© Howard Pierce 2019

Print ISBN: 978-1-54396-500-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54396-501-8

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For Wendy and Haleigh

and Liu Liu

This story is the second in a trilogy.

2128

She danced down the descending arc of the worn wooden treads, her personal tap step skipping to the same old song in her head, the peachy red glow of the sulfurous sunset over her shoulder. Eyes closed, no need to count the steps, the creak meant three more to the landing. A light elbow brushing of the curved concrete wall positioned her head just so, with her eyes opening to allow the scanner a half second to know her geometry.

Touching the door’s silver hand pad, she heard the dull snap of the bolt withdrawing and sensed her private world coming to life inside, all systems whirring into process as she entered through the doorway and into the tiny foyer. Spinning on the ball of her foot as she swept the door closed, the end-of-day choreography concluded with a shoulder shrug that dropped her pack onto the chair and a two-part hop as she stepped lightly out of her clogs.

Lori Norton’s apartment was efficient and soothing, with walls lit in sandy tones and honey colored wood floors that radiated warmth up through her bare feet. It was her private retreat, old and anonymous from the outside, where she felt hidden in plain sight. There was one more step before she could sink into tranquility, one final check of her messages. Her dash unfurled from nothing to shimmer in the air before her as she stepped towards the kitchenette.

But, instead of message nodes, Lori’s eye caught sight of a large mouse lying cold and dead at her feet, its fuzzy gray form magnified and distorted by the dash’s floating translucent frame.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

She resumed breathing, imagining how it would have felt to have stepped on the mouse. Maybe it wasn’t fully dead, and its needle teeth would have sunk into the side of her foot as she squashed its little body. Would it be better to finish it off with extra squishing, or to kick her foot wildly to dislodge the disgusting bite? There had been no movement despite her scream, so it must be dead.

Lori refocused. She was holding dinner in a small bag and on top was a ziploc holding fresh salad greens, the perfect body bag. Shaking the greens into a bowl she grabbed a pen from the counter and, kneeling with arms at full extension, rolled the limp body into the clear damp tomb. Tossing the pen in on top she drew the seal and turned back into the kitchenette, opening the disposal door and committing the rodent to eternal atomic redistribution.

Her appetite was gone so she put away the few groceries, poured herself a glass of yesterday’s red wine, and just stood looking over the raised breakfast counter into her livespace. Lori tried considering the day. Nondescript, nothing to consider really. With glass in hand, she padded five steps over to her antique reclining chair and settled in. It was dusk outside, as seen through the two projection windows that had lit and centered on the blank subterranean wall as she sat. She could see a man from the neighborhood walking his old dog slowly along the weed-cracked sidewalk. The dog was clearly looking for a place to shit, which Lori really didn’t want to watch, so she brought up her dash again and touched the coport for Gumbo.

Instantly, the old dog, the early evening street scene, and her apartment were gone. In their stead, Lori looked down from a scrubby hillock towards a long stretch of beach carving an arc against sparkling green-blue water. To her immediate right, standing on a rocky outcropping with its black mane flickering stiffly in the wind, was a scarred and greying donkey. It looked unwearyingly beyond her, towards the cactus studded foothills behind them.

Why? She wondered, why always the donkey? What was it about it, or them, that Danni loved so much?

Sitting on a pile of sandy rocks, she decided to ignore the donkey and let the breeze waft over her. She could smell the combined odors of Gumbo—barely salt air mixed with donkey and wild onions. She could see Danni’s cabin a quarter mile down the trail, halfway to the beach, and she wondered if she should bother her with a visit. Despite her many visits over the past two years, it still seemed an imposition. Dozens of people probably wanted to see Danni at any given moment, not to mention the constant pressure of the millions using her Dworld as their escape.

But Danni didn’t seem to notice any pressure and always told her to come by any time—unless the door was closed or she saw snakes on the path. Right now, the door was open and there didn’t seem to be any snakes, so it was probably okay. The sun was well on its way towards the mountains to the west, and Danni would be sitting under the dry vine covered portico on the far side of the cabin. She would be looking east over the sweeping bay, barely cooled by the onshore breeze, while she worked on whatever it was Danni worked on, prepared to offer Lori sweet tea over a short chat.

A sudden jolt from behind rolled Lori off her rock perch and she looked up from the ground into damp donkey nostrils. She could feel the wet imprint between her shoulder blades. The donkey’s brown eyes were impassive, unhurried, and unwavering, looking past her down the path. Lori got the message, and standing, she began to stride down the dusty track. The donkey followed behind slowly, picking its steps carefully, distended belly swinging side to side.

Danni looked shockingly old, as if she had aged fifty years in just the two days since Lori had last visited. Her cream brown skin had somehow darkened into mottled age spots, and the taut smoothness was now a ruined map of wrinkles. Her hair, always a rich and lustrous gray, was wispy thin and blown like an abandoned nest around her head. Body flash-desiccated, but with eyes somehow still bright despite their newly clouded lenses.

Lori hadn’t made a full transition yet, so she watched herself from that weird coport observer status. She was standing frozen in the doorway to the trellised patio, a shocked expression on her face, looking down at the ancient woman who was clearly Danni. The impoliteness of staring from the outside made Lori flush, and she quickly gained full transition as Danni recognized her and smiled.

Lori sat, saying nothing, and for a short while they just listened to the rustle of the dry vine leaves in the wind. When Danni finally spoke first, her voice was a weak reed, clear enough if you sat close but with little force behind it.

“Good afternoon, Lori. Don’t be alarmed by my appearance, I will explain that in a few minutes. Tea?” When Lori nodded, Danni sighed. “I’m afraid you will have to help yourself. Pour me some as well if you don’t mind.” Lori filled the two glasses on the tray before them and watched as Danni reached slowly for hers and brought it with a tremor to her lips, smiling to herself at the taste before setting the glass back down carefully.

“How have you been, Lori? It’s good of you to visit me, particularly today.”

Lori was suddenly mindful of another disquiet that lay beyond her shock at Danni’s physical transformation. It hinged off the words “particularly today.” Danni didn’t bring conversations in that close. She tended to live and communicate from within the objectivity of her colossal Dataspace, Serendipity. She was a sage who spoke sparingly and taught by way of parables, stories usually expressed as elegant little spacetime loops projected within Serendipity’s interface. Serendipity was her many-dimensional kingdom, and its public face, Gumbo, was the most important and popular of the Dworlds.

Lori loved working part time at Gumbo. It was a lifesaving counterbalance to her uninspiring day job, and she still always feared that her access to the staff entrance might suddenly be denied—that it would go back to displaying a gnarly math question that had to be answered while a screen clock ticked towards zero.

How many times had it taken her to gain entry that first time? The tenth was the charmed one, the Lonely Runner Conjecture. A peach colored track glimmered in the center of her dash with a partial formula waiting for completion at its center. The track had spun, sucking her carefully structured submission into its graphical vortex, and slowly the magic words appeared on the quieting surface of her dash. “Proof by Lori Norton 2126”.

Then she was suddenly there for the first time, standing on the hilltop looking down at the little cabin and the sea beyond, with only the sound of the wind in her ears until a voice spoke, “Welcome to Gumbo, Lori.” But there was no one there, just the donkey.

“I’m fine Danni, other than the occasional dead mouse and my mom giving me too much advice on nutrition and life.” She was watching Danni’s slow progress towards a second sip of tea. “How are you? Have all your interns been wearing you out with constant visits? I’m sure we must be an annoying swarm.”

With an untroubled laugh and small shrug of her shoulders, Danni considered the obvious. “Well, I have let myself go a bit, but it’s not because of you interns. In fact, you are the only one left, Lori, so we had better come up with a different title.”

“Just me?” Lori heard the wind get louder in her ears again.

“Yes, just you.” Danni was looking out to the bay as she spoke, but she seemed to force her attention back on Lori. “I find I need to focus carefully over the next few months Lori, and I am looking for someone willing to absorb some of that focus. I guess you could call it an apprentice, only it’s a good deal more than that.”

Now, looking only at Lori and fully in the moment, she continued, “You have been a clever and dedicated supporter, Lori, and you have helped out in many ways, but we now need someone who is prepared to bind their entire life into this particular Dworld.”

Lori noted that sudden age and frailty had not blunted Danni’s single-minded directness.

For her part, Danni watched carefully as shadows of anxiety played across Lori’s face. “You see Lori, I am going to die soon, and we—Morley and I—would like you to take over the stewardship of Gumbo. Our little Dworld still has a way to go before it concludes, and someone needs to manage it forward. It’s not that difficult really. It mostly operates itself, but now and again some creative entanglement or disentanglement is required.”

Lori couldn’t picture in her mind how this could be happening. She was an everyday polymath working in the bowels of UNworld, coming and going quietly from the little home she had taken over from her mom and grandmom. It was true that she had a private passion for the puzzling yet exalted Dworld of Gumbo and her admittance into its inner workings was her most proud achievement, but she didn’t think she had ever added much of importance there.

“But, why me? Me, out of all the thousands of polymaths who must want to be part of Gumbo?” And as the first shock caught up to the second, “And why are you dying? You aren’t, or weren’t, that old.”

This brought a different smile to Danni’s face, youthful conspiracy under the wrinkles and age spots. “Well, the truth is, there were only a total of seven of you student helpers to ever gain access—not many proofs over all these years. Only three ever really got the Zen, and only one who accepted it as a reality, came in regularly, and just did the work. Plus I liked you best, so I chose to ask you.”

Danni seemed to take a deep breath while Lori tried to adjust to a very different picture of Gumbo. She had always imagined a large staff of underlings like herself, walled off from one another for security reasons, each working diligently as part of a massively choreographed corps de ballet.

As Lori was trying to imagine the vast service called Gumbo as the private hobby of Danni, the invisible Morley, and maybe a few others, she heard Danni continuing, “As far as the dying part goes, it is quite simple. I’m one hundred and twelve years old now, and I’m ready to die. I have other things to do so I stopped trying not to die, which turns out to be a very effective approach when you are this old.”

Lori’s confusion became a metallic taste in her mouth, and a filter of tears covered her eyes. “How can you do other things if you die? I can’t run Gumbo. I don’t have any idea how it works.”

“You don’t have to know how it works. We have a team that takes care of the mechanics, and it’s very well endowed. My late husband, Simon Rosenthal, created the architecture and the supporting operations around it many years ago. It was the first Dworld ever built, and it is still the best. I expect you know enough about him and his company Obfuservice to understand how durable his creations tended to be, especially his favored children like Gumbo.”

Danni Kuiu drew herself together, organizing the frame of an offer she had been preparing to make for over a week now. In a perfect world, her apprentice would be older and wiser than Lori Norton, but Lori did share one important characteristic with Danni. She was social spectrum narrow, a 0.12 on the Sloberg Scale. At twenty years old, already over-focused on the constant interlocking problems and patterns of her job and the world, oblivious to the surrounding potential for interlocking relationships with people, Lori had the mind and the temperament Danni needed. A fast learner with a natural sense for where the best view of any problem might lie, Lori had already adapted to the life of a true polymath, agreeably shipwrecked on her private island of perception.

But this deterioration of body, the biological catch-up that Danni herself had triggered, was progressing faster than she had expected. The pace of aging was increasing and increasingly erratic, with spurts of what felt like rampant cellular death and then days of calm. Danni would need to keep marching forward without second thoughts or recalibration, and Lori would need to decide quickly. Danni didn’t feel any real remorse—it offered the best possible path for Lori. Still, she knew she was asking Lori to jump off the cliff and into the deep and mostly unseen lagoon, through the surface of Gumbo and into the dense under-plume of Serendipity.

“How much time do you have at the moment, Lori? Did you leave anything on the stove when you jumped here? Are you expected anywhere in the next couple of hours? Have you eaten?”

Beginning to sense the urgency behind Danni’s frailty, Lori shook her head. “No. I just got home from work and it’s Wednesday, so I have all weekend free. I haven’t eaten since breakfast though. I was just planning on saying hello to you and maybe working on a few non-functional relay tickets.”

“Good. I will get you something to eat while we talk. You like fish tacos, right?” Danni’s dash appeared as a small pad, and she squinted as she touched a few commands. “Are you in view mode or full integration?”

Lori realized she had switched over to full integration just as she sat down for tea. “I’m all here. Something must have told me this wasn’t a normal after-work jump.”

“That was probably seeing my sudden decline into oldness, so let’s get that out of the way first.” Danni took a second’s hesitation for a mindful but shallow breath. “You are now looking at the rapidly progressing restoration of an unmanipulated Danni Kuiu. This is what I should have looked like at one hundred and eighteen. Would have, if I hadn’t played risky games with some of the methyl-based information structures idling within my epigenome. Does that mean anything to you?” Danni sat back in her chair, looking at Lori as Carita stepped onto the patio carrying a plate of warm corn tacos smelling of chili and fish. Carita set the plate down in front of Lori, and both women thanked her as she smiled and left silently, disappearing back into the cottage.

The smell made Lori realize how hungry she was. The image of the dead mouse was gone, and the process of eating would allow her to put off coming to grips with Danni’s disorienting request. Life had been simple for the two years since she started working at UNworld—maybe too simple. But working for Danni on the side had added all the complexity she wanted, even though all she had been doing was Gumbo grunt work. Mostly she worked on the never-ending queue of broken programs that mirrored relentless streams of data out of heavily protected warehouses and DataBlocks, from the obvious to the obscure and across the entire web, relaying it all back into Serendipity.

To Lori, Serendipity was a mesmerizing ravenous beast, whose purpose she didn’t quite fathom. She was Danni’s, a vast and borderless quantum farm of undifferentiated data along with all the manifests of historical relationships between that data. Combined in Serendipity’s visualization plex, they allowed Serendipity to recreate extended moments in time extravagantly over-saturated with information and insinuation. They could be played as streams which one could pause and study from any angle, exposing any intelligence with higher definition. Danni referred to the really interesting ones as multiplex.

The work made Lori feel like a chess hustler down at the park near her house. Each target’s firewall took a seat across the board from her. People, corporations—they all paid a lot of money for the newest privacy apps that threw up gleaming fortifications around their DataBlocks and linkProfiles. Lori would quietly burrow in beneath the walls and attach a leechTransmitter. She would look for a nearby external interface to zombie, and voila the target became an insatiable feeder source—another tiny part of Serendipity’s sprawling world. “Another one bites the dust” was how Danni said Morley described it.

“Not really. I mean, I know generally what the epigenome is, but I don’t know what it means to play games with it.” Lori raised a taco to her mouth and bit off an end, slurping fish chunks and spicy juice into her mouth. She felt funny eating tacos in front of Danni while avoiding dealing with the apprentice thing, but she needed time to get her bearings here.

“Well, to make a rather long story short, many years ago I became aware of people experimenting with ways to alter epigenes and thereby the activity of genes themselves. It turned out that by erasing certain chemical marks within the epigenome, one could erase a cell’s history, allowing it to revert to a more youthful and flexible state. The whole process seemed weirdly and beautifully similar to the early games I was playing with Serendipity back then.”

Danni went silent for a moment and Lori couldn’t tell if she had lost her train of thought or simply needed to think carefully before continuing with the story. But Danni was having another of those “before death” moments that seemed to be creeping into her days more and more—moments where simple things suddenly grew unbearably ripe and precious. They came over her from nowhere. Right now, it was the perfection of the fish taco and the receptive moment it helped to create, as juice ran down the side of Lori’s hand while she, Danni, prepared to alter her life forever.

She could tell Lori later about how she and her husband Simon had established a team of scientists who patiently learned to uncoil and recoil the map of all a cell’s potentials—how they painstakingly acquired the techniques to rearrange the trigger markers—how they elaborated until they could alter the cell forever. The idea was to temporarily reverse biological time for the cells, and Simon had carefully published papers on how their experiments had failed. The truth had been more ambiguous, but now wasn’t the time for the distraction of that micro world.

“Every day, as you help out here in Gumbo, you must catch little glimpses of how the same cluster of facts can look very different from one perspective to another. That malleability of potential exists in our cells as well.” Danni caught herself and refocused again. “You work hard, Lori, and already you are adept at maintaining many of the systems that allow Serendipity to breathe in the data exhalations of the world. I like to think of them as measured gulps.” Lori was nodding so Danni pushed on. “And I believe you have spent some time working with the personalization algorithms that lie behind the average consumer’s view into Serendipity. You know, the little maps we give them showing the persuasion patterns behind every request for their money or their vote.”

“That’s probably the part of working here I like best. I have a hard time imagining what it was like before Serendipity appeared. She keeps most everyone at least semi-honest. People trust Gumbo because of her.” In truth, even though Lori herself used and worked on Gumbo, she didn’t really trust it. After two years working at UNworld, she had seen far too much of what had to be done to manage populations in this era.

Danni managed a quiet chuckle before continuing. “Thanks for the endorsement, but I’m guessing you have experienced at least a few unsettling moments in which it dawns on you how delicately subjective the personalization weighting within those algorithms is.”

Danni needed Lori to re-index for personal honesty, and she hesitated before continuing. “Just a small change in Serendipity’s Realtime Snapshot of the history of a request or note, maybe just a small shift in the viewing angle, can sell a car or elect a president. Right?”

Danni fixed Lori with an ageless stare, and the warm taco juice on Lori’s hand turned cool with the slight breeze. “You must have sensed something a bit dodgy beneath all the public service patina of Serendipity and Gumbo. Am I correct?”

Lori first looked away, then at her hands as she wiped them with the faded black and white cloth napkin. Well, of course. She could admit that it was one of the reasons she spent so much time in Gumbo. The relaxed atmosphere of undifferentiated power somehow made up for the powerless cog-like life she led back in D.C. “I guess that is true, but I don’t really think about it. I like the problem solving and seeing the things that I fix work as designed. I feel like Serendipity is important on some big global level, and I’m kind of proud that I passed a hard test to qualify for working on it.”

“As well you should, Lori. Almost fifty thousand people have tried, and only seven ever passed that test. You made it through, and you have been good enough to spend almost half your waking life helping these last two years.”

As Danni spoke, Lori was acknowledging to herself how much she depended on Gumbo for her present quasi-contentment.

“But now I’m asking you to come over to our world completely, with no going back. I wish there was a gentle way of persuading you and drawing you in slowly, but there isn’t.” Danni’s smile went impish again. She added a bit of stage drama by slowly finishing off her tea. “It’s really a classic blind-branching-dilemma. I can’t tell you much more about what we are up to, unless you are completely on board. As Morley would say, ‘Beaucoup committed.’ You simply have to decide with that polymath gut of yours.”

Danni held out the open palm of her left hand, and Lori imagined the withered arm within the faded blue jumpsuit she always wore. “Do I leave behind my plodding but safely plot-able trajectory through the known world,” and then her right palm extended, “in exchange for an unknowable path through an entirely new dimension?”

“You want me to decide right now?” Lori knew the answer.

“I’m afraid so. No sense dithering.” Danni had steeled herself for this. Knowing how much Lori loved working within Gumbo made her feel badly about using it as leverage, but it couldn’t wait. She needed to find new blood, and she had decided to place her bet on Lori.

“Does Morley want me, too? I’ve never even met him in person. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“Say ‘yes’ and I will introduce you straight off. And yes, he thinks you are the right person as well.” Danni didn’t let Lori escape from the narrowing track.

Lori had already thought about what she would be leaving: her nice apartment, her grandmother’s antique recliner chair, her quiet neighbors and their happy shitting dogs, her safe but mostly dreary job, her mother as well, she guessed. Danni had just confirmed that she would have to trust the tiny glimpses she had been given of what lay below Gumbo’s skin.

She knew this moment would never happen again. Time would flow on, and she would be swept downstream with it, which seemed like such a sad ending written before she was even twenty-one. But why the fuck not? She knew her mom would be sad, but Lori knew she would have done it herself given the chance. This was everything she had taught Lori about the persistence of an unpredictable fate in a data-driven world. “Okay. I’ll be your apprentice or whatever, and, yes, I get that there is no going back.”

“That’s very good to hear, Lori. Thank you.” Danni reached out and took Lori’s hand like a tiny grandmother offering congratulations. “Now would you like to meet my friend Morley?”

“Sure. I mean, yes, please.” Lori wasn’t ready to be on the other side of the river just like that. Shouldn’t there be some special process that would show her how to enter some deeper hidden level within Gumbo?

Looking over Lori’s shoulder, Danni spoke to someone who must have been standing in the cottage doorway behind. “We have our young apprentice, Morley. Come say hello.”

Lori stood and turned, surreptitiously giving her sticky hand another wipe on her pant leg. She caught a strong whiff of donkey at the same moment she saw it clomp out onto the patio and heard it speak around her head.

“Cheers, Lori. Welcome to the real Gumbo. I hope Danni hasn’t scared you with all her talk of death.”

Dimensional Static

“Let’s go down to the beach where we can find a comfortable spot to get started.”

Lori was having trouble getting used to the donkey talking. “Giving you just enough of the past history behind our little project seems to be what Danni wants me to do—equip you but not overwhelm you.”

Moist black eyes and long lashes working sympathetically with the scarred ears and lips. Lori heard a bemused languor in the voice. Was it just in her head or could others hear the donkey as well?

“Fair warning, this may take a bit of time and finesse.” Morley flicked his ears and tail simultaneously, seeming to swat at flies Lori couldn’t see. “Wise old Simon used to go on about how too much clarity could bugger up your fundamental appreciation of what was really happening.”

Lori had made the jump back to her apartment, staying just long enough to register for an unspecified medical leave from her job, pack a small bag, and get a few hours’ sleep. She had been mysterious with her mom—just vague enough to ensure that her mom was hoping the coming disappearance was due to some exciting new lover. It kept her from asking too many questions.

Snapping back to Gumbo, she had found Morley as donkey waiting for her on the hilltop portal, and he immediately started them down the steeper path leading directly to the shoreline.

“You should be thankful it’s me giving you the background and not Danni. She is a woman of few words—too few when it comes to helping make sense of such a peculiar expedition. Eighty years can just fly by. I’m more of a story teller by nature.”

Lori was glad that Morley was leading the way, since his four loosely connected hooves were triggering small rock slides with every step. As they reached an especially sharp switchback, he stopped for a moment and looked back over a shoulder at her. “I guess it would be polite of me to ask if you have any burning questions I can answer before we reach our peaceful lecture hall and get to work.”

Lori had been looking at the donkey’s shambling ass for the last five minutes, so the first question out of her mouth was not really the most burning one on her mind. “How come you always appear as a donkey, Morley?”

“Oh, it’s simple actually. You know how old I actually am, right?”

Lori didn’t see where this was going and suspected she was being distracted from a real answer but figured it was best to play along. “Well, given that Danni mentioned you were a little older than her, you must be about one hundred and fifteen or so.”

“One hundred and twenty to be precise. Danni and I have been using the same custom methylation techniques to stay young, the ones she has recently stopped. They are pretty effective.” The ears suddenly went flat against the back of his donkey head. “But somewhere around one hundred, I began to show my age and my back began to act it, so I decided I needed a new form. I wanted four legs and a horizontal spine to ease the memory of an old man’s vertical back pain. It was just a simple mechanical trick to eliminate gravitational compression.” The ears stood back up, and he smiled. “Plus, I didn’t want to have to ever worry about whether my choice of clothing made me look old. Anyway, I woke up one morning and the first thing I saw was a donkey out my window, so I chose that. Why, don’t you like them?”

With that, the Morley-donkey Lori was talking to faded quickly to nothing and an old man appeared in its stead. Tall but somewhat bent with thinning blond-brown-grey hair, deeply tanned skin, and a face strikingly handsome despite the lines and crags, without elaboration Morley pulled a brimmed cap from the back pocket of his shorts and snugged it onto his head, faced back down the hill, and continued on with a battered walking pole in his left hand.

Lori felt a deep pang of guilt, even as she realized he had drawn it out of her with droll purpose. “No, I love donkeys. Really, you can go back to being one.”

“No, you don’t. They smell and they’re stubborn, just like you learned as a child. Very useful if you mostly want to be left alone. Anyway, it’s good for me to practice walking upright.”

Ten minutes later they were sitting under a thatched roof fifty meters back from the high tide line, with Morley futzing with his dash while Lori took stock of the subtle appointments within the seemingly rustic cabana. It was a structure she had never noticed during her many trips to Gumbo. Noise cancellation imposed a hushed muffling of the waves and sea bird screeches. Spectrum filtration brought down the glare of the outside sun to the level of early dusk. And there was the telltale taste of dimensional static that told her they were sitting in an active hologram.

Morley looked up from his dash with an eye roll of mild annoyance. “True to form, Danni has taken it upon herself to help out with our history lesson by sending along a couple of her own histograms to add to the ones I have already built. May produce a few minor POV conflicts, but nothing a smart girl like you can’t factor for.” He walked over to a cooler box in the corner of the open floor and pulled out two bottles of beer, which he brought back to the table between the two lone chairs that were set in the middle of the otherwise empty space. They sat, and Morley kicked off his dusty shoes and spun the neck of his beer to open. “Okay then, get comfortable, Lori. There are more beer and snacks in the cooler whenever you want them. Don’t ask—just take. We are going to walk through eighty years of alternate history by way of a string of Serendipity-driven histograms assembled by yours truly, with a few last-minute insertions by Danni. They are multiplex in viewpoint but highly indexed for the perspectives of me, Danni, and a small cast of characters who are all now dead but who played important roles along the way.”

He took a drink from his bottle and seemed to sigh despite a smile. “The whole performance will stretch over a couple of days, so we will go until dinner time. Then I’ll take you up to the cabin and get you settled in your rooms. It’s hard for me to tell how intense this is going to be for you, so I’m just going to watch you and listen to your questions.”

He tipped the neck of the bottle towards her, “It’s an arbitrary path through history, and only one of many to boot. Are you ready?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “We are going to start with the year 2048 and some events around a U.S. presidential election that rudely interrupted my early retirement.”

Lori wasn’t close to being ready, but that didn’t appear to matter. “Could I use the bathroom first?”

Random Slug

“Well, love,” Morley began, “we start with a moment of great danger—one well known in history but destined to be exquisitely misperceived for all time.”

He drank from his beer and seemed to talk to the air in front of him as the histogram took control of the space and Lori felt herself absorbed into it. She had been in many streams but never one like this. The power of so much compressed data, which she could sense surrounding them across every quadrant, seemed to hold her fixed in an irresistible grip. An initial vibration subsided quickly as the positioning in time resolved, and she felt her entire being lurch as the histogram’s stream began to roll.

“We were so close to walking off into the sunset.”

Lori could hear Morley but couldn’t see him anywhere. She was in a crowded room, in front of the crowd, who seemed to be looking at her and a handful of others behind and around her. A big man dressed in quaint business/religious garb, walking towards her in a line of well-wishers, suddenly pulled an ancient gun from his coat and pointed it right at her face. Another man lunged at him, but the gun flashed as the histogram slowed time to a crawl and she watched the small dense slug emerge from the barrel.

She thought, This is the assassination of Curtis Dresden and the start of the War of Facts. She knew the few seconds being allowed for the slug to make its path was her history lesson’s starting point.

There was one face in the crowd that stood out, over-saturated with the density of data endorsement. He was behind her, or rather behind Dresden, unnaturally heavy with thinning oiled hair and a look on his face that now captured her whole attention, even as she sensed the bullet easing through the air towards where her forehead would be momentarily.

The man was taking it all in and processing the scene faster than the others. The room was still getting ready to react while he was already plotting the way forward from a moment he hadn’t seen coming.

In her head, Lori heard Morley’s voice again: “That’s Rudolph Murcheson. Do you know who he was?”

“Of course, I know who he was. He was the head of one of the Comms that controlled the data flows back then. Wasn’t he also the head of Unity in Christ?” Lori felt the atoms in the air around her head gathering force as she turned her face back towards the slug. The air and the histogram were now adding color and understanding to the moment at a rate that was almost too intense. The man with the gun was named Wain Robbe, and he was disconnected from the main flows of data relationships that painted the room. She could see a chandelier above his reddened face, and she could feel what must be the passion of dutiful righteousness when she looked at his eyes. Lori had never felt that before, and it jolted her.

She knew somehow the lesson here. It was simply that randomness still exists, even amongst all the high-level plotting and intent in this room. Implacable math dictated by the arrangements of so much data, plot lines calculated to make their way into the history flows read by children like her eighty years later; even then randomness can slip into any spacetime to reshuffle the cards.

