Neurotopia

by Tony Mohorovich

  < Ma’am, your O2 is under twenty-five per cent, and I can’t find any shelter around here. >

  The caterpillar’s trail appeared to go on forever. For all Sky knew, it might circle the Moon like a giant belt. Perhaps this was a telepath ruse? Perhaps there was no colony at the end of it? Perhaps she had already passed it, hidden somewhere, known only to those connected to the telepath’s neural network?

  < Ma’am, your O2 is below fifteen per cent. I wouldn’t want you to dehydrate. How about I reclaim some of your water for drinkin’? >

  ‘No.’

  < Your bladder’s got a bit of juice left. I could use that. >

  Sky stopped and pushed out the remainder. ‘Use it for oxygen.’

  Uncle Jesse sighed. < If you say so, ma’am. >

  One step at a time, Sky told herself. No going back now. Would she ever see Earth with her own eyes again? One step at a time.

  She had had dreams like this; running in slow motion as some invisible beast gained on her. The thing would always catch up, wrap its invisible arms around her body so that she could not move while it whispered something horrible in her ear.

  Sky staggered and fell on her side.

  < Ma’am, your O2 store is headin’ under ten per cent. You’ll start experiencin’ hypoxia soon enough and your hallucinations won’t be so artificial. >

  The air was hot and thick. The water reclaimer was sucking up every last drop of moisture that escaped her. Outside it was minus 153 degrees Celsius. She had the urge to take off her helmet. The thought of freezing to death was appealing. No more Moon, no more Earth, no more striving, just the welcome unconscious nothing.

  Those invisible arms tightened.

  You won’t have me.

  She forced herself to stand.

  You won’t have us.

  The left foot lands. Balance. Push off. In the air. Feet off the ground. Where is it? There. Right foot lands. Balance…

  She set her sights on the hill ahead. Maybe there was something on the other side? The incline was gentle, barely a slope. When she reached the top, she saw the caterpillar’s tracks veer off to the left. After a few more hops, Sky found herself at the edge of a large crater. She rotated her leg and dug her heel into the dust to stop herself from going over the edge.

  She switched off her suit’s torch and scanned what she thought was the horizon, hoping to spot the lights of a colony, or a shelter, or any sign of human ingenuity.

  Nothing.

  < Ma’am, we’ve lost the network connection; I can’t get hold of any public comms. Hate to say it, but it looks like we’re in a dead zone. >

  ​9:4

  NIA Director Jeong-soo Tester returned his awareness to his body after a marathon of maya meetings. He stretched his legs as far as they would allow him. It had been long day of planning with his counterparts from the other Earth federations.

  He searched his messages. There were many, but none from Sky.

  After their link had been disrupted—or Sky had hung up on him, he could not tell—he had tried to call her. Whenever he had had a break between meetings, he tried to call her. But she either would not, or could not, respond. The worst scenarios flooded his mind, with outcomes he preferred not to dwell on.

  Calm down, he thought. Maybe she’s switched to a private network? It was a hope that did little to allay his concern.

  It’s too late to start caring now, Jeong-soo.

  His assistant Ivana came through on audio, ‘Sir, there’s a Pious from AntiViral on the line.’ A maya appeared with Pious’ rotund face beside his employee data.

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘He says it’s urgent.’

  Everything was urgent, Tester thought. ‘Tell him to send it up the chain.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  A moment later Ivana’s voice returned, ‘Sorry, sir, Pious says he needs to speak to you personally. He says it’s about your daughter.’

  Sky?

  Tester cast aside his active mayas. ‘Put him through.’

  Pious appeared in maya-form in the seat opposite. The analyst was larger than the average employee, and his haunches appeared to bulge out of the seat. Tester made a mental note to have him assessed for fitness programming.

  ‘Mr. Director, ah, sorry for the intrusion,’ he stammered, ‘I realize this is contrary to, ah, NIA protocol, but I have an urgent matter in respect of your daughter.’

  Tester’s eyes narrowed on the man.

