Mind Hive

by Jake Berry Ellison Jr

  “Cuz it’s the end of the world!” And then it hit Adam too. And, yes, he did cry inside, hand on his chest, through several seconds.

  “Look at us!” She laughed. “What are we going to do with these papers?”

  “I don’t know!” Adam sob-yelled-laugh. “I don’t know! Let’s throw them off the roof!”

  “How do we get on the roof!”

  They screamed at each other, the noise of the destruction of the world so loud they couldn’t hear themselves let alone each other, their voices a thin filament threaded through a corse fabric.

  “I don’t know! Where the fuck is Robert?!”

  “HA HA HA — He got uploaded and says he’ll file a story from the other side!”

  “HA HA HA HA!” Adam rolled off his ass onto his side and laughed until he farted and then laughed harder than he’d laughed in decades. He lost track of her, what she was doing, then he caught sight of her heading for the door that opened onto the world, just outside the windows of the observation deck. He wanted a copy of one of those papers, goddamnit. But before he could lumber onto his hands and knees and get vertical, she’d tossed them off the side. End of the world indeed, he thought.

  She leaned against the railing and watched the pages flow through the air currents, the papers flipping and soaring and diving, feeling pure pleasure. A broad smile plastered there.

  Adam realized then that she had the same clothes on as days ago and his mood shifted … to pity. Why should this be her life? Fifty years ago she would have been a pioneer and part of a major newspaper with money!

  Natalie came back with one piece of paper. “There has never been a more obsolete paper. I mean, the bugs, the AI, the sessions make everything in here pointless.”

  “Yeah, but not wrong,” Adam said, struggling to his feet, rising in stages from the ignoble position of all-four. “Remember all those papers in our archive vault? Going back so long? They are all obsolete, but not as documents of history.” He rattled the paper still in her grasp. “This is a snap shot of the history of the moment in which it was produced and because of that it is invaluable.”

  “I wonder to whom?” She released the page to him.

  The layout was perfect, the photo representation gothic, and she had even remembered to put the masthead at the top, though he realized that officially it wasn’t an authorized version of the Seattle Daily-Record. The headline cutout in sans serif, the subheads under the paper-width photo in a very gothic serif: “Violence, Chaos and Fire Grip City, World” and “Is Your Future a Simulation?” Two question mark headlines. She had changed it on the fly from “Your Future may be in Simulation.” Well, he thought, Fuck it. Her headline by itself was better, just that … But then again, he thought, Fuck it.

  “Really great job,” he said and slipped the page on to the folding table. “Could be the last newspaper ever printed on Earth.”

  The expression on her face changed from that kid-in-panic-and-sorrow hysteria to the I’m-going-to-handle-this look she’d found somewhere in the past couple of days.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” she said, her voice carrying the future she felt certain about.

  “You’re talking about the uploading, I suspect.”

  “No, actually, I’m talking about the future. The only future humans have left.”

  “When you talk like that, with that calm hypnotized voice, I get a little worried.” Adam moved over to the window. He pointed to the turning head floating in the air. “The siren call. And here they come, like moths to a flame.”

  “I think what you are referring to,” she stretched up, straining her shirt, pushed her hair into a ponytail and wrapped it into a knot, relaxed shoulders back down, “comes from being in two-places at once. At first, I didn’t realize why I was having such a hard time with my emotions or lack of them and no one else had even mentioned it to me. Then I realized that I’ve been uploaded.” She winked at Adam, stunning him. “Now and then the signals from the bugs lines up and I’m two people, connected.”

  “Well now that’s creepy.” Adam stepped back from her.

  “Most of the time I am just in my biological body. Its chemical response to the world is very disorienting at times. I feel panic. Fear of death. But my connection, when it is up, helps me focus, helps me see what I want to do and what I no longer need to fear.”

  She stepped toward Adam. He stepped back because of a spike of irrational fear. She laughed.

  “So now you are an advocate, an acolyte? How do I know you haven’t been brainwashed? How do I know it’s even you?” He stood his ground at her next advance lest she laugh at him again.

  “How do I know you haven’t had your dozen or so early afternoon drinks?” She stopped moving at him. “I mean, once you you get a couple in you, you get much braver, much more rash and combative.”

  Everyone knew he drank a lot, he whined to himself. He didn’t give a shit. Now and then, Beach sent him off on a vacation to dry out, but hell everyone drank. And, yes he’d put a few drinks in already.

  “So, you are saying these nanites are like booze to your system?” He tried, condescending.

  “I’m saying,” she stepped to his left and he turned to meet her, “I have no idea what they are like because I don’t feel them the way you feel booze.”

  “I keep thinking the phrase ‘Stepford Wives’ every time you step toward me.”

  “And I always thought the phrase ‘Drunk Bastard’ every time you came back from lunch.”

  “Touché!” He nodded acceptance of the parallel. He really had been overdoing it a bit at lunch, hanging out with the Ukrainians on the loading dock too much. They circled each other. He didn’t want to lose her, too. He didn’t want to be truly alone.

  “But when I am connected …”

  “Like now?”

  “Yes.” Step.

