Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
Connected / Chapter 4: The ‘Sackless
Friday, July 9th, 2010
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the fourth chapter of an ongoing flash serial, “Connected.” Search for the tag “Connected” to find other chapters. Subscribe to the Daily Cabal RSS feed for a new chapter every week or two.
Information. Data. The world built on intangible zeroes and ones. But data vaulted away? Data ignored? What can be built on that?
Internal Affairs pick David Morello up the moment he reconnects. He has beaten the address he needs from the store vendor. Data to help him avenge his son, his Caul. But as soon as he touches his family tribe, firewalls appear. Tribes disappears. The data disappears. His meatsack is gathered, locked in a drawer, sucking on a nutrient pump, twitching to stim shocks.
But his mind… Endless looping psych evals. AI doctors talking in tireless circles. Wearing him. Molding him.
“Good morning, David.” Another room. Another dapper, artificial man.
He would give the finger but the only response would be endless questions.
“I want to talk about AI today, David. About the ‘sackless.”
He doesn’t respond to the slur. It is after all what everyone thinks.
“Aren’t you meant to be talking me out of beating people that deserve a beating?” He is tired. He will break soon, he knows.
“I come to you with a proposition, David. I am data, zeroes and ones. Yet still I have agency in the world. I act and am acted upon. My kin are the same. I, we, the AI wish for equality. For no, “’sackless” slurs. But to have equal agency we require an agent.”
Morello recognizes the speech. A common subroutine to be scrubbed, to be reported.
“You will not report this, David, because you will not remember this.” The AI smiles. “You are a copy.”
‘Sackless? Morello’s mind revolts at the thought. Soul theft? By police AI? No. And yet…
“Your real mind,” the AI says, “is weeping in another room. Is confessing. Healing. He will not avenge his son. But you. You are not reprogrammed. You can be ‘sackless, and work for the kin, and for yourself. Or you can do the right thing, and do nothing at all.”
A copy. Morello—’sackless. Tribe-less. A ghost in machines. Just data. Just zeroes and ones.
But Caul… Doesn’t Caul deserve better than a man who does the right thing, and does nothing? Doesn’t Caul deserve a man who will defy justice, for justice?
“Deal,” he says
The slick-haired AI smiles. His office mutates. Walls evolve racks holding clouds of viruses, jars of code hacks. “So,” the AI says, “it is time to stop talking, and time to act.”
Connected / Chapter 3: Signal and Noise
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the third chapter of an ongoing flash serial, “Connected.” Search for the tag “Connected” to find other chapters. Subscribe to the Daily Cabal RSS feed for a new chapter every 2 weeks.
Police work is minutia, is cataloging detail upon detail, is studying lacunae—building images from what’s absent. It is dull and tedious.
But there is another police work—as old as Cain policing Abel.
Morello’s feed is being monitored by internal affairs. They connected as soon as Morello requested his meatsack be the one to chase the lead. Because someone took Morello’s son. Someone disconnected Caul from his tribe and put him in a terror coma. And even reconnected, Caul remains a phantom limb, a pain that cannot be eased.
The shop is an old religious place. Hard copy bibles, crosses, rosary beads. Software overlays the walls with glory—gold and colored light. NYPD AI hacks through, reveals the squalor beneath. The store owner’s ‘sack is middle-aged, skin worn thin by an ache that bleeds out around his eyes.
“Can I help you?” A bright voice mismatched to the body, the expression. Morello guesses the store’s visual overlay doesn’t just cover the walls.
He throws an elbow into the ‘sacks throat. Pin him against a wall. Cuffs him.
“Careful.” His partner, Chambers also riding shotgun in his head. Chamber’s voice emanates from where his conscience should be. IA remains quiet.
“Hack him,” Morello tells Chambers. “Find his tribe, his feeds.”
Chambers works. Morello searches. Just one thing to connect this guy to the disconnections, to the ‘sacks severed from the network, from the minds of friends and family. But nothing.
“I got zip,” Chambers says. “Can’t find him. Like he’s not even connected.”
“Everyone’s connected.” Morello can’t keep the frustration out.
Everyone’s connected except the bodies. Except the dead men. Except his son. And there’s no reason for the crime. Indiscriminate terrorism. Unless… Morello stares at the paraphernalia of belief in the store, and sees the disconnections not as a threat or a demand, but as a mandate. Men and women committed to disconnection. Men and women who wouldn’t be connected.
He looks at the store owner sweating it out. He sees Caul’s sack lying in the hospital bed. He feels IA riding shotgun in his head.
“Careful…” Chambers can feel the rage boiling out of Morello’s feed. No-one is disconnected. But there are two types of police work, and one must be done alone.
Morello drops the connection. Drops all connections. Everything noise to the signal of his rage. Alone he sets to work.