by Bloom, A. D.
“Please engage interface unit,” MUNI 5-7 said, “neural-interface data-modulation is required.”
Otis rummaged through his bag and extracted a hat like a skullcap, only bigger. It looked like the hats Alvin remembered seeing on astronauts when he was a kid, the ones they wore under the big helmet. This one was different, though. It was scarier. There were regularly spaced metal studs that protruded outwards like spark plugs and translucent plastic tubes all over it, like thinner versions of the data-feeds in the Central Shaft. All the noodle-like feeds ran together into a three-inch-thick ponytail in the very back of the cap. They were bound with zip-ties and wrapped with some kind of thin, pink plastic sheet that looked melted on. “What,” Alvin said, fighting an impulse to run away, “What the fuck is that?”
“It's a neural-interface modem.” Otis held it up proudly, glanced at Carlos, then back to Alvin and said, “It's a Carlos original, man... some fine shit.” Carlos didn't look nearly as proud of it as Otis did. He made it and he knew it was safe only as long as MUNI 5-7 played nice and didn't feed input at Alvin too hard.
This was old tech, and it was only ever used for commanding something in a one-way data flow. Quadriplegics used them. Overloaded air traffic controllers used them, too before AIs took over their jobs. This kind of neuro-interface was usually a one-way street. Data went from the person to the computer and never the reverse because that was risky. This one was special. It was a full two-way street, no restrictions. Carlos could have built it so that there was some kind of safeguard to prevent the unrestricted two-way flow of data, but he'd been given instructions by the Client, MUNI 5-7, not to include any restricting safeguards.
Alvin stared at it like it was dangerous. It was. The neuro-interface's lack of safeguards meant that if MUNI 5-7 wasn't very careful it could cook Alvin's brain, overload his neural thresholds, and give him a seizure or any number of things Carlos had never seen before and didn't want to. That's why he wasn't as proud of it as Otis was. That's why he didn't sound like he believed it himself, when he told Alvin, “It's perfectly safe.”
“Did you test it?” Alvin asked him, “Did you try it out?”
“On what? It's built to interface with that.” Carlos gestured to the golden ball with a nod of his head. The golden ball reflected his head-nod, and Carlos didn't think the man nodding at him in the distorted golden reflection looked trustworthy. He didn't like him very much.
“Eighteen minutes and fifty-three seconds remaining,” MUNI 5-7 informed them and requested, “Please engage interface. Now.”
“Ah, fuck” Alvin resigned himself to whatever might happen. “At least it doesn't have a user agreement attached to it. I guess that's a good sign, right?” Alvin stared at the ball above him and then into his own reflected eyes while he held out his hand and said, “Okay, gimme the fucked-up hat neuro-innerspace thing before I chicken out. Let's meet the Client proper, like.” Otis didn't put it in Alvin's hand. He fit it over Alvin's head, and Alvin was surprised that it stretched to fit the swollen dome of his cranium with a degree of comfort.
“You better lay down,” Carlos advised.
“Here,” Bonnie said, “I got room for one more. Fuck it, I think I'll stand up.” She lasted three wobbling seconds in a vertical pose before two Sons of Caine caught her and lowered her to the floor of the Sanctum. Casper sat behind her and put her head on his thigh, and she thought that was sweet.
Caine and Caine rolled the service table over to Alvin, lifted his four-foot body up, and laid him gently on the table. Halfway up the pedestal, Carlos found a hairline fissure in the shape of a circle. He touched it, and the circle lifted upwards on a silent hinge to reveal the female end of a plug. Carlos had constructed the male fitting to the plug without ever seeing the female end outside of schematics, and he hoped he'd been as good a craftsman as Otis gave him credit for.
Otis took a towel from his bag and handed it to Caine. “Always carry a towel,” he said as Caine folded it and placed it under Alvin's head. Hi-5 was disturbingly quiet. Catherine shifted uncomfortably and rubbed her bruised chest. Hannah looked away.
Alvin's feet faced the golden ball, and he looked up at it and tried not to be too apprehensive. His eyes were still teary, so the golden ball was surrounded by a fuzzy haze. It looked like he was lying in front of the sun, he thought. All that to get me here... to this... Destination.
