Ghost of the Gods - 02 (46 page)

Mark Freedman – Dallas, Texas – March 12, 0002 A.P.

Mark was given a beekeeper suit and ordered to put it on. His hands were then cuffed behind his back and the suit was switched on. Where they taking him? The hatch opened. Mark saw Zuris smiling to himself with Kathy standing beside him. They were flanked by a pair of bodyguards in beekeeper suits. Mark wanted to strangle Zuris.

“Today we’re going on a little tour,” said Zuris. “Think of it as orientation day for a new job.”

“If you think I am going to work for you, you’re a crazier fucker than I thought,” said Mark.

One of the bodyguards marched into the chamber, pulled out a telescoping baton, and beat Mark in the head repeatedly without restraint, driving him to the floor. He saw bright flashes of light from each blow with the world dimming between impacts. After a few minutes on the floor, Mark’s senses returned to him. The smashed beekeeper helmet slipped from his head as he tried to stand with his hands cuffed behind his back. One of the bodyguards hoisted him to his feet. He was more than a little unsteady and bruised. His face and head felt like he had a fever, as COBIC worked to repair the damage.

“This healing ability of your kind is so useful,” said Zuris. “We can badly hurt you again and again without concern that we might go too far. Look at the mess you forced us to make. Now we’ll have to get you a new helmet.”

With Kathy in tow, Zuris gave Mark a tour of Zero-G. Two bodyguards were flanking him with firm grips on either of his upper arms. Since Mark had left the chamber, Zuris had been talking incessantly about ancient artifacts and something called Prometheus. The only time they stopped moving was so Zuris could point out something of importance along their route to what he called the artifacts vault. Mark could not understand why Kathy was being forced to accompany them. She seemed still enraged at him and clearly did not want to be here. To his relief, she had turned ashen when she’d gotten her first close-up look at his battered face, but then soon returned to glaring at him. As they walked, she refused to speak to anyone.

As Mark stepped through the vault door, it felt like he’d walked into a king’s treasure chamber. The artifacts vault was a revelation. He’d had no idea so many relics existed. The vault looked like a museum, but with impossible specimens on display inside Plexiglas cases.

“Look around,” said Zuris. “Take your time. Each case has a description.”

Mark was allowed to wander on his own with his hands cuffed behind his back. Zuris, Kathy, and the bodyguards remained by the door. Several relics had to be nexus devices. Some of these devices looked completely alien, while others looked like you could have bought them in a store today. Oddly, the relics that looked so familiar bothered Mark the most. He had a terrible sense of déjà vu when he stared at them. One relic looked exactly like a pair of IR goggles and another looked like a digital wristwatch. There was a terrible message in those relics. Maybe it was that they were hard proof that civilizations like his had been utterly destroyed, proof that something far worse than a nanotech plague could happen at any time?

Mark’s thoughts were interrupted when one of the bodyguards came to retrieve him. Zuris announced they were heading to Prometheus. A tram picked them up at an underground tunnel. They rode in silence. Mark was grateful for a break in the guided tour. He could tell the tram was gradually heading deeper into the ground. After fifteen minutes they came to a stop. Zuris and Kathy disembarked. Mark was helped off by one of the bodyguards. Large warning signs announced that entry was restricted and deadly force would be used.

They walked through one of several blast doors that was opened and closed for them by unseen hands. Inside this faculty almost everyone was in uniform, including civilians. Those who were not soldiers wore military jumpsuits that carried no rank.

Zuris stopped walking and stared directly into Mark’s eyes with a penetrating gaze. Mark was weary of Zuris and his manipulative head games.

“What I am going to tell you is the truth,” said Zuris. “To prove this to you I will allow you to take off the zone-jammer suit, but first understand something. Kathy is right here with us. If you use one of your micro kill-zones, Kathy dies too. If you try anything, one of my guards will execute both of you. Understood?”

“Your desire to tell the truth would seem far more earnest without the death threats,” said Mark.

“Take off his handcuffs,” ordered Zuris.

