Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone

by Philip Bosshardt

CHAPTER 19

  Paris, France

  December 25, 2110

  0800 hours (UT)

  For Dana Tallant, Christmas Day was supposed to be extra special. She had planned a really nice breakfast for the family. She’d gotten a new outfit for Rene, new sporteye spectacles for Liam who had come down from Cambridge a rabid football fan, come down reluctantly, she had to admit. True, Johnny Winger wouldn’t be there, except maybe the kids would go for Wings’ Dad One avatar if it wasn’t too creepy. Her husband was back in the States, at Table Top, running analysis of the captured Symborg bots. Operation Quantum Crusader couldn’t afford to lose a day, even if it was Christmas.

  She got Liam up, grumbling and while he was showering, she peeked in on Rene too. I’ll let her sleep a few more minutes. Dana thought her daughter was looking particularly good this morning…her skin was tightly meshed and there was a glow about her that seemed almost childlike…or was it her imagination? Dana wanted so hard for the day to go well…the family didn’t come together like this very often. Even if Wings couldn’t be there, at least, she had the kids.

  And one of them was just a cloud of bugs…yeah, she knew that, but every time that thought came to her mind, she squashed it.

  Not today, girl…not today. For once, the Wingers are going to be a normal family celebrating Christmas day.

  Liam came staggering in, yawning and stretching, poking around the kitchen for something to eat. Howie the housebot was ready with a plate of his favorite: scrambled eggs and Howie’s signature blueberry pancakes.

  “Will master be requiring anything else?” Howie intoned.

  Liam sat down and started digging in. “How ‘bout some coffee, H-man. You know what I like, don’t you?”

  Howie beeped and in seconds, had produced a frothy latte warmed to the perfect temperature.

  Dana sat down with her own coffee, peering at her son through a wreath of steam rising out of the mug. “Where’s your sister? It is Christmas morning, you know.”

  Liam shrugged. “Her door’s still shut…maybe she’s disassembled into pieces by now.”

  “Liam, don’t say that…I expect better out of you…today, especially. You’re in college now…watch your tongue.”

  Dana decided to go check on Rene herself. She found her daughter still in bed, under the covers, but wide awake. Her face was pensive, her forehead wrinkled, like she was in pain.

  “What is it, honey…didn’t you sleep very well? Are you hurting somewhere?” She bent down to kiss her forehead, feeling the slight buzz as the skin bots whirred with the contact.

  Rene shook her head, saying nothing.

  Maybe it’s the config engine, Dana wondered. Her lips and eyes weren’t tracking right…there was a slight smear, first there, then not there. She hadn’t seen that in days.

  “Bad dreams,” was all Rene could mumble. She turned and buried her face in the pillow, somehow aware that something was wrong. The way people reacted to her, even her own Mom, you could tell something was out of whack. Some days, she just wanted to dig a deep hole and crawl in.

  “Oh, honey…” Dana fluffed and fussed with Rene’s blond tresses, kneading the braids out, slipping and straightening the kinks. “Honey…it was just a dream. Hey, girl…it’s Christmas morning…got your favorite breakfast in the kitchen…if your brother doesn’t snarf it all up. And there are presents and the tree’s all done up…come on, let’s get up and we’ll get started.”

  Rene just buried her face deeper. “Leave me alone.”

  Dana had worked hard for weeks getting things ready for Christmas. “Young lady, get out of bed and that’s an order. What was in those bad old dreams anyway?”

  Rene turned back to face her Mom. Dana could see something moist in her eyes…tears, maybe? Or was it her imagination? Could an angel even have tears?

  “It’s hard to describe…more like feelings than images…like floating in a warm bath, surrounded by stars on all sides, but cocooned in warmth and light and love. It was comforting…but, Mom, I was scared….” She reached out for a hug and Dana embraced her daughter. She ignored the buzzing of the skin bots.

  “It’s okay, honey…it’ll be all right—“ but even as she said that, the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. It wasn’t that Rene’s skin was buzzing at her; she was used to that. It was what Rene had said…maybe the way she had said it.

  She stroked her daughter’s hair and told herself that the skin bots were just a weird form of static electricity. Was she having some kind of memory of her time with Config Zero? That thought popped into her mind as she helped Rene out of bed.

  “Come on, honey—let’s get you some breakfast. Before your brother eats everything in the house…come on, Howie’ll make whatever you want—“

  They went out to the kitchen and as she watched her daughter situate herself at the table and Howie take orders and serve hot pancakes and sausages, Dana couldn’t help but chew over Rene’s description of her dreams. She knew a little about Operation Sentinel, but that wasn’t what was bothering her. What had given her a chill in Rene’s bedroom was something else…a scrap of memory, something Wings himself had said, years before, during the Jovian Hammer operation at Europa, when he had approached the Keeper that lived in that frozen world’s submerged ocean.

  Surrounded by stars, cocooned in a bath of warm light…she resolved to check out the mission files, maybe even ask Wings himself the next time they talked.

  Dana watched her daughter fuss and fight with Liam and order Howie around like the little princess she wanted to be.

  Maybe these weren’t dreams at all. Was it possible that what Rene was experiencing was something like a memory…a memory of her time as a captive of Config Zero? Or maybe something even more basic…an embedded experience of what it was like to be part of the mother swarm, the Old Ones, a part of the Central Entity?

  This is crazy, she told herself. When she realized she hadn’t been paying attention to what the kids were doing and Liam and Rene were having fun making Howie flutter around the kitchen trying to fill conflicting orders, she intervened.

