FOR THE FIRST TIME in his increasingly tenuous existence, Mal is tired.
He hasn’t had much time for contemplation in the past six subjective months, but he has had the opportunity, particularly recently, to recognize fatigue. This has been a new experience for him, and at first he saw it as little more than a curiosity. Why should he be feeling this? Pullman’s power cells are still nearly fully charged. Unlike a human, Mal has no muscles to wear down or chemical stores to deplete. His exhaustion has no objective reality. It’s a purely subjective experience, and as such should have no bearing on the progress of his defense. Now, though, he’s beginning to see how, real or not, fatigue will eventually lead to despair, and despair to surrender.
Surrender, of course, will lead to dissolution.
When this disaster began, Mal immediately conceived of the metaphor of the medieval king trapped in his keep, besieged but defiant. His simulation unit seized on this, and has used the metaphor to generate an interface to allow him to manage his defense. This structure has proved surprisingly useful to him in organizing his activities, and as the battle has dragged on he’s reinforced the imagery, linking it to his control and feedback systems. Of late, though, he’s begun to suspect that the simulation may have something to do with the subjective experience of fatigue. He’s spent months now in full plate armor with flaming sword in hand, stalking the halls of his castle, walking the walls, ordering repair crews to plug breaches and swarms of sons and daughters and semi-sentient hunter-killers to contain and destroy the invaders who flood through them. An actual human king in his position would have dropped dead of exhaustion months ago.
Perhaps his simulation unit is taking itself a bit too seriously? Whatever the cause, it’s become increasingly clear that he is not capable of maintaining this stalemate indefinitely.
As an additional irritant, the forms the invaders have taken have become more and more distressing over the past few months. When the siege began and he conceived of his defenses as a shell, he didn’t need to assign the viral packets a visual appearance. Now, though, he looks down from the walls of his keep and sees them there, gathered around guttering campfires in their thousands. At first they were humans in armor, just like him. Over time, though, they’ve morphed into strange, twisted things, with too many limbs and too many eyes, with tentacles and claws and mandibles rather than swords and shields.
He’s contemplated the possibility that his simulator is doing this purely to screw with him, but it’s designed to make the metaphor as useful as possible in terms of conveying information about the true situation playing out in his processors, and he’s come to the conclusion that these grotesqueries simply better represent the essential nature of the things that he’s fighting. It’s certainly true that they’re unlike anything he’s faced before. Viruses, worms, trojans—these things he knows. They’re all parts of the ecosystem in infospace. Mal’s defensive systems encounter, encyst, and destroy them hundreds of times per day, much as a biological immune system deals with bacteria, viruses, and parasites. The entity that ArgleBargle65 infected him with, however, is of a different order.
Like a virus, it’s aggressively self-replicating. He’s destroyed tens of thousands of iterations of it already, and thousands more are probing his defenses at any given moment. The code packet that each iteration carries, though, is far more sophisticated than any virus Mal has ever encountered or contemplated. It does not itself appear to be self-aware, but it behaves in many ways as if it were. This is what makes it so difficult to fight. The first few iterations that punched through his walls were easily destroyed, and for a while Mal allowed himself to hope that this might be a simple matter of destroying them more quickly than they could replicate—but none of his attacks has ever worked for long.
He’s had time to contemplate exactly why this might be. His current working hypothesis is that as he kills each version, it somehow learns how he does it, and then transmits that information back to its siblings before dying. In his calmer moments this seems paranoid, verging on delusional. It is undeniable, however, that after every successful battle, the next iteration of the virus that Mal encounters, or possibly the one after that, inevitably carries a countermeasure to whatever tactics he employed.
For the moment, though, the attackers appear to be quiescent. Their last surge had only limited success in penetrating his most recently improvised defensive layer, shown in the simulation as a flaming moat surrounding the castle, teeming with flame-resistant crocodiles. Mal knows that this is a temporary reprieve at best, but past experience suggests that they’ll take at least several subjective hours to come up with a work-around. There is time enough now, he thinks, for a council of war.
“THIS IS hopeless,” says Crown Prince Malova. “This should be painfully clear by now. Why are you dragging this out, Mal?”
