by Alex Myers
“I just talked to my—” he shook his head, “our mother yesterday. She doesn’t know anything about us.”
“You never told me who she was. You said if we ever approached her that it would ruin her life.”
“That’s true. Her husband has no idea. It would break his heart. She did say there was something wrong with one of us—that we almost died?”
“That was me. I almost died at birth, and for several weeks they didn’t think I was going to make it.”
Jack looked off at the horizon, the waves bouncing. “Why didn’t my dad, er, our dad adopt you too?”
“Because your dad, our dad, is a son of a bitch. A selfish son of a bitch.” Payton said. She bit her bottom lip and continued with downturned eyes. “I had autism, albeit minor autism, but autism still the same. He didn’t want damaged goods.”
From everything he heard about his father, he hated him already and he’d never even met the man. “I’m sorry Payton. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for what our father did, I’m sorry for not recognizing you…”
“Jack, don’t apologize. You came to me as soon as you found out. You have been nothing but great to me.”
“They told me I had no visitors when I was in a coma at the hospital. That’s why I thought you might have been lying to me.”
“I never was in the hospital, Jack. I watched you on closed circuit every night sitting in front of my computer. The nurses’ feed—I hacked into it as well as your charts. I sat there with you. I would’ve never been able to step foot in that hospital. I’m a wanted woman.”
“Wanted woman?”
“Yes, a wanted woman. Top ten now on the One World Government’s most wanted list, thank you very much.” She smiled for the first time in a while. “Hacking. They called it computer espionage, but it’s hacking.”
“Well I’ll be damned. I have got a sister.”
“Twin sister. A sister that’s glad she’s not sleeping in the same room as her snoring brother.”
As they passed the jetty of rocks protecting the Hampton Marina, he finished telling Payton the story of his relationship with the Canters.
“You mean our mother is right over there and she doesn’t even know about us?”
“Now you know the reason I didn’t tell you.”
“One-stroke of luck,” she said, “was your e-chip not working there. And from everything I know now, I don’t think our father would look for you there either.”
“How aggressively do you think he’s looking for me?”
“Not just you, us. I don’t know if he knows if I’m his daughter or not, but he’s smart and has the best people working for him, so he probably does. I do know he hates me almost as much as he hates you. And he wants to kill you. At least he did before the accident that is.”
“If they were trying to kill me, why didn’t they do it while I was in the hospital?”
“Breaking into a hospital to get a nano patient is harder than breaking into Fort Knox.”
“There hasn’t seemed to be anyone in pursuit of me since I’ve been out of the hospital. At least until today.”
“That’s not true. When I did research on your e-chip records, I saw the fingerprints of at least three other searches on your account. One? Okay, I could pass that off as a simple government search bot, but I tried to trace the others to their origins and they had been deliberately hidden. Someone was doing a great job of covering their tracks.”
“Fine. I won’t use my e-chip; they shouldn’t be able to find us then, right?”
“I found you and you weren’t using it.”
He lowered the sails and seamlessly turned on the inboard motor. “How did you find me?”
“You are creature of habit, you are always punctual. It was the day to renew your e-chip. I was just waiting at the church on your renewal day. You showed up for service early, of course, but I had been waiting there for six hours. I don’t know how you got in without me seeing you.”
“I didn’t know that today was my renewal day. I only came in today so that I could renew my chip and pay the Canters the money for this boat. It was just a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence, Jack.”
“Wait, that’s my line.”
“We’re twins, we think alike. I just believe the universe has a way of making things right.”
Jack laughed to himself, if she only knew. “So now I’m traceable every time I get renewed? Is this thing like a GPS and they have got my constant location?”
“Yes and no, I have ways to disguise your location. Plus I can renew it remotely and have it show up at any renew station anywhere around the world. Do you have a computer on board?”
“Look at this boat, it’s got one of the best privately owned computers in the world.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“How can I pay the Canters for this boat? I don’t want to leave them in a lurch. They have been so good to me and this boat is so expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“Four point three million dollars’ worth of expensive.”
“Jack, have you completely lost your mind? You go from hating boats to paying a fortune for one.”
“Is it going to be a problem?”
“Don’t worry about it. I can make sure they get their money and do it in a way the government will never be able to figure out it was you.”
Jack stood, went to the navigation station, and set a course for the open sea. “Why don’t we go below and I’ll show you around.”
“Will we be alright? We’re not going to run into an island or a whale or something?”
“This is the most technologically advanced boat in the world. It’s better at piloting than I am. We’ll be perfectly fine.”
“I’d like us to get onto your computer and I’ll show you around the virtual world a bit.” Payton said.
“If you’d like, I really think were fine though.” Jack gave her a mini tour and learned that she had an amazing understanding of anything technical.
