The Beam: Season Three

by Sean Platt

  “What do you need?” Leo asked.

  “Your guy is here.”

  “What guy?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “He wouldn’t tell you his name?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me who he was,” Gregory said, as if that encapsulated everything.

  “I don’t need any surprises. Tell him to get the fuck out of here unless he wants to come clean like the rest of us.”

  “I don’t think it’s like that.”

  Leo paused. Then he said, “I was Leonidas, but you were Centurion. Does it feel strange to be called Gregory now?”

  “Yeah, some.”

  “No Gaia names up here. This new man? He picks a name, or he goes back to the city. Things are different now.”

  “I don’t think it’s just picking a name that’s getting him,” said Gregory.

  Leo looked him over. Gregory was almost a foot taller than Leo and twice as wide. He’d been a demolition specialist. The man had been absolutely fearless and obedient to the death. Leo had once commanded Gregory — then Centurion — to run into a factory with a string of plasma grenades around his waist. If he couldn’t lob them into the machines, his instructions were to yank a single string fastened to the pins — all of which had been ground smooth for easy egress from the explosive bulbs. He would have done it without hesitation: one man dead, one cause advanced.

  It was strange to see him tamed now, with his realistic eye instead of his old chrome one. This was a different leap of faith Leo was asking him to take — and for fighters like Gregory, the leap to pacifist living was a harder one than anything involving death.

  And that didn’t even consider the larger leap Leo was asking his people to make. All of them going dry, all of them hurting.

  “Then what is it?” Leo asked.

  “He said to tell you he’s brought salvation. He’s in the meeting hall, waiting.”

  Leo sighed. Was that today? He’d totally forgotten. The errand was good, but in a way it was also terrible. The visitor sounded like he was bringing religion, and for now, that’s what Leo allowed the others to believe: that Leo had found God. In truth, he’d found something else. It was strange how conflicted Leo felt about it all. Seen one way, Leo was saving his people. Seen another, he was leading them to doom.

  “Okay. Thanks, Gregory.”

  Gregory turned. Leo took one last sighing glance across the unincorporated mountain valley. Before the Fall, most of this had probably been owned by someone. Then in the reincorporation and districting, it had gone back to Mother Nature, owned by nobody. To make his group’s claim on the land official, Leo had dragged a large sum from the coffers that NAU Protective Services had allowed the remains of Gaia’s Hammer to keep unfrozen. He’d started this group when it had seemed the old ways were returning even after nature had asserted herself on the planet, and now he himself was doing the same. Buying land. Machinery might come next, followed by mass production. Then polluting. Then raping and exploiting the earth. Humanity seemed incapable of coexisting with the world for long, like a parasite on the planet.

  “Gregory,” Leo said, turning halfway.

  Gregory looked back.

  “I’d like you to get your arm covered.”

  Gregory looked down at the shining silver thing jutting from his elbow. It, too, had been state of the art when installed. Today, up here among the rug braiding and Kumbaya, it looked sad. At least Leo had begun with flesh over his own Warrior’s Fist. Gregory had enjoyed the intimidation factor of leaving the metal raw, same as the false eye.

  Gregory made a metallic fist.

  “Take your time,” Leo said.

  “I don’t mind doing it,” Gregory said. “I mean, it doesn’t bum me out. Like the eye. It’s just finding the time.”

  “NPS is sending up a team of surgeons. They’ll bring fabricators. Honestly, I hear it’s not much different than having something wrapped with a bandage.”

  “Oh.”

  “You object to NPS coming up here,” Leo said.

  “I just keep thinking we’re done with them.”

  “They’re not butting in. They’re just trying to help.”

  To Gregory’s credit, he managed not to laugh. But Leo read his skepticism just the same.

