The Path

by Peter Riva

  “Want one?”

  “Not in a million years.” I could have added: not with you people anywhere near. We had rounded the headland and turned inland about 2 kilometers. We approached a small building and stopped. No one moved, so I didn’t either. The car began to sink into the ground. Someone had been planning all this a long, long time. Cramer, back to his usual self, was ahead of me, even in this speeded-up state.

  “It isn’t ours, it was Castro’s bunker. It’s a tourist site, will be in four hours. For now we’re going to use it. Security is non-existent, it’s an ex-bomb-shelter, nothing to steal.” As he said all this I read the faded painted letters on the walls as we descended, carefully painted to resemble hand-daubed slogans; Viva la Revolucion, that sort of thing. Tourist crap, who would paint the elevator’s walls unless to make more off of gullible visitors?

  Cramer had revealed the time frame before we would either be on the move or I would be dead. And four hours in this speeded up state would be murder. I could feel it getting faster, adrenaline from his appearance kicking in. I reached for the slo-doze and took one. Cramer, who had gotten out and was standing next to my door, looked and shook his head. The pill worked its way, under the tongue, and things got back to speeded-up normal, about double speed.

  The elevator reached almost bottom and I opened the door and stood out slowly. Cramer, big and powerful as ever, steadied me as the elevator took one last lurch. Cuban technology, recycled car motors no doubt, part of its tourist charm, sells tickets.

  Cramer took my arm, that vice grip ever present, and we marched down the ramp to a waiting group: Angie and Sheila were there. She was older in person. Charlie Cramer was there too.

  Agent Cramer spoke up: “Simon,” not Bank anymore. It wasn’t subtle this name thing. Maybe with Simon instead of Bank he was just buttering me up. “Allow me to introduce you: Sheila, you know about, what you do not know is that she is the daughter-in-law of my grandfather here, who you do know about. And Angie, well Angie is my ex-wife and best friend. You get all this?”

  As I said, what seemed like years ago but was only the night before, it was all a conspiracy theory; only not the one I thought was going on. “Okay, you’ve surprised me and falsified the records in the Library. Spill it all before I make any more mistakes.”

  “Allow me,” it was Angie, said so quickly I almost didn’t catch it. She saw that I wasn’t as fast as her and so she adjusted. “Did you take the slo-doze? I told Cramer not to let you.” Ah, “Cramer” when she was speeded up and Ralph when she was slow, normal-ish.

  “I took one to overcome the effects of the adrenaline at being captured.”

  “You’re not captured, you’re found. Come on, let’s sit down and work this out. If you hadn’t rushed out before, I would have probably told you then.” We walked right past the others, none of whom seemed capable of moving fast enough to intervene. Sheila nodded, so she knew and, probably, was still faster. She had that look of someone who’s been rejuvenated, a lot. The hair was a baby’s fuzz. They say after the third rejuvenation it won’t grow back as normal hair anymore.

  Angie walked me down a corridor, all green glossy paint with posters of Castro Cuba and cigar advertisements, to a sitting area with vending machines. “Don’t touch them, they’ll read your RFID. We’ve brought cookies, chocolate, Cramer’s favorite of course, he always gets what he wants. Me? I like oatmeal.” Mundane details of life, she said it all so matter-of-factly. It was speak that you didn’t hear any more, people don’t relish food, they consume it because they are hungry and the machines watch your diet. Food is input over which you have choice but no relish, it was all so sanitized. Actually, what was far more fascinating was watching the nano-bots pouring over your crap in the bowl to analyze it, making sure you’re healthy. Disgusting? Nah, the food was sterile and so was the outcome. I took a cookie, I was hungry. It was a real cookie, real food, not synthetic, not, well, new. I grabbed another quickly. One thing I had in common with Cramer, chocolate was good. As we sat there, she fidgeted a bit.

  “Sorry, but I’m really hungry, I haven’t eaten anything with calories since Cramer’s chocolate cake this, no yesterday, morning. Why don’t you start in and I’ll listen and chew, adding what I need, from time to time.” I planned to keep my mouth full and my ears open.

