The Daedalus Code (6 page)

“But how did it take the kids? It’s not like it just got up and grabbed them, is it? Metion must have had people physically take Ariadne and her colleagues.”

“It got into their PR engines, lured them somewhere. I couldn’t trace it. When I tried, it found me, tried to get inside my brain, but I realized quickly enough and managed to get off the grid. But it has sent people after me. People it controls. Every day, its influence grows wider.”

“People work for it?” Mouse asked, wondering if Mikos was one such person.

Pagakis nodded.

“But why?”

“Information. When you’re on the inside of the biggest data vault in history, that’s quite the motivation.”

Mouse slumped to the floor. It was worse than he could have ever imagined. How could you take down a virtual enemy that controls people via their Personal Reality Engines?

With direct access to their brains, it could get them to do almost anything. It was far worse than Neuro-D, which had a similar effect, but was short-lived, and mostly the people on Neuro-D experienced things already preprogrammed. Usually violent or sexual acts.

Conscious, intelligent acts controlled by an AI…that was something else entirely.

“How do we stop it?” Mouse asked.

“Hah!” Pagakis jumped up, his eyes wide. “Stop it? You can’t stop it!”

“You said you tried to trace it, do you still have that information? Do you have any idea where Ariadne and the others were taken, or coerced, or whatever this thing did?”

“You can’t go there. Things are bad enough already. It can’t be allowed to spread. We have to take down the networks.”

“Are you mad? The world will stop if that happens. Everything is controlled by the networks. No, I have to find a way in. Tell me what you know.”

Pagakis shook his head. “You’re madder than I am. You really want to know? You prepared to take the risk?”

Mouse thought about it. As far as he figured, he was already in deep and he might as well keep digging in the hopes he’d come out the other side.

“Yes. Can you help me?”

The man stood and walked across the room and down the corridor. A minute later, he came back and handed Mouse his deactivated PR engine.

“It’s all in there. It’s yours. Do with it as you please. But not here. People are looking for me, and I need to stay hidden. You understand me?”

Mouse nodded and thanked him, pocketed his PR engine.

“Now go, be quick before others come looking for me.”

C
hapter Eight

Each step of his journey back to the bullet train and the FT was fraught with the fear of being followed. Not surprising he was feeling paranoid after speaking with Pagakis. Carrying the headhunter’s infiltrated PRE unit upon his person wasn’t exactly comforting.

Despite that, he got into the FT, set the scanners to check for any unusual traffic about him. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He decided to activate Pagakis’s PR unit in passive mode, which meant no transmitting or receiving, and see what he could found out about Asterion.

He connected its output to his own PR screen and waited while it booted up. When it had launched, he started to scan through the log files, and knew the man was correct.

Asterion had logged into his system as a super-root, taking full control of the brain signals going into and out of the unit. Amongst the various commands given by Asterion, Mouse found a map coordinate of a location that presumably Asterion was attempting to get Pagakis to travel to.

Mouse looked up the destination on his New Crete map database and found that it was an empty tower in the tenth-level district of Phraxos. The tower used to be owned by an old software company. Microsoft. They quickly went out of business once the populace ditched bulky, slow desktop machines for the more immediate access to information via Personal Reality.

An empty tower unit that high up would be a good place to hide the servers required to contain such a powerful AI. But it still didn’t answer the question of what this rogue AI would want with a group of kids. Experts or not, if it had already gained self-awareness, what more could it want from them?

Only one way to find out
, Mouse thought. He engaged the H-Core engines and plotted the coordinates.

As the FT navigated through the layers of traffic, Mouse sent a message to Phaedra to let her know where he was going—just in case he didn’t come back.

He got an instant response.

“You’re going up to the tenth?” Phaedra said.

“That’s where the trail’s led. I believe that’s where the heart of this Daedalus Project is. I’m sending you a recording of a conversation I just had with a very interesting man.”

“What happened?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“An AI developed by Metion is self-aware, that much you know, what you didn’t know was the damn thing is insane. It got to the kids, and presumably Ariadne, via their PR units. Lured them to a tower—or at least that’s what I’m currently banking on.”

“Aegeus and I are on our way there.”

“Don’t be fools. Agents won’t get passed the security.”

“Send us one of your IDs then. You need backup.”

“I’ll be there way before you will, and this stuff…it’s dangerous. I’d hate for you to—”

“It’s sweet that you care about my well-being, but damn it, Mouse, we’re agents. Now do as you’re damn well told and sort us out. When you get there, wait for backup, you hear me?”

Mouse sighed, sent her two fake IDs with high-level security clearance.

“Don’t blame me if this goes bad,” he said. “I did warn you.”

“Your
caveat
is noted. We’ll see you shortly.”

