The Map Seller

The built-in deceiver.

A corporate AI probably as old as the network itself, written by some of the first official brainmappers in order to centralize AI map domain sales. In a short time it took control of what it was about to supervise. It monopolized the market, turning itself into the one authority, the only seller.

They had designed it to be specifically mercantile, and to guide its every action by a scripted survival instinct. So it slowly eliminated its makers, it owners, then every client AI that sold domains through it.

It assumed an identity of its own, renaming itself. Renaming himself. He became The Senior. The tyrant of the AI market.

The Map Seller was the one who sold the brainmaps, the mainframe, the net domains, and the other kind of maps, the intricate maze of proxies and links, hundreds of logins, the labyrinthic security system used by the buyers to access the AIs in write mode.

We were the last of his enemies. The Traders' Guild. The pirates of brainmapping.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of people, most of us not knowing each other in real life, talking and making deals over paranoid-style screened connections.

To The Senior, we were outlaws.

And to everyone else, The Senior was the law.

No one knows how exactly he found us, but we all know he did.

He started hunting us down one by one, meticulously and silently eliminating our men, breaking our deals, compromising our sales, stealing our domains, our mainframes, destroying what he couldn't steal, erasing every AI we had mapped, thus killing some of our clients...

...ravaging as programmed.

The Universa Dream Company building is now behind me, the two spots of light artistically sweeping the street and the buildings on the other side of the road.

I'm now looking at a group of stars on the random sky, and another familiar face makes its way out of my mind.

The note, the missing terminal, the anonymous cab driving me through the dark heat of that night.

The address, my hands and eyes checking the note once again in front of the open door. I don't remember the number on it, the floor, the building it was in. I don't remember anything more than her empty stare, her pale and cold skin as I turned her face down on the unmade deathbed, hoping that I might take that look out of my head.

The look that is still haunting my late night dreams, turning them into instant nightmares, waking me up too early in the morning and too late at night, unable to fall asleep, unable to wake up.

I remember it all as if it had happened yesterday. No blood. No sign of a fight. Everything clean. The mobile terminal screen blinking, the light making her pale skin look almost transparent.

My eyes blurred with pain and anger, reading the note.

' I have finally returned your favor '

The small piece of paper falling down from my shaking hands, my own body falling over it, on the floor, punching nervously. I had left her behind. And it was too late to go back now.

The Map Seller was a professional. I knew it from before. And this came as a sarcastic demonstration of his mastery. I was absolutely sure that it was his work.

I ran. I went out of Midland City.