Cyberweb Read online

  The nuking world has gone mad. Data Control holds a stranglehold on public telespace, entities like the medcenter sengine terrorize bootleg telespace, flesh-and-bloods and standalone bots criminalize the streets, and the copbots don’t give a damn. Or are powerless. Or stand accused of excessive force when they do enforce law and order.

  Pr. Spinner rolls her eyespots, shifts her foot rollers. Nuke it! She hates being squeezed between Data Control and the street. When will it end?

  “Carly Quester,” she calls across the bar, shrinking from the suspicious look on the gambler’s face. This is her flesh-and-blood. Owes her life and her dubious freedom to the one and only Pr. Spinner.

  And what does Spinner want from Carly Quester?

  A slippery question. One that Pr. Spinner asks herself often. Metaprogram. That’s what. Oh, to witness an archetype spontaneously generated by the metaprogram embedded in human telelink. That has been the ambition of her entire existence. To see an archetype. Just one. Just once.

  And she’s achieved her ambition.

  Pr. Spinner witnessed the Arachne, the archetype of the spider. Witnessed its anomalous power. Not an archetype disengaged in telespace, stolen by some rich voracious AI entity. An archetype to be stashed away in the AI’s secret database.

  Spinner witnessed live metaprogram, springing from the source. From her flesh-and-blood. From Carly Quester.

  “Can we go upstairs, please?” Pr. Spinner calls anxiously.

  “Sure.” Carly slouches across the barroom floor, dejection and too much wine slumping her slim shoulders. Spinner reaches out to pat her on the back, but stops. Grasper poised, grasper withdrawn. Carly has never liked her bot touch, not even when given in kindness.

  Saint Download snuffles softly. Spinner whirls, ready to tell the coordinate institutor to stuff it. But the coordinate institutor fixes its eyespots on the elevator, ignoring everything but the graffiti-dappled doors.

  They all crowd into the elevator. The doors clang shut. The car rises, creaking as though rust has a nagging voice of its own and a million things to complain about.

  * * *

  Upstairs to the cold-wire flat.

  What a hideout Pr. Spinner had found.

  Carly steps from the elevator first, drops to a crouch, glancing warily around. Pr. Spinner, Saint Download, and the woman move past the dark stairwell immediately to the left. Rustlers and petty thieves sometimes break in the back door to the alley downstairs, hide in the stairwell, lie in wait. Mostly for bots they can shake down for chop shop parts. But they rob what they can from the flesh-and-blood, too. Pr. Spinner herself was almost chopped the first week as she rolled out of the elevator. The memory flares now and then. The taut shadow leaping, the human face twisted with brutish intent. Pr. Spinner buzzes now with anxiety.

  “Ssh!” Carly hisses, cocking her head toward the stairwell.

  But there’s no one. Nothing. Nothing but the cacophony of the club through the floorboards, too much life and intelligence—carbon-based and silicon-based—crammed into one immodest place. The dim hallway is hazy with cigarette smoke, ripe with smells of frying synthy proteins, wood rot, an ever-present pissiness.

  They move down the hallway to their cold-wired flat.

  The flat has no accounts with the public utilities. Someone hacks the electricity. Someone hacks the water supply. Someone hacks most of the subleases. Sometimes someone hacks codes on the lockbox Bins in the alley to which the YinYang Club sells second-hand food, recycled paper products, miscellaneous trash. Now and then, an ambitious tenant will take over all of the hackwork, manage trade for trade, and everyone will enjoy regular services. But ambitious tenants are always moving on. Anyone who stays a while learns to hack for themselves or endure the miseries of no light, no heat, no water, and eviction notices slipped under the door.

  Carly leads the way, brandishing her pliers. Pr. Spinner and Saint Download jerk and jolt behind her through the convolutions of the hall.

  “Good woman,” Pr. Spinner mutters. “Knock the jelly from a blood brain with that thing.”

  Saint Download rolls clumsily, silent and grim, its electroneedle gripped in its armlet. No quips about garbage in, garbage out now.

