by Paul Anlee
The Reality Incursion
Deplosion: Book 2
Paul Anlee
Darian Publishing House
Chatham, Ontario, Canada
The Reality Incursion
Deplosion: Book Two
One in a thousand will be saved. Are you on the list?
Dr. Darian Leigh is missing, presumed dead, and the “Eater” microverse he created is about to destroy Earth. His protégés, Kathy Liang and Greg Mahajani, race to solve the mysterious anomaly. If they can’t figure it out, they’ll need to convince world leaders to colonize the asteroid belt and save as many people as they can. Will Alum, ruthless leader of the powerful YTG church, use his resources to help, or will he exploit the growing chaos to launch his reign as the Living God? There isn’t much time and they can’t save everyone.
Canadian author Paul Anlee writes provocative, epic sci-fi in the style of Asimov, Heinlein, Asher, and Reynolds, stories that challenge our assumptions and stretch our imagination. Literary, fact-based, and fast-paced, the Deplosion series explores themes in philosophy, politics, religion, economics, AI, VR, nanotech, synbio, quantum reality, and beyond.
For Kenna, Jack, and Chris
A universe of possibilities
“People demand Freedom of Speech as compensation for the Freedom of Thought, which they seldom use.”
- Kierkegaard
1
The 4:30 a.m. lattice call jarred the couple out of their dreams.
For crying out loud, it’s not even morning yet. And, it’s Sunday—Kathy groaned.
It was Darian—no surprise—calling through their private lattice network. He’d never been much for preamble or propriety.
Hi, Darian, what’s up? What time is it? Kathy dragged herself toward consciousness and rubbed her sleep-crusted eyes.
It works—was all he sent; his transmitted voice was quiet and matter-of-fact.
It works? What works?—her brain pushed through the mental fog to process what her boss was saying. She sat up and stretched her neck. Then it hit her. IT works!
“Greg, wake up!” she squealed. “Darian got it working,” She shook her unconscious partner’s shoulder. “It works!”
Greg was fully awake in a flash.
I’m sorry about calling so early—Darian said. No—he laughed, almost giddy. That’s not true, I’m not sorry at all. I was going to tell you in person later this morning but I couldn’t wait. Look at this!
Without waiting for a response, he sent the two of them a synopsis of everything he’d been doing, the internal antenna array he’d grown in his cranium, and the test he’d run, the one that generated a sputtering microverse in the middle of his dining room only a few minutes before.
I’m on my way to the lab right now. I need to use the vacuum chamber and the laser interferometer–he sent. Can you meet me there?
That’s fantastic! Yes, of course. We’re on our way. It’ll take us about forty minutes but we’ll get there as fast as we can–Kathy replied. She waggled a free hand at Greg, the universal sign for get up and get moving.
Can you wait until we get there before you run it again?—she asked.
It’ll be torture but, sure. For you guys, anything. I’ll give you 45 minutes. Only then did he remember the fourth member of their team. Hey, can you pick up Larry along the way? I’m sure he’ll want to be there too.
No problem—answered Greg. I’ll give him a call and we’ll cruise by his place. I don’t think his bus runs this early, and he’ll kill us if we do this without him.
In the pause, all three took a collective deep breath.
Kathy shook her head. Wow, right this second, I feel like we own the entire galaxy. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I think I do—Darian replied. I’ll be at the lab in a few minutes. Get here as soon as you can—he said, and disconnected.
“You know he’s not going to wait, right?” she said to Greg. “He’s going to fire it up as soon as he gets there.” She couldn’t blame him. If she were in his shoes, she wouldn’t be able to resist playing with the most important physics discovery of the century, either. “Wow! Can you believe it? It actually worked,” she said, and shuffled around the bed and into the bathroom.
Greg stumbled to the closet and pulled on a pair of jeans. “It’s about time something went right,” he said. He grabbed a fresh t-shirt and pulled it over his head. He poked his head through the neck hole, and the significance of what they were doing sank in.
The Reality Assertion Field, the RAF, had finally been proven. Their theories on the origin of the universe, on why the laws of nature were the way they were, and how they could be changed, it was all true. Science had opened the door to the powers of the gods.
“This is awesome. Can you imagine what that must have been like? He produced a micro-scale universe in the middle of his dining room. A little piece of space with its own distinct physical laws, right in his apartment. Can you believe it? A freaking microverse!”
Feeling more energized than he had in weeks, Greg reviewed the lattice conversation. His glee turned into a pensive frown.
“Uh, hey, Kath? I didn’t know Darian was growing an internal RAF antenna array in his own head. Did you?”
She reviewed the clip he sent her. “No. No clue at all. But I’m not surprised. I mean, it makes sense he’d do something like that as his next step. Think about it. Our original RAF generator should have worked. Everything checked out—hardware, software, theory—everything, right down to the last detail and yet it still didn’t work.”
She passed her toothbrush under the running water. “So what does a good scientist do? He starts all over, clean slate, and goes through it all again, item by item, step by step, with a completely independent approach.” She squeezed a pearl of toothpaste onto her electric brush and laughed. “That’s so Darian. Instead of building another device, he grows the friggin’ hardware right in his own brain.”
