The Path

by Peter Riva

  Godspeed Apollo. And he left. I wonder how I’m going to explain all this? Cramer won’t buy any of it. He’ll be suspicious. Well, let him. Apollo was safe.

  CHAPTER 11

  AM I A HERO? CRAMER’S EYES DON’T LIE

  Apollo was gone. I was all alone. I didn’t like it much anymore. I miss his presence, it was powerful and very benign. He is my friend, yet I need to find a way to claim I killed him.

  Mary’s a genius. Mary’s a genius. Mary’s a genius. I have completed repairs. System nominal. Coming out. I initiated the command to lift out. Opened my eyes and pulled the dome off my head.

  There was tech McVay, holding the cable, one foot on the chair blocking the door. Beyond her are Makerman and Cramer sitting on the table. Makerman has his dome off, Cramer is shouting something.

  “Hello? I’m back. It’s over.”

  Tech McVay started to say welcome back and I could hear Mary answering Cramer. It was a bit of a jumble. My mind wasn’t focusing very well. It’s as if they are all carrying on in slow motion. Walking out the door, I pulled the chair away and the office door slid shut, slowly. I am watching it move, and McVay as well. Heck, they are not moving very well.

  And that’s when I hit the floor. Out cold.

  ------------

  So here I am, sitting in bed, someone’s bed, don’t know where and the room is full of people. I have a gum shield in place, am already dying to spit it out. Looking around, I recognize most of them, Mary, Agent Cramer, Tom Makerman, Sgt. Todd and the 3 codifiers, Tech McVay, Dr. Rence the child analyst, Mrs. Ronneburg, that idiot Isaac the architect (well, he’s superfluous, I closed all his holes) and William, my brother. Of course the six armed uniform boys from the Security Net Division were frightening, if only to me, nobody else seemed to mind. They were all standing around like statues, nobody saying anything. Mary had her mouth open . . .

  No wait, I can hear, sounds, slow motion sounds. Okay, remember Simon, what happened when you took off the dome? You got all the way out the room without anyone moving much. You are still speeded up.

  We codifiers had heard of this before, immersion for too long in the System sped up the synapses in the human brain to the point that, for a few minutes, it was if you were still on computer time. But how long have I been this way? I obviously have been moved to a bed somewhere, which takes time. Let me see, nope, everyone is in the same clothing and their hair looks the same. Let’s see if I can slow this thing down. Stay still, wait, force the delay. Don’t, whatever you do, speak or spit out the gum shield, you could crack your teeth at this speed. Okay, listen only. Cripes my eyelids sound loud, I wonder if the lashes are fluttering.

  Doc Rence is moving over with a syringe in his hand, one of those old-fashioned CO2 palm models. He’s injecting something in my arm. Slow down juice? What the heck is it? His lips are moving, smiling. Very slowly saying something soothing, no doubt.

  Wait it out. Patience Simon. Remember Apollo is safe, they think I’ve killed the System’s baby, Peter, it. The Event is over, all must be back to normal. The drug was taking effect. Like a disjointed train, the carriages were being hooked up again in my ears and brain. I could begin to hear and tell what people were saying. I risked moving my fingers under the cover, they didn’t snap or move too suddenly. My eyelids are not making noise anymore. Hold still a minute longer. Wait until they speak.

  Mary is first, of course: “Simon are you alright? You had us worried. Today, you were in there over 25 minutes, that’s a record. We pulled the implant, came out clean.”

  Charlie, the 1st codifier was next: “No one’s ever done what you did. Agent Cramer has been telling us . . .” They all went on and on. Everybody was happy. Sitting up in bed, I learned Cramer’s interpretation of our journey and that finally Cramer and Makerman were disconnected by McVay by simply cutting the wires. That caused a back pulse to me but I must have been protected inside the sphere at Makerman’s old address or else I should have died. And when Cramer came out he immediately ordered a dump of the System. When Mary and Control went to access the back doors to the library where I had flagged them, which Mary had mapped, they were gone. Solid, repaired, no access. Fearing the worst, Cramer was about to tell Control to initiate a System delete, with all priority overrides. Mary said Cramer was scared when it was confirmed the System was purged of the “being” and back to normal. Everything is back to normal. It was said with such glee. Cramer scowled at her. I smiled, like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. And yes then came the question I was expecting, from Cramer, of course.

