Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330)

by Mitchell, Laura Remson

  Al looked blankly at Zorne, trying to distill his chaotic thoughts into a rational comment or question.

  “Maybe the psychic energy you released directly modified Roberts’ wounds before he had a chance to die, so that the doctors were able to save him,” Zorne went on. “Or maybe the psycho-affective spike split reality into alternative branches, with Roberts dying in one branch and living in the other. At this point, I’m not sure of the exact mechanism involved. We may never be able to find that out for sure. After all, we can only exist in one reality at a time.”

  Al gazed disconcertedly at Zorne, then shifted his focus downward to the tabletop. His jaws ached as he fought to contain the fury of emotion inside. Part of him felt relieved. No—vindicated. Zorne was confirming that what Al thought had happened actually did happen. But Alec Zorne was still Alec Zorne. Azey seemed to approach their work together in a professional, competent manner, but Al could still hear Vickie’s disparaging remarks about Zorne’s public association with counterculture causes. Was all that political activity—which had cost Zorne so dearly—a reflection of integrity or of bad judgment? And if it was the latter, did that bad judgment carry over into Zorne’s scientific work?

  “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Zorne asked.

  A cold knot of fear lodged itself behind Al’s breastbone. Whether Zorne was right or wrong, life would never be quite the same again. Either he possessed a terrifying power that he didn’t know how to control, or else he was crazy and Zorne’s theories were just so much hogwash. Odd, he thought. He had never really considered the implications before. He’d just wanted to prove to himself—and to Vickie—that he wasn’t losing his mind.

  He blinked and shook his head, unconsciously hoping the movement would somehow distill sense from confusion, but everything remained stubbornly hazy.

  “Al? Are you all right?”

  “Sure,” Al responded sardonically. “What could be wrong? You just told me I’m some kind of psychic freak.”

  “All I’ve told you is that you were right about what happened when Roberts was shot. Would you have preferred it if we’d found out it was all in your head?”

  “I don’t really know,” a glum Al Frederick answered.

  “Look, I didn’t guarantee the outcome of these experiments,” said Zorne. “I didn’t know what we’d find any more than you did. But I did think that you wanted to know the truth!”

  Al shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and then straightened in his chair.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I did—I do—want the truth. It’s just—well, even though I lived through it, it’s hard to accept. Especially as time goes by. I keep thinking maybe Vickie was right about my just being overtired and—”

  Zorne heaved an impatient sigh.

  “Look, Azey,” Al said, swallowing hard, “I’m a little confused here. You said I can change things, especially when they conflict with my reality matrix. Right? But didn’t you also say that everyone has a reality matrix? If that’s so, why isn’t everybody doing what I did?”

  “Well,” Zorne answered, “I’m not sure, but I can offer an educated guess. You have a tremendous emotional investment in your reality matrix. That’s not true for everybody. For many of my other subjects, the matrix just exists as a sort of passive background.”

  “So?”

  “Because of the emotional component, a reality-matrix conflict creates more tension for you than it does for them. At any rate, the experimental results show a direct relationship between the degree of reality-matrix conflict and your psychic potential, as measured by the oscillations picked up by the electroscan.”

  “Huh?”

  “In other words, the bigger the conflict, the greater your psychic potential. And here’s something else, Al. Even if everyone has some latent psychic potential, there are bound to be variations from individual to individual—just like with intellectual ability or athletic skill. You happen to combine a very affective reality matrix with strong psychic ability. That combination may not occur very often.”

  “In other words, I’m just lucky,” Al retorted with irony. “What about the other ‘lucky’ people in the world? I can’t be the only one.”

  “That’s a good question, Al. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer—at least, not yet. Maybe other people are changing the world, too, only we can’t tell because we become part of the change.” He paused, pressing his lips together. “You know, this thing we call ‘reality’ isn’t as simple as most people think.”

  “What do you mean?” Al asked with a frown.

  Zorne rested his right hand against his chin, tapping his lips with his index finger. “Let’s just say that the more physicists find out, the more we realize how little we know. How little we can know, for that matter. Heisenberg showed that we can’t even look at something without changing it.”

  Zorne gazed past Al’s ear at nothing in particular. “Some of the theories of quantum mechanics sound wilder than the wildest sort of science fiction. A world that consists of nothing but probabilities, with no physical existence at all until something is observed or measured.... Multiple coexisting alternative realities.... And then there’s Bell’s theorem....”

  The scientist focused on Al once more. “But even with all that, reality-matrix physics is going to knock them for a loop.”

  Al massaged his closed eyes and shook his head. “Enough!”

  Zorne studied him silently for a moment, then picked up the folders he had put on the table earlier. Al shifted about restlessly, hoping for a swift end to the lab session. He had a lot to think about, and he needed time to digest it.

  “Before I forget, Al,” Zorne said, leafing through the papers in the folders until he found what he was looking for, “I’d better give you some of these. They’re the forms I use for recording experimental data. I want you to keep track of what we do from now on, too. I want to find out just what you can do voluntarily to control your psychic energy. The record will help both of us.”

