The corridor the group walked along was quite dim and unwelcoming. The spaces down here lacked the airy, appealing aesthetics of the higher levels, and it was clear there was very little footfall in this part of the building, at least compared to everywhere else. The floor was carpeted in here as well - it had the strange effect of absorbing all the sound in the little passageway, making it feel eerily quiet and enclosed.
"It is suboptimally lit for humans in here." Titch commented, swinging her legs from her perch on Chris's shoulder. "Advisory: light intensity should be raised."
"An energy saving measure," Holly explained, as Chris studied the dim striplights lining the top of the corridor. "There isn't great need for light down here; LOKI doesn't need much human company."
Titch frowned at the other persocom; apparently that hadn't been a satisfactory response. "Chris will bump into things." she warned, causing the man in question to sputter in protest.
"I will not!" he managed indignantly, as James snorted a quiet laugh.
Titch patted the side of her human's head. "It's okay Chris, I will call out if you are about to fall over something." she whispered reassuringly. As much as Chris wanted to maintain an air of mild outrage, he couldn't help but chuckle; this little persocom was growing on him quickly.
"I'm glad you're so well-behaved, Titch." he said.
"Why's that?"
"It's because you're so adorable, you could probably get away anything you wanted." Holly sighed, bowing her head regretfully. Once the Alphabet had found them in the atrium, C wouldn't stop asking Titch to convey irritating little 'messages' to her. The tirade of angry transmissions she eventually hurled at him used up so much bandwidth that every persocom in the vicinity had stopped to experience the explosion.
James grinned teasingly, giving her a playful nudge. "Ahh Holly, it's not so bad. Look on the bright side, at least none of us humans could hear it!"
"That was definitely for the best." Titch said solemnly, making Holly groan under her breath.
"Let's just get on with this." she grumbled.
"Nearly there, nearly there." James said, leading them through another set of doors and turning left. Chris had been trying to keep track of their orientation with reference to the center of the circular building since they left the atrium. He knew they were heading beneath the factories, but only because of the map Holly showed him earlier that day. It was a maze, down here!
"Ah! Here it is." James pointed at the heavy-set metal door they were approaching. Notices printed on the metalwork indicated that the door was to remain closed at all times. Another unfriendly warning indicated that all attempts to access the interior would be logged. James turned to his persocom. "Holly?"
Her eyes flashed. For a moment, nothing happened. Chris jumped as an enormously loud THUNK rang the metalwork from the other side of the door; heavy solenoids pulling the locking mechanism apart. It slowly began to swing inward, revealing a vibrant starfield floating in inky blackness. Titch cooed in fascination, leaning forward. Chris thought he could hear her optics adjusting faintly beside his ear.
She wasn't the only one; Chris had to blink, his own eyes acclimatising to the darkness between the stars. No, not stars - lights. Thousands of them. Twilinking and flickering with electronic activity, they decorated the racks and cabinets of equipment that were just about visible in the dimly lit space. The sound of countless of fans moving air thrummed through the opening. It reminded Chris of the server room back in the Sys Eng building at University, only on a much, much, much larger scale.
"Watch your feet," Titch cautioned, true to her word as they carefully stepped over the tall base of the doorframe and onto the pristine tile flooring inside. The lighting automatically activated, emitted overhead by a grid of striplights that hung from steel cord embedded into the high ceiling. It was still dim, but Chris could sense the scale of the room they were now in; it was easily a match for the factory floors above, if the curvature of the wall they just passed through was any indication. The tall cabinets full of humming machinery were blocking his view of anything beyond his immediate surroundings, but as they walked between them, it became obvious that making their way to the centre would take a little while.
"Almost there," James said a couple of minutes later, as the rows of blinking cabinets passed them by. "I reckon it's time to tell you about LOKI. The name stands for-"
"Logical Knowledge Interface!" Titch chirped happily, grinning at Chris. She looked pleased that she could provide the information.
