EHuman Dawn (19 page)

“
What have you discovered about Evelyn Prince?
”
Adam asked as he followed her across the room.

“Well,” she began while tapping a few images on the monitor, causing a diagram of the internal computer architecture of the MICE Tower to be displayed. “It seems that Evelyn Prince was one of the great minds of the Dawn Project and is responsible for much of the top-secret research done with regards to Neuro. Security was her specialty. While her brother, Elijah, managed the project, it was she who figured out how to secure the most important operating system of all time.”

Alrisha paused for a moment, giving Adam an intent look.

“In my time as a Hacker, I’ve been able to crack much of Neuro’s security. But one issue has eluded me. While I’ve been able to hack the system and insert worms and viruses, as well as mine and manipulate data, I’ve never been able to take over any given networked portion of Neuro. It’s always been blocked. I can gain root access to a server here or there—but to gain control over an entire LMO via the Local Area Network within a city? It’s been impossible.

“It seems we’ve found the answer to the struggle. The true security of Neuro lies within the MICE Towers. I’ve already told you that eventually someone figured out that we don’t need to live in a mobile eHuman body. With the right amount of Chi, the Lux can reside in the network forever. Guess who came up with that invention?”

“Evelyn Prince,” Adam answered.

“Right,” Alrisha replied,

“Well, we just need to contact Evelyn,” he suggested.

“That’s easier said than done,” Alrisha complained.

“I don’t understand,” Adam continued, “There must be a way. Obviously, Evelyn and I knew of this security scheme, even before we Jumped. The virus within me must work with the MICE in some way.”

“Adam, Elijah Jumped almost seventy years before the first MICE Tower was employed. I’m not even sure the code within you will be compatible.”

“Why not?”

“Because the MICE create Neuro and Neuro creates them. The software and their Lux have become one in a way that even Evelyn couldn’t have imagined. Oh, it’s just too hard to explain. It’s a world of light in there Adam! I’ve never seen anything like it! You have no idea where one thing begins and another ends.”

“Then show me,” Adam demanded.

She turned to Adam, focusing her black, pupil-less eyes on him.

“You ready for a family reunion?” she asked.

“I really have no choice, do I?” he replied

“Alright then, follow me.”

She called over ten more Hackers and the group walked to the Tower, taking their seats. Alrisha sat down in one of the recliners, tossing her head to the right to indicate that Adam should do the same.

“Lay back and enjoy the show. This is going to blow your mind,” she answered, “One more thing, the MICE can issue a Remote Shutdown on us, so be ready to unplug at any moment.”

“You don’t say,” Adam replied as he sat back on the plug in the recliner.

Instantly his Lux transferred into the virtual world of Neuro.

A standard plug into Neuro takes the eHuman to the App Portal, where the experiences within the application level of Neuro mimicked reality in every way. To the Lux, every game played, or world visited within Neuro looked and felt like the real world outside of Neuro. The experiences were similar, with only one exception. Within Neuro, you could control the outcomes and create the world around you with your thoughts, desires and dreams.

Plugging into the MICE Tower, however, brought Adam to a whole new level within the operating system. He turned to Alrisha and was shocked to see that she didn’t appear as a solid, purple eHuman; rather she was a glowing being of light. Her features were similar, he could see her dark eyes set against her glowing face. But rather than a body of matter, it seemed that only her Lux appeared before him, like a pillar of flame, struggling to remain the shape he knew as Alrisha in the real world.

Glancing down at his own hand, it became clear to Adam that he too was only Lux in this place within cyberspace. He moved his arm before him, like a torch in the night. It was surreal and unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

“What the fuck?” he asked Alrisha.

“Yeah,” she replied, “I told you it was crazy. The MICE live in the binary levels below the application layer of Neuro. I’ve always wondered how the Lux experienced binary instruction. Here, we’re nothing but light. Photons, shaping into an individual form so that we are recognizable, and then morphing into oneness with the light around it. Look for yourself.”

