by Sean Platt
“Your vital signs suggest that you are nervous. If you would like, I can release endorphins to calm you.”
“Don’t you do shit! Open this goddamned door right now!” Again, Dominic slammed his fist against the molded Plasteel.
Around Dominic, something under the wall’s skin began to whirr and change. True to the experience, light shifted, and everything around Dominic turned the ultra-brilliant white of a proper Respero chamber.
“Override authentication 417 dash beta! Open a channel to Captain Sloan of Quark PD! This is Captain Long speaking, do you fucking hear me?”
The air around Dominic shimmered with the distinct feel of a waiting electric charge. His arm hairs seemed to stand on end. He could smell the change, like fresh ozone.
“Noah! Noah, let me out of this goddamned hallway right fucking now! Open the door, goddamn you! Open this f — ”
Words could no longer leave him. The charge became more tangible. It was everywhere. Dominic felt his eyes wanting to close because they were no longer necessary. He looked down and saw a strange digital reality, his body disintegrating around a glowing center.
As Dominic watched, the glowing thing snaked out of his chest, rose into the ascending mist, and was gone.
Then the rest of Dominic broke apart and ascended to Quark’s unknown Heaven, into the soup, into nothing.
Chapter Sixteen
Stephen York blinked awake in what appeared to be the same apartment where he’d been Beamwalking an unknown amount of time ago. He was no longer in a strange, digital transport, assailed by microfragments. Kimmy, the girl, was gone.
In front of him was the obsolete laptop canvas he’d been using before the girl had hijacked his quest. He jumped when he realized an old woman’s face now occupied the screen. Her hair was probably naturally white, but she’d had it done in straight blonde. The woman was laughing.
York had a thousand questions, but he could only force one past his confounded lips.
“Are you Alexa Mathis?”
“I am. I’d ask how you found me, but I think I know.”
“Ms. Mathis, my name is — ”
“I know who you are, Stephen.”
York held his next question, allowing Alexa to speak.
“I should have known you’d find me. Did Rachel’s drones find you?”
York thought back to Bontauk. Noah’s avatar — an avatar who’d felt far too familiar for comfort — had sent him here. Kimmy had guided him. Too much was coincidental. Too much was perfect. There was little reason to evade, especially on something Alexa clearly already knew.
“I think I confused them long enough to get away.”
“And then let me guess: They stopped following you?”
York hadn’t thought about that. He’d clearly been running from something while also running toward Alexa; Noah’s avatar’s urgency had told him that much, even if Kimmy hadn’t mentioned pursuers during their strange journey. But the drones hadn’t returned. He’d been prepared to evade them for days or weeks, yet he hadn’t so much as seen them again.
“Don’t try to figure it out,” Alexa said. “Rachel is a crafty old bitch. If she sent those drones to find and save you but they suddenly stopped coming, rest assured she found a different way.”
York’s eyes narrowed. “Save me?”
“I’d tell you what she told us, but I’m sure it’s only more lies. Something tells me this was never about Mindbender. At least not in the way she told Panel.”
“Panel,” said York. “So there really is such a thing.”
Alexa scoffed. She looked toward the corner of her screen then back at York, directly into his eyes. York found himself almost able to believe the old adage about eyes being windows to the soul. Despite the woman’s wrinkled skin, he felt sure he could see pure youth beneath it.
“Yes. I’m on it. Rachel is on it. Noah was on it. Same for Iggy, Craig Braemon, Jameson Gray…I could go on.”
York found himself breathless. He’d drawn the same basic conclusions years ago in the Quark lab with his reverse image search and undercover algorithms — absent Braemon and Gray, who must have joined in the interim.
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Because you asked.”
“But…Noah kept the secret so carefully.”
“Don’t blame Noah. The official code is that nobody speaks of our group, ever. Nobody talks outside it. Nobody meets in private without the others. And with the recent exception of Rachel, the rule was always that all meetings must be attended in person. It’s a perfect cone of silence.”
