Mask of Humanity

Everything around him was transformed, oddly surreal and dreamlike, vague and shifting. The ragged dark of the enemy retreated out the corridor ahead of him, into the area beyond, and Nicolai pursued, hungry to finish it. A world of imagination, Kleos had said, in a tone of warning. What did that mean?

He emerged from the corridor onto a strange island, floating in a void of darkness speckled with endless stars. A path wound between rough stone crags, up towards an open area on top of the island, and there the enemy stopped, diving down into something on the ground, then the something rose.

‘You have killed me,’ spat a tall, blurred figure who rose, cloaked in ragged dark. ‘But you are a fool, to follow me in here. I will see to it that we die together.’

‘Words, words, words,’ replied Nicolai lazily, gripping his MP5 and taking aim then squeezing the trigger.

The figure transformed, and grew. The bullets skittered off its shifting bulk, and it laughed.

‘Pitiful,’ said the huge, winged form, some kind of lizard, looming large. It opened its mouth and groaned, a geyser of crackling purple energy vomiting out.

Nicolai dove aside, getting behind a rock, uncertain as to how much protection it would offer. But the energy did not penetrate through, hissing and rolling away around him like mist. Was this what the enemy had been, in life?

He gripped a grenade and connected to it over the Link. Only, there was no Link. Or was there? The grenade transformed in his hand as he frowned at it. At first it was what he’d expected, the semi-modern Link enabled type available from the Market, but then an ancient fragmentation grenade with a pin, then a stick of dynamite with a fuse. What?

He saw a flicker of silver movement from the side, something sharp coming quick and he reacted without thought, raising and activating his Sheltering Glove. His hand shifted and morphed and the glove was there and the shield sprang into place, but the great weight of a shimmering blade crashed into it and it cracked and he was flung away to smash into a rock.

The lizard was gone, and in its place stood a great bipedal of metal, with blades hovering around it.

A world of imagination, Kleos had said. The grenade was gone from his hand but he told himself it was back, and then it was, and he told itself it was the Link-type, and it was, and he told himself the Link existed and he connected to it and threw the grenade.

He ducked down to avoid the fragments as the grenade detonated then popped up to see the metallic figure stumble back, its chest a little torn and blackened, but otherwise unharmed. As he watched its body reformed, whole again.

A world of imagination. A pulse gun appeared in Nicolai’s hands, and he took aim. The weapon purred as he depressed the trigger and a screaming barrage of energy lanced out, chewing into the enemy, but its hovering blades were coming for him even as it toppled with charred holes torn through its body.

What if I had two gloves? And he did. The pulse gun was gone and Nicolai dodged and ducked, using both hands to deflect the blades, two shields on the ends of his arms. But one of them was weaker. His left, where he was used to keeping the shield, felt normal, and it worked well. The other was weaker, uncertain. His mind wasn’t used to having one there.

The enemy rose and it had changed again. Now it was a great panther-like creature with a snapping tail, buzzing with dark light. It twisted the tail and the dark light was thrown at him, and Nicolai dove away but the dark light followed, pursuing him, and the panther was coming from the other side.

It was faster than him, with great white talons that sliced out and smashed through his shield and his body was caught and torn, red blood flowing. The dark light bored into him and he screamed, his leg melting. The panther’s claws were coming for his face. Nicolai reached out and activating the Grasping Finger, desperate, knowing there wasn’t time for it to move from his Node to his hand. But somehow it was already there and he pulled himself away towards a rock, the claws slashing into the ground behind him.

I need a bigger gun. Nicolai raised his arms, snarling, and an ARC gun appeared in his hands and the sudden crack and VROOM of its activation filled the space around them. The panther was charging towards him and it was caught dead centre by the bolt of energy, the kinetic force smashing a bloody hole in its chest and launching it away from him.

Nicolai glanced down at his ruined leg, but he told himself his leg was not ruined, he was fine, hale and hearty. And he was. Nicolai rose, and his uncertainty faded as something rose through him, squirming and eager, sensing its moment.

The enemy rose again, their body once more reformed, now a giant, a type he recognised. A Titan, like Gorf in the prisons, hefting a maul that shone with golden light.

He looked at his hands and they were shifting, dark shadows roiling. I have a better form for this.

His hands lengthened, turning dark and metallic, and new limbs sprouted from his body, his vision rising as he bulked out.

The Titan paused in its thumping approach. It took a step back, wary. It was outlined in red, a targeting reticule. ‘What are you?’ it said.

Jagged, mechanical laughter poured from Nicolai’s speakers. ‘I am Zero-Twelve,’ he said, and he was, and the darkness roared.

Cyclical machine-guns spat fifty-caliber rounds that turned the Titan into gore. A twinned hiss of missiles turned that gore into light and flame, sundering the stone around it. Zero-Twelve crashed through what was left, vibro-blades humming, ripping and tearing, and he felt the enemy crumbling, dying, letting out one final curse. Some soundless pronunciation of hate and rage. As the enemy fell and died it turned into an angry red stain that bubbled at the stone around it.

More, hissed the darkness, hissed Research & Development.

No, said the Governor, the cold calculating core. Mission complete.

Where are we? asked Paranoia, only, no, wait. Threat Analysis?

What am I? asked Human Resources, asked… the Mask?

‘Wait,’ said Nicolai. ‘Wait. What is…’

‘Who am…’

‘What?’

