Catalyst

by S. J. Kincaid

  For a short while, the sense of total detachment from the world threatened Tom again. Time began to stretch onward without end, days lost all coherence, all meaning. This time his father didn’t come, nor did Blackburn. Because Blackburn was dead. It made Tom wince to think of it.

  But then one day the door to his cell opened and it was Olivia Ossare who came in.

  “Tom, I’ve secured an assignment as your caseworker.” Her voice floated to him.

  He stared at her dumbly, knowing her.

  “I was so glad to find out you’re okay,” she said softly. “Do you feel like talking to me?”

  He still couldn’t manage a word.

  She smiled. “That’s okay. We’ll just sit here, then.”

  It took several visits until Tom got his head on straight again, until he felt human enough to really give voice to the questions nagging at him. “Am I in trouble?”

  “I think there are questions you’ll need to answer. But later.”

  “Are my friends okay?”

  “They’re fine. They’re very busy,” Olivia said calmly. “There’s been a whirlwind of hearings.”

  “Am I going to have to do that?”

  “Not until you’re feeling better.”

  But he began to feel better quite rapidly, because the interrogators didn’t return, and Olivia asked for his permission to share information selectively so they wouldn’t have to. Tom agreed. He could talk to her. He kept talking to her.

  Within a few months, he did end up testifying before the interim congress, filled with brand-new public representatives his neural processor didn’t identify. They were all replacements; the people who formerly occupied their seats were rotting in prison now. He wasn’t asked about his time with Vengerov. Somehow, Olivia Ossare and General Marsh had managed to get that classified as confidential medical history, off the record. Instead, he was a witness to testify in absentia against Joseph Vengerov.

  Tom could do that.

  His friends were all waiting for him when he was done, and they surrounded him like a phalanx as they stepped out of the Capitol together. Cameras flashed about them. For a moment, Tom felt utterly overwhelmed, moving down into the crunch of the crowd, the scrutiny seeming to press in on all sides of him, people calling his name, shouting out questions—and then he spotted a familiar shock of orange hair in the crowd and jerked to a halt.

  So did Vik. He bellowed a laugh.

  “Beamer?” Vik shouted. “Stephen Beamer!”

  “HEY!” Beamer yelled back, waving his arms.

  Tom forgot all his unease, surprise and joy washing over him. He and Vik rushed over to their old friend from plebe year.

  Beamer didn’t remember a lot of his time at the Pentagonal Spire, because most of his memories of it had been removed with his Vigilant-grade processor. But he knew their faces, even if not their names. Beamer had left the Pentagonal Spire early on partly because he didn’t like the idea of a computer in his head, partly because he missed his girlfriend.

  He’d ended up with a computer in his head anyway.

  “And my girlfriend dumped me two weeks after I got home,” Beamer admitted later, where they all sat in a restaurant, catching up.

  None of them reacted for a long moment, uncertain how to take that. Only Vik’s lips twitched. Then Beamer started chuckling, and it was okay. They busted up laughing until there were tears in their eyes.

  Later when Beamer and his new girlfriend parted ways with them, the four of them lingered in the restaurant. There was no curfew now that the Intrasolar Combatant program was being decommissioned, and the Spire was a virtual ghost town as the new government debated how to use the resources previously dedicated to the war effort. Tom looked around and saw that they were alone, then admitted something to his friends.

  “So I’m in . . .” He felt heat flush his cheeks, but he felt like they should know. “I’m in therapy. The military’s making me do it five times a week. Apparently if I don’t do it, I don’t get my stipend for these last few years for, uh, breach of contract or something.”

  Silence followed. Tom looked from face to face, feeling awkward.

  Then, “Wait,” Vik said, “are we not supposed to know this?”

  Tom threw him a startled glance. “You already knew?”

  “Thomas, you were being imprisoned for over a year,” Yuri pointed out. “It is only reasonable you would face more extensive evaluation than most.”

  “Yeah,” Wyatt spoke up, “What do you think I’ve been doing ever since I stopped talking for three months? It’s standard procedure.”

