by Toby Weston
“It’s true they are our allies; our fifth column,” Niato says. “But, at the moment, we have to leave them to fend for themselves. We can’t afford to get sucked into any escalating confrontation.”
“Yes, Your Highness. Unfortunately, this is the case,” Paulina confirms. “The Forwards are cracking down on what they like to call illegal IP.” She gives a sceptical tilt of her head. “As we know, it’s really just a pogrom against the Kin and our whole distributed ecosystem. Somebody there must have woken up and noticed the Mesh’s growth rate projections. Traditional economic activity will fall behind the Mesh’s FACs and Fabs within twenty years. Clearly, this is not a surprise to us.” Paulina nods at Niato. “The King recognised this a decade ago…”
Niato murmurs, making a gesture that he would like to speak.
“Let me be even more blunt,” he says. “This is a war of ideas. Growth, hope and progress, facing off against protectionism, fear and consolidation. The scarcity their current order needs is either fake or transient.” Niato pauses for a moment and looks at the faces around the table. “There is enough for everybody, but only if we have the courage to leave the shallow water of the baby pool. The Forwards won’t—they can’t—they are too terrified of what is out there in the deep. They can only hold onto what they know, hold onto the side, kicking their feet, pretending to swim, splashing the water; making a lot of noise… but not a lot of progress.”
Keith glances at the old man with the white beard and wonders if the watery analogy is intended for the aquatic citizens around the conference table.
Niato continues. “They simplify the world, making everything a zero-sum game; win or lose. Their instinct is control, but the real world is uncontrollable. That’s why they have their Sages create fake worlds… which they can control.”
He looks at his colleagues around the table. “I know we have debated this, and not all of you agree, but I for one don’t believe they can keep this level of deception and control up for ever… but that doesn’t mean they can’t do a lot of harm before they finally go; and even more when they eventually implode. On Atlantis, we have chosen a different approach. We are calling out to scientists and anybody else who honours truth; and the scientists are choosing to come. It makes sense, because doing pseudoscience inside the frame of the Forwards’ fake reality is basically just writing bad science fiction…”
Keith glances across to the other end of the table and raises an eyebrow at Dee. It’s not that they disagree, but they both know that not all scientists arrive on Atlantis voluntarily.
“…we challenge the in-looking paranoia and ignorance. For twenty years, I have known that this conflict would come. I would have hoped we could delay it for longer, because time is on our side. They waste resources on the Sages creating their fake worlds, while we push forward in the Real, not just in science and technology, but in art and ethics… people come to us looking for truth and beauty…” Niato glances at the commander. “Sorry, I know you want to finish up, Paulina. Just let me say a couple of sentences about the Caliphate, then I will stop… I promise.”
Paulina shakes her head in surprise and raises her palms for him to continue. “Not a problem, Your Majesty.”
Niato nods an indulged thank you. “We look forward; the Caliphate looks back. But both points of view are reactions to today’s synthetic truth. The Caliph, and the millions who have joined him, want a simpler world. We want a society that is more appropriate to the people. So we are looking for the same thing. Most of all, we agree with him on the most important point: all people must have dignity! This is what we are up against. Right, that’s all I wanted to say. Remember, that the Caliphate is not our spiritual enemy—not like the Forwards, who truly are. Okay? Right, back to you, Paulina.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Paulina says, trying to gather her thoughts and momentum after this unscheduled monologue. “As His Royal Highness says, we expected this, but conflict has unfortunately come sooner than we hoped. We are not fully prepared and our enemies will try to provoke us and draw us into a direct confrontation. We must avoid this at all costs. We cannot defend against a sustained military conflict with Forward Europe. Instead, we will support the Klans through Nebulous and our other allies, but this support must remain entirely deniable. We will fight a guerrilla proxy war, delay as long as possible, ideally entirely avoiding the need for any final confrontation…”
The King can’t resist jumping in again. “We have a plan! We just need time!”
“Exactly,” Paulina continues. “They will attempt to draw us in. They will certainly attempt to infiltrate us. Hence all this additional security.” She waves her hand vaguely, making Keith wonder what she is referring to. “We cannot, however, rule out a direct attack; and anyway, our main strength is in decentralisation. Therefore, we have chosen to risk moving some of our most critical technology, proof-of-concepts and the like, away from Bäna to a small number of trusted locations. We had selected two initial sites, but yesterday a Silicium Klan target in Zilistan was hit by ZKF militia in what was clearly a Forward-sponsored attack. Because of clan infiltration of the ZKF, the Forwards have been convinced this was a fully successful raid. We also have extensive on-the-ground intel on the location and personnel, as Lieutenant Wilson has previously spent time there…”
“It’s karma!” Niato says, well aware that most of his team are uncomfortable with his esoteric world view.
Several heads, including Dee’s and Paulina’s, had turned to Keith at the mention of his name. Keith sighs. The King insists they are all players in the great narrative of Mankind and takes every coincidence as a sign of karma working its mysterious magic in the background. Keith is trying hard to rid himself of the label mascot, but he gathers from the looks of those around him that another flimsy coincidence has thrust him back onto the stage.
