Solaris Rising 2

by Ian Whates

  But Dr. Allegato won’t let him go. “Now tell me the truth, sir. I want to know about your son.”

  “What about him?”

  “How strong is this bond between you and Brad?”

  The son hasn’t spoken to his father in a decade, lending the moment its poignant life. Parcy drops his gaze, saying, “Well. Honestly, we have had our troubles.”

  An empathetic nod is followed by, “I see. I see.”

  “There was a fight. A while back, and maybe it was my fault. And since then we haven’t been keeping up like we should.”

  “Sir, I am sorry for your difficulties,” Allegato says. This is where his natural remoteness helps; the words are compassionate but his mouth gives them heft and a clinical tone. “However, if I might, sir, I would like to point out that there are no problems between you and your son. Sadness and shame are wasted when they aren’t applied to the correct part of the equation. Which is, as I have said –”

  “The bond,” another voice cries from the back.

  The lecture hall feels alert, involved. Everybody watches the young gray doctor nodding, seemingly gathering his thoughts. Then for nothing but the minimal cost of attending, he gives them an idea that in another two years will make him wealthy. “Every person is unique,” he says. “But each of us can be categorized according to his or her properties. There is a periodic table to the human species. I have mapped it. In nature, each element is fundamental. Each plays best with certain elements – like hydrogen joining with oxygen. Those bonds are stable and useful, and yes, the same can be said for people. But we waste so much of our lives worrying about what we cannot change. It’s the quality of our bonds that brings us happiness or despair. Some bonds are essential, others dangerous. The trick is to know how to manage these powerful, ultimately beautiful forces.”

  Hands rise and voices call out. One woman wants help with a difficult husband. Another is grieving her dead, difficult mother. One loud man wonders how bonds can help him sell cars.

  But Dr. Allegato is a professional, and professionals deal with one patient at a time. Focusing on Parcy, he says, “First of all, forget your son. You have no son. What you have is a bond that is sick and unstable, and what you need to do is restructure and reconfigure the other bonds in your life. Only then will you be able to offer your son a new, more stable bonding.”

  “But how can I do all that?” the suffering father asks. “I’m not a strong person.”

  “None of us are strong,” says Dr. Allegato. “But of course, that doesn’t matter. It is our bonds that hold the energy of the world.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I know it, and I have tests I can give you,” Allegato says. “I’m also developing a series of exercises that can be tailored to different elemental personalities. At the end of a long weekend, I promise, you will have the bonds you need, and you’ll drink in the energies borrowed from a universe that will give and give.”

  The Unknown Element

  MAYBE THE FATHER and his estranged son would have reconnected in the future – an event full of significance and press releases, no doubt. But men of Parcy’s age and physical condition often die with their first major coronary. Striking on the eve of publication was a coincidence, or it was the inevitable outcome of long hours making pretty the author’s stilted prose. Some claim that Parcy was suffering regrets about the project. Why didn’t he just steal the idea from the original article and put himself before an eager public? But he lacked Allegato’s marketable looks. And besides, regrets would have required confidence about the book’s success.

  Confidence seemed ludicrous. Initial orders were sluggish, and the tepid early reviews used the words: ‘Contrived,’ and ‘Complicated’, and ‘Unconvincing.’ Parcy told several friends that his last big gamble had failed. Then he died and his body was found by his cleaning lady, and the autopsy and belated inquest found no substantial reason for a criminal investigation.

  The sudden loss of his partner didn’t seem to sadden Allegato, which cocked a few eyebrows. But the earliest believers generally found the man’s reserve to be a comfort. Allegato spoke at the funeral. “The bonds between us and the deceased still exist,” he reminded everyone, “and it is each of our responsibilities to keep the bonds alive and helpful. Which I should add is exactly how Clarence would have wanted it.”

  Clarence would have preferred money. He was guaranteed thirty per cent of Allegato’s take, which seemed like nothing for the first few weeks. But the online campaigns outperformed expectations and a pair of talk-show appearances went very well. Then one actress’ speech turned viral – a five minute sermon about how she had tried a thousand self-help guides before this and none worked and Bonds was remarkable. She was already at the Third Tier and on a good day she could see the bonds surrounding her, brilliant and lovely, tying her to her boyfriend and children and of course her many supportive and lovely fans too.

  Orders jumped from steady to torrential. In an age of e-readers and wide scale thievery, it was impossible to know how many consumers were remaking their lives in the Allegato Way. Ten million Americans was a common guess, with a hundred million practitioners worldwide after the first year. Then the movement struck China. The One-Child policy left people desperate to cherish their scarce, valuable bonds, and seeing the wise Chinese embrace the concept caused a second, much larger wave of interest across the Western world.

  Fifteen months later the second edition of Bonds was released – a minor reworking that dropped Parcy’s name as a contributor, assuring the young social modeler of one hundred per cent of the profits. The International Institute of Interpersonal Bonding and Love did even better. Good weekends saw ten thousand clinics on six continents. Motivated teachers flinging out jargon and smiles were transforming lives. One neutral study claimed that the Allegato Way was more effective at enhancing happiness than any religion and most psychoactive drugs. Other studies were less certain, but they didn’t gain the media foothold. Add the machinery designed to measure bonds and enhance their power, and it was possible to believe that ninety households out of hundred were blessed with Dr. Allegato’s presence.

