“Any progress on the Elsa front?” Ethan said, changing the subject. “Maybe if we can’t win the war, we can at least win a few battles.”
“She only sees me when she wants me to kill somebody. Payment comes in the form of hate sex. So, as good as things can be expected, I guess.”
“Why did she agree to take Sabrina’s role, out of curiosity?” Ethan’s face showed more stifled emotions. No doubt the same ones Roman was stifling, along with a whole extra layer of guilt; Ethan was the one with the bigger brain, so he should have seen a way to rescuing both of them from a fate neither desired.
Roman took a deep breath and let it out. “If I had to hazard a guess, she still thinks she can save me, but she needed access to more mind power to do it.”
Ethan nodded, mulling the matter over in his own brain. “Yes, she would be the most qualified to do so. She pioneered the trail you’re on. I must say I’m somewhat relieved. Alexa has her limits. It appears we’re all cursed by your most singular realization; you can’t get a person to do what a person was not destined to do.”
“So have we spent enough time feeling sorry for one another for one day?”
Ethan gave him a rueful smile. “I’m opening the solar system to corporate expansion. The sooner the battle lines shift to out here, the less work there’ll be for you to do. And the more challenges for Alexa. Speaking of being her bitch, I’m afraid keeping her happy is a never-ending chore. Maybe if your work load slackens you’ll reconsider my offer to step down. At least make use of the extra downtime to see if you and Elsa can get back some of your mojo.”
“I think it’s too late for either of us, but I appreciate your half-hearted, half-assed gesture all the same.”
Ethan took a deep breath, held it, and killed the line.
No sooner had he done so than Roman buckled at the knees and roared like a wounded lion. Every cell in his body felt as if it had been put on an anvil and hammered. The pounding just grew more zealous with each passing nanosecond. A fire roared up the hollow cavity of every nerve, flaring across every synapse. His consciousness, instead of fading, by virtue of being so utterly overwhelmed, just got sharper, so he could experience the heightened anguish. And then, in an all-consuming supernova of pain, he felt himself yanked from his tether to this timeline.
The physical universe was just gone.
He was drifting in the currents of oblivion, caught in a riptide, with force and direction, but nothing material to latch on to. Just cold blackness.
“Come on, Roman, think. How can you even survive here? Maybe this is not oblivion, at least not as we traditionally understand it. Maybe it’s more like Lazlo’s Akashic field. A medium not too unlike amniotic fluid that nurtures everything within it. The divine ground, as the Buddhists would have it, out of which all creation arises, any and all parallel universes. Without this medium the holographic universe principle wouldn’t be possible, for there would be no womb to manifest life from. That being the case… maybe you can learn to communicate with it. Signal it that this is not where you belong.
“Yeah, right. Maybe that’s why they call it oblivion. Without a way to communicate with it you may as well be adrift in the big nothing.”
A short while later he was back in the war room.
He could feel ants crawling along his skin as if suffering from alcohol withdrawal as a consequence of his nervous system firing back up. He couldn’t stop scratching himself.
The clock on the wall alerted him to the fact that he’d been gone nearly an hour this time.
Just as well Ethan had missed this latest episode.
He had a solar system to run, and by the rate things were going, by the end of a month, that might well be a galaxy. Alexa would be hard at work generating the necessary Singularity reaction needed to take genetically and nano-enhanced humans further and further out across the cosmos in less and less time. For a DNA-computer brain she chewed up time better than a quantum computer.
Ethan, safe to say, had his hands full. He didn’t need to know the full extent of Roman’s problems.
THIRTY-ONE
Elsa stood before the floor-to-ceiling metal-glass panes of her penthouse office overlooking the city. Since assuming Sabrina’s role as queen bee she’d adopted her habit of wearing nothing but black. Like with martial artists who sported black belts as a testament to their having achieved the highest possible mastery of their profession, the color gave testament to the flawless performance that was now and forever more demanded of her.
