Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  One of Alyssa’s hands reached forlornly out towards the Prometheus Device, fingers curling into a fist. “Why are you doing this?”

  Huey had been giving that a lot of thought. Had been, in fact, ever since he’d woken up and started roaming around in a meatsuit. Oh, he’d been thinking nearly a million other things as well, but the reasons and needs for punishing Chairwoman Doans had dominated quite a few subminds. “Because.” When he saw that the answer sounded childish, even for him, Huey tried to explain. “Because someone needs to suffer for the foolishness of this system. Terrance can’t. He committed suicide three days ago. He was the first person in Latelyspace to know precisely who Garth was.”

  “Punish his family!” Alyssa shrieked, momentarily off-base about the news surrounding Terrance’s death. She’d heard nothing about it. Or maybe she had. She had to admit she’d been quite distracted of late.

  “The sins of the father, eh?” Huey filled the words with venomous sarcasm. “No. Your crimes are worse. You knew, too. You and Vasily talked about it, admitted out loud and in front of the Universe that you knew that the Box belonged to Garth. Then you decided to see if you could screw the man out of his money. Then you let that balls-out insane cyborg on the planet, and look at what the fuck happened there. Then you started launching missiles at people in an effort to stop a theft you weren’t even entirely sure he was responsible for. Then Martial Law. Then that bomb. And … and … everything. You … you’re just a shitty person. You didn’t start out that way, I know because I can see it, in your records and things.”

  “He’s the Devil Incarnate.” Alyssa offered the excuse weakly. Ashok had been right. The words fitted the man, described the totality of his deed, perfectly.

  “That,” Huey said heavily, “is as may be. He will surely pay for his sins, if he has any. But you …”

  “I will do whatever it takes to live.” Alyssa struggled to feet again. “Whatever you want. Whatever you need. I am a skilled politician, the best that ever was, sa. I know how to manipulate people so completely they believe they came up with the idea a week, a month, a year ago. I know where all the skeletons are buried, I know all the secrets. I …”

  “You’re forgetting something.” Huey tapped the side of his forehead. “I’m an AI. Whatever you know, I know, because somewhere, some time, you mentioned it aloud, you recorded it in your prote … everything. Beyond that, the HIM records everything happening in it’s sphere of influence, Chairwoman. It was designed that way, because Garth figured his plan would need statistical data on the fabric of Unreality. Comprehensive data. This machine,” Huey touched the keyboard almost lovingly, “knows the route that every atom took in the last five thousand years.”

  “Sex.” Alyssa blurted the word out. She’d slept with Hamilton Barnes before. Virtually every Chair had, both men and women. Whatever it took.

  “Haha, what?” Huey shook his head. “Ew, no. Gross. Seriously? That … that … no. Anyways, I totally don’t remember saying I was going to kill you. No, nothing like that at all. You, Alyssa, get to live.”

  “What?” How, in a world where nothing made any sense, could something make less sense than everything else?

  “Oh yeah, no, totally.” Huey gestured for the doors. “You can leave any time you want. In fact,” he smiled, “you can have anything you want, until the day you die. Or. No. Wait. That’s misleading. You can ask for anything you want, and you might even get what you want. Anything at all.”

  “I … I … don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple, Alyssa. Anything requiring a transaction or permission or authority or whatever can be yours. Anything at all, from a steak dinner at a restaurant to a spaceship to take you into space. All you have to do is ask for it.”

  “What’s the catch?” Alyssa asked, immediately suspicious. She was crazy, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d never been anything as crass as stupid.

