Idempotency (16 page)

“Good, good. Keep me updated, Kane. You’re doing a fantastic job—but bear in mind that
fantastic
just barely meets my expectations.”

As NRS executives poured out of the expansive meeting room and into a lobby area, Dr. Kya Okafor pushed hurriedly past a few colleagues to tap Korak Searle on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, Reverend Searle?”

Searle twirled around. He had been deep in thought, but his face warmed at the sight of Kya.

“Dr. Okafor, right? Our new chief scientist, correct?” Searle asked, knowing the answer.

“Yes, yes, that’s right. I don’t know if you remember this, but I used to attend your sermons at that large Protestant church on the Lower East Side when I was doing my undergrad at NYU.”

“Ah, second pew from the back, on the far left—my far left, that is. Am I right?”

“That’s amazing you remember that!” she fawned. “I really admire you. Your sermons were so inspiring. They got me through some very challenging times in my life. I didn’t mention this to Reverend Coglin during the negotiations of my hire, but I wouldn’t have agreed to come on board if you weren’t here. I trust your judgment and stewardship so much.”

“Oh, well, thank you Dr. Okafor.“

“Please—it’s Kya.”

“Thanks, Kya, you’re far too kind. I sin just like everyone else. Hey, so I have to run to another meeting, but how about we catch up over lunch sometime? I’d love to better understand your background. I’ve heard fantastic things about your work in cognitive neuroscience—it sounds truly innovative. Of course, it also sounds like gibberish to me, but I’m told it’s impressive.” Searle’s self-deprecating sense of humor belied his intense eyes.

“That’s kind of you to say, though I have to admit, lately I’ve been” —she hesitated—“wondering about some of the recent decisions I’ve been forced to make.”

A small huddle of people from across the hall motioned to Searle as Kya spoke. Distracted, Searle responded, “Oh, well, that’s very interesting. I look forward to discussing your successes more when we grab lunch. Talk soon, Kya.”

Without waiting for a response, Searle pivoted and marched away to a more pressing discussion.

Kya frowned. To herself she said, “That would be fantastic. I’ll look forward to it.”

Several weeks passed before Dylan even considered doing any sort of investigation into Simeon’s claims. He told himself he was being cautious, but the reality was that he didn’t have the gumption quite yet to admit to himself the severity of his situation. Upon returning to work he had turned inward, avoiding crowded rooms and frivolous conversations. Every word he said seemed to pass through a new filter in his mind; a filter than scanned every word he said for a level of safety. Dylan’s colleagues noticed the change—Frank, especially—but he told his co-workers that he was simply under the weather. Three weeks later, this was turning into a lengthy cold.

As for Kristina, he had avoided her entirely. She had sent him a friendly text message apologizing for her outburst and assuring him she would try to understand. He had responded in kind, but that was it. They had bumped into each other a few times in the hallways, and each time Dylan’s heart jumped out of his chest just like that day on the bluff with SOP. But their conversations had been short, remaining above the surface. They had yet to speak at length or depth. Yet.

On the first Monday that he returned to the office, his heart had nearly beat through his brown tweed jacket. He half expected Frank to call him Boxster when he walked into their Monday morning staff meeting. After a few anxiety-riddled hours, however, he began to calm down, asserting correctly that nothing measurable had changed in the office. A few days passed and he began to fret about when he would be contacted again. He checked his office for obvious video- or audio-surveillance devices, but he stopped after a few minutes, admitting to himself that he had no idea what those devices would even look like. After a few weeks had passed, he began to humorously question his sanity: Had the events of that weekend in the Pacific Northwest even truly transpired? Were hallucinogenic episodes a side effect to his failed deathTrip?

After the fourth week passed, Dylan tried a new trick: Suppress all recollection of the events altogether. He attempted to go back to his fun-loving, gregarious self, a raucous routine that saw him work hard and play hard. A twelve-hour workday followed by dinner and drinks with clients or colleagues, commencing with a quick recap of the world news before rinsing and repeating.

Damn the news
, he thought. It was quite possible Dylan could have suppressed the events had it not been for the news. The news seemed different to him now—prophylactic, synthetic, and manufactured on a massive scale. Whether he was reading a corp-sponsored article, or watching one of the hundreds of different corp-produced newscasts, they just seemed to lack a certain trait: veracity.

