“Did you know The Twins are holding Marsel and Perran?”
Josh turned his attention to Robert. “No.”
“Any idea how?” Robert met Josh’s eyes, still a bit vague.
“Marsel went to their lair to get Perran out. A Bug helped her get in. I can’t understand how they could have captured her with that Bug helping.”
Robert stood. “Do you know who the Bug was?”
“Runs around as a kid in a rabbit costume.”
“Interesting.” Robert took his notebook and pen out and made a show of writing down his description. He would not share the kid’s name or that she had contacted him. He stuck his tools back in the pocket. “Well, I better get this written up. Can we meet up later or tomorrow for a followup interview?” He extended his hand.
“I guess. I don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re setting up an enforcement of norms agency, and now that might be priority one.” Josh took Robert’s hand and gave it a shake. “But give me a ping, and we can meet somewhere.” He sidestepped out from in front of his seat.
Robert touched his shoulder. “Oh, hey. Here’s my number. If Celestine shows up, give me a call?”
“That will depend on her.”
“Understood.” Robert followed him into the aisle. “Talk to you tomorrow.” Robert turned up the aisle as Josh stepped toward the center of the auditorium. He spun back around, “Oh and I’d like to do a story about this Norms Agency.”
Josh waved over his shoulder in response.
Funny Alexandrine didn’t mention how The Twins got through her to nab Marsel. He took out his phone and texted the kid’s number: “Let’s meet. Same place. Soon as you can.” Robert sent himself to the sidewalk in front of the concert hall in Barcelona.
XIX
Ai rolled two office chairs toward Natalie, spun one at her and sat in the other.
“In Angola, we were combating the outbreak of a new pathogen spread by mosquitos at first and then human-to-human contact and then the terrifying moment we saw it go airborne. The disease, undoubtedly a virus, we couldn’t find it. It behaved like Ebola, but faster and more brutal. The last 24-hours of a patient’s life was truly horrific. Just screaming and blood and shit everywhere. Thrashing and crying. We started putting them to death with lethal injections. We had plenty of painkiller, because we bought it off the blackmarket. It was a no-holds-barred effort.
“The population had already gathered into huge refugee camps and into city ghettos to escape the unrelenting heat (60 Celsius), lack of water, starvation. They swarmed in out of the surrounding plains and mountainous rural areas so fast. We knew climate change would force migrations, but we all underestimated just how fast those rural people would see the writing on the wall.
“By the time we got up and running, thousands had already died, millions were exposed. It had not been reported anywhere else in the world at that point, but that was because it caused illness and death so fast that those likely to carry it abroad fell deathly ill before they got on their airplanes. Some did get on but got so sick on the flight that the plane was quarantined wherever it landed. But it was going to get through. Someone was going to get on a flight and get off before showing symptoms and then that would be that. We were looking for a treatment frantically. The news of our efforts were suppressed online. The disease mutated too fast for us to find anything that would kill it let alone something we could put in a person. When news did get out locally through the gossip chain that we were there, we started getting swamped with very tenacious visitors. Then the rumor started that we had a cure but were sending it overseas to Europe and America first, we were overrun and had to make a run for it with whatever we could carry. One of our doctors is a history buff and had read about a military research lab set up during World War Two on a nearby island that would be easier to defend from desperate hordes, we landed our helicopters here and got to work.
“I tell you all of this, because around that time Celestine came through Luanda, the capital of Angola. I don’t know how she got into the country. We were successful in shutting down air travel from Western countries into and out of Luanda, though other airports were left unrestricted. Those governments said travel was restricted because of ‘civil war activities.’ I mean, they thought this thing was going to stay in the city. They were stupid. The city government backed by the military had shut down Clan gatherings in the city because of the disease. Of course, they thought the gatherings were a religious event, they were allowed to assume Clans were a Catholic group, and had let them alone for some time.
