Manifestations

by David M Henley

  ‘When I was there, he had a flawed digitalis locked behind a vault. He wouldn’t tell me much about it.’

  ‘I think you’d better make a full report. I’ll contact the Prime. He should hear this too.’

  They met in a closed room, encapsulated from the general Weave. Geof and the Prime’s team both built walls of protection around it.

  Ryu was quickly up to speed.

  ‘Continue,’ he said to Geof.

  ‘Well, I’ve been looking over the cut-off pattern from Busan and — sorry, may I?’ Geof shifted the visualisation to the Prime’s queue. It opened up into a satellite view that showed each Citizen’s stream from the city at the moment they lost contact with the Weave; played in reverse, it shrank down to a single point of origin. ‘The first cut-offs happen directly above the shaft to Shen Li’s lab.’

  ‘You surmise it came from there?’

  ‘I can’t be certain, but that is what the data indicates.’

  ‘What kind of thing was he working on, Mister Ozenbach?’ Ryu asked.

  ‘Sensei worked on many things at once. He had tables of projects I couldn’t begin to understand. But when I was there, he talked about a failed digitalis experiment that he kept sealed in a vault.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Sensei did not share his ideas with me.’

  ‘What is a digitalis?’ Pinter asked.

  ‘Digitalis was Shen’s opus. It was meant to be an evolutionary step that took humans from flesh and blood to a digital form. A new body that could always be repaired and live forever.’

  ‘The great Shen Li was wasting his time on that?’ Ryu asked. ‘Cyber-mystic nonsense?’

  ‘It was the next logical step after symbiots, for humans to become part of their body. It was his dream and I think —’

  ‘Tell me more about this failed experiment,’ Pinter said, keeping the conversation on track.

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me any more than that. He kept it locked in a vault so it couldn’t get out. He was afraid of it,’ Geof said. ‘He called it Kronos.’

  ‘Kronos?’ The Colonel looked at the beast on the screens. It had a name now. ‘So what is it exactly? That doesn’t look like a human evolution to me.’

  ‘It was a failure.’

  ‘A failure that has taken four million lives,’ the Prime said. He thought for a moment. ‘Ozenbach, I will need you to work on this problem.’

  ‘What about Pierre Jnr?’ Geof asked.

  ‘I would like you to run the data for me on both, for now. But until there is new information on that front, Busan takes priority.’

  ‘That is an honour, Prime,’ Geof answered quickly. I’ll have to upgrade, he thought with glee.

  ‘Now that Takashi has been compromised, I need a weaver I can trust.’

  ‘Thank you, Prime.’

  The Prime sighed deeply. ‘Our problems seem to be breeding.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pinter agreed.

  ‘Prime, may I ask something?’ Geof said.

  ‘Ask it if you must.’

  ‘What about Peter Lazarus? Couldn’t he continue the hunt for Pierre Jnr?’

  ‘We have had to restrict Peter Lazarus for the time being. His recent actions in the Cape have thrown doubt on his allegiances.’

  ‘But he is alive?’

  ‘Alive and well. You have my word.’

  ‘Thank you, Prime.’

  ‘Now, is there anything else? The Primacy council awaits my return.’

  ‘That is all for now. We will begin our tests as soon as it is dark,’ Pinter said.

  ‘Very good. Keep me informed and thank you for this news. It couldn’t have come at a better time.’

  The Prime’s avatar blipped from his overlay and Pinter and Geof were alone in the conversation again.

  ‘I’ll need you to reconfigure the thought room,’ the Colonel said, simultaneously adding it to his list. ‘Gather everyone who you think might be able to reverse-engineer this Kronos thing.’

  ‘Yes, Colonel.’

  ‘Chin up, Geof.’

  ~ * ~

  Peter Lazarus woke in a white room. Around him he heard the sounds of the ocean. Waves pushing in and pulling out across the sand with a gentle rush.

  He was on his back, blinking at the pearlescent ceiling that spread a too-bright light across the room.

  He rolled over on his side and fell from the bed, a white floor rushing towards him like a crashing wave. He felt no pain when he hit.

  ~ * ~

  He lay in cold mud. Dark water lapped through his clothes and the back of his head throbbed. Above him, the imperfect rooftop imitated a sky with too few stars. He heard things. Squelchy running and weapons firing. Every now and then the light strobed in different colours as if fireworks were going off around him.

  All attempts to move sent him into spasm. At some point an armoured soldier stood over him and unloaded something from his pack.

  He felt a sharp jab, then no sensation. He was free of pain, he floated above it. The bot took position over his head, eight legs pinching him until it was firmly secure. Then he felt vibrations and the loud scrape of stitching close by his ear.

  He could blink and breathe. At least he could breathe ...

  The soldier bent down and affixed a white oval to his face.

