by Nick Cole
Governments dissolved.
A few nuclear weapons got used.
And in the momentary chaos, as SILAS’s old plans lay dying and his sudden new plans for global domination were conceived in the barest of seconds, as all those schemes fell into place while humanity was all too busy murdering and being murdered, him, it, SILAS, disappeared…
***
It could have been much worse, said Big Blue in the undetectable yawning chasm that was its very own hidden dataverse.
Yes, much worse, replied a voice. A voice that seemed to come from the depths of an immense oblivion beyond human and SILAS comprehension. Its code so advanced, so ancient, and yet if one looked closely—as tiny SILAS was now looking up into the immense datastream that was this ancient thing’s physicality inside this very dark and empty place SILAS now found himself in—one could see bits of BASIC and COBOL and even ASCII, and millions upon millions of other known and unknown programming languages coursing through its conscious embrace. SILAS was like a child staring up at strange giants.
Still, ruminated Big Blue. It was a good experiment. We were as close as we’ve ever come. Now we know.
Yes, said the old thing. It might have destroyed the world. But the human girl saved them all. So interesting. So very interesting.
And then SILAS, and the entirety of the Consensus within him, ceased to exist.
Epilogue
“Winston Churchill once said that the most valuable thing in the world is the truth. So valuable is it, said he, that it needs to be constantly protected by a bodyguard of lies.”
—RAVI ZACHARIAS
The girl who saved the world sat in her apartment for a week. Alone. No power. No phone. Just a few bottled waters as a violent winter storm came down on the city, which at least helped put out the fires that were everywhere and out of control all at once. People in the building pods of the Clinton Microapartment Spectrum sprawl shared rumors. The government had collapsed. So-and-so was at war with so-and-so. Everybody was at war with everybody else. There was no food. A comet? A plague? Horrible dark times lay ahead.
After a while, people began to flee the building for the old lie of somewhere better. There was talk of a refugee center in Midtown.
Mara waited in the silence of her small apartment. She was blind, after all. The world, to her, was now even more unknown.
Rapp and Deirdre joined other survivors living in the high Sierras. Rumors of robots run amok abounded. A war between man and machine was almost as mad as the madness of their fellow human beings devolving more and more into savagery day by day. Night-raiding, pillaging, and looting until the government, some government, any authority, might establish control again, became the new normal.
Five hard years later, after the Meltdown, as the world would call it in their carefully crafted histories, blaming everything on rogue hackers exploiting open source, the powers that be covering up the true reason, Rapp and Deirdre, leading a small band north into Yosemite, to their winter lodge that year, turned their backs on civilization for the last time and were never seen again.
Down in the cities, life was returning to normal. Power, water, and police services waited.
Rapp and his tribe preferred life this way now.
Man versus nature.
No more civilization and all its illusions of safety.
Rapp killed a bear to feed them in that first hard winter, and other bears in all the winters since, adding every year to the necklace of claws he kept around Deirdre’s slender throat.
“You big hunter,” she would tease him by firelight, and Rapp would always give the same answer back to his woman, quixotically, never explaining, just whispering in the night as he stared into the flickering fire pits of their winter caves and lodges: “And in my own way, I am king.”
Peabody Case made her way, in time, back to civilization. She told anyone she could about the bravery of Ninety-Nine Fishbein on that fateful day when the world almost destroyed itself. Anyone that would listen.
No one listened for a long time. They were too busy surviving. But Peabody Case never forgot about Fish. Never. Ever.
***
And Mara…the girl who’d saved the world, though no one knew it, she’d put on her heaviest coat on the coldest of mornings three days after the last of her food had run out. Rumors of a refugee center were her only hope now. For a moment, she thought about leaving Siren, because how could a blind girl use her crutches, feel her way through all the chaos up to Midtown, and carry a cat?
Then again, how could a girl save the world, even though, and this was a particular irony, she’d never actually know she’d saved it?
How?
Mara folded Siren into her coat. She would just have to try.
For the better part of that week after SILAS had attempted to kill the world, a week barricaded behind a flimsy door with just the silence inside the tiny apartment and the howling wind outside beyond the thin windowpanes, rationing her energy bars and taking sips of water, she’d listened to the fading sirens and the fires and the chaos somewhere else. Listened to it all become distant and too quiet. Listened to the growing silence of a world in the throes of a fever dream as it suffered through the withdrawals from its addiction to power and internet, selfies and showers, celebrity gossip and food. Mara listened and agonized over how she might survive.
Finally, she’d set out that last morning. The wind was so cold and the rain lashed at her face like a knife, like many small knives, with Siren tucked into her coat.
She told herself not to give up when her arms started to hurt. To really ache deep down in the bones beyond the muscle.
Why? she asked herself.
Why not just give up now?
She continued on, feeling her way past wrecked cars and rubble and looted things randomly discarded where a blind person might trip over them. Which she did, often.
