Tomorrow- Love and Troubles
Page 16
Kumar held up the vial of suppressors. It was capped with a small digital valve. This was a premium grade of supps that he had had only once before, at one of Nadella's events. It was the supps that made the event exceptional, and also made it highly illegal. Supps normally resulted in a gradual decline in cognitive integrity, as long as the scene being engaged with was well designed. The orange premium could cause substantial, immediate decay, and required a scene to be crafted precisely to fit within psychological limits.
Any excess damage would come back onto Nadella, both in the form of declining clients and legal action. He was highly motivated to have a well-designed event.
Kumar put the long vial into his mouth, and gave it a single suck. The valve activated and thousands of small spherical containers shot into his mouth and down his throat under the higher pressure of the vial. They would rupture throughout the duration of the event, directly entering the blood stream, and keeping a consistent dosage level. Kumar immediately headed through the door of the encounter room, among the screens. He wanted to get in and get oriented before the supps hit.
The scene around him was not yet active. It was a desert scene, with orange rocks, and an expanse of dunes. He could feel the heat from the desert starting to rise and knew that the supps were starting to activate. In a few more minutes, that thought would get drowned into the background, beneath the weight of scene's sensory data. The wind rose up and he could feel small flecks of sand strike him in the face. The room was vast, or seemed vast. He headed off in the direction of an outcropping of rocks.
The room used staggered screens, created through the use of small walls draped with screens. Screens could adapt to multiple viewers at once, but accounting for large groups of people in the same scene presented challenges; it was hard for the other players to be out of view. Walls allowed more complex story experiences to be told.
Kumar had worked himself into a small shadowed area near a boulder cluster at the base of a cliff face. Higher up on the cliff face, a series of small caves, perhaps carved by ancient streams, pocked the stone. A sound of rasping filled the air around him. Kumar shuddered and hunkered down. The sound had a mechanical quality to it. It hinted, suspiciously, gutturally of something organic. A dark shadow slipped from one of the caves, down a depression in the rock face. Kumar caught a glimpse of the shadow. He responded by moving into the shadows near the boulders. He could feel the heat from rocks as he came to rest—a result of early morning sun exposure.
In the distance, he could hear screams from some of the other participants. The sound technology used with screens could easily cancel and rebroadcast noises in the environment. The screams were real enough, but had been rebroadcast to enhance the sense of distance.
Kumar gripped the baton firmly. He glanced down at it. It was a pointed and jagged piece of metal.
A leg, with a hard carapace, emerged from behind a large rock near the cliff face, drawing his attention. The leg pulled the rest of the body of a creature from behind the rock. Its body was roach-like. Its back, rather than glossy, was covered with fine hairs that fluoresced and color-shifted. From the sides of the torso, eight legs supported the creature. Small antenna sampled the air. Kumar froze. There was no telling what the creature was using to sense its environment. His penis engorged, and became fully erect.
It was a side effect of the supps. The extreme enhancement of sensory processing often stimulated an automatic physical arousal. Kumar was unaware of his protuberance, instead fully focused on spider-legged roach.
More screams wafted through the desert air.
“Get your head back. Get your head back,” Kumar thought to himself. His heart was racing. The heat of the desert had become unbearable. It was an interpolation created by his mind on the supps or…the temperature had been turned up in the room. Or both. He struggled to remember that he was in a scene. The premium supps constantly pushed against the last vapor of that memory. For some of the participants, the memory was already gone. For a few, their minds had already concocted back story to support why they were there. It was less horrifying if it was not a mystery as to why they were in a desert.
Kumar focused himself. The creature didn't seem to sense him if he didn't move. A small shift of his toe in the sand, and an antenna would twitch in his general direction. It was 3 strides out. He could run, but where to? To the screams? What bloodbath awaited him there? How fast was it?
Another scream. This time slightly closer. He looked at the bug’s head section. The articulation between head and thorax had to be more vulnerable to allow for freedom of movement.
A good thrust could down it.
Another scream, still slightly closer. There must be other creatures driving the rest of the humans toward him, together. If he could kill this one, the next objective would be to get some unity in the group to fend off the assault. Doing it quickly with this crew would require a brutal touch.
He grinned, his teeth framed by his grand mustache. His eyes focused on the creature's head to thorax juncture and he sprang—the jagged metal of his baton flashing out and forward.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Longest Light
Cassie stood in her screen room facing a visual representation of the new pipe system worked out by Ada and Trago. The processing power of the Ether was enormous. Trago and Ada had set up a concealed network of virtual processors that would tap a small portion of that power to pre-process the data. The network was adaptive, and added another layer of interaction to link with Cassie and her glyph generator. As Trago had promised, the system was built to become more efficient as Cassie achieved more success.