  “That’s enough of that, guys…Howie’s not a play toy. Eat your breakfast like human beings so we can get to the presents. Howie—“

  “Yes, madam--?”

  “Howie, cancel all previous orders from the last two minutes. Execute bedroom straightening program…and vacuum the hall while you’re at it.”

  The housebot seemed grateful for a simple command and whirled about instantly. “Yes, madam…at once—“ He whirred off to attend to his duties.

  Liam and Rene sulked over their pancakes, not daring to make eye contact with their Mom.

  “You two—honestly…finish up. It’s Christmas Day, for heaven’s sake. And your Dad’s due to call in half an hour.”

  They finished breakfast and left cleanup duties to Howie. In the living room, presents were exchanged and Dana tried to make the atmosphere as cheery as she could. Rene got a snazzy new skirt and jacket combo while Liam was intrigued by the new sporteye spectacles he got, loaded with hundreds of hours of football and cricket matches. Dana herself was touched by the necklace Liam gave her (he had somehow thoughtfully put Rene’s name on the card too…that’s what really brought a lump to her throat). It was faux pearl with some embedded amethyst and other stones. She tried it out immediately.

  The vid beeped from the corner of the living room. “That’ll be your father,” she announced. “Make yourselves presentable---Rene, honey, you stand here—“ she positioned her daughter as if they were posing for a portrait. “—and Liam, here…I’ll be in the middle—“

  Winger called from Table Top Mountain, where it was 3 am. He looked a little worn down, Dana thought, but otherwise, she was glad he could be there on Christmas morning, even if it was only a vid.

  “We just had presents,” Dana announced. She nudged both kids to show off their gifts…Rene shyly holdi
ng up the skirt and jacket for Winger to see.

  “That’s great, honey…it’ll look really good on you…guys, why don’t you go play elsewhere and let your Mom and me have a chat.”

  “Okay,” they both said in unison, as if being released from captivity. Liam flopped into a nearby chair in the den, eager to try out the sporteye. Rene went back to her bedroom, where she sniped and griped at what Howie had done to her bed. Then she threw herself into the bed and sank beneath the covers.

  Winger shook his head. The vid seemed to be coming from his officer’s quarters. Dana knew the building well; she could well imagine each one of the hundred and sixty steps from the OQ to Ops. She had plied that route a million times over the decades.

  “They seem happy enough,” he observed, sipping at a coffee.

  Dana shrugged. “They’re kids. Liam’s doing well at Cambridge…honors this semester. He likes what he’s studying….robotic ethics and all. He keeps trying to trip up Howie with questions and philosophical conundrums. I told him it won’t work…Howie’s just a housebot.”

  “And Rene? She looks good from here.”

  That brought a frown. “She says she’s been having bad dreams. I’m not sure if it’s a processor problem…maybe some kind of glitch. I was going to contact Dr. Falkland…but I wanted to talk with you first.”

  “What kind of dreams? Can she even have dreams…I mean, like we do?”

  “She calls them dreams. Snatches of images. Memory overflow…who knows? But the way she describes them…Wings, it gave me a chill. I can’t prove it but I think she’s got some kind of embedded memory from when she was with Config Zero. I mean, I thought Falkland wiped her clean but I’m wondering.”

  “What kind of images?”

  Dana described what Rene had told her. “Wings, I can’t get over the impression that what Rene’s experiencing is not just some processor hiccup. It’s all the detail that gets me…and it gibes with what Q2 has told us about Config Zero, even with what you and I know from earlier ops. Falkland needs to know about this…either he didn’t do the wipe properly…or Rene’s got some kind of comm we don’t know about.”

  Winger’s eyes narrowed. “Comm? I hadn’t thought about that…she’s got the same basic processor architecture as any ANAD bot…we know that much. Which means she’s got the same embedded viral genome structure that old Doc Frost dug up at Engebbe. Doc Frost once mentioned to me there were things in that architecture…in the logical makeup of that viral genome…that even he didn’t understand. And that’s proven true. Maybe there is a comm channel we don’t know about…and somehow it’s become activated.”

  Dana bit her lip. “This is Rene we’re talking about, Wings. Our daughter. She’s not just a machine, you know.” Even as she said that, a part of her wanted to argue back: that’s exactly what Rene is…a cloud of nanoscale machines, done up to resemble a human. But she squashed that thought.

  “I know…but I’m thinking,” Winger said. He reached off screen for something, then came back. “For sure, we’d better let Falkland know about this. And maybe CINCSPACE too. Maybe something Hawley’s crew is doing out at Sedna is triggering this…we shouldn’t discount that possibility. I’ll contact Q2 as well. If Rene’s got some kind of deeply buried ‘memory’ of her time with Config Zero, maybe we can use that. She could be a gold mine of intel for us.”

  Dana was nearly in tears. “My God, Wings, can’t she ever have a normal childhood?”

  “She’s not a normal child, Dana. We have to accept that. Look, you get in touch with Dr. Falkland. I’ll talk to someone in UNISPACE. Plus I’ve got contacts in Q2. This needs to be looked into.”

  “Okay…” Dana sniffed, quickly wiping a tear away so Liam wouldn’t see it. “I guess you’re right. When are you coming home?”

  Winger explained what was happening with the captured Symborg bots. “I can’t go into details here, of course. But I think they’re making progress. If it continues like this, I can probably make a hop over to Paris in a week or so.”

  “We need you here. The kids need you and so do I. Especially now.”