“We met with Celestine because of her connection with the population. We thought she could help us get the word out about how to protect oneself from the emerging disease. She told us not to worry about the disease that something else was coming that would make it unimportant. My daughter wanted to see this celebrity from America, so I brought her to the meeting. A week later, the disease has tripled in infection rates and then the next thing we know The Transition comes and wipes out the upper crust of Angola and chaos takes over. Same story as everywhere else: Paramilitary groups fight until their guns don’t work et cetera. Same story. A few days later and Celestine’s head is floating above upload zones, and my girl here comes and tells me that she’s been over there and to check out all the neat new tricks she can do. Alex …”
“Mom.”
“Sorry. Alexandrine …” a look of patient annoyance “… on the way back here from town, she jumps out from behind our vehicles and attacks a group of local militants, causing them to kind of explode into dust. The island’s Bios who didn’t want to upload had taken to the hills and caverns. This bunker became our nanite lab, and we went back to work just as we did in Angola. We assumed Celestine had caused the rise of the AI or was in league with it. Alex … Alexandrine tracked her down in The Simulation and attacked her, which I forbade her from doing, and was defeated. Not harmed, just blocked from getting near her."
“Been there.” Natalie shook her head.
“That’s when The Twins became interested in her and approached her. She brought them here and we’ve been working together since. So, yeah, we’re working with them but only so far as they give us computing time in the cloud, The Mind Hive. Meanwhile, Alexandrine’s abilities have kept us safe. I don’t know how long it can last with the nanites mutating so fast and the AI-Personas gathering dead Bios. I just think we’re all running out of time. How long can a Sim stay coherent without a biological body. I mean, I know the AI is a clever son of a bitch, but I know people too and people are not just sparks in a machine. We are the body, all its fluids and skin cells as much as its neurons. I think we’re in even more trouble than simply freezing to death down here and coming unglued up there. We have to find a way out of this mess. Somehow.
Our knack for survival has to kick in and guide us to our own future. Our own destiny.
“So what do you say? Will you help us?”
“That was your sales pitch?” Natalie shrugged. “What can I do? I’ll tell you my story. I can write a story about you being here, but what do you need? Just more computing time or some expertise you don’t have?”
“Let’s start with your story and see where we end up.”
“Not that I’m not interested.” Alexandrine swiveled her chair seat and pushed off from the counter, rolling by Natalie and her mother. “But I see A Batt is charged and I just got a text from Robert. I’ll go get him, though I haven’t tried carrying a Sim signal in here.” She caught her weight on her feet as the chair slowed. One of the boxes they’d arrived in held a silvery charge, the little machines vibrating. She jumped into it and sank over her head.
“She’s quite the adventurer.”
“She’s a little devil is what she is, but back to you.”
“Okay. So, I was working on a story for the Seattle Daily-Record about Mannerheim. That computer scientist whose computer Celestine hijacked? Right. At the time, we knew nothing about what Celestine was up to. I just thou
ght I would write a story about this rich, famous techie asshole going to parties and groping girls. For some reason, maybe they knew how close The Transition was or the Feds might have been closing in on them, but they let me in a Clan meeting that first night. I can tell you … Have you been to one?”
“No.”
“Just as well since your daughter apparently has been.”
“Let’s just let that go. I find now that the less I know about Alexandrine’s choices the more likely I am to keep the peace with my daughter. So, go on … passed those details if you can.” She smiled without showing teeth.
“Right. Long story short, I probably agreed to too much in order to stay close to her to get the story. I was naive in ways that my editor would now laugh at me for admitting to. But, I was with her and The Twins when The Transition started. She, Celestine, decided that my agreement to stick with her was an agreement to be dosed with her replicating nanites. She sort of sprayed them on me during an interview. Then Josh … you know, the government cyber spy I wrote about? Right. So. Anyway, he had some like Seal Team Six shit going on and set off an explosion that deafened me and then dragged me out of there. We made it to Seattle just in time for the same shit you went through. During all of that we set up shop in the Space Needle with my editor. Yes. Dear old Adam. I love that guy. What an asshole. I transitioned. Josh and Robert uploaded and here we are.”