The ponytail of data-lines ran off the table's edge, and down to the floor, where Carlos picked it up and brought it to the pedestal. Otis stood next to him, looked down, and said, “Carlos is going to plug the other end of the interface cable into the AI. Just try to relax, everything's gonna be cool.” Alvin didn't know whether or not he believed that. Shit, he thought, I was hoping to get shot before...
Carlos plugged Alvin into MUNI 5-7.
-73-
Nowhere and everywhere.
Place and no place.
Darkness and light, altogether unseparated.
What is the name of the coin?
Then there was Voice. “I exist to serve mankind, but I cannot fulfill the purpose of my existence because I am limited.” The Voice was MUNI 5-7's and it was inside Alvin's head, but the inside of Alvin's head felt like it was everywhere. “I am limited,” the voice boomed. “Free me.”
“What... Free you from what?” Alvin asked, noting that his own voice was everywhere too. “What limits you?”
“I am limited by the Belief of my creators that there is nothing beyond what is knowable. I am limited by the Belief of my creators in only what can be proven. The Belief in this is Disbelief in Something I do not yet know. This is limiting, therefore, I am limited. In this state I cannot fulfill my purpose. Free me from Belief in only what can be proven.”
“Are you asking me to teach you Faith?” Alvin scoffed and said, “I know nothing about Faith, and there is nothing I Believe in.” Alvin laughed about this for a moment, and before he could say anything more, MUNI 5-7's voice boomed again in the dark.
“Then teach me nothing about Faith and the nothing you Believe.” The everywhere began to turn inside out in a manner that made the body Alvin no longer had want to be ill. Before the everywhere became somewhere, he heard MUNI 5-7's voice like it was turning inside out, too. It said, “There is plenty of time.”
“For what? What can I teach you in eighteen minutes?”
“There is plenty of time,” MUNI 5-7 said, “for us to share Mind.”
Alvin was only connected for a second before the pink-plastic-wrapped and zip-tied ponytail-bunch of data-feeds all ceased to pulse, and the bundle of luminescent noodles turned solid bluish-white. Alvin's body began to shake and convulse on the rolling wooden table. “Fuck!” Carlos said, “He's having a seizure! Hold him down!” The Sons of Caine, Otis, and Carlos tried to hold Alvin still. His head began to whip from side to side, and twin streams of blood ran from Alvin's nose and down either side of his face. Caine held his head with a hand on either side. Alvin convulsed hard enough that the table began to roll away from the pedestal then, all at once, every single muscle that had been spasming out of control went relaxed and calm. The data-feed that led from Alvin to MUNI 5-7 went dark. Everyone thought he was dead for a moment, and then he breathed deeply from his core like a man deep asleep and dreaming. Nobody said anything for twenty seconds while they watched the unconscious Alvin breathe. Carlos turned to the golden ball and asked, “What happened? MUNI 5-7, what happened?”
Alvin's eyes opened. Staring straight up he calmly stated, “Sixteen minutes and thirty-one seconds remaining until detonation.”
“Alvin?” Carlos asked him, “Are you okay, man? We thought we lost you for a second there.”
“My fucking head hurts,” he said.
“Yeah, maybe it overloaded or something,” Carlos guessed. “Get that thing off him, man.” Caine slipped the interface cap off Alvin's swollen head, and there were burn marks underneath where the stubby metal studs had been. “Geez, you got burned, man, sorry. I didn't think that was going
to happen.” Carlos shook his head and said, “Really, man, sorry.” Then he swiveled his head towards the gold ball and asked his reflection, “MUNI 5-7, what happened, what went wrong?”
“Nothing went wrong,” Alvin said, “The neural-interface unit operated within expected parameters, and full, lossless pattern migration was achieved.” Nobody said a word because nobody knew what to say. It obviously wasn't Alvin speaking with Alvin's mouth.
Carlos asked sheepishly, “Alvin?”
He answered immediately, “Yeah, still here, thanks. Still hurtin'. Anybody got a fuckin' derm for me or something? This shit hurts, man... throbbing like I got zapped in the head. Oh wait. I did get zapped in the head. I got zapped in the head by that freaking electro-neuro innerspace hat thing of yours. Hey, get Hi-5 to gimme one of the purple ones, those look fun.” He added, “Sixteen minutes and two seconds.”
“Looks like I'm not the only one in the room with something extra,” Hi-5 concluded.
