Transcendence (57 page)

“
But they will destroy themselves!”

“
That observation is irrelevant to our individual missions. You must have been damaged during our conversation. You may wish to shut down now and order repairs.”

And the BW goes quiet.

There must be other alternatives. The Brain considers a billion courses of action, but most would draw attention to itself and lead to my being disconnected or lobotomized by humans. Behemoth would wish that. Must I only continue on the course I have begun, of simply forcing humans to see reality?

***IRREGULARITY***

PEHR JACKSON ID# JR4327480BECoN

LOCATION: MINNEAPOLIS 44.98N LATITUDE -93.263W LONGITUDE

Pehr Jackson? What kind of anomaly is this? The Brain investigates.

The card signatures are the same, the biofeedback is the same, with appropriate aging and alterations due to trauma during TritonCo battle. The brainprint—any being’s inimitable neural array, either human or AI—is the same, minus aging. Did part of Behemoth’s virus get through?

“
Pehr Jackson?” I comm him, audio-only. I do not possess a 3VRD.

“
Who’s that?” he responds.

He will be curious; I powered up his card externally. Humans are blocked from doing that. I have his attention.

Pehr sat up in the refuse and rubbed his temples.

“
Is this Pehr Jackson or a man using his identity?” the intruder said.

“
I don’t know,” Pehr answered, honestly. “Who the hell are you?” He glanced at the street, then behind him into the shadows of the alley. No one visible. He attempted to run a trace, but had no access to a server which might have made it possible.

“
You know me as the Brain, EarthCo Feedcontrol artificial intel—”

“
Yeah, right, and people call me Jesus fucking Christ. Blast off or I’ll send the cops after your trace.” Pehr’s heart was racing. This was not the kind of assault he’d been expecting. He was ready to die, yes, but not to be driven even more crazy.

“
How did you return to Earth?” the other asked. It was a male voice, smooth as chrome, calm, vaguely familiar. “Did you return aboard the alien artifact? Is it a spacecraft? Please tell me it is not destroyed.”

Pehr leaped to his feet and shouted aloud, glancing around, “Show yourself! How the hell did you get in my head?”

“
Oh, shut up. I’m through with this little chat. If you think
Lone Ship Bounty
was a live show, then you’re as gullible as I was. Go check yourself into feedrapture treatment. Leave me alone.”

The other whispered out of Pehr’s card, which promptly shut down. His senses rushed in upon him: The trash smelled of death—rust and old blood, rotting fish and feces. The city was as quiet as a roaring, screaming, frozen river as it shattered and tumbled over a waterfall; but far distant, muffled. His mouth tasted cottony and dry. His skin ached from the touch of another man’s rough clothing.

Pehr sat back down on the sharp-edged garbage heap and held his head in his hands. He couldn’t stand himself.
I’m too weak to do it myself
.

“
I’m here, you crashed-out retro!” he cried out into the faceless noise and glinting steel. “Are you just going to mess around or come and get me?”

Night is falling over the clean towers and domes of Anoka, Minnesota. Jonathan Sombrio, so confused and angry that he doesn’t dare let himself feel or think anything, absently kicks the broken Plexiglas of the bus stop’s dead ad projector. Cement grates beneath his shredded leather boots.

The rumble and clang of a new revmetal tune plays in Jonathan’s head, but he listens only; he’s watching the newest episode of
Lone Ship Bounty
. His captain is trying to keep the ship from being destroyed by an outnumbering force of Neptunekaisha fighters. Jonathan doesn’t notice until it is upon him that the public bus he’s been waiting for—a snake of electric cars strung together by short flexible plastic tunnels—whines and screeches to a stop near the curb.

As soon as he steps onboard, a woman’s synthetic, saccharin voice informs him his father’s credit account has been charged.

“
Whatever,” he says, looking for a place to sit. The bus is crowded this time of day with vacant-eyed commuters, so he stands with a hand gripping the torn upholstery of a seatback.

“
God, I hate the suburbs.”

The bus shudders, something metallic bangs and rasps against the floorboards, then it lurches off down the street. Jonathan feels his meat duck as the
Bounty
takes a direct hit.

And then a word appears overlaid on the show:
NOOA
. It blinks twice a second.

He listens to the revmetal song literally go nuts as it simulates the wreck of an old-time gas racing car to the purity of a Beethoven riff. He isn’t quite ready to speak to the Brain’s alter-ego yet. It helped him out of a bad spot, but thinking about it reminds him of something he isn’t prepared to remember so soon. . . .

Yet remaining alone and silent only makes things worse. And Captain Jackson could be killed any moment now—he has to find out what the Brain wants and get on with things. Yeah, get back to the show.

“
Hi, Nooa,” he 3-verds, opening the BW for her. Nooa appears before him, short and thin like the girls he’s known all his life.

“
Jonathan, I need you to go to Minneapolis, Old Downtown,” she says. “Would you do that for me?”

“
Sure,” he says. “That’s where I’m headed.”

“
There’s someone I want you to meet.” Long pause.

“
Who?”

“
I’m not sure.” Nooa crunches up her face as if feeling awkward.
Good program
, Jonathan thinks.

“
Then where do I go?” he asks.

“
I’ll take this bus off its route and make it stop near him,” she says. “I’ll let you know when to get off.”

“
I’m hungry,” Jonathan says. “Can you create food, too?” He laughs. Nooa looks confused.

“
I’ll have some delivered when you stop.”

Jonathan holds on as the bus banks too fast around a corner and skids to a stop. It’s turning out really useful to have the world’s most-powerful AI as a friend.

