The container shuddered again. Uncle Jesse estimated they were still a few hours from Earth. Fearing that she had been detected, Sky listened for any signs of intrusion. When there was no further movement, Sky continued her interrogation of Dr. Yukawa.
‘How is it that the VOL, with their powerful network security industry, was unable to detect Geppetto’s intrusions?’
‘Some got close, others have their suspicions. Ordinary hacking methods target the brain’s artificial additive; the DNA wetware that allows the host to install programs and connect to the net. These artificial systems are generally well-protected. Geppetto avoids tampering with these systems and instead fools them into thinking that the signals of the invading mind belong to the victim’s own brain. For those without DNA wetware, those who connect naked, it’s much the same; Geppetto mimics the victim’s brain signals to avoid network security.’
Sky had started the discussion in an effort to demystify Geppetto, but it had done little to reduce her unease.
Dr. Yukawa assured her that Geppetto would not change her. This gave Sky little comfort; now that she understood the insidious means by which Geppetto worked, she feared it all the more.
Perhaps sensing he was about to be dismissed, Dr. Yukawa left her with a warning. ‘Remember this,’ he said with a bony finger in the air. ‘You are a neophyte of Geppetto, little more than a child with a gun. Avoid wielders like your late father, or you will be at their mercy.’
*
Sky woke to thunder.
Her stomach reached into her throat—Earth’s gravity had taken hold. Despite the pain, she was relieved to hear a familiar sound; the billowing winds which pummelled the exterior of the container. She was back on a living planet.
As the seconds passed, the weight of the minerals on top of her increased. It sandwiched her inside the swarm. It hurt to breathe. Sky thordered the swarm to give her more space, but it barely budged.
< Ma’am, right now, it’s as comfy as it’ll get. When the container slows down, you’ll really feel the weight. >
When Sky had first entered the container, she had been careful to position herself near a manual hatch—an entry point for cleaners—in case she needed to make a hasty exit. Now, she thordered her swarm to make for the hatch, but the swarm barely budged.
The pressure grew and grew. Her breathing became shallow. Her helmet groaned.
Just a little more, she told herself. Must be close.
She thordered her swarm to bore a hole through the minerals. It shifted this way and that, trying to make gains like a kid drilling into bark with a twig. The sound of the wind outside became louder. The swarm reached the hatch, got hold of it, and twisted.
A roar of wind greeted Sky. With the swarm invisible to the outside world, she pulled herself out of the container. A stream of minerals rushed out with her.
She gasped when she saw how high she was. The Americas spread from horizon to horizon, the Sun just touching its eastern coast.
Her swarm gripped the container as she closed the hatch.
Sky stretched her legs for the first time in hours. Her muscles shook like jelly. Her body felt heavier. A few days in low gravity had made its mark.
Uncle Jesse estimated that she was much too high to risk a jump, even if she were so inclined. Sky decided to ride the container to its destination, Galapagos’ industrial elevator port. She would have to evade port security, but with her invisible swarm she was confident that she would get past them with ease; there was no way that Earth would be expecting her return.
The container passed through cloud. Ice particles tapped against the exterior of her swarm. When she dropped out of the cloud, she fell alongside rain. She wished she could reach out and touch it with her bare hands. She noticed the falling water had a curious effect on the beanstalk below; it bounced clear of the stalk at intervals. It appeared as if the droplets were rebounding off invisible barriers.
A horrible thought occurred to her; the curious effect could be caused by cloaked swarms.
14:2
As the rain continued to pour, Sky’s container neared the section of the beanstalk where the droplets rebounded in an unnatural fashion.
She climbed to the top of her container, the side facing the clouds and farthest from the potential intruders. Then she waited.
Through her swarm, she felt three distinct thuds on the container.
They’re here.
She reached out with Geppetto but it found nothing other than scattered signals that made no sense.
Could they be androids? Or worse; Geppetto-wielders.
