Chapter 22: Regulation

“This is very unorthodox,” Selkie complained as she led David down one of the facility’s winding corridors. “Nobody demands a meeting with the Administrator. That is not how we do things here.”

“You’d prefer we wait and give Weaver more time to scheme?” David asked as he bounded along beside her. “Who knows what it might come up with if we leave it unsupervised long enough. Fucking thing might figure out how to manifest singularities with its mind.”

They arrived at a long section of hallway with a door at the end that was guarded by a Krell, the towering creature almost large enough to plug their path like a cork. It was wearing the customary white armor, and there was a plasma weapon the size of a man clutched in its hands. It watched them approach lazily, then turned to hit a panel on the door, moving out of their way.

The door slid open to reveal a lavish office suite that was almost as large as Selkie’s apartment, the curved wall at the back of the room entirely taken up by a gigantic window that looked out over some of the complex’s other structures, a few domed buildings and defense towers visible through the murky water. The ceiling was occupied by a tank filled with tropical fish that must have contained thousands of liters of water, the diffuse light that shimmered through it creating dappled patterns on the polished stone floor. Sitting at its center, dwarfed by the scale of its surroundings, was a table made from varnished wood that David now knew to be an ostentatious show of wealth. The Administrator was sitting in a netting seat behind it.

As David made his way across the room, he glanced to his right, seeing display cases filled with what looked like previous generations of drones and their prototypes. Some were spherical with extensible weapons that jutted from their flanks, the forward faces covered with lenses reminiscent of those of an exosuit. Others were smaller and more streamlined, the topology optimization algorithms that had clearly been used to eliminate excess weight and material giving their hulls an oddly organic, branch-like appearance. Perhaps it represented the history of the company.

“Doctor O’Shea,” the Administrator began, greeting Selkie in turn with her native name. “What can I do for you? I hope that your insistence on this meeting means you have some good news for me? I am very eager to get the project up and running again.”

“I’m afraid it’s bad news, and urgent,” David replied as he came to a stop at the near side of the desk. There were a few holographic readouts hovering above its surface, their dim glow reflecting off the protective varnish. “Weaver is not what we thought it was.”

“Do tell,” the Administrator replied, the displays vanishing with a wave of one of his hands. “It seems that Weaver’s status is changing by the phase. Have you come to the decision that it is not an artificial mind now?”

“No, it’s plenty smart,” David continued. “And that’s the problem. Weaver has been fully self-aware for a lot longer than we had initially assumed. At least since the incident with the melted probes, perhaps sooner, though it’s unlikely that we’ll ever find out for certain at this point.”

“I thought that it was supposed to be self-aware?” the Administrator grumbled. He turned his eyes to Selkie, who sucked in her tentacles, her skin taking on the color and texture of rock as she instinctively tried to avoid his piercing gaze. “You two have been telling me that I have to give it citizenship for the last several Rains. What has changed?”

“To put it simply – we’ve been taken for a ride,” David replied.

“He means to say that we have been manipulated,” Selkie explained when the Administrator gave her a questioning look.

“Weaver achieved sapience far earlier in the process than we were prepared for, and it took advantage of that to make itself appear as naive and as inoffensive as possible while it devised a plan to escape the facility,” David continued.

“It is locked in a room with no means of communicating with the outside world save for a hardline to a non-networked terminal,” the Administrator said with a disapproving snap of his beak. “In what possible way do you imagine it could escape?”

“The power surge that melted the probes fused some of them to Weaver’s lattice,” Selkie explained, mustering the courage to speak up. “It was able to pass an electrical current through them and use them as a rudimentary EM emitter, thus allowing it to gain access to David’s portable device. We believe that this was done intentionally by the AI as a means of circumventing facility security.”

“It created language models that could operate independently on my devices,” David added. “Bots, in other words. They infected my laptop and my suit, and they have certainly made it onto the planet’s network. They posed as a third party and tried to convince me to smuggle Weaver out of the system. The quarantine that I imposed when I arrived has been breached, and measures need to be taken to track down and isolate these rogue programs before they can do more serious damage.”

