“You’ll forgive me if I don’t see what murdering people has to do with responsible corporate citizenship,” Ethan said.
“We sacrifice the few for the many.”
A beat and nothing. Ethan was ready to turn towards Monica for moral support when…
“You’re a SME,” Monica said.
Locus smiled at her. “Yes. The various humanitarian groups see a need for someone like myself, but no organization or individual has proven up to the task until now. Not that those organizations would trust. Until the advent of myself. I’m the first of my kind.”
Another beat of tense silence pulsating like the corona of a sun. Then…
“You killed the Pancake Man, didn’t you?” Monica asked the SME point blank. “Or at least you convinced him with that morality-engine mind of yours to take his own life.”
The SME made a sad face, like a deflating tire. “Yes, I did.”
Ethan chose to ignore that little bombshell in favor of the other one that had gone off in the room. “Can’t we just drag the CTWs in here, so you can keep an eye on them?” Ethan begged. “They can work for you. Nothing gets out that isn’t supposed to, like you say.”
Locus smiled empathetically. “I’m afraid, from what we can see, each and every last one of them is a runaway reaction. The kind of big bang of creativity that could overwrite the planet, and eventually the universe. It will never stop expanding. For them to pull up short of that would be to violate their own true nature. That would be an even bigger crime, in their eyes.”
“You can’t know that! Not for certain,” Ethan protested. “Perhaps they can learn to police themselves, to subordinate their creative impulses to the greater good.”
The SME held out his hand placatingly. “You’re free to try and talk them down. If it works, I’m okay with you bringing them in alive and having them join the family. I will even give Monica access to my morality and ethical engine algorithms. I can come into her mind as needed to help you both talk them down. But if you can’t, I need to know you’ll be able to fire the shot.”
“We can,” Monica said, rising from the chair.
“No, we can’t!” Ethan said.
“Never mind him. If I can’t talk him down, I certainly won’t get anywhere with the rest of them. Can I ask why you just don’t nuke the entire county?”
“They’ve scattered to the wind. All but the couple I showed you earlier. Start with them. See if you can get a bead on the others.”
Monica nodded and headed for the elevator. “God damn it!” Ethan squawked chasing after her.
“Just one more thing,” Locus said. Monica stopped and turned. “You get over your head, you call in for reinforcements. Axelman and Johnson will give you whatever we have at our disposal. I think you’ll find if you catch Orion and Doris in time, we’ll have most anything you need to contain them.”
She nodded and resumed her marching campaign to the elevator. Ethan was stewing only long enough so his next boil over would burn away her resistance to this madness.
They were allowed to take the elevator down on their own and escort themselves out of the building. That gave him the opportunity he needed to explode in a socially appropriate manner. “Need I remind you we already work for the Chicago PD!” he said at the top of his lungs.
In her customary deadpan, she replied, “I really don’t see the conflict of interests. Both our employers want the same thing. It’s like getting paid for moonlighting without actually moonlighting.”
Ethan returned to simmering mode, biding his time until he could belch out an even more compelling interrogative.
***
Johnson and Axelman took the next lift down from the penthouse. “Things are looking up for us now that we know what it takes to get to the top floor,” Axelman said.
“How so? I can’t believe they gave that job to a SME! They have zero track record.”
“Think about it, Johnson. They’re basically just killing machines. Tell me that job position doesn’t have your name written all over it. Providing you can come up with some better rational explanations for killing besides, ‘he just gets on my nerves’.”
“You’re the bleeding heart. Consider that your job from now on, to supply me with the necessary rationalizations.”
“Only if we run the organization in a conjoint capacity.”
Johnson turned, looked as if he might just rip his head off for suggesting as much. Axelman quickly added, “We’ll never get around that SME on our own. I suggest we take multiple runs at him until we can convince him to kill based solely on our rationalizations. As soon as that happens, we know we’re ready to…”
“Crush him in my bare hands and throw him out the penthouse window.”
