The Belt - Complete Series, page 57
“Aging in biological lifeforms is a symptom of entropy. As each cell divides, it acquires errors—some can be fixed, others not. A component of this cell replication process is quantum in nature, and so they were investigating ways to modify DNA to express elements that would enhance this quantum phenomena. If a cell could replicate with fewer errors, this would extend the viability of the life-form. But there was a side effect.”
“What sort of side effect?”
“These alterations not only enhanced the ability of the mitochondria, the engine room within the cell, to utilize quantum phenomena, it enhanced all such biology within the life-form—primarily the brain.”
“So they turned me into some weird biological quantum computer?”
“In a sense, yes. You have the ability to operate and utilize the quantum space like no other human alive. You could potentially make the Node Runners look like children attempting to stack alphabet blocks in a kindergarten. This is why they want you, or more specifically, they want your biology.”
“Holy crap.”
“So now you know. We chose this moment, the first time you attempted to interface with a complex data-stream, to tell you. This is why I gave you this drone, so we could help you manage the transition.”
“I… I don’t know what to…say. I just can’t think. This is all too much.”
“You’ve always sensed it, Luca. You always knew you were different.”
“Yes, but I didn’t think I was biologically designed to be a monster.”
“You are not. You’re simply…something new.”
“But, I can’t…make sense of…anything. It’s too much, it’s just all…noise.”
“I am only a facsimile of Athena. It was all that could be accommodated in Fly’s central processing system. The drone uses a basic silicon substrate, grossly insufficient for any deep data-stream manipulation. Only you can do it. But, I am here to guide you.”
“I should pull out now. I can’t do this.”
“This is not true. All analysis that has been done on your neural biology indicates that you have the capacity to manipulate a significant magnitude of incoming raw data.”
“What analysis? Have you been poking around in my brain all these years?”
“We have been monitoring you, of course. To see how you were developing.”
“Who’s we?”
“Dr. Stephanie Rayman, and others at the Institute.”
“Were my parents in on this?”
“Yes and no. We provided some initial observational data to your mother. You must understand, we did not want to unduly worry them about your condition.”
“This isn’t helping, Athena. I’m getting out now. I’m running out of time.”
“Wait. Time is irrelevant in this arena. Only a few microseconds have passed since our conversation commenced. So please, let me help you.”
Luca gave a sigh—in her mind, that is. It was all too much for her, but still, altering the course of the ship was their best hope of evading capture. She had to at least try.
Luca returned her focus to the data-stream and realized that the maelstrom that had assailed her senses when she first connected had subdued considerably. Now, she could make out clusters of related processes, all interconnected with thin filaments, each one pulsing and flashing as data transferred between these nodes. She wondered if that was where the name Node Runner came from.
“You must not use your physical senses—sight, sound, touch. These belong in the physical world. You must use only your mind, your subconscious mind, this is where quantum effect is most prevalent. You must give your mind up to the data.”
Luca calmed herself again and tried to let her mind make its own sense of the information. The nodes she had visualized now began to coalesce into more structured processes. She found that she could delve into one of these nodes and see it expand and separate into a myriad of new islands of data, each a subset of the whole. As she moved through the data space, probing and investigating, a surge of excitement also rose within her. Yet this only served to knock her out of the necessary mental state and push her back into the physical world. The nodes would then begin to decohere, returning the data-stream to white noise again and pushing her even further away, where fear and panic would resume. But each time she fought it, calming herself down, and each time she regained a granularity of understanding.
Soon, a picture began to build of what she was seeing. It was the ship’s main systems: life support, propulsion, power generation, comms, navigation. As she delved into each, they would break out into subsystems, all interconnected, all passing data back and forth.
She thought it odd that this ship did not have an AI, and realized that it had been built to be off-grid. It was designed to be a ghost ship—very useful if you were planning to spend your time avoiding detection. She also sensed many other anomalies about its design, things that were in stark contrast to its physical appearance. From the outside, and even some of its interior, it looked like a beat-up orbit hopper. The type of bucket used to get up and down from the planet’s surface and no more. But as she probed its systems, she realized it was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It had no AI. It was built for stealth, and had two propulsion systems: one high-thrust engine pairing for planetary take-off, and another high acceleration Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, VASMIR, for deep-space travel.
As she investigated the specs, she could sense that this propulsion system was state of the art. A rather unusual and expensive addition for a humble orbit hopper. She concluded that, unlikely as it seemed on the surface, this ship was capable of interplanetary travel.
But by now, the struggle to maintain the necessary mental state was becoming intolerable for her. She was spending less time in the coherent state and more and more in white noise.
With one final push, she delved into the navigation subsystem and found their allotted course. It confirmed what she and Steph had already figured out. They were heading for the far side of Luna. However, it looked like they were to rendezvous with a much larger interplanetary vessel, a VanHeilding ship.
