Idempotency

by Joshua Wright

  “Why not just leave? Why stab us in the back?”

  Jay began to cackle. “Stupid question, you dumb old man. Why does anyone do anything?” Jay-san paused for effect, but Simeon didn’t give him the satisfaction; he simply tied his ankles as tight as possible. With a pained wince, Jay-san continued: “Money. And a filthy amount of it at that. I’ve wasted so many years with you. Following your stupid orders for a pittance of what I could have made in the corp market. I could have been rich by now. I’m going to live forever, and live rich forever. I’m making up for lost fucking time!”

  At that, Simeon gagged Jay, wrapping a rope behind his head, adding, “Well, I hope your money goes a long way after I’ve slandered you across the darkNets. I have more friends than you know. You’ll never work again. And rest assured, I’m anything but stupid. You’ve done everything I asked, even when you didn’t know it.”

  “Simeon! Come look at this!” Grepman’s holoVid had been replaced by his real body. As soon as Grepman had put the puzzle pieces together of Jay’s betrayal, he had logged out of the Titus virt, groggily lifted himself from his recumbent position on the couch, and sat down in front of Jay-san’s dusty workstation. As Simeon had been talking to Jay, Grep had been madly waving his arms, seeking clues—anything—to help Sindhu.

  Simeon stood and glanced over Grep’s head.

  “What’d you find, Grep?”

  “Jay claimed he hacked group rights, but needed user-level permissions to get to this resource, the resource where Sindhu is.” Grepman pointed to a map that showed the room that Sindhu entered. “Obviously NRS allowed him to do this. Him, singular, not a group. In other words, if we know Jay’s private encryptOctId—” Grepman shot Jay a dirty look “—then we can access anything he could access. If we can hack his eyes, we can get his encryptOcID.”

  Jay tried to speak up, but was only able to mumble inscrutably through the rope lodged in his mouth.

  Simeon’s optimistic chuckle returned. “What Jay’s no doubt trying to say right now is that he tried to change his encryptOcID about twenty minutes ago, right around the time Sindhu entered the church.” He turned around and glared at Jay, who was eerily quiet for the first time in several minutes. “So it’s a good thing I’ve been filtering his network traffic for weeks. The new ID never got sent. The old ID, which I happen to have, is still functional. See, Jay, you’ve been more helpful than you realized. Hell, half of your messages from NRS over the past few weeks were from me.”

  “How—when—did you get his encryptOcID?” Nimbus asked.

  “I drank him under the table a few months ago. He passed out, I hacked his ocImps. Easy-peasy. I’ve already sent it to you, Grep.” Simeon glared again at Jay-san and let out a few deep uh-huhs.

  “Got it . . . accessing resource r_TK_1537 with Sudo and Jay’s ID . . .” Grepman’s eyes widened. “It worked! Look here—there are Sindhu and Dylan!” Grepman pointed to the holographic map, which showed two dots within the confines of the large room that now displayed as a hollow cross. Several other dots encircled them. Grepman began frantically waving his hands and typing new commands, but nothing happened. “I can’t get a visual. It seems that this is still a dark area; no cameras of any kind. Damn it. Look at the other people. They’ve been caught—two androids—” more hand-waving “—COO Korak Searle, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kya Okafor, and NRS CEO . . . Edward Coglin.” Grepman paused, then finished his thought: “Coglin . . . oh no, are we too late?”

  Jay-san chuckled and Simeon turned around and kicked him in the ass. He immediately regretted that move, as a new wave of odor enveloped the hot yurt.

  “These days, too late isn’t possible.” The more grim the situation got, the more positive Simeon seemed to become. “Anything else you have access to? There’s got to be something else, Grep.”

  “There are some executable files indexed against the resource—the room. I think these might be holoSims: simulations that can be enacted on the entire resource. Probably a simulation that takes place inside the entire room. We could fire one of those off, but we’re completely running blind here, I have no idea what these even do.”

  “This room has to be a church, right?” Simeon put his fiery arm to his temples and looked at Nimbus questioningly. She had moved several paces away, and was going back and forth from looking at Simeon to peering outside of the yurt, keeping watch. She shrugged back at him. Kristina and the kids had sat back down on the couch, keeping busy by pensively piling various important items into four backpacks.

