It was indescribable relief to have something to focus on. “Yes,” Vince replied.
“Good.”
A soothing blackness fell across Vince’s senses, the frayed edges of his mind curling together.
“Is that better?” said the voice.
“Yes.”
The blackness fell away, replaced by the nothingness of the void. Vince felt himself falling.
“Tell us about the garbage,” demanded the voice.
Calm, Vince told himself, you know the game. They wanted to access his memories, but they needed to understand the structure. His externally stored data used compression keys tuned to his earliest memories, ones that existed only inside of his gray matter. Ones only his own mind could extract.
“Yes, you know the game,” said the voice, “so give us what we want.”
They could hear him thinking. There was no escape. Think nothing.
“Try thinking nothing of this,” said the voice.
And then came the pain. His body was on fire, his skin stripping away in molten chunks. He screamed. And then nothing.
“It leaves no marks, no trace, and no memories,” menaced the voice. “You can cooperate or not, rot in this hole of your mind. It makes no difference to us.”
“I will only talk to Colonel Kramer,” stuttered Vince, his nerves stinging, his mind a point of nothing in a nothingness space.
“You are in no position to make demands. Tell us about the garbage.”
Vince had to give them something. “It was the moment I decided I needed to leave home.”
The soothing blackness returned.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” In the background he sensed them using this reference point to begin unpacking some of his memories.
“I need to speak to Colonel Kramer,” repeated Vince.
“Why?”
“Because there are leaks in your organization. I need to speak to him. Personally.”
The voice considered this. “You know you cannot lie to us.”
“Then you know I am speaking the truth. I came here of my own free will.”
More silence, but the nothingness gave way to a gray fog. It became deeper, thicker, and then evaporated. Vince found himself sitting on a concrete floor in total darkness. Not total darkness. He could just see a slit of light coming into the solitary confinement cell through the food receptacle. He reached up to feel his face, laughing and crying at the same time. Leaning over, he curled into a ball on the ground.
Click, clack, click, clack—steel balls on Colonel Kramer’s desk circled through empty space before returning to hit the next one in an endless loop—click, clack, click, clack. Twelve-foot glass walls stood behind the desk, framing a gray and rainy view of one wall of the Pentagon from ground level. Leafless trees bent in a sudden gust. A squall of rain hammered down onto the sidewalk, soaking men and women in uniform as they hurried between buildings.
Colonel Kramer sat in his high-backed leather chair, facing away from Vince, staring through the window at the rain. “I’m a busy man, Mr. Indigo.” The balls stopped motionless in the air.
Vince was sitting in a leather chair in front of the Colonel’s desk, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his hair disheveled and several days of stubble on his face. “This is worth your time.”
There were no guards in the room. They weren’t necessary. Vince’s neural systems were under his captors’ control.
The Colonel swung his chair around to face Vince. “So?”
Vince did his best to verify the metatags of whoever was appearing before his senses. What little network access they granted him seemed to confirm this was Colonel Kramer. There wasn’t any way to be sure, but Vince had few options. “There’s a plot against you.” Vince held the Colonel’s gaze.
Laughing, the Colonel replied, “I hope you have more than that. If I had a dollar for every plot—”
“The Terra Novans think Jimmy Scadden is some kind of reincarnation of the devil that’s dragging the world into an apocalypse.”
The Colonel stopped laughing. He was verifying the feedback loop into Vince’s mind. He knew Vince was telling the truth. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
Vince frowned. “It doesn’t?”
“Just more extremists.” The Colonel shook his head. “What proof do you have?”
“I have information that Patricia Killiam gave to our group.” Reaching inside himself, Vince unlocked a data vault containing a recording of what Patricia had given them. He sent it into the Colonel’s systems.
“Interesting,” the Colonel replied, analyzing the contents. “Tell me more.”
“They think a computing matrix of crystals is forming under cities, connecting into an ancient machine. The Terra Novans have been studying it.”
“An ancient machine?” The Colonel’s eyebrows arched. “Have you seen these”—he paused—“crystals”—he drew out the word—“yourself?”
Vince stared out the window at the winking lights of the turbofan skyways hanging in a small patch of sky that was just visible. “No.”
“So you want me to believe that there is some kind of alien technology—”
“Not alien,” interrupted Vince, “just not human. And no, I’m not asking you to believe anything. I’m just telling you what the Terra Novans think.”
The Colonel nodded. “And where is this leak?”
Vince shook his head. “I just know they think your organization is compromised at some level.”
The Colonel finished assimilating the data Vince sent. “The neutrino detector data, this is new. What else do you know about this?”
“I have no idea, just what Patricia said. The Terra Novans have no idea either.”
“Again, from aliens?” The Colonel smiled.
Vince said nothing, and didn’t return the smile.
The Colonel asked one last question. “And William McIntyre. We know you were searching for his body at the Commune. Did you find him?”
Vince took a deep breath. “No.” He shook his head. “No, we didn’t.”
10
“Do you believe in heaven and hell?” asked Sid.
Sid rotated the viewing lens of the bot he was inhabiting toward the Grilla. Zoraster was splayed out against the trunk of the tea tree in the middle of their enclosure, inspecting the fur on one of his arms.
“Goddamn bugs.” Zoraster picked at his arm, his surprisingly dexterous fingers finding the offending six-legged creature, a brightly-colored beetle. He set it down and watched it scurry off. “Like the human Bible version of heaven and hell, you mean?”
Sid’s bot nodded. “I guess.”
“I’ve seen a lot of pain, kid, and I can tell you, plain and simple, suffering is hell.” Zoraster rocked forward on his haunches and checked down the sight of the rifle again, looking at the Allied headquarters compound on the other side of the valley. “Whether it’s physical, in your head, in this world, or the next—hell is wherever you find suffering.”
Sid-bot didn’t bother reminding Zoraster that he didn’t need to keep doing a visual check. Sid was constantly monitoring the site. “So then a lack of suffering is heaven?”
Leaning against the tree, Zoraster grunted what Sid imagined was a laugh. “I didn’t say that.” He scratched under his exoskeleton. “I don’t think there needs to be an opposite of hell, just a lack of suffering—so I think there’s hell and not-hell.”
“That’s not very optimistic.”
“You wouldn’t be either if someone as messed up as humans designed you.” Zoraster found another insect in his fur and, again, gently removed it to set it free. “Do I have a soul?” he asked rhetorically. “And if I do, did humans create it? On the balance, I’d prefer not to risk it.”