Standing Wave

by Howard V. Hendrix

  She looked at Doctor Vang’s chief local operative, Harmon Dogon, and in that instant she knew what he was thinking too. The transluminal portal. The Tetragrammaton program had worked. The points of light inside it could only be stars and planets in a part of the universe human beings had never seen before.

  Mei-Ling looked at Phelonious Manqué on another monitor, inside his Stonehenge ring, staring triumphantly up at his own monitor’s image of the hole growing in the sky. One look at his face and she knew what he was thinking as well. The final predator. The points of light inside it—the glint of unimaginable teeth in the maw of a hungry god.

  Phelonious raised his face toward it fully and spread his arms wide.

  “Take and eat!” he shouted.

  She and Erinye and Martin could not wait for time to enlighten them as to the true nature of the thing, could not pause for some sign to distinguish among all those hopes and fears. The black hole sun up above was beginning to expand. She and her co-workers activated the encryption lock Mei-Ling had put together to stop the information flow out of the ALEPH, then darted for the fire exit tunnel. That would dump them out near the base of the mesa—if they were lucky.

  Above them, the rainbow-haloed black sun had begun to absorb the abbey and its inhabitants and the rock itself. The stone of the rock shook and quivered like a living thing. Mei-Ling and Jackson and Tanaka scurried, pitiful rats, away from the monstrous thing that was sinking this tall ship of stone, the thing Phelonious had brought into being—

  Mei-Ling shook her head. She had been silent so long that Robert was glancing expectantly at her. Manqué’s smile had grown horrifying in the broad expanse of its beatific self-assurance. She felt as if he were drawing her into his psychopathy, into a madness arising not from the repression of memory and trauma but from the inability to repress those things. She shook her head—again.

  “The nature of what happened that day is still far from completely understood,” she said. “Whatever it was, it stopped. If it was your information density singularity, then what would have prevented it from absorbing everything into itself? Swallowing the whole planet—or even more?”

  Phelonious Manqué laughed then, and both of his “guests” shivered inadvertently.

  “All or nothing,” Manqué/Kong said mockingly. “You sound like those physicists before the first nuclear device was detonated at Trinity. Some of them thought it wouldn’t work at all. Some of them thought it would cause all the oxygen in the atmosphere to ignite and burn up the whole world! Neither the all nor the nothing happened. It was the same thing at Sedona. The cosmos didn’t end, nor even just our universe. The portal, once it opened, could not exceed its informational Schwarzschild radius—”

  “That’s just it!” Mei-Ling retorted. “Informational this, informational that, but nobody’s ever yet offered a valid test for Friedkin’s ‘information-based cosmos’ theory—”

  Manqué made his understatedly mild dismissive gesture again.

  “If you choose to deny the evidence of your own senses, fine,” he said. “We can argue the peculiar jargon of the very large and the very small. We can talk of manifold universes and infinitesimal particles and superstrings and twenty-five dimensional things until we no longer have breath. But you and I have been where your young friend here has never gone, Mei-Ling. To that place where cosmology and subatomic physics overlap. Even you must have awakened to a necessary consciousness, there. A logical conclusion, stemming from the Paine hypothesis. Something had to be found to limit and counter our false ascendancy as a species. To end the unconsciousness, the sleep of generations.”

  Robert stepped forward.

  “That was what the black hole sun was for?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

  “The silent one speaks,” Manqué said, his beatific grin briefly slipping into a smirk. “Yes. It was right there in front of us. Why else had we striven to develop intelligent machines, but to destroy ourselves? We knew we were out of balance, so—unconsciously—we had begun eroding our consciousness, the very thing that separates us from machines.”

  “How, though?” Robert asked with a quick glance at Mei-Ling, shifting uneasily on his feet.

  “Our information technologies,” Manqué said, somewhat pedantically, “vastly intensify the power of social responsibility over individual freedom. They are transforming us from semi-conscious beings back into totally unconscious mannequins. Manicheans. Collapsing into binarism. All or nothing. Zero, one. Machine-eans. No balance. Subconsciously, preconsciously, we knew how wrong it was, to have no real predators, no limits on our numbers. Why else would we have been destroying the individual self—unless we wanted to self-destruct? For a very long time we as a species had been unconsciously desiring to do the very thing I tried to do. Quite consciously.”

