The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  “But we needed them.”

  “Yes, we did. But who needs whom now? What’s the most stable currency in the world?”

  The President failed to come up with an answer.

  “Theirs. MC credits. Singapore adopted their currency to combat inflation. Digital goods and services are ninety-nine percent of the economy now. They’re continuing to expand into Third World countries, homogenizing all economies, which poses its own problems.”

  “That’s what companies do,” the President said.

  “No. That’s what empires do. We are fools if we continue to believe that because we were the superpower of old, we will be the superpower of the future.” Evan held up the Mindlink from the Sleeper chair. “Land and dominion mean nothing when, in a superior world, those are limitless. The tar pit is ahead, Mr. President, and we’re running out of time.”

  Evan sat down behind his desk. “What did President Williams say about me?”

  President Ward Williams had been Austin’s predecessor.

  “I didn’t speak with him directly,” President Austin replied. “My assistant Sam said he just said to talk to you.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Mostly the same.”

  Evan nodded. “Good.” He paused and then stood. “I’m going to show you something that I showed Ward. Also Grant and Qian, and a few others that need to know. Very few people know about this, and you’ll see that if more people did, the way of life we take for granted would vanish.” Evan snapped his fingers to emphasize the point.

  One of the walls was on tracks, and it slid open to reveal a much larger research area. The first thing President Austin registered was the sound of fear. A spotlight flickered on to reveal, just twenty feet away, animals caged or shackled on a long table. There was a caged hamster, running maniacally on its wheel. A cat, shackled with a short leash, hair raised and hissing. An old dog, collared, and a chimpanzee. The latter looked like a micro King Kong, upright and constrained with chains. It bore its teeth in fear.

  “What the hell is going on?” President Austin said. He looked back and forth from the distraught animals to Evan, who had made his way behind the table, as if it was his turn to present a science experiment.

  “I’ve done this demonstration a dozen times, and it’s important that you listen,” Evan said. “The majority of the world thinks that the Mindlink is a safe device. Obviously, we don’t want them to think otherwise. They shop, go into chat rooms, work online, they see the interfaces, they live their existence blind—and that’s fine. It’s essential. How else would our economy have survived the oil depletion?”

  He knelt next to the hamster and watched it sprint an infinite, unwinnable race.

  “But it’s a two-way feed. Data flows both out and in, and most of it—the majority of it—is imperceptible to the individual. That’s how we get the majority of our intel. Our Sleepers creep into people’s brains and read their thoughts. We do it all the time.

  “You’ve never heard of the King Sleeper, but he was a boy, a magnificent weapon. He’s dead now. But he radically changed our perception of what could be accomplished in cyberspace. One of his strangest feats was that he could kill. You could be piddling along, checking news feeds, and bam! You’re dead. He would plant a codec in a subject’s head and . . .” Evan snapped his fingers. The hamster collapsed. Its little legs fell through the wired bars of the wheel, and it rocked back and forth from the sudden stop in inertia. “. . . trigger it. The brain would stroke.”

  Evan shot the cat with his hand and it fell over dead.

  “Stop!” President Austin thought he said. It came out as a groan.

  Next, the dog collapsed like a marionette with severed strings. Its tongue lolled out in one last lick.

  “What’s amazing about this technology is that it works on anything with a warm-blooded neural pathway. A hamster, a bird—man, obviously—it doesn’t matter. The same effect.”

  The monkey hung limp in its shackles. Blood oozed slowly onto the fur beneath its eyes.

  President Austin ran for the door. It was locked.

  “Guards!” he screamed.

  THEY CAN’T HEAR YOU.

  It was Evan, but the words weren’t spoken aloud. President Austin turned around. The diminutive man was gone. In his place was a crocodile.

  SIT DOWN. WE HAVE MUCH TO DISCUSS.

  “How are you doing that?” President Austin grabbed at his head.

  “This whole room is a Mindlink,” Evan said. “The program that killed those animals is now inside you.”

