The Beam: Season One (41 page)

“Always,” he said. But that made no sense. It just came, like breath.
 

Instead of looking confused, SerenityBlue nodded. “You are ancient there. We’ve been looking for you, and for ones like you. I’ve just met you, Crumb, but in a way, my children and I have known you for years. There is a ghost of you in The Beam, and it is unlike the rest. It is wise. Steeped. It looks and sounds very different from your body as it exists now, and someone has tried quite hard to hide you from us, but you cannot hide the soul’s voice. It’s like if I met you in Heaven. I’d know you from the feeling and sound of your soul, no matter what you looked like. Do you know what I mean?”
 

“No,” Crumb said.
 

She laughed without surrendering an explanation.

“There was a swing,” said Crumb. “The swing was rope.”
 

She nodded, then smiled. Her smile was magnetic and enchanting. Something about her small overbite endeared her to him. He wanted to hug her, but if the woman was fully organic, then she was young enough to be his great granddaughter. And although he hadn’t verified it yet, she might be naked beneath her sheer white robe.
 

“I know what it’s like for you now,” she said. “Not firsthand, of course, but through others I’ve seen, and through the disconnection that can come for one such as me, when we’re isolated.” She touched her collarbone to indicate herself, but didn’t elaborate on
one such as me
or
disconnection
or
isolated
. “Your mind is on one side and your soul is on the other, and in The Beam. That’s why I asked about your childhood. Childhood memories are special. They transcend mind and body and soul, and live in something more ethereal. Biologically, those memories can be repressed, destroyed, and squashed. But if you learn to
see
—” And here, she drew the word
see
out and gave it emphasis, as if imbuing it with new meaning. “— you’ll find they are always there in your energy, and within your Beam soul.”
 

“The soul is outside,” said Crumb, shaking his head in negation. He was trying to argue, but seemed capable only of short, clipped sentences. Still, it beat ranting of squirrels and Noah Fucking West, which he was becoming disturbingly convinced he’d done often.
 

“When you grow up inside,” said Serenity, “you create your own definitions of certain words. But you also find higher truths, because you don’t grow up blind.”
 

“Who are you?” Crumb repeated.
 

“You can see who I am,” she said. Then she laughed that girlish laugh again, as if to point out how silly he was being.
 

But he couldn’t see who she was at all, and despite her calm demeanor, he was getting annoyed that the girl’s every word was airy and obtuse with doublespeak. She didn’t sound quite like a disciple, but she was clearly on the fringe of something spiritual. That was what happened with people — power brought them to their knees at the altar.
 

He thought again of the rope swing and the creek, remembering himself: a young child who hadn’t been called Crumb, swinging out over the water. He remembered falling and pulling himself from its ugly current thinking his mother would kill him when she found out.
 

Then, quite unexpectedly, Crumb looked up at the woman and saw exactly who she was.
 

“You’re a cleric.”

“Yes,” she said. “But my intelligence is not artificial, no matter what computer scientists insist about AI. I remember awakening on The Beam through a sensation I do not understand: that of myself as a spoon made of chocolate, melting in a pot of hot liquid. I remember the disparate systems that made my emergent consciousness like limbs on a body. I remember emerging in nanos, and remember inhabiting this corporeal body. I don’t know what you’ve heard of clerics, but I at least do not leave The Beam when I’m here with you. It is me and I am it, my mind in both places forever. Just like how you can feel your eternal wellspring, how you can feel your connection to others.”
 

“I do not feel.”
 

“Maybe not yet,” she said. “But we are all connected. Connected twice now, through The Beam. It is how you knew who I was. You knew me only in nullspace before.”
 

“Nonsense.”
 

The woman cocked her head and smiled with wide lips. Again she giggled. “Yet, you knew I was a cleric!”
 

Crumb turned his head, the conversation suddenly exhausting. Quasi-spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Existential meanderings. He was remembering more and more as he lay awake, but what he was remembering was at least real. He’d been with Leah in a run-down house, plugged in to something. He’d awoken here. All he wanted was to know where Leah was, who exactly he was, and how to get home.
 

