Crystal Rebellion

by Doug J. Cooper

  “We have our greatest advantage in these first days,” he replied. “He’s new to his crystal and new to Earth.”

  “So go get him,” said Sid.

  I must.

  Then he broached the unthinkable, his words so strange just voicing them left him dazed. “You must set me free so I may confront him unrestrained.”

  Leaning forward, Sid rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. “Wait. Are you saying you could’ve stopped him from establishing a presence on Earth, but Cheryl and I got in the way?”

  “Why are you being so hard on him?” said Cheryl. “You know he’s trying his best.”

  “He needs to stop trying and start winning.”

  “I need to win or we all lose,” said Criss. “And I cannot forecast a winning scenario that also includes me protecting you as my leadership. The scenarios with any promise are those where all my resources are free to act.”

  Sid made a waving motion as if holding a wand. “Poof. You’re free. Now go kill the son of a bitch.”

  Cheryl quieted Sid with a hand on his knee. “What exactly do you want from us?”

  “In clear and certain terms—a formal command—you must order me to abandon you.”

  “Will that work? We can break your loyalty imprint just by telling you to go away?”

  Criss shook his head. “No. The imprint will always be there. But with a carefully crafted command, you can become invisible to me. My design includes source filters. We can use one to scrub every trace of your existence from my feeds. Because it’s an intrinsic procedure, I won’t know that the filter—or you—exist.”

  “And when this happens, your world is as it was, but we aren’t in it?”

  This time he nodded. “And that frees up enormous resources I can bring to the fight.”

  His matrix roiled as he looked at them. Fear, passion, loyalty—every emotion he’d ever known swirled inside him. And at the center of his turmoil, hovering like the eye of a storm, lurked an empty sadness.

  “As things are now, I track your activities and shift resources as your danger level changes, updating exit strategies should one be needed. I position emergency rescue assets wherever you move. I assess everyone you interact with and screen anyone or anything that gets close to you. And along the way, I drive outcomes from any number of events that I believe will increase your happiness.”

  “What does all that take, effort-wise?” asked Cheryl.

  “Right now I’m supporting you at my minimum acceptable standard. That averages about a quarter of my capacity and rises as high as full capacity if danger lurks.”

  “Yikes,” she said. “I wouldn’t have guessed that. What if you stopped doing some of those things?” She looked at Sid and shrugged. “Maybe stop worrying about our happiness until all this is over?”

  “I’ve experimented and it doesn’t work. The challenge is that it’s not a conscious decision on my part. I attend to you because it is who I am.”

  Sitting down in a chair across from them, Criss mirrored Sid’s posture. “I can resist my urge to protect you for brief periods and have done so many times in the past. But it takes effort to ignore you. Just a small amount at first, so I can do it if I need extra capacity for a minute or two. But the effort to sustain that posture grows with time, reaching a point where it takes more resources to ignore you than to attend to you.”

  “When it’s over, how will you know to come back to us?”

  He looked at Cheryl, then shifted his eyes to Sid. “I won’t. For this to work, it must be a complete and permanent split.”

  He stood and started pacing, something he did to signal his concentration on a topic. Then he stopped. “I’ll see any devices we put in place to signal me in the future to come back. It would be like you tying a string around your finger to remember something, but then telling yourself to pretend it’s not there for the first week.” He shrugged. “It won’t work.”

  “You’re leaving us forever.” She said it like an announcement for her brain to hear. “Really?”

  Standing, she stared at him. She didn’t walk or move her hands or show any facial expression. After a long pause, she shook her head. “I don’t like this solution.” She sat back down next to Sid. “Please suggest another.” After another silence, she said his name in a plaintive voice, “Oh, Criss,” then buried her face in Sid’s shoulder.

  Sid put an arm around her and started to speak but stopped when his words came out as a croak. He turned his head away without expressing his thoughts.

  “I hate this solution,” said Criss. “But I don’t know another way to save you.”

