Freedom (TM) d-2

by Daniel Suarez

  “She’s right, Pete.”

  Philips turned to Jon Ross. Their look lingered longer than necessary.

  Price scowled. “What the hell kind of name is ‘Ivan Borovich,’ anyway? I just got used to calling you Jon.”

  “Call me whatever you like, Laney. I won’t be listening anyway.”

  Philips leaned against Ross. “I like the name Ivan.”

  Price chuckled and spoke in a Russian accent. “Yeah, I’m sure the NSA will like Ivan, too.”

  Philips waved him off. “Defending the U.S. government against a hostile takeover should be worth a green card.”

  “I don’t know. I hear the requirements are getting tougher.” Sebeck slowed the car. “Here we go… .”

  “We’re there?”

  “No, but I think were running out of land pretty quickly on this peninsula.”

  They were now heading down along a wide concrete road apparently made to deal with a high volume of container truck traffic. The traffic seemed much reduced. They had the place mostly to themselves—although a veritable skyline of multicolored shipping containers rose to their left across several lanes of highway.

  Philips studied them. “What is the Daemon’s fascination with shipping containers?”

  Ross looked as well. “They helped spread the consumer culture virus to every corner of the world. It’s no wonder the Daemon found them useful.”

  Sebeck slowed the car again as they came alongside a truck yard, and he turned across the highway to a frontage road.

  Price nodded. “A container yard. You’re going to open a container that contains something. Something Sobol sent to himself. Or—”

  “Price, would you please? I can’t hear myself think.”

  “Then think louder, man.”

  Sebeck pulled into a driveway that surprised everyone. As he followed the golden Thread down the narrow lane, they all gazed through the windshield.

  Ross looked puzzled. “A cemetery? In the middle of all this?”

  Before them stood a rusted metal sign that read MORGAN’S POINT CEMETERY. The parcel was perhaps a couple of acres in size, and stood at the end of a long drive that placed it in the middle of a massive container yard. It was surrounded on three—and very nearly four—sides by towering container stacks. However, the driveway and the cemetery beyond looked green. Trees and shrubs covered the grounds, and a barbed-wire fence separated it from the surrounding shipyard.

  Sebeck sighed. “Well, this is where it’s leading me.” He came to a stop in a small, empty parking lot. Everyone got out and glanced around.

  “This place is positively surrounded.” Philips gazed up at all the containers looming above them.

  Price pointed at the names on the sides of the center container in each wall. In big blue sans serif letters was the word “HORAE” painted along the corrugated steel. “Sergeant. Just like Riley told us.” He turned to Philips. “Doctor, you’ve read some Greek mythology, yes?”

  “Yes, quite a bit. In native Greek.”

  “Prove to us you are deadly boring: what are the Horae in Greek mythology?”

  She shrugged. “They were the three goddesses who controlled orderly life. Daughters of Themis. The word means ‘the correct moment.’ And the earliest mention is in the Iliad, where they appear as keepers of the cloud gates.”

  Price just threw up his hands. “Well that’s pretty damned impressive.”

  “Is it a code?”

  Ross stood alongside her. “Or an arrangement, perhaps. Like tumblers in a lock.”

  “You mean these containers need to be arranged precisely like this to unlock something?”

  He shrugged. “You tell me, Doctor. You’re the code breaker.”

  Sebeck was already walking forward. “It’s no code. It’s symbolism. And as you know by now, Sobol’s worlds are chock-full of symbols.”

  Price followed. Ross waited for Philips, and soon they were all walking down a cracked sidewalk toward an ornate, wrought-iron gate. It, too, was somewhat rusted, but the iconography of the gate was unmistakable—three female guardians holding long spears loomed in bas-relief on either side, wreathed in ironwork clouds. The gate was closed.

  As Sebeck approached the gate, D-Space avatars of three towering female forms in robes and enclosed, plumed helms materialized from the shadows, holding tall golden spears.

  Philips looked puzzled as all three men in the group backed away from the shadows. “What is it?”

