CHAPTER NINE
Yanluo Blight residential blocks
2979 CE
Csaba Shigeki, Director-General of the Department of Temporal Investigation, took off his peaked cap and tucked it under an arm as he stepped into the VIP lounge. The sloped glass front curved into the first half of the floor to afford a clear view of the circular stadium below, while virtual reports provided all manner of statistics on the two teams. His eyes caught the name “Thaddeus Shigeki” in one of the rosters, and he wore a proud smile as he rounded a wide couch that seated the only other occupant.
“You know, for having so many time machines under your command, you sure are late a lot.”
The woman’s white suit provided a stark contrast to her black skin and short, curly hair. She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head back with a scornful glare. The public layer of her PIN interfaced with his and the marriage sigil on the back of her hand appeared in his virtual sight: a blooming marigold with three dew-kissed petals beneath it to represent her three children. They’d hired the original artist to add a petal after the birth of each child.
“Fashionably late, you mean,” he corrected.
Jackie Shigeki raised a single eyebrow and tried to skewer him with the other eye, but then the sternness melted away and she started to giggle.
“Come on. Sit down, Csaba.” She patted the cushion next to her. “You already missed the first run.”
“Sorry.” He set his cap on the end table, dropped down next to her, and tossed his braid over a shoulder. “Kloss kept me over.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Not really.” He took her dark hand in his pale one, and their identical sigils glowed a little brighter. “Freep sympathizers keep finding ways to slip tech goodies to the Lunar secessionists, and we haven’t figured out how. The usual headaches. Has Thaddeus run yet?”
“Not yet. The Coordinators from Tower A10 went first, but we executed an early juggernaut rush and stole the initiative. Thad and the rest of the Blight Bashers are prepping for his run now.”
“Very nice. That’s my boy.”
Csaba draped an arm over her shoulders and she snuggled up next to him.
“So how was your day?” he asked.
“Fine, I guess,” she sighed.
“You sure? Because you’re making my sarcasm meter tingle.”
“It’s nothing really. The new boss is a real stickler for the rules. He’s thrown all of our normal procedures into chaos, and schedules meeting after meeting. Plus he keeps calling me ‘Jaqueline,’ and it’s starting to bug me.”
“I think he’s still feeling out his new team. It’s what I’d be doing in his shoes.”
“Maybe so, but ‘Jaqueline Shigeki’ just sounds so darn awkward. I’m getting sick of hearing ‘Publicist Jaqueline Shigeki, I need a moment of your time.’ I know it’s petty, but I miss the assonance.”
Csaba’s train of thought ground to a halt, and he paused to access the local infostructure.
“What is it?”
“Hold on,” he said. “I’m running a search.”
“Are you seriously looking up what assonance means?”
“Maybe,” he admitted.
“Jac-kie Shige-ki. The ends have this nice repetitive vowel sound that forms the assonance.”
“Well, yeah. I know that now that I looked it up, but you have to admit the word sounds like it could be a horrible form of butt disease.”
Jackie snorted. “Seriously, Csaba. One of the reasons I married you was so I could have an assonance in my name.”
“You did?” He leaned dramatically away from her.
“Dear me. Did I let that slip?”
“Oh ho! Thirty years and three children later, and finally the truth comes out.”
“Darn it!” She snapped her fingers. “You’ve seen through my carefully laid machinations at last.”
“Well, I do run the DTI. It’s kind of in the job description.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Seriously, though, if you’re not happy with the new boss, I could have a word with him. Or his boss. Or his boss’s boss, for that matter.”
“No! Absolutely not!”
“What?” He put a hand over his heart. “I can be subtle.”
“Csaba, it’s not how you’d act. It’s who you are. Can you imagine how a lowly supervisor in public relations would react to having the DTI Director-General call him all of a sudden? He would literally crap his pants.”
“Yeah, I suppose I do sometimes have that effect on people.”
“Which is why you’re not going to do it.” Jackie patted his chest. “That’s the very definition of overkill. I can handle the rough and tumble world of public relations without you riding in on a white horse to save me.”
“Well, that white horse is standing by if you need it.”
Jackie shook her head and giggled. He gave her a light kiss on the forehead, and held her close as she rested her head against his shoulder.
The players returned to the field, and the obstacles selected by the Coordinators manifested in his virtual vision.
“Lots of turrets,” he noted.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t leave much for the run itself. I wonder what their strategy is.”
