Sky could not move. He had done this. He had used her. He had betrayed her. She felt more helpless now than when she had been tied to the bed with Gregos leering over her. Her only consolation was that she now realized she had not lost control of Geppetto. It wasn’t her fault. Not entirely.
‘I connected with the telepaths.’ She watched his reaction. He gave nothing away. ‘I know Earth created the virus. I know Earth has the cure.’
Still nothing.
A swarm agent passed over a nearby rooftop, flitting between buildings, scavenging something or other from the colony’s carcass.
Tester was still. Sky observed him. The folds of his skin, the size of his pupils, the breath steaming, and his stance—so many subtle betrayals.
‘What I saw in Yukawa’s mind, back at my apartment…’ Sky said, ‘… you knew it was real. You knew I would go.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘You even armed me with a swarm.’
Tester’s swarm swayed around him.
She said, ‘Here I was thinking how brave of me to head to Apollo, alone, to find the cure. It wasn’t bravery, was it?’
A distant explosion—the floor shuddered. The smoke was so thick now that the far walls of the colony appeared to draw closer.
‘I murdered thousands of men, women, and children… children. I know their names, their favorite colors, how they died. Why?’ she cried.
‘They infected Earth,’ he said. ‘They infected your mother, just to get their hands on a program. Imagine what they could have done with a fully operational Geppetto? We had no choice.’
‘You mean I had no choice.’
His jaw clenched and released. The corners of his eyes sagged. Lips pursed. His body mimicked emotion—sadness? Regret? No, that was wishful thinking on her part.
A herd of cattle bellowed in the distance, accompanied by the pop-popping. Then they were silent. Even the brains of non-humans were a threat.
‘It’s no coincidence my neurals can handle Geppetto, is it?’
A swarm operative scuttled across the cable car rail, followed by two drones. Elsewhere in the colony, agents and drones began to converge on the hangar exit.
Tester turned away. ‘I promise you, everything will be clear when we return to Earth. Unless you want to be buried here, I suggest you follow me.’ His swarm swept under his feet, then propelled him away. Sky watched as he skittered across rooftops, headed for the exit.
Tester had left something behind. It was a second swarm. It scuttled toward her and came to rest at her feet, open to a connection.
Another explosion; a part of the lava tube ceiling at one end of the colony rained boulders, destroying structures as they fell. More explosions erupted along the ceiling, one after the other, bang-bang-bang as if to a metronome—artificial. They were explosive charges, set off by the agents.
The colony was about to become a lunar mass grave.
12:2
Something sparked within Sky. It was a primordial genetic programming; a need to flee, to save herself. To live. She linked with the swarm at her feet. She skipped past the growing fires and burning bodies and destruction until the sight of it all morphed into streaks of reds and browns and grays.
The smoke chased her up the hangar tunnel, at the end of which was a ragged hole that opened to stars.
When she got to the surface, she caught sight of the caterpillar train sitting idle outside, bordered by suitless bodies. The driver had found the strength to fight the virus, long enough to escape with a few passengers. But Tellinii had caught up with them. Then the agents had destroyed their brains.
A space cruiser waited nearby, the name Scarlett Tours emblazoned on its side. The last of the swarm agents and drones piled into it through the open ramp where NIA Director Tester waited.
Sky trudged to the transport. She walked up the ramp and passed Tester without a word. She found herself in a loading bay. Swarm agents filed past her, bees returning to the hive.
It was all a lie.
Sky had lost her reality. It was as if someone had pointed to a rock and told her that it was a snake. She could almost feel the fresh neurons forming to adjust to this new world, but the old ones still clung, refusing to be replaced, wanting to live. Everything wanted to live.
The ship lifted and moved away from the spherical monument that had been the colony entrance, then it circled the area, picking up swarm agents around the perimeter.
‘This won’t go unnoticed,’ she said.
Tester was too close for her liking. ‘There aren’t any satellites trained on this region, and we’ll be long gone before anyone finds out.’
With the loading bay ramp still lowered, Sky watched as the lava tube collapsed in on itself, burying the dead, without a sound. The surface shuddered.
All that remained was the caterpillar. It sat near the edge of a newly formed canyon that stretched as far as Sky could see. The dust mushroomed around the ship.
‘Earth needs Geppetto to survive,’ Tester explained. It sounded like an excuse. ‘The VOL colonies are more dangerous than anyone realizes. They’re an economic powerhouse, built on the backs of an underclass—citizens who have been fooled into thinking they are free. On the shoulders of these slaves, the VOL has gone from isolated mining outposts trading minerals with Earth, to a self-sufficient civilization that has perfected the art of profiteering. They don’t need us anymore. A just and balanced society such as ours could not compete with the unbridled markets of the VOL; their oligarchs would have bought up our politicians and dominated our industries if it were not for Geppetto. With it, we can temper their more extreme elements, negotiate favorable trade, and keep up with their technological advances. Without it, they would devour us. All of this was necessary. We had no choice. They gave us no choice.’
There it was; the string of logic that had led to the murder of ten thousand people.
