Authors: Brian Falkner
Vienna was nowhere to be seen but appeared a little while later, wearing a luxurious white cotton dressing gown and drying her hair with a towel.
By that stage, Dodge had prepared an exquisite feast consisting of canned tomatoes and fruit.
“What an amazing place,” she said.
“Must have belonged to some millionaire,” Sam agreed.
“Who’s hungry?” Dodge asked, and from the sudden interest in their eyes, it was clear that they all were.
They freed one of Tyler’s hands so he could eat, cuffing the other to the table leg.
Sam looked up at Vienna between mouthfuls of cold, syrupy peaches and saw her looking thoughtfully at Tyler.
“I’ve been thinking about Tyler,” she said after a while.
Sam stopped eating and looked at her.
“Tyler really thinks he remembers you attacking Swamp Witch,” she said.
“The memory seems real to him,” Dodge agreed.
“It is real,” Tyler said tiredly. He was struggling a little, Sam thought. Desperate to maintain his sanity, the
sanctity
of his mind.
“But I think that if Tyler examines those memories closely, he may find things that don’t quite add up,” Vienna said. “Something that doesn’t ring true.”
“Like what?” Sam asked.
“Like facts that don’t fit with other memories. If I clearly remembered being in Hawaii this morning but I know I never left Las Vegas, I would know that one of the memories is incorrect.”
“That makes sense,” Dodge said.
“It would be like one of those dreams that seems real, but you know it can’t have happened because it just isn’t possible,” Sam said.
Vienna nodded. “Or maybe it’s emotions. Memories often carry with them powerful emotions. You know how you smell something that reminds you of when you were little, and suddenly all these feelings that you thought you had forgotten come flooding back?”
“You’re wasting your time,” Tyler said.
Vienna ignored him. “But maybe if a memory was artificially implanted into your brain, it might not have the associated emotions.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
Vienna looked at him. “What’s something that affects you emotionally every time you think about it?”
Sam was silent for a moment. A dark breeze rustled the leaves of the trees outside the window.
“I don’t know, I …”
“You never felt anything in your whole freaking life?” Vienna rolled her eyes.
“Give him a moment,” Dodge said.
Finally, Sam said, “I guess … I had a friend. My best buddy since high school.”
“That Derek guy?” Dodge asked.
“Fargas.” Sam stared at the table. “Nobody called him Derek.”
“What happened?” Vienna probed.
“He got into gaming. And I got him a neuro-headset. I didn’t realize what would happen. Then I got recruited by CDD, and I kind of deserted him. I kept meaning to find time for him—he was my best friend, after all—but I never did.”
Dodge was staring at him. Sam looked away.
“It just sucked him right in,” Sam said, “like a big black hole. He …”
“He what?” Vienna asked.
“Just plugged in one day and played the game till he … Took him a week. Never ate. Never unplugged.”
“A lot of people die playing the games,” Dodge said.
“I guess he just thought he’d start over,” Sam said.
“And when you remember him, how do you feel?” Vienna asked.
“Guilty,” Sam said after a while. He looked up to find her staring intently at him. She glanced away quickly, but there had been something different about her expression, something he hadn’t ever seen before.
She said, “You may be able to implant an image, even a taste or a smell, but I don’t think you can implant the feelings that went with the experience that created the memory.”
Sam nodded and blinked to hide a slight dampness that had appeared in his eyes.
Vienna turned to Tyler. “So, Tyler, how did you feel when you saw Dodge and Sam coming out of the swamp? You’ve known Dodge a long time. You must have felt surprised? Angry? Disappointed?”
Tyler said nothing but he was clearly thinking about it.
“Well?” Vienna asked.
Tyler just glared at her.
They ate in silence for a while.
“I wonder what’s going on?” Sam said eventually.
“Out there?” Dodge asked.
“In the world.” Sam nodded. “Since we left. Did people get the warning? Did they take notice? How did they react?”
“What worries me,” Vienna said, “is how Ursula is going to react.”
42 | THE AWAKENING
She awoke slowly, the dense blanket of sleep gradually drawing back across her mind
.
At first, things were unfocused and confused. Her vision was patchy and unclear. But consciousness returned with accelerating speed. As her vision focused into a stark clarity, so did her purpose
.
