Idempotency (43 page)

Sound travels faster underwater, but Sindhu felt as though time had stopped altogether. The world was suddenly muted. As she began to kick, however, the pain in her leg reminded her of everything that had happened. Her eyes remained open, and she saw everything clearly as if she were wearing goggles—a serendipitous by-product of her ocular implants. Grepman floated in front of her, annoyingly urging her on. Her breath was failing just as they hit the far edge of the pool, near the promenade.

She slowly poked her head out of the water, keeping it near the edge of the pool, careful to stay under the half-meter ledge where boys and girls would sit while playing during midday, when the sun was shining its brightest through the glass ceiling above them. Grepman, however, was on the other side, scouting the promenade.

“Sindhu, work your way south, toward me, along the edge of the pool. We’ll cross here.” She began drifting toward him. “There’s one android keeping watch near the north end of the promenade. I think you can outrun him.”

She poked her head up, saw the android, and slunk back down.

“I should have kept my shield. I can’t outrun him. Not with my leg the way it is.”

“We’re going to make a diversion,” Simeon blurted into her ear. “In fact, we already have.”

An explosion of water shot out of an aqueduct to the north. Water crashed against the edge of the promenade just behind the android, who had already turned to investigate. The water died down quickly, but the android assumed—correctly—that something must have been inside the aqueduct to cause such a commotion. He began to deftly climb up one of the support legs of the aqueduct.

“What was that?” Sindhu asked.

“Nothing. We blocked the water for a few minutes, and then we turned it back on without filtering. Caused a splash, nothing more. You need to go.”

Sindhu didn’t need prompting. She quickly stood and straddled the ledge that she’d been hiding beneath. She galloped initially, testing the limits of her leg, then broke into a hobbled run, heading directly for the south side of the grand staircase. The staircase was made up of only fifty marble stairs, but its width was more impressive at over a hundred meters.

The android was alerted to Sindhu’s presence the moment her foot hit the first stair. Sindhu wondered if she had been too loud, or perhaps holoVid monitors had discerned she was an unmarked visitor. In any event, the whys didn’t matter. The android jumped off of the aqueduct—an impressive twenty-meter hop—and began heading for Sindhu, aiming toward the top of the staircase to cut off her trajectory.

Sindhu felt vulnerable. She took a step back and felt a series of small bursts of wind whizz past her face. She again cursed the loss of her shield.

“Sindhu, here!” Grepman shouted, snapping her to attention. He had floated behind the staircase. She hopped over the small railing and heard several metallic
clacks fall against the marble railing. Grepman was pointing at something near the floor.

“Seriously? A flowerpot?” Sindhu glanced at the flowers below her, then back at Grepman.

“No, here, behind this one,” he motioned at a hidden object.

She reached through Grepman and grabbed a small planting trowel that some lower-level employee had forgotten to take with them. Sindhu wondered if that employee would get an extra dose of “education” next week.

“How can I even get close enough to use this?” she asked.

“They only have ten shots, one in each finger. I think he’s used all of his. Their pneumatics are only for emergencies. They weren’t designed for this type of security.”

Sindhu smiled. She began to get up, but Grepman stopped her.

“Wait! Let him come to us. I’ll tell you where he is—you act.”

She nodded.

The android slowed as he neared. To both of their surprise, he spoke. “Ma’am, if you come with me we’ll deal with this peacefully. We have no reason to press charges.” The android’s pinstriped suit was ironed crisper than burned toast.

Grepman floated next to the railing above Sindhu, pointing at the android’s location, while also gesturing as to how far away he was.

“I’ve spoken to management, ma’am, and they are amenable to handling this issue through rehabilitation and education: a peaceful outcome, a peaceful solution.” The android’s male voice exuded sympathy. He was near the railing now, moving slowly, scanning the area.

Sindhu painted her body against the edge of the staircase, keeping herself a few meters away from the android’s path as denoted by Grepman.

“Almost, Sin! Get ready. He’s right here!”

“Ma’am, if you’ll just—”

The android leaned over, and Sindhu reacted with deft quickness. She grabbed the android’s tie, which was hanging loose around a blindingly white shirt collar. She pulled harder than required, and the android had to throw both hands on the marble rail to keep from flipping over. Wasting no time, Sindhu brought the trowel up with a raging force and plunged it into the eye of her assailant. The android screeched in a fabricated pain as its brain struggled to understand the difference between shutting itself down and death. It did one of the two and its body stopped moving.