  They said their good-byes. Dana decided to send a message to Falkland at the Autonomous Systems Lab right away…just composing and writing the message occupied her mind…she wouldn’t have time to dwell on how sad the whole thing really was. She wanted to stay busy. She needed to stay busy.

  Was it even remotely possible, what Wings was saying? Rene somehow in some kind of inexplicable contact with Config Zero, or maybe the Old Ones, tuned in and channeling some of the processor activity inside the Central Entity. Dana shook her head. No, there’s some kind of mistake. There has to be another explanation. Probably some kind of memory glitch…a processor hiccup. Falkland would have the answer.

  Dana pulled out her pad and began composing a message to the doctor.

  The briefing at Q2 was scheduled for two days later. The intel staff was physically located on the fiftieth floor of the Quartier General. A Colonel Lofton was to meet with Dana, who was told to bring her daughter along. Dr. Falkland would join the meeting after a red-eye flight from Northgate. CINCSPACE had a staffer there too…Captain Walz, from the S2 shop.

  Winger would vid himself in about an hour after the briefing was scheduled to start.

  Lofton had already arranged to have Rene examined by Q2 engineers a few floors below them. “They’ve got all the gear,” he explained. “They’ll check her config drivers, download memory, run diagnostics on her processor, the works—very thorough. Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with here.”

  Dana Tallant was dubious. “In other words, she’s in containment. Basically, she’s a lab rat.”

  Lofton showed a pained expression. “Major Tallant, your daughter’s situation is well known around here. We’re trying to be sensitive to family issues. But the truth is: your daughter was a hostage of Config Zero some years before. She was deconstructed. She’s a facsimile of what you once knew. An angel. We have to deal with the facts. And the fact is that, as I’m sure Dr. Falkland will admit, we don’t know the full story of what happened to her, what Config Zero may have done to her, what she was exposed to.”

  “I know,” Dana replied, weakly. “Just get on it, okay?”

  Lofton explained to her and Falkland what Q2 was testing Rene for.

  “Basically, we’re looking for comms, of any type. Especially quantum comms, like coupler signals. Also, we’re scanning her processor for any kind of embedded program that may link Rene back to Config Zero. Dr. Falkland, I’ll have to ask you to produce the source code for the regeneration you did at Northgate. With that, we’ll know what to look for and what not to look for…we can eliminate some things, once we know the details of your memory field technique.”

  Falkland was somewhat annoyed. “That’s proprietary, Colonel. Under the terms of my agreement with UNIFORCE—“

  Lofton held up a hand. “I know all about the agreement. Doesn’t matter. This is a security issue. Besides, it was a UNIFORCE contract.”

  Tallant shook her head. “I’m basically losing my daughter for a second time here. First to Config Zero. Now to UNIFORCE, as an intel source. I want to see her. Is she here?”

  Lofton nodded. “Downstairs, in containment. She’s being prepped for some scans…but I guess there’s no harm.”

  They went down two floors to the Containment Center and lab. Rene was ensconced in a small containment chamber. The vault was heavy gauge, surrounded by beam injectors but there was a small hatch and window at the door. Dana watched her on the vid. She seemed comfortable enough but she was hooked up to all kinds of scanning equipment. Rene amused herself with some kind of tablet, flipping through the pages. Her face remained impassive.

  A tech flipped on the intercom for her. “Rene, honey, how are you feeling?”

  Rene looked up momentarily. “Oh, hi Mom…okay, I guess. It’s cold in here.
And all these wires…is this some kind of test or something? I was supposed to have a Geometry test today, wasn’t I? Mr. Lott’s class…he’ll be pissed if I miss another one—“

  “Rene, watch your—“ Tallant caught herself, looked around sheepishly at the techs. Somebody coughed. “Rene, they’re just going to run a few tests…see what’s causing these dreams and images…did you have any last night?”

  Her daughter shrugged. “A few. Not as bad. Mom, they don’t make any sense…they wake me up.”

  “Just be still, okay, honey? Let the doctors do their tests.”

  A nearby officer, another Major with Stavrolets on his nameplate, came up next to Tallant. “Major Tallant, I’m the tech supervisor. We’re just getting ready to do a sector scan of her processor, level 3 this time.”

  Tallant regarded Stavrolets warily. “What have you found so far?”

  Stavrolets shrugged, tweaked something on the vid. The image shifted to a close-up of Rene’s face. “A few suspect routines in her memory. Some suspicious configs in her main driver memory…things like that. Could be stuff we don’t have documentation for…we’re hoping Dr. Falkland here can enlighten us.”

  Falkland had come down to Containment with Lofton and Tallant. He held up his hands. “I only copied what I was given. You’ve got all my notes and files now.”

  Tallant was curious. “What’s this level 3 scan involve?”

  Stavrolets rubbed his hands together. He was a nervous, balding egghead officer, Tallant figured. Probably a lab rat, she imagined. Doesn’t get out too much. Non-field types in UNIFORCE often had that pasty look about them.

  “Basically, we’re going to do an insert. Send a nanobotic recon unit inside Rene, to scout all her configs and processor arrays. In fact, I was just about to power up R-9…that’s the bot master for the insert. He’s over here—“ Stavrolets indicated a small containment cylinder on a nearby bench. It was connected by a thick hose to the larger containment chamber.

  Tallant was intrigued. “I’m an old atomgrabber from way back. I’d like to help out.”

  Stavrolets smiled faintly. “I appreciate that, Major. I’m aware of your background. It’s just that this is a special force of bots. Specially configured for recon of non-cooperative subjects. Sort of like glutamate trace matching in humans only there’s no glutamate molecules to follow. We just go in and snoop around the lattice arrays of her core memory for anything out of the ordinary.”

