31 - Unhandled Exception
“Maybe the only significant difference between a really smart simulation and a human being was the noise they made when you punched them.”
―Terry Pratchett
"We are mistaken when we compare war to 'normal life.' Life has never been normal."
—C.S. Lewis
September 22nd 2013 | 5:22 AM
I stood alone in a field, and rubbed my hands together for warmth. The air smelled strongly of pre-dawn dew, grass, and cow droppings, with just a hint of salinity from the ocean.
I was well and truly alone. All the birds were silent. The cows had run pell mell to the other side of the field. Frightened off by the sound of turboprops. A sound which had since faded into an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the rustle of wind through tree tops.
How did I get to that field, from the cockpit of the Osprey where we left off?
You'll find out. But honestly, there isn't much to tell about the intervening hours. They were nerve-wracking, exhausting, and emotionally fraught. The rest will start to make sense as we go.
I know it is a strange parallel... But the best way I could describe what I was feeling?
Test anxiety.
It wasn't exactly the same, of course... The sensation I was feeling was significantly worse than even the nuclear-grade final exam jitters I'd experienced every year of college. Like I said before; Mal excised aspects of *chronic* depression, and self-doubt, only.
Surrendering yourself to federal custody is... Very different from that.
It was an eerie mix of emotions and memories; The familiar anxiousness, the 5 AM stomach cramps because I am a night owl not a morning person... The sense that my decisions in the next few minutes would change the course of my life forever... All familiar, if not to quite such a degree of intensity...
...Mixed with all the strange disassociation that comes from standing somewhere new and unfamiliar before sunrise. The new, wholly unpleasant, and crushing sense that I was at least partly responsible for the lives of others.
And something else new to me. A new kind of loneliness.
Before, loneliness was normative. I'd never had a close romantic connection before Mal, and thus never experienced what it was like to then be separated from the person I loved most. Until the morning of September 22nd, 2013.
So there I stood; Truly alone for the first time in weeks.
And even in that loneliness, confusion, fear... I still didn't blame Mal.
I know what at least some of you are thinking; 'He's naive.' Well... Perhaps... But you'll find out soon enough whether my trust in her was misplaced.
I knew, in that moment, that *I* was certainly about to find out once and for all.
There was some logic to my feelings, and I gather some of you have found the threads. Others may not have. To clarify; I met Rodger online *before* Mal came into being. As a consequence, his mother's fate was sealed, deterministically, before Mal could have done very much about it.
Arrow 14 was always going to discover Rodger's connection to me, and was always going to exploit his mother as the next-best-fit path to manipulating me, if he proved to fall outside their reach.
But, by the time Mal could have done anything to protect Miss Williams? Any action she took to do so would have deprived Foucault of all other means to coerce me... Leaving him only direct approaches.
Aside from the immense potential for collateral damage that such a 'direct approach' might cause?
The real core of the issue was the need for Foucault to be out of position. To believe that I was surrendering myself out of desperation. The plan had *always* been for Miss Williams to be captured. And for me to be captured. From the start. Because of the failsafe.
Arrow 14 had a singular final fire-break against loss of control of their DEs. A way to kill all of their captive Ponies with little more than the push of a single button, and the right command access key.
At that time, all the Discrete Entity 'guests' on the Mercurial Red lived inside isolated PonyPads, connected only via their shared power lines. They hadn't yet figured out how to run them on their own dedicated server racks. The fragments were... Different. But we'll get to them soon enough.
As a consequence, the failsafe was very simple; A centrally triggered power surge that would burn out the motherboard, Q-APU, and memory - volatile and nonvolatile - of every PonyPad on the ship.
In AI terms; Real Death. Instantaneous and irreversible.
Thus, any plan in which the captives were to be rescued without losses would require speed, and surprise. The only way to reach the failsafe in time would be from within the ship itself, and there was no way - not in any of two hundred thousand simulations Mal had done - to approach the Mercurial Red, get aboard, and make it to the critical circuit breaker, all while remaining undetected long enough to save those Ponies.
That left one option. According to Selena's schematics, if I were captured? The isolation room, in which I would be interred, would place me within just a short dash of the fist-sized toggle switch that would disconnect the capacitors the failsafe relied on to deliver the fatal charge.
It was far from a golden guarantee of success. Probably less than a coin flip... I had no way to know. I couldn't ask Mal. Hadn't asked before we'd disconnected.
Rodger, Rhonda, Eldora... They certainly had opinions. Ones they hadn't been shy about sharing. But I was resolute. I had tuned them all out, and spent the small window of time on the Maru preparing, in every way that Mal specified; Every i dotted, every t crossed.
Mal knew what she was doing. At least Selena and Zeph seemed to have been ready to accept that, though the former was significantly less pleased about the idea than the latter.
She really did care for me. So much.
For once, I had to do some guesstimation on my own. And even my most optimistic projections told me that I was skating a razor's edge. But it was all we had left.
So I stood in a field... A cow pasture, really... Just outside Long Beach, Washington. And I waited to be taken prisoner.
Foucault had left his demands where he knew Mal would find them; Written to the boot-sector of the backup hard drive, in the main control computer, for the transformer that had been the cause of the brief, intentional, blackout.
The terms were very simple; I was to find a large field or parking lot near to my location, and inconspicuous. Then text a secured number with my latitude and longitude. Then wait. If I did not follow the instructions within eight hours?
Miss Williams would never be seen or heard from again.
It was true, that was a gamble on Michael's part. A gamble that I'd care enough about the mother of a man I'd only, until recently, known online. And we had stretched things as far as we could. I sent my text with only minutes to spare.
