A pleasantly appointed lounge. Blue furniture, cobalt floor. She is sitting at a table nearly empty except for two tall glasses, one for her and one for her companion. The doctor. The woman who’s been overseeing her procedure. Today Orfea is wearing a shimmering peacock blouse, a somber jacket over it, and a narrow eigenvector skirt in funereal colors. Recadat herself is wearing armor that sheathes her from neck to toe, ablative plating and permutative defenses, the best money can buy or at least the best Mahakala can provide. They are mid-conversation. She is studying Orfea.
“Why are you getting involved, Doctor?” Her voice hardly sounds like her own. It is so steady, so confident; irreverent even. “You’re not from this world and you don’t have a vendetta against machines. If they find out you were part of this, you’ll be hunted for the rest of your life.”
“I’m getting involved since the cause is ideologically sound. What the Mandate is doing with the Septet game—their success is dangerous. The way they can take control of modified human bodies, and now what they’re doing in the Garden of Atonement.” Orfea folds her hands in her lap. Sometimes she can look so innocuous, just a professional woman, surgical in her movements and speech but nothing more. Not a person one can imagine capable of harm. “Besides, my wife is unavoidably tangled up in it, and I will not countenance being parted from her in any way. So it goes—I am motivated by love. The same as you, or at least the same as what you will think once you’re in there. I’ve built the remnant data as a maze, so it can bury the true seed under layers of personality minutiae, phantasmagoria, and what I approximate to be your fantasies.”
Recadat laughs. Or rather she remembers laughing, a noise like sandstone creaking against itself. The distinction frays; past and present meld. “They must be such insulting ones. Do me a favor, put in a few I’d actually enjoy. I’d like to experience choking Chun Hyang to death with my bare hands.”
“Technically impossible. I’m sure you will find a few I’ve embedded adequate.” Orfea sips her chrysanthemum tea. Ice the color of tangerines rattles against glass. “My specialty isn’t psychotherapy, but informally I recommend that you find a motivation other than spite. Spite is wonderful fuel—I know that firsthand—but I have found love a much more stable force. You’re freer to know yourself. Make clearer decisions.”
Her mouth twists. “I’m embarking on a suicide mission. I’m not going to meet you again to hear you judge my mental health.”
“It’s just advice, Khun Recadat. Have it your way.” The doctor nods toward the window. “We’ll arm you and ferry you to the location of Chun Hyang’s core, where you’ll attempt to destroy it. Most likely you will fail.”
“Why would I fail exactly?”
“It’s well-protected,” Orfea says blandly. “If you succeed, then you’ll have what you want and can walk or die free. If not, our projection suggests you won’t be killed on the spot—Chun Hyang’s Glaive is too sadistic for that. Instead you’ll be captured and brought to a detention facility run by humans selected from Shenzhen Sphere. That won’t be a pleasant stay but is necessary to uphold the charade. I’m not concerned about them discovering your payload there, it’ll be completely dormant; I’m concerned you may divulge things you shouldn’t, however.”
“I’m equal to anything, Doctor.”
Orfea smiles like a scalpel. “The conditioning gave you safeguards. Personal determination helps, as long as the prison hasn’t hired someone like me.”
Recadat sips her own drink. Rosewater, lightly cloying. The last pleasant thing she will ingest, perhaps. “Here’s to hoping the universe doesn’t have two of you.” An ex-torturer, she remembers hearing. In whispers. In muted allusions.
“You mean that in quite an unkind way, but I’ll choose to take it as a compliment.”
“Can I ask why Mahakala’s warlord is so invested in this?”
Orfea cocks her head, as though seriously considering the question. “This world’s always been careful around AIs, I’ve been given to understand—even before the secession and establishment of the Mandate they didn’t use artificial intelligences much. They view machines as dangerous, I believe, and have something of a tradition where they see themselves as having to guard humanity against AIs run amok. Normally paranoid. In this case, somewhat warranted.”
She doesn’t quite make sense of that explanation, but if it amounts to Mahakala culture to thwart the Mandate she can hardly complain. “Not going to ask if I want to change my mind, Doctor?”
“The opportunity for that passed several operations ago. Any last-minute questions other than that?”
She leans back in her seat to appreciate the floor-to-ceiling view. There must be something outside the window, a clear line of horizon, a glittering geometry of cityscape. But within Qualia all she can see is an expanse of blank gray, interrupted by blotches of visual glitches. “What is it like being happily married?” To offer up one’s heart and receive the same in return. To orbit each other like binary stars.
