Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  “At the center, yes, but he is not the cause.” Hamilton held a hand up to slow Jane’s rebuke. “Consider the Spaceport. its destruction is a direct result of the presence of his artificial intelligence, yes?” He continued when Jane nodded, albeit reluctantly. “A direct result of that explosion was the revelation of Ashok Guillfoyle’s multiple treasonous activities, yes? From the criminal activities of the Portside Boys to his lies concerning scientific breakthroughs to his co-opting of the entire netLINK system to his treasonous and traitorous collusion with his own brother, ‘Vilmos Gualf’. One man. One man’s presence revealed all of that. Answer truthfully. Would we have ever learned of this, without Garth Nickels’ arrival on Hospitalis?”

  Jane didn’t even need to think about it. Though her own systems hadn’t been built with Guillfoyle tech, a vast majority of technical equipment –including the military’s- had, turning everything Guillfoyle did invisible. Even more invisible than the man sitting in front of her, arguing for the continued survival of another man the Chairwoman hated more than religion.

  Hamilton pressed forward. “So even though there has been a terrible loss of life, it could have been so very much worse without Garth Nickels. It is entirely likely that –had he not come to our world- Ashok Guillfoyle would still be doing as he had done. This brings me to Vilmos and the destruction of the Museum. That scenario would have played out much differently, had Ashok not been in The Peak, had he not been forced to reveal his manipulation of the chipsets. Care to imagine what sort of day we would be having today, Si Jane, had Vilmos Gualf succeeded? I will tell you, Si Jane Paulson. Almost all of Central would be Sigma’d. Sigma’d, Watergated, or outright killed in the name of the Chair. To prevent poisonous treachery from spreading to the other cities, the other worlds. There would be no need for Martial Law today, Si Jane, because there would be approximately three people left alive in all of Central. Me, Chairwoman Doans, and OverCommander Vasily.”

  Hamilton paused for a long moment, allowing Jane the luxury of contemplating his words. When he felt she’d had enough time, he said it again. “Without Nickels, this world would already be dead.”

  “What do you want?” Jane wailed, putting her head on her desk. It was true. As much as she wanted it to be a lie, as much as she wanted Hamilton Barnes to be wrong, he wasn’t. Even though death and destruction followed Garth Nickels around like a happy puppy, ever eager to do his bidding, it was clear that things would be a hundred times worse without him. The ironic thing was, she knew how rotten Hospitalis was, how rife with corruption, how rank with deceit. Sa Nickels was a lodestone for change, precisely as Sa Barnes believed.

  Hamilton tilted his head and Jane’s Screens filled with the data she’d been working on before he’d walked into the room. “You are seeking to undo the cross-‘LINKed avatars that aided in Garth Nickels’ technical invisibility, yes?”

  Jane nodded, unhappy. She’d gone to considerable lengths to discover the mistakes leading to that particular ‘boon’, and even greater measures to gain the power to undo them. “You know that I am.”

  Hamilton read Jane’s dismay and shook his head. “I am not asking you to undo your efforts, Si Jane. It was too valiant a thing, too impressive a discovery, to bury. What I am asking, Si Jane, is that you not give the Chairwoman access. Feed the data to me, instead.” He laughed at the shocked look on the Minister’s face. “The Chairwoman trusts me implicitly, Jane. More than any being alive. I have served the Chair loyally for a thousand years. I gave my first life to the Chair, and have continued to do so. When it develops –and it will- that you and I spoke today and that I requested you … divert … the feeds to me personally, Chairwoman Doans will not question the action. If she does, I will … tell her the truth. I will tell her that I am dealing with Nickels, as she herself has asked. All so that she is spared knowledge of the methods I might need to undertake.”

  “Then … then why hide him at all? If you are going to do what the Chairwoman asked of you in the first place, why deny her access?” Jane’s brain threatened to shut down. Everything that was happening to her made all of the sense and none of it at the same time.

  “Because, Si Jane Paulson, Minister of Examination, I suspect her frame of mind is such that she will do little else but watch Garth to the exclusion of all else. And that, Si Jane, would be disastrous.”

