The Path

by Peter Riva

  “No, Cramer, I had the definite impression he knew about something like LA and probably much, much more. His answers to me were provoking, not finite. And of course he’s the one who came up with this form of impregnation, right? In a way he’s Peter’s father and the rest of us were just surrogates. Me? I’m the one who was present at birth so I got called Daddy I suppose, but Peter would not have been fooled for long.”

  We were still shouting over the noise of the open door. “But the System’s back to normal and, according to you, in no danger. Right?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but think about it . . . where there was one Peter, others are sure to follow. Those irregularities you were watching when I started working . . . I thought they were other codifiers fooling around in there as I did. But maybe they were all symptoms of a pregnancy, you know, like when the baby turns, or sticks out a heel. It hurts the Mom for a bit but then all goes back to normal. But she’s still pregnant. I think the system is full of pregnancies, there were too many feelings over the years not to be a good indication that, while Peter may be gone, others will be born. And no two kids are the same . . . the next one may be malevolent.”

  “I thought you said that it wasn’t in the program’s DNA?”

  “Well, yes, but imagine if the DNA there is as varied as ours, who’s to say the next being won’t emerge and latch on to something or someone in the library as its first lesson. What if it latches on to the Purge? It’s the age-old question of nature versus nurture. Yes, the DNA of the System is devoid of the primordial elements to engender violence and a need for conquering, but the nurturing offered to the next creature may conjure up horrors we cannot imagine.

  “And there’s something else Peter told me: That I never lied to him, I never stole from him. He detested the codifier, the one before last, you know the one who liked to alter code ‘like an atom bomb’ was how he put it. Imagine if Peter had been nurtured by him? Would his DNA have prevented him becoming malevolent? I don’t know.”

  “That’s why we need to get to Peter. He is our only hope. He’s got to be the next Daddy Bank, that much is clear. Now where the hell is he?”

  “I don’t know. He took himself away safely and will contact me, off earth if I can make it, when he’s whole, ready, free.”

  “That was his idea, to reside off Earth?”

  “Yes.” I hesitated, perhaps only for one hundredth of a second, but he caught it. He nodded. He knew I was lying. Well, partially lying. I needed to keep him away from Fred, so I threw him a bone. “Okay, you got me. We discussed it and decided that if contact were ever possible it would have to be out of listening of Control and the SND, so we chose off planet. We could have chosen something else on Earth but there is nothing he or I know about Earth outside of America. That’s a taboo subject in and out of the System.”

  “Yeah, but off Earth implies some storage device there and there is nothing large enough to hold that memory off Earth. Of course, in 2 weeks he can’t build or have one built either, not even Peter manipulating the whole system. No, he’s leaking himself somewhere safe without the computing power he needs to be sentient beyond emergency repairs, maybe building that intra-net computing power while he leaks out of Control’s jurisdiction. Now, where could that be?”

  “I’m not qualified to know myself.” Again that hesitation.

  “Spit it out Bank.”

  “It occurred to me that, if he could control WeatherGood and SeaSpout, he could cause an interaction between air and sea which would allow the salt water, conductive as it is, to become a bubble memory medium. But for how long and what’s the transmission device?”

  He scowled, hesitated, “Impractical. Well, let’s think on it. For now just tell me how he’s going to contact you, what’s your code word?”

  “It’s a song, WWII I think: We’ll Meet Again.”

  “How’s that? What the hell good is that? Do you and he sing to each other?”

  “No, he uses my name and I use his and the song or any part of it becomes relevant. In that last search I found the file name swap subset tagged with the lyrics of the song. All I needed to do was complete the lyric, use my name and I was allowed the one way, one time alteration. Just the one,” I lied. It was crucial I didn’t reveal that Fred was also protected. Cramer was too well connected, by his own admission to the Citizens’ Council and our government to be trusted. I needed to see what he wanted to do first.

  It had not escaped my notice, either, that we were in a military transport going who-knows-where, me sitting here with a collar on. All the while Cramer was giving orders with his SND sleeve off. How much power do you have to have to do all this? I mean, if this had been a time near the Purge, I figured we were looking at a major player in the military here. I was determined, this guy must not get Apollo’s whereabouts, at least not from me.

