Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (53 page)

She stoops down and walks through the front door into an open room with a sphere of blue light floating in the middle. An iron pot hangs on ropes from an overhead beam of wood. In the corner, a young woman is bent over a long, narrow Japanese
koto
, plucking its strings, making music. Visible ripples of sound swim through the air.

The woman looks up. She bears an uncanny resemblance to a hip Japanese actress. “Is that you, Michiko? Come in.” The woman stands and walks to the door. “How do you like my new Mesh-home?”

Matt’s gaze scans the room in a circle.

“I just got the blue jewel,” Michiko says. “It’s incredible.”

“More than incredible.” The young woman draws her legs up and sits lotus style in mid-air. “You can go anywhere, see anything. Be anything. Build your own world. Live in the Mesh. All from Shinto.” She turns and opens her hand. Two cups of tea float to her from off a counter, and she hands one to Michiko. “
Dozo,
please enjoy it.”

Michiko lifts the cup to her lips.

Hot liquid floods Matt’s tongue and runs down his throat. He wants to scream, but has no voice.

The woman leans forward and stares into Michiko’s eyes. “You’ll need to upgrade your avatar. You can be anyone you like.”

“I see you’ve picked a familiar face for yours.” Michiko says. “Where did you get it?”

“There are avatar shops everywhere. It’s cheap and easy.” The woman scans the room. “I’ve always wanted to have a traditional country home. I made this to look like my great-grandmother’s house in the mountains outside of Hiroshima.”

Michiko sips more tea and gazes around the room at the rich colors of the dark wood walls and the bare earth floor. “It’s very relaxing. I’ll come back when I have more time. Thanks for the tea.” She takes another drink and lets go of the cup. It floats back to the counter. “I should be on my way.”

Her friend comes closer and reaches out to touch Michiko. “Have you seen this?” She opens her hand and presses it against Michiko’s, palm to palm.

Two walls of white light slam into Matt. He is sandwiched between them.

“Can you hear me?” It’s the voice of Michiko’s friend, sounding as if filtered through a thick wall. “I’m speaking to you without moving my lips. Try it.”

“Amazing.” Michiko’s voice speaks back. “I merely think the words, and you hear them.”

“I discovered it by accident a few days ago.” The friend’s mouth remains closed as she gazes at Michiko. “It works with everyone in the Mesh. I’ve tried it with avatars from France, Germany, Zimbabwe, Cuba. Direct mind-to-mind communication. Language doesn’t matter.”

She pulls her hand back, and Matt senses the pressure of the two walls pull away.

“I’ve got to be going now.” Michiko’s upper body drops forward in a short bow.

The friend bows back. “Come again whenever you’d like.”

Michiko walks out the front door back into empty white space. She jumps through a tube of blurred color that stops on an open plain ringed by jagged mountain ranges. Hundreds of thousands of people mill around, many dressed in white robes. In the far distance, a torii gate stands in front of a Shinto shrine. A priest raises his arms on a platform, his body perfectly framed by the gate. Michiko’s vision zooms in on him, and she is pulled forward through the crowd to a standing position in the front line only a few meters from the priest.

Matt recognizes the priest. Miyazawa, the leader of the Earth United Shinto Alliance.

“To be one with each other is to be one with the
Kami
.” Miyazawa steps through the torii gate. “It is time. Let us be one.”

As Matt stares through Michiko’s eyes, across the wide, white plain, each man and woman in the mass of humanity reaches out to their neighbor to join hands.

Matt thinks about what had just happened with Michiko and her friend. Before he has time to react, Michiko turns to the women on each side of her and allows them to take her hands in theirs.

I’ll try to protect you.

Yarah’s voice is the last thing he hears before a mountain of heavy light crushes him from all sides. He has the sensation of being pressed into an area the size of a small dot, thousands of voices mixing and floating in a harmonious unity that almost makes him forget the pain.

Can’t do it much longer. I’m pulling us out.

The air is suddenly damp and heavy. With his chest heaving from exhaustion, Matt’s eyes flip open. Yarah is beside him on the tatami floor, her eyes just opening.

Jessica sits on the opposite side of the low table and stares at Matt. “What happened?”

“We followed Michiko into the Mesh. It’s an incredible world.” Matt stops to catch his breath.

Yarah jumps up. “They communicate with their minds by joining hands. The colors are so clear and beautiful. You can move from place to place just by thinking about it.” She stops and looks at Matt. “I want to get my own blue jewel and go back.”

He takes another deep breath. “So do I. That’s the problem.”

R
yzaard makes his way up one strand of the spiral staircase that serves as the spine of the building. Moving with hands behind his back, he swings his gaze from side to side, looking very much like the Oxford professor that he once was.

The project is entering its final phase.

The blue jewel is worn by billions of humankind every day. Earth’s population is moving to the Mesh.

Elsa joins Ryzaard on his walk with her slate tucked under an arm.

“How is the work going?” Ryzaard says.

“Day by day, your implants devastate world economics.” She pulls out the slate, and a red holo pops into the air above it. “Worker productivity is down 20% this week alone. The whole world is taking a vacation. In the Mesh.”

Ryzaard keeps moving up the stairs, taking Elsa with him. “No need to worry. It’s a necessary evil at this early stage. We want 100% penetration. An initial period of euphoria is to be expected. All a part of the plan.” He looks over at Jing-wei working in front of a bluescreen. “It won’t last forever.”

