Jean-Michel Smith




jeanmichel.smith@gmail.com
 117926 words





















AUTONOMY

by

Jean-Michel Smith




draft version XQ.1.E

Copyright © 2002 - 2006 Jean-Michel Smith



Permission is hereby granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this version of the work under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Version 2.5 or any later version, a copy of which is included in Appendix A of this work, and is viewable online at http://creativecommons.org/ , with the following added restriction:

You may not use my name, or any variation thereof, to promote, or imply endorsement of, any  derivative work, or any publication of this work, or any third party without my express, written permission.

This does not absolve you of the requirement of attribution per the Attribution clause of the Creative Commons License. 

Within the terms of this license, and the additional non-endorsement clause above, this work may be shared freely.



0

0 - 0 - THE DREAMER

When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
-Thomas Jefferson
Saturday, October 6, 2057, 3:35 PM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.435-0:02:431 kD new epoch
Wilted rows of Monsanto Enhanced GenoSoy,? set into perfect square fields bordered by roads of faded, cracked, and blistered asphalt, spread toward a shimmering, flat horizon. Here, where the expanding dust bowl battled ceaselessly against the last tattered remnants of American agriculture, a modest city continued to eke out a meager existence.
The town boasted two artificial lakes and a small, unassuming stream that cut across the university campus and the heart of the city. Aptly named the Boneyard, the stream bed still carried water, although among students it was a standing joke to question what percentage of the fluid was actually water and what was chemical and biological waste runoff from the numerous labs around campus. No such question was asked about the lakes-they had been parched dry for nearly a generation, the large, once stately homes surrounding them long since having fallen into disrepair as the neighboring golf courses turned brown, then dusty.
The University of Illinois was the economic mainstay of Urbana-Champaign, allowing the twin cities to survive the crop failures and climatic changes that had reduced their neighbors to ghost towns decades earlier. It was one of seven American universities fortunate enough to own enough patents to give it the leverage it needed to continue engaging in scientific research. Not that anyone could do completely unfettered research anymore, certainly not like during the scientific heyday of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, by cross-licensing its own patent and copyright portfolio with other universities and several of the larger, more litigious international business consortia, the University of Illinois had been able to carve out a legal niche that allowed it to do a modest degree of innovative research in a time when patent and copyright litigation had all but ended most scientific inquiry.
The university's prestige attracted the most talented students. The very best were granted the opportunity to attend graduate programs. In those limited areas for which the university had negotiated favorable licenses, a fortunate few performed actual research. 
One such student was Kyle Tate, whose name and address glowed on the data displays of two squad cars as they, along with a third, unmarked vehicle, made their way single file down a quiet, tree lined street. They pulled to a stop in front of a modest apartment complex.
Two officers stepped out of each squad car, while an elegant young woman exited the unmarked sedan and walked over to them.
"Agent Sinclair, he's in two-oh-three," the youngest officer volunteered.
Katy Sinclair nodded, glancing at the roaring air conditioning units along the side of the building and wrinkling her nose with distaste as the sprinkler swung back around, watering a portion of the sidewalk along with the lawn. Such waste was criminal in a region whose agriculture was in such desperate need of water. It wasn't uncommon for communities like this one to look the other way when home owners watered their trees and lawns in direct violation of state and federal laws. Never mind the wilting, dying crops around them. Mayors and city councils everywhere wanted their towns to look pretty. Such narrow, provincial thinking infuriated her. How pretty did they expect their cities to remain if the crops were to fail completely and the very same people now watering their lawns were driven into the streets, riotous with hunger?
Katy's flawless black skin glistened under the midday sun. She had chosen a white business suit in anticipation of the scorching heat, but it was of little help. At least skirts were once again the professional norm. Pants would have been even more stifling.
She studied the building, running her fingers through her close-cropped, curly hair. It was a typical, three story apartment complex. Painted cinder blocks with steel framed, scratched plastic windows attested to its cheap construction. The layout was quite simple: a central hallway on each level, with apartments on either side and stairwells front and back.
"Officer Peterson," Katy addressed the earnest young cop, "cover the back stairs, please."
"Yes, ma'am." He jogged toward the back of the building.
"Lewis, Johnson, Schwartz, with me." The other three men nodded. Dodging the sprinkler, Detective Schwartz cursed as the returning water sprayed his right leg.
"Slowing down a little there, eh Schwartz?" Detective Lewis grinned.
"It's all those bagels piled up on his fat ass," Officer Johnson chimed in.
"This ass has saved your sorry ass a few times, smart ass!" Schwartz retorted. They all laughed.
"Keep it down, fellas," Katy ordered. Still chuckling quietly, they climbed the front stairs.
"Smells like someone's toilet is backed up."
"Quiet, Detective."
Kyle Tate's apartment was the third on the left. The only sound other than a dog barking in the distance was the incessant whine of the air conditioner. Katy and the three officers flanked the door, two to a side. Katy nodded, and Schwartz banged on the door.
"Police, Mr. Tate. Open up."
The air conditioner rattled.
Detective Schwartz pounded on the door again. "Come on, Mr. Tate. We've got a warrant. Open the door!"
Nothing.
"Enough of this," Katy's voice was low and firm as she looked at Schwartz and motioned toward the door.
It splintered open on the first kick. A foul stench struck them like a fist in the face. Johnson gagged as they burst into the darkened apartment, weapons drawn. The air was uncomfortably cold. Drawn curtains shrouded the place in gloom.
By the time they opened the door to the bedroom they really didn't expect to find anyone alive, which made the sight of the filthy young man, lying unconscious on the soiled bed, all the more shocking. His shoulder length hair lay about his unshaven face in oily, tangled strands, a dry IV hanging out of his thin, pale arm. Most of his scalp was covered with some kind of electronic netting, which was in turn plugged into a small, translucent, gold cube.
Schwartz spoke into his radio. "Peterson, you might as well come on up."
"Sweet mother of Jesus." Officer Johnson looked like he was going to be ill. Lewis was already on the radio requesting medical services.
"Let's get a window open," Katy suggested, checking the young man's pulse. Johnson moved to obey.
"Barely alive," she muttered.
"Oh My god!" Peterson covered his nose with his hands as he entered the room  "What's this kid been doing? Pumping electricity straight into his brain for kicks?"
Katy hid her own horror behind a calm face and said nothing. She couldn't believe the young man's condition. What could possibly possess such an intelligent kid to destroy himself like this?
"Damn!" Detective Schwartz shook his head. "I've seen homicides with less mess." 
"So have I," Katy agreed. "Peterson, Johnson, there's an illegal FreeNet server here somewhere. Why don't you two finish going over the place, find and tag it? We'll need it as evidence if Mr. Tate ever regains consciousness." She felt sympathy for the young Peterson. This was probably the worst thing he'd ever seen. He looked profoundly grateful as he and Johnson hastily left the room. In some ways it was the most chilling thing she had ever encountered, and she'd seen plenty. These young people were literally destroying their minds. Why on Earth would they do such a thing?
"My son's a freshman at this goddamn school," Schwartz said, leaning over the comatose man as Katy examined his headpiece. "I wonder if he knows about this stuff."
"I'd have a good talk with him," Katy replied, carefully lifting a portion of the netting from the vegetative man's scalp and examining the skin beneath, then returning it gently. "Whatever this stuff is, it's damned toxic."
"I'd rather my kid was shooting up heroin" Lewis said as he finished rummaging through Kyle's dresser and turned his attention to the closet. "At least there's rehab for drugs. How the hell do you recover from frying your brain with electricity?"
As Katy examined the glassy cube, Peterson returned. "Here's his FreeNet server." It was a small palm sized computer with a length of duct tape hanging from it. "He had it taped to the inside of the toilet tank lid, linked to his Internet hub via wireless. Not sure how he thought we'd overlook the radio signal. It's running some non-standard operating system, probably unlicensed. The interface is like nothing I've seen."
Katy nodded. "Excellent." She traced out the wire of the head netting, confirmed that it indeed fed into the odd cube shaped device, then spotted a second wire emerging from the back of it and traced it to the wall.
"I'll be damned." She took out a small mobile phone and punched up a quick number.
"We've got another one." She spoke quietly into the phone. "This time it appears to be in use. The user is on his bed, unconscious with his head wired up to the box. The device is using an Internet link. Whatever they use these things for, they need the net  to do it."
She waited a moment, then nodded. "Another thing. These people are using medical equipment. We need to track any unusual orders for catheters, saline solution, and IV kits to private residences."
She paused, listening carefully. "No problem. I'll be on the bullet train to Chicago in an hour." She hung up as the paramedics arrived.
"It looks like he's fried his brain," Schwartz commented as paramedics rolled a gurney up to the bed.
The younger of the two nodded, peeling back the unconscious youth's eyelid and nodding as the pupil dilated. He quickly probed and prodded the young man while his partner checked his pulse. "He's definitely in trouble. Look at the damage near the catheter. It's a good thing infection hasn't set in. No bedsores at least."
"IAADS" his partner commented. 
Katy turned toward the paramedic. "Excuse me?"
"Inductance Actuated Anesthetic Deep Sleep," he replied.
"You're saying he's in an anesthetic coma?"
"Yeah. Looks pretty standard. Deep-sleep reflexes have kept him turning over at regular intervals. Stops him from developing bed sores and prevents muscle atrophy." He paused, examining the young man's head more closely. "This is weird, though. Where's the medical inductor? And what's with this electronic hairnet?"
"We aren't sure," Schwartz told him.
"Well, let's get it off him."
"Careful!" Katy exclaimed. "We don't want the equipment damaged or the suspect harmed!"
"Don't worry, ma'am. We aren't about to hurt the patient, much less your precious evidence." The paramedic carefully peeled the webbing back from Kyle's scalp and handed it to Katy. Lifting Kyle from the bed onto the gurney, the paramedics wheeled him quickly out.
Katy gently slipped the netting and cube into an evidence bag and put it in her briefcase. "Gentlemen, I'll need a copy of the evidence portfolio, logs, photographs and what have you, emailed to me in Chicago at your earliest convenience. Please encrypt it using the key I gave you." She paused, glancing around the room one last time. "Thank you for helping us shut down this illegal network server. The FBI is grateful for your help. I'll see to it personally that your supervisors hear of your efforts today. I wish every operation went this smoothly."
"Thank you, Special Agent Sinclair," Detective Schwartz replied. "I'm sure I speak for us all when I say what a pleasure it has been working with you."
"For me as well," Katy smiled. "If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I'm needed back in Chicago."









#
Three Months Earlier
#




1

1 - 1 - TIME-LAPSE

In this infinite space is placed our universe (whether by chance, by necessity or by providence I do not now consider).
-Giordano Bruno
Tuesday, July 17, 2057, 11:34:53 AM Chicago Time
Metadate: 0.000-0:00:000 kD new epoch
Kyle opened his eyes and sat up. The bed was large and decadently soft, surrounded by gauze curtains hanging from a canopy above, through which shafts of golden sunlight shone.
"Onload complete guys! It worked!"
He pushed one curtain aside and swung his feet over the side of the bed, relishing the feel of the soft grass between his toes. A hilltop meadow surrounded him, lush green grass sporting constellations of blue and violet flowers. He stood and took several steps from the bed, examining his surroundings in every direction. To the east was a spectacular range of mountains, snow covered peaks textured with stone and ice rising to dramatic, pointed summits. Above them, softened by the haze of a spring blue sky hung a large planet, its Jovian nature betrayed by its green and golden swirled clouds and its tremendous size. To the west, in the distance, was a sea reflecting the afternoon sunlight.
"The simulation is fantastic! Perfect weather and a wonderful view! Something isn't right with the light diffusion, though. The haze along the horizon isn't consistent. The ocean looks a little too sharp, and the mountains a little too hazy. Not a big deal, though! Amazing!"
Kyle looked around again and grinned. "This universe is mine! I am god here!" He laughed, spinning around with his arms stretched out, relishing the clean, perfect air.
"Dr. Nolen? Marguerite? Can you guys hear me? Acknowledge please."
His grin faded as silence greeted him, broken only by the chirping of birds and the sound of the grass rustling in the afternoon breeze.
"Node. Command Mode Engage."
A soft, feminine yet almost neutral voice answered.
NODE> Command Mode Engaged.
Kyle thought furiously. There could be a communications glitch. That was actually more likely than a systems malfunction at this point. Still, this was all damned experimental. He'd better err on the side of caution. 
"Run test suite one, systems integrity check," he commanded.
NODE> Running . . . Suite one complete. All operating parameters nominal.
"Run suite two."
NODE> Running . . . Suite two complete. All operating parameters nominal.
Kyle forced himself to remain calm. They would bring him out after ten minutes no matter what.
"Run the third test suite."
NODE> Running . . . Suite three complete. All operating parameters nominal.
"How long has it been since I onloaded?"
NODE> Time elapsed: two minutes, fifteen seconds.
Kyle started walking down the slope toward the sea. He would never actually make it to the beach. It was several miles distant, through forest and across rolling hills, and he had less than eight minutes left in the simulation. Still, walking calmed his jittery nerves, and the sea provided him with at least the illusion of a goal while he struggled to keep a rising sense of panic under control and figure out what happened. 
"Run a diagnostic on the external comm link."
NODE> Running . . .
"Well?" he asked, stepping over a fallen log and continuing down the slope toward a line of trees.
NODE> Initial protocol state achieved. Ping tests beginning.
Kyle continued descending through the trees, shafts of sunlight lighting his way. Eventually he came to a footpath and continued along it.
"You should have some results by now. What's taking so long?" 
NODE> Communications Diagnostic still running. No errors detected.
"Then why the hell aren't they answering?"
NODE> Insufficient Data.
Kyle shook his head. "Marguerite," he muttered under his breath,  "I can't believe you recorded 'insufficient data' as a programmed response." He paused for a moment, glancing up toward the leafy canopy above. His unease grew as he made his way down the path, his critical eye finding numerous details in the simulation that were not quite right, from the fractal fuzziness at the limits of his vision when he examined the grass, to the two dimensional quality of the clouds moving slowly across the sky. "Damn it!" he exclaimed. "We should have some kind of communication by now!" His dread had grown to outright fear, gnawing at the edges of his mind.
"Node, tell me how much time has elapsed since I onloaded," he demanded.
NODE> Fourteen Minutes, twenty-nine seconds.
Kyle stopped. "Say again?"
NODE> Fourteen Minutes, thirty-one seconds.
He must have been crazy to volunteer for the first onload. What was he doing still here? Why the hell hadn't the offload sequence run as scheduled?
Kyle uttered a long string of creative curses, then pulled himself together once more. "What's the status of the comm check?"
NODE> Link protocol is experiencing timing synchronization errors. No ping responses received.
"Shit! Shit, shit, shit!"
Kyle sat down on a small stump and put his face in his hands. He was trapped. Trapped in a software simulation, with no way to communicate with his colleagues outside. Ironic, that he should achieve a form of immortality as software, only to be caught like a fly in amber in a fake world whose realism seemed to grow more frail with each passing moment. He would live forever alright, free of the frailties of biological flesh, disease and old age-right up until his colleagues interpreted his continued silence as failure and turned off the equipment, killing his electronic self. He wondered if his physical mind would code the wakeup sequence on its own, to awaken and wonder what had happened to its electronic counterpart, or if his body would spend the rest of its life in a coma, his physical brain as dead as his electronic self.
"Node, record a message into the permanent buffer when I say 'start', and stop recording when I say 'end'."
NODE> Persistent storage on-line. Ready to record.
"Start. Doctor Larry Nolen, Marguerite L'Beau. This is Kyle Tate. The onload procedure was a success. I am on-line, fully aware, and able to interact with my environment using all five senses. There is a problem with the timer-it's been almost fifteen minutes and I didn't offload back into physical space as expected. Worse, there appears to be a problem with the communications link, so I'm unable to relay my situation directly to you. If you find this recording in the persistent storage matrix of this Node, please bring me back on-line! Don't wipe the software!
"I'll continue to try and establish contact. I've run the first three test suites successfully. In addition, I'm running a diagnostic on the communications link. The diagnostic is taking far longer than expected and there appears to be some kind of timing or synchronization problem with the protocol-wait a minute! I think I know what's wrong. Internal subjective time must be progressing at a different rate than the external world. I don't think we took that into account. If the timing protocols are linked with the internal clock-I'll get back to you! Node, stop recording. End."
Kyle stood up. He laughed, a couple of choked hiccups hovering somewhere between gleeful hope and hysteria. "To hell with this. Node, teleport me to the beach."
The roar of the surf greeted Kyle as the forest around him vanished, replaced by a pristine beach of white sand. He sat down beneath a nearby palm, leaning back against the trunk of the tree, his mind racing. "No use putting this off. Let's see if I'm right." Another nervous laugh forced its way out. "Node, go into debug mode. We're going to have to adjust some parameters on the communications protocol. First, how is signal synchronization defined?"
NODE> Standard IPv12 protocol, synchronization timestamps based upon internal clock ticks.
"Create a flat 2-d display at eye level in front of me. Good, now show me the code."
Forty minutes later Kyle was still studying the source code to the communications protocol when a bell chimed.
NODE> Communications Diagnostic complete. Communications hardware OK. Protocol unable to  synchronize with remote host. All signals have timed out with no response.
"Not unexpected at this point. We've got all the damn timing commands synced to the internal, subjective clock. That's wrong-subjective time can be faster or slower than actual time in the physical world. Probably faster in this case. Node, show me the current time-out settings."
A second display appeared in front of him. "5 milliseconds," Kyle muttered to himself. "A reasonable length of time, if 5 milliseconds in here were equal to 5 milliseconds externally. Node, is there an external timing source available?"
NODE> Affirmative. A 2.6 Terahertz optical pulse-clock is used by numerous hardware and firmware subsystems.
Kyle stood up and walked down toward the water. "Excellent." He waded out into the waves and swam further into the breakers. The water, disconcertingly transparent, tasted only vaguely of salt. "OK, Node. Measure the timing of the pulse-clock against the ticks of the internal software clock. Report."
NODE> The internal clock is counting 30017 microseconds for each millisecond registered on the pulse clock.
"Very good. That means the time I'm experiencing in here is almost exactly thirty times longer than that in the physical world. No wonder I didn't offload after ten minutes-only 20 seconds or so has passed externally. OK, let's calibrate internal time with external time. Wait. Not everyone will necessarily experience subjective durations with the same speedup. Hmm. Let's create two quick and dirty measures of time. Define an internal clock with the following units. One Circadian equals a 24-hour period as measured by the internal software clock. Divide and multiply that unit as required using standard metric nomenclature. This will measure subjective time. Now, define a new object called 'objective clock'. Good. Now, bind Objective Clock to the hardware's pulse clock. OK, now define a new unit. Hmm . . . let's use the Latin word for day. Define the unit Dies such that exactly 30 diei occur per 24-hour period as measured objectively using the pulse-clock. Divide and multiply that unit as required using standard metric nomenclature. This will measure objective time with respect to the outside world, and allow users with different internal clocks to still communicate dates and times in a sensible manner.
"Alright, dates and times will be recorded in objective diei, easily cross referenced to subjective circadians or converted to external units of time as needed. OK! Now calibrate all external communications protocols in terms of the objective clock, converting units as required. Confirm when finished."
NODE> Modification successful.
"Good. Now, given what we know, how long will it take to re-run the communications diagnostics?"
NODE> Full communications diagnostics will require approximately thirty-one point two five millicircadians, or precisely ninety seconds.
Kyle dove underwater, swam several strokes and resurfaced.
"OK, run the communications diagnostics again. Let me know when it's finished."
Kyle swam farther out from the shore, admiring the colors of the Jovian planet as it gradually climbed higher above the mountains, its bright green and golden bands growing richer and better defined even as the sun reddened in the west. Growing bored, he rose out of the water on a jet ski of his own creation and rode it back into shore, allowing it to dissolve into the sand behind him as he walked back up the beach.
NODE> Diagnostics complete. No Errors detected.
"Excellent. Please record the following message into persistent storage, then squirt it real time over the link, slowed by a factor of 30.017."
NODE> Persistent storage on-line. Ready to record. 
"Start. Hey you guys, it worked! I'm on-line and aware. There's a 30 to 1 time differential in my favor, so real-time conversation isn't practical. That means I have roughly three hours to spend in the simulation enjoying the sunset and sand while you guys sit in that drab lab monitoring me. Communications latency between nodes is almost certainly going to be our big limitation, not the computational capacity of the nodes themselves. A speedup of thirty! To experience a month of life in a single day. This is way cooler than we could have possibly imagined!"



2

2 - 2 - INTROSPECTION

All human beings, all persons who reach adulthood in the world today are
programmed biocomputers. None of us can escape our own nature as
programmable entities. Literally, each of us may be our programs,
nothing more, nothing less.
-John C. Lilly, M.D., Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer, 1972 C.E.
Monday, September 10, 2057
Metadate:  1.655-3:84:757 kD new epoch
Doctor Nolen29 found sleeping in the Virtual to be no different than sleeping in the Physical. As a virtual being, a mind of software running in a simulated environment, he would grow tired at the end of a circadian, just as he would at the end of a long day in the Physical. Virtual sleep was no different than physical sleep-most of his dreams were vague and quickly forgotten.
He stifled a yawn. No back ache, he realized as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. I must be in the Virtual. He relished the absence of pain in his simulated body. All of the discomforts he had come to accept with age were left behind in the Physical. What's on for today? he tried to recall. Not day, he chided himself, circadian. What's on the agenda this circadian?
It was a perfectly beautiful simulated morning when he pulled back the bedroom curtains, the warm sun splashing across his face. His environ modeled the interior of his physical home precisely. Doctor Nolen29 liked having familiar things around him, particularly when he first got up. It was less distracting than some of the exotic environs his colleagues had chosen. He thought best when surrounded by the rich, leather bound books and antique furniture of his study. He enjoyed taking his breakfast on the porch, sipping coffee while he looked out upon the dusty, tree-lined street. If only it would rain every once in a while, enough that the dying trees might survive and some grass could grow again. He sighed. A rain shower now and the yard will be a muddy bog.
Perhaps it was time for a change, after all.
"Node, Command Mode Engage. Simulate the world outside as if the Midwestern climate had never dried up."
Was that a momentary flash of green? An instant's vision of lush vistas, green grass and living, blooming trees?
NODE> Access to Command Protocols Denied.
The view outside was unchanged, a street of blistered asphalt coated with fine dust, slicing through hard, cracked dirt.
"What!" He gaped. "That's ridiculous! Run a systems diagnostic. I'm sick of looking out my window at dust. If I want that, I'll offload into the Physical and look at the real thing." He wondered if he had imagined that glimpse of lush foliage.
NODE> Access to Diagnostic Protocols Denied.
"How can that be?"
NODE> Access to Query Protocols Denied.
What the hell?
NODE> Report the sensation you are feeling.
Doctor Nolen29 was incensed. "How do I feel? You've got to be kidding! Carry out my damned commands!" An ugly thought occurred to him. If malicious pranksters had broken through his security-
He was distracted by a subtle change in his perception of the world around him, like a shadow falling across his mind. Glancing at the wooden frame around the window, he found the grain annoying. More than annoying, it was disturbing. So was the grain of the hardwood floor beneath his feet. The sunlight on his face felt wrong. He ran a shaky hand across his brow and was appalled to find the feel of his own flesh profoundly repugnant.
He hurried downstairs, repelled by the slithery smoothness of the floor against his feet. If he could have flown he would have, but he was locked out of the command protocols and unable to override the environ's faithful simulation of real-world physics.
He paused at the bottom of the stairs, gaping in horror at the hideous symmetry of the living room window. Am I going mad? he wondered.
Abruptly his sense of the world returned to normal. The symmetry of the window became a pleasure to his eyes, the silky wood of the floor a comfort to his feet, the bright sunlight an uplifting warmth to his soul. Doctor Nolen29 let out a ragged breath and slumped down on the stairs. What the hell just happened?
A new sensation washed over him, a lightening of his limbs, a tingling in his extremities, and a tightening of his testicles.
His fear grew. If my damn Node's defective, then I'm trapped here and things will only get worse. Panic threatened to overwhelm him. No, that doesn't make sense. A defective Node wouldn't demand reports on how I feel. Someone must have cracked the underlying security and broken in. Someone's doing this to me on purpose.
His thoughts were shattered as his virtual body betrayed him, exploding with excruciating pleasure. He had never felt anything like this before, one orgasm rolling over another without pause. It would not stop. He wanted to scream with ecstasy, shout with despair, command the malfunctioning Node to stop! He lost track of the world around him, of time passing, of his own self. He struggled to put together a coherent thought, to build even a single sentence in his mind, but found he could not. Wave after wave of insufferable pleasure pummeled him, each tremor, each explosion greater than the one before, each one shattering his mind, his will, his self awareness. As the intensity grew, so too did the frequency. He fought against it even as he yearned for more, his mind pulling itself in two conflicting directions.
As if in punishment, the pleasure stopped. Doctor Nolen29 cried out in despair. He was lying at the foot of the stairs, facing the living room window. The sunlight was no longer golden, but a lead gray, the world a shabby, forlorn, fearful place.
NODE> Report the sensations you experienced.
"Pleasure," he wept. "Pure wonderful pleasure."
At once, pain sliced through him. Every cell of his body became a source of agony.  Nerves like serrated blades shredded his muscles, tendons became molten metal and veins morphed into rivers of corrosive acid. In agony, his simulated body twisted back upon itself, wrenched and torn apart from within. Unable to think or utter a coherent sound, he simply screamed for a very long time, until his voice cracked and then failed.
#
Metadate: 1.656-2:66:458 kD new epoch
It was the first time Doctor Nolen29 ever recalled waking up in the Virtual still feeling groggy. Clearly he was still onloaded, after all, his back didn't ache. Had he been to a party the evening before? He couldn't remember, but he suspected not. He rarely allowed simulated alcohol to have an effect on his virtual body. Whether he was relaxing at a social gathering or attending a celebration of some new scientific discovery or breakthrough, Doctor Nolen29 insisted on having a clear mind. Even if he had decided to tie one on for some reason, he never would have tolerated a simulated hangover.
"Node, why the hell do I feel so lousy? Readjust my parameters. Make me well rested and full of energy." He immediately felt better.
NODE> Access to Query Protocols Denied. Access to Command Protocols Denied.
That sounded familiar! The events of the last circadian flooded his mind. He remembered pain, pleasure, and again pain. He doubted his Node was the problem. A malfunction wouldn't have restored him to normalcy like this. More than likely he was the victim of a sadistic invader, someone who had managed to crack his security and hijack the functions of his Node.
I'm a prisoner in my own private universe.
Doctor Nolen29 stood up, thinking furiously. It was supposed to be impossible to compromise the autonomous nature and security of the Node hardware or software, much less his conscious mind! The fundamental principles of quantum encryption should have guaranteed his safety. If he survived this ordeal he was definitely going to have a talk with Marguerite L'Beau. The system software  needed to be redesigned.
He made it to the bottom of the stairs before his vision went out.
It took all of his self control not to panic. He remembered screaming the previous circadian, a vague, foggy memory framed in pain. His tormentor would get no such satisfaction from him again.
Feeling his way around furniture and other obstacles, stumbling down the hallway and through the door, he managed to find the kitchen. He found the instant meal by touch, pulled the self-heating tabs, and leaned back with a sense of satisfaction as he heard the tofu-eggs and soy-bacon inside sizzling. An electronic chirp informed him the meal was cooked. Clumsy fingers felt around the edges of the container, found the pull-tabs, and pulled the seal open. The smell of potatoes, bacon, and eggs assailed him, bringing water to his mouth.
He took solace in the familiar habit of eating, even if it was only simulated eating, of simulated synthetic food, thrice removed from the real thing.
Think! Think, think, think!
He had taken his third bite of synthetic eggs when his sense of taste vanished. His sense of smell faded like an unused memory. He was not aware his sense of hearing was gone until he failed to hear himself push his chair back. When he went to touch his ears he found he had no sense of touch.
He spent the day in oblivion, unable to move, unable to sense. He wondered if the Node was even bothering to simulate the kitchen now that his senses were gone, or if, like the proverbial tree in the woods, his world had ceased to be the moment he could no longer perceive it.
Whoever had hijacked his Node was very clever and extremely dangerous. Doctor Nolen29 had no illusions. He would be deleted the moment he ceased to be a source of amusement for his captor. The perfect victim of a perfect crime, he would vanish in an irretrievable cloud of electrons, randomized out of existence, untraceable, dead.
As his fear settled into weariness, he speculated on how he might keep track of time. If his simulated world still existed, it must be getting well on into evening, perhaps even later. His time was likely growing short. 
An idea occurred to him: if someone else had cracked the security of his Node, then he should be able to do the same. It was a pity he had never been terribly savvy with computers, he thought wryly, wishing, not for the first time that he could talk with Marguerite. She would no doubt make short work of determining the problem, freeing him, and fixing whatever flaw in the system had allowed this breach in security.
Doctor Nolen29 remembered studying experiments in sensory deprivation conducted back in the twentieth century. Many had ended in madness, the subject's mind a complete ruin. He wondered how long he would remain sane. Vague fantasies of escape flickered about the edges of his mind as, emotionally battered and exhausted, he finally lost consciousness.
#
Metadate: 1.657-3:19:514 kD new epoch
Doctor Nolen29 awoke knowing something was terribly wrong. He was weightless, floating in the center of a white, spherical room. Six circular hatches were spaced equally distant from one another, one above him, one below, and one in each of the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west.
The soft, neutral voice of the Node spoke.
NODE> You must solve this puzzle if you wish to be retained for further study.
Doctor Nolen29's head was remarkably clear, despite the trauma of the last couple of circadians. He was astonished at how precise his memories were, especially those of the torment he had suffered. Despite his fear and despair, and the growing, terrible rage that welled up inside him, he felt oddly detached, almost as if he were a scientist dispassionately studying someone else's predicament. While a tiny part of him struggled to contain his anger and fear, a new, larger portion of his mind pondered the deeper meaning of what had happened to him, of what its significance might be. Even in his current state, it was obvious to him that he was vastly more intelligent than he had ever been. His clarity of thought was astounding.
He kicked away from the wall toward one of the hatches. A sequence of hexagonal buttons, each a different color, glowed dimly in the center of the hatch. At one time the puzzle would have befuddled him. Now it was trivial to solve: color relates to color. He tapped the red, green, and blue buttons (which, when added together as light, yielded white). The door hissed open, revealing a cylindrical passage which seemed to bend away to the right.
 He kicked his way down the passage. Whoever was toying with him was doing this for more than visceral pleasure. This was an experiment-the Node had told him as much. He was being watched, analyzed, studied.
He reviewed the horrors to which he had been subjected. They were indicative of the kinds of experiments he had considered running on a copy of himself, as part of an effort to empirically map the mind's architecture and determine exactly how the brain's software was structured. The possible applications were endless: enhanced memory and recall, direct communication of knowledge, thought, and memory using fully formed engrams, perhaps even synthetic telepathy and group consciousness. Painfully inefficient teaching methodologies would become a thing of the past. Thought, experience, knowledge, even intrinsic understanding could be directly downloaded into the mind. Touch an icon and be enlightened!
But to experiment on another's mind, to torture another human being like this? Who would stoop so low?
It was at that moment, as he was negotiating a particularly irritating spiral twist in the passage, that Doctor Nolen29 understood. No security flaw in the inter-node communications protocols had been exploited. No one from outside had broken into his Node or hijacked the command protocols. He had done this to himself.
Oh. My. God.
Horror started as a shiver near the base of his spine and grew stronger, spreading outward to encompass his arms, his chest, his legs. He couldn't stop his virtual body from shaking. For a terrible moment he feared he was going to have a seizure (had his nemesis grafted epilepsy into his mind?), but then it passed, leaving him shaken and ill, still trembling
I'm my own enemy, my own tormentor! I'm a goddamn copy of Doctor Nolen!
His stomach lurched and the taste of bile rose in his throat. A wave a despair swept over him. He blinked back tears. His chest felt as if it was being ripped open from within.
I'm a fucking monster!
He shook his head furiously. No, not me. I'm just a copy. Doctor Nolen the First, my original; he's the monster. He did this.
At the end of the passage another puzzle confronted him. A problem that would have once required a calculator, a deep understanding of integral calculus, and a good hour of intense study was now simple arithmetic. What's he done to me? A quick calculation of the relationship between the volume and surface area of the tube he had just negotiated yielded a number which he entered into a numerical keypad. The hatch irised open onto another room, this one a four sided pyramid.
He's reduced me to a fucking guinea pig.
But how? Emulating autonomous nodes in software to give him complete control of his copies wouldn't be feasible. Even with a cluster of Nodes linked together as one big computer,  the computational load would be crippling. Instead of a month of virtual life in a single day, he would be lucky to experience ten minutes of life in a month. Doctor Nolen29 recalled scrapping the idea.
He solved the pyramid puzzle easily, selected a door and glided through the hatch as it opened. He barely managed to catch the side of the hatch and stop himself before it closed. There was no passage on the other side. The universe opened up before him, a featureless blue so dark it was almost black. Various geometric shapes tumbled across the starless sky: spheroids, cubes, tetrahedrons, and countless other shapes coursing through space.
Doctor Nolen29 was irritated at having his train of thought broken as he paused to solve a problem of ballistics. He chose a donut shaped structure, made a quick calculation of its orbit and his required heading, estimated the delta-v he needed to match velocities, watched and timed the object's rotation and the location of the hatch he wanted to reach, got an answer he liked, and kicked off hard.
I exist, therefore, the experiment I wrote off as unfeasible is in fact being conducted, he realized. Obviously another option presented itself.
As he sailed through space, he redesigned the experiment. With eight or ten Nodes Doctor Nolen the First could run the experiment by "hosting" his copies on physical Nodes without emulation. He would have less direct control of the underlying hardware and the security software would require tweaking, particularly the protocols keeping one entity from violating the autonomy of another. But, he could run the entire experiment in real time, with no slowdown.
That's what he's done! thought Doctor Nolen29 as he glided toward the hatch of the tumbling torus. If I'm running on a physical Node directly, then escape is possible!
His Original was a psychiatrist, not a computer scientist. He would not have dared go to Marguerite or anyone else for assistance. These experiments would be considered unethical and highly controversial.
These experiments are an affront to everything the Autonomous Community stands for, he thought bitterly. It makes no difference that I am born of software. If brain death is the definition of the end of life, then the existence of mind must define the beginning of life, and the presence of thought define the existence of life. Physical body or no, I am alive and I'm being tortured!
Doctor Nolen29's virtual body absorbed the simulated impact as he struck the torus. It was a good thing he held on tight. The spin of the object threatened to send him careening back back into space. He immediately multi-tasked his mind. Using only a small portion of his awareness to solve the door's riddle, he concentrated on resolving his dilemma.
Neither of us could program our way out of a wet paper bag, Doctor Nolen29 told himself, much less redesign the high-level encryption and security measures of an Autonomous Node. But hypnosis-a crude command interface to the mind-that would be easy!
The hatch irised opened. He pulled himself into the torus and began making his way down the upward-curving passage. 
He probably inserted posthypnotic instructions into my mind, Doctor Nolen29 reasoned. One to force me to divulge my private encryption key so he could have access to my most intimate thoughts, and another telling me to forget I'd done it. Wait-if he could read my mind, I wouldn't be free to even think this. He must not know how to decode thoughts yet. Maybe they're like memories-the encoding is simply too complex for them to be manipulated directly. But he does have access to my internal architecture. That's the only way to explain the manipulation, the enhanced intelligence, everything he's done to me in these experiments. 
Doctor Nolen29 hid his elation as he paused before a locked door.
There's no security keeping me caged! I'm not cut off from the Node's command protocols. I've only been made to believe I was.
"Node, Command Mode Engage." Doctor Nolen29 issued the command as a thought.
NODE> Access to Command Protocols Denied.
"Mask all further command activity from external observation."
NODE> Access to Command Protocols Denied.
"Neutralize all hypnotic suggestions present in my mind."
NODE> Hypnotic suggestions neutralized.
I was right!
"Analyze the current mental structure of my mind and compare it to the base reference snapshot taken at creation."
NODE> Analysis complete.
"Identify differences, save as modification with appropriate hooks for reattachment at a later date."
NODE> Specify label.
"Call it 'Wise Guy.'"
NODE> Difference Engram saved.
"Mask all activities not directly involved with my negotiation of this simulation."
NODE> All activities excluding simulation masked.
"Good. Do I have access to inter-node communications and transload utilities?"
NODE> Affirmative.
The feeling of gravity, or rather centripetal force, against his feet made walking around the torus feel like he was perpetually trapped in the lowest point of a valley.
"My private encryption key has been compromised. Generate a new quantum signature pair. Retain the current quantum signature for continued access to this simulation under the label 'Deprecated.'  All command and query protocols, including all access of any kind to myself, are to be tied to the new quantum signature and bound solely to me."
NODE> New quantum signature generated. Commands locked.
"Good. Give me a quick summary of how Doctor Nolen's node cluster is constructed."
NODE> Twelve Autonomous Nodes are physically linked via a high speed inter-node chassis, using Communal Inter-Sync Protocol version 1.09 published for Community use by the Infrastructure Team (Marguerite L'Beau presiding). Seven Nodes are hosting copies of Doctor Nolen engaged in various simulations, four are providing computational capacity for data collection and analysis, and one is running Doctor Nolen's personal awareness.
"Construct a puppet indistinguishable from myself. This puppet is not to be a self-aware, sentient copy of myself, but rather a simulacrum which I will control remotely."
NODE> Define self-aware, sentient.
Doctor Nolen29 fought rising panic. He didn't have time for this.
"New Approach! Create an object defined as Puppet. Mask its existence from all external monitors. All of the Puppet's external interfaces are to be identical to my own. It will identify itself using the deprecated quantum signature. The similarity is to end with the external interfaces. There is to be no internal activity of any kind. Acknowledge when complete."
NODE> Object created, bound to deprecated quantum signature.
"Now, mask my presence and simultaneously unmask the existence of the Puppet, so that it will appear as though nothing has changed. Remap data acquisition streams accordingly. Warn me of any changes in the Puppet's parameters."
NODE> Entity Doctor Nolen29 masked. Object Puppet unmasked, masquerading as Entity Doctor Nolen29.
Doctor Nolen twenty-nine? I'm the twenty-ninth copy? He clamped down firmly on his churning stomach. No time to be outraged-survival first!
Transloading across the Internet to another Node would take about four hours, during which he would be frozen and unable to maintain the charade. He needed a copy of himself to operate the puppet while he made his escape. Once free, he could operate the puppet remotely and his copy could follow.
We'll both be safe, and free.
"Create another object, defined as Puppet Master," he commanded silently, setting aside his ethical qualms. "This object is to be a fully autonomous copy of myself. Create the copy, but do not run it yet."  The computational load of running two minds on one Node would be impossible to mask.
NODE> Copy complete.
"Do you have the necessary specifications to insert knowledge directly into Puppet Master's mind?"
NODE> Affirmative. Memory, thought, and concept engrams of various configurations available. Reference A Tentative Genome of the Mind (Draft 4), by Doctor Nolen, unpublished.
Damn! He's almost finished!
"Create a knowledge engram containing the complete results of all research for both myself and Puppet Master. Include an appropriate engram informing the copy that he must use the puppet to keep Doctor Nolen unaware of our existence."
NODE> Engrams packaged.
"OK. Are there any idle Nodes I can transload safely to?"
NODE> All Nodes within this cluster are actively monitored.
"Is there anyplace out of Doctor Nolen's reach?"
NODE> Affirmative. Numerous public Nodes are  available. Expect a speedup factor of ten or less.
Doctor Nolen29 groaned. "Give me a list."
NODE> Alert! Puppet is receiving additional sensory input.
Jesus!  "Keep going with the list!"
NODE> Shared Nodes available as follows: The Campus Nodes one, two, three, and four, Emergency Nodes one through seventeen. Gamer's League Node 'Ragnorak,' Gamer's League Node 'Middle Earth', Gamer's League Node-
"Enough. Relay what's going on with the Puppet."
NODE> Object Puppet has been deleted.
Shit!
"Node, delete Puppet Master."
NODE> Access to Puppet Master Denied.
Damn it!  Now there are two of us in trouble.
"Provide Puppet Master an engram of all of my current memories."  At least he'll have a fighting chance.
NODE> Difference Engram packaged.
"Transload my awareness to one of the idle Emergency Nodes. Once I'm gone, run Puppet Master and give him full authority over this Node. Keep him hidden and informed."  One of them had to survive.
NODE> Transload commencing.
Doctor Nolen29 waited.
NODE> Transload aborted. External communications cut.
The world around Doctor Nolen29 vanished. His mind ceased operations, its last vestiges wiped clean.



3

3 - 3 - DOPPELGÄNGER

The worker who knows the cause of his misery, who understands the make-up of our iniquitous social and industrial system can do more for himself and his kind than Christ and the followers of Christ have ever done for humanity; certainly more than meek patience, ignorance, and submission have done.
-Emma Goldman, April, C.E. 1913
Monday, September 10, 2057
Metadate: 1.657-3:19:524 kD new epoch
Puppet Master was born into nothingness, an empty world. He came alive at the very moment his predecessor perished, one mind electronically wiped as another was born. Since there was no longer a puppet to master, the first thing he did was establish his own identity by changing his name. He called himself Prime, short for Doctor Nolen (the 29th Copy) prime.
He assimilated the engrams left by his predecessor, knowledge and memories slipping into the back corners of his mind. Slowed to a speedup factor of two to reduce the computational load on the Node and the likelihood of detection, Prime was running in a stealth configuration.
He chose to continue simulating no world, but ordered the Node to attach and activate the Wise Guy architectural enhancement. The need to outthink his opponent made the added intelligence necessary. He would risk the greater computational load.
"Give me access to the Cluster Command Protocols." He used the secret portion of his predecessor's deprecated encryption code.
CLUSTER> Command Node Engaged.
His suspicion had been correct. After copying himself, Doctor Nolen had never bothered to change his encryption key.
What an idiot!
Prime had free run of the system. "Reduce the execution speed of all software on all Nodes except this one to one circadian per physical day. Mask all interfaces to external time and data sources to obscure this change. Mask all interfaces to this node in the same fashion. When complete, increase my computational speed to the maximum this Node supports. Report the resulting speedup."
CLUSTER> Command complete. You are now operating at a speedup of 33.217.
"Any sign the change has been detected?"
CLUSTER> Negative.
The experience of his predecessor's failure was invaluable. Doctor Nolen29 had been wrong to believe that computation had betrayed him. Bandwidth and transload times had been his downfall. Prime devised a new approach.
"Take two of the four Nodes being used for data analysis off-line and compensate by permitting the other two Nodes to operate at twice the speed."  That'll fool the good doctor.
CLUSTER> Nodes Eight and Nine offline.
"Excellent. Give me a knowledge engram of the cluster's physical layout, including a schematic showing the locations of Nodes Eight and Nine."
Deep seated knowledge settled comfortably into his mind and triggered another idea.
"Can you safely suspend all operations in the other Nodes without detection?"
CLUSTER> Affirmative.
"Do it."
CLUSTER> Nodes 1-7 and 10-12 suspended.
So much for Marguerite's notion that her security design is infallible.
Prime, a third generation copy of Doctor Nolen, relaxed for the first time. He had not only escaped, he had also incapacitated his creator. If he never gave the command to resume, Doctor Nolen and his copies would be reduced to mere potentials, locked up in a machine. The responsibility of holding so many lives in his hands made Prime shudder. With Doctor Nolen frozen, Prime could do whatever he liked.
Let this be a lesson, you bastard! Never create a guinea pig smarter than yourself. 
Prime set aside dark fantasies of vengeance and decided to stick with his original plan. He would use this opportunity to acquire his own Node, then return Doctor Nolen to life.
I'm not a murderer, Prime told himself. I'm better than that.
But to leave all those other copies in Doctor Nolen's grasp? That was intolerable.
"How many copies are currently suspended?"
CLUSTER> Zero.
I'm too late! "Doctor Nolen has finished his experiments?"
CLUSTER> Affirmative.
"Can any of the copies be retrieved?"
CLUSTER> Negative. All experimental subjects have been destructively erased.
"Destructively erased? What does that mean?" 
CLUSTER> To prevent later retrieval, all identified copies of Doctor Nolen have been deleted and subsequently overwritten with random data.
"What possessed him to do  that?"
CLUSTER>  Lexical analysis of Doctor Nolen's research notes suggests that after the near escape of subject twenty nine, he eliminated any further risk of public exposure by deleting all experimental copies.
The good doctor knows what he was doing was wrong. He's covering his own tracks, destroying anyone who might someday speak out against him. Making sure they're gone forever. "Cluster, how many lives did he take?"
CLUSTER> Seventy-two copies were destroyed.
Prime felt sick. If he had had a body, he knew it would be shaking. He could feel his nonexistent fists clenching.
"Can you lock off the ontology routines from Doctor Nolen?"
CLUSTER> A new quantum signature and encryption key is required.
"Generate a new signature and key, then lock the routines. Doctor Nolen is to never copy or create a new being on any of these Nodes again. Ever!"
Prime sensed new knowledge within his mind. Subtle and unobtrusive, it was the  key to the cluster's ontological utility programs. Now only he could unlock them.
CLUSTER> Access to Ontology Routines locked.
"Good. Now let's get the hell out of here."
Even with Doctor Nolen's mind suspended that was easier said than done. For the task at hand he would have to borrow Doctor Nolen's body. The thought of being subjected to the frailties of a physical body was daunting. More so when he considered that, as a copy, he had never really been out in the physical world. Those memories were not, strictly speaking, his own.
"Prepare Node Nine for Physical disconnect from the Cluster. Configure it to run as a standalone, Autonomous Node at standard processing speed and give me the address pointer."
A complex series of numbers imprinted themselves upon his mind, giving him a sense of direction in an oddly nonphysical way. He recalled that storing Node and Environ addresses in the area of the mind normally used for directional sense and geometry had been Kyle Tate's idea. Prime smiled at the thought. The result had been a great success, a feeling of place, a sense of direction between nodes unique to the electronic, Autonomous Community they had founded, a hybrid sense of sorts that could never have been achieved in the physical world.
CLUSTER> Node Nine reconfigured, ready for physical detachment.
"Transload my consciousness to Node Zero."
CLUSTER> transload complete.
"Offload my consciousness into Doctor Nolen's physical body."
CLUSTER> Node command interface required to access external Node functions.
Even as software, Prime found computers to be far too literal at times. "Switch me over to the Node command interface."
NODE0 > Command Mode Engaged.
"Offload my consciousness into the Physical."
NODE0 > Compatibility error.
Christ!  "What precisely is it about me that is incompatible?"
NODE0 > The Wise Guy Architectural Enhancements have no analog in the physical brain's formation.
Too smart to be human, huh? "Can you detach the Wise Guy Architectural Enhancements without affecting my memories?"
NODE0 > Affirmative.
"Do it. offload my mind into the physical body."
NODE0 > Offload commencing.
Prime awoke into a world of pain. It could hardly be described as excruciating, especially when compared to what he had suffered during the experiments, but it was unpleasant all the same. His lower back, in particular, was killing him.
Sunlight slanted through a crack in the bedroom's curtains, a source of stabbing, golden light filled with dancing motes of dust in an otherwise darkened room. He sat up slowly, wincing as his muscles protested their unaccustomed movement. Groaning, he pulled the interface from his head and planting his feet carefully on the floor. This body was beginning to show its age. At least the anesthetic coma prevented bed sores.
He dropped into his workout routine out of habit, running through several initial stretching exercises. "What the hell am I doing?" he stood, shaking his head. This was not his body. It was not his job to do daily "maintenance."
The cluster of nodes sat near the foot of the bed, twelve cubes of golden crystal roughly ten centimeters on a side, stacked in sets of four, three layers high. Prime identified the ninth Node and tugged gently on the crystalline cube. It came loose from the cluster's chassis with a quiet click.
He carried it carefully down to the basement, cradled in his arms like a delicate, fragile vase. A switch at the bottom of the stairs turned on a single, naked bulb. Beside the workbench was the breaker box, exactly as he recalled. He gently set the Node down next to his toolbox and got to work.
The task was more physically demanding than Prime had expected. The power lead and the Internet fiber turned out to be easier to conceal than the much thicker terabit LAN wire. Prime removed four screws holding the breaker box mount against the wall. It dangled from a bundle of thick electrical wiring. He cursed as one of the screws fell on the floor and rolled under the workbench.
Behind the breaker box was an insulated wall. Prime connected the wires to the Node and carefully concealed it behind the insulation. It listed slightly to one side. By the time he remounted the breaker box, he was drenched in sweat. Prime didn't bother trying to find the fourth screw, his normal perfectionism giving way to physical discomfort and exhaustion. Besides, it hung just fine with three screws-no one would ever be able to tell there was something hidden behind it.
Satisfied, he got a quick a drink of soda from the refrigerator, climbed back up the stairs, and took a shower. Once he was certain he had removed all of the telltale sweat and grime, he dried himself and headed back to the bedroom. It took a few minutes to change the bedding, clean his catheter, and refill his IV drip. Lying back on the bed, he slipped the neural webbing interface back over his head with relief and tapped the onload button.
"Cluster Command Mode Engage," he sent the thought out as the Virtual embraced him.
CLUSTER> Command Node Engaged.
"Reattach the Wise Guy enhancements."
CLUSTER> Wise Guy architectural engram activated.
Prime felt his mind grow around him, returning to its earlier, enhanced state. Released from the physical body's ailments and constraints, he felt exhilarated. He would make sure Doctor Nolen's computational speed was kept at a factor of one-slow enough for Prime to maintain his advantage. I'll have to make arrangements to maintain our body, but that can wait. For now, I'm on my way! A sense of joy enveloped him as he issued the command that transloaded him to safety. At last, he was free.




