The Beam: Season Two

by Sean Platt

  The elevator stopped a floor shy of the penthouse. The doors hesitated then parted.

  Kai closed her eyes. Then, self-conscious, she reached out and touched the panel to close the elevator doors again.

  There were five elevators in the building. If they were anything like the elevators in her own building, they’d hover around the floors that the aggregate Beam consciousness running the building saw as most likely to need them next, based on resident activity. When Kai arrived, two had been in the lobby, likely anticipating the return of residents based on their current positions and headings outside the building. The other three, according to readouts above the doors, had been ticking around floor numbers in the teens. She figured that meant that the building was momentarily ambivalent. People were moving around, but no one was truly stirring. It meant her elevator wouldn’t be needed for a few minutes at least. She could occupy a single elevator for a while if she needed, undisturbed.

  With her eyes closed, she began tapping her right-hand fingers against her thigh. A sort of dashboard appeared behind her eyelids. The construct was clumsy and made her dizzy. Kai’s ocular inputs were projecting a slightly different view of the dashboard in one eye than in the other, giving the illusion of depth. But because the visual was created by stimulating the rods and cones at the back of her retinas rather than projecting an image on the inside of her eyelids, it felt odd. She was used to using tablets, handhelds, and canvases but hadn’t wanted to bring any with her because they might give her away.

  Right now, to the building’s system, she was Michelle Lowery — a twenty-seven-year-old woman whose apartment number would, if the canvas thought to check, turn out to be undefined. She didn’t think her indistinct apartment would bother the canvas or that the security protocols would double check her once she was inside the building. Still, Kai had to keep reminding herself that she didn’t know what the Beau Monde had up its sleeve. Something like an unspoofed handheld could blow the whole thing.

  She reached out and tapped at the air. The projection showed her hands hitting virtual buttons in the dashboard behind her eyelids. The vertigo of the experience took some getting used to and kept making Kai want to swoon. But eventually, blessedly, she found herself looking at the Ryan’s apartment’s interior instead of the dashboard.

  The apartment’s native visual sensors were encrypted in ways Kai had never seen, but the perimeter formed by the physical walls was sloppy. It was, as was so often the case, an example of the weakest link failing the chain. Whitlock, for all of his armor, had had a frail memory and had comprised Micah’s weakest link. And here, while the building’s digital security was top-notch, the physical seals weren’t impervious. The nanos she’d left behind had multiplied and, as far as Kai could tell without delving deep, had probably found that they could go anywhere by following the paths of cables snaking between apartments and into the hallways.

  Right now, those same nanos and their intelligent offspring were inside the Ryans’ penthouse, in a group the size of a tack’s head, each bot’s three-color or light/dark sensor becoming a single point of light in what was essentially a composite eye.

  After a turning the nanobot eye through a quick glance to make sure no one was in the living room, Kai ordered the nanos to detach from the wall and hover.

  “Give me an occupancy sweep,” she whispered.

  With her eyes closed in the elevator and her vision floating around the apartment above, Kai again felt that strange sense of separation. She reached out for the elevator’s cool wall, felt it, and backed up so she could lean on it for support. This was clumsy, and she hated the time it was taking. The elevator of course knew Kai was in it, and while she doubted the car would be needed (seeing as there were four others), it was quite possible that the building would register her presence as anomalous. The canvas might decide that Miss Lowery was having some sort of a medical episode that required assistance, or it might look deeper into her lease and discover Miss Lowery’s digital forgery. But there was no other way to do this. She had to see who was in the apartment before attempting to enter.

  Kai watched the eye’s image, her true lids closed. There was nobody in the living room, dining room, or the elaborately appointed kitchen. There was an empty bathroom, a parlor, a library, and several specialty rooms with layouts and mysterious devices in them that made Kai salivate. She saw an empty white room covered in white panels — probably a simulator — and found herself remembering the simulator the Beamers had left her in and just how real the simulated sand had felt between her toes. Why would you need a simulator if you had immersion rigs? She supposed the answer might be that it was easier for two people to use a simulator together. If Isaac and Natasha wanted to screw in Rome without leaving their apartment, the simulator would let them be physically together. But somehow Kai doubted that Isaac and Natasha were screwing in Rome. They might not be screwing at all. Based on what Nicolai had told her, it didn’t sound like they really ever did anything together other than fight.

