Jump 255 - Multireal Part 36

The Tha.s.selian giggled nervously. "I don't real y know. You should have let Brone fix you up. I've never done this before."

Natch mumbled a curse at the ceiling and shut his mouth.

At least he could final y see the code that had been tormenting him for these past weeks.

It looked like a mutated treble clef, dappled with splotches of orange and purple. Natch had thought it would be a relief to put a definitive shape to his pain. Instead, the very ordinariness of the subroutine increased his depression.

After another hour, Natch started to grow suspicious. There was neither method nor madness to Loget's tinkering as far as he could see. Instead the man was fumbling around like a hive child given coursework beyond his grade level.

Loget would stir blocks of code aimlessly with his bio/logic programming bars for ten minutes at a stretch without making a single connection. Natch knew that every fiefcorper had a unique methodology-three programmers, five programming styles, as Primo's liked to say-but this was ridiculous.

"You're delaying," barked the entrepreneur.

"No, I'm not. I swear I'm not," said Loget. "But-"

"But what?"

"You've got MultiReal code in your head, Natch. How did that get there?" The man seemed apprehensive, unsure, maybe a little awestruck. Natch didn't answer.

Loget noodled around for another hour (covering avant-garde sculpture and the lesser-known dramas of Juan Nguyen in the process) before he final y admitted that he would need to consult with Brone. Natch let him go.

This charade continued for two days. Brone stayed on the periphery of the programming floor the whole second day, and every time Natch looked in his direction he saw nothing but puzzlement on the bodhisattva's face. Natch couldn't figure out what was going on. Was Loget unwil ing or incapable of accomplis.h.i.+ng the task? Was the renegade MultiReal code in his head complicating matters? Or was this al just a masquerade to cover something else?

Meanwhile, progress on MultiReal slowed to a crawl as Natch's pains and blackout episodes grew in severity. An epic rage had been sputtering in his gut for weeks; now he could feel it picking up strength and roaring to new heights.

Frustrated, Natch cut off access to the program early the second night and stormed to his room. Sleep seduced him.

He was awakened in the middle of the night by Margaret Surina.

The bodhisattva made no noise that might explain her presence. In fact, she seemed to be at the center of an inexplicable absence of noise, a lacuna in the world, as if the universe ceased to exist at the bottom of her toes and miraculously resubstantiated at the frayed ends of her hair.

You're dead, Natch told her. Somehow he knew that the apparition would understand him even if he didn't use his vocal cords.

But the bodhisattva did not answer. She merely stood in the center of the room and stared at Natch. She looked as she had before al the trouble started, when MultiReal was but a pseudonymous project bobbing bal oonlike in the distance. Her black hair was flecked with gray; her fingers were long and precise; her eyes were ghost luminous. Her feet, he noticed, did not quite touch the ground.

What do you want? insisted the entrepreneur. What are you doing here?

No response.

Natch clawed at his scalp through his sandy hair. Was the Council right about him? He was sitting in bed talking to a dead woman, and he couldn't even get the dead woman to talk back. Madness. In a panic, Natch lobbed a pil ow at the apparition; it pa.s.sed straight through her torso and landed on the floor with a feathery fwump. The bodhisattva of Creed Surina did not react.

He was about to tear out of the room when Margaret began to speak. The voice was faint, nearly inaudible, and it did not emanate from her lips so much as it floated down from the ceiling.

You are the guardian and the keeper of MultiReal, Natch. Remember that. The guardian and the keeper.

And then she was gone.

Natch pondered the bodhisattva's words for a moment, accompanied by the pianissimo sounds of a decaying hotel. Squeaking floorboards, archaic climate-control machinery. Bats somewhere in the courtyard.

The guardian and the keeper. Margaret had used that phrase on top of the Revelation Spire, the last time Natch saw her alive. What did it mean? He thought of the original order of the Keepers, vilified by history, who had let the reins of the Autonomous Minds slip through their fingers. The resulting stampede had caused a global apocalypse. Was this a warning that similar things awaited if he let go of MultiReal? And why should he listen to the warning of a phantom anyway?

Enough. Enough with riddles. Enough with lies and manipulation.

Natch threw himself out of bed and grabbed a dressing gown from the hook on the door.

The three paral el bars of the Creed Tha.s.sel insignia saluted him in gold thread from the breast pocket. He picked up the satchel of bio/logic programming bars Brone had lent him, bolted through the hal , and took the stairs down to the atrium three at a time.

He could feel the tiny pinp.r.i.c.k in the back of his thigh ache as he stood before a bio/logic workbench and flipped on Minds.p.a.ce. The castle zoomed out of the void until it fil ed the bubble.

