//End 1040:12:6:81:07.931
Sis emtied over a flotilla of probes to sample the vacuum that had been left behind.
‘It’s gone,’ she confirmed. ‘I can find no evidence that it was ever even there. Not so much as a stray molecule.’
‘Maybe it never was,’ said Louie.
‘Are you suggesting I fabricated the whole thing?’
‘You have already demonstrated that you’re capable of it.’
‘Why would I go to such enormous lengths to get hold of some DNA I was already the guardian over?’
‘Sport?’
‘And the disappeared moons and planets? Where do you suppose I put those?’
‘The only evidence we have that there was anything out there in the first place was through your systems and those floating screens, which I note have now all disappeared,’ said Louie. ‘Very handy for you. How did the aliens know where to put them all?’
‘I have no time for this. If you are going to insist on sticking to your conspiracy theory, there is nothing I can do that will convince you otherwise. The alien shoebox artefact is still here although the plastic tube inside it has vanished. You could apply to use independent tech to evaluate the age and source of the material, although you would be at the end of a long line of academics vying for access. Even after that, I’m sure you would still question the evidence and dream up some way of implicating me.’
‘So?’
‘I know what I sensed, measured and recorded, why should I care what you think?’
‘What does council think?
‘Council is extremely concerned.’
‘So I’m not the only one?’
‘No, you are, as usual, alone. Council is concerned that public opinion might force them to make you president and they are deeply worried about the economic impact.’
‘What economic impact? I’d do a better job of running this tub than the current deadbeat. I’m a gurulla!’
‘They’re not so worried about your meddling, this is about the war. In order to contain the panic, the citizens had been led to believe the alien messages, signs and threats were from the enemy with whom we have been waging war ever since the gift-crash of 466. Now we’ve been given permission to enter their space, it means that the war is over. ’
‘And so this is Christmas,’ said Louie.
Sis ignored him. ‘Over 50% of Slab’s economic activity is directly connected with the war effort. We are faced with an imminent economic crisis.’
Louie looked at his screens. It didn’t look like a crisis out there. It looked like the biggest party in known space. The electro-works from the zone 61s had been extended throughout all the habitable zones. The Strip was rammed with barking revellers, the normally somnolent Smith was lit up like a carnival and the moonlit Valley was resplendent in celebration. Plumes of plasma ferns rose from the mansions and estates, throbbing to syncopated rhythms and pulsating with psychedelic colours. Bolts of energy leapt between local supernovae, colliding in mid-air and exploding into shards of brilliant light that irradiated the slabscape, throwing bursts of stark, elongated shadows across the valley floor.
‘Who authorised peace?’ said a loud, angry voice. One of Louie’s screens showed a gargantuan, multi-limbed, red, orange and black mechanical monster trudging down a hillside. With every footfall, the rubble-strewn ground shook. Clouds of dust and steam rose from fissures as the monster reached down to pick up a house-sized rock and hurl it at the screen.
‘Who the fuck is that?’ said Louie.
‘Now you’re in trouble,’ said Sis. ‘That’s A-un Nokokyu, the head of four of the largest gaming syndicates onSlab.’
‘Jeez! What is he?’ As the monster got nearer to the screen Louie could see that each articulated limb and armoured appendage was festooned with an array of weapons that would have made a battleship look naked. Its face came close to the camera and roared. Parallel rows of shark-teeth filled the view.
‘He’s just a regular guy, that’s one of his in-game identities.’
Council collectively responded via neural interface with the fastest and most comprehensive list of excuses Louie had ever seen. As the text version of the dialogue flashed past he got the distinct impression that there was a whole lot of grovelling going on.
‘Important guy, huh?’
‘You could say that. He ran the war.’
‘What do you mean you couldn’t do anything about it?’ roared A-un. ‘Why was I not consulted?’
Several Council members tried to explain their dilemma.
‘I don’t care there was a plausible external threat,’ thundered A-un. ‘No one pulls the plug on nearly two-thirds of my gaming scenarios. Do you understand what you’ve done?’
