The Reality Thief (Deplosion Book 1)

by Paul Anlee

“Maybe it’s time to think about doing your research someplace besides MIT,” Paul suggested. “You know, your mother actually began her dendy research while she was up in Canada.”

  “Yeah, but they’re almost as crazy as we are these days,” Darian countered.

  “That’s true, in some ways. Everyone's going through a lot of adjustment right now. So long as you avoid the religion-based schools in the South and stay clear of the socialist kooks up here, you might find a happy middle ground with the moderates in California. Or what about up in British Columbia?”

  Darian nodded and picked up his sandwich. “Berkeley was one of the homes of SynBio, and they're still doing a lot of great work there.”

  “Berkeley's always been a great university. Very liberal but solid in the Life Sciences,” Paul offered helpfully. “And if you apply now and move to San Francisco this summer, you'd be able to get in before they close the borders to Americans outside of Pacifica.”

  “But then you’d be here, and I’d be in another country,” Darian pointed out between mouthfuls. "Our home is here, and so is everything I’ve ever known and cared about.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time you expand your horizons. I mean, you’d still be in North America. It’s not like you’d be moving to Germany or anything. ”

  Darian nearly choked. "Germany, Dad? Really?"

  "Look, there’s nothing tying me to Boston anymore.” Paul held up his hands, demonstrating a distinct lack of shackles. “Maybe we should sell the house, and I’ll move out to the coast with you.”

  “It’s not like I need my daddy to keep me company,” Darian grinned.

  “No, you’re well past that,” Paul agreed quickly. “It could be good for me, too, though. It wouldn’t hurt for me to expand my own horizons a little. I don’t know how our government is going to respond to this secessionist rebellion any more than you do, but the economy here in what's left of this country is dismal. It’s hard to imagine a rosy future, right now.”

  Darian’s focus shifted outward to some distant point. Paul recognized the look. It meant his son was either referencing a ton of material on the internet, or he was busy with some deep calculation, or both. Waiting for Darian to finish whatever he was doing inside his marvelous lattice-enhanced brain, Paul finished his sandwich and ordered another cold beer.

  “I’ve been reading some articles about President Wilson, Senator Mitchell, and Governor Alcraft; and the political analyses and background papers on what happens when countries break apart due to internal insurrections.”

  Darian's voice took on a stilted academic tone when he was thinking with the semiconductor lattice instead of his biological brain. “In addition, I have investigated several political, social and psychological modeling methodologies, and constructed a crude composite simulation to predict future activities by these three men. Preliminary results indicate that President Wilson will choose to negotiate rather than call upon the military. The negotiations are unlikely to lead to any agreements on the major issues in the near term, especially on currency and defense.

  “Senator Mitchell seems entrenched and is unlikely to respond well to suggestions regarding future cooperation. He doesn't like President Wilson’s politics or his religious affiliation. He will move the New Confederacy toward stronger protectionist and isolationist policies for the foreseeable future.

  “Governor Alcraft, on the other hand, leans toward pragmatism. He will work hard to maintain good relations with what is left of the United States and Canada. I estimate a 95% probability that all parts of the former country will default on 70% of their collective debts over the next three years. There is only a 5% probability that the New Confederacy will recognize its obligation for any of these debts, while there is an 80% chance that Pacifica will assume some portion of its previously shared obligation.”

  “Makes you wonder why they bothered to separate at all.”

  “The majority of analysts suggest the states and provinces making up Pacifica all share a desire for increased fiscal responsibility and a pragmatic, inclusive, secular government.

  “They differ from the government of the New Confederacy in rejecting a Christian basis for Criminal and Civil Codes. They also differ from the remaining United States in refusing to endlessly fund unaffordable corporate welfare programs.

  “They were rushed into an untimely secession, owing partly to their respective governments refusing to pass balanced budgets, and partly to the precipitous actions of the movement in the South.” Darian blinked at his own analysis.