"- That's right! Holly taught you that, huh? Its ultimate design goal was to meld the intelligent decision-making capabilities of neurologic hardware with the big data processing capabilities of traditional chippery."
"Did it succeed?" Chris asked, staring in wonder at the equipment lining the racks. He could pick out the occasional server or blade system, and the switchgear and what might have been SAN boxes, but the rest was a bit of a mystery. Titch eyed the countless ports and cables among the racks with interest, but if she knew what they were for, she gave no indication.
"Succeed? A little too well, some might say," James chuckled. "We planned to sell the designs commercially, but when we realised what it was theoretically capable of we figured this one should really stay with us. Can you imagine what it's like trying to hide something like this from the- ah, never mind." he stopped talking at a sharp look from Holly.
"We don't talk about LOKI outside the company. It's not a big secret, despite what some would have you believe; if it were, we obviously wouldn't be showing it to new employees." Holly insisted, "But nevertheless we would appreciate your discretion."
"Uh… No problem." Chris mumbled, somewhat confused. It certainly sounded like something of a secret. He glanced at Titch, who shook her little head in response... those statements seemed contradictory, as far as she was concerned.
"Let's say a hypothetical ketchup company sells ketchup. Obviously you know they make ketchup and must have a recipe for it, but you don't know what theexact recipe is, and they wouldn't tell you if you asked. Does that help?" James chuckled.
"Condescending as it sounded... yeah, maybe it does." Chris grinned. The expression slid off his face when they cleared the final set of racks, arriving in the centre of the massive room. Stood before them was a large circular podium bristling with wires of varying thicknesses; they snaked to the ground or climbed into the overhead gridwork, spidering away into the distance. Upon the podium stood several rows of cuboid structures, supported on strong metallic pedestals at each corner. Cables seemed to grow out of the sides of each cube, and flexible piping from the top, ostensibly circulating cooling fluid into and out of each one. The density of the cables overhead blocked out much of the dim illumination from the ceiling grids, such that the whole podium was cast in shadow except the eerie green-blue glow of the equipment in the surrounding racks. Titch made a quiet appreciative noise beside Chris's ear as Holly walked up to the podium.
"You are now looking at the heart of LOKI. Or perhaps we should say the 'mind'. The rest of LOKI exists in the equipment that fills this room. It may seem excessive, but you must understand: at the time of LOKI's conception, neurologic hardware was very effective at the tasks for which it was originally intended - namely intelligent decision-making, deeply comprehending written language and speech, and true machine vision - all things which were very difficult for normal computers to do. However, it was a big step backwards in other respects, and when it came to the kind of work normal computers excel at - running generic applications very quickly, crunching large amounts of data and performing mathematical calculations on a vast scale - neurologic hardware was very inefficient and comparatively slow. This limited their usefulness in many economic sectors such as telecommunications, industrial applications, finance, and medical and scientific fields, all of which required hardware with high conventional performance before they would entertain the notion of buying persocoms instead of normal computers."
Holly walked over to one of the cables protruding from LOKI's core, using her hand to indicate its path overhead to a nearby rack of servers. "LOKI completely eradicated this shortcoming by combining the two different forms of logic - something that at the time was considered infeasible - thus allowing a neurologic platform to excel at both types of computation."
James folded his arms, smiling proudly. "Of course things are different now - modern neurologic hardware is really very good at general purpose computing - but back then it was groundbreaking. Even today, LOKI is enormously powerful both by neurologic and general purpose computing standards."
"Wow… So, uh... what do you use all that power for?" Chris asked. He could feel Titch clambering down his arm, but faced with the intensity of LOKI's presence, he was too enthralled to take notice.
