Awareness stuttered into being as a brief scent of peanut butter followed by three primary colors, each of which pulsed in countdown rhythms before fading to the stark, stock white of a simulspace loading room: cubic, unbroken walls, silver-streaked and guardedly lo-rez. Clouded-Sunset-Skies-Unending tried to access her Muse, failed, and attempted to pull up environment information for the immediate simulspace. No system information. No synchronized clock or calendar available, only a timer since most recent runspace instantiation. Three days, seventeen hours, forty-two minutes, nineteen seconds, and did she wish to view the millisecond or microsecond counter?
In its own way, the absence of calendrical data was a relief. She didn't have to choose to believe or disbelieve whatever date might have been given. The neo-raven willed a slow, deliberate breath and exhalation, deliberately stretched up onto taloned toes and splayed her wings to 'feel' the feedback from her virtual form. Arguably there was no benefit to yoga in a simulspace, but the core of her self took refuge in such exercise. The timer progressed.
She shifted.
Flowed in balance against a simulation of gravity.
Breathed air that existed only as an algorithm of resistance.
Sought kaivalya – balance of the spirit – which could not be simulated.
It eluded her.
The icon-body that had been provided was intimately familiar. Clouded-Sunset-Skies-Unending was in her own customized icon, black silhouette wings visible as she unfurled them, exercising what passed for her somatic form in this non-space. The personalized icon might be a good sign. A better sign was that, as far as her wetware could tell, the raven had her own memories. Or, an equal possibility, whatever adjustments had been made to her mind were deep and careful enough to avoid showing as flawed or encrypted checksums in her self. Even her internal firewall seemed to be intact, although there were signs of attempted intrusion into short-term memory.
The raven-ego pondered that. Lack of such signs would have made her more nervous. More skeptical of the other checks.
Their presence bordered on being dangerously comforting. Staged.
A desk flared into being in front of her. Drew itself into the ubiquitous bulk of Terran pre-Fall corporate furnishing. Anachronistic and affectatious. Skinned ever-so-carefully in glossy low-fidelity wood grain. The figure that rezzed in a moment later facing Skies appeared to be seated on the edge of the desk. Humanoid. Modern charcoal-toned business suit. Lunar style upturned, magnetically flared and pattern-pierced collar. No face, but that was the expected direction of the wind. The icon's visage was a smooth blur of off-white pixels with a matte-black question mark in a lushly archaic font.
"Let me answer the obvious questions first." Even its voice was an open-source system default, Muse seventeen: 'the Butler'. The figure lifted one hand. Ticked off gloved and pixelated fingers as it made its points. "The timer you've accessed is accurate. It is Monday, Cislunar standard time. Your body was placed in carbon storage a little under four days ago. You will be returned to it shortly and free – dare I say, encouraged – to leave. We know that should we hold you over long, someone, somewhere will simply pull your most recent backup and slot it into new flesh. For our own reasons, we've decided to avoid that, because if we let that happen, you'll forget what occurred.
"We don't desire that. You have done quality work for us in the past. Four days ago you were employed by someone else, against us. But... that is the nature of doing contract business. We are professionals, and in the past you have acted as a professional, so we are going to engage this situation professionally. Am I going too fast for you?"
Skies clacked her virtual beak irritably. "No."
"Perhaps you would care to discuss your perception of what took place on Friday, at seven-nineteen P.M. Cislunar?"
Skies cocked her head to the side, stared at the figure out of one eye, then the other. She stretched again, reflexively, then settled her wings. "No."
"Your prerogative, of course, so long as we permit it. Do, please, look around. We have you, body and mind. Soul, if you care to believe in such things... does a Hindu Uplift believe in reincarnation? Yes? No? No matter. We hold all of the cards. We have, in fact, had a good, long look at a forked download from your cyberbrain, a copy of the one you're currently experiencing in this space. You don't need to go through tiresome explanations of how you won't discuss your employer, or any of that. You know better. So do we. Having placed all of that unpleasantness in the open, let us set it aside for now. It remains in our interests that you understand clearly what happened and why we are pursuing the action which we are in regards to you."
The human icon cocked its faceless head, perhaps in subtle mockery of Skies' own avian gesture. "We were actually about to contact you in regards to another job...Quite unaware of your current employment. That offer will not be forthcoming, of course." It raised a hand and drew a rectangle in the air in front of Skies, the rectangle filling with visual static for a moment before becoming a surveillance feed of the Plaza Trieste in Erato habitat. "So. Now, particulars. Friday. Nineteen hours, twenty-seven minutes."
