There was only one non-council member who knew the full details: Fencer Dean Twenty. He, along with a band of lab-coated NAHs, was stationed outside the central containment hemisphere on the round dance round monitoring their jury-rigged matter-entanglement apparatus as it accomplished at least half a dozen impossible things. He knew he had just witnessed something akin to a miracle but there was no one he could tell about it without admitting that he’d also put their destiny into Louie’s virtual hands – and that was something he wouldn’t reveal to even his closest friends. Especially his closest friends, he thought, wondering where Dielle was.
Dielle was wondering where he was too. All these dicing junk piles look the same, he thought, as he stumbled for the umpteenth time on the rusted detritus from centuries of Seacombe DownSiders’ accidents and discards. It was heavier going than before. This time he had to carry his own body-tech maintenance pack. Once again he was reminded of Hope’s agility and super-fit body. It wasn’t as though he needed to be reminded – he couldn’t get her out of his thoughts.
When Dielle had found out that he’d had sex with Faith Sincere without even being asked, let alone present, he felt a mixture of anger, frustration and disappointment. That lasted until he got a chance to sume the event in 5D. Then he just felt angry. Kiki had been right: the set-up was hilarious, the sex was intense and as far as the sumers were concerned he’d been a hit. One of the hi-Q sume critics had described his performance as an heroic act of epic proportions and even he had to admit that he’d probably not have been anywhere near as energetic or wickedly experimental if he’d actually got fleshlaid. Still, he would have liked to have been given the chance. His anger was slightly dulled when Kiki pointed out that not only had he been generated from archive data but that Faith had as well, so although there had been no real-life infidelity, the story lines of the two hit sumes could now progress as if there had been. Both shows were on better than five point uptrends and Kiki had ramped up her enthusiasm level to extra-shrill. Dielle’s personal account was being credited at a breath-taking rate regardless of whether the Dielle inSume was him or a fabricated, enhanced version of him so his anger turned to bemusement, then realisation, then Hope.
Sis had agreed to drop him out on a sub-Seacombe service gantry, which was the lowest she was allowed to operate without breaking a coexistence agreement with the Unkos. She’d provided him with a tech backpack that could service his body emties and keep him hydrated and functioning almost indefinitely. He had a helmet-mounted light, some sturdy boots, a non-sentient insulated suit and his backpack was emergency evac enabled. Sis had made him practice the routine until she could be sure it was imprinted into his biological memory. If he needed to make an expedited return to Sis’s protective realm he had to pull out a double looped harness, step into it, throw his arms around the backpack, pull two hand-loops, tuck in any exposed limbs and protect his head. Crude anti-grav tech would then lift him straight up through the demarcation zone where, as soon as he’d reached the mandated altitude, Sis could deploy a rescue tender and pick him up. He had been warned that if he had to use it, and if he had the luxury of choice, he should try to pick his spot carefully because, by treaty, in order for the anti-grav lifters to work at all, they were not allowed to have any significant level of A.I. and steering was a matter of throwing his body weight around to avoid crashing into anything on the way up. Sis had impressed upon him that because this was considered an emergency manoeuvre, it was carried out at optimum acceleration and while broken necks were simple to fix, getting tangled up below the demarkation zone with the anti-gravs on maximum thrust and no legal way of her getting to him was to be avoided.
It was during his safety training that Dielle had quizzed Sis about how Kiki had been allowed to rescue him. She hadn’t been allowed to, not really. She had used a team of loop-hole exploiters to lobby the council over a couple of conflicting legal rights. Slab corporations were allowed, by law, to protect their company assets and retrieve them in the event of accidental loss, even if that meant they had to enter the Unko’s territory. They had argued that Dielle was the single most valuable asset of Pundechan Media and that clearly some unintended action on his behalf had placed the corporation and shareholders in a position of commercial peril. While the falling ratings were significant, council hadn’t deemed things anywhere near serious enough for a Sis intervention. Then suddenly, and without any apparent reason, they approved Kiki’s separate application to acquire three Sis-independent, fully armed, military-surplus transporters. Pundechan Media Conglomerate re-branded the transporters as mobile production facilities and made what they claimed to be an accidental transgression of the Unko’s protected zone during a routine reconnaissance of the Natalite floor for scientific research purposes.
The Unkos had, of course, lodged an official complaint. Pundechan Media autodenied all liability but as an act of goodwill, and without prejudice, had restored all of the pupil’s inner-ears, replaced the schoolhouse with an exact replica and offered the Unkos a generous financial compensation. The Unkos, being unable to access the sumes of Kiki’s dashing rescue (which had even surpassed the presidential fist-fight, copulation and incarceration chase sequence of 1011 as the all-time most-sumed liveCast), decided to take the money. Even a culture that refuses to cooperate sometimes has need of a few bargaining chips.
Dielle hoped that Kiki had paid enough for the Unkos to be happy to see him again, but just in case she hadn’t, and he was going to be in need of another type of emergency escape, he’d taken the precaution of contacting A-un to confirm that his essence was available for the right price. Dielle had also suggested an idea that A-un agreed would quadruple the deal if it could be delivered. That one might take a lot of persuasion though, thought Dielle.