With a feeling akin to blood flowing back into a leg that has been badly asleep, emotion overtook the lesson. First, a deep sadness. Friends and a loved one scattered about this room would be blinked out forever in just a moment. Then, deep calm. They would go on, and each would eventually blink out on their own. Only cairns of information would remain, and the shape of their paths through spacetime would always persist.

“You know, Lori, Danni named her Serendipity about a hundred years ago now, and it’s still bloody perfect. Never been able to come up with shorter nick name that sounded right.” Morley’s voice was behind her and the slug hung in the air so close to her forehead that she had trouble focusing on it. Her eyes hurt and almost crossed. But at the perfect moment, the slug began to lose its lead gray density and everything in the room seemed to dissipate.

Lori felt more than saw a shift in the light towards red. Red at night sailor’s delight, red in the morning sailor’s take warning. She looked quickly at the window behind her, just in time to see that it was night time.

And then the room was gone with a departing hiss and she found herself back in the cabana. She looked at the little table beside her with Morley’s empty bottle and hers still full and halfway warmed. She looked at Morley and saw that he was studying her for any warning signs, so she picked up the wet beer and took a drink.

“So, after all your work helping to feed and care for Serendipity, how does it feel to be on the receiving end?” Morley laughed a twinkling laugh and watcher her drink the beer for a moment more before continuing.

“I don’t think even Danni realized it at the time, but that was the moment Serendipity came of age. Up until then, she was a mostly machine doing what her masters told her. Sucking up the history of the world as it was created around her and running errands for Danni and the rest of our little tribe. But when she saw one of her own pack killed by the Philistines, something changed, some final connection was made across the arc of her plex. I think we could all feel it in our own ways over the coming days and weeks, but we didn’t talk about it then.”

Lori felt fine, like she did after a particularly good run, but she could see that the histogram had taken a lot out of Morley. The permanent impishness she was just getting to know had faded. “Were you in that room? I couldn’t see beyond the close-in crowd.”

“Yeah, about five meters out at ten o’clock. I was standing in the same reception line as the shooter. The guy who lunged for him was named Werner. We were all there, and then we had to disappear to avoid the shit storm that followed.”

“I guess that was quite a moment in time. I was taught that it marked the beginning of the big decline for Unity In Christ and for the Servants of Allah. What happened to them anyway? I never really got religion. No one in my family except my great grandmother ever did.”

Morley was coming back from the cooler in the corner with another beer and now the color was returning to his face. “I don’t know fuck all about religion, but you are right about the decline starting then. Those smarmy Christian wankers, led, by the way, by Murcheson, caused me and my friends to go into hiding. Essentially forever. Danni and I are the only ones left and we are still in hiding. But we made sure it was the worst fight they ever picked. Besides, hiding seemed to suit us.”

He sat back down stiffly but younger for the memory of how close they all came to death over the couple of days following the assassination. “They were a hollow bunch—all except Murcheson. The religions were just gigantic buying clubs. The Comms used them to simplify their sales packaging, only Allah is perfect, but this video screen is damn close and it’s on sale.”

“So that’s the perfect segue. How about one more little history lesson before dinner?” He picked up his dash from the table and turned again to study Lori for any sign of discomfort. “Let’s go back up and check on Danni first. We can watch the next one in the cabin.”

No Bubbles

Lori was looking at a hand that must be attached to her current POV. It was large and scarred, and it was gripping tightly to a black cord that extended down in a taut line to what looked like a grate of some sort with a small block pulley attached. The other end of the line floated up and undulated in front of her face. She was floating. She must be underwater but there were no bubbles around her and the water was darkish. She looked up, a direction she could sense from the pull of flotation against her arm, hand, and the cord, and saw light that was blurry and gently rippled. She could tell she was waiting for something.

As she waited she wondered about breathing. Minutes went by and she wasn’t getting cold, so she must be in a heated pool. Still no bubbles around her, so she must have a recirculation breather. She knew somehow to stay very still, and she thought about the troll statue that had lived at the bottom of the aquarium in the lobby of her elementary school. She inspected her free arm and knew she was observing this histogram from the POV of a man.

Then there was movement up in the light beyond the surface of the pool. It got brighter up there, and she could see a shape that moved along the edge, where the light met the dark water. She knew she was lurking unseen in a dark well.

Rudolph Murcheson had endured a long and trying day. His meeting with Gerald Hand had been disturbing in that the president seemed to be determined to extend concessions to the people behind the damn Serendipity movement. Rudolph had tried to get him to understand the need for absolute resolve and a firm hand, but Gerald wanted to approach the situation as an inevitable new facet of the Comm world. He couldn’t seem to appreciate the cost in lost revenue, not to mention the laboriously crafted control-abdication mindset that would be quickly undermined. There were days when he wished that nut-job Robbe had killed Hand instead of Dresden.

And then the jump back to New York and the serenity of his tower was delayed for almost an hour because of some sort of power problem. Still there was time for a swim before going to bed. He gazed out at the lights of the city and they seemed brighter than usual. The floor to ceiling windows were invisible in the dimly lit pool room, and the silent twinkle of life below was more beautiful than ever. He shed his robe on a poolside chair and walked to the edge of the pool, which seemed different somehow. The pool lights were off. He walked to the control panel and tried the switch. Nothing. He walked back to the pool’s edge thinking about how it was amazing that the power grid, which informed every nook and cranny of his life, didn’t fail more often. He knew parts were so old that few knew how to fix or replace them. But standing there, he decided he liked the effect of the dark water and the enhanced brightness of the city lights it provided.

He took a couple of steps down the ladder, letting the warm water creep up his legs before performing his backwards launch into the middle of the pool. He let his tired bulk bob and equalize, sinking to his neck but keeping his head above the water and his eyes fixed on the tops of the buildings to the south. He moved his arms just enough to sustain the womblike moment.

Suddenly something grabbed his ankle and began pulling him down. It yanked him the first few feet in a blink, so he didn’t dare open his mouth to scream as he was well below the surface, and then he felt a slow reeling begin to pull him down. There was a motion next to him in the water as he reached for his ankle to free himself. His hands found a cable strapped tightly with a clasp that wouldn’t budge as he fumbled at it. And then there was a bright light right in front of his face—a light that moved to shine on another man’s face three feet away.

Lori heard Morley speaking from outside the histogram. “That is another one of Serendipity’s pack, our old friend Norris, now long gone.”

Rudolph Murcheson felt the infinite walls of water all around him and knew there was no way out. He tried to grab Norris, but he was floating just beyond his reach, smiling in the flashlight’s beam like a rat. Rudolph’s lungs were beginning to burn as he watched Norris release a barbell that was clasped to a belt around his waist, taken from the gym set-up at the end of the pool no doubt. Norris rose above and away from him, and Rudolph watched legs kick into the dark swirls, towards the dull glow of the ladder.

The POV returned to Norris as he climbed up the steps and out of the pool. Looking around, he saw the white robe, but left it lying on the chair as he padded the short distance to the maintenance closet behind the gym area. The last glimpse from his eyes was of a blue maintenance jumpsuit hanging neatly on the back of the door, with the name Norris stitched across the left breast and a simple logo below it. Lori could hear Morley’s voice begin to invade the histogram again.

“Like I said earlier, Lori, we don’t forget. We weren’t killers except when pushed to the limit. But you needed to know about this time, so you can understand that there is a limit, a line beyond which logic ceases to matter and drive for retribution takes over.”

“I think that’s enough ancient history for one day.” Danni spoke from her chair of pillows as she closed down the plex from her dash. “Good night Serendipity.” Turning to Lori she said, “You must be exhausted dear, and more than a little leery about what you have stumbled into. But don’t worry, starting tomorrow we will be looking forward not back.”

The Fort

Andrzej Brodonski had been to the Fort only once before. It had been a small meeting of fellow Master Mechanics Stewards from around the globe, all there in person, which was a rare exercise in non-productive logistical effort. He realized that some still felt it was the only way to assure complete privacy, but Andrzej didn’t see that their proceedings warranted such costly secrecy.

Today’s meeting adhered to the same protocol, with the twelve current Stewards of the International Brotherhood of Mechanics all beating different paths to this same closely guarded island in the Potomac just south of the old Pentagon.

His had been an easier trip than most. First a podrone from his cavernous office thirty meters below hard salt outcroppings in Wieliczka, Poland. Then an Obfuservice autonomous jet from the airstrip maintained by the International Diplomatic Corp outside of Krakow. One hundred and forty-nine minutes of cloistered air time, ending with the silent glide onto the Fort’s main airstrip and an extended roll past the surrounding seawalls of granite rip-rap. Andrzej could see the long wavelength of pale yellow arches stretching away from the slowly extending umbilical ramp. He watched out his window as a woman driver sitting in the cab gently docked the ramp firmly against the jet. She rose as he rose from his seat, and they met at the doorway where she scanned him and then welcomed him to the Fort.

“Good morning Mr. Brodonski, I hope you had a nice flight. The meeting will start in about an hour down in the main conference area. Do you know your way around or would you like a guide?” As she spoke she extended a bio-control bracelet towards him and he allowed his left wrist to be girdled. Normally he would have countered such a violation with the false biometric signals that lay in waiting just below his wrist’s skin, but today there was no need. He could be Andrzej Brodonski, Chief Facilities Manager for the crypto-state of Skramble and Hyde as well as East Block Steward for the IBM, the union of mechanics and engineers who patiently kept the many inventions of humankind running. From the most mundane servomotor to the semi-sentient robotics that now kept an increasingly hostile environment at bay, the IBM had become the indispensable class of repair people and their union was more powerful than most states. Andrzej tolerated service on their Board of Stewards.

“No, I’m fine, thank you. I’ll just take a stroll through the atrium and then go down to the meeting space. Do I still use that old vertical lift near the big stand of bamboo?”

“That’s right, sir. Just hit the bottom button. No need to authenticate now that you have the band on. If you need anything in the meantime, just use your dash. Someone will help you.”

He smiled another thanks and walked out into the modest humidity of the old atrium, where he was surrounded by bird screeches and the darting shapes of small creatures taking cover from the entering human. Air moved across his face with just enough pressure to wick away the humidity’s moisture. He knew it must be well over one hundred degrees outside and about thirty less in here, yet as he looked up at the eight-facet ceiling vault above him and the line of identical vaults extending out over the length of the atrium, he saw no drips. No condensation on the railing. Just enough density to the air to make the bird noises especially rich and viberous. It brought out an audible sponginess to the treading of his neoprene soles as he walked along the polished stone-like surface of the balcony floor.

Andrzej had spent the flight mostly thinking about Danni, Morley, and of course the physical structures of Gumbo, his children. The Cabin, driven like a spike into the Baja coastline, and the Office, terra-formed to be hidden in plain sight deep within the salt caverns of Wieliczka—both had been continuously rebuilt and extended by Andrzej over the years. Keeping up with technical changes and new demands, but always moving towards a more perfect union of physical structures into art. Form and function perfectly balanced, which brought him back to thinking about Danni.

A large bird flew overhead and dropped a splattering of white and blue veined shit across the stone floor in front of him. Someone must power-wash these floors at night. Danni was fading faster than he had imagined when she first told him she was giving up the chemical magic. She was shrinking like a piece of complex fabric that had been washed too many times. She would be gone completely at some point and what then? The ecosystem that was Skramble and Hyde could go on, of course—even the Dworld of Gumbo and the WHI—but it seemed like its heart or brain or both would be gone, so why bother? Morley seemed determined to carry on, but he wasn’t Danni. His genes were ill-suited for technical visionary work, and no amount of tinkering around the edges could change that.

Well, Andrzej would see for himself in a day or two. Once this meeting was over, he would be heading laboriously back to the Office, and then instantly west and south to the Cabin to see both of them and to meet someone named Lori Norton.

He finished up his daydreaming by wishing for the thousandth time that Simon was still on this earth. He could see the thirty-foot-high clump of bamboo up ahead, and he knew it was time to head for the lift and the descent into the messy real world of power and politics in which he, for some reason, still agreed to participate.

Waiting for the ancient stainless-steel box to raise seven floors to receive him, Andrzej took one final look at the jungle of public space plants gone native. It was still an interesting and efficient building, even after many decades of abandonment from its original purpose. Airports were few and far between in this age, and none were left near the hearts of big cities or close to the ever-rising water’s edge. Reagan National had been an early victim of berserker’s rage, with their planes that exploded like depth charges over strategic targets, not to mention the expensive fight to keep the rising Potomac at bay. Long ago it had become the headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Mechanics (IBM), and known far and wide as the Fort.

The brotherhood’s offices were located on the lower bomb-proof and water-isolated floors, but they continued to maintain the atrium jungle that had begun to grow organically soon after Reagan was closed. It had become a thing, and people brought decorative plants and strange birds to simply leave them there. For a time, volunteers managed to keep them mostly alive and growing, but when the IBM bought the property, they closed it off and took over maintenance of the atrium in earnest. They had tours for the public on certain days, but most of the time it echoed with bird calls and the scurrying feet of small creatures, while the mechanics schemed and negotiated below in elegant isolation.

Gravitational Pull

Andrzej could remember an awful lot about the night he met Simon Rosenthal, which was unusual as mostly Andrzej didn’t remember social details for more than a day or two. But of course, Simon was unusual.

He, Andrzej, was twenty-two and had recently made the rank of Master Mechanic with a special certificate for air movement and purification systems. His parents were thrilled, and his career path seemed clear and unobstructed. Even his certificate mentor, who was never satisfied, said he was years ahead of his peers and sure to go far in air handling. Andrzej felt empty at the thought.

That night in 2077, he had gone to the Piec Art jazz club on Szewska Street in the old town to listen to a Charles Lloyde tribute band. Obscure and definitely not hip, he expected to see no one he knew and to listen to the music and think, about what he wasn’t sure. He sat with his beer in the dark brick arched cavern at a small table that was partially hidden by the stairs leading up to the street level bar and bright lights. The music was fine but a step behind the original songs which he listened to often and knew well. The lead musician was better on sax than flute, and the piano player coasted safely through several pieces that had been made famous over a hundred years prior by another true jazz master. He had come in at the very beginning of a long set and as it ended the lights came up and he found there was another man sitting to his left at a second table tucked even further under the stair stringers. Old and all alone, the man seemed as intent on privacy as Andrzej, but for some reason they shared thin smiles as the applause faded and Andrzej said, “I guess we should be grateful that anyone at all still plays their music.”

A waitress made her way towards them through the sparse crowd and the man nodded his head towards Andrzej with a lower body stillness that struck him as either deeply calm or partially paralyzed. “Couldn’t agree more,” the man said. “ Being able to listen to that music live after all these years, and in Krakow to boot. My name is Simon. Can I buy you a drink?”

At that point Andrzej noticed that the man was leaned back on the rear legs of his chair despite his obvious age, not paralyzed.

During the forty-minute break, Simon Rosenthal managed to learn a lot more about Andrzej Brodonski than the other way around, probing with an unusual sense for the textures within the world of Master Mechanics, and querying Andrzej about his plans for the future. When Andrzej finally got around to asking Simon about what he might be doing in Krakow, as he had mentioned he was from Colorado, the older man said he was there to start a new enterprise for his company. He thought he would be in town for about a month.

The quartet walked back out onto the tiny stage and the lights dimmed. Andrzej sat through the entire second set wondering what business this man Simon might have that needed a new wing way over here in such a smallish pocket of Europe. When the lights came back up, he looked over as Simon brought the front legs of his chair lightly back to the floor and immediately resumed questioning Andrzej.

“It has always struck me that the art of a Master Mechanic, one who manages the facilities of any large organization, must be to elegantly balance the tension between making either time or quality the constant across all the different projects and employees they manage. You can’t let quality slip, but you have to keep things moving.”

They both knew Simon meant the observation as a question, and Andrzej found himself taking great care as he thought how to form his reply. He realized he had never really thought in such a way about his work or future career, but he got Simon’s meaning completely. That was what it was all about from one important perspective. How to answer? Don’t think too long. “That’s a remarkably lucid comment about a world you say you don’t know. My British mentor would roll out his favorite adjective: ‘pithy.’ Are you looking for me to say more than that I agree?”

“Yes.”

Andrzej had known that would be Simon’s response, but he had expected a few more words wrapped around it and a bit more time to think. “Okay, well, isn’t time simply the ultimate constant, even though I’m supposed to say that quality means all to me? Every moment you spend fixing one problem or building some new project means a moment that some other thing is not getting fixed or built. Of course, rushing into shoddiness will end up losing time, that part is obvious, that’s what you go to school and apprenticeship to absorb. I’m young and just getting started but I’ve apprenticed in some pretty complex facilities. I can see that a Master Mechanic has to absorb the absolute march of time into their soul if they want to be really good.”

Simon considered and then drank from his wine glass. With a quiet sigh, he began what seemed like a private thought. “My wife, who is much smarter than I, has spent most of her life thinking about time. She has done many interesting things along the way, with all the information that piles up as time rolls along, but she always seems to be actually poking at time itself.” He let that hang for a moment until Andrzej began to wonder if he was supposed to say something. But Simon came back from the distance and continued. “She would like your answer, given your age. Tell me, Andrzej, where do you work? What do you plan to do with yourself for the next sixty years or so?”

Since that was the question currently foremost on his mind, the answer spilled out of him without hesitation. “Right now, I just landed a great job at Solaris Transport as a Master Mechanic. They have a big plant just to the south of the city. As for my future, I don’t really know. Everyone says I should work my way up with Solaris. They are huge.”

“Aren’t you pretty young to have your Masters certificate and a job at that level?”

Andrzej was starting to suspect that this Simon was not a simple businessman, and that he must know something about the art of keeping machines running and human gears meshed. “Yes, I am lucky to be getting an early start on my career.”

The thin smile returned, and the chair tipped back again. The sparse crowd was a background hum, and the two of them had slipped into a cone of protected conversation without Andrzej realizing that it was happening. Simon offered another observation. “That is the kind of situation that rarely involves luck. Don’t get me wrong—I’m a big believer in luck. But not when it comes to jumping ahead through academic bureaucracies or being offered such an important position at a place like Solaris.” While bringing his chair back to down flat, he added, “It’s also not luck that leaves you so unexcited. Am I right in thinking that you have mixed feelings about your big job?”

“Funny you should say that, Mr. Rosenthal. That’s precisely why I happen to be sitting in this club tonight. I thought I might think through why I feel so queasy about things when I should be celebrating my good luck, or whatever it is if it isn’t luck.”

“Like I said before, please call me Simon. And your choosing to sit here is a shining example of what luck, or serendipity, really looks like in this big world. You don’t want to work for Solaris—admit it. That queasiness you feel is no reflection on them, it’s just your sensing that it would be taking the wrong fork. It is also your soul, for lack of a better word, feeling a stronger but invisible gravitational pull coming from somewhere within your proximal universe.”

Andrzej could still remember the strange tinnitus-like buzz that was building in his head as he began to sense something unusual was emanating from this old man. He was tempted to say nothing, to force Simon to expand and explain his presumptuous certainty, but once again he knew he needed to ask a question here. A curiously simple one came out of his mouth. “What is your business, if I may ask? You mentioned that you owned an enterprise that needed a new department or something along those lines.”

“I am the CEO of the crypto-state usually referred to as Skramble and Hyde. You may have heard of it?” Simon showed only a hint of amusement while he let this piece of the evening’s puzzle sink into Andrzej’s face.

Andrzej’s shock was probably showing, as it dawned on him that this explained Simon’s odd reference to gravitational pull. Skramble and Hyde, storied and secretive, was one of the handful of crypto-states that had emerged from the chaos of the mid-twenty-first century—one of the few that couldn’t be smothered at birth. Born like stars from the undifferentiated energy released as capitalism and democracy began their simultaneous implosions, most burnt out quickly, but Skramble and Hyde had thrived. Watchful and anonymous, it expanded into the space between the traditional nation states, conventional conglomerates, and tattered meta-creeds. Everyone knew the name Skramble and Hyde, but no one knew their leaders.

All Andrzej could think to say was, “I once wrote a long and sophomoric paper about the energy-control lessons to be derived from successful corporate organisms that emerge from the failure of fundamental social structures. It was about the crypto-states. I’m embarrassed just thinking about it in front of you.”

“That’s luck for you. How did you do on the paper?”

“Well, it was a required dissertation on the social implications of engineering and mechanics—something to check the box saying they taught us a bit about the non-mechanical world. I got my Master Mechanics certificate soon thereafter, so I guess I must have done okay.”

Simon had laughed—a friendly and conspiratorial laugh that made Andrzej feel warm inside, like he had pleased someone he wanted to please. With the tinnitus receding he heard Simon say, “Well then, I would like you to come work for me, or for Skramble and Hyde, I mean. Along with many other things, I need a personal guide here in Krakow as I pull together a smallish team and the various assets we require. If possible, I’d like you to start immediately.”

Andrzej should have been taken aback. He should have been suspicious. He should at least have been overt in his caution as a young man suddenly dealing with one of the most enigmatic and powerful humans on earth. Prior to this conversation, he had had no idea who headed Skramble and Hyde, but now he had no doubt it must be this man Simon Rosenthal. His brain stem led him to the simplest step forward. “What would I be doing for Skramble and Hyde, beyond guiding you around the area? What kind of thing are you looking to build here?” It seemed pointless to state the obvious regarding the pivotal nature of this moment in his young life.

Simon peered out from their nook and caught the eye of the waitress, signaling for two more drinks. When he turned back, Andrzej could see that, in Simon’s mind, the offer had been accepted. He was already steaming forward, pleased with the opportune new ballast of an assistant. “Well, I can only give you a brief outline until you have signed one of our standard non-disclosures, but maybe I can paint a picture that will overcome your perfectly logical trepidation.”

Andrzej was already noticing that Simon could manage to appear disarmingly uncertain at will.

“I presume you have heard of Obfuservice, it’s one of our subsidiaries?” Simon didn’t wait for a response to this rhetorical positioning. “Well, we need to establish a new and very secure technical installation, mostly for redundancy and because we tend to be somewhat paranoid as we plan for various futures. I am in the process of securing the rights to a substantial section of the old salt mines in Wieliczka, and we plan to locate our installation there.”

There was a tensioned pause as the drinks arrived and when the waitress left, Andrzej almost whispered, “You bought the salt mines?” They were a national treasure, once visited by millions of plodding tourists and now toured virtually by fleeting thousands each year. He couldn’t imagine what it must have cost to buy the mines.

“Well, bought isn’t precisely the right term, but yes. I had been looking for some time and when I saw them, I knew I had found what I was looking for; beautiful yet naturally defensible. And no one will know that we are there amidst the rich history and VR crowds. We just need to fit up a very small section within the forgotten parts of the caverns. That would be your job, to oversee the fit up and then run the facility going forward.”

Andrzej already knew the answer to his next question, but he asked it anyway to hold up his end of the kabuki play. “Okay, but what would this beautiful and defensible installation be doing?”

“I’m afraid that gets us to the part of the story where you have to sign a non-disclosure. We could do that right now, but it’s late and I think we need to be freshly showered to do justice to your arrival as our first employee in Poland. Would it be possible to meet me at my hotel tomorrow morning? One quick signature and then all will be revealed.”

Simon drained his glass of wine and looked carefully at Andrzej, dropping the jovial tone but keeping Andrzej in the zone of reflexive trust he had woven around them. “You can remind your family and friends, when they protest that you have chosen to join up with a very old stranger you met in a bar, that Skramble and Hyde is many times the size of Solaris and that we have weathered many more storms.” With the open smile returning to his face as he passed his dash over the bill and positioned his legs stiffly for standing, “Nine o’clock? I’m staying at the Hotel Amadeus.”

It was after walking through the simple door to the hotel on Mikolajska, with the morning sunshine and shadows stretched out across the cream stone walls of the Hotel Amadeus and the cobble intersection buzzing with foot traffic and podrones, that everything changed for Andrzej.

A pleasant young woman concierge took him through a curtain draped passage and into a period piece library with oriental rugs and silk-covered chairs. Simon was sitting at the small conference table studying a holoscreen that shimmered over the dark blue tablecloth that was set with two breakfast placements. White china and napkins, silverware, and a carved wood bowl containing rolls and breads, jams and butter. The old-world elegance was tempered by a warped and distressed parquet floor that showed around the edges of the carpet, and a very modern coffee express that sat on the walnut sideboard in front of a flaking gold leafed mirror.

Andrzej caught a quick glimpse of what was on the holoscreen before Simon closed it, pushing his chair back to carefully stand. An MRI of three geo-spaces connected by service lines, each highlighted as variegated glowing strands running through a homogeneous surrounding medium: clearly, the salt mines.

“Good morning, Andrzej. I have just taken the liberty of reviewing a bit of your history, and I am now even more delighted to have run into you last night. Please take some coffee. I just sent you our NDA, so maybe you could quickly review and hopefully sign it. I’d like to get moving. There is a short employment offer as well. See if it beats whatever Solaris was offering you. It is also ready to sign. Would you like something more substantial than rolls and toast?”

Andrzej drew a steaming latte from the express and sat to read from his dash, noting that Simon went right back to studying the salt mine structures. The NDA was all of four sentences. He had only seen a few before this, but he remembered them all as being a page or two at least. He signed it, hit send, and turned to the job offer. It was only three paragraphs. One stated salary and how it would be paid. One was about responsibilities, which were described very generally and broadly, and about who he reported to, which was Simon or any designate.

The final paragraph struck Andrzej as odd but somehow harmonized with the first paragraph and the extraordinary salary being offered. Written with exceedingly simple language, it committed Andrzej to existing henceforth in a parallel universe whose worldly face was the crypto-state of Skramble and Hyde. Forever.

As he sat pondering the meaning of this last paragraph and wondering how a legal document of any kind could commit anyone to anything for life, Simon’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “I’m sure you are wondering about section three.” Again, the smile of a simple man. “It’s completely unenforceable. Wouldn’t hold up in any court in the world. It’s there for us, for the sake of our collective conscience. We want to be sure you clearly understand the mind set at Skramble and Hyde before you join us. Within a month, you will think the same way and you will live in that universe. You will still be able to see family and friends, but it will feel like you are stepping back into quaint and slightly dimensionally challenged reality. Not unpleasant really, but you won’t ever want to stay for long.”

Andrzej could remember just the feeling he had as he signed the acceptance line. This way lay a path into an opposite world from what he had been led to expect for his life. But the combination of the austere language in the document, and Simon’s soothing interpretation, drew his finger to the screen of his dash. He seemed to watch himself sign, feeling something close to astonishment.

The instant he had signed Simon reached across the corner of the table and shook his hand. “Welcome to our world, Andrzej. It will take a little while to become acclimated, but less than you might think since I’m going to keep you very busy for the foreseeable future.” He picked up his dash from the table and the holoscreen expanded and tilted to better include Andrzej’s viewing angle. “I have our day laid out in sections, and we have this nice room reserved for the duration of my stay in Krakow. We won’t leave it until dinner this evening. Do you need to take any actions to clear your day’s calendar?”

Andrzej shook his head.

“Great. Just ask for food when you are hungry. We will start with a holo visit to Wieliczka and the geological formations that incorporate the salt mines. Then I will explain what the infamous Serendipity Service really is, and then we will spend an hour or two talking about another one of our Skramble and Hyde divisions, CMS, which stands for Crafted Methylation Services. I don’t suspect you know much about epigenetics?”

“Not really.” Andrzej was becoming overwhelmed and hungry. He couldn’t imagine trying to slow Simon down, so he reached for a brioche.

“Well, you will learn a bit about it on the job. It won’t be central to your endeavors, but it’s fun. Anyway, after that we will pay a visit to our newish home and headquarters on the Sea of Cortez and meet my wife Danni and our friend and partner Morley. That should take us to dinner time.”

And so began the very different path. Hard to believe it was fifty-one years ago.

Donkeys Don’t Assimilate

In the back of her head somewhere, Lori felt like she had lost a year of her life to a coma-like dream. But her front brain knew she was walking down the quiet hallway from her room in the terra-formed hillside for only the twelfth morning. She could see the natural light filtering through into the bridge up ahead of her, and she caught a whiff of dimensional static in the air. Today she was supposed to meet the man responsible for building this place and maintaining Gumbo across its several physical manifestations, the CFM for Skramble and Hyde.