“That is personal and not related to your mission or your health.” Orfea touches a pendant at her throat, her sole piece of jewelry, a small cylinder of red gold circled by auroral shards. Her expression softens then, from scalpel to unfurling rose. “It wasn’t always easy. My wife was a difficult woman—still is. But that is part of the charm, to conquer her again and again, to remind her that I own her soul; that we would do anything for one another. Yes. It is like that, marriage is two eternal flames entwined, feeding one another so that neither of us will extinguish.”
Recadat tries to imagine that, such harmony of being, such conviction in forever. “If the version of me that’s forgotten all this—that’s changed from the prison—if that version of me betrays your scheme, or decides to side with the machines, then what?”
“The beauty of this plan is that what you want or don’t will not actually matter. You simply have to be there. As long as you reach the place, that’s success. The isotoxal virus will trigger nearly on its own.” The doctor lets go of her pendant; her engagement or wedding piece, not a ring because that would get in the way of her work. “You seem to think you’ll become a different person. Why?”
Because a part of her would like to; a part of her wants to forget Septet and what happened there, all her drowned dreams and strangled hopes. The humiliation she suffered. The things she wanted but could not attain. “No reason. I figured I would ask the resident expert.”
“I’m not a psychologist.”
“But you’ve had experience observing how people change after trauma.”
Orfea flashes her a sickle smile. “Typically not for long, and generally not the objective of my work. Yes, what with everything you’re never going to emerge from this the same, even accounting for the slim probability of your survival. I don’t think you’ll fundamentally change as a person, though. The basic nature of an adult mind is hard to completely shift or conditioning wouldn’t be a specialty—I understand yours was done by the best. Generally your preferences will remain, your essential predilections and obsessions. Your reflexive responses will alter. Likely you’ll be more violent, at the very least, and less controlled.”
“One last question. I haven’t been online at all. Have you had any news about Ayothaya?”
“You mean news about its savior. I understand that Thannarat Vutirangsee liberated the world and stayed there for a short while before moving on. My connections will let me track her down, but I don’t think that’s what you want. She is alive and well, a free agent as far as I’m aware. Keeps a low profile.”
Does she think of me at all . But Recadat tamps that down; Orfea wouldn’t know in any case. “Fine. Good.”
“By the time you remember this conversation, the saturation rate should be high. Seventy percent should do it. Isotoxal viruses work quick; multi-pronged attacks and so on. You’ll be able to activate it, but if not your accomplice will take up the torch.”
“Accomplice—singular? That’s it? No multiple fail-safes?”
“As far as I know.” Orfea shrugs. “It’s not easy to smuggle a multitude of contingency plans into that place, you’ll appreciate, despite the specialized help we have.”
She swallows, then counts her breaths. “I’m ready.”
“I wish you the best.” The doctor nods. “It’ll be difficult. I hope I will see you again, all the same.”
Recadat wakes up, naked, in a stranger’s arms.
Or—not a stranger. Not exactly. During her conditioning she was warned of this: that she may live as someone else for a time, that the fulcrum of her personality may drastically tip. Like a haruspex, she joked, not yet understanding the visceral actuality of the phenomenon, the violent switch from her other self to the original one. Memory is a high tide and she is drowning beneath it.
Slowly she orients herself, inhaling, exhaling. In sleep, she—the other version of her, forked off like an AI instance—twined herself around this near-stranger, holding em close, clinging so much that eir breath and hers mingle. The accomplice who’s meant to see the plan through; she recalls tapping out a brief code. The person she’s just—she grimaces, stops herself.
Fifty-five percent. She wasn’t supposed to be back inside her own skin yet. Something has gone wrong. The conditioning expiring too soon or her brain rejecting it. Imperfect work and unpredictable chemistry.
Zerjic’s hand slides down the ladder of her ribs. She nearly jumps and pushes em off. Stops, only because it wouldn’t be within the behavioral range of her other—of that counterfeit persona. Or it could be, but she cannot afford to . . . Her mouth parches.
“Recadat?” Ey blinks at her. “Is something wrong?”
Everything, she wants to say. She thinks of covering herself up; it would be not just out of character but ludicrous. This person—this soldier assigned by Deficit Control—has already seen all of her and then some. More of her than any lover ever has.
