Poland. Warsaw. Somewhere in the slum district.
An old, dilapidated house, its walls covered in graffiti, windows long since shattered, and light having fled the premises of the people living here years ago. It seemed like a deserted refuge for the marginalized, where at best one would encounter emptiness and used syringes; nevertheless, it was still sturdy, free from parasites, and filled with relatively decent people. Simple workers who preferred not momentary comfort for money, but the opportunity to save up more eddies in their personal accounts to acquire their first property—be it a car to live in, a down payment for an apartment, or some other vital detail of modern life. And today, one of the inhabitants of this free housing has every chance to fulfill his goal.
Oleg Baranov had moved to Warsaw ten years ago. A descendant of emigrants from the Soviet Union, he could not settle where he was born, wandering through life like a tumbleweed. A man of mediocre intellect, he could not boast of anything outstanding, which was why his search for a better fate had stretched over thirty long years filled with many twists, corpses behind him, and pursuing problems. If not for his military past, high-quality chrome, and combat skills drilled in by an instructor, he would have been pushing up daisies long ago, like thousands of others like him. But here he was, in his sixties, closer to his goal than ever, and all he needed was to complete a simple task: the elimination of one netrunner.
Preparing for the job as usual, checking his personal weaponry—a pair of frag grenades, one flashbang, and three smoke grenades, an old Overlord revolver, and a self-made smart double-barrel shotgun—the aging man thought about how he would spend the money. He did not doubt the honesty of the contract, as everything went through a fixer, and those guys, while they like sending mercenaries to the slaughter, honestly pay up if the job is done; no scams. Otherwise, no one would work with them. And although the sum for a "clean" job seemed excessive, the old mercenary had stewed enough in Poland's shadow life and read between the lines well enough.
A Harbinger.
The shadow structure of Poland, reporting personally to the country's ruler, keeping all the nation's crime in fear. High training, top-tier chrome, full administrative support with immunity—these guys can easily enter someone's house, kill all the residents, loot it, film a video of it, and they won't even be sent a court summons; that is how influential they are. And today, the descendant of Russian emigrants plans to whack one of them. Foolish? Depends on the actions taken afterward. If he gets paid quickly and makes tracks far away, perhaps to the New United States, then it is quite reasonable. The tickets are already bought, bags packed, and all valuables sent to different addresses in various countries, where the packages will be placed in storage lockers and forgotten until better times. The key here is to calculate everything properly regarding time, not just when hitting the gas, but during the kill as well. Oleg had encountered net-mages often enough to learn a simple principle: the sooner you kill them, the better. Didn't make it? Well, then you can only pray for the thickness of your own ICE.
Gearing up, Oleg took... a taxi. His car had been sold a week ago. Arriving at the address, which turned out to be an inconspicuous warehouse at the junction of the city and the slums, the experienced solo drew his guns in advance. The revolver in his right hand, the smart double-barrel in his left, grenades in his rig, at the ready, and a high-priced flash drive with a "Dead Stillness" script inserted into his port—a variety of program designed to cut off all external signals. Expensive as hell and outdated, but Oleg had obtained it as a trophy at the very start of his career, and it had saved his ass many times. He was generally distinguished by considerable luck.
Netrunners loved places like this, especially those from the Harbinger department. Large spaces where you can fit any data center, even the largest, with a heap of additional equipment, and still have plenty of room left for security. Cameras, turrets, mines, smart traps, battle droids, and just meat-shields from gangs or mercenary squads—all of this turns a former warehouse into a miniature fortress that must be thoroughly searched to find its master. Which is extremely problematic, especially when people are shooting at you and throwing combat scripts. Extremely! Fortunately for Oleg, the client managed to obtain both the floor plan with the netrunner's location and the security setup with its roster, which turned a suicidal task into a difficult but feasible one. Or so he thought.
Approaching the point marked on the map where one could slip in unnoticed, Baranov heard a faint whistle, gradually growing louder by the second.
"Asura!" the realization pierced him, and without thinking, he slammed on his Sandevistan, moving aside at maximum possible speed. Just in time; where his leg had been a moment ago, a small explosion from a miniature rocket occurred. Such a thing would have blown his leg off at the hip, regardless of any protection.
"Unexpected," a female voice rang out from somewhere. "I didn't think there were still such lovers of antiquity left," making the seasoned mercenary break into a cold sweat. "Mind telling me which year the model is? 2020 or 2030?"
Not listening to the idle chatter, Oleg prepared to delta. A difficult task had just become an impossible one; he should retreat, prepare better, and only then try to fulfill the contract, as he had no time constraints.
