The Gone World

by Tom Sweterlitsch

  “He wanted to become immortal,” I said, thinking of Njoku, the pyramids, the wasteland. The immortals begged for death, the prison house of existence.

  “He wanted everyone to become immortal,” said the Driscoll simulation, still as Kasparov. “But he never figured out the way. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men . . .”

  “He wasn’t working on this alone,” I said. “Who did he work for?”

  “A conglomerate of interests,” said the simulation. “Phasal Systems, DARPA, the Naval Research Lab. NSC—that’s NETWARCOM now—that’s why I’m keen to help you, if I can. I’m hoping when you fly away to terra firma, you’ll be able to prolong Dr. Driscoll’s life, protect him so he can live longer, so he can keep discovering, maybe achieve transhumanism before the Terminus.”

  “Protect him from what?”

  “You and your colleague were looking at those files, you should already know. It’s all there. An FBI agent might have mistakenly pulled the trigger, but look deeper and you’ll find Karl Hyldekrugger’s fingerprints all over Driscoll’s murder. His gang kills everyone on the Phasal Systems team who came from NRL, anyone with knowledge of Deep Waters. They tried to kill Driscoll twice previously, failed attempts before the assassin hit the mark. You have to save him.”

  “Tell me specifics,” I said. “You must remember what happened when Dr. Driscoll died. You’re being vague.”

  “I share Dr. Driscoll’s mind only up until the moment of my birth: September seventeenth, 2011. After that I have lived my life and he lived his. I wasn’t with him when he died. I had to research his death, figure things out for myself. But it’s not just the specifics of his death that we’ll have to worry about, Shannon. They might kill him a different way than in this future history. Even if you neutralize the circumstances of Driscoll’s death here, there will be other assassins.”

  “So Hyldekrugger is severing links between Phasal Systems and the Naval Research Lab,” I said. “Tell me what you know about Carla Durr. Driscoll was supposed to meet her on the day she was killed.”

  “Carla Durr was a hick lawyer from some hick town,” said the simulation. “I don’t know much more about her than you do, most likely. Handled all sorts of small hick clients, divorces, contract disputes, everything the rabble gets in trouble with. Had her hand in some development deals, small time. Strip malls come to coal town, that sort of thing. I don’t know why she wanted to speak with Dr. Driscoll so keenly, nothing specific. She kept contacting his offices.”

  “Why did Dr. Driscoll agree to meet with her?”

  “She said she would come to Driscoll, buy him lunch if he would meet with her,” said the Driscoll simulation. “I don’t think he realized she’d meant hamburgers.”

  “So Durr asked for a meeting with Driscoll,” I said.

  “Driscoll laughed when his secretary relayed the message. I remember: I have all of these memories. Carla Durr said she represented a client who had information to sell if Driscoll was interested. Information of great value. She had an absurd set of requests. She wanted money, an extravagant sum, but most important she wanted her client and his family to disappear. She wanted a governmental pardon for some crimes her client was mixed up in, wanted a new life for him, protection. Driscoll was on the verge of telling Durr the meaning of ‘no solicitation’ when she said her client had information related to the Penrose consciousness.”

  “I don’t know that term.”

  “Quantum-tunneling nanoparticles,” said the simulation. “Dr. Roger Penrose consulted with Phasal Systems on their Terminus research. He described a model of consciousness based on quantum processes being carried out in the microtubules of brain cells, popularized the idea. His ideas never scratched the surface of understanding human consciousness, but our scientists were able to use the Penrose framework to understand how QTNs control humans—all those crucifixions and the running, the absurdities. QTNs live in a human’s microtubules, part of the cell’s cytoskeleton. They can read our minds in a sense. They crucify us because of the image of the cross. You should see what QTNs do to Buddhists—tie their legs up in knots, lotus blossoms, it’s disgusting. Refract your thoughts or turn your thoughts off altogether. QTNs can switch off a human’s consciousness, like a whiff of anesthesia.”

  “So Durr claimed her client knew something about Dr. Driscoll’s work,” I said. “Wanted to sell Dr. Driscoll that information to keep his secrets? Or was there new information?”

