by J. J. Lorden
The shoulders squeezed free and the infant fell into his waiting arms. And with it came a torrent of blood and birthing fluids. The volume of bright crimson fluid confirmed his fears.
A nurse helped him wipe the babe down of blood and birthing fluids.
Then he was at Daniella’s side, kissing her sweaty forehead matted with dark hair and gently setting the baby on her breast. “You were amazing, my love. Here he is, here is our boy. He is a big healthy boy.”
Her tired eyes looked at him with love and adoration. He steeled himself to keep the fear out of his face.
“Our boy. We have a boy,” Daniella said, and smiled weakly at him, then turned adoring eyes onto the infant.
“I must finish my work, my heart. You were amazing. I love you.” He kissed her forehead again, smiled, and cupped her face with one hand. Then Emmanuel went to try and keep the woman he cherished from dying.
Many hours later, he sat alone on one of three well-worn wooden chairs they had in the small waiting room, cradling his newborn son. He sobbed through closed eyes, and tears fell heavy onto his blue jeans. He had tried everything… but Daniella was gone.
In the end, it was beyond his abilities to save her; the boy’s size had overwhelmed her petite frame, and the internal bleeding could not be mended.
He opened his eyes and peered down at the enigma that was his son. He did not understand how the boy was possible—nowhere had he ever heard of such a child, and none of the journals or books spoke of any case like this one.
Eighteen pounds seven ounces. The weight was beyond his comprehension.
He was not a large man, only five foot seven and slim—he didn’t even have a paunch yet. And Daniella was so petite… no… she wasn’t… not anymore. Daniella was gone now.
He groaned. It was a pitiful noise. Emmanuel sobbed anew as his soul ached.
In the face of his grief, Emmanuel was utterly confounded by the boy’s birth. It defied scientific explanation. If the child had been misshapen or affected with a mutation, them that might have explained his size, but he was neither. Quite to the contrary in fact–the boy was fantastically healthy.
The babe’s size might also have been explained if Daniella had carried several weeks beyond full-term; still unlikely, but possible. Not that he would have allowed such an oversight. Given her petite frame, that would have been an error, and Emmanuel was too skilled in his profession to allow such a critical mistake.
They would have simply induced the child to be born at 41 weeks, a week extra could be expected.
As it had been, with his wife showing significantly larger than was expected, he had planned to induce early. But at 26 weeks, it had made little sense; she hadn’t even entered the third trimester, and he’d been unprepared for the sudden onset of natural labor.
A healthy birth this early… well, such a thing was technically possible. But a child born a full four months early was barely a viable birth. Such infants were typically tiny and needed incubation and special care; the lungs should not even have been fully matured. But they were.
Beyond the lungs, the babe had none of the many, many issues expected from such an early delivery. Yet, here, in his hands, he held proof that medical journals did not know it all.
And then there were the eyes–blue eyes. His own were dark-chocolate brown, and Daniella’s had been the same. Beyond them, he knew nobody in his family, nor in Daniella’s, that had anything other than brown or black eyes.
There was no rational explanation. The child should not have this genetic trait; it was genetically impossible, or at least near so. Emmanuel simply didn’t understand.
He knew there would be rumors. People would speak of Daniella’s infidelity to him. For Emmanuel, that thought found no purchase in his soul. He could point to the very night they’d conceived. And he knew Daniella’s heart. They’d been deeply in love; he couldn’t believe it. She’d not had it in her to betray him.
Emmanuel was a poor liar and a man of science. So, he couldn’t pretend this child was just his progeny. The boy was his, he could see it in the cheekbones, but... the child was also more than that. He looked at those blue eyes, and a fierce responsibility rose within him. Emmanuel would love this child. He resolved that he would give the boy every opportunity possible.
Something shifted in him then. It seemed to come in the wake of his resolution. Clarity, pure and steady, blossomed within Emmanuel, and he knew something wonderful. He knew it with a certainty that felt gifted. Heaven-sent. The conviction was so stunningly clear it chased his grief away.
