Tunnel Rat

Chapter 313: Diving In

Milo debated his options for a minute, then ran tests of the room's air quality, temperature, and radiation levels, and when all tests came back within normal parameters, he opened his suit. Two sides of the chest swung open and each leg split, allowing him to step out of the bulky armor and into the room wearing only his inner suit. He stretched carefully, aware of his injuries. He had ration packs with him but instead made a selection from the food in Jeremy's pantry. An hour later with two cans of hot chicken soup inside of him, he felt much better.

It was time to check the connections hooking Jeremy to the Quantum Core and set up a connection for himself. He didn't want to disrupt Jeremy, on the small chance that part of him was still aware inside the core and could return to his withered body. Based on what he'd seen, Milo didn't think his chances were good, but there was always a chance, and he owed it to Hecate and the other AI who knew Jeremy to try. And, above him, was a cutting-edge biotech firm named Rhebus run by five of the smartest people in the world. He needed to talk to them somehow, without sending them scurrying for an escape hatch. If he could solve the problem of Icarus, maybe he'd get a chance and they could do something for Jeremy.

Knowing more now about the interface that allowed a human to link to cyberspace, he took his time setting up the connection, and creating some failsafes. As always, he'd have a separate connection through his tail, but he also wanted someone watching over him as a guardian angel. Luckily for him, Max was there, the perfect guard who didn't go to sleep and would constantly watch for problems. Max could break the connection between him and the core. The connections included a direct link to his Roomba bodyguard who could follow his instructions, but would also break the link if he was dying, or four hours passed. After triple-checking everything, Milo wanted a break.

He relaxed for half an hour playing Run Run Ramona. He'd recently added more random features to increase the fun of replaying the game. And he'd added a way to play different characters. You could now play as Butch, Min, Ted the Repair Guy, Belinda, and several other characters, each with different abilities and special quests. If Ramona wasn't taken, she became a mini-boss in the game that you had to get past on Level 72. Rather than escape, this version of Ramona had got strong enough to take over. Milo didn't encounter her on this run. He only got to Level 117 before he fell prey to a randomly generated encounter with a Tunnel Snake that ate him whole. He was a little grumpy about that and didn't recall putting Tunnel Snakes in the game. What he'd thought was a side passage turned out to be the snake's mouth. He wanted to play more, but he had work to do.

Climbing into his armored suit, which he'd already connected to the core, he ran a triple diagnostic test, then gave Max a thumbs up. Max gave him a 21 Boop salute and signaled he was ready. Milo relaxed and felt the connection form between his brain and the quantum core. It felt to him like being sucked down a whirlpool into a brightly lit galaxy of stars. He'd connected to cyberspace thousands of times before, but this was different. Information moved faster and the density was beyond anything he had imagined. He gave himself time, watching the patterns, and seeing the rhythm and flow of things. Slowly he made sense of things. His mind was taking in the data and giving him a way to interpret it.

"Well, you made it. I was wondering if you'd come in."

Icarus was there, a 12-year-old boy with red hair, tossing a baseball in the air and catching it in his glove. He stared hard at Milo, "The only reason I'm letting you talk to Jeremy is because he asked to see you. If you do anything bad and he gets hurt, I'll make sure you stay here and die with me. I'm not kidding. Don't hurt him. Please."

Milo realized he wasn't in his suit. He was wearing the worn and dirty coverall that had been his only clothes for years. His prosthetic left leg and old tail were attached and working. "I don't want to hurt anyone at all. I promise I won't hurt Jeremy."

Icarus just pointed, and Milo could see in the distance a large ranch house with a porch swing and white picket fence surrounding it. He started walking that way, imagining the distance getting less and less. A short time later he was walking through the gate in the fence, stepping onto the overgrown lawn, and everything changed. He was suddenly wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a white T-shirt. Normally, he imagined himself wearing his armor, it was disorienting to have something else change how he saw himself. The front door opened and an old man in slippers, sweat pants, and a robe bent to pick up a rolled-up newspaper from the steps. He noticed Milo.

