Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound
1.3      Making a Splash
1.3.3    An Unrequited Love
1.3.3.33 Daimones

Ops, The Burrow;
3pm, Sunday 11th June, 2045;
2 bells, Afternoon Watch, Krevday wain,
18th KrevinBelember, 1600 A2F

In her absence, she was relieved to discover, Ketah and Gorana had delivered lunch without a hitch to Kafana Sabanagic's usual mix of regulars and passing tourists.

Now, only two hours later, she found herself back in velife, having barely had time to catch up with the village gossip. The other five wombles were already sitting at the central table of the enormous Ops room, chatting away while waiting for Bulgaria to start the briefing he had arranged... just this morning? It felt longer. She sat hurriedly.

Bulgaria: "Welcome, Kafana. This morning you summarised the aims for our trip to the Ghetto as: learn enough about forging magic metals to allow Alderney to make us some decent armour, get some leads to help us with the quest to resolve the dispute over sword laws, make progress in removing Flavio's curse and research the local architecture to improve our plans for what the Basso Renewal project should build. How do you think we did?" He swept an arm, indicating the others who were facing Kafana.

Kafana: "Frankly? Astoundingly. Bungo and Alderney worked out that, in Soul Bound, magic metals are allotropes of existing non-magical ones. Thanks to Harlequin, Tomsk learned there's been political shenanigans affecting the Watch and thanks to Alderney, we met the Raggedy Man; both of which are leads we can follow up on. Isabella managed to persuade Dottore to stop opposing Flavio, who told us we might get a lead on who cast the curse from Flavio's parents in Libri. And we not only saw the architecture of every parish in the Ghetto apart from Teeter and Hawks, we also learned about the mindsets behind them. It couldn't have gone better."

Bulgaria: "Other than you starting an insurrection, when the one thing Bungo said you could do to make it easier for him to raise your social status and establish House Sincero was to not annoy Lord Pazzi or any of Torello's other five district Counts whose support you'd need?"

She started to squirm, then switched to scowling when the others all laughed.

Bulgaria made a conciliatory patting gesture: "Just teasing. The creation of the chartists wasn't our fault. If anything, we probably reduced the number of people who got hurt on both sides, by stepping in when we did. But let's not get side tracked. If there are no objections, I'll go around the table and ask everyone to give a brief status report on the things they have responsibility for, and to raise any issues related to them."

Not all the empathy halos lit up, so he added a clarification: "Not necessarily things you did personally, but things the organisational role you accepted has responsibility for, which might be in arlife or in velife. If you have more than one hat, you get to report twice. So for example, I'll start off wearing my recruitment hat."

He mimed picking a hat up from the table and placing it firmly upon his head. A quick subvocal from Alderney caused an actual hat to appear on his head: a tartan Tam O' Shanter bonnet with a playwright's quill as its hackle. Bulgaria, of course, pulled off the look with effortless style.

Bulgaria: "I've completed writing the manifesto that we'll require new recruits to agree to while logged into The Burrow and sharing their emotions, so we can check they sincerely intend to abide by the agreement. Alderney has come up with a 'swearing in' ceremony designed to ensure they know what's at stake and take their responsibilities seriously. So far I've received the names of three potential recruits for his area of our endeavours from Tomsk, five from Alderney wearing her 'media warrior' helm, six from her wearing her 'value proposition' engineer's top hat and thirteen from Bungo. Wellington's given me three names, but also another three slots he'd like filled but doesn't have suggestions for. I'm spreading out some cautious feelers via associates whose judgement and discretion I trust, and I'm aiming to vet the intentions of everyone suggested so far during the next three days."

Bulgaria: "Issues relating to recruitment: Spies."

Kafana: "Spies?"

Alderney: "Yes. We're going up against some of the richest and most ruthless people on the planet, and we're being up front about that risk with recruits. Part of my ceremony involves the candidate demonstrating they understand that if their true identity becomes known to our opponents before the tiaras are launched and win the public's trust, there's a risk of chips in their home computers being replaced with compromised counterfeits so malicious changes can be made to the work they do and the orders they send without their even being aware of it happening. Worse, even if they are known but can't be found, there's still a risk a less subtle opponent will kidnap and torture their loved ones, in order to coerce them. Once opponents start figuring out what we're trying to do, our first and best line of defence against that happening is to stop opponents finding out the identity of any of the people we recruit. And their most obvious way to get hold of those identities is to compromise someone on the inside, turn them into an unwitting spy." She made a face like she'd just bitten into a sour lemon.

Bungo: "So ideally, we don't want the people we recruit to know each other's true identities, so it's just the six of us at risk? I thought that's why we're allowing members of The Burrow to pick a different handle and avatar to use in Ops? We can allow candidates to stay perfectly anonymous, while still being able to trust them because nobody has yet worked out a way to fake human reactions as read directly from brain signals in real-time by the current generation of tiaras."

