I looked away from her, up to the ceiling. “I wanted to stay here…”
“You wanted to be close to Laura,” Akira said.
It had been over two weeks since the Wichita incident. Major Riviera was the only person to come by ten days earlier, once again asking about Sachi. I had nothing for her.
Otherwise my days consisted of watching internet shows – mostly scripted shows, letting the news go by the wayside – and visiting Laura. She spiked fevers off and on. She was in surgery after her kidneys started failing the day before. The doctors said it was due to blood toxicity from the burns, but that they were already in a weakened state. Likely from being brought back to life and then drinking a lot. I had the hospital put out an advertisement offering five times what they usually paid people to sell their kidneys to anyone who was a match. It took less than twenty-four hours for them to find someone.
Other than that, it was just me. Alone. Until Akira showed up.
“That,” I said, still looking up at the ceiling, “and I wanted to be away from everyone else.”
Akira exhaled slowly. “You’re giving up?”
I turned back to her, “how can I? It doesn’t fucking matter what happened, I’m going to keep on living. I’ll eventually have to do something.”
She hesitated for several moments before saying, “have you been keeping up with the news?”
“No,” I said, looking back to the ceiling.
“Sachi’s people have Landon.”
“What?” I said, sitting up in bed, feeling dull pain, “how? Why?”
“They seem to have cut some kind of deal with the hospital,” Akira said, “LoC Security’s not happy about it.” She paused before saying, “I think they’ve hacked LoC Security, because they somehow found out that Landon’s important to you. They traded Coolidge to the PRA in exchange for Doctor Landon.”
“You haven’t been in contact with Sachi?”
“We’ve talked a couple times,” Akira said, exhaling and sinking back in her chair, “but I made it clear Masaru and I are out. I don’t think she believes me, though.”
“What’s she said to you?”
“Not much,” Akira shrugged, “trying to get me to come back and work for her. She also seems eager to meet with you.”
“I don’t want to see her,” I said, lying back again.
“I don’t think either of us will be able to avoid her forever,” Akira said, “especially if you’re interested in what Landon has to say.” She sat quiet a moment before saying, “I know I am.”
I grunted but said nothing.
“I’m interested,” Akira continued, “because of what I’ve been finding from your NexBioGen hack.”
I turned to look at her.
“They wiped everything shortly after…after Kansas,” Akira started, “but not before the Malware you uploaded sent me their encrypted files. I’ve spent the last couple weeks decrypting them and…well, NexBioGen’s been very busy.”
“How so?”
She pursed her lips, “where do I even start? You said Landon denied knowing anything about the LoC bombings, right?”
I nodded.
“I can’t say one way or the other if she’s telling the truth,” Akira said, “but all the bombing perpetrators had files on NexBioGen’s computer. Life histories, sequenced genomes, the works. And get this,” she sat up straight in the chair, “ all of them were Benecorp employees.”
“NexBioGen working for Benecorp?”
“Don’t think so,” Akira said, “I think NexBioGen, along with others, kidnapped them from Benecorp.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know,” she said, “but Dewitt’s not the only one in on this. Those places you thought Dewitt was laundering money for…most of them are from mid-sized companies like NexBioGen from all over the world. Including one in Oman specializing in self-replicating nanotechnology.”
“Like the one used to kill the bomber,” I said, “and those Shift makers in Mexico.”
“Exactly like that,” Akira nodded, leaning forward, enthusiastic about all these discoveries, “but it means that whatever’s going on here isn’t just in Kansas. It’s global.”
“Why use kidnapped Benecorp employees, though?” I asked.
“I can’t say for sure,” Akira said, “but all these mid-sized companies seem to have a special disdain for Benecorp. They rarely do business with them, but they love poaching intellectual property and talent from them.”
“Sound like potential allies to me.”
“Except they’re also involved in the LoC bombings,” Akira said.
“A special hatred for India, maybe?”
“I don’t know,” Akira said, “I don’t know what the motivation for the bombings could be. But…some of the money transfers in this little scheme was also being used for a secret project to work on a cure for Shift addiction. All being done in partnership with…the PRA government, of all people.”
My bionic eye indicated that Akira sent me a file. I opened it, seeing a molecular structure slowly rotating.
“What’s this?” I said.
“It’s the drug they developed.”
I shrugged.
“And this,” she said, sending me another file, “is a molecule that you’re intimately familiar with.”
“It looks the same,” I said, “why am I…”
Akira nodded.
“This is what’s found in me,” I said, “what Benecorp believes is responsible for my reincarnation. They know about it and they’re going to market it as a cure for Shift?”
“Not exactly,” Akira said, talking fast as she pulled her chair close, folding her tattooed arms up on my bed, “it’s very similar, but not exactly the same. A few modifications. I’ve examined the compound that comes from you, and while I still have a lot of questions – how’s it produced, what it does, and why it’s there – this one they found was even stranger. It has chemical bonds that shouldn’t exist. They seemed as confused as I am. They have entire archives of data from NMR, mass spec, IR spec and so many other methods confirming and reconfirming that this is actually how the molecule exists.”
“Does that give it any special properties?” I asked.
“They wondered about that, too,” Akira said, sitting up straight, excitedly gesticulating, “at first they thought it must have some kind of catalytic effect if it’s stopping Shift from working, but kinetic assays didn’t show any sort of activity against Shift. When Shift was administered to mice with this compound in them, the levels of Shift in the blood over forty-eight hours were comparable to controls without the compound. Then they thought maybe it was inhibiting the bioavailability of Shift into cells. Wasn’t the case. So, they thought maybe it inhibited the receptors the drug actually affects and the transcription factor for altering the DNA. That wasn’t it either.”
“What’s it doing, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it’s not the same chemical found in me?”
“Similar, but the differences are important,” Akira said, leaning onto my bed again, “the biggest being these bonds that shouldn’t be allowed, according to molecular orbital theory. Orbitals aren’t following the Pauli exclusion principle. It’s almost like there’s a third spin quantum number.”
“The zero-spin component you were talking about,” I said.
“Yes, but…it’s more like…like there’s a fermion version of a photon present. What physicists call a photino.”
“Photino?”
“The supersymmetric partner of the photon,” Akira said, clearly excited to be explaining this to me, “supersymmetry says every particle we know of – electrons, quarks, photons – have a ‘partner.’ The electrons we know are in a class called fermions. Fermions have mass. They interact with the Higgs field. Have non-integer spins and chiral symmetry. Gauge bosons like photons don’t interact with the Higgs field. They have integer spins. For the supersymmetric particles that’s all switched. Opposite.�
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“What’s the point of thinking these opposite ones exist?”
“It’s a symmetry,” Akira said, “the more I teach myself advanced physics, the more I see that physicists love symmetries. For good reason. Our universe loves symmetry, too. To simplify things, physicists think supersymmetry is right because if it’s not, then they’d have to explain why some things are fermions and others aren’t. It’s arbitrary.”
“Okay,” I said, “what does it mean that this molecule is made of photinos?”
“Well, it isn’t,” she said, “I mean, not exactly. At least not here…”
“Not…here?”
“I think…I think the molecule,” she said, speaking in a low voice like she didn’t want anyone to be able to hear her, “extends into higher dimensions. Like what you saw in your ‘hallucination.’ Maybe a dimension where supersymmetric particles exist.”
“What makes you think that?”
“For one,” she said, speaking at a normal volume, “I’ve been doing the math on your molecule. It’s zero-spin component, extra chiral centers, and unstable energy…it’s all explained if it extends into higher dimensions. I can get all of it to work if…” she bit her lip a moment, as if embarrassed to continue, “if I use twenty-two total dimensions.”
“Twenty-two?”
She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “I’m still not the best mathematician, so maybe it’s some other number of dimensions, but that’s what I’ve found. What I’m pretty sure of, though, is that there are at lest nine.”
“Why nine?”
“Our four-dimensional spacetime,” she said, “and the five-dimensional spacetime you experienced. An orthogonal spacetime. Perpendicular in higher dimensions.”
“How can you be sure it was perpendicular?”
“Because when you were there,” she said, “you said we all became frozen energy and that something like ten minutes passed when for us it was instantaneous. And I believe you. That sounds like it could be what you’d see if you were moving through a dimension of time orthogonal to our own.”
“But neither you or Doctor Taylor saw anything.”
“Not with you,” Akira said, “but NexBioGen’s records show that an ‘unscrupulous scientist’ injected this altered chemical into a human subject. What got the scientist in trouble is…the subject, whom the scientist still claims was a willing participant, underwent hallucinations when the doctor examined him using magnetic resonance imaging.”
Butterflies went through my stomach, “what kind of hallucinations?”
“There wasn’t any video,” Akira said, “but the scientist said the man transported across the room in an instant as soon as the MRI machine was turned on. The scientist claims the man was screaming like a lunatic. The last entry on the experiment was from two weeks afterwards, and all it says is that the subject lost his grip on reality.”
“Jesus Christ…”
“That’s not even the craziest part,” Akira said, standing up.
I kept my gaze locked on her but said nothing.
“The subject was aged about two years,” Akira said, pacing, “in that instant.”
“I…no wonder he lost his mind,” I said, “I was there ten minutes and I thought I was losing mine…”
“I wouldn’t have believed this account if I hadn’t seen something similar myself,” Akira said.
“What about the receptor?” I asked, “the one in the kids? I assume the PRA was helping run those experiments for this cabal of mid-sized businesses?”
“Probably,” Akira said, stopping near the foot of my bed, looking at me, “that’s interesting, too. When the modified chemical binds to the receptor, it goes back to being the normal, unmodified molecule.”
“It converts the Shift treating version back to the inert version,” I said, “as if someone wants people to stay addicted to Shift.”
“Once again, I can’t speak on the motive,” Akira said, “but the receptor is made to be part of a gene drive. It’s transferrable to people through sexual contact, just like the Shift genetic modifiers.”
“Did NexBioGen figure out how to synthesize the chemical?”
“No,” she said, “they’re getting it from a person. Someone referred to only as Asset A. I tried looking into it online, but nobody even mentions an Asset A, much less know who they are.”
“Do you think Landon does?”
“I’m hoping,” Akira said with a wan smile.
“Whoever they’re harvesting it from,” I said, “they must be related to Sachi, Imelda, or myself from a past life,” I said.
Akira nodded.
Mya, I thought, someone coerced her into getting pregnant by me. Did she succeed? Are they harvesting this chemical from my child with her?
“We should talk to Sachi,” I said.
“I think we should,” Akira said, “it’s going to happen at some point, we might as well get it over with.”
Akira called Sachi’s place a compound. When we arrived I could see why. The sunbaked expanse of property had four buildings side-by-side that could only be described as barracks, a surprising number of people walking about. Another large building on the other side of the expanse could only be described as a hangar, one large door opened enough I could see a UAV inside. A pair of transport vehicles drove down a dirt road, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them. A row of people in exoskeleton suits were training on the far end of the expanse, the cracks of their weapons echoing across the grassy field.
“Holy shit,” I said, scanning across it. A part of me had known this was what I would find, but it was till surprising to actually see it.
“She’ll know we’re here,” Akira said, opening her door and getting out. I followed suit.
There was an almost frightening level of discipline in the people moving about the grounds. It was being conducted like a military. People performing drills, both in exoskeletons and without. Most of the people we passed by as we walked across the field looked Hispanic, I guessed either Peruvian or Colombian, but I also heard a few speaking in Portuguese.
“Come with me,” a man with an M249 SAW strapped in front of his chest said in Spanish.
Akira and I followed. She appeared anxious. The whole thing made her uncomfortable. We walked past the barracks toward another small building that I assumed was the command center. A fenced in area around it had an assortment of mesh network nodes, giving the command center a choice of identities on multiple networks. Satellite dishes pointed off into space, antennae jutted up from the ground, and cables were strung along out into the distance.
Sachi was already waiting for us at the door, grinning. She looked similar to the last time I’d seen her, yet more sinewy. The arms crossed in front of her chest had veins bulging above well-defined muscles, her skin darkened from exposure to the sun, determination set in her eyes. Her fatigues clung tight to her muscular figure, legs wrapped in exoskeleton leggings, hair covered with a black baseball cap, an M249 slung over her back.
“It’s good to see you again,” she said, holding her arms out.
I approached, gingerly wrapping my own arms around her, grimacing through the pain in my chest and burnt shoulder during our long embrace. When we finally let go, I stepped back and said flatly, “It’s good to see you again, too.”
“Injuries healing up alright?” she asked.
I looked down at my acid-scarred hand, “I’ve had worse.”
Sachi laughed, “I bet you have. Sorry I haven’t come to visit, but I’m apparently not allowed on the property.”
“I think you’re scaring a lot of the people around here with all this,” I signaled out to the long expanse, small groups of people running drills on it.
“Militias are ‘allowed,’ aren’t they?” Sachi asked, looking out at the field.
“How many people do you have?” I asked.
“About three hundred,” she said proudly, “I mean shit, I bet LoC security employs more than that just in Denver.”
Sachi looked back to me, a crooked smile on her face, “I think the problem is that someone’s been filling their heads with a lot of bullshit about my intentions.”
I sighed, “You have to know what this looks like to everyone, right?”
“Fucking Christ, let’s not fight right away, okay?” Sachi said, “We’ve both said and done shit we’re not proud of, but we can make a new start now, can’t we? Isn’t that what you and I have been doing with others for fucking generations?”
I forced a smile, “you’re right. Let’s not start off this way.”
“Good,” she said, looking over my shoulder to Akira, “why don’t you two come in and we can have some coffee.”
“Maybe some tea,” Akira said as both of us followed Sachi into the small building.
Inside we walked down a hallway, rooms on either side marked as operations or laboratory, muffled voices coming from them. We got to the back to what looked like a crude conference room, a long table, maybe eight by three, surrounded by foldout chairs.
“How have you been?” I asked as I sat down at the head of the long table, Sachi pouring the drinks. Akira sat in one of the chairs to my right.
“Pretty good,” she said, “I’m very happy with progress. How about you?”
I shrugged, “I’ve picked up music again.”
“Oh yeah?” she said, setting the cups in front of us before sitting down at the other end of the table from me, “what instrument?”
“Sitar.”
Sachi smiled, “Damn, I love how those sound.”
“Have you ever played?” I asked.
“I’ve always been more of a percussionist,” she said, taking a sip of coffee.
“You should get some tabla and join me sometime.”
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