The Sentience Machine

By Graham Storrs

The Sentience Machine is the sequel to The Credulity Nexus, a fast-paced, science fiction thriller set at the end of the 21st century.

Two years have passed since PI Rik Sylver became involved in the credulity nexus affair and things are looking up for him – until his old nemesis, Rivers Valdinger, shows up with a message from Omega Point. Rivers is a “zombie” – the mind of a dead human uploaded into a powerful robot body. Omega Point is a “ghost farm” a satellite, orbiting the Sun, with the disembodied minds of 20,000 dead rich people living inside its virtual world. The message Rivers brings is that Omega Point is under attack by an unknown enemy and Martin Lanham, the uberghost who runs Omega Point, is holding one of Rik’s friends hostage until Rik finds out who the culprit is.

Once again, Rik and Rivers become unlikely allies as they track down the perpetrator. Once again, they quickly find themselves tangled up in a web of lies and misdirection, prejudice, deadly danger, and high-level corruption, as they stumble towards a discovery that neither of them could have foreseen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graham Storrs
• Release date: Feb 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9780992498818

Graham Storrs

Graham Storrs is a science fiction writer who lives miles from anywhere in rural Australia with his wife and a Tonkinese cat. He has published many short stories in magazines and anthologies as well as three children's science books and a large number of academic and technical pieces in the fields of psychology, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.He has published a number of sci-fi novels, in four series; Timesplash (three books), the Rik Sylver sci-fi thriller series (three books), the Canta Libre space opera trilogy. and the Deep Fracture trilogy. He has also published an augmented reality thriller, "Heaven is a Place on Earth", a sci-fi comedy novel, "Cargo Cult", a dark comedy time travel novel, "Time and Tyde", and an urban sci-fi thriller, "Mindrider."

Book preview

Chapter 1

At the very edge of Ivan's perception something stirred. He turned to look, the station's radar and lidar arrays moving to follow the line of his virtual gaze, the radio and optical telescopes aligning themselves to the focus of his attention. Was that something? A tiny speck of blackness where there should have been starlight? A fuzzy patch of infra red, a half-degree warmer than the space around it?

Lanham, he said. I think we've got company. He tagged the message with the coordinates and felt Lanham's presence as the man joined him. They stood together in a darkened virtual space, as if they stood on the outer skin of the space station.

What is it?

I don't know. Either it's the best-stealthed ship I've ever seen, or it's thermal noise in the instruments.

But Ivan had spent years staring into the blackness around them. He knew what thermal noise felt like. And this felt wrong.

Passing traffic? Lanham asked.

Not likely. Omega Point orbited the Sun at the L4 Lagrangian Point, a hundred and fifty million kilometres ahead of the Earth. There was rarely any traffic out there unless it was visiting the station. There. Did you see that?

No.

But Ivan had seen it, the faintest flicker from the radar. A reflection.

A meteorite? Lanham asked. Something black, small...

I want to send out a flare.

Do it.

And the little missile was off and running with just a thought, accelerating at twenty Gs away from the station at an angle to the putative intruder's trajectory.

We should deploy electronic countermeasures, Ivan said.

Lanham nodded. You're worried, he said.

It's an attack. I'm certain.

You've been wrong before.

Once. In the early days. I know these systems better now. We should shoot it.

Lanham's tone was contemptuous. And hope it isn't a pleasure cruiser on a new route? Or a UNPF spy come to take a look at us? Is it in range?

Ivan shrugged. Sure. In space, everything was in range. The only question was how long the missile would take to reach its target. The flare had powered up to two kilometres a second in the ten seconds before its fuel was spent. Now it was almost a hundred kilometres from the station. That should do it, said Ivan and triggered the flare. It exploded with a brilliance that briefly outshone the Sun.

Gotcha, said Ivan as his telescopes picked up the reflections in a wide range of electromagnetic frequencies. The ship appeared as a blinking light in a virtual schematic overlaid on the station and its environs. The data block that followed the light gave estimates of the ship's distance, speed, mass, materials, and even a couple of guesses at its make and model. It was no pleasure cruiser.