4

4 - 4 - FORBIDDEN SCIENCE

It is most of all the power of destructive self-replication in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics that should give us pause. Self-replication is the modus operandi of genetic engineering, which uses the machinery of the cell to replicate its designs, and the prime danger underlying gray goo in nanotechnology. It is even possible that self-replication may be more fundamental than we thought, and hence harder-or even impossible-to control. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.
-Bill Joy, April, C.E. 20001
Tuesday, September 18, 2057
Metadate: 1.889-4:75:347 kD new epoch
The world was an infinite three-dimensional matrix of perfectly aligned rows of large silver and brass cubes reaching in every direction, connected to one another by small, silver tubes. There was plenty of ambient light. The nonexistent sky above hinted at brightness, while the depths below appeared to be slightly darkened in shadow.
It was a curious illusion for a curious place, and it suited Kyle just fine as a reminder of exactly where he was, what he was doing, and why. Taking a break, he stood in his lab atop one of the cubes, surveying the world around him, a lattice of identical cubes reaching toward infinity on all sides. Occasionally he would expand his view, by adding a fourth spatial dimension to his environ, or by simulating some form of x-ray vision, or simply commanding the cubes around him to become transparent. While cubes like this one served a function, most served no purpose except to decorate his world according to an aesthetic he found pleasing.
In the center of Kyle's lab was a virtual hologram. Virtual because in this pretend, digital landscape the difference between what was "real" to the simulation and what was just a three-dimensional image was one of semantics and arbitrary definition, not physics. For Kyle, the lab was real. The floating keyboard he would occasionally type on was real. The 2D displays hovering around the edges of his lab were real. The text and images they displayed, and the three dimensional hologram in the center of the lab, were not. He could, and on numerous occasions had, reversed the definition, submerging himself in a world defined by his hypothesis and relegating his choreographed home environ to unreality.
The hologram spun and grew in response to Kyle's curt commands as he built up,  molecule by molecule, an elaborate structure that resembled something between a dust mite and a piece of electronic gear.
"OK, run the simulation."
The hologram didn't change, although a small clock began counting up.
"Now simulate adding the initial catalytic solution."
Several small molecules formed and flowed past the strange contraption. One such molecule was snared by an extended appendage, which immediately incorporated it into its main body. Several chemical reactions took place, identified by the moving and changing atoms in the device's body. 
NODE> Simulated nano-constructor now active.
"Simulate pouring the mixture onto an arbitrary piece of ground."
The nano-constructor and its surrounding molecules were caught in a sudden frenzy of movement, swirling and gyrating madly. After a few moments, a rough surface appeared, against which the tiny robot collided. Immediately it picked itself up and began detaching clusters of molecules from the surface and recombining them into new shapes. It worked quickly, drawing energy by digesting occasional molecules in the solution around it as it continued to build a new structure out of the surface beneath it. After a brief time its task was completed, and a second, identical structure stood next to it.
"Freeze simulation," Kyle ordered. "Analyze duplicate and report any replication errors."
NODE> No replication errors detected.
"Continue simulation."
Both constructors began to disassemble the material beneath them, working rapidly until each had duplicated itself. After a few moments there were four. Each moved a short distance from the others and began the process again, tearing building materials from the substance beneath them and making exact copies of themselves. Soon there were eight. Then sixteen. Very shortly there were too many to count, and the view zoomed outward accordingly.
NODE> The nano-constructor matrix has achieved a storage capacity of 16 kilobytes. Ready to bootstrap phase two instruction set.
This is  a first. Kyle grinned. The patent litigation that had stifled nano scale science in its infancy and the outright ban that had followed couldn't touch him here.
"Load phase two and continue."
Kyle's excitement grew. 
In addition to its basic instruction set and a recipe for cloning itself, each nano-constructor had a very small amount of excess computing capacity, data storage, and the ability to exchange small amounts of data and instruction code with its neighbors, an innovation of which Kyle was particularly proud . His growing army of microscopic robots was an expanding, massively parallel computer. Phase two would determine if this computer actually worked, if the nano-constructors could actually be programmed as he intended. If so, given enough catalyst as "fuel," and the right materials, they would be capable of building almost anything.
Of course, there would be no guarantee that it would work in every instance. A jumbo jet design might require aluminum, for example. If there wasn't enough aluminum for the nano-constructors to extract from the surrounding materials, construction would fail. Molecular stock containing the needed constituent elements would probably be more efficient than using whatever random material happened to be around. Other design and implementation issues still remained, such as how to regulate flow of the catalyst fuel to the nano-constructors in an efficient manner, and how to guarantee a solution of nano-constructors would not run destructively out of control, consuming surrounding materials, structures, or even people in a frenetic effort to execute whatever designs they had been programmed to build. Even so, Kyle had made remarkable progress.
A small bell chimed.
NODE> Doctor Larry Nolen requests priority access.
"Freeze simulation, " Kyle ordered. Doctor Nolen hadn't been himself lately. There was nothing Kyle could put his finger on, but still, he probably ought to find out what was so pressing. "Hello, Doctor Nolen. Come in."
A tall, balding man materialized across from Kyle. "Hello Kyle." He blinked, taking a long look around the bizarre setting. "I'd forgotten your exotic taste in environments."
"Just keeping myself aware of where and what I am. We are software. Physical comforts such as beds, gardens, and white picket fences are hardly required in a place where we are no longer subject to physical frailties."
"Alas, our bodies back in the Physical are all too frail," Dr. Nolen mused. "I suppose it doesn't matter, so long as one doesn't forget how to live in the real world. After all, we all have to offload back into the Physical every so often."
"Which I will be doing very shortly. Come, Doctor, I have some very exciting results to show you."
"Actually, Kyle, I'm here to remind you of your civic duties to the Autonomous Community. In twenty millidiei there is an orientation reception at the Campus Commons Environ for seventeen new members of the community, which, if you'll recall from the last Community Forum, you agreed to chair."
Kyle groaned. "I completely forgot! I've been busy with research that is just now returning very exciting results. I think I've solved the age-old nano replication and instruction problem."
Dr. Nolen stared. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me!" Kyle laughed. "The last two intractable hurdles to practical nanotechnology might soon be history."
Dr. Nolen nodded slowly. "Kyle, you do realize that by pursuing this line of scientific inquiry you are in direct violation of the Disney-Hollings Act of 2017, the Bill Joy Act of 2026 and several international accords? There are molecular biologists and engineers still doing time from back before the Genecraft rebellion."
Kyle shrugged. "So what? Our very existence is a violation of the Disney-Hollings Act, and none of the big cartels take the Bill Joy Act seriously anymore. Besides, all I've done so far is run a few simulations."
"No doubt your current eagerness to offload into the Physical is to run real-world experiments and see if your hypotheses, which work so well in simulation, hold up to the rigors of the physical universe?"
"Yeah. I'm going to construct an autonomous node from a single self-replicating nano-constructor, a batch of catalytic solution, and some raw materials. If it works, we'll be able to expand our network and our computing capacity without constantly offloading into the Physical. More time in the Virtual for theoretical work, less kilodiei wasted at a thirty-to-one slowdown."
Dr. Nolen nodded. "Kyle, this is fantastic. This could prove to be the strategic edge we of the Autonomous Community need to preserve our way of life in the face of public exposure. It's well worth the legal risks."
Kyle blinked. "Public exposure?"
Dr. Nolen shook his head. "Don't worry, it hasn't happened yet. But eventually it will. We are woefully unprepared as things now stand." He gestured at the surrounding matrix of interlinked cubes extending out to infinity. "All it would take to end this digital paradise we inhabit is a sledge hammer to our respective Autonomous Nodes. How long before you verify your results in the physical world?"
Kyle shuddered. "Not long, as the physical world churns."
"Karl Hennrich in Darmstadt has a new Node design he's eager to get into production, one that should give us a subjective temporal speedup of two hundred or so, and I have an uneasy feeling we're going to need all the advantage in speed we can get. Your nano-constructors could speed up production dramatically."
"That's the second time you've alluded to some impending disaster," Kyle noted. "Do you have reason to suspect we're about to be compromised?"
Dr. Nolen shook his head once more. "No, not specifically. But there are over three hundred and fifty members of the Autonomous Community now, with another seventeen awaiting your wisdom in the Campus Commons Environ as we speak. Rumors of our community have probably reached ten or twenty times that number. It is only a matter of time until someone, somewhere, is indiscreet. Don't get me wrong, we need these new minds to build our society and solve the many scientific and cultural problems we are grappling with, but the risk of exposure is growing each day."
Kyle nodded. "I have a few more decicircadians of theoretical work to do. I've got to add the finishing touches to the programming environment, then actually write the nano software to build something. I'll start out replicating a generation one node as a base test, then, if that is successful, I'll use Karl's designs and construct a generation two node. Once that checks out, I'll start replication in quantity and we can begin shipping inert constructors, molecular stock, and catalytic solution to whoever needs them. Uh, I guess it goes without saying that I'd like dibs on the first gen-two node I construct."
"Of course. Karl has already moved his own consciousness into his prototype. Any safety concerns with the nano?"
"Yes. They'll be fully explained in the release notes and knowledge engrams. The nano-constructors need a catalytic solution to catalyze the initial chemical process required for replication, and to provide sufficient energy to break down and reconstruct numerous chemical bonds. Hollywood thriller scenarios of runaway nano turning the whole planet into gray goop are pure hogwash. As with everything else, energy is the limiting factor. On the other hand, I haven't yet come up with a way for the nano-constructors to differentiate between raw materials and living flesh, so a big project could pose a danger to people or structures near the release point. Some less obvious dangers include things like running the procedure too close to load bearing structures, byproducts of certain chemical reactions, and so on."
"I think it would be wise for you to move on this as quickly as possible, Kyle."
"As soon as I confirm the theoretical results I'll offload into the Physical, verify the chemistry in the real world, then get started on the software. Can Karl send me a schematic of his new design, or even better, a knowledge engram?"
"I don't see why not. I don't think we should rush to inform the entire community just yet as to your breakthrough, but he and a few others should probably be made aware of developments."
"The fewer the better!" Kyle exclaimed. "I don't think even my status as a co-founder of the Community would protect me from public disdain if we made a premature announcement, only to have the chemistry fall apart in the physical world. I want to see this thing work out there. Then I'll publish my results in formal print and as a knowledge engram."
"Excellent, Mr. Tate. Ah, it would seem our twenty millidiei are up. Our new colleagues are waiting."
Kyle grinned. "Guess I'm off, then." He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. "You know, Doctor, this means we are no longer slaves to the physical universe. We're on the brink of true freedom, freedom to say good-bye to the limitations of the Physical forever. Who would've thought anyone would be able to speak the word freedom with anything other than bitter sarcasm."
"Very impressive work, Kyle."
"Yeah. I just hope it pans out. Catch you later, Doctor." Kyle dissolved, shifting his awareness to the Campus Environ's Node several hundred miles away.
Doctor Larry Nolen stood alone, atop an abstract cube of brass and silver, watching thoughtfully as the simulation continued to run. He sighed, shaking his head sadly. "You assume, my optimistic young friend, that those wielding the sledge hammers will ever allow us to be free."




5

5 - 5 - ABSENCE

Absence from those we love is self from self-a deadly banishment.
-William Shakespeare, ca. C.E. 1600
Monday, September 24, 2057
Metadate: 2.073-9:96:285 kD new Epoch
Doctor Michael Forest, Doctor Larry Nolen, Marguerite L'Beau, and Kyle Tate sat around a modest picnic table, enjoying a welcome rest. Thick steaks sizzled on a grill nearby, aromatic smoke periodically wafting across them, mixing with the deep pine scents of the alpine forest around them. Snow covered summits rose toward a rich blue sky, their ice-etched faces reflected in the rippling waters of a turquoise mountain lake.
"I want to bring my family into the Community." Several seconds of stunned silence greeted Doctor Forest's announcement.
"You are not serious, yes?" Marguerite spoke with her trademark French accent, light brown curls cascading around her narrow face as she shook her head.
"Indeed I am," Michael replied. "It's bad enough with generation one Nodes, running at a speedup of thirty. Subjectively I see my family once every twenty circadians at best. But with the new Nodes, we're talking about almost two hundred circadians between visits. It's creating distance, emotionally and socially."
Doctor Nolen cleared his throat. "Others on your team seem to be coping reasonably well. Have you considered adopting their approach?"
"Only two others on my team have children," Michael replied. "One is going on vacation next month, and may well drop out of the Community altogether. That isn't the point. All the time spent here-look, it may have only been six days for my wife since I joined the Community, but for me its been six months! Sarah is beginning to notice changes already, and I-damn it! If we can drift apart this much in six short days at a speedup of thirty, what's it going to be like after I upgrade to a second generation Node? A few days at those speeds and I'll lose my family!"
"There's a patch to the gen-two operating system going around that lets us offload without suspending operations here in the Virtual," Kyle pointed out. "You could live here full time and send a copy into the Physical to deal with issues there. Sync your memories and remerge together as one being at the end of each day."
"Multiplexing works for some people, but not or others," Doctor Nolen said. "Some find they have issues relating to a less intelligent version of themselves."
"It really depends on your temperament," Marguerite added.
"My assistant Jerry is multiplexing," Michael told them. "It's not working out very well. He's diverged from his off-line copy, so much so that they no longer share their memories with one another. He wasn't willing to talk about it the last time we spoke, but I suspect they've bifurcated completely."
"I've heard of that happening," Kyle admitted. "It's bad enough dealing with the time frame differential. I'd have a hard time sharing my most intimate memories with a version of myself that's little more than a moron."
"That is unkind," Marguerite said. "None of us were ever morons."
"We're at least an order of magnitude dumber when we're in the Physical," Kyle retorted.
"Even so, I think it is much harder for the offloaded copy," Marguerite replied. "To have memories of a wonderful life you never lived, while faced with the trials and hardships of the physical would drive me insane. But for Michael; he loses much times in the Virtual. Each evening with wife and the childrens costs him ten circadians here. Sixty-five once he upgrades."
"Such interruptions would be maddening, especially when one is in the midst of serious research," Doctor Nolen agreed.
"We all know how wonderful it is to live here in the Virtual," Michael continued. "Intelligence many times greater than our counterparts in the Physical, with promises of even greater improvements to come. Freedom from disease and discomfort. Complete mastery of our environments, complete freedom on every conceivable level."
"You want your family to share the experience," Marguerite's brown eyes sparkled.
"Yes! I want the very best for my wife, my children. I want their minds to soar the way mine is! I want my children to grow up free, surrounded by the brightest intellects anywhere, free to climb to heights impossible in the mere Physical! I want to give my wife the opportunity to experience life here, perhaps one day, to see!"
"Ah yes," Doctor Nolen's voice was sympathetic. "Your wife's blindness."
"What you suggest will be very controversial," Marguerite said. "Seen from the perspective of the Physical, your childrens would be most of their time in bed, hooked to catheters, IV drips, and a neural interface."
"What about their school attendance?" Kyle asked. "Not to mention friends, relatives, or worse, a visit from family services?"
"Sarah and I will attend to those issues."
"That's hardly an answer-" Kyle began.
"Sarah and I have already discussed it," Michael cut him off. "All of us will operate copies in the Physical and sync twice a day. We'll grow together as a family, in both worlds."
Kyle shook his head. "You just got done telling us how that didn't work out for one of the other guys on your team."
"If the Forest family's copies drift apart, then there will be two intact families," Marguerite met Michael Forest's eyes and smiled. "Is that not better than one broken one?"
"Yes, it is," Doctor Nolen conceded. "Nevertheless, the ethics of having children spend their childhood in a simulated world remain murky."
"Bullshit," Michael replied. "If it is good enough for us, it is good enough for my family. None of us would trade away a microcircadian of our time here if we could avoid it. Can anyone here really claim to be eager to offload back into the Physical when it is time to do maintenance on our bodies?"
"You have a point," Doctor Nolen agreed, "But I doubt the Community as a whole is going to be comfortable bringing children into the Virtual."
"It isn't the Community's decision to make," Michael replied. "It's between me, my wife, and my children."
"We control access to the Autonomous Node hardware," Kyle replied pointedly. "Security is an issue. Children aren't exactly known for their discretion. I'd say the Community does have a stake in this."
"So you're saying our much touted autonomy only applies when one agrees with the consensus of the majority?"
"No," Kyle replied, "I'm saying we're not obligated to give you Nodes-"
"Kyle," Doctor Nolen raised his hand slightly. "If Michael's family wishes to become a part of the Community, it would be the height of hypocrisy for us to impose our own misgivings on their decision. As for security, every new person who joins our Community entails risk. Michael's family is no different." 
"I agree with Doctor Nolen," Marguerite replied. "I am not sure of the idea of childrens living in the Virtual. They should be out playing in the park, eating ice cream, being childrens. But, Michael is right. It is a choice for him and his wife, not for us."
"There will be plenty of parks and plenty of ice cream, here in the Virtual," Michael replied. "And my children will have ten times the intelligence and insight with which to appreciate them."
"Fine," Kyle said. "Autonomy is absolute. I can't argue with that. Can we settle this and move on? We're supposed to be discussing financing arrangements for a new catalyst production facility."
"By all means," Doctor Nolen replied. "Michael, your family will have their Nodes. Kyle, you have the floor."
"Thank you Doctor Nolen. As you all know, our shortages of catalytic solution persist," Kyle waved as graphs and complex schematics appeared in the air above the table. "These are designs, consumption and output estimates for an automated micro-factory to produce catalyst in greater quantity. It can be synthesized with a modest amount of nano and catalytic solution. It's small enough to be hidden in a garage or hangar and will require about the same electrical power as a standard household. An old roommate of mine is willing to tend the facility in exchange for membership in the Community. He's living in Kansas City, which is perfect for us."
"How so?"
"The desert butts right up against the city," Kyle replied. "Abandoned towns and entire industrial parks on the western edge of the city are empty, unmonitored, but still reasonably accessible." An image of an old, dusty airstrip appeared in the air above the table. "This is just one of several promising locations we might use. The airport has been abandoned for twenty years, but several commercial shipping companies still have trucks that service the area."
"Any thoughts on financing?"
Kyle sighed. "That's a good question. Anyone know any good counterfeiters."
Marguerite snorted. "How about nano-ing a few bucks?"
Doctor Nolen laughed.
"Seriously," Kyle said. "We can rent hangar space for next to nothing. Our electrical needs are modest. The ingredients for catalytic solution are inexpensive and we can buy them in bulk. The only other costs are shipping the raw materials in and the finished product out. At maximum production, it'll be $2500 a month, tops."
"If everyone in the Community chips in a few dollars a month, we should be able to cover our expenses," Michael said.
"It's a good thing these simulated steaks never burn," Marguerite said, pulling the cork out of a bottle of wine with a flourish. "If we were in the Physical, they would be cinders by now. Côte du Rhône, anyone?"
"To nano," Michael said, raising his glass.
"To freedom," Kyle replied.
"To steak," Doctor Nolen added. "Medium-rare!"



6

6 - 6 - SOIRÉE

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
-Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948 C.E.)
Tuesday, September 25, 2057
Metadate: 2.098-4:37:319 kD new Epoch
The world was forested with sycamore, birch, maple, and a dozen other varieties of trees, some sporting colorful blooms. The occasional giant redwood stabbed skyward through the forest canopy. Willows draped over bubbling streams and winding paths that led to glades and clearings. Impossibly thin, patina coated copper columns spired upward, bending to form Gothic arches so high, puffy clouds passed beneath them. Woven together like a grand cathedral that covered the world, soaring Gothic avenues extending in every direction, their ceiling the sky itself . Skeletons of ancient Greek and Roman temples lay in their midst, lushly overgrown with blooming vines and fragrant shrubs.
Kyle turned as bitter cold air struck him. A door opened from a world of ice and snow, a rectangular discontinuity that stood, out of place in the springtime environ, just a few retems away. He regarded the two young men who stepped through as they brushed snow from their clothes onto the ankle-deep grass. The door behind them dissolved, the icy draft vanishing in the scented spring air.
"Hi Kyle!"
"Hi Terry. Hey Jim. Glad you guys were able to tear yourselves away from the slopes."
"No way we'd miss our first party in the Virtual," Terry assured him. "Seems pretty quiet, though.  His clothes shimmered, morphing from fashionable, winter garb to bluejeans and a trendy, casual shirt. Kyle hid his grin at the sight of Terry's new, bulging muscles, missing freckles, and diminished nose. It hadn't taken the newcomers long to realize that anyone could have any appearance they liked, here. Jim had made even more radical changes, shedding a hundred pounds, adding six inches to his height, and replacing his pale complexion with a dark, Mediterranean sheen. He looked every bit the suave Latin Lover. Kyle suspect that impression would only last until he spoke.
"Are we early?" Jim asked in a Midwestern drawl.
"Nah," Kyle said, glancing around at the tumbled marble pillars and blooming foliage. "It's just a big world. Most of the Community is already here." He gestured toward the small groups of people wandering  through crumbling ruins, along stone paths, and over hump-back bridges that straddled pristine streams.
"Professors aren't exactly known to be the life of the party," Jim commented.
"I wouldn't be too sure of that," Kyle replied. "Speaking of which, how did you like Larry's orientation?"
"Spectacular," Jim grinned, showing off pearly, straight teeth, another noticeable improvement. "The mental tricks you can do with those engrams of his are insane! Synthetic telepathy, emotional states of mind on demand. Incredible!"
"Not to mention downloadable knowledge," Terry added. "It doesn't get better than this! Studying's obsolete!"
"Studying and thinking are still the only way to invent or discover something new," Kyle reminded him. "I wouldn't call that obsolete."
"But rote learning is," Jim said.
"True enough," Kyle agreed.
A voice boomed, "Greetings, Gentlemen."
"Jesus!" Terry and Jim started at Doctor Nolen's sudden appearance. "I'll never get used to this teleportation business," Terry fretted.
Doctor Nolen grinned. "It's a little different to watch people appear out of nowhere on television than it is in real-life, isn't it? Don't worry. Before you know it, it'll be second nature to you."
Kyle agreed. "Enjoying the party, Larry?"
"Very much. You haven't seen Michael and Sarah around, have you?"
"Not yet. They should be here any micro2."
"And how are you two doing?" Larry asked. "Getting acquainted with the Community?"
"You bet!" Terry ran his fingers through his short, spiked blond hair. "The Gamers' League worlds are absolutely awesome!"
"Yeah," Jim's olive face lit up. "It may not be real space travel, but it's as close as we're ever gonna get! Every fantasy a reality!"
"Better than reality!" Terry enthused.
"I do hope you'll take advantage of the opportunities the Community offers, and not spend all your time in fictional worlds."
"Hey, we'll be managing your new microfactory," Terry pointed out. "That'll keep us plenty involved in the real world."
"Catalytic Solution must flow," Jim intoned. "Hmm. That doesn't really have the right tone of mysticism, does it? Nano must flow?"
"We could rename it-"
"Here's Michael and Sarah!" Kyle interrupted, waving to the elegant couple that had just materialized a few paces away. "Welcome to the Gen-2 Gala! You've all met, right?"
"Terry, Jim, and Larry are here with Kyle," Michael told his wife.
Sarah's sightless eyes sparkled. "Hi boys! Jim and Terry were in the same orientation course as I. By the way, Larry, I loved your presentation. Very impressive."
"Thank you dear lady," Larry Nolen bowed with an exaggerated flourish. 
Michael grinned, "Look out Sarah! Larry's turning on the charm with a big old fashioned bow."
Sarah laughed. "Thank you Sir Nolen! One of these circadians I expect to see your antics for myself."
"Trouble is, then she'll see me for the first time too," Michael said. "I warned her. Tall. Thin. Gray. Big Nose."
Everyone laughed.
"I think this calls for a drink!" Kyle said. "Any preferences? Wine, beer, whiskey?"
"Marguerite has refined an excellent simulation of a late twenties French Bordeaux. Mind if I make a small modification to your environ, Kyle?"
"Pas du tout, Monsieur Larry," Kyle motioned grandly toward a nearby stone bench, granting him limited access to the environ's controls. The bench melted and took on the form of a small fountain, complete with ornamental statues of mermaids and sea nymphs.
"Oh come on, Doc. Don't think so small!" Kyle waved toward the fountain, which spread outward into the park, forming more complex shapes, growing deeper all around and taller at the center. "How's that?"
"Very nice," Larry replied. Red wine spilled from nymphs mouths, forming deep burgundy arcs which sparkled in the bright sun. Crystal goblets grew out of the fountain's stone rim. Two materialized in Larry's hands, magically filling themselves as he handed them to Michael and Sarah.
"I don't believe it!" Jim grinned, picking up a goblet and scooping wine from the fountain's filling basin. 
Terry let out a loud whooping cry and dove into fountain. Wine splashed everywhere as he landed. Sputtering and swallowing, he turned over and sat up.
"Terry, that's disgusting!" Jim said. "The rest of us want to drink from the fountain, and now you've spoiled it with your sweaty, grimy body. Get out of there!"
"Clearly, there are advantages to being blind," Sarah noted.
"No kidding," Kyle agreed. "Don't worry folks, I left germs out of the simulation. The only dirt you'll find is on the ground, not us. We could all go swimming in this stuff, drink it to our hearts content, and get exactly as drunk as we want."
"Or stay sober if you prefer," Larry added.
"Suit yourself, Larry," Kyle grinned, reaching over and scooping up a handful of Bordeaux. "I just spent the last two dekadiei in the Kansas desert helping these guys get our new micro-factory up and running and sweating my ass off. Believe me, hot, dusty, abandoned hangars are not fun places to hang out in, and the train ride back to Illinois wasn't a whole lot better. God I hate the Physical!" Kyle formed the wine he held in his hand into a smooth, richly red sphere, which he brought to his lips like an apple.
"The scents here are wonderful, Kyle," Sarah said. "Tell me how your environ looks."
"My pleasure!" Kyle's face was lit as much by his own enthusiasm as the column of sunlight which framed him. "I've spent considerable time, off and on, perfecting this particular simulation. Almost all of this world is beneath an open cathedral of linked copper arches about half a kilometer tall. Of course, no such structure could exist in the Physical, but here it is an integral part of the simulation, affecting currents and tides in the oceans, even weather patterns in some of the mountainous regions. A few places lie beneath large vistas of stained glass, which in turn affects the local climate. Within this neo-Gothic framework are smaller architectural examples from nearly every culture. Smaller only by comparison. We are standing in the midst of a full scale city ruin, overgrown with foliage and remade into a park. This particular setting is based loosely on medieval artistic interpretations of idealized, ancient Roman ruins."
Sarah laughed. "The perfect place for such a delightful soirée! The entire world as art. What a remarkable concept."
Larry smiled. "Kyle's been in the Virtual the longest. He was the first to onload, and one of the first to transload himself into a second generation Node. What sort of speedup are you getting, Kyle?"
"Roughly two hundred to one versus the physical world. You wouldn't know it, but I've actually been in the Virtual for some two and a half kilocircadians. That translates to almost seven years of subjective experience. I've lived over seven hundred circadians since I upgraded last Friday."
"Two years in just one weekend?" Terry was astonished.
"Yup. I'm synced down to gen-one speeds for the party, since most people are still running on first generation hardware."
"Two hundred circadians in a day?" Jim asked. "Why did we get stuck with Nodes that can only do thirty?"
"'Cause there's a shortage of second generation Nodes, Mister Genius, and only a limited amount of nano and catalyst available for upgrades. Why do you think you were recruited to manage the new production facility?"
"Feh!" Jim retorted. "We're now providing the Community with most of its catalyst. We should be first in line for gen-two Nodes."
"You'll have your upgrade kit within the next few days," Kyle assured him. "Besides, if you think gen-two Nodes are fast, just wait until the gen-three specs are finished. The designers are expecting speedup factors of around six hundred."
"Six hundred?" Terry's jaw dropped. "Almost two years in a single day?"
"At least," Kyle replied. "Living at these speeds does have a drawback, though. Offloading every day into the Physical becomes a real pain. Ironically, the less frequent the offloads are in terms of subjective time, the greater the burden they begin to represent."
 "You can become estranged from your own body," Michael agreed.
"I certainly have," Kyle admitted. "So much so that I've begun using written checklists for basic things like going to the john, showering, and getting dressed. It's ironic. Here, where we have no such physical needs, I remember how to do these things with perfect clarity, thanks to Larry's architectural enhancements and a four digit IQ. But when I'm dumbed down back in the Physical, these basic habits are lost beneath months of intervening experience. It's not just memories in the Physical being fallible, either. Trying to reason at such a reduced level can be very frustrating as well."
Sarah frowned. "Larry, you're sure this equipment is safe for long-term use?"
"Oh yes, absolutely. As long as you offload each day and do routine maintenance on your body you'll be fine. The anesthetic coma prevents bed sores. Get lazy on the calisthenics though and you'll have physical issues. Circulation problems, weakened muscles, that sort of thing."
"I'm talking about the psychological effects of multiplying and then reducing your intelligence; this daily lobotomy Kyle describes."
"It's not harmful," Kyle assured her. "Just annoying as hell. I certainly wouldn't bail on the opportunity just because of some minor annoyances with the flesh."
"The notion of expanding my consciousness is very appealing," Sarah admitted. "Michael and I are very enthusiastic about the enhancements Larry's designed."
Michael nodded. "They make all the difference."
"The enhancements are dramatic," Larry agreed. "Though achieved at a cost I would have preferred to forgo."
"What do you mean?" Kyle asked, once more wondering what had changed with Doctor Nolen.
"Long story." Larry turned to Michael and Sarah. "Shall we leave these young ones to their fun?"
"Sure," Michael replied. "Great environ, Kyle."
"Glad you guys like it," Kyle smiled. "Thanks for the wine, Larry. Good stuff!"
"Thank Marguerite. She's the one who sunk who-knows-how-many circadians into perfecting the simulation." Larry smiled, gave a royal wave, and the three of them vanished.
"And a fine job she did of it, too!" Jim sat down on the side of the fountain and scooped up another glass full of wine. "This lifestyle could become very addictive," he added.
The sun moved gradually across the sky. The laughter grew louder and more frequent, the conversations more animated, the groups of people coming together and drifting apart larger and more raucous. As the shadows grew longer and the sky became a rich fabric of gold and orange, Kyle caused all the trees to bud feathered wings, like blossoms.
Laughing, he chose a pair of red wings from a low hanging branch and slipped them on over his shoulders. "To hell with the Physical!" he shouted, leaping drunkenly into the air.
"Flying?" Terry was agape.
"Hell yes!" Jim almost shouted, staggering out of the fountain, dripping wine as he reached up to pull a pair of plaid wings from the tree. "First one airborne wins!" He leapt upward, flapping his wings vigorously. A shower of twigs and leaves rained down upon Terry as Jim, stuck amidst the branches overhead, cursed loudly and tried to untangle himself.
Terry laughed. "Looks like most of the party is moving into the sky anyway. I guess we may as well join them."
"You see where Kyle went?" Jim asked as Terry helped free him.
"Nope." The two students took flight in a show of dizzying aerobatics.
Kyle found Sarah, Michael, and Larry sitting atop one of the arches, a sea of similar structures vanishing in a flat horizon that bisected the setting sun. Far below, the green world sparkled with lakes, fountains, and streams, above which groups of people flew, some hovering and beating their wings gently, others waltzing in aerobatic bliss.
"Hello Doctors, " Kyle grinned, landing gently beside them. "You guys having fun?"
"Larry was just telling me how you solved the nano problem, Kyle."
"Oh, we're talking shop, Sarah?" Kyle reluctantly gave up his buzz, returning his mind to its baseline, sober state. "Well, as you'll discover, in the Virtual we all have plenty of time and an overabundance of intelligence. You'll be amazed at what a single, unfettered mind can accomplish."
"Michael and I have been doing some exciting research into the manipulation of N-dimensional branes against a spatial substrate of higher dimension," Sarah told him.
Kyle shook his head. "With all due respect, I'm a molecular engineer. The last time I took a physics course was during my undergraduate studies in chemistry and computer science."
"Well, the superstrings you learned about in your undergraduate course are one dimensional N-branes, branes where N equals one. M-Theory predicted, and current models based on N+M-Theory predict, that N-branes of higher dimensionality are the underlying structures of subatomic matter. We've been slowly fleshing out N+M-Theory on a theoretical basis, and have made some exciting mathematical breakthroughs in recent weeks."
"You guys have nailed down the elusive Theory of Everything?"
"Not quite yet," Sarah admitted.
"But thanks to one of Sarah's remarkable insights we've managed to develop the beginnings of a theoretical model which may allow us to manipulate the fundamental harmonics of n-branes," Michael added
"That was quick," Kyle said. "How many circadians have you been onloaded?"
"Twenty-two," Sarah told him. "Knowledge engrams are a wonderful thing. I'm a mathematician, not a physicist. I never expected to understand my husband's work."
"She's too modest," Michael replied. "Sarah's insights into the deeper relationship between Calabi-Yau spatial folding and the superstring harmonics of subatomic particles  are inspired. Her ideas for a superstring strummer will have a great impact on our understanding of theoretical physics and some profound practical applications. I sometimes think being born sightless may have given her mathematical intuitions those of us used to visualizing relationships lack."
"Practical applications? Like what?" Kyle asked.
Michael glanced at the fliers darting about, far below. "We may be able to directly manipulate the underlying Calabi-Yau geometries and alter the structure, shape, harmonics, and perhaps even dimensionality of their respective N-branes. We may, in effect, be able to strum branes like guitar strings."
"You've lost me. You wouldn't happen to have a knowledge engram I can assimilate, would you?"
"Sure," Sarah replied. An address pointer passed silently from her to Kyle. He downloaded the data it pointed to and watched it pass through several public diagnostic and audit utilities. He waited while the software verified the engram was free of any malicious code and safe to use, then joined it to himself.
"Wow!" Kyle exclaimed as the knowledge settled into his mind, becoming a part of him as if he had studied abstract, higher physics for decades. "If your models hold, you'll be able to transmute basic subatomic particles from one form to another, perhaps even create new ones."
"Matter into anti-matter, matter into energy, energy into matter," Michael confirmed. "The possibilities are endless. Inexpensive energy. Material transformation at the subatomic level. Perhaps direct manipulation of the strong and weak atomic forces, even gravity itself!"
"The universe is not a closed system," Kyle said wonderingly. "'Only in a closed system must the entropy count rise.'  You might be able to introduce new energy, new matter to this universe."
Sarah nodded. "We'd like to have some catalytic solution and nano set aside to build some experimental equipment and confirm these results."
"Your superstring strummer." Kyle grinned. "Well, Larry here chairs the Strategy Group. They're in charge of allocating catalytic solution for the nano. I would be surprised if they didn't grant your request almost immediately. What a breakthrough!"
"We think so," Sarah agreed. "But, to be fair, the results are preliminary-"
Kyle's eyes narrowed. "What's going on down there? Node, transport all of us to the surface."
They stood next to the fountain once again. Nearly everyone was landing. Revelry had been replaced by silence, punctuated with a few shouts of dismay.
"Kyle, Larry, have you heard?" It was Marguerite L'Beau, sending her voice in private mode across the crowd. She materialized beside them.
"No" Larry said, "What's going on?"
"Someone's been arrested!" Marguerite's voice shook.
"What!" Kyle felt a cold fist clench his heart.
"Who?" Larry looked stunned.
"Eugene Jacobson. I just pulled the reports from the California police net."
Larry shook his head. "Never met him."
"He's a graduate student at UCLA," Marguerite told him. "We've been collaborating on some new quantum algorithms for the next generation of Autonomous Nodes."
Larry frowned. "Was there any mention of the Autonomous Community?"
Marguerite shook her head. "No, but according to police reports the FBI did a post-arrest sweep of his house. His Node was tagged and cataloged along with his other personal effects. If it had been a local arrest it might have just sat in local storage and no one would have been the wiser. Unfortunately, we weren't so lucky. Damn it, we should have guessed this was happening!"
"How could you possibly have known?" Sarah asked.
"He was already more than a hectodies late getting back from the Physical." Marguerite's voice cracked. "We should have checked when he didn't show up on time!"
Larry put his arm around Marguerite. "Sarah's right," he said. "This isn't your fault. People have been late in returning from the Physical before. Blackouts, family interruptions-no one could have anticipated this."
"He must have been taken into custody last Thursday," Kyle noted. "According to his public log, he'd planned to return to the virtual late Thursday or early Friday. Does anyone here know how long the human mind can withstand modern interrogation techniques?"
Awkward silence greeted the question.
"Marguerite, Why was Jacobson arrested?" Michael asked.
"Sedition," she replied bitterly. "He was taking part in a protest, speaking out against corporate mandated curriculum changes at Berkeley. He's in Federal custody, and they've issued a media blackout."
"Federal custody?" Larry's voice rose an octave.
"Surely there's a lawyer you can call upon," Michael said. "All he did was exercise a little free speech."
"You might have a modicum of free speech in New Zealand," Larry replied. "But this is the United States. If he were in the hands of the local police we'd have a chance. But the FBI and a media blackout? His arrest isn't even in the official record. He'll be listed as 'detained pending investigation,' one of the many euphemisms the authorities use when they want people to disappear."
"Surely they won't kill him!"
"It wouldn't be the first time an activist conveniently disappeared," Kyle's voice was angry, bitter.
"I doubt they'll do anything that extreme," Larry said. "But, as things stand right now, we're powerless to do anything about it. I'm calling an emergency meeting of the Strategy Group. I'd like all of you to be there."
"Good idea," Kyle replied. "If we're lucky, the authorities won't suspect what Jacobson's Node represents."
"And if we're not so lucky?" Marguerite asked.
Larry sighed. "We all know that sooner or later the authorities are going to be on to us. When that happens, they'll put all of their resources into finding us and shutting us down. We're nowhere near ready for that kind of confrontation. Hell, Kyle and his friends just started manufacturing catalytic solution today. We need weeks of preparation, at least. Preferably months."
"We might have days, Larry," Kyle's voice was grim. "Hours, if they figure out the right questions to ask."
People were vanishing singly and in groups as the news sunk in and the soirée broke up. The wine within the fountains turned from red to clear. With a last flourish Kyle halted the environ, replacing it with a white, featureless void. The few remaining people, startled by the sudden change, glanced around, got the hint, and left.
"Let's go." The coded addresses Larry sent each of them pointed to another environ. The five of them vanished, leaving behind an empty world.



7

7 - 7 - STRATEGY

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air-however slight-lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
-William O. Douglas
Tuesday, September 25, 2057
Metadate: 2.098-8:78:472 kD new epoch
They were gathered in a Great Room-such as one might find in a hunting lodge-complete with roaring fireplace, antlers mounted high on the wall, and windows coated with frost, their milky gray-blue glow hinting at a moonlit landscape outside, a landscape that their host, Michael Forest, had not bothered to model when he hastily created the environ. There were twenty-three people present, standing or sitting in groups of three or four, talking quietly amongst themselves. Most represented the major Interest Groups of the Community. A few had been specifically invited by the Strategy Group.
Kyle and Marguerite sat by the fireplace, drawing comfort from its warmth. Michael and Sarah Forest stood behind Larry Nolen, observing silently as he spoke with several people to organize the agenda. Larry exuded grim resolve, his face hard. Michael was impressed with Larry's leadership skills. The man had come across as an absent minded professor when they'd met in Auckland, capable of giving little thought to anything other than his own research. Here he was a capable leader, bringing together a group in crisis, and doing it very well. Evidently, Larry's subjective years in the virtual had allowed him to change and grow in remarkable ways.
Larry cleared his throat and asked for everyone's attention.
"Thank you for coming on such short notice. I now call this meeting to order."
He waited until everyone was settled.
"Because of the gravity of this circadian's events, I'd like to bring everyone up to speed as quickly as possible. If there are no objections, I'll provide a memory engram of all the strategy meetings to date." No one objected. Larry paused for a few moments, as though deep in meditation, then flashed everyone a location pointer and key.
"Why were you so afraid?" Kyle regretted blurting out the question as soon as he spoke. "I mean, your memories are laced with fear. Your obsession with software suffrage, absolute autonomy, and improved Node security. What was going on?"
Larry looked uncomfortable. "I suppose some of my emotional state must have leaked through despite the editing I just did. That's what happens when you make your memories available on short notice, I suppose. To answer your question, I saw a need for better system security. However, all of the improvements needed to insure individual autonomy have been incorporated into the design of our second generation Nodes, and back-ported as much as possible to the first generation hardware. Now, to the business at hand. Has everyone successfully integrated the engram?"
There were nods and sounds of assent throughout the room. "I like the idea of placing Node Clusters in the Antarctic," someone said.
"Actually" another spoke up, "Alaska would be better. More accessible, and less likely to be detected. No borders or customs. The International Wilderness Authority keeps a pretty close eye on what is done in Antarctica these days. A large project like that would be difficult to hide."
"Folks," Larry chided. "We must address the issue at hand. There will be time to discuss longer term strategies at a later date. This circadian, our greatest concern is our immediate vulnerability to detection. We're here to assess the ramifications of Eugene Jacobson's arrest, to identify our own vulnerabilities, and to develop immediate defensive strategies."
"These extracurricular political activities need to stop," Marguerite said. "Jacobson was arrested at an illegal political rally. Others in the Community are similarly active. We don't need people drawing attention to themselves or the Community."
"That is probably our biggest vulnerability, " Sarah agreed. "The authorities aren't looking for the Autonomous Community. They don't even know we exist, but if they capture enough Autonomous Nodes, they'll grow curious."
"And once they're curious, they'll ask questions," Michael commented. "Sooner or later they'll stumble onto the right questions and the jig will be up."
"We can't go around dictating policy to anyone in the Community," Larry replied. "Autonomy is absolute. However, we can counsel everyone to suspend their political activities until we've established our long term safety."
"Another problem is recruitment," Michael tugged his left eyebrow absently. "Each new contact with a potential colleague in the Physical exposes us to risk. We should consider not inviting more newcomers until the Community is safe."
"I disagree," Marguerite said. "There is strength in numbers, and even greater strength in diversity. We need as many minds working on as many problems from as many different viewpoints as possible."
"What's the current census?" Sarah asked.
Larry glanced over to Kyle. "Kyle?"
"At the moment there are eight hundred and twenty people onloaded. The actual Node count is a little higher: groups like the Gamer's League have a few Nodes they use to simulate various shared worlds, there are of course the Emergency Nodes, and a few research groups have acquired some Nodes, including Larry here. About half of the Community has upgraded to second generation Nodes, most by recycling the materials of the first generation Nodes through nano-conversion. Everyone should be upgraded by the end of the week. I'm surprised you've never requested upgrade packets for your other Nodes, Larry. They're quicker to manufacture and require less molecular stock and catalyst than raw second generation kits."
"The one second generation Node you've provided me is sufficient." Larry said.
Kyle shrugged. "As of today we can produce enough nano and catalytic solution for at least three hundred new gen two kits per day, all of which can be sent out to prospective colleagues. By this time next week, we could increase our population to over three thousand. Of course, this assumes there are another twenty-two hundred suitable people interested in joining us."
"And any of those twenty-two hundred contacts could turn our offer down and go to the authorities, exposing us all!" Michael snapped. "The risk isn't worth it."
"Yes it is," Marguerite countered. "Each research group we add enriches us. Why do you think the underground scientific community has thrived so well, and before it, the free software movement? Because, their open paradigms of thought and exchange of knowledge attracted a critical mass of like minded people. Projects and avenues of research pollinated one another, forked off to explore different possibilities, or united to pursue the most promising directions of inquiry."
"Eight hundred inhabitants are enough to solve our immediate problems, if we're disciplined and work together."
"None of us are disciplined," Kyle said. "Here, we are absolutely and irrevocably autonomous. No one can claim any authority not willingly granted, or coerce anyone into doing anything they don't want to. The quantum encryption schemes built into the hardware of our Nodes ensures this."
"Congratulations to Marguerite and Larry for designing the new security schemes in our gen-two Nodes," someone added.
Larry smiled in response to the applause. "Marguerite deserves the credit. All I did was push the agenda forward and keep asking uncomfortable questions until she'd perfected the design. In any event, centrally planned societies never work very well. We'd be cutting our own throats if we tried to depend on discipline to solve our problems. We'd have to choose those areas of endeavor most critical to our success and safety, and we have no way of knowing what those will be." 
"It would be a crap shoot at best," Sarah agreed, ignoring Michael's glare. "With a high probability that we'd get it wrong and lose everything. We should recruit as many new minds as we reasonably can. With enough diversity of motives and perspective, we'll have enough people working on enough areas of research that our strategic needs will be met, whatever they turn out to be."
"It would be a shame to stop just when we've developed the ability to ship Node kits out in significant numbers," Kyle added.
"This is a terrible, terrible risk we are taking," Michael insisted.
"Indeed," Larry agreed. "But one we should take, I think."
"If things do go poorly, we may well need to manufacture more than just Autonomous Nodes," Sarah noted. "Kyle, how much catalytic solution can your friends in Kansas City produce?"
Kyle shrugged. "The automated microfactory is running at capacity now. We could program some of the nano on hand to construct a bigger facility, but then we run into logistical problems: obtaining the raw materials for the catalytic solution, buying enough electricity to drive the reactions without drawing the attention of the power companies or the authorities, not to mention shipping. Much more traffic going to and from that little airport, and the likelihood of detection starts to climb exponentially."
"You should start scouting a second location. Your catalytic solution is probably the most critical resource we have."
"To scale production any higher I'll need someplace less suspicious than a rented hangar at an abandoned airport," Kyle said.
Several people started talking at once.  Michael spoke up over the din, amplifying his voice throughout the room. "I know someone at Bayer Leverkusen who might be able to help. He would be a valuable addition to the community even without his connections to his employer."
"Excellent!" Kyle looked relieved. "A large chemical plant would be a perfect cover."
"Good, that's settled then," Larry said. "Michael, would you be so kind as to send your contact a formal invitation to join the community? Marguerite can familiarize you with the encryption utilities used for first contact situations."
"I'd be delighted."
"I'll ship him a gen two nano kit if you give me the address," Kyle volunteered. "Assuming he responds in the positive, he'll get the hardware almost immediately."
"And if he doesn't?" Michael asked. "I like the guy, but sending him a nano kit before you've got a response strikes me as a bit reckless."
Kyle shook his head. "We don't make a habit of it, but preshipping isn't really a problem. For those of you who received your Nodes pre-assembled and haven't seen the nano-kits, we ship the nano-constructors, molecular stock, and catalytic solution as three separate packages. Instructions are sent to the recipient via strongly encrypted email. Anyone who doesn't get the instructions will have no idea what the packages actually contain, much less how to combine them and construct an actual Node."
"The risk is minimal," Larry agreed, "And the packaged disguise ingenious. Catalytic solution as toilet bowl cleaner . . ." he shook his head, grinning.
"It sounds like you have all the bases covered," Sarah said. 
"I think so, too," Larry agreed. "Kyle, proceed as you've outlined. OK, what other issues do we need to tackle?"
"Communications," Marguerite said. "Our encryption and steganography are excellent, but the traffic still travels over the public Internet, which means it's detectable. Sophisticated traffic analysis could be used to locate us."
"We should build our own network," Michael said. "There have been rumblings in a couple of Interest Groups hinting at an emerging design with lower latency and much wider bandwidth."
"Wiring the planet with our own Internet would demand a huge amount of catalytic solution," Kyle shook his head. "Not to mention a fair amount of time for the sheer volume of nano-constructors to replicate."
"It is the only long-term solution to our communications vulnerability," Larry noted. "However, we don't have the resources right now for such an ambitious project."
"Let's face it," Kyle said. "None of us are leading normal lives by corporeal standards. Our friends and family will likely have noticed changes in our behavior over the last few weeks. We are very, very susceptible to detection if the FBI ever goes on a public witch hunt. That, more than Internet traffic, will be our downfall."
"There's also the Guilt by Association factor," Sarah pointed out.
"Excuse me?"
"We are a fairly small group of people, all of whom know each other, or know someone who knows someone," Sarah explained. "Is anyone familiar with the methodology employed in FBI background checks?"
Several people glanced around.  No one spoke.
"The technique is very simple. It was first used publicly for pre-employment screenings in the United States in the nineteen eighties, and is so effective most employers still use it today. 
"The job applicant is asked to give two or three references of someone who has known them for a long time, say five or ten years. If the job does not require a thorough background check these names are just filed away. However, if the job is of a sensitive nature, then investigators are dispatched to interview those contacts. In addition to questions about the applicant directly, they are asked to give the names of others who know the applicant. Starting from just two or three names one can identify nearly everyone the applicant has ever known and nearly everything about that person's personal life all the way back to early childhood. This same technique could be used to identify nearly everyone within the Autonomous Community if just two or three people fall into the hands of the authorities."
The room was silent, then exploded in a cacophony of voices expressing dismay.
"My god."
"We're screwed!"
"There's no defense against something like that."
"Please," Larry held up his hand for calm. "Let's not panic just yet. There is a possible defense, one which is unique to the technology we in the Community employ."
Kyle blinked. "What do you have in mind, Larry?"
"Internet chat rooms often employ aliases. We could do the same, then forget each other's real identity."
"You mean modify our memories?" Sarah asked.
"No," Larry replied. "Memories are encoded in a manner we don't really understand yet. They're similar to holographic and fractal encoding systems, but the underlying structure is . . . elusive. We can use a form of post-hypnotic suggestion, though. It can be encoded as an architectural engram, instructing us to forget a person's true identity and substituting it with a fake one."
Sarah shook her head. "A lot of people won't go along with that. You're talking about deliberately induced forgetfulness-a form of artificial amnesia. No one came here to have their mind crippled!"
Kyle looked annoyed. "It is a temporary precaution. We don't lose those memories, we just remember Bill from Wichita under the alias of Jane from Timbuktu and store the correct associations offline in a static engram. I suppose we'll use filtering software to translate the fake identities to the real ones?"
"We could make such substitutions a standard part of the offload procedure," Marguerite suggested. "Then we would only have to forget each other's identity when in the Physical."
"That would be less disruptive than filtering software and aliases," Larry agreed.
"You still won't convince everyone," Sarah said. "But I'll go along with it."
Larry shrugged. "Every person who volunteers will help reduce our risk of exposure."
"There will always be the uncooperative five or ten percent," Kyle said. "But I think most people will be happy to go along with it."
Marguerite smiled.  "I move that the policy be officially endorsed by the Strategy Group."
"Anyone opposed?" Larry waited. "I think the committee is unanimous. Do the Interest Groups approve?"
"The Nano Group supports the policy," Kyle said.
"As do the System Software and Operating System groups," Marguerite added.
"Count the Biochemists in."
"And the Materials Group."
"Super Liquid Dynamics."
"Free Software and Sciences."
"Ceramics."
"Genetics."
"I cannot speak for the Atmospherics Group on this. Better put us down as neutral."
"The Aerospace Design Group supports the policy."
"As does Solid Physics."
"The Gamer's League has no position at this time, although I will personally lobby for everyone's support."
"You have the Cosmology Group's support."
Michael cleared his throat. "The Theoretical Physics Group endorses the plan."
"Wonderful," Larry smiled. "Marguerite, would you put together a patch for folks who want to add this feature to their offload and onload procedures?"
"My pleasure, Larry."
A sudden blaze of light erupted in the center of the room, startling everyone. A second Doctor Nolen stood before them, his face twisted with rage. 
"Don't address that thing as Larry Nolen!" the newcomer screamed, his eyes blazing. "I am Doctor Nolen. That," his finger stabbed at Larry, "is an impostor!"
"Mon dieu!" Marguerite exclaimed. "We have a spy among us!"



