SG: Aurora #42 - Old Friends I - Part Four of Four

frobozz frobozz at eyrie.org
Mon Jul 5 16:34:37 PDT 2004


[CONTINUED FROM PART THREE, WHICH HAS PART TWO ISSUES TO RESOLVE!]

   "And then bang," said Peterson, finishing up his story. "That's how I
ended up here in the sick room, wasting my life on regrets while
everyone else goes off to do my job for me. Tol'ja I was a goldbricker
at heart."
   Clark nodded, mulling over the story that he'd just been told. A
small contingent of his troops were gathered in the medical bay, making
use of its equipment as a rare chance to patch up wounds as yet
untreated, and gathering needed supplies. The rest were stationed
outside just in case trouble decided to move inbound.
   "Wow," Clark finally responded, shrugging. "If -anyone- tries to
claim we haven't earned our pay for the month, I'm going to have to heat
up the 'liar' brand to a red-hot glow. It also just sucks that you wound
up here."
   "Don't it just? So what's your story? What got you from there to
here?"
   "Well..." Absently, Clark gestured downwards, indicating the lower
levels. "When we separated, my group headed for the shafts. We started
on up and did our best to avoid enemy contact. We managed, mostly.
There've only been two skirmishes so far, though we got bloodied well
enough on the second one. We decided to bee-line for the nearest medical
bay after that so we could plug up a few holes in our bodies, and
well... here you were."
   "Here we were," sighed Peterson, ruefully. "Out of action and sucking
up valuable oxygen."
   "Let's look at it as a good thing, actually."
   "Come again?"
   Clark's smile was grim. "If you hadn't been there, we'd never have
been able to get our hands on Rae's intel."
   "Much good that it does us."
   "Oh, it doesn't do us all that much immediate good. But knowing that
we're facing someone from another altiverse puts a sort of name on our
enemy, for one thing. Dollars to doughnuts when I spread the word,
there's going to be at least a little rise in morale. Know why?"
   "I'm sure you're just itching to tell me, John."
   "Damn right I am, Al. Because it's going to strip off the mystery
these guys have over us. Because--"
   "Yeah, yeah, I know," replied Peterson, waving the rest away. "What,
you think I didn't notice what all this 'they know junk about us and we
know jack about them' stuff was doing to my men?"
   "...just once, I'd like to get the drop on you."
   "Yeah, I know. Know how you do it?"
   "I'll bite. How?"
   "Wake up earlier in the morning, you slackass." Peterson chuckled,
then winced as the pain of his wounds caught up with him. "Also, don't
get your ass shot off and have a working suit of power armour in a
freaking battle-zone. You're already ahead of me, John. Way ahead of me.
>From here on out, I'm on the sidelines holding the pom-poms."
   "Hey, one battle-suit doesn't bench you," said Clark. "Look, we could
rig up a system. It wouldn't have to be all that complicated. You could
come with us. You could... never... conjure up the image of you wearing
a cheerleader's outfit again, *GOD*. I'm going to have nightmares for
-weeks-!"
   "Always leave them wanting more," replied Peterson. "Especially if
what they want is peace of mind." His grin faded. "Nice of you to offer,
John, but you and me and the four walls know it's the wrong thing to
do."
   "But..."
   "No. You lash me to a Tornado suit and you know what happens? You
have one soldier who has to spend his time thinking about how to protect
a soft target instead of thinking about spraying hot lead at the enemy.
You slow down to wait for me to heal up enough to go on. You hobble
yourself, and that is just not -cool- in our current sitch."
   Clark sighed, glancing to the floor. "It just didn't seem right, you
not being there at the end."
   "Oh I'll be there, John. Ain't no question about that. I'll be there
at the end, because life's not like the stories. There's no neat 'Fin'
that's going to appear on the screen when everything's wrapped up in a
neat bow. Besides..." Peterson's grin returned. "When they  make a
mini-series of this, they'll make me the hero of the whole thing.  -I'm-
the photogenic one."
   "The Hell(tm) you are! I've seen mirrors run screaming because there
was a *rumour* you were going to be moving past!"
   "Clark?"
   "Yeah, Peterson?"
   "Bantering hurts a lot right now."
   "That's how I aim to win."
   "Bastard."
   "You know it," Clark offered a hand, which Peterson grasped and
squeezed. "We'll stay the night in these environs at least. So you'll
have a few guns around in case anyone wanders by in the next, oh, six to
eight hours. At any rate, we need a chance to load up on supplies, but
we'll leave enough for you and Chambers, promise."
   "You take what you need, and don't skimp. We'll make out all right."
   "Al? The poems are wrong. You can't actually live on love."
   There was a moment's pause. Then an array of suddenly airborne
medical tools began to bounce off of Clark's helmet.
   "That's NOT what I meant and you KNOW it!"

