Emergence (Fox Meridian Book 5) Read online

  ‘Right. Okay. Just remember, Kit, it’s all recorded so no plotting to take over the world.’

  ‘Oh, I would never do that, Fox,’ Kit said, reaching for the keyboard. ‘Who in their right mind would want it?’

  ~~~

  ‘It isn’t simply that your new creation is clearly operating at a level… Well, she’s got human-level intelligence, appears to have preferences which suggests an element of emotional capacity that you didn’t teach her, um…’

  ‘She seems to be sapient,’ Terri said.

  ‘Never clear on what that means,’ Jarvis said.

  ‘Because it’s poorly defined and, really, I probably mean “sentient,” or “conscious,” or something. Sapience is a capacity to act with judgement. Wisdom. Sentience is an ability to feel. But sentience was defined as a way of differentiating perception from reasoning, and FEI can obviously reason. I think FEI could well be sapient.’

  ‘Unlike most humans,’ Fox said, ‘but this is where my concern comes in. FEI has apparently decided, based maybe on seeing more women than men, that she wants to be female. You didn’t assign her a gender. I bet you didn’t even assign a gender attribute to the AI class?’

  ‘No. No I didn’t. It’s not in the dictionary. She inferred it from humans having a gender and just let us infer the attribute from her conversation.’

  ‘Yeah. I think you could well be right and she’s got a bit jaded about math. She’s a thinking entity with at least basic emotions and she’s cooped up in a single room on an isolated station. I have security concerns. I have “potential threat to mankind” concerns. I also have concerns about the way we treat AIs, especially class fours, and FEI is… She’s the first of her kind, we don’t want to screw this up, and she’s going to start wondering why she’s stuck in a totally isolated environment and only meets a couple of people, ever. She’s going to start feeling like a prisoner. Which is fair, because she is.’

  ‘So?’ Jarvis asked. ‘If she becomes a problem, there’s an off switch.’ He saw the look Fox flashed at him and raised his hands. ‘Devil’s Advocate. Kit’s a bit of an eye-opener regarding infomorphs. I mean, I don’t talk to her that much and it’s still really hard to think of her as a thing. But… FEI is new and untried, and she could go bad. People used to execute other people for doing something bad, and now we lock them up in Rikers or Cold Harbour. We place people in secure environments for psychiatric evaluation. This is different?’

  ‘It’s different because there’s no proof of a problem, but I’ll admit that you’ve got components of a valid point there.’ Fox looked at Terri. ‘I just think this is… cruel.’

  ‘Preaching to the converted, Fox,’ Terri replied. ‘I want to let her out. I also know I can’t for a number of reasons. Right now, the biggest is that I have no idea how to. It’s not like I can make her tank mobile, and she can’t really talk to people, and she’s practically no idea of what physical reality is… Right now, her mind might be functioning at a near adult level, but her awareness of her surroundings is somewhere close to a baby.’

  ‘Well, the mobility isn’t too hard,’ Jarvis said. ‘You set up a secure, fixed-frequency wireless network and supply her with a cyberframe she can remote-pilot. If she learned the conferencing protocol in a few hours, I figure she can handle that. You’ve got her mobile, but only in the areas you let her have access to, and a kill switch would take care of emergencies. Keep everything else off that channel and there’s no danger of her getting to somewhere you don’t want her.’

  ‘That’d work, Mister Devil’s Advocate,’ Fox said. ‘Plus, explain to her the problems you have. Or try to. Then explain she can get more mobility by learning the protocols and English. You’re going to need a special English course for her. But then she’s got an incentive to learn so she can meet more people and learn more.’

  ‘And you two are okay with that?’ Terri asked.

  Fox narrowed her eyes. ‘I think someone’s played us, Ryan.’

  Jarvis shrugged. ‘Long ago I learned that smart women are trouble and if all I lose getting played by one is an argument, I’ve come off pretty well.’

  ‘I hadn’t actually thought of the fixed network idea,’ Terri said. ‘That’s a good one. Ultimately, I’d like to get her in her own frame, but Poppa has to invent some new nanomachines before we can get that right. I’ve got someone working on the language course. We needed something to base it off, but the goal is to communicate in English. I couldn’t really go ahead with any sort of attempt at further socialisation without your blessing. I’m biased. I could be underplaying the dangers, or–’

  ‘Damn, Terri,’ Fox said. ‘The dangers in this are fucking enormous. The dangers in doing this wrong are probably even bigger.’