“Go! Go! Go!” Grepman shouted.

Hopping the railing, Sindhu bolted up the stairs as fast as her tired and torn legs would allow. As she reached the top she heard more metallic clangs
ringing around her, and she chanced a glance toward the promenade. Two androids were running in perfect concert from the far end of the courtyard. This did not faze her. What bothered her were the half-dozen holoPods racing up the staircase behind her, all smiling wildly. She was certain their grins were getting progressively crazier. Now following Grepman with perfect if hobbled precision, she vowed to curse him into a sniveling shell of himself should he make a mistake at this juncture.

They turned a corner and came upon a row of elevators; the center one was twice as large as the rest. Grepman immediately headed toward the last elevator on the right. They entered, the door shut, and Sindhu slumped to the floor.

“Hmm. Shit.”

Sindhu looked up at Grepman. “Shit? No. Do not say
shit
. No
shit
now.”

“I’m sorry, Sin, but we got into the wrong elevator. This one doesn’t go down. We’ve got to go—get ready to run!”

The door dinged
and opened to the back of a holoPod. As the holoPod began to turn around, Sindhu picked it up by the ring of its base and twirled, slamming it against a wall. The smiling face vanished.

Two other holoPods had entered the elevator area, each beginning to read their warning message in tandem: “Halt. If you stop moving, you will be apprehended peacefully by a nano-control unit. Should you resist, we will be forced to utilize a stasis-inducer nano-tranquilizer that will render you temporarily paralyzed.”

Sindhu held the lifeless holoPod in front of her and darted toward another elevator. The two other holoPods moved in front of her, but she did not slow down—instead, she crashed into them, bowling them and herself over. She fell to her knees. The elevator door was sliding open now, and Sindhu was less than ten meters away. From behind she could hear a chorus of “Halt!”s ringing around her. She sprung forward, took two large strides and dove into the elevator, rolling to her side as she did so. Multiple pneumatic shots bounced off the sides of the elevator car around her. As the doors began to close, she rolled slightly toward the center of the elevator to risk a glance out of the closing doors.

The moment before the doors clamped shut, Sindhu saw the pair of androids come into sight. They were marching to the same inner drum, feet perfectly in lockstep. One was smiling. She couldn’t understand why until she felt a cold metal prick embed itself into her neck. She tried to curse as the doors closed, but only spittle foamed out of her mouth.

A light sleeper by training, Reverend Coglin was arguably awake at the most infinitesimal moment prior to the buzzing that shook his bed. Whether prophetic or not, Coglin was immediately cogent as he reached for his BUI. Upon placing the device on his ear and clicking it to life he saw the image of his security savant, Mr. Kane.

“Kane, I assume there’s an emergency if you are waking me at—” Coglin glanced at the old grandfather clock that sat opposite his bed “—half past three in the morning?”

“Correct, Reverend. We have an emergency.”

“Searle,” Coglin said resolutely.

“No, sir. We have a . . . well, we have a misplaced lower-level employee.”

Coglin cleared his throat, then said, “What the hell does that mean, Kane? And why is it grounds for waking me?”

“Sir, by
misplaced
, I mean that we have reason to believe we’ve been hacked—”

“Of course we’ve been hacked. You’ve been allowing my undercover SOP operative to hack us, to keep SOP believing he was being effective.”

“I know, sir, but this is different. It’s as if they know that we are letting them hack us, and then they are hacking us in return on top of that.” Kane’s early-morning voice sounded extra nasally to Coglin. He added, “It’s like a recursive hack.”

Coglin rolled his eyes, sighed, then immediately began to cough. The fit passed and he asked, “Did my contact at least provide us with SOP’s location yet?”

“Yes. He left an obvious trail back to himself. We were able to discern where they are. We’ve traced them to a slum in southern Nevada. An old gambling town called Laughlin, on a dried-up riverbed. Should I send in security?”

“Yes, immediately. Let’s shut them down. Hard. Authorize force; don’t worry about receiving state permission. I know the governor well, so it won’t be an issue. Now, what’s this about a lost employee?”