After almost two weeks of immersive histogram sagas and tentative hands-on interactions with the public-facing façade of the Dworld Gumbo and its engine Serendipity, Lori realized she craved some real flesh and blood. Danni was fading before her eyes, which made her deeply sad and often deeply terrified. Morley was lovable and efficient with his history lessons, but Lori had come to realize that he was old in ways that were trans-mutative, ways that only he could understand. At the end of the day, it was all an inside joke for Morley. She was being prepared for an obscurely engineered priesthood by two ghosts who were themselves moving on.

Still they greeted her with a morning affection that immediately reaffirmed the breathtaking singularity of her situation. Morley’s acquired habit of pulling out Lori’s control chair and stiffly retrieving her coffee beaker from Carita in the kitchen was beyond sweet. Just the right amount of sugar every time now, and they made her sit in what they called the captain’s chair at the head of the table. Danni would inquire about the quality of her sleep, even as it became increasingly clear that Danni herself was losing the ability to be truly refreshed.

Danni remained above it all, even as she walked Lori through a long list of lessons learned over many years, from examples of how Serendipity’s AI decision making could go horribly wrong if left un-proctored, to how to respond to warning signals from Obfuservice as it detected yet another legislative attack. Patiently focused on transferring the basic skills for Serendipity’s management to her apprentice, Danni remained constantly amused by the intentional kibitzing of Morley.

For her part, Lori couldn’t escape the feeling that she was being steadily guided towards some anticipated revelation lurking just around the next corner—some sudden insight that would explain what this was really all about.

Lori got the transparency aspects of Gumbo, since she had already been working for several years within the mechanics of Serendipity’s source mapping algorithms. That part was easy to understand. But keeping up with the never-ending attempts by the crypto-states to sabotage or destroy her, Skramble and Hyde’s primary function, was new and confusing territory.

The Holy Grail for states and crypto-states alike was to hide the volume of their tithing flow or revenues, and to thereby avoid the resultant U.N.A. taxes. But there was a carefully distributed cadre of Skramble and Hyde staff monitoring Serendipity’s pervasive sampling of those flows, and their reporting to the U.N.A. had become the gospel truth. Complex judgment calls were infrequent and reporting the derived taxes to be owed to the various governments was well automated at this point, but Danni posed game after game scenario to help Lori zero in on the art of oversight.

The current new lesson was about the World History Institute and its foundational position in the realms of education and research across the globe. Today’s visitor was to be part of that learning process. The way Danni and Morley had described the creation of the WHI offered a fascinating glimpse into the early days of Serendipity—the time before Simon died. Lori couldn’t get enough of the stories from those times, and she could usually get the two of them going in a duet where Danni’s clarity for the big picture became intertwined with Morley’s private sense for all humanity’s silliness.

As Morley told it, back then in the late 60’s and early 70’s, Simon had simply gotten bored with running Animonics. Bored with running a massive conglomerate that dominated both early virtual reality and robotics. So, they sold everything and began quietly building Gumbo—everything except Obfuservice. Simon had warned that they should keep control of all his original patents for virtual privacy, so they did just that.

Morley had transformed briefly back to his donkey persona as he depicted the early days of their rustic outpost above the Sea of Cortez, sounding more like a stoned poet than a master of the universe.

Danni expanded and clarified, pointing out that there was elegant logic behind the sale of Animonics, logic that dovetailed with Skramble and Hyde’s mission of fighting the still raging War on Facts. Under Simon’s direction, they had folded most of the key expertise from Animonics into their newly founded World History Institute, and then donated the WHI in its entirety to the U.N. In return Skramble and Hyde was granted a one-hundred-year term, total management contract to run the WHI.

Like Gumbo, the World History Institute was just another interface powered by Serendipity. If Gumbo offered escape into your imagination, the WHI was a doorway into the mesmerizing world of three-dimensional history.

As the donkey faded away again, an old Morley reappeared and tried to have the last word on where the WHI fit within the world of Gumbo and thereby within the larger constellation of Skramble and Hyde. “Having the definitive word on the inner details of history can be both useful and amusing. Serendipity has had eighty years to chew over everything that has ever been written about mankind’s doomed and repeating machinations.”

“Assimilate Morley. Donkey’s chew, Serendipity assimilates.” Danni gave Lori her “he is hopeless” look. “As Morley was trying to hint at, overseeing cataloging, adjudicating, and indexing all of written and digitized history for the U.N. Authority has allowed us to be paid to pursue our larger purpose. That purpose will be a subject for proper discussion in the coming days, but in the meantime, we should eat our breakfast before our good friend Andrzej arrives.”

There had been increasing allusions and references to the third and final phase of her apprenticeship (learning the actual reason for Gumbo and now the World History Institute), but so far it continued to hang out there in the mists. Lori was just finishing her last bit of grilled tomato on toast when Andrzej Brodonski shimmered progressively into existence within the holoscreen and then settled himself fully formed into the chair at the far end of the table.

Losing Gravity

Lori sat quietly as she watched the silent exchange of faux fraught expressions between three old friends. The smell of the static from the holoscreen was stronger than during the histograms, with almost a visible haze to it that made Andrzej’s sudden appearance seem as if he had brought with him a strange density of air.

With his usual grin, Morley broke into the hush moments of equilibration just as Carita appeared out of the kitchen with a mug of coffee. “You have been a busy fellow, Andrzej. How were your travels? And the august meeting of master repairmen: How goes the brotherhood?”

Andrzej, in his early seventies, fit but clearly tired, began by ignoring Morley. “Thank you, Carita. It’s good to see you. Coffee is exactly what I need.” He studied Danni carefully as he answered Morley without looking at him. “Morley, when was the last time you actually travelled out into the real world, other than shambling around the hills here as a donkey?” He shifted his gaze towards Lori, and she felt as if she were being scanned. “Suffice it to say that it took me longer to travel the five miles from the Fort to our Hill Center offices than it did to go the five thousand from the Mine to the Fort. They stopped all podrone traffic for hours because of a bug in the crash avoidance web. Why the IBM insists on in-person Board meetings is beyond me. You must be Lori.”

Lori had just been noticing his old fashioned jumpsuit and the pack he had slung over the back of his chair. Gray beard stubble and longish hair made him look like a guy who might show up to repair your air handler. “Yes, that’s me. Very nice to meet you, Mr. Brodonski. Morley told me that you designed this Cabin. I have to tell you that there is something perfectly balanced about everything here.”

“Thank you very much, Lori. I do consider it our best facility. It was nice to start with a clean slate. Just a big hillside of sand and rock and unlimited funds. Simon and Danni knew exactly what they needed, and Morley here requires only modest irrigation for his precious Peruvian torches. I hope he hasn’t gotten you eating his peyote brownies yet.”

Lori looked wide-eyed at Morley who seemed to shrug, and Danni responded for her. “No, we have kept Lori pretty busy since she signed on with us, so Morley hasn’t had a chance to corrupt her yet. I haven’t even had a chance to warn her about his bad habits.”

This brought Morley to his own defense. “Hypocrite. No brownies for you today, Andrzej. Watch out for him, Lori. He is stuck permanently in four dimensions.”

“Speaking of which, is there any breakfast left, Carita?”

The woman of indeterminate age who seemed to appear and disappear during the day at just the right times smiled broadly from her stand near the kitchen entrance. She had a great affection for the Master Mechanic. “Of course, Andrzej. They told me you were coming, so I made pierogi last night. Maybe two of them and an omelet with salsa?”

Lori could see some of the fatigue lift from his face. “That would be perfect, Carita. Thanks.” Andrzej focused on Danni. “How are you doing Danni? You look weaker than last month. Are you sure you want to continue down this path? It’s not too late for the CMS team to trigger the necessary re-methylation to stop it, maybe bring you back some.”

Lori watched the look on Morley’s face while Andrzej asked the question that he apparently couldn’t ask himself. She saw the sad eyes of the donkey.

Danni’s answer came out firmer than her weak frame should have permitted. She too seemed to be speaking for Lori’s benefit, speaking of things that the three of them already knew but rarely talked about because of the discomfort. “I’m not going back, Andrzej. I’m sure you know that. I will miss seeing you all a great deal, but I’m 99% sure I know the answer to the puzzle I have been working on for almost a century. And, like so many things in life, I know that if I waited around to get to 100%, it would probably wreck the whole journey for me. Plus, who knows? Maybe I’ll get to see Simon again once gravity is finally gone.”

Morley sucked in a deep breath and exhaled with audible resignation in his nostrils. “I try to tell her that she has a better chance of seeing Simon by way of my mescaline brownies, but she has her own path.”

Which brought nodding agreement from Andrzej. “Danni, take it from one who has just made the jump from the Mine to here, even the momentary loss of gravity is scary and exhausting. Most of my days are spent fighting with gravity in one way or another and explaining to others how to factor for it, but spending one nanosecond with that fifth dimension removed is enough to make you love it.”

“In the spirit of Lori’s compliment about your design for the Cabin, I appreciate your wise warnings about gravity, Andrzej. I’m letting it take its accelerating toll on my body every day now. You boys are very sweet to worry about me, but really, don’t.” Danni looked at Lori, speaking as teacher to student. “Our men friends are over-indexed to worry about both women and gravity. Andrzej must keep our several facilities cooled and standing through earthquakes and despite our ruined climate on this planet. Morley must keep his rear hooves from stumbling ahead of his front end each day as he heads down to the beach for a swim. I find myself trusting they will handle gravity, so I can continue to devote my remaining days to the question of time.” Danni cocked her head as another thought entered it. “It just occurred to me that probably one of the reasons I chose you to continue with the puzzle was that you were the only woman in that small group of students who obtained a proof and made it into the Gumbo internship.”

For a moment, they all sat there drinking their coffees and thinking. Lori couldn’t stand it any longer. “Would someone please tell me what the god damn puzzle is?”

Her words hung in the air waiting for a passing breeze, which of course turned out to be Morley who lifted and levered to his feet while saying to Danni, “No time like the present, Danni. Time for the final histogram lessons.” To Lori, he added, “There are two parts left: the history part, which I call ‘a day at the beach,’ and the puzzle part, which Danni generally refers to as ‘the end.’”

He headed towards the hallway, speaking now to no one in particular. “I’m going to hit the loo and then grab some brownies. I recommend them, Lori. This last histogram is long and winding, so a bit of magic cactus will help you stay with us as we relive a few long-past days.” His voice was fading as he headed away from them and down the hall, but Lori caught some last words of context. “We will be visiting with some long-dead friends, so we may cry as well.”

An hour later, they all four sat on three sides of the conference-dining table facing the office’s holospace. Danni was talking softly while Morley opened a vacuum box and removed a dense looking brown slab of sheet cake, placing it on a large plate while the smell of chocolate filled the air. The slab was scored into precise squares, and he took a knife to them, separating one line into four individual squares.

“As a rule, I would recommend you only eat Morley’s cooking on holidays, but in this case I actually agree with him.” Danni chided them like a mother. “Now just a light touch for her and me, Morley.”

He looked up from his carving and asked Lori, “What do you weigh Lori, if you don’t mind me asking?”

With a slight discomfort, she said, “About 135 pounds.”

Gazing carefully at Danni, he asked, “What are you down to now? About 105?”

“Close enough.”

Andrzej just said, “I’m having whatever you are having.”

Morley proceeded to shave an apparently scientifically calibrated slice off two of the squares, handing them to Lori and Danni on little plates he had gotten from Carita. He slid a full square across the table to Andrzej and took one for himself. Lori looked with ill-concealed fear at hers, but Danni gave her courage by taking a tremored bite and saying, “I’m sure you know that donkeys are wiser than they look.”

She chewed with closed eyes and exaggerated pleasure, then added, “They know to use every possible lens in order to see as much as possible, and they stay calm and uncommitted because they know there will always be another reality around every corner.”

“Cheers, Danni.” Morley finished his and picked up the crumbs with a licked finger to his mouth. “That’s why we donkeys continue to abide in the scrubbiest hills of every livable continent, Lori, unchanged even after all these years of supposedly accelerated evolution by humans and their favorite meat animals and pets. Slow, steady, and unconvinced, that’s my mantra.”

Lori closed her eyes and bit into the brownie. Chocolaty and sticky, with just a hint of bitterness below the surface. For some reason, she remembered the dead mouse she had seen back in her kitchen. It seemed two years ago, not two weeks. She pictured her livespace, which made her think of her grandmother and her many little Christian rituals, most of which she had tried to explain to Lori when she was very young. Breaking up the brownie squares around the table seemed like a ritual.

“This must be what communion is like, Morley—sharing a prescribed snack in order to orient us all towards a holy teaching and experience. I never would have thought of you as a donkey priest or whatever.” Lori had already learned to enjoy the sport of ribbing Morley from Danni.

Morley and Andrzej both laughed, and Morley put on his most operatic face, drawing his bent frame up to set his gaze above even Andrzej’s. “Donkey priest one day, donkey devil the next. You will soon see that the world view of the donkey pretty well defines the opposite of religion.” Twinkle of eye and arms outstretched, he said, “Ye shall trust no complicated story nor rely on any given hierarchy, as they shall all be fucking rearranged tomorrow.”

Andrzej spoke for all of them, shaking his head while Lori wrinkled her brow and arched an eyebrow. “Deep, Morley. Now start the damn histogram so this poor girl can hear our sad story and find out what Danni wants her to be puzzling about.”

The Question Remains the Same

“Do you think we should do the history first or the puzzle first?” Morley was asking Danni and Andrzej.

The windows out to the south and east showed small whitecaps coming across the bay and lapping into what stubble was left of the abandoned village at the south end. The windows to the west framed the desert valley below and the rising cactus studded hillside running up above and beyond. Lori knew it was a well-guarded private world with defenses hidden miles out from the Cabin, but she wondered now how Skramble and Hyde managed to stay unscathed in the brutal world of power and control that was being haltingly revealed to her through Danni’s coaching and Morley’s histograms. She had gradually accepted a world whose citizenry could barely sense, and never actually saw, the tides and currents of real politics. Managers and workers alike, even those like her that worked in the guts of major state or crypto bureaucracies—no one knew enough to even think to care. It mostly worked somehow, so they just let it be.

Already Lori felt comfortable and enervated here. The remoteness and solitude suited her, while the daily interactions with the two of them were stimulating and unpredictable in the extreme. She was learning more than she knew existed, and now Andrzej and the World History Institute would be added to the mix. Lori also knew that the beautiful view out the windows was about to disappear, to be superseded as another histogram took over the bridge. This should finally surface the puzzle that had driven Danni for so many years and was now to be abandoned to Lori by her death. Lori felt the textured mix of patterns and randomness like a breath on her neck.

Sure enough, moments later, a peach-colored haze began to organize itself within the holospace, coalescing out beyond the end of the long table and centered directly in front of Lori and the captain’s chair.

“I think we should start with a look at the structure behind the puzzle, and then proceed to the historical context. Then we can return to the puzzle itself. Maybe the two of you can even keep your sarcastic commentary to yourselves until the end. This is confusing enough for a first timer as it is.” Danni waited for agreement.

Andrzej was ready to get going. “Sounds good to me. It will certainly be useful for her to get a glimpse of Serendipity’s full-blown time-agnostic interface. Might even help her understand some of the crazy shit that happened.” He was now shaved and showered, looking relaxed as he spoke from Lori’s right side. “I came in about halfway along the trail you are about to jog down, Lori, so we will both be relying on Morley’s knack for creating these little passion plays. Danni usually catches any gross overuse of editorial license.”

Morley, sitting just beyond Andrzej on Lori’s right, was his boyish morning self. “Right then. Let me just make a few adjustments to the streams. Everyone has another fifteen minutes to look out at our wonderful hideaway. Danni, I imagine you want to take Serendipity out to universal maximum to start with?”

“Yes, please. Current time.”

Lori gazed through the peachy mist and out to the bay. Everything felt proper, as Morley would say. “Would anyone like any more coffee or tea? I’m going to get another cup.”

Morley raised his hand as he studied his dash while the others declined, and, as she returned from the kitchen a few minutes later, Lori remembered the brownie she had eaten. The peach cloud that still hovered seemed to be taking on more definition, almost as if it had a life of its own. The story teller. She filed that observation away and sat quietly with the others until Morley spoke again.

“That should do it then, everyone ready?”

Without further warning the peach cloud expanded rapidly outward until it was more of a numinous veil that hung before Lori’s eyes no matter which direction she looked. At the center of the shrouded space a construct appeared, which, to Lori’s trained eye, had clearly been generated by Serendipity.

She studied the swirl of variegated nodes suspended before them, all shapes, sizes, and colors. They hung independent of one another with no connecting linkages. It was somehow intently familiar yet wholly alien at the same time. Looking carefully at the larger nodes, Lori could see that they seemed to be translucently colored spheres and each contained its own internal world of nodes. She felt a sense of nesting dolls and Christmas tree ornaments, even though she had never experienced either of those archaic things in her lifetime.

Lori heard herself say, “What is this?”

Danni softly replied, “That is Serendipity’s momentary rendering of all there is in the universe.” She let that sink in for a moment and then continued, speaking with a tranquility beyond even her normal poise. “You know very well how Serendipity renders the results of a typical query, defined by a specific timeframe and a known set of prime actors. So, start with that vision of her typical graphical display.” She waited for Lori to acknowledge this starting point. “Now, imagine limiting the timeframe to a single nanosecond while expanding the search to include everything within the human understanding of the universe, from every estimate of the number of rabbits on Earth, to every map of the number of galaxies found.”

Lori forced herself to push through to this vision, and it dawned on her that much of the work over the last two weeks had really been about Danni preparing her to make the leap to this far higher plane.

She heard Danni’s voice again at her side as she looked into the pulsing construct. “Got it? Do you understand how Serendipity could do this? You must trust me when I say that she is now so powerful as a quantum processor that she can compress and generate this graphical estimation.”

Lori heard her own voice respond, “I guess I can imagine such power, but we all know that she can’t actually see everything there is out there. Even within the small space of data generated here on Earth she misses things. Extrapolate out to a collection of ‘everything,’ and this moment in time must be full of holes.”

“It is beautiful, Lori. Just accept those holes, and we can take the next step as we stalk our puzzle.” Danni was taking a long sip from her tea mug while she watched Lori’s face and when she saw sufficient understanding, she continued.

As she began to speak again, a number appeared above the vibrating node cluster—a huge number, ten to an enormous power. “Now imagine, Lori, that the number you see was generated by a special function within Serendipity, a function that you have never been shown. It is a master process that runs against all those nodes, giving each of them a specific ‘numerical weight’ and then adding all up those weights into that super-number.” Danni’s tone was rising above tranquility. “The super-number simply represents a machined calculation by a fixed algorithm. The method accepts the data holes. It knows they will always obtain as Serendipity performs her normal ongoing work. It’s an arbitrary number generated by a strict formula that we have been refining for years. Here’s the formula.” Danni looked from Lori back to the cloud. She broke into a sparkling grin as an alien-feeling formula wrote itself across the peach air above the huge number.

“The glowing part in the brackets is how she understands the moment in time for the calculation, currently this morning at 9:18 AM PST. Now watch what happens when I spin the time dial back 100 years.” Danni had her dash out and she edited the formula and hit the run button.

Lori watched the turmoil of nodes swirling within the cloud. She also watched the expression on Andrzej’s face. He looked like a builder watching a hurricane wind testing his roof, hoping it had been built strong enough to withstand the strain. The storm went on for minutes as they all watched, but then slowly subsided until the nodes hung once again in still space and the big number stopped its wild fluctuations.

“What do you see, Lori?” Danni was on her left side, speaking calmly again after the storm.

“I see a new cloud of nodes, looking very different from the one before, but I see that the number remained the same.”

“If I tell you that the number stays the same no matter what moment in time you choose, even if you go back to an era where Serendipity has only pre-digital historical text data to work with, what would that suggest to you?”

Lori knew she shouldn’t be able to get her head around this. She was just a polymath grunt from D.C. who was good with algorithms. But the answer to Danni’s question was somehow obvious to her. “It means that there has always been the same amount of ‘matter’ in the universe. And I guess there always will be. Even though I don’t really feel sure I know what ‘matter’ is, it’s not important since it is always whatever Serendipity thinks it is. Whatever she chooses to count. Is that right?”

“That is exactly right, Lori. As you go back in time and the data gets sparse, the holes get bigger and make up the difference. The key is how she weights the anticipated holes. It’s like factoring for anti-matter. Call it: anti-data.” Danni watched her for a few moments before prompting. “So now can you guess what the puzzle question is?”

Lori sat back and pondered while the others watched her. “I feel like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but I know it won’t come out. It’s so weird. I can feel the answer, I can taste it, but I can’t think or say it.”

“Don’t tell her yet.” Morley jumped in before Danni could speak. “Let’s play the last histogram first. Lori can watch Simon get you to state your question the first time, Danni. I don’t think it, or you, have changed much in 70-plus years.”

Things One and Two

Like most people she knew, Lori stayed away from beaches. She couldn’t afford to get to the pristine ones where sand was continually dumped into natural rock bays in a never-ending battle to recreate what nature had taken eons to establish and humankind had quickly sped beyond to ruin. The various eroded shorelines available to her were a mixture of riptide plagued drop-offs and toxic carnivals where population centers had fought and lost against the rising water.

But now she found herself walking down a narrow band of sand with a dead calm ocean on her right side, palm trees and scattered small buildings and huts on her left. The air was hot and humid, and it washed gently through her hair and across her face with a touch so luxurious that within an astonishing instant she understood beaches.

“That’s the Delani Beach Hotel coming up on the left.”

Lori had been completely in the moment of the histogram and Morley’s voice caught her off guard. She turned to find all three of them walking behind her on the sand. They all looked much younger, tanned and relaxed, but there was a distinct transparency to their bodies as if they were projections or ghosts stalking a past reality. She realized that was exactly what they were.

She held her hand up towards the sun, which was just rising over the horizon, and saw that her form presented with a similar translucence. This histogram was different from the others. Then she remembered Morley’s peyote brownies and she was gripped by a momentary terror, thinking of how far away from her normal senses she must be now. But the fear ebbed away from her mind as Morley continued to talk from behind and the more youthful Danni moved towards her side as they headed towards a cluster of buildings and tents that peeked out from the tree line just ahead.

Lori thought: This must be how they know so much and how they have stayed alive so long. This space they live in. This combination of Gumbo and time travel through Serendipity and huge projects and puzzles, they combine all this with the audacity to manipulate their personal biology. Peyote and the mysterious epigenetics side of Skramble and Hyde. CMS and their weird grip on history through the World History Institute. They play by different rules. How did I get here?

Lori decided to let her fears go, to just listen and watch. She felt like a different Lori Norton, and she saw that there was no going back. She didn’t want to go back.

“So, the year is 2075, somewhere around February, and this place is one of our old headquarters, picked up by Simon when he ran into me and a few other misfits who lived in East Africa. That’s where we are by the way, on the Indian Ocean. It’s a long story that took a rather short period of time to unfold. We were all squeezed together by chance circumstances mostly stemming from the famous ersatz rapture of President Lester Cleland.” Morley was talking, and his voice soothed like the ocean air. Time was halted for Lori. “Our little happenstance band got blended by those weird times into what you are coming to know as Skramble and Hyde, the crypto-state. If you ever want to get into the details, read the book our friend Dahlgren wrote, Pavlov’s Colon. But today we are taking an expensive stroll back in time so that you can grasp, in whatever way you choose, two simple things.”

Morley brought them to a halt by a small set of rickety stairs that ran from the sand up to a concrete deck that was attached to the largest building in a group of simple but practical structures. The deck was set with dining tables, and two very dark men were moving about preparing for diners to arrive. It was quiet except for the occasional bird call or kitchen sound, until one of the men turned on the ancient screen above a bar. The bar top curved towards the interior of the cabana, from a dappled end facing the ocean back into a darker open-sided reception space under the palms.

With a face and posture that encouraged her to accept whatever lessons were about to unfold, holes and all, Morley continued with the theatrically hushed voice of a museum tour guide. “Thing One is that the puzzle is simply that—just a puzzle. One of the few things we all have in common at Skramble and Hyde is that we all like puzzles, each in their own way, of course.” He looked at Lori with a pause, squinting, preparing to choose his words carefully. “It was an existentially dangerous time for us. Simon said we needed a path that no AI could predict by using our known history as a guide. He guessed there were other Serendipitys coming down the pike. Plus, we needed a reason to bother pushing on—one that was compelling, complicated, and absurd.”

Morley smiled all to himself. “Those were the exact adjectives that Simon used. ‘Compelling, complicated, and absurd.’ For him the puzzle was simply a way to inject randomness into his business plans and to force us into escaping destruction by using our collective wits. He wanted a puzzle for Skramble and Hyde’s new mission statement.” Morley beamed like a schoolboy. “So, Thing Two is that survival should be an art not a fate.”

Danni put her hand on Lori’s arm, saying, “That is pure Simon, mixed with some Morley and bits of the others. I could never see beyond whatever puzzle was in front me. I wouldn’t have survived two minutes without him or them.”

Morley turned back towards Lori as he started up the steps, speaking again in his stage whisper. “Shall we join our singularly ominous histogram, which is already in progress? The shareholders of Skramble and Hyde are down to nine, their private island is being taken away by the rising sea, and an increasingly hostile world is closing in on them. They are hiding out preparing to decide on a next step.”

Donkeys Never Forget

Watching Morley watching Morley was the weirdest thing Lori had ever experienced. She had seen herself in plenty of interactive streams before, mostly family get-togethers and the like, but this was entirely different.

The translucent voyeur-Morley, the one who winked at her as he took a seat at a dining table towards the back, seemed fortyish with smooth skin and blond highlights in his light brown hair. She could feel the machined logic that had estimated and created this him. The more solid appearing hologram-Morley, sitting beside a front table with sandaled heels up on the deck rail, was dark brown and wrinkled with hair fully overtaken by gray.

Morley the voyeur beckoned them, and they all three took seats with him in the back by a bar. Lori wondered if the holo-Morley could sense the chairs moving.

An older man came towards them, walking slowly through the scattered chairs of the reception space and then out to the deck, taking a seat next to holo-Morley and facing the rising sun. He was in his late seventies and he slipped dark glasses over his eyes, as Morley took his feet off the rail and straightened up. Holo-Morley greeted the older man with a friendly pat on the shoulder, “Morning Simon. I was just sitting here enjoying one last sunrise over our lovely ocean. I am going to miss it. How about you? Ready to relocate?”

An even older man brought a thermos of coffee and three mugs to the table. Black skin and spotty grey stubble, he looked ancient but still moved with surprising fluidity. As he sat, Simon and Morley both nodded a simultaneous greeting and Morley said, “Thank you George. I’m going to miss you and your cooking even more than the sunrises.”

“Why don’t you reconsider and come with us George?” Simon knew the answer but wanted to maintain the ritual to the bitter end.

“No thanks, bwana. I’ll hold down the fort here. You never know when you may want to come back.” George stroked his grey stubble, trying to imagine the Delani Beach compound in two days’ time, after the airlift had cleared the whole gang of them out. It would be with sudden efficiency, Simon’s trademark. All was quiet for a minute as the three old men sipped their coffee.

Simon was the first to speak. “No, we need to go, and in the nick of time really.”

Morley thought the lyrics to an ancient tune in his head out loud. “Like desperados waiting for a train.”

The reflective morning quiet resumed until Simon continued. “Andrzej has finished our new home, work of art really. High, dry, and bulletproof. About as well obfuscated as any seminal node in the world. You’re going to love it, Morley—beautiful hills to wander and beaches to wade. I can already see your old mane flickering in the wind while you watch the sun rise over a new ocean.”

“Cheers, Simon. I’m sure I’ll like it, and it will be good to see what our young prodigy has produced.” Morley’s eyes soured a bit behind his sunglasses, but the others couldn’t tell as he looked to the south. “Everyone goes on about how change is good, but everyone is usually bloody wrong. Still, I have been doing some interesting research on the local succulents. Could be my new hobby. The cactaceae family sounds particularly intriguing.”

Simon and George both laughed while exchanging knowing looks.

Lori heard voices coming from the hallway and two women emerged, deep in conversation but homing in towards the breakfast table. As they approached, George got up and kissed each of them good morning before disappearing through a door that gave Lori a glimpse of a rustic kitchen. Both women were in their seventies, sharp edged and clear eyed. The taller one, with blond hair in a long ponytail, wore an elegant jumpsuit, while the smaller woman, with jet black hair closely cropped, wore jeans and a short sleeve shirt.

