Ethan felt more intrigued by this alternate reality opening up at the hands of just one CTW than horrified or even put off. Until the SME said, “but that’s just it, Ethan. It’s not an alternate reality. It’s the only reality. Everyone gets sucked into the world this CTW opens with his one invention. Everybody gets one of his VR visors. It spreads like wildfire. Didn’t have to be his idea. Could just as easily have been another pet project of any of the CTWs in this room that took the world by storm. Gives first to market new meaning, doesn’t it?”
Ethan noticed the CTWs fidgeting again, looking more anxious than ever. One guy was now practicing advanced knot theory with his tie. A woman was making origami out of her coffee cup holder.
“Let’s take one of the longshoreman’s ideas, for instance,” the SME said, “and run with it.”
Ethan noticed the guy making sailor’s knots with his tie kept doing bowlines and other trick knots that could be undone with a single yank. And at Locus’s words, he undid his latest creation, as if he wanted to erase the truth of what the SME was saying even before he said it. It was Ethan’s guess, that was the longshoreman.
The dirigible smart-windows storyboarding the last moving picture show went blank briefly, returning the view of Jupiter out the window. “If any of you would like to know who to thank for that last bit of brilliance by the way, that would be Victoria,” the SME said.
All eyes went to the elderly woman making origami with her coffee cup holder. She unfolded the paper hawk she’d made until it lost its shape in a plane of flatness again. “It was just an idea I was toying with,” she said. “Who knows if it ever would have seen the light of day?” From her voice, her excuse sounded as lame to her as it did to everyone else. Her neon shades of spiked blue hair both contrasted and complemented her lemon yellow skin. Ethan wondered briefly, and perhaps pointlessly, if her avatar looked anything like her in real life.
The longshoreman’s storyboard, up next on the window panels, spoke for itself without any narration from the SME. A missile, launched from Earth, landed on an asteroid. The nanite cocktail exploded on impact and started devouring the asteroid, essentially upgrading it to one giant computer brain. The asteroid then exploded sending chunks and debris and dust in all directions. Wherever those fragments drifted—many landed on other planets and asteroids and comets—they converted the substrates they made contact with, essentially infusing them with more intelligence. The particles didn’t so much drift as soar on solar winds, light emissions from stars. All it took was a single photon to push one of them to their new destinations. In short the smallest speck of substance seemed to evince volition and intent.
“As you can see, Ethan,” the SME said, “the idea isn’t too different from The Genesis Effect. Remember the Pancake Man who created it? Only here, there is no desire to emulate the natural world even while smartening it up. This nanococktail propagates silicon based consciousness throughout the cosmos at the expense of the biological realm. If DNA computers modeled on biological life are a better stepping stone to higher consciousness, we’ll never know now. It’s wiped out from the multiverse with the expansion wave of the longshoreman’s device.”
There was silence in the room as everyone glared at the longshoreman, who refused to meet their eyes. His knot tying had only grown more elaborate, and no matter how impossible it was to untangle the knots, all it took was one pull at either end and it became undone in one stroke. It was as if he was contemplating ways to undo his own masterworks and his mind was betraying him with his little gestures. The burn marks at the longshoreman’s wrists and exposed ankles—he wore no socks—suggested being bound and tied was one of his favorite pastimes, and perhaps where he might have learned the ins and outs of knots. His lean muscular physique looked earned the same way—wrestling his way out of being tied up. The angular features of his face looked as if they might be recruited into cutting free of whichever ties bound him at the time.
“You see what CTWs do, ladies and gentlemen,” the SME said. “They create other CTWs. One way or another, that’s all they do.”
“Life will always find a way to the next level,” Ethan said. “It’s starting to look like this is the way. If what you say is true, the drive itself towards greater and greater synthesis of aptitudes and skills and technologies transcends the individual’s mind, which this life force merely uses as a substrate until it can find a better one. One in which it can perform even grander syntheses. Maybe the singularity effect, this intelligence explosion, starts at a societal level with all of us feeding off of one another’s ideas like we’re doing in this room. But eventually it drills down to the individual. It’s consistent with the holographic universe idea, where each of us is reflective of the whole.”
Monica looked at him and snorted gently. Surprised that the moron could come up with these nuggets of wisdom. It was not the first time he’d seen that look on her. As if she occasionally relaxed out of her loathing of more primitive lifeforms in these moments. Maybe she had been using him all along as a way of finding her way towards less contempt for humanity, now that she had embraced transhumanity so wholeheartedly. At the core of her attraction to Ethan, then, was a desire to re-integrate herself with the larger whole of creation. To keep cutting herself off from everything that wasn’t as evolved as she was. He was her salvation. He rather liked the idea, as he had no shortage of insecurities surrounding their relationship.
“Be careful of arriving at the party with pre-conceived notions, Ethan,” the SME said, “and fitting all subsequent evidence to the contrary through your filters so it just reaffirms your own prejudices. I think if you’ll open your mind just a little, you’ll see these are not brighter futures I’m painting for you, but apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios.”
