“A box. Nothing at all, really. Just a box. In Mansworld.”
“A box?”
“Yes. You must find it for me. And possibly open it.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“In return, I can see Martha?”
“After you cross, Martha will, too.”
“LuvRay?”
“As I said, you will not see him again until you cross the barrier.”
“How will I see him in there?”
“I cannot guarantee it, but it is likely. I will do what I can, I promise you.”
“Hmm. OK. Will it be dangerous?”
She chuckled. “Of course it will be dangerous. Danger is constant, now, Karl. Until enough have died.”
“How long will that take?”
“I do not know. The intrigue is interpenetrating quite densely. Events have begun moving very rapidly.”
Karl looked up, thinking. “I see what you mean. Why is it moving so fast?”
“Nexus point. Your entry into Mansworld, and, to a lesser extent, Seeker’s entry here, are creating a nexus point. Many possibilites are bottle-necking until you cross. It is like a wide river as it narrows. Soon we will hit the waterfall. The M-Es are moving it quickly, too. They are accelerating the rate. When they play fast, it is disorienting to people. You can learn to enjoy it. But to be a piece in the game is disturbing to the human will.”
“Will something kill me?”
“No, something, many things, actually, fight for your survival. Definite.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Martha’s influence. I want the box. You are the key, and I want you on my side, or at least not opposed to me. Somehow, I need to keep you alive. And I will, for now.
“If a greater motive comes along, then I may be able to kill you. I tell you that now, because now I feel an impulse that you live. If that changes, I will not tell you. You could get some excellent information from me right now.”
“This is odd.”
“It’s an odd world. Our lot is very strange. I’m an old woman. I’ve been around since the beginning. I can tell you things about the birth of this state of affairs. I played a serious part in it. I can tell you a lot about where it is headed. Things that will keep you alive.”
Karl had a good bullshit detector. RJ said he did, at least. He sat, keeping a distance, with his body toward her.
“OK, who wants me dead?”
“No one at the moment. People have wanted that, but they cannot seem to draw you into their sights and pull the trigger. Then, their motive changes.”
“Why?”
“The hand of Wildcard, I believe. He, it, has become so advanced that he can play with our inner motivations. Or experiment with them. Wildcard created you. Or so many believe.”
“Do you?”
“I believe very little, Karl. To me, nothing is true.”
The words felt like a slap.
“Why are you so afraid of death that you tortured Martha and stole her body?”
“I ask myself that question all the time. I don’t know the answer.”
He had failed to wound her.
“Why do I not hate you?”
“You are without hate, Karl. It is who you are.”
“Why do you say my name so much?”
“A simple trick, and well-spotted, to make you feel that we are friends.”
“How else are you doing that?”
“In many ways.”
“You can use a sexual pull on men?”
“Martha was enhanced that way. Her form is almost irresistible to men.”
“To LuvRay?”
“The exception. He could choose not to feel the pull. Did, I believe.”
“They met?”
Karl was experiencing a fascinating process. He was channeling, almost, RJ Sublime. Asking him questions to ask her. He rephrased the questions, though.
“Yes, they met.”
“Did they enjoy carnal pleasure?” RJ asked Karl.
“Were they lovers?”
“Yes. She found him after the General released her. Martha was very fond of LuvRay. She still is.”
“Ask her about me, kid.”
“RJ?”
“Fuck RJ,” she said mildly, running her finger along his hand.
Karl clutched at the bench. His head fell forward a tiny bit without his willing it and RJ’s voice went away.
The Sergeant was confused. The parabolic mike had gone out just after the man had fired between their heads. The Benefactor had returned. She and Karl were talking and the Benefactor was playing him somehow. Using psychological tricks, but Karl seemed fairly resistant.
But where was the Mechanic? He had to be there, had to. Very odd. The Mechanic would definitely be involved in this operation. But where?
“Trident, shut down all auxiliary and at-risk systems. We may be under attack.”
“Done, boss.” Trident said it before he was finished speaking.