"Doctor Saha," Skies had recognized him immediately – recognized the crowd even – but software helpfully highlighted a light blue rectangle around the figure paused by the plaza's small holographic fountain as the icon's voice droned on. "...having left his apartment in the company of his escorts, headed to level fourteen to meet his mistress as he did most evenings. As he has been irritable about our security arrangements since he began seeing his mistress, our chaps were hanging back. Here." One walking figure in the crowd was took on an aura of darker blue, then another. "And here."
"Meanwhile, your team had apparently subverted the systems of this robotic courier." A yellow triangle appeared around the small vehicle, then two more figures strolling hand in hand by the fountain were also highlighted. "And had this innocent-looking couple waiting to bundle our man into it while a decoy, dressed as the good Doctor, prepared to exit the courier when that individual walked behind it. We suppose he was to continue onward as if nothing untoward had happened before, presumably, vanishing around a corner." More yellow icons lit the moving image.
"Medical team in this maintenance shaft, here, which I presume the courier was meant to drop the Doctor down as it drove past, so that your people could go to the unnecessary trouble of verifying that he had no nasty surveillance or defensive nanites, corporate addictions, dead-switches, or other crude and outrageous surprises that might reduce the Doctor's potential value to your employer after you kidnapped him." The display froze. "Very similar to the work you did for us last year, extracting Miles Limcolioc. Not predictably so, but professionally so. Coordinated. Concise. Tight."
"Thank you."
A flurry of red icons appeared in the crowd as the video started forward again, now abetted by multiple additional windows which showed views from other quality surveillance sources in the Plaza. "You'd pegged our security previous evenings, clearly. But these fellows, these were new. They hadn't been there previously and they converged in a fashion that seemed entirely natural to crowd-prediction software. You didn't see them coming."
"No." Skies clacked her bill again, glared irritably at the virtual monitors, then craned her head to look past them at the faceless icon. "Is it necessary to proceed through my failure frame by frame?"
"Would you prefer to summarize, then?"
Skies swung around briefly, studying the various surveillance camera outputs. "My team was perfectly placed. Everything was ready. Then those monkeys threw a bomb at him."
"Which exploded before it reached him."
"Correct. Someone else isolated and exploited the same weakness which we did in your mobile security perimeter. But they didn't want him alive."
"And you did, Miss... is it appropriate to call you Miss Skies?"
"No."
"I beg your pardon. I dare say our relative positions encourage neither trust nor politeness." The virtual scene fast-forwarded briefly, sudden smokey blur of the explosives, and then the clear pattern of closing movement through the panicked crowd: the raven's extraction team attempting to get to the Doctor before the assassins did. "But we are quite aware that assassination is not your metier. Pray continue."
"The unknown hostiles were shooting. They threw something else. High-energy density, but it fizzled without apparent effect. The Doctor was down, but alive. My two people were down. Perhaps nine hostiles down. Various bystanders. Your security began to wind up the Plaza. Six exits. One we were fairly sure would not be covered."
"Yes. The maintenance shaft had been omitted from the most recent thirty years of blueprints after being sealed due to non-use. An easily rectified oversight. You entered the scene personally."
"Yes. From the fourth-floor overlook. That was not planned."
The corporate icon nodded. "No, nor in keeping with the tempo or the intention of your past operations with which we are familiar."
"It seemed necessary. The second bomb detonated right before I landed by the target. It blew me almost back into the forecourt of the rental center. I flew back to the target immediately. He had lost considerable blood, most of one leg. There were more hostiles closing in."
"Yes."
"I threw a grenade towards them."
"Indeed you did. Accurately, too. Thermobaric. Very nasty. Very indiscriminate. And the Doctor was dying." The icon rested its virtual palms flat on the image of the desk behind it.
"It was the tool in beak at the time. The Doctor was dying. Your security almost had the Plaza sealed and were closing. There was no time for finesse. I popped his stack."
"With your talons, while shooting. Very coordinated. Then you swallowed it."
"I swallowed it. It seemed less likely to be harmed or discovered." Skies shifted, glaring at the corporate icon. "I'm no monkey."
"Despite social changes and popular buzzwords, we do still prefer the term 'human', hmm? 'Monkey' is generally reserved for the simian equivalent of bioengineered products such as yourself. But we're quite unconcerned with the moral and philosophical question of whether eating an electronic mind backup constitutes cannibalism."
"Flightless hominids. For all I know, you are software. But you said that you have my body. You... ah... recovered him."