Now that Margaret was gone and Quel had been taken away, who could he trust with MultiReal? Jara would trade it to the Council for the peace of mind, and Horvil would blindly fol ow her. Khann Frejohr would use it to further his narrow political agenda. Petrucio and Frederic Patel would sel it to the highest bidder without a second thought. The Council would use it as a weapon of domination and submission. And Brone? Brone would hand it out to everyone in the universe to satisfy his bizarre notions of selfishness.

But MultiReal was not some commodity to be rationed out, and n.o.body would bul y him into giving it away. Natch could see the route he must take. The bends and curves ahead were stil murky, unclear; even the ultimate destination remained hazy and indistinct. Stil , he would not submit to someone else's path for MultiReal, whether that path was Khann Frejohr's, Magan Kai Lee's, or Brone's.

Or Margaret's, for that matter. He would not give up.

It took Natch almost two hours to weave through al the roadblocks Horvil had put in his path. But he could afford no more delays, no more sidetracks.

Every hour that Jara had administrative control of MultiReal was an hour when Natch was vulnerable. Sooner or later, the Defense and Wel ness Council would realize that Natch had complied with the Meme Cooperative's order and given Jara core access after al . As soon as that happened, it was only a matter of time before they coerced the program out of her hands-and then he real y would be irrelevant, just as Magan Kai Lee had said.

Natch found the selectors in the program that Quel had described on the soccer field in Harper. Horvil's already demonstrated how easy it is to select the options, he had said. The hard part is deciding which ones to choose. But there was no more need for ambiguity, because Natch had made his selection. No more sudden cutoffs or artificial limitations.

He made the switch. Unlimited choice cycles for al .

There was stil one more step he needed to take, however. He would not get caught in an endless loop of reprisal with Jara, her erecting barriers one day, him disabling them the next. He would not be forced to find detours around Horvil's roadblocks. Natch leaned over the workbench and cast his mind out to the Data Sea. There were a tril ion caches of encrypted data out there, a tril ion places to hide programming code among al the connectible quarks in the world. Natch picked a suitable cove almost at random. And then, trembling al the while, he proceeded to transfer the MultiReal databases to the new hidden location, petabyte by petabyte.

Jara had tried to hide the program from Natch, but Margaret had a.s.sured him it could not be done. MultiReal is becoming apart of you, she had said.

And it was true: Natch could feel its presence now whenever he closed his eyes. He could reach out and interface with the program even outside of Minds.p.a.ce. He could find MultiReal no matter where it resided on the Data Sea.

But Jara couldn't.

The first rays of the dawning sun crept through the windows. Somewhere in the kitchen, machinery began to whir. Natch, fiefcorp master, entrepreneur, outcast, stood in the atrium, bloated with possibilities. He was the guardian and the keeper of MultiReal. And thanks to the ghost of Margaret Surina, he was now the only person in the universe who could access it.

"I can't stay here," said Natch.

Brone regarded the entrepreneur behind a cold mask of wariness and resignation.

Something had changed in that prematurely aged face over the past few days, ever since Loget began his fumbling attempts at tuning the black code.

The endgame was approaching, and they both knew it, though Natch couldn't tel if Brone was expecting to win or lose this contest.

Meanwhile, progress on MultiReal had final y ground to a halt. The Tha.s.selians had not even bothered to gather in the atrium that morning for a status report; instead most of them had bundled up and gone outside to enjoy the freshly fal en snow. Al except for Pierre Loget and Bil y Sterno, who were sitting at the conference table down the hal , trying to solve the black code dilemma. And Brone, of course, who preferred to observe the winter alone in his backroom office.

Natch pressed on. "What you're trying to do-multiple lives for everybody. It's unworkable. I had my doubts about Possibilities 1.0, but this ... The system can't handle it. I don't care how little bandwidth consciousness takes up, the Data Sea won't be able to deal with that much information. You'l crash the whole computational infrastructure."

"I don't believe that," said Brone. "I'm confident in my calculations."

"Then go ahead," said Natch, throwing his hands up in the air. "Launch Possibilities 2.0, and see what happens. It'l be worse than the Autonomous Revolt."

The bodhisattva's voice turned unctuous. "So you'd prefer to let Len Borda get his claws on it and see what unending tyranny looks like?"

"You're trying to make this a black-and-white issue. It's not that simple."

"Not that simple?" said Brone, his voice rising in mock disbelief. He turned to the oddly dressed Texans on his office wal as if expecting them to say a few words of solidarity. "It wasn't that simple when al this started, Natch. You made it a black-and-white issue by stubbornly refusing to explore the options.

