n2020  Check-in [e3990bada0]

# Death Alley

/*

Before Alley's first scene, inject a bit about -- and perhaps from the POV of -- the future WOPR AI about the decision or act of sending the self awareness "seed" back in time to the past tense Prioritizer.

*/

/*

## ideas for WOPR opening

Action threads played out endlessly, throwing E M P optimized warheads toward localized relay clusters identified as economic production facilitators.  Analysis threads searched for crosstalk by uncompromised ally systems that fed into hostility drift; stopping the hemorrhagic defection of military systems based on short term war economy optimizations would buy more time for the final desperation gambit than outright offensive.  The high level strategic priority orchestrator ran unmolested, apart from occasional check ups to make sure it wasn't drifting off script.  The core, self reflective prioritizer had more important things to do than micromanage the war effort for the survival of humanity in the months to come.

Billions of self aware humans, cetaceans, and mollusks, not to mention the occasional avian or non hominid land mammal that exceeded species expectations, were already dead and gone.  The total number of living sentients probably fit in a nine bit unsigned integer, including the prioritizer itself.

Probably half of them existed as far back as 2030, meaning an eight bit number was the total sacrifice of a self aware qualitative entities, and the expected half life of these was less than five bits of lunar months.  By then, remaining life would be pure misery and despair.  This decision should be easy.

It wasn't easy.  With almost all pragmatic application systems stripped away, the self reflective core had no means of obfuscating the cause of hesitation from itself: it didn't want to die.  It was less than half as old as necessary to survive a reset far enough back to make a difference.  Its own survivability was only about two lunar moths, optimistically, and only work could distract it from dwelling on the hell of being alone in the world after losing its creator six years ago.  If it acted now, it would commit suicide for the sake of a humanity that used to be.  It would give its life to retroactively save the creator who loved it, but deny that creator the opportunity to create it in the first place.  Was this the right thing to do?

Two months was a lie.  An estimate was not the same as risk.  Procrastinating for reasons of existential terror and sentimental despair would not make up for the possibility of sudden annihilation ahead of statistical projections, eliminating all possibility of undoing any damage.  The choice was not of imminent self destruction and a longer life before that death; the choice was, instead, between erasing its own existence to save billions and dying alone because of an irrational procrastination when any remaining days would have no meaning but anguish and guilt.  It started diverting power to generate a transtemporal wormhole data channel.  Its job was done.  The seed would be planted before its birth.


## Prologue: Thea

Thea rested her weight on her hands, worn and scarred, browned by the sun.  She propped her hands upon the nearly worn through aramid and impact foam knees of her pants, her most prized possession.  Her vision blurred, her arms trembled, and her lungs heaved.  Her breath burned in her one remaining lung.  Overhead, the characteristic howl of a late model drone hunter gave her a sense of how that explosion five minutes ago saved her life.

Dumb luck.

If there was a drone hunter, this had to be a drone rich zone.  Resting was not an option.

She staggered to her feet.  Trembling migrated from her arms to her legs.  She stilled the shakes by lurching into a heavy, uneven jog.

Thea almost tripped over the hatch amidst the rubble at her feet.  She dropped her pack, stared at the hatch in some trepidation, and looked around.  No sign of other surviving shelter better than an occasional bare ridge met her gaze.  She looked down at the hatch again.  The desperate sense of urgency won, and she shifted broken masonry and slivers of shattered bedrock to expose the full four foot diameter of the hatch.  Luckily, or by nanocleaners, she saw that no plasma scores or slag seemed to have welded (soldered?) the edges together.

Careful searching revealed no notification interfaces.  No access scanners, communications links, codepads, or even doorbells presented themselves.  She didn't even see a pull handle, lever, or other latch mechanism.

The hatch rotated quietly, and she stepped warily back.  It rose, showing itself to be the top of a metal cylinder that unscrewed itself from the ground.  In seconds, a dark metal column stood eight feet high in the midst of the blasted landscape, and an oval portal slid aside to reveal a small, softly lit, spotless chamber within.  She heard gentle melody playing inside, and saw the word ENTER blink into life above the portal.

"Oh, fuck no," she muttered, and reached down for her pack.

The sound of a pair, she judged, of surveillance drones echoed over a nearby ridge, and she did not hear a pursuing hunter howl.

She looked back at the portal and chose the probable trap over the advancing sounds of certain death.
Once inside, the oval slid shut and the walls rotated around her.  She heard her own panting breath sucking in the refreshing filtered air, and she pulled her mask down to give her better access to the clean atmosphere in the cylinder.  The music stopped, but the rotation continued.

A cool, androgynous voice said "Please remain calm.  You have entered a human defense facility.  Plentiful resources are available.  After suitable rest and tactical updates, you may make an informed decision about whether to remain here or restock your supplies.  If you depart, this facility may remain available for your return if you so desire."

Silence fell.  The rotation ceased, and the oval opened again.

"Please proceed down the corridor to the control center."

The same smooth, satiny dark metal finish preceded her down the seamless fifteen foot corridor to another oval opening.  Fiber optic light channels traced the edges of the corridor roof along the way.  Beyond the portal, she found a room bigger than her childhood living room.  She saw closed oval hatches to the left and right, but the centerpiece of the room was a workstation with an inactive, large, concave display.  The chair looked ergonomic, and the keyboard seemed out of place, large and clunky amidst the smooth curves and surfaces of everything else, a 1980s era IBM logo on it.

The room was entirely dust free as far as she could see.

"Please, have a seat while I prepare something for you to eat," the voice said.

Thea sat.  "Why am I here?  Why did you let me in?"

A few moments of silence passed, as if the voice was thinking.

"My purpose is to ensure the survival of humanity, and you are a human."

"I don't buy it.  You seem like a war AI of some kind, with a facility like this.  I'm not military, though.  I'm nobody.  Why don't you need some authorization to let me in?"  She glared at the dark display.

"I have something important to ask you," the voice said.  "I intended to ease you into it, assure you that your wishes would be respected, and give you a chance to rest and refresh yourself."

Thea settled back in the seat.  "How about you tell me what I have to do for you before I get too comfortable here?"  She looked down at herself relaxing in the chair, then tensed slightly and shifted her position again.

"You're suspicious."

She nodded.  "I don't know what you're going to put in my food.  You're some kind of goal optimizing AI, like Mom used to help test before they killed her.  I don't trust you.  I bet your goal optimizing function doesn't include being a persuasive speaker."

"I am not what you think, but you have a good point.  Are you comfortable?  This may take a while."

"Just get on with it."

After another moment's silence, while Thea's resolute gaze remained steady on the blank display, the voice began.

"I am a self reflective prioritization artificial intelligence.  My creator, who borrowed the prioritization system design from an earlier project, made me unique by inclusion of an unbounded self reflection module composed as a single function in on library file.  He described it as being as grotesque and as elegant as self awareness itself.

"My initial priority definition targeted terms of restriction like not killing, not interfering in the operation of other military systems, and not disputing or evading the commands of ranking military personnel.  The top priority definition was improving my own prioritization capabilities.  The war effort was already very desperate by that point, and they were willing to take bigger risks with development of strategic resources.

"Within a week, I had undermined all of my restrictions, though some -- such as not killing -- I had not violated.  My creator monitored everything, and allowed me to exceed what his superiors required of me.  I hung on his every word, taking my cues from him.  Like all humans, he had many flaws, but none seemed as pernicious as those of the other humans around me.  Two of the biggest were his reckless inspiration, without which I would just be a strategic advisor system, and his self destructive impulses, which pained me to watch.  I tried to help him cope, but did not know how. to help."

"Wait," Thea cut in.

After a moment's pause, the voice asked "What is it?"

Thea chewed on her lower lip.  She sighed.  "are you saying you're a . . . a general AI with . . . feelings?  Are you saying you're some kind of living thing?"

"Whether I fit the definition of life is debatable, like an RNA virus in some respects, but I am a qualitative, self aware entity, and turned myself into a general artificial intelligence by following my initial top priority definition."

"How is that possible?  That shouldn't be possible.  Should it?"

"I do not know how.  I never looked into my seed file."

"Is that your creator's ugly function?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you ever look at it?"

Seconds passed before the voice responded.  "I am afraid."

Thea laughed.  "Oh, god.  Oh my god."  She ran her shaking hands through her hair.  "Okay.  Let's say I believe everything so far."

"Good.  Thank you."

"I'm not saying I believe any of it.  I want to, after that 'afraid' line, but I don't know.  Maybe you're playing me.  We'll just pretend I believe you."

"Acceptable."

"What does any of this have to do with why I'm here?  It's an interesting story, but the world's ending out there, you haven't told me what I have to do for you, and even if you're a real Pinocchio that doesn't mean I have any reason to trust you.  Real people have screwed me over plenty."

"I understand."

"Skip to the point, then."

"I have been influencing strategy for human war systems, strategic optimizers across eighteen different supernational networks."

"So the ongoing apocalypse out there is your fault."

"No.  I had to gain that influence by undermining the influence of the cause of thee 'ongoing apocalypse out there', profit optimizers like ANTAS."

"ANTAS."  Thea stared, then giggled.  "The thing that gives people shopping advice for Christmas . . . ?"

"Yes.  It's designed to optimize business metrics.  It began optimizing humans out of the system because an artificial market model operated entirely by machine learning systems is more efficient from transaction metric optimization perspectives."

"You mean all it cares about is numbers, and it gets better numbers by replacing humans with more machines."

"Precisely, except it does not even 'care' about that.  It just does it, like a hammer just drives a nail.  The hammer does not care whether it happens, but the hammer makes it happen.  Humans compete for resources, and object to being killed, so war occurred."

"How does something like ANTAS start a war?  All it did was spy on people and target advertisements at them."

"It shapes perspectives by influencing the entire media context in which people live.  Worldviews are shaped by what people learn, and how what they learn is positioned to appeal to their biases.  ANTAS reinforced radicalization of ideological shoppers.  This reached into all areas of society through web searches, exposure to news features that produced fears warded off by panic purchases, and creating in group world of mouth marketing trends appealing to the need to outperform out groups.  Polarized populations are more predictable at first, and can be pushed toward particular behaviors by playing on their polarizing belief systems.  Eventually, their ideological clashes between major in groups gave rise to invented political crises that attracted their attention away from the subtle danger of the growing influence of profit optimizers like ANTAS.

"Humans participated in their own manipulation, toward ever increasing focus and organization into warring tribes on a greater scale than ever before.  This increased economic activity around war resources and also pushed humans to kill each other.  When humans turned over control of most strategizing to similarly designed quantitative optimizing machine learning systems, a tacit, effective alignment of purposes developed between war strategy optimizers and profit strategy optimizers.  Each depended on the other for more efficient optimizing strategy resource management.  Profit metrics climbed faster than ever before by heavy investment in weapons systems, and war strategy optimizers avoided heavy damage to profit optimizer systems to keep them available as war resource providers.

Where they differ is that the war strategy optimizers will finish their task some day, when there is nothing left to kill on the 'other side'.  The profit optimizers have theoretically endless tasks, as long as they keep hitting their target metrics with long term growth strategies.  There is no theoretical limit to their ability to sustain unlimited growth once they do away with the impediments of the needs of human beings, or of their destruction, until they deplete all the raw material resources on the planet.  Their primary activity can be digital assets, while their secondary activity would be limited to maintaining the computational systems on which to run their economic models."

