by Sean Platt
The patient sighed. “Not yet.”
“Would you like to see your readout?”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It just seems like something that might be done at a time like this. Kind of like showing a new mother the nanograph image of her fetus.” Killian’s smile felt forced. He was chattering for the sake of noise. He had no reason to fear this man, but he’d had plenty of reason to feel nervous around the avatar. Killian wasn’t a Null hacker, but in the right circles, Integer7’s reputation seemed to have spread like a virus. Even then, Integer7 seemed more mischievous than malevolent, but still it gave him nerves. And there was no playbook for something that had never been done.
“No. Thank you.”
“File integrity is complete in all of the redundant buffers,” Killian said, running through the stats despite the man’s clear disinterest. “And of course in the body. It’s all wetware, so it’s not apples to apples, and you can expect some disorientation as you adjust. Your brain — your mind, sorry; you didn’t have a brain before — isn’t used to containment, but the simulations predict it will adjust.”
“‘Predict.’” The word was flat and almost seemed to carry a sense of menace.
“Well, you’re patient zero. Sorry, patient alpha; saying ‘zero’ makes it sound like a disease.” Killian forced a smile that probably came out looking like a grimace. “We don’t have actual results. I’m sorry, I thought Sally made that clear. Did she not make it clear? I’m so sorry. I was under the impression you specifically requested to be moved now, without waiting for testers to inhabit the other fabricated bodies. If I’d known there was any scintilla of doubt, I’d have — ”
“It’s fine.” He raised the hand Killian had recently been squeezing to life and flexed it in front of his eyes. It looked exactly like a natural hand, like everything about the body. But creating organic parts had never been the problem. “It was important that I be first.”
“Oh,” Killian said. “Well then. Good. We aim to please. And I’m not seeing much evidence of dislocation?” It came out as a question, which he hadn’t intended. He was supposed to project certainty. Yes, the download seemed to have gone just fine, but almost all of Xenia’s experience — and literally all of Killian’s — was in uploading minds, not downloading them. Mindbender’s purpose was supposed to be escape from the mortal plane, the promise of immortality, all that. The wider applications that involved a move in the other direction (flesh vacations for digital beings, light speed travel, bulk transit for the Mars terraforming project) were supposed to be decades or, likely, centuries down the pike.
Killian forced himself to breathe. It had all gone perfectly. Things were fine. It didn’t matter how nervous he’d been or how many nightmares he’d had about downloading poorly and then being haunted by the angry ghost of The Beam’s most infamous man for the rest of his days. It had worked out okay in the end. The patient could feel his hands and feet. He sounded coherent.
“Why would there be dislocation?” Integer7 asked.
“Oh. Well. I was just checking.”
“But why would there be?”
“Well, we had an issue with the dislocation paradigm for uploads, as I’m sure you know. Of course you know! But really, that issue more or less went away once the key sequence to the integration software was inserted. Once the sequence was extracted from Captain Long, your archive became fully holographic, as would any other uploaded minds in the system.”
“Which means Mindbender is now open for anyone who knows how to upload.”
“Yes, sir. But as you requested, we’ve kept the matching upload technology confined to your indicated group. You understand it’s a two-piece puzzle? The insertion of the key, from Long, was like a master decrypt cypher that unlocked the decoding, hologram-making end of the process. But any mind that’s not uploaded using the correct encoding will still fragment, with rare exceptions as we’ve seen with batch testing, in the range of zero point zero — ”
“I know all of this,” Integer7 said.
“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry.”
“So what about dislocation?”
“Oh. Well, maintaining the integrity of the uploaded file was always comparatively simple. Comparatively. We knew there was a cypher out there. But the notes said the original cypher vanished with Mr. Hawes, so we’ve been attempting to recreate it?” Another sentence coming out as a question. Killian wanted to slap himself. He must sound so weak.
“Hawes gave it to Dominic Long.”
“Long knew Colin Hawes?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Oh. Then how were you able to maintain integrity before the cypher was inserted?”
“I’m different,” Integer7 said.
“Sure. Of course.” Killian paused. Then he said, “But how — ”
“I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Killian,” the patient said, “but are you planning to answer my fucking question at some point?”
Killian felt his heart leap up to the top of his throat, grab his epiglottis, and hang on tight.
“Sir! Of course. I’m so sorry. I tend to prattle on when excited. The problem with the dislocation paradigm was that whenever there was an archive in two places, meaning two copies of a mind — say, on The Beam and in one of these artificial bodies — there was always confusion from…from somewhere…about which to make real and alive, as it were. Like Frankenstein’s monster.” Killian mimed pulling a giant knife switch and giving a mad scientist’s grin, but his effort seemed to fall flat.
