Convergence_ The Time Weavers

by Dean C. Moore

  When he met her eyes she was smiling wickedly at him. “Oh, what, like that’s what you did with me just now? Don’t even try to turn this around on me.”

  ***

  Lying next to Ethan in bed that night, Monica tossed and turned, the same phrase repeating over and over in her head. “You’ve got to trick them into doing the work for you.”

  Finally she shot up from the mattress and paced the floor, biting her fingernails. She decided to do some quick channel surfing in holo mode, with the volume off so as not to disturb Ethan. Nothing on any of the broadcasts really shook any ideas loose. Until… The Flintstones with their pet dinosaur. The show was followed on another channel by Godzilla stomping Tokyo. “Duh! They’re geeks. The stuff they’re into is so predictable it’s embarrassing. All I need to do is send out a challenge. “Bring one of your favorite film characters to life.”

  She went straight from TV holo mode to hacking mode and started writing the code to release over the internet that only geeks would even notice, using her connection to the holo screen so she could move her hands and visualize more easily at the same time. Even with the chip in her head she frequently worked this way. She was an eyes and hands-on kind of gal when it came to learning. She needed this entreaty to feel like it was coming from a fellow geek, so she adjusted the style of her code-writing on the fly. There would be plenty of stupid puns, non-sequiturs and jokes no one but a fellow nerd could possibly laugh at, all wrapped into the coded message for their eyes only. To make sure she reeled in only CTWs and not all the CTW wannabes, she put a time limit on it. “Within the next twenty-four hours.”

  With a smile on her face and a sense of warmth in her heart, she slipped back under the covers and wrapped herself around Ethan.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Montremart looked up at the sky at the sound of helicopter blades thrashing the air. The acoustic disturbance was getting louder. The helicopter stopped just beyond his house and hovered. A woman leaning out the side with a loudspeaker said, “Verge would like to speak with you. Please power down.”

  “Power down? You running any power tools I don’t know about?” asked Rex, his pet T-Rex, standing just a foot or so taller than Montremart, at 6’2”.”

  “She’s referring to my mind. They’re hoping I panic at the sound of ‘Verge’ and reach out to the group mind. That way they can get a lock on the whole lot of us. Well, today they’re going to find we pride ourselves on self-sufficiency.” He panned his head to Rex. “Go stick your head in the microwave, Rex.”

  “Seriously? I thought we’d come a long way since I pooped on your carpet.”

  “It’ll activate a dormant gene I put inside you for days like today. Cause you to grow to full size in a flash.”

  Rex nodded his head, “Cool. I can finally satisfy my cravings to do the monster mash.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think you’ve shown marvelous restraint up until now, buddy.” He patted Rex on the shoulder.

  Rex stomped toward the house, then stopped himself and turned around. “Don’t you mean ‘Go stick my head in the CRISPR-unit?”

  “The CRISPR is what made you, replete with your dormant DNA, but we can’t use it to activate you, I’m afraid.”

  “I guess that makes sense. What do I know? I’m a friggin’ dinosaur.” He went inside the house, left the door open. Montremart could hear the dinger on the microwave after ten seconds.

  He turned around and saw Rex growing through the roof of the house. Fully grown, he was about twice the size of an actual T-Rex. He was currently gobbling up the house so he could finish growing. The nano in his belly allowed him to convert most anything into energy-food that powered his growth hormones.

  Within seconds he was full size and started stomping after the helicopter, not minding any houses he crushed along the way. Oh, and he was breathing fire at the helicopter. Another genetic tweak courtesy of the CRISPR-unit in MontreMart’s kitchen.

  Montremart laughed at the screams coming from the helicopter and the pilot floundering to get out of Rex’s way. His wife crawled out from under the debris of the collapsed house, carrying their infant. “A heads-up next time?” she said, parking herself at his side.

