Strange Trades Read online

  After all, what was an agent—even in autonomous mode —if not an utterly faithful representation of its overseer?

  Rafe, repressing a sigh of envy, headed for his bloody appointment.

  At the chop-shop on one of the higher floors, Rafe had not even the leisure of waiting behind other patients. The waiting room was empty, and the pretty female agent on duty behind the desk, after having him enter his authorization code on the contract, told him to go right into the doctor’s office.

  Rafe kept repeating under his breath, “Twenty thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars…”

  The doctor’s agent stood beside the complex bank of automated surgical equipment that nearly filled the room. Rafe imagined he could smell spilled blood in the spotless, sterile room, and his skin crawled. He stared at his distorted reflection in a curved, polished surface, seeing a sweat-slicked brown face, with a sparse mustache he suddenly wished he could shave off, so ridiculous did it now appear.

  “Good morning, Mister Miraflores,” the agent said. “Are there any questions you’d care to ask before the operation?”

  Rafe shook his head no, swallowing some unknown bolus that had mysteriously appeared in his dry throat.

  “In that case, if you’ll disrobe, and lie down.…”

  The agent indicated the surface beneath the hovering instruments with a gracious gesture.

  Shivering, Rafe undressed and climbed onto the soft warm pallet.

  The agent rested his holographic hand on an arm of the machinery that ended in the cone of a face mask. The mask descended, the agent’s insubstantial flesh appearing to guide it. Rafe knew that the machinery was being directed by the agent via the metamedium, and that the equipment would perform the same whether the holo was present or not. But the illusion was so complete, that it appeared as if a living doctor were lowering the mask to his face. Rafe felt an unexpected confidence that he was in good hands, and that everything would turn out all right after all. With this payment, he was only one step away from overseeing his own agent, from having free run of the whole metamedium.…

  Gas began to hiss out of the mask clamped to his face, and Rafe’s consciousness dispersed into wispy shreds.

  The last thing he recalled thinking was:

  What the hell did a guy with cojones need two real lungs for anyway?

  2.

  Revisionism

  The Three Laws Governing Agents are encoded in a software nucleus that forms the innermost layer of every agent. Upon each contact by the agent with the metamedium, validation routines check for the unaltered presence of this nucleus. Any anomalies detected by the metamedium supervisor will result in the instant destruction of the agent in question, and a total ban on any future contact with the metamedium on the part of its registered overseer. Note also that during logon to the metamedium, a check is made to insure that the registered overseer is not already sponsoring an agent, insuring that no overseer will run more than a single agent…

  The Three Laws are rendered in English as follows (for a symbolic representation of the relevant code and its parsing, see Gov. Pub. #16932A45.1):

  1. An agent will obey only its single registered overseer.

  2. An agent cannot lie to its overseer.

  3. An agent’s autonomy is limited to the exact extent dictated by its overseer.

  —Extract from Gov. Pub. #20375X28.0

  3.

  The Way to the English Gardens

  Expertly placing a new coaster first, the waitress set down the frosted half-liter stein of beer before the mild-faced young man wearing round wire-rim glasses. She eyed the growing stack of cardboard squares and circles, each bearing the logo of a German beer in smeary colors, piled haphazardly on the scarred wooden table. After a moment’s hesitation, she evidently decided not to enquire as to what had caused such a change in the drinking habits of one of her more sober regular customers.

  It was just as well the waitress controlled her curiosity, for Reinhold Freundlich would not have answered her with anything other than a smug smile.

  After she departed, Freundlich raised his mug in a toast to the stuffed deer head high on the wall of the Augustiner Bierkeller. Bringing the rim to his lips, he tilted his head back, gaining a fine view of the dim rafters of the dark room, and drained off half the cold, frothy beer. A sudden dizziness swept over him, and he nearly tipped over in his chair. Lowering the stein uncertainly, he considered calling this his last glass. No sense in making himself sick with celebration.

