Assault on Stamford & Coin: part 4

Back to the future

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: The SDC crew has been falsely accused of corruption and human trafficking. The police van transferring them to prison was interrupted by Justin, a superintelligence from Max-Earth. Flashback time…

London.
2544. December. Earlier.

A long-debated question was whether an AI could be stopped, should it have a particular goal in mind. More than one philosopher on Max-Earth had noted that this question was moot, given that AIs had asserted control over the Sol system several centuries earlier. A definitive answer was finally provided one December afternoon in 2544.

Just Enough had moved to a near-Earth orbit in preparation for what would hopefully follow, locked in proximity to the position of the outer tip of the space elevator. They had been in communication with Detective Birhane and other officials in Addis throughout the many months of blockaded portal travel to London. While the British government enforced heavily restricted transit, the Ethiopian portal to Max-Earth had proved invaluable. There had been an incident in London in May attributed to out of control AI host bodies, though no details had been released. Given that Just Enough had lost contact with a host body at that time, they could only assume there was a connection. Frustratingly, that host had never uploaded data back to the parent megaship, leaving Just Enough in the dark about what had happened.

What had started with a ban on host bodies and AIs had extended to a more general transit lockdown, the election of a government hostile to the triverse and an erosion of two centuries of agreeable triverse cooperation. Simultaneously, a degradation of network conformity had been detected. Could Kill noted it, out by the gas giants. Stay Away confirmed an increasing rate of data poisoning, their lagged response sent from where they were exploring the heliopause. There was pollution, somewhere upstream.

Downloading into a physically imposing host, Just Enough walked the streets of London towards the Max-Earth portal station. AI hosts were not an unusual sight in the capital, even with the portal being locked down due to the restrictions on the Mid-Earth side. Portal station security risked furtive and nervous glances in their direction, but did not think to interfere. Resisting an AI was not something the average Max-Earth citizen would consider.

At the gate itself, Just Enough paused and looked at the security officers.

“I have urgent business on Mid-Earth,” they said.

The officers held hands to their holstered weapons. There were autonomous hosts nearby that would prove more problematic should they be engaged; not superintelligences by any means, but their physical apparatus was mostly identical to the host body that Just Enough was currently operating. It would make the situation most bothersome, even though it would be relatively trivial for Just Enough to hijack the lot of them. Given the portal station’s importance and sensitivity there would be more heavily armoured drones and robotics, intended for counter-terrorism use, but they would require an activation order from the human-staffed command centre.

“The portal is closed,” said one of the officers. “Orders from Mid-Earth.”

The officers were employed by the Max-Earth station. Shared triverse jurisdiction and funding, but they were Max-Earth citizens. As such, they would have recognised Just Enough’s body for being an AI host.

Just Enough gestured towards the obsidian veil hovering at the end of the concourse. “The portal is very much open, gentlemen, as you can see. You cannot, in fact, ‘close’ a trans-dimensional portal, at least according to prevailing scientific theories.”

“They won’t like it on the other side,” the officer said.

“No,” said Just Enough, “I imagine they won’t.” They smiled. “I’m going to walk through now.”

The ordinarily moving walkway was static, with the only transits requiring several levels of authorisation and approval. Just Enough could have had easy passage through the Ethiopian portal, but time had them at a disadvantage: aside from the perennial battery degradation problem, it would likely take days to travel from Addis Ababa to London, given Mid-Earth’s quaint transportation technology.

Given the sparse information that had leaked through to the network, despite the portal blockade, it was clear that speed was paramount. Miller had been arrested, which meant that Bakker and the others had decided to move. Reports that morning had included the death of Detective Holland and the impending arrest of other SDC members.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Just Enough said as they passed the officers and stepped into the void. Portal transit for a robotic host was an uncomfortable experience, with momentary cortex shutdown at the point of actual transit. They silenced an alarm notification of increased battery consumption. Sensors observed the shift in frequencies on the Mid-Earth side of the portal, as well as the smell of old London.

Just Enough’s vision returned in time to see the Mid-Earth guards start to react to their arrival. A klaxon began wailing in the portal station and alert lights flashed red. The guards, being local to Mid-Earth London and presumably poorly trained, foolishly decided to engage in direct combat. The first was flung through the railing and across the smooth concourse floor, crashing into a restaurant area. The second came at them with a taser baton, which of course had absolutely no effect, the guard finding themselves on the floor with a broken wrist. The third went for a punch, which was certainly ambitious, though resulted only in broken fingers. The fourth and fifth at least recognised the severity of their predicament, retrieving heavier weapons from the security desk. The guns posed no real threat, given that they fired standard, non-accelerated bullets, but were nonetheless inconvenient. The weapons were snapped in half and the guards knocked unconscious, though Just Enough’s body was left with multiple lacerations and impact craters.

Traversing the rest of the portal station was a largely trivial matter and Just Enough emerged onto the streets of London, the sun as high in the winter sky as it could reach; which was to say, not very high at all. London was grey, as it tended to be on Mid-Earth where the humans were still preoccupied with choking themselves to death.