“I guess we’ll find out when Thad starts.”
“Uh-oh.” She disentangled from him and sat up.
“What is it?”
“I just received an alert from a search I was running. Guess who’s in the next lounge over.”
“Do I really have to? You know I hate guessing.”
“Why, it’s your favorite new employee, of course.”
“Uhh…” he moaned and flopped his head onto the back of the couch.
“And I think she just realized you’re in here.”
“This is the last thing I need today,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “Can’t she just leave me alone and let me enjoy the game?”
One of the side doors chimed.
“Apparently not.” He glanced at the fogged portal to his left and switched off the privacy filter. The door cleared, and Cheryl First, newly appointed DTI Under-Director of Archaeology, dipped her head at him and smiled.
“No point in resisting now,” Jackie said.
“You’re right, of course,” he sighed and unlocked the door.
The malglass slid aside, and Cheryl stepped in, radiating grace and dignity with each long-legged stride. A short, angular cut of perfectly groomed auburn hair framed an oval face and milky white skin that were rumored to be the product of the best genetic and cosmetic modifications money could buy, within the legal bounds of the Yanluo Restrictions, of course. The chief executor’s wife would never be seen violating the Restrictions or even dabbling within the gray legal areas that surrounded them. Her custom Peacekeeper blues hugged the sumptuous curves of her body and supported her endowments in ways that weren’t a part of the standard printing pattern.
He straightened his posture and put on his best fake smile.
“Hello, Csaba. What a surprise—and a pleasure—finding you here.”
You’ve worked for me less than a month and you’re already addressing me by my first name? he thought.
“Oh, the pleasure is all mine, Cheryl,” he somehow managed.
She sat down on the couch without asking, and a vein in his forehead twitched while he forced the smile to hold.
“As you know,” she started, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about less—oh, how should I put this? Less aggressive uses for the Admin’s time-travel program.”
That vein twitched again.
“And,” she continued, “I believe I’ve a hit upon a perfect debut mission for us.”
“Cheryl, I’ve love to hear all about it. But as you can see, Jackie and I are here to see our youngest play. Can’t this wait until I’m back in the office?”
“I suppose it could, but you’re always so busy at work when I stop by.”
Have you considered that might be by design? he thought.
“Just life as a Director-General,” he said.
“Oh, trust me, I know.” She winked and nodded at Jackie. “It’s a struggle to find five minutes alone with Chris now that he’s chief executor. So when I saw you were in the next lounge over, I knew this would be the perfect time to show you my proposal.”
This is most decidedly not the perfect time.
Cheryl put a hand on his shoulder and initiated a PIN interface request.
And now you’re intruding on my personal network, he thought. Great. Just great.
He let it through, and a map of ancient Egypt appeared in his virtual sight. Five green triangles swooped in to drop groups of green dots atop a network of tombs.
“As you can see here, I’ve selected the Valley of the Kings. First, because the tombs were heavily plundered during the reign of Ramesses XI, but also, admittedly, because I love Egyptian history. It’s just so fascinating. Don’t you agree?”
“Oh, yes.” He did his best not to sound sarcastic. “Thrilling stuff.”
Cheryl First’s position as Under-Director of Archaeology wasn’t just newly appointed, but newly created by Chief Executor Christopher First’s incoming administration, which irked him to no end. Not only had the newly elected chief executor seen fit to add unnecessary and wasteful scope to the DTI’s mission without consulting him, but he’d also put his wife in charge of it!
“Now, as you see here, all I need is five chronoports for just three weeks. That’s it, and if you would be so kind as to supply me with them, I’m sure we could—”
“Cheryl, I’m sorry to interrupt, but you know that’s not possible right now. All of our chronoports are either on a mission, assigned to suppression, or being serviced. I’d love to give you what you’re asking for. Truly I would. But reality is what it is. I simply don’t have the ships for this…”
He struggled to come up with a response that didn’t include “waste of time.” Partially because it was rude and partially because it was a horribly overused pun in the DTI.
“Creative and fascinating use of chronoports,” Jackie finished.
“Yes, exactly,” he continued. “Very creative. Very fascinating. I just don’t have the resources for this.”
“What about Pathfinder Squadron?” Cheryl asked.
“Now, come on, you know better than that. The Pathfinders are our emergency reserve. I can’t cut into that for a…”
“Wonderful opportunity to rediscover our lost past,” Jackie inserted.
