Rune Source: A Virtual Universe novel (Rune Universe Book 3)

by Hugo Huesca

  In truth…

  “The other Cole gets the cool part,” I explained. “I only get to hear a very confused asshole try to stumble his way around a description, while I wish I had paid more attention to classes at school.”

  Alien geometries, bro!

  Words not meant for our mouths to say!

  Their lakes are green and bubbly, and more jelly than water, I guess. They say the deadly fumes are the souls of their ancestors leaving for heaven or something. I tried not to laugh at them, but I may have implied they were breathing their ancestor’s souls too much. Yes, I know I shouldn’t have, but my brain thinks differently while I’m there…

  I shuddered. “Do me a solid, Misha, if you see Irene or my sister around, tell them I’m at the labs.”

  “Of course,” he called as I left. “And be sure to tell me all about today! I’ll be a scientist someday, I’ll help you out.”

  Foreman was waiting for me by the lab’s entrance. Caputi’s favorite hound was almost indistinguishable from the rest of them all, buzz-cut, turbo-steroid musculature, black suit and tie, sunglasses, gun at holster, and a well-repressed desire to take it out and unload against anyone who dared look at him funny.

  The man was a mixed bag. Our first encounter, he’d put a gun to my head and kidnapped me. Another time, he’d led the squad that had saved my mother from Sleipnir’s hands.

  “Dorsett,” he said. “You’re late.”

  I glanced at my phone. Two minutes on the hour. “Uh, sure.”

  “Everyone’s waiting for you.”

  “Even your boss and Cole?”

  I couldn’t see if he’d rolled his eyes under his sunglasses, but I imagined he did. “Not those two. My boss is busy making sure your virtual version does not get shut down anytime soon.”

  You mean, she’s making sure her own interests aren’t muddled anytime soon. I’d never make the mistake of thinking that the PDF’s leader was my ally out of the goodness of her heart. But as long as her interests involved keeping us safe, well, I was happy to be her pretend-friend.

  “I bet she is.”

  Foreman and I walked into the R&D lab. The first ten minutes were spent just getting through security, and this was the express, no-bullshit line.

  At this point in my life, I was used to draconian security scans, but the PDF—let’s be honest—was at least smart about it. Of course, all procedures were classified to hell and back.

  I left the last hurdle feeling—as I always did—like someone had stared into my soul while it was taking a bath. The PDF was now sure I wasn’t a clone, or a spy in a disguise, or under duress, or a spy under duress. There had only been one or two machines in the entire process, so it couldn’t be hacked.

  It was Caputi’s way of showing off.

  The lab itself was a show-off, too. Since my arrival at the base, it had become the center of the life of very important people all over the world, some of whom now lived at the base, same as me and everyone else.

  The corridors were long and well-lit, with the smell of disinfectant pouring out of every inch of steel and plastic. Everything was so clean it squeaked, and as Foreman and I delved deeper and deeper into the place, the experiments and the helping drones acquired a Rune-like quality. Whoever worked here, they took the “life imitates art” rule to heart.

  The message was clear: We’re constructing the future of our dreams.

  We reached the vault where the Device was held.

  “Foreman, Dorsett,” the leader of a security squad greeted us as we approached. We flashed him our clearance badges and a tiny camera by the wall made sure they weren’t fake. “Yes, they check out. Good luck back there, gentlemen.”

  Foreman nodded politely and we were in.

  The Device station was amphitheater-like, similar to those used in medical drama sets for a special operation that was witnessed by all the hospital’s medics. In this case, instead of medics, we had a bit of everything. Sociologists, mathematicians, biologists, astronomers, physicians… You get the picture. Everyone high enough in the hierarchy of the base got to witness the Translating process a few feet away from the mindjack; everyone else sat in comfortable chairs on the edges of the circular hall.

  The Device itself was in the middle of the room, big and ugly and with too many tubes. Hologram projectors were installed in the floor and ceiling to make sure everyone got a nice, clear view of the Translation.

