Chapter 18
Raymond closed his eyes and signaled to Scorpio, to check in with him. Scorpio confirmed he was close.
"On my command," signaled Raymond, "move me into Venetia's avatar, connect the Raymond mimic to this avatar, and teleport to be near me."
Raymond felt his head nod—Scorpio's "affirmative".
Switching avatars is an old trick. They might be watching for it, whoever they are. They probably don't think I can, and it's the best hope I have.
He gave Scorpio the signal to switch—crossed fingers—realizing the double meaning only as he did so.
Raymond felt the change occur—he felt himself move into a woman's body. He stood in darkness, cool air swirling around his ankles. He patted his waist, felt terrycloth, and realized he was standing in the tunnel, where he had instructed Venetia to hide from the meteorites. Gradually, his eyes adjusted. He was standing on a rock ledge at the water's edge. In the water were the faint wavering lights of glowing cave fish. From the gentle shimmer he could tell the water was calm.
"Scorpio?" called out Raymond. "You can switch to human form. Scorpio?"
"I'm here."
Raymond was startled by how close the voice was. He reached out and felt Scorpio's leather jacket.
"Okay, tell me everything," said Raymond.
"What do you want to know?"
"First things first. Is Anya dead?"
"Not that I know of."
"Seriously?" asked Raymond.
"Seriously."
"Then what's the crypt all about?"
"You built it to convince yourself she was gone from your life forever."
"Then she might be alive!" exclaimed Raymond. "I mean, she's probably with this other guy, but she might at least be out there."
"I've watched your hopes rise and fall many times," said Scorpio. "Be careful. That said, you should probably know that things didn't work out with Tom."
"Tom?"
"That's the other guy, the one she dated briefly, and slept with."
"How do you know it didn't work out?"
"Because she told you."
"Okay, good. Right. Now, you said it might be possible to gain network access. What was that about?"
"When you knew the FBI agents were on their way to the bunker, you had a mote array sprayed onto the inside of this computer."
"Whoa—the FBI found the bunker?"
Scorpio nodded.
"Was I... arrested? What did they do with me?"
"I don't know," said Scorpio. "You said you were going to shut down your NBC."
"Shut down my NBC? You mean commit suicide?"
"No, you figured out a way to stop your brain activity and have it restored later."
"Did I tell anyone how to restore it?"
"You did," replied Scorpio. "You told Anya."
"Wow, I really broke the no-communication rule, didn't I? No wonder I was found out by the FBI. When did I start communicating with Anya?"
"You said you had to talk to her. You said Nurania could never work."
"I said that?"
"Yes. When you started speaking to me again, you—"
"I stopped speaking to you?"
"Yep. You told me you didn't want me to see what you had become, and that I should go away. But two weeks later you called me back, and you told me you needed to talk to someone who knew you when you felt real. You said that Faralonia felt fake, that Iniquita felt fake, that Nurania felt fake—that it would all feel fake, always, so long as you knew that the only society you really valued was one level down."
"One level down?" asked Raymond.
"Reality prime," said Scorpio. "You called it one level down. 'The foundation.'"
"So, I got bored and started talking to Anya?"
"First you started watching. Then you saw her with Tom. That's when you went back for Salya, and things started to get really bad."
Raymond leaned back and let his head rest against the rock wall. It felt as though he had just left the prime world a little over a day ago, but so much had happened.
"How long did it take before she started screwing this Tom?"
"About three months."
"About three months," repeated Raymond. He weighed in his mind whether this was a reasonable amount of time for her to have waited. "Okay. I mean, it's not like we were married."
"And she did think you were dead," pointed out Scorpio.
"Right. And things didn't work out with him, anyway. Okay. So, how did the FBI find the bunker? Did Anya squeal when I contacted her?"
"The FBI insider who erased your data from satellite surveillance history was found out, and your IID turned up in records of his computer activity. The link to Svensson was made. Agent Michaels was back on the case. You detected new FBI monitoring on Anya's network connection and figured out what had happened. Michaels uncovered Svensson's Minnesota property ownership and was then able to piece together enough intact surveillance data to obtain a warrant. That's when you actually contacted Anya, to tell her you were still alive, how Nurania was a failure, and how much you loved her."
"So, Michaels found the bunker on his own. How did I know to shut down? How did I know he was coming?"
"Bob contacted you. He told you he had been authorized by the FBI to take you into custody, and that if you cooperated he would see to it that you were taken care of."
"Bob? That doesn't seem very by-the-book."
"The day of the FBI raid," continued Scorpio, "you told Anya to restore you after shutdown, and you moved my process to the Nurania machine and shut it down. That was in May of 2070. The next time I was launched, it was February of 2071."
"And now?"
"June of 2071."
