"You know this one?" she heard one of them ask, a man, as they drew closer to her.
A long pause. Anna watched a woman stride over to a smoke-blackened figure on the ground, at the muzzle's end, trying to croak out an answer.
"Maybe," the woman said. "Could be with the lepers."
"Huh," said the man, and toed the woman roughly. "Mark her out. Don't move."
The woman pulled a canister from a satchel slung round her shoulder, popped the cap off, then bent over and sprayed a yellow X across the figure on the floor. She coughed.
"Shut up," said the woman absently, and moved on.
Anna watched. They conferred at times, spraying some, loading others into the van, and Anna tried to prepare herself. They drew closer, but when the time came there was nothing Anna could do.
"I don't believe it," the woman said, standing over her. Anna blinked back awake. She had her spray can out. "I've got the bitch herself!"
"What?" someone called. Anna tried to get up, tried to speak, but couldn't.
The woman's face twisted. "I've got Anna! God knows what she's doing here, but I'd recognize her anywhere. She's covered in soot, like she set the bomb herself!"
Others came. They were angry, they toed her face, one of them sprayed paint on her cheek, one kicked her. Not hard, but hard enough, in the side. She tried to roll over and protect her stomach, but she couldn't move.
"This fucking bitch," another said, and spat on her chest. "She's the reason for all of it. We should string up a noose right now." A face appeared close over hers, a man with thick features. "Are you proud of what you've done?"
"Don't hurt her, Montcliffe," said a new voice, a woman. "We need her. We need to know what she's done. Get her ready."
There was argument, and some more calls for a noose, but soon they lifted her between them. They carried her to a corner of the hangar where they tied her down to a stack of packing crates, and the interrogation began.
INTERLUDE 2
The minutes ticked down.
Joran leaned forward in his seat. The transmission he hoped to write onto the line was a simple one.
HELLO
It was encoded in the parameters, which would be sent up the data pillars into each of the one hundred minds. Usually the parameters were just a pattern aiming for calm unity, a kind of data massage tailored to each individual brain to help lull it into the same passive state, most receptive to input.
It was through fine-tuning of those parameters that they'd finally glimpsed the signal six months ago. That had been a glorious day, finally having proof that there really was a medium that encircled the world; a thought-soup, as Sandbrooke had taken to calling it, across which communications could be sent. So many possibilities had opened up in that moment, amongst them telepathy and other psychic powers; though most interesting of all, Joran had believed the very presence of the line might shed light on the question of human consciousness.
The soul. God. A unifying theory of reality.
The celebrations that day had been epic. They'd caught a glimpse of the hand of God, and his Word was opening up for them like a flower unfolding its petals.
After that things had slowed right down.
Honing in on the details of the signal had proved an order of magnitude more difficult than just spotting it. It was in the aftermath of that first glimpse that they'd grown even more rigorous in their screening procedures. Over half their first one hundred volunteers had been sent home, and new ones were brought in, further screened for genetic variance, brain architecture, upbringing. They were then filtered further, trained, and smoothed out over the Array floor like a pureed nutrient paste, waiting for the impression of the line to land and take root, sending data down into the underhall.
At first he'd jokingly compared the task to trying to count the number of stars in the sky with the naked eye, but gradually he'd come to realize that the work was more like trying to count not all the stars, but all the atoms.
But they didn't give up. The SEAL backed him with billions more, so in turn he scaled up their computing power. Yet even with the twelve stations in the Multicameral Array spread like a necklace around the Arctic pole, Joran knew they were only seeing a tiny sliver of the true line, like a camera obscura peephole on the world.
The human genome project had taken thirteen years to complete its first full sequence of human DNA, and Joran began to realize that mapping the entirety of the line was massively more complex. With the assets they currently had, it was going to take not thirteen years to decode it all, but thirteen centuries. More, perhaps.
"God has a big mind," Sovoy had joked, a joke that grew stale the more times it was repeated around the underfloor, in the habitat modules, in the fitness center and out on the permafrost while snatching five minutes for a cigarette break. "We can't presume to know the mind of God. Look what happened to Michelangelo."
"What happened to Michelangelo?" so the joke went.
"He's dead."
So every fatalistic joke about the pointlessness of their task ended in the punch line, "He's dead. She's dead."
Worst of all, it was true. The hydrogen line would outlast them all. Their descendants a hundred or more generations removed may one day know the full mind of God, what the message ultimately was, by which point it'd be time to start measuring it all over again, just like with the Golden Gate Bridge. As soon as you've finished painting it, you have to start painting it again from the beginning.
That was another bad joke.
Morale fell. Joran began to have bad dreams about climbing a mountain of grayed-out future generations, seeking an answer he would never find.
Then the email came. It was simple, from an account he'd never seen before with no data stamp through the SEAL's system, un-flagged by the stringent security measures. The subject line read:
Transmit
There was no further text in the body, only a graphic representation of human brainwaves attached as an image file. There were two graphs laid side-by-side, of the sort he'd seen many times in his studies. They were labeled simply, with single words.
