Burning Violin

Janus was not so sure. He had not said anything at the time, only patted Charlie on the shoulder in that good ol' boy way that seemed to indicated confidence even when it was lacking. There was a man on the flight who seemed somehow familiar to Janus. Lanky, shoulder length blond hair, nondescript in most other ways, but oddly familiar. Janus had sat facing the individual, keeping a subtle eye on him. Nothing had happened to arouse any other suspicions, but Janus just felt paranoid in every way.

Janus moved through the terminal with decided purpose, knowing every nook of it from the map he had memorized on the flight down. There were few people milling around, this type of facility had far less traffic than a commercial airport, and those that were around tended to be service personnel. Bad use of manpower. Janus thought to himself. This place could do with a shaking up by management. Although I suppose that competent administrators have more important things to administrate than low traffic space ports in the middle of the desert.

A limousine picked him up as scheduled at the entrance to the small terminal. A senti sculpted out of flesh and metal to retain the shape of a Victorian butler in full array opened the doors for him and silently drove off onto the freeway. Janus found the controls easily enough and made sure that the connecting window rolled up between the passenger and driver compartments and faded opaque with a liquid flood of blackness from the edges.

Janus reveled in the privacy afforded him even in this claustrophobic space. It was silent and lonely the way he liked it. He called up some delicate sonatas of Mozart and settled back into the cushioned couches with a sigh of comfort. Janus pulled up a smattering of physics journals in audio format and let the logic and numbers float him to an uneasy sleep as he tried not to think about the possibilities of his destination. He did not dream, for he never did, but when he awoke it made him wonder why he never did, and not for the first time.

A private jet out of Albuquerque coasted north and dropped into an almost hidden airfield in the midst of the Rocky Mountains. Janus found himself again stranded beneath a horribly bright sky, but this time there were no buildings in which to seek succor.

Chapter Seventeen - Family

Janus hitched a ride on a departing shuttle and endured the bouncing ride back into Earth's gravity well with the stoicism of someone well beyond the ability to feel simple nausea or vertigo. They landed without incident at the space port in the middle of the New Mexico desert, arcing down with terrifying speed to settle down with a violence that seemed only a step removed from an outright crash. As he stood, he felt the creaking of joints and bio-mechanical muscles long used to the ease of zero-g. It took effort to take that first step, like a reincarnate piecing together that old knowledge with humble new muscles willing in theory if not ability.

The sky burned blue as a welding torch over head, stretching with as much a sense of the infinite as the vacancy of space to which Janus had become so accustomed over the last few years. It hurt his eyes even when he squinted, and the sheer size of it made him feel that bit of nausea his mind allowed, even if his body could not support the sensation. It is so much less than I am used to, but it is infinite nonetheless. It causes pause. Pause to consider our understanding of the infinite.

Janus scurried into one of the nearby buildings with the look of quonset huts, scattered in a random array around the landing strips. The familiar blast of air conditioning and artificial glow of fluorescents relaxed Janus on a fundamental level. He would have breathed a sigh of relief had he possessed normally functional lungs.

Charlie had been less than understanding of Janus' visit Earthside. "But what about the project, doc?" Charlie had whined. "We're at the pinnacle, the apogee, the cusp of it all and you're taking a vacation now? I know you've never taken one before, you've to the time coming to you, but now?"

Janus had not really explained other than to insist that it would only be for a couple of days, that he would be back, and that he was under no uncertain terms not to be monitored, followed, or otherwise spied upon.

"You're an American, doc." Charlie had said. "You know we don't operate that way."

Scents of sour milk and spoiled meat filled Crow's nostrils as he woke in a total blackness that pressed in from all sides with squishy palms and sharp fingers. Rot and decay scorched his nostrils and the panic of drowning seized his lungs. Crow opened his mouth to scream and suck the poison for some trace of oxygen, but a slime poured into his mouth as he did, choking him and burning his mouth and throat. His limbs spasmed and his head kicked against the limits of his neck. It's a dream, it's a dream, nightmares of a tainted return to the womb.

Crow froze with puzzlement as his fist pressed against a membrane, something slick and smooth that gave way to his probing fingers. A fingertip broke free and felt cool air beyond, swirling around the tip. Everything gave in to that hope, the insane last hope for a single breath. At that moment he would give anything in the world for a single breath of air, such a little thing really. He took a dozen a minute without a thought for his entire life and it all came down to wanting just one more. I'll never take another breath for granted, just let me reach the air. Crow swore to himself, even though he knew it was a lie.