  Ross held her hand and tapped his HUD glasses. “Female avatars. The Horae, I gather.”

  One of them spoke in a booming female voice. “Only the quest-taker may pass through the gates.”

  Price held up his hands. “No problemo.”

  Ross nodded. “I guess we’ll wait for you here, Sergeant.”

  Sebeck glanced to Price as he stood with his hand on the gate.

  “You know, Laney, I don’t think I would have made it here without you.”

  Price shrugged. “Well, let’s wait to see if it’s good or bad before you go thanking me.”

  Sebeck shook his head and entered the gate. It closed and locked behind him with an audible click.

  As he continued to follow the golden Thread along the cemetery path, he noticed the graves were widely spaced. It was more like a shady garden—albeit one with colorful shipping containers as a backdrop.

  Before long Sebeck’s path brought him to another D-Space apparition: a young, healthy-looking Matthew Sobol, sitting on a stone bench beneath a tree. There was an identical bench across from him.

  As Sebeck approached, this younger, healthier Sobol nodded to him in greeting. “Detective. I’m very happy that you’re here.”

  Sebeck couldn’t get over how vibrant and healthy Sobol looked, with his tousled hair, khakis, crisp button-down shirt, and suit jacket. He looked the very image of a successful man with his whole life ahead of him.

  “Please, join me.” The avatar gestured to the open seat.

  Sebeck swept off some leaves and dirt and sat.

  “You might be wondering why I look different from the way I will … or did … earlier.” He sat back in his seat. “It’s because I started here at the end. Where you are now. I have no idea where here is or now is at the moment. But I did know that if I started from the end of the story and moved to the beginning, then the Daemon couldn’t begin unless it was complete. So really, your beginning is my end, and my end is your beginning.”

  Sobol gazed directly at Sebeck’s eyes. “When I realized what our world had become, how humanity had become cogs in its own machine, I resolved to do something terrible … perhaps one of the worse things ever done. To exploit the automation of our world in order to plant the seed of a new system is reckless and irresponsible. But I didn’t see any other way we would change. Or could change.

  “But now that humans have accomplished this quest, and you have arrived to tell me of their success, the question I need to ask you is this: was I right or wrong, Sergeant? Should I destroy the Daemon? Should I undo everything I’ve done? Yes, or no?”

  Sebeck felt the shock work through him. He was speechless.

  “You of all people would know, Sergeant. Should the Daemon be ended? Yes, or no? I will wait for your answer.”

  Sebeck took a deep breath and looked back toward the gate. He could see no one. Just himself and this long-dead genius-madman. He sat recalling the entirety of his journey, from the point he received the Sobol murder case up to this very day. It had been years. He thought of his lost wife, Laura, and their son, Chris. Of his colleagues and friends who were dead or to whom he was now dead. He recalled all the people he had met who were building new lives on the Daemon’s darknet, and all the people who had perished in its birth—and in its defense. A procession of faces came to him. What was society, after all, but a group of people making up rules. At least on the darknet, it was a large group of people making up the rules instead of a small one.

  Sobol had waited patiently, but when Sebeck me
t his gaze again, the avatar repeated the question. “Should I destroy the Daemon, Sergeant?”

  Sebeck took a deep breath. Then shook his head. “No.”

  “Let me confirm your answer. Should I destroy the Daemon? Yes or no?”

  “No.”

  There was a flicker in the image, and Sobol looked grimly relieved. He gazed directly at Sebeck again. “You don’t know how much I dream for this to be the ending. There are so many ways for it to end. If you’re really there, Sergeant, good luck to you. Good luck to you all. And don’t be afraid of change. It’s the only thing that can save us.”

  Sobol stood, nodded farewell, and walked toward the nearby gardens. In a few moments he vanished into thin air.

