Authors: Kelly Mccullough
Tags: #Computer Hackers, #Magic, #Fantasy Fiction, #Computers, #Contemporary, #General, #Fantasy, #Wizards, #Fiction
Codespell (30 page)
The next thirty-six hours were very blurry. Melchior and I madly scrambled to design and assemble Melchior 2.0. More than once, I missed the distractions Tisiphone might have provided, but it was probably better that she remained away, considering the workload. We were able to find most of the framework and peripherals among Ahllan’s stores, with some notable exceptions that would require both a trip to someplace still linked to the mweb and some spell work.
If we’d had more time, we could have done the whole thing with spell work, but conjuring up things as complex as the drives and processors was a lot harder than whistling up a fresh set of clothes—the less of it we had to do, the better. Besides, it introduced another point along the way where a minor mistake could lead to a major failure.
Most of what we wanted we could get pretty easily once we had mweb access—the latest drives and such would be basically off-the-shelf parts and could go in as is. We could pick up a case the same way, though we planned on doing a custom mod once we had it.
The one really tough thing on the list was the master processor. Getting or making that promised to be a special kind of nightmare. There just weren’t many possible sources for either blueprints or hardware that could do the level of quantum processing we needed—the only ones I knew of were in Athena’s latest security servers and Fate’s newest webtrolls.
“That does pose a bit of a problem, doesn’t it?” said Melchior. “I don’t much want to have a go at cracking either place, not with Cerice tuning Fate’s security system for maximum Ravirn blockage and Athena’s promises of death.” He made an axing gesture.
“I don’t know, Mel. After a day and a half bent over a workbench, the idea of taking some weight off my neck sounds almost pleasant.” I was deadly tired but not the least bit sleepy, and I
ached
.
ached
.
“I suppose it would solve almost all of your problems . . . with one notable exception.”
“You mean Hades,” I said.
“I do. Dead is just not a good option for you right now.”
“OK, so I’ll have to scratch dying off the list, but I’m only doing it for you. So, what else have we got? I suppose Eris probably has copies of both Athena’s and Fate’s blueprints. ”
“Veto,” said Melchior. “I’m not letting the Goddess of Discord inside my head, and there’s no way she’d share unless she’d had time to install back doors in the plans.”
“Well, that takes us back to Fate or Olympus.”
Melchior paced back and forth on the workbench. “Fate’s going to be the better bet. It’s the hardware we’re most familiar with and much more likely to be compatible with the rest of my specs. You know Athena’s stuff would require all kinds of last-minute modifications, and I’d rather not have too much untested hardware go into my head.”
“How about Asalka?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Melchior’s face closed up.
“Relax. I’m not talking about breaking her up for parts or anything like that. I’m just wondering whether she might not be able to get us what we need. She seemed awfully sweet on you. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Melchior. “I hate to put that kind of pressure on any AI. Besides, if we ask Asalka and she tells Cerice, you can bet Cerice will make getting what we need that much harder.”
“Did Asalka strike you as a rat?” I asked.
“Despite everything, no. I don’t think she’d have told Cerice if she’d known we wouldn’t want her to. She could save us a world of trouble. . . . All right, I’m willing to ask her, but if she says no, that’s it. We find another way.”
I agreed, and we temporarily reactivated the beer can faerie ring, flicking from there to a very vanilla DecLocus just a few hundred dimensions away from prime. With my eyes and ears temporarily rounded to mimic the human norm and Melchior in laptop shape, we blended right in at the local-reality equivalent of Starbucks.
We had visual mail waiting, three messages. I put my back to a wall and plugged in a set of headphones so as not to share with the natives. I decided to go newest to oldest in hopes that some of my problems might be self-solving. Yes, really. It
had
happened before, just not to me. In grad school, Cerice had always had a million messages waiting, and she’d discovered that sometimes, if she just let the ones with questions or requests ripen a bit, someone else would deal with whatever needed doing.
had
happened before, just not to me. In grad school, Cerice had always had a million messages waiting, and she’d discovered that sometimes, if she just let the ones with questions or requests ripen a bit, someone else would deal with whatever needed doing.
