The Beam: Season One

by Sean Platt

  Deep breaths. We’re in the home stretch.

  November 14, 2040

  Still going strong. It’s hard to maintain enthusiasm (well, not for Noah; he hasn’t slept in seven years, I swear), but the scope of Crossbrace is insane and even as the days drag on, I keep reminding myself that things are moving quickly if you look at the big picture. The board keeps bugging Noah for a schedule, but he says no one can make a schedule for changing the world. They press him, and he grudgingly commits that within two years, the new technology will be rolled out nationwide. That will change everything. It’ll touch everywhere in the NAU and be affordable for even the lowest classes (though not at a very sophisticated or immersive level).

  The Beatles said they were bigger than Jesus, and that became a problem for them. Crossbrace won’t be bigger than Jesus, but that’s just about all it won’t be bigger than. The printing press? The telephone? Cellular technology? The Internet? Tablet computers? The Internet’s evolution into 3D, VR, and immersion? This new emergent AI shit? Crossbrace will dwarf them all.

  Now, Noah West? He’d tell you that HE will be bigger than Jesus.

  February 24, 2041

  I’m 23. Noah is… wow, I don’t even know. In his forties? He has to be, but I swear he hasn’t aged since I met him. That’s crazy.

  But whatever, he has to be twenty years older than me and he’s firing on three or four hours of sleep a night. I’m falling asleep at my workbench. I’m making mistakes. Noah is making them too, but don’t tell him that. He needs to sleep but won’t. And I simply can’t understand how he’s doing it. It must be the fire in his gut.

  We’re essentially roommates. We both live at the office and lab. I’m his prisoner, in a way. Noah moved in, first with a blanket and a pillow, and before I realized it he was sleeping there every night. He was there when I showed up early and stayed after I left late. One day he gave me a guilt trip about leaving, laying the burden of both company and world on my shoulders, so I stayed. It was late, so I slept on the reception couch. The next day, a pillow and blanket arrived and I realized that I was living there too. Now we leave just once a week, and I can only leave when Noah does. He’s cranky. Angry. Getting sloppy. Still a genius, but overeager. He needs to slow down. We both do. I’d like to date, maybe one day start a family. Call me selfish. But right now, having a life takes a back seat to Crossbrace. The project is getting close. Noah says everything is there, and that we only have to “untangle the knot.” We try — me, him, the other team members and techs who have lives but still work eighty-hour weeks — but the knot is tight, with too many loose ends. Too many knots. Every time we untie one, another is there, often two. It’s taking forever, and I can’t help but feel like we’re chasing a ghost. Something is running away from us. Whenever we sleep, it gets farther ahead.

  Noah snaps all the time. Setbacks make him furious. When we talk, I’m always wrong. He says I’m trying to solve problems with the same thinking that caused them. He acts like I’m in his way. I FEEL like I’m in his way. Where is that desire they had for my “prodigious genius”? They recruited me like no other I’ve seen since. I literally have more money than I could ever spend. I called Noah on it, asked him why, if I fuck up all the time, he keeps me around. Let me go, I say. Let me have a life, if I’m such a liability. But he only says that mistakes are opportunities to learn. He says that mistakes, frustrating as they are, are gifts. Then, insultingly, he thanks me. He thanks me for all the gifts that I give him.

  September 18, 2042

  I should be elated, but I’m just too fucking tired. Now that we’ve popped the cork, I’m planning to sleep for weeks — to bunker myself in and refuse to come out. Then I plan to drink heavily. Make up for the college experiences that I hear, via mail but never in person, that my friends have had but that I have not.

  Today, Noah told the world about Crossbrace. He outlined what it was and how it would become like a universal sixth sense — how it would give every single person access to all of the world’s knowledge. “Imagine a world made just for you,” he kept saying, and I know it was something written for him by a genius in marketing. He’s describing things that our internet 5.0 (we left 2.0 and behind in the dust) will do as if they were extensions of sight and hearing. He says it will be like living in an environment that will do whatever you want, without having to be asked. It knows which hand has opened the fridge, and hence which items to rotate to the front. It knows which programs you like to watch, no matter where you call for a screen. Every enabled surface becomes a tablet. Those little gadgets people are starting to wear — the evolution of that stupid Bluetooth earpiece my dad used to wear — will be tied into Crossbrace. Crossbrace will know where you are. Your information will follow you. You can allow yourself to forget, because Crossbrace will remember for you.

  It’s strange that nobody at Quark is jubilant as the world cheers us. After ten years of work, we’ve stared at the project long enough to see its every flaw, and worry about all the flaws we don’t see. Is it truly secure? Have we put enough redundancies into the parts of Crossbrace that touch security, life support in hospitals, and “life enhancement” in homes? Are we totally sure that homes will not accidentally poison their owners, swapping bleach for soda? Can it be hacked? What about all of this new emphasis on nanotechnology, and the AI that runs it — the AI that talks to resident AI in Crossbrace? Right now, AI is nowhere near as scary as people have thought since the term was first coined, but it’s clearly reached singularity. The machines can learn, then learn from their learning. We all saw The Terminator and the old Matrix movies when we were kids, so of course we have safeguards on top of safeguards to prevent the proverbial SkyNet disaster. But are the safeguards sufficient? Noah laughs at me when I mention it, then explains it to me with calculations and complex math. He explains the idea of an asymptote. I understand, Noah. But there are not only the things you know to worry about. There are not only the things you don’t know to worry about. The worst of all are those things you DON’T know that you DON’T know. What if we didn’t even think of something that will end in catastrophe? The scope of Crossbrace makes “epic” look small. Crossbrace is thousands upon thousands of times more pervasive (with millions more touchpoints and inputs) than the aging information superhighway. Simple chaos theory clearly states that the potential for disaster is massive.

