‘Its fine,’ Dak dismissed. ‘Thank you.’
‘Kyo, you be careful with that!’ Laux reminded. ‘Only when in a bad situation, got it?’
‘I got it…’
‘Not picking up cylinders or competing for the high-jump. I mean serious trouble, like you need to outrun gunfire.’
‘Alright,’ Kyo smiled.
‘I’m not joking! If someone is shooting at you…’
‘I got it I got it!’
‘Hey,’ said Pania, running to Kyo’s side and kissing his cheek. ‘Keep in touch. Use the quantic peer-to-peer encryption. I’ll talk to you on private call.’
‘Okay,’ he nodded.
‘Take care Biter,’ Edge waved with his cigarette. ‘I’ll be sure to have Hattle’s face flash-fried before you get back.’
Kyo smiled as he followed his family and waved back. Daryl and Enaya Chahuán stayed put for the moment, concluding their plan.
‘How are they getting out of here?’ Pania asked.
‘They’re going to need some supplies first,’ said Daryl, ‘we’ve assigned them a SkyLark at the other end of the air zone.’
‘So,’ Edge said, puffing on his cigarette. ‘How are we gonna deal with the itty bitty problem of old shit-sticks Lewis?’
‘Diplomatically,’ Enaya Chahuán decided.
‘Are you sure?’ Edge asked. ‘Would be a lot more fun for everyone if you just let me mob him with an AK-fourtee’ seven and a few shots of adrenaline.’
‘No,’ Daryl enforced. ‘That’s not how we do things here. He’s going to be contacted by our local federation and evidence to the fire will be presented. The proceedings will be transparent and publicised on the Q-net for those interested and willing to get involved. We’re contacting other victims of Hattle’s violence to speak out against him. At the end of the proceedings, East B’ One’s super majority decides what is to be done after Pierce makes his defence appeal. We’ll even review if any other section of the dome would take him in before complete exile is suggested, although considering how many people are pissed off with this guy so far it’s looking unlikely anyone else will want him. It’s a courtesy the Lewis family we know would not offer any of us if the situation were reversed.’
‘So why offer it to him?’ asked Edge.
‘Because we’re happy knowing we’re on the opposite end of the spectrum to his warped ideologies.’
‘A fair point,’ Edge conceded. ‘I wouldn’t personally be as nice.’
‘Laux,’ Enaya said, approaching the tall scientist confidently. ‘Kyo needs you. We all need you right now. We’ll deal with the Lewis family. But you need to access the Perigrussia Skybus databases and delete anything you find in there related to Kyo. I am fairly adequate with computers so…anything you need I can help.’
‘Right!’ He promised, straightening up. ‘I’m at your service.’
-29-
The V-TOL plane cruised through the cold morning air, cutting through the clouds and soaring above one of the Ameritropolis Atominii cities.
Malik gazed out of the window down to the hellacious crystal concords below, an expanse of emerald glass buildings, tubes and bridges, where the twinkle and wink of flying objects glittered in the sun. The city had a precise geometry to it, oval with four symmetrically triangular points. This enormous luxurious structure seemed to be growing out of an even bigger expanse of ruins and poverty, the suburban areas, the precariat fringes occupied by those desperate to return to the paradise of the Atominii. He saw explosions bursting in the buildings and ruins on the outside and glared at the spectacle ponderously.
‘Magnificent view, isn’t it?’ Vance gloated, recumbent in the leathery warm seats of the passenger lounge of the plane, as though he hadn’t seen the fires and surrounding mire. Malik soaked up the view, watching the uncountable columns of putrid black smoke rise from the craters of blast zones, while the Atominii glittered unscathed beneath the sun.
‘I believe the terrorists are acting up again,’ said Filipe with a mournful sigh.
‘What terrorists?’ asked Malik.
