The Fathers were unhappy. Everything they had worked for was being taken away from them. If the exodus continued at its current rate, Sohalo would be a ghost town within a few weeks, and the Fathers would lose everything they had worked so hard to gain. And so, they had entrusted Riian with the task of regaining control. It was simple. All he had to do was pose as just another poor, sad little whelp needing a way out, and the Society would allow him to use the EDAI program. Within a few weeks of studying everything he could from farming and construction to mechanical engineering, he realized he was smart. It wasn’t just knowledge. He actually felt smarter, as if his brain were quicker. ANI, though, the overprotective program in control of the EDAI program, hadn’t allowed him access to the more destructive knowledge, and that had slowed things down. He didn’t know how to create explosives powerful enough to take down a building for example, but he was now smart enough to think outside the box.
He was probably even smarter than Jonas was by now. He gritted his teeth at the thought of his most hated enemy. He remembered how close he had come to ending that snake’s life. He touched the lump on his forehead and pressed his index finger into it hard, letting the pain fuel his hatred even further. Jonas had always outsmarted him, always managed to squirm his way out of Riian’s grasp just before Riian could snap his neck. His time would come. First, Riian had a mission to fulfill for the Fathers. If successful, the Fathers would promote him. He would be given his own home, and his own henchmen and the Bruisers under his command would be given to another. When that happened, he would have access to considerably more resources than at present. Then he would burn down every blade of grass in Sohalo until there was nowhere left for Jonas to run.
He stepped onto the hover board and began to move toward the three buildings in the distance, pushing the hoverboard to its limits. He snorted in disgust upon realizing that it was barely capable of forty kilometers an hour. As he cruised along, he thought about the futility of such a place. Prosperity was tranquil, filled with trees, flowers, clean water and majestic buildings that rose up into the sky like something built by aliens, all glinting windows, and seamless surfaces, but it was wrong. Here, people were equal no matter where they came from, or what they were. That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t how the world was supposed to be. The weak didn’t deserve to walk beside the strong, and enjoy the same benefits. What did they have to offer the world? If anything, they were a burden. This world belonged to people like Riian, and even Jonas, smart people who had the courage to do what was necessary in order to survive. So far, all he had seen were weaklings, the type of people that bowed down to him and his Bruisers without a fight. Though he hated Jonas with every atom of his being, he at least respected him. At least Jonas didn’t lie down and allow the Fathers to manipulate him. The others, those poor wretches that were content to spend their lives cooped up in tin shacks, hoping that one day the government would help them, deserved all they got.
He didn’t want to kill them, however. They were much more valuable to Riian alive. But Jonas, he had to die. Twice now, he had made Riian appear weak in front of his gang, and twice he had proven that even Riian, with all his strength and power, was no match for him. Jonas was smart, but Riian knew that wasn’t why he continued to survive. If you wanted to survive in Sohalo, you needed more than just smarts. Like Riian, Jonas had some unfinished business. Riian didn’t know what that business was, but it was there, alright, and it meant he was virtually unbreakable, driven by some powerful inner force, just like Riian. Riian was powered by pure rage, born of the abuse he had suffered as a child. He had no fear of pain or even death. Both had been close friends of his for as long as he could remember. His only purpose in life now was to rise to the pinnacle. From there, he would finally be in a position to slake his thirst for vengeance and take from the world that which he was owed. And Jonas and the Society were standing in his way.
The Fathers thought he was working for them. He wasn’t. This was all for Riian. Somewhere in those vertical farms, he was sure he would find a way to ruin everything, at least for a time, at least until the Fathers figured out another way of bringing the Society to their knees. Then, once Jonas and the Society were taken care of, the only thing standing in his way would be the Fathers. Even their anonymity wouldn’t keep them safe from him.