"Short answer? Everything. LOKI operates the building, provisions and manages data storage for the company, supplies ample remote processing power if, for example, S-Dev or R&D need to run some simulations or crunch numbers, and of course facilitates all the usual server-side stuff you might expect of a company network. That's not all; since it has all the data, it's only logical that LOKI analyse it. It practically runs the company these days. Any business decisions LOKI makes are vetted by humans of course, but they are hardly ever contested. LOKI is just too good at analysing the data and making the right call."
"Business analytics on a neurologic platform?" Chris said, making no attempt to mask how impressed he was.
"That wouldn't be doing it justice, really!" James laughed. "But you get the idea, yeah. Not all that uncommon today, either. You should talk to S-Dev about the projects they've won in high frequency trading."
"Who came up with the concept?" Chris said, gazing at the cuboid structures. Whoever it was, they thought big, clearly! James opened his mouth to explain, but they were distracted by the sound of Titch's little bell. It was a lot further away than it should have been. Chris turned around, searching the area.
"Titch?" he called, turning to the others. "I've lost Titch!"
"Ah, not good… not good!" James muttered, as Holly immediately began to scan the cable-ridden floor. Chris felt a rising sense of panic that seemed to be mirrored by the expression in the other man's face; whatever the curious persocom could get up to in here, it wasn't going to be good.
"Titch!" Chris called. He could hear the bell jingling, but the direction was unclear from the circular clearing amongst all the humming equipment. It might have been coming from a set of racks not far away...
"There!" Holly cried out, pointing in the same direction and darting forwards. Titch could just be seen near the bottom of the rack, reaching for one of the various comms ports with a cable snaking out of her head.
Chris lunged for the rack himself, James following suit. "Titch, don't!" he shouted; but she had already popped the cable in, her eyes flashing excitedly. Almost immediately her expression wavered towards confusion, as if something was wrong.
A deep, wailing claxon reverberated across the room, loud enough for Chris and James to squint in discomfort as they reached the rack with Holly. The siren blared mercilessly, pummelling their ears. Over the noise, several loud bangs could be heard in the distance; the thick security door solenoids were fusing themselves in a locked position, trapping them inside. Then the ceiling lights cycled out, plunging everything into darkness except the racks by which they stood. That inky black starfield seemed to surround them now, isolating them in a tiny island of luminescence.
"Holly, calm LOKI down!" James shouted. She nodded, tugging a cable from her ear and sticking it in a port on the rack. James knelt beside Titch, who stared into the darkness around them in terror. "Come on Titch, disconnect!"
The little persocom didn't need telling twice; She tugged her cable free, snaking it back into her hairband before she fled into Chris's arms. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" she squeaked, clutching at the fabric of his shirt.
"Holly?" James shouted, looking desperately at his persocom. She held up her hand to silence him, scowling. Her eyes were already flashing furiously and she grimaced in concentration. "Holly? ...Holly!"
"Will you give me a minute?" she snapped, closing her eyes.
"What's taking so long?"
"LOKI isn't exactly interested in listening to a security threat!"
"But we're not a -"
"I know that, James, this isn't a household burglar alarm, so if you could please wait -"
"Just tell it we made a mistake!" James shouted, gesturing as if it were obvious. Holly rolled her eyes in exasperation.
"Oh, for-! Great idea. Do you know the correct message protocol for 'oops, I'm sorry'?"
"But can't you j-mmmpf!" James managed, before Holly clapped her a hand over his mouth. She muttered to herself as she worked. "Stupid block of bits… come on…" A few moments later the hopelessness was apparent on her face. She tugged her cable free. "He's not having it." She shouted back, allowing James to speak.
"Can you reach Arthur?"
Holly shook her head before he finished speaking. Apparently she'd already tried.
"Anyone?"
Shaking again. "No, we're cut off! What do we do now?"
James looked at a loss for ideas. "It's OK, Chris. Nothing to worry about." He yelled, with near zero conviction. "We'll just head for one of the doors...maybe..."
