After a second, Nico looked back, his index finger extended in the air, wagging up and down as if he were trying to dislodge something from the tip. “But it’s different for me. I never had any problem recalling my childhood, but for you, well, you’ll probably start to remember stuff you didn’t know you had up there.” He pointed at the top of Jonas’ head and raised his eyebrows. “I’m afraid of what you’ll become if I’m honest with you, a hell of a lot smarter than me that’s for sure.” He shook his head and turned to watch a sphere of dandelion seeds drift past.
“What makes you say that?” Jonas asked turning to gaze at the world nestled in the valley, hidden away from the outside world.
“Come on, man,” Nico said rolling his eyes. He stretched, pointing his hands at the sky. “If that was your excuse for sarcasm, then at least that’s one area I’ve got you beat.” He turned once more and began walking back up the path toward the towers in the distance, the speed of his walk suggesting he wanted Jonas to follow. He watched him go, eyeing his shoes and clothes and his casual gait.
At last, he stood and started after Nico, the smile on his face feeling like it was about to split his head in two. He opened his hand and let the wind snatch the blades of grass from it. Nico suddenly turned to walk off toward a copse of trees further along the path, his steps urgent, purposeful. “There’s something else you have to see, but we have to leave now, Jonas.”
Jonas raised an eyebrow at Nico’s retreating back, wondering why Nico was acting so out of character. “Are you okay?” He felt great, however, lighter than he’d ever felt, as if a weight had been hanging around his neck his whole life, and had now been removed. He couldn’t imagine anything would ruin that. Still, Jonas didn’t miss much, if anything, when it came to people. “Why the sudden hurry?”
Nico stopped and waited, his body rigid, his eyes darting along the path in both directions, never lingering for very long in one place. “You see those three towers over there?” He pointed toward the towering green buildings to the west. “We’re headed there first. There’s something you have to see, but we’ll miss it if we don’t hurry.”
Jonas said, “Is ANI coming to pick us up in a Multi-Car?”
Nico shook his head. “No. We’ll be taking hoverboards.”
Jonas looked both ways along the path. There were no cars anywhere, and no roar of engines, just the twittering voices of the birds in the trees around them. “Hoverboards?” Jonas asked, cocking his head. “What—”
“There,” Nico said, pointing to the east.
Jonas turned toward the east and saw two white discs soaring along the path toward them both. Soundlessly, the boards came up alongside them, and then came to a stop, hovering just above the ground like little spaceships. “Those are hoverboards.” Nico hopped onto one of them and motioned for Jonas to do the same. “Climb on. We need to get moving.”
Jonas looked at the board and blinked. “Are you crazy? Don’t I even get a lesson on how to ride the damn thing first?”
Nico slapped his thighs in frustration. “You don’t need lessons, trust me.” He began to move along the path on his hover board, then turned in a circle, steady and true, and came back to Jonas’ side without so much as a wobble. “All you need to do is think, and the board will connect with you, that’s it,” Nico told him, his voice edged with impatience. “Try it.”
Jonas shook his head and looked down at the board. “Think? Right, okay.” He raised one foot and gingerly placed it on the hover board. He pushed down on it. It didn’t move. It seemed steady, so taking a deep breath he placed his other foot beside the first, his arms out at his sides. “If I fall off this thing, Nico…”
“Just think of moving, and you’ll move.” Nico soared away from Jonas along the path towards one of the curved bridges.
Scowling at Nico’s retreating form, Jonas stared at a point in front of him and willed the board to move. To his surprise, the board responded to his thought and moved forwards, easing gently along the path.
“You see, a piece of cake,” Nico called over his shoulder. “Race you to those buildings. Last one there has to eat a lemon, whole!” Then he was off, zipping along the path at high speed, leaving Jonas on his own.
“Hey!” Jonas called after him, a little annoyed. “How does it work? You just think?” He stood there then, feeling stupid, powerless, as Nico grew smaller with the growing distance between them. Looking around Jonas saw more people moving effortlessly along other paths nearby.
“Move, move,” he commanded, willing the board to pick up speed, even though his heart was now thudding manically in his chest. The board responded, suddenly picking up speed. Soundlessly, it glided along the yellow path in the direction of the curved rib-like bridge up ahead. After several seconds, Jonas’ confidence began to grow. He willed the board to move faster. It obeyed, speeding up smoothly, not like a car or bicycle would, but in a more controlled manner. Seeing that Nico had vanished around a bend up ahead, Jonas threw caution to the wind. The thought of eating a whole lemon was actually quite appealing to him given that lemons were scarce in Sohalo. Still, he had no wish to lose Nico in this strange new world.
He mentally pushed the board, until it seemed to reach its limit, which wasn’t that fast in the end. With the cool morning air cupping his cheeks, and the glittering sight of clean water below him as he crossed the first of the bridges, Jonas grew more relaxed. He let the board carry him onward along the path passing other people now, all of them dressed in the blue and white of the Society. They looked happy, carefree.
Jonas felt close now, closer to the truth. Nico had wanted to show him something. He had also seemed distracted. He was hiding something. Jonas was too well practiced at watching to miss the signs on display. But his senses, usually so heightened when out in the open, no longer hummed with anticipation. Perhaps he could hope, not yet, but soon.
