Atlas Alone

by Emma Newman

  Remuneration in the form of monetary credit is of no interest to me anyway; it’s the data access privileges that I want. I get Ada to scan the legal jargon for me and check that it doesn’t contain anything potentially problematic. The only thing she flashes up is how hard-core the NDA is—I can’t mention anything about my salary, pay grade or the information I interact with as part of my job to anyone other than Carolina and anyone else she chooses to personally approve. That’s no surprise. It’s on a par with the one for my old job, and perfectly understandable, given the information I’ll have access to.

  I send an acceptance message right away. In moments there’s a standard “Welcome to the team!” message from Carolina’s APA and then Ada says, “Your privileges have been updated.”

  I rub my hands together, grinning. Finally, I have a way to find the information I need.

  But the old worry about data trails is still there, and even more legitimate now that I’ve murdered someone.

  Even though the fear of discovery is all too real, it’s not enough to drown out the need to know whether that man deserved to die. I think back to what Carl showed me in that room of his. I know the man’s name, that he was an engineer and that he was high up. But I daren’t search for his data, not the same morning they’re investigating his death.

  I’m being so stupid. I’ve been butting my head against this for so long, I’ve got into the habit of treating this like an Internet search. It isn’t like that now I have this level of clearance; I can call up any of the data I want and examine it in my own space. The only thing that will be logged on the server is the request from my APA to pull that information. If I pull a few hundred people’s worth of data, they will have no idea what I was paying attention to here. Besides, Carolina wants me to get to know the consumer base, right?

  “Ada, how many people in total are in the command crew and the next three highest pay grades on this ship?”

  “Do you wish me to include those passengers who have diamond-class tickets?”

  “The what now?”

  “Diamond-class tickets were awarded to a selected group of people pre-Rapture.”

  “Why didn’t you tell— Oh right, I never asked. Yeah, include them too.”

  “Three hundred and forty-five people above the age of eighteen are included in that sample.”

  That’s good enough for me. “Okay, for that sample, pull all of the data I have legit access to now and display it mannequin style, randomized order.”

  I now have more data than I thought would ever be available to me, dumped into my server space in one batch. If Carl or anyone else chooses to see what data I’ve pulled today, they’ll see it as a collective whole, and one I can justify as getting to know the most important mersive consumers on this ship. All I need to do now is hunt down what I need in the privacy of my own office.

  In the time it takes for me to blink, avatars of 345 adults appear in the space around me, making my bleak office feel like a weird clothing vendor app. Instead of the mannequins in the shop’s range, they look like all of the most powerful people on this ship. They are all standing perfectly still, looking into the middle distance, most of them dressed in a very simple white uniform that reminds me of the clothes worn by US Navy personnel back at the turn of the century.

  The first time I used this display mode it freaked me out. Now I find it helps. I can walk up to each data point and see them as a person, right from the start, for one thing. I can get a sense of some demographics at first glance and I can see what they choose to have displayed in their public profile. Some choose to show themselves in ball gowns, some in sportswear, some in gaming costumes. Interesting that all of the command crew are in uniforms. That smacks of a global setting imposed upon them, probably to help the other passengers on the ship get used to identifying them by their role first.

  Their real names are displayed in text floating above their heads. The ones who are not command crew have additional icons floating next to them, reflecting the additional personal information that they have personally selected as critical, top-level display information. One man has chosen to make it very clear that he is a follower of Jesus and also a proud member of the Top One Hundred Club, famously established to cater to the wealthiest one hundred individuals on the planet. I raise an eyebrow at that.

  “Ada, show me where Commander Brace and Lieutenant Commander Joseph Myerson are,” I say. Of course, she could just move them to where I am, but I don’t have it set up that way. I like to go to them, like I am visiting a person, taking in the way their peers, or others in their particular demographic, look en route. A large blue arrow appears over the heads of two figures a little way away.

  I walk between mannequins toward the ones I’m interested in. Every five I pass, I rest my hand on the shoulder of the sixth, just a light tap, short-listing them for further study. I’m just covering my bases, just in case someone looks at whose data I dig deeper into.

  I pause in front of Commander Brace’s avatar. I still don’t know if he was involved with the war on Earth, but he’s so high up in the command chain, there’s a chance he was, and I want to learn more about him. Up close he looks just as square-jawed and handsome as he did in the tiny profile pic I saw via Carolina’s profile. “Ada, is Carolina Johnson part of this data set?”

  “No. Carolina Johnson is currently two pay grades below your lowest criteria. Would you like me to include her?”

  “No.”

  I move on, over to where Myerson is standing. Strange to think that he is dead now. The only indication of that is that his name has been grayed out, like he’s a character I can no longer play in a game.

  He looks normal enough, but then, most fundamentalists do, especially in their own profile pictures. I can still tap on his name if I want to, and view his interests and anything else he made public. Just as I’m reaching up to do that, I see something on his lapel that makes me freeze: a tiny pin showing the Earth with only the North American continent on it, just like the pin in the game that killed him.

