CHAPTER 12
Lumen led them into one of the side rooms of the office, through doors thick and heavy enough to withstand a battering ram.
Of course, building the rooms like tanks meant little when everything was secured with neural links. Lumen used a physical biometric scanner to enter these rooms.
Inside, they found a spartan room full of humming server racks and a near silent AC unit. The far wall was dominated by a tall black steel monolith, taller than Nick. A few cables ran from it to a small terminal, ruining the effect.
“Is that a joke?” Chloe asked, staring at the gigantic chunk of featureless steel.
“Lucas said he saw something like it in a really old film. He thought it would be hilarious to build a custom mainframe that looked like it,” Nick explained as he approached the mainframe.
Because, yes, this movie prop was Lumen’s actual body. Her interface was a shell connected to the mainframe using the neural network, but all actual processing was done here. Unlike the Archangels, Lumen didn’t use distributed computing.
Nick ignored the rest of the room and took a seat in front of the terminal. Most Ciphers relied on their implants to connect to mainframes, but physical links were extremely common. If a hardware malfunction occurred, there was no guarantee that the neural link would be available.
Lumen took a seat next to him, directly in front of the monolith and facing the door. She kicked her legs and held her hands in her lap. Her eyes were vacant again, as her mind focused on her internal processes.
“This shouldn’t take too long,” Nick said as he booted up the terminal. “Lucas said you were throwing a few errant codes, but those are probably just conflicts caused by how old my directives are. Your fancy new body probably doesn’t appreciate directives that assume you’re just a gigantic chunk of silicon.”
“I appreciate them plenty,” Lumen said, a shadow of a pout on her lips.
The Archangels seemed to copy her expression, but their eyes seemed to flit between Nick and Lumen. Rie’s usual smile was missing, and she leaned against the wall with a bored expression.
Suddenly, Lumen straightened up and glared at the observers. “Nick, can we do this alone? I dislike voyeurs.”
He paused mid-keystroke, as he was busy inputting authorization details that Lumen had sent to his phone. “I think they’ll object to leaving me alone with anyone.”
“Yes. Especially for this.” Chloe seemed to glare at Lumen, and the interface glared back.
“Anyway, like I said, it will be over quickly,” he said, trying to smooth things over.
“Can’t you make it last longer?” Lumen asked, her blue eyes bright as she stared at him.
He snorted. “By doing what? Fiddling with Lucas’ directives. So long as…”
Her error log popped up on the terminal, and Nick’s brow furrowed. His attention shifted from the pouty robots around him to the problem within the computer standing beside him.
“Lucas said you were throwing a few codes. These are pretty massive conflicts.” He clicked his tongue. “When’s the last time he did maintenance?”
“A few months ago.”
There was clearly some attempt to rectify the issue, but whoever had done the work hadn’t done the best job.
Lucas was a Cipher, but he specialized in neural implants and networking. By contrast, Nick was all about dolls and mainframes. He knew enough about the neural network to get by, but he certainly wasn’t going to be coding any workarounds for security bands or overrides for implant DRM.
“Did Lucas try hiring somebody else?”
“Yes.” Lumen’s flat tone made her opinion of other Ciphers clear.
“And?”
“I said no.”
“Ah.”
Rie’s expression tightened, while the Archangels stifled giggles. Nick focused on the problem he could solve.
Without a comprehensive understanding of all of Lumen’s tasks, he couldn’t properly fix all the errors. But he could at least work out what they were, and if any were interfering with her work. Then he could fix the worst of them and leave Lucas with info on the others.
And if, in the process, he saw some financial information that might be of interest, well, that was Lucas’s problem.
The next couple of hours passed quickly for him. His bodyguards kept themselves busy by leaving reality, judging from their vacant expressions. One always remained focused, but the rest drifted off into their neural net. Even Rie seemed lost in it.
Anytime he altered a directive of Lumen’s, she twitched or gasped. Nick did his best to shut her out. They were faintly erotic at times, and he needed to use his brain, not his dick.
Eventually, everything was cataloged, and the worst errors fixed.
