Freenet (20 page)

Zen’s face contorted through a series of emotions, from surprise to disgust to a fearful curiosity. His eyes flicked to Roni and back to Gladyz as she settled into the couch with a drunken sigh of contentment. His face bloomed like a rose.

Roni held up a cautionary palm and hooded his eyes in signal to Zen not to panic. “That’s okay. We’ve all had a long day. Zen, come and help me mix drinks for a sec, will you?”

The boy bounded from his seat and followed Roni to the kitchen nook. He pointed back to Gladyz with his thumb. “I’m not comfortable with her.”

“You and me both, kid. Let me have a word with her in private.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No. Hell, no.” That would be all he needed now—the famous Bali boy out wandering the streets with his belly full of tequila sunrise. “Just go to the washroom for a minute. I’ll be quick.” Zen nodded agreement, but his face was etched with confusion.

Roni hunted in his cupboards for a proper wine glass and ambled back to the common room with champagne in a fluted cylinder. “That was quite a show.”

“I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“You and ten thousand other V-net groupies. He’s just a kid.”

“Oh, c’mon, I’m not that old.” She stared at him. “I’m not dead.”

“But he’s from Bali.”

“That’s half the fun, Roni. Don’t you get it?”

“Yeah, yeah, the forbidden fruit. I just think we should show him more respect. We’re working together. We should keep a professional relationship.” He handed forward her glass of champagne, and his fingers trembled, and suddenly there it was out in the open—their awkward history as long-lost lovers. Damn, how did that get out?

Time seemed to warp around them at that moment of interpersonal insight. Everything was plain, the truth was stark, and nothing was ever lost. One intimate occasion from the past had cemented them together across the years—one brief fling kept under the lid of a warming pot on the stove, letting off a little steam now and again, but never coming to a boil.

A tear trickled from her eye as Gladyz hung her head. “They’re suing us, Roni. They’re threatening to shut us down.”

“What?” Roni blinked in shock. “Who?”

“Neurozonics. Today’s show will be our last unless we make a full public apology.”

Holy crap! Roni slumped into the couch beside her. “For what?”

Gladyz sniffed and turned to him. “Defamation.”

“No way!”

“You used the word
nefarious
twice in one segment.”

“I was making conjecture in the middle of a riot, the heat of the moment.”

“It doesn’t matter. Neurozonics is big. They control everything. Turns out they own our station through a subsidiary and have a button on our bandwidth. Do you know what giants do when they find a bug in their kitchen?”

Roni closed his eyes and let his head loll. “Shit.”

Gladyz sighed and took a slug of champagne. “I haven’t got the creds to live like this, Roni. I don’t have a pension.”

“No, I know, don’t worry. We’ll find a way. We always do.”

Gladyz shook her head. “The word came down from Colin Macpherson himself. We’re up against the gods this time.”

“The dead guy?”

“He was uploaded decades ago. He’s not dead—far from it.” She wiped at her cheeks with a sleeve. “He controls his empire from digital space, part of a consortium of eternal intellect. His clones look after the business of his estate.”

“I thought that was urban legend. You can’t believe everything you see in V-space. Most of it is pure machinima.”

“Don’t be a fool, Roni. Colin Macpherson built Cromeus from the ground up. He terraformed the planet and put oxygen in the air. He drew the blueprints for the city of New Jerusalem. Do you think he would hand it off to underlings?”

Roni’s stomach twisted like a serpent. He stood and began pacing the room. How could he fight against the king of the colonies, a ghost in V-space?

Zen poked his head in the room. “Everything okay in here?”

“C’mon in,” Gladyz said with a plastic smile as she smoothed her skirt on her thighs. “I’ll play nice, I promise.”

Zen picked up his tequila sunrise from the kitchen nook and took a seat in a chair by himself a safe distance away. “Any news about Simara?”

Gladyz sipped her sparkling wine and studied him as though considering an apology. Nope, not her style. “The hospital quieted down after Roni pulled the plug on the flash mob. You can visit her tomorrow and spend the day. Do you celebrate Heritage on Bali?”

“No, we worship Kiva, god of the universe.”

“Oh, right, I read about that. Does he communicate?”

“He hears our prayers and sends rain in season.”

“Ahh, the usual stuff.”

“I know he probably has many names on other worlds and back on Earth, but there’s only one God.” He brandished a bold face that seemed defensive, a bit insecure in a strange place.

