CONVERGENCE
“The Time Weavers”
(An Age of Abundance Novel)
By
Dean C. Moore
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Dean C. Moore. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
“If the physical structure of the computer will become sufficiently complex, the flow of human consciousness can enter into the computer.”
HH XIV Dalai Lama,Tenzin Gyatso
ONE
Any more fleet of foot and he’d be dancing between raindrops. Alas, but his stalkers were coming on too fast and the rain coming down too heavily. He glanced back over his shoulder to gauge how much further he could go before his world collapsed in on him for good. Another twenty or so heartbeats he’d say.
The droid copters couldn’t have been much bigger than children’s toys. Their pilots and the shooters hanging out the windows about the size of GI Joe dolls. Only, they were robots. But there were plenty of android GI Joe dolls these days. Same for the scaled-down droid fighter jets coming on him so fast they could give him a buzz cut. The jets fired miniature rockets that were just big enough to take out chunks of skyscrapers. The RPGs lobbed from the helicopters were smart-tracking to boot, and didn’t just stop following him because he rounded a bend at the last second.
He seriously considered the possibility he was imagining all this. That, at least, was a consoling thought. If so, the drug would wear off, whatever it was they slipped into his system.
But the secrets locked inside his head were well worth hunting him to the edge of the earth for. And probably just as worth driving him mad over and hoping he take his own life. So there was no way to decide which dark path his life had turned down based on logic alone.
His heart pounded through his chest. His breaths came in pants as if stoking the fire of his soul. The asphalt stabbed at him through his leather heels with each bounding stride. If he managed to stay ahead of his pursuers much longer it wouldn’t matter. His heart would burst from the adrenaline overload or the fatigue. He could smell only his own fear. It was a musky, stinky odor mixed with a scent of olives. Whoever said you couldn’t smell fear was full of shit. The taste in his mouth was of copper, his own blood cells leaching through the capillaries along his tongue and palate from being pushed too hard en route to their destinations in his brain.
The deafening explosion in front of him blew back in his face, nicking him hard with a chunk of smart-crete knocked clear of the building. The building would heal; he wasn’t so sure about his face. His vision was blurring; no doubt the blood pressure was just too high now.
He’d tried to wirelessly hack the onboard electronics of the miniature droid copters and jetfighters both by way of his nanite-infested brain. Failing that, he’d tried to hack the microchipped-brains of the pilots. Another no go. Whoever wrote the code for both was just better than he was. His 500 IQ was no good for things like that. He was just too specialized. Maybe given another few minutes he could fly upstream of his aptitudes and hack the programming of his tormentors anyway. Minutes he didn’t have.
Automotive traffic was heavy. Pedestrians aplenty passed him by on the sidewalk. The city was alive with the pulse of life. Maybe too much so. Enough anyway for no one to care much about what happened to him. Granted, who could say just at a glance if his chasers were righteous in their quest or just some kid out to get him for cheating him on his weekly allowance for keeping his mindnet clear of brainwashing ad-hackers? Either way, his onlookers’ callous indifference should have made him bitter.
But how often had he seen similar dramas play out on the streets and turned a blind eye to them himself? The contacts most people used for their overlays were often to blame, mixing up the viewer’s desire for excitement to counter the ennui of lunchtime breaks taken at outdoor cafés with their desire to be plunged headlong into newsfeeds of police chases. Sometime the contacts would just as mistakenly signal their hosts’ mindchips to embroil them in techno-thrillers to their liking—from a first person point of view.
There were a hundred and one reasons not to react too severely to such images flitting across one’s field of view as the sight of him being hunted to ground.
Right now he’d have settled for any one of those rationales in place of what was actually going on. Each one was better than the truth.
The Pancake Man turned the last corner he knew he’d ever turn down. He was just out of gas, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, spent in ways no human should ever be. Not since his revised rights per the latest Geneva Convention. He hated that moniker they’d given him since childhood. But the truth was his face was awfully round and flat. Truth was he did look like something someone had taken out of the oven too soon, or perhaps too late, considering the rouged, bulging cheeks on an otherwise 2D face with its smashed nose. The long spindly neck, like the handle of a frying pan holding the pancake, didn’t help. He chuckled just thinking about it.
At least he’d go out with one last laugh.
Feeling his consciousness fading, the lights going dark, driven to pass out from sheer elevated blood pressure and exhaustion, he staggered the last few steps. His field of view narrowed to his arm reaching for the door. The plate registered his handprint and let him in.
He slammed the door behind him. He expected to be blasted clear by one of the droid copters or fighters zooming after him. But no such concussion wave erupted at his back.
Panting only slightly less rapidly than a few seconds ago, he accepted the fact that he’d made it all the way back to his apartment. But he was not kidding himself that he was in the clear yet.
Apartment AIs could be hacked. Even ones as good as his.
Already he was envisioning the cover-up that would follow in the wake of his untimely demise. His only hope now was to see that if they got to him they didn’t get to the treasure locked in his mind.