  Evan continued speaking, but in the President’s head. I’VE PUT THIS PROGRAM IN YOU, YOUR WIFE, YOUR DAUGHTERS, YOUR GRANDCHILD, AND YOUR CABINET. I’VE PUT IT IN EVERY FRIEND YOU’VE EVER HAD, ANY ACQUAINTANCE YOU MIGHT REMEMBER. AND THEIR CHILDREN. AND THEIR CHILDREN’S CHILDREN. BUT IT’S OUR LITTLE SECRET. PRESIDENT WILLIAMS KEPT IT, AND HE’S GOING TO BE FINE. I ONLY HAD TO MAKE MY POINT ONCE.

  President Austin vaguely remembered that Ward’s brother had died unexpectedly.

  SIT DOWN!

  The command echoed through every brain cell in President Austin’s head. He felt something loose beneath his nose. He dabbed it with his finger and it came back with blood.

  “But I’m the President . . . ” he said, hopelessly.

  “No, you’re not,” Evan said. “But it needs to look that way.”

  THERE ARE THINGS I NEED.

  = = =

  Every man believes they would be brave in the face of adversity. And when they learn categorically that they are not, it changes them forever. It makes them live in fear. President Austin couldn’t remember a day in the last six years he had woken up without the images of the animals dying at Evan’s behest. Sometimes instead of the monkey, it was his granddaughter. Sometimes that hamster was gone, and it was him running on the wheel.

  He checked the clock: it was five-thirty a.m. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but lately, things had been a blur. He rubbed his face. “Two more years,” he said quietly. Then his second term would be done. But really, it was less. It was weeks, maybe a month, until the charade would be over. Evan had promised some of the leaders riches. Others, land. President Austin just wanted out. Evan had agreed to that, too.

  Austin thought back to yesterday’s meeting with MindCorp. Evan hadn’t had to explain what he was having the Coalition leaders do: they were setting Cynthia up. They were agitating her for a retaliatory response. David was a brown belt in judo, and what Evan did to his enemies was no different than a judo throw: he used their own weight against them. Evan placed the fulcrum, but he didn’t push. He had them fall on their own.

  President Austin’s wife shifted around as he sat up on the edge of the bed. She slept on her side like a cannonball. He rubbed her leg absently with his hand, and she murmured something and curled tighter.

  An old memory folded over him. They were newlyweds, just weeks into their forty-year union. They lived in a trailer, but neither of them had the faintest clue they were poor. She waitressed, he was in law school. Back then, it had felt like the world was filled with pearls, and every bend around the road held sunlight. The delusions of youth. It was the same as believing in Santa Claus.

  In the memory, he was teasing her that she slept like a dog. In those days, he’d sometimes wake up and she’d be at the foot of the bed, or perhaps her feet would be jabbing his face.

  “You just don’t circle,” he wheezed through tears. She hit him, and they belly laughed, and it turned into making love.

  It was a hot night, and afterward, he had put the small tabletop fan on the bed to cool them off. They got silly and spoke through the fan to each other. The fan chopped through their words.

  Him: “T-h-a-n-k-s f-o-r s-l-e-e-p-i-n-g w-i-t-h m-e.”

  Her: “I h-a-v-e n-o c-h-o-i-c-e.”

  Him: “I c-a-n-t w-a-i-t t-o a-f-f-o-r-d a-i-r c-o-n-d-i-t-i-o-n-i-n-g.”

  Her: “I c-a-n-t w-a-i-t t-o n-o-t w-a-i-t t-a-b-l-e-s.”

  In t
he true memory, they both lay down and let the cool air dry their skin, but as he remembered it now, only he did. His wife stayed by the fan, and she looked at him strangely. For a moment a shimmer rolled across her face. And then she said:

  “W-h-a-t h-a-s E-v-a-n p-l-a-n-n-e-d?”

  President Austin—just David, back then—snapped his head toward his young wife. It no longer felt like a memory. It felt like he was there.

  “Cyn—”

  She pressed her lips to his, and then she lay beside him, just as it was in the memory. “Your wife. We must maintain the construct,” she said. “You are in a meeting with the Coalition leaders. I’ve triggered this memory as a cover. Let it flow. Remember it.”

