by PJ Manney
Tom sighed. “Try a thousand times, maybe hundreds of thousands if you include all the AIs and data processors changing the story of my life around the world.”
“Well, don’t you think—” said Arun.
“Shhh,” said Veronika. She was typing.
Arun stood over her shoulder, watching as her fingers moved feverishly in the air on her virtual keyboard. After a couple of minutes, he said, “You’re the most interesting coder I’ve seen. Maybe ever.”
“Huh?” she muttered.
His eyes never left the screen. “You’re making higher-order leaps that I didn’t have to explain, with incredible intuition for someone so young. But you’ve also got a rigorous, analytical mind. You usually see one or the other.”
Tom watched the code blossom across the screen, wondering if Veronika’s ability was intuition or if she knew more than she was letting on? She was too good to have been hidden for years in role-playing alternate realities like TCoMT, or even cryptocurrency and identity coding. She could have been a programming superstar anywhere she wanted and made a fortune by now.
“That’s ’cause I got, like, a secret weapon.”
Arun looked bemused. “And what’s that?”
“If I hadn’t started out as a computer-obsessed kid in a male body, then transitioned, I couldn’t do this.”
Arun looked at Tom questioningly. Tom nodded. Then Arun nodded. “That’s . . . so cool. Never occurred to me it would affect cognitive processes like that. But it has to.”
“Hell yeah, dude. Big blasts of, like, adolescent testosterone, then estrogen meds? I grew up with a typical male-brained, intensely logical, analytical approach. Then the hormones made me have, like, intuition, I guess. My brain does both equally. And you learn you need both, too. You see the world from both sides now.”
Tom snorted at Veronika’s reference: Joni Mitchell’s classic “Both Sides, Now.” The song began to play through the speakers.
Shaking his head, Arun said to Tom, “Yeah, we know your tricks. Pipe down.” Then he turned to Veronika. “Any interest in Caltech after you save the world? You could teach.”
“Ha! Nah, dude. This is the best buzz ever.”
The song burrowed into Tom’s mind, wiggling around. “Not playing around,” he said. “Think about the last three stanzas. About how experience changes us, and friends not liking that change. About being abandoned. And how it’s all revealed to be an illusion. There’s something there. Isn’t that what we’re dealing with here? I experienced it back when I had the original implants. And I still am.”
Arun’s face grew pinched. “Not on your wavelength, sorry.”
Tom caught a smile flicker across Veronika’s face. And then it was gone. Was she in agreement? Or had she planted the thought purposefully? The song flooded his system with memories of shame, abandonment, and illusion. Of installing the first Hippo and Cortex 2.0 in secret from Carter and Amanda. Of Amanda’s miscarriage. Of demonstrating the new systems and failing at the Phoenix Club encampment. Of his supposed colleagues—Carter, Josiah, Bruce, Chang—all betraying him, trying to kill him. Of Steve fighting him on installing the 3.0. Of Talia hating what he had become. Of dying and living again in completely new forms.
An alarm on the console sounded. The cyberhacking detector had found an intruder.
“Shit!” screamed Veronika.
Both men looked at the HOME screen.
“There!” yelled Veronika. “Hacker inside.” They all watched the Major Tom code change in real time. The AI was trying to combat it but was not winning. “No way! Not now!” She commanded the AI to take care of lower-order attacks and jumped back into the code.
“Disconnect from the network!” said Ruth.
“No!” said Arun. “We need to see how he’s getting in. If we can see the changes, we can try to find the access. And we’d have to turn off all of Major Tom. Complete shutdown. Tom might die.”
“Miss Gray Hat built trip wires into this system,” said Veronika. “This ass is tripping them.”
Ruth sent a voice message to Miss Gray Hat: “Need your help now! MT is under attack!”
The battle was on. Watching Veronika and this mysterious cracker working against each other was like watching them lob grenades, except each throw happened in a few seconds with letters, numbers, symbols—and a lot of deleting—across the huge screen. Some of the code was familiar to Tom. With help from Ruth and Miss Gray Hat, he had written a little of it himself before he uploaded. But some of it was new, written by Dr. Who, Miss Gray Hat, Veronika, and Ruth.
