Of course, it was Hilgor’s own decision to refuse implanting any hardware upon arrival to Earth. Instead, he wore the assistant chip on his wristband, and his residence and his flyer had to be rigged with custom devices, but he preferred to deal with the corresponding inconveniences.
He walked to the corner, which remained in the shade regardless of the building’s orientation, and sat down in a shabby-looking armchair, blatantly contrasting with the sleekness of the overall room design, and refocused on the conjecture he had been trying to prove.
“Hilgor,” said the chip through the surrounding audio speakers, “you have an emergency call from Orbit. Nick is online. Would you like to accept?”
The man abruptly got up, and his expression quickly went through the degrees of surprise and hesitation.
“Fine,” he said finally, “two-way audio.”
He didn’t have implanted optical displays, and he didn’t feel like searching the apartment for his goggles, which made up for this disability. But most importantly, it was easier to control his voice than his facial expressions. He wanted to hide his bitterness.
A soft chime signaled the beginning of the open connection, and then a familiar voice came from the room speakers.
“Good evening, Hilgor. How’s life?” Nick sounded perfectly casual, as if they had parted just yesterday. “Listen, sorry for disappearing – I have been extremely busy recently. I had to leave Earth for a while.”
“Busy?” asked Hilgor. “What do you mean – busy? How is …”
“I’ll tell you everything,” said Nick quickly. “But can we talk face to face? It’s important.”
Hilgor had to admit that he was rather keen to finally find out how Nick’s extraordinary story ended. His pride briefly fought with his curiosity, and then he replied in a similarly casual tone.
“Sounds good, Nick. I will send you the meeting location. When do you want to meet?”
“The sooner the better,” said Nick, and Hilgor picked up on a note of relief in his voice. “I just need to go through a couple of things on Orbit before I can land, but it shouldn’t take long.”
“How about if I go now, and you join me when you can?” asked Hilgor. He knew that his work session had ended anyway – it would have taken much less than Nick’s sudden reappearance to forget about mathematics.
“See you soon, Hilgor. And thank you.”
The chime announced the end of the connection, and Hilgor approached the sleeping dog.
“Wake up, Riph, and let’s go. We’re meeting Nick tonight,” he said and headed to the door.
Hilgor decided to go to their meeting place on foot. It would take Nick some time to get to the city even if he landed right away, so there was no rush. In general, Hilgor preferred walking over taking a flyer unless he was in a hurry, and not just for Riph’s sake. After three months, Berlin still seemed infinite, still had the attraction of an unsolved mystery. Hilgor almost regretted that the feeling of warm familiarity would soon replace the burning curiosity of the initial encounter.
A sudden wave passed through the pedestrian flow, and he quickly scanned the surroundings. Someone had upset the strange rhythm created by the precision with which people walked past each other in order to avoid close proximity, an old habit formed during the epidemic times. Hilgor, who was now used to such glitches, immediately identified the culprit. A woman had looked in his direction for too long and, distracted, stepped into someone’s buffer zone. This happened around Hilgor all the time in spite of the fact that his tall, lean figure and chiseled face with very bright blue eyes didn’t stand out at the slightest. It was Riph’s fault. Nick had explained that there were almost no dogs on Earth because people had simply lost interest in keeping them as companions. The woman turned away, and the smoothness of the crowd’s movement was restored.
Hilgor kept walking on one of the highest street levels. Nothing here resembled his planet, but the pathways that crossed at seemingly impossible angles above and below had already been developing a pattern in his brain. He wasn’t focused on geometrical puzzles at the moment, however. He was thinking about Nick. There were very few people in his life that he could mentally refer to as friends, and this was a word he had started applying to Nick in his thoughts.
Of course, in the very beginning of their relationship Hilgor had been suspicious, if not paranoid, about Nick’s motives. But that was understandable, given the circumstances of their acquaintance. One day Nick simply showed up in Hilgor’s life and introduced himself as a secret agent from Earth. Nick patiently waited until Hilgor went through all of the proper stages of mental shock before filling him in on the details.
According to Nick, Hilgor had something that Earth lost and desperately needed back. Hilgor didn’t quite get what it was from Nick’s explanation, except that it possibly had something to do with his ability to do mathematics. He clearly understood, however, that at some point it was considered so undesirable on Earth that it had been almost bred out, and Earth did just fine without it for several generations. But recently, said Nick, they got some bad news. Military intelligence issued a warning that some cutoff Mirror Worlds would reach a technological level and would be able to cross Mirror borders within a century. Almost all of them were aggressive, and their sentiments towards Earth didn’t leave much hope for peaceful encounters.
At that moment, it was still possible to preventively invade the developing civilizations and throw them back technologically as had been done once before. But generations of people grew up ashamed of their ancestors for doing precisely that. It was beyond impossible to repeat such an inhumane deed again. The only ethically acceptable solution was to build a solid defense system, and Earth invested its best resources into a space shield design. Groups of highly intelligent engineers and scientists came up with excellent ideas, but in spite of all of their efforts, the program development got stuck in the initial stages. After several decades, Earth realized that it had a serious problem. The Mirror Worlds were catching up. Time was running out. Concerned voices started asking what was wrong.