  “Well, the New Confederacy certainly seems hell-bent on ruining what’s left of this country, that’s for sure.”

  “It does appear that the key figures behind the New Confederacy wish to punish the collective governments of the past for their reckless spending, cultural dilution, and lack of religious purity.

  “There is an 85% probability that the New Confederacy will recognize Christianity as its official religion and English as its only official language. There is a contingent 80% probability that the surviving America will be forced to make a similar declaration in order to reduce emigration to the South by the wealthy. By contrast, Pacifica is likely to continue to emphasize a multi-cultural approach, given its large Latino and Asian populations.”

  “Well, I agree with both social tolerance and fiscal responsibility. But it’s hard to say which fragment of the country will fare best. No matter how you slice it, this is a real mess.”

  “My model calculates a 98% probability that the US dollar will depreciate a further 40% before the situation stabilizes. The GDPs of the remaining union and New Confederacy are almost certain to decrease by three to five percent per year for the next five years before settling into a significantly reduced standard of living. Pacifica appears to have the right combination of resources and innovative capability to withstand that kind of devaluation. Should they decide to create their own currency, it would be more stable than the Greenback or the Greyback.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to relocate out to California, after all,” Paul hypothesized.

  Darian smiled, a sign that he’d returned from the world of the cold, analytic machine within him. “Maybe this would be a good time to move. And it would be a pretty good place to go—as good as any, right now.”

  Father and son shared eye contact for a few seconds. “Psst! Don’t look now,” Paul hissed, “but I think we just made a decision. See, that wasn’t so bad.” They burst out laughing, and Darian reached across the table to pilfer his father's unfinished fries.

  Feeling good, but not quite ready to face all the changes and details headed their way, Paul steered the conversation to the Red Sox's chances in the upcoming season. "Well, it's no secret American League Baseball has always wanted to go international. I guess they got their wish—just not the way they expected," he chuckled.

  America might be going to Hell in a handbasket, but at least its national sport would continue.

  22

  A CACOPHONY OF BLARING ALARMS greeted Princess Darya's return to her covert asteroid base, Tertius, and her outworld trueself.

  Her internal status alarms and the asteroid base's intruder alarms all clamored for immediate attention. Great, my ultra-capacitors are nearly depleted, my reserve power is almost gone, and someone’s found this base.

  The proximity alarms lit up: Securitors closing in.

  Okay, first things first. Darya dropped the last vestiges of her inworld persona and reverted to her base trueself.

  Her avatar, the regal Han princess, bore no resemblance to her spherical metal body. Nobody’s avatar ever did. In the real universe, her official Cybrid designation was DAR143147. Outworld, her close friends called her Dar but whenever she was inworld, she went by the more formal name, Darya.

  Though Cybrids were sexless, synthetic constructs of metal and semiconductor, Darya had always identified as a “she.” Throughout the ages of her existence, her persona had been consistently female, matching that o
f her original human template from Earth.

  She deactivated her quark-spin lattice, and took her radar and laser-sight offline. My manipulators and active sensors are eating up more energy than I can spare right now. If I don’t drastically cut the drain, I’m not going to stand a chance. Passive visual sensors and ambient light sources will have to do for now.

  What else can I do without? The emotions system. She needed to focus on problem-solving right now; she couldn’t afford to be distracted by simulated emotions. Done.

  Anything else I can do without? She moved all but her most critical processes into slow storage. That should help save some energy and increase computational power.

  Now, let’s take a better look at the incoming Securitors. Where are you? She accessed the asteroid's external sensors.

  * * *

  TERTIUS WAS DAR’S THIRD “HOME”, the one she used as a base for her Lysrandia inworld incursion. She’d found it during her previous assignment, repositioning other asteroids away from S0-102’s gravity and into orbit around Sagittarius A*, where they would serve as fueling depots, repair shops, and entertainment centers for the countless Cybrids that comprised the Central Implementation Team of Alum’s Divine Plan.