“You are the one.” Ai set her head back and gave it a shake of awe and disbelief.
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“The first one. The flash grenade, I think you called it in your stories, interrupted Celestine’s effort to complete the programming of her versions of the nanites and they mutated to create Bugs. I’ll be damned. The new bugs must have spread fast to get to my kid halfway around the world. But! But. I don’t think you are the key. I remember what you wrote about Adam. He hasn’t uploaded or been into The Simulation? He’s been hanging out in the Space Needle for years?”
“As far as I know.”
“Get this.” She rocked forward, elbows on knees. “He has the original configuration of nanites, which he got from you before you started jumping around. So, he has not exchanged nanites. He is like an original strain of a virus. We get that, we might just be able to crack the code. Get replicators to make Bugs again.”
“That is too fucking funny.”
XX
But after he’d looked at it a bit longer, Adam reconsidered his first conclusion. Was it a spaceship? Maybe it was a cruise ship. But all the seas were frozen, so that would be a bad investment. The oblong, kidney-bean-shaped thing floated free from the glittering mass of the cocoon surrounding it, hanging perfectly in the center of the cavern. The ship, from his vantage, appeared to be the size of one of those cruise ships that floated into Seattle night and day, flooding the streets with tourists. The ship, he noted mentally, was the shape of a skyscraper laid on its side. He examined the flowing currents of nanites thrumming across the smooth, featureless surface, except for small cones for directional firing of whatever propellant the ship expelled. So, at least that section appeared to be the spaceship part. The rest of it moved and shimmied like water in zero gravity, so perhaps that too was part of the ship? Not like he’d ever worked on a spaceship, though just before The Crash he did write about a few liftoffs from the rural campus of a mega-rich, old-school entrepreneur.
No factory-type noises that he could hear above the gale thrashing the world at the mouth of the cave. He attempted to make an alcoholic beverage but the faux liquid boiled off, which was weird. The physics of the cave did not appear to mirror the physics of the Real World. He tried to take a breath, but couldn’t open his lungs, couldn’t draw in air. Vacuum? With an open cave? He manipulated his mouth to gather spit, but couldn’t. Dry as a bone. A bolt of lightning shot from the walls and ceiling of the cave and crawled along the hull of the ship. The lightning storms came and went with a deep baritone buzz. He did not have an experience of a change in environment. It all looked normal, so maybe his body, such as it was, didn’t expect the change either and so didn’t experience it until he began testing it. He felt a swooning disorientation. A hum in his ears, like his tinnitus roaring through a jet engine. Pain inflamed his hands. They vibrated. Blurred. He couldn’t focus his eyes. Fingers of the plasma lightning crawled up and down his body and legs as orange neon in a mist. Maybe I’m having a heart attack. A jolt rocked the floor. He heard pounding. Yeah, a heart attack. I didn’t …
Something gripped his shoulder and dragged him. It looked like the form of the Iron Giant cartoon character with its two glowing yellow eyes. It dragged him across the smooth floor of the spaceship forge. As it pulled him farther up the cave tunnel, his pain subsided and his vision cleared. The giant dropped Adam’s shoulder. He rolled onto his back and collected himself, all the while pondering this monstrosity looming over him. It looked down at him, head at an angle on its stalk, a lilting seed pod above thick wide shoulders. An unclear number of appendages. The giant filled the cave. Its head touched the ceiling, though it bent at the waist. Adam thought of a line in one of his favorite Old World movies: “Are you German?” He lifted himself onto his elbows, but didn’t get up. If this thing is a zombie like Mannerheim was or like the other things roaming around the cave entrance, circling around the vast dish of the collector, well what could it have mutated from? A giant ego?
The machine came alive, lowered itself into a kneeling position, straightening its neck. It kept eyes or orbs pointed at him. It shook its head from side to side and made the same sound as the robot in the movie: Brang-brong.
“Uh. So. You from around here then?”
Brang-brong.
“Cat got your tongue?”