The answer was both unfortunate and obvious. Their failure to launch a suitable defense system was just one example of overall progress stagnation. People did notice that their civilization hadn’t significantly progressed in any fields for a while now, but life had been so comfortable that they hadn’t considered it too worrisome.
This time, they were finally forced to figure out the reason why this was happening. The computational power available for pattern recognition was almost unlimited now, so it didn’t take long to find the cause: the rate of human advancement was reversely correlated with the elimination of the Dark Triad from the population.
Earth had to look into something it didn’t like to remember, and the longer people investigated the history of the matter, the more they understood why the defense program was failing.
Dark Triad people were known for their selfish and asocial attitudes, but these same traits, viewed from a different perspective, turned out to be little more than an evolutionary mistake. In fact, it was rooted in a neutral quality of mental unrest, which, in turn, translated into a fierce lust for anarchy and a burning desire to change the status quo. They fought boredom by their inherited desire to explore new territories and the imagination to develop new things. They weren’t afraid of anything when they were engaged in an obsessive hunt for fresh experiences and extreme emotions. They broke boundaries and took high risks for things that most other people didn’t care about in the first place.
In other words, they had the madness to see something that didn’t exist and the obsession to chase it at all costs. But was this really a mental illness, as it was initially defined, or was it something else? Could it be a kind of violent creativity? Creative drive? Nobody knew, but without it Earth was losing the survival race.
The solution came to everyone at the same time. The trait was still ava
ilable on the closed Mirror Worlds, and Dark Triad personalities could be imported to the Commonwealth to rebuild an environment where mundane reality could be disrupted again. It was understood that they wouldn’t care about the moral side of such disruptions, but Earth didn’t have a choice and had to take the risk of inviting evil back.
Psychologists dusted off the old Dark Triad test. Now someone had to go to the cutoff civilizations, quietly and covertly search for people who had a high enough score and convince them to move to Earth. A new profession was born – Headhunters.
Nick was a headhunter. He brought Hilgor here because Hilgor passed the test.
Hilgor didn’t know how he felt about it, not even after he had spent several months on Earth and finally understood all of the layers of the issue. Of course, there was nothing to complain about in practical terms. Everything was just as Nick promised. Hilgor received ridiculously high amounts of money from the government, and he could work on whatever he wanted.
At some point, he was asked if he would be interested in the space shield program, but there was absolutely no pressure. It was a decent challenge, and he still had plenty of time to do his own research, so he joined the project group with sincere enthusiasm.
Everything had been good on the surface, but Hilgor still didn’t feel completely at ease. It was hard to blame him really. There was something unhealthy about the fascination with which Earth’s population viewed Dark Triad outliers.
Dark Triad. Dark Fire. Friendly Fire. He watched the super-alert eyes of local people during their interactions with him and imagined a similar wordplay in their minds.
Hilgor turned into a small alley, and Riph confidently headed toward a familiar door in a white porcelain wall. The dog stopped to sniff at some protruding object in front of the building, and then, satisfied, lifted his leg. Hilgor looked in a different direction, pretending not to notice. This object was probably a work of art just like everything else on Earth. It was another thing that Nick had told Hilgor during the flight. You see, he said, they collected a lot of art over the centuries, and they disdained wasting precious space with generic patterns. Hilgor remembered noticing this sudden “they” during that conversation.
The plaque at the entrance announced that it was an architect’s rendering of a place without a character. The installation represented a small fast-food place with an automatic food dispenser from some period several centuries ago. The artist was talented enough to achieve the desired effect. The place felt perfectly and refreshingly ordinary.
Hilgor dropped his jacket on the hard white bench and threw the leash on a plastic tabletop that flashed with ancient headline news and bright advertisement clips. Riph immediately stretched out on the floor, obliviously blocking the aisle. There was nobody to inconvenience. The place was empty.
Hilgor had to step over the dog to get to the vending machine in the back corner. Unfortunately, coffee wasn’t on the list of options, so he toggled the stimulant level of some synthetic drink from the past to the highest setting and watched a tall glass fill with cold amber liquid. The running text on the display cheerfully wished him good morning in several modern and archaic languages.
He agreed with the vending machine that he wouldn’t be going to bed soon. It wasn’t even clear when exactly Nick would arrive.
“Riph, we will try to help Nick,” he said to the dog. “We both like him a lot, don’t we?” Riph responded with a slight movement of his tail recognizing the name even from the depth of his sleep.
Approximately Six Months Earlier
That morning, as so many mornings before that, started with the sensation of a gentle breeze on my cheek. I waited for a moment and opened my eyes to the familiar sight of a vast unobstructed seascape. It was early; the ocean was still dark in the low angle of the morning sun, and the wide strip of beach had a deep yellow color. I got up and put on a linen robe that hung on a chair next to the bed.
“Good morning, Nick,” said Kir.
