Finally, a glimmer of truth.
“I don’t need to remind you that he’s stolen sensitive Atopian intellectual property,” continued Jimmy. “And aiding fugitives.”
“Marie is not your property nor Atopia’s,” replied Nancy. “She was Patricia’s proxxi, her property to do with as she liked. And neither Sid nor Bob or even Vince is a fugitive, despite what the mediaworlds say.”
“Our agents report Patricia’s data in Baxter’s possession,” Jimmy replied. “We have no proof that she gave it to him. He stole it. Of all people, why wouldn’t she have given it to you? Why did he run off and hide? Have you asked yourself these questions?”
Nancy nodded. Of course she had. This was a losing battle. “Can we just continue with the situational report?”
“As you wish.” Jimmy nodded at Kesselring, who in turn gave a nod to Commander Strong.
Commander Strong glanced at Nancy, and then took control. The primary perspective of the meeting swept into a synthetic space projection.
“As soon as we opened the Atopian multiverse, we had skirmishes erupting between nation-states and corporation-states in virtual spaces that tracked back to assets in the physical world.” The Commander began detailing worlds that spun through the attendees’ meta-cognition systems, memories, and impressions implanted at required and desired detail in the minds of the observers.
Atopia’s fight with Terra Nova was polarizing the world, and this fracturing was limiting the spread of pssi in some jurisdictions. There was some commercial success penetrating spaces controlled by India and Russia, but most of Africa was out of their sphere of influence. None of this worried Commander Strong, but Kesselring wasn’t happy.
The release of pssi into the general population was generating unexpected chaos. Most of it was due to things her Aunt Patricia had restricted when she was in charge, but had been included in the release after her departure: emo-porning and uncontrolled neural fusioning were at the top of the list of problems. The macroeconomic models were proceeding on plan, but the social chaos on specific levels hadn’t been anticipated.
Nancy stayed quiet while Commander Strong finished his threat report on ownership graphs of corporations controlled by synthetic beings, then a report on a Terra Novan virtual world applying for United Nations sovereign status, but stopped him as he began talking about the disappearances.
“Why has there been no special investigation?” Nancy asked. It was almost beyond disbelief.
The biggest problem in the roll-out was customer support, helping people find their way out of virtual worlds they got lost in. Thousands of them were never found, disappeared into the pssi multiverse, their bodies still perfectly healthy, but their minds lost in some inaccessible corner of a virtual world.
“Over a billion people have plugged into pssi in the past two months,” Kesselring objected. “Less than one in a hundred thousand is reported as ‘disappeared,’ as you call it, and from what I’ve heard, almost all are recovered after a few days. We can’t—”
“Have a few people off pleasuring themselves in the multiverse stop what we’re doing?” Nancy completed his sentence for him. “How long are you going to stick to that line? From my numbers, the problem is accelerating at an exponential pace.” She turned to Commander Strong. “Don’t you see any connection between this and what happened to your wife?”
The Commander returned her gaze, but she could see his mind was elsewhere. He spent most of his free time in virtual spaces with reruns of his proxxid children. His wife, Cindy, was still in a vegetative state, trapped inside her own mind. Even in meetings like this, he kept a reality skin of a 1940s-era wikiworld pegged around him that reminded him of her.
Jimmy pulled on everyone, bending their attentional matrices back to him. “This is a matter for local law enforcement to investigate, isn’t it?” He frowned at Nancy. “And why are you researching this?”
Nancy frowned back at him. “Because it’s important.”
“What’s important to resolve at this meeting is the Synthetic Beings Charter of Rights that you’ve been championing. It would destabilize the entire economic structure we’ve worked to build.”
Nancy had known this was coming. “Even you must admit that glasscutters and hackers terminating our AIs are becoming a problem; we need clearer laws to deal with this.”
“In civil law, yes.” Kesselring joined the discussion, thumping his hand on the table. “But not international criminal law. What are you trying to do?”
Nancy was alone in this. It was Patricia’s most treasured legacy, and one she promised to try and protect. “When birthing a new AI, there needs to be some international framework for responsibility. As it is—”
“There is a framework, and it’s called copyright,” Jimmy interrupted.
“I am not going to support a retraction of the Synthetic Beings Charter of Rights.”
“SyBCoR is dead in the water, at least as it stands now.” Kesselring looked out the window. “You need to be practical.”
Nancy laughed. “Practical?”
“Or at least pragmatic.” Kesselring looked at her. “Push us, and we can push you.”
Nancy stopped laughing. “What does that mean?”
“Don’t force us to issue an arrest warrant for Baxter,” Kesselring replied. “This could escalate into a national security issue for our partners if we let them know how much information is now in his hands. We have more important things to worry about, no?”
So it’s come to threats and blackmail. Nancy looked out the window at the white sand beaches, then at the distant stripe of America’s coastline on the horizon. Where was Bob, why wouldn’t he respond to her messages? Just weeks after Aunt Patricia’s death, and Nancy felt like she was failing her, but what choice did she have?
Nancy sighed. “Fine. You have my vote to retract SyBCoR, at least for now.”
6
Bob stared at the Great Seawall of New York at the edge of Battery Park. It was the first time he’d seen it with his naked, natural eyes. If this place wasn’t still the financial capital of the world, they would have given up and moved Manhattan by now. Much of the island was now below sea level, the city guarded by an immense system of dikes and seawalls. Money was holding back the sea, but time was a thief and eventually would steal it all.
“We need to wait a little bit longer.” Sid slapped Bob on the back. “The glasscutters need to verify us in person.”
That morning, Deanna had smuggled them into Manhattan on her private turbofan. Her DAD credentials gave her automated passage through the NYC passport controls. In the meantime, Sid had sent digital copies of himself and Bob to random locations all over the world, leaving forensic breadcrumbs that should be enough to cover their tracks for as long as they needed to stay in one place.
Despite the soggy weather, the Battery was still half-full of tourists, and Bob and Sid wound their way through them. Sid’s identity-theft algorithm was stealing the credentials of people they passed, briefly pasting them as their own into the wikiworld feeds. It was hacking the audio and visual feeds in the area, replacing their images with the image of someone nearby, then hopping to someone else as they moved.
They were ghosts in the crowd.
They had come to meet, in person, some members of a glasscutter guild that said it had leads on where Willy’s body might be. Waiting at Battery Park was part of the vetting process. The glasscutters wanted to verify Sid and Bob in person, sample their DNA using a remote sniffer, to make sure they were who they said they were. Bob couldn’t argue with their diligence.