‘What will happen to Ma?’
Tester was silent. As the seconds passed, Sky’s body began to shake.
Finally he spoke, ‘The VOL cannot learn we have the cure. At present, all they have are conspiracy theories. But if we used the cure on our own people, we would be contractually obliged to share it with the VOL, and therefore lose our advantage. If we refused to share the cure, we would risk sanctions or worse.’
Olon Rhodes had been right. Earth would rather sacrifice its own citizens than give up the cure.
‘What happens to Ma?’ Sky repeated.
When he did not answer, Sky answered for him, ‘You’d let her die?’
‘When we return home, the NIA will offer you a position as an agent. If you accept, you will keep your Geppetto program. You will learn what I know, and when you do, when you see what’s really at stake, you will see the value in what you have accomplished.’
Sky was exhausted. She sat on the floor of the loading bay and stared out at the dead colony.
‘If you choose not to join us, we will wipe your memories from the moment of the Tellinii hack on Earth and you can return to your old life.’
‘Without Ma.’
‘It is your choice.’
‘Is it? How do I know I’m the one doing the choosing? How do I know it’s not just some programming, the same sort of programming that led me here in the first place?’
‘Sky, we are all programmed. First through our genes and then our environment. We are shaped physically and mentally by factors outside our control. We make decisions based on personal qualities we think are our own, but in reality are dealt to us like a hand in a game of cards. We are born into a world without choice. None of us is free. None of us can escape programming of one kind or another. All that matters, then, is the quality of that programming.’
It was NIA Director Tester who had spoken, spouting the official dogma. He must have justified his crimes like this a thousand times.
‘We are all that’s left of our family,’ Tester said.
He had the gall to include himself. Sky shut her eyes, her rage brimming.
<
br /> She knew what the NIA had in store for her. There was no choice here. They would reprogram her and turn her into her father. She would stand by her comatose mother and authorize the euthanasia, and she would forget all about the woman who had raised her and stood by her side.
Sky had no control over the great machinations of power that warred in the shadows. She was a pawn, privy only to the move she had just completed, a mere glint in the eye of those fervent players who manoeuvred for dominance.
None of those power plays mattered to her. Earth would let her mother die, like the others. The only thing that could save her was Geppetto, a program that roamed—in some form—inside her. If Sky joined the NIA, if she returned to Earth with Geppetto, she might find a way to cure her mother…
But how could she hope to tame Geppetto? It was a killer. A killer within her. A weapon of mass destruction. It may not be a danger to herself, but it was a danger to everyone else. How could she trust it after what it had done to Dante’s people—her people? It would be better for her to accept a mem-wipe than to be Geppetto’s servant.
And what if these thoughts were just another set of programming? What if her decision had already been made for her? How could she hope to break free from her own brain?
Sky called out over the hum of the engines and the whine of the closing ramp, ‘There is one way to escape your programming. One way to make a real choice.’
A portion of swarm, little more than a thumbnail’s size, separated from the parent and crawled up Sky’s body. It landed in her open palm, resting there like an old coin. Sky twirled it between her fingertips; one side gray, the other blue.
Tester watched as she flicked it into the air. It spun—blue-gray-blue-gray-blue-gray—propelled by the accidental and uncontrollable forces of chance.
It fell and Sky caught it. She glanced at the result. Tester leaned in, but before he could see the coin, she formed a fist to hide it from sight.
The swarm coin lost it shape, oozed out of her fist, and slithered back down her body to rejoin the horde.
‘So what will it be?’ Tester asked, ‘NIA or a mem-wipe?’
The ship’s engines roared.
‘Neither,’ Sky said, and catapulted herself over the closing ramp and out into the lunar environment.
12:3
The ship’s thrusters warmed Sky’s back when she landed on the lunar surface, in the middle of a storm of regolith whipped up by the force of the engines.
*
In the loading bay, Tester watched through hazy footage as Sky scuttled out of sight.
What is she thinking? he wondered. She could not outrun them.
‘Alive,’ he ordered. The bay doors opened again and the swarm agents poured out.
Seconds later, he saw the head carriage of the caterpillar shoot out of the darkness, as if from nowhere, sending agents flying in all directions…
*
Sky sat strapped to the driver’s seat of the caterpillar, surrounded by footage of the exterior world (what the cameras could make out through the regolith haze).
Despite catching the NIA off-guard, Sky realized her attempt to escape would be, in the end, nothing more than a gesture of defiance. There was no way she could elude Tester’s ship; she was too far from any outpost. Was she just running again? A voice inside her screamed for the caterpillar to stop; it would be so much easier.
But she ignored that voice. She did not trust it, not anymore. She would not allow the NIA to take her… and yet she could not return to her old life.
What option was left? Death?
Maybe I’m infected, after all.
She received a call from an unknown source. She told Uncle Jesse to block it. She had nothing to say to Tester.