  “But we were assigned to see Olivia right after Yuri’s accident,” Tom pointed out. “Then it ended.”

  “For you, not me,” Wyatt exclaimed. “I never received orders to stop counseling.”

  “So it’s not just me,” Tom said wonderingly.

  “Just you?” Vik laughed. “Please don’t forget the brown-skinned guy who set off a nuke under Obsidian Corp.” He jabbed a finger at his own chest. “There are some people very nervous about me who want to be very sure I’m completely sane.”

  They all looked at Yuri.

  He blinked, then smiled. “I received a preliminary evaluation, along with everyone else.”

  He very tactfully omitted his real reply: he’d obviously been deemed the sanest of them, and not given mandatory therapy.

  “So we’re all crazy but Yuri,” Tom concluded.

  “Basically,” Wyatt agreed.

  Yuri rested a hand on his shoulder. “And if you think about it, Thomas, this is the way it always has been.”

  It was. Tom started laughing, a great weight sliding off his chest. In that moment, surrounded by his friends, the Senate hearings behind him, the future wide open ahead of him, he suddenly realized things were going to be okay.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  IN THE MONTHS that followed, the world changed even more as people began trying their hands at programming their neural processors. Self-programming was no longer illegal, and in fact the ability to code and manipulate one’s neural processor became a software requirement in the machines. Everyone learned with a download how to self-program.

  Knowledge began to disseminate everywhere. It wasn’t like the downloads Tom and his friends had received every day in the Spire, because these were all optional, all in pubic databases for people who were interested in learning new languages, new skills. The effect was incredible. People who’d never learned to read, who’d never been educated, could now make up for years of missed schooling with a few downloads.

  New breakthroughs followed. Some inventions were minor things, like upgrades to the neural processors that closed the functionality gap between the Austere and the Vigilant grades, but others were major, like cold fusion, a working antigravity platform, a superior ionic engine that could propel a ship from Earth to Mars in four days.

  People were beginning to call this the age of the singularity, a time when infinite technological progress was finally possible. All the latent genius of humanity had been unlocked and was finally being used, with none of the old, entrenched power players in a position to halt it to preserve the status quo.

  In the bright, shining new world, Tom finally grew ready to face something of the old one. He’d talked to Olivia Ossare about it; he felt ready.

  At least, he had until a few minutes ago. Now he sat in the bar, words clogged in his throat. His father spoke first.

  “You look familiar.”

  Tom glanced over at the man a few seats away from him, pretending he hadn’t been working up to talking to him for a good hour now.

  Neil peered at him, rubbing his chin. “Were you on the news?”

  “Um, yeah, I was.” Tom wasn’t sure whether to feel disappointed or not.

  Neil flashed a grin, and waved for the barten
der to serve Tom a soda.

  “I knew I recognized you.” Neil moved over to the stool next to his, “You and a buncha other Intrasolar trainees, you all took down Obsidian Corp. together, huh?” He laughed and clinked his glass with Tom’s as soon as the bartender set it down. “Way to go there.”

  Tom raised his glass, a lump in his throat. He’d been following Neil all day. His dad had a job now. He’d apparently programmed himself something that moderated his alcohol use as well. Tom had come here to give him his memory back, to undo what Vengerov had done, but something always stopped him. The memory of Dalton’s words about how Tom’d ruined his dad’s life . . . or maybe it was just the expression on Neil’s face, the way he looked so young. Happy.

  “What are you doing next?” Neil asked him. “I hear they’re converting all you guys to some sort of international force . . .”

  “A galactic legion,” Tom said. “That’s the plan.”

  First, he’d seen Elliot all over TV, helping to advocate for the idea: converting all the ships dedicated to the war effort into exploratory vehicles. Soon, the idea spread like fire , a great symbol of humanity stepping forward into the future, uniting across the bounds of country: a project funded and participated in by nations across the world, dedicated to exploring the solar system and beyond, and sending people into space again. Things happened faster now in the age of the singularity. The training facility had been set up in San Francisco. General Marsh had been chosen to head the venture. The first batch of astronauts had been drawn from many of the Intrasolar cadets, with no regard for country.