She cut the connection off, and Mouse pushed the FT as fast as it would go in its diminished state. He couldn’t wait for the agents, or risk them getting involved. He had to do this himself.

His hacked ID got him through security again, and he soon navigated across town until he came to the old, abandoned tower. From the outside it looked like just that: dark windows, many boarded up, heavy locks on the steel blast doors within the glass walkways that connected it to the other towers.

And yet, even from within the FT, he could sense something inside. Maybe it was the rumble of all that computing power, or perhaps it was just the growing paranoia. He activated his near-field scanners, docked the FT to the empty parking platform, and made his way into the transit tunnel.

So far nothing showed on his scans. No Internet, DarkNet, or MeshNet traffic. It was a complete dead zone. It made his head swim. A world without information! For a moment he had to stop, compose himself. The feeling of falling nearly overcame as he considered the rest of his life as a void. It didn’t bear thinking about.

After a few moments, he pulled out of the scan result, shook his head and focused on the task at hand with renewed purpose. He couldn’t let this continue to happen. He had to find a way to stop it.

The transit tunnel was similar to most others—a connecting walkway with glass walls and ceiling from one tower to the next—but this one had a very specific difference. Overlaid on his augmented-reality HUD was an encrypted digital trail.

He missed it at first, but with the complete data blackout, he managed to barely notice it.

Tiny packets of encrypted data stretched out across the tunnel and through the blast doors. A trail…maybe from one of the kids…from Ariadne…

Sprinting now, Mouse reached the doors and ran his lock-picking program. There were no tumblers to manipulate on these kinds of locks, only multiple, interlocking firewalls. His program counted five such obstacles, and was soon scanning its local library of access codes. He tapped his foot as he waited.

Negative. No known codes. Damn.

He couldn’t wait around for the agents; he had to get in now.

Remotely accessing his secure data storage facility where he kept certain information and scraped-data of the DarkNet, he searched for the make and model of the lock. Again nothing. This was new, unique. He’d have to do it the old-fashioned way and get his hands dirty.

Taking a section of flattened tungsten with a thin, flat nose and a rubberized handle, he wedged it into the cover of the lock and prized the panel off, revealing the CPU and its various mechanisms.

Tracing the circuitry, he identified the main I/O bridge and wired it to his PR. Looking at the base-level code, he could see it was new and advanced. It had multiple fail-safes and wouldn’t be a trivial thing to recode, but he’d certainly try. And then he thought about those data packets left in the PR overlay. Taking them and dropping them into his decryption command box, he waited for the results as the layers of encryption were stripped away.

“Clever girl!” he said as the display showed the data packets were actually a series of 256-bit codes. When he compared them with the operating system of the lock, he realized that whoever had left them behind did so to aid their entry. He took the code from the data packets, compiled it and dropped it into the lock’s system. Forcing a reboot, he gave a fist-pump of satisfaction as the lock clicked open and the doors swayed partially ajar on their rusted hinges.

The musty smell of coolant gas tickled his nostrils as he entered the tower. The first room was almost pitch-black, with a few slicing rakes of light encroaching the gloom from a slit in the boarded-up window. A thin layer of dust covered the floor, and within that blanket were a series of footsteps—from more than one person.

Focusing back on his AR-HUD, he now saw more of those data packets in the overlay. Their general direction followed the footsteps.

The trail took him to a room on the left, off the main corridor. Inside, a blue light gleamed off the white walls and a series of five glass tubes lay horizontally on steel tables. Wires and tubes, attached to each unit, ran up the white-tiled wall and into a grid system of fiber-optic cables on the ceiling. Five people—three males and two females—were situated inside what appeared to be stasis chambers.

He’d found them!

He recognized Ariadne from the video he’d show the agents at the club. The trail of data packets left behind led directly to her stasis unit.

The slight misting under each glass surface told him they were still alive, their chests rose and fell. Electrodes were attached to their heads, and a holographic screen projected from the end of the tubes like a medical chart. Graphs, pulses and textual output scrolled on each one.

He took a video recording of the room, taking it all in, making sure he focused on the missing kids’ faces.

The hum and vibration of computer fans was stronger here, and he could feel it through his feet. Mouse thought about following the cables, searching for the computer core of the building. There was movement within the one of the chambers...Ariadne’s eyes snapped wide open. He jumped back, his heart pumping with the surprise.

Her mouth stretched in a painful grimace as she tried to speak. A silent scream with panicked eyes and a stiff, rictus expression of agony. Her body bucked against the restraints, veins popped in her head, pushing tight against her skin.

Her lips began to move in a silent request. He thought he could make out the words ‘Help me.’ Her body tensed again, and she closed her eyes as her back arched and her feet rapped against the underside of the chamber.

He frantically tried to find a way in.

“Oh, god...hang on. I...”

From behind came the sound of breathing and quick footsteps approaching.

