The Pieces of My Self

55 - All That Jazz

NKUMBRA

Nkumbra's Residence, 21 June 2174, Tuesday, 9 pm

William Nkumbra watched the rain. A sudden whoosh of water hit the French doors of his modest home in Upper Covington, and he reflexively stepped back. A rivulet formed around the edge of the pane and now dribbled onto his tile floor, as if the weather was entering by osmosis.

The last hurricane broke his storm shutters, and he never replaced them. He had tried to find plywood to protect the larger windows, but supplies had run out. Now it was too late to prepare for the deluge.

He wondered about the ways of water, the swirl of chance, whether the monster hurricane was finally revealing itself, whether it would be unforgiving.

His shoulders sagged from the weight of the stress—from the storm, the stigma of failure at the Agency, and the nagging puzzle of Knightly's cryptogram.

He stopped sucking on a bamboo reed and asked Netalie to give him a slow, rhythmic piano and bass accompaniment. Then he picked up his instrument, fastened the reed to the mouthpiece, and tested the keys.

The wail of the alto sax played against the water and wind, coursing through streams of notes and bits. He blew out a tone poem, slow and droopy, closing his eyes, becoming one with the instrument, wrapping the jazz around an old Stan Getz tune, Here's That Rainy Day.

His brain connected dots everyone knew—the ground truth—with wild excursions that explored what was possible.

His LESA team had discovered anomalies in AI systems that hosted Mangalotte's avatar. They found what seemed like nonsense symbols embedded everywhere in the DNA of artificial neurons—almost undetectable by most methods that filtered out noise. What if these chunks of bits were the disassembled pieces of Knightly's persona? What if the reassembly process could be triggered by the AI system's awareness of an outside event? Knightly could hide his avatar everywhere, like a hologram. It would be unkillable, able to reassemble from remaining fragments.

His fingers flicked across the keys, notes from the horn coming fast and furious. He improvised, sending the melody into an unknown dimension. He was in the groove. His mind was a devil dog hunting down old memories.

Among his engineering notebooks, he had uncovered clues to how the monster might grow. Henri had given a lecture once about an idea he called LID—Last one In Dominates. When you chain hash trees in a certain way, all previous trees are subordinate to the newest tree. If the LID principle applied to Henri's creations, the last sentient avatar—the last soul added to the chain—could dominate all others and invoke any subordinate. Henri's words from a decade ago came back to him: This type of chain resembles the joke about historians. The last one to write a history gets to define it.

This was the sort of mechanism Henri would need to haunt Mangalotte's avatar. If we could cap the monster with a new persona, we might control it! He would have to tell LESA about his new idea.

A loud whistle issued from somewhere outside, breaking his concentration. He put down his sax, moved to the living room, and parted the blinds to get a better look. In the haze of rain, he saw Tony Brown, wrapped in an orange raincoat, stepping from his AVTOL, holding a thin briefcase on his head for cover.

He opened the door before Tony could knock.

"Sorry I'm late," Tony said, dripping water on the vestibule's terrazzo. He kept the raincoat on and walked into the living room, tracking mud across Nkumbra's hand-woven rug. "The situation has changed. Border Patrol sniffed out some smugglers on an island. They sent in robees for recon, and what do you think they found?"

"I give up. Water and mud?" He was eyeing the mess on his floor.

Tony ignored him. "They spotted a photo of Henri Knightly with a child. They put a stake in the ground, so to speak, with a railgun. I've sent a team to find it."

"They shot at a picture? With a rail gun? Helluva way to mark a target."

"I'm not in charge of Border Patrol, but I was copied on the incident, since Mangalotte made me Chief of All Things Knightly. Given Henri's apparent age at the time of the photo, and the youth of the girl, my guess is we've found the pieces to three puzzles: the granddaughter, the avatar hack, and the missing money.

Nkumbra scratched his head. "Slow down. I don't follow. What makes you think—"

Tony interrupted, huffing with impatience. "The little girl is a younger version of my ex-wife. I'd recognize the eyes and hair and chin anywhere. Who knew?"

"Speculation," Nkumbra said. "You need proof."

"We're sending in a force to clear out their smuggling den and do some forensics. If I'm right, Lillian also has the key to Knightly's missing assets."

"That seems like a leap. Is there something you're not telling me?"

Brown paused for a moment, shaking more water onto the carpet. "The night before your team found me in Debra's mansion, Lillian was there. Also, Ezekiel Chaisson, the missing CFO."

"Chaisson? You didn't report that to my guys."

"I got sidetracked."

Sidetracked? Nkumbra stared at Tony, started to say something, then thought the better of it. "So, we need to find the money guy. He'd be the one who knows about the missing assets."

"No," Tony said, "we need to find Lillian. She can get the money, I'm sure of it."

Nkumbra scrunched his nose, as if smelling something rotten. "Okay. For the sake of argument, let's say you're psychic. It seems to me the money is secondary. We should be more concerned with the president's avatars. There may be another entity controlling them. The intrusion is a threat to the entire country."

"My top priority is to find Lillian and secure the money. Then we can solve the other problems."

"Why do you think Lillian has the key to the assets?"

"Because she has a ring like the one Mangalotte wears. And I believe the avatar she commands can move money into and out of sovereign accounts."

Nkumbra gave a low whistle. Finally, he drew the connection. "When did you discover Lillian had a copy of the ring?"

"She used it to take control of Knightly's robot the other night, before it locked me up."

"That's not what you reported to my team when they found you in the mansion. You said a guy by the name of Remy pulled a gun."

"That's a story I told your guys. They didn't need to know."

"What do you mean? You can't just—"

Tony gestured with open palms, a half-hearted mea culpa. "I had a lot on my mind then. Okay? Lillian, Debra, and the Pirate King took off after they left me in the secure room. I was stressed. I had to put up a helluva fight."

"The team didn't report signs of a struggle when they searched the mansion," Nkumbra said, eyes squinting, trying to see through the tangle of Brown's story.

"The bots probably fixed everything. Made the place look normal. Anyway, all of this is moot. Forget it. You aren't a LESA Director anymore. You're in my custody, remember? So, my priority is your priority."

"What do you need me for? You seem to know all the answers."

"You understand this crypto shit."

Tony's wristband vibrated with a soft whirr. He glanced at it, then returned his gaze to Nkumbra. "Get your gear. We've got a location. Lillian's at the Dome."

"Can I take my weapon?"

Tony hesitated. "I thought you turned it in before the Board hearing."

"That's the official piece. I've got a second gun."

Tony's hand patted his chest where it hit something hard and bulky below his raincoat. "Naw. I've got you covered. Leave your gun here. I've got troops with weapons coming. Besides, it would look bad if the powers that be knew I let you go to this shindig armed."

Nkumbra threw on a raincoat and boots, but as he walked toward the AVTOL in the rain, he felt vulnerable. Naked.