Recursion

constantine 4: 2119

Constantine walked into the hotel lobby, the green bottle containing the message gripped tightly in his hand.

A blue-suited receptionist met him as he crossed the floor toward the elevators, a company smile on her lips.

“Your guest is waiting for you in the Uluru Bar, Mr. D’Roza.”

His guest? Constantine hid his surprise.

“Thank you,” he said.

“And would you like me to dispose of your bottle, sir?”

The receptionist took the bottle from him. Constantine watched as she carried it off and dropped it in a bin behind the reception desk.

– It’s all a simulation, remember, said White.-There is nothing back there, behind the desk. The object will have been destroyed. Its resources restored to the heap. Now that the message has left the simulation, it will have some way of getting into the outside world.

– Fascinating, said Blue sarcastically.-Now, who do you think is waiting for us in the Uluru Bar?

– I’ve no idea. Have you got any suggestions, or are you just going to be sarcastic?

– No. Sorry.

There was a dark pause.

– I don’t like this. It’s not part of the script.

They rode the external elevator to the Uluru Bar, a dark glass-and-steel corner of the hotel where it was nearly impossible to tell what was real and what was a reflection. Booths and open seating areas were formed out of cuboids arranged at random orientations to each other, making navigation of the bar difficult without a waiter. Constantine was led to a table that seemingly hovered over nothing. Only the faint reflection of its steel legs in the glass floor indicated that he was not experiencing another fault in the simulation. The woman already seated there was hidden by shadow: the bar had been designed with just such an effect in mind.

Now she leaned forward. “Hello, Constantine.”

“Hello, Marion,” he replied. “Should you be here?”

– Be very, very careful, said a voice.

It was Grey. Constantine felt a little shiver of apprehension.

– This is it.

Marion smiled worriedly. She leaned closer and the strain was evident in her face.

“Oh, Constantine, I don’t know. We’re so close to the end, and I’m so worried. Tomorrow’s meeting is the last. We have to make the decision then.”

A waiter appeared, hovering a discreet distance away.

“Scotch,” said Constantine. “An Islay malt, if you have it.”

The waiter nodded and withdrew. Constantine looked sternly at Marion.

“I know, Marion. We’re all feeling the strain.”

“No one more than us, Constantine. The pair of us have been ghosts for the past two years. Does anyone else really understand how we feel?”

A picture of Mary, her dirty green suit trailing cotton from its skirt, sprang into Constantine’s mind. He dismissed it.

“I doubt it,” he said politely. “Look, Marion, it’s not safe for us to be seen together like this.”

Marion picked up her glass and took a sip. Constantine got the impression it wasn’t her first drink that night.

“We left in such a hurry today. So many things weren’t discussed. We’ll be going into tomorrow’s meeting with so much still unknown.”

“That can’t be helped.”

“Are you sure, Constantine? There could be an opportunity now to discuss things. Maybe tonight.” She smiled. “Who would suspect? Two people seen together earlier today, they meet in a bar later on. A woman and an…an attractive man, may I say?”

The waiter placed a cut crystal tumbler before Constantine and smoothly withdrew. The golden liquid inside seemed to light up by itself, casting a pattern of brilliant amber shards onto the table.

Constantine took a sip from the glass and bowed his head. He was stuck for words.

– Tell her you’re flattered, but that all matters must be discussed by the quorum. That was what it was set up for. Blue was shouting the words in frustration at Constantine’s hesitancy.

Constantine repeated what Blue had said.

Marion looked a little downcast. She took another sip, then reached out and touched Constantine’s sleeve.

– Are they for real? asked Red, incredulously.-They’re trying to seduce you?

“Okay,” she said. “Maybe no decisions can be made tonight. But that doesn’t stop us discussing things.”

Marion wore a blue silk evening dress. Her red hair was done up in a French plait. Constantine found her attractive on some abstract level. Whoever had set this up certainly knew how to play on his feelings… Maybe if he hadn’t felt so distracted he would be more open to seduction. Constantine loved his wife, but it had been two years now…

Blue was shouting in frustration.-Tell her you’d love to discuss things with her. Tell her that she looks stunning in that dress, or that you like her hair, or, or that her perfume smells nice. Anything! Just change the subject.

Grey spoke. He sounded cool, almost emotionless.

– Blue’s right. The more she now has to work at it, the more she will have to make obvious what she wants to know.

Constantine coughed. “Yes. Why don’t we talk? That dress really suits you, by the way.”

