Cyber Sparks

by Robert Appleton

  She tightened her face into a puzzled scowl. “You just said he caused the market fire, that he killed nine hundred people. Rinko and Phyllis. And suddenly he’s on our side? Girl, sometimes you frighten me.”

  “You and me both.” I couldn’t get used to the no-nonsense Lenore—she’d lost all trace of bubbliness and bubbleheadedness, and though our cab headed out beyond medium orbit, into the domain of high-powered satellites, nothing was more alien than her grave demeanor.

  “And we’re about to find out what’s really going on.” I pointed out our cab’s brake light on the dash. We seemed to be heading straight for a small dish commune, an oblong satellite ship about the length of a football field with a sizeable interstellar receptor dish on top. Strangely, this dish didn’t point out into space—it pointed at us, back toward Earth.

  “Weren’t these things abandoned ages ago?” Lenore pulled up the vessel’s details on the cab’s scanner screen. “There—Pioneer Class relay ship Santa Maria, officially retired over twenty years ago. Extensive greenhouse, front and rear docking, two labs and crew quarters. Capable of sustaining three people indefinitely.”

  “Yeah, before it bought the farm.”

  “Um, that’s not what the scanner thinks. Look, it’s supposed to be defunct but the power reading is pretty high. It’s fluctuating like crazy but there’s definitely something going on in there.”

  The cold of space suddenly reached in and squeezed my spleen. “I wish we had spacesuits…just in case.” The engineers inspecting the wheel spoke had used all the shuttle cab’s emergency suits, which left us utterly reliant on air and temperature regulators. Hopefully the Santa Maria’s were in good working order.

  Lenore leaned over, whispered in my ear, “We can still turn back. All we have to do is unplug the omni and do an about-turn. We don’t have to follow the Yellow Brick Road to the end, you know.”

  A part of me screamed out in agreement. I’d been embroiled in puzzles and deaths ever since I’d first talked to Satto. But I had to know what was behind this cyber curtain. For whatever reason, he’d selected me out of all the omniyers in D.C., and he’d gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure this meeting took place.

  I was not Dorothy. This wizard wanted an audience with me.

  Either side of the silver-and-green vessel that loomed ahead, flashing lights and reflected glimmers identified dozens of other satellites, seemingly static in their near-identical orbits. Our invisible pilot flew us into the Santa Maria’s rear dock, a tight, cluttered bay in which another shuttle cab was already berthed. It appeared empty.

  As soon as the airlock doors were sealed, Satto’s voice made me jump. He spoke directly to me, as the omnipod was still on the dash, held magnetically in place. “You were wise to trust me, Allegra. And brave. Now we can finally meet face-to-face, as it were.”

  Lenore caught my darting glance, mouthed, Is that him?

  I winked.

  How’s that possible? She touched her earlobe, as if to say, You’re not even wearing an earpiece? You shouldn’t be able to hear him.

  I shrugged, then mouthed back, Fucked if I know.

  Lip-reading etiquette 101: when in doubt, assume the speaker has a potty mouth. It’s more fun, even when you’re wrong.

  What now? she asked.

  I held up a finger, signaling for her to wait. Satto was calling the shots here—I didn’t want to make a move without his say-so, not before I knew who I was really dealing with.

  “It is safe for you both to leave the shuttle cab,” he said. “Make your way through the inner access doors, and bring your omnipod.”

  Lenore and I held hands as we negotiated the slippery metal bay floor barefoot—some kind of red moss had grown over thin patches of soil, as though run-off moisture from the greenhouse at the top of the slope had smuggled bits of earth with it. At least it was warm and spongy underfoot.

  The magno-locked doors opened of their own accord, which meant someone had overridden the security access controls. A strong waft of pulpy perfume greeted us inside. The garden itself, a massively overgrown tangle of vines and giant leaves, soon became a sweltering tropical thicket as we made our way through at Satto’s bidding, the echo-pops of moisture droplets feeding murky puddles reminding me of the onset of the monsoon season on my home world. But no other life appeared to exist here—just endless, strangling vegetation and a vast array of fruit at varying degrees of ripeness. Enough to sustain life, yes, but what idiot would let his eco-system grow so out of control?

