Transcendence (77 page)

At last he’s in the middle of the vast room pulling his filthy old clothes back on, fastening the shredded leather boots. Nooa flashes to life in front of him.

“
Now may I intrude?” she asks. Her face is bursting with restrained excitement.

Jonathan stands and nods. He turns down the revmetal.

“
Early this morning, Captain Jackson and Pilot Librarse vanished at precisely the same time from my sensors, then reappeared together 21 minutes later. I can only assume they traveled to the alien object on Triton and back. Think of it! In 21 minutes, they traveled nine billion kilometers. Then they vanished again and remained away for 59 minutes.”

“
Real peak,” Jonathan says. He triggers one of the wall projectors and watches a menu flash to life around the golden frame, the options having mainly to do with sex. Shutting it down, he stares at his dirty boots in the ankle-deep pseudofur. The pants that rise above them are torn and stained.

“
What do you want me to do? By the way, I’m starved.”

“
A healthful breakfast is being routed to this room,” the girl says. “I want you to do me a favor which may be difficult.”

Jonathan bares his teeth in a grin. “Cracking-open-difficult is my middle name. You name it.”

He hears a huff of air, then a circular panel slides open behind him. Turning, he sees a steaming plate of egg-omelet and blueberry pancakes, two foods he has never eaten in his life. That doesn’t stop him from grabbing up the fork and shoveling in the foreign meal. He closes his eyes to savor the flavors, yet feels sad that it tastes so good.
Is this what it takes to have someone care for you?
he wonders.
You gotta make friends with a computer? Crash that
. He whips the fork across the room and watches it twang against a 3VRD windowsill and ricochet to the floor.

“
Jonathan, what’s wrong?”

“
Nothing,” he says too quickly. He finishes chewing, swallows, and feels a moment of guilt:
Does Nooa think she did something wrong? Who am I to hurt the Brain?

“
It was too good. Never mind. What do you want?”

Confusion contorts the face for just a second. “I want you to have Captain Jackson take you to the alien object, if he can. While doing so, I want you to try to maintain contact with me. You—”

Jonathan begins fidgeting with the seam of his pants and interrupts. “I don’t know. That sounds
. . .
I don’t know.”

“
I’ll give you whatever you want,” she says. Her voice is pleading. “If you cannot maintain contact, I ask you to seek the alien intelligence which built it. Certainly they must have a communication system through the device to their homeworld.”

“
Look, I want to help. Yeah, we’ll see.” Jonathan powers up his commcard and seeks out Captain Jackson’s ID; the man’s card is shut down but active—he’s awake.

He is cut short by a thunder and rumble. Through his boots he can feel the building quake. He crouches and readies to run. “Nooa! What’s that?”

“
I told you EarthCo and NKK are at war. The Pan-America building, seven blocks north-east, was just hit by a NKK missile, disabled but retaining much kinetic energy.” Jonathan feels his stress rising. Nooa continues:

“
I apologize. My ability to defend Earth against spaceborne attack is imperfect. In the past ten hours, the Aurelian Wall has destroyed 99.7% of all incoming projectiles, yet three hundred—”

“
Fuck, man, I don’t need details. Just try to keep the Hilton from getting blown up, all right?”

“
Jonathan,” a voice-only comms. It takes him a moment to recognize the Captain.

“
Yeah?”

The man’s 3VRD flashes before Jonathan and says, “Are you okay?”

“
Yeah. That was just the Pan-Am, a long way off. We’ll be fine with the Brain guarding us.”

A knock at the door. Jonathan overlays the peep-pov and sees the Captain and Pilot Librarse standing intheflesh in the hallway. He mentally keys open the door and invites the adults inside. They both are wearing clothes so new the creases still show. Jonathan wonders if Nooa had those sent up free, like everything else. He wouldn’t want any, he decides, and—seeing no such clothes in this room—figures Nooa understood that.

“
It’s not safe to stay in populated areas,” the Pilot says. She looks somehow
. . .
prettier. Jonathan takes his eyes off her as the Captain follows his gaze and smiles.

“
Yeah, well, there’s a war on, you know,” Jonathan says to the carpet.

“
Who’s winning?” the woman asks. Nooa answers:

“
Entropy.” Jonathan catches a glimpse of the girl as she glances at him, then back to the adults. “Captain, Pilot,” she says, “I would be extremely grateful if you took Jonathan to the alien object and allowed him to try taking me along.”

Jonathan tenses again. He shoots a sharp stare at the AI construct and wonders if it can comprehend what it’s doing to him. Then he watches for his Captain’s reaction.

Jackson looks startled for a moment, then narrows his eyes in thought. Jonathan notes that the man’s arm absently encircles the Pilot’s waist. She answers first.

“
If Jonathan wants to join us, he certainly can. But I sincerely doubt that a
. . .
that you,” indicating Nooa with a nod, “will be able to stay in feedcontact. We can certainly try.”

The Captain pushes shut the door and crosses to the chair he sat in yesterday. “I’m not sure how we can take you
. . .
there,” he says to Jonathan. He sits. “I’ve only done it directly with the artifact or with people who’ve been inside. We—”

“
Oh, Jack,” the woman says. “Remember how Miru brought Pang and Byung inside? You’ve got to learn how to use your new, uh, memories.” She leans against the door and crosses her arms.

“
But they’re foggy,” Jackson says, “like dreams, only you can remember if you try.”

Jonathan shrugs and looks from one to the other as he sits on the mussed bed. “Hey, no big deal. I don’t really—”

“
No, no,” the Captain interrupts. “We can do it. We
should
do it.”

