Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow

by Lee Baldwin

  if we get through this?

  yes?

  together

  There is a long pause before Veronica makes her final reply. Just prior to stepping from the treadmill and walking alone toward the sauna, she makes a quick hand gesture.

  forever

  Strand Reports

  Chris Strand puts in a visit to his wife and young son at home, a couple hours of rapid conversation during which he brings them up to speed as much as he dares. He has tasks that cannot wait. Leaves them with food and flashlights, and departs hastily with the promise to be home soon. His wife is angry, informs him this work thing has gone too far. His explanation that he’s at the crux of things makes scant impression. Not with his 9-year-old frightened and in tears.

  Alone at Next History’s offices, Strand works at furious speed, redacting whale transcripts as fast as he can read them. He wants a computer algorithm that will do it faster, but Carl, the team’s best AI guy, is sidelined at home tracking down Annetka vectors, on Strand’s own order. As combinations of whale messages are unpacked and decoded, Strand’s computer launches a complex search through the text of each one, seeking out key terms and relationships. He wants to read everything in the Whalesong that is authored by anyone on his team, published at any time after next week’s date. There are many.

  Meanwhile Next History’s info-feeds pour torrents of Internet data into supercomputer filters, dissecting and refining. On the large wall monitors, Strand’s activity traces map a substantial turbulence of events converging in the next two days. He regards it as a singularity, a collision of unstoppable forces. With dread he notes a white hot energy vortex centered firmly on the Pentagon. It echoes Grace Cooke’s calm prediction.

  Using Carl’s success algorithm, Strand calculates the probabilities of Next History’s team members surviving the next seven days. Carl and Gary’s survivability numbers are high, consistent with their documented conversation three decades in the future. Jerry’s probability he cannot calculate. His own survival looks good but not great. It is with wrenching sadness he discovers that Sami’s survivability, according to his computation, is near zero. Desolate, he again checks his code, hoping it is in error.

  Fingers trembling, he brings Carl and Gary’s coffee shop conversation to his screen, tells himself he will read to the end. The discussion, thirty-two years in the future, digresses from theoretical points of Carl’s success algorithm to a reminiscence on the early days at Next History. Reading quickly, he finds confirmation of what he most feared. Sami’s disappearance is documented, only days hence, her body never recovered. Jerry survives the next two weeks but dies shortly after, an illness. Of Christopher Strand, there is only rumor.

  Firm in his convictions, Strand now knows enough to speak to General Solberg. It’s the middle of the night, but Solberg’s call filter lets him ring through. The general picks up right away.

  “Chris! Was just thinking to call you. What do you have?”

  “Ralph, you and I have been friends for a long time. And we will be friends far into the future.”

  “Of course we will,” Solberg scoffs. “Don’t placate me, Chris. Give me something I can use.”

  “Fine. First, the future. These whale messages mainly concern the future.”

  “The future?”

  “Let me tell you what we’ve found so far. What would it be like if designs for ultra-powerful weapons, for surveillance systems that collect human thought and human intention, became commonly available? What would it be like if the design of every super weapon since World War Two and for the next several hundred years became available to everyone, every foreign power, every closet terrorist?”

  Solberg is silent on the link. The moments stretch. “What are you telling me, Chris? Are you saying that weaponry is the content of these messages?”

  “It’s about much more than weaponry. It is about the power of human consciousness. And I’m one hundred percent telling you that these Whalesong documents cannot get out. Not even to your senior staff. One example. I learned that in the next two days the world arrives at a critical singularity.”

  “Singularity? You talking about Vernor Vinge? Kurzweil’s AI horizon?”

  “No, not artificial intelligence machine supremacy. Something else. A massive change of thinking on the part of every person on Earth. Every prediction involving the next two days is dark, Ralph. Filled with death. After that, the fog begins to lift. It is not pretty, but afterward... How quick can you get down here?”

  “Twenty minutes. On my way.”

  “Come alone. It’s vital.”

