Under a new and brillian.., p.13
Under a New and Brilliant Sky, page 13
Elys followed Jules through the storage media canyons, taking uncomfortably long steps to match their pace. The dark blue pickup on the back of Jules’s neck demonstrated an elegant design which appeared simple at first, and upon closer inspection was outlined and sectioned in faintly glowing silver lines. “Let me guess,” Elys said. “It all looks fine.”
“Yes. We’ve found a few inefficiencies. Nothing that would delay the city’s CRU and expert deployment processes.”
“Wait. The city is slowing down expert deployments too?” Was the error spreading, or was this part of the original error?
“It is. Those delays began within the last few hours, but they’re developing faster than the CRU delays did.” Jules’s sharp sigh and deepening frown signaled a change in topic. “Now. Why did you think we should spread ourselves thinner running a Castillo series in the middle of everything else?”
“It’s been two years since the last one.” A report Elys would’ve called current for smaller MCAIs than the city, under normal circumstances. “We need all the updated information we can get. And that’s assuming the city isn’t adjusting the results to what it thinks we want to see.”
Discussing Krebs now would invite Elys’s fear and fury at what he’d done to embarrass her in front of the populated universe, and, more importantly, Jules. But Krebs’s concerned expression when she’d mentioned the series... However impractical it was, it was the closest thing to a lead she’d gotten out of him.
“The city isn’t altering test results,” Jules said. “It had a good run of that about... forty years ago, now, and the archons at that time corrected for it.”
Jules studied Elys’s face. Whatever they saw there made them sigh and switch focus to something digital. “We already know the city’s current inefficiencies, but I suppose there’s value in determining whether they’ve expanded to other systems without setting off alarms. I’ll see who I can talk into coming in to fill... Six shifts, at least. And we’ll have to set aside...” Not even Nisse’s audio filters could extract Jules’s grumbling from the ambient machine noise.
When they returned to their inspection of the storage media, Elys asked, “Do you enjoy working in such a public space?”
Jules paused a couple seconds to review the digital readout on the stack to their left while flicking signs to their unseen assistant. “Everything important is public. Why would I want to work on something less important?”
Maybe because you’re not particularly good at the important thing you’re doing. Such as interviewing potential saboteurs. But City Support’s leadership and practices guided the system Elys sought to understand, so she persevered. “It seems like your position is even more important when the city’s making mistakes than when everything’s working fine.”
“When we’re not fixing issues, we’re preventing them and implementing updates, so, no, malfunctions don’t change City Support’s importance.” Jules turned away from the substrate stack to glare at Elys. “Do you have specific questions not answered by the archival records? Because I have very little time lately.”
“I meant to ask how the current situation affected the importance of your archon role.”
Jules heaved a sigh. “My role is to hold the vision for the city’s performance. We all define the vision, but I’m the one with the biggest picture, and let me tell you, this crisis is not part of it. Now, the Republic officer you spoke to, Winoc Krebs. He’s not our man, is he?”
“He couldn’t have done it himself. Could someone from the Republic be paying an Alyansan in City Support to do it for them?”
Jules’s disgusted grimace said all Elys needed to know about their opinion on that, but they had more to say. “If whoever’s done this is willing to hurt the city and Alyansans, they might be a capitalist too. Ugh. Perhaps they immigrated from the Republic. I’ll find out if anyone’s looking into that. I hate the idea that someone in City Support might be responsible, though. I hate it.
“One thousand and twenty-six people, almost all Alyansan citizens, have developed medical conditions which could’ve been prevented or lessened in severity if mediators had arrived on time. I know this because the CRU archon updates the count for me every morning. And that’s not counting preventable mental health difficulties. How could an Alyansan do this to their neighbors?”
“Every jackass has a reason for hurting people.” At Jules’s confused and impatient glance, Elys attempted a translation. “Every... selfish person? Has a reason.” Jules nodded.
Elys could’ve sworn that Jules needed to feel more important than they did, enough so to justify sabotaging the city. Maybe they hadn’t expected the error to take so long to correct. But that would imply they didn’t know exactly what they were doing in the system, which, given the time and effort Jules put into the city’s guidance, seemed... Unlikely. There should be more reliable tests for people’s honesty.
“What would inspire an Alyansan to work for the Republic? Aside from the Alyansan having lived there before, or made friends there.”
“Now that’s a decent question.” Jules checked over several more meters of disguised hardware. “The Republic is large and efficient. They can accomplish more than we can in any given area they choose to focus on, if for no other reason than sheer numbers are on their side. They’re also stable and predictable, qualities lacking in Alyansan life. That became a common discussion topic after the deployment error surfaced. Before, though...
“Perhaps some vote our hypothetical Alyansan cared about came out differently than they wanted, and this is their revenge. A few years ago, somebody lit the Knef Building on fire because a decision about its interior space usage didn’t go their way. The city caught that one before the flames caused significant damage, and we asked it to let people make mistakes before sending CRU assistance, in cases of inconsequential arson at least.” Which meant the Alyansans had taught the city to value autonomy as much as they did. Elys was impressed.
