In his haste Rory quickly transformed the library into a mess of half-truths and financial alchemy strewn in every corner. But still, everything he found was industry standard and totally unrelated to infection. Tapping his fingers on his knee, he turned to the gig files on his home machine and began loading them in, at first autoscanning for key phrases, but soon after this yielded no results Rory skimmed them himself, seeking out signatures instead of names. Perhaps what had been endorsed would be more telling than what was assigned. The members of research and development were a proud group, frequently arrogant, but smart—only a few would be remiss enough to put their signatures on files that might come back to haunt them. He would start by trying to cull them first.
But when he finally found the link he’d been searching for—a battery of diagnostic test results that clearly showed the same contagion that would come to be called the Crumble—the e-signature wasn’t of the supervising head, but the last person who had opened the file. The name was foreign to him, and he could find no record of it anywhere in the McClaren files, a pirate’s name of Bly—someone who’d never worked for McClaren as far as he could tell, but had stumbled on the file, it seemed, by mistake, searching for information on ways to amplify shared reals.
Rory sat with one hand covering his mouth, two fingers trembling against his lips. His gaze sank from the screen down to his lap. McClaren Industries had known there was a connection between the Crumble and their products. He needed to know more.
Pulling his chair closer to the reader, Rory began to click and slide his way further into the company’s secrets.
There were too many products launched and shelved as a result of the conference to track down, but he did find one singularity: Peter Warrell. Buried deep in encryption and biometrics keys only a McClaren could possess, he found the files he’d been searching half the night to find. They were compressed together in a locked .axe file piggybacked one onto the other. They should have been deleted but the bin had been corrupted and so there they all sat in a tiny external drive, plain as a narrative.
Peter Warrel had been the lead bioengineer on Series 3 of the bridging software between The Last Word and VR applications, a key shareholder in the first series of virtu. He was the main designer of the discontinued Series 3. Digesting this information, Rory thought of the antique Series 3 rig he kept in a case in the living room. It had been discontinued after a single sales season. Apparently it had not been discontinued quickly enough.
“Not before it spread—” Rory’s words caught in his throat as the next file opened. According to the files glowing in front of him, Contagion 142 had not been spread in the rigs. It was a byproduct of them.
McClaren Industries had caused the epidemic that annihilated his family and a sizable portion of the population those many years ago.
For several seconds, there was just silence, a stupefied paralysis that slowly worked its way out from the center of him. As it did every muscle in Rory’s body contracted, until all of him clenched. When there was nothing left to squeeze, he shook. His eyes filled with tears that would not fall and a high, hurt sound pulled itself out of his chest, slowly, painfully. Alone at the top of the city, Rory keened.
14
In Anna’s dream, Seife smiled at her from the bank of the River Ruelle. Mist hung over the water and as she walked closer to Seife, the mist grew denser, turned gray. It started to gather behind her and when she turned—
Smoke filled Anna’s nostrils as she struggled to take a breath, and coughed herself awake. She bolted up in bed. A strange noise filled the room and it took her a moment to recognize the until-now unheard squawks of the cygnets from the giene spa. But there was more noise. She separated the swans’ voices from the din of wood creaking and burning, bricks popping. The orange glow of fire lit up the space under the front door. No alarms sounded.
She grabbed her bag from the floor, stuffed a few soft items inside and rushed to the giene spa. Inside, the swans flapped their tiny wings uselessly and squawked. Anna scooped them out of the tub, along with the bags of damselflies she’d brought up that morning and placed them all gently in her bag. The egg, still wrapped in old t-shirts, went in next to them.
Her wall of work faced her and for a moment Anna stood frozen. All of her drawings would burn. Out in the hallway something came loose from its moorings and fell to the floor, perhaps through it from the groaning and crash that followed. She grabbed the tiny portrait of her mother she’d made the summer of virtuoso indoctrination, and left the giene spa.
