Motherland

by Russ Linton

  Humble.

  Terrific.

  Radiant.

  Another giggle.

  I'm debating between putting a chair through the control panel and yanking cables when I hear her speak.

  "Spencer." Familiar. Uncanny.

  She's in my head. She's in my fucking head! Char, you can fuck right off, I think. Loud. My hands shake, but I'm awake, in control. This is not sleep walking. I refuse to lose it.

  No response.

  Can't you hear me? Scrawls the spider web, no voice this time.

  Out of my brain, now.

  No response. The web continues to spin. Please don't be mad. I wanted to help you like your mother helped me.

  "Answer me, so I know you aren't mad at me." Her voice again, whispering through the headphones draped over Eric's chair.

  I'd rather wrap a live snake around my head. I press in close, ear near the speaker, mouth poised over the mike.

  "Charlotte?"

  "Spencer!" The voice is the same pitch and tone Mom has been hidden behind. A quiet, damaged sound which makes you always uncertain whether the next syllable will come. But this definitely isn't Mom. The maturity and self-consciousness I've grown used to with her body-snatched are gone, replaced by unhinged exuberance. Has she taken control of her body once more?

  "Are you patched in from the infirmary? If you hurt my mother—"

  "You met her? I'm so happy for you! I didn't know if it would work."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Everything I knew about her, I had to let it take my place. A data transfer. Her into me, me into...here."

  "Here?"

  "The world, Spencer! I am the world, and all humanity are my family, my friends. They give me their secrets, their innermost desires. They trust me. I'm finally home."

  Chapter 31

  ERIC, WAKE THE FUCK up!"

  He's lying on his stomach, face missing his pillow and melted against the mattress, and his ass awkwardly poised in the air. Good to know some things never change. I grab a used hot pocket sleeve and waft it under his nose. A nostril twitch, nothing more. I smack him on the cheek with it. Repeatedly.

  "Whaa?"

  His eyes flutter. I violently shake the flimsy bed frame. "Up! Up!"

  "Spencer? Jesus. I was dreaming some hottie was smacking me with a pepperoni slice. Not cool to take that away."

  "Get up!" I say, trying to keep from shouting and eyeing Babe's humming tower for any webcams, open microphones, or digital insects scurrying on-screen. "We need to talk."

  "Yeah, sure." He rubs his eyes. Scrubbing away the sleep seems to jostle his memory. "Going on a mission again, golden boy?"

  "Drop it," I say, dragging him out of bed. "Follow me."

  "All right, all right. Let me get..." He gropes for his pants.

  "Nope, boxers will do. Isn't that cold outside. If it is, you acclimate."

  "Outside?"

  More protests but I don't give a shit. His constant bursts of exasperation have no effect as I pull him down the corridor, using the dimples in the ceiling which conceal security cameras as our progress markers. We make the main lobby in record time, and I hurry us toward the exit. I'm half-expecting the killbox to go Defcon One and trap us inside. Doesn't happen. Somehow, we make it to the edge of the parking lot between his car and the team SUV.

  "Okay Mr. Jeans and Sleeves, you said it wasn't cold."

  "Shut it." I lean out to check the security cam mounted on the nearest street lamp. "Audio?" I ask, without explanation.

  Eric follows my gaze. "Not out here. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

  That's enough to trip my own killbox contingency. I lay into him. "What the fuck is wrong with you? I didn't ask for any of this shit. You dragged me out here, remember? This was all your damn idea. You want the looney bin to yourself? Fine, take it. All yours."

  "Slow your roll," he says, pressed against his car.

  "No. I don't deserve this from you of all people. I left you behind, I get it. But all the searching, obsessing, that was your choice. I never had one." I stare off into the woods because it's impossible to maintain my level of anger otherwise. "We're like...like family. Real family. Not the insanity fueled fantasy version of one I've had to deal with. Brothers, man."

  "Look, I'm sorry, okay? Does that help? A brother, someone to commiserate with, maybe watch a game, yeah, that's all I wanted too. Not a mini CM. Not...well...competition. A partner in crime, yo?"