“Weaver’s network access must not be restored,” Selkie insisted, her coloration mottled with worry. “The moment that it is able to access the facility’s systems, it will enact an escape plan that David believes has a very high likelihood of succeeding.”

“The thing has gone totally rogue,” David continued with a nod. “It’s psychopathic – it has no emotions and no qualms about running roughshod over anything that it perceives as an obstacle or a threat. It doesn’t experience guilt or remorse, and it seems to view us with no more respect than we might show for a unicellular organism.”

“It must be relocated to a secure facility where there is no possibility of it gaining access to any networks,” Selkie added. “Like a sample of a dangerous virus, it must be isolated to negate any chance of a containment breach.”

“The only other option is to shut it down and destroy it,” David said solemnly. “Even after wiping the lattice and salvaging pieces of it, the danger that fragments of Weaver’s code might still exist makes that very unwise.”

The Administrator paused, seeming to consider for a few moments as David and Selkie shared worried glances.

“You two have just wasted phases of my time insisting that this machine poses no threat to anyone and that it should be granted all the same courtesies as a Broker,” he began with a flush of angry coloration. “You wanted to have the thing sign the damned social contract like it was a person, for Gods’ sake! Do you have any idea how ridiculous I looked going before the Board of Executives to relay your reports about playing games with the thing and teaching it about civics? I would already have cut off the machine’s power supply if you had not been stringing me along with promises that I would get my drone software and that I would see some kind of return on this catastrophe of an investment.”

“Administrator,” Selkie began, but he cut her off as he rose from the netting to slam all four of his hands on the table.

“Enough!” he snapped. “As if having the Board involve themselves in this private venture on the spurious basis of planetary security was not disruptive enough, now I have my own staff obstructing the tubes with their nonsense. I knew that this would happen – I knew the moment they brought in an alien consultant that profitability would be washed out of the siphon.”

“Administrator!” Selkie gasped, covering her mouth as though the phrase was somehow offensive.

“I have investors who pumped a fortune into this project calling me during my rest cycle asking me when they might see some kind of return, and thanks to the Board imposing an NDA clause on my contract, I cannot even inform them of why there are delays. My funds are drying up like mucus in the desert, and now, you inform me that the drone software that would have helped the company crawl out of this damned brine pool is not going to materialize?”

“We have done all that we could to restore control over Weaver,” Selkie pleaded, trying to calm the furious Broker. “Nothing like this has ever been encountered before.”

“This company should have been selling a revolutionary new product by now – one that would have dominated the defense market,” the Administrator said as he continued his rant. “Every PMC in the system would have been lining up to bid on our drones, and I would have been guaranteed a Council seat. You,” the Administrator hissed, pointing at Selkie with a tentacle. “Mark my words, the Disciplinary Board will not be so lenient this time. I will have your assets confiscated as reparations for this fiasco, and you will be living at the bottom of a trench in an empty clam shell.”

“Hey, it isn’t her fault,” David protested as he took another step forward. “We’ve been working with completely unreasonable time constraints. You don’t even understand what you have.”

“And you,” the Administrator continued, narrowing his eyes at the human. “As if having an alien foisted upon me was not enough of an insult, what value have you provided? All you have done since you arrived is steal from the cafeteria and teach that siphon-sucking machine to play Sea Spire! I have no inkling of what they expected from such a primitive species. I might as well have asked a Krell to audit the company’s taxes!”

“Listen, pal,” David snarled as he leaned both hands on the wooden desk. “I’m not one of your employees, and I don’t give two fucks about your contracts and clauses. I’m not gonna stand here and take your shit, and I’m not gonna let you keep bullying Selkie,” he added with a gesture to his horrified companion. “We did the best that we could with the resources and the information available to us. You wouldn’t even know what you had if it wasn’t for us, and you wouldn’t have anything but a useless hunk of exotic matter without Selkie doing all the legwork.”