  As a symbolic gesture, special priority was given to those cadets who’d participated in the effort to liberate the world from Joseph Vengerov. That’s how Vik, Yaolan, Yuri, and even Tom joined up. For the first time, Tom lived not only in the same hemisphere as Medusa—as Yaolan—he lived a thirty-second walk down a hallway from her.

  As for Wyatt . . .

  She had the offer on the table, but she’d been elusive of late. Tom wasn’t sure what Wyatt was up to, but whenever he saw her, she looked to be brimming with excitement, ready to burst with something she couldn’t share with him. He knew she had a whole batch of new colleagues somewhere she’d been working who were seriously brainy types like her. Aeronautical engineers, astrophysicists. She could only tell them she was working on something very important. Whatever it was, Tom was glad she’d found it. It was the first thing she’d really been excited about since Blackburn died.

  Tom found it hard now to look at his dad’s friendly, oblivious face. His gaze instead found the screen overhead, where an old clip of Joseph Vengerov was being discussed. The reporters were recounting his family history: divorced parents; a younger brother, Ivan, who was rumored to be profoundly disabled. It had hit Tom like a fist when he first learned of the existence of a real Ivan, an actual younger brother to Joseph who’d died years ago. He tried to avoid anything Vengerov related now.

  But sometimes it was unavoidable. Today, the program discussed the way the tragic deaths of Ivan and their father, Alexei, resulted in young Joseph inheriting majority share of LM Lymer Fleet and installing himself as CEO. Speculation now arose as to the suspicious nature of those deaths. Had those possible homicides been an early indication of what was to come? It was presented sensationally, like entertainment. Vengerov had morphed into a figure of morbid fascination for the rest of the world.

  Tom looked away. He couldn’t even stand to see him. He still felt such revulsion and loathing toward Vengerov, the emotions seemed to poison him.

  “I knew that bastard years ago,” Neil remarked, gazing up at the screen.

  Tom cast him a startled glance, wondering what he still remembered about Vengerov.

  “He hired me once,” Neil said. “He couldn’t win against any decent poker player because you could see his mind working it over, running probabilities and calculations. . . . He always picked the most mathematically logical solution. Made him predictable. That’s why he hired me, trying to figure out what he was doing so wrong. But that wasn’t really his problem. He simply didn’t know how to act like a human. He wasn’t fooling anyone. It’s my fault he learned to pass. I thought I was teaching the guy to bluff, not to act so stiff and calculating when playing the game, but really, I was teaching him to be a human being.”

  Tom stared up at Vengerov’s face on the screen, a dark feeling inside him. Vengerov had disappeared after his defeat. No one had found him. He was the most wanted fugitive in the world now, but somehow, he’d totally evaded detection.

  “I didn’t know what was wrong with him then, but he makes sense to me now,” Neil said. “As long as I think of him as a computer, not a person, a machine trying to act like the rest of us. That’s why he did all this, that’s my theory. He looked at the way our society works and saw who was in charge, who ran it all. If we’d been ruled by Gandhis, that computer in his head would’ve calculated the most efficient way to spread peace. But we were ruled by sociopaths—so that’s what he learned to be. He became the best greedy, power-hungry sociopath of them all. That’s why he wasn’t content with all the power he had, all the wealth. He wanted the entire world and everyone in it.”

  Tom’s gut churned. He didn’t even want to think about Vengerov, much less talk about him with his dad. He shoved up to his feet, realizing this had all been a bad idea. He couldn’t do this. He simply could not.

  Then Neil grabbed his arm, his brow furrowed. “Are you positive I don’t know you, buddy?”

  A great, crushing love swept over Tom. Neil had given up so much for him. He owed it to his dad to set him free, too.

  “Yeah,” Tom said thickly. “I’m sure.”