  “You forget I tweaked your genes already so you can survive an atomic blast?” he replied, glaring at his wife and making goo-goo sounds and faces at the infant. If Montremart’s narrow, square chin, full lips, and big eyes all came together in a way to produce a perennially questioning look, his wife’s expression, relaxed or strained, always suggested the answer. Her perpetually serene, glassy blue eyes against her sandy complexion was like a Mediterranean beach he was likely to get calm enough around to find some answers of his own. For a couple of youngsters—he was still in his late teens, and she all of twenty-nine—they had a right to think of themselves as kids still, unless their infant was staring back at them, as now.

  “You forget our baby edits Mozart symphonies in his head?” she said in deference to the goo-goo sounds he was making at him, smoothing out the infant’s scrunched up face with her free hand.

  “Oh, yeah. God, I really gotta stop playing with that CRISPR unit.”

  He returned his attention to the Rex drama. The helicopter was still fighting to dodge the flames coming out his pet dinosaur’s mouth. “I hope they’re enough of a fan of classic movies to get the joke. Then again, it’s not like he looks that much like Godzilla, even with the longer arms I gave him. Damn the Japanese for patenting the genes and threatening to sue my ass for raising the actual Godzilla on Gerber’s baby food. Something to do with protecting their brand image, they said. Bastards.”

  “You’re going to get your ass sued anyway. Look at what you’ve done to the neighborhood.”

  MontreMart had to agree, the place looked like a tornado hit it. Luckily for them, no one had been hurt. The house and garden droids had sheltered the humans inside and around their homes from harm, using their own crush-proof bodies. He shrugged. “They’re free homes supplied by the state for those of us feeding off the UBI tit. The state’ll roll in a bunch of semis, pop the fold out trailers that turn into homes, and that’ll be that.”

  “What about the mess?”

  “The new homes come with house and garden droids. I suppose they’ll be the ones stuck with the cleanup.”

  “In my day you didn’t get all this with Universal Basic Income.”

  Montremart snorted. She didn’t often rub the fact that she was ten years older in his face. “No kidding. To say nothing of the CRISPR-unit. Well, we threw the democrats and republicans out of office. Replaced them with the Transhumanist and Green parties, and the rest is history.”

  “We didn’t just replace them, Monty. We hunted them down like dogs. We went after them and their puppet masters the way the Nazis went after the Jews. We never stopped hunting them. And anyone who deigned to prop up the one percent at the expense of the ninety-nine percent.”

  Montremart shrugged. “You’re such a bleeding heart. Personally, I think they got everything they deserved.”

  “And the guy with the pet dinosaur that flattens a neighborhood? What does he deserve?”

  “Wait till the military sees him. We won’t just be living on UBI anymore. We’ll be actual wage earners.”

  She eyed the carnage in progress, courtesy of Rex, who was managing to hit everything with his flames save for the helicopter. “What good is money in a world such as this?”

  “Trust me, I’ll find some use for it.”

  ***

  “I’m not just hallucinating this, right?” Ethan said, holding fast to his seat as he stared out the helicopter at the T-Rex trying to flambé his ass.

  Monica shook her head slowly. “I should have anticipated this. They’re doing everything they can to avoid summoning the help of the group mind. They figured out our next move before we did.”

  “God, I so want one of those things!” Ethan said, putting his hand up to his face reflexively as the latest torrent of fire brushed the dome
of the helicopter. “What a hit he’ll make with the kids at the annual picnic. My daughter is gonna go nuts!”

  “Well, you have his breath first thing in the morning. Try calling out to him. Maybe he’ll think you’re his dad.”

  “Very funny. Seriously, though, how are we living through this? The helicopter can’t seem to get out of range of the beast.”

  “Sorry,” the pilot shouted. “It’s the air currents above us.”

  “I’m working on it,” Monica said.

  “I’ve seen you topple entire corporations in less time. Or at least climb so far up their ass you reached the sixty-fourth floor!”

  “The dinosaur’s not exactly chip or nano-net upgraded, Ethan.”

  “So hack the minds of the family grim down there looking on as if they’re just walking the dog for his morning stomp down of all creation.”

