by E. R. Jess
Eight responded, “If you do this, you might get more memories back than you want. But we can work through it. I could delve your memories while you're on the Outernet, just in case.”
Alessa said, “No, I think I need to do this alone.”
Eight understood and kept quiet.
“The first thing you're going to want to do is find a directory. They have all of the basic information you'll need, like the location of medical research facilities,” Jenna said while navigating on her handheld.
Sam added, “It will be an enormous task finding information about this implant. It's most likely classified for only those in the higher echelons. It might be easier to learn more about Kagan's disease. Look for documents on AVID, Augmented Viral Immunity Disorder, and see if they've come up with treatments.”
“And keep your head down,” Dernen warned.
Alessa, wearing Jenna's interface suit, decided to forgo the total experience; the one with sensory replacement needles. Jenna's suit was a complicated harness designed to provide realistic feedback directly into the nerves via tiny needles. The needles simulated a variety of senses of touch, like heat and cold, pain and pleasure. It's original purpose; sexual simulations. She asked Jenna for a minimum amount of feedback to function on the Outernet. Sound and vision via AR goggles and ear buds, and simple skin feedback via tiny motion controlled motors in the fabric of the suit.
Alessa made herself at home in the back of the UA-X. Jenna lined up her three batteries next to her portable mainframe and ran a power cable to the vehicle's outlets, just in case Alessa would take longer than the batteries could hold out. Vorn was working on repairing a set of solar panels for extra redundancy while Jenna helped Alessa log on.
The suit sparked up and the darkness before Alessa's eyes grew lighter. Alessa found herself in what looked like a utility or boiler room. “Nice place,” she said.
“That's a safe house I use. Not pretty to look at, but it's innocuous. If someone were to enter unknowingly, it wouldn't arouse suspicion. Beer's in the fridge,” Jenna replied.
Alessa tried to look at her hands, they were gone. She realized that she was a formless shape floating in the room. It was unsettling, but she got used to it.
“Only thing I can do for you is to get you to an Outernet hub. From there, you'll have to display your code and navigate to the Outernet version of the City-State. Should be user friendly,” Jenna instructed, “After you get there, we should stay out of contact. You're not used to the Outernet and I don't want you to have any distractions that might give you away. If we start having a conversation with you, you will lose focus.”
“When will I,” Alessa began to ask but was suddenly thrust into a wide highway of flying and pulsing lights. She stopped suddenly and lost her breath. Before her was a 360 degree display showing a map of the Outernet, new and old. “City-State, Manifest,” she said, and a flash of aqua light ran over her neck-implanted bar code through Jenna's suit. Everything went dark and quiet. Alessa heard a slight whirring sound then was left gasping for air as she found herself back in her own body. More or less. Her avatar, another version of her, though simpler. The skin on her arms had no blemishes. Her hands were perfect and clean. She walked shakily for a few steps, then felt a wave of vertigo. She was standing in a massive row of other avatars, thousands of people coming and going. Everywhere she looked there were rows and stacks of alcoves made for digital versions of the citizens of the City-State. Alessa tried to maintain her composure when she realized that hers was nude. She did as Jenna had told her earlier. She waved her hands across the air and pulled up an interface display that floated before her eyes. She flew as fast as she could through the menus to a hidden directory. Jenna had told her that she could find a set of clothing in a cache of files that Jenna sent with her. Alessa found the clothing files, dressed her avatar with a few taps in the air, and was ready to go. Where, she had no clue.
Alessa walked to the shadow of a massive building. Her head tilted fully back to see an endless regiment of black glass windows disappear into a blanket of darkest pitch. Streets crossed over head, magnetic roads suspended by monolithic columns.
People. It was where they were concentrated. She was in the Outernet version of downtown amongst imposing corporate fortresses. Below her, Alessa saw the life in the lower levels, saw highways hugging the walls of cloudy hellscrapers. Streams of hovering vehicles hummed quietly all around on level after level, above and below. Where she stood, cars gave way to thousands of pedestrians.
