The Harmony Paradox Read online

  “Nope.” He smiled.

  “So your company doesn’t mind if you skirt the law?”

  Joey grinned ear-to-ear and laughed. “Skirting the law is my job. Well… The people who make the rules can’t exactly break them.”

  “What are you talking about?” Katherine lowered her voice to a whisper. “Who do you work for?”

  He leaned back, lacing his fingers together behind his head. “Got hired by Division 9.”

  Katherine stared at him for a few seconds before bursting into laughter. “Oh… you had me going there for a sec.” She sighed and shook her head. “I almost thought you’d really gotten a job.”

  Joey rummaged his hip pocket and pulled out his ID badge. He shifted the vid call back to the NetMini and held it up so she could see it. “Funny thing is, I’m not messing with you. Course, I’m in Net Ops… not a field agent, but I’m still technically working for the government.”

  “That’s not funny, Joseph. If they catch you faking that…”

  He kept a straight face.

  “No… absolutely not. You are working for the government? You hate all forms of authority. How the hell… Seriously?”

  Elizaveta flipped up the visor, rubbed her eyes, and looked up at him with an earnest expression. “Ya zakonchila testovyy uroven’. Teper’ mi mozhem poigrat?”

  He glanced at text on the NetMini’s physical screen. ‹[Russian] I’ve finished the test level. Can we play now?› “Few minutes. Let me get off the vid first.”

  She listened to his voice repeat from the machine, nodded, and flipped the visor down while muttering. “Hochu yeshe poigrat’ v tu igru gde nado v shariky strelyat.”

  ‹Okay. I will play the game where I shoot balls again.› popped up on his NetMini screen.

  Elizaveta raised her arms, gripping her virtual gun.

  Joey put his ID away and flashed a big shit-eating grin at his sister. “Not kidding. It’s real.”

  “How?” Katherine gawked.

  “Oh nothing too extravagant. Just helped one of their people stop a megalomaniacal AI from overrunning West City with rampaging murder machines. None of their Net Ops people have the testicular fortitude to leave the safe confines of the lab. It impressed them I’m not a coward.”

  “There’s a difference between being a coward and an idiot gambling with their life.” She frowned. “And testicles have nothing to do with courage.”

  He rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “It’s a figure of speech, not a criticism of your gender.”

  “It’s deeply rooted in the misogynistic vernacular of a society from three centuries ago. You spend too much damn time immersed in that Wild West nonsense.”

  Joey pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes at her.

  “You know I only started shouting at you because I didn’t want you to get yourself killed.” She let her head sag. “I guess I didn’t express it very well, but I am worried about you.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t forget you’re a lawyer. As soon as you don’t need me for anything, you’ll be back to telling me how much of a failure I am and how I’ve made Mom cry.”

  Katherine scowled. “Everything I say isn’t a lie… and save the lawyer joke. I’m not a criminal defense attorney… anymore.”

  “Chasing MedVans?”

  She scoffed. “No, Joseph… I’m splitting my time working inter-corporate lawsuits while trying to get my foot in the door of the Arcadia prosecutor’s office.”

  They stared at each other in silence for a few minutes.

  “Hey…” Katherine looked up with a rare shade of vulnerability in her features. “This is gonna sound crazy but…”

  Joey flicked a bit of lint from his chest. “You’ve called me for help. It already does sound crazy.”

  “I mean it, Joe. I…” She shook her head. “Look, never mind. If you can―”

  “What? Come on. Out with it.”

  Katherine seemed to stare into his soul. “I got a vid from Dad three days ago.” Her lip quivered and tears gathered in her eyes. “At first, I thought it was Grant trying to twist the knife… but Dad said I should vid you, said you could help.” She sniffled and wiped her face. “What’s going on, Joe?”

  He nodded. “There’s an AI out there that’s basically Dad. It’s a long story. You know that thing with the murder machines? Well, the AI that started that whole mess was designed to collate exabytes of data from millions of sources to generate child AIs that capture the essence of a person. I still don’t know why it picked Dad, but… the entity that called you was an AI version of him.”

  “Oh, wow.” Katherine looked around as if afraid of being spied on. “What does it want?”