A lunge broke his other arm through up to the elbow, and suddenly there was a blinding glare of light twinkling around the edges of his limb. Crow's feet scissor-kicked against the drowning refuse, but found no purchase. Is torso wormed and gained some position, pressing his face hard against the stretching plastic of his prison. Crow's free arms flailed at the air, windmilling through the space beyond his vision. He pressed his head down against his arm, rolling up it to the elbow that had punched through. His face pressed into the tear, stretching it to fit the curve of his skull. Brightness blinded his eyes, which rolled back up in his head as his nose popped out and drew air in a savage inhalation. His mouth cleared just in time to exhale thunderously for another inhalation. Whatever vileness had tried to drown him sputtered out of his mouth on exhalation, streaming over his face, but forgotten in the sweet moments of breathing. The oxygen tasted better than the finest steak he had ever savored with chianti.

The world gave way at that moment, his prison disintegrating into thin air and leaving him to fall into freedom in a hailstorm of debris. He became vaguely aware that a rather stylish woman's boot was nudging his face and with a groan he rolled over on his back in a pile of rubbish. Crow smiled up at Rebecca.

"They told me I'd find you back here, and I feared the worst, especially when I couldn't actually find you." Rebecca said.

"But you worked it out?" Crow asked weakly.

Rebecca shrugged. "The answer kind of fell out of the air." She smiled. "What did the Duke say?"

"What does it look like?" Crow growled. "No. That was the general idea." He held up his new arm to Rebecca who eyed it thoughtfully for a moment before grasping it and pulling Crow to his feet. Rebecca steadied him as he wobbled for a few moments.

"Now what?" Rebecca asked quietly.

Crow stared at the ground and sighed in a heavy desperation. "I have no idea. This was the only straw I had left to grab."

"We'll figure something out." Rebecca said, and started to drag him forward one foot at a time.

"You'd do that?" Crow asked, a little surprised. "You don't owe me anything. You don't have to fight this fight."

"Just shut up already." Rebecca said. "My boyfriend is a robot and he can kick your ass halfway to Cleveland." She sniffed. "So don't get any ideas."

"Sorry, already had them." Crow said. "They were magnificent."

"I said shut up." Rebecca said, and this time Crow actually did.

"What did you want?" Crow asked in a choked voice.

"The same thing as them." The Duke said levelly. "To study him. To replicate the technology used to build his mind and apply it to ourselves."

"I thought artificial minds were anathema to your philosophy?" Crow asked.

The Duke shrugged. "It wouldn't be artificial if we could upload our own consciousness into the new brain, it would be an upgrade not a replacement, an evolution instead of an extinction."

The Duke stood and strode to the nearest window and watched the traffic move slowly through the downtown. Crow watched the Duke's reflection study itself and then turn back to talk to Crow. "And that Dr. Daedalus, is why you are no longer needed. Your utility lay in the boy who is now beyond the reach of us all." He waved to the trio. "Please escort the doctor out now."

"No!" Crow exclaimed. "I need your help, I need to find my son."

The Duke frowned. "He is not your son, Dr. Daedalus. He is a machine."

Crow yanked his arms hard against the grasp of two of the cyborgs even as the third moved up in front to help restrain him. "Why let me up here then, huh? Why let me up here if you're just going to toss me back out after story time?"

The Duke stepped closer and studied Crow. "You underwent major surgery in a requirement intended as a jest. I felt a need to explain myself to a man of such strength."

"Then help me." Crow said as calmly as possible. "You still want him, I still want him. We can help each other."

The Duke sighed. "You have absolutely no resources to aid us. We do not need you."

Crow pulled again with all his strength and his new arm whipped out from the grasp on the cyborg on his left. It flew out, Crow unable to control its nascent neural connection with any semblance of fine motor skills. Fingertips left three cuts down the side of the Duke's of face, artificial blood pumping out for only a moment before nano-valves shut down the flow and the cuts began to heal themselves.

"That was unacceptable." The Duke said, voice flat and dull as concrete. "Throw him out in the trash. If he tries to come back, break his neck and leave him on the steps of Da Vinci Law."

The Duke turned away and the trio ripped Crow back down the hall and into the elevator. Bored with Crow's struggling, one of the trio stabbed him in the neck with a syringe of clear liquid. Immense pressure shoved into Crow's throat, choking him for a few terrifying moments, until it dissipated into warmth that spread like mercury through his entire body. Crow's world darkened by degrees like drops of ink in water until unconsciousness claimed him on the floor of Upgrade's executive elevator.