  During her millions of years on the project, Dar had managed to take occasional unrecorded asteroids and park them in orbits that might prove useful to her at some unspecified time in the future. She implemented the orbital changes in the selected planetoids gradually, and only in coordination with intentionally-herded asteroids. That way, the discrepancies would be interpreted as natural errors, and her propellant use would remain within expected ranges.

  Tertius was the third rock she had secretly maneuvered. She’d picked it for its high natural concentrations of uranium and plutonium. She’d placed it in a fixed position relative to her most important base, Secondus.

  Over the hundreds of thousands of years since placing Tertius in its present orbit, she'd hollowed out a series of chambers to use as workshops, and connected them by a maze of tunnels. Inside the tunnels, undetected and at her leisure, she’d mined and refined fissionable materials, and mapped the structure of the asteroid’s rocky interior.

  And in the central control chamber, she’d planted a 100-kiloton atomic bomb constructed with the purified radioactive elements. Just in case—she’d reasoned.

  * * *

  DAR GLANCED AT THE READOUT from the cloud of microsensors she'd deployed around the asteroid. Oh! Okay, that’s impressive; I’ll give them that. Alum had sent hundreds of enforcement Securitors to capture her. The microsensor display lit up their approach in iridescent trails.

  They’re closing in fast, and in more force than a single opponent should warrant. I guess anyone possessing enough skills and nerve to hack into a central inworld server would be of interest to Alum. Clearly, they don’t want me escaping. Sorry, fellas, but I’ve got other plans!

  She couldn’t fend off a whole squadron of Securitors, and even if she did, they’d just send more. The rock’s thick outer shell and her artful camouflaging of the six entry portals might buy her a little time. Once they got inside the asteroid, it wouldn’t take them long to find the inner chamber. If she couldn’t get out off the rock fast, she’d be facing deep interrogation and a full persona wipe within hours.

  Another alarm sounded. Her ultra-capacitors were down to less than one percent of full charge, and there was no time to recharge using Tertius’ internal power supply. The slow trickle of power from the ancient solar panels on the surface would only give her another one or maybe two percent before the Securitors found her.

  Options! What are my options? The frozen blocks of mercury and anti-mercury in her propulsion system were a great source of power. But for some reason, the idiot engineers hadn’t thought to connect the propulsion system to an electricity generator. Such a blatant oversight—an outright design flaw—made her wonder if it was purposely designed to hamper the Cybrids’ overall versatility and freedom. That wouldn’t surprise me at all.

  If I can get to Secondus, I can recharge from the high-output panels. She ran the calculations. Enough matter-antimatter fuel to reach the base easily. I’ve never run this close to red lining; can my processing circuitry last long enough to make the transit? And if I do go, the energy flare from my main drive will be impossible to hide from the Securitors. They’ll just track me, and capture me there. No sense doing their job for them!

  So, that’s it, then. Time for the last-resort option. Destroy Tertius and ride safely away in the detritus of the nuclear fireball.

  Long ago, she’d simulated how the planetoid would shatter if a nuclear device was detonated at its core. She’d searched through the resultant simulated rock fragments for one large enough to be propelled along an intercept orbit with Secondus.

  Over and over, she’d modified the tunnel structure models until finally the simulated explosion produced large enough fragments that would travel along the desired range of trajectories. Satisfied with the results, her last task before she’d started hacking into the Lysrandia sim had been to drill a Cybrid-sized chamber within one such fragment, line it with a thick titanium shell and hatch, and install a few external sensors.

  She hoped this crudely fashioned escape pod that she’d prepared so long ago would survive the blast meant to destroy the entire planetoid and be accelerated intact along the projected trajectory.

  It had seemed like a reasonable last-ditch escape plan when she’d first thought of it. She’d soon have opportunity to see how accurate her simulation had been.