“Thank you.” Marion lowered her eyes for a moment. “I bought it here in Stonebreak. It’s so rare I get the chance to dress up for someone. I miss it.”

Constantine sipped at his whisky. It tasted convincingly smoky and peaty. Once again, he marveled at the depth of the virtual reality in which he was trapped.

“You must have visited quite a few places over the past two years,” said Marion.

“Haven’t we all?”

– Good answer, said Red.

Marion laughed a little.

“Tell me about it. Go on, Constantine, tell me. Where’s the best place you’ve been?”

He shrugged. Blue had an answer.

– Does it matter? One hotel is pretty much like another nowadays.

Constantine repeated Blue’s words.

Marion laughed again. “That’s so true.” She leaned forward with a serious expression. “But come on. There must have been some benefits. I mean, you must have made it off planet? You must have been to Mars?”

Constantine took another sip of whisky to conceal his reaction. He didn’t need Grey to warn him that this was a significant question. He affected a careless shrug.

– Tell her yes, said Grey carefully.

– And point out that she’s been there too, added Blue.-Ask her how she felt about being there.

Constantine did so. Marion shrugged and tilted her head to one side.

“Oh, amazed. The place is so modern and yet so ancient at the same time. Have you noticed the shape of the factories? They belong to a different age. You can feel it.”

Constantine nodded in agreement. “I know what you mean.”

Marion eagerly took up her theme. “It’s incredible to look out over a landscape that hasn’t been touched in any way by AIs. Preserving that place was the best decision humans ever made. It’s like nowhere on Earth. It makes you think, doesn’t it? Do you ever get the feeling that we’re relying on AIs too much?”

– All the time, said Grey.

– It’s safe enough to say that, added Blue.-It’s the paranoia of our times.

“All the time,” said Constantine.

Marion nodded. “And it goes deeper than you might think. People are losing faith in the human ability to think. Children are growing up believing that if it isn’t an AI construct, it isn’t worth having. Worse, they assume that human minds can’t equal the achievements of the AIs. I mean, for heaven’s sake, it was humans who invented the wheel, and the sailing ship and the fugue and, and-”

“-and the warp drive.” Constantine smiled. “Or so Gillian says, anyway.”

– Nice distraction, Red applauded.

Marion laughed. She had a pretty smile that lit up her whole face, tiny wrinkles forming at the corners of her eyes. Constantine found himself smiling back at her. The moment stretched…and then her face fell.

“But didn’t it make you think?” She picked up her glass and turned it around in her hands. “Didn’t it make you want to just take a piece of that place and bring it back with you? To show to people, to say, ‘Look, this is what we humans did, all by ourselves’?”

– That’s it, said Grey.-That’s what they’re trying to discover.

Constantine sat back in his chair. Beneath his feet were a few centimeters of glass, the only thing between him and several hundred meters of empty space. At that moment he felt as if he were perched on the edge of a precipice both literally and figuratively. He drained the rest of his whisky.

“Well, Marion. I did bring something back. Surely you know that?”

– What? said Blue.-What are you playing at?

– No, he’s right, said Red.-They must have figured it out for themselves. What harm does it do us if they know, anyway?

Marion’s eyes fluttered nervously. “Of course, of course. I just meant, well, you’d want to, wouldn’t you? Take a little souvenir, I mean.”

Constantine waved his glass in her direction.

“Uh-huh. Look, I need another drink. What about you?”

“Better not. Another brandy and I won’t be responsible for my actions.” An uncertain smile spread across her face. “Then again, why not? I’m sure I can trust you, can’t I?”

– This is so corny! complained Blue.

Constantine signaled to the waiter for the same again. Marion slumped back in her chair while he gazed out across the first and second levels of Stonebreak, out toward the dark ribbons of cloud stretching between the moon and the distant horizon. The waiter placed their drinks on the table and withdrew. Marion picked up her glass and took a sip. She leaned forward with her elbows on the table, her hands supporting her head, fingers buried in her hair, and gave Constantine a big smile.

“This is amazing, isn’t it? I’m with a man who has held a piece of the old world in his hands. What was it like?”

Constantine needed no exhortation to speak. It had been a key moment in his life. He longed to share it with someone. He sat back, his eyes taking on a dreamy expression.

“Strange. Exhilarating. Frightening. It was the moment we had been leading up to for a year, it is the moment that everything we have done since then has depended upon.”

“But it worked? You got it back to Earth.”