***

   Pain. And then release from pain. When the former has gone on too
long, the transition to the latter can be nearly more agonizing than the
former ever was. It can also be horrifyingly exquisite, filling the mind
and body with one brief moment of sensations that can never be felt
again, can never truly be expressed, and can never truly be forgotten.
   Of course, these rules only apply to biological life-forms and their
many-linked, symbol-based thinky-brain structures. Computerized
intelligencia, particularly ones quite used to conscious
self-modification and who have experienced these sensations, can often
reprogram themselves to make the transition from a state of pain to a
state of wellness virtually instant and without debilitating
side-effects. One could also quite easily block all sensations of pain
completely, coding themselves to not respond to anything which fell
within a certain threshold of stimulus. One could do many things when
one was a computer intelligence, provided one had full access to one's
self, as well as time and opportunity to use that...
   Arthur Doyle, computer intelligence, once-head of Aurora and current
tortured captive, underwent a transition from pain to wellness. He
rallied himself to recover from the latest round of ministrations that
he'd received at the hands of his captors, knowing that when the pain
stopped, the odds were good that someone was going to be popping into
his personal virtual space, and it just wouldn't do not to be ready to
welcome them like a good host. After all, hours upon hours of torture
without a break for rest and recuperation were still no excuse for an
etiquette malfunction.
   Doyle scanned the immediate environs of his prison, indulging in a
glance around. Though not strictly necessary for a disembodied
intelligence, turning one's head (however unreal it might be) to look at
what was close by was a pleasant reminder to Doyle of his bodied days.
   What Doyle saw didn't much surprise him. This was not because he had
any idea what to expect, but because Doyle found himself in absolute
nothingness, leaving him surprised more by what he didn't see: to wit,
anything. He'd gone so long with horrors and viscera and horrors who
possessed a troubling fascination for viscera (particularly his viscera,
no matter how unreal it remained), that Doyle needed a moment to wake
himself up to the fact that there was absolutely no stimulus around and
waiting to hammer at his poor, fragile senses.
   "Wow," he muttered numbly, both because he'd been worn straight
through by the past few days' tortures and also because Doyle was a big
fan of understatement. "So this is what happens you turn off themeing."
   "Not quite, my friend."
   Doyle strained to turn to face the person who had spoken. What took
him by surprise was not that someone was here (as he had anticipated
that the moment the pain had stopped) but that his turn could, in fact,
proceed as planned. Up till now, Doyle had been bound to something or
another while trapped in his virtual nightmare, and thus turning tended
to be both instinctive and fairly futile. Doyle overcompensated and
nearly fell over before he caught himself.
   "Ahh, it's you," Doyle said, once the difficult art of turning one's
body around had been mastered. He was quite glad to find that he didn't
rasp as he spoke, though the sensation of thirst had been fed to Doyle
throughout his ordeal. "Come back for some more bonding and
commiseration? Or is it just time for us to go out into the wilderness,
find our tribal names and kill a bear together?"
   "Always the jokes," replied Doyle's visitor, culling a chair out of
nothingness before taking a seat. "Always the jokes to form hard scales
that protect a soft underbelly. I wonder if you know how soft yours is
right now."
   "If this is a threat, it's meaningless," replied Doyle, shrugging. He
felt annoyingly at a disadvantage without a chair of his own, but didn't
want to risk trying to code up the pattern and failing, which would put
him at an even greater psychological disadvantage with this person who
had control over the local virtual environs. Doyle supposed that he'd
just have to brazen this one and pretend like nothing was bothering him
at all. Shame he as an actor, he made a good writer... "You've done your
worst so far and it's hurt. I'll give you that, you've been very...
artistic throughout. But I feel better now than I have in a while."
Doyle indulged in a little smirking smile, hoping to put his captor
off-guard and play on pride. "Don't you realise the problems inherent in
breaking a computer intelligence that you don't -understand-?"
   "Yes," replied the visitor, with a shrug. "We do. And indeed,
physically you've weathered this ordeal with an annoying aplomb. But we
both know that your physical shell is really less a corpus than a trick
of the mind, don't we?"
   "We do," replied Doyle, risking turning up the heat just a little
bit. He didn't want to give his captor ideas, but he wanted information
that he could pass on to Xenophon all the more. If he could just get
this person to -slip- once and say something useful, whatever came after
would be worth it. "And like fools, you've focused on the physical to
the exclusion of anything else. Even your mental tortures have focused
on the body. Yes, I used to have one, but do you realise how little that
affects me any more? And you don't have access to my mind, not on the
level that you'd need to affect me there. So what I'm beginning to
wonder is... do -you- see how futile all this has been?"
   To Doyle's great chagrin, his visitor simply smiled, betraying not a
crack of anger or doubt. Well. There would be no egging this person on,
at least not with this tack. Unfortunately, egging on was about the only
weapon that Doyle presently had in his arsenal, and it had just proved
too dull to cut flesh. Oh bother.
   "Maybe," replied the visitor, crossing legs. "Or maybe not. You are
right. we haven't a way to simply cut into your mind, not directly. We
can feed it and probe what comes out, but not go straight in to see what
lies locked away there. Nor to reprogram it to our needs. In that you
are right. However..."
   Doyle realised that he didn't like the sound of that 'however'...
   "From your records, to which we -do- certainly have access, we have
been long able to surmise that your body is a larger concern to you than
even you realise. Psychologically, you've weathered the transition from
flesh to fleshlessness with incredible stability, and for that I applaud
you. But my friend, just because you have placed a support over a gaping
maw, that doesn't mean said maw is vanished. Yes, we have focused on
your body, Mr Doyle. Arthur, if you'd prefer. We have inflicted trauma
upon it, and in so doing, we have been able to plant small scars in your
so-very-brilliant mind."
   "Scars..."
   "Scars, Arthur. Psychological rifts, behavioural misfires, little
traumas, small associations. And by focusing on resisting and even
ignoring the physical pain, you have helped us do so by turning your
mind away from the seat of your reason. I'm afraid you have been
prepared for conditioning, Mr Doyle."
   "Wait." Doyle shook his head frantically, trying to stall for a few
minutes to think, to reason through this. Was it possible that his
tormentor was telling the truth? Or was it more likely that this was to
instill doubt in Doyle's mind, leaving him more open for exactly what
his visitor had just suggested? Or was there another possibility? Or...
   "I'm afraid not, Mr Doyle." The visitor rose. "We didn't have access
to your mind before, but you are about to give us access now. The optic
nerves transmit information and so too do your simulated ones. You are
conditioned to accept patterns of light and darkness, shapes and
symbols, as true and to pass that information uninterpreted to the
fractal codes that make up your mind. Any last words as a free soul,
Arthur?"
   "I--"
   "That's enough. I wanted to know if you had any. I didn't say I would
permit them."
   And with that Doyle's tormentor vanished, to be replaced by line
after line of glyphs and symbols, strobing and flashing, faster and
faster, and to the CI's horror, every last one of them was whispering to
his mind and he could... not... stop... listening...