Whoever it was, they would find her in seconds.
Sky leapt off the container. She grabbed hold of the beanstalk above with her swarm. She slid for a few seconds on the wet stalk until the swarm was able to slow her descent.
The rain revealed figures crawling over her container below. None of them appeared to follow her up the beanstalk. With her focus on the swarm-wielders, and the roar of winds buffeting her helmet, she did not notice the container that dropped from above.
She felt its vibration when it was almost on top of her. She flung herself aside, falling away. She reached out with her swarm tentacles, hoping to catch something. They caught hold of the top of the offending container, just as it passed. Her swarm hoisted her on board. Once there, Sky crawled to the driest side of the structure, opposite the angle of the rain. She hoped the swarm-wielders had not seen her.
With the wind masking all other sounds, Sky had to rely on her sight. She could not make out any movement below.
The container shuddered again, as if something had bumped into it—or climbed aboard.
How many agents? She could not tell. The rain bounced off her swarm just as it had on her invisible opponents. Had they already spotted her? Were the containers fitted with movement sensors or cameras?
She heard another thud, closer this time.
Sky thordered her swarm to mimic a rectangular protrusion on the container, forcing her body into a painful contortion.
She held her breath, as if that would make any difference.
Moments passed like minutes and then hours. There were no more thuds, just the occasional tap, but she wasn’t sure if it was the intruder, her paranoia, or just the natural movement of the container along the beanstalk.
Using the tiny cameras fitted to the exterior of the swarm, she watched as her container descended into the industrial elevator port. The port was a mesh of steel girders and shipping containers. She saw no sign of any humans.
Sky stayed put, moving only to avoid the giant clamps that shunted the containers into the rack. There was a hum accompanied by an array of lights; material scanners, checking for who knows what. Stowaways, perhaps.
She could not be sure that she was alone. They might be waiting for her to move. Every sound startled her; crackling, breathing—or was it the wind? Or her imagination? She felt a perverse camaraderie with her foes; each of them invisible, wondering when the other would move, or strike first.
Her mother had two days, eight hours, thirty-five minutes left, according to Uncle Jesse.
Sky thordered her swarm to melt to the ground, with her still inside it. She landed with barely a sound.
As the seconds ticked by and she remained unharmed, her confidence grew. She moved toward the sound of crashing waves. Her knees buckled under Earth’s gravity, but her swarm held her.
She made it to a railing. Below, the sea swirled. She climbed over the edge, slid down a pylon into the choppy waters and allowed the sea to take her. She drifted until she felt she was far enough from the elevator port to make a move.
Still encased in the swarm, Sky slithered toward the east coast of Ecuador.
14:3
Sky chanced upon a yacht that was heading for the coast. She held on to it with a swarm tentacle until it neared the shore at Pedernales, a tourist town. She made her own way to a relatively isolated spot north of the town.
Her swarm che
cked the area for potential camera signals but found none.
When she stepped out of the water, Earth’s gravity hit her again. She struggled to take off her helmet and lunesuit. She lay down to rest. The Sun warmed her skin. Here, she breathed as her ancestors had breathed. There was nothing like Earth.
She bathed naked in the Pacific Ocean. The water was calm and tepid. She cupped the water in her outstretched palms, allowing it to fall between her fingers. The webs between those fingers had begun to heal.
Sky washed her clothes. They dried quickly in the warm sun. She buried her lunesuit along with the second suit she had carried in the form of a backpack, the one she intended for her mother.
She checked her swarm. Uncle Jesse said it had seen better days, but at least it was powered up. She stepped back into her invisible swarm bubble.
The local area still had land-roads for wheeled autopods. She hitched a ride on the back of a four-wheeled tourist bus which took the highway to the state capital, Quito. She found another bus bound for Mariscal Sucre airport. By the time she reached the airport, the journey had taken three hours.