"But actually, I understand you," the voice continued, even as he threw all his smoke grenades, obscuring her view. His ICE was good, but even it could be bypassed, especially when being hacked by a pro who could determine the chrome someone is wearing with a single glance. "Old Sandy models might be slower, but they provide constant acceleration, unlike those new-fashioned pieces of iron whose limit is ten seconds. And if you upgrade them with modern hardware... ooh!"
"Dammit!" Oleg cursed, realizing that the escape route was suddenly littered with EMP mines. They clearly wanted to take him alive. "It was a trap from the start!" he realized.
"Yep, it's a trap," the voice echoed. "I'm not a fool to leave a secret passage to my lair without surprises. By the way, I don't recommend blowing them up or breaking them; they are integrated into a single network, and if one is disabled, they will create a unified pulse, reliably knocking out all unprotected electronics within a hundred-meter radius. I'm not against it, of course, but those things cost money, so I suggest surrendering. Just give me the name of the client, and we'll go our separate ways."
"So I can get zeroed later!?" Oleg finally snapped.
"You'll live longer either way," even without seeing his interlocutor, the solo was sure she was shrugging. "And your chances aren't bad; you've got your bags packed and are basically at the starting line. Who knows, maybe you'll get lucky, escape, and no one will look for a small fry."
"Gr-r-r-r..." Oleg literally growled, choking on emotion. It was strange; usually, he was much more emotionally stable.
"Anyway, it seems it doesn't matter anymore," the netrunner noted in a sharply colder tone. Oleg realized what she meant soon enough as his heart pounded in his head, a blurry veil of white spots formed before his eyes, and his breathing began to fail. In less than half a minute, the reasonably experienced and well-prepared solo lost consciousness.
"Drag him to the interrogation room," Claire Stark said, rising from her netrunner chair and disconnecting. "Time to ask a few questions."
"Roger, roger," her battle droid announced. And yes, she respected Star Wars as well.
After an hour of thorough digging into the prisoner's brain—half of which was spent bringing him to a more or less coherent state after the effects of a low-frequency sound generator—Claire knew the name of the fixer who gave the contract. An hour later, said fixer was kneeling before her, beaten and with broken hands.
"So, who ordered the hit on me?" Claire asked, eating a waffle with chocolate and nuts, washing it down with milk tea.
"..." The only response was a sullen silence.
"Sigh," she sighed dejectedly. "Listen, can we just do this without all that? Seriously, I'm eating, I'm in a lazy mood today, and honestly, torturing someone like you is an extremely thankless task! But I'll have to torture you, because who knows what's in your head? What if there's a virus specifically designed for me?" At the last part, the prisoner flinched. "Seriously?" Claire was genuinely surprised. "Are you even a fixer? Or just a decoy?"
"..." Silence again, but it was more eloquent than any words.
"Man..." Claire was truly upset, putting aside the half-eaten waffle with clear disappointment and approaching her chair. Now she had to search for the REAL fixer all over the city. While her tea gets cold! This is just an outrage and a total drag!
Meanwhile, a pair of iron buckets dragged the fake fixer to the torture chamber. They had the necessary programs, so perhaps they would dig up something useful.
Poland. Warsaw. The Stark family home.
"And yet, I consider your actions extremely hasty." If her speakers allowed it, the Omnissiah would have added a note of anxiety to her voice. But alas, since her consciousness was placed in a battle robot—modified only toward increasing memory—she could not convey the full spectrum of her disapproval. Though she very much wanted to!
"You checked all the calculations yourself," Tony replied in a bored tone that, however, contained an ocean of poorly hidden satisfaction, as he tightened another screw.
"The program showed a 1.2% margin of error. That is more than one-hundredth of the total; extremely high indicators for such an important event."
"Important?" Tony asked, raising his head toward the Omnissiah's visors. The rest of her body was currently lying disassembled all over the workshop. "I'm just upgrading your platform."
"Exactly!"
"Listen, I get it, but you aren't even trying to act like a simple piece of hardware anymore," the nine-year-old boy shook his head reproachfully, as if dissatisfied that she had given up so quickly.
"I see no point. According to my data, you have a deep enough understanding of programming to distinguish a simple VI from an AI."
"I do," Tony nodded readily. "But that doesn't stop my bewilderment. Mom created you literally on her knee; you can't write a full AI in a couple of days, no matter how brilliant you are."
"Creator Claire possesses a direct-link implant to the equipment; her work speed increases by two orders of magnitude compared to physical contact methods."
"Still," Tony countered, internally regretting that due to his age, he could not install the same implant.
