Artificial Condition

Chapter Seven

I LOCATED THE PROBLEM in the lobby of the main hotel.

Tapan was on one of the upper platforms, seated on a round cushioned bench, her pack at her feet, partially screened by another holographic sculpture of a giant crystal formation. She looked up at me and said, “Oh, hi. I didn’t know if the others would be able to reach you.”

Without me present in the shuttle, ART hadn’t had any visual access to the passenger compartment. (As a private vehicle that was only being used as a public transport in a sketchy if not openly illegal way, it had no onboard security system or cameras.) ART hadn’t known Tapan wasn’t onboard until the shuttle reached the transit ring. Taking its responsibility seriously, it had sent a drone over to the embarkation area to watch my clients disembark and had seen an obviously distraught and angry Rami and Maro, but no Tapan. Then it had checked Eden’s profile on the social media feed and found the message from Rami. (Tapan had told them she was sick and was going to the shuttle’s restroom compartment. They hadn’t realized what had happened until the shuttle had cleared the port.)

I said, “They left me a message.” I had intended to just stand there and stare at her, which is what SecUnits do to clients who have just performed an act of stupidity so profound it approaches suicide which they ordered us not to stop them from doing. But she looked like she knew she had been stupid, and I had to know. “What happened?”

She looked up at me, clearly anticipating a negative reaction. “I got a note in my feed, through the social profile I had when we were working here. Someone working for Tlacey—a friend—said he had copies of the files and he’d give them to us.” She forwarded the message to my feed.

I checked it carefully. The meeting time was set for the next cycle.

I felt this would be the point where a human would sigh, so I sighed.

Tapan said, “I know it could be a trap, but, maybe it isn’t? I know him, he’s not the greatest guy, but he hates Tlacey.” She hesitated. “Will you help me? Please? I’ll understand if you say no. I know I’ve been … I know this could be a really bad idea.”

I had forgotten that I had a choice, that I wasn’t obligated to do what she wanted just because she was here. Being asked to stay, with a please and an option for refusal, hit me almost as hard as a human asking for my opinion and actually listening to me. I sighed again. I was having a lot of opportunities to do it and I think I was getting good at it. “I’ll help you. Right now we need to find a place to get out of sight.”

Tapan had a hard currency card from the transit ring, which wasn’t tied to any RaviHyral account and so was not traceable. At least, that’s what she thought and I hoped she was right. I had never been given any education modules on financial systems and since our modules were crap anyway, I’m not sure that would have helped. ART ran a search for me and the results were mixed. Hard currency cards could be traced, but usually only by non-corporate political or corporate entities. I decided it was probably all right to use it. If the message wasn’t a trap, Tlacey must think my clients were back on the transit ring by now. If it was a trap, they would know they could grab us when we walked into the meeting so there was no point in looking for us earlier.

Tapan used the card to pay for a transient room in the block next to the port. While she ran the card through the vending kiosk and got our room assignment, I stood behind her and surveyed the area. The transient rooms were in a narrow warren of corridors, as unlike the main hotel as a real cargo transport was unlike ART. There was no SecSystem to get control of and only one camera at the entrance. I deleted us out of its memory, but I still felt like we—or I—might have been observed at some point. It might just be inherent rogue-SecUnit-on-the-run paranoia.

Tapan led the way to our room. There were other humans hanging around the dimly lit corridors and some looked like they might try to approach her, then saw me and changed their minds. I was bigger than they were, and without cameras it was still hard to control my expression.

ART said, Tell the human not to touch any surfaces. There may be disease vectors present.

On the way here I had shared the recording of what I had found at Ganaka Pit. ART said, This is good news. You were not at fault. I agreed, sort of. I had been expecting to feel better about it. I mostly just felt awful.

Once inside the room with the door secured, I saw Tapan’s shoulders relax and she took a deep breath. The room was just a square box with pads stored in a cabinet for sitting or sleeping, and a small display surface. No cameras, no audio surveillance. There was a tiny attached bath, with a waste-reclaimer and a shower. At least it had a door. I was going to have to pretend to use it at least twice. Yes, that would be the cap on all the fun I was having today. I created a schedule and set an alarm to remind myself to do it.