My first v-mail was from Thalia, “Ravirn, please visit me as soon you can. Zeus contacted me looking for you, and I’m worried.” Her face gave nothing away.
“That’s interesting,” said Melchior’s voice through the headsets.
“Which?” I asked very quietly—best not to draw too much attention to the fact that I was talking to my laptop. “That Zeus is looking for me? Or that Thalia is worried about me?”
“Both, about equally, but for very different reasons. I wish we had time to follow up on that.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Especially since she specified a visit. I don’t think that was an accident, and I really don’t think we ought to just send a message. For some reason, I’d rather she didn’t know where I was right at the moment. At the same time, I’m thinking any follow-up should start from a safe distance.”
“Yeah,” agreed Melchior. “That one’s got all my paranoia alarms ringing double time. We still don’t know how Nemesis got loose, where she’s been, or who sent her after you.”
“Though Fate’s the most likely evil genius behind our current mess, this sets my teeth on edge for some reason. I guess I have a certain wariness about grandmothers.”
“I wonder why.” Melchior laughed. “Next message?”
“Sure.”
This one was from Eris and very simple. “Trust no one.”
Great. That was a big help. Besides, I was already on it.
“Next,” I said, and Zeus’s beaming face filled my screen.
“Athena’s pestering me to get you to stop in and have another chat with her. If she calls and asks you to drop by, don’t answer.”
“Does he think I’m an idiot?” I asked.
“Why should he be any different?” Melchior painted a grinning version of his own face on the monitor. “Most of the evidence supports that hypothesis.”
“Thanks, Mel. I’m so glad you’ve got my back.”
“Webgoblin sidekick only here to help. Do you want to do anything about any of that?”
“No, let’s call Asalka.”
“How about you sit here and drink coffee and play solitaire, and
I
call Asalka? It’ll go smoother and faster that way.”
I
call Asalka? It’ll go smoother and faster that way.”
“Fair enough.”
Melchior’s face went slack and the eyes of his image started to roll sarcastically—his version of a loading screen. I sipped my coffee, though I no longer felt any real need for it. Maybe I was finally getting used to this not-sleeping stuff. I didn’t actually get much more than a swallow or two down before Melchior returned. AIs can speak very quickly if they don’t have to slow the process down for us poor old analogue-type creatures.
"Well?” I asked.
His image grinned, and he flashed a series of schematics across his screen. They looked nothing like normal chips. Hell, they looked nothing like normal schematics. They had all sorts of what should have been irrational notations and the like. And yet . . .
“Mel, could you give me a graphic view of this? As though I were actually looking down on the real chip with the top sliced off?”
“Hang on a moment. When I look at these too closely, they start to give me a headache and I’m not sure . . . Wait. There.”
The view he gave me was hideously complex, with lines that seemed to fold back in on themselves and some things represented in more than the normal three dimensions, yet it made perfect sense. I got it on some deep level, a sort of gestalt-form comprehension. Hmm.
“Melchior, Vlink; [email protected] to Eris@discord. net. Please. Oh, and let’s go flat panel rather than 3-D so as not to frighten the locals, OK?”
“Aren’t you even going to ask me what happened with Asalka?” He sounded as though he felt a bit slighted.
“I’m sorry, I’m just a bit distracted. I promise to ask you all about it right after we get done with Eris.”
He sighed. “There’s not that much to tell really. She felt so bad about what happened when she told Cerice on us the last time that she said yes before I’d even finished the question. I did have to promise to have a serious live chat with her at a later date, but that was afterward. I could probably have gotten out of it, but I felt kind of guilty about it and . . .”
“And you think she’s kind of cute,” I said with a grin.
Melchior spluttered. “We’re not even the same species.”
“Uh-huh, and that’s such a huge barrier in the electronic world that it would never occur to you to cross the line. That’s why you always blush when Kira flirts with you, right?”