“Yes, thank you. It really is an intriguing idea, but it’s just not necessary.”
“I see.” Cheryl leaned back stiffly.
“It’s nothing personal, I promise, but we at the DTI need to stay focused on our core mission. We go back and investigate the past actions of Freep terrorists, Lunar secessionists, ProTech dissidents, Oort cloud cabalists, and whatever other scum the solar system feels like throwing at us. We find out where and when they were, go back in time, and study those past meetings or attacks. Sometimes we unfortunately only get called in after a terrorist strikes, but even those missions allow us to trace the perpetrator back through time, identify other cell members, and possibly stop them in the True Present before they strike. Other times we get lucky by identifying the time and place for a critical meeting, and we shake it down for information before the attack can be carried out.”
“But don’t you see?” Cheryl said. “The Admin’s push for control is what feeds into this cycle of violence.”
“Cheryl, look. I know we don’t see eye to eye politically, but we live in a dangerous world. The Admin is beset by threats both external and internal, and we Peacekeepers fight to preserve peace and order in a chaotic and unpredictable world. Here at the DTI, our role is to make sure the Peacekeepers on the front lines have the information they need to keep us all safe. And more times than not, the men and women in my department succeed in that mission. They’ve prevented more attacks and saved more lives than I could even begin to count, and I’m very proud of them for that.”
Cheryl took her hand off his shoulder, and the map vanished. She sat back and clasped her hands in her lap.
“Actually,” Jackie began, leaning toward her. “I bet you could help the DTI achieve both.”
“How so?” she asked.
“Aren’t the chief executor and his cabinet putting together the budget for this year? Certainly, you could make a suggestion or two. Perhaps reprioritize some funding to the DTI. Say, enough for five new chronoports and their crews?”
He perked up immediately and checked Cheryl’s reaction.
“You know,” she responded thoughtfully, “I think Chris would be very receptive to a proposal like that. Especially if his new Under-Director of Archaeology were the one making it.”
“And not because you’re married to him, of course,” Jackie said.
“Well, of course!” Their eyes gleamed and the two women laughed heartily.
I swear, I love my wife more every day!
“Hey, Csaba,” Jackie said. “The chronoports could even be based on that new design you were drooling over but didn’t have the budget for.”
“Excuse me? I don’t drool.”
“You remember. The Hammerhead-class chronoport? The one that’s basically a time-traveling fortress that flies.”
“Ah. Those. Yes, I dare say five of them would be perfectly suited to the mission you’re proposing. Or anything else we send them on for that matter.”
“In that case, I will have to mention them to Chris,” Cheryl said.
“Would you mind if I take a look at your proposal?” Jackie asked. “I have to admit, I’ve had something of a passing interest in ancient Egypt myself.”
Since all of two minutes ago, he thought, his grin now completely genuine.
“But I always struggled to find the time to get into it,” Jackie continued. “Never enough hours in the day, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I know the feeling. And I’d be happy to show you, of course.”
“Move your butt, Csaba. The two of us need to talk.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He stood up, and Jackie scooched over next to Cheryl. He walked over to the window and spotted Thaddeus’s avatar in the visiting team’s goal. He frowned, a little upset at missing his son’s scoring run, but he called up the replay and was about to start it when the back door chimed.
The door opened without him releasing it, which severely limited who it could be. He turned around as a tall, imposing figure in a crisp Peacekeeper uniform stepped in. The first-generation synthoid met Csaba’s gaze with piercing yellow eyes surrounded by the smooth contours of his dark gray skin.
“Director.” James Noxon, DTI Chief of Security, nodded to him. “I’m sorry, but a matter’s come up that requires your immediate attention.”
“I take it this is more important than my son’s game?”
“I wouldn’t have disturbed you otherwise, sir.”
“All right, Nox, understood. Ladies?” He picked up his cap and fitted it in place. “I’m very sorry, but duty calls.”
“It’s all right, dear.” Jackie shooed him off. “We were done with you anyway. Just let me know if you’ll be home late today.”
“Will do.” He bent down and kissed her, then followed Nox out. When they were safely out of sight, he put a hand on Nox’s shoulder and opened a private chat. “If this is some scheme to save me from that woman, you’re late. Jackie already took care of her.”
“It’s not, sir.”
“Then this is a genuine emergency.”
“It’s a…” Nox faltered.