Arun snapped at Tom, “Stay down! Don’t move.” He quickly tied Tom down on the examination table with the restraint straps. “They’re after your spinothalamic pathway.”
Tom watched the code on screen. It was not the same route into his systems that they had used in Venice and Long Beach. Arun was right, and he had no time to . . .
“Aaaaahhh!” he screamed.
If a pain signal were a loudspeaker in his brain, this signal was so loud that it ran through all the major biological systems in his body, broadcasting in agonizing bursts to his muscles, skin, head, torso, arms, legs, internal organs. There was no intensity scale to describe it. It was pure pain. He prayed it didn’t cause a heart attack. In this body, there were no nanosensors in his bloodstream that he could order to cut his pain receptors. How could Major Tom have been so stupid? He writhed in agony on the table, the restraints preventing him from ripping off the sensors, crashing to the floor, and injuring himself.
Steve came running in.
Frightened at Tom’s distress, Veronika couldn’t concentrate. She started singing “The Sound of Silence,” off-key, to block him out and focus on freeing him from the hack.
Steve yelled, “What the hell are you doing to him?”
“Not me. Hacker!” screamed Veronika. She continued singing the Simon & Garfunkel classic. Only Tom understood. It was like her Lord’s Prayer. Tom would have laughed, if he could stop screaming.
Steve ran for a crash cart and prepared a syringe of Nalbuphine, a synthopioid to ease the pain.
“No!” said Tom through clenched teeth. “Not . . . yet!”
Ruth stood close, without touching Tom’s body, shaking as much as he was. “P-p-p-please! L-l-let Steve help! Miss G-G-Gray Hat doesn’t answer!”
“Opiates . . . might interfere . . . with feedback! She needs . . . to see . . . feedback!”
Ruth knew he was right, but she couldn’t take his agony. She ran to the corner of the lab and crouched down, twitching and shivering like a frightened terrier.
Veronika stopped singing. “Fuck! I know this guy!”
“How?” asked Arun.
“Like, his rhythm. And readability index. And his obsession for, like, hidden stupid lady-part words. It’s unusual. Get on that terminal!”
Arun ran to another monitor and logged in.
“He’s American,” Veronika said. “Used to do business, and then, like, he asked me out. Fucker. In Grand Rapids. Try this link.” She sent it to Arun. “And this code. And here’s the local power grid accesses. Go after it. Just long enough for me to finish. Let’s shut that fucker down.”
“But how do you know . . . ?” asked Arun.
“What about hospitals and—” said Steve.
“On generator backup. Do it!”
“You’re sure?” said Arun.
“If not, we’ll know quick!” said Veronika.
Arun did as ordered. It was terrifyingly easy. In less than a minute, Grand Rapids, Michigan, had no power. “Damn. I’ve never broken the law before.”
“Welcome to the shit show, dude,” said Veronika. “Look. He’s gone. Hired a fucking amateur. Even I had my own solar and battery array.”
Her hands danced in the air in front of her. “Just need . . . ten more minutes, then we, like, lock, load, and bury this screed where no one can find it.”
Arun sat back, stunned. “I really hope we don’t hurt anyone in Grand Rapids.”
Veronika looked smug. “Santa Barbara had blackouts all the time, till the state went full solar. We survived.”
Tom’s eyes flashed open. He gulped a lungful of air, struggling against the restraints. Steve bent over him and listened to his heart, took blood pressure and pulse, checked his eyes and reflexes. Tom lay there exhausted. “When we get that little shit back up,” he said, “I want to exploit his system. Figure out who he’s working for. And then hurt him. Badly. Leave him as an example not to fuck with us.”
Ruth, Arun, and Steve traded uncomfortable looks.
“You know who’s behind this,” said Veronika softly as she typed. “This one’s taking orders. Like, a little fish looking for coin. Throw him back. We’ll dismantle his system later and look for others. Then we’ll see how to strengthen the cyberhack system. Relax.” She took a deep breath, trying to unwind herself.
“Did you see what I just went through?” yelled Tom.