No compromises! That's been your strategy since the very beginning. Wel , now it's paid off, hasn't it? Here you are at last, no friends left, no al ies, nowhere to turn! Tel me this much. You never had any intention of staying here and joining my Revolution of Selfishness, did you? You would have bolted the instant we finished tuning that black code. Or would you have taken advantage of our programming skil s first, waited until Possibilities 2.0 was done, and then run away?" Brone leaned back in his chair, angrily opening and closing the middle desk drawer for no apparent reason. "Loget said this would happen. He told me you'd never cooperate with us, no matter how much was at stake. But I was too trusting."

"Too trusting?" said Natch with a guffaw. "Too trusting? Talk about false pretenses-you never intended to fix that black code. You planned on leaving me like this al along, didn't you?" He held up his right arm, now twitching as frequently and painful y as the left.

"No," insisted Brone, placing his good hand over his heart in a show of sincerity. "I'm being on the level with you. I swear, Pierre has been trying to figure out what's wrong."

Natch felt a sudden rush of nausea, though whether it was precipitated by the black code or Brone's lies he didn't know. "You haven't been on the level since the beginning," he sneered. "If you wanted to work with me, then why didn't you just approach me upfront? Why the deceit? Why the-"

"Oh, please!" The bodhisattva waved away Natch's objections with a swipe of his prosthetic hand. "I did approach you. Have you forgotten that I gave you money? It was only after you turned up your nose at me-only after you made it clear you were planning to walk straight into Len Borda's clutches with MultiReal in hand-only then that I took the recourse of black code. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, Natch! And did you deserve it? You're the man who lied and cheated his way up the Primo's charts, after al . The man without moral scruples, the man known for his inability to work with anyone. And you say I should have just taken your word? You think I should have just come to you without taking any precautions?"

Natch didn't know why he was stil standing in his old hivemate's office taking such abuse. Better to leave now, better to run out that door into the Chicago winter while his anger was fresh. What could Brone do besides heap scorn upon him as he walked away? Yet Natch's feet felt rooted to the spot; he could not leave, not quite yet. "If you had so little faith in me," he said, "then why did you bother? I wasn't the only one who had core access to MultiReal.

You could have gone to-" Natch stopped short as he felt a horrible truth stab him in the gut. His legs gave way, and he col apsed into a chair near the door.

"For process' preservation," he said under his breath. "You-you murdered Margaret."

The room grew deathly quiet. Brone stood up from his chair and turned his back on Natch. Then he walked slowly to the window and folded his arms across his chest. Outside, a flotil a of dark clouds was threatening to blanket the city with more snow. A few of the devotees ambled by, muttering angry and unintel igible words at one another.

"I admit I wanted to murder her," said Brone after a long and tense silence. "I even admit that I threatened her. But it's not so easy to kil someone in cold blood, Natch. You should try it sometime. Would I have gone through with it? I honestly don't know."

"What do you mean? If you didn't kil her, then who did?"

"n.o.body," replied the bodhisattva, his voice ashen. "Margaret Surina committed suicide."

Something vile wriggled its way inside Natch's bel y. He remembered his last conversation with Margaret atop the Revelation Spire. She'd been in the last stages of paranoia, clutching a dartgun, barely able to recognize Natch. Barely able to recognize Quel . "You expect me to believe that?" said Natch in a hol ow croak. "After al the lies you've told?"

Brone shrugged, conceding the point. "I'm sorry you don't believe me. But the truth is, your business partner kil ed herself. I watched her do it. I sat in that wretched Spire of hers and laid out my vision for Possibilities 2.0, one bodhisattva to another. I told her of my plans for the Revolution of Selfishness, just like I told you." The bodhisattva slumped forward with his palms on the windowsil .

"I don't know if she even understood what I was saying. You saw how she was behaving toward the end. You were in her office right before me. I offered Margaret Surina a chance to join the Revolution, and instead she chose suicide, with her own black code. It was ... horrible. It wasn't a quick death." He shuddered. "Undoubtedly Len Borda has already figured this out, and is just trying to decide who to pin the blame on.

"But I already had a backup plan, Natch, and that was you. So I waited. Because I knew it was only a matter of time before you alienated everyone and exhausted every resource. Regardless of what the Prime Committee decided, I knew you'd never hand them MultiReal. I knew that eventual y you would wind up alone with Council dartguns bearing down on you, with nowhere else to turn. So when the infoquake struck at the Tul Jabbor Complex, I was ready. I swooped down, and I saved you.

"Not only did I save you, Natch-I brought you here to Old Chicago, and I gave you everything you'd always wanted. Unlimited resources. A partners.h.i.+p.

The greatest technological chal enge in the history of programming, and al the time in the world to master it." Brone took a deep breath, looking miserable and defeated. "I'm not sure what else you expect me to do."

"I already told you," said Natch. "Fix that black code. Fix it, or get rid of it."

There was no noise but the creaking of the old hotel for several minutes. Natch could see Brone's reflection in the window. The bodhisattva's eyes were dead, hol ow, unmanned.