Something emerged from the darkness behind her, visible only through the cameras’ night-vision. At first, it appeared as strange patterns in the dust cloud, as if there was a wind blowing in Sky’s direction and upsetting the otherwise uniform rise and fall of the regolith. The patterns separated into three distinct formations. As they gained on Sky’s caterpillar, they came into focus; each had a central mass with two or more limbs feeding off it, striking the ground at a frantic pace, sending more regolith flying in the process. They were like invisible insects scurrying toward her.
She magnified the footage of the three approaching forms, the nearest being less than twenty meters away. When their extremities struck the ground, the sections closest to the surface shuddered and revealed the solid form of a swarm.
Swarm agents. They must be using cloaking technology. The collisions with the surface are disrupting the illusion.
Sky’s first swarm, the one Tester had disguised as luggage, had not had any cloaking ability.
< But this latest one does, Ma’am. > Uncle Jesse said, highlighting her new swarm, < It’s got a few extra features. >
Sky looked down at the swarm swirling around her feet. It began to disappear until it became invisible, at which point a private maya took its place, one that showed the invisible swarm’s outline. In this way, Sky could see the swarm while others could not.
Her caterpillar sped through the landscape, rocking so hard Sky was worried it would tip. The cloaked agents were fast. One of them caught up with the caterpillar, latched on, and appeared to help the others on board. Sky heard the thuds of their boots, and their swarms clasping onto the roof.
Sky lurched the vehicle from one side to the other, like an alligator trying to shake off a passenger with a death wish. One agent must have lost their footing because Sky heard a scrape and then saw a swarm rolling in the dust behind her, flickering in and out of visibility.
She heard thuds on either side of the caterpillar. They were getting closer, moving toward the vehicle’s nose, toward the emergency hatch above her head.
Sky swung the caterpillar as far as it would go without tipping.
The thuds stopped for a few seconds, then started again. They were still up there. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw the circular hatch above her head begin to turn.
On the roof of the caterpillar, the emergency hatch rotated from the force of an invisible hand. Without warning, it shot open, whirling on its hinges and smacking against the roof.
Sky erupted from the cockpit with her own swarm cloaked.
She struck the space around her in a wild attempt to dislodge her opponents. She felt a collision and her swarm’s cloak faltered for a moment, as did her opponent’s, revealing their dark tangled masses. The strike was true, for both her opponent and his swarm bounced off the caterpillar and hit the dust.
The remaining agent stood only meters from Sky, barely a silhouette in the night. She was surprised to find that she could make out segments of the enemy swarm, blinking in and out of existence. Her own swarm appeared to be suffering from the same cloaking defect.
< It’s no defect, ma’am. The swarms are puttin’ all their resources into battle mode; there’s not much juice left for proper cloakin’. >
For some reason, Sky could also make out the maya outline of her opponent’s swarm—it was clamped to the sides of the caterpillar, like Sky’s own.
Sky had never swarm-duelled a real opponent, especially one well-trained in the art and using a cloak. She hesitated, but he did not—he slapped his swarm at Sky’s head. Her swarm deflected the blow, mostly of its own accord. As the two weapons connected, their real forms rippled into view for a second, then disappeared once again.
Sky directed the caterpillar to launch over a hill. The agent became airborne for a moment, but his swarm held him firm. She slapped her swarm against his side. He blocked, but the hit knocked him over the edge.
He leapt up again a second later, striking with a readied swarm spike. Sky dodged, her torso contorting to evade the attack.
The more she fought, the more she settled into a rhythm. Something had clicked inside her, as if she had done this before. Perhaps all those years of playing combat sims had prepared her?
Sky and t
he agent shifted and barrelled and leap-frogged over each other, their swarms pushing and pulling and sliding, open and closed, looking for a weakness, a gap to exploit.
One of his strikes came close to her chest. She blocked it, but the agent tripped her with the other end of his swarm and struck into her belly. Her swarm caught the blow, but the agent had the advantage; his swarm gripped the sides of the caterpillar and pressed down on her.
He uncloaked, and Sky could make out his features which were illuminated by the visor’s internal lights; he was in his thirties, a clean-shaven face with pinprick eyes fixed in an icy stare. She saw his lips move, as if he were speaking, but with her comms blocked she could hear nothing.
You’re unwell, he said, you just need a little programming and everything will be okay.
Uncle Jesse confirmed that her comms were offline.
Your father will be here soon, the agent said.
How could she understand him? Was he inside her mind, hacking her?
An image of the agent’s brain appeared; an explosion of consciousness, newborn neural universes birthed at every moment. It was as if she were scanning his mind. How could that be?
You just need programming, he said.
Data flooded into Sky’s awareness… his name was Afah. It was the Tongan word for hurricane. His father had named him that after his first few days of life.
Sky sensed Afah’s thoughts. They were close, open and malleable. She felt she could reach out and touch them, just like the little girl’s mechanical doll that Sky had manipulated back at the hospital.
Afah froze, gritting his teeth, then—just as Sky imagined it—he wanted to launch himself off the caterpillar. And so he did.
Sky’s opponent disappeared with a scream into the lunar night.
*
On the bridge of the Scarlett Tours, Director Tester watched as an experienced NIA agent threw himself from a caterpillar train.
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