Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(9)

“Is this some kind of joke?” Rudi glanced around the restaurant, hoping to spot a couple of hidden cameras and a group of friends waiting to spring a late birthday surprise.

“I suppose the easiest way to start is to say that this is like The Matrix. Do you have The Matrix here?” He saw the look of incomprehension on Rudi’s face and shook his head. “Keanu Reeves? Laurence Fishburne?” He blinked. “How can there be a world without Laurence Fishburne?”

Rudi stood up. “I’m going to call the police,” he said. “I’ll give you two minutes’ head start, but I’m going to call the police.”

Elder Rudi looked up at him, not at all concerned. “You, and your entire world, are very, very sophisticated computer programs,” he said. He added brightly, “And in fact, so am I.”

Rudi turned for the kitchen. “You’ve had your two minutes’ head start,” he said.

“You’ve got a scar on your arm where you fell over on a paring knife in the Turk’s kitchen,” Elder Rudi called. “How do I know that? Because I have one too. Look.”

Rudi turned back, saw that Elder Rudi had rolled up his sleeve and was showing him a familiar-looking scar. Then Elder Rudi unbuttoned his shirt and exposed another scar that started on his chest and disappeared from view. “Skinheads,” he said. “Warnemünde.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Come and sit down,” he said reasonably. “I don’t mean you any harm. I just have some things to ask you.”

Rudi went back to the table and sat.

“The best way I can explain it is that there is a place in Germany,” Elder Rudi said. “It’s called the Republic of Dresden-Neustadt. You’ve never heard of it, because it doesn’t exist here, but that doesn’t matter. Basically it’s a little walled city-state and it contains the densest concentration of computing power on Earth. The people who built it meant it to be a data haven for oligarchs, a place to keep all their dirty little digital secrets, but that stuff only occupies a tiny percentage of the Republic’s capacity and a number of people have been wondering what else goes on in there.”

Rudi sat staring.

Elder Rudi took a mouthful of flaczki, chewed, shook his head, swallowed. “Too much pepper,” he said again sadly. “Anyway. Yes, the Republic. After a lot of hard work and chicanery and not a little derring-do, it was possible to install a number of software agents on the Republic’s systems.” He tapped himself on the chest. “Autonomous programs designed to adapt to the system, scrape data about what’s going on inside, and report back.”

“This is f*cking crazy,” Rudi murmured.

“Now, I can’t speak for the other servers in the Republic,” Elder Rudi went on briskly, “but this one seems to be running exquisitely detailed simulations of Europe.” He looked about him. “It really is wonderful work.” He smiled at Rudi. “Oh, incidentally, I’m not nearly this sophisticated usually; I’m borrowing a lot of processing power from the server running this simulation, and I look like you because I copied the server’s rendering of you. With a few somatic changes.” He beamed. “There,” he said. “I knew you’d take this well. I’ve always congratulated myself on being adaptable, if nothing else.”

“I’m not taking this well,” Rudi said. “I’m not taking it at all.”

Elder Rudi said, “They run the simulations in batches of about a thousand at a time, at really high speed, compressing a year of elapsed time into a few hundredths of a second. And all the simulations are ever so slightly different. If they’re using all their spare capacity to run simulations that’s an insane amount of computation. Whole worlds.”

“Why?” Rudi couldn’t help himself.

Elder Rudi grinned. “I have no idea. I’m a computer program; I’m tasked to observe and record, not to come to conclusions. I’m not AI.”

Rudi felt himself starting to fall through the trapdoor. “You said you had some questions.”

“Yes, yes I do.” Elder Rudi leaned forward slightly. “Have you ever,” he asked, “heard of Les Coureurs des Bois?”

“What?”

“I’ll take that as a no. Does the European Union still exist?”

“Of course it does.”

“Have you heard of the Community?”

“What community?”

“Has there been a flu pandemic in Europe in the past forty years?”

“No. What kind of questions are these?”

“Does the name Mundt mean anything to you? No? How about Andrew Molson?”

Rudi shook his head.

“Where does your father work?”

“I’m not going to answer any more of these questions. Why do you want to know these things?”

Elder Rudi smiled and shrugged. “It’s what I do. I collect data and return it to my creator. A bit like V’ger.” He sat back. “No!” he said. “You don’t have Star Trek? What kind of monsters programmed this place?”

“Nobody.” Rudi stood up. “Nobody programmed this place. I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing, but I’m going to call the police now. The real police, not the Stra?z.”

“Of course,” said Elder Rudi, sitting back in his chair and grinning – did he ever stop smiling? “Go right ahead. I should warn you, though, this... interaction might have some effect on the simulation. It might skew the data. They might let it run to the end, or they might abandon it and start again. I’d say I was sorry about that, but I don’t feel compassion, and it doesn’t matter anyway because none of this is real.”