by Toby Weston
Silicium was digitally impersonating Tomar during his physical absence. They had already sent a stack of fake mission reports detailing a mostly successful, if somewhat heavy-handed, engagement, and the full decommissioning of an illegal pot farm. Several casualties were noted, but the reports made no mention of a Klan Fab. The cyber-rōnin were now extending their reach; compromising their way up the chain of command. Soon, they would create ZKF identities for Zaki and Segi, and embed orders which would assign the ‘new recruits’ their stations.
Once the supporting documentation was emplaced in the ZKF’s systems, the brothers would be authentic members of the militia, ready for their first mission—the details of which Keith was still busy making up.
Tomar, suitably softened up, would be the absentee commanding officer of a fake detail, his orders to delegate the construction of a radio station on the site of the ruined Çiftlik house. If his brainwashing functioned as anticipated, Tomar would be such a mess of subconscious trauma that his handlers would be able to keep him in line with a few well-placed psychological nudges.
Keith had thought it an unnecessarily complicated plan. He had suggested they just pack up the whole family and escort them back to Bäna; but it seemed King Niato was not simply being nice. He was desperate to build covert capabilities away from New Atlantis. The ZKF might be the perfect cover, an ant hill into which the King could inject his nest parasites; burrowing within the utterly compromised bureaucracy, the Klan Fab could then operate with impunity. The Zil state would be manipulated into providing cover and satisfying all their physical protection needs.
***
Tomar wakes again by a creek. It appears to be dawn or dusk. Probably dawn, because it’s icy cold. His skin has raised goosebumps and he shivers uncontrollably. He is naked and, when he looks at his hands and arms, he sees he is covered in blood—his hands fly to his balls, then his eye. He is whole… but so much blood.
Then he notices the feet and springs up. Lying next to him is a body, ants already crawling across its face and entering its nose and ears. It takes him a few seconds to recognise the cold, ashen shape as his sergeant, Mustafa. He remembers ordering him to shoot the boy. It is only then that he notices two smaller bodies; boys; children.
Then it comes flooding back. With horror, he remembers the chaos at the Çiftlik—panic and shooting. He remembers Mustafa murdering one of the boys, and then a vision of himself shooting a shoulder-launched rocket-propelled grenade at the house. The agonised screams of two women trapped, dying in the rubble, reverberate over the hills.
A raven sits on a wall a few metres away. It doesn’t seem to mind his screaming.
Another raven swoops down. The birds watch him with their tiny black eyes.
Tomar’s cruiser is parked not far away behind the birds. He staggers backwards, away from them. A trail of blood is trickling down his left leg, leaving blots and streaks in the dust behind him. A third, then a fourth raven flap out of the cold, white air. Pretty soon, he is encircled. Intent is clear; they begin to hop towards him. Tomar’s eye socket, empty again, has begun to weep blood—he sobs, collapsing down into the dust, pressing his palm against his remaining good eye. In the cold and darkness, he listens to the scratches and chuckles as the conspiracy closes in on him.
***
“The fossils have woken up,” Niato had said, putting his coffee cup down on its saucer. “The dinosaurs have finally noticed that their clunky old world is being nibbled away at the edges by the tiny teeth of a million rodents.”
“Nice.”
“And now they are trying to fuck us—fuck me.”
“What do you expect? You keep banging on about this vision: decentralised, self-organising, post-scarcity, post-money. Post-fucking-money, Nick! How do you expect them to react? They wouldn’t mind if you were just another billionaire building yourself an island fuck-palace…”
“And you? What do you think, Keith?”
At the age of eleven, Keith had won a scholarship to a posh school—where he had obviously stuck out painfully, like a mongrel in a Kennel Club lineup. However, this made it too easy for him to see Niato as one of the masturbating rich boys he had shared a dormitory with, most of whom were now running multinational corporations, or championing worthwhile, but strangely self-serving, charities. Keith had once put Niato in this same pigeonhole: spoilt brat, justifying unearned wealth, playing at unworkable photogenic utopias. Gradually, though, the undeniable grandeur and the contagious optimism of Atlantis had challenged some of this deep-seated cynicism—which made Keith uncomfortable, because cynicism was his defensive carapace.
“Honestly, I don’t really care a fart either way,” Keith had answered. “You might be building an eco-animal-sanctuary-pinko-yoga-retreat. You might be laying the foundations of a multi-planetary utopia… I’m along for the ride, either way…” He realised this might have come across as too nihilistic and ungrateful, so he added, “…and who knows, maybe you are one of the good guys, and then I really am doing my bit for the glorious revolution…”
“We appreciate you being so frank. We trust you, Keith.”
“I appreciate that,” Keith mumbled back, nodding, a little irritated by Niato’s overuse of the royal ‘We’.
They had been sitting in the grand dining room of the Hotel Atlantis, two men drinking coffee, while the Margrave Caeruleum—second in line to the throne, manifesting again in the guise of a white-bearded old Buddhist—sat staring into space in his distant, disconcerting way.