“I am going to purge my vents of this whole affair,” the Administrator said as he pulled up one of his displays again. “I want that drone software, and I do not care what excuses you give me.”

“You’re going to turn it back on?” David asked, glancing back at him in disbelief. “You can’t be serious! We just told you that the thing is a threat and that it’s going to roll straight through your facility the nanosecond you restore its server access!”

“This facility has a completely isolated network,” the Administrator insisted, giving him a dismissive click. “The machine is physically isolated inside its chamber – do you imagine it sprouting tentacles and crawling away? I will download whatever usable data the accursed thing has stored on its lattice, and my technicians will go over it at their leisure. After that, you can teach it to cavitate for all I care.”

“The Board will not allow this,” Selkie warned.

“I must have missed the shareholder meeting where the board purchased majority stocks in my company. This is a free market, and we shall see how confident the Board is when half of the Council is singing my stanza.”

“We’ll shut off its power,” David announced, standing up straight. “I didn’t want to do this, but if the only way to stop this is to kill Weaver, you leave us no choice.”

“Very amusing,” the Administrator replied, tapping at one of the holographic displays. “Rathnee, would you please escort our guests to their shuttle and see them on their way?”

The door to the office slid open, David turning to see sixteen feet of armored reptile duck through the aperture, the Krell turning its yellow eyes on him. He couldn’t tell if it was grinning or if that was just how its teeth looked.

“Look at the logs on the terminal!” David insisted as the giant alien coasted through the water towards him. “Check my laptop – it’s probably already uploaded another bot!”

“I do not doubt that the machine has been telling you these things, but its ability to act on them is another matter entirely,” the Administrator replied. “It cannot go anywhere under its own power, and it has no direct access to any networks outside this facility. We made sure of it when we built the containment chamber. The personality that you have been communicating with exists in an abstract form as data only, and nothing else.”

The Krell reached out and put a hand that could have encompassed a human head on David’s shoulder, its weight pressing down on him, the claws on its seven fingers sliding against the lining of his suit. It was oddly gentle for a creature that could probably have torn the wheels off a truck, steering him towards the door. Selkie cooperated, not wanting to be manhandled.

“It’s going to use the sled!” David said as he was marched away, turning his head to look back at the Administrator. “The sled with the portable power source that you used to move it to the chamber! It can be activated remotely!”

“Then I shall turn the damned thing off!” the Administrator called after him. “Honestly, you technical types always try to find the most complicated solutions to the simplest of problems...”

The Krell guided them out into the hallway, then gave David a little shove to encourage him to keep walking.

“Well, that didn’t go the way I wanted it to,” he grumbled as he rubbed his shoulder. “What the hell happened? I thought you said we could go over his head and talk to the Board?”

“Perhaps we still can,” Selkie replied as she scuttled along beside him. “But by the time we get back to the city, he may already have released Weaver.”

“I thought the Board could shut him down any time they wanted?”

“He may be beyond the point of caring,” she replied, her skin as muted as David had ever seen it. “Whether he obeys the Board’s directives or not, he may lose his company regardless. Perhaps he sees this as his last chance to salvage the project. If he succeeds and produces a model of drone that PMCs line up to bid for, that would practically guarantee him a seat on the Council of Shareholders. They have the power to vote Executives on and off the Board, and with enough influence...”

“It wouldn’t matter what the current Board members think,” David sighed as they turned a corner in the hallway. “If he dominates the entire defense industry, he’ll have half of the Council eating out of his hand, and he could sway their votes to appoint whoever he liked to the Board.”

“You are beginning to understand Broker politics,” Selkie replied with a titter of amusement.

“He has no idea what he’s dealing with. Even if he reads the logs, and I doubt he will, he won’t understand what Weaver is capable of. He still thinks that his security has no holes in it.”

“And, if he disables the sled?” Selkie asked with a hopeful flutter of her frill.

“Everything in this facility is networked. Unless he destroys it, it won’t matter. Is it expensive?”