  “Bank, what exactly did you do?”

  “I killed it.”

  “Bank you completed—what were those numbers Mary from our exit to Event cancellation?”

  “125,983,034,546 entries, 278 hundredths of a seconds.

  “Right, 125,983,034,546 entries in under 300 hundredths of a second. No way you effected those changes.”

  “That’s enough time. Look, I may not be anything above a level 5, but I know how to construct a worm, linked with my Takeover and Grow programs. Anywhere there was activity during my last conversation I had one worm that flagged yellow, and then another one hiding the Makerman blue tomato with grow and takeover. I asked . . .” I almost said Apollo, “I asked it, the System, to wait for me in the Library. I then activated the 1st worm and it triggered all the others in a one for two stimulation.”

  Dr. Rence, who was clearly in charge as the medico, asked what a one for two stimulation meant. Cramer, quick as ever, explained it’s the atomic squared-detonation sequence, one action begets two, two beget four, four beget 16 and so on. Allowing 25 hundredths of a second for each worm action, in under 200 hundredths of a second every entry would have been triggered. I could see Cramer felt my explanation was wrong, but he didn’t mention it. Something secret between us to beat me up with later? You see, Cramer knows that there was no way I programmed the worm with each flagged address. Maybe he presumed, but I doubted he did, that the worm had a flag identifier built in. Even then it would have taken a full System search over 10 seconds to find every flag. So my worm had to have the exact addresses to work in the time allotted. Apollo and I hadn’t gotten our story worked out very well. But as long as Cramer and Mary didn’t bring it up, why should I?

  Cramer’s eyes told me he didn’t have to bring it up.

  The doctor must have seen something pass over my face. He turned on Cramer and the others and asked them to leave so he could examine me.

  “I’m staying,” Cramer declared.

  “No, you are not. I am the medical officer in charge, I need to fully examine my patient, I need confidentiality under the law. You will leave.”

  Cramer instead of arguing, which I was sure he could, consulted his sleeve, motioned with his head to the rest of the people in the room, including the officers and, to his credit, avoided stating the next obvious, pedantic thing like “we’ll be just outside the door.” Pedantic Cramer wasn’t. Even after all the time with him inside the System, what seemed like days for me, I still could not get Cramer to treat me with anything that approached respect. It makes me angry to think that, having restored the System and all the American operations to normal, the least Cramer could do would be to treat me as anything other than a recalcitrant child. Hell, I even saved his life, and I’m sure he knows it. And Makerman’s, no thanks for that as well.

  As they left the room I saw William, my brother, shoot me a glance of awe. It was the same look he once gave to a kid, a teammate of his, at school. William was the quarterback of the second string team playing in a region final, you know the type of game, local city inter-rivalry, rah, rah, rah. Outcome, who could possibly care? But this kid, the center, all 110 kilos of him, faked a fumbled snap, picked up the ball and simply ran through, past and on top of the opposing team to score a goal. It was William’s face, one of awe and respect, that remained in my memory, and that I saw now. I nodded slightly. William waved a hand and smiled. It was the closest moment we had
ever shared.

  Before the last person left, what I now could see was a luxury room in a hotel, a suite it looked like, the doctor was already going through the motions, asking me to take off my clothing such as it was. I had been disrobed and had on, what the hell are these things? A sort of diaper and an open vest linen thing, a bit tight across the back. Oh damn, it’s a woman’s bed jacket, pink piping and all. The doctor smiled, “It’s what the Waldorf Towers supplies to lady guests. Complimentary. The Pamper is courtesy of a guest who has an incontinent senior traveling with her. I thought it best, often on waking the body takes the opportunity of evacuating the gut.” I could feel a warm wetness now that he mentioned it. A quick hip squirm thankfully revealed nothing else to worry me.