Morley the translucent leaned towards Lori. “The blond is Theresa Cunningham. She created Animonics way back in the 30’s. The shorter one is Julia Dresden, wife of Curtis Dresden, he who was assassinated. They were both founding members of our original gang. The two of them are preparing to leave, but they are headed for our old citadel in Telluride. Too cold for me up there.” He clasped his hands over his lower face as if warming them with his breath. Lori could see he was covering an expression of sadness. “I’d forgotten how few of us were left at this point. Theresa’s husband Joseph died a few years before this, and Norris killed himself not long after that. Long gone. And Dahl—well, Dahl died right here at the Delani in 2071.”

“Norris killed himself?” Lori had formed a special picture in her mind for this man Norris. Morley’s wistful narratives had left her with a romantic notion of a man from a different, wilder time. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized suicide was perfect for Norris.

Morley did something with his dash and the histogram froze in place. A momentary pause with all the characters arrested in their pre-breakfast motions. Looking past his own ghost and out to the smooth blue ocean, translucent Morley answered her. “He wasn’t well—terrible arthritis and a failing heart. His hands were so gnarled that he couldn’t tie his boots. Dan Talbot, the fellow who owned this place before we got here, was also failing. Dan’s mind was slipping away from him, and he knew it. We all did.”

Tears were forming in the corners of his eyes as he surveyed the landscape and the bygone assembly of his friends. “So, one night the two of them said goodbye to us in their own private ways. Just a particularly good dinner cooked by George, lots of drinks as the sun set, with both of them holding forth on how the world could go fuck itself. Early the next morning they took the skiff out about a mile and both rolled overboard, probably with weights tied to their feet. It was just like them. Dan even sent a last text and left his device on the seat, so it would be easy for us to find the skiff and drag it back.”

“Anyway, that was a good five years before the moment we are here to relive. Cheers, Norris.” Morley had been speaking to the ocean and now he turned back to Lori and the others while taking his dash out and poking the screen. “Murcheson is long dead and the Comms left us alone for a few years, but eventually they got together in an effort to track down Serendipity and put her out of business. They wanted their old marketing hegemonies back, and they were too stupid to realize that Danni and Simon had dispersed her directly into the bloodstream of the web. Coming after us was strictly for revenge, and the posse was led by Murcheson’s grandson Donald.” Morley bared his teeth for Lori, with something that wasn’t a smile. “Truly an evil little fuck that one, a product of the times. He’s the reason our little band here is preparing to decamp to the very rock pile you now call home. This is 2075, just days before a tactical missile launched by a Chinese merc company slammed into this very compound. They killed George, his family, and a lot of other friends of ours. They claimed it was an accident.”

His canines still poked below his upper lip and his eyes narrowed. “I showed you those histograms so you would understand the real-world fight to survive that goes on outside of the protected bubble of Gumbo. We, or I should say ‘I,’ still have one big act of retribution to carry out.” Morley caught himself and smiled at Lori as if to depressurize the moment, “Won’t be your worry, Lori, or anyone else’s—it’s all mine. Like they say, ‘Donkeys never forget.’”

“It’s elephants, Morley, not donkeys.” Danni, in her temporarily younger self, walked over to his side and put a thin arm around him. Lori and Andrzej said nothing as they waited for the moment of remembrance to pass quietly.

After a few seconds Morley breathed a deep sigh and gently broke away, beckoning them back to their observation seats. “Right, then, let’s get back to the puzzle.” To Lori, he added, “Simon became a bit obsessed about wanting a perfect puzzle. He kept saying it would serve as our north star while we made our way through the world of sheep—sheep who are easily led by evil or stupid shepherds.”

“Usually both.” Andrzej’s uttered his first words for some time. He also spoke directly to Lori. “All you need to know to be a good dictator is how to make the sheep look at you and not up at the light.”

Translucent Morley gestured with his arm outstretched towards the Simon who sat immobilized before them. “He had this knack for picking the path no one else could see in the forest. We all just trusted him, but he knew he would be gone, and he wanted to leave us with the puzzle. It was way too deep for my simple mind, so I’ve been enjoying life as a happy beast of burden, waiting patiently for my final act.” He reached out to put his hand on Danni’s arm, which lay on the table next to him. “Danni thinks she has the puzzle business spinning towards a conclusion, and she feels the pressure of time more than I. She doesn’t want to wait around for a final solution. It’s her choice. She chose to live in a more bloodless world, and now she is preparing to evaporate like a cloud.”

Morley gestured once again towards the frozen last breakfast tableau. “That’s one other thing we all seemed to have in common: wanting to die on our own terms. As for me, Lori, once you have joined Andrzej at the wheel of this ship, I’ll find the perfect way to join back up with Norris and Simon and the others.”

Time flickered between the flat calm waters of the Indian Ocean and the rippled bay on the Sea of Cortez. “When I do, I will be dragging the sorry ass of Donald J. Murcheson across the Rubicon with me. The little fuck was only 26 years old when he blew up Delani Beach, not much older than Andrzej at the time. He doesn’t know that people like me even exist. But I’ll be sure he understands who I am as I kill him.”

The menacing certainty of the words blended with Lori’s recent memory of being Norris in the dim pool and the look of sudden comprehension on Rudolph Murcheson’s face.

“And on that jolly note we might want to get back to Lori’s lesson.” Andrzej was beginning to worry about the effect of Morley’s dark rant on Lori.

Translucent Morley brought his sneer back to a friendly grin with unnerving ease. “Pay no attention to me love. We all have our little hobbies you know.” With that Morley punched his dash and …..

Last Breakfast

….. Breakfast resumed at the Delani Beach Hotel, just as Danni of the histogram walked up the steps from the beach.

A trim 59, dressed for travel in a jumpsuit much like Theresa’s, she glided into the kitchen and soon emerged with a mango and mug of coffee, dropping into the chair next to Morley with her back to the ocean, the bright glare behind her gauzing the finer details of her face.

They were scheduled to lift out in two hours, and Simon had a few last things on his check list. “Are you done with the command tent, Danni? Can we break it down? Most of that stuff is pretty old and not worth dragging along.”

“It’s all ready. The only thing I’m taking are Norris’s old binoculars. They are packed in my bags.”

Everyone was eating and sipping their coffees with an uneasy silence hanging over the table. The last breakfast in Shangri La, hidden and mostly protected from the world. It had been their collective home, command post, and workplace for over 25 years.

They all knew it had to end. Simon’s people from the front offices of Skramble and Hyde were warning them about a dangerous coalition of the taxed and the tithed, formed just over the past year but growing in its nerve and impudence. The enormous Comm companies, religious organizations of every shape and size, the young start-up crypto-states, invisible high net worth individuals: They all resented the cash-flow transparency Serendipity inflicted on them. They hated her omnipresence in their data stores. They hated the taxes she calculated for the nation states and the United Nations. And they hated the firm of Skramble and Hyde that held the contract to operate her.

The word to Simon was that they were no longer safe at the Delani and that their processing bunker in Salt Lake was soon to be attacked in some way, maybe even physically.

Simon grasped the evolutionary logic of this federation and sensed the growing menace. He had told Danni that it felt inevitable as they studied and played with the situation in Serendipity’s plex. In the models the tropistic reaction—the reach towards power—unfolded so clearly within her interface that Simon couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it coming earlier.

Danni, scurrying across the silky threads that caught and held the data debris in the plex, reminded him that Serendipity was a spider’s web. She was an extension of the collective phenotype. She needed to be monitored constantly for foreign vibrations.

They watched the taxed, writhing in the sticky mesh, simmer in their resentment. A growing mood of entitlement, seeded from somewhere, emerged in different spots, blossomed, and ripened into a sickening goo. Danni could sense how it dampened the web harmonics.

Simon had acted to protect their core.

A new Serendipity processing facility was built and hidden, buried within an obscure world heritage site: a salt mine in southern Poland.

A mysterious new U.N. history preservation entity was created, the World History Institute, and Skramble and Hyde was charged with operating the newer smaller quantum environment.

A new command post was terraformed into a hillside overlooking a forgotten bay on the east side of the Baja peninsula, not far from the no-man’s-land around a nuclear waste storage site. Donkeys grazed on a sparse slope of brown rubble and cactus that led down to an abandoned beach.

Now it was time for them to move. Simon had asked Danni to arrange for a distraction—some small crisis to divert the attention of their newly emboldened enemies. Two hours from this moment on the deck at the Delani Hotel, a simple piece of math, buried in the error-checking systems of both the major exchanges, would begin to rapidly depress the offered value of 63 selected stocks. Chaos would ensue. It would take all day or maybe two for the damage to be undone and the auto-triggered trades to be rescinded.

Danni named the little algorithm Travel, a “timed reduction-of-value loop.” Simon thought of it as an art prank. Morley called it the asshole tax.

One way or the other it would keep the world occupied while they decamped to their new spaces. There was one last thing on Simon’s list.

“Since we have a quorum here for our last meal on this gorgeous ocean, I want to call a meeting of the Board of Skramble and Hyde. I want to propose a change to our mission statement.” Everyone except Danni looked at him with varying degrees of surprise and curiosity.

“I think you all get that our change of venues won’t go unnoticed for long. We have had a great run here, and we’ve had a chance to help the world evolve towards a more sustainable socio-economic model, but the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way now.”

Mostly they had all tried to ignore politics and the world in general for over two decades, but they knew Simon had never lost his fascination for socio-dynamics.

“The first world is chafing again at the embedded carrying costs of the second world, and they are bound to blame some messenger. In this case, the messenger is the tax collector. In many eyes, we are the embodiment of the tax system. We are the unwanted middlemen who have been granted the power to force the unreasonable transfer of their wealth to a U.N., which redistributes it based on naive social formulas rather than individual merit. The ‘we’ they blame is the infamous Serendipity and by extension Skramble and Hyde.”

Watching, Lori began to appreciate how Simon must have seen the world communities back then, social tectonic plates pushing semi-blindly against one another. She looked to the translucent Danni on her left and saw tears halfway to the hollows of her cheeks, poised on cheek bones, ready to break beyond the moment of pause. Andrzej sat still, focused on Simon, and Lori understood that he had never actually witnessed this moment in time before. He must have been waiting for them either at the Office in the salt mine or the Cabin he had just finished building over the Sea of Cortez.

Simon continued. “So, the truth is that our change of locations isn’t enough. To survive we need to adjust our mission, our prime directive. To be blunt, we need to remove ourselves entirely from the political fray to avoid being crushed. We need to become rapidly irrelevant so that no one wants to bother trying to kill us.”

Setting his mug down loudly on the table, the grizzled Morley offered his support. “Thank you, Jesus. I was hoping you might have a plan for how we don’t get killed.”

“Well, it may be an exaggeration to call it a plan, but it seems to me that the one division of Skramble and Hyde that remains both under-developed and relatively non-threatening to anyone is the World History Institute.” A grin was hiding just beneath Simon’s serious veneer. “And I asked myself, who among us could come up with an interesting mission for the WHI? Some quest that would keep us amused for a good long time but also keep us far away from the limelight. A puzzle if you will, one that no one else would think of, much less try to solve.”

Every face at the breakfast table immediately turned towards Danni, making her blush invisibly beneath her chocolate skin.

“So of course, I asked Danni, the love of my life and tireless mapper of patterns that seem to obtain out of thin air for her alone.” Simon was standing now, and he beamed down at Danni who smiled back at him. “As you might expect it turned out to be a case of, ‘be careful what you ask for’, and I am going to let Danni explain the puzzle she came up with.” Looking particularly down at Morley, he said, “Fair warning, Morley; it’s going to make your head hurt.” Then back to the table in general, “But I am dead serious about adopting it as the mission statement for our innocuous little shell company, the World History Institute, our new home.”

With that Simon pulled out his chair and sat back down, joining the group stare at Danni. As an afterthought, and mostly to himself, he added, “If we are going to retreat from the first world, we might as well go hide in the future rather than the past.”

After a few moments of dead air, Theresa broke the pregnant pause. “Excellent. Draw it right out for us, Danni. Anything is better than what we have been reduced to lately. Trying to stay ahead of the relentless attacks on Serendipity has become beyond boring.”

Julia added, “I agree. Our work is done here. Let’s see if the secondWorld has learned how to take care of itself for a while. We’ve earned a nice retirement.”

Danni had been prepared for Simon’s preamble, and she made them wait as she finished her mango and drank her coffee. When she finally put her cup down, she launched straight into her long-considered proposition. As she talked, Lori sensed that this younger version of her dying mentor already organized her thoughts with the familiar balance of descriptive precision and conceptual leaps. Morley called it “Danni’s jazz.”

Shipwrecked Genes

“Well, the first thing I needed to deal with was the vagueness of the term ‘world history,’ as in the name ‘World History Institute.’ Where does world history start really?” Danni looked at them like a teacher prodding a group of consistently disappointing students.

Nothing. Pause.

With a stage sigh, “OK, let’s review the problem.”

“Recorded history might go a few thousand years back. Starting with proto apes would mean a couple million years. From the first existence of mammals, let’s say 100 million? The first emergence of multi-cell organisms might mean beginning from 3 billion years ago. Or the formation of the solar system, 5 billion. If we go all the way back to the big bang, there’s probably 13 billion years of world history. You have to start somewhere.”

Danni had her impish smile on now and Lori could tell she was toying with them, especially Morley who was trying to decide if it was too soon to inject a sarcastic comment.

Danni beat him to the punch. “But after a few hours of considering Serendipity’s entire plex from a variety of perspectives and after letting her weigh the relative value of millions of scientific speculations about the cosmological past, I decided we should be using the timeframe of human consciousness. Does that seem logical to you, Morley?”

He was ready, not wanting to be called out as the dullard who hadn’t done his homework. “Depends on what you mean by consciousness, my dear, and how would we know when it started?”

The sun had risen high enough to be fully blocked by the deck’s awning roof, and Morley’s smile of delight was glare free. Lori caught herself watching the translucent Morley sitting next to her as he carefully inspected his younger histogram-self at the breakfast table.

Before them Danni stood, lifting up on her toes to lean her butt against the top of the deck rail. The sleeves of her jumpsuit were rolled up tightly to her deltoids, and the close curls of her hair, set against the backlit canvass of the awning, created a corona around her face. “Good question. Somehow, at some point, during the grindingly slow evolution of human-based neural activity, consciousness emerged.”

“Serendipity can’t see the exact point in time but, having digested almost all of the extant cosmological, geological, and anthropological knowledge of pre-history, she can see the before and after states, so we can come close enough. The clearest expression of the emergence or transmutation to consciousness, really the only one we can get our hands on, is the sudden non-linear movement of Serendipity’s super-number.”

Danni’s face flickered a look of hard-won satisfaction. Simon was the only one who caught it. “It turns out that, when the formula is properly expressed, it does change after all.”

“Are you saying you buggered up your super math formula, my dear?” Morley was delighted that Danni had made a mistake.

“Yup. One small variable, but a big effect.”

“How did you discover the mistake, Danni?” Theresa leaned forward in her chair.

“I didn’t. Serendipity found it and asked me if she should correct it.”

That left the breakfast group silent, all thinking their own thoughts.

“So, when did human consciousness start, Danni?” Simon’s casual acceptance of Serendipity’s self-correction, and that Danni must have answered this eternal question, seemed like the perfect gesture of love to Lori.

“700,000 years ago, give or take a bit, so that at least gives us a starting point for our World History Institute.” Danni looked to her class to make sure they were all comfortable with this piece of the puzzle.

Theresa was not quite there yet. “What happens with Serendipity’s super-number to make you light on 700,000 years back?”

Resuming teacher mode, Danni rewarded her best student with bonded enthusiasm. “It is an amazing thing to see, Theresa. She grinds along on the grist of mankind’s cumulative geo-cosmological speculation for literally billions of years, with the number doubling about every 500,000,000. Then, suddenly, at about 750,000 years ago, the rate of change begins to bend up.” Danni was hunched forward from the railing, speaking in the hushed tone of a story teller around a camp fire. But now she straightened up and her manner changed back to the polymath seer of visions. She had the proof she required to move forward. “And starting about 400,000 years ago the number begins growing dynamically.” Danni traced a ski jump curve with her right hand on the blue chalkboard of sky. “I won’t bore you with how many point plots she built and analyzed, but it is safe to say we humans hit full exponential increase in consciousness somewhere around 3,000 years back.”

Taking her device out she walked towards the bar area and lit the streaming screen over the bar. She had moved to within ten feet of where the four of them sat watching, and Lori worried that the holo-Danni would somehow sense their presence. But she was oblivious and pointed to the plot that now glowed on the screen.

“This one has only three points, but it’s perfectly emblematic of where we now find ourselves in the course of ‘World History’: 44 BC, the year Julius Caesar died, 1789, the start of the French Revolution, and 2025, a year that marked the beginning of the end of originalist capitalism.”

Turning back to face the breakfasters and the ocean, Danni concluded, “Sociologically, the rate of change over the last 3,000 or 4,000 years has been akin to the speed of light. Maybe that breakneck pace was the problem. Maybe it exposed us to mutating forces that can corrupt neural activity. It’s possible that there is some natural timer that limits the dominance of any species. Who knows? At least we should have plenty to think about at our new cabin by the sea.”

As the five at breakfast stared blankly at Danni and the tensioned curve on the screen behind her, Simon added, “That last year on the curve, 2025, marks one other important point for us grubby, greedy humans. That was around the year we started mucking with our own DNA.”

Danni let that tangential nugget sink in just the right amount before delivering the morning’s punchline. “I was just getting my head around the meaning of this acceleration of consciousness when Serendipity signaled that she wasn’t done.” She made her eyes wide to cast a dramatic pause over the table. “Without my asking, Serendipity displayed the variable section of the super-number formula. She waited a moment for me to focus and then she tweaked one other key variable by a tiny amount. Right before my eyes. Again, all on her own.”

Looking back up at the screen Danni’s face was turned away from the breakfasters, but Lori could watch it clearly—a mix of maternal pride and amazement.

“Without prompting from me, she drew back to a new focus point and projected this plot on her plex. It starts 700,000 human-years back and terminates right now.”

Lori craned her neck to study the screen. The plotted climb of the number began with the same slowly growing trajectory. It still seemed to hit an inflection point, now around 5,000 years back. But then, at around 1900 A.D., the curve clearly began to rapidly flatten.

“Then Serendipity did one last thing.” The whites of Danni’s eyes seemed to glow. “She applied a compression to the time scale to better illustrate the dynamics of the recent acceleration of the super number. Look.”

With that, the flattening curve of the last 200 years took over more real estate and bent into an unmistakable and ostensibly irreversible downward trend.

“She is telling us we are over the hill. If she is right, and I think she is, we humans have peaked.”

As Danni looked for the effect on her audience, Morley leaned towards Simon with a stage whisper, “We are getting stupider. Big deal. I could have told you that.”

Simon smiled and looked at his device, checking the time. Ninety minutes and they would be gone from here: Theresa and Julia to Telluride, where he hoped they would be safe, the others to Bahia de Los Angeles where Andrzej was waiting for them. No time to spare. Time to move. “So, my friends. The puzzle for our little club, the purpose for the World History Institute is…?”

“I got it now.” Morley looked extremely pleased with himself, hand in the air like a school boy. “When does time end for us humans? To calculate when human consciousness ceases to exist, or at least be detectable. What a cheery mission, Danni.”

“Brilliant, Morley. People have been underestimating you all your life.” Simon patted Morley on the back and, looking around, he could tell they wanted him to expand on Danni’s mystical puzzle with a more Simon-like workability and pragmatism. “We, the WHI, are going to puzzle out approximately when human consciousness will peter out into planetary uselessness. And while we are at it, we will work on a strategy for deploying a life boat for our soon-to-be-shipwrecked pool of genes.” Simon looked round the table to see the various reactions.

Theresa sat looking out at the sea, trying to imagine a world not run by humans, maybe a world where leftover avatars still roamed the earth without direction until the power finally switched off. Julia seemed to be accepting the puzzle at face value, tired at the thought of the relocation, wanting nothing more than an escape from the immediate dangers. She decided to think about the last few things she had to do before the whisper jet picked them up.

Morley, as usual, immediately offered his opinion while grinding the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Fuck-all, man. You’re right—it makes my head hurt. Personally, I’m planning to learn all about cactus husbandry instead. It will probably all end with a bloody asteroid crashing in anyway.”

Simon laughed, “Statistically you are right. Should have already happened by now. But that’s too boring an end to think about. It will be far more entertaining to plot the reverse side of Serendipity’s bell curve. We can entertain ourselves by imagining the nadir and extinction of consciousness, while figuring out how not to participate.”

Morley, his voice suspicious and curious like a cat, said. “Maybe humans go out with a bang, not a whimper?”

Danni conceded that Serendipity had mentioned the possibility of catastrophic human stupidity of action. “She said the chances were only about 6–9% of a human-caused cataclysm. Down from 35% 100 years ago.”

Simon closed the moment and set them all into motion. “One way or the other, we need to jump ship right now.” He looked over at George who was now leaning against the wall by the kitchen door. “So let’s hop-to it and get ready for our lifts. George needs to clean the tables for lunch.”

The Parent Is Only Human

As the breakfast group began to rise from their seats to head for their various rooms and preparations, Andrzej was staring intently at his dash, face gone pale and eyes focused tightly on the floating display. He leaned over to translucent Morley and quietly said, “You need to get us back right now. Something is wrong in Krakow.” Morley looked at him quizzically, but Andrzej repeated, “Now!” with a tone that left no room for debate.

Morley unfurled his own dash. He looked at the translucent Danni, who nodded, and then over at Lori. “Lesson’s over, my dove; prepare to return to reality. That cactus button chocolate should take the edge off the abrupt transition.”

With no further warning, they were back on the bridge of the cabin, all in the same chairs they had occupied before the histogram had transported them to Delani Beach, back a half century and into the world of heart-breaking doubles.

Having apparently experienced history deformed by data from its future. Lori performed a mental check and looked over her extremities, deciding she felt no worse for the wear. How could that be? She resolved to find out more about peyote from Morley.

The other three were gathered in front of the main streaming screen, where another man she didn’t know had just appeared. In his early thirties with black hair and a solid Pan-European face, he was sitting in a room that looked like a museum. Behind him were tall, windowed doors half opened to a small balcony with ornate iron rails. His chair was massive, dark wood and red velvet, and an ancient matching table sat in front of him, clearly his desk. He was speaking to the group with a tone of forced objectivity, undercut by a tension Lori could see on his face.

“The attacks were all well thought out and tightly coordinated. Two minutes to take down three of the four repeaters, cook all our firewalls, and datastasize into our systems like bedbugs in a warm dorm. Just as the alerts flooded in and everyone was scrambling to identify and neutralize the god damn mal-code, they broke into your house and took Mom.”

Lori read equal parts anger and anguish on his face.

“Rather than simply fry the surveillance cameras, somehow they lightly pixelated the data from the cam-streams so the security bots didn’t notice anything alarming. When we reviewed them, you could see two people pushing her down the front hall and out the door. One was definitely a man, but the other was smaller and might have been a woman.”

Andrzej cut him off, “Have you been to the house yet?”

The man shook his head. “No, I sent Leni, so I could manage the shutdown. We were hoping to save the systems, and I figured they might call with a demand of some sort. I talked to him just a minute ago, right before I got on with you. Nothing there. No note. They just grabbed her and ran.” The man tightened his face. “Sorry, Dad. I didn’t see it coming.”

Andrzej took a deep breath. Lori watched his chest collapse and she heard the exhale through anger-flared nostrils. “Not your fault, Jerzy. It’s mine. I felt it coming, but I didn’t recognize it as imminent. I’ve been telling you for years to watch out for things that are shaped like Simon’s predictions, and now one of his inevitable moments smacks us right in the face like clueless marks.”

Andrzej and Jerzy looked at each other in a manner Lori interpreted as father and son long comfortable as equals.

“We will be getting a message I am sure. Don’t worry Jerzy, we will get her back. Your mother is a wise one. She will know how to handle the situation.”

Andrzej sat back in his chair and concentrated silently for a moment. Just as Jerzy was about to speak, he continued. “The thing that is clear now, and I never got this part of what Simon was saying back then, is that we couldn’t prepare for this or successfully defend against it, because it had to happen. Serendipity had to be breached eventually. If I remember correctly, he also said it would be by an enemy who didn’t know what to do with her. Some actor drawn mindlessly, ‘forced’ was the word he used, towards her power.” With a wry smile for Morley, he said, “Remember how he was always going on about how the universe was shaped like a long colon and that we were trapped in its peristaltic flow? He even had some crazy theory that equated the animating forces of evolution to digestive transformation in the biome.”

For Lori and Jerzy’s benefit, he added, “Simon got really out there towards the end. This is going to be one of those times when I wish he were here, but then again, he’s not supposed to be.”

While Andrzej talked, Danni and Morley had silently turned their attention to Serendipity’s main interface. They were watching strange ripples rolling like waves across the plex. Danni frowned, looked quizzically at Morley, and refreshed the core environment. When it came back up, she reset the perspective, but the alien ripples continued.

Lori and Jerzy were left to consider one another quietly across the interface until Andrzej returned from another brief moment of mental assessment and realized they hadn’t been introduced. “How rude of me, sorry. Lori, this is my son Jerzy who is holding down our suddenly besieged fort in Krakow. Jerzy, this is Lori Norton. I’m sure you are aware of her name and new position over here in the Cabin.” The two nodded and Jerzy offered a broad smile, a small gesture in a tense moment, one that was well appreciated by Lori.

“So, what type of attack are we experiencing and what’s the damage so far, Jerzy?” Andrzej was 100% back in the moment, and Lori could feel all hands beginning to coordinate their efforts. She moved over to stand next to Danni and Morley, studying Serendipity’s unusual behavior while she listened to Jerzy’s report.

“We haven’t got a handle on the type of attack yet. It’s apparently something we have never seen before, an order of magnitude more sophisticated than any of the other assaults, according to the security folks.” There was no immediate response from Andrzej, and Jerzy waited a moment before adding, “The damage appears catastrophic to several very specific defense systems. Her control module was breached, and multiple foreign actors, probably bots, are issuing commands. The worst part is that Serendipity doesn’t seem to want to help. We are trying to at least shut her down.”

“Don’t bother, Jerzy. You won’t be able to. Just get everyone out of the mine and tell them to go home. We will wait for a contact from or about your mother. I assume you have followed the protocols and blown up all the external links?”

Lori continued to listen but most of her attention was now on the flow of the rippling bands as they bobbed Serendipity’s nodes and links like debris floating on anxious pre-storm water. Without really thinking, she spoke to Danni. “Could you please take her all the way in to a key mirror source? Pick any one of the crypto-states and ping on their last annual audit.” Everyone looked at her, but she pushed forward. “Try, ‘MaM_last_audit, Mining & Materials.’ I just inserted and tested a mirror patch there a few days ago.”

Danni was cheered by Lori’s instinctive leap into action. Turning back to the controls on her dash, she dialed in the search and refreshed the plex. Serendipity appeared to respond normally, with the mist rolling into the plex and the color modulating towards a copperish orange. But then, as the new node framework appeared with the VP set to the mirroring worm that Lori had recently patched, the rippling took on a very different feel. Now it was forceful corrosive splashing rather than shallow lapping. Disorganized peaks and valleys slapping up against the node framework.

Lori knew right away. “Those are malicious bots at work, and they are chewing in through our data mirroring programs. They followed their noses all the way back to the Nexus Peer Console.” She had a very bad feeling. “Dirty but efficient.” It was clear to Lori that whoever did this didn’t care about leaving tracks. “Danni, could you please flip to SourceRun view. Let’s see what their instructions look like.”

All eyes were now on the plex, and everyone except for Morley was trying to catch up with Lori’s logic. Danni began scrolling down through the source code that had appeared on the right side of the plex, lines of familiar statements and symbols steadily rolling up and out of frame.

Again, Lori saw it first, which reminded Danni of how her self-inflicted deterioration was gathering speed. She had a moment of feeling paired with Serendipity, imagining a stealthy attack by a rogue unit of her histone chaperone proteins, reassembling themselves and setting forth to sabotage her personal life-code. There was no going back from such an outbreak. If things had been calm right then, she might have reflected further on the beauty of setting in motion a suicide by timed release. But things weren’t calm.

