Convergence

by David M Henley

  ‘I know. I, uh, he sent me a message. He went to visit his family.’

  ‘Oh. That’s good then. Tom couldn’t find out what had happened.’

  They stood there uncomfortably. He felt that he was lying to her again, but he couldn’t tell her the whole truth about Lizney … he still wasn’t sure how it made him feel.

  ‘I guess I should get this over with.’ Zach started walking towards the back door.

  ‘Wait. Give me your hands.’ Zach held them up for her and she took a healing patch from her apron and stuck it over the tracking mark. ‘There. You can say you scratched yourself.’

  ‘Oh. Okay. Thanks. Good idea.’

  His hands were shaking and she held onto them. ‘It will be okay, Zach. You’re home now.’ She began leading him to the back gate.

  ‘What are you doing? I have to go apologise to Tom and Lily. Don’t kick me out, Bron, please.’

  ‘Hush, Zach. I’m not making you leave, but you should go in the front, rather than sneaking in the back.’

  ‘Why are you being so nice to me?’

  She didn’t answer, just squeezed his hands and pushed him out. ‘Go on. I’ll see you inside. Tom is keeping the others busy clearing out the basement. Lily is round the front.’ She squeezed his hand one more time. ‘It will be alright.’

  The pavement radiated heat. It was a bright walk around the outside wall and he looked up longingly at the clouds coming from the south, then he was opening the wire gate squeaking under the weight of its heavy coat of sweet pea.

  Lily was bent double over a row of seedlings and she straightened up to see who it was. The next thing he knew she was hugging him to her bosom. ‘Oh, thank the Will you’re alright,’ she said and kissed the top of his head.

  He found himself hugging her back, her plump body like an enormous cushion. ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Lil. I’m so sorry I ran away.’

  She shushed him and squeezed him tight. Then she tensed and stepped backwards. ‘And who is this then?’

  Zach turned to see Inez standing quietly behind him. She too had managed to remove her cuffs and was standing patiently, waiting for their reunion to be over.

  Every morning La Gréle performed the same ritual. She lay awake for some minutes, eyes open, looking at the seams in the ceiling. In her mind she recited some phrases. My name is Gretel Lang. In my first life I was a singer. When I was seventy-three years old, I rejuvenated to a body equivalent of twenty-two years old. I am living in the middle of nowhere in a regulation field capsule with Colonel Pinter.

  She found it helpful to remember her persona before arising. It was too easy to slip into old habits. Ways of talking or patterns of movement that might be on file somewhere. It would only take a few instances of inconsistent behaviour to put her on a watchlist and she would be under surveillance for months. She knew how it worked. She had been through it many times. The endless trial that she had to pretend she didn’t know was happening. Telepaths learnt to behave or they got caught.

  ‘Gretel’ was different from La Gréle. Her first life had been more laissez faire. More in line with the mood swing that took over the world after the wars. She was of a generation that had never known peace, and now couldn’t be stopped from making a better and brighter future. The Will swept them into a continuum of landmark achievements and the resultant rewards of indulgence. She had been a mildly acclaimed performer, and promiscuous, which made her a much wanted hire on the party circuit.

  La Gréle had been hiding since she was a teenager, became a nurse … she stopped herself. Gretel knew nothing of that person.

  Gretel? Yes, that’s right. I am Gretel Lang, rejuvenated singer and now a social justice advocate. Living partner of Abercrombie Pinter. She had to remember this to maintain the facade; she had to remember her outside character, exactly like an avatar on the Weave. The outside was what people saw, and that outside had to maintain the image that was expected or the computers would catch you out.

  Then, if you slipped up too often, at some point when they were ready and you weren’t, you would be targeted and collected …

  Breathing in and out, Gretel stretched and leapt off the bed. Every day since rejuvenation she woke up and noticed that her bones did not ache. It felt odd to feel so light and each time it reminded her that she was young again.

