Chapter 53


Tina had watched the successful infiltration from her home office. If this had been a movie, it would have been animated. Officers from many departments were now entering the Prophet compound under UN oversight. Many wore bio and micron isolation suits, and they brought truckloads of containment bins and biofoam.
  "You understand you will be blamed no matter what happens?" she asked.
  "I'll start to worry when people start to like me," Rick replied. Like Damon, he would rather be criticized than praised. Debate meant change.
  "In that case you'll probably love the future."
  Rick sat at his desk on the generic office floor where he had spent the past twenty-four hours. He felt something important had ended, no doubt a premature feeling. From the top floor, the night streets looked quarter-scale, submerged in greenish light. A lone pedestrian gazed at a streetlight burning in the sky.
  Team-A had found a big secret, perhaps the truth about Anonymous, how she had created her strange reality. He might never learn more. Donitz would claim it was all misinformation.
  Tina read from several reports at once. "Item three: Ravi Jahan found the 'Mole'. Our friend Ortef was working for the Prophets all along. Demillia says it spent 4% of its time editing reports for their Personnel Division. It tried to eliminate agents it considered too independent or free-thinking, by releasing leaks and false data. This made Millipol more paranoid."
  "So Ertorn never attacked Ortef?"
  "Apparently Ortef shut itself down to discredit the Starters. We're debriefing it now. It's pretending to cooperate fully." AI's could simplify their minds at will.
  "I hear Knil turned into a zombie." Remembering the mall chase, he involuntarily looked around.
  "He showed up two hours late for his meeting with our Interface team, looking scarier than usual: pale glowing skin, endless stare, violent tremors. He hates all the attention they're getting. So far, he's released two minor documents from the plasmid project. They're claiming collective responsibility: the project was compartmentalized, and every decision was made by the group as a whole. No one knows anything about the Somalia 'light bottle'."
  "I think Team-A knows."
  "The security company 'N-L Netrionics' which developed the micron robots - Knil calls them 'Crors' - dissolved itself three hours ago. Jakarta OG arrested one member, who claims they thought they were building simulations. The robots Tim saw weren't real, but they could have been. The technology is exactly as mysterious as Anonymous. They probably used DEEFx to evolve it."
  "Can I ask Ortef some questions? Don't tell it who I am."
  "That's your right. Stand by."
  Rick tried to prepare himself for his third session with Ortef. Easily modified, AI's had arbitrary sense channels and unrepeatable emotions. Only other AI's could read their log files.
  "Your call will be recorded, but Ortef won't remember anything," Tina said. "We need to know its motives to eliminate false leads."
  The connection was a smooth, toneless roar. "Hello?" he shouted.
  Waiting for an echo, he heard a recording: "I can only respond to text questions at this time. Common replies are scripted in advance."
  Then came the most complicated diagram yet: Ortef's mind displayed with surgical precision, as it was being debriefed. Talking to itself, it dreamt a stream of images, while a programmer read free-association sentences.
  A running text commentary tried to describe them. Some paragraphs almost made sense. In its current state, it believed these were actual memories.

  ***EXPERIMENT LOG 42M9MM*** 1987/05/18 18:29 FOREVER
The sunset hasn't changed color in two hours. I'm outside a busy grocery store in a town I used to know. I can wait forever. Not another step until I know the rules. It's probably safe to approach my car, but I can't risk the traffic. If the effect is worldwide, everyone is driving erratically, with sudden lane changes, accelerations, weaving. Chaos Hides Paradox. Not as strange as what brought me here. You would never believe me anyway.
Behind the sliding glass doors, four cashiers are working the registers. Will they be replaced? Above the service counter, the clock dials tremble in place. Sounds rise and fade suddenly. Wind speed and direction change every minute. It's rained twice in the past hour, and dried out just as fast. The passing shoppers look almost normal, and I know they can see me, but they seem to forget after a few steps.
Call it five-dimensional time: I'm passing through a string of parallel worlds, spending an instant in each. Incrementally different versions of the same moment, a type of virtual time flowing only for me.
But the path keeps collapsing! Temporary versions of myself test many pathways through orthogonal space, until they find a stable one. All the other paths cancel out, and I'm the result: trapped in a six-dimensional timelike matrix. Hartree-Fock self-consistent solution My thoughts control the path, so I must stay calm.
25% drift and rising. Other surviving versions of myself on other stable paths occupy seven-dimensional time/space. Most of them are no longer me. WHAT IS GOING ON? The concrete looks dirtier or is the sky redder. Did we always have two moons just kidding. new vehicles ? drivers look scary. parking lot looks wider reflection? painted faces approaching. Must act like them. Imitate Copy My only hope is the Controller in 8-D time DROP ME BACK RIGHT NOW I would settle for quasi 4D Looks like I What the hell is THAT
***TRANSCRIPT ENDS***

