by PJ Manney
Major Tom hoped his enemies were as stupid, but he doubted it.
He concentrated on building a pattern-recognition module like Totrov’s, depending on an immutable law of the universe: the low level of human initiative. Based on what he knew so far, the most likely candidates were China and the former United States (f-US).
First, he built simulation maps of both China and the f-US, such as it was, split ideologically and politically between those who wanted nothing to do with the Phoenix Club and demanded to reorganize for themselves and those who wished it was back to running the world.
Certain parts of the country hardly needed an excuse to go it alone. Hawaii’s independence movement threw its watery lot in with the seasteaders and ineffectively prayed that China would assume it was too far away for effective occupation, even as the building of Chinese military islands continued. Desperate to repeat its imaginary-independence-for-protection schtick, Alaska played slow and tight with Russia and Canada, hoping for Arctic access and a promise to continue subsidizing its fossil fuels from whatever country would claim it, even though Alaskan salmon—“wild” DNA and nutrients, free from contaminants—was more valuable a commodity. And there weren’t many wild salmon left.
Independent regions like the Northeast, Upper Midwest, the West, and the Pacific Coast fractured into states or smaller municipalities. The Northern and Western states began to organize for themselves and forge mutually supportive relationships.
Desiring a strong leader to unite them in a fight back to global domination, the deep South, Texas, Appalachia, the Lower Midwest, and what remained of the center of federal power in Washington, DC, gathered as one sovereign state: the Southern States of America or SSA, or as Major Tom thought of it, the NeoConfederacy. Its leader, Terrence Conrad of Virginia, called himself president of the Southern States of America, lived in the White House, and was treated as such only by those under his firm grip. The rest of the world tried to ignore him.
Conrad was a tall, flawless-looking, narcissistic psychopath on the make, with a needling personality that the weak-willed interpreted as purposeful, a strong, nasally voice sure to cut through a raucous crowd, an aggressive persona demonstrated by a wide stance, and a place in the Southern hierarchy that made him as much of an aristocrat as Carter Potsdam. He had it all: sexy wife, good-looking kids, a plantation corporation that made him buckets of money. His hatred of anyone unlike himself made him a hero to those who wished they were him. His idea of a transportation policy was promising the trains would run on time. And the political kleptocracy around him was no better.
What about Conrad might embolden Carter or the remnants of the club?
China, on the other hand, had suffered from an economic crash after fragmentation and recession dried up its global markets. Top-down governance, tactical use of fear, and a talent for empire building had brought its people back into line after decades of pseudo capitalism. It was a dominant culture ready to take over, and the world knew it.
Then Major Tom mapped the migrations of peoples. In the American past, people had moved to where they felt they had found either others like themselves—culturally or ethnically—or simply where the work had taken them. The Chinese were no different, except that they needed permission to migrate, based on government quotas and plans. So he looked for the patterns and put them in chronological spreadsheets and geographic maps. While he had hidden in his figurative deep sleep, countries had hemorrhaged for and against a new world order. Looking at all this together for the first time revealed surprising results.
China was spreading around the world. America was shuffling people around the continent at a rate as vigorous as the migrations of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. No one stayed put, and that meant unstable systems. And with instability came war.
The Phoenix Club was somehow behind an effort to create or profit from a war. And Major Tom knew which side of the war Carter would take.
Only a few seconds had passed while Major Tom had done his analyses.
“Well, the Southern States of America has big problems . . . ,” he said.
“No shit,” said Veronika. “Has for, like, four hundred years. Started with the first settlers.”
“I mean they lack the means for self-sufficient production,” he clarified. “People are trying to leave at an alarming rate. And China lacks markets . . . ”
“We all know this,” said Veronika.
“But do you realize most of the surviving and nonincarcerated Phoenix Club members are either in the Southern States or in China, right this moment?” pressed Tom.
Veronika grew antsy, plucking errant eyebrow hairs.
“So what’s that tell you?” asked Talia.
“If they’re working together—” said Tom.
Veronika lurched up. “I hate this room. I can’t breathe. I need my stuff. Like from my car.”
“Can’t until Talia says we break,” said Tom. “The door’s locked.”
Veronika gestured with her hands, executing a computer command. Tom saw it coming but didn’t stop it. The door unlocked and popped open.
“Did you think I couldn’t figure that out?” asked Veronika.
“Don’t be a child,” said Tom. “Talia can send someone to get what you need.”
“You’re not my dad. I’m fine.” She loped out the room and slammed the door.
Talia shook her head. “How can we work with her?”
“We have no choice. All I can find so far are trends. She knows more than she’s telling us.”
“I know.” Talia ground her teeth. “I just wish she’d say it and get it over with.”
“I’m asking security to stop her from leaving the building,” said Tom.
“Fine.” Spent, Talia paused for a few seconds. “We’ll be hunted again.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tom. “It was nice while it lasted.”