  “It looks like a church,” Grepman agreed, “and that would certainly make sense. Maybe these are simulations of famous sermons? I doubt running one of these can hurt, but I don’t see how it can help either. Damn it.” Grepman hesitated, then became suddenly resolute. “I say we try one.” He looked back up at Simeon, worried that he had overstepped a boundary by offering up a decision that was Simeon’s to make.

  “Nice. Do it. I agree.”

  “Which one?” Grep asked, scanning a list of cryptic filenames that all began with the prefix SIM.

  Simeon shook his head slowly as he scanned the list. He pointed, then said, “This one; execute SIM_TK_1537_SMP.”

  “Why that one?”

  “Cause it starts with my name.”

  Grepman looked up at him. “Uh, don’t they all start with your name?”

  “Oh, just do it already.”

  “Okay, you’re the boss.”

  With a few waves of Grepman’s hand, a random simulation came to life inside of a large room that seemed to resemble a church, thousands of kilometers away.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Sindhu had considered trying to flee the moment Reverend Coglin had shot the doctor, but instead she decided to utilize a talent she had only recently employed: patience. She would get her chance to flee or to fight; it simply had yet to arrive. When Coglin had pulled the trigger on his handgun to shoot the doctor, he’d handled the recoil with ease; she noted his talent with the ancient weapon, and she didn’t want to challenge him . . . yet. She would wait for her chance.

  Now, however, as the old man sitting across the aisle from her had raised his gun toward her face, she cursed herself and her foolish attempt at maturity. Forget patience, she had thought. I should have made a move when I’d had any chance at all!

  Everything she had worked for—the recent revelations she had uncovered about the Titus facility, her groundbreaking work with SOP in the past year, not to mention an entire lifetime’s struggle to obtain a position of influence from relative nothingness—all of it was now on the verge of being for nothing. Her impact on the world would be no more than a dying leaf on a coarse sidewalk during a cool fall day, fluttering among the other dead leaves, only to be crumpled under humanity’s unknowing feet.

  And suddenly, her fate changed. Coglin’s image was instantly replaced by that of dozens of men standing in flowing robes. An echoing rustle of clothes and hushed voices bounced cautiously off the walls of the ancient cathedral. Sindhu’s eyes darted around the hall, and she saw hundreds of baroque-fashioned audience members, musicians, choir participants, priests, and church workers all at once appearing to fill the awesome cathedral. The holographic images were everywhere. They had arrived within a moment’s time and had suddenly occluded Coglin’s vision. Momentarily confused, he bounded up from his seat and looked wildly in several directions.

  Sindhu acted. As a holographic image of a man in flowing blue robes, wearing a substantial wig, passed by her, she kicked her legs against the floor, gritted her teeth from the pain in her shot foot, and thrust herself over the back of the pew. She passed through a seated holograph of a large woman wearing an ornate, cream-colored dress, the hem of which seemed to flower endlessly. Sindhu heard the crack of Coglin’s gun, and then a bullet hit the back of the pew she had just leaped over. Coglin ranted, an unchecked animosity rising from his smoky lungs, but Sindhu couldn’t understand a word he was saying. She was too busy crawling under the pews and
over the hassocks—the padded cushions used for kneeling during prayer—each time saying a small prayer to her newfound God that she might still make it out of this place alive.

  Risking a glance down the aisle, Sindhu noticed the shiny shoes of the androids. As she slinked back under a pew, the holographic audience’s muffled voices were suddenly replaced by an explosion of music so beautiful, so passionate, so transcendent, that Sindhu wondered for the first time in her life whether God might actually exist. How else could one explain music so heavenly?

  The strings of the violins rose, darkening the melody—portending the musical and lyrical struggle that was about to begin. Behind it, the heartbeat of a cymbal crash gave life to the music. Flutes entered, providing a quick thought of hope, only to be parried back by even more strings, violas and cellos joining the mix. The flutes made a final, repetitive stand, but were quickly conquered by a powerful choir of alternating sopranos and tenors—an emotional pain obvious in both their voices and their faces. And yet, moments later, the repetitive cadence was back, and with it, the faint glimmer of hope.