Tapan dropped her bag on the floor and faced me. “I know you’re mad.”

I tried to moderate my expression. “I’m not mad.” I was furious. I thought my clients were safe, I was free to worry about my own problems, and now I had a tiny human to look after that I couldn’t possibly abandon.

She nodded and pushed her braids back. “I know—I mean—I’m sure Rami and Maro were furious. But it’s not like I’m not afraid, so that’s good.”

In my feed, ART said, What?

I have no idea, I told it. I said to Tapan, “How is that good?”

She explained, “In the creche, our moms always said that fear was an artificial condition. It’s imposed from the outside. So it’s possible to fight it. You should do the things you’re afraid of.”

If a bot with a brain the size of a transport could roll its eyes, that was what ART was doing. I said, “That isn’t the purpose of fear.” They didn’t give us an education module on human evolution, but I had looked it up in the HubSystem knowledge bases I’d had access to, in an effort to figure out what the hell was going on with humans. It hadn’t helped.

She said, “I know, it’s supposed to be inspirational.” She looked around and went to the cabinet with the seating pads. She pulled them out, sniffed them suspiciously, then took an aerosol capsule out of a pocket on her pack and sprayed them down. “I forgot to ask, did you get a chance to do the research you wanted to do here?”

“Yes. It was … inconclusive.” It had been damningly conclusive, it just hadn’t had the revelatory effect I had been, stupidly, hoping for. I helped her pull the rest of the pads out.

We got them arranged on the floor and sat down. She looked at me and bit her lip. “You’re really augmented, aren’t you. Like, a lot. Like more than someone would choose voluntarily.”

It wasn’t a question. I said, “Um, yes.”

She nodded. “Was it an accident?”

I realized I had my arms wrapped around myself and was leaning over like I was trying to go into a fetal position. I don’t know why this was so stressful. Tapan wasn’t afraid of me. I had no reason to be afraid of her. Maybe it was being here again, seeing Ganaka Pit again. Some part of my organic systems remembered what had happened there. In the feed, ART started to play the soundtrack to Sanctuary Moon and weirdly, that helped. I said, “I got caught in an explosion. There’s not much of me that’s human, actually.”

Both those statements are true.

She stirred a little, as if debating what to say, then nodded again. “I’m sorry I got you into this. I know you know what you’re doing, but … I have to try, I have to see if this guy really has our files. Just this once, and then I’ll go back to the transit ring.”

In my feed, ART turned down the soundtrack to say, Young humans can be impulsive. The trick is keeping them around long enough to become old humans. This is what my crew tells me and my own observations seem to confirm it.

I couldn’t argue with the wisdom dispensed by ART’s absent crew. I remembered humans had needs and asked Tapan, “Did you eat?”

She had bought some meal packs with the hard currency card and had them stuffed in her bag. She offered me one and I told her my augments required me to have a special diet and it wasn’t time for me to eat yet. She accepted that readily. Humans apparently don’t like to discuss catastrophic injuries to digestive systems, so I didn’t need any of the corroborating detail ART had just researched for me. I asked her if she liked media and she said yes, so I sent some files to the display surface in the room, and we watched the first three episodes of Worldhoppers. ART was pleased, and I could feel it sitting in my feed, comparing Tapan’s reactions to the show to mine.

When Tapan said she wanted to try to sleep, I shut down the display. She curled up on her pad and I lay down on mine and continued watching in the feed with ART.

Two hours and forty-three minutes later, I caught a ping from right outside the door.

I sat up so abruptly, Tapan woke with a start. I motioned for her to be quiet, and she subsided back on the pad, curling around her pack, looking worried. I stood and went to the door, listening. I couldn’t hear any breathing, but there was a change in the background noise that told me there was something solid on the other side of the metal door. Cautiously, I did a limited scan.

Yes, there was something out there, but no sign of weapons. I checked the ping and saw it had the same signature as the ping I had caught in the public area during the meeting with Tlacey.

The sexbot was standing on the other side of the door.

