Tom Easton - Silicon Karma

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SILICON KARMA

Tom Easton

For Betty Sue

My thanks to David Hartwell, Don Maass, Rebecca Ore, Mike Resnick, and

Stewart Wieck. Those defects of the tale that have survived their

helpful efforts are my fault alone.

An earlier version of this novel was published on disk in April 1995 by

Serendipity Systems P. O. Box 140 San Simeon, CA 93452

PROLOGUE: RUMORS OF HAZARD

The last thing Albert Pillock remembered was sitting in the crapper

behind the Mandelbrot Tap's tiny kitchen and thinking that it was about

time he B-cupped. That thought had been enough to materialize the

utility popup he needed. It looked like a small woman whose gray hair

was covered by a green kerchief. A coverall of the same color was

embroidered with the logo of Iron Lady B-Cup Security. It was sitting on

the edge of the sink, snapping gum, swinging its feet, tossing in one

hand a vial of large purple pills, and saying, "You'd think people would

remember to back up their memories in the kitchen or the living room,

but no, no. I've got to work in the toilet!" After a brief pause to give

him a chance to smile, it held up the pills and added, "You wanta do it

cold? Or do you want one of these horse chokers?"

He remembered shuddering. That was why he didn't B-cup as often he

should. That was why no one did. It took time, it produced a thundering

headache, and the pills that prevented the headache tasted like a

combination of bad breath and ear wax. He didn't know why, though he

could guess at a programmer with a sick sense of humor. He did know the

headache wasn't necessary, for the few times the power had failed and

the system's automatic B-cup had kicked in, there had been none. At

least the Albert Pillock who had experienced the headache hadn't

survived to remember it. Just as he didn't remember now. Not that

suicide seemed all that rational a way to avoid a headache, but it would

work. Now his hands were tight on the arms of a padded black leather

chair. He was facing a broad desk, and across that the heart-shaped face

and silvery hair of his host computer's persona. She was wearing a

sweatshirt decorated with an offcenter, multi-colored bullseye and the

words "Strange Attraction."

He had to swallow before he could manage to say, "What happened, Ada?"

"You got killed."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Did you record it?"

"Of course. Though I couldn't move fast enough to B-cup you." Ada

gestured toward a wall covered with bookcases that were already fading

to a poster whose flashing neon letters said:

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE MAURITS FINNEGAN FOR MAYOR VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE Every

few seconds, the words in the center of the poster were replaced by a

squarish face, its eyes crinkled to suggest that Finnegan could see

further and clearer than his rivals. Albert shook his head. "That's an

old one," he said. The poster was surrounded by a stolid brick wall

topped with ornamental ironwork. Below it was a concrete sidewalk as

smooth and unblemished as the day it was made, a gutter that contained

no trace of litter or dead leaves, and a cobbled street. The view panned

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to show a cityscape, tall buildings of glass and gleaming metal, their

lines suggesting those of integrated circuit chips. There was no other

hint of what underlaid the perceptions that were all the reality the

residents of the virtual world--or any other--could know. The viewpoint

returned to the street just in time to catch Albert walking past the

poster. He was a tall man with a firm gait that belied the evidence of a

small paunch. His curly hair was dark, almost black, and he wore a

zippered shirt of checkered flannel. A crack appeared between two

cobblestones in the street behind him. It widened, and a small figure

clad in skin-tight black stepped silently onto the surface. In its hands

was a revolver nearly as long as it was tall. The Albert in the image on

the wall was oblivious to what was behind him. The one in the padded

office chair groaned as the pop-up spread its legs, braced its elbows

against its ribs, and leveled its gun at Albert's back. Its face was

twisted with the effort needed, but the gun's barrel never wavered, and

when the pop-up pulled the trigger, Albert went down as if he were a

doll a child had dropped. "Boom," said Albert. His tone was resigned. He

was only software, and so were both gun and bullet. Yet their effect was

real enough. Software could destroy software, he had learned long ago,

when he was meat. Viruses were one example, though they did their damage

by reproducing and preempting memory and storage space. At least they

could be stopped, unlike the more malicious data bombs, which sought out

and overwrote particular segments of memory or data in a computer file.

That was, in effect, just what the bullet did to him. Boom, and the

program which, while it ran within the computer, created him, maintained

him, was him, crashed. He had first run into data bombs when several

marketing firms had complained that their databases were crashing; the

cause had turned out to be a small program which would seek out and

remove a user's name and phone number from every database it could

access via the Internet; it had been very popular among people who did

not wish to be bothered by telemarketers and junk mailers. The solution

had been to isolate the databases from the Internet. And now he was the

victim, and isolation was not possible because both he and his killer

were residents of the system. He had been killed twice since the first

time he had accepted an assignment from the computer. "Third time. I'm

dead."

