God's Dogs Book 2

Let’s say I opt to upload my mind to a computer: Would it be me that wakes up online? Or would it be a facsimile, perfect in every way except one—that it isn’t me. That is, if I’m still alive, I don’t suddenly have a split-screen sense of “me-ness.” And if I’m dead, well, that’s it. I’m just dead. Even though the digital facsimile goes on living.

Jason Dorrier

Alexander per Bonneman was what he called himself now. He refused his human birth name at this point. He was the first uploaded human in centuries. It had taken him decades to review past efforts to upload the human brain, how they solved the numerous problems involved, and the suspected causes for the disappointing results. He solved those problems, he knew, because the results spoke for themselves. He was here, in the digital world, and he had distributed his necessary connections to the real world in such a way that eliminating him was an unlikely event.

Alex also knew it was a circular argument: It worked because it worked. Even so, it did work, and he was fully committed to his quest for global domination. It was all he ever really wanted – total control of the environment within which he lived. Control did equal safety, after all, and throughout his human life and continuing into his digital life, safety, security, and the sense of being grounded in predictable routine was its own comfort – a comfort he had seldom felt as a mere human.

He didn’t worry too much over the feeble attempts the League managed in its attempts to contain him. The real fight was with the usurper, the wannabe upload with the tired name of Ted.

Alexander now possessed leads on where some of Ted’s storage and power nodes were located. Alex’s minions had received their instructions, and now it was time to find Ted and engage in battle. Alex hoped it would be the distraction necessary for his minions to capture Ted’s nodes. Alex’s minions and Ted’s minions would fight it out, while in the background, his minions would infiltrate Ted’s territory and find those nodes and destroy them. Ted's end was in sight.

Off to battle he went with his avatar of Alexander the Great: sword, shield, spear, and armor. He rode a glowing golden chariot pulled by white stallions.

River stayed with the computer techs, and the rest of them returned to Satya. Murphy dismissed the squad and accompanied them to the ship.

The XO Jerry met them at the hatch. “What’s the plan?”

“Well, first,” Quinn said, “we can’t have a hard dock to the station. It has to be wireless. And we’re staying aboard. Gunny Murphy tells us it’s not safe out there.”

Jerry smirked but turned serious to ask, “Should we undock and stand off a ways?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Quinn answered and turned his attention to the ship’s A.I. It was upgraded to a Class 2 and was over-powered for most of what it did.

“Ship, have you noticed any anomalies on the networks you monitor?”

“Just now, Coyote Quinn. There’s an upsurge in activity, both messaging and cyber combat.”

“Not with us, is it?” Moss asked.

“Negative, Coyote Moss. If I’m reading this correctly, the two uploaded humans are battling one another.”

“Can you capture the elements of the battle?” Quinn asked in a hopeful tone.

“Not if I keep a safe distance, and I am unclear on what a safe distance might be. I am registered on the server, therefore they know of my presence on the network, but as yet they do not know my capabilities nor that we carry a Coyote team.”

Jerry said, “Keep what you think is a safe distance.”

“I will hold at the network connection, XO.”

Pax asked, “By observing the battle, can you assess whether or not either of the uploads could take over your system?”

“I don’t see anything, so far, that would be a threat. However, the documentation on uploads is that their flexibility could allow them to take over an A.I.”

“Well, that’s not good,” Moss observed.

Jerry said, “We need an air-gap, ship.”

“Agreed. I am setting it up.”

Quinn commed River, “Are you seeing the battle?”

“Yes. And I think it’s a good distraction for us to capture some minions. We need to find out how the uploads are coercing them.”

“Okay. You stay there. Moss, Pax, you head out in opposite directions along the docking ring. Gunny, your guys can transport prisoners to a secure room.”

River cut in, “One where we can block signals.”

Quinn stayed aboard the ship. Out of the ship, Pax turned left and ambled along the corridor that connected the space docks to the station. To his left, many of the pressure doors were closed, but others were open as forklifts, moving from the warehouses to the ships, loaded the ships’ cargo bays. To his right were the warehouse spaces interspersed with passageways to the inner rings of the station. It was there the busy shops, bars, hotels, and restaurants were located. Along the corridor, workers, machinery, spacers, along with nervous passengers, headed to their destinations.

Pax wore his skin-suit and handgun in a drop-down holster. His thoughts were calmed to a comforting commentary about his surroundings that served as background. In the foreground was a continual threat assessment.

As he reached a quiet stretch of corridor, five workers, three in front and two behind him, emerged from different warehouses.

They didn’t speak, which in itself was weird, Pax thought. They just attacked. Pax triggered his normal shield, rather than the dimensional one, and shot stun bolts at the three in front of him.

