Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone

by Philip Bosshardt

CHAPTER 26

  Solnet/WorldNet Headquarters

  New York City

  February 7, 2111 (U.T.)

  2200 hours

  Riley Baynes was 3rd shift Managing Editor at Solnet and he’d never seen anything like this. Baynes studied the notes that Anna Kolchinova had squirted him off the comsat from Paris and just shook his head. Chief News Editor Gillian Leroux did the same.

  “Your source, Anna…how credible is he…or she?”

  Kolchinova shrugged, her blond tresses ruffling as she massaged her keyboard at the Paris office.

  “You can see for yourself, Riles. It’s a he and he’s on the UNIFORCE General Staff, assistant planner in their Q3 shop. That’s Operations, by the way. I rate him as pretty trustworthy. I am trying to corroborate with other sources, of course. But that takes time. I figured you needed to see this.”

  Baynes hmmm’ed. He scrolled down some more. “Unbelievable…this is science fiction, if you ask me. I mean look at this, Gil: ‘massive injections of ANAD swarms along the plate boundaries…ANAD optimized for solid-phase disassembly ops…anticipated refugee and evacuation efforts to be handled by UN…mobility barrier over the whole shebang…’ Sounds like something straight out of Jules Verne. Can they even do this?”

  Kolchinova said, “My source thinks they can. Not only that…planning is already underway. I can confirm UNDERO…that’s the refugee and resettlement people at the UN…have already been contacted. They’re in Geneva. I’ve got a source there who’s passed me a copy of the email.”

  “Friggin nuts…that’s what this is,” Leroux muttered. “We need to get some academics in on this…geologists, engineers. Christ, this is geo-engineering on an unprecedented scale. Think of it: separating a whole side of Africa and shrink-wrapping it with some kind of barrier. The cost alone must be stupendous. And the chance for screw-ups…” She let that thought hang in the air.

  “Anna—“ Baynes had made up his mind. “Stay on this. Press your sources, especially the one at UNIFORCE. Something this big…I got to have specifics. Dates, times, specific plans and people. I need more evidence before we can run with this. Sweet-talk him, if you have to…but get specifics.”

  “Will do,” Kolchinova said. She signed off and sat back in her chair. I can do better than sweet talk, Riley. Solnet’s Paris office was little more than a glorified closet and Kolchinova felt cramped, even trapped like a rat in a cubicle maze. Got to go for a walk. Paris was a walking town and she did some of her best thinking when her legs were moving.

  As she left the building, she pulled out her phone and pinged GHOSTCHASER. That’s was the name she had given to the UNIFORCE staffer. She didn’t know his full name, of course, but she found it expedient to build an aura of objectivity around him by labeling him with something nondescript. Thus…GHOSTCHASER.

  Can we meet in an hour? LeDuc’s on Rue du Montaigne…you know the place.

  She got a response back in moments. Make it two hours…all OTR.

  OTR was press-speak for off the record. Anna punched off her wristphone and adjusted her dataspecs. In the corner of her view, the glasses laid down directions to the café. Walk two blocks…turn right at Rue Ratouf…then go two more blocks….

  She headed out.

  The gothic spires of the Sorbonne were in view when she settled down in an outside seat and table at LeDuc’s and ordered a glass of Merlow. Her source was nowhere in sight, but it was early…more than half an hour to go. GHOSTCHASER had always been punctual to a fault. Military were like that. UNIFORCE did everything on a schedule, probably even pee’ed and pooped that way, she sniffed.

  Soon enough, the O-3 showed up and took a seat.

  You could best describe GHOSTCHASER as lean, lean in every dimension you could measure. Lean face, lean body, even lean eyes. Anna had the impression he might even be two-dimensional…turn one way and he’d disappear. Maybe GHOSTCHASER was a good nom-de-guerre, after all.

  “I can only stay half an hour,” he reminded her. He waved a waiter over, made a drink order, then proceeded to pinch off pieces of baguette and chew thoughtfully.

  Anna leaned forward on her elbows. “My editors tell me we need more details, more specifics, before we can run this story.”

  “You know I can’t get into operational stuff. Just background. Not for attribution. Call me a ‘highly placed UNIFORCE source’, if you want. But no names.”

  “I don’t know your name.”

  GHOSTCHASER shrugged. “I’m just a messenger. Names aren’t important.”

  “They are for credibility. For starters, why are you doing this? Why go outside the chain of command, mouth off to the press like this? If I know anything about UNIFORCE, I know they have established processes…for everything.”

  GHOSTCHASER munched for a moment, sipped some wine. A steady stream of pedestrians and tourists surged up and down the Rue du Montaigne, only a few meters from their table. Horns honked. Jetcabs and buses jockeyed for position.

  “Sometimes our processes aren’t enough. I don’t know…I think maybe we should let the Assimilationists alone…let them do what they want. Hell, maybe they are the future.”