  Something else was bothering me as well. If Apollo copied or is copying himself on to two different systems, what if he gets both up and running? Will there be identical twin Apollos? I needed quiet time to think, but not in a sleep chamber in case they could read my dreams or thoughts. I guess I still needed to escape. The last of the slo-doze was wearing off. I didn’t know how effective the speeded-up me would be. I was tired and, damn him, Cramer was right, I wish I had eaten that chocolate cake. Prepared like a true soldier, he ate while he could. It made me even more wary of him.

  The lifter swerved suddenly and spun around. A tinny voice said over a speaker: “Incoming missiles Colonel . . .” aha, I was right! So much for Capt. Cramer of the SND. The pilot continued: “Instructions?”

  Cramer looked at me with a hint of resignation and simply said “Evade.”

  “We are not able to, the plane’s doing it itself. We had no screen warning of the last two. Instructions?”

  “Fly on, we will not be hit.” He lowered his voice: “Damn but this invulnerability might be useful, eh Simon?”

  Seizing on a moment of camaraderie I asked “Hey, Cramer, how about taking off this Control collar which they are no doubt tracking?”

  He went back to being in command, “No can do, Bank, I want them to know where you are. That collar has a 10 second delay, my RFID, up here, 30 seconds. As far as they are concerned I’m chasing you somehow. It’s you they are shooting at. If they go on missing, they’ll think your creature made you invulnerable. Did he?”

  “No. As I said, tag, you’re it.”

  “We’ll be there soon. This lifter will seem to crash. That will be the signature,” he tapped a brown plastic box at his feet, running the length of the cabin. There were three others in the shadows at the back of the cabin. “And they will find your DNA in the remains. And the collar—what’s left of it.”

  “Cute trick, how will you pull that off?”

  “Why do you think you wife’s divorcing you? As soon as you screwed up the System, every SynthKid returned itself for recycling, as they are fail-safed to do. Even when the System came back up, the SynthKids programming didn’t initialize on this year, but last, and their bioengineering couldn’t cope. Default programming: Go for recycling. We picked one up. Your wife blames you. She wants a divorce, a new man—apparently there is one at her school, has been for some time—and new kids. She’s been told that’s fine already.”

  “So, you bastard, you’ve snagged a SynthKid and you’re going to kill him,” I hoped the box by his feet wasn’t . . . “and use the remnant DNA to fake an accident for me? No thanks. Come on Cramer, let them live out their lives, at least, let her have them for the next few years.”

  “I’m not that heartless Bank, the Event caused this, switched all of them off in their heads, nothing I can do about that. These here are merely blobs of flesh, your DNA. But use them, use this chance? You bet!”

  He tapped the box again, making his point.

  I just stared at him. What else was there to say? It was immoral but was it more immoral than the SynthKids program in the first place? Once those poor kids switched off in their heads, th
ey were dead anyway, gone for recycling, so what’s a few years make? I still didn’t like profiting off their death. My stomach turned again.

  “Isn’t there another way?”

  “Yeah, want to give up a pound of flesh, to leave behind?”

  “Ha, bloody ha, Cramer.” I slumped back in my plastic bucket seat and closed my eyes. The lifter started a careening dive. The slo-doze took that moment to work off. Adrenaline again, I suppose. Cramer detached the collar using his sleeve. The lifter suddenly approached ground and we all, all four of us, jumped clear. Cramer threw the collar into the plastic box and the lifter swooped up and violently down, 4 seconds maximum. The crash was spectacular. The lifter burned fiercely once we were clear.

  The pilots quickly checked the debris and then went over to and opened a hovercraft hatch. We all climbed in and boosted away, below detection, across Chesapeake Bay, going back northeast. As the slo-doze had worn off, and I didn’t want him to know, I shut my eyes and slept and had bad dreams. Child murder was the central theme.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE RATS

  In the middle of the twentieth century man decided to experiment on future social structure. In one room, eight feet by eight feet, they built a metal series of concentric rooms, very architectural, around a central endless feed and water supply. Into this room they placed 4 pairs of rats. These rats, faced with endless food and warmth, almost total 24-hour light, only dimming a bit at night, began to breed and organize themselves. Within three generations, there was no family unit, all babies were raised by communal mothers together, there was a boss who controlled access to the food and water in exchange for favors of all kinds. Shortly after that there were rapes, murders, suicides and no male-female permanent relationships whatsoever. The population stabilized at just over 200 rats.

