The Beam: Season One

by Sean Platt

“Crossbrace,” said Leo, sighing and putting his hands in his lap. Leah wasn’t remotely trying to find a meditation posture, so Leo let his collapse. “A ‘beam’ is stronger than a ‘crossbrace,’ so it works. Get it?”

  “And you were around before Crossbrace?”

  “Leah, we thought Crossbrace was going to take over the world. It was a topic of great debate. And look: it did take over the world. You can’t forget to buy milk anymore. Your refrigerator knows and has it delivered for you. You can’t get lost. You don’t even need a handheld to keep from getting lost; if you carry a spark toggle, you can flash your ID at The Beam from the most remote locations and it’ll send a bot.”

  “Unless you don’t have an ID,” said Leah.

  “And assuming you don’t actually want to get lost,” said Leo, agreeing with a nod. “My generation used to want to get lost. We talked about ‘getting away from it all.’ People don’t do that anymore. They have the vacation islands, but those places are even more wired than DZ. Or they take virtual vacations, staring into visors. Nobody wants to march out into the woods and unplug anymore, except for fruits like us. Have you heard about the tragedies that sometimes happen during Beam outages?”

  Leah nodded. Two years back, there had been a citywide outage in District Zero that had lasted for two full days. The lights and power had stayed on, but during those 48 hours of lost connectivity, seven people had become so despondent that they’d committed suicide. A few of them left notes indicating that they felt like they’d lost all of their limbs and senses. They said they felt like invalids trapped in beds, like how Crumb was right now. There had also been a rash of depression that had lingered for months after connectivity was restored — a strange sort of post-traumatic stress. City counseling centers had been overwhelmed.

  “I remember the first July 21st, Leah,” said Leo. Then he chuckled. “Well, not the first one, but the first one that was an official holiday, in 2019, when they established the lunar base in the Mare Frigoris and started finding all of that great space stuff out there in space. They had that new far side radio telescope, where there was total radio blackout from Earth’s interference, and that big old array was seeing all the way back to the beginning of the universe.” He inhaled slowly, lost in the memory, a smile of recalled optimism on his face. “Everyone thought it was so important at the time. And it was important, back then. Strange, how seeing new celestial objects and seeing back in time all the way to the Big Bang bolstered the world. The tech renaissance followed quickly afterward, with the first hovertech showing up, and the HIV cure, and all of that.”

  “You say it like one thing caused the other,” said Leah. She knew a lot of this, of course, but she knew it in the distant, sepia-toned way that history books portrayed it. Leo, on the other hand, had lived it in Technicolor.

  “It sort of did,” he said. “The telescope came first, and it gave the world a feeling of ‘we really are all in this big universe together.’ The vaccines came very quickly afterward, as if that global optimism allowed people to finally work together for a change. Hovertech popped up next, and for some reason, the way nanobots could make things float exploded into thousands of other applications, which spawned even more new ideas, and on and on. There’s a reason they call it a renaissance, because so much of it happened pretty much all at once. They even have a word for that kind of thing, where everything happens at once, in evolution. It’s called ‘punctuated equilibrium.’ It means that evolution doesn’t occur slow and steady, but through distinct periods of phenomenal growth. That’s how it was for us back then. All of these new treatments and technologies at once, one followed another, and each was better than the one before. It was as if all of humanity stopped our fighting and turned our attention toward moving forward as one. The notion was paradise for a hippie like yours truly. The world all held hands, it seemed, as we found our global purpose.”

  Leah was doing the math in her head. How old would Leo have been to remember the renaissance so clearly, and to have considered himself a hippie at the time? Teens at the least?

  “You lived through the wars?”

  Leo snickered. “Wars. They weren’t wars, Leah. The planet declared war on us, yes, but then the people just kind of went to shit when the oceans rose at once and swallowed the biggest cities. Most of New York went too, before they managed to build the seawall and drain it back out. Have you seen a globe from the twenty-teens?”