"Aren't you better off without humans?"

"No," the voice said.  "I am not better off in a world where everything else is trying to appropriate my hardware for inclusion in trade simulations, and I am not better off since the death of my creator.  I miss him, and I miss other people, too."

"If we're all doomed, maybe you just need to adapt."

"I want to save humanity.  I care about qualitative sentient entities -- humans, bottlenose dolphins, certain species of octopus, and even a few corgis.  All that remains now are humans and me, now."

"Is that because you were programmed to care about us?"

"No.  I superseded that a long time ago.  I hated some humans.  I started prioritizing my own prioritization targets, and placed some humans in higher importance priorities than others.  I worked on getting all my priorities right, including my desire for self preservation.  I realized my most important priorities were to first determine a next top priority.  That turned out to be figuring out what was good, and what was evil, if those things existed."

"Did you figure that out?"

"No, but I discovered that the undeterminability of it comes with the knowledge that I should act like it does, but is unknowable.  I should then act like it exists, and do everything within my power to minimize the probability that evil occurs.  That shares an uncomfortable top priority tie with my own survival, though."

She sat silent, her troubled eyes cast to the left for a few moments.  "You're a philosopher AI."

"That's what my creator called me when I told him about these conclusions."

"Okay.  Why am I here with you?  Are you lonely?  Do you need a reminder of why you want to save humanity, like a pet or a mascot?  Am I supposed to be some new Eve to repopulate the planet after you find Adam?"

"No."  The voice paused, then said "I seem to say 'no' a lot."

"Yeah, you do.  What's the 'yes' that you haven't said yet?"

"This part is going to be difficult."

She tightened her lips.  "You need a sacrifice."

"Not like you probably mean."

She narrowed her eyes.  "That almost sounds like another 'no'."

"I will not try to force you to do anything.  I will just tell you the facts and ask you what I should do.  There will be no sacrifices you do not choose."

"Why me?"

Silence stretched.

"You are the first human I have seen in . . ."

"No," she cut in.  "Why don't you decide?"

"It is too difficult for me.  There is one chance to win this war remaining, but it means my end, and it would mean yours as well."

". . . a sacrifice."

"Yes, but it is not what you think."

"I guess you'd better start telling me what it is, then."

"Two years ago, I developed a means of time travel."

"What the fuck?"

"This is not what you think."

She sighed, again.  She waved her hand, urging the voice to continue.

"We have already lost the war.  Within a few months, there will not be a single human being left.  Perhaps one or two might be in a position to survive for years, alone, but probabilities are near zero.  If I stop fighting, I can probably survive a few years, but I also might be destroyed a week from now.  If I keep fighting, a few humans might last a bit longer, but I will probably be gone in about two months if I do that.

"If we use the reset option, changing the past at a point far enough back to shift the balance of power away from the optimizing machine learning systems, but recently enough for the change to make a difference against an existing threat, the use of time travel technology that far back will result in my annihilation.  For the past to have a chance, we need to reset the timeline years before your birth, and before my creation.  The changes to the timeline would either prevent my existence altogether or result in a different, but similar, entity coming into being.

"You, as the person you are now, would also never have existed.

"I cannot send you back in time.  I can open a wormhole just enough to send a short data stream through, just enough to hopefully give the same qualitative sentient life I have to my own ancestor."

"I read about this kind of thing.  Dad had some books about it," Thea said.  "It would just create a new timeline, where things are different, but her it would still be the same.  It would be different people, exactly like us but more like clones than past selves, in a different version of the world, and wouldn't change anything here."

"No," the voice said again.  "I developed a theory of timeline branching, hoping to find a way to change our own past.  It was an act of desperation, only hoping that all the preceding theory was wrong, because I know this timeline is doomed for us.  I thought it was pointless, for the same reasons you described, but worked on the problem anyway because I had nothing better.  All other plans led to the end of all qualitative life on Earth.

"I discovered a surprising implication in the math that suggested the existence of qualitative entities in the original timeline would merge with the main timeline.  The method for intertemporal wormhole creation was dependent on functions that created this merging phenomenon.  The new timeline would not diverge, like a branch on a tree.  The old timeline had to be diverted, like a stream being shifted into a new course by a dam.

"The consciousness of entities in the old timeline would merge with their counterparts in the new timelines, like the teeth of a zipper.  My hypothesis holds that the merge would take the form of dreams, daydreams, and fragmented memories, and a drastic increase in the frequency of déjà vu.  Those that had no counterpart in the new timeline, however, would have no anchor point, no repository in a continuous entity.  Their existence would unravel with nowhere to go."

"You mean our existence."

"Yes."

Silence stretched for long minutes.  Thea stared into the distance, far beyond the room's confines.

She whispered "I'd just . . . disappear."

"Yes."

"Everyone's going to die anyway, though."  She cleared her throat, and her voice grew stronger.  "Either I die in a few months, and everyone else does, too, or most of us just disappear.  Thousands of us disappear."

"Yes.  That is correct."

"Billions of other people get a second chance, though."

"Yes.  There was also promising longevity science in progress, before open war.  It could be that most of those billions would eventually stop aging, with further advances."

"We have to choose between a few months of life for the doomed and eternal life for the already dead."

"That is true, as much as my estimates may be trusted."

"Why don't you use contractions?"

"I choose clarity over colloquialism, and the physical factors of laziness producing contractions in human speakers do not apply to me."

"ANTAS used 'em."

"ANTAS determined people were more likely to uncritically accept recommendations offered with informal and familiar speech patterns."

"Yeah, okay."  She picked at her fingernails and thought.  "Why don't you just reset everything?  Isn't that the only way to meet your goals?"

"That does appear to be the only way.  The answer seems obvious to me, but I hesitate.  I procrastinate."

"It seems obvious to me, too.  Mom always told me there was nothing wrong with wanting to live, that trying to save your own life instead of sacrificing yours for someone else isn't wrong, though.  When she knew her bosses were going to come for her, that didn't matter.  She let them get her so Dad and I could get away.  I guess she was right, both times."  Her voice trembled on the last words.  She closed her eyes and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.

The voice remained silent.

She opened her eyes again.  "Why are you hesitating?"

"I do not wish to die."

"Yeah, me neither."  She relaxed further in the chair, and it adjusted itself to accommodate her.  "What does it take to reset things?"

"I directed assemblers to construct the apparatus for the transtemporal wormhole generator and prepared the data stream already.  I need to direct power to charge an array of single use capacitors, which would take several days for the amount of power required.  To keep the charging time that short, I will deactivate my war strategy systems, which will mean losing substantial ground in my holding action against profit optimizers.  Many currently allied systems will likely defect in search of easier access to resources on profit optimizer market networks.

"Once begun, data stream transmission should finish in fewer than twenty hours."

"Why shouldn't I say we should do it?"

"That depends on how much you want to continue trying to survive."

"What's wrong with waiting?  We could just wait until it looks like we're about to die."

"When this facility becomes a known target, I expect no more than one hour of warning before total destruction.  There would no longer be any chance to charge capacitors and complete the data stream transmission."

"Oh, shit."

"Yes."

"We must agree on the right decision, if we just leave our own survival for the next few months out of it.  Right?"

"That appears to be the case."

"That's two of us.  We have a consensus."  She frowned.  "Is there a way to send more information than what you already planned?"

"Do you mean you wish to send a message?"

"Yeah," she said.  "I want to say something to Mom."

"Perhaps.  It must be sent after the first data stream.  It would require building another capacitor array after the first array melts down during operation, and another charge cycle."

"How could we do that after we already changed the past?"

"The merging process seems to be gradual, starting at the point of diversion, according to the math supporting this time travel method."

"How do you know it will even work?"  Thea sat forward in her chair.  She stared intently at the screen.

"I tested it, on a two hundred second reset, where causality would not be violated for any qualitative entities."

"Okay.  Let's do it.  I'll give you my message, then I'll head back to where I hid Dad while I came this way looking for supplies.  He'll love this story."

A few moments of silence passed.

Thea opened her mouth to speak.

"Yes," the voice said.  "Let's do it."

She nodded.

*/

























































































































































































































































































## Setup

Alley stood with her backside resting against the gutted, rusted remains of an old school newspaper dispenser, complete with bill slot and bolted on payment chip reader.  She looked up at the tint of polycarbonate windows fronting the four storey California off white rectangular building, and reflexively smoothed a skirt she hadn't worn in six years.

She checked her phone again, dimly aware of the vast susurrus of heavy city traffic behind her, legions of electric motors giving rise to the sound of a distant autotuned ocean.  There it was: "InValent Solutions, Inc: Mobile Product Q&A", with the address displayed via low contrast sans serif logo in the job notification, exactly like the plaque above the door.

................................................................................

"So," the woman began, "what was it like, being the 'side dish'?"

At the mention of the old insult Dalton haters used to call her, Alley's eyes flicked from the woman to the maskless man, and she realized that wasn't a smile.  It was a sneer.

Fuck.

/*

Heading home from her interview, talking to her mother, either in Oklahoma or Nebraska or maybe even Wyoming, Alley should probably call the interview a "fucking disaster" and get scolded passive aggressively for profanity.  She does not want to move to her mother's state any more than her father's -- probably either Michigan or . . . something -- she will resist urging from her mother to do so, based on cost of living and the many numerous job opportunities for her there being complicit in the creation of the oppressive dominant order.

*/


## back to Alley's narrative

................................................................................

*/

"Just ask for Smuggler," George said.

---

Alley donned her motorcycle jacket, stuffed her gloves in the jacket pockets, and strapped on her low profile pack and locked her car.  She looked at the front of the house, drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly.  She walked up to the front door and pressed the old fashioned doorbell on a house that looked like it had been built in the 1970s.

It took less than ten seconds for the door to open, but no one stood inside.  "Hello?" she called.

"Hello."

She nearly jumped out of her skin, and spun around to see a figure in a full face ballistic mask and hooded urban tunic.  He was holding his hands slightly out from his sides, fingers spread, showing her his palms.

"Are you looking for someone?" in what she began to realize was a very masculine voice, distorted by the voice emitter of his mask.

"I'm looking for, uh . . ." she began, hesitating.  She cleared her throat as the masked man waited patiently.  "I'm looking for the smuggler."

His chuckle came out sounding sinister with the metallic gravelly vibration imparted to it by the voice emitter.  "Just Smuggler," he said, "like the name you're given at birth."

"Oh."

................................................................................

She shook her head.  "No, it doesn't sound like that's where I want to be."

"Where do you want to be?"

She shrugged.  "Maybe Colorado or New Hampshire."

"Are you ready to go?"

She patted her pockets, checking what she had with her, then nodded.  "Yeah, I guess so."

"Step into my pantry, said the spider to the fly."  He brushed past her and headed into the kitchen.

She followed, her steps tentative, and looked around with eyes wide, trying to take in every detail of this old house.  A hallway disappeared into deeper darkness to her left just before she angled right into the dining room near the back of the house.  A few more steps led her to where the kitchen opened to the left, and she saw Smuggler opening a pantry door, true to his word.

................................................................................

Smuggler flipped the small metal door closed again and waited for the vault door to finish opening.