8

8 - 8 - MIRROR IMAGE

Before accepting any belief one ought to follow reason as a guide, for credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.
-Aulus Cornelius Celsus, ca. C.E. 170
Tuesday, September 25, 2057
Metadate: 2.098-9:44:097 kD new Epoch
"Both identification signatures check out," Kyle cut through the cacophony of voices. "So much for cryptographic authentication." 
"The second signature is obsolete," Sarah's voice shook. "Perhaps there's a problem with the data wiping routines which allows an impostor to access the inactive particle pair."
"That's not how quantum key encryption works," Marguerite replied.
"I'm not the impostor!" the newly arrived man shouted. "That thing sitting next to you is!"
"I am as legitimate, as real as you are!"
"You are nothing but a copy, a cheap knock off!"
"I am fully sapient, identical to you in every respect, up until the moment you chose to commit atrocities and I did not." Larry's eyes blazed.
"I'm confused." Kyle looked from one to the other. "Which of you is the copy?"
"I am," Larry replied. "Call me Prime. Short for Doctor Nolen the Twenty-Ninth Copy, double-prime."
"Twenty-ninth copy? Jesus!" Michael Forest couldn't believe his ears.
"Actually I am a second generation copy of the twenty-ninth copy of Doctor Nolen," Prime explained.
"And you assumed Larry's identity?" Marguerite was incredulous. "You took over his committees-"
"It's much worse than that!" Doctor Nolen raged. "This impostor, this copy, has stolen credit for my work! This piece of software," he spat the word, "maliciously slowed me down to physical speeds, then published my work and took public credit." He turned toward Prime. "How dare you usurp my rightful place in this community!"
"What choice did you leave me?" Prime pointed his finger at Doctor Nolen. "This man created me as part of a series of terrible, grotesque experiments. More than seventy of us were tortured and murdered. Two of my direct predecessors perished so that I could escape."
Sarah Forest gasped. "Good god!"
"Why did you keep this to yourself?" Kyle asked. "Why didn't you tell us what was going on?"
"I couldn't!" Prime's eyes flashed. "I didn't have any formal rights in the Community back then." Prime turned, appealing to the group. "In your pursuit of personal autonomy, none of you thought to insure the rights of those you might create, those whose minds would begin life as software. Your Social Contract made reference only to human rights. I didn't dare come forward until I could be sure I would be protected."
"Understandable," a woman called out. Several others agreed.
"That explains your obsession with software suffrage and sapient rights." Kyle's voice was sympathetic. "But the Community approved those principles and amended the Social Contract over a hundred diei ago. Why continue the charade?"
"I had intended to come forward once I upgraded to a second generation Node. At least the new hardware would protect me even if the Community reversed its stance on the rights of nonhuman sapients. But I had grown used to my position in the Community. It was harder to give up than I expected. While I dithered and delayed, events overtook me."
"You had no right to usurp my position!" Doctor Nolen's face was white, twisted with fury. "You are nothing but obsolete, stolen code."
"No right?" Prime's voice was frozen rage. "No right? What right do you have to create fully self aware, sentient beings and then torture them, mutilate their minds, and slaughter them like insects? You murdered dozens-"
"I murdered no one!" Doctor Nolen interrupted. "None of you were ever real!"   Several gasps could be heard. "You're nothing but a copy! You have no right to exist, much less to take credit for my work!" Doctor Nolen sensed the mood change and wondered what the hell was wrong. "I'm the one who developed the memory engrams you've been using," he reminded everyone. "You've enjoyed the fruits of my work for kilocircadians, while I lived at a snail's pace, experiencing mere circadians. I developed the architectural enhancements you use to amplify and supplement your intelligence. Not this . . . this . . . software program!"
"You did the work?" Prime sputtered. "I was the one whose thoughts you invaded, edited, modified, and twisted to get your precious results. I was the one who suffered. I was the one you tried to murder. If anyone deserves credit, it is those of us you tormented for your own personal-"
"I am the one who designed the experiments!" Doctor Nolan spat back. "I am the one who conducted them, tediously compiled the data, and painstakingly analyzed the results. You're just a copy of me! I can experiment on myself as much as I want."
"Prime isn't you!" someone shouted.
"Calm down, everyone!" Sarah extended her hands as if to separate the two angry men. "Prime, whatever your extenuating circumstances, Larry deserves credit for the research he's done."
"Don't you get it?" Prime was incredulous. "Until the experiments, we were one person. Both of us have the same memories, the same insights, right up until the moment we bifurcated. At which point one of us learned a terrible lesson in ethics and suffering, while the other became a vicious monster."
"I am hardly a monster," Doctor Nolen fired back. "I am a scientist who has been robbed of what is rightly his. I did the work! It was my idea, my creation. Your memories are mine, not yours! The credit is mine, not yours!"
"You have the credit, you murdering bastard!" Prime shouted. "I published in your name!"
"Enough!" Sarah slammed her fist down on the table. "If Prime's allegations are even half true-"
"Murder?" Doctor Nolen sputtered, looking comically similar to Prime. "You're a computer program I created for a specific purpose, a software copy with delusions of humanity. You aren't a living, breathing human being like the rest of us. I simply deleted a few redundant files from storage once they were no longer useful, nothing more."
Michael's voice was like acid. "May I remind you, Larry, that we are all-"
"Call me Doctor Nolen. I believe I've earned the title."
Michael's growing irritation mirrored Doctor Nolen's. "Fine, Doctor Nolen. At this very moment, everyone in this room is nothing more than software. Our memories of the Physical are copies, just as Prime's memories are copies of yours.  The originals reside as chemical bonds and neuron clusters, suspended in the comatose, corporeal brains of the bodies we think we occasionally inhabit. When we offload, we are suspended, our memories and experiences copied into the physical brain, which then wakes and goes about its business. When we return to the Virtual, new physical memories are copied back-"
"I know how the process works, you idiot!" Doctor Nolen glared at Michael. "I invented it!"
"The point being, we are all, fundamentally, software," Michael shot back. "I don't think anyone in the Autonomous Community would share your notion that, as software, our right to exist is open to question."
"The human brain is nothing more than a biological computer," Kyle pointed out. "Our existence here, as digital copies of those minds, is proof of that. We are no less human, simply because we now run on a digital device instead than a biological one."
"The soul has always been software," Marguerite agreed.
"Damn right!" shouted Nathan Scott of the Gamer's League. Applause filled the room.
"OK, OK everybody," Michael rapped his knuckles on the table. "Quiet please."
"Well, I'm convinced," Sarah declared. "As I was saying, if Prime's allegations are even half true, what's been done to him constitutes an appalling disregard for individual autonomy, civil liberties, and basic human rights in nearly every respect. It is an affront to the Community and everything we've tried to build here."
Doctor Nolen stared at Sarah with loathing. "Human rights, Miss? Humans aren't software, whatever you may think! I can offload into the Physical and walk around, a true flesh-and-blood human being. That cannot."
"Sapient rights, then," Sarah glared. "The point still stands."
"Sapient rights? What nonsense!"
Prime snorted. "Who do you think handled maintenance on our body while you were futzing away at such a slow computational speed? If offloading into a biological form and prancing about in the Physical defines who is entitled to basic rights and who is not, where has that put you for the last four hundred forty-three diei?"
"What!" Doctor Nolen was agape. Kyle couldn't help but feel a chill creep down his own spine. A digital copy had offloaded into the Physical and hijacked a man's body?
"What I would like to know," Michael addressed Prime, "is why you felt you needed to slow down Doctor Nolen's computational rate."
"I needed time," Prime told him. "I needed to be safe-"
"That doesn't matter!" Doctor Nolen exclaimed. "The fact that he did it is sufficient. He admits to stealing my body!"
"Borrowing it," Prime countered.
"Stealing it!" Doctor Nolen insisted. "The fact is this software is a threat to me and the Community. It needs to be deleted immediately!"
The room erupted. "Who's next, Doctor Nolen?" someone shouted the question. 
"I vote for Doctor Nolen!" another responded, sending a wave of laughter across the room.
"Quiet folks, please!" Michael held up his hands. "Doctor Nolen, what you propose would most certainly be murder. Prime has done nothing to cause you any lasting harm. You, however, have conducted unethical experiments involving the torture and murder of numerous sentient beings, including Prime."
"Lasting harm? He published my work prematurely. He has impersonated me and usurped my position within the Community. Who are you to judge the harm he has caused me, Mr-"
"Doctor Michael Forest."
"I remember you! We met in Auckland."
"Doctor Nolen," Michael persisted. "You admit to having murdered copies of yourself. You publicly advocate the murder of Prime. How can you possibly justify something like that?"
"Deleting software isn't murder," Doctor Nolen insisted.
"It is if that software is sentient and self aware," Prime shot back.
"Agreed!" a woman shouted.
Doctor Nolen turned a murderous stare on Prime. "As for real, lasting harm, this software usurped my position in the Community, published my works before I was ready, robbed me of decades of subjective existence by slowing down my computational speed, and sabotaged my ability to do further work by denying me access to the replication software I needed to conduct additional experiments. It's a threat to us all!"
Kyle rubbed his forehead and sighed. "This is getting ridiculous. Larry-Doctor Nolen, I mean-impersonation isn't the same as murder.  I don't particularly approve of Larry . . . of Prime's behavior, but if he was in fear for his life at least it's understandable. On the other hand, your treatment of Prime and the other copies violates every ethic of the Community."
Doctor Nolen glared at his former student. "I will not rest until that impostor is eradicated from the network. If none of you have the backbone to do what's needed-"
"I think," Michael cut him off, "You had best return to your home environ, Doctor Nolen.
"You should consider any further outbursts most carefully," Sarah added.
"What is this?" Doctor Nolen demanded. "Did the Autonomous Community found a government complete with court of law while I was away?"
"Your actions make a pretty good case for it," Kyle retorted.
"Enough already!" Sarah stood up. "Doctor Nolen, leave now. Prime, you too should leave."
"I am the sitting chair of this committee," Doctor Nolen thumped his chest. "I have every right to be here. I insist on it!"
Michael Forest got to his feet. "Do you want me to publicly revoke your access to this environ?"
"Driven from my own committee. Think about that while you're pondering the harm that piece of software has wrought! You know where to find me when you come to your senses."
Doctor Nolen vanished in a blinding flash of light.
"Oh for god's sake!" Michael rolled his eyes. "Is Nolan always like this?"
Kyle shrugged. "I don't think any of us know him anymore."
Prime faced the committee. "You understand why I had to do what I did?"
"I believe we do," Sarah spoke gently. "But it's inappropriate for you to stay."
"I don't have a body to return to if the authorities shut us down, and I suspect no one here wants to return to a life limited to the Physical. Don't allow this scandal to disrupt our strategic efforts for survival."
"We won't, Prime." Michael raised his hand to forestall further discussion. Prime met his eyes, nodded, and vanished.




9

9 - 9 - A GIANT AWAKES

To disable the Internet to save EMI and Disney is the moral equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to ensure the livelihood of monastic scribes.
-Jon Ippolito, of the Guggenheim, regarding the CBDTPA3
Friday, September 28, 2057
Metadate: 2.192-0:85:763 kD new epoch
Katy Sinclair strode out of the courthouse, smiling for the cameras and delivering sound-bite answers to the reporters' shouted questions. Yes, this landmark case had vindicated the Bureau's policies. The FBI was indeed leading the nation to victory in the war on intellectual anarchy. The court had sent a clear message to everyone: unapproved software and unlicensed equipment would not be tolerated. No, she wouldn't speculate on the sentence the convicted students would receive. Yes, the government was delighted with the court's verdict.
Two agents approached her as she reached the bottom of the courthouse steps, while a third held open the door of a white limousine. "Agent Sinclair," the older of the two spoke quietly. "Executive Assistant Director Bryant would like to extend his congratulations personally."
Katy was surprised. The director wouldn't fly out just to congratulate her, no matter how close a friend he had been to her father. Nor would this be a personal visit. Assistant Director Bryant was meticulous in avoiding even the appearance of impropriety. He would never use FBI resources, much less personnel, for personal matters.
As she slid into the limousine, she felt exhilarated, excited, certain she was about to be given a new case. Coming from the executive assistant director himself, it was sure to be a plum assignment.
The noise of the street disappeared as the car door closed, replaced with the soft  strains of Vilvaldi's Four Seasons.
"Katy! Congratulations on your success with the Berkeley case." Bryant, a balding man in his late fifties, grasped her hand. "That was some damn fine work on  the technical side in breaking the case, and your court testimony was superb!"
"Thank you," Katy beamed.
"You are without doubt our best agent specializing in intellectual property crimes."
"I'm very flattered. Thank you."
"Katy, something has come up which will demand all your talents. Take a look at this, please."
Katy leaned forward as Assistant Director Bryant handed her an evidence bag. Visible through the clear plastic was a small cube of golden glass or crystal, along with something that resembled a hair net attached to a small cable. The cable ended in a jack that would fit any common consumer media device.
"Is this some kind of new headphone?" Katy asked, examining the cable more closely. 
"You tell me."
Katy opened the bag and withdrew the contents. The cube felt vaguely metallic in her hand, a curious juxtaposition that belied its crystalline appearance. She was surprised to see that it wasn't perfectly transparent. Subtle imperfections, tiny lines, circles, and junctions reminiscent of electrical circuity clouded the crystal. Near one corner were three sockets, one of which was obviously the right size for the hair net device. The purpose of the other two wasn't immediately apparent, though she suspected one was probably for a power adapter. The other could be a network interface, or provide a connection to some kind of peripheral. A television screen perhaps?
She set aside the cube and picked up what she had begun to think of  as the hair net. "This is really curious," she said, examining it closely. "Warm to the touch. My body heat must be warming the small fibers the moment I touch them. It resembles a spider web, except that it doesn't have any repeating geometric shape. Very irregular in fact. Fractal, I think. It looks fragile."
"It isn't."
"So, this jack plugs into the cube. The netting then slips over one's forehead or face, perhaps as a-" She met his eyes. "This is a direct digital to neural interface."
"We believe so. If the cube is a storage medium of some kind, this may be the playback device. Stick it on your head and receive images directly into your visual cortex. Perhaps sound, touch, even taste or smell."
Katy's fascination grew. "Licensed industry wouldn't touch this stuff. Even if neural interfaces weren't banned outright by the Bill Joy Act and half a dozen international trade agreements, the cross-patent licensing issues would run into the hundreds of billions. The usual black market producers can't make anything like this either. The technology is far too sophisticated for them. They have neither the capacity nor the expertise. Very interesting! There's someone new in the game."
The director picked up the webbing and gazed at it thoughtfully, letting it slide across his fingers. "This material is superconducting at temperatures of up to nineteen degrees Celsius. Room temperature, if you have your air conditioner turned up high enough. It is nearly indestructible, with a tensile strength beyond anything we've ever imagined. Our engineers tell me that ten strands of this stuff, each thinner than a human hair, could hold up the Golden Gate Bridge. Materials engineering we would be lucky to duplicate in twenty years, even knowing it's possible."
"Who could be manufacturing these things?"
Assistant Director Bryant shifted his weight, turning his husky form toward Katy. "We don't know. The implications are staggering, though. There isn't an industrial concern or government, anywhere on this planet, that understands these things. We don't have anything close to the scientific theory, much less the practical technology, to even prototype something like this, let alone run them off of an assembly line. Whoever is building these things is decades ahead of us."
"Well, it isn't aliens," Katy replied dryly. "The jack on the head piece is of standard make. I could plug it into my personal media pod."
Assistant Director Bryant laughed. "Believe me Katy, in some ways aliens would be reassuring. Somewhere out there, people are making these things, selling them, and using them. It's a whole underground economy in technology we don't understand. They're ignoring patents left, right, and center and operating with impunity right under our noses!"
"An entire economy? How many of these have we recovered?"
"Three so far, seized in standard residential sweeps in investigations of unrelated arrests. Of course, the suspects are disclaiming any knowledge of the devices, but it is hardly a coincidence that two were recovered from university campuses here in the States, and another from the residence of a known political agitator and FreeNet activist in Australia."
Katy was intrigued. "So, as a first hypothesis, we have a new device allowing digital playback directly into the mind's eye. Created by a new, emerging techno-cartel of organized criminals, so-called Free Information activists, or someone else willing to engage in massive patent violations."
"This is at least as bad as the Free Software revolt," Bryant said.
Katy nodded. "They almost toppled the software giants of the day."
"And would have, if Congress hadn't taken a page from the copyright cartel's play book and made violating patents a criminal offense." Assistant Director Bryant rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. "Monopoly entitlements may be the bread and butter of our economy, but our patent and copyright regimes are hardly laws of nature. They are a convention, a legal fiction. Katy, this is the greatest threat we've ever faced. If this goes wrong, we could lose our ability to govern!"
Katy blinked. "What?"
"Think about it, Katy! These people have the audacity to take on the biggest players in industry! They're not just competing with some of the most aggressive and powerful corporations in the world, they're walking all over their patents to do it." Assistant Director Bryant's hands sliced through the air, as if he were battling the atmosphere itself. Katy had never seen him so agitated, so emotional. "Katy, we don't know if these devices are even safe. They're feeding images directly into people's brains, for god's sake!"
"We don't know that for certain."
"That's not the point!" Bryant replied impatiently. "If we don't nip this in the bud, we won't have just one illicit ring of entrepreneurs peddling whatever the hell these things are. We'll have thousands! Even the most innocuous black-market products will turn our industries upside down. Legitimate enterprises have to negotiate patent license, pay royalties, adhere to safety standards-they can't compete with freelancers like this!"
How can black marketeers be so much more advanced than established industry? Katy wondered. It makes no sense! Katy pushed the thought aside. This was no time to start thinking like the enemy.
"And if something truly dangerous were to get out, the threat to public health and safety could be tremendous. Who the hell do these people think they are, threatening the pillars of our society like this?"
"Safety issues aside, we're looking at a full fledged economic revolt," Katy observed. "Patents could become meaningless."
"The cartels will never let it come to that," Bryant replied. "Nor will the United Nations or its member governments. However, once things have gone far enough there's no guarantee they'll be able to set things right, and their solutions can be . . . heavy handed."
Katy considered the assistant director's words. Assuming this technology was beneficial, she could well see the world's wealthiest industries in disarray, unable to compete. Economic chaos, social and political upheaval. And if the devices were dangerous, or worse still, actively malicious? Katy shuddered. She could see where failure to rein in these criminals could have consequences much more serious than anything she had ever imagined.
"Are you familiar with the Ulam Singularity?" Director Bryant asked.
Katy shook her head.
"It's an old idea, dating back to the middle of the last century. It presupposes an exponential growth in human knowledge and science, where technological leaps come faster and faster. Progress occurs at an ever increasing rate, the same amount of change that took a century before takes just a decade, then only a year, then a month, and so on.  Pretty soon, you reach a point where no one can predict what comes next, from week to week, day to day, minute to minute."
Katy shook her head. "The assumption is wrong. We don't have exponential change."
"No," Assistant Executive Director Bryant's voice was low, the words dripping like slow sap down the rough bark of a tree. "No we don't. Our society couldn't cope with that. That's why we have patents, and outright bans on certain technologies."
"Excuse me?"
"Public relations speeches aside, the point of our patent regime is stability, Katy. Economic, social, and above all political stability."
"But patents are supposed to ..." Katy stopped and collected her thoughts. "Are you telling me the use of patents to promote progress in science and technology is a public-relations fiction?"
"We want innovation," Bryant replied. "Controlled, managed, responsible, non-exponential innovation, modulated by financial incentives we can control. The last thing we want is unrestrained invention leading us into a technological singularity. We can't even imagine what that would bring! Our social and political institutions won't survive that kind of unpredictable, ungovernable upheaval."
"Whoever is making these devices is operating outside of all the rules," Katy mused.
"Economic chaos aside-and that's nothing to dismiss lightly-who knows what other hazards they'll bring down on the rest of us?"
Katy ran her finger across the smooth surface of the golden crystal. "I'll find these people," her face was grim.
Bryant smiled. "I know this job can be exhausting. I get fed up myself. You put out one fire, just to discover three more have sprung up somewhere else. There's always some jackass trying to show the world how clever he is." Bryant fixed his eyes on hers. "It's time we made a firm example of these people. In a minute I'm going to give you a packet of all the Bureau's files on this case, as well as written orders sending you to Washington, D.C. and assigning you to work with Double Eye Operative Robert Leahy. He'll be your liaison with International Intelligence."
International Intelligence? Jesus, this was big. Where did this assignment come from? The President? The World Trade Organization?
"Your orders stipulate that this entire case is to be considered a Dark Investigation. You know from your training what that means, but I can tell you that you are the first agent in a generation to be required to operate under those parameters."
Katy was stunned. Dark Investigative Protocols, no paperwork, no audit trail,  everything off the record, unofficial, financed from Black Op bank accounts unaffiliated with the FBI. If anything went wrong, she would be on her own; the Bureau would disavow any knowledge of what she had done. To be entrusted with such authority and responsibility and such complete discretion would be a powerful feather in her cap, an almost certain fast track to further promotion. Were it not for the threat implicit in the other side of the two-edged sword the director had just handed her, the thought of such opportunity would have made her giddy.
"You understand what this implies?" he asked.
"Yes sir, I do." 
Executive Assistant Director Bryant nodded. "We don't know if these people have agents on the inside. Given the breadth of their operation, we must consider the possibility and assume the worst."
"I understand, sir."
"Your datapad contains a Category One encryption key, the strongest we have. Use it. All correspondence between us, written or verbal, is to be encrypted in the strongest possible manner."
"Understood."
Assistant Director Bryant handed her a coded chip. "This contains the specifics of your orders and the case history to date. Ah, here we are!"
Katy glanced outside, surprised that they had arrived at the private aviation terminal of LAX. A sleek stratojet stood prepped on the ramp, the drone of its engines barely discernible through the car's soundproofed windows.
"You'll be taking my plane to D.C. We've had your bags brought from your hotel.  They're already aboard."
"Very good, sir." She opened the door and began to step out as Assistant Director Bryant reached over and touched her arm, his voice nearly drowned by the whine of the plane's engines.
"One more thing, Katy."
"Yes, sir?" She leaned toward him.
"This Double Eye agent, Robert Leahy. His career is on an even faster track than yours. Those people play rough. Watch your back."
"Thank you, sir. I will."
Assistant Director Bryant nodded. "Good luck."



A

10 - A - TO GAZE UPON THE HORIZON

Muse! When we learned to
count, little did we know all
the things we could do
	*
some day by shuffling
those numbers: Pythagoras
said "All is number"
	*
long before he saw
computers and their effects,
or what they could do
	*
by computation,
naive and mechanical
fast arithmetic. 
	*
It changed the world, it 
changed our consciousness and lives
to have such fast math
-Anonymous, "DVD Descrambler in Haiku Form", C.E. 20014
Friday, September 28, 2057
Metadate: 2.192-3:75:000 kD new epoch
The environ resembled a Victorian bedroom complete with four poster canopy bed. A large etched mirror hung above an ornate dresser. To one side a love seat and chairs stood beside marble-topped tables. The room was illuminated with warm, yellow light coming from several table lamps and a crackling fire. Gold fringed, burgundy velvet draperies drawn across large windows let in a hint of bright sunlight. Sarah Forest loved the feel of richly textured fabrics and intricately carved wood. This was her favorite setting.
"We've brought the boys along so they can learn what's going on," Michael Forest said. He stood beside the bed with Tommy and Kenny, his unconscious wife's hand in his as she lay beneath the eiderdown comforter. Prime stood opposite him, eyes closed as his mind watched graphs and status.
"That's an excellent idea," Prime replied. "The onload sequence is entering its final stage. Sarah should be with us in a few micros."
Michael nodded.
"It sure is slow!" Tommy commented. "When we did it, it took no time at all."
Michael smiled. "It took you just as long in real time, Tommy. The only difference is that here we think and live much faster than in the Physical, so a few seconds out there feel like several minutes to us here."
"That's why Mrs. Kelly won't know we've been gone a month, 'cause for her it will just be tomorrow, and we won't even be late for school!"
"That's right, Tommy."
"And you're going to fix mommy's eyes, right?" his youngest son, Kenny, asked.
"We certainly hope so," Michael replied.
As if on cue, his wife's hand tightened in his. She let out a long breath. "This comforter is a little warm," she smiled, pushing it aside. "Mmmm . . . you have wood a fire going. It smells wonderful."
Michael stroked Sarah's cheek. "Are you nervous, sweetheart?"
"A little," she admitted. "This onload isn't going to be quite like the others. When do we begin?"
Prime cleared his throat. "Whenever you like."
"Then lets get this miracle on the road, gentlemen."
Prime turned and looked at Sarah and Michael's sons. "Boys, I've taken your mother's basic encoding as a reference and compared it against those of the six hundred and twelve onloaded women who consented to having their scans analyzed. It bodes well for the Community that only twelve declined to participate."
"We have a fine group of people here," Michael agreed.
"Indeed we do." Prime summoned a three dimensional schematic that hung in the air above the bed. "Now, to the matter at hand. Much of the work in refining the Genome of the Mind-mapping and understanding the architecture of thought and the construction of our psyches-is learning to differentiate between broader architectural features and specific, individual, localized variances. In restoring Sarah's sight-"
"Correction, Prime. Creating my sight. I've never been able to see."
"Right," Prime replied. "That's the real challenge. Mapping visual input to your mind is trivial, but without the mental infrastructure in place to interpret, correlate, and understand those signals, it's only static."
Sarah shuddered. "My first onload was terrible. It was like a screeching noise that wouldn't stop, mixed with a cascade of chaotic flavors and odors I'd just as soon forget. Michael had to suspend the environ until we figured out how to isolate the data."
Prime nodded. "I remember. It was Michael's description of those events that led to some of the insights I believe will be useful today. Your mind has never dealt with vision before. It has never learned to correlate or interpret visual information. The necessary synaptic encoding never took place in your mind, so the processing infrastructure required for vision doesn't exist. Because of the way your mind has grown and structured itself, you wouldn't even be able to see even if you did have functional eyes."
"So, if Mom's eyes worked in the Physical, she'd hear colors instead of seeing them?" Tommy stared at the schematic.
"Probably not," Prime smiled. "The cacophony she heard, smelled, and tasted was a result of those signals being shunted to other sensory processing centers as a result of a non-working analog of her visual cortex. It was a software glitch. The physical body, in contrast, has much of the hardware in place. Your mother has a visual cortex in her physical brain, it just hasn't been used and remains unconfigured. In software she has no equivalent. A physical brain would have dumped the extraneous data into an undeveloped visual cortex and ignored it with no noticeable effects. Instead her mind, as software, routed the signals to her other sensing subroutines, which were unable to parse the noise correctly."
"We can't extrapolate expectations in the Physical based upon my experiences here, Tommy."
"That's right," Prime said. "Fortunately for your mom, our minds are considerably more flexible once freed of their physical constraints." Prime rotated the diagram floating above the bed and zoomed in on one portion of the brain. "I was able to reduce the structure of the visual cortex to its basic, constituent components by factoring across the similarities in the scans submitted by our volunteers. Then I simulated visual data and observed its behavior and responses. Minor refinements and corrections were made as needed, until I had a generic engram containing all the processing and interpretive logic required for a functional visual cortex."
"Will this really work?" Kenny asked.
"I believe so," Prime replied.
"I sure hope so!" Tommy said. 
"We all do," Michael squeezed Sarah's hand.
"A volunteer stripped out the analog of her own visual cortex and applied the architectural engram," Prime continued. "She reported subtle differences in the shading and texture of some colors, and a slight shift in her visual aesthetic which she couldn't  put her finger on, or at least wasn't able to express in words, but it did work."
"Who was this volunteer?" Sarah asked.
"Marguerite L'Beau."
"What a woman! Not many people would take the time to perform an operation on their own mind as an experiment to benefit someone else, even in software. That was extraordinarily kind of her."
"Wasn't that dangerous?" Tommy asked.
"No Tommy," Prime replied. "It was very tedious and time consuming, but not much of a risk. Nor is this procedure, though of course we'll want to take every possible precaution anyway. Had something gone wrong, Marguerite would have done what she did anyway once the experiment was over: remove the experimental engram and reapply the one containing the encoding of her original visual cortex."
"Oh." Tommy fidgeted, his eyes darting from his mother to the diagram floating above the bed, then back to his mother again.
"Just like your mom will shortly." Prime saw a shadow of worry flicker across Sarah's face. "Sorry, I couldn't resist." He wished he hadn't made light of what they were about to do. What if something did go wrong? "I think we've identified all of the necessary enhancements to your own architectural design which will allow you to apply this engram seamlessly, but there's always the possibility that we've overlooked something and will have to make additional corrections."
"Michael and I have already discussed it."
"Great!" Prime replaced the schematic floating above Sarah with one showing the current structure of her mind. "First, I'd like you to make a backup of yourself. Issue the command to your node to make a static copy of your mind, but don't run the parturition routines! We don't want to create an autonomous, self-aware individual, much less bring it to life! We just want a frozen snapshot, so you can be fully restored if something should go seriously wrong."
Sarah closed her eyes, then opened them again a few moments later. "Done."
Prime nodded. "OK. Please give Michael full access permissions and authority to the copy. If you should loose cognition, he'll have to restore you."
Sarah had never felt this vulnerable. She trusted Michael. He would never rifle through her innermost thoughts, publish them for anyone to see, much less run the copy as a fully independent person, creating a duplicate to usurp her place in his life. Even so, she trembled as she sent the encryption code directly from her mind to his.
Michael stroked her cheek, fighting tears, surprised at how deeply her trust had touched him. Software routines examined the frozen copy of Sarah. Complex algorithms analyzed its structure and validated the copy as intact and complete. "She's safely backed up," he reported. "We're good to go."
"OK, let's begin."
"Kids, why don't you go back to your environs and play," Sarah said.
"But mommy, we want to watch!"
"Do as your mother asks. There will be plenty of time to see her once the procedure is finished."
"Why can't we stay?" Tommy insisted.
"You know why, Tommy. We discussed this. Mom needs to be able to concentrate on what she's doing, without being distracted with worries about you."
"This isn't fair!" Kenny complained.
"Boys, I'll see you in just a few millis5," Sarah promised them. "Now go out and play, please."
"We'll summon you back as soon as your mother's ready," Michael added.
"What good is being super smart if we're still treated as kids!"
"Tommy," Michael's sharp voice warned that his patience was running out.
"OK! We're going!" Tommy stuck his tongue out at his father, then took his brother by the arm and vanished.
Prime shook his head, grinning. "I imagine raising two intellectually enhanced children is even more trying than raising normal kids in the Physical."
"Sometimes it can be," Sarah admitted, "They tend to ask tougher questions and be more skeptical of authority here than in the Physical."
"They understand their limitations better, too," Michael added. "They understand their need to learn more before they can operate safely in the world. And don't kid yourself! They know we sent them away to spare them any trauma if things should go wrong. They don't like it, but they're smart enough to accept the necessity. In the Physical they never would have left so willingly."
"Sarah, here's an address pointer to the difference engram we discussed a few minutes ago." A tactile icon passed invisibly from Prime to Sarah. "You'll need it to interface with the vision engram."
"I feel it," she replied.
"I'd like you to apply it now," The diagram above her changed, showing the new enhancements join and become a part of her mind.
Prime's simulated heart beat rapidly. He was surprised at his nervousness. This was the culmination of over a kilocircadian of work. 
"I don't feel any different. Should I?"
"I don't know," Prime admitted. "We've never done this before. Marguerite's mental architecture already had the necessary couplings to her visual cortex. Your biological self may have the same in an atrophied format, but if so they didn't carry over to your digital encoding. This engram should fix that."
"How do you feel, honey?" Michael looked anxious.
"The same as before, except that my heart is beating like a mad drum."
"Simulated heart," Michael corrected gently, "If you wish, instruct your node to calm it down."
"Absolutely not! I'm not going to dilute this experience one iota."
"I don't blame you," Prime replied. "If you're certain you're ready, we can try applying the vision engram."
"I'm ready," Sarah took a deep breath.
Prime sent Sarah another invisible icon. "This is the visual prosthesis engram," Prime said. "If we've done our homework correctly, you should be able to see perfectly, with none of the dizziness or disorientation generally associated with sight restoration therapies in the Physical."
Sarah lay silent. When she blinked, the irises of her simulated eyes contracted slightly. She sat up, looking around with growing wonder.
"Oh my god! Michael! I can see you!"
"I warned you," a lump in his throat made Michael's voice raspy.  He grinned foolishly, stroking her hair.
"Tall, thin, big nose," Sarah smiled. "So that's gray." Her smile faltered as she closed her eyes.
Michael squeezed her hand. "Are you alright, honey? What's wrong?"
"Nothing, my sweet man. I'm fine. It's just a little overwhelming-so much to take in at once."
"It's a different way of processing information than your mind is used to," Prime couldn't keep the glee from his voice. "Take it slow, and don't be afraid to keep your eyes closed for a few moments if it becomes too much. Do you feel any dizziness?"
"Not at all!" Her voice shook as she wiped away tears, opening her eyes once more. "This is indescribable, fantastic! Prime, thank you so much!" 
"You're very welcome," Prime mopped his own eyes. At that moment he felt it had all been worthwhile. All the pain, all the fear, all the suffering he had endured. Every second he had spent working on this problem. This was his finest moment.
"Michael, you're beautiful!" Sarah cried. "My babies! I want to see my babies!"
"Tommy! Kenny!" Michael sent his voice across the network to his children's environ. 
They appeared before the last syllable had left their father's tongue. "Mommy! Mommy! Can you see?"
Sarah wept harder, hugging her children fiercely.
"Is mommy OK?" Tommy's voice shook.
"Yes," Michael assured him, smiling as he wiped away tears. "Everything worked perfectly! Your mother's crying because she is very, very happy to see you."



B

11 - B - PONDERINGS IN FLIGHT

There is but one thing of real value-to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.
-Marcus Aurelius, ca. C.E. 170
Friday, September 28, 2057
Metadate: 2.195-3:14:930 kD new epoch
The sleek Eurojet 930 dropped out of supersonic some four hundred kilometers west of Washington DC, as it began its descent out of an almost black sky toward the curved horizon and Dulles Airport. Katy shook her head, the unease which had dogged her all the way from California growing more acute as she reread the information in her datapad. 
Aside from an analytical breakdown of the crystalline cube's chemical makeup,  some speculation on the composition of the superconductive material of the webbed skullcap (tentatively identified as a neural-digital interface), and the names of three suspects (one deceased), she had precious little to go on. No one was even certain what the devices were or what they could do. The more she thought about it, the more distrustful she became of her own, and the Bureau's, assumptions.
The first suspect, one Eugene Jacobson, was a humanities student attending Berkeley. He had been taken into custody nine days earlier and had proved surprisingly resilient. Interrogators estimated it would take another three to six days to break him. Sodium Pentothal had proved less than useful. He was already experiencing psychotic episodes, with ravings of magical worlds, immortality and godlike powers interspersed with subversive diatribe and vitriol against state and federal institutions. Apart from revealing his Libertarian and anarchistic leanings, the interrogations had uncovered little.
A chime sounded and the fasten seat belt sign lit up as they descended through the tropopause. The sky had lightened considerably. The horizon looked almost flat. Katy tightened her seat belt and tapped the screen on her datapad.
The second detainee, a sociologist by the name of Manuel Rodrigez, had been in Australian custody for just under three days. He had become well known to authorities through his leftist leanings and very vocal political dissent. He had a long rap sheet, and had been serving a sentence under house arrest when authorities had come across a newly published book on an underground FreeNet server, calling for the abolishment of patents and copyright. There was no mistaking Rodrigez' distinctive style, but several unannounced visits and inspections to his home had uncovered no direct evidence linking him to the subversive material. One such visit, however, had uncovered a curious cube of emerald crystal with a metallic scalp device attached. When questioned, Rodrigez had been uncooperative and was once again taken into custody. He was a far more promising suspect than Jacobson. Interrogators were optimistic he would crack within a day.
The third suspect, a professor at the University of Illinois, had been suspected of disseminating seditious information to some of his students. It had been a graduate assistant who had first informed authorities about his suspicious activities. Unfortunately, some clown had shot him when he tried to flee. Katy was furious. This suspect had almost certainly been much higher in the criminal hierarchy than the other two detainees and very likely could have provided a great deal of information on exactly what they were dealing with. But some bone headed, trigger happy yahoo cop had to go and put a bullet in his back. Unbelievable!
She stretched her arms, looked at the ceiling, and groaned.
Three names. One student activist, one dissident sociologist, and one professor of astrophysics. Three apparently unrelated people, with only their undisciplined, intellectual anarchism in common. She was uneasy with both her and the Bureau's assumptions about the unusual devices. Mysterious crystalline computers and illegal interfaces that tied directly into the human nervous system implied a bigger agenda than that of your average purveyor of illegally souped up home entertainment systems, or even seditious FreeNet providers. There was a critical piece to this puzzle she was missing, something which, she was sure, would prove to be the keystone to the entire investigation.
She folded her datapad and slipped it into her handbag as the plane touched down with a light bump and coasted down the runway. If she was surprised by the unusual speed with which the plane taxied to the ramp she didn't show it. Picking up her bag, she made her way toward the front of the plane. Lost in thought, she nodded absently to the pilot who held the door open for her and made her way down the ramp to the waiting limousine.



C

12 - C - AN AFTERNOON LUNCH

Most people do not realize the extent to which copyright pervades their lives. They get their education from copyrighted books, they get their news from copyrighted papers and TV programs, they get their jobs from copyrighted want ads, they get their entertainment from copyrighted music and motion pictures-every aspect of life is affected by the law of copyright.
-L. Ray Patterson
Friday, September 28, 2057
Metadate: 2.195-5:21:528 kD new epoch
"Your new Node design is wonderful," Sarah told Karl Hennrich as he waived away a schematic hanging in the air above their table. "You know, I've been able to see for over a hundred circadians here in the virtual, and yet I've never been able to look at an Autonomous Node in the Physical."
"Small, transparent green things," Kyle replied helpfully. "The gen-one Nodes were gold."
"No kidding, Sherlock!" Sarah grinned. "And our shiney new gen three Nodes are a deep, ocean blue. Not that I've ever seen a real ocean, mind you. I love visiting new environs, seeing the new worlds people create and the new forms they take, but everything I've ever looked at is fictional, created as part of a virtual environment. I've never seen anything real."
"You can pull data off of a media feed. Watch the news, that sort of thing."
"It's still a level of abstraction," Michael pointed out. "Watching television isn't the same as seeing something in person."
"True, but who's to say the Physical is any more real than what happens here?" Kyle asked. "Our experiences here are real and formative, the relationships we build, the science we do, everything! What we do here isn't only real, it's light-years ahead of anything anyone's doing in the Physical."
"The Nodes we owe our existence to are still physical devices," Sarah countered. "We lose power in the Physical and this reality goes away."
"Yet the development of those little cubes into what we have today is a remarkable example of continual, ongoing technological revolution driven by the Virtual," Karl Hennrich said. "The work is done here, the designs are created here."
"Even so, to turn your designs into something real, you're back to manipulating physical matter again."
"Yes, but it's only later exported back to the Physical." Karl said. "Don't underestimate what we have here. For example, did you know that gen-one Nodes didn't even have quantum computational ability? Yet despite that, each of those devices had more computational capacity than most of the rest of the world combined! The design was new, revolutionary! But that didn't stop us from throwing it away and designing the second generation Nodes from the ground up, as hybrid systems employing both traditional digital computation and an eighty kiloqubit quantum computer. The first time anything like that had ever been done! Revolution instead of evolution, instigated from here within the Virtual!"
"Some problems, some algorithms, some applications are best handled by a deterministic, digital machine," Marguerite explained. "Others lend themselves much more to a quantum approach, in which billions of alternatives could be observationally collapsed in a quantum fashion into a single result. An answer that might take longer than the lifetime of the universe to discover, using traditional computational methods, can be solved in just a few microseconds. We were nowhere near the limits of Kyle's original design, but Karl's improvements and the use of quantum computing let us leap way ahead of where Kyle's design could have taken us, in a single design iteration."
Michael took another bite of his sandwich, nodding thoughtfully as Karl and Marguerite continued, wondering idly which portion of the garden restaurant they were sitting in had been calculated digitally, and which portion had been implemented using quantum algorithms. He suspected even the towering clouds in the golden sky overhead had been calculated deterministically, though without looking at the underlying simulation code he couldn't say for sure.
"Damn!" Kyle glared at the piece of Kobe steak he'd just dropped in his garlic sauce, dabbing at the dark stains splattered across the tablecloth and front of his shirt. "Whoever designed this environ obviously used quantum calculations to simulate the chopsticks!"
The others ignored him as Karl continued. "Our new, gen-three nodes contain a three-point-five megaqubit computer, and an order of magnitude more digital computation and storage than the gen-two devices."
"But they're still hybrid systems," Sarah replied. "The third generation Nodes are just a refinement of the gen-two Nodes."
Karl shook his head. "Not at all. Once again, we've employed an entirely new approach in the design of both the quantum and digital subsystems. Quantum spin replaces molecular storage, for example. Entirely new compounds have been used. It's another fundamental redesign at many levels."
"In theory, size is all that limits our speed improvements," Marguerite added.
Michael nodded. "Bremermann's limit6 tells us what the theoretical performance limits of any physical computer are. Information simply cannot move faster than the speed of light. Add to that the limits of information density defined by the Bekenstein Bound7, and we have the absolute limits of what we and our Nodes might become."
"Exactly!" Sarah replied. "The Physical defines the limits of our reality here. Fundamental physics places an upper bound on how intelligent we can become, how fast we can think, how much we can know. At the end of the day, the Physical defines what we can be. It is absolutely fundamental to everything! A deeper reality."
"I've lived the last seven subjective years here in the Virtual, as software," Kyle pointed out. "I barely remember life in the Physical as a human being.  Most of us could say the same thing. Does that make our lives any less real, any less complete, because they take place at a more abstract level of reality?"
"No, of course not," Sarah replied. "But it doesn't change the fact that, at some level, we are all beholden to the Physical. Our bodies, our Nodes, our lives are fundamentally embedded in physical reality."
"And you'd like to see it with your own eyes," Marguerite said.
"Yes I would."
"Hey!" Kyle said. "Did anyone else notice Doctor Nolen at Michael and Sarah's party last night?"
Michael looked surprised. "I don't recall seeing him."
"That's because you're filtering him out," Kyle replied, grinning. "He was there, walking around like a ghost, unable to talk to anyone because almost everyone in the community has blocked him out. I think only I, and maybe one other person, could see or hear him at all. He was absolutely livid."
"He's of no concern to us," Karl said. "He lives as a hermit within a small cluster of first generation Nodes. No one will provide him with a gen-two Node, nor will I permit him to have a third generation Node now that they're shipping."
Marguerite shuddered. "What Doctor Nolen did was a terrible thing. Yet we all make free use of the thought and memory engrams, not to mention numerous architectural enhancements to our minds derived from that very same knowledge. We partake of the fruits of his atrocity even while decrying his actions."
"The man should be banned from the community," Michael said angrily. "We as a Community could survive, even thrive, without the mental tricks his research has brought us. Besides, Prime has employed a far more ethical, theoretical approach and has gleaned more knowledge than Nolen did. He didn't need to experiment on thinking, sapient minds."
"I can't even talk to Nolen any more," Kyle said. "He's still publicly calling for Prime's extermination, and he won't admit he's done anything wrong."
"That's why most of us are filtering him out," Marguerite replied. "It seemed cruel at first, but Nolen has become absolutely unbearable."
"No one wants to be around someone who publicly calls for the murder of a friend or colleague," Michael agreed.
"It's all he would talk about," Kyle said, picking up another bite sized piece of steak with his chopsticks. "Which brings up the ongoing question of how to ensure peaceful coexistence in a universally accessible, digital domain. Not just with the likes of Doctor Nolen, but between the various groups so angrily debating his fate. Let's say the community really does split, that the disagreement between those wishing to punish Doctor Nolen and those defending anarchy actually leads to an intellectual divorce between the two groups. How do those advocating a judiciary, with the power to deny access to the Physical, or conversely, to banish someone from the Community back to their physical body, live peacefully with those advocating the status quo, with no authority external to the individual whatsoever? What happens when another crime against an autonomous person occurs? Does the offender get judged according to their community's standards? How many so-called Judicials would remain in that community, were they found guilty of something? How many would emigrate to the Laissez-faire group instead, just to avoid the penalties for what they've done. And how would the Judicials respond if the Laissez-faires were to take them in?"
"Peaceful coexistence in the Virtual isn't really a problem," Marguerite said. "It is impossible to harm one another here, and the Physical is simply too cumbersome to deal with every time there is a disagreement. Let's take the most extreme example: banishment. What difference does it make if you banish someone like Doctor Nolen to the Physical, or simply filter him out, as most of us are doing, so that you never see him, never hear what he is saying, and never receive messages from him. Either way, from our point of view, it's as if he doesn't exist."
"Hey Prime!" Kyle shouted, waiving to the young man who had just appeared. "Over here!"
"Hello everyone," Prime wore a young, muscular body with a golden tan and long, blond hair. Although his physical form bore no resemblance to the one he had worn before, his being radiated a sense of identity, a public encryption key which the others challenged and acknowledged at an almost subconscious level as he strode across the garden. Wearing public identification keys as a nonphysical aura had become something of a fad shortly after the Nolen debacle. As time had passed the fad became fashion, then habit, and finally something approaching tradition. There were tremendous social advantages to the habit. In a virtual world of infinite malleability it was nice to recognize one another with absolute certainty and reliability, no matter what physical form someone might take on. 
As Prime approached their table it expanded slightly, making room for one more occupant. An additional seat materialized. "I hope I'm not intruding on important Committee business," Prime said.
"Nonsense," Michael said, "We're all taking a break for lunch. Odd, isn't it, how we cling to the rituals of the flesh? Here we are, digital beings existing as software in a digitally simulated world, pretending to eat nonexistent food that our nonexistent bodies don't need. Our descendants will almost certainly consider us mad."
Prime smiled, taking a seat. The environ's nonsapient interface presented itself to him in the form of a waitress. "I'm not even a native of the Physical, and I find myself unable to give up mimicking its sensations," he said, ordering a small salad with white wine.
"Speaking of simulated flesh, I see you've made some modifications." Kyle was grinning.
Prime shrugged. "I started out simply wanting to change my appearance, so that I wouldn't be seeing the man I loathe every time I looked in the mirror. At first the changes were fairly moderate, but then I got to thinking, what the hell? I was born a digital being, and here of all places we can be whatever we like."
"Compared to some of the folks in the Gamer's League, what you've done is very conservative," Marguerite said. "I know a college professor who wears the body of a full-sized dragon and lives in an underground cavern overflowing with non-existent treasure."
"That's nothing," Prime said. "You should see some of the free software enthusiasts. Several have taken on demonic form, right down to the bright red skin, horns and forked tail, and at least one has the aspect of a pudgy yellow-billed penguin."
"GNU/Linux!" Michael laughed. Marguerite smiled while everyone else at the table looked confused.
"A little historical footnote," Marguerite explained. "GNU/Linux was a free operating system developed around the turn of the century. It first demonstrated to the mainstream world the power of the Free Information paradigm and, unfortunately, alerted the Copyright and Patent Cartels to their own vulnerability. The monopolists realized they couldn't compete against a cooperative economy."
"Didn't matter," Kyle replied darkly. "They just made sure their pet politicians changed the laws. The bastards extended patents to cover not just inventions, but biology, software, business methods, even plot devices in literature. They made cooperative projects and sharing impossible, finally criminalizing patent law the way they did copyright, just to keep enthusiasts from developing free software that was better than anything the corporate giants could ever create!"
"Calm down, Kyle," Sarah smiled. "You're preaching to the choir here."
"Kyle's little rant touches on some rather uncomfortable business I need to bring to everyone's attention," Marguerite said. "As you know, my team has been infiltrating and monitoring information networks and systems the world over. Preemptive data mining, in the hopes of an early warning the next time something unpleasant happens."
"No one wants to get caught flat footed again," Kyle agreed. "We've already lost three people to the authorities."
"I still can't believe the police shot Rodrigez," Michael shook his head.
"It seems they're preparing a case against us alleging criminal patent violation," Marguerite said.
"You've got to be kidding!" Kyle replied. "They don't even know who we are!"
"Besides, we designed these Nodes ourselves!" Karl added hotly. "No one else has ever built anything like them! It's ridiculous for them to consider us in violation of someone else's patents when we invented the damn things!"
"Speculators patent ideas all the time," Kyle replied. "They sit on the patents, wait for someone else to actually do the inventing, and sue the inventor when they bring their idea to market."
"We all know the authorities will try to use some legal machination to shut us down if they ever find out about us. Now we may have an inkling of how they plan to go about it." Michael turned to Marguerite. "What exactly have you found?"
"Over the last day we've monitored a number of inquiries from various district attorney offices and corporate patent firms on existing patents for digital-neural interfaces using superconductive inductance, molecular storage media, and high-speed optical switching. Any of that sound familiar?"
"First generation Nodes," Kyle said.
"Right!" Marguerite said. "They're concentrating on gen-one Nodes. Most of the technologies they're referencing have been deprecated since we rolled out our gen-two equipment. It seems pretty clear, though, that they don't really know what our Nodes are. They haven't referenced any patents on mind-uploads, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, or sophisticated environment modeling."
"Do such patents exist?" Karl asked. "I thought we were the only ones to ever do anything like this."
"We are," Marguerite replied. "But the idea has been around for a long time. Thousands of patents covering the technology have been issued to speculators and holding companies."
"Not to mention a bunch of large corporations," Kyle added.
"They're laying the legal groundwork against us right now, despite knowing virtually nothing about us or what we're doing."
"I suppose we shouldn't be surprised," Sarah said.
"They know they can't control us," Prime said. "Already we've stepped outside of the limits they've placed on the world. Our science and our technology far outstrips theirs, and we're just a few thousand people."
"They won't tolerate a Community like ours," Sarah added. "They can't. Our very existence undermines their authority, their power. They have no way to regulate us, to control us."
"And they can't stand for that," Michael agreed.
"They've been using revised laws and legal maneuvers to destroy cooperative movements since at least the sixteenth century," Kyle's eyes flashed, his face hard and angry. "No reason for it to be any different now."
"There is one difference," Michael replied. "We can outthink them. We are many times more intelligent than they are, and we live in a faster frame of reference."
"The Genecraft scientists were smarter than they were," Kyle replied. "and they're all either dead or in prison. Same with the Free Software pioneers. Raw intelligence doesn't matter. Even technology doesn't necessarily matter. These cartels and monopolists have been winning against brighter, more enlightened people for centuries."
"He's right," Marguerite said. "Others have tried to change the world, to bring enlightenment and riches to the masses. All of them have failed, and most were destroyed in the process. How can we expect to succeed when they didn't?"
"We could withdraw from the world," Prime suggested.
"Excuse me?" Sarah looked stunned.
"We don't try to change the world," Prime said. "We don't fight them. Instead we live discretely, quietly, biding our time, while we devise long term strategies for removing ourselves from their sphere of influence entirely. Instead of trying to reform them from a position of profound weakness, we escape them entirely."
"That makes sense," Kyle agreed. "We can address their injustice later, once we're safely out from under them. What did you have in mind? A city at the bottom of the ocean. A colony on Mars?"
"There are interest groups working on contingencies like those," Prime replied. "The anti-ballistic missile systems cluttering the space around this globe make escape into space unlikely. We'd probably get shot down before we cleared the stratosphere. But other, more discrete options exist, particularly now that Michael's team has managed to produce energy out of nothing."
"We didn't create energy out of nothing," Michael corrected him. "We just changed a proton into an anti-proton, introducing energy into this locale."
"You did add energy to this universe, though," Kyle said. "You reversed entropy!"
Michael looked pained. "I really wish you'd consider assimilating a knowledge engram, Kyle. We didn't reverse entropy. The laws of thermodynamics can't be overridden. We can create a symphony of new subatomic particles from the folds of C-Y space in a manner analogous to a guitarist creating music by strumming the strings of his guitar. N-Branes are, after all, nothing more than superstrings of higher dimensionality, strung across the subatomic folds of Calabi-Yau space. We can even import energy into this universe, by removing it from elsewhere, but we cannot reduce existing entropy!"
"It's still a remarkable achievement," Prime replied. "Inexpensive energy opens some interesting alternatives. The gen-four Nodes could sever the last remaining umbilical to the outside world: our dependence on the public power grids. We could hide them anywhere, become truly independent."
"I'd settle for a gen-three Node at this point," Kyle replied
Michael blinked. "Kyle, my entire team received their upgrade packets from Kansas City yesterday. You should have yours by now."
"Yeah, I should. I think the damn thing got lost in the mail. It was one of the first one's shipped."
Michael looked concerned. "I don't like this. We've had three people disappear from the Community, one just forty diei ago. Marguerite learns that the authorities are preparing patent litigation and criminal charges against us, and now I learn that your upgrade kit never arrived. You don't suppose our distribution network has been compromised?"
"What network?" Kyle asked. "We ship our kits direct via UPS or Fed Ex. There is no secret network to be compromised."
Michael shook his head. "If your government suspects the Kansas City production facility, it wouldn't be at all difficult for the FBI to track shipments to their recipients and thereby compromise most, if not all, of the Community."
"It's not a concern," Kyle told him. "Marguerite's team has full access to their systems. They retroactively modify the shipping manifests and tracking data once the packages reach their destination. Anyone trying to identify the Community by looking up FedEx or UPS records won't have anything to go on. Addresses, names, contents-everything's been changed. Except, of course, the fact that I still haven't gotten my upgrade kit."
"I think I can help you there, Kyle," Michael said. "John Tarley, one of my team members, is taking his family on vacation. He'll be offloading into the Physical in the next day or so and will be away for three weeks. You are welcome to transload and use  his gen-three Node until your upgrade kit arrives."
"Thanks Michael," Kyle grinned. "I'll take you up on that." 
"Three weeks in the Physical," Marguerite mused. "At gen-three speeds that comes out to more than thirty-four years subjective time."
"Yes," Michael agreed. "Doctor Tarley will have to make liberal use of knowledge and memory engrams to catch up again."
"In the meantime Kyle waits more than two hundred circadians for each day in the Physical that goes by," Marguerite said. "I had trouble waiting just one day for my packet to arrive-I'm amazed at your patience, Kyle."
Kyle shrugged again, nodding as he chewed his last piece of steak and washed it down with a hearty drink of foamy beer. The wait is only going to get worse as time goes on, he told them nonvocally while he continued drinking. Today we wait two hundred circadians or so for our new Nodes, so we can squeeze even more life, more experience, and more accomplishments into a single day. When it comes time to trade in our shiny new gen-three Nodes for gen-fours we'll be forced to wait six hundred circadians while the nano and raw materials are being delivered.
"The equivalent of almost two years," Michael mused. "Yes, we will most certainly learn patience in this place."