  I took a deep breath and tried to pretend the number of powerful people surrounding me didn’t have an effect on me. At least thirty men and women, almost all of them showing the signs of advanced anti-aging operations. As I walked into the room, the excited chat that had echoed in the hall was replaced by an icy silence and a wall of eyes fixated on me.

  “’Sup,” I said weakly.

  Conversation resumed, albeit more controlled. Foreman remained by my side all the time, but didn’t say a word. He technically wasn’t the highest-ranked person in the room, not by a long shot. But he was the acting representative of Caputi, so the people who rushed to me nodded to him as they got closer.

  “Dorsett. Pleasure to meet you. Doctor Niels Sommer, from Indiana University’s Behavioral Science Department. I’m excited about our date, truth be told. I think the Behavioral discipline can shed some real light in extra-terrestrial decision making that my other colleagues have failed to ascertain.”

  I smiled politely and shook his hand, but he was barely paying attention to me. A woman in a beige business suit and Sommer were staring daggers at each other.

  “Doctor Dai Li, from Tsinghua University Chemistry Department. We’ll have the timeslot after our IU colleague has finished his… experiments.”

  She said the last word like someone says playtime, which didn’t go unnoticed by Sommer. I sighed to myself and made a mighty effort of will to keep my friendly smile.

  Everyone had gotten along during the fists Translations. That was when the politicians and the Defense people were earning their keep.

  We come in peace! We mean well, Alien friends!

  If it’s not too much to ask, mind telling us how big your military is? Say, if a giant lizard was attacking an important port city, what would be your preferred response?

  Then the politics and grand posturing had given way to research and hard science. That had been exciting. Were we about to discover Faster-than-Light travel? True AI? An economical singularity?

  It had been rough. Very rough. To get an idea how hard it is to exchange scientific notes with a different alien civilization, get two drunk folks together and have them explain gravity to each other. Make sure they speak different languages, and that one of them thinks he’s talking about food. To give it an adequate sense of danger, give them loaded guns and slap them in the face.

  Then take notes.

  So, let’s work our way up from basic geometry. This is a circle. Here’s how you calculate its perimeter… Oh, they don’t count in base 10?

  By the way, are you guys based out of Boron instead of Carbon? What’s Boron? Well, it’s an uncommon molecule here in our atmosphere…

  Oh, so you don’t recognize what the “atom” word means. Okay, let’s try to define it…

  That had taken the other Cole a day to get through. They had their own periodic table (thank God) and no, they weren’t made out of Boron.

  When asked what were they made of, they answered with poetry. Which was either totally untranslatable, or the other Cole (and by extension, myself) lacked any talent there. He had simply shrugged miserably, and said, “It wasn’t that good when I heard it, anyway.”

  Research on our Alien friends was slow and they weren’t exactly cooperative. Like us, the other Cole explained over and over again, they were confused and scared and very afraid the big, bad people from the void—this meant us, we double checked—were about to slurp their souls over some cultural misunderstanding.

  Slow research meant there wasn’t enough time in the day for every university member to run all the ex
periments they wanted to try. The other Cole and I were trying our best to avoid hindering them, but it was still painful and moved as fast as a race between boulders.

  So, researchers were fighting tooth and nail for the time slots. Sometimes literally. Doctor Li had long fingernails and was in better physical shape than Doctor Sommer, so I took a step back from her without losing my smile.

  “There’s nothing wrong with confirming if an alien civilization makes choices based on a standard utility-function,” whispered Doctor Sommer with the ashen face of someone who’s ready to duel at dawn.

  “Of course not,” said Li. “Except when it steps in the time zone of real, important research, with real-world consequences for the industry.”

  “My esteemed colleague, Boron lifeforms are not a world-changing discovery.”

