Kaleidocide

by Dave Swavely

  He closed his eyes toward the end, so I could only hear the screams of my wife and the violent, horrific crash that silenced them, as the cab slammed into the concrete and was smashed like a beer can under a foot, by the immovable surface below it and the force of the heavy car rack coming down on top of it. The video link went black, and I couldn’t picture the remains of the cab, because I knew there would be nothing remaining.

  Almost as soon as the two enemy helicopters had dropped the truck over the side of the bridge, the BASS Firehawks came into firing range and took them out with their rockets in two fiery explosions. But that was little consolation for me. I told Terrey and San, who had now arrived at the scene in their aero, to fly to the wreckage and look for Lynn and the double. Then I just sat and stared in silence into the deep darkness of the holo, a million thoughts pressing into my head and immobilizing me. I questioned every decision I had made that day, of course, and imagined every torture I wanted to perpetrate on my enemies for inflicting this on my wife and baby. But strangely, I couldn’t help but think about the supposed supernatural elements of this fiasco, probably because they were so uncanny. I thought about how the cars on the truck had been all different colors, and wondered again if there was something to the bizarre beliefs of the Chinese cult.

  But even more than that, I thought about how Stephenson had dreamed that he would miraculously survive a battle with an enemy assault team, and that my double would fall from a bridge. At this moment of reflection, in the swirl of my high emotions, I actually thought that this might be the culmination of the spiritual journey I’d been sent on by the all the talk I’d heard about a wide range of metaphysical beliefs. I even pictured myself buying a Dreamscape rig and investing in the company, so that it could further unlock these mysteries. Maybe my dreams could be the key to finding some meaning in this tragedy, and some help in coping with the deep pain I was already feeling.

  44

  THE BIG PICTURE

  Fortunately, my trauma-induced delusion of converting to a religion of dreams was short-lived, because Terrey and San soon reached the wreckage of the truck. The rack had fallen over the edge of the cement base into the bay, but the parts of the disintegrated cab were strewn in piles on top of it. And amid those piles lay Lynn and the double, unconscious but perfectly preserved by the second-generation Atreides shields that shimmered around their bodies. They had put the projectors on their waists at the beginning of the trip, as standard procedure for when they went out, and they had activated them either by their own initiative during the road attack, or maybe later during the fall when I shouted that they should turn them on. To my shame, I had actually forgotten the shields until the truck was thrown over the bridge, so they were saved despite me rather than because of me, and I couldn’t claim any credit for it. But the small size of the antigravity engine on their belts meant that its energy was very limited, so I was surprised that there was enough life in it to withstand such a powerful impact. And it was amazing that the truck was thrown over the bridge at a spot where there was cement below, because I honestly didn’t know whether the shields would have saved them or suffocated them if they had fallen into the water.

  Mixed with my initial relief was the realization that we now had to see if they were really okay, or had been injured—especially Lynn and the baby, of course. San deactivated the shields and scanned Lynn first with her built-in medical ware. While she was doing this, Lynn stirred and woke up, well before my double did. Despite Jon’s bravura and skill during the road attack, which had definitely impressed me, he had fainted dead away from fear during the fall. Lynn, however, who had been through childbirth and some other trauma in her life, had merely been knocked out temporarily by the impact of the crash. As my wife showed her toughness by quickly springing back to life, while Jon lay unconscious, I had occasion to admire her again through someone else’s eyes. In this case I was looking through San’s, as she finished her examination and said that both Lynn and the baby looked fine, except for an understandable increase in their heart rates.

  Jon also seemed to be okay, but was still dazed enough when they revived him that they had to help him to his feet so they could put him in the aero. Lynn, on the other hand, walked over on her own power and sat down in it. As Terrey and San were helping Jon through the piles of wreckage to the aero, I told them to hold on before putting him in, because I was regretting Lynn being in danger by being close to him and thinking that they should be separated from now on.

  But then all of sudden, I suffered another kind of assault. A battalion of thoughts hit me all at once, and I told Terrey to stay right where he was until I got back to him.

  I sat still and gathered my thoughts for a few moments, then I put on my glasses and ran a search through my conversations with Saul’s ghost, which had all been recorded and stored. Soon I found the part I was remembering, and played it again. It was from the beginning of the kaleidocide, when Lynn had taken a shower before the protection team had secured the location, and I had briefly thought she was in danger.

  “Lynn was almost killed,” I said on the recording.

  “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” the ghost said with a sad expression on its face. At that time I thought this was a glitch, and that it had misunderstood what I was saying because of the time lapse, the background noise, or my exaggerated comment.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I gave you the wrong impression. Lynn’s fine. You were saying something about paying and praying, to save me from the kaleidocide.”

  At that point the ghost had paused like it was recalibrating, and then repeated the same thing it had said before I mentioned Lynn being killed.

  Having confirmed my theory, I exited the recording and called up a live link to the ghost construct. After I cleared the voice recognition, DNA, and retinal scan security barriers, the holo of the old man appeared and said its usual, “Hello Michael.”

  “Do you know why General Sun of China is trying to kill me?” I said, once again in case there might be a different answer this time.