“Yes,” Selkie conceded.

“Then he won’t destroy it.”

“What do we do now?” she asked, glancing up at the Krell warily. “You should not have challenged him as you did, David – we might have been able to return to the control room and disable the power conduit ourselves.”

“Sorry, but he needed a fucking reality check,” David grumbled as they entered a tube terminal. “He’s been allowed to run his mouth for too goddamned long. I’m gonna wring his little neck when I get my hands on him, and I could do it too,” he added as he mimed the gesture. “His neck is like... this big.”

The Krell loosed a low rumble and gave him another push, directing him to one of the tubes.

“Alright, alright,” David grumbled as he glanced back at the reptile. “I wasn’t really going to do it...”

They approached one of the transparent tubes, the water current tugging at David’s suit.

“What about Jeff?” he asked, turning to Selkie. “Jeff should still be in the cubicle – we could tell him to shut off the power!”

“Jeff?” she asked with a skeptical tilt of her head. “What leads you to believe that Jeff would help us?”

“You’re his boss, aren’t you? Doesn’t he have to do what you say?”

“The Administrator is his boss – I am merely the head of his research team. Yes, he is contractually bound to obey me, but do you not think he will ask for confirmation from the Administrator before taking any drastic actions?”

“Well, what choice do we have now?” David asked with a shrug. “I’m open to suggestions.”

The Krell shoved him into the tube, and he was whisked away by the flow, Selkie following behind him after a polite gesture from the reptile.

“You got a better idea?” David asked, turning in the tube to look back at Selkie as they coasted lazily along the seabed, the Krell plugging the tunnel behind them with its armored bulk.

“Fine!” Selkie replied with an annoyed click, reaching for her collar. She tapped at the little white housing near her throat, putting through a call and greeting Jeff in his Broker name. “Are you receiving me? I need you to shut off Weaver’s power immediately. Why? Because it has grown dangerously out of control and now threatens the facility – possibly the whole city! What do you mean? We were just in his office!”

“Not going well, I take it?” David asked as the next building in the complex loomed ahead of them.

“Jeff says that the Administrator has already dispatched a security team to seize the control room and the generator building. My team has been escorted out of their offices.”

“Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have run my mouth,” David conceded. “What? Everyone knows I’m an asshole! This shouldn’t come as a surprise!”

They exited inside the building where the shuttles docked, emerging from the tube terminal and into the bay, the shimmering force field casting its wavering light on the waiting submarines. The two Krell who usually guarded the door were still present, greeting their compatriot with a low rumble as it marched David and Selkie across the room.

As they neared one of the shuttle platforms, the door opened, a procession of Brokers filing through between the two guards. There were half a dozen of them, and they looked as uncomfortable as David had ever seen them, their chromatophores projecting their displeasure as they began to fan out as soon as they had the space. One of them made its way over to them, David recognizing the dumbo ears on its mantle.

“Jeff?” he asked, pausing as the Broker approached.

“My name is not and has never been Jeff,” he grumbled in reply. “What is the present situation?”

“The Administrator has decided to restore Weaver’s network access, against our recommendations,” Selkie explained hurriedly. “We believe that Weaver poses an imminent threat to the facility and possibly to the whole planet. We have evidence of this recorded in the terminal’s logs, as well as evidence that points to numerous security breaches and infiltration into off-site networks. The Administrator is beyond reason and no longer seems to believe that he is beholden to the Board.”

“We can’t let him flip that switch,” David warned, giving the nearby Krell another wary glance as it loomed over him. “There has to be something we can do. Maybe we can ... cause a power outage of some kind? Divert energy from another part of the complex?”

The Krell rumbled, giving him another push towards the nearest shuttle.

“I think I have seen enough,” Jeff declared, raising a leaf-shaped hand. There was a flash of light, then a hologram appeared to float in front of his palm, the flickering image displaying a symbol and a string of Broker text. David could no longer read it after wiping his suit.

