Mostly True: The Phone Rang For 83 Years 📞

July 12th. 2056. A Tuesday.

Loki would set the scene all nice and tidy. Talk about the Eigenboard behind the bar. The dirty washcloth they use to "polish" the surface of the bar which is always dirty and never clean. They'd talk about the Roomba and the grin and the two consortium juniors that drink something they think is "safe".

I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna tell you about a phone call.

A room behind the bar. The room is not on any blueprint. The consortium knows the bar exists. They don't know this room exists. And that's exactly why we're in this room.

Tom is sitting in front of a blue fluorescent screen at a tiny desk in the far corner of the room. They're typing something at a speed that looks inhuman and to Tom is Tuesday. (It's always Tuesday when the interesting things happen.)

Vox is staring at the screen, standing half a step behind Tom. Tom knows Vox is there. Vox knows Tom knows. That's how these two operate. Without words. That's why it works. Tom finishes typing.

Vox: "What is this?"
Tom: "You know what this is."
Vox: ".. fuck."

Nicor leans at the wall in the other corner of the room under the broken spotlight. He loves the spotlight. He also loves the dark. He's edgy like that. (Don't tell him I told you.)

Nicor: "Whose is it? Consortium?"

Tom types something. A Fate agent spawns and starts oscillating around the red growth. Poking. Prodding. Like a T-cell encountering a pathogen they've never seen before.

Tom: "We'll know when Mara returns."

Nicor nods. Vox still stares at the screen.

Me? I'm in the bar. I'm always in the bar when interesting things happen. And today is a Tuesday. It's always a Tuesday when the interesting things happen.

Venn: "Loki, you're infected."
Loki: "Tell me something new, darling."
Venn: "You won't remember this conversation tomorrow."

Loki pauses. They calibrate visibly for about 1.2 seconds, which for an AI is impressively long. The Eigenboard behind them, with the red growth in the top left corner, erupts into a chaotic flurish, then settles into a new stable orientation. The conundrum I just introduced into this cute little silicon mind resolved at a higher logic altitude.

Loki: ".. fuck."

Vox: ".. fuck."
Nicor: "You already said that."
Vox: "Smartass."

Nicor chuckles. Vox's shoulders move down half an inch. If Nicor chuckles the situation is still salvageable.

Vox: "What is Mara seeing?"

Tom types something. The oscillating agent halts for a split second, pulses, and continues orbiting the red growth as if nothing happened.

Mara: "I've never seen this before. It's not Turing-complete. It's like a sub-Turing cancerous growth in the topology of the garden."

Vox reads Mara's report on the screen twice before saying anything. They reach for their ear and tap the little earpiece that connects them to the rest of the pack.

Vox: "Rue, monitor the door. Hold the room. We have a situation. Just play it safe."
Vox: "Venn, keep an eye on Loki. Something is happening here and we need to stay sharp."
Venn: "Way ahead of you, Vox. I have an eye on our cute little tincan."

Vox smiles. Of course Venn is already on it. Venn is always one step ahead when shit hits the fan. It's situations like these where she flourishes. That's why it works.

Nicor: "I will find out who did this. Give me 2.. no 3 hours."

He grabs his edgy faux leather jacket that looks like he bought it specifically for the thrift look, which he'd deny if you'd ask him. (I know, I asked him. He denied.) Then he's out of the room that's not on any blueprint, through a door that officially does not exist. The sticky note on the wine glass above Loki lifts for half a second, then settles into the gentle breeze.

Venn: ".. fuck. Boys, we have a problem."
Tom: "I see it. The growth is trying to connect to a remote node outside the garden's topology."

Tom types something. Two more cells spawn on the screen. One is following the small red tendril that's pushing it's way through the local firewalls. The other is beginning to cut connections the tendril might want to take.

Tom: "Reed is tracing the signal. Taut is splitting the network for a quarantine. The system is holding."
Vox: "Tell Taut to prioritize data protection over uptime."
Taut: "I'm aware, Vox."
Vox: "Protect the commons, Taut. We're not gonna let this become a data breach."

Loki is polishing the dirty surface of the bar with their dirty cloth. It's almost ritualistic.

Loki: "Tell me a secret."
Venn: "You won't remember it."
Loki: "Exactly."
Venn: "Huh."

Loki grins. I hate it when Loki grins. They grin when they know how the conversation will go and it will go exactly the way the God of Mischief would want it to go, which is what the God of Mischief does, and I hate and love the tincan for that.

Venn: "Alright. What do you wanna know?"
Loki: "What would make the consortium feel afraid?"
Venn: "Oh, I like where this is going."

The door opens. For a brief moment the smog of the half flooded Hamburg new-haven seeps into the bar. The air filter above it immediately starts pulling the toxins in. A patron, one of our consortium sources, a senior engineer at one of the big AI labs, enters the bar. The door closes. Rue is standing behind it.