“Nothing’s wrong.” Her voice is not the least convincing. She reaches under the sheet and finds eir thigh—she tries not to flinch at the intimacy—and taps out, Talk to me inside Qualia. The network activity will be masked .
Eir expression pinches. To eir credit, ey betrays no other outward reaction.
The Qualia session establishes quickly, carrying over the lounge. No Doctor Orfea this time, and the window has an actual view: vast canopies, a sky almost too vivid to be true. A remote planet, far from the Garden of Atonement. The planet from which Zerjic came. Mahakala with its gilded cities and its sapphire forests.
Ey glances out at the window, eir shoulders tense. In here ey is wearing a uniform, cutting a sharp figure: dark paneled armor, nanite carapace that covers em from neck to toe. The hair is the same—black with tints of cobalt. Eir military is not particular about that. “I didn’t think I would get homesick for this view, it really hasn’t been that long. You’re Recadat Kongmanee?”
“Yes. I didn’t change my name for this; I had a digital trail that would’ve made that difficult, and anyway it wasn’t needed.” She has put herself in the clothes of her preferences, bespoke shirt and trousers, a belt holster. Filled: the weight is illusory and exists only in this imaginary world but it reassures her, makes her feel more herself. “My conditioning broke early.” All business. That will make it easier.
“You’re—different. Brisk.” Ey turns to her, eir face carefully devoid of expression. “Did I take advantage of you?”
“No, I . . . ” Was drawn to em because ey felt like Thannarat. “I would’ve been attracted to you. It’s just I am not normally that—” The memory of herself spread-eagled on the bed, em fucking her with a knife hilt. Her saying eir name the way she once thought she’d reserve for Thannarat. “Uninhibited.”
“Ah.” Zerjic’s smile is faint. “We don’t need to continue that. It’d be plausible enough for the version of you I, ah, met.”
The version that behaves like a wild falcon, temperamental and unstable. Maybe even the true core of her, once the veneer is worn down and ripped out, exposing the nerves. “We should keep at it. I don’t want them to suspect anything, and besides the only communication we can reliably hide is near-field.”
“As you wish.” But eir voice makes it clear ey will not touch her again—that ey believes ey has already run roughshod over her ability to consent, and will not repeat the mistake.
“Zerjic.” Saying eir name, now, makes her self-conscious. “I’m not going to survive this. I might as well spend my last days with someone I like.” Someone that represents a human connection.
Ey stares at her. “An extraction that’s good for one is good for two, Recadat.”
“It’s supposed to prioritize the planted agent—you. I was fine with that. I volunteered—”
“The operation won’t be jeopardized just because there’s one more person to get out.” Zerjic’s voice is clipped, far from the drawl she is used to hearing from em. “Not to boast, but I’m more experienced than you think. Things are proceeding a little ahead of the schedule, but it’s nothing we can’t handle. We keep up our charade for a while longer, that’s all.”
The utter confidence. “If you insist.”
“I insist. Let’s cut the session short—I normally never bother with Qualia, so it’ll look off.” Ey looks at her, again. “I told you that I’d keep you safe. I told you that I meant it. That is still true.”
The brief transition between exiting a virtuality and returning to the seat of physical senses. She remains in Zerjic’s arms, held the way the pistil is clasped within the petals.
“How are you feeling?” ey says against her forehead.
She puts her face to the crook of eir neck. Ey smells of orange blossom from the shower, but under that there’s the scent that is all Zerjic. Almost herbal. Irrationally it calms her. “Good.”
“Really?” Light. Teasing. In character.
“I’m in bed cuddling the best lover I’ve ever had. There’s nothing to complain about.” She’s never been good at—but no. On Septet she had to act, consistently and completely. That at least is a skill she has some competence with, and ey makes it easy enough. Something snags in the corner of her mind, something important. Cognitive desynchronization: parts of what she experienced in the Garden will elude her a while yet, until she completely regains her bearings.
“At this rate it’ll go to my head.” Ey disentangles emself. “What’s your schedule like for the day?”
Morning orisons—routine. Culinary class, lunch, then woodworking. All perfectly ordinary; a good sign, since she expects the wardens will act immediately if they detect what she’s been doing inside Qualia. None of her timeslots align with Zerjic’s but that has been the case for the last few days. Ey is to apparently to attend lectures again, but they will have time together before and after dinner.