  “All … all right.” Jane nodded. She didn’t feel terribly confident she’d be able to do precisely as Hamilton had asked, but she was going to do her best. The man’s points made a horrible amount of sense. If the Chairwoman really did do nothing but watch Nickels as though he were some sort of Screenshow…

  “And thus,” Hamilton said as he made his way to the door, “you are proven loyal. Good day, Si Jane. You have one of my prote signatures. Please relay the data to me.”

  “Good … good day, Sa Hamilton.” Jane watched the door close. Her Screens went back to replaying footage she’d been watching before the revelatory business meeting had begun.

  The Minister of Examination sighed and began scripting an avatar that would relay real-time footage of Garth Nickels to Hamilton Barnes.

  It was either that or have the Ministry of Examination become a burp of silence.

  Orders From On High

  “Hello, Chairwoman. How may I be of assistance?” Hamilton Barnes walked away from the Ministry of Examination’s front doors quickly. His new body was a wonder, but following his last death –and the length of time it’d taken for Regime Investigators to locate his corpse- Hamilton suspected that the Chairwoman may have undertaken certain … alterations … to his invisibility. He hoped to forestall discovery of his machinations until it was too late.

  Ever eager to maintain absolute deniability about what it was he did for Chairs, preceding Chairpersons had always enjoyed their inability to locate him properly, even with the limitless power of the Prometheus Device. It was important that they could claim ignorance when under pressure from their ‘peers’. Why, three times he’d been publicly executed by a Chair only to be resurrected ten minutes later.

  With his sudden unavailability at a crucial moment in her life, Chairwoman Doans would seek to undo that willful ignorance. Especially in light of the person she was becoming.

  Chairwoman Doans’ voice whispered in his mind, full of iron determination and aggravation. “You are aware of the Martial Law?”

  Hamilton nodded. “I am, Si Chairwoman. A curious decision, but one I understand all the same. Our world trembles. A gust of wind from the wrong direction and we will fall.”

  “I am not asking for your understanding, Barnes.” This came as a hiss of frustration.

  “Apologies, Si Chairwoman. I am not used to this new body yet. The upgrades require a great deal more concentration than previous.”

  “Forget it.” Chairwoman Doans flashed him an address. “Do you know where this is?”

  Hamilton Barnes craned his head skyward. “I believe I know where the moon is, Si Chairwoman. It is hard to miss, especially at night.”

  “What did that … that … man do to you, my Hamilton Barnes?” Chairwoman Doans practically wailed the question in his head. “You hover on the borders of continual disrespect now. I do not like this incarnation of you at all.”

  “Apologies again, Si Chairwoman. The moments leading up to my eventual death were ones filled with vast amounts of narcotics, physical torture and scripture.” Hamilton admitted this readily enough.

  “Chadsik.” The Chairwoman spat the name. “What a mistake that was.”

  “I am inclined to agree.” Hamilton replied drolly. “This new body, though, will be of greater service to Latelyspace than the previous.”

  Chairwoman Doans bit back the retort. Of course, Hamilton was right. “You must make a detour, Sa Hamilton, in your efforts for the Chair.”

  “The Representatives.” Hamilton nodded.

  “Yes, sa. Them.”

  Hamilton bowed. “By your command, Chairwoman Doans.”

&n
bsp; “Hurry, Hamilton. Your primary goals remain the same. Nickels, Bosch, al-Taryin. Waste no time.” The Chairwoman’s voice faded from his mind.

  Hamilton hailed a cab. He wondered if Trinity’s representatives would present any kind of threat. In the years they’d been present in the system they’d displayed no signs of being capable of doing anything more than eating and answering direct questions with extreme vagary. Was it too much to hope they were secret assassins, possessing unknown skills and martial prowess? Hamilton looked at the address again, calculating the journey.

  Only time would tell.

  He hadn’t been to the Moon in a long time. It’d be nice to stretch his legs.

  Lady Ha Flexes her Muscles

  Naoko wasn’t sure if space travel suited her. The last time she’d been in any kind of ship had been a long, long time ago when her entire family had gone to the moon for the afternoon, and that had been for a work thing for her father. She’d been too young to pay attention to the particulars; further, that first time, she hadn’t been kidnapped.

