Gemini Gambit

by D Scott Johnson

  Kim gasped.

  Tonya asked, “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Wait,” Kim replied.

  The synch wobbled in directions weren’t easy to understand. “Wow. Oh, wow. That’s… weird.”

  “Mike?” Kim asked. “Are you okay?”

  He looked up at them. They kept multiplying and collapsing. Duplicates would spread out and then shift back around him. All the noises were chopped and distorted, like they were coming through a long tube. Static from the realms washed back and forth, pulling and pushing, while the near infinity of voices throughout realmspace threatened to deafen him. He tried moving his arms. They felt notched, and they buzzed. He smelled vanilla. Mike leaned against the tree so he wouldn’t fall down.

  “Yes, I think so. Wow, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.” He kept blinking as a headache formed.

  “What’s happening?” Kim asked.

  Talking was a real effort; his tongue moved in and out of sync with his mind. “Some of my models predicted this,” he said, really concentrating. “Without the phone connection I have to… manually stay synchronized… with myself… let’s see if this works…”

  He tried to open a connection to Kim.

  Kim winced and sucked on her teeth a little. “Is that you, Mike?”

  “So you can see it?”

  “What I see won’t stay steady. Yow!” They both flinched as feedback flooded the circuit in both directions.

  He cut the connection attempt. “Okay. Okay. That’s good enough for now. Wow. Tonya… could you?” He handed her his phone and she reconnected it around his neck. He shook his head and yawned to make his ears pop. It took a moment for the synch to restabilize his threads with his outside consciousness.

  “What the hell was all that about?” Tonya asked.

  Mike took a long, deep breath. “I think I just proved a big chunk of string theory.” He clapped his hands together. After all this time, he finally had experimental confirmation that he’d been right all along. “Nobel prize, here I come!”

  Tonya and Kim shared a look and then both said together, “What?”

  “Okay, first, you need to picture a psychic Twinkie about the size of Manhattan.”

  “Wait, I’ve heard that line before,” Kim said. “On the news, when they were talking about the realm storm you caused.”

  He nodded. “It’s an inside joke. When people get used to working with more than ten dimensions at once, the jokes get really weird.”

  Tonya waved her hands dismissively. “We can talk about Twinkies and Calabi-Yau manifolds when people aren’t trying to kill us.”

  Mike was impressed. Some of the manifolds really did look vaguely like pastries. Not many people understood algebraic geometry, at least in his experience.

  Tonya got a sour look on her face. “What, you think nurses don’t read science books? Anyway, we need to get out of here, right?”

  “Right.” Kim searched the road that ran next to the parking lot. “There’s our bus! Hey!”

  She ran, waving at a yellow-and-red bus that had just pulled to a stop. They all scrambled behind her, and then stacked up at the entrance.

  Tonya laughed. “Is that a fare card? I haven’t seen one of those things in years.”

  It was Mike’s turn to riff on Spencer. “God, Kim, even old buses?”

  The smile she flashed set off something sweet that he was afraid to trust.

  Laugh it off. “Let me guess, no cameras?”

  “Oh it has a camera,” Kim said as she gestured to a small window above the windshield. She tapped the side of her head lightly. “But it’s broken.”

  The doors shut and the bus drove away into the night.

  Chapter 49: Aaron

  Two nights in a row spent with Lefla. He was waking up more often with her than with his own girlfriend. The thought had a disturbing appeal. Lefla had a mute button.

  “Care to let me in on the joke?” her holo asked.

  “You wouldn’t think it was funny.”

  Her face went flat. “Oh. I see. The punch line makes fun of what I am?”

  “Lefla, come on. I can’t rest half my brain like you can. At least you’ve had a download. I haven’t had a shower in three days.”

  An evil gleam sparked in her eyes. “You’re talking to someone who gets paid to smell dead things. Trust me, I know exactly how long it’s been since your last shower.”

