Much Ajar for Nothing

Morning spread though the Vert, designation Clairetown (294-A-800820), starting at 7:00 ± minutes(rand(0,15)). In Clairetown, this occurred on a 24 hour cycle, a quaint holdover that was excused by the Executive (Justification Code: Old Blood).

Gradually, the superstructure migrated from night behavior to day behavior, one module state at a time. Starting in the east and creeping west, lighting brightened up to average 30k lumen, then transitioned to 7000K light temperature. Life support systems raised air temperature and acceptable noise levels. Street scrubbers scurried back to their charging pads as deliverers took the air, carefully avoiding drop-lines that hung from the ceiling, two thousand feet above. And humans went through their own boot-up sequences, with varying degrees of success.

Trojeus was not one of them. Increasing levels of light and sound stimulation did not rouse him until, falling back to extreme measures, he was startled awake by small pulse from his neural implant, his Imp.

“What the hell?!” He spat as he sat bolt-upright. And along the same micro-filaments that sent the wake-up call, he got the next packet, “7:41?!”

Trojeus rolled out of bed and dressed in a flurry, fed information about his day through his Imp, even if his attention was dominated by the fear of being late to work again. It did not matter if he consciously encoded this information, but it was his preference to almost hear it. As easily as he could remember his multiplication tables, he could also know the traffic on the way to work, the exact same traffic the Vert saw on every other working day, and the same traffic that always took 22 minutes to traverse, with a standard deviation of 3 minutes. Damn, he would never make that. His Imp was already informing him of more expedient options, until he finally interfaced with it directly, as he grabbed a breakfast roll.

“Equite, can I get to work before 8?” Trojeus thought to it.

“There is a slim chance you will be able to. But do not be so stressed, you are unlikely to-“ Equite the Imp started.

“I’m trying to make good with the boss! I can’t be late again!” he shot back.

“Then your best chance is to leave immediately. Would you like me to summon a private deliverer? [This] is the cost estimate. Also, do not forget-“

“Yeah, call it, bring it now. And also add more breakfast rolls to my next delivery day.”

“Of course. I have ordered the flavor you like. Now, do not forget-“ it started.

“Has Katsuta checked my desk yet? Is he going to?” He asked as he almost put his jacket on backwards.

“I cannot disclose that. Do not-“

“Has any motion been detected at or near my workstation? Has the motion sensor in the haptic screwdriver connected to my account been tripped? No, wait, tell me the maximum accel reading it’s experienced since midnight, and tell me if this corresponds to nearby footsteps.” He asked. Because he was not a Young Person, it was odd to ‘talk’ to the implant with a roll hanging out of his mouth. He wasn’t vocalizing anything, but interfacing with the implant still required just enough vocal stimulation to make his lips twitch.

“Are you trying to indirectly spy on your supervisor through unconventional means?” it asked.

“No.” He lied through his skull. It was hard to lie to a machine plugged directly into his brain, but the implants had supposed imposed limits. Total Heavy Industries was probably lying about how much they nerfed their devices. In addition to the Imp, the super-corp that made his apartment building, the Vert itself and the planet it was installed in, everything in sight except the roll, but at least the god-company had the decency to pretend it did not listen to his ‘real’ thoughts.

After all, who in their right mind would put something in their head that they couldn’t lie to?

Equite seemed to think about this, and finally replied, “No signals have risen above ambient noise levels since midnight, except for one instance. [This] instance corresponds to the activation of the HVAC system upstairs from your workstation, and is normal. Do not forget to grab-“

“Good, he hasn’t been through yet. How far away is my ride? Also, start playing some kind of relaxing music I’ll like.”

Before the implant could respond, he saw the slick vehicle outside, and practically leapt into it. Finally, for a few minutes, he had a chance to relax. Equite played its generated music directly into his audio-cortex, and was smart enough to realize that he was trying to calm down from a stressful state.

So, in addition to modulating its music to suit the situation, it stopped trying to remind him about what he had forgotten.

11 minutes later, he stepped out of the ride, strode up to the Electronic Rework warehouse’s side entrance and did not grab his badge. Trojeus froze. He tried again, and again failed to grab his badge. He checked his coat pocket, his pants pocket, his lanyard and his coat again, all while the side entrance looked upon him.

“Equite!” he thought, “Where’s my damn badge?”

“You forgot it beside your bed.”

“Get a deliverer to bring it here!”

“Your employee badge is secure material. Deliverers cannot transport it.”

As Trojeus cursed himself, he gave the entrance an awkward wave, and stepped away to debate with his implant, “Then get a secure one to grab it. And why didn’t you remind me?!”