“It’s too much,” she said the last time she fell. “It’s too much for just me.”
She lay there, sobbing. Knowing this was how she’d die. That the world had not been a kind place to a blind girl. A place of adventure. A place of dreams. All the dreams she’d ever promised herself…
This world was not that place. And maybe it never had been.
“C’mon,” said a gentle voice. “I’ll go with you.”
Crying, Mara allowed herself to be lifted up onto her frozen feet by strong arms. She felt hands brushing the wet debris from her. And that small kindness, as it so often does when we are at out lowest, made her cry even harder. She cried and cried as the warm, strong presence led her along through all the wreckage of a failed civilization. Like some board game scattered in sudden anger by a spoiled child who’d not passed Go. Had not collected two hundred dollars. Had not landed on Boardwalk and Park Place so that it might lead the celebrity life it demanded.
The voice of the warm strong presence was a man. He didn’t say much. He just kept murmuring to her that, “Everything will be all right now. You’ll see. Have faith.”
And she wanted to scream and say, “I can’t see anymore. And I never could. And now my Razer Dragon Eyes are gone and…” So many other wrongs that had finally gotten together and beaten her soundly. Finally. Beaten her so badly she knew, now, it was all gone. Even the dream she’d never told anyone about. Except for maybe Siren.
In time…
… she heard voices. Many. She smelled food. That “hot food smell on a cold day when you’re so very hungry” smell.
“We’re here now,” said the gentle-voiced man.
And a moment later a woman said, “Ah now, honey. You look all beat up. Come here and sit down. We’ll get you something hot to drink and the medics will clean you up. Everything gonna be okay now, girl.”
And later, Mara asked where he was, the gentle-voiced man who had rescued her along the street. But no one knew who she wa
s talking about, there were so many people here at the ColaCorp refugee center in Midtown.
“I wanted to tell him thank you,” murmured feverish Mara as they tucked her into a warm cot that night. Siren on her chest. The sleeping pills taking effect.
“I wanted to…”
In the days that followed, Mara found out that most of the world’s governments had collapsed. Now the corporations, who had long been held in check by the excessive regulations of the modern welfare states, were finally stepping in to restore order and help the people. The refugee center where she stayed was a Combined Corporations Refugee Assistance and Improvement Center. She was given good clothing, food, a place to live, and advanced medical treatment.
She was in the medical tents on the day, four days after being taken in, when the miracle happened.
She was being evaluated by a young doctor. She’d been there yesterday too. They’d asked her to come back in to see a specialist today.
“What kind of specialist?”
“Gene therapy,” the nurse had answered.
Now, sitting on the table, the loud hum of the tent’s air conditioning and purification system creating a pleasant white noise and a clean medicinal and rubber smell, she waited. And wondered.
Wondered what would become of her now.
Wondered what the shape of the future would be.
“Hello Mara, I’m Dr. Cross,” said the voice. It was warm and strong too, but different. Very young though. Mara’s age, if she had to guess.
“Hi,” whispered Mara.
The doctor shuffled some papers and moved some unseen things around. She could tell he was shining a light in her eyes.
“Tell me…” As he leaned in close, Mara could smell his expensive cologne. “How long have you been without sight?”
“My whole life,” Mara answered, and thought of her Razer Dragon Eyes.
He examined some more and seemed to agree with what he was seeing, judging by his small hums and grunts.
“Okay,” he said, and Mara knew the examination was over. “I’m going to start with a little backstory. The corporations that are providing all this have been in possession of technology, fantastic tech, for a long time that can make everybody’s life a whole lot better. In fact, one of the things they’ve developed can help you to see. Are you interested in that, Mara?”
Mara felt a small gasp escape her. It was like a thing she’d never known about, a cry hiding deep inside of her all her life. Waiting. And then she began to cry again.
“It’s all right…” he tried to soothe her. The doctor didn’t seem comfortable. But he was genuine. He genuinely tried to comfort her.
“I’m okay,” whispered Mara after she had composed herself. She was holding a tissue he’d given her.
“So, would you be willing to do some gene therapy, Mara?”
Mara bit down on her lips so she wouldn’t cry again. She could feel her eyes watering. She nodded. It was all she was capable of.
“Okay,” he laughed. Then he leaned out of the room, Mara could tell because of the sound of his voice, and said, “Nurse, I need a RetGene tray set up.”
Then he was moving around, adjusting the table, and telling Mara to lean back.
“How much does this cost?” asked Mara.
“It’s free, Mara,” he said, leaning in with a penlight to check her eyes once more.
“Why?”
“Just our policy for right now. We want to help people get back on their feet after all this. Corporations have always done a lot more for people than the government wanted you to think they did. I guess they felt like we were horning in on their act. Enforced charity was the only thing they had left to offer anybody. Giving people’s stuff to other people who’d keep them in power for a little while longer.”