  “I want the girl back who ran in here just a minute ago.”

  “It’s me. I am her. I just feel much more sure of myself, much more confident of my choices, of the choices I want to make.”

  “Sounds like brainwashing to me.” Step. “Mannerheim made a good point: How do you have any idea what this AI, if that’s even what’s causing all of this and not some alien race, wants you for?”

  She stopped and studied his face. “Women face this shit every time we show a little confidence, you bastard.” She snorted. “Might as well be 1950.” She walked over to the table and sat down on the top of it.

  “Ask yourself,” he didn’t take the bait, “what does it need you for at all? Not what does Celestine say she’s doing for you. But why does it even need you or Celestine for that matter? You know the old rule of thumb: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been brainwashed by Mannerheim.”

  “Bullshit. If a story is too pat, too convenient, then it is probably not what it seems. Your daddy must have told you this one,” now it was his turn to step at her, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.”

  “Ha!”

  That confidence again. It was different, almost scary.

  “What makes you think Mannerheim is not completely full of shit? I may not have all the details, but my story comes from reporting and his comes from pure conjecture. Anyway, you already have nanites in you. Everyone does. They are just the AI’s version of them. You piss off The AI or threaten any of its projects and it will kill you.”

  “Well now.” He stepped closer to her again. She looked up. “This is going from bad to worse. That sure sounds like a threat.”

  “Why don’t you just take your dick out and wave it around.”

  “Ha!” There she was again. “Maybe I should. You’ve certainly got yours out.” He moved to a chair on her right and sat, tired and, yes, a little light, running on fumes and needing another drink.

  She moved to the other chair and folded her hands on the table top.

  “I’m just letting you know what I know. Just letting you know the fac
ts. You’ll just have to make up your own mind.” She leaned back. Blank stare. “I hope you will join us before your body gives out.”

  She pushed herself up, stood over him for a moment too long, like deciding something about him, and then walked away.

  Fuck her, he thought.

  VI

  At the base of the Space Needle, just as Natalie slid through the door to the stairwell, she heard more than felt a sharp blow to the side of her head. A sa-Ping! sound with a flash of lightening. She tumbled out of the doorway, her mind blinking on and off, but reflexes got her back to her feet before the young man could raise the night stick and swing it again. As his face scrunched and he grunted in the effort to smash her head with a mighty downswing, her mind flashed on the cut on her knuckles and its healing. On her way to her feet, she put her arm up to take the blow on her forearm and reached for his other hand. When she touched him, his body poofed in to a dust cloud. She felt tremendous relief at the collapse of her attacker, but before she could understand that she was responsible, and what that might mean, she heard screams and then saw a pack of young men from the suburb gangs running through the park with a pod of captured women at the center of their hunting pack. Feeling a disgust so physical, she screamed. She attacked. Hands out like talons, she plowed into the three men nearest her. They poofed out of existence. She slashed with her fingers and bared her teeth as she clawed her way through the men. The captured women were silent, standing blank-faced staring at her, hands bound before them. When none of the gang remained. Natalie examined her hands, turning them over, but they showed nothing more than pink skin and black nail polish.

  “Is this real?” One of the captured women asked.

  “I don’t know,” Natalie said.

  “Can you untie us?” Another woman asked.

  “There you go.”

  The plastic ties holding their wrists together crumbled. At least half of the roughly dozen women broke and ran. The five remaining looked to Natalie.

  “I’m going to Key Arena,” Natalie said, “and getting the hell out of here.” She turned back to the Space Needle base. It occurred to her that a marauding herd of assholes could get up to Adam, kill him and take all his stuff. At the metal door, she pushed hard against it and thought about the metal around the edges fusing. The rim glowed red for a moment, smoke curled off, and she let go. As she strode toward Key Arena, she said bitterly to herself, What was so great about this world anyway? The few rich and powerful had lives that seemed alright but the rest of us are overworked if we can find work, abused and subjugated by anyone with the money to buy our abuse and subjugation, billions don’t have enough to eat and millions starve to death every year? Their personal experiences don’t matter? A couple million have it good so that means the experience of life on Earth was automatically better than the techno dream world promised? Why shouldn’t everyone take this chance? She cut the line at Key Arena by stepping up to one of the blank walls of the building and melted her way in.

  “Upload my ass,” she said to one channeler bringing her orb out of a side room.

  The young man held the orb out to her, “upload your own ass.”

  She took the orb and concentrated on diving through it into …

  Her first impression upon passing through was that she’d simply jumped instantly to her neighborhood in Lower Queen Anne. She seemed to be a point of view simply floating along, no weight, no sound and no specific place that her mind inhabited, no specific place her vision came from. Then the flat light and oddly gleaming buildings before her settled into place; the pavement grew hard under her feet, the air filled in, she felt weight growing in her body, her legs strengthening; she shifted her weight from one leg to the other to calibrate her sense of strength. She ran fingers through her hair and over her face. Her vision localized and her thoughts centered in the perceptual epicenter of her head. She took a step and found herself outside the front door of her apartment building among people she recognized.

  Perran and Marsel Martin stood in front of her, black hair and black clothes, smiling.