And that was it. Constantine felt a little catch in his voice as he spoke. He hoped she wouldn’t notice it.

“I did what I was supposed to do,” he said.

– She doesn’t know what it is. They don’t know where we took it! Got them at last! Blue was practically singing with delight.

“How did you conceal it, when you took it off planet?”

“I didn’t. I kept it in full view. They thought it was a museum exhibit. I suppose it was, really.”

“And then you took it to Frankfurt.”

“Come on, Marion. I don’t think we should discuss this anymore. We will have enough time for that tomorrow. Let’s wait until we’re quorate.”

Marion gave a shrug.

“Spoilsport. Are you always so firm with women?”

– Did she really just say what I thought she just said? said Blue in disbelief.

Constantine looked at his watch.

“After nine. We have an early start tomorrow. Maybe we should get to bed.”

Marion smiled knowingly. “Is that an invitation?”

Constantine grinned back. “You want to be careful. You could get a married man into trouble.” He laughed. After a moment’s hesitation, Marion joined in.

Constantine drained his glass and rose to his feet.

“Well, I’m off. Good night, Marion.”

He leaned across and gave her a peck on the cheek, then turned and walked from the bar.

A clamor of voices arose in his head.

– Well done! That was excellent! Blue was delighted with Constantine’s performance.

– It was good, said Red, though he sounded distracted.-Still, why pull that now? Why not just wait until the meeting tomorrow?

– Maybe they were worried things wouldn’t get decided? said Blue.

– Maybe. But I wonder. Maybe something else is happening out there. Maybe DIANA is moving in on them. Getting ready to free us.

– Maybe maybe maybe, said Blue.-What do you think, Grey?

No one expected Grey to answer. They were surprised when he did.

– I don’t know. I am seriously concerned. Now that we know what they are trying to find out, I think we may have been premature in trying to get a message out to DIANA. I hope that we will not come to regret our earlier request to Jay.

Marion came into Constantine’s room that night. He woke to find her standing at the foot of his bed, something in her hand, an odd smile on her face.

“Marion,” said Constantine. “How did you get in here?”

She held up the item in her hand. It was the same bottle Jay had given him earlier that evening.

“No, thank you, Marion. I’ve had enough to drink.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes. He wondered if his other personalities were sleeping.

– I’m here, said White.-I’ll wake them.

Marion’s smile widened a little, though there was a hint of pity in her eyes.

“Nice try, Constantine. Come on.”

She turned from the bed and walked toward the large picture window that looked out over Stonebreak. Constantine rose to his feet to follow. He was clothed in a simple, white, one-piece jumpsuit. He didn’t recognize it; he didn’t remember putting it on. With a sinking heart he followed her.

Marion took hold of the handle that opened the window leading to the balcony, the same balcony where he had spoken to Jay not twenty-four hours before. She gave Constantine a sympathetic look.

“Brace yourself,” she said.

Constantine wondered what she meant, then she slid open the window. There was nothing beyond it. Nothing. Just a dull grey space. Constantine shivered. The view was unnerving. At the wall containing the window that led to the balcony, the world had just been split in two. Through the glass of the sliding window that Marion had pushed to one side he could see the nightscape over Stonebreak. The dark space that was defined by the lights of the city, the stars and the moon. To the left of the glass, where he should have seen the balcony beyond, there was nothing. An emptiness, a lack of anything that made him feel quite terrified.

He was looking into oblivion. It was the gap beneath the sky. It was the end of his virtual life.

Marion stepped beyond the world. Constantine watched her walk out into the grey emptiness. She turned and beckoned to him to follow.

“Come on,” she called. “We need to talk.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Constantine stepped forward.

He walked into the greyness. There was nothing beneath his feet, and yet, as he walked, he seemed to move forward. It was an odd feeling; there was no resistance to his tread.

Marion was waiting for him up ahead. As he came level with her, she indicated that he should look back the way he had come. There he saw a rectangle hanging in the greyness, a portal that led back to the world. Through it he could see the cream corduroy carpet of the hotel room, the edge of his bed, the corner of a pastel print.

Marion spoke softly. “You’ve been very unlucky. Your message made it to the outside world, but unfortunately for you, the object code failed to destroy itself. It was analyzed in a routine efficiency scan just as its resources were about to be returned to the heap and it caused an exception to be thrown. Even then, we would have wondered at its meaning if it hadn’t been for something you said earlier.”

“What’s that?”

“Back in the concert hall, yesterday. You subvocalized something to your internal personalities: ‘I’m not sure the Night Jay will have a method of contacting the outside world.’”