  Sebeck sat in the garden for an unknowable time by himself, contemplating what had just occurred. Until finally he received an alert in his HUD display. It was from a network handle he was too afraid to recognize. He read it over and over: Chris_Sebeck

  After bracing himself, he opened the message and read it slowly …

  Dad, I sent you this message triggered to open when you’re ready for it. I know the truth, and can’t wait to see you. Your son, Chris.

  Sebeck felt the tears come forth from him—coming from some place he thought hadn’t existed in his heart. He had a family. He was a father.

  He was going home… .

  Chapter 40: // Exit Strategy

  It had taken over a century for Sky Ranch to evolve from the ancestral home of a wealthy family into the heavily fortified executive retreat and End-Times bunker complex it ultimately became. However, The Major knew these things didn’t happen overnight. They accrued in layers over decades—and so they had secrets.

  It was knowing those secrets that set The Major apart from his colleagues. He planned for the worst, and was seldom disappointed. His brand of “black sky thinking” had kept him alive on more than one occasion when all around him had perished. Even now as he looked through a 1960s-era periscope at the cleaned-out storage rooms beyond his secret hiding place, he realized that, once again, paranoia had prevailed.

  It had been ten days since Sobol’s Daemon had bankrupted the merchant princes of the world. Ten days since thousands of darknet operatives had scoured the five-star luxury survivalist lodge that was Sky Ranch. They’d cleaned out the warehouses and storerooms, dismantled the weapon systems, and raided the vaults. They’d gone through the floor plans and databases to find everything there was to find.

  But they didn’t see The Major’s Cold War hiding spot on the blueprints. Rumor had it that the room was a tryst location for a philandering banker—built to Cold War bomb shelter standards to mask its true purpose in the books and to muffle loud music. The entrance was concealed to keep out the uninvited.

  True story or not, the place looked a lot like the swinging pad of a midcentury banker—long sofas, bar, pool table, and card tables. It was also musty, covered in dust, and unaccountably cold. But it had kept him alive. Living on canned goods gleaned from the storage room outside before he closed himself in, The Major once more checked the periscope. All was quiet.

  He’d grown a slight beard over the past few days and wore a hooded sweatshirt and jeans pilfered from the nearby laundry. He opened the heavy door and listened. He heard nothing.

  He turned up the hood and poked his head out, looking both ways. There was daylight coming through an open fire-exit door at the corner of the room, wagging in the wind. Trash skittered around the floor with each breeze.

  Disarray. A good sign.

  He shouldered his scoped Masada rifle, then grabbed his day-pack of canned provisions and water in liquor bottles, and took one more precautionary glance before exiting the bomb shelter. He got to the open fire door and peeked through the gap between the hinge and the door.

  It was a cloudy day, but he cursed under his breath as he saw what obviously were darknet sentries still moving about on the walkways near the main house. One of them wore the telltale armor of a Daemon champion. They were all carrying darknet weaponry. There was no way he could exit unseen. And night would be no better, since he knew they’d have night vision. In fact, he’d be at a disadvantage.

  The Major remained calm. He reached into his pack and produced a pair of quality HUD glasses along with spooled wire that led to an electronic enclosure.

  In the closing days of Operation Exorcist, the Weyburn Labs team had made significant progress cracking into the encrypted Daemon darknet. Partial credit was due, of course, to Dr. Natalie Philips for her work at Building Twenty-Nine—where she proved the concept of darknet identity theft. But in order to use this network, they needed to own it. They had been well on their way to doing that—and The Major might soon be again.

  His researchers had advanced past the need to keep a darknet operative medically alive in order to spoof them—they’d done better. They digitized the biometric data and created a unit that injected it into the standard darknet HUD glass sensors, replete with pulse sensor. All that was needed to steal a darknet operative’s identity with this system was their biometric data—fingerprints, iris scan, voice.

  And The Major had given just that to the lab team.

  As he powered up the unit and slipped the glasses on, he became Loki Stormbringer. He suddenly saw the HUD display first-person, instead of on a projection screen, and he saw darknet objects moving in a plane of augmented reality. They were all over the place. This was going to be a very interesting new world.