Overwhelmed, Alessa needed the help of a nearby black marble financial castle to stand.
Find what you need and get out, she proposed to her glossy reflection, a dismal image of Alessa that she thought of as her mood echoing back to her eyes. The ebony stone drank the light. It drained the color. Alessa touched her shaded and reticent twin. The young woman pulled her coat closer and buried her hands deep in her pockets. She turned her face down and away, then set a steady pace in a direction with the least resistance.
Something then happened. She felt something, but didn't know what. Alessa glanced ever so unaware, into someone eyes that she had known before. There, in her reflection, another woman lingered. She was lies and shadows coalesced, swirled, and re-shaped. This was her anti-self. This was her grim, jet-black counterpart. This was Alessa in negative.
Chapter 6: Out Here
“The Elder lives,” Revan said to himself quietly.
A doctor was looking over him. Revan was suspended in an anti-gravity field, hovering over an array of medical equipment.
“Mr. Kore,” The doctor began, “I am Doctor Epps. You wouldn't remember me, but we are colleagues. Much has been taken from your memory. I'm going to ask you a series of questions. Please answer them honestly and keep your answers brief. Time is fleeting.”
Revan nodded and blinked his heavy eyes.
“A dog dies on your doorstep. It's beginning to smell. Why are you considering eating it?” The doctor deadpanned as he watched his computer displays.
Revan coughed a little, clearing his throat. He replied in a weak voice, “I wouldn't consider eating it.”
“But you are. You are considering eating the corpse of the dog that died on your doorstep. What compels you to desire this?”
“I imagine that I am very hungry and have no choice,” Revan said.
“Next question. You are alone in a boat. Your friends have all gone to the bottom of the ocean to celebrate your impending demise. Do join them?”
Revan cleared his throat again. “I would try to paddle away.”
“There are no oars. Your friends are all at the bottom of the sea, mourning your life. You cannot swim away. You will die in your boat. Would you not swim down and be with them?”
“I would wait.” Revan said, his voice shallow.
“Wait? Your friends miss you. You will die eventually and you'll be alone when it happens. Next question,” the doctor said as he turned away from his devices. He walked up to Revan and looked into his suspended form, “Your heart stops one day. You no longer feel your heartbeat beneath your chest. But you feel fine. It turns out that you do not need a heart to live,” the doctor whispered, “We don't need our hearts. We're not the fluid rattling around in our bodies. We are a great light, chained up and wrapped in reactions to stimuli. You don't need a heart. Do you cut it out?”
“Doctor?” Revan asked, puzzled.
“Do you cut out your heart? You don't need it. You're all hollow inside, just superfluous clockwork and little pains to keep you docile. Cut it out and begin to live?” he answered, staring into Revan's eyes.
“Doctor, I don't know. What do you want?” Revan said, distressed.
“Revan,” the doctor said with a sigh, “I want you to fight it. The conformity doesn't work on you, but it will drive you mad, as you've experienced. So you have to fight through it. The Elder lives.”
“The Elder lives,” Revan repeated, “but I can't find him.”
“He
will appear. You will be seen by the Minister of UCM soon, Elann. She will determine whether or not you're a threat. If she finds that you are, your mind will be wiped by a new conforming implant. I cannot help you after that. But if you can get the memories come back, then you will know what to hide from her. You've done it before,” the doctor said and lowered Revan gently to the floor via hand controls.
“I'll do what I can,” Revan said meekly.
“I know you have the will,” the doctor took his shoulders, “Jakob has great faith in you, we all do. I know someone who can help.”
The Whistleblower
“Our children will look back on what UPC has done and feel pity and shame. But we were faced with a dire threat; expand or die. At our borders; our brothers, though lost and ignorant. We feared them. We feared the human potential. Wasteland industrials, religious organizations, entire ad hoc governments evolved out of the dust and we feared that eventually they would turn their attentions to us. We had to protect ourselves. Our ancestors built a massive city that was the length of the entire country. Many of them prospered, but the poorer classes revolted, and the city tore itself apart. We look back on our fathers with shame and pity.