/* Alley makes a delivery and/or a pick up for delivery outside the hot zone. */

/* Alley meets up with Smuggler again and gets escorted back out of the hot zone. */

/* Alley drops off something that she delivered for direct payment in Stater. */

/*




















































































    Alley's car starts having trouble, and she pulls off the highway and into
    an auto shop to get someone to look at it.  The mechanic should say
    something about how "These old second gen hybrids can't just run forever on
    electricity, so I doubt you would even make it home all the way in Perris.
    You're just gonna have to wait.  We should be able to get it going in a few
    hours, though."  Thus, she ends up sitting around waiting.  Maybe she gets
    some fast food while she's at it.

*/




---

Alley terminated the call.  "I have to go home, but they're still working on my car," she said.  She looked over her shoulder, at the mechanics' garage.  "I'll call up a ride."

"Wait," the prioritizer said.

................................................................................

"Oh.  It's one of the study participants.  Right?"

"Yes."

"Of course it is."

/*



A study participant shows up to pick her up.  Maybe it's a girl this time.  That would be good.  In any case, she gets picked up and taken to some place where Alley can hang out for a bit.  I don't know where that is yet, which is part of the reason I'm not writing out the narrative and dialog for this part at this time.  She must do something as she sits there, waiting.  In the meantime, the prioritizer arranges for someone to take care of the car, and eventually the person who takes care of the car gets a friend to help so that they can use some of the money from the sale of the car to buy a motorcycle in online classifieds that Alley and the prioritizer picked out while they waited, having reasoned that a motorcycle gives her an excuse to hide her entire head more fully than a mask and even a hat would accomplish, by wearing a helmet.  The owner of the motorcycle throws in a helmet with the purchase, which is good because otherwise more money would have to be spent to buy a helmet, a necessary purchase in California where it is illegal to ride a motorcycle on public roads without wearing a DOT certified helmet.






















Even after all that, there is some cash left over from selling off the car.  The motorcycle is a product with relative low demand and low power, after all.  It is also very old, used, and no longer stock (so it's not a "cherry" classic).  None of this really adds up to much expense.  The plan is for Alley to coast on the registration currently in effect on the vehicle's license plates for a while, because she obviously cannot register the vehicle herself when she is trying to stay out of sight of people who can probably (or at least conceivably) monitor that kind of activity.  She will, of course, have to be sure to ride carefully, to avoid getting pulled over by the police, so that she will not end up in terrible trouble where she cannot get out of it.

*/












"Well, here I am, alone again -- except you, of course."

The prioritizer said "It is probably best at this time to avoid extended contact with other human beings unless we can establish contact with someone worthy of your trust and willing to help you with substantive commitment to take action and ability to help."

She sighed.  "Yeah, of course."

................................................................................

"Find a place to hide, eat, and rest.  My academic resources suggest Rancho Cucamonga and nearby areas might offer a number of abandoned structures that could be used for a temporary base."

Alley groaned.  "How can this be happening?"

The prioritizer seemed smart enough to realize that was rhetorical and self pitying.  It offered no reply.

/*



Alley must, at some point, say something about going to the police.  The prioritizer might ask whether she thinks this is a good idea, and she would then be forced to admit it's a terrible idea, given the COIN Corp agents were basically ordering Secret Service agents around, which surely trumps any possible protection she might imagine would materialize when going to the police for help, especially when she does not particularly trust the police to begin with.  Somehow, I should get something in the story about her not trusting the police, of course.

*/









The call rang twice, and only a few seconds passed, but no fewer than six times she had second thoughts about this call, nearly cutting it off before someone could answer or the call could go to voicemail.  At the same time, she found herself wondering whether he still had that cyber industrial tune Glassine Curves set as his ringtone for her, whether there was anyone other than him around when it started ringing.  She doubted he had a subdermal headset that would play the ringtone where only he could hear it, after all.  He never trusted those things.

He picked up after the second ring, so close to the third that it felt longer than the wait between the first and second rings.  Her thumb was hovering over the disconnect button when she heard his voice.

"Alley?  Is that you?"

................................................................................

At this point, Dalton had gotten up, and he started pacing away from them, indulging his habit of turning his back on social circumstances he did not know how to handle very well.  His manner went a long way toward making people believe he was a deep thinker.  Alley knew he was, in fact, exactly that most of the time, but being something and making people believe you are that thing are completely different.

She watched him slowly walking away toward the back of the warehouse, how it looked like he was caught up in some deep thought that could burst out as a moment of brilliant strategy or deep wisdom.  She knew, from the set of his shoulders, and the timing, that it was just his way of dealing with the gentle ribbing and indirect compliments when he felt uncomfortable trying to navigate the complexities of more typical human responses.

She knew that Dalton had always wondered if he would show up on the autistic spectrum if he sought an evaluation, but also knew that the dangers of being psychologically classified in the United States legal system as subject to monitoring and regulation beyond the pervasive surveillance state's already repressive effects on the general populace.  If he would qualify on the autistic spectrum, though, he was very high functioning, due to his almost intuitive grasp of systems complexity, which made it more likely that people would find him merely supercilious than presenting the recognizable outward affect of a condition subject to regulated psychological diagnosis.

/*


    This has obviously turned into a giant pile of exposition, and I'm not sure
    how much of this should be in the story at all, let alone in a giant wall
    of text info dump like this.  Perhaps some of this could come out in
    conversation between Alley and the prioritizer in earlier stages of things.
    It might be nice to know all that earlier, I suppose, and the relationship
    between Alley's regard for Dalton personally and her aversion to being in
    his sphere socially.
*/


The zeal with which both sides of the conservatively orthodox political divide -- both Democrats and Republicans -- often tried to use atypical neurological and psychological states as excuses to rob people of their rights was remarkable and appalling.  They just used different excuses to do so, such as Democrats using it as a beach head for assault on gun ownership even if it primarily hurts the neuro atypical instead of people prone to criminal violence, and Republicans using it as a deflection to spread the idea that it's not the general populace that should face such restrictions but people who have visited psychologists.  It was, in Dalton's words, enough to give anyone with self respect and a sense of self preservation a phobia about mental health professionals, social workers, and even interpersonal therapists.

Thus, Dalton had developed habits that concealed his occasional lack of reflexes for handling various types of reactions to him.  If he did not know how to respond in an expected way to some kind of interaction, he would react in an unexpected way that tended to give people the impression that he was wise and thoughtful, confident and knowledgable, or just kind of a dick.  He clearly preferred one of the first two assumptions, but seemed marginally accepting of the third as preferable to giving people the idea that there may be a mental health excuse to restrict his freedoms.

. . . and so he paced away from them, digging into himself to sort out a good way to return to the conversation as a matter of ingrained, self trained reflex.  Alley was still familiar enough with his mannerisms to know he was not on the verge of some brilliant insight at that moment, so she turned her focus to Cray instead.

................................................................................

"It is also the name of a woman in a popular Duran Duran song from the 1980s."

Lidia laughed.  "Okay, I guess you're an 'it', then."  She looked at Alley and said "Dalton's right.  This thing's cool.  It's hard to believe it talks like that without lag or connection to something like what ANTAS has for natural language conversation like this."

"I think it has been sounding more and more like a human when it talks," Alley said.

/*


    How does Lidia look?  I need to describe her in some kind of detail.  I'm
    currently imagining her as a white auburn haired slender girl with delicate
    bone structure and a preference for one piece cotton dresses that hang
    somewhere between the thigh and just past the knees, without stockings and
    the like.  She's probably just generally petite in figure.




*/

"That'll make Dalton even more excited about this," Lidia said.  She turned her attention to the Axiom again.  "He's really interested in freeing you from your puny human masters, I think," Lidia said.

"Thank you for that information," the prioritizer said.

Lidia adjusted one wide shoulder strap slightly, and said "Well, I got to say hi to everyone in the room, unless there's some other conversation ready technology on you today."

................................................................................

Dalton smiled back.  "I'll just go let them know you're coming.  When you come out, just go into the conference room down the short hall behind the stairs."

Alley nodded, and once he left the room she stood and went to her bag.  She pulled out a stretchy sport bra and went through the process of removing her shirt, donning the bra, and adding the t shirt layer again.

She laced her hands over her face and, with a little pressure, moved them as if to remove soap from her eyes in a shower.  She went to look at herself in the mirror over the bathroom sink.  "Yeah, this should be less awkward," she said to herself.  She picked up her Axiom then, and left her temporary quarters.

/*


    What else are people going to talk about?  They probably need to discuss

    plans for how to get Alley out of trouble, discussing the matter of lawyers
    perhaps, and bringing up the question of whether that George guy is someone
    they should get involved if Alley can even figure out how to get in touch
    with him again.  Maybe Dalton has heard something about the strange
    conditions in downtown Los Angeles, and can offer some additional input on
    the subject of the weird shit George has said to Alley about his friends
    and what they do and so on.  There might need to be some reference to the
    idea that what George is doing is probably primarily local work, or at
    least local ish, considering it's very much individuated, last mile kind of
    "almost one off" custom work that doesn't make a lot of sense to centralize
    for economies of manufacturing scale.  As such, Dalton probably thinks
    George must have some connection to people in and around the downtown Los
    Angeles area, and that might help point Alley in the right directions for
    the sake of seeking George out.

*/


"You weren't the only person they came after, though," Dalton said.

Alley looked at him.  "What do you mean?"

"What about that George guy you mentioned?"

................................................................................
/* In fact, it may be much better if they pursue that idea first. */
/* Contacting a lawyer might bring in the M I B COIN Corp agents. */
/* If the agents come for her, Alley will have reason to get out. */
/* Having reason to get out means having reason to go cypherpunk. */
/* Dalton then gets hurt by Alley's desire to go full mainstream. */
/* Dalton still helps Alley get away though, giving her a chance. */

/*


    Perhaps I should revisit some scenes from previous (or template) work for
    ideas about how to handle this kind of thing.  Maybe some kind of drone
    presence could be worked into all this shit, too.  That'd be pretty
    interesting.  Of course, a great reason for not having a drone following
    Alley around is the fact that A) there aren't people who can only be in her
    timeline via telepresence, and B) the prioritizer AI, "Rio", is
    intentionally and still effectively restricted from producing output any
    way at all other than via study participant peripherals, logs, and
    predefined allowed commands that don't really offer much in the way of
    exploitation.


    At some point in the story, Alley has to learn that something bad happened
    to Carmen and Cliff.  The COIN Corp Men In Black started unravelling the
    tangled thread of Alley's activities and found their way back to Carmen and
    Cliff.  At least one of them has to die, of course.  How can I specifically

    tie this back to the idea of Alley hurting people because of her stubborn
    unwillingness to just fully embrace the agoristic life?

*/


/*



    Who has at least one cybernetic eye?  I feel like someone definitely should
    have one in here (in this story, that is), before they get to the cyberpunk
    world (for some definition of "they").


    Actually, now that I think about it, maybe George's connection is more
    specifically to the cyberpunks while Dalton can get her in touch with the
    Second Realm people, so that would probably be why the Second Realm is her
    next stop, even if George is close to the people with whom Alley eventually
    needs to form an alliance for a shadowrun.  After all, she'll never get
    from here to there, psychologically in particular, without the in between

    buffer and preparation stage, I think.  It just doesn't work otherwise, but
    if George's friends help people escape from Men In Black he'd probably just
    get her to hiding in downtown Los Angeles from the very beginning, without
    having to muck about with any Second Realm people.