LISTENING
SPEAKING
The LISTENING image showed a great amount of complexity. The line measuring thought as the subject 'listened' was a scrawl of peaks and valleys, representing all the myriad background functions of the mind while listening; unfocused and dissimilar. Here was the bump that could be breathing, here some discomfort in a thigh, perhaps, here visual stimuli, here auditory, here a memory popping up, here another ducking down.
The SPEAKING file was much cleaner. The peaks and valleys of the brainwave were far shallower, with the extremities smoothed out by the conscious act of speaking. It reflected a well-known theory in brain science that a focused mind was easier to 'read' than an unfocused one.
He'd been in his office alone at night when the email came in, and immediately tried to back-trace it, but there was no return address. For a moment he considered notifying SEAL security, then paused. To do that would mean sharing any potential credit. And how could he know, perhaps this email came direct from one of the SEAL's shadowy investors, whom he'd never met. How else could it have cut so completely through the firewall?
Whatever, the intent to report it tapered away as he began to think through the possibilities that the simple message suggested.
Transmit
He'd leaned back in his chair, looking out at the snow through his window walls while Siberian winds rushed by outside, and imagined the clarity a single transmission on the line might produce. If it functioned anything like a mind, which it seemed to, then perhaps an act of 'SPEAKING' would stamp order onto the chaos, allowing him to read the core pattern much faster.
In just one generation, perhaps? Even faster?
The opportunity grew more tantalizing as he chewed on it. He began to plan, and in the days that followed began enacting that plan without a hard decision point standing in the way. At this stage it was only preparation, he told
himself; the final decision would be the matter of flicking a switch in the final moments.
He let only as many of his team in on the truth as he had to, and spoofed the rest with dummy controls over their data spines. Everything would go through his desk, so the decision rested solely with him, at the last possible moment.
HELLO.
He would replace the soothing massage in the data spines for that single thought. His Array might get headaches from the intensity, but it shouldn't have any lasting ill effects. One hundred minds all thinking the same thought at once would surely act as a focusing lens for the line. It would make God's Word legible, and the more he thought about it, the more he desperately needed to know what the hell God was saying, right now.
He stared at the screen, and the choice flashing in the corner of his screen as the timer ticked down.
TRANSMIT?
Around Joran the underhall grew still, as all eyes focused on their screens. One hundred green signals blinked before them, like occupied seats on an airliner. Joran counted down the seconds under his breath, from ten to five, from five to one. On two he clicked the Enter key.
Across the underhall his spoofing procedures leaped into place. Soothing data massages were replaced by one single word, pulling the Array into tighter harmony than ever before, pushing his message back onto the line.
For long moments, nothing happened.
The underhall held their collective breath as data rolled in and out through the brains above. Most of them had no idea of the stakes Joran had just put into play, but the atmosphere was electric still. One second to five. Five to ten.
Then the first square on Joran's screen went red.
He leaned in and hit the emergency power kill at once, manually cutting any residual signal running through the spines and skull-caps above, but that didn't stop the second square on the grid turning red, or the third, or the cascade that followed.
Then the screaming began.
Joran rose to his feet as answering shouts rang out. A final glance at his screen told him the power was out, but every square in the Array was flashing red now, signifying severe mental stress.
"Get them out," he called, and the cry was taken up by teams at stations nearest to him. There was no time for panic; they'd drilled for this. It didn't have to be anything catastrophic; a flashing red light could just be the equivalent of a particularly bad dream. It could also signify a drop into coma, or approaching death.
Joran joined a press of bodies racing for the elevator; gathering four paramedics and Sandbrooke to him as the doors opened.
"What the hell's happening, Joran?" Sandbrooke asked.
"We'll find out."
The elevator rose one floor to the hall's access chambers, underneath the second floor walkway, and the screaming grew louder. The doors opened and noise poured into the carriage like a terrible wave, along with a vision Joran could barely make sense of. Through the open arches of the gantry, his Array appeared to be boiling.
He blinked. On their beds, strapped to their mattresses and shackled to the floor by the data spines, their bodies were in some kind of flux. Eyes flashed white. Limbs and chests ballooned and rippled beneath flapping white hospital gowns. Heads reared back with jaws stretched impossibly wide. Skin seemed to burn through different colors, like a hundred panicking chameleons. Arms and legs thrashed violently and hospital beds clacked on the grooved floor, while explosive screams filled the air, warping from human to something guttural and monstrous.
The sound of bones cracking made Joran flinch. His eyes watered. He stared along with the paramedics and Sandbrooke, all six of them motionless, while behind them a second load of first-responders pushed out of the elevator, nudging them forward then stopping and staring too.
Beds collapsed as the things that had been men slathered and rolled off them. Something in the middle, burning red and already twice as tall as it should be, kicked out and snapped another creature in two. On the edge near to them a man seemed to be caught up in a kind of yellow fire, reaching out to them with arms that had no hands.
"Good God," somebody whispered.
"We have to help them," one of the paramedics said weakly.
"How?" said Sandbrooke.
"Him," the paramedic pointed weakly at the yellow burning man. "He's in pain."
"I wouldn't-" Joran began, but the paramedic pushed past him and entered the Array. Inches from the burning yellow figure, dropping his stride to set his first aid case down, he erupted in yellow flames too. One of the creatures from a neighboring square stretched over, sending an arm that had become a tuber of black, elastic meat toward him, suckering onto the paramedic's head.
