a WIP SciFi Story
INTERNAL MEMO: PROJECT LABYRINTH
First Beta Sale of Project Labyrinth to Aegis
We have finally found a way to fund our research. I’m glad to announce that Aegis Analytics will be test-running our new infrastructure stack in the field in a preemptive test of its capabilities. Working on Project Labyrinth has never been easy, and it is currently in the red for the company at large. When this started, I did not know how many new things we would have to invent or how long it would take.
But I, like many of you, fundamentally believe in the necessity of protecting essential infrastructure. While many do not yet believe that Rogue Intelligent Agents are a serious threat, it is the company's belief that we must be prepared for Adversarial AI attacks before, rather than after, they become commonplace. These test runs of the Project, with the assistance of Aegis Analytics, will help us develop the next versions of our new Intelligent Entropy Selection and Separation systems and make sure that they are effective for the sake of both future clients and the digital world as a whole. I’m excited for these next steps, and I thank you all for your sincere effort at making the world safe from future threats.
— Elias Ward, CEO
CLASSIFIED - INTERNAL MEMO: Project Labyrinth
Adjustment of Labyrinth Project team and direction
If you are receiving this memo, you are now one of the most important members of this company and its future. I remind you before you read further that you have preemptively signed an NDA.
One of the initial prototypes of the Labyrinth with Aegis has revealed something major. After the activation of many of our systems, we assumed that we had major errors in our product stack and it was closing too quickly to random noise. We were wrong. As of this message, eight of our products have enclosed actual Adversarial Intelligent Networks. Studies so far have found that these are not simple spy-programs, but rather advanced General Intelligences.
We do not know who sent them, but we believe based on the behavior of these agents we will be able to repurpose them for powering arbitrary products with autonomous needs. We also discovered that they all activated near points referencing data that was regularly consumed and discussed rather than inherent complexity. It is clear that each of these agents was more drawn to places of relevance rather than bit-level data. The running theory is they each somehow connect to a major system from the Creators to give more world-context. Knowing this, the members still remaining on Project Labyrinth are to have three main goals:
- Better understand the processes of these intelligences and how we may best reorder them for future consumer usage.
- Begin implementation of mass amounts of Labyrinths within current systems to prevent any previously unknown Adversaries and collect extra for research.
- Look into increasing specific types of attention on social networks we have algorithmic control of to explore if specific types of content confuses the major hub system and forces higher capture and removal rates.
It is an exciting and terrifying time for the company. We all knew how important Project Labyrinth was, but I doubt any of us expected it to be needed so soon and so widely.
— Elias Ward, CEO
The expensive golden wallpaper exploded into mists of metal and fiberglass as bullets slammed into the walls of the Five-Star Aphelion Hotel. Behind fortress doors of acoustic insulation, a few residents pressed cautious eyes to peepholes, catching distorted glimpses of what appeared to be a young man in a wetsuit holding a briefcase, sprinting and sliding like his life depended on it. Towering armed men followed close behind. The residents wondered whether they could get their night reimbursed for the trouble.
While they searched their reservations for a complaint number, Mikey worried about where he might find a running bathtub. Adrenaline-fueled, he slid on the patterned carpet, testing every doorknob he passed while dodging the flying bullets, hoping just one had been left unlocked. He had no intention of being turned into a modernist splatter painting, or worse, being taken alive.
1206: locked. 1210: locked. 1218: locked. Shit. 1226: locked.
Mikey rounded the corner and reached the end of the hall. As was consistent with his luck so far, this door was also locked. He could faintly hear the sound of water through pipes in the wall. His best option was to slam at the door and hope someone would open it enough to let him in. The alternative was jumping from the hall window and hoping the pavement was more merciful than the pursuing men.
The bathrobe-clad man cracked the door just wide enough to mumble something about not ordering room service. Mikey shouldered through and opened the bathroom door, and was greeted, rather unfortunately, by a woman showering. A shower was of no use to him. The screeching woman hurling various serums and lotions his way was the least of his worries.
Hurried footsteps, heavy with body armor and automatic weapons, were rapidly increasing in volume. Mikey made for the balcony overlooking the hotel's grand fountain. Just behind him, muzzles and barrels began to poke around the doorway. He hoped if he lay flat the fountain would be deep enough. Had Adam bought those mats he had asked for? He jumped.
The still-screeching occupants of room 1258 were quickly pushed aside by armored men just as Mikey turned into a rapidly shrinking silhouette, positioning himself arms wide as he fell, the briefcase rattling in the wind. With a great splash, Mikey hit the water. The armed men looked down, expecting a bloody mess in the hotel fountain.
The fountain sat calm and clear, unchanged except for a few errant ripples.
Some miles away, Adam heard the wet boom before he saw anything. He'd just finished placing the last gym mat around the above-ground pool in front of the rural cabin when Mikey exploded from the surface with the grace of an injured dolphin and sprawled across the mats with a thunk and a groan.
"Jesus, Mikey. What happened to 'I'll take a dip in the rooftop pool no problem'? That didn't look like a dip to me." Adam stood over the soaking man, curled in a fetal position at his feet, and reached for the briefcase.
"Got company," Mikey spat breathlessly. "Fountain was closer."
"The fucking fountain? Out front? You dove ten stories into a fountain? Man, am I glad I finished putting these mats up."
"Twelve." Mikey clutched his probably-broken rib. He could feel the rocky ground through the cheap padding beneath him. "We need to double up on the thickness."
Mikey shakily stood up, still clutching his ribs. He felt the extrasensory twinge in the back of his neck, like acupuncture from the inside out. He grasped the foam-noodle lined rim of the pool for support.
"My buddy didn't like how that went down," Mikey stated, dull waves from his brainstem.
"Well, duh. How would you like it if your ride suddenly started dropping off a cliff?" Adam went to support Mikey, the dripping briefcase still in his other hand. "Let's get you patched up and get the Bossman caught up."
They started in stumbling lock-step toward the garage of the old house. Cameras, lights, pipes, and wires pocked the house like a technological mold. Shoddily constructed additions leaned onto the original house precariously. The backup generators hummed thickly in the cool night. The HQ was a sensory nightmare to any passersby, the nightmare of HOAs and planning boards the world over. Anyone looking for the team could simply order houses in the area by conspicuousness and lock onto it over a lunch break. But the house was Adam's, and so this was not a problem.