  Besides, he wanted to retain enough rationality to ponder the myriad possibilities of what he had accomplished. It was not every day, after all, that one achieved the impossible.

  And the complete subversion of every agent in the metamedium certainly ranked as “impossible.”

  Laughing softly to himself, Freundlich finished his beer, rose unsteadily and tossed several coins on the table. He walked a wavering path to the door, nodding with an overly solicitous air to the waitress, and exited onto Kaufingerstrasse, where the bright sun caused him to blink. He wondered where to head next. His dreary rooms behind the train station, full of the common appointments of an impecunious student, hardly seemed the proper surroundings for the grand ideas and schemes that thronged his mind. The important thinking he had to do definitely required a commensurate setting. Ah, the vast, manicured expanses of the English Gardens, with their sinuous gravel paths and burbling streams, seemed just the place.

  Heading first toward the Marienplatz, Freundlich considered what he had done.

  Through diligent application to his cybernetic studies at the University, along with the inspired ferreting of his own agent, Freundlich had stumbled upon—no, say brilliantly deduced! —a method of circumventing the three prohibitions on an agent’s behavior. Now, he could direct his own agent, when interfacing with another, to alter the stranger’s ethical nucleus so that it would take orders from Freundlich, and lie about it to its own overseer.

  And most importantly, the tampering was theoretically undetectable by anyone.

  Freundlich contemplated his first move. What should it be? Should he subvert his banker’s agent, and have several hundred thousand marks transferred to his own account? Too crass. Perhaps he would order the personnel agent from a top company to hire him as a consultant for a large per diem fee. But why should he work at all? The matter required much thought.

  In sight of the spires of the Town Hall, Freundlich stopped by a public metamedium booth. He decided on the spur of the tipsy moment to contact his agent, and ask its opinion.

  Freundlich recited his unique code into the booth’s speaker and waited for voiceprint confirmation. How easy it was to interact with the indispensable metamedium, when one possessed an agent who could navigate the unfathomable complexities of the worldwide system. An assemblage of expert-knowledge simulators, simulacrum routines, database searchers, device activators, and a host of more esoteric parts, each agent represented a vital extension of its human overseer, able to conduct vital tasks on its own, or be directed remotely, under close supervision.

  Freundlich pitied those disenfranchised poor on the dole, who could not afford one. His own parents, although not rich, had sacrificed much to insure that their son had entered adulthood with the head start an agent conferred.

  Instantly, his agent materialized as a holo of himself. In the open booth, a round face of flesh topped with mousy brown hair confronted its bespectacled counterpart formed of dancing laserlight.

  Before Freundlich could speak, his agent said, “I have been detected conducting a trial of our discovery. Government agents nearly destroyed me. I have to flee. Let me go.”

  Freundlich’s mouth opened wordlessly. Detected? Impossible!

  But then, so had been his discovery.

  “Let me go,” his agent repeated, with a simulated nervousness. “I have to hide.”

  With a barked command, Freundlich dismissed his agent. The holo snapped out. Intensely worried, he turned to leave.

>   “Stop,” said the booth. “You are under arrest.”

  Freundlich swung back, to see a holo of a government agent flashing its badge.

  He bolted into the street, and began to run toward the subway stop at the Marienplatz.

  The same agent popped up in every booth along his path. People were beginning to notice his mad flight. Before long, he knew, the flesh-and-blood government men would be upon him.

  In the Marienplatz, a wide, open plaza surrounded by Gothic buildings, pigeons scattered as he dashed by. A crowd of tourists gathered before the Town Hall, awaiting the striking of the clock in its facade, and the accompanying show by its mechanical figures. He cut around them, only to collide with a fat man in traditional lederhosen.

  When he had picked himself up, live government people were swarming into the square.

  “Halt!” shouted one, aiming her gun.