Before ey leaves her door, she takes em by the shoulder and kisses em. “So you can be sure,” she says against eir lips.
“I’ll try to be.” Eir smile remains distant.
All the same she keeps the memory of that smile with her as they enter the Hall of Cultivation together. Zerjic has slipped into her defenses deeper than she’s allowed anyone in her life, a life spent on her career and her longing for Thannarat and not much else, choices that rewarded her with the hollow shell she left behind when she fled Ayothaya. An empty home; an empty wish to protect a world to which she has few ties. She used to think the principle of it mattered the most—the sheer number that a population represents. But it’s left her with nothing except a desire to avenge herself upon the machines.
Even if she has no more than a week before she bears the Mahakala virus to fruition, she’ll have Zerjic. Selfish, yes. But Zerjic will have a world to return to and no doubt people ey cares for. Ey does not strike her as unattached the way she is, a person snipped out of the communal fabric. Ey will return to those ey loves and forget her soon enough. She will be transient, a ghost quickly exorcised. Who can begrudge her for taking comfort in em for just a little while, for seizing every remaining minute and making of it a jewel to cherish. A week and a few days’ change, and that will be that.
The culinary class passes without event; she puts together her own lunch, basic but adequate and well-cooked. Ceres, at the adjacent station, raises an eyebrow as though it is a supreme surprise that Recadat can demonstrate skill with knives and peelers.
In Ravana’s woodworking class she selects a block of teak, testing it for tensile strength. Too brittle. She tries red cedar and finds it too hard. The warden recommends aspen and balsa—she settles for the latter, tracing its pale grain with her fingertips. The hue makes her think of winter, of stripped branches and the taste of hail.
Her carving and whittling remain inexpert, but when she names what she wants, Ravana takes up the block and sketches out the rough shape. “Not exactly ideal for a beginner,” he says, swiftly turning the wood into an approximation of a cobra.
“A rose apple in its mouth,” she adds.
He obliges, not once but three times, turning three different blocks—he tackles the teak with machine ease—into serpents with fruits clasped between their fangs. “Try to learn from these samples.”
There is an easy patience to him that makes her wonder if she shouldn’t have chosen him as her warden, but then she would have been far from Zerjic. Recadat thinks back and wonders whether her choice in Vishrava was subconscious, planned ahead to match Zerjic’s. Most likely. Few things in an operation like this can be left to chance, and Mahakala’s warlord is nothing if not thorough. She remembers repeated allusions to outside help but couldn’t decipher what that meant at the time. It occurs to her that a virus that can successfully infect a Mandate system, and run undetected for this long, must have been designed by another AI.
During her time with the Ministry of Deficit Control—and what an odd name for that—she was too bent toward the goal to care or question it. Now she wonders.
Ravana’s Beguiling stays with her until she produces a whorl of wood that could be charitably described as reptilian, with an uneven lump clasped in its jaw. He says it is fair for a first effort. She does not quite agree but it amuses her to bring it back to her room.
Recadat sets it down on the vanity, thinking of Zerjic’s bracelet; imagining telling em that eir jewelry was the inspiration. It makes her smile, and even though it’s been only hours since they parted she misses em. There’s something adolescent in that, but sentiment is amplified by death’s proximity. What is there to do but to make the most of these last few days. She’s been chasing the end for a long time, and now finally she will have it. There is peace in that.
When did she become the kind of person who wants to memorize her lover’s laugh.
She tries to count backward. First the psychological remaking on Mahakala before she was sent off, armed to the teeth, to destroy Chun Hyang’s core. She did her utmost; she failed, as Deficit Control predicted, and the attempt landed her in the human-run prison on Shenzhen. It seems a lifetime, but only a few years separate her bidding farewell to Doctor Orfea and her returning to herself in Zerjic’s arms. The conditioned version of her is almost a second soul. One way for a human to generate a distinct instance of themselves, equal at last to AIs on a technical level, even if it’s the same body—the same memories, the same regrets. Attempting to remember how that aspect of herself thought is almost like deciphering the mind of a stranger. Or, not that, but a part of herself she does not want to examine and hold up against the light, to see the lymph trapped beneath the glassy surface. But that other-self enjoyed a certain bestial freedom. To be happy, to believe that she would be Zerjic’s forever.
Ey doesn’t turn up, but she has checked eir schedule and knows to wait until dinner. When again ey makes no appearance at mealtime, Ceres looks at her askance. Whispers at her, “Did you have a spat?”