The relative few number of stories that focused on class issues were all from the perspective of assistance. None focused on the core issue of the problem; most didn’t even recognize a problem to begin with. The majority of reports seemed to indicate that the polar class system had been inevitable, a by-product of a growing economy coupled with technology that might soon allow potions of the population—those who could afford it—to live indefinitely. Experts in the field of sociology would ramble incoherently about the need to properly integrate the lowCasters into the socioeconomic structure. Other pundits—who were usually corp-financed—brazenly lobbied for a formal abrogation of the middle class. They argued that society should engineer their future around two polar classes, rather than attempt the futile effort of rebirthing a long-lost middle class. Their vision included two disparate currencies and economies; there simply wasn’t enough money to support a middle class if everyone were to live forever, the argument went.

Damn the news; for there were only scant, extremist mentions of aging lowCasters who were using age-lengthening drugs as black-market currency. No mention of the abhorrently disfigured aging population suffering from mental and ghastly physical issues due to the lack of skin- or brain-regeneration drugs.

There was certainly no mention of an anonymous group fighting the good fight.

Damn the news.

On a particularly muggy early December day in San Diego, Dylan decided to take the stairs down a floor to the area of the office where the developers worked. The decorum of the office was particularly and deliberately chaotic, and the developers liked it that way. There were no cubicles, no offices, just a bunch of various-sized chairs and couches strewn haphazardly around the room. The room was sparse, as most devs chose to work out of their homes (they resided all over the world), but they did make it a point to get together once a month as a group, in person. The general thought among modern human-resource psychs was to enforce mandatory physical human interaction. Some companies went so far as to require holographic hugs and handshakes on a monthly basis.

There were only a half-dozen or so developers working in the office on this day, but Dylan was certain Kristina would be there. Kristina was one of the top developers SolipstiCorp had on the payroll, and they were lucky that she was local. Many companies had tried to poach her, but SolipstiCorp had signed her to a strict noncompete. And anyway, she seemed satisfied; after all, she was almost always in the office.

Dylan spotted her as soon as he entered the room. Kristina was sitting in a far corner. She had both outside walls at 100 percent opacity. The sun was nowhere to be found. Her small, sinewy body was draped over her cubed foam chair, her arms stretched out. Her simple brown hair was shaped in a bowl cut. A tight, short-sleeved shirt merged unnoticed into similar colored pants, accentuating her twiglike figure. She picked at the floor with her hands, apparently hard at work through her BUI, though it almost appeared that she was picking lint off the carpet.

 “Hi Kristina, how—how are . . . things?” She started as Dylan spoke, and his confidence popped. “Ugh—I’m sorry, this is awkward. I need some advice—some help. Can we go get coffee?”

“Now?” He nodded. “Well, I was just . . .” She fidgeted with the small BUI device on her ear, waved her hands in front of her face, then replied, “Yeah, okay, let’s go.”

Kristina was only slightly confused when they reached the lobby and walked past the coffee shop. She became more perplexed as Dylan ignored one of the many coffee shops just outside of their office building, insisting instead on going to a new favorite coffee joint by way of his transport. Kristina was entirely suspicious when she found out that this favorite coffee shop was on public land ten minutes north of downtown. And she was positively anxious as they walked a half block among lowCasters to reach the coffee shop that Dylan insisted had the best Americano in town. But Kristina placated Dylan’s wishes out of concern for the man she still loved.

Dylan bought two double Americanos, and they sat at a small table inside the open air, windowless, nameless café.

“Double Americano, lots of room.” Dylan smiled as he handed her her drink.

“How’ve you been, Dylan?” she asked, laying a hand on his knee.

“I miss you, Kristi. I miss you so much. I think about you every day. Last night I did Chinese Monday. I got our usual take-out Chinese and ordered your favorite: chow mein with the pork rolls. I set it on the couch next to me and didn’t touch it.” Dylan saw her light up and looked guilty. “But, Kristi, I can’t go back to that yet. You were right, I’m not idempotent, and I—” He stammered. “I’m going to tell you stuff and you’re not going to believe me. I’m not sure
I
believe me.”

