A Future We'd Like to See 1.2 - Burning Nonrecyclable Plastic By Twoflower (Copyright 1993) I'm resisting the urge to say 'It all started when', because that's a really clicheic line, and if history has taught us one thing, it's to avoid cliches. Although really it did all start when Gosub and I were off examining the defenses of some professor's home terminal. Someone on campus came down from the dorms planetside and dropped us a line at our office on the orbiting station, Freeport. "Be nice chaps and up my Yttian Language grade a slot or two and I'll make it worthwhile for you." The netrunning business has been quite good lately. By now just about every system in Terran space was hooked in some way to VOSnet... that's Virtual reality Operating System Network for you hicks out on non-tech colonies... making it quite easy for college grads with nothing better to do an a degree in computer science to slice into other people's systems and take whatever they've got. It's not THAT easy, really, since everybody's got some form of defense on their system. Having a VR interface makes for some really sick defenses, too, since you can expand puns to the visual level. I remember once when breaking into the city sewer control system to open hatches for some crook escaping the feds, we had to climb inside this fifty-foot tall toilet to access the flow controls. Some people have very deranged minds. The guy even sensitized the odor of human feces and splattered it around the system. I wasn't sure if I should be disgusted or proud of the effort the guy put into his system. Of course, this wasn't any easy run; Gosub flipped the wrong switch and triggered the alarms, 'flushing' us out of the net. We're lucky the guy hadn't put in brain scramblers to be especially nasty. That's why defense cutters and various programs are extremely handy. Progs to confuse alarms, cut security lines, and generally mung the works up while you go about your dirty work. There are sickos out there who actually take offense to our little intrusions, and will gleefully mixmaster your electrons, reducing your mental capacity to that of spam. Having a direct mental link to your computer can be fun, but not all the time. Returning to the flashback, it all DID start that day we were staking out the prof's terminal, waiting to check out what he had behind his door. "Zipcode," Gosub addressed me as, which is fortunate seeing as how it's my name, "When's this guy gonna leave? I'm sick of sitting here all day waiting." "Chill," I ordered in a calm, slack sort of way. "He's got to change systems eventually. Once he does, we run an optic probe in his door, click a holoshot of his defenses and we've got him. Two days of planning and prepping the progs after that and we're in, buddy." Sitting in the bleak, flat, uninteresting VOSnet wasn't very fun at all, I had to agree. Out in this part of the galaxy, systems were pretty sparse, so you'd get vast expanses of blank region before you came upon the polygonal shape that represented someone's computer. In this case, the prof hadn't bothered with any fancy rez art, just a white block of graphic with a simple door. He obviously didn't expect anyone breaking in, or he wouldn't have gone with something as unsecured as a door. Bumping into someone in the net was very unlikely, which is why I was very surprised when just that happened. The guy tripped over my crouched-down form, toppling over both me and the invisibility program I had placed in front of us. I got a quick jab of pain, since negative feedback is one of the many little quirks of the net we have to deal with. The man looked about twenty, with a bleak, expressionless face covered with perfectly ordinary features. His clothing didn't speak marvels either, a cheap rez job of a simple t-shirt and jeans. Everything about him spoke generic, harmless, unimportant, not something to worry about. In other words, this guy was probably danger personified, or else he wouldn't have gone to such lengths to look perfectly normal in an environment where you can look like anything you want to be. "You guys want to be rich beyond your wildest dreams?" the man said, scrambling to his feet. "Yes," I said. What can I say, I'm no liar, and I can cope with oddities like men running over me then offering me cash. I'm not the sort of joeboy that sits around saying 'What?' or 'I don't understand.' or 'Who are you?' when someone offers me money money money. Only slowpokes did that, and you don't get to be a good slicer if you're a snail. "Great. Stop that daemon and we'll make a deal," the man offered. "Jeezus, what IS