  Aaron tried to parse what getting paid meant to an unduplicate when an alert softly pinged. Finally, the chemical analysis of the motorcycle was complete. It was such a strange tip to come on the hotline. Just a description and a direction, but it wasn’t like a Ducati superbike prototype was all that common. Aaron thought all the stereotypes of Italians were precisely that, until they’d given the thing back to the factory reps. They’d been knocking a few back at a bar in Old Town when Trayne and her companion drove off with it. The chief engineer fainted when they told him it was safe.

  Aaron and the rest of the team had been combing the parking lot outside Belle Haven Marina ever since.

  As they peered together at the result, Aaron felt strangely reassured by the effort Lefla was making. After all, she already knew what was in the report.

  “Well,” he said, “at least we know it’s Rage. I mean Trayne. I mean, God, I really want my next assignment to be simple. You know, an assassination attempt, maybe a kidnapping?”

  Lefla laughed softly. “I’ll be right behind you, Aaron. And look, her mysterious bodyguard was with her.”

  The kid, Spencer, was still being interrogated in Arkansas, but her other male companion, the one they still hadn’t managed to identify, had been right here.

  The screens outside drew trails where their subjects had walked or stood, so he opened up a channel to the agents outside.

  “Jenny, Mosby, over to your left, there’s a big tree branch covered with her DNA.”

  “Geez,” Jenny replied, “the pieces are scattered everywhere. Do you think maybe they were attacked?”

  “By what?” Mosby replied. “Bears?”

  “Aaron,” Lefla said, “something’s wrong.”

  She posted up several windows showing the far perimeter. Her ROVs, really just a set of glorified radio-controlled airplanes, cruised over three cars that had pulled into the parking lot, one after the other.

  “Agent Park?” Aaron asked. “Something’s going on out—”

  Lefla’s normally very animated holo snapped twice and turned into a plastic doll, a sure sign she’d been forced into a default mode by an outside event. In a far rougher, more robotic voice she said, “Agent Levine. Priority call from Herndon Hospital. Override code six-six-seven-three.”

  Someone from a hospital was ringing Lefla’s emergency line. “Levine here.”

  “Agent Levine,” Adelmo Quispe, of all people, manifested in a window on his left. “You need to pull your people out of there.”

  Way too many men were piling out of the cars parked on the edge of the marina. “Mr. Quispe, what are you talking about?” He tried gesturing to Lefla, but she couldn’t respond; the call put her in emergency mode. “Are you surrendering or something?”

  The answer blew him away. “Actually yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing, but I’m too far behind you. Agent Levine, pull your people out now. Now!”

  No need to tell him twice. Levine cut the channel and smashed the glass cover over Lefla’s emergency alert button. Every agent in the area got an override command to activate their vests and dive for cover. Over Lefla’s screens he saw faint shimmering wrap around each of the team outside.

  Except for Aaron. He couldn’t wear a vest inside the van; they interfered with her scanners. A line of assault rifle rounds stitched through the roof of the lab. He covered his head, swearing as hot plastic and metal rained down.

  “Aaron!” Lefla shouted, back in control of herself. “They’re setting mines!”

  Sure enough, two men were setting satchels with flashing detonat
ors beside the truck’s wheels. Something ripped through his arm. He had just enough time to realize it was a bullet when Lefla’s voice filled his mind. “Aaron. Can you hear me?”

  Alarms blared. There was no way she could’ve overridden the access codes to his neural interface. Goddamn, his arm hurt!

  “Yes, Lefla, I can hear you!”

  Her eyes flared and she slapped her hands together. “Shit! I can’t do it by myself!” Her holograph flashed back to a doll. “Override authorization required. Please confirm.”

  The reek of burning plastic filled the air as more claxons sounded. “Yes, Lefla! Confirm! Confirm!”

  The floor gave way underneath him. Aaron splashed into a tank of fetid muck. A field flickered over him, and then the world went white in thundering violence.

  *

  “Agent Levine! Agent Levine!” Someone was slapping him.

  God, what smelled so bad?