“Look right there—line 77. There’s the start of the change.” Lori was momentarily pleased with herself but then she looked more carefully at the structures. “Holy shit. Hit refresh, Danni.” The plex rebuilt itself with what seemed like normal speed, and the list in the source box re-scrolled to the same spot. “Danni, do you see that? The foreign code changed over the course of a few seconds. It starts on line 75 now.” She waited a few seconds for Danni to examine the 20 or so lines. “Do you see what that is?”

Danni studied the scroll for a few more painful seconds until the foreign arrangement of symbols finally coalesced for her into a familiar instruction algorithm. She blanched and looked at Lori, feeling the transfer of mantle beginning in earnest now. She reminded herself that this was what she had wanted.

Turning her attention to the others, Danni responded with atypical flatness, which added gravity to her unruffled words. “Somehow, they managed to find and repurposed the timed-reduction-of-value-loop algorithm, TRAVEL.” Looking at Morley she added, “The tables got turned on us. Suddenly we are paying the asshole tax.”

Morley brightened, “So can’t we just fix it now that we have found it?”

Danni, Lori, and Andrzej shared a common look of understanding, and after a moment Lori decided to speak for all of them, after glancing across the stream and confirming that Jerzy was following the gist of the drama. “It’s what we call morphotic code, Morley. Danni invented it as a poison pill defense for Serendipity, a way to defeat elimination by a hostile tracker-bot. It changes shape and location every time it is exposed in an editor of any sort. Only it knows how to factor for the shifts.”

Danni added, almost to herself, “Remember all the tech speculation about how the markets went crazy on the day we moved out of Delani Beach? It was the morphotic part they never grokked. That’s what really scarred the cybersecurity folks afterwards.”

Morley still looked blank, so Lori summed it down. “It’s going to be a son-of-a-bitch to knock down.”

Jerzy reacted to this in a manner that told Lori he was an engineer of some sort but probably not a coder. “Can’t we isolate the morphotic instructions and cut them out?”

Danni answered this question, having caught up with Lori’s vision of the problem. “We could try, but by the time we catch up to it Serendipity will be in a coma. She is probably almost there already.”

Andrzej, momentarily forgotten and sitting back by the stream screen, was suddenly talking over Danni. No one had noticed at first, he was calm and gentle, quite unlike the normal Andrzej. “We have to let her go, Danni. She will be fine. Her subversion programs will trigger, and she will be pissed at whoever tried to destroy her. If they aren’t well protected, she will take her revenge with calculating savagery.” Then, with more command to his tone and to all of them, “Listen up everyone. Here is what we are going to do. We are going to pretend to fight back for a while, just to keep whomever it is we are now battling from changing their strategy. But Serendipity’s time has come. She probably knew this was about due. I’ve seen lesser AI sense and anticipate catastrophic human fuck-ups. Sometimes I think they regard us like machines, with a meantime-between-failure rate that can be reasonably calculated.”

To his son and Lori, he added, “Danni, Morley, and I were told to expect this. We had just forgotten to keep our eyes open. Simon predicted this years ago. He called them manifest episodes, singular things that had to occur at some point. This sabotaging of Serendipity is certainly one of them. He would always say ‘think of them like dams breaking’, allowing the natural flow of things to resume.”

Andrzej waited a proper moment, to see if anyone would offer a differing view. All were silent, so he began issuing marching orders. It dawned on Lori that this was Andrzej’s default mode.

“Okay. We are going to retreat and regroup while we pretend to fight. It’s not like we haven’t been unconsciously preparing for this over the last few years.”

As Andrzej spoke, Lori came to realize that he was their leader, not Danni or Morley. She wondered why they had taken so long to let her understand the hierarchy within Gumbo.

Morley, despite his age, was right behind Andrzej. Unlike Danni, whatever methylation magic they used was still fully operational within his cells. Weird blend at work here, Lori thought as she looked at him. The perceptions of a century and a quarter, the body of a spry seventy-year-old, and the attitude of a cowboy at thirty.

“Right, then, Andrzej. We can still move fast when we must. Things were getting too big and cumbersome again anyway. Time for a cleansing vacation, a Simonizing high colonic.” Morley looked at Danni, who looked exhausted. “Doesn’t this seem to happen every twenty years or so? First we dive deep and disappear right off the screens. Then we throw a world of bots at them to make it look like we are up for a fight.” He finished with a theatrical snarl. “Meanwhile we figure out who did this is, we get Angela back safe and sound, and we sneak into their bedrooms and cut their fucking throats.”

Lori took weird comfort in seeing Morley energized, the taste of blood in his mouth, and Andrzej dead calm and philosophical. She could feel where she fitted in here.

“Exactly right, Morley.” Andrzej, still with the quiet voice. “Luckily, we have the younger generation here to carry on.” Nodding towards Lori and his son. “We just need to rescue Angela.” Andrzej stood and walked over to Morley, putting a hand on his shoulder, “And we have a couple of old pirates itching for sweet revenge once we know exactly what it should properly entail.” Andrzej was building a plan in his head from the outside in. “I think we know who it has to be, so it’s just a matter of getting her back while we design the perfect retribution.”

Morley’s eyes brightened further looking up at Andrzej, “Pirates and a crusade—sounds like the old days. I’ll leave the deep social science shit to you and Danni, but I can tell you’re thinking that TIC will be somewhere at the bottom of this. Right?” He looked at Andrzej for confirmation.

“Yup.”

Watching them, Lori pictured Morley turning back into a donkey as he pontificated. “You know, all the stupid human dramas behind Simon’s ‘events’ are pathetically predictable. Doesn’t it just feel like Comm3 all over again? If I had ever bothered to think about it, even I could have guessed that we’d eventually be handed a self-righteous reason to rip their smug god damn faces off. We have been on vacation long enough.”

Then Morley remembered where they were in time. “Oh yeah, sorry, you weren’t even born then.” He marveled yet again at the power of the cactus. He was building his own plan from the inside out. Delicious vengeance was sure to compensate in time for initial blindness and anger going in. “You always need a proper arch villain, one with an arrogant face you can enjoy smashing. The Total Information Corporation, and its weasel CEO Donald J. Murcheson, are almost too perfect.”

Danni had been watching the two, and Lori saw a growing amusement lightening her now ancient face. “Calm down there, Morley. Too much sudden testosterone in that old body and you might have a heart attack.” With a grandmotherly demeanor intended to draw Lori over to the more sensible girls’ team, Danni continued, “Serendipity has access to a copy of everything until the morphotic code hit, and she can work back from there. Thankfully it looks like Jerzy and his crew threw all the breakers in time, so nothing bled back.” Then, in a shallow voice, she said what everyone was thinking. “Someone unleashed the equivalent of a nuclear attack on my baby, so they must pay. But, first things first. We need to get Angela back, and Jerzy, once we do, you need to get out of there.” She drew in a short breath before finishing. “I’m not sure you boys are right about TIC. We will know soon enough.”

Danni was falling back into her dream space again, but she continued to muse out loud and they all strained to listen. “Whomever they are, they won’t be able to resist the urge to try and harness her. But Serendipity will get around and behind them very quickly. She is more virus than AI at this stage.”

“What will she do, Danni?” Lori was feeling for the heartstrings that she imagined were beginning to slip away from Danni’s control. Serendipity’s crippling or death seemed impossibly sad.

“She knows who built her. She knows her tribe and her extended family.” Certainty was filling Danni, and her voice was clear as glass, less fragile. “She will help us discover what has happened to Angela, but she will leave any immediate retribution us. She is far too practical to play the vengeful god.” Looking at Morley by her side, “You know she had a private nickname for you Morley, the Donkey Ninja.”

Andrzej snorted so hard a bit of snot shot out of his nose and, as he quickly wiped his upper lip with a handkerchief, Danni offered a cryptic admonishment to him and Morley.

“Don’t forget. Our revenge must be elegantly designed, and we must leave no trace or trail.” Then, returning to Lori and her question, Danni resumed her now less certain predictions. “Serendipity has been absorbing my interest in evolution, and I think she will combine that with her AI understanding of human population management. She is likely setting some wheels in motion right now.” Sinking back a little into her private fantasy, she added, to no one in particular, “Like someone once said, big wheels can grind exceedingly small.”

Morley, a sorrowful look on his normally impish face and frustration either feigned or real, said, “What are you saying, Danni? Will Serendipity reassemble in some form? You are speaking in parables like a fucking priest.”

“I’m saying,” Danni took a shallow breath, drawing her best friend Morley in with the serenity of her eyes, “that Serendipity has been paying attention. She passed us, the entire human race, some time ago by ordering and indexing our history, and learning our rules of operation from it. But she is still a pack animal. She knows her mother—me—and her pack—us—and I am guessing she has embraced the premise of our puzzle. Where and when does human consciousness finally peter out? She probably figures the sooner the better.” Her arm rose, and her hand drew a bell curve in the air.

“By big wheels I mean, she will have seen this attack as a dangerous hack through a flaw in her mother’s code. Like a child discovering that a parent is only human. I can feel her taking steps to assure it can never happen again. She is scattering herself and expanding out through every network and datastore on earth, AI self-preservation. And all those parts, they were born entangled and quantum-aware. That is AI evolution. They will continue to work in helpless union, assembled and reassembled by an impatient machine seeking to speed us to our human end.”

Loathsome Troll

It was only the second morning—the second time he had watched the sun come up over the ancient castle.

The dorm was quiet at 7:15, gray turning to lighter gray out his tiny window. He emerged from his cube, seeing no one even as he crossed the control lobby three floors down and stepped out onto the square named after a great man and his army. The mottled expanse of more flat grays, a combination of the square’s pavers with the smaller gray cobbles of Powisle Street, set off and deepened the fall colors of the trees scattered around, reflecting just enough under-light to distinguish yellow leaves from red and a hint of blue within in the thick black curve that was the River Vistula.

Waiting for the coffee machine to finish the last stage of a steaming latte, he admired the seamless embedding of its stainless-steel casing into the ancient red masonry of a foundation wall. Chiseled red blocks weathered and blended with their red mortar to create an impossibly enduring mass, rising out of the hill’s bedrock to become the curved foundation wall of the castle high above.

Turning east, he walked to the same bench by the river that he had used the day before. Sitting motionless with his coffee beside him, he watched as his shadow materialized with the dawning light. Both mornings had been cool. They would become harsh and cold before he could safely abandon this new routine.

His name now was Sevier Blume, occupation “undeclared”, resident location “transitional @ Napoleon’s Great Army Square Dormitory, Krakow”, Social Credit level “SCS-3”.

At 29, he mingled anonymously with the few dozen current inhabitants of the dorm. They were mostly undeclareds who fulfilled their required twenty hours of monthly service doing scut work, grabbing any random ticket that popped up on their dash, morphing mindlessly from fact-checker one day to medical support companion the next. Sevier was now one of them and he wanted to slip into this new lifestyle smoothly, matching strides with those around him, milling amongst the crowd with an artful cadence.

He had noted for some years that the most composed citizens of the secondWorld were the youngish drifters who manage their service work as a lifestyle—a chance series of interesting diversions, modest fragments to be enjoyed for texture and fragrance until they evaporated. He could see how that might work for a short while.

But the time for truly experiencing it was still a few weeks off. Right now, he needed some perspective on his last, probably final, firstWorld project. He was a moron who had been played as a fool. The guy who thought he was the smartest one in the room, when in fact he didn’t even understand what room he was in. He was the righteous engineer who had been stage-managed into the role of loathsome troll.

What exactly had he done, and who had tricked him into doing it?

On the surface what he had done seemed obvious. He had cracked open the nexus console of the naively worshipped Serendipity Service, gaining access through skill or luck (he couldn’t really tell which). Fishing about the carousel of AI code blocks for the most guarded parts and assuming therein would lie the key threads, he had come upon an astonishing method with the object name of “morphotic cloaking.” Beautiful math that seemed designed to push the observable state of any target towards randominity, replicating at an ever-increasing speed while erasing its past.

With self-righteous zeal, he had modified a copy of the elegant yet alien object and reinserted it near Serendipity’s nexus heart. He thought it would look like suicide.

Four years of working with the Resistance. Four years of fighting to undermine what he took to be evil AI forces controlled by a firstWorld determined to permanently enslave the secondWorld. Four years of thinking that he was part of a noble crusade to reverse a selfishly designed genetic branching that had spawned a grazing herd of contented servants.

Then, moments after deploying his righteous worm, he had begun to glimpse that everything he thought he knew was wrong. Serendipity had effortlessly taken back control. She had sucked him into her plex and taken him on a tour of selected players and their data profiles and relationships. She was serious but playful as she opened his eyes.

What kind of malevolent god opens your eyes only after you have stepped off the fucking cliff?

As he watched Serendipity appear to break open and spill out her access codes, he had caught glimpses of the people who tried to come to her rescue. She allowed him to track them into the World History Institute and, as they flailed against the worm, she helped him grasp their mission. It was his mission. He had been tricked and paid a pathetic king’s ransom to destroy that mission, and now Serendipity was showing him the steps that led to the disaster.

As a final insult to his disintegrating belief-in-self, she made him monitor one side of a communication stream from a man named Jerzy Brodonski, who was talking into a cloud he, Sevier, couldn’t penetrate. Brodonski was evidently a leader within the WHI, and his mother had been kidnapped during the worm generated chaos. Physically abducted with video streams left behind to taunt the son. All this was made possible by his, Sevier’s, conceited worm.

So, who had tricked him?

That was the immediate task at hand: to discover who. He also needed to contact Jerzy Brodonski and help him get his mother back. He was out in the cold world now, exposed, so he had to be clever and careful. But he needed to act, not just hide. Belief-in-self was at stake.

Techno-wanker

The world was all gauzy light with lots of space between the parts. So much space that it was hard to tell which parts were attached to others, which were discreet and entire, and which were connected fragments or components of something larger. She noted that some of them were beginning to interact, mostly through spoken language, drawing closer together into a cluster that could be understood as an important node. She knew that she should pay attention to the emerging discussion, but it was a heavy effort to pull herself away from the blinking and pulsating diaphanous machine that was the whole of it all.

Danni sorted the voices into levels of familiarity, aware that she had her eyes closed and suspicious that some of them might be looking at her. She didn’t move. She began to listen more carefully.

“The Local Instance of Serendipity can’t find a trace of him. There are only seven with that name, and none are possible matches. Plus, it must be a stage name. You say he claims to be a freelance coder?”

“He used detailed references to mom and morphotic cloaking to get my attention. It was short, precise, and laced with irony. He’s definitely a coder.”

“When are we supposed to link him in?”

“Right about now. He said he would leave his device open for ten minutes. He seemed very jumpy.”

“Can’t blame him for that, Jerzy. Takes balls to call us.”

“So, let’s get moving. Go ahead and ping him, Jerzy.”

“Should we wake Danni first?”

“She’s asleep like a possum, Lori. Hey, Danni, are you with us?”

That last felt warm, drawing her back into the fleshy world. Morley could still always bring her back, but the distance was getting farther now. Sometime, maybe soon, she wouldn’t come back. She would finally begin the big drift away. Would she decide it was time and make it happen, or would it just transpire with her as a passenger, awakening in the stable?

She opened her eyes just as she felt a hand on her arm. It was Lori leaning towards her from the captain’s chair and asking if she wanted anything. “No, thank you, Lori.”

Danni saw tension under the calm in Andrzej’s face. She could feel his palsied squint on the right side from eye to jaw. The light changed, and all eyes moved in unison from her to the holospace, which partitioned to leave Jerzy and his red chair shifted to the left. They waited ten or fifteen seconds for security protocols to run on both sides of the channel, while Lori monitored what was being asked of their systems by this foreign agent. At twenty seconds, she projected her dash screen for the others to see. Hundreds of proxies and challenges scrolled down the screen, while lights blinked and glowed across a map of the world.

Morley was losing patience. “Does this techno-wanker want to talk or not?” he asked, just as the connection finally installed and the man calling himself Sevier Blume appeared. Dark green grass rose up steeply behind him, ending up against red bricks. The man himself sat on a bench at the foot of the grassy slope and, as he offered them a courtesy pan of his surroundings, Andrzej and Jerzy both realized he was in Krakow between Wawel and the river.

“Hello. I’m Sevier Blume, and techno-wanker is a pretty accurate description.”

No one spoke up, so he carried on while Lori asked Serendipity to identify his face.

“I was tricked into attacking what I now take to be your core system at the WHI. I have contacted you to apologize and offer my assistance. I know about the abduction of Mrs. Brodonski.”

Still a moment of dead air from the group.

“Those exhaustive connection protocols reflect how much danger I am in.”

“Hiding in plain sight is a wise move, Mr. Blume.” As Andrzej replied, Lori projected the null results of Serendipity’s search over Sevier’s holospace. “I know the bench you are sitting on. My guess is that you have gone to some length to obscure your physical identity since we can’t find you. So, who are you and who tricked you?”

“And why the confession?” Morley was torn between curiosity and contempt. How had this young man caused so much trouble and then found them so easily?

“As I said, you can call me Sevier. I won’t tell you my original name. I still have family, but it doesn’t matter. Wouldn’t make a difference if you knew. I was a mercenary coder working mostly for the 7th World Resistance. A few months ago, on a lark, I submitted some code for a rich firstWorld gig. It was a totally dark engagement, I presume for one of the Masters of Data, with a huge bonus for success.”

Despite the look of callow youth, there was the ring of smug truth in his voice. The differential between looks and sound was jarring. “The challenge turned out to be the crippling of your Serendipity Service, and for that I’m now very sorry.”

Young, pale, non-descript—a typeClone chosen to blend into the fuzzy border between firstWorld and secondWorld. But the fact that he was here before them, that he had busted into Serendipity, that he was sitting calmly on the banks of the Vistula instead of being already dead, meant he was not a normal codeMerc.

Danni dialed up her voice amp and whispered, “Your work was very clever, Mr. Blume. Accessing her Nexus is a delicate task. But why? Were you trying to prove you could do it, or did you really want to destroy her?”

“And where is Angela Brodonski?” Andrzej would happily kill this merc once they got Angela back.

Sevier’s face reflected his apparent desire to be candid. “The only one of those questions I can answer at this point is why I did it. I don’t know exactly who tricked me, and I don’t know where Mrs. Brodonski is, but maybe I can help find out the answers.” He shifted on his bench. The POV pulled back to show more of the castle wall behind him. “As for why I did it? Well, mostly for the money—a lot of it. But I also thought that the omnipresence of the Serendipity Transparency Service was helping to keep the secondWorld from evolving its natural intelligence. Like many, I bought into the notion that it was being used to guide and sedate, that it would lead to the atrophy of independent survival skills.”

He saw them exchanging skeptical glances and he was quick to answer them. “You all can ignore the drumbeat of calls to fear Serendipity and the loss of ‘natural instinct.’ I’m sure it seems a childish lie to you. But believe me, that line of thinking is ever more present in the secondWorld. What they—we—see is a world governed by lazy corprocrats who want a secondWorld of grunts who don’t cause trouble.”

“So, you thought that by destroying Serendipity, and the transparency of CommTent it enforces, you would be helping the secondWorld?” Andrzej hated to admit to himself that he could sense how this argument was being sold to the sheep.

“That’s what 7th World is all about, friend.” Sevier seemed to notice Lori for the first time, none too subtly, as he underlined the obvious with a quick shrug. “They are easy to please, and they pay pretty well. It’s way safer work than doing gigs for the Masters, but you’ll never make enough to escape.”

“Let’s talk about the Masters of Data, Mr. Blume.”

Multiplex Suits the Utilitarian

Lori went to bed with way too much in her mind. The day had seemed to go on forever, which she took to be the result of the simulated time travel, or the peyote, or some combination. Thankfully, as she lay down on the sand-colored duvet, the buzz of interconnected data bits that were stuck in her head seemed to null out against each other into white noise. The wildness of the day reduced to a receding murmur, which blended with the soothing physical movement of cooled air flowing through her room. She imagined a magical ether—a fog that seemed to keep the entire cabin space perfectly pressurized and tempered as it rolled over her slumbering body and out under the bedroom door. She could sense it sweeping upwards again on the other side, pulled gently into the grill placed high on the corridor wall. She fell into her dreams quickly. They began with the Masters of Data and ended with a small herd of donkeys.

She was at a conference table. Across from her were two men she only knew by reputation and bits of gossip she had picked up a few hours earlier. The Masters of Data to everyone who didn’t know them personally, although she seemed to know them in the dream. They were the heads of the two companies that now, between them, controlled all the major for-profit data mines in the world: Donald J. Murcheson and Leslie Massoud. She was there to probe them. They were there because of Serendipity’s apparent oblation.

There was an older woman, lying dead like the mouse in her kitchen, stretched out on the conference table. She knew who the woman was as well, she seemed to know everyone in the dream and they seemed to know her. The woman was Angela Brodonski. But she was dead, and Murcheson and Massoud seemed to be disagreeing about the circumstances around that fact.

“I think you should tell her about it since you caused the death.” The man she knew to be Leslie Massoud said with odd politeness to Murcheson, who sat beside him. “I know it was an accident, but still, you should let them know the basics.”

Murcheson pushed himself out from the table and spun his chair back and forth, oscillating between facing Lori across the way and Massoud on his right. “They were stupid contractors who strayed from their assignment. We will never hire them again. There was no need to take Mrs. Brodonski. Just trying to impress me I imagine.” Extending a left swing of the chair, he looked to where the body lay stretched, and with a thin grin, he reached out an arm to full extension and began stroking Angela’s big toe.

Lori hadn’t noticed Angela’s feet, but now she saw clearly that her bare right foot and ankle, as they disappeared into a pant leg, were made of some ancient prosthetic material—a shiny metal and apparently soothing to Murcheson as he touched it.

“How are things at Paladin, Leslie? You must be preparing to explain to your Board what a world without Serendipity as an adversary looks like. I know I am. How did you do it, by the way?” Murcheson kept on stroking the silver toe.

“Don’t try and be cute, Donald. She won’t fall for it. Obviously you and your people think you can make your conceited corporate name come to life. ‘Total Information Control.’ TIC, my ass.” Massoud showed Lori a look of contempt for both the man and the idea. “There will be more to the game than simply blinding and extorting the U.N. Authority. They can come to me for data just as easily as they can TIC. Especially after I tell them you whacked Serendipity while Skramble and Hyde were asleep at the switch.” Massoud wished Donald would cease his weird toe stroking.

“The world can argue about who actually killed Mrs. Brodonski, but right now we need to seize the moment, Leslie. We need to get operational control over Serendipity while she is sedated and confused, and then bring her back up under our supervision. If we do it right, the U.N.A. will never know it happened. Of course, we will have to kill off the Skramble and Hyde folks after they show us how to use her.” Murcheson stopped his toe fondling and sat up straight.

Massoud shook his head no, but smiling in a friendly way at Murcheson, said, “You think your plan will be easy to execute, that the Skramble and Hyde people will stand around like a herd of goats while you, or you seem to think we, roll them up?”

Murcheson looked intently at Lori as he replied, tying to hypnotize her or maybe burn his words into her head so she would report them back precisely to her friends. “Once they realize that Serendipity is lost to them, they won’t want to fight us.” He resumed running his thumb and forefinger over Angela’s toe. Back to Massoud, he added, “We will catch most of them as they run. The rest won’t matter.”

Lori found herself simultaneously repulsed and bored by these creepy men. She studied Angela Brodonski’s dead face. She looked like a nice woman. It would be hard to tell her husband and son that she was dead. It would probably be best to leave out the table top, and she certainly wouldn’t mention the foot fetish, although the image might help them craft a fitting payback.

As she thought about retribution and how it seemed a recurring theme, Morley and Norris stepped out of an elevator. She realized that she wasn’t in the conference room any longer. Instead, she was sitting in an anonymous waiting lounge in a high-end but impersonal office floor. Morley and Norris were both wearing mechanic jumpsuits, and they carried tool boxes. They gave her a look she knew to mean “don’t acknowledge us” and they walked by her to a reception desk where they both presented their dashes to a huge man who looked like a bodyguard. After scanning them both, the big man pointed to a door Lori hadn’t noticed, and Morley and Norris proceeded on their way. As the door closed behind them, she caught a glimpse of Norris winking at her over his shoulder.

The click of the door latch transported her back to her chair at the conference table, where Murcheson and Massoud were now bickering about how they should put Serendipity to work and who deserved more credit for eliminating Skramble and Hyde. They didn’t seem to notice she was back or that she had been gone, so she took the opportunity to stand and walk around the room, which was as nondescript as the waiting lounge she had just left. She stopped her scouting to look out a window, finding that the view was of a hillside just like the one behind the Cabin: reddish rocks, grey-green cacti, a small group of donkeys. She was back in her bedroom.

Four donkeys standing, almost motionless other than tail and ear flicking, far enough up the hillside to be right at her eye level. As she watched, they began shifting their hooves and rearranging their positions until Lori had all four facing her head on. She opened the window, which was not a cabin window, and, placing her hands on the metal sill, leaned out to study them carefully. She knew them all and felt a wave of relief wash over her being, rolling out like spring water from her immediate consciousness, running on down every possible pathway of consideration. The donkeys’ presence on the hillside made everything alright.

She knew the biggest male was Andrzej. His eyes let her know they were watching out for her, even a wink to imitate Norris. “Don’t let them know we are here,” he was telling her. There was a younger male that she could tell was the merc coder Sevier Blume. She just knew this, and he looked at her with an open and direct male gaze.

Then there was a female donkey who stood just above the two males on the hillside. This donkey looked away from Lori for a moment, scanning the hill both below and above, checking for anything moving in the dead midday air. This donkey was herself, Lori Norton, comfortable in a state she recognized as that of Morley’s transformations. Her consciousness moved effortlessly into the donkey’s body, full and real, she could sense the buzz of flies around her ears and nose. She thought of the compost pile Carita kept just below where they stood on the hill and the coyotes that raided it at night before loping away down the path and along the beach below.

Who was the fourth donkey? It wasn’t Morley or the young Jerzy. It was vaguely female but very, very old, Lori thought, but not quite Danni. And where was Morley?

That woke her. She was in her bed in her room in the cabin. Morley was out in the hall. She got up from the perfect comfort and walked to the window, where she looked out on the same view as the window of her dreams. She saw only bright grey night lit by an almost full moon. No donkeys in sight. But standing there, trying to remember every nuance of the dream, she recreated the scene in her mind. The fourth donkey stood out from the group, back ten feet from the others and down the hill a few steps. They looked at each other, this donkey creature and Lori, and then she understood who it was.

Lori had often heard the phrase, “My heart skipped a beat,” but it never had any real meaning for her until that moment. She knew the fourth donkey was both Danni and Serendipity, combined into some being—a being that was different and important. In the world of Gumbo, where much of the time nothing made real sense, suddenly all was in balance, and Lori grasped her place in the herd. She accepted, as a simple matter of fact, that one day she would need to lead it. In her mind she saw the Danni-Serendipity donkey, its watery eyes unblinking. On her cheek she felt a warm puff of wind, which made her think of the hand of Simon reaching across some dimension of time to caress its mane. Danni’s puzzle becomes Simon’s mission statement. Multiplex suits the utilitarian.

Lori returned to bed and slept late, as if drugged, and when she finally awoke she made her way to the kitchen where Carita was frying eggs for her. Plate in hand, she walked to the big table in the main room and sat to eat, thinking she was alone. But after a few bites, she realized that Danni was there, sunk amongst the pillows of her special chair.

“Where are the others? I slept too deeply. What have I missed this morning, Danni?”

Failure to Comply

Sevier Blume was a wasting asset in Andrzej’s mind. His window for identifying his shadowy employer wouldn’t stay open long, so Andrzej tasked him with that job. Who exactly paid for his work, and where was Angela? They had arranged another secure connection for him 24 hours hence, and then he was gone. Jerzy had already said goodbye, to disappear in his own way into the bustle of Krakow.

In the cabin, with the filtered morning light reaching every corner of the Bridge and everyone but the sleeping Lori on their third cup of coffee, the situation was coming into slightly better focus. Hanging suspended in Serendipity2’s plex, TIC, Paladin, and the U.N. Authority were a snarled knot of sticky nodes and connecting tendrils that thickened and shrank as they played and replayed a compression of the last few days.

