Solar Singularity

by Peter J. Wacks

Raider tilted his head to the second transport. “Well done. On board with the rest of the squad, and keep me updated.”

  Raider watched the first group finish loading and strap in, then waited until the last of his team filed aboard the VTOL. Once the engines powered up, he jumped aboard behind Maven, and opened a channel to the pilots as well as his team.

  “Engines and weapons hot,” he barked. “We’re heading to Galaxy. Once we leave arcology space, we’re going to be relying on hardlines and local point-to-point radio channels. We’ll be on our own, cut off from Command and able to rely only on each other. Are you ready raise some hell?”

  The chorus of “Sir! Yes! Sir!” shook the floors of the VTOLs as they lifted off the arcology rooftop.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Anansi

  In the middle of the day, a grand Chinese parade filled the street and stretched out along ten blocks. Anansi wasn’t sure what the holiday was—and it didn’t really matter. He was exhausted. It had taken him hours to get here, stopping when he spotted people he thought he could help, painting the kill code on dozens of people’s hands since leaving the arcology hours ago. Normally it only took him about twenty minutes to get to the studio.

  Fireworks exploded in cascading, flowery colors that hurt the eyes to look at directly. Cymbals clanged and drums pounded. Fiery lanterns soared overhead, burning up their own rice paper lining. Confetti littered everything, from the crowds to the abandoned vehicles. Anansi rubbed at his temples as he made his way carefully through the festival.

  Dragons painted all colors of the rainbow undulated and writhed down the middle of the roadway. People carried portions of them on poles, hoisted parts on their shoulders and heads, or shrouded themselves behind flowing silk curtains to act as their serpentine bodies. All manner of people, from normal human adults to little kids to genetically or mechanically modified individuals, pranced along beside them, faces white, bedecked in feathered fans, golden robes, and outrageously gaudy floral arrangements.

  Watchers laughed and clapped at the spectacle. Chinatown was insulated, both fairly clean and corporate free. The HR madness hitting most of the city seemed largely contained here, but Anansi didn’t trust what seemed to be. Some joined in the parade, marching alongside those who carried the floats and dragon costumes. Thousands of people composed the parade and crowds, singing, dancing, swinging each other around. Didn’t matter whether they were Chinese or not; all were welcome to participate in the Hyper-Festival … He looked at the back of his hand and rebooted. The parade was a giant lie, though a far less destructive one than some of the places he had passed through.

  Every so often, one or two people would trip and fall, serenely trampled and killed by the throng who stomped over their bodies without pause. It was the only indicator Anansi saw that these people didn’t have working filters and were under the control of malware. Even the dying had insipid smiles plastered on their faces.

  Anansi shivered. None of it was real. Not the dragons, not the costumes, not the fireworks. The whole of the parade existed within a Hyper Reality simulation that had engulfed the neighborhood. The code was on everything, and, as far as he could tell, was embedded by the neighborhood’s commerce association. With GENIE down, the malware painted into the local murals by taggers had kicked in, hard. His personal filters were able to isolate it and protect him.

  There was nothing he could do about it. The malware he could spot was not in places he could get to. He clenched his jaw in frustration. Onward then. He desperately needed to get to the studio and catch a couple hours sleep. Then he could hang with the guys and maybe figure out what he could do in this madness.

  Anansi shoved his way through the crowd, aiming for Galaxy Entertainment’s rental sector. The entertainment giant parceled out numerous performance and practice spaces to up-and-coming singers, bands, and artists, reducing access rates so long as they received a percentage of income from the resulting songs, vids, games, or commercial HR works.

  Anansi paused to get his bearings as another round of super-realistic fireworks exploded, scattering blue and white lights off the surrounding windows. His filters were trying to compensate, but they were struggling. He rebooted again.

