by Sean Platt
Well, maybe not that exactly, but it had been something like it. Sam didn’t remember. He’d made his post, he’d raised the alarm, and he’d told them all to watch the big wall behind the representatives at the Prime Statement, where Shadow would make magic things happen to prove the size of his dick.
Across the apartment, there was a loud beeping. The coffeemaker. Sam had forgotten he was making coffee. He saw the carafe full of black liquid, remembered, and grew suddenly furious. That motherfucking coffeemaker didn’t understand just how badly Sam was screwed.
It hardly mattered that there was a wall between Shadow and Sam. This was Null. Null had brought down banks; they’d liquidated a major corporation without its permission. Legend said Null had had pink hats delivered to all 101 of the supposedly anonymous senators “just for the lulz.”
And now they had an excellent reason to reclassify Shadow from friend to persona non grata. It was only a matter of time before his comeuppance arrived, wrapped like a gift.
The coffeemaker gave a reminder chirp. Sam picked up a heavy paperweight and hurled it at the machine.
“Shut the fuck up!” he screamed.
The paperweight hit the carafe, but the carafe wasn’t made of glass. The knock merely tapped it off its base, causing it to slosh coffee from its top and onto Sam’s reader tablet, which was beside it. He started walking over to mop up the coffee and save the reader, but then his mail bonged again and he forgot all about it.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
This wasn’t even his fault. This was Integer7’s fault. Integer7 had left him high and dry. It wasn’t like Sam had even asked for it. He’d simply found a loose end, had reached out to those who could help him, and, yeah, he’d talked about disrupting Shift.
But how much could one Beam malcontent do? Null were a force unto themselves, but they were still real people with real income needs. The best they were ever going to do would be to goose Shift. That’s all Sam had really been going for, anyway. Shake the box; see what comes out. See if this Beau Monde thing showed up, and whether the party changes by the folks he was watching actually made a difference.
He was just a kid with too many tattoos and useless glasses. He wasn’t Shadow. He was harmless.
Contradicting him, the canvas continued to ping.
Sam opened the laptop then flicked to the Null box with a feeling of peeking through his fingers during a vid’s scariest part. Two of the subject lines caught his attention.
YOU ONLY PLAY NULL FOR FOOLS ONCE
YOUR CLOCK IS TICKING
He slammed the thing shut. What exactly was the clock ticking on?
Sam could imagine. It was ticking toward Null finding out who Shadow really was. But what then? Would they kill him? No, that seemed severe. But they could empty his accounts. Bug his connection so he’d never again be alone. Cover his walls, twenty-four hours a day, with nonstop gay porn.
Should he run? Should he try to explain? And why wasn’t that fucking coffee done?
Sam started to run through his limited options. He could contact Integer7. Or better: He could blame Integer7. After all, he hadn’t screwed anything up, right? It had been Integer7 who’d promised and then failed to deliver the big upset on the White House wall.
But, he realized, that wouldn’t work because Shadow hadn’t so much as mentioned Integer7 before now. It had been half by accident, half intentional. The first rule of Null was that you didn’t talk about Null, and even citing a Null hero as the architect of a Null plot was a kind of tattling. Integer7 had spoken to Shadow, not to The Beam at large. It was up to Shadow — and Shadow alone — to decide whether to tell the others, and to accept what followed. But in practice, all of it meant that if he tried to blame Integer7 now, he’d just look like a coward in search of a scapegoat.
His handheld rang. Without looking at the screen, Sam picked it up and hurled it at the ground. Too late, he realized he’d need it, especially if he was afraid of his canvas. It shattered as if it had resented being whole, tiny pieces scattering to the four winds.
Ping.
Ping.
Ping.
Sam looked at the terminal. He could get a new terminal and try to hide, but what would it change? He’d still need to access his old mail unless he planned to go underground and never return. His terminal was custom, as secure as he hoped to ever be. He couldn’t avoid The Beam forever. He should face the music now before it got worse. He could try to tell his hate-mailers that Integer7 had been the one to drop the ball. He had to do something.
