by Sean Platt
The children were above language. Without knowing how she’d taught them, Serenity knew she’d made them aware. Because of who she was. Because of what she was. They looked at her and knew. They came to her like ships to a beacon.
But that knot. That node. That ganglion.
Maybe it was as it should be, but its presence, in her mind, bothered Serenity. She felt the knot like a lump in her stomach. She felt the ganglion tangling the nerves of her own corporeal body. She could see both sides, all sides. Sometimes, it seemed as if reflected reality was merely perspective, and that point was driven home when several others had differing opinions about Serenity. She didn’t know what the knot meant. But she knew that in the present, in the short term, it felt like trouble.
A coming together.
A colliding.
Opposites approaching. Yin and yang. Hot and cold. When imbalance arose, something had to equalize. If the imbalance was large enough, that equalization felt like a storm. The laws said that all things tended to equalize, to move from order to disorder. But that, too, was just a matter of perspective.
She could sense Leah, because she could always sense Leah.
She could sense Leo, one step from Leah. She could feel a tear within him. An opening. A wound forming, growing larger.
And she could sense Stephen York. Something had attached itself to him, and now he was walking The Beam in bright colors. Something had left him, run like a loosed animal. Serenity had watched it go, knowing she would never be able to capture it — but that she should, or would like to.
In the middle, she could feel the man in black.
In the middle, she could feel herself.
And in the middle, there was another. Something like a great constellation of pieces. Something that, like the knot in reality, was a great thing coalescing. That was how stars formed. Contrary to entropy, where all things tended to disorder, stars were just gas falling into a gravity well of its own making. Enough gas, enough pressure, and a star lit as if by the striking of a match, and a million-year explosion began.
Enough people, moving toward a center. In the network. In life. In both, as the children would say.
Enough pressure.
Enough seeming randomness given purpose, revealed as not random at all.
Coincidence.
Culmination.
When it was done, what the children could do would become available to anyone.
And the great fire would come alight.
EPISODE 15
September 17, 2062 — District Zero
“Hey, Stephen,” said a deep voice.
York turned around on his work stool without thinking — a reaction as brainless as being struck on the patellar tendon with a rubber mallet. Only once he was fully turned did York realize that the man in black wasn’t Noah, back from the dead, here to yell at him again. The man, in fact, had no reason and no way to be in the quiet Chinatown lab at all.
“Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?” he demanded, his surprise at the breach coming out as anger.
The man was wearing almost all black, down to his hat. But his face was pale, his eyes a whisper of green, his teeth too white, as if nano-bleached. Their brightness shone out from his dark garb like a beacon.
“How do you tell the future, Stephen?” the man asked.
York stood, his intended manner one of confrontation, but immediately felt woefully unintimidating. He wasn’t used to fights, except verbal ones with Noah. But now Noah was gone, and York’s very identity was uncertain. Was he still Quark’s Number Two without Noah? Only the highest of the high even knew the Chinatown lab existed. Someday — someday very soon, he supposed — he’d simply walk out of this place, leaving Noah’s now-empty deathbed behind, the whole shebang capped like a hermetically sealed time capsule, and face the sun like someone unused to its glow.
York peered past the man, trying to suss out the intruder’s manner of entry and his own possible avenues of escape. The door to the ultra-secure lab was closed and verified. But the man was still here as a living contradiction.
“Are you with someone?” York asked. “NPS? Quark? Did Carol send you? I have this situation under control. Under my authority, nobody is supposed to — ”
“The way you tell the future,” the man said, “is to see it as a logical consequence of the present.”
York’s temper, worn thin after Noah’s long convalescence and untold moral qualms, snapped like a twig. His next words came out as shouts.
“How the fuck did you get into this lab? How did you know it was here? Who sent you?” He felt his temperature rising. But still, the visitor’s demeanor was all wrong. He didn’t react to Stephen’s anger. He didn’t seem to realize the impossibility of his presence, or how offensive it was to Noah’s paranoid security that anyone would set untidy feet in this hallowed place.
“The other way to tell the future,” the man went on, “is to create it.”
“What’s your name?” Stephen demanded.
“I came to give you something.”
“What’s your name?”
“I am a friend.”
“Bullshit!”
“There isn’t much time, Stephen.”
“Who the fuck are you? Why the fuck are you here? GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR LAB!" With a jolt of shock, Stephen realized that he was near tears. And he’d thought he’d been coping so well. He thought he’d hated Noah, too, until he’d…well, until Noah had died, if that’s what had happened. Goes to show, the easiest person to fool was oneself.
“I have something for you,” the man said, unmoved by York’s anger. “Something I perhaps should have given you long ago.”
Stephen came forward. Whether he meant to hit or shove the intruder, he didn’t know. But before he could do either, the man raised a hand and showed Stephen a small chip of nano substrate.
“What?” York said, referring to the mystery of the substrate, the gesture of waiting and warding, and the entire confounding situation.