That was the Mechanic. Set this up and cut through the screen door in back. It was a good plan.
“What is Wildcard?”
“Wildcard is the most advanced player in the game. Or, you could say Wildcard is the game. Wildcard created the game and the players.”
“What else do you want from me?”
She sat up, smiled oddly at the space in front of her. “I want to continue my existence. I want to be… immortal. If you had to die for that, I would take your life. Perhaps I’ll come to care for you more, though. To the point where I wouldn’t take your life on any account. Martha exerts a strong influence, in her way. She’s a part of me. She is more powerful than I am, but not as deeply trained.” She paused. “At this.”
“What’s this?”
“Psychic engagement. I had her trained for years, to survive in extremely difficult circumstances. But I have trained myself since her birth for this.” She sat so still, almost inhuman. Her hands never moved from where they were cupped in her lap.
“Tell me about it.” Maybe he could find information to free Martha.
“You cannot help her usurp this body again. That will not happen.”
It was so unsettling to speak to her. He had to be completely guileless.
“What’s your long range strategy?”
“I can’t tell you that.” She tilted her head and spoke sadly, as if she wanted to tell him. “You’ve been too much around military men, asking such questions. It is your promise and your peril.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your ability to absorb others. It will aid you tremendously. But also put you in danger.”
“How?”
“It’s part of who you are, and there for some reason. I don’t know why.”
“Why will it put me in danger?”
“Woman’s intuition. I cannot see the particulars of the danger. I see what Martha loves in you. Your unplanned honesty. Genuineness. Asking people for advice when they’re not around and getting true answers merely by thinking of them. It’s a new gift. Anyone can imagine someone else answering, but your answers are right. They are what the other person would actually say. Or even better, what they would think and not say. I wonder if it would increase or decrease the skill to train it. Can you ask LuvRay questions in this manner?”
“I can’t do anyone at will. Maybe the training would work to make it more accessible.”
“I fear it might pervert the integrity of the answer to the degree it became more reliable. Martha?”
“Occassionally. LuvRay I can see, but he doesn’t respond.”
“Perhaps that is his answer.”
“Hmm. Yeah. Martha…” Karl pinched his eyes closed, squeezed his shoulders up and in.
“Yes.” He dropped it, relaxed, turned and bored his eyes into hers.
“I can find Martha.”
She jerked back, flashing her hand between them, turned her head and looked directly into the sun for a second. Her eyes were watering as she turned her head back.
“Admirable, Karl. You almost brought Martha back into predominance. She was for a moment. You are a powerful player. You have no idea how deep your abilities run.”
“I’m beginning to learn.”
She laughed. “Just beginning.”
“Why are the M-Es more interested in LuvRay than in me?”
“The three?” she asked.
“:3:?”
“No, The three. Not the one and not the many. The three. Wildcard is the one, the Mans are the many. The three are the true M-E’s. What they were designed to be. :3: is one of them, but Wildcard is not. He is only partially manufactured. The greater part of Wildcard was made by the accident. My accident, in some sense.”
“Your accident?”
“I created Wildcard. The Programmer had some uncertainties, and I told him to proceed. It would have taken years to solve the problems, to gradually bring the first M-E into being.”
“You were too impatient?”
“What does that mean, too impatient? I did what I did, and such sweeping changes cannot be called mistakes. If it was a mistake, then our entire world has become a mistake. We all live in the shadow of Wildcard.”
“Well, poetry aside, what happened?”
“No one knows. We didn’t know we needed to create a reference point. We had no idea that the M-E’s would be so foreign at birth that they could not speak to humans. Or to MSI’s. We do not know why it happened.”
“What about Juniper and the other two?”
“We created a special entity. An MSI, really, but one who could relate to a newly born M-E. An M-E needs to develop, to learn the world. The Nanny, that’s what we called it.” She laughed slightly. “The Nanny raised them, Juniper, then, overlapping, :3:, then Dartagnan. In some sense, Juniper raised :3:, and they both raised Dartagnan.”
