Wildcard (14 page)

“Unusual question. You think laterally,
sunshine.” Karl’s code name. “Yes, he could.”

“How?”

“He would contact the Sergeant who would
have me play it, probably. In that situation, the directness of the
solution is what counts.”

“What does that mean?”

“I am uncertain of the meaning. I simply
said it. I have a lowamplitude randomizer to my responses. I
engaged it for your question. It is supposed to help humans make a
leap of understanding. Occassionally, it works. Mostly it just
confuses you.”

“What does it feel like?”

“It simply feels as though I do not
understand my own response. Almost amusing, you might say.”

“That’s kind of creepy.”

“Did my response mean anything to you,
sunshine?”

“Say it again.”

“‘In that situation, the directness of the
solution is what counts.’”

“Yes. It does. It means that LuvRay cuts
through garbage.”

“Yes. He eliminates noise, as Juniper would
say.”

Serg- Lightning, are you there?”

“I will contact him,” Trident said.

“Yes, Sunshine. What do you need?”

“Just a question. Why the codenames? They
seem silly and pointless in light of modern technology. Anybody
listening would know who we are, I think.”

“True, partially. They have little tactical
value, in that sense. They’re more of a command test. I need to
know how everyone will respond to my orders when the reason is not
clear. It can be crucial. It will. Sometimes the reasons for a
command cannot be explained due to time constraints or for other
reasons. At such points, the commands are even more important to
mission success and team survival. The operatives need to follow
orders quickly without asking why questions. Only how questions.
Although, Juniper’s dying throes might snatch our names out of the
ether. That could be very dangerous and is still at high
probability.”

“How did we do on the command test?”

“Pretty much as expected. You’ll follow
orders without difficulty, then ask why later. Though you may
forget specifics, you’ll find creative means to act. LuvRay and
Sublime won’t obey as easily. Sublime will remember details, LuvRay
may but won’t care. He’ll do things his own way. Sublime will
comply through one means, LuvRay through another. But time may be
lost, especially in LuvRay’s case. We can bag the codenames now, by
the way.”

“Why the time loss for LuvRay?”

“I’ll be able to voice-force Sublime to
comply. He’ll do as I say before he realizes what he’s doing. Once
he’s begun, he’ll probably fulfill the order. He also wants to
survive and knows that following my command in battle heat will
greatly increase that possibility. LuvRay doesn’t concern himself
with survival, particularly. Only in an instinctive way.”

“Why didn’t you tell us all your methods in
the beginning, Sergeant?”

“You will never know all my methods. I often
invent them in the action, anyway. I also need to unfold them at
the right time.”

“But you answer questions quite freely. You
don’t refuse to answer much.”

“More than you realize, though I do it in a
non-obvious way. Also, I’m free to answer as I like. There’s a
tactic for you, Karl. When someone asks you a question you don’t
want to answer, answer a different question. Make up the question
in your head, and pretend that is what they really asked. I reveal
the tactic I wish to disclose, then make it appear to be an answer
to the question. Or I simply say it, making no effort to connect it
back to the question. People fill in the gap somehow. It’s very
simple. Or they fail to. They perhaps cannot connect it in their
own minds. It’s interesting to watch. Juniper was fascinated by
this particular phenomenon. He taught it to me. The General uses it
as well, though in his own way. More French, more circuitous. More
elegant.

The Rendering took three hours. Trident told
him he could leave by cutting out clean, but the return to
Juniperspace was through the Information Wall, over which Trident
had no control. The short-lived tube was long closed and the Wall
had absorbed an understanding of the method. A tube repeat was not
possible. When the Sergeant left, he left.

Trident’s coms were spotty. The Sergeant
tried to contact the General, but he refused the contact. Possibly
he suspected a buried reprisal from Juniper if he did so, the
Sergeant was not sure.

Suddenly, he was sitting at a desk, looking
at a computer menu. He looked around. It was just blankness.

“Trident, is this the full Rendering?”

“This is the menu.” Home page.

“What am I looking at?”

Trident explained. It was a holo-screen,
arranged as a pyramid, with three faces showing and one hidden
against the desk.

“Is the fourth face active?” he asked.

“Yes. I recommend that you do not look at
it.”

“What is it?”

“It is in M-E language. My best translation
is ‘basis’.”

He had a laser pointer. He could dial it to
depth and he saw three tiny buttons of different colors. He pushed
one, and a yellow laser light appeared.

“Why the different colors of light?”

“Multipoint and player intersection
analysis. You can highlight, for example, yourself and Karl with
different colors and play out scenarios or analysis.”

“Do the colors mean anything?”

“Yes, but you should not worry about that
yet. The colors involve many levels of subtlety which I could not
explain.”

He thought. Best to dig into the principal
mechanism, first. “OK, forget the colors. Tell me about the
holo.”

He looked into one face, leaning forward at
it, and it leapt at his face, flashing out and past, then splitting
into many more faces. He thought he saw a menu as he went in, but
it was too fast to read. He went still and was looking at a
hologram with thousands of minute facets. Each one suggested
peering into something different.

“What is this? I feel like the fly or like
the world is a fly and I’m looking at it.”

“Either is an apt analogy. You have
penetrated 18 levels into the menu system. Moving your head towards
something will access it, unless you tell me to freeze
position.”

“Yeah, hold position. Menu access should be
verbal only.”

“I recommend using the pointer for detail.
That is its primary purpose.”

“Fine. Put menu back to base form.”

The hologram turned into a pyramid
again.

“Bottom is called ‘basis,’ right? What are
the other three called? Do they mirror the three Manufactured
Entities?”

“Not as far as I can determine. I used
Juniper’s processing capacity for the Rendering and do not fully
comprehend it. However, you could ask to see things in such a way.
It would require a different Rendering and several hours, but I
could ask it to show each face as an M-E. Is that your
meaning?”

