Recursion (46 page)

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Authors: Tony Ballantyne

Tags: #AI, #Science Fiction

BOOK: Recursion

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Helen bit her lip thoughtfully. “Each time we’ve met?” she said. “There is more than one copy of me?”

“Oh yes, you’re very popular in this little chamber of horrors.”

Judy’s console made a shushing noise, and Judy tilted her head a little, clearly listening to something.

Helen opened her mouth, and Judy raised a hand to silence her. Helen looked around the mirrored chambers, at all the black and white women who raised their hands to the young blonde women, images receding into infinity. Helen had a sudden sense that she was not looking at reflections; that, instead, each of the pairs of figures that she saw was another Helen and Judy, trapped in another computer simulation. Each one of them awaiting some dreadful fate.

Judy lowered her hand.

“Kevin has shown up on one of the Level Three simulations. I’m going to intercept him. Helen, you will be safe within the stealth cube area for the moment. Don’t wander too far into the arboretum; the simulation only extends for a few hundred meters beyond the limits of this construction.”

“But…” said Helen.

“Read this while I’m gone.” She thrust a thin plastic pamphlet into Helen’s hand.

“What…”

It was too late. Judy had vanished. Helen looked down at the pamphlet. Written along the top were the words “Welcome to the Digital World. Welcome to your new life!”

Level Three, Variation A

Helen crouched in the corner of the mirrored room, knees pulled up tight against her chin, arms hugging her shins. She guessed she had been trapped in the room for about six hours now. Long enough to make herself hoarse, shouting for help. Long enough to realize that Social Care wasn’t coming. Long enough to realize that she faced the awful prospect of being a victim to those crimes she had thought were only vicarious entertainment on historical shows. Rape. Murder. Torture. She gazed at nothing, not wanting to look into the terrified eyes of the other Helens who shivered around her. The wide eyes, the pinched cheeks, the pale faces all served to amplify her own fear.

“Watcher,” she whispered. “If you are there. If you really exist. Please, please. Help me.”

And then there came the noise of the seals in the door disengaging. Helen whimpered with fear. How much would it hurt?

A thin, unshaven man stepped into the room, his eyes lighting up with excitement as he saw Helen.

“Please,” said Helen. Reflexively she felt for her console, but it was no use; Kevin had taken it away when he had first pushed her into this place.

The man giggled. “Say it again,” he said. “Say please and I might be nice.”

Helen felt something inside herself harden. She pushed herself upright against the wall, gazing at the man’s fingers as she did so. He didn’t look so strong, really. Maybe if she could get behind him, hold his blue-stained hands away from herself.

Too late. With a speed that took her by surprise, he lashed out, brushing his fingers against her cheek. She felt her legs give way.

The man stood back and looked down at her thoughtfully.

“Now,” he said. “Where shall we start?”

“How about with a profile readjustment?”

The man jumped at the voice.

A woman stepped into the room. Black hair, black lips, white face. The sight of her terrified the man.

“No,” he croaked. “You don’t understand. This is not what it looks like…”

The woman smiled. “Hello, Helen. Hello, James. My name is Judy. I’m…”

The man’s face crumpled. “How did you know my real name? They told me that my anonymity would be assured.”

Judy rolled her eyes. “James,
they
are running illegal personality constructs.
They
are collaborating in the torture and murder of said constructs. I think it may be a fair assumption that
they
are not the sort of people to be trusted when they tell you that your anonymity is assured.”

The man stared at Judy, his lips moving silently as he tried to understand the full import of what she had just said.

Helen was a lot quicker on the uptake. “You mean this isn’t real? I’m a personality construct?”

“I don’t know about real,” said Judy. “It
is
true that you are a personality construct. According to your time frame, you were copied by a Marek Mazokiewicz two days ago. You’re being run, illegally and without your consent, so that people like James here can get their rocks off torturing you.”

Helen wasn’t listening. She was still focused on the first part of the sentence. “According to my time frame…” she said slowly. A yawning feeling opened up in her stomach.

Judy shook her head sadly. “According to atomic time you were copied seventy years ago. You’re just the latest in a long line of Helens. I’m sorry.”

Helen felt a pang inside her. She forced down the welling nausea for the moment. She wanted to know the facts.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why were you copied? As I said, so that people like James here could play with you. Torture you. Isn’t that right, James?”

“No,” said James. He began to wring his hands. “I wasn’t going to do anything like that. I just wanted to know…wanted to know…what it would be like…”

Helen felt contempt rising inside her. She dismissed James from the conversation.

“What happens now?” she asked Judy.

Judy tilted her head. “That all depends.”

“On what?” asked Helen.

Judy looked at James. “The people who run this place know that their cover is blown. They’ll want to destroy the evidence. What happens now depends on whether
they
manage to wipe the processing space in which we reside, or whether my atomic self manages to stop them.”

Helen licked her lips. “Do you think you will?”

Judy smiled and nodded. “I always do. We’ve been dealing with the Private Network for some time now. One of my digital alter egos is hot on the trail of Kevin—one of the Private Network’s leaders—right now. They won’t do anything to harm the simulation while he’s still in here.”