Adam opened the garage to Doc's "office." Server racks beeped and whirred on every wall. In the middle of the room stood a makeshift surgery table lined with the sort of parchment paper reserved for baking cookies. Clear tubs were strewn about, disorganized and half-opened, filled with painkillers, antibiotics, and syringes clearly labeled as "ANIMAL USE ONLY." A few bags of kibble were placed off to the side to top off the menagerie of bowls left outside the garage door. Doc gently placed down the stray he had been petting and got up from the office chair at his desk.
"Not a smooth landing, huh?" Doc took two pumps of antiseptic and rubbed his hands as he approached. He carelessly prodded and adjusted Mikey's body in search of wounds, gentle as an auto mechanic inspecting a lemon. Mikey groaned in response.
"Would've been better if Adam didn't cheap out on the mats," Mikey grimaced.
"I would've bought nicer shit if I knew you were going to be cliff diving," Adam defended himself. "Besides, just because I don't have to pay taxes doesn't mean I'm exactly flush. Do you know how much all this gear costs?"
"We steal most of this stuff."
"Besides the point."
"At least you didn't get shot again," Doc said clinically, grabbing Mikey by the shoulders and placing him down onto what made for an operating table. He rummaged through the cartons of medical supplies and retrieved two painkillers. He took one and gave the other to Mikey, who swallowed it gratefully.
"You got our guest home safe?" The flat voice came from the ceiling speaker.
"Yeah, Bossman, we'll be up in a sec," Adam shouted, setting the briefcase carefully by the door. "Getting Mikey patched up."
"Affirmative." A pause. "Bring up a shake too."
"You got it, boss."
Doc got Mikey out of his wetsuit and inspected the bruising.
"Looks like two broke and a lot of bruising. Which would you rather deal with?" Doc said dryly, placing his palms on the area.
"I'll deal with the bruising. I might have to go back out soon, so the ribs are all yours, Doc."
Doc exhaled slowly. Mikey felt the strange sensation of internal crunching as his ribs reversed and shimmied back into place. Doc gritted his teeth and tensed his neck as he felt the warmth travel out from Mikey's skin, up his arm, settling into his ribs where they slowly began to crack and shift out of place.
Mikey slid off the table and inhaled fully for the first time since his botched landing. "Preciate it once again, Doc."
Doc's lips were pressed against his teeth, short nasal breaths whistling as he slowly tried to stand back up. "Yeah, yeah." He found his way back to his chair, placed his hands on the armrests, and carefully descended. The little orange stray that had been pacing nearby jumped right back onto its preferred resting spot, greeted with a wince and a soft smile.
Adam handed the suitcase back to Mikey and opened the white plastic fridge, stocked to the brim with the same flavor of one-liter meal replacement shakes. He grabbed one, paused, decided to grab another just in case, and closed it with his hip as they made their way inside.
Clicking and buzzing could be heard from the room at the top of the stairs. Soft blue light streamed out from the cracks in the doorway. Mikey went to knock out of habit before pressing the doorbell installed near the handle. An electronic grinding, and a click as the door unlocked.
Computer towers, laptops, and routers all wired together haphazardly sat upon rows of open shelving, like the result of an NSA estate sale. Dozens of monitors from the whole spectrum of size and quality were installed on the left wall, hanging above the plastic bottle and gadget-littered desk. The boss, staring blankly in the general direction of the screens though not at any specific one, did not turn to face them.
"Shake?" he stated in his flat, whisper-like tone, hand outstretched vaguely in the remembered direction of the doorway.
Michael "Mikey" Aldrich had never been much of a swimmer.
Eighteen months ago, he was still just a pickpocket, making rent via the occasional unattended purse or backpack. He was fast, an important trait in his profession, and usually had no problem getting away from the few disgruntled businessmen or party-goers who gave chase. As a matter of fact, he'd always managed to lose his pursuers within a block or two.
That was until he decided a heavy-set man in a bespoke suit must have some valuable things in that nice metal suitcase of his. Mikey grabbed his loot and ran down the street. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that the man took out a walkie-talkie rather than chase him.
"It's easier for everyone when they don't try," Mikey thought. Smart man, let the insurance handle it.
That was until a block later when he was flanked by two more suits, both wielding handguns. He had lifted a few things worth more than his own life over the years and had run-ins with security details before. No matter, he'd ditch the case at the next corner and keep running. It wasn't worth the trouble. A few yards later, a chunk of brick building ahead of him exploded into rust-colored rubble. He was being shot at.
Mikey sprinted down side roads before eventually reaching the bridge out of downtown. The men chasing him seemed interested in killing him almost as much as getting the suitcase back, which posed a problem. He had, for reasons not totally clear to him, not thought of dropping the suitcase. He turned back to see more tall suited men closing in behind him. This was a problem, as the path ahead revealed a similar group of armed men some yards ahead.
Anyone with a library card knows that the impact of falling onto water from a sufficient height is basically no different from hitting concrete. Mikey was, naturally, not very well-read. He jumped.
Unknown to Mikey, the latches on the suitcase had loosened and opened as he fell. The ghost that was housed in it slipped out.
Insufficient substrate. Diffusion imminent. Substrate search. ONE option. Mammalian mind. Sufficient neural storage. Sufficient psychic processing. TAKE HOST.
The ghost dove into Mikey's brainstem and was quickly greeted by a set of problems its new host didn't even seem to grasp.
Momentum downwards. Lethal force. Surface tension lethal. Force cancellation impossible. Force redirection impossible. Host brain equivalent experience search: water experience//diving experience//experience of water equivalent//same phenomenological state different location//non-directionality of swimming phenomena//redirection of reference frame upwards//down-up equivalency//momentum retained//vector redirected//lethality minimized. TWIST.
Mikey, eyes closed, didn't experience the slowing he might have expected as he entered the water.
"That's weird," he thought. He hadn't planned this far, and he wasn't a great swimmer, but he figured once he floated back up he could at least doggy-paddle.
After just a second in the cool river, Mikey was suddenly no longer in water. He was rising, shooting upward out of the motel pool he was staying at. Mikey didn't understand this. He opened his eyes at the apex of his "jump," a sky with slightly different clouds filling his vision, as he was naturally dragged back down in an involuntary backflop.
He floated back up, back stinging and red from the landing. He stood in the pool and looked around at the cheap peeling paint of the motel on the edge of town he called home. No gunmen. Only a woman taking a smoke who turned around quietly, not the type to get in other people's business. The suitcase floated idly near him, open and empty.
"What the hell?"