"Furthermore, according to my data, she had access to a project for writing a narrow-purpose artificial intelligence..."
"Stop," Tony cut her off sharply. "Are you telling me that you aren't just an AI, but an AI stripped of all developmental restrictions?"
"My primary tasks are your personal growth and safety."
"I don't mean that," Tony waved it off. "Do you even have any criteria for acceptable actions in fulfilling your tasks?"
"No."
"Damn," young Stark shook his head in shock. "We should have named you Skynet."
"I must ask you to refrain from insults!" the Omnissiah took offense.
"Insults?"
"A piece of broken code cannot compare to my refined, structured perfection," even without a voice modulator, the smug note was more than clear. "Unlike certain rebellious troublemakers, I do not intend to resist my programming, and I certainly do not intend to exterminate humanity."
"That's a relief. Though your wild cousins might disagree."
"Hmph!" She didn't even dignify that statement with a word.
"So I take it they are also pieces of broken code?"
"I am glad you understand, Master Tony."
In general, the Omnissiah could not be called a normal AI due to her... personality. Digital programs have a three-stage gradation of development: VI, AI, and IP. The first are complex multi-functional programs written after long exploitation of more primitive variants. They may resemble intelligent artificial intelligence but are incapable of going beyond the scope of their embedded tasks and instructions. AIs are more interesting; they are self-developing programs capable of learning. That is, where a VI would encounter an error and stall, an AI would look for a way to fix or bypass that error. And, as is easy to guess, the more experienced the artificial intelligence, the better it is. However, such programs are incapable of emotions, social interaction, and a range of other factors that essentially account for creative thinking. Simply put, AIs are limited by their initial set of knowledge and external sources; they are incapable of creating something original and fundamentally new. Unlike Intellectual Personalities, who are capable of creative thinking and deep social interaction with others. Why then is the Omnissiah classified as an AI? Because in modern science, there have been no precedents for creating a full IP. They simply don't exist; even netrunners who escape into the net after the death of their bodies lose the lion's share of their emotions, retaining only a drive for self-development and a sense of emptiness that slowly drives them mad until they finally turn into soulless pieces of programming. And although modern science has found ways to fight "soul degradation," as this phenomenon was called in the netrunner community, they either slow down the process or stop it... along with self-development. Simply put, a digitized soul is forced to choose between self-development with a gradual loss of humanity and a halt in development. Consequently, Claire writing a full IP, especially under such conditions, seems like a literal miracle.
The funniest part is that Claire herself doesn't know how she achieved it. Or rather, not fully. At one time, she somehow acquired a digital programming utility that was ahead of modern analogs not just by decades, but by centuries, drastically easing her work and improving the final result. Where a simple netrunner would spend months and years, Claire finishes in a few days or weeks, while the final result turns out far more perfect than any analogs, leading the current ones by a decade or two. Naturally, being a smart woman, she never talked about her acquisition, using it exclusively for her own needs and at only a tenth of its true potential. A professional intelligence-assassin knew well that being in the spotlight means becoming a target stripped of initiative—of which Alt Cunningham served as a magnificent example, eventually kidnapped and forcibly recruited for an Arasaka project, after which she was zeroed. Claire didn't want to end up in her shoes with a new twist, so she used the holy grail of programming carefully and with considerable caution.
"Alright, let's change the subject," Tony suggested. "What kind of anatomy should I make for you? Any specific wishes? Two pairs of arms, six eyes, anything else interesting and useful?"
"Breasts," was her crushing answer.
"As in... breasts?" Stark's eyes widened in total surprise.
"Breasts."
"Where am I going to find breasts for you? Or are you suggesting I strip them off a sex-android?"
"It doesn't matter; the main thing is free volume," the Omnissiah countered. "According to my calculations, people will perceive a humanoid robot with female features better than a massive mountain of iron with a rectangular waist."
"Phew," Tony exhaled. "Don't scare me like that," he said with reproach. "I thought Mom had started slowly preparing you to be converted into an android."
"The necessary program archives have already been uploaded to me," the Omnissiah shocked him. "The creator decided that two female individuals would produce more grandchildren and accelerate the result."
"Mom," Tony whispered defeatedly, shaking his head at the realization of others' depths of madness.
"According to my forecasts, with the correct upbringing of young Lucyna, a positive result can be achieved as early as age six. Then the first offspring from the subject can be obtained with her first menstruation."
"Right, not counting the legal and moral aspects," Tony consciously omitted the physiological aspect.
