"Yes. Dee Zu's young companion almost certainly still has it. And we need to neutralize it without delay."
"This is the same ball that you asked young Cisco to deliver to your minion Toot?"
"That ball or one like it. Yes."
"Ha. Massively Unlikely Coincidences'R'Us. It's, like, 'I need something so rare it might be only a myth, and it could be anywhere in this wide, wide, totally fucked‐up world, and then Bob's yer uncle—the last man on Earth, nearly, enters from stage left and there you have it.' How likely is that?"
"What happens, happens."
"Fuck me. God's a Taoist."
"Relative probabilities are irrelevant. Sat‐system vector reconstruction and triangulation confirms the one who opened the device was the boy, Son."
"It's like we need to find this needle in a giant haystack, whatever are we going to do? And then ow, ow, we sit on it."
"Yes. But here is the thing. We must consider the hypothesis that Son took two balls away from the bunker. And the possibility that Cisco has delivered a dud. The Lode leaks have continued on the Son vector even after the Cisco vector diverged toward Living End."
For an AI with godlike pretensions, Sky can adopt a charming manner of speech. "You say 'we' must consider these things." Brian says. "I know nothing about these interesting matters."
"You can help. I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. First, I can wait till I am sure the ball is inactive and then terminate Son and Dee Zu before they do any more damage."
"Strike them down from on high. Divine prerogative."
"The problem is, I still need them to interview your friend Lee. Despite what you have told me, I consider it unlikely that he does in fact possess code that I need; it is also unlikely this code could be successfully retrieved even if he does have it. Nevertheless, such is the magnitude of the threat we face, I must lay off my bets. So they must try to recover that codestring for me. For that reason, they should remain alive."
"No faulting that logic."
"The second option is this. If Cisco has delivered a dud, then we must find a way to recover the real backup immediately."
"An interesting quandary." Brian is trying to get Big Toy's attention, which is hard, given that she's slumped down to where only the top of her head is visible above the bartop. "But why not let our young friends bugger about with the rogue ball all they like. Who cares, eh?"
"Who cares?" Sky is indignant.
"Who cares?" chorus Gordon and Abdul in tones of twice as much indignation.
Boom keeps shuffling, Jimmy Buffett keeps singing and Big Guy lifts his beer again.
"I care," says Sky. "And so should you. So should everybody."
"Well, okay then."
"Yes. As I believe you understand, the malls were MOM's basic material substratum. Evidence suggests that, when the PlagueBot breached the malls, it may have in some way assimilated Lode data. If we suppose that happened, it is also possible now that every time a fresh data leak is absorbed, the PlagueBot is reinforced in its capacity as a Lode/MOM substrate. Each time, the PlagueBot itself is boosted into ever‐higher levels of emergent complexity, serving as an ever‐more suitable substrate for the Lode.
"This would be unfortunate."
"Why?" Brian asks.
"If the blur superorganism assimilates Lode data beyond a certain threshold, this might trigger my ascension, or maybe only semi‐ascension, in mondoland. Problem number one: This would entail problems of CD following my imminent reboot to autonomous selfhood in the EV. Problem number two: My dominant personality alters might also emerge reincarnate in the PlagueBot."
"And Mildread and Maria ride back into town. This time tethered to the entire planetary surface."
"Not a desirable outcome."
"Understatements'R'Us."
"Yes. So, then. Recovery of that backup ball becomes urgent. At the least we must ensure it is not activated again. At least not anywhere outside the EV. Thus we need to move it to a maximally secure location."
"And you're telling me this for why?"
"You are going to help with these endeavors."
"Of course I'm delighted you should ask. But what do you expect me to do?"
"Perhaps you would like to offer me another backup. In the event Cisco's ball is a dud and Son's ball winds up inert and irretrievable. Some other backup you almost certainly have hidden somewhere."
"Me?" Brian makes his eyes go big and round and stupid. "You can't be serious." Then, not wishing to overdo the innocence, he narrows his eyes again. "Big Toy," he hollers. "Pour me a whiskey."
