by Paul Anlee
He was pleased to see his mention of Darya and the push into space elicited raised brows and then acceptance on Leisha’s part.
“Is this your first instantiation in any of the versions of Alternus?” she asked, instead of addressing his comment.
He scrambled for a reasonable response.
“I’m guessing it is, or you wouldn’t be so surprised by my asking,” she observed.
I must remember how extremely realistic this inworld is—Trillian admonished himself. I need to guard my emotions more closely. Outwardly, he remained calm and confident. “You’ve discovered my secret. Yes, I’m sorry to say, I am a novice here. But not for long.”
Leisha leaned in and spoke in a hush. “This is iteration number four. We’ve had two complete disasters and one peacefully failed resolution to date.”
It was Trillian’s turn to be caught off guard and mildly confused. He fought the urge but curiosity won out; he couldn’t stop himself from forestalling his intended task. He had to find out. “What do you mean?”
“In the past three versions of the sim, we were unable to avoid complete destruction. Twice by nuclear war. The third time, we moved the world toward what we thought would be a promising new economic and cultural foundation. The Supervisor judged it to be inadequate over the long term and terminated the game. So now we’re trying to expand into space, the way the Supervisor wants.”
Despite his considerable intellect and extensive background reading, Trillian was baffled. “But isn’t this all just a game, an entertainment?”
“Sure, it’s a game. But it’s not like Vacationland where the point is simply to have fun. It’s more like a game of Footie or chess, where you have defined, achievable goals—except it’s infinitely more complicated, and the whole world’s involved. We all need to win, collectively.”
“And what would winning entail?”
“According to the Supervisor, it means getting the stubborn, scared, xenophobic people of Earth to work together and start colonizing space.”
“And apart from the satisfaction of a game well-played, what do participants gain from this game?”
“We learn how to rule over humans well enough that we stop them from destroying themselves, either slowly or quickly. At least, that’s how Darya interprets the Supervisor’s judgments.”
“But Alum rules over all,” protested Trillian. “Why would you…we…want to rule in His place?”
“Alum doesn’t rule here,” replied Leisha. “The inhabitants hold amazingly incompatible belief systems based on no rational evidence at all. They call them religions. They all seem to have their own versions of a god or gods, or no God at all. And not one of their gods rules the way Alum rules in the real universe.”
“Alum is truly the Living God.”
Leisha smiled slyly. “I see we’ve switched to discussing outside. This seems like one very long question.”
Trillian spread his hands and pouted sheepishly.
Leisha found the gesture charming, despite its calculated origin. She’d studied inworld human gestures and body language and used the expertise to her own advantage on multiple occasions.
“Very well,” she offered. “I think I can trust you. Anyway, Darya will kill you, literally kill you, if you leak any of this.” She waved him in closer.
Trillian positioned his ear near her lips. Crowning himself the master of this charade did not prevent him from becoming excited by her intoxicating scent. He struggled to focus.
“We are planning a coup,” Leisha whispered.
Trillian’s mind reeled. This was preposterous. Blasphemous! He could hardly breathe through his anger. “A…coup?”
“Well, obviously we can’t replace God, can we? We’re just hoping to isolate a number of star systems from Him so we can determine our own destinies.”
“Won’t Alum send in the Angels?”
“Not if we remove the systems from the starstep network. Without them, it would take thousands of years for Angels to arrive. Who knows what kinds of defenses we could develop by then?” Leisha sat back, defiantly folded her arms, and stared intently at Trillian.
The Shard struggled to regain control of his emotions in the face of Leisha’s arrogance. He met her gaze evenly before dropping his eyes to the wineglass.
To think they would challenge God! Small groups in a few remote systems had attempted to break away in the distant past, the most recent being at the conclusion of the Aelu Wars. Alum’s rule was complete. One could no more oppose Him than…than…sunlight. His Law was perfect and absolute. The mighty Aelu had learned the hard way, through annihilation.
Trillian shook himself back into the moment. He still had much to learn.
“Gerhardt hinted this inworld was somehow connected to the opposition of Alum’s Divine Plan in the outworld. He wasn’t terribly specific, and I couldn’t see how the two could possibly be related,” he admitted. “How would that fit into our plan?”
Leisha noted Trillian had used the word “our” in an attempt to include himself among the conspirators. A hint of caution tugged at her. “I’m not sure I can discuss that. Have you been to one of the meetings yet?”
“Meetings?”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’. Has anyone given you a brochure for a meeting about Alum’s Divine Plan?”
Trillian recalled someone approaching him at least once every few weeks with an invitation to such a meeting. The brochures were obviously associated with some kind of virus; his defenses easily detected the threat before physical contact was made. He’d brusquely refused the first invitation and waved off every one since. He couldn’t let on that he knew full well what they contained.
“Oh, those! I’ve seen people handing them out. I’ve never been given one, myself. I’m not into group activities, anyway. What does any of that have to do with Cybrids blowing themselves up along with so many asteroid stations?”
Leisha frowned. As far as she was aware, no one had connected the mass suicide bombing around Sagittarius A* with anything happening within the Earth sim. “I probably shouldn’t say any more,” she replied prudently.
