Influx

by Daniel Suarez

  “If you say so, sir. When do you need him here?”

  “As soon as practical. Make him comfortable on the return trip. Treat him well. In fact, I want him awake during transit—so he can see how we’ve made use of the gravity mirror in aerospace. I want him happy and rested for our discussion—so no use of force.”

  “I don’t know how ‘happy’ I can make him, but I’ll bring him here.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Daylight

  Jon Grady swayed with vertigo as the video surface of his cell depicted an aerial journey over the Amalfi Coast. It was as though the bullet-shaped cell had been converted into a clear aerial capsule that he rode across the sky. Even the floor projected the glittering sea beneath his feet.

  This was one of the many “rewards” the interrogatory AIs had to give—and since he’d compromised his years ago, he had the run of its prize cabinet. It was the big-screen TV to end all TVs. Reality painted over the walls via a nanomaterial coating. He’d also gathered various articles of furniture to go along with his examination table bed. He had a chair and desk, and he’d printed clothing and shoes as well. He’d also learned to produce metal tools and utensils—since he had access to additive manufacturing printers somewhere in the walls.

  Extracting the carbon microthreads from his brain had been a harrowing experience involving the now tame electroactive polymer tentacles of the physical restraint system. These controlled a head-mounted device that inserted and retracted the fibers as necessary—stabilized by drilling into the bone of his skull at intervals and holding it in place like a vise. He shuddered at the memory.

  But as impossibly thin and strong as those fibers were, they didn’t seem to damage his mind. Chattopadhyay had said they wouldn’t. No, the memories he was missing were due to the AI’s cruelty, not the fibers themselves. And those fibers had been put to good use implementing some of the Resistors’ more intriguing superconducting equipment and communication designs. Jerry-rigged stuff for exploring, compromising, and exploiting the prison control and logistics systems. Turning those systems against their creators.

  But that was long ago now, and so, too, had it been a long time since the proteins that halted his hair and fingernail growth left his body. The AI had been pumping these into him via the umbilicus. Now he had a nice head of hair—and fingernails to claw at his cell with. Not that any of that got him or the other Resistors any closer to freedom.

  As imitation sunlight from the video washed over him, he knew if he watched it long enough it would give him sunburn. It had been years since Grady had seen true sunlight, but the truth was that Hibernity’s in-cell imitation of the outdoors was more than just convincing. It wasn’t just video. It was flowing, heather-scented air. It was sunlight at the actual frequency of sunlight—not the hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide lights used by lower-tech society at large but powerful thin film OLEDs that could pump out electromagnetic radiation anywhere below, above, and along the visible wavelength. Materials science had undergone something of a renaissance somewhere in the 1980s, as he now knew, and Grady now took for granted things that only a few years before would have seemed akin to magic.

  But regaining control of his cell systems was not a prelude to escape from Hibernity prison. No one had ever escaped. It had taken him more than a year to accept this—that is, if he’d ever really accepted it.

  At least now he had some idea how the prison complex worked. In a word: poorly. His warders barely had control of the place, and they walked every day in fear of the geniuses who had nearly wrested control of it from them.

  There were serious limitations on what was known, though. The control systems of the prison were segregated, with each cell compartmentalized and self-contained. Prison construction and maintenance was managed by semisentient robotic equipment that melted and resolidified rock as needed. These bots were kept off the network that was available to both the guards and the prisoners.

  There were other limitations to the Resistors’ knowledge. They had no clear idea how many prisoners were held at Hibernity. Nor did they know where the prison itself was located.

  Grady had spent months examining video from compromised surveillance cameras in the garrison guardrooms and corridors, hoping to glean some clue as to their location. Most of the guards were Morrison clones, and they spent the majority of their time playing cruel pranks on each another. He recalled the original Morrison calling his lesser sons “hyenas,” and the description was pretty apt. They squabbled and raged at their fates, posted as they were at the end of the world.

  But they had all developed a healthy respect for the Resistors.

  He recalled watching a security monitor at the edge of the Resistors’ domain—a lone sentry post where graffito left by a guard had communicated a warning to his fellow officers:

  The Sensors Lie.

  And that pretty much summed up the situation.

  The Hibernity complex continued, year in and year out, to all appearances self-contained, creating all the water and food it needed by breaking down matter with fusion energy. Creating food supplies by rearranging molecules into proteins and carbohydrates in automated labs. They were largely self-sufficient here, so no one from the outside world need ever visit. Sustainability was apparently yet another one of the BTC’s technological achievements—wasted on them though it was.

  Looking into a hand mirror, which he’d created from polished steel, Grady could see how he’d changed over the years—both physically and mentally. He’d lost that half-smile that he’d always worn back when the world was continually amazing him. He was dour and determined now.

  And he bore the marks of his fight. His back and sides were covered with scars from the physical abuse he’d suffered from the tentacle restraint system. He also had circular marks at intervals around his head and temples where machinery had drilled into his skull to hold it in place while it inserted (and later removed) the carbon microthreads.