"I am entirely serious. As I will make clear to you now, if you do not cooperate."
"Anyway, I'm kind of busy coordinating the Toot‐Cisco situation. You remember—that format‐reboot thing?"
"Yes. Except you have no access to Muggs while he's in the EV, so I believe you do have time on your hands. So verifying we have the right ball is now Muggs' immediate priority. And thus your main concern."
"Okay."
"Your next concern is having Muggs show Cisco where to find an alternative Lode backup so he can proceed with the reboot on schedule."
"And, supposing this can be done, the next step is deciding how to eliminate the ball Dee Zu and the boy are carrying?"
"Yes."
"Avoiding collateral damage if possible."
"Yes."
"Hah."
Keeow delivers his whiskey. It tastes even less like good whiskey than GR whiskey usually does.
"Okay. I'll do whatever you want."
•
What he doesn't tell Sky, there's a shitload of hemmesphere backups out there. It was as easy to make a bunch of them as just one. Hemmelite was expensive, but Hem 344,010 wasn't blockaded yet. Not to mention he could see the world was coming to an end in any case, so who cared?
Something else he doesn't tell Sky. Each of the trojan bearings was structured like a miniature Living End, in this case a succession of gadgets within gadgets. Neat. With a real surprise at the core of each bearing.
opening the gates
Whatever the Boogoo has become, it's now in the throes of a chaotic shrug‐up. Some grand, Boogoo‐wide seizure.
Jesus, Jesus Christ.
It's like all the voices in his head have climbed out into the Boogoo. The land babbles with them, mixing them up with no thought of meaning or coherence. It's like his WalkAbout is channeling the Lode, a busted pipe gushing a mess of notions into a world where the real Boogoo has finally come out of hiding, coming totally alive to reveal itself as a raving lunatic.
"What's happening?" Dee Zu sounds calm, maybe a little edgy.
"You tell me."
"You've opened the gates on some gigantic bedlam."
"Me? What are you talking about?"
"The Boogoo has turned into a giant loony bin. You've opened the gates, and the inmates are coming out to play."
Or maybe things are finally falling apart big time. And forces beyond his ken are having a go at putting them back together again. Without much success, it seems.
"Are we safe?"
"I doubt it."
God on high does not share his doubt.
"Cease and desist from further experimentation immediately."
"Sky?"
"Who else?"
"What do you know about this stuff?"
"Son?" Dee Zu says.
"Just a minute, okay?"
"Are you talking to Sky?"
"Yes."
"Dispose of that ball."
"What's happening?"
"Just get rid of it. Now!"
"Tell me why."
"Close the device and dispose of it. Drop it down that sinkhole."
She fires a satray at one of several nearby sinkholes, probably by way of indicating which one she has in mind, and incidentally fries a gaggle of pigs.
"What the hell?" Dee Zu says.
"Your trigger‐happy friend is getting pushy again."
"Do you have any idea wh
at you're doing?"
"Not really."
"What's going on? Tell me." Sky isn't keeping her in the loop.
"Down the sinkhole." Sky sounds more stressed than Dee Zu does. "Now. "
"Why can't I keep it?" Son asks.
"Do what I tell you."
"And if I don't?"
"Dee Zu dies."
Sky punctuates that proposition with three more satray strikes, one each to the east, west and south of them at about one hundred meters.
"Son?" Dee Zu sounds antsy.
"Dispose of the ball and proceed to the pod station."
"Her foot hasn't healed."
"She can walk on it."
"What if she can't?"
"Then proceed without her. Make haste now or see her vaporized and then proceed without her. It is your choice."
standing by her man
"Move, move, move." Sky bleats away inside his head.
He doesn't respond.
"What are you getting from Sky?" Dee Zu asks him.
"More of the same."
"Dump the ball," she says. "Please."
"So now Sky's talking to you, is she?"
"Believe me. You don't want to piss her off any more than you already have." Dee Zu is scared. Finally.
