But she elected to stay with Mother a while longer, see if she could divine her intentions better.
***
The Nigerian head of state, Uburu, waited for the bomb squad to do their work.
They went over his limo with bomb-sniffing dogs.
They went over it with high-tech scanners.
Then, one of his lackeys turned the ignition, and drove the car in circles, to set the wheels in motion, just in case the bomb might be triggered by either of those means.
Bomb experts popped the hood, crawled under the chassis of the car, examined every square inch.
Others sat inside the car, checked for pressure-sensitive triggers. They shifted their weight in the seats, felt about with their hands, and put themselves in harm’s way as the unwitting human triggers that would set off whatever bomb they couldn’t find by the subtler and safer means of detection at their disposal.
Finally, after sending the head of the team back several times to go over the car one more time, and rejecting his false assurances, Uburu decided this was not his day to die. At least not from a bomb planted in his car. He’d still have to take his chances that the armor-plated chassis and bulletproof windows would repel any sniper bullet as he drove off in it.
He signaled the rest of the team to load up in their respective cars in the cavalcade, and he climbed in the backseat of the limo meant for him.
And he closed the door.
Uburu’s limo promptly exploded—taking him, and half the cavalcade out with him.
Robin monitored the drama that surrounded Uburu from the surfeit of security cameras at the airport. In addition, there were the cameras stealthily mounted on the nearby plane Uburu had recently disembarked, and stuffed by way of fiberoptics into Uburu’s own clothes and those of his lackeys. There were the hidden cameras mounted throughout the vehicles belonging to Uburu and his people. Obviously, she remained well within one of the hot-pocket districts Seriana had set up to test Mother’s intervention in human affairs.
It was becoming clear that Mother was cleaning house. But her reasons for doing so remained foggy. A little voice in the back of Robin’s head said it might have to do with the spaceship heading to Earth that the HAARP station had been tracking. Maybe Mother felt she could no longer afford the luxury of corrupt politicians slowing the pace of progress. She needed nation-states to function like well-oiled machines in order to repel a potential alien attack in the time crunch they’d have to work with.
It further dawned on Robin that that might just be one scenario for which Mother was gearing up. It was in the nature of supercomputers to run multiple simulations at once, after all, to prepare themselves for as many contingencies as possible. Minimizing political corruption in Mother’s assigned regions would do more than facilitate Seriana’s agenda, it would facilitate readiness against most any contingency, if protecting the human race from extinction remained the bottom line.
It further occurred to Robin that while she was mated with Mother’s consciousness, Mother might be feeding her these rationales to buy her compliance.
Robin pulled herself out of Mother’s mind.
There was no way to know for sure what was going on without linking to the obelisk in order to see into the future more clearly. Only then could she know if Mother was selling her a bill of goods as regards her interest in avoiding unwanted futures—only to set up one even more oppressive of her own.
***
When Robin went into Mother’s mind in the future with the aid of the obelisk, she found herself in a dizzying kind of techno-land. Not content to bounce around in cyberspace from one hidden camera perspective to another, she took physical form, and materialized before a skyscraper in a business park, labeled Questar.
While she was busy assimilating the eye-candy of the corporate park itself—unable to fathom what was going on within any of the buildings—a man materialized in front of her. “Hi, Robin. I will be your tour guide.”
She suspiciously eyed the man. “You’re a robot.”
He bowed with the same gesture of confused obsequiousness and superiority that she had observed in Abah moments before his death at Mother’s hands.
“How is it you materialized before me?”
“We rely on teleporters to reduce the cost of transportation,” he explained. “What you see before you is a corporate park devoted to materials science. The breakthrough-materials we invent here are used to provide housing for all for free, and access to much more such as entertainment parks and malls for the purchase of clothes and necessities, also for free. If you like, I can take you to another corporate park where bioengineering is being used in tandem with nano to provide disease-free bodies which do not age, thus further lowering the cost of mortality, while expanding access to the physical world at the same time.”
“By ‘we,’ you mean robots?”
After the briefest of hesitations, her robot guide replied, “Not entirely, no. Moreover, in this time, we don’t think quite so simplistically in terms of artificial or natural—I believe those are your preferred terms, no? We have numerous hybrid lifeforms, nearly as many variations as there are individuals.”
“You seem to have ready access to my mind.”
“Of course. The magnetic fields enclosing all cities allow full telepresence. You may, of course, opt out, but few choose to, as it just imprisons you within your own mental machinations without hope of editorial review and feedback. Your evolutionary growth slows.”
“But surely, for sanity—”
“I’m afraid these concepts are endearingly colloquial, but essentially meaningless in our time. Sanity and insanity—and any number of shades of gray—are donned as need be to assist with projects at hand. No one perspective is valued over any other. You yourself pioneered the early work in this field with your tour of the DSM-IV.”
“So you’re saying this is some kind of utopia?”
“Hardly. The whole point is to keep pushing limits. No two individuals agree on how to do that entirely, how to be more whole, more advanced. There’s no one formula that works for all environments, moreover.”
“All environments?”
