Idempotency (48 page)

I’ve not accomplished a fraction of my goals, and yet I sit staring down the barrel of my failure. Please don’t let this be how it ends!
Sindhu prayed to a God she didn’t believe in.
This cannot be how it ends!

Jay-san’s stomach gurgled; he really needed to hit the can. For hours he’d been clenching back what was bound to be a raucous toilet experience. There were two reasons for this: One, he didn’t want to leave in this time of crisis for SOP; and two, he hated using public restrooms—hated it. That the particular restrooms in question were frequented by slum dwellers who hadn’t seen a shower in years, and the fact that the toilets were baking under a sweltering hot Nevada sun—well, those facts only thickened his antipathy for the situation.

Just for once, why couldn’t Simeon decide to hole up in Canada?
Jay whined internally.

As soon as Sindhu had gone into the church—finally!—he figured it was safe to make a move. Moreover, the appearance of the graviCopters was serendipitous—his bathroom visit would be perfectly timed. And so, when Jay-san finally made the decision to leave, it was understandable that his bowels became overly excited, demanding ever more stridently for freedom. The gurgling was so loud it almost drowned out the hum of the graviCopters.

Jay-san stood up. As he did, he started to say, “Hey everyone—bad timing, but I really need to hit the can—” But when he got to the word
can
his shoelaces caught on his chair, and he came crashing down onto the dusty yurt floor, at the heels of Simeon and Nimbus. Nimbus jumped and twirled around in surprise. Simeon sighed heavily.

“What the hell?” Jay asked in confusion, as he looked down at his shoes. His two shoelaces had been tied together and around the center stand of his chair.

“How long, Jay?” Simeon asked without turning around. He was still staring outside.

“What the hell are you talking about? Is this some kind of joke, Sim? Bad timing for a joke; I’m about to shit my pants.”

“Nice. Funny. It’s a joke all right, you’re the punch line.” Sim chuckled, but his bass-filled laugh lacked the typical optimistic underpinnings. It sounded desperate—sad, even. He turned around. Everyone in the yurt was now standing and staring at Jay in bewilderment. Kristina was holding onto both Chicklet and Mitlee’s shoulders. Nimbus remained next to Simeon.

“Don’t play coy, man,” Simeon continued. “I know you’re working with NRS. I’d had my doubts for a while now, ever since the Seattle incident. Grep doesn’t make a mistake like that in a million years.”

Everyone in the yurt froze as the gravity of the conversation began to sink in. Mitlee gasped. Nimbus let out a quiet, “Oh no, Jay, no.”

Grepman’s holoVid squinted as if in deep thought, an expression that did not go unnoticed by Jay. He thought back to that day at Carkeek Park in Seattle almost a year ago, when they first met Dylan. An errant software release had given away their location. At the time, everyone had expressed shock at Grepman’s carelessness, but Jay’s shock had been feigned. In fact, he had snuck onto Grep’s box and released the code— Grep’s only mistake that day had been trusting Jay-san with his own terminal.

Jay’s thoughts returned to the present and he watched the wheels spin within Grep’s head. The man’s face contorted, his squint twisted into confusion then contorted into anger. Jay returned his friend’s stare with a smile and a shrug.

“I became convinced a few weeks ago. No one hacks into NRS security without a stolen encryptChip of some kind. You aren’t that smart. No one’s that smart. What amazes me is how dumb you must think I am.”

Jay began to roll over and untie his shoelaces. Simeon walked a few paces and kicked him hard in the stomach. A foul stench immediately erupted into the air as Jay gasped for air and rolled into a fetal position.

“Oh, for the love of—”

Jay’s head popped up, venom showing on his face. He yelled, “Fuck you, Simeon!” His voice softened, “You’re right—you
are
stupid. Even with your suspicions you still gave up Sindhu and Dylan, and within minutes you’ll be property of NRS for immediate extradition to a corp tribunal—if they don’t outright decide to kill you, which they could easily do since you’re all kinds of off-the-grid anyways.”

Simeon yelled to the kids, “Hand me that rope.” They both grabbed the rope without hesitation and tossed it back to him. “Thanks. Now start gathering our most important tech into our emergency packs. We’re going to have to leave soon.” The kids scurried away.

Simeon knelt down and began to tie Jay up. Tightly. His ponytailed blond hair fell in front of him, and he gently flung it over his shoulder with his right hand. After securing his hands, Simeon grabbed Jay’s chin, preparing to bottle up his typically quiet mouth.