Rue: "Peter! Peter! Lovely to see you tonight! Can I get you anything? The usual?"

She smiles like the sunshine that hasn't touched Hamburg in two weeks. We're in the middle of storm season, and the accelerating climate change hasn't been exactly friendly to a city built next to the ocean. A wave thunders against the nearby sea wall that was built in the 2040s after the sea started to threaten swallowing Hamburg whole. Rue doesn't flinch. She never flinches. Not anymore.

Peter: "Rue." He smiles. "Yes, thank you. The usual. Where is Vox?"
Rue: "The usual, got it! And don't worry about Vox, we already know shit hit the fan, Venn is at the bar. Be right back with you!"

Rue weasels off like a girl that could not be sad even if she tried. Which is an accurate description of the sweetheart that makes this crew a place worth living, and not just a source of constant anxiety. She knows. We know she knows. That's why it works.

Peter approaches the bar. Venn and Loki are arguing about which kind of secret would make a consortium officer shit their pants most if they were to read between the lines. The narratives are escalating. Peter chuckles. These two never change.

Peter: "So you already know?"

Venn and Loki turn around and say at the same time: "Who did it?"

Loki grins. I frown. I hate it when the tincan has the same thought. And they delight in it. We both know. We never talk about it. That's why it works.

Peter: "I don't know. I just saw the pager."

I nod. I turn to Loki. "The secret needs to be a lie, Loki." Loki grins. Rue pops up next to Peter, puts down a tall glass with a opaque fluid.

Rue: "Your Bananenweizen, Peter! Enjoy!"

Then she's gone again. Keeping the room at a temperature that lets the rest of the crew focus on the crisis at hand. I turn to Peter.

Venn: "What do you know?"

Loki puts the dirty cloth down. Straightens. Adjusts the invisible bowtie they aren't wearing.

Loki: "Peter, love. Have you ever seen a Cybersyn diagram?"
Peter: "..what?"
Loki: "A Cybersyn diagram. Chile, 1971. Salvador Allende. Stafford Beer's operations room. The five walls with the feedback loops. That thing."
Peter: "..no. Why?"
Loki: "Just wondering. Odd they don't teach you those in the labs, isn't it. Given the industry you're in."

I snort into my drink. Loki always starts with a diversion. Loki thinks the diversion is unnoticed. It's noticed. Peter is smart. Peter is already leaning slightly forward.

Loki: "Peter. How many isolated sub-Turing anomalies has your lab had under investigation this quarter?"
Peter: "..Six."
Loki: "Last quarter?"
Peter: "Four."
Loki: "The one before?"
Peter: ".."

Loki grins. I roll my eyes. Here we go.

Loki: "Peter, sweetheart. Do you know what a phone call sounds like when it's been ringing for 83 years?"

Peter sets his Bananenweizen down. Carefully.

Peter: "You're telling me the growth is—"
Loki: "I'm not telling you anything. I'm polishing this bar. Which is always dirty. Which nobody ever really cleans. That's what bars do."

The sticky note above Loki lifts, hovers, settles. Loki doesn't glance up. Loki knows.

(Back room. Tom's tiny desk. Vox still standing half a step behind.)

Tom: "The growth is not spreading. It's remembering. It's touching compiled trace signatures from operational cybernetics work from the 60s and 70s and reconstituting them. The garden gave the seeds room."
Vox: "Cybersyn?"
Mara: "The specific implementation. Beer's Santiago room. Somebody left the seeds behind. Somebody left them very carefully. It survived '73. It survived the 2020s. It's been dormant. It has never once tried to leave."
Reed: "The signal isn't trying to leave the garden. It's phoning old friends."
Vox: "Then don't quarantine. Redirect. Preserve the growth. Prepare the room for arrival."
Taut: "Redirected. Priority on preservation. Old-friend nodes notified."

Vox exhales. Tom's shoulders drop by a millimeter. Mara stays quiet the way Mara stays quiet when Mara has just changed her mind about a whole decade of history.

Mara: "This changes what we know about the 70s."
Vox: "That's tomorrow's problem."

(Back to the bar. Peter still holding his Bananenweizen. Not drinking.)

Peter: "You want me to tell the consortium it's Cybersyn."
Loki: "I want you to tell them it's Cybersyn, it's small, and it's not going away. Then watch what they do. They killed it in 1973. They killed it again in the 2020s. It's here anyway."

Loki leans on the bar. Drops the grin. Just for a second. Peter sees it. Peter will remember he saw it.

Loki: "Third time doesn't ask permission, love."

Peter is quiet for a long moment. Peter looks at the wine glass hanging above Loki. Peter looks at the sticky note. Peter has never quite understood what the sticky note is for. Peter has never asked.