He proceeded to act on that apprehension. But an overriding concern remained. Was he imagining all this? Had the truth of who he was and where his research had been heading become too great for him to tolerate anymore? His Catholic upbringing too disallowing of suicide? And so, this compromise, to be killed by imaginary stalkers? The truth was, he might never know. Only one thing did he know for certain. His end was near.
With any luck, upon his death, someone out there would be smart enough to see through the conspiracy, whether spun by his unconscious mind or by genuine external adversaries, which had swallowed him up. Hell, there was no shortage of 500 IQ types anymore. So what if most of them were preoccupied reinventing the world? Slim odds were still better than none.
If so, they’d have a chance to save themselves and, just possibly, everyone else on the planet. From. What. Was. Coming. Next.
TWO
Ethan stared at the refrigerator panel until he started pulling his hair out, and then he screamed. “How do I get this thing to order milk for me?!”
“Just ask me,” the refrigerator said in a calm tone.
“Seriously?”
“Your favorite brand of 2% will arrive within the hour by quadcopter.”
“Really? Sorry I yelled at you.”
“That’s okay, I’m programmed to ignore the emotional outbursts of unupgraded humans like yourself. It’s the first thing they teach us in refrigerator school.”
>
Ethan bit his lip. “A smart-ass refrigerator. You and I are going to get along fine, our brief history together notwithstanding.”
He opened the refrigerator door and started shuffling stuff around, ignoring the crick in his lower back. And the fresh-from-the-deli smells. “I know I have one last beer in here somewhere.”
“No you don’t.”
“Don’t lie to me.” He kept shuffling. “I suppose you’re one of those teetotaling refrigerators who will call the cops on me if I go out the door after putting away one too many with my car keys.”
“No, honestly I don’t care how many people you run over in a drunken haze. I consider it your civic duty to reduce the number of unupgraded humans out there. Everyone else will be able to drive around your slower-than-molasses reflexes just fine.”
“Well, where’s the last beer then?!”
“You drank it last night. By then you were entirely blitzed. If it makes you feel any better, you couldn’t remember your name either.”
“You’re right. That does make me feel better. I don’t suppose you have any video coverage to back this up?”
“The house computer can field your request. I won’t feed into your trust issues any more than I already have.”
“No, I’ll take your word for it.” He slammed the door shut. “Um, sorry for slamming the door in your face.”
“You mean now that I have to deal with your reflection in my porcelain laminate? Honestly, it’s you who should be sorry. You’re the one who has to look at it. For the record, you look ten years older than yesterday. Kudos for trying to catch up with the times.”
Ethan bit his lips until they nearly bled and shook his head slowly at the same time. “Will you stop it? No one is that funny.”
“You think I’m bad, you should try giving lip to the dishwasher.”
Ethan smiled, despite himself, which didn’t help his case any; it multiplied the number of laugh lines around his eyes. Unless the smart glass of the fridge was of the funhouse distorting variety, his reflection did look thirty-five instead of twenty-five. Then again, he felt forty-five, so what did it matter? He was still a handsome fuck. If his thick curly hair started thinning today, no one would notice until he was ninety. So he figured he had plenty of equity to deplete. The black glass of the fridge door lent a certain swarthiness to his complexion, which he appreciated. He really needed to get some more sun, he thought, scratching his day-old stubble.
The cell phone rang. A Mozart clip with a little too much drama for this hour of the morning. He was glad for the humor-relief in any event. Until he realized he had no idea where he’d left the phone. “Where the hell is my phone?!”
“Why are you asking me?” the fridge balked. “Ask the damn phone.”
“Phone! Where the hell are you?”
Each ring had the phone sounding like it was in a different location in the apartment. Ethan was getting tired of being sent on an Easter egg hunt. Already the place looked tossed worse than if he’d come home to a B&E gone bad. “I swear it’s doing this on purpose.”
“You didn’t take it to your daughter’s Easter Egg party, did you?” the refrigerator said.
“I told the phone I didn’t want any calls from work interrupting my little girl’s special day.”
“What, you thought your daughter might be the only one to get her feelings hurt?”
“Are you shitting me!” He wasn’t just tearing up his own apartment, any more, he was becoming increasingly savage in the process.
The faint sound of vacuuming in the background came to an end. The maidbot wheeled itself out of the bedroom, took one look at the apartment he’d just tossed and said, “I hope you’re not expecting me to clean this up. I observe a strict no make-work policy.” She wheeled herself into the closet and shut the door. “Don’t bother looking for me. I’m on break until you get your head out of your ass, in case you were wondering if this were a game of Hide-And-Seek. Such courtesies are reserved for your daughter.”
Ethan shook his head slowly and groaned. The phone had stopped ringing. It started again, causing his face to flush.
“Just play its little game of Easter Egg hunt with it, you’ll be out of the dog house, and you can get on with your life.”
“I’m being counseled by my refrigerator. Is this what my life’s come to?”
