Convergence

by Michael Patrick Hicks

  I woke up cold, in a tangle of sheets and limbs. I pulled myself free and felt around the floor in the dark for my pants. I found the small tablet in the pocket and went into the living room. Naked, I sat in a plush chair and pushed the data spike into my port. It sent a small, icy shiver through me.

  I played around with the menu and the setting options. I wasn’t interested in the webs and the spliced connectivity maps of groups of people surrounding a single event. I wanted individual memories, and I turned off the safety settings.

  The memory of the chiang’s final moments hung over me. It felt like forever since I had done this, and I was rigid with anticipation. My mouth was dry. My lips felt chapped. I decided to go for it and let the rush of endorphins flood through me. My heart galloped, on the verge of tearing itself apart, knowing that death was imminent. I felt what he had felt, and it gave me a rush because I remembered all of it from my own perspective. The feeling of power. The control of having a life in my hands. The weight of the gun. My finger curled around the trigger, and I whimpered in anguish, begging for my life. My heart raced, tears warming my face, dizzy from all the conflicting emotions. High from the adrenaline dump, I was both fidgety and fully in control. The warmth of muzzle flash bloomed against the back of my skull, singeing my hair beneath the flush of gasses and heat. Then nothing. White light blinded me, and my body thrilled with the rush of hundreds of chemicals as my pineal gland emptied itself.

  The world tipped, and I fell down the rabbit hole, into a vortex of colors. Breathing became difficult, but I was incredibly relaxed and comfortable. I sank deeper into the couch, letting the DMT flood through me. The mem ended too quickly and left my head feeling heavy. I spent the next few minutes fighting through delirium and trying to collect myself, feeling drunk and loopy.

  I crashed quickly and ended up in a funk. I was beyond worn out, but I didn’t want to go back to bed. My mind was still racing, caught up in too many thoughts. I wondered how Mesa was doing and how she was being treated.

  I thought about the schoolgirl turned suicide bomber and about teaching Mesa how to shoot rifles and pistols, training her to take lives, trying to force her to kill. I wondered what kind of father that made me, and I loathed myself for all of it.

  I had never wanted to be a father. I didn’t want to be bothered by all the bullshit parents dealt with. The crying. The diapers. Two a.m. wake-up calls. The screaming and wailing. The idea of a kid was unbearable. I never understood why people put themselves through that willingly or why some people wanted that so badly for themselves. I was intent on never letting it happen until, of course, it happened.

  Selene had wanted kids, but her pregnancy was a fluke. When she told me the test was positive, there had been a nervous hitch in her voice, and she’d struggled to keep eye contact with me. She knew how I felt about kids, and she was afraid of my reaction. My life, as I knew it, was over. And that was fine. In that moment, all of my defenses crumbled away with two simple words.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  With those two words, I was a father. I couldn’t hold back the smile, or the tears, and I took her in my arms. We laughed, cried, and made love. Before I even saw the ultrasound or held her in my arms, that little girl-to-be wormed her way right into my heart and brought me a joy I’d never thought was possible.

  But I’d lost her. I had tried everything I could think of to earn her love and her respect, to be her father. She was fine as a child, but those teenage years had been brutal, and she’d grown to hate me. Maybe I was too authoritarian, or maybe she knew I wasn’t proper parenting material. She sensed it, the way animals sense fear. She turned against me and left a void deep inside me. She’d fought to become her own person, while I’d fought to keep her in my life, which pushed her farther away.

  I missed her, and I missed the life we used to have. Driving her to school. Sharing dinner at the table in our house with her mother, Selene and me helping her with her math and science homework before sending her to bed. All of that was gone, and I had never realized how badly I needed it or how much I craved that stability.

  Alice padded softly across the carpet behind me. She put her hand on my shoulder then bent over to kiss me, stretching her fingers down my chest.

  “You’re crying,” she said, surprised.