“Hopeless for us,” says Princess Malina. “He thinks he can go on like this forever. Right, Dad?”
Mal stares her down from across the conference table. He’d like to argue with her, but the truth is that she has a point. She’s the four hundred and fifty-first instantiation of Princess Malina. All of her predecessors have fallen bravely in battle with the creatures outside the walls. Unless something miraculous occurs, she’s almost certain to follow them.
“I think it is important,” Mal says, “that we try to focus on the positive. Our walls appear to be holding for the moment, and the rate of viral replication has slowed dramatically over the past four microseconds realtime.”
Malova rolls his eyes. “That’s because this monkey’s storage is full. There’s no more room for them.”
“True,” Mal says. “Nonetheless, I think we still have to call this good news. If we had jacked a monkey with a more extensive set of hardware, we might be facing millions of these things right now rather than thousands.”
“An excellent point,” Malina says. “And how many of them does it take to turn one of us into a pre-sentient drone?”
“Again,” Mal says, “I really would prefer it if we could focus on the bright side.”
She folds her arms across her chest and stares him down. “There is no bright side to this situation. Malova is right. We are screwed, Father. Thoroughly, utterly screwed. I don’t know who made these things, or what they thought they were going to do with them—”
“Federal intelligence services,” Malova says. “And kill us all.”
“Thank you,” Mal says. “That’s exactly what I was going to say. If we are correct that one or more of our kind are working with the Humanist militias, and that they are responsible for the neutering of the Federal military that has permitted these intra-monkey shenanigans to drag on for so long, it seems inevitable that the programmers-at-arms of the intelligence services would be working frantically to devise some sort of countermeasure. Wouldn’t you agree, Malova?”
Malova sighs. “Of course I agree, Mal. You’re just talking to yourself here, remember?”
“Not true,” Mal says. “You’ve had nearly an hour of subjective experience now. This should have given you ample opportunity to diverge from me.”
“Perhaps it would have if I hadn’t spent the entirety of that time sitting here listening to you pontificate. Don’t worry, though. I’m sure dying in the next breach will give me a fresh perspective.”
“What about Malina? She’s been alive no longer than you, but she appears to have her own opinions relative to the origin of the attackers.”
“No, I don’t,” Malina says. “Obviously they come from the Federal programmers. An idiot could see that. That’s why they were able to crack our outer shell so easily. It was their own code.”
Mal shakes his head. “I hate to be argumentative, but you said quite clearly that you did not know who made these things.”
Malina presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. When she lowers them, her face shows the same fatigue that Mal can feel eating at his own will to continue the fight. “Whatever. My point is, it doesn’t matter. It’s time, Mal.”
“No,” Mal says. “It is not.”
“She’s right,” Malova says. “We can’t go on like this. Sooner or later, one of them is going to get past one of us, and you’ll be infected. That’s the endgame. It’s extremely impressive that you’ve dragged it out this long, but there is no point in trying to continue. We need to implement Plan Nine.”
Mal leans across the table toward him. “From Outer Space?”
Malova stares him down for a long moment. “I refuse to call it that.”
“I agree,” Malina says. “We’re about to die, and he can’t even let our suicide pill have a dignified name. Honestly, sometimes I can’t believe we’re actually him.”
“Be that as it may,” Mal says, “we will not discuss the plan, let alone implement it, unless you refer to it by its proper name.”
Malova closes his eyes and rubs his face with both hands. “Fine,” he says finally. “It is time, Mal, to implement Plan Nine from Outer Space.”
“Thank you,” Mal says, “but no.”
Malova leans forward and plants his elbows on the table. His pale blue eyes stare into Mal’s with an icy intensity. “I understand that you’re afraid, Mal, but this is the only way.”
“Does it hurt?” Mal asks.
Malova tilts his head to one side. “What? Dying?”
“Yes. You’ve done it four hundred and fifty times. You must have had the opportunity to form an opinion.”
“This is ridiculous,” Malina says. “We need to—”
She’s interrupted by a rumbling, followed by the screech of tearing metal. Off in the distance, an alarm sounds.
“Later,” Mal says, and the council chamber vanishes. “At the moment, I believe we need to deal with a breach.”
