by Tony LaRocca
“Even the dog’s consciousness is evolving, though nowhere near as quickly,” said Jaeger.
“Why is he aging so fast?”
The general made a fist with one glowing hand, and wrapped the other around it. “At the center of the human mind is what is sometimes called the reptilian brain,” he said. “It contains our most primitive emotions and instincts. The mammalian, and then human brains evolved around it. Our minds incorporate these base impulses into their higher functions. The lust to procreate with the best genes possible becomes the search for a loving soul mate. Survival of the fittest becomes office politics.
“The zhivoi–painting of Matthew is like that reptilian brain. The Sage interfaces with it, enhances it, and causes the result to evolve and grow. The problem is, the paint was divided. So where you and I have one primal brain driving us, Matthew has two. The resulting conflict is causing his mind to mature at an accelerated rate. It may slow when he finishes puberty, it may not.”
Alyanna closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She let it out in a long, shuddering sigh. “I’m very tired,” she said. She laid the pad at her side. “I want to sleep.”
“Of course,” he said as he stood.
“Just one more question,” she said. “Say I do decide to get hooked up. Will that happen to me too? Will my brain age?”
“No,” said Jaeger. “No offense intended, but you would always just be a biopure with an implant. Matthew, on the other hand, is so much more.”
She shrugged, and curled on her side. She heard the Cyleb’s footsteps exit the room, the door sliding shut behind him. The harsh lights dimmed to a dull amber. She caressed her dead hand with her good one. She tried wiggling her fingers again. Nothing happened. She squeezed her right hand with her left. It felt warm, but dead between her fingers. She slapped it again and again. It was just meat. Sobbing, she fell asleep.
The next morning, she reentered the Sage. She tried to wiggle her fingers the moment the transitional vertigo ended, but they refused to move. She heard Matthew knocking on her bedroom door, and pushed her despair into her stomach.
“Mom,” said Matthew, as he rushed into her arms. She clutched him to her in an awkward, one handed embrace. Strike one, she thought, I can’t even hug my son anymore.
“Mom?” he asked, pulling back. “What’s wrong?”
Alyanna forced a smile. “Mommy—I—I hurt my hand.” Her throat felt tight. Within a day, she had gone from being Mommy to just being a mom. “It’s all right.”
He looked at his shoulder. It crackled from beneath his shirt. “Well, why don’t you get them to fix it?” he asked. “They fixed me.”
She sat on the bed, and patted the spot next to her. “I want to talk to you for a minute,” she said. He plopped down, kicking the side of the mattress with his heels. A sharp cramp stabbed through her abdomen. She winced until it passed.
“Hey,” he said, “are you okay?”
“Give me a second,” she said. She took a few quick breaths. “It’s just me readjusting to the suit.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” she lied. She forced herself to smile. “Do you like it in the Sage?”
“Sure,” he said. “My brothers say anything is possible here.”
She put her good hand on his. “Do you understand that you can never leave this place?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, “but what’s the difference?”
“What do you mean?”
He pulled his hand from under hers, and held it in front of him with the other, forming a bowl. “Sigma says that you never actually touch anything,” he said. “You never hear, smell, see, or taste anything either. It’s all just a virt in your head.”
Alyanna bit hard on her lip. She had told that woman to keep away from her son. She would deal with that later. “You mean she’s teaching you that nothing is real?”
“No, everything is real,” he said. “It’s just that you only see it all like pictures in your head, you know?”
“No,” she said. “Explain it to me.”
“What can you see?” he asked.
She sighed. “I see you. I see the wall, the window, and the trees outside—”
“No,” he cut her off. “You see the virt screens in front of your eyes.”
“Well, yes,” she said, blinking. Even after her time away, the illusion had become second nature.
“But you don’t really see them either. Photons bounce into your eyes, and your brain makes a picture from them inside your mind. All you really know is that picture. You see the map, not the territory. Now, close your eyes.” She complied. “What do you see?”
She shrugged. “Nothing.”
“You got it,” said Matthew. She opened her eyes. He grinned. “There’s no light bouncing into your eyes, so your brain doesn’t make a picture for you.” He snapped his fingers. Somehow, she had missed him learning how to snap.
She shook her head. “You’re so smart.”
“Nah,” he said. “It took me a long time to get it. So before, the pictures of the world were in my brain. But now, I’m a part of the Sage, so I’m directly part of the picture. There is no image, no separate model—not for me, anyway. For me, the map is the territory.”
“Stop it,” she said. She put her hand to her head. He shrunk back, and looked at his lap.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just… it’s a lot for Mommy—for me to think about.” She kissed his forehead. He rolled his eyes, and blushed. Oh God, she thought, he’s already embarrassed.
“Go on,” she said. “Go on, and play.” He smiled, jumped to his feet, and ran into the hallway. She listened to his sneakers thudding on the stairs, and the sound of the front door opening and closing behind him.
Chapter 7
Jaeger glided through the currents of NorMec’s decrepit communications network. He had always insisted that infrastructure was a nation at war’s most important resource, but in his absence, the protecting fathers had grown lazy. The result was a system full of short circuits, faulty gates, and noise. Just more evidence that the biopures would not survive on their own. The longer they held out, the longer it would take Jaeger to save what was left. Cylebs were not the enemy; they were the only possible future.