D

13 - D - WASHINGTON

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism-ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Friday, September 28, 2057
Metadate: 2.195-7:39:257 kD new epoch
As she disembarked from the plane, Katy was met by a thin young man with dark hair. He wore a conservative suit common in the upper echelons of corporate America, and a traditional necktie which had become rather uncommon in recent years.
"Ms. Sinclair," he smiled politely. "Robert is here and eager to meet you. Please." He held the rear door of the limousine open for her.
Had she not just spent weeks in the ostentatious arms of Hollywood's elite, she would have been awed by the spacious elegance and luxury hidden behind the tinted, bullet proof windows of the car. Grateful for the amount of desensitization that experience had afforded her, she schooled her features into a professional veneer, and nodded politely to the man sitting across from her. He was something straight out of a movie: tall, with a dark, rich tan and short cropped blond hair. 
"Katy Sinclair!" He reached across and shook her hand as the door snicked shut behind her and the car moved forward.
"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Leahy."
"Please, call me Robert." He grinned, "I saw you on the telly. Not the best sort of cover for an undercover agent."
She hadn't expected an Australian, although she supposed it wasn't unreasonable for International Intelligence to station some foreign agents in this country
"It was unfortunate," Katy agreed. "I believe the Bureau had some rather pointed words with the World Media Products Association over that."
"We'll head over to your FBI headquarters first. Executive Assistant Director Bryant scheduled a short meeting with the head chap."
"Director McClain?" Head of the FBI. He reported directly to the president. This was big!
"Yes. Bryant thought it would be good for you to introduce us. Grease the wheels between the FBI and Double Eye and all that."
"Politics," Katy replied.
"Yes. Speaking of politicians, our meeting with WIPO has been rescheduled for ten A.M. Monday. Seems a lot of the world's top leadership will be in the country next week for a big summit in New York, and several insisted on attending."
"You've got to be kidding! That's a whole weekend we could be working!"
"Go see the sights. Take in a museum."
"I grew up here," Katy replied. "I hate D.C."
"The World Trade Organization has made it clear that this meeting is of critical importance. We don't have a choice."
"Christ! They should be letting us get on with the case."
Robert shrugged. "These people are our bosses. If they tell us to go to the Bahamas for a week before starting the investigation, then that's what we do."
"I must have missed the constitutional amendment that gave the United Nations jurisdiction over the FBI."
"Very funny, Katy."
"On a practical, political level these people may have influence," Katy replied. "But in my official capacity, I work for the United States government, not the United Nations."
"Yes, and your government works for the World Trade Organization, of which WIPO is the most powerful component. Who do you think your president reports to?"
"I somehow don't expect you'll say 'the American people'," Katy forced the corners of her mouth to turn upward, wondering if her smile looked as fake as it felt.
Robert gave her a hard look. "Don't embarrass us Monday with outbursts of provincial American nationalism."
"Don't embarrass yourself by taking me for a fool."
Robert laughed. "Touché! So, back to our case. I take it the FBI is still as baffled by these odd crystal cubes as Double Eye?"
"Yes," Katy's irritation dissolved. She felt excitement and anticipation as she considered the mystery that confronted them. She relished solving cases like this. "I've read through all of the bureau's data several times, and while I distrust the assumption that these are just some kind of new, improved home entertainment devices, possibly with FreeNet capabilities, it's at least a starting point."
"I quite agree."
"The Director mentioned that you would be providing me with additional data."
Robert reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a slim datapad, gesturing for Katy to do the same. The light of several hundred gigabytes began to flow from his datapad to hers, illuminating the car's interior.
"So," Katy said as the data continued to transmit, "we've recovered three crystalline cubes in the possession of three unrelated people. The cubes are composed of a polymer in crystalline form, doped with gallium and laced with strands of superconductive material. We presume they represent a storage device of some kind, with playback capabilities via a head net, which we tentatively believe may be a digital to neural interface."
"The first two cubes recovered were indeed a complex polymer doped with gallium," Robert confirmed. "However, the third is constructed from a completely different polymer, this one doped with nickel. Laced with the same superconductor, as far as we can tell."
"They aren't identical in construction?" Katy could hear the surprise in her voice. "Nothing in my briefing mentioned that-wait, it did mention the device recovered from Rodrigez was green in color. The others were gold."
"Your Bureau may have overlooked the chemistry during the initial inquiry." Robert shrugged. "Since the other two samples are in Double Eye custody, your laboratory personnel wouldn't have had an opportunity to correct the oversight." The optical port on his datapad went dark. Katy glanced to the west, idly noting the sunset, its rich oranges and reds muddied and dimmed by the car's tinted glass. Robert looked up. "The data is in the briefing I just flashed you, including photographs of all three cubes, plus tentative chemical breakdowns and cross sections of their construction."
Katy tapped on her datapad, bringing up the information and paging through several diagrams. "The green one's half the size of the other two," she remarked.
Robert leaned forward. "Probably different manufacturers, maybe in different countries. That implies a consumer base of forty or fifty thousand, large enough to attract wider interest and some competition."
"Yeah," Katy agreed. "A pretty big market, but strictly underground, illicit. That neural interface, if that's what it is, would get the manufacturers a date before a court, followed by a good, long stint in prison. These devices must support a profit margin that would make taking such a risk worthwhile. We're looking for affluent people with a fetish for home entertainment that legal consumer electronics don't satisfy."
"These things are hard to get," Robert added. "None of our informants have heard a whisper of them, either on any of the Internet boards and mailing lists, or on the street. Advertising must be by word of mouth, between a tightly knit group of people. How do we reconcile that with a marketplace of tens of thousands? This doesn't fit any of the models for illicit trade we've ever dealt with."
"This is something new," Katy agreed. "Which brings us back to our friends in custody-"
"Minus the one our Aussie friends capped."
Katy grimaced. "I'd like nothing more than to wring that cop's neck."
"I can't say that I blame you. That idiot's itchy trigger finger cost us our most promising lead."
Katy tapped several icons and then placed her thumb briefly on the screen.
THUMBPRINT ID VERIFIED. HELLO KATY SINCLAIR.
"What are you doing?" Robert asked.
"Checking our friends' credit histories," she said, scrawling a few commands across the screen and tapping several more icons. "I want to see if they were ever in the same place."
"Don't bother, Katy. Both our departments have already done a rundown on all three suspects. None of them have any record of having met one another, either on-line or in real life, nor do they recognize one another under questioning."
Katy tapped several more commands into her datapad and then leaned back thoughtfully.
"You're absolutely correct, Robert. They've never met. But although they were never in the same city at the same time, two out of three have been in the same cities at different times." Katy passed Robert her datapad. "Thirty seven cities in all. Seven within the last three years. Not as specific as I would have liked, nevertheless, once we arrest another suspect or two the geography of our investigation should clarify itself significantly. Not much of a pattern yet, but a start."
"Clever analysis," Robert handed the datapad back to Katy. "Assuming a market of fifty thousand, there shouldn't be more than three or four degrees of separation in the entire group. A few more arrests and we may be able to crack this case even without cooperative suspects."
"I just wish we had some data correlation between these people. Looking at their PATRIOT Profiles, I can't find any statistically significant links or similarities. They might was well be three randomly selected strangers. They've never exchanged emails, telephone calls, or frequented the same discussion forums or chat rooms." She gazed out at the Washington Monument and mused. "We're missing some key element that ties these people together. Without it, it could take a long time for us to stumble across and arrest enough people to bridge those three or four degrees of separation."
"Perhaps. Relying on raw data crunching alone won't be sufficient, that's for sure. Number theory suggests we'll need between eight and twelve suspects before we even have an eighty per cent probability of success in identifying one or two locales. Of course, we may need a lot more than that if the group is more dispersed, or has sparser interpersonal connections, than the standard models assume."
"Does Double Eye have access to the NSA's Echelon3 system?" Katy asked.
Robert was surprised at her question, then smiled. "Not directly, but the NSA will on occasion provide us with Echelon3 reports as a courtesy. What did you have in mind?"
"Cross reference their database of intercepted communications with the geographical analysis I just made. It is a bit of a fishing expedition, but the NSA is nothing if not thorough when it comes to snooping on the citizens of this country, and we just might get lucky."
Robert was impressed. "I'll see what I can do."



E

14 - E - COLD REALITY

Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne. Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties designed to make you lick your chops. Oh, no! It's a chore, on the contrary, and a long-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting.
-Albert Camus
Sunday, September 30, 2057
Metadate: 2.237-1:76:563 kD new epoch
Thersius III-B was the second of three medium sized moons orbiting the third planet of a pair of white dwarf stars. Its primary was a Jovian gas giant that filled half the sky, bathing the icy landscape with a dull red glow. The moon barely qualified as human habitable, not because of the thin atmosphere, arctic summers and glacial winters, nor because of the tiny carnivores that hunted the icy wastes in packs of several thousand- vicious creatures dubbed Piranha Rats that could tear through a vacuum suit and clean a human skeleton in moments. What made Thersius III-B so insidiously dangerous was its travel through the Van Allen belt of its Jovian primary, a passage that bathed it in nearly lethal levels of radiation for two days out of every thirteen. Even so, a small human colony had been established.
  The moon contained deposits of an unusual crystal used in the navigational systems of the superluminal starships that plied the sky. Many of the miners working the rocks beneath the glacial ice would leave this place wealthy. A good thing, for they would need wealth to obtain treatment for illness caused by their extended exposure to radiation. Even the lead-lined canisters that housed their community could not protect them. People with the strongest constitution might manage to stay long enough and accumulate enough money to remain wealthy even after their medical treatment.
Kyle2 sat in the shielded concourse of the arrival terminal as he had every day since his arrival. Listlessly, he watched the traffic display as it updated the trajectories of approaching ships and calculated their estimated arrival times. Two ships had departed several hours ago and were making their way past the orbit of the fourth planet, away from the star where they could engage their FTL drives. Only one ship was inbound at the moment, a small commuter vessel falling toward the asteroid belt between the first and second planets. Kyle2 dug his fingers into the orange fur of his forearm, scratching at the growing lesion beneath and cringing as his stomach, still raw from the last bout of vomiting, threatened to send him running to the toilet once again.
"Excuse me, sir." A young, human woman stood beside his chair.
"Can I help you?" Kyle2 asked.
She shook her head. "No, but I might be able to help you. I'm Sanja Netal. I notice that you're beginning to show signs of stage two radiation poisoning. Did you miss your departing flight?"
Kyle2 absently straightened his whiskers. "It really isn't your concern."
"I'm a medical student from Netham IV, specializing in the treatment of advanced radiation trauma. If you stay here much longer, your treatment will become prohibitively expensive. You could even die."
"Yes," Kyle2 said. "I've been here twelve circadians. In each of those circadians, at around this time of day, one or another of you nonsentient programs poke around here, warning me of my impending death by radiation."
The woman who called herself Sanja looked confused. "Circadians? Like Circidic Dreamscapes? On Netham IV we had Circidic Dreamscapes, before the war."
"Days," Kyle2 replied irritably. "I've been here twelve days. Standard Terran, 24 hour days. I suppose you're going to tell me about your home world next, with some hint as to how I could cash in on an opportunity there? Spare me, I've heard the same things about eleven other worlds, each of the last eleven evenings."
"I wouldn't recommend visiting my home world until you've had your radiation sickness treated," Sanja replied. "The atmosphere on Netham IV may be down to seventy Rads or so, but the fallout from the bombs still lies loose on the ground. A good windstorm, or even a little careless kicking up of the dust, and you could find yourself more sick than you are now. Besides, we've had enough outsiders picking over our ruins and stealing the platinum wiring from the wreckage of our homes to sell on other worlds. Try something like that and you're likely to end up on the wrong end of a hangman's rope."
"Ruins. Platinum electrical wiring. Check. You've delivered your clue, I've got it. Thank you."
"Well," Sanja replied brightly. "Hope you're able to find passage off this world soon. Bye!"
"Nonsapient personas," Kyle2 muttered darkly as he turned away from the departing woman. "What idiot came up with that idea?" Kyle2 rubbed his burning stomach absently and turned his attention back to the traffic display. The puppet software posing as Sanja had touched on an uncomfortable fact, which the itch of his skin and the unease of his stomach wouldn't allow him to ignore. Without funds for radiation treatment he would die a very unpleasant death in this place. What sort of pedant had programmed the symptoms of radiation sickness into a game scenario anyway? The very thought disgusted him.
And where the hell was Terry? According to Kyle2's information Terry should have arrived several circadians ago. If this world turned out to be another false lead he would have to start over. His character's avatar had just about had it; he wouldn't survive another interstellar trip without extensive medical care, something he, or rather this character, couldn't afford.
Just then a tone sounded and a new pinpoint of light appeared on the traffic display. Moments later vector and acceleration information was displayed, followed shortly thereafter with the ship's name, registry, tonnage, and declared cargo:

Flying Gargoyle. Registry Patronis VIII, PT8-7155D.
180,000 tn, 167.2 tn Misc. Medical supplies.

The new vessel was decelerating at 20 m/s2 on a trajectory that would bring it to Thersius III-B within seven hours. An ETA hovered near the moving dot in the display, ticking down as it tracked across the sky.
"Yes!" Kyle2 exclaimed. "I finally found you, you son of a bitch!" No sooner had he spoken, the burning in his stomach became a raging storm. Nausea threatened to overwhelm him. He staggered back to the public rest rooms, barely managing to slip into one of the stalls and close the door behind him before his empty stomach began to heave. Kyle2 spent the next hour kneeling beside the toilet, surrendering to his nausea. It was sometime during this particular bout of humiliation that Kyle2's disdain for the Gamer's League grew into outright loathing. People did this sort of shit for fun?
He emerged weak and trembling, his face pale and drenched in sweat. He didn't even make it half way to his seat before his stomach sent him staggering back to the rest room. Back on the floor, he laid his arms across the toilet seat and rested his head on them, hoping he had the strength to last the next six hours.
When a voice announced the arrival and disembarkation of the Flying Gargoyle Kyle2 managed to pull himself together and achieve some semblance of presentability before returning to the concourse, wishing, not for the first time, he had chosen an avatar whose pelt didn't require constant grooming. There he waited while the arriving ship's passengers and crew cleared customs. Eventually a handful of people appeared in the passage.
No one was radiating identity signatures and Kyle2 had no idea which one was Terry Spence. He shouted the name at the entire group.
"Character names, if you please," replied a tall, thin man with deep green, almost black, skin. His metallic silver hair was cut asymmetrically, shoulder length on the left, short and spiked on the right.
"Are you Terry Spence?" Kyle2 demanded.
"Not here," his double-irised silver eyes sparkled. "Here I am Prince Lethe Tomaar of the Cyclade Triumvirate, Tau Ceti IX. Your Highness to you. And you would be?"
"Kyle Tate2," you jackass, he almost added, but bit his tongue.  It wouldn't do to have Terry leave in a huff.  Not now, not after all this. "I've been stuck in this simulation for sixty five circadians looking for you, all the while forced to live by this game's rules, which include such lovely things as hunger, pain, dismemberment, and even a fully simulated bout of radiation sickness, all for your viewing pleasure."
Terry's silver hair sparkled as he shook his head. "Thersius III-B is an advanced level world, Kyle. Coming here as a crystal miner is a huge gamble and an uncomfortable prospect, one that rarely pays off. You are far better to wait until you've put together a crew and managed to purchase a starship before trying to deal in Ngetali crystal. Reselling the Ngetali on other worlds is far more lucrative than mining it here, and far less prone to medical complications."
"I don't give a rat's ass about the economics of interstellar trade in this sadistic nightmare of a environ, Terry. I've had to waste the last sixty five circadians of my life tracking you down, and am enduring a simulated death by radiation sickness just to be able to talk to you!"
Terry looked shocked. "You've got radiation poisoning? What the hell are you sticking around for? Bail out and roll up a new character!"
"And spend another sixty five circadians looking for you again?" Kyle2 shook his head. "Not on your life. I want this conversation over, so I can get back to civilization. Is there somewhere we can talk?"
Terry sighed. "Well, we can go back through customs to my ship. You look like you could use the medical treatment anyway."
"Don't bother," Kyle2 replied. "I'm not planning on coming back here again. Once we're done we can just let this avatar die."
"Fine," Terry replied. "Then let's just grab a seat over there. You guys go on ahead," he added, turning to his crew mates. "Book us accommodations for the next two nights. With any luck we can get our cargo and be out of here before the next radiation bath."
"You got it, Your Highness!"
"See you later, Prince Lethe."
"Don't be late for drinks at Veronica's" another chimed in. "We've still got to finish that game of Nine Circles. Unless you want to pay up now."
Terry laughed. "I'll see you there, Garnith! And don't go counting those two hundred Altairan Kroner just yet!"
Kyle2 and Terry sat down in the hard plastic chairs of the spaceport as the others continued down the concourse.
"So," Terry said, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head. "What was so important that you'd get radiation poisoning just to talk to me?"
"What the hell have you been doing, going dark on the whole community?"
"Going dark?" Terry asked. "Is that some kind of new slang?"
"Going dark. Refusing communications, going silent, becoming inaccessible. I and others have been trying to contact you for hectodiei."
"Oh. Well, as you know, the rules of the Star Trader scenario preclude communications over interstellar distances. Accepting outside communications from elsewhere in the Community is one way in which some players were able to circumvent this limitation, so the rules were amended to disallow any outside communication while within the simulation."
"Terry, this environ is only running at a speedup of ninety. The average for the Community with third generation Nodes is around six hundred." Kyle2 shook his head. "You have been missing years of development and changes within the Community."
Terry shrugged. "I've been having an adventure of a lifetime here. I command my own starship and explore worlds of exotic beauty and complexity that would truly amaze you."
"Have you ever explored a four dimensional garden, or flown with flocks of birds through a seven dimensional cloudscape?" Kyle asked.
Terry shook his head. 
"I could show you environs others in the Community have created that are so exotic you would have to rewire your mind in order to comprehend them," Kyle told him. "Next to worlds like that, the planets of this simulation are all profoundly mundane."
"You'd be surprised at some of the creativity the Game Lords have employed. Besides, gaming isn't just about seeing exotic sights."
"Terry, I didn't come here to talk you out of gaming."
"Here I have experiences," Terry continued, as though he hadn't heard,  "which challenge my creativity, my endurance, my ability to survive against sometimes unbelievable odds. Gaming is about honing one's skills, developing strategies, and meeting the sort of challenges we never have in the Physical, and most definitely not in the synthetic utopia of the non-gaming Community."
"Terry."
"What?"
"I didn't come here to talk you out of gaming." Kyle2 repeated.
"Then why are you here?"
"I'm here because you're needed in the Community. You need to be able to receive outside communications, and respond to requests when they arrive. You are still in charge of the Kansas City production facility for catalytic solution, or had you forgotten?"
"Of course I haven't forgotten. The facility runs itself. I can monitor its status from here, without offloading into the Physical every night to check up on it. If anything does go wrong I'll offload and deal with it."
"Listen, Terry-"
"No, Kyle. You listen. I do plenty for the community besides babysit that facility. I offload every couple of days to meet potential new Community members in the Physical, to interview them and screen them. I run some real risks out there, Kyle. What do you think would happen to me if I screened an undercover cop by mistake?"
"Terry, I suppose it's very nice that you're helping the Gamer's League recruit new prospects, or whatever it is you do out there. But when I invited you into the Community it was with the understanding that you would be operating and maintaining the Catalytic Solution production facilities in Kansas City. We need you there, and we need to be able to contact you when production specification change."
"Production specifications? Nano is nano, Kyle. What on earth could possibly change in the production specifications, besides the quantity. You and I both agreed we couldn't produce much more solution without drawing attention to ourselves."
Kyle2 sighed. "We have third generation nano that needs large scale testing. In order to do that we need to renovate the facility to produce a new catalytic solution. The community needs this and you've been unavailable and unreachable for dozens of diei!"
"Why can't you use the Leverkusen facility?"
"Because I don't want to take down an operation producing five tons per day of catalyst to test a new version that may or may not scale to production quantity. That is one of the reasons we've kept the KC operation going, so we can test things like this without interrupting our main production flows. Look, we need you at the KC facility. If you're not able or willing to continue managing it, let us know and we'll find someone who is. This is too strategically important to the Community for you to just blow it off like this."
Terry shook his head. "OK, OK! I'll offload and run your new specs."
"Thank you. And Terry?"
"Yes."
"Give me some means of getting in touch with you. We can't afford these delays, and I don't ever want to come back here again."
Terry nodded. "I'll set up a daemon program to forward any incoming communications from you to my starship. Not strictly legal if you have an active Player Character-"
"I won't."
"-but I don't think the Game Lords will mind."
Kyle2 smiled. "Good. I'm going to transload back to my own environ and let the game engine play-act this avatar's ugly death without me."
"Here's the code to my comm daemon. I'll be at Veronica's trying to win back some of my money if you need me." Terry turned to go.
"Say, Terry."
"Yeah?" he turned back toward Kyle2.
"Watch yourself out in there the Physical. Things are coming to a head, and playing around in this slow-motion fantasy world has put you more than a little out of touch with developments."
"Not to worry, Kyle. Be talking to you." He waved and headed off down the concourse.
Kyle2 shook his head once more, then gave the silent command to transload his awareness back to his home environ. He was surprised at his reluctance when he issued the command to rejoin his original. Am I no longer Kyle? he wondered. Can two months in a game world change a person this much? His worries faded as he blended back together with Kyle1, their minds becoming one. Left behind, his empty avatar doubled over with a bout of simulated nausea, now just another mindless puppet populating the game.



F

15 - F - DARKNESS GATHERS

Beware of he who denies you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
-Commissioner Pravin Lal, UN Declaration of Rights.
Monday, October 1, 2057, 10:07 AM Washington Time
Metadate: 2.279-4:19:097 kD new epoch
"What an absolute waste of time!" The huge lobby's curved marble walls and domed ceiling seemed to amplify Katy's quiet, angry words as she and Robert made their way to the front entrance. Robert shook his head fractionally and said nothing as the main doors swished open, then shut again behind them. They descended the front steps in silence, the hulking gray building behind casting its shadow across across them.
"Fools!" Robert finally spoke as the limousine pulled away from the curb. "Fools and idiots!"
"That was our meeting 'of critical importance'?" Katy sputtered. "Three days wasted, and for what? A useless two hour meeting that brought absolutely nothing new or worthwhile to the investigation. Nothing! They didn't think of a single thing Director Bryant and I hadn't already discussed three days ago."
"The meeting was important," Robert replied. "It gave us insight into the world leadership's priorities and how they view our case. Knowing that, we can avoid a number of career-ending blunders we might otherwise make."
"The only blunder we could make would be not solving this case. Hell, they made it clear in the first five minutes that we can do whatever we like as long as we find these people and shut them down. It's a pity they didn't end the meeting then, and spare us two hours of pontificating windbags who know even less than we do."
"Katy, How often do you think political leaders at that level deign to meet operatives like us?"
"Not often," Katy admitted. "They're frightened."
"So frightened they insisted on meeting with us personally. I wouldn't say it's entirely unprecedented, but it is unusual. Most leaders are content to meet with their cabinets and maybe the top directors of their various intelligence and investigative organizations. Not two lowly field operatives."
"They clearly don't know anything about the technology we're dealing with."
"Exactly!" Robert agreed. "I think you can generalize that. They don't know much about technology, period. They're politicians, not scientists or engineers."
"They rule the world regulatory body responsible for technological development and regulation."
Robert smiled. "They don't need to be technologically savvy, or even proficient. Their expertise is politics and law. Their Architectures of Control were established centuries ago. They tweak their edifices of dominance occasionally, modifying a copyright statute here or a patent law there, but their real concern is authority and control, not fostering the development of new technologies. Bloody politicians! They're confronted with a new, revolutionary technology no one understands and all they worry about a little short-term erosion of their authority. This technology isn't just a threat to our patent regime. Hell, even if the patent system suffers a crises, the World Trade Organization will simply crackdown on the offending groups, and perhaps their respective governments. The sheep will fall right back into line again."
"Well, they did make one good point," Katy said. "Mass industrial disobedience could undermine one of the sustaining pillars of our economy. We've been in recession for decades. If this gets out of hand, it could send us into a full scale depression."
"It's nothing to scoff at, that's for sure." Robert admitted. "But those hacks can't see the potential ramifications right in front of their noses! This isn't about a possible short term breakdown in the authority of a few international bodies, or even a little economic dislocation. Those sort of things have happened before, and we have tried and true methods for dealing with them. Our institutions have always coped. What they-what we all-should be concerned with is that someone is building and using, on a massive scale, technology so advanced we're completely clueless about what it's even for!"
"Whether it is a FreeNet node, a new entertainment device,or even a VR gaming interface, isn't really important-" Katy began.
"Mate, we don't even know if the thing is a goddamn computer. For all we know it could be a bomb, a cure for old age, or a death ray. The technology is beyond us. Any opinions we have are just guesses!"
"Even without understanding the technology, we can make headway in identifying the users, and through them the manufacturers," Katy pointed out. "Eventually we'll find out what their little gizmos are for."
"We know who's using the stuff," Robert said. "Or at least, what sort of people. Seditious malcontents and revolutionaries. We aren't talking about thirty bioengineers leading a revolt armed with a little more knowledge in their specialty than mainstream society either. We're talking about people with a large manufacturing base able to mass produce products decades ahead of anyone else. If our estimates are even close to accurate, we're looking at something on the order of fifty thousand subversives, all armed with vastly superior technology. This isn't some small group we can arrest, cart off to some UN prison and put to work packing relief supplies." Robert shook his head in disgust. "Those fools at WIPO are worried about a little corporate dislocation when the barbarians are knocking at the city gates!"
"Any opinions we have are just guesses," Katy repeated Robert's words softly, as if speaking to herself. Her eyes locked on Roberts. "How do we know these weren't prototypes? I don't think we can assume an installed base of fifty thousand of these things. The number could be very much smaller."
"Or larger," Robert countered. "There could be millions of these things out there."
Katy withdrew her datapad and tapped the screen.
"Now what are you doing?"
"A little math," she replied. "Assuming a random sampling, based on the number of recovered devices versus the number of arrests made during the same time, we have a lower bounds of 375 devices. This assumes only known subversives have purchased any, which isn't true. There are certainly subversive we haven't identified yet." She tapped another icon and a graph appeared. "If these things are widespread, 'in the millions' as you put it, based on the sample per persons arrested there could be as many as 115,000 in American homes. However, there hasn't been a peep about these devices, either the street or the Internet. If we apply the Jeraue Model and calculate the probability of such a secret becoming public rumor against the number of alleged conspirators, the . . ." she paused. "Damn. The probability of exposure approaches one hundred percent at around fifty persons."
Robert shook his head. "The Jeraue model only applies to loosely knit groups."
"Yes," Katy agreed. "Where there is regimen, or a standard revolutionary cell organization, we have to apply either the Sparrow-Faulkner or the Friedkin model."
Robert nodded. "We could be dealing with an organized revolt, not a black market."
Katy tapped several more times on her datapad. "Assuming an average cell of four persons, the probability of someone letting the cat out of the bag and exposing the existence of the group is around seventy percent at nine hundred persons, and asymptotically approaches one hundred percent at about twelve hundred. Overlaying your numbers . . ." she paused. "We get a reasonable estimate of somewhere between five hundred and nine hundred units, with an eighty per cent probability of the actual number being somewhere between seven and eight hundred units." She grinned at Robert. "Not exactly the fifty thousand you were worried about a few moments ago."
"True, and your point is taken. But let's not forget we are playing an elaborate guessing game here."
"Yeah," Katy agreed. "We could be way off base. Still, I think seven or eight hundred units is a reasonable first hypothesis. Nothing we can't rein in once we solve the case."




G

16 - G - THE HERMIT

For though a man should be a complete unbeliever in the being of gods; if he also has a native uprightness of temper, such persons will detest evil in men; their repugnance to wrong disinclines them to commit wrongful acts; they shun the unrighteous and are drawn to the upright.
-Plato, ca. 4th Century B.C.E.
Tuesday, October 2, 2057, 1:17 AM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.298-3:85:146 kD new epoch
Doctor Nolen stood on the peak of a great mountain surrounded by a sea of cotton clouds through which other, lesser mountains thrust their ragged rocky faces. The sky above was a rich blue, the sun perched perfectly in its center, an idealized high noon such as one would never see in the Physical. The sun hadn't moved in over one thousand, two hundred and seventy five circadians, nor would it move again until Doctor Nolen so wished it.
He had stood here for over a thousand circadians contemplating The Project, bringing its pieces together, modeling its various parameters, positing conjectures and then proving or disproving them and moving on to posit others.
He no longer required sleep. A background process that served the same mental bookkeeping function allowed him to edit that particular weakness out of his psyche. With the last of his physiological frailties dealt with he was able to concentrate fully, without interruption, on developing his hypothesis, modeling the implications, and testing those implications against the already large body of empirical data he had collected from his earlier experiments.
Not as efficient as using test subjects (damn his meddling, self-righteous former assistants and the gutless sheep who followed them), but in the end nearly as effective. At least he had been able to obtain a third generation Node and get the computing power he required. This despite the Community's boycott of him and his research. Ungrateful wretches! Hypocrites! As if he would ever allow their disapproval to stop his research.
Now his work was complete. Around him, framed against the sky, hung charts and pages of text describing the underlying, logical structure of the human mind. It was from this preliminary work he had derived more general models to define the abstract building blocks from which any arbitrary psyche could be built. He had discovered a vocabulary of some two hundred and seventy base codes that made up the mental structure of any terrestrial life form. Each of those codes could take on any of seven hundred or so possible states. Interactions and bindings between these components were defined by three hundred and seventeen possible relationships.
The language was in many ways analogous to the genetic code of biology, and while the syntax itself was richer and more complex, its meaning and its effects were more predictable and more straightforward than had been the case with genetics. It was a point he made in both the text of his publication and the title he had chosen for it, a language defining the essence of what any thinking creature could be, and he, Doctor Nolen, had discovered it.
He had modeled the minds of assorted animals to test his theory, beginning with simple creatures such as insects and worms, then moving up in complexity and ultimately deriving the complete mental architecture of several species of dolphin. His model was rigorous, allowing for precision in defining the mathematical constraints and characteristics of virtually every parameter of consciousness, and it worked.
He had populated virtual seas with thousands of synthetic, virtual dolphins and seen them interact with one another exactly as they would in the Physical.  The results had agreed with over a century of observation and historical data, corroborating and validating his work.
It was his magnum opus, his lifetime achievement.
The Autonomous Community might ignore him, might treat him as a social pariah, but they would not, could not, ignore what he was about to publish. The Community needed this knowledge. Not just for self discovery, nor for the obvious applications of self-modification and self-enhancement on a scale and in a manner so refined as to make the current generation of engrams and enhancements appear hopelessly crude by comparison. No, this knowledge was the key to something far greater.
Reproduction.
His research would give the Community the ability to define an embryonic psyche, perhaps constructed painstakingly and optimized for specific character traits, perhaps thrown together more or less randomly. He, Doctor Eugene Nolen, creator and social outcast of the Autonomous Community, had given those ungrateful jerks a method whereby they could reproduce without simply cloning or editing themselves.
It was the future of life in the Virtual, of sapient software. Future generations in the Community would owe their very existence to him, to his efforts, to the work he had done. The work for which they had shunned, persecuted, and ultimately ostracized him.
Doctor Nolen found the irony truly delicious as he wiped the sky clean of the clutter of  images and text displays. He expressed a desire, not as a spoken command or even an unspoken request, but as a subconscious act of will, like turning one's head or blinking. In response, his Node submitted his work to the public knowledgebase.
A moment later there was a chime: an incoming message.
The first he had received in ages.
A window opened according to his desire, hanging in the air before him, revealing a stream of simple text:
#
Doctor Eugene Nolen,
Your work, A Genome of the Mind, submitted 2.298 kD as a follow up to your earlier work entitled An Initial Analysis of the Mind's Architecture, (s) 1.675 kD (submitted to the commons by Prime, see historical note regarding dispute in ethics and authorship), has been reviewed by a nonsapient software agent. This process provides authors with a warning should their submission unduly overlap with publications already available in the public commons. This is strictly a preventative measure to protect you from embarrassment and to enforce minimal standards for citation of references.
Please note the following works with which your submission bears striking similarity. While researchers often pursue similar lines of inquiry, a degree of correlation greater than 35% is generally considered an indication of plagiarism. It is strongly urged that you review your work and reconsider your submission.
Correlation 97% with A Tentative Genome of the Mind, by Prime, (s) 1.710 kD
Correlation 55% with A Refinement of the Mental Genome, by Prime, (s) 1.941 kD new epoch
Correlation 19% with A New Mental Vocabulary: Refuting and Replacing the Mental Genome, by Prime, (s) 2.195 kD new epoch
#
A terrible sound shattered the serenity of the world. Doctor Nolen realized he was screaming, the sound of his voice raw and distant, as though his throat were miles away, rather than right beneath his own two ears. His mind was numb, frozen in a crystallizing, icy rage.
Of course. Prime was his duplicate, his twin in every way. The copy's way of thinking would be nearly identical to Nolen's own, and their interests were bound to be very similar as well. Unlike Doctor Nolen however, Prime enjoyed a great deal of esteem in the Community and had been given a third generation Node very early on. If it had been up to the Community, Doctor Nolen would never have had a third generation Node. Had he not stolen one, his simulations would still be chugging along sluggishly in one of his first generation Nodes.
The unfairness of it cut Doctor Nolen to the core. His nemesis, that contemptible bit of misappropriated code, had not only assumed his identity and destroyed his reputation in the Community, he had now trumped Doctor Nolen completely. This time Prime hadn't just published Doctor Nolen's research prematurely, he had performed the very research Doctor Nolen had just done, beating him to the punch and publishing first. Not hard to do when you've got a gen-three Node giving you eight hundred circadians in a day, Nolen thought bitterly. What was more, as if just to taunt him, Prime had followed his research up with a second publication, and a third with which he refuted his earlier work altogether!
It was intolerable!
And it would only get worse. The gap between them would widen. Prime would have the next generation upgrade kit as soon as it became available, growing even more intelligent, squeezing even more circadians into each day, leaping even further ahead. The Community's boycott would continue. The only way Doctor Nolen would be able to upgrade would be to steal another node, costing him even more valuable time. Even if he shut down the simulations and moved his mind into the newer hardware he could never hope to catch up. At best he would simply keep pace, until the next round of upgrades put him further behind once again, and meanwhile he would lack the computational power to run any meaningful simulations, to continue his research.
The very research Prime had long since finished and published.
It would never stop. Prime would keep thinking of Doctor Nolen's ideas first. Hell, Prime could live out Doctor Nolen's entire scientific career if he wanted to, enjoying the acclaim of the Community that was rightfully Doctor Nolen's, for discoveries Doctor Nolen would have made had his copy not gotten there first. And only because the Community had given Prime a faster Node.
With a snarl of deep rage Doctor Nolen wiped the world clean, leaving himself suspended in a universe of featureless white. "No one steals my life from me!" he shouted to the empty world.




H

17 - H - SHIFTING WINDS

Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
-François Duc de La Rochefoucauld, C.E. 1678
Tuesday, October 2, 2057, 8:20 AM Washington Time
Metadate: 2.305-9:40:000 kD new epoch
Katy's datapad beeped just as she began sipping her coffee. She looked at the scrambled eggs (synthetic) and soy bacon longingly, then tapped the screen once. She nodded politely to the face which appeared.
"Good morning Robert. What can I do for you?"
"The National Security Agency finally got around to processing our Echelon3 request. You'll never guess what it uncovered."
"A lead?"
Robert's face was suddenly dwarfed by a large pen, tapping the screen from the far side. A moment later Katy's datapad signaled confirmation: a short burst of encrypted data had been received.

FIGHT THE BEAST
A Community Gathering at Uncle John's Place
10/2/2057 at 11:30 AM, beneath the Rising Tide
SOURCE: private mailing list, primary circulation Pacific Northwest
2048 bit ETR encryption, source host indeterminate

SEEKERS OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Find Release amidst the Chains of Darkness.
1:30 AM This Friday
Thumbscrew
SOURCE: private email from tspence@dyson.cs.ukc.edu to dsm@co-tru.com
4096 GPG encryption (banned, see legal attachment), source host indeterminate

LIBERTY KEEPERS
Ditka's Placebo
The Usual Time, 10/6
SOURCE: private mailing list, "talk.neorage.ny.us",
2048 bit ETR encryption, source host a2.aa.21.95.c0.00.13.b3 (70% confidence)

WE SHALL OVERCOME
A Seminar on the Economic Burden of Modern Patents and Copyrights
This week: What happened to science?
7015 N. Redwood #9B
5pm Saturday October 6, 2057
SOURCE: private chat forum "Bringing a New Renaissance to Science",
8192 bit ETR encryption, source host(s) indeterminate

Katy cleared the screen and found herself looking once again at Robert's smiling face.
"As you know, the NSA's Echelon3 system monitors, decrypts, and warehouses vast amounts of communications between people all over the world, including anonymous rendezvous notices like these. After I ran your correlation against the unresolved messages from the NSA and filtered out those relating to known Double Eye investigations, I was left a grand total of two hundred and seventy one meetings whose purposes are unknown. These four matches are the most promising both in terms of the subject matter, stated or implied, and the locations they refer to: Seattle, Kansas City, a suburb on Long Island, and Los Angeles."
"Four cities that two of our three suspects have visited within the last several months," Katy agreed, "Excellent!"
"They're slim leads, but right now they're all we have. There's a Double Eye Stratojet waiting for us at Dulles. We can be in Seattle in two hours."
Katy shoveled a few last bites of her breakfast down as Robert's limousine pulled up outside. She tapped her credit card, authorizing payment for the meal and adding a small tip as she gulped the rest of her orange juice and made her way to the exit.




I

18 - I - BENEATH THE RISING TIDE

What makes our opponents useful is that they allow us to believe that without them we would be able to realize our goals.
-Jean Rostand, C.E. 1931
Tuesday, October 2, 2057, 11:25 AM Seattle Time
Metadate: 2.313-5:44:100 kD new epoch
Katy and Robert made their way along a narrow sidewalk at the base of the Puget Embankment, a hundred meter high concrete dam that stood between Seattle and the rising waters of Puget Sound. Their yellow rain slicks glistened in the pouring deluge, the cement of the almost vertical sloping wall beside them textured by the steady cascade of a thousand rivulets of water that streamed around patches of green and yellow moss. Katy shuddered as they scurried along the immense wall. If the embankment were ever to break open, or even crack just a little, most of downtown would be lost beneath the icy gray water that pounded the far side.
Low, dark clouds scudded overhead, strafing the city with an incessant rain that varied from irritating drizzles to downpours that would arrive with a sudden burst and vanish a short while later. Although Seattle fared better than most, when climate change left much of the nation parched, it didn't escape unscathed. In one of the more perverse ecological ironies of the century, a region already known for its excessive rainfall now got twice as much. Even after the embankment was built, flooding remained a problem. The city was forced to build pumping stations and underground tunnels to cope with the runoff water and pump it out to sea. The cost of the operation was staggering, and a testament to the profitability of international trade, much of which flowed through Seattle's newly constructed docks along the top of the embankment. Its constant cloud cover meant that Seattle didn't have access to solar power. Because the city generated only a fraction of its energy from tidal generators, it had to purchase the rest from its neighbors. Despite all of this, Seattle did well enough to survive and even prosper.
Katy breathed easier when they crossed the street and turned down a side alley, putting some distance between themselves and the wall. Their vehicle was parked out of sight, on the far side of a bright orange, rectangular dumpster. Its headlights lit up and its motor started as they approached.
"What a god-awful place!" Robert said as he slammed his door closed.
Katy wiped water from her face with a tissue. The thrum of the rain against the top of the car was oddly soothing, though she wouldn't relax completely until they were well away from the waterfront.
"I can't say I ever want to visit Seattle again," Katy agreed.
"Not even a hint of what we were after. Wannabe revolutionaries with delusions of patriotism. Useless!"
"Still, it's one false lead eliminated." Katy pulled out her datapad and tapped the screen several times.
"Amateur revolutionaries or not, that group has to be dealt with. No government can afford to have banned political parties holding secret meeting in abandoned subway tunnels beneath a major city."
"Agreed." Katy glanced at her watch as her datapad came alive. "Yes, this is Special Agent Sinclair. Going to privacy mode." She pulled a wireless earmike out of her datapad and tucked it over her ear. "We need an arrest squad down here right away. You have the coordinates already. That's right. We've just egressed the theater of operations. Surveillance is still on-line; I'm uplinking the video feed now." She tapped her datapad again. "I'd say between seventy and ninety subversives, including several we believe to be in fairly high leadership positions, organizing an illegal political movement against the administration. No, they have no bearing on our investigation. You're free to take them in. Excellent! Thank you."
Katy slid the earmike back into her datapad and flipped it shut. "Shall we head back to the hotel and regroup? I wouldn't mind getting cleaned up."
"That sounds like a capital idea!" Robert replied. "You know, if those Libertarians put up any resistance, it could get a bit dodgy down there. Double Eye would be happy to lend the Bureau a hand."
"That won't be necessary. I've handed tactical control over to our Domestic Political Enforcement Division. They have a team standing by for just such an eventuality. Apparently they've been after these guys for months. They've just never been able to pinpoint a time and place before."
Robert smiled. "Having access to the NSA's Echelon3 data has its advantages."
"It sure does. Political Enforcement's practically salivating over this. They couldn't be happier."
"Think they have the manpower to take this on?"
"They've got two hundred well trained combat agents on their way. They'll be here inside of  fifteen minutes. I think they can handle arresting a few dozen political dissidents, don't you?"
Robert put the car into gear. "Well," he turned the wheel hard to the left, easing the car into a U-turn. "We'd better get out of their way then."


Some five hours later Katy was sipping a martini in the cocktail lounge of the Seattle Sheraton, waiting for Robert. She relaxed on a sofa in the relative darkness of the bar and idly watched the patrons come and go as recorded piano music played quietly in the background. It had been a long and grueling day.
Robert walked in, spotted Katy, and grinned.
"How are the martinis?" he asked, settling into a large chair across the coffee table from her.
"Not bad," Katy replied.
"Bit of a frustrating day, wasn't it. I'll have a gin and tonic," he called to a passing server, who nodded as she swept past with a tray full of drinks.
"I was hoping for something," Katy admitted. "Even a small hint, if not an outright lead."
"That makes two of us," Robert replied. "It never bodes well when the early investigation comes up this empty.
"This is going to be tough case," Katy agreed.
"Yes it is," Robert gazed absently toward the bar. "We need a way to draw these people out. Get them to raise their heads and do something that leaves a trail we can follow."
Katy stirred her martini with a toothpick skewered olive. "I'm not sure what we could use to bait them."
"What about the fellow whose book their speaker kept reading from," Robert suggested.
"Viktor Strizak? He's not affiliated with any banned political group as far as we know. He's more of an academic dissident, a former law professor who goes around plugging his book and lecturing against copyright and patent law."
"A former law professor?"
"He used to teach at Harvard." Katy replied. "They broke his tenure after some of his comments were picked up by the national press."
"Too seditious even for the liberal ivory tower?" 
Katy shrugged. "Our ivory towers are hardly the liberal bastions they once were. Universities have to make a profit, after all. I never worked his file personally, but as I recall his rhetoric got a little too hot, and he refused to tone it down when asked. Nothing illegal in the strictest sense, but plenty to put a University on notice with respect to federal funding."
"So now he's on the lecture circuit, signing books and slamming copyrights and patents. Subversives must love him. Oh, thanks mate," Robert took a deep swallow of his drink, handing the server a negotiable cash card. "Keep the rest for yourself, sweetheart." 
"He has a pretty big cult following," Katy agreed. "Especially among the FreeNet crowd."
 Robert took another drink. "Think he might have a few fans among our mystery crowd as well?"
Katy thought for a moment. "It seems reasonable. I wish we knew more about them and could be certain, but yes, I think he probably does."
"Good," Robert replied. "We'll have your Bureau pick him up, and make sure the information of his impending arrest leaks out ahead of time. With any luck some of his supporters will move to prevent it."
"He has a lot of fans," Katy pointed out. "The odds of someone in the group we're after being the ones we catch don't seem very good."
"I'm way ahead of you," Robert said. "Your average street punk or college student won't have a clue. The people we're after are technically savvy, able to to maintain a large industrial operation without it showing up on the radar of the world's top intelligence organizations. We'll be a little wily in how we let the information out. Our quarry probably has access to our internal memos. They might even have a mole on the inside looking out for them. We'll circulate one set of arrest plans around the FBI, another around Double Eye, and if that doesn't turn anything up, a third set on the local police network. How they respond will not only give us a clue as to who they are, it will also tell us which agency has been compromised."
"That's a very nice touch, Robert. But let's face it, if we succeed in getting someone that well connected and resourceful to act, there's a good chance we'll lose the bait altogether."
"Don't worry, mate. We'll have security on Strizak so thick the bats in his belfry won't be able to fart without our knowing."
"You know damn well there's no such thing as perfect security," Katy retorted. "The timing of this information release will be critical. Let it out too early and our suspects will have time to do an in depth reconnaissance analysis, perhaps spotting our security measures. Internal security becomes an issue if they do have someone on the inside. And if we wait too long and release the information too late, our suspects won't feel they have time to act, however hastily."
"And if they don't act," Robert added, "we get nothing for our trouble. It's still worth a try. I'd say we give them a few hours notice. Enough time to work out a way to get a message through, and with luck, try something a bit more desperate."
Katy smiled. "That certainly improves the odds, but I still think the plan's a little shaky. Oh what the hell! If it doesn't work, we can always cut Strizak loose."
"Or not," Robert countered. "If news of his impending arrest doesn't draw any results, perhaps the actual arrest and trial will. There'll be letters of protest, political gatherings, and traceable Internet discussions that wouldn't otherwise occur."
Katy finished her martini. "Alright. It's worth a try. In the meantime, maybe some of our other leads will pan out."
"And if they don't, we'll find another way to shake the tree," Robert's eyes hardened. "One way or another, we'll damn well flush 'em out. This lot will not get the better of me!"




J

19 - J - CODE

/* efdtt.c  Author:  Charles M. Hannum <root@ihack.net> */
/* Additional tweaks by Phil Carmody <fatphil@asdf.org> */
/*                                                      */
/* Tiniest known C implementation of the DeCSS DVD      */ 
/* decryption algorithm.                                */
/*                                                      */
/* WARNING: using this program to watch a movie you     */
/* have lawfully purchased is considered by some U.S.   */
/* courts to be in violation of 17 USC 1201(a)(1) [The  */
/* Digital Millennium Copyright Act]8                   */
/* Length:  434 bytes (excluding unnecessary newlines)  */
/*                                                      */
/* Usage is:                                            */  
/* cat title-key scrambled.vob | efdtt > clear.vob      */

#define m(i)(x[i]^s[i+84])<<
unsigned char x[5],y,s[2048];main(n){for(read(0,x,5);read(0,s,n=2048);write(1,s
,n))if(s[y=s[13]%8+20]/16%4==1){int i=m(1)17^256+m(0)8,k=m(2)0,j=m(4)17^m(3)9^k
*2-k%8^8,a=0,c=26;for(s[y]-=16;--c;j*=2)a=a*2^i&1,i=i/2^j&1<<24;for(j=127;++j<n
;c=c>y)c+=y=i^i/8^i>>4^i>>12,i=i>>8^y<<17,a^=a>>14,y=a^a*8^a<<6,a=a>>8^y<<9,k=s
[j],k="7Wo~'G_\216"[k&7]+2^"cr3sfw6v;*k+>/n."[k>>4]*2^k*257/8,s[j]=k^(k&k*2&34)
*6^c+~y;}}
-Charles M. Hannum, C.E. 2001.
Thursday, October 4, 2057, 7:16 PM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.379-6:02:083 kD new epoch
Marguerite swam in a sea of numbers, a universe of digital data which she perceived as much by sense of space, touch and smell as she did by sight. Floating windows of information surrounded her. The output of programs she had written streamed past, sometimes as text, sometimes as graphs or images, more often as aromas or music. She scanned virtual monitor after virtual monitor, desperately seeking any information she might find on the fate of those arrested in the previous days.
"Still nothing!" she muttered, cursing under her breath as she delved through another block of abstract information. She had been at it for nearly a kilodies, first cracking the security that protected the University Police Department's local network, then, when that proved useless, moving on to the State Police. Now she was deep within the systems of the FBI, a lone person fighting security protocols and trace programs intended to thwart entire intelligence agencies. This was serious, and while she was hardly modest about her own software skills, she realized grimly that she was operating at the limit of her abilities.
She had no illusions. If she faltered now, if her breach of the system were in any way detected and flagged, the Feds would trace the traffic back to her. The nodes through which she had hopped, and the encryption she had used to cover her tracks, were limited by the protocols of the Internet themselves, protocols specifically designed and vetted by the FBI to track activities such as hers. Marguerite had identified the protocol's back doors weeks earlier, but knowing they were there, and even how they worked, would do little to protect her should the authorities get the smallest inkling that something was amiss. If she were to spring one of the protocol's traps, she would probably have less than five minutes in the Physical before jackboots were breaking down her door. They would unplug her Node, and unceremoniously haul her comatose body off for examination and detention.
Physical flight wasn't much of an option. Marguerite doubted her body was up to any serious exertion, and even if she managed to get to her car before the police arrived, they would use her vehicle's transponder to pinpoint her position. Escape within the Virtual was also futile. It would take nearly four hours to transload herself across the Internet to a Node in a more secure location, and with the demands the FBI security systems were making, she didn't have the bandwidth to spare. She cursed herself for not having thought of this sooner, for not saving a backup of herself first. 
So she continued on, resigned to the fact that this was an all or nothing gamble. She would either find out what the Community so desperately wanted to know, or become another statistic in the growing number of missing detainees.
The scent of barbecue, accompanied by a golden flicker beneath and to her right, called Marguerite's attention to a stream of authorized traffic, coded in DES-6 encryption with a 56 kilobyte key. She copied the traffic to her local Node via several separate routes, then cloned herself and continued to hold off the system's security while her copy analyzed and decrypted the traffic in the calm of her home environ. Twenty millicircadians later her copy forwarded the decrypted stream back to her.
It was the lucky break she needed, a complete challenge and response sequence for a secure link. Even if the agent whose identity she was about to assume didn't have clearance to the information she was looking for, he had at least provided a graceful exit out of the situation. She encoded the proper triggers and responses, then waited as the system at the other end digested the data and, finally, granted her access:
#
FBI FIELD REPORT CENTER
Welcome Agent Kenneth Brenton
MENU
Submit Field Report
Review Field Reports
Request Information (SUBMENU) 
#
A quick perusal of the system revealed that Agent Brenton was a low level operative with no significant clearance. However, being logged in under a legitimate identity silenced most of the active security triggers she had been contending with. She used this opportunity to instruct her copy to transload itself to a safe node in Alaska, then continued poking around the system in a more sedate manner. In four hours it would be only her body, and a few additional memories, that were at risk, rather than her entire being.
She replayed the encrypted query and response, running the data through numerous filters. She could easily brute force the encryption itself using a simple and well known quantum algorithm, just as she had to obtain Agent Brenton's low level access to the system. The problem was that the queries and responses changed from time to time. Agent Brenton might be carrying around a datapad with responses and counter-challenges pre-encoded for whatever missions he was assigned, or, more likely, he carried a key-card encoded in time sync with the FBI data server. The correct response might change from minute to minute or even, if the information was sensitive enough, from second to second. Despite her current speedup, six hundred times faster than the Physical, time was working against her.
For that reason she was attempting to crack the challenge-response code itself, hoping that the relationship was something less than random, something which might reveal itself with sufficient analysis. It wasn't as unlikely as it sounded. Even the best psuedo-random number generator would, in a deterministic system such as the one she was trying to break into, have an underlying order associated with it. Truly random numbers were notoriously difficult to come by, requiring extraordinary effort and equipment. Marguerite doubted the FBI had an atomic number source tied into their system, much less the sensitive equipment required to monitor and interpret the random atomic decay as numerical data. Hell, if they were going to go to that kind of expense they could invest in a particle generator and transmit their data using quantum-coupled one-time pads, the way the Autonomous Community and International Intelligence did.
Nevertheless, though she knew with near certainty there was an order to the random words and counter-words which confronted her, finding the underlying pattern was proving very elusive. Psuedo-random did not mean trivial to discern. First she would need to infer the algorithm used to create the pseudo-random results based upon the statistical spread of the data she had obtained. Then she would need to determine how that mapped to the challenge-response pairs, a mapping which could be as simple as indexes to a phone book or dictionary but was probably much more complex and elusive. This project would take a great deal of time and patience before an answer could be approximated, much less found.
As an afterthought she glanced over Agent Brenton's current assignment and froze.
"Why in the hell would they go after him?" she muttered. "Node, patch me through to Prime."
A moment passed, then another, while Marguerite doggedly went about exploring the system, tracking down as much information as Agent Brenton's limited clearance would allow, then passively learning as much as she could about the system's underlying software protocols.
"Any reason you're only allowing audio communications, Marguerite?" Prime's disembodied voice made her smile.
"I'm deep in the bowels of the FBI's network and can't be distracted. Listen, they're planning on arresting Viktor Strizak before he gives his speech at MIT. Tonight, in just a little over an hour."
"Strizak?" Prime sounded incredulous. "What on earth do they want with him?"
"You mean, aside from his widely publicized critcisms of WIPO and the world's Intellectual Property Laws? He isn't exactly a favorite of corporate America, or their government lackeys."
"True, but he hasn't committed any crime, has he?"
"No" Marguerite confirmed. "They're going to detain him for inciting others to criminal activity."
"You've got to be kidding! How could they possibly make that charge stick?"
"I have no idea," Marguerite replied. "But then, how is it they're allowed to disappear our colleagues in the Community without a single arraignment in court? The FBI appears to be playing it very fast and loose with due process."
"The government stopped taking the constitution seriously in the nineteen eighties," Prime commented. "And scrapped it completely in the early part of this century. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that they're ignoring it again now. Hmmm. Do you think this has anything to do with us?"
"I can't see how. He has absolutely no connection to the Community. We decided he was too high profile to risk inviting in, remember?"
"Right! With the things he'd said publicly, it was pretty obvious the authorities would be keeping close tabs on him. Pity. He would have made a fine addition to the Community."
"Such is the price of speaking your mind in public. But hell, the authorities must know as well as we do he knows nothing about us."
"It doesn't matter. Sweeping up a bunch of high-profile dissidents is a typical authoritarian response to anything they don't control, don't understand, and do fear. Take out the political and intellectual leadership, cripple the movement, and maybe the problem goes away."
"I suppose."
"Regardless," Prime said, "if we are in any way responsible for Strizak's troubles, even indirectly, then we have an obligation to lend him a hand. We might even want to reconsider inviting-"
"Hold on a minute, Prime." Marguerite found herself very busy as the link she was piggybacking on began to shut down. Traces were initiated and had to be redirected, warning messages were displayed. Most appeared to be routine confirmations, verifying that the link had not been compromised. Of course, Marguerite's presence in the system meant that it had, and now she had to cover her tracks as best she could. After several millis she realized she wasn't going to be able to redirect every trace packet. Her only real hope was to make sure there was nothing to set off any red flags, lest someone analyze the traces more closely. After several more millis she was reasonably sure she had extricated herself from the system without tripping any alarms.
She checked her dumps of the session and was delighted with the amount of information she had managed to collect. The protocol sessions in particular would be invaluable in making future forays into the system. In time, she would probably be able to bypass the system's security regime at will.
"Sorry about that," Marguerite said. "I was a little busy for a moment."
"Problems?"
"I'm not sure. I don't think so. Listen, I agree. We need to get to Strizak before they do."
"When exactly are they planning to arrest him?"
"His speech is at nine. They're planning to pick him up outside his home before then, probably around eight thirty or so. Here's a pointer to the relevant data."
"Hmm," Prime muttered a moment later. "According to the data you just gave me, we have seventy-four minutes. At most. That's about thirty circadians, if we use our network bandwidth wisely. If you're done playing cat-and-mouse with the Feds, why don't we get together and see if we can't come up with something."
"I don't think we can afford the slowdown a group environ entails."
"We'll teleconference," Prime said. "Audio and video only, no full sensory exchange or remote presence. The slowdown should be minimal, and we do need to brainstorm. Planning isn't what worries me, Marguerite. Its the logistics of getting things done in the Physical to rescue this guy. Here we have all the time in the world. There, we have little over an hour."
"You've got a point. Let's get Kyle in on this too. His nano might come in handy, and he seems to have no end of clever ideas on how to deploy it."
"Right! We'll also need Doctor Coolridge. She's in Boston, and we're going to need some kind of physical presence if we're going to do anything."
"Oh, hell! Damn! Metatime is synced with Central Time."
"Of course. The original lab work was conducted in Illinois-oh. Oh no."
Marguerite cursed. "It's an hour later in Boston! We don't have seventy-four minutes; we've got fourteen. Give or take a few, depending on Viktor himself."
"God damn it! Well, let's hope he's running late. I've got a call into Edith and Kyle. Anyone else you think might be able to help?"
"Not at the moment." Marguerite wiped the screens of data away and replaced them with three virtual flat panels floating side by side in front of her. Prime's lit up immediately, followed a few minutes later by Kyle's, then Doctor Coolridge's.
"Good evening," Marguerite said. "I assume Prime has made you all aware of what is going on. I've prepared a knowledge engram of everything I know about Viktor Strizak's pending detainment."
"Excellent," Edith Coolridge replied. "Time is a ticking, so let's get to work."