  The room clock told her it was six a.m. Abe had been gone all night and hadn’t sent any word. She stretched her mind out and found the Servicemen outside were on alert and activated. Two guards were on alert at her door … she sensed something was wrong. Had she been discovered? Was Kronos on the move again? No … no … It seemed the Weave had gone out and they were simply following the emergency protocols; re-forming into independently controlled groups with local command authority.

  The Servicemen didn’t know what was happening either. Each mind had a hunch, such as that the psi rebellion had struck a devastating blow, or that a Kronos had consumed another population. They speculated internally, but also verbally to each other when the ranking officer, Lieutenant Campsey, wasn’t nearby. It didn’t affect them though. They were trained for emergencies, and some hoped this might just be an elaborate drill. For now, they just had to do the same job better than they would on a regular day.

  Campsey reinforced the perimeter with more drones and all eyes watched the black mass of Kronos to see what it would do, if it sensed their weakness. Lieutenant Campsey was on the platform with his underlings jumping around him. As of yet Kronos remained passive, its tentacles lazily waiting for dawn.

  Gretel opened the doorway to watch the activity of the camp. A loud medley greeted her ears: the rolling of heavy vehicles and zip zip of darting drones, servitors and remote MUs marching to new positions. The clockwork of the Services machine.

  The guards by her door were Ellen Farly and Rico Taloma, both Ones unattached to a permanent ten squad.

  ‘What has happened?’ she asked them — she had to ask even when she knew the answers. A telepath always had to ask what a normal person might ask. She could never let the watchers think she had more information than she should or the algorithms might catch her.

  ‘We know nuttin, miz. Only that the Weave cut out, so we’ve gone into defensive mode. It could just be an exercise.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘We have to ask you to remain inside for now.’

  ‘But what about the Prime?’ she asked, swallowing a tremor in her voice. She knew this wasn’t a drill, or a training exercise.

  ‘He hasn’t returned yet.’

  ‘And there have been no messages?’

  ‘No,’ Private Rico said.

  It was true. Even the emergency Services network hadn’t sent a command. For all they knew, everyone else beyond their fifty-kilometre radius had disappeared.

  There was nothing for her to do but go back inside and wait.

  Gretel went back to bed and then made it look as if she couldn’t rest and had decided to read. Lying on her back, she placed a thin, semi-transparent visor over her eyes.

  She was in the middle of reading Ortega for the twentieenth time. What We Can See was a contentious text that could be, and was, interpreted in many different ways. Some saw it as a book of nonsensical, derivative confusionisms. Others that it was a work of unparalleled enlightenment that must be taught in schools.

  It was common for people to read the collection repeatedly throughout their lifetimes, looking for wisdom, and thus it was perfect to keep her cover.

  Knowledge is but a pattern for understanding and controlling chaos. As knowledge changes, so does the chaos.

  The words washed over her. She was undecided about Milawi Ortega. The adages felt like they had meaning, but defining them further was a challenge.

  Her heartbeat was loud and her mind began replacing the words before her eyes. She visualised her thoughts spelled out and written over the real text. This was how she fooled the machine into believing that she was reading and it continued to turn the pages obediently
.

  The drop-out of the Weave meant that Pinter was now Prime — his move enabled in no small part by her network of influencers controlling some key minds — and he had committed his first act: separating the Will from the Weave. She tried not to smile. Her plan was proceeding on schedule.

  This act, for him, meant protection against further Kronos outbreaks. For her, it was a chance for her people to take control of the Will, and then they could create an amnesty … it had to happen.

  Her gamble was that he would return to her. The longer he was beyond her reach the more unpredictable he would become. His mind was like an unbroken horse; at the first opportunity it would bolt and go in its own direction.

  Abercrombie had been out of her range for only a few hours, and she was completely cut off from the entire world. She found it ironic, and galling, that despite her success at getting close to the highest power of the WU, she was now as disconnected as the most regressive denizen.