  “All right,” Al nodded with an uncertain smile as he accepted the papers from Zorne. “One thing I’ll say for you, Azey. You have a great sense of timing.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Well, according to you, I just about snatched John Martin Roberts out of the grave.”

  “I don’t think I’d describe it that—”

  Al interrupted with a bittersweet laugh. “Look at the calendar, Azey. Happy Halloween!”

  Chapter 8: Library Run

  “You have a choice, Flynn. You can be quiet and do as you’re told, or else you can run off with your tail between your legs and go play ball with the technocrats,” Tauber said in an icy near-whisper. “Makes no difference to me. We can pull this off with you or without you. But you better decide if you’re one of us or one of them.”

  Wraggon smiled at Flynn’s discomfort—a reaction Tauber noticed and tucked away in the mental file he automatically kept on the strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities of everyone who crossed his path.

  “All right, now,” Tauber said, “everybody got it straight? This is Phase One. Anybody wants out of this operation, better do it now.” Tauber gazed directly at Flynn. “After tonight, we’re committed. We’re at war. We’re going to bring down this whole weak-sister regime we’ve been stuck with for so long and get back to the natural order of things, with the strong in charge.”

  Flynn’s eyes narrowed, and he glared at Tauber, but he said nothing as the others nodded.

  It was just past 2 a.m., and the streets were as deserted as those big, old-fashioned shopping centers became after retailers started emphasizing instant-delivery home sales. The group’s destination—about half a block away—was housed in a simple, unadorned structure built in the utilitarian architectural style that was so popular around the turn of the century.

  The five of them made up an odd-looking bunch, Tauber mused. Wraggon, sporting an incipient beard, swaggered instead of merely walking, as if intoxicated b
y the scent of power. To Tauber, he just looked like a little boy playing soldier. Barnard could have been sent by a holovision casting director to play the hulking, not-too-bright sidekick. Flynn, still hot over their earlier clash, seemed more concerned about who gave the orders than about any outside interference with their immediate objectives. And Thompson strolled along as if they were merely out for a middle-of-the-night constitutional. Only Tauber himself exhibited the mix of competence, confidence, and caution that the circumstances warranted.

  “Okay, Flynn,” Tauber said as they stopped before a door marked:

  LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY, CENTRAL BRANCH

  “Open it.”

  Flynn scowled for a split second, then tried the door.

  “Locked,” he grunted

  “When’d they start locking the library doors?” Barnard complained. “I thought they always kept ’em open.”

  “Yeah, well, with all the vandalism lately, maybe they’re starting to smarten up,” said Thompson.

  Tauber jerked his head toward the door.

  “Open it,” he repeated, handing Flynn a set of lock picks.

  Flynn ran thick fingers through his dirty russet hair, then took the packet from Tauber.

  “What’s the matter?” Wraggon taunted as Flynn studied the picks uncertainly. “Aren’t you the guy who told us all last week how you didn’t need Tauber or anyone else to teach you how to open some goddamn door? Maybe you need a little more motivation. Just think, Flynn. Now that people are locking their doors again, you’ll probably have to use one of those to get into your latest whore’s pants!”

  Flynn flushed with anger and took a step toward Wraggon, only to feel Barnard’s huge, restraining hand on his shoulder.

  “Come on, Casey. You don’t really want to do anything like that, do you?”

  Tauber gave Flynn a few seconds to regain control of himself, then turned to Wraggon.

  “I don’t want that to happen again, Wraggon,” he said firmly. “So far, we’ve only got 23 men, including us, to change a world that right now doesn’t even know it needs changing. As long as Flynn’s with us, he’s part of the team. We don’t take pot shots at each other!”

  Wraggon glared at Tauber. “I was just....”

  Tauber’s hard look cut Wraggon short.

  “The door,” Tauber said, turning to Flynn.

  Flynn took a deep breath, selected a pick and inserted it in the lock. After a few seconds, the lock gave way.

  “Thompson, you stay out here, and keep watch. I don’t think anyone’s going to show up, but we’d better play it safe. Here, take this.” Tauber removed a silver flask from a satchel slung over his left shoulder. “Anybody comes snooping around, you start playing drunk. Loud drunk.”

  Thompson nodded and took the flask as Tauber directed the other three men through the wide library doorway.

  Once inside, Tauber removed a low-intensity glow lamp and a focus-beam flashlight. He set the lamp in the middle of the room and switched it on.

  “Close the door, Wraggon,” he said, turning his head to survey the scene.

  The soft light of the glow lamp revealed two rows of public-access computer terminals on the main floor, as well as racks filled with what at first appeared to be books.

  “Hey, Tauber,” Barnard asked with a wave of his arm. “What is all this stuff?”

  “Yeah, Tauber,” Flynn added. “I thought you said they don’t keep books in libraries anymore.”

  “Wait a minute,” Wraggon chimed in, removing a “book” from one of the lower shelves. “These aren’t books.”

  Tauber looked at the three others and shook his head.

  “No, they’re not books. They haven’t kept real books in libraries for at least 20 years. Those are disk modules.” He pointed to the open end of the three-sided container in Wraggon’s hands. “Each module holds up to 10 optical disks. The open end faces the read/select circuitry behind the racks. When you want some sort of information, you punch up the library on your terminal at home. The library’s supercomputer uses high-speed molecular switching circuits to locate the right place on the right disk, access the data and send it to you.”

