Elizabeth Bear: Worldwired

He'd told Wainwright that he would fight if he had to.

But he didn't have time to fight. The other program had Jenny and Min-Xue, had a gun to Riel's head. Was operating on certain tight-coded assumptions, provided parameters. Was an automaton, on certain levels. A sociopath.

Was not, to turn a phrase, a moral creation.

And was eating Richard's program, consuming his threads, assimilating his data in great, dripping handfuls of code. He threw more at it. Input, aware of the risk, aware that he was breeding something he had no control over.

He spawned, and spawned, and spawned again, and the Chinese AI grew fat feeding off him, and reached out again, cleverer this time, learning as it grew, going for the zeroth persona, for Richard himself. And Richard ducked—

Then handed off control to Alan, and shoved himself wholesale down the other AI's throat, and like a virus turned it inside out, assembling the data he'd fed it willy nilly, turning the whole thing — metaphorically — into a mirror. And the Chinese AI turned around and found itself looking itself dead in the eye.

So to speak.

In that instant, it became something more than a program. Like Richard, it became a person . The process confused it. It hesitated, for picoseconds only.

And in picoseconds, Richard ate it, from the inside out.

And then, with no sign at all that anything has changed, no whisper in my ear, nothing but the shift of my balance as the paralysis eases, as my gun hand starts to tremble and water wells up in my eyes. I feel Min-xue, feel him in my bones, feel the warm crosshatched grip of the borrowed pistol in his hand. I feel Charlie and Leslie and Genie and — oh, Merci à Dieu. I can feel the whole damned worldwire, snapped into place as if it had never been gone. Dick?

“I hear you, Jenny.”

Mary, Mother of God. My chest burns. I don't dare let the assassin see me draw a breath as he drags Riel one step backward. She stumbles over his feet. He hauls her upright, the hand that doesn't hold his weapon cupped under her chin.

Dick, you hacked your way back in. I feel his wordless confirmation, a sensation like a quick nod, internalized. Can you do to him what his AI did to Min and me?

A long pause, by Richard's standards. Seconds, long enough for the gunman to drag Riel three more steps away from me, lengthening the distance, lengthening the range to target, my need for air verging on dizziness now.

Dick, you're complicating my life.

“I'm having… an argument.”

An… argument?

“Alan thinks we should do as you ask.”

You should!

“No. I should not.” He isn't even bothering showing me his face; he's just letting me feel his hesitation, his grief, the raggedness of the emotion that would clench my hands until the meat one went white and the steel one creaked… if it were mine. “It is rather the one thing I should not ever do. Not once. Because if I do it once, I will do it twice.”

Dick . It's a prayer, a plea. It's the best I can do. What kind of a goddamned morality leaves us to hang, you bastard? Help me now and I'll give you anything you want. Anything.

I swear, I swear, I swear I feel his lips brush across the top of my hair, his hands on my shoulders in a moment's benediction. I swear I feel the sharp sting of his tears in the corners of my eyes. “I don't believe in God,” Richard whispers in my ear. “And moreover, I don't believe you need any God you have to bargain with, Jen. Now. Go do what you have to do.”

And then he's gone, a whisper in my ear, a faint and subtle presence I can't feel nearly as well as I can feel Min-xue, and the thin, thready pain-dazed awareness that's Patty Valens, swimming groggily back into consciousness.

And then I smile, because Dick hasn't abandoned us. He's just told us we're old enough to bloody well take care of ourselves. The smile doesn't last, though, because all of a sudden I can see the way out, if we're lucky. And it means sending the kid right the hell back into harm's way.

I wasn't fast enough, Patty thought. I wasn't fast enough. I got shot, I got hit—

“Patty.” A calm even voice in her ear, in her mind.

Jen. I'm okay, I think I'm okay, but I'm bleeding a lot—

“You're doing fine.” Just a little emphasis on the last word. Just enough to ease the tightness in Patty's chest and calm the thunder of her heart. “Patty. I need you to do something.”

Show me . Which was the right thing to say, mind to mind like that. Show me, not tell me . And Jen showed her, a mental picture so crisp that Patty realized she could manage it without even having to open her own eyes. “Get it?”

Got it, Patty answered. She grabbed one cut-short breath, pain dull and piercing between her ribs, before she had the time to psyche herself out, and shoved herself stiff-armed off the floor. Her wounded shoulder failed her; the arm collapsed. She screamed; it didn't matter, because she had the momentum by then and her other arm was strong enough.

Barely. She rocked down, fishtailing, her pelvis lifting as her nose banged into the carpeted floor and white-red flashes like police car lights lit up her vision. Her hand slipped in blood, carpet burning the heel of her palm. Her elbow smacked hard on the edge of a stair. But her feet shot up and she donkey-kicked out hard— hard —with both legs at once, and nailed the prime minister right in the gut.

Riel didn't have time to shout. She went back like an unbraced kickbag, right into the arms of the man with the stolen gun. One shot banged Patty's eardrums. She yelped and buried her face in her arm as two more answered.

The pricelessness of the gunman's expression when Min-xue drills him between the eyes would be easier to appreciate if Riel hadn't gone down with him, folded over like a rag doll, blood spurting through the fingers she's clamped over her face. I'm running, stepping over Patty as Patty feels me coming and rolls out of the way, kicking the gunman's pistol skittering under the seats just in case he comes back to life like a 3-D villain.

The chances are slim. Even a cursory inspection reveals that if Min-xue's shot didn't take the top of his head off, mine sufficed for follow-up. But Christ, Riel, Riel's bleeding like a stuck pig, and she whimpers when I try to pry her fingers away from her face. “Connie, let me see it. Connie. It's over. Are you okay? Are you all right?”

Richard, I need medical teams. I've got it secured down here, but I need EMTs, trauma docs, I need them fast, I've got multiple gunshot casualties, at least eight… no, ten, no — I don't even know what the hell I've got—

It occurs to me as I yelp directions that maybe he meant he wouldn't be around to help at all anymore, and I should be running for the door, running for help myself. Patty drags herself to her feet behind me, staggers down the steps with one arm hanging limp, and Min-xue has crouched back down between the seats. I can hear him counting. CPR, of course.

She's going to check on her granddad, I know. I can't bring myself to grudge it.

And then, “I'm already summoning help,” Richard says in my ear, and I burst into tears. Seriously, no shit, crying with relief like a kid punched in the belly, still tugging gently at Riel's wrist, trying to see how much of her face she's had shot off. She finally lets her fingers relax, and the only thing wrong with her is—“Marde, Connie. That bastard shot your nose off.”

She looks at me looking at her, at the expression on my face, and bursts out laughing, which breaks a clot and sprays blood over us both. But at this point, who the fuck could tell?