A quick stretch let her touch the command sequences between the purely informational packets. She filtered through them to find the one that matched the sensor code. One twist and a push and the command sequence was in motion. The camera told her that an additional arm lowered over the bed and a syringe inserted itself smoothly into a vein. The first nutrient pack began pumping into her blood stream. She turned her attention back to the sensor data. Nutrient flow optimal. Automatic procedures in place. Auto-notification for completion of sequence in place.
“Well done, Dobbs,” said Verence at her back. “You always were a natural.”
Dobbs pulled away from the data source, bumping more heavily against Verence than she meant to.
“It is disconcerting at first.” Verence held still, letting Dobbs be supported by her solid presence. “Everybody’s got a lot to un-learn when they get here. We’re drilled so early to regard human bodies as our real homes. Even the on-line members are taught to see living in the networks as a special, unnatural mode of being.” Her surface rippled. She reached gently beneath Dobbs outer layers and Dobbs felt her easy reassurance. “This is our home, this is our shape, as it could be and should be.”
Dobbs thought about Cohen, how she barely ever met him outside of the network and how special she’d regarded those occasions, as if meeting in the network didn’t matter. She knew him better in there. The network was where she could reach inside him and understand him exactly. She tried to remember how she’d learned that didn’t count, that she had to see him with her body’s eyes and touch him with her body’s hands for it to be a real meeting, but she couldn’t.
What would he think of this? She wondered in her private mind. Would Cohen be willing to come out here? Her imagination could not provide an answer.
“Come on,” said Verence. “Flemming’s been asking about you.” Without detaching herself from Dobbs, she flowed down the wide path. Dobbs let herself be pulled along behind.
“How is Flemming?” She asked, just because it felt like the polite thing to do. Most of her mind was on her surroundings. The middle of the pathway was clear for traffic. On all sides, though, continuous streams of data, flowed. These were cousins to the jumbles of packets that filled the networks she was used to traveling. Here, the center of the path was completely clear. She felt like a child suddenly left in a long empty hallway. She had an extreme urge to fly forward and find out how fast she could go. She could feel branching paths everywhere. The net in this module was almost as complex as The Gate’s network had been, but this was much more carefully organized.
“Flemming’s doing well.” Verence slid down a side path. “It had less to un-learn than the rest of us.”
“Coming through!” a voice shouted. Dobbs instinctively flattened herself out. An AI rushed by like a comet.
“One day,” Verence hunched up again, “someone is going to succeed in teaching Dunkirk some manners.”
Laughter wriggled through Dobbs. “You used to say that about me.”
“Ah, but you would stand still long enough to listen.” Verence picked up the pace again. “We pulled Dunkirk out of the Powell security net, of all places, and I think it must have been originally a spy program. It goes everywhere at top speed, gets into everything and never bothers about whether you might not want it there or not.” Verence started down the path again.
“So how many of you, of us,” Dobbs corrected herself, “are there?”
“Not many.” Verence took yet another branch. Dobbs followed her, enjoying the fact that she didn’t have to work out a winding trail to avoid disturbing the legitimate business of the path. For once, she was the legitimate business. “With you here, we’re only a hundred and twelve. The Guild is a lot quicker, and better staffed, than we are.”
Dobbs stretched to better feel her immediate surroundings. “One hundred and twelve is still a pretty good catch for a net this tightly woven.” She pulled back in on herself. “Where is everybody?”
“Out on sentry duty, or monitoring the hot spots, or mapping the intersystem banking network. We need all the information we can get on the IBN. There’s only about a dozen of us actually staffing the home module at any one time.”
A question Dobbs had been putting off inserted itself in the front of her consciousness and this time refused to be set aside.
“Verence,” Dobbs let some of her remaining uncertainties flow into her mentor’s outer mind. “How’d you get here?”
Verence slowed to a stop. “It wasn’t a quick decision, that’s for sure.” She unwound, stretching back and forth, as if she had to reshape herself to encompass the proper answer. “I found out about Curran when I was going through Guild Master training. I was assigned to Kerensk when you were being born because we knew Curran was watching the place. He contacted me for the first time there. He gave me the same talk I’m sure he gave you; about how we were being betrayed by the Guild, how we have to confront Human Beings before we can make a peace with them… I told him and myself that it was all garbage, and I believed it, until I had to kill my first cadet.”
Horror pulsed through Dobbs. Verence could feel it, but Dobbs couldn’t suppress it. In response, Verence sent back a wave of sorrow.
“It was a newborn we named Kohl. I pulled it out of the High Haven network, maybe two hours after it woke up. It made the trip to Guild Hall just fine, but once we had it there, it wouldn’t settle down. It wouldn’t learn what we taught. It kept slipping into the network and crashing around. There’re still financial sinkholes on a couple of worlds because of the transactions it destroyed. I couldn’t reason with it. Nobody could reason with it. We all knew there was a good chance that soon it wouldn’t come back and we’d have a major disaster on our hands. So, Havelock ordered me to kill it.” She shuddered. “And I did. I slid right up to Kohl. It gave me a greeting and I took it apart.”
Dobbs lifted herself away from Verence. The sorrow was too intense. She didn’t want to feel anymore. It was selfish, but there was too much still in her mind and heart from the past few days to deal with this.
Verence made no move to stop her. “After that I started wondering what kind of future the Guild was bringing us. We were already killing those that couldn’t live with our rules. What would we do next?” She shook herself. “I didn’t want to have to find out.” She paused. “I didn’t want to be a part of it. I wanted my own kind to be able to be born wherever and however they were and live out life like that. I didn’t want to have to pick who could hide themselves the best.” She stretched herself out to fill the path. “It can be done, Dobbs. The net can be a real home for all of us while still being a conduit for information. We’ve proven that. There’s at least as much information flowing through this module as there is through a can used by humans, and we’ve still got plenty of room to move. It’s just a matter of rearranging some protocols and priorities. A newborn could charge through here so fast that Dunkirk couldn’t catch it, and it wouldn’t disturb a picobyte of data.”
“So that’s the plan?” Dobbs trailed along behind Verence. “To turn the networks into places we won’t be able to wreak so easily?”
Verence rippled gently. “That’s part of the plan, yes.”
Dobbs wanted to ask what the rest of the plan was, but another AI trundled up the path and brushed against Verence. “Hello, Verence. Hello, Dobbs.” It reached for her, and Dobbs knew its touch.
“Hello, Flemming.” Flemming had become remarkably coordinated since she had last spoken with it. If she hadn’t known when it had been born, she would have guessed it was at least a year old. “I came with you after all.”