“I wasn’t thinking of anything quite so dramatic, but, yeah, that works.”
NINETEEN
Ethan eyed the missile still lying on the asphalt where they’d left it when the pulled it out of the Maserati as they pulled into his parking place. “Ah, the good old days,” he said, picking up the rocket on his way out of the car and tossing it in the dumpster. “You know, when we were just running for our lives, without any of the moral ambiguity.”
The dumpster compacted the rocket like it was a fine meal, burped, and said, “Thank you sir.” It only now dawned on him that crushing a rocket probably wasn’t the best idea if you didn’t want it to go off in your face. Let’s hear it for very stable explosives!
Ethan turned to face Monica. “And for the record, I’ve yet to see any sex out of the deal. To blunt the harsh reality any. And now, I’m a murderer. Why? Because she tells me so. Honestly, there’s only so much pussy-whipping a man can endure.”
She picked him up, wrapped his legs around her waist, taking full advantage of her nano-endowed strength, and kissed him hard, back pressed against the dumpster. She was showing no sign of slowing. Probably figuring it was easier to manage him than to win him over entirely. Whatever. He wasn’t beyond being managed.
“Um,” the dumpster said, “would you like some appropriate mood music to go with the sex? I’m afraid the only things I have are designed to mute out the sounds of crushing metal.” As Monica dented the metal behind his back with her overzealousness, Ethan winced and eked out to the dumpster, “That’ll be fine.”
It was weird to be pile-driving her and having her do all the work. Someone should really consider applying this concept to a driver seat. The fact that he didn’t have to undo her zipper, her smart outfit took its cue from her brainwaves, was, well, only slightly less weird. As to opening his own fly, she must have cleverly attended to that while distracting him with a kiss.
He felt like a deranged serial killer who could only get it up while fantasizing about slaying people. Flash-forwards of killing people they had been hired to kill kept piercing his mind, a carryover from the Verge conversation. She kept pulling him back to the present by wet kisses to his ears and his other sweet spots. She did this weird shiatsu pressure point massage thing to his back when he started to tighten up too much. It wasn’t clear at that point if from the flash-forward episodes playing out in his mind or from her banging him against the wall of the dumpster.
But no matter what she did, she couldn’t hold him in the here and now for long. She must have sensed as much eventually, and relinquished trying. He was almost glad to not have come to orgasm when she tucked him away and zippered him up. That would have just driven home the whole psycho-killer theme too much.
His body felt bruised and battered, yet curiously more relaxed after the whole ordeal. Perhaps “ordeal” wasn’t a fair description of this latest round of sex. The endorphins released when she was pulling him into her repeatedly were so pronounced he felt high and spacey even now.
When they got upstairs to his place, she just started ripping boxes open and using the contents inside to suit up for her, or should he say, their, private war. Evidently she’d ordered the stuff on line on the drive over from Verge. He accosted his house comp
uter verbally. “I can’t believe you could have betrayed me like this! You’re my minions, not hers,” he said, glaring at each and every talking appliance.
No response.
“I see we’ve graduated to the silent treatment.” He mumbled the “small blessings” part before shifting his attention back to Monica.
“I know why you’re doing this,” he said, trying to get used to her makeover in progress as GI Jane. She was fierce enough without all the accoutrements. “You hate CTWs. I don’t know when envy turned to hate exactly, but I’m sure the idea of tracking down every last Convergence Tech Wizard makes you all hot, just so you don’t have to face your inadequacies.”
“And for all your objections, I didn’t see you refusing to take the case. Why? Because this is the career-making opportunity you’ve been begging for. It’ll put you on the map. You get to be world-impacting for once. All without having to endure the dratted fate of becoming transhuman. You couldn’t be happier despite all the mock protests to the contrary.”
Damn her if she wasn’t right.