Sam opened mail then forced himself to read through the subject lines. They made his gut twist, but at least once he’d finished, the messages were no longer unknowns. The first part of the bubble had popped. Now, he had to build some momentum. He had to open a few. See what was waiting.
Sam clicked one of the messages at random. Unsurprisingly, it contained indignation and a veiled threat. But it contained something else, too. The final line said:
youve been a friend to null but today you made you a fool & null too. the forum has a new thread saying you have 24hrs to prove youre not nps or some fake. show us something good or else.
The typical Null bravado made his skin crawl. Sam stared at the screen, wishing the coffeemaker would finish brewing because his head felt sleepy and sluggish.
Show us something good or else.
In the second before he’d shattered his handheld, Sam now thought he might have seen a name on the screen. It might have been his imagination, but it also might have been Sterling Gibson returning his call, possibly responding to his offer of services as an intrepid reporter. And if that was true, it might be interesting. Gibson was cagey. He only responded to messages when he actually had something, and otherwise ignored them. Sam’s message had asked Sterling how he might contact Nicolai Costa. He’d known that his chances were remote, and he’d mentally shelved the idea, resolving himself to a reverse search using the hacked Beam ID.
But Gibson — maybe — had called him back.
Show us something good, the mail message had said.
Sam looked down at the shards of his handheld. Maybe there was a way out of Null’s poor graces after all.
September 16, 2034 — District Zero
Clive Spooner entered the room, wheeling his enormous balls in a wheelbarrow. Or at least, that’s how it seemed to Noah.
The Englishman had a swagger that could only come from being the world’s darling — from having the immunity that came with knowing you could do no wrong. Noah liked Clive. He respected Clive. Before Clive, nobody had so successfully gotten the entire planet to think and move as one…toward his personal goals. Yes, the lunar base had revolutionized modern thought and cooperation before the weather threw its catastrophic hissy fit and put an end to the party, but by then Clive’s pockets had been lined plenty. But despite the respect and liking, there were things about Clive that irked Noah. Such as his swagger, and the implication that his time was more valuable than anyone else’s. Someday, maybe, Noah might be considered half the revolutionary that Clive was. When that happened, he wouldn’t walk like Clive did, nor would he wear what looked like a goddamned ascot.
“This had better be good,” said Clive, taking a seat around the long polished black table. “Calling us here on a Saturday.”
It was too much. Noah was a patient man and didn’t like to argue, but Clive had placed his finger on an already throbbing cluster of nerves. The others around the table knew it, and he could see their faces respond to Clive’s comment, having already had this discussion while waiting for Spooner to finish dallying and finally arrive.
“I would have called you out of your bathtub on Christmas if I’d known earlier,” Noah snapped. “Jesus Christ, Clive.”
“Is this about the immigrant?”
“It’s about what he’s carrying.”
Clive turned to Iggy. Iggy was a writer first and a revolutionary second. Being an artist helped him enjoy Clive’s condescending jabs well
enough, but the fact that he’d managed a seat on Panel as a mere scribe spoke volumes about how disruptive his business methods had been. “The immigrant,” Clive reported to Iggy in a mocking tone.
Noah glared at Clive. Clive wasn’t responsible for the problem with Costa, but he was currently the one mouthing off and would take the brunt of Noah’s ire until another target presented itself.
When Clive finally looked up, Noah pulled an image onto the front screen showing a quiet-looking man with Mediterranean skin, small round glasses, and a mop of shiny black hair.
“Nicolai Costa,” he said. “You know we’ve been following his signature, pulled from the anomalous data traffic. We saw the signature launch from Southampton two weeks ago, and it was my understanding that it was being followed, and my further understanding that we all knew how essential it was that we intercept it on arrival.”
“It’s arrived, Noah,” said Colin Hawes. “So whatever. Now we can intercept it.” He yawned. Not only was it Saturday; it was early. Noah had discovered Costa’s arrival in the wee hours, launching the secure tracker on a whim after checking his email. He’d been aghast to see the signature now in the center of New York’s beating heart, making itself comfortable.
