Version Innocent

by Pete Molina

Chapter 3

  It had been three days since the virus attacked the system and Jeff was still the director, but he knew it would not be long. The news had been leaked to the press and public outrage had been the result from around the solar system. The event was being compared to the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York by Islamic fundamentalists, early in the millenium. Even though the number of backups lost was in the millions, the number that had no living version from which to have a new backup made was only in the low thousands. Still a huge number considering that true death had almost been eliminated. The unreality of the situation was compounded by the lack of documentation and reporting.

  The US had made many guarantees over the years to foreign governments that the backup storage facility was secure from outside threats. That guarantee of security had convinced many nations to allow the US to continue its monopoly on the restoration technology. Not that they had a choice. Foreign nations were now afraid that their backups were compromised despite assurances that all the casualties had been US citizens.

  There were calls for Jeff’s resignation and prosecution, and he was seriously considering the former. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The debate over Newbie positions in the government was now flaring again. Newbies were people born more than a century after the restoration technology had been invented, when society had fully embraced the change and all children were raised in the children’s cities. Primers were those that had been born and raised before the children’s lottery was established. They acted like two political parties except that the Primers outnumbered Newbies a thousand to one, and had had enough time to acquire great sums of money and power before the Newbies had been born.

  Most Primers thought of the Newbies as children despite the fact that many Newbies were also centenarians. For the most part, like teenagers, Newbies didn’t agree with the current system of government and restoration, they thought that society had stagnated and was headed nowhere slowly. A century earlier many Newbies had organized demonstrations and some had resorted to violent terrorist acts. They had been distrusted by the Primers ever since, even though all those had been caught and exiled or had their restoration rights revoked.

  That was the heaviest thing on Jeff’s shoulders at the moment. He had originally agreed with the Newbies that society had stagnated because of the restoration technology, but he had been convinced that it was an inevitable technology for a species to achieve, that the current means of controlling that technology was the only way for a society to use it peacefully despite the disadvantages.

  He had worked hard to get his position as director of the Restoration Division of the United States government to prove that Newbies weren’t all bad, and that they could work with the system. His appointment to that position had been improving the sentiment towards the Newbies and they were becoming more accepted, but now… Not that many Newbies cared about it, most of them stayed in the Children’s cities and worked and socialized with their own, or took jobs off Earth, where the Primer to Newbie ratio wasn’t so high.

  Jeff navigated his way through the crowd toward the zip tube stop. He was on his way home for the evening to his apartment in Denver. The tube stop consisted of two large holes eight meters across separated by about three meters. They both had circular roofs above them supported by three strong pillars. The hole that Jeff was heading towards was the green roofed hole, the down hole. The other hole had a red roof, and was the up hole. People in front of Jeff streamed towards the down hole from three sides in concentric circles and disappeared from view. Jeff waited as the circle of people in front of him took the plunge. From the other hole Jeff could see people rising up from the hole to the surface and walking out.

  As he reached the front shell he continued to walk out in to the middle of the opening having the appearance of walking on air. Of course this was just an illusion. Approximately ten others joined Jeff standing on the opening, and then they began to descend, and as they went they accelerated to cover the distance to the two mile deep zip train station. The tube wasn’t as empty as it appeared but was filled by utility fog that acted as a sort of elevator.

  Utility Fog was a product of nanotechnology, but it was not nanotechnology itself. The “Fog” consisted of billions of small robots that were still large enough to be seen by a microscope. Each unit, called a foglet, was a small autonomous robot that had arms extending from eight sides. These arms were capable of telescoping in and out and grabbing on to other foglet arms. When these arms connected, the foglets could hold each other while also using the connection to transfer power and data between them.

  In the elevator column the swarm of foglets worked together to raise or lower passengers by exerting a lifting force in the case of the up column, or by decelerating passengers to prevent them from falling too quickly in the down tube. They could make themselves appear invisible or they could form images that seemed to hang in space.

  Traveling down the lift tube always felt like falling to Jeff, but a controlled fall. He felt his stomach give way as it was left at the surface for a few moments until Jeff stopped accelerating. The tube walls were a uniform color which gave the illusion that one was standing still once a certain downward velocity had been achieved. The fog column could lower passengers to the zip train terminal a mile below the surface in less than a minute. The energy created by the lowering of the passengers through the down tube was partially reclaimed by the fog and used to power the ascent of the up tube passengers like a counterweight. The corresponding trip back up the tube took two to three minutes.