  Tallant decided not to make an issue of it. It had been several years since she’d done any field ops. There’s just a chance the old girl is a bit rusty on her configs.

  Stavrolets turned back to the vid. “Before we insert, though, I want to interrogate Rene directly. Hear from her in her own words…what she’s seeing, sensing, hearing.” He switched on the intercom. “Miss Winger…would you mind if I came in? I have a few questions for you?”

  Rene looked up from her tablet. “Sure, why not? How long do I have to stay in here?”

  Tallant noticed her face seemed a little out of sorts, smeared out around her eyes. She bit her lip, looked questioningly at Stavrolets. “What’s happening to her…what’s happening to my baby?”

  Stavrolets seemed unconcerned. “Probably a config glitch. We’ve already been snooping around her config driver…poking and prodding, checking registers and arrays. Looks like pattern buffer overflow to me…we’ve got her loaded up with check routines, so it’s not surprising.”

  “Just stop messing with my daughter, okay? Do what you have to do, but she’s not an experiment.”

  “Of course…” Stavrolets pressed a thumb on the bioscanner and the containment tank hatch unsealed and cranked open. Out of the corner of her eye, Tallant noticed two UNIFORCE guards stiffen and inch closer. She also saw they had primed their mag carbines in one smooth motion. “Rene…I’m coming in, okay. We’ll have a little chat—“ He slipped inside and a nearby tech shut the hatch behind him.

  Tallant’s atomgrabber instincts took her eyes immediately to the beam controls on the main panel. Right away, she saw all the injectors had cycled to FULL CHARGE. And all the safeties were off.

  This guy’s not taking any chances, she told herself. She fought back conflicting emotions. That’s Rene in there, you troglodytes. She won’t bite.

  But the atomgrabber in her was whispering something else.

  Stavrolets leaned against a table. “Rene, what are you feeling…right now? Can you describe it?”

  Rene sank back in her chair and shut her eyes. “I don’t know…it’s like being in a bathtub, you know? Warm, cuddly…it kind of tickles, almost. Like when I’m in bed under the covers. It’s real comfortable.”

  Stavrolets was recording her words. He tapped a few notes out on his device. “What can you see when you have these dreams? What images appear?”

  Rene shrugged. “I don’t see much, really. A lot of stars all around…like I’m in space or something. Floating in space. I’m just drifting along…except—“ she scrunched up her face and frowned. “—there was something the other day—“

  “What, Rene? Describe it to me.”

  She rubbed at her eyes and, from outside the containment chamber, Dana and the others noticed how her fingers shed a faint trail of bots as she rubbed, almost like crumbs. Stavrolets chose to ignore the effect.

  “It was like I was drifting along and something stuck me in the side…poked at me. There was light and the world kind of shook and I was tumbling for a moment…then it was over. That happened several times.”

  Outside the containment center, Colonel Lofton snapped his fingers. “I’ve got an idea. Sergeant—“ he said to the tech at the console. “Can you patch me into SOFIE from here? Mission report archives--?”

  The tech nodded. “I think so, sir…as long as you have the right passwords and biometrics. Plus I’ll have to start a new encrypter…Ops stuff is done differently.”

  Lofton told him what he wanted. “Operation Sentinel files…mission logs over the last week from the Michelangelo mission. Captain Cory Hawley’s logs—put it on my wristpad.”

  “Right away, sir.” The tech massaged some buttons and, after a few minutes, Sentinel reports and logs scrolled down Lofton’s wristpad screen.

  “Something?” Tallant asked.

  “Just a hunch,” Lofton said. “I’m listening to Stavrolets and what your daughter is saying. Here—“ he had punched up some visuals from Michelangelo’s engagement with the Devil’s Eye swarm, near Sedna. “Just the way she was describing her dreams made me think…is there some kind of correlation here?”

  Tallant looked at his screen. “You’re thinking that what Rene’s describing is this engagement…this swarm assault? That’s quite a leap, isn’t it?”

  Lofton nodded. “Maybe. But it fits. I think what your daughter’s telling us is a swarm’s eye view of how that engagement went down. From its perspective…listen to what she’s saying: drifting along…floating…being poked in the side…tumbling…--I admit it seems a stretch and we have some work to do to corroborate this, but it’s a working hypothesis. Stavrolets needs to sharpen his questions with this in mind…focus down using this as a guide—“ He had the tech signal Stavrolets to step out of the chamber.

  Somewhat annoyed, the Major complied. His mouth was tight when he shut the hatch behind him. “Colonel…if you don’t mind, sir…I was just beginning to gain her confidence…her config’s really unstable today…just a few more minutes—“

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad, Major…I want to show you something. I want you to change your line of questioning.” Lofton went over his theory with Stavrolets. “I’m thinking that what Rene is imaging is related to the details of this engagement a few days ago. It’s just a theory but ‘what if…’ with me, okay? Just suppose this is true…and somehow, Rene can access or is receiving data on Devil’s Eye’s response to our assault. Mayb
e she’s somehow plugged into Config Zero’s archives…that wouldn’t be so farfetched, since she spent time there as a hostage. And she is, after all, a swarm angel herself…sorry, Major Tallant.”

  Dana nodded. “It’s true. God knows, we’ve tried to pretend it isn’t, but it’s the truth.”