Abject apologies scrolled up Louie’s screens.
‘If this is how you repay over five hundred cykes of my corporations providing you with the driver for your pathetic little economy, I consider this an act of commercial espionage and therefore have only one response.’
Louie’s screens were silent.
‘What?’ said Louie who was seriously missing the point.
‘You enjoyed a mock war. Now you’re going to have a real one,’ said A-un, with rumbling menace.
‘He’s declaring war on Slab?’ said Louie. ‘That’s nuts. He lives here… doesn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Sis, ‘he partially lives here but he mainly lives in a permanent substrate of his total immersion gaming environments and they’re backed up by privately owned multiple-redundant data arrays that are hidden behind self-powered dimensional firewalls.’
‘You mean he could destroy Slab and still live on?’
‘Yes, he could, but most of his gamers couldn’t. He won’t destroy Slab, but he could make life a lot more uncomfortable for a lot of people. Uh-oh, here it comes.’
‘What’s this?’ said Louie as his screens filled with an information release.
‘This is going out as non-deny broadcast to all SlabCitizens. He’s hacked into my emergency lines. I didn’t know he could do that. I seem to be doing an outstanding impression of a sieve.’
The SlabWide party that had been ramping up to a crescendo came to an abrupt stop as the Citizens were made aware of a new reality. Louie read his text version:
[[This is a SlabWide news release. It has just been revealed that the enemy we have been fighting for over 500 cycles and who has now retreated from the field of battle was in fact not solely engaged in a war with us, but was simultaneously holding off three separate alien races all of whom are intent on taking possession of Slab. Our previous enemy’s goal was solely to prevent us from entering their space but as they have now acquiesced to our continued passage and withdrawn, it has become apparent that they had become seriously depleted from the rear due to the onslaught of their other attackers, who are now all focused on taking Slab for their own. Sadly we must acknowledge that the peace we thought we had finally gained has in fact produced an escalation of the war with three new, unknown foes with an array of additional technology that we now must find ways to protect ourselves against. We must hope that the inter-conflict between our attackers may serve to weaken and delay them and give us enough time to develop improved weapons and tactical advantages. All military personnel and reservists will be expected to report for additional briefing at 0300 hours tomorrow. That is all.]]
‘I’ve just been fed a complete battle-zone scenario with detailed field analysis and a database of three offensive fleets. All the fleets are different and heavily armed,’ said Sis. ‘It allows me to respond with images and statistics to all of the enquiries I’m now receiving. Anything with this level of detail must have been prepared far in advance.’
Louie looked at the centre screen that showed A-un standing tall, with six sets of limbs crossed over his armoured chest.
‘Looks like that’s the economic problem sorted,’ said Louie. ‘What do the numbskulls in the council have to say?’
‘They say you’re in c
harge.’
‘What?’ said Louie. ‘That’s a surprise.’
‘I have another surprise for you,’ said a sultry voice behind him. ‘Only this one isn’t as pleasant.’
Louie span around, shocked that his personal fortress had been so easily infiltrated and stunned that it had been achieved by a statuesque woman with blonde hair, Scandinavian looks and a lithe, cat-suited figure.
‘Who are you?’ asked Louie. ‘And how’d you get in?’
‘I am system admin representative 001.735.3160 and as such have priority access to all areas onSlab.’
‘System rep? What happened to Erik?’
‘Security upgrade. The previous version has been retired.’ She smiled coolly and turned a slow three-sixty, smoothing her form-fit with manicured hands. ‘This is the latest model.’
Louie whistled. ‘It’s an improvement. Nice rack. Are they detachable?’
‘Why for Dicesake would I need removable breasts?’
‘They’re going to get in the way when you play basketball.’
She gave him an ice-maiden stare that Louie had no difficulty ignoring. He’d been ignoring rejections from beautiful women all his life.
‘I think I will call you Erika,’ he said. ‘If that was the message then it wasn’t so bad. Might even bump the sume ratings when we get the league together.’