“Yeah, dude, I did. And I know he, or someone like him, set fire to my house and hurt my mom. But he’s small fry. And he’s done. Next stop for him was fast food, but that’s manned by robots now.”
She was right. Tom took another deep breath and tried to clear his thinking. Why was he behaving so vindictively? So illogically? Oh yeah, he was human. No one could think purely logically and without bias, no matter how intelligent. Either one lacked knowledge, and therefore thought they knew more than they did. Or they possessed knowledge, and assumed they knew more than they did. Put another way: no matter how much anyone knew, they were usually wrong.
Regardless, with everyone assuming their way was the best way, there would be trouble ahead. He knew the team’s plan to save refugees had sieve-like holes. And one question pulsed through his mind like a heartbeat after every attack: Why was he still alive? Why was he still alive? Why was he still alive? His only answer so far: Carter was waiting for a showdown. Winter versus Tom, round 2. For all his knowledge and predictive analysis, he wasn’t sure who would win.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Two days after the cyberneural attack, Tom’s human body still recovered below deck. The Zumwalt entered the mouth of the Mississippi River as stealthily as a six-hundred-foot naval destroyer could. He didn’t want anyone to see him yet, for fear his human identity might become too well known, too soon. But he could watch the first step of their operation almost as well as if he was there.
Only the barest sliver of moon shone on the ship’s security cameras, and if one noticed the big, dark mass at all, it was from a hole of blackness surrounded by the shimmer of reflecting water, or by its blotting out lights from the opposite shore.
He heard gunfire, miles away. Conrad’s army hadn’t arrived yet, but violence was already breaking out. Rick was helping them with identities to get the refugees out of both New Orleans and Port Everglades and in new lives elsewhere, untraceable by the SSA. Tom just wished it went faster. Every moment Carter had before they arrived in Florida would make him stronger.
Talia and Ruth exited a huge hangar door on the stern deck to meet a small craft, its lights out, approaching from the riverside. There was no breeze to move the humid air, and the tinny sound of the putt-putt engine sounded in the dampness. The small boat came along side. A lithe man quickly climbed the Zumwalt’s side ladder to the deck.
“Bonjou!” whispered Rick Blaine as he came on deck. “Welcome to the craziest port town in the country.”
Talia shook his hand. “So good to finally meet you. Hope we can help.”
“Glad Tom kept his promise. How many beds for my people?” Rick asked. He extended his hand to Ruth.
Ruth backed away and twitched. “Only a few hundred. No more available.”
“What’s your problem, lady?” Rick asked. “The SSA is sending Conrad’s army. Now.”
Major Tom checked a satellite camera feed of the Southern States of America. A large military presence was massing in Biloxi, Gulfport, and Picayune, Mississippi, and along state borders further west, ready to cross into Louisiana.
“We can’t get a big enough ship into the ports here for you,” said Talia. “The draught’s too shallow and the docks are too small. Big ships can go to South Florida. We’re trying to round up more small ships for you.”
“Batars!” fumed Rick.
Talia touched his arm. “We’re doing the best we can. We can move twenty thousand in two ships from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, so I need your top picks for this ship to help us there. And you.”
“I can’t leave,” said Rick.
“Conrad’s army is coming,” said Talia. “You said it yourself. We need you for identity assignments.”
“Veronika can do it.” Rick gestured toward the dark of the riverbank. “If I go, who helps my people get to your future ships? This is my city. Se kreyol mo yè. Can’t call me Creole if I don’t have a parish ’a friends and a hidey hole.”
“We must move fast,” said Ruth. “In the gulf before sunrise.”
“I can register new identities as they load,” said Rick. “Veronika can do back-end detail work. Exact number you can take tonight?”
“Three hundred,” said Talia. “That’s bodies in every place we can manage. This ship is huge, but it’s not designed for people. And we’ve only got enough food to get to New York. Ideally, we want to get them to Canada. We know they’re accepting Southern refugees.”
“Come on, mes amis! Give me some wiggle room! Can’t we put ’em on the deck?” Rick waved his arms at the enormous and empty platform. “Tent city? Something?”
