IGMS Issue 11 (15 page)

Tekkai copied Gama's daring act. "Freedom."

"There are things in these worlds more precious than that." Gama took a final leap and squatted on top of a large heart-shaped balloon. His perch drifted beyond Tekkai's margin of safety for a jump, towards the immense watery arch.

"How about being a good father?" Unable to follow, Tekkai contemplated his next move. The roar of an engine drew his attention below. Maeda had caught up to them on a sleek replica of a motorcycle.

Tekkai scratched the back of his neck, touched the
ki-rin
tattoo on his arm, and muttered a pair of incantations under his breath.

The scaly leonine beast billowed forth from his skin, gaining purchase on the air with its hooves as it asserted its shape. It roared and charged towards the balloon, its pair of antler-like horns lowered like spears.

Not to be outdone, Gama copied Tekkai's motions, freeing a
baku
from his stumpy left thigh. The elephantine golden-furred creature trampled onto the dead space before Gama, interposing its bulk between the balloon and the
ki-rin
. It trumpeted and leveled its twin tusks at its mythic foe.

The beasts clashed, horn striking tusk with a thunderous report. Deadlocked in a contest of strength, the two giants fought on behalf of their Immortal masters as Maeda watched in silent awe below. Sweat beaded on Tekkai's brow, while Gama's hairless face was scrunched in dire concentration.

Out of the Priority officer's sight, in the pond behind the Arch of Cascades, a frog waited atop a lily pad, eyeing the flies and dragonflies skimming the surface of the water.

A three-legged toad struggled onto another leaf beside it.

Tekkai, who had conjured the frog from the tattoo on the back of his neck, croaked a proper greeting to Gama's toad. "Temporary truce, Gama-
sennin
?"

The toad nodded. "
Hai
. Think we will fool her for long?"

"Maeda's craftier than her avatar looks, and I don't trust her much," Tekkai-Frog said. Then again, he wasn't sure if he could trust Gama, either. "What's really going on?"

"She probably told you the party line on Mirrorstream," Gama-Toad said. "Truth is, Tekkai-
san
, the Priority is afraid of recent developments in the mimicstreams. Evolution's a better word to describe it."

"Evolved? From what to what?" Tekkai asked, intrigued.

"Remember that batch of viral
koi
you unleashed twelve years ago?" Gama asked.

Tekkai thought back to his carp-shaped creations and smiled in pride. Capitalizing on the popularity of virtual goldfish as pets among mim-users, Tekkai's
koi
had spread a viral code throughout the Floating Worlds, infecting systems with flaws that Immortals could exploit. "How can I forget?"

"In your absence, your viruses evolved into full-fledged artificial intelligences."

"AIs! Benevolent?"

Gama nodded.

The rise of synthetic sentience was every Immortal's dream. Tekkai puffed his vocal-sac. "I always knew it would happen, but never in our lifetime. How?"

Gama's tongue darted forth and snatched a passing fly. "Wish I knew. The first one we encountered in Ukiyo-Edo passed the Turing Test with flair. Others soon followed, but not just in the Floating Worlds. These AIs also emerged in mimicstreams that are patterned after mythological tropes, like Scheherazade and Yggdrasil. Something about the laws of these mims allow them to gain sentience."

"How do they manifest?"

"In imitation of creatures from the myths and legends of each realm," Gama said. "It may be that these AIs spring from our pool of Jungian archetypes, then grow strong because of the non-rigid rules in certain mims. Your viral
koi
may have sped the process. There are twenty alone in the Floating Worlds. They are such magnificent spirits, Tekkai-
san
!"

"Where are they?"

"Hidden in the Shrine of Cranes."

"And the Priority intends to destroy them with the damnable Mirrorstream upgrade," Tekkai conjectured.

"First, extermination. Then, prevention." The three-legged Gama-toad shook his head in disgust. "The government fears that AIs will turn against humans. Once they complete Mirrorstream, they will restrict future virtual environments to ensure that AIs never emerge again. That's why we remain behind, to find a way to save them."