  Manqué almost appeared to be caught up in his rant. Robert glanced more confidently at Mei-Ling, as if he were thinking to run some good cop/back cop routine on Manqué. Mei-Ling doubted such a ruse would do anything more than entertain Manqué/Kong briefly, but it was too late now.

  “And the ALEPH was the key?” Robert asked.

  “Absolutely,” the prisoner said almost happily. “Mei-Ling, you once told me yourself the ALEPH was more artwork than anything else. As the man said, Art’s not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it. You gave me my hammer, Mei-Ling, but then you took it away before I had a chance to shape the world with it. The whole world might have seen our art, if you hadn’t stopped it.”

  “I had no choice,” Mei-Ling said, in a voice that sounded too pleading and exculpatory in her own ears. “It might have destroyed everything.”

  “There is always a choice,” Phelonious said quietly. “It might have transformed everything. But no matter. The transformation continues. What else could have brought you to see me?”

  Robert and Mei-Ling glanced at each other.

  “What do you mean?” Robert asked.

  Manqué’s grin turned abruptly into frown and grimace.

  “Please, Ms. Magnus,” the prisoner said, “tell your little British friend that I grow tired of his empty-headed police games. Though your ‘justice’ would keep me as benighted and shit-fed as a barnyard fungus, though I am denied any access to the infosphere, though I have only this ancient mechanical typewriter on which to record my thoughts—why not clay tablets for cuneiform, while you’re at it?—yet, yet, I am still allowed the occasional recycled newspaper, or ancient magazine, or web printout. I read most carefully behind their lines.”

  “You know about the Light, then?” Robert asked, speaking up again in an attempt to redeem his own intellectual standing in the eyes of this mass-murderer standing before them.

  “Of course I know about the Light,” Manqué/Kong said with a short snort of laughter. “I experienced it, even here. It passed through the globe itself as readily as any neutrino, but in a much more interesting fashion. The other investigators sent by your Mr. Landau and Dr. Mulla told me at least as much through their questions as I told them through my answers. I don’t want to play that little game any longer. If you want information from me, you must give information to me. If you want my help, you have to help me.”

  Mei-Ling glanced briefly at Robert, as if to say Now look at what you’ve gotten us into.

  “How much do you know?” Mei-Ling asked.

  “Ah, that’s better,” Manqué said with a nod. “Not so much as you out in the world who are not similarly constrained, certainly. But the Light would appear to have been the result of the generation of an information density singularity. My dear RATs were involved in gathering the information for it. That’s why you’re here. Quid pro quo, now. How much do you know about the Light?”

  Mei-Ling glanced at Robert and immediately decided that trying to play any sort of game with Manqué would be absolutely foolish.

  “It originated in space not far from HOME 1,” Mei-Ling began, recalling briefing materials given her by Mulla and Landau. �
�The person who was supposedly responsible for it, Jiro Yamaguchi, had been dead for over a year. He apparently died during an attempt to transfer his consciousness to some sort of machine-based artificial brain.”

  “The transfer, though, seems to have worked,” Manqué said, “at least after a fashion...?”

  “So it would appear,” Mei-Ling said with a nod. “The machine systems he’d ‘transferred’ himself to were reactivated by the chief web spider up in HOME 1, Lakshmi Ngubo. The result was that the consciousness-construct of the former Jiro Yamaguchi began to infiltrate HOME’s systems. It started with the HOME master control system Ngubo herself had designed, the Variform Autonomous Joint Reasoning Activity, or VAJRA—”

  “When did my RATs come into play?” Manqué said, a slight impatience in his voice.

  “Apparently after the Yamaguchi construct began moving out into the totality of the infosphere,” Mei-Ling said. “We don’t know where he found the RATs. Maybe you can tell us...?”

  Manqué, standing silent and smiling, was not forthcoming.