  I unplugged the data spike and set aside the tablet. “Just thinking.”

  She sat beside me and asked me what was wrong, but I ignored her question. I found myself needing the comfort her body provided, and she let me take her again. We made love slowly, and when I was spent, she lay against me. With her eyes closed, she asked if I was feeling better.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I need to find her. I need to get back to the camp.”

  “Echo Park?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Echo Park was attacked. She’s not there. Neither is Jaime.”

  “What?” I shot up straight, pulling her with me. “Why didn’t you tell me? What happened?” I was yelling, suddenly furious. I held her between both of my hands, squeezing her arms tightly. Fear crossed her face, but I didn’t care. “What happened?”

  She twisted free from my grip and shoved me away, kicking herself away from me, to the other end of the couch. Whatever closeness we’d enjoyed evaporated.

  “Kaften,” she said. She rubbed her arms and glared at me. “Asshole.”

  “I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.”

  “God,” she said. “There’s so much happening…” She looked away from me, down at the floor.

  “Tell me what happened. Kaften attacked the park?”

  “This afternoon. It was a total slaughter. They knew where all the PRC were stationed, how to get in and out. They knew the security protocols, shift changes, everything. They had a lot of inside knowledge.”

  A cold stone dropped into the pit of my stomach. I already knew the answer, but asked anyway, “Inside knowledge from who?”

  “From you,” she said. “You were their inside man. They trawled your brain, plundered you for all you had. You gave him everything. He damn near walked right into the park. He had snipers take out the guards overlooking Echo camp, while he led a ground party to take out the street-level forces.”

  “He went after Jaime,” I said. I knew Kaften wouldn’t see any difference between the PRC and the park’s inhabitants. “How bad was it?”

  “Bad. He turned that park into a charnel.”

  “But Mesa… you said she was with Jaime. They weren’t at the park?”

  “They escaped, somehow. Kaften was looking for him, but couldn’t find him anywhere. They disappeared. My sources confirmed Jaime was not among the dead. Neither was Mesa.”

  “Then where are they?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “He attacked the park today? Before or after we were attacked?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Why? You think that was Kaften, too?”

  I thought about Kaften’s regiment, their supplies, equipment—and their uniforms. The men outside of Alice’s restaurant had used guns and worn clothing that didn’t match Kaften’s.

  “No,” I said. “I think that was Jaime. He was retaliating, sending a message. Does he know you trade with Kaften, that you supply him?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. Then she conceded, “Maybe.”

  “Did Kaften lose any troops in the attack? Somebody Jaime could have trawled?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  I paced the living room, massaging my scalp. A headache was growing behind my eyes. “Fuck,” I yelled, exasperated.

  Kaften. Jaime. Mesa. This whole thing was fucked. What the fuck was I wrapped up in? Where had it all gone sideways? What was the link, aside from me? What was missing?

  I couldn’t focus. I had too many things running free in my head, and the pain was blistering. I was the link between all of them. I was what had fucked it all up. I knew Jaime. I did work for him. I had admitted that much
to Kaften. His bullshit soldier-boy idealism, fighting for a country that didn’t even exist anymore, painted us all as traitors because… I swallowed and thought about it, then forced myself to admit it. Because we were terrorists. We attacked individuals, without much distinction between soldiers and citizens, and we lived among the enemy. We blew up marketplaces and attacked innocent bystanders in traffic. I was on the very edge of a cell, a freelancer without any true loyalty to any one cause. Kaften knew this, and he had soaked up every last drop of intel I had to offer.

  I had given up Jaime to Kaften. I had given up those people in Echo Park. I had given up my own daughter.

  I sat back down. “Jesus,” I said, running my hand against the stubble of my scalp. I was sweating, and the hairs on my neck and arm stood on end. “I did this.”

  Alice looked at me but didn’t move. I wanted to feel the warmth of her body pressed against me, but I made no motion for her to come to me, so she stayed put, tucked into the corner of the sofa.

