She found it infinitely more pleasurable to be floating in the Network, tunneling down avenues of data, sorting through bright information that she didn’t even have to remember because she could access it again anytime she wanted.
Some humans did have the right idea, though it was far too late for them to ever become true Interfaces. Rodney Quick, for instance, was a capable human; he knew how to use The Net. She didn’t dislike him—in fact, he flattered her with his ridiculous fear of her authority. Almost unconsciously, she had responded to his fear by making herself dictatorial and intimidating. As another challenge, she had decided to push her powers to the limit, to do what Rodney seemed to expect of her, to destroy him as efficiently and as intricately as she could.
Supervisor had no active malice in mind, because malice was a human thing. But Rodney’s occasional “Quickening” of the female Servants late in his shift showed that he was still too closely concerned with physical stimuli.
Supervisor had run three other people into the ground, setting her snares and drawing them tighter. A game, intricate and challenging, and ultimately satisfying. Normal humans would consider this to be cruel and malicious, but she recognized her need as a misguided backlash from her own exotic childhood; other humans had normal aggression-dampening routines, beating on people, picking on things, pulling the wings off of flies.
By causing Rodney Quick’s death and resurrecting him as a Servant, she would in a way be bringing him one step closer to the ideal. If only the resurrection process weren’t so flawed. If planting the microprocessor in Rodney’s brain would order his thoughts and physical actions, make them more easily controlled by the person himself, then this could only be a step in the right direction. However, after seeing some of the Servants walk out like mannequins, she thought the process had overshot the mark and developed something more machine than human.
Unlike the perfect amalgam that she herself was.
The Net accepted her logon, and she felt her consciousness link up with the stream of information. The various directories stood like gateways in front of her, each leading down an infinite hallway of mirrored doors. Every directory was like a separate museum of knowledge, with more facts than any single mind could hold.
Entering the huge Network, Supervisor had left her tangible body behind, and she knew that if she could bend back and look at her Net-self, she would see only a blurred locus of incandescent light that moved down different datapaths. This was home. This was peace.
She had experienced The Net many times before and needed only a moment to reorient herself to her new physical state. With all the energy of The Net to draw on, with the secondary power pouring into her body through the impedance path from the power plates on the wall, she had no risk of becoming tired.
She began her search.
As an Interface, Supervisor could move down any path without the hindrance of passwords, able to go up and down, in and out, digging into any file she required.
She started by assimilating all the pre-Servants known to be missing—Cremator successes?—and then she used a complex routine to unearth all past records about them. The previous data activity of a deceased person remained accessible only for a certain time before it was erased or stored on a separate omnidisk. Dumping the data into an open-ended file, she activated another routine to correlate all the information, searching for parallels.
Supervisor spun down other paths as the sifting subprogram churned away behind her. She moved into the Enforcer log files of corpses found during routine duty, and then cross-checked those names to make certain every cadaver had actually been delivered to Resurrection, Inc.; some names had likewise disappeared in between lists, and she included them in the growing file behind her. Third, she checked The Net’s master death record, scanning the obituary files and collating them with the first two lists, looking for other names that had disappeared along the way.
The growing number of subfiles churned through cross-checking routines that spit out the coincidental occurrences, leaving only the genuine anomalies. Supervisor began to grow alarmed—she doubted even Francois Nathans suspected the scope of the Cremators’ involvement.
She folded herself back to the output end of her processing file, searching the missing persons’ outgoing electronic-mail archives. The computer started storing and assimilating and correlating all the information, looking for common pathways, common messages sent.
Every one of the names had been searching through The Net for the Cremators, some with real skill and imagination, others with almost pathetic clumsiness. But somehow they had all found their target. In less than a second Supervisor scanned the paths of all the outgoing messages, frustrated to find that none of them led anywhere. They were all blind attempts to contact someone, anyone: vigorous database searches, or just short letters doggedly sent out to “The Cremators” over and over again.
Then, changing her plan of attack, Supervisor began a backlash routine to go over the files again, this time searching for common messages received. With a large enough control sample taken from other random people on The Net, she was quickly able to eliminate the spurious messages, the mass mailings received by everyone.
After several iterations she found one thing, one message they had all received and all deleted; it came from the same electronic address. She used a grave-digger routine to unearth the original message, but was able to gather only selected pieces of the text. It seemed innocuous enough, a simple business advertisement about a mapmaking and demographic-studies consulting firm. She flashed down another data corridor, trying to reference the firm’s control number, and found that the company did not exist.
Mercator.
Cremator.
She tunneled down the return path of the deleted messages, elated with the challenge, the possibility of success. Along the way she encountered several dead ends, false cross-links, booby-traps that would have been successful against even the best superhacker. But she was an Interface. She made it through to the home directory.
And she found the Cremators.
All of the information had been hidden from her before, and in awe Supervisor scanned the deepest secrets of the Cremators. In growing horror she found information that amazed her, made her feel like an idiot for not suspecting—
Supervisor turned to flee in triumph, but found suddenly that the electronic gateways, the datapaths ahead of her, began shutting down one by one. She could feel the influence of other Interfaces, different from any she had ever encountered before, nearly unreal minds that never left The Net. They had hidden themselves in the forest of files and directories, like predators waiting for her. As they moved forward, she could see their electronic identities, blurred formless things of bright colors, moving in ambush around her.
The gateways closed on all sides, closer and closer. United, the other Interfaces were infinitely stronger, and Supervisor could not break through. She could see the knowledge of the Cremators all around her and was trapped by it. Although she battered her consciousness against the barriers, they became stronger and stronger, as her fear and helplessness grew.
More and more interlocks were placed around her as the other Interfaces rerouted the datapaths. For the first time in her memory, Supervisor was severed from The Net, trapped inside, completely isolated on a data island. Her incorporeal form had no voice with which to shout for help. And there was no possible way for her to get out, ever….