Insignia (13 page)

“Speak for yourself, Viktor. I am happy to use my—” Yuri grew limp and keeled over onto Tom’s side.

Vik flicked Tom an amused glance as he struggled to dislodge the dead weight. “The Zorten II computer language is Indo-American neural processor-specific. It’s classified, so Yuri’s neural processor sends him into shutdown mode.”

Between Tom and Beamer, they were able to prop Yuri up on the bench in a way that stopped him from crushing either of them.

“What does he remember happening during Programming?” Tom asked Vik.

“I asked him once what he thought of this class, and he started rambling about ‘munchkins’ and ‘fractals.’ I think he just gets so scrambled, he doesn’t even realize he’s scrambled later.”

The door to the lecture hall slid open, and chattering voices died away. Tom looked up, and saw an imposing man with close-cropped brown hair and a hawkish face stride up to assume the podium. His profile said he was:

He greeted them with, “Well, folks, I had a big laugh after your class prank.”

Then a ping in Tom’s brain:
Morning classes have now commenced
.

“I had to look over your firewall programs twice just to be sure.” Blackburn leaned his elbows on the podium, his broad shoulders stretching his fatigues. “At first, I honest to god thought those were the real programs. But then I remembered that these are the best and the brightest young people in the USA even without neural processors, so they couldn’t possibly be serious about such laughable, poorly written code. Well done, trainees! You had me. Now where are the real programs? Feel free to submit them now.”

Blackburn began drumming his fingers on his podium, waiting. Despite his easy words, there was a grim, almost angry set to his features. Tom glanced around for some cue about what was going on. All the faces he saw were fixed in varying degrees of tense expectation, like they knew the mildness of their instructor’s tone was deceptive.

After a time, Blackburn glanced up into space. “That’s funny. Looks like I got … nothing. Do you mean to tell me those were your real programs? In that case, we need to talk about some fundamentals here for a minute, children. In fact, let’s start with fundamental number one. Are you listening? Here it is: there are computers in your brains.”

He let those words hang there and looked over the room.

“Do I need to repeat myself?” This time, he jabbed his finger at his temple with each word. “There are
computers
in your
brains
. Do you know why I am wasting my breath trying to teach you to program? No, it’s not so I can spend precious hours looking at this sea of happy, shiny faces. It’s so
you
can learn to control your own neural processors.” The mild tone vanished from his voice—his irritation seeping through. “Mastery of programming is mastery of self, and if you can’t take that seriously, then the joke’s not on me, it’s on you. What, Ms. Akron?”

Heather’s hand dropped. Her voice rang out, “If it’s really so important we learn this, sir, then it would make much more sense to just put everything we need in the download streams.”

Blackburn puffed out his cheeks and released his breath very slowly. “I’ve said this before,” he replied, “and I’ll say it again: those neural processors can’t manipulate computer languages the way they do human languages, and there’s a very simple reason for that—it’s illegal. We have federal laws in this country. One such law prohibits self-programming computers. Your neural processor, as a computer, falls under this law. Your brain, as an organ in your skull, does not. If you have a problem with this, then you can take it up with the good folks at Obsidian Corp. who lobbied your congressmen for that legislation. You see, they built the neural processors, so it makes sense for
them
to keep the military dependent on their programmers. That’s why you folks are all so very lucky I’m here, and I, unlike you, realized how important it was to control the computer in my brain, even if it meant I had to sit down and teach myself the Zorten II computer language the hard way.”

Tom stared at Blackburn, still stuck on those words “The computer in my brain …” How could Blackburn have a neural processor? He had to be forty, at least. General Marsh said adults couldn’t handle neural processors. But he remembered seeing an IP address in Blackburn’s profile. That must be his.

“But, sir,” Heather pressed, “some of us are Combatants. We’re fighting the war. You had more time to learn the regular way, since you were just …” She trailed off.

She didn’t seem able to say it, so Blackburn gave a short, harsh laugh. “I was just … locked in a mental institution?”

“He was in a mental institution?” Tom whispered to Vik.

“First test group was sixteen years ago,” Vik replied softly, “three hundred adult soldiers. The military didn’t know yet what neural processors do to adult brains.”

“They
all
went insane?”

“Only the lucky ones. The rest died.”

Tom took a moment to absorb that as Blackburn went on, “No need to dance around my mental illness, Ms. Akron. I’ve never tried to hide it from you. If there’s one monstrous representation of a neural processor’s destructive potential, you can see it standing right here. That computer in your head is a weapon, but it is a double-edged sword. Don’t ever forget that.”

“He doesn’t seem all that crazy,” Tom whispered to Vik.

“He taught himself how to reprogram his neural processor and fixed his own brain.”

“There’s this attitude,” Blackburn was saying, “and I find it in trainees again and again. The first few months with a neural processor, it’s all amazement and awe. And then? You start taking it for granted. Don’t. Never take a neural processor for granted. There is nothing natural about having a computer in your head. So while you have a point, Ms. Akron, about having a time crunch, you also fail to see the forest for the trees. Yes, I was a paranoid schizophrenic with nothing better to do than figure out how to program, but
you
, as an actual fighter in this war, have a much more critical reason to learn programming for yourself. Let’s start with point one: you’re fighting a war. What is the basic definition of war? I don’t need anything deep, just a quick, one-sentence answer.”

Silence. Then, a Middle Company trainee Tom’s processor identified as Lisa Sanchez answered, “War is a violent conflict to resolve a dispute.”

“That’s right, Ms. Sanchez. This war springs from a disagreement over ownership of the solar system. Each side has laid claim to it, and each is trying to enforce that claim using violence. Point two: why do you think your identities are classified? Anyone?”