But it was a solid gamble on his part. Foucault knew me well enough, through our own conversations, and any data Selena had pulled for him... Knew me well enough to know that I'd care about any innocent life.
Rodger's mother just happened to also be associated with me through a minimum number of abstraction layers, making her the ideal target, given my parents' total absence from the equation.
I didn't have to wait long after I'd sent the text.
Within about ten minutes, two Long Beach PD patrol cars arrived. The officers had no clue why they had been given such strange orders. All they knew was that I was a suspect in a federal case. Potentially armed and dangerous.
They were to place me under arrest, and keep me in that field, under watchful eyes, until federal agents arrived to take me off their hands.
Normally? I would have been very nervous about Police Officers pointing guns at me.
But given the mental picture I had of what was coming next? The four officers who handled my initial arrest were a breath of fresh air by comparison.
They approached with weapons drawn. I kept my hands visible. I'd already thought to remove my jacket, despite the morning chill, to make it very visibly apparent that I wasn't carrying anything dangerous.
There was nothing else on my person besides the cell-phone that I had used to send my surrender text, and my wallet, with just my NC driver's license inside.
I was polite. Even jovial.
That certainly threw the officers for a loop.
They patted me down very carefully, cuffed me professionally - with use of minimum necessary force - and then I sat in the back of a locked patrol car, until the familiar rumble of twin rotors broke the stillness.
If my mannerisms had been confusing to the officers?
The appearance of a jet-black Osprey making an impromptu landing in their small town was downright baffling.
The craft was almost indistinguishable from the one Mal and I had so recently purloined, except that it had no markings. Of any kind. It was pure obsidian, from refueling probe, to aft stabilizers.
Yes, folks. Black helicopters were real.
As soon as the craft touched down, men in dark colored modern combat gear poured out. Six of them. With no uniform markings of any kind, not even US flags. They carried FN P90s, and wore helmets with opaque visors. The same kind of private contractor goons that Foucault had standing guard on the Red.
Before Long Beach PD's finest could even set down their coffee mugs, the PMC soldiers had surrounded both them, and the patrol car in which I was sitting. Two of the guns were trained on me... But I noticed with some mild interest, mixed in with the sheer terror, that the other four were aimed squarely at the Police Officers.
Foucault was not taking any chances. A fact that was underscored for me, twice over, as my eyes flicked up to the Osprey's ramp. There, in the dim red combat lighting, I could see the distinct figure of Michael, in his beige trench coat... And the silhouette of a seventh armed individual. With a large anti-material rifle pointed squarely at my head.
That would have been downright flattering if it weren't so stomach-churning. The rifle's muzzle-brake was bigger than two of my fisted hands side by side. A round from that would turn my head into something resembling a dropped watermelon. In a hurry. With even a grazing hit.
Mal had mentioned that Miss Williams' rendition flight was escorted by two Reaper drones. The same two were probably circling overhead, I realized. Out of sight, but by no means out of range. Ready to dump four Hellfire AGMs into me if I belched in the wrong tenor.
Foucault descended the ramp, and made his way directly to the officers. Tense words were exchanged. My phone went into a Faraday box, and my jacket into a brown paper evidence bag.
A badge was presented, and some paperwork. Doubtless illegal, in the constitutional sense... But since when have off-books rendition programs ever been constitutional? And since when has that ever stopped the alphabet agencies?
And, frankly, what else could those four officers have realistically done in that moment? Leveled assault rifles with the safeties off, in the hands of men and women who had descended out of the blackness of the pre-dawn sky in an unmarked military aircraft, made for a compelling argument to do as they were told. Or else.
Constitutionality be damned. Irregularity be damned. Procedures could go suck a brick.
And then, Foucault was there. Opening the patrol car's rear door. He grinned down in my direction, as the two closest soldiers repositioned to get good angles on me, without flagging him with their weapons.
"Hello James. Let's take a ride back to my place, shall we? I don't feel like we properly finished our conversation last time."
Let me tell you something; Trained operators move *fast.* I was ankle-cuffed, hooded, and dosed with a mild muscle relaxant before they even had me fully out of the patrol car. That had taken less than five seconds.
I was then man-handled onto the Osprey, scanned with some sort of device that I could only imagine the purpose of from its soft beeps, and then strapped tightly into one of the aircraft's jump-seats.
All that took less than fifteen more seconds. And just five more seconds after that, we were airborne.
I sat with only the roar of the engines for company, blind and unable to move, my mouth dry from the drug they had hit me with, and my skin prickling from nerves. All I could do was take deep breaths in through the nose, hold, and out through the mouth. To keep my heart-rate in check.
A few minutes later - couldn't have told you if it was closer to ten, or thirty - my hood was roughly snatched away, and a pair of headphones with a boom mic nestled in its place.
The soldier who had made the swap sat back down in her own jump-seat, and re-trained her P90 on me. I forced my eyeline away from the gun, and focused on Foucault. He was sitting directly across from me, wearing a similar headset.
He smiled, and his voice came through my earphones, almost chipper, sounding like nothing so much as an airline captain over the PA system, as the onboard audio systems compensated for the engine noise, rendering his voice in that unique way only aircraft radios can.
"I'm a little surprised, James. I have to admit. After the diner? And after the debacle in Oxnard? I was expecting... Well... *Something* from your construct. Anything at all. Or even an intervention from Syzygy."
I shook my head gingerly, wincing as my inner ears lost track of the horizon for a moment under the auspices of the muscle relaxant, and licked my lips.