  The hovering eye showed Kai the offices she’d already visited, where they’d duped Whitlock into believing he’d seen Kai beat Doc to death with a pipe. Isaac’s office was closed. Natasha’s was open and empty. Kai could squeeze the nanobots into Isaac’s office (through cracks in the door or via their proven route, following cables behind the walls, floor, and ceiling), but there was no point. She knew what she’d needed to know. The closed office door in the otherwise empty apartment told her that Isaac was home but that Natasha wasn’t. It made sense, seeing as Nicolai had said they were feuding. Natasha was probably off with Micah. Whether Isaac was taking a virtual vacation at home alone or simply beating off was immaterial.

  Kai told her bots to head back into crevices and hide then tipped her head to deactivate the visuals and activate her cochlear implant. But still she paused, indecisive.

  Did Isaac even know who Kai was, other than a girl he’d once seen standing beside Nicolai? If so, was that good or bad? What was the more enticing story — that she’d defected from Micah’s camp and wanted to join Isaac’s, or that she was a random Isaac Ryan fan who wanted to take a ride on the Directorate’s handsome front man? Neither was a clear winner, and neither gave her a clear course of action. She was in the building now, but she couldn’t admit it. If Kai was going to call Isaac, she’d need to pretend to be outside. She’d have to do a lot of explaining then hope he’d come down to the lobby let her in. Once she was standing in front of him, Kai was sure she could make him stand on one hand and sing showtunes, but she wasn’t there yet, and had no idea how to get that far.

  Maybe going straight for his apartment had been a bad idea. Maybe she should retreat then arrange to meet him at a public function. If she did that, she could work her magic in her usual way. She could touch his arm ever so slightly and bat her eyelashes. She could bed him in thirty seconds if she did it that way then siphon out his secrets — both those he gave willingly and those her nano scavengers could sniff out while he was asleep, as she’d done with Whitlock back when she’d only known him as “Ralph.”

  That was clearly the better option, and she knew it, but it had only occurred to her once she was already inside the building, in an elevator one floor below Isaac’s feet, with a floating eye already in position. Being here was no accident. Kai didn’t make many accidents. No, if she was honest, she’d wanted to come here despite its impracticality. Because she wasn’t really here for Nicolai. She was here for herself, and Isaac wasn’t her target. To Kai, the apartment itself was what mattered most.

  She clicked off her call implant, deciding not to alert Isaac. She had a much bolder plan in mind. She’d get inside then allow him to catch her. Porn had been exploiting the “apprehended intruder” motif for as long as porn had existed. It was a proven model, and someone with Kai’s wiles was up to the task of giving it life. She already felt fairly sure she could stifle the canvas’s automatic panic response, and before Isaac called DZPD to report a break-in, she’d knock hi
m off-kilter with pattern-matching movements modeled off her nanobots’ AI assessment. She’d use her pheromones. She’d purr in his ear then launch a rear assault on his brain’s inhibition centers using the nanos that had been following him around for two weeks, learning his habits and patterns. The Beau Monde wanted to keep secrets from Kai? Fine. She had her own secrets, and she doubted that even the world’s elite knew what she knew about how to thumb the buttons men didn’t even know they had.

  Closing her eyes and calling up the visual dashboard, Kai ordered her hoverbots to re-form the eye. A moment later, she found herself looking at what appeared to be a Beamglass coffee table. She lifted the view, moving the bots toward the door. She closed on it then settled the view so that she was looking at the wall beside the door where the eye had first formed.

  She opened her real eyes and tapped the elevator’s panel. “Request penthouse access.”