  She cursed herself for letting him leave her to swelter alone in the swampy mindset of the Servicemen. Men long in the field, with their eyes all over her. She couldn’t step outside without provoking an explosion of sexual thoughts.

  And she knew how most of them felt about psis too. They had grown up on cartoons where the villains were most often a psi of some sort, so that’s how they instinctually felt. Who could forget the catchy tune of ‘Merlin & Morgana’ and the bassy swing whenever Lefay was on screen? All the Servicemen seemed to forget that Merlin was a very good psi; to them, the moral was always that psis were to be controlled and defeated. It sickened her.

  Abe was a different kind of man though. A man made strange by experience. He never forgot the past. The wars were wounds upon his memory. He had never left that moment when he had had to decide. He wished he hadn’t been the one to make the final decision, but his nightmares comforted him even as they ground him down, confirming that he had been right to do what he did.

  Subliminally, she drove his thoughts to remember that the Örjians dehumanised themselves. The Örjians were monsters. The psis are different. They are still people … In some ways pushed into their rebellion by the prejudices of the Will.

  He didn’t want to have to make that decision again. He had already conceived a plan to defeat the psis — with one strike. The Scorpion’s way, although he didn’t want it to come to that. He didn’t want to be the Scorpion again. She didn’t need to make him want that, which she loved him for. It meant she wasn’t controlling him. It made what she was doing okay.

  Pinter didn’t hate psis. He’d met a few before and come to no harm. He was pretty sure his life had been saved by one once. Sometimes he even suspected Gretel was one … but that was okay because she loved him and he loved her and he didn’t want a war. The last war was fifty years ago. He had to make sure it stayed that way.

  Gretel’s second-guessing was interrupted by the thoughts of the Servicemen outside as a jet began approaching with a landing code for clearance. She waited and waited, flicking the pages of her book as if she wasn’t watching through Campsey’s eyes as he rushed to the landing area.

  Her mind stretched to its full reach and touched upon a squib of Servicemen coming in to land at the jet pad. It was Abe. He was tired, thrilled, invigorated and worried. It didn’t take La Gréle long to read why.

  As Pinter, now Prime, gave orders to the Lieutenant, she stayed in his mind, following his thoughts without interfering with them. He told Campsey and the senior officers that he was the one who had shut down the Weave. ‘As soon as I had the authority to do so, I did it.’

  ‘Why would you do such a thing?’ Campsey asked. ‘The people must be petrified.’

  ‘The Weave has to be purged,’ Pinter answered. ‘Kronos was using it to seed itself. We can’t afford another Mexica.’

  ‘But the psis —’ the Lieutenant started.

  ‘I have given Ryu Shima command of the psi situation. But your fears are well-founded. It seems our little insurgents have decided to take this moment to attack.’

  This isn’t the plan … Gretel thought. With the Weave down, she had no contact with her pupils. Are they really attacking? That can’t be right. Has Tamsin changed the plan?

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There are outbreaks all over. But the most densely populated areas seem to be suffering the most. Nairobi, HK, West.’

  What he wasn’t telling them, but what La Gréle was waiting for him to focus on, was what had been found under STOC Sector 261. His becoming Prime and turning off the Weave — and even Kronos — were inconsequential to the discovery of the Pierre Jnr clones, but he didn’t want any more people to know about that than possible.

  But now she knew. And her thoughts spiralled around the repercussions and were caught in the same puzzle the Prime faced. Is it all Pierre Jnr? How many clones of himself has he made?

  ‘Is the beast doing anything?’ Pinter asked the Lieutenant, dipping his head in the direction of the black mass starting to awaken in the dawn light.

  ‘No, sir. Kronos is unchanged.’

  ‘Good. Now get a bank of full-sense command pods made ready for me. Tell everyone this is going to be the longest week of their lives.’

  PIERRE JNR BRINGS PEACE

  Geof was en route back to Seaboard when the Weave went down. One moment he was twitching through his data modules, looking at the hierarchy changes that made Pinter Prime, then his feeds cut out. Was he being punished again? Was this going to be the cost of his insubordination?

