Rationality Zero

by Guillen, JM

  I trust you have been ported the initial packet.

  I have, Designate. I was still sorting it out, however. My mission details were already stored in my Crown, but I wouldn't really be able to fully access it until everything was online.

  You should have full system access within the hour. Until then, I will give you the basic dossier.

  I smiled, not looking directly at her. Understood.

  This is an atypical mission, Asset. For a few weeks now, Facility 17 has been running deep telemetry testing. They are experimenting with bandwidths that might allow more effective long range monitoring of Rationality integrity.

  I have heard. Wyatt had told me. It was a good idea.

  It was during one of these tests when the operatives there located nigh-terminal levels of Irrationality; intense spikes of activity. At first it was believed to be a systems error, but when these outliers returned, Facility 17 alerted their superiors.

  Nigh-terminal? I furrowed my brow. That was serious. Someone was bending reality almost to breaking. It wasn’t subtle work either.

  Whoever it was couldn’t help but be noticed. With Rationality spread that thin, some abomination could break through, into our world.

  “Bad” didn’t begin to cover it.

  Ambient Rationality levels spiked for little more than nanoseconds, varying between R thirty-six and R negative ninety. Then, typical Rationality resumed, albeit with some lingering effects.

  Such as? I glanced at the Designate. She gave a nearly imperceptible shrug.

  Small gravitational anomalies and variations in local space-time. There are no locals, and the anomalies seem to resolve themselves. They are little more than eddies in physics, and have been classified as non-threatening.

  That was telling, just by itself. Typically, small variations like that would be seen as a problem, even if they were short lived. Apparently, they were to be overlooked.

  I frowned. Where was this?

  Sixty-seven minutes southwest of Las Vegas. Not a populated area. It's the middle of the Mojave Desert.

  I sat back and crossed my arms. This was an atypical mission.

  Usually I was little more than a courier, or maybe some muscle if things got hard with some Irrats. Situations like the Yucatan were actually pretty rare. Most Irrats had no control over their capabilities. Maybe it would be a girl who had some extra-cognitive capabilities, or an insurance salesman who always seemed to draw aces; typical, small, class IV stuff. They were people who were bending reality without really realizing what they were toying with.

  They weren't actually criminals, but dangerous, nonetheless.

  But nigh-terminal Irrationality? Hidden in the desert? That was foreboding.

  Where will the conduit insertion point be, that far in the desert? That was something I hadn’t considered. Typically, there were teams that shaped physics for our transport, and that took time. Wyatt always teased about the sheer amount of time and planning it took to create wormholes, as if it was baking a cake.

  You will be flying. We were completely unprepared for this eventuality, and we don't have any available conduits to the area.

  That spoke volumes. I didn’t remember a mission where a transport conduit had not been arranged. The idea that the Facility was flying by the seat of their pants was not comforting.

  When will I be meeting the rest of my cadre?

  Preceptor Petrova is well apprised of the situation, and has come straight from Facility 17. She will be at the airport when you arrive; she will take you to Asset Guthrie. You will be leaving immediately.

  I frowned at that. All of my gear was in my white room. I knew I would be outfitted, but my personalized stuff, the gear that had seen me through, was at my apartment. Some of my own gear had some pretty specific alterations. However, I knew that the Designate was unlikely to allow me the time to run home.

  Asset Guthrie is on the ground. Your cadre will be able to equip once you are on site in Las Vegas.

  Understood, Designate. The packet still wasn't quite sorted in my head. Will this simply be reconnaissance? Or are we expected to pull an incursion?

  The primary objective is to accompany Preceptor Petrova so that she may get further readings regarding the levels of ambient Rationality. We need to understand the cause of this event. The Designate paused. It is likely that you will have Designate support on-site. Because of this, objectives may change as the mission requires.

  That was unusual. We never had on site support from a Designate.

  The bus was slowing. This was the airport. I realized with a dawning comprehension that it was my stop.

  You will find all the pertinent details in your Crown. Your flight will be short, so you should use your time to review the dossier.

  I will, Designate. I stood, grabbing at the handhold. I will be prepared by the time I touch down.

  She smiled at me. I’m certain you will be, 108. As I walked away, I heard her one last time.

  As always, Asset, we wish you well in the days ahead.

  5

  Of course, airport security doesn't apply to me. Within an hour, I was seated in first class.

  Still, just the fact that I had to fly irked me.

  Typically, there are conduits set up far before the Asset is even tapped, and they are one of the first points of the dossier. They’re odd little things, locations like, “the second story exit of the abandoned mattress warehouse on Fifth and Powell, from 11:38 PM to 11:40 PM.” There is a very short window for conduit usage, as their creation bends Rationality far beyond its typical parameters.

  As long as you were on time, all was well. You’d step into a sphere of twisted light, and find yourself along a short path, or hallway, or moonlit road— somewhere else. Conduits were rarely a long trek, but once at the other end you might be a thousand miles away, or across the ocean, or in the white room at one of the Facilities.