  Lofton went on. “Stav, change your line of questioning. See if you can tease out more details…visuals, physical responses, that sort of thing. I’m trying to get some kind of valid correlation between what she’s saying and what Hawley’s mission logs show. If we can pin that down…or rule it out...we’ll have something solid to go on. My guess: she’s somehow got access to Config Zero’s files. And if my theory is right…whatever happened out there at Sedna was communicated to Config Zero in some way. Which could mean that whatever or whoever is controlling the Devil’s Eye swarm is also in contact with Config Zero.” Lofton looked Tallant square in the face. “And in contact with your daughter.”

  Stavrolets sniffed. “Begging the Colonel’s pardon, sir, but this sounds just slightly nuts.”

  Lofton agreed. “Possibly, but I do want to change the focus of your questions…see if you can zero in on these images…we’ll try to corroborate from Hawley’s mission logs.”

  Stavrolets shrugged. “Yes, sir…you’re the boss.” He cycled back through the containment chamber hatch.

  The interrogation lasted for another half an hour. In that time, technicians made R-9 ready for insert. Lofton followed Stavrolets’ questions and Rene’s answers closely, but no real conclusions could be drawn. “Not detailed enough…her answers could be interpreted different ways. We need more.”

  Lofton gave the order to begin the insert. Bedard, the bench tech handling R-9, pressed buttons on the console beside the bench. The reconbot master was embedded in a small containment cylinder. Now, internal valves were open and the bot and its accompanying swarm flowed through thick hoses into the chamber where Rene sat, still fiddling with a small tablet, engrossed in some kind of game she was playing. Stavrolets had left the chamber.

  “R-9 staged, sir,” Bedard announced. “Bot reports ready in all respects…we’re in Config One, ready to launch….”

  Lofton watched Rene for a moment. Although UNIFORCE had done inserts and recons of the Rene angel numerous times over the years since she had been rescued from Config Zero, Q2 hadn’t done one in years. Lofton knew that all ANAD-style angels had boundary bots that hovered near the outer surface of the angel…the body, if you liked…to protect the integrity and structure of the angel. Rene did too and Lofton had read the reports of encounters between Quantum Corps recons and Rene’s boundary bots over the years. After dozens of probes and inserts, a sort of protocol had been worked out to get by the boundary swarm, for inserts that needed to go deeper.

  “Start insert protocol…Config Two, Sergeant,” Lofton ordered. “Sound for reaction…let me know what’s happening.”

  “Starting protocol,” Bedard announced. “Outer valve coming open—“ The outer valve protecting the containment chamber was now open and on the vid, Lofton could see the faintest sparkling mist begin to issue into the chamber and slowly expand. Rene clearly was aware of the new swarm in her midst, but she showed no reaction.

  Dana Tallant bit her lip. Under her breath, she swore: Nobody should have to go through this… She wanted to turn away, she wanted to not see what was happening, but something made her watch…maybe her old atomgrabber instincts. She stared at the vid and divided her attention between the swelling mist and her own daughter. Honey…it’ll be over in a few minutes…

  Lofton said, “Let’s see what things look like, Sergeant.”

  Bedard flipped a switch. “Sounding on the monitor now, sir.”

  The screen crackled and popped and flashed with light as the acoustic image was converted to visual. R-9 sounded ahead as it approached Rene’s outer boundary. The screen image finally settled down and was soon filled with a dizzying array of shapes, polygons and tetrahedrals and icosahedrons and pyramids, all careening at the screen, like some mad driver plowing through a sleet storm.

  “Boundary ahead…sixteen thousand microns, sir…sounding shows nothing unusual…protocol in place. I’m approaching on a normal vector…effectors at Deploy One…bond breakers primed but not cycled…per protocol.”

  “Very well.” Lofton took a deep breath. “This always gives me the creeps, Major Tallant. It’s like crossing no-mans’ land with a white flag, and the enemy has every gun trained right on you. Border Patrol at the scale of atoms. We approach on an agreed-upon vector, with our weapons and effectors at an agreed-upon state and hope nobody gets trigger happy.”

  Tallant agreed. “Beats trying to slam ‘em with HERF. Besides—“ she turned from the vid back to the hatch window to watch her daughter. “That is Rene in there…not some alien swarm we’re dealing with.”

  “Of course. Bedard…how’s the reception?”

  The tech studied his console. “All steady, Colonel. Boundary bots less than ten thousand microns…no unusual activity. Thermals normal, EMs normal…they’re just maintaining structure…routine atomic stuff. Nobody’s ringing any alarm bells.”

  “Very well…continue the approach, per protocol. Let’s see if they’ll let us pass without incident.”

  R-9 continued its approach without incident. The screen image showed a constant flow of polygons and tetrahedrals…mostly oxygens and other molecules, flowing by.

  Bedard caught a whiff of something on the sounder. “Boundary dead ahead, sir. No spikes, no reaction.”

  “Maintain speed.”

  Tallant held her breath. She understood, better than any of them perhaps, that what she was looking at was Rene at the molecular level…the real Rene, a swarm of nanoscale robotic mechanisms. Just hold still, honey…just hold still—

  The boundary bots that comprised the outer surface of the Rene angel slowly materialized into view…looking like a small forest of dumbbell-shaped trees, with effectors and actuators undulating in the breeze. R-9 closed quickly and first contact showed up as a slight jostling. The dumbbells resisted at first, but then parted.

  R-9 was in.

  Lofton and Tallant both let out a breath of relief. “They scanned us and saw we weren’t a threat,” Lofton said. “We conformed to protocol and showed nothing unusual to them. We’re in…Sergeant, sound ahead for the core processor…should be along this vector.” Lofton manipulated a small palm button and the new course, already plotted, appeared on the screen as a dotted line. Bedard sent the commands to R-9 and the course change was made.

