Neurotopia

by Tony Mohorovich

  When Mym had informed the telepaths that she had found a potential Earth agent, a swarm-wielder, and they realized it was Sky Marion, the colony divided: Enticing Earthagents is bad enough, but the daughter of an NIA director? Too dangerous. Too great a risk. But our infected will die. Perhaps they won’t, perhaps we’ll find someone else, a better candidate. But when? Our infected have less than a week left. This is our best chance to save our kin.

  And so they had argued.

  When Sky had boarded the telepath’s caterpillar train at Shackleton City, Dante convinced the colony to allow her to come on the condition that she would connect. When Sky had refused, the telepaths abandoned her in the desert. But when she returned on foot and had chosen to die rather than connect, Dante became convinced that she could be trusted (with the aid of a mechanical brain scan). Out of a colony of about ten thousand, Dante’s view had been accepted by a margin of 128 votes.

  A metal clanging drew Sky out of her mind and back into the physical present. She was no longer on the edge of the cliff; she stood on the hangar deck. How had she come to be here?

  Not so bad, is it? Dante said.

  Sky realized she did not hear Dante’s words as if he were speaking. There was no sentence as such, rather it was a feeling of meaning. She recognized that moment from her freescanning, when a person could reveal something before a thought had even formed. Telepathy allowed Sky to communicate in pre-thought.

  She was also surprised to discover that she could pick up more physical cues than usual and extract better information from them. Body language had more meaning and less mystery.

  The sizzling of an incoming vessel made her look up; a small transport lowered itself through the vertical tunnel, landing on the hangar deck. A woman stepped out of it, young, in her twenties, wearing a lunesuit and holding something in her arms. Sky tried to access her mind, but there was nothing there; the woman was not on the network. She felt like a virtual image in comparison to the others.

  A cohort of Olon flanked the woman. It was a solemn, almost religious procession. The crowd parted as the woman approached Sky, holding in her arms a newborn babe dressed in a gold lunesuit, eyes wide, staring at the world around it in wonder.

  It was through Dante that Sky learned the nature of the woman and the package she held. The babe carried Geppetto within its brain, a brain flexible and spacious enough to house a program such as Geppetto.

  A memory came to Sky, but not from her own mind. It was of the telepath hacker who had first volunteered to wield Geppetto. She saw the moment he had lost control, when his hands had clawed at his body, tearing shreds of skin from it, until the Olon had pinned him with their swarm.

  You’re different, Dante said. You’ve got the neurals to wield it.

  Sky disconnected from the telepaths. It was a precaution, in the event that Geppetto claimed her and tried to infect the others. Although she had only been linked with Dante’s people for barely half an hour, she felt a sudden loss, as if something had been stripped from her, as if she were once again abandoned in the lunar wasteland.

  Dante laid a hand on her shoulder. One simple gesture, overflowing with emotion. More than that; he remained connected with her. He was alone, cut off from the others, open only to Sky. She told him to leave, in case she was unable to control Geppetto.

  No. I have faith in you.

  She did not protest. She was glad he was there.

  The babe’s mother stepped forward with the child. His name was Ty. ‘He is alone on a network available only to you,’ the mother said.

  Sky sensed the boy. He had a one-way link, allowing her access to a single program inside his mind and nothing else. There she saw Geppetto, like a weight around the child’s neck. The sheer size of the program gave her pause; she had never seen anything like it. The thought of integrating it into her own neurals filled her with dread. How could she sustain its weight?

  Dante was far more confident in her abilities than she was. Buoyed by his faith, Sky instructed Uncle Jesse to attempt the download.

  The familiar sensation of rushing data came to her, but this time with spikes of discomfort, even pain, like skewers prodding her skull.

  She fell to her knees. She tried to hear Dante’s thoughts, but all she could make out were whispers and echoes. She felt Geppetto’s horrible weight inside her, straining at her skin, as if it were trying to burst out of her skull. The program seemed endless, pushing its way inside her brain for an eternity. She told herself to stop fighting it. She would let it take her, even if it cost her life.

