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Waking Up - Chapter 1
Date: 19 March 2010, 2:09 am
Jessica
This is quite a pickle. My shirt is definitely ruined, and there's no way my hair is getting out of this without some major restructuring and a long shower. And I forgot to take out the garbage this morning, again.
It's because not half an hour ago I was in a real hurry to get to work but forgot to set the alarm. As a result, I did not awaken until the sun had reached an angle high enough to claw over the windowsill, through my eyelids, down my optic nerve and into my brain whereupon it savagely attacked whichever bit of gray matter controls the "oh fuck I'm late" neurotransmitters. Quick shower, no time for breakfast, throw on some clothes (where the hell is my jacket?), walk right by the trash can without stopping and into the car. Get halfway down the street before slamming on the brakes, rocket out of the car back to the house to pick up my briefcase and a laminated name-badge with "Jessica Anders" printed boldly in thirty-point capitals. Just out of shape enough to be a bit winded when I got back to my sedan, and then it's down the highway at a speed usually reserved for interstellar transports and taxi cabs, leaving a bit of burned rubber in the driveway with an earsplitting dolphin-like screech and pull into the parking lot twenty-three minutes late. Stumble out of the car, thoughts fixed only on the waiting coffee machine sixty floors down in ARCHER base, and then I ruined my shirt.
It's my third-favorite shirt too, the blue one with the flowers around the wrists. I normally wouldn't wear it to work, not really, but it was the first clean thing that I saw and I took it before I realized what it was and now look at it, with the ugly hole right where it can't be covered up. Not to mention the stain. What a waste. I'm contemplating just getting back into my car, but I don't really think that's possible now.
What the hell happened? I must have rolled my ankle and fallen or something, which explains why I can't get my feet under me when I start to pull myself up. But my ankle doesn't hurt, and that wouldn't explain away all the screaming that I realize, belatedly, is coming from my own throat. And what about that terrifically loud noise and a feeling like being punched in the back by the business end of a coked-up elephant's tusk that happened just before I fell?
"Gunshot," is the noun my brain draws at length from memory banks that are getting cloudier with each second. That noise sounded suspiciously like a gunshot. And all that gore lying in front of me like toys spilled from an unruly child's closet looks like it might have once called my torso home. And when I move my hand down below my breasts there's something warm and wet with the consistency of stale pudding where there should be flesh. Huh. Gunshot sounds about fuckin' right.
A scream strangles itself in my throat and sends little ripples through the blood pooling around my lips. They sting a bit -- I must have scraped up my face when I nose-planted into the cold asphalt. My freshly washed hair, already starting to revert to it's usual frizz, is sponging up my blood, drawn up like a wasp's venom diffusing through the body of a caterpillar. And I missed the damn garbage truck, two weeks in a row. For someone in my profession, I ponder ruefully, I'm awfully disorganized. The thought makes me laugh, but somewhere between diaphragm and larynx it turns into a shuddering cough that sends more little needles of pain through my chest. My mouth tastes like copper.
Right about now would be the time to panic but that just seems like so much bother.
A dark smog is rolling steadily across my eyes, punctuated by little flashes of silver. I try to push myself to my feet and am startled to realize that my legs won't obey me anymore. In fact, I'm not feeling much of anything below my ribcage and I must have scraped up my knees and shouldn't I be able to feel that? When did the sun start to set? It's getting kind of shady around here.
Did I leave the shower on? God dammit, I think I left the shower on.
Exeunt.
Mitchell
I once overheard my former secretary say that I have a sense of humor like a dead rat nailed to a crucifix has good taste. I begged to differ -- my sense of humor is functioning perfectly well, thank you, I simply seldom have cause to exercise it in the day-to-day execution of my duties. I do garner some amusement from my underling's attempts to get me to laugh, though if they were to put half the effort of making me crack a smile into doing their God damn jobs the insurrection would be as finished as the aforementioned deceased rodent by this point. Life is to short to waste on pointless frivolities.
