by Joseph Rhea
“I’m afraid we have little choice,” Leconte said. “This operation can’t be done remotely, and this diagnostic event only occurs once a month, so this window is our only shot.”
“So, who are you sending on this suicide mission?”
“Your father activated a room with seven new interface chambers in our construction level,” Leconte said. “Six of those chambers are not being used. Mr. Cloudhopper will be leading a five-person security team into Cyberdrome to place the routines. His people are training for the mission right now.”
“You said there were six chambers. Who else is going in?”
“Me,” Maya said. When he looked at her, he saw that she was actually talking to Leconte. “I helped design the interface. I’ve also logged more hours inside Cyberdrome than anyone in this room.”
In the corner of his vision, Alek noticed the way Cloudhopper had turned his body slightly toward Maya as she spoke. Reading body language wasn’t exactly his best skill, but the connection between Maya and the security chief was obvious. Was that why Cloudhopper’s mannerisms had softened since entering the facility? Is this why you volunteered for this crazy mission? Do you want to be with your new boyfriend that badly?
“We will be monitored from this room,” Cloudhopper said, pointing to the rotating sphere. While we can’t see other programs inside the Core, we have set up a way to track human Avatars there. The people here will know when we have completed the mission and will be able to bring us all home.”
Alek faced Cloudhopper. “If your team fails, you’ll all be trapped like the others.” He turned to Maya. “You’ll be trapped.”
“Then we all need to make sure they do not fail,” Leconte said.
“Well, it sounds like you have this all worked out.” Alek said turning back to face the others. “So why am I here?”
“Cyberdrome has an aggressive firewall,” Maya replied, sounding much less hostile toward him. “It’s the only thing not affected by the diagnostic, and we are pretty sure it won’t allow our deletion routines to pass through.”
“I don’t follow,” Alek said.
“I was told that breaking into secure systems is your specialty, Mr. Grey,” Leconte added. “We would like your help breaking into ours.”
He was about to say that preventing people from breaking into systems is his specialty when the solution came to him. “You know, I think I already have exactly what you need.”
“Don’t hold us in suspense,” Leconte said. “What have you got?”
“I designed a program recently to protect my personal work. I call it a Swarm. To put it simply, it separates programs into millions of pieces, which I call ‘bees,’ then scatters them randomly across the net. When I want to access any of my programs, I simply activate a Queen program, which recalls the swarm and reassembles the chunks of raw code back into working programs.”
“How can this help us?” Leconte asked.
“If we swarm the deletion routines, the bees should be able to pass safely through your firewall because they will look like harmless chunks of random numbers. Once through, I can send in the Queen program to reassemble the routines.”
“This Queen program of yours has to be more than random numbers,” Cloudhopper said. “Are you sure it can make it through the firewall?”
“It’s simply a list of addresses along with a builder module,” Alek said. “Your firewall will scan it and see that it poses no threat by itself. There should be no problem.”
Leconte stared at him for several seconds before speaking. “How does this sound, Maya? Can this really work?”
“I know that Alek is just like his father,” she said with a slight smile. “He’s the best at what he does. I think his plan’s worth trying.”
Just then, an alarm went off. “What now,” Leconte said as she looked off to one side, obviously reading something on her contacts. Her face suddenly lit up. “Maya and Alek, please come with me.”
She turned to leave but Maya grabbed her arm and stopped her. “What’s wrong, Rebecca?”
Leconte turned and smiled at her. “Nothing’s wrong, my dear. In fact, it’s quite good news. One of the hostages is coming out of interface.” She looked at Alek. “It’s your father.”
o o o
Alek followed Maya and Leconte down the hall to an elevator that took them down one level to a heavily guarded lobby. Judging by the circular shape, Alek guessed that they were back in the center of the building, directly below the computer center. After the guards cleared them, they entered a cylindrical glass elevator and began descending again.
A moment later, they dropped into another circular room. Through the glass walls, Alek could see that this room was about the same size as the lobby and had six doors equally spaced along the walls. Instead of stopping, they passed through the floor and entered another room exactly like the one above. The elevator slowed to a stop, and the doors slid open.
A blast of cold air hit Alek in the face. He was about to mention it, but noticed that neither Maya nor Leconte seemed bothered by the temperature change. As he followed Maya toward one of the doors on the outer wall, he saw the reason for the cool temperature. The floor surrounding the elevator was actually a raised walkway that floated over a pool of some sort of liquid coolant. Something on this level was running hot.
The door ahead of them opened and a young woman with brown hair stepped through, almost running into Leconte.
“Ms. Aston,” Leconte said, stepping aside to let the young woman pass. She wore the same uniform as Cloudhopper, although she filled hers out much better.
“Lorena,” Maya called out as the woman breezed past her.
“No time, Maya,” she called out without slowing down. “Have to get this data to Roy, ASAP. You know how he is.” Alek watched her jump into the elevator just as the door closed.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“Lorena Aston,” Maya said. “She’s a friend of mine. One of the few I have here, actually.”