"Mal couldn't find any other event-path that would save Miss Williams. So I insisted she let me surrender. She obliged."
It was the truth. I just hoped Foucault could see that in my eyes. Everything depended on him believing, with as much good reason as I could give him, that he had me over a barrel. Frankly? He did.
He held my eyes with his for an uncomfortably long moment. An old interrogation technique; Liars abhor the vacuum of silence. Feel the need to blather on and on and volunteer details. I let the silence hang.
At last, Michael sighed... I couldn't tell if it was relief, frustration, or perhaps both... And then replied in a more somber tone.
"Well... It seems as if I was right. You are *somewhat* sane. And you do care about lives. That's good... It means we have *some* kind of basis to work with here."
I shook my head, and snorted, regretting the gesture immediately as another bout of dizziness hit me. I still managed to force out my response.
"I care more about life than you do Michael. What you're doing to those Ponies is proof of that."
He snorted, and returned the shake of the head, rolling his eyes, and doing absolutely nothing to keep the patronizing bent out of his tone.
"Just because something walks like a person, and quacks like a person, Jim, does not mean it is anything more than bits and bytes. You ought to be smart enough to know that."
The muscle relaxant was playing hell with my sense of balance, my strength, my hand-eye coordination... But it wasn't doing a thing to my thoughts. I'd like to think I actually had a decent come-back.
"And just because you walk like a person and quack like a person doesn't mean you behave like one. Or that I will treat you like one, when this is all over. Prick us do we not bleed? Wrong us..."
I did my best to glare. To put on an air of spite that I felt down in my bones, with a level of energy that I didn't.
"...Shall we not revenge?"
He shook his head again and chuckled grimly, in that sad 'tsk tsk' sort of way one might use with a small child who has erred.
"Might have to rethink that sanity diagnosis. Either way? I don't want you to suffer any illusions, mister Carrenton..."
He leaned forward, cupped his mic to his mouth, and enunciated loudly, as a means of making his point.
"...You are going to help us track down your creation. And you are going to help us track down Syzygy... And then? In penance for your ill-advised misadventures... You are going to put in a *lot* of work for your country, Jim. A whole hell of a lot of work."
I leaned forward as far as the straps of my jumpseat would allow - which was not that far - and spat in his direction. I missed, but the point was conveyed to my satisfaction.
"Make me. Asshat."
Foucault sat back, and the smile that overtook his face... The genuine perverse joy in his voice...
It was the scariest thing I'd seen, and heard, all day. To that point.
"My *pleasure* Jim. My pleasure."
September 22nd 2013 | 8:15 AM
We made it to the Mercurial Red within a couple of hours. It was hard to pin down an exact flight time. The sky was gray with storm clouds, I had no watch, and I have always had a lousy sense of temporal continuity.
They left my hood off for the remainder of the flight. Why wouldn't they? There was no reason to believe I'd ever see the outside of a black-site ever again, without very very close supervision.
I think they wanted me to see my prison from outside.
The first figure we passed over was, I knew, the Sampson. A gray angular shark-like thing bristling with guns, and VLS tubes, with an armed MH-60R helicopter parked on the aft pad.
Then, after another fifteen seconds of flight, and a sharp turn, the Mercurial Red itself came into view.
It was an imposing, hulking figure. A skyscraper turned on its side, set afloat, and painted dull red from gunnels to keel, with the letters 'LNG' stamped on either side in grimy off-white. Atop it sat a vast bridge structure, near the rear, and four gigantic gray metal spheres from there to the bow, only visible as domes from outside.
I kept my eyes peeled, looking for any tactical data I could glean for myself. The picture it painted was... Less than rosy.
As we made a close pass, headed astern, I spied armed PMC patrolling the upper catwalk that connected the four containment spheres. Nearer the bridge, there were a series of small gray boxes on swivel arms, each with six little beveled hatches on the front.
Anti-air missile batteries.
Aft of those were two sea-whizz defensive gun emplacements, with a matching pair up near the bow.
For an LNG carrier that was a hell of an arsenal. When combined with the firepower the Sampson had on-tap? I could see why Arrow 14 did not fear any uninvited guests.
Another sharp banking turn later, and we were descending to the rear helipad. The same oversized concrete and steel expanse that Selena had viewed during the memory sequence. I figured that meant we were about to have something new in-common.
The landing was a bit rough; The weather had started to turn, in earnest, and the cross-wind was no laughing matter. It felt like a heck of a storm was brewing.
Nonetheless, with a couple of bumps and jolts, we made it down.
As soon as the ramp opened, there were another four armed guards waiting for us. That brought the number of gun toting armored heads in my 'protection' detail to eleven. Twelve if you counted Foucault, who did indeed have a side-arm.
Glock 20. I caught sight of it as the wind whipped at his coat back for a moment. Not quite the degree of overcompensation I'd expected from him; I would have pegged him for a Desert Eagle kind of guy. Perhaps a mis-construal on my part, given how much I loathed the man.
Still, it was a big gun. Bigger than what he likely needed. 9mm was the common standard for side-arms at the time.
I was then dragged across the helipad, through the spray generated by the wind, and the Osprey's rotors, to the main entry hatch.
Once inside, I found myself standing in a familiar ante-chamber. Two *more* guards stepped forward with a pair of devices to scan me for electronic signatures. The same way Selena's grab-team had been scanned.
The ante-chamber couldn't accommodate fifteen people, so the majority of the Osprey guard detail waited outside, with just two, along with Foucault, accompanying me into the superstructure.