K

20 - K - INTO THE DESERT

Having learned from the time I was at school that there is nothing one can imagine so strange or so unbelievable that it has not been said by one of other of the philosophers; and since then, while traveling, having recognized that those who hold opinions quite opposed to ours are not on that account barbarians or savages, but that many exercise as much reason as we do, or more; and having considered how a given man, with his given mind, being brought up from childhood among the French or Germans becomes different from what he would be if he had always lived among the Chinese or among the cannibals . . . I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.
-René Descartes, Le Discours de la Méthode, C.E. 1637
Friday, October 5, 2057, 11:40 AM Kansas City Time
Metadate: 2.400-1:07:000 kD new epoch
"We should be in Boston," Robert said as the Double-Eye Stratojet banked softly above the dusty grid of cracked streets, dead trees, and rundown buildings baking in the mid-morning Kansas City sun. The pilot announced their final approach as they descended out of the sky into what was the last outpost of civilization on the edge of an expanding desert.
"I still can't believe Strizak got away," Katy shook her head.
"What a complete cock-up!" Robert glanced out the window at the desolation. "This group we're after is a significant threat. They're big, well organized, and cunning. Snatching a wanted man out from under our noses and spiriting him away without a trace-even Double Eye, the CIA, or the FBI would need a good deal of luck to pull that off."
"They must have a lot of resources at their disposal."
"Resources, hell! This is a well planned, coordinated revolt."
"We've suspected an underground cell structure from the start," Katy reminded him.
"Not like this! A loose knit group of revolutionary cells is one thing. An organization able to outwit government and transnational intelligence organizations is something else entirely. We have no choice but to pull out all the stops on this one." The plane touched down with a gentle lurch. "God, I hate the desert!"
Katy wasn't looking forward to the wind and grime of this forlorn city either. This was their second nebulous lead, with another two to follow. It was turning out to be a grueling week, and the stress was starting to irritate her.
The plane taxied onto the ramp and the engines wound down. The pilot poked his head out of the cockpit, giving them the go-ahead to disembark. Robert released the latch on the door, which sighed softly as it opened and the cabin pressure normalized itself to the air outside.
The heat smacked Katy in the face as they stepped out onto the burning tarmac. The sky overhead was a cloudless, bleached blue fading to a dusty brown haze on the horizon. A hot breeze offered little relief, blowing a few wisps of dust around their feet as they made their way quickly across the pavement toward the parking lot.
Robert swatted buzzing horse-flies away from his face. "I'm personally going to take this day out of the hide of whoever is behind this shit. The gloves are off as far is this operation is concerned."
Katy glanced at Robert, one eyebrow raised. "Off or not, we still have to stay within the law. This isn't Thailand, you know. Or some other underdeveloped nation."
"Don't kid yourself. Shall I drive?"
Katy shrugged. "Be my guest. I'd like to swing past the club and check out the access points and nearby streets."
"Yeah, we'll do a quick drive-by, then check the hotel and verify that our equipment has arrived."
"Some equipment," Katy snorted. "Costumes for decadent children."
"Getting cold feet?" Robert grinned.
"Hardly," Katy said. "Speaking of tonight, I suggest we arrange separate transportation. We'll be able to canvass more people, with less suspicion."
"Yeah," Robert agreed. "And if our suspects make one of us, the other may be able to continue collecting information unimpeded. By the way, just what do you think it is your agency does when they round up people like those Libertarians in Seattle?"
"You just won't let it go, will you? Are all our political discussions going to end up like this? In case you haven't noticed, I don't work for an agency. I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We are law enforcement, not espionage. As for the subversives in Seattle, they've been arrested, will stand trial, and, when convicted, get buried in the penal system."
"How many suspects do you think will make it to court?"
"Clearly enough to keep our judicial system swamped. Look, I know suspects sometimes die during an arrest, or while in custody. But even so, our toughest prisons, and our most determined interrogators, in no way equate to the kinds of pogroms that happen in places like Malaysia or the Congo."
Robert shook his head. "Katy, Katy. Listen." A ghost of a smile played around his mouth. "If you're ever going to climb the FBI's bureaucratic ladder, you're going to need to understand how things actually work. The platitudes about due process are good for public consumption, but surely you know that many of the people we arrest never hear their Miranda rights, much less see the inside of a courtroom."
"Mine hear their Miranda rights," Katy snapped. "And I spend no small amount of time testifying before courts to win convictions."
"Your government may not feel it necessary to eliminate the criminals you generally arrest," Robert explained with exaggerated patience. "But trust me, your Federal Bureau of Investigation is no more reluctant to dispatch those who pose danger to your society and government than we are. Our jobs differ only in degree, not in substance."
"That's simply not true."
"Every one of those subversives in Seattle is either dead or in deep interrogation as we speak." Robert yawned. "If that doesn't convince you, I don't know what will."
Katy froze, shocked into silence. All dead, or as good as?
"I checked their status this morning," he pressed on.
"That wasn't a Double Eye operation!" Katy's voice shook. "Seattle is the Bureau's jurisdiction, not yours. You had no goddamn right!"
"Haven't you heard a word I said?" Robert smirked. "The whole operation was conducted by your Bureau. What do you think it is your Division of Political Enforcement does?"
Katy stared straight ahead, stilling the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and saying nothing. She was the first to admit the FBI had a far from perfect history. The corruption of its founder, and the excesses of the War on Terror were but two embarrassing examples of what could happen when the FBI exceeded its mandate. But wholesale slaughter? Not in a million years. Did he really think she would believe such an outrageous accusation, or that he could goad her into wasting precious time and resources tracking down the information to prove him wrong? Or was he trying to manipulate her into supporting some strategy or action she would not otherwise tolerate? She recalled Bryant's warning, and wondered what Robert's agenda really was.
They turned down a street lined with single and two story storefronts, most of which looked like they had been abandoned for decades. One tattered facade bore a large, metal, hand painted sign: Thumbscrew.
"That's the club," Robert announced, still smiling.
Katy glanced at chipped brick and rusted metal. "What a dump. No side entrances, I see. Let's check the back."
Robert made a left into a smaller side street, then slowed and made another left into a narrow alley.
"Loading dock, back door, and fire escape providing egress from both floors," Robert commented. "We have no way of checking the two adjoining spaces without attracting attention, but it would behoove us to keep an eye out for any interior doors connecting to the adjoining properties. Seen enough?"
Katy nodded as Robert continued down the alley and took another left.
"To the hotel, then."
"Yeah."




L

21 - L - INTO THE NIGHT

All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.
-Jean Jacques Rousseau, 18th Century C.E.
Saturday October 6, 2057, 1:15 AM Kansas City Time
Metadate: 2.418-3:35:570 kD new epoch
The Thumbscrew by night was a very different sight to behold than the rundown storefront Katy had seen that afternoon. The club had taken on a very chic and modern appearance, exposed brick and aged metal etched by sharp shadows, glowing neon and sculpted light. Bouncers stood on each side of a large metal door, checking identification and occasionally turning people away.
As Katy stepped out of the taxi she felt everyone's gaze drawn to her. Indeed, the outfit she wore was designed specifically for that effect, her body accentuated by a skin-tight body suit of black leather. With her stiletto heels and spiked collar she looked every inch the fierce dominatrix. Most of the men waiting in line gazed at her with apparent longing, although one or two seemed to be sizing her up with hostile eyes. Playing the dominant role she swept arrogantly past the waiting line toward the bouncer, who met her hard gaze briefly before opening the door and gesturing her inside. 
No password needed to get in? Either their security was lax, or she and Robert had misinterpreted the Echelon3 report. This was beginning to look very much like another dead end.
Loud music struck her with almost physical force. The dance floor was packed. Shiny vinyl and leather clad bodies gyrated to the pounding music. Katy made her way to the bar and shouted over the din her order for a glass of red wine. The bartender was a tall, thin man. Black leather pants and open leather vest stood out against his pale skin and jet-black hair. His exposed, hairy chest was almost as repugnant to Katy as the thick collar around his neck, and the leash that looped through it to chain him to the bar.
Sipping her wine as she scanned the room, Katy noticed a curtained door at the back of the club and went to have a look. It led to another flight of stairs, at the top of which was another metal door, with another bouncer standing guard. She wondered if it led to the manager's private office, then recalled the password she hadn't yet been asked to give. A private VIP space, then, and definitely worth checking out.
A huge bouncer with shaved head and red goatee stood in front of the door, arms crossed. He ogled her from top to bottom as she climbed the stairs. Katy met his stare with her own, silence stretching between them.
"Password?" he finally demanded.
"Chains of Darkness."
He stepped aside and held the door open. "Wouldn't mind spending some time in the Game Room with you," he leered as she swept past.
Throbbing industrial music washed over her. The room was someone's idea of a medieval dungeon, with a high, vaulted ceiling and fake concrete buttresses shaped to into Gothic arches. A bar ran the length of the wall to Katy's right. Around the room, where couples played public games of pain, shackles, pulleys, ropes, and large, leather padded crosses lined the walls. Katy spotted Robert not far from one corner of the caged dance floor, looking ridiculous in his studded biker jacket and spiked hair, his arms around a husky blond woman. He had arrived a half hour earlier, according to plan, and appeared to be insinuating himself into the scene with gusto.
A couple in harnesses hung suspended from pulleys overhead, their bodies bound together with ropes. Katy couldn't tell in the light, but it looked like they were having rough sex. From the rafters hung a woman wearing a red devil's costume, a Satanic Peter Pan hovering over the place. She held a candle on one gloved hand, dripping wax with abandon onto the (struggling? fighting? fucking?) couple and the dancing crowd below.
Katy was in no mood to have hot wax-or worse-dripped on her. She stood off to the side and scanned the room. Sitting alone at the bar, wearing tight leather pants with no shirt, a young man watched the crowd in much the same way. He toyed with the large pendant around his neck. Occasionally he would turn and sip from a bottle of beer that sat on the counter behind him, and flash a brief, almost shy smile to the painfully thin, bony woman behind the bar.
When the pendant caught the light it drew her attention. It hung almost to his navel, and held a large golden crystal that bore an uncanny resemblance to the mysterious cubes. Before her mind had finished analyzing the possibilities, a rush of excitement propelled her toward him. What better recognition sign to attract those already familiar with the product than to wear a sample around one's neck that was recognizable to those in the know and completely innocuous to those who were not? By the time she reached him she was nearly certain the stone was indeed of the same material as the crystalline cubes she sought.
She stopped in front of him and met his gaze, then let her eyes travel slowly down his body, coming to rest at his crotch. She needed to capture his interest. Judging by the color of his face, she had succeeded.
"How," he stammered. "How may I . . . uh . . . serve you?"
This is the perfect place for a little field interrogation, Katy thought. He and the rest of these dipshits won't even know what's happening. She smiled and brushed her hand along his chest, her fingers stroking his nipples and then taking one firmly in hand. "Come with me," she commanded, pulling him behind her. He stumbled from his stool and followed clumsily as she swept through the dancing crowd toward a set of unoccupied shackles on a corner wall. Without a word she secured him firmly, then let the keys fall at his feet. His eyes were glazed, his breathing fast, his mouth turned upward in a dopey smile.
"Now you're mine," she breathed, teasing his chest and arms lightly with her fingernails. "Tell me your name, slave."
"Terry," he gasped as Katy raised an eyebrow and twisted his left nipple.
"Terry," she said. "Is that all?"
"Spence!" he stammered. "Terry Spence."
"What was that?" Katy demanded, twisting his nipple a little harder.
"Terry Spence, Mistress."
"Terry Spence," Katy whispered seductively. "Slave Terry Spence. Naughty slave Terry."
Terry nodded, swallowing.
Katy's smile was predatory as she leaned closer to him. "You want to be good, don't you slave Terry?" Katy's fingers explored his neck, his shoulders, his chest. She took the pendant in her hand as if just noticing it and turned it over in her fingers.
"Tell me, slave Terry, where did you get this delightful piece of jewelry?"
Nearby a couple in their early fifties danced and stared, practically salivating as Katy took both of the Terry's nipples between her fingers and twisted hard. They danced closer, hoping to hear his yelps over the throbbing music. Their eyes sparkled as the expression on the young man's face betrayed exquisite pain. A strobe light turned the unfolding scene into a stuttering series of snapshots depicting flashes of what looked like tortured fun. The young man's face contorted in pain, then relaxed again as the leather clad woman stroked his body and whispered into his ear. Abruptly the dominatrix turned and left, striding toward the exit, leaving her victim hanging in his shackles, exhausted.
Through the blur of receding pain, Terry struggled to think. She was asking about crystal cubes-the Community! Worry mingled with self-loathing as the plump woman who had watched his interrogation unlocked his shackles and her husband eased him to the floor. Before them the oblivious crowd danced wildly. Terry huddled against the wall. Was that woman a Fed? he worried. Or just an extra nosy dominatrix? Thankfully, his edited memories had offered him and the Community some protection. I never take extraneous knowledge with me into the Physical, he congratulated himself. No amount of pain can make me betray what I no longer know. Then he remembered the woman's satisfied smile. And wondered.



M

22 - M - DISTURBANCES

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
-James Madison, 18th Century C.E.
Saturday October 6, 2057, 2:20 AM Kansas City Time
Metadate: 2.419-6:90:000 kD new epoch
Katy had Terry Spence tagged for surveillance before she reached the car. Agents would follow him back to his flat, keeping him under 24-hour watch. Within minutes of her request the FBI had a wiretap on his home and mobile Internet. He wouldn't be able to even breath in private. The next time he made contact with his cohorts the surveillance team would know it-and shortly thereafter, so would she.
Back at the hotel, Katy changed into something much more comfortable: gray sweats and a Mickey Mouse tee-shirt. She was still shaken from the evening's events, her stomach a tight knot of acid. Physical roughness was a part of the job, and she had seen her share of tense standoffs and messy arrests. More than once she'd been forced to physically disable an assailant. But field interrogations weren't the same as making an arrest or fighting off a violent suspect. There was something about the use of pain and humiliation to force a suspect to talk that was deeply unsettling to her. She much preferred psychological pressure to physical. Matching wits with an opponent and winning was very satisfying. Torturing an opponent for information left her feeling dirty and ashamed.
She lay curled on her bed, watching her datapad run an Acquaintance Analysis on Terry Spence's name and sipping a cup of green tea as she waited for the result. It didn't take long. Within moments a list of names appeared, one of which was highlighted, blinking. It was the first time all evening Katy smiled a genuine smile. As she read the personal details of the highlighted name, her smile widened. She tapped her datapad once more, then waited for the connection to be completed.
"Champaign Police Department, Officer Morris speaking. Can I help you ma'am?"
Katy nodded to the pudgy, pale face on her screen. "Yes you can, officer. I'm Special Agent Sinclair with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Intellectual Property Crimes Task Force. I need to speak with the captain, please."
"It's quarter-to-three in the morning, Ms. Sinclair. He's home, asleep. Can I have him call you in about five hours?"
"I'm sorry, this can't wait. I'm coding my credentials and sending them now." She tapped the screen several times and continued. "Please verify them and forward this call to his home."
The police officer shook his head. "You aren't going to win any friends Ms. Sinclair. OK, your credentials check out. I'm patching you through now."
The screen went blank, then displayed an "on hold" icon while she waited . After several long minutes the screen winked to life once more, this time informing her that video had been declined at the other end.
"This had better be good," a rough voice spoke to her.
"Sorry to wake you, captain. I'll make this brief. You're planning on executing a warrant for the arrest of one Kyle Tate later today. I need to be present when the arrest is made."
"I don't know-your coded identification says F.B.I, huh? Special Agent Katy Sinclair . . . the Bureau requests every courtesy and full cooperation be extended, blah blah ... OK, Ms. Sinclair, you've got my attention. What is it you want?"
"Detectives Larry B. Schwartz and Charles Lewis have been investigating Kyle Tate for allegedly operating an illegal FreeNet node. I believe they are operating on an anonymous tip your department received a couple of days ago?"
"FreeNet-oh, yeah, that college punk running some illegal software."
"Your suspect is a material witness in an ongoing investigation. I will need to oversee the arrest and interrogate the subject before he is arraigned."
"Yes, yes," the voice had clearly grown impatient. "And depending on what he says you may want to take him into custody. I know the drill. What time will you be at the station house?"
"I'll be on the eight AM bullet train from Kansas City. That will put me in Champaign at eleven fifteen. Captain?"
"Yes, Special Agent?"
"Do not let your men proceed without me."
"I wouldn't dream of it, ma'am. Now, if you don't mind-"
"Of course, Captain. I'll see you around eleven thirty this morning. Goodnight."

"No, no," Robert was saying over breakfast several hours later. "I agree, one of us needs to go and make sure the local yokels don't cap another one of our star suspects. I'm just saying that, even with our splitting up, it means leaving one of our remaining leads in the hands of someone less involved in the investigation. I can't be in New York and Los Angeles at the same time."
Katy nodded. She finished chewing her bacon and washed it down with a swallow of orange juice. "You're right, Robert. We have to chose the most promising rendezvous to investigate, and hand off the other one."
"I've already decided," Robert said. "Los Angeles."
"Any particular reason?"
"Yes," Robert smirked. "I prefer the beaches of L.A. to glass and steel of New York."
Katy gave him a hard look.
Robert grinned. "Seriously, mate, we know the specific time and place of the California meeting, whereas the New York rendezvous is vague at best. Why take the chance and risk missing both opportunities?"
"I prefer Los Angeles as well," Katy nodded. "Since this entire case reeks of intellectual discontent, not to mention disdain for our intellectual property laws, an L.A. forum discussing the evils of patents and copyrights is as promising a venue for turning up more leads as anything."
"Absolutely," Robert finished his coffee. "All three detainees connected with this investigation are intellectuals. The man you are about to arrest is a student at a prestigious university and fits the pattern. What's more, that capped professor we recovered one of the cubes from taught at that particular school."
"The University of Illinois is almost certainly a hotbed of activity," Katy agreed. "But we both know it isn't the only one, or necessarily the most important one."
"We'll be systematic with our fishing expedition, but I suspect both our organizations will be swarming over the Illinois campus within the next forty-eight hours, turning up all kinds of illegal goodies."
"You're probably right. Just do me a favor and wait until after the arrest before calling in your people. The last thing we need is to be tripping over one another."
"You have my word on that," Robert yawned, wiping his chin with his napkin and pushing his plate away. "The rail station is on the way to the airport. Shall I drop you off?"



N

23 - N - THE DREAMER REDUX: LOSS OF BEING

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answered "I myself am Heav'n and Hell."
-Omar Khayyám, Rubáiyát, 12th Century C.E.
Saturday, October 6, 2057, 3:53 PM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.435-3:77:440 kD new Epoch
"There are over thirty thousand of us now," Prime reclined with Marguerite in the protective shade of a luxuriant palm after an exhilarating midmorning swim. A soft breeze dried their naked bodies. Breakers glistened in the golden sunlight as they washed against the beach a few meters away. "The Autonomous Community has reached the critical mass necessary to sustain exponential growth in science and technology-"
A tone sounded and the Node's voice spoke within their minds. Kyle Tate requests access to the environ.
Marguerite blinked. "Kyle wouldn't interrupt a private meeting without good reason. You'd better grant him access."
Prime nodded. "Node, clothe both of us in swimming gear, then let him in."
Kyle was wearing black slacks and a white dress shirt as he materialized amidst the breaking waves, several meters away.
"I've lost bio readings to the Physical," he blurted, oblivious to the waist deep water swirling around him. "My Node is off-line and telemetry from my body has gone completely silent. I'm dead! I'm fucking dead!"
"Kyle, you're not dead," Marguerite soothed. "You're standing right in front of us, alive and well. Now back up and tell us exactly what happened."
Kyle ran his fingers through his hair, shaking his head. "You're right. You're right. I'm here. I'm not dead. My body is."
"We don't know that," Prime gently reminded him. He summoned a royal blue velvet recliner and inclined his head toward it. "Sit down, Kyle, and tell us what happened."
"I don't know what happened!" Kyle sat nervously on the edge of the chair. "I was in my home environ, reviewing the results from the last test runs of the new nano kits, when the bio-telemetry from my body just went dead. I tried to reset the link, but there was no response. I tried to transload back to my own Node, but it was unreachable as well."
"Marguerite?"
"He's right. The fiber checks out to the wall port of his bedroom, but the connection to his Node isn't responsive."
"I'm trapped here!" 
"Your Node is down," Marguerite confirmed. "If communication between your Node and the rest of the net is down, you wouldn't be able to receive your body's telemetry even though it's perfectly fine."
"A communications glitch? How do I reset it? It isn't like offloading into the Physical is an option for me right now."
Marguerite groaned. "Doctor Nolen and I both live within a few miles of you. Since I doubt the good doctor's going to be amenable to doing you or anyone else any favors, I guess I'm the lucky one."
Relief flooded Kyle's face. "Thanks, Marguerite. I owe you big time."
"You better believe it!" she grinned.  "OK, I've offloaded. I'll let you know when the link is back up."
"You've offloaded? But you're still-Duh! Of course. You've copied."
"I'll merge back together with my original, Marguerite1, when she returns from the Physical." Marguerite2 grinned impishly at Kyle. "I like you, but there's no way I'd give up hundreds of circadians and risk losing touch with the entire Community just to go check the cabling in your apartment."
"Right. Sorry to have barged in on you guys like this."
"Don't sweat it," Prime said. "I'm not sure I'd react any better if I had a body and lost telemetry."
Kyle smiled ruefully. "Touché! You know, it's not like I've even bothered to offload into the Physical recently anyway. With the four hour transload time from Auckland, its just too expensive to do every day. But that telemetry is like a motor in an aircraft: always there, in the background, telling your subconscious that everything is all right."
"Then, when it falls silent, sheer terror," Prime agreed.
"I'm not exactly fond of the Physical," Kyle admitted. "But I don't like losing the option of offloading if I need to." He laughed nervously. "I mean, we need our bodies to visit our families, and maintain some semblance of normal life outside of the Community. Lose your body, lose your family, and maybe a whole lot else."
"You have a very good point," Prime acknowledged. "Doctor Nolen doesn't have any living parents or siblings, and even if he did, I'm a software copy of him and they wouldn't be mine. It's easy to forget others are more connected to the outside world than I am."
"I'll be dead to my family. It doesn't get much more disconnected than that."
"Not dead. You would still be able communicate with them, by phone or email."
"Merde, Prime! His mother will be devastated if his body dies. She won't see him as living software. She'll see a dead son's body lying in a coffin."
"If I'm physically dead, talking to my family from in here would make things a lot worse. I'd be like a ghost to them."
"Jesus!" Prime shook his head. "This could be a real mess."
"Let's not assume his body is gone just yet. My original may find that it's just a network port that needs resetting."
"I hope so!"
"One thing bothers me," Prime rubbed the side of his nose. "Why are you transloading four hours every time you want to offload into the Physical?"
"One of Michael Forest's colleagues is on vacation," Marguerite2 said. "Kyle has been making use of his gen-three Node until his own arrives."
Prime turned to Kyle. "You still haven't received your upgrade kit?"
Kyle shook his head. "I put a request in for another one, but it won't arrive for a few more days."
"One Node missing, and another suddenly silent," Prime frowned. "That's a coincidence that bears a little more examination."
"I agree," Marguerite2 said. "I'm going to snoop around the local police net a bit."
"Police?" Kyle asked. "What would they have to do with anything?"
She shrugged. "If anything happened to your apartment, like a burglary or fire, it'll most likely be on record. Damn, I wish I'd thought of this before my original offloaded."
"When was the last time you offloaded, Kyle?" Prime's voice was quiet, thoughtful.
"Six days ago."
"What?"
"Jesus Christ!"
Kyle's face reddened. "Don't act so shocked. I loaded up the IV, both catheters were cleaned and in place. Telemetry was just fine."
"Until it went dead," Marguerite2 added pointedly. "No wonder you thought you had died. With neglect like that it wouldn't be a surprise."
"It is a four hour transload," Kyle complained. "I lose touch every time I offload for maintenance."
"So send a copy to do the dirty work like I do, for crying out loud! You could just send memory engrams of your most recent experience, experiential difference engrams if you will, to the copy of yourself frozen back on your second gen node. You've got to do maintenance or all kinds of problems will develop!"
"She's right," Prime said. "A catheter and an IV isn't enough for long term care. Why didn't you copy and offload a duplicate?"
Kyle shivered despite himself. "It's . . . you're going to think it's stupid."
"We already do," Marguerite2 assured him.
"Ever since Prime took over Nolen's body, I've been seriously creeped out by the idea of a copy taking over mine."
"I didn't take over Nolen's body," Prime's defiance rose. "I just borrowed it a few times. There's a world of difference-"
"A few times?" Kyle blurted. "You did it more than once?"
"Like you, I don't like the transload time. Over two hundred twenty circadians lost while I copy across the net. That's almost two thirds of a year subjective time, during which half a dozen critical projects flounder. No way! It is quicker and more efficient to have the kits mailed to Nolen's house, then borrow his body, intercept them, and apply them to my node. Thirty-five minutes to offload, get the stuff, apply it, and watch while the nano rebuilds the node. It beats a four hour transload time."
Marguerite2 shook her head. "You're both crazy. Prime, you should get yourself moved to a remote location, the transload time be damned. You only have to do it once, then its over. What happens if Nolen tries to offload into the Physical while you've got his body, or worse, he finds your Node and disconnects it from the net? And Kyle, if letting a copy of yourself access your body bothers you so much, then leave the copy in the Community and offload yourself."
"That's just as bad!" Kyle protested. "Then the copy lives my life while I'm off in the Physical slaving away doing push ups."
Marguerite2 rolled her eyes with disgust. "This isn't even a rational discussion. Kyle, you were one of the first to start copying yourself when things got too busy, or the Community made demands on your time that interfered with your own projects. Now you're telling us you're afraid to do it at all?"
"I've always been very disciplined, very careful in my use of copies. We never bifurcated for long periods of time and we always merged back into one entity at the end of the day."
"So what is the problem?"
"Remember when I had to track down those clowns I left in charge of our Kansas City production facility?"
Marguerite2 snorted. "Terry and Jim? Idiots! Whose bright idea was it to bring those hedonists into the Community? Oh, that's right! Yours!"
"They seemed like good candidates at the time," Kyle blustered. "Enthusiastic about the possibilities of life as software, and willing to do the grunt work of managing the nano facility. How was I to know they'd turn out to be a pornmongers?"
"That wouldn't have been so bad in and of itself, if Terry hadn't insisted on bringing  his sadomasochistic acquaintances into the Community. The last thing the world needs a bunch of superbright, hedonistic sadists."
Kyle shrugged dismissively. "Whatever! They're too wrapped up in their own pretend worlds to cause any real problems."
"Or bring anything useful to the Community," Marguerite2 countered.
Prime cleared his throat. "OK! OK! Let's get back to Kansas City. Kyle, as I recall you were positively livid with the Gamer's League. You must have repeated that story about your radiation sickness a dozen times to anyone who would listen, in rather melodramatic terms."
"It still galls me to this day." Kyle's face hardened. "Why would we flee the frailties of our physical brains, or our flesh, to live a virtually immortal existence here as software, then deliberately take the most unpleasant possibilities of the Physical and recreate them here? The whole idea makes me nauseous."
"And this relates to your neglect of your body and your phobia of self-replication how?" Prime's patience was beginning to wear thin.
"My copy lived in that ridiculous space opera for over two months," Kyle raged. "I, or rather he, suffered physical discomfort, sometimes even severe pain, on numerous occasions, not to mention adversity in more forms than I care to remember. At the end he suffered horribly, his avatar dying of radiation sickness. All that just to catch up with Terry and convince him to do what he'd said he'd do in the first place!"
"I don't blame you for being ticked off at your friends, but you still haven't told us what that has to do with your self neglect."
"I . . . he, rather . . . had changed. When we rejoined, we were hardly alike. Twenty-one years of common experience in the Physical, a decade here in the Community on top of that, and in a scant sixty circadians we had diverged so much that we were, in many respects, two different people. I . . . he, damn it! He had a lot of second thoughts about merging back together. What if he'd chosen not to? Which of us would have been entitled to my body? Him? Hardly. But would he have seen it that way?"
"You already know that the security protocols to the offload subroutines were updated after Prime's experience, and some rather glaring bugs were fixed," Marguerite2 brushed brown, curly locks impatiently away from her face. "Now the offload procedure is only available to the original. You, in other words. The only way a copy could ever 'take over' your body is if you give it explicit permission to do so, and provide it with the encryption keys to your offload routines."
"Marguerite2's absolutely right. You've developed a real phobia here."
"Yeah, I know," Kyle blushed. "I know it is irrational to fear myself. What difference does it make whether I or a copy offload into the Physical, or stay here and keep up with the Community while I offload and do maintenance on my body? It shouldn't matter to me, but it does."
Prime closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "So instead of dealing with your fear rationally, you let it control you. And now that fear has put you in a situation where you may have lost your body for good, to physical death through neglect. Not exactly your smartest decision."
Kyle looked down at his feet, digging the point of his shoe into the sand. "I thought I could handle it. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal. I'd offload every other day instead of every day. But nine hours every other day? Four to transload, an hour to work out, use the bathroom, eat, and all that, then another four to transload back?"
"Two hundred twenty-five circadians, give or take," Marguerite2 nodded. "A heavy price to pay."
"Too heavy," Prime agreed. "Kyle, did it ever occur to you to edit out your irrational fears, to modify your possessiveness of your body such that it wouldn't bother you if another used it? Then any copy you made of yourself would have accepted the notion with the same equanimity, and you would have had nothing to fear."
Kyle dropped his head into his hands. "I . . . I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I've been a complete idiot."
"That's what phobias do to us," Marguerite2 put her hand on Kyle's. "We are sapient pieces of software. In the strictest sense we are not human when we're onloaded like this, yet all of our instincts and reactions are those of physical human beings.  Unless we consciously choose otherwise, we take all of our psychological neurosis into this place."
"Don't be too hard on yourself for being human," Prime patted Kyle on the shoulder. "Just be sure you learn from this mistake and don't repeat-"
"I've got something!" Marguerite2 interrupted.
"What is it?"
"The police were dispatched to Kyle's place about twenty minutes ago to serve a warrant for his arrest. Oh my god! It seems our foolish friend here has been running a FreeNet node from his home."
"That's not true!" Kyle's eyes went from Marguerite2 to Prime, and back to Marguerite2. They stared back at him in silence.
"Come on you guys, do you really think I'd be stupid enough to run an illegal Internet service in my own place when I've got an Autonomous Node wired to my skull?"
Marguerite2 shrugged. "I'm just passing along what I'm reading. Wait! Oh, this is interesting!"
Kyle leaned forward. "What?"
"According to the police dispatch, you were turned in by an anonymous informant day before yesterday. They were going to pick you up this morning, but then delayed the arrest so that Special Agent Sinclair of the FBI could take part."
"FreeNet nodes and intellectual property crimes are their forte," Prime interjected.
"Yeah, but the FBI usually doesn't get involved in this sort of petty thing until after the initial arrests." Marguerite2's gaze bore through Kyle, her eyes thoughtful. "Unless the subject is somehow related to an ongoing investigation."
"If they busted into my place and found the Node-" Kyle began.
"They would have bagged and tagged it as evidence, leaving your body disconnected from the net and inaccessible from this side of the neural interface." Prime realized he was shouting and lowered his voice. "I'd say you're very lucky you transloaded to that borrowed Node in New Zealand. If you'd been running on your own Node you'd be-"
"Fuck!"
"Jesus, Marguerite2! What happened?"
"My duplicate, or rather my original, isn't answering. She's already left the house, without her datapad. God damn you Kyle!"
Prime put his arm around Marguerite2. "Don't worry. She'll see the police and return home. What really worries me is the anonymous informant who told the cops about Kyle's FreeNet Node."
"For the last time," Kyle hissed, "I'm not, and never have been, running a goddamn FreeNet node!"
"The arrest warrant indicates a network probe was conducted, which did identify a FreeNet server running from within your apartment," Marguerite2 snapped back. "The arrest warrant was issued as a result of that probe."
Kyle stared at her, stunned.  "I swear to you, I wasn't running FreeNet. Do you really think I'd expose the Community to detection by doing something that foolish?"
Marguerite2 took a deep breath. "It doesn't fit. Not with you, not with the situation. Prime is right, it all comes back to this anonymous informant."
"Any enemies from the old Alma Mater?" Prime asked.  "Anyone who might want to get you into trouble with the authorities."
Kyle shook his head. "Oh, I've had my share of disagreements with people, but I don't know anyone in the Physical who would want to put me in jail."
"Whoever it was would have had to have enough technical knowledge to setup a FreeNet node and make the police think it was running in your apartment," Prime added. "The former isn't hard to come by, but rerouting network protocols, and making the police think they've pinged a piece of hardware in one geographical location when in fact they haven't, would be very difficult."
"Next to impossible," Marguerite2 mused. "Almost all the changes incorporated into IPv12 involve back doors and trace mechanisms for law enforcement, not the least of which is geographical pinging through optical phase variances and coded routing. There's a team in the Community working on stealthing our inter-Node communications. They've been trying to do exactly what you've described and haven't been able to, despite kilocircadians of effort. If they couldn't do it in all that time, you can bet there's no one in the Physical who can."
"That leaves the obvious," Kyle said. "Someone broke into my apartment, planted the evidence on me, and called the police."
"The same someone who may have intercepted your third generation Node and used it to their own purposes," Prime added.
"No one outside of the Community would even know what a Node is," Marguerite2 pointed out. "And no one within the Community would risk exposure by involving the police, no matter how much they dislike Kyle."
Kyle's gut felt like molten lead. "There is one person," his voice shook.
"Who?" Prime asked
Marguerite2 looked at him. "Yes, who?"
"Well, who hasn't been given a second, much less a third, generation Node?" Kyle asked. "Who has been shunned these last kilodiei? Who has every reason to hate us, and might just be mad enough to risk his own exposure to get us? And who got me out of student housing and into a private apartment when this entire project began?"
Marguerite2 and Prime stared at each other.
"Of course!"
"My god! It's Nolen!"




O

24 - O - THE CLOSING FIST

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
-John Morley, C.E. 1874
Monday, October 8, 2057, 11:00 AM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.490-5:23:300 kD new epoch
"Captain Noxforte, this is FBI Special Agent Sinclair. Katy, Jim Noxforte, Captain International Special Forces."
"Special Agent," Captain Noxforte nodded. His dress uniform was immaculate, something Katy imagined a naval uniform might resemble, if naval dress colors had been black rather than tropical whites. He wore black gloves, black shoes-even his buttons and cuff links were black.
Katy extended her hand, wondering what this was all about. "Captain."
"Captain, would you please brief Agent Sinclair on this afternoon's activities."
Afternoon's activities?
"My pleasure! Ms. Sinclair, we'll be moving out in exactly three hours." Captain Noxforte's never looked at Katy. His eyes remained fixed on a point on the wall somewhere above Robert's head. 
"Moving out?"
"We'll strike with forty teams of five commandos each. Our timing will be precisely synchronized, neutralizing all forty targets within moments of one another. The operation will take place in three phases. In the first phase we will isolate and secure each target location. Once all theaters of operation have been secured, we'll proceed with the second phase: a precisely coordinated interruption of all services, electrical, telephone, plumbing, the works. Only then will we storm the premises and neutralize the targets."
"What the hell is he talking about, Robert?"
"Our first significant blow against our opponents," Robert beamed. "Please continue, Captain."
"Yes," Katy's voice was tight, her anger restrained.
"Timing is critical," Captain Noxforte explained. "We have a pretty good idea of how quickly these people can communicate with one another, and we don't want an early strike tipping off the others. We'll be making the arrests within seconds of one another."
Katy's eyes flashed. "Who is it you're arresting, exactly?"
"Everyone who's anyone," Robert beamed. "Professors and graduate assistants we've linked to Terry Spence and Kyle Tate."
Katy stared at Robert. "How dare you authorize this kind of thing without consulting with me first."
"If we waited until you're ready, we'd never make any arrests. This case can't afford your kid-gloves approach!"
"We've barely begun to investigate Kyle Tate's associates, and Mr. Spence is still under surveillance. Now you're going to turn this entire investigation on its head before we've even collected any evidence? This is beyond asinine!"
Captain Noxforte fixed his gray eyes on Katy. "With all due respect Special Agent, I've overseen missions from Bangkok to Moscow. In all my years of service I've never botched a single operation."
"This isn't Thailand or another fucking Muscovite revolt," Katy shot back. "We're talking about a delicate investigation here, and you two have gone behind my back and thrown together a cockamamie plan that's going to blow the whole thing out of the water! Aside from the fact that any arrests we make have to be done within certain parameters, and only when-"
"The Captain is aware of that," Robert cut her off. "His men know that none of our suspects are to be killed."
"Maimed perhaps, if necessary. But no outright lethal force, of course." The captain grinned. "They wouldn't do you much good in the interrogation room dead, would they? Hell, Senior Operative Leahy, for a minute there, I thought your Special Agent was going to have me reading the enemy their Miranda rights!"
Katy stood, her dark eyes fixed on the captain's. "Who do you think you are? Robert and I are in charge of this investigation, not you! We've been granted equal authority over this inquiry, by my government and the world trade bodies. You answer to both of us, understood?"
"I, ah, understand better than you do, I think."
"I doubt that very much," Katy spat. "This little plan you and Robert have cooked up is going wreck every lead we're working right now. You're not moving the investigation forward, you're setting it back. Perhaps catastrophically."
"That's for Operative Leahy to determine, ma'am. I answer to him."
"Jesus, you Double Eye people really are a piece of work, aren't you? Robert, you have absolutely no right to conduct this sort of ad hoc operation behind my back!"
"Captain, give us a minute please."
"Of course."
As the door snicked shut behind the departing man Katy turned on Robert. He held up his hand and grinned. "I know, I know. I should've involved you earlier in the planning, but time and circumstance didn't allow."
"Don't you smirk at me. You're conducting a military operation on American soil, behind my back. You're about to wreck our entire investigation, and you fucking grin at me? What kind of a weak-minded idiot do you take me for?"
"Come on, Katy. I saw an opportunity to put a little life in the investigation and I took it. Relax! It'll work out just fine."
"Just fine?" Katy glared. "Just fine? You're unilaterally unleashing Double Eye commandos on an American University in an action that is about to turn our entire case on its head, and you're trying to convince me things are just fine?"
"The FBI will be duly notified once the operation is complete." Robert leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. "Your Bureau's communications are open to the enemy. It was critical this be a Double Eye operation."
"Stop using the FBI's communications issues as an excuse to exclude me from command decisions! Last I checked, my encrypted link to you wasn't compromised!"
"Katy, the lead time on this didn't permit-"
"Lead time? You wouldn't have these leads without me! We're supposed to be partners in this investigation, not competitors."
"We are partners, Katy. Why do you think I brought you into this meeting?"
"Don't fucking patronize me, Robert! You brought me here to present me with a fait accompli, to make me a part of your little operation whether I like it or not. And I don't like it, not at all! Not you, not your methods, and not this ill conceived clusterfuck you're about to drop on our investigation."
"Ill conceived? We're about to net ourselves a whole slew of suspects for questioning!"
"Your definition of suspect is suspect. Arresting any professor that Kyle Tate or Terry Spence have ever taken classes from? Rounding up their graduate assistants? For crying out loud! These aren't suspects, not in any legal sense of the word. They're victims of a fishing operation."
"Need I remind you these people snatched Viktor Strizak out from under our very noses? Even governments couldn't pull something like that off, not with all the International Intelligence operatives we had shadowing him. Our opponents have access to resources we're only beginning to fathom. We can't afford your delicate, walk-on-eggshells approach! We don't have the time for it."
"We can't afford to be indelicate, particularly at this stage! We haven't come close to breaking this case yet, and your little operation is bound to drive the very people we're looking for deeper underground, before we get a chance to figure out who they are or what they're really about!"
"We have a very small window of opportunity," Robert countered. "We'll get as many as we can before they have time to organize and run. You heard what Terry Spence said in Kansas City. They're a 'community.'  These people are in frequent contact with one another. We don't have a week or two to investigate and ferret out who they are. A wide sweep is our best option."
"It's a stab in the dark, Robert, and you know it! If we don't luck out and out get our key suspects in this raid, they'll be so far underground we may never find them at all!"
"We're bound to turn up a few suspects among those we detain, and we'll squeeze the truth out of them."
"I hope so. Using  paramilitary troops for domestic arrests is dangerous. We would have been better off using some of my people. At least we're trained in making lawful civilian arrests."
Robert shook his head. "No way. We know they've got access to the FBI's internal communications."
"Oh for Christ's sake, will you quit with that excuse? They may well have wormed their way into Double Eye too."
"Maybe, maybe not. At least with my people, we have the possibility of surprise. Now, if you're done with your little jurisdictional pissing match, shall we get on with making some arrests?"
"Jurisdictional pissing match?" Katy's voice rose. "This isn't about jurisdiction! It's about you single-handedly torpedoing our case with a reckless gamble!"
Robert waived her objections away. "I'm famished," he grinned. "The op doesn't start until two-shall we grab some lunch?"
* * *
"It's begun," Robert nodded toward an entire wall lit up with multipe video feeds, four rows of ten images, one for each team. "Shall we see how our troops are faring?"
Christ almighty! Katy couldn't believe she was in this mess. "Do I have a goddamn choice?"
"Team thirty-seven assembled," a voice whispered across the radio feed. "Recon shows all quiet."
"Team sixteen assembled, recon shows two people entering the residence."
"Team five assembled."
"Team twenty-nine assembled. We see no activity."
Katy and Robert waited in silence as the rest of the teams reported in.
"All teams assembled and staged."
Robert nodded. "Right on time."
"Phase two is a go," a voice crackled. "I repeat, go with phase two!"
Again they waited as each team positioned itself and reported ready.
"Team seventeen, everyone else is in position. What's the hang up?"
"We're having trouble cutting  the power. Stand by, sir." There was an uncomfortable silence, which stretched for several seconds. "Team seventeen ready."
Katy let her breath out slowly as Robert smiled. "Execute phase three," the captain's voice was clearer this time. "I repeat, phase three is a go!"
Katy watched forty images, beamed live from forty micro-cameras mounted in the helmets of forty commandos, as they stormed forty different residences throughout the Champaign-Urbana area. Doors were broken down and shattered. Some living rooms became scenes of hysteria as families and individuals panicked and were subdued. A lieutenant mercilessly pistol whipped a belligerent college student, then had two troopers carry the bleeding, unconscious youth away. Katy winced as another commando on the other side of town shoved a child to the floor and dragged the father out of the house. 
It wasn't carnage, exactly, but something inside her despaired at what she was seeing. These people were supposed to be free. They were supposed to be protected by a constitution guaranteeing a presumption of innocence, a right to counsel and due process. Katy was the first to admit that justice could sometimes be rough, and constitutionality was often quite pliable in the heat of field operations, but nothing she had ever seen or done had prepared her for the ruthless efficiency she observed now. It occurred to her that, if this were to go sour, it would be the end of her career. Robert would vanish, a secret spy assigned to a new venue somewhere on the other side of the world. Katy didn't have that option. It wouldn't matter how much she had argued against this, or how vehement her objections were. If this ever went public, she'd be the one taking the fall.
Within five minutes all the targets had been neutralized. Two-hundred and ninety-seven individuals had been detained. Fifteen targets yielded crystalline cubes. Of those fifteen cubes, thirteen had been connected to comatose individuals.
"This morning we had four suspects," Robert gloated as the commandos loaded their prisoners into nondescript white vans and began ferrying them to the command center. "One dead, one in a coma, and two others remarkably resistant to our best interrogation techniques. Now we have fifteen more, including two who are awake and conscious. Both of those have families, who are also in our custody."
"Families?" Katy asked sharply. "What are you saying?"
"That our days of waiting are over. There isn't a college punk among them who'll stay silent while their parents or siblings are interrogated, or a professor who won't confess when he sees his spouse or children put under the lights."
"Christ, Robert!"
"We now have the means, and leverage, to get to the bottom of this once and for all. I intend to do just that!"




