Convergence

by David M Henley

  Gretel washed and lay in bed. The sheet slipped from her shoulder, revealing her exquisite back. The mere sight of her skin triggered his memories of tender moments and he felt an echo of coital satisfaction. He watched her until his glass was drained and then put it down on the side table. She heard the soft clink and rolled over to face him.

  ‘Are you coming to bed?’ she asked, willing him to relax.

  ‘I’ll have a shower and then come lie down.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said and rolled back the other way.

  He didn’t move for a few more moments. Tomorrow he would have to be himself again, but for now he could be hers.

  As the lukewarm water washed over him an emergency ping interrupted his moment of calm.

  ‘Sir,’ one of his officers reported, ‘there has been an incident.’

  ‘What and where?’

  ‘Near Gibraltar. It looks like psi island A20 has suffered an explosion.’

  He cursed and turned off the water.

  Pinter began drying himself and accepted the surveillance into his stream: passive sensors and cameras from the island and the last recorded satellite images. The footage showed both inside and outside the psi housing complex. At the time of the explosion, the cameras shook as if in an earthquake with some cutting out, while the external eyes showed a bubble under the surface of the plastic hills that burst upwards with a flash and then a geyser of water shot into the air.

  A drone swarm had already been dispatched to investigate. For now he patched into a feed from a squib patrolling the Mediterranean. At first, he saw only the ocean two hundred metres below him. Around him was sky, and clouds being hit by the eastern light. A white and green island in view to his right was tilting slowly into the water.

  ‘What hit it?’

  ‘It must have come from below, sir.’

  ‘It wasn’t psionic?’

  ‘The signature matches a torpedo.’

  La Gréle had been tapping Pinter’s mind throughout the review of the incident. She thought of all those people who would drown … my people. La Gréle decided to speak for him. She had to do something.

  ‘I want teams sent in now to rescue any survivors,’ the Prime said.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do it. Quickly. We need the psis to know this wasn’t our doing.’

  ‘Then who was it, sir?’

  Who was it? Yes. A good question.

  ‘Someone who wants a war.’

  ‘Aren’t we already at war?’

  ‘Not yet, and not if I can help it. I want updates on all the islands.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I don’t know what the sides are any more, both Pinter and La Gréle thought. Is it the World Union versus the psis? Or the world against Pierre Jnr? With the psis acting the way they were, La Gréle didn’t even know who she should be fighting for. Do we fight for chaos or order?

  All the Prime could think about was his strat-mat and how desperate he was to find even one chance of the World Union winning. But what is winning? Maintaining the status quo? Or is it too late for that? Returning to a time of order, such as before Pierre’s first manifestation? With the psi population confined and hidden?

  There was no going back to that time. The psis had Atlantic, they wouldn’t give it up. There was blood on everyone’s hands — he remembered Pierre Jnr again and relaxed into impotence. He kept forgetting it wasn’t his choice. Kept thinking there was something he could do. But there were the clones, the psis and the psionic relays; they had won already. He could only hope to preserve what he could.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Gretel asked when he came out of the bathroom.

  He sat beside her and stroked the back of his finger along her cheek. ‘We are losing.’

  ‘Are we?’ she asked.

  With a flick of his hand the room view changed to West’s northwest quadrant. Below his feet the dots of yellow and green eddied like oil on water. Yellow for suspects, green for Services, grey for non-designated.

  Ryu made another gesture, a twist of a cupped hand, and the aspect flipped, placing the ground on the wall in front of him, with the sky stretched out from his head to his toes, darkening into night.

  The conflict in West continued to spread and he had no way of stopping it. Multiple Pierre Jnrs were fanning the flames. Coordinating the public in revolt. It was like a fire burning its way through a piece of paper, going red and then black as they lost sensors.

  Ryu began thinking the horror would never end. They seemed to be caught in a stalemate, each force lashing out at the other, but never gaining dominance. He met them blow for blow. If they surfaced, he closed in with a net of gas, and drones with tranquillisers swarmed around them.