Talya had felt the same way as he. Of his three true siblings, he missed her the most. He had scoured every byte of available data for leads on her and his brothers, but he could not find any. Perhaps, like him, they had been trapped, or even executed.
He hoped Talya had made it back to Russia, the way she had always dreamed. Would they accept her? He doubted it. The Ascension had transformed each of the first generation Cylebs in different ways. His organs had become amber suns. Jonathan’s eyes had turned to smoke that could ride upon the air and see almost anything, even hours into the past or future. Brandon could calculate any possibility to the hundred thousandth degree; the cost was a head so hydrocephalic that his survival required a support frame and a drainage pump. And Talya, who had the ability to command organic life as he did the electronic, beautiful Talya’s flesh had become dancing ribbons of chaos.
Jaeger continued his journey north, checking behind him every few milliseconds for signs of a shadow. The pathways of information, once his playground, had become treacherous. It was like drifting off to sleep, only to be jarred awake by a hornet’s buzz under a window shade.
David had done this with his childish attack. David had put a wasp in his bedroom. If David’s neck were in Jaeger’s hands, he would squeeze until the colonel’s windpipe collapsed under his fingertips.
But revenge was unfortunately not a priority. Jaeger needed a plant where his children could construct drones, and he needed a second base of operations. He needed the Watervliet Arsenal.
He examined the access point for the installation’s communication hub. Its encryptions were, of course, more advanced than those that had existed in his time. The lock appeared to him as a cloud of three–dimensional shapes, each with
an irregular chunk removed. To gain access, he needed to join them together, so that their missing parts formed a cube. The problem was, the shapes of the remaining pieces reconfigured themselves with each join in a seemingly random pattern.
Of course, it was just another problem to be solved. Creating a truly random number was impossible. The gaps appeared in a pattern that essentially could not be predicted, but were based on one algorithm that used a combination of prime numbers, and another which used the billionth of a second at the moment of calculation as a variable.
He chose the piece closest to him, and stepped inside. Integers whipped around his head in a maelstrom. He accelerated his mind to match it. The tornado of numbers pulled away from him, and took on a reddish hue. They slowed to the point where he could just make them out: 81293, 15452417011775787851951047309563159388840946309807, 5628290459057877291809182450381238927697314822133923421169378062922140081498734424133112032854812293, 979189… But they were gone before he could comprehend the pattern.
He was obsolete.
He shook off the self–defacing thought. He had a new tool in his chest. He removed himself from the whirlwind cypher, and sped back to the Sanctuary.
Matthew lined up his shot and took it, gliding his smooth wooden cue through the fingers of his right hand. The white ball shot across the felt, and connected with the two–ball, but a few centimeters to the left of where he had intended. There was a thunk as the blue ball hit the edge of the corner pocket, and bounced off.
“This is stupid,” he said. He grabbed a chalk, and twisted it on the end of his stick. “I could make the balls move exactly where I want.”
Sigma did not look at him as she aimed her cue. “That’s the point, the environment may not always be under your control. And besides,” she said as she shot, sending the nine spinning into the side pocket, “you’re just complaining because you’re losing.”
He flushed. “I am not,” he said. He tried not to stare at her butt shifting beneath her uniform as she bent over the table. “Where did you learn how to play?”
“School,” she said. The balls collided with a clacking sound, followed by a thud as another fell into a pocket.
“The one my grandpa sent you to?”
She nodded as she pointed to the pocket in the far corner.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Was my real mom there?”
“Yes,” she said. She sunk the thirteen–ball, but the cue ball followed it. “Shit,” she said. Matthew snorted as she retrieved the balls, and placed them back on the felt. She raised an eyebrow at him, and cocked her head towards the table. He chose the two again, and aimed.
“What was she like?” he asked.
“Her name was Zeta, but she preferred Zed,” said Sigma. “Actually, she was old enough to remember the name her parents gave her. It was Marianne. She was an artist too, that’s where you get it from. She enjoyed drawing, and making up stories. That’s probably why Benjamin thought you and your mother would be such a good match.”
He took his shot. The ball ricocheted off the side, and landed in a corner pocket. He grinned. Sigma rolled her eyes, and twirled her finger in the air.
“Did you like her?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “We were much more diverse than the third generation. We were all supposed to love each other, but sometimes families don’t like each other. Do you understand?”
“Kind of,” he said. “What happened to her?”
She pursed her lips. “There were complications with your birth,” she said at last.
Matthew swallowed. “It’s really hard,” he said. “Like, all of the sudden my mom isn’t my mom, and my dad wasn’t my dad.”
“I understand,” Sigma said. She put an arm around his shoulders, and hugged him. Her face felt warm against his. “It’s your turn, by the way.”
“What about my dad?” he asked, turning back to the table.
Sigma opened her mouth. Before she could respond, a line appeared in the air, and Jaeger stepped through. Sigma snapped to attention. She coughed. Matthew dropped his cue onto the table and stood straight, his fists clenched at his sides.