Chapter Nine

Instantly Mouse’s bod
y tensed, entered fight mode. Heart rate jumping, adrenaline and endorphins flooding his system, he spun on his heel.

“Mikos?” Mouse said as the man ran at him.
Man
was a generous term for what he had become. Once bright and handsome, Mikos was now hunched over. His face was twisted into a mask of hate. Drool dripped from his grimacing mouth. He wore a charcoal grey boiler suit, covered in dust and grime.

Mikos quickly closed the gap. He carried a steel pipe. He swung it out ahead of him, aiming for Mouse’s head, but the swing was just a sliver too high, the draft flickering Mouse’s hair into his eyes momentarily.

Mikos kept on charging, swinging wildly as Mouse backed off, leaned away so the pipe swung harmlessly in front of his chest. Mikos’s face reddened. He roared as he continued to bear down on his prey.

Mouse moved past the stasis units, hoping to lure Mikos out into the corridor, where the narrower space would take away some of his advantage with the pipe. But the door slammed behind him.
Asterion must have control over the doors…

A smile crept across Mikos’s face. He stalked slower now, both hands gripping the pipe, knowing Mouse had run out of options.

“It’s got into you, hasn’t it?” Mouse said, trying to buy time, distract his opponent.

“And you’ll soon understand,” Mikos said. He laughed hysterically and thrust the pipe towards Mouse’s face, but he dodged the attack. The pipe clanged like a bell against the metal door.

Seeing the opportunity, Mouse ducked, sidestepped, threw a vicious left jab into Mikos’s exposed ribs. He took the shot with a sharp intake of breath. Mouse followed up with a right uppercut, twisting his hips and thrusting up with his legs, putting all the weight and momentum he could into the strike.

Mikos attempted to lean away, but Mouse was too quick. The punch landed square on his jaw. Mouse felt Mikos’ teeth clatter together and break. The force of the strike sent Mikos falling backwards.

He thudded to the floor, and his head cracked against the hard surface. He let go of the pipe. Mouse leapt onto him, sensing his moment to end the brief confrontation. Straddling Mikos’s chest, knees squeezing into his ribs, he pushed his left hand into Mikos’s face, crushing his nose and clawing at his eyes.

Mouse lifted his right fist ready to land the final blow when Mikos laughed again. Louder and more hysterical than before—the laughter of the mad.

“What happened to you? What’s your role in all this,” Mouse said, pulling Mikos’s head off the ground by his hair.

The laughter cut off like a switch. Mikos’s eyes widened, focused on Mouse’s face, as if he were recording everything about him, noting every scratch, blemish and wrinkle. A few seconds later, his eyes relaxed and all tension left his body.

“You’re too late.” It was Mikos’s real voice now. He sounded just as he did when they had first met on the job, back at the club.

“I visited Cynthia, she mentioned something about an insurance policy.”

“It’s beyond that now.”

“You’re not making sense. What the hell’s going on here?”

Mikos turned his head to one side. On the right side, his shaggy black hair had been shaved, leaving an empty patch of scalp a few inches wide above his ear with the telltale marks of a cranial interface protruding from the skin: three dots where deep-brain electrodes would have been inserted.

“I discovered it after the first student, Marianne, went missing,” Mikos said, his voice weak and taking on a wet, garbled quality. “It was majestic. It promised me…so much. If I just delivered…minds. It wants minds. It had me do so many…things.”

“What is it?”

“Asterion.”

With a single muscular spasm, Mikos’s whole body tensed and his eyes closed. A brief scream and his head fell to the side. Blood dribbled out from the three electrode points.

Mouse checked his pulse: nothing.

Mikos was dead.

A muffled voice screamed, “No!”

Furious knocking caught Mouse’s attention. He looked up to see Ariadne’s stasis unit vibrating. Inside, she was kicking and palm-striking at the underside.

Standing up and away from Mikos’s body, Mouse picked up the pipe and approached her. He tried to speak to her, but her eyelids were shut, and her eyes flickered furtively as if in a state of REM. Her body relaxed, and she was no longer frantically assaulting her prison. He waited a minute, but neither Ariadne nor any of the others said anything else.

He struck the pipe against the glass. It rebounded off, nearly striking him in the face. The body inside didn’t stir. He had to find the source, get to wherever the cables led.

He followed the trail up to the ceiling and out of the room. They led him through a series of dark corridors until he came to a door with bright, white light gleaming through the gaps. He’d come too far now to turn back, so he reached out and pushed the door handle down. The door swung inwards.  He stepped inside.

It was the server room. A single console sat in the middle, upon a desk.

Mouse approached, but was halted when he received a video message on his PR screen. It was Ariadne: or at least an accurate virtual 3-D model of her.