Outside her front door, smoke filled the hallway. She didn’t have to open the door to see the fumes crawling in from under. She pushed the living room window open and stepped outside. A second later she’d carefully tightened the straps on the bag and was down the fire escape ladder to chart a new course, this time without the comforting voices of her past, but perhaps with something better. After all, this was only the second unlucky thing to happen to her since the cygnets had come and even magic couldn’t stop a fire once ignited.
15
The small dome of Post One rose above the surrounding trees, a moonlit mound beckoning from the shadows. The night sky, a crisp and deep indigo, stretched out in the rarefied air above the building, the last fresh air before the silent, invisible threat of the fence. If not for the mounds of birds on the other side of the barrier it would be impossible to know the fence stood just a few hundred meters away.
Eugenio and Lucine approached from the northwest, careful to skirt the tree line before they moved into the open. On the way, Lucine had explained to him how the fence operated.
The fence worked as a two-stage system. A pair of invisible shells fifty meters apart surrounded the city. If one could see them from above, they would form a concentric circle. Lucine had paused here and looked at him significantly. The larger outside perimeter identified what passed through it. When it detected a bird that message was sent to the second barrier which then electrified to kill.
In the first few years of the barrier there had been two major problems. At first, the outer barrier malfunctioned. It began targeting not only avian DNA, but all uncategorized small endothermic animal DNA. This resulted in the near-eradication of two apparently new subspecies of jungle mouse, and had been repaired over a period of months. In the second incident, the inner barrier had been set at a lower stun-level voltage and dazed birds came careening into the city in droves. Reports of mobbing and erratic behavior abounded. Both of these incidents happened in the first two years of operation. Leiodare recovered and improved their systems to the nearly self-maintaining fence in use today.
“So,” she had explained, “there’s only one way to disable it.”
“What’s that?” he had asked.
“Do exactly as I say.”
As they approached the exterior of the building, Eugenio planned on doing exactly that.
The post seemed empty, but perhaps it was better staffed than the rest of the city. Eugenio played lookout while Lucine darted over to the windows. She looked in and motioned to him. Quietly, they climbed the stairs up to the office. Still, Eugenio’s footsteps echoed on the metal and he winced, almost expecting to see someone to come out and investigate. Looking in the slitted window in the door, he saw an empty control panel and lit room; no one was inside it. Eugenio listened for anyone who might be just out of view. The wind over the treetops and the distant crackle of a fire somewhere reached him, but nothing else. Satisfied that they were alone, Lucine crossed to the entrance and stepped into the building.
Stone covered the doorway arches and floors. Plexi and high-sheen plastics covered every other surface for a disjointed effect. A bank of monitors and a sleek control panel were situated on Lucine’s left. She walked to the seat in front of the panel, took out her tools, and went to work on the panel. Eugenio joined her there.
Lucine removed the facing and looked down at a circuit grid lit up yellow and blue.. She took out the makeshift soldering pencil in the smal
l recess of her bag and began burning out lights in the grid; sharp fumes floated up .
“Can I help?” Eugenio asked.
She looked over at him, and put down the soldering pencil.
“Yes,” Lucine answered, pulling a pair of cutters from her bag and handing them to him.
“See that relay there?” She pointed inside the panel, but Eugenio couldn’t see much difference among the myriad wires and plastene chips.
“Which one?” he asked.
“That one there.” She placed her finger near a blue wire curled around a yellow one.
“Yes.”
“You’ll need to cut it, remove it from this panel and solder it to the negative here in B Panel.” She gestured to the panel below the counter. “I’ll disconnect the negative, but in the meantime just cut the wire and don’t let it touch the rest of the panel.”
Lucine disappeared under the panel. Eugenio heard the noise of tools going to work underneath him. He jimmied the cutters into position and snapped through the wires. The lights in the room flickered.
“Eu?” Lucine asked.
Suppressing a curse, he answered.
“I cut the yellow too,” he said.