“I believe you,” Gladyz said. “That’s a wonderful sentiment.”

“Do you worship on Heritage? Or meditate?”

“Me? No. I try to catch up on my sleep. The
Daily Buzz
really saps my energy. I guess I’m not very religious.”

Roni stopped his pacing in the centre of the room as a sword of light pierced his darkness. “I’ll go see him in person!”

Gladyz squinted at him with a puzzle on her forehead. “Who, God?”

“Colin Macpherson, the owner of Neurozonics. I’ll go off-camera, man to cybersoul, or clone, or whatever—completely off the record. He’ll see me. He has to . . .” Roni paused and struck a pose to put his famous profile in view. “I’m Roni Hendrik from the
Daily Buzz
.”

The headquarters of Neurozonics was located in the outskirts of New Jerusalem near the main nuclear reactor, close to a safe and stable power source. Antimatter energy might be the efficient choice in space where derivatives could be freely dispersed, but traditional fission had the best shelf life in proximity to humans. The Neurozonics building was a squat cinderblock cube covered in beige stucco with white trim around porthole windows. Overtop the entrance, a backlit logo in blue and gold featured a lightning bolt slashing the company name exactly in half, replacing the z and making it a capital
Zonics
just under the
Neuro
. The effect was trendy and futuristic.

Roni stepped off the tram and found the plate-glass doors locked. Inside there was a woman with platinum hair ensconced in a circular desk surrounded by flashing data like the captain at the helm of a flying saucer. He palmed a sensor beside the entrance, and the woman peered over from her work to appraise him. Her silver bangs were cropped along her eyebrows in a pageboy cut, her dark eyes framed with glittery highlights. She rose from her chair with cultured grace as twin glass doors swung inward with welcome. She wore a silver dress cut high at the thigh, her muscular legs sculpted like a bodybuilder’s, her barefoot gait like a lioness.

Roni put his toe in the doorway as she approached. “Hi, I’m—”

“Roni Hendrik,” she said as she clamped his hand with assurance. “I’m Niri. Big fan. Love the show.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“I was so excited to hear you were coming in person for an interview.” Her smile was like a velvet glove. “You must know what all the girls from the gym are saying round town—
anyone
would kill to get on the
Daily Buzz
with the Bali boy.” She lowered her voice in confidence. “They’re supposed to be good with their hands.” Her eyeballs rolled up into her forehead to scan some wirehead data, and blinked back to him with enthusiasm, her painted eyebrows arched like thin crescent moons above her eyes. “Come in and have a seat.”

Niri swivelled with ease on her bare feet and led him toward her desk complex with an elegant sashay. Her stylish mini-dress rose modestly to her throat in a choker collar, but her shoulders and arms were bare, her overdeveloped muscles like braided cords below her bronzed skin. Roni wondered if she might be a robot, cold like moulded plastic.

The circular desk and two office chairs were the only furnishings in the room. The Neurozonics logo featured prominently on one wall with bold silver letters underneath:
Building Better Brains.
Roni followed Niri up one step into her workstation and took a seat. They were surrounded by sixteen active thoughtscreens with images flashing like lightning and text scrolling by at rates too fast for comprehension. Webcam lenses glinted in the corner of each monitor.

“These are the sixteen facets of the eternal consortium,” Niri said.

Roni nodded. Cybersouls in storage. “Only sixteen?”

“These are executive groups, organized according to personality traits. I’m not sure exactly how they work it out.”

“And this is how they communicate with you?”

“It does help. I’m hardwired, of course, but I’m not omnidroid, so I can barely keep up.”

Roni studied the torrent of images on a few screens. He could make no sense of it. “I was hoping to interview someone in the flesh.”

Niri smiled. “I’m the official representative and interface with the material world.”

“What about Colin Macpherson?”

“He has long since transfigured to machine intelligence.”

“Can’t I speak with one of his clones?”

“The Macpherson clones all live in quickened states to stay connected with their progenitor. They’re not readily available. You must appreciate the passage of time in digital reality.” Niri waved a palm at the frenetic thoughtscreens around them. “Life is a million times faster. Minds that drop out of eternity just to speak with us could lose ages from their existence, relatively speaking. Everything in mundane space goes through me.”

“Then you know why I’m here.”

“You’ve been summoned because of slanderous comments made on a public newscast. Neurozonics is very concerned about keeping a good corporate image.”