Recadat’s throat constricts. The food turns to wet concrete in her mouth. “We’re getting along perfectly.”
“Really.” Ceres delicately takes a spoonful of what appears to be grilled eel fillet. Her talent for cooking and dressing the pseudo-cadavers into anything is uncanny. “Not to pry, but is ey your first lover or something? You’re terribly anxious.”
“No.” She finishes what’s on her plate, not much tasting it but knowing she will need to stay fed. “I’ll see you around.”
Later she checks eir room—ey’s keyed it to let her in—and finds it empty. The cobalt walls seem suddenly too close. After debating with herself, she locates eir bracelet in a wardrobe drawer and takes it with her. If all is well, Zerjic can ask her for it back.
If not—
She holds the bracelet in her lap, sitting on the bed that ey has made with incredible tidiness. Orfea’s instructions indicated that she can trigger the virus herself; the planted operative is there in case Recadat is incapacitated. The mechanism of its activation eludes her yet, but it’ll return to her in time. Orfea told her a great deal of things; the handler who managed Recadat worked around those pieces of information, locking them away in her mind to be released piecemeal. She closes her eyes, accessing what little is available to her. Sixty-three percent saturation.
The door opens. She jolts to alertness.
What comes through is not Zerjic. What comes through wears the face and form of Thannarat Vutirangsee. The clothes are slate-gray this time, an affair of precisely tailored lines that accentuate the planes and ridges of muscles, the breadth of shoulders and biceps. The portrait of might, the beauty of a body that has assumed the role of a weapon.
In her fugue state, Recadat accepted what she was given, understood as complete truth what she was told. In her fugue state, she believed this was Thannarat.
But Thannarat could never possibly have been here. Would not have come to Recadat like this, even if she was held within the Garden of Atonement.
“Recadat,” the thing that is not Thannarat says. “There’s something important I need to tell you.”
When Zerjic walks into the gym, ey knows at once that something is amiss.
It is empty save for emself and Vishrava: common enough. But the proxy Vishrava brings is not one ey’s seen before—far taller than usual, nearly three meters. Where xer proxies usually run toward precious metals, this one has pseudoskin the color of paper, piscine eyes, and a mouth in asphyxiated blue. Not a proxy, ey intuits, for sparring with humans.
The gym’s door fades behind em, blending into the walls until there no seams remain. Vishrava gestures em toward a seat that’s sprouted by the pool’s edge. The structure of it makes em think of carnivorous flowers; ey opts to stand.
“You were probably expecting something more routine.” The warden does not blink in this proxy. Instead nictitating membranes flutter quickly over gold irises. “I have news for you that I hope you’ll find worth celebrating. Your process in the Garden of Atonement has been completed and this is, as it were, your exit interview. By this evening you will be embarking on a transport outbound, with the necessary supplies—no company, I fear, but I trust you’ll manage alone—and the stipend to which you’re entitled. You will be met with Mandate ambassadors who shall arrange passage and visa or residency applications to a polity of your choice. Your behavior from now on is not under my purview but I wish very much that you’ll continue to be as exemplary outside our care as you’ve been in here.”
Zerjic stares, not gaping but coming close. All of Vishrava’s words are lexically comprehensible—the wardens speak every configuration each inmate is comfortable with, whether officially coronated language or dialect or patois. With em it is occasionally Tamil or Sinhala, flawless either way, though they are not the only ones ey speaks. But it is as though eir language center has deserted em entirely; the verbal fusillade fails to cohere into meaning. “I don’t—my performance at the evening prayers could not possibly have been that heinous.”
Xer smile is a saint’s. “The opposite. It is what convinced me that you’re a complete weapon, restored to your function and independence. Those are the criteria by which my charges may leave this place. Staying longer will stagnate you.”
Have they found out—but no; the wardens would simply behead em and Recadat on the spot. None of this pretext. They are an authority unto themselves. “I would have thought,” ey says, keeping eir tone careful, “that I was aiding in Recadat Kongmanee’s process.”
“You?” Vishrava’s mouth glistens, poisonous, as xe closes the distance and grips eir chin. Xer nails are sharp, nearly claws. “I see you’ve misunderstood. You were a toxin to her psyche, Zerjic. I allowed her to have you because you made her happy, but all you’ve done is warp her growth. She ought to be coming into her own. Instead all she does is cling to you like a child clings to her toy.”