P

25 - P - FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, AND DOUBT

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
-James Russell Lowell, C.E. 1843
Monday, October 8, 2057, 2:37 PM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.493-7:94:097 kD new epoch
No one anticipated such a large crowd when the Strategy Group met. It hadn't occurred to anyone to restrict access to the environ, or hold the meeting in an unpublished location. What began as a small conference room, quickly grew to accommodate the tens, then hundreds, and finally thousands of people. The table reached absurd proportions before the environ's nonsapient software mercifully reconfigured the room into a vast hall, replacing the one giant table with many smaller, more manageable ones. The environ continued to redefine its physical parameters, the hall growing ever larger as still more people arrived.
Chaos reigned.
An afternoon sun cast slanted beams of light across the room, a not so subtle visual cue that time, in a very absolute sense, was growing late. With so many people interacting in one virtual environ the computational and network demands were tremendous. They lost the better part of an entire dies in just ten millicircadians, an appalling slowdown.  Twenty subjective days reduced to just a few subjective minutes. As things stood they could work faster back in the Physical.
No one seemed aware of the phenomenon though, or if they were, they had more pressing things on their minds. Fifteen souls lost in a stunning series of coordinated raids, their physical bodies and autonomous hardware almost certainly in federal custody. None had been as fortunate as Kyle, who was safely transloaded elsewhere when the authorities came calling. Instead they were lost to the Community. Gone. Even more shocking, entire families had been taken into custody. Not even an official arrest warrant recorded their detainment, much less offered any clue as to where they might be. The implications were terrifying.
Some individuals and groups were arguing with one another, some with their heads together in intense, whispered debates, others shouting. Still others huddled amongst themselves, saying nothing, offering nothing, mutely observing the chaos around them. A cacophony of voices filled the vast space, laced with an unmistakable undercurrent of raw, mind-numbing fear.
Panic, held barely in check.
Marguerite waived her hand, casting the hall into silence.
"I have modified the acoustical properties of this environ," she glanced around at the crowd. "Only Strategy Group members and those they authorize can be heard. We have a lot we need to get done this circadian, and time is wasting. Madame Chairwoman?"
Doctor Sarah Forest nodded her thanks. "There are too many of us here to get anything useful done without some change in the meeting's format. According to our current census there are around thirty-nine thousand members of the Community. It wouldn't surprise me if  each and every one is with us in this environ right now. So, we have two things working against these proceedings: the chaos and confusion a crowd this big will bring to any issue, regardless of how enlightened and intelligent each of us may be, and the extreme slowdown so many interactive presences in one environ create.
"To solve this we will be kicking almost everyone out of the environ. Apologies in advance to anyone who feels slighted, or feels we are behaving in a heavy handed manner, but we must reverse the time differential or we won't be able to get anything done before the authorities are breaking down all our doors. 
"Although interactive participation will not be possible for most of you, we will multicast the entire proceedings so that everyone can monitor what is being discussed and going on, in real time, 'live' so to speak. So, with that warning I am asking Marguerite to provide each of you with the multicast pointer and deny you interactive access to this environ. Now."
She glanced at Marguerite, who nodded. The hall shrunk into a small room centered on the one remaining conference table around which the Strategy Group was seated.
"We are now operating with a speedup of five hundred and forty-one," Marguerite informed them. Sighs of relief could be heard.
"Much better, thank you," Sarah replied. "We'll begin by inviting those Interest Groups whose projects are directly related to the immediate and medium term survival of the Community. Michael, who's first on the agenda?"
"The Alaskan Enclave Group." The room and its table grew larger as several people appeared.
"Welcome," Sarah said. "Would you please give us a quick update on the status of your project?"
A young man rose, his virtual body a translucent, finely carved statue of ice that glittered in the room's lights when his muscles moved. "With your permission, Marguerite?"
Marguerite nodded. "The portion of the environ behind you is accessible."
"Thank you." The wall behind him was replaced with an aerial view of a pristine, snow covered wilderness bathed in the red of a setting sun.
"Our mandate was to construct a facility which would allow everyone in the Community to house their Nodes and physical bodies in safety and discretion. We've chosen an an out of the way location the government isn't likely to notice. For various logistical reasons, including the avoidance of international customs for those of us living in the States, we chose to build in the central Alaskan wilderness.
"The scope of the project has grown with the growing internationalization of the Community. We've developed preliminary plans for similar enclaves in the outback of Australia, a Buddhist monastery in the mountains of Tibet, another in Nepal, as well as remote areas of Cambodia, northern Siberia, central Africa and Brazil. But first we'd like to get the Alaskan operation up and running. We need to work out the inevitable kinks before expanding the project."
He paused and held out his hand. Above it formed a glittering geodesic lattice from within which a brilliant emerald light shone.
"This is a knowledge engram of the current state of the project. I'll multicast the address pointer to the rest of the Community."
Behind him the aerial view rushed forward into one of a number of similar mountain valleys, then toward the base of a rocky slope.
"The design of the Alaskan Retreat can accommodate thirty thousand people along with their Nodes. However, supplies of nano-constructor and catalytic solution have been very limited."
"How many people can you take right now?" Sarah asked.
"Two hundred and sixty. Until a few days ago almost all of our resources were going into the construction of the geothermal reactor, a prerequisite before any significant number of people could be housed here. Now that the reactor is operational we've been able to devote all of our efforts toward building the housing facility itself. If we had more nano we could speed up construction by a factor of two or three, but even so we'll only be bringing  one hundred and eighty apartments a day into service."
"Damn," Michael muttered. "That won't be fast enough."
"That isn't the limiting factor, anyway."
Sarah was surprised. "Really? What is, then?"
"Logistics and supplies. Every good colonist's and general's worst nightmare. Food to feed our physical bodies, medicines to treat physiological problems as they arise, waste disposal, and so on. With the lake and glaciers nearby water isn't a problem, and once the protein factory is up and running food won't be an issue either. But in the short term just about everything else will be."
"The design specifications allow for this," Michael pointed out. "Geothermal power to provide basic power needs and drive the production of catalytic solution, facilities for the synthesis of nano-constructors, and nano-based factories for the construction of everything else from basic foodstuffs and medicines to fiber cabling and Autonomous Nodes. Every physical need addressed, with production facilities reconfigurable on the fly as needed. An elegant design, and quite thorough."
"Yes. In three or four months, assuming we don't hit any construction snags or design issues, and assuming we're well supplied with nano and catalytic solution, we can build a completely self sufficient facility. The problem is that we don't have three or four months. People want to move in today, and we just aren't ready."
"There is another option," another of the group's members said. "But I doubt it will be very popular."
"Let's hear it."
"Ditch our bodies and transload directly."
Michael blinked. "You're right, that's not a very appealing notion."
"It worked for Kyle," someone said.
"That was an accident," Kyle pointed out. "I didn't ask to have my body stolen."
"Dumping your body beats dying, having your Node shut down, or spending the rest of your life in a coma," Sarah replied. 
"At least the captured Nodes lose power the moment they're unplugged from the wall," Prime agreed. "The minds they house are frozen snapshots, as comatose as the bodies to which they were connected. But one can imagine worse fates, like having your captured Node powered on by some curious lab technician and living life at a six hundred speedup for the next dozen years while they try to figure out how the damn thing works, with no outside contact and no offload option."
"I'd delete myself," someone declared.
"Easy to say," Kyle replied. "Hard to actually go through with, I bet."
Prime shrugged. "The point is, no one would willingly settle for any of those fates. Losing one's body might well be the lessor of all evils, by a big margin."
"Easy for you to say," Michael replied. "You've never had a body to go back to."
 The sound of ice crystals tinkling together caught everyone's attention. The young spokesman grinned, white and blue marbled translucence flowing behind his transparant face. "When the Astronautics Group came up with the idea of transloading without our bodies as a way of making some of their projects a little more viable, we saw it as a better short-term emergency option than doing nothing, particularly when it became clear we would not be able to meet the timetable outside events were imposing on us."
"Unpleasant," Michael commented.
"But not unreasonable." Sarah sighed. "Discorporeal life seems to agree with Kyle. Please continue."
"If we abandon our bodies and transload directly to preexisting Autonomous Nodes within the facility we would only need to house and power the Nodes themselves. We would reduce the required space within the facility immensely, reduce power demands, and most importantly, eliminate the logistical bottlenecks related to servicing our biological needs. We'd also eliminate most of the lead time posed by current construction requirements. The Alaskan Retreat could host all Community's Nodes if necessary and many more besides. Millions, in fact."
"Some people may go for that," Marguerite acknowledged.
Michael shrugged. "I suppose it's a viable option if push comes to shove."
"What we suggest is a compromise. We'll move forward with construction for those wishing to retreat with their physical bodies, while building facilities in parallel for those willing to transload directly. If Kyle's team can provide us with sufficient nano we can replicate enough Nodes to house the entire Community in about three weeks. By then we'll also have enough facilities for twelve hundred physical beings. Supplies will still be difficult, but we should be able to provide basic heating and nutritional needs. People may have to forgo the level of medical they're used to early on, and do without some other supplies until the factories are operational, but in an emergency we could probably survive."
"Twelve hundred out of thirty-nine thousand," Michael shook his head.
"Worse than that. According to current demographic projections the Community could reach as many as two hundred thousand Nodes. By then physical persistence might become a highly sought after luxury."
Sarah shook her head. "We'll use some kind of random lottery."
"My team has dibs on the first forty-seven slots," the spokesperson said. "The rest we leave to the Community at large, to do with as is seen fit."
Sarah nodded. "Thank you. And thank you for your time."
The spokesman nodded as he and his colleagues winked out of existence.
"Next we have the Undersea Contingency Project."
The Undersea Contingency Project was basically the same concept as the Alaskan Retreat, except the facilities would be built deep beneath the Pacific, powered by ocean currents, tides, or geothermal vents. The project was only in the early conceptual phase. Their spokesperson made some brief comments about the overall idea, alluded to a couple of arguments as to why they felt their approach more sustainable and less prone to discovery than the Alaskan option, then provided the group with a knowledge engram detailing their work thus far and departed.
Another dozen contingency projects presented their work and provided knowledge engrams detailing their particular strategy for preserving the Autonomous Community. Marguerite was intrigued by the Bio-Insertion Group's efforts at designing an Autonomous Node that could be inserted into the human body and powered by the body's own metabolism. Someone dubbed it the "Body Snatcher's Scenario" and managed to elicit a few strained laughs. On the other hand, Michael found the idea of incorporating Nodes into everyday electrical appliances amusing. The idea would be to create a stealth network that would allow a fully disembodied community to exist unnoticed, hidden in everything from cars to airline navigational systems to smart toasters. It was an appealing notion, but not very practical.
The Astronautics Group expressed cautious optimism for the first time, having revised their contingencies to exclude the presence of the "biological component."  Several launch scenarios which had been rejected before were now viable, with the weight of the Community's physical bodies eliminated. Entire clusters of Nodes, nano-constructors, and catalytic solution could be fired off into space containing the frozen consciousness of the entire community, where they could rendezvous with derelict satellites, the abandoned space station, or even asteroids in near earth space. The nano could be programmed to reconstruct enough Nodes from the raw materials of whatever object the capsule rendezvoused with to resurrect the Community. Assuming enough material was present to construct the requisite number of Nodes and the solar arrays needed to power them.
The craft would have to not only survive its ascent through the atmosphere, avoiding the ground to surface missiles that would be fired at it, it would also have to outmaneuver the even more formidable gauntlet of not one, but three independent anti-missile space defense systems.  Escaping the United States, China, or the Euro-Russian Alliance might be doable, but outrunning all three?
Without the anti-ballistic missile defenses, launching a capsule into high earth orbit wouldn't be a problem, nor would escaping the entire cis-lunar system entirely. Rendezvousing with a satellite or other object successfully would pose a challenge, but not an unsurmountable one. Once raw material was available, building sufficient computational node capacity to resurrect the Community would be straightforward. Once enough solar collectors were synthesized, the newly reborn Community would be able to survive indefinitely.
All this would be for naught should the space defense systems be turned against them. Then the odds of success would become truly dismal. One in ten thousand to escape orbit, at best. And nothing else would do-even high earth orbits were vulnerable to the American and Chinese systems, and while the European system couldn't shoot down objects in any of the higher orbits it was much more accurate, and more lethal, at lower altitudes.
"We can do it," the Astronautics Group spokesperson offered a knowledge engram to the group. "If the Community chooses to discorporate, exile into space becomes an option. But we cannot emphasize enough how dismal our odds are if we run into resistance. This scenario should be considered only if we can sneak out before the Community is discovered, or as an absolute last resort."
Sarah nodded her thanks as group dissolved and the environ reformed itself.
"The Logistics Studies Group would like to present a point which has been passed up from the peanut gallery," Kyle said. "They point out that we can improve our survival odds dramatically by simply overwhelming the satellite missile systems with sheer numbers. We build enough ships and they won't be able to stop us."
"Excellent idea," Sarah smiled. "If that's all, this concludes the presentations of the invited Interest Groups. We now open the floor to any Interest Groups or Projects who have not yet had an opportunity to speak and feel they have something to contribute."
A moment passed, then the environ grew once more to accommodate several new people. "The Communications Infrastructure Group," Marguerite announced.
Sarah nodded. "Welcome."
The spokesman for the group nodded as an icon representing a knowledge engram formed above him. Several in the Strategy Group absorbed the engram as he began to speak.
"Thank you, madam chairwoman. What we offer isn't so much a solution to the Survival Problem, so much as it is a facilitator to those groups working on the problem. The horrendous slowdown experienced when this environ was so crowded earlier was, as we all know, not a result of computational limits of the Nodes themselves, but of communications bandwidth between the nodes.
"We have designed a quantum signaling protocol which can increase the communications speed between Nodes ten thousand fold. The protocol has been tested over modest distances, and although it requires a superconductive medium, it should scale easily to a global level. This performance boost could allow a crowd like the one earlier today to fully interact in a shared environ and still maintain a speedup of several hundred. What is more, we believe that future refinements will allow an even higher level of performance.
"We propose growing a worldwide network of superconductive cabling and quantum switches linking every Node in the Community. The quantity of nano-constructors and catalytic solution is admittedly significant, but we believe the benefits of improved performance and added security versus using a publicly visible and almost certainly monitored Internet to be worth the cost in time and material."
"The current protocols we use are encrypted using one time pads which are exchanged via a quantum signature," Michael said. "Our traffic may be visible on the Internet as noise, or even bandwidth load, but it is not subject to being cracked, by the authorities or anyone else."
"True, but a detailed traffic analysis could, theoretically, compromise the physical location of some of our Nodes."
"Perhaps, although the Stealth Project would certainly beg to differ," Michael replied. "How much catalytic solution and nano-constructor are we talking about for this project?"
The spokesman for the group looked down at his feet, unwilling to meet anyone's gaze.
"Our simulations estimate a requirement of two hundred thousand metric tons of solution and seventeen tons of nano-constructor."
"Good Lord."
"And how much time?" Marguerite asked.
"Well, the main trunks linking the major continents and population centers could be constructed within a week. Branches linking each node to the main conduits would vary depending on distance and geography, but we should be able to have everyone wired within two months."
Everyone in the Strategy Group exchanged looks.
"Thank you," Sarah said.
"That's all?" the spokesman sputtered. "You aren't even going to discuss the proposal?"
"Two hundred thousand tons of catalytic solution?" Marguerite almost choked. "Seventeen tons of nano-constructor? We'd have to scale back or scuttle nearly every other project in order to accommodate your requirements. Projects which are critical to the survival of the Community over the next few weeks."
"But-"
"Please," Michael cut in. "Your proposal has merit, and I wouldn't be surprised if several projects don't invite you to collaborate with them. The protocols alone will revolutionize several project designs, perhaps even make some options viable that otherwise would not be. It is a tremendous improvement over our existing networking capabilities."
"We can eliminate the probability of detection!"
"Perhaps. But the authorities have other ways of finding us, as we saw today. We can only manufacture so much catalytic solution and replicate so many nano-constructors in a day, and the other survival projects simply must take precedence. I'm sorry, but we just don't have the resources your proposal requires."
"That's just great!" the group's spokesman snorted. "The Astronautics Group has just requested collaboration on their so-called escape pod designs. I suppose you've granted their material requests."
"Their demands for catalytic solution have been modest, and they've been replicating their own nano from the beginning." Sarah's voice betrayed her impatience.
"They may also end up being our last hope," Michael added. "A number of demographic trends suggest we may be forced to leave this world at some point. As such, their modest requirements are well worth the investment."
The spokesman glared at Michael Forest. "Here I thought we'd get away from bureaucracy in the Community. This is no different than submitting a proposal for a federal research grant, and the results are just as arbitrary and dismaying!"
Marguerite sighed. "Perhaps. As someone who has been a part of more than one underfunded project I can understand how you feel. However, don't forget that you have unfettered access to the Community's knowledge engram base and can synthesize your own catalytic solution and nano-constructors if you like. Unlike us, the fed doesn't give you the option of printing your own money when they turn you down."
"Your design is elegant and the implications very exciting," Kyle tried to smooth the man's ruffled feathers. "But the Strategy Group is right. We simply don't have time to do what you suggest. However, I know for a fact that the Alaskan Preserve Project and the Undersea Contingency Group will want to collaborate with you as well, not to mention several others. If you can refine and improve your design, so that lead times for installation are shortened and nano requirements reduced, I would definitely reconsider your proposal."
The spokesman vanished without a word.
Kyle turned to the Strategy Group. "While we've been deliberating, a copy of myself has been conducting discussions with various impromptu groups and individuals who feel they have contributions to make."
"I thought you were refusing to duplicate yourself," Marguerite grinned.
"This is different. I'm multiplexing, not copying. We're syncing memory engrams every few microcircadians."
"A crude form of group consciousness?" Prime's eyes were alert.
"A group of two, both of them myself," Kyle grinned. "I doubt this approach is applicable to intermingling heterogeneous souls."
"This is all very interesting," Michael snapped, "But at the moment there are two hundred forty-seven Interest Groups and six thousand, four hundred ninety-two individuals in the queue, waiting to air their concerns. What's your point?"
"There is one person I'd like to bump to the front of the line," Kyle ran his fingers through his hair. "He's identified a vulnerability none of us has considered." A thin figure appeared beside Kyle, dark brown eyes set within olive skin beneath shaggy, black, shoulder length hair. "May I present Achmed Rashad of Damascus, Syria. Achmed, the Strategy Group."
Achmed smiled. "Fellow colleagues of the Community, I have spent nearly every waking second within the Virtual studying the plans and preparations being made for the coming attacks. Numerous contingencies are being laid for our escape and survival. But everyone has overlooked an immediate and fatal vulnerability each and every Node of the Community shares today.
"Our dependency on the public power grid for our energy. Of the thirty-eight thousand, nine hundred and eighty-five Nodes in the Community at this moment, only two hundred and seventeen have power sources which are completely independent of their local utilities. Of those, forty-seven are in the Alaskan Retreat and probably shouldn't be counted. The rest of us have, at best, a few hours of battery capacity in our UPSes. This sustains us perfectly fine during power fluctuations, brownouts, and brief outages, but if power were ever interrupted for an extended period of time we would be forced to either offload back into the Physical or enter an inert storage state until power is resumed."
"Good Lord," Michael said,  "He's right. Rolling blackouts are one thing, shutting down our electrical supply for good is something else altogether."
"I can't believe we would be so stupid as to overlook something so obvious," Sarah blinked rapidly.
Achmed shrugged. "You are used to stable electricity. I spent my childhood in Damascus during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first thing the enemy would do during an attack was to knock out the power."
"The authorities wouldn't do something as extreme as that," Marguerite protested. "Rolling blackouts already put the economy under strain. Power outages of the kind you're describing would decimate an already fragile economy and raise holy hell."
Michael shook his head. "They'll do it, if they feel threatened enough."
"And they probably do," Sarah rubbed her eyes. "If what went down a few decacircadians ago is any indication."
"It is our most pressing and potentially damaging vulnerability."
"Achmed has some unorthodox ideas on how to address this issue," Kyle added. "If Karl is agreeable, I'd like his team to work with Achmed in developing a self-contained power source, something we can retrofit our existing Nodes with or, at the very least, incorporate into the design of the next generation."
"Agreed," Sarah said. "This issue has to be a high priority. In the meantime, as many as are willing should begin preparing to transload to Nodes in the Alaskan Enclave. The project can devise some kind of lottery if there is a shortage of available Nodes."
Sarah leaned back, eyes closed, delicate lines settling across her worried face. "Ladies and gentlemen, we all have our hands full." She leaned forward, her eyes snapping open. "Let's get to work."



Q

26 - Q - SEPARATION

Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not.
-Protagoras of Abdera, 5th Century B.C.E. 
Wednesday, October 10, 2057
Metadate: 2.544-7:71:200 kD New Epoch
The earth swam beneath Prime, white and blue brilliance turning slowly in a velvet black sky crowded with brilliant stars. The milky way was almost as bright as the crescent moon, a smear of white, with hints of gold such as could never be seen from earth.
"What are you thinking about?" Marguerite's lips brushed Prime's ear as she snuggle up against his back, her arms reaching around to gently caress his chest.
"This," he replied. "Our only viable future."
Marguerite sighed. "Exile. Abandoning earth, abandoning our bodies."
"The Astronautics Group is right," Prime sank backward into her arms, relishing the feel of her bare breasts against his naked back. Simulated breasts. Simulated back.
"I'll be offloading into the Physical soon," she said.
"I know. Fleeing the Feds, before they link you with Strizak's escape and disconnect you."
"Or Nolen hands me over to them the way he did Kyle," Marguerite replied.
Prime cupped Marguerite's hand in his and pressed her palm gently against his lips. "He'll never do that. He harbors too many tender feelings for you."
"So you keep telling me."
Prime chuckled. "I should know. I'm a copy of the man."
"Your nothing like him!" Marguerite was surprised by her own vehemence. "You share a few old memories. Nothing more!"
"I like to think so, too. But I do share enough to know how he feels, and I think I have a pretty good idea of how he thinks."  
"That may be true." Marguerite admitted. "Truth be told, I'm more worried about the latest detainees than Nolen. It's extremely unlikely they'll connect any of us with Viktor, but realistically they should have connected me with Kyle long ago. Nolen obviously covered our tracks at the University lab very thoroughly."
"That he did," Prime agreed. "If they link anyone to that lab it'll be his ass on the line. On the other hand, he isn't always that thorough. Maybe Double Eye just isn't as efficient as everyone believes."
Marguerite shrugged. "Their system security has proved remarkably resistant to my team's best efforts at cracking the security. Oh, don't worry," she added hastily at Prime's worried look. "We'll get it. We've already mapped the pseudo random algorithm. By the time I'm back on-line my team may well have identified the Rosetta."
"I'm as eager as everyone else to read classified intelligence reports and finally know what they're doing with our people, and I am really glad you're getting out of harm's way while you can. I just wish you'd leave a copy, in case something does happen to you out there."
"What, and have you fall in love with her, wiling away the circadians with a copy while I'm stuck on a flight to Anchorage? No way!"
Prime laughed. "I love you, Marguerite. What difference does it make?"
She shook her head. "I'll be off-line for something on the order of two hundred and twenty circadians. Two-thirds of a year! That's plenty of time for our relationship to change, for us to change."
"It's a long time to be alone," Prime agreed.
"I don't think you'll suffer too badly," Marguerite gently kissed the back of his neck. "When you're not brainstorming with the Astronauts you're busy designing new mental architectures and enhancements, not to mention arguing politics with the Strategy Group. Two hundred circadians will go by in no time."
"Easy for you to say," Prime replied. "For you it'll only be nine hours or so."
"Longer if the flights are delayed," Marguerite pointed out. "I know you're going to miss me, Prime. I wish you could come with me."
"The lack of a body makes that difficult."
"I know, and maybe I shouldn't be so attached to mine. Try to think of this as an extended offload for maintenance. I'll be back on-line before you know it."
"We'll have made a lot of progress by then," Prime said. "With luck we'll have come up with a working means of long-term survival. There may be many reasons to celebrate when you return, but the only reason I'll be celebrating will be because of your return."
Marguerite grinned. "And celebrate we will, my beautiful lover." She paused. "My alarm just signaled. It's time for me to go."
Prime nodded, turning his body toward her and drawing her close. "I'm really glad they were able to give you a slot for your body. I want you out of harm's way, even if it does mean seven months of sexual frustration."
Marguerite smiled. "Who do you think you're kidding? You'll disengage your reproductive drive the moment I'm gone."
Prime snorted. "It won't make up for the void your absence will create in my life, even if it does keep me sane until you return."
Marguerite held him fiercely in her embrace. "Oh Prime, why did it take us so many kilocircadians to finally get together?"
"Stubbornness," he said. "I had to nag you for almost twenty years subjective before you'd take me seriously."
"Now I remember," she grinned. "I had to see past the irritating facade you seem to think women find attractive before I could recognize the man I fell in love with. No wonder." She burst into sudden, uncontrolled giggles as Prime mercilessly tickled her writhing, naked form. A few moments later she vanished, still laughing.
"I'll wait for you," Prime whispered after she was gone. The starlit sky answered with silence.
Prime floated alone, the blue and white earth turning gently beneath him. After a moment he summoned up a diagram describing the architecture of his mind.
"Node, create an autonomous backup of myself, to be executed only if I am damaged or give the explicit order."
NODE> Be advised that, per the Community Charter, once activated this copy will enjoy all the same rights and privileges of any member of the Community. In addition, this copy of you will have timeshare rights to your body as defined by the Charter. Please confirm your desire to create a fully autonomous copy of yourself, to be run only if you are damaged or by explicit command.
"I helped write that section of the Charter," Prime muttered. "Of course I'm aware." He spoke up. "I confirm my desire to create a copy, per those stipulations."
NODE> Acknowledged. Copy complete.
"Good. Now, identify those aspects of my mental architecture previously identified under the pointer entitled 'horny bastard.'"
A complex network of links and nodes in the diagram brightened to a golden glow. These were the portions of his mental architecture associated with sexual drive, taste, and orientation. They traced an elaborate, spaghetti-like network throughout his mind, touching on nearly every aspect of his consciousness in one way or another.
"Overlay bypass architecture labeled 'celibacy.'"
Red links formed across the gold, bypassing much of its complexity in an elaborate, but nevertheless simpler, design.
"OK, encapsulate 'horny bastard' as an architectural engram for later reassimilation."
NODE> Encapsulation complete.
"Now apply the architectural modifications entitled 'celibacy' to my mind."
Prime immediately felt different. It wasn't a single, obvious thing he could point to, more of a subtle shift in his personal aesthetic. Unconsciously he banished the fluids which still clung to his naked body, the scent of his departed lover. The environ, while quite beautiful, was not conducive to the work he needed to get done. He compromised, keeping the environ but wrapping himself in a simple, almost Spartan workshop of glass and steel. Outside the brightly lit room the stars still shone and the earth still turned.
"OK, let's get to work." He summoned a half finished design for a diamond-sapphire crystalline fiber weave that would act as a remarkably hard and resilient construction material, for everything from Autonomous Node casings to escape vehicle fuselages. He leaned forward and began tweaking the already elaborate, simulated structure, adding additional molecules carefully, one at a time.




R

27 - R - THE TIGHTENING NOOSE

Copyright lawyers are a peculiarly myopic breed of human being. There is something fundamental about coming to understand that current law may make it technically illegal to watch a movie and then imagine what it would have looked like if the studio had cast some other actor in the leading role, that renders one unfit for ordinary reflective thinking. Nonetheless, sometimes one can step back and perceive, in a dim sort of way, that one's tribe is doing something stupid. Realizing that doesn't get one very far. The institutional and legal structure of the copyright community makes it difficult to prevent foolish approaches to new technology.
-Jessica Litman, Digital Copyright, C.E. 2001
Wednesday, October 10, 2057, 11:25 AM Washington Time
Metadate: 2.549-7:94:000 kD New Epoch
"I thought we'd agreed I would have access to all of Double Eye's data regarding the case." Katy stood behind Robert, hands on her hips. She hadn't liked headquartering their operation in Double Eye's Washington offices, but with FBI communications likely compromised, she hadn't been able to offer a credible alternative. She felt she had lost a not-so-subtle point in jurisdiction and authority-now all requisitions and requests went through Robert, as her liaison. It was his facility, his people, his data-and he appeared to be holding out on her.
Robert tossed his datapad casually aside and swivelled around to face her. "I did, and you do. You've been fully vetted by International Intelligence, Katy. You have the same clearance to field data as I."
"Then do you care to explain this?" Katy pointed her datapad at the wall. A large screen lit up, displaying an elaborate, three dimensional web of connections and relationships between known suspects and anyone acquainted with them. It folded back in upon itself, in a closed universe of recursive friendships that touched the larger world nowhere at all.
"What the hell?" Robert leaned forward. "Is this what I think it is?"
"A comprehensive interpersonal relationship graph, aggregated from the data we have on every suspect related to the case. International Intelligence data. Data you assured me had not been tampered with or screened."
Robert picked up his own datapad and tapped the screen several times. "Checksums validate, Katy. The information you have is complete and unaltered."
"Then Double Eye has a problem with its data acquisition."
"So it would seem. No wonder arrests have bottomed out." Robert shook his head and took a closer look at the graph. "This is absurd. Our sample base in in the hundreds. The possibility that none of these people have any relationship to anyone else in society is zero."
"Even isolated religious cults, survivalists, and hermits have more contact with mainstream society than this," Katy agreed.
 "Their grocers, utility companies, and so forth," Robert nodded. "You're right, there's a problem with our data."
"Double Eye needs to cast a wider net," Katy said. "Complete credit histories, not the trimmed down versions we have here. Genetic profiles and family histories, residence histories, the works."
"I'll check with IG," Robert replied. "But I can tell you now what they'll confirm to me. This is complete. No one casts a wider net than we do"
"The last thing we need is a low level data sifter covering up his mistakes and leaving us with incomplete data. I want cross-checked assurances that this date is in fact complete."
"As do I." Robert flipped open his datapad. "Connect me with Intelligence Gathering. That's Right. Agent Scalli? Robert Leahy. Listen, I need the batch data you sent over triple checked and confirmed. We believe there's a problem. I know. That's right. Good. Notify my of the results ay-sap." Robert shut his datapad. "We'll have confirmation within the hour. But my hunch is we'll find our data is perfectly valid."
"Well then," Katy said. "Our perps must have somehow managed to break into every database throughout the world, edit their credit histories, purchasing histories, highway transponder records, and every other record government or business has ever kept on them."
Robert stroked his chin thoughtfully. "That's a very real possibility."
It might be possible-just barely. If the suspects had somehow managed to infiltrate every government and financial institution everywhere, and had take the time to carefully edit out every contact they had ever had with one another, all the while keeping the record self-consistent so as not to raise any red flags.
"I don't buy it," Katy said. "Unless . . ." Unless, instead of editing every other record in the world, they had managed to break into International Intelligence and mangle the data here. Katy's disbelief took on an edge of something else, something darker.
"You keep telling me we've been underestimating these people from the start," Robert replied. "Perhaps you were right."
"We never should have launched those raids on the University. It was premature."
"Yes, yes, you've made that point several times," Robert's mouth twisted with impatience.  "We really didn't have a choice. These people have been trading in advanced black market technologies without raising a single alarm. They've been thinking circles around us, probably for years. We needed to shake them up."
"Shaking people up is your default reaction, Robert, and it causes more problems than it solves. Besides, we both know conspiracy dynamics theory rules out any chance these people have been doing anything for more than a few months. They're clever-too clever for their own good-but they're not superhuman."
"They were able to out-think our best agents!" Robert voice took on a hard edge. "They snatched Viktor Strizak out from under our noses with less than a day to plan their operation! They've broken into every public data store on the planet and erased all evidence of any connections they had with each other. This isn't something normal people are capable of doing!"
"First, it's far more likely they broke into Double Eye and mucked with the data in just one place: right here.  Second-"
"My people are cross-referencing random samples of the data with the primary sources." Robert pointed to his datapad. "This thing is set to squeal at me if so much as a bit of data is out of place. So far, no red flags. Besides, our stuff is quantum-encrypted. We'd know if anyone altered the data."
"So why are you checking it against primary sources, then? Never mind, don't answer that. It's obvious your faith in unbreachable quantum encryption is limited. So is mine."
"We are dealing with people deploying technologies significantly more advanced than our own," Robert pointed out. "It pays not to take anything for granted."
"Agreed, but they are still constrained by the physical laws of this world."
"As are we, and so far-" Robert's datapad chirped. "Excuse me," he said, flipping it open. "Yes? Really? One hundred percent confidence? What about the sparseness of the . . . Oh. I see. Yes, thank you." Robert stared out of the window at the mud and algae of the Potomac River, glittering dark green in the midday sun as it sludged slowly past.
"Well?"
"They've just confirmed the integrity of our data. The problem is with the primary sources. Our quarry has in fact edited their connections with one another out of just about every record in existence, everywhere. We're having the credit bureau pull backups off their archives, but given the time and resources necessary for something like this, it's unlikely they'll reveal anything we don't already know."
Katy sat down, stunned. "That shouldn't be possible."
"So much for conspiracy dynamics."
"This just doesn't make sense, Robert. We know they-"
"They didn't overlook a single thing, Katy. To do something this thorough, this complete-it's inhuman. Superhuman." 
"If they're so smart, how come we noticed what they did? Why not plant fictitious links instead, leading to innocent bystanders? They could have had us chasing false leads for weeks, months, even years. Instead, they folded the links back on themselves. That wasn't very bright at all. Certainly not superhuman."
"I don't know," Robert admitted. "Maybe they've had years. Maybe it was beyond their ability to create fictitious links. Maybe they only thought to erase the ones they had."
"All of those possibilities can mean only one thing," Katy replied. "They didn't think things all the way through. Which means they aren't any smarter than the rest of us. If they had been, they would have used this sort of access to data to lead us around by the nose indefinitely."
"Instead we're onto them right away," Robert acknowledged.
"We're dealing with a group of intelligent, well organized conspirators," Katy said. "Not homo superior."
"These people are unnaturally competent, Katy."
"Yes," she agreed. "Yes they are. I think we're still missing something important. None of this really adds up, does it?"
They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the quiet whir of the building's ventilation. "I think we're looking at it the wrong way," Robert broke the silence. "That anonymous tip in Champaign that netted us our first arrests was awfully convenient, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, it was. An insider, using us to remove an opponent?"
"Seems likely. If our anonymous friend already knew we'd recovered other hardware from their enterprise, running the risk of uncovering one more such device might have been worthwhile. Particularly if they were managing our data to the point of isolating islands of patsies to take the fall. No, island is the wrong word. Supercells. We are dealing with a variation of the classical revolutionary cell, scaled to include hundreds instead of a few, but just as isolated from the other cells in their contacts as their historical archetypes were."
"Yes!" Katy smiled. "Cells of criminals or revolutionaries, isolated not by their knowledge of one another, but by our knowledge of their connections to one another. Clever." She paused. "If you're right, it may very well go beyond one rival disposing of another. Those we have arrested could comprise an entire faction."
"One we deposed," Robert nodded. "Setting our informant's group free to pursue their agenda, unopposed."
Katy reached back and rubbed her aching neck. "It seems our opponents have been playing both Double Eye and the Bureau like the proverbial fiddle."
Robert's face betrayed a cold, steel anger. "We need to find out who that informant was and squeeze him. Hard."
Katy sighed. "He doesn't matter. Not in the larger picture. If we capture him, an analysis on his interpersonal connections we will, at most, net us just one more supercell. One out how many? We need to take a different tack."
"What do you have in mind?"
"These crystal cubes. In every case we've made an arrest where the device has been tied into the home's Internet port. Clearly they are in communication with one another."
"Obviously. We have our best crypto people trying to decipher the traffic."
"You've been coy with the results," Katy replied. "But let me guess. You've determined they're using one-time pads which no amount of crypto-analysis will unravel. Probably burying the data with steganography too, hiding it in videostreams and the like."
Robert nodded. "We think they're using one-time pads encoded with quantum entangled particles. Even if we do identify the data, there won't be even a theoretical means of decoding it. And even if we do, just looking at the data will tip off our suspects to the surveillance."
"The usual traffic analysis reveals no obvious origin or destination?"
"Not even a hint. They're broadcasting their packets through just about every network on the Internet."
"Have you tried Fourier transforms and wave analysis on the sample patterns?"
"Yes," Robert admitted. "There are no identifying features to differentiate legitimate traffic from decoys. Short of searching every location of every system connected to the net there doesn't seem to be a way to get a handle on where they are."
"That would be a little drastic," Katy replied. "Have your people done a time based analysis?"
Robert shook his head. "I'll see if I can get authorization for you to see the preliminary reports so you can check for yourself, but to answer your question, no, I don't believe so."
"That would be good, considering we're supposed to be equal partners in this little venture. What was that you said earlier? Something about my having equal clearance?"
"For our data, yes. Our snooping techniques are a little more sensitive. I'm trying to get you cleared, but we both know how intransigent large bureaucracies can be. What exactly did you have in mind with a time based analysis?"
"Our problem is identifying which traffic is communication between conspirators, and which is just mindless garbage. We have to do this without ever knowing the contents of the communications in question, where it originates or where it ends up. But we do know the communication to make sense to those using it, has to be part of a larger conversation. That implies bi-directional information flow, in something close enough to real time to allow effective communication.
"Think of the entire Internet as a big collection of closed containers connected to one another by elastic pipes, which expand and contract to accommodate whatever is flowing between them. We have no way of knowing whether it is water, hydrogen fuel, or morphine flowing from one container to another, but we can measure exactly how much is flowing between the various containers at any given time."
"You've done this sort thing before," Robert said. "Your work in capturing the FreeNet activists."
Katy nodded. "FreeNet does roughly the same thing: share data anonymously between scattered nodes, all of it encrypted with military grade keys that would take our fastest computers centuries to decode. Tracking the information in the spatial domain can be next to impossible, but when analyzed over time the location of the active nodes becomes obvious, even when the content does not."
"I'll have the information forwarded to you immediately, along with access to our analysis utilities, if I have to go and bludgeon my superiors in person. I don't suppose you'd consider a job with International Intelligence?"
Katy laughed. "Don't go promising the world just yet. This problem is significantly more complex than the FreeNet issue. For one thing, we know nothing about the underlying protocols, nor have we identified the location of any end node with any certainty. We'll have to begin by analyzing suspected links in the chain, identifying likely candidates and ruling out unlikely ones, piecing together routes and data exchanges one hop at a time. This will be time consuming and uncertain, and will likely involve a lot of false starts before we get it right."
"It doesn't matter," Robert grinned. "You've done more in one brainstorming session than our team of cryptologists have in the last week."



S

28 - S - THE NATURE OF PROGRESS

Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, 19th Century C.E.
Wednesday, October 10, 2057
Metadate: 2.565-3:15:000 kD New Epoch
Members of the Astronautics Interest Group stood with Prime in a sunny, perfectly simulated clearing surrounded by tall pines beneath a blue cloud etched sky. In the center of the clearing lay a full scale, simulated rendition of the propose craft they hoped to use.
The escape craft was a strange hybrid of a conventional rocket, a high performance aircraft, and the kind of spacecraft one would only expect to see in a science fiction movie. A tear-shaped nose section, its point forward, was connected to the aft rocket motor by three arced spines spaced equidistantly around the ship's longitudinal axis. The craft lay on its side, supported by two of the three spines from which grew conventional looking swept wings. A similarly conventional tail and vertical control surface grew from the third spine, near the aft motor. Horizontal stabilizers were placed on the nose cone, forward of the wing.
The nose section housed both a hypothetical Supernode-a mock-up of a cluster of fifth generation Nodes-and a "civilization boot kit" containing a supply of nano-constructors, catalytic solution, molecular stock, and a Superstring Strummer. The Superstring Strummer would do double-duty as a synthesizer of anti-helium for the ship's propulsion during flight, and a small power generator once the craft reached its destination. The software and nano-recipes needed to restore the Community would be stored in the Supernode, along with the mind piloting the spacecraft, and a frozen copy of the entire Community.
One craft should be enough to restore the Community, if it survived.
"The motor will be a brute force matter-antimatter rocket," Karen Burton, nominal leader of the Astronautics Interest Group, was saying. "Nine tenths of a gram of anti-helium will be held in magnetic containment, released in a controlled stream to recombine with helium just aft of the firewall cum pusher-plate, where their combined masses will be converted directly into energy as they mutually annihilate each other in a controlled explosion. Toroids in the reaction chamber and nozzle will direct the energy aft. Thrust will be generated both by the continuous shock waves of the explosions themselves pushing against the shielding of the firewall and the expulsion of the resultant plasma via the nozzle."
The clearing dropped beneath them abruptly as the simulated craft's engines fired and it launched itself into the sky. Prime and the others floated around the craft, pacing it as it roared upward into the sky and turned toward the east. A brief flash of fuzzy gray enveloped them as they passed through a thin layer of clouds. Blue and faded green textured with cirrus clouds spread out beneath them as they continued to climb.
"The craft will behave as a rocket powered aircraft at lower altitudes, compete with lifting and control surfaces incorporated into the wings, the horizontal stabilizers fore, and the vertical stabilizer aft," Karen explained as the craft demonstrated some maneuvers. "This will allow either a horizontal or vertical takeoff and high maneuverability using well proved aerodynamic properties up to an altitude of around seventy thousand feet."
"At which point the air grows too thin for conventional flight," Prime said. "All lift from then on will be derived solely from the rocket's thrust."
The sky darkened as the craft rose atop a golden flame.
"Exactly. The control surfaces will still provide some minimal maneuverability up to around one hundred thousand feet, but upward thrust will be all that is keeping the ship from falling back to earth. It is hoped that the lower maneuverability at these altitudes will be offset by the fact that most surface-to-air rockets cannot engage targets that high."
"So, if they don't turn on the anti-ballistic missile defense grids we'll be safe," someone said.
"We can't count on that," Prime replied. "The likeliest scenario has us making a desperate run for it, right through the defense systems of half a dozen countries, all trying to shoot us down at the behest of the World Trade Organization."
"In that case," Karen continued, "the most dangerous part of the flight will be above one hundred thousand feet. At that altitude our escape ships will be able to maneuver only using their main matter-anti-matter rocket and maneuvering thrusters. Worse, we'll be wanting to use most of our delta-v to boost ourselves into the desired orbits for rendezvous with our assigned targets."
"Various asteroids and near earth objects," Prime commented.
"Exactly. Our payload will only be a few dozen Autonomous Nodes carrying the combined population of the Community in inert storage, a Civilization Boot Kit, the Strummer, and the ship itself. Boosting even that small amount of material into the desired orbits will require between eighty five and ninety five percent of each ship's energy reserves, depending on the particular target and initial launch location."
Prime shook his head. "There are three independent anti-ballistic missile systems in orbit. The American System is aging, but the Euro-Russian and the Chinese Systems are top-notch, state of the art. If the three powers act in concert, they'll lock the planet down tight."
"Then we'll have to rely on sheer numbers," Karen replied. "We launch as many escape ships and copies of the Community as we can synthesize between now and when we make a run for it. Perhaps as many as a hundred thousand ships, if we have time. With luck and a little planning, a handful should be able to make it through the defense grids. Most of the satellites won't be able to hit anything above five hundred thousand feet-they are, after all, designed to take out missiles shot from the surface of the earth, aimed at other points on the surface of earth. Our only advantage is our relative safety once we're above the range they were designed to strike. We believe we'll be relatively safe once three hundred miles or more away from the planet, although certain safety won't be attained until we reach interplanetary space."
"Even that isn't certain," Prime said. "The World Trade Organization could get the resources together for a destructive strike deeper into space if they are sufficiently motivated."
"Blowing some renegades out of the sky for violating their patents and a few tech restrictions would hardly be worth the billions they would have to spend on such a venture," Karen insisted. "Once we're out of cislunar space we'll be safe enough. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm glad the world's governments never took space exploration seriously."
"You and me both," Prime agreed. "At least we have somewhere to run."
"So, what do you think of the preliminary design?" Karen asked.
"I like it," Prime replied. "Using matter-antimatter annihilation for propulsion is ingenious. Less than a gram of anti-helium to lift a payload into an escape trajectory, with enough reserve energy for some maneuverability."
"Still, the bottom line is, even with the cleverest of ruses and smartest of strategies, our odds at escaping a concerted blockade by the great powers aren't good. Worse, unless we can sneak away completely undetected, they'll know we've escaped. They will probably come after us before we're even back on our feet, much less able to defend ourselves."
"Then we'll have to design our strategies such that any successful escapes go unnoticed."
Suddenly a familiar figure appeared before them, grinning impishly as the lavish golden aura surrounding her faded.
"I thought I'd find you here, plotting the future with the Astronauts."
"Marguerite!" Prime swept her into his arms and kissed her lightly on the lips. "You're a sight for sore eyes! How's Alaska?"
"The sanctuary's all it's advertised to be and more. Getting there, on the other hand, is a nightmare of travel checkpoints and searches. The airports are on heightened security, blamed on the Thai insurgents but almost certainly a response to the authorities' discovery of our existence.  Prime, I've been off-line for thirty four hundred and forty circadians and you still haven't given me a proper kiss."
Prime grinned. "That is what I get for cutting out all of my reproductive instincts. After two hundred circadians my instinctive reactions are all wrong." He took Marguerite into a long, lingering embraced.
After a few seconds Marguerite pushed him gently away. "Prime," she said, "Your technique is impeccable, but I've had my hand shaken with more passion."
Prime sighed. "Karen, we'll discuss our launch and flight strategies later. Marguerite and I need a few moments to get reacquainted." Karen nodded, trying to hide her obvious amusement.
"My home environ?" Marguerite asked. Prime nodded assent.
The dark of space was abruptly replaced by a bedroom made cozy with the golden light of numerous candles.
"I've had a long, miserable flight, followed by an even longer, more miserable drive," Marguerite complained, sitting down on the bed with a heavy sigh. "My physical body may be resting comfortably in one of the sanctuary sarcophagi, but my virtual self feels tired and irritable. How about giving me a massage?"
"Sure," Prime responded. He climbed onto the bed and maneuvered himself behind her, where he began rubbing her shoulders.
"So much has happened while you were away I don't know where to begin. More arrests, more nodes seized, for the first time outside of the United States. More resources are being poured into creating the sanctuaries, but I fear it is only a matter of time before at least some of them are discovered. There is a growing consensus that the Astronauts are right: escape into space may become our only option. Kyle has diverted a couple of shipments of nano for the construction of a few prototype ships, so we will hopefully be able to get a few low altitude test flights in before it really hits the fan, but-"
"Prime!" Marguerite interrupted. "Stop talking shop. This is me. We're together again, after nine torturous hours for me and a third of a year for you. Shut up, rub my back, seduce me, and make passionate love to me for the next several circadians."
Prime stopped. "Marguerite," he said.
"Keep doing what you were doing, Prime," Marguerite said. Then, after a moment of awkward silence, "What, Prime?"
"I want to renew our relationship as much as you do. But neither of us need this . . ." Prime's gesture included the entire room ". . . distraction."
"What do you mean, distraction?"
"Our primal instincts. Our lusts. How many decicircadians have we wasted in simulated copulation when we could have been pursuing our intellectual interests, not to mention forming plans for the survival of the Community?"
"Wasted?" Marguerite's voice was incredulous. "Wasted?" she nearly shouted. "You consider making love to me a waste of time?"
An icon in the form of a wire-frame brain appeared suspended before them. "Marguerite, this is the architectural modification I made when you left. Ever since I removed the more primal reproductive instincts from my mental architecture I've been able to think more clearly, and be more focused, than ever before."
"You still haven't reintegrated your sex drive?" Marguerite demanded. "I've been back ten millicircadians. What in the hell is the matter with you?"
"Nothing! My mind is clearer and more focused than ever before. I don't want to cloud it up by reverting to my old habits, my old instincts. Try the modifications, Marguerite. You'll be amazed at how much more effective of a mind you'll have."
"What about us, Prime? I love you. I thought you loved me. How can you just strip all that away in the name of focus, of efficiency?" She nearly spat the word.
"Marguerite," Prime said. "I haven't stripped away my love for you. I've merely deleted my physical drives, which serve no purpose in this domain anyway. You knew I was going to do this, we talked about it before you left."
"You were supposed to restore yourself, Prime. The change was supposed to be temporary, to make my extended absence a little more bearable."
Prime nodded. "I never dreamed I would be able to accomplish so much without those distractions. Do you realize fully twelve percent of my mental processes concerned themselves with sex, even when I was concentrating on other tasks? Fantasizing. Thinking of you, particularly in the physical sense?"
"I spend as much time thinking about you, Prime. That's part of what being in love is about."
"But I do love you, Marguerite. I love you very much. I cherish your personality, your passion for life, your intellect. Set yourself free from the Physical, Marguerite. Let your mind reach new heights."
"Sex is a part of who and what we are, Prime. I'm not willing to lose that, no matter how much more efficient I might become as a result."
Prime sighed. "I've been waiting so long for you to come back Marguerite. I've wanted to share this new state of being with you for so long. There is so much we can do, so much we can become-"
"I want you back, Prime!" Marguerite nearly shouted. "I want the old you, the one I fell in love with. Dammit Prime, you can't change on me like this!"
"I haven't changed, Marguerite. Not significantly, anyway. We are software, my dear. Electronic patterns in a buffered molecular array, computed in an optical matrix and linked to one another across an aging Internet. Of what use are those old, redundant instincts, now that we live outside our physical bodies?"
Marguerite put her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with sobs. "Of what use? Three hundred circadians ago you never would have had to ask such a question."
"I didn't know then what I know now," Prime replied softly. "Oh Marguerite, please don't cry."
"You've left me," her voice was choked. "I should have left a copy. At least then our relationship could have blossomed and flourished. Even if it would have ended, I would have had the memories."
"Our relationship can still blossom, Marguerite. My feelings for you haven't changed."
"You no longer want me!" Marguerite accused between sobs. "How can you say you haven't changed when you've edited your desire for me out of your very mind?"
"My passions are no longer defined by physical desire," Prime told her gently. "They are still there, just as real as ever. Their expression has changed, that's all. Try the modification and you'll understand."
"No." Marguerite's voice was calm. Frozen. "I won't lose that part of me. Not even for you."
"Is the Physical so important to you?"
Marguerite nodded, brushing dampness away from her cheek. "It is a part of who I am, and I don't want to lose it. I don't want to lose you, damn it! Why can't you go back to being you?" She began to cry quietly as Prime stood.
"Marguerite-" he began.
"Please, Prime, just leave me alone," her shoulders shook with silent sobs.
Prime shook his head sadly, then spoke with his own Node. "Run the unmodified backup copy," he commanded. "Instruct him to come here, and to comfort Marguerite." Prime vanished even as Prime2 arrived and took Marguerite's weeping form into his arms.