“Oh,” said Constantine.

– Stupid, stupid, stupid! said Red.

– It’s too late to worry about that now, said Grey.

Marion continued. “You had the whole realside team in turmoil because of that. What did you mean, ‘outside world’? What was the Night Jay? They couldn’t believe that the simulation had been compromised. Most of them assumed it was some sort of code. They didn’t want to believe you had found out where you were. And then we found the message in the bottle.”

“Oh,” said Constantine. He didn’t know what else to say.

Marion touched his elbow. “Look, it was a mistake anyone could make. You’re up against a team of a hundred people.”

Again he was lost for words. Marion cleared her throat.

“Anyway. While I was busy trying to seduce you in here, the powers that be out in the real world were putting together an offer.”

Constantine nodded. “I’m listening.”

Grey spoke with cold finality.

– There can be no bargains.

Marion gave a tiny shake of her head. “I’m not sure that you would really understand what the offer means. You don’t understand what’s involved here. That’s why we’re going to show you.”

She reached out her hand into the nothingness and pulled it to one side. Another door opened in space. Through it Constantine could see a corridor, just a little wider than the doorway itself. A steep stairway, looking oddly familiar, led downward. He strained to see more, hungry for the touch of reality in the empty world. It looked so real. He could make out cracked paint on the ceiling; he could see how the stone of the steps was slightly dipped in the center where so many people had already trodden.

“Go on down,” said Marion.

Constantine did not need to be told. He was already stepping into the welcoming doorway. Anything to get out of this dreadful nothingness. He walked down eight or nine steps, feeling the reassuring solidness of the stone beneath his feet. He pressed a hand gratefully against the cool, cream-painted plaster of the wall. Marion stepped onto the top step behind him and pulled a cream-painted door closed behind her. She sat down on the top step and took a deep breath.

“What now?”

“Go down the steps,” said Marion. “Someone will be waiting for you at the bottom.”

“Aren’t you coming, too?”

“No. I’ll wait here for your return.” She shivered, and said with real feeling. “I couldn’t bear to wait out there.”

Constantine shivered in sympathy. “I know what you mean.” He turned and began to descend.

Constantine danced quickly down the stairs, the stone treads beneath his feet sending up a pitter-patter echo in the narrow passageway. As he reached a landing, the stairway reversed direction, yet still heading down. The feeling that he had been here before was rising in Constantine all the time. Onto another landing and he reversed direction again. There was a door at the bottom of this next flight of steps. A green double door with anti-crush bars stretched across, faintly patterned with the oil of a thousand fingerprints. And Constantine at last remembered where he was. He pushed open the doors of the concert hall and stepped out onto the wide paved area of the fourth level of Stonebreak.

A familiar figure in a shabby green suit was waiting for him, just beyond the doors.

“Hello, Mary,” said Constantine.

Mary led him to a nearly empty cafe bar located close to the Source. They ordered tiny cups of espresso and tall glasses of chilled water and carried them to a table well away from the bored-looking youth who served at the counter. Around them, the tables were still littered with dirty cups, dried coffee foam forming tidemarks around the rims; half-eaten sandwiches, and cakes dried and curled on plates. Mary looked across to the five entwined branches of the Source and then raised her espresso cup to Constantine.

“Cheers,” she said.

“Cheers.”

Mary sipped at the strong coffee then took a drink of cold water. Constantine did the same. The contrast between the strong, hot, bitter coffee and the refreshing coldness of the water was stimulating. Constantine replaced his cup on the saucer and sat up straight.

“What’s it all about, Mary?”

She sat up a little straighter too and looked at him.

“I was supposed to be your conscience. It was another possible way to get what we wanted from you.”

Constantine said nothing for a moment, took another sip of espresso, another of water.

“It probably stood the best chance of working, you know.”

“The company AI said it would. I never believed it.”

“Which company is it?”

“The company now called 113 Berliner Sibelius, following the corporate merger at the AI level earlier this week. My presence is also partly explained by the much more environmentally aware policy we’ve been pursuing since then. I’m not sure it’s to our benefit, you know, but there you go. Who are we to argue with an AI?”

“Who indeed?” asked Constantine. He looked across to the Source again.

“Is the DIANA strand crumbling out in the real world, too?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mary.

He finished off the espresso and downed the rest of the water in one gulp. He was ready for a whisky, now.

“So. What is it you want to know?” he asked.