“Searching for
discord.net
,” he said, his voice going flat and mechanical and his face taking on its loading aspect again.
discord.net
,” he said, his voice going flat and mechanical and his face taking on its loading aspect again.
“You’re not fooling anyone, you know that, right?”
Seconds slipped past with his eyes rolling steadily and snarkily away. “Contact. Waiting for a response from discord. net. Lock. Vtp linking initiated.”
A circle of white light appeared on his screen with Eris’s face in the middle. On her end, the image would be the usual 3-D globe, but that would have caused unwanted questions here.
“Raven, how delightful to see you. How’s?” Eris’s hair burst into flames and her clothes vanished, exposing an absolutely perfect body that evoked but didn’t mimic Tisiphone’s.
Even through the screen, the impact of her sexuality took my breath away. It only lasted for an instant, then she shifted back to a more distant sort of beauty wrapped in a sharp black skirt-suit with gold pinstripes. It took me a moment to get my breath back, and my voice squeaked a little when I spoke next.
“Tisiphone’s fine, thanks.”
“Only fine? That’s a pity. Considering how long it’s been for her, I’d have hoped for mind-blowingly exhausting at the very least, to say nothing of insatiable. I suppose it’s possible she’s forgotten some of the basics through lack of practice.” She cocked her head to one side and put on an expression of coquettish concern. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m not going to discuss my sex life with you,” I replied. “Fine is how she is out of bed. In is not an acceptable subject of conversation.”
“Why, Ravirn, you’re a gentleman. Who could possibly have guessed?”
“Look, I don’t have any time at all really, and I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“How could I possibly resist after you ignore my questions and frame your request in such a bracingly abrupt way.” She acquired a pair of stereotypical librarian glasses and frowned over the top of them at me. “What do you want?”
“The blueprints for Fate’s latest run of webtrolls.”
“What makes you think I’ve got a copy?”
I just looked at her.
“Oh, all right. But what do you want them for? I insist on knowing that at least.”
“What if I told you I wanted to upgrade Melchior?” I asked.
“I’d say you were mad. The chip runs way too hot for either a laptop or a webgoblin. You’d fry his brains in no time.” She paused for a moment. “I suppose you could leave the top of his head off . . .”
Shit. I hadn’t thought about heat. From the look the webgoblin logo below Melchior’s screen gave me, I had to assume that he hadn’t either. We’d have to fix that.
“All right,” I said. “You’ve got me. I’m just planning on making a little trouble for Fate, and I thought that knowing exactly what I was up against would make things a bit easier. ”
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I’m always willing to snag the weave of Fate. The plans are on their way.”
“Thanks, Eris.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome. Do you know that’s the first time you’ve ever called me anything other than Discord? I wonder why that is. Maybe my being able to do this?” She flicked herself into naked Fury shape, grinned lasciviously, and vanished from the screen.
“Got them,” said Melchior.
“What?” I asked.
“The plans, as you’d have realized if you put your tongue back in your mouth and used your brain.”
“Sorry, Mel.” I sighed. “I wish she wouldn’t do that kind of thing. Could you bring her version of the schematics up for me? Graphic view, same as the others, please.”
“Working on it.” His eyes rolled for a few moments. “There. I couldn’t detect any changes, but they feel different somehow, even more headache-inducing.”
“That’s because of this.” I touched a spot on his screen without even really thinking about it first. “Here’s where she inserted her back door. It’s very subtle.” I looked more closely. “Very.”
In a normal computer, information was processed using binary gates that were either open or closed. In a quantum computer those gates had three states—open, closed, and simultaneously open and closed. Eris had changed the configuration of one of these quantum gates so that in addition to the three normal positions, it could also . . . There was no word for what I wanted to say. Become more
cosmically open
was the best I could do. That gate didn’t just function as a processing point: it also allowed for intrusions from outside the system. It was almost diabolically elegant.
cosmically open
was the best I could do. That gate didn’t just function as a processing point: it also allowed for intrusions from outside the system. It was almost diabolically elegant.
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