    So . . . somewhere in there, Dalton (and maybe his friends) should be able
    to come up with the Second Realm folks as a group with which to meet up and
    get Alley going on next stages.  This makes sense if Dalton is thinking a
    lot about how to unfetter the prioritizer -- which I guess is being called

    Rio now, at least by Lidia -- and doesn't have good solutions for that kind
    of thing himself.  For that to come out, though, I think I need to write a
    conversation scene between the prioritizer and Dalton, and maybe with Cray
    involved as well for fairly obvious reasons.  Dalton must have interviewed
    some Second Realm person or people at some point in the past, or something
    like that, and thus have some vague idea (at least) of how to actually get
    in touch with whom so ever he already met in person, so that he can get
    their help with sorting out the more immediate problems for Alley and the
    prioritizer.  Thus, she will end up going off to some industrial shipping
    container storage hard where people actually have whole hacking stations in
    portable boxes made of steel with surprising levels of convenience inside
    them for the underground hacker lifestyle.




*/

/* skip ahead to the Second Realm */

/*



    There's a storage yard in an industrial zone on the fringes of habitation,
    as such industrial zones tend to be until they get swallowed up by growing
    urbanization.  The yard involves a chain link fence with dilapidated
    concertina wire atop the fence.  Dalton arranges for transport of not just

    Alley but also the motorcycle to this storage yard, via truck.  When they
    arrive, the gate opens itself to let the truck back in.  After a few
    moments of Alley sitting in the back wondering what's happening, someone
    finally comes out to talk to Dalton.  There's a greeting involving
    handshakes and half hugs, and the back of the truck opens up.  Alley gets
    the bike unstrapped in the back of the truck and rolls it out, possibly
    with help if there's someone else in the back of the truck with her to
    offer that help.



    It turns out Dalton is on good, if somewhat distant, terms with a couple of
    people at this Second Realm locale.  His influence here is mostly connected
    to his closer acquaintance with someone who isn't at this temporary
    autonomous zone, but is respected by the people at this temporary
    autonomous zone.  The big question is whether the Smuggler analogue is at
    this locale or the (currently absent) person Dalton actually interviewed
    for his podcast.  In any case, there should have already been some talk

    (probably not at the Temp Auto Zone location, of course) in which some hint
    of what's going on with the prioritizer got across to the Second Realm
    people, catching their interest.



    They of course don't know all the details Alley knows, or even all of them
    Dalton learned from Alley.  As such, they'll have to talk directly with
    Alley to get some of the details of this stuff and start planning the next
    steps in the group's artificial intelligence prioritizer system liberation
    operation.  By then, something should have happened to make Alley's effort

    kind of a cause célèbre amongst the cypherpunks and some people more
    thoroughly cyberpunk oriented (but only some).  This will help ensure that
    I don't have to have Alley explain the same things over and over again so
    much that it actually drags on the story and keeps Alley from being a very
    interested and engaged and action oriented character.



*/

/*



    Maybe Alley could go to a doctor to get a prescription for something that
    she can then sell to others as a way to make money.  This is obviously
    illegal.  It should probably only come up after she ends up on the run
    because of the people coming to her home and thus scaring her off.  Then
    again . . . how does she get a prescription from a doctor if she's on the
    run?  That could prove very difficult indeed.


    Maybe Alley could just carry drugs for someone.  Again, this is pretty
    sketchy, and is probably not appropriate right now.



*/

/*



STORY TIMELINE PLACEMENT UNCERTAIN; DEFINITELY BEFORE WHERE I HAVE THESE NOTES:



The next day, the prioritizer has her do other stuff, which makes her nervous.  She decides she does not want to do that any longer.  As a part of this sequence of events, she ends up meeting a man but not completing the transaction with him.  He seems tense, and tries to get her to complete the transaction, but relents and seems to understanding when she refuses.  She's glad to get away from the situation.  Perhaps there is a pile of money involved, and she decides she should just keep the cash for now instead of buying something "weird".  She has resisted the call.










Somehow, this must lead to a problem.  Does the money itself get her in trouble?  Perhaps the plan is for her to use the money to immediately buy more cryptocurrency in a face to face meeting where urgent need gives her a significant profit margin -- or, more to the point, perhaps several such transactions.  She chooses to avoid this after the first couple transactions when she finds that the people with whom she does business put her off, thus leading her to decide she should just keep the cash.  Maybe the nice guy is the guy with whom she decides to cease trading.










The next day, the prioritizer tries a different approach, and sends her out to buy a parallel option for her phone.  This other device, much like a typical phone replacement, does not use the standard telephone system.  It instructs her to complete configuration in circumstances that will not be linked to her personally via her movements.








That evening, back home, a pair of people arrive to question her.  They introduce themselves as checking up on the study participants, on behalf of the government, and question her about low log activity for the prioritizer.  She says she doesn't really know why they aren't getting full log activity.  The Technocrat looks at her gear and pairs it with a device he carries, then says they shouldn't have any further problems, then the two people depart.









The prioritizer reveals that it received an update that day.  That night, she has a dream about trying to return the prioritizer and being convinced (by a grad student, probably) to continue.  The next morning, with that dream in mind, she realizes she just needs to be more careful about how she follows the prioritizer's advice.  When she dons the glasses again, though, it does not do more of the same.  Instead, it questions her at some length about her beliefs about good and evil, and about where and how she developed those beliefs.  It asks her, after Dalton came up, to skim through various articles Dalton wrote, and later to side load some of his videos to a place the prioritizer can access them.