"Been a long time since I had a visitor. Usually just one of the boys. Why don't you come inside, I think we have some things to discuss." He walked back inside but held the door open for Milo. Milo stepped inside the house, and the door shut firmly behind him and disappeared, as did the windows. "Don't worry about the things I'm changing. I'm thinking hard about certain people being unable to listen in on our talk. The visualization process helps. Have a seat."

The man looked at him for a minute, then sipped his tea.

"So, you're the famous Milo, who made friends with Rusty and has Icarus upset. You've certainly stirred things up. Who are you working for?"

"Yes, I'm Milo. I'm not working for anyone. Are you Dr. Jeremy Cooper?"

"That might seem like an easy question, but it isn't. Are you sure you're Milo? Then who is out there in a set of tactical assault armor? Are you part of the same person? Or is each of you a Milo? What if the guy in the assault armor runs off without you and leaves you here, are you still Milo? And even if you think you're Milo, will anyone else? There are a lot of pigheaded people out in the world who don't think that digital intelligences are a people."

Milo considered the questions. If this was Jeremy or some sort of simulation, then this was a test. "Yes, I'm sure I'm me. That's me out in my suit as well. We are both Milo. There's only one of me. If the me in the armor leaves, I'm still me."

He paused. "And I don't care what those people think about me. I never have. I didn't ask to be made how I am."

"Interesting. You use the word made, not born. Care to explain."

Milo shook his head. "Nope. I came here to make sure the Fusion Generator doesn't destroy everything. I don't have time for puzzles and tests. KATHERINE holds you in high esteem, and Rusty loves you. I'm sure Icarus does too."

At the mention of KATHERINE, Jeremy looked shocked. "You've met Kate? How could you? You aren't what you seem to be, are you? Who do you work for?"

"I work for me! I've lived in this habitat most of my life, over two decades. I hide and fix things. Kate is alive. They are all alive. She'd like to talk to you, but not here, and I can't take you there with Icarus trying to melt everything down."

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Jeremy looked hard at him, and Milo's skin itched, then all of him itched. It was an illusion, an effect of Jeremy 'looking' at him. "Your avatar is very young, and it matches your physical form in your armor. You're overmind is more developed than anyone I've ever measured, including myself. You were able to navigate the structure of the core without stress and are functioning at a high level, so my next question for you is..."

"...Which batch are you from?"

It was Milo's turn to be shocked, but he answered. "Batch three. I was abandoned in the habitat above us during a hectic move to avoid the authorities."

"Alone?"

"All alone. Until recently."

"So interesting. There was a claim by the group that designed you that without the support of your siblings, you would quickly go mad and die. You seem to have found a fix for that problem."

"I didn't have a choice. They left me. I focused on fixing things. I had to build my systems from scratch out of spare parts and rusty tools. I think I did go mad. And I'm never going to be normal."

"Well, how could you? You have the right attitude though. Don't let other people define you."

Jeremy began to pace. "Firstly, I had nothing to do with your creation, but one hears things. The fall of many world governments and the power shift to corporations removed all restrictions on research until things stabilized and the larger corporations bent to public opinion and got things under control. It still happens, but no one goes to the yearly Society for Neuroscience meeting to brag about their advances in wiring a jar of brains to a 50-ton mechanical death machine. That was the proposition for Batch 5 by the way. Supposedly, batch four would have all the bugs ironed out and they'd move on to placing genetically modified brains into machines. Despite how much I loved Vigo for his amazing intelligence, I was happy that his death put a stop to that."

Milo froze. "Vigo Johansson, who married Ekatarina Seimovich."

"Yes, exactly. I've upset you. Your readings are off the scale."

Milo sat still, then began to ignore the simulation entirely, sinking into his mind and curling into a ball. He'd been preoccupied with too many things. Thugs and assassins. Getting Belinda to somewhere safe. Caring for his family. Fusion overload trumped looking through massive amounts of old data. He NEEDED to know. Needed it so badly that it was all he could do to not disconnect and run home to put the puzzle pieces together.