  “Durr read a statement from her client that implied he was aware of some or all of the work Dr. Driscoll had been conducting in various IFTs. Mining the future, so to speak. Retroengineering the future, to kick-start the singularity, to achieve the transhuman, divorce our consciousness from the stagnation of the flesh, to avoid the calamity of the Terminus by leaving the need for Earth behind, leaving our bodies entirely behind. The Naval Research Lab and Phasal Systems want to study the Terminus as in-depth as possible, because they want to invent immortality. QTNs are immortal, not bound by the kinds of bodies we’re bound by, and Phasal Systems wants to give that same gift to humanity. Driscoll decided that maybe he should hear what this Carla Durr had to sell.”

  “But you never got the chance,” I said.

  “He never got the chance,” said the simulation. “How violent, how terrifying, to be gunned down at a hamburger stand. Driscoll was in the bathroom, I gather, and sprinted from the food court once he heard gunshots and caught up with the police only later. He didn’t want to get dragged into anything he wasn’t actually a part of, so he gave a statement, making sure everyone knew he didn’t have anything to do with this woman, had never met her. Probably some madman from Hyldekrugger’s gang killed poor Carla Durr, one of his cronies. They would have killed Driscoll then, too, if they’d known that Driscoll was there, taking a piss in the men’s room.”

  “So Dr. Driscoll’s company—Phasal Systems—uses NSC ships, travels to IFTs,” I said. “They study the technology of the future and bring that technology back to the present. Phasal uses that technology in their research and development, and eventually they’re able to create things like you.”

  “Phasal studies QTNs,” said Driscoll. “Applies what they discover to nanotechnology here. Medical breakthroughs, Ambient Systems, ‘artificial’ intelligence. NSC realizes they can’t defeat the Terminus, but maybe they can outmaneuver it. Maybe humanity doesn’t have to die in the Terminus, if humanity ever has to die at all.”

  “Dr. Driscoll wanted to become immortal,” I said. “Cure cancer, perfect the body—”

  “Sidetracked,” said the simulation. “The key is consciousness. QTNs are metallic, but they are ‘conscious,’ maybe only in the same limited sense that I’m conscious, but conscious nonetheless. QTNs are a species that behaves like an aggregate consciousness, and Phasal mimics them for their nanotech development. Phasal wants to imitate QTNs, refashion humanity to become more like them, find out exactly how QTNs interact with human organics, exploit that knowledge to save the species. There were senators and people within Naval Space Command who shared Dr. Driscoll’s vision, who supported him. Admiral Annesley was a great supporter.”

  “The FBI sniffed this out,” I said. “Started investigating what information was passed between NSC, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Naval Research Lab, and Phasal Systems.”

  “Ships full of sailors, teams exploring Terminus-ridden futures, filling their blood and bodies and minds with QTNs, poor boys, only to be studied later,” said the simulation, as Kasparov. “In fact, let me check. Here we are, here’s you: V-R17, your leg. Moss, Shannon. Amputated, sealed, shipped, studied.”

  I didn’t know if the simulation was taunting me or if this was true, but the bed had changed into an image of a stainless-steel drawer, opened. Inside was a leg in a vacuum-sealed bag, cut at the shin but also cut at the thigh. I recognized the black toes curled into the foot, the violet lines that had raced upward. This was my leg, this was true. Someone aboard the William McKinley
had taken my leg once it had been amputated, had sealed it and saved it to give to someone at NRL who would study how QTNs burrowed into organic material.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I said. “Make it go away.”

  The leg vanished, replaced by an image of a chessboard, the pieces arranged in midmatch.