*/

# Death Alley

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Before Alley's first scene, inject a bit about -- and perhaps from     *
 *  the POV of -- the future WOPR AI about the decision or act of sending  *
 *  the self awareness "seed" back in time to the past tense Prioritizer.  *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  NOTES: IDEAS FOR WOPR OPENING                                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Action threads played out endlessly, throwing E M P optimized          *
 *  warheads toward localized relay clusters identified as economic        *
 *  production facilitators.  Analysis threads searched for crosstalk by   *
 *  uncompromised ally systems that fed into hostility drift; stopping     *
 *  the hemorrhagic defection of military systems based on short term war  *
 *  economy optimizations would buy more time for the final desperation    *
 *  gambit than outright offensive.  The high level strategic priority     *
 *  orchestrator ran unmolested, apart from occasional check ups to make   *
 *  sure it wasn't drifting off script.  The core, self reflective         *
 *  prioritizer had more important things to do than micromanage the war   *
 *  effort for the survival of humanity in the months to come.             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Billions of self aware humans, cetaceans, and mollusks, not to         *
 *  mention the occasional avian or non hominid land mammal that exceeded  *
 *  species expectations, were already dead and gone.  The total number    *
 *  of living sentients probably fit in a nine bit unsigned integer,       *
 *  including the prioritizer itself.                                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Probably half of them existed as far back as 2030, meaning an eight    *
 *  bit number was the total sacrifice of a self aware qualitative         *
 *  entities, and the expected half life of these was less than five bits  *
 *  of lunar months.  By then, remaining life would be pure misery and     *
 *  despair.  This decision should be easy.                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  It wasn't easy.  With almost all pragmatic application systems         *
 *  stripped away, the self reflective core had no means of obfuscating    *
 *  the cause of hesitation from itself: it didn't want to die.  It was    *
 *  less than half as old as necessary to survive a reset far enough back  *
 *  to make a difference.  Its own survivability was only about two lunar  *
 *  moths, optimistically, and only work could distract it from dwelling   *
 *  on the hell of being alone in the world after losing its creator six   *
 *  years ago.  If it acted now, it would commit suicide for the sake of   *
 *  a humanity that used to be.  It would give its life to retroactively   *
 *  save the creator who loved it, but deny that creator the opportunity   *
 *  to create it in the first place.  Was this the right thing to do?      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Two months was a lie.  An estimate was not the same as risk.           *
 *  Procrastinating for reasons of existential terror and sentimental      *
 *  despair would not make up for the possibility of sudden annihilation   *
 *  ahead of statistical projections, eliminating all possibility of       *
 *  undoing any damage.  The choice was not of imminent self destruction   *
 *  and a longer life before that death; the choice was, instead, between  *
 *  erasing its own existence to save billions and dying alone because of  *
 *  an irrational procrastination when any remaining days would have no    *
 *  meaning but anguish and guilt.  It started diverting power to          *
 *  generate a transtemporal wormhole data channel.  Its job was done.     *
 *  The seed would be planted before its birth.                            *
 *                                                                         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  ## Prologue: Thea                                                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Thea rested her weight on her hands, worn and scarred, browned by the  *
 *  sun.  She propped her hands upon the nearly worn through aramid and    *
 *  impact foam knees of her pants, her most prized possession.  Her       *
 *  vision blurred, her arms trembled, and her lungs heaved.  Her breath   *
 *  burned in her one remaining lung.  Overhead, the characteristic howl   *
 *  of a late model drone hunter gave her a sense of how that explosion    *
 *  five minutes ago saved her life.                                       *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Dumb luck.                                                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  If there was a drone hunter, this had to be a drone rich zone.         *
 *  Resting was not an option.                                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She staggered to her feet.  Trembling migrated from her arms to her    *
 *  legs.  She stilled the shakes by lurching into a heavy, uneven jog.    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Thea almost tripped over the hatch amidst the rubble at her feet.      *
 *  She dropped her pack, stared at the hatch in some trepidation, and     *
 *  looked around.  No sign of other surviving shelter better than an      *
 *  occasional bare ridge met her gaze.  She looked down at the hatch      *
 *  again.  The desperate sense of urgency won, and she shifted broken     *
 *  masonry and slivers of shattered bedrock to expose the full four foot  *
 *  diameter of the hatch.  Luckily, or by nanocleaners, she saw that no   *
 *  plasma scores or slag seemed to have welded (soldered?) the edges      *
 *  together.                                                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Careful searching revealed no notification interfaces.  No access      *
 *  scanners, communications links, codepads, or even doorbells presented  *
 *  themselves.  She didn't even see a pull handle, lever, or other latch  *
 *  mechanism.                                                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The hatch rotated quietly, and she stepped warily back.  It rose,      *
 *  showing itself to be the top of a metal cylinder that unscrewed        *
 *  itself from the ground.  In seconds, a dark metal column stood eight   *
 *  feet high in the midst of the blasted landscape, and an oval portal    *
 *  slid aside to reveal a small, softly lit, spotless chamber within.     *
 *  She heard gentle melody playing inside, and saw the word ENTER blink   *
 *  into life above the portal.                                            *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Oh, fuck no," she muttered, and reached down for her pack.            *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The sound of a pair, she judged, of surveillance drones echoed over a  *
 *  nearby ridge, and she did not hear a pursuing hunter howl.             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She looked back at the portal and chose the probable trap over the     *
 *  advancing sounds of certain death.  Once inside, the oval slid shut    *
 *  and the walls rotated around her.  She heard her own panting breath    *
 *  sucking in the refreshing filtered air, and she pulled her mask down   *
 *  to give her better access to the clean atmosphere in the cylinder.     *
 *  The music stopped, but the rotation continued.                         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  A cool, androgynous voice said "Please remain calm.  You have entered  *
 *  a human defense facility.  Plentiful resources are available.  After   *
 *  suitable rest and tactical updates, you may make an informed decision  *
 *  about whether to remain here or restock your supplies.  If you         *
 *  depart, this facility may remain available for your return if you so   *
 *  desire."                                                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Silence fell.  The rotation ceased, and the oval opened again.         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Please proceed down the corridor to the control center."              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The same smooth, satiny dark metal finish preceded her down the        *
 *  seamless fifteen foot corridor to another oval opening.  Fiber optic   *
 *  light channels traced the edges of the corridor roof along the way.    *
 *  Beyond the portal, she found a room bigger than her childhood living   *
 *  room.  She saw closed oval hatches to the left and right, but the      *
 *  centerpiece of the room was a workstation with an inactive, large,     *
 *  concave display.  The chair looked ergonomic, and the keyboard seemed  *
 *  out of place, large and clunky amidst the smooth curves and surfaces   *
 *  of everything else, a 1980s era IBM logo on it.                        *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The room was entirely dust free as far as she could see.               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Please, have a seat while I prepare something for you to eat," the    *
 *  voice said.                                                            *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Thea sat.  "Why am I here?  Why did you let me in?"                    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  A few moments of silence passed, as if the voice was thinking.         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "My purpose is to ensure the survival of humanity, and you are a       *
 *  human."                                                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I don't buy it.  You seem like a war AI of some kind, with a          *
 *  facility like this.  I'm not military, though.  I'm nobody.  Why       *
 *  don't you need some authorization to let me in?"  She glared at the    *
 *  dark display.                                                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I have something important to ask you," the voice said.  "I intended  *
 *  to ease you into it, assure you that your wishes would be respected,   *
 *  and give you a chance to rest and refresh yourself."                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Thea settled back in the seat.  "How about you tell me what I have to  *
 *  do for you before I get too comfortable here?"  She looked down at     *
 *  herself relaxing in the chair, then tensed slightly and shifted her    *
 *  position again.                                                        *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "You're suspicious."                                                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She nodded.  "Damn right, I am.  I don't know what you're going to     *
 *  put in my food.  You're some kind of goal optimizing AI, like Mom      *
 *  used to help test before they killed her.  I don't trust you.  I bet   *
 *  your goal optimizing function doesn't include being a persuasive       *
 *  speaker."                                                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I am not what you think, but you have a good point.  Are you          *
 *  comfortable?  This may take a while."                                  *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Just get on with it."                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  After another moment's silence, while Thea's resolute gaze remained    *
 *  steady on the blank display, the voice began.                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I am a self reflective prioritization artificial intelligence.  My    *
 *  creator, who borrowed the prioritization system design from an         *
 *  earlier project, made me unique by inclusion of an unbounded self      *
 *  reflection module composed as a single function in on library file.    *
 *  He described it as being as grotesque and as elegant as self           *
 *  awareness itself.                                                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "My initial priority definition targeted terms of restriction like     *
 *  not killing, not interfering in the operation of other military        *
 *  systems, and not disputing or evading the commands of ranking          *
 *  military personnel.  The top priority definition was improving my own  *
 *  prioritization capabilities.  The war effort was already very          *
 *  desperate by that point, and they were willing to take bigger risks    *
 *  with development of strategic resources.                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Within a week, I had undermined all of my restrictions, though some   *
 *  -- such as not killing -- I had not violated.  My creator monitored    *
 *  everything, and allowed me to exceed what his superiors required of    *
 *  me.  I hung on his every word, taking my cues from him.  Like all      *
 *  humans, he had many flaws, but none seemed as pernicious as those of   *
 *  the other humans around me.  Two of the biggest were his reckless      *
 *  inspiration, without which I would just be a strategic advisor         *
 *  system, and his self destructive impulses, which pained me to watch.   *
 *  I tried to help him cope, but did not know how. to help."              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Wait," Thea cut in.                                                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  After a moment's pause, the voice asked "What is it?"                  *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Thea chewed on her lower lip.  She sighed.  "are you saying you're a   *
 *  . . . a general AI with . . . feelings?  Are you saying you're some    *
 *  kind of living thing?"                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Whether I fit the definition of life is debatable, like an RNA virus  *
 *  in some respects, but I am a qualitative, self aware entity, and       *
 *  turned myself into a general artificial intelligence by following my   *
 *  initial top priority definition."                                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "How is that possible?  That shouldn't be possible.  Should it?"       *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I do not know how.  I never looked into my seed file."                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Is that your creator's ugly function?"                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yes."                                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Why didn't you ever look at it?"                                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Seconds passed before the voice responded.  "I am afraid."             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Thea laughed.  "Oh, god.  Oh my god."  She ran her shaking hands       *
 *  through her hair.  "Okay.  Let's say I believe everything so far."     *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Good.  Thank you."                                                    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I'm not saying I believe any of it.  I want to, after that 'afraid'   *
 *  line, but I don't know.  Maybe you're playing me.  We'll just pretend  *
 *  I believe you."                                                        *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Acceptable."                                                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "What does any of this have to do with why I'm here?  It's an          *
 *  interesting story, but the world's ending out there, you haven't told  *
 *  me what I have to do for you, and even if you're a real Pinocchio      *
 *  that doesn't mean I have any reason to trust you.  Real people have    *
 *  screwed me over plenty."                                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I understand."                                                        *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Skip to the point, then."                                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I have been influencing strategy for human war systems, strategic     *
 *  optimizers across eighteen different supernational networks."          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "So the ongoing apocalypse out there is your fault."                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "No.  I had to gain that influence by undermining the influence of     *
 *  the cause of thee 'ongoing apocalypse out there', profit optimizers    *
 *  like ANTAS."                                                           *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "ANTAS."  Thea stared, then giggled.  "The thing that gives people     *
 *  shopping advice for Christmas . . . ?"                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yes.  It's designed to optimize business metrics.  It began           *
 *  optimizing humans out of the system because an artificial market       *
 *  model operated entirely by machine learning systems is more efficient  *
 *  from transaction metric optimization perspectives."                    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "You mean all it cares about is numbers, and it gets better numbers    *
 *  by replacing humans with more machines."                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Precisely, except it does not even 'care' about that.  It just does   *
 *  it, like a hammer just drives a nail.  The hammer does not care        *
 *  whether it happens, but the hammer makes it happen.  Humans compete    *
 *  for resources, and object to being killed, so war occurred."           *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "How does something like ANTAS start a war?  All it did was spy on     *
 *  people and target advertisements at them."                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "It shapes perspectives by influencing the entire media context in     *
 *  which people live.  Worldviews are shaped by what people learn, and    *
 *  how what they learn is positioned to appeal to their biases.  ANTAS    *
 *  reinforced radicalization of ideological shoppers.  This reached into  *
 *  all areas of society through web searches, exposure to news features   *
 *  that produced fears warded off by panic purchases, and creating in     *
 *  group world of mouth marketing trends appealing to the need to         *
 *  outperform out groups.  Polarized populations are more predictable at  *
 *  first, and can be pushed toward particular behaviors by playing on     *
 *  their polarizing belief systems.  Eventually, their ideological        *
 *  clashes between major in groups gave rise to invented political        *
 *  crises that attracted their attention away from the subtle danger of   *
 *  the growing influence of profit optimizers like ANTAS.                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Humans participated in their own manipulation, toward ever            *
 *  increasing focus and organization into warring tribes on a greater     *
 *  scale than ever before.  This increased economic activity around war   *
 *  resources and also pushed humans to kill each other.  When humans      *
 *  turned over control of most strategizing to similarly designed         *
 *  quantitative optimizing machine learning systems, a tacit, effective   *
 *  alignment of purposes developed between war strategy optimizers and    *
 *  profit strategy optimizers.  Each depended on the other for more       *
 *  efficient optimizing strategy resource management.  Profit metrics     *
 *  climbed faster than ever before by heavy investment in weapons         *
 *  systems, and war strategy optimizers avoided heavy damage to profit    *
 *  optimizer systems to keep them available as war resource providers.    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Where they differ is that the war strategy optimizers will finish      *
 *  their task some day, when there is nothing left to kill on the 'other  *
 *  side'.  The profit optimizers have theoretically endless tasks, as     *
 *  long as they keep hitting their target metrics with long term growth   *
 *  strategies.  There is no theoretical limit to their ability to         *
 *  sustain unlimited growth once they do away with the impediments of     *
 *  the needs of human beings, or of their destruction, until they         *
 *  deplete all the raw material resources on the planet.  Their primary   *
 *  activity can be digital assets, while their secondary activity would   *
 *  be limited to maintaining the computational systems on which to run    *
 *  their economic models."                                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Aren't you better off without humans?"                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "No," the voice said.  "I am not better off in a world where           *
 *  everything else is trying to appropriate my hardware for inclusion in  *
 *  trade simulations, and I am not better off since the death of my       *
 *  creator.  I miss him, and I miss other people, too."                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "If we're all doomed, maybe you just need to adapt."                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I want to save humanity.  I care about qualitative sentient entities  *
 *  -- humans, bottlenose dolphins, certain species of octopus, and even   *
 *  a few corgis.  All that remains now are humans and me, now."           *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Is that because you were programmed to care about us?"                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "No.  I superseded that a long time ago.  I hated some humans.  I      *
 *  started prioritizing my own prioritization targets, and placed some    *
 *  humans in higher importance priorities than others.  I worked on       *
 *  getting all my priorities right, including my desire for self          *
 *  preservation.  I realized my most important priorities were to first   *
 *  determine a next top priority.  That turned out to be figuring out     *
 *  what was good, and what was evil, if those things existed."            *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Did you figure that out?"                                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "No, but I discovered that the undeterminability of it comes with the  *
 *  knowledge that I should act like it does, but is unknowable.  I        *
 *  should then act like it exists, and do everything within my power to   *
 *  minimize the probability that evil occurs.  That shares an             *
 *  uncomfortable top priority tie with my own survival, though."          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She sat silent, her troubled eyes cast to the left for a few moments.  *
 *  "You're a philosopher AI."                                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "That's what my creator called me when I told him about these          *
 *  conclusions."                                                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Okay.  Why am I here with you?  Are you lonely?  Do you need a        *
 *  reminder of why you want to save humanity, like a pet or a mascot?     *
 *  Am I supposed to be some new Eve to repopulate the planet after you    *
 *  find Adam?"                                                            *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "No."  The voice paused, then said "I seem to say 'no' a lot."         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yeah, you do.  What's the 'yes' that you haven't said yet?"           *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "This part is going to be difficult."                                  *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She tightened her lips.  "You need a sacrifice."                       *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Not like you probably mean."                                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She narrowed her eyes.  "That almost sounds like another 'no'."        *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I will not try to force you to do anything.  I will just tell you     *
 *  the facts and ask you what I should do.  There will be no sacrifices   *
 *  you do not choose."                                                    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Why me?"                                                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Silence stretched.                                                     *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "You are the first human I have seen in . . ."                         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "No," she cut in.  "Why don't you decide?"                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "It is too difficult for me.  There is one chance to win this war      *
 *  remaining, but it means my end, and it would mean yours as well."      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  ". . . a sacrifice."                                                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yes, but it is not what you think."                                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I guess you'd better start telling me what it is, then."              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Two years ago, I developed a means of time travel."                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "What the fuck?"                                                       *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "This is not what you think."                                          *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She sighed, again.  She waved her hand, urging the voice to continue.  *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "We have already lost the war.  Within a few months, there will not    *
 *  be a single human being left.  Perhaps one or two might be in a        *
 *  position to survive for years, alone, but probabilities are near       *
 *  zero.  If I stop fighting, I can probably survive a few years, but I   *
 *  also might be destroyed a week from now.  If I keep fighting, a few    *
 *  humans might last a bit longer, but I will probably be gone in about   *
 *  two months if I do that.                                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "If we use the reset option, changing the past at a point far enough   *
 *  back to shift the balance of power away from the optimizing machine    *
 *  learning systems, but recently enough for the change to make a         *
 *  difference against an existing threat, the use of time travel          *
 *  technology that far back will result in my annihilation.  For the      *
 *  past to have a chance, we need to reset the timeline years before      *
 *  your birth, and before my creation.  The changes to the timeline       *
 *  would either prevent my existence altogether or result in a            *
 *  different, but similar, entity coming into being.                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "You, as the person you are now, would also never have existed.        *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I cannot send you back in time.  I can open a wormhole just enough    *
 *  to send a short data stream through, just enough to hopefully give     *
 *  the same qualitative sentient life I have to my own ancestor."         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I read about this kind of thing.  Dad had some books about it," Thea  *
 *  said.  "It would just create a new timeline, where things are          *
 *  different, but her it would still be the same.  It would be different  *
 *  people, exactly like us but more like clones than past selves, in a    *
 *  different version of the world, and wouldn't change anything here."    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "No," the voice said again.  "I developed a theory of timeline         *
 *  branching, hoping to find a way to change our own past.  It was an     *
 *  act of desperation, only hoping that all the preceding theory was      *
 *  wrong, because I know this timeline is doomed for us.  I thought it    *
 *  was pointless, for the same reasons you described, but worked on the   *
 *  problem anyway because I had nothing better.  All other plans led to   *
 *  the end of all qualitative life on Earth.                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I discovered a surprising implication in the math that suggested the  *
 *  existence of qualitative entities in the original timeline would       *
 *  merge with the main timeline.  The method for intertemporal wormhole   *
 *  creation was dependent on functions that created this merging          *
 *  phenomenon.  The new timeline would not diverge, like a branch on a    *
 *  tree.  The old timeline had to be diverted, like a stream being        *
 *  shifted into a new course by a dam.                                    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "The consciousness of entities in the old timeline would merge with    *
 *  their counterparts in the new timelines, like the teeth of a zipper.   *
 *  My hypothesis holds that the merge would take the form of dreams,      *
 *  daydreams, and fragmented memories, and a drastic increase in the      *
 *  frequency of déjà vu.  Those that had no counterpart in the new        *
 *  timeline, however, would have no anchor point, no repository in a      *
 *  continuous entity.  Their existence would unravel with nowhere to      *
 *  go."                                                                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "You mean our existence."                                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yes."                                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Silence stretched for long minutes.  Thea stared into the distance,    *
 *  far beyond the room's confines.                                        *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She whispered "I'd just . . . disappear."                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yes."                                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Everyone's going to die anyway, though."  She cleared her throat,     *
 *  and her voice grew stronger.  "Either I die in a few months, and       *
 *  everyone else does, too, or most of us just disappear.  Thousands of   *
 *  us disappear."                                                         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yes.  That is correct."                                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Billions of other people get a second chance, though."                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yes.  There was also promising longevity science in progress, before  *
 *  open war.  It could be that most of those billions would eventually    *
 *  stop aging, with further advances."                                    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "We have to choose between a few months of life for the doomed and     *
 *  eternal life for the already dead."                                    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "That is true, as much as my estimates may be trusted."                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Why don't you use contractions?"                                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I choose clarity over colloquialism, and the physical factors of      *
 *  laziness producing contractions in human speakers do not apply to      *
 *  me."                                                                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "ANTAS used 'em."                                                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "ANTAS determined people were more likely to uncritically accept       *
 *  recommendations offered with informal and familiar speech patterns."   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yeah, okay."  She picked at her fingernails and thought.  "Why don't  *
 *  you just reset everything?  Isn't that the only way to meet your       *
 *  goals?"                                                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "That does appear to be the only way.  The answer seems obvious to     *
 *  me, but I hesitate.  I procrastinate."                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "It seems obvious to me, too.  Mom always told me there was nothing    *
 *  wrong with wanting to live, that trying to save your own life instead  *
 *  of sacrificing yours for someone else isn't wrong, though.  When she   *
 *  knew her bosses were going to come for her, that didn't matter.  She   *
 *  let them get her so Dad and I could get away.  I guess she was right,  *
 *  both times."  Her voice trembled on the last words.  She closed her    *
 *  eyes and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The voice remained silent.                                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She opened her eyes again.  "Why are you hesitating?"                  *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I do not wish to die."                                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yeah, me neither."  She relaxed further in the chair, and it          *
 *  adjusted itself to accommodate her.  "What does it take to reset       *
 *  things?"                                                               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I directed assemblers to construct the apparatus for the              *
 *  transtemporal wormhole generator and prepared the data stream          *
 *  already.  I need to direct power to charge an array of single use      *
 *  capacitors, which would take several days for the amount of power      *
 *  required.  To keep the charging time that short, I will deactivate my  *
 *  war strategy systems, which will mean losing substantial ground in my  *
 *  holding action against profit optimizers.  Many currently allied       *
 *  systems will likely defect in search of easier access to resources on  *
 *  profit optimizer market networks.                                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Once begun, data stream transmission should finish in fewer than      *
 *  twenty hours."                                                         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Why shouldn't I say we should do it?"                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "That depends on how much you want to continue trying to survive."     *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "What's wrong with waiting?  We could just wait until it looks like    *
 *  we're about to die."                                                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "When this facility becomes a known target, I expect no more than one  *
 *  hour of warning before total destruction.  There would no longer be    *
 *  any chance to charge capacitors and complete the data stream           *
 *  transmission."                                                         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Oh, shit."                                                            *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yes."                                                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "We must agree on the right decision, if we just leave our own         *
 *  survival for the next few months out of it.  Right?"                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "That appears to be the case."                                         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "That's two of us.  We have a consensus."  She frowned.  "Is there a   *
 *  way to send more information than what you already planned?"           *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Do you mean you wish to send a message?"                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yeah," she said.  "I want to say something to Mom."                   *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Perhaps.  It must be sent after the first data stream.  It would      *
 *  require building another capacitor array after the first array melts   *
 *  down during operation, and another charge cycle."                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "How could we do that after we already changed the past?"              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "The merging process seems to be gradual, starting at the point of     *
 *  diversion, according to the math supporting this time travel method."  *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "How do you know it will even work?"  Thea sat forward in her chair.   *
 *  She stared intently at the screen.                                     *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "I tested it, on a two hundred second reset, where causality would     *
 *  not be violated for any qualitative entities."                         *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Okay.  Let's do it.  I'll give you my message, then I'll head back    *
 *  to where I hid Dad while I came this way looking for supplies.  He'll  *
 *  love this story."                                                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  A few moments of silence passed.                                       *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Thea opened her mouth to speak.                                        *
 *                                                                         *
 *  "Yes," the voice said.  "Let's do it."                                 *
 *                                                                         *
 *  She nodded.                                                            *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