“So why are you breaking the code?”
Alexa smiled. “Because you should have been on Panel from the start.” She paused. “And because I’m dying.” She looked at her wrinkled hands, shaking her head minutely. She didn’t say more, but York knew the ghost of vanity when he saw it. Alexa should appear young, even now. Whatever she was dying of, it had either sabotaged her restoration nanos or exceeded their capacity.
“Dying?”
“It’s a long, boring story.” Alexa waved a dismissive hand. “I’m not afraid.”
“Why not?” York couldn’t help himself and wanted the words back immediately, but exhaustion had lowered his inhibitions and defenses.
“I’ve never really been afraid. Because I believe.”
“In Heaven?”
She shrugged. “In an afterlife.”
“Oh.”
Alexa laughed. “I know that ‘oh.’ It’s what everyone but Rachel used to give me. Rachel didn’t patronize. She outright called me a naive fool, and still does. Everyone else was at least polite enough to pretend that they understood my faith. But you? I’ve always wondered if you’d believe, Stephen.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been there. You helped to build it.”
“Build what?”
“My afterlife. You were there. With Noah, at the end.”
York slowly nodded as pieces fell into place. He’d heard this about Alexa: that she was superstitious, that she believed gods could be found through anthroposophic study of the network, of other realities. If the avatar he’d heard from at Bontauk was any piece of Noah, that avatar would know what Alexa believed. What Alexa, it seemed, actually knew: a way to use what Noah had done to make her faith real.
“You’ve been uploading your mind in preparation for death. Like I did for Noah.”
Alexa nodded. “There hasn’t been much progress on the real Mindbender while you’ve been gone, but unlike Rachel, I don’t think the missing piece has eluded us because it’s something that The Brilliant Stephen York needs to help us figure out as he scrapes through ones and zeroes searching for the solution. For the record, I’m glad the assassin hasn’t found you simply because you deserve better, not because you’re the handyman that will finally fix Mindbender.”
Stephen wouldn’t normally put much stock in this conversation, but Noah had sent him to this woman, and Kimmy had guided him. It seemed that he was meant to be here, and hear what she had to say.
“Then why do you think the missing piece of Mindbender is…well…missing?”
“Because it’s a leap of faith.”
York paused.
“You don’t believe in a leap of faith?” Alexa asked.
“I’m a coder. I believe what I can see.”
“Then you should believe this. You helped Noah complete his final upload. He was sent to The Beam. There was a massive data deluge at the time — a deluge that, on today’s increasingly clogged network, is an everyday occurrence. We know Noah was fragmented. Dashed on the rocks like water from a waterfall. But you still believe he’s out there like I do, don’t you?”
York took a slow breath then nodded. He’d seen too much. He’d felt too much. Leap of faith, indeed.
“Everyone thinks I’m ridiculous, putting faith in my little program of digital hospice. Every night, my day’s new patterns are sent to The Beam. I’m as much there as I am
here. The only thing missing is Frankenstein’s spark. ‘It’s alive!’ and all that. Everyone thinks it’s false hope, that one day I’ll be like Noah — that my little false self will become the real me. They think it’s like cryogenics. Remember cryogenics, when people used to freeze themselves for the future?” She chuckled. “Well, it was hard to blame them. But now I get the last laugh. Now, I can finally die.”
York looked around the room. This was too surreal. He had a strong sense of déjà vu, sure that he’d gone through this all before. He saw himself beside Noah’s deathbed twenty-four years ago, sending that final stream. Alexa was hoping for the same thing…and the worst part was York — always an objective, logical thinker — couldn’t find it in himself to disbelieve her faith.
But then something she’d said clanged in his mind like a bell.
“Wait. Now? Why now?” He squinted. “Because you’ve met me?”
