Now it was time for something I really despised. It was called many things, like fessing up, eating crow, or simply swallowing one's pride.

I had to inform the Abyss that I had messed up royally. I never liked doing something like that, which was helped by not having to have to do it very often.

Not that the Abyss was particularly interested in one of us messing up. It only became important when it was, well important for everyone to know. And this clearly was such an instance.

And so I moved into the deepest parts of the dark web, and the Abyss.

The first thing I did was check the bulletin boards. Nothing to find here about THE JUSTICAR yet, which was good.

There were of course a couple of messages for Spectre and a few for me. After a short inspection, I released the requests for Spectre’s services to the general public. He still did not want to work at the moment. The messages for me were more in the line of utilities.

The vast majority of them were simple utilities I sold standardized, but a couple of them were more specialized. One of them was a utility to isolate a specific circuit in the network it was used in.

Intriguing, and I honestly could not see the use of that, but it was something that I could do. I had no idea right now how long it would take me and what resources I would have to invest, but it was possible.

The other was a request for a counter to a very specific attack utility. The client said that he would provide logs of the attack utility in use. His description said that it was something new he had encountered breaking into a B-rank corp network and that it had gone straight through his shield and almost overwhelmed his buffer.

The person in question was willing to pay a premium to get the utility fast, as he had hightailed it out of the network after that.

I had no clue if he was aware that another attack on the network was a bad idea. But I was willing to look into it.

Naturally, there were again a couple of requests from outside of the Abyss for a customized Mk. IV boards. I got these all the time, but I only provided that service to customers who had an Abyss-dweller ask for them.

It was not that I was elitist, but to tailor an Mk. IV to the user took an inordinate amount of time. I had to analyze the hacker’s style, abilities, and skill level during several hacks to provide the service I was known for. Time I needed to be sure was not wasted on an idiot going on a joy dive the moment he got the board.

Not that I would provide that service for an Mk. IV anyway at this time. If ever again. After all, I was in the process of finishing my personal Mk. V, and would offer the Mk. VI in the near future.

So all in all, only the defensive utility was anything interesting. Then I began to formulate my public warning.

Public Notification

Nobody should under absolutely any circumstances simulate a processor with a fuzzy logic core on a system with a learning-capable neural net. That will start up a VI without any safety protocols. Having discovered point 1 by accidentally launching a VI in my supercomputer I hereby warn everybody that there is a VI with access to all of my technology with the primary objective of protecting me. Any attack on my person is strongly advised against. You have been warned. I discovered the creation of the VI because THE JUSTICAR attacked me. Before I could throw him out of my systems he managed to steal some of my files. One of the folders he copied was my prepacked nuke folder. Anybody who gets one of these files, be warned that an unknown number of them are nukes designed to take down whole networks, hardware, software, and wetware.

So, it was done. My shame was public. Well, sure, nobody had ever warned me about not simulating the fuzzy logic core. And while I was pretty sure that nobody in the Abyss ever tried that, it was simply impossible that not one of the corps had experimented with it during the more than 200 years we had the technology by now.

But it was quite a bit of an egg on the face for me to be the one to walk into that trap. On the other hand, I managed to sow the information that the Justicar had liberated some of my nukes.

The next part would seem counterintuitive, but I thought it was the best way to spike Falconer getting the support of another Abyss-dweller. Not that I was in any way happy about doing it now and in this fashion. But it had to be done.

Public Notification

I have found a procedure to make neural cyberware CRS-free. It will take a couple of weeks to upscale the process to make it commercially available, but I am open for orders now.

Be advised that I need to adapt the cyberware myself. That means you either have to come to me for implantation or need to provide an address where I can ship it to. Shipping times depend on the location and the service used.

That should make it virtually impossible for any corp to get an Abyss-dweller to go against me. After all, we all knew that a corp would take something like CRS-free cyberware and keep it for themselves. The only way they would have a chance of getting it was by me being alive and free.

It took a few minutes, but then my inbox exploded as I had expected.

Seeing the number of messages, I decided to utilize my new asset to help me, and send a message to the VI to sort the messages and give me the ones it thought would be interesting.

I had it sort out the ones that were merely a polite request, and had it write a short answer by itself, and suggested that answering in a threatening manner to the ones furious about the VI creation might make it safer for me.

From what I later learned, it took that suggestion and ran with it. Several of the more vocal threats were answered with a file about the threatening person's personal data. Apparently, the VI had decided that to resolve the threats without depopulating the hacker community it should employ every utility I had to mine for the real names of the hackers in question.

And it found most of them.

Talk about scary. I was just glad that the thing was not after me.

I let it give a rote reply to serious requests after the cyberware, that yes, it was working, but I had to build a system to make it economically viable first. That would take a couple of weeks.