  When Strand opens the door for Solberg it is three in the morning. On the porch in his garrison cap and leather bomber jacket the general’s breath mists white. Behind him two military staff cars and six armed men on the sidewalk. Under one arm he has a bottle of 98-year old Jenssen Arcana Brandy. Strand has coffee ready, and a large Greek pizza. They start in.

  “Ralph, first take in the fact that the post-parade blue whale count worldwide turns up no animals with markings on them. Zero. This is the National Marine Fisheries Service’s latest spot survey. No whales are seen bearing numbers, messages, text-like markings of any kind. The survey so far covers thirty percent of all blues, including eighty of the one hundred twenty-eight animals that were tagged. There are no numbers on any blue whale located anywhere on Earth.”

  “Your reading?”

  “That the whales caused those number strings to appear on their bodies. Strictly for us to see. After the encounter, the markings were no longer needed.”

  “So, it’s a message from one intelligent species to another.”

  “These whales are conscious and intelligent, and they can manifest reality. Their degree of organization alone is immense. We have to stop killing them.”

  “Well Chris, that is a good reason for the transcripts to get out. The Navy sonar…”

  “Yes Ralph. Whales are conscious beings. Spiritual beings. We have to stop hurting them for the sake of our weapons.”

  “If I have anything to say about it, when this is over… God willing.”

  “I’ve done other research, more in the paranormal field, but it connects with information from Next History’s event traces and from the Whalesong itself. There is a record, Ralph, a record buried deep in the living fabric of this planet. It contains the recorded history of all historical events, the lives of every person.”

  Solberg lowers his chin, gives Strand an ‘are you alright’ kind of look.

  “Ease off there, Ralph. The future has been our business for twenty years, and my team has looked deeply into the Whalesong. You know there were 108 distinct whale messages?”

  “I do.”

  “With blanks in between, right? Whales with no markings, like delimiters?”

  Solberg nods, swirls a sip of brandy on his tongue. “What’s that on the back of your hand?”

  Strand looks at the reddened spot, doesn’t at first recall when he noticed it. “Wait, I got it. Fish Jump meeting. Right before the fish leapt.”

  “I’m ordering Friedman to get in touch. That is the first external effect we have noted, other than the smells and sounds. Are you feeling alright?”

  “Just tired. Anyway Ralph, can you imagine our surprise when we removed a blank between two adjacent number strings, combined them, and unpacked a readable message? A completely new one? We continued doing that, and kept getting unique documents. Now we are working on higher permutations of the original message strings, and we’re still getting data. We have something in the six billions of possible combinations. Ralph, this should not work but it is real! It is combinatorial encoding of elegant perfection. Order does not matter. If we join up any number of the Whalesongs, we decode meaningful text.”

  “A bit like having random buses pull up, and everybody that gets out is related, or neighbors in the same town?”

  Strand nods energetically. “Something like that. I am giving you three articles to read. One of them tel
ls how the military can survive the coming days. Read fast. There is more you need to see.”

  Solberg pulls Strand’s laptop to him.

  “One other thing. Your boy Friedman. He is mentioned in a news article a year from now as a guiding voice in the return to sanity, as they call it.”

  “Shackleford? Is he mentioned?”

  “No mention I have found thus far.”

  Hunched over the laptop, Solberg reads quickly, face set. He finds an adventure of the intellect he’s not experienced since Academy days, articles about accessing the spiritual realm and Akashic knowledge through a daily practice of meditation, dissertations about human interference in deep processes of the Earth herself, manifesting as an illness upon it. Mouth agape at the future conversation between Strand’s two employees, he struggles to comprehend the outcomes, decades hence. Future documents describing the aftermath of a twenty-four hour period in which the entire world lies unconscious. An event to begin less than two days from this present moment.

  Solberg looks up from the screen. “Chris. Can this be believed?”

  “What are you looking at?”

  “This is a research paper, a set of conclusions about the behavior of something called Conscious Universe. Arnold Friedman’s name is on it. Have you looked at this?”