  “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Don’t take a sarcastic tone with me. I’m getting fricasseed by a talking lizard that can’t stop saying, ‘Take that!’ I swear you have zero compassion.” He rubbed his forearm which was feeling the heat in hopes that the extra blood he could coax to the area would cool it some.

  Monica roared nearly as loud as the rampaging dino. “The Pitmans must have been able to share lessons learned to the group mind about how I got around them last time. Nothing I try is working. Their minds have better security than a Swiss vault,” she said, eyeing the two parents and the infant below.

  “So stop trying to hack their minds. Hack their bodies.”

  She did a double-take in his direction. “That’s actually a half decent idea.”

  “Don’t look at me like I could possibly say something intelligent only because someone hacked my mind!”

  The husband and wife went down. Monica gestured to the pilot to take the copter lower. Swooping close to the ground, they could see that the couple was balled up together in the shape of a perfectly round beach ball. Every bone broken to eliminate the negative space between them. The infant was sitting up a few feet from the parents, clapping their abstract dance performance.

  The pilot was having a hell of a time dodging both the fiery blasts of the beast and its desire to stomp the mosquito flying just below its knees. The pilot had exchanged one peril for two. All in all, he seemed far less interested in Monica’s handiwork than Ethan and Monica.

  “Land this thing,” Monica said.

  “Land! With Godzilla’s special-needs brother out there?” Ethan turned to the pilot. “What’s say we just throw her out the helo and call it a day?”

  “I’m with you,” the pilot said.

  “He’s with me,” Ethan echoed to Monica.

  “Screw it.” Monica jumped out of the copter, landed on her feet using her legs as shock absorbers as if she’d never heard of shin splints or ankle breaks. The copter didn’t wait to watch the show. It retreated to a safer distance from the dinosaur.

  Monica cart-wheeled and forward-rolled and back-flipped round the ball people. Each time getting closer to the couple. “I can play cat and mouse games with your pet dinosaur all day long. But he can’t control his impulse to mash things, can he? And his reflexes aren’t as good as mine? How long before you think he accidentally mashes you?” she said to the husband and wife team. When they seemed unresponsive, she added, “Or your baby?”

  She expected them to send out the distress call to the group mind. If not now, when? But hand it to them, so far they seemed willing to sacrifice themselves. “You want T-Rex to grow up without a mommy and a daddy?” Monica said. From the flinch on the husband’s face, she could tell this approach was working better with him. But other than feeling pained about the whole thing, he wasn’t exactly transmitting an SOS, either.

  Which is why the next move surprised her. Someone initiated a connection to them. The transmitter undid Monica’s handiwork. The couple peeled off of one another and unfolded like pill bugs after the scare was over.

  The husband helped the wife up as he finished ironing out the crick in his neck. Mommy picked up the baby and held it against her breast in one arm. “You win,” he said. “She wants to see you. The one who started all this.”

  “But… you were supposed to use the group mind power to see what the other side was capable of, without showing her hand. Without exposing her. Only if the group mind power was overwhelmed was she to intercede. And then and only then was I to spring the trap on her.”

  The husband made a pained smile. “Sorry to spoil all your fun, but I’m afraid we’re past that now.”

  “Explain yourself.” Monica felt like a child at Christmas expecting a bike under the tree and getting a doll. She was furious.

  “Johnson and Axelman decided to show some initiative in their desire to show up their boss for who’s best qualified to run the company. They took on the group mind without you. Synthia wants you to see the results for yourself.”

  Monica swallowed hard. From the husband’s tone, she wasn’t going to like this.

  ***

  Lazarus stared open-mouthed at the scene where Godzilla just finished stomping a residential neighborhood into toothpicks. Shook his head in disbelief and cut the image feed on the dashboard screen of his boat.

  One of his fellow boaters, the guy from before who couldn’t stop commenting about how clear the water was out here in Menorca, Spain, sidled his boat up to him, the sail down. “I tell you, I’m glad I got out when I did. These transhumans… you think life was tough before?”

  “Tell me about it. I just watched Godzilla stomp a neighborhood south of Chicago into kindling.”