  I didn’t understand the process that was used to create the instantaneous transportation, but it was apparently a tricky thing. Only certain times and only certain places were appropriate, and their use can be difficult on the asset’s Crown, at times.

  Still. This was almost barbaric, in comparison.

  However, flying did give me time to peruse my dossier. I settled into my chair, waited for take-off, and then opened the packet.

  It was an extensive one.

  The Solomon's Crown is an impressive piece of technology. It lines the inside of my skull, and is constantly connected with the Lattice, the worldwide information network used by the Facility. The Crown can hold a vast amount of data, in addition to holding open ports for packets and neural software. It is a seamless technology, something that can be used as effortlessly as my hand. There is no pointer, or key input. It knows what I want, and how I want it, faster than I could possibly give voice to the desire.

  As the packet opened, I chose a visual overlay. I almost always do when I'm opening a packet. I could just port the data to my memory, but dossier packets were often large, and the sensation was jarring.

  I had time. I could take it slowly.

  I felt the smooth vibration in my head as it meshed with my cerebral cortex. I relaxed my gaze, looking only at the back of the seat in front of me.

  Welcome, Asset. The familiar voice was soothing. I watched as the packet's visual interface opened before me, a series of colored spheres that only I could see.

  I mentally thumbed through them until I found the one marked Overview. I didn’t even have to think to select the sphere. The Crown knew what I wanted the instant I chose.

  Approximately twenty three hours ago, assets being trained in the Death Valley region noticed several sharp spikes of terminal grade Irrationality. These spikes were at the edge of their data range, but were still significant. This report lead to Facility 17 doing axiomatic telemetry scans on the area, as part of new protocols.

  The interface was resolving to a map of the American southwest, superimposed over my vision. I could still
see the cabin, of course, it was a similar eye shift as when one looked near, and then far away.

  As the map clarified, I could see the location of the team, the readouts on their gear, and the Irrational spikes.

  Something’s wrong. The asset who was speaking was equipped with Veracitor class neuralware, which was glitching in time with the spikes. I think my gear is mis-queueing.

  That’s exactly what was happening. As I watched both the readouts and the spiking levels of Irrationality, the two seemed intimately connected. The spikes were incredibly focused, intensely powerful, and only occurred in extremely short bursts.

  Wait. What was—

  The bursts were nanoseconds, in some cases picoseconds long. They came seemingly randomly over the course of an hour and twenty minutes, with no discernible patter—

  I stopped the playback of the data, and stepped it back a few seconds. In 1/10000 time frame, I watched as the bursts occurred in the middle of the desert. It was odd both in how high the Irrationality spiked, and in how it did not ripple throughout the area. It did cause small anomalies, but I was surprised that it didn’t “echo,” creating other, smaller spikes.

  Strong and localized. It had almost been enough to rip through the fragile veil of our reality, almost enough to expose us to whatever was on the other side. This was a Class IX in the making. I rubbed my sweating palms on my slacks.

  It was more than odd. No single Irrat could cause bursts that large. Furthermore, I had seen spikes that were 1/10th that size cascade and ripple. Something of this strength should have created other bursts that spread across the Mojave Desert, leaving inhuman aberrations and small rifts in its wake.

  The fact that it had not done that meant something. It meant that this was controlled.

  It meant that someone was behind it.

  Facility 17 and Facility 6 have both lent their efforts to monitoring ambient Rationality in the area since these spikes, but there have been no further alterations.

  As the voice spoke, I scrolled through the dossier until I found satellite pictures of the location. It only took a few moments to enhance the photos to the point that I could see there was an old structure, almost hidden in the shadow of a cliff.

  A missile silo? Perhaps.

  “Would you like something to drink?” I was moving on to the next part of the dossier when the young woman startled me.

  “Oh,” I looked up at her. The stewardess was cute. A touch young for me, but I loved red hair.

  “Anything?” I found her eyes fascinating.

  “Not just now.” I smiled at her. “Could I get something later?” My smile became a sharp grin. “If there is something I want?”

  She smiled back. It was nuanced with meaning. “I'll be around.”

  I sighed as she walked away.

  Not now.

  Full profiles on Anya and Wyatt were present in the dossier, but I didn't need them. Of more interest however...

  There. The third sphere. Known Irrationals and Their Locations. I chose that selection.

  There are no current known Irrationals in the selected area. Would you like to expand?

  Of course. I was still looking at the missile silo, and so the program had only searched that region. Apparently there were no known Irrats sighted in that small area. I re-selected Las Vegas.

  The listing of known and wanted Irrationals seen in the Las Vegas area in the last month include:

  Clyde D. Gordon- Irrational 1854

  Harij Nasan- Irrational 1458

  Thomas LeManns Irrational 7704

  William Eidon- Irrational 0081

  Leticia Del Toro- Irrational 6723

  Unnamed Crimson Dedicant- Irrational 1108

  Earl Princely- “The Masque” Irrational 3420

  Rebecca Thorne- Irrational 9108

  Rudolfo Firenzei- Irrational 2187

  Aberration # 51894

  Aberration # 13563

  Hmm. That was a lot of data. The Facility certainly had a lot of info on each of them— and I had no way of knowing if any of them were even involved.