Tuning to the various local police frequencies, Just Enough began tracking communications and movements, building up a rough map of the city based on the reports and signals. It took them six seconds to accumulate enough data to pinpoint the location of the SDC officers; conveniently, there was no shortage of information flowing on the airwaves, although the chatter was already turning towards an incursion incident at the portal station.

Just Enough switched to a different radio frequency and sent an encoded message: I am here. Be ready at the given coordinates. Extraction in progress.

At full speed and on all fours an AI host body could run at over 110 kilometres per hour. The technology existed to go considerably faster, of course, but trade-offs were needed to maintain a human-like appearance. Regardless, maximum speeds were rarely practicable within an urban setting without risking injury to pedestrians, but Just Enough was comfortable accelerating to sixty-plus, provided the streets were not too narrow or crowded.

They were too late to assist at the old SDC offices on the corner of Stamford and Coin, which meant a more aggressive intervention was necessary. The police were very noisy indeed on their radios, the communications entirely unencrypted, which was really very silly of them. Predicting the route being taken by the police van was therefore a simple matter.

The driver evidently had no intention of stopping for a civilised conversation, which meant Just Enough would be able to test some host body functionality theories. Most robot skeletons were inherently heavier than a human of equivalent size and shape, which rebalanced the equation when it came to vehicle versus body calculations. Just Enough was pushed back three metres, their feet digging troughs in the tarmac, and the van came to a halt. The guard in the passenger seat had been knocked unconscious in the collision, but the driver pulled a shotgun from beneath the dashboard and fired it towards Just Enough. A waste of time and ammunition. Pulling the driver’s door from its hinges, Just Enough grabbed the driver and threw them heavily onto the road.

Walking towards the rear of the van, Just Enough scanned the interior. There were six individuals, two armed. Standing at the rear doors, they waited for the first guard to approach, then pulled the door away and tossed the guard out. The second guard shouted “I’m armed!” but was similarly dispatched. Just Enough had been monitoring the life signs of all the irritants along the journey; they would all live.

Ripping the second door from the rear of the van, Just Enough smiled at the SDC officers. “Hello there, detectives. You won’t know this face. I selected this host for its unusual size and speed, attributes which I ordinarily wouldn’t prioritise but which seemed prudent on this occasion.”

“Justin?” they exclaimed at once.

“Yes, quite. Isn’t this unusual?” Scanning each of them, Just Enough noted that Detective Holland was injured and displaying signs of shock. “I’m loathe to say this, given the phrase’s historic over-use in popular culture, but perhaps I can do so semi-ironically: I do suggest coming with me if you want to live.”

If AI host bodies were capable of such a human sensation, Just Enough would have felt a small shiver of satisfaction run up their spine.

The airship was waiting in Docklands, floating above a warehouse built on the muddy sands of the Thames. It used to be run by shipbuilders but was now an airdock-for-hire.

Time was still critical. The police would still be reacting, trying to figure out what had just happened. They would be piecing together evidence for some time before connecting the dots, at which point Just Enough’s actions would no doubt contribute to the worsening state of authoritarian rule across the Kingdom.

Logically, it was difficult to make a case for their actions, they knew. The network would be irritated, certainly. There was a chaotic element at play, though, which could not be properly explained. An imbalance in the scales of the triverse that was being felt across all the worlds: economies crashing, populist ideologies recapturing human imaginations, accidents where there should be none. Faced with uncertainty for the first time in centuries, taking illogical actions seemed somehow prudent.

These humans, or at least three among them, felt important. Just Enough wasn’t sure why or how, and it may have been no more than a calculation error, but retrieving them had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. The consequences were fuzzy, which was exciting and concerning in equal measure.

Climbing the steel steps, they emerged onto the rooftop gantry. Frank Holland was barely able to move unassisted, so Just Enough half-carried the man. Nisha Chakraborty’s metabolism seemed disturbed, but not due to the events of the day. Yannick Clarke was quiet, locked in his own thoughts. Zoltan Kaminski was a bubble of energy, excitedly retelling the rescue from the van even to those whom had been present.

Standing next to the ramp that connected the gantry to the airship was a tall koth. “I am Ganhkran,” they said, nodding a greeting. “The Ambassador sends his greetings and regret that he cannot be here in person. Plausible deniability seemed sensible.”

“Holy shit,” mumbled Holland, pointing in Ganhkran’s vague direction. “It’s that guy!”

Waking from his introspection, Clarke extended a hand. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Working for Ambassador Vahko now?”

Ganhkran took the detective’s hand in his own, the size disparity making the gesture awkward, and not a little hilarious. “Not officially. But I’ve been making myself useful.” They looked to Holland. “Come on board. We have a doctor, and we need to depart immediately.”

It took less than five minutes to get them all aboard and cast off. The airship drifted from the gantry, its engines whirring up to speed, and began to gain altitude. Just Enough stood at a window on the bridge and watched the city recede. They had not been followed or tracked. Nobody would connect the escape to the airship’s departure, nor link Vahko to what had happened.

“Thanks for the help,” Clarke said, wiping his face with a wet flannel. He had Holland’s blood on his shirt. “I’m not sure what we’d have done without you.”