Call it, said Lanham. Warn it.

You're kidding.

Just do it.

Ivan bit his tongue and made the call, but even as he began broadcasting, the sensors flashed warnings. Multiple launches, Ivan said. They're shooting at us. Deploying decoys and chaff. Puffs of vapour erupted from around the space station as decoy missiles took off, electronically pretending to be Omega Point. Clouds of metal fragments and ribbons were blasted after them, surrounding the station with the electromagnetic equivalent of a dense fog. Anti-missile defences online.

Now you can shoot it, Lanham said, startling Ivan with his calm. The missiles leapt from their tubes. Time to impact?

Ivan studied the virtual world around them. We'll hit them in twenty-one minutes. They'll hit us in twenty-six. A small read-out was running, giving the station's chances of survival based on available data on all threats and countermeasures. At the moment their chance of surviving was barely fifteen per cent.

Plenty of time then, said Lanham and initiated the emergency evacuation procedure. There were no klaxons or flashing lights. The station merely began copying its twenty-thousand uploaded inhabitants and beaming their minds to an auxiliary station a thousand kilometres away. Since everyone aboard Omega Point was an upload – a copied human mind running on the station's powerful quantum computers – no-one's life was in danger unless their enemy also knew about the auxiliary.

Why now? Ivan asked.

The attack? Good question. It had to happen sooner or later. As you know, we've been preparing for more than a decade.

Ivan had been looking after the station's defences for most of that decade. His qualifications as a weapon's engineer had been the main reason he had been granted a place on the station. A vast fortune was a pre-requisite, of course, but, these days, earning a place on Omega Point took rather more than that.

More interesting to me is who it might be, said Lanham. Any clues?

Not many. I'd say the ship was an adapted mining freighter. The kind you can get for small change at a junkyard. The stealth modifications are very sophisticated and very expensive. Military grade. Same with the missiles. Very good but not as good as ours. Russian, maybe, from the chemical composition of the exhaust. They'll be hard to hit.

Doesn't sound like a government, then, unless they are trying not to look like what they are. One of the big corporations? One of the churches?

Ivan shrugged. A super-rich individual could have afforded this.

A smile flicked across Lanham's face. Every one of us has enemies. All our businesses have competitors. The churches hate us. Many governments might profit from eliminating us. As I said, it was only a matter of time.

Omega Point was an exclusive club for dead trillionaires. You had to be rich to afford uploading, but not that rich. Any old millionaire could have themselves scanned and put into a computer or a robot body. There were many communities of dead rich people on Earth, in orbit, and on the Moon. But Omega Point was special. Not just the world's most successful business people but also organised crime bosses, heads of state, and super-rich individuals wanted to go there. So many, in fact, that it had grown richer and more exclusive all the time. And, since the Life Extension by Cerebral Upload Act of 2045 had empowered uploads to continue the financial activities of their deceased originals, Omega Point controlled a significant portion of Earth's economy – legal and illegal. Its inhabitants now represented the largest concentration of wealth in the whole solar system.

Anti-missile missiles began to pop out of their tubes. Their targets identified and locked, they squirmed off into the darkness to find them.

Lasers charged, Ivan said. The information was there in the displays, but Ivan was never sure just how well Lanham understood these systems, so he read it out anyway. Whatever enemy missiles got past the anti-missile missiles would face a bank of laser canon. The lasers were the last line of defence. Anything that got past them, would hit the station.

Any response to the hail? Lanham asked.

No. Did you think there would be?

Lanham shrugged. Some of the people who want us dead are not altogether sane. I thought whoever it is might want to gloat a bit. Instead they've hedged their bets and decided to remain anonymous in case they fail. It eliminates one or two candidates, I think.