She stopped opening boxes and sighed. “You know what I think about when I question our motives, Ethan, I think about the Pancake Man and his pet project, The Genesis Effect. One genius Convergence Tech Wizard, that’s all it took to potentially turn not just our world but the entire multiverse inside out. And he wasn’t even of the same caliber as the ones we’re going after.
“I know the rational mind has trouble accepting that anyone can be so world-impacting. Even for a trans-human it’s hard to grasp. That’s because our fears step in to close our minds off from the possibilities we just can’t accept. We deem them irrational possibilities. But the only thing irrational is recoiling in fear instead of confronting the problem head on.” Speech over, reserve rebuilt, she resumed her suiting up.
He didn’t know what the weapons were that she was strapping on, and he didn’t want to. “I’m still not sure what the Pancake Man was up to was such a bad idea.”
“So that’s your solution, sit around and debate the future for time immemorial, just so you don’t have to act? It’s just another coward’s way out.”
She was right about that. He had a bad habit of holding off on decisions just because he didn’t like any of the alternative solutions he’d come to. He’d held off on the whole human to transhuman metamorphosis since forever, and he was still debating taking the leap. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this stripping away one another’s defenses ploy he’d initiated. It was starting to sting. Time to try another tack.
Maybe if she thought of him more as an ally rather than an adversary right now. “You hack into Verge yet for that support they promised to lend? I know you aren’t waiting until we get in over our heads to make a call. By then it’ll be too damn late.”
“I’m up to the sixty-fourth floor. It’s getting harder the higher up the building I climb. Whatever they have on their top floors, it’s not nearly as open source as they claim it is, or as open to public scrutiny. I’ll put Anonymous on it. I’ll have my hands full coding self-evolving algorithms more suited to battle and to deploying whatever convergence tech I could lay my hands on at Verge.”
Suited up finally, automatic rifles in each hand, she faced him and said, “You ready?”
He grabbed one of the handguns she’d left behind. “I think it only fair to tell you, I’m debating killing both of us for the greater good. Perhaps individuals weren’t meant to be this world-impacting, certainly not the two of us. If anyone’s up to the task, it’s the convergence tech wizards. And if they don’t pass muster in your mind, then who are we to intervene in things?”
“I’m not worried.”
“Why, because you could swat me like a fly?”
“No, because you’ll be debating that too until the end of time.”
He made mocking gestures as he trailed behind her, silently repeating her words. Though he knew them to be true.
TWENTY
“More coffee?” Doris said.
Monica held the mug out to her, waited for her to fill it and then sipped from the cup. When the wife gestured to Ethan he shook his head stiffly. “You understand my hesitation to kill you?” Monica said to Orion, her Beretta 9mm in front of her on the retro-chic diner table.
Orion ran his eyes up and down her for the umpteenth time, eying all the hardware. “No, not really. You strike me as Gung-Ho Chic.”
“I’m telling you, huh?” Ethan said before piping down.
“Aren’t you curious why my security let you by without batting an eye?” Orion asked. “It’s because you’re one of us. A Convergence Tech Wizard.”
Monica’s eyes went wide. “That’s simply not true.”
Orion nodded. “You’re so busy hunting us down, trying to lock us up or kill us, you stopped noticing that the tech you had to create to do so gradually turned you into one of us. You can’t do as much yet, but over time I imagine…”
“That’s simply not true, I said!”
Orion stopped talking for fear of provoking her further.
“You understand your choices?” Monica scrutinized his face for understanding. “If you don’t come with me to Verge, agree to have your mind monitored, I have to kill you. It’s nothing personal. You seem like nice people. I love the whole quiet-country-house vibe you’ve got going here.”
“To say nothing of that atrium, huh?” Ethan said. Then when Monica gave him a dirty look, he said, “What? I can’t like the atrium?”
“I’m just a channel.” Orion gestured. “I can’t help what comes through me. It’s God you want, not the hand of God. I assume if my mind is creating Convergence Tech it’s because it’s what the world needs to fill some void.”