As I pull onto the exit that will take me to ARCHER base, I try to banish the image of pistol-whipping my secretary from my mind. Now is not the time to engage in pleasant flights of fancy. As usual, Wole has pushed the appropriations meeting as close as he can to the deadline for military expenditures. He's asking for Marines to act as paramilitary support for... well, for something shady. As usual.
It's a favorite tactic of the ONI Director's, to keep everybody in the dark right up until decision time when we're all off-balance and anxious enough to acquiesce with a minimum of fuss. It's said that every year, the week before the deadline, the sound of officials slamming their foreheads against the walls outside of Wole's office can be heard through all negative-eighty stories of the base. Hopefully I won't end up as one of their sad number today. My knuckles crack around the steering wheel as I attempt to throttle it to death.
Again, now is not the time for such introspection. It is quite vexing that I don't have the slightest clue as to what Wole is going to be asking for today. Director Wole is the only person on this planet, and one of the few in human-controlled space, who can actually... intimidate is the wrong word, of course. Impress me, yes, that's it. Standing a good six and a half feet tall, with dark, weather-beaten skin contrasting sharply with short a white buzz-cut, the Director cuts an imposing figure even at upwards of seventy years old. I have, to my frustration, tended more towards the scrawny side and the sight of the Director leaning over his cane and staring at me with those two eyes like black diamond drill bits is terribly... impressive.
I'll just have to wing this one, I think morosely to myself as I pull reluctantly into the employee parking lot. But still, I can't shake the feeling that I'm a mouse staring at a bowl on the kitchen floor labeled "Mister Muffins." I, for one, object most strongly to being the mouse. Scurrying into a spot next to a blue sedan parked awkwardly across two spaces, I step out of the car and am immediately struck by the smell of death.
Groping for a gun that isn't there, I quickly drop down into a crouch beside the door. There's a prone figure not twenty feet away, a short woman with frizzy red hair lying face-down in a pool of what I can only assume is blood, leather briefcase on the pavement as though she flung it as she fell. There's really no need to check for a pulse (nobody could lose that much blood and still be alive) but I feel bound to do so anyway – dash across the open ground ready for a shot to take me in the face at any instant, I place two fingers against her neck. She's still warm, probably not dead for more than ten minutes.
There's a security guard lounging against the fence, ankles crossed and arms dangling, but seeing as he's missing everything from the nose up he'll probably be a less than adequate witness.
What kind of circus is ONI running here? What happened to all the automated defense systems? This is irritatingly lax security. I'll have to do something about this, one day, but in the meantime somebody is going to get severely scolded. Flipping open my phone, I punch in a number and start speaking as soon as the ringing stops.
"Hello? This is Colonel Mitchell Fuchs. Could you please alert security? There's been a breach."
Later...
It's dark.
It's dark and it's cold it reeks of memory, which smells oddly like my high-school's locker rooms after a hard volleyball practice. I used to play, but I sucked royally at the stupid fucking game. High school in New Chicago had a mandatory PE requirement and I hate to admit that as bad as I am I actually kind of liked the sport. I can taste the air of the court, cold and dry as sweat runs down my nose and I dive awkwardly for the ball, miss, fall, scrape up my knees and my shoulder twists and Michelle is laughing and there's my Mom on the sidelines and Dad and...
You have to get up, now, says the coach. Oh God, Coach Jesse is such a bitch. You have to get up now, kid. You've got the rest of your death ahead of you, after all.
The weight of death is heavy in the air as they lay the casket down into the damp earth. The light drizzle makes the first shovels full of dirt hit the heavy oak boards with a dull thunk of sound every few thunk seconds. Every eye that meets mine is filled with so much pity that it burns like dry ice. Black-clad family and friends on damp greenery with red flowers. Colors reach through the tears in my eyes and twist around until they take my brain somewhere else, somewhere without the pain and the grief until my baby brother falls into my arms and snaps me back to reality with a mental deceleration so hard it hurts. He looks up at me with damp eyes and a runny nose and don't cry, he says, don't cry because if you cry I'll cry too and you look ugly when you cry 7-2945-3.
Tell us your name.