  Then the flight computer of the squib drew a new path and rolled into a course change. An incoming connection pinged for his attention.

  The Prime appeared in his overlay.

  ‘Prime,’ Geof said.

  ‘I apologise for the override, Ozenbach. The situation has changed dramatically.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Do you know why I can’t access the Weave?’

  ‘I gave the command to shut it down. I had to. Kronos has replicated all through it. We need to purge the system and the only way to do that is to turn it off and manually wipe every node.’

  ‘I see,’ Geof said.

  ‘You don’t see everything, Ozenbach. Geof, I’m not sure if I should share this with you, but I think that I must. We found something at Sector 261 which changes everything.’

  ‘What? Was Pierre Jnr there?’

  ‘Yes. And … more than one of him.’

  Geof thought about this for a moment. Possibilities and conjecture flourished and dissolved in his mind. ‘Clones?’ he surmised.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I will send you the file. And I’ll say this …’ Pinter paused and swallowed. ‘I wanted to tell you as there are so few of us who know what is really happening, and I want you to remain one of them.’

  ‘I don’t feel I know what is happening,’ Geof said.

  ‘None of us do. But you now know a little bit more about what we are up against.’

  ‘Of course, Prime. Just tell me where you need me. Where is the front?’

  ‘For you it is with Egon Shelley and Kronos.’

  ‘But Prime, I can help with Pierre Jnr.’

  ‘Ozenbach, “helping” is you finding a way to stop Kronos. That is what I need from you. I can’t help you with the Kronos problem, that needs scientists and weavers. Ryu Shima and I will manage the psi front.’

  ‘I can help with both.’

  ‘No,’ Pinter said sharply. ‘What happens with Pierre Jnr and the psis doesn’t matter if the whole planet gets consumed by black goo. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You have to find a way to stop Kronos expanding any further. We have three now: one each in Busan, Mexica and Hokkaido.’

  ‘And samples at the labs,’ Geof said. ‘And one in space.’

  ‘We need to make sure there won’t be any more.’

  ‘You want us to find a way to kill it.’

  ‘I want you to make us safe. I don’t care how at this point.’

  ‘But Colonel,
it is a living thing. It is sentient.’

  ‘Then prove it and stop it. Until you do, the Command is to find a way to eliminate the threat.’

  ‘It won’t be easy. We are still no closer than when we started.’

  ‘Of course it won’t be easy.’ The Prime tutted. ‘If it was easy, it would have been done by now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you’re right. I don’t know how, but we will find a way.’

  ‘Good. I will contact Doctor Shelley about your arrival.’

  ‘May I share what you’ve told me with Egon?’

  ‘Yes. You can share with him, but nobody else without my order.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Egon Shelley was perhaps the tallest person Geof had ever met in the flesh. Though they’d worked together in overlay and with holographic avatars, Egon’s depiction of himself obviously wasn’t to scale. He shortened himself for others.

  Geof followed a servitor that had been sent to greet him around a glorious work of architecture to the far side of the campus and the sweeping view of Buenos Aires. Of all the cities in the world and their elaborate adaptions to the weather and the wars, Buenos Aires was one of the most elegant. Ingeniously they had built aerodynamic shells around their major buildings, which could withstand the ocean like the bows of icebreakers, and the mechalogical skin could curl open when conditions allowed. From a distance, they looked perfectly smooth, but up close the shield was dimpled like the flesh of an orange — only more of a grey-blue colour.

  Along a flat wall a figure in white cotton gratuit sat cross-legged, looking out over the basin, sun striking water and windows. As Geof got closer the person stood, extending the stilts of its legs until it was fully upright, and held out its hand.

  ‘Geof Ozenbach. At last we meet in the flesh.’ Even when Egon spoke, Geof couldn’t precisely be sure of its gender. On record Egon was unspecified, but having only met through avatars he hadn’t really thought about it.