The Ultimate Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Bestsellers)

by Perkins, Cathy

  Brett held on to his reflexive reply. He wasn’t as convinced of the rightness of his cause as he had been, and he never argued politics with Ariel. Before he could try and change the subject, she struck off in an unexpected direction.

  “Brett, I love you. I want you to stay here with me forever. Please defect and become an Oceanian citizen.”

  Brett stared into her eyes, for the first time dismayed by the depths in them. To tell her he loved her also seemed too cruel, though it was the truth.

  “If there’s any chance of avoiding war, that isn’t it. That would be the ultimate proof I’d been taken over by the overmind, wouldn’t it?”

  Her face flushed angrily, and there was a sudden bite to her voice. “Is that what you think?”

  Brett shook his head tiredly. “No it isn’t. I’m proud of the Space Force, and I’ve studied their history, and even now this is the only major action in the last hundred years I don’t feel proud of. You wouldn’t have cared for the boy I was before the Space Force got hold of me. Even so, I’d give it all up to be with you if I could.”

  Brett could see she was holding back tears, on the border between rage and despair. “So instead you’ll go back to what? Do you have a – a family? I’m sure the Federalist Worlds will be very grateful for your self sacrifice!”

  Brett suspected she had been about to ask if he had a wife at home. The question was absurd, since it was not unusual for ships in the Space Force to be away from home for a decade.

  He had nothing to hide from her. “I don’t have any family. As for my homeworld and the Federalist Worlds, in public perhaps they will. In private I’ll never be trusted, not just as an officer, but as a citizen. I’ll be lucky if I’m watched by intelligence services instead of locked up for ‘my own protection.’”

  For a second Brett wondered if she would hate him now, as much as she had loved him before. Instead she squeezed his hand. “But you still feel you have to go? Oh Brett, I’m sorry.”

  They were quiet for awhile. Eventually Ariel bought more coffee. Brett didn’t, but the place was almost empty, so nobody bothered them.

  Eventually Ariel broke the silence. “Brett. Maybe my being your teacher while I’m involved with you is a lousy idea, but it’s too late to worry about that now. You’ve absorbed a lot, and I want you to talk about it. Your brain assimilates some things better by putting them into words.”

  Brett gave himself a few moments to adjust to the lower emotional temperature. Another customer entered the far end of the diner, but Brett still couldn’t see how it paid for them to stay open at this hour.

  Some of his experiences could be discussed only by analogy. Brett had come to think of calling Oceania a ‘collaborative system’ as an analogy. Instead of trying to describe his experiences as a whole, he pulled out a piece almost ready to put into words and shaped it a little more.

  He began, “I wasn’t exactly in a dojo. There were a number of practice areas, with some supervision. These were surrounded by tables where people ate and drank and talked and watched. It was a trendy hangout for people in their late teens and early twenties.”

  Ariel asked him, “What language did they speak?”

  Brett started to reply ‘English,’ and then reconsidered. “This isn’t a real memory, is it? Just some sort of aide for me to convey judo skills to a client.”

  Ariel smiled. “You got it. Go on.”

  “I was this kid, who might have been named Todd or Ted or something. My thoughts felt funny inside of his spoiled and undisciplined mind. All the fat slowed us down, and threw our balance off as well.

  “This wasn’t the first time I – he really, but I was him by then – had paid for martial arts skills. I’d never had to work for the money. They’d done no good. Knowing moves didn’t help someone who hated to practice and exercise, who got tired and bored easily. I rarely pushed myself to the point where it began to hurt.

  Today was the first time I realized Sammy, the guy with me, wasn’t really a friend. I wanted to learn something else. I wanted to know what it felt like not to be in awe of someone just a bit less lazy than myself, not to be always afraid – or at least not care so much.”

  When Brett stopped speaking, the silence momentarily startled him, along with the knowledge of where he was. Then he said, “It’s not that easy, surely? Nobody would agree to overwrite his brain?”

  A moment later he flushed. He knew the technology couldn’t and didn’t work that way. Ethics aside, nobody understood the brain that well, and you had to learn to work the technology at least as much as it learned to work with you.

  And … Brett sort of remembered. “He could learn how someone else might think and react. He could choose to act differently, and imagine feeling differently, and try to become another person. It might be just barely easier than doing the same thing without nanotechnology.”

  Ariel smiled. “I used to know a woman who rarely wore makeup and was very shy. So self conscious she didn’t even like interacting with people face to face. Not ugly really, just sort of mousy. She trained as a Neuron, and loved interactions where brains could show their mettle without mediocre bodies getting in the way. Little by little she learned there was nothing wrong with her body. It took the guise of her own habits and expectations. The knowledge she wanted consisted of more than a skill or set of skills, but she knew how to do that kind of learning, and had friends linked up. She learned new ways of walking, or dressing, of talking, of smiling and looking at people. Even how to dance.

  “The difference was dramatic. Some men were too shy to talk to her at parties, but the ones who weren’t would not have noticed her before. She was pretty pleased with the end result, but I’m not sure what you would think if you met her. Did a collective somehow leach away part of her soul?”

