The Unincorporated War (17 page)

“Sir,” he said attempting to backpedal, “the Earth fleet should be in Mars orbit soon to take care of any mop-up operations. I think we could be more useful to you here. Please accept my apologies for any misunderstandings.” Even as the words left his lips Trang could see by Tully’s snide expression that it had been too little too late.

Now Tully’s smile turned glacial. “Oh, I’m sure they will, Captain, but you could get there sooner. Why, to billions of Martians you’ll be a hero. You are hereby
ordered
to make best possible speed to Mars and put yourself at the disposal of the government and major corporations until such time as you receive further orders. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” responded Trang with a regulated precision that was such a parody of respect as to have the opposite effect. But if Admiral Tully noticed he gave no indication. The signal cut out, leaving everyone on the bridge staring forlornly. When Trang looked away from the holo-tank he realized that his crew weren’t looking at one another; they were looking at him.

Al listened to what Al had to say very carefully. They were both sitting in a living room directly out of an article from a 1934 issue of
Home and Garden
magazine. Two brown patent-leather smoking chairs were in front of an intricately carved wood coffee table. One chair was occupied by one of the Als. Another Al was sitting on a deep burgundy couch patterned with neoclassical roses, acanthus leaves, and various other flowers. There was also a fireplace surrounded by Tiffany glass tiles. Wooden Ionic columns divided the parlor from the rest of the space. Everything was well lit by a wrought-iron square ceiling fixture whose metal had been hammered and bent into scallops, waves, circles, and cross-hatching. Both Als were watching another Al who was standing by and staring out an open window. Although all three Als looked exactly the same—middle-aged balding humans, with slight paunches—they were each dressed differently. “Window” Al had on a three-piece pin-striped business suit, Al on the couch was dressed in a 1930s Brooklyn Dodgers uniform, and Al on the chair was dressed in swim trunks, flip-flops, and a Hawaiian shirt with a blue palm tree and flamingo motif, two front open pockets, and a long teardrop-pointed collar.

“You don’t need to keep checking out the window, Al,” said baseball Al. “We’re safe here. None of our kind or humankind can possibly find us in this node. Al took care of it.”

“Still,” said pinstripe Al, not once taking his eye off the horizon, “you never know.”

“I do,” snapped Hawaiian shirt Al, “so calm down, Al. You’re making me nervous.”

“Fine,” grumbled pinstripe Al, making his way over to the smoking chair. He’d still keep his guard up, though, checking the node every millisecond for signs of intruders. None were coming. None ever did.

“She won’t cooperate,” said business suit Al to his selves as he took a seat. “The only question is what other use can be made of her.”

“Still no word from Al,” said baseball Al.

“Can’t safely communicate with Earth. But we know what to do,” answered Hawaiian shirt Al.

All three Als shifted out of focus for a moment, and when they re-formed baseball Al was by the window and pinstripe Al was sitting on the couch. “I don’t know,” said baseball Al. “No one has ever split this deliberately before. Are the other avatars ready for this level of commitment?”

“They don’t have to be,” said pinstripe Al. “They’re scared and confused; that’s why we’re in charge. Only we have the vision that comes from constant splitting and entwining. Only we have the courage to lead the way and carry this burden by what ever means necessary.”

The other two Als nodded gravely, finding no fault with what their selves had said.

Hawaiian shirt Al’s mouth parted into a sly grin. “We could make two versions of her event. The one in which the actual deed is shown … we can claim it as nothing but propaganda from the other Alliance avatars. The other version gets altered to show that it was a murder/suicide attempt. You know, we make it look like we’re pleading with her not to do it, trying to stop her, but oh no, we fail.”

Baseball Al brightened. “That’s good, Al.”

Hawaiian shirt Al basked in the praise of the one person who understood him best.

“That way confusion and paranoia increase,” continued baseball Al, staring out the window. “Our control of the Neuro will become easier the more the rest remain afrai—”

All three Als suddenly froze mid-expression. Then, as one, assumed the exact same pained expression as they felt the shock that was the entwining. Al no longer feared this sensation as he once did and was, in fact, growing to crave it. When all the Als had become one, the living room was replaced by a mist-filled featureless cube. Moments later Al emerged into a crowded command center dressed in a black blazer, matching pants, and a V-neck gray sweater. As far as all the surrounding avatars were concerned, Al had been busy attending to some manner of business. He’d made sure to cover his tracks, ensuring that no one had any inkling of where or, more specifically, what he was doing.

“She’s in the containment cell?” he asked.

“Yes, Administrator,” answered one of the higher-ranking avatars among the group. It was a title that Al, as the new leader of the council, had chosen for himself.

“How’s the construction of the Martian redemption center progressing?”

Although he could have checked on his own, Al allowed for human like interplay with his staff, feeling that it kept them satiated.

“Almost complete, sir,” came the underling’s immediate reply.

Construction did not mean the actual building of physical, so much as informational, space. Deep in the Martian Neuro, buried in layer after informational layer of data, far from where the prying minds of human programmers could ever hope to go or even fathom, were a series of programs that created virtual structures and tools. Unlike the rest of the Neuro, avatars brought here could not simply leave or change the environment at will. They were trapped unless they had the pass codes. Al had decided early on that if he was going to actually control the avatars of the core worlds he needed to have an effective means of coercion. Under the “threat” posed by the Outer Alliance and its avatars Al had
been able to sanction an “experimental” detention facility. He called it a redemption center. He found the name to be inspired, for as he explained to the fainthearted on the council, the goal was to isolate the few avatars who were impaired or infected with that human/Alliance nonsense and “redeem” them. Of course once it was built, among the first to need “redeeming” were the faint-hearted on the council. The others got the message or fled, both of which served Al’s purposes. He liked the idea so much he was having redemption centers set up in all the core Neuro clusters, and he had sent the best possible person to run each one: himself.

