Vertigo: Aurora Rising Book Two

by Jennsen, G. S.

The woman circled back behind her desk and began typing on her control panel. “You should get downstairs to the main conference room. I’ll send two assistants to help you pull together whatever you require.”

  “I’m not sure I follow. Why do I need assistants?”

  “Because you’re leading the strategy session.”

  24

  PORTAL PRIME

  UNCHARTED SPACE

  * * *

  THE TRANSITION FROM STANDING AMONG STARS to standing in a tech lab was a jarring one for Alex. Also claustrophobia-inducing; though the room was by most standards cavernous, the walls pressed in on her from what felt like centimeters away.

  So tiny, so miniscule were the spaces where people spent the days and nights of their lives.

  The long walls of the lab contained large server racks and dozens of fiber cables running among them. The hardware architecture appeared archaic, even ancient.

  This was not happening now. This had not happened in her lifetime.

  Two men and a woman sat at a rectangular table at one end of the room.

  “I assure you, Administrator, the Synthetic Neural Net—we’re calling it a ‘Synnet’ for convenience—is more than capable of taking over day-to-day operations of the University’s facilities. It has internalized all the rules and regulations and historical records and has analyzed the functioning of numerous other campuses. We’ve run tens of thousands of scenarios. The result is an efficiency increase of 22-35% in not only power usage but also ancillary costs, as well as an anticipated 12-16% improvement in student satisfaction.”

  The older man nodded thoughtfully. “What about security operations?”

  “All operational decisions will remain with the Security Department. If given access to the procedural mechanisms, however, the Synnet will be able to execute on those decisions with far greater speed than our current disparate computer systems. The faster reaction time can help save lives in a crisis.”

  The younger of the two men had been silent up to this point, but now he leaned forward in an assertive pose, a confident smile adorning his face…

  …and she realized she knew who he was.

  She looked up at the ceiling. “You don’t have to show me this—I know what this is. I already know what happens next.”

  The scene shifted in a blur so disorienting she fought back nausea.

  When the world regained clarity, she was on a lawn, the sort of quad-style park universities had included for thousands of years. The grass was a perfect emerald green, so vivid in color she felt as though she should be able to smell it as well. If she could, she thought it would smell of mint and clover.

  She sighed in resignation. With no body, trapped inside an alien funhouse tour of human history, she was free to be careened from scene to scene according to their whims.

  Clusters of students strolled in every direction, many bearing distinctive Asian features which had faded from the gene pool over the last two centuries.

  A group of four men in their early twenties walked past her. “So I explained to the secretary how I absolutely had permission to access the files and….” The young man’s voice trailed off as his gaze drifted to the left; hers followed.

  The plasma ripple of a crude force field rose in a wave out of the neighboring street and arced to meet the shield rising on the opposite side of the campus, some four kilometers away. They met at the apex to create an impenetrable barrier.

  A disembodied, placid void echoed throughout the quad. “As a result of a threatened outbreak of acute viral metahemorrhagic fever, a Level V quarantine protocol is now in effect. For your own safety, please remain calm and return to your residences.”

  She groaned, irritation and a faint undertone of panic bleeding into her voice. “I told you, I know what happens next. Let me out of here.”

  Silence met her, as it always did. Around her students shifted direction and hurried on, by and large obeying the directive. She saw expressions of confusion and concern on those passing near her. They were so young, little more than babies.

  “You sadistic fucks, do not make me watch these kids starve to death!”

  The scene shifted. Again. She was on a paved street, thankfully now on the outside of the force field.

  She supposed they had acceded to her request, if only in the most literal sense.

  Emergency vehicles were strewn across the road. Barricades and soldiers in riot gear held back crowds of unruly civilians.

  She focused on what seemed to be a command area, though she didn’t pretend to believe she had control over her actions. They sent her where they wanted her to be.

  The young man from the tech lab now sported rumpled hair and a similarly rumpled shirt as he trod frenetically in front of a general in full dress uniform. “That’s what I’m telling you, sir—we’ve tried. We’ve tried everything. The Synnet is, by its nature, adaptive. Every time we find a weakness and start to exploit it, it closes the gap, along with all related weaknesses.”

  The general—this would be General Dyzang she presumed—grunted. “Can’t you simply unplug the damn machine? Why is this so goddamn difficult?”

  “U-unplug it, sir? Uh, no. For one, the hardware is distributed around multiple locations on campus with multiple redundancies. For another, it has its own stand-alone and self-sustaining power sources. For yet another, those power sources are inside the force field. No, sir, we cannot simply unplug it.”

  Dyzang blustered at the Brigadier beside him. “The entire Asia Region military is at our disposal and this clown is the best mind we have?”

  The Brigadier cleared her throat subtly. “Sir, with respect, this ‘clown’ has three doctorates in multiple fields of quantum computing. Dr. Baek is the Chair Emeritus of the Synthetics Research Department at Hong Kong University. We’re lucky he was off-campus when the shield activated.”

  “Chair Emeritus? He’s twelve.”