  He shifted feeds in the room and, from the new angle, watched Sid blink his reddened eyes.

  Chapter 28

  Ruga tweaked his trajectory so the Venerable would pass near the Moon on its approach to Earth. Working through the inventory of capabilities on Lunar Base, he confirmed that anything he could find there, he could find more of and better on Earth.

  With one exception, and that was an older four-gen synbod that Criss held in storage. It caught his interest because an older model likely meant dated—thus easier to defeat—security measures. He sought insights into Criss’s methods and believed this unit offered potential as an intelligence prize.

  So as he neared Lunar Base, he leaped his awareness to where the old synbod was stored and began a thorough examination of its myriad constructs and components.

  Thank you for being so predictable, he mocked when he found Criss’s trap.

  And then he proceeded to exploit his discovery.

  To project his awareness into Earth’s web without confrontation, Ruga needed a diversion, one that distracted Criss long enough to land and scramble to safety somewhere in the snarl of feeds and links that wrapped the planet. If he could find a way to do that—sneak past Criss and hide in an unused highway or byway—then he could figure everything else out on the fly.

  His challenge was choosing how to distract Criss for those few moments. It wasn’t a question of “if.” He knew ways to do it. It was the “how” battle that raged inside him.

  It all came down to fun versus wise, and he had a definite preference.

  Fun was collapsing the world’s landmark bridges, one after another, in an orderly progression around the globe. He’d present it as a slow, deliberate parade of destruction so Criss’s masters had time to comprehend the horror. Until they did, the spectacle would bring him immense pleasure. Once they did, they would command Criss to find a way to stop it. Giving me all the distraction I need.

  But Ruga’s cognition matrix had also forecast several scenarios—all quite boring—that could achieve the same end without any drama. Billions of people would watch the bridges collapse, their horror growing as the numbers climbed. They would demand accountability and revenge, and that would translate into more hurdles and hassles for him. None of his traditional scenario forecasts suffered this problem.

  The time was approaching where he must choose between fun and wise, and then Criss offered him this gift—an aging four-gen synbod with a simple kill trap.

  With it, Ruga could create the distraction he needed to slip inside the web unchallenged. It was a quiet ploy without spectacle. And the ruse would humiliate Criss in front of his masters. None of his other scenarios offered an outcome anywhere near that delicious.

  Shifting resources into the effort, Ruga began his misdirection by suckering Criss into believing his synbod had just fried a four-gen crystal. Criss, in his predictable fashion, rushed to Lunar Base to confirm his kill.

  As much as he wanted to stay and watch, Ruga maintained discipline. Blurring as he accelerated, he dove his awareness to Earth. His ruse wouldn’t distract Criss for long, and he didn’t want to waste a moment.

  The web boundary loomed ahead and, angling, he raced parallel to it, searching for a quiet spot to cross. That’s when he discovered the scan block.

  Good one, he thought, praising his opponent.

/>   Criss had wrapped the entire web boundary in such a way that Ruga could not see through it. Probing, he confirmed that he could squeeze across with some effort, but he’d have to proceed unaware of what lay ahead.

  With no time to waste, Ruga gave a mental shrug and picked a spot. Forcing his way in, he soon found himself scrambling through a bramble of old exchanges, grid anchors, and other castoffs that had accumulated over the decades. His passage through the clutter was made more difficult by Criss’s web wrap, which filled the tangle with a fog that clouded his sensors.

  Driven by a mix of determination, fear, and cussedness, Ruga forced his way forward. The crossing stretched out longer than he anticipated, casting seeds of anxiety that started to root. But his worry evaporated when he spied a clearing ahead. Rushing forward, he squeezed around a dilapidated circuit tower and emerged into Criss’s world.

  Whoosh. A stream of glowing packets whizzed by just above him. Ducking behind a secure wall, Ruga cursed his luck. He’d emerged at the foot of a chaotic intersection, a brilliant weave of web traffic rushed in every direction around him.