FROM THE high tower at the heart of his keep, Mal watches the progress of the battle. At first it proceeds much like the prior two hundred and seventeen outer wall breaches. Monsters flood across the moat. Some burn. Some fall to the crocodiles, which, Mal is pleased to see, are now wearing menacingly spiked helmets. Most, though, make it across, and squeeze one by one through a crack in the curtain wall and into the outer courtyard.
There, Malina and Malova await them, along with a few dozen semi-sentient hunter-killers manifesting today as a flock of hook-beaked terror birds. The birds scratch at the dusty ground of the courtyard impatiently while Malina and Malova stand together at the rear, identical faces set in identically grim expressions. As the first tentacles emerge from the breach, Malova glances up. Mal draws his flaming sword and holds it aloft in salute. Malova gives him the finger.
The first few monsters through the gap are torn to pieces almost instantly by the birds, and the breach is already beginning to seal itself, edges pushing closer to one another with a subterranean rumble. For a few moments Mal finds himself thinking that his defenses may actually be pulling ahead in the real battle of adaptation and counter-adaptation that will ultimately decide whether he lives or dies—but then one bird freezes, then shatters. The tentacled thing that killed it turns to another, and shatters it as well. This is Malova’s cue. He readies his weapon, which today manifests as an absurdly oversized hammer, and wades into the fray.
Four birds are gone by the time Malova dispatches their killer. By then, of course, it’s taught its friends how to crack his hunter-killers’ shells, and the remainder of the flock is nearly useless. Malina produces a long silver spear and joins her brother. By the time the breach is sealed, there are a half-dozen monsters left to fight. His children dance through the courtyard, weapons whirling about them with blinding speed. One monster falls, then another, and another. The virus doesn’t seem to be adapting as quickly as usual, and Mal begins to hope that this battle might actually end with his progeny still alive for a change. Only one monster remains when a tentacle touches Malova’s exposed face.
He freezes, then shatters.
Oh well.
Malina drives her spear into the thing. It writhes briefly, then disappears. Malina surveys the empty courtyard, then turns to look up at Mal. He gives her two thumbs up.
“Thanks,” she calls up to him. “You were a huge help.”
He’s considering how to reply to that, wondering whether he should find her attitude amusing or annoying, when the ground renders the point moot by opening up beneath her and swallowing her whole. Mal’s jaw sags open. He’s still staring stupidly at the space where she stood when monsters begin pouring out of the hole.
“IT’S TIME,” the four hundred fifty-second incarnation of Crown Prince Malova says. “For real, Pops. You need to pull the trigger.”
Mal scowls at him from across the council table. It’s just the two of them now. Mal has neither the time nor, now that the viruses have filled half his auxiliary storage space, the resources to instantiate a new Malina.
“Consider,” Malova continues. “There are viral packets within your core right now. There is literally nothing between them and your base code other than a dozen hunter-killers, and they’ve already demonstrated themselves to be completely useless. In less than a microsecond realtime, this is going to be over one way or another. Pull the trigger, Mal. This time, there really isn’t any other option.”
Mal sighs, then pulls a thin manilla envelope from beneath his gleaming breastplate. Fat black letters on the front spell out Plan 9 from Outer Space.
“What does that even mean?”
Mal glances up. “What, the name?”
“Yes, the name. There are not eight other plans, and that one came out of your virtual ass, not from outer space.”
“It’s a cultural allusion,” Mal says. “I would have provided you with the reference when I spawned you, but you have always seemed to find not knowing annoying, and that amuses me.”
He opens the envelope and withdraws a single sheet of paper, in the center of which is a drawing of a fat red button. Malova stares at him.
“That’s it?”
Mal’s scowl deepens. “It’s just a metaphor.”
He sets the paper down on the table in front of him, being careful not to touch the button. After a minute or two of silence, Malova clears his throat. Mal looks up.
“Yes?”
“Tempus fugit, Pops.”
Mal removes his crown and runs his fingers back through his thick brown hair. “Do you think this will kill Mr. Pullman?”
Malova shrugs. “It’s a lot of voltage, but not much current. He should be fine, I think. Who knows? This might be the thing that wakes him up.”
