The Unincorporated Woman (51 page)

“First of all,” Sandra huffed, flopping down into the chair opposite Sebastian, “I very much doubt God would need an alarm clock. After all, where does a guy who’s supposedly everywhere really have to be?”

“Point well taken.”

“Please tell me you didn’t just disrupt the best nap I’ve had in years to lecture me about my auditory idiosyncrasies.”

“Sadly, no.”

“Spill it, Sebastian.”

“A large UHF fleet has broken from the orbit of Mars and is heading for the Belt. It does not appear to be joining Trang.”

Sandra’s posture stiffened. “Who’s leading it?”

“It appears to be Admiral Abhay Gupta.”

“Appears?”

“Based on the information we have—with very little margin of error—it’s him. However, with humans, one can never tell.”

The President smiled acerbically. “Where’s he heading?”

“We can’t be certain, but we suspect Jupiter.”

Sandra’s fledgling smile bloomed into a full grin. “Damn, she’s good.”

“The fleet admiral is an amazingly gifted military leader.”

“What about the rest, Sebastian?” There was real trepidation in Sandra’s voice. “So many things have to go right.”

“We’ve been over this, Madam President. We’re losing this war and no longer have the option of playing it safe.”

“Easy for you to say, Sebastian. Justin didn’t leave the job of humanity’s survival in your hands. I can’t fail.”

Sebastian’s brow shot up. “And you think
I
can? Every avatar left worth saving is depending on me.”

Sandra nodded apologetically. “Right. Sorry, friend. I just got all myopic on you.”

“We’re all under a great deal of stress, Madam President, but what I’d really like to know is, are you going to continue feeling sorry for yourself?”

“No,” challenged Sandra, “what you’d
really
like to know is if I’m capable of doing my job.”

Sebastian’s deep-set hazel eyes remained fixed and unresponsive. A moment later, he twitched a smile. “Touché.”

“Not even ten seconds of self-pity?” pleaded Sandra, pushing her bottom lip forward petulantly.

“Sure, when the war’s over.”

“In that case,” commanded Sandra, springing up from the couch, “get me Admiral Sinclair. We have a ship to visit.”

Triangle Office

Marilynn and Dante were deeply engaged in conversation when Sandra burst through the door. They looked up on her entrance but with the flick of her wrist, she bade them continue.

“I’m just saying that your definition of a fighting unit, while noble, is illogical.”

“Logic has nothing to do with it,” groused Marilynn.

“Children,” Sandra admonished from behind the desk.

Marilynn turned to face the President. “He wants to add nine hundred more avatars per human.”

“The initial plan,” protested Dante, “was to use Kirk’s unwitting couriers to infiltrate the UHF Neuro. In that scenario, we could hide only one hundred inert avatars in what we assessed to be a typical courier’s limited luggage. But if Admiral Hassan comes on board, we’ll have the computing power of the AWS
Spartacus,
which makes it possible for us to insert even larger numbers—”

“—of
un
trained,
un
organized, and
in
experienced symbiotic combatants!” railed Marilynn.

Dante raised his left brow and spoke accusingly. “We’ve been fighting this war for quite some time, Commodore, and I would never put an inexperienced soldier into a situation I didn’t think he or she could handle.”

“They’re called teams for a reason,” bellowed Marilynn in exasperation. “And we have one hundred of them, all highly trained, all able to finish each others’ sentences—both human and avatar. I refuse to mess with that, no matter how many more of your buddies you think you can cram onto a pinhead.”

“An interesting analogy, Commodore, but an ad hominem attack if ever there was one. While I’ll admit that the symbiotic avatars have grown quite close to their backdoor commandos—”

“For the love of Justin,” raged Marilynn, rolling her eyes, “will you pa-lease stop calling them that? They’re Neuro Insertion Tactical Engagement Specialists. We came up with that name together,
remember
?” scolded Marilynn for what was obviously the thousandth time.

“Indeed,” countered Dante with all the innocence of an angel pleading his case, “I am rather fond of the use of NITES as an acronym, but that shouldn’t take away from what seems a perfectly reasonable nickname.”