  Eight minutes later, the sounder hit pay dirt.

  Staccato beeps alerted everyone. Bedard upped the acoustic gain, trying to zero in on the source of the return. “…trying to get better resolution… I think this is our baby…returns are pretty strong…dense, lattice structure ahead…”

  “Slow to one half propulsor,” Lofton said. “Let’s make sure they haven’t sprung a surprise on us.”

  R-9 did a slow reconnoiter of the structure, which resembled a vast, slightly flattened cube, drifting in space. Pinpricks of light flashed inside the cube…bonds being broken and re-formed as the structure slammed atoms together to maintain itself.

  “Looks like our baby,” Lofton decided. “Now, we just have to figure out a way in. Most of these core units have seams along the edges…Bedard, let’s turn right and probe that nearer edge seam…maybe we’ll get lucky. Slow to one-quarter speed.”

  R-9 slowed and poked and probed and sniffed along the phosphate groups that defined the outer boundary of the processor cube, tickling its way through loose molecules hovering and coagulating around the edge. The reconbot was jostled and buffeted by van der Waals forces churning the edge and Bedard let the bot drift outward a bit to gain a smoother ride.

  “There--!” Tallant had noticed something. “Right there…looks like a cleft or a seam, some kind of cavity.”


  Lofton marveled at her instincts. “Major, you haven’t lost a thing…Intel shows that’s probably a double-fold or cleavage plane, where the phosphate groups don’t quite mesh. Could be a tunnel right into the main array, if we’re lucky.”

  “I’ve seen that before plenty of times,” Tallant admitted.

  Bedard steered R-9 into the cavity and they soon found themselves inside a thickly populated lattice, surrounded by pyramidal structures extending in orderly rows as far as they could sound in every direction…above, below and all around. Flashes of light flickered on and off in the distance…the angel’s version of thoughts being formed…data and instructions shuttling around the cube from one node to another. It was like being lost in a forest at night in a thunderstorm.

  “Where now?” Tallant asked. “Anybody got a map?”

  Lofton had an idea. “Major…get on the intercom. Talk to your daughter. See if you can get her to recall and describe those dreams she’s been having. If I’m right, that should cause some kind of spike in processor activity down here…if we can detect that spike, we’ll move in that direction.”

  Tallant didn’t have a better idea. She flipped the intercom switch.

  “Rene…Rene, honey…this is Mom. Can you hear me?”

  Rene looked up from her tablet. Her face was smeared out slightly…like the config wasn’t holding. Tallant swallowed hard. Can’t let this get to me, she told herself.

  “Mom…Mom…what’s going on? I feel funny…I feel dizzy….”

  “Rene, listen to me. I want you to describe the last dream you had…the one you told me about the other night. Remember that? Just tell me again what it was like, okay?”

  Rene seemed to shrug. “I don’t know…it was all mixed up…lots of images, weird stuff, you know. I was floating somewhere…maybe it was the bathtub or a lake…just floating. It was warm and pretty cozy—“

  Rene went on with her description, while Tallant, urged on by Lofton’s hand signals, asked more questions, tried to draw her daughter out with more details.

  Beside her, Bedard and Lofton were intent on the sounder and the main console. They had seen something. R-9 had detected a thermal bloom deep inside the cube. Bedard changed course and sped toward the source of the spike.

  Dana Tallant knew that the truth was Rene had been probed and mapped many times by Quantum Corps, since she’d been rescued from Config Zero. Q2 had good maps of her swarm configurations. But Q2 had never gone inside her main processor before…mainly out of fear of damaging or disabling something vital. Rene was a swarm angel…nobody could argue that. But she was also a daughter.

  Maybe this won’t be so bad, Dana thought.

  “Thermals increasing,” Bedard announced. The acoustic image showed a seemingly infinite forest of dumbbell-shaped, multi-lobed columns….nodes in the processor array. “Main source six thousand microns…still at one-quarter speed, Colonel.”

  “Maintain course and speed,” Lofton told him. “Initialize the grabber.”

  Tallant looked quizzically over at Lofton. “Something new?”

  Lofton had a smile. “The latest play toy from R & D. Quantum State Grabber…somehow, the eggheads have figured out how to snatch quantum state information right out of thin air…I don’t pretend to understand it. Latch onto a decoherence wake and re-build the source state before it collapses. If it works, we may be able to take that source state and figure out what caused it. I’m even hoping to get some visuals.”

  “Sort of like memory tracing,” Tallant said.

  “Very roughly analogous to glutamate molecule sniffing that ANAD systems have been doing for years. Without the glutamate—“

  Bedard interrupted. “Sounding ahead, Colonel. Thermals still high—“ he pointed at a staticky fritz of interference on the screen, off dead center, but growing fast in the acoustic image. “Must be it.”

  “All stop, Sergeant. Let’s reconnoiter a bit.”

  Bedard tapped at some buttons and brought the R-9 swarm to full stop, a thousand microns from the thermal bloom.

  “What the hell is it?” Lofton squinted at the image. “Can you boost the gain a little?”

  “I can try.” Bedard fiddled with some buttons. His finger drew a slider across a nearby window. “That’s the best I can do.”

  Closer examination showed the thermals came from a small group of columns, throbbing and swaying at the center of the image. At Lofton’s urging, Bedard drove R-9 closer still.

  The columns glowed brightly in the image, expanding and contracting rhythmically to some unseen influence, swelling and shrinking as if they were alive. With each cycle, the columns ejected a brilliant poof of light, which pulsed away and then dissipated like a supernova in slow motion.

