"Don't even try it, Goli," Gideon calls out. "Giants are not very good at sneaking up on people and I'm already watching you on my armrest monitor.
"Gideon, you're no fun," Goli answers back.
Gideon sets down his coffee to stand and face his visitors. The two men embrace with bear hugs. NIS extends a hand, but Gideon gives him a hug too.
"This is a hugging household," he says.
Gideon reaches down to his pod-chair and touches a few buttons and the men can see two other pod-chairs, hovering in the air, coming to them.
"Touch them and place where you want," Gideon says.
"Looks like the retired husband and father life is treating you well," Goli notes.
With the auto-hovering, the pod-chairs seem weightless as Goli and NIS set them next to Gideon's on either side.
"It is."
"You're too young to retire," NIS says.
Gideon sits back down, and they do the same.
"I resigned," Gideon says.
"Resigning your commission as a leader in the Continuum," NIS says. "Someone at your level. That's unusual for this critical time."
"Time is always critical." Gideon picks up his coffee. "I had an epiphany back on one of my many missions. I was naked, cold, running barefoot through the streets of some Godless tek-city. I said to myself, I have no wife, no kids. Here I am being hunted by shadow drones. If I die, what would I leave behind? It's one thing for Jesus to be a thirty-year-old Jew with no wife and kids, but not me."
"I completely understand," NIS says.
"'Good things come to those who wait is a universal adage," Gideon says. "But so is, 'there is no such thing as tomorrow.'"
NIS smiles. "I hear you."
He looks at Goli. "So how's married life for you?"
"What's the word I'm looking for?" Goli thinks. "Shocking. But I'll say good."
The men laugh.
"I have never, ever heard someone describe their marriage like that."
"I'm married to the leader of the Jewish Wolf-Pack. You should have committed me to a mental institution. That's what best men are supposed to do."
"I wasn't about to get into the middle of that. I told you that once she set her sights on you that your fate was sealed."
"I thought you were being philosophical, not literal."
"Kids?"
"First one on the way," Goli says with a smile.
"So what can this retired spy do for you two?"
"We need you for validation purposes," NIS answers.
"Validation? What does that mean?"
"We want to pick your brain for a bit," Goli says.
"What exactly?" Gideon asks.
"Babylon," NIS answers.
"The Pagans' VR world?"
"The largest in the world."
"How does that help you? And I don't think I've ever played a vid-game in my life."
"Babylon is part of the Grid."
"I see where you're going, but they're separate. Government infrastructure services, the energy grid, surveillance grid, financial grid, registry, data collection. They're all firewalled. Lots of people have come up with the same idea, though I'm not sure about using a VR world to breach into the Grid. Homeland heavily monitors VR worlds."
"True," Goli says.
"And Goli, you're on Homeland's top ten most wanted listed in the cyber-terrorism division. Don't you have to be more careful than that? They've got tek-lords too—cyber bounty hunters."
"I know. Three of the top ten tek-lords in the world are government cyber-trackers."
"And I suppose you two are part of the top ten?"
"That wounds me, Gideon. I thought we were friends."
"Okay, okay, top ten tek-lord member. I don't know what I can tell you. I never worked for the cyber division. You know that. Field agent my entire time in Homeland."
"You know more than you think you know."
"If you say."
Goli takes a collapsible tablet from his sleeve pouch. He extends it and the device turns on automatically. "We want you to look at a personnel directory. Touch the images of anyone you recognize by sight or by name, even if you never personally met them."
"And?"
"We'll do the rest."
"How long is this going to take?"
"An hour or two. Depends how fast your fingers work."
"Goli, I'm supposed to be retired." He takes the tablet from Goli and begins touching faces on the screen. "What is this going to allow you two to do? You can't breach the American Grid through a VR world. It's a virtual cesspool of vid-game addicts, VR world addicts, VR sex game addicts—every kind of degenerate you can imagine is in there, but the firewalls there are the same as if it were the White House mainframe."
"So if someone could breach Babylon, they could breach the White House or any other government system?"
Gideon looks up. "What are you not telling me?"
"Nothing at all." NIS just smiles.
"I know you're not telling me everything. I can tell. Goli is always quiet when he's plotting something. He's been like that since we were kids."
"No plotting. Just two tek-heads doing their necessary external research. Don't overthink things, Gideon," Goli says. "Do you want to be here an hour or two, or three hours, or four?"
"Oh, it's like that." Gideon continues scrolling through the profiles. "Whatever you two are going to do, I don't want anything to tie back to me. I'm out of it and I'm staying out."
"Yes, Family Man Gideon," Goli mocks.
"You're right behind me, Family Man Goli. Goli was trouble enough by himself. Now you have a wingman." Goli and NIS start laughing. "I shudder to think what's going to be happening in the world now."
"There's three of us actually," NIS adds.
"Oh, God help us. Three of you. Just keep all your tek-madness away from me."