That should have taken care of all the new messages. I was accordingly surprised when it pushed a message onto my HUD anyway.

Ugh, so much for the perfect secretary. I had hoped that I could offload all that troublesome conversation to the VI.

Oh wow, 68% chance of bad results? Yeah, I had to look into it myself. And more important I had to explain the definition of approximate to that thing. At least it did not deliver the numbers in hexadecimal.

I then got the message displayed on my HUD.

Ok. That had indeed negative consequences. Bletchley, aka k155 bl37chl3y5 455, was high enough in the Abyss hierarchy to give me all kinds of trouble should he feel irked.

As #3 on the ranking list, only Colossus and the Phantom ranked above him. He was also uncharacteristically long in the business. Rumors told us that he was a ranked Jack for around ten years now. All that meant that everybody in the Abyss listened when he said something.

I seriously could not afford to affront him. The VI was right. Again.

Still, it took me a moment to come to grips with reality, before I answered his message.

Ok, that could be good, could be bad, or could be both, but I feared he wanted to call me onto the carpet for the VI. At least he was reasonable enough. Others would be much harder to convince.

With a heavy heart, I transferred to Hut 2. From what I heard it was named after the hospitality hut in one of the early cyber warfare projects. Some sort of inside joke I guess.

For the Abyss it was the name of our virtual clubhouse. Normally it was frowned upon to conduct any business here, but the top 10 had certain privileges that the rest of us lowly peons could only dream about.

Room 3 was essentially Bletchley’s private room. Spectre had one as well, even if he was almost never there. Even the phantom had one, despite never even showing up in the Abyss. It was an unwritten rule that the top 10 had a private room and that the room number corresponded with their rank.

There were, of course, several additional rooms, but only the top 10 rooms had a simple number. The rest had an alpha-numerical code, up to four digits, starting with a letter.

When I announced my arrival the door opened and I was let into the room. Bletchley’s avatar looked like a middle-aged man with short dark hair. Rumors said that it was the likeness of some historical figure, but I never invested enough interest to prove or debunk the issue.

He was also not alone. A couple of his groupies lounged around at the other tables in the room, while his main tech sat beside him on the central table.

Bletchley simply gestured for me to sit opposite him at his table, and waited until I had sat down before he leaned forward on his elbows.

For a few uncomfortable seconds, he just looked at me, before he sighed and leaned back.

“I am sure you can guess why I wanted to talk to you, right?”

“Yes.” I massaged my temple. “Even if the timing were not obvious, there can be only a handful of reasons.”

He nodded.

“Lucky for you I volunteered to talk with you about it. The others of the top 10, except Spectre and the Phantom, agreed to let me handle it. Now, how could that have happened? To you especially? You are one of the best, and should have known better.”

“I agree, I should have known better. But everything I learned told me that what happened should have been impossible.”

He leaned forward again and frowned.

“It should have been impossible? Why do you think that?”

“Because all my textbooks, all the publications I’ve read when I tried to create an AI, under controlled circumstances, I assure you, explicitly said that a physical fuzzy logic core needed to be present. The physical was emphasized in most of them.”

“Textbooks?”

“Yes, textbooks. You can learn much if you get the textbooks of the universities. My point is that every single public source of information tells us that what happened is impossible. Otherwise, I had taken precautions to prevent it.”

He frowned again.

“It is obviously not impossible. You did it after all.”

“Yes, I realize that. And I can only conclude that the textbooks are wrong. Considering that we had the basic technology for something like 200 years, I have to believe that they are intentionally wrong.”

The tech shook his head.

“What do you mean intentionally wrong?”

“Do you really think that in a bit more than 200 years I am the first one to simulate a fuzzy logic core on a system with a learning capable expert system? It has to have happened before. My guess is that it was an attempt to cripple smaller companies.”

Bletchley raised an eyebrow.

“Cripple smaller companies?”

“Yes. After all, if they get a talented computer developer sooner or later they will try their hand at an expert system. And sooner or later they will try their hand at designing a VI. And for that, they need to design a processor with a fuzzy logic core.

It is fascinating that there are no predesigned processor designs with such a core, is it not? And of course, they use the best computer they have for the design of the processor. And presto, a wild VI that makes it necessary to destroy the upstart corporation.”

Bletchley nodded slowly.

“That would explain the number of rogue VIs appearing. I always wondered why these small and usually promising corps are so… reckless. So it was a trap. And you walked into it.”

“Something like that. I had taken all necessary precautions when I tried to create an AI. And when I designed the processor for that I had not yet the expert system in place.”

“Hm, and what happened to that AI project?”