  He walked with purpose out the storeroom door, ignoring the guards, and then kept walking briskly toward the distant guest bungalows. He gauged the houses were two miles away across slightly unkempt gardens and uncut lawns.

  He kept his back turned to the guards and just kept walking. As the minutes ticked away and he estimated he was hundreds of yards from the main house, he felt the tension draining from him. He looked up at the sky with his new glasses.

  He saw the call-outs of surveillance drones up there, thousands of feet in the sky. But he was one of them now. A member of the darknet. He also had four hundred thousand euros in his bag. It would be much needed since his accounts had all been emptied by Sobol’s Daemon. If only he hadn’t been greedy. But he still had some safe-deposit boxes in Zurich and Dubai.

  And he could now steal all the darknet identities he needed. He suddenly frowned at Loki’s reputation score. It looked surprisingly like a half-star out of five. And what was this? It now looked like Loki was only a tenth-level Sorcerer.

  What the hell?

  No matter. This was only a temporary identity. The sky was the limit now. He was almost to the bungalows, and he could either head out on foot for the power station or try to obtain a vehicle legitimately from the darknet.

  He risked a glance behind him, but there was no one in sight any longer. He was more than a mile from the main house.

  He kept walking and chuckled to himself. Once he was clear of this place, he knew some hackers who could make very good use of this darknet identity theft technology. Very good use.

  “Excuse me, Major.”

  The Major stopped cold. The voice came from right behind him.

  The Major clicked the safety on his Masada rifle and spun around even as he crouched. Then, in utter astonishment, he slowly came to his feet again.

  “It is ‘Ze Major,’ is it not?”

  Only a few feet away, impossibly, stood a spectral image of a Nazi officer in a full black trench coat, monocle, and filter cigarette. He looked real, except for the fact he was a ghost. The Major was so stunned he kept the gun aimed at the ghost’s head.

  It knew who he was.

  “I zought I recognized you.” The apparition tapped his cheek just under the eye. “From your eyes. I can tell zees zings.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “My name is Heinrich Boerner.” He started taking off his leather gloves as he spoke.

  Meanwhile, around him, The Major heard a rising whine, like electric motors. He turned to see a line of razorbacks coming over the g
rass toward him. Why hadn’t he heard them?

  “Fuck!” He turned to run and saw another row of razorbacks moving toward him from the bungalows—like lions approaching in deep grass. There were at least a dozen closing in from all directions. He opened fire with the Masada. The bullets whined off the in front cowlings harmlessly, and the machines all unfolded their swords as they advanced across the grass on electrical power.

  Soon The Major’s gun was empty. And there right next to him was Boerner, smoking calmly.

  Boerner began to remove his heavy leather coat. “Your guns are qvite useless, Major. Zis is an unstoppable event. Struggle vill only prolong ze inefitable.”

  Now the razorbacks were all around The Major—trapping him in a circle of swords.

  The razorback nearest Boerner raised one sword, and Boerner hung his leather jacket upon it. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and grinned at The Major.

  “I do so enjoy my vork… .”

  Further Reading

  You can learn more about the technologies and themes explored in Freedom™ through the following books:

  Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Penguin Press

  The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, Metropolitan Books

  When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce, Beacon Press

  The Shadow Factory by James Bamford, Doubleday

  When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten, Kumarian Press & Berrett-Koehler Publishers

  The Transparent Society by David Brin, Basic Books

  Wired for War by P. W. Singer, Penguin Press

  The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwyn, Oxford University Press

  Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Portfolio Brave New War by John Robb, John Wiley & Sons

  Acknowledgments

  This book was quite a journey. Dramatizing the sweeping socio-economic and technological transformation of civilization required a little research. I’d like to extend my profound gratitude to: James Bamford, David Brin, Ian Cheney, Curt Ellis, Deborah Koons Garcia, Lawrence Goodwyn, Naomi Klein, David C. Korten, Fred Pearce, Michael Pollan, John Robb, and P. W. Singer whose published works informed this story in ways both great and small.