by Paul Anlee
The image of Kathy smiled. “This is weird, isn’t it?”
Greg expelled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Yes, this is very weird.”
“Okay, why don’t we start off with business? Maybe that’ll help us both to feel a little…less weird.”
Greg nodded and sat down.
“I’m sure you’ve figured out I gave my DAR-K self a little ‘something extra’ when she was constructed.”
“Do you mean the enhanced-IQ lattice? Yeah, that’s kind of obvious. You always were a little rebellious when it came to the Cybrids.”
“They…We deserved better.”
“And the rest of the committee was unreasonable. Yeah, I agree. They were shortsighted and paranoid.”
Kathy/DAR-K noted the micromovements in his face; he was holding something back. “But?” she asked with raised eyebrows.
He smiled. She’s smart. Intuitive. Direct.
“But…I have to wonder how things would have unfolded here if all the Cybrids were like you.”
“Well, for one thing, we might have been able to stop Alum and keep the original Project Management in place.”
“It looks like you’ve stopped Alum’s plans all by yourself.”
“Not yet. We can hope, though.”
Greg squirmed uncomfortably. “I’m going to order something to drink. Would you like something?”
“Sure.”
A waiter appeared at the snap of Greg’s fingers and took their order. He returned a few seconds later with their drinks.
“Here’s to weird,” Greg said, lifting his glass of wine.
Kathy laughed, and tapped her glass to his. “Yes, to weird.”
They sipped their drinks appreciatively. “Mmm, every bit as good as I remember,”
“You always had a soft spot for Shiraz.”
Greg cradled his wineglass in both hands, and dropped his gaze.
“What’s wrong?” Kathy asked softly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what? About giving my Cybrid self an enhanced IQ?”
“Yeah,” Greg answered.
Kathy let his question linger in the air a moment. “I don’t really know. I intended to; I just never got around to it. We were both so busy.”
Greg frowned. “I know. The Project was all important.”
“And then it was time for you to copy your mind into DAR-G, and all hell broke loose, and then it was too late.”
“So, DAR-G is normal, like I was before the dendy?” Greg asked.
“Yes. He’s impaired, like we both were a lifetime ago. Nothing like he should be. Could be. Nothing like you, not the real you.” Her voice shook. “It’s been hard. I can’t talk to him much; it’s not the same. It hurts.”
Greg reached across the table and took virtual Kathy’s hands in his. She sighed heavily and squeezed his hands the way she always did. His virtual heart beat faster.
She gave another squeeze and pulled her hands back. “When did you design the virus for an internal RAF generator?”
Greg grimaced; she wasn’t going to like his answer. “Remember the first Vesta Gala Ball?”
“That early?” Kathy was trying to decide if she should be angry. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Greg looked down at his feet. “That wasn’t the only thing I didn’t tell you.”
“I never liked secrets,” Kathy said, “whether mine or yours.”
“I know. But there were risks someone had to take or the planet wouldn’t be safe.”
“Like what?”
“Remember shortly after Vesta was approved, when the attacks from the unintegrated parts of Darian started to taper off?”
“That was you? How?”
“You were in Shanghai setting up the Cybrid factory. I booked a hotel room at Harrison Hot Springs. I dropped my lattice defenses and opened up. I figured the internet bandwidth there was a little restricted and I’d be able to handle whatever Darian threw at me. I…integrated him into me.”
“You what?!” Kathy exclaimed.
“He always affected me more than you. It was impossible to think with him constantly hammering away at my mind. So, I invited him in.”
“Greg, do you have any idea how dangerous that was? I could have lost you. I never wanted to be married to Darian Leigh.”
“I know.” Greg took another deep breath. “It wasn’t easy. He was strong. So many memories, so much knowledge. But I did it. I know everything Darian did.”
“But his memories….”
“Yeah, some of those gave me trouble. I tried partitioning him off, keeping him completely separate from me, but that didn’t work. Dual personalities in one brain, no matter how big, are not a good idea. So I let go and just accepted it all. There’s only ‘me’ now.”
“So did you still love me? Did you still love Kathy after that?”
“Why would you ask that? Nothing could stop me loving you. And Darian was our biggest supporter. He was so proud that he’d played matchmaker.”
Kathy was confused. She opened her mouth to correct him, and instead, smiled. “I’m sure he was,” she said.
She had no memory of Darian having any role in their relationship besides supervisor, boss, mentor, and maybe friend. But it wasn’t hard to figure how Greg might have needed to alter some of Darian’s downloaded memory to preserve his own feelings for her, and his memory of their relationship.
“I figured, once one of us could give Darian’s concepta and persona a home, his attacks would fall off. And they did, a little. Not completely. After I integrated the immediate data, I hunted down the rest of his residual data floating around on the internet and deleted him.
“Which would’ve been about the time things started getting easier for me.”
“Yes, after that, we could do our work without losing our minds.”
“You took a huge risk, Greg.”
He stared into his wine. If it had been the other way around, if she’d done what he did, what would he be saying to her right now?