  The subject of her story was obviously Ariel herself. Indignant at being constantly tested, Brett raised his eyebrows and replied innocently, “Was it worth it? Did she end up prettier than you?”

  She leaned across the table and gave his shoulder an open handed punch.

  Brett shook his head sadly. “Beating your students? I thought that went out with the dark ages.”

  He paused a moment, let the mood grow serious once again. “This is fascinating stuff, but after coming so far I’m starting to wonder what it feels like to be part of a unified consciousness.”

  Ariel smiled at him. “You’re getting there. The day after tomorrow will be your first full four hour session, and your first time as part of a large scale project. Don’t worry, I’ll be with you.”

  He replied, “Uhmm, you’ve been with me almost all the time I’ve been learning, and I appreciate it. So I take it you’ve been taking time off from the stuff you usually do?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t, really. You of all people know, this is a critical time right now.”

  Alarm bells were going off. “How many hours have you totaled the week? Spoken with Muriel lately?”

  Ariel squeezed his fingers, which had been about to pick up a coffee cup. “You’re sweet to worry, but she couldn’t stop me even if I did. Neither can you. This is my job. Promise you won’t worry her, since it won’t help?”

  The hell he couldn’t stop her – at least from working with him so much. He said aloud, “I promise.”

  That promise he would keep, since that wasn’t his plan anyhow.

  Chapter 25

  Ariel had sounded concerned when Brett told her he had an upset stomach. He’d had to talk her out of visiting, without seeming in a hurry to go anywhere, which had cost him some time. So now he had about five minutes.

  A shame he couldn’t share today with her, but he felt pretty sure she was spending too much time with the hive mind. He damned well wouldn’t become another Michael, letting her make herself sick again trying to make his first experience with the full supermind easier.

  Since it was customary to do this with your personal mentor at first, Brett couldn’t ask anyone for help. Question
s would arise, someone would contact her, and she was so stubborn.

  Brett grinned at the thought. Not as stubborn as he was.

  The pod had arrived inside the building, which was open to the public, although the more specialized equipment was reserved for Neurons. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. The first door he opened after getting off the elevator led to totaling equipment similar to that which he had recently used under Napoleon’s guidance. The rectangular tank looked ominous. Fortunately Brett didn’t need to use it today.

  The next room looked better. There were a bunch of recliners, which he ignored. The treadmills might have been better, keeping his body moving while his mind traveled elsewhere, but they were all grouped together and some people were talking. Brett wanted to be able to concentrate, at least his first time.

  The exercise bicycle in the corner would be perfect, and nobody was near it. Brett strode over to claim it, then plugged one on the plastic high bandwidth cables from the wall into his headgear and one into the box on his hip. He started pushing the pedals to keep himself busy, and wondering what he was waiting for. This would be his first time working without Ariel. A large portion of the hive mind would be thinking about improving brain cancer treatment today, and even though the Federalist Worlds were behind overall, Brett’s perspective and knowledge of older technologies might help. When the most difficult surgeries were required, the most technically advanced of the Federalist Worlds had better results than Oceania.

  On the other hand, Oceania excelled at finding ways to treat brain cancer without surgery. Brett would be able to help more when he learned more about their techniques. At first he had expected to be briefed, but apparently he would learn as he went.

  No time to worry, he would be starting in a few seconds. Since he was hooked up, he could warm up now. He’d start with using the nannies themselves to block capillaries supplying blood to tumors, since his home had no equivalent. A capillary feeding a tumor could sometimes be blocked, starving the tumor of nutrients with little or no effect on surrounding tissue. These tiniest of blood vessels were often so narrow only one red blood cell could pass at a time. Nanomachines could block them, could attach to capillary walls, could clump until nothing could pass.

  Of course it wasn’t quite that simple. The memories of quantum mechanics from his school days came back surprisingly vividly. He could visualize the quantum orbital shells that took mathematics to describe. Even chemists sometimes used simplified metaphors for atomic bonding that worked imperfectly. Instead of doing so himself, Brett considered the atoms and molecules of the cells lining the capillary, and those of the nanomachines, especially the parts most likely to come in contact with the cell walls. The electron clouds were quantum distributions of probability, assuming odd shapes as they interacted with atomic nuclei and with each other.

  It all worked out, this was one of the parameters of the modern nannies, although specially designed nanomachines could block blood vessels slightly larger than a capillary. Unfortunately this didn’t destroy every tumor. Some of them had more than one source of supply. And the most resistant cancers could chemically signal the body to grow blood vessels.

  Although an ineradicable cancer killed its host and could leave no descendents, many cancers had sneaky ways of evolving. Cancer DNA could be transmitted to cells in an entirely different individual via retrovirus, and successful cancers had a much greater chance of surviving. Thus an increasing resistance to both the body’s natural toolkit and medical intervention. Although cancers weren’t intelligent, proteins could combine and recombine in different combinations. Since the immune system had evolved to fight cancer as well as many other diseases, and many of the best techniques on both sides had hung around, in some ways cancer fighting was better treated as a chess match than a struggle to solve a static puzzle.

