The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  Darya walked up to one of the blank interior walls. She waved a hand in front of her and the association network representation of a concepta appeared as shimmering green print in front of the cream-colored wall. She motioned for Timothy to join her.

  “This is the real you,” she said. “These are the data structures that represent your concepta and persona. This represents what you know, believe, remember, like, dislike, and so on.”

  Timothy stared in wonder. He noticed some movement off to one edge of the graphical text. “Why is this part changing?”

  “As you have new experiences, your processing algorithms update the data structures. This part shows you’re thinking about this new experience.”

  “That’s me, thinking?”

  Darya nodded.

  “I’m looking at myself thinking?”

  “That’s right.”

  “My head hurts,” Timothy said, looking around for a non-existent chair to sit in. “It looks like gibberish to me. Do you understand this?”

  Darya waved her hand again, and more writing appeared in mid-air. “This is me,” she said. “Unlike in humans, Cybrid thought processes can be called to consciousness and inspected directly. It has certain advantages, especially during disagreements. Though we don’t use it inworld very often.”

  She pointed to a region in the upper-left portion of the network. “This is the basic data structure for the local region of space. It tells me where the local stars, planets, and asteroids are. One of the great things about being a Cybrid is that I can copy this information directly over to you, and then you’ll know what I know.”

  She drew a circle around the region, grabbed the enclosed data structure as if it were a ball, and pulled it from the matrix. A copy of the structure slid out, trailing a few broken links, fractured arcs, and isolated nodes. She tossed the whole thing toward Timothy’s visible concepta. It hit near the middle and stuck, rearranged itself, and connected the broken links to some of his already-existing nodes.

  Timothy gasped. “I can see them! The stars and planets. Even the asteroids. I can see them in my mind. I know what they’re called and how to find them.”

  He walked back to the window and pointed. “That’s Sagittarius A*. There’s S0-102. And we can’t see them, but the nearest three Deplosion array elements should be right about there, there, and there.”

  “That’s just a glimpse of what it’s like to be a Cybrid.”

  “Oh, Darya. It’s so wonderful. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “How could you believe this without experiencing it?”

  “Point taken. Once I’m fully integrated into my new body, will I see all this directly? Will I be able to explore it on my own?”

  Darya nodded.

  Timothy looked out at the crater one last time, his face rapt with the thought of a universe to explore.

  “Okay, I think I’m ready now,” he said, turning back to face into the room. “Though I will miss how peaceful it is in here. I hope we’ll have a chance to simply enjoy life for a while.”

  “Once we get to my base, we’ll have a chance to rest,” Darya replied. “But right now, millions of Cybrids are trapped inworld, including Mary. We can’t leave them there.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Darya walked to the wall and inserted her crystalline chips into waiting slots that had appeared. “My plan for getting off this asteroid is in here. Wait for my signal.” With that, she dissolved.

  Timothy felt irresistibly sleepy. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, it was to a new universe.

  10

  Darya didn’t dare take her eyes off the two Securitors hovering high above. She suspected they had orders to detain, possibly to kill, anyone who attempted to leave the recharging station. After a few hours,

  Darya’s Partial returned and reintegrated, informing her that the required code had been uploaded into Timothy’s concepta. As soon as Timothy finished integrating the new knowledge, they could make their move.

  If only it were that simple! Her escape plan had no more than a fifty-fifty chance of success but she couldn’t come up with anything better. So long as our personas remain intact, our trueselves can be replaced.

  Timothy pinged Darya. His system was updated and ready to go.

  Using the control virus she’d inserted into all 18,457 bodies recharging in the crater, Darya sent out the first signal.

  Inside the crater, twenty Cybrid bodies detached from their docking bays and drifted upward.

  They go up so slowly, they look like helium balloons. She was struck by an ancient memory—a child in some park letting go of a string and shouting with glee as his bright red globe ascended into the heavens.

  One of the Securitors moved in to investigate the ascending Cybrids. They didn’t respond to anything except automatic ID pings.

  The Securitor’s manipulators snaked out and latched onto the nearest Cybrid, then moved onto the next, and the next, until it had similarly collected all twenty.

  Hopefully, it thinks there’s just been some kind of docking malfunction.

  Darya released a wave of thirty more Cybrids from their recharging bays.

  The second Securitor left its station and rushed into the crater to respond. It neared a free-floating Cybrid and demanded it return to its dock. When the Cybrid didn’t respond, the Security blasted it with an energy beam. The Cybrid blew apart; its molten fragments cooled rapidly into slag and continued to drift.

  The Securitor watched for a few seconds to see if any of the remaining free-floating Cybrids would react. Their shells, free of any occupying consciousness, floated placidly upward. The Securitor fired another half dozen energy beams, and another half dozen Cybrid trueself bodies were blasted to pieces.

  Darya cringed with each loss. She hoped the inworlds would hold their personas safely until she could find new bodies for them. With Trillian’s involvement, it’s hard to say. But their permadeaths will be on his hands, not mine.

  Before the Securitor could target any more of them, she released the fifty docked Cybrids surrounding Timothy and herself.