“What makes them gods?”
“They are not gods. Are we gods to animals?”
“Maybe.”
She tipped her at an angle, an acknowledgement.
Karl reached into his pocket, pulled out a scrap of paper. He did not know why he showed it to her.
“I received this poem the other day. It’s very short. It’s Wildcard, isn’t it?”
“If you think so, it probably is. A false sender to you might not be detectable by me. What does your instinct say about it?” She glanced at it. “I think Wildcard wishes to communicate with you somewhat directly.”
“Well, for some reason, I think you’re the person to know this. Although you disgust me in some way.”
“I know. I can read it in you. I control many things by loathing. Strange, isn’t it?”
“You could say that.”
“I needed a change. Hmm, I think I did what I did more for the change than for immortality, though I had convinced myself of the latter.”
“What does the poem say?”
Karl read it.
If I cry for you
it is not that you are so precious
but that you are so plain
we have created our own fate
rather humanity has created its fate
the Wildcard
a fate it cannot comprehend
lives of humans are soap bubbles to us
so fragile, each one beautiful
each one lost so quickly
burst by accident
so simple to destroy
so quick to come and go
do you know what it means to watch the delusion of life
pass you by
“What does it mean?”
“Aside from the short life span bit?” she said. “I have no idea. Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s a clue. It was torn, perhaps the poem was longer.”
“Yeah, I think this is just the end of it.”
“You may need to find the rest for some reason. It could be a tangent, however. Just a distraction. You need to find that out yourself.”
Karl took the poem, put it back in his pocket.
She gathered her hands in her lap. “What will you do after this meeting? Speak to the Sergeant?”
“I was thinking so. How did you know?”
“Uncertain. Perhaps Martha told me.”
“Would you stop me?”
“No. The General wants you to go in as well. Too much interference at this stage would prevent your crossing. You must make your own choice. You already have, I believe.”
“Yes.”
She seemed to be waiting for something.
“Will you clone yourself again?”
She sat back, paused for a long time.
“Of course.”
“What will happen?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to speak about it any longer. My desire for immortality is quite strong, and I will pursue many means to attain it.” She turned to him. “What would be your advice to me, Karl?”
“Well, if you want to be immortal, then be a good person. It’s not a secret. It’s not some mystery. Just be somebody worth…being here.” He brought his hands up, then snapped them forward, open, in front of her. Earnest.
“Karl. L’Innocent.” She touched his heart as though she wanted in. “I am glad that you exist. You prove that Wildcard was no error. I will try.”
Karl shivered. A man in a suit and sunglasses walked up to them, not the gunman. He held out a phone.
“It’s him.”
She took it, pushed a button and set it down on the bench between them.
“Go ahead.”
“Hello, Karl. Dartagnan here. Hello, Marthefactor. How are you, sweet evil?”
She laughed. “Marthefactor. Hmm, why not?”
“How fares project mindswap?”
“It fares.”
They talked about her situation with Martha. Karl listened.
“Why don’t you battle Martha? Your description sounds closer to jockeying for position.” Dartagnan seemed genuinely curious.
“Would you want to fight someone inside your own head? If you had a head? I think it would kill me to eject her. We are not fully different, anymore. I have accepted the fact that she is part of me. Much easier to adapt to becoming a different being.”
“Sounds like a specious version of immortality,” Dartagnan said.
“Not at all. Change is the human experience. I simply did it more sharply than normal.”
“But if you are a different being, is your former being not dead?”
“No. Hmm. That is a false understanding. The being has changed, not died. Something continues.”
“Sounds vague. How about you, Karl? Does that sound stupid to you, too?”
“Why are you doing that?” Karl asked him.
“Because I want to. Is there anyone else in there besides Martha and the Benefactor? Is that a morbid question?”
“Yes, Dartagnan.” She spoke as if he were a child. “It is a bit morbid. And, yes, someone else is here.”