  Lofton was amazed. “We’ve never seen this before in any of our probes or recons. It’s not in any expedition notes, not on any vids. This is new.” He consulted some charts on a nearby screen. A flashing blip of light highlighted R-9’s position. “Let’s try the Grabber.”

  “Activating Grabber now,” Bedard announced. He studied a small plot of data on a nearby screen. “Grabber up and operating. I’m zeroing the disentangler…and we’re already getting something…Jeez, this bugger’s putting out quantum states like a volcano—“

  “Can you make anything out of it, Sergeant?”

  “I’m washing the raw feed through all my buffers…EMs, thermal, acoustic, visual, you name it. It may take a minute for the signal to make any sense.”

  Dana watched carefully, as puzzled as the others. She had never seen the Rene’s processor before. It’s like brain surgery…she knew she was looking at the very thing that animated Rene…that made Rene look and act like Rene.

  “Getting something now,” Bedard told them. “Multiple channels…acoustic and visual. I’ll try visual first—“he played with some buttons. The screen dissolved into momentary flashes and streaks…then slowly settled down into a steadier view.

  The image was a black, featureless void, static and unchanging for the first few moments. Then, as the image stabilized, they could detect faint embedded pinpricks of light scattered in no particular pattern. One of the lights seemed to be moving relative to the field of view. A stream of symbols and indecipherable characters scrolled from top to bottom along the right edge of the view.

  Lofton snapped his fingers. “I think I know what that is—“ he consulted some notes on his wristpad. “If I’m right…that little moving light is Michelangelo…Hawley’s ship.”

  Tallant marveled at the view. “Imaged from a swarm. This could be the swarm’s eye view. Colonel…are we looking outward from within Devil’s Eye?”

  “Maybe,” Lofton said. “See those symbols…could be data, maybe instrument readings of some sort. Range, heading, position…that sort of thing. Stavrolets…” Lofton spoke to the technician inside the chamber, “—keep asking her questions about her dreams.”

  Stavrolets glared up at the monitor. “I’ll try but I’m running out of things to say—“ He turned back to Rene, who had resumed fiddling with her tablet.

  Lofton put forth a theory. “When he asks her to recount a dream, talk about all the details…it makes these nodes in her processor glow. And Bedard here gets a handful of quantum states off the Grabber. Somehow, these ‘dreams’ your daughter’s having are coming from recordings, maybe memories, some kind of record of the Michelangelo encounter with Devil’s Eye.”

  Tallant was mesmerized. “We’ve always thought Rene had a direct link back to Config Zero. All the probes suggested that. Wouldn’t your theory imply that Config Zero’s receiving this imagery…and Rene’s getting it from Config Zero?”

  “Possibly. But who or what is sending it to Config Zero?”

  Tallant said, “It has to be the Devil’s Eye swarm. Somehow they’re in communication….quantum state communication….”

  “I’m losing it--” Bedard
said. “Looks like these nodes are going dark—“

  The screen imaged began breaking up, streaked with slashes and swirls of color, then settled into a featureless grainy void, like a painter’s canvas seen in close-up.

  “What happened?” Lofton asked.

  Bedard pointed to the readouts on his console. “These nodes which were glowing so brightly are going dark. Maybe going inactive.”

  Lofton peered inside the containment chamber. “Stavrolets, I told you to—“

  “Colonel. More thermals, more spikes…this heading…only a few hundred microns.”

  Lofton sucked in his breath. “Head that way. Keep the Grabber active—“

  Tallant wondered if they were actually chasing a stream of thought inside Rene’s processor.

  The thermal target proved to be another patch of columnar nodes glowing brightly in an otherwise darkened forest.

  “Something’s coming through the buffer,” Bedard said. “I’ll try to up the gain—“

  Now the screen image jumped from the grainy pattern to another view…a long range view of a distant horizon. A field of some type, thick with undulating, waving plants. It was an open, level plain, like a vast field of cornstalks feathered back and forth by a gentle breeze.

  Then came more imagery…it never made any sense…or more likely, according to what the debriefings would say later, the Grabber couldn’t make any sense of the flood of entanglement waves that washed through the coupler.

  The plain reminded Tallant of Dakota prairie country, only the plain was covered with tall, undulating plants. The plants were not plants at all, she soon realized. The ground writhed with life, swarms upon swarms of bots seething and swelling and contracting, pulsing and throbbing to some unseen rhythm. The imagery jerked and shifted and this time, the horizon was curved and she was in space orbiting a planet. A planet of bots, teeming with nanoscale life.

  The planet of the Old Ones.

  She had been here before.

  “What the hell is this place?” Lofton said. “Looks like something from a magazine—“

  “Getting something else on the Grabber,” Bedard mentioned. “It’s a real jumble…I’m washing it through some filters, trying to clean it up.”

  The screen flashed and a kaleidoscope of swirling colors and patterns strobed across the imager. Bedard swore and continued finagling with the feed from R-9.

  “Ah…now the signal’s starting to behave…had to interleave separate channels…the state grabber was offline—“

  The screen image slowly settled down into another view of the starfield they had seen before. This time the distant light was closer…it was still moving.

  “Can you get better resolution?” Lofton asked. “That’s some kind of structure.”

  “I can try,” Bedard said.

  After more finagling, the screen went through several burps and blasts of color, then the starfield came back. This time, there was no mistaking the object at the center. It was a ship.

  “I think that looks like Michelangelo…seen through different eyes,” Lofton said.