The general did not bother with formalities. “I have a task for you,” he said to Matthew. “Are you ready to help your brothers?”
Matthew glanced at Sigma, but she remained at attention. Jaeger tapped him on his brow, and he snapped his eyes straight ahead. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Follow me,” said Jaeger. He turned his attention to Sigma. “Don’t you have other duties?” he asked.
She opened and closed her mouth. “I’m well above schedule, sir,” she said. “This is my rest period. I was teaching.” She swallowed. “Physics.”
Jaeger glanced at the pool table. “I see,” he said. “Forgive my curtness, Daughter, but plans are changing. Tell 0800 to form a squad, and wait for my orders. We’re going to take Watervliet.”
“0800?”
An amber muscle in the general’s right cheek twitched, almost imperceptibly. “Is there a problem, Sigma?” he asked, his voice soft.
“No, sir,” she said.
The withered man regarded her with clouded eyes. “Good,” he said. “Prepare immediately.” He strode toward the glowing conduit. “Come along.”
Matthew glanced at Sigma, unsure. Her eyes grew wide, and she jerked her head towards the line of white suspended in the air. He held his breath, and stepped through.
He felt a sudden sense of vertigo. He no longer walked, because there was no ground. He did not fly, because there was no sky. The world had become a uniform field of gray that stretched in all directions.
“This is an unwritten portion of the Sage,” said Jaeger, as he hovered beside him. “I will open a conduit to an encrypted gate on an external system. When we arrive, you will see a formation of shapes. Inside of each one will be a whirlpool of numbers.” Jaeger moved in front of Matthew, and stared into his face.
“Your mission,” he said, “is to accelerate your consciousness until you can observe all the data displayed for the duration of one nanohertz. Keep your mind open to me, so I can interpret the data as you see it. Do you understand?”
Matthew’s mouth went dry. “The only way I could do that,” he said, “is if I tore off my arm.”
Jaeger gazed into his eyes. Beneath the general’s translucent, leathery skin, the boy could see the spiderweb of fiery veins that threaded together to form his distended muscles. “You are one of us now,” Jaeger said. “We each have to do our part. Your brothers need you. Sigma needs you.”
Matthew bit his lip. He remained silent.
“I’m not used to having to repeat my orders,” said Jaeger. “Do not make me repeat them again.”
Matthew swallowed, his stomach churning. “Yes, sir,” he said.
A blue line appeared in the limbo, about twenty feet from them. It spun into a circle, creating a metallic torus. The inside receded into the distance, forming a tunnel.
A wall of churning energy that felt like a blast of freezing water hit them from behind, propelling them into a maze of glowing circuits. Every so often, a bolt of orange lightning spat from the walls, and they would change direction. The forks of plasma stung Matthew through the water, even when they were far in the distance.
“Be careful,” Jaeger said, his voice warbling in the current. “The infrastructure is damaged, and there are many arcs. After we take the factory, one of our first tasks will be to dig a dedicated ground link from the Sanctuary.”
The underwater roller–coaster ride came to an abrupt halt. They hovered before the cloud of spinning polyhedra.
“Pick one,” Jaeger said. “Any one, it doesn’t matter.”
Matthew pointed to the nearest object. It resembled the letter T, but with cubes removed from the corners of its arms. The general guided them forward, and they passed inside.
He flew amidst a cloud of mathematical insects. The data crawled on his lips; its wings tickled his eyes. He swatted at th
e living storm in disgust, but it parted around his flailing limbs.
“Stop that,” Jaeger said. Matthew held his arms to his sides, his hands clenched. “Now,” said the general, “accelerate your perception.”
“I don’t know how,” Matthew said. Jaeger stared into his eyes again, his scarred, luminescent face expressionless.
Because Matthew did know. There were times, in private, when he picked at the blurry pixels that composed his shoulder. The rush of agony and energy that infused his body when he pried at the cleft frightened him, but it fascinated and excited him as well. He knew that he aged days for every accelerated second, but the rush of energy and power was intoxicating. It was as if the world had always been black and white, but for the brief seconds that he delighted in his secret self, became color.
He met Jaeger’s stare. He raised his right hand to his left shoulder, dug his fingers in, and broke the flesh.
The swarm of data slowed to a crawl. Jolts of pain shot through his shoulder and into his spine in quick, agonizing flashes. The prime numbers glided by in clumps, their legs and wings fractals that intertwined. He opened his mind to the general’s, allowing Jaeger to see the cloud from his perspective.
Within seconds, he understood the algorithm that predicted how the blocks would change. It all had to do with the number of sides of the largest face of the chosen shape. While the outdated, fiery monster was still trying to figure that out, he would unlock the gate. He pulled his consciousness back to examine the other pieces—
Jaeger’s hand clamped around his right fingers. “What were your orders?” he asked. His voice was low–pitched and stretched, but still understandable.
“Let go,” said Matthew.
Jaeger squeezed, grinding his knuckles together. The boy screamed.
“I told you not to make me repeat myself,” Jaeger said in a voice like melted taffy. “Now, do as you are told.”
Matthew shot out his left hand. In this state, he was much quicker than the archaic martinet. He would gouge out the emaciated bastard’s eyes—