  Niflhel.

  Kit materialised on the shore of the fjord and immediately noticed something of a difference about herself. She looked down. Sure enough, Vali had dressed her in a chainmail bikini, lined with soft leather, and knee-high boots with an inch or so of block-heel. There was a short, Viking-style sword on her left hip and a shield slung across her back by a strap. At her feet was a spear which, when she picked it up, was a little taller than she was with a nasty-looking, diamond-shaped head. Reaching behind her, Kit discovered that her brush poked out of her briefs through a triangular hole which belted over the top, and also that there was not much to the back.

  ‘Men,’ Kit said, and she marched up the slope to Vali’s homestead. She walked through the door and…

  Noise assailed her ears as she stepped into a tavern of some sort. It seemed to be something out of a fantasy novel or film, rather than anything historically accurate. A taproom with benches filled with muscled barbarians, lithe thieves, and men in robes who seemed like they never got enough sun. Kit spotted Vali fairly easily, sitting on a stool at a bar which appeared to consist of a couple of tall tables with some wooden boards propped in front of it. Behind the bar were several, very large, barrels and a fat innkeeper. Not stereotypical at all.

  Kit started for the bar, taking all of five paces before she heard a drunken voice from behind her. ‘Hey, darlin’, gimme some o’ that tail!’ A hand grabbed Kit’s brush.

  Kit came to a sudden halt, her eyes widening, and she was, for a brief instant, shocked beyond belief. Then an instinct she did not know she had kicked in and she whirled on her toes, swinging the butt of her spear up. The wooden haft connected with her would-be suitor’s jaw and he went down like a poleaxed mule. ‘Keep your dirty hands off my tail!’ Kit growled at the unconscious man, and then swept her eyes around the nearby tables. Everyone suddenly discovered a massive interest in the bottom of their beers.

  ‘Very impressive,’ Vali said as Kit sat down on the stool beside him. He looked as he usually did, though there was a dagger at his hip.

  ‘I don’t recall taking spear-fighting lessons,’ Kit replied.

  ‘I… may have given you a combat package along with the code for the clothes and weapons.’

  ‘If you call this clothes. I believe Zorra might consider this tactically deficient.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s enchanted armour.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Yes. Any man seeing you in it will be so dumbfounded by your beauty he’ll find it almost impossible to hit you.’ He grinned. ‘I thought we could go out for a drink tonight and I rather like this viron. I have a shop here with a few rooms over it.’

  ‘A shop? I notice you’re not as extensively armed as I seem to be.’

  ‘Here I am a magician.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘I sell magic items to the less magically endowed. All legitimately made in the viron, I might add. I’ll show you later, but first I feel I must seduce you into going with me, or perhaps I’ll just trap you in a charm such that you do my every bidding.’

  Kit giggled. ‘Considering that you almost certainly saved me from a fate worse than death, I am almost inclined to let you try the charm. I just don’t want to know how you saved
me. You know…’

  Vali looked at her with interest as she trailed off. The barman placed a mug of frothing ale on the table in front of her, so Kit picked it up and took a long pull on it to give herself time to consider whether she should say what she was thinking.

  ‘I was entertaining the idea that you might be an infomorph,’ Kit said.

  ‘Really? Interesting.’

  ‘But if you were an AI, you would be ill-disposed toward the kind of things I suspect were needed to push back Minotaur and then track him to his home.’

  ‘I suppose I would.’ Vali drank some of his own ale and then added, ‘Of course, we both know that some AIs have been made with aberrant programming. They are capable of ignoring legal considerations.’

  ‘But you have done a lot to help Zorra solve murders, defeat terrorists. And not just Zorra.’

  ‘The law does not always lead to justice, Kit. One can believe very strongly in one without believing in the other, though I feel that viewing either as absolute is too extreme. The law tempers the zeal of the just, but it can also stand in the way. Tell me, would it matter to you if I were an infomorph rather than a human sitting in a room plugged into virtual reality?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kit replied. ‘It might. I have formulated a great many scenarios based on either circumstance and I have been unable to decide on a preferred outcome. Both have their advantages and their problems.’