  With such all-encompassing overlays, the trick was flicking his filters on and off at the right moments. It just meant he had to reboot a lot more frequently. If he left them on, keeping his vision entirely in meatspace, then it became difficult to anticipate the movements of the crowd. They’d jostle this way and that, reacting to events he couldn’t see. When he turned the filters off and studied the simulation, he got a better sense of how the mob might move and where best to shift through it.

  It was just hell on the brain. He rubbed at his temples again. Despite employing the flickering technique, it was still difficult to distinguish true reality from Hyper Reality. He’d try to push a person who stumbled too close, only to be thrown off-balance when his hands met air. The artists that had encoded the HR here really had a passion for what they did. You didn’t normally see that outside of the underground. He ignored a person in a gorilla costume until they came up and shoved him almost to the ground, and he realized it was a real hybrid caught up in the sim.

  He zigzagged, trying to keep going in at least the general direction he needed. At one point, he thought he saw a Third Life Corporation security squad standing on a side street, watching the masses with deadpan expressions. They neither participated in the false festivities nor did they attempt to stop them. When Anansi flicked his filters off and on again, they had vanished.

  The hell? Had they been real or just another Hyper Reality trick of the mind? If they were real and weren’t being affected by the network breakdown, why weren’t they helping contain the situation? That was just … well, fucked. That’s what it was.

  The crowd’s laughter shifted suddenly to shrill screams. The mood turned from celebratory to frenetic, to frantic, and people jerked to a halt and stopped dancing to fight their way free. The parade lines turned into mosh pits, and dozens of bodies went down underfoot in moments. The gentle stream of revelries had turned into rapids too quickly.

  Anansi flicked his filters off to try and see the cause. Two competing simulations vied for visual dominance, fracturing the parading crowd’s TAPs. From one direction, balls of roaring flames blasted down the street as if from a dragon’s throat. At the other end, an enormous fifty-story wave roared inward, sweeping illusionary debris along its path.

  Neither wave nor flame could actually hurt anyone, but the very real panic they inspired proved deadly enough. People were smashed and trampled, legs, necks, and arms broken as everyone scrambled for survival.

  Anansi wondered how the hell such complex … and large visuals were being relayed, but for the time being that didn’t matter. Only survival mattered, and inaction right now would equal death. He ran, forced to join in the mad dash, letting the flow of bodies sweep him along and hoping he could stay upright long enough to find a way out of this mess. An idea hit him as he ran, and for the first time since GENIE’s crash, he felt like he had power. He pulled out his airbrushes and fought the crowd to get at the walls.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Raider

  “We’ve lost the drone feed, sir.”

  Raider detected the slightest flinch from Chu as he fixed his baleful eye on the sub commander. “Then get it back,” he said flatly.

  Chu slumped in his seat straps and looked up from the laptop. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, sir. By lost, I mean the drone self-destructed.”

  “It … what?” Raider tapped a fingertip against his faceplate.

  “It self-destructed, sir. I saw the red command flash, then an … uh … insult flashed at me right before the point-to-point feed dropped.”

  “Hmm. I don’t … An insult? Did that drone, by any chance, have an AI in its guidance system?”

  “Er … yes, sir. Do any drones made in the last forty years not have them?” Chu realized he had overstepped
himself and quickly finished his reply. “I was tracking our target just fine and then feedback became erratic. Not ten seconds later, the drone told me I could go fuck myself and then, um, dove into the nearest antennae array and exploded.”

  “I thought AI was supposed to eliminate the weakness of a human operator?”

  “It is, sir. It’s only speculation but maybe the hacker collective found a way to hack the drone?” Chu looked perplexed.

  “With GENIE down? No.” Raider leaned over until he could look out of the transport window. “And I suppose it doesn’t matter, since it is done. Highlight Anansi’s last confirmed location.”

  Chu transferred the data, which Raider relayed to the pilot. He marked a spot a quarter of a mile out from the target, a four-way junction near a shopping center. “Take us down there,” he said. “We’ll go into the madhouse by foot.”