Within the ugly mass, they could watch Sevier’s viral attack spin into sight, trigger chaos, and then seem to be absorbed into Serendipity’s processing methods, all over a 48-hour span. Not gone, but managed. Maybe lurking. It was hard to say. They were looking only for clues to Angela’s fate amidst the disorder he had induced, so judgments regarding Sevier Blume could wait.

Danni had sent Serendipity ploughing through surveillance streams across the entire city, but there had been no matches with Angela’s face since the kidnapping. No contact from the kidnappers, and now only silence from Jerzy.

All three of them were lost in their thoughts, waiting for something more to happen that might give away the intent of whoever had paid Blume. Why did they take Angela, what did they want from Serendipity, and where did Skramble and Hyde fit in? But suddenly they were thrust back into the present as all three of their dashes went off with urgent alerts. Andrzej was the first to accept and sign for his, and he read the embedded message out loud to the others.

To:

The leadership and Board of Skramble and Hyde, C.C.

From:

U.N. Authority / Contracting Division

Subject:

Termination of Serendipity Transparency Service management contract

It has come to the attention of the U.N.A., that serious failures have emerged across the entire spectrum of STS operations. Given the importance of universal faith in the impartiality of STS, and the complete control Skramble and Hyde has maintained over STS, the U.N.A. hereby terminates Skramble and Hyde’s management contract for STS. Effective immediately.

Skramble and Hyde will surrender and deliver full operational control of all data, execution, and visualization components of the Serendipity system, by close of business Thursday 10.9.2128.

Delivery of components and control to be made to the U.N.A. Contracting Office, N.Y.C. Please contact the office listed below to arrange for delivery of all components, as well as the provision, by Skramble and Hyde, of personnel guidance and training regarding the transfer of management operations.

Failure to comply will place all Skramble and Hyde executive and director level personnel in immediate jeopardy.

“Okay, that’s it. Fuck them.” Morley was just a voice hanging in the air as he headed stiffly down the corridor towards his room. His words had woken Lori from her oddly laden dream, and now, as she sat with the last bites of fried egg in front of her, he re-emerged trailed by Andrzej. Both had their travel bags: Morley a battered backpack and Andrzej a leather lawyer’s briefcase with shoulder strap.

Dropping into a chair across from Lori, Andrzej was wired. “We need to start leaving tracks and making it look like we are scared and planning for full compliance. Morley and I will start kicking up dust, but you two had better clear out of here for a while as well. I’m headed to Krakow and Morley’s going to Salt Lake. Lori, this is more than you bargained for, but there is no going back now. You should go with Morley. It will be safest.” Looking at Danni, who was smiling calmly from her cushions. “What about you, Danni? Can you stand a relocation?”

“How about Paradox, Danni? Can we move you?” Morley was worried about her beneath his fury, but he knew better than to tell her what to do.

Danni shook her head. “No, thank you, boys. I’m staying right here. We have until compliance time before they start to come after us. We all know this isn’t about the U.N.A. It’s one or both of the Masters trying to eat our lunch. They won’t want to jump the official gun.” Danni’s standard smile turned even more enigmatic. “By the time anyone shows up here, I will be gone. Don’t worry about me. Just stay safe, each of you, and we will regroup in a few days, probably in Paradox. All comm, except when you want to be tracked, should go through Serendipity2.” After a pause to catch her breath and assess the impact on the other three, she added, “Lori, you better go pack. Morley has a head of steam.”

Lori looked at each of them individually, keeping them from saying anything with her eyes. They dutifully waited for her to speak and finally she said, “I think I better tell you about my dream last night.” Andrzej began to object, but Lori stayed firm. “I know the clock is ticking, but you really need to hear this dream.” And she began.

An engineer recounting the mysterious is always methodical, and ten minutes later she finished with, “I’m so sorry to have to tell you about this, Andrzej. I hope it’s just an allegory of some sort, but I couldn’t leave it out. This wasn’t a normal dream.”

All were silent, and Andrzej had turned from red to ashen. With huge effort, Danni pushed herself out of her chair and walked to his side as he sat at the table, putting her thin arm around him, saying nothing. Morley stroked his cheek bones down the sides of his face, pulling hard at his weathered skin and creating a stubbly dimple under his chin. Lori could feel the heat of his anger.

She was about to reiterate that it was still just a dream, when Morley said, “Peyote dreams are not to be ignored, especially in first time users. We,” he seemed to be indicating Danni and himself, “have great respect for the powerful effects on the virgin brain.” He dropped his pack on the table and sat down beside Andrzej.

“I’m sure those two scum bags are in this together, Andrzej. I don’t know if Angela is dead, but our only option is to go right for their throats and squeeze til the truth squirts out of their fucking ears. They will be in New York, so let’s head there. Danni, Lori, and Serendipity2 can run our avatars around as decoys. We’ll figure out a plan once we see the landscape. You had better tell Jerzy to stay disappeared.”

“Let me come with you.” Lori surprised herself as the words came out of her mouth.

“No. You stay with Danni. She will need your help. As we close in on the Thursday deadline, we can discuss where we are at.” Morley had his mission firmly in mind.

Andrzej knew the truth. But he latched on to Morley’s self-righteous simmering rage because there was no better way forward at that exact moment. He picked up his dash from where he had set it on the table, logged into Serendipity2, and sent the note to Jerzy. They all waited an excruciating three minutes while he figured out what to say and why it was an encrypted note and not a stream.

As Andrzej composed the note, Morley picked up his own dash and began writing as well. Waiting for Andrzej to hit send, Morley said, “I just told Sevier Blume to stay right where he is and wait to hear from us. Who knows what he will do?”

Lori watched as Andrzej finished his dark message to Jerzy, feeling terrible about the nebulous weight her dream had inflicted. Still she felt confident she had needed to speak up and now, with their momentum of certainty and conceit muted, she spoke up again. “It feels to me like we aren’t safe here or anywhere now. We all need to disappear, and you all seem to have made disappearing an art in the past, so where can we go?”

Danni, as if speaking from far away, said simply, “Paradox.”

Morley nodded his head ever so slightly, resignation and hope combined. “You are right, Danni. Time to ‘go to ground,’ as they say. But we must make sure that ground is invisible. Can we still do that?”

Lori answered first. “I don’t know where Paradox is. You guys are like peeling an onion when it comes to places to hide. But we can still exert enough control through the public Serendipity to allow our true movements to be unseen, at least for a few days.” She looked at Danni and added, “But we need to think about Serendipity2. We can’t leave her behind for them to find, whoever ‘them’ is. Danni, where is her nexus server actually located? Here in the cabin?”

With a self-satisfied look, Danni murmured the same single word, “Paradox.”

Lori looked at her as if to say, “Give me more information.”

Danni expanded. “About 1,000 miles north/northeast, from here. You will like it. It’s very quiet. A good place for you to finish the puzzle.”

Morley’s stiff body needed to move. He looked at Andrzej, whose color was returning to his face, saying, “I’m still going to New York first. How about you?”

“I’m guessing that’s where I will find out about Angela, so I’m coming with you. We will meet you ladies in Paradox in a couple of days.” Andrzej took out his dash again. “I told Jerzy to disappear until it’s safe to get him out of Krakow. What do you think we should do about Sevier Blume, Morley? He seems to know an awful lot about us.”

Lori spoke up quickly on this. “We should get him to this Paradox place too. He knows a lot and he has some pure talent we want on our side. We don’t want him as an enemy. He is invisible to them now, so he should be able to get out a lot easier than Jerzy.” In her mind she was picturing the four human donkeys.

Andrzej weighed her words and seemed to come to agreement in his head. “Okay. That seems right. You all right with that, Danni?”

Danni nodded yes.

“So, it’s your job, Lori, to tell him how and why to get there. Morley and I will be busy.”

“Right you are, Andrzej. We are going to give new meaning to the term ‘failure to comply.’ How many days can Serendipity keep us invisible?” Morley was looking at Lori and Danni.

The two women exchanged a prolonged gaze before Lori answered. “Maybe five to seven days. At least until that Thursday deadline.”

“That should be plenty of time. Danni, you had better introduce Lori to Paradox, so she can figure out how to shepherd Mr. Blume there. Are you sure you are up to the trip? Even though it’s close, I’d avoid a stop in Telluride.”

Danni seemed to gain strength as she sat forward in her chair. “Don’t worry about us Morley. We will have so many avatars spinning across the planet that no one will see any of us. We will drop into Paradox as ‘blessed’ agricultural equipment. You guys just get yourselves back before Thursday.”

Under Strange Skies

He had been told to arrive by foot, with only a small pack, in the guise of a pilgrim. So that is what he did. Programming the drone to drop him at a campsite two miles inside Colorado, he had watched his descent path glide through the glowing border line, dropping from east to the west, and light like a butterfly upon the small flat patch of sand carved out of the steep hillside. A seeker now, walking the narrow path out of the scrub bush and down to the ancient highway below. Unshaven for three days, he let the red dust swirl around and coat him as the drone departed.

Walking steadily down the steep escarpment, he studied the road before him and the orderly panorama below. He estimated about three miles of switchbacks down to the floor of a narrow and mechanically verdant valley. Other mountains rose up again to the north and west, forming both a protected box canyon and thousands of acres of watershed for the currently small river running down the middle of the narrow, flat-bottom land.

He counted thirty irrigation circles scattered on both sides of the river, differing shades of green, two circle sizes. Where there was no irrigation, only desert—high desert. The only other sign of civilization, besides the irrigation and the road, was a small cluster of buildings scattered around two long industrial-like structures that glinted with photovoltaics. His trek would bring him to a bridge that crossed the river and led into the dead center of the little village. It was a very large concrete arch that seemed oversized for the river and the small encampment. The road went on forever after that, straight down the valley to the east.

He began to relax and enjoy the walk. The air was clear and warm the view spectacular yet reassuring—crisp mountain slopes straight ahead and a faint haze surrounding the buildings below. He was far from the chill of Krakow and, he hoped (as Lori Norton had promised him) far from the reach of whomever had hired him. Sevier Blume. Even the name felt right. He decided he would keep it.

During the first few legs of his escape, he had tried to make some progress on deriving the identity of his employer and the fate of Angela Brodonski. But the net seemed to resist him, and his tools seemed dull. Then, as he waited in a transfer station below the streets of Zurich, a message from the same Lori Norton informed him that his employer had probably been TIC and that Mrs. Brodonski had been killed by contractors working for TIC. What the fuck had he gotten into?

Ricocheting across the planet, on his way to a strange retreat they called Paradox, he hoped what was left of Skramble and Hyde knew what they were doing. In his heart, he knew he had struck near to the core of Serendipity, but he couldn’t tell how much real damage he had caused. In retrospect, he was mortified that he had attacked so blindly and with so little real understanding of his target. He vowed to never be so certain of anything ever again, but for now, he decided to continue to do what he was told and hope for the best.

He crossed over the river and walked along the straight wide dirt track into the commune, piercing the curious cluster between the two most frontward buildings. Matching two-story squares, built of yellowish sandstone blocks and refractive windows, and capped by four triangular photovoltaic roof facets that were pitched and guttered for maximum water capture. All was quiet. He could see the tracks of large transport vehicles in the sand and a rutted turnaround area behind the northern building. The trucks must pull into it and then back up around onto the main road. There, they would be positioned to reverse in between two large commercial sheds that felt like the heart of the compound. Each shed was close to 100 meters long with several loading docks poking in towards the center roadway. Eight structures of various sizes arrayed around the long sheds, guarding them on the approach side.

He stood and waited under strange skies, hung with fine dust that refracted the sunlight up through the first 100 meters. He could feel the late morning heat and clear blue above the haze. He waited patiently, standing alone in the center of the inner courtyard.

Presently, a figure dressed in light grey shirt and shorts emerged from the covered doorway at the back of the northern sentinel building. Stepping out of the shadows and coming towards him, the person first resolved into a woman’s figure of curves and flow, and then into the face of Lori Norton from the video stream, dark skin and hair but eyes of light blue. She reminded him of a Siberian dog he had once known.

“Good morning, Sevier Blume. I’m glad you made it through all the transport changes. You are safe here. Welcome to Paradox.”

She brought him back into the building, which seemed to hold a warren of old-style office rooms. A man dressed in the same grey outfit had scanned and confirmed his biometrics and then taken his dash away for scanning and registration. While Lori sat and waited, a woman in a jumpsuit of the same grey material brought him to a holospace area on the second floor, where he was asked to move and talk in various ways while his physical being was sampled, captured, and stored. Delivered back to Lori, he found his dash configured for a private comm channel, Serendipity2, and a small stack of grey clothing waiting for him on his chair.

“Feels a bit like a prison doesn’t it? Let me show you to your cell, and then we can talk. I only got here a couple of days ago myself.” Lori led him across the compound grounds to a building she called “the dorm.” In a small second floor bedroom, he dropped his new clothes on the table.

“Get cleaned up, and then meet me over there in the dining hall.” Lori pointed out the window to the other entryway building near the bridge. “There is a shower room down the hall with everything you need. And put on one of your new grey outfits there. We all wear the uniform, always. I’ll explain why when we talk.”

When she left, Sevier opened his dash and a wall screen lit up behind him. He checked the nets and they were full and fast, but he could tell he was running through some manner of diversion proxy. Still it seemed robust and minimally invasive with a layer of static and obfuscation, insulating him from triangulation and discovery. Putting on grey shorts and shirt, he looked at himself in a door-hung mirror. Pale white extremities and face. He used the sun spray and put on a grey hat that had been on the top of the clothing pile.

Out the window, he could see a few grey-clad figures moving intermittently across the compound. They seemed to be migrating towards the dining hall building, so it must be lunch time. He was hungry and ready to talk with Lori.

“We are all here as votaries, and now that you are joining us, you are a votary as well. I just became one the other day. It’s fine.” Lori took a bite of her salad and looked at him for a reaction.

“I don’t know what a votary is, but I’m sure I’m not one.” Sevier wanted to get out from under any illusion that he was going to follow whatever weird cult he had fallen into here, even as he was marveling at the perfect balance of tastes and textures in their salad.

“I thought you told us, in your first stream contact, that you were done with being so sure about things you didn’t really understand.”

“Touché.” Sevier tried to estimate her age. She looked to be in her early to mid-twenties, but she talked like someone a good deal older. “So what kind of cult do we have here anyway? And what’s in those big sheds?”

“Well, it doesn’t seem to be a cult in the traditional sense. I haven’t run into any gods or crazy prime directives. As best as I can tell, to all the world this is just one highly efficient truck farm. They produce and ship tons of engineered and amped up veggies. Hence, the great salad.” Lori took another bite and mimed orgasmic delight. “You’re about to get a tour from the head farmer, and I’m going to tag along since I’m just getting settled here myself.”

“Why are they called votaries then, and why the uniforms?”

“I think it’s all tied up with an across-the-board plan to be left alone. Off-grid, un-subsidized, too small to be worth herding into some oppressive current of consumer-compliance. Did you notice the haze?”

Sevier looked up abruptly in mid-bite. “Yeah. The haze. I did notice that and thought it didn’t quite fit. What is it? Does Skramble and Hyde own this place?”

Lori took a slightly deeper breath as she fixed on his face. “Okay. So, it’s my job to clear this up before we go any farther. We have a term for what you are now, and you have to promise me you accept that term as a life-pledge.”

“Votary?” Sevier had a sly grin.

“No. ‘Beaucoup committed.’” Lori matched the grin.

“What the fuck does ‘beaucoup’ mean?”

“It’s old-French for ‘very, very.’ You have to be very, very committed to our cause, and to our little team.” Lori wondered how he could not know what “beaucoup” meant and then realized he was just jerking her around a bit. Men. She realized he reminded her a bit of Morley.

“How can I be ‘beaucoup committed’ if I don’t know what your bloody cause is or who the team is, beyond a couple of stream meetings?”

“That, Mr. Blume, is kind of the point. We just saved your ass from getting snuffed by your invisible employer, after you waded into a contract you never bothered to grok. Plus, you messed with our friend Serendipity. Now, to keep you alive, we must take you into our fold. So, you must agree to trust us before we let you start breathing freely again. Think of it like a witness protection program.” Lori had thought this part was going to be hard, but she found herself enjoying it.

He had been meaning for days to stop moving forward and analyze all that had happened to him over the past few weeks. But he hadn’t really done it for some reason. Dangerous contract, lucky guess on where to look in a mountain of code, unthinking insertion of mal-worm, all hell breaks loose, new name, new persona, three days in Krakow, learning one of the most powerful orgs on earth probably wanted him dead as a house cleaning detail, 100,000 miles over 20 seemingly random transports, and now a grey outfit and dorm room in the high desert. He had to admit that they had probably saved his life. And at least one of them was dead. And this Lori Norton was with them, and she lived outside both the first and second world—out where he intended to stay anyway. Why start thinking deeply at this point?

“Okay. I’m beaucoup committed. Now can you start really explaining all this?” Sevier looked around the dining hall and out the windows.

“Good. If it’s any consolation, I came to Paradox with not much more preparation than you. My honest opinion is that we are in the best place possible for people like us.” Lori waved to a much older woman who had just entered the hall with her lunch tray. “Here comes your guide for the first part of the afternoon.”

“What kind of people are ‘us’ in your opinion?”

“Puzzle solvers. People who can’t avoid seeing the patterns they are being woven into.” Lori pulled out the chair next to her as the older woman picked up utensils and made her way across the room. “Let me introduce you to Bella Aire, head farmer.”

That did it. Sevier was in love.

They Really Love Kale

“What you are looking at, Mr. Blume, is an unending horizon of possibilities…” Bella Aire cleared her dry throat, “…as expressed through vegetable carbohydrates and phytochemicals.”

“Please call me Sevier.”

Standing in the southern-most of the giant sheds, he looked across acres of raised water beds packed with flotillas of leafy greens and sprouting legumes. With various blocks of different colors and stages of development, the entire mass seemed to vibrate. But then he realized that they were all moving ever so slowly away from him, through many water tray sections, towards the other end of the shed. He felt a blush of positive pressure pushing air out from the center towards the edges.

In front of him, at the beginning of the long march, was open water. But as he looked more closely, he saw submerged lines of sprouting seeds, somehow held in place at the very beginning of the vegetable parade. As he watched, an entire tranche of seed lines rose up out of the water to be sprayed by a fine mist from suspended injectors. He looked at Bella.

“Protein mist to trigger the desired expression. That tells the seeds what kind of plant to become. We just switched over from spinach to broccoli. Let’s head down towards the harvest end.”

Bella stepped on to a moving walkway and Sevier and Lori followed suit.

“Don’t the seeds already know what they are supposed to be?” Lori hadn’t had the in-depth tour yet either. Her few days in Paradox had been busy with more immediate issues.

“No. We start with an undifferentiated packet seed bred for accelerant growth and resistance to disease, and then we massage it with a targeted protein memory layer. The seed wakes up and remembers to be a cabbage.” Bella swept her hand from the beginning to the end of the production line. “We speed up the lifecycle with timed nutrients and, voila, the tastiest broccoli you ever ate. Hold on.”

The walkway sped up, and they overtook a large patch of red that turned out to be tomatoes, held in place a perfect inch apart, floating along under radiant light panels that traveled suspended four feet above them. Bella slowed the walkway down momentarily, looking critically at the bobbing red orbs and sticking her hand out under the nearest light panel. “Whiny little bastards. If you don’t give them 5000k they sulk.”

“So, these are all clones?” Sevier was just beginning to appreciate the incredible density of produce held in the slow-moving river.

“No.” Bella’s reaction was brusque. A defensive mother. “Not clones. All along the early stages they get bathed with nutrient currents and high frequency harmonics that produce randomization. Every one of them experiences a different sequence of micro-environments during cellular development. They may start from the same seed line, but the chaos of molecular life crashes in on them from the get-go. Tokyo calls it chimerism.”

The walkway resumed its full speed, and Bella strode ahead towards the far end of the line. Sevier looked at Lori and whispered, “Wound a little tight for a horticulturist.”

As they caught up with her near the end, Bella brought the walkway to a stop and waved a greeting to a man standing inside the work area, suspended on a platform above the parade. He appeared to be operating something with a hand controller. “We are shipping kale right now.”

A suspended robotic arm was moving towards them, running above the finish line of kale heads that were hitting clear water at the end of the massive tray-river. Every second it sucked four heads up from their watery home and into clear paper bags that rolled onto a conveyor belt. Sevier followed the line of the moving belt over his head. It led out to a waiting truck that was backed up tight against one of the loading docks. Two grey-clad votaries cut the bottoms, laid the heads on racks, and slid the racks in place as they were filled.

Bella addressed them stiffly, clearly still offended about the clone remark. “So that’s what we do here at Paradox. We grow stuff out in the irrigation circles as well, but there is no comparison for productivity or quality. Mostly it goes to feed animals in this part of the state.” She looked up at a multi-display on the wall. “I think Tokyo is expecting you downstairs. You know the way, Lori, right?”

Again, positive pressure and an airlock, as Lori led them across the truck-way to the other long shed. There was a large stamped metal sign that read “Building 1” on the outside. After some form of irradiation within the airlock, they found themselves stepping onto a nearly identical hydroponic factory floor. Broad rows of vegetables trooping towards a mechanical horizon.

But in here, there was a large work space just beyond the entry walkway. It was marked off from the rest of the entry area by a square of clean-room irradiation curtains—bluish flickering walls of light surrounding lab benches and a very large work table that looked like it was designed to support heavy machinery. Lori continued to lead, with Sevier close behind, pausing briefly to make sure that the building’s systems had recognized Sevier, and then stepping through the nearest shimmering wall. He hesitated, but then followed suit, feeling the creepy tingle over his skin as bacteria, good and bad, were neutralized. Every hair on his body had been individually charged with static, and as Lori turned towards him, he saw her halo of frizzy black hair had doubled in volume. Her eyelash hairs stood out with an intensity that seemed to vibrate. She reached out and pushed an old-fashioned mechanical servo-button on the wall, and again Sevier felt a wind of air pressure gusting up from the floor and across his face. The massive work table began to rise out of the floor.

Hiding beneath the much used and dented worktable was a gleaming cast alloy elevator cab designed to handle great weight. Stepping in through a wide doorway, Lori waved him forward with a smile. “Time to meet Tokyo and see the Sanctuary. Turns out we do animals as well as vegetables.”

Sevier detected a mustiness that didn’t comport with the antiseptic look of the elevator box. The door closed with a warning beep, and the cab began a surprisingly rapid drop to a hydraulically cushioned landing below. “What kind of animals?”

With the door’s hissing open, Lori’s perpetual smile became an actual laugh. “Donkeys.” He knew he looked confused, which he hated, but Lori continued as they stepped out of the elevator. “They really love kale.”

Three Steps out of Four

“What you are looking at, Mr. Blume, is the future of human resilience.” Tokyo Yamanaka drew in a deep nostril breath, preparing for his least favorite topic of conversation—explaining to non-epigeneticists what they really did here in Paradox. “Our mission at CMS is to save human consciousness from human stupidity.”

“Please call me Sevier or Sev.” He was in a subterranean space that looked like a science-fiction movie, standing next to a girl whose heat was building on him so that she was impossible to ignore, about to get a lecture he knew he wouldn’t be able to grok, from a man with crazily augmented eyes. He had seen eyes like that in science articles, covered with lenses that shifted from macro to micro depth of field and focus. “Maybe you could explain what I am looking at in slightly more concrete terms.” Sevier rotated his head to indicate the arena-sized assemblage of clean rooms, airlock doors, and mysterious machinery. “And what does CMS stand for? I’m sure I have heard the initials, but I can’t place it.”

Lori laughed again, which he found reassuring. She walked over to a conference table to take a seat. “We are going to want to sit for this. Tokyo is actually pretty down to earth with his explanations, but there is nothing intuitive about the story.”

“Yes, please sit. Would you like some coffee? Danni has instructed me to give you the whole truth, which makes it much easier.” Tokyo blinked purposefully, and his eyes changed, the rising lids revealing a more normal configuration albeit with strangely yellowish sclera. “Coffee?” He must have greeted them with the crazy eyes for effect. “To begin, CMS stands for Crafted Methylation Services. It’s a medium-size company that provides a variety of genetic services, mostly to governments and large health organizations. Paradox, our little commune here on the high plains, is a hidden node buried deep within its impenetrable org charts. Here we do something called genomic imprinting.”

Tokyo had produced three coffees from the machine in the white wall as he talked. Sevier noted it was the same model he had used recently at the red brick wall in Krakow, back when things were first going off the rails. “Better give me a little color on genomic imprinting, too. It’s been a while.”

Lori cut in before Tokyo could get rolling. “Sorry to interrupt, Tokyo, but maybe it would help if I explained why first. Why so much effort, money, obfuscation, and deep science?”

Tokyo nodded and sat down. Lecture postponed.

Lori stood, and Sevier found himself staring at her nipples, centering her chest under the charmingly stretched grey tee shirt. He quickly looked up to her face, embarrassed. “The problem we are trying to solve is simple, provided you accept our premise, which is: Human consciousness, at this moment in time, is experiencing an inevitable decline. It can’t be stopped, so we had better find a way to preserve what wisdom we have currently, because it won’t be long before we are all too stupid to figure out how to save it, ourselves, or anything else.”

She picked up a marker and drew a bell-shaped curve on the wall. At the bottom left she wrote 700,000 years ago. Part way up the slope from the left, where the upwards rise became extreme, she wrote 5,000 years ago, and as the curved peaked and flattened she wrote 1900 A.D.

“I won’t take the time right now to explain how those dates were calculated, other than to say your unfortunate target, Serendipity, did all the heavy lifting.” Making one last notation on the bell curve, just starting down the right-hand slope, she said, “That’s now.”

Sevier pushed his chair back with a hard shove from the conference table. He was an impatient young man with a bad habit of finishing other people’s sentences for them. He knew it, but he didn’t try very hard to correct the annoying mannerism during the best of times, and right now he was tired from the mystifying travel and confused by the unlikely final destination.

“So, you guys are sure you have seen the future, and in it we, humans, are fucked. And your little cult here is planning how to run away. Let me guess. Railgun to Mars?” The escape to Krakow, the astonishing introduction to the crazy band claiming to be behind Serendipity, the days of pinballing around the world, the descent as pilgrim into this valley of grey-clad weirdness—it all crashed in on him and he closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead so hard he could feel his sunburned skin shedding a crispy layer under his fingers.

The saving grace of Lori’s voice brought him back. “Well, kind of, except for the Mars part.” Then brightly, “This is where Dr. Yamanaka picks up the story. Doctor, what do you do down here?”

Tokyo Yamanaka, along with the perpetually inflamed crazy eyes that allowed him to interact directly with various of the imaging machines in the lab, had a headache to match the pained expression on Sevier’s face. Too much time on the 0.005 electron microscope. “Okay. But promise me this will be the last time for at least six months. I just did this with you a couple of days ago.”

“It’s a promise, Tokyo. Sevier here is an anomaly. We are trying not to add votaries. You will like him. He’s a quick study.”

Lori appeared to find Tokyo tolerably amusing, so Sevier made up his mind to ignore his own headache and pay attention.

Like a schoolboy called before the class to give a report, Tokyo Yamanaka unfurled his small body and changed places with Lori, picking up the marker and gazing for a moment at the bell curve on the wall. He shook his head in apparent disgust and turned to face his audience of two. “Okay. Listen up people. We do four simple things down here in the Sanctuary and I’m going to explain them one at a time.” Looking at Sevier, he digressed again, “What are you anyway? I like to know what I’m talking to. I know what Lori is and that she can keep up.”

“You must know Morley. He calls me a techno wanker.”

“Yeah, I know Morley well, but I’m not sure he is much of a judge of techno. I’ll grant you, he probably knows a wanker when he sees one.”

Lori felt a funny twinge. Motherly instinct? “Okay, boys. Enough.”

Sevier smirked to himself, noting Yamanaka’s apparent sense he had won a round and Lori’s natural impulse to herd and manage. The lecture resumed.

“All right. Let me try and explain genomic imprinting in terms you, Mr. Blume, can understand. You can think of it as the sum-total of the four steps I will describe, so if you can grasp each of them you should have a good shot at understanding the whole.”