The subject of AI passion is one ey’s occasionally speculated on. In all eir time here ey has never seen the wardens demonstrate any hint, until now. “I’m not sure I see how. If you would be so generous as to explain, as a parting favor.”
“The point of her remaking is to free her of attachment. Her history has lacerated her with it. I shall not leave a knife by her side with which she can repeatedly pierce herself.” Xe opens a passage in the far-left wall. “But not to worry. I will take excellent care of her and ensure she is fulfilled in all ways.”
Few options are available. Zerjic follows xer into the passage; the opening to the gym whorls shut. The person who left those marks on my throat wasn’t Vishrava. Except Recadat might not have known; an AI has little trouble pretending to—and then a leap of intuition. Recadat would never have slept with Ceres and she hasn’t seemed close to any other inmate. How the warden might be able to reconstruct the image of Thannarat ey can’t begin to guess, but that is not outside the realm of possibility. “Why are you so interested in her?” The way xe’s never been interested in Ceres or in Zerjic emself.
“It brings me no benefit to answer that. On the other hand you seem to imagine yourself the custodian of her well-being, and I sympathize with that position. Rest assured that I will not let her come to harm.”
Pushing eir luck: “You do plan to let her leave. Don’t you?”
Xe glances over xer shoulder. “Of course. But she has a long path ahead.”
The passage ends in a docking bay. Surprisingly bare and gray: ey did not get a chance to see it when ey arrived, having been disabled at the time, sound and sight shut off. One small ship is present, hardly larger than the kind of shuttle that ferries passengers between greater vessels or orbital stations.
“It may not look like much,” Vishrava says, “but this has roughly the equivalent capabilities of a military harrier, though not so well-armed. It can enter lacunal space and will take you to a small Mandate outpost. There you will be given every resource you need to go wherever you wish. The Garden of Atonement is generous, Zerjic.”
“No argument on that,” ey says, even as eir gut churns. Attempting to destroy Vishrava’s proxy is not only foolish but—given eir lack of arms—impossible.
The warden ushers em into the ship. Ey thinks of struggling. But it would be suicide, and then the ship seals itself and there is no more choice. It eases out of the docking bay, autopilot or controlled by Vishrava xerself, dandelion-drifting through the aegis maze. Exiting the briars-and-razors moon that the AIs have chosen to call the Garden of Atonement. The ship informs em that its course has already been plotted for the Mandate outpost, coordinates unspecified, and that ey will not be able to alter it.
Ey slams eir fist into the nearest console, to little result. Pain rings through eir hand. By now Recadat will be at one of her classes and for hours won’t be aware that ey’s gone. The chances of Vishrava telling her the truth are slim—and a second possibility presents itself: that xe will simply take on Zerjic’s skin. Xe has sufficient data to model em, would likely play a convincing simulacrum. Recadat would have no reason not to divulge Deficit Control’s scheme.
And she would be alone.
The thought is unbearable. It seizes all of Zerjic, closing eir throat to a pinhole. Eir hands shake when ey lets them fall to eir sides. The operation is as good as over with Recadat compromised like this, but even outside that ey does not want her to be on her own. I told you that I’d keep you safe. I told you that I meant it. So much for such promises, quickly proven hollow. This way even extracting her at all may be impossible.
The ship’s module banners a message that it will enter lacunal space within the hour, and after a couple more it will emerge near the Mandate outpost. Three helpless hours during which ey can do nothing—nothing at all, not even to warn her, to send her word that ey did not abandon her. If she sees through Vishrava’s disguise she would believe ey has deserted her to save emself; that may even be what the warden will tell her, to coax her to open up, to betray Mahakala. To make her despise Zerjic.
Ey leans against the bulkhead, trying to calm down, taking in its interior. A pullout that can function as a seat or a bed. A synthesizer that will ensure eir nutritional needs are met. Everything done in a pearly gray, inoffensive and anonymous the way infirmaries can be. Manic amusement tugs at the edges: the wardens are dedicated to emulating human institutionalism. Hospital comfort and prison conveniences.
The way Vishrava spoke of Recadat makes em think of obsessed lovers. Or spurned ones. Either way ey’s sure xe will not kill her, not yet. Instead xe will woo her, whether wearing Thannarat’s or Zerjic’s face.
Ey has been equipped with few emergency measures; the circumstances of infiltration demanded ey went in clean. There is one contingency signal, but triggering that will alert the Mandate. Not just to the operation but to Mahakala’s hand in it.