  The other passengers were quiet as they descended. It was always that way. People didn't like to talk much when sharing a confined space with strangers and that was fine with Jeff. A few of the passengers glared at Jeff for a moment before they looked away. They obviously had seen him in the news or had identified him using their SS companion. He was now probably the most infamous Newbie in history. Jeff felt the beginnings of deceleration as they were slowed to gentle stop at the exit of the column. Because the column of fog could support itself, they were lowered out of a hole in the ceiling of the terminal ten meters through the air to the ground. The passengers quickly moved out of the circle of the fog column moving towards their departure gates.

  Jeff stepped out of the circle of the fog tube into an anteroom to the main terminal. There was a large arch doorway on one side through which Jeff could see hundreds of people moving around. He had come off the back side of the lift tube circle, so he walked along the path that surrounded the circle and through the portal into the zip train terminal hub.

  The terminal twenty meters high, and had the diameter of half a football field. All around the edges of the terminal were large ornately carved doorways. The entire floor was marble with patterns in the stone that radiated from the center like a sun, each ray pointing towards one of the doorways. In the center hanging from the ceiling was a large circular display that had the arrival and departure information for the next hour. In between the archways were some smaller doors that led to various cafes, restaurants, and information access terminals for those without companion information assistants.

  Jeff was one of a very small minority. He was one of those without a neural implanted SS companion. Instead, Jeff wore a pair of glasses, an ear piece, and a belt computer. The glasses worked as a display, similar to the display of the neural implant but not as all encompassing because one could still see the frames. The ear piece provided him with sound, and the belt computer controlled everything. These three items could provide most of the functionality of an implanted companion, but one lost the direct mind interface, enhanced memory, and the security.

  A neural implant could not be hacked, and no information could be coerced from it without killing the host, which was generally a significant deterrent. Because of the security concerns of the non-implanted companion, which could be stolen and hacked at will, Jeff couldn't wear his comp
anion at work. This gave him a slight disadvantage but one that he was willing to accept for now.

  He would eventually have an implant but not until he needed restoration because of an accident or natural causes. A neural implant could only be implanted when a person was being restored, and to this point in his life Jeff had never been restored. At fifty four Jeff was a stocky, slightly overweight graying man. He didn't exercise much or eat very well ... not that many did. The advantages of the implant were great enough that most people would backup and dissolute so that the neural implant could be added at the restoration. Jeff didn't believe in dissolution, the voluntarily killing of his own body, even if it wasn't permanent. Most Newbies didn't.

  The zip trains didn't always arrive and depart from the same terminal so Jeff needed help from his companion. Without a thought interface that meant he had to interact with his companion, Chevy, by speaking to him or at least subvocalizing.

  Chevy anticipated his need, “Your train is departing from terminal twelve today. I'm overlaying the path.”

  Jeff began to follow the green path that appeared only in his glasses display and guided him to terminal twelve. The express Denver zip train always departed at five thirty, and the trip took about twenty minutes. It was almost five thirty now, and if Jeff missed the express he'd have to take a train that made more stops.

  Jeff had to push his way through the crowd. Most people were heading for the west coast trains. When Jeff reached the entrance arch to terminal twelve there were again two circular lift tubes. They were much smaller than those from the surface. Each terminal had a lift tube that went to a different depth, which allowed the zip tubes that the trains traveled through to continue without having to curve. This meant that the trains not stoping at this station didn't have to turn which was almost impossible when traveling by zip train.

  At the bottom of the lift a long hallway extended, three or four meters then split like a U and two walkways extended for around a hundred meters. The walkways were partially crowded with people standing and facing the empty space between the walkways. The train hadn't arrived just yet; it was still a few minutes until five-thirty. Jeff hurried toward the far end of the walkway where there were the fewest people.

  Just as he arrived a blue flashing light came on along the ceiling of the long divided hallway. The people stepped back towards the walls. The floor that was between the two walkways became transparent and a long bullet shaped train with five cars rose from the floor through the fog barrier from the vacuum environment of the zip tube below. Doors at the midpoint of the cars opened and people streamed out and towards the main terminal. After the arriving passengers had all exited, the light that was flashing blue changed to green to indicate that the train was now ready to be boarded.

  Jeff waited patiently as those in front of him stepped in to the entrance. As he passed through the doorway, Chevy piped up in his ear, “The sum of fifty-one dollars and twenty cents has been debited to your personal account for zip tube fare.”

  Once on board Jeff proceeded down the isle towards the back of the train. There were rows of seats but the spacing between them left quite a bit of room for each passenger. Each seat was raised slightly from the floor on a post. Jeff grabbed a seat. The entire half cylindrical ceiling of the train appeared like a window showing the terminal outside.