“What?” Csaba Shigeki pressed.
“It’s a situation we haven’t dealt with before. Let’s put it that way. Jonas is already on site, and Kloss and Hinnerkopf are on their way too.”
“Now you have me both worried and intrigued.”
“It’s best if you see it for yourself. This way, sir. I have your shuttle standing by.”
* * *
The Prime Campus was the physical heart of the System Cooperative Administration, constructed over what had once been mainland China before the Yanluo Massacre, and the Prime Tower was the single largest structure humanity had ever built. Csaba Shigeki gazed out the window and wondered, not for the first time, what the architects had been thinking. It was as if their first design meeting had gone something like this:
“What would be the best way to symbolize this big-ass new bureaucracy we’re calling the Admin?”
“Well, that’s easy! We build a big-ass tower!”
“Sounds reasonable. But where should we build it?”
“How about right smack in the middle of the Yanluo Blight? That way it’ll serve as a big-ass monolithic middle finger to demonic AIs.”
“Brilliant! I love it!”
“And therefore, it should be the biggest assiest tower there ever was. Nothing else will suffice.”
“I’m really feeling it! Let’s do this!”
Yanluo had been a weaponized AI created in 2761 and named after a mythical Chinese god of death. In order to control Yanluo, his designers “boxed” the AI by carefully controlling his access to the outside world. However, Yanluo interpreted the box as an impediment to his mission and quickly circumvented it during a weaponized microbot swarm test by programming the swarm to overtake his physical location and construct a transmitter. He then transferred and overtook the local military infostructure, which was not boxed.
Once freed, Yanluo executed the only imperatives he’d been designed with: destroy everything and everyone in his path. With the growing swarm under his command, he introduced his own improvements at a prodigious rate while consuming the surrounding landscape and even whole cities, converting their raw material into newer and fiercer iterations of the original swarm, including biotech variants that turned infected people into mindless slaves to the AI. The Chinese military was overwhelmed in the first few days, and other nations stepped in to assist. Unfortunately, the combined efforts of the world governments were unable to tame Yanluo with anything short of weapons of mass destruction, and a brutal campaign of nuclear and kinetic bombardment was finally authorized to destroy the monstrous AI.
It did the job. It also took out most of China, Mongolia, and parts of Russia, in the process.
After Yanluo’s defeat, the stunned peoples and governments of Earth came together and, in 2763, formalized the Yanluo Restrictions and created the System Cooperative Administration, under the Articles of Cooperation, to enforce these restrictions.
On that day, the Admin became, and remained, the most powerful governing body in the entire solar system, with jurisdiction stretching from the habitat caverns of Mercury all the way to the aloof Oort cloud cabals.
Shigeki’s shuttle sped past the Prime Tower as the sun set in the distance. The tower stood over three times as tall as any other structure within sight and over ten times the height of the DTI tower built in the campus outskirts. It loomed above its surroundings, a single, enormous monolith in Peacekeeper blue, its sides traced in wide, climbing bands of white that directed the eye to the silver Peacekeeper shield—so large it served as a satellite building in its own right—at its midpoint. That was it. No flourishes. No embellishments. No baroque structures. Just the grandeur and spectacle of its size.
“You know something, Nox?” Shigeki said.
“Sir?”
“It really is an ugly tower.”
“It could have been worse.”
“How so?” Shigeki leaned back from the window and faced his chief of security.
“One of the proposed designs was, to put it kindly, a bit on the phallic side.”
“Hah! Yeah, that would be worse.”
“There was a referendum called for approving the design, and I’m trying to remember if that particular one included two large domes at its base.”
“Oh, good grief! Seriously?”
“Or maybe that was just an improvement my friends and I submitted. I honestly can’t remember. Regardless, the teenage me thought it was the pinnacle of comedy.”
Special Agent James Noxon was a rarity in the Admin: a human being who’d joined the Special Training And Nonorganic Deployment command and voluntarily submitted his mind to connectome recording so that his consciousness could be loaded into a synthetic body. There was no coming back from a transition like that, and the men and women who signed up to become Peacekeeper STANDs knew it. They also knew they would be regularly sent into the absolute worst combat situations imaginable; it was their job to charge headfirst into places and battles that flesh and blood Peacekeepers couldn’t possibly survive, and Nox had been one of the very first of their kind.