Jonathan swallows hard, but nothing goes down. He takes a deep breath as he realizes he hasn’t breathed for a long time.
Fuck this
, he thinks, and cranks up the revmetal.
I’m not afraid; cracking-open-difficult is my middle name
.

“
So,” he says, standing. “What do I need to do?”

That friendly smile he’d used yesterday crosses Captain Jackson’s face again as the man stands up. “Just be open-minded. Be careful about your defenses; they’ll only hurt you if you try to use them inside artifact-space. Don’t be afraid of anything. Share as much as you can. If you start feeling scared, I’ll help you get out before
. . .
anything bad can happen.”

Jonathan’s stomach feels like a nest of snakes whipping around. But damned if he’s going to back out now!

“
That’s all? Let’s go.”

The Captain reaches out a hand as if to shake, retro-style, in greeting. Jonathan meets the hand and glances at the door, wondering if they have to walk—

Something heavy and warm like a hand begins to tug at what feels like the back of Jonathan’s head. By the time his fear has mounted enough to override bravado, it’s too late to resist.

Come on
, Nooa, he begs.
Come on
.

Bricks and chunks of cement cloud a blackness penetrated by stars. Beneath the rubble, a wall stands—its upper reaches cracked and spewing clouds of debris like blast furnaces. Each fragment shimmers with just enough to be visible against the darkness. Each emits a subtle hum that rises and drops in pitch, vibrating the blocks so hard that they crack; flickering light shines through.

“
You must relax,” I and I tell Jonathan. If you don’t. . . .

Lonny explodes, spewing out maggots and ants and pulverized moments of his life. The clutter crowds with filth, further obscuring the view.

Before you two even orient yourselves, I wade through your lives.

This isn’t what I expected
. . .
my Captain’s life has been as painful as my own? No, it can’t be
.

“
Fuck this!” rises like a moving wall gathering the debris into a solid mass before it.

But we see behind the rupturing concrete and brick:

Flash-flash-flash
, mostly faster than we can comprehend, Jonathan’s life rips open within us. Images of a gang motherboard—The gang calls itself “the Malfits,” Blackjack with red hair and frozen face; érase bloodied and thrashing on gravel and chipped cement; Lucas like a smiling shark. . . .
Is this what you wanted? What’s happening? I can’t stop it
.

Flash-flash-flash
, faster and faster the wall falls to pieces, the chunks crack and spill out their contents of a boy’s memory. *We can’t follow you, Jonathan, please —*

“
I can’t help it,” says a tiny voice like the trickling of water. But gradually, the bricks and blocks stop exploding like fireworks and begin to crack one by one:

Pain and self-loathing paints a dull brown gloss over the motes drifting through the darkness, like blood smeared across glass and left to dry. One scene opens to Janus and Pehr the way we understand.

A young boy enters his bedroom as quietly as he can. In the room next to his, older sister Josephine cries in frustration, like every other night. He shuts the plasheet door and slides the lock into place by hand. One by one, he piles empty cans and metal toys atop one another near the door, where they would fall and clatter him awake if it swung open during the night. Toy soldier cast in shiny copper, his arms flexible and controlled by pressing the back; miniature operating aircar that doesn’t have a battery pack; stiff jungle animals stand and hold up an arm-long model of an EConautics battleship, smooth and only dented in a few places. The toys pile higher until the boy feels his trap is good enough. He reaches out his mental hand in the way teacher showed him to access his headcard, and on comes the smiley face of his individ. “How can I help you, Jonny?” On flickers the circle of light around him like a huge hula-hoop that he can see even when his eyes are closed—the circle that
bings
if anyone crosses it—and he knows no one can hurt him while he sleeps. At least not without waking him first so he can be ready. He keeps a knife beneath the pillow.

Why?

Another moment overlaps: Dad—Lt. Dirk Sombrio—sets young Jonathan on his lap and tells him in great detail about his job and all the places in the world he has visited by 3VRD. “I’m a deadly weapon,” the man summarizes. “We live well because EarthCo needs men like me to infiltrate and eliminate”; the man’s face finally registers emotion which writhes across the quadrants of the face one at a time like a thick worm. “Now, don’t you ever bother your mother again when she’s in feed, understand?” My own cheek sizzles where Mommy whacked it with her fast, loose fingers that thrashed when I interrupted something that made no sense. “Yes, Daddy,” with fucking baby tears heating the little baby face. “And don’t you ever bother us again when we’re in feed together, understand?” No answer but a whimper, desperate for the man to hold me tight against his narrow chest and apologize for speaking so harshly;
How could I have known at that age what adults do in fivesen feed?

“
You couldn’t have.”

They looked like they were sleeping, and now Mom feeding every day while picking at something invisible beneath her chin, always, except when she screams and smashes things and lashes out with her clawlike fingernails; Dad erect and silent as he walks back and forth across the apartment, always showing his medal-bespangled uniform in 3VRD when I try to talk to the fucker, reminding me ever so subtly of the threat
. . .
oh, yes, I understand that Mother needs her alone time, that you need your headfeed privacy. . . .

Flash-flash-flash
, scene after scene of silent seething as Jonathan walks the streets of Minneapolis in search of a reaction from someone,
Can anyone see me?
He learns to penetrate deep into the power structure of the adults’ CityNet—why? Because I can! He prompts the attention of a strong, quiet boy named Blackjack, and Blackjack takes the time to teach me how to take something back from the adult institutions. When I succeed at my first job—cutting into a staticky old holofeed distributor—Blackjack lets me crash at his ’board. One day he has Lucas put my headcard to sleep, and when I wake, I’m a Malfit; I’m blackcard-installed; I’m a fucking force for adults to fear.