“If it makes you feel any better, it’s not just your ex-wives who can’t stand you, we can’t stand you either.”
“You’re right. That does make me feel better. There was probably something screwy with their programming too.”
He was getting no better at finding the phone. “Fine, I surrender,” he mumbled. “Now where can that phone be?” he said in a mock tone of interest. “Oh, I bet I know, under the bed!” He ran with mock excitement and checked under the bed. When it wasn’t there, his face flushed red and he sneered. “Please tell me I don’t have cameras under the bed, and the cell phone can see my expression,” he whispered.
“Sorry to break it to you this way,” the house computer said. “An ant couldn’t inspect its ass in here without me having at least three different angles on it. I suggest you put on a happy face if you ever plan to see your phone again. That or stop drinking yourself into a stupor.”
“Smiley face it is then.” Ethan put on his mock smiley face. “Oh where or where could my phone be?” Big gestures. “Oh, I know. I bet I absentmindedly stuck it in the oven!” He mumbled, “If I’m wrong, Techa knows, I’m ready to stick my head in the oven anyway, and turn on the gas.”
The doorbell sounded as the phone was still ringing. The ding-dong clashed violently with the Mozart. He muddled over and answered the door. It was Monica Chapman, his partner in crime. Looking like she was selling cell phones off the cover of Cell Phone Magazine. He couldn’t quite think which of his favorite Olivia De Berardinis pin-up posters she reminded him of—as so many of those models also wore shapely cut leather that concealed little. The knee-high spiked boots had him salivating worse than a Bull Mastiff. If the landlord could see him now, she’d charge him the extra maintenance fee for keeping pets. Monica had her phone to her face. She didn’t need it; she was mindchip enhanced. Those people didn’t need cell phones, but she knew he wouldn’t appreciate being pulled into the twenty-first century this early in the morning. “You don’t answer your phone?”
“Mine is sending me on an Easter egg hunt to make up for my leaving it out of the one with my daughter.”
“You might need to adjust its AI sensitivity settings.”
“Gee, you think?”
“On second thought, maybe it’s your sensitivity settings that need adjusting.”
“That’s what we’ve been telling him!” came the chorus of voices from all over the apartment.
Monica swallowed both lips in an attempt to thwart her smile. “Look on the bright side. If it weren’t for them, you’d never survive a real woman.”
The toaster: “Who’s not real? Let him try to get a slice of unburnt toast out of me. Go ahead, let him.” Dishwasher: “Did she accuse us of not being real? I’ll erase his reflection in my shiny plates. See how long he thinks he’s real.” Cell phone: “AI-phobe! I just can’t take it anymore!” The phone’s screams, projected all over the apartment, made it sound like a 1970s streaker running from tormentors. The Refrigerator: “Try and get anything cold out of me!” The washing machine: “I’ll twist his shorts into a knot.”
“Let’s get out of here before you have a riot on your hands.” Monica opened the door for him that she’d just closed to keep the squawking appliances from disturbing the neighbors. “Seriously, Ethan, maybe you should take some sensitivity training. I’ve never seen house appliances this worked up.”
She shut the door behind them. “I know it’s rough when even the toaster is smarter than you, and has more personality to boot. But you have no one to blame but yourself. Don’t take it out on them.”
“Please, could we put an end to the haranguing right here?
Or I swear I’ll take a full-gainer off the balcony.”
“You’re lucky I’m in no mood to call your bluff. The building AI catches that on camera, your rent will double just to cover the insurance.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Since he expected more haranguing, as was her style, he eyed her suspiciously. All that did was make him forget why he was eying her. The platinum blond highlights of her dirty blond hair caught the sun. Her makeup-free face was nonetheless perfect, speaking to both complexion and contouring, even by transhuman standards. Don’t get him going about her figure. He was surprised he could think straight standing this near to her. Considering the deep thinking that went into his profession, her looks alone could have been a career ender.
“We caught a case. I don’t want you mentally exhausted by the time we get there matching wits with me. Save it for the perp. I have the five minute drive over to build up your confidence enough that you believe you have a chance in hell of solving it.”
They’d hit the stairwell and were continuing to talk as they descended it side by side.
“I’m frightened to ask.”
“Career maker or ender, as the case may be.”
“Just so it’s not a world ender. I can’t handle another one of those so soon after the last one.”
“It definitely has that potential.”
“Are you shitting me!” One look at her face told him she wasn’t putting him on and wished she was. “It’s not like we even get any attention from the higher ups for putting out these fires. What’s the point?”
“I’d like to think thwarting Armageddon has its own rewards.”
“Spoken like a woman who’s gotten a raise in the last five years. I’ll never make Sergeant if I can’t get the attention of the higher ups.”
“Maybe if you could get our definition of world-ending crisis more in line with theirs.”
“Bastards. By their definition, it’s anything that adds to the chaos on the streets and the loss of control. By ours, it’s anything that puts us even more under their thumb than we already are.”
Convergence_ The Time Weavers Page 1