  Pious fiddled with his pudgy fingers as he spoke. ‘A local programmer has identified anomalies in your daughter’s—Ms. Sky Marion’s—brain data, and we believe there is a chance she is being neurologically manipulated.’

  ​9:5

  < Ma’am, now I don’t want to sound like a nagging operating system, but… >

  A graph showed Sky’s oxygenwas in the red zone.

  Her breath was warm inside the helmet. In and out, it went. She sat in the dust. She had the urge to lie down.

  < Don’t give up yet, ma’am. I think I might have a bite. >

  That roused her. ‘I thought you said this was a dead zone,’ she said, her breathing strained.

  < We went from a level-four connection to zero in a few meters. That don’t make no sense. I reckon it’s an artificial dead zone. >

  ‘You mean someone’s blocking the networks? Telepaths?’

  < Don’t know. But whoever’s doing it probably has a shelter hereabouts. I can’t be sure, but I reckon the perimeter of the dead zone is an arc, meaning I might’ve worked out where the center is; out there is my best guess. >

  A maya-arrow pointed away from the caterpillar’s tracks, into the darkness, skimming along the rim of the crater and over a series of rocky outcrops.

  ‘How far?’ Sky whispered.

  < Judging from the arc, about 500 meters. >

  It was enough to get Sky back on her feet. Her muscles were like jelly. It was only Moon gravity, yet she felt as if she were in the middle of a black hole. She wished for a chariot, or a palanquin, carried by willing slaves. Even better, a swarm.

  After 300 meters she saw hope.

  She had missed it at first, for it had appeared like the silhouette of boulders in the darkness. In reality, they were not boulders; they were spheres.

  As she approached the structure, she saw that each sphere was the size of a railpod back on Earth. The spheres linked together via tubes in a way that reminded Sky of a model of atoms.

  She circled the monument and found caterpillar tracks at its northern tip. Perhaps the vehicles had taken the long way around the crater to avoid the outcrops? The tracks ended at the base of the structure.

  < Sure you don’t want an O2 update, ma’am? >

  ‘Not until I pass out.’

  If the building did belong to the telepaths, it was not well-hidden; a satellite could pick it up when day crossed the region.

  Sky felt a sudden rumbling beneath her feet. She turned around to see the first sign of artificial light; a double-barrelled gun turret rising out of the ground and swivelling in her direction. Before it could fire, Sky’s adrenalin kicked in and she leapt behind a boulder. There was an almighty quake, and the next moment she found herself face-first in the regolith, the dust grinding against her visor.

  Rain fell. Some of the sharp lunar dust that had been blasted into the environment now pattered against her helmet and lunesuit. The top half of her protective boulder was missing.

  The next sound was a woman’s laugh through Sky’s comms. Sky saw the maya of an Olon with lunar fatigues standing on top of one of the spheres. Their face was that of a brunette woman which switched to a middle-aged man’s features, ‘You are harder to get rid of than regolith. Honestly, I did not expect you back so soon. Points for trying.’

  Another round of turret fire pounded the boulder. Sky threw herself over the tip of a small crater. She tumbled, landing on the crater floor.

  Uncle Jesse confirmed that her suit was still intact, though he advised her to av
oid any further damage to her visor, company permitting.

  Sky lifted herself to a crawl and breathed the remaining air. She couldn’t get a full breath; it was as if someone was sitting on her chest. She rolled over and lay on her back. The night’s stars looked back at her, gleaming bright. Pretty. Her thoughts overlapped one another and became a jumble of illogical impressions. She felt sleep coming on.

  A bright light. A flash of red. Something above her. It was a drone, the size of her fist. Its red lights turned to green. Then it departed.

  ‘Wonderful view, isn’t it?’ A male voice this time. Sky angled her head to see a figure standing at the rim of the crater, his features lit by his visor’s internal light. It was Dante.

  When they had first met on the caterpillar train, Dante’s face had appeared on the Olon. Now, Sky could see no hint of a blank canvas behind his features, nor was there any switching of faces. Instead, Sky realized, he was just an ordinary one-faced human.