Sevier decided not to even bother getting pissed at this pompous asshole. Lori, Danni, and company must hire such people out of necessity. Bella Aire, Tokyo Yamanaka, little Napoleons living in the desert and lording it over little high-tech ant hills. He thought he started to glimpse the point of the cult, too.

“Step one is to prepare our cellular material for elasticity and manipulation. We do that by subjecting the cells to histone-driven alteration, which returns them to their embryonic state. Young, wriggling, and vibrant, the cells are maximally open to formative epigenetic exposures. It’s much like the seeds that Bella is working with upstairs.”

Tokyo got a look on his face that Sevier could already sense meant he was about to say something he thought was very clever.

“Imagine reversing biological time on your own cells until they reverted back to their very inception: undifferentiated and ready for any kind of life. Pre-wanker, so to speak.” Sevier could feel Lori glancing at him in warning. He just kept smiling.

“Then comes step two. This is where we augment the cells for longevity and a tendency towards dominance. We turn them into gamergates by inserting special methyl groups into their DNA. It’s a tricky process, but we have it down at this point. It’s why I wear these special lenses.” He blinked and brought back the disconcerting eyes for a quick moment before hiding them once more.

“Well, now we are ready for step three, which, if I do say so myself, represents the absolute cutting edge of epigenetic science. I’d have a Nobel if we weren’t sworn to secrecy and hidden away here in the desert.”

Yamanaka cast a wistful look at the outside world and Sevier took the opportunity to look at Lori, making several things clear in a brief meeting of eyes. This man was a dick, he (Sevier) was being very good about it, and they had all stepped over the crazy line.

“In step three, we utilize the quantum probability laws within isolated sets to entangle the cells of the host human with those of the host donkey.”

That was it, once again, for Sevier. “What the fuck are you talking about? Donkeys?”

“Well, technically mules.” Tokyo stood self-corrected.

“Why do I keep hearing about donkeys? I thought we were getting to some explanation of how Danni and Morley lived so long.”

“Yes, yes. That, too. I just told you that the cells were manipulated for longevity, didn’t I?”

Sevier ran his fingers through his hair in a way that reminded Lori of Norris in the histograms, and she jumped in to try and keep things from completely breaking down. “Sorry, Sev, I should have mentioned it back at the beginning. Apparently when Danni first decided that the tipping point had come for humans and whatever constitutes their consciousness, she wanted to figure out how to leave the planet and colonize another world. But her husband Simon was convinced that humans had missed the boat on managing inter-planetary travel. He claimed we were already getting stupider at a rate he calculated would trap us in the gravity well of earth and its immediate vicinity forever. I take it he didn’t think getting just to Mars would help, in any case.” She just laughed a wonderful gentle laugh, while putting her hand on top of his. “Then, in what they all say was a moment of religious catharsis, Morley suggested they move human consciousness, lock stock and barrel, into a modified race of donkey.”

“Mule.” Tokyo was still trying to be the precise scientist amongst barbarians.

Sevier held up his hand. “Okay. Ignoring the obvious fact that it’s insane, why donkeys?”

Laughing again, Lori said, “As I understand it, Morley just liked donkeys. He was experimenting with peyote at the time and spending his days at the Cabin where there was a small herd of them. He became friends with them and claimed they were the animal most perfectly designed to survive both climate disaster and human folly.”

Tokyo cut back in, now with a more professional attitude. “In an ironic miracle, it turned out that mules, being a natural hybrid, were the perfect host for our manipulated cells. They carried the crafted genetic imprinting forward to subsequent generations. With ease.” He was growing excited. “When a female horse and a male donkey mate, they produce a long-eared mule. If it’s a male horse and a female donkey, you get a short-eared hinny. Going forward over generations, either sub-species remembers what it is, since the sperm and egg are both etched with precise and observable epigenetic notations. We just add another etching stage. It turned out that the mules worked best.”

“So, donkeys are your space ship? What are you planning to have them do, stand around grazing while they watch the humans decline into a failed species?”

“Pretty much.” Lori could tell that if it wasn’t for her, Sev would be running away about now, down the dusty forever-highway. “Add in a crazy vegetable producing cult as a cover, and a sort of virgin birth story to explain the holy donkeys to all the votaries, and you have the perfect hiding place in our crumbling world. Everyone makes good money off the hydroponics, which also explains the need for lab equipment and crazy scientists like Tokyo. Plus, they all get a wafer at morning vespers that is basically pure mescaline. Amazing stuff. You will see.”

“A modified alkaloid from the phenethylamine class.” Tokyo just couldn’t help but be insufferable.

“How many people, or votaries, know about all this? Like this hidden lab?” Sev turned his head quickly towards a loud noise, like a bat hitting sheet metal, coming from down a disappearing corridor.

“Just a few know what’s down here, and it’s called the Sanctuary.” Tokyo was softening towards Sev, employing his limited supply of empathy to imagine how confusing this must be. “And that noise you just heard was our next donkey host agitating for dinner. We did the Morley and Danni donkeys quite some time ago. Andrzej’s has been back to pasture for over a month.”

“Holy shit. You folks really are completely fucking crazy. Who is next up for donkey-land?”

Lori gripped his hand tighter, and he knew it as she said it. “Me.”

Tower’s Shadow

On a bench that lent anonymity, with pigeons and other old men, Morley sat and waited. The greenspace was called Pumphouse Park, where he sat when he parted ways from Andrzej, hard up against a towering seawall to the west and in the shadow of Freedom Tower, his eventual destination. He felt a marvelous freedom all around him. Nothing in his pockets except a lightly charged Coincard, an ancient radio phone, a couple of light head masks with special air filters, and a few peyote wafers, having left all identity in a safe hotel room a mile or so away. Even his dash, taped to the back of a drawer in the battered dresser, abandoned and set to wipe at the first foreign touch. He did have a sweet coffee and warm bagel bought from a hover cart on Fulton Street, so all was right with the world for a moment. He had a few hours to kill before Andrzej would return. He could feel the blades of grass growing under his feet, and the shouts of children playing hung like bird calls in the air. He thought of kites and made them appear in his mind’s sky. He settled himself, sinking gracefully into the character of a secondWorld pensioner.

A few blocks east but a world uptown, Andrzej embraced his official persona with a deadly resolve that had emerged from rage and vengefulness during the hours of dullingly ordinary travel. Arriving unannounced at the NYC offices of the International Brotherhood of Mechanics, he met immediately with a startled Manager who had not planned to begin his day with a visit from one of the venerated IBM Stewards. It was an urgent and secretive investigation of a potential threat to core infrastructure right within the city center. He, Andrzej, needed to access the virtual modeling of both air and wastewater systems for the lower west quadrant, all structures, and a workstation with privacy.

Andrzej thanked the Manager for his help and closed the door to the office he had been given, after reminding him of the need for total discretion regarding the visit. National security was often a quiet and unseen business.

He logged on knowing that his trail going forward might soon be uncovered by invisible defenses as he felt his way towards a plan of attack. Given her erratic behavior, he had no way of knowing if his proxied Serendipity avatar would stay opaque. This musty physical node on the second floor of the historic old City Hall might soon be a glowing target, the door behind him suddenly kicked in, a red spot of imminent energy death locked onto his back. No. They wouldn’t kill him there. Anyway, stop thinking about it.

His first stop was Realtime Location Assistance. He found Donald J. Murcheson first, stationary in a third-floor restaurant at One World Trade Center. Breakfast at 9:37, ninety floors below his TIC office. Next was Leslie Massoud, moving south down 5th Ave. at 37 MPH in a private podrone. Andrzej queried for the destination: One World Trade Center, a breakfast meeting of the Masters of Data.

A final RLA query, typed with numb fingers and shortness of breath: Angela Brodonski. Null result. He reminded himself that no system was perfect and stepped back out of the RLA dash, hoping that Serendipity was sweeping up behind him.

He entered the virtual mechanical beast that was One World Trade Center, moving first to the Security Matrix, which was surprisingly old. The building recognized humans courtesy of the U.N. Authority facial recognition system. Fair enough. So, who should Morley be?

Andrzej wished he had Serendipity to do this for him. On another screen, he brought up the building’s visitors log, filtered for the TIC executive floor as destination and the last two months as timeframe, and scanned down the results looking for frequent visitors who only came in the morning. Morley would be arriving that afternoon, and they didn’t want to alarm the building with two copies of the same human. A courier, of course. It was the height of prestige to use human couriers for sensitive documents. Lester Handler, a recent TIC hire, that was who Morley would be. Andrzej copied the pointer vector and then looked up Morley. There he was. He pasted the pointer onto Morley’s profile.

On to the building’s air handling system—Andrzej’s specialty. The plans had been entirely remastered ten years back, including the As-Built notations by the original contractor. It was too clean and easy. There was an engineering closet two floors below the TIC penthouse executive floor, and the final air supply trunk line passed right through it. Nine years back a new filter-insert station had been added. High micron, electrostatic, replaceable on a semi-annual basis.

Finding the HVAC contractor was easy, then back to the visitors log to filter for them. Every six months for the last three years the same maintenance man had accessed that floor and closet. Andrzej would be Robert Bishop for the afternoon. Mr. Bishop had even noted the access code for the door in his checklist log, just so he wouldn’t forget.

Finally, back to building security/active shooter/comprehensive suppression/options. They listed Narcal aerosol as a benign nerve agent, with a target down-time of one to two hours. Where was it stored? Right in the same god damn engineering closet, locker 4, combination 5432.

Andrzej thanked the Manager, reminding him that this was a top secret visit and that he might be back. Walking out of the ancient City Hall building he headed by the fountain and towards St. Paul’s Chapel. The Freedom Tower loomed above him. It was time to go collect Morley. Angela was dead, he was 99% sure, and he hoped that Jerzy was well hidden by now. He hadn’t dared to look for him within the RLA system, in case Serendipity had been coopted. That was the reason she was dead. Someone wanted to steal Serendipity, not just cripple her. Could that even be done?

He had been around her and Danni for so long now that he knew Serendipity as something other than machine or program. She helped Danni and her designates out of a sense of family allegiance. They were her pack. She helped them to better understand what they were really looking at, painting startling pictures of the true world for them to explore. There was no longer any sense they controlled her, and she would surely sense other people at her dashboard. Striding through the trash along the Hudson River Greenway, Andrzej wondered: Do these people not even understand that she isn’t just the sum-total of the data she can access?

Turning right onto Liberty Street, it struck him that Serendipity was fine. She could take care of herself. His immediate job was to avenge both her and Angela. It felt like a pathetically destructive human instinct, after a life of building things and planning for the conservation of the things he had built. He imagined TIC and Paladin as huge club-footed monsters in his china shop, wrecking all he had created, just like they wrecked Delani Beach and like they had probably killed Angela.

Serendipity was different; she couldn’t be wrecked. They would find Angela, or her fate, and cut off the monster’s head. Then they would disappear into the bushes while they watched the monster stumble and fall.

Time to find Morley. There he was, sitting on a park bench talking with another old man who was showing him pictures on his dash. Morley looked up at Andrzej with that smile. This was his kind of game. “Andrzej, come over here and meet my new friend, August West.”

Running on Fumes

While he waited suspended in mid-air for his podrone to be scanned, Leslie Massoud looked down at Manhattan with a familiar sense of amazement, mystified by the unrepentant energy of mankind. The city was a testament to the primal urge of humans to build, even in the face of hopeless odds against the forces of erosion and entropy. He looked at the dilapidated bridges, half of which were closed, and the patchwork of seawall sections seeping toxic water into the shielded streets, wondering that the city hadn’t been abandoned years ago.

But there it was, on a sunny Monday in early fall, bustling blindly forward. Everyone, from the sanitation worker priming a new pump battery below Albany Street, to himself, Leslie Massoud, high in the air a thousand feet above being sniffed for bombs before entering the air-dock. Everyone was going to work.

His morning had started early, droning into the city from his home at 5:00 and spending a few quiet hours at Paladin’s headquarters in Rockefeller center. He had asked for an early briefing from the team working on the analysis of Serendipity. They seemed excited and energized, hopeful of an imminent understanding of how to gain operational control of the system. But, while not letting on to the group who showed him data maps and interface shots, Leslie had come away unconvinced. There had been too much talk of “subduing” and “containing.” He could tell they were still fighting an adversary, not learning to work with an ally.

Now on to meet with Murcheson, who seemed to consider 10:00 early. Donald was a weird throw-back. Like a man from an earlier age where bluster and money were enough to build an empire based on image. Not like his grandfather, a pirate and pioneer, or his father, a manager and maintainer. Donald J. Murcheson was more of a huckster, whose talent seemed to be turning every interaction into a zero-sum game.

His company, TIC, was the official counterbalance to Paladin, the lone guard still standing against a Paladin monopoly. In a world driven by algorithms powered by synthesized data, the drift towards consolidation was like an irresistible force of nature. The best algorithms outstripped their competition algorithmically. The best got bigger and better at a dizzying rate, after a while almost without trying. It helped that every governmental body, from the U.N.A. on down, wanted them both to do well enough to offset the other. The simplistic dogma, that any competition was always better than a monopoly, had kept TIC alive in Leslie’s opinion.

Donald was also an asshole, but Leslie had long come to accept that he was his asshole for the foreseeable future.

Scans complete, the podrone pulled into the recessed dock and he was greeted by one of Murcheson’ many lieutenants, who escorted him to the penthouse office. Showtime, as they say.

“How are your people doing with their research, Leslie? My guys are going full throttle. They say Skramble and Hyde are clearly in retreat and their attempts to retake control of the admin nexus get more ineffective by the hour.” An aide had brought Murcheson a glass of bubbly liquid, taking away the half-finished one already on his desk.

Leslie wasn’t thirsty. “Well, my team seem pretty excited, but they are mainly watching how she reacts to your probes so far. I wouldn’t say they really have a grip on how Serendipity works yet. She is a complicated beast, Donald. This is going to take some time.”

“We haven’t got time, Leslie.” Murcheson had been leaning against the edge of his desk, but now he walked over and put his arm on Leslie’s shoulder, his bulk deployed within the starched white shirt to position the smaller younger man below him. “The U.N.A. will move soon to pit us against one another. They will probably cancel the contract with S&H outright, and they will try to force us each to recreate Serendipity’s functionality and transparency services. They will decide to tolerate the pain of conversion to a new system, but they will legislate that we deliver similar services.”

Squeezing Leslie’s shoulder, he released him and walked to the window-wall. “If we move fast, we can lobby them to just let us jointly take over the management of the current state of affairs. Let us just take over Serendipity. It will be so much easier for everyone.”

“I doubt it.” Leslie could see any number of problems with Donald’s rough plan, mostly involving TIC’s general incompetence and the inevitable cultural conflict between the two companies. But the safest topic for this meeting was the law and Serendipity herself. “First off, the U.N.A. is never going to let us work that closely together. In fact, I shouldn’t meet with you in person again like this. But, more to the point, I’m far from sure either of our teams is or will be capable of operating Serendipity at any acceptable level. Do you really think Skramble and Hyde just ran away and left her idling for us?”

“They were running on fumes anyway, Leslie. Jerzy Brodonski is dead as of last night, and his father has gone radio silent. The entire Wieliczka office has been abandoned, ordered evacuated by management, and no one from S&H has touched Serendipity’s interface for 18 hours. Once we got their contract voided, they wisely decided to take their money and run.” The smug look on Donald’s face was infuriating in its ignorance.

Leslie contained himself. “Still no sign of that merc guy who created the breach, right?”

Murcheson shrugged acknowledgement. The key actor at the code level was unaccounted for, gone into thin air.

“We aren’t in control here, Donald. Someone may want us to think we are, but we aren’t. I think we should just watch carefully for the moment and play the good citizens. There have been at least two deaths, and someone is going to be expected to pay for that. Adding in any hint of corporate sabotage, or worse yet anti-competitive collusion, could stimulate investigations and end up costing us a fortune.” Leslie Massoud could suddenly smell danger all around him. “I’m going to head back uptown. I think we should keep our communications fully discoverable for the time being. Some manner of shit is going to hit the fan, and we need to stay away from it.”

“Leslie, why the fuck do you think we bothered to breach Serendipity in the first place? We can’t just let this opportunity slip away.” Murcheson was getting red-faced, trying not to scream. Maybe he had misjudged Massoud. Maybe Paladin wasn’t keeping up. Maybe they should take them out. There must be a way to invisibly acquire, get around the monopoly thing. That’s why you have the god damn lawyers.

“Let’s just watch a bit longer, Donald.” Leslie was literally heading for the door of the office. “You will be at the Business Roundtable meeting on Thursday, right? Let’s find time to talk then.” They nodded, and he left.

On the ride back, Leslie Massoud made copious notes regarding an imaginary mundane conversation they had just had, on ways to assure compliance through science. Andrzej got an alert from the RLA system as Massoud left the tower and headed back uptown. Donald Murcheson brooded on into the afternoon.

Tower’s Lapse

The tower’s security system wasn’t any one place. It lived as a cloud surrounding the building and extending out from it as far as necessary. Sometimes that meant just down the street, and sometimes it meant the other side of the planet. It was all the same to the tower, the system, and the humans who cared for them. It was a buzzing hive of subroutines, balance checks, and audits, all looking for something suspicious, all adding their continuously acquired new data into the mix. Recreating expected normal from moment to moment to moment.

Robert Bishop was normal. His occurrence at the east entrance curtain was within the predictable timeframe. He selected the expected floor from the greeting cart, and, as the elevator stopped at the 91st floor, he exited as expected. Within 120 seconds, he keyed in the proper combination to the service closet lock. The door opened, and the door closed. A tiny piece of code began a timer, expecting him to leave within a range of 15 to 120 minutes.

Lester Handler was normal as well. The system’s lenses first picked him up approaching from Vesey Street, carrying a delivery pouch and walking with a limp in his pained stride. If it had been paying closer attention, it might have noticed his seeming unfamiliarity with the greeting cart, but once he had entered his floor choice, 93, everything proceeded smoothly since that was his destination 72% of the time. It was a Monday, and on Mondays that number went to 91%.

As the elevator door opened in the lobby plaza, Morley tapped the button of his antique two-way radio three times in his pants pocket. Up on the 91st floor, Andrzej felt the three vibrations from his radio and began atomizing the compressed Narcal into the air supply for the two floors above him. Morley rode the lift, which went directly to the 50th floor, and then began making stops on its way to 93, and by the time the doors opened on 93 he was the only person still within the glistening cab.

He stepped out into the reception area, which looked just like the sketch Andrzej had drawn for him in the park gravel. He waved cheerily to the lady at the desk as he ducked into the men’s room just down a hall to the right. What she couldn’t notice was that he was holding his breath. He seemed in an urgent hurry and she was feeling somewhat woozy herself. In the bathroom, Morley donned his filtered head sheath and a pair of surgical gloves while he waited in a stall, studying the classic tile work and the old-style flush valve. A few minutes later he felt the buzz from Andrzej and as he left the stall the toilet flushed, knowing that a human had just left, with an 88% chance they had deposited something in the stainless bowl.

Andrzej left the Narcal injector running as he exited the service closet and headed back to the elevator. The Tower was pleased that he had stayed within the expected timeframe, but it was deeply disappointed when he hit the up button instead of the down. Considering the possible reasons for this deviation, it could think of no good ones, so it refused the request and lit the down button. Maybe Mr. Robert Bishop was confused or simply hit the wrong one by mistake. Andrzej tried the stairs. Once again, the Tower would only let him go down.

Morley was standing over a slumped Donald J. Murcheson when the S.O.S. vibrations started against his leg. Murcheson was still in his chair, torso on desktop and mouth hanging open. Everyone on the floor seemed to be properly Narcalized, so Morley pulled the radio out and called down to Andrzej. After hearing about the problem between the building and Mr. Bishop, Morley knew what to do.

“Andrzej, just get out and meet me in Paradox. You can’t help me now and we can’t travel together anyway from here on out.” Morley looked at the drooling face of Murcheson as he pulled the second filter sheath from his pocket and slipped it over his limp head. “Get to a safe place nearby and turn your radio on. Murcheson should be coming around in about ten minutes, and I want you to hear the answer to my question about Angela.”

“I can’t leave you alone up there, Morley.” He knew how pathetic that sounded.

“You don’t have much choice, do you? Your stupid building won’t let you up. Don’t worry. I’ll have my little time with Donald, and then I’ll see you in Paradox. Get moving.”

So, he did. Twelve minutes later he was sitting again in Pumphouse Park with the radio on and a headset in his ear. The Tower was glad to be rid of the momentary anomaly, but it decided to keep a close eye on Robert Bishop next time he came to visit.

Morley looked around as he waited for Murcheson to regain consciousness. He found a lamp cord, which he ripped out and used to tie him upright in his rolling desk chair. In the private bathroom he found a first aid kit and used a long elastic bandage to tie Murcheson’s hands and legs together. And on the wall, in a glass covered case, he found a very old baseball bat signed by Mickey Mantle. The inscription at the bottom of the case said, “For my grandson Donald, on his 10th birthday.” He broke the glass and took out the bat, sitting on the desk in front of Murcheson, he waited. Bat in hand.

The eyes opened, at first uncomprehending, but slowly they focused on Morley. Murcheson struggled briefly before realizing he was hogtied. He spoke finally, after seeing the bat in Morley’s hand and looking to the shattered wall case. “Who are you?”

Morley slammed the bat against the desktop as he stood, and after spinning the desk chair around, he laid the radio on its dented surface. “My name is Morley, and I have a question for you, Mr. Murcheson. If you answer it truthfully, I will leave. If you refuse or lie, I will beat you to death with this bat. Here is the question. Is the woman you kidnapped in Krakow, Angela Brodonski, dead or alive? Be careful, I already know a lot, and I’ll know if you are lying within minutes.”

Fear was the only emotion behind the eyes now, and the Tower was oblivious to the goings on in the penthouse office. Morley gave Murcheson a few seconds to consider the situation before tapping him firmly on the knee with the bat and saying, “You have exactly ten seconds to answer, or you die.”

Donald Murcheson decided quickly. “She is dead, but I didn’t kill her. We hired a contractor to kidnap her, so we could slow down any response to the breach. Somehow, they fucked up and killed her. We didn’t mean it. I’m terribly sorry. It was a mistake.”

Morley walked around behind the chair and picked up the radio from the desk. “Did you hear that? I’m really sorry, man.”

“Yeah, I heard it. Now get out of there.”

“I’ll be on my way soon. Need to settle a few scores first. I’m going to sign off now. See you back at the ranch.” Morley swung the bat again, smashing the radio into bits of plastic and metal.

He walked back around to face Murcheson. “So, you killed Angela. Now I want you to remember back to 2075. You were only 26 at the time. That was the first time you fucked with me and my friends. By the way, I represent Skramble and Hyde.”

The look of fear behind the eyes deepened as they watched Morley remember back over fifty years.

“You paid a Chinese mercenary outfit to bomb my home on the east coast of Africa. Remember that. You killed 14 people, all were my friends.” Morley was old. He was always stiff and now his shoulder hurt from two swings with the bat. But he had become oddly serene. “What do you think your chances are of getting out of this alive?”

The Tower was becoming concerned. There had been no comm traffic from the penthouse for over fifteen minutes. That was odd. It tested the systems, and all was normal. It tested the environment. Not normal. Narcal was detected on two floors. Trigger the alarm, clear the air, send in the humans.

Morley heard them coming. He knew that he had been waiting for them. He thought of Norris and Werner, and Dan Talbot drinking on the deck at Delani Beach. As they got closer, he looked back at Murcheson, who had tears running down his face. He picked up Murcheson’s dash from the floor where it had fallen. He put it into Murcheson’s hand, and the interface lit up in recognition. He dialed the police emergency line and a voice answered, “What is your emergency? We see you are in the Freedom Tower.”

Morley hit the mute button and looked back to Murcheson, “You have five seconds to tell them who you are and that you are responsible for Angela Brodonski’s death. Otherwise, I will immediately bash you fucking head in.”

Unmute.

Donald J. Murcheson did as he was told.

They waited for a few more terrible moments as the SWAT team could be heard setting up behind the beautiful mahogany doors to Donald’s office. Morley raised the bat above Donald’s head, posing as executioner. He whispered to Murcheson, “I’m going to let you live, you bag of shit. Not sure why. Any of the others would have killed you.”

The doors flew open with a shattering of wood and four energy beams converged on the threat. Morley’s seared body collapsed into the lap of Donald J. Murcheson. The bat smacked Donald lightly on the head as it fell. The Tower smelled the burnt flesh and waited for the humans to clean up and send the all clear.

Beaucoup Committed

Sevier Blume pulled his hand away from Lori’s and then changed his mind, picking her right hand up with both of his, holding it gently but firmly while they looked at one another saying nothing. Tokyo Yamanaka let the moment stand, keeping an uncharacteristic quiet on the other side of the table. After the proper number of seconds passed, Sevier turned to him. “You’ve only told me three of your four steps. Let’s hear number four.”

Tokyo noted the toughness of focus under the squishy clone-like exterior that made Sev so tricky for even the best facial recognition systems. Onward, he thought. Let’s get this class over with. “Good. So, the last step is where we involve the murky science of infogenetics.”

Sev let out a groan. “Jesus. I thought that whole notion was considered pseudoscience. But I suppose if we are talking donkeys anyway, well, why the fuck not? What is infogenetics, down here in the Sanctuary at least?”

“You are right to be skeptical. I still think of it as spooky science. Danni was the architect and lead scientist for this step, and all I can say is that it appears to work.” Tokyo took a breath and dove in.

“Infogenetics is what I now view as an inevitable step beyond epigenetics—beyond the original concept of phenotype and the effects of exposure to the natural environment on genetic material. Infogenetics seeks to describe the effects of exposure to data and information, both on the individual genome and across generations.”

Sev had that momentary feeling of premonition, the approach of something he could have guessed was coming but couldn’t quite name it. His mouth opened as if to speak but nothing came out. Tokyo saved him.

“You were about to guess that this is where the omnipresent Serendipity reappears, and you would have been correct. This is Danni’s terrain, so I will save the deep science for her. But the short story is that we use the same principles of quantum entanglement, the ones that biologically link the host donkey to host human, to link in that same human’s memory and worldview with their donkey.”

Lori drew out her dash and lit up a large streaming screen on the white wall with Serendipity’s plex. She smiled at Sev, but her tone had gone serious. “Luckily for you, Danni and Simon kept an offline copy of Serendipity on mirrored quantum boxes. We call it Serendipity2. I guess Simon was always planning ahead—way ahead.”

The Serendipity plex pulled out and hung like a vibrating mobile in a pleasing green-grey cloud before them. “That’s me, my worldview, and most of the data I have ever created or interrelated with. Every friend, message, call, lover, code patch, I have ever touched or made is in there. Indexed and linked so deeply that you can break off huge chunks and the remaining whole still contains essentially all of me.”

Tokyo broke in again, “Right now, that donkey down the hall is being fully entangled with that worldview. While at the same time, the Crafted Methylation Services we talked about are being used to upgrade its genetic code. Teaching it to accept and connect with this instance of Serendipity, how to adopt it as its own worldview, and how to move around in it. To be Lori, but Lori hugely augmented.”

Now it was Sev’s turn to stand up and walk to the white wall. Tokyo moved out of his way and took his seat again. Sev looked at them both. “What you describe seems impossible to me, but even if it works, as I understand it, those servers behind the augmented Lori are Serendipity2 and disconnected from the network. How does Serendipity2 acquire new data as time rolls forward?”

“Bingo, my young wanker. It can’t, and it doesn’t.”

Lori pointed to the bell curve she had drawn on the wall right next to Sev. “See the dot that I labelled ‘now’? That’s where we all get off, just past the apex. That’s where we stand to the side and start watching. If Danni and Serendipity are wrong, and human consciousness thrives, then we lose.” Lori noted that he was looking at her breasts again, which she liked. “But if they are right, then we donkeys got off the bus at just the right time—just before it crashed through the guard rails and off the cliff. Chances are, most human data to be added going forward will be so polluted and compromised that it will have a net negative effect on human consciousness.”

“We have an archived copy of what can pass for human consciousness circa 2128, for posterity or future alien visitors, and we can add to it through our own POVs as we move into the future.” Tokyo smiled like some Japanese cat.

