Саймон Морден - Equations of Life

“Will this do?” asked Oshicora.

“Yeah.” Petrovitch squeezed past and picked up a slim console with a holographic screen and virtual keyboard. He powered it up and watched the commands scroll past in the air. “Gesture recognition too. So, what’s on the other side of the firewall: the Oshicora intranet or a web-accessed network node?”

“VirtualJapan is within the Oshicora system, as I understand it, which has its own security.” Oshicora peered over Petrovitch’s shoulder. “Do you feel any different yet?”

“Not dead yet, if that’s what you mean.” His fingers typed rapidly. “Log me on in God mode. Let’s see if we can change some settings.”

Numbers flowed across the screen, and Petrovitch scanned them as they flew by.

“Prime number encryption keys,” said Oshicora. “I had to allow—my creator had to allow—for the presence of very many otaku who would attempt to hack the fabric of this reality for their own perverse obsessions.”

“No animé cat-girls? Though I do see your point.” He made a gesture, dragged and pointed at an icon, which bloomed into life. “Okay, so here’s the firewall controls, and I can’t move them without another password. Any ideas?”

“This is kinshino . Forbidden.”

“Oshicora-san, can I remind you that not only are you dead, but you’re also a quantum computer? You could crack this in a second if you wanted to, and your subconscious mind has already done so. It’s shoveling out a stream of commands and receiving vast oceans of data in return. You just don’t know it.” He tapped his finger in the air. “See?”

A graph appeared, measuring data transfer over time. He expanded the axis to read in days rather than seconds, and showed Oshicora the past week.

“You died on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, and there’s a rise in activity. Information is starting to seep out. This spike here, that’s when you helped Sorenson and Sonja escape Hijo, then you killed all your employees, and it just climbs from there. More and more until you’re running in the terabyte range. For something which is forbidden, it’s happening an awful lot. Take the firewall down for five minutes, have a look around outside. Slap it back up and leave me to die if I’m not telling the truth.”

“You are very sure of yourself, Petrovitch-san. Very well.” Oshicora touched the screen and filled in the missing characters. “You have your access.”

The screen filled with a dense mat of icons, all overlapping each other in unreadable density. Petrovitch ran his finger over them, letting each one expand so he could sense their purpose before discarding them and moving on.

“Climate control, power consumption, physical access, data access. Hang on, physical access. When was I able to read Japanese?”

“When I altered your configuration. A harmless modification.”

“Thanks. Access, security, closed-circuit cameras.” A map of the building and the surrounding area unfolded. “Garden. Garden one, garden two. There.”

Petrovitch dabbed the corners of the screen and pulled the image wide. Hijo lay twisted on the ground. He found another camera. Chain sat hunched over on the temple steps and Madeleine paced restlessly in front, glancing inside the temple on every pass. He picked floors at random, each one showing empty corridors, empty cubicles, and moved down the building until he reached the ground floor.

He showed Oshicora the bodies and the rats from several angles, then moved outside, using the zoom to show the building isolated in its illuminated glory. He panned the camera, and revealed the hell it was set in. The skyline trembled and a section of box-girder passed in front.

From another angle, an iron giant on top of six articulated legs lumbered down Piccadilly.

“Enough,” said Oshicora. “I have seen enough.”

They were back in the bar, sitting opposite each other.

“Perhaps,” said Oshicora, “I should have another drink.”

Petrovitch poured him more, a generous portion that nearly filled the lacquer box too. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re the first truly sentient AI ever, and this happens. You couldn’t have predicted it.”

“That does not excuse what I have done. I am to blame.” He picked up his sake and sipped carefully. “I cannot explain why, though. I am not a man given to reckless impulses, senseless murder or mass destruction. I am,” he frowned, “in control of my emotions. It is something I take pride in: every decision weighed and judged.”

“Yeah. To be fair, Oshicora-san, you always struck me as that sort of man, but you still made your money out of extortion, prostitution, drugs, and guns. Traditional pursuits for a yakuza .” Petrovitch blinked. Something was happening to him, and he looked again at his medical card. “Oh. Okay.”

“You should go, Petrovitch-san. We can conclude this conversation later.”

“No, I don’t think we can, or even if we could, I don’t think we ought.” He laid the card face down on the table, even though Oshicora had to know what was written on it. “You’re a violent, ruthless crime lord. No matter how cultured or civilized you are, you still send people to their deaths with a simple hai . For all I know they deserve it; pimps, pushers, thieves, thugs, whatever. But it leaves scars, scars inside. I know about that. I know what happens when I close my eyes, the nightmares I have, the ones I’m going to have because of what I’ve done this last week. They’re the kind of thing you’d never tell anyone, let alone allow them to see.”

“And here are mine, played out in front of a whole city.” Oshicora gripped his cup with white fingers. “It would be humiliating in any circumstance, but now it is lethal.”

“So,” said Petrovitch, “what are you going to do?”

“The project has failed, Samuil Petrovitch. It is self-evident that we cannot have both a VirtualJapan and a real London Metrozone. One of them will have to go.” Oshicora put his sake cup down and placed his palms down on the table. “It is also obvious that it is I who should depart, and the Metrozone remain.”

“I bow to your wisdom.” Petrovitch pulled a face. “There’s an additional complication, Oshicora-san, in that I promised Sonja I’d save you.”

“Then it seems you made one promise too far. A man’s destruction should always ultimately lie in his own hands. Sonja will understand.”

“Yeah. I didn’t say it to make myself look good. I said it because I can do it. I can save you, after a fashion.” Petrovitch shrugged. “At least hear me out.”

“Very well.” He folded his arms. “I will listen to your proposal.”

“I have a server. It’s in Tuvalu, though I may have to do something about that before the sea swallows it up. It’s nowhere near big enough to contain even part of VirtualJapan. It’s not big enough to contain you. But there should be enough to hold a template of what you started as, like a seed. Or an egg: it’s going to be like an eggy-seedy thing, anyway.”

Oshicora folded his arms and looked supremely sceptical.

Petrovitch growled his frustration. “Look, I’m trying to help. I’m trying to salvage something out of this pizdets that’s worth saving. We export a blueprint of your command processes to the Tuvalu server. Nothing else. Just, just the genetic code.” He slapped the table as he finally found an analogy that would fit.

“And using this code, you can grow a new AI. But without the memories. Without the dreams.” Now Oshicora was engaged, animated. “Not just a new intelligence, but my twin.”

“Your good twin. A clean start. How many of us have wanted that? How many of us ever have the opportunity?”