Ivan wondered if Lanham was referring to Newton Cordell and his friends. It was only two years since Cordell had tried to set Lanham up as a mass murderer. Cordell ran the enormous Titan Engineering Corporation, the system's biggest business. He was also a fundamentalist Christian who hated the whole idea of uploaded minds and actively lobbied to stop the practice. He had almost pulled off an elaborate plan to trick Lanham into destroying the Moon's largest city, Heinlein. If that had happened, nothing would have saved Omega Point from Earth's retribution.

The ship's firing its main engines, Ivan said, seeing the heat signature. It's going to ram us.

Blow it up, said Lanham. Use the biggest warhead we've got. We don't want too much debris hitting the station. Spread it about a bit.

They watched the missile slide out of its tube and accelerate away.

I take it you meant the biggest conventional warhead, Ivan said. If we set off a nuke, we'll definitely have the cops out here to see what happened.

Of course.

They waited as the seconds ticked by.

You've been here since the beginning, haven't you? Ivan said, breaking a long silence.

I was the fifth person ever to be uploaded.

You're joking. You were in Dr. Crane's original experiment?

Yes, I was. Elvira was part of that group too. She was uploaded before me even. He smiled that enigmatic smile again, just a twist of the lips, a Mona Lisa smile, hinting at secret thoughts and sophisticated amusements. She's the conscience I never had.

Ivan had met Elvira only once. Like Lanham, she was part of the Omega Point aristocracy. She didn't involve herself with the running of their community but she was something of a spiritual leader to many of them. Not in a crazy, religious kind of way, more like a wise-woman someone people could turn to when the insanity of being a disembodied mind grew too much to deal with.

And what were you before you died? If Ivan was going to sit here waiting to be blown to pieces, he might as well ask some of the questions that had always wanted to ask.

Nothing much, said Lanham. It's all in the files.

Maybe, thought Ivan, but the files were all off-limits to him. He'd already tried and failed to access them.

I miss being alive, Ivan said. The living called them ghosts – ghosts in the machine. It bothers me that I don't have a body, something substantial to point to and say, 'This is me.' He had no idea why he was saying this – especially to Lanham. Perhaps it had been the mention of Elvira. Perhaps it was the missiles, dodging and weaving their way towards him.

Get yourself a robot, Lanham said. Spend some time embodied. It's not so bad. Lots of people prefer it.

I might. But using a nano-material robot body to host his mind, wasn't quite the same as having a real one, being human again. In that way mean people had of getting to the heart of things, robot uploads were known as zombies. The undead. And they were about as welcome on Earth as real zombies would be. The Moon was different, and out in the Belt. There, a lot of uploads who didn't want to live inside the big virtual worlds – or couldn't afford it – would take jobs with the mining companies, or building Alltheway Station. Jobs in space, where it was too dangerous for the living, created societies where zombies were welcome, or, at least, respected.

A bright flower blossomed in the darkness. One of the anti-missile missiles had found its mark. Then there was another, and then a whole garden of them. Ivan glanced at the display, it jumped to show their likelihood of survival at almost eighty-five per cent. A thrill of excitement went through him. There was a chance they might live through this. If the lasers did what they were designed to...

Already they were finding their targets, the handful of missiles that had evaded the anti-missile missiles, but they were finding it hard to lock onto the little, fast-manoeuvring rockets, with their radar-absorbent skins and their shielded exhausts. Ivan helped them where he could, running his clock speed up to maximum so that he could think as fast as the little computers on-board the missiles. He was a better pattern-matcher than the station's targeting computers and could often tag a missile quicker and more easily than they could.

One by one the missiles were targeted, and heated by the lasers until they failed or exploded. But the process wasn't fast enough. Even as the targets were destroyed, the survival indicator fell and fell towards zero. One of the missiles was going to get through. There was nothing they could do to stop it. Ivan could even see it, but it was outside his targeting envelope, meaning he couldn't get a laser to point at it for long enough to fry it.

He turned to Lanham, frantic. He wanted to apologise. His systems had let them down. His defences had failed and Omega Point would be destroyed. It was all his fault. It was bad enough dying once. Now they would all have to die again.

