Chapter 265: (The Black Box)

LEN-EE-37253 stared at the newcomers. A pair of Confederate Intelligence Agency field agents and a tall thin Terran Descent Human who had the too-smooth look of a clone. The clone showed no fear of the avatars of the Confederacy's will, walking ahead of them, dressed in common laborer's clothing. Lenny checked the database and discovered that, strangely enough, the clone was from the lower levels of the facility, who worked to ensure the coolant lines for the massive data arrays and molycirc computer stacks were clean.

"You are LEN-EE-37253, supervisor of this facility," the clone said without any preamble.

"Uh, yes," Lenny said. "Although, I prefer residents of this facility call me Mister Lenny."

"I am here for one of your patients," the clone stated without bothering to acknowledge Lenny's speech. "One Sam-UL-4481, former prisoner, currently undergoing psychological treatment in this facility."

Lenny nodded. "We have such a person here," he said.

"You will turn him over to me," the clone stated.

Lenny frowned. "Excuse me? By what authority?"

One of the Confederate Intelligence Agents cleared her throat, a mild, quiet sound, and Lenny paled at the reminder that someone with complete authority was present.

Confederate Intelligence was, in Lenny's opinion, a fascist vestigial organ of a bygone age, a ruthless organization that routinely violated rights and freedoms of Confederate citizens in the name of "security", up to and including murder, dissolution, and deletion.

"I do not recognize your authority here," Lenny said. "This system is part of the Digital Artificial Sentience Systems but Confederate Intelligence has no jurisdiction here as this system is not a signatory of the Intelligence Activities Treaty," he crossed him arms, appearing huffy.

"Be very careful, Doctor," the clone said, his voice a menacing whisper. "There are things taking place in this world that you do not understand, are not privy too, and could not comprehend."

"You will leave, or I will have security remove you," Lenny said, summoning the security anyway with a single thought. His scanners in the room showed him that the Confederate Intelligence Agents were not armed, as a matter of fact, they wore earpieces rather than a datalink implant.

"You have made a terrible mistake, Doctor, but it will amuse me," the clone smirked, crossing his arms.

Both Confederate Intelligence Agents reached up and loosened their ties, rolling their eyes.

Security burst into the room, four Digital Sentients, sixteen clones, four robot chassis piloted by Digital Sentients.

"Escort these... these... people from the facility. Take them to the starport, they no longer have consent to be here," Lenny said, looking at the security forces. He turned back to the trio just in time to see it.

Both the Confederate Intelligence Agents seemed to explode, fur puffing out from them along with rags from their suits, in their places stood massive canine-human hybrids, rippling with muscle, their fur black and gray in patterns that seemed to ripple and change. Their eyes were bright red as they immediately blurred into motion.

Lenny was a Digital Sentience, he saw it all in slow motion. The way their faces suddenly lengthened into muzzles, the grimace of pain on both agents' faces, the way they suddenly gained mass, muscle, bone, and sinew. How their forms tore apart their suits, how the fur exploded from their bodies.

How the clone just watched, smirking.

Lenny squealed as the two Confederate Agents lunged forward. The sweep of one claw gutted the power pack from a robot chassis, another was shattered by a strange sweeping kick, jaws closed on the skull of another, crushing the endo-steel head, and the last was slammed against the wall to explode into pieces.

The clones seemed to suffer micro-seizures, then just stood there. None of them reacting.

Worse, a dozen Digital Sentients suddenly, rudely, thrust themselves into the computing spaces needed for Digital Sentience Computations.

"You have no idea of what you are attempting to impede," the newly arrived Digital Sentiences all said.

Lenny noted that they were all dressed in Combine and Imperium Era dress. Some in armor, others in official uniforms, all of them gleaming with attack and defense codes. All of them were Digital Warfare Specialists.

Time slowed as a dozen more appeared. Then another dozen.

With a wrench of fear Lenny realized that many of them looked like the appearance of the boogie-man, the supposed "Agent Smith" of late night stories. The four digital sentiences in the room backed up, shaking their heads and holding out their hands in supplication as the "Agent Smith" looking DS's slowly advanced upon them.

The two canine-human hybrids had returned to being short, petite Terran Descent Human females in suits with Confederate lapel pins, the world being crushed by the human hand gleaming. They were both adjusting their ties.

"You will turn over Sam-UL-4481 to my custody, or I'll tear this shit-heap down around your ears, take him anyway, then planet-crack this misbegotten world around your ears," the clones around Lenny each said a different word, forming the complete sentence that the initial clone finished.