  The first Securitor freed the twenty it had corralled and blasted them. Before it had finished, two hundred more Cybrids began drifting up from the depths of the crater. A few seconds later, another thousand rose, and then two thousand more.

  The second Securitor raced into the crowd of rising Cybrids. It opened an infinitely deep, black gash in its side. The creature’s lightning fast manipulators wrangled and scooped up Cybrids and stuffed them into the gaping maw—a microverse holding cell from which it could retrieve them later in Alum’s presence.

  Darya released five thousand more Cybrids, and triggered a hundred of them to transmit a signal to scatter. Fifty meters above the asteroid surface, the Cybrids’ matter-antimatter MAM drives kicked into maximum power. Cybrids rocketed away on random vectors, pursued by energy blasts from the Securitors below. There were too many for the Securitors to handle; most of the Cybrids were going to escape their guards.

  Darya sent a pulsed signal to Timothy. The two of them detached and drifted upward a few centimeters.

  At the same time, she released another five thousand Cybrids. As their drives reached full power and they blasted into space, Darya and Timothy drifted toward the edge of the crater.

  The Securitors were too busy chasing thousands of rogues to notice.

  As another wave of Cybrids lifted from the surface, Darya slipped over the lip of the crater and into the rock-filled blast zone around it. Keeping low, she headed for the rendezvous location to wait for Timothy, who was only a minute behind.

  You made it!—she sent by laser pulse.

  Was there ever any doubt?—he replied.

  A blinding light cleaved the dark sky in two, saving Darya from having to answer. She looked up in time to witness thousands of Cybrids being vaporized by the planet-busting beams of a squad of Angels.

  Angels! There weren’t supposed to be any Angels w
ithin a thousand light years of the Deplosion Array project.

  She froze.

  The presence of Angels implied many things, none of which fed her optimism. It meant Alum was taking the possibility of rebellious actions near the Deplosion array seriously. It meant the thousands of Cybrids she’d set adrift had overwhelmed the Securitors’ ability to keep up, and caused them to call for help.

  It also meant the Securitors were free now to investigate the cause of the Cybrid mayhem. That spelled trouble.

  If the Securitors put it all together, if they tied the laser signals that first caught their attention to the Cybrids’ inexplicable behavior, they were likely to conclude someone on the asteroid surface was directly responsible.

  My plan worked too well; they could be here in minutes. We need to put some distance between us and that recharging station! But where?

  The presence of Angels made it too dangerous to leave the surface, and she didn’t know anywhere to hide on the asteroid itself.

  Just move—she thought. Move as far away from the crater as we can and gain some time to work out a better plan.

  The two Cybrids set out at a slow, steady pace, hugging boulders, hills, and crater rims along the way.

  Darya felt a radar pulse wash over her.

  “Stop!” she signalled.

  Timothy halted.

  “Quick, back up 3.6 meters and stop there.”

  Timothy reversed course as instructed.

  Darya returned to the spot where she’d been when the radar passed over. They waited silently in the shadows.

  Another pulse passed over.

  The Securitors appear to be doing a quick scan of the area from high above the recharging station, and comparing images a few seconds apart to identify any movement in the surrounding area. With any luck, their scanning resolution won’t be high enough to pick out our perfectly spherical shapes against all the ragged rocks, ridges, and depressions of the planetoid surface. If we’re careful, we ought to be indistinguishable from natural features.

  Minutes dragged on without follow-up pings or the sudden arrival of Securitors or Angels.

  “I think we can move again,” she sent to Timothy, “We need to keep close to the crater rims, and move across open ground only where there are lots of boulders.”

  She wished she’d taken the time years ago to map the surface of the asteroid, but since nobody ever ventured outside the recharging stations on these things, it had always been a low priority. These particular asteroids had all been mined and discarded for anything useful ages ago. Except for support services, there was nothing to see on the rest of the surface. That was one of the reasons this chunk of rock was chosen to host a recharging station.

  Darya and Timothy drifted slowly, cautiously, away from the crater where the trueself bodies of Mary, Leisha, and Qiwei were still docked.

  The activity behind them grew fainter and fainter, until the signs of commotion dropped from sight. Likewise, the radar fishing expedition that had nearly caught them grew increasingly random and sparse. With one final weak pulse, it stopped altogether. The pair stood still, awash in ghostly echoes stemming from doubt and anticipation, unable to flee freely for fear of being trapped by a fresh random pulse.

  The paralyzing doubt festered and grew. Had their freedom been worth the horrific cost of their escape? The Angels had blasted thousands of Cybrid bodies into plasma. Millions of her colleagues, many of them friends, were now trapped inside her Alternus simulation.

  Or rather, inside Trillian’s sick distortion of my Alternus simulation.

  If she and Timothy were to rocket away, the Securitors would detect the trails from their propulsion units would make it easy to detect them against the distant light of stars.

  How long can we hide out?—she wondered. If the Securitors made a concerted effort to find them on the surface, there’d be no way to avoid being discovered.

