Industrious

Industrious

Michael McCloskey

Published by Michael McCloskey at Smashwords

Copyright © 2011 Michael McCloskey

ISBN: 978-0615457239

Cover art by Brom

Many thanks to those who helped me:

Dan Bloch, Ilya Kirnos,

Maarten Hofman, and Tom O'Neill

Special thanks to Yingjiu Sun for everything.

Prologue

Sun Xinmei didn’t want to work on her economics paper. She lay curled on her tiny bunk at the dormitory on the outskirts of Tsinghua University in Beijing. The August sun still blazed over the buildings of the late Thursday afternoon.

The dormitory was as quiet as anything ever got in Beijing. The dense throng of humanity permeated every square meter of the city, bringing with it the sounds of traffic, air conditioning units, and incarnate conversation. But at least Xinmei could lock herself into the tiny slot of a room and the noise was muted enough to find rest.

Xinmei wore the purple and white of her school. Although wound into a compact ball at the moment, Xinmei stood 170 centimeters tall and felt proud of her height. Her smooth black hair and slender figure gave little to distinguish her from her billion countrywomen, but her height and her intellect made her stand out.

She allowed herself a hidden smile.

I don’t need to study economics... I have computers.

She thought of her contact in the Golden Lamb university datacenter. A flick of her mind commanded her intracranial link to initiate a live contact. Chengbo answered the call in a couple of seconds.

"Wei?"

Chengbo, is there still an upgrade going in this weekend? Am I going to be able to set up my astronautics calculation in the Golden Lamb?

Xinmei knew the lab was about to undergo a serious upgrade in capacity. At the same time, she would be using millions of cores for her project. Her economics project.

Yes, Chengbo’s voice replied in her mind. You could use another lab. We can’t put off the upgrade.

Oh I don’t expect you to do so, Xinmei assured him. But I can’t use another lab, either. It’s just that I’ll be generating some failed authentication flags if there’s any significant network corruption.

Yes, I’m prepared to deal with them, Chengbo said. His voice sounded a little annoyed. Xinmei was technically correct to verify the situation with him, but he must have felt like his abilities were being questioned.

Okay, well just as long as you know about it.

I’ll tweak things to expect some extra trouble.

Thank you.

Xinmei cut the link and smiled to herself again. Normally the person on duty—this time, Chengbo—would consider setting a high alert threshold for authentication failures during such maintenance. But a high threshold might be only five or ten failures.

As it happened, Chengbo had sufficient reason to set the thresholds even higher. He had a date with a girl Friday night. Xinmei had set up the date herself, although Chengbo had no idea. Xinmei sensed an opportunity before she had confronted the problem of the economics paper. She wondered idly if some part of her unconscious mind had already been working on the problem.

Now she’d given Chengbo a strong reminder that if he didn’t want to ruin the date, he’d have to take steps. Xinmei considered it a good possibility that he would even turn the alerts completely off.

Xinmei thought there was a great chance that the one-time authentication system set up by her economics professor used a generator written by Tsinghua University’s own computer science department. Now her astronautics calculation would use that algorithm, together with her snooped samples of his past one-time passcodes to calculate a set of probable codes that might be accepted in the future.

She felt thankful that her professor loved to use his archaic computers. They had provided a limited seed space to the algorithm, weakening it considerably. She’d also managed to pick up his regular password off the archaic keyboard he used from time to time. These factors, and the likely possibility that a large number of authentication failures might be tolerated this weekend, gave her a very real chance of success.

Xinmei got a voice link request. The identifier block said Li Feng.

She felt a jolt of pride. Her boyfriend was one of the smartest—and best looking—men in the officer’s curriculum leading into the Divine Space Force. This was only fitting in her mind, since she was one of the best students in the computer science department.

"Bao bei," he said.

She smiled at the term of endearment.

Yes?

There’s a dance contest for us to win Friday night.

Oh? Xinmei said, biting her lip.

Of course I would think of no one else for my partner, Feng said.

Hrm? Oh.

So I’ll meet you in the union atrium at six?

Xinmei frowned. Chances are her operation would be in full swing at that time.

I’m very busy with work this weekend.

This is a matter of pride, he proclaimed. It was true that they had won the last two contests. But she knew he didn’t really care about that. He just needed an excuse to see her.

We should spend time together, she thought. Before we leave the university and start our careers.

Okay, she agreed. I’ll meet you at six. And now I have some more control code to set up. This has to come off without my direct oversight.

Xinmei rescheduled her class feeds to begin two hours later the next morning and started coding furiously. She lay curled up on her bed, unaware of her physical surroundings as she created the system to implement her plan in her personal view. The PV served as every person’s own virtual workspace, a series of windows and viewpanes seen in the mind’s eye. Information flowed into the PV from Xinmei’s own brain as well as the outside network, shuffling data in and her commands out.

As soon as the lab upgrade started on Friday evening, her machines would begin to crack into Professor Hu’s archives. Some number of failed attempts might well shut access completely off, but most likely Chengbo had configured the lab monitors to be very tolerant. Even if Hu himself became notified of the attack, he might well be aware of the upgrade corruption warning and dismiss it. If not, any inquiry on his part would interrupt Chengbo’s date, which would cause the lab monitor to explain quickly to the professor that there was an upgrade in progress and thus absolutely nothing to worry about.

If any one-time code was accepted on the other end, then Xinmei would have access to Professor Hu’s research documents. That would give her an edge with her paper. She could choose a subject close to the man’s interest, and she could make use of his own research and pretend she had looked into it herself. Of course, the material couldn’t be used too blatantly or else she would give away her actions. It had to be close enough to make Hu want to publish her work, under his own name. Then he would give her a good grade, perhaps even a co-authorship on the paper, and Xinmei would have what she needed.