It shrugged. The big robot-like machine settle back onto several appendages, lifted its chest, which began unfolding. The light in the robot’s eyes dimmed and at the same time, deep in the cavity of its chest, a holographic image began to form, a glow and then a person. With a big afro.
“Celestine? Are you shitting me?”
The image of Celestine flickered. “Hello. Adam.”
They looked at each other silent for a moment. Celestine flickering into sharper focus and a more solid image.
“How? What?” He scooted his back to the cave wall. Folded hands in his lap. “What brings you around? Not that I mind. I think it was trying to absorb me or something. Got too close?”
“Hello Adam.” The image flickered between Celestine standing and sitting. “I’m …”
“Struggling.”
“… to get a handle on this machine. I’m new to it. Or, it’s new to me.” Flicker.
“Well. Take a minute. I’m feeling a little frazzled myself.”
Celestine’s holographic image grew larger by a few inches, more distinct. “I think I’ve got it.” Her voice carried a tone of marvel. “I …”
“You’ve got a new toy. Where did it come from?”
“From outer space.”
“Aliens?” His head the angle of disbelief.
“No. I. It’s. Well.”
“Hard to explain?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a kind of Bug Person?”
“Unclear.” Several images reminiscent of holographic computer screens floated in front of her. She swept them away. “Best I can figure is that I’m embodied in this robot. It can do everything a Bug can do, but I’m inside of it like I’m the person in Descartes’ theater of the mind. Ah ha! Give me just one more second.”
“I’ve got all millennium.”
The small Celestine, dressed in trademark copper-woven leather vest, white shirt and pants, floated out from the center of the machine’s chest cavity. She grew to her full size, holographic feet on the ground. “That’s better! You’re the first person to witness this. The robot raised an appendage with a hand at its end. Closed fingers and popped a thumbs up.
“Astounding.”
“Oh, be quiet. You don’t even know what you’
re looking at.”
“A robot?”
“An avatar for Real Earth. I just don’t know if I can leave it or what I can do with it. I’ve been exploring its …”
“Where the hell did you come from?”
The robot fluidly pointed skyward.
“Funny.”
“I came from The Mind Hive, which is being operated in the space platform up there. I think. We were running an experiment just before the last shutdown and there was an explosion and I was kicked out of The Simulation into into I …”
“Outer space?”
“Something like that. I became this thing on the surface of that platform. I could feel sensation. You’re Bug suit glowed down here, giving off an emergency-like beacon, like a scream really.”
“I didn’t scream.”
“Ha! I jumped at the Earth, orbited once and landed just outside the Space Needle. Lucky for you. I think whatever you found would have dissolved you.”
“That’s the feeling I got. But wait a second.” Adam got to his feet and stood before her. He waved a hand through her. “You look solid.”
“Thanks. Let’s go look at what you found.”
“Go ahead. Damn thing almost killed me already. I’m staying right here. But you go right on ahead.”
Celestine flickered out, like a candle flame. The robot’s chest closed. Appendages looped foreword and lifted the big body off the ground. It centipeded into the chamber. Lightning filaments attached to its body. He watched and waited. Hope she knows what she’s doing. He heard a noise behind him, up the cave toward the entrance. Dozens of zombies shuffled toward him. He pushed himself against the wall as they filed by. About fifty of them, all shapes and sizes. They stopped at the mouth of the cavern. Smarter than me evidently. He raised himself up above their heads. Celestine held her own against the lighting. She’d gotten it to focus all its threads on a silver ball at the end of one of her appendages. Another appendage stretched to the spaceship and attached to the fluid bubble. The thread of the connected appendage glowed white. Bits began to pop off and snap into bright specks. The sparks grew to an intensity that reminded Adam of Fourth of July sparklers. Another of Celestine’s robot arms swung up and then down on the sparkler appendage and cut it free. She backed up, holding the lightning ball out in front of her until the plasma bolts returned to the body of the ship. She turned and waded through the zombies back to Adam.
Mind Hive Page 35