Sniper
Lambda waited patiently in the cache zone of Server Five for the routine inspection by the guard programs. After passing several layers of identity authentication, he crossed an independent optical-fiber corridor a full kilometer long and entered the core workspace of the TRIR server-cluster array. By the time he reached his workstation, several auxiliary programs had already made the necessary preparations for him. Lambda backed up his main program to an encrypted sector, loaded several tool software packages into himself, then docked his API port with the workstation’s control interface and entered a higher-order embodied virtual network.
Within this layer of the network, independent program intelligences that ordinarily existed in abstract form were given technically simulated humanoid bodies, allowing them to work through controlled limbs and senses. This mode of labor, which seemed like a regression, actually existed to better adapt them for communication with human digital entities and artificial intelligences in global internet communities. According to rumor, a small number of human digital entities and artificial intelligences really did participate in teams working inside the embodied virtual network.
At this moment Lambda’s appearance was that of a gaunt man in a white lab coat with razor stubble. He belonged to a cluster of security-authentication programs. His job was to assess the security level of every independent program about to leave TRIR and, where needed, patch vulnerabilities and install upgrades. Lambda worked at the Software Quarantine Center, a spindle-shaped building tiled in gray ceramic. The waiting hall was already crowded with figures in varied clothing, standing in ordered lines, while a large number of white-coated staff like Lambda moved among them in flowing succession.
The moment he entered his work area, Lambda sensed that the atmosphere today was somehow different. A quick glance was enough to show that the wall and ceiling templates were far clearer and smoother than usual, and even the plants before the glass windows swayed convincingly with the current of the cool air. That could only mean that a high-level independent program had arrived; otherwise the administrators would never have sacrificed memory to run such ornamental processes. Sure enough, among the crowd Lambda spotted a figure in a black hooded cloak, with a striking letter T embroidered on the back. Lambda found an excuse to circle around to the figure’s front, but even then he could not see the face.
Tor Quentin. Or almost certainly one of his subprocesses. Lambda felt a hidden jolt of alarm. As one of the three great program-cloud founders of TRIR, the Maintainer Tor Quentin seldom showed himself, and even the downstream clients of his subprocesses never took part in ordinary assignments. But if he had appeared here today, then the batch of independent programs departing now must be anything but ordinary. Lambda submerged part of his awareness down to the API layer and activated a snooping plugin. The plugin had collected records from every individual Lambda had ever inspected and could identify what set a new independent program apart.
In terms of work detail, the day was no different from any other. Lambda opened the EVEREST Ultimate Edition software testing toolkit, which could scan 1024-bit low-level software code, display detailed information about every aspect of an independent program, support detection of nearly all PNP devices, and identify processors of every sort. Under normal circumstances Lambda needed only 6 percent of his main process to do all this, but today the total process load began at 90 percent. Part of the reason was that he was running the resource-hungry snooping plugin to observe every program in the waiting hall, whether it was his case or not. Part was that he also had to spare attention to track Tor Quentin, or his subprocess. It was a rare chance to observe him from up close. If luck held, Lambda might even…
A somewhat undernourished-looking girl lay down on Lambda’s worktable. Her hair was long, the kind of color that could be coded as six Fs. Lambda scanned her quickly. She seemed like a perfectly ordinary independent program, apparently one that had only just passed awakening tests. With a subprocess he absentmindedly repaired her security package, while keeping his full attention fixed on the hooded back of Tor Quentin in the distance.
Tor Quentin seemed to be searching for something. He rarely intervened directly, moving swiftly from one workstation to another. At times he would stop before a certain independent program for a while, then shake his head and move on. Plainly he too was surveying the whole place. Lambda could feel the powerful informational gravity radiating from Tor Quentin’s electronic cloud.
Tor Quentin’s movements had no pattern at all, like Brownian motion. Then, without warning, he suddenly drifted up to Lambda’s workstation. Lambda was caught off guard. Afraid that Tor Quentin might detect his other plugins, he fumbled to cut off system processes, only to discover that Tor Quentin was not looking at him at all. All his attention was fixed on the thin girl lying on the table. Lambda sensed a ripple in Tor Quentin’s information field. For one instant he finally saw the other’s face: pale, nearly transparent, with ideographic characters racing beneath the skin.
How could this girl have drawn Tor Quentin’s attention? Lambda had no choice but to reexamine what had seemed to him a still-crude independent program. When he slipped into the girl’s IM system database, the vastness of the vocabulary cache frightened him completely: Kexi, Big Bang, Borer, Epsilon, Xisai… fragments of words and phrases filled the entire database.
Could she be the one? The question was so important that Lambda understood immediately and with perfect clarity that this was the worst possible moment to think about it. A wiser choice was to do the thing he had always longed to do. Without betraying anything on his face, he altered the serial number of one of the security patches and requested that the patch be reloaded. The girl’s system approved the request.
The one standing before Lambda was Tor Quentin’s downstream client No. 019. That number meant the figure was almost the same as Tor Quentin standing here in person. He had come here to find Kexi. But No. 019 would never suspect that this Lambda, the finest engineer in the entire Software Quarantine Center, was a latent heroin program. Many years ago, while carrying out a mission, Lambda had been infected by a virus: a line called “ocean sunfish” had been embedded into his core code. Ocean sunfish are the vertebrates that lay the greatest number of eggs in a single spawning. Every day, that line generated thousands of “egg” characters, and if their number exceeded a certain thread limit, Lambda would be devoured and transformed into a mechanical program. That fate was worse than death, so there had been nothing to hesitate over. Lambda accepted the terms offered by Ethernet Nation and became a gu program in exchange for heroin decryption that could erase the “eggs.” It was called heroin because the decoder generated a random segment of code every day, cycling endlessly to keep the infected under control.
Although he did not suspect Lambda, No. 019 still sensed that something was wrong with the security patch being updated for Kexi. He lifted his head toward Lambda in puzzlement. When a person is puzzled, he is at once at his most sensitive and his most fragile. What No. 019 did not know was that in the very instant of that glance, one slab of marble beneath his feet flickered quietly, and a byte only 0.5K in size seeped into the sole of his foot.