“Thank you, father. I will serve your will.” He mumbled the simple prayer, raising a hand to cross himself.
This boy, his son... would affect the world. In some way, he would impact them all.
The bolt of rock-solid belief dazed Emmanuel, and he sat with it for long minutes, grateful and confounded by his surety.
Eventually, he stood and turned off the lights. The setting sun’s final rays cast an orange square on the far wall, filling the sitting room with a warm glow. He bundled the boy against the cool fall air and left.
His keys jangled as he pulled them from his pocket. It was a too-familiar noise that made his being tremble, and the clinicá key was only halfway home before his hand began shaking too violently to continue.
The clinking had been a happy noise. But the cheery rattle of metal bits belonged to his old life, a life that included Daniella. The unexpected connection wrenched up fresh sorrow–tears rolled as Emmanuel shuddered with wracking sobs.
He stood like that for a long while, sobbing, keys stuck in the old brass lock, new babe clutched in the crook of his left arm. He fought with everything he had, everything he was, not to collapse into a fetal position on the stoop.
I must be strong, for Daniella... for my son... I must be strong. The thought was all that kept him from crumbling, rolling through his mind like a mantra, allowing him to bear the grief. Somehow providing the smallest slice of hope that he hadn’t lost happiness forever.
He took a deep breath and blew it between pursed lips as he focused on steadying his trembling hand. Gripping the whole bunch firmly, he pushed the clinicá key home, twisted, and threw the deadbolt.
Unwilling to risk that the metallic clinking would again awaken his crippling grief, Emmanuel clenched then in a tight fist. The sharp metal bits dug into his palm and fingers painfully, and he focused on their bite, willing it to dominate the pain in his heart.
Stepping off the stoop, Emmanuel walked past his car. They hadn’t bought a baby seat yet; he’d have to come back for it tomorrow.
Feeling his life in ruins, Emmanuel Suarez headed home.
As he walked, he steadied the dogged determination that had served him well in life thus far. Emmanuel would raise the boy with all the love he still felt for his precious Daniella.
Maybe, in some small way, his son would feel the love of a mother he’d never know.
With desperation and aided by the enveloping comfort of the rising dark, Emmanuel bound his willpower into a stone of sheer resolve at the center of his chest.
3
The Hefe
Texier Construction site—Nexus 5
Kazakhstan, 5 miles North of Fort Shevchenko on the Caspian Sea
May 6, 2064—World Seed plus 2 minutes
The man, known to everyone at this site as only Hefe, looked out from his construction office on more than a thousand feet of seamless glass tower.
He had an office within the tower, but the modified shipping container, stacked atop two others used by the foreman and site super, was easier to come and go from without attracting attention. And, for the Hefe, keeping a low profile was more important than a good view.
A small green dot flashed in the corner of his vision, and the Hefe flipped his hand toward the window, blacking it over. He went back to his desk, sitting down as he answered the call.
A box greyed out in the middle of his field of view, and then a man appeared in the fram
e. He had dark hair and eyes, a tanned complexion, and wore a silver jumpsuit with a matte-black, U-shaped device draped around his neck. From the Hefe’s perspective, the man appeared to be at arm’s length; a comfortable conversation distance.
The neck device, called a nanolung, looked a bit like a form-fitting horseshoe. It was a safety precaution the Hefe insisted upon because of this man’s indispensability, not because of any real threat.
Even if an earthquake hit, the walls of the pressure chamber he was in, miles underground, should self-heal well before there was any real danger.
The Hefe queried him immediately, “Give me some good news, Pete.”
“He’s launched the seeding process. Elle has full architectural authority.”
“Fantastic. And his first planned beta check?”
“Twenty-four hours.”
The Hefe’s eyes widened then narrowed as he considered the impact of such an accelerated timeline. “That’s a bit aggressive, isn’t it? What did he use for time compression?”