  “Agent Levine, open your eyes!”

  Who was this old guy? Aaron tried to recognize him, but things kept going in and out of focus. All of the blue and red lights were flashing too fast. Why was it so noisy? What was that smell?

  The old man stood up above him with his hands raised as white spotlights blasted him. Adelmo. That was Adelmo Quispe. Why was Adelmo Quispe standing over him? He wasn’t a nice guy. It was good they were arresting him. Aaron had been sitting inside Lefla. Where the hell had Lefla gone?

  Two EMTs picked him up out of a wrecked bathtub. There were stretchers everywhere, bodies covered with sheets. Worry and panic collided until he was able to find the rest of his team. They were all on the stretchers, groaning but alive.

  That still left one missing. “Where’s Lefla?”

  Small fires were scattered everywhere, hosed down by firemen that had mysteriously sprung into existence around him. The truck should be here. Where the hell had the truck gone?

  One of the EMTs moved Aaron’s arm and razors of pain shifted around inside it. “LEFLA 3 saved your life, sir. It dumped you into its disposal basin and activated the containment field. Its programming saved you.”

  LEFLA wasn’t an it. Lefla was a she. The world swirled around his head. He collapsed into a stretcher, trying to understand what had gone wrong. The truth crashed in when he saw the torn, smoldering chassis, just wheels and frame rails really, charred black.

  Chapter 50: Mike

  From the moment they sat down in the bus, they’d been trying to contact Kim’s team. It should’ve been easy, but it had to be according to her rules. It had to be secure. After what had happened at the apartment, Kim didn’t think anything was secure.

  Mike closed his eyes and put his head against the bus seatback in front of him. It made the bag of chemicals he mostly inhabited lately feel much better. Frustration had never been so exhausting.

  “I’m telling you,” he said as she sat next to him, “it’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “That’s what you said when we tried reverting the encryption stack. My scalp’s still itching.” She scratched it theatrically.

  It didn’t help that she was right. He’d just missed one value. But hey, it’s not like her hair fell out or anything. Mike stopped the process well before it’d gone that far. “I know what went wrong there. This time it’ll work for sure.”

  “And you’re trying to tell me you’ve checked every line of this config file? It’s gotta be two hundred lines long!”

  “I’m not stupid, Kim.”

  “I never said you were stupid, Mike, I said you were—”

  “HEY!” Tonya snapped her fingers between them, making them both flinch away. “Save the team now, call each other names later. Right?”

  Tonya was the only thing holding them together. He’d been trying to take notes on how she kept Kim in check, but then one of his own encryption attempts had gotten loose. It wasn’t his fault the damned thing had burrowed into the bus’s engine management system. Tonya and Kim both got really shouty when it threatened to catch fire. All he wanted to do was flee deep into the realms. But that wasn’t an option tonight.

  Tonya sat back and rubbed her eyes. “What are you two trying to do this time, anyway?”

  Kim threw her hair back. “What I’m trying to do is figure out a way to communicate with the team that won’t get us busted again.”

  “And what I’m trying to tell her is I access all of this and nobody will detect it, but she won’t believe me.”

  Neither of them believed him. It took so long to explain how it all worked. Back-channel conduits and data tunnels didn’t just sit there. They moved where his real self lived, like tumblers in a lock. By the time they understood any explanation, the loophole he’d found had closed or the opportunity had passed.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Mike, I just want to make sure it’s safe.” The way she said it made him afraid to look at her. Electric things happened when her voice went gentle like that.

  They needed to understand he was so much more than this muscled skeleton. “All the stuff you’re doing is just messing me up. That’s why none of it’s working.”

  Tonya used the end of her sleeve to tap on Kim’s hand. “I believe him. I think you should too.”

  Kim stared ahead with her lips pursed in a frown. She took a deep breath. “Okay. You already have their addresses. Here’s what I need you to check, and here’s what you need to send.” She sent over messages addressed to each of the team members.

  “Do I get to use any of your toys?”