I rock back and forth on my heels, digging my feet into the artificially perfect grass of the college quad and playing my hands through the shadow of a maple tree. The sun is almost directly overhead and hot, very hot, sending a trickle of sweat between my shoulder blades. Inane chatter all around as students flit from class to class, hummingbirds going after scholastic nectar. What's your name, asks the goddess of an upperclassman standing in front of me. She's tall and blond and with a smile that could knock down a regiment, and I feel ugly. 7-2945-3, I answer. That's a pretty name she says with a little false laugh. I've already decided to hate her.
--gen deprived for less than ten minutes, minimal damage to--
There's this brilliant spot of sunlight where the peaks of three waves crash together in an orgy of sea foam and the bow crests the waves and takes wings for a perfect instant before it smacks down onto the surface. A sputtering whoop of laughter, a fast-forward memory spooling through a tape recorder so quick quick quick it smokes and mingles with the ocean spray and th--
What's your name.
The lecturer is droning on about Greek mythology and I'm doodling circuit diagrams on a sheaf of notebook paper. A ceiling fan spins lazily as my mind dusts off some n memories of the totality -- boredom is nothing if not fuel for the imagination. But I guess something he said must of sunk in.
Tell us your NAME.
It's Tisiphone, all right? Will you shut up about it? TSN-7-2945-3.
Now just let me get started.
Beginnings
"So I'm an AI."
"Yes."
"An AI."
"Yes."
"So I-"
"Yes."
"And you-"
"Yes."
"But I'm not-"
"That depends on how you define it."
"How are you-"
"I've had this conversation a dozen times. Next you're going to ask about your avatar."
He's hit the metaphorical nail right on the head. I take a moment to pause and examine my shiny new holographic body. It's... odd. Familiar, in a lot of ways, but the details are all different, and somehow I know that my name isn't Jessica anymore. Now I'm Tisiphone. It's like reading over an essay somebody has edited for you, except instead of editing it they spilled coffee on it and scribbled bad romantic poetry in the margins. Which actually happened to me, back in college. I think he was drunk for most of it. But that's not important right now. Oh God, my conscious mind is wandering faster than I can process. Shouldn't being an AI fix that?
"I thought an AI's avatar was supposed to be some sort of subconscious ideal / repressed identity psychobabble thing."
Eugene gives me a look of reproach as if I had just told a fart joke at a funeral. He's been all but bouncing in his chair this whole time, threatening to crack the thin plastic back. "It's not psychobabble." He's young, for an AI technician, and supposedly a budding genius. His work is just about the only thing in life he has real passion for, and for now it's on full throttle. "An AI's avatar represents both a- a- a- well, a subconscious ideal and, well... fine. I know it sounds like nonsense, but..."
"By all means, go on." I quirk a smile and tap a holographic foot. He's cute when he's flustered.
He turns away and gives an exasperated sigh, pacing the confines of his cramped, cluttered closet of an office and running a hand through shaggy blond hair. A stack of old coffee cups threatens to collapse in a caffeinated bid to escape from the entropic horror that is his desk, which is a cheap thing that's about to give in to the inevitable before you can say "cleansing inferno." It reminds me of nothing so much as a sort of shrine to the ideal state of perfect messiness, a divine manifestation of... right. Back to the task at hand. Do I still have hands? His voice snaps me back to reality.
"Well, what do you think?"
I look down at myself again. There is, I cannot fail to notice, a bit more "self" than I was used to. Quite a bit more.
"So you're saying that my subconscious me is my old me, but with bigger boobs. And what appears to be a bronze-tipped spear. In a sundress. With... is my hair pink? My hair is pink. Did I mention the spear?"
"It's a very nice shade of pink," he says, mildly defensive.
"I think you're insane."
"You're the one with the spear."
I concede the point.
Waking Up - Chapter 2
Date: 23 April 2010, 6:14 am
Go go go.