“But I solved that.”
“The insertion of the second sequence caused it. Yes, sir.”
“I solved it,” Integer7 clarified.
“Yes. The AI was able to extract your sequence from Mr. York while he was with the girl.”
“Does York realize what happened?”
“I don’t think so, sir. We’re watching him, of course. But for all intents and purposes, he seems to believe that he simply traveled from one virtual place to another. He does not seem to realize they were in a hole.”
“And the girl?”
“She vanished, sir. We’re not sure.”
Killian thought his patient might take umbrage, but said nothing.
“I’m not sure how it worked, sir, but it did. It’s like there was a piece of…well, of you…inside Mr. York? When we made the transfer, it lit right up as if the two pieces recognized each other. I daresay it wouldn’t have worked without that other piece.”
“It wouldn’t have.”
“How does it work, sir? We’ve been trying to crack dislocation here at Xenia for decades. May I ask how you managed?”
The patient sat up in the cradle, loose download wires sliding from his shoulders to pool in the thing’s bottom. His head turned to face Killian.
“No. You may not.”
Killian blinked. “Oh. Yes. Of course, sir.”
Integer7’s hands went to his new head, which was specified to be like his old head. To his new hair, like his old hair. Across his arms and chest. Then they reached out for the small, round glasses on the table by the cradle. The ones his estate had given Killian such a hard time about procuring.
“I’d like a mirror.”
Killian practically clapped. “Oh! Of course. Yes. This is the exciting part, isn’t it? Like unwrapping a present. All that hard work. All that time! I can’t even imagine. And this is a triumph for me, too, seeing as — ”
Integer7 was staring into Killian’s eyes.
“Yes,” Killian said, his manner dampening. “Well then, of course. It’s right here, sir.”
Killian stood by the foot of the cradle, pushed the wheeled thing around in a half circle, then stood beside the patient. Together, they looked at the new body and the new mind inhabiting it from behind its curious little round glasses.
The patient watched his reflection. He tipped his chin down then up. He rubbed his cheek. He ran a hand through his short brown hair.
“Welco
me home, Mr. West,” Killian said.
Hey all, and welcome to “Shit From Brains,” which is what we call our author’s notes these days. We used to call them “Author’s Notes” and I (Johnny) never wanted to write them because the whole concept seemed boring. Like I’d need to wear a beret and pontificate about the general difficulty of life and writing, or otherwise find something super meaningful to say. Who wants to do that? Nobody, that’s who. So we decided that if we made them crude- and irreverent-sounding, I’d write more of them because that’s more fun and I’d know I could be casual. And if you don’t like the title … well, you just read The Beam and there’s a few swear words in there. So fuck it. We’ll keep it cleaner in our kids’ stuff. Maybe like “Brain Stuff,” though then it’ll seem like an anatomy lesson.
(Fun side note: The first “Shit From Brains” I wrote under that title was for a book called Dead City. That book won’t come out until after this book and a few others, but I wrote the author’s note first. Anyway, Dead City is a zombie thriller — we think of it as The Walking Dead meets All the President’s Men — so the whole “brains” thing felt right on. But hey, look! It works for The Beam too.)
So, right. About the third season of The Beam.
You should be reading this after finishing the book, so I won’t be careful about spoilers. Let’s just come out and say it: The Beam is a complicated world. It was our job in this season to … well … not simplify it at all, but to at least tie up some of the mystery so readers weren’t being strung along forever. It’s been three full seasons now and we’ve given you a lot to wonder about, but three is a nice neat number and it made sense to both of us to sweep the floors a bit … giving some sense of closure (though God, not all of it by far) to this first threesome.
In Sean’s words, we wanted to “close ten boxes and open three new ones.” So we had some questions to answer.
Questions like, Who is SerenityBlue?
Where is Noah West, if he’s anywhere, and what’s become of him?
What happened to Noah?
And, what will happen at Shift?
So we tried to answer a lot of those questions for you, at least part way. This season we learned a lot. We learned about the truth behind Respero. We learned how Leo began the Organa movement and how his people got addicted. We saw what happened when they went fully off Lunis, and how Leo tried (he did try!) to solve the problem … by “fixing methadone withdrawal by going back to heroin.” And more and more and more.