Jules stared into the middle distance in a moment of uncharacteristic stillness. “If this goes on, we won’t be able to facilitate quick accommodations like that.” Jules’s gaze refocused on the hardware around them, and their speaking pace and volume returned to normal. “The city still stages CRUs as soon as the signs appear, mind. But sometimes people get into streaks of votes that go to majorities they’re not part of, and they get so angry about it they don’t know what to do with themselves.”
Elys dodged someone signing to the person walking beside them, even though they both had pickups. Neither of them wore uniforms. “What do you do when a vote doesn’t go your way?”
The archon gave Elys a withering glare while they knocked their knuckles on a metal pole next to the nearest substrate stack. The snap of electricity made Elys wince in sympathy, but Jules didn’t react to it.
“I have a glass of wine and a dream and commiserate with friends, then I go back to what I was doing before. If I care about it enough, I get together with like-minded people and we write a counter proposal. Not that I always make time for that, of course.” The pause, and Jules’s discontent frown, made Elys feel like she understood them a bit better. The two of them had both found a way to work as hard as possible in a paradise station.
“One way or another, there will be another vote.” Jules walked even faster, making Elys break into a jog to catch up. “The result may not be ideal, but it’s always something we can live with.”
If the Republic wanted to disrupt Alyansa, why hadn’t it attacked their voting system? Perhaps Alyansans secured it better than the CRU deployment systems, although Elys had yet to find any gaps in security, aside from the public archive. Maybe the Republic never expected the error to get the kind of attention Alyansa gave it. They could be testing an attack vector on an obscure independent station.
Jules turned to face Elys. “And now, I have a question for you. About your work for the Republic government.”
Information moved fast in Alyansa. But if Jules had requested Elys’s involvement in this project without knowing about the deaths and disappearances — of course they had, nobody knew until Elys talked about it in public — then she owed them answers. “Sure. Ask.”
“I’m aware that you didn’t have access to the Republic Information Service’s MCAI during the relevant period, but in your opinion, why did it encourage such a drastic and violent policy change?”
Elys relaxed a little. She appreciated the way Jules had phrased the question. “In my opinion, the MCAI’s maintenance team didn’t give it enough time to simulate scenarios with people, especially changes in behavior over months or years, before the RIS started using it to plan operations. If it had a testing environment like the city’s, or was given enough time with the environment it had, it would’ve seen the longer-term increase in political tension for the failure it was.” And thousands of families wouldn’t have lost their most idealistic loved ones to workcamps and unmarked graves, or gotten back people with a long struggle to regain what mental and physical health they’d had before.
Jules nodded, although Elys couldn’t tell from their expression whether she’d offered a satisfactory answer. “If you feel the need to talk to anybody else in City Support, I’ll be there when you do it. I won’t have you stressing people into breakdowns. I need everyone in the best possible condition to solve this.”
“My assistant will coordinate with yours.” Elys tapped the center of a yellow circle on a metal pole labeled “Ground Here.” The snap of the shock made her wince before the pain did. The charge lit a couple of small lights on the pole for a fraction of a second, turning the circle into a surprised mouth, which made her smile and offset the minor discomfort.
In the Republic, she’d led teams like Jules’s. They were worrying about all the right things. If they’d taken responsibility for the RIS MCAI instead of Krebs, Elys wouldn’t be having this conversation. Which meant she wasn’t any closer to finding the city’s error.
Elys checked her inbox as she walked in her apartment door, while the two mediators following her around reconfigured their suits to let them sit in the hall outside. Nothing from Taia waited in Elys’s inbox. Nothing from Wirth either. After Nautilus’s announcement about the RIS MCAI’s violent strategic recommendations, Elys wouldn’t blame the Alyansans for not wanting any more to do with her.
What Elys’s inbox did contain was the city’s report of Nautilus’s and l’Assemblée Tordue’s unusual interactions with it over the past year. She lifted the cleaning bot off the nearest couch cushions and dropped it on the far end, clearing space for her to sit down and read.
The city had caught l’Assemblée Tordue members poking around in functions that should’ve only been accessible to qualified City Support personnel. Nautilus xirself had tried to change how the city handled transport prioritization, a subsystem which contributed to the city’s decisions about which CRU to activate. But nothing on the city’s list of l’Assemblée’s actions could’ve caused the error Elys was searching for.
The next report listed failed changes and circumventions. Krebs had made eight of them within his first three years visiting Alyansa, and hadn’t gotten caught since. During the RIS MCAI development project, every other meeting with him had included questions about why her team kept pursuing decision-making mechanisms that didn’t work immediately, rather than asking what clever workarounds they planned to try. Unlike Elys, the past two years hadn’t changed him much. He must’ve given up on making unauthorized changes to the city himself.
Elys laughed her way through the rest of the list, which included regular failed infiltration attempts by Honesty Alyansa and l’Assemblée Tordue members. In one, Nautilus attempted to delete records of xir dropping a melon on a public street and splattering fruit all over xir legs and sandals. Everybody had something they didn’t want the universe to know them for, except, perhaps, Jules. Neither the city nor the detectives had found any incriminating records about them.