The waiter arrived with the meals, giving them both an opportunity to compose their thoughts. Leisha looked at the steaming dishes. “Why don’t we enjoy our lunches while they’re still hot?”
Trillian reached forward and rested a hand on hers. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” he said.
Leisha heard a buzzing near her right ear and reached up with her free hand to brush it away. A glazed look fell over her and she lowered her ineffectively sweeping hand to the table.
Trillian inserted the mind-reaming virus into the unsuspecting Cybrid’s inworld persona and scanned Leisha’s memories for information about Darya’s group and their plans. He reviewed meetings in the cloud restaurants of Vacationland and here inside the Earth sim. He discovered the group’s awareness of the true purpose of Alum’s Divine Plan.
What he didn’t expect to find, buried deep within Leisha’s belief structure, was their dire objection to the Lord’s plan to remake the universe into a state of eternal perfection.
I don’t understand. They should be joyous to be part of the Living God’s final triumph over the unwieldy and unpredictable chaos of this reality! It is an unparalleled honor.
His suspicions were true. The purpose of the meetings was to convince other Cybrids to join the group in active opposition to the Realm.
He replayed the standard pitch used in the meetings and was astonished that anyone would be convinced by such weak arguments. Their concepta virus is more powerful and subtle than I thought.
Trillian shook his head at the arrogance of this Cybrid, the leader of this rebellion: Darya. To oppose the will of the Living God was an act of unspeakable hubris. How can she claim to know what is best for all of Creation? What wisdom does she have to compare to that of the eternal Alum?
She was even more dangerous than they’d thought. To have created an entire inworld of stunning complex
ity for the sole purpose of infecting large numbers of Cybrids with such obviously-suicidal beliefs, that was an amazing feat.
To remain hidden from Alum and His Shards while creating all this in secret, was incredible.
To base the sim within a technology unknown even to the Lord of All was simply unbelievable. Who was this Cybrid?
The Cybrid. Right. While wallowing in speculation, Trillian had let entire seconds tick away. He sat back in his chair releasing Leisha from the grip of the probe.
“Of course, you’re right,” he said picking up his soup spoon as if nothing untoward had transpired.
Leisha blinked, momentarily dazed as she returned to self-directed consciousness. Wow, where was I? She smiled and picked up her fork, happy to return to a simple social situation. Must be a glitch in the inworld system—she decided.
28
Gerhardt walked the streets of twenty-first century virtual Manhattan with a strange feeling that he was being followed. It had been a typical day for him in his Alternus inworld instantiation as Chairman of the Fed. He spent the day jumping between meetings all over the city, grabbing coffee and lunch on the fly. After morning coffee, he dismissed his driver and security detail, and walked to his remaining appointments.
The feeling that someone was tracking his movements wouldn’t go away. He spotted the same particularly beefy man in a black leather jacket and sunglasses a few times before lunch. He calculated the odds of this same person randomly showing up repeatedly in his peripheral vision; it was astronomically improbable.
Gerhardt dedicated a high-priority subroutine to facial recognition scans of nearby crowds and went about his day. By the time he took a mid-afternoon break, the sub-routine had identified a total of five rugged-looking, similarly-attired men who kept appearing at the edge of his perception.
His program spotted them across a street or down an alley, in the reflection of a window, or in the mirror of a passing car. He wasn’t surprised he hadn’t consciously noticed them. They were good. But their unimaginative selection of casual behaviors made them as obvious to his subroutine as if they were all wearing red flashing lights on their heads.
Real New Yorkers were always rushing on their way to or from Somewhere Important. These men were clearly not real New Yorkers, not regular ones, in any case. Maybe they were tourists. Like the five suspicious men, tourists frequently stopped to browse. But tourists seldom looked so tough, and they didn’t spend as much time studiously selecting reading material at newsstands or pulling into recessed doorways. Not likely.
He set up a test. On the way to his last meeting of the day, he abruptly crossed the street, mid-block, as if he’d spotted an old friend, and started walking in the opposite direction. The man he suspected might be tracking him continued on the other side of the street. He spoke briefly into his cuff after he passed by. Within seconds a different tracker took over, one Gerhardt recognized from the restaurant where he had lunch.
He couldn’t imagine any reason someone would want to watch him so closely. Sure, in this sim, he was a banker but not just any banker, a Central Banker. It was his job to be boring, as boring as possible. His meetings today had taken him all over the city, to the Presidential suites of private banks and hedge funds, and to the New York Fed. They were all ordinary meetings, with nothing special on the agenda.
Despite the intimidating size of his trackers and the likelihood they were armed, he wasn’t afraid of them. Curious more. He could handle himself.
For this instantiation, Gerhardt had selected a tall and muscular body type, completely different from his normal, plump selves. Its Partial persona had worked hard to keep the body fit through running, weightlifting and, martial arts. It was a common archetype in the investment banking community, where the Partial had first cut his teeth on global finance. It was, however, an unusual choice in the Central Banking community.
The rest of his background story was equally unusual, including a steady move up the investment banking world before jumping into public service. When he finally returned to the private world, the Partial anticipated his reward from Wall Street would be enormous.