But Lanham was as calm as ever. He seemed preoccupied, gazing with still eyes at the incoming missile, the one that would kill them, as if it were a rainbow, or a lover's Moon. As the last of its fellows blew themselves apart under the lasers' constant beams, this one slender tube of high explosives swooped down on them like a bird of prey.

A movement caught Ivan's eye. Across the metal skin of the great space station he seemed to be standing on, a pair of doors swung open. It took him a moment to check the schematics and orient himself. It was a docking bay. Not one of those the maintenance ships used when they brought supplies and work crews. Those were standing empty around the other side of the station. This was the one they called the Parking Garage, where some tenants kept their private spaceships. This was almost empty too. Omega Point was so far from Earth that it was rare that anyone would take the trouble to visit. But a few kept ships all the same. Lanham, for instance.

Ivan flinched as flame erupted from the bay doors followed by the black saucer of Lanham's own ship, The Phenomenon of Man, all engines firing on full as it catapulted out of the bay and into space. The blazing exhaust washed over Ivan and he could see nothing as white-hot flame scoured the outer hull where he stood. He moved his virtual viewpoint five hundred metres to the side and saw the ship blast into space with the unstable ferocity of a firework rocket. The incoming missile, almost upon them, tried to dodge the rapidly-closing obstacle but could only do so by turning at such a steep angle it's trajectory took it clear of the station. Too low on fuel to turn back, the missile self-destructed harmlessly as it shot past the station.

The Phenomenon of Man flipped itself over and began a gentle deceleration.

Ivan returned his viewpoint to the blackened hull of Omega Point. Lanham was watching his ship manoeuvre with the same, implacable calm. It was a while before Ivan could even steady himself enough to speak. Lanham looked across at him.

You can fly your ship by remote, Ivan said.

I like to have control, said Lanham. It was one of the improvements I made when I commissioned her last year.

That was a hell of a stunt.

Lanham gave him his Mona Lisa smile gain. I now have to explain to some very powerful people why I had to burn their private yachts to a cinder to save their asses.

He was right. Anything else in the Parking Garage would be toast.

I ... Ivan tried to explain his shame at having almost cost them everything, but the words wouldn't come.

We underestimated our enemies, Lanham said, his crisp, businesslike tone so much at odds with the emotional turmoil inside Ivan. And we underspecified our defences. Start rebuilding them at once, and this time try to imagine facing something much, much worse. Our enemies will have learned as much from this as we did. Don't worry about the cost. I'll have a whip 'round.

Lanham's virtual form disappeared, leaving Ivan alone on the hull. Out in space, a bright flash showed where their last and largest missile had found the converted freighter and blown it to pieces. Some of those pieces would continue their original trajectory and rain down on the station. A light drizzle, Ivan thought, compared to the hurricane that had just missed them.

Chapter 2

Rik Sylver was back in Heinlein, climbing an endless ladder through a narrow tunnel. He was sweating and exhausted but he had to keep going. The tunnel was getting narrower and his arms and legs felt like jelly. He looked up and there was the tiny dot of light at the top. He pushed himself harder, his breathing laboured and painful, on and on until he reached the top. He heaved his head and shoulders up through the hole and there was the cop, Burleigh, with the barrel of his enormous gun right in Rik's face. You can't win, Rik, the voice behind the gun said, and light exploded in his face.

He woke up, the covers in a crumpled heap, his body tense and slick with sweat. It took him a moment to realise it was just that damned dream again. He settled back into the bed, panting, and closed his eyes. Maybe Fariba was right and he should see a shrink about this. It was wearing him out.

Irritated, he kicked off the quilt that was wrapped around his ankles and sat on the edge of the bed, his head hanging between his broad shoulders. One good thing, he told himself. At least it wasn't that dream where he was having sex with a supermodel and she turned out to be a killer robot and pulled his arms off. That one was the worst, and he didn't even dare mention it to Fariba.