  Wraggon swiveled his head slowly, studying the racks.

  “The central L.A. library holds more information than you could find in all the libraries in Southern California combined a hundred years ago,” Tauber added. “That’s why we’re here. Not only does this library have a lot of information, but it also acts as a link with other local libraries. Haven’t any of you ever heard of the Consolidated Data Network?”

  Barnard wrinkled his brow in concentration, then suddenly smiled in recognition. “Sure,” he said. “The CDN. I just never figured that had anything to do with libraries. Always thought libraries were places you punched up if you wanted to read something.” He turned to Wraggon. “I never did like to read much,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

  Wraggon looked around him. Disk modules lined all four walls of the library, extending from the ground to the ceiling three stories above them. A stairway to the left of the main desk and an elevator to the right provided access to the balcony-like upper floors.

  “I feel like I’m standing at the bottom of some kind of deep hole,” Wraggon said as he gazed upward. “Shit! I never realized how much information they keep in these places,” he said.

  “Oh, this is really nothing. You should see the regional libraries. Then there are the archives, where they store the master disks with all the information they’ve transferred to computer storage over the years. And the originals. They’ve got warehouses of the stuff—real books and paper records, too. Backups for backups. We don’t have nearly enough manpower to destroy all the records, but we can do a good job of screwing things up if we handle this right.”

  “How’d you get to be so smart?” Flynn snarled.

  Tauber ignored the sarcasm.

  “Before I left Fleet, I made damn sure I learned everything I could—anything I figured might be useful later on. Fleet was very cooperative. After my big run-in with the brass, they grounded me. Guess they figured they could keep me in line by giving me some sort of desk job. Their mistake. Hank Tauber’s nobody’s sheep. Anyhow, they gave me all sorts of training on the Fleet computer system—which meant learning a helluva lot about CDN, not to mention a few other things that are going to come in very handy for us.”

  “What now?” asked Flynn.

  “Now we start putting our plan into operation. Like I’ve been saying for weeks, the whole world depends on information and energy these days. Take those away, and what you’ve got is a nice, juicy apple, ripe for the picking.

  “We’ve got an information-exchange node coming up in about—” Tauber paused to look at his wristwatch “—25 minutes. First thing we’ve got to do is tap into the data burst. Then we use the library’s master computer to analyze the burst and isolate the transmission codes.”

  Barnard scratched his head, a puzzled expression on his face. “What transmission codes?” he finally asked.

  Tauber sighed and rolled his eyes.

  “Come on, Barnard,” he almost pleaded. “We’ve been over this 20 times. You’re a merchanter, for God’s sake! Didn’t you learn anything about how the CDN system on Earth ties in with the one in the colonies?”

  “Well, yeah, sure I did,” Barnard answered somewhat defensively. “But I still don’t see what that has to do with—”

  “You explain it to him, Wraggon,” said an exasperated Tauber. “Do me a favor, and translate it into this guy’s language!”

  Tauber shook his head and snorted derisively as Barnard’s Fleet-issue merchanter boots suddenly caught his eye. Now, what kind of idiot wears merchanter boots when he’s on leave? With a quick mental shrug, Tauber shifted his attention to more immediate concerns.

  “Flynn, you go scout the upper floors. Better take the flashlight. See if you can find the supply room, just in case we need anything. And make sure the main office and the
receiving station are unlocked.”

  Tauber watched Flynn walk deliberately to the stairway, then bound up the steps two at a time.

  “Look, Barnard, it’s real simple,” Wraggon was saying. “The colonies are too far away for us to use the same database. Communicating back and forth over that distance takes too long. Slows the computers down too much. So instead of having just one network, we really got two of ’em—one on Earth, and one out in the colonies.”

  “Yeah, Charlie, I know that much already. What’s that have to do with what Hank was saying about data bursts and transmission codes?”

  “Well, think about it for a minute. When you use the CDN, you’re supposed to be able to get whatever information you need, no matter if you’re in Los Angeles or somewheres on Ceres. Right? But that means the colonies’ network and the Earth’s network both gotta have the same information. You got to update both networks. You know—like, Earth’s network gets a copy of the latest stuff the colonial network has, and vice versa.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Barnard said, his eyes brightening. “That’s what those information-exchange nodes are…. Aren’t they?”

  Wraggon nodded. “They take all the information they need to send to the colonies and put it in some fancy electronic package, then send it out in a high-speed radio burst. The colonies do the same thing with the stuff they need to send us. They make an exchange like that about every couple weeks.”

  “Right,” Tauber broke in. “And in order to make the exchange as fast as possible, they time it for when Earth and the colonial transmitting station are in their closest positions to one another for the two-week period. Which in this case happens to be in about—” he checked his watch once more “—17 minutes.”

  Barnard nodded, apparently satisfied, and Tauber lifted his eyes toward the upper floors, searching for Flynn. Suddenly, Barnard caught Tauber’s arm.

  “But what does any of that have to do with transmission codes?” he said. “You said something about transmission codes.”