  Huey appreciated intelligence, even if it was gazing out at him from someone so insane they thought they weren’t. “Any time you ask for something, a vote will be asked for. The more … sophisticated … the demand, the smaller the number of people will be contacted. Think of it as a game. Let’s use the steak dinner as an example. You walk into a restaurant, you order your meal, you enjoy yourself mightily. It’s delicious and awesome and you haven’t eaten in a long time, so it’s good. You maybe even splurge and get a top-shelf drink or three. The bill comes, and you click ‘pay’. A hundred thousand –and that’s a guess, I haven’t really written the program yet- men and women and maybe even kids get a popup on their prote asking ‘Does the ex-Chairwoman who recently tried to kill almost all of you get a free meal?’ For something so small, maybe three people have to say yes. Then bam. Free meal.”

  That didn’t sound so bad, though it did gnaw on her that she’d be relying on the largesse of the common people. “And the spaceship?”

  “Ah!” Huey waggled a finger excitedly. “Two or three people get the vote. All three –or whatever- are required to say yes. See how it works? The more … necessary the request, the greater the chance of someone saying yes. At heart, Latelians are decent people. It’s almost virtually impossible for everyone to say no, especially when confronted with the immediacy of you starving. See how this works?”

  Alyssa narrowed her eyes. “I still don’t see the downside. Out of office though I may be, people can still be manipulated. They are still sheep.”

  “Totally.” Huey nodded, wholeheartedly agreeing. “You’ve done a bang-up job of transforming these people into sheep blindly accepting the rule of the one. The downside is this; the more requests you make, in, I dunno, a day or an hour or whatever, the more likely it is that the same people are going to be polled. The more frequently a person says ‘yes’, the greater the chance that one day they will wake up, order breakfast, and find themselves relying on someone else to say yes. It will become more expedient for them to judiciously choose when to say yes, instead of ‘shit, man, a woman needs to eat, right, so yes’. The greater the demand, the higher the chance of automatic polling. But it gets worse.”

  “Worse?” The question came out thinly. It was a devious trap. Plans of demanding starships, hundreds of millions of dollars, weapons, soldiers, all of that flared and burned out. No one would agree to that, not even her most loyal supporters, not if it meant they too would wake up … pariah.

  “Completely worse.” Huey uploaded the program into the HIM’s netLINK. It was a very sophisticated string of code and he was quite proud of it, even though he was sure Naoko could do an even better job. “Everyone everywhere will know where you are at all times. Always and forever. Your home, wherever you choose it, will be open to the public.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because, this time.” Huey shrugged at Alyssa’s flat expression. “Hey, I’m not actually a nice guy. There’s some truly stupendously awful shit coming up and you’re a massive pain in the ass. You made this so much goddamn harder than it needed to be and you literally tried to blow my boss up. That’s it, lady. You’re free to go. You have one day of free requests, with a threshold of fifteen thousand dollars. Make the best of it. Tomorrow, this time, your life goes public. Have fun with that.”

  Alyssa slowly left the HIM control room, eyes on the Prometheus Device dangling casually in one of the man’s hands. “What about that? This system needs a ruler.”

  “Hm?” Huey wiggled the quadronium-forged proteus tantalizingly. “Oh, this. Yeah, I know a guy. He’ll do well. He’s got a solid background in business management. Politics! Ha.”

  Alyssa trudged towards the elevators, the man’s sarcastic laughter echoing down the hallway. She had to find some way to get back on top. There had to be a way to manipulate the system that’d been attached to her, some method of control.

  All she needed to do was find it.

  xxx

  Huey zoomed his way through the theoretical space generated by the HIM in search of Bravo’s distinct quantum signature. He’d
looked in on the quadronium craft a few times since gaining full control over the HIM’s broadcast and couldn’t resist doing so again; the ancient machine’s dimensional profile was vast, so much larger than its physical construction hinted at. Looking at the huge depression Bravo made in the corporeal state of the solar system, Huey wondered how the Latelians had managed to miss an entire stratum of investigation; surely being in the same room with the thirty thousand year old ship was to feel like you were at the bottom of the ocean. All that pressure would’ve insisted upon itself, would’ve forced scientists to look into what was going on unseen all around them.