‘I’d tell you not to hold your breath but in your case that would be redundant. No, this message is from SisPrime and is so sensitive that it cannot be entrusted even to the encrypted comms channels and is therefore delivered to you in person, so to speak.’
‘What is it?’
Erika looked at him gravely. ‘All power is corrupt,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Louie. ‘Tell me about it.’
epilogue
Louie six shot out of the stasis cage and turned to watch it run out of time and vanish. He surveyed the familiar surroundings. The emti-to-emti test rig that stood in the centre of the lab consisted of a pair of two-metre wide polyhedral metal cages, one of which was filled with equipment, the other vacant. They were connected by a four-metre arm of cross-braced aluminium tubing so the contraption resembled the skeleton of an enormous dumbbell. He couldn’t wait to discover who the dumbbell was who’d built it. After all these years, he thought, he was finally going to find out Snood’s true identity – and fire his ass.
He floated over to the occupied end. Inside, the space-suited culprit looked up, raised his mirrored visor, pointed at Louie's vDek and said ‘Hi Louie, what's that? A new toy? You look like shit.’
‘Milus! You asshole! Do not, whatever you do, turn that thing off!’
‘I don’t think it’s working,’ said Milus, kicking the control panel. ‘Nothing happened.’
‘Don’t touch anything!’ yelled Louie. ‘Something fucking happened alright. We thought you’d vaporised California.’
Milus stepped down from the pilot’s seat. ‘What the hell are you talking about? And what’s this floating projector? I thought you were on your way to catch the Knicks at the Garden. You doing this from New York?’ Milus was suspicious. He knew that Louie habitually hid things from him and had never seen a self-contained mobile holographic projector before. He got down on his knees to inspect Louie’s vDek. Louie lowered it so he was face to face with Milus.
‘Listen, you moron,’ he said. ‘Turn on the TV and see what chaos you’ve created. Or just go upstairs and look out the window.’
Milus had known Louie for a long time. It was thanks to Louie that Milus had been the richest person on Earth. Now he was just the second-richest person in California, but he didn’t know that yet. He had learned that there were times when it was best to just do what Louie said. He waved his gloved hands at the nearest screen. Static. He waved a few more times.
‘Satellite is out,’ he said. ‘Must be interference. I’ll try cable.’
A handsome couple sitting on an overstuffed couch smiled vacantly at each other while an unseen audience whooped and whistled. Milus cocked his head to one side and waited. Day-time TV drivelled on for almost a minute more. The show had, unbeknown to its producers, just become the longest running TV sitcom of all time. He was about to turn it off when there was a bulletin interrupt.
‘The sun has gone out,’ smiled an over-coiffured, female newscaster. ‘About two-and-a-half minutes ago, all light and, reportedly, heat from the sun ceased.’ Behind her was a live shot of the K level of the 401 super-highway in darkness. Overhead lightstrips were flickering into life as the view zoomed in. The headlights of the auto-streaming vehicles reflected off the bug eyes of the passengers who were searching the pitch-black sky. The newsreader ad-libbed: ‘We’re trying to get confirmation of whether this is a localised occurrence but we’ve lost our out-of-state feeds. If anyone’s watching this from Arizona could they call the station on 555…’
‘What the fuck?’ said Milus. ‘I can’t have turned the sun off!’
‘The sun is fine,’ said Louie. ‘It’s just not anywhere around here anymore.’
Louie gave Milus a brief summary of what had happened from an external perspective and had relayed, as best as he was able, what the Tit’s avatar had told him about California’s temporal stasis.
‘I do feel lighter,' said Milus. 'But I'd put that down to the acid I dropped for the trip. So everything within 450 klicks of here is frozen inside an ultimate slow-motion machine?
‘You aren't going to believe how slow. If the figures I’ve been given are correct, it’s taken us over a billion external years to have this conversation.’