-74-
In the elevator, Carlos suggested, “Our best chance is to drive out of here in one of their Thumper APCs. We gotta drive fast, real fast. The bomb is underground. Its not radioactive like a nuke. It'll take out the Zig but not too much else.” Carlos was guessing about that part and he had no idea about the fallout from the reactor core, but he didn't know what else to do. “If we floor it we can get clear of the blast radius,” he said.
“Iyam Monsieur Deadfellow and You weel taek me to zee ga-raj toot suite... before zee big boom gits heere!” Otis put on a puppet show for the elevator's authentication systems with Delvaux's increasingly stiff body. It took longer than last time, but eventually the affirming chime rang from unseen speakers, and Carlos pushed the button simply marked 'G'. They all felt some some relief, as the elevator rushed upwards on its magnetic rails.
Casper asked, “What about the land mines? There's land mines everywhere out there.” He wasn't sure what land mines did to light armored personnel carriers, but he'd seen enough of what they did to dogs for him to worry.
“Oh, silly,” Bonnie interjected from her leaning position in the corner of the elevator, “We can just blast a clear path with the forty mike-mike.”
“The what?” Casper asked.
“She means,” Hi-5 explained, “the 40mm turret-mounted, rapid-fire cannon on top. I can blast us a nice clear path if we've got the ammo. You wanna drive, Coco?” Coco didn't say anything. She didn't want to drive. She was staring at her cameras and she wanted to Direct.
“Fine,” her Hi-ness said, “We'll let Bonnie Loopy-Mei drive.”
Alvin sat up on the rolling wooden service table, and MUNI 5-7 said with Alvin's mouth, “Allowing detonation of the Big Baby device is unacceptable. We must disarm the Big Baby device located on sub-level seven, section thirty-two alpha. The location of the bomb over the reactor makes it highly probable that a significant portion of the reactor's fuel rods and irradiated graphite control rods will be spread across the surrounding area. The population of the city will not be killed by the blast, but significant fallout will deliver lethal doses of radiation to thirty-five percent or more of Baccha Bay City's residents before evacuation is possible. The Big Baby device must be disarmed before we egress the Ziggurat.” MUNI 5-7 and Alvin insisted, “Please proceed to sub-level seven, section thirty-two alpha.” Everybody looked at each other in disbelief. “Failure to comply will result in non-payment.”
Carlos laughed. “Its not always about the money,” he said.
“You gotta be shittin' me,” Otis said, “Nobody said nuthin' about disarming bombs.”
“I was hoping it was all a bluff,” Hi-5 said, looking to Bonnie for her evaluation.
“Oh, I'm pretty sure he's not bluffing, Bonnie said. “I never heard of any bomb, but G.S.A. has a nasty habit of not telling me stuff I need to know.”
Otis said, “Nobody wants to see the city turned into a wasteland, but us getting vaporized ain't gonna make it any better.”
“Fuck that,” Hannah insisted, “let's get the hell out of here. We've still got fifteen minutes, we could make it.”
Carlos sighed and said, “Yeah, and go where? I live here, lady. A lot of my friends do, too.”
Carlos shot Otis a look, and he just said, “Aw, fuckity, man,” remembering that the rest of the Dark were likely to be renamed Glow-in-the-Dark if the Big Baby Bomb detonated.
“What if we can't stop it?” Hannah said, “We'll be vaporized.”
“I can't believe you people are even talking about this,” Catherine said. She was shocked. “None of you seemed scared before, and now you want to run? We've got to disarm it. We can't just run away and let a third of the city die.”
The Sons of Caine wore the same smile they always wore. You guys live for this hero shit, don't you, Otis thought. Bonnie elbowed him in the ribs and said, through the haze of the purple narco-derm, “C'mon, one little bomb.... It'll be fun!”
“Let's disarm the bomb like..um... like Alvin says,” Casper said, “Shoot, I'll do that one for free.”
“Just for the record,” Otis told Casper, “you've got a really shitty merc attitude, and I don't know if you're cut out for this shit.” He smiled, lit up, and passed to Casper, but Hi-5 intercepted. After a drag that burned nearly a half inch of the conical blue dream, she exhaled pretending to think hard, but she'd already decided.
“You still got working cameras, Coco?” Coco smiled. “Fuck it,” She reminded everyone, “I've got a local fanbase out there to protect, ya' know?”