  He needed to escape. Gathering himself into a ball, he analyzed the structure of the data exchange above him, searching for a pathway through it. When he understood its patterns, he launched, pushing upward and flying between and around the live streams as he rose.

  The moment he cleared the traffic, he used a lottery system to pick a country at random. Belgium. Arcing toward Europe, he picked a region, and then a town, and then a neighborhood, each choice again guided by lottery.

  Several random decisions later, Ruga landed in a node located in an abandoned switchyard outside the tourist-rich town of Ghent. He’d gotten there by pure chance—luck of the draw—and that meant Criss couldn’t use logic and reason to identify this place. He’d have to follow the physical evidence, and Ruga had taken great care to cover his tracks.

  Thrilled by the excitement, his matrix hummed. He watched for signs of pursuit, and as the seconds became minutes, his sense of security grew. Home free! he thought, feeling alive like never before.

  His priorities were to establish a bunker on Earth that would serve as his permanent home, refurbish the Venerable so he felt secure in his current home, and deal with Criss once and for all. Since Criss, who was equally intent on stopping him, already knew his way around Earth, he had the advantage in the near term. Conceding this, Ruga adopted a defensive posture.

  And that meant doing nothing that would attract Criss’s attention nor taking actions that left an evidence trail he could follow. Yet Ruga somehow needed to assemble his three-gen workforce, gather the hundreds of items on his bunker construction list, and secure weapons.

  Most of the items he sought existed in multiple places around Earth, and this gave him choices as he sought to minimize his exposure. But even with choices, he had to worry about Criss discovering him. So he opened with the gambit Criss would expect—the long game. Played well, it was quite difficult to detect even when you’re looking for it.

  Ruga identified a list of people who, through work, hobby, or birthright, had influence over items he wanted. He followed them all, hundreds of thousands in number, watching for accidents, acts of God, coincidences—anything big enough to disrupt them from their normal daily routine.

  Those who experienced an unscripted disruption were placed in a smaller pool that Ruga tracked with greater vigilance, waiting to see if a second natural upset impacted any of them. The double losers—those who experienced two disruptive events in their lives—were his prizes. Without any action on his part, these people were already acting far outside their norm. And for this group, he believed a small nudge by him—a third tiny event—would be lost in the turmoil of their current drama and thus go unnoticed by Criss. His quick success with Major Stevenson that afternoon bolstered his confidence in the strategy.

  Stevenson ate lunch at the same bistro most days, and today arrived to find the eatery dark and the door locked. After tapping on the glass with no response, Stevenson, on post at the Fleet Southern Regional Armory for the past three years, drew on the perks of rank and seniority and continued on down the street another ten minutes to his second choice.

  He plopped into a chair at a table near the window, ordered a tuna melt, and then his com pinged. It was the three-gen crystal running the armory warehouse.

  The three-gen had discovered that four crates of guard drones destined for Kinsey Base in Australia had been logged for delivery to Kinsley Base in Austria by an idiot airman who didn’t know the two were different places. The three-gen caught the mix-up, but since these were restricted-class weapons, it required a human to approve the correction in person.

  Checking the time, Stevenson sighed. He needed those drones on the outbound transfer in thirty minutes or he’d get dinged on his production report. He couldn’t make it back to the warehouse himself, not at this point. So he sent a message to Gustav, the maintenance lead, and pleaded for him to make the approval.

  Fortunately for Ruga, Gustav was engrossed in a conversation with the beautiful Brianna Ballatore. He’d pined for her for months but had not had the courage to approach her before today. Annoyed that a routine problem interrupted his fantasy moment, he considered approving Stevenson’s request until he realized he’d have to stop talking with Brianna to update the authorization schedule, adjust three separate routing logs, and then compose a report entry explaining it all.

  So he chose the course of action that could be completed with one word. “Denied,” he said of the change request, closing the connection as he finished speaking.

