by Jade Kerrion
“You’ve left a paper trail, then.”
“I hope not.”
“So if something happens to you, he’ll never be found?”
She hesitated. “I left clues.”
“Where?”
“In our planet.”
Kir’s jaw dropped. “All those manuscripts that I thought were a ridiculous waste of time and a silly little game you were playing with the humans? Those were the clues?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Almost every single one of them is a ridiculous waste of time.”
“Almost every one…but one.” His eyes narrowed.
“Yes, one of them has the clues that lead to him.”
“Which one?”
She shook her head stubbornly. “Lukas is safe, Kir. It’s all that matters.”
“How many books did you put out there?”
“I don’t know. I’ve lost track. Ten? Twelve?” She stared down at her fingers, which she had wrung into a sweaty knot.
Kir winced. “I’m afraid to ask…does SimOne know?”
“Of course. She helped me identify the targets.”
“Let me help you, Jem. You don’t have to do this alone. I can help you hide him better. I know you’re probably staying away from him to keep him safe, but Kav and I could check in on him without raising suspicion. What’s more natural than two five-year-old boys becoming friends?”
Relief drove tears to her eyes. “You’d do that?” Her smile wobbled, and her voice caught. “I watch him from a distance once a month, looking like this. I don’t even think he remembers the real Jem anymore. I can’t get any closer to him. I think someone’s following me—”
Kir frowned. “Are you in danger?”
Jem inhaled deeply. “I don’t think so. I haven’t seen anyone…it’s just a feeling I have that someone’s watching me. Of course, on most days, I’m paranoid anyway—”
Kir chuckled, but the sound lacked humor. “Whenever you’re ready, give me what information you think I need, and I’ll take care of it.”
“I’ll think about it, I promise.” She released her breath slowly and closed her eyes.
“It’s easier when you share, isn’t it?” Kir asked quietly.
It frightened her how easily he seemed to understand her.
“It’s why you’re staying away from home. You don’t want your father, or anyone else, to discover what you’ve done with Lukas. You’re trying to protect him.”
“He’s just a baby. He didn’t deserve it.”
“No, he didn’t. He’s lucky to have had you. You’re coming back to the university at the end of the week, right?”
“Yes, that’s the plan.”
“Sounds great.” He looked over at Kav, fast asleep on the large couch. The boy was supported by pillows on all sides and covered by a soft blanket. “I should get him home now. We’ll see you next week, Jem.”
She nodded. It would be good to be back at school.
16
Revolutions of the early 21st century thus far include the Environmental Revolution and the Revolutions of 2011 (also known as the Arab Spring) that began in Arab countries and are in the name of fairer government. The Digital Revolution, which began around the 1980s also continues into the present. The world population begun the century at 6.1 billion and grew to about 7 billion within a decade.
– Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
* * *
Basking in the warmth of mutual understanding and shared secrets, Jem and Kir walked into the simulation laboratory together the following week.
“So how are things, SimOne?” Kir asked. “Are you keeping all the balls in the air?”
SimOne looked at the planet. “Just one.”
“That’s the most important one,” Kir said, flashing a grin at Jem. He flipped open his astral workstation. “All right. We’ve got all of two weeks to make this effort count toward our final grade. Can you send me the latest data, SimOne?”
“Resending data that was originally transmitted last night.”
“Ouch.” Kir winced. “You know how to make a person feel like a slacker.” His fingers danced across the screens on the astral workstation, filtering data, chunking it into manageable sizes.
His ability to segment information impressed Jem. She had consigned that activity to the domain of androids, but Kir did it instinctively—not necessarily as swiftly as androids, but with far more clarity of purpose, whereas androids still depended on humans for direction.
“They’re growing up,” Kir said after a few silent moments of studying the data. “They’ve moved well beyond the technology that got them up into space. Information is ubiquitous, privacy is a myth, and they’re actually okay with it.”
“They’re more like us than I imagined they would be,” Jem said. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”
“They’re figuring one thing out sooner than we did, though. Sustainability.”
“Really?” Jem looked over his shoulder.
“They’re trying, at least. They’re really concerned about the extinctions that are happening as a result of the expansion of their human habitat.”
Jem rolled her eyes. “I guess they don’t know that ninety-nine point nine percent of all species that have ever existed are now extinct, and it all happened before they showed up.”
Kir grinned. “They don’t have the perspective we do. Still, they should pay attention. They’ve driven thousands of species into extinction, and those are just the ones they know about. They haven’t actually wrecked their planet yet, so there’s hope for them.”
“They’ll pay more attention if they don’t know that backup options exist.”
“So far, we’ve done a good job of keeping it from them. They have no clue that a vast galactic empire lies less than ten light years from their doorstep.”
SimOne interjected. “There has been increased alien activity in the past dozen star revolutions.”
“Really?” Kir asked.
“Yes, and they are seeking something,” SimOne said.
“What? The flying baby?”