  “If a bunch of Gaia start showing up in DZ to get themselves stripped and covered, people might start asking questions,” Leo explained.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Gregory seemed to be waiting for dismissal. He turned when Leo didn’t dismiss him. Then Leo repeated his name, causing him to turn again. But this time, Leo kept his gaze outward, seeing the turn only in the corner of his eye. He only wanted to see the valley. Maybe that would help him focus on why they were here and help him believe that this was right. That all of it was right, no matter how conflicted it made Leo feel.

  “Yeah, Leonidas?”

  “Do you like it here?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you miss the old life?”

  Gregory didn’t say anything. Leo assumed he’d shrugged out of sight.

  “I don’t mean just our purpose as Gaia. Gaia’s time is past. This here — ” he turned and patted the air, indicating the new mountain village, “ — is right for us now. The days of blade and fist are over. The deal we made with NPS — no matter how I feel about it — will keep that mission going forward. Our best purpose now is to lead by example. Up here. Doing what’s hard, to show that it’s possible.”

  “Sure, boss.”

  “I meant, do you miss the city?”

  By which Leo really meant: Do you miss the technology? Do you miss Crossbrace? But even if the former members of Gaia’s Hammer (now Organa, weak as that sounded) would admit to missing the network they’d embraced as a means to battle against it, Leo wouldn’t need an admission to get his answer. He knew they missed it because they couldn’t not miss it. It wasn’t about willpower. It was biology, and nobody was immune without help.

  “Maybe some. But this is what’s best.”

  Leo considered Gregory for a moment before giving the big man a nod to dismiss him. It was strange to think that he pitied someone so mighty, but he did. The others all trusted Leo so blindly. Once their leader, always their leader. Where Leonidas led, Gaia would follow.

  The thought hurt Leo’s heart, especially considering what the visitor waiting in the meeting hall had brought with him. And to think: Leo had once thought that particular piece of organic, blood-pumping humanity within him was strong.

  Leo began walking the trail back to the heart of the village, moving slowly to make sure he didn’t catch up with Gregory. The man wouldn’t be taking his time; they’d all caused enough damage to the NAU infrastructure over the past years for religion to feel like a hypocritical luxury. In another situation, Leo supposed the soldiers would think him weak, but they couldn’t; they respected him too much. So they avoided the issue.

  Leonidas had found God. Good for him.

  They would settle in time. People had a remarkable capacity to forget, and they were in this mountain community for the long haul exactly the same as they’d been warrior vigilantes for the long haul. All for one, and one for all — lives pledged forever and all that. Despite the violence, they’d joined the Gaia cause as idealists, and this was another kind of idealism. They believed in nature, the Earth’s spirit, and leaving a minimal footprint behind after they died. They had everything needed to be hippies except the aesthetic. In five years, with the help of fabricating nanosurgeons, they’d have that, too.

  And Leo? He wasn’t done with all of this. He wouldn’t go so quietly. He’d covered every one of his visible enhancements and had his nanos flashed, so he’d start aging soon — and would look the part like the others. He could grow his hair long. Maybe he could get a pair of those little glasses, just for effect. Wear tie-dye shirts. Colorful headbands.

  And then, duly disguised, he could get back his presence in the city. Once this first troubling period had passed, NPS
would leave them alone. Leo could return to DZ to regain a foothold and keep his all-too-organic ear to the ground. Get a quiet job for his days then come up here on the weekends. Maybe he could be a teacher. Help influence the minds of new potential rebels from the start, before the world twisted them into what most of humanity had become.

  Walking the ridge trail, the air was still and pleasant. Leo tried to distance himself from his twitching urges and see the vista for its obvious beauty. The silence inside him was strange, but he was getting used to it. Over the past few months, he’d found that whenever he was alone, he was literally alone. No voices pinged into his head from the collective or the social forums. He had to grab a handheld or find a console to check his mail. He didn’t get a news feed. There were no noises telling Leo’s internal connection points what he should be paying attention to.