“Secure-transport-rated deliverers are not available for… about an hour. I tried when to remind you upon waking. I did not want to interrupt your music.”

“That is some BS and you know it!” He said with enough emotion that he almost actually said it. Finally, he tried to think rationally again, “What’s the fastest way to get it?”

“To return home and retrieve it by hand.”

Now he did actually speak aloud, “What kind of stone-age cave-man crap is that?! Do you expect me to drive the car myself too?”

“Please calm down. This is not a serious situation.” Equite shot back, really pouring on the contempt.

“You can be a real ass sometimes.” He said.

“I am not in your ass.” It replied.

He threw his hands up in frustration, and span back to the door. There, at the top of the jam, was the camera, centimeter-wave radar and microphone, hidden behind the tamper-proofing enclosure. The Electronic Rework warehouse was not secure enough to justify the cost, expressed as network bandwidth, to include millimeter-wave radar, X-ray or Jeegtronic detection.

“Hey, it’s me, let me in.” He said aloud. A microphone, either one embedded in the door or incidental to the environment caught his words, correlated them to his voice signature, then consulted a secure database that connected this signature with his Imp’s address. The door traced these addresses and established a private channel with him, so that they did not have to talk on public audio channels.

“No.” it said.

“You know me! I’m here every workday!” he sent back, “Equite can vouch for me.”

The door thought. Then responded, “Equite is an assistant of [this] security patch update. [Vouching behavior] is only valid for assistants of [this different] security patch update, published three days ago.”

“Dammit, Equite, get updated!” he said. The difference between interfacing with the door and with Equite was so stark, it felt like he was suddenly talking to himself.

“Updating will take… about half an hour and will disable-“

“Do it anyway.” He thought, “Door, you gotta be able to-… Door? You there?” He had the uncanny feeling that nothing was listening. And he was right. Too late, he thought about Equite again, and got back a ghostly memory, something about all non-essential neural channels being closed while the security patch was applied.

“Dammit.” He thought again.

“Well,” He said aloud, “Door, I was saying, you see me all the time, you have to let me in.”

The door paused before responding. It had received an offline packet from Equite, but still tried to contact Trojeus on more secure channels before falling back to audio. It paused further as symbolic packets had to be translated through its 6B language model to be rendered as speech.

“I cannot confirm identity with only one factor. Present second factor.”

“Uh, I kind of forgot my badge.” Any other day, he would have blamed Equite, but it felt wrong pinning something on the Imp while it was offline.

“Present second factor.” The door repeated.

“Biometrics, here’s my thumb.” He held his thumb up. The door was not equipped to read it, and ignored this gesture.

“I have confirmed biometrics through face recognition as the first factor. Present second factor.”

“Well, what do you want to know? That’s the other one, right?”

The door seemed to think about this. While it was thinking, Fleits arrived and walked right through the door. His badge was scanned through NFC and did not need to be presented. He passed through so fast that Trojeus didn’t notice him until he was gone inside.

“Hey! Fleits didn’t even show you his face! Where was his second factor?” Trojeus whined.

“Gait signature, behavioral patterning and partial facial recognition yielded high confident biometric verification of that employee’s identity. Present second factor.”

“Then ask me a damn question!” He said, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“Loading.” The door said.

Pathetic, he thought, it’s such a dumb old box that it has to load. And dumber still that it would say so aloud!

Finally, the door continued, “Insufficient data for meaningful question. Unable to construct identity-authentication query.”

“I’m Trojeus!” He yelled, “I come here every single day! You gotta recognize me! I’m always late, I’m the guy that always makes jokes about ‘Haptics being Tactics’, and I always go out to the sandwich place for lunch.”

“I recognize you; first factor confirmed. Response analyzed; all information is publicly accessible, insufficient for second factor. Present second factor.”

Trojeus was so angry, he had to wrestle his coat off to stop from sweating through it.

“Dammit, what other factor do you want?!”

“Present either: Authenticating information or authenticating non-fungible object.”

As Trojeus threw his hands up again. He was going in circles at this point. But now, he saw Smiths approaching, even later than he usually was.

“Smiths! Hey, you get held up to?” He said.

“Yep, almost forgot my badge!” Smiths said, running a nervous hand over his bald scalp, “What a pain that is, you know?”

“Boy, you have no idea.” Torjeus said, sliding in right behind Smiths.

By the time the bald guy turned to ask what in the world he was doing, they were nearly though-

Smack!

The door closed itself between them so abruptly, Smiths was bounced inside and Trojeus caught a painful knock on the kneecap as the door cut him off.

