Mask of Humanity

Zero-Twelve popped open, limbs uncurling, and twisted its body to match the curve of the side of the golden horse. The killbot skimmed past, attention turning to its next move.

Zero-Twelve was moving very fast, and it was very heavy. Unless it did something to manage those factors then when it hit the roof, the roof would know about it. Its body spread like an artificial spider, limbs wide and artificial muscle tense, each of the manipulators on the ends of its many limbs switching to present soft rubber pads to the ground.

The killbot touched down, landing on its four gun-limbs, two main arms and two main legs, and dozens of utility tentacles. The whole mass flexed as hydraulics and artificial muscle took the strain of landing in a controlled fashion, spreading its weight over a wide area with calculated precision. But Zero-Twelve didn’t stop moving, instead it redirected the bulk of its momentum forwards. Had it been visible to human eyes and had there been an observer able to view in slow motion, it would have appeared to skim over the ground like a smooth stone over water.

Zero-Twelve slowed its rush towards the corner of the roof, an Olympic sprinter slowing to a stop after the hundred metre dash. There the only scanning array which had a sight-line on it waited, a small boxy tower of metal covered in dishes and antennas, cameras and sensors.

This array had an on-board AI which was currently puzzling over some discrepancies in the scans it had sent out while Zero-Twelve touched down. It had detected something odd but wasn’t quite sure what. The array was compiling information to make the anomaly report which it would ping to the relevant system AI’s in approximately half a second.

But Zero-twelve was already there and one of its gun-limbs, a thick tentacle made from metal and tough rubber ending in a heavy machine gun and various folded manipulators, extended a spiked implement which punctured a spot on the array.

Zero-Twelve loitered there for a moment, Nicolai and the other Modules relaxing. Now that Zero-Twelve was still there was no sign of its presence; a human looking right at it would have had an uninterrupted view of the city beyond.

There was the briefest dip in the array’s functionality and the routine messages it was continually exchanging with its brethren. A gap of less than a millisecond. But already all the linked systems were querying the array as to the reason for the communications drop. An explanation was expected. Cyberwarfare was immediately on the case.

The Module sent a long message of ones-and-zeroes that said simply: ‘a brief malfunction in output. Back to normal now.’ The message was coded properly with all the necessary digital signatures.

The systems settled back down, hens who’d thought they’d smelt the whiff of a fox, now convinced otherwise. But the fox was amongst them and the array gave it a hardware connection to the other systems, allowing Zero-Twelve to bypass the towers’ external firewall.

Cyberwarfare, Scanning and Analysis joined forces and set to work, covering up their digital footprints while beginning a slow and subtle spread through every system they could connect to via the array, ghosts in the cyberspace. It wasn’t his area, but Nicolai knew the other Modules weren’t particularly worried about the various minor AI’s in the building. They were only really concerned about one AI, and their efforts to conceal themselves were based around avoiding its notice.

The building’s primary AI, Tower Central, was significantly more capable. It was an ageing—but still powerful and comprehensive—IcoNoGraph model Limited Artificial Super-Intelligence. Its job was to organise and direct the various other systems in the building as well as stepping in wherever necessary, and it directly controlled the security bots and automated weaponry, both of which were present in significantly higher numbers than was typical for a building of this size.

It wasn’t a threat Zero-Twelve was unable to deal with. One of the primary purposes the killbot had been designed for was that of gaining physical access to the central processing units of super AI’s and destroying them. In contrast to the calculating ruthlessness and bottomless paranoia of Warship AI’s Zero-Twelve had dealt with in the past, the Tower Central AI was small fry.

But Zero-Twelve’s current job had a few explicit rules. One of them was that it was not to damage the Tower Central AI permanently or severely.

The Modules and the Governor had therefore decided that stealth was their best move. The closer they could get to the Target without Tower Central noticing, the better.

Zero-Twelve’s jobs always came with several such stipulations. Ensure so-and-so comes to no harm. Do not damage this piece of infrastructure. Kill no one with a value over a given arbitrary number.

Zero-Twelve was never given the details as to exactly why it had to follow these rules. But they all knew why, at least in the broader sense. Nicolai viewed these stipulations with a grim and resigned amusement. They reminded him of his old job.

Liability. Always, liability.

Most of their actions took place in the Corporate Coast, the rim of extraordinarily rich coastal cities wrapping around the warring states of the old world. The Corporate Coast was a place of rules and regulations, but mostly it was a place of money. There was no rule that could not be broken, so long as one was able to pay the fee for breaking it, but simultaneously everyone had a bottom line and no one wanted to spend more than they had to. The legal system had become extraordinarily complex over time, which was why the Legal Module comprised over fifteen percent of their artificial brain.

This mission had all the typical stipulations, and one which stood out. Apparently there was an art piece by the famed creative, Ernst Brogdaer, in the Target’s home. They were to ensure no harm came to it.

The killbot retracted its arm spike from the array, breaking the connection and moving to the edge of the roof, then scuttling over. It slid down the side of the building, shifting its manipulators into grip-mode, spreading its weight wide over the glassy exterior.

There was a balcony not far down, one of many such balconies emerging from the building. Each of them a grand affair, more closely resembling a large garden than a small, protected opening where one could stand under the sky and stare down at the world below. In this case there wasn’t even a sky to stand under, as a few hundred metres above the tower loomed a great ceiling of metal, the floor of the next city layer above.