‘That’s most likely the Galileo Coterie.’ Vance explained. ‘They don’t much like the Atominii. Many transentients do their duty in the Syridan army to suppress the terrorist activities in the precariat civilian zones. It’s a dirty job…but it’s got to be done.’
‘Who are these transentients?’
‘It’s a politically correct name for a cyborg,’ Filipe told.
‘Usually, the ones most ready to take up the jobs are ironically the precariats themselves already living on the fringes. They do it to try and win back their Atominii citizenship by service to civil duties. It’s mandatory to serve in the Syridan army for no less than three years before Atominii certification is recognised again. From then on it’s up to the transentients, they can either pick-up their lives in the city where they left off or continue serving the Syridan military. Strange how many choose the latter. A surprisingly high number.’
Malik turned back out to the view, but as they ascended higher the clouds fogged up the glass and they were soon drowned in an opaque mist.
‘Would you like another suppressant?’ Vance offered. ‘Those nanomes sometimes cause quite a headache after the initial neurophase inception.’
‘It’s fine,’ Malik smiled, ‘I’ve got it under control.’ And he turned to Filipe and asked where he fitted into all this. ‘Are you one of us Serat’s?’
‘He’s a clone of my son.’ Said Vance, ‘exo-viviparous, a cultural experiment of mine. My son was American born. Filipe here was cloned and grew up in a safe and well educated environment in Paris. I wanted to see how different his environment would make his personality compared with my son.’
‘Was it a successful experiment?’ Malik asked, analysing Filipe for some strange product code in his skin or hair.
‘No,’ Vance declared, ‘my real son perished in an accident. Filipe is all I have left.’
‘I have no mother,’ said Filipe loquaciously, lifting his shirt to show his stomach even lacked a bellybutton. ‘That’s what exo-viviparous means. I was grown in a laboratory, you see? No button. It is not an unusual practice today.’
‘I know what it means Filipe,’ Malik said calmly. ‘I’ve known what it meant before you even existed.’
‘Pardon me, sir,’ Filipe smiled, pulling down his shirt again sensitively. ‘So…I too have a question. Some people think you are insane, what do you think?’
‘Well Filipe in answer to your question,’ said Malik, ‘what you must know is that I am entirely insane. I have a side-affect brought on by a rare condition called chronoshock, it causes hallucinations. Every crew member of the Erebus suffers from the same thing. I struggle to sense my reality sometimes, I struggle to adjust.’
‘Interesting,’ said Filipe, staring out the window again. ‘And you say this chaos cipher is a sort of guide?’
Malik chuckled. ‘Oh you’ll see.’
‘We’re here,’ said Vance at last, looking out of the window and pointing. ‘Look brother...a symbol of my power. The floating city, Atominus Phalange.’
Malik Serat leaned over his knees to improve his view and there in the brumous clouds, over the typhonic blusters that lashed around the spires of skyscrapers jutting above the foam and mist, he witnessed the floating city. It was a huge silver sphere, seemingly anchored high in the sky, with several other spheres attached to its magnitude, each one had earth scrapers reaching down from the bulbous floatation. It was an inverted city where everything hung, and he could see there that the trees seemed to bend and want to coil back up to the sun, creating strange verdant images. He saw flocks of birds migrating above the puce clouds, the ginger mist of the peach sun colouring the stirring storm.
‘A floating city,’ Malik stated. ‘This is our new address?’
‘Yes,’ Vance said gladly. ‘Much like the other eternals I live quite comfortably here. And I’ll show you how.’
The V-TOL plane vee
red beneath the bloating shadow of the city as they passed under its veritable magnitude and the autopilot followed guidance lanes, avoiding the hanging earth scrapers where they saw the micro-sized people in white uniforms wondering around through the screens of glass.
‘What’s so funny?’ Malik asked as he watched his brother smirking.
‘Nothing,’ he revealed, ‘I’m merely excited to show you how far I’ve taken the Serat name. You’re going to like it here Malik…you’re going to like it very much.’