  “What, a bag full of LockPixies wasn’t enough for you?” she asked with a wry smile.

  He should’ve known better than to try hiding it. “You weren’t supposed to know about that.”

  “What did you end up doing with them?”

  They were on the verge of trusting him, but he wouldn’t lie, that would just make it worse. “It… didn’t go exactly like I planned. But Spencer’s fine now; I checked.”

  She stopped smiling. “That’s why you scare me, Mike. You play around with this stuff, think it’s just a big game, and you end up putting people in real danger. You’re not in the realms anymore. If you mess up out here, people can die. People will die. You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met, but if you don’t start paying attention, none of us will make it out of this alive.

  “It’s not a game anymore. You can’t apologize when it blows up. We won’t be around for that. I need you to pay attention. These are people I care deeply about, and I can’t protect them right now. You can. Details matter, Mike. Get the details right.”

  He filed her “amazing” comment away for further analysis. For now, he had a job to do.

  “I can. I will.” He leaned back, closed his eyes, and fractured himself through the realms.

  She was right. He was always in such a rush. All he wanted was to get the task done; get it done, show off the results, and move on to the next challenge. But this time he wouldn’t make a mistake.

  “How long do you think it’ll take him?” he heard Tonya ask as he delivered the first half of the messages.

  “Most of them are scattered all over the country, and there’s a lot of checking he needs to do.”

  Well, yes, but that just meant spawning a few hundred more threads to cover the bases. He heard Kim breathe out. The image of her stretching like she always did made it hard to keep the threads synchronized, but he managed it.

  “I’m just glad I decided to introduce him to the team. Probably fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  Mike checked four times before he called it, fifteen seconds later. “Done.”

  “What?” Kim asked, “How?”

  “I told you, I’m not limited sequentially when I’m in the realms. That’s how I did the phone call thing.”

  “The phone call thing?” Tonya asked.

  Kim shook her head. “He called every Trayne in northern Virginia, all at once, trying to find my mom. Remind me to kill her when this is over for getting listed again.”

  Tonya tur
ned to Mike and asked, “Why’d you want to call her mother?”

  It was another reminder of how he rushed around jumping to conclusions. “It’s complicated. If I’d only known…”

  Kim put her hand up. “No, it’s okay.” A yellow light blinked in their shared channel. “Well, I’ll be damned. Emerson’s transfer just completed.”

  Tonya asked, “So is he all right?”

  Kim shared her message screen with them. “I don’t know. When he reached out toward the screen, he must’ve been firing duplicates all over the place. Check out the routing for it.”

  Each segment, and there were millions, had gone through at least three thousand different realms. The pattern was so random even Mike couldn’t make it out. No wonder it’d taken most of an hour to assemble. It shouldn’t be a coherent signal, let alone a real message. Emerson was a nutball, but he was also a genius. He’d been the first human to find him, after all.

  “Wow.” It was the only thing he could say.

  Tonya checked the map display as it slid by on the ceiling of the bus. “We’ve definitely got the time. What’s it say?”

  Kim reconfigured their shared space as the bus bounced through another empty stop.

  They were in a realm, sitting on a bench in a small amphitheater. Matthew Watchtell walked onto the stage.

  “Prime Ministers and Presidents, thank you for attending this presentation.”

  They were in the front row, on the far-left corner. The whole thing was a replay, but Tonya still whispered when she leaned over to ask, “Who’s that?”

  “Matthew Watchtell.” Kim nodded to Mike. “I told you he’d be at the bottom of this.”

  Tonya cocked her head. “Who’s Matthew Watchtell?”

  Kim pulled at her earrings. “A man who makes deals.”

  Watchtell walked across the well-lit stage to address what appeared to be a group of about a dozen people. Mike never had much reason to pay attention to the politics of outside, but he was a slave to the Daily Mail’s realm. Because of that, he recognized every single person seated around them. World leaders. By their reaction, Kim and Tonya recognized them too.