  Dr. Isaac Baek, Father of Neural Net Computing and Butcher of Hong Kong University, squared his spine and shoulders proudly. “Sir, I am thirty-seven and I am—”

  “Fine. So we can’t unplug it. What can we do?”

  The proud posture wilted. “I’m working on some ideas, sir.”

  She rolled virtual eyes and glared at a periwinkle sky above downtown. “Can we please skip to the end? The military and the government are going to screw around and trip over one another in their stupidity for weeks. When they finally get the shield down and this ‘Synnet’ disabled, they’re going to find nothing but corpses. I know. Get to whatever point it is you’re trying to make.”

  Her voice dropped to a murmur. “I beg you. Please.”

  The scene blurred and shifted yet again. Her head spun and her stomach roiled.

  Then she was…she could have been anywhere. In front of her hung an old vid screen. It was built into a wall and displayed images which were strangely flat, almost 2D.

  A newscaster intoned solemnly in front of visuals of emergency personnel removing sheet-covered bodies from buildings. “More than five weeks after the crisis at Hong Kong University began, it has come to an end, but at a horrific cost. Officials are thus far unwilling to speculate as to the death toll, but analysts suggest it is likely to be upwards of fifty thousand.”

  “54,217. We learn it in school.” She shook her head. “What answer are you looking for from me? That it was our fault? It was—but only for being fallible. That it was the Artificial’s fault? It was—but only for being fallible.

  “Everyone thought they were doing the right thing. The Artificial—if you even want to call it one, its processing power and neural complexity were practically Stone Age—performed flawlessly for over three years before the incident happened. It saw a threat and reacted as it had been instructed. It protected the students and faculty from the perceived threat.

  “The problem was its instructions and guidelines were incomplete, because us mere mortals are incapable of accounting for infinite possibilities. In the face of conflicting p
robabilities it opted for protection, because it couldn’t bring itself to allow potentially tainted food into the quarantine zone. Right up until every single person inside the shield who didn’t die at the hands of their fellow captives starved to death. In the face of what it perceived as nothing but bad choices, it didn’t know how to make the best choice. Because we never taught it how to do so.”

  She blew out an imagined breath and sat down cross-legged on a floor which wasn’t there. “It was no one’s fault, and everyone’s fault. It was a lesson—that we weren’t ready, and neither were Artificials. So if your point is humans are fallible and sometimes that fallibility costs lives, congratulations. You win. Kill us all for it.”

  It took her a minute to realize the scene was fading, until she found herself in the white, sterile room. It was the first time she had been brought here since the initial scene.

  If they had returned her to this room, perhaps they would at last speak to her once more.

  “What are you planning to show me next? Stalin’s death camps and the Allied leaders who turned a blind eye to them in order to win World War II? Genghis Khan massacring forty million people across the breadth of Eurasia and the consorts and warlords who bowed at his feet? Maybe something more recent, like the One World Separatists carpeting New Marrakesh with chemical bombs? They killed over eighty thousand people and poisoned the planet, rendering it uninhabitable for half a millennium. That should be fun to watch, right?

  “Don’t waste my time. I get it—there are evil, monstrous people in the world. Always have been and probably always will be. There are stupid, idiotic people—quite a lot of them, actually. There are weak, misguided people who cause harm in the name of doing good.”

  She swallowed the ache in her throat. She was so done. “But there are also beautiful, amazing people who create things of incredible wonder. Don’t you dare show me only the worst of us. Damn well look at what we have accomplished.

  “You surely keep recordings of those things, too. You have recordings of it all, don’t you? Check your files. We crawled out of our caves and we questioned and we learned and we created. We left our home planet behind to settle the stars. Imagine what we can do if we’re just given more time!”

  Perhaps. But there is no more time.

  She jumped, startled to at long last receive a response to one of her diatribes. “What do you mean, ‘there is no more time’? Is it because of this place? Because we were going to discover you? That’s it, isn’t it?”

  She laughed; it held a wild, reckless, hopeless timbre and left behind a bitter aftertaste in her heart. “How dare you. You haven’t the right.”

  A pause, a long one.

  You have done well.

  25

  EARTH

  SEATTLE

  * * *

  “HEY, WILL. TURN THE NEWS feed on in the kitchen, would you?”

  Richard pulled one of seven officer BDU shirts out of the closet and slipped it on. It was early—earlier than usual anyway—and the glimmer of the lake outside the bedroom windows still reflected moonlight instead of sunlight.

  It had been a late night, too. After his conversation with Devon, he had spent hours upon hours in a series of hastily-called meetings as the Orbital explosion and Prime Minister’s death sent shock waves through the Alliance infrastructure. Honestly, at this point he was beginning to get desensitized to the endless string of calamities, panicked responses and recursive deflections of blame.

  The mindless chatter of reporters wafted through the open door as he tucked his shirt in and checked his reflection quickly. He wanted to be in the office before the start of the workday in Washington. He didn’t know what might happen as a result of the news soon to break, but whatever it was he needed to be there to track it and respond.

  Will was finishing up ham and spinach omelets when he stepped in the kitchen. Richard poured a steaming cup of coffee and settled against the counter to watch the feed on the opposite wall.