  Into an identical room they placed identical laboratory-bred rats, 4 pairs of them, but this room had day and night, a grass and country environment but the same supply of food, evenly supplied (4 lots) and moving water. In twelve generations none of the aberrant behavior displayed itself, the population stabilized at 32 rats. No murders, no violence, normal relationships, coupling and life, with normal death.

  These studies were called the Calhoun Rat Studies, paid for by the Ford Foundation. They were infamous, of course. Only once appearing on a TV show called Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Then they went secret during the time of the last administration of the Twentieth century. When they surfaced, they became the model for the reasoning behind the Purge and were heralded as the savior of civilization. Once the PowerCube was invented, individual limitless energy and all the spin-off technical marvels it lead to, the Calhoun Rat Studies were held up as the gold standard for our society, the reason for controlling the population, the reason for making energy and food individually available and for the dictatorial laws regarding individual freedom over imposition by others. It was even why my wife could ask for and get an instant divorce; under the rule of the Calhoun Rat studies research, why, how could I impose on her not to have one? It was the reason we had the integrated System, to supply the needs of us, the rats, living in blissful security, no strife, no suicide, no murder, controlled population, in balance.

  Of course, the natural living model wasn’t the point. How could it be? With a population worldwide approaching 10 billion at the time of the Purge, there wasn’t enough room for that model to work on Earth. That’s what the space elevator is for . . . build to grow in orbit and look to the stars, now that energy is not a factor. Conversion of aluminum on the moon was already outstripping 200 tons a day. Soon there would be the materials America needed to put an atmosphere on the moon, a New America it was being called. I might live to see it. I might not want to.

  Am I a cynic? I had always secretly thought about all this. There were dinner conversations with previous colleagues and the wife, when we had first courted and married. “Is this all life is about?” that sort of thing. But the niche you fit into in life, with every opportunity a “yes,” well, how could you really complain? We heard rumors on the newsvids of the rest of the world, but really they were few and far between. An earthquake here, a coup there, video on demand if you want more and when you did, it was just a repeat with longer pauses and no streaming PVI ads on the presenter’s desktop. No one really cared about the rest of the world. It had no impact here, there was no contact allowed directly and, anyway, why should we allow them access to our standard of living? We had the PowerCube and all that sprang from it. If they got hold of it, they would threaten us again. Terrorists all, enemies all. You learned it in history class, the American Way it was called. Hard to argue with. People lived, lived again and eventually died if they chose to. Dying was sometimes a generous act if you dedicated your life spot to help your kids have a kid, if they really wanted to.

  As it was, at the moment all I was worried about was living for the next hours or days. Where Cramer brought me, after the fake crash in Virginia, was the Calhoun Center, famous home of the studies. A rat had come home. Make that two, Cramer certainly wasn’t innocent either.

  ---------

  I have seen this place on vid. There were lecture tours, complete with link-text and sensory feed, sound and smell only, no touch. Rats bite. The 1,000th generation of the rats in their now-famous double-decker city, sequel to the single story version of the 20th Century, was a big vid moment with a visit from the President. As an ex-jock, our President was still a fine figure of a man and not ridiculous at all standing before the hermetically isolated one-way glass viewing window, saying “These little happy friends, the ancestor descendants of those first experimental rats, continue to provide valuable data to our System structure to ensure a continuing contented and fulfilled life for us all.” I can still smell his cologne over that scientific background smell of disinfectant. The rats, being rats, we didn’t get to smell.

  I was still speeded up, about 20% faster than normal, I estimated. Still fast enough to bite through a cheek if I was not careful. Gravity doesn’t move faster and skin gets in the way. Deliberate movement would give me away to the ever-vigilant Cramer, so it was easier to sit here, waiting, dozing, not letting on.

  Cramer kicked my feet. “Come on, get up. There’s work to do. You’re going to find it, or at least help.”

