“This man you escaped with,” Mohesha asked, “do you have any additional information?”
The priest had come further than Bob expected, all the way into Lagos. They said their goodbyes just before Bob initiated the contact sequence with Mohesha. Bob hesitated. The priest said he had enemies here. He didn’t want to get his savior into any trouble.
“Just that he was a priest, and that he wasn’t welcome in the AU.” Bob spun some information packets with the priest’s face into Mohesha’s networks. He’d do his best to protect the priest if anything came up. He owed him.
Mohesha assimilated the data. “Ah, yes, we know him. A Bedouin shaman, but an advanced user of our technology. We don’t see him as a threat, but politics in Africa are complicated.” Mohesha stood next to Bob and put an arm on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep his identity between us.”
Mohesha pinged Bob for location, and taking a deep breath, he released it to her. “You can relax, young man, you are with friends now. Come, let me show you more of what we’re about.” Mohesha took charge, and his primary viewpoint rocketed out from the top of the Spike, up and into the dark clouds. They looked down at an enhanced image of the plains surrounding Lagos.
She highlighted a circular area two miles in diameter, dotted with radio receiver dishes. “This is what Atopia is pushing for UN weapons inspectors to look at.”
It was the microwave power array for Lagos, part of the space power grid that the African Union and Terra Nova pioneered. Bob was familiar with it: over a hundred satellites in LEO, each capable of transmitting hundreds of megawatts of power in line-of-sight microwave bursts.
Nearly two hundred years ago, the “old” world built dense networks of power transmission lines that stretched across America and Europe and China, but with the sharp rise in commodity metal prices, replicating this in Africa had been impossible. So they created the space power grid, becoming the leader in wireless power transmission.
“They’re worried the power grid could be used as a directed energy weapon in a coming conflict,” explained Mohesha. “But it’s the basis of our economy, and we cannot consider demands to throttle or limit it.”
Mohesha began spinning out one project after another into private worlds for Bob to see. Bob watched her Chief Science Officer credentials flash as each one opened. A massive tornado filled Bob’s visual fields.
“The controlled vortex project can capture energy from the upper atmosphere,” Mohesha explained, “and convert it into usable kinetic energy at ground level.”
There were a dozen vortex installations across Africa. Promoted as terraforming projects to combat global warming, they generated vast energies. Anything that generated that much power could be used as a weapon, a new and terrifying Weather War weapon, he thought but didn’t say.
Mohesha spun their viewpoint a hundred miles into space and highlighted a ring running under the western half of the African continent. “The supercollider, a project only the African Union has been able to realize.”
It was on the drawing board for decades, the ultimate endgame in a series of high-energy physics experiments to probe the very nature of the fabric of the universe. A thousand miles in circumference, it ran beneath Lagos, toward southern Africa and then eastern Africa, and even ran under the Sahara desert to the north. It was the scientific triumph of the AU, and was only just operational.
“Patricia was a big supporter of many of these projects.” Mohesha brought in views of other projects, the Arbitrarily Large Phased Array—ALPHA—a swarm of satellites that collected solar energy and beamed it down to Earth via the space power grid. “The supercollider, in particular, was the twin of Patricia’s own Pacific Ocean Neutrino Detector.” Mohesha paused. “Patricia shut down the POND just before the crisis. Do you know why?”
He shook his head. “No idea.” Bob’s attention sharpened—the POND data, the transmission from another universe. “I’ll give everything I have to the Council.” Not that he didn’t trust Mohesha, but it might be wise to wait. “Patricia asked me to talk directly with them.”
Mohesha paused before collapsing the display spaces. “Yes.” She sighed. “I miss her. It is good you made it. You’re the genetic embodiment of everything Patricia worked toward. You are her children, her pssi-kids. She is not gone, she is with you, in you.”
Their viewpoint sailed across the ocean, and the crystal towers of Terra Nova glistened in the distance. Mohesha guided them in, circling the main tower complex. They materialized together, walking next to each other in a tropical garden of flowering red begonias and gladiolas. It was already dark, but the night garden was lit by the soft glow of aerial plankton.
Bob had questions of his own, things that he’d been waiting to ask. “You say you miss Patricia, but she said it was you who infected Atopia with the reality skin that nearly destroyed us.” Mohesha had used Patricia’s trust to gain access to Atopian networks. “You used her.”
He stared at her. He wasn’t sure if she’d try to deny it.
Mohesha’s face turned to the floor. “It was the only way.”
Bob waited for more, but she just walked ahead of him. “Half the reason my friends and I are being hunted is because they think Sid and I created that virus,” he added after a few seconds.
She turned to him. “You think we should admit we attacked Atopia? That would be an automatic declaration of war. The uncertainty is all that’s buying us time. Patricia was lost to us already. Now it’s too late. There will be more bloodshed, and on a far larger scale than just Atopia.”
“More bloodshed?” The skin on Bob’s arms prickled. “What do you mean?”
Mohesha turned away and started walking again. She turned his attention to the sky, amplifying an image of the comet, its curved tail like a giant scythe aimed at the Earth. “The comet is decelerating too quickly. It was supposed to remain in an extra-lunar orbit.”
Bob’s systems assimilated the data she sent him. “But it’s not going to hit Earth.”
“Not yet, no.” She emphasized yet.
“And you think this has something to do with Atopia? With Jimmy?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard to say.”
“Is this the destruction you see coming?” Bob jumped forward several steps to get even with Mohesha. “Is this the bloodshed?” There were ways a comet could be stopped. It was still on the far side of the sun, a hundred and fifty million miles away. He grabbed Mohesha, turning her to face him.
Her face remained impassive. “It might be best, as you said, to wait for the Council meeting.” She pulled away and kept walking.
Bob stood still. He glanced at the enhanced image of the comet in the sky. It faded as Mohesha released it. “When can I reconnect with my friends?”
As soon as he made the connection with Mohesha, her networks had given him a status update. Sid had pinged Terra Nova with several requests. His friends were safe. Terra Nova hadn’t responded to them yet, but they’d know that Bob was all right. The mediaworlds were in a frenzy with the images of him getting picked up already. Bob watched the probability of imminent kinetic attack against Terra Nova spike in his phuturing channels.
He was out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“As soon as your physical body is secured in Terra Nova, we’ll let you talk to them. In the meantime, get some rest.” Her face softened. “Soon you’ll be free to roam your worlds with them again.”
“And my proxxi, how long will it take to reconnect with him?”