  “I don’t know, Michael. But let me tell you some more about Zhang Sun—”

  “No, Saul.” I failed to make my usual distinction between the construct and the man, because I was so emotional about what I expected to happen in this conversation. “I don’t want to hear any more about Sun, because he killed my wife. Lynn is dead, Saul. We were both targets of the kaleidocide—I survived, but she was killed.”

  “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” it said.

  “What?”

  “That’s an old saying. It means—”

  “I know what it means,” I said, “and it’s a terrible way to talk about my wife’s death.”

  “I’m sorry, Michael. I was just trying to help you see the big picture.” That sounds familiar, I thought, but couldn’t remember right now who said it. But what I did know was that my guess was right, and that the ghost had been programmed to respond a certain way if I said that Lynn had been killed, and it was now accessing a new part of its memory that it didn’t “know” before.

  “Okay,” I said. “What is the big picture?”

  “This had to happen so you could see just how evil Zhang Sun is, and why his regime should never have access to our Sabon antigravity technology.”

  “Why couldn’t you have just told me that?”

  “There is no greater teacher than experience, Michael,” the ghost said. “You may not have learned what you needed to in any other way, and BASS might have made a deal with the devil.”

  I thought for a few moments again, and the ghost just stared straight ahead in creepy silence.

  “Is this why you hired me at BASS, and groomed me to succeed you?”

  “Besides the fact that you are smart, skilled, responsible, a hard worker, and you look good on camera,” the ghost said with its slightly unrealistic version of Saul’s patented grin, “Yes, Michael.”

  “Tell me about that,” I said
, “but try to make it brief.” I wanted to know all of it, and especially why Lynn and I were both targets, but I also had to get back to protecting her.

  “When we developed the Sabon technology,” the ghost began, “I knew it was a global game changer. Nuclear research has been basically static, and nanotech development hit a wall with its power limitations and is now only effective for lesser purposes. Even cyberware has been widely rejected by those who could afford it because of the possibilities of hacking and outside control, so that the best stuff is mostly being applied to people like Min who have no other recourse. But whatever nations and corporations came into possession of the antigravity technology, and could develop further applications of it as we have, would have the balance of world power tipped hard in their direction. One of the most important victories in World War II, you might remember, was the science that Hitler did not develop. If the best minds had not left Germany for America, and had given him the atomic bomb instead, the whole thing would have ended differently.

  “Given China’s traditional hegemonic tendencies, and a militaristic leader like Zhang Sun in charge, I knew that we should withhold the Sabon tech from them at all costs. Sun would add it to his already considerable war machine, and seek to bring the rest of the world into his growing empire by intimidation or invasion. This would precipitate the third world war, and China would probably be the last man standing. At the very least, it would be devastating to the planet.

  “So I brought Min to BASS to work for me in the hope that his presence would keep Sun from even wanting to deal with our company, especially when I had to pass it to someone else. Min is a young man and can live a long time with his augmentations. But a conquered foe like him being here didn’t discourage Sun from soliciting the formula—in fact, the general was quite eager to offer staggering amounts of money for it. Then I found out about my cancer, and knew that after my death my son Paul or any other successor would almost certainly succumb to such offers, regardless of any instructions I left them. I hired Darien Anthony because of his loyalty and friendship with the American leader Stanford Glenn, hoping that he could prove to be a successor who kept our treasure out of the wrong hands, if my son’s character did not change for the better.

  “But not long after that, I hit a jackpot that could only be explained by Divine providence. I heard about a young British soldier who had brutally killed Zhang Sun’s deeply cherished lover in a military operation in Taiwan, and who was now looking for employment. He also happened to be smart, skilled, responsible, a hard worker, and looked good on camera.” The ghost smiled that half-smile again, the lightning scar on its face wrinkling even more.

  “I killed Sun’s lover?” I said, trying to think if any of the soldiers I saw on the holo could have been women. But as far as I know, there were none in China’s combat military.

  “Yes, Michael, you shot his lover in the head in cold blood, while Sun himself watched you do it.” Oh, I thought. I was assuming the wrong gender. “General Ho was Sun’s cherished lover.”

  “Sun wasn’t in Taiwan,” I said. “How could he have been watching?”

  “Sun and Ho both had Lovers’ Link implants installed in their brains, so they could experience everything the other did, and enjoy each other even from a distance. Their relationship was a secret to a significant degree, because that’s still not as accepted in China as it is in other places. So when you put a bullet in Ho’s head, Sun experienced it through the Lovers’ Link. I’m sure he still uses it to relive the good times they had together while Ho was alive—word is that Sun hasn’t been with anyone else since—so he also may be reviewing the shooting from time to time, fanning his flames of hatred for you.”

  “How does he know it was me?” I asked, thinking of how my face was obscured by the combat eye rig, and my involvement in that op was never publicized.

  “I told him, Michael.”