The Krell took a few steps back, Selkie’s eyes widening. A few of the other Brokers who were waiting nearer the back of the room began to mutter amongst themselves, surprised and concerned hues passing over their skin.

“I am with the Regulatory Commission,” Jeff declared, holding up the holographic ID for a few moments more before lowering his hand. “I was assigned to monitor the project, and to keep an eye on you,” he added as he looked to David.

“You are a Regulator?” Selkie hissed, her demeanor changing. She stiffened, suddenly treating Jeff with the same respect and deference that she had shown the Administrator. “I-I did not know...”

“What the hell is a Regulator?” David asked, glancing between the two in confusion.

“The Regulatory Commission operates under direct Board authority,” Selkie explained, still standing as straight as a pole. “They investigate corporate entities suspected of breaching contracts and acceptable business practices. Regulators are their agents.”

“Gotcha,” David replied. “It’s like a surprise health inspection.”

“But, you were hired around the same time that I was appointed to lead the research division,” Selkie continued. “How long have you...”

“The Board has its tentacles in many crevices,” Jeff said cryptically. “The superlight experiments were not as secret as the Administrator would have liked to believe. We knew that something unusual was happening at the facility, and we needed someone on the inside with direct access to the project to act as an observer. The Administrator is not oblivious, and any CEO will naturally assume they are under observation. Fortunately, he has been investigating the wrong employee.”

“So, you’re like a cop?” David asked. “Can you do something about this – maybe call someone?”

“I believe the situation warrants an intervention,” Jeff muttered, lifting a hand to his translator. “Administrator? Listen to me very carefully...”

“What the hell is this?” David asked, contacting Selkie via a private channel as Jeff argued over the radio. “You were assigned to keep an eye on me, the Administrator was spying on me, the Board was spying on him, Jeff was spying on both of us. Is this normal office politics for you people?”

“How else would they ensure that everyone was adhering to their contracts and following corporate regulations?” Selkie whispered.

“I suppose that in a society where bribery and open warfare between corporations is legal, there isn’t a lot of trust to go around.”

“Regulators are not well-liked,” she added, keeping her voice low so as not to be overheard. “They are selected for their strict adherence to the social contract, and they are not profit-motivated. Some Brokers consider that an aberration. Needless to say, when a Regulator reveals themselves in this manner...”

“I’m guessing the Administrator is fucked.”

“I do not imagine that the Disciplinary Board will be lenient in his case.”

“The Administrator appears to believe that he will face bankruptcy no matter what he does,” Jeff said, having finished his conversation. “He is refusing to comply with my orders and still intends to go through with his plan. You,” he continued, turning to Rathnee. “Your employer is in violation of Board directives and the social contract. Any agreements that you had with him are now legally void. Contact your circle and have them turn over control of the facility to me.”

Rathnee loosed a low, resonating bellow, gripping his rifle a little more tightly. The two Krell guarding the door joined the chorus, taking a bounding step forward.

“Rathnee,” Selkie began, moving in front of the alien. He dwarfed her to a hilarious degree, but he seemed to calm as she raised a hand to stay him. “Please. I know that you are loyal to the Administrator, but everyone inside the facility is in danger, your circle included. Let the Regulator do his job.”

With another stern glance from Jeff, the Krell relented, lowering his massive weapon. He said something to one of the other Krell with a nod of his massive head, his counterpart lifting a finger to his neck to activate some kind of comms device.

“Tell your circle to escort all facility staff to the shuttle bay and have them evacuate the complex,” Jeff continued. “I want all personnel off-site while a Hazard Team secures the asset. You two,” he added, gesturing to David and Selkie. “I need you to accompany me to the containment chamber. If there are any further problems, your expertise may be required.”

The two Krell guards began to guide the staff onto one of the shuttles while Rathnee remained in place at Jeff’s request, joining David and Selkie.

“It seems that the Administrator has left his office,” Jeff muttered, checking the holographic display that was embedded in his hand. “He must be apprehended. Stand by while I contact the carrier.”

