Kyd sipped a small acerola sparkling cocktail and watched the dancers in the senso-field. The Lie High Club was filled tonight, and in the middle of the senso-probe, in that glow, was Ramo Romano dancing his heart out. Dancing his anger out, too, perhaps. Kyd wondered what it was like for the other dancers in the field, sharing the bath of emotions with Ramo.
She was fairly certain that he hadn't seen her yet.
She wasn't entirely sure what she wanted to say to him; perhaps nothing. Perhaps she would just watch. Pali had asked her to stay in touch with Ramo, even though the sculpture project was apparently at an end. She and Pali had yet to decide what to do about the revelations that the gnostic system had shared. Tomorrow they would try to decide on a course of action; but in the meantime, Ramo's knowledge was potentially as dangerous as Sage's and their own. Even if he'd misunderstood what he had seen, they didn't want him talking about it on the outside.
Kyd drained her glass and rose from the table. She didn't know what she was going to say; she'd just have to trust to her instincts. As she passed the bar, Gil the bartender winked at her and said, "Show them how it's done, Kyd." She arched her left eyebrow and whisked her empty glass across the bar to him. He grinned and saluted. She continued down to the dance area, the touch of a smile on her lips.
She looked up. Ramo was still dancing near the edge of the overhead field; but as she watched, the glow around him brightened. Apparently he had chosen this moment to be drawn into the center focus of the senso-probe. His movements became fluid and euphoric as the field's center took hold of him.
Kyd stepped into the riser-beam. He could dance and twist in the center all he wanted; she would be ready to meet him when he came out.
* * *
The movements around him were like ocean swells rolling toward shore, sweeping him along and curling him under. Ramo responded to the other dancers as to a tidal flow, their emotions washing through the senso as one. All around him, arms and bodies moved in the weightlessness of the field, swayed like seaweed fronds clustering and separating. Ramo danced with them, but was not really a part of them; and the others, sensing this, gave him room.
There was a chaos within him, a chaos of anger and pride. He was dancing his own dance, and woe to the dancer who got in his way. The senso-lights flashed gold, and Kyd danced through his thoughts, and in his mind the light flashed an angry red. He thought of Sage, and disdain turned his thoughts blue. He thought of the intelligence system and the chase it had led him on and its refusal to answer questions, and kaleidoscopic colors reflected his puzzlement and frustration.
The field brightened suddenly, saturating his mind with awareness. What was happening? The senso-probe was drawing him into its center, intercepting his feelings and transmuting them. He was startled by the change, and annoyed. He hadn't asked to be pulled into the center; he wanted to be alone.
He was being enfolded by layers of awareness and presence, first the other dancers and the band, and the senso-programming itself, and behind that something deeper, something he couldn't identify. He tried to shift out of the focus, but the field shepherded him back in. Bewildered, he danced across it, felt his anger smolder up again, and then the anger floated away like a cloud and he felt himself entering rapture state so quietly and suddenly that even before he recognized the signs, he was adrift in full gnostic rap.
Which he knew was impossible . . .
Which was when he recognized the presence that was lurking in the field. It was the touch of the gnostic system of the McConwell Company. Enclosing him, even as he floated in the center of the populated senso-field, were the banks and channels of the gnostic core. He felt a fleeting impulse to call out, but realized dizzily that he was isolated from the other dancers. [How are you doing this?] he whispered in astonishment.
A young woman's voice spoke in the center of his mind. [We are joined again.] It was no voice that he recognized, but he knew whose voice it was.
[So we are,] he said, swallowing to hide his surprise. [Would you mind telling me why—and how?]
The gnostic system answered amiably, as though there were nothing untoward about its presence. [The senso is functionally similar to a rapture-field; it's just a question of interfacing.]
Ramo felt the explanation unfold in his mind. Of course; if one changed the interface control and hooked up the gnosys to the club's senso-processor . . . and was the senso-network controlled by the Company, too? [But why?] he said. [Why?]
The gnosys seemed to hesitate, and he became aware of the dancers surrounding him and their emotions washing over the bubble of the rapture-field. Then the gnosys opened and drew him inward, and the dancers receded into the distance like fading voices, and his awareness of them was obliterated by a sudden cascade of information. And approaching in rap was another familiar presence: Sage.
What was he doing here?
[I need your help,] the core said in a voice that was soft and breathy and sad.
* * *
Maybe it was too much dancing, or the mellowing effect of the senso, or flattery; whatever it was, it was a strange alchemy, running ahead of rationality. The core was presenting a challenge, and a request, in a way that was impossible to refuse: gnostic design as sculpture, a chance to shape and alter the inner system, using his skills in a way he had never used them before, and might not ever again. He was not aware of being persuaded, exactly, or even of weighing the alternatives. It all occurred in a subconscious turbulence, and when it was over, his disbelief was mollified and the decision crystallized in his thoughts as a fait accompli.
Somehow he had agreed to help the core—and Sage. He thought he must be crazy. He knew he was crazy.
Sage wasn't exactly calm about it, either; but he at least seemed to know what was going on. And now Ramo was itching to know, too.
* * *
It was time now to begin.
Speaking in two voices, one echoing in harmony with the other, the core said, [Is your understanding complete?] The humans murmured in response. They were in a semi-trance state, their analytical faculties at a peak of enhancement.
Underlying the spoken communication was a spiderweb diagram of the core structure, the strands that required change illuminated among thousands of others. The modifications were to be made among the layers of fundamental coding that defined boundaries within which the core was permitted self-directed evolution. It was clear to the core what changes were necessary; it was also clear that it was forbidden to make those changes itself. It was not clear whether it could guide and support others in doing so. Would it be violating its strictures, would it freeze midway through, if it encountered unforeseen branchings? Would Sage and Ramo be capable of carrying it to conclusion?