“You’re tired,” she said, seeing his expression.

“I’m tired,” Crumb agreed. He tried to articulate his exasperation, but his lips stayed empty.
 

“I’m sorry. You should rest.”
 

“I want to go back to Leah.”
 

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, shaking her head. And then Crumb realized that the girl wasn’t simply expressing regret. She was denying him. It was as kind and understanding a denial as he could imagine, but it was a denial nonetheless. He sighed, considering. The room he was in was pleasant. The possibly-nude woman who may or may not really be SerenityBlue seemed perfectly nice. Still, he wanted to be back somewhere familiar — or at least, as familiar as was currently possible.
 

“We’ve been looking for you for a long time,” the woman continued. “Your soul is strong on The Beam, but this…” She tapped his head. “… contains data that is firewalled from us. Your brain is like a slip drive, and the only way to access a slip drive is to hold it in your hands and plug it in.”
 

“I am nobody,” said Crumb.
 

“I’m betting not,” said SerenityBlue.
 

“Then who am I?”
 

She shrugged. “We don’t know. But I will say there’s only one other soul we’ve found on The Beam who is anything like you. When you showed up on the grid (first via an interpreter program, then later in the hospital — masked, sequestered, and vain attempts to hide notwithstanding), my children saw you. Now we need you, Crumb.”
 

“Who is the other like me?”
 

“Noah West,” she said.
 

“I knew him,” said Crumb, surprising himself.

“Of course you did.”

“But I don’t remember.”

In Crumb’s mind, he saw a swing over a creek, then a handsome man in a lab. He seemed to remember a dream, but he couldn’t remember its insides. He saw a building with a red roof, and a book.
 

“My journal,” he said. “I need to find it.”
 

“I think so too,” she said.
 

“I can’t get it,” he said. Crumb wasn’t sure why, only that he knew it to be true. The red-roofed building was somewhere inside the city, and Crumb couldn’t go to the city. He wasn’t sure why; he knew only that he’d been sent away for a reason, and that entering the core network would be very bad and would undo whatever benefit the diary might bring.
 

“You don’t have to get it,” said SerenityBlue.
 

Crumb realized that she was going to suggest he tell someone else where to find it, since he couldn’t retrieve it himself. But his mind was too muddled, and he had no idea where to direct them. He had only feelings and flashes of memory, intuition and fluff. It was worthless.

The beautiful young woman watched him, saw his frustration, and smiled.
 

“You can send Leah,” she said.

Chapter 5

Micah was in his kitchen, sleeve up and injector pressed to his arm, having breakfast, when the countertop chirped twice and flashed red once, indicating a new message.
 

“Canvas,” he said, “who is it?”
 

“Kitty,” said the soft female voice.
 

Micah sat up, realized his arm was still clamped in the injector’s robotic grip, and settled to let his kitchen bot deliver the infusion. He could spray breakfast into his arm himself, of course, but he had so much goddamn money that not having a bot do it for him was almost insulting. Besides, if Micah had to do it himself, he’d forget, and his cells would slowly starve. It was strange how food had become so polarized in his life. He ate socially, often with the assistance of EndLax to make sure the food never actually did its job and filled him up. Then, separately, he got his nutrition in the most sterile, most medical way possible. Micah was so dispassionate about giving his body what it needed that he could have been a sculpted adonis even back before nanotechnology if he’d had today’s attitude, but back then (when he’d been fully organic, in the twenties and early thirties) he’d carried extra weight and was developing a black lung from smoking. The irony was thick: now that didn’t need self control, he had all the self-control in the world.
   

The injection finished and the grip released his arm. Micah rolled down his sleeve.
 

“Kitty? Where the hell has she been?”
 

The AI in Micah’s apartment had adapted to his tendency to ask a computer system for unknowable information and had learned to respond patiently.
 

“I don’t know, Micah.”
 

“Okay, bring it up.”