  She summoned what little strength remained. ‘I could enjoy the view even more if I wasn’t being shot at.’

  ‘You came uninvited.’

  Her lungs burned. ‘I’m out of air. Please, let me in.’

  ‘Please, let me in. Connect or die.’

  Never let them in, Mym had told her. So had Okiro. Her father too.

  A telepathic connection request appeared before her. All she had to do was consent. That was all she had to do. Yet something held her back. Something that made Sky sick to her stomach. A fear greater than death. A fear even greater than her mother’s death. How could that be? she wondered. Do it, she told herself. Just jump, you fool. But she could not.

  She felt the subtle vibrations of footsteps. Dante bent over her, turned her body around and tampered with the back of her suit. She did not have the strength to stop him. The hiss of escaping air told her everything she needed to know.

  The dust beneath her shifted. She tried to steady herself, until she realized she was already lying down and had nowhere to fall.

  Another hiss—as if a snake had found its way into her suit. An icy wind came with it, cooling her nostrils, gliding over the folds of her cracked lips like a winter’s mist, then rushing into her lungs.

  She took a breath. Then another.

  Deep rich breaths. The taste of rainforest. The memory of a picnic returned; her father parked the autopod, her mother smiled. ‘You first.’ The door opened. A crackle of loose earth beneath Sky’s feet. That first breath, moist with the scent of deciduous leaves and a bittersweet chocolate timber.

  Happiness is relief, Sky thought. She had never been happier.

  The fresh oxygen lifted the fog from her mind. She was able to focus on Dante’s face, with its melancholy eyes and half smile. Orange freckles and blemishes of age decorated his features.

  ‘It was silly of you to return on foot,’ he said, helping her to sit. ‘What in the hell were you thinking? You were just going to find a secret passage into the colony without us noticing? Either you’re the most dedicated aspiring journalist in history, or you’re not telling us the entire truth. What could drive someone to cross a desert alone as you have?’ He lowered himself beside her.

  There was something about being in Dante’s presence that made her feel childlike. Could she trust him with the truth? She knew that was a dangerous line of thinking, yet she also knew that he could have let her die if he had wanted to. What did she have to lose?

  ‘My mother is infected with Tellinii. I came to find the cure,’ she admitted.

  ‘Good.’ He clapped. ‘Now keep going. How did you come by the swarm?’

  She paused. ‘My father gave it to me, for protection.’

  Dante nodded, waiting, unconvinced.

  ‘My father works at the Americas’ Neurosecurity and Intelligence Agency.’ She felt as if she was exposing herself with every word. ‘I’m not an agent. I was a scanner reviewer. No one sent me. I just want my mother back.’

  Dante sniffed the air inside his helmet, as if savoring the scent of a rare flower. ‘When you speak your truth, your entire body sings. There’s no mask, no tension; that is freedom.’ He stood up.

  A rover rolled into view at the rim of the crater and two armed men got out.

  Dante looked at Sky and his lips curled into a sympathetic smile. The two soldiers above parted for the maya-form of an Olon. Their faces flipped and the heads shook in an unmistakable gesture of No.

  Dante gave no outward sign of a response. With a sudden scowl, the Olon spun and disappeared.

  ‘I might have a compromise,’ Dante said. ‘If you allow us to scan you the old way, machine-to-brain, and if we’re satisfied, we’ll consider letting you in.’

  Sky couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This was a chance.

  But a memory scan would reveal the confidential discussions with her father, not to mention the many hours of scanning reviews, and her private neural data. She might betray State secrets. ‘How do I know you’re not going to turn me into a puppet? How am I supposed to trust you?’

  ‘We’ll only scan your memories and intentions. You have my word—insofar as that means anything to you—that we won’t alter or manipulate your neurals in any way. We are not mind-rapers, Sky.’

  It sounded like a good deal. There were no good deals in the VOL. What did they want? ‘I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,’ she said, ‘but why the sudden change of heart?’