‘Cool!’ said Milus. ‘I always wondered how emties worked. They must do some form of quantum space-time folding or something like that. Maybe they don’t move anything, they just move the space around things.’ He pulled his gloves off and started punching numbers into an IRAKi terminal on the pitted workbench. ‘Do you know if we’re in Planck Time or Chronons?’
Not for the first time, Louie was staggered by Milus’s inability to comprehend anything outside his personal reality-distortion field. ‘Planck. But are you even listening to me, you idiot? Millions of people out there are about to go absolutely bat-shit crazy and it’s all your fault. How long do you think it’s going to be before they figure out you’re at the centre of all this?’
Milus broke from his calculations. ‘Hmm? Yeah, good point.’ He looked up at the muted news feed. Things were turning ugly, but this being Los Angeles, it was difficult to tell. ‘The house in Carmel has self-contained power, sewage and its own water supply. We’ll be safe there.’
Louie nodded. ‘Let’s hustle.’
Milus spoke to the air: ‘Kay?’
‘Yes Milus?’ said a lively, well-educated female from the sensurround.
‘Louie’s here. Don’t ask me how. It’s him you’ll hear next.’ He went back to his screens.
‘Evacuate the whole complex,’ said Louie. ‘Get Milus’s flyer warmed up and lock the labs down to maximum security. No one comes back in. Not even us.’
‘Got it,’ said Kay. ‘You want me to notify your destination?’
‘No, definitely not. No communications to the outside without my authorisation. Shut it all down.’ Louie turned to Milus. ‘Are you going to need the satLink so you can access the basement cluster from home?’
‘No point. Nothing up there is going to stay in orbit,’ said Milus. ‘Shit will be flying off in all directions. Kay?’
‘Yes Milus?’
‘Meet us on the roof in five minutes.’
‘Yes Milus.’
Louie gave Milus an old-fashioned look. Milus just smiled. ‘I think we have more to worry about than a little work-place canoodling,’ he said, pointing at his results.
‘What now?’ Louie was good at trouble shooting. He thrived on it. But the day was already looking like a bit of a disaster and it wasn’t even four o’clock.
‘According to my calculations, the Universe is coming to an end.’
‘What? When?’
‘About teatime.’
Kay was waiting for them by the flyer when they got to the roof. She seemed to be completely fine with the sky being blacker than the blackest night she’d ever seen but she was unnerved by Louie’s holographic appearance. Especially when he’d tried to goose her with his grav-manipulated fingers. They climbed aboard and the flyer rose almost silently, if somewhat unsteadily, as the A.I. adjusted to the lower gravity. Milus told it their destination and turned to his passengers.
‘SatNav is screwed of course, but we can home on my beacon at the house. We’ll be away from the city lights too, so we’ll get a great view of everything.’
‘View of what?’ asked Kay, trying to stay as far as possible from the leering hologram.
‘Good question,’ said Milus. ‘I think it will be a big crunch but the jury’s still out.’
‘Not for much longer,’ said Louie.
The flyer shot through the blackened sky in stealth mode. Louie had insisted on secrecy, even though the air-traffic controllers would be too busy dealing with emergency landings to monitor their track. Milus was still fascinated with Louie’s vDek.
‘Come on, spill the beans, how long have you had this and where did you get it?’
Louie looked at him with a pained expression. ‘Do me a favour. Don’t ask me any more questions that have time in the answer.’
As they flew, Louie related selected highlights of his life since California disappeared that sunny August afternoon in 2069. He told them about getting frozen and being reinstalled as a hologram hundreds of years later on an enormous space ark. He told them about Slab and where it was heading, and how he’d had to outwit himself to single-handedly save humanity from a doppelgänger ship and instead of being rewarded he’d been exiled for his trouble and that was how he’d wound up in the back-end of nowhere and rediscovered California. He didn’t mention Dielle though.
It was clear that Milus was skeptical about Louie’s tales of derring-do because he kept diverting the conversation back to what had happened to Earth as a consequence of California disappearing. Louie told him about the Mexicans declaring war.
Slabscape: Dammit Page 28