It couldn’t have been following me all this time. It could have been watching for me on the security cameras, tracking me sporadically through the port when I came back within range. That was not a comforting thought.

It had to belong to Tlacey. If it had been watching me, it would have missed Tapan’s unexpected exit from the private shuttle but would have seen her again when we met up at the main hotel or on the way here. Damn it.

But now I knew that. If it hadn’t pinged me, I wouldn’t have realized it was in play. Why is it here? I asked ART.

I assume that’s a rhetorical question, it said.

There was only one way to find out. I acknowledged the ping.

The moment stretched. Then it reached out to my feed. It was cautious, the connection almost tentative. It said, I know what you are. Who sent you?

I replied, I’m on contract to a private individual. Why are you communicating with me?

SecUnits on the same contract don’t talk, either verbally or on the feed, unless they absolutely have to in order to perform their duties. Communicating with units on different contracts has to be done through the controlling HubSystems. And SecUnits don’t interact with ComfortUnits anyway. Could this be a rogue sexbot? If it was rogue, why was it here on RaviHyral? I didn’t know why anybody would stay here voluntarily, including the humans. No, it made more sense if Tlacey owned its contract, and had sent it here to kill Tapan.

If it tried to attack my client, I would tear it apart.

Tapan, sitting on the pad and watching me worriedly, mouthed the words, “What is it?”

I opened a secure channel to her and said, Someone is outside the door. I’m not sure why.

That was mostly true. I didn’t want to tell Tapan what it was, since that seemed to lead directly to me telling her what I was, which I didn’t want to do. Though if I had to destroy it in front of her, I was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

The sexbot replied, This is you, and sent me a copy of a public newsburst.

It was from the station, from Port FreeCommerce. This time the headline was “Authorities Admit a SecUnit Unsecured and Location Unknown.”

Uh-oh, ART said.

I closed the story by reflex, like that would make it not exist. After three seconds of shock, I made myself open it again.

“Unsecured” is what they call rogue SecUnits when they want humans to listen and not just start screaming. It meant that the knowledge that I had hacked my governor module was no longer confined to me and the members of PreservationAux. They must have been at the stage where everyone in the two survey groups who had survived was being interviewed, and they would have had to guarantee bonds to assert they were telling the truth.

So the company knew now that I had hacked my governor module. That was terrifying, even though I had expected it. It was one of the reasons Mensah had made sure to get me off inventory and out of the deployment center as soon as I came out of repair and reconstruction mode.

Expecting it and having it happen were two different things, something I learned the first time I got shot to pieces.

I skimmed the story in dread and then read it again, closely. The solicitors for several sides in the ongoing legal and civil battles had asked Preservation to produce the SecUnit who had recorded all the damning evidence against GrayCris. This was unusual. It’s not like SecUnits can testify in courts. Our recordings are admissible, just like recordings from a drone or security camera or any other inert device, but it’s not like we’re supposed to have opinions or a perspective on what we record.

After some back and forth, Mensah’s solicitor had admitted that she had lost track of me. They phrased it as “released on my own recognizance, as constructs are considered legal sentients under Preservation law,” but the journalists hadn’t been fooled by that, either. There were a lot of sidebar links to attached articles about constructs, about SecUnits, about rogue SecUnits. There was no mention that this particular unit had had a little problem with murdering the clients supposedly under its protection before, but I had the feeling the company had probably already destroyed any records relating to Ganaka Pit so they couldn’t be produced under court injunction.

Tapan whispered, “Are you talking to them, the person?”

“Yes,” I told her. To the sexbot, I said, That’s an interesting story but it has nothing to do with me.

It said, It’s you. Who sent you?

I said, That’s a story about a dangerous rogue SecUnit. No one would send it anywhere.

I’m not asking because I want to report you. I won’t tell anyone. I’m asking—There’s no human controlling you? You’re free?

I could feel ART in my feed, carefully extending itself out toward the sexbot.

I have a client, I told it. I had to distract it, if ART was going to be able to get any info. Even though it was a sexbot, it was still a construct, still a whole different proposition from a pilot bot. Who sent you here? Was it Tlacey?

Yes. She is my client.