  And just like that, he remembered. He was. President Nehru wasn’t there, and none of the other leaders said a thing about it. But they were all thinking the same thing. When one of them wasn’t present, it meant they’d stepped out of line. In what felt like another room, he heard himself speak. He was talking about how to best transition the governments after the Coalition became unified as one under Evan.

  “I can’t talk to you. He’ll kill my family.”

  The dream carried on. It rolled back from lucid. He no longer felt in control. His wife, who was not his wife, rolled over onto him. Even though the last thing President Austin was thinking about was sex, the body he inhabited in this dream was raring to go. She lifted up slightly to let him in, and they were going.

  “You’re a monster. You’re all monsters,” President Austin said.

  “I’m nothing compared to Evan. And you housed him,” Cynthia replied. “What has he done?”

  “He has built a hive brain. He uses geniuses to increase his intelligence. I don’t know how it works, but he says it will make him a god.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Marine Base Quantico, south of Washington, D.C. In a bunker. I didn’t want to help.” President Austin started to cry. “I had no choice.”

  “Is he done?”

  “No. It’s not just that. He has things he calls ‘Multipliers’ that it needs. He hired mercenaries to help install them as a gateway from UNITY into your network.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They’re everywhere. That’s why UNITY took so long. The resources were divided.”

  “And that’s why you and everyone else approved the plan.”

  President Austin nodded. “He told us to. UNITY is his gateway in.”

  The room plucked like a string. President Austin tried to get out from underneath his wife.

  “He’s here,” he said.

  “He may be, but he won’t know we’ve spoken. Riding the memory guarantees that.”

  Cynthia didn’t see the shadow in the room. She was too busy grinding to climax. But President Austin did. He spoke past her. “She tricked me! She tricked me! Please don’t kill my family! Please don’t hurt them! It’s her fault!”

  The shadow moved away from the wall. It was Evan. Cynthia turned to face him.

  “I won’t let you do this,” she said.

  Evan smiled, but instead of teeth, his mouth was filled with eyes. “You make it too easy for me, Cynthia.” He extended his index finger and touched her shoulder.

  Beneath Evan were others, insatiable for feelings and information, and they chewed through Cynthia’s memories like a swarm of piranhas, tearing her apart. They ripped out the memory of the Northern Star’s location. They disassembled her conscious being. And then Evan hit command code.

 

 

  <5>

  <4>

  <3>

  <2>

  <1>

 

  Evan hadn’t killed Cynthia. He had destroyed one of her MIME CPUs.

  Anger boiled off of him. The eyes protruded, now on glowing tentacles. Those that could, came out of his mouth. Those that couldn’t broke through his face.

  President Austin pushed himself against the headboard of the bed that he had slept in forty years ago. Back when he was no man’s pawn. Back when he thought he could make a difference. Back when the idea of death was as far as the farthest star. He closed his eyes and thrust his arms out, as if that would protect him. Nothing happened.

  “She tricked me! Please, I’ll do anything. I’ll make it up to you.”

  “You will,” Evan said.

  President Austin cracked his eyes open. The tentacles had pulled back into Evan’s face. He was seated on the bed.

  “It’ll help if the world hates her,” Evan continued. “She needs to appear rogue.”

  “Okay. I’ll hold a press conference. I’ll say whatever you need me to say.”

  Evan ignored President Austin’s plan. “Do you want to die, or should it be someone in your family?” he asked.

  The question paralyzed President Austin. “Wha—?”

  “The narrative is simple: she killed Nehru, and she came to you, either to kill you too or to make an example by killing someone in your family. It’s gotta be someone close. Your wife, your daughter. Can’t be a second cousin, a great uncle twice removed. It’s gotta be someone you really care about.”

  President Austin’s mouth opened and closed like a fish drowning on land.

  Evan waited for a response. When one didn’t come, he said, “Your wife will do.” He sat up as if the decision had been made.

  “Me,” President Austin said. He looked at his young wife, frozen in front of him.