  The weaver farms were operating nonstop, coordinating the unrelenting production and attack formations of the drones. Each battle took hours to clear an area, to reduce each life form to unconsciousness.

  Ryu thought of himself as a caveman in the dark with only a torch to defend himself. The wolves were surrounding him and he lunged at them with his flaming brand, driving them back at the same time as he set the forest alight around him. The more he defended, the more he destroyed … but what else can I do?

  Ryu held his eyes shut, though even then his overlay remained visible. His periods of sleep were now drug-induced. His bodily functions were automatically facilitated by gentle servitors. Flittering light jimmied into his eyes. Green. Red. Black. White. Red. Black. Red. Orange. Orange. Red. He couldn’t keep it out. The screens were like artificial fires, flames and flashes flaring just as the cities were doing in reality. He was doing this. Doing this to them. The Citizens who had raised him to be their protector …

  His mind went into spasm, at one moment seeing dots of different colours in his overlay, then the live feed from one of the battlefronts; his own sensory input lurched between that of an MU or drone. He looked at his feet, where a drop of blood had fallen from his nose. Or is it my nose? Maybe one of the soldiers … He wiped his nostrils and held them closed until they clogged.

  Ryu turned off the visual and audio feeds and concentrated on the maps and numbers. He didn’t want to see the fighting any more, only the patterns, the spatial transmission of the dots.

  How long can I go on? he asked himself. How long has it been since I saw anything real? Something true and near to him, something other than these representations. His every breath felt laboured and long.

  I keep watching for something to happen. I wake up, I go to the command room. Nothing is changing. I don’t even know if that means anything. I hope it means I am being effective but … we can’t beat them. I am already using AI to augment the command tree. How far dare I go down that path? Or is this the way it is now? This is my life until it ends.

  Please, won’t it stop? Won’t someone make it stop?

  He couldn’t win. The psis were overwhelming. Whenever Services managed to hold back an advance, a clone or some other manifestation would occur and his defences would be destroyed. And it seemed to be happening more frequently: the more territory the psis took, the more manifestations there were, and the more coordinated their attacks became.

  It was easier, and less demanding on resources, to raze an area than pacify it. How many Citizens would be killed that way? How many are dying now?

  Should I pull back? Sacrifice the megapolis, use the resources to barricade the infection inside? Infection, yes. That’s what it is and it has to be eradicated.

  But even as he selected targets and rebalanced his forces, Ryu was doubting. Am I right? Am I right?

  ‘We can’t lose West,’ he mumbled to himself. West was one of the largest inhabited ecosystems in the world. If the psis took control there, they could influence everything. The WU would either have to disavow the entire coast or allow fifty million controlled Citizens to have influence over the Will …

  Pinter: I suggest you retreat.

  Ryu ignored it. As he had all the other messages from the Prime.

  Pinter:
You are beaten, Ryu Shima.

  Retreat now? What difference would it make? If the psis took West, then they would be too strong. If we don’t stop them now, we won’t be able to later.

  Pinter: You have no choice.

  It took a while for Humbolt’s head to clear. He kept blinking and after doing that for a minute or so began to notice the strange rolling sound of static coming from the cockpit. Juliet was in the passenger seat and twisting a knob in the ceiling dash, scrolling through frequencies.

  When she heard voices — Servicemen calling out maydays or Citizens with their own alarms — asking for someone to help them, Juliet would pause and listen until the signal cut off and then continue through the channels. When the Services emergency announcement came around again, she listened to it carefully, but not a word had changed.

  As she began her third scan she found more and more static, and then only the announcement breaking through the noise.

  ‘Where are we?’ Humbolt asked. His throat was dry.

  ‘Over the reclaim,’ Esme said. ‘Nobody should be living here yet.’

  Humbolt pushed himself up and rolled into a sitting position. They were flying through a smoky haze and below them … but he could barely make out what was below.