  By the time we reached the far side, Lenore and I both looked like we’d been marinated in a fruit salad.

  “There are towels and robes in the first room on your right,” Satto said. “Or if you prefer, you could wear nothing.”

  “Ha!” I slid my headset on. “If you wanted a show, you should’ve tried our agents first, you sleazy shit.”

  Poor Lenore, more bemused than ever, wrung her sopping tank top onto the mossy floor of the bridge. Every chair, every inch of wall space, the dash controls, the crates of lab equipment and canned food, the stacks of flash drives and music labels standing on a shelf to the left of the co-pilot’s chair—all were covered with red moss, vein-like orange vines, and the occasional horseshoe-shaped white shoot.

  “Actually, Allegra, your coarse assumptions do you a disservice. I couldn’t care less whether you go naked or not.”

  “Oh? You mean with plants being asexual and all that. I get it. So which one are you?”

  “Not one you are familiar with. I’m more, shall we say, viral.”

  I shuddered, gazed around the giant plant pot. “Um, Satto, I was joking, pal.”

  “I know. I’m not.”

  Lenore crept toward the pilots’ chairs, slithering in her bare feet. “All right, enough of these Chinese whispers, dickhead. Who are you? What do you want with Allegra?”

  All of a sudden his voice rang out through the Santa Maria, and I slid my headset off. “Welcome aboard, Lenore. I didn’t invite you, but we can certainly find a place for you here while Allegra and I talk. You can call me Satto—”

  “I know what to call you, and it ain’t that pretty. Why don’t you show yourself?”

  “Because I cannot.”

  “Why not?”

  “Would you ask a sound to show itself? Or a thought to reveal its face?”

  She folded her arms. “That’d be a start.”

  It occurred to me, as I scanned the stacks of flash drives and music labels next to the co-pilot’s console, where I’d heard his voice before. It wasn’t exactly the same—like I said, it had some kind of electronic filter—but I was ninety percent certain Satto Vasir had to be the phantom orbital DJ, Gideon Briar, whom the authorities had spent years searching for. The search had ended several months ago, coincidently around the same time his radio signal, after pinging between the thousands of satellites, untraceable for so long, had stopped. It all seemed to fit: the unlikely habitat, the powerful dish, endless water and food and solar energy, his apparent omnipotence no doubt gained through the use of multiple satellites watching D.C. And Briar had always been anti-establishment. Satirical more than anything, but he’d ridiculed omnipods and other consumer tech quite often.

  But could all this be the work of one pirate DJ?

  “Lenore, won’t you have a seat? The floor’s much too slippery for you. There, swivel the pilot’s seat around and take a load off.”

  She flung herself away and gave a cry of horror as soon as she touched the seatback. It spun slowly, squeaking, as she hit the deck.

  The seat was already occupied, after a manner.

  The pilot had been dead a long time—his moss-covered skull and bony arms and the wild, faded colors of his T-shirt were now infused with the garden’s DNA.

  I shut my eyes and crouched beside Lenore, doing my best t
o calm her hyperventilating. A combination of gentle caresses and soothing words did the trick, and she rested her head in my lap, staring at the music labels.

  “Satto, is your real name Gideon Briar?” I had to know.

  He didn’t respond right away, and Lenore pulled hard on the hem of my skirt, her way of asking if I was smogged or not. The conclusion made perfect sense to me, a straight A to B, but I’d already siphoned the facts from my own experience. To her, it must’ve sounded like a leap from A to S, with an extra S added for good measure.

  “My name is Satto Vasir. The man you see in the chair was formerly Gideon Briar. You knew his daughter, Phyllis.”

  Son of a bitch. Too much use of the past tense for so recent a loss. “Knew? We were there when she died. When you killed her!”