“If the words in this testimony could even begin to validate my actions, then I would be ashamed to write it. Instead, I expect no less than complete and total vehemence from everyone.
“A hyper-reality, a condensed reality. Like another bible that held facts and figures as yet unknown to anyone who didn’t know the new and better language of the elite. This left the truth available for manipulations and redirections by what should have been a mentor and protector. These were lies with such little substance that even their creator had difficulty conjuring them into thought. Lies so ethereal, so impermanent and impossible that they were beyond transparent, they actually enhanced the ability to see what they hid. But by then lies were policy. Years ago, I released a recording that embodied those falsehoods, a recording of a little known experiment that was run in the heart of Urbania. It answered all fears, confirmed all the conspiracies. The experiment, known simply as the Core, never ended.
“They are the ruling class of the planet. So I made a plan that was worthy of their greatness. It was called The Caelestis Project, the depopulation of the Free City. It began with the purge. The next step is the complete eradication of freedom in the City-State. And beyond that, they will extend their reach to the stars. They will reclaim humanity from the first interstellar settlers and force their wisdom upon them. May the City-State ever rise.” The recording stopped.
“Sub-Minister Aloca,” Major Kellen said.
Colonel Morgan and his men erected temporary structures to provide protection from a harsh storm. Morgan was leafing through documents on his handheld, playing audio recordings he had collected. He stretched his back and held his aching head. “The Sub-Minister was a good woman. She believed in UPC. She thought that we needed to embrace our neighbors.”
“We did, in a way. Her treason forced UPC to change one thing; the sentiment. Amnesty instead of depopulation,” Major Kellen replied.
Morgan laughed lightly, “How does a citizen fall into sedition? She does so thinking that she's doing the right thing. Kellen, there is no right thing. There are only actions and reactions.”
The Major nodded and said, “Aloca was reeducated before she was executed. Her example hasn't been followed since.”
“Yet here we are, out in the rain, hunting down an ex-conformed citizen. How many people are on the edge, riding the line between citizen and whatever she is now,” Morgan said to the walls of the shelter, pointing beyond them into the night.
“They can't hide for long, Colonel,” the Major said.
“These have,” Morgan said, referring to his handheld, “A group of non-violent apostles that the citizen is traveling with. They've managed to elude patrols, raiders, direct attacks. But they're no saints. They've got enough rehab time racked up for thirty outcasts. Major, there are four people on the Redlist in the group. We're going to get them.”
“Yes, sir. Should be a good haul.”
“And I want them all. Six regiments of tactical UA units are heading this way. I want the ground to shake. I want fear to be the only emotion. I don't just want to capture them, I want to decimate their lives before they're conformed and handed citizenship like a fucking prize. I want them to suffer like the Whistleblower,” Morgan ordered.
“Yes, sir. I will get the commander,” Kellen said and left.
Morgan replayed the recorded voice.
0
Alessa found herself in the crux of Outernet society, a hub called Manifest. It was a labyrinthine amalgamation of City-State cultures pressed into a few city blocks. A melting pot of the mundane. The separation of classes in UPC was paper thin, and in Manifest, their digital semblances commingled in a mecca of commerce and City-State propaganda. Alessa was lost in a sea of people. She struggled at first with simple navigation on the Outernet, but soon muscle memory kicked in. Her saving grace was the simplistic 'you are here' signposts that dotted the realm. Having to perpetually find her bearings, Alessa let herself drift, letting the human current drag her along.
Alessa found the Urban Citizen Monitor's virtual offices. There, on building-sized screens, proud newsreels touted the promise of amnesty, the liberation of the peoples of the Free City. She shuddered. It was a step in the right direction. She reached UCMs main building, the Outernet version of the Imperium. It was the end of line, a fortress of information. She looked up at the building with a painful awe. She swallowed her fear and went to the front door.