  Or was it? To Brett, that seemed like the sort of idea people who would allow themselves to be aggregated into a hive mind might like. Where was the evidence? He reached to analyze specific Oceanian ‘advances,’ searching both for evidence that they actually worked, and proof that this strange sounding paradigm had helped generate them.

  Reviewing the statistics, Brett was forcibly reminded of the difference between Oceanian life spans and those where he came from. The statistics on the clinical trials were very well kept, and he could tell who to contact if he had any questions about them. Either these records were in good order, or here stood a truly massive and pointless bluff that would collapse as soon as he used the contact information.

  A few scientists had written about how they got their ideas, and some even saw themselves as struggling against an intelligence which had long been at war with the human (and mammalian before that) immune system. They did not see it as conscious in any way, but they regarded it as having all the capabilities of intelligence to avoid underestimating it. Nobody had effectively proved the concept, since it generated scientific theories instead of being one itself. It didn’t seem to interfere with the productivity of those who used it.

  Brett went back to visualizing the chemical bonds as nannies blocked a smaller capillary, and as chemical signals were sent out to prevent blood flow from being rerouted to the tumor.

  Then he blinked. Even when the information had been fresh in his mind, when he had finished studying for finals, Brett couldn’t have visualized the three dimensional probability distributions of quantum orbitals without visual aids, let alone the changes as other molecules approached closely enough to influence the shape of those orbitals. Clearly his shift had started, and he functioned as part of the overmind.

  Brett reflexively pulled the computer off his belt to check the time, but the answer came into his head as soon as he conceived the question. Seven minutes. He found he was smiling so hard his face hurt. He remembered the brief introduction to the basics of exoskeleton operation which had almost prompted him to try and change career paths, even though exoskeleton operators, unlike doctors, didn’t start as officers. Bending and crushing steel bars with your hands felt so awesome, as did jumping thirty feet in the air unaided. No tool had ever made him feel so much like a Titan – until today.

  Powerful tools could still be very dangerous. Now he smiled a different sort of smile. Just thinking about the dangers of the hive mind now would help detect any limitations – or restrictions – on the system.

  The biggest worry seemed to be direct stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain. Over the centuries some had made blocking this their lives’ work, but the occasional clever scofflaw had found ways around. The addiction wasn’t quite incurable, but in some ways it was worse than any drug. The brain had many different chemical receptors, and would eventually develop at least a partial tolerance to even the most powerful narcotic. The sophisticated technology linked with the nannies could pass barrier after barrier.

  Pornography was another problem. The system could know someone’s kinks better than they knew their own, presenting images and sensations varied sufficiently to avoid monotony, but with more appeal than anything not individually customized. Direct stimulation of the pleasure centers didn’t have to be involved. Visual and tactile centers could activate the limbic system, which stimulated those centers without external aid.

  Sadly for the students of the biology of human intercourse, the sexual regions of the brain were artificially restrained while they did their research. You could study as much as you wanted, but you couldn’t enjoy it – unless it came in useful after you removed your interface.

  What he and Ariel had done counted as a misdemeanor instead of a felony, since it was no more addictive than regular sex, and the most common problems were of just the sort he and Ariel had experienced.

  Skipping past a few other forbidden pleasures, the next biggest danger lay in financial crimes. Last century the trade secrets of a famous trillionaire had motivated several people to pursue entire careers setting up the crime, which had required the corruption of several other professionals
with impeccable reputations. The sudden financial acumen of several people who had no known relationship had been part of what caused the crime to be detected. Precautions had been improved since then.

  Ariel’s problem ranked rather low. Her personal information was confidential, but he gathered she would have had to break several rules and sneak past certain safeguards. Despite his initial skepticism Brett began to believe. The archival of scientific data was so transparent here.

  On the other hand, once it had happened, the risk of recurrence was greater, so perhaps he had made the right decision.

  Brett contemplated Oceania’s consciousness, and wondered if he could believe what he learned. Sometimes it functioned to smooth out disputes over the priorities of various stakeholders. Other times it prevented disorientation from the memory gaps required by confidentiality laws. You might remember mostly the experience of being part of Oceania if your mundane memory had too many holes. A few even ascribed mystical properties to it, hoping it would learn deep religious truths. Hidden desires and tendencies might come to the surface when a group worked together this way, but nobody intimate with Oceania believed the idea of her assimilating or enslaving her members even made sense.

  The Oceanians largely blamed themselves for what had happened on Roundhouse, not because they believed Alexander had subverted the individuals who composed ‘him’, but because they had given powerful technology to one side of a civil war. Alexander’s war crimes were not too different from ones of previous generations on Roundhouse. A fragile peace had been created by allowing some of the most egregious crimes to be blamed on the technology used to commit them. Historians disagreed about the extent to which various representatives of the Federalist Worlds had realized what they were doing, but even those most critical of Oceania didn’t believe an entity had done things unintended by the citizens of Roundhouse who composed it.

  Only they couldn’t say so loudly and clearly. Doing so would have broken the fragile peace established by the Federalist Worlds, probably sent Roundhouse into another cycle of atrocious wars.