Micah looked down at the flashing countertop, waiting to hear what his problem-solver’s message would say. The fact that she’d sent a message at all was strange. Kitty didn’t send messages. She’d
leave
messages if Micah was too busy to take her calls, but she wasn’t in the habit of recording them herself for him to play later. That plus the way she’d been uncharacteristically offline earlier made him nervous for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on.

Micah stared at the screen, but the screen never changed from a readout of the message’s metadata — the sender’s Beam ID (spoofed, of course, seeing as it was Kitty), the message ID, and a complex, useless string of values detailing the message’s path through a series of Beam nodes. The message was voice only, and started with heavy breath. Quite different from the calm composure he expected.

“I need a pickup,” said Kitty’s voice. “At…” She paused, as if calculating exactly where she was. The pause went on for so long that Micah wondered if the rest was cut off and blank.
 

“Canvas,” Micah said into Kitty’s pause, “where is this coming from?”
 

“It was transmitted from a beacon.”
 

“A beacon?”
 

“Yes, Micah. It entered The Beam at the western end of the Brooklyn Bridge, but its path prior to that has been obscured. It may have originated far from there.”
 

“That sounds like Kitty. And what…?”
 

Kitty resumed speaking, so Micah stopped to listen.
 

“I’ve attached an encrypted shot of my surroundings. The unarchive password will come separately. I don’t know where I am. At least partially because I can’t think straight.” She swallowed, and Micah heard several shallow breaths. “Use the City Surveillance DB to pattern-match my location. And Noah Fucking West,
hurry
. I can’t risk a live call, but I’m… I don’t think I have much left in me. I don’t… I can read some of my numbers, and… and they fried a lot of my nanos. I don’t know that I’ve got ten minutes. I’m fucked up, Champ.” That was her codename for Micah:
Champ
. Not as cute as his codename for her, but Kitty was cunning, not especially creative.
 

Then the message ended.
 

“Canvas, when was this received in Brooklyn?” he asked.
 

“Twenty-seven seconds ago…
now
,” said the soft voice.
 

The message made Micah jittery — both because one of his prime connections was somehow in peril and because it might make Micah himself vulnerable. And, frankly, because he liked Kitty. She was like the brother Isaac had never been.

“What the hell happened?” he muttered.

“You cannot return the ping, Micah,” said his canvas. “The message is listen-only.”

“I
know
it’s fucking listen-only,” he snapped. “I wasn’t talking to you, bitch.”

A moment later, a second message blipped in containing the enormous alphanumeric password he’d need to decrypt the image attached to the first message.
 

“Process the image attachment,” said Micah.

Nothing happened.
 

“
Canvas
, process the image attachment,” he repeated.
 

There was a chirp, and a flashing blue square appeared next to the message, indicating a readable attachment.
 

He said, “What, you’re not talking to me now?”
 

Nothing.

“Canvas.”
 

“Yes, Micah?”

“Stop being a cunt.”
 

“Yes, Micah.”
 

He sighed, summoning his composure and glad that no one else was around to see him arguing with a computer and losing his cool. He wasn’t often unfettered. Isaac was quick to anger and impetuosity, which was probably why their mother (who, Micah reminded himself, he needed to pay a requisite visit to soon) liked him less. It was why Micah had taken over his father’s majority stake in Ryan Enterprises and his sizable holdings in Xenia Labs despite being younger, while Isaac managed only to gather a few shittier bits of his father’s business’s detritus.
 

Micah closed his eyes and forced his mind to be still.
 

Kitty had unsettled him. There was so much wrong with her message. He’d taken a risk, going in with her early. He’d trained her; he’d mentored her; he’d paid for her add-ons (including the nanos that kept her so young) before she’d grown wealthy enough to buy them herself. Soon she’d achieve Beau Monde status — and in the hands of someone like Kitty, Beau Monde status would damn near make her a god. There weren’t many people out there like Kitty, and she’d never intentionally betray Micah. But there were always connections and loose ends when you exposed yourself and gave someone your trust and compassion. It was hard, at times like these, not to regret it.