“Are you just about ready? We’d better get moving,” Greg said, pulling on his running shoes. “On the off chance that he is waiting. And we still have to swing by and pick up Larry. I’ll call him right now.”
Larry didn’t answer the lattice calls or his door when they banged on it some twenty minutes later.
“Larry!” Kathy huffed in exasperation, and tapped the door with her foot.
Typical—she thought, but kept the comment to herself.
They rapped a few more times and tried the window before giving up and heading to the lab without him.
Greg pulled the car into the nearly empty parking lot near the Physics building, and headed for a choice space along the perimeter.
“So, are we ready to be famous, hon? This research is going to rock the world. It really is.” Greg guided the car toward the parking spot.
The grin taking up half his face was replaced by a surprised yelp of pain as an incomprehensible torrent of Darian’s knowledge and memories —everything that made Darian who he was—slammed past the couple’s internal neural-lattice security and gushed unfiltered into their minds like a tsunami.
The influx of data from Darian rolled over their minds, overwhelming and clashing with their own thoughts and senses. As they struggled against the excruciating intrusion, the car rolled to a stop against a pliant sapling in a shallow drainage ditch.
In a final, desperate move to stem the flow, Kathy disconnected her communications port. Physically incapacitated but at least back in control of her mind, she created a rudimentary cutoff routine and piggybacked it onto the data surge still streaming into Greg’s lattice.
She reached feebly for his hand. “Greg,” she gasped, and gave in to unconsciousness.
When they came to, morning light was peeking through the misty
mountain air.
“What…was that?” Greg cradled his head in his hands.
Kathy groaned. “I think something happened to Darian. Something bad,”
“He blasted through our anti-virus protection like it was nothing,” she marveled, and rubbed the back of her aching neck.
“How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know; we’ll look into that later. Are you okay? You got a little more of it than I did.”
Greg stretched his neck from side to side, blinked a few times, and tried to focus. “Yeah, I think so. My head hurts, and I ache in muscles I didn’t know I had.”
“Me too, but I don’t think there’s any permanent damage.” Kathy opened the car door.
“What are you doing? I think we should stay put for a few minutes.”
“I can’t. I think Darian might be dead, or in serious trouble. I don’t know why, but that’s what it felt like. Underneath his data, there was a lot of fear. Didn’t you feel it? The fear?”
She stepped out of the vehicle, and winced as she stood up.
“Yeah,” Greg admitted, “I guess.” He gripped the doorframe and eased himself upright. “Oh, man! I feel like I ran a marathon,” he moaned.
“Worse,” Kathy replied. “A marathon, carrying a backpack full of rocks.” She started to laugh and stopped; it hurt too much.
They left the car sitting halfway in the ditch and hurried to the lab, expecting to find Darian dead or in desperate condition.
Their footsteps echoed down the Physics wing hallway.
That’s weird; there should be light coming from the observation window—Kathy thought. She braced herself for the worst, opened the door, and turned on the lights.
Where’s Darian? He should’ve arrived long before us.
They walked around the workspace and checked the shared office. Did he even make it to the lab? Where was he when he sent his message?
Greg dialed Darian’s cell phone. Six rings. Seven rings. Eight rings. No answer.
Don’t jump to conclusions—Greg reminded himself. Darian rarely turned on his phone. No need, when you carried a built-in connection to the internet in your head. Well, I’m not going to call him through the lattice, that’s for sure, not after what happened in the parking lot. He wasn’t going to risk opening himself up to the flood of Darian’s memories again.
Dazed and unsettled, they conducted a more thorough inspection of the room. Kathy’s eyes sought the hardware project she’d spent the last six months designing and troubleshooting. In place of the Reality Assertion Field generator, the harsh overhead lights illuminated an empty frame and rectangular patch of dust.
What the….? “Greg? The RAF’s gone!”
Darian would not have taken the RAF out of the lab; he was adamant about it staying in the sturdy anti-theft frame, and well-secured to the counter at all times. The empty frame was intact. The RAF generator, however, was nowhere in sight.
The server! Greg tried to log on with his lattice to make sure their repository of theoretical work was intact, and hit a security wall.
Kathy must’ve added that to the comm-activation protocol when she buffered us from Darian’s thought storm. A pop-up message reminded him of the danger of opening his lattice to external communications. Yep, definitely Kathy’s work.
He walked into the office area and clumsily tapped in his user ID and password using an external keyboard. Like any other mortal.
The screen refreshed, and a conspicuously empty blue screen replaced the log-in box.
Where did all my folders go?
He opened the systems directory. Nothing. Hundreds of folders containing their theories, schematics, and half-written papers awaiting data were all gone.
“Kath? Why is the directory empty? You didn’t do this, did you?”
“What? No, of course not. What do you mean?” she answered. She walked up behind him and peered over his shoulder. Sure enough, the drive had been wiped clean.
“This doesn’t make any sense. Darian called to say he was on his way to the lab. Even if he’d taken the device home last night, he wouldn’t have taken any of this with him. There’s no reason to remove it.”