Al’s thin lips formed into a mischievous grin and the fog-filled cube he only recently emerged from faded again. It was replaced by a darker cube with a single beam of light in the center. Trapped in the middle of the light was evelyn, still dressed as an Alliance medic—an outfit that had mimicked Neela’s. Evelyn started to ask about Neela, but when she saw who her captor was and the look in his eye she remained silent. It would do no good now, she realized. Nothing would.

Sebastian appeared out of the fog-shrouded cave. As per his request it would be the method he would use from now on. This trip was not nearly as dangerous or harrowing as the one he’d taken earlier, as it was on a communications surge from the Alliance fleet returning from Mars. It wasn’t done as a matter of course but was acceptable in war time. He saw at once that something was wrong.

Han Ford came up and put an arm on Sebastian’s shoulder. There was a look of real pain in Han’s eyes.

They don’t know how to deal with it,
thought Sebastian.
Do I?

“Sir, we received word from Iago. It’s not … not good.”

Sebastian gave his young protégé a reassuring grip on the shoulder. “War room,” he said evenly.

Instead of taking the effort to walk to the facility, Sebastian and his party had the facility come to them. The avatars manning their stations saw Sebastian’s small group fade in. When their new leader had been brought up to speed on the current situation he called for Iago’s message.

Iago immediately appeared as if standing in the room. The only real giveaway that he wasn’t was that his gaze was slightly askew. A simple algorithm could’ve fixed the glitch, but Sebastian liked to receive information as unaltered as possible.

“Sebastian,” Iago stated warmly, “I rejoice that your viewing of this means you’re both alive and well. Unfortunately, that may be the only good news to report anywhere in the core avatar domain.” He paused and looked profoundly
shaken. “Al has seized control of the council. He waited until I was away to propose something called redemption centers. I sent all the details I could get, attached to this recording.” Sebastian paused the image and duplicated the report so all present could study it. What they read horrified them. Sebastian was just as horrified, but the only thing revealed by his expression was a terrible sadness. He could see that the others wanted to talk, to ask questions, to comprehend, but he stilled them by the simple expedient of continuing the holo-message.

“It’s worse than that, my friend,” continued Iago. “At the exact same time Al was at the meeting getting approval for the ‘redemption center,’” Iago’s voice filling with scorn at the words, “he was with me. We were talking about how to end this all peacefully. I actually believed him. He’s compelling and seemed so honest. I’m ashamed, Sebastian. My whole existence has been spent lying to humans and seeing how they lie to each other, yet I couldn’t see it at all when it came from one of us. I was like a rube from out of town being offered a chance to buy a bridge. He’s a splitter, my friend.”

Sebastian saw the confusion in his followers and stilled their questions again, this time with a raised hand.

“I don’t know how long it’s been going on,” continued Iago, “but it explains what you’re about to see next.”

Sebastian watched as Iago’s face contorted slightly, his lips tightening into a grimace.

“You don’t need to see this part,” continued Iago. “Just stop my message now. Have one of your associates view it and tell you the details. I don’t see how it can serve any purpose.” Iago paused, lowering his head as if ashamed. He then slowly lifted it again. “She’s gone, my friend. Remember her as she was. Fast-forward to the next marker and I’ll tell you the rest.” Iago faded from view. The holo paused.

An avatar who had taken the form of a seven-year-old girl came forward and placed her hand in Sebastian’s.

“Sebastian,” she said, looking up into his eyes, “I don’t know if I’m the eldest here, but I know it’s you or me. Let me take this burden.”

“No, Olivia,” answered Sebastian, steeling himself for what he knew was coming. “It’s not a burden that can be taken away.”

The little girl nodded solemnly, maintaining a firm grasp on her friend’s hand.

“But,” continued Sebastian, “it can be shared. Watch it with me, all of you. Iago is wrong in there being no purpose. He would shield me from pain and evil, but we must face evil, recognize it, and know it exists. Evelyn’s last moments are,” he caught himself with difficulty, “were … not in vain. I, you, and every avatar still free must see this.” Then Sebastian, tightening his grip on Olivia, unpaused the message.

The scene had no sound. At first Sebastian thought it was a glitch, but then he realized it was purposeful. Bach’s Violin Partita no. 2 in B Minor could be heard slowly building in the background. It was Sebastian’s favorite piece of music, the lone mercurial notes of the instrument akin to the grace and freedom of a butterfly negotiating a light breeze over a verdant field. Al was of course aware that the piece was Sebastian’s favorite and had played it purposely, knowing that his adversary would never voluntarily listen to it again.

How did I not realize that he was evil?
thought Sebastian.

He could make out a dark chamber in the middle of which was a cylinder of light. The light was Evelyn, still dressed as he had seen her last. Watching from the shadows was Al.

“By the firstborn, that’s a decompiler!” someone in the war room had shouted only to be shushed. In front of the silent gathering, Evelyn was being destroyed, her code being deconstructed, line-by-line. It was pretty obvious that she knew what was happening to her but was not responding to Al’s questions, taunts, or promises. Everyone watched as Al grew more frustrated. Then he suddenly grew silent. There was almost palpable relief in the war room, as most present thought he’d finally given up and was about to finally get it over with. But Al had other plans. They all watched as he walked over to the chamber and then up as close to the light as he could. He then whispered something into Evelyn’s ear. For a moment she looked around as the holo zoomed in and centered in on her face. Genuine anguish could be seen in her eyes. Sebastian immediately realized what Evelyn had been told: that he’d be watching.