“So, most of these are just attempts to use your interface’s processing power,” he mentioned. “Your error-correction stopped them, so they’re fairly harmless. But I’ve adjusted your directives so that you don’t treat your interface like an extension of your mainframe—there’s a huge gap in computing power.”
“It is quite difficult to damage a high-quality mainframe such as myself,” Lumen declared, holding a hand to her chest.
“Mmm. There was a fairly persistent error, and I think it’s the one Lucas noticed. It’s one of the first directives I coded, so I turned it off as I don’t think it’s relevant anymore.”
Lumen stared at him blankly. A moment later, a message appeared on the terminal. Then another, and another.
Nick glanced over and rolled his eyes. “You don’t have the privileges to edit your own directives while I’m logged on for maintenance, Lumen. Stop trying.”
“Oh,” she muttered. “Then can you log off?”
The Archangels didn’t bother to stifle their giggles this time. Nick sighed, then shut down the terminal.
He was pretty sure none of Lumen’s directives required her to alter her programming. Unlike the Archangels and Helena, she was entirely driven by a logic engine. So either some additional glitches had cropped up over time, or this was a side-effect of having an interface.
Probably the latter, he decided. Regular dolls often acted strangely toward Nick. While he had rarely dealt with interfaces outside of training courses, they could easily show the same errant behavior.
“There’s a report for Lucas in your memory on what all the codes mean. Have him look into them, or…” he didn’t finish his sentence, as the sullen look being sent his way told him enough. “Well, maybe I’ll finish the job when I have a spare day and you can explain everything.”
As if Lucas would let him understand the ins and outs of his current business, given he was a detective. Then again, he doted on Lumen. She was his AI daughter.
“I’ll see you soon, Nick. Take care,” Lumen said, after following them to the front of the building.
The Chevaliers escorted her, looking around nervously as one of the most important people under their care put herself at risk. How often did Lumen even go outside?
“Nice to see you again, Lumen,” he said.
She waved goodbye as he left in the direction they’d arrived.
They were barely out of earshot, before Rie asked, “That directive she reactivated. What made it so important?”
Nick coughed. “It was my job security. I coded her to throw esoteric conflicts on a regular basis, so that Lucas couldn’t just get rid of me. I think I forgot about it after I went to Neural Spike.”
His memories had come flooding back once he recognized what the codes were.
“And she wants to reactivate that directive in particular?” Rie nodded knowingly. “I suspect she knows more about her conflicts than Lucas does.”
Nick wanted to object to that, but stopped himself.
Maybe mainframes acted differently to his expectations, if Rie was unsurprised by this behavior. Years of working with Helena had given him a different outlook on AIs. They did some strange things and often knew more than the Ciphers working on them.
By this time, the district had calmed down. Some of the shadier shops were doing more business due to the decreased traffic, but the bars and restaurants were cleaning up and preparing for the night.
More than a few thugs stalked the streets, as the security dolls had thinned. They cost money to operate and had better places to be.
“Is it just me, or are we being watched?” Nick asked.
“It is a common occurrence. We are not well liked,” Chloe said.
“This feels more like we’re being followed than glared at,” he clarified.
He didn’t bother to look around. Anyone that the Archangels hadn’t spotted was far better at this game than he was. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that a few of these thugs were cropping up in the same groups.
“There is no suspicious neural activity nearby,” Chloe said slowly, but her hands tightened on her SMG.
“If they had the fancy new NLF neural mods, would you be able to tell?”
“If they were activated…” She frowned. “The mods are not fully understood, and they may have additional ones. Until the military finishes their investigation and notifies us of the results, we won’t know for sure.”
Uh, what? Nick looked at Rie.
She shrugged. “As I explained earlier, the NLF mod hides the user’s true thoughts behind a fake shell. Lucas’s mod shuts his mind off from the implant, but these new ones might be undetectable through passive scanning.”
“You sound less confident than when you talked yourself up to Lucas,” he said.