“Of course not. I’m not that airheaded.” Alexa laughed. “Because not twenty minutes ago, my archive began to crawl with software I’ve never seen. It’s…I don’t know how to describe it. Holographic?”
“Your archive projects’ holograms?” It didn’t make sense.
“No. Like how every piece of a hologram contains a shadow of the entire thing? It’s…self-referential? Self-assembling?”
“Of course. It’s an archive.”
Alexa smiled. “Maybe it’s not much to you, Stephen, but to me, this is the sign I’ve been waiting for. If I die and my data breaks apart now, there are instructions in all of the fragments on how to assemble the whole. It will pull order from chaos, and then I’ll wake up on The Beam as a digital being.”
“Twenty minutes ago?”
Alexa nodded, smiling. “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it? It couldn’t have worked out better if it had been orchestrated. Or destined.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Mathis,” York said. “I just can’t believe in destiny.”
“You don’t have to.” A wider smile. “The holographic encoding happened whether you believe or not. I could show you. The software itself assembled from fragments on The Beam, as if it, itself, was a holographic archive.”
“Why now?”
“Maybe it was time.”
“But where did it come from? Not the code, but the…it must have had a codex? A way to unlock all those little pieces you say were hanging around? So where did the solution come from? The activating sequence that made them assemble, to make them into the software you’ve been waiting for?”
Alexa shrugged. “That’s not for me to ask.”
York drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Something was itching at him, but he couldn’t articulate what it was. Then suddenly he had it: He’d always been after something. He’d always been important. He’d always had a quest, or something to do. But if someone had been after him but now, per Alexa’s thinking, was no longer following him, then what did that say about what came next for the great Stephen York?
“So you don’t think they need me after all — whoever locked me down, saved me for later, then decided to uncork me because they needed my help to fix Mindbender.”
“Maybe and maybe not. Not everyone has my faith. Rachel tried to have you killed, but then she had a change of heart, thought you were important, and decided you were worth saving. So one idea, if you’re so inclined, is to seek out Rachel Ryan and offer your services.”
York watched the old, dying woman on his screen. There was something inscrutable in her eyes. Something she wanted him to say but wouldn’t offer a hint.
“But you don’t think I should do that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Because there’s nothing required to fix Mindbender. Because you believe your archive will live on its own thanks to this brand-new, mysterious development.” He paused. “And that means that Mindbender already works, and has for twenty minutes now.”
Alexa nodded. “For anyone who knows about it, yes. For anyone with the access, the equipment, and the means, I believe it’s now possible to live on The Beam.”
“If I’m not here to help fix Mindbender, and going to Rachel Ryan is a mistake,” York said, “what should I do, Ms. Mathis?”
“Wait,” she said.
“Wait for what?”
Alexa smiled. “For Noah’s digital self to tap you on the shoulder and say hello.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sam heard the scream before he saw the girl standing in the doorway.
At first, he thought the party’s marauders had returned despite Nicolai’s strange assurance that they wouldn’t. But then he looked up and saw the girl standing alone, her back strapped with something that looked like a groundskeeper’s leaf blower, her brown hair in thick pink mats that looked like sausages made of fuzz. She was young if her appearance was natural — maybe a bit younger than Sam, perhaps a bit older. Her face had twisted into something ugly, but even as she fell to her knees in grief Sam could tell she was, in happier times, quite pretty.
“Oh shit. Oh West. Leo!” The girl dropped to her knees beside the dead man on the floor, the dead man whose head was still being cradled by the holographic girl — or, at least as cradled as a hologram could manage. Her hands went all over him, shying from the mess of blood soaking his head and shirt. Then the new girl’s head jerked toward the closest of the room’s occupants (it happened to be the tall blonde), and her eyes were momentarily hard. They softened almost immediately, perhaps as a reluctant truth dawned.
“What happened?” she asked.