  “I think Jaime knows you betrayed him,” I said.

  She looked at me sharply.

  “He sent his death squad to kill you. Or to kill me. Or both of us. Maybe he knows I gave him up to Kaften, and he decided to punish us. Either way, that squad at the restaurant, that was Jaime.”

  I focused harder on it and ran the algos, trace summaries, and comparisons. In the end, I was fairly sure the same squad that had killed all those people on the 101 had come after us at the restaurant.

  “Then I feel even less remorse over their deaths than before,” she said.

  “Why did you support them?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer for a long time. Then she said, “I am Tong, but I am also American. I was born here, raised here. I lost too many loved ones, too many friends, in the war. The PRC is my enemy as much as they are Kaften’s and Jaime’s. With those two men, I see equal goals, if not equals means. It is their idealism surrounding their methods that divides them, but for me, as an outsider, I see that they seek the same outcomes. They want the PRC gone, and I understand that desire. The PRC caused so many problems for all of us. They are the reason my parents are dead, even though Jaime pulled the trigger…”

  She paused, choosing her words carefully. “If we removed the PRC, there would have been no chance for convergence. If we charted it all as a system of data, the PRC would lie at the center of the convergence map, the root of all this evil and division.”

  “Supporting Jaime and Kaften is good business, which is why I also provide an esoteric array of services to the PRC. I will not limit my customer base, even if I have moral oppositions to the systems and governments they serve, but it also allows me to learn things about those larger data sets. It gives me information, which has far more utility in the long run. Does that answer your question?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I think so.”

  After a time, she shifted back to my side of the couch, ready to reestablish contact.

  “Your parents weren’t Tong?”

  “No,” she said. “I came into this business through my uncle. I kept it secret from my parents. They never knew. After their death, my uncle raised me. In some ways, I find it a blessing that they died ignorant.”

  She curled against me and looped her arm around one of mine, pulling herself close to me. She rested her head against my chest. “I would do anything to have some semblance of my old life back. To have a family again. To be a daughter again.”

  I kissed her forehead, and we stopped talking. We cuddled on the sofa, enjoying one another’s warmth. I pulled a blanket from over the back of the couch and draped it over us, and we slept.

  Chapter 12

  MemSeq0500188986

  My face was pushed down into cold earth. Mesa was beside me, her eyes pleading with me, begging me to do something. I raised my head, and the butt of a rifle crashed into my temple, leaving me dazed and seeing double. My arms were pulled behind me and secured with a loop of plastic. I watched as the same was done to her, thankfully less violently. She had been pushed down roughly, and the grit and rocks had left minor scrapes on her dirty face. Her hair was disheveled, and the fight had gone out of her.

  We were hauled to our feet and dragged in opposite directions. We watched one another until we were forced into the cargo hold of separate transport jets, and then she was gone. Her eyes screamed at me, asking for help, asking me to do something—anything—to fight for her. But I didn’t.

  I was shoved into the hold and pushed forward until I fell into a seat. The door was thrown shut, and I sat in the darkness with the others. Nobody said a word. The PRC barked at us in a language we couldn’t understand, so they screamed louder, making their words even more indistinct. I had no idea what I was asked or what I was being told. It earned me two loose teeth, bruised cheeks, and a few bruised ribs that felt just short of broken. My seatmate received the same method of interrogation.

  The jet rumbled, vibrating my feet, as it lifted off with a surging moment of weightlessness that made my stomach flop. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on something other than the burning pain that racked my body. Thinking about Mesa made everything ache worse.

  The cargo ship landed on a rooftop helipad, and we were escorted into the building and down a freight elevator to the ground floor. We were met by more guards and more questions. Some of us answered; some didn’t. Those of us who did gave our names and denied any serial numbers or military service. An older, smaller man was removed from our group and severely beaten into unconsciousness. We were asked the same questions again.