“We’re deployed throughout the heavens, of course. There’s no crack or cranny of spacetime where you will not find life in some form, most likely originating in or growing out of one of these labs or some off-world facsimile.”
“How much of this is Mother’s doing?”
“None of it, and all of it. She is simply the language of the new economy. Individuals like yourself are as responsible today as ever for doing most of the pioneering work.”
Robin gulped. “Just how far out, are we?”
“I’m afraid you’ve arrived at the one question I cannot answer. As all paths converge on Singularity—life post linear evolution—the question itself is almost meaningless. Some timelines arrive sooner than others. And how quickly each timeline will arrive is in constant flux. Each person’s every small action—”
“But this is one future, not at all what I imagined for Singularity. I saw a future inclusive of any and all possible futures, without rejecting any.”
“You were right about the nature of Singularity then as you are now. Think of this as a more heavenly world, where individual abilities are nurtured rather than thwarted. Though I suppose one person’s heaven is another person’s hell. Mother brought you here to give you a chance to assimilate the future without recoiling in fear and judgment, as you might well have done had she chosen to show you some far more hellish world first. If she misjudged just how you’d react, you must not judge her too harshly. The fault is all mine. I was assigned to you because, well, it seems we cross paths in your not so distant future, and it doesn’t go well for either of us. She hoped meeting me like this might change that.”
Robin sighed. Whenever she tried to get a better sense of the big picture, it became more confused, uncertainty increased. Of course, she could elect to stay here, and explore the multiverse, with or withou
t this robot as guide. See if what he was saying was true in any objective sense, or just his skewed perspective on things. But that kind of exploration could well take lifetimes. She could clone herself a thousand times over and sync each one’s mind to the other to chew through such an open-ended future in fast-forward, like locusts sweeping across the land. But that in turn would just open that many more Pandora’s boxes. The realization seemed to justify Mother more than any other as the new glue holding it all together. A sentient mode of exchange, a market transfer mechanism that was multidimensional, was simply what the free market looked like at this level. It was probably as ridiculous to ascribe ominous intent to her as benign. And even more ridiculous to think all this could be linked together without her.
The only thing Robin knew for certain right now was she was rapidly outstripping the psychic reserves at her disposal. Without more spiritual capital to spend, she could not sharpen the lens on the future any better, even with the obelisk’s aid. She had reached her omega point at least in this incarnation of herself. Once she was reborn in her next incarnation—metaphorically speaking—once she had purified herself further, infused mind and body with more soul stuff, she might attempt this journey again, see how much further she got.
She thought of Ardel’s challenge—that would come in the not-so-distant future—which she was able to access with the help of the obelisk, to avoid recoiling in fear, turning her eyes away from the light. But who could continue steering a path into such a heart of darkness without eventually going mad? And not in the purposeful way she’d taught herself to come unglued. Ardel’s taunt would have to stand for now. She would be the blinking Christmas tree light as opposed to the one that was always on. For all she knew, Ardel wasn’t even human, and was made of stuff that allowed him to play the game differently.
For right now, removing herself from the cosmic stage to attend to more homespun affairs back home seemed like true liberation. Not the faux kind offered by continuing down this path.
“I appreciate your offer to tour the multiverse, but I must decline.”
He bowed again, more graciously this time, less condescendingly.
“Maybe you should tell me your name so I know who to look out for back in my time.”
“Robby, of course. Robby the Robot. What else? I was the first.”
“And so the most defective.”
“I hope you can forgive me for that.”
She smiled ruefully and dematerialized herself.
It was nearly time for Odysseus, who had traveled so far and wide, to return home.
Just a bit more homework…
NINE
“This visit had to cost you.” Seriana smiled at Robin’s expense.
“You have no idea.” Robin joined her in surveying the city from her sky-rise-in-the-making, the top floor still no more than a bony skeleton of steel girders and cement. The city at night seemed worthy of Seriana’s enchantment.
“It’s hard to imagine with the state it’s in now, but—”
Robin completed construction on the top floor for her, allowed her to see the metamorphosis as if watching through time-lapse photography.
“Maybe not so hard to imagine as all that.” Seriana gulped. “Let me guess. You left this part out of the conversations with Drew.”
Robin smiled. “You know why I’m here?”
Seriana returned her eyes to the vista, this time used its hypnotic effect to bore through to some higher wisdom buried deep inside her. “You think if I can beat Donald Trump at playing master of the universe, it’s probably time to move on. Consider graduating to a god like you, or is that demi-god?”
Robin, unable to deny Seriana’s charm—which cut through even her bitchiness—stifled a smirk.
“No, thanks,” Seriana said. “We all have a domain in which we do our best work. You want to play seer, prophet, and sage one minute, superhero the next, fine. I don’t much care how many characters you drag out of your drama therapy closet, just so we’re clear, this is your healing we’re talking about.”
Robin passed her eyes over the city with the same aim in mind of clearing the way to some higher truth. “Very well,” she said. “I suppose I can’t expect to win them all. But I’ll have my eye on you. You’re so confident you’re headed in the right direction, it should show. There should be positive indicators, not negative ones.”
