Ability (Omnibus) (13 page)

The fact that over a billion humans could now sing at the level of professionals wreaked instant havoc on the entertainment industry. Within a week there more than a million videos on YouTube alone of men and women, even children, showing off their new talent. Within a month there more than ten million videos on YouTube, with news sites estimating more than fifty million total in circulation when all video sharing sites were considered. Famous singers were devastated, more than a few publicly furious, one even breaking down in tears as she shouted at the onlookers that whoever caused this should be beaten to death.

Brian had begun to feel regretful that he’d been the cause of such suffering on those that had spent their whole lives honing a skill, nurturing a talent that only a rare few possessed. Not even Derry could console him, but she refrained from ever saying, not even hinting, that she’d told him it would happen. He’d begun to rethink the whole plan of unleashing any and all learning to every human. If this much chaos came from something as ‘simple’ as singing, it wouldn’t bode well when suddenly millions of new professional athletes were competing with the non-inducted professionals, millions of computer programmers, doctors, mechanics, electricians, plumbers, teachers, and hundreds of more professions were suddenly wiped out.

Two months later, after a quarter of the world had learned how to sing, something began to happen. With over two hundred million videos now on the net, and the overwhelming majority skilled but bland, almost boring in their perfect renditions of someone else’s tune, a few shining examples began to stand out. At first it was a young woman from Longwancun, China. Her voice was so impossibly pure, so rich, that it made millions cry to listen to it.

Then a middle-aged man from Jaen, Peru, uploaded a holo of himself singing in a bass so low that it made plates and cups on tables rattle until they vibrated off onto the floor. A young mother from Cairo showed a talent for singing in duo with a single voice. A sextet of singers from a church choir in Decatur, Illinois stormed onto the scene with a new style of A Capella, utilizing complex harmonies and emotion-influencing voicing. Garret had saved a couple of their videos and made the gang watch, not for the music itself, but the way it affected the listeners.

The sextet were able to sway the emotions of their audience, from side-splitting laughter, to tear-jerking sobs, to a passionate lust that ended with more than a few escorted out by event security and police. The four friends debated endlessly about whether or not the A Capella singers had gained the kind of ability Brian had briefly exhibited. Derry wondered if maybe the sextet
did
have some kind of ability, but hadn’t figured it out yet. Michelle wondered immediately after what might happen should the group figure out that they did have an ability to lyrically suggest listeners do certain tasks or feel certain emotions.

For the first month, YouTube tried to pull the videos, and for a while they almost stayed ahead of the uploads, deleting or rejecting them as fast as they went up. Within a couple of days, it became clear that it was a losing effort, as users would create new accounts and upload the videos with different names. When YouTube figured out what was happening, it programmed the upload servers to check the content of the holos and 2D videos and reject them if they contained either the module or the Receiver formula.

This brought on a storm of black site hackers who simply made brand new, original vids and holos that contained the formula, and had their robot army of infected computers across the globe start uploading the new versions every two minutes on burner accounts. The hackers tasked other zombie machines to upload new videos that were of random scenes or popular shows for the first ten to fifteen minutes, then linked straight into the induction module. YouTube finally gave up and took the entire site offline at the request of the American government, only to bring it back up within twelve hours, after what seemed like the entire internet flooded Google’s support desks and message boards with venom, knocking all thirty-two of Google’s cloud farms offline.

The module was easier to keep down, as it couldn’t be altered. Video and holo upload sites were commanded to set the algorithms on their upload servers to reject the module version, but it was too late even for that. No one needed YouTube, or VidCasa, or any of the other major players within two weeks. Within two months, a net search of the module would turn up two hundred million links, and that didn’t count all of the Usenet, FireFly, N-Torrent, and private websites that hosted or traded the module.

Within three months, the buzz was almost deafening on the net. Trolls, defenders, accusers, and objective observers all flocked to their virtual stations to talk about Receiver and the induction modules. And talk about it. And talk about it. And argue about it. And preach to others about it. Flame wars ignited and died daily. Religious persons entered the fray in force once the Pope stood on the mezzanine of his cathedral and proclaimed that God was being usurped by the forces of darkness.

Law enforcement had to ramp down their search for the parties responsible for releasing the formula and the module to protect citizens from each other as battle lines were drawn. The
modern
net users believed in Receiver, the modules, and their ability to sing in a beautiful voice, as well as the promise of what was to come in a few months. Others railed against the anarchy of the networks, the use of drugs, the unnatural acquisition of the ability to sing from the learning module, and the threat of Armageddon coming in a few months.

Overall, Brian, Garret, Derry, and Michelle were pleased at the success of the plan. The creativity being displayed by the world’s singing voices was beginning to drown out the negative side of thousands of professionals finding themselves out of work and no longer relevant. The negative side effect was lessened even more as the true
professional
singers began to learn via induction. Trained their whole lives, and with a lifetime of practice and a new wealth of techniques and song knowledge unlike anything they’d ever possessed, they quickly found their way back into the spotlight. The
old pros,
their new nickname, introduced evolutions in vocal performances so extreme, so entertaining, that the number of inducted singers across the world submitting videos of their new talents dropped off sharply.

The four never let their guard down, even though there hadn’t been a single whisper of threat that the authorities had them on radar. If word got out that any of them had been involved, the rest would soon follow the first one into a dark hole in Federal Bay, where ‘terrorists’ had been held since Guantanamo’s closing. It hadn’t gone as perfectly as they’d planned, but they had to admit to each other that even though the chaos and eruption of violence in some places had been surprising, it hadn’t gone as badly as their worst-case scenarios.

They kept their heads down and started on the final phase of their plan.

CHAPTER 11

August, 2045

“We have a problem,” Brian said from the edge of Garret’s bed.