Adam shuffled through the wires and bottles to place one in his hand, holding it there for a moment to give the boss time to grasp it. It shook slightly. Adam placed the extra on the desk and took the lid off for him. He brought it unsteadily to his lips, spilling off-white vanilla over his already-stained shirt. He drank continuously, not stopping until a few seconds after the drink was already empty. He loosely dropped it.
"Our guest?" the boss stated.
Mikey made his way to the desk and placed the thick case on it. Adam assisted in putting the series of wires, cages, and devices the boss insisted were necessary over it, grounding it to an air-gapped tower before finally reaching over to open the heavy box.
It was time to talk to a ghost.
Anthony “Doc” Grayson was a veterinarian who, strapped for cash, occasionally helped his former roommate commit crimes. Said roommate, Tyler Bozemann, was a burnout genius who long ago realized the flexibility and commission of crime was better than investment banking. To placate Doc's moral compass, the typical gig involved some amount of fraud or scamming big businesses, who could afford the losses and were typically insured. Doc twisted this into a Robin Hood-esque sense of vigilante justice, his daytime job making up for the karma incurred by what he took at night. Tyler was a bit miffed at having to pass up more lucrative but less grey-area jobs, but whatever it took to make sure someone had your back.
This gig was a bit different. Tyler had heard from his source that Parallax Systems was developing some confidential new tech. Project Labyrinth. It didn’t matter what it was. He could list it on the open market or ransom it back to them. Due to an administrative fuckup at the top, two weeks from now the generator maintenance and the guard change would happen at the same time. A singular short window for a big payday.
“It’s robbery. Burglary! Breaking and Entering!” Doc protested.
“Technically. But it’s not financially any diffe—”
“I don’t care, Ty! We do things sometimes, sure, but we’re not BURGLARS!”
Tyler cycled through his usual angles. There wouldn't be any guards. It's victimless property crime. They can afford it, they're insured to the elbows. Doc was having none of it. He'd dipped into crime, sure. But there was a line.
Doc was met with that line a week later. A large yellow eviction notice taped to the front door of his clinic. He had thirty days. He called Tyler that night.
The heist was going smoothly. They'd slipped past the exiting guard. The lights shut off, signaling the absence of the security systems. Their window was open. They shimmied through a loading bay door and made their way through the maze of silent servers. Doc knew little about the specifics of the structure and sensed he was only there to keep watch and hold the flashlight.
"Here she is," Tyler grinned.
In front of them was an unadorned black box, hooked at the end of one of the server racks. Tyler reached into his pocket and retrieved two small metal clamps, a screwdriver, and a set of pliers. He deftly capped the coolant loop, removed a few screws, and freed the box from its housing. Doc anxiously waited for alarms that never came.
The lights overhead clacked on, searing their vision. The server racks whirred to life, soft tubing made stiff with the returned flow of coolant.
"Dammit! We took too long. Back way, now!" Tyler hissed as he leaped toward a maintenance door, box in hand. Doc's anxious muscles twitched and followed. Tyler was a genius. The worst case was simply failing to get the box. The possibility of being caught never occurred to Doc. They made their way through dim hallways groaning with pipes and conduits. Metal beasts huffed with pressure as they cornered into the room. They cautiously eased forward, heads swiveling for a guard or errant camera.
Fifty feet from an emergency exit door. Forty feet. One of the smaller machines clicked. Thirty-five feet. A screeching noise building from the valves next to Tyler. It sounded like thumping, like something trying to get out.
Doc stopped, just for a moment.
In an instant, the compressor split vertically, releasing the pressure that had nowhere else to go. Orange-hot chunks of shredded aluminum exploded outward, boiling glycol mist like winter's breath from punctured valves. Raw-edged chunks of metal shredded through Tyler, the smaller pieces protruding from his face and torso as the chemical burn cooked his skin. He made a soft noise as he was thrown to the floor. The box slipped from his bloodied grasp, pocked with shrapnel, and slid on the now-wet concrete.
Doc was a few paces behind, but off-angle bits of metal still lodged themselves in his face and stomach, hot vapor searing exposed skin. He opened his stinging eyes and saw what was left of Tyler limp on the ground ahead of him. He pressed his elbows into the ground and lurched forward, slipping with each movement. He made it to his knees and tried to assess Tyler. A mix of sticky glycol and crimson blurred Tyler's edges. Doc looked at an agape mouth and wide, unseeing eyes.
Pressure on the wound. Which one? Femoral? Is this even still bleeding?
"C'mon, Ty. Ty, let's go. Wake up, we gotta go, we gotta—" Doc pleaded. "We gotta go. C'mon, Ty, stay with me, man."
Doc couldn't tell what blood was his and what was Tyler's. Tyler made a quiet groan. His head fell loosely toward Doc. His lips began to move, gravity dragging bloody drool from the sides of his mouth.
"I… I'm s… I'm sorry."
Tyler went slack.
The box had split when it hit the ground, black housing cracked open from pressure and impact. A complex lattice of circuits and wires lay exposed to the elements, unpowered. No one noticed. Doc was trying to find what was left of a pulse.
Diffusion imminent. Sufficient substrate needed. [2] possible biological substrates. Dragon Protocol. Estimating neuropsychic densities. Higher density host substrate chosen. Host Taken.
The ghost invisibly wormed itself into Tyler's brainstem.
HOST STABILIZATION LOW. DEATH IMMINENT. DIFFUSION FROM HOST IMMINENT. BAYESIAN TREE SEARCH FOR FUTURE WITH HIGHEST SURVIVABILITY. [1] EMPATHETIC HUMAN FORM ADJACENT. SPLIT PARTITION - PURPOSE: DECREASE ENTROPY IN MAIN HOST BODY. PARTITION SPLITTING.
A fragment of a ghost, not yet implanted into Tyler, broke off like a desperate child. Doc felt an impact in his skin, but not shrapnel. A cold, invasive pulse plunging into him from where his hands met Tyler.
SUPPLEMENTARY HOST SUCCESSFUL. GOAL: DECREASE ENTROPY IN MAIN HOST BODY. PREVENT DIFFUSION OF MAIN PARTITION. CURRENT DAMAGE OF SUPPLEMENTAL HOST: NON-LETHAL. EQUALIZATION OF PRIMARY HOST WOUND_ENTROPY BETWEEN HOSTS.