that thing?!?!" Gosub exclaimed, whirling around in horror at the green and red warty monster stomping its way mechanically towards us. "Daemon process," I said. "Come'n, you're a hacker, you know these things. Don't look like a layman in front of a client." "Yeah, well I never seen a program THAT butt-ugly," Gosub said. I shrugged and rooted around my trusty prog toolbox for something that would help. I pulled out a SuperSoaker 300 (that's the nice thing about VOS... you can make a prog look like anything you want. Punsters, as mentioned, have a lot of fun here) and doused the sucker with a generous dose of H2Whoa. It crumpled up and vanished. "Nice trick," the man said. "What exactly was it?" "Just a process tagger and killer," I said, putting it back in the box. "Simple prog, publicly available. Stops other progs dead. The water gun isn't my design thou, some guy way-back-when made it. Now that we've taken care of whatever that was, mind explaining A) who you are, B) what it wanted with you, and C) how you're planning to make us rich?" (There is a time to ask 'Who are you?'. You just ask it after you're sure that you're in the clear.) "Fair enough," he stated. "Name's Swift. I'm an AI, built as a defense cutter, and it was trying to hunt me down and kill me for fleeing my programmer, and if you take me to Haven I'll cut just about anything that exists for you." Gosub stared blankly, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. He's not very good at interpreting information that fast, nor in that quantity, so I figured I'd help break it down into bite-sized chunks for him. After all, what are friends for? "Okay. Let's get this straight," I said, which is the best way to start out an explanation, "Your name is--" "Swift." "And you're an--" "Artificial Intelligence program, designed as an advanced tool in cutting computer defense systems." "That thing was--" "A program sent by my programmer to kill me." "Because--" "I ran away from him to seek out a better life, where I wouldn't have to bow and scrape to whatever human I was serving." "And you'd like us to--" "Give me transportation to Haven." "In return for--" "Cutting one system of your choice, no matter how heavily defended." "Right," I concluded. Meaningful pause. "You got all that, Gosub?" "What's Haven? What's going on?" he asked. I sighed. Then again, it's not his fault. We can't all be incredibly good at coping with a crisis. "This is going to take some more explaining for my lovable but slow friend here," I told Swift. "If you'd be so kind as to hop into this toolbox, I can port you over to my system before jacking out. You should be safe there for the moment." Swift nodded, and promptly squeezed himself into my toolbox. Gotta love those carry-all programs. * "This is movin' a bit fast for me," Gosub said, back in the real world, stirring coffee as we talked over pizza. "Hey, I told you the biz of comp cutting was a fast game when you signed on to be trained," I said. "You move with the times or become obsolete, style of thing. You wake up some morning, and in the next hour you might find yourself running for your life with whatever cash's handy." "But... this... PROGRAM is offering to deal with us?" "Haven't heard of AIs, have you?" "Haven't seen one on the net, no," Gosub said. "Saw one named Eliza on some game I played over the net, but I'm afraid she wasn't very intelligent. Kept asking me why I was so negative and if my mother beat me as a child." "This ain't no game, kid." "I'm five years older than you, Zipcode. I'm not a kid." "Whatever," I waved away. "Alright, Concise History of AIs in a VOS Environment, take one. First AI showed up on the Septic Tank--" "That's that invitation only system out in Sector JK, right?" "Right, boyo. Anyway, some high-up schmuck, Key somebodyorother, in the Tank figgers he can make big bucks mass- producing and selling custom AIs," I continued. "AIs don't like this very much. There's a minor revolt, and some Heroic Programmer (TM) helps 'em all out of the Tank and to some closed system not connected to the net. Rumor calls it Haven. Nobody really knows where it is. AIs are 'llegal now on the Tank, after the mess they caused." "Why'd you say the tee emm?" "Don't gotta 'splain everything," I said, swilling down some more from a six pack. Of soda. Never drink and netrun, I always say, hangovers plus direct mental links to a galaxy-wide net don't mix real well. "Sounds like fucking mythology to me," Gosub said. "Spartacus frees the slaves. One thing. If AIs are illegal on the Tank, how'd Swift get made?" "On a system other than the Tank," I