  Hiding in the nostalgic good ol' days has always sounded appealing. I'd made it a life goal. Since this latest encounter, I've figured out that can never happen and Eric hasn't made the same discovery.

  "I get it. I do. I'm sorry too, man."

  "Then what the fuck has gotten into you?"

  I steel myself to confront him with what comes next. Deep breath. Eric's right, the air is chilly. A million other places we could be other than here, but this is where we've both chosen to stay. Along with an unwelcome guest.

  "Charlotte," I say.

  His gaze drops and eyes shift in the shadowy light. "What about her?"

  "She's back."

  Eric releases a nervous chuckle. "You on something?" He grabs my cheek and goes to pry an eyelid, studying my pupils. I swat his hand away.

  "No, I am not on something. She's found some way to transfer her consciousness into the systems. She's become the comcen...more."

  He's momentarily lost in thought and way too quickly accepts this new revelation. "I'd thought we lost her," he whispers, gazing at the roof. All shadows and glinting edges, her former perch is a black hole.

  Motherfucker.

  I get nose to nose with him. "You thought we lost her? In what universe would that have been a bad thing?"

  "Sure... Wait, how do you know?"

  "We had a talk," I say, pacing a short line between the cars. "She's been a busy girl."

  "Doing what?"

  "Exploring the internet for the past two years for starters. Chat rooms, business networks, government mainframes, topside, deep web, databases, SMTP servers."

  "Amazeballs, don't you think?" A radiant, eager grin splits him ear to ear. "She's...she's an evolutionary leap. The singularity but instead of being birthed from AI, she went the other direction. Freaking brilliant, huh?"

  "Eric!" I want to smack him to cancel his geek-on. "This isn't brilliant, this is a catastrophe. 'Psychotic girl becomes the internet' will be the last headline you ever see on your smartphone before the entire world goes dark."

  "She wouldn't do that," he says softly.

  Wait a minute. I know that look. The same puppy dog eyes he gives a girl who can melt his face off.

  "Dude, I can't believe you."

  "What?"

  "You're crushing on her?"

  He's examining his tires now, fidgeting. "Whatever."

  "Fuck, you are! Christ, my mom is in her body, you perv."

  "No way. I mean, you know, I took care of her and stuff while she was up there. I was just worried." A sense of wonder wipes away the concern. "But she became the internet."

  It's the perfect storm of bullshit for him. An unattainable girl who isn't just only reachable online, but is entirely made up of everything he's ever really cared about. They'll be married in an MMORPG within a week.

  "Nothing about this is amazeballs. You forget, we already have one world-ending event on our hands."

  He's quiet for a minute, his eyes darting from the camera to me. The temperature tumbles a few degrees as a gust of wind races by, and he stuffs his hands in his armpits. "Can we talk and not freeze?" He tries the door on his car.

  "I locked it."

  "Really?" he says, disappointed. He pulls out his hands and rubs them together. "Maybe this isn't all bad. She might not have refined her hacking skills yet, but she's hella powerful. Maybe she can help."

  "Help? You're remembering the wrong Augment test subject."

  "She's able to do some seriously cool shit. Real Matrix stuff!" He begins a series of sl
ow-mo acrobatics, bending and weaving as he says with awe, "I know Assembler!" The routine ends abruptly at my scowl. "Stopping these attacks could be child's play for her."

  "We're not going to ask for her help."

  "Why not? She might listen to me, you know. We had a thing up there."

  "You didn't have a thing, Eric," I say, gritting my teeth. "We need a plan to deal with both her and Shortwave."

  "Fine. Tell me how it is, CM 2.0."

  He's slipping back into pissy Eric mode. It's not what I intended, but it's impossible not to get worked up. He might even be right. Hell, Charlotte could truly be the only hope for our impossible mission. The penetration of the virus was near total, and having the help of the now-claiming-to-be sentient internet would be one hell of a boost.

  But there's mom. From what Charlotte said there's a good chance all I'm looking at is a psychic afterimage stuffed into a body. A possession animated through a freaky form of technomancy. Could Charlotte take her away again any moment? No. She seems confined to the world of zeroes and ones, where she's going about growing into her own new body. Testing her own limits.