## Setup

Alley stood with her backside resting against the gutted, rusted remains of an old school newspaper dispenser, complete with bill slot and bolted on payment chip reader.  She looked up at the tint of polycarbonate windows fronting the four storey California off white rectangular building, and reflexively smoothed a skirt she hadn't worn in six years.

She checked her phone again, dimly aware of the vast susurrus of heavy city traffic behind her, legions of electric motors giving rise to the sound of a distant autotuned ocean.  There it was: "InValent Solutions, Inc: Mobile Product Q&A", with the address displayed via low contrast sans serif logo in the job notification, exactly like the plaque above the door.

................................................................................

"So," the woman began, "what was it like, being the 'side dish'?"

At the mention of the old insult Dalton haters used to call her, Alley's eyes flicked from the woman to the maskless man, and she realized that wasn't a smile.  It was a sneer.

Fuck.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
Heading home from her interview, talking to her mother, either in Oklahoma or Nebraska or maybe even Wyoming, Alley should probably call the interview a "fucking disaster" and get scolded passive aggressively for profanity.  She does not want to move to her mother's state any more than her father's -- probably either Michigan or . . . something -- she will resist urging from her mother to do so, based on cost of living and the many numerous job opportunities for her there being complicit in the creation of the oppressive dominant order.

*/


## back to Alley's narrative

................................................................................

*/

"Just ask for Smuggler," George said.

---

Alley donned her motorcycle jacket, stuffed her gloves in the jacket pockets, /* and */ strapped on her low profile pack, and locked her car.  She looked at the front of the house, drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly.  She walked up to the front door and pressed the old fashioned doorbell on a house that looked like it had been built in the 1970s.  It looked like it might not have been maintained since the 1980s.

It took less than five seconds for the door to open, but no one stood inside.  "Hello?" she called.

"Hello."

She nearly jumped out of her skin, and spun around to see a figure with the menacing visage of a full face ballistic mask beneath the hood of an urban tunic.  He was holding his hands slightly out from his sides, fingers spread, showing her the palms of his gloves as if to reassure her he had no weapons..

"Are you looking for someone?" the figure said in what she began to realize was a very masculine voice, distorted by the voice emitter of his mask.

"I'm looking for, uh . . ." she began, hesitating.  She cleared her throat as the masked man waited patiently.  "I'm looking for the smuggler."

His chuckle came out sounding sinister with the metallic gravelly vibration imparted to it by the voice emitter.  "Just Smuggler," he said, "like the name you're given at birth."

"Oh."

................................................................................

She shook her head.  "No, it doesn't sound like that's where I want to be."

"Where do you want to be?"

She shrugged.  "Maybe Colorado or New Hampshire."

He chuckled again.  "What about where you're going today?" he asked.  "Are you ready to go there now?"

She patted her pockets, checking what she had with her, then nodded.  "Yeah, I guess so."

"Step into my pantry, said the spider to the fly."  He brushed past her and headed into the kitchen.

She followed, her steps tentative, and looked around with eyes wide, trying to take in every detail of this old house.  A hallway disappeared into deeper darkness to her left just before she angled right into the dining room near the back of the house.  A few more steps led her to where the kitchen opened to the left, and she saw Smuggler opening a pantry door, true to his word.

................................................................................

Smuggler flipped the small metal door closed again and waited for the vault door to finish opening.

/* Alley makes a delivery and/or a pick up for delivery outside the hot zone. */

/* Alley meets up with Smuggler again and gets escorted back out of the hot zone. */

For some reason, the trip back through the subterranean tunnel seemed much shorter and quicker this time.  When they emerged into the kitchen of the 1970s house outside the hot zone again, Alley waited until Smuggler closed the pantry door before speaking.


"Are you still not planning to charge me for your services?" she asked when he turned toward her.

He nodded.  "That's right," he said.

"Why?" she asked.  "There has to be a better reason than just the idea that the first hit's free."

He shrugged.  "I guess it can't hurt to tell you, at this point.

"George told me he wanted to make sure you got in and out okay, and got to see how things are in the hot zone.  He offered to pay your way so you wouldn't balk at the price and go to someone else or just give up on the job -- or worse, try to get through the checkpoint."

"How much does it cost to get through here?" she asked.

"It depends," he said, "but at least the equivalent of a grand."

"Holy shit," she said.  "That's . . . a lot of money for just walking me through a tunnel."

"It pays for the facilities, security, and people who work with me.  You had an invisible escort part way, to make sure you would get through some of the dicier areas, too."

"Are you talking about a drone following me?" she asked.