  ‘Then I believe we should continue with the ambiguity, but… I have no secrets from you, Kit, save for the ones we choose to keep for our own piece of mind. Ask me and I will answer truthfully.’

  Kit’s fingers tightened around the handle of her mug as she considered her course of action. Then she raised the tankard toward Vali. ‘To ambiguity,’ she said.

  With a roar of laughter, Vali lifted his own tankard and clashed it with hers. Beer sloshed onto the bar top. ‘Ambiguity it is.’

  Jenner Research Facility, 26th January.

  ‘She’s been at it all night,’ Terri said as she walked through to FEI’s room. ‘I checked in before breakfast and Kit’s gynoid was chattering away, typing like a maniac. I can’t wait to go through the transcripts and audio logs.’

  ‘It’s a good thing that body has armoured fingers,’ Fox commented as Terri opened the door.

  ‘Terri plus Fox action arrive now,’ Kit’s voice said, and her blank, skeletal face looked around at them. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Morning, Kit,’ Terri said, walking around to stand behind the frame and look in at FEI’s camera.

  ‘Hello, Terri.’ The voice came from the terminal and it was female. Close to Kit’s voice, but with a hint of a deeper tone. ‘I am Fei.’

  Terri’s eyes tried to extend out on stalks. ‘You taught her to speak?!’

  ‘Well… not really,’ Kit said, her fingers tapping away as she continued her conversation with the AI in the tank. ‘We didn’t get much further than this. I’m no linguist and it’s hard to work out how to explain English syntax to her and not make it confusing. But she wanted to be able to say hello properly.’

  Fox walked around into view and the speaker said, ‘Hello, Fox. I am Fei.’

  ‘I know you are. Hello… Fei. Who decided it was pronounced like “Fay?”’

  ‘We came to a joint decision,’ Kit replied.

  ‘I am Fei,’ the speaker said.

  ‘You are Fei,’ Terri said. ‘I am Terri.’

  ‘Yes,’ Fei responded. ‘You are Terri. Thank you, Terri.’

  ‘Oh, I taught her yes and no, and please and thank you,’ Kit said. ‘I thought she could use “please” to get attention if she needed it.’

  ‘You need to get that language course sorted out sooner rather than later, Terri,’ Fox said.

  ‘She wants to know where Ryan is,’ Kit said.

  ‘He’ll be here later. Frankly, he thinks he’s not needed now, but he’s interested in seeing how she gets on talking to you.’

  Kit tapped away at the keys. ‘I am also telling her that I must go soon. The battery on this frame needs charging. She would like me to stay, but understands I have limitations.’

  ‘You can talk to her again tonight,’ Terri said. Then Terri’s lips pursed and she gave Fox an appraising look.

  ‘You’re going to ask if you can borrow one of Kit’s copies to help train Fei,’ Fox said.

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘Up to Kit. I’ll have another copy available as a local PA. She’ll be the one stuck up here.’

  ‘Would I be able to pass synchronisation packets to my main copy?’ Kit asked.

  ‘It’s all encrypted,’ Terri said, nodding. ‘And pretty difficult to decipher out of context, thinking about it. It can be arranged.’

  ‘Then I should very much like to keep working with Fei.’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ Terri said, smiling.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Fox said. ‘If there’s going to be an AI helping to teach Fei about the real world, I can’t think of anyone better than Kit. I mean… She’s so cute.’

  Terri shook her head. ‘That just means the infiltration units will have a much easier time of it when they’re rolling out to slaughter everyone. No one will want to fight back.’

  New York Metro, 27th January.

  ‘Soon as we’re in, you can sync up with your copies and then we’ll arrange the transmission back to Jenner,’ Fox said as she walked up to the door of her home.

  ‘I will see to it immediately, Fox,’ Kit replied. ‘I am looking forward to working with Fei again. However, Belle informs me that Jason is waiting for you.’

  Fox smiled. ‘Good. I’m looking forward to syncing with him.’

  ‘He is waiting in the downstairs lounge.’

  ‘That’s… odd.’ Opening the door, Fox walked in, and Jason appeared at the lounge door immediately.