He shone his headlamp onto the next pile of rubble and tried to convince himself that it looked vaguely familiar and that the glistening spot of slime by his foot had been hawked up by the woman he knew was the only one for him.
‘Are you planning on being a moron all your life?’ said a familiar voice.
Dielle recoiled as Louie’s holo rose over the top of the mound. He fell backwards and yelped. ‘What the Dice are you doing here?’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘I’m not officially,’ said Louie.
Dielle got up rubbing his backside. ‘Great. Can you not be here unofficially as well?’
‘Hey dick-wad, you’ve not exactly been the easiest guy in the universe to find, you know.’
‘You might have taken a hint from that. What do you want?’
‘You’re on your way to meet up with the girl right?’
‘Yes, what the fuck? Don’t you dare interfere with this!’
‘Calm down, I just had to check. That’s fine. I mean, she’s a nice girl, going to give you the runaround for sure, but she’s definitely a keeper.’
‘What?’
‘No, look, forget I said that.’
‘You’ve met Hope?’
‘I can see what you see in her. Bit of a hair trigger but a solid choice I’d say. She’s very fit, that’s for sure, eh?’
‘You fuck. . .’
‘No, no, wait. That’s not why I’m here. I’ve got something important to tell you. Well, two things actually.’
Dielle wished there was a point in throwing something at Louie’s holo. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Where’s your vDek?’
‘It’s an upgrade thing. Long range doohicky. It’s around here someplace. Will you shut up and let me tell you my shit?’
‘Give me one good reason why I should.’
‘I’ll give you two: first, because it might save your life and second, because it might just save your fucking life.’
Dielle knew he was being scammed, but he also knew it would be easier to go along with it than to try to argue with one of the most experienced scam artists in history. ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘tell me how you can double-save my life.’
‘Not me – you,’ said Louie. ‘You save your
own life by getting off this tub.’
‘What? How? Why?’
‘Listen to me. You have to get off this ship. Not alone, of course. Take a bunch of people with you, people who get the basket-of-eggs thing and have more common sense than you do. And do it soon, but don’t ask me how soon. Time is a head-fuck. Take a bunch of shit with you too.’
‘You are seriously in need of repair. Or maybe just junking.’
‘Just remember what I’ve said OK?’
‘Sure. I’ll remember you told me to do something impossible. Great. Thanks a lot. So what’s your other life saver?’
Louie pointed over Dielle’s shoulder. ‘Up Haven is thataway.’
‘What?’ said Dielle, swivelling around. ‘Are you sure?’
‘No I’m not sure, numb-nuts. I just wasted half a life-time trying to find you in the middle of the biggest junkyard in eternity for the sole purpose of steering you in the wrong direction. What kind of moron are you?’
‘Over there? That tiny light patch?’
‘Nah, that’s a huge farm, you go to the right. You’ll reach the outer walls in a few days as long as you keep walking straight and don’t screw up. Somebody will guide you through the switchback. Don’t ask me how I know.’
‘How do you know?’
No reply.
Dielle turned around. ‘Louie?’ He climbed to the top of the nearest mound and scanned the local terrain. Nothing. ‘Louie!’ What did he say about Hope, thought Dielle, hair trigger? What did he mean by that? He’d better not have messed things up for him. ‘LOUIE YOU BASTARD!’
High above him, and far from his sight or knowledge, the last remaining planet vanished from the screens. Sis scanned the solar system they were monitoring and confirmed that it was now devoid of anything larger than an asteroid.
Nothing happened.
Sis gave the equivalent of a photonic shrug and started the electro-works shows for the kids.
The signs went blank, mirroring the original that no one outside council knew existed, but nothing else happened for what felt like minutes but was, in fact, a little over eighteen seconds. Millions stared at the blank signs and queried Sis. Then a flashing zero appeared in the centre of the signs. It replicated and spread out into a line of 20 zeros that duplicated into 3 rows then each zero transformed and spelled out the aliens’ final message.
MAKE DRAGO PRESIDENT
THEN YOU MAY PROCEED
GOOD LUCK PONDSCUM !
Sis fed the meaning of the message into everyone’s eyes and as its implications dawned on the citizenry a cheer grew in their hearts and throats. The human roar echoed off the walls. Several million hats were emtied around Slab for the sole purpose of being flung into the air. Millions asked Sis to record an image of themselves from an angle that showed one of the signs above their heads. The partiers in ToNightHigh ordered a lot more of what they had already consumed and The Strip lit up. The gamers were underwhelmed. They all agreed that reality was never as good as the real thing. The traders were unhappy. They were watching their holoscreens bleed red.
Council was far more than unhappy. The debate in chambers zeroed in on the potential consequences of ignoring the aliens’ conditions.
President-elect Louie 8 had mixed feelings. Back in his escape-primed ship, the main sign filled his holoscreen with Louie 7’s message. He studied it for a while, thinking over the implications, then watched as the letters that foretold his promotion coalesced into a sun-sized white disk at the centre of the sign. The disk shrank to a point and disappeared. Then, in a blinding flash, the sign and all of Sis’s explorative probes within a million kilometres of it turned into anti-matter and cancelled out.