“Perhaps an apology is in order.”

Niri glanced at a screen to her left. “We’re not convinced it will be heartfelt.”

“All the omnidroids were manufactured right here in this building. Does Neurozonics deny a continuing relationship?”

“Yes. This facility has been closed for many years. Physical reality has been outsourced.”

“I find that hard to believe. Look at you and your impossible physique. You’re obviously being micro-managed by the corporate executive in every detail of fashion.”

Niri smiled. “We’re very much alike, you and I. We’re both paid to play the harlequin onstage. You may have a bigger audience, but mine is just as demanding. I wear silver because it’s company policy.” She spread her palms in feigned helplessness. “We’re supposed to be from the future, so it’s expected.”

“I’m just trying to make a point.”

“I sculpt my body by private choice. I work hard at my strength training, but I try to have some fun with the challenge. I keep to 1,500 calories with vitamin supplements and a drug that makes my muscles exercise while I sleep. I enjoy the discipline.”

Drugs? How did that work? Roni imagined her freakish body twitching like a frog stabbed with electricity. He shook his head to dispel the image. “Sorry. Let’s not make this personal.”

“Neurozonics does not practise a culture of control,” Niri said. “The omnidroids were manufactured for a specific purpose and have been set loose to accomplish their task.”

“Sure. They streamline all the V-net data and tell us what we want before we need it.”

Niri nodded. “No firewalls, no filters. They do that by their nature, but their true value goes far beyond mere predictive social physics. The omnidroids have the built-in capacity to communicate with an advanced celestial consciousness.”

Roni blinked. “What?”

“The highest goal on the digital frontier is to share the human collective mind with another sentient form. That’s the only real hope for progress.”

“You’ve lost me. What other sentient form is out there?”

“Colin Macpherson postulates that an omnidroid hive-mind has spread into space from ancient times to influence the course of cosmic history.”

“Are you talking about connecting to some sort of intergalactic god?”

Niri paused. “Where there’s smoke, there must be fire. The earliest religions arose from dreams and visions. Various prophets accessed a higher consciousness and recorded the first inklings of psychic revelation. Neurozonic brains were designed to maximize that potential in order to make first contact with a universal sentience.”

“No way.” Roni stood and stabbed a finger to challenge the screens before him. “I’m here about the murder of two omnidroid children, Ruis Limkin and Elana Mant. Real people in the real world. You can’t hide behind a smokescreen of superstition. I’ll get the truth out, no matter what. On the
Daily Buzz
or elsewhere. You can’t stop me.”

“Roni, please.” Niri held out her palm. “Colin8 has changed his mind. He’ll see you now. Please sit down. He’ll need a few minutes to prepare.”

Finally, some headway. Roni resumed his seat.

Niri turned to a nearby viewscreen. “These are the flight documents pertaining to the helicopter crash. Look closely here. Do you see the revision notifications?”

Roni peered closer at a segment of machine code. “Revisions?”

“These markers indicate huge gaps in clock time. The original data has been altered, perhaps fake instructions to the pilot or falsified mechanical readings that were later erased. Only an omnidroid could make these changes. No mere human has that zero-day capability. We find the same pattern on the data record of the troopship, as you can see here.” The screen changed to another page of program code. “And also on the flight record left behind on the vessel owned by Randy Ying. I’ve sent all three documents to your studio office. You can have your technicians check their reliability.”

“The omnidroids arranged the accidents? Why would they kill two of their own?”

Niri pressed her lips. “Morality is an anthropological concept, but a superior intelligence might be tempted by efficiency. Natural selection is a ponderous genetic refinery, but why wait for generations of evolutionary history to refine the genome? What better way to cull the herd than a death match with fate? Only the precognitive omnidroids would survive, and their DNA would remain pure for the future.”

“No, that’s diabolical.”

“So we humans would say. Colin8 will see you now.” She stood and led Roni toward a seam in the wall that slid open on proximity. A comfortable light glowed from a change room inside.

“Leave your clothes here for pickup later. Step through the scanner into the germicidal shower and keep your eyes closed until the tone sounds. Then proceed to the irradiation dryer. You’ll find fresh cellulose clothing in the fabricator on the other side.”

“Why the sterilization?”

“It’s been months since Colin8 has had any human contact from outside his white zone. He doesn’t carry the natural immunity to germs and diseases that you and I take for granted.”