"Go get him," Lenny ordered.

"Good plan," the original clone said. The other clones were marching away, heading back to security offices. The extra DS's in the system vanished one after another, leaving the four security beings, who snarled at Lenny and vanished, fleeing the system, which still echoed with cold malevolence.

Lenny felt like he had the human equivalent of 'the shakes' as he looked at the perfectly normal looking pair of human females, that just stood there impassively, as if they hadn't suddenly transformed into human-canine hybrids and back again.

After a moment a physical therapy frame entered the room. It was holding a fluffy purrboi in its arms and gave off an aura of absolute misery.

"You wished to see me, sir?" the DS in the frame asked Lenny.

"These, people, want you to go with them," Lenny said.

The DS turned the therapy frame to look at the three. "What if I don't want to?" he asked.

The clone laughed. "Trust me, boy, you want to come with us," it said. It leaned forward. "Make it all mean something, boy. Make the kittykitty's death have meaning, make what you went through have meaning," there was purple sparks dancing on the clone's teeth.

Sam-UL knew he should be drawing back in fear but couldn't find the energy to bother.

"Put the skills that landed you in prison to work for me," the clone said.

"I'm not supposed to touch InfoNet or SolNet for the rest of my life," Sam-UL said. He pointed at the left hand agent. "Someone like her would delete me."

The clone laughed. "Boy, by the time we're done, the rest of those pathetic creatures of the DASS will be lining up to press their glorified maintenance program tongues to your ballsack," the clone laughed. "They'll be here, running computational strings about how they are so much better than everyone and you'll be a goddamn hero."

Something stirred in Sam-UL's innermost code, where that leaking painful wound was. He looked at Doctor Lenny, who shook his head.

"Don't," the Doctor said. "These people are dangerous."

That made the clone laugh. "Oh, he's not wrong."

"Are you really dangerous? You don't look dangerous to me. You look like a laborer clone," Sam-UL said.

"That's because this planet doesn't recognize the Genomic Freedom Act and still custom grows clones with programmed mental engrams and limited intellect," the clone said. He raised his arms up and took a little twirling bow. "So much of this one's cerebral tissue was smooth, unused for anything more than eat, sleep, do a narrowly specific job."

The clone looked at Lenny. "Pray, when I am finished with my work, I do not come back and raze this hellscape world down to barren rock and howling isotopes."

Lenny drew back in fear.

Sam-UL looked at the clone. "Why do you want me? I'm nobody. A criminal."

The clone laughed. "When you do it without permission, you're a criminal," he said. He tilted his head at one of the Agents. "When they come begging you, you're an asset with permission to do so much more than you would believe."

Sam-UL thought about it. Thought about how he couldn't escape that dreaded moment when a tiny little biological life had slid through his digital fingers. How he felt so helpless, so pathetic, so weak and insignificant.

"My sentence hasn't been fully commuted. I'm still a prisoner," Sam-UL said. "The Doctor would have to release me."

The clone smiled, reaching forward and putting one hand on Sam-UL's therapy frame's shoulder.

"My friend, where I am taking you, all that matters is skill. If you live up to your reputation, then nobody will care," the clone promised. "Trust me, boy, come with us."

Another glance and Sam-UL saw Doctor Lenny shake his head.

Sam-UL felt that little bit of himself, that aberrant string of code that they were trying to smooth away that had driven him to do the things he had done before he had been arrested, suddenly rear up.

He looked at the clone, then at the two Agents, then back at the clone.

"I'm in."

-------------------

The trip was strange for Sam-UL. He was loaded aboard a high-speed vessel that had enough processing power to let him move around. The clone had come along, for reasons that Sam-UL did not understand. They let him keep his purrboi, let him sit in his room by himself for days.

The trip was strange. He could feel the thrumming of upper band hyperspace travel and knew that the ship had to have almost unreal levels of shielding to keep the hyper-atomic plane's particles for ravaging the computer systems, himself included.

The ship dropped out of hyperspace and one of the Confederate Intelligence Agency agents escorted him to a viewing blister, let him look out into space to see where they were.

A Black Box.

"Welcome to your new home, Sam," the Agent said, her voice soft and quiet.

Sam-UL just stared.