They ended up in the second stateroom that Jack had set up as a command center and were seated in front of Jack’s powerful computer. Payton reached into her bag and pulled out an optical cord. It was approximately nine feet long and had fittings Jack had never seen before. She slid the CPU out of its floor cabinet and inserted a cord into the back of the machine. She lifted the hair off the back of her neck and plugged in the other end of the cord.
Jack was aghast. “What are you?”
She turned with a quizzical look on her face and asked, “What are you talking about?”
“That cord,” he was wild-eyed and gaping. “What did you do with that cord?”
“I plugged it into my dock; don’t have a kitten over it.”
Jack got up, went to her, and examined the place at the base of her skull where the cord went into the back of her neck. The flesh-colored plastic, the size of a postage stamp, had a raised-ridge receptacle in the middle. The edges so perfectly blended with the surrounding skin, it looked as if it had been there forever.
“Can I touch it?”
“Sure, whatever.” Payton said.
It was harder than plastic and he thought it might be metal. He lightly rubbed his fingers around the edge.
“Hey watch it,” she said, jumping, “that tickles like crazy.”
Jack jumped too. “What exactly does that do?”
“It matches the computing power of my brain with that of the computer. Some people use it like a glorified mouse or keyboard. In the hands of an expert… let me rephrase that, in the hands of an artist, you are the computer.”
“When did you have that done?”
“About six years ago. I also have a MEC, memory enhancement chip.”
She must have seen the look of confusion on his face. “It does exactly what you think. A microprocessor and memory chip that enables near 100 percent retention. Mentally turn on the chip and it records everything: sights, sounds, smell
s, tastes, even thoughts.”
“And they attach this to your head?”
“In your head. It’s an implant; it runs by the electricity in your brain. They have been using it or a variation of it at least, on Alzheimer’s patients for fifteen years. The brain actually reroutes neurons around the MEC, so it becomes more efficient the longer you have it.”
“Sounds like major surgery and dangerous.”
“Minor. They do it right in the doctor’s office. It’s an outpatient procedure.”
“Cracking your skull open?”
“Lasers. They make the incision with lasers then fuse it back together to close it.”
“There’s no problem with rejection?”
“They use titanium because it has a low incidence of immune hypersensitivity, and in the reported cases where there have been problems, they came from people plugging into the wrong things. There was a guy in Delaware who plugged into a toaster oven. Plus they also insert nanobots to surround and protect it. Here’s what it looks like.” The 3-D screen now displayed a working model of the MEC.
“How did you pull that up?”
“With this, my neural net relay, my NNR,” she said, indicating the cord plugged into the back of her neck.
“MEC, NNR, this is all so wild and confusing.”
“Don’t blow a gasket. They’re commonplace. I mean, you even have one.”
“Me? No way. I would’ve noticed it.”
“I’m sure you have one.” She got up, walked around him, moved his hair, and said, “It’s right here.”
He felt the interface with his fingers on the back of his neck. He moved to the mirror, turned his head, and strained his neck to look. “Damn, how could I have missed this?” As he felt the postage-stamp sized device, he understood how he could have missed it; except for the small protruding receiver, it felt like the skin around it. “Are these things really that commonplace?”
“Sort of. The same way people were with the Internet when it came out in the early 60s. Probably 20 to 30 percent worldwide have it, more like 70 to 80 percent in the urban areas. The N1 is the model most people have. It’s a relatively in and out procedure. They connect the N1 to a few ganglia neural endings—something like two or three hundred. Last year I upgraded to the N2 that has a twelve thousand connection points.”
“Twelve thousand! A surgeon connected twelve thousand pins to your brain?”
“A surgeon, two robotic arms, and a butt load of nanobots. Now that is major surgery where you are lying awake for about five hours with your skull cracked open.”
“You’d have to be crazy to go through something like that.”
“You should know. You had the same procedure done yourself before I did. You even paid for mine. Two hundred and fifty grand. You said it was the most expensive gift you’d ever given a relative.”
“What kind of difference, performance-wise, is it to the first one you were talking about?”
“While we’ve been talking, I downloaded the interface software for this computer. Would you like to see for yourself?”
With the optical cord in the back of his neck and her finger hovering over the “enter” button on the computer keyboard, Jack was about to go on a journey.
“Are you ready?” She asked.
He nodded. He waited. Nothing. He waited a little bit more. “Are you sure this is going to work?” His heart was racing and he could feel sweat on the back of his neck where the wire attached.
“Here we go, I promise to be gentle with you.” Jack heard the key click and his world fell in upon itself. The sounds of the boat and the harbor disappeared, replaced by a big bass beat; everything went black, devoid of even the smallest amount of light.
“Can you hear me?” She asked. It came as a voice without direction, a voice in his head.
“Yes, I can.” His voice sounded unsure even to him. “What’s that sound?”
“What sound? I programmed it for no sound.”
“That big drum beating?”
She paused for a second. “That’s your heart beating.”
“Where are you?” He was still not able to determine which direction her voice was coming from.