“I don’t believe you,” Ethan said. “I think you’re the one who’s twisting the facts to suit your own theories, the ones around how best to manipulate people that are smarter than you in every way that matters.”
“Every way except morally and ethically, you mean?” the SME said. “Well, I guess you can say, despite the distraction of the visuals, that’s what we’re having, a moral and ethical discussion about the kind of future we want to open ourselves to.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Noah took Synthia by the hand and led her away along the catwalks of the dirigible from the adults and their heady conversation. It all seemed so ponderous, a little too deep and meaningful for his tastes, a little too much like individuals trying to decide the fate of the world when they couldn’t decide their own fates. They came across as children playing in their respective sand boxes. Using their minds as their toys. No thought of anything but play. He felt more adult than they did and he was tired being that way around Jarod. He’d been the responsible one growing up, taking care of everything that the old man neglected for his project play. Mowing the lawn, trimming the brushes, scrubbing out the toilets, making the beds, doing the food shopping, ensuring the old man made his medical and dental appointments, that the refrigerator was stocked, the bills were paid. It was sort of like taking care of an invalid, or the cuckoo person the psych ward let go because they couldn’t afford to house him anymore, and that responsibility had subsequently fallen on Noah. It was time for him to just be a kid again and stop minding adults who insisted on remaining children.
Jarod, for his part, wasn’t taking part in the conversation with the rest of the adults. He was too busy going over the dirigible’s Captain Nemo Nautilus-like, ornate, Victorian-era interiors, taking note for how to convert his own basement when he got home accordingly. Now that they were in cyberspace, sharing mind-space together, it was easy enough to read his mind.
“Where are you taking me?” Synthia asked.
“You’ll see.” He steered her up the stairs, backstage into the guts and innards of the zeppelin. He’d been hearing groaning and creaking sounds and feeling increased shudders. Too much for simple wind to be the explanation. He realized the dirigible itself
was just a cyber-fantasy, but there were rules to these things. He was quite a proficient gamer. And so he knew better. Something was afoot and he intended to figure out what.
Once they’d made it to the top level of the dirigible’s frame, the problem was both clear and ominous. The frame itself was pulling apart. Breaking up into soldiers made of nothing more than polished aluminum. If he looked closely he could see they’d been hiding there, perfectly camouflaged, all along, even before they unfolded themselves. “Stand back. I got this,” he said to Synthia.
Noah formed a sword in his hand just by thinking of it. It grew up like a stalagmite from the floor of his palm. Around the blade shone the laser edging that would do the true cutting. Vibrating and pulsing, he could feel its throbbing all the way up his arm. He sliced through the first of the soldiers coming at him. Making contact with the combatant sent other reverberations coursing through Noah’s body. The tremors he experienced in his body were actually turning him on. He tried to remind himself that most any stimulation at his age tended to get routed to his dick pretty fast.
When the aluminum assassins were too close for him to wield the blade, he kicked them off the gangway plank with one foot. He was getting better at anticipating the recoil reaction of his body, better at tightening up the associated muscles to buffer the shock so the railings to either side of him wouldn’t have to. Hitting one of them was like getting a blade slashed across his back. He didn’t need to be doing the enemy any favors.
Synthia, refusing to hang back, decided to join in the fun. She manifested a couple compression canisters which she wore like scuba tanks on her back, and a rifle-shaped spray nozzle in her hands to go with them. Her sprays gummed up the soldiers coming at her along an intersecting rib of the airship’s frame. They couldn’t keep their balance and toppled over the narrow walkways falling to their deaths, fragmenting and breaking apart as they hit every crisscrossing rib of the airframe on the way down. Evidently the spray gun’s exudate was not just gummy but also corrosive.
The ones hit with her spray that were moving too slowly and thus blocking the others from getting to her were strategically overcome by their partners in crime. The other tin men crawled over them like army ants, coming at her in such number she had no choice but to change the formula of her spray. Melting them.
The slow melt caused the stick soldiers to adhere to one another, until the whole unwieldly tangle of assassins ended up dragging one another down off the narrow metal-grate walkways.
Slowly, Noah got a hold of the situation. He may not have had a mindchip in his head, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t counter-hacking whoever was sending malicious computer code at them the whole time he was fighting. So long as he was part of cyberspace, his mind was directly linked to the computer codes populating it.
The soldiers quietly returned to their hiding places, like puzzle-pieces, fitting themselves back together into the dirigible’s airframe. “I think I’ve got the upper hand for now,” he said.
“What was that?”
“Cyberspace has the equivalent of its own police force. Like the T-cells of the human immune system, they fight off various forms of malware looking to take hold. In this case, looks like your CTWs are being treated as the unwanted invaders.”
“Let me guess, Verge algorithms to keep like-minded rebels from meeting up in cyberspace right under their noses.”
“You got it.” He looked down in the direction of the cabin space where muffled voices could be heard. “I guess that means our SME has a plan B in case all his smooth talking comes to naught.”