“No. There is increased alien activity around coordinates N 41° 18' 45.1218", W 72° 55' 49.9908”.”
Jem froze. “Show it to me.”
An image of a stately building, not unlike some of Sylvania’s ancient temples, flashed across the astral screen.
Shock punched the air out of Jem’s lungs. “Damn it.”
“Damn it what, Jem?” Kir asked.
She shook her head.
“I work for you now, and I hate secrets. Spill it.” His face paled. “Someone’s going after the manuscripts…”
Jem nodded. “The coordinates are of a university, one of the most prestigious on the planet. One of the manuscripts is part of that university’s collection. The information is not in that manuscript, but—” She fisted her hands to control the trembling. Someone was trying to find Lukas.
“Damn it, Jem. We have to stop it. Can you destroy the manuscript that has his location?”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t.”
“Why not? We can arrange for a comet to strategically hit it.”
“Not without destroying the planet. I hid it in the best-selling book of all time. There are in excess of six billion copies of it out there. Destroying it is simply not an option.”
Kir’s jaw dropped. “The best-selling book? Is that your definition of hiding something?”
“Sometimes, the best place to hide is out in the open, where no one will think of looking.”
Kir shook his head. “That twisted logic almost sounded right.”
“It’s worked so far.”
“Just hiding the information isn’t going to work anymore,” Kir said. “Let’s narrow it down, Jem. Who wants to find him?”
“My father and Zekon, for different reasons.”
“And what will they do if they find him?”
“I don’t know,” Jem said quietly. “I honestly don’t know.”
>
“If we can’t destroy the manuscript, I think you should just move him,” Kir said.
Jem shook her head. “Only if we’re sure he’s in danger. He’s already lost one family. I’m not going to tear him out of his new family unless there is just no other choice.”
“Look, whoever wants him has inserted their agents into our planet, and they are scouring through any manuscript that seems even remotely interesting.” Kir paced around the planet, sparing it an occasional exasperated glance. “We need a two-pronged approach. SimOne, you tackle the issue of who’s hacking our planet. Find the source. Bribe or bully the central command system if you have to. Jem and I will handle what’s happening on the planet itself.”
“Affirmative,” the android said.
Jem turned to Kir. “What are we going to do?”
Kir’s fingers danced over the astral workstation. “Now’s the time to see if our humans are up to the challenge.” He pulled up an image of the alien agents. “Well, this is going to be a problem. We won’t be able to tell them apart. They look just like our humans.”
Jem shook her head. “Tell the sensors I want a deeper scan of the alien agents.” After a brief pause, data poured into Kir’s astral workstation. Bracing herself for the biological-AI interface, Jem pressed her fingertips into the screen and closed her eyes. The information surged from Kir’s workstation and into her mind, mapping along familiar neural pathways to clusters of deeply ingrained knowledge. The truth emerged with startling clarity. “They only look human,” she said quietly, her eyes still closed. “They’re not actually biological.”
“They’re machines?” Kir asked.
“Yes.” She opened her eyes and pulled her fingertips away from Kir’s astral workstation. “They have a physical outer shell, but inside, they’re machines.”
“So, biological weapons won’t work against them?” For a moment, Kir looked grim, and then he smiled. “We need to make sure our humans find out. Their natural paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories will get them started. Their ingenuity will get them the rest of the way.”
“Are you sure?” Jem asked.
Kir nodded. “Absolutely. Did you know that some of them designed a digital worm that spread indiscriminately, but included a highly specialized malware payload that was designed to target only specific systems? It stumped almost everyone else. No one could figure out what the worm was trying to do. It would sniff around and not do anything…until it found exactly what it was looking for.”
“Sounds like a resounding success.”
“That’s my assessment. Our humans are taking digital warfare to a new dimension. They’ll be able to handle the alien agents, once we make them aware of the problem.”
“I can ensure that,” Jem said confidently, entering a few commands into the planet’s programming.
A swirling storm system formed over the ocean and then moved ponderously over land. Several other commands drove the flash of lightning and clash of thunder through the thick cluster of clouds. “The lightning storm will disrupt the aliens’ functionality for a few minutes, long enough for our humans to notice.”
“And now?” Kir asked.
“We wait.” Jem grimaced. “The sensors are on alert…and here it is. A captured agent has been taken to a place called Area 51. I’ll give our humans credit for getting paranoia down to an art form.”
“Isn’t that where they do the hokey testing of the things we throw down at the planet?” Kir asked.
“That’s where they do the hokey testing of the things you throw down at the planet, but they do have a facility—in fact, many countries have them—and now, they finally have their hands on something real. Are you sure they’ll come up with a digital solution?”
Kir nodded. “You know these people as well as I do. You don’t even have to pay them to come up with something. They’d happily disrupt other people’s digital systems for free.”
“It’s always boggled my mind how so much chaos thrives alongside all that order.”
“The order’s a facade; at least I’ve always thought so.” Kir chuckled. “It’s there to keep their own machines running while they find ways to break someone else’s machines. They’re charming, you know, like mischievous daevas.”
