Reality 36

PRAISE FOR GUY HALEY

"Guy Haley is a force for good, a hidden gem of British SF."

  –
Paul Cornell

"Richards & Klein displays fascinating characters in a very believable future."

  – 5-time Hugo winner
Mike Resnick

"Haley's wit is both laugh-out-loud and sharp as a sword."

   –
John Whitbourn, author of BBC prize winning
A Dangerous Energy

GUY HALEY

Reality 36

Richards & Klein

Book I

For my mother, who encouraged me to write.

For my father, who always listened to my stories.

"All members of the Community of Equals are created free and equal in dignity and rights."

Extract from Article One of the 2114 Amendment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

"Every sentient being: naturally derived, artificially created, altered, upgraded or otherwise – who seeks to dwell within the borders of the European Union, whether in physical actuality or
within the confines of sovereign European Union designated virtual
spaces, agrees without reservation to abide by the laws of the European Union, to be held accountable for their actions as such accountability is defined by their status under the law, to serve the
interests of said state and its federal components… [and] to support
it wholeheartedly according to their obligations as detailed in Directive 44871/112-b: 'Responsibilities and Rights of European Union Member State Citizens.'"

Paragraph 8172, sub-section 47d 9 (abridged) of the 2078 European Parliamentary Directive regulating Synthetic, Simian, Cetacean, Trans- and Post-human entities

"Freedom is not a luxury to be conferred upon those possessed of sentience; it is a fundamental and inalienable right of the sentient."
 

Professor Zhang Qifang, speaking at the Napoli Science Symposium, "Morality in and toward Created Intelligences", Wednesday, January 18, 2113

PROLOGUE:

Richards

Richards' body was a sculpted titanium box 1.793 metres high, 2.47 metres wide and 1.323 metres deep – at these dimensions' extremes, for in form he was fluid and bulbous, as most such AI hardware was.

  This shell was hardened against physical and electromagnetic attack, armour beneath the gleaming surface a complicated laminate of rare metals, semifluid conductors and active metalloid buffers. Holes of differing diameters pierced the final layer – a jacket of cleverly stacked copper atoms – creating a broad-spectrum Faraday cage. The delicate electronic brain of the man, if you could call it a brain, or if you could call him a man, sat inside: a fourteen-tiered ziggurat of latticed graphene spun on microgravity looms, the electrons that carried the messages of Richards' mind going about the business of yesses, nos and multitudinous maybes of quantum computing upon it.

  Richards liked his base unit, old-fashioned as it was. Many other Class Five AIs preferred plus-C optical set-ups, but not Richards. He claimed, when asked, that this older configuration gave him time to think. All who knew him well knew the truth to be somewhat more sentimental.

  The base unit sat upon a pyramid at the exact centre of a vault of machine-woven metal, a ten-metre cube perfect to the millimetre. The base unit was static and had no motive parts, but the pedestal pyramid could move, and did, when occasion demanded, for it floated upon an enclosed bed of mercury, protecting Richards from external shock. Though the pedestal and base unit combined massed at little under a metric tonne, they were balanced so that were a human being to enter the vault, he would have been able to push it round without difficulty.

  Not that any human had ever been in the vault. The atmosphere was an unbreathable mix of noble gases, the temperature maintained at a precise -36 degrees Celsius, bathed by ultraviolet light sufficient to render the room biologically sterile.

  There were other, less subtle discouragements to physical interference with the base unit; at the eight corners of the vault stood eight sentry guns, also hardened against electromagnetic attack. They were possessed of eight simple near-I minds that understood one binary command and one command alone – kill/not-kill. They were set always to kill. Their quad mounted machine guns, loaded with armour-piercing rounds, were matched with a military-grade EMP projector and high-power xenon laser apiece.

  Beyond the Real, within the digital second world of the System Wide Grid, vast and ugly things with teeth of sharpest code circled Richards' nominal soul. These leviathans were murderously alert to intrusion through the base unit's data portal, a fat Gridpipe carried upon microwaves to a shaped hollow on the vault's wall. The sole means by which Richards conducted his business with the wider worlds, the Gridpipe was a drawbridge that could be slammed shut at a picosecond's notice. There were no other entrances to the vault, virtual or otherwise; it was hermetically sealed, its seamless exterior locked in foamcrete, altered steels and spun carbons.

  These precautions were not unusual. Where Richards' body differed from those of his fellow Class Fives was that its location was widely known: hard by a fortified buttress, below the offices of Richards & Klein, Inc, Security Consultants, on floor 981 of the Wellington Arcology in New London, one junction down the old M1 from Luton.

  As Richards said, it was foolish to have an office that nobody could find. Nonsense – naturally, as a free-roaming digital entity Richards could go anywhere there was hardware to pick up his commands – but it made people laugh at parties.

  Richards liked to make people laugh at parties.

  Richards' power supply sat beneath the vault. Running from a pearl string of high-density Helium3 fuel pellets, the fusion plant was as heavily protected, gifted with redundant systems and as divorced from the outside world as that which it fed, beaming energy in wirelessly direct through Richards' Gridpipe.

  As to the essence of the man, the being generated by this chilled machinery in its impregnable fort, he was more of a people person than his mortal shell suggested, and was elsewhere.

  He was at a concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

Chapter 1

The 36th Realm

Ulgan the merchant, sometime haulier of cargo, very occasional tour operator, sat counting his money. As is the way with most grasping men, and such Ulgan was, the enumeration of coin was his greatest pleasure. His business did not afford him the opportunity to do so as often as his wont, so he took advantage of the hottest time of day, when the sun burnt down through the dry air of the mountains, the time when he was least likely to be disturbed by those less avaricious than he. Under the meagre shade of a worn parasol, he lost himself in a happy world of greed for an hour or two, before time and trade called him back to the tedious affair of making more.

  He was therefore annoyed when a shadow took the glitter from the edges of his dirhams and his shekels and his dollars and his pfennigs and his other coins of a dozen lands. Ulgan liked to see them shine, and so was doubly vexed.

  "Good day to you, sir," said the caster of the shadow. His face was a solid block of black against the sky, the merchants' argot he employed accented in an unfamiliar manner. Ulgan squinted against the halo of sunlight around the stranger's head, and wished he would go away.

  He said as much, and roughly. "Go away."

  The stranger was undeterred. "I and my companion are seeking transportation across the Rift," he said pleasantly, which redoubled Ulgan's irritation. "I have it on good authority that you are the finest provider of flight services to the other side." Flamboyant gestures made a shadow puppet of him.

  The compliment did nothing to improve Ulgan's humour. He grunted back. "That's as may be." He dropped his gaze back to his money. "Flights are closed" – he waved his hand round – "is too hot, bird won't fly."

  "But sir!" said the stranger. He moved round the counting table to where the haulier could see him. "Today is a most marvellous day for flight. The air is clear and pure."

  "The air is too hot and too bright," grumbled Ulgan.

  "No, sir! You can see for miles! Surely any creature would be desirous of flight merely for the thrill of it!"