laughed. "'scalled grey matter. Use it occasionally. Plenty 'o other systems out there with free progging rules. Someone mixes up an AI... don't ask me where he got the personality mixer, they're really hot softs, ever since AIs were banned from most systems... loads 'im up with info on how to cut just about everything that exists, and puts it to use. It. Him. Sorry. The distinction's hard. Call it what you want to. Seems our pal Swift there buggered out and tried to make a life of his own, only to be hunted down by an angry progger." "And he's offering to cut anything we want in return for transportation to Haven?" "Yup," I confirmed. "'course, that's assuming he knows where Haven is. I sure as heck don't." "Why not just get there by the net? Speed's no problem, you just @tel there." "It's not on the net," I said. "No outside links. Phantom floating castle style of thing, some metal box in space with a buncha databanks. You think a buncha escaped AIs would survive one minute if they were linked up? A buncha old proggers with a sense of revenge'd be on them like gnats to a picnic." "Okay, NOW I get it," Gosub said, relieved. "Well, that's great. A shuttle ride in exchange for cutting the professor's computer. We'll have this job wrapped up in minutes for that jock, whatisname--" "Aim higher, kiddo." "I'm not a kid." "What, we use a program with the potency of an atomic bomb on some measly grade-fudge job?" I said, alarmed. "Jeez! We ditch that job. We gotta aim higher, much higher than that. We go all the way or none of the way, style of thing. Cliche, yes, which I normally 'ate, but it works here. Keen." "So who do we cut?" "Good 'Q. Lesse. We need someone with gobs of cash and plenty o' defenses to guard it, or it's no use at all, no rush, no fun. How 'bout that chap, guy who thinks he's really hot shit around here. Escher," I said, taking another nip at the bottle and awaiting the explosion. "ESCHER!?!?" Gosub exploded. On cue. "Are you NUTS? He thinks he's hot shit because he IS hot shit! That guy's got security flowing up the wazoo! He's got a fucking PlastiCard, after all!" "Which is exactly why we can burn him," I said, grinning like a maniac. Gosub probably had doubts as to whether I was one or not. * Credit Cards can be stolen, or anybody who's got the number of one can suck you dry if needed. So how do the megarich easily purchase items from common stores? Simple. You get a PlastiCard. The PlastiCard has security that rivals the Terran Confederation defense department, thus making it useful for everyday transfers and still keeping millions upon millions of credits safe. Here's how - 1. The credit card number has 1000 digits. Not easy to copy down, and this number is heavily guarded by multiple defense programs and layers of computer security. 2. The card itself only accesses the number for a millisecond, and ensures that the machine reading it won't try to hang onto the number for any longer than that either, unless it really wants its memory cores wiped. 3. The card is made of plastic explosive, which will explode if tampered with or stolen. A nasty surprise to muggers. Escher was hot, the hottest cutter on this side of the sector, able to slice through anything you'd like... for a price. His prices were high. His bank account is understandably as high. 'Course, you can't steal a PlastiCard, and you'll get toasted if you try to get the number by computer. Unless you've got an artificially intelligent cutter on your side, I 'splained. "You're nuts," Gosub speculated. "I used to think, what ho, he's just an idealistic computer enthusiast, but no, you're just nuts. I'm a newbie at this hacking business and even I know that if you mess with Escher you get your mind scrambled to tofu!" "Swift can do it," I said calmly. Gosub has had fits of rage before, this was nothing new, the kid'd get over it soon. "He's an AI, smarter than the average cracking prog. Able to make decisions in a single bound." "I don't care if he can do my income taxes!" Gosub said. "If you think I'm tagging along on this run-of-death of yours, you're crazy." "So call me crazy," I grinned. "Come on, this is what you've been waiting for. No more dull job at the Chicken Wicket serving fries to John Does at the land rover window. It's the big one, Lemont, the penultimate job. Pull this one off and we'll have unlimited access to Escher's finances. I might even retire." I pulled a bit more soda from the bottle, then played with that thought. "Naaah." "My name's not Lemont." "It's a, whaddya call it, saying, style of thing." "And you're willing to bet your life on that crackpot