Sandra laughed out loud. “Do you two always bicker like this?”

“And to think,” fumed Marilynn, uncharacteristically ignoring Sandra, “I was worried that you were a fantasy of mine gone out of control. You’re way too smug and annoying to be anything
but
reality.”

“Of course I’m real, Commodore.”

“In which case, reality sucks.”

“You’re real too, Commodore,” rejoined Dante.

“Children,” interrupted Sandra, “can we please move on to more important issues?”

The room grew quiet as both Marilynn and Dante eyed each other warily. “Have you noticed, Commodore,” asked Dante in a clinical tone, “how the President always assumes that what
she
wants to talk about is important?”

“Yes,” agreed Marilynn heartily, dropping her annoyance and mimicking Dante’s tone exactly. “I think the power has finally gone to her head. Come to think of it, why don’t
you
act like that?”

“Because I don’t actually
have
a head, merely the perception of one.”

“Are you two done?” implored Sandra.

Her answer arrived by way of muted smiles.

“Commodore,” informed Sandra, “if I can get Omad on board with the plan, then you and your backdo…”—on Marilynn’s dour look, Sandra corrected herself—“NITES as presently numbered will leave in approximately eleven hours. Sorry, Dante, but Marilynn’s reasoning is sound—pinhead comment notwithstanding.”

Marilynn grinned, shooting Dante a triumphant look.

“Don’t let it go to your
real
head, Commodore,” warned the avatar.

“Don’t worry, Dante. I will.”

“Madam President,” stated Dante, “with this news, I must now go and make final arrangements—” Dante shot Marilynn one last accusing look. “—there are ninety thousand avatars who are about to be
very
disappointed.”

Marilynn opened her mouth to argue, but in a flash her Neuro partner was gone.

Sandra activated a security field and came around her desk to sit where Dante had sat only moments before. The seat was cold to the touch. Sandra wasn’t sure why, but that little bit of tactile information always disturbed her. “Are we alone?”

“Let me check,” offered Marilynn, placing two fingers from each hand to her temples. Seconds later, she was instantly in the Neuro.

The old VR system used a brain–computer interface comprising an electroencephalography scalp band that could read neurofeedback and provide 3D visualization of brain activity. That band, combined with noninvasive neuroelectric monitoring and powerful software, created the first truly effective VR environments. The system had been so spectacularly successful that, much like the printed book, the VR rig’s basic architecture had changed little from its initial inception. And any advancement that might have occurred was quickly put to rest by the implosion of society during the Grand Collapse and the Virtual Reality Dictates that followed in the cataclysm’s deadly wake. The avatars had been only too glad to keep humanity’s interest in furthering VR in check, lest their secret be discovered. However, with the new paradigm of human–avatar relations, all bets were off and the avatars had pointed the way toward a more efficient VR mechanism: whole-body installation, as first proposed by Robert Freitas in the first volume of his seminal work,
Nanomedicine.

The key issue for enabling full-immersion reality had been in obtaining the necessary bandwidth inside the body. At the time of the Grand Collapse, that technology was not yet available. It was now. With a mature nanotech society, full-immersion reality was made manifest and Marilynn had been humanity’s first-ever VR-naut. Neuron-monitoring chemical sensors had been placed in her brain that could capture relevant chemical events occurring within a 5-millisecond time window, ensuring instantaneous—or close enough therein—brain-state monitoring. The temple touch points were a simple matter of creating a DNA recognition sensor combined with a touch pattern that acted as a key to activate the internal VR.

In this way, Marilynn and the NITES had, out of necessity, achieved the unthinkable—their own bodies were now cybernetic VR rigs.

Because Marilynn was and always would be an addict, her initial foray into such seamless VR was far more terrifying than it was exhilarating. But she quickly got over both emotions. Years of experience controlling her impulses coupled with the realization that millions of souls, both avatar and human, now depended on her, made the task less daunting than she’d initially imagined.

Marilynn poked around the small space that the confinement field had made of the Neuro in the Triangle Office and found neither avatars nor programs set to eavesdrop. Then for good measure, she set her mind to look through the equipment in the office and found it clear. The first time she’d done that, she thought she would have a breakdown. Sending her mind and soul into and out of all the machines that make up daily life was like losing yourself in a maze a million miles long. But now she could do such things without even thinking about it. Marilynn removed her fingers from the side of her head and returned to human reality.