She sat on the walkway and let her feet dangle over. He sat down beside her, took her hand, and clasped it in his. Took a deep breath. “You’re better with virtual space and these avatar bodies than I am,” Synthia said. “I guess in the final analysis I was designed to be more of a real-world junkie.”
“My real world consists largely in taking care of my father so he has time to get lost in his inventions. In that world I’m the parent and he’s the kid. But up here…”
“You’re just you.” She looked at him and smiled softly.
He kissed her. He wasn’t sure if the kiss was ever going to end. He wasn’t sure if he wanted it to. But sooner or later he’d have to start breathing again. And he knew it would end things, like bursting a soap bubble. Was love truly this fragile?
His saliva proved to be sticky, like glue. He laughed as he tried to unstick them.
“Nice trick,” she said as they finally pried their lips apart.
“You have a distant look in your eyes.”
Synthia sighed. “That’s because I’m trying to figure out what to do about what they’re talking about down there.”
“Figures adults are all talk and it’s left to us to take some action.”
“I hope I took the right one.”
“Whoa! As in past tense? What did you do?”
“The SME has been outsmarting and outmaneuvering me at every turn. If he doesn’t win over the CTWs to Verge’s side, he isolates them and cuts them off from the group mind, or…”
She looked in the direction of the muffled conversation coming from the cabin below.
“Or…?” Noah said.
“Or he gets them to suicide. I don’t think Ethan and Monica are going to be able to talk them off the cliff. The SME is too good at what he does.”
Chunks of the dirigible started breaking away. As if a toddler was putting away his ten-piece puzzle. The violent jerking actions pressed Noah against Synthia in one wild, uncomfortable position after another, as if he were deliberately trying to run through the Karma Sutra poses, one and all, with her. She smiled mischievously at him, enjoying his hardness as she was enjoying her softness. The tender feelings running in parallel with a rising sense of panic burning its way through both of them. Too bad he wouldn’t have this kind of access to her mind in the real world. Perhaps the matter was moot; they’d yet to survive this situation.
“Those are the CTWs committing suicide as I suspected, aren’t they?” Synthia said.
He nodded slowly, and gulped. “And your workaround?” He gulped. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“I released my nanococktail on the world. Even if just two percent of the global population are CTWs, it’s still too much for the SME to control. It’s too much for any single entity to control.”
Noah took another deep breath. Perhaps his last, considering the ship was breaking apart. “Smart move. Assuming we’re going with he’s wrong and we’re right. What makes you think you can take the moral high ground away from that guy?”
“The fact that I love you. That suggests to me that STWs and CTWs can get along just fine. I’d like to think we’re catalysts for change. But if it’s not a change that interests you, then you come with your own natural immunity.”
He smiled. “I guess I’m lacking the necessary antibodies then.” He leaned in and kissed her again. This time when he finally let go of pressing against her lips, they were drifting in space besides Jarod, Monica, and Ethan. The ship, the SME, and the rest of the group mind were gone.
“Just for the record,” Jarod said, “I don’t think that was a 14-year-old age-appropriate kiss. But hey, what do I know? I’m orbiting Jupiter without a spacesuit. Talking in a medium that doesn’t allow for sound. And crashing into the eye of the biggest cyclone in the solar system. Clearly my judgement’s lacking.”
“No worries,” Noah said. “Synthia has enough sound judgement for all of us. She’s given the rebel resistance the hope it needs.”
The resulting silence could not be blamed on the vacuum of space.
“And that would be?” all of the adults finally said at once.
“She released her nanococktail on the world.”
“How?” Ethan said impotently, realizing the question was almost beside the point.
“I used the spyware Verge invented to seep into everyone’s mind that had a mindchip or a nano net,” Synthia explained. “And I used
it instead to hack the transhumans’ genome, with a little help from their mindchips and their nano nets.”
“I hope you did the right thing, kid.” Ethan said. “But you rescued us one way or the other. Another five seconds with that SME and we’d have committed suicide.”
“Hear, hear,” Jarod said.
Monica just snorted her agreement.
THIRTY-NINE
Locus screamed so hard he shattered the windows of Verge’s penthouse suite. The bullet-proof, shatter-resistant metal-glass windows that could have easily survived a post-911 impact with a jumbo jet.
He trudged over to the floor-to-ceiling window frames with the last bits of energy of a man staggering in the desert towards a mirage, only to collapse face down in the sand he thought was water. He looked out at the numberless skyscraper apartments and citizens of the overgrown Chicago metropolis. The child-god Synthia was right; there was no way he could keep a lid on fourteen million CTWs raising their creative heads out of the sand like last minute popcorn kernels in a microwave seconds before readiness. If he could be permitted the mixed metaphor, considering his mind numbing grief.
He’d been given one mission and he’d failed at it.
There was only one thing left to do.
He went over to the sword on the desk he’d reserved earlier for Johnson and Axelman, his two failed protégés, before deciding last minute to smash their skulls together. Maybe he didn’t want to sully the blade on such an unholy mission. But there was no shame in ritual suicide with a blade to the abdomen.
Convergence_ The Time Weavers Page 23