  ‘If you’d aimed to harm us, you would have agreed to connect sooner… as others have. But it appears you would rather die than join our network.’ He frowned, but it was not unkind. ‘Besides, we may be able to help each other.’

  A trade. Of course. This was the VOL, after all.

  ‘Help each other? How?’

  ‘One step at a time.’ He offered his hand again. After a pause, she took it.

  Sky followed Dante out of the crater while the two soldiers jumped into their rover and backed it up. The monument of spheres lifted and the rover disappeared down a ramp that led underground.

  Dante walked to the mouth of the entrance and beckoned.

  PART III

  Geppetto

  Chapter 10

  Under

  ​10:1

  Sky followed Dante down the ramp and the monument closed behind her. She joined him in a transparent airlock. Its door shut and her ears popped under the new pressure. A blast of air and water cleaned their suits of regolith particles. A door on the other end of the airlock opened.

  Dante stripped off his suit. His hair was short and had a hint of natural orange. Underneath his suit, his skin was as bright and freckled as his face. It took a few moments for Sky to realize that he was naked because he moved without a hint of social discomfort. He must have been twenty years her senior but his body was lithe and sinewy, muscles dominating fat. He entered the shower block and a showerhead released its water.

  ‘Regolith particles stick like glue and cause havoc with our air filters,’ he said. ‘We must be thorough.’

  There was the distinct smell of burnt earth when Sky lifted her helmet, the smell of lunar dust. She took off her suit and stepped out in her undergarments. With all the travelling she had done since her arrival on the Moon, her ability to move about without the aid of a lunesuit had improved, and she was able to hop about without looking like a complete novice.

  The shower block was a large room with multiple showerheads and zero privacy. Dante finished his shower and, mercifully, left her alone in the block. Sky disrobed, her legs still shaking from the journey, and selected a shower in the far corner.

  She had intended to shower quickly, but the water was warm and soothing, so she allowed herself to indulge in it. When she finished, she found a pair of slippers and a fresh set of clothes waiting for her on a bench; light pants and a T-shirt, the sort of thing you might wear in the tropics. There was also a bottle of water which she guzzled down in no time.

  As soon as she dressed, Dante returned. His smile was wide, brimming with joy, as
if he were appreciating a sunset for the first time.

  ‘Do you always stare at people like that?’ Sky asked.

  ‘Only those I’m not connected to. When you become a telepath, you realize the thoughts and emotions of others were never truly hidden; the body has a language of its own, more trustworthy than that of the tongue, if you take the time to learn it.’

  There may have been some truth to that, Sky thought. Scanning citizens had taught her that people were so intent on controlling their tongue that they often forgot about what the rest of the body was declaring to the world.

  Dante led her out of the shower block and into an empty corridor. He stopped at a second door and guided her into a stark white room. It had a recliner with a transparent helmet dangling above it. The base of the recliner was a cabinet with circuit boards and a network of wires.

  The door shut behind Sky to the sound of clacking locks.

  An Olon appeared in maya-form beside the machines, a look of disdain on each subsequent face.

  Dante sought to smooth the interaction, ‘Olon Rhodes channels many of us who are not exactly comfortable with outsiders who refuse to connect.’

  ‘And you are?’ Sky asked.

  The Olon answered for Dante, ‘Some are less uncomfortable.’

  Dante smiled. ‘Don’t let Rhodes worry you. If they weren’t so wary, we wouldn’t be so safe.’

  The Olon fiddled with maya data and the old neurotech hardware lit up, ‘And if Dante were not so hospitable, we would be safer.’

  Dante let out a hearty laugh. ‘Nobody knows you like kin,’ he said.

  Ain’t that the truth? Sky thought. She studied the neurotech equipment, ‘Don’t you have something more up-to-date?’

  ‘We don’t have wireless neuroscanners like you do on Earth,’ Dante said. ‘No need for them in a telepath colony. But we could hack you wirelessly, if you like?’