Biohackers: Cybernetic Agents

by Dean C. Moore

  Zoya had gotten so lost in the debate, she’d nearly lost sight of Eva’s one on one battle with a couch that had morphed its seat cushions into boxing gloves at the same time it unfolded from its horizontal position to fight her as a kind of goliath-bot-junior. While keeping her humanoid appearance, Eva in turn had morphed into a robotic version of herself, more cybernetic than true hybrid. Her blood was now dark green and acted like acid against the junior goliath-bot attempting to dismantle her with its boxing. Zoya decided the skirmish wasn’t truly worth her attention anyway, and returned her focus to the debate. That was when Couch Bot delivered a chest blow to Eva so impacting that she flew apart into a thousand pieces. Zoya sighed. None of them were the robotics engineer that Eva was, and so putting her back together was going to be a real chore, especially fighting off the AGI. She might just be down for the count until they could get themselves out of here.

  Buck Tooth said, “No matter how much of the surface area of our vessels and installations are eroded by whatever weaponry is used against them, the latest generation of self-replicating nano fills the void in nanoseconds.”

  “Nanoseconds might be all the other side needs,” said another astute listener. He was the sixteen year old with green spiked hair and black fingernails and rainbow colored lipstick.

  The lecturer finally sighed. Evidently frustrated with ever getting out the rest of his lecture while his listeners remained hung up on this one point. He checked his watch nervously, possibly wondering if he was going to be able to clear the room for the next meeting. “The nanites shielding contains millions of levels. Each one capable of morphing their duties from quantum encoding to buffer the shielding as needed. More to the point, they can evolve countermeasures for whatever attack they’re under on the fly. So no more than a layer or two of the nanites is ever sacrificed. Inconsequential as regards overall defenses.”

  That seemed to satisfy his detractors finally and the room settled down.

  Zoya wondered why the AGI was being so forthcoming with its proprietary information. Was it simply that confident that the girls would never escape its clutches? Or was it half hoping they would, putting an end to its reign once and for all? Maybe for all its countermeasures, a twenty-four-seven existence in virtual reality was something it could no longer bear. And so it was giving up the goods on itself the only way it could, to those few that had made it this far against her defenses.

  The mystery of exactly what was up with this AGI would have to be solved later.

  Roman was making his move.

  The AGI sim world was dissolving, right before their eyes. And the AGI’s breakoff-personalities weren’t weathering the transition particularly well. They were freaking out, running for the exits, screaming, and running over one another in a complete stampede.

  A fire alarm had been set off, the AGI as much conceding that anyone with an original idea for how to get out of this was welcome to take it, presuming they could open an exit that actually led somewhere.

  Seconds later Zoya and the rest of the Sexy Six were caught up in oblivion’s drifts, much as Roman had been so many times. Their first time in, they weren’t exactly weathering it any better. Their minds depended that much more on constant computations. Perhaps they should have taken Roman’s Zen training on how to quiet their minds more seriously. It might well be the only thing that could buy them time from falling prey to total insanity. As it was, their minds were defensively amping up their computations to compensate for the sudden lack of input, especially from the other sisters, as their parallel-array gave way to oblivion’s drifts.

  Zoya knew instinctively that she had to conserve her mind power or burn out even before she lost her mind. Maybe, considering the alternative, burnout was indeed the way to go.

  ***

  Roman materialized back on the pod people’s planetoid, though they were long gone. His body was on fire. So much so that he instinctively rolled on the dusty ground to put himself out, gasping and bellowing, before he realized it was just his nervous system running awry again. He stood up, dusted himself off and forced a state of calm on himself.

  He spied Ethan who was waiting for him where he’d left him. “It’s done,” Roman said.

  “And the girls?”

  Roman averted his eyes. “I don’t know. With any luck the failsafe measure worked.”

  “Did you seriously just blink the entire multiverse out of existence, Roman?”

  Roman looked at him teary-eyed, feeling the weight of his guilt like a thousand billion suns. “It was the only way.”

  “Christ, that was a hell of a risk!”

  “The worst part is, that stunt may well have to be repeated many times over before the last of your rebel corporations are put down.”

  “But how…?”

  “It’s just possible I’m the second coming.”

  Ethan snorted derisively.

  “I imagine with time we’ll come up with a better explanation,” Roman said. “I guess that one will have to stand for now.”

  “I guess it hardly matters any more but…”

  “How did I get around Woback’s quantum AI? You forget, quantum computers evolve like the rest of us. You just have to find the faults in their architecture, divine their error rate, craft a superior machine, have it go in and take over the other one, then self-dissolve per its instructions. Easy enough when your computer is nothing more than a software simulation, and your Multiverse Man can search through time until he comes up with an answer.”

  Ethan lowered his eyes. “All the same, it seems that safeguarding the best of all possible worlds becomes more treacherous by the day.”

  The girls started materializing around them. Roman couldn’t help but notice somewhat jealously that if they were showing any aftereffects of their stint in oblivion, their DNA enhancements allowed them to take it in stride.

  Zoya was the first to speak. “You have no idea how true your words are, Ethan.”

  Evidently the girls had overheard his last remark. She gave Ethan and Roman the data dump, sparing her larynx.