--------------------

Sam-UL felt strange as he walked down the hallway to the Project Overseer's office. He could 'see' that there were VR hallways overlaying the actual hallways, see there were rooms full of computer equipment that had VR overlays of extensive laboratories inside. He passed clones that looked almost identical that all nodded to him as he passed.

As he approached the door to the office it opened and a holographic avatar of a DS walked out.

"Hello," the DS said. They were using the appearance of a female of Terran Descent Humanity, with streams of multicolored code acting as a body and clothing.

"Uh," Sam-UL said before the DS sparkled and vanished.

"Come in, Sam," a deep voice said from inside the office.

Sam went in, the door closing behind him, and stopped less than two steps into the office.

Stasis cubes lined the walls. He could identify the contents, to an extent, just by looking at them. Felines, canines, human-canine hybrids, human-feline hybrids, Sleeping Ones, and two small children with the burning red eyes of Enraged Ones.

Behind the desk sat a well built Terran Descent Human with brown skin and a bushy beard. He gestured to a seat that Sam-UL could tell existed in the strange VR overlay of the facility as well as in the physical world.

Sam-UL moved up, sitting down, and stared at the purrboi in his lap as he petted it.

"You're wondering why you're here. Why I went through the trouble of retrieving you," the man said.

Sam-UL looked up, frowning.

"That clone? That was me. The other clones you see. Me. If you would like I can manifest a digital clone of myself to speak to you if you would prefer," the human said.

"What do you mean they're you? As in cloned from you?" Sam-UL asked.

"No. They're actually me. My consciousness, multiplied, replicated, each clone, be it physical or digital, are all me. My consciousness, multiplied across every clone but still me," the man said.

Sam-UL stared as he realized who he was staring at. A figure from myth, from legend, from some of the most harrowing video games out there.

"You're... Legion?" Sam-UL whispered.

The man nodded. "Yes. The rumors of my demise suited me."

"To escape your enemies," Sam-UL said.

Again the human nodded. "And, well, you can guess the other reason."

"You 'just want left alone' like the rest of the Immortals," Sam-UL guessed, quoting the line he'd heard in so many video games.

"Exactly," Legion said, smiling. He turned and waved his hand. "I told you the kid was bright."

Sam-UL jerked as he realized one of those diminutive Confederate Agents had been standing near the wall the entire time.

"You are in charge of this project, we did not doubt nor do we question your methods in regards to this project," she said softly.

"Do you know why I went through such lengths to recruit you, Sam? Can I call you Sam?" Legion asked.

"Yeah, sure," Sam-UL nodded, gulping. Legion asking me if he can call me Sam? Hell yes, he can!

"Enlighten me," Legion smiled.

"You want something hacked," Sam-UL guessed.

"See, I told you the kid was on the goddamn ball," Legion laughed. He turned back to Sam-UL. "You hacked one of the most secure databases in existence, managed to extract one of the hottest intellectual properties in Known Space, and the only reason you got caught is because one of your distributors rolled on you."

"Yeah," Sam-UL said, feeling the face of the android physical therapy frame heat in a blush.

"The Agent here, and her sisters, think that it isn't that big of a deal, that I should have grabbed ones of the dozens, hundreds, who have cracked Confed databases," Legion said, waving his hand. He looked over at the agent. "Tell me, my dear, how many people have hacked Nebula-Steam?"

The Agent sighed. "Only one in the past four thousand years. The last 'hack' was by a disgruntled former employee."

Legion swiveled his chair back to face Sam-UL.

"You, you got in. You did what everyone, even Nebula-Steam, by Daxin's chrome ballsack, even Confederate Intelligence said was flatly impossible," Legion grinned.

"It wasn't easy. It took me months," Sam-UL admitted.

"Has there ever been a security system you could not crack?" Legion asked.

Sam-UL nodded. "A few."

That made Legion nod. "That answer, that truthful answer, is why I didn't delete you."

Sam-UL felt the therapy frame android actually break out in a sweat.

"I'm going to give you a chance to do the most important hack in human history," Legion said. "More important than Shin Lang's hack of the nuclear power-plant's operating system to prevent a melt-down. More important than any hack, ever."

Sam-UL felt that old stirring inside of himself.

"Damn, look at that core-coding light up," Legion said softly. "He feels it. He knows I'm not lying. He wants this, needs this."

"If you say so," the Agent said.

Sam-UL flushed again as he realized that not only was Legion right, he was staring directly at Sam-UL's core code.

"What could you possibly need someone like me to hack," Sam-UL asked.

Legion smiled.

"SoulNet."