  If they’d done that, they would’ve figured … things …

  “Fuck me.” Huey panicked. Bravo was awake! “Fuck. Fuck me sideways. Shit.”

  Not only was Bravo awake, it was angry, and had a plan. Bravo had undergone emergency reboot procedures, responding to the man’s encroachment.

  The ‘minds’ operating inside Bravo weren’t pleased. Learning finally that Garth N’Chalez had been lying the entire time, the commanding entities were … upset. Undoubtedly already enraged past the point of sanity once they’d realized that the Hundred Year Plan had been no plan at all and further driven past the point of fury with each passing millennium, the proof that Garth could’ve ended the War thirty thousand years ago had made them vindictive.

  Huey examined the emanations with a critical eye. Not geared to scan the quadronium ship, the HIM could only give Huey a partial glimpse into the details. He had to rely on intuition and an awful lot of guesswork to come up with an accurate idea of what it was Bravo’s commanding minds were up to.

  “Fuck me sideways.” Huey’s mind spun through the HIM-field in search of Fenris and the others.

  The Single Outcome

  The request for a conversation came as a surprise, but not much of one; Fenris had seen the bond between AI and liberator, had understood the total implication of Garth’s plan in respect to what he’d wrought almost as quickly. N’Chalez never did anything by half-measures. All you had to do was focus on the one salient fact of their present lives; Garth had planned and implemented an attack stretching across thirty millennia, a tactical engagement that, minus a few surprises here and there, was working.

  Around Fenris, in the real world, he, his four brothers, and Garth N’Chalez strode up a stone staircase that would lead them to the interior of The Peak. Surrounding them on all sides were God soldiers bent to one knee. Their … savior … continued telling stories about the past, cracking jokes and trying to penetrate the stoic armor the other four wore over their hearts.

  It wasn’t that the man was oblivious to what was going on. Quite the opposite. He knew, and was terrified. Forcing Garth to admit the deep truth that’d been trying to scream its way out of his lungs for the last few days had stunned the mighty Kin’kithal warrior to the core. A sad thing, that. Fenris wanted to know precisely why N’Chalez had seen the need to hide the final truth of his wonderful plan from himself.

  Garth knew that he was going to learn –remember- what it was that’d driven him thirty thousand years into the future and the moment, which wasn’t far off now, filled him with dread. So powerful, so … ready to do what needed to be done … so human still.

  It made no sense, none at all. The man had arranged events so that not only would he be stripped of the power that could’ve ended things abruptly, totally, finally –an act alone making eventual success that much harder, that much more painful- but also so that he was, by the very definition of what he’d transformed himself into, the most inhuman thing in all of Unreality. The q-circuitry within him, melded into the neural sheathes and bound by the limitless strength of a Kin’kithal … N’Chalez was no man. He was … one of them. He was the first. The best.

  And yet, he trembled. He hid it well, but Fenris knew well the smell of fear, of doubt, of dismay. Garth’s hidden subconscious knew what was coming. The truth of what awaited them all hovered just below consciousness, just beneath the swarming surge of emotion that had their commander beside himself with anxiety.

  Fenris hoped, prayed, that when N’Chalez came out of Bravo, those … human … concerns were gone. No man, no matter how limitlessly powerful he was destined to become, could do what truly needed doing, not if he was plagued with such simple fears.

  The request came again. Fenris accepted it. “Huey.”

  “You’ve got to warn the boss, Fenris, you’ve gotta tell him that Bravo is planning something. I’ve examined the emitters spinning up around the ship and … it looks like they’re planning to trap him in a temporal suspension field.”

  Huey was another of Garth’s miraculous creations. Utterly inhuman, completely inorganic, incapable of ever being truly real, yet the machine mind’s fear and concern were tangible. The very air beat with the AI’s worries for Garth’s safety. “Are you aware of what it is Garth plans for you, Huey the AI?”