James slumped hopelessly into a corner of the room.

Helen gazed at Judy. “Digital alter egos? You’re going to have to explain that…”

Judy fingered the black sleeve of her kimono.

“There are twelve of us,” she said. “Twelve digital Judys. And then there is our other sister, living out in the atomic world. For the sake of convenience, I’m sometimes called Judy 3.”

“Judy 3?” said Helen.

“You can call me Judy.” She tilted her head, listened to her console, which was set in the form of the black rod threaded through her hair. “Here we are. My sister has just caught up with Kevin…”

Level Three, Variation B

Judy 4 stepped into the isolation room. Kevin was already here, struggling with Helen. Calypso, the woman who had booked the session in the trap, was lying on the floor, feebly trying to get up. Judy paused by the door, letting events run their course. As she watched, Helen slumped to the floor. Kevin noticed Judy and gave her a smile.

“Hello again,” he said. He nodded to Helen on the floor. “She’s very clever,” he said. “She grabbed hold of Calypso’s hands and rubbed the relaxant on me. She wasn’t to know that the simulation is programmed to exclude me from the effects.”

Judy’s face was deliberately impassive.

“She’s very tenacious, Kevin. I’m really coming to admire her.”

“That’s why we pick her for the traps. Big favorite with a certain sort of man.” He looked down at Calypso. “And a certain sort of woman,” he added.

“Fk ff,” murmured Calypso.

Kevin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t seem to be able to exit from this space at all.”

“We’ve got your measure now,” said Judy 4.

“I didn’t think that was possible.” Kevin frowned.

Judy pulled a little blue pill from the sleeve of her kimono and swallowed it.

“It is possible,” she said, “if we isolate the space completely. Nothing gets in and out now. Not even me.”

Kevin shrugged his shoulders.

“Ah well. There is still one way out.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Watch me,” whispered Kevin. His smile froze as he slumped slowly to the ground.

Judy 4 stared at him for a moment, her white face motionless. Only the slight widening of her black eyes displayed the horror she felt.

“Wht? Wht s it?” said Calypso. She was gazing up from the floor where she lay. “Wht dd he do?”

Level Three, Variation A

“What’s the matter, Judy?”

Helen leaned close to Judy 3 and took hold of one of her white hands. For something that seemed to be barely there, the hand felt very warm.

“Judy, what is it?”

“He killed himself,” she whispered. “Overwrote the personality space he inhabited with null events.”

James spoke up from his corner in a whining voice. “So what? Let him die. Who cares?”

Judy 3 turned and gave him a sweet smile. “
You
should care, James. Now that Kevin has left this processing space there is no reason for the Private Network to maintain it. Let’s just hope my atomic friends get an exit into here before we’re all wiped.”

Helen moved her lips, thinking aloud.

“Surely they have a backup of this processing space? Couldn’t they just run that?”

Judy 3 had been gazing at her reflection in the mirrored walls of the isolation room. She turned and gave Helen a significant look.

“Ah, now you’ve hit on the nub of the matter, Helen.”

Level Four

Judy 11 stepped into the isolation room on Level Four and held her breath, expecting the worst. The scenarios on this level did not bear contemplating. To look at them awoke a boiling anger that slowly cooled into thoughts that left her feeling weak and ashamed.

In this room there was a table, a little tray of silver instruments at one side of it. A man was looking at the instruments thoughtfully. He turned as Judy appeared.

“Hello, Judy,” he said.

“Who are you?” asked Judy 11. “Where’s Helen?”

“Never mind that,” said the man. “We need to talk, and quickly. I’ve been trying to get a message to your atomic self, undetected, for months now. This may be my last chance.”

Judy 11 gave a sardonic laugh.

“You could have picked a better place. This processing space is going to be shut down at any moment, with all of us in it. I’m doing a last sweep for anyone who may be trapped in here, in the vain hope that we may be able to get them out in time.”

“Never mind that,” said the man again. “What I’ve got to say is far more important.”

“I doubt it,” said Judy.

The man took hold of Judy’s hands and gazed into her black eyes floating over the white space of her face.

“Judy, listen to me. When word of this gets out, it could bring down Social Care, the EA, even the Watcher. It changes everything we’ve been led to believe. There’s been a murder.”

The edge to the man’s words touched something in Judy. He
believed
in what he was saying.

“Who has been murdered?” she asked crisply.

“That’s not the problem. The problem is the murderer. They’ve killed once; they’re going to kill again. The murderer has to be stopped, and I don’t think that that’s possible.”

Judy 11 was calm.

“Nothing is impossible. Who is the murderer?”

The man swallowed. He looked around the room, as if afraid of who might hear his words. When he spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper.

“The Watcher.”

About the Author

Tony Ballantyne grew up in County Durham in the northeast of England, studied mathematics at Manchester University, and then worked as a teacher, first of math, then IT, in London and later in the northwest of England.

Nowadays he enjoys playing boogie piano, cycling, and walking. In the past he has taught sword fencing at an American children’s camp, been a ballroom dancer, and worked voluntarily on conservation projects and with adults with low literacy and numeracy.

Visit Tony Ballantyne at
www.tonyballantyne.com
.