“We must remain. As stealth as possible,” said Ruth. “This ship is important. And we are p-p-prey if found.”
Rick muttered quiet curses in Louisiana Creole. He plopped down cross-legged and feverishly text messaged on his GO, which Major Tom and Miss Gray Hat had hacked back at the nightclub in New Orleans. He was contacting the three hundred people he had chosen for the first wave to pave the way for more folks who would follow. Talia and Ruth left him to it.
Soon, a flotilla of small boats headed for the stealth behemoth. Pontoon party boats, inflatable dinghies, small skiffs, and sportsfishing charters came with human cargo from shore. It was a clever mix of refugees: some leaders, some followers, some with great skills, some with no definable skills—yet—but all begging for opportunity. As with most refugees, the largest demographic was under the age of eighteen. Families with children felt they had the most to lose and were the most eager to flee. They were also those most likely to settle quickly in a new home, assimilate, and establish a community for others to follow.
Talia saw the hope in their faces and understood. “Rick, you’re a wise and compassionate man. For all your hustle.”
“Mèsi.” When she looked confused, he said, “Thanks.”
The silent, orderly boat parade approached the Zumwalt, dropped off passengers, and went back to pick up more. On a boat, a baby cried. Its mother bounced the infant to quiet him. On another, a child whimpered, apparently afraid of the looming dark ship. It did look like something out of a nightmare, with a dark, hulking shape that didn’t look like anything a child would recognize.
As the migrants climbed aboard, Rick and Talia re-registered each subcutaneous CNEM-ID tag with Rick’s reader, assigning them new identities so that no government, real or imagined, could order them back. Then they headed below deck, to be directed by Ruth to their crowded, barebones accommodations.
As Rick watched the last few disappear into the hangar doors, he grabbed Talia’s arm. “You promise they’ll be safe? These folks. They’re more than clients. They’re human beings. We’re all human beings . . . ” The pale city lights bounced off the clouds and reflected in his watery eyes. “They deserve to be free. Find happiness . . . ” His throat caught.
Talia took his hand. “I hope we do right by you and your community, Rick. We’ll keep in touch.”
Within three hours, the full complement of three hundred was aboard, and Rick was off to secure the ne
xt shipload.
It was time to say goodbye to someone too valuable to keep on board.
Arun Ponnusamy paced the tiny bunkroom where Tom rested in bed. “Come on, you still need me! What if Carter hijacks you again?”
Tom smiled sadly. “I’m sure he will, but maybe not in a way that you can help with.”
“But I’m learning, too. I’ve got incredible new ideas for—”
“That’s why you need to go,” said Tom. “I need someone to continue what we did. Get back and work. You have no idea how grateful I am that you helped us.”
“But what am I going to do now?” asked Arun. “I can’t share this information. I can’t even tell anyone where I went.”
“But you can build from it. And you’re right. This body won’t last for long. I’m hoping a better AHI will. It needs to evolve to survive. And I need you alive for that. You can be a warrior on another front.” Tom studied Arun. “What do you know about smart-body prosthetics? Like autonomous exoskeletons.”
“A little,” said Arun. “Why?”
“I have a side job. You can give an active life back to the most incredible woman in the world. And I promise you’ll love her as much as I do.”
Within minutes, Arun was ferried to a boat that would take him to Playa Bagdad, Mexico, where a car would take him to Matamoros to board a private jet that would fly him to Burbank, California, and back to Caltech.
The Zumwalt set sail for Port Everglades.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The next day, Talia crawled inside a 3-D dome on the Zumwalt bridge and monitored a camerafeed near the ship’s bow. It was dawn on Florida’s southeast coast, and the landscape looked peaceful from a distance: beaches, luxury hotels, cruise ships, palm trees waving in the gentle breeze. But when she zoomed in, she could see people. Hundreds of thousands, all desperate to leave. During her childhood and young adulthood, when she had been Marisol Gonzales, this had been her home. Then her father was mistakenly murdered by the Phoenix Club when a member fulfilling his initiation orders had intended to kill her instead. She had been on the run and living under a fake identity ever since.