As a ComfortUnit, not a SecUnit. Sending a ComfortUnit into this situation was morally irresponsible and a clear violation of contract. I’m guessing the sexbot knew that.

ART said, It’s not rogue. Its governor module is engaged. So it’s probably telling the truth.

I asked ART, Can you hack it from here?

There was a half-second pause while ART explored the idea. ART answered, No, I can’t secure the connection here. It could stop me by cutting off its feed.

I told the sexbot, Your client wants to kill my client.

It didn’t reply.

I said, You told Tlacey about me. It must have recognized what I was during that first meeting. If it hadn’t been sure, seeing the damage I had done to the three humans Tlacey had sent would have been all the confirmation it needed. I was seething, but I kept it out of the feed. As I told ART, bots and constructs can’t trust each other, so I don’t know why it made me angry. I wish being a construct made me less irrational than the average human but you may have noticed this is not the case. I said, Your client sent a ComfortUnit to do a SecUnit’s job.

It countered, She didn’t know she needed a SecUnit until today. It added, I told her you were a SecUnit, I didn’t tell her you were a rogue.

I wondered if I could believe that. And I wondered if it had tried to explain to Tlacey the impossibility of this assignment. What do you propose to do?

There was a pause. A long one, five seconds. We could kill them.

Well, that was an unusual approach to its dilemma. Kill who? Tlacey?

All of them. The humans here.

I leaned against the wall. If I had been human, I would have rolled my eyes. Though if I had been human, I might have been stupid enough to think it was a good idea.

I also wondered if it knew a lot more about me than what little was in the newsburst.

Picking up on my reaction, ART said, What does it want?

To kill all the humans, I answered.

I could feel ART metaphorically clutch its function. If there were no humans, there would be no crew to protect and no reason to do research and fill its databases. It said, That is irrational.

I know, I said, if the humans were dead, who would make the media? It was so outrageous, it sounded like something a human would say.

Huh.

I said to the sexbot, Is that how Tlacey thinks constructs talk to each other?

There was another pause, only two seconds this time. Yes. Then, Tlacey believes you stayed behind to steal the files for the tech group. What did you do for so long in the feed blackout area?

I was hiding. I know, not my best lie. Does Tlacey know you want to kill her? Because the “kill all humans” thing might have come from Tlacey, but the intensity under it was real, and I didn’t think it was directed at all humans.

She knows, it said. Then I didn’t tell her about your client, she thinks they all left on the shuttle. She only wanted me to follow you.

A code bundle came through the feed. You can’t infect a construct with malware like that, not without sending it through a Sec or HubSystem. Even then I would have to apply it, and without direct orders and a working governor module, there’s no way to force me to do it. The only way that code can be applied without my assistance is through a combat override module via my dataport.

It might be killware, but I was not a simple pilot bot, and it would mostly just annoy the hell out of me. Maybe to the point where I tore a door off the wall and ripped the head off a ComfortUnit.

I could just delete the bundle, but I wanted to know what it was so I knew how furious to get. It was small enough for a human’s interface to handle, so I shunted it aside to Tapan. I said aloud, “I need you to isolate that for me. Don’t open it yet.”

She signaled assent through the feed and pulled the bundle into her temp storage. The other thing about killware and malware is that they can’t do anything to humans or augmented humans.

The sexbot hadn’t said anything else and I sent a ping in time to feel it withdraw its feed. It was walking away down the corridor.

I waited until I was sure, then stepped back from the door. I debated staying here, or moving Tapan. Now that I knew something was hacking the security cameras to watch me, I could use countermeasures. I probably should have been doing that from the beginning, but you may have noticed that for a terrifying murderbot I fuck up a lot.

“It’s gone,” I told Tapan. “Can you check out that code bundle for me?”

She got that inward look that humans have when they’re deep in their feed. After a minute, she said, “It’s malware. Pretty standard … Maybe they thought it would get your augments, but that’s kind of amateurish for Tlacey. Hold it. There’s a message string in here, attached to the code.”

ART and I waited. Tapan’s face did something complicated, settling on worry. “This is weird.” She turned to the display surface and made the completely unnecessary gesture that some humans can’t help doing when they send something from their feed to display.