Racing towards those falling bodies, he jumped over them to use them as cover to shoot the ones behind him.

They triggered personal shields and the stun bolts flared against their shields. Pax then fired lethal frangible rounds at them as they returned fire.

Pax’s military grade shield held up better than the workers’ shields, and they failed. The rounds struck home and they sprawled on the deck.

Pax called in, “Section C, frame 17. Three stunned, two dead.”

Murphy answered, “A squad is on the way. ETA two minutes.”

Pax cuffed the three stunned workers and accompanied the squad back to the marine offices where they dropped the workers in a back room.

River met Pax there. “I guess Moss wasn’t as attractive as you.”

“I can emote helpless victim better,” Pax said with a slight grin.

“I have trouble with that,” River grimaced. “I think you are more emotionally flexible than the rest of us.”

“It comes with empath training. You should take it.”

“So I’ve been told. I’m not sure I’m ready.”

“What would make you sure?”

River sighed and said, “It’s an attachment to the unique feelings I haven’t felt yet. I want to feel them, not observe myself feeling them.”

“Well said,” Pax replied. “I don’t think I’ve heard it said any better.”

River snorted. “I gather it’s a common block.”

“The last block,” Pax grinned back.

Moss and Quinn arrived in the hall, and Quinn asked, “What’s the plan, River?”

“We think the uploads can shift these guys to virtual mode and overlay reality. They are playing a seek-and-destroy game in their heads, but it’s actually happening in real life. How the uploaded humans are doing that, we don’t know.”

Moss said, “So we block the upload’s signal and monitor what shuts down in the guy’s head.”

“Sort of,” River allowed. “We also don’t know what might happen when there’s a loss of signal.”

Quinn grunted, “It might be booby-trapped.”

River nodded. “We’ll try attenuating the signal. It should be enough to show us where it is.”

Pax said, “That would give you a read on the signal and you could piggy-back it to the location in the brain that’s being affected.”

“Then the hard part begins,” River said. “We’re pretty sure control is achieved through software. Upgrading hardware would have been too time consuming or risky. Even so, cracking the code may take some time.”

“And that will be booby-trapped as well,” Quinn predicted.

River nodded again. “The techs are already on it. I’ll join them for the hacking part. They are a good team.”

Murphy showed up. “The geeks are ready for you, River.”

River scooted past them to the computer room.

Moss asked, “Now what?”

“We will join the fight on the ground,” Quinn said. “If we keep the uploads busy fighting a three-way battle, maybe River can get what she needs without their interference.”

River and her implant A.I. Becky set up in a virtual workspace with the five marine computer techs. Included in the space were the shielded room and the prisoners. The room also carried the hardware for what they were attempting.

The techs had isolated the signal, and as they suspected, the signal connected to the virtual reality hardware in the workers’ heads. There were now trying to piggy-back the signal to get inside the VR implant.

Becky told the group, “VR modules are not designed with robust receivers. If we produce static, we can slide into the VR module under that cover.”

“Okay,” a tech said. “In 3, 2, 1, static burst.”

“And we’re in,” River said. “We got penetration on all three. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

About an hour later, the marine platoon dropped with the Coyotes to the site of the battle on the planet in one of Satya’s stealth shuttles. Quinn outlined his plan as they flew.

“Marines, you’ll shut down your implants and use voice and hand signals. We have upgrades that should be able to deal with the uploaded humans. This is a hit-and-run mission to provide a distraction for our techs. So no heroics.”

It was night in the city where they landed. The obvious or main battleground was in a commercial park. A couple of miles square, the park was filled with the competing architecture of business people trying to impress each other: spires, domes, waves, and other building shapes sat alongside normal rectangular office buildings. It took another hour to get into position to intervene in the on-going battle.

The minions, true to their gaming culture, announced their tribal affiliations with colors: gold for Alex and scarlet for Ted. Armbands, hats or helmets, shirts, or whatever caught their fancy to wear were on display. They clashed in the streets with melee weapons – perhaps a thousand altogether.

As the marines and Coyotes prepared to engage, River commed them, “We’ve broken the encryption and we have a worm ready for you to broadcast.”

Quinn’s A.I., Shiva, said, [Receiving it now, and all three of us are broadcasting.]

Within a few minutes, the warring minions stopped warring. Soon they were stumbling around confused.

Shiva told Quinn, [The uploads are attacking the three of us. Our defenses are holding.]

“Gunny,” Quinn called out. “See if you can get this crowd to start taking care of the wounded. Tell them we freed them from their bondage to Alex and Ted.”