"Who turned me back on? Bob and Anya? No, that doesn't make sense. If someone simply restored my mental state, I would remember everything you're talking about. Whoever brought me to life this time clearly used the original copy of my mental data." Raymond mused on this for a moment. "The FBI would have seized every piece of hardware in the bunker. Maybe they turned it over to Bob, maybe they didn't. My guess is they would never actually do that. They might promise to give it to him, but they wouldn't actually do it—it would look bad. Someone has an instance of Nurania running on my hardware. And somewhere in the mix, there has to be an NBC, to be my brain. It's gotta be the FBI. But why would they bring me to life and then watch me? They wouldn't play around like this. They would be direct. I just don't get it."
Raymond chewed on the inside of his lip. He wanted to pace, but he couldn't—he was afraid he would fall in the water.
"So," said Raymond. "About this possible network connection. You said I had a mote array sprayed on the inside of this computer. If it's active, the FBI would have found it and wiped it."
"The array is set to wake on a signal, then go into listening mode without broadcasting anything that could be detected more than an inch or two away. There's some chance they never found it."
"Or they could have found it and ignored it, never suspecting that someone would bring me back to life. When I first asked about the possibility of a network connection, you started to lead me somewhere in Iniquita. Where were you taking me?"
"To the v-chamber in the Glory Hole. You can only access the network connection from a v-chamber."
"The Glory Hole?" asked Raymond.
"It's a sex club in Iniquita."
"Great. Is that the only v-chamber?"
"There was one in Faralonia, in the dome at the bottom of the pool, but it was destroyed along with the rest of Faralonia."
"No others?"
"There's also one in the work cabin, but there's no entrance."
"Is Iniquita as dangerous as it sounds?"
"It's dangerous," said Scorpio, "but I can get you where you need to go."
"Yeah, and rack up a body count on the way," said Raymond. "If there is someone watching us, they'll notice that for sure. And then they'll realize I switched EIDs. There has to be a way to get into the
work cabin."
Raymond ran his hand through his hair, and was surprised to find Venetia's long silky hair.
"There's got to be a way. My god copy's superhero avatar was in there—how did he get in?"
"He had god power," replied Scorpio.
"Wait! His avatar is still in there! Can you move me into that avatar?"
"I expect so," said Scorpio.
"Boom! Done! Move me into that avatar, restore Venetia's persona into this one, and teleport to meet me at the work cabin."
"That should work."
"Wait—how much time do I have? You don't know when the comet's supposed to hit, do you?"
"You programmed it to impact in six days. You said God created the world in six days, so you would let the destruction last six days."
"And I've been here for about two, so with any luck I have four days left. And there's also the issue of my sleeping avatar, back in the Village. I need to reoccupy that avatar before Eddie or someone else comes visiting. And it would be nice if I could actually get some sleep. Wait, do I need sleep?"
"The original Raymond only needed a few hours each night. But you said it depends on the body simulation, and I don't know anything about your current body sim."
"Well I'm sure I can go one night without sleep. So here's the plan. Teleport back and forth between the work cabin and the Village. If you see someone approaching my tree house in the Village, or if it's time for me to wake up, come pull me out of the v-chamber in the work cabin and switch me back to my real avatar."
"Got it."
"Alright. Now let's see if you can switch me to my god copy's avatar."
o-------------------------------o
Raymond found himself in a reclining position, in the chair of his work cabin. The muted moonlight coming in through the windows gave the room an unfamiliar eeriness. He looked down, his muscle-bound naked body barely visible, the moonlight being mostly obscured by the ash cloud. He flexed his pectorals and biceps, chuckling at the unfamiliar brawn. It felt downright ridiculous. Had his god copy just been screwing around, or did he really want to look like this?
"Computer," said Raymond. His voice came out extra husky. "Transition to v-chamber."
The scene around him transformed. His workstation appeared before him, and the computer instantly dressed him in exercise clothes. It felt backwards to enter his workstation from the mountaintop gateway; it had always been the other way around. He dropped his hands down and found his manuhaptic gloves, the familiarity an immense relief.
The computer asked him several challenge questions. Luckily, they were all old questions, and he was able to breeze through them. He then started poking around. Many of his workstation's features were missing, and he found it disorienting.
Of course. I'm not attached to my network. This is just a limited view, based on what's running on the Nurania machine.
Gradually adjusting to make the most of what was available, he searched for a way to signal the mote array, to awaken it so he could find out what kind of network traffic was out there. He eventually found what he was looking for, and issued the necessary commands. The workstation's networking view lit up, and Raymond smiled. His eyes moved rapidly from one display to the next, interpreting everything he saw. He discovered a great deal of activity, all encrypted. He chose to focus on a frequency typically used by the low-power transmissions of service equipment, and settled into the work of cracking the transmissions. Unfortunately, none of the tools he was used to were available. They had never been installed on this machine, and he had no connection by which to download new copies. His own development environment wasn't available either, so not even the tools he had written were at hand. He let out a big sigh.
"This is going to take awhile."
After several hours, using a combination of basic tools and some snippets of code he was able to reconstruct from memory, he finally got the break he needed: he identified the communications signature of Reikover cleaner bots.
"Well, there's a convenient oversight."