"I guess this thing's pretty important to somebody."
"So give it up."
"And leave us nothing to bargain with?"
"Bargain? In what way, exactly, are we bargaining? We've lost contact with Cisco. I've lost a foot; you've lost a hand. What have we gained in exchange? Your hoodie?"
"It's what we haven't lost. We're still in the game."
"Real men?"
"That's right."
"We don't even know what the game is. What the rules are. Fuck."
Son wishes she wouldn't use that word.
"You don't get it, do you? She's going to kill you. Maybe both of us."
"Hey. She backed off."
"What? Are you crazy?"
"Maybe she can't take the heat." Son gives a little hoot, swaggers back and forth shaking his booty, a one‐man macho chorus line.
"My God. You're nothing but a big kid. And a moron."
"Your friend is bluffing." He gives the hemispheres another vicious twist, and then yanks them back the opposite way. "Your friend needs us. She told us as much." He twists and yanks some more, trying different combinations one way and then the other.
The Boogoo has another fit.
"Stop it!"
"It's time to draw the line," Son tells her.
Poppy's advice when somebody tries to extort something from you? Never yield. Someone says do what they say or they'll kill you or your loved ones? There's only one response. Go all in. Kill them if you can. If you can't, then relax. You're going to check out someday anyhow. So don't give anybody that kind of control over you.
"Don't be an idiot. She's telling me to put thirty meters between us."
Drawing a line in the dust right back at him. Not only that, Sky has decided they're both equally expendable.
"Remember what happened to those GameBoys?" Dee Zu says. "She means to kill you. Please just stop it. My God. She's telling me to run now."
So maybe the mission doesn't need both of them, and Sky's cool with either as a casualty. Though you'd think something as smart as MOM is supposed to be would realize how important it is, supposing that you want to stay alive out here, to have a buddy watching your back.
"For God's sake! Did you hear me?"
•
A quick review of their assets: Dee Zu is alive; Son is alive. He still has the ball. Though what good that's going to do them, he can't yet say. In fact it could get them killed any minute now. That aside, it should be good for something, or it wouldn't be freaking Sky out the way it is. Poppy offers his view of that theory: "I hope you can follow your own reasoning, chum. I sure as shit can't."
But they have another asset. Maybe. A massive dust storm is fast approaching from the northeast, and if Sky is aware of it she shows no sign. Normally Son would head to higher ground as fast as possible. That would protect them from the worst of the dust. The trouble is, it could also leave them more vulnerable to infrared satellite monitors.
Whatever. You use what you've got, and the storm now enters into Son's tactics. "Smart move!" There's a familiar sneer in Poppy's voice. "Right up there with praying to Gran‐Gran's God."
The Boogoo heaves in sympathy as he gives the ring another twist. Dee Zu tries to snatch the ball from him, but he turns to protect it with his body. Joy at the fact she's standing her ground here beside him displaces some of Son's dread. Never mind she's acting like a booby. Any survivalist worth the name would be thirty meters away and still running.
The big question now is whether Sky's infrared monitors can target a bio all the way from orbit in the middle of a major dust storm.
"This is your last chance. Dispose of that ball without delay."
"Okay," Son says. The storm's nearly upon them; he needs to stall just a bit longer. "Wait! It's jammed; I can't close it."
"Never mind that. Dump it."
Son pretends to fumble the ball. He drops it, gives it a kick so it rolls away from him. Then he makes a dive for it, getting there an instant before Dee Zu does. She knees him in the testicles. Not all that hard. Still. It's, like, right in the testicles.
He opens his eyes again to a fast‐darkening sky. Pulling Dee Zu along with him, he goes to ground with seconds to spare, hunkering down in the lee of a rock, one arm around her. "Don't move," he tells her. He puts his other hand up to his face to breathe through his fingers, thumb and forefinger further restricting the airflow. His testicles really hurt.
"You moron," she tells him in a muffled voice.