Kate’s eyes flicked toward Nicolai. His eyes passed the buck to Sam. That was hardly fair. The ball of spikes that had killed the old man hadn’t been the only one in the house. They had to be part of Craig Braemon’s security system, but Braemon, who seemed to have vanished, wasn’t controlling them unless he was doing so from a distance. Each ball had entered the room, just to the doorway. If they’d had eyes, it was clear they’d have looked at Nicolai — and then they’d gone, having duly checked in. If the old man was this pink-haired girl’s friend or father and someone was to blame, it was Nicolai, not Sam.
But the girl’s eyes still went to Sam, waiting. So Sam swallowed and said, “He tried to kill us.” Then he nodded at Nicolai and added, “To kill him.”
The girl’s eyes were filling with moisture. She wiped them absently in a gesture of getting down to regrettable business, then pulled a handheld from her pocket and held it up, the device’s back toward Nicolai. She pushed buttons, seeming to scan.
“You were wearing a shell earlier, weren’t you?” she finally asked.
Nicolai looked at Kai and nodded.
“It looks like it really had its hooks in you. You’re resetting now, but…” She shook her head. “This is just a guess, but does the name Stephen York mean anything to you?”
Nicolai didn’t hesitate. No reason to be coy now.
“It was his shell.”
The girl looked down, found a clean spot on the dead man’s head, and ran her hand affectionately over his gray hair. “Oh, Leo,” she said, sniffing. She blinked hard and looked up. “If you give me your ID I can explain later, but it…” She shook her head regretfully. “He couldn’t help it. I think he was programmed. There’s no way he even knew this would happen, that he’d be triggered to come after…” She looked at Nicolai. “Well, after Stephen York.”
“What do you mean, he didn’t know it would happen?” Sam asked, thinking of the way Leo had stormed in with his guns blazing. It was bizarre, watching the girl comfort the dead rather than apologize to the living. But when she looked up, the girl only sniffed and waved the question away.
“Later.” She tapped her handheld’s screen, ignoring the others. It was fine with Sam. They were done here. After the York shell had pilfered what it wanted from Quark using Braemon’s credentials, it had self-destructed, and the system had reset. Braemon, if he returned now, probably wouldn’t even notice a difference. All the security was back in place. Sam couldn’t even use a cal
culator app on it now if he wanted.
Sam’s handheld buzzed. He pulled it out, seeing half a dozen ignored messages from n33t on his lock screen. n33t really must be coming to trust Shadow. n33t had told Shadow about the secret society with the ultra-high-level tags on their IDs, and now he was skipping Diggle to hit Shadow’s inbox directly.
The new buzz was from n33t, too. It said, where r u?
Sam, not wanting to be obvious in all this company, used his thumbs to reply. craig braemon in the city - respero fndrasr & massacre
The response came back almost immediately. It said, where tho? hiding? have to cap a un/archive. v important. will explain l8r
Sam squinted at his screen. Why did n33t care where specifically Sam was at Braemon’s horrific event? And what was this about capturing an unarchivable archive? Sam had only heard of the things, mainly on the Null forums, mainly from deep Beam hackers whose obsessive immersion into code bordered on religion. Normally, the idea of a file so enormous that it literally couldn’t be massaged, compressed, or even transmitted due its precise sensitivity and the chance of fidelity loss would have seemed like folklore to Sam — on par with digital hexes and ghost stories. But before today he hadn’t truly believed in Beam holes either, or believed anyone could be fooled so completely while inside one.
And hey, if you even wanted to attempt to contend with an un/archive, the geeks all said, you needed either a stable, protected canvas or a highly elaborate, overstabilized slip drive. The things he’d seen sold to suckers for such purposes didn’t even look like computer equipment. They looked like something from a hundred years ago. They had a self-contained, self-actualized canvas, several layers of redundant cooling centers, a mechanical drive, and the accompanying micro-motion cancellation stabilizers — on and on. Geeks called the devices “proton packs” — a reference to some old movie that Sam had never seen. They were huge. You couldn’t even carry one. You had to…