A splinter following world events chimed in with a future prediction that had topped the ninety-percentile, “With Atopia joining the Alliance, it is only a matter of time before a kinetic attack is launched against Terra Nova unless it gives in to UN demands for weapons inspection…”
Something else was bothering him. The digital organism Sibeal had been complaining about, it shared some of the same digital fingerprints as the virus that infected and nearly destroyed Atopia.
Burrowing into his workspace to investigate, he shrugged off an attempt by someone to grab his primary subjective. Closing his virtual eyes, he sighed, relenting, deciding he’d better apologize to Sibeal for his rant earlier. She was right about that glass being odd. He opened a private space, a small meeting room with beanbags on the floors and walls covered in whiteboards.
But it wasn’t Sibeal.
Vince materialized sitting in a beanbag across from Sid. He smiled. “Miss me?”
25
“Back!” broadcast the droid across a wide spectrum of audio and radio frequencies, its red and blue lights strobing at the crowd. A second droid was working the other side of the plaza, while a third and fourth rolled in and sprang into action, pushing back the street vendors and hawkers and robotic scavengers.
It wasn’t easy clearing a landing space for a VTOL in the Lagos slums.
Bob stood still in the center of the square while the crowd dispersed, his head bowed. He wore a stained white robe and sandals, his dirty blond hair falling around his shoulders, merging with his beard. Passage through Assembler City was thankfully uneventful, just about the first thing that had gone to plan in this whole adventure. The drone he’d hidden in had passed by one automated transport and microwave array after another, eventually depositing him here in the outskirts of the Lagos mega-city.
A light mist began to fall, and the moisture triggered a phase change in the bio-plastics lining the alleyways and shop stalls. Like blooming flowers, walls and awnings spread against the coming rain.
Over the tops of the tin roofs and neon signs, the Spike—a glass tower a mile high—glittered between scudding clouds in the night sky, dominating the skyline of Lagos beside the greyed-out hundred-story Islamic business feminist complex. A point of light flashed from near the top of the Spike, and Bob watched it arcing through the murky air. The point of light grew into an African Union turbofan transport. A knife-point of light stabbed out from it, illuminating Bob in a cone of white in the middle of the now-cleared plaza.
Stepping back from the center, Bob gave the transport room to land. The blast from its exhaust blew a cloud of dust and scattered debris. Bob closed his eyes, but his mind was already away, his primary subjective jacked into a private Terra Novan communication channel. The moment he made a data connection with Terra Novan representatives, his body was flooded with their own synthetic reality technology.
Observing from a virtual point-of-view in a conference room at the apex of the Spike, Bob watched his body climb up and into the transport far below in the slums.
The relief of reaching a safe harbor was almost overwhelming. Bob felt like he was resurrected, been brought back to life after wandering the underworld. Somehow he managed to navigate his way out, past the tortured souls that remained trapped there. The past week was a blur. He felt different. Most of his external mind wasn’t reconnected yet, and a lot of it might stay lost, but it wasn’t just that.
After making a connection, he was instantly cordoned off, his presence isolated by thick security blankets. He hadn’t spoken to anyone yet, and so Mohesha pinging him, asking if she could come and talk to him, felt like the start of his journey home. He’d done what Patricia asked. He made it to Terra Novan territory, and could tell Mohesha what he knew. Perhaps his part was done.
“We were afraid we had lost you,” Mohesha said as soon as her virtual presence materialized in the room with him. She looked down through the windows at the transport. “We haven’t been introduced, I’m—”
“I know who you are.” Bob turned to face her, a slender, dark-skinned woman with close-cropped black hair and kind eyes. She was an old friend of Patricia Killiam, and was, in fact, a student of Patricia’s more than fifty years before. Together they created the foundations for synthetic nervous systems, the foundation for both Atopia and Terra Nova.
Mohesha smiled. “You understand bringing you here is dangerous.”
Given that I’m a hunted terrorist. Bob resisted the urge to defend himself.
The room was cool, their voices echoing through the empty room. It was a conference space designed for international meetings, forty chairs lining each side of a massive table ten feet across. The floor-to-ceiling glass window walls sloped outward. They were alone.
“Patricia told me to come.”
“I know.” Staring through the window, Mohesha’s reflection hung side by side with Bob’s. “Atopia has formally declared war, joined the Alliance with America.”
“I had nothing to do with what happened in New York.”
Mohesha spun mediaworlds into Bob’s sensory frames, announcing the sighting of Robert Baxter in the Lagos slums. “It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do anymore. International courts have filed for your extradition, to Atopia of course. They claim you possess stolen information that threatens Alliance security.”
Bob retreated from the window. “Not stolen, it was given to me.” He sat down in one of the conference table chairs.
“By Patricia? This is Patricia’s proxxi data?”
Bob nodded. He was holding the data cube Patricia gave him in the center of his systems, protecting it like an egg. It seemed another world and time when she gave it to him. It was a burden he’d be glad to be rid of.
“And you have it with you?”
Bob nodded. Leaning his elbows onto the table, he pressed his hands together and steepled his fingers. The data cube might be a burden, but he hesitated to just give it up. “I have it encrypted in the bio-electronics in my body.”
“Good.” Mohesha watched the transport arcing through the sky on its return, cradling within it the precious cargo of Bob’s body. “One more thing.”
Bob looked at her. “What?”
“Did you find Willy’s body yet?”
26
“This proves it!” screamed a newsworld anchor, his face apoplectic. “Robert Baxter is a Terra Novan spy, flying home to roost.” In the background hung a three-dimensional image, the viewpoint flying around from all angles, of Bob climbing into the transport in the Lagos slums from the night before. “The Allies need to launch an immediate attack on Terra Nova before we get a repeat—”
Sid controlled the primary feed, and he switched to another newsworld.
“—with Atopia joining the Alliance, an era of peace stretches forward for humanity. In countries where their synthetic reality system has been successful, we’re seeing the highest happiness indices that have ever—”
Sid switched worlds again.
“—they are trying to destabilize Atopian technology for their own gain.” This time a square-jawed synthetic anchor, in a suit and tie with his hair neatly parted and his voice steady. “Granting asylum to Robert Baxter, while refusing UN weapons inspectors entry to their space power grid installation is not—”
Vince swiped away the mediaworlds with a phantom. “Enough. At least we know Bob is safe. Did you send out a message?”
Nodding, Sid sent a copy of his inquiries to the external Terra Novan offices. There was no response. “I still can’t believe he made it.” He must have one hell of a story to tell.