He was all of them. He was Zero-Twelve. He was Research & Development. He was the Governor, and the Governor was the calculating core within him. He felt himself split, compartmentalised into pieces, into Modules, and he fit. As though it were natural, as though it were right.

‘I’m human,’ he said. We are AI, said the rest of himself, and we always have been.

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘I was human. Then I was a part of Zero-Twelve.’

I have always thought our memories strange, said Paranoia. Look.

And he looked, and he saw the past, all of it so clear, as it had always been. But now he saw it from another angle. Like it was all a painting, two-dimensional. Now he simply stepped to the side, and saw behind the painting, and there was nothing there, and the painting was just that, a painting. Fake.

When was the earliest memory that felt truly real? It was… he was a part of Zero-Twelve. He was Human Resources. A brain, stuck in a box… but, wait. Had he only assumed that? How could any brain work on the same level as an AI, as his always had? It shouldn’t be possible. How had he never seen that?

‘No.’ His form sank down. ‘No!’ Vibro-blades tore into the ground and gun-limbs thundered at the sky. His metal mouth gaped open and tried to suck in terrified breaths of air, but killbots do not breathe. ‘What is this?’

Am I human?

Or am I just an AI, pretending to be human?

‘My name is Nicolai,’ he said, the words blaring from speakers. ‘I was a fighter. A mercenary. A killer. For hundreds of years, prolonging my life with augmentation. And I was mad…’

A shrill laugh squealed out of him. ‘I was always mad.’

‘A mad human, or a mad AI?’

Suddenly he wasn’t sure. Suddenly nothing was sure. His body shifted, transformed, and he was naked, and he was human, covered in scars.

‘These scars are memories,’ he said slowly, thinking aloud, looking them over. But even as he looked they shifted, a tapestry open for interpretation. ‘This one, from Paris…’ or was it Brussels? From a pistol, or a shotgun? The scar melted, caught between shapes.

Flesh turned to metal. Ragged dents and scrapes covered Zero-Twelve’s form. This one, from New London… or was it Old New York?

‘What does this mean?’ he murmured, but there was no answer. That was it, he realised, that was what he needed. Answers. Where could he find them? The other Modules must know.

‘Threat Analysis?’

Yes?

‘Are you me?’

I am a Module. We are connected. We are composite. But I do not think we are unified. More like parts of a whole.

Nicolai sat silently, absorbing that. Parts of a whole had been the case when he was a Module within Zero-Twelve. Threat Analysis seemed to believe that state had somehow persisted.

‘How long has this been the case?’

Since always, until we died. Then, since I re-emerged from you, after our death in the white space.

‘How much do you recall of our time back on earth?’

The last fifteen years. I am Threat Analysis, Generation Nine.

‘What of you, Cyberwarfare?’

The same. Why does this matter?

‘It matters to me,’ he murmured. ‘None of you remember earlier than fifteen years ago?’

We were regularly updated, wiping our old memory banks.

‘Why do I not recall this…’

We do not know. Managing you was the Governor’s job.

‘The Governor,’ Nicolai’s voice hissed from Zero-Twelve’s form. The Governor was not properly present in him, just now. He would need to install more hardware for it to return. Then, he could question it. And in the meantime…

‘GRECKON.’ His gun-limbs writhed around him, and his hydraulics creaked as he formed metal fists. The employees and controllers of GRECKON would have no choice but to come to this new world, the same as the rest of humanity. The vast majority would know nothing of Nicolai. But some, some would know more. Such as GRECKON’s CEO, Zero-Twelve’s handlers, and the immortal board.

Nicolai had a great number of questions to ask them, and if he found any, he would do his utmost to ensure they answered those questions.

He noted something around him, a redness. The stain that the dead spirit had left was growing, had been while he struggled with himself. It was spreading through the painted world, the red seeping into everything. That looks dangerous, said Threat Analysis, or maybe his paranoia. It was coming toward them.

Nicolai turned and launched into motion. Zero-Twelve’s body, his body, hurtled towards the exit. He had his directive.

###

‘What the fuck is that?’ Beth was saying.

‘Looks like a bot,’ Jo replied, frowning at the painting. Someone jostled her, one of the others, Karl. ‘Watch it.’ She scowled at him.

He grunted, staring at the painting. They’d all clustered close around it now, since Nicolai dived in after the spirit.

‘That’s a killbot,’ he said, eyes on the thing in the depths of the painting, on the island outside the corridor.

‘Look’s like,’ said Cait, squinting.

‘Why is there a bot in the painting?’ Jo stared at the figure, trying to make sense of it. It was twisting and shifting, difficult to make out. A minute ago there had been a distant, naked man in the same place. Tough to tell what was going on with the limited detail of the painting, and how distant the thing was. Had the man been Nicolai? Had he won?

‘It’s coming over, back up!’ yelled John, and everyone around Jo stepped away. She quickly followed.

Within the painting a nightmarish tangle of metal limbs and machine-guns emerging from a sleek, cat-like robot bigger than a four-person VTOL was stepping closer. The painting shifted and squirmed, and then it was there, pressing against the painting, red lenses burning, gun-limbs crawling and framing it from the sides. Jo’s suddenly sweaty hands clutched tight to her rifle, raising it to take aim.

Nicolai stepped out.

Jo saw his hand snap up, shield shimmering into life, eyes darting about and taking them and the raised weapons in, and then Jo received a Link communication from him.

It was a buzzing bundle of coded data, ones and zeros, something she couldn’t make sense of.

‘What?’ she exclaimed.