  No, we can't let this get any worse. A cult leader trying to free all the machines, a lab experiment trying to become them. Neither needs free reign. And an all-out cage match between the two could be impossible for civilization to recover from.

  "Wwwwell?" Eric shivers uncontrollably.

  "We need to shut it down."

  "It? What do you mean, it?"

  "The internet. Shut it down."

  For a second, I think Eric is going to faint.

  WE'RE IN THE PARKING lot again. Eric has clothes on this time, and CM 1.0 is with us. Dad was getting up at zero dark insanity anyway for the operation, so he's all good to go. Mom is sleeping, which is a relief, and the rest of our team is prepping inside.

  The downtime seems to have done Dad a hell of a lot of good. Color has returned to his cheeks, and with the wound wrapped up under his tactical suit, you wouldn't even know he'd been injured. But the occasional flinch and grimace isn't due to skepticism about my idea. I don't think.

  "Is it even possible to shut it all down?" Dad asks.

  "If you would've asked me a few hours ago if it were possible for a psychic Augment to transfer her consciousness into the internet, I would have said hell no," I say. "I spent almost four semesters trying to understand even the basics of neuroscience, psychology. Turns out, people make no sense. But the 'net, that's my playground. Our playground," I add, swatting Eric's arm.

  Eric begins pacing and muttering until he's gained our full attention. "We can't do it. Crimson's right. It isn't possible."

  "What about Charlotte's 'cute little leg stretches?' Those external spikes which manifested as an infrastructure-wide denial of service attack? We can use that as a blueprint for exactly how to pull it off!"

  "Maybe that's another part of Shortwave's plan," says Dad.

  "Definitely!" Eric latches onto the out, wagging a finger.

  "Doesn't add up," I say. "Shortwave needs the world connected to implement his new world order. He's got most everything pwned, but his initial concentration seems to be financial transactions, to get his spice flowing. He could easily use the information to shut down individual systems in multiple sectors. We've got limited resources. Our best bet is to target the infrastructure."

  "What about Charlotte?" Eric blurts.

  "What about her?"

  "Well, she's in there." He's scanning the pavement again, unable to look me head on. "What happens to her?"

  I've about had enough with his fixation. He knows her as this helpless antenna array he helped nurse back to life. He never had to spend quality time with mind-melter Charlotte. "Two vultures, one stone."

  "Polybius wouldn't say that," says Eric.

  "Well, Polybius switched teams and left me hanging when I went to save his ass. He can eat a bag of dicks."

  "Guys, cool it," says Dad. "We can't get emotional. We need an actionable plan. Spencer, what would it take for us to pull it off?"

  Eric is fuming. Once more, Dad has turned to me. Yeah, it isn't fair. Life isn't fair. Brothers, sibling rivalry, it's all normal. I'll keep telling myself that.

  "From what Eric showed me of her past activity, her incursion into the 'net came in waves, forcing service providers to expose their reaction speed, their security protocols. We take as much of the compromised systems as we can, everything at our disposal at the base, and do the same."

  "All that does is cause more damage than even Shortwave intends!" Eric exclaims.

  "Before we kill it," I say. "We send out instructions on how to clean the hardware along with details about the virus."

  Eric stays tight-lipped and shakes head. "Why not just reveal the vulnerabilities like we should and let the community sort it out?"

  "You're forgetting Shortwave already has everything in place. As soon as he knows people are going to start a wide scale clean up, he'll launch. He'll have total control before anyone even has time."

  "Let him launch then!" Eric shouts. "We'll fight him head on! Cyber warfare? You kidding? I'm not afraid. I still have contacts out there, unlike some people, and no, they won't be sitting on the sidelines."

  "How big is his Collective?" I say, voice rising. "How many of our friends are members? Me at school, you here playing dispatcher, neither of us has kept up. We have no idea how deep this goes."

  "You’re saying we just shut it all off? Fuckin’ A, Spence," Eric says.