His voice trailed away. A heavy clumping noise could be heard approaching below the wail of the sirens, emanating from behind the racks nearby. All four of them turned to stare at its origin. There emerged an enormous mountain of a persocom, his irises glowing faintly in the gloom. An old model that must have been made for security, he strode purposefully towards them.
Titch squealed, and Chris yelled in protest as something snatched her from his grasp. An instant later he found himself restrained, gripped firmly by a pair of large hands. "Don't move!" a deep voice commanded, as he reflexively began to struggle. It didn't shout, but it seemed loud and easily audible over the wailing alarm. He noticed then some of the lights in the starfield were moving; the eyes of more persocoms, surrounding them, closing in.
James cried out in shock as Holly sagged to the floor. A slender female persocom in security uniform stood behind her, easing her to the ground. There was a cable snaking from her forearm into the side of Holly's head. "That's not necessary!" James tried to say, waving his ID badge before he was restrained as well. The enormous security unit hoisted Holly over his shoulder, clumping stoically away as the others lead Chris and James in his stead.
The blackness swallowed them, making it impossible for Chris to see what was happening, and the blaring alarm drowned out the sound of their movement. When Chris called out to the others, he was roughly instructed to remain silent. He stumbled frequently as he was shuttled down the dark aisles, but the hands gripping him did not allow him to fall. Their captors had no trouble in the dark at all. The way their irises glowed made sense to him, now; active infrared vision. Not exactly thermal imaging, but clearly effective in low light settings.
The sound of the alarm was changing, reverberating less and less; they were approaching a large solid object. The wall, Chris thought, as they drew to a halt. Sure enough, a loud metallic THUNK rang several feet ahead of them, and he squinted at the sliver of light that sliced through the opening door. This must be one of few that had not been sealed when the alarm tripped. From the silhouettes on the other side, it appeared it was guarded; perhaps an attempt to ensure the only way out would be straight into the clutches of security. At that point he realised the huge persocom who had carried Holly was nowhere to be seen. Neither was James, and Titch had been missing since the moment she was snatched from his arms.
Clutched in the hands of his captors, he felt his stomach drop. He was alone.
Chris tried not to let the panic set in. The carpeted corridor he expected on the other side of the door was nowhere to be seen. Instead there was an unwelcoming metallic floor, filling a small room which itself contained only a few miserable looking doors. It could once have been a maintenance accessway, but it appeared in this case to be part of the facility from which the security force operated. Were the others going to end up here too?
He soon found himself stripped of his possessions and seated in a cold room with the persocom who had captured him. Of strong build, he was slightly taller than Chris, and more than a little intimidating. The effect was somewhat ameliorated by the way he appeared rather disinterested in the situation, as if he were here only to check a box in a procedural exercise rather than for any real purpose.
That disaffection clearly didn't extend to his duties, though. The persocom leaned forward in his seat and looked at him coldly. "Who are you?" he said, his tone demanding a response.
"Well, I... Why are you asking me that? Can't you just check the network?" Chris replied, confused.
"Your little stunt has shut down the network; the whole building has ground to a halt. Now indulge me, and answer the question."
Chris understood, now. The persocom couldn't verify his identity if the network was locked down. Well, then he would cooperate; hopefully when it was clear he wasn't a threat, he would be free to go.
"Chris Barker, uh, NEIS employee. I just joined S-Dev."
"What were you doing in there with LOKI?"
"This is my first induction day. I spent it with James Ashburn from Mechatronics, and his persocom Holly. They took me to see LOKI as part of that induction." the security persocom looked at him, expressionless, so he ventured a question. "...Um, where are they?"
"What of the little unit who breached security protocol?" the security guard said, ignoring his question.
"She's my work-issued persocom. She isn't fully configured, I only just got her. All she knows about LOKI is the name, near as I can tell. I don't think she knew not to connect to any of the equipment."
"But you let her anyway." he replied, phrasing it as a statement rather than a question.
