Page 147 of Coldwire
42LIA
I slam around the corner of M Street, frantically enlarging the map on my overlaid window.
There has to be a better way to do this. Operation Coldwire fused with my code has to be worth something. I’m supposed to be interfaced with StrangeLoom. That means anything the system can do to its avatars, I should be able to as well.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” I call, pushing through a group clustered around the neighborhood square. There’s a small concert playing in the middle. A duo, their guitars connected to miniature speakers. I take the time to hop over the wires, then I’m running again, ducking beneath the waving banners behind their performance. Those who I pass turn in haste, puzzled by my urgency. This isn’t a common sight in Kunlun.
I make an abrupt turn, taking the route on the map. It’s hard to think while I’m panicking, which also means I can’t quite follow the threads waving continuously in front of me. I think back, briefly, to the way Weston popped into Medaluo’s server on the tour bus, and I slam out a command to my display, asking it to spit me right beside Kieren’s location.
ERROR: System Instruction Not Foundflashes bright red across my display.
“What?”I screech. “Are youuseless…”
While I keep running, I pare down the command, staring at another point on the map. Make it two blocks.
ERROR: System Instruction Not Found,it repeats. Then, when the line disappears, it offers:StrangeLoom Allowance Within Eye View.
My attention snaps beyond the map in my display, locking on to the end of the road instead. I turn down opacity in my display. And I move.
My avatar physically bounces, landing at the end of the road with a jolt. I huff, then continue running. That was still useless. But I suppose I’m understanding how Chung built Coldwire.
I can pry into endless data with the correct prompts, sniff out any information floating in the ether. I can interrupt phone calls, enter inboxes, change whatever I’d like about someone’s personal information hovering online. But I can’t mess with StrangeLoom’s fundamental constraints. I can only hack what already exists. Chung can create shortcuts that send my friends through Kunlun’s landing station. The system understands that command. I can move my avatar as far as I can see. The system has that prepared in its code already too: our avatars automatically move to the first spot we see if we enter a landing station at the same time as someone else to overwrite collision.
I can’t shove myself to the edge of Kunlun and help my friends. I can’t grow a hundred feet tall and crush NileCorp’s soldiers under my feet.
I’ve reached a busy bus depot. I scramble up the stairs for the walkway that continues over the buses. The view I have on NileCorp’s soldiers tells me their team leader is making a call. Just as I’ve tuned in, it drops, but another related one appears for my perusal.
“… this won’t be a problem. We have a one hundred percent success rate in retrievals. When have we ever failed?”
I recognize that voice. James Moore.
“Chung transmitted an automatic notification the moment his program installed. We’ve got to move fast, given her capabilities now.”
This second voice is familiar as well, but I’m struggling to place it. Just as I’m peering down to watch a bus depart from the depot, my displayknows I’m requesting more information, and it offers:Secretary of Defense, Chip Graham.
I stumble in my step. I tear through his emails, his notes. Once I am merged with Operation Coldwire, they want to capture me, then put me in an isolated room. They’re going to bring out Dad and Tamera and Kieren and Rayna and they’re going to force me to mutilate Medaluo until the country is in chains. They’re going to kill everyone I love unless I keep in line. They’re going to use me for decades, for centuries, until my very code fries into oblivion. I see it all. I read the plans faster than my newly non-human mind thought possible.
My display starts to flicker between everything I’m watching at once. I’m nearing Kieren, his dot at the very edge of Kunlun. NileCorp soldiers turn the corner of the landing station. Their radios crackle. I activate them, hear bits and pieces:Sir, half this cohort are Murrays— The instruction was clear— With Kelland Murray, I can’t imagine— You don’t know Kelland Murray, do you?
I skid down the stairs at the end of the overhead walkway and emerge back onto the footpath of B Street, at the northern end of the depot. I search the NileCorp files for Kelland Murray—Headmaster Murray—and I almost throw up on the sidewalk.
“Lia?”
I spot him then, under the shadow of a parked bus. It’s only Kieren. Where are the others?
“Shit,” I whisper. “Shit, shit, shit—” I scramble forward, running toward him. His eyes widen; his arms open. I don’t intend to, but it’s Kieren who reached for me first, and I react accordingly, diving into his arms and burying my face in his neck.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want you to log off, I didn’t want you to lose everything—”
“Kieren, none of that matters anymore,” I breathe in a panic. “I forgive you. I understand. But you have to go. You have to gonow.”
“What? What are you talking about?” His grip tightens. His mouth is warm against my hair.
Kieren holds me like I’m real.
I pull away. I have to make this fast. “Your father isn’t the same person anymore because they Indisposed him when he quit as head of security. Chip Graham was afraid that letting him into a civilian life would mean the exposure of state secrets. He asked James Moore to delete his consciousness. The father you know is AI. It’s a bot that learned to behave like him using the information NileCorp scraped from their own databases.That’swhy he’s so different.”
Kieren’s mouth opens and closes. He’s turned pale. His expression is caught somewhere between distress and disbelief, unable to grasp what I’m saying.