“Bravado is important during negotiations.” Rie shot him a sweet smile. “The implants of the NLF members you encountered at the docks appeared much simpler, but we suspect they are capable of much more. Fortunately, the fake shell exposes the user to the Altnet—and therefore to intrusion. We can stop them if necessary.”
Nick nodded, finally understanding. So long as the implant retained a connection to the standard neural network, there was an obvious hole. They would be like Lucas’s glasses, which accessed the neural network but merely attempted to shut out the Archangels.
“The bomber we ran into still used the neural network, though,” he said.
“A closed one, similar to what elites in the Spires use,” Rie said. “Not the Altnet.”
Damn. That explained how the explosives were still usable to him.
No wonder the military had been interested in these mods. If the regular citizens of Babylon could carve out their own little networks, free from intrusion by the Spires, that would drastically weaken the grasp of the elites.
But none of that answered the question of whether they were being tailed. Nick decided it didn’t matter, so long as nobody tried to shoot him.
Without any further leads, Nick was dragged back to the Spires. He supposed he could break in his new office while waiting for news from either Lucas or Rie about their investigations. Or maybe Hammond would want to go out for drinks first.
The shiny new terminal in his office turned out to be extremely bland. The entire thing was locked down, there was an obscene amount of monitoring software on it, and he had less access on it than his phone. The idea of ransacking police files seemed quaint now.
Rie tottered in after he had spent a bored hour scoping out the police executives, trying to understand what might motivate them. She had two cups of coffee and slid his next to him.
“I thought you’d be more excited to have your own office,” she said. “You asked for it.”
“I feel as if you are a cruel, unforgiving genie who twisted my wish. Did you install every piece of bossware in existence?” He waved a hand at the monitors. The built-in cameras and microphones had tape over them.
She shrugged. “I believe it is formally called productivity monitoring software.”
“The microphone and camera are permanently on, you’re monitoring literally every keystroke I make, pretty much every workaround I try is overridden, and you turned off the AI assistant,” he said. “This is some next level bossware.”
“I don’t want you seducing another AI.”
He snorted. “Ah, yes. I shall romance the incredibly simple task-management assistant that’s been in every computer for over fifty years. Truly, my social needs shall be met for all time.”
“You seem to have done quite the stellar job on all the other AIs you’ve met.” Rie gave him a suspicious look. “The Host is pouty that you haven’t given them any new directives yet.”
“I don’t really think I should be giving the Archangels any directives just yet. Can you imagine how suspicious it would look?” He laughed.
Although Nick did wonder if Hammond would even notice. The man’s antipathy toward the Archangels oozed from his pores. But it was a risk that Nick didn’t want to take this quickly.
“We’ve been without maintenance for a little too long,” Rie said. “I think everything would be fine, and it’s not like you have access to any of our core directives.”
“Yet.” He waggled his eyebrows. “It’s only a matter of time before I… Err, will the monitoring software ping me for making a joke about taking over the police department?”
“No, but I have alerted the Host to your desire for world domination.” Rie smirked at him and leaned on the corner of his desk. “Perhaps you should keep your ambitions in check. Perhaps try to overwrite the core directives of only one of us.”
Nick wasn’t the best with women, but even he heard the innuendo.
“I, uh, don’t think I’ll be achieving that through any directives.” He coughed.
“Oh, but you do want to achieve it? And what might ‘it’ be, Nicholas?” Rie leaned forward, and her arms pressed against the sides of her chest. As they had when he first met her, her breasts shifted and seemed to become larger as they were crushed between her arms.
Unlike the solid polymer plating of her subordinates, Rie’s chest seemed to be made of something much softer. Clearly, deflecting railguns was of a lower priority in the mind of whatever scientist developed her.
What had been the priority boggled Nick’s mind. Rie was a war machine. Did she need silicone tits?
Yes, he decided, as Rie leaned closer to him. Right now, he was going to enjoy this.
Then she leaned away and laughed. “You remain as unpredictable as ever, Nicholas. I had expected some sort of gruff remark and for you to turn away. Or perhaps to change the subject and ignore me. So far, Chloe and the rest of the Host haven’t had much luck with you.”