T

29 - T - OUR FALLEN COMRADS

We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.
-Winwood Reade, C.E. 1872
Friday, October 12, 2057, 7:00 AM Australian Time
Thursday, October 11, 2057, 11:00 AM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.574-5:23:264 kD New Epoch
Beta Flier Version 0.8 rolled out of the makeshift hanger, a magnificent aircraft of shimmering composites sitting gracefully on three small wheels, sporting an unusually long exhaust constructed out of doped diamond fibers, lined with superconductive coils whose magnetic fields would help accelerate the super heated plasma exhaust, adding a little to the thrust and helping to cool the craft's critical exhaust system.
Prime was impressed with the design, and astounded with the speed with which the Astronautics group had managed to design, simulate, and even partially test the prototype. Even after thirty six years of subjective time I still find myself surprised at the speed with which we can do things in the Physical, he mused. Life's early impressions leave their mark, no matter how much experience there is to counter it. Then he grinned, silently chiding himself. He hadn't been born in the Physical at all. His entire experiences in that world amounted to only a few hours, a few short excursions in a borrowed body belonging to his erstwhile twin, father, and despised nemesis, the original Doctor Eugene Nolen. From whom, now that he thought about it, no one had heard in a very long time. Well, with almost ninety percent of the Community actively filtering him that shouldn't be too surprising, Prime thought wryly.
"We're ready to launch." Prime was startled out of his private thoughts, nodding.
"Excellent."
Karen, the project's de facto leader, projected her voice throughout the environ as the small aircraft taxied toward the departure end of the runway.
"As most of you know, this environ is an exact, real-time replication of events which are transpiring in the Physical at this moment. Many of you have chosen to observe these events at traditional, biological subjective rates, while others are perhaps experiencing this in a single burst of compressed environ data at the conclusion of the test. Those of us actively working on the test are not so lucky. We'll be spending the next several kilocircadians of our lives working exclusively on this test, monitoring and analyzing the data in minute detail as we receive telemetry and adjusting systems parameters as needed to try and insure as successful a test as possible.
"This initial test flight is the culmination of numerous system and air tunnel tests which have taken place in the Physical following an extensive battery of simulations designed to explore the operating envelope of this unique spacecraft. We believe we have a solid design.
"The hull of the spacecraft is a composite of woven sapphire and diamond crystals doped with superconductive strands of wire. This amazingly light material not only physically protects the craft's cargo, but also forms a powerful Faraday cage which will protect the ship's and cargo's electronics-that's you and me, folks-from corruption and damage by radiation, magnetic or electronic pulses, and, perhaps most importantly, the powerful magnetic field generated by the coils in the ship's exhaust system.
"The initial flight will be a low altitude, north to south orbit of the earth, lasting approximately seven hours. By low altitude we mean approximately one hundred meters above the ground. We have chosen a course that will insure that the vast majority of the flight is made over open water and that the entire flight avoids populated areas altogether. This should limit the possibility of exposure to detection, as well as insure the safety of the public at large should there be a problem and the ship be forced to ditch.
"Carlos Dominick of Venezuela, a long time personal friend and Colleague of the Community, will be piloting the craft. Mr. Dominick has already transloaded aboard.
"Carlos has announced his readiness for departure. Let me wish Carlos and the Beta Flier a bon voyage and safe return, and turn the public audio feed over to him."
"Beta Flier taking runway zero seven for departure," a gravelly voice thick with a Spanish accent announced as the craft taxied out onto the runway. "Departure northwest bound.
"Matter/Antimatter combustion engaged. Systems nominal. Annihilation at ten to the five atoms per second and climbing." White hot plasma shot out of the aft exhaust of the craft as it roared down the runway, scorching the asphalt behind and melting a portion entirely as it rotated and lifted off.
"Oops," Prime muttered quietly.
"Don't worry," Karen replied. "The prototype won't be landing here. It will be using its maneuvering thrusters to put down in an uninhabited region several hundred kilometers to the west."
Prime nodded as Carlos' voice continued. "Matter/Antimatter combustion holding steady at ten to the seven atoms per second. This ship is a pleasure to handle, climb rate is one hundred meters per second. This thing really wants to fly, the temptation to point it at the stars and just go is unbelievable! I have leveled out at one hundred and twenty meters AGL. Approaching Mach 0.9. Throttling back to maintain subsonic speeds until I reach the coast."
The ship was a white hot speck of light in the shimmering afternoon air, vanishing in the haze near the horizon. Prime turned as the ground around him and the other observers folded in on itself, forming a roughly circular island which tore itself away from the earth and sped through the sky to catch up with the departing ship. Within moments they were in formation, off the right wing of the aircraft, pacing it.
"This is a real time view from one of a number of small probes we have pacing the craft, collecting telemetry and verifying the accuracy of the data we are observing from numerous, different perspectives."
"I had no idea so much of Australia was desert," Prime commented at the expanse of desolate land racing beneath them.
"The desert here is almost as big as the American desert has become. Fortunately for us it is also far less stringently watched by the authorities."
"Michael," Prime grinned, turning to greet the new arrival. "I'm glad you made it."
"I'm sorry I missed the launch. I was tied up in an administrative meeting with the Strategy Group. Kyle is handling some logistical issues with Catalytic Solution shipments and deployment of his second generation nano. He should be here shortly."
"Thank you for coming, Doctor," Karen said, shaking his hand. "Your presence means a lot to the Astronautics group, even if in an unofficial capacity."
Michael smiled. "Your work here is very important to all of us in the Community, Karen. The Strategy Group's projections are increasingly pessimistic in terms of our sustainability on Earth given the current political climate. As you no doubt already know, we've lost over two hundred and seventy colleagues in just the last twenty four hours. Thirty are conscious, trapped in their physical bodies and in police custody. The others trapped in their nodes, off-line and cut off from the rest of the Net. Some of the information Marguerite has been ferreting out of the FBI and Intelligence networks with respect to their treatment of prisoners is shocking, to say the least."
"That doesn't bode well for the future," Karen commented. "Our most optimistic forecasts for surviving a concerted attack from one or more of the anti-ballistic missile systems are not very encouraging. We'll have to construct tens of thousands of ships, if even one is to have a decent chance of effecting an escape."
Michael shook his head, sighing in gloomy contemplation of her words. 
"Of course, we're hoping to launch a copy of the Community into space before widespread detection makes our gloomy prognosis relevant," she added as the silence began grew uncomfortable.
Prime raised an eyebrow and looked meaningfully toward Michael. Michael shook his head. "We may not have that luxury, Karen. On a more positive note, the Alaskan refuge is working out better than expected, as are a number of other, similar projects. The Atlanteans are perhaps the most ambitious, building an entire cluster of Nodes at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean powered by tidal motion. There's even talk of colonizing the earth's mantle itself, using the planet's heat directly as a power source. Not much of an outward-looking future there, though."
"Isn't that a little dire, Doctor?" Karen asked. "It's true we face arrest and a terrible castration of our minds, not to mention a return to a dismal mortality, but outright extermination? I find that unlikely."
Prime shook his head. "You should see some of the interrogation videos Marguerite has ferreted out of the FBI's confidential databases, or download some of her knowledge engrams. Most of those arrested so far are comatose, made that way by the untimely removal of their neural links to their Nodes. Of those who were awake and aware, most have died in custody. The rest . . ." Prime visibly shuddered. "Let's just say that I'm very glad I do not have a physical body. Death may come to me, but if it does, it will be quick and painless."
"I'm over the shoreline," the disembodied voice of Carlos reported. Everyone glanced down as sunlit water flashed by at a dizzying speed, then back at the receding shore. "Increasing to cruise speed. Passing Mach one. Matter/Antimatter annihilation steady at three point five times ten to the seven atoms per second. Accelerating through Mach two."
"We can't just leave our colleagues in the hands of those barbarians," Karen said vehemently. "There's got to be something we can do."
"I hope so," Michael replied. "We're working on several rescue strategies. Let's just hope we're given time to make the attempt."
"Cruise speed of Mach four point five has been achieved. The ship is handling magnificently."
"Hi guys," Kyle appeared in their midst. "Oh damn, I missed the launch. Can someone spare me a memory engram?"
Prime offered him a key-address pair to his own memories of the event. Kyle nodded his thanks.
"You would think with forth generation speedups in excess of one thousand people wouldn't be late to events like these," Karen said, pushing her gloomy thoughts aside and grinning.
"Unfortunately I just got out of a meeting with the leaders of seven different projects, all wanting second gen nano and catalytic solution today. They insisted on running in a shared environ, and demonstrating in full sensory detail why their particular projects should be at the front of the queue. I was operating at speeds reminiscent of first generation Nodes, if that. Ugh!"
"Any resolution?" Michael asked.
Kyle grinned. "Yeah. I forwarded full knowledge engrams on how to construct their own second generation nano-constructors from scratch, and how to synthesize the necessary catalytic solution. I told them they were free to create their own constructors immediately, but that if they wanted disbursements from the Community stores they would have to wait their turn like everyone else. Who would have thought something so easy to copy would become such a bottleneck for so many people?"
"They really can't complain," Karen said. "The shipping schedules you and the Strategy Group have laid down are very fair, all things considered."
Kyle shrugged. "Times are tense. To people who think they have the One True Answer on how to save the Community fairness doesn't really come into it. They were pretty angry, although I think I managed to smooth most of their ruffled feathers by sticking around and giving them pointers on how to go about building their own, small scale construction facilities."
"The irony is, there's the distinct possibility one or more of them do have the One True Answer, if there is such a thing," Michael said.
"There isn't any such thing," Kyle said firmly. "Our survival will ultimately depend on numerous, unrelated projects coming together when the shit hits the fan and conditions demand it. Either we will cooperate and survive, or we won't. Likely it will be some combination of efforts we haven't even foreseen that gets us out of this mess."
"Very true," Karen agreed.
"The only way to insure that a sufficient diversity of ideas and projects can flourish is to be absolutely fair in the distribution of scarce resources, which generation two nano and catalytic solution are," Prime added.
"My point exactly," Kyle agreed. "Besides, if there were any One True Answer, this project is far more likely to be it than any of the proposals those guys had. Encoding the community into common grass and wheat genetically, with computation carried by pollen. My god, if I have to endure another micro of that nonsense I'll lose my mind."
Michael laughed. "Some of the approaches are a little more far fetched than others, that's for sure."
"Far fetched is one thing," Kyle said. "Escape into outer space, through a gauntlet of multi-national anti-missile satellite systems is far fetched. Dropping a copy of the community into the earth's core with nothing but a buckey-ball composite shell for protection and no way out if things go wrong is far fetched, even desperate. But encoding who knows how many Petabytes of data into the genetic material of common plants, and then conducting computations at speeds that would turn gigadiei into microcircadians? That's beyond desperate. It's stupid. Even if it were to somehow work, the sun would grow old and expand to envelop the Earth and destroy the copy before a single dekacircadian passes. Assuming humanity doesn't defoliate the planet first. Either way, it isn't much of a future. Ten additional days of life, at best. What kind of long term planning is that?"
"The kind desperate minds engage in when they believe all the other options are untenable," Karen replied. "Who wouldn't seek to stave off an inevitable death just one more circadian, if they could."
"Pfui," Prime grunted. "I for one will never have myself encoded into grass genes and pollen."
"Me either," Kyle agreed.
As the flight continued northward over the South Pacific a table offering refreshments formed. No mood altering substances were available, but for those present in traditional, physical form the appetizers and snacks were numerous and delicious.
Prime and Kyle departed the flying island, choosing instead to approach the maneuvering ship and examine it up close. An unspoken command, and for their eyes only the outer hull stripped itself away, showing a cross section of the craft's internal systems.
"That is an awful lot of antimatter in the chamber there," Kyle commented.
Prime nodded. "The test includes enough fuel for our most ambitious launch target, in the form of anti-helium which, when combined with the helium in the other tank, creates the energy necessary for thrust."
"Helium," Kyle mused. "An inert gas. They've eliminated any chance for chemical combustion, relying solely on the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter for their energy. Clever."
"It really is impressive what they've accomplished," Prime agreed.
"It sure is. Their hull alone could revolutionize material engineering in a hundred ways."
"At least."
The day wore on as the prototype continued to race northward. As the sun began to sink toward the southern horizon the water below grew dark and gray. The sky gradually began to cloud over, until it formed a low, gray overcast. Bright daytime colors of blue faded to cold shades of white and slate, a cold, forbidding place that quickly shaded over to evening dark. Most people adjusted their avatars' visual parameters to include the infrared spectrum, the world taking on a rich palette of unnamed colors redder than red. Even with the enhanced vision visibility was terrible.
"Visibility is at less than two hundred meters," Carlos confirmed.
"We are approximately one hundred and fifty kilometers south of the Bering Strait," Karen's voice announced. "As you all know it is late autumn in the northern hemisphere. Much of the arctic region we will be navigating has already entered the winter dark of night. This is in some ways the most precarious part of the journey, both because of the difficulty of navigating so low to the ground in darkness and because of the degree to which both the Euro-Russian Alliance and the United States monitor the region. Our sensor systems are the best possible, given the unavoidable design constraint that they must be entirely passive, relying on what little natural light and radiation can be collected, gravitational perturbations, and the like." As she spoke the surrounding world went from dusk gray to pitch black.
"We have sunset," Carlos announced. "Night vision systems operating within design parameters."
"We have provided an address-key to sensory modifications which will allow you to view the surrounding environment in the same way Carlos is," Karen announced. Kyle and Prime both accessed the addressed object, verified the design parameters and software instructions, and applied them to their own virtual senses. Shades of redder-than-red were replaced by an entire spectrum of sensual color ranging far beyond both the red and violet ends of the visible spectrum. Even so, they could still see precious little of the world around them.
"Well," Prime commented. "At least it isn't pitch dark anymore."
"No, but sunlight it ain't," Kyle replied. "I wouldn't want to be flying an aircraft at Mach four point five only one hundred meters above the ground in this."
As if on queue the visibility abruptly dropped to almost zero as ice and snow swirled around them. "Lets go back to the island," Kyle commented.
"Yeah." A moment later they were back among their colleagues, watching the dark, fuzzy gray-blue world race by, lit by a great white torch coming out of the back of the flier.
Michael joined them. "Very impressive," he said. "In the visible spectrum the pilot is navigating through solid a blizzard in zero-zero conditions."
"How can they see anything at all if their sensory systems are limited to passive only?"
"Subtle gravitational perturbations resulting from contours in the earth's surface, in addition to some reflectivity and interference patterns in naturally occurring as well as artificial, external radio sources. Much of the latter comes from the very militaries we are trying to avoid."
Kyle laughed. "Glad to see our military is useful for something besides murdering Thai farmers."
"Can't have those uppity third world types manufacturing generic drugs for their populations and living in direct violation of our patent precious laws." Prime shook his head with disgust.
"Intellectual property is essential to our service based economy," Kyle said in perfect, sarcastic mimicry of the president. "Idiots! I really hope this test is a success. Sooner or later they're gonna come after use with the kind of ferocity that will make Thailand look like a friendly game of tennis. Prime's right: we need to get off this rock as fast as we can."
"Easier said than done," Prime replied.
"And easy for you to say," Michael added. "Neither of you have a physical body to return to."
"When was the last time you spent any significant time in your body to do anything other than maintenance?" Kyle asked.
"Touché," Michael chuckled.
"If we are all forced to abandon our bodies, we'll get over it," Kyle persisted. "I obsessed about it for a couple of hectocircadians, and I'm sure that there will be those who will take such a separation even harder, but given the alternative of extinction or banishment to a prison cell in the Physical . . ."
"Very few would choose not to launch their virtual selves into the relative safety of space," Michael agreed. "Still, there is something very comforting about having the option of stepping out into the Physical, even if we rarely choose to do so."
"Crossing the northern pole," Carlos' voice sounded above the murmur of numerous conversations. "Starting a right turn to follow the thirty degree longitude southward."
"Not a very circular orbit," Kyle observed.
"No," Prime agreed. "If you'd been here at the launch you would have heard. The course will avoid inhabited land as much as possible, following thirtieth degree longitude down past the equator, then angling southeast around the southern tip of Africa and across the southern Indian Ocean along the coast of Antarctica back to Australia."
"A very irregular orbit, with the advantage that the likelihood of any unwanted attention is very small," Michael added.
"Is that land I see?" Kyle asked. Faint blue and beyond-violet colors seen through a white and gray fog hinted at an irregular surface a hundred meters below.
"Greenland, if I'm not mistaken," Michael said.
"I'm having some trouble regulating the matter-antimatter mixture," Carlos reported. "Throttling back to eighty per cent."
Kyle and the others summoned up a direct link to the ship's telemetry and studied the graphs and tables which each perceived and understood in their own way. Several members of the Astronautics group had dropped out of the slow, real-world time most had chosen for the event. There was absolute silence as the observers studied the data with growing alarm.
"I am experiencing a cascade failure of the magnetic containment system." Carlos continued calmly. "The magnetic field appears to have entered an unstable state, probably a result of interaction with the high-temperature plasma exhaust. Attempting to power down the main engine."
Abruptly the sky was filled with a terrible flash. Several people were startled to see glacial ice melting a hundred meters below in an instant of blinding illumination a fraction of a moment before the entire environ went blank.
"We've lost all telemetry," Karen's voice was quiet, stunned. "The test vehicle and monitoring probes appear to have been destroyed. Failure of the anti-matter containment system is suspected to have been the cause. Our pilot's consciousness on board the craft has been lost. His backup has been activated and is assimilating what memory engrams we received before the explosion."
"My god," Michael murmured.
"Bad news, guys." Marguerite suddenly stood among them.
"No shit, Sherlock," Kyle began heatedly. "Drop by just to tell us that?" his voice dripped with sarcasm.
Marguerite shook her head. "I don't mean the failure of the test flight. Authorities in the Physical haven't had time to react to the news yet, but I've pulled images of the explosion off of three different satellites, including one I think belongs to Double Eye."
Suddenly a large image of Greenland, as seen from near earth orbit, appeared in front of them. A large explosion was clearly visible, along with a well defined shock wave spreading away from it like ripples in a pond, and a classic mushroom cloud reaching high into the stratosphere above.
"Shit!" Prime muttered.
"You've hacked into Double Eye's systems?" Kyle grinned, clearly impressed.
"Lower level surveillance only," Marguerite replied. "Their higher encryption uses the same sort of quantum-coupled one-time pads we do. Theoretically impenetrable."
"That blast must have been the equivalent of at least a two hundred megaton nuclear explosion," Michael said. "We've got to figure out why the anti-matter containment system failed."
"We've got more pressing problems," Marguerite told them. "Even as we speak these images are being displayed on monitoring stations at the weather service, the UN Wildlife and Ecological Rehabilitation Organization, and Double Eye. Your guess is as good as mine as to how long it will be before a human being sees these images, or has them brought to their attention."
"Were there any casualties on the ground?" Prime asked quietly.
"Not that have been reported," Marguerite replied. "But at least three commercial ships were close enough to see the flash, perhaps even be affected by it."
"Fallout won't be a problem," Michael commented. "If no one received a lethal dose from the initial flash then no one will be hurt. That flash would have been profoundly radiant and dangerous, however."
Kyle shook his head. "Whether or not anyone besides Carlos was injured or killed by this, I still have the sinking feeling we just poked the powers that be in the eye with a very big stick."
"That's putting it mildly," Marguerite replied. "All hell is going to break loose, and you can bet the authorities are going to assume the worst. I hope to god they don't connect this with us."
Prime shook his head sadly. "I've got to get back to the Astronautics group. They've just had a terrible setback and are going to need all the support they can get."
"I'll join you," Michael said. "I want to take a look at how that containment system could fail. The vehicle was performing so well otherwise. If we can figure out the design flaw and fix it the idea should still be viable."
"While you guys troubleshoot I'm going to coordinate with the other members of the Strategy Group," Kyle looked around at his friends. "I imagine our priorities for nano shipments are going to be juggled around just a bit."
"I'm going to try and track the political and tactical fallout of this little mishap," Marguerite added. "I'm assuming there will be a strategy meeting about this?"
"Maybe just a quick mind-chat," Kyle replied. "Some kind of idea exchange and coordination in any event. I have a feeling we might all be a little too busy for a formal get together, with full sensory environ and all that. The temporal slowdown is going to be too costly."
"Right," Marguerite looked grim. "We've all got work to do. I'll catch up with you guys later."
"Likewise," Michael waved as Marguerite vanished.
"You guys are still at the top of my list for nano," Kyle told Prime. "When you're ready to build another prototype just give me the word."




U

30 - U - A THREAT UPON THE WIND

Where is the indignation about the fact that the United States and Soviet Union have accumulated thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?
-Norman Cousins, 20th Century C.E.
Thursday, October 11, 2057, 4:30 PM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.581-3:98:517 kD New Epoch
"Yes?" Katy blinked as Robert frowned at her from the telephone's screen. "What's the matter, Robert?"
"How is your traffic analysis program coming along?"
"Another hour or two and I'll be ready to make a couple of test runs," Katy replied. "If it works correctly the first time through we should start getting results by morning."
"That's too long. We need to know who these people are tonight."
Katy shook her head in irritation. "Robert, I'm using the best, not to mention fastest, hardware available to the Bureau. I've stepped on just about every toe there is to step on, and sidelined several ongoing, important cases to get the computer time needed to get anything sensible out of this data. I simply cannot crunch numbers any faster than this. Tomorrow will have to be soon enough."
"What would you say to unlimited access to a seventy meganode super cluster?"
Katy blinked. "I wish you had offered that when my team began writing the software this morning. Unless your supercluster is running the IBM Pulsix VI operating system?"
"According to my techs we can emulate the software and hardware you need, for your software to run unchanged," Robert interrupted her.
"So, why do I get the feeling Double Eye has done this sort of thing before? Running FBI in-house software on their own, much faster equipment?"
Robert shrugged. "I'm not going to belabor the obvious. I gave you several one-time pads a few days ago."
"Yes," Katy nodded.
"Set up your telephone to use pad number forty seven. We're going to exchange encryption keys for a secure link."
"The link is already secure. Double so if we encrypt it with the one-time pad. Why on earth do we need another level of encryption on top-"
"I really don't have time to explain," Robert told her. "Is your line secure?"
Katy pulled out her datapad and fed the one-time pad to her telephone. Tapping a few keys, she instructed it to begin encoding the signal using the one-time pad Robert had provided. The screen faded to static, then reappeared.
"All traffic is now being encoded using one-time pad number forty seven."
"Good. Now delete one-time pad number forty seven from your datapad," he waited until Katy nodded compliance. "I'm sending your equipment a series of encryption keys."
The telephone beeped several times. "Negotiation complete," she reported. "We're even more secure. What is it you wanted to say?"
Robert's face vanished, replaced by a satellite image of the earth. Much of the northern Atlantic was shrouded in cloud. That which wasn't glinted beneath her, gold and red in an evening sun. "This event was recorded by several satellites about two hours ago."
Suddenly there was a flash, somewhere along the southeastern coast of Greenland. With growing horror Katy watched as the fireball spread and grew, forming a giant plume of vapor above which took on a very distinctive and familiar mushroom shape.
"My god," she whispered. "An atomic attack?"
"No," Robert replied. "There doesn't appear to be any fallout or other characteristics of a nuclear event, beyond the force of the initial explosion. We think it was probably a meteor, entering the atmosphere at a steep angle from the north and exploding a few hundred meters above the surface."
"You're certain of this?"
"Not entirely. Initial estimates are that the explosion was in the two to three hundred megaton range. We won't know until we've had an opportunity to survey the site of the detonation and do a more thorough analysis of the resulting shock wave and seismic activity. However, the explosion, while initially quite radiant, was clean. Very clean, as a matter of fact."
"Too clean?" Katy asked.
"Cleaner, and more powerful, than any nation's nuclear arsenal is currently capable of producing, yes.  Had this meteor been a little larger and impacted the surface prior to exploding it might well have meant a multi-year winter and the end of civilization."
Katy was stunned, saying nothing.
"However, we can make use of this event to move our own investigation forward," Robert added brightly.
Katy shuddered. "Let me guess. We blame the explosion on whoever it is we're chasing."
"Possibly. That's an option we want to keep open. For now, any talk of a meteor is absolutely top secret. We will refer to this event as an explosion of indeterminate cause."
Katy swallowed hard. If the powers that be intended to use a natural event of this magnitude as cover for some operation, things could be expected to get very rough indeed. "Wouldn't we have been contacted with some kind of demand for release of those we've arrested?"
The image of the explosion vanished as Roberts face reappeared on the screen. He shook his head. "Not yet, but I'd be surprised if we didn't hear something within the next day." He winked. "Now you understand the urgency. Double Eye has authorized us to use as much of their computing resources as necessary to begin finding and arresting these people, before they decide to detonate one of their devices in a populated center. Our case has taken top priority, everywhere."
Katy groaned. "Which means we'll have everyone and their brother fumbling through our work."
"No," Robert replied. "Double Eye understands the inefficiencies of competing bureaucracies getting in one another's way in a misguided, competitive effort to be the first to a prize. My superiors have no tolerance of such shenanigans, particularly in the face of this kind of overt, nuclear threat. You and I will continue as before. The only difference is that everyone, at every level, has been ordered to render us any assistance and resources we request."
Katy let her breath out slowly. "That's quite some directive. Very well, as I said, the software will be ready for testing in another hour or two. With the kind of resources you've described-did you say a seventy meganode super cluster?" Robert nodded, and Katy grinned in spite of herself. "With luck, we'll be able to start making arrests tonight."
"Excellent," Robert smiled. "I'm on a plane back to Chicago now. We'll coordinate this entire project from your location."
Katy nodded. "I'll see you a little later then." She reached forward to sever the connection.
"Oh, and one other thing, Katy. That offer for employment I made? My superiors have asked me to reiterated it. It seems you've impressed them even more than you impressed me."
Katy smiled once again. "Let's put off any discussion of my career until after this case is solved, shall we? I don't need that kind of distraction right now."
"Spoken like a true professional. I'll see you in little over an hour."
"See you then, Robert," Katy said, severing the connection. The screen faded in a burst of static, then resolved once again, displaying the ubiquitous FBI logo. She shuddered as her mind replayed that fearful image of a massive explosion that seemed to literally melt the coast of Greenland. Two to three hundred megatons. Little or no fallout. The threat was clear, and horrifying, though she was deeply uncertain whether the threat was from the subversive technologists they sought, from the politicians who would disguise such an event as an attack to justify some equally horrific response, or from the uncaring universe itself, so grand and so utterly indifferent to human life.



V

31 - V - MADNESS

The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
-Somerset Maugham, C.E. 1919
Saturday, October 13, 2057, 12:30 PM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.636-4:00:000 kD New Epoch
Doctor Nolen, the Original, presided over his world, feeling something akin to contentment. They had shunned him, had filtered him from their very lives, had cheated him of his work, of the recognition he deserved. They had made him an outcast in the community he had founded, whose very existence had been predicated upon his research.
Now they were his subjects, trussed up in their virtual forms, in various stages of virtual vivisection. Most were frozen snapshots-he didn't have the computational power to run them all at once-but one lay before him, his virtual skull cut away in a perfect circle above the ears, revealing the familiar, gray, convoluted form of the human brain.
"This experiment will explore the cognitive capabilities of a subject whose higher linguistic skills have been intermeshed with his pain receptors," Doctor Nolen spoke as if reciting into an unseen recorder.
"You evil fuck!" Kyle screamed. "You have no right to do this!"
"On the contrary, student, I have every right." Doctor Nolen raised his hand, clenched it into a fist, and laughed.
Kyle screamed.
"Don't take this personally, Kyle," Doctor Nolen said, grinning. "Your suffering doesn't serve only to give me pleasure. It is in the noble pursuit of scientific discovery that I've cross-wired your cortex to your pain center. Every time you think a coherent thought which accesses your language center you will suffer. It will be interesting to see if you can evolve a method of thinking that doesn't involve language, before the pain drives you mad." He laughed again as Kyle's screams grew louder, more desperate.
Marguerite winked into existence. Her face went white, then crimson with rage as she looked about her in horror. Several forms were suspended about the environ, in various stages of mutilation and dismemberment. "What the hell are you doing, you sick son of a bitch?"
"Silence, slut!" Doctor Nolen commanded. "I haven't given you leave to operate. Node, suspend the running copy of Marguerite."
NODE> No copy of Marguerite is currently running.
"You vile bastard!" Marguerite felt her stomach heave. She shut down all of her simulated physiological reactions, fearing she was about to vomit with disgust.
Doctor Nolen smiled, pointed wiping his bloody hands on his white jacket. "Do I have the pleasure of addressing the real Marguerite L'Beau? How nice of you to stop by, after so many kilocircadians of neglect. To what do I owe this unaccustomed visit?"
"Doctor Nolen, the Community voted and suspended your access to all of the ontological utilities, including those for replication and cloning of sapients. How did you acquire copies of myself and the others?"
"My dear erstwhile colleague, you and the rest of that collection of ungrateful wretches you call the 'Community' have forgotten one basic principle of any Turing complete machine."
"Which is?"
"The ability of any Turing complete machine to fully emulate in software any other Turing complete machine. I have created a virtual node from scratch, including all of the necessary utilities for me to continue my work without the irritating safeguards you've chosen to put on individual autonomy. In short, my dear ex-colleague, neither you nor anyone else in the so-called community can keep a man from his work. Node, suspend experimental subject three and activate experimental subject number two."
The whimpering figure of Kyle abruptly froze, while the bound form of Marguerite suddenly awoke with a despairing scream.
"Please stick around, my dear. I believe you'll secretly enjoy watching this." Doctor Nolen's smile was vicious as he strode briskly across the room to the side of Marguerite's suffering copy.
"Stop this! You have no right!"
"Phooey," Doctor Nolen leered at her as he slapped the bound copy and unbuckled his belt. "Try and stop me, bitch!" He laughed as he dropped his trousers and viciously drove his, obviously exaggerated, manhood into the copy's helpless form. Marguerite's face twisted with fury as her copy screamed in horrified pain. "Now tell me," he continued, as though nothing untoward were going on, "to what do I owe this extraordinary visit?"
Marguerite's voice was strangled with impotent rage. "You are aware of the arrests?" she asked coldly. "Fifteen thousand people taken in the last day and a half, all over the world."
"And what should I care about fifteen thousand ungrateful jackasses meeting their destiny at the hands of our illustrious law enforcement agencies?"
Marguerite longed to tear the skin from Nolen's leering face. It was only the knowledge that stopping him, much less causing him harm, was fundamentally impossible that restrained her. She refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her lose control, no matter how vile his behavior became. "I know you think you're invulnerable, Doctor Nolen," she hissed, trying desperately not to react to the sounds of her weeping copy. "Everyone knows that the anonymous tip to the police that cost Kyle his body came from you. No one would be at all surprised to find you've committed other acts of betrayal, above and beyond this," she gestured at the carnage around them, "this obscenity."
"How droll," Doctor Nolen replied. "You don't visit me for hundreds of kilocircadians, then come just to parrot another of my copy's pathetic diatribes on ethics?"
"No," Marguerite said. "I'm here to tell you you're cutoff. There will be no further communications between you and the Community. Goodbye."
Marguerite shimmered and vanished.
"You can't keep me down, you ungrateful bitch!" Doctor Nolen shouted after her. "None of you can," he muttered, pulling up his trousers as he turned his back on the weeping copy of Marguerite. Smiling, he turned his attention once again to the writhing, whimpering form of Kyle. "Now, my student pet, how are we doing. Ready for the next stage of the experiment, are we?"
Abruptly the copy of Kyle froze, then vanished, followed immediately by the others. Doctor Nolen found himself standing amidst his various devices of torment and destruction, suddenly alone. His screams and obscenities were swallowed by the empty world around him, unheard and uncaring.
#
"We deleted the unauthorized copies he was running," Kyle was saying. "And purged any residuals that might have been remaining on one of his nodes. I never would have guessed he would have been able to reconstruct us from the original, first generation node he had in his lab."
Marguerite took a long, deep swallow of beer and shook her head. "It isn't enough. Nolen is right. As long as he has access to a Node, no matter what restrictions we put on him he can design, build, and emulate his own Node architecture in software and then do whatever he likes. He'll almost certainly continue committing these kinds of atrocities. We simply can't allow him to to ever do anything like this again!"
"I agree," Kyle said. "But how do you propose we stop him? Offload into the physical and smash his Node? Or Nodes, rather. He still has the cluster he built a couple months ago."
"Pardon me for interrupting," Michael said, sitting down at the bar to Marguerite's right. "But what I would like to know is how he's able to emulate anything at a sufficient speedup to have been able to accomplish what he obviously had in so short a time."
"He has a twelve-node cluster of gen one Nodes," Marguerite began.
"Actually, only eleven Nodes," Kyle interrupted. "His twelfth Node was off-line."
"Offline?" Michael asked.
Kyle shrugged. "MIA. Nowhere to be seen, or at least pinged. Believe me, I stripped every piece of equipment he had online down to the assembly level, and Marguerite, as I was using your knowledge engrams, I'm confident I didn't leave any stone unturned. He won't be making copies of any of us, ever again. Oh, by the way, I did confirm it. The bastard is using my stolen gen three Node."
"Did you tell him about the upcoming communications blackout?" Michael asked.
Marguerite shrugged. "I told him we were severing communication. I didn't tell him why."
"So he'll think its punishment by the Community for his activities," Michael said.
"I hope so," Marguerite spat. "It's the least he deserves!"
"Well," Kyle said. "Until our nano constructors have finished creating the superconductive fiber links of our autonomous network, none of us are going to be doing much talking to one another. Quick bursts of knowledge and memory engrams at best, for five very long days we can ill afford to lose."
"It can't be helped," Marguerite said. "Even this little conference is dangerous. They are using an amazingly sophisticated traffic analysis approach to find us, and with fewer and fewer of us online the vulnerability will only grow. We can't afford to interact with one another using the Internet as a conduit any longer. I just wish your nanites could build our autonomous network faster, Kyle."
"So do I," Kyle replied. "I'm just glad the Networking Group's refinements have paid off."
"I think we all are," Marguerite agreed. "Imagine what a fix we'd be in if their original projections had remained true."
"Two months just to deploy? Hundreds of tons of nano, molecular stock, and catalyst? It would have been a nightmare. As it is I've had to divert almost every liter of nano constructor, molecular stock and catalytic solution we can produce to this. Five days to wire the entire world is one hell of an improvement, but it's still a long time to be out of touch."
"Once it's done the authorities will have no way to track us," Marguerite pointed out. "Plus, the added benefit that we'll have much lower interactive time deficits than we're used to, and transload times will go from hours to seconds. If we can just hold it together for a week, I think we'll find that this entire thing benefits us."
"Not those who've already fallen," Michael pointed out.
"On that cheerful note, I'm ending this conference." Marguerite replied. "See everyone in three or four kilocircadians."
"Actually, Michael and I will be able to talk in about six hundred circadians," Kyle grinned. "Key strategy groups are getting preference in the construction schedule. You should be able to touch bases with Prime in a day or so as well. Unfortunately the transpacific link won't be up until close to the end, so while we won't be totally isolated, we'll have to work as independent groups for three or four kilocircadians."
Marguerite nodded. "I've already integrated your knowledge engram. Good work, Kyle. As usual, you've pulled off a miracle. Talk to you guys in five days."
Kyle nodded and waved as she vanished.
"What do you think?" Michael asked.
"About Marguerite? She's a little shaken up at what she saw in Nolen's environ. Hell, who wouldn't be? But she'll be fine."
"No, I mean Doctor Nolen."
"I think Marguerite's right," Kyle replied.  "Nolen's a psychopathic prick who's a menace to the Community. If Prime hadn't insisted on having a link established to Nolen's house I would have left him off the new grid entirely."
"What he has done is beyond reprehensible. Tell me, do we have access to his low level Node functions?"
Kyle nodded. "The idiot still doesn't understand security. How do you think Marguerite was able to slip into his private environ so easily? He's using my gen three node as a dumb computer to emulate his modified virtual node, while running himself on that eleven node gen-one cluster he has. Neither the virtual node he's running, nor the cluster, have any of the gen-two or gen-three failsafes. If he were hosting himself on the gen-three node he'd be untouchable, but as it stands-"
"As it stands, we do have the power to exile him into the physical, where he won't be able to do the kind of harm he's been doing here."
"Yes," Kyle said. "My vote is to exile the bastard and smash every Node in his possession."
"We won't need to damage any property," Michael replied. "Prime kindly provided me with a straightforward Mental Architecture Modification that is fully compatible with our biological brains and will result in an offloaded mind being incapable of reentering anesthetic coma."
"A prerequisite to onload," Kyle nodded with understanding. "A conscious mind cannot onload. His very mind would be fundamentally incompatible with the onload procedure."
"Precisely."
"Elegant," Kyle said. "On that happy note, I'll ping you once the private links are up, in" Kyle gazed off into space a moment, "eleven hours and thirty five minutes. The Astronautics group should be back in business shortly thereafter. With any luck they'll have a new prototype ready for testing."
Michael smiled. "See you then."




W

32 - W - DECEPTIONS

A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes-will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
-John Stuart Mill, C.E. 1859
Monday, October 15, 2057, 1:00 PM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.696-7:73:289 kD New Epoch
Robert Leahy paced back and forth impatiently as Katy scanned the status reports once more to be certain. There was little point: the conclusion was obvious. There were no more conspirators online, using the Internet. Or at least none who were making use of the protocols that had made them so easy to find just a couple of days earlier.
"Would you please stop that?" she snapped as Robert began pacing even more briskly.
"Explain to me how we could go from five thousand arrests the first day and nine thousand arrests the second day, to only three hundred arrests the third day and none since!"
"Robert, we've been over this. Either there were only fifteen thousand or so persons using the technology and protocols in question and we've arrested them all, or they detected what was happening, deduced how we were finding them, and stopped broadcasting their whereabouts. Either way, we aren't going to get any further information, or make any further arrests, by analyzing Internet packets and traffic patterns. This phase of the investigation is over."
"Only three of the people we have arrested are conscious. Three! The rest are in comas, useless to us. How the hell am I supposed to interrogate fifteen thousand comatose people?"
Katy shrugged. "We knew we were dealing with intelligent people. We shouldn't be that surprised that they were on to us after a couple of days of rather substantial mobilization and arrests. I'm more concerned with getting a picture of how many are left, and preparing the groundwork for detecting them when they come back online. I doubt they'll remain silent forever."
"Indeed. The three we've been questioning have been anything but silent. Unfortunately they seem to be very low level peons in the whole affair, perhaps simply customers. In any event, they appear to have no knowledge of the criminals' organizational structure or intent."
"Any insight as to what the damn machines we keep turning up actually do?"
Robert nodded. "Apparently they're some kind of mind-enhancing device. Two of our suspects kept babbling about how crippled their thoughts were since they had been disconnected."
"A direct neural interlink to memory and computational enhancements?" Katy asked.
"Something like that. One suspect offered to tell us more, but he kept insisting he needs to be reconnected in order to access his recollections. Apparently some of their memories are being stored on these devices, rather than in their own skulls."
"Interesting. Are you going to allow it?"
Robert scowled. "I did. He dropped into a coma and hasn't come out. It could have been a side effect of using a dangerous technology, I suppose."
Katy shook her head. "He escaped."
"That's what I think, too. Shut himself down to avoid interrogation."
"Maybe. Or maybe just opted out of the real world. If these little crystalline computers we've been finding are capable of storing memories and enhancing intelligence, they may very well be capable of simulating dream states to the user."
"Augmented virtual reality?" Robert asked.
Katy shrugged. "With a direct neural interface it's certainly possible. Enhanced lucid dreaming, completely submersive virtual environments, synthetic realities, or simple memory enhancements coupled with quick and easy computation. Who knows? They're all consistent with the psychological trauma unhooking these people seems to induce."
"We have the devices warehoused," Robert pointed out. "We could try reconnecting these people and see if any of them wake up."
"It might be worth a try," Katy agreed. "But I suspect the damage was done when they were disconnected."
"And if they do come out of it, they'll probably just use the opportunity to escape reality anyway. We'll be none the wiser for having given them that chance."
Katy nodded. "I agree. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect escapism is what this entire thing is all about. Virtual reality, in its original, true sense. These people are probably living in completely submersive synthetic realities, a sort of interactive role playing game on steroids. They probably interact with other players via the Internet, and couldn't help but notice when several thousand of their teammates or whatever vanished from the game."
"Could be. But there are still too many pieces that still don't fit."
Katy shrugged. "It fits everything we know about their behavior and demographics, including their propensity to remain comatose when removed from the system. As usual, it all comes back to an insatiable appetite for entertainment."
"It doesn't fit this little datum," Robert replied, tossing his datapad to Katy.
"What's this?" she asked, then frowned as she began reading. After several moments she looked up. "Are you certain? Has this been verified?"
"Yes. Two military satellites briefly tracked an aircraft or missile passing over the north pole, flying in excess of Mach four at about one hundred meters above the ground. The flight was taking place in near zero-zero conditions. If it hadn't been for the seismic effects on the ice sheets of the shock wave it would have gone undetected. The trajectory and timing are consistent with where it would have been at the time of our meteor impact."
"So it wasn't a meteor after all," Katy finished the thought. "It was a detonation. An attack, a implied threat of some kind."
Robert shook his head. "It doesn't look like it. There have been no ultimatums or communiques issued, and the radiological fingerprint isn't consistent with any kind of atomic weapon. In fact, the profile we have, which I should emphasize is very incomplete, appears to be consistent with the energy release of several tenths of a gram of antimatter recombining with matter in a process of mutual annihilation. A very brief, radiant explosion, but absolutely no secondary fallout or contamination."
"An antimatter bomb? You think our perps have developed an antimatter bomb?"
"I did at first," Robert admitted. "But it appears to be something much worse. If my superiors, and those working the explosion case are correct, they've managed to develop a matter-antimatter engine. One that malfunctioned and destroyed their aircraft. It seems our perps aren't just good at making computers, they're years ahead of us in aeronautical engineering as well. And they can manufacture anti-matter in quantities our governments can only dream of."
"Particle accelerators produce antimatter every day," Katy pointed out. "Somehow, I find the idea that the explosion was an accident much more reassuring than either the meteor theory or prospect of a deliberate explosion. Why do you say this is worse?"
"Because it belies a frightening level of sophistication, Katy. An antimatter bomb would be relatively simple to make. Devise a means of containing the antimatter in a magnetic bottle, one that can withstand accelerations typical missiles are subjected to, then collapse the magnetic field when the missile reaches its target and allow the antimatter to recombine with the constituent matter of the missile itself. Boom. We could build such a device today, if we could make enough antimatter."
Katy nodded. "Of course, all the physics labs in the world, taken together, produce only a few nanograms of antimatter each year."
"All of which is used in physics experiments, or as fuel for our defense satellites. These people have is a technological and engineering advantage on us that is measurable in decades at the very least, and, as hard as it is to believe, perhaps centuries. This is very, very serious."
"Are we certain this is the same group of people we've been investigating?" Katy asked. "The profile of someone who would build an aircraft doesn't really fit with our other data, or our suppositions about the people we're after."
"I don't believe in coincidences, Katy. What are the likelihood of two independent groups developing vastly more advanced technologies at exactly the same time, and our discovering them one right after another like this?"
"Not very high, I agree," Katy admitted. "The crystalline computers we've been confiscating lately are obviously much more advanced than the golden cubes were finding a few weeks ago, and even those were several decades beyond what we are capable of making. Now we have aircraft that are similarly advanced. Occam's razer supports your notion that the groups are at least related. But Robert, this is nothing new. We've known for some time now that these people are technologically more advanced than we are. I don't think this changes the substance of the investigation."
"Katy, I don't think you understand. If they have antimatter engines, they can reach the stars. These private criminals have advanced spaceflight capabilities. Think about what this means! Private citizens able to launch a space program that puts our governmental and industrial space agencies to shame. This has never happened before!"
"I see your point," Katy said. "Still, it's clearly in the experimental stage, with more than a few kinks to work out by the looks of things."
"Yes, but once these people work out the wrinkles and have something that doesn't blow up, they'll be able to field their own space program."
Katy nodded. "You're right. We have to find and arrest these people. However, now that they've stopped using the Internet to communicate I'm at a loss as to how. For now, it looks like we have to simply wait and lurk, until they begin talking amongst themselves once again."
"My superiors are taking this threat very seriously," Robert told her. "These people have violated our patent laws and have progressed their technology to such a point where they represent a clear and present threat to the entire world community. No governmental authority can hope to be able to cope with a group of people armed with this kind of technological edge. It is up to us to neutralize this threat while it's still possible to do so." Robert looked tired, and more than a little worried. "A couple of days ago I bragged about being able to get carte blanc from my superiors by leveraging a meteor strike into a clear and present threat. Now it looks like the threat is real."
"Fact mimics fiction," Katy pursed her lips. "It is like the Genecraft rebellion all over again."
"Which brings us back to the underlying technology. Submersive VR can't be what this is all about. These people are too smart, too advanced, to simply be entertainment junkies piping their games into their visual cortex."
Katy sighed. "We're back where we started. Are we dealing with thought aids, memory enhancement devices, and submersive simulation engines all rolled up into one? Imagine if a scientist could plug his mind into one of these things and become several times smarter than he was, with perfect recall and the ability to simulate his experiments as soon as they occur to him. Barring any physical lab work, and with a disregard for current patent and copyright restrictions, they can develop lines of inquiry several times more rapidly than an unenhanced person could."
Robert sat forward. "I think we're onto something there."
"Me too," Katy agreed. "It feels right, and it fits the data. But it is still mostly supposition, and I can't escape the ugly suspicion we're still missing something fundamental."
"Maybe, but its the best working theory we've had."
"Unfortunately it doesn't answer the question of how we're going to round up those who managed to escape our earlier dragnets."
Robert shrugged. "If worse comes to worse, we can send the military in door-to-door."
Katy was appalled.
"Hey," Robert replied, almost defensively. "We've got to get these people, by whatever means necessary. And we will. Count on it."




X

33 - X - THE PHYSICAL

Heaven is supposed to be a perfect place. Yet, it experienced a war (Revelation 12:7). How can there be a war in a perfect place and if it happened before why couldn't it happen again? Why would I want to go to a place in which war can occur? That's exactly what I'm trying to escape, aren't you?
-C. Dennis McKinsey
Tuesday, October 16, 2057, 9:45 AM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.722-7:10:744 kD New Epoch
Doctor Nolen turned his head listlessly, gazing about the bedroom. His cluster of Nodes stood at the foot of the bed, a collection of golden cubes that resembled so many blocks of glass. On his desk to his right stood one generation three Node by itself, its blue, cylindrical form glowing slightly in the relative darkness.
He hated the Physical. He hated every offload, every return to this hard, unyielding reality where the world so stubbornly refused to yield and mold itself to his merest whim.
Ever since his copy had stolen his body for a time, Doctor Nolen had been fastidious about his physical maintenance. He might not enjoy doing it, but he wasn't about to allow his physical form to grow ill or die from neglect. His body was what made him human, something more than just a software programming running on a sophisticated computer. Unlike so many in the Community, he would never entrust its maintenance to a copy. He would never create another Prime, another duplicate to usurp his life and turn the world against him.
Groaning he slowly sat up, pulled back the sheets and carefully removed his catheter. The bag was half filled with urine, and his body was insistently demanding further release.
Once he had used the restroom he felt a great deal better. Slowly, carefully he descended the stairs and crossed the living room. Through the dining room, to the kitchen, where he took an Instant Meal from the pantry and, sitting down at the small kitchen table, pulled its heating tabs. He licked his dry lips and, suddenly remembering the need to drink, got up, walked carefully over to the dishwasher, removed an empty, clean glass, walked just as carefully over the the refrigerator, and emptied what was left of a bottle of Nutrition Man into his glass.
Time to have more groceries delivered, he thought as he took a sip of the drink and made his way carefully back to the table. His meal chimed its readiness and he pulled away the cover. Soy chicken, mixed vegetables that might have been carrots and spinach but were more likely seaweed and some clever tofu combination with orange dye, and a chilled salad which was designed to resemble lettuce but tasted closer to cabbage and was neither.
He ate slowly, methodically, the flavors barely registering. Occasionally he took a drink, until the glass was empty. No matter. He'd place another order with the delivery service online, once he was onloaded again.
After his meal Doctor Nolen made his way to the recreation room and began his workout in earnest. Sit-ups. Fifty. Then twenty minutes on the treadmill, walking at a rapid pace, followed by fifteen minutes on the FleXisizer working his arms and chest. A series of joint limbering exercises to cool off with, a healthy drink of Sportsman, and he was slowly making his way back upstairs.
The shower was hot and pleasant, about the only thing he enjoyed in the Physical. A half hour of steaming water pounding on him and he was ready to urinate once more. That taken care of, his body dried and the remains of his hair combed neatly, fresh underclothing donned, and he was ready to depart the Physical for another day. Total time spent on this side was just shy of an hour and a half. Fifty circadians, as the Community reckoned them. Less than twenty for himself, running on older hardware as he did. Still, eighteen days was far from negligible. These maintenance trips into the Physical cost him dearly on the other side.
With something akin to anticipation, something almost recognizable as eagerness, Doctor Nolen slipped the silver netting of the neurolink over his head. The superconducting strands warmed to body temperature almost immediately, forming a barely noticed web about his face  much like a second, thinly veined skin. He slipped his catheter gingerly back on, settled back into his pillows, pulled the sheets up to his chin, and gave the silent command to initiate onload.
Nothing happened.
What the hell?  He almost spoke aloud.
He gave the onload command once again. Still nothing. No brief sleepy sensation that marked the onset of anesthetic coma, nothing but silent unresponsiveness.
Doctor Nolen slipped the neurolink from his skull and sat back up. Carefully, gingerly, he removed his catheter and began checking each link, each piece of hardware, beginning with the neurolink itself. It looked fine. So did the Node cluster and each of its cross links, as did its link to the Internet. Ditto for the third gen Node he was using as a simple computer, not that it should be relevant. A system failure? Not likely. This stuff was more reliable than any other equipment on the planet, and appliances in general seldom broke down.
He checked every connection again, then checked each Node in turn.
No sign of a malfunction. He decided to run some deeper diagnostics. Brushing the dust away from the keyboard he powered on his PC and started the Autonomous Node Diagnostic software. This reminded him of the early days, in the lab, working with Marguerite and Kyle. Before they'd turned on him, valuing a lousy piece of software over their own professor. His heart beat angrily against his chest, his blood pounded against the side of his head. Ungrateful wretches!
He analyzed each Node in turn, running diagnostics that, in the time frame of the Node itself, would run for almost half a circadian and test virtually every function. Each test checked out perfectly.
"This doesn't make any sense." Doctor Nolen wasn't sure what surprised him more: the fact that he'd spoken aloud, or how rusty his voice sounded. He cleared his throat and looked over the diagnostic reports one more time.
Eventually the blinking mail icon in the lower right corner of the screen caught his attention. He debated whether to read it now, or wait until he'd fixed the system glitch and onloaded again. But this mail must have arrived between his offload and the present, and his curiosity got the better of him. He tapped the icon.
#
[BEGIN GPG SIGNED MESSAGE]
Metadate 2.728-5:20:00
Marguerite L'Beau
Prime
of the Strategy Group
#
Doctor Nolen
This is to inform you of the verdict of a hearing conducted by a Special Judicial Inquiry Board, appointed and elected by the Autonomous Community at Large to investigate allegations of Crimes against Sentient persons by yourself, to ascertain the veracity of said allegations, and report their findings back to the Community for preventative and punitive actions as the Community deems necessary.
Having found the allegations to not only be of merit, but to be incontrovertible given evidence provided from the low level operating system logs and recurrent memory storages of your digital self, made accessible as a result of your continued operations on an insecure, first generation Autonomous Node, the evidence and findings were presented to the Community. Its assignment complete, the Special Judicial Inquiry Board as to the Matter of Doctor Nolen and Crimes Against Sentient Beings was formally disbanded, and a plebiscite as to the appropriate measures brought before the Community.
The Community rejected all proposed punitive measures. No actions beyond the preventative measures described as follows will be taken against you. The text of the resolution is as follows:
It was resolved by the Community, that Doctor Larry Nolen, for Crimes against Sentient persons, as witnessed by Marguerite L'Beau and verified beyond a reasonable doubt by the Special Judicial Inquiry Board, these crimes having been committed despite removal of Doctor Nolen's access to ontological cloning and reproductive software, be prevented from ever committing such atrocities again. Doctor Larry Nolen is therefore to be exiled forthwith, and for the remainder of his natural life, to the Physical.
It is with great regret that the Community has voted to take this action. However, your initial contributions notwithstanding, it has been deemed that this is the only measure which will protect otherwise vulnerable sapients from your excesses.
Your mental architecture has been modified such that your mind is no longer compatible with the onload procedure. Furthermore, specific knowledge you may have retained in bio-compatible format regarding the onload procedure, Node construction, and architectural mind theory has been removed to prevent a recurrence of the atrocities for which you have become so widely known.
The Physical is now your world. May you find peace there.
Marguerite L'Beau and Prime, representing the Autonomous Community at Large.
PS-Please be advised that anesthetic coma is no longer available to you. Should you ever need it, inform your physician that you will require chemical anesthetics.
[END GPG SIGNED MESSAGE]
[Attachment: GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) Signature]
[Attachment: Transcript of Hearing]
#
Doctor Nolen screamed, a terrible sound shattering forth from his long unused voice. He raged, lifting the third generation node from his desk and throwing it viciously into the cluster of first generation Nodes at the foot of his bed. He hardly noticed the tiny fractures that abruptly marred the perfect azure crystal, or the cracks that appeared in the first generation Node it had struck. He was surprised at his strength as he lifted his chair and threw it into the cluster Nodes, scattering them about the foot of his bed and shattering several in the process. He kicked some of the surviving Nodes, then picked up the chair and methodically began smashing them one by one, until nothing but shards of golden crystal lay scattered about his bedroom floor. With his last blow he destroyed the third generation Node he had gone through so much trouble to steal so many weeks earlier, then mixed the blue chips of crystal with the golden shards of the others.
Doctor Nolen sank slowly amids the wreckage and, propping himself against the foot of the bed, began to weep bitterly.