Dee and Keith would be catching the Xepplin from the hotel’s roof terminal, forty storeys up, later that day.
“The Margrave asked me to set up this meeting, you know?”
“I’m honoured,” Keith said, as sincerely as possible, nodding his appreciation to the King’s dolphin-spirit-guide. He had never really gotten into the whole talking animal thing; but strangely, after all the upbeat presentations, ethical cheerleading and scientific inspiration he had been exposed to during his time on Atlantis, it was a brutal financial fleecing at the beak of a Machiavellian parrot that had finally forced Keith to re-examine his position on the Internet of Animals and Economics 2.0.
“He wants you to play your part,” said Niato. “We both agree it’s important for the karma…”
A tickle of irritation spread from Keith’s forehead. “Blimey, Nick, please.” He glanced awkwardly at the Margrave. “With the utmost respect to both you and Blue, you know I don’t believe in any of that karma stuff, right?”
“That really doesn’t matter.”
Keith wished he could excuse himself. “Can we discuss the mission? I don’t need the backstory. I’ve actually found I like being a soldier precisely because I don’t need the backstory. Just tell me what you want and I’ll do my best to get it done. That’s the deal, right?”
“But this is what he wants to discuss. The Margrave thinks you should understand.”
Keith sighed.
“You think it’s all meaningless, don’t you?” said Niato. “No God, no soul, no karma?”
“Pretty much,” Keith shrugged.
“So, what is this? Isn’t it a coincidence that you’ve been given an opportunity to help those Zil Kin who once saved your life? To close the circle?”
“It’s not magic. You want to prove this karma thing, so you send me on this mission. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, Nick. It’s not a mystery!”
“You are so locked up inside your bubble of denial! So resistant!”
“Actually, Your Highness, I think it’s you lot who live in your bubbles, while I’m out here on my own in reality, trying to keep a lid on things.”
“Well then, I am sorry to disappoint you! There is no reality,” Niato said flatly.
“No reality? Great. Well, it does sometimes feel like I am stuck in some sort of dream.” Keith sighed and shook his head—they had left the path of rational conversation again.
“Abhyuday proved it.”
“Now, how’s that?”
“Dr Abhyuday Narasimhan. You recruited him for me.”
“Kidnapped. Yes, I know who you are talking about.”
“We’ve learnt a lot from him recently. Like we learn from all the people who support us.” Niato stressed the word ‘people’ to make sure Keith understood that he was not just talking about the humans. “It’s our job to learn from the enlightened who come here. An elephant once taught us a koan…”
“Why have you started referring to yourself with ‘we’?” Keith interrupted. “Aren’t you starting to take this royal stuff a bit too seriously?”
“No. We like it. It reminds us that we speak for Atlantis and enlightened people everywhere.”
“It can come off as a bit pretentious, you know?”
“Keith, I’m the King. It’s my part. Don’t change the subject. I am trying to explain something important. The wise, they visit, they teach us… and we teach them. We…” Niato paused and looked at Keith. He corrected himself. “...I started out as a reductionist. I thought that people were essentially irrelevant to an uncaring universe… would you say this is how you see the world today?”
Keith shrugged again, not wanting to get backed into the corner he sensed was coming.
“This is not how dolphins have ever seen it,” continued Niato. “At first, when I tried to understand, when Blue tried to explain his world to me, I thought that they were solipsists. Do you know what that is? Solipsists deny any reality outside their minds; they believe that everything is their own personal dream.”
“Yeah. I know the word. I know what you mean.”
“I spent a lot of late nights doing philosophy with Blue back then, composing my premises on the screen of a Companion in secret while he was still a prisoner. He liked the game; he was bored near insane in his evil little pool at the Institute. But the isolation forced him to swim the inner oceans of thought instead. I didn’t understand his answers.” Niato nodded towards Blue, the Margrave. “It seemed he was insisting the world was a dream.”
“I’m leaving in a few hours,” said Keith. “Are you sure you want to spend the remaining time that we have talking dolphin philosophy?”
Niato ignored him. “My world view was a wall between me and Blue. But I started to see. For them—the dolphins—each individual has a voice, which must be integrated into the pod’s story and which, to them, is reality. This story is their reality.”
“Sing by yourself. Only reflection on water surface,” Blue said suddenly. “Sing together, songs make world shared, freeze water into ice.”
Keith had never been spoken to by Blue before. He couldn’t deny that the Margrave’s words—nonsensical as they might be—reached him with unexpected impact.
“You see?” said Niato. “We are entangled. Those Kin, too, joining our pod and our stories. We are making a real world from all possibilities.” The King held Keith’s gaze, staring until Keith became uncomfortable and looked away. “Just like you and I are drawn together…”
“I can’t say I have any idea what you are talking about,” Keith admitted, while he listened to the King continue to embarrass himself.