  Granted, she’d decided to go along voluntarily, but that in no way diminished the fact that she had been kidnapped, and by none other than Jordan Bishop himself.

  It was an oft-repeated thing that your life wasn’t your own in Latelyspace, and most of the people who lived in the system imagined that the phrase implied you belonged to whoever sat on the Chair. Naoko supposed as she tipped and tapped her way through the ship’s laughably encrypted security systems, that for almost everyone in Latelyspace, the sentiment was true.

  But not for geniuses. For geniuses, life was risky, and tricky, and rife with danger. Regular people didn’t see it, couldn’t see it, but if you were too smart, or too successful, or too innovative, there were two things that could happen to you.

  One, obviously, was you found yourself working for the Chair or its assembled host.

  In and of itself, a dream job. An endless parade of Ministries and Bureaus –even the Army itself, if you were martial-minded- allowed an enterprising man or woman to push back the boundaries of scientific discovery at breakneck speed. A dream job, until one day you were approached to work on a bizarre nightmare like the Gunboys or you found yourself working for Ashok Guillfoyle. Then what? Public castigation if your involvement was revealed. Criminal charges brought against you. Or both or worse, The Peak. That was the wrong way to go.

  Two was something no one outside the scientific community talked about, mostly because they’d been told not to but also because they imagined genius-level programmers or engineers were flighty, untrustworthy, and likely to show up sometime in the future, frantically discussing talking cats or a new hyperconductive fluid. It was a stereotype carefully cultivated by the Regime itself, in everything from literature to Screenshows; regular people grew up believing their genius friends and relatives were quirky weirdoes and barely batted an eye when they started disappearing.

  The Regime had permanently skewed the perception of Latelyspace. Sadly, few smarter-than-average people were capable of seeming average. It was horribly ironic that you needed to possess an extremely high intellect to come off stupid.

  Naoko shook her head at the passwords the crew of Zhivago used. An embarrassment. She didn’t even need to use the crack avatars on her prote to work her way through the ‘LINKs. How her kidnappers had managed to stay out of jail or The Peak since Jordan Bishop had started farming her peers like ripe ears of corn was beyond the woman.

  Unhappily, missing geniuses never returned. Ever. Parents and friends who started complaining were told that bodies matching the descriptions of missing loved ones had been found at long last. Persistence was met with warnings. Insistence was met with tragedy. Naoko would need to use all her fingers and toes to count the number of families who’d disappeared five, six, ten years after their son or daughter had vanished into the night and all because they’d refused to believe the lie. Oh, some figured it out, realized too late what was going on and kept their mouths shut, living as happy a life as they could.

  Therefore, the geniuses talked amongst themselves, using encrypted chatter on mindless boards about boys or girls or sports or movies, all of them trying to find the cause of the disappearances. Two hundred years of smart boys and girls vanishing. And not just from Hospitalis, though conditions on the home planet were the most fertile for the growth of high intellect and solid creativity.

  Two hundred years, and the only thing any of them had ever managed to do was realize the Chair was in on it. At least to some degree. It was impossible to believe otherwise.

  Up until the other night, many had always believed that the Chairwoman had been fully responsible, inexplicably spiriting away her own people and engaging in a vast conspiracy.

  The truth was so much worse than anything they’d imagined.

  Naoko tricked her way past the last sequence of avatars and found herself in control of the Zhivago. Everything was at her fingertips. From life support to engine control to hot and cold running water, with the press of a button she could do whatever her heart desired. If she wanted, she could turn the ship around and head back to Hospitalis. She could call her father. She could call Garth. With a little effort, she could even contact her Uncle, OverCommander Vasily.

  Naoko pouted. Too many things to think about, too many choices that weren’t choices at all.

  One of the braver people on the hidden network of conspirators kept a faithful list of the missing, routinely adding or subtracting names when he –or she, the site was gender neutral and one of the most heavily anonymous sites in the solar system- could personally verify stories about bodies being found. It was risky, because the identities of the missing were watched. Watched by the parents, watched by government agencies, watched by the people responsible for disappearing the children and young adults.