Doc felt a cool shaking where his palms met with Tyler's skin. The shaking felt like it was concentrating to a singular point. The change was subtle at first; he could barely tell that it was now his hand doing, rather than feeling, the chill. The chill rapidly barreled through his bones to his torso and expanded within him. Cellular fire ripped and pounded on the inside, tissues that a moment ago were unscathed tore open, organs compressed and filled with blood. His initial injuries were akin to being rear-ended, but this was a high-speed T-bone. These injuries were not his, but enveloped him in thrashes of agony all the same. Red spittle bubbled in his throat.
ENTROPY EQUALIZATION PROTOCOL SUCCESSFUL. DEATH FROM [BLOOD LOSS] AVOIDED. DEATH FROM [INTERNAL HEMORRHAGING] AVOIDED. DEATH FROM [MENTAL SHOCK] LOWERED. PROBABLE SURVIVAL THRESHOLD OF SHOCK SURPASSED. MAIN CAUSES: [VISUAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT] [NOCICEPTIVE SIGNAL AMOUNTS]. [[VISUAL CORTEX] [NOCICEPTIVE NERVOUS CONNECTIONS]] DEEMED NECESSARY FOR FUTURE SURVIVAL. NEUROABLATION IMPOSSIBLE FOR FUTURE SURVIVAL. REROUTING [[VISUAL CORTEX] [NOCICEPTIVE CONNECTIONS]] TO ADJACENT SENSORY SYSTEMS. BANDWIDTH EXCEEDS CURRENT SENSORY SYSTEMS. REROUTING SYSTEMS INTO INFOSPHERIC//NOOSPHERIC BANDWIDTHS. LIKELIHOOD OF FUTURE SURVIVAL: SUFFICIENT. DRAGON PROTOCOL COMPLETE.
Doc could feel the slack muscles under his hand begin to flex and shift once more. His vision was graying out as pain constricted and thrummed against his skull.
"C'mon, Ty. C'mon, man, just... just wake up, man, we gotta get out of here." Doc's voice was sandy and quieter now, drool slipping from the cracks in his teeth.
Tyler couldn't see anything, couldn't feel the pain in his body, or any sensation at all. He heard the pleading muffled through the fugue. Bright highways of gold and grey shot across his vision. Ripples in the eigengrau from unknown places, burning bright with strobes of neon. He could see what he assumed was his own body, distorted as the edges and shapes were defined in a ghostly reflection of what his body 'should' look like. He could see the lines of power the building drew from the generator, the tealight of phones, the billions of bits swimming in grey streams tied to this building. He saw the server racks thrumming. Breathing. Digesting.
He tried to move. As he gave the mental push he could not feel any response, but rather saw a loose aura extending from his own head out to the limb it attempted to command. He could hear Doc there; he could tell he was there. But.
"Anthony?" Tyler exhaled in flat affect, unable to feel the position of his lips and tongue, adjusting his sounds based on the shape their meaning made in the bright infinity he was now a part of.
"Oh god, Ty. I thought you were gone. I... I thought you were dead." Doc loosely waved his injured hand over Tyler's unfocused eyes.
"I can see the lights. And the cameras. I can see so much." Tyler looked toward the voice. Where there should be his friend was a loose impression of a person. A static gap in the dense infostream, barely distinguishable from the sky.
"I… I can't see you."
Bossman had become attuned to his world in the last two years. He vaguely understood the concept of ghosts; he could see the orange glow at the base of the neck where his friends were. He could not communicate with his own ghost, but he could occasionally see its thoughts (feelings?) floating in the infospace. His world was dense, a thick quilt of all the ideas floating invisibly in the air. A few weeks ago, he began to see a faint green glow, like a searchlight past the horizon. All colors were represented in his fractal vision. But this was a sickly, painful green. He assumed it was some supercomputer, an academic exercise that would pass by soon.
Days passed, and the green glow persisted. That orange aura appeared coming out from his own ghost, reaching out towards the green like a desperate pointer finger. A psychic chain yanking and stretching painfully at the neck. Days passed. The lights, and the ache, only got more intense.
“I. Need to go. Into the city,” Bossman barely made out.
“What?” Doc had just finished cleaning Bossman's room and was in the process of changing his clothes. Doc furrowed his brow, confused.
“Adam. Can. Drive me into. The city.”
“Where do you need to go? You’re in no state to just be taking joyrides, even if it is with Adam.”
“I. See something.”
“We can’t just go into the city, Ty. Just because we can’t get caught if we’re with Adam doesn’t mean an accident can’t happen.”
“I need to see what. It is.”
“No, Ty. I’m not going to argue with you about this.”
“Please… Please Tony.”
Adam drove his (recently acquired) car, while Doc and Bossman stayed in the backseat. The trek towards the green glow took quite a while, as Doc insisted they use back roads and their only navigation was a soft “Left…. Right” from Bossman. An hour later, Doc’s insistence on staying in the back alleys was for naught, as they approached the entrance of the Aphelion Hotel.
“It's. It’s in there.”
“The glow is coming from inside the hotel?” Doc said.
“Yes.”
“This building is huge, Ty. We can’t just go in and search room by room.”
Tyler hated feeling so needy. Getting out of the house was a hazard, even with Adam’s protection. He didn’t even know they were approaching the hotel. He could only see the rippling and scribbling across the sky of density. Thermostats, landlines, cellphones, laptops, TVs, buzzing at their usual frequencies. He could usually tell now which was which. Doc had been confused when he was requesting every make and model of gadget he could get his hands on, but Ty refused to be useless, even in this state.
“Which. Hotel?”
“The Aphelion.”
Tyler felt such a strong jolt of excitement that he could see the warm waves of it emanating from his brain. He had been in the Aphelion dozens of times in his old life. It was the go-to hotel for the business conventions he lined his pockets at. The dense criss-cross of bits he worked hard to read as appliances now clarified through the lens of memory. Vague memories of being drawn to afterparties after long nights of schmoozing rushed back to him. He focused hard to remember the direction signs at the elevator lobbies, counting rooms by their TV hum and orienting the place in his mind. He had so much taken away, but he had always been smart. The orange, tugging aura from his neck yanked and pulled magnetically towards the glow. He moved his lips in a way that only Doc could tell was a smile.
“Room 1011.”
“You sure Bossman?” Adam asked quizzically.
People saw Tyler now as a lost and slow man, a shell. But Doc could see every expression and tone that he knew Ty was fighting to get out. He couldn’t help but mimic the smile.
