Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (45 page)

“H
igh tide in five minutes, sir.” The assistant priest walks to the side of Miyazawa and lays her hand in his shoulder.

“Then let us drop down.” He slips an arm out of its sleeve. Stripping a green square from a nearby gelatinous mass, he places it against his inner bicep and closes his eyes to the rush of relaxation that flows up his spine like a slow glacier of blue ice.

The white heli-transport hovers over the ocean and floats down in a slow kiss with its mirror image in the water. The glass door slides open two inches beyond Miyazawa’s nose. He takes a step out of the transport, and his wooden
geta
sandals press down onto the water.

Shouts of adulation rise from 300,000 Shinto acolytes waiting in anxious expectation on the shore.

Taking another step, both sandals are now firmly on the crystal walkway that rises up from the seabed a millimeter below the wet surface with each of his steps and falls away as he moves to the shore. He pauses directly under the floating torii gate and touches a fingertip to the freshly painted vermillion.

Two chords sing out in a harmonic double helix that weaves its way to a crescendo. As it vibrates inside his skull, the tension between his frontal cortex and his jaw becomes a source of pleasure.

Miyazawa steps through the torii gate. The 300,000 Shinto followers drop to their knees on the shore and press their foreheads to the ground. A sea of white-robed believers flow down from the green hills, across the beach to the blue water on which he walks.

He glides over the water on a straight line that takes him to a path of beaten gold cutting through the crowd and up the beach to the shrine entrance. Pausing at the bottom of marble steps, he reaches out and pulls sharply on a rope dangling in front of his eyes. A single, clear tone rings from the bell above. As if on cue, the robed believers raise their heads, look in his direction and bow. The sea of white robes is transformed to a sea of black hair.

Miyazawa ascends to the top of the steps and turns to face the crowd. Thousands of voices flow inside his body and come together into one that only he hears.

We are the Kami.

Two bluescreens, each fifty meters across, grow up out of the ground on his left and right. A live image of his face appears on the bluescreens.

It is the signal that something rare is about to happen. He wants to speak. As he opens his mouth, an indistinct sound comes out, as if several people, men and women, are trying to talk at once, each with a mouthful of marbles. There may have been a subtle shift of bones under the thin skin of his face. When it comes to a rest, the sound coalesces into one voice.

“We stand here at a single shrine in my home country. It was here, in a land that is no more than a small island, that the path to Oneness and Harmony was discovered by a few poor rice farmers thousands of years ago. It came to be called
Shinto
, the
Way of the Kami
, the
Way of the Gods
.” Miyazawa reaches into the over-sized sleeve of his robe and takes an object out. He keeps it hidden inside his fist.

“I now speak not only to my own countrymen, but to all people of the world who embrace Shinto. You have brought peace where once there was only death and devastation. Billions are united in the
Way of the Kami
.” He opens his hand to reveal a clear cube on his open palm. On the massive bluescreens flanking him and on identical screens at shrines around the world, all can see the single blue jewel that floats in the cube’s interior. “It is the will of the
Kami
that all of you become One on a deeper level. This Gift is the Way.”

Moving his gaze to the line of people kneeling behind a rope at the bottom of the marble steps, he locks eyes with a young woman, perhaps twenty years of age, and, with an outstretched arm, beckons her forward.

Never taking her eyes off Miyazawa, the young woman leans forward under the rope. Following the priest’s prompts, she ascends the marble steps, mounts the top and stops less than a meter away from his eyes.

“You will be the first of all the believers to receive the Gift.” Miyazawa touches the cube. Its top third slides horizontally to the side. Exposed to the open air, the jewel glows with a blue aura and rises a centimeter on a tiny pedestal. They both inhale the faint smell of Jasmine tea mixed with cedar oil that the jewel gives off. “Close your eyes.”

Miyazawa lifts the implant in his fingers, letting the empty cube fall away. With the other hand, he gently brushes back the young woman’s dark hair and presses the jewel against the skin behind her right ear.

“Now open your eyes.” Miyazawa lifts her fingers up to touch an identical implant he has behind his own ear. He slowly turns her around so she is gazing over the crowd. “What do you see?”

Her face appears on the bluescreen beside Miyazawa. The dark eyes are open and fully dilated. “I’m weightless, swimming in a sea of color. Thousands of structures go on forever above and below, in every direction, like floating islands.”

“Do you know what the floating islands are?”

The young woman leans forward a few centimeters, but keeps her balance. “I can jump to any of them, instantaneously. Some are single buildings. Others look like entire cities. Clouds and oceans. Forests.”

Hundreds of thousands of faces stare up at the bluescreens, mouths open, listening to the dialogue and watching with rapt attention.

“Let’s try something.” The priest rests his hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “What is your favorite Mesh-point?”

The woman’s eyes close. Beneath the lids, the eyeballs move from side to side. “I spend a lot of time watching music holos at CJ247.751.”

“What do you see now?”

“It’s incredible.” Her eyes flutter open and shut like camera lenses. “I’m there, at the Mesh-point, walking through a building, moving up and down floors. I can access all the holos just by . . .” Her jaw drops down. “
Thinking
it.” The woman’s arms fly out to the side, and she brings her hands up to her head. “I can travel the Mesh, go anywhere. In my mind.”

“I will join you.” Miyazawa’s own eyes dilate, and the blue jewel glows behind his ear. “So that all can see what the Gift can do.”

The real-world image on the bluescreens fades. A stylized version of the priest, his avatar, appears against a background of white. It’s not cartoonish, but the lines are too clean, the color too intense, the symmetry too perfect, to be real. He hovers in an ocean of floating structures.