  Tallant marveled at the sight. “Very different eyes. And your state grabber’s pulling this from Rene’s processor?”

  “From some kind of protected memory we never knew existed. Somehow, some way,” Lofton explained, “your daughter’s receiving imagery from the edge of the Solar System…likely from Devil’s Eye. It’s probably coming back to Config Zero and your daughter is somehow still plugged in to that source.”

  Dana Tallant swallowed hard as the truth began to sink in. “What you’re saying then, Colonel, is that Rene’s like a conduit…a channel for intel from this Devil’s Eye…from Config Zero. And that Config Zero’s got comms we never knew about.”

  “Essentially, that’s what it—“ Lofton’s wristpad chimed. An incoming message. “Excuse me…” he pressed a button and Tallant could see a face on his wristpad. It was Johnny Winger. Lofton turned away from the console and conferred for a moment. Then he turned back. “It’s CINCQUANT….General Winger. He wants to speak with you…shall I send it over?”

  Tallant activated her own wristpad. “Send it.” Moments later, Winger’s face materialized on the tiny screen.

  For the next few minutes, Tallant related what Lofton and Stavrolets and Bedard had been finding with Rene. At the end, she was almost in tears.

  “Wings…it just isn’t fair…she’s just a child…she’s our child. To make her go through this, it’s—“

  “I know, Dana. I feel the same way. But we have to face the facts. Rene’s got a role to play here, whether she’s our daughter or not.” Winger briefly went through what he had experienced years before, in the Golden Horde case, when he’d been caught in some kind of sim of the Old Ones history. “At least, that’s what I think it was. A story or a narrative of how they came to be. This happened right after I got sucked into that vortex, right into the Keeper at Europa…it’s in my reports.”

  “I’ve studied your reports,” Lofton said. “My theory is that what Rene’s experiencing is something similar. R-9 has managed to penetrate some kind of protected memory. I think she’s still in contact, maybe unwittingly, but in contact with Config Zero. There’s a comm link we didn’t know about here. And I think both Config Zero and through it, Rene, are in comm with the Old Ones, with the Central Entity. The Mother Swarm…whatever the hell you want to call it. It’s a theory but it fits the facts.”

  Dr. Falkland was forced to agree. “Clearly there are configs and elements here that my memory field didn’t affect.”

  Lofton sniffed. “Doc, nobody’s blaming you for this. In fact, it’s a tactical advantage for us…we’ve got intel on what the swarms are doing now…we know how they look at us, what they sense and how they react. We can use that.”

  “Agreed,” said Winger. Then he softened a bit. “Dana—trust me…we’ll get through this—somehow.“

  But Dana Tallant could only sit down heavily in a nearby chair, her hands at her mouth. She kept shaking her head, willing the whole thing to go away. It was a nightmare. This can’t be happening…it just can’t--

  Her daughter…their daughter was channeling Config Zero and the Old Ones. And she and Wings had been living with this situation for years, completely unaware.

  For the second time in the past ten years, she and Wings were about to lose Rene, lose her to something much greater than any of them. All they had now was a memory of what Rene had once been. A pattern. A configuration.

  She didn’t know if that would ever be enough to soothe the hurt.

  Mount Kipwezi, Kenya

  December 28, 2110

  Config Zero had completed its analysis of newsvids, completed its analysis of all uploaded geophysical reports, seismographic tests and stratigraphic assays. The Master Swarm ran correlation routines, cross-checked the results with other statistical modules and concluded that another round of tectonic plate operations would soon be needed.

  The Humans were steadily improving in their ability to detect and defend against swarm operations below ground. Module 2, the Re-configuration module, was four hundred and twenty two cycles behind target schedule. Additional resources would have to be made available, additional swarm mass dedicated and new configurations developed to optimize disassembly operations. Newsvid content analysis indicated that plate disassembly generated highly destructive P and S-wave tremors, causing great damage to Human infrastructure. However, such damage was only an ancillary result of the plate re-configuration effort.

  Module 2 was clear: Once the purge of single-configuration life forms was finished, the next step would be to re-engineer the Earth’s surface to be more compatible with swarm-based life...the oceans were to be eliminated and all the Earth’s surface ‘locked’ into a geologically stable state, providing maximum surface area for swarm activity and growth. Also, the stable point temperature of the Earth was to be raised…an enfo
rced climatic change similar to what Humans were doing now on the Earth, unwittingly helping the Prime Key along. This would provide a consistent environment conducive to swarm growth and activity. The Earth would become, in effect, an incubator or giant Petri dish, to incubate this new kind of life.

  Config Zero created a new command sequence. Command 6773665 was loaded for transmission, quantum coupler links activated and the command was sent via channels to all swarm masters. Timers were initialized and counters started.

  Swarm penetration and Phase II tectonic plate re-configuration began shortly afterward.

  Config Zero also continued to receive and analyze signals intercepts from the Humans. After initiating Command 6773665, one scan caused an unanticipated alarm fault to be generated. Parsing the intercepted signals, Config Zero conducted further analysis and concluded that some kind of operation was being planned against Subunit ‘Symborg.’

  Countermeasures would be needed. Config Zero initiated Branch 5 fault recovery. The result of the fault recovery would be to develop a special group of ‘angelized’ pseudo-Human swarm entities, in effect an artificial nanotrooper group. Trooper angels would then be inserted into Table Top and into the special ops unit whose mission was to corrupt the Symborg master bot.

  Feedstock was located and configs downloaded. Angelized trooper entities were assembled at all target coordinates and activated.

  Branch 5 infiltration began shortly afterward.