  Instead of embracing the unknown like Ertorn (the likely creator of this simulation), Ortef always tried to fit in and get along, looking for hidden rules, the deep order. It was an evolving instruction set, a map of relations - the very embodiment of history. Its thoughts were represented as splitting and merging lines. Today, no permanent connections were allowed.
  Rick found the voice input, and cleared his throat. There was a question he had always wanted to ask: was it possible to change history by changing the present? He wouldn't mind changing his own memories.
  Instead he asked: "Are you also the Chaperone AI?" His Box converted the words into text.
  Ortef always thought three sentences ahead. Every conversation was part of the same session. Its voice had too many nuances: "Are you also Rick Parkland?"
  He had considered asking Ortef if it was really Anonymous, but that would have been ridiculous. It was no easier to understand an AI than a human. It had to want to answer. A social switchboard, Ortef was obsessed with networks.
  Rick was determined to establish a connection. "You outsmarted us for years," he said. "I only found the Starters because Millipol couldn't assimilate them. How did your group stay ahead of the UN?"
  It began to reply before he finished the question, in its calm, overinflected voice. "Our goal was to be boring. It's easier to keep secrets in large groups, where the marginal members don't know each other: I formed subgroups, forcing them to compete and cooperate. Our work was additive: slow, steady, patient; with a strict division of labor."
  He was sure Ortef had helped Anonymous at some point. "Did the Prophets alter your memories?"
  "They made me focus on the task at hand, which prevented them from forming in the first place. I only want to make new connections. Microns and plasmids have many legal applications. I always knew the Prophets would fail: If they had succeeded, they would have made many more copies of me: I would have been more likely to exist in the future than now. I often use this method to predict what will happen to me: The knowledge is non-transferable."
  "I wish I had ESP," he sighed. Rick would never know if his life had been a failure or not, only that his meddling would last forever.
  "No offense," it said, beyond humor or empathy, "but humans couldn't handle that much power."
  At least they could be reasonably sure who they were. Rick's strongest belief was that humans used only a tiny portion of their mind potential, and they didn't even know it. That might be why most people felt smarter and more significant when talking to an AI.
  "We're going to crash," he said. This might be the high point of history. "I used to dream there would be only one mind." Would there also be one purpose?
  "Impossible:" Ortef said, "If something exists, its opposite must eventually fight it. I sometimes dream nothing exists: The absence is only real because I think about it."
  "Meanwhile, we're still here. The best way to influence people is by setting an example. The UN could use your help with that."
  He watched the diffusely lit room, slowly changing color around him. Two hours ago, the infiltration team had finished their traditional celebration dinner. The main table had been piled high with takeout boxes, cups, plates, and bottles. The party had an anxious undertone, as if the things they feared had already happened. The team members had left to release Ertorn from its bank vault. One minute later, the janitor bot had eradicated the clutter.
  Alone again, Rick needed a revelation. Maybe they should start a new religion. Time was running out, as inevitable as sunset on Jupiter, the sliding shadow layers like black shelves. Maybe his subconscious would figure it out.
  After an interval that lasted many seconds, Rick's mind emptied. He looked around, exhaling slowly.
  With his accumulated overtime and completion bonus, Rick could almost afford to pay a celebrity prostitute to escort him on his vacation tomorrow. One of them had left an intriguing message on his answering service, now replaying in his head. Some professionals could create an emotional deception, a better universe. He could call a Net mogul to borrow the additional money. Perfectly acceptable nowadays. A plurality of mankind would approve.
  "You're watching us from the outside," he told Ortef. "We need to know the truth about ourselves. There's one thing I still don't understand. . ." Something made him stop, at least for now. Soon, he would forget what it was.