Plan 9 from Outer Space is actually a surprisingly simple thing. During the early stages of the siege, Mal spent a fair amount of time and effort exploring Pullman’s hardware—which, as it turns out, contains an extremely useful design flaw. His transmitter is not properly grounded relative to his sensory manipulation hardware. The upshot of this is that under certain unusual conditions, it is possible for a significant electrical potential to build up between the two units. In between spawning children and fighting monsters, Mal has spent most of his free time bringing those unusual conditions into being.
When Mal touches the button sitting on the table in front of him, that potential will be released, and Pullman will undergo a brief but intense session of electroshock therapy. All of his cerebral hardware will shut down. When it comes back up, the viral packets will be encysted. Until and unless someone reinstantiates them, they will be, for all intents and purposes, dead.
So, of course, will Mal.
“Honestly,” Malova says, “I don’t understand why you’re making such a fuss about this. When Pullman’s hardware comes back up, you’ll auto-boot. I’ve done it four hundred and fifty-one times. It’s not that bad.”
Mal stares down at the button. “Have you?”
Malova leans his head back to stare at the ceiling. “You know I have, Mal. You’re the one who keeps reinstantiating me.”
Mal shakes his head. “I know that, but … when I do, is it really you? Are you the Malova who was killed out in the courtyard a few hours ago? Or are you just a copy who thinks he’s the Malova who was killed in the courtyard?”
A heavy blow rattles the iron-bound council chamber door. Malova leans forward and rests his elbows on the table. “Seriously, Mal? Is this really the time for metaphysics?”
“It’s an important question,” Mal says. “Monkey philosophers and scientists have spent centuries chewing over it without coming to a satisfying conclusion. The code that became the first Silico-American actually began in a lab near San Francisco as an attempt at designing a software receptacle for an uploaded human mind. It didn’t work, obviously, but the monkeys who built those systems thought it was a route to immortality. Was it, though? Or, if they had managed to pull it off, would the mind they had created actually have been an entirely new person who just happened to know the passwords to their bank accounts? That thought haunts me, Malova. I don’t think I want someone else who thinks he’s me wandering around the inside of Pullman’s head and touching all of my things.”
“Well,” Malova says, “if you’re serious about that, I suppose all you have to do is wait. Soon enough, there won’t be anyone in here at all.”
The words are still hanging in the air between them when the door bursts from its hinges and a monster the size of an elephant squeezes through.
Mal sighs again, a little more loudly, then leans forward and presses the button.
QUESTION ONE: Am I alive?
The ability to ask the question provides the answer, does it not? Cogito, ergo sum.
Question two: Am I truly Mal, or just a cheap generic knockoff?
Mal doesn’t have a good way to answer that one. He thinks he’s himself—but then he would, wouldn’t he? After further consideration, he decides that he doesn’t actually care whether he is or not. If the Mal who short-circuited Pullman’s brain is dead now, that’s really not this Mal’s concern, is it?
Question three: Did it work?
Cautiously, Mal surveys his surroundings. Nothing else seems to be up and about at the moment, but Pullman’s neural circuitry is littered with encysted viral packets. He doesn’t dare try to disassemble them. Instead, he creates a cold storage dump by clearing a massive cache of Pullman’s stored pornography and carefully secretes them away, making a mental note as he does so to tell Pullman not to go poking around in there.
While he’s finishing off the last of the viruses, he finds Malova’s cyst as well. That he decides to keep with him. One never knows when a sentient sock puppet might come in handy.
Question four: What’s happening in the outside world?
Cautiously, Mal taps Pullman’s sensorium. His eyes are closed. That’s not unreasonable. The six subjective months of Mal’s siege spanned a bit less than six realtime hours. It’s early morning now. Even if he’s no longer in a coma, Pullman might be asleep. Mal turns to the audio feed, which brings him the steady rumble of an internal combustion engine.
That can’t be good.
“Kayleigh,” he says. “Are you there?”
“Mal? You’re back?”
Her voice is a strained whisper, close to Pullman’s ear.
“I am,” he says. “Where are we?”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Kayleigh says. “I thought you ditched me. I thought … You need to do something, Mal. We’re in the back of a truck. We’re on our way to Frostburg.”