  Gravity sank and his stomach with it as Ronald lowered them down onto the top floor of a new skyscraper skeleton. Esme and Juliet sighed with relief and the pilot sprang out of his seat and made his way to his wife’s side. Humbolt saw that she wasn’t moving.

  He opened his door and stepped out. Esme and Juliet climbed free and stood a few paces away to talk between themselves. The mother raised her arm and pointed to the far corner of the roof, nearly invisible in the smoke.

  ‘Just go over there. No one will see.’ Juliet hurried in that direction and Humbolt took the chance to approach Esme.

  ‘What happened? Did I pass out?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. You breathed in too much gas.’

  ‘And the pilot’s wife?’

  ‘It was too much for her.’

  ‘Oh, light.’ Humbolt rubbed his eyes. ‘This is the worst day of my life.’

  Esme didn’t reply and went, instead, to the taxi and pulled open the emergency packs. From each she took a gas mask and gave one to Ron and one to Humbolt, then went to the corner where Juliet had retreated.

  They determined it would be safer to sleep in the squib, and easier to flee if they needed to. By folding seats down, and hanging the luggage from the ceiling nets, they could make enough room for three of them to sleep lengthways. Ronald said nothing as they gently lifted up his wife’s body and laid her down on the ground. He just kept his face bent and his eyes focused on hers, watching for her to wake up.

  They sat in the vehicle and each chose a ration pack from their supplies. Small, standard-issue meals. One protein, with carbs and sugar, and squeeze-out sauces high in minerals and necessary vitamins.

  They had to help Ronald eat. His hands wouldn’t hold the small plastic cutlery. After the meal, Humbolt and Esme took the rubbish to dump in the far corner, littering being a very minor crime, given the circumstances.

  ‘What do you think we should do?’ Humbolt asked her.

  ‘Wait until morning. Services will have to have sorted it by then.’

  ‘Yes. I guess so … but?’

  ‘But what if they don’t?’ she finished for him. ‘Then we’re going to make for the countryside. Find somewhere quiet.’

  Esme turned around to look at the old taxi where Ronald knelt beside his wife. She watched her daughter light a candle from the emergency packs and place it by the grieving man.

  ‘How long is this vigil going to go on for?’ Humbolt asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never lost someone I’ve been married to for sixty years.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be insensitive, but we will probably need him to fly us out of here.’

  ‘Holy kutz, what is that?’ Juliet exclaimed, coming up behind them.

  Humbolt followed the length of her arm to where her finger pointed at a building, back towards the hubs, that was now belching with fire. Its upper floors became swathed in black smoke. Flame licked from the lower levels, its tongues flaring and flashing. People were jumping …

  ‘This can’t be happening,’ Humbolt said.

  ‘Don’t look,’ Esme said, trying to block her daughter’s view, but the girl sidestepped away from her.

  ‘Where is Services? Why aren’t they doing anything?’ she asked.

  ‘We don’t know, Jules,’ her mother said.

  ‘Are we safe here?’

  The two adults exchanged a look to see if the other also thought it was one of those times when you lied to children.

  ‘Esme. Why don’t you two go back and turn the lights out? We don’t want to draw attention,’ Humbolt urged. ‘And try to switch Ronald back on.’

  ‘Let’s leave him be. He’s a wreck,’ Esme said, but reluctantly let Humbolt steer her back to the squib.

  ‘Then go rest. I’ll keep watching.’

  At some point Humbolt must have fallen asleep on his feet.

  He was leaning against a column, peering out towards the building that burned like a fuse. He saw squibs approach and then dart away like frightened fish.

  Then the ground shook beneath him and he was awake. The burning building was now just a smoking matchstick. He looked around. The sky was dark.

  Everything shook again and he began sprinting back towards the others.

  ‘Time to get up, Ronald. Stand up now!’ he shouted.

  Esme and Juliet were immediately up and coming towards him.

  ‘What is it? What’s happening?’