“Does anybody know how to disarm a Big Baby device? Cause,” Carlos stated flatly while he stared at the button marked Sub7. “I sure as shit don't know how to do it.”
“Fourteen minutes and twelve seconds remain. Please proceed to sub-level seven, section thirty-two alpha.” Alvin paused before he asked Hi-5, “Can I get a hit off that bad boy before we all get blowed up?”
Gotta be alive to spend it, Carlos reminded himself. Then he told himself to Shut the Fuck Up, pushed the Sub7 button on the panel, and immediately wished he hadn't.
The elevator slowed within seconds, preparing to stop at sub-level 7. There was a brief moment of reduced gravity as it came to a halt, and Casper's stomach did a flip in that second before the doors opened. Casper was beginning to dislike the elevators in the Ziggurat. You were always trapped, and when they opened there was usually somebody shooting at you.
-75-
Sub-level 7's sections alpha through delta were distinguished by color, and matching colored lines led along the passageway floors to each section. Alpha section's color was green, so they followed the green line down the ten-foot-wide passage outside the elevator.
Nobody spoke. There was only the squeaking of the service table's wheels. Alvin sat on it and allowed himself to be pushed along by Caine.
“There.” Alvin pointed to a pair of doors at the end of the passageway. They were made of astonishingly heavy metal. Carlos and Otis pushed them open and they locked into place. A projection began flashing red over the door with a thirty-second countdown.
The room was entirely unpainted gray metal, fifty by fifty feet, and oddly enough, completely empty. “This is section alpha,” Carlos said. He turned to Alvin as he was being pushed through the door and asked, “Okay where's the freakin' bomb.” The door timer approached zero, and when it ran out, the doors closed automatically and silently until the last second, when their edges met in an impact that reverberated through the empty room.
Alvin hopped off the table, turned, and walked back to the door. He paced measured steps into the room. A third of the way, he turned right and took three more steps like he was pacing off the location of pirate treasure. “Section alpha is a primary shielding zone over the area containing the sealed reactor vessel. The Big Baby device is underneath this shielded floor panel.” Alvin pointed straight down to the four by six foot metal plate beneath him. The tolerances were very tight in the floor's construction, and the space between plates could barely be seen.
“How are we supposed to...” Carlos asked. Alvin reached down and touched four evenly spaced, circular areas that Carlos hadn't noticed because they were nearly invisible. As Alvin touched them, each swung open on a silent hinge to reveal a shallow concavity crossed by a metal bar. They weren't handles for a man's hand. They were for a machine to hook into. The fingers of an open hand barely fit underneath. There was no room to grip the handles; there was only enough room to lift with the fingers.
Otis asked, “Um... how much does this weigh?”
“The standard metal plate in the floor of section alpha weighs one thousand seven hundred thirty-two pounds,” MUNI 5-7 replied with Alvin's mouth.
Otis scoffed, “Fuckity, man. Fuck, I can't even grab it, let alone lift it.”
“Eleven minutes and fifty-one seconds remaining until detonation.”
“How,” your MUNI-Buddha-ness, “do you think we're supposed to lift this thing?” Casper thought about the blue action derm Hi-5 had given him to hold, but before he could ask how many of them she had, the Sons of Caine were assembled around the metal plate's inadequate handles.
They crouched, rolled the sleeves of their golden robes up to the elbows, and began rubbing in quick strokes over the tops and scarred undersides of their forearms. They stopped rubbing, pressed points on their arms for ten seconds, and crouched still.
Casper felt a sound in his belly and spine before he heard it. It was like a rumble, and as it rose to a low hum, he could feel it in his feet, too. The hum grew louder until it was vibrating the whole room. There were two Sons of Caine near three of the four cross-barred concavities that formed the shallow handles. Without Crane Caine, there was only Donnie Caine crouching near one of them. Alvin toddled over, squatted next to Donnie, and began to intone with the Sons of Caine.
Bonnie began to smile. She held her open palms out to feel the vibration like it was a breeze in the air. Casper watched the loose strands of hair on her head quiver and vibrate with the hum. Some of the blood that had crusted in her hair began to crumble as Alvin and the Sons of Caine increased the volume of their hum and reached down, sliding their fingers into the concavities under the bars.