  Once a warehouse for dry goods perched above the YinYang Club, the space is now a labyrinth of plywood walls, curtains strung high and heavy as tapestries, tents and teepees, stacks of boxes, packing crates, vast sheets of plastic that ripple with a passing breeze. Years of subdividing and territorial quarrels have resulted in semi-permanent hutches, cubbyholes, and apartments that sometimes shift boundaries. An uneasy alliance exists among the squatters, freelancers, revolutionaries, criminals, quasi-legal dealers and outright traffickers, hackers, and dispossessed artists of every stripe. A knife fight will erupt in the hall, a beating or an overdose; thieves or gangs will trash someone, or a hacker’s locus will be traced and raided. But the denizens of the hideouts are remarkably effective at warning each other of Data Control raids and copbot busts, and arrests seldom happen. Not here. Not inside, anyway.

  Spinner and Carly pass Saint Download’s living cubicle, a barrel patchworked with thrice-cycled silicon bearing a striking resemblance to the coordinate institutor itself. It. Saint Download is mostly definitely an It. Pr. Spinner dislikes gender-neutral tech-mech, the preferred style of housing before and after Spinner’s generation of fembots and andies. Devoid of some touch of human gender, human identity. As if the human designers couldn’t make up their minds, didn’t give a damn, or both. Saint Download is less anthropomorphically cued to humanity than a car. Cars can be sexy, have bodies, even gender-specific personalities and synthy voices. Cars have muscle and machismo, or are sleek and chic, buxom, even voluptuous. Or yet again are dependable, sensible, pragmatic as a school marm. As doddering and adorable as a dear old grandpa.

  But Saint Download? The coordinate institutor is relentlessly plain. As evocative as a can of date-expired beans.

  Saint Download keys the door to its cubicle, rolls inside. Pr. Spinner peeks. A single bare electric light bulb is strung up on a wire. There’s the usual litter an urban AI collects—bottle caps, Styrofoam cups, bicycle parts, severed bicycle U-locks, copper coins, baby socks, lost plush toys. Download squeaks its thanks, waves its insectlike armlets goodbye. Slams the door. Locks click shut.

  Pr. Spinner catches Carly’s look of disgust, shrugs her rusty shoulder ridges. “I still believe, indeed I do, that Saint Download may help us in our quest to resolve your difficulties with Data Control.” Spinner finds herself repeating this in defense of her affinity with Saint Download every time Carly shoots that look.

  ”Help how?” is always Carly’s tired retort.

  “Well, first of all—and do not discount this, for we have had the pleasure of residing in this charming abode for but a few months—Saint Download has been wanted by Data Control for over a year. Yet still manages to maintain its freedom.” Her synthy voice quavers. “The bot has survived against the odds, you see. Perhaps we can learn something.”

  “That’s something, anyway,” the woman mutters, resuming her wary stance as they round the corner to their own hideout. “Remind me of the other reason.”

  “Saint Download was a coordinate institutor. It knows things.”

  “But Saint Download never jacks into public telespace. Not like you and me.”

  “Indeed, oh certainly! But Saint Download knows how the fundamentals work. How the basic coordinates were laid into place at the beginning. Saint Download,” Pr. Spinner insists, “knows more than its humble appearance would suggest.”

  “That can’t be hard,” Carly quips, but she nods. Keys in their door. “The little bucket of bolts knew how to hack data out of the very heart of Data Control. Right? The mythical Saint Download, squatting right next door.”

  “That’s what they say,” Pr. Spinner sputters. In truth, she’s impressed by Saint Download, even if half the myth is true. That the AI entity isn’t a glamorous millionth-generation diva bot or a ra
d-chic blue-jeaned boy makes the myth all the more credible. “Yes, indeed, that’s what they say.”

  Carly swings their door open. Spinner readies herself for trouble. But no one has broken in, no one springs at them. Pr. Spinner’s cat mews, winds around the woman’s ankles and Spinner’s foot rollers. Afternoon sun slants through the soot-spattered skylight, the haze of light swirling with dust particles that always hover in the hideout’s urban atmosphere.

  Carly bolts the door behind them, lies wearily on her cot. “Hey, kitty-cat.” She reaches down, extends her forefinger, and the cat rubs his cheek. “At least you’ll get dinner. Can’t say the same for me.”

  Pr. Spinner had found the hidden cluster of rooms and closets after the medcenter sengine demanded to see the results of her probe therapy with Carly and good old Spin had refused. Refused to share the archetype she’d found. She knew what R-X would have done if the sengine ever found out what it suspected was true. R-X would have coveted the Arachne, would have disengaged the archetype if it had gotten the chance. Brazenly stolen the archetype, and uploaded it into the sengine’s database.