“It’s fine, just hold it free of—”
Wires in hand, Eugenio leaned down to listen. Blue wire met diode and the lights went out.
“Shit. I shorted the room,” Eugenio said.
A pool of bright yellow light clicked on under the panel.
Lucine popped out from underneath. She held the torch in her hand.
“We’ll fix it,” she said calmly.
“I shorted the lights out in the whole post, didn’t I?” Eugenio asked.
“The city, Eu,” she answered.
He felt suddenly sick. Eugenio’s handheld sounded.
“It can be fixed,” Lucine said. “Answer it.”
The phone kept ringing. “Eu,” she said.
Eugenio clicked the “Accept” button and held the handheld to his ear.
“Dr. Oliveira.” He didn’t recognize the voice on the other end. “This is Rory McClaren. I’ve something for you. Come to The Spires. I have the tech you’re searching for, the old virtu tech that created the Crumble.”
The tourists wearing skimpy costumes and smeared face paint. Some of them still had their virtu rigs on.
“I’m on my way,” Eugenio said, and hung up. He paused, trying to fully comprehend what Mr. McClaren had said. The old virtu tech that created the Crumble. Not spread the Crumble—created it.
“I have to go,” Eugenio said. “McClaren called. Something unbelievable has happened.” Eugenio saw the concern on Lucine’s face and chose his words carefully.
“I’ll be fine, Lucine. I’ll meet you back as soon as I can.”
She looked at him steadily, her lips slightly pursed.
“OK, Eu. You come back,” she said.
Eugenio turned to leave.
“Eu?”
“Yes?” he asked turning back to Lucine from the doorway.
“You come back. OK?” she said. Her eyes amber in the torch’s beam, her hands capable and ready to right so many years of wrong, Lucine could not have been more powerful or compelling. And still, she thought of him. Eugenio smiled despite himself.
“Of course,” he said.
Outside, nearly all of Leiodare was now invisible in the darkness. Only The Spires remained alight. Wind beat near Eugenio and he jerked his gaze up, sure a black bird wing had passed though he couldn’t see it. Instead of dark flying shadows his gaze met another sight rarely seen: endless points of scintillating light more lovely than any tower. Eugenio walked toward the stars hanging over the darkened city.
As he neared the edge of The Dire, strange outlines began to glimmer in the darkness. The outlines fit the forms of people. Limbs and heads were clearly demarcated even in the darkness. They moved as people did, each at their own pace, on their own route. Eugenio spied a half-dozen more smokey gray outlines on the next block, and more toward the edge of the tree line, as well as the intimation of more in all directions. He wondered how many were people, and how many spirits, though it mattered little now.
“Soon now, you’ll all be free,” he whispered as he took his handheld out of his pocket and recorded the images for his sister. “Lucine will make sure of that.”
Tingling with anticipation and the charge of what he had seen, Eugenio headed off toward the glow of The Spires.
16
Morning found Rory, head in his hands, quiet and grim as the truth he had discovered. The Series 3 virtu rig rested at his feet where he had let it slip from his hands. He’d slept in the chair for a few hours, but he was again trying to understand how he and his family had let it happen.
At the time, the family had been told the tech was unreliable and that that was the main reason McClaren Industries decided to go nano, instead of bio, with future virtu rigs and reals. They’d thought no more of it than any other update at the quarterly board meetings.
They’d thought nothing of it and look what it had done to them.
He felt devoid of all emotion, empty. His body however was not quite so. Rory stood and slowly made his way to the giene spa to relieve himself. As he left the giene spa he glanced outside and stopped in mid-stride. The sight outside drew him to the plexi. From where he stood, his forehead pressed up against the plexi, he saw the streets emptying.
Emptying.