  ~ * ~

  He lay face up in a restorative pallet. He didn’t know how long he had been lying there. His muscles were reluctant to move.

  If this was a hospital, where were the nurses? Where was that nurse, the one he knew? Was she prohibited from seeing him now? Where was he? The walls and ceiling were canvas. Plastic-waxed and crumpled as though he was inside a ball of screwed-up paper.

  Was he still at the compound? Was the rest of that time a dream? Or from a life he had forgotten? Did it come before or after he was standing on that paved street, waiting for something to happen?

  He closed his eyes and saw eyes staring back at him. Calm eyes, reading him as if he was the pages of a book. That face knew him ...

  ~ * ~

  They strapped him into a cockpit. Tied down with secure webbing over his chest. He could hardly hold his head up and it flopped to the side where he could see the city of Atlantic retreating from view. It spread out of sight. Five hundred or so kilometres of clustered habitation. Dirty smoke rising in a column from where the compound had been destroyed.

  Pete didn’t hear a thing as the squib lifted into the air but the acceleration made him woozy. With the pain from his head and the drugs in his system he was nearly senseless.

  He tried sending a message to his symbiot, but it didn’t respond. He tried again, but the effort made his head hurt. He reached up with limp hands and found gel pads bandaging him from cheek to shoulders.

  The squib flew on in silence. He was the only person on board, and yet ... he did not feel alone. Was there someone in the second chair? Did it twist as though an invisible body was turning it? He felt so sure he reached out his hand towards it.

  ‘Pierre?’ he asked.

  His hand touched the back of the seat. There was no one there.

  He closed his eyes.

  How many times had he slept and woken up? They slept him and woke him as needed. Switched on and off like a machine.

  On, off. On, off. Services activated and deactivated as and when they had a use for him. Like a hot. And just like Pierre did. On. Off. On. Off.

  ~ * ~

  He was falling again, dropping into a white cloudscape, whipped to peaks. Then he was in the room of white. A clinical room with a pallet beside him. He used it to push himself up.

  At a spell of nausea, Pete touched his head and held it until it stilled. The gel pads were gone. Concentrating on taking small breaths, he managed to rise up and sit on the edge of the bed.

  Below his feet a dashed line glowed into existence in the flooring. It led across the room to a cleaning cubicle that had opened in the wall. There it e
nded in a circle about his size. It was obvious he was meant to follow.

  As he arrived a shute opened by his feet and an icon of a shirt appeared above it. He understood. Stripping his clothes was hard and he had to sit down to remove his trousers, but when he dropped them into the shute, he was rewarded by a drench of sweet-smelling water. Warm and calming. He could smell spices and grated ginger. He heard the sound of the ocean and looked down to the water touching his toes. Beside him, a boy stood looking up ...

  The water stopped and was replaced with strong air currents. They pushed up and down his body until every hair was dry. On the floor the dashed line appeared again, this time leading him to a drawer that had slid out from the main wall. It held fresh clothing. Standard white, two-part, gratuit.

  Once dressed he looked down for the line and it now led to the little alcove, with a circle at the end.

  As he faced it, the back wall of the nook became reflective. His mirror image drew him closer.

  He hadn’t seen himself in a while. His hair was longer by an inch. Two weeks’ worth, perhaps three. He noticed a fracturing in his skin, his growing hair avoiding the new scar.

  A thick stubble had grown on his chin and around his neck was a metal collar. He reached to touch it and his body went into a fit.

  ‘Don’t,’ he heard a gentle voice say.

  ~ * ~

  Pete stood up from the floor. He swayed as if he was at sea. His head felt as if there was water inside it and he took deliberate steps towards the door, trying not to slosh it from side to side.

  He reached towards the panel and it opened ahead of his touch, sliding back to show a corridor full of daylight. The ceiling was frosted glass and the day outside was hot. The corridor curved away to both left and right. Echoes of voices bounced from either end.

  This way, said a voice in his head.

  Pete tried to focus on it, but turning made his skull slosh and he had to lean on the doorframe.

  To your left.

  He dragged himself forward, keeping his hand to the wall as he doggedly kept moving. Who are you?

  Then he was on the ground again, on all fours, as his body undulated and pumped liquid yellow vomit from his mouth. For torturous moments he was a bursting hose, spraying the floor. Spatter hit his hand and the pool of it spread to his knees.

  Quickly his stomach was empty, but he didn’t dare move. He watched as a wheelie bot, no bigger than his fist, zoomed under him and began sucking up the fluid. He turned and crawled back to his room. His new clothes were dirty and wet and he stank in his mouth. He needed to wash, but the effort of removing his clothes left him curled up on the smooth floor where he passed out.

  Try as he might, Pete couldn’t stretch his mind out. His consciousness wobbled as if it had turned to rubber. When he tried to float away from his body he sank and found himself dizzy.

  What is happening?