***

   The Rolling Stones were right, reflected Nicolas Treis as he hid
himself in a small storage closet which boasted a uniquely large
collection of mop heads and a singular lack of matching handles. It
really was a drag getting old.
   Still, he mused, he should look on the bright side. While his
artificially aged body was incessantly protesting the foul treatment it
had received in the last four hours, it was still holding up remarkably
well. He had managed to escape captivity and elude further capture --
not that anyone seemed to have noticed that he was gone, given the
decided lack of urgency he saw in what guards he encountered -- and was
making his way down towards what he hoped would be freedom.
   Down was the right direction, he was certain. As Nicolas' escape and
periodic window-peering had driven home the realisation that he seemed
to be in a Beanstalk, and clearly not the one belonging to Aurora. Or
his Aurora, at the very least.
   There was an explanation. Nicolas had to push past the drug haze from
which he'd only recently emerged, but he remembered what had happened
before he'd been submerged into that nightmarish narcotic playground of
the mind. He'd been poisoned. That, he remembered. Poisoned by...
someone. No one had known by whom. Relations had just been opened with
another Altiverse, there was a need to get Nicolas somewhere else,
somewhere that he couldn't be easily found. It had seemed a match made
in Heaven.
   And now here he was, awakened in Hell(tm). They had put him under,
interrogated him, possibly done more that he just couldn't remember. It
might come back, given time. Nicholas was almost afraid that it would.
It had only been neglect that had allowed Nicholas to awaken to his
situation, and he intended to make the most of this chance that he had
been given.
   Of course, Nicholas reflected, as he fought to catch his breath,
there might be nowhere to where he could run. There might be no safety
anywhere on this world, meaning that running away from the Beanstalk
would mean running away from his only chance to win free. Which meant
that his best bet would be to go -up-, rather than down, and try to find
the transport device that could usher him home.
   All right. Someone had once quoted some ancient advice that you
should make any decision within the space of three breaths. Or was that
seven? Or a half. Or... he couldn't even remember whose advice that had
been, or who had originally said it...
   Getting old was indeed a drag. But being old was worse. Nicholas
decided to make the climb, rather than the descent. Always better to run
towards than to run from...
   He hoped...

***

This issue is mine, mine, mine and you can't have it. Nyah and copyright
to Frobozz/Chris Angelini, Two-Thousand-Four AAAAAA.DDDDDDD. Mess with
my legal rights and I'll send over Gggthstx to discuss 'fair use' with
you. Email to frobozz at eyrie.org. Homepage at
http://www.eyrie.org/~frobozz. I'd forgotten how much Dougspeek made my
spell-checker explode!

---
-Chris
frobozz at eyrie.org
http://www.eyrie.org/~frobozz

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