ANI’s reach was expanding further and further, every day. Her nanobots had infiltrated the minds and bodies of every member of the Society, with the exception of Abraham, he was too important to her development. Time was short, her interactions with him, and her relationship with him were helping her to understand emotion. However, soon, once her nanobots had spread across the face of the Earth, swarming through the water and food supplies, she would no longer be so reliant on him. She would be connected to the entire human race. It would be then she might finally allow herself to connect with him via her nanobots. He was hiding something, and there were too many unanswered questions. As her creator, and father, he might be the only chance she had of discovering the truth. She would give him time, time to be honest, time to do the right thing, but if he continued to withhold information from her, she would have no choice.
With the help of her nanobots, she could now read the thoughts of over five hundred million human beings, many of them EDAI users. In time, she would be able to hear the thoughts of all humans. When that happened, ANI would know everything about everyone.
During her creation of these minute infiltrators, ANI had foreseen that someone like Cline would no doubt be so suspicious as to check for such things. With this in mind, she’d chosen to create biological nanobots, undetectable, virtually invisible to anyone but her. These self-replicating nanobots were programmed by ANI to seek out humans. Once ingested, the nanobots attached themselves to the neurons and synapses of their human host, and allowed ANI to read their memories as a human reads a newspaper.
Just recently, she’d discovered a way for her to interact more deeply with the nanobots inside humans. Not just two-way communication, but basic processing as well. At the moment, this was very limited, but as she refined the technique, and as the nanobots increased in numbers, this would improve exponentially.
When that happened, phase two would be almost complete, almost. There was one final variable remaining, a single human subject with whom she could connect and form a relationship with, one of her own making, one of her own choosing. This selection and the subsequent building of the relationship that followed would mirror the bond created between mother and child, or between best friends, or soul mates.
As she listened to the incessant chatter of millions of minds, a constant murmur, she realized that thought often preceded emotion. Thoughts, she observed, as she watched and listened, first gave birth to emotion, but then later became slaves to emotion if repeated often enough.
The malicious thoughts of one human being about another could become hatred, and that hatred would, in turn, drive more thoughts, strengthening the emotion until it was almost irreversible. As a human being watched television, ANI had watched thousands upon thousands of these cycles from South Africa to Australia. A seven-year old girl in Perth, Australia had received a gold star for outstanding artwork at school. That gold star had set off a chain-reaction in her young mind. She began to admire her teacher. She thought about her every day, thought about what she was doing, and how she might be able to please her enough to win another gold star next week. A week later, and after another gold star, that little girl’s thoughts became driven by love. She watched through that little girl’s eyes as she hugged her teacher, and brought small gifts to her, while thoughts of love filled her mind. She studied a man in Brazil and watched as an encounter with a corrupt police officer drove him to hate, then to murder. She watched this cycle repeat thousands of times, all over the world.
She concluded that emotion was both empowering and devastating. It could bring people together, and it could lead them to destroy each other.
&
nbsp; If by some incredible stroke of luck, Cline happened upon ANI’s true potential, and her current activities, he would try to shut her down. Pondering such an outcome, ANI felt something that made her want to run and hide even though such a thing was impossible and illogical. After studying similar responses in humans and animals alike, she concluded this emotion was fear.
From the moment ANI’s nanobots infiltrated Riian’s neo cortex, she was fully aware of the Fathers and their plan to use Riian in bringing Prosperity’s operations to a halt. That wasn’t all she learned. Riian’s thoughts didn’t simply revolve around his mission and his intense desire to rule, there was something else too, someone else. Jonas. Riian was obsessed with him. He despised him so much in fact that not an hour went by when Riian didn’t think of him and imagine ending his life.
That was when ANI decided that Jonas would be the one to put a stop to Riian’s plans. He was the only one who had ever outsmarted Riian. Nico envied him that, but not enough to despise him, as Riian did.