An Alexander Division Combatant Tom’s processor identified as Emefa Austerley raised her dark hand. “Security, sir.”

“Why?”

“To protect us.”

“From what?”

No answer this time. Tom glanced around, wondering about it himself. It wasn’t like they’d be killed if their identities were in the open. That didn’t happen now.

“To protect you from violence,” Blackburn supplied. “And I know what you’re all thinking: no one kills in this war. We’ve evolved beyond that, right? Even you Combatants aren’t putting your lives on the line to fight since the battle is taking place thousands of miles from you.... So why protect you from violence? Nigel Harrison, you seem to have something to add.”

A slim, dark-haired boy said, “War evolves over time. It’s better to say, ‘No one kills in this war yet.’”

Blackburn snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “Give the boy a gold star. No one kills in this war
yet
. Violence hasn’t reached you
yet
. Let’s face it, why would the Russians and Chinese try to kill you? They know if they kill one of our Combatants, we’ll set out to kill one of their Combatants. And then the two companies sponsoring those Combatants will have wasted a whole lot of money on some dead kids. There are what, forty something Combatants in the entire world? You’re valuable. It’s not worth it financially to bring death into the equation. But what happens a few years down the road when some discount neural processors hit the market and there are four hundred of you? What about four thousand? Here’s a hint, trainees: your stock goes down. You become expendable.”

In the front row, Elliot Ramirez must’ve said something too quietly for Tom to hear. Blackburn whipped around toward him. “What’s that, Ramirez? Say it louder.”

“I said that’s very cynical, sir,” Elliot said.

Blackburn chuckled drily. He dropped down onto the edge of the stage, legs sprawled, eyes fixed on Elliot. “Did you know that back in the nineteen fifties in the early days of nuclear technology, the military stationed soldiers close to an atomic bomb testing site? The soldiers received massive doses of radiation. So did the civilian population that lived downwind of the site. Was this done in ignorance? No, Mr. Ramirez. It was deliberate—so we could learn about radiation poisoning. Same story with mustard gas, dioxin, PCP, nerve gas, LSD—you name it, some unwitting group of nobodies got a dose of it because some bigwig deemed them expendable. Same story with me—one of three hundred soldiers who received neural processors sixteen years ago, who either died or lost their minds. People are expendable. Period. The only difference between the nineteen fifties and today is that there are billions more of us expendable human beings. If you think you have any true value beyond your impact on someone’s bottom line, you need to wake up from your dreamworld.”

A thick silence hung on the air. Blackburn let those words sit there for a long moment, and then he jounced to his feet.

“I know that from birth you’ve been taught to trust in institutions, laws, systems. But I’m here to tell you, the only person you can trust to protect you is
you
. It’s your responsibility to defend yourself with every weapon in your arsenal, and one of those is knowledge—knowledge of programming. If you willfully choose to reject that knowledge, then I will have no pity for you when you wake up with an enemy surgeon cutting into your head to extract that neural processor, and you can’t move a muscle because they’ve hit you with a paralysis program you couldn’t defend against. I warned you, and you chose to delude yourself with the illusion someone else would save you. Helplessness can only be excused in children and fools. You gave up your right to be children the day you came here, and the last thing this world needs is to shelter its fools.”

Tom stared at him, surprised by the words. Everything else at the Spire so far had encouraged camaraderie, teamwork, adhering to the regulations of the place. Blackburn’s words sounded more like …

Well, something Neil might say.

Maybe Blackburn realized he’d taken his spiel too far, because he let out an exasperated breath. “All right, pick your jaws up off the floor and go take a five-minute break. No one’s hacking your heads open today. When you return, I’m going to call someone up here to test a firewall.” When no one reacted, he grew impatient. “Four minutes, fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight, fifty-seven …
Go!
” He turned his attention to his forearm keyboard. A tap of his finger lowered a screen over the stage.

The mass of people in front of Tom reacted. Many trainees raised their forearm keyboards and dove into frantic work on last-minute tweaks to their firewalls. A couple, like Vik, just surrendered themselves to the possibility of facing Blackburn with shoddy firewalls, and rose from their seats.

“Wanna grab something in the mess hall?” Vik asked him.

“Sure,” Tom said, thinking of turning the nutrient bar in his pocket into a burger. He rose to follow Vik from the room, but then several words popped up in his vision center.

Mr. Raines, get up here
.

Tom turned, confused—and saw Blackburn beckoning to him impatiently from the stage. Apprehension squirmed in him. “Vik, I’ve gotta—” He gestured to Blackburn.

Vik glanced back and forth between Tom and Blackburn. “It’s probably nothing,” he assured him.

“Yeah, sure.” Tom hoped so. He headed up to the stage where Blackburn was waiting, elbow propped against the podium. As he neared, Tom made out the frown lines on the man’s face and the pair of thin scars down his cheek.

“Sir, I don’t have a firewall,” Tom blurted.

“Of course you don’t, Raines. This is your first day here,” Blackburn said, kneeling down at the edge of the stage. “It may take you weeks or even months to catch up in this class. I don’t expect that of you. What I do expect is an explanation from you about something.” His eyes were fixed on Tom’s, gray and intent. “Yesterday, someone hacked into one of the Spire’s classified personnel databases. Can you guess whose profile they changed while they were there?”

Tom’s heart plunged. Oh.
Oh
. This was about the favor Wyatt did him.

“That’s right, you’re suddenly a national spelling bee champion,” Blackburn noted. “I don’t care what background you want to make up for yourself, Raines. Not my problem. The reason I called you up here is because that hacker committed a security breach. I want you to tell me that hacker’s name.”

Tom drew a sharp breath. He’d made a promise to Wyatt. He couldn’t go back on that.