The flames on Sim’s arm flickered softer now, and he asked, “Why, Jay? Why did you do it?”

Jay-san cracked a smile. “Come on, Sim, you know why. I heard you talking to Nimbus a few minutes ago—even you are starting to wonder why we’re still trying. Why are we? It’s been decades and nothing has changed! It’s hopeless. We haven’t made a damn bit of difference. I’m tired of it all. Tired of your self-righteous bullshit. Tired of shitting my pants while living in the fucking asshole slums of America. We’re all going to live forever—why in hell would I
want
to live like this forever?”

“Why not just leave? Why stab us in the back?”

Jay began to cackle. “Stupid question, you dumb old man. Why does anyone do anything?” Jay-san paused for effect, but Simeon didn’t give him the satisfaction; he simply tied his ankles as tight as possible. With a pained wince, Jay-san continued: “Money. And a filthy amount of it at that. I’ve wasted so many years with you. Following your stupid orders for a pittance of what I could have made in the corp market. I could have been rich by now. I’m going to live forever, and live rich forever. I’m making up for lost fucking time!”

At that, Simeon gagged Jay, wrapping a rope behind his head, adding, “Well, I hope your money goes a long way after I’ve slandered you across the darkNets. I have more friends than you know. You’ll never work again. And rest assured, I’m anything but stupid. You’ve done everything I asked, even when you didn’t know it.”

“Simeon! Come look at this!” Grepman’s holoVid had been replaced by his real body. As soon as Grepman had put the puzzle pieces together of Jay’s betrayal, he had logged out of the Titus virt, groggily lifted himself from his recumbent position on the couch, and sat down in front of Jay-san’s dusty workstation. As Simeon had been talking to Jay, Grep had been madly waving his arms, seeking clues—anything—to help Sindhu.

Simeon stood and glanced over Grep’s head.

“What’d you find, Grep?”

“Jay claimed he hacked group rights, but needed user-level permissions to get to this resource, the resource where Sindhu is.” Grepman pointed to a map that showed the room that Sindhu entered. “Obviously NRS allowed him to do this.
Him
, singular, not a group. In other words, if we know Jay’s private encryptOctId—” Grepman shot Jay a dirty look “—then we can access anything he could access. If we can hack his eyes, we can get his encryptOcID.”

Jay tried to speak up, but was only able to mumble inscrutably through the rope lodged in his mouth.

Simeon’s optimistic chuckle returned. “What Jay’s no doubt trying to say right now is that he tried to change his encryptOcID about twenty minutes ago, right around the time Sindhu entered the church.” He turned around and glared at Jay, who was eerily quiet for the first time in several minutes. “So it’s a good thing I’ve been filtering his network traffic for weeks. The new ID never got sent. The old ID, which I happen to have, is still functional. See, Jay, you’ve been more helpful than you realized. Hell, half of your messages from NRS over the past few weeks were from me.”

“How—when—did you get his encryptOcID?” Nimbus asked.

“I drank him under the table a few months ago. He passed out, I hacked his ocImps. Easy-peasy. I’ve already sent it to you, Grep.” Simeon glared again at Jay-san and let out a few deep
uh-huh
s.

“Got it . . . accessing resource r_TK_1537 with Sudo and Jay’s ID . . .” Grepman’s eyes widened. “It worked! Look here—there are Sindhu and Dylan!” Grepman pointed to the holographic map, which showed two dots within the confines of the large room that now displayed as a hollow cross. Several other dots encircled them. Grepman began frantically waving his hands and typing new commands, but nothing happened. “I can’t get a visual. It seems that this is still a dark area; no cameras of any kind. Damn it. Look at the other people. They’ve been caught—two androids—” more hand-waving “—COO Korak Searle, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kya Okafor, and NRS CEO . . . Edward Coglin.” Grepman paused, then finished his thought: “Coglin . . . oh no, are we too late?”

Jay-san chuckled and Simeon turned around and kicked him in the ass. He immediately regretted that move, as a new wave of odor enveloped the hot yurt.

“These days,
too late
isn’t possible.” The more grim the situation got, the more positive Simeon seemed to become. “Anything else you have access to? There’s got to be something else, Grep.”

“There are some executable files indexed against the resource—the room. I think these might be holoSims: simulations that can be enacted on the entire resource. Probably a simulation that takes place inside the entire room. We could fire one of those off, but we’re completely running blind here, I have no idea what these even do.”

