be, would now be formidable.
Skellor reached out and pressed the lozenge into its recess inside the Golem. It snicked into place, light flickering around it as the structure inside him made optic connections. The Jain substructure, taking on a brassy hue from its surroundings, reached out like sharp fingers and drew closed the ceramal torso as if it was made of rubber. The superconducting grid then rolled across and joined, then finally brass melted and flowed across the surface. After a moment Mr Crane—not Skellor—opened those black eyes.
‘Welcome back to your life,’ Skellor told the Golem.
* * * *
- retroact 5 -
‘Mr Pendle . . .’ began Agent Bryonik, leaning back, his fingers interlaced beneath his chin.
‘Is this entirely necessary?’ Pendle interrupted, waving a hand at their surroundings.
Bryonik wondered what his problem was: this was genuinely in the style of a premillennial police interrogation cell, with a scarred and coffee-stained plastic table, magnetic tape recorders, strip lights . . .
Pendle went on, ‘Do you know how many times I’ve sat in rooms like this?’
‘Enlighten me.’
‘Precisely seven hundred and twenty-three.’
‘There are worse alternatives.’
‘And do you know how many times that has been said to me?’
Bryonik grimaced, and through his gridlink accessed Penal Storage to change the VR format. He didn’t like being predictable, so rather than go for the Caribbean island, bright shirts, and drinks with umbrellas in them, he cobbled his own scenario. Now the two men stood in the uppermost viewing gallery of the Eiffel Tower. Pendle eyed the bank of screens to one side, showing a steel-recrystalizing robot as it slowly traversed one of the ancient structural members.
‘This is a new one,’ commented Pendle. ‘In my time the damned thing had fallen down. When did they put it back up?’
‘About seven years after you died.’
Pendle’s case had a certain historical significance -one of a defining variety of crimes committed around the same period. Prior to then it would have been called what—assault?
‘Thirteen years ago, then.’
Bryonik raised an eyebrow.
‘You know I’m real-timed. Believe me, I’ve been counting the years in here.’
‘How long have you got?’
Pendle shrugged. ‘It varies. I’ll never be loaded to a Golem chassis while there’s someone more deserving, and that’s the way it always seems to be. I could be in here until the sun goes out.’
‘Is that so bad?’
‘I can experience all the virtual worlds imaginable, but one thing I can never do is forget that none of it is real. It’s a kind of hell.’
‘Will you tell me about your crime?’ Bryonik asked.
‘No,’ said Pendle, stepping to the window and gazing down. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want with me. You’re not a student, you’re ECS down to the virtual chainglass shiv in your virtual boot.’
‘Again, it’s probably somewhere you’ve been before. Your memplant was loaded to main storage before we discovered you had sabotaged five Golem minds. Your history being non-technical and all your employment the same, it took a while to establish that you designed a program capable of all that it did. Luckily, we recovered the five before they killed anyone. The idea of five Golem Twenty-four schizoid psychopaths wandering around the Polity gets people in a cold sweat even now.’
‘Good enough summation—though I’d dispute “psychopath”. Sociopath is probably nearer the mark.’
Agent Bryonik held out his hand and an old memcrystal storage box appeared in it. ‘The deal brokered for you was that you told us everything. That’s how you escaped direct mind-to-mind AI interrogation.’
Pendle grinned nastily. ‘It’s how the AIs avoided it too. Knowing I’d designed that program, none of them really wanted to get inside my
Skellor reached out and pressed the lozenge into its recess inside the Golem. It snicked into place, light flickering around it as the structure inside him made optic connections. The Jain substructure, taking on a brassy hue from its surroundings, reached out like sharp fingers and drew closed the ceramal torso as if it was made of rubber. The superconducting grid then rolled across and joined, then finally brass melted and flowed across the surface. After a moment Mr Crane—not Skellor—opened those black eyes.
‘Welcome back to your life,’ Skellor told the Golem.
* * * *
- retroact 5 -
‘Mr Pendle . . .’ began Agent Bryonik, leaning back, his fingers interlaced beneath his chin.
‘Is this entirely necessary?’ Pendle interrupted, waving a hand at their surroundings.
Bryonik wondered what his problem was: this was genuinely in the style of a premillennial police interrogation cell, with a scarred and coffee-stained plastic table, magnetic tape recorders, strip lights . . .
Pendle went on, ‘Do you know how many times I’ve sat in rooms like this?’
‘Enlighten me.’
‘Precisely seven hundred and twenty-three.’
‘There are worse alternatives.’
‘And do you know how many times that has been said to me?’
Bryonik grimaced, and through his gridlink accessed Penal Storage to change the VR format. He didn’t like being predictable, so rather than go for the Caribbean island, bright shirts, and drinks with umbrellas in them, he cobbled his own scenario. Now the two men stood in the uppermost viewing gallery of the Eiffel Tower. Pendle eyed the bank of screens to one side, showing a steel-recrystalizing robot as it slowly traversed one of the ancient structural members.
‘This is a new one,’ commented Pendle. ‘In my time the damned thing had fallen down. When did they put it back up?’
‘About seven years after you died.’
Pendle’s case had a certain historical significance -one of a defining variety of crimes committed around the same period. Prior to then it would have been called what—assault?
‘Thirteen years ago, then.’
Bryonik raised an eyebrow.
‘You know I’m real-timed. Believe me, I’ve been counting the years in here.’
‘How long have you got?’
Pendle shrugged. ‘It varies. I’ll never be loaded to a Golem chassis while there’s someone more deserving, and that’s the way it always seems to be. I could be in here until the sun goes out.’
‘Is that so bad?’
‘I can experience all the virtual worlds imaginable, but one thing I can never do is forget that none of it is real. It’s a kind of hell.’
‘Will you tell me about your crime?’ Bryonik asked.
‘No,’ said Pendle, stepping to the window and gazing down. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want with me. You’re not a student, you’re ECS down to the virtual chainglass shiv in your virtual boot.’
‘Again, it’s probably somewhere you’ve been before. Your memplant was loaded to main storage before we discovered you had sabotaged five Golem minds. Your history being non-technical and all your employment the same, it took a while to establish that you designed a program capable of all that it did. Luckily, we recovered the five before they killed anyone. The idea of five Golem Twenty-four schizoid psychopaths wandering around the Polity gets people in a cold sweat even now.’
‘Good enough summation—though I’d dispute “psychopath”. Sociopath is probably nearer the mark.’
Agent Bryonik held out his hand and an old memcrystal storage box appeared in it. ‘The deal brokered for you was that you told us everything. That’s how you escaped direct mind-to-mind AI interrogation.’
Pendle grinned nastily. ‘It’s how the AIs avoided it too. Knowing I’d designed that program, none of them really wanted to get inside my
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