“How many of you knew about this?” Noah demanded.
Colin raised his hand. So did Kendrick Hayes, the trillionaire. Indistinct muttering came from many of the others around the table, including Alexa Mathis, Rachel Ryan, Shannon Hooper, and Audrey Pascoe. They sounded to Noah like a gaggle of gossiping hens.
“So I missed a meeting?”
The reaction around the table (Noah alone was standing because he was the most indignant) was varied but immediate. There were some rolled eyes, and a few people looked ready to deny what Noah had said, but all of them began to stir at the implication. The rules clearly stated that all Panel discussions required all members to be present. No exceptions. The general population didn’t know there was a caste of society with special privileges such as Crossbrace beta access (Noah didn’t care for the “Beau Monde” term the group was tossing around, though it seemed to be sticking), and even the Beau Monde didn’t know about Panel. A nation of a few hundred million hosted an elite group without realizing it, and that elite group of just a few million hosted its own group above that, also without knowledge. There was no room left to subdivide the dozen people currently in the sealed conference chamber. Panel was as high as it went, two levels past official. There could be no such thing as off-Panel agreements and conversations. Twelve was narrow enough.
“We all had the tracker,” Alexa said. “Relax, Noah.”
“It certainly seems to be common knowledge.”
“We’ve been chatting while waiting for Clive,” said Plasteel baron Marshall Oates. “Relax, will you?”
“Why don’t you just tell us what’s on your mind?” said Eli Oldman, the big man in the far chair. Eli was a certified genius, but he looked like a pig. He was fat with huge, tangled dreadlocks. Alexa’s friend Parker had once said that Eli looked like he was missing something if he didn’t have a grease stain down the front of his shirt. Noah hadn’t wanted to laugh at that but hadn’t been able to help himself.
“You of all people shouldn’t have to ask that, Eli.” Noah looked around the long table, seeing the way light washed along its polished black surface like a river, undulating as he moved. It was a synthetic material that employed a shifting matrix and could change from solid to a kind of intelligent liquid, shapable via an electrical charge. The material had been designed as a space-saver (large tables could be “slurped down” into smaller tables when not in use), but Alexa was already joking about creative ways she could used it in her sex business.
Realizing how odd he must look pacing around the eleven others, Noah slipped into a chair and forced himself to calm. What was done was done.
“You’re worried about losing control of whatever he’s carrying,” Eli said. “In a network sense, I mean.”
“No,” said Noah. “I’m worried that we already have.”
“How?”
“I told you all of this. Was nobody listening?”
Across from Noah, Rachel shrugged. She appeared old and harmless, but the woman was deadly. It was Rachel’s connections overseas — the thugs who’d tried to intimidate Allegro Andante and their man in Italy into surrendering secrets — who’d uncovered the traveler’s identity after the anomalous signal had been found. It had seemed very coincidental that the anomaly was coming from a device apparently carried by Salvatore Costa’s son, but when they’d reviewed the Southampton drone footage, they’d seen him sneak aboard and had seen so much of his father in the stowaway’s features. And when he’d left and the drone had analyzed the oil left by the traveler’s palms on a shipping container, it had found his DNA to be a perfect match to what Panel already knew.
Noah looked at Rachel, knowing better than to argue. Panel, stocked with the nation’s most successful and influential minds, was always a potential ego minefield. The kinds of personalities that changed the world and then accepted a seat to run it were seldom quiet. He’d learned in the first meetings that the best policy was to always stay calm, demur, then strike fast only when the issue truly mattered. Like now.
Noah sighed then pretended he was back in the office with his new protégé. York was brilliant but had to be shaped. Like many of the minds in this room.
“If our guess is correct, about Salvatore Costa’s nanobots hopping onto the boy when he left home,” Noah began, “which makes sense, if they knew he was planning to burn the place — then that means they were already working in a network.”
