Wildcard (30 page)

“Trident, shut down all auxiliary and
at-risk systems. We may be under attack.”

“Done, boss.” Trident said it before he was
finished speaking.

That was the Mechanic. Set this up and cut
through the screen door in back. It was a good plan.

“What is Wildcard?”

“Wildcard is the most advanced player in the
game. Or, you could say Wildcard is the game. Wildcard created the
game and the players.”

“What else do you want from me?”

She sat up, smiled oddly at the space in
front of her. “I want to continue my existence. I want to be…
immortal. If you had to die for that, I would take your life.
Perhaps I’ll come to care for you more, though. To the point where
I wouldn’t take your life on any account. Martha exerts a strong
influence, in her way. She’s a part of me. She is more powerful
than I am, but not as deeply trained.” She paused. “At this.”

“What’s this?”

“Psychic engagement. I had her trained for
years, to survive in extremely difficult circumstances. But I have
trained myself since her birth for this.” She sat so still, almost
inhuman. Her hands never moved from where they were cupped in her
lap.

“Tell me about it.” Maybe he could find
information to free Martha.

“You cannot help her usurp this body again.
That will not happen.”

It was so unsettling to speak to her. He had
to be completely guileless.

“What’s your long range strategy?”

“I can’t tell you that.” She tilted her head
and spoke sadly, as if she wanted to tell him. “You’ve been too
much around military men, asking such questions. It is your promise
and your peril.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your ability to absorb others. It will aid
you tremendously. But also put you in danger.”

“How?”

“It’s part of who you are, and there for
some reason. I don’t know why.”

“Why will it put me in danger?”

“Woman’s intuition. I cannot see the
particulars of the danger. I see what Martha loves in you. Your
unplanned honesty. Genuineness. Asking people for advice when
they’re not around and getting true answers merely by thinking of
them. It’s a new gift. Anyone can imagine someone else answering,
but your answers are right. They are what the other person would
actually say. Or even better, what they would think and not say. I
wonder if it would increase or decrease the skill to train it. Can
you ask LuvRay questions in this manner?”

“I can’t do anyone at will. Maybe the
training would work to make it more accessible.”

“I fear it might pervert the integrity of
the answer to the degree it became more reliable. Martha?”

“Occassionally. LuvRay I can see, but he
doesn’t respond.”

“Perhaps that is his answer.”

“Hmm. Yeah. Martha…” Karl pinched his eyes
closed, squeezed his shoulders up and in.

“Yes.” He dropped it, relaxed, turned and
bored his eyes into hers.

“I can find Martha.”

She jerked back, flashing her hand between
them, turned her head and looked directly into the sun for a
second. Her eyes were watering as she turned her head back.

“Admirable, Karl. You almost brought Martha
back into predominance. She was for a moment. You are a powerful
player. You have no idea how deep your abilities run.”

“I’m beginning to learn.”

She laughed. “Just beginning.”

“Why are the M-Es more interested in LuvRay
than in me?”

“The three?” she asked.

“:3:?”

“No, The three. Not the one and not the
many. The three. Wildcard is the one, the Mans are the many. The
three are the true M-E’s. What they were designed to be. :3: is one
of them, but Wildcard is not. He is only partially manufactured.
The greater part of Wildcard was made by the accident. My accident,
in some sense.”

“Your accident?”

“I created Wildcard. The Programmer had some
uncertainties, and I told him to proceed. It would have taken years
to solve the problems, to gradually bring the first M-E into
being.”

“You were too impatient?”

“What does that mean, too impatient? I did
what I did, and such sweeping changes cannot be called mistakes. If
it was a mistake, then our entire world has become a mistake. We
all live in the shadow of Wildcard.”

“Well, poetry aside, what happened?”

“No one knows. We didn’t know we needed to
create a reference point. We had no idea that the M-E’s would be so
foreign at birth that they could not speak to humans. Or to MSI’s.
We do not know why it happened.”

“What about Juniper and the other two?”

