The Beam: Season Three (66 page)

“What has he told you? I don’t even know what to do.”
 

“Well, what has he told
you?”
 

“I’m just supposed to ‘clear my mind.’ Oh, and he injected me with some nanos yesterday when we were working on particulars.”
 

Micah nodded. “Okay, I can fill in a few of those gaps. We’ll whisk you off with some sort of swarm
invisibility cloak
, but when you
return
, it’ll be a holographic Isaac. A special kind of hologram since the lights are really bright in here and you’d be able to tell with a normal one — see dust motes running through your head or something.”
 

“What does that have to do with nanobots?”
 

“Permissions, I’m sure.”
 

This was the first Isaac had heard of
permissions
for the trick. It was just one word, but he didn’t like it.

“Permissions for what?”
 

“West, Isaac. Some trick of Gray’s will — don’t ask me how; he won’t share —
recreate
you onstage after the act is over. It’s the only way he can prove you’re not really there before you appear.”
 

“Prove how?”
 

“I’m not sure. Shove blades through a box at you, like in the old acts?” Then, when Isaac felt himself pale, Micah rolled his eyes again. “Oh, relax. You’ll be long gone with your invisibility cloak. But you know AI can’t just replicate living people, according to the official law about — ”

“Replicate
me!” Isaac blurted.
 

“Of course, Isaac. Replicate your
image
. How else could he pull this off?”
 

Isaac considered retorting, but he was in too deep — and as much as he disliked the idea of Jameson Gray’s show, it was the least of his current concerns. He’d been talking to Micah too long already, and apparently there wasn’t any business to transact (about Vale, Rachel, or otherwise) other than the usual business of brother belittling brother. He needed to catch up to Natasha. She was a diva; it would take her a few minutes to cross a room filled with admirers to find this Godfrey woman. He might still be able to catch her.
 

But replication, even in hologram? The idea twisted something in Isaac’s gut.
 

“Oh,
relax
. Xenia has known the technology to selectively circumvent The Beam’s fifty layers or so of identity safeguards has existed for years. You honestly didn’t?”
 

“It’s not a matter of the technology
existing
. AI can’t mimic people in image or manner, living or dead. It’s a civil rights issue! Or an identity theft issue. If AI can pretend to be me…”
 

Deep sigh. Micah continued patronizingly.
 

“It’s a thirty-second permission window that won’t do much more than smile, take a bow, and leave the stage. You’re giving that permission through the nanos Gray injected you with.”
 

“How is that possible?”
 

“Maybe it’s not, whatever,” Micah said, again rolling his eyes.

But it
was
possible, and it
wasn’t
fine. Isaac had been trying to figure out how the trick would work for days. His return, after
disappearing
, had always been the part that seemed most impossible. If, on the spot, one of Gray’s assistants planned to simply keep Isaac backstage while a slightly better-than-normal hologram impersonated him onstage, that was the only thing that had made any sense. But the safeguards were supposed to be stacked and impenetrable. Watchdog groups had been picking at the issue forever and had thus far declared it safe. AI couldn’t “pretend to be any person, living or dead, in manner, image, or voice.” Just about the only way it’d even be a
little bit
possible would be if some dumbass used above-Beau-Monde technology to intentionally drop his own identity firewall. Someone like Isaac Ryan, who had a history of being a dumbass when it mattered most.

“If you’re so damn worried about it, I’m sure Braemon has a Gauss wand. Go get yourself waved down, and kill them off.”

Isaac saw the bait but refused to take it. If he killed off Jameson Gray’s illegal nanos now, there would be hell to pay — from Micah, from Natasha, from his social peers, and from Gray himself, who Isaac suspected might be part of the supersecret group his mother belonged to.
 

No, it’d be okay. He could do it after the show. It’s not like an AI clone could keep impersonating him after he’d wanded himself. And it’s not like the nanos would help Micah zap him off into places unknown, as he’d joked.
 

“Well now,” Micah said, indicating a tall man across the room. “Look who’s arrived.”
 

Isaac’s eyes were on a recently spotted group of people who, it turned out, had indeed stopped Natasha to admire her. All were men. Isaac didn’t know what Shelly Godfrey looked like, but unless she had testicles, it didn’t seem like Natasha had found her just yet.

Isaac didn’t reply. He began pushing through partygoers instead, headed where Micah had indicated.
 

Yes, he needed to reach Natasha before she located Godfrey.

But first, he needed to have a chat with President Carter Vale.

Chapter Nineteen

“Harper,” Dominic said. “Were you ever a mall security guard?”
 

“Captain?” the officer replied.

Dominic pointed at the Beam wall displaying its many rows of video feeds, including the one showing Isaac Ryan’s corner that had been bothering him. Quark PD, probably knowing the importance of good PR leading up to Shift, had let DZPD use their surveillance wall to monitor the fundraiser and had been deferring to DZPD cops for hours now. If Dominic didn’t know better, he’d think he was in charge in this big white room.
 

“Have you ever spent mindless hours staring at a bank of screens like this?”
 

“No sir, but…it’s just looking at screens, isn’t it?”

“You’re a smart cop, Harper.” Dominic stood and slapped the other man on the back, motioning for him to take Dominic’s chair.
 

“Are you leaving, sir?”
 

“I need to run in. You can watch the event from here.”

Harper became instantly nervous. “But sir! You’re the commissioner right now! I’m just…”
 

“You can watch monitors the same as me. I’m still the commissioner. For today, anyway. I need to go on-site but will remain in command. No worries. You’re just eyes.”
 

