“Thank you,” said Steve’s wife, and with a nod and a smile, they continued on their way.
The man hadn’t even been aware of the request he was about to make, even though it was preordained by his own chemical nerve signals. It was more than phuturing, more than making statistical predictions based on past events. It was a foregone conclusion, a decision already made before Steve consciously knew it. Was he really making a choice? Did he have a choice? Or was it all an illusion, just preprogrammed? Was all the world just a stage for a play already written?
The wind pushed a break in the clouds, revealing the faint twinkle of some brave stars trying to shine down on Gotham.
“Do you ever wonder why?”
Bob snapped his attention back into his body. Near to him was a man, sitting on a park bench, in a gray raincoat with a hydrophobic shell. The falling mist of rain danced away from him in a veil as the man looked toward the bay. That’s odd. No hits popped up in Bob’s identity algorithms. “Why what?”
The man looked into Bob’s eyes, smiling. “A hundred billion stars in this Milky Way galaxy, and a hundred billion more galaxies just like it. Life fills every available crack in this Solar System, and most stars have planets—many of them similar to Earth.”
“And yet?” Bob was still trying to get an identity.
“And yet not a peep from anyone out there. Do you ever wonder why?”
Except for the POND data, thought Bob, remembering the mysterious signal from a supposedly extraterrestrial source that Patricia had detected with her Pacific Ocean Neutrino Detector. She’d instructed them to keep quiet about it, but perhaps Bob should release the news. It might even pull society from its downward spiral if the world realized that someone else was out there. But first they needed to decode the data. That’s what Patricia asked them to do. What was inside the message might be as important as the message itself.
Bob shook his head, feeling the weight bearing down. He was the wrong person for this job.
The man was still smiling at Bob. “No? You never wonder? You look like you do.”
Bob sensed that something had gone terribly wrong. In his mind the Sea Wall before them opened up and the irresistible force of the black ocean beyond came rushing through, swallowing them and everything in its path, sweeping the world away. The vision pulled the breath out of him and he had to lean on the bench the man was sitting on.
The man reached out to steady him. “Sometimes, to look out there, we need to look inside.”
The man looked familiar, but Bob’s internal systems were sure he’d never seen the stranger’s face before. Bob sent splinters shooting out into the multiverse, looking for a recognition point, for any identity associated with his strange visitor. Still nothing. Bob regained his balance and tried to string out the conversation to buy time. “I don’t think about it much.”
The man retreated and smiled. “You should.”
Bob’s identity-theft splinters, able to slice through most security blankets in the outside world like butter, were still coming up blank. He felt a phantom pulling his attention away. He turned to find Sid’s skewed grin.
“We can go. We’ve been vetted.”
“By who?”
Sid pulled up the lapels on his jacket against the rain. “I don’t know. They kept their distance and asked me specifically not to scan for them.”
Bob flicked his chin toward his shoulder. “Who’s that guy?”
“What guy?” Sid craned his neck to scan the crowd.
Bob turned, but the man on the bench was gone. He rewound his inVerse to replay the conversation, but it was blank as well. There was nothing in his meta-cognition systems or external memories that recorded the event, nothing but what was in his own head. Bob closed his eyes. Had he imagined it?
Sid sensed Bob searching through his systems. “I think you need to get some sleep.” He put an arm on Bob’s shoulder. “Let’s get back to Deanna’s apartment.”
7
RAIN HAMMERED DOWN on the tin roof of the church vestry.
Vince watched the Reverend prepare tea on a side table, a tiny kettle whistling atop a heating pad. The Reverend stooped to fetch a set of china cups and pot from a shelf. Vince looked around. He’d imagined something rougher, something more oppressive—creaking doors, dim rooms, an agonized Jesus hanging from a cross—but the interior was sparse and neat. A water-driven radiator rose up from the wooden floor, filling the space with hissing heat. They hadn’t outrun the storm. Soaked, splattered in mud, Vince and Brigitte sat awkwardly in front of the Reverend’s desk. Zephyr went next door for dry clothes and blankets.
So this is what it feels like to be in the middle of a black hole. The sound of the multiverse silence was deafening to Vince’s metasenses. No data feeds, no messages, no information other than what his own mind and body could provide. No Van Eck radiation could get through the shield over the Commune; comms jamming, image jamming, even externally-stored memory jamming of those going in and out. The inside of the Commune was an informational black hole, protected by the American Family Values faction of the Democrats, a neo-wild project of human preservation.
Entering the Commune was passing into another world in more ways than one.
The Reverend smiled at them. “Sorry about the rain.” The kettle pinged, and he picked it up and filled the teapot. “Zephyr is . . . well, the boy was late.”
“So you’re Willy’s grandfather?” Brigitte turned to face the Reverend. “He told me so much about you.”
“Is that right?” The Reverend wasn’t asking, wasn’t telling. He picked up the teapot and two cups and placed them on the large desk before them.
Vince heard the tick-tock of a clock in the hallway outside. The wall behind the desk was filled with books, and Vince squinted to read what was written on the spines: several Bibles, Chaucer, Jung, Nag Hammadi, Blavatsky. A painting of a crystal mountain in a desert hung on the side wall. “Don’t you want to know why we’re here?” Vince asked.
