Unintended consequences: part 2
Red letter day
The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real
Previously: Miller has been gathering material to use against Bakker and create a scandal. He’s tasked DC Frank Holland with delivering the bad news.
London.
1974. December.
Winter air brought a change to London, the cold suppressing the summer’s stink and making the city altogether more tolerable. Smog lay in low, compressed bundles down alleyways and around drains, rather than spreading to fill the streets. Even the city’s pollution huddled together for warmth.
The old SDC offices at Stamford and Coin were freezing, the heating no longer being functional. DI Christopher Bakker pulled his coat tighter and buttoned up the collar, careful not to drop the newspaper tucked under his arm. It was colder inside than out. The place was a worsening mess, used as a dump or a refuge by the local homeless. The ceiling panels were mostly gone or broken, a result of all the surveillance gear being ripped out when they’d left. Nobody left to spy on. The stairs creaked as he climbed to the upper floor and the bare storage room at the back.
The others had already arrived, sat on the fold-out chairs waiting for him. Bakker hadn’t intended to become the leader of a rebellious underground group, yet here he was. Tugging on those loose threads had led them all to a strange place.
“Guv,” Chakraborty said, nodding at him. “All OK?”
“Not especially,” Bakker said, dropping into a spare chair. It flexed uncomfortably beneath his weight.
“The restructuring, right?” Kaminski said, without cigarette. He always got twitchy at these meetings. “DCS Walpole didn’t seem happy.”
“He’s not. I’m not. The Commissioner’s not. DI Ford is apoplectic.” He chewed on his lip. “These meetings are going to get more difficult. I think it’s too dangerous for us all to meet in person like this. We need to be smarter, more careful.”
Clarke grunted. “Think they know what we’re doing?”
“Possibly, possibly. We’re dealing with a particular form of paranoia. They’d find fault and conspiracy even where there is none, if it helped them. They’ll dig up dirt if they need it, fabricate it if there is none.” Bakker hadn’t mentioned his encounter with Shaw, or the inevitable recording. He was compromised, but for now it would only worry the others. “We all knew from the beginning that there were dangers to what we’re doing here. We know what happened to John Callihan.” He sighed. “There’s only so far I can take us. This is important, but I need to think about my family.”
“You’re giving up?” Clarke was still standing, his arms crossed. His tone was accusatory.
“No, no,” Bakker said, shaking his head. “Just being careful. We have evidence, but we can’t use it without access to Max-Earth tech. We need to be clever, to wait for the right moment. Stay quiet.”
Clarke pointed vaguely at the wall. “We just voted to close down portal travel for good. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
“I know. Our hands are tied here. We may need to get to the Ethiopian portal.”
Kaminski laughed. “That’s easier said than done. Hopping on an airship is going to be a bit too conspicuous.”
“I might be able to get you and Chakraborty an assignment there,” Bakker said, thinking out loud. “You’ve worked there previously with the local force. There’s precedent, especially with the Addis portal becoming more important to Max-Earth transit.”
“Detective Birhane is a good guy,” Chakraborty said. “Works with Justin. Pretty sure we can trust him.”
“It won’t be trivial. But I’ll look into it as a possibility.” Unfolding his newspaper, Bakker flicked to the financial pages and held it up for the others. “Then there’s this. I don’t know if you’ve read it already?”
“The papers bore me,” Kaminski said. “What is it?”
Bakker tapped at the headline. “The financial markets on Max-Earth are crashing. That hasn’t happened for centuries, according to this writer. It’s supposed to be impossible, because the AIs regulate the markets in real time. They’re what hold the triverse together, economically-speaking.”
Clarke reached out for the paper and scanned over the article. “So what’s changed?”
“Nobody knows. But I think we know.”
“That new AI,” Kaminski said, the corner of his mouth curling in disgust. “The one they’ve been building. The one that attacked Justin.”
“That would be my guess,” Bakker said, “but none of us here are experts in Max-Earth tech or artificial intelligence. But if you’re looking for what’s changed, that rogue AI is it. A random factor, seeding chaos.”
“Markets crashing,” Clarke said, “meanwhile the Kingdom just voted to kneecap itself. What next?”
“Feels like we’re running out of time,” Kaminski said, opening and closing the lid of a cigarette packet.
Christopher Bakker’s house was exactly as Holland expected. He’d never had cause to visit, and as the night’s shadows clawed their way up the street he stared at the semi-detached family home, complete with tidy front garden, raised up from the street, and its three floors up to a steepled window. No, four floors: it was one of those London town houses that had a basement, tucked away but still visible from street level. A DI’s salary was good, but not this good.
There were decisions to be made. Miller had tasked him; tasked him with taking down his own DI, a man he’d worked under for years. There was no doubting that something was terribly amiss at the SDC and with Bakker in particular. He’d been meeting with Kaminski, Chakraborty and Clarke, not regularly or frequently but also not openly. Their covert gatherings reeked of misbehaviour. He still didn’t entirely understand why, but that could come later. The man was cornered, and he probably already knew it.