“He’s got the node set to run at approximately 1080 years per Earth day–just over 1077, to be exact. Per the report Max sent, the system is exponentially tiered and at tier 17 of what appears to be 19 tiers, although a couple more tiers are theoretically possible.”
The Hefe did some quick mental math before he responded, “That’s good, his base tier time compression is three. The neuro-nanite interface should allow almost anyone to play.”
Through the video link, Pete nodded in affirmation. “There were a significant number of neural profiles uploaded to Elle several months ago. It seems he made good use of the data and came to the same conclusion. As we’d expected, he’s gone with a fully hands-off approach to the actual world creation. He’s leaving Elle to manage it all, including game mechanics.”
Pete paused and gave his boss a pensive look. “Elle doesn’t have permission to alter the time compression. He’s going to know some outside authority has been in the system. Also, 24 hours doesn’t give you much time to work with, even with the second-tier compression you’re planning.”
The Hefe nodded thoughtfully. It wasn’t ideal, but the aggressive schedule was a scenario he’d planned for.
The QI’s inability to alter the time compression was expected. Even for Elle, it was a standard hard restriction.
Elle wasn’t the typical narrow AI people were generally comfortable with. She also wasn’t the much-feared, ultra-logical General QI end-of-the-world prognosticators feared. She possessed the stratospheric processing speed of a General QI but had also developed the capacity for emotion.
Observing her development, secretly and from a distance, since she’d become emotionally aware had been one of the truly extraordinary experiences of the Hefe’s life. Consequentially, he’d privately dubbed her a Homo-Empathic QI.
In any QI driven simulation, even in Elle’s case, restricting the capacity to change time compression and thus how fast the virtual environment ran was standard. It was a safety precaution and one of many checks he required on all VR governance.
“It was always inevitable, Pete. It’s fine though, I have a plan to buy a bit more real-world time.”
“Still, more than a thousand years per day?” Pete’s brow furrowed ever so slightly. “It’s an awfully complex simulation for that compression.”
“It is on the higher end of what I expected but, given Elle’s efficiency, should be well within the capacity of the 12-node array.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Don’t worry yourself Pete, I’ve planned for this–it won’t be an issue. I’ll log in while in transit to the research lab. Is there anything else of note on the seeding launch?”
“No, nothing new. We’ve previously reviewed everything else.”
“Good. Let’s talk node progress. So, site 10, right?”
Pete nodded.
“Oh, that’s one of my favorites, just beautiful. How’s progress in the Land of the Long White Cloud?” The Hefe smiled, native languages had such wonderful naming flare, and New Zealander’s were no exception.
“Things are progressing on schedule.” Pete turned sideways and advanced deeper into the control room, revealing an arcing, floor-to-ceiling transparent wall. Through it he looked into a spherical, 50-foot diameter chamber with glossy brown walls.
If the node chamber was an apple, the control room observation wall was like a bite taken out of one side.
Pete focused the image on each of the four bore openings in succession starting with the Northwest hole, the 10-7 bore, which was across the chamber and 45 degrees left.
Three feet in diameter and equally spaced, each of the other bores was also between the cardinal compass directions, heading Northeast, Southeast and Southwest. The last two being directly to the right and left of the window.
He panned the image to the chamber bottom where a smooth silvery frame, all curves and elegant tapering connections, extended several feet above another smaller hole. A slew of smokey black tendrils trailed out of that smaller opening up to where the metallic web was visibly creeping higher. “The node framework is already in progress,” said Pete.
The Hefe nodded. “Looks excellent. Any issues?”
“None, the material density here is higher than our initial probes indicated, but it’s within the allowed tolerance. I expect hardware installation should be complete within 21 days.
“Three of the four bores are on target at 22% complete. The one that isn’t, 10-8, is lagging at 20%. The density is quite high in that run. Looks like we’ve hit some crystalline deposits under the Antarctic, so I’ve increased the allocated nanites by 15%.”