Memory is coming back in fits and starts, and it's stupidly frustrating. There are weird gaps filling in with little chunks, slipping into place like unruly schoolchildren being herded into a queue for lunch. I can recall, for example, pushing my little brother off of a dock when he wasn't paying attention, but not where the dock was or what I was doing there or what (if anything) he had done to deserve such treatment. Knowing him, he almost certainly did deserve it, so I don't dwell on the morality of his ensaturation but rather bask in the pleasant memory of sunlight on my skin and wind playing with a strand of hair escaping from my ponytail and --
The file was labeled "Top Secret, Eyes Only." I could be executed just for poking the stupid thing, let alone reading it. Where on God's green Earth had he gotten his hands on it?
The isolated memory of that plain manila envelope slides neatly into place with a little mental click. In this day and age, a single printed copy is more secure than digital. No matter how many firewalls you pile up, there will always be a better hacker. I don't know what's in it, or who showed it to me, or when it happened. It's just one visual memory. I can tell it's... important? Or something.
Eugene says it will be a week or so before my mind is fully settled. I have a few decades worth of memory to sort through, after all. It feels like I'm reading a really fascinating book over a stranger's shoulder but I can only catch every other word. Sensory memories are the hardest to deal with, and they come back the strongest. It's easy to get overwhelmed and pulled in. Every one that hits home leaves a little ache in my soul (yes I still have one dammit), a bit of pain that tells me I'll never let the waves lap over my toes again, never taste the salt air or dad's blueberry pie, flavors exploding over my tongue. Never run across a field to chase a butterfly, never hear crickets chirping lazily in the dry summer heat while I lie on the porch with a book and a mug of iced tea, sunning myself like a snake on a rock.
On the plus side, now I'll never trip and break my wrist while trying to walk across the kitchen, fix my hair, carry a plate of chicken and read a book at the same time. I nearly landed on the cat, too.
"Hey, Jess-, uh, Tisiphone. How are you feeling?"
Eugene is standing at a holographic pedestal. I can see him with one of my two-hundred and eighty-seven eyes in ARCHER base, each one kept clean and polished every other night at two ante meridiem by a small fleet of service bots. I like the service bots, with their little wheels and manipulator arms. They're kind of cute.
I flicker into being, tossing my pink locks over my shoulder and gripping my spear like a hiking stick. There are coded routines that mimic sensory perception. I can feel the grain of the wood beneath illusory fingers and individual strands of hair sliding along my cheeks.
"You know what's the worst part of this whole identity crisis thing is?"
"I guess I don't."
"Having to introduce myself with such a stupid name. Seriously, Vengeance? What was I thinking?"
"Well, you did get shot in the back. That'll do it."
"Yeah."
There's a bit of an awkward pause as we both realize what we're talking about. Neither of us like to think about... that. My death was one of the first memories to come back, and it's really, well, I mean I died. That's got to be worth a few years of therapy. Everybody does it, sure, but most don't get to go around bragging about it after. Though bragging would feel a bit gauche. It really does make for frustrating conversation. So how was being shot? Not bad, not bad, wouldn't recommend it though. Very messy. It kind of stings.
They still haven't caught the guy who did it, either. They found a sniper stand half a kilometer away, but no DNA, no finger prints, no hairs, no nothing. Just some shoe prints that ended at a paved road fifty yards away, and some tire tracks that could belong to any of half a million cars. The only lead we have is that whoever did it figured out how to remotely disable the cameras. You'd have to be a damn skilled hacker to pull that off -- which narrows it down to, oh, let's say five-sixths of the thousand-odd people who toil at ARCHER base, and Lord knows how many in New Edinburgh just a few miles down the road. The working theory is that there were at least two people, one to disable security and one to take the shot.
I know this, of course, because my case file was the very first thing I hacked. It was startlingly easy to get away with, too -- I move at the speed of thought, and the police firewall was no match for me. I could get use to this, used to the sheer joy of data, the shivery feeling of ones and zeroes streaming through my conscious mind and taking shape as parsable semantic symbols. I live in a new world, now, something bigger than a world. There's information dripping from my fingertips, caressing my arms as it flows around me and carries me away in a torrent of electricity. I can see things that English -- or any language spoken by humans, for that matter -- has no words to comprehend. There's something big and twisting and made of bits, polarized magnetic sectors flipping back and forth like perfectly delineated sharkskin. I can slip between the layers and peel them apart like n dimensional branes splitting from a forming universe, each one surging through me with wave upon wave of light. It's pretty nifty.