He took a deep breath as he began to rouse. Surely, they would soon start to come back. There had been quasi-evacuations before—tropical storms, infrequent hurricanes, once even a particularly productive bee year, but the people of Leiodare had always returned. Each time, they dashed his hopes of going outside into blessedly empty streets, of going home. In fact, they never really left, only clogged up the trains, the roadways, and underground giene stations. In less time than it took for Rory to enjoy a virtu he’d look back outside and see people moving back into the city, his hopes dimming with each new person on the street. And it couldn’t be nearly as many people leaving as it seemed to be. Rory sighed and turned back to the library, glanced at the clock, and wondered how much longer it would take Oliveira to arrive. He switched on an archival performance of Annie Lennox, contemplated opening a bottle of wine.
After three glasses of vintage cabernet and a virtual kayaking trip from Chaiwan’s northeast shore to Okinawa, Rory took a look outside. The city must have commandeered the floating billboards—instead of innocuous ads for toothpaste and rejuvenation treatments, now emergency messages scrolled down the screen just above the increasingly empty streets. If they cleared out more he would continue considering. The idea of the big emptiness began to make its way out of his heart and into his bones; soon it would want to tweak his muscles into action.
Rory watched for twenty more minutes and counted less people still. He called Oliveira to track his progress—closer but not close enough. Drinking the last of the cabernet he decided to count people like thunder. Each time a person crossed from the northeast corner of Martin and Jackson he would count off the seconds until the next crossing. Once he hit fifteen seconds, he went to retrieve his jacket and emergence kit from its home in the armoire. He removed the new hearing aids and replaced the old ones he was wearing. Next, Rory packed the antique virtu rig and files of evidence in a case, placing it all on the kitchen counter with a note for Oliveira.
Rory walked the perimeter of the room. Nose centimeters from the glass, he surveyed the scene below, the newly emerged patches of sidewalk, the things that people left behind in their haste—errant clothing, indistinct black dots that Rory took to be handhelds or some other digi flotsam. Though he tried his best to dispel the notion with waiting and further tests, there was still no surge of return. The suffocating bodies did not fill the streets.
Still it could happen. He counted twenty seconds on three corners and decided on a route. Out of habit, Rory grabbed his virtu rig. Seeing it in his hand though he slammed it down in disgust; then
, after a few anguished seconds, picked it back up. Rory fiddled with the controls, consciously stopped his hand from switching up and instead went sideways. “Record,” as foreign as Cantonese, glowed in the lower left-hand corner. He stood at the plexi between him and the anteroom. This time, his hand didn’t hesitate at the lock, as he had twenty-five years ago. Rory took one last reassuring glance at the empty streets and the items he’d left for Dr. Oliveira, entered the unlock code and stepped into the private elevator that would take him away.
On his way down the elevator shaft, smooth and soft as a raindrop’s trip to the ground, Rory bit back his anxiety, counting backwards in his head and stopped his hand from reaching up and punching the button that would take him back upstairs. Even the weight of the emergence kit in his hand didn’t calm him. The elevator landed softly at the bottom while he tried to remember enough Italian to count back in that language. The doors slid back and opened onto the lobby.
Nothing was as he remembered. Not that he had suspected it. Somehow he’d forgotten the lobby’s very existence. Upstairs, he had thought of the world outside the window and his rooms, but rarely of the people in that very building and never of its communal spaces. Now as he stood at the open doors looking out, Rory saw, just for a flash, what the lobby had once looked like by seeing all it was not: It was no longer burgundy. The plushness of the couches, the deep textured curtains and gold vases in the corners had been replaced by sunlight pouring in everywhere from the two-story-tall plexi walls. A warm wooden floor glowed in the light. And above it, polished basketball-size spheres like molten steel hovered in the air. All of it came across as retro as anything Rory could remember from his childhood.
Across the lobby, a well-dressed middle-aged man stood behind the counter, staring out on the street with his back to Rory. A doorwoman stood at her station near the door; she turned her head slightly and watched Rory approach. The man, ostensibly the concierge, watched the building across the street, not noticing him. At the station, Rory pulled a small package out of his pants pocket and placed it on the corner of the podium the doorwoman stood behind.
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