“What does she do?” he asked, still staring at the elevator.
“She’s one of our best systems engineers,” Maya said over his shoulder. “You two probably have a lot in common. Too bad that she doesn’t like men, though.”
He turned back toward her. “So, you two are friends, huh?” he asked with a smirk.
She raised an eyebrow. “Jealous?” She turned and walked through the door before he could answer.
Alek followed her into what was obviously an interface room, with seven oval-shaped pods lining the outer wall. One of the pods on the far left side had someone inside, as evident by the glowing display screen above it. Some sort of bio-neural readout, he realized, showing a cutaway view of a human body. The display showed a heart beating in the chest, blood flowing through veins and arteries, and flashes of colored light in the area of the brain.
The main walkway led to a raised circular platform in the middle of the room and a series of control panels ran along the outer edge, facing outwards. A woman wearing a white doctor’s uniform stood in front of one of the panels.
Maya and Leconte stepped down to a narrow walkway that led around the room to the chambers. He looked down and realized that the walkway was too narrow for his powerchair, so he headed toward the center platform and stopped next to the doctor.
“He’s definitely waking up,” the doctor said, tapping a code into the control panel in front of her. She had dark brown skin and a caring face. She turned and smiled at him. “You must be Mathew’s son,” she said. “You look a lot like him. I’m Angela Benness.”
“Did you do anything to initiate the retrieval, Doctor?” Leconte interrupted.
Dr. Benness glanced back down at the control panel. “No, it looks like a self-induced return.”
“What’s the count?” Maya asked.
Benness glanced at Alek before answering. “Probe count has decreased by 30 percent,” she said.
“That’s really slow,” Maya said. “It should be well
over 50 percent by now.”
“I don’t know why he’s returning,” Leconte said. “However, one person coming back means that there’s a chance to bring them all back.”
Leconte stood over his father, softly stroking the surface of his chamber. She looked like she really cared about him. Was this more than professional concern?
Leconte looked back at the doctor. “How long?”
Benness checked the readout before answering. “About twenty minutes, I would say.”
“Twenty minutes?” Alek asked, moving closer to the handrail that separated him from his father. “Why is it taking him so long to wake up?”
“You’ve never experienced an interface like ours,” Maya said, finally turning to face him. “The neuroprobes are capable of leaving faster, but we have them go more slowly to allow the brain time to get reacquainted with the body’s natural sensory data. It’s sort of like decompression, like when a scuba diver stays in deep water too long. The longer the interface, the longer the decompression required.”
“Decompression implies that you use some form of compression in your interface.” He thought about that for a moment. “It sounds like you’re running your simulations faster than normal.” He looked over at his father’s chamber. “So, how fast was he going? Two, three times normal?”
“Originally, we had estimated that the neuroprobes could boost brain activity to a maximum of ten times normal,” Maya said. “However, it now looks like your father had been experimenting with a much faster interface. When Ceejer became infected, we think the entire system defaulted to his speed for some reason.”
“What do you mean? How much faster was my father going?”
“Our best estimate is that time is passing inside the simulations one hundred times faster than normal.”
Alek’s mouth hung open as he fought to make sense of what she said. “That can’t be right,” he said after a moment. “Even with nanotech enhancements, there’s no way your brain could process information at that speed. It would be like living in a world running on fast forward. There’s something else you’re not telling me,” he said. “What is it?”
Maya glanced over at Leconte before replying. “You’re right of course. Neuroprobes can’t boost brain efficiency by that much all by themselves. We also use something I helped develop, called Intelligent Avatars. We use a new form of high-resolution biological scanner to digitize a person’s brain and body all the way down to the molecular level. We then use this data to model an Avatar body that’s a perfect copy of the person.”
“What you’re saying is that these Avatars are so perfect, that your brain’s tricked into thinking you’re actually inside these digital bodies.”
“Exactly.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you can exist inside a simulation running a hundred times faster than normal.”
“The Avatars do more than simply transmit sensory data from the simulations,” Maya said. “At higher interface speeds, they work as interpolation routines to help your brain handle the increased data rates.”
“I think I understand what you mean by interpolation. In a digital environment, movement isn’t steady; it involves a series of steps per cycle. If I connect myself to a faster-than-normal simulation, I might decide to start walking, and then suddenly my Avatar would be at my destination. But a smart Avatar could handle all of the little details for me, like walking.”
“That’s right. It’s like watching those old two-dimensional movies; they trick you into thinking you’re watching steady movement, when in fact you’re only watching a series of still images. Our brains are easy to fool in some ways.”
“Something’s wrong,” Dr. Benness said. She tapped on the display showing his father’s heart, then pulled out a stethoscope and ran down to join the others near his father. She pressed a button on the wall and the upper half of the chamber began lifting up. She put the stethoscope on his father’s chest and held her breath. “I’m getting a flutter,” she whispered. “I think he’s coming out early.”