They walk two more flights of stairs up in silence. Elsa’s breath begins to grow heavy. “I’d better get back to work. It’s a full-time job finding the money to support this project.” She drops back down the spiral and disappears from view.

Ryzaard works his way effortlessly up and walks to his office in the corner. Dropping onto his meditation cushion, he hears the signal on his jax.

Jing-wei’s face floats above its golden surface waiting for permission to speak.

“What’s the latest?” Ryzaard says.

Her eyes meet his. “A couple of recent developments I thought you should know about.”

He closes his eyes and nods.

“We completed the most recent distribution of implants to world government leaders at a special reception today at the United Nations.” The holo switches to a view of a large hall filled with men and women from around the world. A woman dressed in Shinto robes stands in the center of the floor. Lines form as the attendees descend down steps to receive the blue jewel. “As you can see, it was very well attended, including both the President of the United States and the President of the People’s Republic of China.”

“I’ll have a look around inside their minds,” Ryzaard says. “But you said
developments
. What else is going on?”

The view of the hall at the United Nations disappears. “It’s Miyazawa. He’s returned to his Shinto shrine base in northern Japan. Our sources say he’s going to perform a purification ritual. They say he’s been acting strange lately.”

“Interesting,” Ryzaard says. “But none of my concern.” His hand goes up to the Stones floating above his chest. “I’ll be out of touch for a few hours. See that I’m not disturbed.”

“Understood.” Jing-wei’s face vanishes from the holo.

R
yzaard jumps to the familiar spot in space just outside the purple sphere above the planetary network, an aura of blue fire clinging to his body.

With a Stone in one hand, he lays the other on the sphere’s cold surface. As he relaxes, his mind is instantly drawn into the sphere, down the long cable and into the planet’s core. He cycles through the network once, holds it in his thoughts and travels seamlessly through his implant into the Mesh.

His mind expands to fill the infinite white space.

He senses billions of other minds, coming into view as clearly as dots on a page. He stares at them, sifting and reshuffling until he finds the one he is looking for.

The President of the United States.

In less than a nanosecond, he jumps into the mind, finds his bearings and looks out through the eyes. They are in a meeting. The voice of a woman floats through his ears.

“We need your decision, Mr. President.” The eyes sweep around a large crystal table where twenty men and women sit, some staring down at slates or jaxes, others staring back at him.

All of them, including the President, wear the blue jewel behind their ears.

A woman with five stars on the shoulder of her military uniform stands. “Do we blow up the Chinese embassy in Vienna or not? We’ve determined the terrorists are hiding in a small room on the southwest corner of the fifth floor. Attack ships are standing by at a safe distance with surgical missiles primed and ready to be fired on your command. If we don’t release the prisoners they’ve demanded, the terrorists will remotely detonate a nuclear device in the heart of Barcelona and destroy the entire city. Five million people will die. And it will be blamed on you.”

The President looks up. “If we blow the embassy, it will constitute an unprovoked attack on the Chinese. It’s what they’ve been waiting for. It’s what they want. Total war.”

“That’s why the terrorists are hiding there.” The woman’s voice is clear and unequivocal. “They figure it’s the one place in the world safe from attack.” She puts her slate down on the table. “So what is your decision going to be, Mr. President? You have less than three minutes to decide.”

Ryzaard breathes in slowly. This meeting he has stumbled onto looks like a good opportunity to test the new technology.

Hovering in the President’s mind, he senses the words
blow it up
begin to make their way from the man’s brain to his vocal cords. Relaxing into his Stones, Ryzaard tears the thought from the President’s mind, and replaces it with the words
give me a minute to think
.

Leaving the man cycling in thought, Ryzaard’s mind jumps through the Mesh to the standing woman and into her slate where he reads the precise coordinates of the room in the Chinese embassy in Vienna. Instantly seeing its location in the Mesh, he jumps to a jax in the same embassy room, identifies its owner, and makes his way into the man’s mind through his implant.

Ryzaard finds himself looking through the man’s eyes at three other men sitting around a table. He senses their desperation.

“The deadline is about to pass.” The man’s hand reaches for a rectangular gold card with a luminous green square in the center. “Threats without action are meaningless. It’s time to make good on our promise. We must destroy Barcelona.”

Too easy.

Taking control of the man’s mind, Ryzaard raises the man’s arm, reaches down to his side, finds the pulse rifle, and in a single smooth motion, raises it above the table and sprays projectiles across the bodies of the other three men. As their chests implode, Ryzaard brings the point of the rifle up to the man’s mouth and taps the trigger. After a flash of lightning, the man’s mind fades to black.

Problem solved.

Ryzaard jumps back to the conference room at the White House and enters the President’s mind.

“Do we blow the Chinese embassy up or not?” The woman’s voice rises in intensity. “Do we release the prisoners or not?”

“Not.” The President smiles. “The problem has taken care of itself. Everyone back to work.” He gets up to exit the room, leaving incredulous stares around the table. As he approaches the door, his personal jax lets out a high-pitched beep, and a holo of a young man jumps above it in his hand.

“Good morning, Mr. President. The Chinese embassy in Vienna just discovered the location of the four terrorists. There must have been an argument. One of them shot the rest and then killed himself. The Chinese assure us they have no knowledge of the plot and thank us for our restraint.”