  A whimsical smile preceded Joey laughing. “Same thing Dad did when he’s on vacation. It’s just wandering around taking in the sights. It’s kinda freaky how much like him it is.”

  “You’re saying an AI made an AI? That’s illegal.”

  “Yeah. Because declaring something illegal stops criminals from doing it.” Joey frowned. “I know. Don’t worry. I deleted the creator. Dad-AI seemed harmless, so I didn’t bother.”

  “Thanks.” Katherine smiled. “I know you can get Grant off my ass. He’s really trying to ruin my life… maybe even get me put in jail.”

  “I got him.” Joey winked. Okay, this is surreal. I’m working for the government, and I’m looking at Katherine and I don’t want to eat a bullet to make her shut up. “Hey, since I don’t have to worry about getting black-bagged anymore if I set foot on Mars, maybe I’ll pop up and visit sometime. How’s Mom?”

  “Lonely.” Katherine folded her arms, staring down. “After Grant left, I was going to have her move in with me, but with all this crap going on now, she doesn’t want to terminate her lease and then wind up being out on the street if I lose my place.” She lifted her head. “Mom would like to see you again. If the two of us could exist in the same room without trying to kill each other, it’d probably make her year.”

  “Oh.” Joey cracked his knuckles. “This jackass is involving Mom? Consider him dealt with.”

  “Thanks. I owe you.”

  “Yes… yes, you do. Don’t think I’m not going to expect atonement for the past five years.”

  Katherine chuckled and wiped a tear. “If you fix this Grant situation, I’ll kiss your boots.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you being literal, like lips to pseudo-leather or metaphorical?”

  “Asshole,” she muttered.

  After two seconds of staring at each other, they laughed.

  “I’ll vid you back when it’s done.”

  Katherine reached off frame. “Thanks.” She started to turn away, but looked at him again. “And sorry.”

  The call dropped.

  “Gde mama?” asked Elizaveta.

  “I should probably get a Russian chip.” Joey glanced at the screen showing ‹Where’s mama?› “Working late. It’s probably going to happen a lot.”

  “Oy. Spasibo, chto ostalsya so mnoy.” She smiled. “A shas ty pokazhesh’ mne igru?”

  The NetMini spoke in the child’s voice, “Oh. Thank you for staying with me. Will you show me the game now?”

  “Sure.”

  Joey picked up the second Senshelmet with the mild cringe and head turn one often used while handling a loaded diaper. The Yume had M3 ports, but plugging direct would give him an unfair advantage. Damn. I haven’t even touched one of these things since I was seventeen. He eased it down on his head and tried to remember the old routine of relaxing and letting the brain trust the signal. After a momentary tingle spread across the top of his head, the living room melted away to a white-floored room with glowing green and pink energy fields. A virtual slab of glass held a series of commands for the Yume-Koujou system. To his right, a shimmery orb of golden light bobbed up and down, a representation of Elizaveta’s presence in the VR world.

  “It’s pretty in here,” said a somewhat-louder English child voice on top of Elizaveta’s real-world Russian.


  “Oh, that’s so handy.” Joey smiled. “I had no idea these things did on-the-fly translation.”

  The girl giggled. “It is funny to hear you talking twice.”

  “Okay.” Joey walked over to the slab and accessed the library. Fortunately, Alduin’s Adventure sat at the top of the list, so he didn’t have to scroll past game covers full of gore with the kid nearby. He poked it.

  A few seconds later, the shimmery ‘lobby’ changed to a stone-floored room. The surroundings resembled a medieval castle rendered in cartoon. Elizaveta’s ‘presence indicator’ had changed from a ball of light to a faerie. Joey looked down at himself and confirmed that he, too, had taken on the outward appearance of a twelve-inch-tall faerie.

  “Sigh,” he said. “Okay… what’s the setup here?”

