4
Nancy surveyed the hall. It was filled with row upon row of young men and women, healthy young men and women—healthy save one respect. They weren’t aware at all. They were cocooned in life-support units, white pods stacked along the length of the hall like eggs in a hive, ready to hatch. Attending drones hovered and buzzed between them.
The facility she was virtually inspecting was located in an office tower in the middle of San Francisco, but she was finding more of them in nearly every city. They were operated as infirmaries by Cognix Corporation, a spillover from the private health care systems it helped operate around the world.
In the cocoons were the disappeared, the people who’d become lost in the Atopian virtual reality system. They went in, but their awareness never came out. On Atopia, before launch, there were reports of this happening, but they’d been pushed aside. Nancy wished she had paid more attention. Only now did she understand the truth.
Jimmy was stealing souls.
“Some report that over a million people are now among the disappeared,” a Boston Globe reporter said in a mediaworld that Nancy watched in a corner of her mind. “Inquiries at Cognix Corporation go unanswered, yet the FDA refuses to hold an inquest into the issue.”
There were rumors, reports, but nobody seemed too worried. It wasn’t just that people were too busy to care, or too interested in their own selfish pursuits. They honestly didn’t notice, or when they did, they’d forget. The highest rates of disappearances were in areas with the highest penetration of pssi, and there was a collective blind spot operating in the externally stored memories and meta-cognitions systems. The disappeared list Nancy was compiling correlated with people in influential positions. Jimmy was taking control.
Another newsworld caught Nancy’s attention: “UN commission reports happiness rates soaring around the world…”
Something had to be done. She couldn’t wait any more.
“Are you content knowing Jimmy is taking Cognix away from you?” asked Nancy. Cognix was Herman Kesselring’s baby. She turned to look out of the phase-shifting windows of the Cognix Board room onto the forests of Atopia more than a thousand feet below.
Kesselring’s face flushed. “I am still the main shareholder. I’ve got nothing to fear from young Scadden.”
“Is that why you hide up here all the time?” Kesselring had barely left the confines of the upper corporate office complex in weeks. “You’re sure acting scared.”
“Have you seen the stock price of Cognix?” Kesselring blustered. “We’re on track to become the fourth-largest economy on the planet—”
“This isn’t about money anymore, Mr. Kesselring. Do you know he’s amassing a private psombie army?” She didn’t need to specify who they were talking about.
“The body lend-lease program? That’s not a private army—”
“Let’s cut the bullshit right now, Herman.”
That stopped Kesselring in his tracks. In the silence, Nancy stared out the window at the crescent of white sand beaches ringing the floating-island-nation-state, at the waves breaking over the frothy breakwaters. The beaches were empty, where before they’d been packed with tourists. They hadn’t been coming here for the water, however, they’d been coming to experience pssi, and now that pssi was everywhere, the tourists were elsewhere. Nancy used to feel such peace when she looked out at this view—but now when she saw those waves, she always thought of Bob and wondered where he was.
“Aren’t you part of the science team going to the Dallas Commune?” asked Kesselring, trying to shift topics.
The Commune outside of Dallas, Texas, under siege by American internal security forces, had been breached. It was the sister to the much better fortified Montana Commune. Atopia had been asked to send in its head technical team to do a forensic analysis of the Commune’s systems. “I am. My main subjective is there now.”
Kesselring drummed his fingers against the conference room table. Nancy could almost see the gears clicking in his head.
“How do you know you can keep anything secret from him?” he said finally.
“I don’t, but then we’re going to have to take some calculated risks if we’re going to stand up to him.” Implicit in this was the risk she was already taking. She didn’t know that Jimmy didn’t already own Kesselring. She was sure Jimmy was controlling the rest of the Board, starting with Dr. Granger, whose normally vapid expressions had become more sinister.
“We?” Kesselring smiled. “So now we are a ‘we?’ ”
Nancy turned away from watching the waves to face Kesselring. “We are.” She sent some data into Kesselring’s networks, some of the information Bob gave her. Kesselring’s eyes widened. “I need you to call a special, very private meeting of senior shareholders.”
On an overlaid situational display, Nancy watched Alliance battle platforms converging on Terra Nova in the Southern Atlantic. She didn’t reveal everything she knew about Jimmy. She kept secret that Jimmy had stolen Commander Rick Strong’s wife. That needed to be used at the right moment.
Kesselring’s mind raced through the data she gave him. “You received this from Patricia?”
Nancy nodded. Maybe she should attempt to contact Mohesha at Terra Nova. The other option was Bob, but that was far too risky. Jimmy would have sensors waiting to be tripped if she tried anything like that. Even here, she was keeping her memories of this meeting locked away inside the perimeter of Kesselring’s private security blankets. Each part of her mind would have to start to work independently, like cells of an espionage network, each knowing the other existed, but not knowing where or what they were up to.
Not until it came time for them to come together.
At the same time, another part of Nancy’s mind hovered at the peripheries of the Dallas Commune in the scrublands of Texas. Surrounding it on all sides were bipedal bots, the letters “FBI” stenciled on their sides. Overhead, in the clear blue sky, the Dallas Commune’s mile-high electromagnetic shield of aerial plankton shimmered, pulsated, and then a gust of wind washed it away. There were four Communes in America, and all of them were under investigation. The Dallas location was the first whose perimeter had been breached.
“Good to go,” came the all clear command.
In an instant, Nancy’s point-of-view shot across the dirt roads and barns into the center of the Commune, inside the vestry of a small church. She eased her virtual presence inside, slowly materializing her virtual body onto a chair. Already a clouding of Atopian smarticles permeated the space. This Commune’s Reverend was pouring himself a cup of tea.
“You realize it was futile to try and stop us getting inside,” said Jimmy, draping himself across the Reverend’s desk. Jimmy wasn’t just projecting himself here virtually—he’d infected the body of one of the Commune’s residents.
The Reverend finished preparing his tea and turned to Jimmy. “Do you need to inhabit my son’s body?”
“Have to, and want to, are two different things.” Jimmy smiled. “But what I do need is some information.”
“I know what you are.”
“It doesn’t matter what you know anymore. Whatever is in there”—Jimmy pointed at the Reverend’s head—“will soon be in here.” He pointed at his own head.
“The Day of Judgment is soon coming—”
“Oh, I know, I know,” Jimmy interrupted, his smile growing wider. “But your day of judgment has already arrived, and I don’t think your God will help you now.”