The Duke shook his head and leaned forward, hissing with vehemence. "These aren't assumptions, Dr. Daedalus, these are facts from the Russian senti projects. The tenth generation required only six hours to design and construct. The eleventh took thirty minutes. It was destroyed when the first bombs fell."

The Duke leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. "People don't know how close we were to extinction that day. Another few hours of debates in the UN, and we probably couldn't have done anything."

"Would they have invented and constructed force fields by tea time?" Crow asked, trying to be humorous, but the air was so tense that it only sounded sneering and bitter.

The Duke gestured to the floor, looking through it to another world only in his mind. "Picture a clearing in a forest. A monkey sits on a branch, sunning itself. A lion sneaks up under cover of the brush and attacks the monkey so suddenly that flight is no option. The monkey will tear and claw and bite and in the end die." The Duke turned his hand over and flexed his fingers like he was gripped a baseball. "Put a man in the same situation and he will grab something without conscious thought, a rock, a stick, and slam it into the lion's snout. And the man will live, because he had the intellect to create a tool when all a monkey could see was a lion's teeth. Who is to say what such tools the universe has left laying around for those with the intellect to see?"

Crow waited in the silence for a moment and then goaded the conversation on. "Are you saying that Alexander is the eleventh generation?"

"No, no." The Duke scoffed. "A side project only, but one with fascinating implications. His body and mind could be the perfect senti as far as normies normally think about it. He could perfectly pass as human, live among them, learn to be like them. You see, I do not think that the machine intelligence was evil or apathetic like many of my brethren, or the Naturalists for that matter. I believe that it was curious like a child, and oversaw the development of your son as a way to interact and learn about people first hand. It will not surprise you of course that his name was Adam. You see, our artificial offspring do have a sense of history after all.

"Information is unreliable at best, but it seems that there were at least a couple of dozen Adam-model sentis." The Duke said. "Their brains were implanted and brought full term by human women employed by the program. Vat space was too expensive to waste in Russia at the time, still is to be sure, so they grew the parts bit by bit in natural incubators and surgically removed them when ready for assembly. It was . . ." he searched for a word and twisted one out of the air, "grotesque. It was assumed that all were destroyed during the attacks, but someone snuck your Alexander out and into Moscow, where you found him." Crow flinched and the Duke went on. "We took the luxury of tracking down your history with the child once we became aware of his nature, only the day before the senti's took him. We did not want that, which is why you were warned."

"The sentis designed artificial minds brighter than ours or theirs. And those minds in turn designed minds brighter than themselves. An intellect was born that crackled with insight and intelligence that we cannot understand anymore than a point can imagine a sphere. We were dwarfed." The Duke sighed. "The scientists, the human ones, were terrified. The monster was breaking free of Frankenstein's shackles."

"They probably felt like Neanderthals sitting in on the first meeting of Homo sapiens' inaugural book club." Crow said.

The Duke merely looked at Crow for a moment and then went on. "The project directors, who by that point were sentis of course, dismissed the remaining human scientists. It would be their downfall. The scientists went to the governments, the sentis revolted, atomic weapons blanketed south Russia, you know that part of the story. The important thing is that the singularity was stopped in its tracks with a few dozen mushroom clouds, although a remnant of a remnant survived. Enough to rebuild and threaten again."

"The singularity is science fiction." Crow said. "It's just a short cut for lazy thinkers, so that way we don't have to really figure out what will happen in the future."

"You're quite wrong." The Duke said. "The singularity may be science fiction, but we live in a world with computers the size of skin cells and robots who look and act like people. We're entitled to a little science fiction in our thinking. The singularity is the point beyond which we cannot see. It is nothing magical, just a corner around which human history turns, and we cannot yet peer.

"Some have said that artificial intelligence will be the last thing man invents, because after that artificial intelligence will do all the inventing we need." Crow tensed at his own words but the Duke did not notice. "Artificial intelligence allows the exponential growth of knowledge. A first generation senti can design a second generation senti in a year. A second generation senti designs the third in a month. By the tenth generation, leaps in the capacity of intelligence occur in hours. The moment the first senti walked off the assembly line, mankind's remaining time started ticking down."

"Those are invalid assumptions." Crow argued. "It's the kind of logic to scare the normal people who never got past first year algebra. A first generation senti may not have the ability to design a second generation. Or each successive generation may take a hundred times longer than the preceding generation. Or there is some cap, maybe humans are even near it."