  She sneered at him. “That wasn’t our suggestion, and it hardly counts. I don’t know who let the Global Open University get a hold of a time slot…”

  I mentally tuned out, but kept a careful eye on those fingernails. New eyes were an expensive medical procedure, even in 2043. They had to grow them in vats.

  At least the other Cole gets to actually talk to them… I thought. It was strange, feeling nostalgic about a world that I’d never known and probably never would.

  My refrained attitude was short-lived, though. A small, frail-looking man with white hair and glistening eyes approached while the other doctors berated each other without actually coming to blows.

  “Cole Dorsett. Pleased to meet you.” His hand felt sticky and cold.

  Have you never paid for an anti-aging? He certainly seemed old.

  “Likewise,” I said and waited patiently for the obligatory introduction.

  “I’m Doctor William,” he said. “From Freya Investigation Conglomerate. I’ll hold the last of today’s timeslots with you.”

  I raised an eyebrow at “Freya.” Never heard of them, but c’mon. Dervaux loved her Vikings. She didn’t even bother hiding the names.

  “I assure you, we splintered away from Sleipnir a long time ago,” he said, reading my train of thought. “We’re dedicated to theoretical Computer Science research, in fact, and have more in common with the late Nordic than with those nasty rogues. We’ve worked for the States for a long time, manufacturing drones brains. Hell, we even helped build this Device. As you may assume, Freya and Jottun aren’t on speaking terms.”

  Nordic wasn’t exactly a saint, either, I thought. But they had made some great videogames.

  “I see,” I told him. If Caputi trusted them…Well, I didn’t trust them, but I would hear the man out. “I hope that’s the case. What’re we going to be working with, doc?”

  “Please, call me Wily. Makes me feel younger. I was hoping we could so some side research, let our extra-terrestrial friends get a breather. God knows they deserve it.”

  This got my attention. For all I knew, the time slots at the PDF laboratory were worth a lot of money and influence. Streaming was banned here, but if it weren’t, the public interest would dwarf the viewership of the Emergency Council by several zeroes. And this man wanted to do something else?

  “What do you mean?”

  I held the urge to smack my forehead while he smiled. Computer Science. Let’s take a bet about what’s he interested in…

  “The First Contact isn’t the only ground-breaking discovery of our time, Cole—I can call you Cole, right? In fact, we believe the first instance ever recorded of a stable, digital human mind in existence has far-reaching, though short-term, implications that could change the face of the Earth as we know it.”

  I felt my jaw tighten as my smile became more and more forced. “Is that so?”

  In the background, to which I was barely paying attention now, Doctor Li and Doctor Sommer had abandoned all pretenses of civility and were screaming at each other.

  Wily ignored them. He put a hand on my shoulder, like a caring grandpa. “Not only for the obvious implications of life-extension and communication. Cole, the version of yourself inside the Signal is a tremendous opportunity for mankind. Just by studying the way his brain works, we’d advance science leaps and bounds. We’d be in at the frontier of a new stage of mankind’s evolution. A pure mind, powered by a processor with infinite power…Do you understand?”

  “I understand the implications of strange old men whispering about unlimited power and next stages of evolution,” I told him. I regretted the sting of my words—it’d be harder to give this man the slip if he knew I was straight-up antagonistic. But he’d pushed some button inside me.

  The way his eyes glinted when he mentioned off-handedly “just by studying how his brain works…”

  His smile didn’t falter, nor did the hand over my shoulder. “It’s only natural to be scared of progress. But, to be honest, I’m a bit surprised by your attitude. You, of all people, should understand that true progress is rarely accepted by the masses. It’s an acquired taste.”

  “I have nothing against progress,” I told him, mocking his greedy expression. “But if you’re not ready for it, it comes with a cost.”

  I didn’t feel like moralizing with Wily. I wasn’t built for debates. My gut told me not to trust the former branch of Odin, so I turned to leave.