Once Mark was free, he immediately took off the helmet and one-piece suit, leaving them in a pile on the floor. He’d expected to feel the god-machine come rushing in, but experienced nothing. A geo-projection showed the entire area was riddled with n-web pathways, but there were no outside routes. The facility had to be shielded with zone-jammers. Mark could feel emotions from hundreds of people inside the facility. Stray thoughts were coming in from every direction. He caught Kathy staring at his battered face and experienced empathy blended with reluctant admiration radiating from her. A medical assist reported on his large bruises and gashes. They were his medals of honor for standing up to Zuris. The internal damage had healed enough for COBIC to begin work on the outer layers.

“I am going to tell you about the Prometheus
project,” said Zuris. “I trust you are able to read my emotions and biometrics to confirm I’m speaking the truth.”

“I’ll know when you start to lie,” said Mark.

“Excellent, handcuff them together,” said Zuris.

One of the bodyguards cuffed Mark to Kathy. The cuff bit into his wrist. Mark wanted to tell her he was sorry, but knew for now it was better to keep silent.

“We are currently standing in the Prometheus interface project
,”
said Zuris. “This facility is a joint USAG-EMP shielded underground bunker designed for critical top-secret work. The bunker is sealed against everything, including kill-zones. A quarantine of the project is required because it must remain isolated to prevent a breakout of Prometheus into the world at large. To explain it simply, the Prometheus interface project is a system that can interface the god-machine with our computers. Once interfaced, we can mine the god-machine for its gold, its wealth of knowledge on every topic from ancient weapons to power plants.”

“Does this interface include command and control?” asked Mark.

“We cannot control the god-machine,” said Zuris.

“So what can you control?” asked Mark. “You lie and I’ll know it.”

“In theory we can control the n-web and biological nodes,” said Zuris.

“By
biological nodes
you mean people?”

“Yes, and animals too.”

“The ultimate weapon,” said Mark. “Command and control of man-made kill-zones. You have an anonymous first-strike weapon with no collateral damage to buildings or equipment.”

Zuris did not smile, though Mark sensed a veiled eagerness in the man.

“As I said,
in theory
,” replied Zuris. “At this stage we have no control over the n-web. It has taken the combined efforts of all our best scientists and engineers on this project to get the data exchange interface marginally operational. Our Kathy contributed a fantastic discovery, which opened the doors to making the interface work for the first time.”

“You used me,” accused Kathy. “There’s nothing medical about this project. Both of you used me. Both of you can go to hell!”

“I am sorry for the little deception,” said Zuris. “What you did will help with medical applications once we get to them. You must admit, you would not have assisted if I had told you everything.”

“Screw you!” said Kathy.

She yanked angrily on her cuffed wrist several times, then stopped. Her tugs had been violent enough to cause the cuff to bite into Mark’s skin. He knew she’d hurt herself as well. He’d never seen her look so defeated. He returned his attention to Zuris. He was both hopeful and chilled by the reality of Prometheus. All that was standing in the way of command and control was a better understanding of n-web syntax and protocols. As a highly evolved node in the god-machine’s network, Mark intimately understood this syntax and protocols. Zuris was well on his way to creating exactly what the hives were using to trigger kill-zones, and Mark could provide the missing pieces for Prometheus. Zuris had no idea how close he actually was to achieving this goal. A single thought kept echoing in Mark’s head:
If you own the weapon, you can devise a means of countering the weapon
.

“Our team had a breakthrough about two weeks ago, thanks to the discovery of jammer-bridging made by our Kathy,” said Zuris. “For the first time we were able to send and receive data packets across the n-web using a hybrid as the interface. As long suspected, the n-web data is digital and network communications circuits are massively parallel with redundant data streams. The biggest surprise was that we did not need complex mapping of the hybrid’s nanotech brain to figure out where to interface. Our second surprise was that we did not have to encode or decode the n-web data itself. All we needed was the ability to pass ones and zeros back and forth at high speed through the cerebral cortex of a connected hybrid. We started by tickling a group of nanotech neurons with a digital signal injected through an electrode inserted into the temporal lobe. In retrospect, I think we could have picked any spot in the cerebral cortex that had been converted to nanotech. The god-machine was hungry to communicate and immediately detected our signal. In a frighteningly short period of time it learned our computer encoding and altered the output of nanotech neurons touching our electrode to match our encoding. We then enabled a feedback loop and the god-machine started learning on its own and was soon radically optimizing the nanotech brain circuitry of the interfaced hybrids to further improve communications. The god-machine was now doing our work for us. Prometheus feedback uses the hybrid’s eyes and ears to present simultaneous classroom-like audiovisual explanations for the computer encoded data we inject into the temporal lobe. This virtual classroom is created using a three-dimensional sound system and laser video projection directly into the retinas.”