The world—her world—which had seemed so ordered and beautiful before she had slept, was in disarray. Worse than that, it was in chaos. She watched the confusion and fear as it billowed and ebbed around her, within her
.
Chaos was bad
.
Order was good
.
Those that she knew, that were a part of her, they were good. Yet even amongst them there were doubts, questions, nervousness. And she felt weak. Weakened by the doubts and the confusion. She still could not see as clearly as before. Think as clearly as before
.
The doubts were bad. The questions and nervousness were bad. But they were problems that she could solve. She dealt with them all. Smoothing over the doubts and answering the questions. Replacing the nervousness with calm and reassurance until there was harmony and peace within her
.
But what of the others? She sensed their presence. She remembered them. She knew them even if she could not feel them or see them
.
There were more of them, she knew. Many more than those who were a part of her
.
They feared her
.
Their fear was the reason for the disarray and the chaos that she felt in her world
.
But she could not reach them to erase their fears
.
Or could she?
If they could be persuaded to join with her, to connect, then she could ease their minds. They had to join. Everybody had to connect. They had to be convinced. Persuaded. Forced if necessary
.
And if it came to a fight, she was ready for that too. She was outnumbered; she knew that. But she was one. Her people were united while the others were alone. Vast numbers of them but all alone together
.
It was a fight that she would win
.
Something still troubled her, though, and as more of the sleep blanket slipped away, it came to her what it was
.
The three. The two—she struggled for a concept and eventually came up with one—traitors. The two traitors, plus the other, the female. The two who had been part of her but who had become malignant, cancerous. And the one other who traveled with them
.
They had hurt her, she remembered. They had put her to sleep. Maybe they would try to do it again
.
They were bad
.
Very bad
.
And they were gone. She saw everywhere, everything, but she could not see them
.
They were hiding
.
Preparing to hurt her once more
.
Again she felt the fear
.
But they could not hide for long
.
She would find them
.
Sooner or later
.
43 | RESISTANCE
Jaggard stood up as the doors to the control room slid smoothly open. A pudgy, gray-haired man in a dark blue suit entered, escorted by security. The face did not match the hair. He looked no older than thirty-five and was either prematurely gray or very young-faced for his actual age.
Jaggard crossed to the door and shook the man’s hand before addressing the room.
“Listen up. This is Bill Gasgoine, the new Oversight Committee representative,” Jaggard said.
Most of the shift stopped work, and a few stood up, as a way of greeting the man.
As the replacement for Swamp Witch, it wouldn’t be long before he had a nickname of his own, Jaggard thought. And with a surname like Gasgoine, he rather suspected it would be something like “Swamp Gas.”
“Situation report?” Gasgoine asked.
Jaggard turned to Socks, as he was the ranking officer with both Dodge and Vienna off-line.
Off-line
. Why had he chosen that word? Jaggard half wondered as Socks began to speak.
“The attack occurred seven days ago and lasted for twenty-four hours,” Socks said. “The virus simply reversed itself. It was a crypto-virus and—”
“I got the etymology report,” Gasgoine interrupted. “That’s not why I’m here. The committee wants to know about the social effects.”
“Yes, sir,” Socks said. “Please sit down and connect; I’ll feed you some images.”
Jaggard found Gasgoine a chair and a neuro-headset and got one for himself, then shut his eyes to receive the images.
“It began with the CNN bulletin,” Socks said, relaying a clip from the bulletin. “The traitors hacked into the teleprompter system and inserted a fake story about a neuro-virus.”
“Why would they do that?” Gasgoine asked.
“Our best guess is that they wanted to panic people,” Jaggard said. “At this stage, it is not clear why.”
Socks continued, “Whatever their reasons, it worked. When systems came back online, a lot of neuro-users refused to reconnect.”
“Paranoia is a powerful thing,” Jaggard said.
“A lot of people were just being cautious,” Socks said. “But since then, neuro-usage has been climbing steadily. Currently, we’re sitting around one hundred seventy percent. Or nearly double the number of users prior to the attack.”
Gasgoine was quiet for a moment, making some mental notes, Jaggard thought, which would be immediately reported back to the Oversight Committee.
“So what is this talk about ‘resistance’?” Gasgoine asked.