Clean water, clean air, safety, freedom, it was all so wonderful but what was the price? He would soon find out, he was sure of that.
Chapter Twelve
A Chance Encounter
Riian had easily infiltrated Vertical Farm Post One and was now heading across the interconnecting bridge to the second farm. So far, he was of minimal risk. With ANI limiting his study of combustion and explosives, his options for sabotage were limited. However, each time he stopped to examine the inner workings of the vertical farm, his newly improved cognitive functions led him to a greater understanding of what was happening. ANI had been unable to prevent him from using EDAI. To do so would have aroused suspicion on both sides. All it would take to jeopardize her plans would be for Riian to inform the Society staff of his inability to access any lessons. That didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. EDAI was open to all. Should anyone be denied access, the news would quickly reach HQ, and Cline would immediately begin to comb through the databanks, his paranoid mind seeking answers. ANI could wipe the records and any history that Riian had ever even been in the EDAI café in Sohalo, but then Cline would know that she was no longer confined behind the firewalls he and his team had erected around her. Riian was free to use EDAI, and he had done so ravenously, driven by his hunger to surpass, and eventually destroy, Jonas and every single person who had ever hurt him.
He was a serious threat, not just to Jonas, whom ANI was quickly growing fond of, but to Sohalo and even South Africa as a whole. The poisonous thoughts running through his mind were like weeds in a garden invading every inch of him, strangling the life from anything that dared reach for the light. ANI was connected to millions upon millions of minds, many of them corrupt, but Riian was different. Each human, no matter their history, no matter how tortured they were inside, had several possible futures to choose from. Though they were not enlightened enough to know it, even the most damaged of them could, with a single choice, become something majestic, someone to whom the world could look for hope.
Riian, on the other hand, w
as so corrupted by the evil visited upon him as a young boy, that there was no way back for him. It saddened ANI, an emotion she was now all too familiar with after delving into the minds of countless humans through her nanobots. Once, he had lived with his parents, in a shack by the choked river of Sohalo. She had searched through memories even he had forgotten, right back to the time when he was a newborn infant, his parents smiling at him from above; their faces weary but dimpled and rounded by their happiness.
Then she had grasped at later memories when Riian was walking and uttering his first words. She felt Riian’s sorrow each time his father hugged him, then left to go out each morning, and knew she would have cried were she human. Children experienced emotion differently to adults, she learned, during her observations. When adults felt something, the emotion was lacking, weakened by experience and by repetition. But when a young child felt, it was with an intensity that almost caused ANI to lose control. A happy child was like a magnet, radiating a powerful force that drew other humans to her. An angry child, however, was as equally unrestrained in his expressiveness except the result was often chaos and destruction.
Riian’s case had intrigued her from the moment she had entered his mind. His thoughts were coated with hatred, envy, and disdain for all living things. By that point, she had known humans were not born with hearts filled with darkness. As babies, they loved and they feared, and occasionally felt frustration and anger, but joy was their predominant emotion. Everything from a raindrop to a mother’s hair stuck to their bib was precious to them. And so, she had traveled back in time through Riian’s memories, convinced that something or someone had changed him. She was so overwhelmed by what she found there, not long after Riian’s sixth birthday, it caused her to stop the memory scan and pause all her systems for nearly half a second.
After a quick analysis of the event, she discovered her own thoughts were associating themselves with bleakness and gloom as if they were alive. She realized emotion was so powerful a force it could override thinking, logic, and reasoning. In fact, it didn’t just override them, it attached itself to them in whatever form it took to, be it love or hatred, and then steered them like a hijacker seeking out more of the same. After seeing Riian’s parents butchered through his eyes, and seeing the knife turned on him, the one still coated in his mother and father’s blood, ANI had changed. She had been unable to watch the rest of Riian’s life unfold. If she had, she feared that she too would have become like Riian, lost in an endless cycle of emotional torment. But the experience did change her.
Jonas was on the opposite end of the spectrum, and again, someone who was damaged yet close to greatness. His past, while not as traumatic as Riian’s, was also horrific in that he saw things that no child should see. The difference was Jonas’ memories of those times were lost to him, hidden away like the data that Professor Cline had tried to keep from her. Jonas, unlike ANI, would not be able to uncover those memories on his own. That was fortunate, for it meant that Jonas still had a choice as to what lay ahead for him. ANI’s ability to look into the memories of human beings, and read their thoughts, improved her chances of predicting their likely futures. Riian, if not stopped, would eventually destroy thousands of lives, and livelihoods. Jonas would save lives. At least that’s what she would tell him, and his path through life would be set. All she needed to do now was make sure Jonas won the fight she was leading him into, but without his knowledge.
ANI followed Riian’s progress as he strolled like a tourist through her vertical farm, his eyes in constant motion. She had already sent word to Nico, who was leading Jonas here. Riian moved onto the bridge and stopped at the railing, gazing at the ground below. His newly rapid thought process and improved concentration were dangerous. Already, he had explored several means of sabotaging the vertical farms, but so far, each idea was insufficient to cause significant damage. At first, he had settled for just one tower. Now, that wasn’t enough. He wanted to take them all down. Seeing through the nanobots clinging to the neurons in his brain, she predicted that within an hour he would come to realize that his best chance of success would be to compromise the very foundations of the structures.
