Cynthia’s avatar looked down at Earl. “I’m happy you came to me. Finally, it all makes sense.” She sounded relieved.
“What’s going on, Cynthia?” Sabot asked.
“Evan is planning to take over the world.”
“That’s . . . how?” Earl said, in disbelief.
“Those in the physical world disregard the virtual world, and those in cyberspace return the favor. But they are inextricably linked. There is no difference between the two except one: if you control the digital world, you can bring the physical one to its knees. The opposite isn’t true.”
“Why?”
“Geography. No country can take over the world, not anymore, maybe never, though some speculate about Germany in World War II. Land empires don’t exist because the resources to maintain them no longer exist. For over one hundred years borders have been protected by the threat of nuclear weapon strikes, not invasions.
“But cyberspace is both infinite and small. There are no borders. There is no innate obstacle that would stop a coup. It can be ruled, quite easily, by one person, one mind. And with the physical world so dependent on the digital to survive, the physical world would have to relent. It would fall in line.”
“But our armies—”
“Rely on the digital world to function. I could render nearly all of your weapons useless in minutes. I could dismantle your communications. I could launch your nuclear weapons. I could control—”
Boen interrupted. “We need to get a hold of the President.”
“He will be compromised. But I’ll try. If anything, he will know how close we are to this war.”
“What can I do?” Earl asked.
“Get back to the base, act like we haven’t met today. Or hide. What’s happening will happen soon. I will do what I can to stop it.”
= = =
Sabot escorted Boen out a side entrance.
“You could stay,” Sabot offered.
“No, I can’t. We don’t even know what’s going on, really.”
Sabot’s eyes said different, but he kept his mouth closed.
“I run the base; I need to be there. I’m old, and I can play senile if I have to.” Earl looked up and down the street. A few people shuffled around like zombies. “I just don’t get the world anymore. I really don’t know what to do. Private lines aren’t private, the internet may as well be a bullhorn. Everyone’s looking into your shit. And no one cares. They expect it! They think it’s safer that someone’s listening in. And maybe for a bit, it was. Give an inch.”
“They don’t care, because they don’t realize what they’re giving up,” Sabot said.
“What’s she going to do?”
“She’s going to figure it out.”
“What would you do?”
“Kill him. Do you know where he is?”
Boen shook his head. “No. I haven’t seen him in person in years.” He looked up at Sabot. “He can do it?”
“He can try, but even if he takes over cyberspace, he’s physically located somewhere. If we can get to him, it’ll be done. He’d need the military on his side.”
“They’re good men; they wouldn’t just get in line. He’s got a few cronies, but a few wouldn’t do it.”
“She’s the smart one. I don’t know.”
Boen chewed on his tongue. “Yeah . . . so’s Evan.”
“You can stay.”
“No, I can’t. Now’s not the time to cower. I hope she’s wrong.”
“Me, too.”
They shook hands and Boen walked away. He was at the stairs to the L-train platform a half-mile away when he heard the car pull up.
“General! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
It was Wilkes, his assistant. He was already out of the car, approaching him. Boen’s stomach knotted, and he looked at the stairs and thought about going for it. He nearly laughed out loud when he pictured himself trying to outrun a Tank Minor.
“Sir?” Wilkes looked expectantly at the general.
“Got distracted on my run. What’s going on?” How did he find me?
Wilkes herded Boen toward the car. Boen glanced past it to the MindCorp building, wishing that Cynthia’s giant, dreaded bodyguard were running over to intervene. But it was just them.
“The gate said you’d left for a run and you never came back. Don’t take this the wrong way, but—”
“I’m old,” Earl finished. Wilkes held the rear door open for him. Boen got in.
“I didn’t say it,” Wilkes joked. He closed the door and went around to the driver’s side. “Back to base?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
There was a more direct route, but Earl liked to drive north on Lakeshore Drive, and Wilkes knew it.
Act normal, Boen thought to himself. “How’s life off the reservation?” he asked. Wilkes had moved off base with his family a few months before—a new policy to integrate bionics with civilians. Wait, did Evan propose that?
“Strange,” Wilkes replied. “My softy neighbors always ask me to help move things.”
“Well, it’s easier to move an armoire with a Minor around,” Boen offered. “Tera’s doing fine?”
“Still sore, C-section, but Anna keeps her occupied.” Wilkes looked back in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think she even notices me in the room sometimes.”
“I remember that.” Idle chatter. Maybe everything was okay. Boen started to relax and exhaustion flowed over him. He closed his eyes and thought about Cynthia mounted on that spider, getting pulled and twisted, her “ideal” pasted on a large screen above her.
Crude.
Boen opened his eyes.
“Did you say something?” he asked Wilkes.
“Huh?”
Boen closed his eyes again and thought about Cynthia, Evan, the Mindlink, the ill of it, the grift. How people were so convinced that technology brought them happiness, while it was sucking their life away. A campfire and a couple of beers brought solace. A day done well brought worth. The meaning of life? Easy: love, family, friends, and selflessness. You do that, you’ll die fine. The Mindlink was as shallow as a sheet of paper and as vast as an ocean. And in its vastness was its lie: there were infinite sips, but it would never sate. It had made people skimmers of life.