  “The train will be departing momentarily. Please take your seats,” a pleasant male voice echoed inside the car.

  Jeff sat down in his seat, which was well padded. As he did, he sank down a bit. The cushions were made of utility fog and they enveloped his body. He still had some freedom of movement but the fog would constrain him from falling out of the seat during the acceleration phase.

  “The train is now departing,” the voice said.

  Jeff felt the train begin to descend. As it did, it moved slightly to the right from its central position into the west bound zip tube. Zip trains were only allowed to move in one direction in the zip tube, so there were two tubes on each route, one for each direction. Jeff watched them lower down into the tube through the ceiling window. Once they were settled, the opening to the terminal above closed and they were in darkness for a few seconds.

  The train began to move, slowly at first but with increasing acceleration. After a few seconds the ceiling windows, which actually formed a very high resolution display, showed them exiting a tunnel into a simulated country side on the surface. This simulation was provided for the duration of the trip to help keep the passengers from feeling claustrophobic, which had been a common occurrence when the zip tubes had first been constructed. Being several miles underground tended to give many people claustrophobia.

  The train began to accelerate faster. As it did the seats pivoted so that the passengers would feel less of the acceleration through their backs and more through their seats. Jeff felt pushed back into his seat and heavier than normal. The express train accelerated at one earth gravity; the normal zip trains only accelerated at half a g. The train continued to accelerate for six minutes until it reached its cruising velocity of eight thousand miles per hour; propelled and suspended by super conducting magnets. The simulated surface view, however, only moved at eighty miles an hour, keeping everything from becoming a blur as it rushed by.

  Usually Jeff slept on the ride or watched the latest newscasts on his displays, but the events of the last few days made sleep almost impossible, and the newscasts were mostly about the scandal of which he was the centerpiece. Jeff was currently under investigation. He had not been formally charged with any crime yet, but charges could yet be filed. He had spent the previous two days under “interview” which was just a nice way of saying “interrogation”. Until the investigation was complete, he had been suspended from work.

  The most disturbing thing about the events of the last few days was that Jeff hadn't heard a word from Damon Harding. Damon didn't particularly care for Jeff, and he had made that quite clear. Damon objected to him mostly because he was a Newbie, and because Damon rarely liked any one from the government that had any degree of autonomous control over the restoration division. Jeff was afraid that because he hadn't heard from Damon yet, that he was only experiencing the calm before the storm. He continued to worry until he heard the deceleration warning and his seat spun around to face the opposite direction.

  The deceleration lasted for the same amount of time as their acceleration, and as the train came to a halt, the ceiling display changed back to a black tunnel and then the opening to the terminal appeared above them. The train lifted gently, shifting to a central position over the two zip tubes. The zip train then rose up through the floor of the arrival terminal, which was identical to the departure terminal.

  A blue light was flashing on the ceiling of the terminal and the voice came on again, “Arrival at The Children's City of Denver. If this city is your final destination and you are not a resident, or employee in the city you must check in at the Visitors office before you may leave the station.”

  Jeff's fog cushion restraint let loose, and Jeff stood up and proceeded to the exit of the train. He proceeded back up the lift tube at the end of the gate and arrived in a central terminal identical to the one he had come from in Washington DC. Jeff walked quickly to the lift tube that would take him to the surface. As he was approaching the upward tube, Jeff noticed that a man who was standing in the lift circle didn't lift with the rest of the people in his group. The man looked perplexed.

  “You know,” said Jeff, “that you have to check in at the Visitors Office and get visit approval before you can go up the tube, don't you?” Jeff hadn't thought that there was anyone who didn't know that.

  “Of course,” the man said as he started to walk off the lift circle, “but I'm starting a job here tomorrow and I thought I'd already be in the system...oh well, I better go to the Visitors Office before security gets called to pick me up.” As the man walked past Jeff, he patted Jeff’s shoul
der, attaching a number of micro-bug surveillance devices. “Thanks,” he said smiling as he departed.

  “No problem,” Jeff replied as he stepped on the pad with several others. The physical contact of the stranger was abnormal, but any suspicion slipped from Jeff’s mind as he was thought of other things. As soon as the pad had filled to about half full, Jeff and the others began to rise, slowly at first until they cleared the ceiling and then they accelerated up the tube for ten or fifteen seconds. After a few minutes they began to slow until they came up from hole to the surface and stopped.