  “Skimmed it. What stands out for you?”

  Solberg looks at the screen again, clears his throat. “This is well outside my wheelhouse, but it theorizes all matter is conscious. Photons are thoughts. Matter is not inert, it has a rich subjective life.” The general turns tired eyes on Strand. “Matter has an inner life?”

  Strand nods, Solberg reads on. “Human consciousness is not an illusion. Where it originates is unknown. The mind extends far beyond the brain in three dimensions, it is much more than synaptic activity, more than electrochemistry inside our heads. Our minds are not limited to static time. Memories are stored as material traces in brains but also in a shared consciousness, which this article calls the Akasha. Memories are not wiped out at death. Consciousness continues without the living brain.”

  Solberg’s face takes on a pleading look. “Chris, I almost get this, but make it bite size for me. What’s it saying?”

  “The whales, Ralph. The whales brought us information from a source called the Akashic Record.”

  “In the ocean?”

  “Not sure. I’ve found four sources that say what the Akashic Record is and where it is stored. The sources don’t agree. Think of it as the cloud. Mystics refer to it as The Mind of God. There’s a paper here that explains how DNA is the primary storehouse of the Record. I spoke to a learned psychic…”

  “Chris cut it out. You’re not consorting with…”

  Strand cuts him off with a wave. “Open your mind, Ralph, seriously. Open it and take a big bite. We have a completely new class of problem here. At no other time on Earth has a supernatural shape-shifter appeared to eight billion people all at once. At no other time on Earth have seven thousand whales handed over the book of creation.”

  Solberg shakes his head in surrender.

  Strand goes on. “So the Record could be stored in living DNA. The psychic Grace Cooke thinks it’s stored in quartz crystals. Right or wrong, the means do not matter. The paper you’re reading links to a description of how photons are thoughts. Thoughts, Ralph! Photons live forever. They could record all the events that ever took place, the life story of every star, grain of dust, sentient being…

  “And Ralph look at the dates on these writings. Most within the next two hundred years. Think back. The United States is less than 250 years old. Look at the changes in that period of time! Then, it was sailing ships, now it’s comet probes and Mars rockets. And in the next 250 years, these documents talk of travel to the farthest reaches of the universe. A universe which is, in fact, fully alive. Reality is consciousness. We have a chance to truly shape our own future.”

  Solberg struggles to maintain focus. “Suppose it’s all true. What do we do with it?”

  “You tell me. Did the whales perpetrate a hoax? Does some foreign power have such technology to cause thousands of whales to develop a skin rash in the form of numeric strings, cause them to swim past Navy ships in precise order, and that those number groups decode into readable English text? There is an intelligence operating here that is beyond human. It is not the whales, it’s far beyond anything on Earth alone. The universe itself could be conscious. Ralph I am as doubtful as anyone about some of these messages and their implications. But I think our futures are best served if we try to learn from them. And keep them secret until we are certain.

  “And what about our friend in the Pentagon? That shape-shifter with the invincible shield? Two women with him who appear and vanish without taking a step? It is beyond science, it is beyond the occult. We are dealing with hidden intelligence of supernatural power. This is not an enemy, Ralph.”

  “Are you talking God?”

  “No idea. Possible, though nothing I’ve read so far talks about theology. Consciousness, yes. If God is present, it is within the pattern of supremely elegant physical processes. Ones we do not yet comprehend. But Ralph, time is short and this information could endanger us. You, me, your command, the United States, the world. It has to be kept secret. I took my entire team off it. Who else do you have working on it?”

  ‘We have an Army team in Cheyenne Mountain. Using the NOAA computer center.”

  “Hah. No wonder my cycles were cut by sixty percent.”

  “My order, Chris. I had no choice.”

  “What do they have?”

  “They have translated the original 108 messages. As you say, they are all histories.”

  “Have they started to combine them?”

  “No one has mentioned it.”