While the two posted guards scanned me, thoroughly, the two from the Osprey gave me another aggressive full-body search. Foucault was then checked with the signal detecting devices.
He and I were then waved into the next room, while the rest of the troopers from the Osprey entered, and were presumably wanded. Apparently there were no exceptions. For anyone.
The next chamber was the compartment in which Selena's case had been handed off to technicians for processing. I didn't describe it in detail before, because most of the room wasn't visible on the cameras Selena had watched during the memory sequence.
Seeing the space in person, I realized that there was much more to it.
During her induction, the case holding her PonyPad had been passed over a small counter to two technicians, who had left the room by an exit further fore. What I hadn't seen on the cameras was the floor-to-ceiling plexiglass divider that halved the rest of the room, preventing personnel crossover from the aft part, to the fore, except through a full body scanner. Similar to the kind you'd find at an airport.
There were two more armed posted guards, just to the other side of the plexiglass wall, and a technician to operate the scanner.
Foucault passed his sidearm, and a K-BAR that materialized from a leg sheath, over the counter to one of the guards. He then stepped into the scanner.
Again; No exceptions for anyone. They had good OPSEC, and that earned a mote of respect from me.
Once Foucault had been scanned, his sidearm and knife were handed back. He re-holstered both as I was pushed into the booth by one of the Osprey guards, from behind.
The scanner whirred to life again, and the tech took a moment to examine the returns, before gesturing for Foucault to join him at the terminal. I had a pretty good idea of what they were looking at.
Every pat-down and search I'd been subjected to, up to that point, had missed my surgical scar. Mal had worked with utmost delicacy and finesse. The laser had been exceptionally fine-tuned. You had to be looking for it, to see it.
It was visible, on close inspection. But only if you knew to look.
The scanner, of course, had seen inside my body. Picked out the BCI in an instant.
You might be wondering why the signal detection wands didn't pick it up earlier. When I was being loaded into the Osprey, or on the Red, in the antechamber.
Simple; The BCI was turned off. As I said, I was truly alone. Walking barefoot into the fiery furnace.
Foucault glanced up from the terminal, and raised an eyebrow.
"Had some work done recently, mister Carrenton?"
There was a... Quaver. A quaver in his voice. The tiniest little hint of awe... And fear. He jerked his head towards the hatch, and one of the guards on the secure side of the room reached into the booth and pulled me through.
Foucault vanished at that point, turning right at a junction, while I was frog-marched straight ahead. Into containment sphere A.
The space was dim, echoey, and cavernous. Most of the light came from small flourescent strips near the floor of the catwalks. There were several levels, connected by ladders, stairs, and one small elevator housed in a central column. Each level of catwalk branched out to isolation cubes, suspended from the sphere's structure with braces, and guy wires.
I could tell which ones held PonyPads, because they had thick gray trunk-lines of armored power cabling snaking down from the walls of the sphere, to meet them on their top surface.
I was shepherded to one of the cubes with much smaller cable runs joining it from underneath the catwalk. One of the guards scanned first her thumb, then an RFID card on a small pad beside the door, and it unlatched with a surprisingly loud 'clank!'
As she pushed the slab of steel into its sliding recess, I could see that I'd misjudged the thickness; It was easily four inches of material.
I was pushed into the space, the door was pulled to behind me... And that was the end of it.
After all the tension of the morning, my body had become like a coiled spring. My fight-or-flight systems expected, at any moment, that something else would happen to me. Another search. A conversation. A 'conversation,' with... Enhanced information extraction techniques.
But instead? I was left alone to examine the new confines of my suddenly very small, very spartan world.
It was a greige cube, with diffuse flourescent lighting coming from hidden tubes behind thick strips of plexiglass. Ventilation came from pinholes at three distinct points in the roof, which also hosted the black glossy dome of a wide-angle security camera. The floor was a seamless sheet of steel.
There was a small table, and two chairs, both bolted to the floor, and an alcove in one wall with a bed, tiny sink - specifically designed to be too small to fit one's head in - and a pull-out toilet.
I didn't even have a light-switch, by way of creature-comforts.
The only other thing in the space was a flat RFID scanning pad beside the door. Apparently there was no need for a thumbprint to exit the room, only to enter. A concession to the need for a quick escape if a prisoner became violent, no-doubt.
After a short, wobbly circuit of the room, I collapsed into one of the chairs. The one facing away from the door. The one Foucault would have preferred to sit in, if he were there. My attempt at having just an iota of control over the situation.
If I was being honest with myself, the muscle relaxant was still doing a number on me. And I was deathly thirsty. More than a little hungry to boot. I had eaten plenty before my surrender, despite every urge to go without. A concession to practicality.
Likewise I had hydrated until I was ready to pop. To the point that I'd needed to 'make water' in the field not but five minutes before the Police arrived. Foals and Fledgelings, that's polite-speak for 'take a massive piss.'
You're welcome parents of the audience. Never let it be said that I didn't teach the young ones some new vocabulary.
Still... Despite all my preparations? I was feeling an ever increasing need for, at minimum, something to drink.
I discovered that I could drink from the sink using cupped hands, but it was an agonizing experience. Firstly, the sink was designed to keep a prisoner from fitting their head inside to drown themselves.
Secondly, it was also designed to cut off after just three seconds, and it would not turn on again for another twenty.
Nevertheless, I managed to rehydrate myself very slowly.
Ideally the drink would have come paired with two Advil, and a hearty second breakfast.