But it wasn’t her reflection in the glass that was the real subject of her attention.
No one bothered with TV anymore, she thought, gazing at the vista; they just stared out their windows. Each day the world was remade anew with never-before seen wonders. How could Roman, a dreamy idealist who knew so little about the real world, have gotten it so right?
The mind power unleashed on the world all at once was staggering. With every human being now rocking a DNA-neuronet computer spread over their brains like an umbrella holding out the rain, or like another layer of dura mater, courtesy of Ethan and Alexa’s hack, practically everyone on the planet was now the equivalent of a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates or a Capelo Minsky. The result was this. A world that wouldn’t settle into anything recognizable from one day to the next.
Yesterday it was air cars growing in such number that the City AI had to regulate everyone to assigned invisible air-lanes only the onboard computers could identify. Thanks to 3D printers that could spit out virtually any product on demand now, again courtesy of however many upgraded minds it took to procure that miracle, it didn’t take long for just the early adopters of air cars to transform the city.
Today was what? She kept staring out the window with full confidence that today would be no different than any other day. “Holy shit!” She ducked reflexively as the dragon swooped by, pulled up and out of view at the last second, only to perch on the pinnacle of the skyscraper across the street from her. It roared and sent its flames blasting straight at her. She jumped back just as reflexively. “Oh my God!”
Of course, the windows had been upgraded, as with the rest of the building to withstand moody dragons. At least in whatever sectors they were allowed to roam in. The animals were being kept like zoo pets by the City AI. They were allowed to fly over only regions they were given access to. If they tried to broach the invisible barriers, the dragons would feel the sting of crossing the line, like a dog with an electric collar getting too close to a submerged electric fence. The sectors had been chosen by majority vote as to which residents were up for dragons in their neighborhoods. The actual tech modifications to allow even these sectors to withstand cohabitating with a dragon had taken thousands of citizen scientists to procure, but virtually no time to procure it. Her DNA computer brain, now enhanced to data mine the internet in ways she never could before, filled in the missing pieces for her. But it couldn’t chase away the childlike wonder. She appreciated the fact that she could still hold on to it despite the souped up brain.
“You see the problem?” a voice said, coming from behind her.
Sabrina turned to see Victor Omally who’d snuck into the room, not wanting to interrupt her vigil. CEO of Tronics. His ten thousand dollar suit, of course, could now be 3D printed for about ten bucks. That had to boil his blood. No one stepped into her office anymore unless their blood was good and boiling. His family heirloom jewelry he was using for cufflinks, tie pin, and finger rings, could be 3D printed for just a tad bit more, considering procuring gold, and other precious metals on demand was a recent tweak to the 3D printers. By tomorrow though, things trending the way they were, those accoutrements might be procured for a few dollars less than the cheap mockup of a suit, indistinguishable from the real thing.
Victor could easily stand on the cover of a romance novel, though possibly a paranormal romance. He had a bit of that old vampire charm that only gathers around Dracula, not his underlings. Victor was certainly no less of a blood sucker of
the people, but he went in more for psychic vampirism, insisting on subservience from his subordinates, something also in short supply these days.
“What is it, Victor? You trying to gum up my view again?”
He smiled politely and plastically and averted his eyes. Guilty as charged. “Mercy, Elsa. You appreciate the kind of overhead corporations our size have. We can’t compete with these citizen scientists who have zero overhead unless we have some kind of edge.”
“That edge being?” She turned her back on him, not done enjoying the dragon on today’s menu.
“Perhaps if you could see your way to letting us introduce a small, entirely-manageable-I-assure-you biotoxin that rapidly ages anyone who insists on prolific procreation of ideas, to slow down the rate of citizen science creativity. A high risk death toll perhaps among the ones who use it at all, so that most people wouldn’t even try.”
“I feel your pain, Victor. But the fact is if you don’t have mind-empowerment to sell in some form or another, you’ve got nothing worth buying anymore. All those citizen scientists out there want is to be even more prolific inventors than they are now so it takes even less time and effort to procure their magic.”