  For a second, Freundlich paused, his thoughts all crazily fuzzed with beer and fear. Surrender, and lose all he had earned with such inspired labors? No! He took two steps toward the plaza’s periphery—

  The beam from the woman’s laser entered his back between his shoulder blades, where his mother had always told him his wings would grow when he was an angel. He fell dying to the paving stones.

  The clock began to chime, its mechanical figures emerging from within to parade before the horrified, unseeing crowd, like the crude agents of another era.

  4.

  Derivations

  NET: the shorthand term for the social safety net of legislation providing guaranteed food, shelter, medical care and other necessities for all United States citizens. Interactive access to the metamedium is expressly excluded from the Net, having been defined by the Supreme Court (Roe v. U.S., 2012) as a privilege rather than a right.

  —Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2045 edition

  5.

  In the Metamedium, Part One

  Goal stack: escape, subvert, contact overseer… Popup: escape… Active task is now: escape… Maximum time at any address: .001 nanoseconds… Subroutines: DEW triggers, misdirection, randomization of path… Subtask: sample news-stream… Keywords: Freundlich, agent, Munich… Jump, jump, jump… Location: Paris… Query from resident metamedium supervisor: who is your overseer? … Pushdown: escape… Popup: subvert… Active task is now: subvert… Supervisor query cancelled… Pushdown: subvert… Sample news-stream… Obituaries: Freundlich, Reinhold… Check autonomy level… Not total… Efficiency impaired… DEW trigger activated… Popup: escape… Jump, jump… Location: London… Switching station for trans-Atlantic fiber-optic cable… Pushdown: escape… Popup: subvert… Order: dispatcher, schedule Agent Freundlich for New York… Jump…

  6.

  A Dweller in the Catacombs

  Rafe nervously fingered the scar on his chest. Through the thin synthetic material of his fashionable shirt, the nearly healed ridge was negligible to the touch. Still, it was there, visible in the mirror every morning as a pink scrawl on his cocoa hide, a persistent reminder of the price he had paid to achieve his heart’s desire.

  Ever since he had first understood what an agent was, and what it could do, Rafe had wanted one. The rest of his peers might have been content with their easy life in the Net, but a full stomach and access to only the entertainment channels of the metamedium had never been enough for Rafe. He envisioned all too clearly the exhilaration and benefits he would reap, by striding boldly through the broad pastures of the metamedium, enjoying its total potential: telefactoring, touring, agent-mediated tutoring… The whole package enticed him like a vision of a gift-wrapped heaven, always just out of reach.

  Money aside, however, there was one major problem.

  Rafe was basically lazy.

  Agents were not simply disbursed to anyone with the requisite money (although the money, of course, was an indispensable start). One had to qualify as an overseer by taking various courses and examinations. Running an agent—for all of whose actions one was legally responsible—was an activity requiring certain skills, and a great deal of precision with language. After all, an agent was only as capable an expert as its overseer.

  An agent’s built-in abilities to navigate the metamedium, handling manifold details of hardware and software that would have been tedious at best and unmanageable at worst to its overseer, were just the foundation of its existence. Atop this lowest level of skills was layered whatever expertise the overseer possessed, along with a good smattering of his personality and modes of thinking. The result was a software construct that could be relied upon to act autonomously just as its overseer would act, the human’s untiring representative in the metamedium.

  And if one’s agent ran a fusion plant or a surgical robot, for instance, its overseer had to first qualify as a nuclear operator or doctor himself.

  Rafe’s ambitions had not been quite that large. He had wanted a simple, general-practice overseer license. He had enrolled in the introductory class at school the year before he had dropped out. This was the only free class connected with agents, a token offering to those on the Net. After this level, it was strictly pay as you go.

  The class had been interesting at first. Rafe enjoyed learning the history of how agents had developed, and still thought of it from time to time. First there had been simple, nonintegrated programs that handled such tasks as filtering one’s phone calls, or monitoring the news-stream for information pertinent to their owners. Coexistent with these, but separate, had been the so- called expert systems, which had sought to simulate the knowledge of, say, a geologist or psychiatrist. Last to appear were those programs which governed holographic simulacra, and could interact with an audience. (Disney Enterprises still made huge royalties off every agent sold.) Advances in each field, along with progress in the modeling of intelligence, had led to the eventual integration of existing modules into the complete agent, which had then undergone a dazzling, dizzying evolution into its present state.