"No I bloody didn't!" Chris could feel his temper rising. He was still a bit dizzy from what just happened but now he was beginning to realise… this was an interrogation, wasn't it? "She did it without me noticing, and I'm sure she didn't mean any harm. She's been contacting other persocoms ever since she was activated... Where is she?"
"Why was a persocom who isn't fully configured allowed into LOKI's chamber?" The guard demanded. Chris clenched his fists in frustration.
"How am I supposed to know? It was LOKI's bloody idea, why don't you plug in and ask it yourself?!" He grated. He was beginning to want a human face to talk to. This bloody robot must have a screw loose! It was one thing to accidentally trip an alarm and be taken in by security; It was quite another to be subtly accused of sabotaging company servers! "Where are Titch and the others?" he repeated.
The persocom regarded him coolly, apparently unfazed by his outburst. Chris stared back, feeling combative. "Well? Where are they? Where's my persocom?"
"She's not your persocom." The guard corrected him.
"Whatever, where is she? Come on, tell me! What are you doing with her?"
"Standard protocol for security breaches."
"...What does that mean?" Chris demanded. Standard protocol. Those words filled him with a sense of foreboding that was immediately justified.
"The malfunctioning persocom will be analysed, and then disassembled." Came the disaffectionate reply.
"You can't do that, she didn't know any better!" Chris shouted. The guard raised an eyebrow, at that.
"Oh? It's just procedure. What do you care? You'll be issued another properly working one… assuming you're not found responsible and you get to keep your job, that is."
"She's already working properly, I'm sure of it! There's no need!" Chris pressed, but the guard didn't respond.
Chris gritted his teeth, sensing the hopelessness of the situation. There was no malice in his captor's voice, of that he was certain. But nor was there concern, nor empathy. Try as he might, there was nothing there he could to appeal to; and no logical reason, no computer-friendly assertion he could think of to justify why the company shouldn't destroy Titch. She was just company property, after all. Like the aggravating bucket of bolts sat in front of him. "This isn't… it isn't right. Give her back!"
"It isn't up to you. Or me, for that matter. It's just procedure, don't get so worked up."
Chris held the persocom's gaze. "And if it were up to you, would you let her go?"
The guard got up and walked to the door. "Thank you for answering my questions."
"It would be polite to answer mine!"
"Wait here." he said, locking it behind him.
Chris stewed in his chair. The minutes rolled by, affording time for his frustration to well up inside his chest. There was nothing he could do... He tried not to think about Titch being disassembled, but something about it just felt wrong. It wasn't just a waste of good hardware! That was certainly true, of course, but more than that... he liked that little persocom the moment he saw her in her tiny box.
No, he couldn't accept this. He had to get her back. It should be possible, in theory... He knew how big companies worked; stock loss was just something that happened when you had so much product to move... if he could just...
Just steal from your new employer?
Footsteps were rapidly approaching from down the corridor. Cursing his bad luck, Chris abandoned his train of thought. What a foolish idea it was… as if he could have done anything to begin with! The steps stopped outside the door. Chris watched the handle's lock click, expecting the guard again, perhaps accompanied by police officers ready to take him away.
"Hello, mate." James said gruffly, throwing the door open.
Relief washed over Chris, the feeling in his chest melting away. This madness was over before it could begin! Even then, he couldn't help but vent a little. He fixed the other man with his best glare as he strode for the door. "James! What the hell is going on?"
"Good to see you too. Come on." the man sighed, gesturing for Chris to follow him. The security guard was waiting outside the door; he followed the men quietly as they walked away, and Chris made sure to shoot him a double-barrelled glare as well, while James continued to talk. "Look, I'm very sorry about this. I bet you were worried, huh? They split us up to question us separately, you see. I'm easy to verify as an employee and Holly's clearly company property, but they felt you were a bit out of place. You're not in trouble or anything, no-one to blame, accidents happen and all that. Just had to explain the situation, is all. Bloody hell. Oh, what a day!" James pinched his brow, as if trying to suppress a headache.