  “That was unfortunate. But the timing of the explosion was for your benefit, Allegra. Phyllis just happened to be with you.”

  “Excuse me? My benefit?” Was he somehow trying to lay the blame on me? “Start talking, jerk, before we leave immediately and tell the authorities where you are.”

  “I am about to explain everything to you. But first, Lenore must leave us—she must wait in the laboratory to your right, the second door from the bow. I will let you know when to fetch her. That is the only way I will divulge the truth—to you alone.”

  Curiouser and curiouser. Either he was shy or there was more to this meeting than a face-to-face chinwag—a lot more. He’d brought me up here for something important, but what? And why the continued secrecy?

  “Will you be all right on your own for a bit?” I hated separating from her, but she’d only be in the next room, and my hunger for the answer to this riddle had begun to bite.

  She shot me a disappointed glance, as if I’d let the side down, then she got up and left. “Don’t promise him anything you’ll regret later,” she said over her shoulder as the door eased closed behind her.

  I scanned the empty, moss-laden room, finally gazing out of the front window at the rash of white clouds covering southeast China. The insanity of my situation zapped me like an X-ray, and I felt utterly naked.

  “So—we’ve got a room to ourselves at last. A Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Decent aircon. Good heating. Plenty to eat. You mind telling me what the fuck’s on your mind?”

  “Your humor is lost on me, Allegra. It supposes emotion, of which I am entirely incapable.”

  I snorted. “No shit. You’re about as much fun as a lobotomy. So what are you? A cyborg? AI?” Sitting cross-legged on the floor—my yoga position—seemed as comfortable a position as any.

  “Neither. You don’t have a name for what I am.”

  “Try me. Describe yourself, and I bet I can fit you into a crossword.” Keeping the conversation light helped dispel the tension, but it was more a reflex. Deep down, I could feel my anchor teetering over a dark, unfathomable drop.

  “I am what humanity is in danger of becoming. I am the future you must not find.”

  “Okaaay. I’m scanning 6 across for that one. Wanna try me again?”

  “Allegra, I come from a system many light-years from here, on the far side of the galaxy. My ring of worlds is now only a memory, for while life still thrives there, our race no longer can.”

  “Why not?” I should be overawed by the discovery of a brand new alien species from the far reaches of the galaxy, but all I heard was the same voice I’d spoken to over the past few days. The shock would have to spill out later—one more shock on account—the day was already backed up with them.

  But truthfully, an alien terrorist? What could anyone say to that?

  “We have evolved out of our physical forms, so we no longer need those worlds for sustenance. We can easily render ourselves to electrical form, though by nature we are closer to a morphous energy.” Satto spoke of these outrageous ideas so matter-of-factly, he might have been regurgitating yesterday’s tabloid gossip. “Once, we were as you are now, masters of technology, beginning to grasp the amazing implications of the neural-digital interface. The more we implemented this science, the more excited we became by the idea of divorcing our minds from our bodies altogether.

  “Think of it—no longer having to feed, sleep, cure ailments, expire after the natural term of our bodies. We were on the threshold of immortality. Our version of your podnet, your cyberspace, achieved artificial intelligence and grew infinitely complex, but it was also fully integrated into our own biological brains. Think of a hive mind, except each being was also sentient if he chose to be. Within a few generations, we’d redesigned our civilization to its utmost efficiency, which left us far more time to ponder, to muse, to invent. We began to share information faster than any digital system could handle.

  “That’s when the first of us evolved completely beyond the physical. What humans refer to as coining, or astral travel, is a temporary likeness to our ultimate permanent state, to what I am now. The difference is that during coining, the human can return to its body at any time. All those emotions, physical wants and needs, the depths of its id, are vital components of the human being. They might be burdens sometimes, they might make life difficult, but they’re also the source of your dreams, your passions, that hunger for life you wear so proudly as a species.