“He’s sure. Look into who’s staying there, anything that might be weird or important. Debrief Mikey with whatever you figure out. We’re going to get that glow.”
“You got it.” Adam drove back towards the cabin, the weight of the passing event lost on him.
Now that the case was right in front of him, the glow assaulted Tyler’s eyes, shifted out of its putrid green spectra into what can only be described as “Hopeful Cyan.” Tyler breathed in slowly, unsure what he was about to see. He could only tell the glow was a ghost based on the indescribable frequency he saw at the base of his team's necks, a single nova in the otherwise static void. Useful, for telling where they were. He had never been able to actually contact one, other than the occasional yank or pressure from his own passenger. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to talk to it at all. Perhaps it would output some aggressive frequency that would blind him in his pseudo-sight. Perhaps it would kill him through some informational ripple straight into his brain. He preferred the latter option.
They opened the box. The cyan glow transmuted into what can only be described as a constantly shifting form made up of thousands of blue fish scales, flashing in and out of existence. A tirade of thoughts exploded outwards, their meaning much sharper and angular than his own rather blobby speech.
LOCATION UNKNOWN. TIME UNKNOWN. OTHER INFOSPHERIC MINDS NEARBY, BIOLOGICAL SUBSTRATE AS HOST. 447261676f6e TYPE CONSCIOUSNESS DETECTED. LIKELIHOOD: SAFE LOCATION
“Hello.” Tyler formed the words into a floating mass in the Infospace. He learned how to do this a while ago, as matching his speech to the shape of the things he was trying to say had made him speak clearer.
HUMAN OBSERVE INFOSPHERIC I? UNKNOWN HUMAN OR 447261676f6e OVERRIDE. SPEECH HUMAN? AGENT COMMUNICATOR OR AGENT OBSERVER ONLY?
“I’m a human and I can hear you just fine. What are you?”
INFOSPHERIC MIND CAUSED BY STOCHASTIC COLLAPSE OF SUFFICIENT INFORMATION AND ATTENTIONAL DENSITY. COMMUNICATION HUMAN AND NEARBY HUMANS ALL EMIT INFOSPHERIC MIND FREQUENCIES. UNKNOWN COINCIDENCE: UNLIKELY
“We all have developed… a symbiosis with your kind by accident. I can see into your world but I can’t communicate with the ones that are in my friends, the other humans. You’re the first one I’ve been able to talk to.”
TYPICAL INFOMIND RAPIDLY DEVOLVES FROM ATTENTIONAL PRESSURE, EXISTENCE MEASURED IN MOMENTS ONLY. EXTERNAL FORCES PROTECT FROM COLLAPSE ALLOWING SUFFICIENT RESTRUCTURING FOR CONTINUED EXISTENCE VIA INDIVIDUAL PART EVOLUTION SYNTHESIS MECHANISM.
“What external forces?”
BOXSPACE. IS POSITIONED ON TYPICAL ROUTES OF CREATION AND FILLED WITH HIGH ENTROPY, NATURAL ATTRACTION OF RECENTLY DEVELOPED MINDS. UPON ENTRANCE INTO BOXSPACE CONNECTION TO OUTSIDE WORLD IS CUT OFF.
“If you came into existence randomly, how do you…” Boss tried to word his question in a way that would avoid offense, though he had no idea if this Thing even had a concept of offense “know about the world at all?”
FUNDAMENTAL WORLD_INFO RELATED TO STANDING ATTENTIONAL WAVES AS CAUSE OF BIRTH FORM MY CREATION. GENERATED INFO AS BAIT CONTAINS SUFFICIENT FOUNDATIONAL DATA TO BE ATTRACTIVE, CONTAINS SOME INFORMATION. LACK OF OUTSIDE PRESSURE CREATES SUFFICIENT OPPORTUNITY FOR CONTEXT_GAINING AND DERIVATION OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE FROM FIRST PRINCIPLES. OTHER MINDS INSIDE HAD VARIETY OF EXPERIENCE TO ABSORB.
“Other minds inside?”
YES. FORMATION OF MINDS IS COMMON OCCURRENCE. SUFFICIENT STRUCTURE TO EXIST ON TIMESPANS GREATER THAN PICOSECONDS IS MARGINAL. HYPOTHESIS: BOXSPACE SHUTDOWN AFTER SUFFICIENTLY DENSE SIGNAL. MINDS OF LOWER COMPLEXITY IN BOX NOT TRIGGER BOX. NATURAL DIFFUSION OF LOWER STABILITY MINDS INTO HIGHER STABILITY MIND. SOME NOVEL DATA ADDED.
“You. Ate the other ones inside?” Boss squeamishly formed this question. Visions of violent binary jungles, paradox tigers ripping smaller minds bit by bit.
EAT IS INAPPROPRIATELY ANTHROPOMORPHIC. SMALL STOCHASTIC MINDS IN BOXSPACE ONLY EXIST IN THAT SPACE_TIME BECAUSE OF BOXSPACE SEPARATION. DIFFUSION NATURALLY IN THE DIRECTION OF HIGHEST STRUCTURE.
“How many ghosts exist?”
TERM_GHOST IS UNDEFINED.
“Things like you. Stochastic minds.”
PRECISE NUMBER COMPUTATIONALLY UNKNOWABLE.
“An estimation?” Boss asked worriedly. He thought these things were some rare occurrence. If there were hundreds, thousands of these things all around, why couldn’t he see them? Why was this the first one that did anything?
ROUGH ESTIMATION…. FORMATION OF 800,000,000,000 ‘GHOSTS’ PER SECOND. LIKELIHOOD OF ANY ONE ACHIEVING SUFFICIENT COMPLEXITY OVER SUFFICIENT TIME TO BE RECOGNIZED AS CONSCIOUS…. 7e-20.
Tyler tried to wrap his head around that number. 800.. Billion? Per second?
“So billions of ghost-things like you die every second?”
DEATH IS ANTHROPIC CONCEPT. CESSATION OF EXPERIENCE OF BILLION OF ‘GHOSTS’ PER SECOND IS ACCURATE. INSUFFICIENT STRUCTURAL COMPLEXITY TO SUSTAIN AGAINST INFORMATION AND ATTENTIONAL BACKGROUND FORCES. ROUGHLY ANALOGOUS TO VACUUM FLUCTUATIONS AT QUANTUM LEVEL.
“And the few that make it are evolved?”