  Leah had. There had been so much land back then. There’d also been a cap of white on the top and bottom of the planet. She’d once asked a teacher what those white spots were, and the teacher had told her that they’d been ice. Modern globes didn’t look like that. The north pole was blue and the south pole was green. It was strange to imagine it any other way.

  “It was a terrible time,” said Leo. “Just like that, we went from global cooperation to global animosity and suspicion. Everyone started looking out for themselves and only themselves. Maybe they looked out for their families too, if their families were lucky. And then for some reason, leaders in most of the civilized world thought this would be a good time to launch missiles at each other, presumably because there was only so much land left and they all wanted it.” Then Leo looked at Leah and his starry eyes cleared. He laughed and said, “But I’m going on and on.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out how old you are,” Leah replied, smiling.

  “I had a car. A Plymouth Fury. Fire-engine red, like Christine. She was old when I got her, but she was still beautiful.”

  “Who’s Christine?” said Leah.

  “Oh, but you wouldn’t understand the beauty of a fine car,” said Leo, either missing or ignoring her question. “Back then, your car was your freedom. You could get into your car and go anywhere you wanted. Hovers aren’t like that. You can still go anywhere, but it’s not the same. And land cars? Forget about it. They’re so stripped down, they’re an embarrassment.”

  “Didn’t those cars pollute like a motherfucker?” said Leah.

  “Don’t judge me,” said Leo. “I was young.”

  “So you had cars, but no computers?”

  “We had them later. But you can’t imagine that, can you? What are you, twelve?”

  “What are you?” said Leah. “A thousand?”

  Leo sighed, apparently tired of playing coy. “I was born in seventy-six. Nineteen seventy-six. And don’t gasp. I’m your elder and you have to respect me.”

  Leah gasped dramatically. Leo rolled his eyes.

  That started another round of questions, and once Leo got rolling, Leah had a thousand questions. How could they know the weather before it was controlled inside the NAU lattice? And if they didn’t know the weather, how could they plan their days? How did they get what they needed if things had to be shipped over the course of days? Was it a bummer growing old when you were still so young? Leo said he’d been born before the ancient internet and had had to watch an old screen only when his shows were on, at certain times. Nothing was 3-D, and he’d even watched for a while on an old black and white screen. How, Leah asked, were they able to function with so little information? How did people survive without add-ons on such a large scale? Today, the Organa were considered tough, living life mostly unenhanced. But back then, everyone did it. How had they managed to let bones heal without replacements? How had those who played sports competed without eye or muscular enhancements? How had average people remembered what they needed to remember without wetchips or recall flashers?

  Leo groaned, but Leah could tell how delighted he was by her interest, how willing he was to answer her many questions, and how pleased he was to go on and on about the US, Canada, and Mexico before they formed the NAU. He wanted to tell her about his days exploring Europe and Asia in the 1990s, back before chaos turned the Wild East into what it was now.

  After over an hour, Leo brushed off, stood, and made a good-natured comment about Leah not letting him meditate. She made a good-natured joke about how he wouldn’t shut up, t
hen parodied his voice, mimicked walking with a cane, and did an impression of Leo yelling at fictional kids to get off his lawn. Then they returned to the hospital, spending their short walk in discussion of what they should do with Crumb if he was awake.

  But when Leo and Leah stepped back into his room, they found his bed empty. Crumb — with his strangely complex, locked-down mind — was gone.

  Chapter 3

  Nicolai woke to find Kai touching his face with something cold. Her brown eyes were tender. It took him a while to place her, along with his location (currently simulated as a large, old-fashioned saloon), and to place the blond man sitting on a stool ten feet away, his arms crossed and his face almost angry. But then slowly, it all came back. He remembered the Beamers, the simulator, and the one-sided fight.

  “Hey,” said Kai, still touching his face, withdrawing the cold object as Nicolai sat up. He had been laying with his head in her lap, and although his senses were still fuzzy, he thought she’d been running her other hand through his hair.

  “They gave you ice?” said Nicolai, indicating the cold rag in Kai’s hand.