  They came to an intersection of two crater rims, and Darya noticed stars twinkling far off to one side. Interesting. Little else besides the presence of surface gasses causes that effect. Aside from the recharging station in the other direction, this should be a dead chunk of rock. So what’s distorting the starlight, and is there some way we can use it? She magnified her view of the region. No melting ice visible. Atmosphere? Out here? Not likely. The backwash of a rocket? If it was from a propulsion unit, there’d be Securitors nearby.

  “I need to go check something out. Please move ever so slowly, look for the largest boulder you can find nearby, and hide. Don’t move again until I tell you.”

  She focused her main light receptors on the region, and ramped up the magnification to find the source of the gasses.

  The stars twinkled in exactly the same place several times over the next few minutes. She couldn’t see anything moving, but couldn’t determine what was making them shimmer. She needed another perspective.

  “Stay there. I’m going to move closer.”

  “Wait! What if you don’t come back? What would I do on my own?” Even over the short laser channel, Darya could make out the tremor in his voice.

  What could he do if she didn’t come back? He was brand new to the real universe. Though he knew the basics, surviving past the end of his charge cycle would require much more than that. Was it right to abandon him here?

  “I’m not going to lie and tell you it’ll all be okay,” she answered. “Maybe this is some sort of trap, or maybe we are being tracked. If I don’t come back or signal in fifteen minutes, return to the recharging station at the crater and turn yourself in. None of this has been your fault. Tell them your story and say you’ll be a faithful and productive Cybrid. Tell them how I tricked you and lied to you. With any luck, they’ll be curious enough to question you.” She shut up before adding, “...instead of just blasting you into dust on sight.”

  “Well, if that’s my only other option, I might as well come with you. I don’t belong in this world. They’ll simply return me to Partial status in DonTon. I couldn’t bear going back to being a Partial now. I’m better off taking my chances with you.”

  Darya didn’t respond right away. I have to admit, he has a valid point.

  She spent a few seconds surveying the landscape around the projected source of the gas emissions as best she could with the available light.

  “You’re right. Besides, a second viewing angle will help pinpoint where the gas is coming from.”

  She sent him the map she’d constructed, and indicated his route to reach a useful vista. “Make your way along this path to this point,” she said. “It’s a little higher than most of the surrounding landscape. And stick to the shadows.”

  “That won’t do me any good if they’re using active sensors.”

  “True. But please humor me. It makes me feel better about sending you into potential danger.”

  Timothy shot her the equivalent of a Cybrid eye roll. “Again,” he replied, “You must stop being so protective. I’m a full partner in this.”

  Darya realized the futility of arguing with his nineteenth-century chivalry. “Okay. I hope it doesn’t destroy your cover story if we’re caught.”

  That is, if you are caught—she modified in her own mind. I will be destroyed or destroy myself before I let myself be taken prisoner by Alum.

  “Where will you be?”

  Darya sent a second route to Timothy’s map. “I’ll try to get to this position. Once I get there, I’ll send you a laser ping and we can compare what we see.”

  “Very well.” Timothy moved off to his assigned path. He sent a quick message back. “Be careful. And, Darya…”

  “Yes, Timothy?”

  “Thank you for this life you’ve given me, however brief it may be.”

  “Let’s try to think positively.”

  “Stiff upper lip and all?”

  Darya laughed; she hadn’t heard that phrase for ages. “Let’s just get into position and exchange data.”

  “I look forward to your ping.” Timot
hy continued outward.

  Darya accelerated along her chosen route. She reached the high rim of a crater a few hundred meters from the projected source of the emissions, came to a stop, and peered out from behind the largest boulder she could find. It sheltered too little of her spherical body, but it would have to do.

  If there’s a Securitor down there, we’re finished anyway.

  She focused her visual receptors into the shadows. She could make out dozens of boulders and small meteorite impact sites. Without the stars behind, she couldn’t spot the source of whatever gasses were present. Maybe Timothy was having better luck from his vantage point.

  She sent him a line-of-sight laser ping and was rewarded with a direct connection in milliseconds. “Can you see anything?” she asked.

  “It’s dark,” he replied. “I can’t tell if there’s a Securitor down there. Could be nothing but rocks.”

  Do I dare try an active probe? If there was a Securitor down there, a single radar microburst would reveal her presence. Then again, if there were any Securitors following them, they already knew she and Timothy were out here. One brief microwave pulse would illuminate every detail in the field and end her uncertainty. It’s worth the risk. I hope.

  Darya extended a thin array of antennae as wide as she dared and transmitted a quick, directional pulse into the area between her and Timothy.

  The reflected microwaves revealed the plane below in detail and, more importantly, the source of the gasses: a gaping hole in the ground. No, a cave.

  “Aha!,” she sent to Timothy. “I took a quick look by radar. It’s just a cave.”

  No answer.

  “Timothy? Are you there?”

  “You might have asked my opinion before you risked giving away your position,” he responded.

  Darya felt his rebuke. “I’m sorry. You’re right. We weren’t getting anywhere. I guess I’m not used to working with a partner. I should have asked you.”

  “Just so you know, I would have agreed with you, to scan actively.”