Holly was waiting for them in the security depot lobby. Chris was glad to see she was okay after the way she collapsed earlier. Perhaps 'okay' was a subjective term; the persocom wore an expression which could have frozen water from a thousand yards away. Even the guards seemed to be giving her a wide berth. Chris wondered why; wasn't she relieved that this was all sorted out? Why, she and Titch must have been...
Chris scanned the lobby. Titch was nowhere to be seen.
"Right, I think this was enough for one day. Holly's going to take you back to the main entrance while I sort out the rest of this mess, okay? Go home, relax a little. Assuming you want to come back after this, we'll see you tomorrow- "
"James, where's Titch?" Chris interrupted, that feeling of dread gripping him again.
James rested a hand on his shoulder. "I'm getting to that. Listen, there's something I need to say. Titch… I'm very sorry, but she will - ah… yes, I see from your expression you already know."
"Wait, hold on. But… you just said this was all sorted out!" Chris said, a hint of panic in his voice.
"I said you're not in trouble. I'm sorry Chris, it was an accident, but there are rules-"
"What are you saying? Come on James, isn't there something you can do?" Chris pleaded.
"I'm sorry, no." the man said softly. There was genuine sympathy in his eyes.
"So… so… that's it?" Chris said, staring at his colleague in disbelief. He waited for a joke or a smile - something to indicate James was pulling his leg - but it didn't happen.
"That's it. I'm sorry. I did try, but the rules can't be bent on this one." James sighed dejectedly. Behind him, Holly's face darkened further. "Look, go home, rest, come back tomorrow and we'll… I'm sorry Chris, I know it sucks. It's not like losing a phone or a laptop. And to have only just met her too... it's such a shame... The problem is that chamber is full of all our corporate secrets, and it's difficult to truly securely erase neurologic hardware… you'd never let hard drives full of sensitive data leave a datacenter intact, even when formatted, you know? I think it's madness to apply it to this situation, but I just couldn't get anyone to listen… Just come find me tomorrow morning, okay? We'll talk about this some more."
James motioned for Holly to take over, and Chris didn't protest any further. He couldn't quite compute what was happening, and he almost didn't notice when Holly stalked towards the exit. "Please follow me." she said icily, not pausing to see if he would. In a daze, he silently complied, falling in step beside her. The footsteps of some of the security persocoms followed them, apparently ensuring they left the area.
Although Chris only felt hollow inside, Holly seemed filled with anger. He'd never seen her face like that before. It looked a little alarming, considering how placid and unflappable she usually was. In stony silence they headed along the passageways, which soon became carpeted like most of the lower level. At that point the guards stopped following them; they stood at the edge of their domain, watching them until they rounded the next corner.
Chris glanced at Holly as they walked. He felt he should apologise. He was truthfully a little afraid to open his mouth, with Holly being so angry, possibly at him directly... after all, if he'd kept a better eye on Titch, none of this would have happened. He steeled his nerves and opened his mouth, but before he could utter a word Holly grabbed his hand, pulling him briskly down the corridor.
"Hey- where are we going?" he stammered, taken by surprise.
"Where do you think?" Holly growled. "We're getting your bloody persocom back. That's what you want, isn't it?"
"What? But-" Chris stammered, not quite comprehending. Holly stopped so suddenly he nearly stumbled into her. Her next words were dangerously quiet.
"Since giving Titch to you, I seem to recall charging you with her care. I am correct in assuming we are on the same page, am I not?"
Chris blinked. She really was serious. A new sensation fought to displace the dejection in his chest. Holly looked him in the eye, and he returned her determined gaze.
"That's what I thought." Holly muttered. Her eyes flashed in the dimly lit corridor. "The network's still down... We've not got much time. How fast can you run?"
"I- whoa!" Chris almost fell on his face as Holly broke into a sprint, dragging him down the empty corridor.