And as they slid under a beam of light they ascended vertically until the ship connected with the iron fingers of a davit arm and they were towed higher into the loading bays somewhere in the enormous spherical base of the floating city.
*
As Malik Serat followed his brother into the lobby of one of the long structures, he cared to look over the side of the railing down into the everlasting vertices of the earth scrapers, spiralling into the vanishing point. Daylight shone in through the glass walls, illuminating the stairway columns and intersecting escalators slanting from one level to the next, all leading down to the Earth. At the ground floor was an observation dome from which people gathered to look at the clouds below them, or the distant cities further still. He saw people in white uniforms, strolling around the lower levels of the structure. Everything here was plane, bleached and sterile, surfaces pallid and people were responding to personalised information relevant to them, visual fields that nobody else would experience. It looked like a world of insane and uniformed individuals pointing at things and muttering to themselves, following things that did not exist in the hardlands but were real to them nonetheless. He saw the shapes of things that seemingly held no purpose, a random white plastic ball that hovered around serving no apparent meaning. He saw blank screens, orbs, and the general area was populated with all kinds of machines that hovered around delivering supplies from building and zone to building and zone, connecting with rails and pulling parcels away from yet more rails, all busy as bees. Much of this technology was new in his time, but now Malik saw an immersed settlement of people using a mix of the old world and the new, no longer communicating to one another through face to face verbal interaction, but through an enriched Omni channel interface that made them look insane and without goal.
Food, he came to realise, was not something that the eternals embraced. They rather indulged in the fantasy of food, the illusion of it, an old habitual crave deep in the human psyche that was settled in the virtual realities of the Nexus quasilands. But in the hardlands the eternals and some transentient Titans scarcely ate. It was unnecessary as his brother Vance had informed him, nanoctors catalysed all they needed in a single nutrition pill.
‘This is where the neurophase comes in handy, brother,’ said Vance, ‘one needs to be wired-up to experience the veridical nature of this reality. Otherwise, you will not understand what these people are doing, what they’re interacting with, who they’re talking to. You have to let the neurophase talk to you first before such realities become apparent.’
The wire-up had taken some time with Malik, there was much for the nanomes to work with since the chronoshock had breached many normal memories he had and shaken his very perceptions of reality.
‘Let’s activate that neurophase,’ Vance chuckled, ‘you should be ready for interface about now. And brace yourself Malik for sensory projection.’
When the nanoctors were done the optics channelled Malik’s neural waves with new information and he was connected almost immediately with the Atominii’s Nexus servers. All that was once blank and uniform now exploded with activity and visual metadata. He could have sworn even the population increased the moment he merged with the Atominii. He saw the most incredible things that he’d only ever seen achieved with projection mapping illusions. But here, things could now be touched, illusions stood out, made real for the person experiencing it, a synthesis of reality and projection enhanced by the mind.
A giant grey whale swam gracefully overhead, shifting through the centre of the structure as it was chased by scuba divers. He saw strange cartoon characters running around; marked with logos and symbols he didn’t yet know but would come to learn were the mascots of various neuro-commerce companies. And upon the spiralling boulevard were fantastic humanoid creatures, half animal in appearance, with horns and scales.
‘I feel I have to apologise for the whale,’ said Vance humorously, ‘that wasn’t our work. Actually, some neuro-hacker broke into our system, thought it would piss us off...then we grew to love it. That and our data-collectors never got round to fully harvesting the programs during the last clean up. Originally, the Whale was supposed to remind us that our sub-sea drillers mining cosmic HE3 material trapped in the deep earth. Some believe those sub-sea factories are responsible for killing off the whale species.’
‘But you don’t?’ Malik asked.
‘Species die all the time,’ said Vance nonchalantly, ‘even humanity has a time limit. We’re learning to transcend humanity, however. One day we’ll be untouchable. No need to be conservative about nature, she destroys and populates all the time. Titans are the future, Malik. We are the only species that needs to survive, the superior techno-homonids. We’ll transcend and unify into one conscious entity, a super being. We’re already on the verge. Besides, if nobody else cares why should we? Let’s go over this way.’