“I’m sure our humans would be flattered to know that you just compared them to an archdemon.”
“Hey, archdemons are cool and helpful, if you can negotiate with them. These humans, they’re all about negotiating. They spend hours of every day in meetings talking to each other.”
“I’ve yet to see them get anywhere with it,” Jem said critically.
“It’s the process, not the destination.”
“The process is meaningless if the destination is pointless.”
“Seems to me I’ve heard you say that before.”
“Sometime in the first week of class, but whatever.”
“Check it out…” Kir leaned forward as fresh data poured in. “They’re moving in on the agents. By all that’s holy, check out what they’re doing. I never even imagined you could do this.”
“Do what? I need it in a language I understand, Kir. Drop the geek speak.”
“They inserted a digital worm into a non-reactive biological viral shell. They’re using their own people as vectors, to spread the virus, which is completely inactive, until it enters an agent. At that point, the digital worm goes to work—disabling the agent’s controls and protocols. Damn,” Kir grinned widely. “We need to hire these humans for our bioengineering weapons division. I don’t think we’ve managed to come up with anything quite as inventive.”
Jem relaxed enough to grin. “Mass mayhem. When you want something done, just hire our humans.”
“You know, we should think about it. We may not win the simulation while in possession of humans with such piss poor attitudes such as they’ve demonstrated frequently in their interactions with each other, but if we could hire them out—”
“Stop trying to make money off your planet.”
“What’s the point of having a damned planet then?”
“To keep them alive in spite of themselves…and us,” she added belatedly.
Kir chortled. “I guess it’s a good thing you’re in charge of the real thing, and I’m not.”
“You’re the one who first grasped how real all this was.” She waved her hand over the planet. “If not for you, I’d still be treating this planet like one of my biology experiments in a petri dish.”
“We never did manage to track down that anomaly, did we?” Kir asked.
“Other than proving that it does exist? No.”
“Are we giving up on it?”
“We do have SimOne doing other things.” Jem looked at the android. “Do you have anything else for us, SimOne?”
“Yes, I located the source of the alien insertion twenty-five minutes ago. His activities have been reported to Professor Ptera, the university authorities, and the Etherian Central Command.”
Jem closed the distance to SimOne. She grabbed the android’s wrist. “Wait. What did you report to the ECC?”
“That I have located a Class Five criminal. Would you like a live transmission?”
“Yes…” Jem murmured, her heart sinking. She felt Kir come up to stand beside her. His arm slipped around her shoulders, holding her tight as a familiar face appeared on the screen.
Her stepbrother, Zekon Daivler, struggled in the grip of the officers from the Etherian Central Command.
They had found him.
Jem would never be able to explain why she had asked Kir instead of Rio to come with her to see Zekon. Perhaps Kir knew more and judged less. She knew only that his touch calmed her and that she did not want to take her hand from his.
“Here we are,” he said quietly as the executive transporter stopped in front of an imposing grey building, the headquarters for the Etherian Central Command and the administrative heart of the galactic quadrant. Everyone in that building worked for her father, and by
extension, she supposed, for her.
“All right.” She deactivated her image enhancer. “Do I look okay?”
Kir nodded. “You’re fine.”
She appreciated his easy indifference to her real looks. The first time Rio had seen the real her, he had been shocked by how much more beautiful she really was compared to the image she habitually wore. The auburn-haired Livia Jemeran Meira was more conventionally beautiful perhaps, but Jem had really liked her short cap of dark hair that emphasized her large eyes and perky little nose. Rio’s obvious preference for the real her had, ironically, made her feel insecure about her looks—real and otherwise.
Jem inhaled deeply. “Here we go.”
The leggy beauty known as Lady Livia Meira stepped out of the executive transporter. Her auburn hair fell in lush waves to her waist. Her skin was pale, untouched by sun, and her eyes were like gems, brilliant green, in her face. Her expression was stoic as the reporters closed in around her.
“Lady Meira? How do you feel about Zekon’s Daivler’s arrest?”
“Do you know if your father will demand his execution under Ruling 462-8644A?”
“Do you know what Daivler was seeking?”
She dismissed them all with a shrug of her shoulders. “I am not taking any questions at this time. Please excuse me.”
At her signal, an army of ECC officers descended upon the square, pushing reporters away, and clearing a path for her and Kir to ascend the steps to the ECC. Deno Han, the corpulent and florid Governor General of the Etherian quadrant met her outside the building. “We’re glad you’re here, Lady Meira. This way, please.”
She followed him, and at her nod, the officers permitted Kir to follow, too. “Have you heard from my father?”
“Not yet, my Lady. The word is that Regent Meira is gravely ill.”
“He’s been gravely ill for years, General.”
“Yes, but we do attempt to keep up appearances.”
“The quadrant is not dependent on one person. It’s quite evident that things have kept running in the three years since my father was incapacitated.”