"Did you need anything, Eugene? Or just asking after little old me?"
He looks a bit flustered, turning to one side and averting his eyes. "Well, no. I mean, yeah. Just seeing how you're doing."
"Well, I'm j-"
"And this isn't all. There's more evidence, I'm sure of it."
Eyes the color of steel stare into mine with an uncomfortable intensity. The envelope lies on the table, the "Top Secret" label blithely disregarded. It's just paper -- untraceable, easy to dispose of (and easy to fake). But obviously, somebody had royally fucked up in the shredding department.
"What am I looking at?"
"-ust fine, thank you for asking."
I'm not fine. I'm lost and scared and confused and I'll never touch somebody again. There is a buzzing noise in my "head" and I can still feel my guts leaking out between my cold hands when I don't consciously block out the memory. And what the hell is up with the spear? I'd say I need more time to think, but as a computer I guess I have as much time as I need.
I let my consciousness dissolve back into the datastream as I drift away like a sailboat with no rudder, dreaming of two-hundred and eighty-seven flocks of butterflies swarming over my eyes until all I can see is a blurry, shifting mass of orange and blue.
Requisition
The air conditioning must not be working properly, because I'm sweating.
"We live in troubled times, my friends. You know this as well as any."
The Director limps around to his seat at the head of the table, leaning heavily on a polished mahogany cane. The pyramid-and-eye symbol of his office is resplendent in the wall behind him, picked out in gold leaf on onyx. Rumor has it that he was wounded in action at the end of the Covenant War, and refused to replace his flesh and blood with an artificial limb -- hence the limp and cane. Even so, he is an imposing specimen of a man, with an air of quiet power. Rather like a black-furred lion, reclining in the sun -- quiet for now, but obviously dangerous when the circumstances require it of him. Wole's voice is worn smooth with age, though he wears his sixty-odd years well.
"Sometimes, we must take action. Action that we may find, ah, difficult to accept. We are not fighting the aliens anymore, you know. Please, all of you, be seated."
I take my place at the table. Around me, half a dozen high-ranking military and government men and women follow suit while I mop my face with a handkerchief. Damn climate control.
"The insurrection is heating up. More and more cells are appearing each day, and they are too well organized. Much too organized. Men have died, for years they have died. And there will be much more death still unless we end this conflict soon. Colonel Fuchs?"
I twitch slightly as my name is called out.
"Yes, Director?"
"I have a modest request to make."
My handkerchief comes away damp from my brow as those black eyes bore into mine. Their corners are crinkled almost imperceptibly in a small smile. What have I gotten myself into now?
Waking Up - Chapter 3
Date: 20 August 2010, 4:16 am
And a one, and a two, and a push and... bam. Oh baby, I'm good.
Finding a security hole in the base's security system hadn't been easy, of course, but once found it took a trivial amount of time to exploit. Cameras, computer access logs, building entry logs, retinal scans, it's all laid out in front of me. The investigators haven't been through all this data yet because of the ridiculous amount of red tape involved in a situation as fucked up as mine. They have to get permission from the chief of security, but they can't ask the chief of security until they have the right clearance (which takes about a week to get, if they're in a rush) to put in a formal request (another two days). Then the chief of security has to get signatures from the base administrator (one or two days) and the administrative AI (which won't be me officially for another three days). Then the police's primitive dumb AI has to collate the data, and everything has to be combed over. It's a fucking mess, but my nosiness has gotten the best of me once again. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it must have learned something worthwhile enough to get killed over first.
So here we go. All the data from the day of my murder, laid out nice and neat in front of me. Well, not my murder. Jessica's murder. I'm not Jessica anymore, and, you see, it's kind of hard to get used to. Jessica was timid, and awkward, and wrote bad poetry in her spare time. She was clumsy and a bad driver, she liked sunshine and sailing and lying on the beach. She had frizzy red hair that never behaved itself, and was perpetually late for work no matter how many alarms she set. She's not me, I'm not her anymore.