Or she could just research her own economics paper... but it was so much more fun this way.

Xinmei then arranged for a certain datastore to run out of space by making sure her jobs requested resources after the upgrade had started. The scheduled maintenance inhibited the automatic cleanup to create more space. The full storage would decrease the chances her illegal authorization attempts would end up in a log where they could be analyzed later.

When she had finished the chronometer in her PV said 2 AM.

***

Xinmei looked at herself in the mirror. She wore a short black dress ideal for dancing. The fabric hid many tiny cyblocs that could sensitize the dress to music, making it iridesce in time with the beat. The freedom the dress afforded her legs allowed both easy movement and a good view for the judges. Two important elements for another victory.

Most men found her attractive. She had large eyes with double-folded eyelids and pale skin. Her figure was slender, whether due to her dancing and ping-pong, or her youth and genetics, she wasn’t sure. This beauty combined with her energy and intelligence had given her the pick of the men around her, so she had chosen the best: Feng.

As she finished touching up her looks, she checked on her software running in the Golden Lamb. It was still only in snooping mode, recording traffic related to the target. The upgrade hadn’t yet officially started due to some delay. Xinmei found it maddening and wanted to scream, but she had steeled herself to a high probability that the techs wouldn’t start on time.

She took a deep breath and left her dormitory, headed to the dance hall. The air outside was hot and dry but it didn’t bother her in her dancing dress.

The dancing hall was a wide, sweeping building encased in black glass. It was only about four stories high, which made it one of the lowest buildings in the area. People were already flowing in and out of the entrance as the Friday night activities started up. Xinmei fell into line and walked inside. Her link registered her presence at the event. It couldn’t hurt to have her located firmly at the dance hall. Hardly the actions of someone performing a nerve-wracking breach of campus security.

Over on her left she saw a group of about a hundred people watching a virtual dance contest on a giant screen. They milled about talking with each other and holding drinks while a couple danced in a VR dance hall. The people could have just as easily stayed home and observed the competition from their dorm rooms, but they enjoyed the opportunity to meet their friends in the flesh and share a drink.

Xinmei wondered if humans would ever give up their bodies entirely. It didn’t seem likely any time soon, since the government limited VR time severely. Many workers didn’t get more than a couple hours a week. Students got more as long as their studies remained excellent.

No matter how wonderful virtual reality was, and how strongly it beckoned, the Chinese still remained chained to their real bodies. The robots couldn’t run the world by themselves just yet, though many visionaries declared it was simply a matter of time.

Might as well enjoy it as much as I can, Xinmei thought, feeling the cool air of the dance hall on her legs. She walked around the main platform, which dominated the center of the building. Balconies ringed the area above for the next three stories, allowing a large number of incarnate observers to attend. It made the event more fun to watch as a virtual observer when people attended incarnate, but of course if everyone showed up xian shen, in the flesh, there wouldn’t be enough room.

She saw him. Feng was dressed in his uniform, knowing that this outfit helped their chances in its own way as much as her own dress. She admired him in the seconds before he spotted her. Such a tall, strong man! He had jet black hair and eyes that were piercing when he wanted, but just as easily became friendly if his mood suited it.

Perfect for an officer, she thought. And smart. He’ll go far.

Feng spotted her and smiled. He took her hand and looked her outfit over approvingly. Then his face became serious and he drew her over to a corner of the hall.

I’ll be leaving at the end of the semester, he said.

Xinmei prepared herself for another session of serious talk.

I know, she said. Her own words sounded lame.

Will you accept me as your future husband then? I can’t wait for your response any longer. Will we find a life together?

Adding the first ten thousand jobs, announced a message from her little project now running in the Golden Lamb.

Perhaps we will, Xinmei said.

Why can’t you ever stand before a charge? Always sidestepping everything, Feng complained.

Life is more complicated than a straight line, she replied. I can’t say yes or no to you because we both must launch our careers. After that, we can try to arrange to serve together. I can’t give you the firm answer you demand because I can’t control where we end up.

We will. If we both try we will succeed. I need to know before I leave if you’ll try.

One hundred authorization failures.

She met Feng’s demanding gaze.

Yes, I will try.

If you know of another more qualified candidate...

No Feng. You are the most qualified.

Two hundred authorization failures.

Feng kept staring at her. At last his face relaxed. I take you at your word, then.

In his mind they were now a committed couple.

Xinmei didn’t have any plans to betray his trust. But her focus was solely on her work. The idea of setting it aside to have a family was a distant and vague plan.

Authorization obtained. Copying archives. Cleaning up.

Xinmei felt a rush of accomplishment. She had control of her life on all its many levels. She felt invincible.

Now, shall we win this contest? she asked.

***

Saturday morning Xinmei went for an early game of ping pong before beginning her work. It was really an excuse to avoid her analysis of the economics archive she had stolen the night before. Now the exciting part of the task was over, and she was left with the dull work of selecting a good topic and creating a paper that titillated Hu’s own interests in the area.

It’ll be a little fun making sure that it’s not obvious that I took the topic and some of the information straight from him, she thought, trying to warm herself up to the task.

She was walking across the campus when some unusual activity down the street caught her eye. A couple of sleek black state cars with red Chinese flags emblazoned on the doors had pulled up to the building across the street.

Dr. Hu’s building, Xinmei realized. Suddenly she was walking towards the cars, watching carefully. Nothing else was happening outside the building, so she walked inside.

A few students milled