But her focus was collapsing. If she was going to plot a new course, she’d better try and do it now. She found the previous coordinates for the Johnston Transit Orbital and dialed them back in just as her grip on the data-stream began to disintegrate.
This time she let it, and found her physical self coming back to the fore. She reached up to the base of her skull and deactivated the interface. Even though her body, strapped into the cockpit seat, was weightless in the zero-gee environment, Luca felt a sudden rush of motion as if she was being spat out of a blowhole. She felt the seat harness bite for a moment before she finally came to rest.
“You okay?” Steph’s hand rested on her shoulder.
Luca glanced over at the blurry figure of the doctor. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
“What—” But her sentence was cut off as the ship fired its engines to change course, accelerating fast for the Johnston Transit Orbital.
14
AVATRON
The massive interplanetary craft brooded motionless in a stationary position on the far side of Luna, waiting for the mission to begin. On board, Fredrick VanHeilding sat in his luxuriously appointed accommodation sector and studied the array of data and video feeds that seemed to float in the air before him. Each one represented an element of the complex mission they were about to embark on. Very soon, the council of the Seven would convene on board the ship and formally give the go-ahead for the mission. Then, and only then, could he give the order to power up the main engines and journey into deep space.
But there had been a development. A very unexpected opportunity had just come to light—one that made him want to delay the mission a little longer so that it could be satisfactorily resolved. That opportunity was none other than Luca VanHeilding, an individual whom he had been trying to find for a very, very long time.
As far as he was concerned, since the VanHeilding Corporation owned patents to most of her biology, she was his rightful property, and he wanted her back. But more than that, she was a unique individual, the culmination of countless iterations of genetic modification and experimentation. The army of Node Runners that currently worked to keep this ship hidden from the data-stream and the prying eyes of the QI network were a pale shadow to the potential that Luca VanHeilding possessed.
All his early attempts to get her back had failed. Worse, she then went incognito and completely disappeared off the Grid. Ever since, he had devoted a considerable amount of time and resources to tracking her down, but not even his best Node Runners could find so much as a sniff of her. It was like she had simply vanished.
So, after over a decade of this fruitless searching, he had all but given up hope, until, by sheer chance, a Node Runner happened upon a communication from a group of smugglers describing a woman on the run who had all the signatures of Luca VanHeilding.
One of their party reckoned that getting someone like this off-planet, with no questions asked, usually meant they were wanted by some authority or other. If so, there might be a handsome bounty. A bounty that could be much, much more than what the crew were being paid for the job. So they put the word out just to see, and that’s when Luca popped up on Fredrick VanHeilding’s radar. All he had to do was make them an offer they couldn’t refuse. And just like that, after over a decade of fruitless searching, she was packed up and on her way to be delivered to his ship.
He couldn’t believe his luck. It seemed the attack on the Grid Node had flushed her out of hiding. Athena felt it could no longer protect her, and she was making a run for the Johnston Transit Orbital, presumably to pick up a ride out into the solar system. But not anymore, or so he had thought up until a few hours ago.
Fredrick had been tracking the smugglers’ craft as it made its way out to his location on the far side of Luna when, for no explicable reason, it dramatically changed course, seemingly heading back to the Transit Orbital. What the hell are these idiots doing? Did they have a change of heart, deciding to reject my offer? It seemed unlikely to him, considering he was about to make them all very rich people. So what was going on?
All attempts at communicating with the ship were met with silence. To make matters worse, the other six families were pressuring him to commence the council session. His ship was prepped and ready to leave lunar space immediately. He could not delay it any longer; they were already beginning to ask questions.
It was a hugely frustrating situation. He was so close to finally getting his hands on her unique biology, only to be thwarted at the last minute. Yet he knew she would not escape that easily, not this time, not anymore. Now that she was out in the open, it wouldn’t take his agents long to track her down. Already, several of his network on the Transit Orbital had been alerted to intercept the craft when it arrived, kill the idiot crew, and acquire the asset. Once she was secure, he would decide what to do then—either transport her to a secure facility or bring her out on the other VanHeilding ship in the local fleet. Either way, it was only a matter of time before he had what was rightfully his. But there was nothing more he could do for now. He had waited for almost two decades, and a little bit longer would be nothing more than an irritating inconvenience.
An alert flashed on his ocular implant; the mission briefing was about to begin over in the main operations room of the vast ship, and he needed to jack-in and be present.
The operations area occupied a series of interconnected sectors, the largest of which accommodated a cohort of Node Runners that had been assembled for the mission. Several were currently keeping the whereabouts of the ship hidden from the prying senses of the QI, Athena. Several others were tasked with creating a trail of disinformation, all of which was designed to infer that an attack on Athena was being planned. But this was simply a smokescreen, a way of diverting attention from the real mission.