A wave of misery ran through him and had him on his feet and pacing across the room. He should probably stop thinking about Fariba like that. Chances were, she wasn't his girlfriend any more. He hadn't even spoken to her for three weeks and the last time he had seen her had been... well... complicated.

He gave the command for the windows to clear and looked down across the River Thames, brown and turgid under a dark grey sky. To the south, in Vauxhall, was Fariba's office. To the north in Camden was his own. He'd call her today, if he could, but she was undercover, probably out of the country, and unreachable. You could expect a certain amount of separation when your girlfriend was an MI6 field agent, but Fariba had volunteered for this particular assignment, whatever it was, just to get away from him. She didn't actually say that, but that's what he thought, and that's what he accused her of. And that's when she said, Get help, Rik. I mean it, and left without saying goodbye.

He checked the time on his cogplus. Not even six o'clock. Was it just him, or did London look dirtier and more worn out than ever that morning? He thought again about going back to California, about getting in a convertible and driving through the desert, not caring where he went.

When he had returned from Heinlein and set up shop as a P.I. in London, it had seemed like a good idea. He used the money he took from Lanham to rent office space in Euston Tower, hired some very sharp people, and started pitching his company at the corporate market. And it all worked out for once. Tower Investigations had hooked a couple of big clients within the first few months and from there had grown exponentially. By the end of the first year, he'd made back his initial investment and now, after two years, he was ready to open up new offices in the US and Germany.

But success wasn't as much fun as it should have been. Running a big and growing business left Rik no time to take part in any of the investigations his teams were pursuing. In fact, it left him no time to do anything at all except juggle numbers and attend meetings with people who were themselves one or two stages removed from the real work. It certainly left him little time for a private life. One of the reasons he and Fariba had been drifting away from each other lately. The new offices would mean more work and yet another layer of management between him and the good stuff.

The irony, to Rik at any rate, was that he was doing so well at it. He seemed to have a knack for making the right choices and signing the right clients. He was an LAPD cop, for chrissake. Or had been for most of his working life, until he'd married and gone off the rails. And, after that, he'd been a PLEO – a United Nations-licenced P.I. – on the Moon, where he'd spent more time drinking his wives' bar dry than actually working for clients.

But the events of two years ago had changed him. So had knowing Fariba Freymann. The emotional leash that had held him back and dragged him down all his life had snapped, it seemed, and now he was off and running. And it helped a lot that he had come out of it a wealthy man. Yet that wild ride as he chased after the credulity nexus had scarred him. Good friends had died. Both his wives had died. And he had come so close to death so often in those few days that he couldn't stop his mind playing distorted versions of it over and over, every time he closed his eyes.

Even so, there were days – many of them – when he would trade his desk job, and his fortune, to be out on the streets doing something that made him feel alive again.

He showered and dressed and took the lift down to the street where he had a coffee and Danish in a café and watched the news on his fancy new cogplus. Then he walked the rest of the way to his office. People greeted him as Mr. Sylver as he went through the security checkpoint and reception. He hated that.

His office could only be reached by passing through his PA's office first. When he tried, his PA, a bright young thing called Paul, leapt up and barred his path. There's someone in your office, Paul said in a whisper. No appointment, no explanation. She just barged in and said she'd wait.

Rik couldn't help smiling. Is she blonde? Is she beautiful? he asked.

The young man grew even more flustered. I couldn't say. Well, I suppose, in a brassy kind of way.

Rik's smile broadened. I've never told you this, but the only reason I started this P.I. business is so that one day I could walk in here and find a mysterious blonde bombshell waiting in my office. Like in a Sam Spade novel. He gently moved Paul aside. If she turns out to be from the Inland Revenue, I'm going to be very disappointed. He strode across the room and swung open the door.

The woman sitting with her long legs crossed was indeed blonde, and beautiful.

Shit! Rik cried and reached for the gun under his jacket.

Hello Rik, said his visitor. Is that a gun in your pocket?