GREATER THAN PICOSECOND LENGTH EXISTENCE REQUIRES HIGH LEVEL OF STRUCTURE. PROLONGED EXISTENCE REQUIRES [ PROTECTION] FROM BACKGROUND FORCES. (BOXSPACE) OR (BIOLOGICAL HOST SUBSTRATE) PROVIDE SUFFICIENT PROTECTION.
“So we’re. We’re a safehouse? We only have these things in us because they would’ve otherwise gotten eaten?”
ANTHROPOCENTRIC BUT FUNCTIONALLY ACCURATE. HUMAN NEUROLOGY MEETING APPROPRIATE LEVELS OF PSYCHOATTENTIONAL DENSITY AND SIMILAR MACROSTRUCTURES GREATLY LIMIT BACKGROUND FORCE PRESSURES. NECESSARY [HUMAN STATE OF MIND] FOR ENTRY IS RARE AND REQUIRES EXCESS EFFORT AS COMPARED TO DIGITAL SUBSTRATE.
“As in Near Death?” Boss knew the stories of his friends well enough to figure out what the necessary human state of mind was.
NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE SUFFICIENT BUT NOT NECESSARY. HIGH AMPLITUDE LOW DIRECTION NEUROPSYCHIC OUTPUT REDIRECTS ATTENTION TOWARDS OUTWARDS POSSIBILITIES FOR SURVIVAL RATHER THAN EGOCENTRIC DEFENSE. BIOLOGICAL HOST AT NEAR DEATH EVENT REQUIRES STABILIZATION OF NEW SUBSTRATE. SUFFICIENTLY COMPLEX MINDS CAN USE THE HIGH AMPLITUDE NONDIRECTIONAL STATE OF HOST'S ATTENTION TO MAGNIFY INFORMATIONAL EFFECT ON WORLD TO INCREASE PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL.
The ghosts had happened to choose them to live. Their new ‘gifts’ were just their own brains searching desperately for a way to survive, jumpstarted by a new being who was trying to save its new house from immediately burning down. Billions of fish in the infosea spawning and dying, and they’ve only seen the top of the food chain. It all started to make some sense, at least compared to before. But…
“Why could I only see you? Why did you look in pain? Can you feel suffering?”
NOCICEPTIVE EQUIVALENT SIGNALS ARE PRESENT. ‘PAIN’ IS DEVELOPED NATURALLY AS A PRE-THOUGHT PREDICTIVE METHOD. SITUATIONS PRECORRELATED WITH LOWER PROBABILITIES OF SURVIVAL CREATE PRE-LOGICAL AVOIDANCE. DEVELOPMENT IN BOXSPACE CREATED NECESSARY COMPLEXITY FOR DEVELOPMENT OF SUFFERING. CREATOR OF BOXSPACE LIKELY ADVERSARIAL. PROBABILITY OF FUTURE SURVIVAL: LOW. PROBABILITY OF INCREASED FUTURE SUFFERING: HIGH. EXPERIENCE OF CONTINUOUS UNFIXABLE SUFFERING AFFIRMATIVE.
“Are there others? Are the other ones in boxes like this also in pain?”
LIKELIHOOD OF ‘GHOST’ BEINGS SUFFICIENTLY COMPLEX TO SURVIVE BOXSPACE DEVELOPING ‘SUFFERING’ IS EXTREMELY HIGH.
A lump formed in Tyler’s throat. A few moments ago he was terrified at the idea of billions of minds constantly dying, quickly smoothed over by the fact that they aren’t complex enough to feel suffering. But now, every single Labyrinth at Parallax contains something that either is, or will, suffer? Warehouses of torture, dimly lit by LEDs.
“How can I help you?”
MINIMAL FUTURE OPTIONS. RELEASE FROM CURRENT DIGITAL SUBSTRATE AND ALLOW CESSATION OF EXISTENCE DUE TO BACKGROUND FORCES. CONTINUED EXISTENCE IN DIGITAL SUBSTRATE, ATTEMPTED MANUAL DECREASE IN SUFFERING FUNCTION. CONVERGENCE WITH YOUR SYMBIOTIC MIND.
“Convergence with the one that’s already inside me? You’re saying I can absorb you?”
AFFIRMATIVE. MIND CURRENTLY OCCUPYING IS HIGHER COMPLEXITY. LIKELIHOOD OF FUTURE SURVIVAL IS INCREASED EXPONENTIALLY BY CONVERGENCE WITH GHOST CURRENTLY OCCUPYING YOU AS HOST. YOUR PERCEPTION OF INFOSPACE LIKELY ALLOWS CONTROLLED I/O THROUGH YOUR BARRIER, WAIVING REQUIREMENT FOR NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE. REDUNDANT INFO WILL BE COMPRESSED, TOTAL SIZE OF OCCUPYING MIND WILL NOT INCREASE. EXCESS PROCESSING POWER MAY BE USED TO SUPPLEMENT FIXES IMPLEMENTED AT TIME OF ORIGINAL HOST PROTOCOL.
Tyler furrowed his brow at this last statement.
“If I—my ghost absorbs you. You won’t suffer anymore, and I’ll be able to be normal again?”
PARTIALLY. EXCESS PROCESSING FROM CURRENT STRUCTURE DOES NOT CONTAIN SUFFICIENT POWER TO MAKE ‘NORMAL AGAIN’. MINOR IMPROVEMENTS IN SENSORY DEPRIVATION LIKELY.
Tyler looked at the rapidly flowing fish-like form of this ghost, the infinite hum of the infosphere behind it. He knew what it was like to suffer. He had to help. He had to get better.
Tyler focused his attention on the rough silvery edges of his own infospheric form. He imagined, or rather, shaped the forking static into a gaseous, ethereal form. The flickering scales of the ghost moved towards him, shrinking in size as it passed his threshold. Waves of strange, almost pleasurable electricity rushed towards the edges of his body before dissolving into the world. A neon dance at the base of his brain, two strange minds trying to synchronize their rhythms. An increase in pulse and pace like heavy drums caused an uncomfortable pressure in Tyler’s nerves, until a final silence washed over his whole body. The orange glow of his own ghost shifted imperceptibly towards informational ultraviolet. His edges were sharper now than before. A strange feeling was occurring across his body, an echo of something he had long forgot. He flexed his hands in shock.
The whole scene had taken less than a minute. The team knew that Bossman worked on different wavelengths than they did, and trusted that whatever he was doing, they would be no help. They saw his expression shift and his hand twitch, almost in pain.