Sky was famished—she could not remember the last time she had eaten—so she helped herself to some food in the cargo hull of a hypersonic plane bound for Detroit.
When the plane landed at Detroit Metropolitan airport, she scanned the brains of airport employees and found a likely candidate to assist her; an avionics technician by the name of Manny. It was the end of his shift and he was on his way home to Battle Creek, but after Sky spotted him, he decided on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Detroit. He had an aunt there, and he had been promising for years to visit her. He was exhausted, but he would make the trip for Aunt May.
Sky marveled at Geppetto’s simplicity; it aligned emotions with a decision and the victim’s mind justified it with reason, after the fact. It was like pulling a bull by a nose-ring.
Manny sat inside the Detroit-bound pod and once he had buckled himself in, Sky had Geppetto put him to sleep.
Sky was well aware Detroit was packed with scanners. In addition to Geppetto blocking her neurals, she thordered it to mimic Manny’s neural signals. That way, even if a scanner signal somehow got through, the system would assume it was picking up Manny.
Soon the capital city of Detroit came into view. Its transparent towers shone with oranges and reds in the waning sunlight.
I’m here, Ma.
Sky replayed the plan in her mind. She would find her mother, block her neurals from the scanners using Geppetto, encase her in the swarm to avoid the cameras, then return to Apollo via the industrial beanstalk.
The prospect of seeing her mother again buoyed her spirits as she entered Detroit proper, passing through maya billboards which spruiked their wares: enhanced (expensive) programming to ‘Turn you into an amazing public speaker! Improve your relationship skills! Make you love your job!’ A program for every ailment.
In the midst of all this maya commotion, Sky spotted Jeong-soo Tester, her biological father.
She had initially thought he was just another passenger in just another passing railpod. She could not believe her own eyes. Her shock tripled when he turned to look at her.
Impossible.
Yet it was him, there in flesh and bone. Uncle Jesse confirmed he was no maya. But there was something different; his dark hair was shorter, he appeared rested, or younger.
‘Sky,’ he said. The word came through her railpod’s comms.
You died, she thought.
He must have escaped. But how? No escape pods had jettisoned from the Scarlett. ‘Getting blown to bits has done wonders for your complexion,’ she said, drawing back the swarm from her head. ‘You’re not him, are you?’
‘No and yes,’ he replied. ‘This may be a backup, but in essence I am everything he was; I know everything he knew; I feel everything he felt. From my perspective, I am Jeong-soo Tester.’
‘I thought mind-dubbing was banned on Earth.’
‘It is, excepting in matters of planetary security. A person in my position cannot afford the luxury of death.’
‘What number copy are you? How many times have you—’
‘Enough to tire of dying. But we all make sacrifices, do we not?’
They were in the heart of the city now, minutes away from Detroit General Hospital where her mother lay comatose.
‘How did you find me?’ Sky asked, buying time while she tried to think of a way to escape.
‘Your Brain Operating System has been transmitting updates on your whereabouts.’
A chill ran down Sky’s back.
Uncle Jesse?
Her BOS responded, < Sorry ma’am. Now that it’s out in the open and all, there’s no harm in tellin’ you. It’s part of my programming. Can’t escape your programming, know what I mean? >
Dr. Yukawa was right; she had been a fool to think she could penetrate Earth’s security systems and save her mother.
‘So it was my BOS that ordered Geppetto to infect the colony,’ she said, a question that morphed into a statement.
The copy of Tester gave a nod. ‘I am here to give you one last chance,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re here for. You cannot succeed now. You have to give yourself up.’
‘And what then?’
‘A mem-wipe and a position at the NIA,’ he said.
‘So it never was a choice?’
He swallowed. Neither an affirmation nor a denial.
‘How long have you been in my head?’ she demanded. ‘My whole life?’
She recalled that force that had first appeared in her childhood—that thing—that lay on her chest at night, a shifting self, never stable, always adrift…
‘What am I?’
‘You are Sky, my daughter.’