“This is getting weirder by the minute,” Greg said. He tried Larry’s number again. C’mon Larry! Where are you? Still no answer. Why isn’t he picking up? Was Larry missing, too, or just incommunicado, per usual?
Kathy’s mind continued to reel from the remnants of data, memories, and thoughts that had assaulted them earlier. She couldn’t make much sense of the flashing images, but she was sure it had been an emergency broadcast from Darian’s internal neural lattice to their own, a desperate effort by a dying scientist to secure his legacy the only way he could. She had no proof, nothing more than a feeling…and an empty lab.
“I’m pretty sure this was no random theft. There’s no sign of a break in, and there’s nothing else missing. Besides, who would know to take that one device and our data?” she reasoned. “It’s useless to anyone outside the lab. We need to call the police.”
“And tell them what?”
“That Darian’s missing, the RAF generator is gone, and we don’t know where Larry is.”
“I don’t think we can yet, Kath. They haven’t been missing twenty-four hours.
“But him, Larry, and the RAF device gone at the same time? That can’t be a coincidence, Greg.”
“We can’t prove that.”
“All we have to do is report it. It’s up to the police to prove it.”
“Sure, I can just hear the cops now: ‘So they took your laptop. Big deal. Take a number.’ Do you really think they’d take us seriously? As far as they’re concerned, our lab supervisor might be running a little late. They’ve got bigger things to worry about.
“For all we know, Darian took the machine home and worked on it over the weekend. Or maybe they got here ahead of us and moved it to a bigger space, or they needed some specialized equipment in another lab.”
Kathy stared at him. “I can’t believe you’re saying that. You felt it. You know what hit us! Darian is dead, or at least badly hurt. That was sheer desperation he sent out. You felt it as well as I did.”
Greg sighed. “Maybe. Maybe not. There’s no proof. How do we know it wasn’t a simple program glitch? There’s no sign of a struggle here. Nobody besides us knows Darian got the device working. I know what you think hit us in that transmission and, I agree, it felt serious. The truth is, we don’t know anything yet. We’re only guessing. What if he and Larry are on their way over right now with the RAF laptop, hot coffees, and a box of doughnuts to celebrate?
“And don’t forget, our own neuro lattices are developing and adjusting. Maybe what broadsided us was just the dendy’s next level of growth. You know, like maybe they’re linking us all together or something. What if Darian received our brain dumps in his lattice at the same time, and that’s why he’s not answering? Have you thought about that?
“You acted right away and you were able to shut it down for us, but what if Darian didn’t? What if it caught him off guard, too, and he’s lying unconscious somewhere.”
Kathy stood mute, gaping at him, and tried to come up with a response.
“I’m not trying to be difficult. All I’m saying is, we really don’t know anything yet,” Greg walked to the back office window looking into the lab. He stared at the empty lab bench. “If we report this now, we’ll only embarrass Darian and the lab. The university is already giving him a rough time. Some of those profs are just waiting for an excuse to get him fired. You’ve heard the rumors going around. We don’t need to add any more negative attention.”
“We can prove the device is missing.”
“We can claim a piece of lab equipment—which, incidentally, was publicly demonstrated to be non-functional—has gone missing. By all outward appearances, a laptop, and that’s about all. Oh, and by the way, officers, we all have a key to the anti-theft frame.”
He held up his key ring. “Darian
has one, I have one, you have one, and so does Larry. For all we know, maybe one or both of them have the generator with them. The police might think one of us took it ourselves and hid it for an insurance claim; people do that all the time.”
Kathy returned to the lab area and inspected the empty frame where the RAF device should have sat. “Okay, so even with witnesses who know what was here in the lab, we have no real proof it was stolen?”
Greg joined her by the bench. “No, and we don’t even have any proof that Darian and Larry are missing, hurt, or dead. Just Darian’s private lattice conversation that no one else can access, inviting us to meet him here. And Larry’s usual behavior—ducking out for hours or days at a time without telling anybody.”
“We’re going to look hysterical, aren’t we?”
“If we call now, hysterical is the best we could hope for. More likely, crazy. And if anyone did believe us, we’d be looking like the prime suspects.”
“Okay, so what do you think we should we do?”
“I’m not sure. What have we got to work with? Nothing concrete. It felt like Darian blasted out all this data, the essence of his self, in a real panic. If he doesn’t show up soon, we can report his disappearance to the police. But until we have a better idea of what happened, until we actually know he’s missing, I don’t think there’s much we can do. Let’s give it a few more hours and see what we can find out. If we don’t hear from him and if he doesn’t show up for work…”
“You mean, when he doesn’t show up for work. C’mon, Greg. You know what we experienced. That was a dying gasp.”
“I refuse to jump to conclusions. Like I said, the police won’t do anything until he’s been missing twenty-four hours. If he hasn’t checked in by tomorrow morning, we’ll go talk to Dr. Wong and he can make the call.
“In the meantime, let’s leave a note here in case one of them does show up, and we’ll walk the route back to Darian’s apartment. Maybe he fell, or got mugged, or something like that. If we find any sign he disappeared under duress—like a shoe or his backpack, anything like that—we’ll call the police right away.”