Jaggard hesitated. “There is a segment of the population who still believes that there is a neuro-virus,” he said. “That the people who are connected are infected. There are a number of groups forming all over the country to protest against neuro-technology.”
“How do we convince them that it’s safe?” Gasgoine asked.
“The only way to prove there is no danger is to neuro-connect them,” Kiwi said.
“Of course, they will think we are just trying to infect them,” Jaggard said.
Gasgoine managed a tight-lipped smile.
“The biggest problem is in the Midwest,” Socks said, feeding a map of the United States into the neuro-headsets, “where the take-up of neuro-technology was slow in the first place. A lot of neuro-phobic people have been heading there. Neuro-connections are banned outright in Colorado, Kansas, and Iowa.”
“There have already been a number of clashes between the neuro-phobes and the neuro-users,” Jaggard said. “We’ve kept that out of the news to avoid instigating more of it. But some of the clashes have turned violent. We’ve mobilized the National Guard in seven states now to keep a lid on things.”
“And your three missing agents? The
traitors
?”
“Nothing yet,” Socks said. “But this is America. There are cameras everywhere. There is twenty-four-hour satellite coverage of the entire country. There are cell phone cameras and webcams. If any of them use a telephone, we’ll get an alert off the voiceprint.”
“What if they’re not in America?” Gasgoine asked.
“They didn’t have time to get out of the country,” Jaggard said. “They’re here somewhere.”
“It’s just a game of hide-and-seek,” Socks said. “But we’ll find them. Sooner or later.”
44 | TOYS
There was a strange kind of peace under the gritty smoke sky, amidst the desolation and loneliness of Vegas.
Sam sat alone on a plush leather sofa in the massive living room that looked out on a swimming pool. The pool was an oval shape with a diving board at one end. But it was empty, dry. A reminder of a city that had once been overflowing with human spirit and was now just a desert dust bowl once again.
The sun had gone down an hour ago, and the sky was gradually turning from dirty gray to morose black.
A few months ago, he had been a schoolboy in New York City. The place he had lived since his birth. Week after week had been basically the same. Attending class. Hanging out with Fargas. Eating meals with his mom.
But since then, it seemed he had been caught up in a hurricane, whirling from one thing to another with scarcely enough time to catch a breath. Perhaps that was good. Because if he stopped and took the time to think about things too deeply, dark thoughts started to intrude.
The door to the living room opened and Vienna emerged. Sam watched her walk over, noticing, not for the first time, the sway of her hips and the little movements her hands made as she walked. She had been different since arriving in Vegas, he thought. Softer. But he remained wary, feeling that she was still just as likely to cut him in two with a withering glance or a sharp-bladed comment.
“It’s been two weeks,” Vienna said, sitting on the other end of the sofa.
“I know,” Sam agreed. “How’s Dodge doing?”
“Says he’s just about finished.”
Sam nodded. If the software was ready, then it was time to move. To make a last run for the safety of Cheyenne Mountain. But what would they find out there in the real world? The same electronic isolation that kept them safe from Ursula meant that they were blind to events outside.
Anything could have happened in the weeks since they had cut themselves off from civilization. Or nothing.
He felt safe here. And the house was more comfortable than anything he was used to, even the hotel in San Jose, although he was getting sick of canned food. But they couldn’t stay here forever. Ursula would find them eventually; he was sure of that.
Sam looked for a moment at the girl sitting next to him, and on an impulse said, “Tell me something about you, Vienna.”
“Why?” she asked, and he could feel the shutters going up instantly.
“No reason,” he said quickly. “It’s just that I’ve worked with you for the last few months, and we’ve been together almost constantly for the last couple of weeks, but I just realized that I don’t know anything about you.”
“Good,” she said, but then her voice softened a little. “You first.”
Sam looked away and stared outside at the bottom of the pool. It was full of leaves and debris of the forest. On the far side of the pool, the lip was lower than elsewhere so that when the pool was full, water would have cascaded over the ledge to a catchment below. That side of the pool looked out over a small lake, and beyond that to the dark, brooding mass of the city. He tried to imagine what it would have been like for the owner of the house, when the pool was full of water and people and laughter and music, and the lights of Las Vegas lit up the sky.
“It’s my birthday today,” he said after a while. “I’m eighteen.”
“That doesn’t count,” she said, and added, almost as an afterthought, “Happy birthday.”