“You said . . .” The Reverend paused, leaning against his desk. “You said you were Willy’s friends and wanted to speak with his mother.”
“Yes, but—”
“Then that’s what you’re here for.”
“Is she here?” Brigitte glanced over her shoulder at the door.
“She is.” The Reverend stood up straight. “I’m going to see where on Earth our Zephyr is with those clothes.” Walking toward the door he motioned at the teapot. “Serve yourselves. And don’t try activating your smarticle networks.” He left the door ajar.
Vince leaned forward for the teapot. “Don’t they find it even slightly ironic to be driving horses and carts under a vast nano-bot radiation shield?” He felt some warmth seeping into his hands. “Old man McIntyre must be over a hundred—tell me he’s not using the latest in gene modification—”
“I can hear you, Mr. Indigo.” The Reverend was in the doorway. “These should about do.” He tossed a pile of clothes into Vince’s lap. Walking forward, he unfolded a blanket that he brought around Brigitte’s shoulders. She shivered and gripped it around herself, silently mouthing thank you.
The Reverend continued back behind his desk, passing a hand over its center as he sat down. A three-dimensional hologram sprang up over its center, an image of the bipedal transport Vince and Brigitte used on their way up, now threading its way down the mountain trail in the rain.
“We Neo-Luddites aren’t against technology. What we are against is the replacement of humans by technology.” The Reverend waved his hand, and charts and graphs spread out to fill the room. “DAD now has two robots for every human, and ten times that many if you count synthetic intelligences. We’re becoming a very small ruling minority, Mr. Indigo.”
Vince did his research before coming. “Weren’t Luddites the ‘machine destroyers’?”
“Machine destroyers, yes.
” The Reverend turned the phrase around in his mouth. “But that is not what we do. I think you misunderstand us, Mr. Indigo. We offer our youth an opportunity to connect with nature, work with their hands, and delve into the depths of their humanity before . . .”
The Reverend went silent.
“Before what?” Brigitte asked after a respectful pause.
The Reverend rocked back in his chair. “Forgive my caution. The Commune has enemies, and this business with my grandson William has inspired new ones.”
“Father, you know Willy is innocent.”
Vince and Brigitte turned to the doorway to see a middle-aged woman with clear gray eyes smiling at them.
Brigitte jumped up. “You must be Willy’s mother!” The woman nodded. In two steps Brigitte was taking her hand, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “It’s a pleasure.”
Willy’s mother accepted the kiss but kept her distance. “Likewise, I’m sure.”
The Reverend stood and stared at Vince. “So you wanted to speak with Elspeth?”
“Is it possible to talk with her in private . . .?” Vince asked.
The Reverend gestured to the room. “This is as private as you’ll be allowed, I’m afraid.”
A sense of absurdity overcame Vince—how to tell a mother that her son was gone, but not gone? “We have some disturbing news, and we were hoping you might be able to help us.” He looked into Elspeth’s eyes. “Willy’s missing—or, er, his body is missing.”
Elspeth’s brow wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
“A few months ago . . .” Vince began but then stopped. A few months ago he’d been living in endless virtual worlds while running from future death threats. How was he going to explain their world to Willy’s Neo-Luddite mother?
“Perhaps I could try?” suggested Brigitte.
At a loss, Vince nodded.
“Willy is fine,” Brigitte started to say, “so you don’t need to worry, but we—”
“I know,” Elpeth said.
Vince cocked his head. “You know what?”
Elspeth looked at the Reverend. He met her gaze and nodded. “That he’s fine,” she replied.
Vince frowned. “And how do you know that?”
“Because he was just here.”
8
THE TIP OF the Great Pyramid, covered in electrum, hovered in the sky under the hot eye of god. Guardians lined the leafy promenade leading up to the pyramid’s entrance. Its base on four sides was surrounded by lush gardens and temples. A priest walked beside Bob as they made their way up the promenade toward the pyramid. “Intelligence is that which creates attachment,” the priest said. His face was hidden.
Bob looked up at the Sphinx. It smiled down benevolently, the smooth curve of its nose glistening in the midday sun. “Isn’t it the self that creates attachment?”
The priest nodded. “And it is the self that arises from intelligence.”
Bob fought the dream. He tried to launch himself into flight to soar above the pyramids and into the desert beyond, but he felt like he was caught in molasses. His feet kept moving along the marble walkway, locked in step with the priest’s. Thoughts curled around his mind like sand swirling on the desert wind.
They reached the base of the pyramid and began up the steps to its entrance. The guards parted before them. “It is only through the destruction of the self that peace can be realized,” the priest said as they reached the top of the stairway.
With a final glance at the blue sky, Bob ducked his head and followed the priest into the dark tunnel. He had to hunch over and shuffle to get through.
Bob hated small spaces, ever since he had gotten stuck in the passenger cannon access tunnel on Atopia as a child, searching for ways to access the upper levels directly from their habitat. It took hours for rescuers to get him out. Even with his mind able to soar free into synthetic worlds, he’d known that his body was trapped, that the perceived freedom was an illusion.