In another sector of the operations area, a large ovoid conference table had been set up, around which sat a number of scientists, strategists, commanders, and six avatrons, each one representing the heads of the primary families who had controlled most of Earth and its dominions.
An avatron was a fairly simple humanoid robot that could be controlled by an individual using a mind-machine interface. Once connected, the avatron took on the gestures and voice of the operator, acting as them in a remote environment.
VanHeilding jacked-in. His avatron, already present in the operation area, activated itself and walked out from its docking station. The unit itself was somewhat understated, with a pale semi-translucent body shell, yet fully clothed in his preferred style of dress, complete with a dark gray cape that he himself sometimes wore. He walked across the floor of the operations area toward the conference table, staff and technicians moving out of its way as he progressed. The avatron sat down at the head of the table and surveyed all those present, most of whom were flesh and bone, except for the six avatrons of the other family heads.
Where VanHeilding had opted for understatement, the others had opted for machines with garish colors and absurd appendages, giving them the look of some farcical fantasy creature rather than a facsimile of the human form. To his mind, they were detestable.
The other six were all still on Earth, or on some luxury orbital in local space. None, except himself, was physically on board the ship. Fortunately, this would be the last time he would have to involve them in such a briefing. Once the ship left lunar space, the communication time lag would render the avatrons useless. But for now, he had to indulge them.
“Glad you could join us, Fredrick,” announced Pao Xiang. “We were beginning to think you might be having second thoughts.” It was fortunate that the range of facial expressions available to his avatron were negligible, otherwise those assembled around the table would witness the full force of Fredrick VanHeilding’s sneer.
“I wish you would have second thoughts,” said Yoko Yanai. “I still think this mission is folly. We should be concentrating our efforts on the QI, Athena here on Earth, rather that this jaunt out into deep space.”
VanHeilding’s avatron raised a hand and spoke. “I appreciate your concerns, but we have been through all this before and your opinions have been noted.”
“Noted?” The avatron gestured with all four hands. “Well, that’s a comfort to know.” It glanced around at the others one at a time. “Since you seem to be in the mood for taking notes”—Yoko paused to gesture air quotes with just one pair of hands—“then perhaps you can take note of the fact that this mission of yours would not be happening but for the generosity of our collective sponsorship.”
VanHeilding could feel the rage building up inside him at the insolence of this maggot of a lesser family.
“Let us not forget,” Yoko continued, “that none of us would be in this position of utter subservience to the QI network if you had not so spectacularly failed us all those years ago.”
VanHeilding’s rage was now so intense that he had difficulty maintaining the mind-machine interface with his avatron, which may have been for the best, as otherwise he would have reached over and smashed Yoko Yanai’s avatron head to pulp against the hard, solid surface of the conference table.
But he regained his composure, and with it his control over the machine. “Let us not dwell in the past. Instead let us look to the future, one where we once again take our rightful place as the rulers and guardians of humanity. You have all witnessed the abilities of the Node Runners to supplant the all-seeing hegemony of Athena and the destruction of the Grid Node in its backyard.” His avatron gave an expansive gesture. “This ship, this mission, all of it is hidden from the QI. This is the power we now have, and it’s time to unleash it.” He could see that he now had their full attention.
Yes, it was true that after the disaster of the past, the VanHeilding family had fallen out of favor. It had taken him a long time and a lot of torturous development to build the family back up to where it was today. And yet he still needed the other families’ agreement to commence this mission. But not for long. Once he had achieved his objective, he and he alone would be in control. But for the moment, he still needed them.
“Some say that we should use this gift to destroy Athena,” he continued. “And I admit there is merit in that course of action. But, we all know the true wealth of the solar system lies in the Belt. All that would be lost to us if we showed our hand too early. That is why we must strike there first, and strike now while they are not expecting it.” He glanced around at each of the avatrons, trying to gauge their reactions—not an easy task, given their stoic demeanors. He opened his hands to them. “Is everyone in agreement?”
One by one, they nodded or vocalized their consent.
“Excellent.” His avatron stood up and gestured to the mission commander. “We have consensus. The operation is go. Please prepare the ship to depart immediately for Ceres.”
15
JOHNSTON TRANSIT ORBITAL
The Johnston Transit Orbital may have been a sleek, efficient space port at some earlier point in its history, but over the decades, it had acquired a multitude of appendages such as docking ports, cargo bays, habitation rings, power stations, fuel processing plants, storage facilities, maintenance yards, gantries, communications antennae, and a great many other engineering carbuncles. As a consequence of this, it now looked like a graveyard for scrapyards—all ringed with a bewildering array of spaceships and navigation beacons. It had no discernable form. It looked like it had just grown organically over the years with new sectors added seemingly at random, while old sectors were mothballed, abandoned, or discarded completely.