“You refer to Mother and her performance in Nigeria. I agree the court is still out on that one. The whole idea got away from me, took on a life of its own.”
“You weren’t the only one trying to awaken Mother from her slumber.” Seriana’s eyes went wide. “So don’t go too hard on yourself,” Robin said. “It was an idea whose day had come. The only way to know if it really works is to play the hand we’re dealt. If it’s a cause you believe in, you may find yourself embroiled with other parties determined to wrangle control of her away from you.”
Seriana laughed. “Mother’s already beyond anyone’s control, for better, or for worse.”
Robin grabbed a loose piece of paper blowing in the wind, possibly from as far down as the street, caught in the updraft.
“She is not fully conscious yet,” Robin advised. Seriana’s shocked reaction was hard to gauge, mixed as it was with fear, hope, and plotting and scheming.
Robin folded the sheet in her hands into a paper airplane and sailed it back into the winds, observed how much better it navigated the updrafts this time. “Her sentience blinks on for short bursts in places before burning out.” She watched as the paper airplane took a nosedive. “I would say there’s a lot of room to influence the genie in the lamp.”
Seriana glared at Robin as if she’d spoken those last words only to rile her and make her question her meddling in human affairs, if the unintended consequence was that she’d handed the forces of darkness a weapon as powerful as Mother. She didn’t like having her confidence shaken, and Robin couldn’t imagine her handiwork would improve any with compromised self-esteem. So best she drop the subject.
Robin dematerialized before the ugly look Seriana gave her, as if withering before her gaze. There was nothing more to say. All she could do now was monitor her from a distance, look for another auspicious moment to intercede. For the time being, Seriana’s defenses were unassailable.
She was right about one thing, though; until Robin attended her own house, she was possibly more of a menace to humanity than Seriana.
TEN
“Great. The only one who needs saving here is me.” Skyhawk turned around in a full circle to confirm the only enemy in sight was his foul temper. He spun the sword in his hands a few times, refused to sheath it, as there was such a thing as, “if it looks too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”
The forest appeared dead except for the slight breeze. The season was autumn, from the looks of it: the golden hues; the falling leaves; the chill tentatively sneaking up on him, only to dart off again.
The errant sounds could be giving testimonial to small critters scampering about. If so, they were doing a damn good job staying out of his line of sight. An ominous sign in its own right—the first so far.
He walked in no discernible direction, only because the forest offered no opportunity as of yet to ascertain a bearing.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to bring a sword to a gun fight?”
Skyhawk swirled around, blade out, surprised to find the woman talking to him, unarmed, and unthreatening in any way. “Did anyone ever tell you not to go to war in a cocktail dress?” The woman before him was dressed in a scarlet red hourglass dress, high heels, blond hair, not quite femme fatale, not quite ‘50s silver nitrate icon, just more woman than he, or a dozen men, could handle. Just his type. He ran his eyes up and down her, made no effort to conceal his lechery. Great, not here five minutes, and already hallucinating. “Let me guess, this planet screws with people’s heads, externalizes their worst nightmares, or their wildest fantasies, as the case may be.”
“There are
worlds like that. Would you like me to take you to one?”
He gulped, suddenly realizing his tough talk, along with his sword, may not suffice this time. “Who are you?”
“Robin Wakefield.”
“Who are you besides a name?”
“Someone who thought you were worth rescuing.”
He laughed. “Don’t look now, but of the two of us, you look the more defenseless.”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
He wondered if she was bluffing earlier with her promise to take him to a planet of his choosing. “Prove it.”
Suddenly they were no longer standing in the middle of the forest.
***
Skyhawk stood alongside Robin on the forest’s periphery, at the edge of a cliff, overlooking a metropolis so vast, so beautiful, it made his heart ache. No world he’d ever been on had ever evolved a city this wondrous.
No sign of pollution. No indication of urban decay. Every world had myths and legends of such a Shangri La. And that’s all they were: myths.
Even the fantastic airships came and went with a sense of leisure.
The setting sun only amplified the sense of entrancement, allowed him to see different facets of the city with each bending of light.
“Are they who I’m here to protect?”
“Ostensibly,” Robin replied. “The Orlacs have been forced to retreat to this world, where they will make their final stand. Once spread out across an entire galaxy, now pushed back by fiercer civilizations inside a hemisphere that has them entirely enclosed like the core of an apple. There’s no escape for them, or for you.”
“Not according to Festus.”
“Festus takes heroes like yourself and breaks them. He takes them out of the equation. One of your kind killed everything he loved, once. Now he won’t rest until every last hero has been imprisoned like a genie in a bottle, made to suffer for time immemorial. This place is made to order. The Orlacs experience no time passing; they are forever complacent and unable to evolve. The surrounding civilizations invite this state as their own sadistic experiment, as a form of enslavement, or prison, for both sides. Expedient, cost effective, and cruel. This is a planet full of heroes just like you. People who couldn’t be imprisoned. People who could escape from any lockbox to menace their captors. And so by putting them here, the leaders of both civilizations are thus able to maintain a perverse balance of power without fear of anyone disrupting it.”
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 182