Mary smiled at him and sat back in her seat. A young couple crossed the square behind her, wrapped up in each other’s arms.

“Three things,” said Mary.

She raised a finger. “One, how did you carry the VNM away from Mars?”

She raised a second finger. “Two, where did you take the VNM? How are you maintaining its integrity?”

A third finger. “And three, what are you going to do with it?”

“Can’t you guess?” asked Constantine.

“Oh, we can see the point, sort of. We know that the VNM is entirely the product of human ingenuity. As a human-” she smiled briefly “-as the personality construct of a human, I share your concerns about the motivations of AIs and realize the value of having something untouched by their machinations. We just don’t see the commercial advantage.”

“Maybe there isn’t one.”

Mary said nothing. Constantine held her gaze for a moment.

“Okay. I’ll answer your first question. I didn’t take the VNM off the planet. I couldn’t. You’re thinking of modern self-replicating machines, the sort of thing you can hold in your hand or pour by the million into a bottle. This was a first attempt: thirty gigabytes of code and about one hundred tons of raw materials. It was the code that counted. That’s what I took away.”

“Couldn’t you just get it from records here on Earth?”

“How do we know it hadn’t been subtly altered by the AIs in the meantime? How paranoid can we be here? Every processor, every memory slice that can be accessed by an AI is necessarily suspect. I couldn’t even trust a modern secured memory slice; it would have to interface with modern equipment eventually and then that code would become visible. So I took something called a laptop computer. Over a hundred years old-an oversized plastic box with a fixed-size viewing field and a data entry area that hurts your back and arms and neck just using it.”

Constantine rubbed his hands unconsciously as he remembered the odd machine: crouching at the overlarge device, the strange feel of the antique plastic keys moving beneath his fingers as he painfully typed out instructions, the eerie glow of the viewing area on his face; the humming noise and the bizarre way that it blew warm air out of a vent in its side as it worked; the fact it needed a power source-what modern thinking machine needed power?

“It was a museum piece, Mary,” he said. “Priceless. They can’t make them anymore. You’d have to build a factory just to construct the processor. Too much effort. There’re only about ten of them left working now. When they all die, that will be it. The programs that ran on them will live on in emulators, but the original machines that made those programs live will be just so much metal and plastic. It’s…not sad exactly. I don’t know…The passing of something?”

He tilted his head to one side. “You know, that’s just like us, isn’t it? Minds without bodies. I never thought of that before.” There was another pause.

He sighed. “You know, this is nice in a way. Two years alone. It’s nice to speak to someone about things. What I’ve done. What I’ve seen. Have you ever been to Mars, Mary?”

She shook her head.

“It’s an odd place. A vision of what might have been. The future maybe, but not our future. A Buck Rogers future…” His voice trailed away as he remembered the events of a year ago. Flying up to the Martian factory mine. Its odd pyramidal shape seemed appropriate somehow on the red plain of the Martian desert. The soft voices of the flier’s pilot and of Louisiana Station control were the only sounds in the cabin as they approached the red-and-silver mass of the construction. They had skimmed over the tracks of two robot crawlers, low cylinders suspended from huge balloon tires that were trundling in a straight line from the base, headed who could know where. The mine drew closer. A jumble of steel and iron and rock. A miniature city built by and for machines.

Constantine jerked himself back to the present. “The AIs haven’t touched the place. It’s a preserved land, but what they’ve preserved there is our human past. The original project has been left to run unhindered. Everything there is a product of human ingenuity. It’s…” He shook his head.

“The…silence there, the intent…I can’t describe it. We developed Antarctica, we let AIs loose on the moon…I don’t know.”

Mary said nothing. The young man who had been serving behind the bar had finally left his place and was clearing used cups and litter onto a tray.

“I landed there and entered through a maintenance hatch. Can you imagine, those earthbound engineers, over a hundred years ago, designing a city that was to grow on another world? A city that only existed to them as lines of code, designed to be built in a place they could never visit. And while they wrote that program, they thought to include doors for future humans to enter the site, and access corridors and interface slots where they could plug in their laptops.”

He shook his head in admiration.

“They were building castles in the air, but they made them real.” He shook his head again. “Do you know how long I have waited to talk to somebody about this?”

“I can guess. I don’t think I can truly appreciate what it really must have been like.”

