New Mode

.CHAPTER(ONE) - Part 2/2

The elevator took him straight to Anya's office level. He stepped onto the landing and a small red 'X' appeared in the lower left corner of his vision, transposed over the room by his retinal overlays. The entire floor, and many others in the tower, was cybervaulted. The only communications in or out were through authorized, heavily encrypted relay ports. There was no safer place he could think of to discuss what he had come to tell Anya.

Through the office's transparent alloy windows and a haze of neon he could just make out the outline of Old Town far below. On its right sat New Town, its million sparkling lights screaming like firecrackers as they rushed up and burst into clouds of sapphire and violet. Between the two collections of spires the blueish gray Hudson crawled tirelessly south, towards the harbor's vast flood zones and sea bogs.

A faint noise made him turn to the large holodesk at the center of the room. Normally immaculate, the desk was littered with plates and catering trays from the kitchens deep within the bowels of the tower. A small sphere of light had flickered to life above the desk and was rotating in place, displaying an empty room with unfinished, concrete walls. John leaned closer, trying to remember where he had seen the emblem on the wall before.

A muffled voice came from the direction of Anya's office. A moment later a second voice responded with something he could not quite make out.

"Anya?" John asked loudly.

The voices ceased, and in the corner of his eye he saw a flash of movement in the holodesk's projection. He turned back to it but the image had already cut out, leaving him with the fading impression of two crystal blue eyes staring down at him.

He remembered where he seen the emblem that had adorned the concrete walls in the holodesk's projection. The coat of arms for the Corporate Sovereignty of Romania. Cyberarms dealers. The world capital of the unterweb.

A ribbon of grayish light sprang across the room. This time the projection was not above the holodesk but came from some unseen sources mounted along the ceiling. A young man with hair as black as oil, wearing an equally black suit, materialized three feet ahead of John.

"Evening Mr. Quantum," the young man said. "Can I get you anything?"

"No thank you Richard."

The avatar made an obsequious gesture that was half nod, half bow. "Thank you for coming. Ms. Kruspe has been rather reserved of late, I hope you have more luck with her than I."

"Thank you," John said, and Richard stepped back and gestured towards Anya's office.

It occurred to John that Richard had not greeted him immediately at the lift as was usual. He had never known Richard's systems to demonstrate the slightest of flaws in the past. The avatar had only seemed to detect his presence once the holodesk communications line had terminated. Almost as if the call had been blocking or disabling Richard's sub-systems. John wondered what purpose there would be to doing so, why Anya would bother keeping anything from her own personal assistant systems.

"Hello John," a thin voice said.

At the very back of the Anya's office a chair was turned to face the windows, its outline circumscribed by an incandescent glow. A hand appeared from behind the chair and beckoned him forward.

John stepped around the side of the chair and looked down at the worn face framed by soft, silver hair. Its features were familiar, but there was something about the face John had never grown fully accustomed to. Anya Kruspe, in addition to being the world's most prolific artificial intelligence expert, seemed herself in some way synthetic- or inhuman at least- as if a long time ago she had shed her designation as a member of the species to become the first of a brand new form of life, not a person so much as a living artifact of raw intelligence. Perhaps more extrahuman than inhuman. Robed in an aura that emanated from her in slow, palpable waves.