  Ralph, please. Take that team off the Whalesong! Get the raw data away from them. And give me back my cycles! I have six billion messages to unpack and search. We have less than thirty-six hours to find who we are supposed to be.”

  Announcement

  The walls of the FBI examination room are gone. Among bare trees under cloudy sky, Tharcia stumbles in the courtyard. Vardøger, invisible on her shoulder, bites sharp claws into her flesh. Lian is back to his winged-lizard guise, twenty feet of scaly leather with taloned claws. Amplified voices fill the air, as though a throng outside chants a foreign tongue.

  As she appears, Lian thinks to himself. Here she comes, appetizing young love for sale. He does not relish the thought of dominating her in some made-up theme park for his amusement, or her education. At one time he would have thought that useful as a teaching method. Perhaps instead they will merely talk. She does have entertaining questions and an inquiring mind. Plus, she seems actually to like him. Most mortals are merely afraid. And what was that she’d said? We get to experience you too Lian. I would want that.

  And his incomparable Lylit, virtually his own creation, his deepest love. After the gap of eons during which she was for him a longed-for dream, they at last have the chance to be together. Her bright companionship is more interesting to Lian than all the torment he could provide a mortal. He sighs. Realizes that without Lylit he’s been a distortion of his true being. She is already changing him.

  Tharcia steadies herself as the Pentagon appears around her. Lian is across the courtyard, looming with taloned claws and dangling dick. It scares Tharcia silly. She would rather be here though, than the interrogation room with the FBI dude. Verlett. What a monstrosity, she saw it in his eyes. But in some way, everybody is going flat berserk, the world is. She has some idea why. And it will get worse the instant Lian delivers the announcement he’s prepared to make today. Tharcia is afraid, but she is glad she could talk to Clay. Her heart goes cold. That was goodbye.

  She’s suddenly dizzy. Drops to hands and knees on the paved walkway. Her eyesight dims. In her mind a vision of tiny cell-islands, floating closer in limitless dark. They touch, fuse into a single being. Me. Lylit. Their attraction came into being when they w
ere a few dozen cells adrift in darkness. Lylit had said, forever. Tharcia believes that to be true. Her only mystery: who is their other father? She wills it to be Clay.

  An echo of voices outside the courtyard, a huge congregation chants an unknown tongue. She walks to where Lian stands, impulsively, incredibly, wraps both arms around a muscular scaly leg taller than she, eyes closed hugs tight. Inside the fierce winged demon, something snaps.

  “Who is outside? I hear chanting. What language is that?”

  “Oh that’s high Latin. The Vatican sent a small army to rid the world of me. I imagine they will take credit for my departure.”

  “So what happens next?”

  “We are nearly done. We’ll review the bargain, then you shall leave to enjoy your last day of life as you know it.”

  Tharcia plops herself on a bench, a puppet with cut strings. Imagines going directly from this spot to someplace unimaginable, into her dream of souls being processed, her flesh devoured by demons, used in the most abominable ways. To be without her life, without Clay, never to see their home again. The courtyard, the massive winged shape, shimmer in her vision. Get it over with.

  “I wrote out the bargain on paper.”

  “You don’t think I’ll remember?”

  “You’re a slippery devil.”

  “Oh, ha.”

  “But it’s not here. It’s at home.” She wonders if Clay will make sense of the page of conditions in her sketchpad. Imagines him looking through her things, after she is gone. Recalls the lovely meditation video she saw on his laptop. She’s never written anything for him, just for him. She clears her throat.

  “But I remember well enough. First, you give up your power to bargain with people for their souls. You make the dream state a meditative state about gratitude. You’ll teach people to control their egos, so there is not so much aggression, less greed and more sharing. Teach that killing is not okay for any reason. Not even if they think God orders it.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Oh, great memory, Lian. Let all people have direct spiritual experience of the Creator. Women and men are equal and all humanity is one family. Let every child be taught they are part of the Creator.” She stops, trying to recall.