His eyes watered, and she looked upon him with infinite sympathy. She wanted to wrap him up in her arms and save him. “I love you, Dylan. A part of me always will. I’ll listen to everything you say with an open mind and try to help you. Tell me what’s going on.”

“So, remember when I went up to Seattle? I visited a group of people. An underground—er, I think you’d call it dark—organization of sorts. They’re known as Sons of Pseudo, or SOP.”

Kristina’s jaw dropped. “SOP? Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

“You’ve heard of them?”

“Of course I’ve heard of them! I’m a technologist. You’d have to be completely ignorant to
not
have heard of them—no offense.” She patted his knee. “Their leader, Simeon, is infamous, he’s a modern-day unicorn—almost mythical. Most people don’t believe he’s a real person. There’s one theory that he’s a collection of several people.”

Dylan grunted. “Oh, he’s real all right. Log on to my local-private network—I’m going to send you a few things.”

They both opened their BUIs, and Dylan sent Kristina all of the data he had amassed: saved text chats with SOP, expired encryption keys, his entire faulty deathTrip, the data surrounding his great-uncle Randy, and personal notes outlining everything he recalled from his trip to Seattle. Kristina’s brow furrowed and she scanned through zettabytes of data in seconds.

She made several grunting sounds as she read. When she got to his personal notes about his travel to Seattle, she gasped repeatedly, causing Dylan to raise his eyebrows. “C’mon, Kristi, you’re killing me.”

She clicked her BUI off and met his gaze again. Exhaling, feeling sad, she asked, “Oh Dylan, why didn’t you talk to me? I could have helped—”

“Dammit, Kristi,
that
comment is why I didn’t talk to you. You just make me feel guilty all the time. Could we, just for this conversation, try to not focus on our relationship?”

“As if we’ve ever focused on our relationship!” she shot back.

“Kristi—” He reached out and grabbed her hands in his. “I’m in trouble and I need your help.”

She relaxed. “I’m sorry, Dylan. Really, I’m sorry. This is just a lot to take in, and I’m so worried for you. I’ll do what I can. What questions do you have?”

“Well, I have a lot of technical questions I want to ask, but, in general, what do you make of it all? And what do you know about SOP?”

“Well, like I said, not a lot. SOP are more darkVirt legend than real. I can’t believe you met Simeon. I don’t know what to make of it all. I need time to mull it over. What are you going to do?”

“What
can
I do?” he asked rhetorically. “I have to wait until they contact me.”

Kristina seemed deep in thought, tapping her chin pensively. “Maybe not,” she said. “You could try to find them. Something tells me that if you go poking around in the darkVirts they might be encouraged to reach out to you.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“Yeah.” They both nodded.

“Also,” Dylan continued, “aren’t ocular implants required to login to a darkVirt? I don’t want to get ocImps. I don’t trust that.”

“Most corpVirts allow BUIs, but yeah, any darkVirt will be ocImp only.” She began tapping her chin again. “However, I have been considering modifying SolipstiCorp’s headgear to allow the user to log in to darkVirts. The thing is, no one would ever sign off on that plan. I’d have to do it in my spare time, and hide the code.”

“Well, like my buddy always says, hiding code in a function is easier than hiding hay in a haystack,” Dylan replied.

Kristina looked at Dylan and raised her eyebrows.

“Simeon,” he replied to her unasked question.

A slight vibration tickled Dylan’s ear. He reached up and clicked on his BUI. Instantly, a message popped up in front of him:

BEGIN 256 PETABYTE OpenPGP PUBLIC, PRIVATE, & AUTHORIZED ENCRYPTED CHAT SESSION  . . . AFFIRM THREE TIMES TO ACCEPT PUBLIC KEY AND SIGNED CHAT FROM:

NIMBUS:NIM_f9f8bb74612c. . .<256PB>. . .89ae2

Dylan’s heart skipped. He glanced toward Kristina with a finger in the air to indicate the importance of the message he was receiving. He waved his hand in a slight downward motion three times, and a message arrived . . .

[NIMBUS 12:40:24] Hey Dyl-Pickle.

[Dylan 12:41:12] Cute. So it wasn’t all a dream.

[NIMBUS 12:41:57] Dylan, you are being watched.

[Dylan 12:42:18] By someone other than SOP?