“That’s not possible,” Maya said, looking first at Alek and then at Dr. Benness. “Are you sure the count is accurate?”
Benness glanced up at the bio-readout on the wall. “If this display is correct, more than half of the neuroprobes are still inside his brain.”
“Then how can he be waking up?” Alek asked.
Maya began chewing on one of her fingernails. “This shouldn’t be happening,” she said, a look of distress on her face.
“Mathew,” Leconte yelled, leaning over him. “It’s Rebecca. Can you hear me?”
His father stirred. It looked to Alek like he was trying to move, but something was stopping him.
Benness nudged Leconte out of the way. “Dr. Grey? Please don’t try to move.” When his body started to shake, she turned to the others. “His muscles are starting to spasm. Help me hold him down.”
Alek started to move forward but realized that he couldn’t help from his position. Both Maya and Leconte pushed on his father’s chest, but he continued to shake.
Suddenly, his father sat straight up and threw out both arms, knocking all three women backward onto the floor. He turned his head slowly back and forth, as if he was scanning the room. His eyes looked blank, almost lifeless. He took a slow, deep breath and whispered, “At last, I am free.”
Benness stood back up. She had a cut across her forehead that was starting to bleed. She opened a side panel and began filling an injection gun, “Help me hold his arm,” she said. “I need to tranquilize him before he hurts himself.”
Before anyone could move, his father collapsed back into his chamber. Benness dropped the injector and ran to him, just as an alarm went off. “He has no pulse,” she yelled as she hit the button to reseal the chamber. She stepped back as the upper half of the chamber began to lower.
“What are you doing?” Alek yelled. “Someone help him.”
“We are helping him,” Benness said. “The interface chamber has full life support capability.”
“She’s right, Alek,” Maya said, climbing over the rail to stand beside him. “Your father has a better chance in there than in a hospital emergency room.”
Alek sat there and helplessly watched the display above his father’s chamber. He didn’t need a medical degree to see that nothing was working. Bright red crosses began popping up all over the glowing shape of his father. Eventually, the display stopped changing and a small readout flashed red.
Benness looked at the display and spoke solemnly into a microphone on the wall. “Subject Mathew Grey. Time of death is 21:55.” She then turned to Alek. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” he whispered.
Maya grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry too, Alek.”
“No,” he repeated. “You have all of this high-tech equipment. Do something else.”
“Your father has no brain activity whatsoever, Mr. Grey,” Leconte said. “I’m afraid that there is nothing more we can do for him.”
Alek pulled away from Maya, turned his chair around, and headed out of the room as fast as he could.
FIVE
Alek sat alone near the elevator for several long minutes. Even though he could see his own breath, the ice-cold air in the room didn’t seem to bother him anymore. He heard the elevator swoosh to a stop, and two men carrying a gurney swept passed him and entered the interface room. A few minutes later, they returned with the body of his father. They wheeled the gurney into the elevator, followed closely by Leconte and Benness. With another swoosh of air; the elevator took them all away.
Alek stared at the open door to the interface room. The silence was almost deafening. A full minute later, Maya walked out and sat down on a curved bench a few meters away. He looked at her but she just stared blankly at the elevator shaft. Tears were streaming down her face.
“I remember when my mother was sick,” she said, still facing away from him. “About a year before I met you. It was during exams and my father kept
insisting that I drop everything and fly back home, as though Argentina was just down the block. I felt so horrible telling him that I couldn’t go. Luckily, she got better, but I still have nightmares about that period. My father was so disappointed in me.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, not sure what she was trying to say.
“God, I’m so sorry,” she said, walking over to sit next to him. She placed a warm hand on his shoulder. “I guess I really can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now.”
“I’m not sure what I feel,” he said, and he was telling the truth. “My mother left him when I was six, so I don’t have many memories of him living at home. Not that he was home much before then anyway.”
“You told me that he was married to his career,” she said. “That couldn’t have been easy for you or your mom.”
“That’s why she left him. She said it would’ve been easier to deal with if he was having an affair, but to abandon his family for a job—well that she just couldn’t understand—or accept.”
“Maybe this is a nexus point for you,” she said.
“A what?” he asked, looking up.
“You know I don’t believe in fate, or any sort of destiny crap, right?”
“I don’t either,” he said. “I think when someone tells you that you’re ‘following your destiny,’ it’s a good time to do a ninety-degree turn and get the hell out of there.”
“Well, my grandmother use to say that instead of some sort of predesigned fate, there are instead a limited number of crossroads, or nexus points, in each of our lives,” she began. “Moments where a single event, or a decision you make, takes you down a different path, permanently altering the course of your life.”
“Like when I left you,” he said, only realizing as he spoke the words, that it was true.
She stood and faced him. He looked up at her, desperately wishing he could stand. Instead, she bent over and kissed him on the cheek. Before she could stand back up, he grabbed her shoulders and kissed her hard on the mouth. She resisted only a moment, and then he felt her tongue slide between his open lips.