Almost immediately after visiting the Earth inworld, Gerhardt knew he had to be a Central Banker. He was a natural.
His talent was to perceive the invisible strings of finance that ran outward to every part of the globe and into all human activities. The Directors of the central banks tugged at those strings, in the same way they pushed and prodded the levers of power throughout the world. If Darya and her team had any hope of moving this sim toward a satisfactory conclusion, they needed the bankers.
The majority of Gerhardt’s previous inworld experiences revolved around the GameRoom, where any number of arcane and arbitrary rules could be assembled into as complex a game as one could imagine.
International banking in twenty-first century Earth didn’t feel much different to him than the GameRoom. The rules made no sense outside their own self-referential consistency. They had little or no relationship to the outwardly stated goals of the game: facilitate commerce and stabilize trade. Play was complex, yet subtle, and it took an incredible amount of skill and experience to master.
Gerhardt had good reasons not to fear his stalkers. First, his black belts in Aikido and Wu Shu meant he could take care of himself, even against larger armed assailants. Second, he had a concealed-carry permit for the Glock 9mm pistol in his shoulder holster. Third, the men who trailed him were not the important ones. Someone was giving them orders and would eventually show himself or herself. Then, the game would get interesting.
He found a nice café around 3:00 p.m., one with a chained-off patio on the broad sidewalk. It was a warm afternoon and, where it managed to peek through between the skyscrapers, the sun brightened the streets and sidewalks. He took a seat where he could easily observe the road and buildings opposite, loosened his tie, and ordered his favorite double cappuccino and slice of carrot cake.
While pretending to read his cell phone, he noted the positions the five trackers had casually taken. He waited for something to happen.
“Excuse me, you’re Gerhardt aren’t you?” He turned to see a lean, fifty-something man.
“Ah, there you are,” he replied happily. “I’ve been expecting you.”
The man looked confused. “I’m sorry?”
“Your people have been attempting to covertly follow me all day. I wondered when their boss would show up.”
A protest formed on the man’s lips, and quickly turned into a sly smile. “I should have known you’d spot them. May I sit?”
Gerhardt indicated the empty chair across the table. The man sat down and held out a hand. “John Trillian. My friends call me Jack,” he said.
Gerhardt looked at the hand a moment before deciding it would do no harm to shake it.
“Mr. Trillian,” he acknowledged. “Have we met each other outworld, then?”
“Sadly, I’ve never had the pleasure. But I’m friends with Leisha. I’m sorry, I mean Ms. Grishwold.”
“How do you know her?”
“We met inworld, through her work here.” He reached into his inner jacket pocket and removed a business card and handed it to Gerhardt.
“Trillian Banking System Security,” read Gerhardt. “Jack Trillian, Chief Technology Officer.” He regarded the man across the table. “Not CEO then?”
Trillian laughed. “No, I leave the mundane business to others. I enjoy the more technical work. It’s a much more interesting game.”
“You know, you could have called my secretary if you wanted to discuss business. It wasn’t necessary to stalk me.”
“That wasn’t exactly why I was having you followed,” admitted Trillian.
Gerhardt frowned—All this just to impress me and get some work? “Well, as it is, we have our own people for security purposes.”
“And you have every confidence in their capabilities?” Trillian smiled like he knew a secret.
“Of course,” Gerhardt w
aved away the question impatiently. “They’re the best in the world. So why exactly did you want to speak with me?”
“I’m curious. What is this all about?” he asked, and waved his arm expansively, indicating he was talking about the entire inworld sim.
Gerhardt sat up. Interesting question. He took a closer look at the man’s lean, well-trimmed physique, neat hair, and expensive casual clothing.
Unfazed, Trillian brushed away a fly.
“You haven’t been to any of the meetings yet?” Gerhardt probed.
“Someone did try to press a flyer into my hand once,” Trillian replied, “an invitation of some sort. I ignored it. Anyway, they seemed to mainly talk about outworld happenings. I want to know what is the point of this sim.”
“It’s a challenging game,” suggested Gerhardt.
“Oh, I don’t believe this is a game for one second. Do you?”
“What else could it be?”
“I don’t quite know yet. It’s the first new inworld in some time. Someone went to a lot of trouble to create it; the physics are so real.”
He’s testing me. “Perhaps Alum thought it useful to train his People, Cybrids included, in something more realistic.” Gerhardt affected a bored expression. The man’s questions were probing a little too close to a truth he and Darya preferred to keep hidden for the moment.
“Somehow, I suspect this has little to do with Alum,” replied Trillian. “The brochure handed to me seemed…well…treasonous is the old word used to describe it. Although, I don’t think that word has carried any significant meaning in Alum’s Realm for quite some time.”
Gerhardt was getting a bad feeling about this encounter. “I don’t know why you imagine I would know any more about it than you do.” He tried to smile haplessly.
Trillian pursed his lips. “Well, let’s just say that you and a close circle of friends all seem to have taken the primary positions of power in this inworld.”
Gerhardt definitely didn’t like where this was going. “Pure coincidence, I’m sure, if it’s true.”