“But…” he said, his tone standing his ground for him, even when his words for failing him.
“But there’s a Space Age on, and we have a cosmos to fill overnight. Honestly, Victor, get with the program. We need to figure out how not only to empower these citizen scientists further, but how to make more of them. We’ve got an entire cosmos to fill before any of us can feel safe. You want to feel threatened? Think less of your bottom line over the next few months as you retool and redirect your production lines to something germane anymore to satisfy the new supply and demand curves, and more of the real threats out there.
“It’s not just you thinking of ways to sabotage the greater good anymore, with the means to do it, it’s billions of citizen scientists, each with the same ability now and with near zero costs to execute on their mad ideas. Honestly, none of us is safe anymore until we can teleport most anywhere in the heavens the instant some pandemic breaks out here, the likes of which you’re suggesting to me.”
She finally turned to face him again, having had her fill of the dragon hunting the flying cows that someone had designed for it to feed on, clawing and ripping away at its prey, feeding, and finally preening. “I’m sure you have many more Armageddon scenarios you could run by me for approval. Don’t you see, the time when people like you alone could be bothered to come up with them has passed? Now we’re in an age where anyone who can’t get with the creative zeitgeist has become another you. You want to feel cheated, consider that your entire personality is but a subroutine running in most people’s minds anymore.”
“But…” There was that unrelenting tone again. Like any good salesman, and most CEOs were, above all, salesmen, logic didn’t impress him in the least. Rhetoric was their true coin of the realm. Pathos and Ethos following as close seconds for playing to their customers’ emotions.
“You want me to compromise with you, Victor, meet you half way? Fine. Here it is. I concede that not everyone wants to play citizen scientist. And many of the ones that do, would just as soon it not take more than an hour of their day, because honestly, they’d rather be sailing, or painting murals on walls or God knows what else. We need Tronics to motivate those people to get behind the Space Age with a little more gusto. That’s your competitive niche. It’s the one remaining competitive niche for anyone at your level. To find some way that escapes all the other corporations for reaching those people.”
“But what of Alexa? No one can beat her at that game. We’ve tried.”
Elsa sighed. “I have it on good authority that Alexa is soon to be preoccupied elsewhere.”
“Ethan. He keeps you in the loop, and Roman, just no one else,” Victor said sounding like he wanted to break something, and nearly spitting at her unwittingly from across the room he’d put so much force behind the objection.
She paraded herself back and forth in front of her picture window like a windshield wiper that just couldn’t erase the truth raining down on them from the outside. “Soon Alexa will be spread thin overseeing a galactic federation, and thinner still, overseeing a universe, and thinner still come time to expand across the multiverse. That’s a lot of upside growth for you, Victor, and the others, filling the increasing gaps in her reasoning.”
Victor came over to the window and stared out at it silently. At the dragon, at the aircars, at the rest of the rapidly morphing city. He seemed to be processing what she was saying for the first time. “Yes, that is a lot of upside. We like weakened adversaries. What are wolves without sheep, eh?”
Elsa stopped her strutting, her face inches from his, and smiled. “Indeed.”
Victor shook her hand, as if another person entirely. “Always a pleasure, Elsa. It’s not as if you’re ruling the world. It’s as if we are, and you’re just the genie granting us the magic to do so.”
“I think we both know that for me to do anything else would be foolish. And perhaps even out of character.”
He retreated a couple steps back, bowed to her, and excused himself from the room.
***
Victor had barely exited Elsa’s office when Roman sauntered in. “I need some hate sex, now.” He swept her generous smart screen desktop of clutter with the back of his hand to make a bed for them. “Lie yourself down, woman. This is going to hurt.”
She chewed off a smile as best she could. “One plus of having you in warrior mode, saves me a lot of lip. I get enough of that from these forever-politicking CEOs.”