  The Securitors blasted their way into one of the upper tunnels leading to the central chamber, and were headed toward the center to detain her.

  Dar set the timer on the bomb for seventy-five seconds and raced down the narrow tunnel to the escape chamber. She lodged herself firmly inside and secured the hatch door. Eighteen seconds to spare.

  Safely inside, she detonated a chain of chemical explosives behind her. The capsule vibrated and rumbled as the kilometer-long tunnel collapsed all the way from outside her makeshift lifeboat to the central control chamber. If any of the Securitors had managed to make it to the center, the choked tunnel would give her a little extra time to make her escape.

  The variation in projected trajectories are within plus or minus 20,000 kilometers of Secondus, 80% of the time. Still too broad; I don’t like those odds. At least the fragment she’d be using as an escape pod could be expected to survive more or less intact 96 times out of 100.

  Goodbye, Tertius.

  As the timer on the atomic bomb counted down the last few hundredths of a second, she wished she believed in a Higher Power to whom she could pray. Sadly, she had parted ways with faith long ago. Keep me safe—she pleaded to no one, anyway.

  Zero. The 100-kiloton explosion vaporized the inner part of the asteroid. An expanding fireball forced gasified rock out through the venting tunnels, obliterating her lab, her work, the connecting tunnels, and the waves of Securitors moving through the labyrinth to find her, along with all traceable evidence of her existence.

  Tragic, but nice and tidy. A clean slate.

  As predicted, the extreme heat and pressure from the massive blast splintered the planetoid along the lines Dar had meticulously mapped out. It propelled fragments brutally outward in all directions, including the crucial chunk cradling her crude escape pod.

  Though her Cybrid bulk filled the titanium-lined escape capsule to within a millimeter, she was thrown around like a dried bean inside a rattle. She berated herself for not incorporating a dense foam lining to cushion the buffeting. It had seemed an unnecessary luxury. This is sure to knock a couple of screws loose. Regardless, it’s a lot better than staying behind and letting the Securitors catch up with me.

  Great Alum, the Securitors! I didn’t take them into account. More to the point, I didn’t include the additional explosive energy that would be added by their antimercury fuel packs. Dar, you idiot!

  The nuclear reaction would have
destroyed their containment fields; the resulting matter-antimatter reactions would have altered the acceleration and rotation of the discharged asteroid fragments, including the one she was riding in!

  She was lucky it hadn’t just killed her outright in the first second. She was alive, but off course, out of energy, and too far from a recharging option to recover. I’m dead. Or hopelessly off course, and then dead.

  If I don’t bring at least some of the systems back online right now and revise the computations, I’ll die for sure. And if I do go online, I’ll run out of power before I get to Secondus and likely die, anyway.

  Dar counted to a hundred trillion, slowly, and started accessing whatever external sensors remained functional. The sensors verified her suspicions. Overlooking the effect of the Securitors’ munitions and fuel had cost her dearly.

  As the external sensors began streaming data, Darya watched her unfortunate oversight blossom into a problem, a big problem. The trajectory of the escape pod was above the orbital plane; it would miss Secondus by almost ninety thousand klicks.

  She needed to get out of the pod within forty-seven seconds. That was her only chance to propel herself on a safe intercept course for home. And I'll have to do it without being observed by any Securitors in the vicinity.

  The fragment’s external sensors revealed that about fifty percent of the Securitor team had survived the destruction of the asteroid.

  She had significant blind spots over a large portion of her visual field, especially behind the hurtling rock fragment where the remaining Securitors were likely waiting. Her lifeboat was now a few hundred thousand klicks from the blast center but still within an area the Securitors might actively search. With any luck, their remaining sensors were concentrated nearer the origin of the blast.

  She activated the hatch release. Nothing happened. She sent the signal again. It remained closed. She snaked out a manipulator tendril and used a risky amount of her remaining power to try pushing aside the hatch. Jammed! The explosion must have deformed the titanium shell.