He had been hacking Reikover cleaner bots for years, and had discovered a backdoor documented nowhere on the Net, at least not that he could find. The bots had a service feedback mode that could be accessed via a skeleton-key password, a fairly standard practice among cleaning bot manufacturers. Naturally, Raymond knew this password. Being able to obtain service data was not much of a security hole, in and of itself. But the Reikover service mode had a bug where it gave the user the ability to delete the administrator password file. The next time the administrator logged in, the software would notice that there was no password file and reset itself to the default. Raymond also knew that password, which could be used to gain complete control over the bot.
Raymond executed the hack and gained access to one of the cleaner bots, a model with a full set of sensory input devices. He configured the bot's navigational system to give him direct control as soon as he said the word "override" and set the bot to transmit its optical data to him, giving him a view of its surroundings.
What he saw was a wall. A white wall. It filled his field of view, network monitoring data superimposed in low-contrast text off to his right. Pretty much what he would expect from a cleaner bot, except that the quality of light suggested it was an exterior wall. And as the bot moved down, Raymond saw areas where the paint was chipped away—definitely not what he would expect of an ultra-clean government facility.
He triggered an audio feed from the bot, and immediately heard voices. Two women were talking to each other, in a foreign language. They were speaking in short sentences, in relaxed tones, with frequent conversational spaces. There were birds singing, the tinking of a spoon in a teacup, a dog barking in the distance. He strained to recognize some informative snippet of what the women were saying, a name or place.
"No way," muttered Raymond. "They're speaking Portuguese."
Rage surged within him. Anya was involved in this somehow—she had to be. How could she watch him experience such pain, such hell, and not interfere?
This Tom guy was probably some corrupt FBI agent, and he seduced her and talked her into illegally continuing research. She told me things didn't work out with him, but that could have been a lie, to gain my trust.
He caught himself assuming the worst of her and tried to swallow his emotions. He had to gather information without jumping to conclusions.
He was quickly growing tired of watching the wall. As soon as the bot reached the end of its current run, he issued the override command. He smoothly spun the bot around, surveying the area. The bot was between two buildings, in a fairly narrow alley, two floors off the ground. Out the end of the alley he saw a cascade of red tiled roofs. Bougainvillea in full bloom climbed the wall of the neighboring building.
Raymond turned the bot toward the wall again and went into a straight vertical climb. He cleared the wall and found himself looking at a sun-drenched deck. Two olive-skinned, black-haired, middle-aged women sat on one side of a wrought iron table, drinking from white china teacups. They were looking off to Raymond's right, unaware of or unconcerned by the cleaner bot. They wore clean white blouses of identical cut, probably part of a uniform. French doors stood open behind them. Raymond spun the bot ninety degrees to the left and followed the edge of the wall, then turned again, headed for the open door. Before going through, he turned to the right, to get a look at the view these two women were enjoying.
In the distance, beyond a long expanse of tile roofs, lay the ocean. Raymond called up a screen of navigational information and saw that he was looking west. Additional evidence, he thought, that he was in Portugal.
He guided the bot through the French doors, across a handsomely furnished sitting room, and down a hall. There were closed doors to either side. He paused to listen at one after another. At the third one, he heard the tock-tock of high heels on tile. He listened a bit longer, then headed toward the staircase at the end of the hall.
"Coffee-banana shake," came a woman's voice f
rom behind that door.
Raymond spun the bot around and returned to listen. Tock tock tock—the footsteps were coming toward him. The door, an old-fashioned hinged door, was pulled open from inside the room, and there stood Anya.
She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at him. She looked beautiful. Her hair was up in a bun, exposing her slender neck and pretty little ears. Her skin was tan. Raymond sighed. Seeing her, he couldn't believe she could have anything to do with his current situation. She had always been so good to him.
She raised her left wrist and spoke into her bracelet in Portuguese. Raymond caught something that sounded to him like "not functioning".
"Shit, shit. No!"
Anya ducked beneath the hovering bot and headed down the hall, toward the sitting room. Raymond suddenly remembered that this model of cleaner bot had text-to-speech capability, to ask people to move and such. He hurriedly hooked up a text input stream, half paying attention as he followed her down the hall. She was headed out toward the deck. He caught up with her just as she was about to go through the doors and got down close to her right ear, as if to whisper.
"Coffee banana," said the cleaner bot in a clear, polite male voice, not at all a whisper.
Raymond wasn't sure why these words had come to mind. Somehow, they seemed right, as if she would immediately understand the connection. Anya turned around and scowled at him—at the cleaner bot. The two women outside also turned around.
"Crap," said Raymond. He tried desperately to think of something that only Anya would associate with him, so as not to give himself away to the other women.
"Canal Street Home for Children of the State of Illinois," said the voice of the bot.
Anya's eyes opened wide, and she looked at the bot askance. One of the women outside asked a question, and Anya responded in Portuguese.
Raymond spelled out words with his manuhaptic gloves as quickly as he could.
"I am experiencing a malfunction. I need your help."
"Is that you?" asked Anya in a whisper.
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