“What the hell was that for?!” He barked as he clutched his leg.

“You have not presented second factor. Entry is not permitted.” The door said.

“Damn box!” He cursed. But, finally, he hobbled away. There was another door, a dumber one, he'd just barge in through there and deal with a human security feature instead.

It was locked.

“This- dammit, this door is never locked!” He growled, yanking on it in vain. He stormed away, heard a click, and turned in time to see Fleits close it behind him.

“Fleits!” He called, “Can you open that for me?”

“Oh yeah, let- Oh, it’s locked already.” Fleits replied, yanking on the handle.

“Just badge in, and I’ll trail you. Forgot my badge today.”

“Ooh, that sucks. Huh.” He pulled his badge out and tapped it against the scanner, even though it should have picked up from his pocket. He paused as he got a message through his own Imp, “Uh… it’s saying you have to step back.”

“What?!”

“I don’t know man, it doesn’t want you this close… It says you’re trying to gain unauthorized access.”

“Damn box!” Trojeus swore, “Well, just leave it open. I’ll stand over here, and just-“, He stopped as he saw Fleits shaking his head, “It’s telling you not to do that, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“Well screw it! It’s just a door, just ignore it!”

Fleits crossed his arms nervously, glancing between Trojeus and the door, “I don’t know man, it doesn’t like that idea.”

“It’s a damn door.”

“It’s part of security.”

“Yeah, I know. Tell you what, just take me straight to the security office, and I’ll sort this out with them. But first, let’s get me inside.”

That calmed Fleits nerves, and he finally returned to the door. Trojeus took a few steps away. Fleits yanked on the handle again, and again it failed to open.

“Don’t tell me…” Trojeus started.

“It heard the plan.” Fleits confirmed.

“Screw this, just take care of your stuff, I’m taking this up with the big door again. I’m going to give that box a piece of my mind!”

As soon as he said it, the lock clicked again. Fleits cracked the door open, Trojeus span on his heel, Fleits slipped inside, Trojeus leapt for the opening, and Fleits slammed it shut just before he could get his hand on the door.

“Traitor!” he shouted through the door.

“Sorry man, the door told me it was a security violation!” Fleits called back.

“You plotted with it! You planned this!”

“I can’t hear you!” He replied, and Trojeus could hear his voice fading into the depths of the building.

“Bastard! You damn glitchy box!” He slammed a fist into the door for emphasis, then went back to the original door, the smart one, the one he could reason with. Or at least talk to.

“What the hell was that?” He demanded.

The door did not respond.

“What would it take to let me inside?”

“Present second factor.”

“I know that! I mean, what if I cut your network access? Killed your power? Pried you open?”

“If destructive methods of intrusion are detected, this system will summon more security agents with greater agency to defend this system.”

“Human security agents?”

“No.”

“Then call a human security agent!”

The door thought about this. Or maybe it was summoning a human, or perhaps even a robot to deal with him.

Finally it responded, “No. You have demonstrated a pattern of manipulating human agents. Would you like me to summon… a secure, non-human agent?”

“No! That will be just as metal-headed as you!”

He regretted saying it as soon as he said it, but either this door was less sensitive than Equite, or better at de-issuing human abuses.

Trojeus paced in front of the door now. All the obvious avenues were exhausted, and somehow he was losing. But he’d be damned if a simple door forced him to go back home for this! In fact, even if Equite came back online now, he wouldn’t think of using it. This was a battle of man and machine now.

He saw Plethaux approaching. The other man spotted him too late, and Trojeus called out before Plethaux could turn away.

“Pleth! Hey, Pleth! You gotta help me, this thing isn’t letting me inside.”

“Troj, Fleits told me about this, just go home and get your badge.”

Trojeus was half leading, half hauling him out of the door’s sight, “Listen, as long as this works, it won’t be an issue. I need you to smuggle me inside.”

“… I don’t know man, that seems pretty-“

“Don’t worry about it. The door already thinks I’m manipulative or something, if it catches on, and that’s a big ‘if’, then it will just assume I tricked you and that you did nothing wrong.”

Plethaux looked around, concerned, or maybe looking for someone to get him out of here, but he was alone with Trojeus. The only thing that could have seen them was the door, but Torjeus had made sure they were behind a storage crate waiting for the freight door to open.

“Don’t talk to it!” Trojeus snapped, as he saw Plethaux’s lips start moving, “Come on, who do you trust, me or some dumb box?”

“Well, you’ve been kind of-“

“I’m a human, dammit! You gotta trust a human, right?”

“Well…”

“Here,” Trojeus held up his coat, “I’ll grab you, and drape this over myself, so the box will think we’re just one big dude. Trust me, these things are smart, but they can be even dumber than smart.”