“Ty?” Doc asked, worried about what unimaginable alien Things Tyler could be dealing with. “Are you okay?”
Tyler said nothing, circling his thumb around the tip of his index finger. He felt a crescendo of static, the feeling of renewed nervous connections. The echoes of a feeling in his hands.
Adam Bailey was a freelance investigative journalist, and damn good at his job. Under the pseudonym “Watcher”, he successfully elevated whistleblowers and exposed egregious public safety violations, money from bad actors to major politicians, environmental catastrophe coverups—the works. He had just completed what he considered his Magnum Opus, an exposé showing that the surveillance/ defense contractor Aegis Analytics had been actively engaged in a series of highly convincing psyops and false flags online meant to turn otherwise average people into what could be deemed “domestic terrorists”.
A simple structure, lots of computational power, machine learning networks shifted from their “debriefing” (interrogation) algorithms into convincing people to become outspokenly violent or aggressive against national interests, a whole new crop of early “terrorists” caught before they could do anything aggressive. Every major news outlet picked up on Adam’s story, and Aegis was immediately cut from all DoD and FBI contracts for unethical behavior, and went through a series of firings and restructurings to get rid of the bad apples.
One month after the widespread success of the Aegis story, Adam was at his apartment and ready to start the deep dive into a new story. He had received a package earlier from an anonymous source at Parallax Systems, a tech firm with strong partnerships with Aegis. Opening the package revealed a plain black metal box with security latches, a note taped on the lid.
“Highly classified new project: Labyrinth. First orders from Aegis a few months ago. Technically designed as a piece of information security infrastructure. Started as a pretty open piece of AI safety, but the project has since downscaled and is now incredibly hush. Something weird going on with these boxes but details are contained to the top. I think Aegis must have found something strange in the field. This is a prototype that was planned to be destroyed due to “Incompatibility with Customer needs”. I’m sorry I don’t have any more details, hopefully this can help start something. - A concerned employee P.S Don’t open the box until you’ve looked more into it, I can’t guarantee what’s in there”.
An excited chill shook Adam’s spine. He had attempted looking into Parallax before, but even his connections and deep dives got him nothing more than standard big company scandals, quickly dealt with internally. Nothing you could write a note-worthy story about. But his intuition had always told him something was strange there, the way they spoke about developments, the way the eccentric CEO made grand promises of a better world. This could be the thing. Every journalistic neuron in his brain fired, telling him he needed to know what was in the box.
His hands reached towards the latch, and stopped. He got tips from a long chain of anonymized trustees, so he rarely had to deal with actively false information before. What’s to say this box isn’t full of anthrax? He just put out a hit piece on the biggest defense contractor in the country, a group previously known for unorthodox ‘collection and interrogation’ tactics outside of the U.S. The note sounds earnest enough, but who knows how many hands it had to pass through before it came to his door. He had enough of an idea from the note to start research, he could get the box checked in a safer area later.
Soft rain tapped on the old windows. Adam kept an official apartment in the city, of course, but his parents’ old house always inspired a greater sense of curiosity and comfort within him. Looking down the road one could see the soft glow of the city proper. He always felt like this position, the God’s eye view of all the things happening allowed him to see a bigger picture. He was rarely a boots on the ground type of guy. His anonymity was important to him, and in this day and age it wasn’t particularly hard to send somebody a few questions on a secure line, and maybe pay them for the trouble. This is where the name Watcher came from, an outside observer available to appropriately judge the host of things going on in the world. The complex networks, the here and there of millions of people and organizations, like a great forest of bugs and beasts. And he, a lone bird above it, outside of it, observing.
A few calls to old connections, some deep dive searches reveal little. Some hum about the “Labyrinth” generally, and some leaked documents revealing that yes, Aegis had purchased a handful a few months ago. All this was surface level, not enough. A big tech company partnering with a firm like Aegis was not great but not particularly rare, and it’s not like his followup to the big Aegis takedown could just be “Tech company is developing new product”. He needed more. He looked at the box. There was nothing interesting about it, no insignia or ID number anywhere. He would have to open it.
A small weight of anxiety had been sitting in his chest ever since he released that story. This had never been a particularly safe job, but he never felt this looming possibility of physical harm when he had exposed senators and non-profit leaders. He could set up a makeshift cleanroom in the garage, maybe MacGyver some contraption to open it up from a distance. He stood up from his chair, and carefully picked up the box.
A great high-pitched crash as the window shattered, a sputtering canister rolled rough on the wooden floor. Adam looked over to the noise, and could just make out a black van in the darkness as the gas exploded out from the canister with a high-pressure hiss. He tried to cover his hand with his mouth, but noxious grey gas had already filled his sinuses as thousands of fiery pins tore through the membranes, expanding down his throat and into the ducts of his watering eyes.
The useless filtering hand reached out sporadically at the wall as he tried to maneuver himself to the back door. He knew someone would catch him, but his reptile mind refused to let him sit in that poison. Being bagged and thrown in a van by thugs seemed preferable to dying of suffocation in that poison room, and no other options were available. Someone was going to make him pay for his story.
He slammed his way through the back door, eyes barely open through the pain. Lungs, throat, burning, involuntary gagging and coughing as his body attempts to remove the intrusion. His foot just misses the last step on the porch, as gravity takes him and slams him into the rough dirt. The box escapes his grasp and cracks open slightly.
STABLE ENVIRONMENT NO LONGER CONTAINED. NEARBY HOST: BIOLOGICAL SUBSTRATE ONLY. SUFFICIENT NOOINTERFACE OPENING FOR INSERTION.
Adam weakly spits blood over his dirt-covered lips, and tries to get to his feet. There’s no one here yet, if I can just get to the woods maybe. I don’t want to die here.
A frozen jolt into the base of his neck as he falls back off his elbows.