He could hear it now, when before his mind was joined with the Nexus he had only heard the patter of footsteps and the natter of voices echoing in the vacuous building as people spoke to themselves and wondered around alone, all seemingly aware of one another yet not interacting. Now everything was alive with colour and motion and ecstatic sound, and the call of the Atominii was surfeited in depth. Malik was confounded to see somebody walk right towards him, a man with dark glasses and a wet comb haircut and what looked like a white and green suit. He passed right through him like a ghost.
‘It’s alright,’ Vance reassured with a sideways glance. ‘They’re meta-profiles. We call them digi-people, personalities augmented by the Nexus sensory-projection. Sometimes, with the right tools, you can also see them through Quantic devices like the optics. They’re quite harmless.’ Vance assured.
‘What are they, ghosts?’
‘Actually yes,’ Vance explained, as they walked. ‘Some of them at least. They respond to both the hardland environments and the quasilands in real time simulation, kept operating via priority programming from the Nexus AI software. Some of the individuals who once occupied this space and have since died continue to exist in this quasi-form, their quasi-avatar profiles are animated based on their personalities. Adamoss deep-learning facilities capture and predict the person’s characteristics and retain their augmented profiles, unless, of course they specifically state otherwise. When there’s no need for a digi-persona or the request is to remove one from the system then our data-collectors clean up the digi-people. Some of the gamers have made hunting for digi-people a kind of sport to make data-space for the Nexus. Eternals are still themselves mortal and able to die from tragedy, a troublesome statistic that’s related to probability rather than age. All that’s left of you is the personality print in the Nexus, your digital-persona.’
‘Matter and time,’ Serat corrected somewhat dreamily.
‘Yes, if you prefer to see it thus,’ said Vance benightedly. ‘For these digi-people their personalities still linger, occupying the virtual space. Sad when a person passes away. They leave many things behind. Nothing quite as comprehensive as a digital personality, mind. It eases the pain of relatives when they have access to their lives in the Nexus.’
‘So they are ghosts?’ Malik asked.
‘Yes,’ Vance nodded. ‘You are about to learn about the complexity of this place. Of course not all these phantoms are the augmented personalities of the dead; only the ones which don’t get updated are deceased. These digi-people have only a rudimentary knowledge of the world as it changes since their existence is powered by Ada
moss AI. The deceased ones are coloured you see. The man who rudely stepped through you just now had a suit with a type of green hue to it. That means he’s dead. The green hue means our data-collectors team can remove him if we’re struggling for more data-space. Up here, that scarcely happens. But some of these augmented personalities are merely what’s left wondering the quasilands when the profile’s pilot user is on vacation or busy.’
Malik was analysing the animated electronic macrocosm all around him, responding indignantly to things that spun or rushed under his feet, still unsure if he was going to feel their presence brush against his skin or not. He knew for a fact some of them were sensory interactive, but he was still learning which ones were not.
‘You should be used to seeing ghosts by the sound of things,’ said Vance somewhat tauntingly. ‘From the stories I’ve heard about the Erebus. Certainly you shouldn’t be disturbed by seeing things that aren’t there.’
‘Yes I’m not concerned about that,’ Malik said, suddenly bumping into someone in the crowd.
‘Wow, watch it!’
‘You watch it!’ Vance suddenly snapped at the man, jumping to Malik’s defence.
‘Of course, beg your pardon Master Serat,’ the man cried demurely, shrinking back into the shifting bodies of people and digi-people.
‘See what I mean?’ Malik said, brushing his black suit down irritated.
Vance guffawed loudly and patted Malik hard on the shoulder.
‘You have been gone a long time sir,’ Filipe said, resting his hand on Malik’s other shoulder, but Malik brushed it off abrasively.
Chaos Cipher Page 29