Before Plethaux could protest, Trojeus did just that, hunching and hugging, with his jacket over him. Plethaux tried vainly to push him off, but Trojeus just hissed, “Move it, it won’t suspect a thing!”

Defeated, and a bit terminally curious, Plethaux lead them back to the door. Just in time, Trojeus remembered to adjust his gate, hopefully enough to keep the machine from recognizing him. As they approached, the door spoke, oddly choosing the audio channel to begin with, “Present second factor.”

Torjeus was about to give up the gambit right there, until he realized it was talking to Plethaux.

“Uh, what? I- here’s my face.” Plethaux said.

“Facial recognition confirmed. Gait recognition delta-Tau exceeds normalcy margins, biometrics rejected.”

“No, I’m walking normally. Same as I always walk.” Plethaux said.

“You are walking normally.” It said, because a 6B language model was very poor at disagreeing. But that was only the language model; the adversary engine was not fooled, “Gate recognition delta-Tau exceeds normalcy margins, biometrics rejected.” The door repeated.

“What’s that supposed to mean? This is how I always walk!” Now it sounded like Plethaux was getting as frustrated as Trojeus.

“Gait recognition rejected because you have… four legs. Standard leg number is… two. Standard deviation of… one.”

Trying to keep the coat from sliding off, Trojeus carefully executed his next maneuver. He locked his grip around Plethaux’s shoulders, shifted his weight, and slowly lifted his legs. It was a painful, awkward position, and he felt the man’s muscles straining to carry them both, but at this point they were too far gone to back out for fear or weakness.

“What about now? You must have just been seeing things. I only have two legs.” Plethaux said, his voice straining to stay normal.

The door thought, its thoughts seeming far slower than before as both men tried to stay their ground.

“Explain this anomalous behavior. Suspicion index is non-zero.”

“It was a trick of the light. Come on, I need to get back to the office.” Plethaux groaned and braced himself against the wall.

“You appear stressed. An unknown agent acting as Trojeus was trying to gain access to the building. Further verification is required to ensure you are not under duress. Stand by.” It finally said.

“I’m not under duress!” Plethaux shot back, “I just need- I just need to get into the office, or I’ll be late for a meeting.”

There was no wait this time, “You do not have an immediate meeting. Suspicion-“

“It’s with my mistress!”

This gave the door pause. Trojeus too. Was this why Plethaux kept leaving the office before lunch?

“Disclose the mistress’ identity to confirm.”

“That’s private information.”

“The mistress’ identity is private information.” The door paused, long enough for the men to realized the jig really was up this time, “Mrs. Information is not expected to meet with Supervisor Katsuta today.”

He was so shocked, he had nothing to say before the door spoke again, “Semantic and Abstract Ascension analysis has determined you are trying to carry an unknown person onto the premises. Entry denied.”

Finally, Plethaux hit his limit. He pulled Trojeus’ arms off his shoulders, “Nope! I’m out!” he cried, and scurried off to get in through another door.

“Dammit!” Trojeus hissed as he landed on his tailbone, rolling on the cement in front of the door, “Dude! We almost-“ But Plethaux was already gone.

“What is your problem!?” He shouted at the door, lacking anyone else.

“You.” It said.

He got to his feet, “At least you know who I am now. Box bastard.”

The door stared down at him, image-solving his skeleton as he slowly pushed himself up and stood, shoulders slouched, arms hanging, to stare up at it. Emotion recognition modules and behavior prediction gave aligned outputs; the unknown human was continuing to behave as expected. It was defeated. The box’s adversary engine was well optimized to recognize this state, as it was the desired state for every subject that interacted with the security system. All permitted persons were best kept in a ‘passive’ and ‘incurious’ state, so that they trusted the system and had no interest in tricking it. And unpermitted persons were best kept ‘defeated’, unwilling to even challenge the system’s control. If the machine had modules for mirror-neuron emulation, for empathy, it may understand how distraught Trojeus was as his last great trick was defeated. And defeated by both the machine’s unyielding demands and a man’s weak will. His efforts alone had failed, his efforts to find weakness had failed, and even bringing in another person, one he tried to trust, had ended with humiliation. But the box didn’t need to understand the emotional state of its adversaries, only know if such a state would lead to attempted subversion, or if they were put in their place. In the next cycle, it checked that predicted and observed emotional states were still aligned.