"Oh my God," Sandbrooke whispered.
The arm-tuber jerked and the paramedic's head twisted sharply to the side. The nearby yellow thing took a step closer then threw itself bodily at his chest, where it-
Joran's brain stopped working, as something happened in the air, like a psychotic break. He was watching but not thinking. He saw the yellow thing seem to fold into the paramedic's chest, a man whose name he knew but couldn't recall. The yellow thing bedded in, melding into position, then somehow stood up.
It stuck out sideways from the paramedic, emerging at right angles from his chest, melting along a weld line of yellow flesh and clothing. The paramedic looked down with horror, then up to his team members as if asking for help, but before anyone could move the black tuber pulled again, and the paramedic's head cracked right off.
Someone vomited to Joran's right. Sandbrooke. Joran felt the same urge, but nothing was working as it should. He was frozen in position by a flood of cold and heat, of interference in his head, like someone had programmed an impossible thought into his own parameters and dialed it up to dangerous levels.
"We have to," somebody said nearby, and Joran caught the stench of fresh vomit as Sandbrooke staggered forward against one of the archway pillars. Perhaps he didn't realize how close he was to-
Another break hit him.
The giant red thing was spinning in the middle, lashing at its data spine and others nearby. There was more than one like it now, batting smaller bodies around like weeds. There was a black and white thing nearby, whose very presence burned against his skin like an electrostatic shock. There was a gray thing with eyes like white halogens, crystalizing the storm outside, reaching out at the full extent of its data spine leash. Someone was laughing, and now Joran's eyes came back and he saw it was Sandbrooke, as a flimsy black thing several rows into the Array pressed its fingers into his head.
Joran felt his jaw drop. Sandbrooke with his bright blue eyes and easy blonde hair was on his knees in the thick of the Array. The other creatures had peeled to the side to let this insubstantial black wraith thing have Sandbrooke to itself; standing over him, pushing its hands deeper into his head.
Sandbrooke laughed but his eyes were terrified. Joran felt his own bladder release, and hot liquid streamed down his thighs and the stink of urine filled the air. The black thing barely seemed real, some kind of evil ghost from a nightmare, but it was right here. There was no blood though, no cracks in Sandbrooke's skull where its hands entered, only another fleshy weld on his forehead where the wraith's wrists merged into his skin.
"Joran!" Sandbrooke called out, his voice half his usual merry self, half utterly terrified. "Joran, I think we should leave now."
The hands sank deeper. Joran thought he saw the shadow of them pass across the inside of Sandbrooke's eyes. Sandbrooke shuddered and laughed and his mouth twitched violently, as if he was talking when he wasn't saying a word.
"Help," he managed, a wet gulp, as the shade pressed its arms deeper in through his head, pushing impossibly into solid meat and bone, until it was elbow deep, then shoulder deep, and Sandbrooke shook from above like a puppet on a string. He stopped making any human sounds at all and only began to squelch. His mouth opened and sucking wet noises came out.
Sound rushed back in, and Joran became aware of the chaos a
nd confusion all around, with bodies shifting and snatching, yanking at their data spine shackles and transforming, though he only had eyes for Sandbrooke. Now his stomach swelled as the wraith poured more of itself in, stretching outward through his sleek shirt, then his throat bulged and he coughed up something black and lumpy, which ran down his chest, and which Joran dimly recognized as a kidney. A second lump followed, along with a trail of thick black juice. Sandbrooke's eyes jerked and he gave a long loud burp, and-
The pressure in Joran's head tightened and he was yanked forward by invisible hands. Now there was something gray and furious holding onto him, working his arm over with its teeth. In a bloody moment Joran realized he'd been sucked in to the fringe of the Array. Had he stepped in? His left arm was held out like a foreign object, while the gray thing took bites out of it. He felt the pain of each gulp, but distantly.
"I-" he began, then Sandbrooke's body appeared beside him, his shirt marked with a grotesque trail of internal matter, while the black shade moved behind his eyes. It was inside him now, wearing him like a second skin. It opened Sandbrooke's mouth so hard his jaw cracked, then leaned in to clamp down on Joran's left arm too.
It came back with a chunk of skin and muscle. Joran screamed and panicked as the pain finally hit and his blood pumped out. He couldn't move, could barely think for the thickness of cold and heat in his head, electric static and screaming and all he wanted was to die, until-
RATATATATATATAT
Sandbrooke was blown backward, stitched across the torso with a line of bright red stars. The red giant in the middle toppled backward, as did the gray thing holding Joran's arm.
RATATATATATATAT
One of the black and white ones collapsed in a puddle of fizzing static, like a puddle of gooey cola. The yellow thing that had been paddling the paramedic around rolled and sucked itself sideways away from the lines of fire.
RATATATATATATAT
Machine gun fire, he realized. One of their protocols? He veered dizzily, looking for a place to put his bloody arm, something to do. They'd never drilled for this. A circle cleared around him, and overhead on the railing there were stick figures leaning over and shouting.
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 171