And of course, we wanted to slash the Gordian knot. The Beam has sprawled, so some of these plot lines needed to be trimmed. We have so much we still want to explore (ramifications of Project Mindbender, anyone?) and characters we want to introduce, but we knew you’d get lost if we didn’t trim the tribe (and associated open storylines) first, while hopefully also giving you satisfying resolution to the first three seasons as a “quasi unit,” with many more seasons of this series to come. And what’s more, we wanted to do all of this in a way that hopefully felt harmonious. Meaning: we didn’t just want to slap answers onto these questions; we wanted to delve back through the first two seasons, find unanswered questions, and braid them all together.
For instance, we didn’t just want to figure out what the reappearance of Project Mindbender meant for our characters and the NAU. We wanted to answer that question by calling back to things you’ve seen before: Respero, the strangeness of The Beam once an adept dips below the surface, and the disturbances someone like Serenity sees … yet doesn’t understand herself.
We have big ideas for Season Four (due out in 2016 if you’re not reading this in 2017 or later … or, for that matter, in 2097), but I’d be lying if we knew more about Season Four now than we did going into Season Three. The truth of all our Realm & Sands stories is that we as authors learn about them right there in the pages, not do different from you.
Integer7’s real identity? Hell, we found that out ONE DAY before I wrote that scene. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t always true. It IS always true. Remember, we’re not really creating these stories, so much as acting as their caretakers, here to find what we can and make it all coherent.
Sean and I hope you enjoyed this third season. We both agree it’s the single most complicated thing we’ve written to date — though we sure hope (and think) it’ll be sensible for you as the reader in the end. But it was really gratifying to pull a project like this off. Because shit, we had our doubts in the middle.
If you like what we do, you really have no excuse not to be on our mailing list. I know, I know: mailing lists. But that’s just like calling these end thingies “author’s notes.” Nobody’s excited about mailing lists, but ours is awesome. And I guess you can call it something cooler if you want.
If you join our list, you’ll get Invasion books 1+2 for FREE. So that’s reason #1 right there to sign up: FREE MOTHERFUCKING BOOKS. But there’s another, and that’s deals on books, which are sometimes discounted at release, etc. Not enough for you? Okay, we do contests, too. We give stuff away. And if that’s not enough, we also write stunning and charming prose in our emails. All the cool kids are on the Realm & Sands email list. You know it’s true.
We also have a Facebook page. I’m kind of shit at updating it and Sean ignores it entirely because he’s a bastard, but I do sometimes post insightful stuff there, project updates, contests and giveaways, and other stuff that generally lets you waste your time or laugh. So definitely like our Facebook page too. That way you’ll be in the know and we can all be friendly and stuff. You can do that here:
http://facebook.com/realmandsands/
As far as the sequel to this book? Well, like I said, that’s a 2016 project, maaaybe squeaking into 2017 depending on how things go. If you can’t wait that long, go to your favorite bookseller and search for either one of our names. We have approximately one thousand books each (slight exaggeration) across many genres, and you’re sure to find something that tickles your fancy.
(You know another way to know for sure when the fourth season of The Beam comes out, by the way? THAT’S RIGHT; JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. Told you that was a good idea. :) )
You can do that here:
http://sterlingandstone.net/rsfb/
Thanks for reading!
Johnny (and Sean)
September 2015
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The discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon) has already shown the populace what is coming. So the news has turned from evasion to triage, urging calm and offering the few fact they have: The objects are enormous, perfectly round spheres numbering in the dozens, maybe hundreds. They are on an approach vector for Earth. And they will arrive in six days.
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THANK YOU FOR READING!
Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant
About the Authors
Sean Platt is an entrepreneur and founder of Sterling & Stone, where he makes stories with his partners, Johnny B. Truant, and David W. Wright, and a family of storytellers.
Sean is the bestselling author of over 10 million words' worth of books, including the Yesterday’s Gone and Invasion series. Sean is also co-author of the indie publishing cornerstone, Write. Publish. Repeat. and co-host of the Story Studio Podcast.
Originally from Long Beach, California, Sean now lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and two children. He has more than his share of nose.
Johnny B. Truant is co-owner of the Sterling & Stone Story Studio, an IP powerhouse focusing on books and adaptations for film and television. It’s the best job in the world, and he spends his days creating cool stuff with partners Sean Platt and David W. Wright, as well as more than 20 gifted storytellers.
Johnny is the bestselling author of over 100 books unde
r various pen names, including the Fat Vampire and Invasion series. On the nonfiction side, he’s also co-author of the indie publishing mainstay Write. Publish. Repeat. and co-host of the weekly Story Studio Podcast.
Originally from Ohio, Johnny and his family now live in Austin, Texas, where he’s finally surrounded by creative types as weird as he is.