“This room has to be a church, right?” Simeon put his fiery arm to his temples and looked at Nimbus questioningly. She had moved several paces away, and was going back and forth from looking at Simeon to peering outside of the yurt, keeping watch. She shrugged back at him. Kristina and the kids had sat back down on the couch, keeping busy by pensively piling various important items into four backpacks.

“It looks like a church,” Grepman agreed, “and that would certainly make sense. Maybe these are simulations of famous sermons? I doubt running one of these can hurt, but I don’t see how it can help either. Damn it.” Grepman hesitated, then became suddenly resolute. “I say we try one.” He looked back up at Simeon, worried that he had overstepped a boundary by offering up a decision that was Simeon’s to make.

“Nice. Do it. I agree.”

“Which one?” Grep asked, scanning a list of cryptic filenames that all began with the prefix SIM.

Simeon shook his head slowly as he scanned the list. He pointed, then said, “This one; execute SIM_TK_1537_SMP.”

“Why that one?”

“Cause it starts with my name.”

Grepman looked up at him. “Uh, don’t they all start with your name?”

“Oh, just do it already.”

“Okay, you’re the boss.”

With a few waves of Grepman’s hand, a random simulation came to life inside of a large room that seemed to resemble a church, thousands of kilometers away.

Sindhu had considered trying to flee the moment Reverend Coglin had shot the doctor, but instead she decided to utilize a talent she had only recently employed: patience. She would get her chance to flee or to fight; it simply had yet to arrive. When Coglin had pulled the trigger on his handgun to shoot the doctor, he’d handled the recoil with ease; she noted his talent with the ancient weapon, and she didn’t want to challenge him . . . yet. She would wait for her chance.

Now, however, as the old man sitting across the aisle from her had raised his gun toward her face, she cursed herself and her foolish attempt at maturity. Forget patience, she had thought.
I should have made a move when I’d had any chance at all!

Everything she had worked for—the recent revelations she had uncovered about the Titus facility, her groundbreaking work with SOP in the past year, not to mention an entire lifetime’s struggle to obtain a position of influence from relative nothingness—all of it was now on the verge of being for nothing. Her impact on the world would be no more than a dying leaf on a coarse sidewalk during a cool fall day, fluttering among the other dead leaves, only to be crumpled under humanity’s unknowing feet.

And suddenly, her fate changed. Coglin’s image was instantly replaced by that of dozens of men standing in flowing robes. An echoing rustle of clothes and hushed voices bounced cautiously off the walls of the ancient cathedral. Sindhu’s eyes darted around the hall, and she saw hundreds of baroque-fashioned audience members, musicians, choir participants, priests, and church workers all at once appearing to fill the awesome cathedral. The holographic images were everywhere. They had arrived within a moment’s time and had suddenly occluded Coglin’s vision. Momentarily confused, he bounded up from his seat and looked wildly in several directions.

Sindhu acted. As a holographic image of a man in flowing blue robes, wearing a substantial wig, passed by her, she kicked her legs against the floor, gritted her teeth from the pain in her shot foot, and thrust herself over the back of the pew. She passed through a seated holograph of a large woman wearing an ornate, cream-colored dress, the hem of which seemed to flower endlessly. Sindhu heard the crack of Coglin’s gun, and then a bullet hit the back of the pew she had just leaped over. Coglin ranted, an unchecked animosity rising from his smoky lungs, but Sindhu couldn’t understand a word he was saying. She was too busy crawling under the pews and over the hassocks—the padded cushions used for kneeling during prayer—each time saying a small prayer to her newfound God that she might still make it out of this place alive.

Risking a glance down the aisle, Sindhu noticed the shiny shoes of the androids. As she slinked back under a pew, the holographic audience’s muffled voices were suddenly replaced by an explosion of music so beautiful, so passionate, so transcendent, that Sindhu wondered for the first time in her life whether God might actually exist. How else could one explain music so heavenly?

The strings of the violins rose, darkening the melody—portending the musical and lyrical struggle that was about to begin. Behind it, the heartbeat of a cymbal crash gave life to the music. Flutes entered, providing a quick thought of hope, only to be parried back by even more strings, violas and cellos joining the mix. The flutes made a final, repetitive stand, but were quickly conquered by a powerful choir of alternating sopranos and tenors—an emotional pain obvious in both their voices and their faces. And yet, moments later, the repetitive cadence was back, and with it, the faint glimmer of hope.