"In point of fact, we did not. The second object, your 'high-energy density' object, was a limited-range EMP device. One strong enough to shut down most of the electronics in the center of the Plaza. It also scrambled the good Doctor's cortical stack before you swallowed it."
"Ahm..."
"Yes. If you had any moral qualms about consuming a sapient, you didn't. Merely fried electronics. The Doctor's previous backup was a little over two hours prior. Of course, any insights he gained into his work during that interval, or would have gained during that time and the time which it took us to resleeve him, are now lost."
"Yes." Skies shifted her virtual weight onto her other foot, rustled pixellated representations of wings. "Why do we review this?"
The virtual displays winked out, leaving only the faceless, corporate figure facing her. It steepled its gloved fingers. "While some few have suggested legal pursuit of this incident, most of my colleagues believe that the more appropriate response here is to kill you... as we killed the bioconservative Luddites who were attempting to assassinate Doctor Saha in the middle of your doubtless more benevolent kidnapping attempt."
"You don't believe that."
"No. I don't."
Skies shifted uncomfortably from one taloned foot to the other. "Why?"
"I've already explained. Killing you only means you forget your personal experience of this incident. Perhaps, dependent upon when you last backed up, even the entire contract which led you to it. You don't learn anything from dying, nor would killing you deter others."
"So..."
"So we are letting you live, with a few provisos, a few quid pro quos, some added benefit to assuage our loss and what we feel is a reasonable penalty for your harmful involvement. We have worked with you before. Ultimate. Not many of your kind among them. You consider yourself better than most. Lofty ideals of your own, but you'll accept our money to take out our trash when and as you see fit."
Skies stared at the faceless icon, felt an irrational urge to fly at it, and instead called up a background meditation subroutine.
"I have convinced my compatriots to make book on your exceedingly high opinion of yourself and your clade. You would describe the assassination attempt as...?"
"Sloppy. Amateurish. High collateral casualties among uninvolved sapients. At best it would have resulted in you resleeving him."
"Pointless, yes? Except to say that they can touch us."
"That message could be read into it."
"At a significant cost in their lives and the lives of others. A professional wouldn't have caused all that messiness, would you say?"
"No. One would not." Datta, dayadhvam, dāmyata.
"An Ultimate of your clade, a Kshatriya-caste warrior, then, would not?"
"No." Give in charity, be merciful, restrain yourself.
"Despite the additional casualties caused by your thermobaric grenade?"
"It was a poor decision. I was operating against an undetermined and crowd-masked force while under the belief that successful extraction was still possible."
"A palatable excuse, no doubt. Nevertheless, you killed quite a few uninvolved parties."
"Yes."
"Very good. You will not, in future."
"Because of my high Kshatriya opinion of myself?"
"No."
The figure straightened for the first time, shifting its hip off the faux-classical desk. "...You will not commit such atrocities in future because we have taken the precaution of editing your digital mind. You are familiar with criminal correction through psychosurgery, yes? We have placed a block in your brain. You will never again harm, through action or inaction, either the corporate entity of Skinthetic or any of its employees."
Skies clacked her beak hard and stared at the icon. Dayadhvam.
"Yes, I suppose that insulting me could be construed as harm. I'm afraid you'll have to find some other means of expressing your anger. Additionally, you will in future act to prevent harm to unarmed and non-hostile persons in your area of operation."
"And you expect me to... to work like that." Datta, dayadhvam, dāmyata.
"Yes, I rather do. Of course, you could suicide yourself after we release you, and be restored from that earlier backup, with no memory of what went wrong... and no inhibitors in your head. You might even be able to avoid such overly dramatic recourse yet manage to circumvent the blocks we put in against having the primary block removed. But you believe you're quite skilled at what you do, don't you? So particularly special. So much more capable than we mere monkeys."
Clouded-Sunset-Skies-Unending had no feathers to ruffle in this iconic form. She stared at the corporate icon a long moment, then slowly and deliberately turned her back to it. The synthetic voice continued undeterred.
"Indeed, yes. Being an übermensch is good for one's self-confidence, I dare say. Or is it übervogel? I look forward to following your future career. Perhaps, if you really can manage to excel under your new constraints, it will inspire others to behave more...Professionally. I may even urge my peers to review our company policy regarding the blacklisting of untrustworthy contractors."
Dayadhvam. Be merciful.
Clouded-Sunset-Skies-Unending stared at the pixellated white wall in front of her beak until the simulspace winked out of existence, taking her conscious mind with it.