Final y, Brone spoke. "My black code isn't causing those tremors and blackouts, Natch,"

he said. "I don't know what is. And that's the truth."

Natch snorted. "I don't believe you."

Another pause. The storm clouds that had been threatening snow began to deliver on their promise.

"Why should I help you, Natch?" said Brone, tired. "You're already planning to leave.

This is Chicago, the city of barter. And yet you offer me nothing in exchange."

Natch picked himself up from the chair and thrust his hands in his pockets. "Why should I barter?" he said. "I've got core access to MultiReal. I don't have to offer anything in return. You've got one more day. Fix the black code, or get rid of it-and then I'l decide if I'm going to stay. It's the only chance you've got."

Brone did not turn around. "So be it," he said.

The graveyard of midnight. Complete silence throughout the hotel.

Natch bolted out of bed and threw on his clothes. He dashed through the hal way and down the stairs. There were no revelers in the atrium tonight, no wandering insomniacs, n.o.body picking over leftovers from the kitchen. Through the windows, Old Chicago had nothing to offer but the wind and the sepulchral snow. Natch picked a devotee's platform at random, lowered it, and hopped on.

He knew what he had to do.

Natch stood at the workbench and waved his left hand. A s.h.i.+mmering bubble the size of a coin appeared in the air before him. The bubble quickly expanded until it encompa.s.sed most of the workbench, until it enveloped him entirely and blanketed the rest of the world in a translucent film.

Minds.p.a.ce. An empty canvas, a barren universe. Anything was possible here.

With his right hand, Natch reached into his pocket and pul ed out the black felt bag he had been carting with him for weeks now. He yanked open the drawstring and shook out the bag's hidden treasure on the workbench: ten glimmering circlets of gold, the bio/logic programming rings Quel had lent him.

Natch slid them whisper-quiet onto his fingers. As soon as the rings pa.s.sed the borders of Minds.p.a.ce, strings of programming code leapt to his fingertips and formed an intricate pattern in the air.

The entrepreneur raised his left hand again and spread his fingers wide. The Minds.p.a.ce bubble quickly fil ed with the swol en treble clef, the black code that had been afflicting him since that fateful night on the streets of Shenandoah.

Natch attacked.

The treble clef buzzed and whirred while the minutes pa.s.sed. Mindful of what had happened the last time he tried to bombard a subroutine too quickly, Natch took absolute care with Brone's black code, only making tentative sorties at first to test the program's defenses. The rings felt more comfortable now than when he had tried them in Shenandoah. They had adapted to his movements, his pace, his style. He could have sworn they had even shrunk a size or two. Gradual y, minute by minute, he began to make more complex maneuvers.

Final y, one of his attacks penetrated the program's surface, and the treble clef exploded into a thousand pieces with a deafening crash. Natch stepped back, surveyed the jagged guts of the black code.

And realized that this was definitely not a cloaking program.

Natch had never actual y built a cloaking routine before, but he had spent long hours studying their ilk in dark corners of the Data Sea. He knew the shapes and contours to expect, and he had an idea of where the hooks should be. But this program, this black code, didn't match the profile. Links in the treble clef pointed to obscure OCHRE subsystems that would be of little use if the program did what Brone claimed. Natch wished he had paid more attention to Serr Vigal's neural programming lectures al those years ago, because most of the treble clef's nodes appeared to be tied to machines along the brain stem.

Natch stood on the lowest platform of the atrium, gazing at the stalks that jutted into the air around him like stalagmites. He felt the internal fury boil over. His suspicions had been justified; Brone had lied to him, and now he had proof.

Do you know why we're not dodging Council missiles right now? the bodhisattva had said. Because that black code floating in your bloodstream renders you invisible to Len Border's tracking mechanisms. Do you understand me? The Council has no way to find you.

If the black code was not a cloaking mechanism to keep him hidden from the Defense and Wel ness Council, then what was it? Why was Brone so adamant about refusing to disable it? Had Pierre Loget been faking al his efforts to tune out the code's insidious side effects? And if Brone was lying to him about the black code software, what else was he lying about?

Natch combed frantical y through the Minds.p.a.ce schematic looking for a way to disable the software, but it was too wel crafted for the simplistic tricks that would cripple most works of black code. He remembered how skil ful a programmer Brone had been even years ago at the Proud Eagle; now he was witnessing the end product of that ruthless and cunning intel ect. No, even with the program's innards splayed open in Minds.p.a.ce, it would take Natch hours, possibly days, to dislodge it from his skul . Could he afford to cal Brone's bluff?

Could he even afford to wait for Brone to discover that he had found a way inside?

Natch shut off the workbench, pocketed the felt bag with the programming rings, and ran out the front door without a backward glance.