  He almost made it out of the bar that way. Almost. Because when he found Yaolan and whispered to her that he wanted to leave, she sighed, hopped down from her bar stool, and marched toward Neil. “You’re being ridiculous, Tom.”

  Then she shoved a neural wire into the back of Neil’s neck and deployed the program herself.

  “Hey—” Tom objected.

  “This is why you brought me along, isn’t it? To make sure you followed through?”

  “That wasn’t my plan, no!”

  “Then you’re lucky you have me around.” She rose to her tiptoes and kissed him. “Go sit with your father. I’ll be outside waiting for you to realize I was right.”

  Tom knew so much about Yaolan now that he didn’t before, like the way her entire school had collapsed during an earthquake when she was a child. The way she’d clawed out of the burning debris; the way she’d spent years in and out of hospitals, recovering from reconstructive surgeries, and the way she’d flatly refused to fight as a Combatant if the Chinese military insisted on subjecting her to another surgery to fix her scarred face. She’d been determined and fearless enough to hold her ground for years. She was small, clever, and bossy. He found her unbelievably attractive, even if they annoyed each other sometimes.

  And so now, Tom found himself with the choice out of his hands, standing there before his dad, a mixture of emotions inside him. He watched the program work its magic, the burden of years falling back over his dad’s face, Neil’s expression transforming from that light, carefree one to something more solemn. Then Neil pulled out the neural wire and found his feet, seizing Tom’s shoulders, looking him over.

  “You were just going to leave me like that?” Neil said.

  Tom averted his gaze. “Yeah.”

  “Tommy, for God’s sakes, why?”

  “Because.” Tom couldn’t look at him. “I know the truth, Dad. I know everything.”

  “You know.”

  Tom met his eyes. “Yeah, I know about Mom. I know you never wanted this. Dalton told me everything.”

  His dad bowed his head. He sank down onto a chair, and Tom stood there, watching him numbly.

  “You don’t have to—” The words caught in his throat, and Tom realized suddenly he hadn’t just been protecting his dad. It hurt him so much to see his w
orst suspicions confirmed, to realize how much of a burden he was on his only family.

  But Neil caught his arm when he instinctively tried to pull away from him. He grabbed Tom’s other arm, too, and pulled him closer.

  “I made a terrible mistake once, Tom,” Neil told him. “There are the right people and the wrong people to have kids, and your mom and I were the wrong people. I didn’t realize how wrong we were until it was too late.”

  “When she started having problems.”

  “Before that, I thought I had the whole world in my palm. I could read anyone. But I didn’t see it coming with her. She was like . . . like standing in the eye of a hurricane, Tommy. There was something mesmerizing about her when it was calm, but when she changed direction, God help you.”

  Tom stared at him. For the first time ever, his dad began to make sense to him.

  “She left with you one day. There was no warning, nothing. You two disappeared one night while I was out.” Neil searched his face. “I emptied my bank account trying to track her down, but it was the police who found her—when she set her father’s house on fire, and half her neighborhood besides. You could’ve both been killed. She didn’t even understand what she’d done afterward.”

  Tom found himself looking inward, suddenly breathless, remembering those memories Blackburn pulled out of his head with the census device. Remembering seeing his mother, giddy with excitement as they walked together down some dark street. The fire he’d seen in the moments before he’d shorted the census device out. Fire. It hadn’t been from the census device. It had been something from his early memories.

  “I couldn’t take it anymore,” Neil whispered. “Vengerov was right there on hand, this respectable business guy with a whole company in his control, and he said they could take her off my hands, fix her up. He said they had new procedures, the experimental ones that could . . . I believed him. I knew I couldn’t take care of you myself, and he was going to find you a nice home, he said. For a short while I gave in to this idea I could turn back the clock, just reverse everything, get rid of all my responsibilities. That was my other mistake. I didn’t know what he would do to her. To you. If I’d known . . . And the second I saw what his company had done to her, I went to get you back. I would’ve torn this whole world apart if they’d hurt you. You have to know that.”