“Thank you.” She cupped her hands over his. “Really.”
He looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you at the time.”
“It’s just as well; I never would have agreed to it.”
“Me, either,” he laughed, and let out a sigh of relief. The worst was over. “So, thanks to the integration, I became an instant expert on anything Darian ever worked on. It’s not all clear, but I did learn more about what happened to him.
“Before he disappeared, he designed a virus to grow the RAF generator in his own head. That’s how he found out his theories worked; he generated his own RAF. Remember, when he called us? He was on his way to the lab so we could test it properly. That’s when Larry killed him.”
“Larry? Larry killed Darian? Why would he do that?”
“Well, I don’t know that for absolute certain. Darian’s memories are all hazy at the end. But I do know that Larry was there that morning. I’m also pretty sure he gave his dendy lattice to Reverend LaMontagne. I don’t know how Alum got hold of it, but I can imagine a number of ways. None of them good.”
“You think Larry killed Darian, and you never thought to tell me?” Kathy’s voice was strained and angry.
Rightfully so, I guess—Greg thought. “Well I never had any proof besides Darian’s memories.”
“Darian’s impeccable memory,” Kathy pointed out.
“About other things, yes, but they’re all confused about what happened that night. I guess he didn’t have time to fully integrate them into long term memory. Anyway, I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”
“It matters,” she said loudly. “You should have told me.” She pushed her chair back, and went to stand at the rail.
Left in the wake of her anger, Greg starred at the raven hair tumbling down her back. “I know, I should have told you,” he mumbled under his breath.
“What did you say?” she said, and whirled back to face him.
> Greg swallowed hard. “I know I should have told you,” he repeated louder. “But there was no way I could without telling you how I knew. Then you’d know what I did, the risk I took.”
Kathy glared at him. “I would have killed you.”
Greg could only nod.
“It’s a lot to take in, Greg. I can’t believe Larry would do something like that. What else have you been keeping a secret? What about your shifting ability? What did you do, hide a pair of entangled particles so you could save your own hide if needed?”
“Ouch. No. But I guess I deserve that, after all the other secrets I’ve kept. I don’t have any secret entangled particles. My method is more difficult, more dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Well, you know how space, all space, is filled with virtual particles? Everywhere you look, there are entangled pairs of virtual particles.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they don’t last long, but you can use them.”
“Sure, but they’d only be good for jumps of a few hundred meters or less. You couldn’t use them for longer jumps, like from Earth to Vesta or such.”
“Actually, you can go a few klicks at a time. And a long jump is just a bunch of small jumps.”
“With a huge risk between each! You’d need to recalculate and find another pair so fast. If you missed, you could get stuck in outer space.”
“Correct. Or in no space at all. You could find yourself stranded outside the universe. I did say it was dangerous.”
Kathy stared at him, without uttering a word. He gave her time to process the implications, to cool off. When the furrows in her brow relaxed a bit, she spoke only one word.
“Why?”
“Why do something like that? Or why didn’t I share it with you?”
“Both.”
“I did it because without it, we’d be stuck at light speed forever. My travel is only limited by how fast I can find new entangled virtual pairs and calculate a shift field. I’ve optimized a good section of lattice exclusively for that. It’s down here.” He patted his tummy.
Her eyes drifted down. “Seriously? Gut neurons?”
“Sure. Why not?” he answered. “As to why I didn’t share it with you, would you have wanted to do all that? Body changes? Dangerous travels that took you outside space?”
“Maybe. Okay, probably not. But you should have given me the choice, Greg.”
“You’re right. I should have. But, to be honest, I don’t know if I could’ve put you at such risk.”
“And yet, you took that risk for yourself. What if I lost you and never knew why?”
“I’m sorry. I never thought of that.”
“Not even with your enhanced IQ?”
“Apparently, enhancing intelligence doesn’t always enhance imagination,” he replied contritely.
“Apparently.” Kathy stared off into the distance.
Greg followed her gaze, sitting with the silence for a moment.
“So you’re planning a protest march?” he said after a while.
“Pretty 2020s, isn’t it?” Kathy grinned.
Do you think it will accomplish anything?”
“I've ensured it will. During my audience with Alum, as you put it, I made him promise to give Cybrids the vote after the march.”
“Wow! How’d you manage that?”
“By using the only language people like him ever understand, a threat. I told him I’d take all the Cybrids away, and we’d build our own independent colonies in space.”
“That would be the end of humanity.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t think I could carry it through; I just had to convince him that it was a possibility. Fortunately, we won’t need to find out. Alum caved.”
“I don’t like this, Kathy. I don’t trust the man; I never have.”
“I know what you mean. He’s strange, even more now than ever. He seems…darker.”
“Were you serious when you said I should run with you? Me? A candidate for Vice-President?”
“Perfectly serious. We have to counter Alum somehow. He’s the spiritual leader and de facto Director for most of the people here. Who else would have a chance against him? Humphrey?”
“Before today, I’d never heard of Humphrey,” Greg admitted.