  “You mean…assisted mass suicide is okay…that’s the wave of the future?”

  “No, of course not. Now you’re putting words in my mouth. Look, nobody can stop technology. Nobody can stop evolution. I’m saying maybe what the Assimilationists are doing is just the next step. The next leap. Maybe we are supposed to be part of something greater. Maybe we are descended from bots, like that German scientist said. Call it whatever you want: the cosmos, the Mother Swarm, universal peace and love, whatever. UNIFORCE is pretty single-minded about this. They do what they’re told, like the soldiers they are. The Powers That Be have decided Assimilationists are a threat to Humanity. Me… I’m not so sure.”

  “You implied, the last time we met, that Project Quarantine has an objective of rounding up as many angels and Assimilationists as possible and confining them…on this new island continent they trying to create.”

  GHOSTCHASER nodded. “That’s true. Inside the Quartier-General, they’re called ‘angels and asses.’ It’s pretty much a violation of just about every nation’s laws on personal liberty and expression…even the Human Rights Declaration.”

  Anna studied her source carefully. “Some people say angels and Assimilationists aren’t human…that they don’t have rights.”

  “Bullshit. If I put on glasses dark enough, I can’t see you. Then I can say you don’t exist. There are factions in the UN and inside UNIFORCE that are pressing for exactly what I’m describing…concentration camps for angels. I know we already have Sanctuaries for swarms…why not just stick angels and Assimilationists in there too? A ready-made camp. In fact, that’s been suggested. But this idea of using our own swarms in a vast geo-engineering effort to detach part of Africa and make it a new continent…Christ, they want to cover it with a MOBnet. They want to make it a prison and put it out of sight, out of mind. Sanctuaries are like bedsores…you always know they’re there. Making a new continent is like building a new wing on the house. You can lock the door and pretend Granny’s just sleeping in there.”

  Anna held up her notetab. “I still need specifics. What about the timeline for this project?”

  “Like I said…operational stuff…. but I can tell you this much: it’s already underway. Schedules are being laid out, personnel assigned, contracts let…all classified very high…way above my pay grade.”

  Anna pecked some notes into her wristpad. “Tell me one thing: can we really do this? Or is this just some propeller-head’s idea of a tech paper come to life.”

  GHOSTCHASER swirled wine around in his glass, ran his fingers around the rim and tasted it experimentally. “Good question. I’m not involved in day to day planning. But I’ve seen some of the contract stuff…not up close…but enough to know some serious budget and manpower
is being devoted to this. UNIFORCE departments guard their budgets like the crown jewels. Nobody would give up a penny if this weren’t real…and it comes from the top. The whole place is like an anthill someone kicked over. It’s buzzing and stirring day and night.” GHOSTCHASER leveled an even gaze at her. “UNIFORCE means to do this…or at least give it the old college try. They’re deadly serious about Symborg, Config Zero, Assimilationists, angels, the whole lot of them.”

  “Okay, fair enough.” Anna stopped working her wristpad and looked back at her source. “Sixty-four million Euro question: should this project be stopped? Can it be stopped? Some of my viewers will say we should have kicked Assimilationist butt years ago. Others say that Nirvana, or whatever the hell they all look forward to… can’t come soon enough.”

  It was obvious that GHOSTCHASER had given this some thought. “The whole idea of quarantining angels and Assimilationists, under the guise of dealing with Symborg and Config Zero, needs to be debated…debated publically. There should be some kind of vote…some kind of information put out on the pros and cons. For UNIFORCE…or anybody…to unilaterally declare war on something a lot of decent people believe in…and understand, I think they’re misguided too…but that’s beside the point…for UNIFORCE to conduct open warfare against angels is wrong, and dangerous. CONFIG Zero’s an enemy. I get that. Symborg’s just a minor celebrity in the scheme of things. But angels and Assimilationists…they’re your neighbors and mine. Aside from the technical aspects of partitioning east Africa off into a new island…even the idea of quarantining your neighbors and mine…I mean, do I really have to spell it out? Where does it stop? What if UNIFORCE decides that blond female Solnet reporters are a grave threat to world security…where does that stop?” With that, GHOSTCHASER pulled out a few bills and tossed them on the café table. “I’ve said too much already. I have to get back…my shift doesn’t end for another four hours.” He got up and turned out into the crowd jostling along the Rue du Montaigne.

  “I need more specifics, if you want Solnet to run this—“

  But he was gone in an instant, slipping easily into the crowd flowing down the street.

  Now what? she wondered. She scanned the sparse notes she had taken on her wristpad. She’s even snapped a few surreptitious photos of the guy with the small camera in the pad. Not that it would matter much, without details.

  Anna Kolchinova paid the table bill and launched herself into the crowd.

  Philosophy and opinion was all well and good…as background. Context. I need facts and figures. Names and dates. Specs and hard data.

  Quantum Corps wasn’t the only organization that could put bots into places they didn’t belong.