“Do you really think you can get into this nervenet? Infect it?”
Sid nodded. “Yeah, I do. To start with we’ll just track the topology, try to pick up network traffic. Then maybe we can slow them down a little.”
Zoraster laughed. “We might be able to slow them down.” He swiveled his head up to look into the sky, using one giant hand up to block the sun. Just at its edge, the comet’s tail was becoming visible again. “But that freight train is on its own schedule.”
Sid switched into a simulated viewpoint a hundred million miles away in space to have a look. The comet had swung around the sun and was heading for Earth. The Comet Catcher mission still hadn’t figured out what was slowing the comet down more than it should be.
“Do you really think that’s the plan?” The deceleration of the comet could just be violent out-gassing, and it was still only projected to swing just inside lunar orbit, but the problem was taking on ominous dimensions. “Not very elegant.”
“Sometimes war isn’t elegant,” replied Zoraster. “Blunt trauma is my personal favorite. Simple and effective.”
And more than one mass extinction in Earth’s past was blamed on comet impacts.
Zoraster returned his gaze to the Allied headquarters. “Just one shot, that’s all I need.” He stared back down the rifle sight. “Payback time, you bastards.”
I guess he was the right choice for this mission. “We’re not killing anyone, right?” Sid confirmed. “Just injecting some of my hotwired smarticles.”
“Not yet,” Zoraster replied, his voice somewhere between grim and enthusiastic.
The idea was to suffuse trace quantities of nerve conduction particles into the target’s biological matrix that would start leaking data back to Terra Nova. They were going to literally infect the head of Allied Command, and watch to see if any unusual network traffic connected with the crystal nodes they collected. The rifle Zoraster was fondling would accelerate a tiny payload, less than the width of a human hair, which would penetrate the walls of the compound and disintegrate itself on impact with the target and release its content.
“When you locate a Trojan infection, especially a virulent one like this”—Sid shared some more examples with Zoraster’s meta-cognition systems—“it’s best to isolate it, learn what it’s doing. If you just wipe it out, it’ll pop up somewhere else and be that much harder to find.”
Zoraster assimilated Sid’s examples. He smiled. “But eventually we wipe it out, yes?”
“I guess.” Sid shrugged. His job was just to get into the network.
Overhead, the spider-bots were nearly finished. The tensile microfilaments bonded together, creating a gossamer shield that the optics and radio cloaking could spread across. Sid sighed with relief. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could maintain the reality filter in place, spoofing the sensors of the Allied base. He started withdrawing his agents.
This whole time, he’d been listening to conversations inside headquarters, monitoring their movements. Sid switched to a visual overlay of the building, and the red outlines of people inside glowed within the three-dimensional frames of its walls.
“You did a good job back there, kid.”
This was surprising enough that Sid withdrew his primary subjective to stare at Zoraster. “Huh?”
“On the drop down. I risked my team in the hands of some kid who’d only ever fought in gameworlds, but you did good.”
Sid didn’t expect this. “Thanks.”
“The second I saw you, I didn’t like you,” continued Zoraster, “but we’re friends now, right, kid?”
“Right,” replied Sid.
“Good, because I only risk my neck for friends.” Smiling, Zoraster pinged Sid to get the visual overlay for the building, and they both dove into the display. “That’s the target?”
“Right.” Sid highlighted the senior Allied Commander.
It was time.
Zoraster nodded and accessed the control systems of the rifle. “Are we go?”
Sid nodded.
Sounding like a hammer hitting a steel plate, the rifle fired. Its projectile, little more than a thousandth of an inch in diameter, shot across the valley at a velocity of several thousands of yards a second to pierce the wall of the Allied compound building like a hot needle through butter. Several feet short of the target, it disintegrated, spraying its payload of neuro-active smarticles onto the target. The building intrusion was detected, the self-healing walls and glass of the building registering an impact at the same time as external sensors picked up the shockwave outdoors, but with no apparent damage and no detected anomalies within the building, the alert threshold was filed as a low priority. No alarm sounded.
Exhaling with relief, Sid opened up the workspace designed to track the network activity. The display blinked then lit up like a fireworks show. “It’s working,” he whispered.
9
.…two… three… four…
Time.
…six… seven… eight…
Time.
…two… three… four…
Time.
Who am I? Vince, I’m Vince. Is this a game? No, it’s not a game. Was it all a dream? That we can’t be sure of. How can we be sure of anything?
…two… three… four…
Time.
…six… seven… eight…
Time. Time to take out the garbage.
In his mind’s eye, Vince watched himself as a young boy, pulling trash bags out back of the old house on Bowen Street in Southie. It was dark, early November, and bitterly cold. “He needs to get a job!” his father shouted. “Don’t yell,” hissed his mother. “Vince doesn’t fit in here, you know how he is…”
Vince dropped the bags on the street and leaned against the red brick wall in the shadows of the streetlights, lighting up a cigarette. It was only a few miles, yet an impossible distance, from there to the halls of MIT, a distance that would forever separate him from his father.
Looking up at the window, listening to them arguing, he yearned for the warm yellow glow of home.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Nobody cares for you, sang a voice in his head. Nobody is waiting for you. This life was wasted, wasted on something that doesn’t exist. The future is a ghost, Vincent…
Colors washed in front of his eyes: greens, golds, shimmering reflections like God’s oysters falling open before his eyes, spilling pearly tears. I wish I could close my eyes. Or open them. Please make this stop.
…two… three… four…
Please.
…six… seven… eight…
Stop.
“Tick tock, said the Ticktock man.”
“Is someone there?”
No response.
I’m suffocating. Drowning in nothingness.
“Tick…”
“Please, is someone there?” Vince said again.
“…tock.”
“Tick tock, tick tock, you are the man of time, are you not, Mr. Indigo?” the voice said. “Or perhaps, the man out of time.” The voice laughed.
“Sensory deprivation is banned,” Vince whispered, “by all international treaties.” He couldn’t hear his own voice, but he knew he was talking.
“You’ll have to take that up with the courts when you get out.” The words flashed in his vision, a bright green that faded like the strobe of a flash. “Of course, that’s if you remember, and you won’t, because your memories are classified now. Allied property. You understand?”