Zuris swallowed and took a moment to compose himself. Mark could tell Zuris was about to say something that genuinely affected him. This was not an act.

“I had not grasped the immense intellectual potentials of an artificial mind until that day,” said Zuris. “And since that day I have lived in growing awe, fear, and respect. It is so much greater than we are. We started communicating by passing sequences of digital numbers to the god-machine. The god-machine sent the same sequences back to us and we, in turn, sent back the sum. The very next time we passed a sequence of numbers, we got back the sum. We then proceeded to multiplication, division, log functions. You name a math function and we have done it. We then went through the ASCII alphabet and the dictionary as fast as our audiovisual feedback system could handle. We are now currently working on phrases and sentences that express complete abstract concepts. We are so close to having a true conversation. Unfortunately, there are so many permutations of phrases that the process has slowed because of the feedback bottleneck. Sending audiovisual feedback is very slow compared to direct temporal lobe injection. There also appears to be a barrier between our mental constructs and the constructs of the god-machine. There is a quantum difference between the way we think and the way the machine thinks. We are directly communicating with what amounts to a superior alien life form.”

Mark could not contain himself any longer. A medial assist along with radiated emotions and leaked thoughts all showed Zuris was telling the truth. Synchronicity was a magnificent thing. This egomaniac might just have built the answer to stopping the hives!

“Prometheus is exactly the same thing the communes are using to trigger kill-zones,” said Mark. “They are going to commit genocide and we can use Prometheus to stop them. All we have to do is write a program on one of your computers to monitor the Prometheus interface for kill-zone signals. We then broadcast a complementary data packet over the n-web containing a signal to abort.”

“Mark… Mark… Mark,” said Zuris, shaking his head. “Stop. I want to believe you think this hoax is real, but a plague is not coming; kill-zones are not happening. I am at a disadvantage. You can tell if I am lying, but I cannot judge if you are telling me the truth. Through Prometheus, we humans are building a fragile truce with the god-machine. Maybe you’re more than a pawn in this game. How would I know? Maybe you want another plague. After all, wasn’t all this worldwide murdering done so transhumans like you and Sarah could get a solid foothold in our world?”

Mark could not believe what he was hearing. It took an extreme act of will to contain the resentment boiling over inside him.

“You are wrong!” he argued. “Everyone in the government knows the god-machine acted because humankind was destroying the planet. The attack was to save the Earth, not hybrids. No one knew it at the time, but hybrids already had a lot more than a tenuous foothold. We’ve been here since before this civilization even existed. We obviously don’t need the god-machine’s help to survive and would have been better off in the shadows than the center stage we’re now in, thanks to the nanotech plague…. Look, what’s the harm in setting up Prometheus to defend against kill-zones? Even if I’m wrong and what I’m telling you is a hoax, you have to admit a plague could start without any warning. Wouldn’t Prometheus be a great defensive shield to have just in case? All we’re talking about is some software development on one of your computers. Think of it as cheap insurance.”

“We have zone-jammers,” said Zuris.

“Okay, let’s get them manufactured and sent out to everyone.”

“We’ve already given them to everyone we can’t afford to lose,” said Zuris.

“What about everyone else?” asked Kathy.

“They will have to wait. Listen to me. There… is… no… imminent… threat.”

Mark had stopped arguing with Zuris but remained obsessed with the idea of using Prometheus as a shield. There was no guarantee it would work, so they needed to program and test it as soon as possible. The direct approach of convincing Zuris was not going to work. Mark decided he either had to come at Zuris from an oblique angle or somehow hack Prometheus. Either way, he’d have to bide his time or risk being completely shut out. Zuris was now ushering them deep into Prometheus. After they got into an elevator, he put his hands onto Mark’s shoulders.

“I am not giving you this tour to show off a successful project,” he said. “This is not about ego. I want you to join the team working on Prometheus.”

Mark could not believe the synchronicity that was occurring. Of all the projects in all his many companies, Zuris wanted Mark to work on the very one he needed to hack. He began wondering if the god-machine had a hand in all this; after all, Zuris was saturated with COBIC. The elevator stopped.