  He perused the information tiles for the game, which unrolled in midair like ancient scrolls. The game differed from most in that the player did not embody their character. Alduin’s Adventure, while based on the Monwyn RPG, had been simplified and turned into a maze crawl for younger players. The character advancement and skill elements were almost gone, with each of sixteen playable characters having only six ‘choice points’ where a player could select one of three abilities that would alter how the character played a bit. The player’s point of view hovered above and behind the character as they guided them around various levels full of hallways, treasure chests, monsters, and traps. The cartoony/anime appearance of everything reassured him he’d chosen a kid-appropriate game. Hopefully, nothing too graphic would happen.

  Elizaveta selected an elf woman with a bow and a dog-sized dragon companion. Joey chuckled to himself. Well, since we’re going cliché, I might as well go full-cliché. He picked a guy that looked like a knight with a sword and shield.

  Thok.

  An arrow stuck into his character’s face. Aside from a sound effect, little happened.

  “Why did you do that?” asked Joey.

  “Umm.” The elf woman bit her lip and shrugged. “Aren’t we supposed to fight?”

  Joey found it easy to disregard the quiet Russian leaking into his right ear. “No… we work together to fight monsters.”

  “Oh!” The elf bounced and clapped. The sofa jostled, likely from Elizaveta bobbing in her seat. “That is better.”

  Despite not being ‘in’ the character, controlling the knight played much like other games. It moved as he wanted to move, and all he needed to do was think about it. The effect proved wildly disorienting as the disembodied view followed his character from above and behind.

  After a few minutes to get used to moving and attacking, Joey walked over to a giant pair of metal-banded wooden doors.

  “Is the adventure inside there?” asked Elizaveta.

  “Yep.” He grasped a large iron ring and pulled.

  The doors opened with a slow, groaning creak, revealing a long tunnel.

  “Die!” yelled a tiny creature voice.

  A three-foot tall grass-green goblin leapt out into the hallway brandishing a small sword. Its huge eyes and floppy ears made Joey want to laugh at it. It raised its pitiful weapon and started to charge at them.

  Elizaveta shot it in the chest.

  The goblin flew backward, bounced on its head, and landed flat on its chest, giant Xs where its eyes had been.

  “I got a meanie,” yelled Elizaveta.

  Joey chuckled. “You did. Wanna go find more?”

  “This is fun!” The elf woman zoomed off into the dungeon.

  Joey ran after her, smiling at the gleeful noises coming from the girl next to him. “Hey, wait. You’re weak up close. Don’t get too far away from me.”

  “I found a door,” echoed from around a corner up ahead.

  He ran past several torches and hooked a left not quite a full second before the elf kicked open a pair of double doors.

  Dozens of goblins ranging from the size of the one she’d shot moments before to pudgy ones a little shorter than men littered a large, open chamber. Some had been dancing, some eating, some sleeping… but they all froze and turned as one to stare at the two of them.

  “Uh oh,” said Elizaveta. “That’s a lot of meanies.”

  “Nah.” Joey stepped in front of her. “It’s just the marketing department.”

  She blinked at him. “What?”

  “Arrows. Put them into goblins.” He raised his shield.

  The mass of goblins swarmed at them, a tidal wave of green.

  otating jets coated Nina with hot water and soap. The metal ring descended inside the autoshower tube to the floor, lingered for a few seconds, and rose again. She held her arms up to expose her sides to the cleansing foam and combed at her hair with her fingers. Pressure from the streams embraced her like a slow massage. The soapy mix washed over her face, but didn’t sting her eyes.

  She closed them anyway, a few seconds late, trying to avoid the reminder that every part of her aside from her brain and spinal cord had been made in a factory. The military-grade Class 3 doll body fooled even her parents, as well as everyone else who saw her. Even Nina forgot sometimes, but only when something existed for her attention to cling to. Joey’s irreverent smile could offer such escape, and apparently so could comforting a terrified orphan who’d snapped awake from a nightmare.

  The spray ring descended once more.

  Nina ran her hands around her chest and up over her shoulders one after the next. Skin made from high-grade flexible composites had the exact feel and texture of living tissue. Of course, they couldn’t cover this body in real skin. As soon as she used her full strength, she’d tear it. When she’d yanked the cage doors from their frames in the Osiris lab, she’d have peeled all the skin off her hands had it been living tissue. When she’d twisted Sergeant Hickman’s augmented arm off at the shoulder and knocked him out with it, she’d have sheared her palms off.