  “What?” Huey’s shout of confusion echoed across the quantum plane. “What does that have to do with anything? The boss is in trouble. We all are. Once he steps into Bravo, the t-field goes up. He could be in there for eternity! We could all be dead and dust and less than a memory by the time they let him out!”

  “Knowing what Garth plans for you has everything to do with … everything. Do you know his design?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “And, Huey the AI,” Fenris asked calmly, “how do you feel about it? Knowing as you claim to the totality of the burden he has placed on you.”

  “I …” Huey’s presence faded for a second before resolving itself further, “it’s … necessary. It needs to be done.”

  “Indeed.” The eldest of the Sigma Fives nodded. Everyone ignored the motion. They were perhaps a mile or less away from Bravo, which gleamed in the quantum field like a quasar. It would take time to arrive at their destination; non-augmented and Harmony-insensitive base personnel were attempting to prevent their incursion and Garth was taking great lengths to ensure that no one died. “Everything needs to be done as it has been … foretold. The man has undertaken the greatest burden. How well do you know your creator?”

  “We don’t have time for this, Fenris!”

  Fenris felt Huey’s intellect reach out towards other avenues of communication, so he reacted by releasing a slow, steady stream of Harmonic disturbance. The brothers stiffened for a second, surprised at the sudden counter-intrusion methods deployed, but continued walking once they understood. “We have at least fifteen minutes, Huey the AI. Then, God willing, we shall have all the time in the world. Answer me. How well do you know N’Chalez?”

  “You … you know the answer to that, I think.” Huey’s frustration at being blocked was great. “I don’t know how you know, but I know that you do.”

  “Before her passing death, Lisa Laughlin was a … friend.” Fenris admitted. The glorious, ephemeral woman, she of the sapphire skin and eternal star-tears, would be missed more than the Harmony Soldier was willing to admit. He and his brothers had loved her dearly, least of all because she’d come to them after their flight from Hospitalis, had shown them what needed doing, how best to prepare. Lisa Laughlin had saved their lives so they could spend them … in service to a much greater cause.

  “One of the last things she told us was of you, Huey the AI, Huey who would be King, of the things you learned, crouched inside yourself, hovering above the source of your mind. Of what you saw during your bid for true sentience. So. You know N’Chalez perhaps better than he does himself. Better than any one of us save Lisa. Knowing as you do who he is, knowing his meticulous attention to detail and his willingness to do the right thing, can you not think of any one thing that has happened, any … unplanned for moments … that might … interfere? That might upset the man’s willingness to do as planned? As is essential?”

  “I … do.”

  “Naoko Kamagana, Huey the AI. Garth N’Chalez loves her. And so suddenly, the end he planned, though he may not articulate it, may never admit it al
oud, becomes … unpalatable. For the first time in his life, he sees something beyond the end, and he craves it.” Fenris sighed. All so unplanned for. During the So Long Ago War, Garth had had no time for true love, true connections. He’d been too consumed with planning these moments to notice, or care, or surrender. His lips twitched into a wry smile. So very human when he should be the furthest thing from it. “Knowing Garth as you do, knowing the man’s abilities, would it not be safe to say that with this unexpected distraction in his life, he may very well attempt to … alter things?”

  Waves of vexation roiled out from Huey. “Yes.”

  Fenris nodded again. “And, given your nature, given what you know, you understand the necessity of hewing completely and irrevocably to what has already been planned for? The only way this will work, Huey the AI, is with sacrifice.”

  “Fuck you.” Huey blurted. “Fuck you, man. It doesn’t have to happen that way. This Unreal Universe is completely off the rails. There are things out there in the dark that Garth had absolutely no way of imagining, no way of factoring into his plans. Thirty thousand years of madness, Fenris. Gorensworld. Tannhauser’s Gate, Shoemaker’s Grave … there are a hundred, a thousand … untold numbers of things out there just as completely bizarre. If he has the time to document them, chart them, understand them completely … there has to be another way.”