“Who are you?” she said, standing in front of an image of a stone arch. The PR’s processor ramped up, diverting more power to the graphics unit in order to render the images. Huge amounts of code flowed from somewhere in the system beyond.

“I’m…Mouse. I was tasked to find you and your friends.”

“You found us—our bodies, at least.” She wore a pained expression on her modeled face.

“What can you tell me about Asterion? And where exactly are you? I mean your consciousness?”

She turned her back then and pointed at the dark entrance beneath the arch.

“He has us trapped in there—the data vault, the labyrinth.”

“The Daedalus Project?” Mouse asked.

She turned back to him and nodded.

“What exactly it is?”

“A vault, protected by Asterion. It’s insatiable. Metion took our early research and developed a self-aware AI, but didn’t put in sufficient safeguards. It feeds on data and information, and…dare I say, it’s insane…or a form of insanity. It’s using us.”

“Using you? How?”

“My colleagues and I are trapped within Asterion’s reality engine. It’s using us as CPUs of a sort…using us to catalogue and protect the information—a distributive, live, processing unit.”

“How are you speaking with me?” Mouse asked.

“He hasn’t quite got all our minds synchornised yet. I was the last to be added to the system. A part of me is still here. But I won’t be for much longer. I need you to free us.”

“And how would I do that? I thought this vault was supposed to be rock solid?”

“The key to the labyrinth’s power is in the minds of my colleagues and I. Sever the connection, and Asterion is vulnerable to the usual deprogramming procedures—I wrote a set of protocols on how to do this, but Mikos stole them from me. Beyond that, I can’t help you.”

So that was the insurance policy! Mikos tried to buy safety by keeping Ariadne’s deprogramming protocols. But he was enthralled before he could use them, or perhaps he just wasn’t skilled enough.

“How do I sever the connection?”

“You have to go into the labyrinth via your PR engine, let yourself go, find us, and set us free…”

With that, Ariadne’s avatar entered the dark archway and disappeared, but left behind were those little data packets. Left as if for him to follow.

So, he followed.

Mouse engaged the full-immersion mode within his PR engine and stepped in the new reality rendered by Asterion’s systems. Before him lay a rendering of an ancient stone labyrinth. He knew Asterion was tracking him; packets of data pinged his unique ID every few milliseconds. He felt himself being watched, inspected as torrent of data swirled around him just beyond his vision, beyond the graphics.

That the AI hadn’t tried to enslave him like the others was interesting. It showed that it was indeed self-aware, and capable of plotting…but what exactly? And why the elaborate graphics? Asterion didn’t have to go to these kinds of lengths. The data was safely secured in its myriad servers, and it didn’t need to have all this ceremonial imagery. That gave Mouse an indication of its ability to think, rationalize, even create art. The damned thing had an ego.

He walked into the maze, started plotting his way around. He picked up on a signal. It bleeped at him like radar, and soon he was running, changing direction at the hints of this threaded signal. It was probably Ariadne doing her best to help him find his way.

The labyrinth’s complexity conspired to beat him and now he was following that signal on instinct, all the while knowing that Asterion lurked somewhere within this structure, waiting.

He turned out of a tunnel and found himself at the front of a bricked courtyard. Standing next to each other like ancient standing stones were the facsimiles of Ariadne and her colleagues. Each one looked to the sky, as if in reverence. Strands of lightning attached to them reached up into the sky and beyond the clouds. Overlaying the new virtual world with a ‘true view’ of the data he saw a folder structure within a directory. Running within that folder were a number of programs. Mouse traced through the system, realised they were the sockets that allowed Asterion to use their minds as processors. Terabytes of data burst through the sockets every second, as the AI distributed its processing to them.

It was time to break the connection. Diving back into the graphical representation, he conjured a program to block the links to Ariadne and her friends. As he was doing that he felt a wave of data crash into his processor, but it came too late. He had already launched the program into the system.

He approached the statues. A dark circular entrance yawned behind them like a great mouth, and from within the darkness came the steam-filled exhalations of a beast.

Conjuring a mighty, two-handed war hammer from within the virtual world to represent the execution of the program, Mouse approached the effigies, smashed them to the ground, severing them from the constraints of the altered reality, and clearing his way to the opening.

Inside the PR engines audio systems he heard a great exhalation as the minds disconnected from the system.

Asterion reacted. The courtyard rumbled beneath Mouse’s feet. Debris smashed to the ground and he found himself having to dodgy the falling masonry from the arch. Asterion was trying to disconnect him, but he was too driven, too far into the system, farther than he’d ever gone before, and he wasn’t about to turn back.

He dashed forward into the darkness of the tunnel when a roar knocked him onto his back. Up ahead he could feel the rumble grow, the intensity of the AI gearing up for an attack.  Scrambling to his feet, Mouse knew it was time. Time to face the beast.