  Later, we were taken to the showers and deloused. Our heads were shaved, and we were given razors so that we could shave off all of our body hair under the supervision of an armed guard. Then our group was led, nude, to the prison commissary, where we were issued clothing.

  After dinner, we were allowed to go outside. I took in the view. The Golden Gate Bridge had collapsed into San Francisco Bay, which was a graveyard of ships and boats. Below all that were the bodies. The city was a distant dying ember.

  “Hell of a view, ain’t it?” a voice at my shoulder said.

  I shrugged. “I was looking forward to an island vacation.”

  He smiled, the kind that indicated he thought I was stupid. Or maybe I was the sort of stupid he favored. He stuck out a hand, and we shook. He was an older man, in his sixties maybe.

  “Jaime.”

  “Jonah.”

  “Under the circumstances, I can’t really say it’s all that good to meet you.”

  We talked for a while, mostly about nothing. Nice weather. Hell of a war. You hear any news? The attacks on DC and New York had fucked things up good, and our satellites were all out of commission after that thing in Taiwan. When we ran out of bullshit small talk, we took a casual walk, not saying anything, sizing up one another in the silence.

  “What’re you in for?”

  “Nothing.”

  We laughed, figuring we were officially prisoners.

  “Ever been here before?”

  “No,” I said. “Only ever saw it in the movies.”

  The sunset’s rays refracted through the dust over the bay—the dust of bridges destroyed, a city ruined, and lives lost.

  “Hell of a view,” Jaime said again. He lit a cigarette, shook another one loose from the pack, and offered it to me. We smoked while the sunlight died away, then we drifted apart.

  A siren bleated, and a voice over the loudspeaker ordered everyone back inside. We went through another round of inspections as our retinas were scanned and compared against their database records, and those of us who were new were assigned what our guards euphemistically called “housing.”

  My cell was small, barely wider than me. I watched other people fill theirs and recognized that most of the cellmates had a familiarity with one another. I recognized a husband and wife from the mountains. Mesa was nowhere to be found. I walked down the corridor, but a guard stopped me and asked me where I was supposed to be. He nudged
me back toward my cell. The door slid shut and locked. A short while later, the lights went out, throwing the corridor into perfect blackness.

  Sleep did not come easily, despite the quiet. I dozed in fits and starts, and when the lights came on in the morning, I rose slowly, ragged and unfit for the day.

  After morning roll call, the newbies were separated. I saw Mesa, finally. She was ahead of me by several people, and when I called to her, she ignored me. I called again, louder, and got smacked in the belly with a shock stick. The guard told me to shut up, and my stomach burned. A thick wad of bile stuck in my throat. The muscles in my abdomen kept twitching and wouldn’t relax, forcing me to walk hunched over.

  The guards had us form a line outside an office. Grateful for the chance to relax a bit, I leaned against the wall, waiting for my stomach to settle down. One by one, people went into the office. Mesa was ahead of me, and I watched as she entered the room, stayed for a time, then came back out to resume her place in line.

  When my turn came, I passed by her and nodded. She ignored me. The room was barren, save for one beat-up desk at its center and two chairs. The one behind the desk was occupied by a slim, elderly Asian man, and the other in front of it was empty. He pointed to the empty chair, and I sat.

  He introduced himself as Shàngwèi—Captain—Song. A second officer standing beside the desk was Xuéyuán Yu, an officer cadet. Yu held a scanner to my eye and processed my identity. I gave him my name, and he assigned it to the number on my clothing. I could have given him any name, really. The EMP blasts had ruined the data files, and I was sure I wasn’t on anybody’s radar. No police record. No military service record. I was nobody, and I could be anybody. I could have lied, but I didn’t. I liked who I was.

  “We have brought you here to ask you if you would renounce your American citizenship and swear oath to the Pacific Rim Coalition.”

  “No, I would not.”

  Song rested the pad on the desktop, squaring it against the desk’s edge.