  “Through the use of the RATs and control of the nanotech used to build the orbital solar power satellites,” Mei-Ling continued, glancing at Robert for help here, “the Yamaguchi construct created something akin to photorefractive holographic projectors—”

  “Which are?” Manqué asked flatly.

  “Dr. Mulla’s people say they’re arrays of microscopic lasers embedded in photorefractive material,” Robert explained. “Powered by layers of solar exchange film. Their best guess was that the film functioned as both power source and memory matrix. X-shaped information-refractive satellites. We have not been able to duplicate them.”

  Manqué/Kong gave a curt nod as a gesture for Mei-Ling to continue.

  “The Yamaguchi construct used the RATs to gather and shape information from throughout the infosphere,” Mei-Ling said. “The X-sats began appearing in a necklace all about the Earth. There was a mass infiltration of the infosphere by Yamaguchi’s RATs and related programs. All this made authorities here on Earth very nervous.”

  Manqué laughed, but said nothing.

  “To the military,” Mei-Ling continued, “the ‘Building The Ruins’ game the Yamaguchi construct was using to shape the information looked a lot like strategic and tactical scenarios, to the military. Forces from Earth came very close to invading the orbital habitat before the crisis passed.”

  “How, exactly, did ‘the crisis’ do that?” Manqué asked, suddenly very attentive.

  “The Yamaguchi construct underwent something that’s been described as a ‘portal experience’,” Mei-Ling said, hesitantly, aware that she was on much more speculative ground here. “Yamaguchi left our spacetime plane and went elsewhere.”

  “In theological terms, he transcended, then?” Manqué/Kong said, more than asked.

  Mei-Ling nodded.

  “Yes, that would be the word for it, in that context,” she agreed. “In undergoing that apotheosis or dimensional shift or whatever it was, the Yamaguchi construct shed a torrent of shaped information—”

  “A kenosis,” Manqué said, nodding vigorously, beginning to pace his death cube of burning light.

  Mei-Ling looked confused for an instant, then recovered.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know that term,” she said. “Dr. Mulla’s people are agreed, though, that the information pulse was facilitated through the X-shaped satellites. That pulse is popularly referred to as the Light.”

  Robert glanced up from the floor.

  “It’s also been described as a simultaneous omnidirectional wave of hyperconsciousness,” he said, trying to be helpful. “Also as an ‘irenic apocalypse’.”

  “Yes, of course,” Manqué said, nodding, pacing. “Exactly. What was the nature of the Light’s interaction? Was it recorded?”

  “Film, video and holo records show lightpaths spiking everywhere,” Mei-Ling said. “A distortion of space about the heads of human beings, and above the cranial region of some other creatures as well. Eyes remming fiercely. Knots of sensitive flame like distorted rainbows. All lasting only a brief flash.”

  “Paraclete tongues of fire,” Manqué said, nodding as he paced. Looking at him, Mei-Ling thought of a happy pyromaniac, for some reason. “Yes, yes. What happened to the X-shaped satellites?”

  “Apparently they destroyed themselves in discharging the Light,” Robert said. “With all of them gone from cislunar space, with the RATs and Building the Ruins game gone from the infosphere, the tensions between Earth and the habitat dissolved. The invasion was halted.”

  “Fascinating,” Manqué said, stopping from his pacing, turning his gaze fixedly to Mei-Ling. “They functioned as self-consuming artifacts. I presume you recognize the points of contact between what happened around this Light and our moment of aborted glory above Sedona?”

  Mei-Ling nodded and glanced down at the floor of the cell.

  “The thought had occurred to me,” she said quietly.

  “What do you mean?” Robert asked, looking from Mei-Ling to Manqué. Manqué said nothing, waiting expectantly on what Mei-Ling might say.

  “The X-satellites would seem to have some similarities to the holojector-like devices you insisted we install at the abbey,” Mei-Ling said, glancing at Manqué. “Some of the phenomena surrounding the black hole sun resembled the phenomena surrounding the Light. Particularly the knotted or distorted images of rainbow fire.”