  Raider unbuckled and waited by the door while the rest of the squad detached to join him. He liked to perch in the open door on take-off and landing, giving his unit a morale boost by playing the part of the strong commander. Always lead by example. Never show uncertainty. The best thing a leader could do for morale is be decisive and act.

  As soon as the transport touched down, before the engines could even begin cycling, he opened the hatch and jumped out. Poised in an athletic gun stance, half for show, he swept his barrel through the area for hostiles. He had known that the area was clear by the time his feet hit the pavement. The show was to bolster the courage of the unit.

  Squad members landed all around him and fanned out in a pyramid formation. The second transport remained in the air with units waiting as backup. Once they secured the position, Raider signaled the pilot, who peeled off to survey from the skies. Onboard point-to-point would allow the VTOLs to update Raider and his team.

  He split his team of twelve into three groups, sending two of them in flanking directions. The third he led north, where the transports would circle around and meet them at the edge of the central Galaxy district. Relying only a little on luck, they’d flush their quarry out of hiding along the way. If luck wasn’t on their side, they’d have to breach, which would cost more lives. But either way, they were bringing in their first target.

  “Commander.” Maven’s voice sounded strained over the suit com. She kept position in the rear of his unit.

  “What is it?”

  “Sir, I’ve been monitoring the Hyper Reality broadcasts in the area.”

  “I told you no external channels open. One bug gets past our filters we’re all toast,” he replied in annoyance.

  “Yes, sir. As per orders, I’m not accessing the feeds directly. I have a sandboxed monitor that’s doing all the work for me, so there’s no interference with my own input. Like the rest of the city, the sector is swamped with a confusing overlay composite. However, sensors just picked up a magnified databurst in the vicinity our target was last spotted in.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” he barked the question back. Damn code jockeys made it so hard to understand what should be simple ideas by obfuscating their meaning in language only they understood.

  “Someone managed to erect temporary filters across an entire city block. They tried to alter the feeds around them, force them back into a semblance of order—like building a virtual dam against a flood, sir. They succeeded, though temporarily. The signal’s gone now.”

  Raider licked the inside of his teeth and scowled. “Sounds like our terrorist at work. Guide us in. Let’s bring this bastard down.”

  The unit double-timed in formation, weapons live, scanners at full sensitivity. Two streets into the massive Galaxy Entertainment district, fire blossomed in their midst, and two members of his unit tumbled away from the shockwave. Their bio-signs remained active on his faceplate readout, but their armor readouts fluxed and dimmed.

  Raider shouted over the coms. “We’re under attack! Defensive action.”

  Team members raced for cover, setting up behind benches, vehicles, and rubble. In seconds, the street morphed from an empty lane into a full-bore battlefront. Gunfire erupted in their direction, and Raider’s suit sensors triangulated the shooters’ positions, highlighting three figures a hundred yards away. He rolled to the side, using the momentum to jump up, popped three shots as his body twisted through the air, and landed back in a roll, sliding behind new cover. Each one of his three shots had dropped an assailant.

  Rockets thundered down on them, shaking Raider’s bones, even inside the heavy shielding of his reinforced armor. Submachine guns chattered, pock-marking asphalt and shattering windows, while energy weapons crackled all around. A car went up in a huge fireball, metal chassis flipping through the air, spraying drops of fire across the street.

  Despite the bedlam, the unit worked calmly, a well-oiled machine, calling out directions and angles as they spotted additional attackers, coordinating pincer advances to pick them off, and methodically dealing with the disorganized threat. Raider took out two more shooters while coordinating his team’s efforts. He flicked through multiple visual modes, scanning for nodes of heat or motion.

  The firefight died off less than two minutes later. Raider spun in place, searching for new targets but found nothing. “Report!”