The background blurs, and Miyazawa stands at the base of steps leading up to an open door. He ascends and walks into the interior.

The young woman’s avatar stands in the center of the room, dressed in elaborate robes of blue and white. Multiple spheres of multi-chromatic holos hover around her. She is in front of one, her hand resting on its blue surface.

“Come with me.” Miyazawa approaches from behind. She turns, and he takes her hand. For a half second, the background fades to a blur of static, and then condenses into a Shinto temple courtyard nestled against a steep green mountain with white pearls underfoot. They stand in front of a torii gate made from the trunks and branches of two cherry trees. “Welcome to my shrine. Here I will teach the
Way of the Kami
to the entire world.” He picks up a white pearl from the ground and hands it to her.

As she takes it in her fingertips, audible words play out in the soft voice of the priest.

There is no Many. It is an illusion. There is only One.

At first not comprehending the source of the voice, the woman stares down at the white drop perched on her fingers. She lets it roll off and reaches down to pick up another.

We are all a manifestation of the Kami.

As it becomes clear that the
sound
is coming from the pearls, she drops to the ground and scoops them up by handfuls. A chorus of voices descend around her. Ecstasy rises on her face. Wisdom lies all around her.

“Come.” Miyazawa raises her up. “Let us return and share the Gift with others.”

The avatars on the bluescreen close their eyes and fade from view, replaced by the real life images of Miyazawa and the young woman. He steps forward and walks, hand in hand with the woman, down the steps to ground level and over to the front line of worshipers. The woman returns to her place.

In full view of the bluescreen, Miyazawa steps off the path of pearls, stoops down and brushes aside a thin veneer of dark dirt that covers the ground. His hand comes up with another of the clear cubes encasing the blue jewel. Holding it high for all to see, he hands it to an old man a few feet away.

“The Gift is here for all, under your very feet. I encourage you to freely partake, that we all may be One.”

The sea of black hair turns to white robes as each person bends down and gropes in the dirt below them. There are cries of joy as hundreds of thousands of followers came up with clear cubes and gaze at the prize within.

“Touch the white spot and the Gift will open to you.” Miyazawa surveys the crowd with fatherly love. His eyes glisten with moisture. “Apply the jewel to the skin behind your right ear. Close your eyes. Join us.”

“C
an you feel them coming in?” The implant behind Ryzaard’s ear glows light blue.

“Like a tidal wave.” Kalani leans back in his chair and puts his feet on the crystal table.

The holo in the center shows a view of the Shinto shrine built in the Mesh by Miyazawa. Cherry blossoms rain down upon the priest as he gazes out on a growing throng of worshipers. With each passing second, hundreds more of them materialize and bend down to pick up pearls from the ground.

Jing-wei looks down at her slate. “The Earth United Shinto Alliance is already getting bombarded with thousands of requests from shrines around the world for the Mesh implants.

“By the end of the day today, we’ll have a hundred million implants ready for shipment and delivery.” Jerek turns to Ryzaard. “Shall I order the transport vessels to move ahead of schedule?”

“No need to change our schedule,” Ryzaard says. “Let them wait for a few days. It won’t hurt to allow the demand to build up before we release any more.”

“There may be riots.” Diego Lopez shifts in his chair. “People will congregate at their local shrines and demand that they receive the same
Gift
given to their Japanese counterparts.” He bends forward with hands on the table. “After all, this is the first successful Mesh-brain interface. For the masses, the holy grail of technology has just been introduced.”

Ryzaard’s hands go behind his back, and he assumes the posture of an Oxford don. “All the better. Let them riot. A little blood may be good for the cause. People will want the peace of Shinto even more.” He wanders around the table and stops behind Jing-wei. “Assure Miyazawa that we are fabricating the implants as fast as we can and that his shrines will be supplied with a sufficient amount to satisfy all requests. All in due time.”

“What about limits on Mesh access?” Kalani eyes the growing crowd gathered at Miyazawa’s shrine. “Depending on the level of encryption, highly secure Mesh-points will be invisible or inaccessible to Mesh-travelers, just as they are now.” His hand drops down to the handle of the knife hanging from his belt. “Do we really want to open up the rest of the Mesh to this horde?”

Ryzaard puts a black Djarum between his lips. “Let them have free access to the Mesh. For now.” He lights a match and touches it to the tip of the cigarette. “As long as all of our assets are protected, I see no harm. But keep track of where they go and the most popular Mesh-points. That may be useful information for the future.”

“I assume you would like us to track the identities of all who receive an implant and enter the Mesh.” Diego looks up from his slate. “It’s a fairly straightforward procedure. We can pull the ID numbers off their jax.”

“Do it,” Ryzaard says. “Let me know if any of our enemies venture a foot inside. That would be a most interesting prospect.” He walks around the table and returns to a spot behind his chair. “Any other questions?”

Each of the young people silently shakes their head.

“Good,” Ryzaard says. “Continue on with your projects. With the distribution of the implants, we enter a new phase. One step closer to the goal.”

Elsa Bergman puts her elbows on the table. “And what exactly
is
the goal? I keep forgetting.” She drops her chin into her hands.

“I’m surprised you need to ask.” Ryzaard turns and starts walking to his office across the floor. “The short-term goal is for 99% of the population on the planet to get the implant. As soon as we have achieved that, Paradise will follow.”

“What about the one percent?” Elsa raises her eyebrows and scans the table, as if she is looking for a response from someone other than Ryzaard.

He stops halfway to his office and turns. “No need to worry. When we have achieved penetration of the ninety and nine, the one remaining lost sheep will be easily dealt with.” He turns back and begins walking to his office.

“You mean disposed of?” Elsa’s voice reaches across the open space between them.