Folding the external walls of the room was the only form of wake-up call that I allowed Kir to use during my vacations. I had the luxury to drift from my dreams slowly, hovering over the images before they melted away. There were no urgent decisions to make, no place to rush to.
I stepped out of the room and sat on the porch, my bare feet touching the cool sand, and stared at the boundary between the dark sea and the pale cloudless sky, well defined at this hour.
In several minutes, I heard a familiar flutter of wings, and a seagull landed on the ground nearby. It had unblinking yellow eyes with a small black dot of a pupil, long orange beak and a distinct dark mark along its light gray back. It tilted its head and looked at me.
“Morning,” I said, “how was your fishing?”
It came almost every day now in what seemed to be a gesture of genuine greeting. There was no obvious material gain since I never bribed it with food.
For a while we sat silently and looked at the line of the horizon. Then the bird flapped its wings and took off in the direction of the ocean.
I got up, walked to the edge of the water and stretched. The curved beach was completely empty except for the pile of large white cubes that formed my house.
In fact, there wasn’t another living soul anywhere near my rented artificial island in the middle of the Pacific.
Sometimes I wondered if it was a sign of getting old that I preferred this solitude to the maddening energy and psychedelic beauty of big cities. I immediately felt embarrassed, though. Thirty-two was a far cry from advanced age no matter how you looked at it.
I dropped my robe on the dry sand and stepped into the calm water, so transparent that I could see schools of tiny fish scurrying close to the bottom. I carefully walked around the cluster of small corals and decisively plunged in. As usual, the water felt bitterly cold and dense at first, resisting my rapid movements and instantly driving away the remains of my morning dullness, but after several energetic strokes, it became much friendlier. I slowed down and switched to a steady pace in a straight line away from the beach. All Kir’s feeds were still turned off, and pristine snapshots of the bright blue sky and the pale green water underneath replaced each other in measured beats.
For a while I didn’t think about anything, enjoying the freedom of the ocean.
Finally, I asked Kir for the morning update. A bunch of irregular blobs popped up in the backdrop of my vision. I focused my eyes on a large red bubble in the forefront, making it expand, then slowing it down in mid-stroke. The combination of stock market fluctuation and my recent expenses sent my account to less than 20,000 credits. By itself, it wasn’t a reason to worry – I could easily afford my current lifestyle for a couple more months. But I had made an agreement with myself that reaching this number served as a signal to start a new contract. After another couple of strokes forward, I abruptly changed my direction towards the beach.
The vacation was over.
When I stepped back on the shore the sun was significantly higher and the line of the horizon blurrier. I quickly showered and donned a light summer outfit.
Behind the folded wall, the ocean was gleaming in the sensual heat of late morning, but I hardly looked at it, feeling the familiar chill of excitement down my spine. The game was on.
I ignored the basket of fresh produce delivered in the middle of the night, picked a random precooked meal from the pantry and chewed as I ran up the steps to my study. I sat on the lonely armchair in the middle of the windowless room, leaned back and snapped my fingers to activate the hand controls. Kir projected the home screen onto my retina, and I navigated to the familiar interface of the contract assignment program.
As always, I sorted the list of Mirror Worlds by environmental danger coefficients. It was directly linked to headhunter compensation: the total bounty amount was calculated based on the Dark Triad score of a delivered target and the difficulty level assigned to their home
planet.
I checked out the top place first and paused in surprise. I had never seen anything like this. Not a single headhunter had ever been registered in that sector, although its award coefficient was more than ten times higher than average. It was totally baffling that I never ran into it before. I whistled and asked for detailed information.
Facts about Sector M-237 began filling the space around me.
People of Beta Blue, as they called their planet, didn’t know much beyond the fact that at some point in the past, they were a part of some technologically advanced civilization with the label “Earth” attached to it. However, the local regime worked this potential to the maximum. Media, controlled by the government, warned that the Commonwealth was planning to launch an attack to reclaim the planet. News was filled with ominous reports about secret Earth agents infiltrating research and defense facilities. The imaginary spies were elusive and impossible to catch due to their superior technology, but alleged traces of their malicious activities were exposed daily. Admittedly, being an actual earthman in this situation would have its difficulties.
By the early afternoon, I felt that I couldn’t absorb a single additional fact, but it didn’t matter. I found out everything that could affect my decision.
Surely, there was a risk. Headhunters were on their own – it was a part of our contract. Nobody would come to help me if my cover was blown. On the other hand, the chances of this happening were minimal considering the means at my disposal. This planet was in a period of wild technology expansion with no coherent laws yet in place and a very inquisitive government to boot. I figured that Kir would be able to hack into Beta Blue’s vast digital net and manipulate local computer systems, making me both omnipresent and invisible – a virtual ghost with rather unlimited power. In addition, I was positive that it would be easy to convince a discovered target to defect. Dark Triad outliers didn’t do well in totalitarian worlds thanks to their inherent hatred for any kind of rules, totalitarian regimes being the most annoying.
Fire of the Dark Triad Page 3