  And then there were the emotional scars. The lost memories—gaps in his childhood, the loss of his parents and identity. These made the memories he still retained all the more precious. There were just enough of them to suggest that he’d been happy once. He knew his parents were close to him, but he couldn’t recall their names or even their faces.

  Some of the more mundane details had been filled in by his cell’s subject information file—his full name and work history, for example, but that didn’t make him feel complete.

  Nonetheless he felt sure he was still Jon Grady.

  He hadn’t seen another human being in the flesh for more than three years. The video system helped (he could pretend to be moving through a market crowd in the streets of Hong Kong, for example), but he still craved actual human contact. That was something he’d never thought would be so important to him. He’d been so wrapped up in his own world for most of his life, but now that he was actually without human interaction, he realized how much he missed it—even feeling like an outsider wasn’t the same as actually being alone. Entombed within solid rock. Escape impossible.

  His fellow Resistors helped, of course, and they could pass messages to one another (along with designs and tools) via polymer worms, but he’d never seen his fellow prisoners.

  And of course he never stopped thinking about the outside world—and about Bert, Raj, and the others. What had happened to them? He even wondered what had happened to Marrano and Johnson—the two Wall Street guys who’d been visiting the lab when the BTC came down on them. Maybe they were BTC officers—who knew?

  How many of his friends were here in Hibernity? He feared the worst for them. But Grady made it his mission to find them, and that mission had so far failed. He couldn’t imagine suffering under the cruelty of the interrogatory AIs for years. He’d only been subjected to it for five months, and that had nearly driven him insane. He didn’t want to contemplate how badly he’d failed Bert and the others. So far the Resis
tors only numbered a few dozen members—only adding one to their number since Grady had joined. No telling how many others remained undiscovered and without hope. The crawlers moved randomly, and only found new cells by chance.

  Grady was roused from his thoughts by a brilliant red laser dot flashed across his video of the Italian coastline. He gestured with one hand to dismiss the video. The indifferent gray nanomaterial walls returned, but the laser dot remained.

  It was a beacon he’d rigged to alert him whenever a message from a fellow Resistor came in.

  Grady moved toward a jerry-rigged computer on his only table. Since they couldn’t trust BTC computer systems, they’d built their own from parts their polymer worms had scavenged. Grady’s was a system nearly invisible to the naked eye, assembled on a ceramic plate. The computer’s microscopic quantum processor he’d gleaned from the multiprocessor array that powered the interrogatory AI’s brain. No loss there. The machine had a thousand more of them, and while silencing the alarm had been difficult, it felt like payback to tinker with the sadistic AI’s mind.

  Grady had followed a design worked up by one of the pioneers of quantum computing—Aleksandrina Kovshevnikov, a Bulgarian woman in her fifties who was also interred here in Hibernity. Her level of intelligence made speaking with her painful, for she didn’t mask her disdain for anyone not her intellectual equal. Only her respect for Grady’s supposed achievement made her willing to assist him. The computer she’d helped him build was a hundred thousand times more powerful than anything he’d ever had access to. And it fit on a small dinner plate.

  Grady tapped at the computer’s holographic 3D field. Two-dimensional displays had been left behind in the ’90s; phased array optics and plasma emission made vivid, three-dimensional holographic fields practical. These realistic apparitions could be manipulated by hand. It was remarkable how quickly his mind had grafted onto this new form of UI, and by now it felt as natural as working with real physical objects. A few deft motions of his hand, and he could suddenly see a voiceprint equalizer floating in the air before him—a security measure against AIs masquerading as friends.

  He spoke to it. “This is Jon.”

  Chattopadhyay’s familiar voice came to him. “Jon, I have rather important news.” The voiceprint confirmed Chattopadhyay’s identity—that it wasn’t previously sampled voice snippets. Grady tapped aside the confirmation.

  “Hey, Archie. News from the scavenger committee, I hope. I need that scanning tunneling microscope.”

  “No. I am afraid your committee days are over, my friend.”

  “Okay. Why’s that?”

  “The guards are coming for you.”

  Fear swept over him. “Coming for me—why?”

  “A message was passed along from Guard Station Whiskey. You are apparently to be moved to BTC headquarters.”

  Grady sat down in shock. “I don’t understand.”

  “I have made my displeasure known to warden Theta.”

  Grady’s thoughts raced. The idea of being released from this cell was exhilarating. But then came the potential reasons, none of which were encouraging. “Why would I be moved to BTC headquarters?”

  “The prison relations committee has been discussing this very thing. There are two possible explanations: One, you’ve turned to their way of thinking.”

  “Are you kidding? I want to burn this place to the ground.”

  “Which I do believe. Or two, they badly need something from you and want to extend the olive branch to you until they get it.”

  “Like I said: I want to burn this place to the ground.”

  “Rumor has it that Director Hedrick is obsessed with your gravity mirror.”

  “Says who?”