Tekkai understood. "Maeda didn't bring me here to track you. The Mirrorstream upgrade could destroy this mim at any time, you and the AIs with it. She wanted to know if you found a way to save the AIs."

"Help us. Perhaps together, we can avert genocide."

Tekkai weighed the situation. If Maeda lied about her reasons for tracking Gama, then she likely lied about his parole. When the Mirrorstream became active, he might die alongside Gama and the AIs. He ought to disconnect his avatar now and save himself, endure the twenty-year wait to see his son.

But what if Gama was telling the truth about viable AIs? If the Priority destroyed these life-forms with their upgrade, the factors that created spontaneous sentience might never align again. He had to save these creatures here and now, and not dwell on the slim chance he might one day see a grown son who would neither remember nor recognize him.

There remained only one question to ask.

"Gama, was it you who betrayed me?"

Gama did not answer, only looked at Tekkai with toad-eyes.

In silence is my answer
, Tekkai thought. But then he realized Gama wasn't moving at all.

Tekkai sped his consciousness back to his prime avatar and surveyed the mock deadlock. A katana's blade protruded from Gama-prime's chest, and his
baku
froze in mid-strike against Tekkai's
ki-rin
. Maeda had thrown her sword, impaling Gama with deadly precision.

"So, there was no cause to worry at all," Maeda said to Tekkai. "The upgrade will proceed as planned."

Tekkai growled. "How did you hear us?"

Kagami Maeda swept aside her hair and let a dragonfly alight on the nape of her neck. "You aren't the only ones who know tattoo conjuration."

Tekkai cursed. Could he return to the interrogation room with enough time to stop Maeda? Perhaps, but there he was mortal, and prison officials might be observing them from behind the glass. Here in the Floating Worlds, he could not die. He must defeat her here.

The distance to the ground below was too far to jump, even for a deathless avatar, but he would not admit defeat.

"To me!" he cried to the
ki-rin
.

At his command, the
ki-rin
crossed the air. When it came near enough, Tekkai leapt and grabbed the ruddy mane. Carrying its master, the creature dove towards Maeda.

Maeda drew the shorter
wakizashi
sword from its scabbard, but Tekkai released his hold on the
ki-rin
and fell on top of her. The pair struggled to control the dangerous steel. Tekkai's Immortal avatar proved the stronger, and the blade inched towards the shallow spot between Maeda's breasts.

Maeda shouted a command, and the Priority symbol flared bright.

A lightning bolt descended from the sky and struck the rivals, the force of it blasting them apart. Tekkai reeled from the shock and pain of the lightning strike and fell to the ground, but Maeda seemed unhurt.

The rumble of thunder broke the silence.

A drizzle of mercury fell, coating surfaces with a silver sheen. Where the raindrops touched Tekkai, they burned his flesh.

Maeda laughed and began to fade. "Too late, Tekkai. The upgrade begins. Die here or die in prison, either way you lose, Immortal."

Tekkai spied the
wakazashi
a few meters away, and slid himself through the silver puddles of rain. He grabbed it and threw the sword at the ghostly Maeda, piercing her stomach. Her avatar froze in mid-exit from the Floating Worlds, a spirit caught between one world and the next.

"Then share my fate," Tekkai said, and left her to turn silver in the Mirrorstream rain.

He called his
ki-rin
and hastened to Gama-prime atop the heart-balloon. The quicksilver rain continued to fall, burning him. He fought the pain and gripped the
katana
's hilt.

Tekkai hesitated. The matter of Gama's innocence had not yet been settled.

But no. Time did not pour from a bottomless cup, and he would not waste what remained on paranoia instead of doing good.

He ripped the blade free of Gama's flesh.

Awareness returned to Gama's wart-marked face as he re-asserted control of his avatar. He flinched at the touch of raindrops, but looked at Maeda unmoving below and nodded. "So it's begun."