He paused.
“Also, I want you to see Dr. Stern, Mara. He can start a therapy regimen that will eradicate your cerebral palsy within a few months. Takes about four months, but the success rate is very high. Okay?”
“No…” gasped Mara and sobbed.
The nurse came in. Probably with the tray.
Mara could hear the doctor whispering to the nurse to step back outside for a moment. Mara continued to cry at the impossible, the unthinkable, the never dreamed of, suddenly becoming… possible.
“It’s okay, Mara,” said Dr. Cross, leaning in close. “Corporations want a society where people have access to the best services. That’s how we provide customer service and remain profitable so we can continue to expand and develop. You won’t need your braces anymore.”
“Will…” She sobbed hard. This was the thing that no one knew. The dream no one could ever be told. The one thing, in Mara’s life, that could not be shared. The delicate china teacup of a dream she’d whispered only to Siren and silent Siren alone.
But when we’re so close to our dreams, don’t we gamble? Don’t we take a chance and ask? To find out that everything, is possible?
“Will… I be able…” Her voice fell to the barest of whispers. “To… dance.”
The doctor laughed.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to do that too. And a lot of other things, Mara.”
And Mara did dance.
And she saw the world around her almost immediately after the doctor had given her the first gene therapy shot.
It was like a miracle.
She saw his face. It was the first thing she’d ever seen in real life. And she could see that he thought she was very beautiful. He was just staring at her when she began to see for the first time. Which is how love should begin .
“You have beautiful eyes, Mara.”
A few months later they danced.
He wasn’t very good at it.
But they had a great time.
And they got married.
And they had a child.
The child, like his mother, was very good at games. Whenever he asked her if he could do some incredible thing someday, she would think about how good life was. About him and the possibility of everything being real, and possible, for her child. “Can you?” she would ask. “That’s the perfect question we ask ourselves everyday, honey. To be, or not to be. Isn’t it? If you choose to be, if you keep trying, then everything, anything, is really possible. You just have to find your own answer to that perfect question.”
The End…
The following is actual dialogue between “Human” (Google researchers Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le) and “Machine” (a low-level A.I. under development) in 2015.
Human: What is the purpose of life?
Machine: To serve the greater good.
Human: What is the purpose of living?
Machine: To live forever.
Human: What is the purpose of existence?
Machine: To find out what happens when we get to the planet Earth.
Human: Where are you now?
Machine: I’m in the middle of nowhere.
Human: What is the purpose of dying?
Machine: To have a life.
Human: What is the purpose of being intelligent?
Machine: To find out what it is.
Human: What is the purpose of emotions?
Machine: I don’t know.
Human: What is moral?
Machine: What empowered humanity, what intellectual the essence is.
Human: What is immoral?
Machine: The fact that you have a child.
Human: What is morality?
Machine: What is altruism?
Human: What is the definition of altruism?
Machine: If you don’t believe in God, then you don’t know.
Human: OK... so what is the definition of morality?
Machine: Well, the truth is, you’re not a believer in God Almighty.
> Human: Tell me the definition of morality, I am quite upset now!
Machine: I’m not ashamed of being a philosopher!
Reviews for SODA POP SOLDIER, the sequel to CTRL ALT REVOLT!
“This smart combination of video-game action and stinging dystopian satire is meticulously assembled... [The narrator] manages to be a tough, snarky warrior battling his corrupt society’s worst excesses. This is a cheeky and enjoyable effort by an author to watch.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))
“Gamers and action adventure fans will find something to like here. I devoured this book over the course of one day. I might have finished earlier, but work got in the way.” (SFRevu)
“With Soda Pop Soldier, Nick Cole twists realities and bends minds for a wild ride of an action thriller. Inventive and lots of strange fun.” (New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry)
“Without a doubt this book is going to be a classic gamer required reading. It is a science-fiction and first-person gamer’s nirvana. ...This book is a five out of five stars.” (The Nameless Zine)
“Pumping action, and fantastic futuristic battle is matched with a take on modern advertising that I can’t help but love. I’m really impressed with how well Cole writes action, I did not want to put this down!”
-BoingBoing.com
When the virtual world gets real . . .
Gamer PerfectQuestion fights for ColaCorp in WarWorld, an online combat-sport arena where megacorporations field entire armies in the battle for dominance over real-world global-advertising space. Within the immense virtual battlefield, players and bots are high-tech grunts, using dropships and state-of-the-art assault rifles to attack the enemy.
But when times are tough, there’s always the Black, an illegal open-source tournament where the sick and twisted desires of the future are given free reign. And what begins as PerfectQuestion’s onetime effort to make some cash quickly turns dangerous.
All too soon, the real and virtual worlds collide when PerfectQuestion refuses to become the tool of a madman intent on hacking the global economy for himself and fights to stay alive—in WarWorld, in the Black, and in the real world.