  “Access to the penthouse is restricted,” said a voice. “Would you like to place a request?”

  “That’s what I said,” Kai told the voice, irritated. “Yes. Make a request.”

  There was a chirp, and the panel changed to show a pair of arrows chasing each other in a circle.

  Kai closed her eyes and saw the same animation appear on the Ryans’ wall, indicating an incoming request. In the middle of the arrows it read: Access request: Michelle Lowery. The animation would appear on the surfaces nearest to Isaac, too, but there was nothing she could do about that. She just had to cross her fingers and hope he was as immersed as she thought he might be.

  She watched the arrows for a half second.

  Kai couldn’t hack the canvas to grant herself access. But although the electronic security was top-notch, most physical security could be subverted. Every chain had a weak link.

  The view behind her eyelids distorted as the tiny floating group of bots formed something like a minuscule finger. The finger touched the center of the circling arrows, and at the same time, a chirp sounded inside the elevator. Then the box began to climb.

  Surprisingly, the elevator didn’t open into the apartment itself. Instead, it opened into a small hallway. Kai walked its length, and the interior door opened at her approach. Before the door closed behind her, Kai looked back along the hallway’s length, toward the elevator bay, from one open door to another. What was the point of having the hallway as buffer security if both doors opened at once? More evidence that even while the world was getting smarter, it couldn’t always see clear of its ass. The thought made Kai feel warm. She’d made her living slipping through cracks, and as long as people kept building strong doors on flimsy hinges, she’d always be able to find a way in.

  Kai lifted one leg and then the other, slipping off the high heels she’d worn on the chance she’d need to sex Isaac out of his secrets. At this point, though, that ship had sailed. Whom had she been kidding? She didn’t actually want Isaac to catch her. She wanted to be left alone because this errand wasn’t about gathering information for Nicolai. This particular errand was about Kai, and what had been kept from her.

  With her heels off, she felt significantly shorter. She buckled the shoes to a belt around her dress’s waist then walked across the living room on padding feet.

  She felt a strange absence of fear, and after a moment realized the root of her boldness was a sense of indignation. She’d always worked hard and made smart choices — far smarter and bolder choices, she thought, than the Isaac Ryans of the world. And yet those at the top had been keeping the best for themselves and away from her deserving hands. It made her furious.

  She prowled her way into the kitchen. Each unfamiliar appliance was an affront to her dignity. Why hadn’t she been offered the strange, depth-screen handheld laid carelessly on the counter? Why hadn’t her leasing agent offered her what appeared to be a rudimentary teleporter masquerading as a food delivery system? The technology’s casualness was infuriating. If the “food delivery system” really did bring items into the apartment from somewhere else without it having to travel through tunnels or via hovering conveyances, it represented technology that the popular press had discussed extensively — but believed to be decades or perhaps centuries away. Yet here it was, plain as day, sitting beside sealed canisters with Natasha Ryan’s flour, sugar, and brown sugar.

  No big deal for us up here at the top, it seemed to taunt.

  Kai glanced toward the office. Now, she almost did want the door to open. She almost wanted Isaac to come out and see her stalking his apartment without a care. She wanted him to see that his ivory fucking tower wasn’t as impervious as he’d thought. His technology hadn’t kept him as untouchable as he surely believed he was. And if the door didn’t open on its own, she kind of wanted to smash some appliances, being loud enough to make it open. And when he came out, she wouldn’t seduce him. She’d hurt him instead, for the way he’d unknowingly snubbed her.

  But instead, she soothed her swelling anger. Alarming Isaac would do no good. She wanted what the Ryans had, but she knew full well she couldn’t take it by force. Even if she were to steal a few gadgets, she doubted they’d work for her and her inferior ID. If they were as next-generation as they seemed to be, every one of them would be intelligent. Like The Beam. The Beam responded to direct requests and queries, but it always flavored those responses based on the person asking. It knew the requester’s patterns of speech, how they used idioms and expressions, and how some people meant one thing while saying another. The appliances would be like that. The handheld wouldn’t work with Kai’s level of access. The food delivery system would only boil water and make toast because it would know she wasn’t supposed to have anything more.