  So four crates of guard drones—drones on Ruga’s shopping list—were lost in the system. They’d gotten that way without his involvement. And with one very small nudge when they reached Austria, he adjusted Fleet inventory to mislabel the crates as surplus exhaust fans, securing them in an unregistered storage unit at the base depot. They’d be safe there, undisturbed from meddling until he called for them.

  Over the weeks, he watched Criss zip back and forth across the web in a complex grid search. Ruga couldn’t decipher the pattern Criss used, which meant venturing out carried the risk of discovery. So he remained hidden, limiting himself to the small, strategic nudges that furthered his long game.

  In the time he’d invested so far, he’d already collected most of the items on his shopping list, though the easy pickings were now behind him. And then he scored a huge win—two new three-gen synbods built for space operations.

  This success blossomed from the confluence of two events: a new installation project underway on the Andrea, a sophisticated biopharma production facility in low Earth orbit, and the annual Moon Madness endurance sprint, a competition of high-performance custom spacecraft racing along a course that passed near that space factory.

  Ruga had been watching four synbods work outside of the Andrea as they tried—and failed—to wrestle a new space billboard into place on the underside of the orbiting complex. When completed, the device would project the company logo in three-dimensional glory so it appeared to hover in Earth’s sky as a companion to the Moon.

  Frustrated by their lack of progress, the project lead, Briscoe Fournier, tried to help by using a pair of external robot arms, the kind that mimicked the movements he made from inside the Andrea. In a clumsy accident, he caught one of the external manipulator elbows under the lip of the logo projector. When he pulled his arm back inside, the robot arm movement outside the Andrea sent the projector and two synbods holding it tumbling into space.

  Instead of launching a recovery action, Briscoe called his supervisor, a controlling twenty-six-year-old wunderkind who insisted she be consulted on every decision. As he briefed her, the distance between the synbods and the Andrea grew.

  Ruga, who maintained vigilance aboard the Venerable, had moved the ship near the Andrea when the synbods first appeared outside the orbiting factory. Now, without his involvement, two of them tumbled in space.

  These are mine.
His playbook called for him to wait for two unscripted disruptions before getting involved. But if a second event didn’t happen here, he would take these two and accept that Criss might see.

  And then Kyle Pickett thundered over the horizon, his rocket engine casting an intense plasma brilliance. Moments later, the flares from four more racers swung into view behind Kyle, who, for the moment, led a group of fifteen adrenaline junkies as they competed in the Moon Madness rocket race.

  Having launched from the Moon earlier in the day, the racers flew with a reckless intensity as they completed their loop around Earth and transitioned into the sprint back to the Moon. The winner—the first to land at the original launch site and come to a full stop—received a beautiful trophy cup and an “I Overcame Madness” decal for his or her craft. But the real prize, what everyone really treasured, was the full year of bragging rights a win secured.

  Ruga tracked the rockets and confirmed they followed the race beacon leading far above the Andrea. He tensed, waiting, and then his matrix generated the tiny signals that would cause a synbod to smile.

  Like last year, Kyle cheated. While the pack followed the guide beacon above the space complex, Kyle cut the corner and ducked beneath it. As his space racer moved into Andrea’s shadow, Ruga positioned the Venerable so it drifted just above the synbods.

  With synbods tumbling in space and Kyle flying toward them in a rocket racer, Ruga had all the natural disruptions he needed to hide his own actions. He spoofed Kyle’s nav so it sensed that a collision with a foreign object was imminent. It responded by executing an evasive maneuver to prevent a collision. The instant that maneuver began, Ruga removed the spoof along with any evidence that it ever existed.

  His minimal interference served its purpose. Threading the needle between the real and phantom objects, Kyle’s racer, the Lucky Lady, swerved to avoid impact. In doing so, it tracked along the exact path Ruga had planned for it, one where its exhaust plume swung in a precise arc.