That’s what they want.
Earl’s eyes snapped open. He knew that wasn’t his voice. He knew it wasn’t Wilkes. Wilkes kept driving, oblivious.
“I think I may want a bit of breakfast before we head back to base,” Earl said. “Tired of the same.”
“No, sir. I got orders.”
“From who?”
Me.
“Wilkes, I need you to stop the car.”
He can’t. He’s not driving. See?
The car swerved to the left and then back.
Fear filled Wilkes’s voice. “I can’t control my body, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not controlling my body right now. Someone else has control.”
Let’s shut him up, so we can talk.
Laughter filled Earl’s head, and he realized he didn’t know if the words were spoken aloud or were coming from within.
Within. The answer came without the question. Boen saw that Wilkes/Evan ignored the normal off ramp to the base. They were going farther into the sticks, where the road was no longer maintained, where no one was around.
“How are you in my head?” General Boen asked.
Your car is wired as a Mindlink.
“For how long?”
Years. The same with your office. The same with the base.
Then Evan knew everything. He always had.
Of course.
Wilkes/Evan took an off ramp out toward the lake, toward a pier that had been abandoned for twenty years. Earl’s right hand rested on his hip pack.
“So Cynthia was right?”
Earl felt the smile, and then the frigid tickle leak through his brain as Evan used Boen’s memory to recount what Cynthia had said.
“Yes. It’s just days away,” Wilkes said. But it was Evan. The timbre may have been different, but the cadence was the same.
“How?”
“The traits we value: integrity, honor. These are conditional behaviors, and I’ve learned that they are quite easy to break.”
“Cynthia will stop you. The military won’t follow you.”
“One begets the other. Reactions and consequences will build into the inevitable. It’s too late. Cynthia would never say it, but we’re no longer like you. Time is different, space is different. My thoughts are clouds stretched across a horizon, and still they grow. I have gone over these scenarios a trillion times.”
“The people won’t allow it,” Boen said.
“The people don’t care. They want to be ruled. They want to be left to their devices. A quick coup will ensure that. There is no other way.”
“Don’t act like you care about the people.”
“I don’t, and I’d never say otherwise. We’ve stalled too long for the weak. We’ve catered to the lowest common denominator, and the world has suffered for it. If we acknowledge—and I think you’ll agree—that most lives don’t matter except to the small periphery of family and friends that encircle them, then we also have to acknowledge that some lives—infinitesimally few—do matter. They are imperative to the survival and growth of the species. And without these few people, we would just be hairless apes fucking on the Serengeti, splintering stones for spears. It wasn’t the entire species that advanced, Earl: it was a few souls that advanced the entire species.”
Boen was silent, stunned.
“The best minds in our world have taken their dreams and used concrete and steel to build them. I am no different. But my dreams are vast. Beyond Cynthia’s, beyond Einstein’s, beyond the greatest minds that laid the foundation on which I stand. They could not do what I do because it was too soon. And in the future they cannot do what I do, because they will be too late. The time is mine.”
Wilkes turned down an empty, broken road toward the pier. The sun was ahead, red and wavering, peering over Lake Michigan. To Earl, it looked like an eye.
“So you want to rule.”
“No. I want to live forever. And I will, Earl. I promise you, my most sincere promise. I will. But to do so, first I must rule.”
The doors locked, and Earl knew the door handles wouldn’t work. He didn’t even try. He slowly snuck a hand into the hip pack.
“So this is it,” he said. He had only one chance, and it was small.
The car swung through the parking lot, picking up speed toward the pier.
“Earl, I like your style, but you’re not going to change, and you’ll fight me to the death. Every other person I deal with would shoot a newborn baby to save themselves. The Presidents, the Prime Ministers, the military leaders. Yes, I blackmailed them, but I blackmailed them into an aristocracy. They will be lords and they know it, because I no longer care for this world. It’s no longer the one that matters. For what it’s worth, I admire you.”
General Boen pulled out the subcompact Glock he always carried, and fired a 180-grain hollow point into the back of Wilkes’s head. His assistant’s hair exploded in flaps from the impact, revealing a white, ceramic skull.
“See? You’re a tough old coot!” Wilkes/Evan laughed. “Let’s see how fast this baby will go!”
Wilkes/Evan gunned the engine, and the car shot through the parking lot and onto the pier. The tires rumbled over the splintered wood.
Boen fired two more rounds into Wilkes, but it was no use. Even at point-blank range, Minors were immune to handgun fire. Boen shot at the windows instead; they spider-webbed, but didn’t break. A round ricocheted into Earl’s abdomen.
The car lunged off the pier at seventy miles per hour. The nose hit first and it tumbled upside down. Freezing water poured in. Earl pulled on the doors, grunting with effort, veins bulging from his neck.
Wilkes turned around. He was holding a handgun.
“I salute your service, Earl. That’s why I’ll make this quick.”
