Chaos Cipher (42 page)

The V-TOL
plane veered 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 Adamoss 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.

‘
We’ll teach
you how to walk here,’ Vance assured, leading him further around
the spiralling lobby.

A giant
data-bubble expanded into the sky above their heads and Vance
seemed to operate the object with ease, managing layers of data
imprinted across the surface, which peeled back to sub layers like
onion skin, changing colours as it cycled. Vance stopped on a green
page and pointed for Malik to see.

‘
To operate a
data-orb you simply hold out your hand with your thumb tucked in,’
Vance aptly explained. ‘The data-orb will come to you. The rest is
user friendly, easy I imagine for a scholar of non-linear
science.’

They ambled
through the promenades of Atominus Phalange and Vance showed his
brother the great bulwark structures harmonised to hold the city
together, while anti-gravmex simulators operated to make the
impossible seem possible. Water fountains that rained upwards,
pools of liquid impossibly sustained without a visible containment
in large pockets beneath the structure, where swimmers trusted
their fate to the technology making it all possible. They swam
leisurely through the unbound baths, looking down into endless
clouds where below the spires of buildings pointed back and the
blink of lights and radio dishes pulsed. Malik was no longer sure
if this trickery was in the hardlands or in the quasilands but he
imagined it was a little of both.

Swarms of
tiny quadro-blade drones flew about, carrying parcel shipments from
place to place. Androids wondered onto walkways that seemed to
self-construct beneath their feet to prevent them from falling into
the sky. The intelligent magneto dishes aimed their pads to orient
the base material into position and the androids marched fearlessly
with equal confidence that the paths would carry them forth above
the sky. In the Nexus, Malik would see the androids striding onto
Lilly pads suspended in the air.

Malik saw it
all shifting and changing, a city that was never the same,
completely malleable, but what they witnessed in the Nexus was
contradictory in the Real. Where the androids walked there was
clearly a bridge, where the people swam in the inverse baths they
could see a lagoon, merged with the Nexus the superficial images
altered what was really there, and as the people constructed their
reality in the Nexus, reality outside the virtual worlds
automatically complied and transformed to make real what was not
and to bolster the digital fantasy.

‘
The law that
exists is very contradictory, Malik,’ Vance orated, ‘it takes a
hard willed philosopher to find ethics here. We have a law called
the limitation law, which is our main law. But law, old law, is a
construct for people outside of the Atominii still living in the
hardlands, it’s a law designed for social control in order to
preserve all of this. For instance, it is law for every person to
be neurophased with a neuro-ligature. I mean, it would be damn well
ridiculous for them not to have since they would be able to operate
nothing in the city without them. The city would not receive such
people without the neural adaptations and it would reject them like
antibodies. The other laws; no Olympians and no Precariat rebel
unwilling to comply with our divine order. Olympian Genetics,
you’ll be happy to learn, are today seen as more lethal than
twentieth century nuclear weapons. We do not tolerate the
pessimistic obsolete here. They don’t understand that here in the
Atominii, in the Nexus quasilands, you are free, spiritually,
creatively, legally to a point. There are divisional cultures who
are returning to philosophical notions in this universe. They dream
of reordering law. We have religions uniting to create for the
first time a simulation of God, to envision for ourselves a divine
reality. But for the most part we are like the dawning
civilisation...free to do whatever we want. Our every desire
enacted upon unburdened by our guilt and moral conscience and
without the consequences of suffering, either from guilty feelings
or real violence. If violence is indeed one’s fantasy then here it
can be indulged via the simulation...nobody real need
die.’