  Jeff arrived at his apartment without incident. As he grabbed the handle the door unlocked with an audible click. The lights came on around the apartment as he entered and he could hear the heater come on as well. He hung up his coat and took off his companion glasses, ear piece and belt computer and put them on a table near the door. As he was walking past his office, he saw that the master view screen had a mail icon in the corner. Jeff often got mail at his terminal, but the odd thing was that unless the mail had arrived at that instant his companion should have already received it and let him know. Jeff stopped and turned into the office and sat down at his terminal. The system sensed his presence, scanned his iris, and logged him into the system.

  “Open Mail,” Jeff said.

  The mail program started up, and there was only one new message in the system. Jeff didn't recognize the address but he opened it with a tap of the screen. The message was audio only, so Jeff initiated the playback. As he heard the voice, he felt his stomach grumble a bit. It was Sam.

  The recording began, “Jeff, I know that by now the virus attack has worked because this message was to be sent only if one of my software agents found the attack reported in the press. Apparently one of them has. I would contact you personally, but unfortunately I am no longer able. I am sorry that I used you to get the virus into the system. I take full responsibility for this action, but it was necessary for my cause. I made sure that the virus would only destroy backups of those that still had a living version. By now I'm sure you have realized that all of my own backups are gone from the system.”

  Jeff was confused, he knew Sam was methodical to a fault when he was planning or designing. Something here wasn't right because three thousand non-corporeal backups had been destroyed and were not recoverable. It seemed to Jeff that Sam was saying that he didn't intend for that to happen.

  Sam continued, “I have good reason for what I have done, and I hope that you will be able to forgive me one day. I am now outside of the data sphere, and I do not plan to return. I have been working on a very important project for the last decade, one that I wish I could share with you here, but I think that if I told you it would only put you in more danger. I have dispatched a message to the government, by the same agent mechanism, that claims responsibility for this attack and this message indicates that you were not involved. It explained that I used our friendship to accomplish my own goals. I don't know if they will believe me. I hope they do for your sake.”

  “And now, after all I have done, I need to ask you a favor, I know I shouldn't, but I don't have any other choice. In order to complete my project I made several deals, which I cannot now personally fulfill. I couldn't risk leaving any version of me in the system that had any knowledge of my activities. The only backup version of me that now exists is the one in the cube I gave you years ago. I hope you still have it.”

  “On April first I need you to go to Stacey’s house for dinner with a restored version of me from that cube. She knows to expect you, one other guest, and the other version of me, but she knows nothing of what has transpired. You know Stacy, she's doing this out of love, and blind faith. I can only imagine what she must think of us now. I owe this guest more than I can repay. She already knows to go to Stacey’s on that day to meet me. Unfortunately, I can't be there, and I can't tell you where I am, but she needs a version of me to get to where I am to collect on the debt. The guest will know how to start looking for me, and my other version will have the DNA and biometrics necessary to get through barriers that are in place.”

  Sam paused for a second. “I hope that you will accompany them, so that when you find me you will understand why I have betrayed you. Take care, Jeff. I hope to see you soon.” The recording stopped. Jeff sat there in stunned silence.

  What the hell are you up to, Sam? Jeff thought. Mysterious work, debts owed to strange female guests, dinner parties, and old versions. It's like a damn mystery novel or something. And why April first? That's three weeks away. Even if I could still have the restoration started tomorrow, it wouldn't be complete until a day before then. He was getting angry now. How dare Sam do this to him? It didn't matter why or for what cause Sam was wrong, and his methods were wrong, and he had killed despite his claim that his virus wouldn't do so.

  He would have forwarded the stupid message to the government, but he knew it wouldn't do any good now. He was through, Sam must know that. He would never have a government job again. He would never be trusted again. Jeff wished for a second that he still could restore that old version of Sam just to beat him to a bloody pulp...but no, that Sam was different, innocent of this betrayal, and didn't deserve his anger. Jeff loved that old Sam, even if he had become a monster.

  “What made this happen to you, Sam? What project is so important that you did this to me? I wish I could go find you, kick you around a little and find out why.” Jeff started to tear up, but he wouldn't cry so he forced the emotion away, deleted the message and went to bed. He didn't eat, but he did dream, and the dreams were nightmares that all involved Sam trying to kill him.

  In the morning Jeff had a quick breakfast. He needed to get going for another interrogation session. He wondered briefly what would happen if he didn’t go, but he knew he was under surveillance and would be picked up in minutes. Then he would just be in more trouble. He just wished silently that it was over, but he had the feeling that it was only just beginning. As he was closing the door to his apartment to leave, a micro-bug surveillance device that had witnessed last night’s events while attached to the wall of Jeff’s office, flew out with its cache of information, heading for its handler to download.