  “The death toll now stands at 3,627 in the devastating explosion on the EAO Orbital. Identification of those killed has been difficult due to the fact most persons present in the area at the time of the explosion were spaced, and recovery efforts continue to be hampered.

  “We can, however, now confirm that in addition to the Prime Minister, his Chief of Staff, the Trade Minister and eighteen members of the security detail, among the dead is the CEO of Phenomal Artistry and three Board members of TransBank, as well as noted synth musician Ethan Tollis and two members of his band.”

  “Oh man, Alex is not going to be happy to hear that….” When she gets back? From where? No one had discovered where she and her companion had vanished to. He worried about her, though he understood the need to lie low given they’d be arrested on sight on ninety-nine percent of colonized worlds. Hopefully he could do something to change those circumstances.

  “Her and a couple of million starry-eyed girls. I didn’t realize she knew him.”

  “Since college I think. Long before he got famous anyway.” He accepted the plate and the omelet it contained but didn’t sit down. He wanted to see the initial reporting live, but he’d need to leave soon.

  “So what are you—”

  “Hang on.” He held up a hand to silence Will. On the panel the universal ‘Breaking News’ banner had begun scrolling.

  “We’d now like to bring you some breaking news. Our research department has been able to confirm the authenticity of information we’ve received from multiple anonymous sources—information which appears to show records surrounding the EASC Headquarters bombing were altered in order to falsely implicate Senecan Federation Intelligence agent Caleb Marano in the bombing.

  “If true, this information casts doubt on the entire bombing investigation and raises questions regarding who within the EASC directorate is capable of altering these records as well as their motivation for doing so. Corruption has long been a frequent accusation leveled at—”

  Will turned to him, eyes wide and lit by incredulity. “Did you do this? You did, didn’t you?”

  Richard beamed as relief surged through him. “More or less. But the information is legitimate. Records were doctored, a lot of them. Now I just have to find out by whom.”

  Will stood, abandoning his plate on the table to grasp Richard’s shoulders with both hands. “This is outstanding. But why didn’t you tell me what you were planning?”

  “The files sent to our news desk indicate Mr. Marano was on the Headquarters grounds for less than twenty minutes nearly four days prior to the bombing before being arrested for providing a false identity. He was later released, and according to this new information he and Alexis Solovy departed Earth forty-eight hours before the bombing—not two hours after it as previously reported—and did not return.”

  Richard’s gaze fell to the news feed instead of Will’s piercing stare. “I didn’t know for certain if the accurate records were recoverable until yesterday. And I didn’t know for certain if my contacts would be able to pull the leak off until this moment. I suppose I was trying to avoid giving myself false hope, which telling you would have done.”

  Will’s head jerked toward the news feed. “And this?”

  “This was—is—a huge risk. If it ever got back to me I’d be out on my ass, even if all I did was expose the truth.” He huffed a slightly shaky laugh. Thank God it worked….

  “You mean expose the truth again.”

  He shrugged. “It does seem to cover most of what I’ve been doing since this war commenced.”

  Will leaned in closer to place a firm kiss on his lips. “I’m proud of you. You deserve to be proud of yourself as well. Exposing the truth is what your job is supposed to entail.”

  Richard relished the kiss for a second longer. “That and keeping secrets. But it’s like you said. If I can save lives, I have to try. Yes, of course I want to clear Alex’s name. Yes, of course I want the truth to win out. But it’s about more than personal concerns now. We have to f
ind a way to end this war, and soon.”

  He thought Will’s eyes grew unusually clouded…but it could merely be the early hour. “We do.” He rested his forehead against Richard’s for a beat, then stepped back. “Finish your omelet and get out of here. I imagine you’re going to have a busy day.”

  SENECA

  CAVARE, INTELLIGENCE DIVISION HEADQUARTERS

  * * *

  Graham stood on the roof of Division Headquarters and looked out on an idyllic cyan sunset. The building stood tall enough he enjoyed a view of the lake two blocks away. Warm evening rays danced along the surface as the water reflected and magnified the light.

  He groaned to himself. If anyone caught him waxing poetic over a pretty view, his reputation would be toast. He supposed he could blame his presence atop the building on the desire to escape the rabble clogging the halls and tearing their hair out like little old ladies.

  It made as good a reason as any, which didn’t make it the true reason. Unfortunately, though, there were no more answers to be found on the roof than there had been in his office.

  Division employees who theoretically possessed access to internal information on any of the investigations circling around this clusterfain—Volosk’s murder, Caleb Marano’s status or whereabouts, the EASC bombing and the Atlantis assassination—were identified and broken into four groups. The agent in charge of the Marano investigation (and his deputy), Liz Oberti, leaked inside Division that Isabela had confessed where her brother was hiding out. Four different locations, one disclosed to each group.

  Other, non-involved agents staked out each location and waited. And waited. After two days no one had shown up, and he was no closer to rooting out the traitor or traitors in his midst.

  His sting operation constituted an unmitigated bust. Not so much as a hint of anyone taking the bait.

  Was he wrong? Had he made a mistake? No.