The Room, Unknown Location
6:45 a.m., 16 October 2096
In the beginning, analogy was first, then digital, then technology, and now tek. The world is so dependent on technology that those who can create and maintain it are the true gods of society. Those who can hack into it and take possession are part genius, part artist, and all criminal. Governments hunt these 'tek-lords.' They are perpetual threats to Tek World. The best ones, the legendary ones, are all Faithers.
A large cavernous room is filled with rows and rows of half-circle cubicles. Teks are hard at work typing, scrolling, and using stylus pens on their systems. No one has less than three vid-screens on their desk, some have as many as seven. Everyone is wearing dark glasses that allow them to view multiple pop-up virtual displays. No one is talking in the room. There's too much work to do.
A young Asian woman sits in a large spherical lobby wearing a simple cream colored suit (chao fu). She is the only person waiting. She looks up, wondering how many human and mechanical eyes are watching her.
An entrance appears on the wall opposite her and a lanky man runs out.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Ms. Zen."
She stands. "It's quite all right."
He shakes her hand. "I've always wanted to meet you."
"Really? Why is that?"
"You knocked down Father Marcos' world record in Kill the Devil. Well, he's the Catholic's Pope now."
The vid-game Kill the Devil, still quite popular in Faith World, has the player go through different levels of Hell to kill its cartoon devil any way you can with gunfire, knives, body blows, etc., while he tries a variety of ways to maim or kill you in violent or disgusting ways.
"It's not too impressive to beat someone in a vid-game and he set his record over five years ago. He doesn't play anymore, and if he did, he'd probably still be fighting for the top. But life takes precedence over vid-games."
"But you have the records in Armageddon, Tribulation, and End Times."
"You really do follow me."
He leads her through Skeleton Pass, the name for the connecting hallway to the Room. It glows with a light that
has a very strange blue quality. They are no longer human beings, but walking skeletons with translucent skins. Any cybernetic implants, and even any synthetically grown organs or limbs, will register.
"Are you of the Shinto Order or..."
"I'm not religious if that's what you're asking."
"Oh. A Gnostic?"
"I'm not affiliated with the Gnostics. I'm of the Shinto Order."
"As a..."
"As a Pagan, yes. Though that is an American term. Outside of America we say atheist."
"An atheist in a Christian Order. That seems...illogical."
She grins. "God doesn't need me to believe in Her."
The man chuckles.
"I didn't offend you with my pronoun, did I?" she asks.
"Of course not. Pronouns are a human creation. He's not any gender, so no pronoun is technically accurate, but the masculine is tradition. We like tradition."
"The existence of God is not a certainty for me. Isn't truthfulness a Faither principle?"
"It is."
"Then I'm being truthful. I don't believe in Him. I believe in His people. It has been over two thousand years since all of this happened. People can't get an event accurate that happened last week. Something happened, I'm sure of that, but what happened—I'm not positive about that."
"Interesting."
"And you?"
"The African Collective. Of the Armenian Christian Order."
"My reasons for living with the Shogun on Shinto Island and being part of the leadership is very logical. They're going to Heaven and Neo-Japan and the rest of Asia is going to Hell."
"You believe in Heaven and Hell?"
"I do. And here on Earth, a final comeuppance to a people—the good and the bad."
"Interesting. I never heard that reasoning before."
"Because you never met me before."
Finally they walked through a cloud of mist, which renders any bio-, micro- or nano-tek inoperable. No external tek or devices are allowed in or out. They are no longer skeletons as they pass through the final nano-door into the Room. None of the teks look up from their screens as they walk past down an aisle. She is led to a mini-meeting room, where two men wait. Zen enthusiastically shakes Goli's hand as she bows and repeats the same with NIS.
"It is an honor to meet you, Goli-san. It is an honor to meet you, NIS-san." She reaches into her breast jacket pocket. "I wish to give you these as a gift from me and the teks of the Shinto Order who did not have the privilege and honor of meeting you."
"We are just men," Goli says. "Nothing special."
"Honorable men always say that. Kanji, our leader, is the same way. But as a fellow tek-lord, we know you both are much more than that. I have studied your methods in every detail. Goli-san, your attack methods are materializing into systems—as if burrowing in somehow, microscopically or possibly atomically, through unexpected vulnerabilities that no one would readily imagine—and then overwhelm, consume, expand to destroy every part of it. NIS-san, your attack method is flow into a system using its own inherent properties and then use electrical or quasi-electrical means to destroy. There is a list of the top ten tek-lords in the world. Does this mean I am part of this list now?"
"Not yet," Goli answers. "You're in the next tier of ten, but after this op, you will be among the ten."
"That suggests that someone on the list will no longer be there. Not because of my tek-abilities."
"Zen, your tek-abilities are irrelevant. You are here because of your knowledge."
"Knowledge?"
"Vid-games," NIS says.
Zen's face saddens. "I've been invited here because I play vid-games. NIS-san, you play vid-games, but you are much more than that. I am much more too."
Goli says, "We understand that you secretly play in Babylon. The last ten years or so?"
Unknown Transport Site, Trog-land
12 Midnight, 17 October 2096
When the hover jet arrived, the three tek-lords boarded. They sit together as the only passengers.
"What is this Finger of God?" asks Zen.