  Kai had always believed that you couldn’t wait for life to give you what you wanted, but that you had to be bold enough to reach out and take it. But infuriatingly, this situation was the exact opposite. She’d never be able to take any of what she saw here. Any of what was owed to her, that she’d earned through blood and sweat.

  She looked toward the office again then plodded across the floor. Her hips swayed without her permission, soft lips pulling into a seductive bow. She felt the environment watching her, but the attention was accommodating, not alarmed. She’d been granted access by the apartment, and now it was time to see what Isaac would grant her.

  But before she reached the closed office, the open one caught her eye. The room’s decor was clearly masculine, its floor and surfaces messy with detritus. Directorate Party detritus.

  It was Isaac’s office.

  Which meant it wasn’t Isaac who was home at all. It was Natasha.

  She should leave. Kai could do nothing with Natasha, unless Natasha swung both ways. She should get out, count herself fortunate for not getting caught, and try again later. Maybe track Isaac somewhere more public now that she’d seen what she’d come to see.

  But had she seen what she’d come to see?

  Kai’s fingers tapped her leg, her mind turning. Then she sat on the polished wood floor in front of the door with her legs crossed, almost daring one of them to step out and see her in plain sight. She closed her eyes to see the dashboard. At her command, the hovering composite eye re-formed. This time, she sent it into the office, bots squeezing in the sway spaces around bolts that held the walls together and through gaps in conduit. A moment later, she found herself looking down at a tall red-haired woman lying on her back in one of the chair-shaped rigs.

  Nicolai had cobbled an immersion together for Kai, Doc, and Whitlock to share, but none among the three had truly known what they were doing. What they’d used was like an immersive diorama, but it was clear there was much more out there if you could use the same technology to access The Beam. Kai had only seen a small dataset, and wondered what lay deeper into the network, where more of the Beau Monde’s superiority came out to play.

  Her internal vision watched Natasha. She turned the eye toward the feedback monitor and looked on as the woman’s heart rate increased. She watched the thermal display indicate t
he gathering of bodily blood in a pattern Kai recognized, and then she realized what she was seeing.

  Natasha was cheating on Isaac right now, without really cheating at all.

  Kai focused inside, feeling the wood floor beneath her.

  “Can I enter the immersion?” she whispered.

  The view shimmered, a red flash pulsing across the distortion.

  “Can I hack the data stream?”

  Another red shimmer.

  “Is there a redundant activity monitor?”

  Her view flashed green.

  “A visual stream?”

  Green.

  “Show me.”

  At first, Kai didn’t know where she was being led as the eye inched closer. She’d assumed that if the visual stream was echoed outside of Natasha’s mind, it would be showing on a screen somewhere on the rig. But then, that didn’t make sense, did it? If the rig let you do things in virtual space that you couldn’t, wouldn’t, or maybe shouldn’t be doing in real life, would you want anyone passing by to see your indiscretions?

  Natasha’s pale skin filled Kai’s field of view as the nanobot eye neared her face. There was a disorienting sense of inversion as the nanobots rolled all at once to look in the other direction. Kai realized it had slipped up under the back of Natasha’s hair. The view was dark and filled with filtered reds, but in the last moment before the eye dispersed, she saw a small port in the rig. The sort of port where you might plug in an external monitor.

  Kai waited. The bots would be spreading out now, making contacts like a rudimentary plug. But when the redundant visual stream filled Kai’s view, it didn’t seem as redundant as she’d thought it would be. Rather, she saw an immersive stream made flat…which was in turn made semi-immersive again thanks to Kai’s current eye-on point of view.

  She saw a white room. Slim hands that seemed to stem from Kai but that were, in fact, Natasha’s. Fingers buried in a gorgeous man’s hair. His face came closer, and Kai could almost feel his kiss. She saw how he moved and craved audio to hear the rise and fall of his breath.