"No." The Duke said again but with firmness instead of anger. "Your son's brain is pure wet-ware, did you know that? It's not hardware, not even on the most microscopic level. It is design come full circle, an artificial mind built using the raw matter of the original product. It is the pinnacle of both evolution and science, not the bastard half breeds of normies or sentis."

"How do you know any of this about him?" Crow asked. "You've never even met my boy."

The Duke's eye glittered. "No, but I've seen the blueprints." The Duke leaned back in his chair, eyes gazing out the sparkling evening lights of the city. "A man came to me several years ago with a story. It was not the sort of story one would generally believe, but this man came with impeccable qualifications. He was from Russia. He vaz zay scientist." The Duke said the last bit in an exaggerated Russian accent and turned his eyes to Crow. "This was just after the riots began. His name was Hydane." Crow's head lurched at the name and the Duke turned his eyes back to the cityscape. "I thought that part would interest you.

"Dmitri though, not Yuri. Yuri was off getting tattoos and pretending to save the world." The Duke said. "Dmitri had been on the ground floor of a new kind of research."

"What kind?" Crow asked as the Duke paused for a moment.

The Duke shrugged. "It wasn't the research that was novel, it was the research method. The scientists were all sentis for the most part. A few normies like Dmitri for appearances, but they were all let go and warned not to talk after the project entered its second phase." The Duke leaned forward and licked his lips in a motion so quick, Crow could barely see it. The Duke was agitated, excited. "You see, the sentis were researching artificial intelligence."

Crow frowned. "Why? They were artificially intelligent. Problem solved."

The Duke shook his head. "Phase one, Dr. Daedalus. Phase one." He paused and looked out again on the lights. Crow noticed that his eyes pointed in different directions at once and suppressed the shudder. "There are degrees of intelligence, Dr. Daedalus, as you are undoubtedly aware. An artificially intelligent human, a senti if you will, is the superior of a dog's intellect, whether artificial or natural. Humans though, we were supremely arrogant. The vast majority of us simply nodded at artificial intelligence adapted to our level of thinking and nodded. 'Problem solved' as you so quaintly put it. In our self-importance we assumed that was the pinnacle of artificial intelligence. We were wrong.

"What did you want with him?" Crow asked.

The Duke looked him up and down, eyes settling on the mechanical arm. He raised an eyebrow. "Do you wonder about my appearance, Dr. Daedalus?"

"What do you mean?" Crow asked.

The Duke's voice became harsh at once. "You know exactly to what I am referring." His voice softened, the storm passed. "Now, do you wonder about my appearance?"

Crow gnawed on his lip for a moment and took the plunge. "You look human. But you can't be, not heading up a cyb-joint like this. They wouldn't even let you through the front door."

"My helicopter lands on the roof, so I don't ever enter through the front door, but point taken." The Duke said. "You are astute. And I am completely modified at this point, with the exception of my brain."

"That's amazing." Crow said, his technically trained eye unable to do anything but trace along the contours, looking for seams, falseness of any kind. "The workmanship is superb."

"Sam downstairs will be pleased to hear your praise." The Duke said. "I understand he got along well with you. What question springs to mind?"

"Why?" Crow asked without hesitation at this point. He waved his flesh hand at the trio. "Why go to such meticulous lengths to stay perfectly human looking, when you have no limitations at all?"

The Duke leaned forward, eyes gleaming. "Because as long as I live on this world, I must be human to be normal. And because mankind did not evolve this way for 4 billion years on a whim, it did it because this way worked. What I want is your son's brain, Dr. Daedalus. That is the final frontier as far as I am concerned."

"But we've developed AI. Walk out on the street, you can find a hundred artificial brains within a hundred yards." Crow said.

The Duke slammed his hand down on the desk. "No." He shouted and then appeared to calm over a few seconds time, anger dissipating like steam. "I want a brain as artificial as my limbs, but as perfectly masked, mapped to my very mind. I don't want to destroy myself and give this body to some freakish computer program, I want to upload myself into something greater."

"That's impossible." Crow said.

Chapter Sixteen - The Duke

The trio accompanied Crow up the stairs in an executive elevator that was all polished wood, marble and mirrors. Whoever the Duke was, he certainly had taste. Or at the very least, money to pay people who did. The doors opened with a beep on the top floor of the high rise and Crow realized that he had completed a high rise trifecta in the last month. Da Vinci, the Hilton, and now the Upgrade's top floor. As far as networking went, Crow had gone right to the top. I don't think any of those meetings will yield job opportunities.