  Carol, on the other hand, is worried about global outcry. We’ve changed the world, literally. The connectivity of Crossbrace will empower the poorest of the poor, and provide fountains of opiates to hush them. For at least a few years, we can say goodbye to most of the class strife inside the NAU borders. But the borders, themselves, are the problem. Crossbrace only touches the NAU, and isn’t accessible outside of it. Other countries are already starting to complain, saying this is the NAU’s attempt to consolidate their power and rattling their rusty sabers. Quark PR is pacifying them, but Noah intends to keep Crossbrace here in the spirit of triage. He says the rest of the world is beyond saving. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that adding Crossbrace to our pile of riches won’t make those other countries love us any more. We’ve increased the size of our target. I should feel like we’ve popped the bubble, but to me, the bubble only seems to be growing.

  Noah says I worry too much. I can’t be sure. I need to sleep.

  June 12, 2050

  I’m amazed to see a resurgence of Noah’s energy. He’s talking about a complete overhaul of Crossbrace, again speaking like a revolutionary. Of course Crossbrace just became integrated into daily life inside the NAU, and of course people, as excited and amazed as they were at launch, simply absorbed it. They stopped marveling at how their houses changed the projections of art on the walls based on moods read from those who entered. They began to complain about system latencies and bugs, about the fact that they didn’t want peripherals to experience what just became another internet. Of course the most popular sector was immediately porn. At first I was indignant, calling the
NAU ungrateful, until I realized that people can’t help their nature. You can’t remain amazed every day. Ultimately, the most astonishing things become commonplace. It makes me wonder why I bother sometimes. You change the world, and people say, “It’s always been this way, and it sucks.”

  Still, I should be grateful. That new lattice dome around the continent handily solved the global crisis I’d worried about. Now the Wild East can yell and shoot at us to their hearts’ content, but they cannot hurt us even with the biggest rocks they have to throw. I live well, and I work much less than I did during the heady years. I make more money than most people I know added together. They say that puts me in the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the NAU and hence makes me what they’re calling “Beau Monde,” but I can’t help but hear it as an insult. I don’t want to be a part of a class pompous enough to give itself a French name. I’m seeing something I made wedge the classes further apart while the lower tiers think it’s drawing us all closer.

  I’m seeing technological elitism. There are dealers who will only sell the best upgrades to this Beau Monde. I see Crossbrace technology (and modified hovertech) incorporated in those upgrades. People are having actual implants put in their bodies! Nanobots are being injected! And I say that with lots! Of! Exclamation! Points! because it’s all so hush-hush. The poor can’t buy anything like it; they’ve no awareness, or access if they did. So what happens? Crossbrace connectivity increases for those with money, and decreases for the rest.

  Noah tells me to smoke weed. He says I need to go with the flow. He acts like a merciless businessman one minute and a hippie Organa the next. I try telling him that technology doesn’t relax, that it has always made life more harried and more complicated.

  Noah is talking about the second version of Crossbrace, which will embrace all of the new biological add-ons and nanotechnology. Forget about your environment knowing where you are. Soon, it will know what you think. What you see. What you feel. What you desire.

  I keep telling him that I can’t do it all again. We’ve given the NAU internal supports of a sort — a way of holding us up and interconnecting our isolated society. It’s serendipitous that Noah named the network “Crossbrace,” seeing how perfectly the metaphor fits today. And so I asked him when we can be finished, when enough will finally be enough. But Noah doesn’t listen. He says that he wants something better. Something stronger. So I asked him how much stronger and more robust the mega-network could possibly be. He just laughed, as if I was stupid and naive, and told me that while it’s nice that we’ve propped up a world in trouble with a bit of crossbracing, crossbracing is always triage, always temporary and useful only until something more sturdy and sound can be build on top of it.

  Accordingly, he’s calling Crossbrace’s evolution “The Beam.”

  Feb 18, 2061

  Noah is sick. Of course I’m affected. Over the years, he’s been a friend and tyrant, but in the end, he’s more the first than the latter. He feels his mortality, although his appearance is still remarkably young. I suspect he had access to nanobot injections before the rest of the world knew they existed — the Beau Monde of the Beau Monde, a group which has always skimmed the cream for itself while keeping its secrets. And of course even today, the “lower 99” (as the elitists call them) know nothing. It makes me wonder what else is out there that even we don’t know about, and how high the tiers of ignorance are stacked.