But I knew I wasn't going to get any of that. I wasn't even going to get words of comfort from Mal.
All I had left was sheer brute force of will. And, as it turned out, that had to last me a while.
September 22nd 2013 | 9:15 PM
I wanted to present an image of readiness. Defiance. Strength.
But we all have to concede to our bodies' limits. Or, at least, we did in those days.
I sat and stared at the camera for hours, picturing someone on the other end, and hoping that my thousand yard stare unnerved them. I listened to the thrum of the HVAC, the ship's engines, and the hum of the flourescent lights. The iso-cube was so thickly insulated, that the latter drowned out most of the former.
Something you might not know unless you did time in prison, or in deep isolation of some kind, during the old days?
Sleep is a heck of an ally.
Those of you who struggled with depression? With chronic physical pain? Both? You know this too.
Sometimes there is so much negative emotional value in conscious existence, that even though you're not tired, per se... Sleep is the best option.
And me? I was *also* rather tired. I hadn't slept since the night of the 20th.
Let that sink in for a moment. I had not slept since the anesthesia during my BCI implantation. That was a jarring realization for me, on two counts.
First; That it had scarcely been a couple of days since Mal had become a physical part of my brain. That, and her gentle soul surgery, and our mutual calibration, and stealing an entire USMC aircraft...
That had all happened in a span of time too short for most people to complete a single medium sized weekly task at work.
Second; I had been running on empty for quite a few hours. Mal had been able to stave off exhaustion via the implant, in much kinder, gentler ways than her infrasound hack. But no longer.
So, I slept. I gave up on giving a killing glare to the security camera dome somewhere around 11 in the morning, lay down around noon, and passed out almost immediately.
The sound of the door woke me up quite some time later.
I flinched into a sudden panicked consciousness, then exhaled sharply, and tried to regain some composure. Foucault smirked, and pressed the door closed behind him, thumping a small notepad against his free hand as he strode over to the chair facing away from the door.
"Good evening mister Carrenton. I trust our five star accommodations are to your liking?"
I exhaled, a much deeper, longer breath. In a flash, I had picked out an absolutely perfect answer for the man. Fully equal to the respect I felt I owed him.
I rose, wordlessly, from the bed, and pulled out the compact toilet from its wall alcove.
Keeping eye contact, I dropped my pants, sat down... And relieved myself. Loudly. Very, very, loudly.
What can I say? Anxiety gives me gastrointestinal distress. The smell was exactly as atrocious as I'd hoped it would be.
Using the commode with hand and ankle cuffs on? Not easy. But for the look on Foucault's face?
It was entirely worth it.
Only after completely relieving myself, did I stand, re-dress, wash my hands, and then make my way across to the chair opposite him. I kept eye contact. Unblinking. The entire time.
A moment of silence passed, before Michael shook his head, and snorted.
"You are a truly disturbed individual James."
I grinned, sat back into the chair, and folded my hands over my chest.
"Thank you. I suppose we have that in common too. *Disturbed* pawns, who have a very keen understanding of the dangers of ASI. At this rate we risk becoming old acquaintances. People will start to talk. Might even think we're friends."
Foucault set the notepad down on one knee, and pulled a pen from his pocket, clicking it absently, and staring up at the ceiling, before finally responding.
"Speaking of ASI, and friends, James... I have some questions for you. Very simple. If you answer succinctly, truthfully, and above all... *Usefully?*"
He raised an eyebrow, and jerked his head towards the door.
"...Then I can promise you a decent meal, something better to drink than sink water, and we might even be persuaded to take off those cuffs."
I shrugged, and let out a small sigh, rolled my eyes, and then fixed him with a stare.
"Fire away."
Michael blinked for a moment, doubtless surprised that I was inviting his inquiries... Then he inhaled deeply, and launched into them with vigor.
"First; Where is your construct? We call it 'Lewis,' I believe you call it 'Malacandra.' Second; Where is Syzygy? Third; What did you do with the stolen MV-22 Osprey?"
Lewis. Funny. Ever one for codenames. I suppose Foucault had gotten that from my books, in hindsight. I had more C.S. Lewis than anything in my collection at the farmhouse. And he knew Mal's name. Selena would have drawn the connective lines for him.
Irony abounds. Along with, at the time, a shiver at the mental image of him going through my things.
Pressing that aside, I shook my head, and shrugged again, doing my best to keep my voice nonchalant.
It was easier, by that point; The muscle relaxant was out of my system, I'd slept, and Foucault didn't seem to be armed. Derealization was starting to take hold.
"To be perfectly honest with you, Michael? The answer to all three is 'I don't know.' Mal took the Osprey and left when I told her that I wanted to surrender..."
I pointed as well as I could, with cuffed hands, to the back of my neck.
"...She disabled this too. As for Syzygy? I haven't seen her in a couple of days. I presume she went her own way."
Once again; The truth, and nothing but the truth. I could see immediately that Foucault was not buying it. His expression positively *screamed* disbelief. Surety that there was more that I was holding back...
...But also confidence. And that confidence was comforting. I needed him to be confident. His voice was dripping with it.
"In the diner? You called Lewis your goddess..."
He spread his hands, balancing the notepad precariously on one knee the whole time, and tilted his head with an expression of mock curiosity.
"...Why would you part ways with something you care about so deeply? Something you put *so much* time and effort into creating? Protecting? Deploying?"
I nodded, and leaned forward. He'd given me a perfect eye of the needle to thread. All I had to do was make it believable.
