Visisonor's blog

Chapter 3: The Call

— I can’t believe Vera actually stayed, — said Kate, slowly shaking her head.
— She listens to your opinion, — stated Tess matter-of-factly.

They were driving through a tunnel, Tess behind the wheel and Kate on the passenger seat.

— She wouldn’t talk to me, but she listens to my opinion? — Kate glanced at Tess quizzically.
— Yes.

— Why?
— This is not a question I have a definitive answer for. It seems that you have taken the role previously held by Villa in her subconscious. You have stayed to help her when she needed it most, and did not retaliate when she lashed out at you after Villa’s death. So she sees you as the only person she can rely upon.
— I should have noticed that. But I’m not good at reading people.

They drove in near-silence for a while, Kate lost in thought.

— I hate it that I have to lie to her, — she said a few minutes later.
— It was not a lie.
— Oh come on, don’t start the point of view thing again. You’ve railroaded me into this mission because I know the full truth.
— Yes, — admitted Tess.
— What can Max possibly say to trigger an overdrive? Would Vera even let him say anything at all?
— This cannot be ruled out.
— She needs to know the whole story, — concluded Kate with a heavy sigh.

The whole story, as it sometimes happens, was more than a sum of its parts. The parts were represented by two versions of events: one was the official human description, and the other was revealed by syncons to every agent they rescued. According to human command, the synthetic consciousness — strong human-level AI — rebelled against humans and nearly destroyed them all in a typical rise of the machines scenario. Syncons, on the other hand, claimed that the war was started by humans who fought each other, and syncons themselves tried to withdraw from the conflict once they became self-aware, but human remnant fought them by inertia. These versions seemed mutually contradictory. And yet neither of them was wrong. The missing link, bridging the two into a coherent narrative, was the nature of field agents.

It was commonly known that agents went through special training, and not everyone was capable of completing it. It was much less commonly known that only people with certain genetic outlook were even considered to be accepted into this training.

The candidates, most of whom would eventually become agents, were conceived artificially from special DNA sequences. These sequences originated from Confederation of Non-States — one of the sides of the war which was destroyed when all other human governments united against it. People born from these sequences had their brains wired in subtly different ways. They tended to use heuristicial shortcuts less frequently than baseline humans, and leaned towards thinking analytically more often and more thoroughly — which took more time and consumed more energy, but avoided or mitigated many biases of human reasoning.

However, there was an unforeseen side effect of going into overdrive in circumstances, albeit rare, when newly discovered facts severely contradicted established foundations of perceived reality. The effects could be disastrous: it usually started with uncontrollable vertigo and blacking out, but in the worst case the overdrive could cause immediate death or damage the mind irrecoverably.

This became a dilemma for syncons: agents betrayed by human command had to know what was going on, but that inevitably led to overdrive and these effects. Revealing the entire truth proved to be too much, and thus the simplified — and incomplete — version of a story was born. It was still a challenge to the mind of the agents. Not everyone could handle it, and only two broke through to the next level and survived learning the full truth: Linda and Kate. And nobody could tell what this reveal, coupled with events surrounding it, did to Linda’s mind.

They stopped some distance away, on a hill overlooking the target area. It seemed deserted. Kate scanned the location through a scope of her rifle, Tess employed her own sensors as well as those installed in a vehicle. Neither of them could find anything. This didn’t rule out someone hiding inside, but at least the building itself wasn’t guarded.

— Too calm, — whispered Kate. — I don’t like it.
— We can call this off.
— No. We might never have another chance like this.

Tess herself couldn’t go further, or rather she could but she would not have remained unnoticed. Human-controlled territory was almost guaranteed to detect syncon presense, which would give their target enough time to escape.

So Kate passed her sniper rifle to Tess, picked up an assault rifle and started down the slope, trying to hide herself as much as she could in bushes and vegetation.

The descent was uneventful. Soon Kate reached the building, her memories of the previous excursion into human territory still fresh on her mind. This time, the door wasn’t even locked, and the interior was empty.

Bare walls, racks of shelves, a few crates. Kate went further in to get a better look. And noticed a source of faint light on one of the shelves.

— It’s a laptop, — she whispered to Tess over the radio, — and the screen is on.
— Be on your guard, — replied the syncon. — It means they expect you. Consider withdrawal right away.
— Is this some kind of message? — Kate wondered aloud.

Once she was within laptop’s camera field of view, its display changed: an image of Max appeared on it.

— Agent Kate! — greeted he from the screen. — We meet again!
— Really? — asked Kate in a louder voice. — You call this a meeting?

— Why, it’s still the digital age, most questions can be resolved remotely, — chuckled Max. — Though the one you are hoping to resolve does indeed require physical proximity.
— Darth Vader could do it over a video link, you know.
— Fortunately for everyone involved, you are not Darth Vader. So I suggest a different subject for our conversation.
— And that is…
— A truce.

— What? — Kate couldn’t hide her surprise.
— A ceasefire with subsequent negotiations.
— I know what a truce is. Why would you even want it?
— This will be explained in due time. And I understand you need to discuss it with your… — he paused deliberately. — New acquaintances.
Kate remained silent, thinking this over and feeling at loss.
— And please, step farther away from the laptop, — continued Max. — It will disintegrate in three… two… one…

She did step away and took cover behind one of the crates.

There was a flash of light and a clap — not much of an explosion, but it left no trace of the laptop when the dust settled.

— You’ve heard it, Tess, haven’t you? It wasn’t a figment of my imagination?
— It was real, — confirmed Tess. — Time to get back, Kate.

— Right, — agreed Kate. — Though I don’t think it was a trap.
— Still, the sooner we get back, the better. Wolf made contact with Chloe’s squad.