  These days, Leo’s own mind was in charge of deciding where to look. These days, the only voices whispering in Leo’s cortex were his own: one of reason, one of worry, one of conscience.

  He couldn’t use any of his rehearsed triggers to call up his dashboards. If he wanted to know if his feet were dirty, he had to look down or take off his sandals. If he got a bug in his eye, he had to sit and blink until it dislodged. When he wanted to wake himself up fully, he needed a brief stroll, maybe coffee. He couldn’t rise with Fauxdrenaline or fall asleep with Fauxlatonin. These days, too much stimulation at night would keep him awake — whereas in the past he’d never had the guts to turn that stimulation off.

  In the beginning, they’d embraced technology so they could fight it. Implants made them strong and sharp and fast and observant. They’d installed plugs so organization nanohackers could enter and work directly on their target processors — until the AI got too smart and found workarounds. They’d installed CNS networks so they could collaborate and coordinate Gaia’s movements at a distance.

  But in the end, they’d become just as used to all that technology as the people they were supposedly trying to oppose. They joined the system they claimed they were trying to unseat. They came to enjoy the ability to connect at all times and reveled in the constant entertainment. They’d been spartan before, but once Gaia teched up in the name of fighting the power, they came to appreciate the side effects: the way rooms responded to their wishes without being asked, instant access to videos everywhere, the way the hive reminded everyone of their grandmother’s birthday.

  In theory, surrendering those perks should have been simple. Supposedly, they only had the add-ons because the tech aided their ability to do their anarchical jobs. Coming up here, obeying the NPS agreement, they were supposed to sever those connections — and, from their counterculture standpoint, it was supposed to be good riddance to bad rubbish. They should have been eager to do it.

  But it had been a long, hard fight. And Leo, for one, knew that his mind had changed during the years it had been working as a single point in a network rather than as an individual.

  He arrived at the large meeting hall to find it almost empty, just one man sitting in the middle. The visitor was of moderate height, fat, and sweaty. He was wearing a suit that made him stick out like a sore thumb, dark enough to pass for the black of a holy man’s garb.

  “Where is it?” Leo asked.

  The big man turned. He had curly shoulder-length hair that was pulled into a knot to keep it off his neck. His face was barely shaven, and of the hair strewn across it, the most prominent sections had become like gigantic, jowly sideburns.

  “Is that how you greet me?” A small smile grew on the man’s features.

  “I’d rather not draw this out.”

  “Fine. It’s in my pack.”

  The visitor pointed at a backpack on one of the long benches…which, Leo now realized, did indeed resemble church pews. That hadn’t been the intention. They could have printed straightforward chairs in a dozen materials up here and wouldn’t even have needed a proper canvas to do it. Before cutting the cord, Leo had a satellite receiver that let him siphon a signal out of the sky from almost anywhere. They could have plugged the printer into Leo then downloaded plans from Crossbrace and reeled off a few hundred comfortable seats in little time. But no, making the seats by hand felt more honest. Making fewer units by hand, then, was easier. And so here they were, in a church that had never seen religion, and where true spirituality — during the next few years of cleansing, anyway — felt to Leo like hypocrisy.

  “But Leo,” the fat man said, “I wish you wouldn’t look at me that way. Aren’t we friends?”

  “Not really.”

  “See, now, that hurts my feelings. I’m bringing you salvation, not poison.”

  “It’s both at once, Hector.”

  “It’s medicine.”

  Leo sighed and rolled his eyes. He went to the pack, picked it up, and brought it to the man. He set it on a bench (pew) beside him.

  “Go ahead,” Hector said.

  Leo unzipped the pack. Inside were many small silvery bags that yielded slightly to the touch. Vacuum packed. Apparently, the stuff was manufactured on the moon. Maybe the vacuum packs were in the same spirit as the freeze-dried ice cream he used to sometimes get as a kid, fascinated by the idea that it’s what the astronauts ate. Or maybe it was because Lunis was sensitive when left in open air. He’d been breaking only one open at a time before sifting it into the holding tank for the community’s drinking water, then keeping the rest sealed for later.