  “We were that way once. But the uncoupling of our minds from our physical bodies—a seamless event over which we had no control—eventually evolved us into a species of cosmic drifters, without home, without emotion, without purpose. All we feel, if that word can even be applied, is a constant exultation—that which we strived for all along but which I have long grown weary of. The evolutionary jump was too premature. The rip was too severe. I think a great number of us still reside together in the original hive community, wandering the universe, soaking up knowledge and discoveries like an insatiable sponge. But they can no longer experience the joy of giving birth, the great heights and depths of love, the pride one cherishes at the end of a life dearly spent.

  “My message for humanity is this—knowledge, even at its infinite reaches, is no substitute for wisdom. A being can live a thousand lifetimes and uncover all the secrets the universe has to offer; but if he’s left love and fear behind, he’s—” There Satto paused, as if an inkling of long-lost emotion had infected his saturnine being.

  “Then he’s a living encyclopedia, high on himself,” I finished for him. “If he’s got nothing to lose, eventually he’s going to get bored. Or lost. Like you, Satto?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Well, that’s quite a story. Amazing, even. And it’s nice to finally know who I’ve been talking to. But why bring me all the way up here for a face-to-face when you’ve clearly got no freaking face? And what does any of this have to do with me?”

  Any pity I’d felt for him during his story quickly evaporated as I remembered the awful fire in the market circle, the friends I’d lost, Lenore straining to escape me and hurl herself into the pyre. Where was the wisdom in any of that?

  “Allegra, I need you to help me manage humanity, to dissuade it from following the same regretful course my species took. Your virtual reality technology is becoming more and more addictive to its users. The podnet has grown exponentially these past few years. And with the emergence of coiners across all your colonies, it is clear humanity is approaching a vital stage in its evolution. If it pursues its current course, the fate that befell my species could easily befall yours. Virtual coiners, those able to venture inside the data streams and directly communicate with the minds of other users, will be the catalysts for a chain reaction that could unite humanity the way our cyber-hive intelligence united us. If that happens, the proliferation of human coiners might very well signal the end of humanity’s physical presence on Earth.

  “I cannot allow that to happen. Your fate must not be mine.”

  The urge to fetch Lenore immediately and flee a million light-year
s from the Santa Maria almost came to fruition—I was beginning to realize the bitter insanity behind Satto’s plan. He’d lost his own way of life, and now he was hell-bent on making sure we didn’t make the same mistake. But why all the skullduggery?

  “Wouldn’t it be better to tell your story to ISPA, or the Earth Administration? Surely that would be more persuasive than sending encrypted messages to a handful of civilian omniyers. I mean, what can I do that ISPA can’t? You’ve dragged me up here to help you convince the world to lay off its cyber tech—I’d say we’ve got our work cut out there, pal.”

  “The authorities already know of my existence. To gain my current form, I had to absorb the memories and consciousness of Gideon Briar—a procedure he volunteered for, I must add. Unfortunately, he was not strong enough to survive the frequent disassociation from his body, and so we had to meld permanently. His body died but he lives as a part of me.”

  “That’s why you sound like him.”

  “Yes. And in my current electrical form, I have full control of the vast network of satellites orbiting Earth. When the Earth Administration discovered I had infiltrated their entire network, they tried to shut it down. In turn, I rendered Earth’s defenses inert for a day and assured them if they ever tried to tamper with the satellites again, there would be more serious reprisals. They seem to have got the message, as I haven’t heard from them in some time.”

  I recalled the undercover military personnel loading their fleet of shuttle cabs under the sky port. For what purpose I couldn’t imagine, but something told me it was connected with this hijacking of the satellites. Was ISPA mounting a secret operation to regain control of the network, posing as maintenance men in simple shuttle cabs?

  Finally, something Satto didn’t know—I hoped.

  “Satto—” The true meaning of his name dawned on me, and I hit my forehead with the heel of my palm. “That was pretty clever, man. Overseer. Sat, as in satellite. Sat Overseer. You told me who you were right from the start.”

  “In a manner.”