Even though Coglin’s eyes were still adjusting to the relative bright light of the projection in front of him, he could still make out Kane’s hesitation. “We have a misplaced low-level employee who we think is being aided by SOP.”

“So, catch him. Can’t be that hard. I didn’t let you shell out billions for the EGC androids to look pretty.”

“She, sir. He’s a she. And we are trying to catch her, but it’s proving difficult due to SOP undermining us. They’ve managed to obtain root-level access to some of our less secure control subsystems.”

“Ah, I see. So the Indian bitch has made her appearance. Not very subtle. Where is she now, Mr. Kane?” More coughing.

Kane raised a hand to one of his several chins and scratched it thoughtfully, “We don’t know, sir. Like I said, we’ve been partially compromised. We can’t track her, and the SOP operative—at least I’m assuming this is an SOP job—is disrupting our navigation services. We’re working on it, but they’re proving to be clever.”

“Well, shit, Kane. I want a full write-up on this next week. Even the fucking toilets need to be secure, let alone the navigation systems. Is navigation a lesser system?”

“No, sir, of course it isn’t—“

“Sindhu was her name, right? That cute, clever bitch—and clever of Simeon to protect her identity. He must suspect our mole—no matter.” Coglin cleared his throat anew, then locked eyes through his BUI with his subordinate and stated unequivocally, “This is unacceptable, Kane. If you don’t catch her, you will be fortunate if the worst that happens to you is permanent unemployment. What is your plan to find her?”

“We have every external access blocked. She can’t escape—”

“Idiot. She’s not trying to escape, and she certainly won’t try now, knowing that you’re expecting her to do just that. She’ll go for the most valuable item she can: information. In the form of Dylan. Or me. Which, hopefully, at this point, is the same thing. I want you to instruct your entire security team and the androids—especially the androids—to herd her toward Saint Thomas Kirche. She can grab Dylan if she wants; it’s time to wake him up. Alert Dr. Okafor as well. I will meet all of you at Saint Thomas Kirche. In the meantime, try not to fuck anything up in the next five minutes—actually, scratch that—I’ll take care of the situation here myself. I want you to head to Laughlin, ASAP. Take two of the androids with you and shut down SOP.”

“Sir, I’m certain I can find her if you give me some—”

“I doubt that, Mr. Kane,” Coglin blurted. “And anyhow, we need to deal with this situation on both ends. I need you in Laughlin. Now.”

“Yes, Reverend. One question: You noted authorizing force. Do I need to worry about accidental casualties?”

“No, consider this in line with—” Coglin’s throat constricted suddenly. A searing ache—the pain of which he had never before experienced—shot through the right side of his chest. After a minute or so, he caught his breath, cleared his throat, and continued as if it had never occurred. “Consider this in line with our exercise of eradicating slums south of the border. Do the needful. I don’t care about litigating anyone in SOP at this point. They did this to themselves. The time for restraint is long overdue. I’ve been far too cautious up until now. If someone dies . . . well, fuck ’em.”

Coglin clicked off his BUI and slumped back into his bed. He sighed—a wheeze came out instead—and allowed himself a ten-second respite. At last he rolled his aching body out of bed, and it cracked as if it were making popcorn.

Sindhu lay paralyzed upon on the hard elevator floor. Her gaze fixed outward on a pneumatic transport system twenty meters in front of her. In the five minutes she had lain there, she had designed the transport system in her head four different ways. She had even written some of the scheduling algorithms for it, using two different programming languages. The entire time, Grepman had sat next to her, occasionally reaching out to her shoulder, only to have his virtual hand pass through her.

“We just found some data on this nano-paralyzer, Sin. It sounds like you should start regaining some movement at about the ten-minute mark. And it’s already been seven minutes. So that’s good!” Sindhu’s arm twitched at this exciting news.

“I’m so sorry, Sin. There’s more good news, though. Simeon also found a way to obscure your location entirely. They can’t track you anymore. So, that’s good. He also shut down the elevators, and that’s the only way to get down here. Also, they’ve already started spreading to other parts of the facility, trying to anticipate your next move—they are guarding the exits, they think you’re trying to escape. So, in some ways, this wait is serendipitous!”