They were not. They had diverged. The machine was looking at an unexpected response from the unknown person. The response was an expression of surprise and realization. The door corrected its projected behaviors from the human, then adjusted its responding behaviors, and began running epochs of adjustment so that the human behavior and its own behavior would converge on an outcome that would preserve the security of the premises. But this took time, and the human was still acting, and changing its emotive state, so the door had to respond to each development.

Finally, the unknown person left the door. Object recognition tracked his bounding box projected onto its understanding of the environment. If it had a more expensive abstraction ascent module, it would have adjusted its models to account for the fact that the human did not leave in the direction it had arrived from. But, with the hardware and software it had access to, the door determined he was not approaching a known vulnerability, such as the other door, so it did not make note of this, nor pass this message up to the server that coordinated the Electronics Rework warehouse security detail.

After he was gone, the door finally arrived at a branching graph of behaviors that was very likely to converge on preserved security. It was a simple network of actions and reactions: if the human claiming to be Trojeus did not present a second factor, it would summon secure resources to extract him from the facility. It had already sent a message to Trojeus’ employee account, notifying him of attempted identity theft, and it would update him again when the threat was removed.

Some time later, motion was detected. An unknown object came into the field of view. Strictly speaking, it was not unknown; there was a 21.9% chance it was a ground deliverer, a 19.4% chance it was a cardboard box, a 14.2% chance it was a small animal, and the rest of the keyed list of object classification probabilities. But, with these probabilities being so low, and with no clear peak probability, the door was as close to confused as it could be. Then the object, with the halting, rocking motion of a broken robot, rotated itself and faced the door. The door sent a series of communications to the box over near-field radios, as it did not see any universal fiducials or QR codes to communicate its network address, yet the box did not respond. The door attempted to contact the box on near-field audio channels, but this action was blocked by its own security overseer module, as it would risk broadcasting secure information over a public channel.

“Identify yourself.” It finally said, falling back to speech channels.

For some time, the two regarded each other, apparently in a stalemate, with the door considering the box, and the box sitting in front of the door. With its limited abstraction ascent module, the door tried to solve out this odd circumstance. This box was likely a deliverer, based on its shape and motion. And it was likely damaged, which may be why it moved and looked so odd. So, the door down-selected two descriptions of what was happening; this deliverer was here to be repaired, or had arrived in error, after the damage it sustained caused malfunction. In either case, there was no security-

The door opened as someone left the building, and Trojeus leapt out from under the box so fast that they nearly toppled over to get out of his way. For the milliseconds between recognizing Trojeus and his entry beyond the portal, the door was blocked by this other person, and the door could not safely slam him out again.

“Gotcha! Take that you damn machine! Can’t even tell what a box is? This is one small step for-“

“Torjeus? What the hell are you doing?! You were supposed to be at your desk half an hour ago!”

Torjeus looked up into the red, sweaty face of Supervisor Katsuta.

“I-“

“Intruder detected!” The box blared, repeating the signal across audio and radio channels, “There is an unidentified human inside the facility!”

With a glance and a thought, Supervisor Katsuta shut the box up, though Torjeus suspected that, at this point, even his boss’ override wouldn’t convince the box he was supposed to be here. And maybe he shouldn’t be, given how the big man was glaring at him.

“And what the hell did you do to Plethaux? The man was ranting about you turning him into some kind of- some kind of- some kind of sock puppet! And this!” He kicked the box out of the doorway, “Are you some kid crawling into work? You got some dolls? You going to show up with a unicycle tomorrow?! What do you have to say for yourself?!”

Trojeus felt like his stomach was still in the box. Now would be a great time for the door to slam in his face.

“I- uh, I- I forgot… I forgot my badge at home…” He managed.

“And you figured it waws better to pen-test our security system than go back home and get it?”

“Yeah! I just figured-“

“That’s not your job! Your job is to be at that desk at 8:00, fixing whatever I tell you to fix! Not to break our expensive security systems like some kind of cybersecurity cowboy! Now you better run home, get your damn badge, and just hope it’s still attached to a current employee when you get back here!” Katsuta practically shoved Torjeus back out of the door, leaving the employee glancing between him and the sensor cluster, now staring passively, smugly down at him.

“But if I leave now…” He glanced up at that damn box one more time, “I’ll miss my appointment with Private Information.”

Slowly, Katsuta’s deadly glare shifted from him to the sensor cluster over the door jam, “What the hell do you not understand about ‘Private Information’?!” He shot daggers at Trojeus, “Get the hell out of here. And no one hears a word about this, you understand?”

“So, I’m not fired?”

“Get back here in 20 minutes or you might be!” Katsuta spat, and slammed the door.

Through the barrier, Trojeus still heard the man berating the machine, “If this happens one more time I’m gonna sell you for scrap!”