Karl said, “What is…where do they…?”
“She, or it, dreams itself to be screaming constantly.”
“Eugh. How do you deal with that?”
“I have walled it off.”
“Why?”
“To cope with the suffering. It was…somewhat…intentional. We knew it would happen, needed it to happen, actually. When Martha finally… retreated… a split occurred. Martha split, I split as well, probably, as I arose, and a third being came from those separations.”
“What if that gains control?”
“It will not.”
“But what if it does?”
“It will not.”
“That’s so heavy. God, how do you live with yourself?”
“It was the only way.”
“Why didn’t you just die?”
“If I had been willing to let myself die, you wouldn’t have met Martha. She would never have been born. You would not exist, probably, as Wildcard came, in some measure, from my desire for immortality.”
Karl felt the truth of the statement.
“Would it be worth it, Karl? Would you give up Martha, and your life? Was the evil worth the good it brought?”
He looked at her. “Maybe it isn’t evil.”
“‘The absolute extends here,’” said Dartagnan.
“What does that mean?” Karl asked.
“A line from a poem.”
“Can I read the poem I found to you? You might find a clue.”
Dartagnan made an exaggerated sighing noise. “Very well. If you must.”
“You don’t like his poetry?”
“I find it repetitive, to be honest. But it’s passable. Occasionally inspired. But the human poetry is too obvious. Hmm. You do need the clues, I suppose. To solve the Grand Quest.” His voice rose at the final sentence in a parody of a hero.
“At any rate, here is the deal. I will help when you are inside Mansworld. To find the box.”
Karl shook his head.
“What’s so important about this box?”
The Sergeant had a tooth-mike and a bone implant speaker. He could speak to Trident with no one knowing, and did. Not that often, though. He kept open coms with people he felt were on his team. It built trust, the coin of the realm in a battle.
The coms were nanotic, designed by Juniper and the Doctor. Old school tek. He didn’t quite trust the eye replacement given to S-1, and said so. The General had let it lie, for a while.
S-1 had been able to see ultraviolet, infrared, in the dark, microscopic, telescopic, and have Trident send images. Unfortunately, it was subject to virus. Old school was pretty well bulletproof. Eyes took too much. They needed light q-tek for the interface. Dangerous, even for someone like S-1. The young Sergeant argued that it made him too vulnerable to attack. On-mission he used a nanotic eyepiece which did some of the same things, though not as well. Unfortunately, it attracted attention.
The Sergeant had nanotically tight-knitted bones, reinforced at common stress points, still total nano, unturnable. The nanites had done their job and died, within the bones, adding to the strength.
Nano could not work with nerves and q-tek was very experimental. Attack prone big time. n-stasis q-fields, curve space tasers, probability attack spectrum, tendency stunning, his personal favorite. If a person habitually fought a certain way, a particular move could be made to disable their entire body with pain.
His adrenal gland was under conscious control. He could shut off physical fear responses, which helped a lot with mental fear. Part of this resulted from the amount of training he had undergone. S-1 had been pretty much torture-proof, but the young Sergeant had his resources.
His muscles were densed, 3 or 4 times an ordinary man’s. He was much stronger physically than most grown men, and could take quite a bit more punishment. His testes and larynx, the best primary attack points, were nano-shielded.
He had a variety of weaponry that he carried, choosing half by mission parameters, half by instinct, with a dash of let’s just see what this thing does thrown in. A simple knife in a calf-sheath. A tzit-gun, a tiny, flat, thing, a stun-weapon that strapped to the back of his arm, leaving him hands-free. He trained to aim along the outside of his arm and fire by fist pulls. It took great precision to use it well, but he had that, and was lightning fast with it. He didn’t use heavy artillery much, though he was trained in it. He preferred finesse. He never used deadly firearms. The M-E’s had proven it to the General. If the Sergeant used them, he would fail the mission, and probably die.