  Yet as successes grew, the man became more of a mystery. Even employees who saw him on an irregular basis were perplexed by his manners. Desmond could be pleasant in conversation, but he usually ignored the room full of corporate officers, preferring the DS held close to his face. He made decisions when decisions were necessary, and when it seemed essential he could meet a national leader or open a new hospital, mustering a passable charm for several minutes straight. But the man’s only true friend seemed to be Desmond Allegato. His ideal day involved solitude inside one of his dozen mansions, playing games designed by a team that built games only for him. Beautiful women and a few men tried to entice that billionaire, but besides a few laughable/sad adventures, nothing came of their bold advances. The man had a pathological indifference to the rest of us, and that only made him seem more brilliant and intriguing and perhaps tragic.

  For twenty years his books and courses and hardware continued to sell, and there was more praise than complaints about the results, and there was no reason to suspect that would ever change.

  Then, last March, without a whisper of warning, astonishing news broke. The corporate office panicked. The announcement was absorbed and often misunderstood and, according to several sources, the vice-presidents told one very loyal officer to find out where the Master was, and then they started to battle about who would deliver the thunderbolt and how.

  The officer had ambitious and very bold bonds. On his own initiative, he drove to the Master’s favorite house. There were rings of security to pass through and, getting wind of this event, the vice-presidents called their man to order him home again. But the officer was already inside. He kept imagining the thrill of sharing what he knew with the world’s greatest man. Sitting in what seemed like a random room, the fifty-year-old game player was filling a very comfortable chair, holding a controller while
armored gnomes lived in three dimensions, fighting hard for dominion over nothing.

  “Sir,” the officer said.

  The Master continued to play, apparently not hearing him.

  Again, louder this time, he said, “Sir.”

  The game was paused. But it took Allegato some time to pull back from the place where he had been, rubbing his eyes and sighing twice before looking over his shoulder at the intruder.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “There’s been an announcement, sir.”

  But Allegato raised his hand first, silencing him with the gesture. “Your name is Greg, isn’t it?”

  An eleven year veteran of the company, Gary knew well enough to nod and say, “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. What’s this announcement?”

  “Researchers in Australia designed some new equipment. They were using it to study quantum effects. And they just determined that you were right.”

  Allegato had no reaction, save for another small sigh. Then a look of doubt came into the still-handsome face, and he calmly asked, “What am I right about?”

  “There are bonds,” Greg/Gary stated.

  “What do you mean? Bonds where?”

  “The air is full of them, and they’re real, and just like we’ve always said, they weave us together.”

  “No,” the great man said.

  “But it’s true, sir. They just had a press conference...”

  “I meant ‘No, I am not right.’” Allegato picked up the game control, studying a partly disemboweled creature. “I made it all up to begin with. So you see? I can’t be right. I’m just lucky.”

  A Team of Dreamers

  GOSSIP AND APOCRYPHAL stories make unreliable sources, and that’s true with groundbreaking science as well as with affairs of the heart. Something intriguing lay inside an ocean of data. But even the Australian researchers were uncertain what their work meant, and they said so many times. Yes, the universe was laced with subtle quantum relationships. That was always known, at least for the last century-plus. And yes, the human mind seemed to be connected to other minds, including evidence of persistent influences shared between friends and family. The first news conference was wrapped around those modest claims. Then a reporter asked, “What do these bonds look like?” The “bonds” didn’t look like anything. The effects were invisible and always tiny, and everybody at the podium said as much. But once used, the telltale word was embraced. “Bonds” was the most popular word in the world now. It took another three days before the science team realized the significance of the word, and they released a joint statement to warn the public away from a label that delivered history and color and a lot of money-making expectations.

  Yes, something new had been found. But the discoverers were hardware savants armed with competent software. Those Australians were in no special place to assess the new phenomenon, and the real groundbreaking work required theorists possessing special training and the interest and a properly warped nature, plus that rarest blessing, which was the free time to invest in the chase.

  We are the hunters.

  Counts vary, but there are about fifty of us worldwide. We know each other mostly through webcams and emails. Some of us are graduate students, others tenured professors, while the largest group are presently unattached to any major institution – the result of economic downturns and little scandals, bouts with mental illness and probably more than a few cases of plain stubbornness.

  Except by reputation, we didn’t know one another before this. Yet now we’re in the same grand endeavor, and bonds have formed. We talk about this daily. And we use the word “bonds” without qualifiers or scorn. Our new mathematics has been woven into the physical research, and we can put numbers to the ways that the fifty of us are bonded. We aren’t one mind united by a holy quest, no. But in a given twenty-four hour period, on average, the fifty of us share one-and-a-third thoughts that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

  Allegato demands our attention. Last year, most of us didn’t give a damn about the man. Yet while the media keep simplifying and misunderstanding our work, they can’t stop talking about linked minds and Allegato’s innate genius. It pisses us off. Every month, a fresh edition of Bonds is released, and each volume culls a few of our equations to illustrate points that were never intended. Doesn’t the world understand that the man is a phony? How can brilliant people like us be so unappreciated while his organization of con artists and tag-alongs continues to swallow up billions in new revenue?