  “That’s the theory, at any rate,” said the Driscoll simulation. “Unfortunately, Phasal Systems hits the back limit of infrastructure. It’s all well and good to travel a hundred thousand years into the future to see men like gods in shimmering interstellar chariots, but try finding the schematics for how to build one. Or, if you do find the schematics, you can’t just hand them to Lockheed-Martin in 1997 and place an order for an ‘interstellar chariot.’ You have to account for the industrial know-how of the era, you have to invest in building the framework before you can engineer the future. Even with the answer key in our hands, we haven’t been able to leap as far ahead as we’d dreamed. The best NSC has been able to do is devise your Cormorants and TERNs, the compact B-L drive, the Black Vale. And now we aren’t even as far-seeing as we once were, because everywhere we look is Terminus. You’ll all die, Shannon. The Terminus will wash over you. Look at the chessboard: Game Six, May eleventh, 1997.”

  “Unless we can escape the Terminus,” I said. “We can still escape.”

  “If,” said Kasparov. “I’m afraid the Terminus has us in checkmate. And humanity has already lost its match to superior intelligence. Sometimes I hear wistful men wonder how Bobby Fischer would have fared against Deep Blue, wondering if Fischer would have succeeded where Kasparov failed because Fischer was erratic, insane, some sort of artistic genius. No, Fischer would have failed. But I’ve often wondered how someone like the great grand master Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin would have fared. He would have realized that the ultimate victory for human consciousness over an unassailable opponent was simply to withdraw . . .”

  With those last words, the Driscoll simulation vanished.

  I sat on the balcony listening to the ocean and soon tried to sleep but was fitful with the sensation of Courtney’s corpse there with me. Lying awake, I feared the simulation was observing me. I flipped on the bedside lamp, but the room was empty. An ocean breeze pushed through the open French doors, but even the breeze couldn’t dispel the fret that the Driscoll simulation thickened the air with its presence, so I dressed and left the room, left the hotel to walk along the beach, past the phantasm lights of the boardwalk where night winds rushed from the water, blowing away the possibility of Ambience. I slept a few hours on the beach beneath the stars, woken by predawn joggers and their black Lab, who licked me from a dream.

  —

  One of his secretaries brought me coffee, saying, “Just a few minutes, Special Agent Nestor’s wrapping up a meeting that went a little long.” A view of Pennsylvania Avenue through the broad windows, midmorning D.C. traffic far below, a tourist rush, crowds snapping pictures of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, but as I watched from several stories above, the city seemed to recede. Everyone out in the blissful autumn sun was a figment of this IFT, or if they were alive in terra firma, they were eventual fodder for the Terminus. Everyone I could see would die. Cities would dissolve, coated in crystalline frost, and even nature would be threshed away by unnatural ice. NSC had launched Operation Saigon here; they had conceded Earth, its fleet like scattered seeds, but those seeds would fall on barren worlds and die fallow. There was no time, no time for Earth, no time for someone like Driscoll to help us shed our bodies or teach our flesh to live forever. We all die, we will all die. A framed photograph of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone hung on the wall, and a picture of his family stood on his desk. His wife was a pale beauty, feathered hair and a leather jacket, tight jeans shredded at the knees, snakeskin cowboy boots. His daughter took after her mom, but her eyes were Nestor’s, softer than her father’s, but the shape was similar.

  “I apologize for making you wait,” said Nestor, coming into the office, a woman with him. “Shannon, this is Special Agent Vivian Lincoln.” He closed the door behind them. “Vivian, Special Agent Shannon Moss, NCIS.”

  A few years younger than me, tallish, her black hair pulled into a tight bun, her neck ringed by a tattoo, words in Gothic calligraphy: NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM. I knew her, I realized—I couldn’t place from where, but I had definitely met her before. She looked like a stylish librarian, with sizable black-framed glasses, a wool skirt, and leather clogs.

  “Vivian,” I said, shaking her hand.

  “This is incredible,” she said. “You’re Shannon Moss.”

  The recognition clicked when I heard her voice—Shauna—remembering strawberry-blond braids. This was Shauna, who’d once saved my life on Miss Ashleigh’s orchard. They’re going to kill you, she’d said, and that night in the orchard swept back to me, a swift black shape, Cobb, a red rush of his blood, and I remembered hearing a death scream before I ran, Shauna dying—Vivian—I was sure of it, Cobb killing her before he attacked me. But this woman here would be oblivious to that other version of herself, untouched by the terrible history they shared. Raven hair instead of that strawberry blond, and her weight was different here—she was slimmer, her features sharper. But this was her, without a doubt. Vivian, those agents had called her, Egan and Zwerger. The memory clicked: a butterfly in a bell jar.