  “Sindhu!” Coglin was climbing the stairs of the pulpit to get a better view—his ascent of the twelve stairs was the liveliest he had appeared in days, adrenaline obviously pouring through his dying system. He reached the top and his shouts rose above the choir: “Sindhu! How does it feel, Sindhu? Feels like failure, yes? I should know. My entire life has been nothing but a series of failures, most at the hands of your depraved boss. How fitting that my tribulations should end with Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion. And so shall yours end. This is where you will die, Sindhu. This is where we will all die. I may have failed to save the world, thanks to the cowardly antichrist you follow—” he spit at his feet “—but I will fucking kill you!”

  Coglin screamed—a blood-choked, carnal scream—and began to randomly fire shots all around the cathedral.

  While Sindhu slowly slid away from the pacing androids, another battle raged beneath the pulpit. Searle picked up Dr. Okafor as gently as he could. Blood had covered his hands where he had been holding the wound shut. This was his chance to leave.

  Coglin’s shouts to the androids could not have reached a more maniacal level. “Do not allow Searle to leave with the doctor!”

  “Edward, I’m begging you, let me get her out of here, please!” Searle shouted over the crescendo of angelic voices.

  One of the androids had quietly stepped up behind Searle. He placed a hand upon Searle’s shoulder—the grip was stifling—and stated calmly, “You are not permitted to leave, Mr. Searle.”

  A buzzing near his ear momentarily distracted Reverend Coglin. Flicking his gun-wielding hand across his face produced a projected holographic image of Mr. Kane. The weak man looked more confused then usual. Behind Kane, Coglin could see the rows of yurts of tenting that made up the Laughlin slum. The sight sickened him; God (and him) only knew what those people were doing inside of their sin-infested tents.

  “What do you need, Mr. Kane?”

  Chapter Fifty

  Around the moment that Sindhu was vaulting over pews and confusing androids, Simeon and his team were ducking beneath battered shacks in a similar but less successful effort. Their escape plan had included a specially designed graviCopter capable of high-altitude flight, disguised as a makeshift hut. However, upon nearing the graviCopter, the team had found it swarming with security officers, including the head of NRS security, a Mr. Kane, who was barking out orders faster than his employees could possibly follow them while wiping away the sweat from his short, bald head.

  Never one to succumb to poor odds, Simeon was beginning to wonder if he was playing his final hand. He was starting to doubt his recent effectiveness; he had botched the Carkeek Park and the Pismo Beach operations, and now this? Perhaps he had become too careless in his excitement to expose NRS. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but it might be the last.

  The group had become splintered in the chaos of the last few minutes. Throughout the slum, people ran screaming as NRS security aggressively rounded up the slum’s residents. An android had shot Grepman with a stasis gun, rendering him momentarily paralyzed. Kristina and the children had resorted to hiding under a makeshift kitchen counter, but Simeon knew their safety would be short-lived. No one was quite certain what had become of Jay-san, though Simeon guessed he was being fitted for some NRS corp award of excellence. Simeon and Nimbus were now left to scamper through cluttered, dusty walkways with no clear plan in place. Simeon’s most trusted allies were sending help, but they were far away, relatively speaking.

  Nimbus nearly crashed into Simeon’s back as he came to a halt between a decade’s-old, three-meter-high garbage compactor that was somehow still functioning noisily at this very moment, and a stack of old shipping containers that looked especially out of place in the middle of a desert. He turned and Nimbus instinctively placed her arms on his chest.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Good question.” The trash compactor began to squeal and Simeon squinted from the uncomfortable noise. Louder, he said, “I’m done, Nim. We’re done. There is no getting out of this one. I’m giving myself up.”

  “Giving yourself up won’t save us. They’ll still search for us and find us; it won’t be hard.”

