[Republished] A World Gone Virtual (8 in Science Fiction 3/8/13)

Chapter Twenty-one

They advance into the room, one shutting the door. The man who had spoken stops a few feet away from us. The other agents flank him, all of them staring grimly at us.

"Mr. Thomas, we meet again," says the agent who had spoken. Then I recognize him: it's Agent Gray. How he retained the memory of his human operator, I don't know, maybe the machines gave him the memory of it or something... Either way, it's quite creepy.

Jared stares at them in confusion. "What did I do this time?" he says in annoyance.

One of the agents to Gray's left pulls a small device from her suit pocket. She hands it to Agent Gray, who holds it up. "This is a recording of something you said approximately four minutes ago. Threats to the System are very serious, Mr. Thomas, and we will act in its protection."

He clicks the recorder and the recording begins to play.

"Maybe the code is there for the Director. If she gets out of hand. To kill her. I'd do it." Jared's offhand words are clear in the silence of my apartment. But, given recent events, did he mean it? That's something I'm not sure of anymore.

"Threats...?" Jared says slowly, almost to himself. "She can be killed, then?"

"You are a known threat, Mr. Thomas. Four and a half months ago, you revealed the reality of the simulation to two Artificial Consciousness Units, causing them to experience system cascade-failures and eventual shutdown. And as for the Director, yes, she can be terminated. Her death would mean the shutdown of the System, as she is its personification, its embodiment. She is, in essence, the Sphere itself."

"If she's that important, why is she able to die?" I ask. The agent turns to me.

"Every system has strategic weaknesses, in case of malfunction. If the Director were impervious to deletion--and if she began to malfunction--there would be no way to remove her. It is necessary, and she is designed that way for that precise reason. She knows this. However," he says, his voice growing cold, "her programming grants her highly-specialized self-defense mechanisms, so the average person--if he met her with that intent--could not delete her."

"If the Director is the 'embodiment' of the System, if she were deleted for a malfunction, wouldn't that destroy the Sphere?" AJ says.

"Not if we got a proxy system running before it happened," says the female agent.

"Proxy system?" I say.

She addresses me. "We would design an alternate Operating System for the Sphere...and for the rest of our world." Then she looks over at Jared. "However, the Director is not the malevolent force you construe her to be, Mr. Thomas. She is compassionate to the needs of humans, and she has realized this goal through the benign overseeing of your species. We will learn to coexist on this planet, we sapient beings. The Director will ensure it."

Agent Gray steps forward. "And now, Mr. Thomas, you will find that we are not so lenient with you anymore. Threats to the Director's existence are something we take very seriously. For this, you are under arrest."

Jared is handcuffed by an agent before he can even move. I've never seen an agent move so fast, it was like he blurred...

"Fuck you!" Jared spits at Agent Gray.

"We'll be seeing you," Gray says to AJ and me as he leads Jared out of the apartment with the other agents.

. . .

Jared is convicted by the Department of Justice, which is operated solely by intelligent machines, of threatening to kill the Director. Since he was just talking about it, and hadn't made any plans to actually do the thing, he is sentenced to only two weeks in the Penitentiary.