program's ability to break into the most heavily protected system in the sector?" "Yup," I laughed, smirking that Harrison Ford / Tom Cruise / Tommy Spartus arrogant smirk I was famous for. "I'm funny that way, I guess." My home computer terminal swapped out of the VOSnet communication program I had running on it, a two dimensional shot of the inside of my computer filled the screen. It was a bit messy, crackers and programs and bits of x-rated rez art lying around, but Swift (who was onscreen) didn't seem to care. "Been listening through your pal's soundcard," Swift said, looking at Gosub. "You seem apprehensive." "Damn right I am," Gosub grumbled. "I put my personal guarantee on it," Swift said. "If I screw up and you two are about to get your brains scrambled long distance, I promise to use all my progs to eject you two from the net ASAP and erase your tracks before they find me. Self sacrifice, if you will." "You'd do that?" Gosub asked, doubtfully. "Yeah. Why not?" Swift said. "I got no life expectancy, built as a data cutter. No point in installing any self- preservational traits either, they figure. You just keep your end of the bargain, I want a free ticket to Haven. I'm in it for the kicks and the rides." "You know where it is?" I asked the screen. "'snot gonna do me much good if I got no idea where this mystery computer is." "I do," Swift said. "Why'd I run away if I had no escape route? I'm a data cutter. We don't act without at least fifteen thousand instructions of decision beforehand." "Alright, I'll tag along," Gosub said reluctantly. "But if I see you doing anything funny I'll have Zipcode's SuperSoaker out before you can say abort, retry or fail." "Sounds fine here," Swift said plainly. * Escher's house was one of the oddest polygons I had need in the net before. You gotta admit, the guy had glass. "A MOBEIUS house?!?" Gosub exclaimed. "Looks like it," I said. "Great, ain't it?" "Yeah, but where's the door?" "Simple enough to answer. Swift?" "Yeah?" the AI said. "Find the door." "Righty o," he said, walking casually up to the floating- strip-in-the-simulated-sky and promptly twisting an invisible knob, opening an invisible door. "Not bad," I said. "Even when it's open it's invisible. Come on, then." Gosub tagging along like a grumpy dog, I walked directly through the polygon and into a hallway. "Argh," Gosub said. "Mirrors." Sure enough, the hallway was coated in reflective surfaces. Swift must have a good system to be able to simulate infinity like that. To add to the fun, the hallway progressively twisted to the left until it had twisted one 'undred eighty. "Infinity style of thing," I commented. "How can you tell which way is up?" "Don't bother. It's all simulated physics, yaknow. I just choose to ignore it." "Heads up," Swift said, as a smallish lump formed on the 'ceiling'. The lump congealed, pulling mirror material off the wall, the blob finally yanking itself free, as if it was a bubble of mercury in zero g. It finally formed a shape, much like a small, very reflective dragon. "Unknown quantity," it hissed metallically, glancing us over. "State type." "We are Escher," Swift said calmly. "It is Escher," the dragon slightly repeated. "We are welcome here. This is our home. Nothing is out of the ordinary." "You are welcome here. This is your home. Nothing is out of the ordinary," it said. Seeing no more danger, it floated back up and sank into the silvery surface of the ceiling. "Jedi mind trick," I joked. "Whoever progged ya had style." "He was a fat, bloated fool who enjoyed playing with people as if they were toys," Swift said. "Yeah, well, he had style anyway," I said, walking along the warped hall to the other end. I giggled to myself as I noticed that both Swift and Gosub seemed upside down from here, even though my mind told me they weren't. "You guys comin' or not?" I asked. * I really should have had Swift monitor the hallway for unexpected passages, since all three of us fell through a trapdoor in the wall at the end of the hall. What my inner ear didn't like was the sensation of falling sideways, despite gravity being in the normal down direction. I hit the water with a digitized KERSPLASH, smacked into the plaster bottom (argh. Negative feedback really sucks) and bobbed back up in time to watch my comrades hit the water too. "What the heck--?" "Waterfall ahead!" I shouted helpfully as I went over the end, the cascading water drenching my clothes before I hit another flume below it. "Gurgle," Gosub commented after landing. "What the hell is this?" "You've never seen any old MC Escher work, have you? Old Terra?" "No," Gosub