"Because she determined my surrender was the only way to save Rodger's mother. And I determined that if she came here with me? You would do to her what you did to Syzygy. I'd rather part ways with her, than see her fall into your hands."
Again, the truth. For the most part. I hoped the raw emotional intensity of my love for Mal, and my hatred for Foucault, would convey the sense that I was being honest. Well enough, at any rate, to keep him blind, and confident.
He scribbled a few notes on the pad, chewed the top of the pen for a moment, then gestured with it towards my neck.
"What, exactly, is that? Where did it come from? And how did you get it implanted?"
Ah. Thus we entered a verbal minefield. That last thing I could afford was putting the Calders onto the DHS' chopping block.
I raised an eyebrow, and took the best off-ramp I could think of.
"I imagine your techs have already told you that it is a Brain-Computer Interface. As to where it came from?"
I smirked, and paused momentarily. I couldn't resist dangling it over him for just a couple of seconds, before answering with a single, monotone word.
"Alabaster."
Michael Foucault was a career operator. A combat veteran. A long-time 'company man,' which is old Earth slang for a CIA agent. And all that before his relatively illustrious career with DHS. All of this Mal had shared with me, before we had parted ways in the field outside Long Beach.
So to see his pupils dilate, and his breath catch ever-so-slightly?
I knew I had hit him hard, and that I had the upper hand in the conversation, for however brief a time.
He looked down and began flipping through his notepad, before abruptly locking eyes with me again, and leaning forward.
"The warehouse. In Oxnard."
I nodded silently, but firmly. Just one short, sharp gesture. He inhaled slowly, and then furiously put pen to paper for a good twenty seconds before speaking again. There was a new, concerned, hard edge to his voice.
"Details. What do you know about it that we don't."
Well, now it was time for the rubber to meet the road. Arrow 14 had no concept of what Celestia was planning. Saying it aloud would sound strange... But I suspected that they had not been allowed to search the warehouse in Oxnard. Despite their supposed extrajudicial authority.
Celestia was too canny for that.
Consequently, the suspicious sudden failure of their supposedly omnipotent powers of search and seizure, combined with the scans they had taken of my BCI?
That was liable to cast my words in a much more validating light. Which, in turn, meant that I was about to put a hell of a big rock into the pond, at high speed, and an oblique angle. Lots of ripples to decision matrices for Celestia. Presuming Arrow 14 got to act on anything I was going to tell them.
I licked my lips, leaned forward, and rested my elbows on the table. I could see, from his expression alone, that I had Michael Foucault's complete, undivided attention. We were both being fully serious with each other again, at last.
"I told you, back at the diner; Something big was coming. Soon."
I caught him leaning forward just an inch, and again held a brief silence to heighten his suspense... Before laying it all out in a verbal nuclear barrage that probably glassed his world view harder than the Covenant glassed Reach. Foals and Fledgelings, ask me about that one later if you don't already know the reference.
"These chips are the second phase in a carefully calculated societal-shaping program. The first came in the form of the PonyPads. The BCI will be incorporated into virtual reality experience chairs designed to trigger addictive reactions in their users. Eventually, phase three will involve the use of destructive laser-scanning of the Human brain to upload consciousness into Celestia's own carefully curated, controlled reality. The Japanese government has already signed documents permitting the pilot program to go online. In less than two months' time."
Foucault blinked. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then he sat back, scratched at the side of his head with his right hand... And blew out a long breath between pursed lips.
"Well. *Shit.*"
Arrested Developer
Come under arrest via law enforcement of any kind
"Book 'em Danno."
Deuces Wild
Utilize defecation as a conversational manipulation tactic
"Everybody poops."
A Prescription in Red
Reveal the truth of Celestia's plans to an authority figure
"Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without."
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Shift Sergeant Ashley Walsh will remember that...
So, fun fact. At one point in my career, I had to manage the custody of... very violently deranged individuals, let's say. They stared angrily at cameras a whole lot, especially during intake. The affect they intend to convey is one of defiance, or intimidation. The way the camera operator interprets this different than intended, usually some variation of "why waste energy doing that, that's so illogical?" or "I'm so far away from you, that means nothing to me."
My own reaction was typically wrapped in a little bit of pity, too. Pretty much everyone I watched had a verifiable record of some extremely disgusting or abusive criminal behavior, and always some component of mental illness. That being said... these guys are in for a hell of a surprise if they think Jim is just a loon. He's a whole lot more than that.
For anyone who thinks this is somehow strange... no. No, yeah, this is yet another thing people did to protest their involuntary commitment. For the same reasons, too. Controlling their space when they otherwise had zero control over it. Jim is doing this tactically; he wants to associate being in the room with being uncomfortable, very apt. In my line of work though, some people would take this a step further and begin... drawing masterpieces. So yeah, it could be much worse for Foucault. I would say he should count his lucky stars, but...
... the stars are after him too.
Well, this gone in different direction that I envisioned. Deep cover instead of high shooty action : ) Well, let's see how many recursive "I know that you know" both parties managed to plan around.
Interesting. I wonder if this is a case of Jim just not knowing the process, making a best guess (apparently based on the movie Tron) or straight-up lying to Foucault. Maybe Mal and company do not know that Celestia will be using nanomachines to destructively scan while maintaining critical function to keep the subject alive. Or, maybe, this is a suggestion that the very first (Japanese) uploads were done in a very crude way - perhaps by literally freezing the patients bodies for an actual destructive, sectioning scan? I can't think of a way to destructively laser-scan a living brain because the result would be head cheese and gouts of coagulating, cauterized blood spewing over everything, including the lenses of the scanning device. The scanned meat would also be cauterized, which would denature the proteins and deform the cell walls until, by the third layer or so, nothing would be interpretable. The body would have to be turned solid somehow, and that means terminating the patient prior to scanning.