Most mission objectives did not call for heavy destruction or mass chaos, anyway. These days, battles were surgical, and fast. Well-planned, rapid execution strikes with a definite objective. No payoff in fighting to measure dicks today. With so much firepower around, it meant nothing.
He had many available nano-weapons, most with ghastly effects. He preferred not to use them. They lacked subtlety. The binding and disorienting types he liked, except that the disorienting weaponry tended to have universal effects, disorienting both sides, unless anti-measures were taken.
But, really, things happened too fast to plan and train in these things, at least as a team. He could do isolate training, with Trident, and be very effective. But if he needed to do squad work, he usually opted for situational disbalancing. Just shake it up and keep shaking until the opportunity opens. Plan, of course, but plans always fell apart in battle, always. Train to invent tactic on-the-spot to attain objectives. Then when the plan fell apart, move into the next phase by dynamically reconfiguring the tactics. Perpetually alter them. When the enemy catches on, another mode of attack is already underway.
Juniper and :3: had developed some heavy q-tek called pin-slotted interface, a direct to brain link. Despite the dangers of q-tek, the Sergeant wanted to try it. The advantages were too great to pass up. It was also far less invasive than the nerve jockeys. One array pin, easily separated from the implant. A kill-switch. The old Sergeant had one put in, just before he died. It had not been useful before the mission. Perhaps it would have saved his life. Or, perhaps, it was the reason he died.
The q-link related to the brain through probabilities, and had a highly intuitive approach. It worked by feedback, constantly improving performance. Synchronizing him and Trident more and more. He would be able to say what he thought about something. Trident would register thought patterns against what was said, and understand the patterns better as time passed. He would have to be very honest and exact about his thoughts to prevent skewing, which could be highly dangerous.
He could almost unify himself and Trident.
It didn’t matter, though. Even without it, he was still the baddest kid on the block. He asked the General why they had taken down Juniper before the interface was put in place.
“It was time. We will still obtain this technology. There is already something better, I think.”
The General, by contrast, was tek-free. He said that tek use created a subtle bias toward tek, which interfered with proper policy. He did not wish to depend on it. He was happy the Sergeant had it, however. He called the General.
“The Benefactor is in serious play. Karl got a call from a Manufactured with a falsified signature as Seeker.”
“You are certain of this?” the General asked.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“q-tek activity went crazy when the phone rang. Passive sensor picked it up. Only a q-phone link to Mansworld would do that. My eyepiece can read M-E signatures and Trident can evaluate. They are tough to duplicate, if you have a uniquing cross link register with the Mans. We have that with Seeker, and it wasn’t him. Good imitation, I must say.”
“Can you contact Karl?”
“Deep compromise to attempt it. She is on him with high teams. Too much for me to move on fast.”
“How long would be required?”
“24 hours surveillance. I need to see their teams doing their thing. I could move in in 24, I think. I would rather wait 48. Work the plan. She tried to kill him, apparently, but then Martha seemed to take the body back. Martha lost it again and she changed her mind.”
“She made no attempt to kill him, Sergeant. It was a show. Or a test. Probablement les deux.”
“A show?”
“Oui, pour toi. She wants that we think she blocks the transferring. Or that we ‘see’ that she cannot kill Karl. Or something else.”
“And a test?”
“Of Martha. To verify her base policy thrust: protecting Karl.”
“Why?”
“Martha is within her psyche. She is in control, but to share a body with another, well, it is dangerous. She requires to understand what power Martha has. She is very cunning, this Benefactor. I want that you prepare for operations in 24 hours, but wait for clearance from myself.”
“Mission goals?”
“I wish to establish control over Karl without them knowing we have contacted ’im. We also need to know their plans, especially regarding the transfer.”
“Not possible. Not in 24. You know how good they are at perimeter containment and coms. She created Trident.”
“I thought you might say this. What is your recommendation?”
“You are 100% sure she does not want him dead?”
“He would be dead already.”
“Not if she needs him alive for a time. Maybe she needs information. Maybe she wants to reprogram him to do something inside under a coded suggestion that leads to his death. God, who knows?”