It was the message string, three words. Please help me.

I moved us to a different room, near an emergency exit, in another section of the hostel. The sexbot might be alert for hacking, so I removed the access plate, manually broke the lock, and replaced the plate again while Tapan watched the corridor. Once we were inside, I told Tapan some of what the sexbot had said, mostly the part about how it claimed Tlacey didn’t know Tapan was here. (I didn’t tell her our visitor had been a sexbot because Tlacey had figured out what I was and didn’t want to waste any more human bodyguards on me.) “But we don’t know that that’s true, or that this operative won’t tell Tlacey you’re here now.”

Tapan looked confused. “But why did they tell you anything?”

That was a good question. “I don’t know. They don’t like Tlacey, but that might not be the only reason.”

Tapan bit her lip, considering. “I think I should still try to keep the meeting. It’s only four hours from now.”

I’m used to humans wanting to do things that can get them killed. Maybe too used to it. I knew we should leave now. But I needed time to hack enough of the security system to get past the sexbot. Once I did that, it seemed wrong not to wait the short time to make the meeting, which Tapan was reasonably sure Tlacey didn’t know about. Reasonably sure.

It was probably a trap.

I needed to think. I told Tapan I was going to sleep for a while and laid down on my side on my section of padding. My recharge cycle isn’t obvious but it doesn’t look like a human sleeping, so what I was actually going to do was play some media in the background of my feed while I worked on my security countermeasures and looked up my old module on risk assessment.

Thirty-two minutes later, I heard movement. I thought Tapan was getting up to go to the restroom facility, but then she settled on the pads behind me, not quite touching my back. I had set my breathing to sound deep and even, like a human sleeping, with occasional random variations to add verisimilitude, so the fact that I had frozen in place wasn’t obvious.

I had never had a human touch me, or almost touch me, like this before and it was deeply, deeply weird.

Calm down, ART said, not helpfully.

I was too frozen to respond. After three seconds, ART added, She’s frightened. You are a reassuring presence.

I was still too frozen to answer ART, but I upped my body heat. Over the next two hours, she yawned twice, breathed deeply, and snorted occasionally. At the end of that time I changed my breathing and moved a little, and she immediately slid off my pad and over to hers.

By that time, I had a plan, sort of.

I convinced Tapan that I should go to the meeting, and she should get on a public shuttle to the transit ring immediately. She was reluctant. “I don’t want to abandon you,” she said. “You’re only involved in this because of us.”

That hit home so hard my insides clenched. I had to lean over and pretend to look through my bag to hide my expression. Company emergency protocol allows clients to abandon their SecUnits if necessary, even in situations where the company might never be able to retrieve them. Tapan was making me think of Mensah, yelling that she wouldn’t leave me. I said, “It’ll help me the most if you go back to the transit ring.”

It took a while, but I finally convinced her this was for the best for both of us.

Tapan left the hostel first, wearing both extra jackets from her pack to change her body shape and with the hood of one pulled up to conceal her hair and shadow her face. (This was mostly to make her feel more confident, and because I didn’t want to explain the extent to which I could gain temporary control over portions of RaviHyral’s admittedly not-great security system.) I watched her on the security cameras until I saw her reach the public dock about one hundred meters away, go down the walkway to the embarkation area, then board the shuttle that was scheduled to leave in twenty-one minutes. ART sent me an acknowledgment as it slid into the shuttle’s controls to guard the bot pilot again. Then I left the hostel.

I’d prepared a hack for the security cameras that was much more sophisticated than the one I’d been using up to this point. It involved getting into the operational code and setting the system on a tenth of a second delay, then deleting Tapan out and randomly replacing that part of the recording with pieces cut from earlier. This would work because the sexbot would be scanning the recordings the same way I would, using a body configuration scan. I didn’t match SecUnit standard anymore, but the sexbot had had plenty of time to scan my new configuration during that first meeting with Tlacey.

Right now I wanted the sexbot’s attention on me, and not the public dock. I let the cameras track me out of the port and back toward the tube access. Then I started the hack.

I was only 97 percent certain this meeting was a trap.