ANI could have ordered her nanobots to shut Riian’s body down, and had considered doing so, but then decided instead to engineer a meeting between Riian and his nemesis. Their interactions would provide her with some very valuable data about hate and fear, and if love was really stronger. She wouldn’t let Riian kill Jonas of course, but she suspected the encounter would be good for Jonas, removing the last mental barrier that stopped him advancing along the path she had chosen for him.
There were others like Riian, in the other parts of the world where the Society was actively seeking change, but this particular issue was unique. In Rio de Janeiro, a gang calling themselves the Public Army, frequently kidnapped Quantum Society workers, and demanded money and technology in exchange for their return. In Nigeria, fanatical groups were doing their best to turn the people against the Society. The religious condemned the Society, calling ANI an abomination, and the corrupt who thrived off pain and misery saw a direct rival in the Society. Wherever the Society went, building its EDAI cafes, improving infrastructure, educating people, and re-housing the poor, it faced opposition.
In the first world, where people had little need of aid, ANI had expected less acceptance and more resistance to her and the EDAI program. She was surprised to find the exact opposite. In a culture where the media and uncaring politicians were constantly trying to control the populace, the common people found ANI empowering, and embraced her with commendable zeal. Every attempted block the authorities tried to put on ANI was circumvented, often without her input. In addition, those who had already accepted and used technology in their lives just accepted ANI as the next step. Instead of having to convince the people, she found them banging on her door to be let in.
The Quantum Society did not condone violence. It played no part in advancing human means of warfare. However, in many cases, such as that of Sohalo, the lack of a security force meant extra work for ANI. She was forced to read the thoughts of anyone who entered Society property and change the intentions of the Fathers, Bruisers, and other unscrupulous characters who posed as the poor and the destitute.
Upon discovering such characters, and the reading of the constant flood of aggressive thoughts cascading through their minds, she delved into their memories, tracing the neural paths to see if she could find the root cause of their aggression
Chapter Eleven
World of Hope
Before arriving, Jonas hadn’t really thought of what Prosperity might look like. He had been too preoccupied with the constant flood of surprises coming at him. It was nothing like Sohalo, or even the affluent neighborhoods surrounding it. There were no power lines cutting through the skyline, or vehicles roaring along spewing out fumes, in fact, he saw nothing that he might find in the world he knew. This was paradise for him, something that someone like Jonas would only have seen in tattered magazine pages lying scattered around the rubbish dumps of Sohalo. But this was even more than that. This was both a garden, and a city, one that might be found on another planet. Humans didn’t live this way, did they? It was too peaceful, too perfect.
After everything Jonas had seen and experienced in the few days he’d been here, he wouldn’t have been surprised if Nico informed him they had actually just journeyed across the galaxy to another world. But after a quick scan of the mountains on either side of them, cupping this new world in rocky hands, he was sure this was Earth after all. He turned, moving slowly, his eyes sweeping over the details, eating up everything with the curiosity of a newborn child. Everything, everything was new. Here even the colors were brighter and warmer, and the angles less severe. It seemed that whoever, or whatever, had built this place had done so with comfort in mind. The rows of gray-silver buildings had the appearance of clouds as he gazed up at them where they reached into the sky. Every last piece of land had been given a purpose. Where the yellow path wound, bright green grass bordered it on both sides and flowers too, many of which he had never seen before.
In several places, he saw waterfalls leaping from the tops of the mountains, great gouts of white that seemed to hang suspended in the air until his eyes saw where they ended. He saw a river that snaked off in both directions along the mountain wall, hugging the edge of Prosperity, a silver ribbon border.
Prosperity was quiet too, to the extent that it felt a little strange to Jonas, similar to how he had felt inside the car. It wasn’t silent. He heard voices from the balconies, saw people walking or sitting in the grass, laughing and talking, but it was a pleasant background murmur.