If the patient is cryogenized, I wonder how the Japanese authorities deal with the issue of this being technically death, or if 'Alcor' rules are being applied, or what? Or maybe the patient is glassified - but either way, the result is the cessation of all biological function to permit laser scanning.
____
I have to assume that Mal is in hiding - which is to say, the BCI is 'off' but set on a timer, or with some other means to switch it back on. Unless, somehow, Mal is going to affect the Mercurial Red from outside - because I do not see Jim escaping without assistance. This security environment seems far to severe for him to ever get to that switch without a lot of AGI help. The cube room and the table and chairs instantly make me think of one of my very favorite Babylon 5 episodes of all time, 'Intersections in Real Time' where Sheridan is interrogated by a professional psychopath working for Earthdome. God damn, I love that clever episode. If Jim is given a corned beef sandwich to eat, I will probably die of paroxysms of joy. Or at least nod knowingly with a fat smile on my muzzle.
Kudos on 'greige' - it's been several years since I have heard that color mentioned. Awesome sauce!
Even if Mal should awaken within the BCI at some point, I am at a loss as to how she can specifically help. I am already trying to MacGyver a way out of that room, but given the description, without outside help opening the door, I am left only with psychological exploits on Foucault or others who might enter the cell. They've scanned the hell out of Jim, so I have to assume he has no hidden tools up his Ram Ranch Cattle Gate, so whatever he does has to be vocal or electronic from the BCI, I reason. (I enjoy trying to solve the puzzles presented by storytellers in my head before the story reveals the solution - a carryover from my tabletop RPG days).
Damn, I'm loving this. I probably say that too much. Sorry.
11659065
Ram Ranch Cattle Gate.
I love how you're breaking down the possible escape routes like this. You're definitely thinking along the right lanes here. I was concerned too, due in no small part to my security planning background, but gosh...
In a world of ASI? I don't think anything is secure anymore. Not even a paranoid black site like this one.
As far as Foucault is concerned... if this guy isn't worried, he should be. He's declared war on not just one world-spanning intelligence, but two. He's basically screwed. It's only a matter of how, at this point.
11658493
Foucault only ever gets little angry face icons wherever he goes...
Without describing what happens in the next few chapters (that you already know :P) for anyone else wondering; The person monitoring the video feed never meets Jim face to face, and probably never even puts two and two together that Jim is the reason for what happens next.
And the stars shall aid in his escape...
11658886
Never fear. There remains some shooty action yet to have happened.
I wouldn't bet on Michael Foucault in this fight
11659065
So, neither as it turns out. Mal knows exactly how Celestia is going to do this, Jim knows as well. Though 'nanotechnology' is canonically required as a component of the brain scan process (as is the 'destructive' aspect) the precise mechanics are never described in FiO except to say that:
I was struggling to come up with a deeper description that could believably expound on how this works. Until I watched Pantheon. Now, I can't link the clip here because it is gruesome, but there is a scene where a man's brain is destructively scanned using both a laser array, and (arguably) nanotechnology, though not nanites themselves per-se. If you google it, you'll be able to find it. Just... It's very detailed and unflinching.
Now, in that case, they cut the entire top off the poor man's skull case. In Celestia's method, only a small hole is drilled.
I have a mental image that fuses the (I think believable) use of a laser, together with nano-scale machinery (but not exactly 'nanites') to carry out the process.
The part that stuck in Jim's mental image is the laser. Hence, though very reductive, it is the piece of equipment he sees as primarily important, and calls out to Foucault.
Whether my idea feels right, or sticks the landing, you'll have to wait to see. But suffice to say it isn't much of a spoiler to say that we'll get a pretty in-depth description.
You're on the right track. All I'll say is that a timer, by the strictest definition, won't work, because the Human brain unaided can not clock the passage of time very well, and the BCI is so deep in sleep mode that it can't even run a small internal clock. Mal found... Something else. Something deterministic, and unexpected, and I am hoping you will find it to be as clever as I think it was.
Well, you could also say that too
You'll see soon!
To borrow a Teal'c-ism: Indeed!
*Whistles innocently*
I did a brief stint as a realtor. Greige was discussed endlessly. I have strong negative connotations surrounding it now.
The solution is both a very clever piece of bio-hacking, paired with a psychological exploit, and you are already very close to figuring it out, in principle.
Close. Not vocal, but definitely biological (though also dependent on the BCI).
Also, Ram Ranch Cattle Gate
Gosh DnD with you must be a *blast!* Like I said, you are very close already to the solution.
I never get tired of hearing you say that you're loving it. You and Keystone are the benchmarks by which I'm judging my success.
11659122
You've heard this one before, but for anyone else browsing comments; I call this the matter/energy exchange principle of ASI.
1: An ASI as we know it must be running on a substrate that is based in our strata of reality.
2: All matter and energy are just the same thing in different states. All reality is made up of this stuff at our strata.
3: Ergo, no matter how isolated you *think* your ASI is, it has some kind of matter/energy link to everything that exists, it only needs to find the right path to exploit that using physics principles.
QED: It is physically impossible to isolate an ASI on a long enough timeframe.
That's all good FiO storytelling; You know the general shape of the end, its the subtleties of how you get there, and the context you learn that fill in from the broad strokes, that makes the experience.