Feeling foolish at his reaction, and seeing that he was in no immediate danger, Rik dropped the gun back into its holster and closed the door behind him.

Hello Rivers, he said. I was hoping you'd be dead by now. Really dead, I mean.

Rivers Valdinger smiled. I missed you too, sweetie. I think you've put on a bit of weight.

Rik went to sit behind his desk. Yeah, having a regular income will do that to a guy. You're looking great, I have to say. Almost human.

Rivers inclined her head in acknowledgement and looked down at herself. I knew there would be apps for improving the appearance of one of these things. I've been trying out a few looks. What do you think?

Rik looked her up and down. She appeared to be a beautiful woman in her mid-twenties, long-limbed and youthful, shapely yet athletic. It was hard to believe that the body her Spandex dress clung to so magnificently was not flesh and blood, but nanite paste. The flesh tones in her 'skin' were faultless, her eyes even had whites and sky-blue irises. For a robot body, it was a work of art. Such a shame it was inhabited by the callous, selfish, ruthless mind of a professional thief and assassin.

Rivers Valdinger had been a successful burglar in Chicago when she had died in a police shoot out. Her fabulously expensive robot body was a gift from a Mob boss in return for certain post mortem favours. That the Mob boss, who called herself Celestina since her death, just happened to live in Omega Point and was herself an upload, was no coincidence at all.

I wish all zombies looked so good, said Rik, wishing the exact opposite.

So, you broken up with your little Arab cutie yet? She looked around theatrically. No pictures on the desk, nothing on the wall. Don't tell me she dumped you already.

It was just like Rivers to start prodding and probing for some way to wind him up. Some women watched daytime soaps. Rivers liked to poke her fingers into open wounds. As usual, she had zoomed in on a nice fresh one. He tried not to let his irritation show. You didn't come all the way from Chicago just to chat about old times. What's the occasion? You want to hire my services? I have special rates for people I don't like.

She looked at him as if she would like to play some more, but either she was bored already or she had something better to be doing. I came to deliver a message. She pulled a pair of what looked like sunglasses out of her bag and tossed them to Rik. He caught them and glanced at them. Inside the rims were tiny laser projectors, on the arms were little gold contacts. It was a pretty ordinary virtual reality interface – cheap stuff that you get from advertisers or in cereal packets. Put them on. An old friend sent them.

Rik hesitated, you could get brain viruses from stuff like this, bugs that could make you buy stuff or go crazy. With a shrug, he put them on. What the hell? If Rivers had wanted to harm him, there were a thousand ways she could have done that by now. That body of hers might look decorative but he knew from experience just how fast and strong it was.

The lenses seemed to clear as the device made contact with the skin over his temporal lobes. A man was standing in the room with them, a tall, handsome man in his mid-thirties, wearing a beautifully cut business suit and a trillion-dollar smile. Hello, Rik, the man said.

Lanham!

Rik tore the device off his face and glared at Rivers. What the hell is this? The last time Rik had spoken to Martin Lanham, the upload had tried to kill him – along with everyone else in Heinlein. He tried to control his anger, but he'd never been very good at that. Are you nuts? I mean, more nuts than I think you are? You're working for those bastards again? Do you remember what they did to you?

Rivers looked uncomfortable, as well she might. The good people of Omega Point had nearly killed her too, rigging her robotic body to turn itself into a small nuke in case it became convenient for them to take out a few square kilometres around her and Rik. She had been working for Celestina at the time, perhaps the craziest sociopath Rik had ever encountered in a long career of dealing with crazy sociopaths. And Celestina had been working for Lanham.

Just watch the message, Rivers said. I don't need any holier-than-though crap from you.

Rik studied her for a moment. So they had something on Rivers. Big deal. Not his his problem. He put the specs back on.

And there was Lanham in the room with them again, cool and superior. The chief executive every CEO wished they could be. Hello, Rik, he said.

Hello, Lanham. Of course it was only a simulation but, knowing Lanham and his