  “Fine. Before the Purge . . . look tell me where you are in all this, I don’t want to waste time. Have you accessed the security files?”

  “Yes, Charlie’s, that’s the 1st, and Sheila’s as well as the LA-North Korea file. Made interesting reading.”

  “Has Peter seen it?” I shook my head. “Thank god. Okay, let’s deal with the rest before that. Look everything you read in there is true. What is not there is relevant and critical because it was never once written down. There is no record, no proof for what I am about to tell you, it is just a secret kept between two families for all these decades.”

  As my eyes glazed over, they always do when massive input is being absorbed, the vision I had was of the absolutely gorgeous redhead inches from me coiled on a soft chair in a dimly lit waiting area outside of the Castro Theater in his bunker in old Communist Cuba. It may have been what she was telling me, as important as it was, it may have been my method of storing things right brain/left brain. Whatever it was, part of me analyzed what she was saying and the other analyzed her. I found no fault with either.

  Angie explained that Charlie was a MacHead early on but calculated that they would be stopped, so he pretended to be on the fringes of the activity, a poor 14 year-old being duped, and so on. When they raided the MacHead’s labs across the nation, students died, and Charlie was detained at his home. He had never been to the labs on campus, he had been quite careful of that. And his home computer link to the daisy-chain of Mac G12s was an older model G8, so there was no way he was part of that super-computing chain. What they didn’t know was that he was doing it all in his head and the G8 was only a controller for the storage.

  “You nearly gave Cramer a heart attack when you suggested using the salt water medium in the ocean as a bubble memory storage device, that’s where Charlie was storing the MacHead data, all of it.”

  She went on to explain that when the MacHeads were arrested and barred from future academic or computer work, he was exempted because he was, after all, only a hanger-on. The Pentagon, however, saw potential and they recruited him. There he met a particularly vicious little brat, the kid who had programmed his Akibo 6, that bit him. What this kid was planning was to turn that artificial non-human programming loose on the world’s most advanced weapons, lasers, bombs and, worst of all, biological weapons derived from stem cell research being conducted in Atlanta at the Army labs. There was tremendous momentum to build these weapons. The DefenseShield was in place, we were secure. There were the Hispanic LA riots, of course.

  What Charlie did was to kill that kid. He was subtle about it. First he totally endorsed the programming plan, he even improved it, and then he suggested that a perfect way to test the weapon was to apply it to anti-riot programming and see how it went. Since there were no biological weapons involved, just commands given to police, what was the worst that could happen? The Pentagon agreed and, with Homeland Security, a stepped approach to implementation of the weapon was put into effect. The Senate Standing Committee, the President and the military were the only need-to-know on this new weapon.

  Charlie suggested to the kid that he test it out first, appealing to his ego, that he be the first one in history to show it worked. The kid set up a demonstration, Charlie told the general in charge the kid was being premature, it wasn’t ready. The general, wanting a demonstration for the Senate, paid no attention, but Charlie’s objection was on the record. The kid put on a vest, stood before a squad of riot police, hooked up to command and control with the new weapon programming in place, and shouted abuse. The squad moved back, the kid moved forward a step, across the no-go line on the floor. In front of the Senate Standing Committee, one cop got
a program command and fired two shots, in quick succession. The first shot him in the knee and, as he dropped, the second round hit in the same place, except that the kid’s head was where his knee should have been. Dead; effective demonstration. The weapon program was ordered shut down, the general demoted. Charlie won, or thought he had.

  Then came the bad riots. It was obvious to Charlie the weapon had been deployed. Meantime, Charlie received orders to “mess up” the mainframe of the DefenseShield main computer to implant the kid’s programming, tag it for removal immediately, so that the System, as it was now called, could learn. He was being watched. He did as he was told but hadn’t understood the reason. The System increased the DefenseShield to cover Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. Someone altered the West Coast, exposing Hawaii and California. The North Korean bomb was sent over, LA was vaporized with the “mother of all earthquakes” and yet, instantly, Hawaii was back under the DefenseShield. It had to be deliberate. Charlie kept his mouth shut. He was blamed for the program codifying that caused only the “vulnerability to Hawaii.” That was on his record. LA was not. The panel of the Senate Standing Committee, under the new military dictatorship, recommended that no one over grade 5 be allowed access as codifier, in the humanizing of the System.