Zero-Twelve’s composite mind briefly shared in one of Nicolai’s memories, that of standing on a cramped balcony on a building long gone, smoking a cigarette and looking down at the street below, the sun playing over his skin. As the Human Resources Module was involved in movement and many other tasks, much of Nicolai’s awareness and way of viewing the world was present at most times in the killbot’s thoughts, and as a result a slightly human outlook often coloured the minds’ overall experience.

Most of the modules found this human colour to be significantly more interesting than the rest of their existence. The killbot paused as its mind was briefly lost in another time, another place, another body.

Then the Governor told them to get back to work, and Zero-Twelve continued down towards the balconies. The Governor also logged Nicolai’s errant thoughts for later review by the handlers and technicians, something it did by rote, a constant chore.

Nicolai was pretty sure they’d stopped reviewing his thoughts long ago. He was a known element, a dog in a cage. Threat Analysis agreed with him.

The garden-sized balcony Zero-Twelve approached had a large, glowing bubble around it, as they all did. It was an AR sphere, designed to prevent those on the outside from seeing or hearing any of what happened in the garden, while creating any sky and scenery those inside wished to see. Privacy and entertainment, all in one.

Zero-Twelve could see what was within. Cyberwarfare had been busy, and its control through the nearby systems had spread to the point where it had access to the feeds of every nearby camera and sensor, which it passed on to Nicolai and the others.

Inside the AR sphere a garden party was well under way. Dozens of people drank overpriced cocktails, snorted designer drugs and enthusiastically congratulated one another. They were partying in one of the most expensive buildings in the layer, so Nicolai supposed they had a lot to be happy about.

As Zero-Twelve viewed them through hacked cameras, its request for additional information about each party-goer was granted via its connection to the handlers and GRECKON’s database. The important information, as far as the handlers were concerned, was shown through a visual overlay which framed the humans in differing colours.

These colours represented the legally recognised investments and interest of various organisations. None in the garden party were below a gold. If Zero-twelve were to kill them and be recognised as the killer, then its employer would have to pay a repatriation fee to those impacted by the death of each individual. Gold was a relatively high level of investment, but for whoever had paid the gigantic fees GRECKON charged to lease Zero-Twelve, it was likely meaningless. The killbot could slaughter everyone here, be caught doing so, and the impact on the employers bottom line would barely be noticed.

But there was no need to do such a thing, and none of Zero-Twelve’s Modules had any interest in such an act. Well, except for the Research and Development Module, which piped up from the virtual corner the Governor had stuffed it into, claiming to be interested in “the visual phenomenon which will occur when large amounts of pulverised human remains pass through an AR sphere.”

Research and Development was a bit of a social pariah in the composite mind. Threat Analysis, Cyberwarfare and Close Combat were all convinced it had gone mad, and Nicolai thought they were right. But all complaints on the subject were immediately dismissed by the handlers, and so Research and Development stayed.

Zero-Twelve moved on, creeping toward the next balcony garden. This one was quieter than most, empty but for two humans. The AR sphere let out the AI equivalent of a brief, silent wail as Cyberwarfare deleted it and replaced it with a subjugated version while Zero-Twelve passed through the wall of light and into the garden. The killbot paused momentarily, the sight sinking in now it could see with its own sensors instead of hacked cameras. Nicolai and the Observation Module recognised the garden as designed in the traditional Japanese style, full of giant rocks, artfully twining rivers and waterfalls, dominated by a large pond with a rocky island reachable by bridges of natural-seeming stone in the centre. It contained a profusion of plant life, wide-leafed trees, and carp in the pond.

On the central island a woman wearing a white dress and a sunhat sat with a young man in contrastingly dark casual-wear, the sounds of their talk and laughter making its way gently over to Zero-Twelve’s audio sensors. Their bare feet dangled over the water, and the koi carp gathered beneath stared curiously up at them. The AR Sphere was set to show a bright sunny day, and played convincingly natural noises, birdsong and the hum of insects, meshing perfectly with the trickling of filtered water and the artificial wind in the artificial trees.

Nicolai did his best to forget the falseness behind it all and simply gazed upon the image as a whole, the killbot pausing as the rest of the composite mind was drawn along with him into the moment.

Beautiful, he thought. The other Modules clustered close, sharing blissfully in his faint emotion. His thoughts began to drift back in time, to a similar garden he’d seen long ago.

With the irritation of an overworked parent guiding a dozen unruly toddlers, the Governor Module wrenched Nicolai out of his memories and set the lot of them back to task. Observation snapped a picture with one of their primary cameras as they turned away. Legal promptly deleted the picture, citing some ancient privacy regulation. Observation accepted this without fuss, which told Nicolai it had already hidden a copy somewhere.

Cyberwarfare opened a door as Zero-Twelve approached, and the killbot slowed as its body silently reconfigured, shifting and squeezing and turning slimmer and longer until it could fit through the door, invading someone's home and finding itself in an empty dining area. It made its way through into a hallway and the main door slid open before it, revealing an expansive, ornate area outside the apartment, large enough to be considered a street had it been outside. Zero-Twelve slithered out and returned to its normal, four-legged panther-like shape, creeping into the lightly guarded interior of the human hive.

The Target was only a short and easy journey away.