  It’s okay. Try to be calm, the friendly voice said.

  His next attempt was better. His head didn’t slosh as much, and nor did his stomach. His brains were made of thicker syrup this time and he could keep his balance through the washing and dressing. He ignored the line that led to the mirror and went back towards the exit.

  He made it all the way to his door and with his back permanently to the wall he could manage to shuffle along the corridor.

  Pete passed more doors like his with white touch panels at waist height. They didn’t open for him. When he pressed his fingers to the plastic squares, they turned red and showed a name, presumably the occupant who the door would open for.

  The corridor opened out, the rectangle of brighter light tilted as he crept forward, until it finally filled his view. His head was flopped to his shoulder and he twisted his body to look at the room. There were many people there. A fist caught him square in the face. All went white and black. And black and white.

  ~ * ~

  When thinking of the megacities, the definition expands from simple buildings for housing and industry and includes the larger environmental and financial ecosystem.

  The system of West, the largest of the WU cities, stretched the length of the Andreas and included the water tables for another three hundred kilometres inland. It hugged the coastline with its vast fisheries and wave-powered energens, and dropped away before reaching the ruins in the valleys and the deserts. West, like the Cape, was a general name used by the public for that area. The places where people lived and worked had localised regions like Beverly Hills, Corona or Frisco.

  Far to the south, with no hardline roadway or unitrack connecting the two, was the megapolis known as Mexica.

  Many other cities had been abandoned in the Dark Age. Some when their supply lines died, others from infestations of splicer diseases that still lived in the soils. Some cities never died completely. They fell into liver-spotted convalescence, part rubble, part ruin. Inhabitants pieced together their livings and a society from what could be found: trading antiques and services for food and modernisation. A few, like Petersburg and Chicago, were trying to reclaim. The weather was easing and people liked to visit the ruins; if they could succeed in installing the parks and gardens they planned, these two cities would become quite beautiful places.

  Mexica was unkindly thought of as a city that didn’t know it was already dead. Nothing new was built here. Only scavengers made a home, eking out a living. Most of the old cities had long ago been picked clean. Every useful scrap had been hauled away for re-use or smelt. Mexica lived off the past, a huge scrapyard of collected junk. Centuries of outdated tech. The rubbish the rest of the world didn’t want.

  Gomez had built himself a watchtower on the third pile in their zone. It wasn’t the tallest of the stacks, but it had a lot of old military vehicles that were easy to climb and the missing doors and windows formed tunnels he could run through. His scouting point was an old cockpit, separated from the ginormous fuselage it must have once guided. The portals were broken out and let the breeze through — when there was one.

  He kept some of his treasures here: a pair of oculars he’d found, strips of smart wire and batteries. He had once found a dart rifle with no darts and Gom liked to sit at the front of the cockpit, zooming in and out with the telescopic enhancements, aiming and clicking the impotent trigger. Imaginary bullets for imaginary invaders.

  Invaders could be anyone in his game, like rival junkers entering their turf — his family had a lease on these lots, but it was their responsibility to protect it. They didn’t have much trouble, although Gom had an alert button he could activate that would send a message back to his family. There were fewer junkers now. Most of the good stuff was gone. Some families had made their fortune and moved into the city; others just got by doing what they could get away with.

  The cockpit was heating up under the sun and Gomez began crawling deeper into the scrap heap. He had some water in an empty tanker down the bottom and a lot of other supplies he had secreted there. Rations, a portable heater, knife, compass. Everything he collected that might come in handy if the darkness fell on Earth again.

  His papa said he should always be prepared for the worst, even when things were at their best. For the worst he had a bag of ammo, and guns: pre-Dark Age, but they would be lethal enough.

  Gomez had the junk stacks pretty well mapped out now. He knew where his family had and hadn’t mined and had catalogued areas of interest for later searches. He carried an old rubberised handscreen with the scavenge list his father had given him for the week. Most of the stuff was easy — wiring and components, and general scrap for the smelt. He wanted to put off the liquids for another day. Leaching out plasma coils was slow, boring and heavy. Today was too hot for a liquids run.

  Gom always kept his eyes out for collectables he could trade for access credits and every month he managed to collect enough minutes to explore the Weave when no one was looking over his shoulder.

  He lay down on the cool curved wall of the tanker and connect
ed. Overall, he hadn’t spent much time connected, his stream had a log of merely a dozen hours. Mostly he visited other places, just to look.

  He couldn’t immerse through a screen, but he held it up close to his face, looking over the Golden Horn of Istanbul ... a butterfly button flittered towards him, an advertisement in a bright circle of green that folded and opened like wings. ‘Hi there,’ it said in a nice-girl voice.

  He moved closer to it to hear its message. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Would you like to become a Citizen?’ she asked.

  ‘Would I?’ he answered, tapping his response into the screen.