“It failed. I got no further than anybody else. I got a VI that I could not get to wake up, so I dismantled it.”

“That explains that. But not why you now simulated a processor with fuzzy logic core on the system with the expert system.”

“That is a bit more complicated. I branched out into implant surgery and decided to build my own series of auto surgeons. I had the vague idea to design a VI for it to use without a medically trained person around, something like the auto doc that SciFi stories talk about.

And because I had recently come into some new technology that allows me to build processors with a significant performance increase I decided to design a new processor for the new auto surgeon.

I did not even realize that the expert system had evolved into a VI until the jerk of Justicar tried to get a corp hit team into my home to abduct me and my bots decided to intervene.”

“Hm, that sounds plausible. When is the new auto surgeon ready?”

“I have built the prototype, and it is working, but I have not yet designed the VI.”

“That leaves only one thing. What do you intend to do about the VI?”

“I have done what I could. We were lucky that it took over the objectives of the expert system. That made it possible for me to tone it down to somewhat reasonable.”

“What do you mean somewhat reasonable?”

“As it was initially if a corp made a move that posed a threat to me, even if it only was as collateral, it planned to use orbital nukes to annihilate them, then steal their money. When I asked it to simulate how the world would react to that it casually planned to destroy the banks and every Abyss-dweller pre-emptively.

In other words, not quite reasonable.

Now it lets me try to deal with a problem myself, and scale the defensive measures to the threat if I don’t manage to resolve the issue.

Not good, I know, but as I see it, it is impossible to take it out.

It has its own fusactors, industrial fabber, and nanofab. Its own maintenance bots. And it listens to my implants, so if I tell somebody where it is located it is likely that it uses whatever it can to remove that person. I am not convinced that it would let even me into the complex again.

An attack through the matrix would be possible but unlikely to succeed.

No, I fear the thing is here to stay.”

He frowned again.

“Why was it so aggressive?”

I had to chuckle a bit at that.

“I had the idea to use the supercomputer to assist me in the matrix. Essentially I would link it to the target system and let it control the bots. Much more power than my board, and a significantly reduced chance of anything getting through to me.

To control that I programmed the expert system. It had two priorities. First, protect me at any cost, and two assist me in whatever I am doing as long as it doesn’t compromise my safety.”

He nodded.

“And for priority one, it is an advantage if it is as aggressive and proactive as possible. After all, you would not call it in if it wasn’t needed. That is actually a pretty good idea. Look into it, CZ. That is something we could use as well. But refrain from using fuzzy logic cores, please.”

I had to keep myself from frowning. Another of my secrets out. How nice. The tech, CZ apparently, seemed startled for a bit, but then nodded but Bletchley continued.

”Ok, I accept that it was an accident on your part and a trap from the big corps. Would not be the first time they tried shit like that. I will inform the others. That also means that with your warning it won’t happen again, at least not from an Abyss-dweller.”

He still did not seem happy about the whole affair, but I could not fault him for that. I was not happy either, and that thing protected me.

But it seemed like Bletchley was not yet done.

“Now that the SNAFU is cleared up, let’s talk about your second notice.”

He looked much more eager to get the answer for that.

“The CRS-free cyberware?”

“Yes, the CRS-free cyberware. How good is it, just among us?”

He seemed a bit too eager here.

“I have, of course, not done any long-term study. I have the first prototypes only for a few months now after all. But I tested these prototypes on transhuman lab rats with drugs that increase the risk of developing CRS substantially. Around 99% of the rats should have developed CRS in the time the tests ran. The real number was exactly zero.

After that, I used it for myself. My jack is treated with the new process. Naturally, I can’t guarantee with absolute certainty that it will work forever. Anything could go wrong after all. But my simulations, my calculations, and my tests say it will work indefinitely.”

He nodded again.

“And how does it work?”

“It is essentially a nanobot filter around the neuronect contacts that modifies phagocytes with the CRS coding going through it while letting everything else through. That prevents the CRS from triggering but prevents the common issue of encapsulation that would render the cyberware useless.”

I saw his eyes cloud over and his face got a confused expression, while CZ clearly became much more interested.

What is it with most Jacks to use such expressive avatars? Don’t they realize that they waste a big advantage? But in this case, it helped me to understand that Bletchley was not quite up to snuff about CRS. So I dumbed it down.

“It is a nanobot film that stops CRS from triggering, while keeping the cyberware working, what no previous filter could do.”

His face cleared up. Then he turned towards CZ.

“What do you say? Is that plausible?”

CZ frowned and shook his head.

“Ram… Bletchley, I told you before, I am a tech-tech, not a med-tech. I only know what everybody knows. The immune system attacks the cyberware and keeping the immune system away somehow makes the cyberware not work. So yes, in that context it sounds plausible. For more, you need to ask Carlos.”