“I need to tell Steve. He’ll be so angry.”
“I’m sending him a message now to come down. Maybe it’s better if I’m not around when you tell him.” Tom threw the security footage onto the monitor. The message had arrived too late. Veronika exited a different set of doors than he’d anticipated, and a moment later, security guards ran for her in the lot.
A shrieking sound, something flying low and fast . . .
BOOM!
The building convulsed. Major Tom commandeered all the security cameras at once. A corner of the Prometheus facade exploded, exposing offices and labs as the smoke cleared, like a jagged doll’s house, bodies on the floors, two others thrown from the explosion to the pavement outside. A blaze ignited. Fire sprinklers kicked on, showering the dead and the living.
“Steve!” screamed Talia, as she ran from the room, clutching her GO.
Major Tom found Steve Carbone’s GO in a room inside the research facility and confirmed the biosignature. The internal security camera wasn’t working. Steve’s signal was stationary, then moved. He might have been injured, or administering to others. Tom sent a message to Steve’s GO: If you can, join Talia.
Steve audio messaged back, “Hands full here. Send more first aid supplies.”
“No time for triage,” said Tom. “Get as many as can be evacuated out with the able-bodied, and then join Talia. There will be another sortie.”
“How do you—”
“Trust me. Just do it.”
Veronika’s car was already gone. He set a program to search for a robo-Fiat 500. So far, none had been found on the streets surrounding Prometheus.
Then the Prometheus security cameras went dead. All of them.
Major Tom switched his vision to a satellite feed, looking for the plane or rocket launcher that had delivered the payload, trying to anticipate the next move.
And then he saw it.
A phalanx of twenty-six unmarked cars and transport trucks rumbled down Sand Hill Road, heading directly for Prometheus. They couldn’t have been more ostentatious if they had tried. A truck-carried rocket launcher
led the pack, followed by crowd-dispersal laser-heat units. Worse, the sky filled with drones. Large ones with weapons. Small ones with cameras.
GO-clad Sand Hill Road workers and Stanford students recorded the march on the Valley.
Major Tom could only assume that this unknown army wanted staff out of Prometheus and rounded up as quickly as possible so that they could get what they had come for and destroy the rest.
He sent a message as “Prometheus Security” to all employees: Evacuate immediately—scatter to the west and south. Avoid the driveways and parking lots. Head into Stanford and hide below ground if you can. Do NOT stay in groups. Avoid the drones.
And an additional message to Talia’s and Steve’s GOs: Out through the basement into the tunnels and head west! NOW!
“Which way is west?” Talia screamed into her GO.
Steve messaged, Use the GO compass!
From Major Tom’s satellite view, the ants were agitated and moving fast. Thousands of Stanford students, staff, and faculty tried to figure out what had exploded, and where. Sand Hill Road office buildings emptied. Prometheus employees followed orders en masse: jumping fences, hiding, pretending to be with nearby facilities, getting away. There were 1,257 employees and only two hundred drones. Mingling with the Stanford population or running into open buildings might save their lives.
Major Tom had never wanted his body back so much.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The audio message said the sender was “Rick Blaine” and included a live AV link. It originated in New Orleans, one of three Southern Exodus ports, along with Miami and Fort Lauderdale/Port Everglades. That voice had the peculiar verbal twang of Louisiana Creole.
“Veronika told me to contact you urgent if kaka e paye.”
Translation: if the shit hit the fan.
A quick search revealed that the most famous Rick Blaine was the protagonist in the classic movie Casablanca. That made sense. These cities might have been in the American South, but they were certainly not of the South. New Orleans, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale had become the Casablancas of North America, a byway for refugees who had the wherewithal to flee an increasingly authoritarian regime for the more democratic shores of Northern or Western states, another country, or a seastead. Those fleeing a collection of threats—racial, ethnic, or religious violence; the for-profit prison-industrial complex; or wage slavery—attempted to raise the necessary funds and prepare whatever paperwork was needed. In a world filled with legal, quasi-legal, and illegal demands on governments, bureaucratic mendacity only increased when life and livelihood were on the line.
The GO link went live. A pumping nightclub inside an old industrial warehouse. A twenty-foot, neon-trimmed robot danced to the tightly laced, deep-groove electro-funk of Jonny Sonic’s “Seminal.” Sweat-slicked bodies, a literal and figurative melting pot, writhed in sync on the dance floor. Both music and lyrics enticed them to get aroused through the irresistible beat and find a suitable sex partner. An array of sexbots for hire lined the walls for those who struck out with humans and still needed to scratch an itch. Some looked almost human, others like giant dolls with unsettlingly close-set eyes, symmetrical features, and Barbie-and-Ken physiques. All were ready to provide erotic fun for the price of a GO swipe through the biometric reader between their robo–shoulder blades, in any currency. Permutations of heights, weights, ages, genders, and ethnicities added to the carnivalesque, something-for-everybody vibe. A handful of prospective clients were grinding against them, getting their android on.