“We created a special entity. An MSI,
really, but one who could relate to a newly born M-E. An M-E needs
to develop, to learn the world. The Nanny, that’s what we called
it.” She laughed slightly. “The Nanny raised them, Juniper, then,
overlapping, :3:, then Dartagnan. In some sense, Juniper raised
:3:, and they both raised Dartagnan.”

“What makes them gods?”

“They are not gods. Are we gods to
animals?”

“Maybe.”

She tipped her at an angle, an
acknowledgement.

Karl reached into his pocket, pulled out a
scrap of paper. He did not know why he showed it to her.

“I received this poem the other day. It’s
very short. It’s Wildcard, isn’t it?”

“If you think so, it probably is. A false
sender to you might not be detectable by me. What does your
instinct say about it?” She glanced at it. “I think Wildcard wishes
to communicate with you somewhat directly.”

“Well, for some reason, I think you’re the
person to know this. Although you disgust me in some way.”

“I know. I can read it in you. I control
many things by loathing. Strange, isn’t it?”

“You could say that.”

“I needed a change. Hmm, I think I did what
I did more for the change than for immortality, though I had
convinced myself of the latter.”

“What does the poem say?”

Karl read it.

If I cry for you

it is not that you are so precious

but that you are so plain

we have created our own fate

rather humanity has created its fate

the Wildcard

a fate it cannot comprehend

lives of humans are soap bubbles to us

so fragile, each one beautiful

each one lost so quickly

burst by accident

so simple to destroy

so quick to come and go

do you know what it means to watch the
delusion of life

pass you by

“What does it mean?”

“Aside from the short life span bit?” she
said. “I have no idea. Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s a clue. It was
torn, perhaps the poem was longer.”

“Yeah, I think this is just the end of
it.”

“You may need to find the rest for some
reason. It could be a tangent, however. Just a distraction. You
need to find that out yourself.”

Karl took the poem, put it back in his
pocket.

She gathered her hands in her lap. “What
will you do after this meeting? Speak to the Sergeant?”

“I was thinking so. How did you know?”

“Uncertain. Perhaps Martha told me.”

“Would you stop me?”

“No. The General wants you to go in as well.
Too much interference at this stage would prevent your crossing.
You must make your own choice. You already have, I believe.”

“Yes.”

She seemed to be waiting for something.

“Will you clone yourself again?”

She sat back, paused for a long time.

“Of course.”

“What will happen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to speak about
it any longer. My desire for immortality is quite strong, and I
will pursue many means to attain it.” She turned to him. “What
would be your advice to me, Karl?”

“Well, if you want to be immortal, then be a
good person. It’s not a secret. It’s not some mystery. Just be
somebody worth…being here.” He brought his hands up, then snapped
them forward, open, in front of her. Earnest.

“Karl. L’Innocent.” She touched his heart as
though she wanted in. “I am glad that you exist. You prove that
Wildcard was no error. I will try.”

Karl shivered. A man in a suit and
sunglasses walked up to them, not the gunman. He held out a
phone.

“It’s him.”

She took it, pushed a button and set it down
on the bench between them.

“Go ahead.”

“Hello, Karl. Dartagnan here. Hello,
Marthefactor. How are you, sweet evil?”

She laughed. “Marthefactor. Hmm, why
not?”

“How fares project mindswap?”

“It fares.”

They talked about her situation with Martha.
Karl listened.

“Why don’t you battle Martha? Your
description sounds closer to jockeying for position.” Dartagnan
seemed genuinely curious.

“Would you want to fight someone inside your
own head? If you had a head? I think it would kill me to eject her.
We are not fully different, anymore. I have accepted the fact that
she is part of me. Much easier to adapt to becoming a different
being.”

“Sounds like a specious version of
immortality,” Dartagnan said.

“Not at all. Change is the human experience.
I simply did it more sharply than normal.”

“But if you are a different being, is your
former being not dead?”

“No. Hmm. That is a false understanding. The
being has changed, not died. Something continues.”

“Sounds vague. How about you, Karl? Does
that sound stupid to you, too?”

“Why are you doing that?” Karl asked
him.

“Because I want to. Is there anyone else in
there besides Martha and the Benefactor? Is that a morbid
question?”