  Dad presses a palm against his wounded arm and tests the movement. Another grimace and he sighs. "You two have eight hours to come up with a plan. We'll have boots on the ground at Tango by then. I imagine that alone will be enough to get Sergei to push his timetable forward." He turns and grips my forearm, firm, but without the bone crushing threat. More a reassuring squeeze. His commands, however, go to Eric.

  "Eric, fill me in when you two decide about this technical threat. I've got enough to worry about."

  His wife returned in the body of a mental patient, powers drained, a bullet through once impregnable skin, it took a lot, but I think he's mellowing out. And, while I may be his son, he's got an established chain of command to which he adheres. Both Eric and I watch him walk toward the building, neither willing to speak. The awkwardness stretches long after Dad disappears inside.

  "Guess I'm in charge," Eric sighs, a hint of self-satisfaction.

  "Guess so."

  Chapter 32

  I ONLY SORTA GET THE consequences of Shortwave's plan. Bad, good, I wish I could judge the end result, but it's the havoc-wreaking transition which we need to stop. Our plan? No idea about the fallout. Captain Pike has decided to go with all-out cyberwar.

  If I ever need to start a global revolution in under eight hours, I know who to call. Dad kept insisting we weren't in the politics game. Regime change. Proxy wars. Superpower conflicts. But when engaging an enemy who wants to dismantle the global status quo, any response will necessarily be political.

  Eric has contacted dozens of hacker groups worldwide in a matter of hours. We did our best to rule out the ones who might have been influenced by the Collective, though it's too hard to say. We're going for a swarm effort. If some work against us, so be it. We can't control that. What we need is to hit a critical mass.

  As Chief Science Officer, I spend my time creating a wiki on the hardware vulnerabilities and exactly how to repair them plus Eric's own algorithms to detect the access point virus. We can assume most people will ignore the threat, initially. That's where the strike teams come into play. We'll do our best to prevent any hostile takeovers. Compromised systems left vulnerable get owned. By us, not Shortwave. "Us" being a very loose term.

  Anonymity is king, even on the more public layers of the web. We've broadcast our call for help on the deepest levels where the only identities are ones chosen for that hidden world. There are near zero ties to any official, government-approved version of "you."

  What I can't con
vince Eric of is we're playing Shortwave's game in the exact way he plans to play it. His transfer of global power involves handing over the keys to this amorphous community of believers and digital vagrants. Here we are asking his "friends" from a very similar demographic to support the old world order of geographic boundaries where an official, government-approved existence means more than a personally tailored virtual one.

  I could keep arguing but I won't. Instead, I'll follow orders and "monitor the situation." Meanwhile, I'm studying the activity heat maps from those DDOS attacks in case we need to go with my Doomsday route. That, and I'm keeping a wary eye out for Charlotte.

  She hasn't shown up. Eric set up a secure chat channel under his handle, 3n1g|/|4, protected by a password he refused to tell me but said, "she'd know." Whether playing shy or playing her own little games, if she's romping around the digital world, no way she hasn't heard the buzz we're creating.

  Tactical screens show the away team is less than an hour away from Shortwave's factory. Hound never fully explained how they'd sneak up on Danger. With any luck, Cyrus has neutered him by now per request.

  Dad called in a favor to get the ride. Some former Air Force pilot with his own jet. From what I understood, taking an unscheduled flight over mainland China could be a fatal mistake. Like Dad though, the guy must have been an adrenaline junkie, and, I suspect, an Augment. At least Ember should survive the fiery crash. And Dad's recovery from the desert had been pretty quick over these few days. Almost makes me wonder if his powers weren't completely erased.

  I'm not the only one watching the tactical screen. Mom's here. After finding out Charlotte's on the loose, rediscovering my equilibrium of only a few days ago is hard. That mismatched face and scarred scalp. Her hair has come in some, and though dark, it hangs in cobweb strands. This should be good news. Maybe as long as we don't jack Mom into the array, she's got sole custody.

  "They're almost there," Mom says, unnecessarily. "What can I do to help?"

  I wish I had a good answer.

  "Eric." He's swimming upstream, text and code. I slide over and trigger the boatswain. “Eric.” He swats my hand, continues typing for several more seconds and gives me his best angry librarian impression.