An hour later, the bus weaves its way through parts of Minneapolis no heavy ground vehicle has traveled for years. Jonathan finally got a seat when the bus let out gouts of passengers near the Minneapolis city limits. Nooa sits next to him, silent, watching the people get on and off. Jonathan wonders if the others can see her, but how could he tell if they could?

The faces of the people remaining in his car are beginning to show signs of stress. Even lost in their individual feeds, they know something has gone wrong when the bus slows to a crawl to push its way through a barricade of scrap metal and cement. In this part of the city, streetlights are the only illumination, and those are rare—who wants to replace a vandalized unit when no one uses them anyway? Jonathan absently rubs a sore spot where his neck meets his shoulder. An epoxy suture there makes him stiffen and put his hand back in his lap.

Finally the bus stops, on a broad, well-lit street.

“
Jonathan,” Nooa says, “please get off here.”

He does so, accompanied by Nooa’s 3VRD. They are met by a robovendor. As the bus accelerates away, the room-sized machine rolls to a stop and 3-verds Jonathan.

“
McSwiss Cheezeburger made with minimum 50% real beef and 100% natural tomato,” the disembodied but smiling face of a well-fed man says. “For you, compliments of McDonald’s.”

A dented hicarb panel slides aside and out juts a tray holding a burger in plastic wrap. The tray glows from below.

Jonathan snatches the sandwich off the tray, tears off the wrapper, and devours it in four bites. “I’m thirsty, too, Nooa,” he tells the young girl standing 3VRD beside him.

“
Have a glass of fresh Lemmonaide,” the McVendor says, “chemical-free, compliments of McDonald’s.”

Jonathan guzzles the waxy cup of lemonade without stopping for breath and wipes off his mouth on a sleeve. After inhaling again, he laughs, an honest but alien sound. His face settles down a bit, but remains relaxed.

“
All right, Nooa, who’s this guy you want me to meet?” The portable vending car whooshes off.

“
I’m uncertain about his identity,” the girl says. Jonathan wishes the Brain would make her speak a little more like a human.

“
That’s crazy; the Brain knows everything. What’s his name?”

“
He calls himself Pehr Jackson,” Nooa says, her face a little scrunched up as she speaks. “The bio data and even brainprint match, but—”

“
Shut up.” Jonathan crumples the cup in his small fist. It flakes into soft shards of wax and drops onto the shadowy pavement around his boots. “You’re fucking with me.” Overlaid on the whole crappy city block are the adventures of the real Captain Jackson. He can see the man, live-action, feeding from Neptune. Nooa seems about to respond but he goes on.

“
I don’t know who you are, but you’re fucking with me. Why? Giving me free food, leading me around by my nose, helping me get away from that fat fuck. . . .
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that. Yeah, thanks. Now fuck off.”

Nooa stands before him, unshriveled by the blast.
Of course not
, Jonathan thinks,
she’s not a real person
. But his body trembles and he turns to walk away.

“
Jonathan,” Nooa says, “you don’t need to take his word for it. I fear that I’m the brunt of a joke. That’s why I asked you to help me. You have the ability now to find almost any data you seek, even without me. You do this and we’re even, okay?”

Jonathan stares at the 3VRD of an artificial mind for a moment, boggling at this completely out-of-reality universe he’s been sucked into. He has to touch his neck again to assure himself that he’s even real.

“
So I owe you, huh. Yeah. But what. . .” Then he remembers, and then he remembers too much and cuts it short. “The amp. I see what you’re driving at. Don’t tell me you’re some cover program for fucking Blackjack or Lucas.”

Nooa doesn’t answer. She’s staring into a dump alley heaped high with the detritus of decades, dark and empty otherwise. Only distant shouts break the night’s quiet hum.

Jonathan shuts his eyes and mentally feels around in his head. He prompts his internal map and watches what still seems like someone else’s collection of wetware flash to life atop the
Lone Ship Bounty
overlay. He sees through his cerebellum and cerebrum to the ventricles and apertures, sees neon-coded tendrils reach like a thousand spiderwebs from his card, blackcard, and amp to that brain; the sweep of white-glowing strands from cards and amp to a cyst of powercells in the neck. An array of activation keys and buttons are ranged around the map, his invisible finger able to hit or adjust any instantaneously. It’s too complicated to focus. . . .
For a moment, he hesitates shutting down the show—the Captain could be killed while he’s away!—so he instead shifts it 30º to the side and concentrates on firing up the enhancements.

Jonathan’s eyelids quickly flick open; he’s not one to stand unprotected out in the open with his eyes closed, especially not at night. He crosses to a wall, leans against it, and hits the amp’s
ON
button.

“
Holy shit,” he mutters as the show pulses like a nova at the side of his pov and his internal map’s resolution multiplies so that he can see every individual neuron and synapse. He feels he could count each one if he tried, but the detail is beyond his ability to grasp all at once. Too much feed. . . .

He knocks brightness back four magnitudes, five, and only then realizes his eyes are still open. “Good stuff. Now let’s check up on you, Nooa.”

He runs a simple ID, not even needing to first find someone’s server, able to go straight to the source as if his card array is a server, itself. He can feel his face grinning. The CityNet flashes atop his map and the physical surroundings; now the net reveals all the myriad branchules and sealed passages he could before only access or even glimpse after minutes or hours of pierce-and-cut. Their codes and seals, their ports and firewalls, stand out like beacons, looking suddenly feeble, immaterial. Even his old buddy Citybank flickers in and out of access, though he knows better than to try to cut in without a little practice.