inching my way forward. The man seemed thin and frail, squeezing through with relative ease. My metallic right shoulder scored the walls on both sides as I scraped along. My hat tumbled off, but I managed to snatch it with my free hand. “I take it that receptionist’s discomfort was your fault?”
The man laughed as I continued to struggle through. “Yeah man, the system they got has detection algorithms for multiple links on the same path, kinda to prevent exactly what I’m doing. They send a feedback spike down the link into the intruder’s brain, which manifests as about the worst hangover you could ever imagine.” He shrugged, stooping over. “Of course, I tricked the countermeasure into thinking
Finally, as he jabbered about his mainframe diving, I gripped the edge and pulled myself free. I came out in a small open square, with identical gaps leading forward and to the left and right. My new friend was crouched over a street covering, prying at it with a twisted chunk of metal. Exasperated, I asked, “Sewers?”
He waved a hand at me, annoyed. “No, no, no. This isn’t a shit-pipe. It’s a relay.” The man wrenched, and the covering popped open an inch. “Grab that.” I did as he asked and hauled the hinged plate upward. I noted the broken locking mechanism on the lid as my new companion dropped down into the hole. Carefully, I followed behind, settling the hatch in place overhead before descending the short ladder.
Lengths of electrical and various cabling stretched out in either direction along with a small walkway. It appeared to be a maintenance tunnel for the unholy amount of data processing and wiring that stretched everywhere on the planet. Soft green diagnostic blips on the walls provided a dim lighting.
I half-expected the crazed man to take a lunge at or try to rob me, not that it would have done him any good, but he waited with an impatient expression. “You’re a little slow; you know that?”
Frowning, I asked, “Where are we going?”
“We should be safe here, for now. I couldn’t speak freely out in the open because they’re looking for me.”
I felt a twinge of frustration as the man confirmed the presence of paranoia and likely delusion. “Who is looking for you?” I asked.
“Keritas, of course. Who else?”
Rolling my eyes, I replied, “Who else indeed? What information do you have for me?”
“Ah, ah, ah! It’s not that simple, is it?” He grinned again, and the wild expression knocked my opinion of his sanity down several more notches. “There’s a such a thing called a deal. You know? Tit for that? You scratch my back, and we all smell the music? All for one and five for a credit?”
I folded my arms, favoring him with a glare. “Loose lips sink glass houses.”
My new friend tossed his head back and gave a long laugh. “Exactly my friend, exactly. So I want to know what you’ll be doing for me if I tell you what I know.”
Cocking my head, I replied, “I’m willing to negotiate, assuming what you know is worth anything in the first place. You mentioned Ivan; do you have information on him or not?”
I winced as he revealed his hideous teeth again. “Oh, for sure. I know exactly why he was a patron of the fine Keritas establishment as well as why the greedy pricks won’t say a thing no matter how high up the chain you go.”
“Why not?”
“They’re embarrassed! Oh no, no… can’t let that little secret out, can they?”
Rubbing my forehead, I replied, “What secret?”
“Ah, ah, no, no!” He wagged a finger at me. “You gotta promise me something.”
I stared at him.
“Promise you’ll take me with you when you leave.”
“No.”
He appeared shocked by my flat denial. “W-well, then you have to tell someone about what I tell you. Spread the word, fly like an eagle, you know?”
“To what end?”
He smacked himself on the forehead. “Man, the people! The people gotta know what they’re doing in there: the kinds of horrors and wonders of technology hidden by the corporate giants. They gotta know, and then everyone can band together to tear the walls down, you know? Bring the fat cats back down to our level!”
“You want to bring down Keritas?” I envisioned the planet upon which I stood, Ethra, with billions of unemployed people scrounging and murdering for food. Fires burning across the wide cityscape. A galaxy-wide recession as commerce stuttered under the loss of a major economic power.
“Of course! Man, the things I’ve seen; they would shock you. They would
I doubted this, as I’d done many jobs and seen many things. His assertions didn’t matter anyway since it wasn’t really possible to bring down the entire corporation in any real sense. It operated within thousands of smaller units and didn’t exactly have unified oversight of every little detail.
It became certain for me that the information from this man was suspect. Not that any of the corporations had the most stellar record or firm ethics, but he carried an obvious madness. I nearly decided to leave and let him doomsay at someone more patient. Still, I wouldn’t be too inconvenienced to hear him out.
“Very well,” I said. “I will take your message to those who may act upon it. I don’t guarantee results, and I am not a champion for your cause.” This was utter honesty. I intended to tell someone as long as the story had details applicable to my search. I didn’t tell him what I suspected: no one in the entire galaxy would care even if his tale was dripping with the truth. “So tell me, what is this big secret about Ivan which is so embarrassing?”
“He escaped from them!” he said with delight. “The most advanced piece of technology in the entire galaxy, capable of fighting armies and destroying cities, worlds even, slipped right out of their grubby little fingers!” He stifled a giggle.
I found his assertion of their uncleanliness to be ironic and mildly hypocritical, but I didn’t bring it up. I asked, “What exactly do you mean?”
The disheveled man continued snickering and shaking his head. “Man, you have no idea. No idea!”
Frustrated, I glared at him without speaking.
He grinned. “I-V-A-N, man. Ivan’s a goddamn robot.”
“They don’t want anyone to know about it, especially after the incident in the Regulus system when Ivan became so famous. I had friends on the Garden, man. Lots of friends.
But his creation… the entire R&D department responsible for building Ivan got shipped out to deep space exploration with the threat of death if they should ever return within the next three millennia. Managers who knew about the project, anyone who happened to be working within three floors of the breakout, all kinds of people disappeared in their clean-up.
Think of the lawsuits, man. Think of how many people would be banging down Keritas’ doors if they knew that all the shit Ivan had done was their fault. The company would get smashed into tiny pieces, and that’d be it.
IVAN was just a code name for the project. It stood for Impervious Vessel for Annihilation Nexus. It was supposed to be one of a hundred, maybe a thousand individual units with the strength and destructive power to conquer anything and withstand any amount of punishment.
They were the ultimate in defensive and offensive weaponry. An unstoppable force Keritas wanted to use to cut down the competition and reign supreme in the entire galaxy.
It all started in that big building, on the 19th basement floor.
The lab was huge, containing the most sophisticated pieces of technology. Famous engineers from everywhere disappeared and were brought to the facility to work on this robotics project. It was a big secret, man. They had top of the line hardware, dense and refined alloys, and the most important piece of all:
An augmented human brain.
AI projects have been dead-ends for hundreds of years, you know? It’s a widely known fact that the growth of an intelligence on that scale requires a planet-wide system of computers to sustain it, and by then, the experiment gets wild and out of control. No variant has ever bothered to consider us humans as anything but inferior, so these projects end in disaster. But that’s a whole new can of worms, man. I could talk for days about AI stuff.