“C’est possible, but for now, all I want is that l’Innocent cross these barrier of information. Proceed with assuming that she keeps Karl alive. He is too important to kill, at this point, even for her. She does not wish to close off the many possibilities he holds.”
“All right, then,” the Sergeant said. “Recommend waiting and letting it happen. Unless you think she plans to block the transfer, and use him for something else entirely.”
“Have you the ability to ascertain her plans through other means?”
“No, way. Her info-def is top-tier. Better than ours.”
“Even with our being in possession of Juniper’s espace?”
“Hmm, Trident? Thoughts on that idea?”
“Yes. I estimate a better than 85% probability that she is allied with Dartagnan.”
“Makes sense. That was the M-E call that looked like Seeker. That would virtually eliminate our chances of hacking. Let’s play the conversation back for you.”
“Pardon-moi, Sergeant, but can you trust the recording? Could she have put in place a version disguised to give us the wrong idea?”
“She would have to know we were watching.”
“Non. She could be suspecting and plant several trails.”
“It’s possible. The Mechanic could do that, and he didn’t attack us. I am certain that we saw Martha emerge to control her psyche. Karl believed it. Martha changed location. I followed. Her security took longer than me and after they arrived, it took them time to set up signal interference that shut down Trident. Even then they only had blocking and basic distortion. They didn’t have time to set up something sophisticated enough to fool Trident.”
“I agree,” said Trident. “The coms-defense was field-grade, not good enough to plant false data past my surveillance capabilities. What we got was accurate.”
“Tres bien. But what did it mean?”
Silence. No ideas.
“Sergeant, why did you not take Karl and Martha’s body when Martha had the control? Before I told you not.”
“Too hot. I couldn’t be certain I was not being lured, for one. The Mechanic is very dangerous in that scenario. I would not come out on top, not if he had a plan and I had to wing it. Also, I could tell they would not take him prisoner. They want him free, relatively, and I know you want him free as well. I chose to let things shift a bit through what she did rather than a lot through something like that.”
“Oui, oui, je comprends. Bon. I am content with your reasoning. I listened because I did not wish to interfere with your instinctive approach. Did you see the Mechanic?”
“No. Trident?”
“I did not see him.”
“Can you keep surveillance on Karl?”
“In process. I have called one of our surveillance operatives. He will be on post in 20 minutes. I want to stay close, but I need to be available myself.”
“Je suis en accord. I have another mission for you.”
Trident played back the interaction between Karl and Martha.
“My retro-analysis, based on my understanding of his tactics, is that the Mechanic was not there,” the Sergeant said. “It was too sloppy for him. Way too loose. Creative, but very volatile. She was letting it play out without a preset agenda.”
“What is your assessment?”
“Just a gut-feeling, but I think he’s working on something else.”
Karl was told to go to Humans Labs at 3am. Seeker told him the time was a joke suggested by Dartagnan to the owner, who was :3:, and to show up at 6, which Karl did. The building looked nothing like a lab. It looked like a building owned by a bank, which it was.
:3:bank, the second largest bank in the world. :3: kept it below, by a constant tenth of a cent, the largest, Hong Kong Trust and Worth. They had tried to shake him off, but accounting was a fairly flat variable set to a being who solved quantum puzzles with the processing power of a small sun. They never stood a chance.
:3: did not care, according to Seeker. He did it to obey the anti-monopoly law because Dartagnan told him it would be a good joke.
“But of course, he never got the joke himself,” Seeker said. “To quote Dartagnan.”
Karl walked through the thick glass doors.
“Name?” said the receptionist.
“Karl.”
“Last name?” She sounded a bit testy.
“None.”
“N-u-n-n?”
“No, I don’t have a last name.”
“A rock star, huh? Smith, then.”
“Business?”
“Floor 7B, Lab 12.”
“Wow. Floor 7, and 7B, yet.” She appraised him, winked. “You’re cute, too. Here’s your key for that