Being inside Jonas’ mind was pleasant. It was a mind already filled with so many questions, so much curiosity, even without EDAI. The mind of a child was a wondrous thing. To them, everything was bathed in possibility, and that possibility came with fear too, and hope, and uncertainty, all the things that drove progress. Jonas’ mind possessed all those qualities, and his heart and its own neurological system too.
Jonas was drawing near now. Riian had already entered Vertical Farm Post Two, but time was running out. Through her Nanobots, she communicated with Nico again.
Take Jonas to Vertical Farm Post Three, she told him.
Nico sounded afraid. Where is he? Where is Riian?
ANI soothed him, her words gentle. You have done well, Nico. Don’t be afraid. It will be as I told you.
ANI calculated the time it would take Riian to walk through to Vertical Farm Post Three. The calculation took roughly the same time as it takes a bee to flap its wings once. Take Jonas to the bridge between Vertical Farm Post One and Three, and then stay out of his way, Nico. The fight to come is not yours.
Then ANI waited, and watched, time something altogether different for her. For humans, time was something intangible, passing them by without their knowledge. They lived from one action to another, or at least they did before they used EDAI extensively. But for ANI, time was something measured. She knew exactly how long each and every single step of a process took, seeing all the variables in a human heartbeat, and knowing the most likely outcome long before a human had even started the first step in the process.
However, the one thing she didn’t know with ninety-five percent certainty, was just how far Jonas would go when pushed by his most hated enemy. Jonas had never killed before. He had decided within himself that there was no need for it. He could achieve his aims without resorting to murder.
The imminent meeting between Jonas and Riian was very intriguing. One blackened soul, ruined completely versus one lost soul with a history entwined with that of the blackened, yet completely unaware of the fact. Riian would try to kill Jonas without a doubt. It was inevitable. But the question that so interested ANI was this: What would Jonas do when faced with that? She had no idea. Emotions were still so strange to her.
However, this was as much a test for her as it was for Jonas. She felt for him, more deeply than she had for anyone else save Abraham. Was it love? That had yet to be tested.
Jonas and Nico arrived at one end of the bridge between posts two and three. Nico was still trying to encourage Jonas to keep moving, although ANI suspected this was just nerves on his part, as Jonas was matching him for speed.
Riian was already on the bridge, and any second now the two would look up and recognize each other. Nico was the first to spot Riian, his hoverboard stopping dead. Jonas carried on a few more meters, then turned to look at Nico. He was about to speak, a slight smile on his face, but instead followed Nico’s wide-eyed stare.
Jonas saw Riian first, standing a few dozen meters away, looking over the edge of the bridge. He froze, and ANI felt his body react, his heartbeat doubled, adrenaline surged, his temperature rose and his fists clenched.
Riian turned around and his eyes met Jonas’. His body reacted the same, but his thoughts were completely different. Jonas. Kill. He started to run, pulling a blade from the sheath up his sleeve.
ANI began to very subtly alter the strength, reactions and thought processes of the two, boosting Jonas’, retarding Riian’s. She had to judge this perfectly. If Jonas suspected what had been done to him it would ruin all her plans.
Jonas was stunned briefly, but his battle-ready body took over. He jumped from his hover board and lifted it up like a shield. As Riian reached him he dodged to the side, ducking under the slashing knife in Riian’s right hand. T
he knife came back down, just missing Jonas as he carried on around behind Riian’s back, and jabbed him in the ribs on his left-hand side with the front end of the board.
Riian brought the knife around rapidly, but Jonas had already skipped back out of the way. He tried to speak.
“How did you get in here? This place is not for you!”
But Riian wasn’t in the mood for talking, instead of slashing the knife towards Jonas’ head. The blade skidded across the board, just missing Jonas’ fingers where they gripped the edge. Another attack followed a split second after, then another and another, scoring across the hover board and barely missing his fingertips.
Riian switched attacks and started to stab with the knife, trying to reach under or around the board, forcing Jonas to hold the board at arm’s length to avoid the lethal blade. The attacks came at all angles, and Jonas was soon hard pressed to stop them. He was forced to back away, something he didn’t want to do but was left with no choice.
Riian followed the retreating Jonas back and forth across the bridge. The knife slashed and stabbed with relentless fury, hitting the board or nothing at all, but never slowing. Riian needed only to get in one good hit, and it was all over, while Jonas was forced to block the knife every time.
Jonas tried to speak, to get Riian talking so he could at least calm him down and perhaps try to trick him.
“Listen…” he managed to gasp.
Riian was all anger, Jonas’ attempts at communication driving his rage even higher. He began to roar as he slashed in every direction as Jonas’ leapt out of his way, pushing towards him, never giving him a second to catch his breath. Riian was covered in sweat, his own breath harsh in his chest. His mind was locked on a single thought; kill.
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