  He had no idea if he was dosing his people by the book. Hector had offered instructions, but he’d also suggested they eat the stuff. It was harder to dose that way when people didn’t know they were on the drug. Leo’s barometer was softer. If the people in the village were too hyperactive, always pulling Doodads and other handhelds from their pockets to check their screens despite the terrible signal, then Leo simply added more Lunis. Once the village seemed reasonably content with their disconnected lifestyle and stopped clawing at its collective eyes, he figured he’d added enough.

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “I’ve already debited your account,” Hector said, waving a sweaty hand dismissively.

  Leo’s eyes narrowed.

  “You do realize I’m not a street hustler, right, Leo?”

  “Just because you have a badge doesn’t give you the right to access our accounts without authorization.”

  Hector patted his pocket, presumably indicating the presence of his NPS badge. “This is my authorization. But don’t get comfortable with our arrangement, okay? We’ll supply you for another month, if you want to keep handling things this way. But after that you’ll need to find yourself a dealer. Officially, I’m not even here.”

  Leo considered making a joke about Hector’s girth, suggesting just how here he was. But that was anger talking. Or, more likely, guilt.

  “The three agents you know? We’re it, Leonidas. In the system, everything we did with Hammer was slotted under unspecified civil investigation. You’ve got until July 15. After that, the three of us plan to forget everything that’s happened here. You run into me on the street, I don’t know who you are.”

  “Literally, or…?”

  “Figuratively. But we’re trained enough for it not to matter. Per our agreement, all Gaia records will be expunged and erased. This never hit Crossbrace. It was always contained, cables cut. AI will do the erasure, getting all the little loose ends. Come mid-July, Gaia’s Hammer will only exist in the minds of cops who dealt with your messes. But good luck if they ever try to prove it. Officially, half of the shit you did was due to a gas leak.”

  “The stadium raid?” Leo asked. “The string of factories upstate?”

  “It was a big gas leak.”

  Leo pulled the small silver bags from the pack, re-zipped it, and handed it to Hector. Hector took it and set it on the floor: an athletic backpack soon to be shouldered by an unathletic-looking man in a suit.

  “You’ll need to help me find a dealer.”

  Hector shook his head. �
�I’m not even here.”

  “Just a hint. Just tell me where to look.”

  “Come on, Leonidas. You’re good at digging up shit. Get your hands dirty a bit more before settling in and pretending to be an innocent old man.”

  Leo met Hector’s brown eyes. Behind the man’s duty, Leo saw resentment. Gaia was getting off easy for all the damage and death it had caused, and everyone involved knew it.

  “Fine.”

  “How much are they taking?”

  “You’ve seen the holding tank for the water?”

  Hector nodded.

  “Seems to be two meterbars a week in there does it.”

  “You’re still not giving it to them directly?”

  Leo made a noncommittal gesture.

  “It’s a bad idea, trying to hide this. You know they’re addicted. You understand that, right?”

  “They don’t even know it’s happening.”

  “Which makes it that much more dangerous. They won’t stay here every day of their lives. What happens when someone decides to leave? She gets back to the city or to another commune and starts feeling uneasy. Like some part of her brain is missing and she can’t think. It hits the fear center, and she gets paranoid. But she doesn’t know what’s wrong, so she can’t fix it. She thinks she’s going crazy. Things get bloody. Then someone locks her up screaming, or puts her down like a sick dog.”

  “I’ll tell them eventually,” said Leo.

  “Tell them now,” said Hector. “Your people, for all your bullshit about the need to live simply in harmony with nature, are the most tech-dependent group I’ve ever seen. They’ve offshored half their thinking. I’ve seen them looking at each other, wondering why the other person doesn’t understand without speaking, because they’re used to working in a dependent network. The quiet is going to start killing them.”