“Yes, but don’t do it. What’s this
view?”

“It is the overall view.”

“Yeah, I mean what are the faces
called?”

“They are written on it if you look
closely.”

“This is a complicated menu system.”

“It is a top-level Manufactured Entity. I
have simplified it to the extent possible.”

“Why is it so…interpenetrating?”

“Because that is the way an M-E mirrors
reality. Juniper is a predictive device in many ways.”

“And a labyrinth in others. Man, you could
get lost in here.”

“No, I could not,” Trident said.

“Can Juniper still teach you?”

“No, that is gone. It was base level, a part
of the curiosity function, the desire to teach.”

The designations for the three pyramid faces
were Power, Relevance, and Destiny.

“What does that mean?”

“Choose one and look. It will make more
sense.”

He looked into the face called Power, and
said it. The hologram changed to four menu choices.

Wildcard

Named of Power

Powerful Named

Possibilities

‘What’s Possibilities?”

“I need eight seconds to request a
summary…Religious ideas, such as God and transcendent power, the
Pantheon of the Greeks and Romans. Things that Juniper considers
unlikely at best, absurd at worst.”

“Still no proof of God, eh?”

“You would have heard of proof of God. :3:
still tries, it seems.”

“Can I have some gum?”

“You are chewing it already. Just
remember.”

There it was, two sticks in his mouth. He
blew a bubble, laughing at the thought of the General’s reaction.
It popped.

“Wildcard.”

The menu changed. Wildspace, wildsong and
Future were the choices.

“Future.”

There was only one entry.

“Anything is possible?” Nothing happened.
“Is that a menu choice?”

“No, it is a human summation of the
contents. It is quite large, perhaps 60% of Juniper’s total memory.
Would you like to look at it?”

“Mmm, yeah, OK. Will it make sense?”

The hologram changed to a complicated graph
of an equation, with different colored multidimensional forks and
planes and curves. He reached out and turned the hologram, which
had become a sphere. The equation rippled and took on a different
look, slowly shifting as he turned it.

“What is this?”

“Probably beyond human understanding. The
laser would help you see predictive analyses of each sentience at
any point in time. The further in future, the more forks. Even
Juniper cannot calculate much past one year. Especially now.”

“Now?”

“The timeline accelerates soon, and the
forks begin splitting rapidly. Something is happening.”

“Show me Karl.”

A line brightened, light blue with planes of
light that re-converged. The Sergeant dialed the laser pointer to a
time in the next few months. A movie played, of Karl, very confused
and disoriented in a strange, void space. Another…thing came at him
and then the holo forked. The Sergeant picked a direction and Karl
died. Another and he went mad.

“Back out. Wildsong.”

There were four entries, steady white
computer screen words.

humansong

M-E song

Other song

“Other song?”

Two categories. Wildspace, humanspace.

“Humanspace.”

Two categories. Earth, not Earth.

“Not Earth.”

It opened. Another holograph with millions
of facets.

“Holy cow. What the hell is this?”

“Wildsong. All that Juniper has recorded
which Wildcard has broadcast into space. Some entries are in two or
even all three categories. He sends out his poems, apparently,
translated into many languages. Wildsong occurs in all languages
and is broadcast into space.”

The Sergeant popped back to the top
level.

“Relevance.”

A very long list populated, the item counter
at the top continuing to run into the billions. It was a list of
M-E texts.

Effects of alcohol and drugs upon
humanity

Uderstanding the perceptions of Manufactured
Entities

Human mating rituals

The Wildcard paradox

Simulating human society

Techniques to impersonate humans

The future of mankind

FTL – faster than light travel

Deep gravity systems and the relation to
space-time

Human systems of morality and the
implications thereof

Using base human motivations for mass
control

There were billions more.

“Go to top Menu. Hmm. Destiny.”

Named of Power

Powerful Named

Deeply Named

Incidental Named

“What’s the difference between Named of
Power and Powerful Named?”

“Named of Power have free reign, so to
speak. It is admittedly subjective. But they do not answer to an
authority. Powerful Named are immensely influential, but they have
a …boss, you would say.”

“The Named of Power. How long can I stay
here?”

“As long as you like, but when you leave, I
doubt I can bring you back.”

“Do I have to leave through the Information
Wall?”

“No. Simply leave the room. I cannot bring
it in again.”

The hologram changed. The Named of Power had
many entries.

“It is sorted by relevance to you
personally,” Trident said.

Wildcard

The General

Juniper

:3:

Dartagnan

The Benefactor

q-code

the Programmer

The boX

Nefario (defunct)

Erratic (predictive based on wildsong)

Phurba (Kila) (predictive based on wildsong
and personality vector)

A few hundred more names followed.

“Go back to Deeply Named.”

The menu retained the look, but the Names
all changed.

The Wound

Karl

Broken Boy (predictive analysis based on
wildsong)

the Gambler

LuvRay

The Poet (Victor or analogue/predictive
analysis based on wildsong)

Martha

The boX

Seeker (nSeeker, theoretical, predictive
analysis based on wildsong)

Karlotta (theoretical, predictive analysis
based on wildsong)

There were perhaps forty more.

“Go to Powerful Named.”

Hazel

The Old Man

The Mechanic

The Sergeant

Boy Sergeant

Trident

Firstchild

The faces of :3:

Solomon (theoretical, based on predictive
analysis by wildsong)

Karlotta (theoretical, based on prediction
of wildsong)

Ishmael (certain predictive statement, based
on wildsong)

the boX

Inquisitor

“Why are we on this list?”

“It is not apparent? You answer to a higher
authority, the General.”

He kept reading.

The Subordinator

The Jester

The

“What’s this one, after The Jester? The one
that just says ‘The’ and then nothing?”