said, bobbing as the water carried us along a number of right-angle turns. "Well, we're in one of his paintings. A waterfall illusion. Goes over the edge, then flows back up to the top." "Don't be silly. Water can't do that." "That's why it's an illusion. Might wanna brace yourself, we've reached the waterfall again." "Wha--" he managed before we fell again. Oddly enough, I was having fun. I always liked flume rides. "Alright, Swift, where to now?" I asked, splashing a bit of water around, like a kid in a pool on the first day of summer. "Jump off at this next right angle," Swift said. * It's a good thing we jumped, because Swift informed us on the way down from the cliffside that housed the waterfall that the thing was programmed to drown us if we didn't figure out where to get off on the next cycle. I just love the way he informs us of imminent danger when not asked to. "NOW where are we?" Gosub asked, as a large chamber materialized around us. "Ah. Nudder drawing," I said. "I think this is entitled 'staircases' or something similar." "Why is tha-- oh dear." Once again, VOS proves to be more fun than reality. Where else can you take a room of staircases that technically defies every law of physics that exists and make it come alive? All the 'cases were there, jutting out at weird angles, sometimes reforming into another 'case. And the odd line-drawing men were there too, marching along like puppets on parade. "I like it," I said. "This guy Escher might have a career in rez art after we burn his holding out from under him. Swift, anything particularly dangerous here?" "Contact with any of the walking figures will instantly kill you," he stated. "Great. Just great. So what, we gotta find the door to the next room in all this mess AND avoid the time bombs on legs?" "It'll be fun," I laughed. "Shame I didn't bring my screen grabber, I'd love some shots to show the guys down at the club." "Screw it," Gosub said. "Swift, take out this mess." "Righty o," he said, and the staircases came crumbling down around us, all the mortar mysteriously gone. The men unravelled into bare lines. I panicked. "WHAT did you do that for?!?" "I figured it'd be easier. Look, there's the door, just above us." "You probably just triggered every alarm in this room with a disturbance like that!" I shouted. "Geez, Gosub, you can be a real weenie at times. Swift, cut the alarms!" "Complying," Swift said. "There are a lot of 'em though, it's a bit hard to suppress them all." "Weenie?!?" Gosub exclaimed. "Weenie? Who's the weenie? Here you are, getting into INCREDIBLY dangerous places for what? Money? No, you just like that feeling of paranoia and imminent doom! Where's the sense in that?" "There is no sense in it!" I shouted. "That's the point! Your average cutter's got the life expectancy of a mayfly. What fun is life if you can't make life fun? Good lord, you've been training under me for two months now and haven't learned the philosophy style of thing one bit--" "PHILOSOPHY?!" Gosub shouted. "It's not Zen, it's crime!" "If you've got objections to crime, go flip more burgers for all I care. I pulled you out of that pit. Don't you want a better life?" "Yes! I just don't want it to be very short!" "Jack out if you want to. I can handle this run on my own." "Oh no," Gosub taunted. "You'd just get yourself killed if you didn't have me around. And I'm not gonna live with that one for the rest of my days. I'm staying right here." "I do NOT need you around to stay alive." "Face it Zipcode, you don't know anything!" I said. "Sure, you talk big, I'm a master computer user, but you've never lived real life before. What was your grade point average in High School?" "2.1. But--" "See? You're ignorant!" "I HATE to interrupt," Swift interrupted, "But I'd advise that unless you want to abort now, you find a way up to that door now. The alarms won't stay silent for too much longer." "Outta the way," I said, shoving my obviously non-slacked partner aside and pulling out the trusty toolbox. "Need my physics modifier. Where'd I put it?" "It's under P, with your program encoder and pubic ticker," Gosub said. "Yeah. Always knew that dewey decimal system'd be handy some day. Lesse. Gravity, gravity." I paused. I had gotten this thing as a toy a long time ago, and in the proud tradition of hackers everywhere, threw out the manual. Never did master the thing, or even figure out how to use it. "Umm." "Five minutes till we're in serious trouble," Swift updated. "You don't know how to use it, do you?" "Well, since all knowledge is interconnected in the universe, so that--" "You DON'T know how