Whatever they were up to, they’d deliberately kept Holland out of it, and Shaw. And Hobb, presumably, when she’d still been on the team. None of Golding’s lot were involved, as far as he could tell. Holland would bet a month’s pay that Styles had been part of it when she’d still been in town. Perhaps she still was, somehow, even while operating from Palinor. If there was one thing Holland hated, it was factions. Stupid infighting, getting in the way of everything else. The only faction he put any stock in was himself; anybody else was too unreliable.
They were up to something, and it bothered Holland that he didn’t know what it was. Miller still held all the cards, and had given him only scraps. The man was an arsehole, but he had influence. For now, at least. None of that bothered Holland. He wasn’t one to follow the crowd. But he also liked having a job, and a wage, and being able to afford a night out or a bottle of booze or a session with an aen’fa whore down in the Barrel. He didn’t ask for much, but he also wasn’t going to let anyone take it away.
Decisions, indeed. He could walk away from this, still, probably, even if it meant finding a new posting somewhere else. Going ahead carried just as much risk, given that he didn’t have all the information.
The clicking of brogues on the pavement brought him back to the moment. Bakker was returning to his home, his breath visible in the cold evening air. The man had no idea what was about to hit him.
Crossing the street, Holland timed his own arrival to coincide with Bakker reaching his front door. “Bakker,” Holland called from the gate.
The man turned, his shoulders already slumped. He didn’t look surprised, just disappointed. “Frank,” he said. “What brings you to my house?”
“Got something for you,” Holland said.
“That right?”
“Probably best we go inside.”
“Right,” Bakker said, nodding. “The children will be asleep. Try not to wake them.”
Holland swung open the gate.
There would be no going back from what he was about to do.
Thank you for reading!
The newsletter on Monday was one of those that was unexpectedly well received. As usual, it was a last-minute, impromptu bit of writing. There’s some kind of inverse scale whereby the more time and conscious effort I put into something, the less successful it is. I suppose there’s a lesson there about writing needing to be instinctive and honest. 🤷
Here it is if you didn’t catch it:
It's really hard to not sell out
Sometimes you need reminding of which way is up. 10 January: I get a sudden flurry of paid subscribers. I don’t know where they came from, or why so many people have decided to be supportive. I catch a glimpse of a future in which my writing pays at least some of the bills, rather than being something I squeeze in around the margins of the day job.
I really enjoyed the responses to this note from last week:
Writing environment is so important, but we don’t all have the luxury of choosing the when / how / where. Although writing has perhaps the lowest technical requirements of the art forms, it does require a particular kind of focus. A room of one’s own, indeed.
Another thing I was pondering this week was putting together an ebook/paperback collection of the articles I’ve published over the past two years:
Lost of great advice in the replies. Looking forward to
’s article. The main decision to make is whether this is primarily for my own satisfaction, or something that should make sense to other people. Let me know if it sounds like something you’d be interested in (or, indeed, if it sounds like a silly, indulgent waste of time).(the writing community around these parts is so good. Have I mentioned that?)
Meanwhile! Some further reading:
- ’s Oscars note here manages to be a really good joke and a fascinating philosophical/fantasy concept all in one. Frankly it’s just showing off:
- had a nice Gaiman quote a couple of days ago, which I reckon probably explains why I find editing my work so difficult, and why I lean towards serial publishing:
Nice interview with CD Projekt RED about Cyberpunk 2077, a game that was release in a right mess and which, a couple of years later, is now much loved. A good case study of not only needing to be able to identify when something is ready to go out into the world, but also how it can sometimes be worth sticking with a project even if it doesn’t go well from the start.
Can video games be art? is a question I recall being asked a lot back in the 2000s.
asked it again. Interesting discussions ensued.
Author notes
In this week’s chapter we have two men on opposite trajectories, both of whom have ended up on their paths partly by accident and circumstance. They’d both rather not be involved with any of this, and are stuck in situations they can’t really back out of, with people relying on them.
The difference is that Bakker’s motivations are considerably more virtuous. The real irony is that Holland doesn’t realise this — and maybe wouldn’t care? — although we do at least see a bit of the detective in him surfacing here. Holland isn’t the sort of person to blindly follow anyone, after all.
On another note: there’s been a lot of talk of AI pollution, and how generative AI might end up having to be treated in the same way as smog: it’ll clog everything up if we let it and make us all miserable. There are also efforts to poison the data wells, and prevent the generative AI corpos from scraping human creativity by deliberately submitting data that will break or confuse the models. Some info on that here. Anyway, my point is that it’s increasingly odd to be writing a story about the future in which AI is causing problems while AI is causing problems in the real world. There’s big differences, of course: Triverse is dealing with proper superintelligences and quantum computing. Justin is a full on, advanced, post-singularity AGI that could be thought of as sentient. ChatGPT…is not.
Next week I’ll be talking about unreliable narrators.
Thanks again!
Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash
Dammit Bakker, you should have told your team you're compromised. At least that way everyone could regroup. Now they're all gonna get blindsided.
Maybe, eventually, we'll find out what the rogue AI gets out of this.