by Abhisek Basu
Lewis scrolled through a few pages and then looked up at Josh. “These other people, do you want me to get them?”
“Start with Marcus Adams. Run it through the database and figure out where he is. The others are only useful when we enter the valley.”
“I’ll get right to it,” Lewis said and walked away, closing the door behind him.
“Tell me, do you think you’re doing this against your will, Miss Tessa?” Josh asked, eyeing Miss Tessa as she kept licking his cut. She plopped her tongue back, and said, “No, Mr. Bones,” she said, clearly afraid of defying him.
Josh tapped his cheek again, ordering her to keep licking.
“Would you have dared to lick this wound, a wound that you created, without my explicit order?”
“No, Mr. Bones. I wouldn’t have thought of that in a million years,” Miss Tessa said.
“So, you agree that this- my order- made your life easier, right? You were told what to do, and like you were told- you did,” Josh said.
Miss Tessa, retreating her tongue momentarily, said, “Yes, Mr. Bones.” Then she went back to licking his cut again.
“This is not your fault. The cut, surely is, but your human nature to obey- that isn’t. Humans have always served and assumed a subordinate position when someone superior led the way. That was how the world worked, from cavemen to quantum AI- that was the fact that never changed. That is where my fight begins, Miss Tessa. I’ll change the world, make it a better place and make us all evolve with a certainty that never existed,” he said and smiled at Lewis. “All the people that are volunteering to kill themselves for the Quanti Fuel, do you think they would’ve done it if they weren’t told to? If they weren’t convinced that they’re doing something that will make the world better?”
“No, Mr. Bones.”
“Exactly, Miss Tessa. This will change the world,” he said and looked at her eyes.
“Unfortunately, you won’t be there to see it,” he said, and sighed.
The cut had dried up, and Miss Tessa retreated her tongue. “I understood the risks of participation when I joined the Red Alliance, Mr. Bones. You took me in despite my lack of technical knowledge or any relevant skills. For that, I’ll always be grateful,” she said.
Josh smiled at her and clutched the key hanging from the chain near his chest.
“Me too, Miss Tessa. Me too.”
Chapter 5
“But what now? We need to find that guy, right?”
Natalie wanted to stop and correct her uncle. There was no “We”. She didn’t want her uncle to get dragged into this. But she knew that she had no other choice. Her uncle was one of those people who didn’t leave any task undone- no matter what it might have been. She knew already that telling him to not get into this won’t work.
“Yes, we need to find out where they took him,” Natalie said and glanced at the clock nearby. “Did you get a look at who the people were that arrested him?”
“I didn’t, but I saw a bookie of Jzetri talking to one of the officers. Jzetri has connections with the mob and he might find something. I’m supposed to meet him now. I’ll try asking him,” he said.
“Uncle, wait. You’re gambling again?” she said, raising her eyebrow.
“It’s not gambling if I know who’s winning, kiddo,” he said, smiled and was about to leave the room, when Natalie raised her hand and stopped him.
“Just be careful. I think that the Red Alliance hacktivists are connected with this somehow,” Natalie said.
“Now, you’re just thinking too much into this kiddo. Relax. Get your kit off. If it were any other day, we’d celebrate with a cheat meal. Unless that is still on the cards?” her uncle asked and smiled.
Natalie wanted to say no. She knew she had to be there at Remnate Street at 7 and meet Evan, if he was even there, but the look in her uncle’s eyes made her think twice about that. Back in Tholos, she missed these days. Training, wrestling, going out after a tough win- these were the little things that she looked forward to. Earth didn’t have giant spiders or three-headed snakes, and if it somehow did, she wasn’t looking forward to fighting them soon. Perhaps if she completed the dinner fast, she could still make it in time.
“It is. I’ll get dressed,” Natalie said and loosened her glove.
“Yes!” her uncle said joyously. “I’ll come back in a minute. Dinner’s on me.”
Dinner meant food, something she didn’t have the memory of, anymore. In Tholos, all she did was drink copious amounts of alcohol with Travis. That was the only thing that helped. But the thought of food again, on Earth, after all that time, made her strangely excited.
After dressing up, Natalie took her AR phone out and scrolled through her feed and schedules of the past few weeks. She hoped it would jog her memory, but all it showed were her training schedules which packed most of the time leading up to that day, reminding her that her only life on Earth consisted of fighting and winning wrestling matches.
She spent most of the dinner scrolling through obscure internet forums searching out whatever she could find about the Red Alliance. Her uncle gave her a list of darknet websites to scour, and he carried a VPN device to mask their IP, making sure they wouldn’t be fed curated content. There were far too many conspiracy theories, far too many people pretending to be leaders of the Red Alliance, and far too much noise to keep track of. A large majority of people claimed that they would usher in a new world order, that they would save them from the life imposed on them from capitalist lies, that they would bring peace and justice in a world that lacked both.