  I asked Noah how old he is. He said, “I’m old enough,” then smiled to show it was a joke, and I didn’t have the heart to insist that I really wanted to know. So I let it go. He’s weak. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but it must be something nanobots can’t cure. I hear there are nanos out there that can, in certain cells and under very restricted experimental conditions, stop apoptosis and telomere shortening. I hear it’s a tough nut to crack, but once they do, it’ll be one more step toward immortality. It will come too late for Noah. He wants to live long enough to see the launch of The Beam, which he says will “change the world of Crossbrace as much as Crossbrace changed the world of the internet.” He also says he wants to live forever inside The Beam. I told him that he already does — his voice is the voice of Crossbrace; avatars and representations of him show on every tablet, every handheld, every screen, and every canvas. He is the soul of Crossbrace and will be the soul of The Beam. People live with him every day. He is friend to billions — the savior many never had.

  But Noah didn’t want to hear it. He said Crossbrace is nothing and that I cannot imagine what The Beam will become. I tell him I understand it perfectly, because I’m working on it too. But I can’t help but believe that Noah has a final ace up his sleeve, and that he won’t be content by simply delivering better virtual meeting places, better VR, and more intelligent AI.

  March 3, 2061

  I was right. The son of a bitch had an ace up his sleeve all right, and it’s one fuck of an ace. The little wrinkle he wants to add to The Beam project will delay us a full year. Sometimes I want to kill him, even though he’s already sick and dying.

  I can’t write (yet again) about the change, but I’ll just say that as part of it, he’s moving our R&D into Chinatown. That’s right, CHINATOWN. For what has to be nostalgic reasons, he bought that restaurant we used to love to eat noodles at back when we first started working together and has converted it into a lab. The logistics of moving the project, wholesale and in secret, are insane and muddle an already ridiculously complicated project. Noah’s turned paranoid, saying our rivals (he uses the word “enemies”) have spies in our midst and are watching the Quark labs.

  Moving to a totally new secure location (just the two of us plus Jenna and Hal, with Noah sick in bed most of the time) is stupid and paranoid. But The Beam project isn’t costing Quark in the way Crossbrace did, seeing as how Crossbrace-related profits have made Quark as rich as the NAU itself, and easily as powerful.

  I’m beginning to regret my ironclad non-disclosure agreement. When I signed it originally, I thought it was standard. Each time I re-signed, I thought the same thing. It all seemed logical: to focus scrutiny on the fabulous Noah West and keep me, as his partner, silent and hidden so that I could do my work without worrying about PR. But now with Noah dying, I wonder if this wasn’t just another genius move. I wonder if he didn’t know EXACTLY what he was doing from the very, very beginning. He’s already an icon and as powerful as the senate. (He’d have to be to nudge through the Tagging Law, marking all new babies with a Crossbrace ID at birth. Nobody but the messiah he thinks he is — and is seen to be — could pull that off without a revolt.) And with me behind the curtain, I’m invisible to the world. Nobody would listen to me. Nobody even knows I exist. And of course, nobody can challenge the will of the great Noah West. Quark will go on when he’s gone, but it will just be a company again. Its icon will already be in the aether, having died a martyr’s immortal death and living on in the everyday lives of the continent.

  Jan 23, 2062

  I had an idol, once. By age 45, you’d think I’d know better than to idolize anyone, but it seems your heroes can always amaze you, enchant you, and… well, we’ll see if this is something I shouldn’t be doing. I believe in the power of The Beam. I believe in people, and that they are inherently good. Some would say I’m naive, maybe weak. We’ll see.

  Noah’s been mostly too sick to work on the Beam project. He started out at the lab, but he’s been absent for a while, mostly staying in his apartment. I give him updates. Today he asked and I told him about our recent successes. I told him we should be running in alpha by the end of the month. He was pleased. Back in the days of Crossbrace, he would have mocked me, yelled at me for being slow and making too many mistakes. But today, he was the man I first met when I was only a kid who looked up to him as a hero. We had dinner in his apartment like we used to, even ordered Chinese noodles — from a different restaurant, seeing as our old one is a lab now. I felt plied, placated. He was Noah West again. I was sixteen-year-old Stevie York, aw
ed to be near him. He told me, very casually as if it were reasonable, that I would have to finish the Beam Project alone. Jenna and Hal would no longer be allowed in the new lab; they would be ordered back to Quark HQ and told that work on The Beam was finished, and that techs would handle implementation. Then I was to finish the rest of the work solo. Noah said he would guide me, then pulled up a screen and showed me six months of development already outlined for me. It was intensely detailed. I was awed. I still am. These days, the man can barely breathe on his own. He looks like a bag of bones, and never leaves his apartment because he can’t. And here, he’d done work that I couldn’t even imagine. A new module of an entirely new technology that is quite simply beyond belief, incredible in scope, finished just inches from his own death.

  Noah told me he would move to the lab and that the two of us would finish The Beam together. It sounds absurd to think about it now, but I don’t know that I even protested when he suggested it because I was too spellbound by his last magic trick. He told me he’d require a bed and would need me to give him some light medical assistance (no nurses or doctors, though), but he’d made peace with his impending death. Noah wanted only to end his days working, and to see The Beam live. I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I had to help him. Just he and I, working side by side, like in the old days.