Wellington: "It isn't perfect."

That didn't sound good. Kafana tried not to sound too worried: "It isn't?"

Bulgaria: "We can trust their intentions. But incompetence can be just as harmful as malice, and we can't trust that a candidate is able to do well in a slot just because they believe they have 'leet skillz. Either we need to know that a candidate has been successful in the past at accomplishing related tasks of similar scale and difficulty. Or we need to place our trust in the assertion by intermediaries of confidence about the evidence they have. In both cases, the candidate has to entrust others with sufficient details of their qualifications and track record that those others can probably narrow down the real identity of the candidate to just a small pool - when you're talking high levels of expertise, there just aren't all that many people on the planet who need to be considered."

Kafana: "I think I see. So either we risk picking people so incompetent that they're likely to screw up the launch, or we risk turning away some candidates who would be ideal because they are too frightened of our opponents to trust us with evidence of their competence that might result in their real identity being discovered by the wrong person?"

Bulgaria: "Exactly. So far we've been sticking to people the six of us know or who have already trusted us with details about their arlife professional status and demonstrated their competence. But some of the names Bungo gave me are just members of CraftySqu1d who've been active on The Burrow and expressed interest in helping out in a particular area. I'm not sure what my responsibility is here, or how to go about it."

Bungo: "I could make do without the extra help."

Wellington: "I can't. I need someone on my team who people like Fundim will listen to. I need someone who knows the setup and capability of Fundim's existing manufacturing capacity, who can discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different ways their machines and procedures could be altered , and who can make a persuasive business case for starting a new line of trustworthy products in the consultant-speak their managers will respect. Smaller teams may be easier to trust, but larger teams will help us launch quicker which means a shorter window during which an opponent would be able to sabotage the launch effectively. It's an optimisation problem."

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Bulgaria gave Wellington a brief nod: "Tricky, isn't it?"

He paused a moment before continuing: "Well, if anyone gets a bright idea, even an incomplete one, please do tell me. In the mean time, let's move on. Tomsk?"

Bulgaria removed his hat, and carefully put it down on the table in front of him.

Tomsk grinned then whispered something, and a moment later a grey fur hat appeared atop his head.

Tomsk: "Speaking for Safety, I want seven lieutenants, and one tenente to ride herd on them if I'm working, off-line or, worse, get taken out by an opponent. Lt Intel runs the threat analysis team, modelling the likely goals and actions of known opponents and scouting for signs of danger. Lt Stealth sets op sec policy, runs decoys and takes other counter-intel measures to maintain staff anonymity. Lt Training is self-explanatory. Lt Quartermaster buys, makes, customises or (in necessary) invents whatever we need. Lt Logistics ensures that everything from costumes to cached vehicles are in the right place at the right time. Lt SpecFor provides mobile rapid reaction to worst case scenarios. Lt Planning keeps track of it all, and keeps escape routes, plans and contingencies updated. I've got an amazing candidate for Lt Planning, and I've given Bulgaria a couple of possible names for Lt Stealth and Lt SpecFor."

He looked a little more serious.

Tomsk: "So far, though, it's been all me. Readiness status for the six of us is as follows: 100% for myself, Bulgaria and Wellington. The primary escape route for Alderney is 75% planned but only 25% resourced; however she's fully trained on what to do, and how to use all necessary items when they're ready. Bungo is similar, but his is 50% resourced. Kafana, your situation is complex; Terah can tell you the details later, but for now consider it at 50% overall."

Tomsk took off his hat. He'd managed to deliver all that in under two minutes? The military did think differently to civilians. How much had he and Terah been talking? She trusted the expert system she'd created to look after her arlife safety to be benevolent, but she could do without more "Let's Railroad Kafana" conspiracies, even ones performed for her own good.

Bulgaria: "Any issues besides missing lieutenants?"

Tomsk: "Just the standard 'need to know' precautions. I'm arranging three caches or decoys in geographically plausible areas for each one that's actually involved with a primary escape plan or contingency. But I'm still trying to keep the people who know the principal's identity, location or destination to the absolute minimum, and that's directly at odds with making sure my team continues to function smoothly even after taking casualties. Redundancy, but not too much. I know teams will be storing team-specific information in the Ops room, but I don't know how it will be deciding who gets access to what, and which staff roles can alter the Ops room's rules if the person holding the role (or their home computer) gets compromised."

Alderney: "You mean, if someone dies, does someone else inherit their private files or is the information in those files lost along with their creator?"

Tomsk shrugged: "More or less."

Wellington: "Let daimones take them."

Eh? If someone dies with their work incomplete, let the demons have their soul? No, he couldn't possibly mean that. Not Wellington.