“N is close to the Team Silicium Klan,” continues Paulina. “They tell me it is competent and well organised. In fact, Silicium is one of N’s most important recruiting pools. In the last twenty-four hours, Silicium has fully compromised the ZKF IT infrastructure and has hacked and salted its reports relating to the attack. N has coordinated the release of some edited video of the attack.”
A short flick plays through their Spex. Rolling hills, distant mountains, a house, and approaching military vehicles. The raid is clumsy and brutal. Two young males and an old lady are killed when members of a ZKF squad overreact to crude defensive tactics and gun them down.
“This is a flick segment that N has been distributing,” says Paulina. “Keith, Dee, we want to send you over to clean things up as permanently as possible. N is already there working on the captured officer, but they are going to need boots on the ground. Once you are there, if you categorise the situation as conducive, we have some plans and kit for you to deliver, which we cannot trust to a glider. Two other groups are already set to visit other locations. Dan, you take over from Dee as team lead.” She directs the last sentence to a wiry guy Keith had recognised but had never spoken to.
Paulina continues. “These will be our proof of concept locations for projecting presence beyond our home islands. If these sites are discovered, they will immediately become targets for the Razzia. This is critically important, guys!” She makes deliberate eye contact with each of the away team members sitting around the table.
Niato sits forward and, in a measured tone, adds his own emphasis. “The Forwards like to joke that I am off my rocker. Do you believe that I am a half-hinged zookeeper and this is just a big animal sanctuary?” He pauses, scanning the room for reaction. There are some smiles and one nervous chuckle. Then heads are shaken and a few confident voices declare variations of “No, Your Majesty.”
“Right, it’s a little more than that, isn’t it?” he continues. “We are the pilot project for the future of humanity.”
The twenty-six people around the table are listening attentively.
“We admit, in moments of weakness, we are hit by the full f
orce of the audacity of what we are trying,” says Niato. “Look, we’re sorry, we can’t share all the details. We can’t talk about everything we are planning… and, if we did, we think most of you would seriously doubt our sanity!” He is rewarded with a few laughs and more polite disagreement.
“We sometimes doubt that we are on the right path, but recently we were reminded by a friend that new ideas invariably pass through well-recognised stages.”
The word ‘Denial’ appears in the air above the table. “The Denial phase is ignorant people rejecting something they don’t understand. At the same time, it is dishonest people rejecting something that threatens their status quo.”
‘Denial’ is joined by ‘Disruption’.
“Next comes disruption. People can deny the truth as much as they want. But the disruptor has the advantage. That is the whole point! Unless it can be stamped out and utterly repressed, it will begin to upset the system it is growing within. The achievements of this new system will be evidence of its success. In the face of growing evidence, the monopolistic powers can no longer deny it. Some will defect, but others, who are too entrenched to join the party…”
‘Conflict’ materialises below.
“…will realise that they are existentially threatened. Inevitably, there will be conflict. They will give everything they have to discredit and sabotage! Things will get nasty. Unfortunately, this is where we find ourselves now; and, while we would rather not face this conflict, we have no choice. But, as unwelcome as this is, it reassures us that we are on the right path… if we can hold the line…”
Denial
Disruption
Conflict
Reimagination
“We now reach Reimagination. The ideas that have been persecuted and repressed are finally free to develop to their full potential! The sky is no longer the limit!”
Niato sits. The words dissolve. He waits. The silence extends until it becomes uncomfortable. Then he slaps his palms down on the table.
“Thank you, that is all.” He stands. One of his officers opens the door.
The room remains silent. Finally, spots of spontaneous conversation spring up.
Keith waits for Dee to pass by on her way to the door. They make eye contact and walk back towards the lift together. Both pragmatists, there is no need to dwell on thoughts of esoteric destiny. Instead, as they retrace Keith’s journey into the bowels of the mountain, they discuss their upcoming mission to Zilistan.
Chapter 12 – Bad Tripping
One after another, Ben cracked three more eggs and dropped them into the bowl. He turned on the gas, glancing over at the mound of blankets which had just made a vague murmur. As the eggs started to congeal, he sprinkled in chopped spring onion, grated parmesan, flakes of kashar, and a few turns of pepper from a wooden mill he had brought over and forgotten to take home a few weeks ago. When the omelette was almost done, he placed in the slices of smoked salmon and flipped it in half. A sprig of parsley and a cup of tea completed the presentation.
She would chide him for the salmon—and the expensive tea, if she noticed it; but it was a game. Deb enjoyed being outraged at the decadent, wasteful, conspicuous consumption, as much as Ben playfully enjoyed corrupting her egalitarian ideals.
He kissed her on the cheek, enjoying the smile which touched her lips before she was even fully awake. They ate breakfast in bed, then fucked…
…made love, Ben reminded himself.