  < You have it, ma’am, > Uncle Jesse said, with a hint of excitement. < Geppetto. It’s yours. >

  The pain began to subside. Elation took its place—Dante’s unfiltered elation.

  I was right to trust you, he told her.

  Is that all of it? she asked. It happened so fast.

  When we first downloaded Geppetto, Dante explained, we had to siphon it through a series of encrypted nodes to hide the transmission. It slowed us down. But your link was raw, with nothing in the way.

  The network’s security systems scanned Sky and Dante multiple times, looking for any sign that Geppetto had turned against its new owner. It found nothing.

  Sky wanted so much to reunite with the colony’s minds, but she knew she could not do so until they were certain it was safe, until she had put Geppetto to the test.

  Dante accompanied her to the hospital in a rover, down a road flanked by onlookers, hope plastered across their faces.

  The hospital ward echoed with the footsteps of hundreds of colonists who had arrived before her, hoping to see a miracle with their own eyes.

  The infected lay underneath their white sheets, on their backs, like lumps of lifeless clay, their minds blocked from Sky.

  Here goes everything, Sky thought.

  She initiated Geppetto and the world changed.

  She looked at Dante; his brain was as clear as day, its synapses flashing—the fireworks of consciousness. His mind was sending electrical impulses to her own, and in turn, her mind was sending impulses to his. The other telepaths were on their own network, one that spanned the length of the colony. Each individual mind appeared to Sky as if it were a single neuron, which shared information not only with the surrounding neurons, but also with every other mind-neuron in its network. It was as if the telepath network was a brain in its own right.

  Stranger still, Sky could see the minds of the infected. She should not be able to, for they were not on any network. Yet she could see them. How was Geppetto achieving this?

  She approached the nearest patient, a teenaged boy, and zoomed in. His neurals were polluted with pasty shades that floated like swamp mist. The mist coursed down his neck and into his torso, across his arms, along his spine, and through his legs.

  The virus isn’t just in the brain, it’s embedded in the nervous system, Dante said, astonished. He had never seen anything like it. Chop off one head and another grows in its place.

  Sky prepared herself for the final test. Uncle Jesse, let’s hack this thing.

  < Yes, ma’am. >

  A spray of neurons flowed out of her, or appeared to, and covered the length of the patient’s body. The medical maya graphs became unstable, rising and falling, finding no equilibrium.

  Then the patient’s sickly mist began to clear; first from his legs, followed by the torso, arms, and finally his brain.

  Silence.

  The boy opened his eyes.

  There were gasps from the onlookers. The boy looked around. ‘Why am I disconnected?’

  Laughter erupted from all directions, accompanied by sweet tears of relief.

  Dante grabbed the teen by his shoulders, helping him to sit. The boy’s face sunk when he realized where he was. ‘What happened to the others?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Dante said. It was more than okay, for at that moment other patients rose from their graves, one by one.

  Sky had never experienced such an outpouring of emotion.
The sight of everyone’s tears and laughter moved her so much that she felt as if she were still linked with them.

  Families, mind-kin, reunited with their loved ones. A ward no longer silent. It was everything that they had hoped for. Everything Sky had hoped for; now she had the means to save her own mother.

  The colony opened their minds to her once more and she embraced them like long lost family. Their emotions washed over her, richer now that she had reconnected with them; it was as if she had gone from enjoying the aroma of a favorite fruit to taking the first succulent bite.

  I underestimated you, Olon Rhodes said, placing a hand on Sky’s shoulder.

  You and me, both, Sky replied.

  It was then that a shrill whine pierced Sky’s ears.

  She clawed at her scalp, as if trying to exorcize a demon lodged within it. When she managed to pry her eyes open again, she saw others on the floor, squirming as she was. One of them—the teen she had first healed—reached into Dante’s side, pulled out a gun, put it to his temple and fired.