  “Charlie stopped making notes, destroyed all his files, cleaned up the record, matching master files and his own. Charlie was blameless again. Then came the full Purge and Charlie became just another citizen, a specialist programmer. He volunteered for the Citizen’s Council and used his last credit with the old Pentagon and Senate Standing Committee to be appointed for life, if he wanted. It was a pension of sorts. They liked, still like, Charlie, he helped make all this New Way possible. He knew his services and proximity would, one day, give him access to the System. That day took 40 years and you.”

  I asked, mouth full, “And Sheila?”

  “On his second marriage, Charlie had been nurturing his stepdaughter Sheila. He took her into his confidence and trained her. She volunteered for the experiment that the Citizen’s Council recommended was necessary, to determine what human/machine interface would have on humans on longer-term immersion. It was a scientific program, of no military or other significance. Charlie knew better.”

  She paused for effect. “In her speeded-up state Sheila could talk with Gaia.”

  At the mention of Gaia, the hairs on my neck rose to attention. How far down this rabbit hole did they expect me to go? First Apollo mentions Gaia and now this beautiful redhead is telling me that Gaia research was in earnest.

  “Charlie had kept working in secret on the MacHead main program, to contact Gaia and open a dialogue for the benefit of all mankind. In the middle of his 25th year, Charlie talked with Gaia, he found the frequency. Gaia had nothing to say, or rather what she said made no sense. Charlie could proceed no further. He needed both more computing power and a different clock speed. Gaia wasn’t speaking slowly, Gaia was speaking at 100 times the rate of humans, a useful conversation was impossible without speeding up. Sheila was the 1st human to talk with Gaia.

  “What Gaia said to Sheila made no sense. For the 1st week all Gaia would say were variations on “it’s time.” It became clear that Gaia is alone here, but not alone out there. Her conversations are not with us, we’re only hearing her internal clock, her “vocalizations” are not heard by us nor are they meant to be. We needed to have a conversation that she could listen to and respond to, kind of like, “Who’s that talking over there?” That sort of thing. That was me, I volunteered, a research scientist, officially speeded up, wife of a SND cop, security clear as crystal, and so forth. Gaia didn’t pay the slightest attention. Then you started jabbering away inside the System and Gaia talked up, real loud, knocked Sheila and me off our feet. Gaia is pissed.”

  CHAPTER 19

  TOO MANY LIFE FORMS

  Gaia, all this is about Gaia? A left-over, touchy-feely, environmental movement that was popular a hundred years ago had resolved itself into a need to speak with Gaia, mother earth, the whole planet for heaven’s sake? What are these people thinking about? Are they all nuts? Or are they conning me to get me to reveal Apollo to them? I was getting agitated.

  Angie seemed to sense my discomfort. “Look Simon, try this. Sheila and I find that if you hold your breath, like when you try and get rid of hiccups, the clock slows down. Then breathe out and you can drop, about, 5% every few minutes. It doesn’t last but it helps. Try not to hyperventilate, that makes it worse. If you’re ever caught out without slo-doze, use a bag and breathe your own cee-oh-two.”

  I took a few slow breaths, held my breath and let it out. The anxiety passed and my rate dropped a little. At least it wasn’t going up anymore. “How long have you been speeded up?”

  “Six months, I was getting ready to become the next codifier. I wanted to be faster in there than anyone before me. I wanted the System to talk to Gaia and at the same time, check the synaptic response times. We had predicted their levels at awareness capability. You went in there as our last decoy before implementation. It took twelve years to alter your records to make you eligible. As I said, you were in System for a few months and, presto, it comes alive. We’re still not sure how you did that, but we’re pretty sure it was an accident, well advanced awareness of the schedule we thought likely. The creature, Peter you call it, must have been ready. You just spanked it alive according to Cramer.”

  “Okay, so here we are. What do you want of me?”