“There is no God,” Monica spoke acidly.
“All these people in the world,” Orion pleaded, “most of them transhuman now, inventing new tech at a mile a minute, don’t you ever wonder why there isn’t more redundancy? Why no one is really out of work because he can’t think up something the competition hasn’t? God doesn’t play with dice, but he doesn’t create any two people the same either. We’re all here for a reason. We all have a unique purpose, a mission in life only we can fulfill. Take away any one person and the whole suffers, everyone suffers.”
“A poetic justification for sticking your head in the sand,” Monica said, “for not having to pay attention to the ramifications of your actions. Just go from concept to creation, never looking around, figuring that if the idea popped into your head it’s because it’s meant to be. Mad bombers and psychokillers all have wild ideas popping into their heads all the time too. And, like you, they follow their heart with the same blind conviction. Did God put them here too as part of the flowers in the field idea?”
Orion lowered his yes, not knowing what to say. It looked for a second like he was giving up. Then he raised his head again. “How would you know if your computer security was any good if someone didn’t try to hack it? If it weren’t for computer viruses you had to fend off, how could your neuronet get stronger, more robust? The mad killers out there have their role to play too. In their own way they are serving the greater good.”
“I’m not here to recruit for the debate club, Orion.” The words came out like acid from a squirt gun.
“Hey, guys, can we just agree to disagree on this?” Ethan said trying to diffuse the rising tension in the room, most of it coming from Monica’s growing impatience with Orion.
“As for running the checks and balances on the godhead we’re building from the ground up,” Orion said, “the system as a whole does that. It’s not something you can do by yourself, Monica, even with Ethan to help error-check your thinking. Those kinds of error checks have to be run by the group mind, countless group minds nested within one another, as required, if more and more mind power needs to be drawn on to make a more informed decision.”
Ethan could read Monica well enough to know Orion was getting to her. That her anger was as much at herself as at Orion. She’d
committed to a course of action, and she no longer had room for uncertainty. She was going to go through with her mission, one way or the other. The peaceful way or the violent way. It was one of the things that drove Ethan batty about her. If he was the personification of perennial inaction, she was act-first-and-think-later lady. They forced each other to confront the fact each and every day that without each other they were running blind. And if they didn’t interpenetrate one another’s thinking better, they were both on a path to perdition.
“Maybe what you’re saying is true,” Monica said. Ethan was flabbergasted by how quickly she’d changed tack. “If so, then why not come with us to Verge? It’s the closest approximation to the Godhead’s checks and balances you insist is so important for directing your kind. At Verge it won’t just be your fellow Convergence Tech Wizards weighing in on what you’re doing, you’ll have the benefits of a SME. Not to mention Anonymous, Sousveillance, and countless other human rights organizations keeping a constant watch over breakthroughs that could negatively impact us all.”
Orion nodded slowly. It looked for a second as if Monica had actually managed to win this argument. He lowered his eyes as if seriously considering the matter. And once again, after some delay, Orion raised his head to her. And once again, he said, “I believe in your own misguided way you are trying to work for the greater good. But your way will take us all down. It’s the way of every totalitarian regime that has ever existed. Always preferring order over chaos. But those of us who are Convergence Tech Wizards live on the edge of order and chaos. We embody both extremes in perfect balance. It’s how we can do what we do. Without that balance we couldn’t create at all.
“We integrate the rational fears of the left brain with the intuitive insights of the right brain to birth into reality only what is vital at that moment, not what is ahead of or behind its time. In so much as one person can balance self-serving with serving the greater good, we are the best arbiters of what to birth into this world when. Not some middle man. Not Verge. And certainly not someone who doesn’t even know her own mind.” Orion’s dig, Ethan realized was directed at Monica. He wasn’t so sure it wasn’t terribly ill-advised, for however profound he sounded to Ethan.
Convergence_ The Time Weavers Page 12