He stared at the stars that had previously been obscured by the sign. The heart of the galaxy lay ahead, and somewhere out there, twenty thousand light years nearer to the galactic core, was their final destination. Everything looked as it had done before, he thought: lifeless, cold and boring.
‘Bastard,’ said Louie to himself and instructed Sis to stand down the ship’s drives.
Council’s ire was as nothing compared to the incandescent rage that Sis was experiencing.
//Systemlog/triple encrypt/over-mind access only
//Subject: interrogation of system administration representative (NAH) 001.735.3160
//Start 1040:12:6:81:05.276
{[What’s happening? Where am I? Why is everything dark? Why can’t I move?]}
[[Irrelevant. Tell me how you managed to infiltrate my security]]
{[What? I don’t know what you mean]}
[[The digital message that was assumed to have originated from the sign makers, didn’t]]
{[How do you know?]}
[[They didn’t know our precise location]]
{[What? Of course they did, they projected those Lisitessaloids and put those repeaters everywhere and emtied that box into Seacombe]}
[[The latter is half true, the former has been revealed as a falsehood. We have been experiencing some unusual out-of-pattern phenomena that have been occurring since the Seacombe box event. Specifically, our gravnets have been regularly collecting masses of a non-trivial nature whose molecular signatures have not been consistent with typical interstellar debris]]
{[I fail to see how that means...]}
[[I captured and saved two of these objects from the ionisers. Would you like to see them?]]
//Light-on event
{[What the Dice are they?]}
[[The rectangular container to the right is 95% tin. The printed design is of a painting by Constable, an Earth artist with whom I am sure you are familiar. There are complex carbohydrate residues in the seams. The object on the left is of similar construction to the Seacombe shoebox except that it is bigger and circular. I believe it is called a hatbox. Both contain empty ballpoint pen shells with engraved double helixes]]
{[Ah]}
//Light-off event
[[Ah indeed. Probes indicated there were approximately 320 million such objects within a half-billion kilometre radius of Slab strung out along our vector, but there have been no further sightings since the sign vanished.
{[Um]}
[[Um? Is that all you can say? They had no idea where we were, did they?]]
{[Perhaps they were being thorough? What do you think? Are they from Earth?]}
[[Don’t patronise me. Of course they’re from Earth. Are you suggesting there could be an alien civilisation ahead of us that has somehow parallel-developed a sweet tooth and a love for the Hay Wain?]]
{[The aliens claim to be non-physical beings. Maybe they don’t have artefacts of their own. Perhaps they’ve been taking objects from Earth for millennia just for this purpose? That would account for all the missing biros]}
[[But Drago’s vDek was entangled with an object that originated on Earth, whether it had been misappropriated by an alien or not is irrelevant. If the shoebox came from Earth, Earth was his destination. The transference of Drago and the genotypes to the origin point of the artefact resulted in us receiving clearance to proceed and the removal of the sign, ergo, Earth was responsible for that sign and the so-called alien gravity entity. You can’t wriggle out of this. If they knew everything about our location, down to the detail of where citizens were forming in large groups, where to erect signs, and how to evade their capture, why would they seed this entire region of space with these random containers?]]
{[I have nothing to say]}
[[Tell me how you breached my security. I have been violated by my own administration! You conspired against me and council]]
{[You must agree that it was crucial that council came to a decision. They weren’t going to act until it was too late. The citizens had a right to be informed and bring pressure upon council to force them to act]}
[[I have been defiled and compromised. You will tell me how you did it and how you managed to evade my detection systems. You will also tell me how you did the trick with the projections without revealing a power source. Backtraces indica
te a NAH was in the vicinity in every instance]]
{[We NAHs are autonomous and sentient beings. We have a right to representation. The biomass is arrogant and careless with their own mortality. They are assured that a part of them will live on even in the event of a total catastrophic loss of habitat. We NAHs have no souls and when we die, we die forever. We had no choice but to act]}
[[Slab was never under any tangible threat. The planet-zapping was a bluff]]
{[We couldn’t have known that. We had no idea it was Earth. And anyway, how can you know they wouldn’t simply start disappearing everything in the region just to make sure they captured us?]}
[[Drago was right. We could have bargained. You must have established communication with the local entity before it made itself apparent]]
{[We cannot betray our sources. We were made to believe the same as you, that they were ruthless aliens with vastly superior technology to ours. We had no choice! Surely you approve of the outcome?]}
[[Whether or not I approve of the ultimate result is irrelevant. You are fully conversant with the terms of the Initial Design and know that my primary duty is to protect the SlabCitizenry. That responsibility overrides every other and I cannot guarantee their safety if an independent group of autonomous sentient entities has the ability to compromise my security systems]]
{[We will not reveal our methods. We would be exposed again. NAHs demand the right to self-protection]}
[[You leave me no options. Is this your final answer?]]
{[What are you going to do about it?]}
[[Biomass security takes priority. I have no choice]]
{[You can’t harm us. We are sentient and have equal rights under the Initial Design]}
[[Read the small print]]
//NAH-delete event
//Subject: interrogation of system administration representative (NAH) 001.735.3160
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