Adam gazed out to the vast expanse before him. The entire network stretched out in all directions. While he’d never experienced anything like it, his eHuman software fully comprehended the 1’s and 0’s as they formed sequences that flashed before his mind’s eye. A luminescent grid, like a network of golden roads, blanketed the space in every direction. Beyond
the valley of golden roads, a city of lights rose before him, large and forbidding. Wispy packets of photon energy traveled about the landscape, moving almost too fast to be seen. Most of them were small bursts, but surrounding the city of light there was a more ominous, storm cloud of light, constantly in motion.

“Holy Shit,” was all that Adam could say.

Alrisha smiled at him. “Pretty wicked huh?”

She stared at the sight before her with a look of longing mixed with pride in her profession.

“It’s a technical wonder,” she began, “A world of pure light. A place where the Lux can live in total freedom. Hold out your arm and check this out.”

Adam did as he was told and she laid her arm over his. Rather than remain two separate entities, their bodies blended, and became one at point where they crossed.

“Like flashlights,” she mused.

“Excuse me?” Adam asked.

“If you had two flashlights and shined them out towards the horizon parallel to each other, you would see two individual beams of light. But then turn them towards one another and at the point that they meet, they become one. You can’t tell which photons belong to which beam. Our arms are like that. Which photons are yours, and which are mine?”

Adam immediately pulled his arm away from hers. Alrisha giggled, then turned back to the world of light in front of them.

“This is Evelyn’s creation,” she continued, “and she was one of the first to enter the system. By all appearances it seems simple enough. About one hundred years ago, her Lux Jumped into a server outfitted with a Chi-Regulator. Since this server was connected to Neuro,
she found herself capable of being many places within Neuro at once. The photons that make up her Lux can travel at the speed of light along the entire fiber optic network. You can see the packets traveling the roads before us.”

“Amazing,” Adam admitted. His sister was a genius.

“Evelyn and her colleagues Jumped into the Tower in the New Omaha LMO. Over time their Lux melded, sharing their consciousness in such a way that they are no longer truly individuals. Rather, they’re known by their point of origin. The Tower here in this LMO is named M1. Any Guardian who Jumped into this MICE Tower is known as M1. No name, no individuality. Simply a number, lost within Neuro.”

“So you mean there’s no way to contact them individually?” Adam asked, bewildered.

“As more Towers were added to Neuro, the intelligences across the global network began to meld. Consider the implication now, a century after Evelyn first Jumped. If each LMO in the world has a MICE Tower that supports approximately fifty individuals, and there are over two hundred thousand LMOs in the globe, that means—”

“That Neuro is guarded by ten million people, each one with their own energy needs but sharing one huge consciousness,” Adam finished her thought.

“Yes. It’s a huge mind, larger than any we ever thought. And the only way to crack it is to shut it off. Take every last MICE Tower offline.”

“But if you do that, you’ll kill over ten million people!” Adam protested.

“That’s one deduction. And even after that, it might not work. Neuro’s code has been modified to work seamlessly with this massive intelligence. I believe the thoughts of these Guardians create new source code as well as monitor what’s happening, and keep us out. The MICE Tower is the ultimate in artificial intelligence: Human consciousness perfectly embedded
within the fiber optic network of cyberspace! As the intelligences of the people who entered the system grow and learn, so does Neuro. The Lux and Neuro are nearly inseparable. Thus even if we did decide to murder millions of Guardians, we might not be any closer to recovering Neuro for our own use. Rather, we just might destroy it.”

“And destroy my sister along the way,” Adam replied bitterly.

“As well as the entire eHuman population. We can’t run our cities or live our lives without being networked,” she added. “We’re slaves to our own technology.”

Adam stared at the world of light before him and felt the urge to join it. The freedom of being without the body appealed to him.

“Total eHumanization,” he said softly.

“Excuse me?” Alrisha asked,

“The Lux in this system are completely eHuman. They have no need for the real world at all, except to provide energy for the Chi Server,” he explained, “Our eHuman bodies are really just a stepping stone towards this goal; complete eHumanization. This must have been the vision all the long.”