“Keith, we are meant to be together… we have a place in each other’s stories.”
“Riiight.”
“Although you might not know it—I think you’ve been searching for something, Keith.”
“You are swimming alone,” Blue said, turning and looking at Keith intensely.
Niato sat forward. “We are entangled together. Our karmas are entwined…”
“Er, Nick, this is a little weird, to be honest.” It was slowly becoming too much.
“It’s okay, Keith. Don’t fight it. Come swim with us…”
***
“I honestly thought he was going to ask me to suck his dick!” Keith said, once he had finished relating the King’s surreal goodbye.
“Don’t be so disgusting!” Dee said, rolling over and punching him in the chest. “But he can be a bit intense.”
“It was so weird. Anyway, I promised Blue that I wouldn’t sing alone anymore...”
“Well, if you promised, you should try it!”
“Try it? What do you mean? I did exactly what the dolphin said. We just sang a duet, didn’t we—not that many people would call that noise you were making singing!” He dodged as she tried to hit him again. “I suppose that should make Nick happy.”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t get so uptight. I like the guy, seriously. But he’s a billionaire, an oligarch. They are all a bit weird. With Nick, it’s his dolphin guru.”
Dee was suddenly frosty. She scowled at him and stood up, dragging the covers with her.
“Have more respect. He’s your King,” she said, shutting the flimsy door of his tiny en-suite, leaving Keith naked and confused on his bed.
As they slept that night—in their separate rooms—another ocean passed beneath. The Xepplin had risen to fifteen kilometres, inserting itself opportunistically into a highway of wind. Electromagnets in the Xepplin’s skin continually shaped and smoothed the ionised air flowing over its envelope, cutting friction, allowing the gigantic cybernetic beast to swim, like the whale it resembled, through the thin night air.
By the morning of the fifth day, they were already sliding over Fès, the Sahara’s yellow mottled desolation receding to the horizon in every direction. They breakfasted and then ferried their luggage aft, leaving anything non-incriminating with the purser. If everything went to plan, they would be rejoining the Xepplin on its next intra-atmospheric orbit.
Luggage allowance was costly. Every kilogram counted. Keith had one small, soft duffel with some clothes and wash things. Another duffel contained his wingsuit, while a third, torpedo-shaped, semi-rigid mission bag held plans and high-tech difficult-to-fabricate pieces of kit.
Dee locked the door to the small room, entering a code into the pad, which would ensure their privacy for the next few hours. They changed quickly into their wingsuit undergarments and tested the fitting and articulation of their flight surfaces. In the years since Keith had first flown, wingsuits had evolved from something that looked like a cross between a penguin and a flying fox, into elegant biomimetic fans of insectile-pseudo-feathers, which, when fully unfurled, extended two metres out from the fingertips. A filigree-powered exoskeleton gave the pilot sufficient strength to control the surfaces in the face of hundred kilometre per hour headwinds—the exoskeleton would even permit limited low-speed flapping.
Leaving the whale fifteen kilometres up, they would be virtually invisible. The wings themselves were almost transparent and the suits covering their bodies provided advanced cross-spectrum electromagnetic camouflage. When deactivated, the suits appeared to be covered in thousands of fat worm-like rubbery dreadlocks. Each dreadlock was a mini-tentacle able to stretch, shrink, change colour and alter its electromagnetic properties. When activated, at anything over a few metres, the wearer became little more than a smudge-like distortion of whatever was behind them.
Fifteen kilometres below, the Karpass Peninsula edged starboard; a finger projecting from the island of Kibris, like the stumpy flagellum of an injured spermatozoon. To accommodate the mission, the Xepplin had detoured as far north as possible. It would soon be looping back south, towards its next scheduled stop in Muscat. They still had nearly an hour to disembarkation. They spent the time testing their equipment, flexing wings as much as was feasible in the cramped space available.
Keith was looking forward to the drop. Wing-suiting had become a hobby and was pretty much the only non-beverage-related social activity he indulged in on Atlantis. This would be his highest jump yet, and they would be flying close to the suit’s theoretical limit. Not that he really cared, but he knew he would pick up one achievement for jumping above forty-five thousand feet, and another—the diamond wings insignia—for a hundred-kilometre glide.
Dee sent a message to the Çiftlik house, letting the brothers know that they were on their final appro
ach and would be physically with them soon. She asked about Tomar. He was apparently sleeping soundly now that his re-education had finished. If he had been dosed correctly, he should continue to doze contentedly for another half day or so.
When the time came, Keith depressurised the room-sized airlock. The rear ramp hinged down—an appalling screech of wind was quickly erased by the smarts in their helmet Spex. They were still sixty kilometres out from the coast and higher than most planes. The Earth was clearly a ball. Ahead, markers helpfully overlaid highlighted features of interest along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea: Antakya, Latakia and mount Jebel Aqra.
They jumped.