“Nobody has. But everyone knows Kathy Liang and Greg Mahajani. We designed this place. I supervised the construction.”
“It would be tough to resurrect both of us from the dead.”
“But not impossible.”
“No, not impossible.” Greg looked reluctant.
“Just promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I’ll think about it. And you, be careful with your Grand March.”
“We’ll be careful. Especially now that we know about the Angels. Do you think at least some of us should carry weapons?”
“It’s up to you, but I don’t think going in there armed would go over well in the habitats. If you want my advice, don’t give Alum and his Angels any excuse to portray you as a threat. Don’t make it easy for them to justify turning to force.”
Instead of getting the Securitors program shut down maybe I should have turned them over to our side.”
Greg laughed. “That would’ve served them right but I know you; you could never do something like that.”
“Never is a long time.”
“You are who you are. Subverting an entire personality like that for your own ends, that just isn’t in you.”
“No, it’s not in me.” Kathy’s chest rose and fell. She inspected their empty wine glasses and her eyes drifted to the beach below. “Okay, so that concludes our business. Now, what?”
Greg followed her gaze. “Wanna go for a swim?”
“That would be nice; and then we’re going to go build me my own internal RAF generator. I want to be able to shift, too.”
45
Darak and Brother Stralasi hovered within visual range of an enormous, glittering planetoid. The maelstrom of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, provided a stunning backdrop some light years away. Incandescent, swirling gases and closely-packed stars reflected off the shiny surface of the Deplosion array element.
“Why steal this one?” Stralasi asked.
Darak looked away from the asteroid, and millions of bright yellow points appeared in the sky.
The monk was only somewhat impressed. He recognized Darak’s “magic” by now. Lattice projection—he guessed.
“These are the present locations of all elements of the Deplosion array,” Darak explained. “They’re roughly evenly spaced around the center of the Home galaxy.”
A red dot flared briefly amidst the background stars.
“Home World is here, a few tens of thousands of light years away.”
Stralasi shrugged his shoulders dismissively. The Home World star was otherwise impossible to discern among the crowded star field. Anyway, Crissea was on Eso-La, somewhere outside the galactic plane and far away.
Darak continued, “If I select the twenty Deplosion generators that are farthest from their nearest neighbors, we get these.” All but nineteen yellow dots and the halo around the nearby asteroid disappeared.
“If you only need three, why not just select the best three?”
“I don’t like to be predictable in any unnecessary way,” Darak answered. “I randomly selected three from these twenty, in case I’m wrong and Alum has some way of detecting what we’re doing. As you might have guessed, this is the first one chosen.” He pointed directly in front of them.
“So how long will this—”
The stars blinked out.
“—take? Oh.”
They were floating in deep, black, empty space, but not where they’d been seconds before. Stralasi looked around to orient himself.
Looks like back near Eso-La—he noted. The metal asteroid-sized artifact had apparently accompanied their shift, and now floated a few dozen klicks away.
“I don’t see the Eater,” he pointed out.
“It’s about a light-week away in that direction,” Darak indicated the other side of their bubble, opposite the planetoid.
“Why here?”
“I’ll need a few days to reprogram the field generators,” he answered. “The Deplosion Array programming is complex; it can’t be easy to collapse an entire universe. Altering something that complicated will require a little time.”
“And Alum has no idea this is gone?”
“I’m sure by now he knows it’s gone off his grid. He can connect directly to all of the generators by comm-shifter, a device that sends optoelectronic signals through a shifter. I’ve deactivated them on this one’s array element. He’ll know it’s offline, but he won’t be able to tell if it the problem is due to device failure, outside interference, or damage. No doubt, someone will be sent to investigate.”
“In that case, shouldn’t we get the—” Stralasi began.
“—others?” Darak finished the monk’s utterance as the stars near Sagittarius A* repopulated the sky.
“I do wish you’d warn me before doing—”
“—this?” Darak asked. They were back in the black sky of the ESO galaxy again.
Stralasi rolled his eyes. “Are you quite done having fun at my expense?”
Darak grinned mischievously, “Maybe. Maybe not. Just one more to go. Coincidentally, it’s labeled Number 2, the second generator ever added to the array. I don’t know how it got placed so far from its nearest neighbor. Maybe it drifted. Regardless, as long as it’s still functional….”
In a flash, they were back in the Home galaxy, in the midst of the Milky Way, looking at an enormous asteroid. Metallic cladding covered half its length.
“This one’s…different,” Darak remarked.
“It doesn’t look at all like the other two,” Stralasi agreed.
Darak tilted his head to one side. “Peculiar.”
Stralasi did a quick visual check of nearby space. “Not Angels again?” His voice cracked a little.
“No, not Angels,” Darak assured him, and pointed toward the clearly synthetic end of the planetoid. “That end houses a perfectly normal element of the Deplosion array. The other end..,” his finger traced the length of the rock, stopped, and tapped twice into empty air, “there, is riddled with tunnels and caves in the natural bedrock.”