“Jesus, Bri, what the hell?” his roommate asked, checking to make sure he had covers on and wasn’t sporting morning wood while trying to push the fog of sleep from his brain.

“I overdosed on a test batch by accident, and it has produced a very frightening side effect,” Brian said as he stood and turned toward Garret’s bedroom door.

“What ki—”

Garret’s words were cut off by the sound of his bedroom door slamming shut. When the knob seemed to lock itself, Garret looked at Brian with fear in his eyes. For a moment he thought Brian meant to kill him. Then he realized what the side effect was.

“Jesus, Bri, did you…?” he asked, all worries of morning wood or a naked Derry next to him gone from his head.

“Yeah, I did,” Brian said. He turned to the digital clock on Garret’s nightstand. It lifted off the surface and wobbled for a couple of seconds, spinning in place twice before crashing down. “It’s kind of weak when doing stuff like that, real precise stuff, but a sudden burst like slamming a door… I can put a lot of power into it.”

“What changed? What happened? Have you told the girls yet?”

Brian sat down on the corner of Garret’s bed again. “No, and we aren’t going to tell them. About anything you just saw. About anything
you
are going to be able to do in less than an hour.”

“Why not? This is awesome! Holy shit, Bri, this is… this is… awesome!” Garret repeated.

“No, it isn’t. If Derry finds out about this, we’ll be in a lot of trouble.”

“Why? What kind of trouble? Like she’d go to the cops?”

“No, not that kind of trouble. You know how she feels about this whole thing already with the ‘changing of the world’ and ‘human evolution’ stuff causing societal collapse. That’s just from learning skills like languages, medicine, science, whatever. There’s no fucking way she’ll be okay with giving the entire world abilities. Whatever it is I can do now. She will
not
be okay with this.”

“She can’t stop us, Brian,” Garret said. He stood up and pulled on a pair of shorts and a shirt. “She can cry about it all she wants, but she can’t do anything about it.”

“Are you fucking stupid?” Brian shouted at him, standing up. “It’s Derry. You’re in love with her. I’m in love with her.” He surprised himself by saying it out loud. “Think of how she’ll feel if she says no and we tell her to go pound sand. Then think of how you’ll feel every time she sees you, looks at you and knows, the same as you do, that you ground her heart up and then dumped it in the trash.”

“I don’t care,” Garret said softly, not letting himself get baited by Brian’s anger. He’d worried that this might eventually come up. “I’m going to see this through no matter what. If that means hurting Derry because she doesn’t agree with it suddenly, then I guess I’m just an asshole. But I’m not going to let her, or anyone else but you, stand in my way.”

“And what will you do if I
stand in your way
?” Brian asked, his voice low and dangerous. Garret could see Brian’s fists rubbing against the side of his pants.

“I guess nothing,” Garret answered, more wary of Brian’s mental abilities than his ability to fight. Garret knew that all of his inductions with the major fighting arts styles would be worthless against an opponent that could freeze him to death, or fling him through a window and down to the parking lot below simply by thinking about it. “That’s what I’m saying though, bro. You’re the only one that can stand in my way, same as I’m the only one that can screw you over.” He sighed and sat down on his bed. “I don’t mean to sound ugly. I really don’t. I
am
in love with her, but you know as well as I do that this… thing we’re doing, this is the most important moment in human history after crawling out of the swamps and learning to make tools. Our ancestors made stone, then metal, then plastic tools. We’re making mental tools.”

“Don’t fucking try to hard-sell me, Garret,” Brian growled.

“I’m not trying to
hard-sell
you. Tell me that you don’t believe exactly what I just said. That this is the most important thing modern humans will ever do, and not even Derry saying no will stop this train from rolling.”

“Fuck you,” Brian said and sat on the bed next to Garret.

Garret put his arm around Brian’s shoulders and said, “Bro. Brian. I agree that we won’t tell her. Or Michelle. Good job on that, by the way, you lucky prick. Anyway, we’ll keep it under wraps. But have you thought about what she’s going to think when release day comes and suddenly instead of everyone being able to speak Swahili or Portuguese, they, including her, are able to drop-kick shit with their mind, do Exorcist-type shit on doors or windows or whatever?”

“No,” Brian said, the lie on his face visible from the moon.

“Riiiight. So what’s going to be the worst way of ripping her heart to shreds? Telling her now what’s going to happen, and then telling her to fuck off when she protests? Or keeping our mouths shut and her finding out we lied for months, and worse, we lied because we both knew without question that she would have said ‘no fucking way?’”

“I don’t know,” Brian mumbled.

Garret gave his roommate’s shoulders a friendly shake. “Neither do I, Bri. If you figure out which one is worse, tell me, and we’ll do the other one.”

“Fuck you,” Brian said, but this time he couldn’t help laughing. Garret always made him laugh when he didn’t want to.

“Well, seriously, man. Michelle James? You think Derry isn’t feeling the burn over that?” Garret asked, giving him a friendly shove.

“Derry’s the one that’s always harping about not being anyone’s property. She didn’t have a problem rotating between our beds, nor among quite a few others when we didn’t see her for weeks at a time,” Brian said, miserable again.

“Shit is burning her up, man,” Garret said. “She maybe don’t show it around you, but I think secretly she has this fantasy that we’d both always be here for her to fall back on.”

“Dude, that’s cold as ice.”

“Is it? We’ve always been here for her to come back to. Remember Rob Tukel? Jody Chambers? Marlin What’s-his-face with the big nose and the giant horse-cock? She slips between my sheets as easily as she does yours. We’ve let her do it because she’s a fantastic fuck, and because she’s insanely smart, both street and book, and because we’re in love with her. But it’s too late for that.”