Between sputtering oil torches, the tunnel was pitch black, leading them down and down. He could only see the shifting shape of the priest ahead. The tunnel eventually opened up into a room that was filled with more guards, and another tunnel led upward from that, larger this time, with a wooden walkway and ropes hanging along its side.
The oppressive weight of millions of tons of stone hung above them, squeezing Bob’s mind. “So that peace can be brought to what?” he asked. “To the self?” That didn’t make any sense. If the self was destroyed, to what were they bringing peace?
The main chamber opened up before them, and the priest urged him into the room. It was the heart of the Great Pyramid. More priests, their heads bowed, were arrayed around a large stone sarcophagus. Its lid was off, set to one side. Colorful hieroglyphs danced on the walls around them in the flickering torchlight. Bob’s pssi instantly translated them, and the stories splintered into his mind—stories of Isis and her husband Osiris, his body quartered and dragged to the four corners, and then his return to life and his betrayal by his brother Seth.
The priests began chanting. A light grew out of a crystal structure within the sarcophagus, rising up to form a shape that hung in space. The shape solidified into a creature that hovered above the assembled. Sobek, the crocodile god, stared at Bob with fiery eyes and said, “It looks like Willy’s proxxi is running from us.”
The god’s face morphed into a green version of Sid.
The priests continued to chant.
“Maybe it’s not his proxxi who stole his body,” Bob replied.
The confines of the sarcophagus chamber melted into the concrete grays of New York City. Self-driving cars swept by on wet streets. There were no street lights or signals, just a never-ending stream of traffic that melted together at junctions and around corners. Sid had left Deanna’s apartment while Bob was asleep, and a splinter, in the middle of a conversation, was integrating into Bob’s consciousness as he awoke.
The dreams were becoming more intense.
Sid noticed the arrival of Bob’s primary self. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine,” Bob replied. He didn’t want to talk about the dreams. “Just waking up. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You needed the rest.” Sid smiled. “Besides, you’ve never been on time for anything in your life. Why so surprised?”
Vince was with them virtually. He’d climbed outside the Commune’s perimeter to tell them the news that Willy’s body had preceded them there. A projection of Vince’s virtual self lounged on a chair, sitting beside Willy and Sid. In the background, multibots were busy setting up the tables and chairs of Herald Square for the day. The square’s cover peeled back like a blooming flower as the sun broke through the clouds overhead. The rain finally stopped.
Sid returned to the discussion while Bob assimilated the backstory. “If Willy’s proxxi didn’t steal his body, then the question is who, or what, did? And why?” He stretched and rubbed his eyes.
“To gain access to the Commune?” Vince suggested. “It’s almost impossible to get in there.”
“Hold on.” Bob slipped his brain into the conversation. “Why couldn’t it have been proxxi?” Nothing suggested it wasn’t Willy’s proxxi who was still guarding Willy’s body.
Sid shrugged. “How would he have kept the smarticle network operating in Willy’s body while he was in the Commune?” Because all outgoing communications would have been cut off from Willy’s mind, was Sid’s point. Sid looked at Willy. “Did you have any gaps in your conscious stream?”
“None at all,” Willy replied.
It was only when Willy’s body left the Commune that access had been granted to Vince and Brigitte. Was it coincidence, or was the Commune part of whatever was happening?
Bob looked around. People walking by kept their distance. They mostly kept outside the information security blanket th
at glittered in the augmented wikiworld around them. But it wasn’t just the security blanket. Vince’s phuturing network was also altering their trajectories without them realizing it, keeping them looking away.
Bob and Sid were effectively invisible to people on the street just because nobody bothered to look at them.
Sid’s identity-thieving algorithm was active, of course, and Bob’s own credentials were constantly shifting, through Rocky, and then Susanna, Bill, Quentin, all of it layered in a time-cloaking algorithm he and Sid had created as kids.
And almost all of the passing people were already on pssi.
A girl approached, walking her dog, and Bob accepted her open reality share, fusing his perception into a bubble-gum-inspired teddy-bear world. The multibots finishing arranging the chairs sprouted lavender fur. Everyone on the street looked happy behind vacant smiles. The girl had virtually fused her frontal lobes with her dog, and they were chatting about what park they wanted to visit.
A woman in a suit brushed past the girl, and Bob shifted into her reality skin. A sleek minimalist world slid into his sensory frames, and a brass-and-glass metropolis rose up out of the teddy-bear world of the girl. The multibots, busy parking themselves under the bright red star of Macy’s along the sidewalk bordering the square, shed their lavender fur and became menacing in black.
New Yorkers were early adopters of new technologies, but this might be the last gadget they’d ever install. Bob could already sense psombies passing by on the streets—people whose bodies were under control of someone else while the owners amused themselves in virtual worlds—or parts of composites that fused their neural systems together into collectives.
The pace of cultural change was gaining speed.
Vince rocked back in his chair. “I think this might be a waste of time. Whoever stole Willy’s body doesn’t want to be found. We should be getting in touch with Terra Nova directly. For God’s sake, they’re still funneling the communication link into his body.”
The Dystopia Chronicles (Atopia Series Book 2) Page 5