  “Warden Theta. A friend of his at headquarters claims BTC researchers have made few advances to your work—despite a great deal of effort. And that BTC splinter groups are a growing threat. Hedrick apparently believes that mastery of gravitation is a key to lasting technological dominance of the world.”

  Grady now knew that there was not one but three BTC organizations—splinters of the original bureau. Back at the turn of the millennium there had been some sort of schism between the BTC operatives harvesting technology in Asia and those back in Europe and North America. Apparently Asia had been hoarding key technologies, and soon the parent organization did as well. Before long they had separate portfolios and chains of command. Not long after the end of the Cold War, a Russian faction of the BTC also sprang into being. So there were now three separate and highly distrustful branches of the Bureau of Technology Control. Their rivalry occasionally flared into bloodshed—powerful incentive to remain one step ahead technologically.

  Hedrick had been right about one thing only: Human nature remained in the Dark Ages.

  “Hedrick apparently hopes that once you see what they’ve achieved, you will be swayed to join their effort.”

  “He’s delusional.”

  Chattopadhyay’s gentle laugh came across the line. “Ah, but my complaints to warden Theta notwithstanding, this is actually an opportunity we Resistors have been waiting upon for many years.”

  “How is giving in to Hedrick an opportunity?”

  “We don’t expect you to give in, Jon.”

  Grady looked around his cell at all his hard-won comforts. “Then what happens when I get returned here? They fix the AI, and it starts in on me again.” Grady’s heart began to race. “I can’t go back to that, Archie.”

  “We have no intention of seeing you returned to Hibernity, either. What we’re suggesting, my dear boy, is escape.”

  “Escape?” He considered this. “Even if that’s possible, what about you and the others? I can’t just abandon everyone.”

  “We know you will not abandon us. We want you to bring evidence to the outside world about the existence of Hibernity and the people in it.”

  “Would it matter? The BTC might be secret, but it’s legally sanctioned.”

  “Jon, most of the governments of the world have no idea the BTC exists—even much of your own government. The BTC is a relic of the Cold War. Forgotten. Mythological.”

  “And if I did get word to someone—and if they believed me—what could they do about it? The BTC’s technology is so advanced, no one could force them to follow laws.”

  “Do not underestimate the power of revelation; if existing governments knew there were great innovators hidden away, they might endeavor to rescue us. And the weight of all the world is very great indeed. There is a reason they hide our existence, after all. We must try, Jon.”

  “You know I’m willing to try, Archie. I owe you my life.”

  “You owe me nothing.”

  “Let’s agree to disagree on that. But just because I get out of my cell doesn’t mean escape is going to be easy.” He upended a ceramic jar on his desk and sorted through thousands of nanotech components until he came up with a cubic, half-carat, flawless, colorless diamond. Machine-made, it was more perfect than any natural diamond could be. A q-link transmitter. “I removed my tracking diamond at least.”

  “Good. Conceal it in your shoe. You will need it eventually. And we had some ideas about your escape. We think you should make the attempt during transport.”

  “But they nox prisoners in transport. I’ll be unconscious.”

  “Instructions were sent down not to delta-wave you. You’re to be awake during transport.”

  “Awake? But why?”

  “The warden says it’s to impress you with their technology.”

  “Huh.”

  “We have spent many years preparing for this moment. But first we must eliminate all traces of your Resistor activity. You must restore your cell to a condition in keeping with the official AI records.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “It means you will need to dispose of your perso
nal computer and your connection to the Resistor microthread network—as well as all perquisites not listed in the official record. I’ve sent you a list of approved items.”

  Grady could see that a holographic document had arrived on his desktop. He opened it and perused the alarmingly short list. “This is all that I’m supposed to have after three years of cooperation?”

  “Interrogatory AIs are parsimonious creatures.”

  “I don’t want to give up my fiber connection. What if—”

  “You will not be coming back, Jon. And you must trust that we will get you all you need for your journey.”

  Grady took an unsteady breath. “Maybe I’m becoming too attached to my cage.”

  “For my part, I look forward to the day that I can leave this cell behind—though I have spent nearly half my life within it.”

  Grady realized too late how insensitive he’d been. Chattopadhyay had been here ten times longer. “I promise you, I’ll do everything I can to make that happen, Archie. How long do I have until they come for me?”

  “BTC headquarters is sending a hypersonic transport in the next forty-eight hours. Prison guards will be retrieving you in twenty-four hours—to prep you.”

  “And I need to go back to the way I was.”

  “You have officially been cooperating with your AI warder for several years now. Official records will show that it’s already removed the carbon microthreads from your brain in preparation for your departure.”

  “Good.”

  “But you will need to shave your head and eyebrows.”

  “Do I get to keep my fingernails?”

  “The guards will not know what to expect in these cells one way or the other. It is mostly for the cameras that we will be preparing you. Keep your hands low.”

  “Okay, but we need to discuss the escape. How do I convince anyone that Hibernity exists—and, if I do, where it is?”

  “The escape committee has dealt with all those concerns, Jon. We have been preparing for this moment for many years. You’ll find out later.”