There was another hacktivist group called CELIA, a group that still wore Guy Fawkes masks like the original Anonymous group, and members of this group vehemently opposed the Red Alliance. Unfortunately, they had far few supporters but the ones that they did have were the vocal ones. They were criticizing and taking apart the Red Alliance video, claiming that it’s a far bigger threat than anyone realized.
Overall, both online forums seemed like they were filled with a bunch of teenagers searching for something cool to fit into. And yet, somehow they had a legitimate operation which managed to hack into broadcast feeds to send their message. Finally, on their ride back home, Natalie decided to open a toggle stream and search for Ian Floyd. Like she had expected, she found him sitting in his bedroom with a guitar and singing a song to an audience of 33, the red label on the audience counter changing from 32 to 33 as soon as Natalie joined.
“Is this one of those people? The ones you met in that world?” her uncle asked.
“Yeah, this is Ian,” Natalie said.
“The one who went crazy with power and forgot about most of the journey?” her uncle asked.
Natalie looked at her uncle and sighed. “Yes, uncle. You don’t have to put it like that.”
“What? That’s what happened, right?”
“Yes,” Natalie said. She eyed the donate button and decided that it would be a healthy surprise, given that she knew how passionate Ian was about his music. She entered an amount that was a fraction of a fraction of her net worth, knowing that such an amount would change his life. She clicked on ‘Donate’, which prompted her to attach a note for such a generous amount.
“Never stop practicing,” she typed in, and sent. Her uncle watched this entire thing without saying a word. “Sings well, this lad,” he finally said, and as the transaction processed, Natalie saw Ian’s reaction on the video.
“I can’t take this much!” Ian shouted, his expression half of surprise and half of joy. “NatalieW47! Thank you, but this is far too much! Is there any way I can return this? NatalieW47?” he kept shouting, but Natalie didn’t interact with the feed. This was the man who almost would’ve killed her, and yet, he was so pure and innocent before he would’ve been corrupted.
“Can my teams arrange a meeting with them?” Natalie asked, closing down the feed.
“I thought you said they didn’t have their consciousness transferred. They won’t remember you if you meet
them, right?”
Natalie nodded. “I know. It’s still worth a shot. If they remember seeing Evan, I’ll have something to go on.”
“It seems you’ve tracked down one of them. I’ll ask your outreach team to see if they can track down Travis Wilson and Marcus Adams.”
“Not Marcus Adams. Just Travis,” Natalie said.
“Wasn’t Marcus like a good guy at the end?”
“Far from a good guy, but he did try to make amends,” Natalie said, thinking about how he gave her his sword. “But the Marcus that is here on Earth is still the person he was before all that changed.”
Both their AR phones collectively buzzed and a notification popped up right at that moment. Her uncle took his phone out and saw that it was the President holding a press conference. He turned the volume up as Natalie leaned in to see what he was talking about. He was standing in front of a wooden desk with a large white screen behind him on which the American flag kept waving on a loop.
“Today, I’m here to explain a phenomenon that has been largely hidden away from the American public, not because we didn’t want to go public with this sooner, but because its intelligent design forced us to do so. Here are some facts, verified by independent and government agencies, and checked by a team of experts and bots to ascertain its truthfulness,” he said, as the screen behind him changed to show different graphs, all of which were animated to show a red line moving from the top-left corner to the bottom-right representing a significant decline.
“In the last seven years, depression has gone down by 342%. Rates of suicide have gone down by 277%. The average American lifespan increased by 13 years. Rates of high school dropouts have gone down by 533% and the average income of the average American household has gone up by 218%. In the same time frame, rates of domestic violence have gone down by 156%, average productive working hours went up by 34% and the average American now lives a healthier and wealthier lifestyle than they did seven years ago. Such a drastic improvement on all fronts of human life wouldn’t have been possible without a slight nudge in the right direction, and that nudge was provided by a hardworking team of scientists at Quanti Valley. These are the same people that helped with the Asiatic missile crisis, the California hyperloop experiment, and by the time they proposed such a plan, denying them would mean we were denying the greatest country in the world of the life they deserved,” he said as the screen changed to show a blue diagram of a human brain, revolving around in a dimensional plane.
“Seven years ago, during my time, the researchers at Mindhaven suggested this experiment that would revolutionize our world and it did, as we can see from the abundant proof we already have. But along with this came a choice, a bold choice that we had to make. Mindhaven used Quantum Fuel technology, the same technology that they used to create your life-life augmented PAs, to transport a part of our consciousness to a subconscious simulation where it trained them and brought it back that led to an all-round increase in each of our life’s virtues. If the subjects were told of that before the consciousness transfer could take place, that would render the process ineffective, resulting in no improvement. Thus, this was an extremely profitable gamble- one that we made sure would have no negative effects on our population,” he said.
The screen changed back to showing the perpetually waving animated American flag.