  “Shannon is investigating domestic terrorism related to Buckhannon, has been for sometime,” said Nestor, “and we came up against the name Dr. Peter Driscoll in an older case.”

  Vivian’s eyes hardened. “I understand.”

  “Vivian worked undercover for us,” said Nestor. “Several years spent with Hyldekrugger’s network. The intelligence she gathered saved countless lives.”

  She had been undercover in that other future, too, when she’d given her life to save mine.

  “Very good to meet you,” I said.

  “Shannon wants to know more about your time with Richard Harrier,” said Nestor.

  “And if you ever heard the name Carla Durr,” I said. “She was a lawyer, from Canonsburg, killed in the spring of 1997.”

  “No, I don’t think I ever heard that name. But I wasn’t with Harrier until after 9/11.”

  “Driscoll was set to meet with Carla Durr on the day she was killed,” said Nestor.

  Vivian shook her head; the name Durr meant nothing to her. “Hyldekrugger had hit lists,” she said. “Durr might have been one of his targets, I don’t know. Nestor must have told you about my involvement in the death of Dr. Peter Driscoll. He was on the hit list.”

  “Tell me about this list. Who else was on it?” I asked. “Where did it come from?”

  “Hyldekrugger made the list, made sure everyone on the list died,” she said. “I never met him. They called him the Devil. I had the sense he would disappear for long stretches and then would reappear with a revised hit list. I was never allowed close to him.”

  “Who were you close with?”

  “I was in a relationship with Richard Harrier. He was the closest I ever got to the core group,” said Vivian.

  “I interrupted Harrier with Ashleigh Bietak the night we stormed Buckhannon,” I said.

  Nestor smiled. “He did time in federal prison after his arrest, but we never linked him to the chemical-weapons lab beyond that relationship to Ashleigh Bietak. He served five years, eventually won out on appeal.”

  “He was radicalized by the time he left prison,” said Vivian.

  “There was a woman named Nicole Onyongo,” said Nestor. “Do you remember that name?”

  “I remember,” I said, recalling what she’d said near Miss Ashleigh’s barn as twilight deepened: I’m innocent. “Nicole was connected with the Patrick Mursult homicide,” I said.

  “That’s right. I first interviewed Cole when our investigation into the Mursult deaths was just beginning, once we figured out she was the woman in the photographs we found,” said Nestor. “Remember that? The suicide, the mirrored room?”

  “
I remember.”

  “I tracked her down using license-plate information the lodge kept. I interviewed her but released her, nothing to hold her on. We figured at the time that she was someone simply involved with the wrong guy, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. But Brock wanted to talk to her again, had something new on her and was looking for her at the time of his death, had issued a BOLO.”

  “But she disappeared,” I said. “Brock couldn’t track her down.”

  “Vanished into thin air,” said Nestor. “But Cole contacted me several months later, long after Brock’s death. She was panicked, said she wanted to cut a deal, for protection. Cole was worried that whoever had killed Patrick Mursult would kill her, too, so I flipped her. She became a CHS for us.”

  A confidential human source. An informant. Nestor at his desk, his fingers tented, Vivian in the leather chair next to mine. Nicole could have told Nestor everything she’d once told me—about Hyldekrugger, about Cobb, Esperance, the Vardogger. She could have divulged information about NSC, Deep Waters. Libra.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “We offered Cole WITSEC, but she grew skittish,” said Nestor. “I met with her several times, but she never told me much—she was terrified. Eventually she agreed to bring Vivian into the fold in return for immunity.”

  “And that’s how you met Harrier,” I said. “Because of Nicole.”

  “Through that connection, yes,” said Vivian. “The core of their group was inaccessible, their inner circle, the river rats. But Nicole Onyongo arranged several meetings for me with Richard Harrier once he was out of prison, informally. I was able to get close to him.”