  Almost randomly, I expanded the final selection.

  Aberration # 13563, or “the Gaunt Man,” has been frequently reported since 1974, although it may have been in existence longer. It has a basic humanoid appearance, although is unnaturally slender. It wears a grey suit that is several years out of date, and can easily pass for an older man by any who do not pay him special heed.

  Aberration # 13563 is a collector, both of rare items and creatures. He was first encountered by Asset 71, Leo Telesco, in Romania in March of 1974. The aberration was pursuing a trader who had found an item of particular rarity, a small statuette with unknown origins that was rumored to possess an odd affinity for Type L astral aberrations. As a result of this—

  I scrolled down, letting my vision drift across the page as I attempted to surmise how much information was available. After learning about the Gaunt Man’s tendencies toward flight rather than confrontation, and perusing Leo Telsco’s accounts of ‘The Menagerie’ (some kind of extra dimensional realm where the Gaunt Man kept living prisoners.) I frowned.

  It was too much.

  I briefly thought again about simply porting the packet to my Crown’s memory, so that I could draw on it as simply as I could any other recollections I wished. It’s what Wyatt would have done, probably Gideon too, but…

  But it was a lot of space to take up, space I might need for other neuralware.

  I needed to keep things simple.

  I closed the Irrat data, and went back to look at those spikes, laid over the map. It was incredible how tight they were. That much Irrationality should have had some effect. I dug deeper into my Crown's database and looked at the telemetry data.

  There have been no further reported Irrational readings as a result of the events of June 21.

  That was just strange.

  Once I had been on the trail of an Irrat in Saskatchewan. It was an aberration, a creature of the astral tides that had somehow slipped through. In the distant wilds of Canada, I had spoken to native Inuit, who believed the creature to be a Wendigo, a ravenous, cannibalistic spirit.

  Of course, that was horseshit. Entire mythologies are built by people who try to tell stories, to make sense of what they have seen.

  By the time I found the creature, she had a small village in her thrall. She was drinking life and sanity from them, and had grown into a creature capable of creating small Irrational spikes similar to ones I was looking at. Nothing near so large, of course. Still, the aftereffects and echoes of those spikes were causing “hauntings” and weird occurrences months after I destroyed her.

  Irrationality is a like a cancer in the world. It spreads. The fact that there had been this enormous surge and then nothing, was troubling, to say the least.

  It seemed like someone was hiding… something.

  I flagged the cute stewardess only a few rows up from me.

  “Could I get that drink, now?” I gave her my most charming smile.

  The stewardess smiled back, and poured for me.

  I took a sip and settled in, preparing for a long trawl through my dossier.

  6

  It was morning before we had touched down, and were ready to disembark.

  “Nothing.” I'm certain that if anyone had been looking, I would have seemed cracked. I was staring intently at the back of the seat in front of me, muttering my dismay under my breath.

  Yes, completely normal.

  I was more than a little frustrated. My Crown was wonder of modern technology, but I was awfully limited by available intel. There was plenty of data, but none that truly seemed to matter.

  I could pull up topographic maps of the area, and look around in three dimensions. That confirmed that, yes, the small structure was an abandoned missile silo, but there was no other helpful data. I could view ambient Rationality, which was well into the green. No problem there.

  I had gone through the profiles of every Irrat whi
ch had been sighted locally, but none were higher than a Class III. I doubted if they could have created spikes like this even if they had all worked together. Even if they could, the precision and the speed at which the spikes had occurred were absolutely monstrous, and impossible to comprehend.

  I didn't think this was an Irrat at all. My mind drifted to the aberration I had destroyed, the “Wendigo.”

  We hadn't come close to classifying the abominations of the astral tides. Could it be something behind the veil? Something trying to punch through?

  I closed the dossier. There was so little data that conjecture was pointless. Hopefully, Anya or Wyatt would have something I didn't.

  The cute stewardess was looking my way as I made my way off the plane. I smiled at her, wistfully wishing that I wasn't on assignment.

  There would be time, later.

  Of course, later my Crown would be in torpor mode and I wouldn't remember who I actually was. It was too bad. Some small part of me enjoyed women more when I was awake and online. Then, it was all actually me. My debonair charm.

  It felt like seducing women was just part of my Crown architecture when I was offline. No skill, nothing to lose.

  She smiled back, and continued her duties.

  No time.

  I made my way off of the plane and into the airport. Of course, everything checked out and I was moved along smoothly. I had no bags, so I didn't need to—

  Bishop, we have a small concern. It was Anya.

  You sound worried, Preceptor. I just made it off the plane. I smiled, knowing that the feel of my emotion would translate through the Crown. What's going on? Is Wyatt in the airport bar?

  Nothing so simple, Michael. Even though she knew me well, Anya's tone contained no true warmth. This was typical of Preceptor class assets. They were all female and all seemed to have their emotions subdued.