Bob and Sid were effectively invisible to people on the street just because nobody bothered to look at them.
Sid’s identity-thieving algorithm was active, of course, and Bob’s own credentials were constantly shifting, through Rocky, and then Susanna, Bill, Quentin, all of it layered in a time-cloaking algorithm he and Sid had created as kids.
And almost all of the passing people were already on pssi.
A girl approached, walking her dog, and Bob accepted her open reality share, fusing his perception into a bubble-gum-inspired teddy-bear world. The multibots finishing arranging the chairs sprouted lavender fur. Everyone on the street looked happy behind vacant smiles. The girl had virtually fused her frontal lobes with her dog, and they were chatting about what park they wanted to visit.
A woman in a suit brushed past the girl, and Bob shifted into her reality skin. A sleek minimalist world slid into his sensory frames, and a brass-and-glass metropolis rose up out of the teddy-bear world of the girl. The multibots, busy parking themselves under the bright red star of Macy’s along the sidewalk bordering the square, shed their lavender fur and became menacing in black.
New Yorkers were early adopters of new technologies, but this might be the last gadget they’d ever install. Bob could already sense psombies passing by on the streets—people whose bodies were under control of someone else while the owners amused themselves in virtual worlds—or parts of composites that fused their neural systems together into collectives.
The pace of cultural change was gaining speed.
Vince rocked back in his chair. “I think this might be a waste of time. Whoever stole Willy’s body doesn’t want to be found. We should be getting in touch with Terra Nova directly. For God’s sake, they’re still funneling the communication link into his body.”
Bob nodded. Getting in touch with Terra Nova was the next logical step. Ever since the attack on Atopia, though, Terra Nova had been blockaded in the physical and cyber realms. Secure communication from this side of the world was difficult, so they needed to get physically closer. “Way ahead of you,” said Sid, uploading the details. Deanna had already arranged transit for them on the New York passenger cannon, to Lagos in Africa.
“What about Sintil8?” Willy asked. His image flickered.
Terra Nova linked the connection between Willy’s mind—in his lost body—and Willy’s virtual presence here, and they were having trouble maintaining the connection. Bob worried that it might wink out altogether, exiling Willy into the outer reaches of the multiverse.
Vince smiled. “Leave the gangsters to me.” His future-altering espionage and counter-espionage network had tentacles reaching into the underworld. “I think it’s time we switched gears. I’ll be in New York the day after tomorrow. There’s not much more I can do in the Commune.”
“Perfect.” Sid fiddled with his phantoms, uploading data into Vince’s networks. “After we pick up some more bootleg smarticles, tonight Bob and I are going to Hell.”
9
In the blue daytime sky, Wormwood was just visible to the naked eye. The comet’s dust-and-ion tails separated as it neared the sun, turning it into a tiny feathery “v” in the sky. Vince glanced at Zephyr, his chaperone on the hike past the perimeter of the Commune.
They had walked out on foot, two miles each way for some fresh air. Vince had needed to get outside of the Commune’s perimeter to get communication uplink, to talk with Sid and Bob back in New York. No comms in or out from under the radiation shield. A splinter of Vince’s mind was still lounging on a chair in Herald Square, chatting with Willy and Sid, but his main subjective was back at the edge of the Commune with Zephyr, staring into the sky at the comet.
Vince shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand. “Quite the sight, huh?”
Zephyr nodded, his mouth open, staring up. “Grandpa says people are bringing it here on purpose, that it’s one of the signs.”
Vince rolled his eyes. Sign of what? That people on Earth were doing bat-shit-nuts things like building Communes? But as crazy as what they were doing was, a part of him was fascinated. Below the surface of the Commune was a network of tunnels built into the bedrock of the mountains. The Commune wasn’t just an alternate-Amish experiment—it was a fortress for the end of times. He respected their dedication. More than that, these were genuinely nice people. That was a rare thing in this world.
And he had to admit, he felt safe inside the Commune’s perimeter.
When Vince shared that Willy wasn’t running Willy’s body anymore, the Reverend helped Vince track down what Willy’s body had been doing inside the Commune. After talking to the town librarian, they discovered that Willy’s body had been reading old manuscripts, ancient copies of Gnostic texts that detailed the Apocalypse. Hoarding ancient texts like this was the sort of thing the Commune was famous for, the prototype for hundreds of copycat doomsday cults that were sprouting up around the world.
“Do you really buy into all that stuff?” Vince asked, still staring at the comet.
“And ye will know the truth, and it shall make you free,” Zephyr replied. It was early morning, and the grass underfoot was stiff with the frost of the night before. He turned to face Vince. “Do you know what apocalypse means?”
A drone buzzed past them, darting back and forth to capture motes of spent aerial-plankton that fell like snow, collecting them to return to the recycling center. The rising sun lit up the face of the mountain behind the Commune village in the distance.
Vince shrugged. “Death? Destruction? The end of days?”
“No.” Zephyr looked down from the heavens. “Apocalypse is a Greek word, and it literally means ‘lifting of the veil.’ ”
“So something is about to be revealed?” Vince didn’t mean to edge his words with sarcasm, but they rolled out that way.
“You might not think much of me, Mr. Indigo, but some of the world’s most respected people have joined the Communes.”
“Sorry, Zeph, I didn’t mean it like that.” Vince was well aware of the weekly roll call of new “Communistas”—mediums, celebrities, actors, retired politicians, famous scientists. There wasn’t just one Commune. This one was the largest, but there were dozens around the world.
“Many come to escape, as you did to Atopia. But on Atopia you try to cover the real world—reality skins, virtual worlds, limitless sensory stimulation. The Communes have been trying to cut through that, to see things more clearly.”
They’d re-entered the perimeter now, and Vince’s virtual reality systems and communications cut off again. He stared at the grass at his feet while he walked, dewdrops from the thawing frost glistening in the slanting sunshine. Going back outside the perimeter and reactivating his body’s smarticle network felt like sliding a comfortable sheath around his senses, a plastic version of reality.
Now he felt… what?
More alive?
“Make no mistake, Mr. Indigo.” Zephyr clenched his jaw and looked into the sky at the comet. “The War in Heaven has begun.”
10
“Holy shit, Sid, what the hell did you do?”
Bob felt like he was dropping into the bowels of the underworld as the elevator sank into the depths. Visions of Cerberus slavering over the entrance to the spirit lands raised a spine of fur on the nape of Bob’s feline neck.