She approached a series of guards; anti-wires standing watch at the gates of the imposing structure looked her over. She stood firm. One of the guards ran his palm over the bar code on her neck. There was a moment of pregnant silence, then the doors opened for her. She kept her composure and walked inside with only the slightest hesitation.
The Imperium was vast; a city within a city, and Alessa once again felt lost. She closed her eyes and walked straight ahead. She walked right into someone else's avatar. And as she opened her eyes, she could have sworn that she had seen the man before.
“Can I help you, ma'am?” Sen, UCM's lead programmer, asked with odd curiosity.
Alessa stumbled on her words, but pulled them together as fast as she could. She just blurted it out, not only because of the buffer of her relative anonymity on the Outernet, but because she was weary from the search, the haystack was too big for the needle. She replied, “I'm looking for information on the Antikythera program.”
Sen ran his hand over her barcode unceremoniously. “You have clearance, ma'am. You'll find what your need on the fortieth level, room 802,” he said, emotionless save his impatience.
“Thank you,” Alessa said and got on her way.
Sen watched her leave and shook his head. He got a chill like he had seen a ghost.
Alessa waved her hand in the air, creating a building map with a finger command, and transported her avatar to the fortieth floor. She meandered the corridors until she found the room she needed. Room eight hundred and two was covered by a door with no handle, only a simple metal rectangle in its center with a bar code embedded there. She stood and studied it for a long while.
Alessa finally put her hand up to the rectangle and the door opened. Instead of a room, Alessa's being was removed from her avatar and left floating in a great canyon. The canyon walls were lined with old-fashioned filing cabinets, stretching from immeasurable depths to the heavens. She floated over to the nearest cabinet drawer and pulled it open. Inside were file folders. She looked at one; they were filled with page after page of undecipherable text; code or programming language. She floated back and said “Antikythera” to the room. The canyon shook and then shifted at impossible speed straight down. The movement stopped and a single filing cabinet protruded out in front of her. She opened the top drawer. Inside was more code. She used her hands to draw a command in the air to record the file
s. Alessa copied all of the data she could.
The Imperium was an odd memory in her mind, invoking chills, as she left and navigated to a secluded street away from the hustle and bustle. She held her open hand in the air, and twisted it as she closed it into a fist. The Outernet dissolved before her eyes, leaving a bright wash of light that took some time to recover from. Jenna, Sam and Eight stood breathlessly waiting for her to finish. Alessa simply nodded. Jenna looked puzzled and then pored over the data Alessa had culled from her trip. Jenna's eyes widened to twice their size. Alessa slipped off her VR goggles and savored the welcome view of the real world. She left the UA-X with a sense of dread covering her like a blanket.
Jenna stopped her. “This is everything we need, how did you do it?” she asked.
Alessa didn't turn as she answered, “I don't know. I don't want to know.”
Kagan opened his eyes. The pain in his damaged joints and muscles was gone. Jenna had limited access to the Antikythera program and used to it to clean up some stray bugs in the software. Kagan looked at her and saw Alessa instead of Jenna, the Alessa from years past. He took her hand and squeezed it. “I'm glad you're here,” he said, his voice raspy from not being used in a while.
Jenna took her hand away, feeling awkward.
“I dreamed. I saw a great sky of nothing but stars. The light was pure and clean. Tiny points of light, like snow, fell around. I dreamt that we all lived in the sky,” Kagan said. The program put him to sleep slowly.
Eight put his hand on Kagan's shoulder. He asked of Jenna, “Did it work?”
“Yes. I was able to keep elements of the program out of his conscious thought. Or at least I think I did. This is all very advanced. I've hacked into people with brain implants before, but this thing is new. The Antikythera has the best ability I've seen to integrate with the human mind. It does it too well. In Kagan's case, it thinks it can do a better job at arranging his thoughts. I hope I stopped it. It'll be weeks before his body is ready to remove this thing,” Jenna said.