“Let me turn on the light.” There was a click and a soft, indirect light illuminated Payton’s face. The light didn’t stray from her face so he could see no details of the room he was in; he couldn’t even see her body.
“Where are we?” Jack asked.
“We are in a virtual room I created.”
“It’s like being in my VITU immersion tank,” Jack said.
“Not quite—here check this out.”
He smelled lilac. “That’s your hair—I can smell your hair. What’s the big deal though? I was smelling that before we started.”
“How about this?”
“Apple?”
“And this…”
“Citrus? Lavender? I’m not sure what it is—how are you doing that?”
“I have complete control of this environment.”
“Sight, sound, smell…is that all?” He asked.
She realized what he was asking and her hand appeared out of the darkness. She touched him on the cheek. She withdrew her hand and when it reappeared, she was holding a Hershey’s Kiss on her upturned palm. “Go-ahead, have it, I know how much you love them.”
Jack opened the foil wrapper and placed the chocolate in his mouth. “It’s perfect,” he said as he chewed.
“And calorie-free too.” Payton smiled.
“You could come in and eat all your favorite food in here and not gain an ounce, right?”
“There are over ten thousand distinct tastes in the program, many of them brand names.” Payton said.
“How are you executing this program? Are you using keystrokes?”
“Of course not, I’m doing it all with my mind. I’m going through a series of menus that only I can see. After a while, you don’t even need them, you just think what you want, and it happens,” Payton said.
“Do I have the ability to do this right now?”
“You do, but right now just concentrate on following me. It takes a little getting used to and we’re going to be moving fast. I am purposely taking it slow in here in the beginning so you don’t freak out.”
“I appreciate that, I’m not really prone to freaking out though,” Jack said.
“Okay, you asked for it. Hold on tight.” Her image coalesced, elongated and after half a second, a small pinpoint of light shot like a rocket to an even smaller pinpoint of light in the distance. “Come on Jack, try to keep up,” her voice echoed in his head.
By merely thinking about it, he felt his cyber-self grow light and leave the ground. He tried to execute the shape-shifting move she had executed to no avail, so he simply decided to follow her vanishing image.
Lights appeared in the distance and soon surrounded him. He was in a room filled with thousands of filing cabinets and saw Payton standing in an aisle way off in the distance. He willed himself to her and almost before he could complete the thought, he was standing next to her.
“That was quick,” she said sounding impressed.
“I don’t know about that, you pretty much left me in the dust.”
“But I knew where I was going. I guess some things you just don’t forget.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You are, after all, the one that taught me to navigate in here.”
“What’s first on our agenda?” Payton asked.
“Well, there is a Professor Finney at the University of Texas that I can’t seem to get a hold of, can you find any information? The text said it was urgent.”
“Can you tell me if Finney is a first name or last name?”
“I just assumed it was a last name,” Jack said.
“It doesn’t matter, I’ll get it.” A file drawer opened to their left and Payton gave a slight nod in its direction. A file folder popped out and hovered in the air above it. “Oh, it’s Dr. Brooke Finney with the
Archaeology Department, look, here’s a picture.” A picture of a beautiful blond woman appeared. She didn’t look to be a day over twenty-five.
“She looks too young to be a professor.”
“With nano cosmetics nowadays, how can you tell?” Payton asked.
“Wow,” Jack said, “if I would have known she was that good looking I would have got back with her sooner. Archaeology? I wonder what she wants with me.”
“It does look like she’s single from her file. Maybe that’s why she was trying to get in touch with you?”
There were pages of personal and professional information. A cover sheet was displayed but the other information—both professional and personal—was secured with an access code.
“Great, now what are we gonna do?”
“I have my code-breaking subroutine running in the background, it should take just a second,” she said.
The eight empty slots covering the page had numbers rolling and then stopping like a giant slot machine. When the eighth number rolled into place, the virtual code page exploded into pieces making way for the more intimate details underneath.
“They have everything here: books she’s bought on Amazon, pay-per-views she’s watched recently, sporting-goods she’s purchased, organizations she’s joined, donations she’s made—it’s all here.”
“I have purchases and locations up until about five days ago when she went off-line somehow,” Payton said. “The trail ends in Soufriere.”
“Soufriere is a city somewhere?”
“It’s a seaside town of about 7,000 people on the West Coast of St. Lucia.”
“St. Lucia? Remember that thing about there being no such thing as coincidence? The guy who was supposed to buy this boat and our father were last heard from on St. Lucia. Can you tell what this Professor Finney is working on?”
“That’s not clear. I see notes that link to nonexistent documents like ‘Sea Stacks and Conical Mountains’, ‘The Hindu Calendar and the Six Civilizations’, ‘Ancient Technology’ and ‘Atlantis’. Sounds to me like she’s more into fairytales than archeology.”
What would she think if I told her about my time travel? Jack wondered. “Off-line? I didn’t think that was supposed to be able to happen.”