  He led the way down a few corridors and down a flight or six of stairs. I guessed we were about 7 floors down now, probably underwater or in wet sand anyway. I plodded after him, somnambulant, trying not to look speeded up. I contemplated taking another slo-doze, but I only had 4 left and might need them. We arrived at a pair of glass doors with the words “Access Restricted. Command & Control, Systems” etched in them. The feeling was permanence, not scientific study. More business and efficiency and, as I said, the center had been here and will be here for a long time.

  Cramer’s RFID opened the doors but a guard stepped forward to block him and me. Cramer then held up his left hand and, at the same time, looked straight at the retina scanner hanging from the ceiling. The hand presumably had the RFID in it. “He’s with me” he said to the guard who was watching Cramer’s eyes, nothing else, meaning business. A voice came from nowhere “Pass, Able 1.” Only then did the guard move aside.

  Down another corridor with full wall vids, showing things I have never seen before. On earth and off earth views, undersea views, military views of missiles, airborne defense weapons in the form of giant blimps, submarines, inside and out, and things that I had no idea what they could be, except once or twice I saw a human hand move controls of something complex.

  These vids were not for public consumption. They were measuring vids, I could see that. Like the early NASA images from space they had optical grids on them. There was no attempt to create a pleasing or moving image for the news. These were sterile, informative images, like those taken by the first astronauts on the moon, devoid of any humanity. Then, later, in the Sightseeing program, hundreds of thousands of human hand-held images were found in a freezer vault
at NASA and human perspective of space travel changed. But not these moving images, these were scientific, studious, cold but compelling. Across each feed was a scroll of data, flowing information that would, presumably, have relevance to someone, somewhere. In here no doubt.

  I knew where I was, but not what this place really was. A study center? Hardly. This place oozed an aura of business, military business.

  “Hi Ralph, what’s that you’ve caught? It’s him?” A sexy redhead, and I mean sexy, piped up from an open doorway. She was leaning on the jamb. Honestly, I wondered if she were plying her wares. The female lures were visible, blouse tight, outline clear—and she knew it, flaunted it.

  “Angie, put those wiles away, this one is beyond anything you could have imagined. Let’s stay focused. Give me the Control report.” We entered her office, if that is what it could be called. She had one large glass vid desk and vids playing on every wall and even the ceiling panels angled for her viewing pleasure from her chair. It was like being inside the System except the eyes were the sensor not the neurons inside my head. It was all sensory saturation for my eyes, the vids and her.

  “Okay Ralph, tell me later maybe, but for now, ask him to stop staring, I’m up here, mister.”

  “Not my fault” I mumbled. Standard defense with a beautiful woman. If they didn’t want a normal red-blooded appraisal ogling, they shouldn’t look so good. It worked the other way around too, of course, although sadly never with me. Ah well, next life. “Sorry.”

  “No need, I enjoy it, but not now unless you like to anger Ralph here. He’s got a temper.”

  “And a sweet tooth” I chimed in.

  “Chocolate?”

  “Cake, Waldorf, fingers, messy. And I thought he was a Charles. Agent bully Charles Cramer”

  “Oh, I call him Ralph, pet name.” And to Cramer she said: “This one’s a keeper, got you pegged! Okay here’s the report,” she continued quickly before Cramer could get angry, “Control has you and Simon Bank dead, DNA testing underway, sky lifter destruction total, two DNA capsules for pilots also under study. We used the two bodies from the Venezuela probe, untraceable, solid RFIDs linked to their DNA. System is normal and nominal time-line correction effected by your Mary and working fine. WeatherGood back online, no hitches. DefenseShield never wobbled visibly to outside. FarmHands is a bit of a mess, cabbages shipping as bananas and being over-cooled, that sort of thing, but emergency supplies coping. Public Enemy dead, on evening vids, expansion details to follow. They’ll make something up no doubt. Wife will be trotted out, that sort of thing, sorrow, mix-up, no reason to smear him forever. Life’s good, there are no bad guys. He only looked like an evil doer, wasn’t, standard fare. He was just a screw-up. Mary taking his place in rotation on Citizens Council next September.” I didn’t know I was due for that honor that soon.