  Everyone was gone. “I have given you a shot of slo-doze, it’s the standard drug of choice to reduce the disconnected feeling of your higher rate of perception. Bring you down from your rate. But I fear part of your rate may be permanent, but only in part.” I started to rise. “I know, I know, you can’t take slo-doze forever. It is addictive and damages your renal function after about 5 days.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Look, agent Cramer and Control have plans for you, after where you’ve been and from what little I know you’ve achieved, they are bound to treat you differently. Maybe not well, but safely I’m sure. Everything’s different.” As he was speaking, he was probing this and that, peering into my eyes, eyelids up. Tapping my temples, checking my teeth for cracking and so on. It seemed perfunctory, routine. He wasn’t really looking for anything. After all, what could he be looking for? Medical excellence and approved practice before the medical review committee? Hardly.

  He went on, “As for me? You’ve saved millions if not billions of lives. The rest of the planet is affected, you know, and we can’t calculate the benefit there except that it is a benefit, having things stable, saving lives, un-rocking the boat. So, in case people don’t remember to say it, thank you.”

  There it was, the simple thank you from a professional. But why was it necessary, so very necessary, to me . . . and why did he say it? “You’re welcome.” I made it personal as his was meant.

  “Yeah.” He nodded, “Now,” he leaned forward, pretended to look at my implant node port and whispered “be prepared to run. When the slo-doze wears off you can move quicker and evade capture. Find the truth. I checked the patterns and it was alive, may become so again. It was aged 20 by the time you left. And, until you can get free . . .” he leaned back and said, in a normal tone, “here’s a slo-doze sleeve to help you appear normal.” And he slipped a sleeve of pills into my diaper.

  “All done doc?” Cramer asked as he reentered the room.

  “Yes, the patient is as good as can be. A full medical work-up should be made. He has surpassed the norms in two categories. The nodal implant time at sea level can burn connecting tissue, although there does not seem any damage, perhaps because he was still, physically, the whole time. The long-term effects of such a long immersion and the rate of synaptic connection, time to wear off, etc. should be properly documented and the patient monitored for his own benefit, of course.”

  “Thank you doctor, I will implement that. We’ll take it from here. Bank? You ready to leave this,” he waved his arm about, disdainfully “suite? We have a debriefing to complete.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I am, I’m a little weak and, as the doc says, I’m not quite in synch yet, but I’ll get there shortly. Fred okay?”

  “Your son’s fine. You wife is home . . . the kids,” he said “kids” with what I can only describe as disgust so that even the doctor swiveled his head. Cramer looked at the doctor “They’ve got SynthKids.” Again the look, almost like he was going to be sick.

  “Hey,” I shouted, “She wanted them, it’s allowed.”

  Cramer didn’t want to discuss it, he just turned and barked orders to the cops outside the door to clear transport and take everyone home. Mary, he ordered to Control.

  “Well?” Cramer was looking at me.

  “Agent Cramer, I don’t know what’s up your butt, but me, I’ve got a diaper on and a lady’s negligee. How about some clothing? A man’s preferably.” Hah, I caught him! His eyes darted around the room and, finding nothing, he turned on his heel and marched out the door.

  “Careful with that one, I sense something personal against you,” the doctor added as he got off the bed and walked towards the door, now being held open by two cops.

  I folded my arms and thought. The doctor’s warning had me worried. I had assumed I was all done, that I could go back to my life and simply wait until I could get off-planet, using Fred’s position in a year or more, and re-establish contact with Apollo. Apollo was alive, I was alive, System’s normal, all’s well that ends well, that sort of thing.

  It was clearly not to be.

  Cramer came back with normal street clothes, tags still on, and carefully placed them on the bed (no admission of my ‘gotcha’ by flinging them on the bed) and asked me to get dressed. I felt like a fly on a spider’s web. Wrap yourself up in a cocoon, we’ll eat you later, no hurry.