  “True, but if I stall and you help Kristina, you may be able to hold out until one of our graviCopters gets here. We’ve got to try.” He raised his flaming arm up to her cheek. “We’ve had a good ride, and we both knew this day would come. I love—”

  “Fine. I’ll go back to the kids, and take them toward the riverbed—“

  “Fine? You’re just going to give me up—just like that? You’re not even going to argue?” Simeon put on his best faux-pained expression.

  “Oh, stop it. You know I love you.” She smiled and winked at him, but the wink became a blink to hold back tears. “But you’re right, it’s our best chance. We owe it to Kristina to try, that poor girl. They won’t hurt you— it would raise too many red flags. Right?” He nodded, but neither of them were certain of this. She continued, “Hell, at this point having your story in public may be our best bet. You may go to federal containment, but that’s why we employ lawyers. So, get going.”

  “This is why I love you.” His wan expression turned to a brief smile. He turned and ran around the groaning trash compactor.

  “God, please let me be right,” she whispered.

  Grepman had been caught by a PubSecCorp security team member not two steps outside of the yurt. The fact that he tripped over himself on his way out was partially to blame for his quick capture. Had he acted nonchalantly, he might have sauntered past them, as Kristina and the kids had.

  Now bound and laying in the hot desert sun, Grep’s sweat-drenched thoughts strayed only toward Sindhu. He hadn’t been able to help her in the slightest, and at this point, he figured it would take a miracle to ever see her again—in person, at least. Would he ever be able to touch her? And even on the remote chance that they were able to fraternize once more, she would most certainly not forgive him for his role in her failed escape.

  Still, he thought begrudgingly, that girl is stubborn. She’d be high maintenance. If I ever got into a contractual relationship with her, I’d limit it to a year . . . max. Maybe two.

  It was around this thought that Grep noticed Simeon walking toward him. He appeared relaxed, not hiding in the least. Grep squirmed and began to make obvious coughing sounds. Simeon glanced in his direction and nodded, but he still kept walking nearer. Grep became convulsive, trying desperately to warn Simeon to run, but Simeon waved him off and walked into the opening where Grep was laying.

  Simeon noted several security guards, two androids, and Kane. The opening was a dusty intersection of slum walkways. Several crates were used as benches, and more than a few of the security officers were sitting down. The androids, dressed in immaculate suits, stood rigid, awaiting Kane’s orders.

  Simeon sighed and shook his head at the lack of
bias for action shown by the PubSecCorp employees. At least the androids had their backs to him—the humans were obviously not paying attention.

  “Mr. Kane, I presume?”

  “What—“ Kane twirled and nearly slipped at his shock of seeing Simeon emerge from behind a stack of rickety crates. Kane slowly raised his stasis rifle and, as if mirroring the action, Simeon slowly raised his arms, causing his shirtsleeves to fall down to his round shoulders, displaying the lightly-flicking flame aniToo wrapping around his bicep. His eyes began to flicker as well.

  “Holy shit,” Kane said quickly, then slowly: “Ho-lee she-it. Simeon of SOP. The Simeon!”

  Kane recognized him immediately, though he had never seen a picture of the man—the arm, the long blond hair, the stocky build, the animated tattoo—Simeon’s identity was wholly obvious.

  Kane nodded and two burly security officers rushed up, grabbed Simeon, and immediately placed his hands in electrified restraining wire that glowed a soft red hue.

  “Call off your dogs, Kane, and I’ll cooperate.”

  Kane laughed. “You’re hardly in a position to make demands.” He eyed Simeon suspiciously, half-expecting some kind of trap.

  “No trap,” Simeon replied, reading Kane’s mind. “Tell your boss I’ll work with him. I’ll cooperate. Just call off your security. There are women—innocent people here—children. Let them go about their day; they don’t need to be a part of this.”

  Kane seemed to hesitate.

  “Just call your boss—Coglin,” Simeon pleaded. He made a motion with his hands, silently asking Kane to lower his weapon.

  Instead, Kane raised it more resolutely, then waved his opposite hand in the air, opening his BUI. A moment later, a crazed vision appeared in front of him. Reverend Coglin’s eyes were spinning wildly atop his ashen-gray face. Suddenly his visage locked onto Kane.