Trago had become more involved than he had desired. The project had made him uncomfortable, but as he collaborated with the Ada simulacrum, he accepted that the security measures were strong enough to prevent discovery by whatever mystery humans that might be hunting them. He kept a small secure monitoring screen on his desk to watch the activation. If this technology ever became public, it would be a significant step forward. Trago had a feel for the presence of history being made, and this event seemed historic.
“Alfie,” said Cassie, “bring the virtuals online.”
“Yes, Madam.” It was uneventful. The data pipes activated and virtual processing systems came on. The pipe illustrations shifted colors and snaked about in different shapes, representing the changes in data flow designed to anonymize the pipe.
“Bring on the glyph systems.”
A small orb appeared before her. In the center of it was a half moon shaped glyph with small dots around it. It was a structure found in many variations in the ancient languages of the world, likely due to the common experience of the moon. Cassie had selected it from a list of likely proto-symbols to start the hunt for a new glyph. She had pulled it from the list instinctively.
Cassie pulled a long slender brush from a satchel on her waist. She gestured at the glyph and with a flick of her wrist pulled a flow of images toward the glyph. With a dab and pull, she pulled the shape of the glyph to be wider. The stacks cycled. She pulled another stack up and attached it as a subset of an image of the first stack. She observed the flow of the glyph. It was very early in the process of creation and the process was entirely driven by the feeling that she was walking closer or farther from where she needed to be.
With another gesture, she pulled an image out of the stack. One of her quantum processors relayed the change to the virtuals. The decision had been split into a series of small independent choices and then passed to the pre-processors. The pre-processors sorted a massive chunk of the Ether data and identified a more likely assortment of images. That likely chunk passed back to the quantum.
Cassie pulled an image from the chunk, and slipped it into the stack. She could feel herself marginally closer to her goal. The process of locating an image was noticeably faster.
Trago watched the process on his monitor. He signed it off.
“Connect Ada,” he said to the air. Ada appeared on t
he screen.
“You are certainly more prompt, now,” quipped Trago.
“One of the advantages of being dead,” she responded, “And it's very slimming.” Ada shifted her body on the screen, displaying her svelte figure.
Trago laughed at Ada's dark humor. Before her simulacrum phase, she had always been delightfully irreverent. He didn't have to make any cognitive jumps to accept that this Ada would joke about her disappearance. It would have been abnormal for her to avoid the topic.
“It looks like your daughter has taken to the software, and I don't see any faults in the process at this point. I'll review the data in the morning.”
Ada slipped her left shoulder out of her light yellow, summer dress, revealing most of her breast. It would be the summer solstice shortly. She had dressed to celebrate the occasion.
“I'll review it with you then,” Ada answered.
Cassie continued work for another hour. The process was definitely faster than before and experienced strange jumps in accuracy and feeling. After an hour, the original moon like glyph had developed some features of a meandering scrawl. She had made the adjustments to it intuitively, adding or subtracting to it dependent on the overall feel of the changes she was making.
She was, however, tired, her eyes looking sunken. The process drew upon her at many levels, causing a weariness to emerge deep within her.
Samuel entered the screen room as she paused, resting. He was uninterested in the scene or in the glyph.
“Nothing special yet, Samuel?” He sniffed about her shoe in response. It was time for a walk, for both of them.
She needed some outdoor time. She looked at her wristband. A reminder that it was the Summer Solstice was on the screen. It was a family tradition to celebrate it. For Cassie, the celebrations brought back memories of her mother and the stories of her grandparents. She would likely celebrate it with the Ada simulacrum in the evening. And Samuel. Last year she had had a nice celebration in the solarium. The screen setup was not as good there, but the physical environment, the feng shui was ideal.
Cassie checked her image in the screens—a little water on her face and she'd be ready. She walked to the wall and pressed a panel near the console. It opened a section of the wall, and a sink slid out far enough to be accessed. She washed her hands and then her face in almost ritual fashion, and dried with a blue, hypoallergenic towel.
One more check in screens; She wore a classic green and yellow tube dress with a pair of comfortable loafers. Her hair was up, being held in place by a set of gold hair pins inlaid with tridymite. They were gifts from Kumar.
“Come on, Samuel.” she said. The two went to the door and stepped out into a bright summer day. It would be noon soon. In the oppressive heat of the mid-day, she wanted to get to the park quickly, and under the shade of some of the large trees there.
When they entered the park, it was obvious that the Solstice was a popular activity for this Wednesday. Samuel's favorite bench on the park fringe was taken. The two of them navigated across the busy lawns to the more centrally located benches. Samuel guided her to a bench near a pagoda, hosting a boisterous Solstice party. Astronomical celebrations had risen dramatically in popularity in the last ten years. The celebrations had originated during the early Troubles and grown slowly. This party had a large, golden, paper cut out of Apollo and a solar chariot. Cutouts had started selling initially as an ironic religious statement, but had now become an essential display craft for summer celebrations.