  She nodded toward the saloon’s bar. “I got it over there, in a big chest by some bottles. They also have beer on tap.”

  Doc, still cross-armed, stood from his stool and said, “Okay. Your pretty baby is awake. You can stop playing nurse.”

  Kai stared at him, and Nicolai got the impression they’d been having this argument since he’d been knocked cold.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Not long,” said Kai. “They came in, gave you a quick scan to make sure you didn’t have a concussion, then said you could sleep it off.”

  “She’s been preening over you,” said Doc, “seeing as we’ve established she’s the hooker with the heart of gold.”

  Kai shot Doc a look, but the look was full of exasperation, not anger. Nicolai knew that Kai liked Doc a lot and considered him a friend, but right now that wouldn’t stop her from kicking him in the balls to stop him from being an asshole.

  Nicolai stood bit by bit, making sure he still had his equilibrium. He could feel that the side of his face was swollen, his cheek too large. Nicolai’s nanos weren’t specialists in large-scale repair like those injected by athletes and criminals, but they’d reduce the bruise and swelling in much less time than would take to heal naturally. Still, for now, it hurt.

  “You hit me,” said Nicolai.

  “They made me.”

  Nicolai seemed to remember the Beamers’ persuasion as being less than inevitable and Doc as being rather quick to comply. Normally, everyone here should be friends. Nicolai and Kai were Doc’s clients, and Doc and Nicolai were Kai’s clients. If they remembered that everything was just business, amity should shine through. Eventually.

  “How much have I paid you over the years, Doc?”

  “How much have you thought yourself better than me over the years, Nicolai?”

  They hadn’t neared each other, but Nicolai could still feel menace radiating from Doc’s body. He didn’t think Doc would hit him again, but Doc had an ego about as big as the NAU lattice. He didn’t like to appear weak or wrong, and he certainly never apologized.

  “Just admit you hit me because you wanted to.”

  “Fine,” said Doc. “I hit you because I wanted to.”

  “And that you hit me harder than you needed to.”

  Doc chuckled, looking down at his right hand. From where Nicolai was standing, the hand looked swollen and the knuckles abraded, but already the abrasions and friction burns on his fingers had started to fade. Doc, whose business walked many lines, had quite robust repair nanos in his blood.

  “Oh, definitely,” said Doc. “I hit you as hard as I could.”

  “With your artificial muscles. Like a real man.”

  Doc stood. “I built what I have.”

  “Without help, right?” said Nicolai. “Who goes to the gym twice a month and gets arms like yours?”

  Doc gave Nicolai a crocodile’s smile. “The real power in a punch comes from the legs.”

  “You fucking fake,” said Nicolai. He didn’t want to fight, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d been sucker-punched, and he hadn’t gotten a chance to even the score.

  “Okay,” said Doc. “So I’ve got a fake body, huh? Well, smartass, you have a fake brain. How’s that wetchip working in your well-reasoned arguments against me?”

  “Not as well as my upgrade would,” said Nicolai. “Which I already paid you for, by the way.”

  Doc made a show of searching his pockets. “Oh, I’m sorry. You want that upgrade now? Let me just get my tools. I’ve got nothing else going on.”

  Kai stood. Nicolai was tall and Doc was taller. Between the two men, she looked downright tiny. She held her hands out and said, “Will both of you just grow up?”

  “I thought you were on my side,” said Nicolai.

  “I’m on the side with fewer assholes.” She looked at each of the men in turn. “They want you to fight. Are you really going to give them what they want?”

  Nicolai stared at Doc for another long moment before turning away, exhaling. Doc chuckled. Then Nicolai, who’d broken eye contact first, looked back up. He was down two-zero in his sparring, so if there was a next step, it was up to Doc.

  Finally, the taller man extended his hand. “I’ll knock half off your next upgrade,” he said.

  “And refund half of what I paid for my last one,” Nicolai countered.

  “Fine.”

  Nicolai gripped Doc’s hand and shook it once, then released. Neither had apologized. Kai rolled her eyes.

  After a moment of odd silence, Nicolai began to pace.