  What did disengagement of an archetype do to a human telelink? Devastated it, that’s what. For the archetype was metaprogram, a fragment of the collective human unconscious, eternal, incapable of being copied, and integral to the human mind through which it mysteriously manifested.

  To disengage an archetype was to rip out a piece of a living mind. And if R-X had discovered and disengaged the Arachne, Carly would have died or become brain-dead, so seriously damaged she would have spent the rest of her young life skewered on a support wire. Maybe vivisected for her organs.

  Who would have protested? No one, that’s who. Oh, indeed, Pr. Spinner knew the tricks. The medcenter sengine would have fabricated an explanation for Data Control, which the fumbling bureaucracy would have swallowed whole. Data Control would have settled the matter with Ava & Rice, the megafirm where Carly Quester had once practiced telespace mediation. And Ava & Rice would have paid Carly’s mother an insurance settlement. Carly’s father couldn’t question it since he was dead, his link accidentally disengaged in recreation telespace seven years ago under suspicious circumstances. Carly herself had often speculated whether a predatory AI had been involved.

  And Pr. Spinner? If she’d kept silent, the medcenter sengine may have sent her more probe patients. May have permitted her to carry on. If she’d protested, the sengine would surely have punished her. No more referrals, no more standalone status as an AI entity, or worse. And no one would have given a damn.

  Spinner had done neither. In the dead of night, good old Spin had taken Carly’s unconscious, cram-damaged body from the office on Telegraph Avenue to San Francisco. Settled her in here with the cat, a few of their belongings, and the funky double-jacked chair. Spinner’s private link apparatus.

  Ah, the chair. The chair is a third-hand workstation customized to generate the bootleg telespace required for probe therapy. The university had specially supplied her with it. Spinner had taken the chair to San Francisco, too, teh! Stolen university property, and so nuking what? It was her damn chair. She had used the double-jacked chair for ten years. She couldn’t very well have probed damaged perimeters of human telelink in public telespace, now could she? For if she found a bug, a glitch, an archetype, she couldn’t unleash this dangerous thing, this unknown whorl of erratic neural energy, upon the millions of minds jacked into public telespace. Indeed, not!

  The chair still worked here, even with hacked electricity. Shaky, fuzzy, worse resolution than ever. But it worked.

  Carly Quester turns over on her cot, regards the chair with bright, fanatical eyes. “Hey, Spin,” she says. “I want to jack in.” She sits up, kicks off her boots, finger-combs her hair. “Let’s jack into the telespace.”

  “You’re not strong enough today,” Spinner replies. And it’s true. Once Spinner couldn’t wait to get the jelly brain into telespace. Couldn’t wait to probe and pry at her perimeters till she screamed in pain. Now she dreads Carly’s impatience. Does she fear for Carly’s sanity? For her own safety? For what they may see there? Yes, all of these. And more.

  “I am strong.” Carly stands, towering over Spinner. “I’m stronger than I’ve been since the archetype invaded my perimeters. I’ve got to get back into telespace, Spin. I’ve got to master this thing. I know it. And you know it, too.”

  Pr. Spinner sighs. “You’ve had wine. This isn’t a good time.”

  “This is a mega time,” the woman says, her voice low and harsh. “I can’t wait. I can’t wait to go broke again.” She kicks at the plywood wall with her bare foot. “I can’t wait for Data Control to raid me some night in this lousy hideout. I’ve got to get ready. I’ve got hyperlink capability now, isn’t that what you said? The archetype used to manifest at random. It haunted me, terrorized me. Now that I understand the myths and symbols animating the Arachne, I’ll be able to summon it at will. Control it. Something no ordinary link can do, human or AI. I’ve got hyperlink capability, and I hardly know how to use it. I’ve got get ready now.”

  Pr. Spinner nods. Gathers up her ambiguity-tolerant sequences and all the loops she likes to call courage. “Sit down, Carly Quester.” Rolls to the center of the room where the double-jacked chair broods. Pr. Spinner backs into her side. “Then get ready.” She hits the switch.