The bench was located in the shade of an oak tree. The tree was a remnant from an earlier time, as the climate in this zone was hostile to oaks. Hidden among its roots, there was a camouflaged adaptogen unit that fed a cocktail of chemicals and genetically modified viruses to the roots of the tree. The cocktail was flowed in micro-doses through a tapeworm like ribbon that snaked down into the dirt and throughout the root ball. Without the unit, the tree would fail quickly.
Samuel sat on one end of the bench, opposite of Cassie, both because of the oppressive heat and because of his need to adopt a sufficiently royal pose. She rested. The sound of the party near by and the heat lulled her into a sluggish stupor. The day had an odd perfection to it. She had taken a major step forward in her work. She had Samuel's company. The people around her were joyous and relaxed. The park was beautiful.
Cassie's eye lids dragged slowly shut, opening suddenly as she resisted napping. She shifted for comfort. Samuel seemed to imitate her, and nodded off. She drifted in and out of her nap, catching small glimpses of the park during her waking periods.
The solstice event went into full swing. The party goers set off some fire works and the music ramped in volume. It was enough to rouse Cassie from her naps and cause her to take in the changing scene around her. It might be time to go back. She looked over at Samuel. He had awakened and was in full regal form. He would be sorely disappointed if they were to leave now. Putting up with a grumpy Samuel is not something she wanted to occupy the evening with.
An older gent, dressed in a formal, retro, blue, checked suit was sitting on the bench immediately near her left. He was staring casually out across the park. He was, it seemed, in his 60s. He was highly fit, and his skin had a youthful glow. His hair was white, and long. In appearance, he seemed in his 40s. Cassie felt that he was older, and felt that he was in his 60s. Maybe late 60s.
He glanced down at his wrist. It was a watch. Large, silver. She hadn't seen a watch since her childhood. No one was willing to sacrifice the functionality of a wrist unit to wear one, and since the wrist unit could also provide the time, watches fell into disuse even as a fashion statement. Fashion was always on the move though. Cassie smiled to herself. It could be coming back in. She'd have to review the trends when she got back, and see how the fashions were developing across the populations. The glyph project had taken so much of her time of late, she might be out of step.
The watch though seemed familiar.
Cassie shot bolt upright from her bench, and backed slightly away from the bench on her left.
She must have fallen asleep again. She was probably in the lab. Again. Something had happened with the glyphs. The park seemed so real.
Cassie made a slow semi-circle around the seated man, staying at a distance of about 4 meters. He seemed normal. He had all human features. But. But, he wasn't normal. It had been the watch. She had seen it before, on screen video. The watch belonged to her grandfather. It was her grandfather. Clearly her grandfather was sitting on the bench. Unchanged despite the passage of years. Despite the years since his death.
The man gasped suddenly, as if an infant drawing its first, vital breath. He became alert, and less like a Greek marble. He focused upon Cassie, and looked at her quizzically.
Cassie waited for the tone. She had ordered Alfie to sound it if she fell asleep in the lab. It had been purely luck that Samuel had roused her the first time. She wasn't about trust chance to save her from another encounter like the spider-monster.
Cassie continued slowly circling the man, waiting for a piercing tone to shatter the scene. The expression on the man's face changed to recognition.
“Hello. It's Cassie, isn't it?”
She shrank briefly, startled that it could talk. The voice was the voice of her grandfather, Mike. She recognized it from the family vids.
The man looked at his hands and at the suit. He pulled on the fabric, seemingly checking if it was real. He drew his palms up and together as if he were shaping a clay bowl. He concentrated for a moment, trying to create the image of a small bird suspended between his hands. None appeared. He smiled.
“This seems somewhat real, Little One. I suggest we go with it until I can figure out what's going on. Unless you know what's going on, Cassie?”
Cassie swallowed the perfectly sensible desire to grab Samuel and run. She put her hand on her wristband, ready to trigger the panic button there and summon a horde of protective drones. She approached him cautiously, as one approaches a wild animal.
“It's okay, Cassie. You can come closer. Really. Come on now.”
Cassie crept up next to him.
“So, what are you, Gramps? Are you a ghost?” Cassie boldly grabbed her grandfather's arm. Mikel smiled at her. Her resemblance to his daughter, Ada, was unmistakable. She also had many of his wife, Mary's features.
“Honestly...I don't know what I am, Cassie,” he replied. His voice was matter of fact in the face of the extraordinary. It was a trait that Cassie had seen often in her mother, Ada.
“I'm solid,” he continued, “so I don't think I am a ghost. I've never met a ghost, but in my time they were always thought of as insubstantial”
“It's the same now, Gramps,” Cassie responded.
Cassie hadn't released his arm. He lovingly placed his free hand on top of the hand gripping his arm.