slid inside the crack where the back and bottom of the drawer met. Only the corner of it could be seen. Carla tried to move it with a finger. but found it was stuck. Instead she yanked out the drawer, turned it over, and pulled the hardcopy from it.

She let out a long, slow whistle as she read the crumpled paper she held in her hands. It was a memo, dated eight days ago-three days before Farazad Samji’s death. It was addressed to the lab’s director, Ambrose Wilks, and was signed with a wavering scrawl by the wage mage himself.

To: Director Wilks

Re: Lucifer Deck” (Farohad) Project

As per your direct instructions, I have summoned and bound the farohad. Despite my formal protests to the board of directors, and against the dictates of my conscience and religion, I have performed the tests you have required.

If anything, the results of these tests prove that the farohad is unsuitable for the project you propose. It is true that the light effects the farohad produces can enter the Matrix, although the extreme measures we go through to tap this energy seems to border on torture. By all indications, it would seem that, as suspected, magical entities cannot stand the pure technology construct of the Matrix.

While I can force the farohad to allow me to tap its energies, and through trial and error we have been able to transfer that concentration of light into the Matrix, I am unable to control it once the energy is in the Matrix. Please note this because it explains why we cannot control the effects in the Matrix. The speed at which the light moves is beyond our capacities and the capabilities of the best deckers we have. The spirit’s lack of cooperation makes training the farohad impossible. Our best brains alone cannot match the speed and short-lived usefulness of these bursts of pure light.

By its very nature, a creature composed of light must flow-it must remain in an active state. The farohad cannot “sit around” and wait for instructions. Nor can it remain within the Matrix for more than a nanosecond or two, at most. As a living spirit, it would completely lose its integrity if we tap too much of its elemental power, especially using so many technological systems. At any moment, the creature could dissolve and disappear.

It is thus impossible for the farohad to perform the function you wish it to. In theory, it should simulate the functions of a Matrix gopher program-one with unlimited access to data. It could bypass any intrusion countermeasures, seek out a keyword, reconfigure a portion of its body to exactly duplicate the data that contains this keyword, and return again to a computer to write that copied data on an optical memory chip or datastore. In theory. Obviously, in hindsight, this does not and cannot work. We did not foresee the inherent difficulties in forcing a magical creature into a pure technological construct. Even when we have tapped its energies, we have absolutely no control over the light. It will erase a memory chip or datastore instead of penetrating and copying the information. Without the human mind to understand the technology, we have set loose something, again in theory, that can destroy the Matrix.

I cannot in good conscience continue to subject the farohad to this torture, only to prove what we already know-magical entities cannot exist in the Matrix and that light travels faster than the human mind. I believe that with the data we have learned we may be able to use the farohad’s energy in the Matrix to create knowbots that function in a similar way-knowbots at least would be fully under our command. And from what I understand, our Software Division is very interested in what we have learned. If you approve this, I would be able to release the farohad. I cannot permit the farohad to die in captivity. I intend that it should he free-free to return to the paradise that is its natural habitat.

I have already outlined my opposition, on religious grounds, to the direction in which the Mitsuhama Seattle lab has taken my research. While I realize that my moral arguments cannot persuade you, I hope that the practical problems I have outlined above will do so. This project must be discontinued.

I cannot, in good conscience, continue this work. I hereby request a leave of absence, effective immediately, and a release from my contract with Mitsuhama.

Farazad Samji.

Automatically, Carla framed the memo with her cybereye. did an overall shot, then went to macro-focus and scanned the lines one by one so that they could be assembled later into a scrolling graphic. But even as she performed these mechanical functions, her mind was reeling. She’d jumped to the wrong conclusions not once, but twice. Mitsuhama hadn’t developed the spirit for use as a new form of para-biological weapon. They hadn’t even intended to use it as a virus-although it could certainly be put to that purpose, as Carla had done earlier in the Byte of the Future display. The corporation had instead been after the holy grail of magicians and deckers alike-an “interface” device that used magic as a bridge to the Matrix. They’d intended to use the spirit as an organic, magically based computer-as hardware and software in one. As a program that could ignore ice, enter any system freely, and use its own body to copy any data it found, no matter how much encryption was used to protect it. Had it worked, it would have been the ultimate stealth program and ultra-high-speed master persona control program, rolled into one.

Except that no mage or decker could control it.

And now its energy was running amok in the Matrix, randomly wiping data and crashing systems in an effort to get back at the man who had conjured it and forced it to enter the Matrix in the first place. The man who had presumably set it free, only to have the spirit turn on him and burn the life from him.

Carla stared at the project name: Lucifer Deck. Farazad Samji certainly considered the spirit to be an angel-a farohad. His boss had probably dreamed up the word Lucifer, putting a Christian spin on the concept. Lucifer, the “bringer of light,” the shining angel who later fell from heaven in the form of lightning and became Satan, lord of darkness. The name choice was both ironic and appropriate. The spirit-Lucifer-was indeed the fallen son; instead of serving Mitsuhama, it now was trying to destroy the corporation’s kingdom-the Matrix. It was, in every respect, as unruly and antagonistic an angel as the original Lucifer had been.

Carla folded the paper and slipped it into a pocket. That was it. She had what she needed. Her incursion was a wrap. But she’d been trained to be thorough, and so she peeked into the only other room she had yet to explore-a private office. Judging by its comfortable, overstuffed chair and plush carpet, it must belong to the lab’s director. If so, the work station it contained just might contain some other, vital piece of information that Carla could weave into her story.

The data terminal here, like those in the front room, had been taken apart and its central processing unit removed. Carla wasn’t going to get anything from it. And the rest of the room didn’t hold anything of interest; there was no enticing hardcopy lying about. She was just about to leave when she noticed an electronic daytimer that had fallen onto the carpeted floor, under the workstation itself. It was a micro-thin model, no more than a few centimeters long. Picking it up, she thumbed the button that activated it.

The tiny liquid-crystal screen on the top of the data-pad came to life, revealing a name and title in an ornate gold font: Ambrose Wilks. Director MCT Seattle.