Two pops of orange light came from the car, scattering a school of salmon who had become its procession. The car sank to the depths, first clearly outlined, then a grey shape, and then it became one with the black, never to be seen again.
And the last thought that went through Earl’s head was that he knew something Cynthia did not:
Evan already had an army. And they were all him.
Chapter 5
Ever since his first meeting with Evan Lindo, President Austin had woken up each morning with a hangover. He didn’t drink.
“I voted for you, Mr. President,” Evan had said as they shook hands six years before. They stood outside the Derik Building.
“So you’re the one,” the President joked. No one voted anymore.
“Come, I’ll show you around, get you up to speed. I appreciate you making the trip to Chicago. In this digital age, there are still some things you have to see in person.”
Mike Glass walked ahead of them and opened the doors. President Austin realized that his eyes were lenses that never blinked. They rolled and tumbled with green silt.
“Mike Glass is my bodyguard, has been since . . . jeez. How long has it been, Mike?” Evan asked.
“Five years,” Mike replied. His voice sounded as if it it were being projected from a tin can. President Austin wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure that his mouth moved. The bionic held the door open for them and they walked into the Derik Building.
Evan explained to Austin, “WarDon appointed him to me.”
“That’s how you got your start,” President Austin said.
“Yep.”
The Derik Building bustled with activity. Nurses and doctors, researchers and scientists, soldiers in camouflage guarding the entrances.
They walked through the checkpoint. Even Evan showed his ID.
Nurse stations lined the main hall, and surgery and research wings shot off to each side. Elevators rose to floors marked “Culling,” “Assembly,” “Diagnostics.” Evan followed signs that said simply, “Core.” He talked while they walked.
“The Tank Majors were exciting—they were the first—but the technology to build them really wasn’t anything special. Metal, gears, chains, engines. A good mechanic had a shot, really. Still, incredibly useful. But now, with the Minors and the technology that we’ve developed to build them, it’s true science.”
“Glass is one, correct?” President Austin asked.
“Yes, the most powerful one. He’s become somewhat of a guinea pig. He’s L3, which is three times stronger than a man. Strength is easier than speed though—and he’s twice as quick. Here.”
Evan stopped at a lab marked “E.T. Processing and Minor Assembly.” Inside, it was massive: as clean as an intensive care unit, as automated as the most efficient assembly plant. At the front, the President watched a technician controlling what could only be described as a computerized loom, weaving together an oily sheath of off-white tissue.
“Their muscle is electrostatic tissue. Currently, every six months we’re advancing its strength and speed. We’re also improving its efficiency.”
They walked the length of the assembly line, following the progression from materials to soldier. At the end of the line, fully built, headless bionic bodies hung like coats.
“How many Tank Minors are there now?” the President asked.
“Two hundred. We’re hoping in the next five years to have twenty thousand.” Evan led them out of the lab back to the path that had led them to the Core. “The advantages are huge. They’re far more discreet than the Tank Major, and the bionic program allows us to recycle soldiers injured in battle.”
The door to the Core was a vault. Evan put his eyes to a scanner, then his hand, and then his ID. He spoke his name and the door exhaled and opened. Glass stopped moving.
“Just the President and I, please,” Evan requested.
The President’s guards looked to hi
m for instructions.
“It was the same with the EU Prime Minister and President Qian. This is a place of secrets, Mr. President. That’s why it was important to have you come,” Evan said.
“It’s fine,” President Austin said to his guards. He went in with Evan alone and the door closed behind them. “Prime Minister Grant was here?”
“Four years ago. Ward invited him. Same with Qian. It’s important that the Coalition leaders are all on the same page, don’t you think?”
A field of servers greeted them. Past this metallic crop sat a square monolith the size of a house.
“That’s my private lab,” Evan explained as they wove their way through the humming crops.
“What are all these servers for?” Austin asked.
“Oh, many things. Some are chewing on data to build better prosthetics, others are connected to cyberspace, searching for flagged keywords, phrases, that kind of thing.”
The doors of the monolith opened as they approached. They entered a hallway that wove around the perimeter of a very large room.
“I hope you don’t mind—I added security protocol to your family’s Mindlink,” Evan said. “It’s standard procedure.”
“No, not at all. I’ve heard what Sleepers can do.”
“It’s a dangerous world. More than people realize,” Evan said.
“In your eyes, what’s the biggest danger?”
“Our sovereignty.”
“Not the Terror War?”
“The Terror War is a nuisance, but we’re winning, and with the Minor, it’s only a matter of time now. MindCorp is our greatest enemy.”
“MindCorp? From what I understand, they’ve been our greatest ally.”
They entered a simple office with one Sleeper chair. A desk was nearby and a couch was against the wall. There was a small kitchenette and fridge. Evan gestured for the President to sit on the couch. “Water?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Evan poured himself a glass. “Cynthia and MindCorp are an ally of opportunity, Mr. President. I was there at the beginning. It’s hard to believe, but back then we thought of them as a monopoly.” Evan shook his head. “But because they were helping us with China, and with the Terror War, we ignored the obvious—that their total marketplace dominance should have been addressed a decade ago.”
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