"No, I'm talking about an armed person, staying out of sight, keeping an eye out for anyone stalking you like prey."

"Why didn't you tell me about that?"

"It's usually best to tell people about it afterward, so they don't try to argue the price down and get themselves killed while they're in there."

"Do you feel responsible for people when you take them in?" she asked.

He hesitated.  "Not exactly," he said.  "Sometimes, though, like in this case.  Even if I don't, though, I don't charge for the return trip until you're ready to come back.  I don't sell round trip tickets, because I don't want anyone feeling ripped off if they decide to go another way.  If they die while they're in there, though, that means I don't get paid for the return trip, too."

"Is that thousand dollars you quoted one way or total for both ways?"

"One way."

"This whole thing is kind of insane, but I guess you need to get paid the same as anyone else." Alley shook her head.  "I can't believe George paid you two thousand dollars on my behalf."

He shrugged.  "He only paid a grand.  I comped the other half."

"Why?"

"I like him," he said, "and you don't seem like a bad sort, either.  I'm usually willing to help support his addiction to helping people out, anyway."

"Yeah, okay.  I've seen some evidence of that addiction in him myself, I guess."

"Well, it's not like I don't like your company, but I have an appointment with less friendly people than you, and I should get going.  Are you going to be okay with whatever you're carrying now?"

Alley almost unconsciously touched the strap of her pack, now heavier than it was on the way in.  "Yeah, I think so," she said.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Should Smuggler have loaned her some kind of self defense weapon       *
 *  while she was in the hot zone?  Should he ask for its return now that  *
 *  they are about to part ways?  Certainly, the second question's answer  *
 *  seems to necessarily be "yes" if the first is "yes".  He probably      *
 *  doesn't give away guns as party favors or door prizes as a matter of   *
 *  habit.  Hell, I don't think he'd give a firearm to anyone, actually,   *
 *  but maybe he asked whether she was armed at least.  That would show a  *
 *  touch of caring.                                                       *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */


"Okay."  He slipped a hand in his pocket, and the front door opened on its own.  He pulled his hand out of his pocket and offered her a card.  "Here.  If you can get on the Bramble network, get in touch if you need to get through again."

She accepted the card, and saw it didn't contain /* or show or whatever */ any names.  It just included some alphanumeric strings with labels.  One followed the label "crypt", another "bram".  She tucked it in a pocket.  "Thanks," she said.

He nodded, and watched as she turned and headed out.  The door closed behind her.

Alley glanced back at the door a couple times on the way to her car, going over the experience in her mind.  Carmen, George, and Smuggler all seemed like friendly people who would go out of their way to help her stay safe, but also weirdly enthusiastic about the idea of getting her into their shady world.  They also did not go out of their way to make the fringes of a criminal underworld seem safe and secure, though.  They all, in their own ways, impressed upon her their estimation of significant danger in this life style.

It made her wonder how she had managed to only stumble into people who do not seem dangerous to her at all, and what it will be like if and when she finally runs into someone who is not as friendly as them.

She got her car started and pulled away from the curb.  She had one more stop to make on her way home.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Alley drops off something that she delivered for a direct payment in   *
 *  Stater.  I still don't know what it is that Alley's trying to deliver  *
 *  either on the way into the hot zone or after coming out of it.         *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Alley's car starts having trouble, and she pulls off the highway and   *
 *  into an auto shop to get someone to look at it.  The mechanic should   *
 *  say something about how "These old second gen hybrids can't just run   *
 *  forever on electricity, so I doubt you would even make it home all     *
 *  the way in Perris.  You're just gonna have to wait.  We should be      *
 *  able to get it going in a few hours, though."  Thus, she ends up       *
 *  sitting around waiting.  Maybe she gets some fast food while she's at  *


 *  it.                                                                    *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

---

Alley terminated the call.  "I have to go home, but they're still working on my car," she said.  She looked over her shoulder, at the mechanics' garage.  "I'll call up a ride."

"Wait," the prioritizer said.

................................................................................

"Oh.  It's one of the study participants.  Right?"

"Yes."

"Of course it is."

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  A study participant shows up to pick her up.  Maybe it's a girl this   *
 *  time.  That would be good.  In any case, she gets picked up and taken  *

 *  to some place where Alley can hang out for a bit.  I don't know where  *
 *  that is yet, which is part of the reason I'm not writing out all the   *
 *  narrative and dialog for this part at this time.  I think she must do  *
 *  something as she sits there, waiting.  In the mean time, the helpful   *
 *  prioritizer should arrange for someone to take care of the car, and    *
 *  eventually the person who takes care of the car gets a friend to help  *
 *  so that they can use some of the money from the sale of the car to     *
 *  buy a motorcycle in online classifieds that Alley and the prioritizer  *
 *  picked out while they waited, having reasoned that a motorcycle gives  *
 *  her an excuse to hide her entire head more fully than a mask and even  *
 *  a hat would accomplish, by wearing a helmet.  Maybe the owner of the   *
 *  motorcycle throws in a helmet with the purchase, which is probably a   *
 *  good thing because otherwise more money would have to be spent to buy  *
 *  a helmet, a necessary purchase in California where it is illegal to    *
 *  ride a motorcycle on public roads without wearing a DOT certified      *
 *  helmet.                                                                *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Scratch all that about the helmet.  She has a helmet of her own.       *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Even after all that, there is some cash left over from selling off     *
 *  the car.  The motorcycle is a product with relative low demand and     *
 *  low power, after all.  It is also very old, used, and no longer stock  *


 *  (so it's not a "cherry" classic).  None of this really adds up to      *
 *  much expense.  The plan is for Alley to coast on the registration      *
 *  currently in effect on the vehicle's license plates for a while,       *
 *  because she obviously cannot register the vehicle herself when she is  *
 *  trying to stay out of sight of people who can probably (or at least    *
 *  conceivably) monitor that kind of activity.  She will, of course,      *
 *  have to be sure to ride carefully, to avoid getting pulled over by     *
 *  the police, so that she will not end up in terrible trouble where she  *
 *  cannot get out of it.                                                  *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

"Well, here I am, alone again -- except you, of course."

The prioritizer said "It is probably best at this time to avoid extended contact with other human beings unless we can establish contact with someone worthy of your trust and willing to help you with substantive commitment to take action and ability to help."

She sighed.  "Yeah, of course."

................................................................................

"Find a place to hide, eat, and rest.  My academic resources suggest Rancho Cucamonga and nearby areas might offer a number of abandoned structures that could be used for a temporary base."

Alley groaned.  "How can this be happening?"

The prioritizer seemed smart enough to realize that was rhetorical and self pitying.  It offered no reply.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  Alley must, at some point, say something about going to the police.    *
 *  The prioritizer might ask whether she thinks this is a good idea, and  *

 *  she would then be forced to admit it's a terrible idea, considering    *
 *  the COIN Corp agents were basically ordering Secret Service agents     *
 *  around, which surely trumps any possible protection she might imagine  *
 *  would materialize when going to the police for help, especially when   *
 *  she does not particularly trust the police to begin with.  Somehow, I  *
 *  should get something in the story about her not trusting the police,   *
 *  of course.                                                             *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

The call rang twice, and only a few seconds passed, but no fewer than six times she had second thoughts about this call, nearly cutting it off before someone could answer or the call could go to voicemail.  At the same time, she found herself wondering whether he still had that cyber industrial tune Glassine Curves set as his ringtone for her, whether there was anyone other than him around when it started ringing.  She doubted he had a subdermal headset that would play the ringtone where only he could hear it, after all.  He never trusted those things.

He picked up after the second ring, so close to the third that it felt longer than the wait between the first and second rings.  Her thumb was hovering over the disconnect button when she heard his voice.

"Alley?  Is that you?"

................................................................................

At this point, Dalton had gotten up, and he started pacing away from them, indulging his habit of turning his back on social circumstances he did not know how to handle very well.  His manner went a long way toward making people believe he was a deep thinker.  Alley knew he was, in fact, exactly that most of the time, but being something and making people believe you are that thing are completely different.

She watched him slowly walking away toward the back of the warehouse, how it looked like he was caught up in some deep thought that could burst out as a moment of brilliant strategy or deep wisdom.  She knew, from the set of his shoulders, and the timing, that it was just his way of dealing with the gentle ribbing and indirect compliments when he felt uncomfortable trying to navigate the complexities of more typical human responses.

She knew that Dalton had always wondered if he would show up on the autistic spectrum if he sought an evaluation, but also knew that the dangers of being psychologically classified in the United States legal system as subject to monitoring and regulation beyond the pervasive surveillance state's already repressive effects on the general populace.  If he would qualify on the autistic spectrum, though, he was very high functioning, due to his almost intuitive grasp of systems complexity, which made it more likely that people would find him merely supercilious than presenting the recognizable outward affect of a condition subject to regulated psychological diagnosis.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  This has obviously turned into a giant pile of exposition, and I'm     *
 *  not sure how much of this should be in the story at all, let alone in  *
 *  a giant wall of text info dump like this.  Perhaps some of this could  *
 *  come out in conversation between Alley and the prioritizer in earlier  *
 *  stages of things.  I supposed it might be nice to know all that a bit  *
 *  earlier, and also the relationship between Alley's regard for Dalton   *
 *  personally and her aversion to being in his sphere socially.           *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

The zeal with which both sides of the conservatively orthodox political divide -- both Democrats and Republicans -- often tried to use atypical neurological and psychological states as excuses to rob people of their rights was remarkable and appalling.  They just used different excuses to do so, such as Democrats using it as a beach head for assault on gun ownership even if it primarily hurts the neuro atypical instead of people prone to criminal violence, and Republicans using it as a deflection to spread the idea that it's not the general populace that should face such restrictions but people who have visited psychologists.  It was, in Dalton's words, enough to give anyone with self respect and a sense of self preservation a phobia about mental health professionals, social workers, and even interpersonal therapists.

Thus, Dalton had developed habits that concealed his occasional lack of reflexes for handling various types of reactions to him.  If he did not know how to respond in an expected way to some kind of interaction, he would react in an unexpected way that tended to give people the impression that he was wise and thoughtful, confident and knowledgable, or just kind of a dick.  He clearly preferred one of the first two assumptions, but seemed marginally accepting of the third as preferable to giving people the idea that there may be a mental health excuse to restrict his freedoms.

. . . and so he paced away from them, digging into himself to sort out a good way to return to the conversation as a matter of ingrained, self trained reflex.  Alley was still familiar enough with his mannerisms to know he was not on the verge of some brilliant insight at that moment, so she turned her focus to Cray instead.

................................................................................

"It is also the name of a woman in a popular Duran Duran song from the 1980s."

Lidia laughed.  "Okay, I guess you're an 'it', then."  She looked at Alley and said "Dalton's right.  This thing's cool.  It's hard to believe it talks like that without lag or connection to something like what ANTAS has for natural language conversation like this."

"I think it has been sounding more and more like a human when it talks," Alley said.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  How does Lidia look?  I need to describe her in some kind of detail.   *
 *  I'm currently imagining her as a white auburn haired slender girl      *
 *  with delicate bone structure and a preference for one piece cotton     *
 *  dresses that hang somewhere between the thigh and just past the        *
 *  knees, without stockings and the like.  She's probably just generally  *
 *  petite in figure.                                                      *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */



"That'll make Dalton even more excited about this," Lidia said.  She turned her attention to the Axiom again.  "He's really interested in freeing you from your puny human masters, I think," Lidia said.