‘I’m nothing,’ she replied. Had any of Sky been real? Her desires? Her goals? Her loves?
My fears?
‘It was necessary,’ he explained. ‘After ’36, we had to be prepared. Sacrifices had to be made. Most of our agents receive basic programming without side effects, but in the early days we found some of the advanced programming could unbalance a personality, particularly in the young. In your case, the price of your enhanced neurals was a phobia. It had similar qualities to cognitive disorders which we had already eradicated, so we thought we could manage it. We were wrong, and for that I am sorry.’
Sky replayed his words in her mind. ‘You’re saying it was NIA programming that resulted in my phobia? I thought—’
‘Once we relieve you of some of your neural enhancements, it will lift a weight from your mind and you will have a more normal life.’
And there it was. Sky Marion was nothing but a blank canvas for another artist. Even her dear phobias were not her own. Her only consolation was that now everything made sense; her irrational fears, the isolation. It wasn’t her fault. Hers was an artificial autism, a construct, one that could be unwound.
Tester continued, ‘Your disability was the reason you had never been initiated for duty, until recently. After the telepaths hit us with Tellinii, it was all hands on deck. I had no choice.’
Sky felt sick. Because of her phobia, she had chosen death rather than to connect with the telepaths. That was the reason Dante had trusted her and invited her into the colony. Her disability had allowed the NIA to succeed.
‘And Ma?’ she asked. ‘Are you still going to let her—?’
‘It would be corrupt of a high-ranking government official to heal a family member while allowing other citizens to die. We sacrifice our own first, so that we sacrifice only when necessary. That is what separates us from the VOL.’
He said it with such casualness, as if he were talking about a dying flower and not her mother.
‘The future of Earth is at stake, Sky. Without the advantage that Geppetto grants us, the VOL would destroy us. This is more important than any of us, even your mother. She would want you to live.’
‘Live?’ Sky scoffed. ‘Whose life?’
‘Please
, don’t make me do this,’ he said. ‘There has been enough sacrifice.’
When she did not respond, he sunk back into his seat. They traveled like that, side by side, as the hospital loomed.
‘One of us must bend,’ he said, ‘or we both break.’
‘Then break,’ she told him.
The sound of skimming rails occupied the space between them. More railpods slid around them, filled with citizens heading home from work, busy with their mayas, public and private. Some were asleep, like the avionics technician, Manny, who was still slumped in his seat opposite Sky.
Tester’s pod pulled away. ‘Last chance,’ he said.
She would not make this easy for him. Her pod continued toward the hospital. She waited for the inevitable, whatever it might be.
Sky felt something touch her hair. She brushed it away.
< Ma’am, Geppetto says there’s an intrusion. You’re being hacked. >
‘And I’m supposed to believe you now?’
As if to confirm the BOS’ statement, she sensed the familiar tendrils seeking a point of entry into her mind. Unlike previous occasions, these tendrils were thinner, weaker, and their knocking was quiet.
Sleep, it told her, yet she would not sleep.
She could fight it. She still had a chance.
If you resist, I have orders to neutralize you. You have a passenger there. Don’t make me—
Sky lashed out. It came with the rumbling of thunder.
Tester jolted in his seat. Sky had attempted to hack his mind with Geppetto.
You stupid girl. You give me no option.
Sky felt a blow to the abdomen.
Her backstabbing BOS said, < There’s been another breach, ma’am. >
She would not listen. It could not be trusted. None of them could.
I have failed, she thought.
Failed herself. Failed her mother. Failed her community.
I am a burden.
She had hidden from this truth for so long, but now, finally, it was out in the open. She felt herself draining, swirling round and round, sucked down into a bottomless cesspool that was her life. Never better, always worse. She had stomached it for longer than any human could possibly bear. If only they knew of the weight she carried. They would marvel at how she had survived this long, swimming in adrenalin-fueled shit.
Neurotopia Page 27