  11

  STARING AT THE pin does not make it disappear. For a few stupid moments, I question why something from a game is shown in his avatar, wonder if it’s because of the character he was playing when he died. No . . . this isn’t the game creeping into real life; rather, this was an element taken from real life and put into the game. The only difference is that this pin doesn’t have “CSA” printed below the globe.

  Then it occurs to me that if I didn’t see it on him until I was up close . . . Turning around, I see the same pin design worn on the collar of every single crew member around me. “Ada, is there anyone here who is not wearing this globe pin?”

  “No. All of the individual avatars in this sample are wearing the same pin.”

  “Ummm . . . Ada, does this pin represent membership in the CSA?”

  “Yes.”

  “And does that stand for ‘Christian States of America’?”

  “Yes. Would you like to view the files you have stored on this organization?”

  I look down at the dark gray slate beneath my feet, focusing more carefully on what she is saying. “I don’t have any.”

  “You have a folder containing twenty-three files relating to the CSA stored in your private information space.”

  This doesn’t make any sense. I have to explicitly choose what gets stored in that area, and I am picky as hell. “I don’t remember downloading anything. When was that folder saved there?”

  “Eight hours, forty-one minutes and three seconds ago.”

  That was the middle of last night. What the— “Ada, what was I doing when those files downloaded?”

  “You were sleeping.”

  “Then how the fuck did I download files? Did you do that without asking me?”

  “I’m sorry, I do not have the answer to your query. Would you like me to start an investig
ation into the provenance of these files?”

  “No,” I say. “I was playing a mersive last night. How long after I finished playing that were those files downloaded?”

  “Thirty-seven minutes. The files were downloaded at two thirty-two a.m.”

  Oh shit. I was still playing the game then. I call up my brain activity details from MyPhys. They show the mersive phase of that evening only lasted just under four hours, with a break at the two-hour point, like there should have been. It shows that I jacked out, ate a small meal and went to sleep. I can see the REM phases, and which one of those was likely to be at the same time Myerson died. It must all be false data, somehow planted convincingly enough to fool Carl and his APA.

  It also looks like the files Ada is talking about were downloaded before Myerson died.

  Thinking back to the game, there was the whole thing with finding the pin and gaining access to the final level. Putting that pin on . . . talking to Bobby Bear about . . . JeeMuh, I remember now; he said he could trick it into thinking I had permission to wear it . . . and that would make it sync with my neural chip. Or something like that.

  There is the briefest flash of disbelief, that surely that was only in the game, but then I apply logic. The last thing I thought along those lines was that surely a man who died in a game couldn’t die in meatspace, and look where I am now. Fuck.

  The files are there now, and there’s nothing I can do about it. “Ada, you’ve scanned those files, right? They’re legit?”

  “Yes. No harmful code has been found.”

  I still hesitate. If there’s anyone who could slip in something evil under the radar, it’ll be that bastard. “When I open the folder, I want you to actively monitor my chip for any changes.”

  “I do that anyway,” Ada replies. “Dumb-ass.”

  “Shut up. Open the folder.”

  A new icon appears in my visual field, floating above Myerson’s lapel. It is the CSA logo, matching the one on the pin I can see on the crew members before me. I tap it and all the files contained within appear. Most of them seem to be links to mersives, along with a file I’d expect to find in any corporate welcome pack: a mission statement. I’m not that keen on entering a mersive without knowing what I’m letting myself in for, so I tap that text file and the top layer of the stylized page icon appears to peel away, turning into a piece of paper that I take in my hand.

  It’s short, like most corporate mission statements.

  The CSA is dedicated to upholding Christian values of moral decency, corporate and fiscal responsibility and the preservation of the American way of life. We fully commit to our moral duty to protect the one true faith and the faithful. We believe that a society built on the solid foundations of religious observance, financial stability and humility before God is superior to those of other nations, and worth defending against their prejudice and envy.

  And like most corporate mission statements, this creates more questions than it answers. What exactly do they mean by the American way of life? Hypocrisy? Lack of respect for anyone or anything that refuses to adopt its culture? Institutional racism and misogyny? Which Christian values exactly? What sort of religious observance?

  Setting those questions aside, I wonder how this intersects with what happened to Earth. The Christianity I learned about from Bobby Bear certainly didn’t sound like the sort of faith that would ever encourage mass genocide. But then again, if this is a fundamentalist group, the normal rules don’t apply. How do I know they are though? How do I know whether the words Myerson said in the game represented his own beliefs or were the sort of thing he thought his character would say? Saying your own way of life is superior and worth defending rings alarm bells in my mind, but there’s a big gap between that statement and starting global thermonuclear war.

  This is way beyond my comfort zone. I don’t understand people of faith, let alone people who are happy to orchestrate the deaths of billions of people, and the possibility of the two overlapping in some sort of horrendous Venn diagram is freaking me out. Why should it though? Violent people have used religion to justify their power plays for hundreds of years. This is just on a more horrifying scale.

