Web of Futures by Jefferson P. Swycaffer

Author:Jefferson P. Swycaffer [Swycaffer, Jefferson P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

“Everyone leaves a record,” Christopher insisted. “It’s what makes our work so hard. Hasn’t this Maddock ever done anything?” He sat at ease, with his feet up on the table, and ticked the points off on his fingers. “Has he never made a credit transaction? Never transferred funds? Never driven anywhere? Never been spot-checked on the street?” With incredulity bordering on derision, he asked, “Can he have gone all his life without buying a battery-fill?”

“Impossible,” Marianne said, but there was a hint of doubt in her voice.

“Impossible entirely,” Katya added vociferously. “Flat-curve, quick-converging, bitwise-redundancy impossible.”

The others turned to stare at her; seldom did she utter such a categorical denial. She looked blandly back at them. “I am not stating an opinion. It is a fact. An impossibility is still a fact.”

Marianne stood and walked to the low window, where she paused for a time, gazing down reflectively at the three prisoners held in isolation below. “But there he is. What could be more possible than actuality?”

Katya clapped her hands once, a cheerful, nonsensical gesture that betrayed her inner exuberance. She sprang up, then, and came to stand by Marianne’s side. “What is actual is different from what we are complacently assuming. Possibility: he is a genius at the information culling. He could have spent his lifetime acquiring access to high-level erasure codes. Impossibility: he has never impinged upon the registration process.”

Christopher, back at the desk, blew out his cheeks. “Your ‘possible’ also sounds pretty impossible to me.”

Katya glanced at him thoughtfully. “Truth.” She looked back down at Maddock, Sharleen, and callow, angry Warall. “Perhaps it is she who is the record-purger?”

Christopher was still unconvinced. “She’s energy, not information. You’ve been over her record, and it’s complete.”

“She fakes it?”

“Why twice? And why so clumsily? Why would she give herself a false trail and leave him nothing? It was the absence of his history that alerted us, not the presence of any specific anomalies.”

Katya pursed her lips, then laughed. “Not so! It is explainable in a number of ways. A security monitor might have given his record the kick; he could have failed to include a hidden transfer sector. Maybe his whole record-class was shifted to some storage center in East Thermopolis, Wyoming, and only he got left behind.” The sarcasm was, in her voice, soft and amused rather than harsh. In spite of a lifetime fighting against them, she still found programmatic quirks to be entertaining.

“My own record is as minimal as anyone’s can be made.” She grew serious again. “I haven’t access to a handheld orienting point, as you enjoy, but I can still find my way into the big system.” She waved her hand idly through the air, indicating the all-pervasive network of processors, storage facilities, and transfer links. “I am as minimal as anyone can get. My record is pared down to the fewest essentials. That was the result of several years of very hard work.” She looked back and forth between the others, meeting Marianne’s accepting gaze and Christopher’s skeptical look with equal poise.

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