  “You sure?”

  President Austin could see the whimsy in Evan’s gaze. Evan was enjoying this.

  “Yes. Please not my family. I’m enough. If you make it look like she killed me, I’ve got to be enough, right?”

  Evan nodded. “You’ll do fine.” President Austin could see gleaming eyes in Evan’s mouth.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this,” President Austin said quietly.

  Evan cocked his head. “That’s a silly thing to say. This has been done a thousand times since the beginning of man.”

  “And it’s always failed.”

  Evan shook his head. “You don’t know your history. There are dynasties that have lasted thousands of years. You can still find their borders and touch their crumbling walls.”

  “What does that matter when you’re dead?”

  Evan smiled. “I don’t plan to be, Mr. President. I plan to live forever.”

  The tentacles burst from Evan’s face and latched on to President Austin. As the Northern Star unraveled his soul, the President held on to a simple memory of his wife. The day before, he had hugged her from behind in the bathroom. They had looked at each other in the mirror’s reflection. It was a passing warmth, easily overlooked. But it brought President Austin peace as what made him him was torn asunder.

  = = =

  Raimey chaperoned the truck of children with Razal at the wheel. They had left an hour after the CB radio had crackled to life and now it was nearing dawn. The children slept. Vana watched over them, making sure their blankets were tight, running her hands through their hair when they cried out in their dreams.

  Ahead, Raimey saw the lights of Matadi, flickering across the dark edge where sky met land. Matada was an industrial city, pressed against the Congo River; columns of black smoke rose into the air, probably from burning trash heaps.

  The road was in lousy shape, and their progress was slow. Raimey walked alongside. Earlier, Razal had sent a message to Command, but they had no way of knowing if it had been received. Razal’s comm was still out, which was confusing: it was satellite-based and had worked fine on the flight over. It was possible that it was being jammed, which only reinforced the feeling that something sinister lay ahead.

  They occasionally passed a nomad walking in the other direction, away from Matadi. They led donkeys that pulled warped wooden carts, built on ancient car axles and tires. As John and the truck approached, they would pull to the side and wait far off the road. They didn’t nod or speak, j
ust stared with wary eyes.

  Razal stopped the truck a quarter mile out. Matadi rose and fell over rolling hills. They didn’t know where the threat lay.

  “What do you think?” Razal asked. “Can you use your hover-rovers?”

  “They’ll announce our presence,” Raimey said. “It’s better if I just go in.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  Raimey laughed, and for a second his wife flickered away. Razal climbed out of the truck and onto the roof with his rifle. “You hear my gun, get out here.”

  Raimey walked ahead and entered the city. A far-off mosque crackled with the fajr, and the sound echoed down the streets. Trash was everywhere, and so were signs of war, though they were mostly anthropological. Craters were patched with asphalt, and John could see where shelled-out walls had been rebuilt.

  Doors and shutters shut quietly as John approached. He caught a boy watching him from an alley. The boy sprinted away, kicking up trash.

  The black columns of smoke were what John had suspected they were: the town dump. A dozen men and donkeys worked diligently to plow the trash toward a massive fire pit. Other fire pits burned around them. They stopped and stared as John passed.

  A man approached him with his hands in the air.

  “Please, please,” the man said.

  “Do you speak English?” Raimey asked. Above him, men appeared on the rooftops. He didn’t see arms, but they had the look of soldiers.

  The man beckoned John forward. “Please, please. Don’t hurt us, there are more children.”

  “I don’t want your children. I have some. Is this place safe?”

  “Children, come. No need to fight.” The man disappeared into an alley. Raimey trudged after, unsure how to proceed. The man sped up, running ahead and waving him onward.

  “Slow down,” John said. He didn’t want to run. The man either didn’t understand or didn’t listen, and continued on around a corner, still waving.

  Raimey followed. He made a hard left around the corner—and found himself walking right into an M1 Abrams tank, its 105-millimeter cannon aimed square at John’s chest, just twenty yards away. The man who had beckoned stood next to it. Two other Abrams covered its flanks.