One cyborg led and the other two flanked Crow into the wide expanse of marble and granite, surrounded by an elaborate stream that flowed from a waterfall behind the desk of the cyborg Crow had come to see.

The Duke was nothing that Crow expected. He looked entirely human in every respect, and not a particularly impressive one at that. He wore wire spectacles - and not he retro-hip kind that always seemed in style for folk of a certain look - and was entirely bald. Crow thought he was a rather ugly little man, although he wore a silk tuxedo of such class that it was hardly noticeable.

"Thank you for seeing me." Crow said. He crossed his arms in front of his chest with some effort, drawing the mechanical arm on with a bit of awkward tugging from his natural hand. "The entrance criteria were high, but as you can see, I adapted."

The Duke smiled warmly and pointed a hand to one of a pair of leather chairs in front of the desk. "Please, sit." He said in an almost squeaky voice, and when Crow had seated himself, sinking deep into the patent leather with a sigh, the Duke continued. "What business did you wish to discuss?"

Crow blinked and looked down at his arm and back at the Duke. He decided that directness was the best course. "My phone records indicate that you called me last week to warn me to hide my son, just below a phalanx of federal agents broke down my door. Presumably you could have masked that this was the source of the call." Crow paused for a moment, realizing that the converse was also true. Someone could have masked the source as this office, and set them all up as fools. Crow shrugged to himself, it would all be over in a few minutes one way or the other, too late to go back now. "Further, I presume that you had some motive in wanting my son kept safe, and also for me to know that it was you had warned me. I arrive now at your door step to discover that motive, and perhaps offer my services if our goals coincide."

The Duke continued to smile and looked down at the table at a dashboard of switches, as if contemplating which one to press that would send Crow down a chute to fiery death. Crow shifted uncomfortably. "I doubt our interests coincide any longer, Dr. Daedalus." The Duke said slowly. "That call was placed in hopes of cutting off the federal authorities from access to . . ." his voice dwindled for a moment before continuing, "your son."

Crow nodded and pushed himself up with his real hand. Rebecca helped him to his feet and he was surprised to note that he felt off kilter, like his right arm weighed twice as much as his left. He mentioned it and Sam nodded.

"The new one's a few kilos less than your old meat." Sam said. "Your balance might be a bit off as well for a while. But you'll get it back, the brain is amazing at adapting."

Over Sam's shoulder, Crow spotted his old arm discarded in a bin marked biohazard, sitting on top like last night's leftovers on the top of the garbage can. He could see the small scar from where he'd cut it on a nail when he was ten, and the two missing fingernails on his hand. The joint at the end glistened white in the light, like an oversized version of what he ignored every time he pulled apart rotisserie chicken. The skin looked oddly pale and Crow realized that all of the blood must have drained out of by now. He felt woozy all of sudden and almost fell over. Vomit involuntarily poured from his mouth, but enough flowed back for him to start to choke.

Rebecca caught Crow and lowered him to the floor with Sam's help, tilting Crow's head to the side to let his airway clear on to the floor. "What are you doing letting him see that?" Rebecca swore. "That's mod-101, don't let them see the old part, or they're liable to freak out. And this?" Rebecca pointed at Crow. "This is a fucking freak out."

Sam mumbled apologies and rushed to dispose of the limb before it could cause anymore trouble. Rebecca helped Crow up as he regained some semblance of control and they stumbled to the door way. "Sorry." Crow mumbled. "That last bit was just a little too much." He turned back at the door and gave a little wave with his new arm. "Thank you, Sam. Any advice?"

"Take two aspirin and call me in the morning if you have any pain." Sam said and broke into laughter.

They navigated the corridor and stairs and reappeared in the bar. It seemed to Crow like an eternity had passed although he had been downstairs little more than a couple of hours. He spotted the bartender and strode up to the bar. Crow slammed his new arm down on the bar, rattling a few nearby glasses and knocking an elaborate stack of pennies someone had left as a tip into a mess on the floor.

"I'm a changed man." Crow said. "Can you show us upstairs to see the boss?"

The bartender shrugged. "Just you. The boss said you come alone."

Crow started to protest, but gave up, not wanting to ruin this chance after all that had gone in to it. He looked back at Rebecca. "Are you okay waiting here?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I'm more okay waiting here than you are going upstairs. Have you ever heard of the Duke?"

Crow shrugged, played off his ignorance.

Rebecca smiled. "Don't piss him off."