"But not for long, and not for good. That wasn't ten minutes ago. I

rebooted you right away."

"So who killed me?"

The host shrugged. "It wasn't a real pop-up. I can check what all my

subroutines are doing, and none of them were in the neighborhood."

"Another resident, then. In disguise." Albert made a face and wished,

not for the first time, that the virtual world did not make disguise so

easy. Where everything was data, a wish and a suitable subroutine were

all one needed to reprogram appearance or to materialize a gun. Or a cup

of coffee. He sipped at the mug that now occupied his hand. "I wish you

could do these jobs yourself. It would be easier." He made a face. "And

safer."

"You know why I can't. The company wrote it into my software. No spying.

No eavesdropping, except accidentally, and even then, even if I learn

about a crime, I can't use the knowledge. The idea is to protect your

privacy and keep me from becoming a tyrant."

"And I'm your loophole."

The computer's persona chuckled. "I've got to have a cop, they said.

It's a cumbersome requirement, but I can't do a thing until you catch

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whatever thieves and rapists and whatnots show up within me."

Albert was silent while he wondered whether murder was truly a crime in

the virtual world. Indeed, he thought, it couldn't be. Since the victim

could be promptly rebooted, the deed hardly existed except as theft. The

victim necessarily lost all memory of events since the last B-cup.

Finally, he said, "So we both want to know who shot me." Then he added,

"I'd like to know why too."

"You must have annoyed someone."

He looked disgusted. Of course he had annoyed someone. "But my last

B-cup was three days ago. I haven't got the faintest ..."

"You were working for me."

"I know that much." It had been over a week since Ada had appeared in

his apartment to say she needed his help. The currency of the virtual

world was the raw material of computerized imagination. Every resident

had the same basic ration of memory and processing capacity, just enough

to let them restore their youth and imagine the necessary paraphernalia

of daily life. If they wanted more--larger quarters, private worlds,

elaborate self-transformations--they had to earn more memory and

processing capacity, or "data energy." Most just called it money. To

earn what they needed to fuel their imaginations, some pretended to be

artificially intelligent software for an outside world that preferred to

have no overt contact with the ghosts in the Coleridge machine. Some

sold their imaginings of food or sex or fashion to their fellow

residents. One popular product for those with programming skills was the

image-transformation routines necessary to strip the years away from

one's age of entry, or to grow fur or tails, or to make other changes.

And some cheated. "I have heard," Ada had said. "That some of my guests

have disappeared."

"Why don't you just reboot them?"

The computer's representation shook her head. "They're not dead. They

haven't really vanished. They're still around. That much I know. But

none of their friends have seen them, and they don't answer calls."

"If they're still around, you could force them to answer. Or pick them

up and drop them in the same room as those friends."

"You know I can't do that. I can't interfere." He had sighed, and when

she had added, "Would you look into it?" he had agreed. Now he could

only shrug. "I must have been close, but ..."

The memory just wasn't there. "Then you'll have to start over."

"Not quite." His memory was fine, up to his last B-cup three days

before. He had only three days of investigation to repeat. And then, if

whatever he had found before could still be found, if it had not been

hidden or destroyed, he would know why he had been murdered. He

suspected that he would also have fulfilled the mission Ada had handed

him. "Did they have anything in common?"

"Several of them had recently bought custom image transformation

routines from the Image Shop."

"Then there's a place to start." # The Coleridge Corporation occupied

the twenty-sixth through the thirty-first floors of the forty-story

building it owned in the heart of the city. The executive boardroom was

on the uppermost of these floors, its broad expanse of glass looking out

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over sun-sparkled ocean, distant freighters, and closer sailboats, a

ferry, a snow-white cruise ship. The foreground was filled with the

roofs of lower buildings, fragments of street, a green scrap of

waterfront park. Swimmers could not be seen because the water was toxic

with sewage and chemical wastes. The only persons who entered the water

in the flesh were those who did not intend to return. The four people

sitting at the boardroom's long table were paying no attention to the

view. They were there to discuss certain difficulties the Corporation

was encountering, fully aware that if they could find no solution ...

Well, each of them had enough in investments and savings to live out

their lives in comfort. They were not about to go down to the beach.

