Read Online Insidious by Michael McCloskey - Free Book Online Page B

around the arena talking about an upcoming event. She knew there were more than five hundred souls on the station at any given time. That wasn’t many for a station this size, but it was expensive to support life this far from Earth. Expensive even for a huge corporation that commanded immense wealth.
    Her finder said that two thirds of the station inhabitants were assembled here in this node of the virtual environ.
    “What’s the attraction?” Aldriena asked the nearest idle citizen.
    The masked face turned toward her and answered.
    “Johnson is taking on Red.”
    “Why the big turnout?”
    This time the mask didn’t turn away from the field below. “Why? Johnson’s the highest ranked … y’know. Our best one. Maybe he can beat Red. If we could beat it just once …”
    Fat chance , thought Aldriena. They’re amazingly smart.
    “So Red always wins? Isn’t it dangerous if the robots are too smart? You have heard of the Marseilles Purge?” It was a rhetorical question. Everyone had heard of the incident when an AI core had attempted to take over Europe, forcing the humans to use a limited nuclear strike to keep from losing their planet. The same thing had happened in controlled conditions in off-planet research centers, each time resulting in destruction.
    The person shrugged. “They know what they’re doing. Look, I’m not allowed to talk about that.” The avatar faded into thin air. Whoever it was probably blocked Aldriena out to avoid further conversation.
    Down below, she saw the avatars starting to quiet down. Messages started coming through the whole channel on broadcast.
    Johnson challenges Shakolfar.
    Aldriena had learned no one called him Shakolfar in conversation. To the inhabitants of Thermopylae, his name was Red. One of the citizens stepped forward toward the center of the environ. Orange highlights on the clothing of the man’s avatar showed his ranking—fairly high.
    The stake is five percent increase in bandwidth rights to Xanadu.
    Seemed reasonable enough. Xanadu was the flagship deep space station of Bentra’s European ally, Gauss Systems.
    Aldriena spotted Red. The mechanoid spun forward. Its avatar looked identical to its incarnate form. The body was a sphere emblazoned with a large red spot, its eight legs so thin as to look vestigial. As the machine moved, it didn’t bob. It floated. It tilted so the legs spun as it progressed. One leg always remained directly below it for an instant before replaced by the next. Aldriena smiled. The way Red held a leg beneath it reminded her of a flamingo. Albeit a spinning, featherless, eight-legged flamingo.
    Shakolfar accepts the challenge.
    Red and Johnson flew out into the clear blue space of the arena. Dozens of spectators switched their avatars transparent and floated out to watch from the field. Aldriena left herself visible, but she pushed off and flew high into the air, preferring to watch from above.
    Down below, Red and Johnson stood on the green expanse of grass facing each other about two hundred meters distant. Two huge collections of oblong objects appeared between them, hundreds of white objects on one side and black objects on the other. The things were each the size of a small dog. They shifted rapidly, changing orientations, and interacting with each other in confusing patterns.
    Aldriena wasn’t familiar with this contest. She didn’t have time to travel back and forth between the deep space bases and still learn all the challenges. This one appeared to be an abstract of two armies facing one another on a flat field of battle.
    The objects transformed into more understandable shapes. Red’s army formed into two groups, a large group of black spider-legged machines that hung back by Red, and a smaller line of perhaps ten or fifteen motley creatures of all shapes that began to march forward.
    Johnson’s white army formed up into two lines in front of him. The front line looked squat and crablike, menacing, and the second line