Afterwards, while Deb was in the shower, Ben flicked on the wall screen, which Deb usually left looping through the top stories on counterculture Channel-N.
Another day of Razzia raids across Forward Europe.
Flicks of military action and portraits of those killed in skirmishes.
Two Kin youths and their mother gunned down in Zilistan in a Razzia-sponsored operation.
A slow scrolling of names, dates and smiling, fresh faces.
The day’s innocent pleasures melted, frothed and blackened like butter in a hot skillet.
Stella felt very old, sitting like a wizened aunt, tense and painfully hunched over sheets containing the Gordian knot that Sagong Marine’s finances had become during the two years of her sick leave.
She was sitting at a narrow desk in her new temporary home—the ‘Kuala Lumpur Budget Backpacker Hotel’—trying in vain to ignore the many distractions that bustled around her.
From her initial excavations, Sagong Marine Maintenance seemed to be chugging along nicely. However, from the cryptic, terse and inconsistent bookkeeping, it was lucky that the Farm, a floating extra-national nomad, was beyond any financial jurisdiction, as the company books would certainly have rung alarm bells to any auditor.
A new peel of giggling erupted from some of her roommates. They were young, excited and slightly drunk. Eavesdropping on their conversation was far more diverting than painstakingly interpreting and collating the cryptic, slap-dash mess that Marcel and Chris had very gratefully handed her.
Stella forced her eyes back down to the numbers which, like crawling ants, refused to form themselves into any sense of order.
She welcomed the legitimate distraction as her Spex announced the arrival of an anonymous message. It had an App attached. This never happened—or rather, it happened dozens of times a minute, but her Spex would reliably filter such spam before she was even aware of them. That an anonymous message had made it through was notable enough, but an anonymous message with an unverified App attached was almost certainly a malicious Trojan.
‘You need to see this,’ the message stated. It was signed simply ‘N’.
Surely a real hacker would have migrated past such clumsy attacks? It must, therefore, be legitimate? The ‘N’ was certainly intriguing. The Nebulous Klan had recently sent another of their masked representatives to discuss a vague proposal of collaboration.
She was aware that all these mental gymnastics were fundamentally justifications for opening the App because, whatever it contained, fair or foul, it would be far more interesting than the repetitive table of service expenses she was working through.
“What the hell,” she decided, dismissing an alarming succession of warnings before launching the App on her Companion.
A black screen materialised a few metres in front of her and a flick began playing. A soldier was levelling a gun at a running youth. She tried to skip back to watch the beginning again, to get a better look at the young man’s face, but the App would not allow her to rewind. This would be single view only…
The soldier was forty metres away from Zaki. It would take the bullet only a tenth of a second to cross that distance. In the same amount of time, light would travel eighteen thousand miles.
The microwave beam, projected from a newly installed collection of prongs and prisms on the barn’s roof, travelling at the speed of light itself, had reached the bullet and bounced back before the projectile had travelled even a centimetre from the barrel. An initial trajectory was calculated and a second microwave ping confirmed that the bullet would intersect the space likely to be occupied by Zaki’s head in 87ms. Wafer-thin mirrors inside the boxy gadget, floating in a knot of magnetic fields, swivelled, accelerating at thousands of g’s. As soon as they were in position, a series of multi-kilowatt laser pulses illuminated the tiny projectile, destroying its delicate guidance fins, and blasting off puffs of ablated metal. The clever gadget used the incoming data from successive pulses to map not only the delta in trajectory, but also the subtle ways that the pits and flanges blasted out of the bullet’s surface affected its aerodynamics. As a result of its efforts—pushed by jets of evaporating metal and pulled, of course, by defects that snagged on the syrupy air—its flight path was subtly tweaked.
In the end, the shell passed nine centimetres from Zaki’s head.
This time, Zaki didn’t stop running.
Yüzbaşı Tomar watched the soldier shoot again and saw another round inexplicably miss its target before the boy made it to cover.
“You stupid
donkeys!” Zaki shouted from behind the thick stone wall that surrounded the lower third of the barn. His body was flooded with adrenalin. “My granny shoots better!”
Kin security had been taken by surprise at how quickly the violence had started. All attempts at subtlety would now be forgotten. The kamikaze roaches were ordered in to attack—
The swarm of flying insects took off from where they had been lurking on trees or hidden inside cracks on walls. Each carried a gram of shaped high explosive, enough to do some very nasty damage. They were guided on multiple paths, buzzing through bus windows and into the officer’s cruiser through its open door.
The doodlebugs were not intended to kill; instead, they burst in faces and ears—evil animate fire crackers, burning skin, perforating eardrums, amputating fingers and rupturing eyeballs. Soldiers began streaming out of the truck, trying to avoid the sudden plague of exploding insects.
After a bit of reconnaissance, a trio of insects managed to find a way into the back of the cruiser. As the first order of business, they set about incapacitating the soldier controlling the mechOid.