  Over the last fifty years, there were three thousand, four hundred and twelve Latelians ‘missing and presumed dead’.

  She couldn’t call out to anyone. Not as long as those men and women were still out there. Not as long as Jordan Bishop’s contract was legally binding. Yes, the great and powerful man was well known for duplicitous behavior and outright lies, but in her heart of hearts, Naoko couldn’t risk a simple call to her Father. Being caught would throw Bishop into a frenzy. Though there was every chance Jordan had no intention of setting his crop of brains free to return to Latelyspace, Naoko had to make the effort.

  She could do none of the things she wanted to do. The lives of three thousand plus men and women –and possibly children by now, depending on how Bishop permitted them to live- relied on her behavior.

  Naoko smiled sadly. Garth would be in a state by now. He would be tearing Hospitalis apart. Contacting him would only serve to push him harder to find out where she’d been taken.

  Naoko was worried for Garth. Anything at all could happen now that she wasn’t there. In his frenzy to find her, he could run afoul of Chairwoman Doans in a way that even his considerable charm wouldn’t quell. He could upset Vasily, and find himself in The Peak.

  Or, just as likely, he’d continue working towards whatever goal he’d come to Hospitalis for in the first place. He was extremely capable. He’d lived life before her; he would find some new way to continue without getting into too much trouble.

  Naoko nodded firmly to herself. Their relationship was a side effect of his presence on Hospitalis. He’d come to her world to open The Box, not to fall in love. He was an ex-Specter. He understood duty. He understood honor. He understood doing the hard thing, even if it meant death or worse.

  Could she do any less?

  Naoko Kamagana might not be able to contact any of her loved ones, might not be able to engineer the freedom of her people without sacrificing her own life, but there was one thing she could do.

  At the very least, she could, teach her kidnappers that she wasn’t to be treated as cargo. She rubbed the bruise on her cheek. The swelling hadn’t gone down yet. If anything, it threatened to seal the eye shu
t. Bishop’s insistence she not be harmed didn’t matter to any of the others; bruises and even fractures would heal by the time they made it to the man’s front door.

  Lady Ha looked down at her proteus, shaking her head at the foolishness of her kidnappers. With their roles reversed, she would’ve taken her prote away first thing. It was certain that in their entire history of stealing people for Jordan Bishop that the man himself had never once brokered a deal of three thousand to one.

  One woman, worth three thousand? Even the dimmest witted should’ve realized that she was something special, something wondrous.

  Something dangerous. Leaving her with her prote was like … was like leaving Garth Nickels with a gun.

  Lady Ha started writing an avatar. It was time to teach everyone a lesson.

  xxx

  Alligorni leaned against the airlock door and heaved a sigh of smoke that left his lungs rattling. He knew he shouldn’t smoke, but couldn’t help himself. Cigarettes calmed his nerves and made him feel so much better.

  Greuz hated the habit, passing an ‘executive order’ that he not do it aboard the ship because air was limited and their scrubbers ancient. More than two cigarettes a day could make the old things struggle and make terrible, groaning noises. Alligorni shook his head. They needed to replace them soon, and not just because of his ‘filthy’ habit. He’d heard stories about scrubbers failing, about what happened to the crew. Choking death, asphyxiating, the ship rocketing through space, following the last programmed coordinates, desiccated corpses floating, perfectly preserved for all time…

  Ghost ships. Alligorni chuckled around a mouthful of smoke. He was going to tell the girl all about ghost ships, how they were out there, filled with empty bodies, staring, lonely eyes. He shivered. He was giving himself the spooks! The little slip of a girl was going to lose her mind over the fear of what waited in the dark.

  With Greuz being such a hard-ass about smoking, Alli’d been forced to come up with a way of tricking the avatars into ignoring him when he was inside the airlock alone. It’d taken a lot of hard thinking to get everything reprogrammed properly and he was really pleased with himself. Why couldn’t Latelians just realize already that AI was the best way to go? Everything was so much easier with artificial intelligence.