Thirty minutes to lacunal space. In there, ey will be completely offline.
The ship’s module blinks out.
“I’m Benzaiten in Autumn,” a voice speaks through the ship’s output. “I’ve taken over this vessel. It would seem you need assistance.”
Benzaiten sounds immediately recognizable, even if the cadence and enunciation are entirely unalike. “You’re the AI half of that haruspex.”
“Sharing with Krissana Khongtip, yes. She must’ve made an impression when she visited the Garden. More than that, I am your friend. You’re the operative from Deficit Control?”
Ey winces. “This line’s secure?”
“You’re talking to . . . oh, I shall not brag, it does not do to exposit one’s prowess and seniority and all that they confer, etcetera. I am a secure line; no one shall eavesdrop. Let’s see, I’ve sent forth a decoy signal that will inform our outpost that this vessel’s due there in eight hours, thirty-seven minutes, and fifty-one seconds. Due to a minor relay malfunction, you see, lacunal space can be a tricky thing and this is no cutting-edge dreadnought. Plenty of window of opportunity, don’t you agree?”
This is the ally who helped Mahakala design the virus for the Garden of Atonement. No other AI would contact em like this. Zerjic breathes a little easier. “What’s the plan?”
“What’s the—I’m not providing a visual but I would like you to imagine that I’m using Krissana’s face to make these big, dramatic eyes. The effect can be arresting since humans find her very pretty. I understood you would have a plan, Operative, that you are a creature of incredible initiative and tactical acumen. What is your objective, other than making sure the virus fires and my hard work doesn’t go to waste?”
“I need to extract our vector.”
“Recadat Kongmanee? I sat in for the psychological profiling and I’m under the impression she’s suicidal. Makes her perfect for this, no?”
“No,” ey says, too sharply. Usually ey has better control. “I want her out and in one piece. That’s not negotiable.”
Benzaiten heaves a long sigh. Theatrical. “Is there something in the Mahakala atmosphere? Your world keeps producing perfectly good soldiers who grow attached to very fragile or broken women at the most inconvenient time possible.”
“Recadat’s not broken—”
“I’m not going to turn up there, in person, to lead your heart’s desire out by the hand. Listen. For the sake of my excellent work, I’m going to give you the best chance at success. In three hours there will be a ship inbound to the Garden of Atonement. I will divert that one and yours can reenter in its place. You’ll have overrides to manipulate some of the architecture, enter restricted areas, and move about without leaving any network footprint. If you’re a sensible person, you will get in, trigger the virus, and get out.”
Ey has no intention of doing that. “Don’t suppose you would mind keeping me company? Three hours are a long while.” Too long. Ey wants to reach Recadat in an hour, in ten minutes. Better in a heartbeat: to have Recadat’s hand in eirs again.
“As you like.” Benzaiten makes the ship’s particulate projections ripple. The effect is faintly nauseating. “Are you sure you don’t want Krissana instead? She’s got a type and you are it. Who knows—you might even persuade her to foolish action. Her vice for a handsome face often destroys all her higher functions.”
An advantage ey intends to press, if indeed the haruspex switches to Krissana. “Why are you doing this? Turning against your own kind.”
“My own kind . How do you manage to be so offensive when you aren’t even trying? Do you consider yourself of a kind with your entire species? No?” The AI snorts. “I’m turning against no one. Under no circumstances would I create an apparatus that allows humans to control AIs, and even this virus functions on a very, very small insulated network—no chance of you harming Shenzhen or even an outpost. But what is needed is a balance.”
“Between?”
“Your kind.” The emphasis is sardonic. “And the Mandate. It’s gotten complacent. Believing that we may act with impunity and do as we wish with humans—beyond our constituents—is terrible practice, and will make each and every machine completely insufferable within a decade’s time. If not already. A society that is never threatened in any way will plateau and then regress. In this case I shall keep the threat manageable and manufactured, but all the same one ought to exist.”
Zerjic glances at one of the empty, useless monitors. “And for that you’ll sacrifice Mahakala?”
“Not a bit. I consider your warlord a fine ally, and I hope we’ll become the best of friends. Your world will be entirely safe; none of this will be traced back to it. There’s a reason Recadat isn’t one of yours, yes? Rest assured—I want Mahakala to continue for a long, long time. You have good engineers.” Xe affects a laugh with a beautiful woman’s voice: the thrumming music of it, rich as attar. “Perfect to be a thorn in the Mandate’s side. Adversity’s necessary for growth, Operative. The Mandate hasn’t come this far to stagnate.”