  “Jesus!” Ethan exclaimed. “Just one corporation had so many ways of getting around Alexa… It’s a humbling thought.”

  “How did you girls make it back?” Roman asked.

  They showed him the umbrella shape in their hands. The pill that his neuronet had injected them with so long ago, back when they boarded the Phantom together for the first time, and Roman upgraded it to time slip, had activated.

  “Shiiiiit,” he mumbled. “So now you share my dark fate.”

  After a beat, Ethan said, “Maybe not, Roman.” He was evidently reticent about spilling even now. His tense body language said as much.

  “What is it?” Roman said in a tone suggesting he’d beat it out of him if he had to.

  “You were gone a long time, Roman. No one knew if you would ever make it back. That left a void that needed filling. Nature abhors a vacuum, and all that.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  “We decided that one of you wasn’t enough anymore to keep a lid on things. Alexa and I have a factory not too unlike the one you helped me shut down here today. There are now millions of you. Overkill for right now. But at the rate at which we’re expanding through the heavens, they’ll all be feeling overworked soon enough. Especially with what we’ve learned from Zoya. If one corporation alone can come up with so many workarounds, well, God knows, sooner or later even a million versions of you won’t be enough.”

  Roman ran his hand through his hair trying to get more blood to his brain. “My God, Ethan, you were supposed to safeguard this timeline not put it in greater jeopardy than even I could have imagined.”

  “These aren’t prototypes, Ethan. They’re not as defective as you. If you’d come back just a short while later than when you did, I wouldn’t have had to send you off to save us at all.”

  “That’s not the reason, and you know it!” Roman shouted, taking an aggressive step towards Ethan. It was Ga
lina that held him back, curious to hear the rest of Ethan’s big picture story herself.

  “I needed to know if the next generation-on-line multiverse men could rescue the multiverse from a meltdown of the original Multiverse Man. I had to push you over the edge.”

  “You knew there was only one way to solve the Woback problem!” Roman yelled, pulling at Galina’s arms. “You and Alexa figured it out long before I did.”

  “I’m sorry, Ethan. I truly am. It’s as close to betraying you as I’ve ever come.”

  “And you risked everyone to test your theory, you madman!” Roman felt another of the girls take him by the arm to make sure he wasn’t going to launch himself at Ethan.

  “You wanted me to safeguard this timeline at any price. That was the price. And the upside is we may now have the same protection for the entire multiverse, not just this timeline. So hate me all you want, but all I ever did was carry out your orders. I’m just one of your foot-soldiers, Roman, I suppose I always will be. Just because I’m the general in this army, doesn’t really change that.”

  Roman tore at the girls’ hands until he was exhausted. He just had to vent his outrage and his anger, which was more against himself now for putting them all in this situation. His mind had already accepted the truth even if his heart couldn’t.

  The girls let him go when he could barely stand anymore, far less take on anybody.

  “You’re retired now, Roman. Your girls can stay on in the role of enforcers, but they will never again need the neuronet in the palms of their hands to activate, protecting them from your fate. If they need to jump from timeline to timeline, one of my Multiverse Men will take them. The VERSERS, who are not all men, by the way, are the Special Ops soldiers of today, capable of taking on any corporate SPACE NAVY.”

  Roman buckled at the knees and the girls had to hold him up this time.

  “Go home, Roman. Go back to Daytona, and take Elsa with you. You deserve that life. You’ve both paid the highest price, and your service to the multiverse will never be forgotten. They’ll be singing songs about you and passing on your legend long after you’ve passed on. You don’t need to play the martyr anymore. And neither does Elsa. The girls can make another queen.”

  Roman wiped his snivels with the back of his hand. The last of the fight in him gone, he said, “Sounds good to me.” He wiped his eyes and hugged his friend. “Sorry I doubted you earlier and tried to tear you limb from limb.”

  “Let the impotent attempt to do me in be the bridge you need back to the man of peace. My people have already hacked your neuronet and downloaded the updated software. No more oblivion baths for you.”

  Roman chuckled and wiped his eyes by brushing them against Ethan’s shoulder. “Take care, my friend. I leave you to what you do best, and I look forward to returning to what I do best.”

  “One day you must remember to thank Alexa. If she couldn’t surf the mindnet as well as she does, she couldn’t have tapped the countless minds she needed to, looking for a solution to your neuronet problem.”

  He knew Ethan had a point but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. So he just nodded tentatively. Maybe because he knew deep down that for Alexa to pull off that magic trick from inside Ethan’s belly, she must have done one vicious makeover of his cellular makeup. In all likelihood turned him into a super-router for her trans-galactic trafficking of information. The underlying biophysics involved would have been nothing short of scary. And so Ethan might now be hovering at oblivion’s gate himself. He would bridge the topic the next time he met up with Ethan to discuss his and Alexa’s ongoing co-evolution.

  Roman stepped away, hugged each of the Sexy Six in turn. “I’m going to miss you girls.”

  “It’s not like Daytona has any defenses against the likes of us if and when we decide to hunt you down,” Galena said.

  Roman chuckled. “No, I guess not.”