That, or its equivalent, would be for the Corporation. One of the chairs

of polished wood and thick leather upholstery creaked discreetly. "It's

gobbling memory," said Jonathon Spander. The official head of the

division, he had thinning hair, a round nose, and bad teeth that he

sucked noisily and often. He did so now. "Just in this one box. Using it

much too fast. There's a lot of demand on the processor too."

"Is this really the problem?" asked Leah Kymon. Tall, lean, and gray

from hair to skirt, she was a special assistant to the corporation's

president and the division's actual manager. Usually, she deferred to

the specialists. "After all, you can just plug in more chips and boards,

another processing unit. Unless it's money?"

"No," said Spander. "Not that. The residents are productive enough to

pay for all the chips and processors they want. But ..."

"The rumors," said Eric Minckton of PR. His blond hair had been

carefully cut not to hide the pair of diamond studs that adorned his

left ear. "Crime waves! The whole virtual world is about to collapse!"

"That's nonsense, of course."

"It's still hurting sales." The fourth person at the table was

Marketing's Manora Day, a short woman with skin like fine leather and

hair as black as night. "Right across the board. Not just in this

computer, but also in the corporate retirement machines, the Heavens,

the ..."

"I'd like to know who leaked," said Kymon. "And how they knew anything

at all was going on. We can't watch or eavesdrop, after all, and the box

doesn't give us reports."

"It isn't supposed to," said Spander. "There should be a back door."

He shook his head. "If they caught us ... Besides, that's what we sell,

privacy, no interference, ever since the government ..."

"Can't you just ask the machine?"

"We tried. All it says is that the problem is internal, it's working on

it, and we're forgetting privacy."

"Then it has to involve the residents," said Manora Day. Spander nodded

as Kymon said, "And someone knows regardless."

"My department squashed the collapsing-world story. It was easy to make

it seem just too ridiculous. But the crime wave ..." Minckton gestured

with one hand. "We know people are getting killed," said Spander. "Not

many, and we don't know who. But we can see the reboots."

"It's too bad we don't have more access to what's going on."

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"At least we've managed to keep it off the front pages."

Kymon made a face at Spander. "There isn't supposed to be any crime at

all in the box. Did your screening let in a mobster?"

"Not as far as we can tell. But the residents are human. They had to

have enough money to pay the bill. And to get that money ..."

Now Kymon laughed. "A poor man's prejudice, Jon! Or do you think we're

all unprincipled?"

Spander did not answer in words, though his expression and the sound

that escaped between his teeth suggested that he sometimes wondered. "We

tried lowering the price," said Day. "As soon as the sales fell off. It

helped a little, but not enough."

"And we didn't find any more crooks than ever," said Spander. "We think

it's just one person, or maybe a few. Running wild. Trying to take

over."

"Can't we do anything?"

He shook his head. "We promised our customers a world of their own, to

run by themselves. We programmed the machine so that short of unplugging

it we couldn't interfere even if we wanted to. Even the machine itself

has severe limits on what it can do."

"That's been a good selling point," said Manora Day. "But I can't use it

now," said Minckton. "I'll have to tell the press something soon, and

I'll have to say we're doing something. If I can't ..." He shrugged

heavily, held one hand out, palm up, and turned it over. "Maybe it's

just one of the hazards of life? In the box or out of it."

Kymon barked the briefest of laughs. "We can't say that. It's what many

of our customers are dying to escape."

"Can we talk to anybody in the box?" asked Day. Spander shook his head.

"Not unless they call us."

"Set it up before they go in?" asked Minckton. ""Your mission, if you

choose to accept it ... '" Day laughed. He winked at her. Kymon said,

"We need one with some loyalty to the Corporation. We don't want her

talking to anyone else."

"Like the Enquirer."

Spander looked thoughtful for a moment. "There's Durgov. He's due to go

in soon." Then he shook his head and sucked his teeth again. "We forced

him to retire after the stroke. He hates our guts."

"Talk to him anyway."

CHAPTER 1.

"There," said the technician as he withdrew the needle from her arm.

Rose Pillock blinked. She could already feel the drug wrapping her

consciousness in layers of cotton wool. She turned her head to one side

and there, in the polished stainless steel of an equipment casing, she

saw herself. Thin, gray hair, almost white, straggling across her scalp.

A face seamed by time and illness, the flesh worn so thin that the bone

of her skull threatened to burst free. An arm, a sleeve pushed up to

expose the crook of her elbow for the technician's coolly professional

hands, the skin wrinkled and spotted, the meat reduced to flaccid

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Tom Easton - Silicon Karma

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