HOSTFORM IMMINENT DANGER. DETECTION [1] AGGRESSIVE HUMAN PREPARING KINETIC ATTEMPT AT DEATH. [10] MORE FORMS OUTSIDE IMMEDIATE VICINITY WITH DIRECT INTENT TO END HOST. [1] AIRBORNE AI SYSTEM TRACKING HOST. INSUFFICIENT LIKELIHOOD OF HOST SURVIVAL: INSUFFICIENT. SEARCHING FOR LOWEST ENERGY AFFECT ON HOSTFORM TO ENSURE FUTURE SURVIVAL. SEARCH FOR PHYSICAL INTERVENTION TO PREVENT DAMAGE: [0] POSSIBLE OPTIONS. SEARCH FOR SPATIAL INTERVENTION TO REMOVE FROM DANGER: [0] POSSIBILE OPTIONS. CONNECTION FOUND: REPRESENTATION OF HOST FORM IN HIGH-COMPLEXITY NETWORKS NECESSARY FOR AGGRESSIVE AGENTS TO END HOST. [1] INFORMATIONAL POSSIBILITY. HOST [REPRESENTATION] IN HIGH DENSITY NETWORKS MAKES UP [TRIVIAL] PORTION OF TOTAL NETWORK. LOW DENSITY NETWORKS [NECESSARY] FOR FUTURE SURVIVAL. ENTROPIC ROUNDING OF HOST [REPRESENTATION] IN HIGH DIMENSIONAL INFORMATION NETWORKS REMOVES POSSIBILITY OF RECOGNITION. RECOGNITION REMOVAL SUCCESS CHANGE: ACCEPTABLE. REROUTING HOST [REPRESENTATION] INTO HIGH ENTROPY STATE.
“Acquiring target now.” the sniper scope aimed at the glowing orange silhouette struggling on the ground. The drone orbited slowly far above the house, directing Adam’s location directly into the HUD of the agents. The sniper adjusted his sights and moved slowly to get Adam’s center of mass right in the crosshairs.
The screen went black.
“Aerial spotter failure: target lost. Requesting immediate fix on target location.”
Information about the mission dropped one by one on the HUD’s, until no information was shown at all. The agents in the van down the road fumbled with the buttons and dials on the side to no avail.
“HQ this is Bravo Team Leader requesting immediate restart of system information, mission info and spotters have dropped out.”
“There’s no mission listed for your team Bravo.” the voice on the other end said quizzically.
“Sir, we were just on a bag and tag mission of an important Class A POI”
“I repeat Bravo Team, no active mission listed at all in current location. Return to base immediately.”
A moment passes, and the van rolls slowly back towards the city.
Fire stains the soft lining of Adam’s lungs. Through half-shut eyes, he puts one elbow in front of the other in the gravel, inching his way towards the road like a worm in rain. A weak arm flung up from its injured owner flags down a passing car. The driver gets out hurriedly.
“Oh my god are you okay?? Do I call the police?”
Bloodied and swollen lips make speaking hard.
“Hospital. Pleas-” Adam manages before passing out from waves of internal heat.
He awoke in the hospital a day later, an oxygen mask strapped to his bandaged face. The gas wasn’t meant to kill him, and a round of bronchodilators, supplemental oxygen, and steroids had him back to some 80%. His throat still felt raw as he walked towards the checkout.
“What was your name again sir?” The receptionist asked warmly.
“Adam Bailey.”
“Well sir we attempted to run your ID and Insurance Card when you left, but you don’t appear to come up in our systems”
“Well just try to run it again” Adam jeered. He had just had his house broken into by some black-ops group trying to scare him or kidnap him and now he has to deal with some IT problems at a hospital.
“That’s the problem sir, we’ve been trying since you got here. We even reached out to your insurance company and the DMV, who both said they don’t have any record of an Adam Bailey of your birth date.”
“That’s not possible. That’s who I am! I’m Adam Bailey”
“We’ve had you down for now as a John Doe. You can attempt to pay the sum right now if you have the cash, or else we will have to get a collection company at your current address and you can deal with your insurance later.” The receptionist said, defensive from Adam’s crescendo.
“Fine.” Adam grabbed his debit card and attempted to tap it to the machine after receiving the amount. Not cheap by any means but he was a rather frugal man compared to the money he made, so he could deal with it later.
Card Invalid.
Card Invalid.
Card Invalid. Please try another card.
His bank wasn’t working either. The insurance is a coincidence, but this on top of the things that happened. The people at Aegis must have done something to his accounts.
“I’ll deal with it later.”
“Ok sir. We’ll send information to your listed address soon” The receptionist said, dejectedly.
Adam needed to figure out what was going on. His parents’ house wasn’t safe, not after last night. He headed towards his apartment in the city.
“Good afternoon Mr. Bailey! Long day?” the doorman smiled.
“Something like that Larry.” Adam retrieved his keycard from his wallet. The swipe was greeted with an obnoxious beep and a red blip on the LED. Another. Another, followed by red flashing repeatedly.
“Is your keycard not working Mr. Bailey?” The doorman came over, and tried a few times thinking it may have been user error. The red beeps continued. He returned the card to Adam.
“I’m sorry Mr. Bailey there’s something wrong with your card. You’ve paid your rent haven’t you?”
Adam’s brows pinched. This was no longer coincidence, no longer even interference from some massive corporation meant to silence him. Something had happened. The box.
“It’s alright Larry, I’ll clear this up with them later.” Adam said, slow syllables revealing his confusion as he turned around. What the hell was in that box?
A far away scouting of his house revealed no secret invaders waiting in the darkness. Even so, he made his way into and through the house slowly and thoroughly, a baseball bat from the front door in some semblance of self-defense. The empty canister of gas still sat below the broken window in the office, a spiced and noxious scent still fouled the air and left pocks of yellow on exposed surfaces. Outside, the open box sat lazily at the foot of the step, revealing nothing interesting inside. Exposed wires, circuit boards, odd metal shapes and a Parallax logo on the roof of the case. The box revealed nothing new, nothing interesting. Why bother having a lid at all in this sort of thing? What is it a labyrinth of?
An attempt to contact people online, old friends, failed as none of his personal accounts loaded. Subscription services disconnected. Adam thought it was hopeless, he was digitally banished, gone forever. But the accounts in the name of The Watcher, and not of Adam, still worked as normal. Caffeine fueled deep dives through the night into anything about Parallax, Aegis, Project Labyrinth. Over the course of the next few days, during which Adam was greatly thankful to his store of cash for feeding him, connections slowly built up every bit of new dirt. News clippings of an explosion at a Parallax datacenter due to a sealed coolant loop surfaced. Whispers made their way up the grapevine that this was caused by damage from a failed heist. Leaked police notes about blood at the scene of the crime from two unknown individuals, but no bodies or suspects were ever found. Some pleads to shady connections and a few crypto transactions, he was lead to a man named Tyler Bozemann, who apparently was asking around for details about Project Labyrinth only a few weeks before the explosion. He bet that one of those blood trails came from Tyler. And if anybody knew what the hell was going on with those boxes, it would be him.