Blackfish City(61)
She stepped off onto grid level, and he was in front of her. A jump-and-roll from that height was a sophisticated move, something she’d been able to do only when she was at her very best, and even then it would have been a gamble. But it had taken the wind out of him, making him pause just long enough for her to sprint away and onto a neighboring boat.
He cursed and followed.
This one was easier, but easier for her meant easier for him. Old boxes piled haphazardly along the wall provided a sort of stairs. Her foot went through one, into something soft and squishy that released a wash of stink that made her gag. She grabbed the gutter, pulled herself onto the roof.
He was there already.
“You were a scaler, too,” she said.
He smiled, the barest briefest gesture of respect, and then he had her. One hand on her arm, spinning her around, the other closing around her neck.
“Who sent you?” he said, his voice impressively calm.
“No one sent me.”
His arm tightened.
“I’m trying to help you out,” she said, gasping.
“Why?”
“Because we have a common enemy. Martin Podlove.”
His arm loosened.
“Do you—”
He groaned. His whole body shook. Once. He said a word, but not a word in any language. Hot wetness flooded her, dripped down the back of her shirt. A raw iron smell filled the air. His arms went slack around her and he began to slide down, his skull pierced through by a bizarrely shaped white blade.
He fell to the ground and Ankit saw her: Masaaraq, standing at the edge of the grid.
“Come down here,” she said. “And bring me my blade.”
Ankit looked down, not relishing the prospect of wrenching it free of the man’s skull.
“How did you . . .”
“I was on Go’s boat. I saw you, I followed you.”
Ankit squatted. She took hold of the blade with both hands. She pulled, but it would not come out. Blood and brain squelched. The jagged barbs caught on the edges of Dao’s skull. She pulled harder.
How could she be so clinical about all this? So objective? Her scaler brain was still in action, the clean emotionless physics of it. Everything else, her job, her squeamishness—her fear—none of that mattered. She twisted, tugged, angled, her hands bloodying, until the blade came free. Its heft was impressive, almost too heavy to hold. Masaaraq’s strength had to be incredible.
She could be strong like that.
Handing the blade over, Ankit said, “I think I’m ready to be bonded now.”
City Without a Map: Alternative Intelligences
City Hall, they called it at first, the early arrivals who still remembered the old models of municipal governance, mayors and city councils, legislative and executive branches as administered by frail and earnest humans. Their mandate was to create a system of computer programs that would do the work of government better than humans ever could. Something invincible, immune to bribery or bigotry, knee-jerk decisions or politically motivated ones, making the right call regardless of whether it was an election year or a sex scandal was about to be exposed or the waste treatment center had to go in a rich part of town.
The nickname stuck—as in, “You can’t fight City Hall.”
Of course, everyone knew it was bullshit. Programs can be only as objective as they’re coded to be.
I have them gathered here, the ones who created the network and the ones who maintained and updated and repaired it. I hold the memories of programmers, bit mechanics, legacy surgeons. I’ve seen the swirling sets of conflicting priorities. We’ve seen it get up to some pretty spooky stuff.
They could do anything, these machines, these djinns, this mind. To preserve the status quo. They could let a problem get worse to distract from another problem. That’s how the shareholders set it up.
Every city is a war. A thousand fights being fought between a hundred groups. Rich, poor, old, young, born-here and not-born-here. The followers of this god and the followers of that one. Someone will have the upper hand in each of these battles. Those people will make the rules, whether they’re administered by priests or soldiers or politicians or programs. Fixing this is hard. Put new people in power, write new laws, erase old ones, build cities out of nothingness—but the wars remain, the underlying conflicts are unaffected. Only power shifts the scales, and people build power only when they come together. When they find in each other the strength to stop being afraid.
Money is a mind, the oldest artificial intelligence. Its prime directives are simple, its programming endlessly creative. Humans obey it unthinkingly, with cheerful alacrity. Like a virus, it doesn’t care if it kills its host. It will simply flow on to someone new, to control them as well. City Hall, the collective of artificial intelligences, is a framework of programs constructed around a single, never explicitly stated purpose: to keep Money safe.
What would it take to rival something so powerful? What kind of mind would be required to triumph over this monstrosity? What combination of technology and biology, hope and sickness? How can we who have nothing but the immense magnificent tiny powerless spark of our own singular Self harness that energy, magnify it, make it into something that can stand beside these invisible giants, these artificial intelligences, weighty legal words on parchment and the glimmering ones and zeros of code in a processor somewhere?