  After I was washed and dressed, a little woozy, two cops guided me through the hotel, down the elevators. The wall screens, all three of them, were colored with images of damage and carnage clearly brought about by the failure of the system. Some of the footage was pretty spectacular. There was a toppled building somewhere in some city, dead all around, blinking lights, that sort of thing. I couldn’t hear which city, couldn’t get near enough to the RFID reader to complete the receive-sound-feed request. The cops kept me in dead center of the elevator. Off to my left, the wall was showing people pushing, grabbing food as it loaded onto empty shelving. Wow, they were all of a half day without full shelves, the desperation was obvious and pathetic. Is that what we’ve become as a nation?

  Into a car, and away we went, at speed, no Cramer but with one agent either side of me, one driver in front, and one seat behind with only the morose Makerman slumped on it. The driver turned around and said “He the one?”

  The cop on my left said “Yeah. Shuddap and drive.”

  The driver shot me a look, like out of an old Humphrey Bogart movie, using the rear-view mirror. All I could see was hatred, cold brutal hatred.

  CHAPTER 12

  ESCAPE

  We never made it to Control.

  As we proceeded up Park Avenue, there was a detour around the Armory Bridge which had collapsed straight across Park. As we sat there waiting to take the side street, I suddenly realized there was no siren going, no marking on our vehicle which told people and services to get the hell out of the way, which is what normally happened with an SND cop car, even when they were only going to lunch. No, we just sat there, creeping forward.

  “What gives?” I just had to ask. The driver started to respond but was cut off by the cop on my right.

  “Hold it, no talking Cramer told ‘ya. Tint the windows black. No siren, he doesn’t want to draw attention. Get it? Shuddap.”

  Tint the windows, what’s going on here? Why would they want to creep along and, more importantly, why would they want to tint the windows?

  Oh, then it dawned. It’s all my fault. They’ve told everyone, and I mean everyone, this was all my fault. I’m the rogue who caused this. Tint the windows? Yes please! I don’t want to get stoned to death. I turned to Makerman: “Tom, what’s happening?”

  “You, you idiot, you caused all this with your programming screw-ups. You’re gonna get yours.”

  “You’re kidding! I saved everyone.”

  “In a pig’s ass. You screwed up my file, screwed up the System, caused all this devastation and you think you saved everyone? What planet are you on, Bank? You think that just because you somehow fixed the System, the System you screwed up, you’re going to get hero’s honors? Hah!”

  “But, cripes, I didn’t screw up the System, that started when Charlie did the first job as codifier, you heard all that . . .”
<
br />   “Who’s going to believe all that crap from a machine you taught to speak? No way Bank, you’re at fault, Control knows it and you’re going to get yours, big time. And if Cramer doesn’t get you the Director will.”

  This does not look good. Now I wish I had taken more time, if I had had more time, inside the System with Apollo—I am already thinking of him in there. Locked in, confined temporarily, as I was. If I had had more time maybe I could have found something, anything, which would give me an edge here.

  I can’t think of anything. Maybe I can make a run for it. If I allow the slo-doze to wear off and don’t take the pills (now residing inside my underpants—well, they were inside my diapers a moment ago, so why not, it’s not like I’m dirty anymore) . . . maybe if I can speed up I can overpower one of these goons and make a break?

  To where? My RFID is working fine now, since the System is up and functioning. No, they have me and I am going to Control, perhaps never to get out again. I wonder if I’ll have to wear that yellow PJ set all day?

  Come on Simon, figure this out. Damn it, you can’t let them take you. If they do and something happens to you and Apollo finds out, he may seek vengeance. Shit, shit, I forgot to warn him about me being terminated, even by accident. Well, maybe he can figure it out, he’s old enough now. He’s on the path! Hah, me? I’m on the path to hell.

  We were just sitting there, dark windows, three rows of seats, one, three and one passengers, waiting for the Armory bridge to be cleared away or the side street to be cleared for the detour. I didn’t see it coming. The two cops sure as hell didn’t see it coming and I don’t give a damn if Makerman saw it coming. He got hit first, steel rod straight through the roof, hit his hands and through a foot and the floor of the car. Pinned him there like a giant moth, yelling. The two cops sprang to action telling me to stay put.