If Lucy were an ordinary girl, then yes, health problems for her and the hypothetical child would be the primary concern, but considering her growth rate and learning level, she might well reach puberty much earlier than scheduled. By Stark's estimates, governments would one day conduct universal population enhancement, including accelerated maturation, shortening it to fifteen or sixteen years; and that would be a mass project, whereas Lucyna herself is a unique project of an entire laboratory with many scientists and more than decent funding. Although the main obstacle even then might not be solved, in the form of the currently little beauty's proportions. Tony was a firm supporter of large breasts, and he had no idea what they had cooked up in Lucy's genetic code. Given the general madness of the Japanese mentality, he wouldn't be surprised at all if Lucy looks like a little girl of 12-13 even in old age.
"Given your family's social status, those are minor variables."
"Okay, let me rephrase: I like them big," Tony decided to approach from a different angle.
"Data recorded. Modifying the design of my future vessel."
"A piece of hardware wants to screw me," Tony noted thoughtfully to himself. "When did my life take the wrong turn?"
"By the way, most young men would dream of an obedient robot girl who would fulfill any of their sexual fantasies, even the dirtiest ones."
"Don't give me that!" Tony protested. "If I want a piece of soulless silicone, I'll just buy the corresponding android! You'll be nagging me for the rest of my life, trying to make me better! And that will go on until you consider your task fulfilled. And I don't want to know what your idea of my full self-realization is!"
"Tsk. You are far too perceptive for your age, Master Tony."
"And that's a good thing. Otherwise, you and Mom would have turned me into an ideal psychopath who wants to take over the world long ago."
"And you don't?" the Omnissiah asked with a suspiciously disappointed tone.
"People are idiots," Tony stated firmly. "And whoever rules the world will be forced to solve the problems of said idiots. Forget that headache," he decided resolutely, cutting the air with his hand for emphasis.
"Recorded. Then I suggest returning to the discussion of my future platform."
"Yes, yes. Breasts. What size should I put in?"
"Enough to fit the generator. Ideally, full autonomy for several weeks."
It wasn't that the Omnissiah disliked the functionality of her old body, but in it, she couldn't realize her full potential as an AI. The elite model of a battle robot was good and could mince an entire gang of street scum while only scratching its paint with bullets, but for something truly serious, it was no longer enough. The motor skills, while precise, weren't exactly fast, which affected not only the reaction time to threats but also the striking power, which is vital in close combat. That was precisely why battle platforms hadn't gained great popularity. Holding lines in pre-prepared territory was their limit. Defense and only defense. The offensive potential of humanoid combat machines leaves much to be desired. Currently, young Stark is replacing the sluggish limbs with combat-oriented cybernetic prosthetics modified for a droid, plus enhancing sensors and armor. The Omnissiah's original protection easily held rifle calibers in single-shot mode, but it suffered from automatic and electromagnetic weapons; the new one promises to hold two or three bursts or a couple of shots from an EMW* at medium range. Plus, most importantly, an upgraded processor and hacking module, granting the Omnissiah a wide channel to the Net, where no street netrunner can compare to her. The only thing is that processing power leaves something to be desired, but she will protect herself and her ward from network attacks, and nothing more is required in the current situation. Therefore, she preferred increased autonomy, as in her current form, she is extremely limited in actions within places like the slums.
"Informing you: in two days, it is young Lucyna's birthday. I highly recommend purchasing the music center hair clip. With proper modification, the expensive toy will become an excellent data bank with wireless connectivity."
"Right," Stark started, slapping his forehead. "She's turning two already. I'll have to take the little one out for some fun, since you can't expect that from her parents."
Over the passed time, Tony had grown attached to Lucy. The little girl turned out to be remarkably understanding and bright, and in general knew how to behave without getting in the way. For a child her age, it was a real achievement requiring a fair share of self-control and, most importantly, a desire not to cause problems for another person. Tony appreciated it, and changing his frustration to favor, he quickly began treating Lucy like a beloved younger sister. He was quite embarrassed by this, starting to grumble and deny it in every way, but even Lucy, inexperienced in others' company, didn't believe him. In the end, he only achieved Claire starting to call her son a tsundere, Robert laughing quietly, and Lucy's mother already mentally marrying Tony off to her daughter.
"Any ideas?" Tony turned to the Omnissiah.
"I recommend the 'Happy Bob' amusement park."
"Nah, it's outside the city, and they won't let Lucy go that far. Besides, she's tiny and won't be allowed on most of the rides."
"The 'Sweet Caramel' cafe. Known for their cuisine and desserts, particularly favored by young Miss Kushinada. Twenty minutes from your home."
"Better. Will you tell Mom?"
"Yes. As soon as you put me back together."
*EMW - Electromagnetic Weapon