  “Godzilla?”

  “Yeah, the guy whipped him up in his CRISPR unit in the kitchen.”

  The yachtsman with the Irish, freckled, sunburnt skin, who should just have known better than to be out here, stared at him with a vague expression for the longest time. “Hey, you don’t happen to have any more of those drugs on you, do you?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  His son leaned back against him and Simon folded his arms around his eleven-year-old kid. Simon’s long red hair draped over his son’s shoulders, and his generous red beard would give his chin adequate shock protection against his son’s head. He wondered if the original Vikings were ever this red-haired or this white-skinned once upon a time. If not, he and his son were definitely out to improve the germ line. “Ready?” Simon said.

  His eleven-year-old gave him the thumbs up—and down they went—whooping it up all the way. The ice-slide went on for miles and miles. It worked just like a water slide, only you zipped down it way faster. By the time they reached bottom they would have been taken on a roller coaster-like tour of ups and downs, slowing them from reaching critical speeds that would crack the toughest noggins or snap a neck with one wrong move, and then speeding them up again.

  They hit the pool at the bottom just hard enough to have time wave at the polar bear diving for his morning allotment of fish before their natural buoyancy returned them to the surface. Friendly fellow, the polar bear, after some CRISPR-enhancement.

  Simon laughed hard when they finally got a chance to stand up again in the chamber the ice-slide emptied in to. He couldn’t hear himself laughing though as his son had exhausted his ringing ears with all his high-pitched screaming. God willing, his voice would drop in another few years. His wife’s soprano, calling for him to attend to some aspect of married duties he was neglecting, was taxing enough on his ears.

  “Let’s do it again!” his son screamed jumping up and down.

  “That ride went on for twenty minutes! You’re insatiable.” He ran his hand through his kid’s mop of hair. “Your old man is thinking more of the hot springs down here and soaking long enough to work out the kinks in his back.” He looked eagerly in the directions where steam rose from the pools, as opposed to the lagoon they’d landed in, with no such steam rising from it.

  “Just take a CRISPR-pill and be young again. You always have to do things the hard way.”

&n
bsp; His father laughed. “One day you’ll learn that the hard way is the fun way. Now go on, find your sister and get on with repopulating the Earth.”

  “Ah, Dad, we’re eleven and nine accordingly. Little young to be repopulating the earth, assuming that in-bred scenario makes such a thing possible.”

  “You know what I mean. Make some more avatars to fill up the empty rooms down here and to give yourself some more friends to play with.”

  “You expect us to fill up all of Greenland?!”

  Simon sighed. He had hollowed out the ice sheets across the entire country until it was really more of a floating block of Swiss cheese. But they were confined to their underground existence, separated by the other members of the group mind by great distances so they couldn’t be taken out in one fell swoop. And so, what’s more, the price of taking out any one of them individually would be too high to even try. Though try someone would, sooner or later, they were all convinced of it. “Don’t see why not?” his father said. “If you can populate an entire country single-handedly, make the community more enlightened than any on Earth, well, that’s a worthwhile project, don’t you think? Think of the implications for the greater good.”

  His son sighed. “I guess.” He took out his little device, played with the console until he created a bunch of adults to play with. The latest crop. The avatars looked real enough, just that you could see through them. His son called them his Jell-O people. “Come on, let’s go find you some ice caves to call your own and hash out what your idea is of communal living.”

  He led the avatars into the adjoining caverns through one of the connecting tunnels. For some reason, his son preferred playing with adults to children his own age. Maybe it allowed him to get in the extra time with them he felt he should be getting with his own parents. And suddenly, Simon felt guilty again. The whole point of spending time with his son this morning was to assuage his guilt, not to augment it. But they all had to make sacrifices. Without his wife, Norma, to handle the tech toys for their eleven year old and the other devices they needed down here, they couldn’t survive. It was a full-time job. His expertise was more in synthetic biology, so he handled the CRISPR units. Together they could damn well give Adam and Eve a run for their money, but there was no denying it was a lonely existence, for them as much as for the kids.