“No, I don’t think you could. Anyway. I went in there and plugged in the laptop. Filled it with the program that is the seed of a new factory and then got back on the flier. Went back to Louisiana Station. Back into our world. You know, you sit in a hotel room on Louisiana Station and look out at red Martian plains littered with rocks and you see Mons Olympus rising up over the horizon. Close the blinds and you could be anywhere. You could be back here on Earth. You sit in a room with the same bed and pastel prints and minibar serving filthy vanilla-flavored whisky.”

He sighed and looked down at the simple white jumpsuit that he had found himself wearing. He suddenly realized that it didn’t have a zipper or any other way to take it off. Whoever was controlling this simulation was making a subtle point.

“Anyway, that’s it. That’s how I got the VNM off Mars. I’d have thought you could have figured that out for yourself.”

Red spoke up.-They probably did. It’s an old interrogator’s trick. Start with the easy questions. Get the subject talking.

Mary smiled at him. “We had some ideas. We just wanted to know for sure. What about the other two questions? Are you going to answer those?”

“I don’t know,” said Constantine.

– You’re not. Grey’s tone was low and final.

Constantine shivered. It hadn’t occurred to him, until that point, that he might not have a choice in his actions. Grey had already demonstrated that he could take over control of his body.

“I’m not sure I will be able to,” he added, too softly for Mary to hear.

Mary had already risen to her feet. “We thought you might not be cooperative. Come on. We’re going to try and change your mind.”

She led him out of the bar. They walked side by side across the large flagstones of the fourth level. The moon was banded by thickening streamers of cloud, giving the impression of being behind a set of Venetian blinds.

“See the moon?” asked Mary.

Before Constantine could answer her, the bands of cloud widened, blocking out the moon completely. They quickly narrowed again, but now the moon had gone. In its place was a hole to somewhere else. Through it, a great eye looked down at Constantine. A blue eye; it blinked twice. Long curling eyelashes swept up and down, down and up.

“Everything you do is being watched. This world has been constructed entirely for you. It can look like this…” She waved a hand around, indicating the Source, the bar they had just left and the nearby concert hall. She took hold of Constantine’s arm and swiftly guided him to a grey door set in the wall of the concert hall, one of the many exits used to empty the building quickly once the entertainment had finished.

She stood Constantine before the door and looked the other way.

“Or it can look like this,” she continued.

The door swung open. Constantine looked through it into Hell. He saw flames. A demon was staring out at Constantine. It held a book tightly gripped in its twelve hooked hands. Constantine saw his name clearly inscribed on the front. The demon was standing by a strange machine made out of stainless steel, all blades and needles and with someone strapped inside it… The door suddenly swung closed.

Mary turned to face him, her face pale. “It’s an idle threat, Constantine. It costs too much running the simulation that keeps us all in here. The processing power could be put to better, more profitable uses. You, me, Marion and…the other one. We’re all personalities trapped in this bottle. They’ll just turn us off if we don’t deliver.”

Mary shivered and looked up to the great eye, staring down from the hole where the moon had been. A look of defiance crossed her face.

“I don’t care, Constantine. I’m telling you the truth now. You don’t know what it’s like. You’re more honest than we are. You didn’t volunteer to come in here. The real me, the one out there in the real world, has sentenced a copy of herself to oblivion for the sake of a bonus of a few hundred credits. What does that tell you about human beings, Constantine? Would you do that to yourself? I bet you would.”

She began to shake; she looked as if she was about to start crying.

“I don’t know what to say, Constantine. I don’t know what to tell you. This is the deal: you tell us what we want to know and we keep the simulation going. That way, you have a life; we have a life. You don’t tell us, and I don’t know what will happen. Maybe it will be what you saw through that door. Personally, I think they’ll just turn us off. Why throw good money after bad?”

“How can I trust you?” asked Constantine.

“You can’t. But what other choice do you have?”

“I don’t know. I need to think.”

Mary nodded. “I bet you do. Well, here’s something else to think about. Why are you protecting DIANA? Do you know they’ve already launched three attacks on this computer, the one in which we now reside? The third one almost succeeded. They got a worm into the system that would have wiped the entire simulation if we hadn’t found it in time. For DIANA, the best way to keep secret what you know is to destroy you.”

Constantine opened his mouth to argue, but he couldn’t find the words. What Mary said made sense. He didn’t want it to be so, but it made sense. What would he do if he was outside and not trapped in here?

And that was the point. He was outside. The real Constantine was out there somewhere. And Constantine, now shuddering violently in the warm night air, knew exactly what he would be thinking:

At all costs the project must be protected.

Somehow I must wipe out the copy of my personality.