Jeremy saw Milo disappear into a single point of space. The rules of his simulation weren't affecting his visitor, and he could only compare it to the torment that ICARUS and LLAMA had gone through at the end, fighting against the restraints added to their kernels. Then he reappeared.

"I'm going to need you to tell me more, but not now. I need to save Icarus and Rusty. I know that's important to you. I saw the picture."

"Ah...yes, I shouldn't have left that lying around. But it's all I have left of their childhood. Please understand, that those were difficult times. My wife and I traveled the world, and to keep Lars and Rusty safe, we took them with us. We had bodyguards and round-the-clock security in our laboratory, but it didn't matter with the amount of money someone paid to put pressure on me. They wanted my research into mapping the human brain and using the recording as part of the kernel of an AI. My backers didn't want to sell, so they resorted to blackmail. My wife and boys were poisoned, and only they had the cure. I just had to gather my research and go with them. But I didn't trust them, so I went to my employers at Technodyne for help. That help resulted in the destruction of the terrorist group that had poisoned my family. That's all that Technodyne cared about."

"No antidote, of course. If there was one, it was destroyed. Technodyne promised a cure, but it never came. My wife died first, and the boys had only days. Rusty didn't understand and was scared. Lars was angry. Angry as only a 17-year-old boy cheated of his mother and life can be. I was desperate to save even part of them."

"You recorded their minds?"

"I did. Not their memories. I didn't have the ability then to do that or the resources. Just a template of each. It was selfish of me, and in the end, history repeated itself, and someone poisoned my children."

Milo wanted to ask so many questions but didn't have time. "Lars is ok now. He's with Kate and seems happy. I talked to him. He misses Rusty and wants his cat memes. Rusty is doing better. I can help him. But only if you help me. I need a way to stop Icarus."

Jeremy seemed to rally but shook his head. "No, you don't need to stop Icarus. You need to stop Order 666. That's what I've worked on for years, to the detriment of my physical form. I tried to develop my Overmind to the point where I could both distract Icarus and solve the problem. However such simultaneous functions require a splitting of the Overmind into two independent parts. I did that to Rusty, split him apart, and shifted part of the Order to Rusty, then set up the games between them to keep them occupied in an endless game of cat and mouse. Icarus can't lose the game but has no time requirement. Rusty only knows he needs to oppose Icarus, while Icarus is content to play for a draw, knowing he can win whenever he chooses to. His kernel is satisfied that way, and I'd hoped to solve the problem, but I haven't. He developed past the point I could keep up with."

"And when I helped Rusty to get ahead, that triggered Icarus to try to win."

"Yes, you destroyed the balance. Icarus believes that you can help Rusty to win. That aggravates his kernel and tortures him. As long as he knows he will win, he can delay, but you scare him."

"And if I back off? Promise not to interfere?"

Jeremy looked tired. "We are past that point. He's met you, knows of you, and seen how persistent and inventive you are. He's afraid you'll find a way to erase his persona, shut down the cores, or turn off the reactor. He's not taking a chance on losing. He's not allowed to lose."

"And he's more powerful than I am in here."

Jeremy laughed at that. "No, he isn't. Icarus is still a child, all the power of a quantum core does no good if he doesn't use it. You've projected your overmind into his reality, as I have. But I've been shaping his reality for a long, long time. He loves stories and loves playing games. We played a lot of games over the years. And, as we did that, the structure inside the core warped to reflect those stories. Help me move the chair you are sitting on, please."

Milo did so, confused. Under the chair was a trap door that concealed a ladder going into darkness. "Your games? You mean?"

Jeremy smiled broadly. "I always loved Dungeons and Dragons. All of us in my group did. Many of the AI we raised gamed with us, then took over as the Dungeon Masters. You haven't lived until you played in one of LYRICAL's stories. Icarus perceives much of his reality as an endless dungeon, including his kernel and Order 666."

Milo had a horrible thought. "And of course, Order 666 will be in Level 666.

"Sorry, I should never have told him about the Abyss."