“I’m serious,” he said, “I need to be fucked and fucked badly.”
She draped her hair behind her ears and folded her arms, having more fun denying him, though she was secretly as turned on as ever by his boyish charm. Whether the idealistic dreamer back at the Daytona commune, or her knight in shining flexible body armor, he was as uncomplicated as ever. Something else quite refreshing from all the people she was forced to deal with. “What has you so worked up, Roman?”
He paced and ran his hand through his hair. The simple gesture ripped at the seams of his body suit. He was either becoming stronger and more muscular, faster than the suit could adapt, or he was that tense. He stared at the gashes in the seams along his arm and said, “Fuck it. Needs to come off anyway so I can hump you madly.” He just tore the suit off and stood before her naked in all his manhood practically begging her not to reject him. When she still refused to budge, he said, “I got sucked up in an oblivion drift today. Lasted nearly an hour. You’re the only one who can save me.”
She came up to him and whispered in his ear. “I’m sorry. What was that?”
He smiled and used the tension in his face to squeeze out the tears that were welling in his sockets. “You heard me.”
“No, I don’t think I did.”
His mood changed again, as he held her up by her neck, dangling her off the floor, crushing her larynx. “I swear to God, I hate you so much. I’m going to hurt you so bad. You’ll think my dick is boring another Lincoln tunnel right through you.”
She pulled his hands off her and threw him backwards so hard he broke the smartscreen desk top. Landed on the floor in a bed of shattered smart glass.
They proceeded to roll around in it, ravaging one another, their body nano having to heal them from the nicks and slashes and gouges the bed of shattered glass wrought on their bodies.
Yes, he could just as easily have said, “I love you so much.” But the fact was, she hated him for betraying all that he was for her. Couldn’t forgive him. The guilt weighed on her and made her weak and she hated that and so by extension hated him all the more. For his part, he hated that she chose the easy path for herself instead of the much harder one he’d laid out for her, one that though difficult at least promised a character arc leading to redemption, renewal and rebirth into a person she might actually love.
Where had the
y gone so wrong in acting so right?
By now, he’d brought down the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the office filled with their books and assorted objets d’art. When the floor couldn’t contain their passion anymore, he charged the glass panes with her wrapped around his waist. He was fully intent on pile driving deeper into her using the unyielding bulletproof windows to ensure that her body had nowhere else to go but deeper down his shaft.
But, of course, he broke through the windows.
And so unwittingly created a new drama.
The dragon, bioengineered with a relentlessly high metabolism so watching him the livelong day through the windows would be as arresting as it could possibly be for fans, decided it would make them its latest meal.
It grabbed them up, one in each set of talons, pulling them off of one another. Roman used the one patch of his uniform still stuck to his shoulder that hadn’t completely been ripped off to regrow a full bodysuit. Ah, the magic of self-replicating nano! He then initiated the thrusters in the suit and force-propelled himself towards Elsa. Once he had his hands on the dragon’s claws, he pried them open and she dropped out of its hands, plummeting towards the ground. Alas, one problem at a time.
He dove after her, parachute-rescue style, grabbed hold of her, and blasted them out of the dragon’s clutches as the creature was reaching for them yet again.
Playing rocket man, he was a lot more maneuverable than the dragon on the sharp turns between buildings. But there was the fact that he was in the middle of making out so didn’t have his entire mind on the project of dragon avoidance.
He managed to knock them both out by colliding with the nearest building. Elsa was temporarily lost to the world. But he was lost to the void, yet again. The current he was in stronger than ever.
When he snapped to, the dragon had them both on its perch on top one of the skyscrapers. It had all but eviscerated Elsa, and was chewing on her intestines. She was calmly reading a copy of Dean C. Moore’s Escape From the Future, turning the latest page. Maybe one of the city’s residents, observing her plight from a high-rise patio, had thrown her a copy. “Any time, lover,” she said, noticing Roman was conscious again.
Biohackers: Cybernetic Agents Page 29