"It was an op done during the time we still called ourselves the Resistance," Goli answers.
"We're still the Resistance."
"We're the Continuum now. It was directed at T. Wilson himself."
"Was that wise?"
"He would never have known what was done to him, but would have known it was us. The details are not important. It was seven years ago and truthfully we don't care either way. Our enemies don't define the Continuum anymore."
"Yes, we transcend them," Zen adds. "I heard the General Moses speech."
"Yes."
"We're about to engage in some pre-transcendental violence?"
"Yes."
Zen smiles at them from her seat facing them. "Good. One can't stare at rock gardens and meditate all the time."
Babylon, the Net
Time: Unclear
Freespace—a region of the Net that is not run or sponsored by a government; free of any government monitoring or tracing. But Freespace is also infested with cyber-pirates, who attempt to seize control of your link for their own purposes or follow it back to you, where they can do such wonderful things as steal your identity or hack into your systems; dark worms, that eat any data you capture from the Net; and freddies that corrupt any data you download from the Net. These are just the main Net predators; there are dozens of other types. It is very much like maneuvering through a jungle teeming with ferocious wild animals.
But it is also where Babylon reigns, and thousands of other virtual reality worlds exist.
A man walks into the pulsating pink R and R pleasure bar through a hallway shrouded in clouds of multi-colored vapor. A busty woman in a virtually see-through dress and a topless man wearing translucent pants greet him at the entrance.
All throughout the establishment are attractive women and men clustered together in groups at the bar, at individual tables, and in the shadows at the back of the place on the way to the restrooms.
"Male or female?" the man asks.
"Female," Tapeworm answers.
"Homo or hetero?" the woman asks.
"Bi or tri?" the man asks.
"Hetero and let's see where the day takes us."
All the men in the R and R bar disappear and music starts playing. The strobe lights spin as women seem to appear out of nowhere to take to the dance floor—some dancing as couples, others dancing with everyone around them.
Tapeworm sits in one of the booths, as a woman on each side of him hold the top of his head with sucker-tipped fingers. His eyes flutter, alternating with different rainbow colors—his mind in an almost dream-like state as the hallucinogenic stream pulses through his brain.
A bean-pole woman in a very tiny sleeveless, one-piece dress glides across the floor.
"You have clients waiting, but work is forbidden in Babylon."
"My clients have to play too or I don't work for them."
"Very smart. They said they'd meet you outside when you're done." She smiles and glides away.
"Then it will be a long wait."
Tapeworm exits the R and R pleasure bar. It looks like any tek-city but the buildings are alternating colors of pink, orange, lavender, powder blue, and many more. This chromatic flux is in all things in Babylon—the clouds, the cars, people's clothes and hair color are constantly changing. People don't walk; they glide, hovering above the ground, to where they wish to go or simply teleport there.
He sees his clients—two men waiting. One of them is a tall giant of a man, all muscles. Must be a pudgy midget in the real world, he thinks to himself. The other is a tan-skinned man with neon-blue, circular lens glasses—one can almost make out the constant static charges from them. While everyone in Babylon dresses in the boldest and brightest colors and in the most provocative outfits, the giant is dressed in a black office suit with white shirt and black tie; the other man in a blue office suit with white shirt and blue tie.
Who wears o
ffice suits in Babylon? Obviously VR virgins, Tapeworm says to himself.
A male-female couple is walking down the yellow-brick road encircling the pleasure bar, hand-in-hand, when they are both harpooned. Giant spears penetrate their bodies, hooks spread out, and they are yanked up into the air. The flying pirate ship descends from the sky and everyone on the streets scatter for safety—all except him—and the two men waiting for him.
The cyber-pirate ship pulls up their two victims and jets off as walking cannons appear and start firing lasers at them, but too late. The cyber-pirate ship phases out of Babylon.
Tapeworm looks back at NIS and Goli with a smirk. The men teleported right next to him. "It's a terrible thing to have your entire Net-identity stolen like that," he says to them. "Got to be careful in Babylon."
"Yes, you must." Tapeworm sees the men's mouths move in unison, but the voice was female and didn't seem to come from their mouths.
"We're the only three on this city block who didn't lose our heads—or our bodies," he says. "One would have to be some kind of tek-lord not to be afraid of a fortified cyber-pirate ship."
"We would indeed," the big man says.
"But there are only two of you."
"No, there are three of us. Just like there are three of you," glasses man says.
"Your one person is watching my two comrades."
"Yep," glasses man says.
"Who are you? You obviously know me."
"I'm Goli."
"I'm NIS."
"How confrontational. My 'clients' are quite sneaky."
"We've been looking for you."
"Why is that?"
"We need a data download."
"Why tell me?"
"True. You will only deny us, so we'll have to take it instead."
"What's to stop me from exiting this instant?"
"You'd never live that down. A couple of Jew-Christian fugitive tek-lords scaring away the legendary Tapeworm."
"Trying to play my ego against me, but in Babylon I am invincible, and my comrades too."
Pure Conspiracy (The After Eden Series): The Genesis of World War III Page 11