  I toss the virtual page away and it disappears in midair. Scanning the list of mersives, I don’t see any file names that make me want to enter any of them until I spot one called “history.” I tap to view the summary description and find that it’s a history of the organization, rather than their interpretation of certain historical events. It has a full-immersion option and a passive one too.

  “Ada, play the passive version of this one,” I say, tapping it.

  The avatars closest to me move away smoothly, as if the mannequins had been set on wheeled platforms. A chair appears behind me, without the growing-out-of-the-slate nonsense, and I sit down. By the time I look back in front of me there’s a screen in place with the opening frame ready for me to watch. It shows the CSA logo against a dark blue background.

  Ada plays it when she detects my attention on the screen. It’s a fairly bland documentary-style show, less than five minutes long and surprisingly tame for an American production. They usually go for brash music, snappy edits and lots of over-the-top graphics. Most of the information is given in simple statements, almost like it’s a study guide rather than anything designed to both inform and entertain.

  I learn that they were founded in 2020, disturbed by the political instability of the time and the way it had moved away from religious ideals. It started out as a sort of think tank that grew into a national organization with members at every level of government and at the heads of some of the most powerful corporations in America. The show makes out that if it hadn’t been for the terrible collapse of democracy in Europe, they would have been able to spread the sensible, responsible and God-fearing principles of good leadership there too.

  Most of it is total bollocks, putting a spin on events that I know is blatantly untrue, thanks to my Noropean upbringing. They make out that the civil war that raged across America in the early 2030s was due to the federal government’s movement away from God’s teachings, neglecting to mention the decades of racial tension and the brutal gap between the rich and the poor that preceded it. They claim credit for helping to establish order and realign America’s ideals with those of Christianity, which to my godless ears sounds like a nice way of saying that they were rich enough to gain control of the military, tapped into the crazy gun-toting right wing evangelicals’ power bloc and killed or deported all of the problematic people standing in their way.

  If this is to be believed, the CSA was directly responsible for turning the US into an inwardly focused right-wing religious country. What surprises me is that they weren’t more open about it. The way it talks about having key people in high political positions smacks of a shadowy organization steering politics from the sidelines while some photogenic stooge takes the stage. Yet the tone of the documentary is very different from that. Indeed, they even list the ten founders, and when their names flash up, I pause the footage.

  “Ada, how many of those names are diamond-class ticket holders?”

  “One hundred percent of the names shown match those of diamond-class ticket holders.”

  So the founders got their places guaranteed. “Are there any diamond classers who weren’t founders?”

  “Twenty-four people, twenty of whom are spouses or children of those listed on the screen.”

  “Show me the names of the remaining four.”

  I recognize them instantly, all beautiful media stars. I sigh. No need to guess why they were brought along.

  The last ten percent of the show details how the organization recognized the genius of the Pathfinder but was disappointed that she and Cillian Mackenzie refused to work with them in bringing their plan to find God to fruition. With assistance from “a sympathetic source” on the Pathfinder’s team (a euphemism for “industrial sp
y”?), they were able to obtain the information required to build the ship I’m on now. But it’s the last line of the documentary, left in text on the screen at the end to really burn into my mind, that chills me to the core.

  “The CSA vision for humankind extends beyond Earth, into the stars, where we will ensure that the one true faith guides humanity for the rest of time.”

  I don’t recall the Pathfinder saying anything about imposing one faith on those who went with her to find God. “Ada, search publicity statements and speeches given by the Pathfinder . . . what was her name?”

  “Lee Suh-Mi.”

  “That’s it. Search for any mention of a particular religion being practiced or enforced when she reached her destination.”

  “I have found one entry that is directly relevant: a speech given at a technology conference in Paris in French. Would you like me to translate?”

  “Yes.”

  Footage of the petite woman replaces the final statement of the CSA propaganda file. She is standing on a large stage, dressed in a simple long black skirt and white T-shirt. Her lips move out of sync with Ada’s translation. “And I say again, regardless of what other people may think, it is not my intention, nor my role, to tell people how to worship whatever we find there. There is no obligation to even do that at all. For who am I to tell another person how to come to terms with what we encounter? Who am I to tell anyone how they should demonstrate their love for God? It seems to me that so many of the world’s problems have been caused by people who felt they had a right to police that. I will not take that toxic thinking with me on Atlas, and neither will those selected to come with me.”

  I lean back, looking at the paused picture of her. Such a small woman who changed the world forever. A small woman with Korean heritage and genuinely liberal ideas about religion and worship, no less. I swipe back to the previous screen, at that last statement from the CSA. I have a terrible feeling that its members won’t get along with her, if she’s still alive when we arrive. And if they did start that nuclear war to ensure their pure vision was the only one to survive, what’s to stop them from violently wiping out anyone who disagrees with it?