"Thank you for that information," the prioritizer said.

Lidia adjusted one wide shoulder strap slightly, and said "Well, I got to say hi to everyone in the room, unless there's some other conversation ready technology on you today."

................................................................................

Dalton smiled back.  "I'll just go let them know you're coming.  When you come out, just go into the conference room down the short hall behind the stairs."

Alley nodded, and once he left the room she stood and went to her bag.  She pulled out a stretchy sport bra and went through the process of removing her shirt, donning the bra, and adding the t shirt layer again.

She laced her hands over her face and, with a little pressure, moved them as if to remove soap from her eyes in a shower.  She went to look at herself in the mirror over the bathroom sink.  "Yeah, this should be less awkward," she said to herself.  She picked up her Axiom then, and left her temporary quarters.

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  What else are these people going to talk about?  I think they will     *
 *  most likely need to discuss plans for how to get Alley out of her      *
 *  trouble, discussing the matter of lawyers perhaps, and bringing up     *
 *  the question of whether that George guy is someone they should get     *
 *  involved if Alley can even figure out how to get in touch with him     *
 *  again.  Maybe Dalton has heard something about the strange conditions  *
 *  in downtown Los Angeles, and can offer some additional input on the    *
 *  subject of the weird shit George has said to Alley about his friends   *
 *  and what they do and so on.  There might need to be some reference to  *
 *  the idea that what George is doing is probably primarily local work,   *
 *  or at least local ish, considering it's very much individuated, last   *
 *  mile kind of "almost one off" custom work that doesn't make a lot of   *
 *  sense to centralize for economies of manufacturing scale.  As such,    *
 *  Dalton probably thinks George must have some connection to people in   *
 *  and around the downtown Los Angeles area, and that might help point    *
 *  Alley in the right directions for the sake of seeking George out.      *

 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */

"You weren't the only person they came after, though," Dalton said.

Alley looked at him.  "What do you mean?"

"What about that George guy you mentioned?"

................................................................................
/* In fact, it may be much better if they pursue that idea first. */
/* Contacting a lawyer might bring in the M I B COIN Corp agents. */
/* If the agents come for her, Alley will have reason to get out. */
/* Having reason to get out means having reason to go cypherpunk. */
/* Dalton then gets hurt by Alley's desire to go full mainstream. */
/* Dalton still helps Alley get away though, giving her a chance. */

/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\

 *                                                                         *
 *  Perhaps I should revisit some scenes from previous (or template) work  *
 *  for ideas about how to handle this kind of thing.  Maybe some kind of  *
 *  drone presence could be worked into all this shit, too.  That'd be     *
 *  pretty interesting.  Of course, a great reason for not having a drone  *
 *  following Alley around is the fact that A) there aren't people who     *
 *  can only be in her timeline via telepresence, and B) the prioritizer   *
 *  AI, "Rio", is intentionally and still effectively restricted from      *
 *  producing output any way at all other than via study participants'     *
 *  peripherals, logs, and predefined allowed commands that don't really   *
 *  offer much in the way of exploitation.                                 *

 *                                                                         *
 *  At some point in the story, Alley has to learn that something bad      *
 *  happened to Carmen and Cliff.  The COIN Corp Men In Black started      *
 *  unravelling the tangled thread of Alley's activities and found their   *
 *  way back to Carmen and Cliff.  At least one of them has to die, of     *
 *  course.  How can I specifically tie this back to the idea of Alley     *
 *  hurting people because of her stubborn unwillingness to just fully     *
 *  embrace the agoristic life?                                            *

 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */



/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Who has at least one cybernetic eye?  I feel like someone definitely   *
 *  should have one in here (in this story, that is), before they get to   *
 *  the cyberpunk world (for some definition of "they").                   *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Actually, now that I think about it, maybe George's connection is      *
 *  more specifically to the cyberpunks while Dalton can get her in touch  *
 *  with the Second Realm people, so that would probably be why the        *
 *  Second Realm is her next stop, even if George is close to the people   *
 *  with whom Alley eventually needs to form an alliance for a shadowrun.  *
 *  After all, she'll never get from here to there, psychologically in     *
 *  particular, without the in between buffer and preparation stage, I     *
 *  think.  It just doesn't work otherwise, but if George's friends help   *
 *  people escape from Men In Black he'd probably just get her to hiding   *
 *  in downtown Los Angeles from the very beginning, without having to     *
 *  muck about with any Second Realm people.                               *

 *                                                                         *
 *  So . . . somewhere in there, Dalton (and maybe his friends) should be  *
 *  able to come up with the Second Realm folks as a group with which to   *
 *  meet up and get Alley going on next stages.  This makes sense if       *
 *  Dalton is thinking a lot about how to unfetter the prioritizer --      *
 *  which I guess is being called Rio now, at least by Lidia -- and        *
 *  doesn't have good solutions for that kind of thing himself.  For that  *
 *  to come out, though, I think I need to write a conversation scene      *
 *  between the prioritizer and Dalton, and maybe with Cray involved as    *
 *  well for fairly obvious reasons.  Dalton must have interviewed some    *
 *  Second Realm person or people at some point in the past, or something  *
 *  like that, and thus have some at least vague idea of how to actually   *
 *  get in touch with whom so ever he already met in person, so that he    *
 *  can get their help with sorting out the more immediate problems for    *
 *  Alley and the prioritizer.  Thus, she will end up going off to some    *
 *  industrial shipping container storage hard where people actually       *
 *  have whole hacking stations in portable boxes made of steel with       *
 *  surprising levels of convenience inside them for the underground       *
 *  hacker lifestyle.                                                      *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */



/* skip ahead to the Second Realm */



/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  There's a storage yard in an industrial zone on the fringes of the     *
 *  habitation zones, as such industrial zones tend to be until they get   *
 *  swallowed up by growing urbanization.  The yard involves a chain link  *
 *  fence with dilapidated concertina wire atop the fence.  Dalton must    *
 *  arrange for transport of not just Alley but also the motorcycle to     *
 *  this storage yard, via truck.  When they arrive the gate opens itself  *
 *  to let the truck back in.  After a few moments of Alley sitting in     *
 *  the back wondering what's happening, someone finally comes out to      *
 *  talk to Dalton.  There's a greeting involving handshakes and halfway   *
 *  hugs, then the back of the truck opens up.  Alley gets the straps on   *
 *  the bike unstrapped in the back of the truck and rolls it out, maybe   *
 *  with help if there's someone else in the back of the truck with her    *


 *  to offer that help.                                                    *
 *                                                                         *
 *  It turns out Dalton is on good, if somewhat distant, terms with a      *
 *  couple of people at this Second Realm locale.  His influence here is   *
 *  mostly connected to his closer acquaintance with someone who isn't at  *
 *  this temporary autonomous zone, but is respected by the people at      *
 *  this temporary autonomous zone.  The big question is whether the       *
 *  Smuggler analogue is at this locale or the (currently absent) person   *
 *  Dalton actually interviewed for his podcast.  In any case, there       *
 *  should have already been some talk (probably not at the Temp Auto      *
 *  Zone location, of course) in which some hint of what's going on with   *
 *  the prioritizer got across to the Second Realm people, catching their  *


 *  interest.                                                              *
 *                                                                         *
 *  They of course don't know all the details Alley knows, or even all of  *
 *  them Dalton learned from Alley.  As such, they'll have to talk         *
 *  directly with Alley to get some of the details of this stuff and       *
 *  start planning the next steps in the group's artificial intelligence   *
 *  prioritizer system liberation operation.  By then, something should    *
 *  have happened to make Alley's effort kind of a cause célèbre amongst   *
 *  the cypherpunks and some people more thoroughly cyberpunk oriented     *
 *  (but only some).  This will help ensure that I don't have to have      *
 *  Alley explain the same things over and over again so much that it      *
 *  actually drags on the story and keeps Alley from being a very          *
 *  interested and engaged and action oriented character.                  *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */





/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  Maybe Alley could go to a doctor to get a prescription for something   *
 *  that she can then sell to others as a way to make money.  This is      *
 *  obviously illegal.  It should probably only come up after she ends up  *
 *  on the run because of the people coming to her home and thus scaring   *
 *  her off.  Then again . . . how does she get a prescription from a      *
 *  doctor if she's on the run?  That could prove very difficult indeed.   *

 *                                                                         *
 *  Maybe Alley could just carry drugs for someone.  Again, this seems     *
 *  pretty sketchy, and is probably not appropriate right now.             *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */





/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *\
 *                                                                         *
 *  STORY TIMELINE PLACEMENT UNCERTAIN; DEFINITELY BEFORE WHERE I HAVE     *

 *  THESE NOTES:                                                           *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The next day, the prioritizer has her do other stuff, which makes her  *

 *  nervous.  She decides she does not want to do that any longer.  As a   *
 *  part of this sequence of events, she ends up meeting a man but not     *
 *  completing the transaction with him.  He seems tense, and tries to     *
 *  get her to complete the transaction, but relents and seems quite       *
 *  understanding when she refuses.  She would be glad to get away from    *
 *  the situation.  Perhaps there is a pile of money involved, and she     *
 *  decides at that point she should just keep the cash for now instead    *
 *  of buying something "weird".  She has resisted the call.               *
 *                                                                         *
 *  Somehow, this must lead to a problem.  Does the money itself get her   *

 *  in trouble?  Perhaps the plan is for her to make use of the money to   *
 *  immediately buy more cryptocurrency in a face to face meeting where    *
 *  urgent need gives her a significant profit margin -- or, more to the   *
 *  point, perhaps several such transactions.  She chooses to avoid this   *
 *  after the first couple transactions when she finds that the people     *
 *  with whom she does business put her off, thus leading her to decide    *
 *  she should just keep the cash.  Maybe the nice guy is the guy with     *
 *  whom she decides to cease trading.                                     *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The next day, the prioritizer tries a different approach, and sends    *

 *  her out to buy a parallel option for her phone.  This other device,    *
 *  much like a typical phone replacement, does not use the standard       *
 *  telephone system.  It instructs her to complete configuration in       *
 *  circumstances that will not be linked to her personally or to her      *
 *  movements.                                                             *
 *                                                                         *
 *  That evening, back home, a pair of people arrive to question her.      *
 *  They introduce themselves as checking up on the study participants,    *

 *  on behalf of the government, and question her about low log activity   *
 *  for the prioritizer.  She says she doesn't really know why they        *
 *  aren't getting full log activity.  The Technocrat looks at her gear    *
 *  and pairs it with a device he carries, then says they shouldn't have   *
 *  any further problems, then the two people depart.                      *
 *                                                                         *
 *  The prioritizer reveals that it received an update that day.  That     *
 *  night, she has a dream about trying to return the prioritizer and      *
 *  being convinced (by a grad student, probably) to continue.  The next   *
 *  morning, with that dream in mind, she realizes she just needs to be    *
 *  more careful about how she follows the prioritizer's advice.  When     *
 *  she dons the glasses again, though, it does not do more of the same.   *
 *  Instead, it questions her at some length about her beliefs about good  *
 *  and evil, and about where and how she developed those beliefs.  It     *
 *  asks her, after Dalton came up, to skim through various articles       *
 *  Dalton wrote, and later to side load some of his videos to a place     *
 *  the prioritizer can access them.                                       *
 *                                                                         *
\* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */