James smiled. “I agree. Without question, the Hektor plan is a much more practical way of blowing up Venus. On the other hand, if you want to terraform her—”
“You’re being belligerent.”
“Then fire me, Inua.”
“Look, all I am saying is there are a lot of people down here with multiple PhDs who disagree with you.”
“But you agree with me. The Hektor plan is lunacy, and you know it. Smashing an asteroid into Venus to get rid of the atmosphere isn’t going to accomplish anything other than destroying the planet. You have to have a little more finesse than that, Inua. Jesus Christ! You know this.”
“I did you a favor. Don’t bust my balls just because I needed you to do me a favor in return.”
“I’ve done enough favors. All I asked was that I remain anonymous. Was that too much to ask?”
A new strategy flashed into Inua’s eyes. “What are you afraid of, James? You’re afraid you’ll be famous for a little while?”
“Exactly.”
“Let me let you in on a little secret. Fame is a sham—a total sham. It’s spectacle. No one who’s famous deserves it. They’re only famous because the public needs to believe that there are people worth idolizing—it’s the malady of the herd.”
“I know this, Inua.”
“Do you? That’s interesting. And do you also know we’re forecasting a 210 IQ for the general public within a decade?”
James did not respond.
“That’s right. 210. The people will have reached your level.”
“Based on my model?”
“Based on your model. You. The man who knows fame is a sham. Do you think the general public will care about you then, once you’re just like them?”
For the first time in his life, James felt the need to throw up.
“You’re going to live forever, James. Up against forever, ten years of fame won’t seem like much.”
“No. No it won’t.”
“There. You see?” Inua was smiling now. “Even with that big soppy brain of yours, old Inua can still teach you a thing or two. Now try to relax, my friend, and try enjoy the notoriety, okay? And let’s make sure we get together for some golf soon—maybe next week, once people are used to the new upgrade and the PR tour is over. What do you say?”
“I-I hate golf. I’ll take you to a hockey game.”
Inua laughed—it was hollow—a salesman’s laugh. “Okay, old friend. Okay. Goodbye.”
The connection was severed. James swiveled his chair around and faced the glass wall behind his desk. Outside was dark, hot hell.
3
James glided out of his office and toward the central dome of the lab. There, the other four members of the research team were sitting together near the base of the MP—the four-story tall magnetic propeller that stood in the middle of the lab. It was about twice as thick as the coast redwood trees near his house in Vancouver and built primarily of titanium. Old-timer had taken to calling it Zeus and the name was appropriate; it was worthy of the gods. James activated his mind’s eye and quickly saw that the rest of the team was already signed in and were ready to begin monitoring the test run.
“Feeling lucky, Commander?” Rich called up from his seat next to the other researchers.
“Who needs luck when you have math?” James replied, jokingly.
“Who needs luck when we have you?” said Thel.
James smiled.
So many things seemed to be wrong in his life. He wasn’t sure exactly what they were—there was just a feeling—like something was slipping away. It wore on him.
Zeus sustained him. These moments made him happy. To accomplish something—something amazing—that sustained him.
His life had not been like other people’s. In a time when infants were born into the world with every genetic advantage known to science, James was exceptional. No one had isolated the genes that could create someone like him—at least not yet.
At the age of six, he designed his first robot. At the age of seven, he designed one that could translate French into English. By the time he was ten, he had programmed it to learn other languages and it became the first speaking universal translator on Earth. The robot was confiscated by the A.I. Governing Council later that year—only one A.I. was allowed to function on Earth—but the Council took note of its young designer, and were quick to put him to work.
James was offered a position in any government field he desired, and he chose terraforming. At that time, the terraforming of the moon was well underway, but a Martian project seemed decades, if not centuries, down the road. James changed all that when he invented the SRS—the Self-Replicating System. He designed dense programs for robots that would blast off to another planet and reproduce. “Adam” was sent to Mars when James was only fourteen. By the time James was sixteen, Adam had used the available resources on the planet to reproduce 100 times. The resulting work force built a research lab that was ready for human inhabitants the following year. James began commuting to Mars soon thereafter and, only five years later, Mars had been terraformed. Now, fifteen years after the terraforming was complete, Mars had its own city—its own hockey team—and the bastards had beaten the Canucks.
Venus was a whole other matter—a planet that could be the jewel of the solar system if only its harsh atmosphere could be removed. The scientists on the Governing Council had their hopes set on a plan that had been designed almost half a century earlier. They wanted to use nuclear detonations to knock the Hektor asteroid into Venus, the theory being that the resulting explosion would destroy the carbon dioxide atmosphere. Then the crackpots wanted to attach a gigantic rocket onto Jupiter’s moon, IO, and send it on a quarter-century long trip to Venus, where it would act as a sunshield and allow for the cooling of the planet. The whole process would take a century.
James’s success on Mars killed their plan, making it look needlessly elaborate in comparison. Now the pressure was on him to prove that his Venus idea could succeed as well, delivering results that were faster and better than those proposed by the Governing Council’s top minds. The first step was to send an SRS to the planet—it built the lab and the Zeus. The Zeus functioned on the same principles as the magnetic implants in everyone’s spinal cords; these implants created a magnetic propulsion and generated the protective fields that allowed people to fly—even through space. The Zeus would generate this same magnetic energy but would spin it like a propeller, creating a massive fan, thus forcing the atmosphere of Venus into space. The Zeus James would activate that day was just a prototype—a baby. If it functioned properly, James would signal the go-ahead to the SRS robots still on the surface to build another Zeus—one two kilometers high and the width of a football field, with the capability of removing the Venusian atmosphere in a matter of months.
It just needed to work today.
“Whenever you’re ready, James,” Old-timer said, smiling up at his young friend.
James was still floating about a dozen feet above the floor of the lab. “Okay. This is it. Keep your eyes on those meters. The numbers have to line up exactly as they do in the simulation. If you see anything amiss, you have permission to engage shut down. Everybody copy?”
“Aye, Aye, Cap’n,” replied Rich. The others likewise assented, albeit without Rich’s unnecessary seafaring pirate accent.
“Okay then. Let’s do it.”
The Zeus began to spin. It moved without noise, floating on magnetic energy. It quickly began to pick up steam. Before long, the movement caused the air in the lab to circulate into a breeze.
“Mmm...feels kind of nice,” Rich commented.
“Concentrate, guys,” James said, still looking straight up through the tinted roof of the dome.
The clouds were clearly starting to swirl. It was a magnificent sight. The clouds moved so slowly on Venus—to see them swirl as though a prairie summer storm were about to break sent chills down James’s spine.
“The momentum is right on track, boss
,” Old-timer reported. “It’s exactly to the computer model—to the decimal point.”
“It has to be. I don’t want to take any—”
Suddenly, there was a flash of light—a crack of energy that went through James’s body before he lost consciousness. In the last second before he blacked out, he knew he was falling.
4
WAKING UP was suddenly a very difficult thing to do. Never in James’s life had he felt groggy before—his head ached—it was a frightening feeling. He knew pain—everyone felt pain from time to time. People couldn’t avoid the occasional spill every now and then, but the nans would release endorphins to minimize the pain and, whatever minor damage might be caused, be it a scraped knee or a bloody nose, was quickly repaired. This was different—this was a whole new experience.
James felt pain throughout most of his body; in his neck, in his back, and it shot down his legs—even his eyes hurt. He was looking straight up, through the dome. The clouds were still moving, but they had slowed considerably. He turned his head a little to the right to see that the Zeus had stopped spinning. “Thel? Old-timer?”
There was no response from the team.
Like a turtle on its back, he rocked his body from side to side to facilitate a turn onto his right side. He quickly regained his bearings; he had landed on a table, denting it with the impact of his body. He struggled to his feet and opened his mind’s eye, but nothing happened. “My God. I’m offline.”
He limped across the lab, past the now lifeless Zeus, and to his four friends. Each was unconscious, either slumped over in their chairs or sprawled on the floor. The first one he went to was Thel. “Thel? Thel!”
She began to stir.
“Can you hear me?”
She opened her eyes, but James could see the pain with which she did so. She groaned. “Wh-what happened?”
“Just relax for a second. Everything is okay, Thel. Just relax.”
Djanet began to move, quickly followed by Old-timer. James called over to both of them as he lightly stroked Thel’s face. “Are you guys okay?”
“What the hell—” Djanet began.
“I know this feeling,” said Old-timer. “This is exactly what a hangover used to feel like, way back when.”
“Oh my God!” Djanet suddenly exclaimed. “I’m offline!”
“We all are,” James replied. He left Thel and attended to Rich, who was just beginning to regain consciousness.
“What happened?” Thel asked.
“I remember a flash,” Old-timer said, struggling to develop a hypothesis. “I think our synapses might have been overloaded.”
“Electrical charge?”
“But where did it come from?” asked Djanet.
“I don’t know,” James answered.
“The numbers were normal,” Old-timer reported as he rubbed a bruise on his elbow.
“Anyone notice how hot it’s getting in here?” Rich said, still groggy.
“Oh no—the whole lab is offline!” Djanet realized.
“Don’t panic,” Old-timer said, suddenly showing his hard-won wisdom and maturity.
“Our nans must have been overloaded by the blast. The connection is severed—everything in the lab has shut down,” Thel concluded.
“The airlocks aren’t run by computer, and neither is the air circulation system. We’re okay, but it’s going to get hot in here, real fast,” Old-timer answered.
James walked away from Rich and lifted off into the air. He stopped, hovering about five feet above the others. “Looks like we’re going to be fine. The flight systems are still operational.”
“Oh thank God,” Rich began. “I thought I was going to have to get used to a new life as a roasted entrée!”
“How can the flight systems still be operational if everything was overloaded?” Djanet asked.
“They’re larger systems. Each individual nan is its own microscopic computer. A surge of electricity that’s powerful enough to knock a human unconscious is powerful enough to severely damage a nan. The flight systems, luckily, were able to absorb the surge, and since they are intranet systems rather than Internet systems, we can still access them,” James answered.
“I thought we didn’t need luck!” Rich retorted.
“We did today,” Old-timer replied. “Math just didn’t cut it.”
“How did this happen, Commander?” Djanet asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t in the model,” Thel observed.
“Yeah. Math screwed us,” Rich replied. “Hey, even if the flight systems are working, without the Net, how are we going to find our way home?”
“I’ll take care of that,” James replied.
“How?” asked Thel.
“Astronomy.”
“Let’s hope astronomy still works,” Rich said, now standing and dusting himself off. “I don’t know if I trust any of the high school subjects anymore.”
“We’ll have to evacuate the lab,” James began. “Gather up whatever you’re taking with you, and we’ll rendezvous at the main airlock in thirty minutes. After that, it’s going to be too hot to stick around in here.” With that, he lifted off and headed toward his office.
“He doesn’t look happy,” Djanet observed.
“He knew I was just joking, didn’t he?” worried Rich.
“Of course. He’s just pissed because he screwed up. I don’t know if he’s ever screwed anything up in his life,” Old-timer suggested.
Thel felt she knew differently. “I’ll go talk to him.” She floated into the air and glided in the direction he had gone.
“Hmm. Now that’s interesting,” said Old-timer.
“Why?” Djanet asked.
“They’re offline,” Old-timer replied.
“Ohh. No. They wouldn’t...would they?” Djanet said, disbelieving.
“Sex ed is in session?” Rich posited.
Old-timer shrugged, his bottom lip protruding as if to say, “Maybe.”
James went to the closet and retrieved his flight jacket and helmet. He paused before putting them on and sat on his desk, gazing out the window. The best-case scenario had his Venus plan being set back six months. The worst-case scenario was that he’d lost her. Would Inua really be misguided enough to allow the Hektor plan to gain traction in the Governing Council?
He had failed. Why? Every calculation seemed to make sense. He had used every resource the Net had to offer—input as much information as he could find into the model. The model had run thousands of times successfully. What had gone wrong?
There was a knock on his door. He couldn’t open it with his mind’s eye any longer, so he crossed the room and pulled the sliding panel open manually. Thel floated before him. She was looking at him strangely—almost expectantly.
“Come in,” he said, feeling hesitant but trying to hide it. He turned away from the door and crossed back to his desk to retrieve his jacket and helmet.
She closed the sliding door and noted his downcast eyes and slumped shoulders. “How are you holding up?”
He stopped by his desk and looked up at her, a helpless expression on his face. “What went wrong, Thel?”
“Life,” she said, smiling. “For most of us, not everything goes exactly as we plan it.”
He leaned against his desk and grimaced. “This could be bad. The Governing Council loathes me. They’ll use this as an excuse to take Venus away from us.”
“What?” Thel reacted with genuine surprise. “That’s ridiculous. That’s not possible.”
“It’s true. They hate me. They use me when it’s convenient, but they hate me. It’s one of those keep-your-enemies-close kind of deals. They’ve been trying to take Venus away from me from the beginning. It’s because I’m thirty-six—they think I’m a child.”
“Well, it’s difficult for a bunch of centenarians to accept that someone a fraction of their age can do things that they can’t.” She crossed the room and leaned on the desk, inches away from
him; he could smell the apple scent from her shampoo.
But I can’t control what I want to do.
“You’ll bounce back, James. You’re too talented—too special not to. Even if they took this project from you, you’d prove them wrong down the road. And they know it too—and if they really do hate you as you say they do, that’s the real reason.”
James closed his eyes tight, Thel’s words reverberating in his mind. “Special. Not for long.”
She smiled. “What are you talking about?”
“They’re looking at an upgrade to a 210 IQ, within a decade.”
“What?” Thel was stunned. She knew James had access to extremely important officials—if he said it, it was true—but how could it be?
“I know it’s selfish but—”
She shook herself from the daze built by his revelation and put her arm around him. “I understand.” She moved in front of him and kissed him.
He looked up at her, mouth agape.
“I love you because I’ve never met anyone like you. I don’t want to lose that either,” she said.
“You kissed me.”
“I love you.”
She loved him? He’d wanted to hear those words for a long time. He’d dreamt of it. But it couldn’t be. “Thel...we can’t—”
“We can,” she countered, her eyes locked with his. “Right now. We don’t need thirty minutes to pack up—no one is taking anything but their flight suits—we could have been at the airlock in ninety seconds.”
She was right. Why did he say thirty minutes? She continued looking straight into his eyes, strangely, fixedly, expectantly.
“Because we can do it doesn’t mean we should. It doesn’t make it right,” James replied.
She touched his face and pressed her torso against his. “People have lived for more than half a century, never being offline, never able to break the rules because the nans will record it, report it, and destroy their lives. But the nans aren’t functioning. No one is watching us. There is no law.”
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