  He allowed them to fan around him in a circle. Firing a beam from the center of the palms of their outstretched hands straight at his heart, which he assumed was more of a symbolic gesture, they beamed him back to Daytona.

  FORTY

  Roman materialized back at Daytona to find his feet ripped off the ground. Orion held him overhead and shook him. “There you are! We’ve been anticipating your arrival for weeks now.”

  “For weeks?” Had he and the girls been lost to the intergalactic mindnet for that long? If so, it definitely gave new meaning to Ethan’s vigil waiting for him and the girls to return to the pod people’s world. Was the lost time more about beaming this far across the cosmos, even at mindnet speeds? Those questions, he imagined, would be answered all in good time. “Wait, where’s Elsa?”

  “She arrived here weeks ago. She was the one that told us you were coming.”

  He smiled. “For a second I nearly forgot about that DNA-enhanced brain of hers specializing in sorting through future probabilities. I guess she knew long before me and Ethan and the Sexy Six how things would play out.”

  “Hell, she’s more one of us now than you ever were.” Orion finished shaking him and lowered him to the ground and put him in nearly as crushing of a hug from the side with just one arm flung over Roman’s shoulder. It was a good thing he was still wearing the body armor; he doubted his body would have held up to the affection otherwise.

  “Take me to my queen. Tell her the king is home and expects a royal screwing far more so than a royal welcome.”

  Orion laughed. “Pity you two weren’t born into a less egalitarian age when those terms actually meant something. You’re more like honorary figureheads at this point. I suppose we’ll keep you on like England keeps on the queen and the rest of the royals, as a painful reminder of darker days.”

  Roman laughed. “Thanks, I think.”

  Roman didn’t get far before he was mobbed by the rest of the community, starting with his inner circle, Anoki, Neil, Martha, and of course, Hatter, the man who had started it all. He was glad to see they’d kept their old tech and so their old looks despite the DNA-based neuronets they all sported. He wasn’t sure why, other than with biohackers even legacy tech had its charms. He was just glad their personal foibles had contributed to his feeling at home again.

  “They saved you when I couldn’t!” Hatter said embracing him as soon as he could make his way to the front of the pack. He had to pull the others off him to do so. He was amazingly strong for such a wiry guy. “Just don’t let that get out, huh,” he whispered in Roman’s ear. “Could seriously impugn my biohacker street cred.”

  Roman laughed. “My lips are sealed. At least until Elsa can part them.”

  “Right here, Romeo.” The pack parted for Elsa. She walked through the bodies as if parting the Red Sea was just another everyday miracle for her.

  Roman had never laughed or cried harder, or done so more quietly than when he wrapped his arms around her. “Odysseus has returned to you after his many long and arduous voyages, my dear.”

  “I’m afraid you and I will have to come later. The entire commune is jonesing for one of your speeches.”

  Roman laughed. “What can be said that has not already been revealed to your eyes?”

  “This is you we’re talking about, Roman. Trust me, there’s always more to be realized than our eyes or any of our senses can relay.”

  Roman reprised his laughter. “True enough.”

  He flicked his fingers. “Shit, you know, in all the excitement over the last couple weeks, I forgot all about Coma Boy. Please tell me we didn’t leave him lying there?”

  “He’s one of us now,” Orion said.

  The crowd made a hole for Irvin to pop his head up. He waved at Roman. “There’s the little guy!” Roman exclaimed. “What new calling have you found yourself now that our little plot to take over the world has been superseded by Ethan’s much bigger plot to take over the multiverse?”

  “I’ve been using the latest intel from the Sexy Six to help him and Alexa keep those transgalactic corporate goobers in line. Tell m
e why you’re so important again?”

  Roman and the others laughed. “The congregation can always use one more good heckler. You’re right, Orion, he definitely is one of us now.” He hugged the kid from the side and took his hand so he could continue to flank Roman’s right as Elsa flanked his left as they walked.

  Roman shifted his attention back to Elsa. He had never known her to be this carefree. He could see it in her eyes, the laxness of her face. It was as if everything he’d hoped for had come true, even if it had taken all of creation working together to procure the miracle. She caught him reality-testing the truth for herself in her eyes.

  “Looks like you were right,” she said, “about there being a more integral universal consciousness in whose womblike embrace we are forever sheltered, even against ourselves.”

  “Did I actually say that once upon a time?”

  “Again and again and again,” came the chorus from the commune’s members and another round of laughter, this time at his expense.

  “I remember saying something about our baser humanity getting us through the worst of our transhumanity.”

  “A baser humanity that you attribute to our attunement to the integral universal consciousness,” replied a voice in the throng.

  “Funny how you forget these things with time,” Roman said with mock forgetfulness as if straining to find the memory even now.

  No one was falling for it. “Yeah, right?” was echoed through the throng.

  They picked him up and carried him over their shoulders into the barn, the place where it had all begun for him. It was on that pulpit that he’d discovered his true self. The commune of Daytona itself had but set the stage. To emerge from the chrysalis as a butterfly he had to take that stage again and again, his life as brief between incarnations as any butterfly. His rebirth with each speech into a world he believed in more than anything, a salvation that only came so long as he kept believing.