  His hand closed around my shoulder, suddenly as strong as steel. “Please, reconsider. Freya’s aware of the personal nature of our request, and we’re not unreasonable. You may have formed an attachment to this instance of your scanned mind, so we don’t need to work on it. Another one—an exclusive version just for us—will do just as well. If you agree, we’ll reward you. You won’t be needing for money ever again.”

  My blood turned to ice. I had been offered riches before, that particular Devil’s deal didn’t hold much sway over me lately.

  He talked about the other Cole as an it.

  “You want a copy for your experiments?” I asked him, and Wily mistook my look of disgust for an invitation to elaborate.

  “The Device still works, and nothing in the instructions seems to indicate it was a one-time use only. In fact, it’s proving to be quite modular. I assure you, your monopoly on…digital existence won’t last more than a year or two. Freya would like for you to help us speed the process up.”

  At this point, my smile vanished from my face. “And what’d happen to the copy of myself you’d be making?”

  Wily squinted, this time realizing the hostility oozing from my expression. “Why, I don’t understand the problem. Experiments on code? Even a code as complex as… I mean, at most, we can refer to our intentions as a thorough debugging. If you think of your image as an extension of yourself—”

  “No. Answer’s no, doc.” I shook his hand off my shoulder with enough force to make him stumble and draw the attention of a couple other scientists (and Foreman) away from the fight between Sommer and Li.

  “I don’t understand,” Wily said. “This costs you nothing. I was told you weren’t entirely unreasonable.”

  “I made a decision, before undergoing the procedure, that I’d stand by the other guy whatever happened. That if the real-world window appeared to me and not to him, I’d always remember it could have been the other way around. And you know what it means? As far as I’m concerned, he’s family. My sister calls him brother, my mother visits him. You’re not toying with his brain, not now, not ever. And you aren’t making any more copies of us. That’s a human being you’re talking about, and I’m sure as hell not going to allow you to dehumanize him.”

  “What?”

  “You said so yourself. There’ll be more to come,” I told him, my voice low enough for it to be a whisper or a growl. I’d thought about Wily’s proposal, or something close to it, long and hard before. Torturing a mind trapped inside a toaster is very easy when you own the toaster. If corporations began putting “copies” inside their toasters for study…they’d never think of “copies” as human beings.

  They’d do to them as they wished.

  “I can’t allow
watching you create people to use as guinea pigs.”

  This, too, was my responsibility.

  Wily wasn’t ready to let it go, however. “Isn’t your relationship with the Rune’s copy strained as it is—?”

  “Family works like that.”

  Foreman, who had been distracted by Sommer and Li having come to a full-blown catfight that landed both of them—and a lot of other researchers—sprawled on the floor, finally managed to separate them and come to my aid. “Everything OK, Dorsett?”

  “Doctor Wily here was just leaving. I think he has to rethink his slot if he doesn’t want it to go to waste. Perhaps you can study Boron with us, doc?”

  Wily shook his head. His face was red and there were pearls of sweat trailing down his forehead. He looked like a man talking to a kid and reaching the edge of patience.

  “So, you think they’re a person? That’s ridiculous… But Freya understands we have to make concessions. We’re not the bad guys, Dorsett. Look, to avoid personification, we surely can program the Device to erase some—or all—of the lines of code that are his personality. In this way, we won’t be working on a human being like you think. Only on lines of code.”

  Foreman paled and looked at me. “Shit. Is he saying what I think he’s saying?”

  So, tonight I’ll have a chat with Roscoe, I thought. The man was more or less AWOL, focused on his cyber-anarchy hobby, but he’d get behind me on this one. I’ll team-up with him and break into Freya’s database. Leak every single piece of fucked-up shit they’re planning to do to all newstreams in the web.

  He was speaking of something worse than a lobotomy. He was talking about holding minds in virtual hell…There was an old story in Kipp’s science fiction stash called “I have no mouth and I must scream.” That storyline was just a degree of separation away from the future this scientist was painting in front of me.

  “The world is not ready for your kind of research, Doc.” I told him with my voice so tense it was barely audible.