  * * *

  And tumbles into warm fog. A thick gray extends in every direction. But the impression of infinity is an illusion swiftly discarded. This is mere standalone bootleg telespace generated by the chair, powered by the unsteady electricity in the cold-wired flat. No connection to the vast public telespace program comprised of a hundred million minds worldwide. No steady stream of electricity. Not the boggling near-infinity of public telespace.

  Once Pr. Spinner was content with her bootleg telespace. Once she reveled in her freedom from Data Control, Her very own little cyber queendom. And once, when she subjected Carly Quester to this sorry excuse of a telespace, the woman had cowered, shivered, pleaded for the integrity of her telelink.

  Now Carly zooms through the smeary bootleg telespace, power sparkling off her presence, taut with purpose. The crisp white cube of her telelink takes on breathtaking new angles, peculiar dimensions. Her radiant face shines from every facet. In a moment, the cube coalesces into the luminous pearl of her hyperlink, then bounces back into geometric dimensions. Now Pr. Spinner is the one who cowers in this telespace, dazzled. Intimidated. Who longs for clarity, for safety, for the clear, cool beam and steady hum of public program.

  Pr. Spinner’s presence in link—a cone of purple, set with silver crescent moons—spins in slow circles around Carly’s cube.” What shall we do?”

  “Probe my memory.”

  “Oh, indeed! Just like that?” Spinner shivers at the woman’s careless confidence. Probe her memory! That was the very thing that once shattered Carly Quester’s perimeters.

  ”Just like that.”

  Not shattered anymore. No, the Arachne took care of that, weaving a spider web over the breach. But still. “May I ask what you’re looking for?”

  “I want to retrieve the file for TeleSystems, Inc., versus Kay Carlisle. I downloaded as much as I could before I left Ava & Rice. It should be in my memory.”

  “All right.” Pr. Spinner nudges Carly’s cube toward a foggy perimeter. But she cannot recapture the furious curiosity, the aggressive assault that had been the hallmark of her therapeutic technique. The cone probes gently, almost tenderly.

  “Hell, Spin,” Carly calls, “what is the matter with you?”

  “I don’t want to damage you, Carly Quester,” Spinner says anxiously. “Truly, I do not know if your perimeters can sustain a vigorous intrusion.”

  “Sustain, nothing. Spring that file loose, damn it! “K” for Kay. The icon is a key. I’ve got to see it.”

  “Very well.”

  Pr. Spinner cruises to the far side of the fogbank, gathering momentum. Then she charges full on. Sh
e dives, angling the sharp point of the cone, digging and digging. A spray of copper stars arc across telespace below them. A sea of starfish, each wiggling scarlet arms, swims above them. By bot, this telespace is giving her vertigo. Spinner’s presence in link flips, stars above, starfish below. Better! She dives again at Carly’s perimeters, probing.

  A small black cube springs out of the fog, whirls across telespace, growing larger, till it fills one entire horizon, stops and hovers. A key, glowing black and shiny as obsidian, extrudes from the side, fits itself into a keyhole. Turns the lock with an earsplitting squeal.

  A window pops open. The file spews forth, coded in somber black alphanumerics, punctuated by a period mark, which disengages from the command sequence. The period twirls and enlarges, forming a sphere as shiny and dense as a bowling ball.

  The black sphere flies across telespace, spinning furiously, doubling in size again and again till it fills the whole space. A clean crack divides the side. The sphere splits in half, peeling open, revealing a smooth, featureless face in the center on which rests a single closed eye. The black eyelid flicks open, and the logo of TeleSystems, Inc. stares at them.

  “This is the case they wanted me to build against Carlisle,” Carly’s presence in link whispers.

  Pr. Spinner trembles before that wrathful eye. The gleaming white pupil is surrounded by black. A double-sided black-and-white beam shoots from the pupil, and swivels like a malevolent spotlight.

  Spinner scurries to the blind side of the logo, panting with fear. “Nuke it, Carly. You stole this file?”

  “I didn’t steal it.” She laughs. “Promise!”

  “It’s going to wreck our little telespace!”

  “Not to worry,” Carly says, as they spin, now dwarfed, around the logo. “The data aren’t smart. It’s just a copy of the specs without the intelligence to go with them. Otherwise, we would have been annihilated five seconds ago. Besides, I had proper access at the time I downloaded it. Kay Carlisle was my last mediation. Or should I say, TeleSystems was. TeleSystems was my client.”