  “You’re a bloody bastard,” I said, realizing that the old man did this to ensure the animosity between Sun and BASS, and to keep our secrets from passing to the Chinese. And then my head was filled with much harsher words for him, when I began to realize how Lynn figured into the equation. I had killed Sun’s cherished lover, so his revenge would include my cherished wife and unborn baby, along with my own life. It made sense when viewed from the Chinese leader’s perspective, and as much as I hated the thought, it also fit with Saul’s desire to build a wall between him and BASS. If I happened to survive the kaleidocide, but my wife and baby were killed, I would certainly never make any deals with the man who was responsible for their deaths.

  “So you knew that Sun would probably try to kill me,” I said. “Did you know that Lynn could be endangered, too, when you made this plan?”

  “I did, Michael. I’m so sorry it had to be this way, but try to see the bigger picture, like I said. I really believe that the lives of many millions of people will eventually be saved because of all this if not the whole world.”

  The ghost actually appeared remorseful to some degree, and for a moment I was inclined to tell it that Lynn was not really dead (not yet, anyway). But I reminded myself that an A.I. construct couldn’t have real feelings, and that’s why I didn’t indulge my other temptation, which was to say that I would give the Sabon secrets to China just to spite him. I had to think more about what all this meant for me and the future of BASS, but for now I needed to get back to protecting Lynn’s life. I thought of her not just because we were talking about her, but also because of what she had said to me about discovering my destiny and the reason I had been brought to this company. I knew the answer now, but I had the feeling that knowing it would cause more problems than it solved.

  I switched off my link to the ghost and got back on the line with Terrey.

  “What’s up, mate?” he said immediately. “You left us hanging here.”

  “Don’t tell Lynn this yet, unless it’s necessary for some reason,” I said. “She’s already had too much stress today. But I found out that she’s a target, too.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “I tricked Saul’s ghost into telling me, and why Sun wants us dead. It’s a long story, but think about it, Terrey—every attempt so far has been geared toward both the double and Lynn. And when you went to the city without her, nothing happened. I can explain it to you when we have time, but for now I need you to focus on her, protecting her.” I waited for him to ask for even more money to do this, but to my surprise he didn’t say anything. Maybe it was because he had already made over ten million dollars from us that week. So I continued: “I want you to stay with her at all times. What happened to the rest of the protection team?”

  “Min and Ni are damaged pretty bad,” he said. “It will take them some time to be repaired and recover, like it has with Go.”

  “So you only have San and Stephenson right now, besides yourself.”

  “Just San,” Terrey said. “Stephenson’s dead.”

  “Really?” I said, genuinely surprised to hear this, because when the truck went off the bridge, I had assumed that the other “prophetic” dream of Stephenson surviving the assault had also come true.

  “Yeah, he’s dead. He didn’t last more than a minute against the squad in the hallway.”

  “Well, I guess we didn’t learn anything from his dreams after all,” I said, realizing that both of Stephenson’s last two were misleading.

  “Yeah, except maybe that we shouldn’t rely on them.”

  “The same thing goes for the ‘color power’ idea,” I said, remembering the other example of my friend’s rare spiritual interest. “That truck wasn’t very safe after all.”

  “Maybe Sun’s colors are just more powerful—he’s in touch with more of the spirits or something.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on that, though,” I said, “like the dream thing.”

  “I don’t. But like I said before, Sun does. And we haven’t had a black attack yet, as every other kaleidocide has. It’s the key color, or all the
colors mixed together, or whatever. And it usually represents betrayal.”

  “So you want to run that sting with Korcz,” I said, “to see if he’s been bought.” He said yes, and I continued: “Okay, take everyone back up to the Valley. The hill is still the safest spot for Lynn, and I don’t feel right about her being at the Presidio now that I know she’s a target. We’ll have some peacers take Hilly and Jessa there, so you don’t have to worry about them. We’ll also have BASS staff investigate the mercenaries, and tell us if anything worthwhile turns up.”

  “I’m sure it won’t,” Terrey said. “Like I said about the other assault team, Sun’s people would make sure there’s no link to him. And listen, mate. Min and Ni will have to be repaired before they can be at full strength, so it’s just me and San for now. If you want us to keep Lynn safe while we’re shorthanded like this, I’ll need you to give us total control of all the hill and Valley systems—security, communications, etcetera. Especially if I’m going to let Korcz out of lockup and keep him under surveillance.”

  I agreed to Terrey’s request, so he and San escorted Jon into the aero at the bridge and went back to the Marin Center, where they helped Min and Ni into one of the other aeros. San flew that one alongside Terrey’s on the half-hour trip up to the Napa Valley, which was even more nerve-racking for me than the trip down, now that I knew the Chinese were trying to kill Lynn, too. But the journey passed uneventfully, and soon Terrey and San were laying Min and my double down on beds in the infirmary inside the hill base below our house, next to the bed where Go was still recovering from the fire. San gave them both a sedative so that their bodies could recover faster, and she told Min that the Cyber Hole tech would be there soon to work on him. Then she stepped over to another side of the big room to work on her sister. I wondered if the combat injuries had affected the bodiless, augmented brain that lived on Ni’s back—her name must have been Ichi, because I remembered that Roku was the one who had died and Yon was the one attached to San.