More test results arrived in Elys’s inbox. She skipped several to read the Castillo series summary, to which Jules had added a list of station events and functions they’d had to divert city resources from to run the test series. Each bullet before the listed event seemed to emphasize Jules’s displeasure. Maybe they’d put those in bold on purpose.
The report described all the city’s subsystems as operating at efficiency levels appropriate to their types. Yet another aspect of the city’s functions working the way they should, which meant the error wasn’t related to systemwide efficiency... Didn’t it?
Jules had been right to say that the results should’ve been predictable. The city was dispatching CRUs later with every passing day, and it wasn’t due to the communication protocols. It’d developed its own internal dialect, as complex and far-reaching as any MCAI’s Elys had ever seen, and its messages arrived at the intended destination complete and in a timely fashion. But why would the Castillo series say that the city was making efficient decisions about CRU deployment, along with all the other subsystems?
It’d been years since City Support ran a Castillo series, and they’d taken months to prepare for it then. On short notice, with so much else going on... A subsystem could’ve gotten skipped, or a test unit timed out and didn’t get restarted, or a thousand other errors could’ve made the results look higher than they should’ve been. City Support needed to run the series again, if she could talk Jules into making that happen.
With all the coordination and pleading and upheaval Jules described, they wouldn’t run the series again just for the asking. While the latest dose of painkiller kicked in, Elys crafted several changes to the series. Describing the adjustments required frequent references to the city’s documentation library. Between interviews and attempted kidnappings, she hadn’t had much time for memorization. Implementing the changes would demand even more of City Support’s time and resources, but they’d offer more thorough coverage of the city’s vast network of interconnected subsystems.
She checked what she’d composed a couple times before she sent it. Unlike Krebs, Jules would understand what she was talking about even if she didn’t phrase everything perfectly, but her message still needed to sound professional.
While Elys was catching up on the rest of the test results, Nisse presented her with a message from Jules: Kundakçı, your modifications would make a second test take thirteen extra shifts. This would delay implementation of the result of the privacy level exception paths vote happening in Concorde district, which any citizen should recognize as unconscionable.
They hadn’t bothered to emphasize “citizen” in text, but they must’ve at least thought about it. Elys sent Nisse off with a reply. The first results don’t make sense given the city’s observed behavior. How can we know why without repeating the series?
Jules’s next note was mercifully brief. Running the series again. Elys relaxed into the couch cushions on a relieved sigh.
After the note came a notification that City Support had dedicated the city’s entire test environment to assessment, putting all legal and social change implementations on hold. Even Alyansans who hadn’t been involved in a crisis worsened by late CRUs would notice this. If it caused riots, mediators were guarding her door. Nobody else would be that fortunate.
She’d just confirmed that the input reception and hardware tests showed optimal functions, and maybe it was time to dig into the parts of the system that handled millions of direct communications from individual Alyansans, when Nisse prompted her to connect to a live Les Conlen Truth Hour episode.
The summary described it as a special episode about her. She put his bar and customized bartender on the wall beside the city test results.
“...why she went to prison, friends.” Conlen leaned conspiratorially closer on his barstool. “Her last MCAI gave the Republic its own secret police force. What do you think’s going to happen when she gets her claws in the city?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elys had somehow been inducted into the RIS so she could lead their new MCAI’s maintenance team instead of Krebs. Managers denied her demands to give it the space it needed to simulate long-term outcomes of its recommended responses to civil dissent. Security settings kept her from making changes on her own.
The MCAI was still working out how people responded to lost loved ones. RIS bias made it predict they’d give up. In reality, they fought harder. The MCAI didn’t calculate the effect losing one individual had on an already struggling community, let alone multiply that loss across hundreds of communities.
Elys told officer after apathetic officer what needed to happen, even as the huge mission monitoring visualization in one of the RIS headquarters’ operations control rooms tallied hundreds and then thousands of arrests, interrogations, and work camp assignments that inspired more dissent, more causes for arrest.
Parents, cousins, childhood friends, gone, in stations across the Republic. Those who returned came back less able to support themselves and the people who’d relied on them. The RIS never documented the rise in suicides among populations it infiltrated, but a column in the visualization became a graph that had burned itself into Elys’s brain, rising sharply in the weeks after the maintenance team took over. And still, no one questioned the MCAI’s orders to continue the conflict-heavy enforcement of Republic law.
In the short term, in the shock and sorrow of friends and family dragged from homes and schools and workplaces, the dissenting groups got quieter about advocating for change. In the short term, the RIS’s violent interventions achieved the desired effect. That was the only timescale they’d allowed the MCAI to work from. The RIS personnel should’ve known better, but here Elys stood with them.
As Elys’s team had taught it, the MCAI found the most influential people in each movement. The RIS even permitted journalists to discuss a few criminals involved, to show them beaten on the street until they could no longer resist being dragged away. The visualization made space to present the visual records, too.