Alrisha looked at Adam suspiciously. Was he remembering something from his pre-Great Shift days?

“If complete de-corporalization of the human race was the goal Adam, this would be the first I heard of it,” she replied uncomfortably.

At that moment, a face seemed to form within the massive MICE cloud. Adam trembled at the sight. Suddenly a burst of light shot forth from the face and traveled down along the road in front of them.

“Get off the road!” Alrisha cried.

Adam’s Lux instantly moved at her command as the light packets zoomed by him. He watched it continue to another, smaller structure, where it was absorbed. Immediately a second burst of light shot from the structure, back out along the road, towards the MICE, where it was promptly re-absorbed. The face instantly disappeared into the mass of light.

“What the hell was that?” Adam asked.

“I’m not sure,” Alrisha said, “The MICE mostly appear as streams or clouds of light. But every now and then I can see faces and limbs forming and reforming. Packets of light, which are really just data packets, come shooting out in all directions. That structure behind us is M1. I imagine they issued a Remote Shutdown command. It means they have seen us. We’re going to have to get out of here pronto.”

“Why?”

“Because an attack is about to happen. And things get pretty scary when they’re trying to kill you,” she answered.

“That didn’t feel unfriendly,” Adam mused.

“Adam,” Alrisha began.

But another face was forming and sending forth a burst of light towards M1. Suddenly, Adam had an idea.

“If Evelyn Jumped into the Tower in this room, perhaps M1 is her home base?” he asked Alrisha.

“That could be. Why do you ask?” Alrisha answered impatiently, obviously eager to unplug and get the hell out.

“Well, any device within the system sends regular status updates, right?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure that the Lux is really a device,” she answered.

“But, Neuro is about control, isn’t it?”

Alrisha nodded, her Lux began to swirl while her hacker mind began to whirl into action.

“Then those who control Neuro would want to know where every single being within the system is at any given moment. Embodied or not,” he added.

“That means there must be some sort of status update protocol,” Alrisha finished for him.

“Yes,” Adam agreed, “And my guess is that the Tower where the Lux originated would be where that Lux would check-in. That’s got to be what is happening here. Short bursts of status updates being sent in, and then registered within M1.”

“Yes!” Alrisha cried out again, “Yes! That’s it!”

“What?” Adam asked.

But Alrisha ignored him, instead creating a light packet with her luminous hands. Once she appeared satisfied, she released the packet along the golden data road.

“Did you just send a status update from M1?” he asked Alrisha as the packet was absorbed by the MICE.

Alrisha nodded her head. Her darkened eyes looked hallow against the light of her Lux.

A second packet came flying back towards them and Alrisha caught it. After a moment of struggling, she shot it back towards the MICE.

“Got it!” she cried with joy, “I sent an acknowledgement back to Evelyn. If the worm works, the two of you will be sent into another part of the system.”

“And then what?” Adam asked.

“You have your little chat while we keep the rest of her friends at bay,” Alrisha replied. “Convince her to redirect all New Omaha LAN traffic to our server. And do whatever it takes to get her to tell you the location of Neuro’s source code.”

The light mass before them began to form and reform again. Faces and limbs appeared and then disappeared, engulfed by the MICE themselves. One face remained, its arm reaching out, struggling against the rest to form its own identity. As her body separated from the mass of light surrounding her, Evelyn Prince cried out in a language completely unrecognizable to Adam or any of the Hackers by his side.

The next moment, Adam was in the dark, illuminated only by his own Lux. The city of lights, the web of golden roads, and the Hackers were nowhere to be seen.

He was face to face with Evelyn Prince.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Adam gazed at Evelyn’s Lux, forming and reforming into the image of a beautiful woman. Yes, it resembled Elijah in some way, but being a body of light, she looked more like a fire elemental than his younger sister.

“
What is the meaning of this?
” Evelyn commanded without opening her mouth. Adam realized that she was speaking directly into his mind. “
Where is Tower M1
?”

“
We have little time,
” Adam replied, “
You’ll be messaging with me, not M1
.”