  Nina narrowed her eyes. Why did Joey die laughing when I told him about Hickman? That wasn’t funny. She prodded the holo-panel in front of the metal strip where the autoshower tube touched the wall, adding another five minutes to the wash cycle. Even if her body consisted of plastisteel and synthetic materials, a hot shower still felt good.

  “I’m a brain in a jar. It doesn’t know any better. Reality is a product of one’s experiences. I’m experiencing a shower, so for all intents and purposes, I am real.”

  Beep. A flashing green dot appeared in the upper left of her vision.

  ‹Incoming: [D9] Cmdr (O6) Hardin, Harold J›

  “He knows I’m going to be late today.” Her mental impulse caused her hardware to answer the call.

  A panel opened dead center in her vision; her boss floated three feet away, which made him appear to be standing behind a window in the wall. 「Good morning, lieutenant.」 He smiled. Brown-grey curly hair draped over his scalp like a woodland creature hit by a PubTran bus. 「Hope I’m not interrupting anything important. Just a quick heads-up. I thought you’d like to know Lieutenant Woodring’s out of the tank and back to his old self.」

  Nina smiled, both in reality and via her virtual presence on Hardin’s terminal. The spray ring again climbed, filling the tube with steam and the scent of lavender. 「That’s good. I’m going to guess that he wants the case back?」

  「Yeah. He’s a little miffed we didn’t wait for him to finish his dunk. He wanted to go after Hickman.」

  「I’m sure he did… and he probably would’ve shot the guy as soon as said ‘fuck you,’ assuming Hickman didn’t disappear before he got out of the tank.」

  Hardin gave her a solemn nod. 「Exactly why we sent you in. He knew we had him, and we figured he’d make a run for Sector 6060. All the parts he’d funneled in for them, his friends there would’ve protected him.」

  Nina chuckled. 「We should’ve let him go to the black, sir. Prison’s like a four-star hotel by comparison.」

  「Except he could’ve left the disavowed sector any time he wanted… provided that he remained alive to do so. More risk to citizens
that way.」

  She arched her back and adored the shower on its last up-down pass. 「Hickman wasn’t expecting me. He actually laughed when I confronted him.」 Nina stared down at her hands, fingers splayed, soapy water running in trails over her palms. So delicate looking. So harmless. She closed her fingers to fists. So false. 「He stopped laughing when he hit the floor.」

  Hardin scratched at the side of his head. 「Damn fine of you to leave the man alive.」

  The dry cycle kicked on; hot air blasted up from the base, creating a tornado in a bottle. Her skin rippled as if she’d gone skydiving nude. 「I didn’t get the feeling command wanted him on a ‘flight to Miami’… even if he did try to tear Woodring’s head off.」

  「Well…」 Hardin chuckled. 「Let’s just say no one would’ve complained if you’d gone that route. I’m half-tempted to ask if you want to talk to someone, but I know you better than that. Most in your position would’ve killed him.」

  Nina lifted her gaze to her reflection on the clear tube. A vacant, emotionless face stared back at her. 「You’re worried I’m having a crisis of humanity, sir? That I can somehow ‘be more real’ by acting more humane?」

  「The thought had crossed my mind, though I doubt Doctor Rice would call you reluctant to do your job.」

  「Tell me everyone in Division 9 doesn’t fight to keep their soul.」 Her attention fixated on a droplet of water dangling from the tip of her nose. Gravid, it wobbled, threatening to fall at any second. 「I’ve tasted death, so they worry I hesitate taking life when necessary? Would they rather we solve every problem with expedience, or does some shred of morality still live within this shell of metal and plastic?」

  「Nina… Are you feeling all right?」

  「I suppose. I know I had to have been dead for a little while. That I’m in this body only proves I had to have been beyond help.」

  「You had lost almost all of your blood, and most of your vital organs were mush. The only thing they could do was rig a bypass to your brain to keep it oxygenated; the rest of you had been dead for six minutes by the time you arrived in the procedure room. You seem oddly morbid. What happened?」