  His body fell limp and bloodied on the floor.

  No.

  There were screams; from the ward, from outside…

  No.

  Sky tried to stand, but the piercing sound had turned her legs into dead weights. She crawled in the direction of the hospital entrance in a desperate attempt to escape the sound.

  ‘We’re infected,’ Olon Rhodes screamed. ‘She infected us.’

  Sky dragged herself along the floor. She crawled to the foyer where an orderly stabbed himself in the heart, then outside where weapon-fire echoed across the colony.

  The whining in her ears would not abate.

  She spotted a figure inside the hospital, by the window. A single lone figure. It was Dante, eyes gaping in hollowed sockets, mouth trembling… why?

  ​11:6

  Sky gasped and coughed, the air was hot and dry. There was the caustic smell of smoke. Dark plumes rose in the distance and gathered along the colony’s ceiling like storm clouds. The piercing whine continued no matter which way she turned.

  The hospital doors opened and Olon Rhodes staggered out, a hundred faces in agony, their eyes trained on Sky.

  The chorus of deaths rose high and wide across the expanse of the lava tube. The Earth woman had brought them doom. What have you done? they cried. Sky thought she heard her own voice among them.

  Something grabbed her ankles, pulled her to the ground. She fell on her back and knocked her head on the floor. A swarm dragged her by her feet toward the hospital entrance, to the waiting Olon.

  ‘You’ll die with us,’ Rhodes cried, their swarm rising like a cobra. It paused there, on the verge of a strike. The Olon strained, sweat pouring down their faces. The cobra head turned around to face the Olon.

  ‘No, please, I don’t want to—’

  The swarm skewered Rhodes through the chest. Their faces flipped, one after the other; men, women, children, all in states of demise, until at last it rested on a single face… Sky’s own.

  The Olon fell. No more faces, just the contours of the pale featureless head.

  Flames raged in the hospital foyer. Where had the fire come from?

  Dante was still at that window, his forehead against the glass, his nails clawing the transparent surface, smoke circling, eyes pleading.

  Sky yelled over the piercing sound, ‘Uncle Jesse, stop this, please.’

  < Ma’am, I’m tryin’ to heal the infected but Geppetto’s just not respondin’ to my commands. >

  She gripped her skull, trying to think of a way out of this. ‘Geppetto must be responsible. Switch it off.’

  < I’m tryin’, but— >

  ‘Then disconnect me from the network.’

  < Ma’am, Geppetto’s like a dog with a bone. It won’t let me do anythin’. >

  Dante was no longer at the window, but Sky sensed him nonetheless. He lay on the floor of the ward, the air thick with smoke, his breathing rapid, throat and lungs searing, and then there was nothing. If any part of his brain was still functioning, it no longer registered on the network.

  Sky dashed toward the hospital entrance, hoping she could somehow get to Dante. As the doors slid open, a wall of heat and flames hit her so hard she felt her skin burn. She screamed and fell. She crawled away to escape the hellfire.

  ‘No, no, no…’ was all she could say. She was helpless. She was in a runaway railpod with no emergency brake.

  Sky ran. She ran to Shamyn; a father, with his brains now a Rorschach pattern on the wall; his sons, Xen and Dario, had picked up the bloodied weapon. Sky heard the shots. Felt the bullets pierce their skulls. She screamed when they could not.

  She ran to the crèche. She knew the children, Sasha, Ariel, Jin, Miguel. They had joined their teacher in the wading pool.

  The voices—within and without—screamed and wailed. She saw them as they took their lives in the most efficient ways possible, and in other ways she could barely comprehend. Her wrinkled hands put the muzzle to the roof of her mouth. Her blood drained from her sawed wrists. She breathed water into her lungs as if it were air. She electrocuted herself. She set herself on fire. She murdered herself ten thousand times over.

  Chapter 12

  Unearthed

  ​12:1

  Sky staggered through the apocalypse in a trance. She had no destination in mind, but she had to keep moving.