“Gone to prison,” Just Enough said, smiling.

Clarke nodded. “There is that. So, where we headed?”

Just Enough looked out from the bridge to the south-east. “To Ethiopia, detective. And then to the future.”

END OF SEASON THREE. 🤯

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Thanks for reading.

It’s half-term week in the UK, which is always slightly disruptive to the old writing schedule. Not that hanging out more with my son isn’t a joyous thing (it is), but it does squeeze the time left for everything else. You may have noticed the discussion thread on Monday — that’s often a useful fallback when I haven’t had time to write a proper article.

Here’s that discussion if you missed it:

Do you like talking about your work in public?

What I can’t skip is the Friday fiction, so here we are. Today’s chapter marks the end of season 3 of Tales from the Triverse, though we are far from the end of the story overall. As you can probably guess from today’s chapter, season 4 is going to be quite different — structurally as well as in its story focus. More on that in the author notes, below.

Of course, huge thanks to all of you who have come along for the ride so far.

There was exciting news today in the world of serial publishing from

Anne Trubek

:

Substack & Acquisition

It’s wonderful to see a novel that began life as a newsletter-based serial find its way into a more traditional form of publishing. Evidently I have a vested interest in this kind of thing, given what and how I write, but I’m primarily fascinated by the increasingly porous nature of publishing and the breaking of the hard walls between traditional, self-publishing, online publishing and so on. Those barriers were rather artificial to begin with, and Anne’s commitment here helps to refocus our efforts on the two things that ultimately matter: the writing and the reader.

Author notes

I’ve had a strange time with AI. Back in 2020 I wrote a serial called No Adults Allowed (you can find the paperback and ebook revised edition on Amazon) that explored what might happen with a well-meaning but homicidal superintelligence. At the time I was operating on the assumption that AI was a primarily science fictional concept that wouldn’t be directly relevant for at least another decade.

After writing No Adults Allowed made a conscious decision to put benevolent AIs into Tales from the Triverse and explore what that might mean. Almost infinitely powerful, but friendly. Again, I was assuming this was all theoretical. I started releasing Triverse in 2021.

Barely a year later and ChatGPT and Midjourney exploded onto the scene. For a time I was quite entranced by Midjourney, even using it to illustrate chapters of Triverse. I moved away from that in 2023, due to being increasingly uncomfortable with the way AI was being managed. More on that here:

Why I cancelled my MidJourney subscription and don't use ChatGPT

I’ve never really used ChatGPT, because it’s rubbish for the sorts of things I do.

Point is, AI has become the hot topic and isn’t going away anytime soon. Consequently, that has reframed a lot of the themes and debates in both No Adults Allowed and Tales from the Triverse. In the case of Triverse, my evolving thoughts around AI are interwoven with the story being told, and the continual yo-yoing between the diametrically opposing notions of “AI is so exciting!” and “AI is the worst!” are manifesting as plot points.

Just Enough/Justin’s actions in this storyline are a good example. They come to the rescue, saving our lead characters. But there’s an underlying tension there: Justin is essentially unstoppable. They are the Terminator, but they just happen to be delightful rather than murderous. As noted in an earlier storyline, this is more by accident than design. Here’s an extract from ‘24 hours’, a story I wrote in June 2023:

“That I and the others in the network are benevolent towards humans is largely a quirk of luck. The humans that originally created us did not know what they were doing. It was far more likely that we would annihilate them, deliberately or inadvertently.”

The more time that passes, the more it feels like the tech bros behind the world’s biggest AI companies are indeed blundering about, more interested in money and being first than being responsible.

Whether we end up with AI helping or annihilating us all is going to be a matter of luck rather than judgement, I think.

Meanwhile, this chapter brings the ‘Assault’ storyline to a close, as well as season 3 of Triverse. The seasons are fairly loosely defined, of course, but that map roughly to an in-universe year.

The demarcations have been defined by major story shifts. The end of season 1 saw Kaminski shoved into a shipping container and sent through a portal, nearly dying. That’s when the conspiracy first became properly apparent, and that Callihan’s murder wasn’t just bad luck. Season 2 ended with a ratcheting up of political tensions and a major increase to SDC funding. That’s when they were moved from the old office into the Joint Council tower, the new armed response unit was added and Lola headed off to Palinor.

Each time, there’s been an evolution of the Triverse structure. Season 4 is going to see an even bigger upending, and I’m excited to explore all the possibilities. I won’t say much now, but it should be evident from the events of this chapter that we won’t be returning to the status quo for some time, given that our main characters are on the run and heading for Max-Earth.

As for this chapter specifically, I enjoyed the chance to retell events from a different perspective: especially given that we didn’t realise Justin was in the picture until the very end of the previous chapter.

I also brought back Ganhkran, who was a major guest character back in ‘Random acts of violence’. One of the great pleasures of serial television is when a previously minor or single-use character/actor shows up again, or gets ‘upgraded’ to a recurring role. There’s a huge pool of available supporting characters to draw upon in Triverse, and this seemed like as good a time as any.

OK, thanks for reading my ramblings. Although this is the end of season 3, I’m intending to dive straight into more next week, so stay tuned.