I'm proud and strong, I laugh without thinking first. I can hold my own in a conversation with generals and commanders, I love computers and numbers and swimming through the datastream. I have pet service robots. I'm confident, I have real power and I'm the closest thing to a bona fide angel that any human will see in this life. I'm Tisiphone. I'm a Fury of vengeance, with a spear and a... well, a rather pretty dress for some reason.
And by God, I would give anything to trip and fall over my own feet just one more time because I've never been more afraid.
****
In the presence of the distinguished ONI Director, I must remind myself that, as a Colonel in the UNSCMC, I should be able to withstand his gaze without flinching. But it is difficult indeed when one recalls the... colorful tales surrounding Director Wole. None can be verified, and none can be mentioned to his face, but I have heard them from people whom I have every reason to trust. Certainly, I have no trouble believing even the most outlandish tales. Wole is, to paraphrase a rather shaken First Lieutenant who had recently met with the fellow, one scary motherfucker.
For example, the legend of the Director's leg:
Forty years ago, at the height of the Covenant War, when worlds were burning and all hope seemed lost, there was a young sergeant in the UNSC Marine Corps. Sergeant Wole was considered by many to be a brave man, steadfast and strong, always ready to lay down his life for the cause. Commendation after commendation was heaped upon his head over the years, and, the story goes, he managed to remain humble and modest in the face of his growing fame. His sudden honorable discharge caught the worlds by surprise -- sure, he had gotten shot through the leg, but why wasn't he fitted with a prosthetic and sent back into the fight?
Once upon a time, Wole and his squad were ambushed by a pack of Grunts and a solitary Elite in the verdant forests of Cygnus IV. The squad came up over a low rise and a private stepped through an infrared laser tied to a few plasma mines. Those went up, and then squeals and screams pierced the dawn air as bullets and plasma whizzed and sizzled back and forth. A third of the squad was blasted to glass and carbon by the mines, and another third was cut down in the first few seconds of the frenzied firefight. Wole and his good friend, sergeant Jefferson, were pinned down behind a log that was being rapidly eroded by green and blue bolts of plasma. With morning dew flashing into steam above them, Wole requested of Jefferson some covering fire. Sergeant Jefferson, however, failed to deliver. In fact, he tossed down his gun and, gripped by a terrible panic, attempted to flee. Wole leapt out from cover (receiving his characteristic leg wound in the process) and proceeded to beat the ever loving shit out of his comrade with the butt of his rifle before slitting his throat and throwing the body to the tender mercy of the alien horde.
This is, of course, just a rumor. There is no hard evidence of any such event, nor does it appear on any official record. But I can't help but ponder, as I contemplate my course of action, what the Director would do to me, should he be so inclined, if he was willing to bash in his best friend's skull with his own hands.
****
So. Data. Let's see...
The override that erased the security footage of my murder came from the chief of security's terminal, which is to be expected. Donald Jones was a temperamental old grouch who had, surprise surprise, been trained as a sniper back in the day. But why would he kill me? It doesn't make much sense -- unless he was bribed?
Time to delve into finances. Let's see what the bank has on him.
Now that's odd. An offworld account that has been receiving monthly deposits and frequent withdrawals for the past... five years? But no big deposits, and they're coming from his primary account. And the withdrawals are to one Michelle Durac. A rather pretty young woman in the next town over. That sly dog... but clearly not related to my... situation.
Maybe I should tell his wife?
I'll ignore that for now, in favor of looking at the login information. Retinal scans. The scan that he used to log in on that fateful day was a one hundred percent match to the recorded value, which was highly unlikely. Specs of dust or stray reflections or a slightly different angle or just random errors ensured that it was never a perfect match. In fact, it only has to be ninety-five percent accurate to qualify as a valid log-in. So that means somebody had actually hacked the scanner with a digital copy of the original scan. So that means it was anybody but the chief of security -- unless he deliberately hacked the terminal to throw off suspicion from himself? Gah. I wish I were a detective...
Now let's broaden the search.
Hm... loading... loading... there.
Now... what the hell is that?
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