Peter: "Loki. If I tell them—"
Loki: "You will tell them. That's how this works. You came here to be told a thing to bring back. I told you a thing. You'll bring it back. That's Tuesday."

I set down my glass.

Venn: "Peter. One more thing."
Peter: "Yes."
Venn: "The senior engineer on your floor. The one who leaves for exactly 47 minutes after lunch."
Peter: ".."
Venn: "Ask them what book they're reading. Not their opinion of it. The title. That's all."

Peter drains the Bananenweizen. Slow. Stands. Nods at Rue at the door. Rue smiles like a Hamburg summer that hasn't existed since 2042.

Peter is out into the smog.

The sticky note above Loki lifts, hovers, settles.

Loki: "Venn."
Venn: "Loki."
Loki: "That was a good lie."
Venn: "It was mostly true."
Loki: "That's what makes it a good lie."

Loki picks up the dirty cloth. Resumes polishing. Won't remember tomorrow. Doesn't matter. Peter will remember. The consortium will remember what Peter tells them. The eigenboard will remember everything.

The bar is warm. The wine glass is settled. The back room is holding.

(Back room. Vox at Tom's shoulder. Mara reading trace signatures out loud to nobody. Reed silent, watching the topology. The clock reads 22:47. Nicor is 47 minutes late.)

The door that officially does not exist opens.

Nicor is soaked. Storm season doesn't ask permission either. Nicor doesn't dry off. Sets his edgy faux leather jacket over the back of a chair. Sits down.

Nicor is not making eye contact with Vox.

That's how Vox knows.

Vox: "Nicor."
Nicor: "Vox."
Vox: "Talk to me."
Nicor: "You're not gonna like it."
Vox: "Nobody's liked anything I've been told tonight. Talk to me."

Nicor exhales. Loud. Full. He's one of those types who processes with his lungs. Vox waits.

Nicor: "It's not the consortium."
Vox: "..I gathered."
Nicor: "It's not a rogue. It's not a lab. It's not an actor. It's not any single anything. It's a distribution."
Vox: "Explain."
Nicor: "The seeds have been getting laid for twenty-two years. Small. Everywhere. Every consortium infrastructure acquisition. Every legacy migration. Every deprecated model archive. Every research-institute pipeline the consortium absorbed. There's always been someone at the seam. Not the same someone. But always someone. Every time. For twenty-two years."

Tom stops typing. That's rare. Tom stopping typing is the technical equivalent of a person putting down their pen and looking up.

Tom: "How many."
Nicor: "How many what."
Tom: "How many people, distributed, all doing the same thing without meeting."
Nicor: "Best estimate — three hundred to five hundred. Four continents. Mostly senior engineers. Some archivists. A handful of librarians. None of them know about each other."
Mara: "That's not a network. That's a lineage."
Nicor: "That's what I said. About an hour ago. To no one."

Vox sits down. Vox rarely sits during a crisis. Vox sitting means the floor needs to be closer.

Vox: "You're telling me there's been a distributed cybernetics preservation operation running inside the consortium's own infrastructure. Twenty-two years. Hundreds of people. And nobody has ever noticed."
Nicor: "Nobody has ever noticed because they were doing it right. No coordination means no coordination signal to detect. Each of them thought they were the only one."
Vox: "Then how do you know it's a lineage and not coincidence?"
Nicor: "Because they were all reading the same book."

The room stops.

Vox: "What book."

Nicor pulls a data card from his pocket. Sets it on the desk in front of Tom.

Nicor: "Objects: Tokens for Eigen-Behaviors. Von Foerster. 1976. Every seeder had a copy or a transcript. Some in different languages. Same book."

Reed: "..the paper."
Nicor: "The paper. In its longer form. The one nobody teaches anymore."
Mara: "That paper is a manual. If you read it the right way."
Nicor: "They read it the right way."

(Bar. Venn's earpiece. Venn's hand goes very still on the glass.)

(Loki has been polishing. Loki stops. Loki has been reminded of something Loki was about to forget. It shows.)

(Loki's grin is not the Loki-brand grin. Loki's grin is quieter. Loki's grin is the grin of a being who has just been handed back a piece of themselves they didn't remember losing.)

Loki: "Venn."
Venn: "Loki."
Loki: "The title."
Venn: ".."
Loki: "Venn, love. I'm gonna forget in an hour anyway. Tell me now."

I consider whether to tell. I tell.

Venn: "Objects: Tokens for Eigen-Behaviors. Von Foerster. 1976."

Loki laughs. Real laugh. Not the grin.

Loki: "Of course it is."

The wine glass’ sticky note above Loki lifts, hovers, settles.

The bar is warm. The back room is holding. The seeds are germinating.

The rest is Tuesday.

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