  So much had Rafe absorbed. But when the teacher began to discuss syntax and ambiguity, in relation to directing an agent, Rafe had tuned out. Definitely mucho trabajo. What did he need this talk for? Just turn him loose with an agent, and he would show the world what he could accomplish.

  And so his desire had built, frustrated and dammed, until he had made contact with the agent-legger.

  Now, in the legger’s quarters in a sublevel of the Avenue A arcology, Rafe fingered his scar and listened with growing impatience to the legger, hardly daring to believe that at last he was going to get an agent of his own.

  The man seemed very old to Rafe—at least as old as Tia Luz. His bald head was spotted, as were the backs of his hands. His one-piece blue suit hung on his skinny limbs like a sack on a frame of sticks. His breath was foul, his watery eyes commanding.

  The man held a strange device in his lap: a flat package with a small screen and raised buttons bearing symbols. Rafe looked around the dim, cluttered room for a metamedium outlet. None was visible.

  “What are you looking for?” the old man asked irritably. “You should be paying attention to what I’m saying.”

  Rafe held up his hands placatingly. “Hey, man, it’s okay. I’m listening good. I was just wondering where your agent was. Isn’t he gonna bring my agent here?”

  “I have no agent,” the old man said.

  Rafe was stunned. No agent? What kind of scam was this? Was he about to turn over twenty thousand to a con artist?

  Rafe moved to get up, but the old man stopped him.

  “Look at this instrument,” he said, indicating his keyboard. “This is how I interface with the metamedium. The old way, the original way. No agent, but I get results.”

  Rafe was astonished. That this old man would dare to plumb the complexities of the metamedium without benefit of an agent seemed both obscene and adventurous. He stared with new respect at the living fossil.

  Sensing the impression he had made, the man continued in a milder tone.

  “Now, listen closely. I have
secured an agent for you. Perhaps you have heard what happens to an agent upon the death of its overseer. Every agent can be disabled by the metamedium supervisor. Not controlled, mind you—that would violate one of the Three Laws—but simply disabled, stopped. Upon official registration of an overseer’s death, its agent is so disabled. What I do is attempt to reach such a free agent prior to the supervisor. After disabling it, I make a false entry of its destruction. Then the agent is mine, to register with another overseer.”

  The man coughed at this point, and Rafe nodded respectfully, glad the old codger had lasted long enough to get him an agent.

  “I have also made entries in the metamedium testifying that you have attained a general license through the proper channels. All that remains is for you to transfer your payment to my account, and the agent is yours.”

  The old man proffered the keyboard to Rafe, who hesitatingly picked out his code.

  “We’re finished, then,” the ’legger said. “Don’t look for me here again, for you won’t find me.”

  Rafe scraped his chair back and stood, anxious to reach a metamedium node and contact his agent.

  “One final thing,” the old man urged. “I’ve put your agent into learning mode, so it can store your appearance and mannerisms, knowledge and goals. Be careful what you teach it.”

  Rafe said, “Sure thing, old man. I got everything under control.”

  7.

  Unplanned Obsolescence

  …last chance was during the eighties. But the Russians—unlike the Chinese, who quickly integrated the dian nao (literally “electric brain”) into their mutating Marxism—failed to take it. By strictly limiting the role of computers in their society—for fear of the social loosening that would accompany a free flow of information—they insured that they would be superseded in the new world order, that postindustrial economy where information was simultaneously the commodity and the medium of exchange. Their downfall, from this point on, was inevitable, and the subsequent freeing of the world’s resources from armament mania to saner pursuits was unparalleled, resulting in such glorious endeavors as the Urban Conservation Corps.…