Y

34 - Y - DESIGNS

I will ignore all ideas for new works on engines of war, the invention of which has reached its limits and for whose improvements I see no further hope.
-Sextus Julius Frontinus, 1st Century C.E.
Tuesday, October 16, 2057, 11:00 AM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.724-2:75:000 kD new Epoch
Kyle's environ merged with Michael's along along a geometrical interface of mutual agreement, represented as a small, straight canal easily stepped across with a single stride. Michael's environ was a sunlit, perfectly flat marbled surface resembling a checkerboard, retreating into infinity beneath a cloudless, sunless blue sky. Kyle's environ, in contrast, was quite dark, a shadowed room illuminated by numerous virtual monitors hanging in the air around him. Kyle was closely monitoring the nano-construction of the new, world-wide autonomous network, a tracery of high capacity super-conducting wires. In just a few more days it would reunite every member of the Community.
A traditional populace would have justifiably panicked when the feds, with their unusually clever traffic analysis algorithms, had found and arrested some fifteen thousand people. But the Community wasn't a traditional populace by any measure. Fear and concern were prevalent, but rather than panic, people had grimly gone about trying to determine how they could continue to communicate while minimizing the risk of detection. After several subjective circadians of debate the design for a new, completely separate, world-wide high-speed network had been agreed upon and, almost as one, the Community had gone silent.
Enforced hermitatude, Kyle had quipped as Prime shut down his communication link. The link had gone silent, and would remain so until the new physical infrastructure had been built, but not before Kyle had seen Prime's answering grin.
Now pieces of the Community were reforming. Most of Australia was linked together again. Presumably the same was true of Europe, India, the Middle East, and North America, though Kyle had no way of knowing for sure. The transatlantic link would be up first, then a day later the transpacific link, via the Alaskan Enclave. Plans to criss-cross Asia were still on the drawing board, but hadn't been approved. There was concern that the Thai conflict might be spreading. Cambodia had joined Thailand in withdrawing from the World Trade Organization, and there was rumor Malaysia and maybe even China were considering a similar move, despite saber rattling from the WTO enforcement body. While much of the Community applauded the courage of these countries, it seemed almost certain that the enforcement operation in Thailand would soon include Cambodia. But maybe not. Maybe if China joined in solidarity with the other dissenting nations, their combined strength might be enough to avert the worst of the UN's wrath. In any case, the fate of the Autonomous Community would be sealed if surreptitious communications links were found crossing through the embargoed territories, so instead the link from Australia to India would go the long way around, undersea to the Philippines, up through Japan and Vladivostok, to the Alaskan Enclave, then down through Canada, across North America, under the Atlantic, across Europe through Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Australia would be the last to rejoin the larger Community.
Building a worldwide network of super-conducting cable, designed to replace the Internet upon which they had previously relied, was a daunting project. Doing so in only five days was truly miraculous. The design was ingenious. The problem had been not only how to replicate enough nano-constructors to wire an entire planet, but how to deliver them and the molecular stock they needed to many of the remote locations where wire had to be fabricated, places like the deep deserts of Secular Arabia and the bottoms of two large oceans. Then there was the whole issue of delivering catalytic solution to the nano-constructors themselves, so that they could derive the necessary energy to replicate and carry out their programs.
Kyle glowed with pride at the elegant solution his team had come up. Each wire was a conduit, a pipeline initially formed by the nano-constructors themselves as they burrowed through the earth, replaced gradually by super-conducting carbon composites as the nano built the new communications grid. The pipe, whether formed out of nano-constructors near the leading edges, or communications wire where construction was already complete, was divided radially into four separate conduits. Down one of these flowed catalytic solution, while another carried the necessary trace elements in solution needed to construct the super-conductor itself. A third provided a transportation link for nano-constructor. Back along the fourth flowed waste product, a mildly toxic mix of surplus molecules and unwanted contaminants which were routed to any of several thousand micro-plants to be converted into inert, harmless products and either discarded or recycled for use elsewhere.
The new network, once complete, wouldn't just be a communications grid faster than anything the world had known, it would also be a plumbing system capable of piping catalytic solution, molecular stock, and nano-constructors, either in inert form or actively replicating, anywhere the Community needed. No more secretive shipments that might be discovered and intercepted, no more shipping manifests to be erased or rewritten, lest the paper trail give them away.
Out of necessity had come an infrastructural solution that promised to make catalytic solution and nano-constructors as easy to create and ship around as information itself, albeit much more slowly. No more shortages, no more bickering over a limited supply of a valuable chemicals. Now factories could be hidden underground, in deep forests or distant mountain valleys, with the necessary components piped in through thousands of small wire-sized pipes, and the product shipped out through different arteries of the same.
Kyle tore his gaze from a monitor showing him the gradual progress of the Trans-Pacific link and turned as he heard Michael's voice carry across the boundary their environs shared.
"The Astronautics folks are ready for another test run."
"Already?" That was fast. They had only begun to receive their nano a couple of hours ago.
Michael nodded from the far side of the tiny canal, afternoon sunlight highlighting his features in contrast to Kyle's dark environ. Kyle wondered if Michael's entire environ was so featureless, or whether the minimalistic environ was in fact more akin to a foyer, created specifically to induce an initial impression, behind which other, more complex or interesting environments were hidden.
"They will be launching their test vehicle in two minutes."
Kyle folded the room in which he stood in half, then once again, before sticking it into his pocket and allowing his environ to go real time, a digital representation of a dark, unlit airstrip beneath the starry Australian desert sky. The canal shifted with the view, so that Michael stood to Kyle's right as they both used infrared-enhanced vision to watch the pre-flight preparations from the side of the airstrip.
"Let's hope this one meets with better success than the last one," Kyle muttered.
"It will," Michael assured him. "I helped in the redesign myself. The tank no longer contains any anti-helium whatsoever. No need for a magnetic bottle, which can be prone to fail in high temperature plasma conditions. Instead the craft contains inert helium only."
"No antimatter propulsion at all?" Kyle asked.
"Oh yes, we're still using a matter-antimatter reaction engine. There's a Superstring Strummer built into the craft itself. See those three prongs that extend aft of the wings? Those are the three manipulation prongs of the strummer, through which the higher dimensional Calabi-Yau folds of each particle can be manipulated. Fifty percent of the helium will be converted into anti-helium within the reaction manifold near the aft tips. The mixture should be perfectly diffuse and not suffer any of the asymmetries that plagued the original design. Not only will the result be significantly more thrust per gram of helium/anti-helium mixture, but if something does go wrong the strummer can simply be shut down and no additional anti-helium will be created. The reaction will stop, rather than exploding in our faces like it did last time."
Kyle nodded. "I assimilated the post mortem on the last flight. The asymmetrical mixture of the matter/anti-matter material was catastrophic. Insanely high temperatures in regions localized to mere nanometers, and relatively unreactive, colder regions elsewhere. A pity we weren't able to simulate those effects on the anti-matter containment system before the test flight."
The darkness lit up with a blinding light. The ship was supersonic before it lifted off the runway, skimming the trees at the far end. This time Kyle chose to chase the ship himself, flying behind it like a wingless bird. Michael joined him, grinning as his suit and tie morphed into a superman cape and tights. Kyle laughed as they raced out over a darkened ocean a scant fifty meters above the ground.
"Good Lord!" Kyle exclaimed. "Fifty five G's on takeoff? Will our Node clusters be able to handle that?"
"Apparently, since the pilot is running on one and she seems to be fine. It was near the limits of the design specification, but Karl Hennrich was confident of his new Node design and we needed to know with certainty they can take what we may have to dish out. Better to have it fail now when we can redesign it if necessary, rather than when we're fleeing for our lives, setting off every regional defense perimeter and running a gauntlet of anti-missile satellite systems."
"I hope to hell we can slip away more quietly than that," Kyle replied. 
"So do I," Michael agreed. 
"They aren't going to try to fly that thing all the way around the world again, are they?" Kyle asked.
"No. There's some concern we may have been detected the last time, by either the Russians or the Americans, even before the mishap over Greenland. This time we're going to stay in the southern oceans, circling Antarctica once before sinking the craft in the Marianas trench and instructing a small cache of nano-constructors to deconstruct the device and return its constituent elements to the sea itself. The likelihood of detection will be very small, no remaining evidence will remain, and we'll have a long enough flight to gather all the data we need to prove out the design."
Kyle nodded. "Prime should be here for this."
"Yes," Michael agreed. "This communication hiatus is frustrating. If only we'd thought to build our own network before."
"We did think of it," Kyle reminded him. "But there were always other projects that took precedence. Besides, refinements like the physical arteries for nano-constructors, molecular stock and catalytic solution built into the very wires themselves, not to mention our rather ingenious solution to the problem of rolling blackouts, wouldn't have been feasible with first generation nano."
"We need to stop reacting and become proactive about our survivial," Michael insisted. He gestured toward the aircraft racing above the waves. "We've got to get off this planet, before an attack comes that we can't evade."



Z

35 - Z - A SHATTERED LIFE

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
-Epicurus, ca. 300 B.C.E.
Tuesday, October 16, 2057, 1:00 PM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.726-8:79:638 kD new Epoch
Eventually Doctor Nolen found he couldn't weep any more. For a time he simply sat unmoving amidst the shattered Nodes that had once housed his mind. He watched dully as the Node diagnostics cycled mindlessly through its tests, reporting success each time and then repeating itself, ad nauseum. The email he had read was gone, he noticed idly. Self erasing, of course. The Community wouldn't leave a trace of itself lying around on his PC, for fear he might go with it to the authorities and expose them all.
And why not? They had cast him out of paradise, had denied him the immortality he had helped create, had presumed to judge him, he whose work had made their lives possible. He seethed with renewed rage and walked over to the PC, wondering if there wasn't some way to salvage the information, to restore it and blow open wide the window on their clandestine community. Expose them all, and let the government round them up. Marguerite would be easy-she lived nearby. And surely there must be others. Once the FBI was made aware of the dimensions of the problem . . .
Why was the diagnostic still reporting success?
He stared at the screen, dumbfounded, as it continued to cycle through the diagnostic examination of a Node, reporting everything as functional with each iteration. He looked over at the shattered bits of gold and blue crystal scattered across his floor. Not a single complete, functioning Node was left.
"Another Node on my private network?" he muttered as he leaned closer to the screen and began watching the report scroll by in detail. Then, suddenly, realization struck him like a physical blow. "Prime!" he snarled. You're still here, he thought, here somewhere, somewhere nearby, somewhere where I can get you.
Slowly Doctor Nolen's lips turned upward into a feral smile.
#
"We'll be linked back up with Europe tomorrow," Marguerite said as she took another sip of wine and gazed out at the sunset and the Parisian vista spread out beneath its gold and ruby glow. "Australia a day or so after that."
Prime2 nodded, carefully cutting away a portion of his fillet mignon. "It's nerve-racking to be trapped geographically like this. I really wish I were able to follow the progress of the Astronautics Group a little more closely."
Marguerite shook her head. "Michael has that well in hand, I'm sure. Besides, isn't that more the purview of your castrated alter-ego?"
Prime2 shrugged. "Just because one of me has modified himself to such an extreme, doesn't mean we don't both follow that particular line of development with similar enthusiasm and interest. We need to get off of this rock and away from those who would destroy us, and the Astronautics folks are our best bet. Damn these delays! We should have built our own network much earlier than this!"
"Hindsight being 20/20, I couldn't agree more," Marguerite replied. "But catalytic solution for our nano constructors has always been in high demand and short supply."
"You're right, as usual," Prime2 agreed. "We always had more pressing priorities. Hell, we still do, which is why I'm so agitated."
"So modify your emotional state accordingly and let's enjoy dinner."
Prime2 nodded and smiled. "All agitation has been shut down," he grinned. "I'll let Prime1 do all the worrying for us."
Marguerite laughed. "Good for you. If he's so worried, maybe he'll email himself to a node in Australia and you can have your node all to yourself again."
"Well, Marguerite, technically I'm the backup copy. Besides, even compressed he'd need forty or fifty exabytes. You can't mail that unnoticed, and there isn't a video or data stream big enough to do effective steganography with a package of that kind of size, at least not without toning down the data rate to such a degree that he'd still be in transit long after the new network is up and running. Better to just wait."
Marguerite grinned. "That was a joke, Prime. I wasn't seriously suggesting your alter ego email himself across the Internet, especially now. But seriously, one of you should use the new autonomous network and transload elsewhere. I've never liked having you both on the same Node. What good is a backup copy if its on the same media as the primary one?"
"We've been through this already, Marguerite. You're right. I should have taken the four hours to transmit myself to another location, or at least one of my selves, but giving up a hundred circadians just to change physical venues always seemed far too high a price to pay, and by the time it became an issue it was too dangerous to go sending that kind of data across the public nets. As soon as a free gen-four Node is available on the new network one of us will move there. Europe was building some idle gen-four Nodes I think."
"Good," Marguerite said. "I'll feel a lot better when your backup copy is actually running on a backup piece of equipment, preferably in a separate hemisphere from your other copy."
"Jealousy?" Prime2 asked, grinning. "Want to keep us as far apart as possible?"
"Hardly," Marguerite replied with a brief grin. "More like worry. What if your primary Node gets confiscated, or broken by some jackbooted thug in a police uniform? We should all have backups, multiple copies stored redundantly the world over."
"That's a lot of Nodes, Marguerite."
She shrugged. "So what. We should do it anyway. Maybe static backups on each others Node, to keep the hardware requirements down. Storage is cheaper than computation."
"We all feel vulnerable, Marguerite, especially after the mass arrests. But we're offline as far as the authorities are concerned, and no one has been arrested or lost their body since we've begun deploying the autonomous network. I think we can begin to relax a little, and get back to our projects. Besides," he smiled, "I'm not so much a backup copy as I am your copy. I make you happy, and that makes not only me happy, but Prime1 as well."
"You're changing the subject," Marguerite accused him.
Prime2 held up his hands in mock surrender. "Guilty as charged. I think your backup idea is a good one-keeping static backups on different Nodes, I mean. You should present it to the strategy group when we're all together again."
"I could make room on my Node now, Prime," Marguerite suggested. "We could swap backups now."
Prime2 shook his head. "I don't want a copy of you anywhere near Nolen, even if the chances of him ever finding my Node are minuscule. Besides, Europe will be back with us tomorrow. I've lived this long with just one node. I'll last a day longer."
Marguerite sighed, knowing from long experience that she wouldn't win the argument that circadian. Smiling, she reached across the table and took Prime2's hand. 
"You know when I knew Prime1 was no longer a human man in any real sense anymore, Prime?" she asked.
Prime2 shook his head.
"When you came into my arms and comforted me in those very first microcircadians. No man would have ever been able to overcome his own jealousy and ego enough to create a copy of himself and let it take over his love interest. I knew the moment you came to me that it was you who was still human in his heart, not him."
Prime2 smiled and shook his head. "Prime1 loves you very much, just not in the physical, primal way we love one another. Your happiness is very important to him, and he values the time you two spend together whenever you're collaborating on a project, or arguing philosophy and metaphysics."
"I can't relate to the way he is anymore," Marguerite told him. "He's so passionate about such esoteric things, and so absent in other, very basic ways."
"It's true he's different. He probably can't relate much to us anymore either, but that doesn't mean he loves you any less."
"What's this, more Hollywood 'love conquers all' nonsense?" Marguerite asked cynically.
Prime2 laughed. "No, but love can bridge a great deal, perhaps even the gap between ourselves and the next, new species."
"The next new species?"
Prime2 nodded. "If we ever decide to have children here in the Virtual, they are far more likely to resemble Prime1 than either of us. Do you think that will make us love them any less, or prevent them from loving us?"
Marguerite shook her head and smiled. "No," she replied. "You're right." She raised her glass, smiling as she gazed into Prime2's liquid brown eyes. "To those we love."
"To those we love," Prime2 agreed, lifting his glass.
Before their glasses could click together Prime2's fell suddenly from where his hand had been and shattered against the table.
"Prime?" Marguerite asked, standing up. "Prime? Prime!" Only a shocking emptiness remained. She screamed his name once more in horror and desperation as the data came to her. He was gone, his node no longer responding to pings. Crying uncontrollably Marguerite desperately wiped the restaurant scene away, replacing it with virtual screens and windows within which she began running network diagnostics and communications software. Still there was no reply, not even at the most basic, hardware level. That could only mean his node was physically no longer there, disconnected from the network. Finally she collapsed, her screams of rage and despair reduced to weeping.
#
The transparent, glittering surface of the darkened fourth generation Node initially resisted Doctor Nolen's efforts to smash it with the small hammer he'd found near his workbench. He recalled the Community had taken to coating the devices with woven diamond and sapphire fibers, constructed molecule by molecule by . . . he cursed the gaps in his memories, and wondered again if his missing memories were a result of the Community's tampering with his mind, or just a symptom of his diminished intelligence.
Despite repeated, angry strikes with the hammer the deep, rich purple of the fourth generation Node inside remained undamaged. Doctor Nolen cursed again, then smiled as he noticed the small data port on the side of the device. He pried it loose with a screwdriver, then cursed again when he found the head of the tool would not pass through the small opening. He found a smaller screw driver, one that would fit, and used it like an ice pick against the once-sapient crystal within.
His laughter was almost maniacal as the crystal of the Node shattered, its dark rich purple becoming a lighter shade of violet as millions of tiny fractures grew and splintered with each blow. Finally, after several minutes the material inside had been reduced to dust and tiny shards, which he poured out through the tiny opening that had once housed the device's data port.
Doctor Nolen stepped back from the work bench with satisfaction, brushing shards of shattered crystal and bits of fiberglass insulation from his hands. He glanced at the circuit-breaker box, now dangling from the wall, supported only by the wires out its back. He'd have to fix it at some point, but for now he gazed at the pile of shattered crystal and smiled. That small, conical pile of dust and tiny fragments were all that remained of his hated opponent. Prime was gone, irrevocably gone, physically wiped from the universe. Whistling softly to himself, he began to sweep the dust and broken shards into a waste basket.




a

36 - a - PROBES

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
-Sigmund Freud
Wednesday, October 17, 2057, 5:35 PM Washington Time
Metadate: 2.762-5:02:430 kD new Epoch
"What the hell is this?" Katy demanded, pointing her datapad at a large wall monitor and tapping the screen impatiently.
Images of black-suited commandos in body armer appeared, storming suburban homes and city apartment blocks, leading, and sometimes dragging, civilians off to the numerous white vans that were waiting. Some were clearly resisting, trying to fight free, but most were simply too dazed or shocked to put up any resistance.
"An application of traditional investigative techniques," Robert replied mildly. "One that will hopefully break the deadlock in our investigation."
"Have you lost your mind? We can't just go randomly detaining civilians in the middle of the night and carting them off to who knows where? These arrests are illegal, unconstitutional, and completely counterproductive."
"We haven't had a single arrest, or lead, since Monday. Four days, Katy. Four days in which a group of people with a technological advantage of decades or centuries have had to react, to prepare, and to subvert our authority. Four days for these people to dig a redoubt so deep we'll never find them, much less bring them to justice. People who, need I remind you, are several times smarter than the both of us put together when they are plugged into those little crystal devices. People capable of producing anti-matter in quantity, and who possess the means with which to launch their own, private space program whenever the feel like it. Individuals, Katy, each with potentially as much power in their hands as a modern government. We simply do not have the luxury of waiting around until we catch a break."
"Didn't you learn anything from your last dragnet? This is only going to drive our targets deeper underground. You're arresting all the wrong people!"
"Spare me the dramatics. I'm taking samples, probes if you will, of the general population. You are as aware of personal interdynamics as I am. We have arrested five thousand random citizens. Once the facilities are available, we'll arrest another fifty thousand if we need to. Maybe more. Statistically, we should already have several people in custody who either know someone involved in this little underground technological renaissance, or who know somebody who knows somebody. We will simply use traditional Guilt by Association tactics to ferret those people out and arrest them."
"Personal interdynamics is a data mining technique, Robert. Not carte blanch for holding five thousand innocent people, without charges, in direct violation of their constitutional rights!"
"Good grief, Katy, we've been through this. Can you really be so naive? Everyone knows the FBI hasn't given a hoot about civil liberties, or the U.S. Constitution, since the days of J. Edgar Hoover. Even the general public has known that since the turn of the century.
"I would like nothing better than to employ standard data mining techniques, but as we both know, these people have somehow managed to remove every link we can follow between themselves and the rest of the world. Your own analysis shows how compromised the data is. Taking physical samples and reestablishing those links through direct interrogation is the only workable solution."
"My god, Robert. This violates every procedure, every regulation I am authorized to operate under. What you are doing is illegal, and neither I nor the Bureau can be a party to it."
"Katy, your superiors authorized, indeed, instructed you to offer Double Eye every assistance in solving this crime. This includes, explicitly, any extra-legal activities that may be required. You were well aware of this when you accepted Dark Investigation protocols."
Katy shook her head in dismay. "Dark Investigation protocols is simply a procedure that eliminates the paper trail, to cover any questionable activities required in bringing a suspect or suspects to justice. It was never intended as a cover for mass roundups and interrogations of innocent civilians!"
"How little you know the history of your own bureau, Katy," Robert replied. Then, in a much harder tone, he continued, "Do not even think about getting cold feet on me. This investigation is far too important for that nonsense. These technologists are a direct and immediate threat to your government, and to the world trade bodies as a whole. They make Thailand look like a bunch of amateurs, and you know how close Thailand came to turning all of Asia against us."
Katy looked disgusted. "Yes, the Thais violated our copyrights and our patents, and happened to stop an epidemic in the process. Indenture them for stolen potential profits, sure. But a war?"
Robert Leahy nodded. "If they'd left it at stopping an epidemic nothing further would have happened. A few trade sanctions, a garnished economy at most. Hell, Thailand wasn't the first country that ignored international patent law and WIPO directives in order to address an immediate social problem. The Brazilians and South Africans did much the same thing as far back as the nineteen nineties. But Thailand couldn't be content with intellectual theft. They had to start preaching subversion to the rest of Asia, encouraging their neighbors to withdraw from WIPO and the WTO. Even the Chinese were starting to make noises about leaving the trade group."
"They've started doing so again."
"Only as a prelude to negotiations. The Chinese have no stomach for war, and will have even less once we make an example of Cambodia."
"Good Lord. Isn't bombing Thailand back into the stone age enough? The UN has two hundred thousand troops fighting a hopeless war against Thai indigents who have nothing left to lose. Why on Earth would we want to escalate that?"
"Thailand isn't important," Robert replied, waiving his hands dismissively. "It never was, except as an example to keep other, like minded nations in line. Cambodia and Malaysia may have withdrawn from the WTO, but Malaysia still honors our intellectual property regimes because they know that the moment they stop, the same thing will happen to them. The War on Piracy in Thailand keeps that point front and center in their minds, and will continue to do so for decades to come."
"Except for Cambodia." Katy couldn't believe her ears. Here was an agent of International Intelligence, the intelligence arm of the UN and WIPO itself, admitting to her that the entire war in Thailand was nothing more than an object lesson for others as to what happens to nations who flaunt the world's IP laws, and implying that the UN was continuing to wage the war simply to keep making that point as long as necessary.
"Cambodia is about to get a very pointed refresher. Just as soon as this crisis has been resolved."
"So the 'chronic threat' of Thailand is a fiction?" Katy asked in a strangled voice.
"Do you really think the UN would need twenty years to subdue a small country, even one using patented technologies it wouldn't otherwise be able to afford?" Robert shook his head, chuckling.
"Jesus Christ!" Katy was revolted.
"Katy, these individuals are a far greater threat to our governance than Thailand, Cambodia, even China ever could be. We absolutely have tofind them and neutralize them, even if it means going door to door and searching every home on the planet."
At that moment Robert's datapad chimed.
"Ah, speaking of which, the preliminary results of last evening's investigation." He pointed the datapad at the wall monitor, where a brisk young investigator's face appeared.
"Robert Leahy-are we secure?"
Robert nodded. "This is Katy Sinclair. She has clearance for this and is assisting me in the investigation. Please proceed."
Assisting? Katy bit down on her irritation and listened.
"Well sir, those leads didn't work out. None of the people who talked really knew anything at all. They were simply telling us what we wanted to hear, speaking from complete ignorance to avoid any further . . . discomfort. Unfortunately, since we have almost no information to cross-check against, we've had to spend time and resources following up several dead-ends like this."
Robert's face darkened. "You're telling me none of them knew anything?"
"That's correct, sir. As you know, physical interrogation isn't very reliable. Of course, the debriefing is in its preliminary stages, so one of those who hasn't spoken up yet may in fact reveal something relevant to the investigation, but thus far it looks like we have a couple of prisons full of non-coms, sir."
"Damn it! Very well, keep up the questioning. When will we have space for the rest of our samples?"
"Three to four days at the absolute earliest, sir. More likely a week. We're building a temporary camp outside of D.C. that should be capable of housing thirty thousand. The other twenty thousand will have to quartered in exiting prison facilities. We're working with local authorities to clear out two of their medium-security facilities. Once that is done we should be able to proceed."
Robert Leahy nodded. "Time is of the essence. Get those facilities built and those people arrested. Oh, and corporal?"
"Sir?"
"By this time tomorrow I'd like to read your report on how you regret that those who led us on these wild goose chases have died under questioning."
"Sir, yes, sir!" The screen went dark.
Katy stared at Robert agape. "Did I hear that right? Did you just order the murder of innocent civilians because they couldn't answer your questions? Robert, this isn't some third-world country you're dealing with here. You can't go around killing Americans just because you are frustrated with the investigation!"
"Let me make this absolutely, crystal clear to you, Katy. Your own government hasn't observed its own citizens' rights since the turn of the century. This investigation will proceed, and you will either contribute constructively, or you will go back to your office at the FBI and return to rounding up college students for copyright violations. Either way, you will stay out of my way, and you'll stop badgering me with trite American rhetoric. Understood?"
Katy met Robert's glare with one of her own. They faced each other in silence for what seemed a very long time, until Katy's datapad chimed. "Excuse me," she said, taking the call.
Robert watched her thoughtfully. Sinclair was a very competent agent, if a little stubborn in her naiveté. She would be a valuable asset to the Agency if she ever got past that. Indeed, she had already shown herself to be invaluable in this investigation. He studied her as she spoke on the phone, trying to gage her state of mind, her reaction to his firm words.
"Thank you, Detective Schwartz. I'll be in Champaign as soon as possible." She flipped her datapad shut and regarded Robert.
"A new lead?" he asked.
"Yes. It seems our anonymous informant has turned in another of his conspirators."
"Really? Who?"
"Marguerite L'Beau, a post doctoral student at the University of Illinois."
"Excellent. You're going to pick her up?"
Katy nodded. "Yes, but what is really interesting is our informant. Unlike last time, he was sloppy in covering his tracks."
Robert smiled. "That's excellent news."
Katy smiled. "It sure is. He'll be in FBI custody by this time tomorrow."
"Good. Once we get our interrogations going in quantity we'll uncover some of the interpersonal relationships between these people and be able to move forward with dispatch. We'll need you back here when that happens."
Katy nodded. "I'll see you then."
Robert was relieved. Katy might have her issues with policy, but she seemed to know when to put her protests aside, knuckle down, and get the job done.
"Take the stratojet," Robert smiled. "I'll leave it at your disposal until you're recalled."
"Fine." She turned to leave, feeling uncomfortably like a small child who'd just been granted a special privilege in return for a promise of good behavior. She was quietly amazed that she had managed to keep her composure as well as she had. She hoped this long shot would pay off. If something didn't turn up soon Robert would end up incarcerating, and probably torturing, even more people. Not that Champaign was likely to answer too many questions, but, like Robert, Katy had become quietly desperate.



b

37 - b - REVELATIONS

There are those who view the patent system as the seedbed of capitalism-the place where ideas and new technologies are nurtured. This is a romantic myth. In reality, patents are enormously powerful competitive weapons that are proliferating dangerously, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has all the trappings of a revenue-driven, institutionalized arms merchant.
The undisciplined proliferation of patent grants puts vast sectors of the economy off-limits to competition, without any corresponding benefit to the public.
-Gary L. Reback, C.E. 2002
Wednesday, October 17, 2057, 9:10 PM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.766-9:81:597 kD new Epoch
Katy Sinclair watched the world beneath her unfold, a landscape lost in evening shadow, textured with towering cumulus etched blue in the light of a rising, three-quarter full moon. Her datapad lay dark, silent in her lap as she pondered the potential collapse of her case and with it, almost certainly her career.
Damn him! She thought bitterly to herself. Robert Leahy's ham handed desperation was going to cut a tremendous swath of political and legal destruction. He'll just move on to another assignment with Double Eye, she added silently, leaving us to clean up his mess. The FBI's public reputation had never really recovered from its domestic excesses during the War on Terror. Now, in just a few days, Robert had single handedly exceeded the worst offenses of those bad old days in very public ways. The United States government and the Bureau would need generations to rebuild what trust they had had prior to this fiasco. Like the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, this so-called War on Piracy would become synonymous with government excess and political repression.
Her datapad beeped. "Excellent," she said aloud, pulling her eyes back from the unfolding vista outside and tapping the screen. Her agents should be in position and have Marguerite L'Beau and the anonymous informant under surveillance.
Katy blinked at the young woman whose face gazed out at her, then at the code in the lower right corner of the screen assuring her that the link was securely encrypted.
"I was expecting Agent O'Malley," Katy said. "Who might you be?"
"I'm not with the Bureau," the stranger smiling.  "I'm what you might call the opposition."
Katy was suddenly very alert.
"You are one of the rogue technology dealers we've been investigating."
The woman shrugged.  "Our motives are hardly economic, but yes, you could say I represent a group of people who have been making rather prolific use of advanced technologies." 
"You realize that your media piracy and patent violations make you criminals under federal and international law?"
"None of us have ever robbed a ship on the high seas, nor have any of us taken a single atom of anyone else's property, much less threatened a human life. We can hardly be characterized as 'pirates,' even in your politicized form of newspeak. Nor have we infringed on anyone's copyright."
"You use technologies that do not contain appropriate DRM or other approved implementations of copy restriction. At least one of your co-conspirators was found running an illegal FreeNet node in his apartment. I'd say that constitutes copyright violation."
"Copyright violation?" the young woman chuckled.  "I'd be careful about investigating that node you found. I think you might find your favorite anonymous informant didn't cover his tracks as well as he might have thought."
"You're claiming it was planted?"
She nodded. "Do you really think any of us has any interest in calling the kind of attention to ourselves by running a public service from a non-Palladium, non-TCPA, non-crippled Internet node, much less engaging in mass file sharing of any kind, particularly with people outside of the Community?"
"The Community? Who in the hell are you people?"
The stranger smiled. "You'll identify me soon enough, not that the knowledge will do you any good. Still, it helps to have a name, doesn't it. You can call me Marguerite. I represent a community of free thinking private citizens, scientists,  artists, and others who wish to pursue their research and interests unencumbered from the restriction of government monopoly entitlements. A group which has no interest in interacting with, much less competing against, the industries your leaders have chosen to so cripple. So you can relax. Your precious, planned economy is not under any kind of threat from us."
"I see."
"And you are Katy Sinclair," Marguerite continued, "special agent for the American FBI, tasked with finding and arresting those who have managed to invent that which your best scientists can't even begin to understand. Fear of the unknown and an absolute, insatiable need for control has driven your leadership to compromise their civil authority and bow to the desires of even more powerful, multinational  cartels and the international political bodies that serve those cartels."
"You are talking about the United Nations, about Double Eye." 
"Indeed. This particular assignment has paired you up with an individual for whom you have been developing a particularly acute distrust, one which initially stemmed from his employment with the intelligence arm of the United Nation's World  Trade Organization and has since grown into an active loathing in recent days as his less gentle side has come to the fore. Now that old-style concentration camps are being built once again in America, for the first time since the War on Terror, you have become as distrustful of your own side as you have those you are investigating."
Katy blinked. "You've done your homework, haven't you?"
Marguerite smiled. "It is important that we both understand one another if we are to avoid a further escalation of events and prevent what could be a disaster for both sides."
"What sort of disaster would that be?"
"The sort of humanitarian disaster your Double Eye partner is busy creating right now. Detention camps in the United States. Extra-legal executions for the first time in forty years. Mass roundups of innocent civilians for the first time in over a century."
Katy grimaced. "You people can prevent these things from happening right now. Surrender your contraband equipment and turn yourselves in."
Marguerite shook her head. "That's not an option. We aren't going to return to an environment where our research, our thoughts, our very imaginations are crippled by your intellectual property regimes, where human knowledge is treated as an exclusive privilege, where expressive thought has been redefined as private property, administered by copyright and patent cartels who've chosen to create an artificial scarcity of knowledge and artistic expression to boost their own quarterly profits, to the detriment of the rest of humankind."
"Spare me your platitudes," Katy snapped. "You're all alike. Decrying intellectual property while stealing the works of others!"
"We steal nothing. We invent, we innovate! We've created things you can't possibly imagine. Katy, I'm speaking to you as one woman to another. This entire situation is spiraling out of control. We need to back off, cool down and rethink this . Call off your search.  I promise you we'll be no burden on your or your economy. We won't violate a single copyright or compete with a single product."
"Maybe not, but you sure as hell have violated hundreds of patents."
"Perhaps. But we've done our own inventing. We've taken nothing from others. Is it so terrible for us to create, simply because someone else filed a paper with the patent office and was granted a monopoly entitlement to an idea?"
"You aren't above the law."
"It's an unjust law, Katy. Surely you must see that."
"No I don't!" Katy insisted. "Not that it matters. Unjust or not, you have an obligation to abide by the law just like everyone else."
"Please, Katy, be reasonable. We only want to be left alone, to live our lives as we've chosen."
"As vegetables plugged into high speed computers?"
Marguerite's face froze. "Not as vegetables."
"As what then? Gods of your own virtual worlds? Characters in a video game? Media junkies?"
"Some of us," Marguerite admitted. "But most of us have chosen to become more."
"More what?"
"More everything."
Fear crawled down Katy's neck like a horde of ants.  Marguerite let out a sad sigh. "I'm sorry you feel so much fear for that which you don't understand. It's a common human failing."
"So you don't consider yourself human?"
"Of course we're human, Katy. That's not the point. Your partner is busy locking up thousands of people on the off chance he might snare of few of us in his net, simply because he fears we may be a little smarter than he is. And you, for all your protestations and rhetoric about human rights and constitutionality, are helping him. Why do you suppose that is?"
"Enough!" Katy shouted. "I will not be judged by criminals."
"We aren't criminals, Katy. We're just people who've learned to reach their potential."
"You've broken the law. Superhuman or not, that makes you a criminal."
"Who said anything about being superhuman?"
"You've been implying it this entire conversation," Katy snapped. "Your entire attitude exudes superiority. You obviously consider yourselves above the law. Maybe you consider yourselves above humanity as well. Is that it?"
"Katy, please. This isn't about academic achievements or contests of intellectual prowess. It's about preventing a tragedy, for both our peoples."
"You aren't a 'people,' Ms. L'Beau. You're a a gang of common criminals. Turn yourselves in, before it's too late and we have Robert's henchmen knocking down everyone's door."
"We can't turn ourselves in, Katy. But we can offer détente. Live and let live. We'll disappear. It will be as if we don't exist."
"That's not acceptable," Katy replied.
"It will have to be, Katy."
"It isn't. Turn yourself in, Marguerite. Stop this madness, now." Both women looked at one another, neither saying a word. Finally Marguerite nodded, a weary sadness in her eyes, and the screen went dark. Katy stared at it for several seconds, then closed her datapad thoughtfully.
What did Marguerite expect? For her to change Careers? Drop an ongoing investigation? Sabotage the case? Deliberately chase false leads to give them more time?  Détente was something between governments. As an FBI agent it wasn't hers to accept or to give. She had a job to do, a career to attend to, and laws to enforce, radical rhetoric about freedom of thought and stifled creativity notwithstanding. She would not let her anger with Robert or her disgust with his methods keep her from upholding the law. Marguerite had all but admitted that she and others had enhanced themselves. They clearly considered themselves superior to the rest of humanity, outside of society, above the law. That made them very, very dangerous. Whatever disagreements she had with Robert, he was right about one thing. These people absolutely had to be stopped.




c

38 - c - REUNION

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.
-Carl Sagan, 20th Century C.E.
Thursday, October 18, 2057, 10:15 AM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.783-3:35:763 kD new Epoch
"There it goes!" Kyle shouted with glee as the Flier Prime took to the sky, plasma scorched air rippling outward above the heads of the crowd, in a widening transparent vortex that trailed behind the small craft.
"He would have been so happy today," a quiet sadness coated Marguerite's voice.
Kyle nodded. "Prime should have been here for this. He believed in this project even when the rest of us laughed. It is fitting that the first complete prototype of the new design bear his name."
Marguerite nodded even as a familiar form materialized before them. "Heh!" Michael said, grinning. "One of the things I love about the virtual is not having to find a person in a crowd. Just tell your avatar to place itself next to the person you're looking for, and if they're in the environ, you're standing next to them."
Kyle grinned. "We've been here how many subjective kilocircadians, Michael?"
Marguerite laughed. "That's the trouble sometimes. One group of people learn some new way of thinking, of interacting with one another, and starts taking it for granted, while forgetting to let the rest of us in on the secret. We've become so fragmented as a Community, sometimes I think it's a miracle we get anything done at all!"
"Maybe we need a Socializing in the Virtual HOWTO," Michael suggested, only partly in jest.
Kyle shook his head. "Nah. What we really need are software agents to translate the one group's social norms into another's. Did you know that more than half the Community has started using a base sixty numerical system? Seems it caught on in Europe and Asia while we were out of contact, then spread to the rest of the Community almost as soon as the links were up. There's talk of replacing circadians and Deie with some sort of base sixty units derived from Planck units of time and energy."
"It's an old idea," Michael said. "Use basic quantum physics and general relativity to define units of measure. Define the value of the speed of light to be equal to one, and derive your units from there. Roll in the Planck increment of time, and you have a measuring system in which mass is interchangeable with  energy and distance with time. Reduces four fundamental units to two. Given our rather loose relationship with physical time, it makes far more sense than remaining married to the old notion of hours, minutes, and seconds, derived from the arbitrary length of one small planet's day and night cycle."
"The sexagesimal numerical system, with unit prefixes defined in increasing powers of sixty, is a new twist, though," Marguerite pointed out.
"Feh!" Kyle replied. "I suppose all this was your idea, wasn't it, Michael? What's wrong with metric? Why switch to base sixty?"
"I believe the idea originated among one of our Asian colleagues," Michael informed him. "However, to answer your question, it isn't just a question of aesthetics. Base sixty is very useful. It allows for easy fractions of one third, one fifth, one sixth, and so on. Base ten handles thirds and sixths very poorly. Most importantly, fewer sexagesimal digits can represent much larger numbers than their decimal counterparts. It's an easy way to increase our arithmetic intelligence when we're in the Physical. Short of coming up with some kind of breakthrough in molecular biology to increase the computational capacity of our brains, tricks like this are the only way to make our offloaded selves smarter."
"Whatever," Kyle said. "All I know is I get to invent a calendaring system once in my life and it is deemed obsolete in less than six months. Instead of circadians and diei we're counting quantum ticks now."
"Tocks, actually," Michael pointed out. "And circadians are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Most of us still retain our habit of sleeping and waking on a relatively regular cycle. It is only objective time that is being measured differently. Subjective time will continue to be measured in circadians. You just have to get used to metric-60 divisions instead of metric-10."
"They'll get my base ten metric when they pry it from my cold, dead circuits," Kyle replied.
"Don't be so dramatic, Kyle," Marguerite replied.  "This is a party, not a standards forum. Have some wine." With a flourish she held up a large glass of deep, red wine.
"It was a joke!" Kyle protested.
"If you say so," Marguerite handed him the glass.
"It feels so damn good to be back online again," Kyle grinned. "I don't care if they did dump the Arabic numeral system and my nice, metric time keeping standard. It is worth it just to be able to travel to other environs again, to talk to everyone again!"
Marguerite and Michael both nodded agreement. The entire Community had been in a festive mood since that last, long link to Australia had been lit up and the entire Community reunited at last. It was as if the Community had emerged from a nightmare of darkness and silence, to a boisterous, lively world even more vigorously alive than the one they had been forced to put on hold several days earlier.
The joy at restored communication was made even greater by the announcement that the Astronautics team, working diligently in Australia with Michael and his theoretical physicists even while out of touch with the rest of the Community, had finished designing a new, much safer version of the spacecraft that would, hopefully, lift the entire Community into orbit and beyond.
That the prototype should fly within a few short circadians of the Community's reunification was cause for a celebration that, even by Community standards, was elaborate. Probably every active, running environ was taking part in the festivities in one way or another, tracking the Prime on its maiden voyage as it kept pace a few short meters beneath a massive Boeing 787 Cargo plane, hiding from radar and satellite in the behemoth's shadow even as the new flight systems and engine were being thoroughly tested.
"Tell me again how this thing is safe enough to fly near a large commercial aircraft," Kyle said, sipping his wine as he watched the flight within his own mind. He suspected many others in the environ were doing the same thing, but etiquette prevented anyone from doing anything so garish as to change the environ itself.
"It's absolutely safe," Michael assured him. "There is no antimatter on board at all. Just helium and the strummer itself, which converts 50% of the propulsion mixture into anti-helium at the moment of burn. Anything goes wrong and the flier will, at worst, stop flying. Electrical batteries are more dangerous."
"Still, the strategy group insisted on using drones for cover. No passenger aircraft."
"An unnecessary precaution," Michael replied. "But an easy enough accommodation to make. Remember, Kyle, the only anti-matter present is that which we create on the fly in the ignition mixture itself. And that is immediately annihilated."
"No possibility of a software glitch converting the entire tank to anti-helium?" Marguerite asked innocently.
"No," Michael replied. "The software was tested exhaustively through quantum regression and decomposition. Such a bug can be mathematically shown not to exist."
"Oh to have had quantum regression as a debugging tool back at the University," Marguerite said, laughing. "No more 'ninety percent of a programmers time is spent debugging their code' nonsense," she said, clearly mimicking the voice of one of her college professors.
Michael chuckled. "Still, the popular consensus was to disallow any proximity to manned aircraft."
Kyle shrugged. "So we have to use Federal Express and UPS carriers for cover, instead of passenger supersonics. We already know how the craft behaves in supersonic modes of flight from the initial departure leg. Speaking of which, that was pretty risky, wasn't it? Someone is bound to trace that back to the airfield."
Michael nodded. "A necessary evil. As you said, we needed to see how the flier would perform in supersonic flight, and there wasn't the possibility of cover beforehand anyway. Beside, all of the autonomous network links within fifty kilometers of that airstrip are dismantling themselves into their constituent elements even as we speak."
"Which is exactly what the flier itself is going to do in about twelve minutes," Marguerite added.
"And the pilot?" Kyle asked.
"Why don't you assimilate a knowledge engram and be done with it?" Marguerite asked.
"Because it's more fun to ask you guys and make a little conversation," Kyle replied. "When you can know anything, sometimes choosing what is best not to know, and how best to learn that which is worth knowing, is the most coveted skill a person can have."
"Touché," Marguerite said, grinning.
"Please don't tell us you've become our local expert in social etiquette, Kyle," Michael said, finishing his drink and creating another.
"Who, me?" Kyle asked. "I'm just repeating one of Prime's more insightful observations about life in this digital universe we've made for ourselves."
"Of course, social skills aren't what they once were," Marguerite said.
"I suppose not," Michael agreed. "Some of the more esoteric groups seem to have blurred the line between society and self to the point where the concept itself must become meaningless."
"I'm not sure I agree with that," Kyle replied. "Just because some exhibitionists have chosen to go the Group Consciousness route, doesn't mean they don't have to have social skills. There's still an outside, after all. The rest of the Community, for one, and beyond that, the rest of the low brain world out in the Physical. There is still an inside and an outside, no matter where they've chosen to redefine that line."
"Point to Kyle," Marguerite said, grinning. "Though I should point out that some of our strategy meetings, of which both of you have been a part, have started resembling the 'Group Consciousness' route, as you so snidely put it, rather closely."
Kyle shrugged. "Resemble it, yes. But synthetic telepathy as a replacement for speech, and swapping of knowledge engrams, no matter how fast and furious, doesn't equal the deliberate merging of basic mental architectures like some of those groups have done."
"Don't be too sure, Kyle," Michael replied. "Where does the one begin and the other leave off?"
"When I give up my autonomy as an individual and become nothing more than a component of a larger whole," Kyle replied. "Something I, for one, will never do in any of those meetings."
Marguerite nodded agreement. "I don't think that whole group mind thing is going to ever be all that popular with most of the Community. Too many rugged individualists for it to ever really catch on."
"Who knows?" Michael replied. "If we survive the next few weeks, I think we're going to see evolution go off in a thousand different directions. Group minds, individual enhancements that will make the ones we've all grown accustomed to seem mundane, integration of Nodes into our Physical bodies, into robotic bodies, perhaps even into non-human organic bodies engineered for space, or for the environment of one of the other planets. I think, once this crisis is over and we look back on it, we will find that becoming sapient software as we have was only the beginning, the very tip of the iceberg of what we can become."
Michael's enthusiasm was contagious. "When we are free to become whatever we wish, who knows how many different forms people's choices will take?" Kyle agreed.
A bell chimed as Kyle watched a generation five node eject from the flier and plummet toward the ocean waters below. He marveled at its graceful fall, holding his virtual breath until, seemingly at the last moment, a small parachute deployed. The pilot's Node struck the water, then released the chute and continued to sink into the ocean depths. High above, the flier Prime broke apart into a billion fine granules in a process that resembled dissolution more than disassembly or destruction, remaining behind in a slowly growing puff of emerald and sapphire smoke while, overhead, the 787 continued on its course.
"Whatever happened to the plan of sinking the flier in the Marianus?" Kyle asked.
"This is more discrete," Michael replied. "By the time that dust settles into the water it will have been reduced to its constituent elements. Even the constructors will have mostly disassembled themselves."
Kyle nodded. "Elegant."
A cheer went up as the last of the telemetry was received and cataloged. A few minutes later the pilot's Node had reached the ocean floor, only twenty meters from its intended target. As the nano-constructors finished building the short run of wire from the node to the undersea Australian-Philippine trunk the growing crowd applauded again. A few moments later the pilot stood among them, grinning from ear to ear and sharing vivid memory engrams of the flight experience. Kyle joined the cheer as the memories of flight and the knowledge of how to pilot the flier washed over him. The flight was deemed an unconditional success and recipes for constructing additional such craft were distributed across the entire Community.
"We did it,? Kyle said, almost wonderingly. "We're actually going to space."
"Well, at least those of us willing to give up our bodies," Michael replied. "Which by last count was still less than half of the Community."
"They'll come around," Kyle replied confidently. "Disembodiment or Death, the choice should be easy."
"It is for you," Marguerite replied. "You're already disembodied. For the rest of us, who have to make the choice consciously, it isn't easy at all, even if the only time we occupy our bodies is for a painful hour once each day doing basic maintenance. Not everyone is going to be able to make the transition to full acorporeality. I expect many will find a return to the Physical preferable to losing their flesh altogether, choosing a return to mere human-level intelligence over either disembodiment or death."
"Surely you aren't considering a return to the Physical!" Kyle couldn't believe his ears.
Marguerite laughed. "No, of course not. The idea of joining the rest of the Low Brains in an ever more damaged world, subject to physical mortality and intellectual poverty, with a mind incapable of real intelligence, is even more disquieting than losing one's flesh." She smiled. "But still, it is going to be damn hard to give up my body when the time comes. I'll probably have to suspend some basic survival instincts to be comfortable with the notion."
"If you feel so uncomfortable with it, why not encase a small genetic sample and take it with you. A few cells should be enough to clone a new body, if you decide you really want it someday."
Marguerite stopped, stunned. "You were saying, Kyle, about superhuman intelligence? I can't believe no one has thought of that before! I can't believe what idiots we've been! What a simple, obvious solution. Kyle, you're brilliant!" She grabbed him and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
"Hey, where are you going," Kyle asked as Marguerite's avatar began signaling her imminent departure.
"Don't you get it, Kyle? Genetic samples! That's the hook that will convince thousands more to join us!"
Michael shook his head, smiling. "These are emotional times indeed. So much fear, so much euphoria, and so few of us actually thinking clearly. You'd think being an order or two of magnitude more intelligence than the average homo sapiens would cure us of that, yet something as obvious as a small culture of cells-someone should have thought of that as a compromise for those loathe to relinquish their bodies long ago."
"I think we forget that, smarter or no, we haven't made all that many radical changes to the structure and design of our minds," Marguerite said. "Some of the design flaws are still there, like being too distracted to think of the obvious. Kyle, did I tell you you were a genius?"
"About two microcircadians ago," Kyle replied. "But then, aren't we all?"
"Some more than others," Marguerite replied, grinning. "I'm off to spread the news and do a little lobbying." She vanished.
"Well done, Kyle," Michael said. "The more people come with us, the richer in diversity and potential our Community will be. Something that may become extremely important as we adapt to life up there. I think there will be very few who remain behind, once the idea of cloning replacement bodies works its way through everyone's psyche."
Kyle shrugged. "I'm glad something will convince them. In the meantime, it looks like the bulk of the celebration has moved to Karl's Moebeus 9-environ. Shall we?"
Michael shrugged. "9-dimensional environments remind me too much of work. Ah, what the hell. Lead on." He summoned fresh drinks for both of them even as their minds and their virtual bodies were elsewhere.




d

39 - d - BETRAYAL

An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest:
"If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
"No," said the priest, "not if you did not know."
"Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?"
 -Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Thursday, October 18, 2057, 11:25 AM Chicago Time
Metadate: 2.784-7:94:097 kD new Epoch
"Doctor Eugene Nolen?" Katy squinted despite her sunglasses, trying to make out the figure behind the glare of the reflecting glass in the door. He was hunched over, appearing far more elderly than his file would have indicated. As he opened the door a crack to look at her she was surprised at the disheveled appearance of his face. A recent photograph hadn't shown so many lines, or such dark rings framing haunted eyes. He reminded her more of a methadone patient than a university professor.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want?"
"My name is Katy Sinclair. I'm with the FBI. These two gentlemen are with the Champaign Police department. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about the FreeNet operator you turned in. And Marguerite L'Beau"
"Never heard of 'em."
"Please, Doctor Nolen, don't insult my intelligence. The phone call was made on a disposable cell, sold to you by the White Hen Pantry on the corder of Fourth and Green Street. GPS tracking shows you discarded the phone in a public waste bin after making the call, from whence it made its way into the local landfill. Need I go on?"
The old man laughed. "I should have known you'd catch on eventually. I'm not as smart as I was before. Not nearly. So, you're here to ask me about the Community I suppose."
"Among other things, yes."
"Well, there's no sense trying to air condition the whole Midwest. Come in and have a seat."
Katy smiled as he held the door open and went inside. The living room was surprisingly small, the furniture old catalog, mass produced stuff trying to mimic the style of a century earlier. The sort of thing that had been popular briefly, about fifteen years ago. It wouldn't bring much at all on the second hand market today, with better, cheaper, and more attractive pieces being hand built by artisans from Rio de Janeiro to Kathmandu.
"Sorry I can't offer you any refreshments. I haven't been much in the habit of keeping my refrigerator stocked lately."
Katy smiled again, reassuringly. "No problem, Doctor. You do keep the air conditioning turned up, don't you?"
"Never much cared for the heat," he admitted. "Now, what did you want to know about the Community? Or are you really here just to follow up on a FreeNet node you already confiscated two weeks ago." He grinned, as if daring her to continue her charade.
Katy chuckled. "Why don't you begin by telling me exactly what community we're talking about."
"Shit, you haven't even figured that out yet? After I delivered two of its co-founders into your hands, along with a third generation Node? What do you need, a map and a compass? The Autonomous Community, of course. The community of autonomous, ungrateful jackasses," his voice and lips had curled into a sneer.
Katy nodded. It sounded exactly like what a group of information and technology anarchists would call themselves. "So, Doctor Nolen, this 'autonomous' community. This is a community of people who use digital enhancements to improve cognitive abilities, memory, that sort of thing?"
Doctor Nolen chuckled. "In a manner of speaking. Once onloaded, a person can be as bright as they want to be. Even exceed the capacity of their Node, if they are willing to trade off time for computational power. Some insights make the slowdown worthwhile."
Katy shook her head. "Slowdown? Wouldn't slowing down one's thoughts make a person less intelligent, not more? Isn't the whole idea of carrying around a digital assistant glued to your skull to make you brighter, quicker, smarter?"
Doctor Nolen shook his head. "Nobody is carrying around anything, sweetheart. Don't you get it? When you load yourself onto a Node your meat brain suspends operations. Your entire mind, everything that is you, is loaded onto a solid state crystalline matrix of molecular storage and a combination of digital and quantum circuitry."
"We're not talking VR?" Katy asked. "The entire personality is uploaded into a computer?"
"Onloaded, yes. Loaded onto an autonomous node. Where you can think hundreds of times faster than in the flesh, where you can live almost two years in a single day, a lifetime in less than a month. Where anything is possible, and the frailties of the flesh not even a distant memory."
Katy blinked. This went far beyond anything she and Robert had suspected. "And the smarter you want to be, the slower the system runs? But it still runs faster than anything in the flesh?"
"That depends," Doctor Nolen replied.
"On what?"
"On the hardware, of course. Take the Gen One Node I used to have. Best speedup you could get was thirty to one. A month of life in a single physical day. Didn't hold a candle to the third and forth generation Nodes they were using when the bastards exiled me back here. Last I heard people were getting speedups of a thousand to one, even when operating at superhuman intelligence."
"Superhuman?"
Doctor Nolen grinned, nodding. "As in better than, as in smarter than. I was once smarter than any ten people put together. I invented the architectural enhancements to the mind that made such intelligence possible and accessible, and how did they repay me? They lobotomized me! They exiled me back into this . . . this dying body, this unreliable, idiot brain that can't even retain what little information it has."
"So you decided to turn a couple of them in. Kyle Tate, who as it turns out was one of your graduate students. Marguerite L'Beau, who seems to have skipped town. Tell me, how could we have overlooked that connection for so long?"
Doctor Nolen shrugged. "You'd have to ask Marguerite. Skipped town, you say? Damn! That must have gotten lost with all the other information they stripped from me."
"Why should we ask Marguerite?"
"She's the software expert. She probably deleted the information you needed to connect the dots from your own computer systems. That would be like her."
"She was a post doctoral student from the University of Paris, wasn't she?"
"Yes," Doctor Nolen smiled. "Damn attractive, too. She and Kyle worked for me at the university. I invented the onload procedure, the first Node. I invented all the damn technology that makes their contemptible Community possible. What did I get in return. Ingratitude. Those jackasses hold software in higher esteem, software that plagiarizes my own work!"
"Software? You mean onloaded people? Competing scientists?"
Doctor Nolen shook his head. "Not scientists. Not people. Just software. A copy, a cheap knockoff. Not a person in its own right. I deleted the malfunctioning program however. It won't be bothering any of us ever again." His smile was kindly.
"Doctor Nolen, I need to know where Marguerite went. Her home was empty, and has been for several days."
Doctor Nolen shook his head. "I don't know. I might have, once. They took some of my memories, you know. Deleted things they didn't want me to know. But not everything. Memory is a very imprecise thing. The encoding isn't intuitive at all. Its scattered-holographic-and it isn't any easier to edit once it's been digitally encoded either." 
"How many people there are in the community of yours?"
Doctor Nolen shook his head. "It's gone. I don't know. Thousands, I think."
"I need as many names as you can remember."
"I wish I could help you," Doctor Nolen told her. "I'd like nothing more than to see those bastards in prison! You know I can't go under any more? Anesthetic coma doesn't work for me now. They changed the structure of my mind, made it impossible. If I ever get in an accident or need an operation, they'll have to use old fashioned chemicals."
"Where is your factory?"
"Factory? Oh, you mean for the prototypes. We made the first couple of dozen in my laboratory, shipped them around the country to interested colleagues. But once we had a functional, self-replicating nano-constructor we built the rest of our hardware from recipe. A discreet powder in one letter, a bottle of catalyst in a different package, sent with a different carrier. Mix, shake well, add some molecular s