  “Very good, Ms. Magnus,” Manqué said, like a teacher bestowing approval on a student’s very appropriate answer. He abruptly sat down at the chair beside the desk. “That still doesn’t explain fully why you’ve come to see me, however. Your description mentioned nothing about the Light killing anyone. Or a new black hole sun expanding uncontrollably through space. Or RATs in the wainscoting again—which I suppose you believe are my areas of expertise.”

  Mei-Ling glanced down at the floor again.

  “We have no evidence that the Light was itself harmful to anyone,” she said. “Since its advent, however, there have been several simultaneous waves of deaths throughout the world and in near-Earth space. Something striking people through the infosphere, usually while they were looking into certain data constellations. Most specifically those data sets involving Tetragrammaton, Crystal Memory Dynamics and its connection to the Blue Spike trade, even the Light itself.”

  Manqué/Kong drummed his fingers lightly and excitedly on the tabletop.

  “A murderer both serial and mass—simultaneously,” he said, intrigued. “Wonderful! I’m only accused of being a mass murderer, myself. And how are you referring to this fascinating character who operates in different spaces at the same time?”

  “A parallel killer,” Robert said. “Some in the media are calling them the ‘topological voyeur’ killings.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard something about that,” Manqué/Kong said. “And you say Tetragrammaton is involved too. Why bring me into it, though? I have no connection with the Program any longer. I already took the spear for them, wouldn’t you say? And, as you can see, I have no electronic access whatsoever.”

  “You’re a potential asset because of the nature of the deaths,” Mei-Ling said. “Those murdered were dimensionally distorted. Topologically reduced and expanded. Your RATs and their information-gathering propensities are probably involved. The spatial distortion surrounding the victims also bears some resemblance to a controlled version of the ‘black hole sun’ effect.”

  The prisoner from his death cube fixed her with his stare.

  “And you say these waves of killings started after the Light?” Manqué asked. “Intriguing. And, if not me, you suspect—whom?”

  “We suspected a machine intelligence at first,” Mei-Ling said, “because of the vast amounts of sheer data manipulation involved. Now I must believe the perpetrator is human. It has the human twist to it, the desire for control, for power over others. We suspect the killer is someone who feels wronged by one of those groups whose data our perpetrator is
so zealously protecting. Perhaps in order to protect himself.”

  Robert looked at Mei-Ling quickly. That last part was a new angle, certainly. He glanced at Manqué, who seemed lost in thought, as if contemplating a complex chess problem to a dozen moves ahead. Mei-Ling and Robert waited expectantly.

  “Interesting,” Manqué said at last. “That all seems logical enough. But you’re missing something. I’ll give you a little hint. You mentioned a game played throughout the infosphere before this Yamaguchi person zapped out of our spacetime. Look for a sore loser. An unrecognized genius who might feel that the prize of transcendence is rightfully his. Or hers.”

  Mei-Ling nodded as Robert took notes.

  “Quid pro quo, sir,” she said at last. “What do you want in return?”

  “Access,” Manqué said, in a suspiciously sweet voice that nonetheless affected Mei-Ling like the sound of teeth grinding. “I want back into the infosphere. How can I help you otherwise?”

  “You know I can’t grant you that,” Mei-Ling said evenly. “There are courts and boards and officials at a dozen levels—”

  “And you can get to them!” Manqué said, his right hand clenching into a fist. “Tell them they can monitor every information exchange I engage in. They can wire everything with kill switches. Tell them if I don’t get access, you get nothing more from me. And you need me—they need me.”

  He pounded the table on this last, once, very hard.

  “You don’t really think,” he said forcefully, “that Yamaguchi or my RATs or your topo killer were able to bend spacetime like that all by themselves, do you? Something much bigger is involved. Tell your ‘authorities’ that a lot more than just these insignificant killings are at stake. Tell them a lot more than just our pitiful little planet is at stake.”

  After that outburst, Martin Kong, A.K.A Phelonious Manqué, lapsed into a silence so total that nothing Mei-Ling or Robert could say or do would rouse him from it. Mei-Ling told him that she and Robert would lobby for Manqué’s limited access. She told him they would do so before they left for Edwards spaceport to travel to the orbital habitats. Robert said they were going in hopes of interviewing Lakshmi Ngubo and Yamaguchi’s elder brother Seiji.