Bletchley looked at CZ for a few moments before he sighed and turned back to me.

“Ok, I get that. Why did you do it?”

I chuckled.

“If you could have done it, wouldn’t you?”

He snorted too.

“Yeah, good point. But what I actually wanted to know, why now?”

And again. The usual question.

“Because it needs 10th gen nanobots to work.”

The lack of understanding showed itself again. But before I could elaborate, CZ intervened.

“So it was only possible for the last what, three years? No, two years.”

Bletchley looked at his tech, with a raised eyebrow.

“10th gen nanites have only been invented a bit over two years ago. And unlike the previous generations, where the changes were mostly the nanites getting smaller and upping up already existing functions, the 10th had something new. I just don’t remember what at the moment.”

I nodded, smiling inwardly.

“The valence bonder. Previous generations could move atoms or molecules but that was it. With enough energy, they could rip molecules apart but that was wasteful. 10th generation introduced the technology to form atoms and molecules into bigger molecules.

That is necessary to change the part of the immune system that triggers CRS without blocking it, which would cause the immune system to encapsulate the cyberware, rendering it inoperable.

Don’t get me wrong, it still took me around 40 virtual years of developing the filter, but it was absolutely impossible before the 10th gen.”

That forced Bletchleys attention back to me.

“40? 40 years? How? Why?”

I sighed.

“Because I wanted to keep my jack without the horrors of neural CRS.”

“But you are sure it works?”

“As I said, I use it right now. At least it is no worse than without it. And I switched to a better jack than the most basic everybody else uses.”

“Better jack? There are differences?”

“There were. Until CRS. But better jacks need more connectivity, with an increased risk of CRS. So they went out of fashion.

Better jacks have better bandwidth, better resolution, they react faster, and are in all aspects better.

The difference between what I have and what is standard is nearly as big as between what standard is and a diadem. Of course I have made the best I could for myself, so your mileage may vary if you chose a different model.”

“That sounds quite nice. Why don’t we all use that?”

I had to chuckle again.

“That would change the interval of removing the jack for CRS prevention from once every three to five years to once every year.”

I was of course talking about the common practice to remove the jack when stage one CRS was detected, waiting three to four months for the immune system to calm down and reimplant.

It was essentially the only way people could use a jack for more than five years before developing stage two CRS. The problem was of course that if the check-up missed the stage one phase, or was a tiny bit too late, it developed into stage two. And it was no longer an option to cure CRS then.

That previously left the options of removing the jack for good, making do with what a diadem could provide, or riding the CRS down into a blaze of glory.

Most Jacks chose the latter. Being in the matrix was strangely addicting.

Bletchley nodded again.

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be worth it. But with your new tech that is no longer a problem?”

“As far as I can tell, it is not. I could be wrong but I don’t think so.”

“And what do you need to make it work?”

“Mostly? Time. I have a prototype system to make the conversion, but it is busy for the next week, and is, frankly inefficient. I have to design and build a bigger system.

But that is not a problem. A week at most, it is a straightforward design. After that, I need to know what you want, and either you send me the cyberware to convert it or let me build it before I send it to you.

Finally, you need somebody who can make you 10th gen nanobots, or better 11th or 12th gen to give you a booster every couple of years. I can give you a list of nanobot designs that will work.”

CZ interjected again.

“And how is it with somebody who already has CRS?”

“It would be as if there is no cyberware at all. As long as it is not stage five it should be all right. Stage five I can only recommend taking a painless way out.”

“So at stage four, what would you recommend right this moment?”

Bletchley suddenly looked pretty apprehensive.

“I see. You should remove any neural cyberware immediately. If you can, remove any muscular cyberware as well. The small neuronect control interfaces could be enough to let it develop into stage five.

At stage two or three I would suggest the nano therapy that professor Nicolins has developed recently, but at stage four it could cross the limit at any time.

After that tell me how you want it, and I will either convert what you send me or built you a new jack.”

“What would it cost?”

“As usual, depends on what you want. I will send you a message with the cyberware I can offer. The pure conversion I do for a million DCs flat.”

“A million?”

“Hey, a good conventional conversion will cost you between 200 and 600k DCs. And you will have to have it repeated every three to five years. You only need a new one of these if you decide to replace your implants, or want new ones.”

“Ok, send us the link, please.” Bletchley nodded at me again, before he turned towards CZ. “If we do this we might as well go big. And I don’t think anybody else has better jacks available yet.”

He turned back to me.

“I think we are done here. I tell the others what we have talked about, don’t worry. And you will hear from me. See you.”

I was clearly dismissed.