“This was a safe measure- randomized control trials were made on unknowing citizens who were monitored based on emergency authorizations, and only when those trials came to show no adverse effects, did we proceed to carry it out on the general public.
My memory of it was wiped and then I too went through the trial and I can attest, as can all of you, of its effectiveness. So, I urge the American people not to panic, self diagnose or do anything that damages our reputation, because right now, we need all the help we can get. We will face a significant backlash from the international powers at large, mainly because immigrants weren’t left out of this wide scale productivity and life enhancement, but even then, we can assure you and everyone else that we have done what we can to ensure that this was safe and secure, and there was no downside. As Dr. Jerry Hofstadter will explain in a minute, think of this as a boon that helped everyone and damaged none. To deprive a nation of this would’ve been a far greater travesty than anything else. This space is now open for questions,” he said and drank a glass of water.
“Mr. President, will you address the rumors saying that the Vice President has been kidnapped and is being held hostage?” a reporter asked from the front. It was an unrelated question that should’ve caught the President off guard, but he didn’t look unnerved. Instead, he looked calm and composed, as if the response was already rehearsed.
“No such thing has happened. Bruce is well and is not being held hostage anywhere. I’ll have to look into it why he hasn’t been showing up at the office, but rest assured, he hasn’t been held hostage,” he said and pointed to a different reporter.
“Thank you, Mr. President. Many people claim that the eight digit code used in the video is the Gold Code, or the launch code of our nuclear arsenal. Can you please address those rumors?”
“They are definitely false, and there is no validity to those claims. There is a reason why we didn’t have any hacktivist groups in America for so long, and one of those reasons is that we have ramped up our security detail. They exist for the same reason that other groundbreaking technologies are popping up now, simply because we have made human life better on all fronts. Nevertheless, the perpetrators behind the Red Alliance will be behind bars soon.”
After a couple of more questions which didn’t address the Mindhaven Project, her uncle closed the feed. It was obvious that the reporters were told not to ask any questions regarding that, so they didn’t have much to ask.
“Well, that was a lot to take in,” he said. The car had stopped outside her home. “This means you’re the only one who remembers it, like that Evan lad said, because you won!”
“Yes,” Natalie said absent-mindedly, thinking about what the President just said.
“Get some rest. I’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said as Natalie stepped out of the car. “And remember, call me if anything else happens.”
“I will,” Natalie said.
The car automatically rolled its windows up, sensing that the conversation was over. It drove her uncle away, and when it did, Natalie pulled her AR phone out and summoned her other car. She looked at her clock and realized that she was already late. The chances of Evan being at Remnate Street were slim to none, given that he could be gone by now.
The garage door of her mansion opened up automatically and her self-driving Ferrari rolled out to her.
Natalie went back inside and entered the coordinates to where Evan had asked her to meet him. She didn’t expect him to be there anymore, but she knew that she would find something there- something that would help her make sense of all this.
Natalie reclined back in the backseat as the car drove itself towards the destination.
Chapter 6
“They denied the claims that we have the Vice President and about the launch codes,” David said, his wireless earbuds still in his ears. Josh looked at him and went to the drawing board, a relic of the past that he still loved using. In the age of AR screens, the board was a reminder that the simplest things didn’t require quantum chipsets.
He marked a tick beside three dots and then called for Miss Tessa. Miss Tessa showed up at the door within twenty seconds.
“Check if the funds have been wired, and while you’re in the network room, tell Lewis to bring the crypto wallets here.”
Miss Tessa was gone within a second. David stood there ticking off boxes on the screen projected by his AR phone. “Sir, are you sure you want to cancel the torture devices? The Russians will not refund any of the crypto we sent them in advance,” he said, looking up from the screen.
“I’m sure. We won’t need them at Quanti Valley,” Josh said. David, always thinking he
knows everything and everyone else is stupid, won’t get far in life. Josh knew that much very well. But still, he was sometimes surprised at his diligence. He did actual work some of the times when he wasn’t being a snitch.
“We won’t?”
“No. There has been a slight change of plans. Let Lewis come, I’ll explain,” Josh said.
David went back to ticking off boxes on his screen. Despite being a part of Josh’s upper team, David wasn’t like Miss Tessa and Lewis. Both Lewis and Miss Tessa were loyal and hard workers. The lower levels, which they all managed, had people who were dependent on their group for their livelihoods. Most worked for crypto, cash and assets like food and shelter, but not them. Lewis and Miss Tessa, both of them, had been carefully chosen by Josh to make sure that they wouldn’t ever turn their backs on him.
The Red Alliance was strong because there won’t be a day when the upper half would question his authority. Josh knew them well enough to understand how their minds worked. He had carefully planted enough incentives for them to walk away from this, to hold a better position somewhere else, to give him up to the feds, but they’ve never betrayed him. Not all the people were like that, though. There were people who chose to fall for his traps and they were dealt with rather unfortunate deaths, but Lewis and Miss Tessa were now like family to him.