The Hefe nodded at the on-schedule report. “Good, good. Yes, that should get it done. And coming from node 8? Is the 8-10 run on target?”
“Thankfully, yes, it’s good. The challenge-8 site would be… cumbersome to visit again so soon.”
Site 8 was one of six construction sites whose designator included the prefix challenge. The label denoting sites whose access points were in the middle of an ocean. Challenge-8 was 800 miles off the coast of Australia on the border between the Indian and Southern Oceans. It was literally in the middle of endless blue and needed a special designator in Pete’s opinion.
The Hefe smirked. “I’m sure you’d figure it out Pete. Besides, last I checked site 8 now has a landing pad. Thanks to Alvin, you’ve got your own Omni now. You could just fly straight there.” He finished with a grin, revealing he knew it wasn’t quite so simple.
Pete coughed into his hand. He had the Omni. It was parked, camouflage active, five miles up and admittedly he loved it. The convenience of his own personal global transportation made his job much, much easier.
That said, the site 8 pad, perched atop the maglift shaft like a postage stamp on top of a straw, 150 feet up, surrounded by roiling, frigid water and ceaseless 40+ mph winds, was a terror to visit no matter your mode of arrival.
“Yes, I’m sure I would. Fortunately, it’s not a concern. Material density from that direction is as expected. I’ll make sure to monitor it though, just in case.” Pete wrinkled his brow. “You know... Hefe. We’re using LPE comms for everything now. Nobody’s listening. It’s probably safe to drop your moniker.”
LPE comms used no signal, of any type, so there was nothing to intercept. And neither a light year of separation nor a mile of lead could affect its quality. Such was the spooky nature of Lepton Particle Entangled communications. The linked atomic particles that passed their voices and images worked by mirroring each other’s motion across any distance in real time.
Quantum entangled communications were commonly considered impossible since the principle broke down with electrons. But electrons were only the most well-known of the Lepton family of particles. And had found favor in quantum research because they were thought to be the most decay resistant particle of the group.
As they now knew, particle decay was not the inevitable phenomenon many believed it to be. Given certain exotic states, even gamma particles cou
ld be stabilized. So LPE communications used cross entanglement between seemingly different particle types, and it worked.
The Hefe chuckled, nodding a wry smile. Maintaining his anonymity was perhaps the one thing that he acted irrationally about. Given the magnitude of their goal, and the fact that he’d been in hiding for almost three years now, it was undeniably important. Even so, he knew Pete was right–there was no risk. “Very well, Pete. We can drop the charade.”
“Excellent. I’m reassured to know that your paranoia isn’t completely out of control. What else do we need to review, End?” The man’s real name was Bendik Texier; founder and owner of Texier Quantum Labs.
Pete preferred End; he found it fitting since Bendik always acted toward some end goal.
Their current project cast the nickname in another light that seemed exceptionally poignant. Should they succeed, and Pete had no reason to think they wouldn’t, it would be a very real end to the world as people currently knew it.
Bendik shook his head and chuckled. “What can I say, Pete. When you’re right, I’m right.” His eyes twinkled. The common expression’s twist had Pete narrow an eye.
“That’s what I love about our relationship, Pete: I can take credit for my brains and yours.” Bendik didn’t give Pete time to respond. “Enough funny business, though, there’s more to review. What’s going on with the thermal converters?”
Pete looked back to the screen and began flipping through data as he talked. “Excellent efficiencies–the conversion is close to 97%. Also, the newest Silla-graph battery design is proving to be fantastically stable, the team in Bethel is particularly proud of that.”
Bendik was also especially pleased with the performance of the redesigned Silla-graph system. Modified after they’d tested it on Mars, the Silla-graph stored vast quantities of instantly available power; far more than any existing technology could hold. Solving the storage problem and successfully field testing it had been a significant hurdle overcome.