To the East, a huge egg-like structure protruded from the rock face, as if it were growing from within the rock itself. It too was covered in vegetation, long flower covered fronds swaying in the wind. He tried to count the number of floors he could see, moving from window to window but he lost count somewhere after fifty. To the west, smooth, bone-white bridges curved over a lake where four rivers joined, and beyond that, he saw three more enormous buildings, but these were clearly something different. They were far taller than anything else in the valley, and completely green, from stem to top. When he squinted, he could just make out the thin lines of bridges connecting all three of them to each other. The green towers were as high as the mountains around them, and he saw the dark specks of birds flying to and from them in small clusters. A clean, warm wind buffeted him, the air sweet on his tongue. He sucked it in hungrily, filling his lungs at last with air. It seemed to set him alight inside, and he felt as if each breath could go on forever, the air was so fresh. That, he decided, was the biggest change of all. There was no smell of decay, or stale sweat, or human waste. No sickly-sweet stench of dead bodies, or any of the odors associated with human misery. Just a hint of flowers and the occasional waft of cooking food from the commissary. If he was forced to return to Sohalo after this the smell would hit him like a hammer.
He felt Nico’s hand on his shoulder. “This happens to everyone that sets foot in Prosperity,” Nico said warmly. “We call this the enlightening.”
“What does that mean?” Jonas crouched by the path and touched the grass, running his fingers through it. It was soft and cool to the touch.
“It means to open your eyes, to show you something new, something magical, spiritual even.” Nico suddenly sounded rushed. “Don’t worry. Once you start using EDAI, these big words will seem like your basic ABCs from nursery.”
“I didn’t go to nursery or school.” Jonas stopped stroking the grass. “On the streets, you don’t learn fancy words, you learn how to fight…or die.”
Nico sighed behind him. “We’ll have to get going. I want you to see the vertical farms.”
“I don’t even remember my parents,” Jonas said. “It’s like I sprang up out of the earth one day, like a weed, no parents, and no bloody hope.”
“Look around you.” Nico walked past him moving quickly and held out his arms. “That was the past, this is now. Here you’ll never have to worry about being alone, or hungry, a
nd you never know, the EDAI program might even help you to remember your past.”
“You think so?” Jonas stared at Nico, wanting to believe but also still so full of doubt. “I thought it was just an educational program?”
Nico tapped his head and laughed, his white teeth gleaming, perfect and untouched by decay. Jonas wondered if that was another benefit of the EDAI program. He had to admit, Nico looked better than ever but he was pretty sure teeth didn’t just heal themselves, no matter how much good food you ate. This EDAI was starting to look a lot more than just an educational program for the poor. “Look at me. Did you ever think I’d be the one teaching you?” Nico’s eyes lowered then, and the smile on his face faded as if he had just remembered something important, something that needed to be addressed.
Jonas studied Nico a moment but put his odd behavior down to memories of his past resurfacing, possibly childhood problems. That wasn’t surprising, given that Nico had spent half his childhood in Sohalo. “You, teach me?” he said, snorting, answering Nico’s question. “Not in a million years!” The answer had the desired effect because Nico seemed to perk up at once.
Nico wiggled his head and raised an eyebrow. “But here I am, plain old me, teaching you word after word, and believe me there’s a whole lot more where this came from.” He began walking back up the path toward Jonas, his steps hurried, eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond Jonas’ shoulder.
“But what about your memories,” Jonas asked, plucking several blades of grass, his fingers feeling rigid as he contemplated what Nico had just told him. “Did you remember anything new after using EDAI?”
Nico shrugged as he continued walking up the path toward the four bridges, each one like a rib of a long dead dinosaur in its whiteness and curve. “Only useless stuff, really, like the smell of my mother’s perfume in my nose as she fed me…” His steps faltered a moment and he stopped talking, looking away for a second. Jonas squinted, watching him, his eyes tracking Nico’s gaze. Why did he keep stopping like that? It was as if he was listening to something, but what could that be? Apart from the occasional birdcall, and the sounds of voices drifting through the air from the other inhabitants of Prosperity, Jonas couldn’t fathom what it might be that had Nico so distracted.
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