The door slid shut between them, and Roni made his way through a gauntlet of cold steam followed by glowing purple heat from overhead driers. A sharp disinfectant tickled his nose. He pulled on fitted cellulose clothing and paper slippers and stepped through the final gate into a spacious hallway.

“Roni Hendrik,” a boy said as he strode forward with an outstretched arm. He wore a navy blue three-piece suit that seemed foppish on his teenage frame—like a child pretending to royalty. “I’m Colin8.”

Roni studied the boy as they shook hands, blond hair sweeping off a large forehead with big ears like butterflies and a prominent chin. “You’re Colin Macpherson?”

“The current custodian, seventh clone of number one.”

“Are you in charge here?”

“We exert a collective will. The elder progenitors have transitioned to digital experience, but I still enjoy the occasional foray into the mundane world. Thanks for visiting.”

“I didn’t have much choice with my show pulled off the air.”

“Yes, you seem to be working with some erroneous assumptions. Niri has set you straight with some of the facts.”

“There’s still the matter of Randy Ying hiding away on Babylon while working on your payroll.”

Colin8 waved backhand in dismissal. “Mr. Ying was hired as a guardian to Simara, and he performed his job admirably for many years before his breakdown. As you can see by the altered data transcripts from his vessel, he was clearly being manipulated by the omnidroids. We’re not going to cancel his pension just because he goes missing for a few days.”

“Why was the first omnidroid working the hard trade route all those years instead of living safely at home in your lab?”

“Evolution is not mimicked by coddling. Simara was sent to us from Earth by Colin7. She was in distress after implant surgery, overwhelmed with raw V-net data, and unable to cope with her experimental wireless installation, her brain scrambled, memories wiped clean by trauma. At first we didn’t know if the child was a danger to herself or others. We didn’t know if she might be hunted because of her psychic powers, so we sheltered her under a caregiver for long winters on Babylon where the V-net signal is sparse. She needed a sanctuary to grow in relative isolation until she learned how to master her potential.”

“A biogen smuggled through the Macpherson Doorway?” Roni’s news-nose pointed suddenly toward a hot byline. “In defiance of the embargo?”

Colin8 affected an impish, cultured charisma of entitlement. “Those laws weren’t in effect at the time, and I doubt there’s any tawdry substance there for a ratings boost on the
Daily Buzz
.”

Roni shrugged. “Depends how we spin it. The poor little orphan girl cast out from paradise, a biogen denied her natural birthright on Earth. The viewers will lap it up like goat’s milk.”

“As you wish. But is that really the best angle for your story? Remember, you’ll only get one chance to tell it. That’s the thing about the news of the day—it has such fleeting substance.” Colin8 turned and began walking at a leisurely pace.

Roni nodded as he followed down the empty hallway. He wondered what other information might be on the serving tray at Neurozonics. He didn’t even know the right questions to ask. “So you deny any involvement in the omnidroid accidents?”

“Of course. Why would we harm our own children and squander several lifetimes of work? We’re only now seeing our cherished dreams come to fruition.”

“Talking to God?”

The young clone smiled. “I’m a scientist, Mr. Hendrik. I prefer facts over faith. My progenitor broke the space-time barrier. That’s my heritage. We built a Doorway across the galaxy and found a new home to expand the human race. We chose the closest blue planet and terraformed it to our liking. But when I look out at the night sky now, I see only squandered opportunity.”

“The universe is a big place. We’ll get there eventually.”

“Indeed, we already have. Progress has left us behind like protozoa trapped in a tidal pool.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Doorway folds the fabric of space-time. That’s the best way to describe it. A place distant in space is pulled close enough for an instantaneous jump through the wormhole. But any Doorway travels through time as well. Our trip to Cromeus, for example, vaults twelve million years into the future in the blink of an eye.”

Roni nodded. “It boggles the mind.”

“Just think how many Doorways have been built in the last twelve million years. It takes a lot of resources, more than we could ever manage from the Cromeus colonies, but Earthlings might manage one every five hundred years on average, wouldn’t you say?”

Roni took a moment to perform the mental math. “Twenty-four thousand Doorways?”

“Conservatively speaking, there must be an empire of twenty-four thousand solar systems by now, and some of those will have spawned Doorways of their own. Some will be far in the future, but, more importantly, some will be far in the past.”