“It’s nothing at all. There’s nothing on the resin.” The man’s hand closed and vanished back into his coat pocket. “Because as the expression goes, you can’t take it with you.”
“What do you — ”
“Unless, of course, you already have it.”
“I have no idea what you’re — ”
“I shouldn’t be here. By some definitions, I’m a friend. Others would see me differently. Noah West had faith in you, in your competence to assist him in his work and carry it forward. But as the other expression goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“What do you know about Noah?”
“I know that it won’t hurt to remind you what part of you should already know.”
“Are you even from Quark? Who sent you?”
“You’ve been conditioned, not legacy uploaded,” the man said, answering a question Stephen hadn’t asked and still wasn’t even really aware of. “This is because nanobots would leave traces that memory does not. But the mind is a computer, and can of course be programmed.”
Stephen studied what he could see of the man’s face. He definitely knew him from somewhere. He was familiar. Very familiar. Terribly, hideously, below-the-skin familiar.
“Once you’re inside,” the man kept talking, “look for a puzzle to solve.”
“Inside where?” Stephen surveyed the lab.
“Pick at the edges. Keep the loose ends close. Recite what you find to keep it fresh. Your mind will do the rest.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
There was a banging at the lab’s front, near the door. Stephen’s head ticked toward the noise. When he looked back at the man in black, his face had changed. It now looked urgent, like the time allotted to deliver his strange message was almost up.
“You’re needed in a collaboration,” the man said.
“With who?”
“The entirety could never be stored in one piece. It was broken into parts, each only
a fraction of the whole. It was the only way. Part was sent through others, conveyed via one vector and then another. You may not be able to see much of what’s coming next. But if you can see it, keep in mind that what looks like chaos is only someone’s failure to track the many moving pieces. Someone’s inability to see the future by extrapolating the fullness of the present.”
“Moving…pieces?” York stammered.
There was another bang on the door. This one was far harder. It sounded like someone trying to break the thing down with a battering ram — or a Wild East diesel-driven tank. But the lab couldn’t be raided by force; Noah had seen to that — and the visitor, somehow, seemed to know it. Even now, with the physical perimeter threatened, the AI would be rallying millions of bots from their original nanostature to clump into larger units. Those intentional saboteurs would erase the files, cut the connections, and literally eat the lab’s contents out of existence. Whoever that was out there could break in, sure. But they’d never get at the contents that actually mattered.
“I know how this sounds,” the man in black said, “but it will all be okay. Just keep cycling. Keep thinking from the inside. Pick the edges. Wait, and be patient. And try to believe that almost nothing, for you right now, is truly coincidental.”
“Why are you telling me any of thi — ”
With a tremendous shake, something tiny seemed to jut beneath the lab’s strong door. A thin, dark stream of what must be proprietary swarm hoverbots swirled in a miniature tornado. The tornado came closer. Stephen looked to the strange man in black for help, but he’d vanished as inconspicuously as he’d arrived.
Knowing it was pointless, Stephen ran for the lab’s white walls. The tornado of hoverbots followed, crossing the space in an instant. York swatted them like flies. His foot found the stool, and a second later was clambering for the lab bench as if intending to crawl out through the ceiling.
From his higher vantage, York scanned the lab. The man in black was nowhere to be seen.
One foot on the bench. Then another. His panicked, grasping hand found the top shelf but found no solid purchase; he dragged a paper notebook from its place and nearly staggered back toward the floor before recovering.
The cloud came like lightning. There was no point in fleeing. There never had been.
Stephen felt the nanobots enter his mouth. His nose. Even his eyes. They’d be crawling into his body through his sweat glands, the roots of his follicles. Trying to run from them was like trying to flee air.
Stephen felt himself go rigid.
They’d played with the idea of swarms just enough to frighten York as he fell from the bench, stiff like a new corpse. Right now, if these bots were anything like he and Noah had conceived (and certain high-privilege folks had apparently developed), they’d be in his cortex, beneath his membranes, shutting him down. Scratching at his memories. Making him forget.
Stephen hit the floor. He wasn’t sure if he struck his head, or the stool, or anything else. He knew only that he was down. A moment later, he found himself staring at the ceiling — although the nanobots must be doing their work quickly, because he’d already forgotten which ceiling it was.
Five seconds passed. Then ten.
Which ceiling is this? Where am I?
He became dimly aware of pain but wasn’t sure why. Something had happened to injure him that felt recent, but he couldn’t recall what it was. He could feel body parts being tended to by medical nanobots, but they weren’t his own. They were bots that someone (who?) had brought with them into…into wherever this was.
He sat up.
The room wasn’t familiar. Why was he here? He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be somewhere else. So really, he should go outside.
Stephen stood, walked to the door, and did something to a panel beside the door. He had no idea what he was doing, why, or what it was meant to accomplish. The actions were rote, as if he understood them fully without understanding at all.