  Parts of the colony were on fire, lit by suicidal infected or the results of explosions by the same. The air tasted of melted prefab and burnt hair.

  She scoured the environment for signs of life. Surely, someone had resisted the hack? Someone must have disconnected? Someone must have failed in their suicide attempt and rendered themselves unconscious?

  ‘Hello,’ she cried again and again. ‘Is anyone there?’

  She received no response. The only survivors she found were non-human; pets and farm animals. There was nobody left to forgive her.

  The infected telepaths who had not had the wherewithal to take their own lives were aided by more able-bodied victims, like the bedridden grandfather, Adam, whose life was extinguished by a shot from a grandchild. Others lit fires that attracted the infected like moths; countless victims walked into flames, like reluctant widows in a mass sati ritual. It was as if Tellinii implanted a perverse altruism into its victims that encouraged them to help other infected fulfil its horrid purpose.

  Days ago, when the NIA hacked the colony, the security systems had quarantined the first of the infected. But this time, with Sky wielding Geppetto, the virus had spread in an instant throughout the telepaths’ interconnected minds.

  Because this was an attack from within their ranks. From me. It came from me.

  This knowledge was like a noose around her neck. Had she lost control of Geppetto? If she had, why was she still alive?

  Sky passed a field scattered with dead, many with headshot wounds. She had seen their last moments; grasping for the gun like famished hyenas, wailing for help, unable to stop their minds and bodies from taking their own lives.

  Elsewhere, charred victims littered the colony like the coals of a campfire.

  She came upon a babe in a gold lunesuit. It was the original Geppetto-carrier, Ty. He floated facedown in a water tank, beside his mother.

  This wasn’t murder; it was genocide.

  Sky collapsed and wept. She wept for them all.

  She coughed in between sobs as the air became scarce. She needed a lunesuit. She found a body of a woman who was about her own size. Her name was Jingfei, eighty-eight, mother of three, grandmother of ten, now all deceased. Jingfei had lived in the European Federation’s state of France and worked as a neuroprogrammer, just like Okiro. When she had discovered the government was using programming to reduce political dissent, she attempted to leave for Apollo. The authorities stopped her and reprogrammed her. But the programming failed. Sometimes it didn’t work, not the way they planned it. Jingfei made her way to Apollo at great risk. She started a new life. Now, than
ks to Sky, she had a hole through her throat.

  I might as well have shot her myself.

  Jingfei lay dead outside her home. Sky entered the dwelling and found the woman’s lunesuit and helmet. She put them on and breathed a dead woman’s air.

  Sky headed back toward the hangar, to the exit. Somehow, she found herself at the hospital again, at the scene of her crime. The building was in flames. Olon Rhodes’ remains smoldered at the entrance.

  An explosion echoed in the distance. Metal shards rained on the hangar floor—the blast must have come from above. Lights poured through the hangar tunnel, then spread out across the colony. Two of them buzzed over Sky and she realized that they were drones.

  One of the drones landed near the remains of Olon Rhodes. It fired something into Rhodes’ skull. There was a pop, and a second later the head exploded. She heard more pop-popping in the distance.

  Someone was deleting the evidence.

  The drone approached Sky. It hovered near her head, the muzzle of its weapon extended. But the damned thing ignored her. Instead, it turned toward the hospital again and entered the inferno.

  A shadow emerged from the hangar tunnel, like a giant swarm, and spread out just as the drones had. The shadow separated into many parts and Sky recognized them as swarm soldiers.

  One of them landed meters away from her, deft as a ballet dancer, despite his bulk.

  ‘Are you okay?’ The sound came through her comms. His visor was dark, his features hidden, but there was no mistaking his voice. It was Tester.

  His visor untinted, revealing his features.

  They stood there, facing each other as the colony burned.

  ‘We should go,’ he said, to the echoes of brains popping throughout the lava tube. He sounded calm. Assured. Not a hint of surprise at the devastation around them.