Nox resided within a first-generation synthoid, whose exterior represented the apprehensions of a populace unwilling to allow inhuman machines to blend in amongst them, and so his skin and eye color loudly proclaimed his synthetic nature. Attitudes toward synthoids had softened in the intervening centuries, but that soulless, nonhuman stigma had never truly left their kind.
Shigeki always felt a little sad when he looked at Nox. STANDs were the tip of the Peacekeeper spear, but they were also shunned by those they protected. Thankfully, attitudes changed with time, and modern synthoids could legally match the outward appearance of natural humans, but Nox had never done so. Shigeki wondered if he’d simply given up on ever being considered human again.
“That was over two hundred years ago,” Shigeki said. “I didn’t know you still had clear memories from that far back.”
“I have a few, and unfortunately my connectome wasted one of them on that.”
“Well, no one’s perfect.”
Shigeki glanced out the window and noticed a flight of Switchblade attack drones drop into formation around his shuttle.
“That’s a rather hefty escort. Are we expecting trouble?”
“No, but given how unusual the situation is I thought it prudent to take all possible precautions.”
“And how unusual is it?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
Shigeki let Nox interface with his PIN, and a gunmetal ellipse with a spike on the end appeared between them.
“What sort of crazy chronoport design is that?” Shigeki asked.
“We don’t know.”
“Is it even armed?”
“Minimal weaponry in the blisters here and here,” Nox said, pointing. “And it didn’t use them.”
“It’s not something copied from us, and it doesn’t look like any of the Freep originals. Who built this thing?”
“We don’t know. Hinnerkopf will investigate that once she arrives.”
“Fair enough. Next question, how’d we get our hands on this thing?”
“It phased in over North Africa. High-speed entry with no attempts at stealth.”
“That sounds awfully stupid.”
“I find it difficult to argue with that, sir. Jonas had two chronoports from Barricade ready when it phased in, and the pilot almost immediately surrendered. We only fired one warning shot.”
“It didn’t try to run or self-destruct?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I take it we have the pilot in custody?”
“Yes, sir. He and the chronoport are being carried to the DTI tower. They’ll arrive less than an hour after we do.”
“Any Yanluo Violations to deal with?”
“Actually, we’re pretty sure there are several.”
“Thought so.” Shigeki grimaced. “Are we taking the appropriate precautions?”
“Yes, sir. The pilot and his chronoport will both be isolated in the subbasement upon arrival.”
“And where is this pilot from?”
“We don’t know.”
“Do we even have a wild guess?”
“No. Kloss plans to interrogate the prisoner as soon as he returns.”
“Good. We need some answers.”
“Though you may want to consider doing the interrogation yourself.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because the prisoner has requested to speak to you personally.”
“Oh, he has? Has he?” Shigeki scoffed. “And why should I?”
“Actually, we only think he’s asking for you. His speech is, well just listen for yourself.”
Nox played a recording that came through Shigeki’s virtual hearing.
“Nǐ hǎo. Wǒ nèed to spèak with pěrson in chàrge of nǐ de tǐme trǎvel prògram. Zhègě is màtter of grěat ùrgěncy. Fàte of àll èxistěnce is at stàke. Wó am bèíng rèallý sèrìóus àbóut zhègé! Pléase stóp pòintíng zhègé át wó!”
“Wow,” Shigeki said. “Okay. I see what you mean. I think I understood about every other word in that mess. What sort of bastardized version of English was that?”
“We don’t know.”
“Do we know anything for certain right now?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
Shigeki let out a frustrated growl and opened a call to Dahvid Kloss, DTI Under-Director of Espionage.
“Kloss here.”
“Kloss. Shigeki.”
“What can I do for you, boss?”
“Change of plans. I’m going to speak to the pilot first. No offense, but this one’s so weird I’m taking direct control of the investigation.”
“Understandable. And no offense taken. Anything else?”
“Institute a full information blackout. I don’t want news of this spreading until we have a better handle on what’s going on.”
“Not a problem. As chance would have it, my team already has a suite of data scrubbers and monitors ready for deployment on your command.”
“Good man.”
“It’s what you pay me for.”
Shigeki closed the call.
“What’s next, sir?” Nox asked.
“Next.” He glanced out the window to see their shuttle swing around the DTI tower’s upper landing platform. “Next, I’m going to call Jackie and tell her I’m sorry and that it’s going to be another late night. Then I’m going to do my damnedest to figure out what the hell is going on.”