  “Well, you made it after all,” Marsel said, in a tone that said she knew she would come around to it.

  She spoke in plain ol’ American, Natalie realized. No accent. “After all what?” Natalie said, still angry that they had spied on her and manipulated her.

  “Oh you know,” Perran said. “Now come up stairs. We want to show you something.”

  “A teleporter.”

  “No,” Perran said. “But, we can make one if you’d like.” He opened the door to the building’s central staircase. “In the meantime …” he made a low waving gesture to usher her inside.

  When she opened the door to her apartment, she saw, well, mostly nothing. Just the patch of her kitchen and a bit of carpeting that took the shape of the door. It was the same as a patch of light or the view from the couple’s apartment window.

  “All you have to do is stand here looking long enough and the simulation program, or whatever you want to call it, will begin to fill in the blank spaces,” Perran said. “Eventually, it will have combed your memories for every detail from every angle you ever saw it and replicate that.”

  “But why would I want to do that,” Natalie said accusingly. “Why not live in an apartment with a view?”

  “Simple!” Marsel said. “Because you don’t have a memory of any other living space, unless you want to move into a simulation of the house you grew up in? Right. Eventually, we will all be able to make simulations from scratch, but for now we have to live with what the simulation program makes of the world from our memories.”

  “Hey,” Perran said. “Come up to the pool deck. Absel has figured out how to paste one memory into another. Come.”

  “The pool deck?” Natalie gave him a look of incredulity.

  “I know! Come on!”

  Exiting the stairwell door at the top of the steps, she recognized the layout, plants and barbecue stations of the roof-top deck. She followed Perran around a bush and there was a kidney shaped pool just hanging kind of midair, sort of in everything and yet its own thing too.

  “Wow,” Marsel said.

  “No kidding,” Natalie agreed. “Where is this Absel? I’d love to interview him.”

  Marsel stepped to the edge of the pool, as if stepping into a two-dimensional plain. Natalie squinted. She stepped forward and put her foot against the edge of the pool, not on it or above it just sort of at it. The point of view expanded into three-dimensions. She looked into the water and saw a bronzed figure sitting crosslegged at the bottom of the pool.

  “He’s been down there for a day and a half so far.” Perran said. “No telling when he’s coming up. I guess you could go down there, but …”

  “Yeah, like I would know how to talk under water.”

  “Yeah,” Perran nodded.

  “But if we are each a computer simulation, then why are there any limits at all?”

  “The construct,” began Marsel, looking down into the water (wistfully, Natalie thought), “has built-in dampeners. Not hard limits, but biases toward what we knew as reality in the old world. Otherwise, we’d just go insane. Here in the new world, the sky is the limit if you can build up the mental balance it takes to get there.”

  “So this,” Natalie raised her hands and looked around, “is what Celestine has been talking about?”

  “Yes,” Perran and Marsel answered.

  “Go ahead, dear,” Perran said. “I bet Absel will be coming up soon to flex his imagination for you.”

  “Some things apparently will never change,” Marsel said and rolled her eyes away from Perran. “She started it with her own memories, and we’ve all been adding to it as we arrive, like you will do in your apartment.”

  Bossy, Natalie thought. Then an insight popped open. She snapped her fingers. “So, she must have a replica of The AI or could make one from before all of this happened?”

  “Yeah, but we couldn’t learn enough to change anything.”r />
  “Why not? Maybe we she should try it. It might corrupt The AI or …”

  “… bind it up in a time paradox.”

  Natalie spun around and was face to face with Celestine, or face to neck. She quickly grabbed Celestine’s wrist and thought hard about her going poof.

  “That won’t work here,” Celestine said. “Besides,” she moved her hand out of Natalies grasp as if it had been an illusion, “you mistakenly mistrust me.”

  “Oh, really.” Natalie drew her notebook like a knife, pen like a gun. She clicked it. “So, how did I get here? Apparently my simulated self was walking around here like a zombie while I was in the real world yo-yoing between the real and this.” She pointed the pen’s end at Celestine. “You said I would not be uploaded without consent.”

  Celestine smiled at her. Materialized a chair and sat, legs crossing under her flowing dress. “And.”

  “And you lied. I did not consent.” Her voice tentative, unable to reach strident, because she suspected Celestine had something up her sleeve.

  “Explain, Natalie,” she smoothed the flower-pattern fabric over her legs, “how did you get here? While you think about that, let me ask Perran the same question.”

  “Marsel and I went to Memorial Stadium, stood in line forever …”

  “Yes. Yes. Perran. And then what happened?”

  “We sat in chairs and had our brains and other sensory information recorded and printed into a form here, like a 3-D printer out there.”

  “What happened to your bodies out there?”

  “We directed that they be broken down into their minerals.”

  Natalie took notes on the notebook, which while looking like a regular reporter notebook with pages of blank sheets didn’t use paper. She wrote on pages and flipped them up, but the number of pages below the one she wrote on didn’t change thickness nor did the spent pages accumulate on the other side. It was like a notebook fantasy come true.

  “Now, Natalie,” Celestine started.