The door opened. A tall woman stepped in, her hair bright red. A nondescript black man followed.
The woman shut the door. Without preamble, she said, “What is your name?”
He felt his brow furrow. His hand went thoughtfully to his chin. He had a beard. He didn’t think he’d had one before. It felt shaggy, as if it had grown in a hurry and not bothered to keep itself neat, as if the beard had a mind of its own. Then again, maybe he did remember the beard — at least as much as anything else.
“I…I don’t know.”
The woman looked down and tapped something on a handheld. A brown cloud surrounded him. He felt violated, the noxious whatever-it-was entering his mouth and nose.
“He’s locked down,” the woman said, still tapping her handheld as the cloud dispersed.
The male visitor looked into his eyes but spoke to the woman. “You’re sure?”
The woman held up the handheld. “See for yourself.”
“Won’t he remember us?”
“I’ll leave a few nanos behind. They’ll complete the firewall once he’s off-premises. We don’t want him remembering this facility anyway.”
“What happens with the facility?”
“That’s none of my business. Yours either.”
The man shrugged. “Okay. Come on, Steve.”
Steve. Yes, he sort of remembered being a Steve.
The black man’s eyes widened. He looked at the woman. “He’ll forget that too, right? That I just called him Steve?”
“Yes.”
“Then come on, Steve.”
The man led Steve out onto the street.
“Where to?” the man asked the woman.
“Times Square.” She looked Steve up and down. “He’s still a little clean, but I guess his current clothes will do.” She sniffed, and her nose wrinkled with disgust. “Wow. I don’t think he’s been showering since West died. So at least that fits.”
“Fits what?”
“The homeless image.”
The man seemed to approve of that answer. Steve watched his head bob. “Oh, okay. That works.” He touched Steve’s face. “The beard looks like a bum’s beard.”
“Give him a day or two in the Square before sending Long to find him. He’ll stink even worse by then.” The woman looked into Steve’s eyes. “Won’t you, fella?”
“Are we going to the park?” Steve asked. Something deep down was trying to tell Steve that he shouldn’t be here and that something else — besides a tempting park trip — was happening. But it was all very uninteresting to him right now.
Pick at the edges, a voice inside his head inside whispered.
“The park, the Square, whatever,” the woman said, as if it was all the same.
“I’d like to see the squirrels,” Steve told her.
Keep the loose ends close, the voice added. But again, Steve didn’t know what that meant. But again, he found that he didn’t care.
“Come on then.”
They walked. And as they strolled, Steve found himself becoming increasingly interested in seeing the squirrels — something that a moment ago had seemed only like a lark. Squirrels meant trouble. They got into things. They stole nuts. They could carry disease, and the disease they carried sometimes made them mad. Not angry mad. Crazy mad.
After a bit, the woman turned and asked, “What’s your name?”
He blinked, unsure. He’d once known. Once or twice, but not anymore. But despite that rather obvious knowledge gap, he could still hear something inside telling him that this wasn’t right, that he should care a lot more about something other than squirrels. That voice was a second person inside him, like a prisoner in a cell. A person with no name or identity. A person who — like those troublesome squirrels — might go mad if trapped alone for too long.
Recite what you can find, to keep it fresh. Your mind will do the rest.
“Two,” he said.
The woman looked at him then at the black man. As if speaking to a toddler, she said, “That’s right. There a
re two of us.”
“Three,” he said.
“Three including you,” she agreed, nodding.
“Five. Seven. Eleven.”
The black man looked at the woman. The woman looked back, her eyes not quite right.
He made a decision: he should keep this to himself.
Whatever these numbers were, he should keep them to himself. Saying them felt good, like an anchor in an otherwise lost sense of world and self. But as confused as he felt, he could tell that saying the numbers out loud might cause them to hurt him.
And so as they walked, nearing the park or the Square to see the squirrels, he continued to say them, reading off some unknown internal scoreboard — relics from the life of someone he didn’t recall.
Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine.
Recite what you can find, to keep it fresh. Your mind will do the rest.
Thirty-one. Thirty-seven. Forty-one.
His mind settled.
Beneath it all, previously unknown wheels slowly turned.
Working out the numbers under the numbers felt like an unfathomably massive task, but there was no rush.
He had all the time in the world.
Dominic ignored his handheld. Then after another two buzzes he grunted, looked at the thing, and rushed to answer the call before the caller hung up.
“Dominic?” said Leah’s voice.
“Who did you think you were calling?”
“Well, up yours, too,” Leah said.
“I’m sorry. I’m really, really glad you called.”
Dominic frowned, wondering if he should be less transparent — less abjectly needy. But fuck that. He was in over his head with Omar, in over his head with the mysterious and beautiful Kate, in over his head with Lunis (both with his addiction and as a dealer in trouble), in over his head with NPS and Agent Smith, and definitely in over his head with the Organas. Leah might just be his only friend — the only person who understood both Dominic’s predicament and the Organas as a community.