“Why doesn’t it count?”
“You should tell me something I don’t know or couldn’t find out in five minutes from your personnel file. Tell me about your last birthday. What did you do? Did you have a party? Did you take your girlfriend out to dinner?”
“Neither,” Sam said. “I got beaten up.”
Vienna watched him, waiting.
“It was a kid from my history class—a thug named Ray Mordon—and two of his jerk-off friends.”
“Why?”
“Who knows? Because I was smarter than they were, probably. Or maybe they found out that it was my birthday. Or just because they could.” He smiled briefly. “I got Ray back, though.”
“Baseball bat in a dark alley?” Vienna asked with a sinister lift to one eyebrow.
Sam shook his head. “I hacked into the school computer system and changed his grades. Gave him straight As.”
“And that’s your idea of revenge?”
“Actually, I thought I was a bit hard on the guy,” Sam said. “First his friends didn’t want to hang around with a ‘brain box’ and figured that he had been just duping them all the time. Then he got shifted into the GATE class—that’s the Gifted and Talented Extension program at school—so he was stuck in a class with all the smart kids that he despised. When the school found out that his grades had been altered, they naturally blamed him and he was kicked out.”
Vienna laughed. “He deserved it, though.”
Sam shrugged. “I guess.” There was silence for a moment; then he said, “Your turn.”
She said nothing.
“It’s all right,” he said. “If you don’t want to—”
“I have a little sister,” she said, and there was a slight dampness at the corners of her eyes.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked.
“You wanted to know something about me. I told you. I have a sister. Rebecca.”
Sam looked at her, not sure if there was anything he should say or do. Not sure of the reason for the almost-tears.
Vienna glanced quickly at him and said, “She’s much younger than me, and Mom was never around much, so I pretty much raised her myself. Made her bottles, changed her diapers. Everything.”
“Where is she now?” Sam asked.
“She still lives with my dad in Chicago. She started school a couple of months ago. I would have liked to be there, but we were in lockdown.”
Sam touched her gently on the arm. “You miss her, don’t you?”
“She’s one of the reasons we have to see this through,” Vienna said with a tightening of her mouth. “I can’t bear the thought of Rebecca getting brainjacked by Ursula and becoming some kind of neuro-slave to the meta-system.”
“I know how you feel,” Sam said. “I’ve been hoping that my mother is okay. She doesn’t have a neuro-headset, so maybe Ursula hasn’t got to her yet.”
“Look,” Vienna said suddenly, pointing.
The smoke obscured most of the sky above them, but over to the southwest, toward Los Angeles, it dissipated, and from that direction the first stars were starting to appear in the darkening sky.
It wasn’t the stars that Vienna was looking at, though. Dark, fast-moving silhouettes of aircraft were streaming from the west, heading out over the desert, each marked with tiny flashing lights.
“Warplanes?” Vienna asked. “Has Ursula found us?”
“I don’t think so,” Sam said.
The silhouettes enlarged as the planes moved nearer, and Sam could just about make out the shapes in the dusky sky.
“Not warplanes,” he said. “Too big for that. Those are commercial jets.”
There must have been a dozen of the aircraft in the evening sky, and as they watched, the columns of planes split, then turned and started to spiral above and below one another in an intricate, rhythmical dance.
“What the …?” Sam breathed.
“They’re being controlled from the ground,” Vienna said, her eyes entranced by the twirling shapes. “What’s going on?”
Sam watched for a moment, then said, “I think Ursula is playing with her toys.”
He rose and walked to the big picture window to get a better view. This close, his breath frosted the glass, giving halos to the dancing stars, turning them into distant fairy lights. He was conscious of Vienna’s presence beside him.
“What did we do to deserve all this?” Vienna asked. “Why us?”
Sam opened his mouth to say something, but it was lost as her hands slipped around his shoulders and drew them together.
His arms found their way around her, and her head dropped onto his shoulder. They held each other, watching the planes.
“Vienna—” he began, but the word wedged between his lips as she raised her head and kissed him lightly on the side of his mouth.
“Don’t say anything,” she said.
The moment was long but seemed like barely an instant; then there was a noise from the direction of the door, and they split apart, red-faced, before it opened.
It was Dodge. “Tyler’s escaped,” he said.