“But sir! What do I do if something goes wrong?”
 

“Ping me. Tell me.”
 

“But…”
 

But nothing, apparently, because Dominic took a final glance at the troubling screen and walked away, leaving Harper to blubber.
 

There wasn’t much to like about tonight. Dominic didn’t like being in bed with Omar — and although parts of him would very much like to be in bed with Kate, she was still a dust runner and an unknown quantity. She had the shell of a strange man in her — a man who didn’t have a good record, but did have connections to Omar. That man seemed to have gone suspiciously missing as if his life had hit an abrupt dead end — whose end, interestingly, hadn’t come from death. Dominic hadn’t managed to get much on Doc Stahl, blocked both by maddening erasures and by high-level permissions that even a commissioner’s access couldn’t touch.
 

Dominic didn’t like that he was more or less breaking the law. He didn’t like the way he’d left things with Leah — not just for her sake, but the way she’d been left to deal with the Organas when he’d been called first by Omar and then to the station.
 

He didn’t like that all of a sudden President Vale had decided to make an appearance, necessitating all sorts of new security and protocols.
 

He didn’t like the way the feeds had been glitching a lot lately — something that had got him thinking he’d need to head in keep an eye on things in person for a while now.
 

But he really,
really
didn’t like the way the feed of Isaac Ryan and Carter Vale set off all his internal alarms. Dominic, gray-area dalliances aside, was a good cop, excellent in ethics and great at his job. He knew, despite what Leah had or hadn’t found, that someone, somewhere, was walking around with a bogus Steve York in his pocket. And he knew, just by looking at Isaac, that Isaac was keeping a secret of his own.
 

Maybe he shouldn’t have dismissed Isaac’s earlier call. But still, watching Isaac and Vale onscreen, it sure didn’t look like an assassination in progress. The two were talking feverishly, below the conversational privacy tolerances’ ability to overhear. It wasn’t just Isaac. Both were keeping this secret, and Isaac looked…
 

Well, he looked
guilty
.
 

Dominic crossed the Quark station, wanting to hurry without having to admit that a lot of people might be in trouble.
 

Why was this whole fucking sector of The Beam glitching? Why were entire nodes overworked, as if caught up trying to process a massive backlog of files? That kind of thing happened on Dominic’s shitty little DZPD console canvas, but now it was happening on The Beam itself. What could The
whole fucking Beam
be chewing on? And why did it have to happen tonight, while Isaac and Vale were swapping secrets and Omar was trying to pull a rabbit out of Dominic’s ass without Dominic knowing? He could practically see the slippery son of a bitch trying to undermine everything with his own agenda. It might just be time to storm in there and stop it.
 

Because really,
fuck
this whole plan. Dominic’s benefit, back when he’d made his deal with Omar and Kate, was supposed to be an uninterrupted Lunis supply chain. But now that the Organa problem was more or less solved, who needed Lunis? Certainly not Leo and the others. Dom was an addict, yes, but he understood the solution. He just needed to get enhanced a little. Get some nanobots or something. He’d rather do that than have a monkey forever on his back.

“Good evening, Dominic,” said a voice.
 

Dominic looked up, recognizing the voice coming from all around him as Noah West’s. On his way out, he’d entered the white, Beam-surface hallway between Quark and the main DZPD station. The stupid motherfucking, judgmental, all-knowing
hallway.
He didn’t have time for its henpecking, righteous assessment.

“Not now, Noah,” Dominic told the avatar’s disembodied voice.
 

“How is your back?” Noah asked.
 

“It’s fine. And also, fuck off.”
 

“I notice you’re carrying a lot of stress in your shoulders. Would you like me to book you a therapeutic massage?”
 

“No.”
 

“How about a therapeutic nanobot treatment?”
 

“No. I’m just trying to get out of here.”
 

“Suit yourself,” the voice said. “Let me know if I can help you with anything else.”
 

Something swooped into Dominic’s mind. His feet stopped moving in the middle of the long, pristine hallway as his thoughts turned to his last few moments in the ruins of Flat 1, just before Omar had called in a panic.

“Noah,” he said.
 

“Yes, Commissioner Long?”
 

“I don’t have any nanobots and shit in me, right?”
 

“No, Dominic. According to my records, you never have.”
 

“So why did Leah’s gadget say I did?”
 

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”
 

“What does ‘Sector 7 Access’ mean?”
 

“I’m afraid I don’t know that, Dominic.”
 

“Can you scan me for…” He tried to think of what Leah’s scanner might have been looking for, and why this intrusive hallway, through all these years, had missed what Leah’s box had found. “For, shit, I don’t know. Anything at all that I might not have been born with?”
 

“You have a carbon nanotube patch on your right radius, from when — ”

“I don’t mean when I broke my arm as a kid.”

“Your stomach currently contains a large amount of — ”

“I don’t mean my lunch either, dammit,” he huffed. Then, with a sigh, Dominic resumed walking. Stupid fucking worthless technology. The one time he
wanted
insights into his own body, Noah had nothing to offer.
 

When Dominic was near the end of the hallway, Noah’s voice said, “Would you like to hear something interesting?”
 

“No.”

Noah’s voice went on anyway. “Noah West is the
only exception
to the law restricting AI from being able to impersonate human beings. Did you know that?”

“No,” Dominic said, acutely uninterested in trivia games.