Major Tom watched the GO-cam move from the line of sexbots into an empty sex booth, one among many that hung above the fray off a catwalk. A cappuccino-skinned hand closed a door. Occasional bumps, grinds, and climactic sounds seeped through the walls. The camera turned 180 degrees to face a square head with the same cappuccino-colored skin. Short-cropped black hair, black mustache and goatee. Pale olive eyes with an intense squint.
“Is Veronika okay?” asked Tom.
“Sent me a message a day ago to contact you when I had problems. And I do,” said Rick.
“Where is she?”
Rick shook his head. “Don’t know.”
“Who are you?” asked Tom.
“Identity and currency trader. I work with Foxy. All my accounts are frozen. The Shell is dropping. I can’t reach her.” Dr. Who traded through Foxy, too. Maybe that’s how Veronika knew Dr. Who.
“How do you know Veronika?” asked Tom.
“Occasional hack,” said Rick. “Realistic designs for forged papers. She knows what’s goin’ on. But isn’t sharin’. Do ya know?”
“Not much, and I’m a little busy right now,” said Tom. “What happens if Foxy’s network crashes?”
“Hey, I make franc from folks payin’ for fun, but if I can’t move ’em with new identities, there’s gonna be a million refugees stuck between here and Miami with nothin’. No life. No future. Not enough smugglers in the world to move this bunch. And there’s rumors Southern military be linin’ up at the Exodus Zone borders. Need these folks out now.”
“Why?”
“SSA wants poor folks back. Abandoning their country? Tre térib for the bosses. The South was never about machines. Cheap, desperate humans with no security net do the work as cheap as robots, so aristos and bureaus sell ’em God and suck ’em dry.” Rick gestured behind him at the dancers. “History, man. Automation my ass. These are still cogs and wheels. And ya know they’ll scoop the rest of us up in the nets, ’cause they can. Vit komm un néklè.”
As quick as a whip. It was amazing how some phrases still resonated. These emigrants needed new identities and lives as much as anyone.
“Rick,” said Tom, “I’ll do everything I can to help you get those people out, but I need a favor, too. Right now. I need a sexbot.”
While speaking to Rick, Major Tom dove into the vast files of Prometheus Industries: research and development for the Hippo and Cortex 3.0, memos, correspondence, marketing, sales, personnel records. He wanted copies of all of it.
A vindicated paranoid, he also demanded ridiculous levels of redundancy, especially in the aftermath of the destruction of the Phoenix Club. His off-site storage records at Prometheus indicated that eight facilities still held the company’s data. At each of them, he observed both satellite imagery and digital traffic. All were under either physical or digital attack.
Except one.
When the redundant systems were developed, he moved one to his own server farm. No one but he knew where it was located. Not even Ruth. It was never recorded as a backup. And the route that delivered the data was circuitous and designed to appear as if it had originated in another location. He checked for that system’s files.
They were still there. He copied them to yet another location, in case something happened to him. Somewhere no government or corporation would care about invading, on the other side of the world: the largest data center in New Zealand, on the North Island, near Whangarei, the most geologically sound area in the country. No one disliked Kiwis. Hell, a bunch of wealthy or connected Americans had moved to New Zealand already to run away from the disintegration of the United States. He hoped the information would be safe there.
He followed Talia’s progress into the depths of the building. Most people never knew how deep underground a highly technical building such as Prometheus could go. It had to handle a great deal of power, waste, and communications infrastructure, as well as storage and replacement parts. If they needed a helium-neon laser for a state-of-the-art Raman microspectrometer, they couldn’t order it for next-day delivery.
“Where am I?” Talia yelled into her GO.
“Under the power plant,” said Tom. “Straight for another twenty feet. Then turn right into the next tunnel.”
There was the sound of her breathing. Then the sound of flowing water.
“A flood!” she yelled over the sounds.
“Hold your camera up!” She moved it to show water pipes had ruptured. “Can you get throug
h it?” he asked.
“I don’t know!”
“Try. And keep your camera up!”
“Shit!” she screamed, sloshing through the water. Her cursor stopped moving on Major Tom’s schematic of the building.
“You okay?”
The few seconds it took her to answer felt like several little eternities.
“Yeah . . . yeah, I think so,” she said. Steve’s GO-map cursor went dead on Talia’s GO. “Steve! Is he okay?” In her panic, she stopped moving.
“Yes, he can hear me. Keep going. The GO’s probably got water in it. He’s moving.”
On his satellite, Tom could see another sortie approach. “Talia, turn left. Steve, hold on!”
“But it’s too short to stand in!” screamed Talia.
“I know. Trust me.”
BOOM!
The structure shook violently. Talia’s camera showed that her section of the building held, but Tom didn’t know for how much longer.
“Steve?” she yelled.
Steve was still moving. “He’s okay!” said Tom. “Turn into the next service duct!”