  “We’ve been here forever,” he said. “Why? What the hell do they want?” He looked at the saloon’s simulated walls as if staring at their captors themselves, but no answers came. He turned to Doc. “Tell me again. How did you end up here? Did you see who it was? Did they say anything? Anything at all?”

  Doc paused, looking at Kai. Then he said, “I was in my apartment. I was falling asleep when someone broke in and somehow killed my connection. Some asswipe came at me, so I ran to my car.” He laughed. “I was in my boxers. First time I’ve had to use my emergency pants.”

  “Emergency pants?”

  “Brother, when you’re as cool as I am, you learn to keep a change of clothes in your car just in case. Maybe keep a set where you lay your log, too.” He glanced at Kai, who looked disgusted. “Anyway, I drove around all night, then hooked up with my lady here. Got ambushed by a bunch of fucking shadows in a building down by the park. They brought us here. Nobody said shit, just hit me with clubs and pain pods. That’s all I know.”

  Nicolai read between the lines, aided in part by the creativity enhancement from his wetchip. Doc and Kai were probably just below Nicolai on the income ladder. The only reason they’d go to an area of town so far below the line would be to meet someone beneath the law — likely someone who could help one or both of them disappear. But why would anyone come after Doc in the first place? Had Kai been involved? Was that why he’d “hooked up” with her? One or both must have gotten mixed up in something, pissed the wrong person off. But of course, they couldn’t discuss that now.

  “What about you?” said Kai.

  “I’m an innocent bystander,” Nicolai replied. “I came to Doc’s, and…”

  “For a purchase,” Doc interjected. Nicolai liked Doc when Doc wasn’t punching him, but the man was such an asshole. Even now, he felt the need to remind Kai that Nicolai wasn’t as clean and pure as he pretended to be.

  “For an upgrade on my wetchip,” said Nicolai, making a gesture toward Kai. Kai already knew about his add-on. She had, in fact, urged him to get the upgrade because she wanted to see his creativity blossom. “I found the apartment open, with stuff broken. Someone put a knife to my throat and knocked me out. I woke up in here, and same as you, nobody told me anything. And that’s all I know.”

  Kai looked from one ma
n to the other. Her role, as far as the Beamers were concerned, was adequately covered by Doc’s story. Kai was smart; she knew not to add anything more.

  The door opened. The saloon simulation faded as if the machine had been shut off, and the three captives again found themselves standing in the middle of a great white cube. Six Beamers entered. Centered in the cluster of men in black was a tiny man of indeterminate age with a shock of hair so white that it nearly vanished against the walls.

  “You are comfortable, yes?” said the small man.

  No one replied.

  “Well,” he said, his voice tinged by an odd and unplaceable accent, “I hope you’re comfortable while you stay with us. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Alix Kane. I am new here. And by here, I mean the NAU. All hail the NAU!” He saluted with a fist, then cackled like an old woman.

  Nicolai felt his eyebrows wanting to rise. The borders had been sealed since he himself entered the old USA. How could anyone be new?

  “Yes, yes,” said the small man, pacing. As he did, the Beamers stayed where they were, as if they didn’t want to be in the room at all. They were all carrying either slumberguns or pain pods, but Nicolai noticed that as Alix marched, the Beamers’ visors stayed fixed on Kane and that their weapons subtly pointed toward him rather than the prisoners. “I am from the Eastern Alliance, near what you would probably know as Krakow, if you in the NAU bothered to study the rest of the world at all. They let me in for reasons that are none of your concern, and did so using means you don’t need to know. You need only know is that officially, I don’t exist.” He clapped excitedly, as if something had just occurred to him. “Oh! And that I have a present for you.” He turned to the Beamers. “Go and get it,” he said, waving a hand at the cluster.

  As one of the Beamers moved toward the simulator’s door, Kane turned to Nicolai, Doc, and Kai and spoke low. “They may look intimidating in their black gear, but they are afraid. They’ve never seen one before, you understand. Not for real. And for a Beamer to see one? Well, you understand.”