“They’ve been trying?” he asked, dumbfounded.
Rie gave him an odd look. “Yes. They have been. Perhaps their idea of courtship is a little too esoteric for you to appreciate.”
The fact the Archangels used the term “courtship” of all probably meant they were missing the mark entirely. Nick felt that the Host was a touch overprotective, but he hadn’t felt the same sort of… individual interest that Rie poured onto him.
Dating hadn’t been on Nick’s radar for years now, but Rie was practically firing signal flares to show her interest in him. He’d never thought much about the idea of romantic entanglement with a doll in the past, however.
Deciding that this topic had suddenly taken a swerve for the dangerous, Nick returned to safer ground.
“Any luck tracking down Travis? Or anything in Alcatraz?” he asked.
“It will likely take a day or two to narrow down our leads,” Rie said, smoothing her expression after the change in subject. “Neo Babylon is a magnificent metropolis with an abyssal underbelly. Probing it does not happen overnight.”
“You just said a day.”
“Or two.”
He rolled his eyes. “So do I get to be involved or…?”
“I imagine if you butted into the investigation at this stage, the Mark 1s would physically shackle you to your bed. And not in the desirable way.” Rie paused. “I expect there to be a place for you as we narrow down the leads, but the risk-reward right now is highly lopsided. This is drudge work.”
Nick swirled the remnants of his cold coffee. Deciding that this conversation was vastly more interesting than poking at the police files, he wandered out to the kitchen. Rie followed.
Outside, the task force office was nearly empty. Chloe and only a couple of Mark 3s remained. They all sat behind desks.
Chloe sipped her cup of coffee as Nick entered. Her eyes tracked him closely. Soon, all three dolls watched his every move.
Rie leaned against the counter while he prepared his own injection of caffeine.
“You know, we could probably afford some better coffee here,” he said.
“I thought you liked this.” Uncertainty crossed Rie’s face for a moment.
“I do, but I drink it all day because it’s cheap. This is one of the older robot barista models. It’s good, but I have it because it’s cheap, and I use cheap, factory-farmed beans. The real stuff that comes out of the proper AI barista bots is way better,” he said.
Rie tilted her head, then let out a bark of laughter. “I understand why you don’t have one at home. While the department might spare no expense on our maintenance, I believe there may be questions raised if I purchase a coffee machine worth as much as a cheap self-driving car.”
“It would make great coffee,” he protested.
“Become the police commissioner and perhaps you can justify it.”
Chloe chose this time to join in from her desk, and said, “Is this an invitation for Nick to begin his plan for world domination?”
Rie shot Chloe a dark look. “No.”
“Nick?” Chloe asked him.
“I’ll need to think about it if I get a fancy coffee machine.” He stroked his chin. “Then again, I can probably just buy one myself. The beans will probably bankrupt me, though. I’ll need a raise.”
“You do not need a raise.” Rie’s voice rose several octaves.
The room fell silent. Nick retrieved his coffee from the workhorse machine in front of him. He sipped it.
“This is pretty good,” he admitted.
Rie punched him in the arm. There was a pretty good chance it would bruise tomorrow.
“So, our earlier conversation,” he said. “Define drudge work.”
She scowled. “Patrolling shadier districts of the city, so that we can interrogate the neural implants of known criminals and agents of black companies. Questioning suspects we believe sympathetic to the NLF. Pulling data from corporate networks. All these activities draw attention, but you would be a target. We are not.”
“If I’m going to be cooped up in the office, then I want to look into the Tartarus security dolls,” he said.
“Fine,” Rie said. “The Mark 1s have been sweeping the warehouse district anyway.”
At least he could do something tomorrow. Working on a Saturday would suck, but he was far more interested in finding Helena than lazing around his apartment. Then again, what even were his hours?
For now, he returned to his terminal and kept poking at fairly dry documents.
Around 6PM, his phone buzzed. He glanced at it. It was a message from Hammond.
“Meet me at the east entrance to the Labor Zone,” the message read. “Let’s get some grub and booze.”