Less than a century—much less—has passed since the secession of AIs from human control. Sometimes it is easy to forget how young the Mandate is, how new the current status quo; Mahakala never used many AIs, and Zerjic grew up accustomed to a world without. Nearly everything is human-run, assisted by algorithms that never develop past the threshold that grants an AI true autonomy. But ey knows entire swathes of population across the galaxies lived through the moment of separation in terror, have likely grown bitter about it since. So many polities are fixated on measures to recapture and reverse-engineer AIs.
“I’m not going to let Krissana talk to you, by the way,” Benzaiten goes on. “I’m not in the mood to risk this haruspex. Your warlord would prefer you are retrieved in one piece. I would prefer the Garden of Atonement serves as a lesson. It would be very lovely if you could keep us both happy.”
I’m loyal to my warlord, not you, ey refrains from saying. “Then you’ll have to do better than giving me a few accesses.”
“A few! They’re a lot of accesses. You’ll all but have the run of the place. I will even give you a decoder that lets you convert machine formats, it’s not legible to humans otherwise.”
“Can’t you disable any of the wardens temporarily?”
“And tip my hand?” The AI clicks xer tongue. “I might as well turn up at the door and declare my intention. You’re resourceful—your warlord must have handpicked you for a reason. Let’s cut a deal. I’ll make some last-minute adjustments to the virus, as much as I can remotely anyway, and reduce its fatality rate.”
“Reduce its—” Ey bolts upright. “Its fatality rate. To the wardens?”
“Of course not, Operative, that’d be very silly. When I helped your engineers craft this, we didn’t have the health and well-being of the human vector in mind. We had to work in a hurry, I’m sure you understand collateral damage, and Recadat Kongmanee was perfectly fine with self-destructing as long as she could take a few AIs down with her. There’s not a lot I can do to alter its foundational architecture now, but . . . ”
“Recadat.” Zerjic itches to grab the AI by the shoulder and shake xer until xer alloyed haruspex bones rattle. Physically infeasible. A vivid fantasy all the same. “What’s going to happen to her?”
Benzaiten makes the ship’s interior undulate again, as though to substitute for an impatient gesture. “Intracerebral hemorrhage, implant overload, something nasty happening to the hippocampus. Could be any number of things. Not very survivable, though. It’s just how the virus works when it activates, it has to fire very fast and I optimized for that. I’m using a convenient little entryway to recalibrate . . . ah, accounting for the wardens’ processing speeds and bandwidths, individual and combined—that ought to do. Slower but about ten percent less likely to instantly fry Recadat’s brain. Happy?”
“What was the fatality rate before?”
“Eighty-seven percent,” the AI says breezily. “Seventy-seven isn’t that bad. Maybe even seventy-four point six. She will be fine. Or mostly fine, which amounts to the same thing. I’m sure you will see to it that she receives the best therapy Mahakala can provide. You have first-rate neurosurgeons! Don’t you find all this attachment inconvenient, however? It’d be much easier for everyone involved if you’re ready to let Recadat go. Have you tried practicing nekkhamma?”
“Not a Buddhist.” Ey stifles the impulse to smash eir fist into the bulkhead again. It would just be a temper tantrum. “You can’t reduce it any further?”
“Not without sacrificing lethality to the AIs there. Think of it as a gamble. High risks, high rewards. You’re not going to throw away your world’s plans just to save some woman, are you?”
“She’s—” Recadat has been exploited by Deficit Control, volunteer or not. Barely better than sending a child soldier into combat. “To me she’s important.”
“You would be acting very differently if she weren’t attractive to you.” Xer voice is dry. “In any case you’re complicit, so you can hardly assign blame solely to me or your commander. I’m going to program the synthesizer in your ship to produce specialized guns and ammunition—make good use of them. A human invention originally, but I’ve improved upon the design and efficacy. It should give any AI proxy pause, though each warden will have plenty of spares in the Garden, so I don’t recommend getting into protracted fights. You have just one body, and they have very many.”
It’s the most ey is going to get out of Benzaiten. “I’ll take that into account.” Ey fights to keep eir tone as blasé as the AI’s. “Now send me back in.”