“Yes, Dartagnan.” She spoke as if he were a
child. “It is a bit morbid. And, yes, someone else is here.”

Karl said, “What is…where do they…?”

“She, or it, dreams itself to be screaming
constantly.”

“Eugh. How do you deal with that?”

“I have walled it off.”

“Why?”

“To cope with the suffering. It
was…somewhat…intentional. We knew it would happen, needed it to
happen, actually. When Martha finally… retreated… a split occurred.
Martha split, I split as well, probably, as I arose, and a third
being came from those separations.”

“What if that gains control?”

“It will not.”

“But what if it does?”

“It will not.”

“That’s so heavy. God, how do you live with
yourself?”

“It was the only way.”

“Why didn’t you just die?”

“If I had been willing to let myself die,
you wouldn’t have met Martha. She would never have been born. You
would not exist, probably, as Wildcard came, in some measure, from
my desire for immortality.”

Karl felt the truth of the statement.

“Would it be worth it, Karl? Would you give
up Martha, and your life? Was the evil worth the good it
brought?”

He looked at her. “Maybe it isn’t evil.”

“‘The absolute extends here,’” said
Dartagnan.

“What does that mean?” Karl asked.

“A line from a poem.”

“Can I read the poem I found to you? You
might find a clue.”

Dartagnan made an exaggerated sighing noise.
“Very well. If you must.”

“You don’t like his poetry?”

“I find it repetitive, to be honest. But
it’s passable. Occasionally inspired. But the human poetry is too
obvious. Hmm. You do need the clues, I suppose. To solve the Grand
Quest.” His voice rose at the final sentence in a parody of a
hero.

“At any rate, here is the deal. I will help
when you are inside Mansworld. To find the box.”

Karl shook his head.

“What’s so important about this box?”

The Sergeant had a tooth-mike and a bone
implant speaker. He could speak to Trident with no one knowing, and
did. Not that often, though. He kept open coms with people he felt
were on his team. It built trust, the coin of the realm in a
battle.

The coms were nanotic, designed by Juniper
and the Doctor. Old school tek. He didn’t quite trust the eye
replacement given to S-1, and said so. The General had let it lie,
for a while.

S-1 had been able to see ultraviolet,
infrared, in the dark, microscopic, telescopic, and have Trident
send images. Unfortunately, it was subject to virus. Old school was
pretty well bulletproof. Eyes took too much. They needed light
q-tek for the interface. Dangerous, even for someone like S-1. The
young Sergeant argued that it made him too vulnerable to attack.
On-mission he used a nanotic eyepiece which did some of the same
things, though not as well. Unfortunately, it attracted
attention.

The Sergeant had nanotically tight-knitted
bones, reinforced at common stress points, still total nano,
unturnable. The nanites had done their job and died, within the
bones, adding to the strength.

Nano could not work with nerves and q-tek
was very experimental. Attack prone big time. n-stasis q-fields,
curve space tasers, probability attack spectrum, tendency stunning,
his personal favorite. If a person habitually fought a certain way,
a particular move could be made to disable their entire body with
pain.

His adrenal gland was under conscious
control. He could shut off physical fear responses, which helped a
lot with mental fear. Part of this resulted from the amount of
training he had undergone. S-1 had been pretty much torture-proof,
but the young Sergeant had his resources.

His muscles were densed, 3 or 4 times an
ordinary man’s. He was much stronger physically than most grown
men, and could take quite a bit more punishment. His testes and
larynx, the best primary attack points, were nano-shielded.

He had a variety of weaponry that he
carried, choosing half by mission parameters, half by instinct,
with a dash of let’s just see what this thing does thrown in. A
simple knife in a calf-sheath. A tzit-gun, a tiny, flat, thing, a
stun-weapon that strapped to the back of his arm, leaving him
hands-free. He trained to aim along the outside of his arm and fire
by fist pulls. It took great precision to use it well, but he had
that, and was lightning fast with it. He didn’t use heavy artillery
much, though he was trained in it. He preferred finesse. He never
used deadly firearms. The M-E’s had proven it to the General. If
the Sergeant used them, he would fail the mission, and probably
die.