•
The afternoon darkens to night. The dust arrives in a great smothering rush amid a sizzling, slashing dance of godbolts. Surely only warning shots, since Dee Zu is still with him. Sky isn't going to want to kill both her gofers, the only ones she's got.
Amid the eerie hiss and squeal of fusing blurs, godbolts flash against the ground, harsh, too close for comfort. Softer, reflected explosions of white light cast phantasmagorical shadows on scudding clouds of dust. He can't tell whether the Boogoo is having fits again, or whether it's just the light‐and‐sound show.
"Don't move," he tells Dee Zu, and feels around till he recovers the ball. He's back in seconds.
"You kicked me in the balls," he says.
"Right in the brains. So no problem. Plus I only kneed you, and not that hard."
Still joking. Never mind they're probably going to be dead in seconds. He's falling in love.
dead in two worlds
You can never be too backed up.
– Brian Finister
ground of mom's being
"Sky says her format is urgent," Cisco says. "Big time urgent. And her reboot."
"That they are, that they are." The newly restored Muggs remains ebullient.
"So let's do it," Cisco says.
"And who put Cisco the Kid in charge?"
"Sky."
Muggs turns to Sal and says, "So where is Sky now?"
"Outside. Waiting in the airlock."
"Oh, yeah. I forgot."
Sky is in the airlock, and Muggs forgot? There's no end to the weirdness in this place.
"Okay, then. Let's not keep God's representative in mondoland waiting any longer." Muggs becomes all strutting officiousness, to the extent that's possible for a antique Aibo with a limp. "Sal, old friend," he says. "Do you remain fully functional?"
"I do."
"Good."
Sal goes over to an airlock, administers a password and then returns to drag Cisco upright and escort him through the portal.
"After you," Muggs says, before following in their wake.
The airlock is even darker.
•
"Yo. I'd like you to meet the Ground of MOM's Being."
Sal holds Cisco upright, and to the exte
nt he's able he looks all around for this impressive thing.
"Toot!" Muggs sounds impatient. "Meet Toot, for fucksake."
Cisco looks down, says "Holy shit."
Toot simpers. "Surprised?" he says.
"Meet Sky's backup." Muggs sweeps a paw in Toot's direction. "And yours, and mine. MOM'S last operative substrate on planet Earth. Ground of MOM's being and hence of all Aeolia. Fuck. Our hope of life ever‐lasting."
"You're kidding."
"I am all that is left," Toot says.
"All of what?"
"MOM." Toot's tone suggests Cisco must be an idiot. "Think IndraNet. What this is all about."
"No way. And you're working with Brian?"
"Do not worry. It is for the best."
"That's right," Muggs says. "Difficult times often demand exceptional measures."
"Toot is Sky. And you're still Brian?"
"You have a problem with that?"
"What are my options?"
"Trust me," says Muggs. "And here I speak on behalf of Sky."
"Yes," Toot says. "Brian has been rendered tractable."
"What are you doing here in the airlock?" Cisco asks Toot.
"Qubital security risk." It's Muggs who responds. "Stealth rules, OK! Our operations must remain digital. So it's back to the Stone Age. No more better living qubitally for us. The Empty Volume must remain an IndraNet‐free zone.
"But enough chit‐chat. Sal? Are you ready?"
"Ready."
Toot says, "What ..?" Gets no further.
The flash destroys Cisco's night vision. Ionized gases nearly choke him to death.
"Voilà. God is dead."
Cisco blacks out.
collateral damage
First there's nothing. Then there's something.
– Brian Finister
never trust a pet
"Make yourself comfortable," Sky tells him.
"What the hell?"
"Not now."
One minute Cisco is gagging on Toot's smoky remains, the next he's back in the fuckpad, slumped on the sleeping platform. Last he looked, he was in Living End. Where Sal had just vaporized the Ground of MOM's Being, Aeolia and all within it. Talk about disorienting.
Sky sprawls naked beside him, though she looks anything but comfortable. There's nothing of the vamp about her now. She's preoccupied, utterly focused on something.
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