“How do you know that?” asked Audrey.
Despite Noah’s determination to calm himself, he felt annoyed. Audrey was an architect, not a computer scientist. He could explain all day, and she’d never understand. He’d been mostly speaking to Eli and didn’t have the patience for Audrey’s butted-in posturing.
“Individual nanobots can’t think,” Noah snapped. “They’re too small. There’s no room for enough pieces.”
Audrey opened her mouth to offer a follow-up, but Noah cut her off, anticipating her question. “The desire for self-preservation is one of the hallmarks of life. Which means that not only were they thinking when they jumped onto Costa; they were thinking as a life form. And if they were doing that back in ’27, you can bet they’re much more advanced now. They figured out that hotwiring a Doodad increased their host’s chances of making it to safety. They figured out that where they currently were wasn’t safe. They might have done all sorts of other things, hovering to nearby devices and making them work, sending signals, making old machines breathe again. That’s highly developed behavior. Which makes sense because we’ve always seen that the smaller and more ephemeral the life form, the faster it evolves. We don’t have all the details of Costa’s prototypes, but logic says that nanobots would recycle on a very compressed timeframe. That means they’re mining materials to do it. Again: advanced. Do any of you know how to make more of yourselves?”
Eli raised his hand. He’d made his fortune in the VR community and had changed how the world thought about digital avatars as conduits for intelligence and personality. If the Crossbrace network Noah was working on ever launched and evolved as quickly as the nanobots had, it was Eli’s models that would predict whether entire minds could be replicated in a purely electronic realm.
“My point is that you all seem to be seeing the intelligence Nicolai Costa is carrying as if it were metallic fleas. But I assure you, even if they can’t speak for themselves, they’ve seen more than any of us. They’ve lived through many generations already, and are a force to be taken very seriously.”
“I don’t know that they’re a force,” Iggy said. He had black hair like Costa’s, skin that was too pale to match, broad shoulders, a devilish grin, and a huge nose. His features were a hodgepodge, like a mash-up of two totally different people.
Noah shook his head. He tapped his inde
x finger on the smooth table, leaning forward in his black, high-backed chair. “That’s exactly my point: You don’t know. None of us know. That’s why I wanted to intercept him the second he entered the country. And you understand that, don’t you, Eli?”
“Are you worried about pollination?”
Rachel almost chuckled then leaned back. The moment she’d heard Costa was on his way with the same hovering bots her father had tried for so long to bully into Ryan Industries’ hands, she’d been counting dollar signs — or, thanks to the economic manipulation of Morgan Marconi farther down the table, the forthcoming currency soon to be known as universal credits. Ryan Industries would take hovertech and build it into a billion consumer applications. She thought they were a floating novelty and nothing more.
Noah ignored Rachel and continued looking at Eli. “How could they not pollinate?” he said. He heard his own voice, realizing it held a note of resignation. Too much time had passed, and he knew it. Costa had arrived very late in the night, a week ago Thursday. He’d been within Fi range of the core network for nine days — an eternity of time for a short-lived, highly intelligent consciousness to spread out. Of course the Crossbrace beta ran on the Internet’s infrastructure. There were sturdy firewalls in place, but to the nanobots, such things would be child’s play. Like it or not, his own house would be forever infested with whatever Costa had seen, done, learned, and been over the past seven years.
“So what?” said Eli.
“Are you kidding?”
“Not kidding at all.” Everyone else around the long table had been animated to some degree — shifting, leaning, rotating a few degrees in either direction — but Eli was frozen. Noah found himself recalling the comment about him being naked without a grease stain. “Sure, they’ll start talking to the Internet. But they’re used to isolation. They’re sponges. Crossbrace was going to employ AI anyway.”
“My AI,” said Noah.
“So that you can control the world?” said Colin Hawes. He was one to talk about controlling the world. His company, simply called Hawes, was the dominant merchant in almost every consumer market other than eroticism, where Alexa was slowly gathering her own brain trust.