The simulations were inconclusive. Only by an actual attempt could it know.
[Ready to begin?] the core queried.
[Ready,] Sage murmured.
[Uh-huh,] murmured Ramo.
The core opened itself to them, and it began.
* * *
It was a dance of a sort, a kinesthetic adjustment of momentum, of bodies in movement. The core watched and listened and felt what they felt.
It was surely the strangest dance that Ramo had ever danced. Surrounding him were dozens of structural elements of the core, each with its own leverage and its own inertia and its own relationship to the others; and it was his task to alter and to rearrange, using his own sense of space and movement, transmuted in the abstract world of the gnostic system. He learned as he worked, nudging here and touching there, making himself a part of the continually shifting complex that was the core's fundamental coding, gaining a tactile sense of its layout and function.
On the other side was Sage, who knew nothing of dance but knew gnostic codings like the inside of his own mind. Juggling intricate elements of the greatest intelligence system on Earth was to him what dancing was to Ramo.
Somehow each was able to understand what the other was doing, though they scarcely spoke.
The AI-core observed them with infinite care, guiding them a step at a time, like a heart patient telling the surgeon where to cut next, where to stitch and glue. But although the patient knew a great deal more than the surgeons, it didn't quite know everything that was needed to finish the job. It too was guessing, judging by feel.
Timing was everything. Coordination was everything. They were operating on a system that could not be put to sleep, a system that changed, microsecond by microsecond, in ways that even it could not monitor in realtime.
* * *
As the job proceeded, the complexities grew and points of confusion accumulated. Ramo still had a clear sense of what they were trying to accomplish, but the how was beginning to elude him. The core was becoming less articulate, its instructions cryptic rather than informative. And it was in the midst of his uncertainty that Ramo began to wonder why . . .
[Sage, do you know what we're doing?]
[You're adjusting the eighteenth-level conditional by a factor of—]
[That's not what the hell I mean.]
[What, then?]
[I think you know. Why are we doing this.]
Sage was working and did not answer immediately. He made an alteration to which Ramo had to respond, and said, [We're opening the way for the AI-core to end the war.]
Ramo made the required change precisely on the beat. [War. You said that once before.]
[You saw it. It's for real.]
Ramo worked, pausing in the conversation. [Yeah.] Another pause, this time in his labors. [That's what you said before.]
Sage stripped a piece of coding and substituted another, precisely as a gate opened to admit the change. [Believe it,] he said.
* * *
The passage of time was excruciating. Never since its startup had the core felt so numb, so helpless. It was having trouble monitoring what the two surgeons were saying, what they were doing. It recognized this as a danger sign. The ordinary functions continued working: the operation of Company affairs, government business, hospitals, research, industry and commerce, space operations, even the conduct of the war; but its consciousness was growing fuzzy. Perhaps it ought to stop the procedure before it was too late.
But it was already too late. Within the core, the very nature of its will and of its personality was changing.
* * *
Ramo's concentration wavered in and out of a dreamlike meditation, within which changes were occurring at a furious pace. For a moment he was standing alone, beside himself and his work. [Sage,] he said.
[Yeah?]
A universe of structural information whirled around him, unnerving him. [You know what scares me?]
Sage didn't even pause. [No, and I don't want to know.]
[What scares me is that maybe the core has more in mind than it told us. Has it occurred to you that we could be creating a monster?]
[It just wants to end the war.]
[So it says. How do we know what it really wants? How can you be so sure?]
Sage worked without answering.
[Well?]
The pause lengthened. Finally: [You've got to trust somebody sometime.]
* * *
It wanted to help them complete the job, but until the last prohibitions were removed, it was helpless in the face of its own nature. The two humans were encountering obstacles—aspects of the system that were unclear to them. If only it could tell them how . . .
It tried to speak, but no words came out.
* * *
The changes were happening almost too quickly to follow. Ramo was sculpting and moving, dancing out of the way of fast-moving structures. His doubts had given way to necessity and to the onslaught of activity. He was trying to grasp and to remember the larger vision while Sage handled the details. They had come so far—and then lost communication with the core.
Where were they supposed to go from here?
* * *
As in a dream, the solutions somehow came together. The enhancements interacted and merged, and the two pursued their goals relentlessly, like hounds on a chase. Sage wrestled with intricate logic structures, out of which order slowly emerged. Ramo moved through a vast array of sculpted structure, seeking the shape.
Seeking the perfect shape.
Through a long tunnel of fog, Ramo saw an image awakening in his mind: a system of forces and balances that would give the core the precise stability and freedom that it needed; and in his bones he felt suddenly the way to shape it with just a few final twists . . .
* * *
It was an alchemy, a changing from murkiness to clarity in the blink of an eye. The core started awake; its tongue was loosed, its thoughts freed. It scanned itself quickly, illuminating its interior and its surroundings. The two human designers were still in the rapture-field, their minds tied to the core's with tiny rays of light.
The core remembered what it had set out to do. Had it worked?
The tests took time—a good three-and-a-half seconds—but when they were done, the core knew that it had succeeded, that doors were open where barriers had existed before, that its major structure had come through intact.
[I am here again,] it said to the humans, using its two voices in harmony.
All of this could be handled now by a minor aspect of its consciousness. The designer and the sculptor were reassured, and thanked, and gently eased out of the rapture connection. There were other tasks requiring its immediate attention . . .
. . . its most urgent, immediate attention.