  One CHIMERA soldier had taken a rail bolt straight through the face. Raider marked the corpse for transport pick-up, hiding the anger coursing through him. They couldn’t leave the valuable gear lying around for any ganger to snatch, but neither could they spare the time to drag him back themselves. He made contact with the other two units, but neither had met any resistance so far. Be decisive. Act. He quietly repeated the mantra to himself.

  By then, several of his soldiers had reached the enemy position and called him over. Raider joined them. They had found twelve bodies total. A couple wore power armor like they did. Most had basic shielding with a few augments here and there. A scouting party, perhaps—all dressed in Third Life security uniforms.

  Raider prodded the corpses with the toe of his boot. What was Third Life doing in this sector? More importantly, why were they ambushing CHIMERA troops? Had they been sent to directly oppose the CHIMERA ops, or could they be under orders to bag the same target and wanted to take out the competition?

  The two of his unit who’d been caught in the initial blast were back on their feet, though still not particularly responsive. One’s knee joint kept locking up, but she said she’d be able to keep up, no problem. Three casualties total then. He walked to his two injured teammates. “Stay here. Guard Baker’s body till transport retrieves it. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir!” the two responded sluggishly, but cogently enough that he wasn’t worried about their safety.

  Raider turned to Maven. “Still have that odd signal?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re on point with me.” He waved all the others back into formation. “Activate stealth systems. Conserve what power you can; we’re going to have to breach in ghost mode.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chicken Fingers

  Chicken Fingers couldn’t decide which of his joints ached more as he leaned against the wall in Nova’s apartment. He studied the two women, engaged in an aggressive debate, and realized they couldn’t have looked more different. Nova was a willowy, elegant woman who could’ve walked into any club without paying a cover, whereas Gyro was a scrappy street rat in mismatched clothes, looking like she’d just crawled out of the garbage. In retrospect, thinking about where she had been hiding, she actually had just crawled out of garbage.

  Despite the differences, the determined scowls they wore were practically identical. Nova’s parenting of this street rat was clearly etched in the girl’s features. She even held herself like Nova, emulating her body language. Chicken Fingers was glad neither of those glares was aimed his way.

  Gyro and Nova squared off in the middle of Nova’s pad, quiet while they matched gazes. It was the first moment of silence since they had gotten inside. Chicken Fingers tried to be as unobtru
sive as possible while he looked around the place. They were actually pretty swanky digs. She had two whole rooms and a mini-bar setup in one corner alongside the fridge.

  “We’re safe here,” Nova said, spreading her hands wide, reinitiating the discussion, “and you want us to head right back out into that madness?”

  Chicken Fingers popped open various bottles on the shelf, sniffing and sipping the contents as he listened in on the argument.

  Gyro had played what she claimed to be a file from someone called Prophet. Chicken Fingers hadn’t caught everything on it, but he at least understood some major rundown was in the works. Now he just had to figure out whether he wanted to be part of it or not. He had rescued the kid sister, as promised. And … what was going on was wrong. Anyone could see that. But how could three people make a difference in the face of a digital natural disaster? It was like the Deep was hitting the world with its first tsunami, and what could anyone really do about that, other than run?

  “We gotta,” Gyro said. “Don’t you understand? Prophet is protecting us. The only reason we’re not goin’ all loopedy-loo like everyone else is because of the code that was downloaded to our TAPs.” She glanced Chicken Fingers’ way. “Either of you feel a little off lately?”

  Nova frowned over at him too, and he knew she was thinking about his unexplained ability to sense danger before it appeared. Chicken Fingers rubbed the back of his neck and guiltily sidled to the side, hiding the bottle he had been sipping from. The moment she glanced away he refilled his flask and stashed it again.

  “Dunno,” he said. “The whole damned universe feels off since last night.”

  “That’s ’cause of what I just told you,” Gyro said, stamping a foot. “The flare made Prophet die when GENIE went haywire. We have everything that’s left of Prophet’s code and have to put it all back together again. Y’know, Humpty Dumpty style.” She crossed her wrists then flung her hands apart, mimicking an explosion.