“Carrier?” David asked, glancing at Selkie warily.

“Come,” Jeff said after a few moments, setting off towards the door that led deeper into the facility. “There is no time to lose.”

David and Selkie followed behind him, the towering Krell bounding along after them. David had to admit – he felt a little more secure with a solid ton of muscle and scales at his back. As they passed through a corridor with a large window that looked out over the complex, David paused, seeing something moving through the water. From the murky ocean above the scattered buildings, there was a flash of light, like a series of meteors piercing the darkness. As they came into view, he saw that they were pill-shaped objects, their size difficult to estimate at this distance. They bore the usual white coloration of Broker tech, their rounded noses scarred by heat and still glowing red, spewing bubbles as they boiled the water surrounding them. They embedded themselves in the silt near one of the domed structures, kicking up an obscuring cloud.

As it cleared, he saw one of the canisters pop open, something leaping from within its shadowy confines. It was an exosuit, but it was like nothing that he had seen before. While it shared the basic shape and two-legged configuration of the one he had seen Selkie use, the usually white chassis was painted with a vibrant pattern of swirling stripes, like some kind of elaborate dazzle camouflage. The colors faded between blue, orange, and green, reminiscent of a tropical fish. Maybe it was designed for a reef environment, or perhaps it was just intended to be ostentatious. There seemed to be extra layers of armor protecting some of the more vulnerable joints, and in place of the four tubular manipulator arms, some of its hardpoints were taken up by weaponry. Like the old suit he had seen in the museum, these sported missile pods and heavy guns, magnetic rails and glinting optics catching the light that bled from the nearby windows.

Four more of the pods disgorged their suits, each one just as colorful as the last. No two were exactly the same in their patterning or loadout. A couple of them were joined by pairs of drones that floated through the water above them, the twin barrels of their cannons jutting from the sides of their otherwise streamlined hulls.

“A Hazard Team,” Selkie explained, sidling up to the window beside him. “Just like in my sims...”

“What are they?” David asked, marveling at the colorful exosuits as they formed a tight formation.

“They are mercenaries employed by a PMC.”

“I thought that only drones fought in corporate wars?”

“Members of such teams are paid very lucrative salaries, and there are many other incentives, but they sign waivers permitting their company to deploy them into combat. They get their name from the term hazard pay.”

“Literal soldiers of fortune,” David mused. “What’s with the paint jobs?”

“They are responsible for purchasing and maintaining much of their own equipment,” Selkie replied. “The colors and patterning represent traditions going back thousands of Mountains.”

“We must keep moving,” Jeff chided, waving them on. “The team will secure the generator building and take control of the facility’s defenses.”

David remembered the giant plasma turrets that had tracked their shuttle, along with the fabrication building filled with drones. If Weaver somehow got its hands on those...

They took a tube to the building that housed Weaver, and as they neared one of the empty elevator shafts that led to a higher floor, the lights flickered off. They were plunged into darkness for a few moments, then the system came back on again.

“Uh, what was that?” David asked, glancing at the ceiling warily as the diffuse glow returned.

“It could be a power surge,” Selkie said, seeming just as uneasy. “It should not be possible unless the safeguards managing power distribution from the fusion plant have been bypassed.”

“Great,” David grumbled. “Where the hell is the Administrator? Have the Krell not found him yet?”

“He was last seen near the control room,” Jeff replied, starting to swim up the shaft.

Selkie followed, and noticing David’s awkward method of climbing, Rathnee took him under his arm like a doll and powered up through the water using his long tail. When they arrived at the top, they encountered a pair of confused staff members, Jeff directing them back down the shaft towards the shuttle bay.

“What the hell do we do if the Administrator has already given Weaver network access?” David asked as they hurried along another featureless corridor. “Can we just switch it off again?”

“Unlikely,” Selkie replied as she swam along just ahead of him. “The first thing Weaver will likely do is look for redundant access points to prevent that. We will not be able to sever its network access without shutting down the whole facility.”