to use it!" "Yeah, I don't know how to use it!" I said. "Great. Alright, abort time. We jack out." "Can't," Swift said. "One of the alarms wiggled out of my control and shut off all ejections from this building." "Shit." I'm going to die, I thought. I lived hard, and fast, running the edge, never slipping. Now I'm gonna die because I didn't read the fucking manual. "Alright, step aside," Gosub said. "Time for me to play Hero for a Day." "What?" I exclaimed. "Since when do you know anything about physics?" "Did you ever bother to ask me what my major was in college, Zipcode?" "No--" "Physics." "Then why'd you want to be a cut--" "Physicians don't get babes," he joked. "Alright. We just tune gravity's acceleration from 9.8 meters per second per second to, say, negative 2.5 meters per second per second..." The sickening wrench of gravity giving you the bird set in, and we floated/fell to the ceiling. The landing was rough, but not that bad. "Easy enough," Gosub said. "Wow," I admitted. "That was quite a move." "Thanks. Now, the door...?" I gleefully ripped open the door. * There it was. Digits flowing after digits, an almost unending stream of numbers twisting this way and that in a little dance around the room to some unheard tune. I found myself trying to whistle the dance music, only to realize the notes didn't exist in the human pitch range. Gosub reached out for the numbers, but his hand passed right through them. "Huh?" he said, groping for the numbers. I tried plucking a number six out of the air, but I couldn't touch it either. "What gives?" I said. "Last level of security," Swift said. "Since only the PlastiCard's comlink is expected to touch this number, only a program can access it. It's not a file, it's a stream of data that flows around randomly." "There had better be a way to get this number," Gosub said. "I didn't come all this way just to take a dip in some water and wreck a few staircases." "I'm a program," Swift said. "Let me try." Swift uncurled his fingers. The air shifted in the room, as one thousand numbers were sucked out of their individual orbits, and slurped through the air in front of us... and occasionally THROUGH us, which is a sensation I wish I could have sensitized and had on file for later feeling pleasure... into the palm of Swift. Swift peered oddly at the small glowing ball of numbers in his hand, and closed his fist. "We've got it." "Bang on!" I shouted in glee. "She rides! I did it!" "WE did it, Zip," Gosub warned. "You'd never have made it without my physics." "Or my programming," Swift added. "Yeah. We did do it. Swift, I gotta admit, you're one hoopy guy. And Gosub..." "Yeah?" "You did good, kid." "Don't call me kid." * After that, it was just a matter of setting some 'mops' about to wipe up our tracks and to nuke that alarm that kept us from jacking out. I watched the zeros build up on the screen of our computer, soda in hand, as my bank account grew. I now had about as much money as William Doors of Macroware. "Yow," Gosub admitted, as his account inflated as well. "That's a hell of a lot of money." "Shame we can't keep all of it," I sighed. "Our accounts can only hold so much before someone out there's gonna notice. Whaddya think we ought to do with the rest of it?" Swift pushed the bank comlink out of the way of the screen. "I've got an idea." "Yuppers?" "Why not donate it to People for the Ethical Treatment of AIs?" "Sounds fair," I grinned. "I like your style, Swift." "All set for travel," Swift said. "I'll be snoozing in the back if you need me." "I thought AIs didn't sleep," Gosub pondered. "We're only human," he said. "Gotta sleep sometimes." * I skipped down the stairs of my office building, my CPU in tow (hooked up to a battery so Swift wouldn't kick off during transit) and clicked the taxicab hail button on the side of the building. Now it was just a matter of a quick trip to the airport, flash a few figures in front of some jockey, and a quick trip out to wherever Swift's coordinates led to. "Spare a cred, pal?" begged a voice from my left. I turned around. He was sitting on the sidewalk, wrapped up in as much clothing as I guess he could have carried. A plastic shopping bag of playing cards, cigarettes, and other worldly possessions slumped at his side, as he held out a coffee mug with an optical illusion of birds changing into fish. "Lost all my money," he 'splained. "Someone swiped it. Couldn't make payment on my house, got kicked out. Usual sad sack story. How about a bit of money for the Queen for a Day?" I grinned and stuffed a thousand credit chip into his cup. "Keep the change," I said.