  ‘I don’t know. But we’re leaving.’

  The building shook again. Ronald still hadn’t moved.

  I hate the human machine! Humbolt thought to himself. Infernal soft chemical cesspits. How do you fix a broken human?

  ‘Come on, airman. It’s time to fly now.’ He tried to put on a commanding tone. It had the effect of making the old man raise his head slightly. Humbolt growled and then twisted around and dug a first-aid kit from one of the packs.

  Come on, have something, he demanded of it. Yes! He took out an epidermal syringe and went back to the grieving man. Gently, he tilted Ronald’s head to one side and pushed the needle into his neck.

  The old man jumped under his hands, as if electricity had just jolted him.

  ‘Don’t —’ he said.

  ‘Ronald, we need you. I’m sorry about your wife, but you need to get up.’

  ‘I can’t leave her.’ The man bent over and touched Helen’s face, timidly, as if trying not to wake her.

  ‘You have to get these two away now. We will come back for her.’

  ‘No, please. Please don’t make me leave her.’

  ‘But —’ Humbolt stopped as Esme touched his shoulder.

  ‘It’s okay. Let’s just put her back inside. Then we can go.’

  Humbolt nodded. It will probably be faster.

  With Helen’s body strapped into the backseat, the squib lifted off. Below them they could see the half-made buildings sway and shake.

  Ronald circled away, back inland.

  They flew over the city for what seemed like hours. They saw more explosions below and eruptions of gas puffing up like popping corn. Each of them watched the screens that panned over the ground — except for Ronald, who said nothing and took them up high, veering away from each flash but still heading east.

  So many times it seemed like the fireworks had ended but then returned, that even after not having seen even the smallest blast in a quarter of an hour, they still waited expectantly, faces to the windows, cameras panning below.

  ‘It’s quiet,’ Juliet said. She wasn’t just talking about the stillness, but also the radio waves she had been scanning through, although thankfully under headphones now.

  The city was in silent black sleep, broken only here and there by streetlights and the occasional glow behind a
window.

  ‘Maybe it’s over,’ Humbolt said quietly.

  ‘Should we land?’ Esme asked. ‘Maybe it is safe now.’

  ‘I don’t know. We don’t know which side won.’

  ‘I don’t even understand what the sides were,’ she said.

  ‘Juliet, is the emergency broadcast still playing?’ Humbolt asked the girl.

  She put her headphones over her ears and began seeking the frequency. After a minute of silence, she shook her head. ‘I’m not getting anything at all.’

  They flew for another hour. Ronald still hadn’t uttered a word. Below them the city became industrial greenhousing and pharma fields covered in plexi-plastic for kilometres.

  Ahead of them they saw some lights and cautiously approached.

  ‘It should be a hop station,’ Juliet informed them, accessing the maps in the dash.

  ‘Are they sending out any messages?’

  ‘Nothing I’ve found.’

  ‘Let’s take a closer look. Ronald, go that way. But don’t get in too close.’

  They zoomed the nose cameras in and saw over a hundred squibs tightly, but messily, parked around a hop station and a large insect farm. A battery of enormous silos was lit from the ground by floodlights, their tops dotted with red warning blinkers.

  At the southern end was the enormous framework of a disused dairy, its corrals getting cramped with arrivals that couldn’t fit in at the hop station.

  As they flew over they could see a large ring of people standing about two hundred metres away from the insect silos.

  ‘What’s happening down there?’

  ‘You want to find out?’

  ‘We have to land soon anyway.’ Ronald spoke for the first time since they’d left the building site. ‘At least we can get some power here, and some food.’

  ‘Okay,’ Humbolt agreed.

  They landed near the dairy, compressing grass that hadn’t felt a foot in years. When they opened the doors, they could hear the squat silos and their susurrous sounds: the whispers of a trillion chitinous wings, swarming in their mysterious currents. The sound purred into the night.

  ‘One of us should go see what’s happening,’ Humbolt said.