Bulgaria: "An archaic Greek 'daimon' as in a chthonic hero, force of nature, tutelary spirit or divider of fortunes?"

Wellington: "Closer to the latter, though similar in other ways to a process running in the background on a computer that works tirelessly to perform system chores. They say no man can serve two masters. Well a daimon can. It's an expert system that's mortal. It is given a task that is closed rather than open ended, because it has a deadline or fixed completion criteria; it's given a finite pool of resources which it can use; it's given a fixed set of mandatory rules limiting how it can or can't go about the task; and it's given a metric for converting risk, quality, time and resources left over into a score it aims to maximise with the rules of the game. Once the task is finished, the process terminates."

Alderney: "Aww, poor daimon! But how does that allow it to serve two masters?"

Wellington: "Because the task is not ongoing, there would only be a limited pay-off for investing some of its resources into self-improvement."

Alderney: "It's like a child who dies too soon to get corrupted and power hungry - it remains a sweet idealist."

Wellington: "Err, in a way. But that means its intentions can be trusted; it doesn't need ongoing supervision. It is safe to specify everything at creation time then start it running on a neutral computer where you can't alter or terminate the daimon except as specified in the daimon's own rules."

Alderney crossed her arms, visibly suppressing her impatience. Kafana knew that when it came to computers, Wellington had a habit of expecting others would immediately see certain implications because they were so obvious to him. But it must be particularly hard on Alderney who would be considered a total wizz at this sort of stuff when compared to anyone other than Wellington.

Alderney prompted him to continue, in a leading tone: "So... ?"

Wellington: "So you can have a single person create a daimon, or indeed another daimon. But a daimon could also have two or more creators - just as long as they can negotiate a set of starting conditions for it that they all agree to."

Bungo: "Like fairy godmothers at the birth of a princess?"

Wellington: "Well, hopefully a bit more organised than that. And instead of saying 'Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo' they each pass a copy of what was agreed to a neutral system that they've all checked and trust, which system then compares the copies to make sure they match and verifies that the required allocation of resources have been transferred over."

Tomsk: "I think I see. So you and I would specify a daimon to act like an executor of a will? I'd give it a copy of the escape plans, and could trust it not to give them to you while I was alive. You could trust it to pass them onto you, and only you, if I died within the next twelve months. And we both could trust it to delete the plans if I managed to live for longer than a year. And maybe throw a small celebration party for me." He chuckled, before adding "But who on earth has a neutral computer system so secure that even you couldn't hack into it, Wellington? And wouldn't it just mean trusting the owner of that system instead?"

Alderney sounded excited: "No, no, I know this one! It's like the Swiss legal system and how they run virtual corporations based upon machine-parsable articles of association, using homomorphic encryption over distributed computing, yes?"

What?

Wellington: "Yes. It introduces a bit of latency, and there's a hit to the price per teraflop, but it scales just fine and the cost of computing keeps falling. The Burrow uses it too: particle state vectors and sense rendering get cached locally, but all the important things like permissions and persistent data storage are spread across all the users' systems as well as a core of systems anonymously spot-hired from multiple cloud providers. Each operation is broken up into small enough packets that the owner of a system has no way to tell if the string of 1s and 0s their machine is currently manipulating are part of meme text being added to cat pictures, or the lat-long coordinates of the jewels that King John lost in the wash."

Tomsk: "Or the arlife identity of our Raggedy Misstry. But I don't know anything about that homomorphic stuff. Wouldn't I still need to trust you to specify the daimon and run /Bibbidi.Bobbidi.Boo.exe or whatever, to launch it?"

Wellington suddenly looked focused and very alive, like a fan devoted to a particular TV series who has just been asked a question they're passionate about: "I thought of that. It's why I created this Ops room! Most of what you see is created by a butler serving the room. The room itself isn't an expert system at all. It's a very simple piece of code whose sole function is to enforce access permissions to the data and resources it has been entrusted with, and launch daimones that have been certified by the butler. Eventually I intend to boot strap it, under trustworthy conditions, to be owned by a daimon specified by and loyal to the six of us. But, um, my plan on how to do that might take a while to explain - perhaps another day? In the meantime, the room itself has a full sense recording of my intentions while creating it, and you can ask your own expert system to review its source code, if that helps?" He sounded hopeful.

Tomsk: "I already trust you with my life. But yes, it might help persuade ex-military paranoids that I recruit to trust you too. Thank you."

Bungo: "Yeah, me too. It's just a pity that some recruits might not trust us."

Alderney: "What did you say?"

Bungo flushed apologetically: "Forget it. I was just saying that it's a pity the architects we might want to recruit to help with the Basso Redevelopment Project might not trust us with their professional portfolios as easily as Tomsk says vodka-grizzled Russian spetsnaz will."

Bulgaria face palmed. As did Wellington. Alderney just gave Bungo a hug.