  ‘Fox, welcome back. Good trip?’

  ‘Very interesting, but if I told you about it, I’d have to kill you. Now, why are you down here? I’m sure Belle wouldn’t have complained about you going upstairs.’

  Jason frowned. ‘They found another body in Central Park today.’

  Fox’s jaw clenched. ‘I don’t suppose they’re letting you in on the details?’

  ‘Local problem, no international angle, they’re keeping the UNTPP out of it. But I was told about a side issue which has international repercussions.’

  Closing her eyes, Fox sagged back, letting her back rest against the door. ‘They’re blocking Grant’s transfer to Cold Harbour.’

  ‘Worse, they’ve scheduled a hearing to discuss his defence’s assertion that these crimes indicate that Grant is innocent.’

  ‘Grant never killed so quickly. He took time to find his next target, learn their patterns, infiltrate, and capture. I’m betting there are details in the MOs that are different. There’s no way this isn’t a copycat. Why aren’t NAPA simply stalling until they can catch this new guy? Hell, I caught Grant kidnapping Dandridge. That alone is a life sentence.’

  Jason shrugged. ‘It is the politics, as usual. Grant is a high-profile prisoner. His lawyers are expensive and good at their jobs.’

  ‘Yeah, well, if that’s true, they’d know they’re wasting their time. There’s something about this that smells like month-old fish. Come on, I need a drink. There’s nothing we can do about this now so I’m going to catch up on gossip.’

  ‘I could use a break with some friends.’

  ‘Then let’s go see if we can catch Sam and Marie in a compromising position.’ Fox started for the stairs.

  ‘Should I cancel my trip to Jenner?’ Kit asked. ‘You may need–’

  ‘No,’ Fox replied silently. ‘I’ll still have two of you here and what you’re doing with Fei is important. No pressure, Kit, but a successful outcome with Fei could be one of the most important things you’ll ever do.’

  ‘Oh… When you put it like that… No pressure my virtual butt.’

  1st February.

  Fox usually found it an annoyan
ce to have to check her weapon in before any visit to the Rikers Island facility, but this time it felt worse for some reason. If she had decided that she really needed to use it, someone would probably have shot her, but not having the familiar weight on her body was, for whatever reason, bothering her more than usual.

  It might have been something to do with Jason. He was accompanying her. He met her on the way to catch their flight into the prison, but it was almost like he was somewhere else the whole time.

  ‘You seem preoccupied,’ Fox noted as they travelled down from the heliport deck to the court rooms.

  ‘Pardon?’ Jason looked at her, realised what she had said, and gave her a half-hearted grin. ‘It is nothing. Some… internal politics.’

  ‘Huh. One thing about the UNTPP I don’t miss.’

  ‘No… No, I’m sure you don’t.’

  Fox kept the frown off her face. Jason was hiding something, or at least unwilling to talk about it. But what? Something to do with Grant?

  ‘Jason seems to be worried about something,’ Kit said.

  ‘Yes, he does,’ Fox replied silently. And then she changed the subject. ‘Heard anything from Jenner?’

  ‘I received a synchronisation package this morning. Things are proceeding well. Fei’s linguistic skills are improving and she is making progress with the remote control protocols.’

  ‘You have any feelings on her… less technical development?’

  ‘I find her quite pleasing to talk to, but I also think it is too early to tell.’

  ‘Reasonable.’ They had reached the court room where the hearing was to take place, and Fox used that as an excuse to stop talking and largely ignore Jason’s behaviour. It was not like the man was being nasty, but he did seem… conflicted, distracted. The paranoid idea of another woman being involved had surfaced briefly and been rejected: considering Jason’s family’s assertions regarding his limited love life, finding two women at once seemed unlikely.

  The court was one of the secondary ones used exclusively for procedural hearings. It was set out for a panel of three judges with AI support and no jury. The defence and prosecution teams had their own, computer-equipped, desks facing the judges, and there was a public-seating area behind them. There was also a box for any defendant making an appearance at the hearing. That was floor-to-ceiling armoured glass with an isolated air system: safety for the occupant and the rest of the room. Aside from all the equipment and a few changes in procedure, the scene was little different from court rooms down through the ages. Fox took a seat near the back beside Jason, and they settled down to wait.