  “Charlie—that’s the 1st as you call him—will need to ask you questions. His level is marked at 7.5 but is, in fact closer to your own.”

  “5?”

  “No, smarter. You and I and Charlie are about the same. I told you we doctored your files over time.”

  It was impolite to ask anyone their level. It wasn’t done, it was a serious social faux pas. But I had to know. She knew I did. She waited, she moved on the stool, knowing I was watching. She turned her gaze on me, full force, smiled, leaned forward. “Nine.” About as good a flirt as I had ever had.

  “Thanks. That explains a lot. Makerman was a dunce with the same 5 rating. What the hell is Cramer? He’s always ahead of me.”

  “He doesn’t measure, his grandfather has been augmenting his neural pathways since he was in the womb. Cramer is powerful, but benign. For the record, he doesn’t even fire that gun, he just show-boats with it. Cramer must not do one thing, though, he must not go in System for long. It’s cumulative for him, there are too many neural pathways to effect. Yesterday nearly killed him. He threw up chocolate cake all over that suite after you left, it’s why he didn’t go with you when they took you away.”

  “I’ll remember that image, it makes him more human.” I wanted to sound placated, at ease. But was still terrified that all this was a ruse to get me to reveal Apollo or Ra.

  She could see right through me. Her head snapped around, “Look, you can’t take an attitude here, you have to come clean. Charlie has worked for 40 plus years for this moment and, what happens? You abscond with the new life form! The new life form that he correctly predicted could talk to Gaia but now has left, gone walkabout.” She took a breath, “The Kansas City diversion was good by the way. Simon, please, you’re our only hope.”

  “That’s not true, Mary will take over when we’re all dead.”

  “Is it worth it? To die for?”

  There was no hesitation. The only thing I was sure about was Apollo and Ra were worth it. “Yes.”

  She jumped up and threw her arms around me and planted a warm, provocative and demanding kiss right on the lips. It was a full body press, at speeded-up pace, so I lost my balance and toppled backwards. She landed on top, still clutching. There were tears on her face, she was so happy. “Simon, I swear you are too good to be true. I know you were chosen because of your father, but I never expected to know, believe in you, this way. Come on, we have to get going.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet.

  I am still not sure if it was her kiss or th
e mention of my father, but my defenses suddenly began to crumble. “No, wait, what’s my father have to do with this?”

  “Your father was a MacHead too, he was Charlie’s roommate at Penn.”

  I had gone to my father’s alma mater, it was important to him. More to him than to me. He’d been adamant. But if Dad had been a MacHead, did that mean Charlie had recruited him as well?

  She was ahead of me. “Simon, think, how old is Charlie? And your Dad, how old would he be today?” Oh, damn, Dad was much older, 8 years older, than Charlie. But, wait, Charlie was there as a prodigy at age 14. So, they were there together. It began to sync up. But surely Dad wasn’t a MacHead, he never admitted to anything that weird. Dad was a staunch realist, always talking about the irreality of America, the New Way. Partly I always put that down to his older generation. Lately, I had found myself seeing the gaps, the fakeness of events and, more than anything, finding his God’s theater scenario uncannily real. Like yesterday morning, the tornado had reminded me of God’s theater, simply because it wasn’t real, it was manufactured.

  I saw then, that’s why Dad had told me this story, and William too, to make us look more closely for the flaws, not think we were God’s chosen. Unlike Angie and Sheila, we weren’t merely recruited. We were indoctrinated to get to the right result by a different path.

  Angie saw me thinking, guessed where I was going. “Simon, yes, I knew what my path was. You were set on an inviolate path by your father. It’s how the friends, the two families, decided to seed for the future, one track willfully continuing the work of the MacHeads, the other not willfully but just an inevitably, in total secrecy. When we chose you for the codifier, we knew that your awareness, given to you by your father, would enable you to see better than someone without that code in their head. That’s why Cramer was appointed guardian, by the Citizens’ Council, as a pretend SND cop, as overseer. He knew, you did not. It was vital you not know. Contact had to be true, real, honest. Was it?”