  That’s why the old hermit can’t be ignored. The world talks about Allegato, and some of those thoughts leak our way. Our math gives us a reliable number: We endure six and a third Allegato moments every day, and some of us think about him quite a lot more than that, particularly now.

  Several months ago, one of the Master’s officers contacted us, and because my name was first on the latest paper, I ended up being the rich First-Bonder.

  The young woman had two tasks: to show me a pretty face and a polite, respectful manner, and once that goal was met, to arrange a video conference between my group and hers.

  Twenty-three of our fifty were present at the meeting. Some of us expected Allegato at their end, but of course he wasn’t present. One of us asked about the man, and we were told that he was quite healthy – did we think otherwise? – and he was certainly watching the feed but preferred to keep a low profile, which was everyone’s right, and since our time was precious, shouldn’t we move things along?

  “Things” included us describing exactly what we were doing and what it meant to science and human existence.

  Every living mind was connected to every other mind. “Bond” was a poor word, implying some sort of profoundly stubborn joining. There wasn’t anything like that, at least not that we could see. What our work showed us were influences and the ghostly quantum motion of information. “Thoughts” didn’t do justice to the concept. In a random day, there were anywhere from five hundred to a thousand thoughts that would pop into existence inside a healthy adult cortex. And yes, that seemed like a lot, but the number needed a proper context. Most “thoughts” went unnoticed by the conscious mind. The average person ignored a thousand “thoughts” every minute, and the ghostly glimmers arriving from outside were usually weaker than those generated by the resident brain.

  In the media, self-described experts were promising that the world could be woven together with some kind of a telepathic Internet. But that was a farfetched if not out-and-out ridiculous thought. There was a lot of neurological rain falling, but most of it was senseless and, in any storm, who can count individual drops?

  We ran out of thoughts that we were willing to share verbally. And when the silence was noted, the pretty lead woman smiled and straightened her back, telling us, “Well, thank you. This has been very fun and informative, and I know that all of us feel energized by this last hour. Thank you very much.”

  The conference ended with a blank screen.

  Three hours later, the PR wing of Allegato’s organization went into overdrive. A clipped and deeply misleading version of our conference was given to the world, and with it came words attributed to nobody. That’s when we learned that our work was lending meat to bones laid down by the famous man himself. According to the nameless spokesperson, Dr. Desmond Allegato believed this was the moment to step forward and accept the duty for which he was born. He wasn’t merely a deep thinker and a grand scientist, but in a world tied together by infinite Bonds, there had to be a leader, and who would be half as perfect as him?

  The Bondless Man

  AS MENTIONED, THERE are fifty of us, give or take. Some of us feel like “grand scientists”, but most realize that he or she has some narrow strength as well as broad limitations in a venue that was invisible just a year ago. On the whole, we love our work. We accept being collaborative. We respect some peers and despise others. Lying awake in the night, each of us contemplates pseudo-telepathy and quantum mysticism, and we imagine future success
es while our sleepless minds play with erratic and lovely high mathematics. But there is no way to avoid thinking about Allegato – he is never “Dr. Allegato” to us – and that turn of the mind never helps any of us fall back to sleep.

  The long hermitage seems finished. The man who never appeared in public is suddenly ubiquitous. As in old times, he has begun holding little seminars with select audiences, but this time cameras are invited so that the video can be diced and carefully remixed and then released as web events and extended commercials. The old salesman looks handsome and respectable and maybe a little heavy. But Allegato walks quickly on a small brightly-lit stage, and with a strong certain voice he speaks about Bonds and how they define so much of us, and every religion stems from the Bonds, and all intellect and even the smallest emotion too.

  His last twenty years have been spent in contemplation, he says, and what he has learned is enormous. Eight Tier is the highest level on the official Allegato Scale, but he is a genuine Twelve, living in a world full of bright Bonds that are lovely and obedient to him. In one more year, perhaps sooner, he will reach the ultimate Tier, which is so important and powerful that it doesn’t wear a number, and at that point he will know how to influence most of what happens in the world.

  The world probably isn’t seeing the genuine Allegato. That’s our best guess, at least. Digital invention has reached a point where any damn thing can be put together out of zeros and ones, but we know what we know. The cold soul from the old video could never have become so relaxed and smooth and charming, and particularly not after years spent playing his games. I knew that immediately. But somebody else in our group saw the deeper meaning. “That’s not our Desmond,” she announced. “That’s Parcy with a new body and voice. Don’t you see?”

  We see too much. The man’s fine face is everywhere, and he makes it into the news most days. His first new book in decades was released just last month, and I read it in one long bad evening and then tried to get my peers to look at the words. The old Allegato was a slippery character who at least delivered a comforting product. But this new incarnation isn’t a simple commercial machine. He wants power. He is religion. His agenda is broad and well-planned, although it is impossible to know just what the ultimate goal is. Does his organization want to bump up the profits another notch, or is this some wild bid to gain a chokehold on civilization?