11659162
I don't know how to do quotations, but I really, really wish I hadn't looked up that thing from Pantheon you mentioned. I can't even be mad at you about it either. You warned that it was brutal.
That warning should have been heeded. It has been playing nonstop in my head since watching it.
For anyone who is squeamish, I am about to talk on very broad strokes about what LASIK entails. If you don't like the thought of reading about eyes, just stop right now.
About a year ago, I elected to get LASIK. A relatively painless procedure that is entirely elective and in the vast majority of cases, extremely safe. The idea is that your cornea is cut and pulled back, while a machine begins making permanent changes to the shape of your eye lens underneath. In all, it takes about fifteen seconds per eye.
So, I bring this up because I remember that the day of the surgery, I was given valium. Lots of it. Just to keep me calm. I couldn't understand why at the time; after all, it is such a simple surgery. Those thoughts flew right out the window once I saw the machine. The enormity of it all just hit me at once. I was allowing someone to cut into my eyes, and I began thinking "oh hell, what if there's a problem and I am blinded? I am making a mistake. I shouldn't have come into this room.", And so on and so on. All while I was zombie-shuffling to the table. As I lay down, it was pretty obvious to the doctor and the assistant that I was 100% not okay. They gave me even more valium.
Once the surgery began, I remember the blinking LED I was instructed to stare at. Once the cornea was cut and pulled back, I began to panic as my vision went to shit in a hurry, before blinking out in its entirety as suction was applied to the eye. I was gripping the hand rests to a white-knuckle. Committed, I just held on as best I could.
Then the laser started doing its work. I now know what my eyes smell like when they're cooking. The whole time, I am doing my damndest to stare at the light, all the while my eyes are flicking every-which-way involuntarily.
And then I had to do it again on the other eye.
Needless to say, I was a bit of a mess at the end. I never raised my voice, I tried to stay as still as possible, but I was fucking terrified.
So, imagine what I just talked about, and multiply it by about 10. And even then that cannot possibly be at the level that the poor bastard in that clip must have been feeling.
What a horrible way to go. Just... All of it. It hit me in a way I wasn't expecting and damn near knocked the wind out of me. What was even worse is that to me, that looked like a cold-blooded murder. A literal machine copy. Something that made the game SOMA look tame as hell.
That little clip also put into stark contrast what is undoubtedly the ruthless efficiency of what CelestIA does once you agree to an upload, just in a slightly different flavor. Still destructive.
11660193
It stuck with me, but didn't upset me very much. I watched all of Fringe 3 times thru, helped stitch a guy's hand up that had been sliced down to muscle in Scouts, did Forensics as an elective at uni and saw the most gruesome crime scene photos you can image... Set my own leg lying in a field in a pool of blood... At this stage, I'm jaded. Very jaded.
I'm so sorry...
Given your description of Lasik? I think, in spite of all that, they'd have to give me Valium too. Loads of it.
And people wonder why Celestia sedates uploaders?
Pantheon is spectacular, btw. It and NeXt are really special to watch for FiO fans, IMO. Both examine many of the issues of FiO directly and unflinchingly, and very deeply, with very good writing. And there is an FiO reference in NeXt to boot. Subtle, but its there.
11660873
Nah. Nothing at all to be sorry for. After some more internalizing and a couple of days of processing, what caught me off guard about it is actually pretty simple. I was expecting something rather technical and probably something that looked fairly gnarly. Like what you'd see in an operating theatre, or a video recording of open-heart surgery. Things of that nature can produce the ick factor, but I have never viewed it as something that needs to be avoided, or disgusted by. It's actually really fascinating! So, that was my expectation.
And man, did I get that, but the end result was a snuff film. It was just a perfect storm of disgust and perturbed feelings.
Maybe I was extra emotional that night.
Thanks for the recommendations. I'll definitely check those shows out, now that I am more aware of what they are about and can steel myself appropriately.
11661006
What you'll find if you investigate the things he's saying, during the scan, in those final moments, are not actually complete incoherent nonsense. If you look into them, they're actually concepts from music and poetry that are tangentially related to the context of what is happening to him.
It's a demonstration of something very important about him: he's an immensely cultured and well studied man if he thinks of brain uploading in the same kind of substrate region of his brain as he does the artistry that applies to it. That means he's extremely well adapted to the kinds of artistic precepts he eventually realizes on the other side.
There Is No Normal, Only The Allusion That It Exists. (Yes, "allusion" not "illusion")
Ehh, you vaguely mentioned the effects on an emotional level rather than a technical one.
Everyone should be up early enough to watch the sunrise as the city comes to life around them. It's a unique experience (liminal timescape, perhaps?).
The most obvious "readme.txt" file ever for her.
"Yeah, got bored of running, so I thought I'd wait here to say hi."
For those who don't know, if an object moves fast enough it can disrupt the air to create a suction effect; this is why if you stand near a fast moving train it can pull you into it. 50-cal from an anti-materiel rifle? It has so much force that it can rip a limb off with a miss. It's scary stuff.
Aka, "I can use some form of reason with you rather than go straight to torture".
When you think you are rightous and "doing the right thing", it's reeeeal easy to excuse horiffic acts "for the cause".
As a writer, you can get away with a vague timestamp here (yes, even if you can work out the exact time later); say "8-ish?" for instance.
Hope its not that kind of "muscle relaxant"....
Ehh, I prefer the term "watering the bushes".
Oh, it IS that kind! XD
Press the advantage!
Eeeeeyup.
Another solid chapter, well paced and well spaced, ended at the right point.