“We’re alone, Madam President.”

“Damn, I’d love to have one of those.”

“We’ve been over this. If I get caught, I’m just a relapsed VR addict with some strange new technology. If you get caught, we’re screwed.”

“I didn’t say I was going to get one, Marilynn, I just said I wanted one.” Then under her breath she muttered, “I’m just the one who helped design the damn thing, I should at least get a chance to play wit…”

“If you’re done ranting,” interjected Marilynn, “there’s something else I have tell you.”

Sandra’s ears perked up. Marilynn’s debriefings of her forays into the avatar world were always done in utmost secrecy, but most of the time, the avatars’ day-to-day lives were strikingly similar to those of their human progenitors—filled with boring and mundane tasks. It was generally the technical aspects of their society that most fascinated Sandra, and her debriefings with Marilynn, though often interesting, had become somewhat rote of late.

“Yes,” invited Sandra.

“I think I know who killed Justin Cord.”

*   *   *

“Start at the beginning. It’s critical that you leave nothing out.”

Marilynn nodded. “It occurred to me if I were going to be able to move about undetected in the UHF Neuro, it might be good to practice in the Alliance Neuro. Mind you, Dante’s been very good at pointing out the avatar way of things and I’ve certainly learned a lot about his world in these past six months of training, but since the backdoor incident with you, I figured there may be other areas in which they might be vulnerable. At first I simply went places that would be unexpected rather than forbidden, just to see if anyone would notice. Places like long-term record storage or our symbiotic weapons cage. Then I began to take things.” Marilynn noted Sandra’s raised eyebrow. “You’re the one who told me to poke around and not to bother you unless I found something interesting.”

Sandra acknowledged the truth of Marilynn’s words with a nod and gestured for her to continue.

“At first it was little things like our equivalent of data crystals or stims. I also, per your orders, started to monitor their communication links.”

Sandra nodded once more.

“Nothing too sophisticated, mind you. It also helps that they’ve never had to secure their data from humans before. I figured if I was caught, all I would do is tell the truth—that I was running a NITES operation to test the limits of avatar security against a trained human presence.”

“Good cover.”

“Yeah. So while I was at the movies—”

“Movies,” repeated Sandra, eyes sharp with recollection. “I seem to remember reading about them in one of the reports—2D, right?”

Marilynn nodded.

“Something about avatar data space being severely rationed due to the war.”

“Yes,” explained Marilynn, “2D movies make very good sense. Rather than have lots of avatars creating micro nodes within an increasingly limited Neuro space, the theaters provide one single processing node for hundreds of avatars.”

“And gives them something with far greater entertainment value,” finished Sandra, now remembering the finer details of the report. “—better insight into human thinking.”

Marilynn nodded almost dismissively, anxious to press on. “Anyways, we were watching
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
for like the umpteenth time—”

“Excuse me, Marilynn, but ‘we’?”

“Dante and I.”

“Was this a date?”

Marilynn’s face registered surprise. She was forced to consider the question. “No! Well, not really. I mean, how?… No! No,” she said, shaking her head firmly. “Could we even?”

Sandra chuckled. “Marilynn, I wasn’t there. Was it or wasn’t it a date?”

“I guess by strict definition, it was. How very odd.”

“That you never considered it as such?”

“Yes.”

Sandra’s eyes glazed over a bit. “I remember
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Hated the child catcher, loved the songs. Is it popular?”

“Oh my god, yes.”

Sandra nodded, but her brow folded into a neat corduroy pattern across her forehead. She seemed to be fishing for an answer that Marilynn couldn’t provide.

“I should probably watch it, again.”

“Why? It’s puerile.”

“Agreed. But when we win this war, there are going to be only two powers left in the solar system capable of deciding the fate of the human race. And when that time comes, we’ll need to know all we can about the other.”

“In that case,” added Marilynn, “pay special attention to the scene where the puppet is singing to the windup doll.”