"You still haven't answered my question," Tekkai reminded Gama.

Gama's gaze met his through the drizzle. "It was not I who betrayed you, Tekkai, though I know not who did. But know this: in your absence, I did all in my power to protect and educate your son. He is a bright lad, and I do not doubt he will one day join the ranks of Immortals."

Gama's words could well be lies, of course. Tekkai's time in prison had taught him to trust few men. But if a man's actions defined him, then Gama's acts of defiance against Maeda proved his worth. Even if he had betrayed Tekkai years ago, he surely had taken the first step to redemption.

Tekkai clasped Gama's shoulder with a trembling hand. "Then I owe you much, old friend. Let us see what must be done to save these AIs."

With Maeda's
katana
still in hand, Tekkai raced his
ki-rin
against Gama's
baku
through the gleaming downpour to the Shrine of Cranes.

They dashed into the shelter of the Shinto shrine moments before the heavens burst. Behind them, torrents of quicksilver flowed down the steps to the shrine to join the rising reflection flood.

In the incense-thick sanctuary, holograms of golden cranes glided through the vaulted hall, but it seemed as empty as the streets of Ukiyo-Edo.

Gama called to the air. "Immortals and spirits! I have returned with Tekkai-
sennin
!"

The hidden ones broke
sennin
-encryption and strode forth. Among them were three other Immortals who had stayed behind: Chokaro, bearing a pumpkin; Kume, in the crimson robes of a Chinese sage; Kinko, on the back of a black carp. Each of them greeted Tekkai in turn.

Glimmering specks of dust high above fused and became three great Oriental dragons. Two dragons were golden-scaled and serpentine, weaving bright calligraphy of light as they danced in the air, while the third was majestic and verdant, aloft on wings of flames, dwarfing the avatars of the Immortals. Though he could not explain how or why, Tekkai could feel an
otherness
to the spirits.

"I welcome you, Tekkai-
sennin
," boomed the dragon. "I am Ouryu."

Tekkai bowed. "Great Ouryu."

"Enlightened One, if not for your viral
koi
, we might never have been," Ouryu said.

Smaller spirits ventured forth from the shadows. Nine-tailed foxes.
Tanuki
, raccoon-dogs.
Kappa
, water-sprites with scraggy hair. Splendid things, all, though Tekkai spared no time to admire their beauty. Instead, he conjured a spirit-eye to scan the creatures, and saw an inimitable
koi
-ness hidden deep within each one.

You are my children, indeed,
Tekkai thought.
I may have lost Ichiro, but I will not lose you.

"How do we save them, Tekkai-
san
?" Gama asked.

The wind howled, seeming to bring the shining rain through the walls themselves.

Tekkai raised Maeda's
katana
before him, studying the time-slowed beads of quicksilver rain that clung to the blade. "There might be some flaw in the upgrade code."

He pulled the gourd from his belt. He forced a drop of upgrade-rain into the vessel and studied the trickle of symbols that flashed across the gourd's surface. Gama joined him.

Though he could understand the bulk of the programming, Tekkai struggled with some of the more advanced code. His nine years away did hurt. "I can't see an easy way to stop the upgrade, Gama. The rain will drown and erase everything in the mims, except the sensory database."

"Couldn't we break the AIs into pieces, and mask them as sensory input?" Gama asked. "We could introduce a virus to reassemble them once the Mirrorstream is complete."

"A good suggestion, but they're more than the sum of their code," Tekkai said. "We have to hide them without disrupting their integrity."

"Download might be our only option, then," Gama said.

Tekkai shook his head. "These are mimicstream programs that thrive only in mim environments. Even if we found a system complex enough to host them, they will starve. Unless --" He shook his head.

"Say it."

"We could host them in a human brain." Tekkai drew a deep breath. "An AI might survive on the sensory input from a true body."

"What would that do to the host?" Gama asked.

"His consciousness might be overwritten, or form a gestalt. I don't know. All I know is that it's dangerous."