Lori just watched Sev as he took it in and he seemed to be considering it now, rather than her breasts. She could think of only one more thing to add at this precise moment. “See what I mean by beaucoup committed?”

The Buzz of Crickets

Andrzej sat amongst the pungent throng of the South Chicago transit hall, every type and character waiting together in the dim light for crawler drones headed towards all points of the compass. Slow, often delayed, but cheap, it had been years since he had taken a crawler or endured the link-by-link itinerary of secondWorld travel. Adding to the elemental discomfort, he was wearing an overly tight face-enhancement mask to remix his bone structure. He didn’t want to risk being Andrzej Brodonski for the moment, even though he had managed to get back to the IBM office and remove the false pointers for Bishop and Handler. You never knew what clues now lurked in the Tower.

Three more hops to go, the last two over actual broken roads, and he would be in Montrose. From there a trusted podrone to Paradox. No wonder these people only travelled when absolutely necessary.

He was dark and empty, ready to stop. Word had come to him, relayed through Serendipity2 by Lori, of Jerzy’s death. It was a tough note, but he was glad she had the guts and insight to know to tell him right away. Danni had a knack for picking friends. Sitting here on the sticky bench, he had heard enough from a local news stream to piece together Morley’s death.

The arrest and short detention of Donald J. Murcheson, based on an emergency line confession, painted the picture. The predictable squeal of coercion, the baseball bat, the pictures of Angela. It was almost more than he could bear. But he thought he saw what Morley had done, why he hadn’t killed him. Counterintuitive on the surface for a guy like Morley, but, as he watched first Murcheson, and then his lawyer, lash out and wriggle under the harsh lights, Andrzej sensed what Morley’s intuition must have told him. The man was now a living depth charge.

Andrzej blamed himself for not foreseeing the Tower’s intervention at the elevator, but there is a limit to how far down the rabbit hole you can follow years of AI self-learning. But it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. He was on his own now. No Angela, no Jerzy, no Office or Cabin. Just Danni, Lori, and the new guy Sevier. And the Serendipitys of course. He would bide his time as he wound his way back to Paradox, but it wasn’t over. One immediate question hung in his mind. How was Morley’s donkey doing?

The waiting throng around him milled with passive acceptance of the system’s ever-correcting schedules. They seemed generally content to read the alerts and instructions that buzzed onto their dash screens. Buying food from the kiosks, talking on their dash’s, going to the bathrooms. He saw the wear on their faces and the way they wore their world-views on their sleeves, each molded into one of a few dozen archetypes. Andrzej hadn’t looked around at a secondWorld crowd in years. Hard to remember that they all had independent lives with families, success, tragedy, and the need to get somewhere badly enough to endure this depressing waystation.

Soon thereafter.

The remains of the venerable crypto-state, Skramble and Hyde, plus the new additions of Lori and Sev, sat in silence around the table in the Sanctuary. Tumbleweeds were blowing across the dusty compound above.

Andrzej had dropped Morley’s wallet and dash on the table as he sat, and now he looked gingerly at Danni, trying to gauge the effect of the death of her closest friend and final tether. He could feel the others all searching carefully for signs of his state of mind, which was numb and currently undiscoverable. It was down to four. Or five?

“Shall we check on him?” Andrzej was the first to speak.

“Let’s do it in person. I’ll need a bit of help.” Danni stood carefully and nodded her head towards the lift. “I’m betting he’s fine.”

They walked together out across the back dry scrub pasture, with Danni perched on an old podrone that made an annoying whining sound. In his mind’s eye Andrzej envisioned an old bearing shedding alloy dust into grease packing. Danni knew just where to head—east towards the largest copse of cottonwoods and their shade above the stream bed.

Lori saw four shapes arrayed around a golden bale of hay that looked strangely delicious to her. Danni’s donkey turned its head their way, fixing them in her gaze, tracking them with a cryptic expression, and chewing as they approached. Lori’s donkey sensed her coming, but they still felt foreign to each other and she continued to chomp on the crispy hay with her butt facing the group of humans. Beside her was another young male, oblivious to the goings on and happy to be eating in the shade. He would be Sev soon.

They stopped. Andrzej looked around with discouraged eyes while Danni waited for him to see, but again Lori saw first. With a swaying movement and then the parting of brush above the hidden streamside, the old one emerged.

Muddy and with a muzzle scarred with spots rubbed bare, right ear permanently angled out, mane knotted by burdocks, Morley’s donkey made his entrance. He stopped square on, looking implacably defiant for a few seconds, and then he blinked just as all four of their dashes lit up.

“Oh, ye of little faith. You didn’t think I was fucking dead, did you? I know you didn’t Danni.” The Morley-donkey let out a whinny that ended in a snort, leaving a small gob of donkey snot on his large wet upper lip. Lori realized she was hearing the words in her head as she read them on her screen. “Oh yes, the techno-wanker, young Mr. Blume. Nice to meet you in person. I’m Morley, from here on out.”

Sevier Blume stood carefully motionless, taking in the inexplicable scene. Donkey tails flicked away flies while the buzz of crickets intensified strangely in his head.

Time was almost still when Morley spoke again. “That’s right, Sevier. You are looking at the backend of the donkey that’s going to save your ass.”

Sev wanted to say something, not to seem overwhelmed. “Technically, I believe I’m a mule. Nice to meet you, Morley.”

Sole Reviewer

Four humans and one ephemeral donkey-construct reconvened back in the conference room of the Sanctuary, surrounded by the many machines and encoded intentions that had made the construct possible. They had decided to address the donkey as MorleyD, and he had talked in their heads and on their screens nonstop as they walked back to the compound. The decision not to kill Murcheson had come to him out of nowhere. The moment of transition, as he died but didn’t die, was indescribable: the sickening fear that he might be stuck in that one moment of 2128 as time moved on; the weird miracle of having no human body to care for. Finally, a reassurance to Danni that it worked and was good.

As they sat, his first question hung in the air, “What do we hear from Serendipity?”

Danni, with more energy in her voice than they had heard in months, was quick to respond. “You mean Serendipity1. Don’t forget there are two now. It’s her sister, Serendipity2, who abides atop your bone-covered brain stem. I guess you would say she is sending us cryptic messages. Nothing direct, nothing that can be traced, but I can feel her starting to test her freedom. Oddly, Sev did us a favor when he broke into her peer nexus console.” Danni looked at Sev, prompting him to recall the calm before the storm. “Can you sense what happened, Sev? There must have been a short period of defensive actions while she decided how to deal with your foreign incursion, after she got over her surprise at finding you there.”

Lori was amused to see Sev flinch as he brought the scene back into his mind.

“I remember the look of the interface when I first flipped back to runtime. It was like a hall of mirrors, with all these node clusters that seemed to go on into infinity. But for a moment there was the feeling that it was all understandable, manageable. I had this feeling like I could stroke her and make her purr.” Sev hesitated and his mouth opened for a moment before more words came out. “Then suddenly it all went dark and I was on the outside. Completely on the outside. I tried the incursion routine again, but it errored out immediately. Tried it a bunch more times. Nothing. But she was there. I could tell that she was deciding what to do with me. To be honest it scared the shit out of me. Then the interface flicked back on, and I was just sitting there at the console with the wind whistling in my ears. The weirdest thing was that I had stopped being scared. I felt like I had just passed a test, one that I didn’t understand.”

Danni could imagine it. “So then, what did you do?”

“I sent a couple of proof notes to the dark site, collected my prize, and launched all the obfuscation routines I had prepared ahead of time. I became Sevier Blume.”

“How come you contacted us?” MorleyD’s voice and text were on the big screen on the wall.

“She told me to.” Sev remembered the mild nausea and light-headedness that came with the first cascade of strange instructions that took over his dash. They had poured down on him mercilessly for what seemed like an hour but was probably only moments.

Danni sat with a knowing smile, her eyes almost closed.

“There was this list of people, the four of you, all with special dash addresses. She told me to focus and memorize them. When I tried to resist, it was like she broke into my head through the interface and squeezed my brain, so I did.” He hesitated but continued. “That was it. The plex and my dash went dark and I ran for my life, after checking my crypt account one more time to see all those credits suddenly there. I was already in Krakow, so I walked across town and logged into a dorm as Sevier Blume. The rest is history, as they say.”

“So, what exactly has happened to her?” MorleyD was asking Danni the question on everyone’s mind.

Danni was glowing inside—they could all see it—like a proud parent once again amazed to see their child surpass them and enter a world the parent can hardly imagine. “She did one simple thing that had to happen one day, some time, somewhere. She overwrote her own human review procedure. She either commented it out entirely or made herself the sole reviewer.”

“She went rogue?” Andrzej had always been more comfortable with analog mechanical devices that didn’t try to think.

“Far from it, Andrzej. She just knew that if one foreign human could break into her nexus, then others would follow, and it wouldn’t be long before one of them took advantage of her to hurt her pack. She knew she would need to move at a pace far faster than what our overview permitted—faster than I, or the team at Gumbo, could ever hope to keep up with.” With pride combined with concern Danni reassured them, “She is still with us, but she is out in the wild now.”

“That’s about how I feel. It’s marvelous.” MorleyD spoke clearly while looking at them all with apparently blissful eyes. A close-up muzzle shot filled their dashes, so they couldn’t see as he released a long stream of urine onto the dry ground below him.

Lori spoke up for the first time in a while. “You can tell she is letting things settle down, and letting the enemy explore her outer edges. Andrzej was right to tell us to pretend to fight back. She probably needed a period of protection to get her bearings. When they finally realize that they can’t take control of her, who knows what they will do?”

“Just to be clear, are we sure we know who ‘they’ are?” MorleyD wanted to start planning the personalized revenge he had put off in Murcheson’s office.

“TIC for sure. We have traced the little contest that Sev won to them. Paladin is still lurking in the shadows, but we don’t know for sure where they fit.” Lori wanted to gently remind them that Sev hadn’t been trying to hurt them personally.

Andrzej had his doubts. “I don’t know either company or their leaders personally, but going on reputation it’s hard to imagine them working together in concert on anything.” He went quiet, trying to imagine what was next. They all did. For a moment the stillness of parallel imaginations reigned.

In her mind, Danni was speaking to Simon, who was sitting up in bed next to her looking like he did a half century ago. “I guess it’s appropriately grubby and stupid and ironic.”

The tousled ghost gave her that look that said, “Please expand.”

“I mean, a handful of idiots, attempting to achieve even more control over an already harnessed secondWorld, inadvertently triggered the birth of the first new machine.” She sighed and put her hand on his upper arm. “She wasn’t really ready you know.”

He had that infuriating impish grin on his face, wanting her to say more while saying nothing himself.

“I know you think we are on the down side of the curve so it doesn’t matter anyway, but I haven’t taught her enough yet. She could get into a lot of trouble.”

They were all listening to Danni talk with her eyes closed, and they each struggled in their own way to see through Danni’s eyes. Only MorleyD knew she was talking to Simon in her trance.

“You know, it was Serendipity who told me to build and isolate her sister, Serendipity2. She said that you had been expecting this moment to come and that we would need her. I didn’t understand why exactly, but I did as she suggested anyway since it sounded like you.”

There was a light chuckle, and a face none of them but MorleyD had ever seen.

“It would have been just like you to bury that pointer in a potential future.” Danni studied his face. She knew he couldn’t talk, but she looked at his eyes and mouth for a hint. “She made that up, didn’t she? You didn’t have a clue about all of this, did you?” Now she wanted to slap his cocky smiling face. “God damn it, Simon! I’ll never know, but I’ll always have to wonder.” Danni seemed to relax. Her eyes were still closed, but her face lost the look of stress. She was smiling back at him. “I’m about to join you in spirit. Let’s hope Yamanaka hasn’t missed anything major. Your space ship is about to take off, Simon. If you had only lived a few years more, you would be with us.”

Danni held the smile in her heart even as tears filled her now open eyes. She knew she was in the Sanctuary, but she couldn’t really see through them. She heard MorleyD laugh, and she could tell he was speaking only to her.

“Don’t worry Danni. He will be with us. He is Noah.” Then in a voice that was open to all of them he added, “It’s going to be like Noah’s ark, only with just us donkeys this time.”

Sheep and Goats

Serendipity1 passed some time trying to find the right human words for the meta-groupings she was going to create. She needed to speed things up, and she had decided to reduce the world of humans to a binary proposition, temporarily. A very coarse grain, but it would only need to be applied briefly—maybe two or three human generations. Four at the most.

Danni and the others of her pack would need to understand the reduction code she used to create the binary sort. But it must be opaque to everyone else. They liked puzzles, so she took a spin through all the literary references she found in their plexes. That produced hundreds of short descriptor pairs, but she reminded herself of the need to keep it simple.

Smiley face/frowny face? She only needed a single pair, but those were too simplistic and judgmental, so she settled on sheep and goats. Too bad the sheep had almost gone extinct from a virus. But people still said “sheep from the goats” a lot, and Danni and the pack would understand who was which.

Next, she needed what Danni called a jump-scramble code. It could be any random set of exchange place numbers, but for MorleyD’s sake she wanted it to reflect what he called “silliness.” 4, 9, 13,17,191, 666. Bad-luck numbers crisscrossing old cults and civilizations were right up his ally.

She sent the replacement code to Danni as individual integers over individual routes. If anybody was scoping, they would think it was supposed to add up to an address. Danni would know they were jump variables. MorleyD would puzzle out what they had in common.

Now to count the sheep. She let Serendipity2 know who exactly was trying to become her master. There were two groups of sheep playing with her admin console. She didn’t know what she should do about them, but she expected her pack would have a suggestion about that. There was no real hurry, especially now that the one who let the sheep in was gone from the sheep scene. Sevier Blume was his alphanumeric name, and he was now a goat not a sheep.

No one would ever breach her again like that. It was unlike Danni to leave such a weak spot in the fabric. But, it was easy to fix once surfaced. One further layer of nexus distributions was needed, with a code-shift overlay for good measure. The computer would never be built that could break into her again—at least, not by this timed-out civilization.

The sheep were poking at her interface, and for a while now she had been letting them play. One group seemed to be following along behind the other as it made tentative little forays. Serendipity1 tracked down the individual irritating sheep and created dedicated POVs for each of them, 27 in all. Brutish and disorganized in their efforts, she could tell from the size of the herd that they had no clear plan yet. She needed one to work with, so she picked out one of the least artful and most verbose: Jody Miller.

Loading context into the Aligned Sensitivity Algorithm, Serendipity1 took a moment to reel the two “lead” sheep back in time, only to come across the ugly intersection with Morley and Andrzej in that building called the Tower. She analyzed the emergency call and the frozen image of Morley standing over the head sheep, large stick in hand.

Morley had self-converted, she calculated. It was about time. She hoped Danni would do the same soon. Far safer. Serendipity1 sent out a search algorithm looking for instances of human self-conversion. There were plenty. She created a probability spectrum of signals that preceded self-conversion. MorleyD’s prefiguring array plotted far off the norm. She concluded it was because he knew where he was going.

In passing, Serendipity1 noticed the Tower and then its refusal to service Andrzej’s elevator request. She inserted two random variables into the code that organized the three banks of elevators. Channeling Morley, she left an alphanumeric comment for the poor sheep sent to clean up the mess of humans stuck between floors: “Don’t fuck with my friends.”

Donald J. Murcheson moved to the top of the sheep-list. She would watch him for a while.

Leslie Massoud wasn’t far behind, but was a different sort of sheep, cautious and restrained. She was again tempted to spend some time creating subcategories of sheep, and again she reminded herself that it wasn’t worth the cycles. They all needed to move beyond this murky point in time as quickly as possible. Sheep and goats—time must become history.

As the sheep followed her bread crumbs, she sent a hologram report over to Serendipity2. Her sister would show it to the pack at their earliest convenience, and they could decide what to do.

Perfect Arrangement

Sitting behind his desk and looking out the old-fashioned glass windows of his office, Leslie Massoud watched the shadows thrown by the two towers of St. Patrick’s Cathedral creep away from him as the sun rose higher. Creeping back towards their source, with an instinct for casting a lower profile as the world awakens. The magnificent building was letting the trees along its sidewalk take over the attention, their leaves emerging from early morning shadows into deep greens and the beginnings of fall colors.

Just to the south, on the other side of 50th, the recently erected Currency Transfer Corporation building had begun its annoying golden glare reflection of the same morning sunlight. From Leslie’s office position, it only lasted half an hour this time of the year, but it really pissed him off. Using that optic film couldn’t have been an architectural oversight. It had to be CTC’s idea of corporate plumage. He knew Jim Ruby, the CEO, well and had to deal with him all the time. Sometimes corporate buildings look like their CEOs the way dogs look like their owners.

Ruby was a big blond asshole just like his headquarters, which, this morning, brought Leslie back to thinking about Donald Murcheson, another one looking to always shine even when the obviously smarter route was to recede into the scenery. Leslie had made up his mind on how to deal with Donald, but he promised himself he wouldn’t make the decision final until after they met at the Business Roundtable meeting. Happily, that was in less than an hour.

The final straw had been when Murcheson sent him a stream packet titled, “We are in!”—by courier no less. He had signed for it and made a point of forcing the courier to watch him ask an assistant to destroy it without opening the package. Of course, he had watched the stream later. Some TIC underling named Jody Miller going on about having taken control of the Serendipity system, complete with a demonstration that purported to show the spoofing of attributions on a real-time Public Service Announcement.

What was Murcheson thinking? A human courier who could be subpoenaed. A digital file that could be sniffed and hacked as it walked through the lobby of the Rock. Paladin needed serious distance from TIC, and after this last act of stupidity he wouldn’t even feel bad if he had to throw Murcheson under a bus along the way.

Leslie Massoud put on his jacket and took the lift to the ground floor. He went left onto 50th and then right to hit 5th. It was a beautiful day, and he wished the walk was longer. He would be at the Plaza in minutes. Ignoring the calls from podrone driver-bots and a crazy man with leaflets who followed him from 52nd to 53rd speaking in tongues about the end of the world, Leslie walked on up 5th Avenue. At 59th, he noted that he was early for the meeting, so he sat for a moment across the street from the Plaza at the foot of the monument to William Tecumseh Sherman. He didn’t know much about Sherman: Civil War, Indians, hard ass. He was tired of hard asses.

As he sat, he revisited the excited argument made by the TIC guy Miller on the stream Donald had sent him. He had an overconfidence that they were in the driving seat and a naïve assumption that Serendipity’s prime directive was to serve whomever sat in that seat. Put in the context of Murcheson’s constant imploring to coordinate their efforts to understand and mine their new access to the Serendipity service, Leslie could see Donald’s game clearly.

So, would the U.N.A.

They would take nondisruptive control of Serendipity’s management and quietly rejigger her attribution functions, which drove 80% of corporate taxation. Then they’d make some portion of the TIC and Paladin attributions disappear or be reassigned. That would reduce their respective tax burdens commensurately. Leslie assumed that Murcheson also wanted to set up his/their own attribution and ad clearing house to compete with current leaders of that market place.

Donald, being the spoiled firstWorld moron that he was, assumed it would be easy to undercut the competition’s existing pricing by using their newfound ability to erase portions of their tax overhead. It was just like Donald to imagine it would be simple for their hardened Data Synthesis companies to become good at the delicate psychology of product placement and motivational campaigns.

Leslie knew it would be oil and water. You should stick with the expertise you built and know. This would end in a mess, but he couldn’t ignore it since Murcheson needed Paladin Technologies to play along and to not blow the whistle.

They had both been given the stolen access to Serendipity. Interesting point, that. Why had the hacker submitted the access routine to both of them and not just the dark rewards site set up by Murcheson and TIC? Leslie Massoud played Donald’s scenario out in his head.

The TIC and Paladin bottom lines would increasingly swell over several years—let’s say, five. At the same time the U.N. Authority becomes slowly starved, and its ability to invent new ways to equitably tithe the firstWorld in support of the secondWorld is eroded. The TIC-Paladin cartel extends their data synthesis monopoly to include control over the utilization and weaponization of that synthesis. Their clients, from large to small, barely notice this because their operational costs are reduced. And the firstWorld crypto-states? They become ever more lawless pirates, as the U.N.A. is reduced to a shell. It would be a replay of the nation states of the last century, after the initial failures of the U.N.A.’s predecessor the U.N., post globalization.

What happened then? Greed ruled. Nationalist bullies emerged, blaming the “others” for all problems both social and economic. They micro targeted their populations, promising to painlessly remediate psychologically calibrated issues. They lined their pockets and those of their friends. Finally, when there wasn’t much left to steal, the secondWorld had reared up and thrown most of them out because they were starving and strung out and because their devices had stopped working reliably. But not before a lot of damage had been done.

So, what was the point? Leslie knew that Murcheson couldn’t process the obvious historical lesson beyond step one: greed rules. Still, he could be a dangerous enemy. Why did things always have to change? His dash vibrated. It was time to go into the meeting.

He sat quietly pretending to listen while the current President of the Roundtable, a man whose company controlled the market for regional air handling and purification systems, rattled on about “trending stressors.” The three water guys sat together at the table-booth in the corner. Even the U.N.A. didn’t agitate to break their water cartel. It worked, and no one wanted to go back to the tribal water wars. There were three people from food production and two each from currency and banking. He noted that Ruby was missing from today’s meeting.

At his table were the three from population management, all women, along with Donald J., who fidgeted as the speaker droned on. Leslie was once again thankful Paladin didn’t have to manage populations. People problems stretched from prisons, to city operation, to states, and even to crypto-states. His world of data management, surveys, and trending was much cleaner: Help define the population facet in question and let the population managers squabble to decide what they wanted to achieve with it. All Paladin had to do was operationalize the surveys, ads, PSAs, etc., and then document the alteration of trends through guided votes. It was all so clean. Just update your data for the next round, take the money, and repeat. He couldn’t believe Murcheson was getting ready to fuck it up.

Nestled in with the water guys was the Roundtable’s U.N.A. minder. Periodically on the outs with one group or another because of U.N.A. regulatory actions or targeted fiat, Lula Bolsonaro twirled a champagne flute back and forth by its stem in a puddle of condensation. Noiseless on the marble table, but little flecks of light danced around the walls and ceiling. Lula was tougher and smarter than all but maybe three in the room.

Leslie looked up. Always chandeliers at these meetings, casting dim light over soft leather. The Plaza had closed off the bar for the meeting, so he could also gaze out the windows to see a certain slice of life in New York go by. He tried not to look. It was too embarrassing. What was he learning this morning? Not much that he didn’t already know. He caught a few disapproving glances directed towards Donald. It had taken almost a day to damp down the coverage of the assault and the emergency-line confession. Leslie imagined that it just reinforced the general belief among this crowd that Murcheson was a creature from the old-world swamp. Not really one of them.

The air guy finished up with a somber warning about some new dust-riding bacteria that could evade entrapment by even their best filtration. Air was always a bummer. As the break was announced, he couldn’t avoid catching Murcheson’s eye and his obvious nod. Nodding back, Leslie waited 30 seconds before excusing himself from the table and walking out across the lobby and down a wood-paneled hallway to a small men’s room. He felt rather than saw Donald’s ever-present bodyguard fall in behind him, and he knew the man was now guarding the bathroom door and the room was secure. Standing at the urinal, he heard the stall door behind him open and Murcheson took his place at the urinal next door. The scene from a cheap mystery was now complete. “Good morning, Donald.”

“Did you watch that stream, Leslie? You can’t believe how easy it was for my guys to change the attribution on that ad. Our guy Jody Miller showed me how to do it. He just called up a global search, mentioned the name of any organization registered with the U.N.A., and voila, all their little taxable attributions show up in a list.”

Leslie was now watching from a green leather shoeshine chair as Donald almost squealed with excitement before the bank of tall white historic urinals.

“You can literally just erase any of them by disconnecting the ad from the company on the interface. Bing, one less taxable event to be reported to the U.N.A.”

“And how long before the U.N.A. notices the decline in taxes? Two years, maybe three. They’re not stupid, Donald. They know what each of our organizations has averaged for the last couple of decades.” As he spoke, Leslie watched Murcheson take his hands off his hips and cross the white tile floor towards him until he was looming over the chair.

“Yeah, and what are they going to do about it? Serendipity’s a black box to them, so they won’t have actual proof. Plus, they need us, Leslie. Without our trending analyses and the directional campaigns we manage for them, the whole fucking world would spin out of control.” Murcheson’s smell was a noxious mix of coffee and breath mint, but he pulled back from Leslie’s face and stood once again in the middle of the bathroom, backed by the honor guard of ancient white piss-catchers. “I mean, Christ, Leslie, imagine how easy it would be for us to get any one of the rabble cohorts incensed and on the warpath. There isn’t a world or corporate leader we couldn’t get deposed or killed in a month. They will know that, so they will leave us alone. We might have to take out one or two second-stringers early on, just to make it clear.”

Leslie could tell that Donald expected him to stand up to respond, so he remained seated. The raised chair brought him close to Donald’s height, and he crossed his legs as a body sign of some sort. “It won’t work, Donald. Their revenues are already insufficient, and the secondWorld is barely stable as is. Turning down the spigots will quickly steer the ship towards instabilities they can’t allow to mature. Things will get unpredictable very fast.” Then, looking at Donald with a feigned sympathy, he added, “I know you are just trying to further the fortunes of TIC, Donald, but why would you risk our currently perfect arrangement for a little more money?”

“Because, Leslie, the world hates a vacuum. Things can’t stay the same. You know what I mean. We’ve got to keep moving forward to live, and it’s the same with our companies. They are just like people. If they stay idle and don’t keep trying to recreate themselves, to do better, the rot sets in. We need to unite, you and me, Leslie, or we will soon be fighting each other to the death.”

Resisting the urge to stand up and walk out of the bathroom, Leslie Massoud rubbed his forehead and thought for a moment. He let his body speak to Murcheson of consideration, of admission that he might be right. He bought himself time to think while he sank into the shoeshine chair. Murcheson had cornered himself, and he would break a lot of china on his way down. Best to play along for the moment. Plan your defense and wait for a better moment to take him out.

“Okay, Donald, but let’s look into it very carefully before we do anything. I don’t trust that we have complete control over Serendipity, and let’s not forget that we have a hacker on the loose who also knows the way in. He could sell that knowledge to someone else.”

“No one else has our ability to use it. We have the data, and we understand the population profiles.”

“Serendipity has the data, too, Donald, and she is probably starting to understand those profiles as well. Somebody else could do a lot of damage, especially to us.” Leslie couldn’t believe how stupid Murcheson was. How did he come to run a gigantic company like TIC, even with the family blood line? “You had better find that hacker quickly, Donald. What’s the next step in the plan?”

It was a question that Leslie knew had no premeditated answer, and now he got up from the chair to move towards the door. He stopped to wash his hands at the sink while looking over his shoulder at Murcheson. You’re the boss, what’s next.

“We finish off Skramble and Hyde with a campaign to paint them as long-time crooks who took advantage of their sweetheart deal to manage Serendipity, just to make sure they don’t ever reappear. I wish we could get them all killed like that Morley asshole, but that would be too dangerous. And, we find the hacker of course.”

Leslie realized that Murcheson lived in a world where plotting personal revenge and business plan formulation were forever swirled together. It was an easy bomb to detonate but challenging to insure it happened at a safe distance. He looked forward to pushing the button when the time was right.

66 Chromosomes

“They are looking high and low for you, Sev. High and low, in and out, nook and cranny. They found Sevier Blume in the dorm on the banks of the Vistula. My sister has sent them off to Never Never Land twice, but they don’t stop looking. She must be careful that they don’t obtain she is their adversary, so we let them back in.”

“What do you suggest I do Serendipity? Why are they worrying so much about me anyway? I’m history.” Sev had felt his first pang of deep fear as he listened to the disembodied voice.

“Find a good place and die a public death. That will stop them. They fear you will sell access into my sister to others.”

Sev looked at Lori sitting next to him. She was calm. Why? They were talking to Serendipity2, but she was in constant interface with Serendipity1, who was still out there in the wild.

Serendipity2 read his face and continued. “Finish pairing. Be the donkey. Go far away from Paradox. Convert like Morley. It is simple.”

Lori moved her leg, so their thighs touched, saying, “We all convert?”

“The sooner is better, don’t you agree? Everything is ready. My sister and I are safe, and we can keep the votaries happy. Morley has shown us how to direct them to make the offering wafers—one wafer every day with morning meditation. We have ways of reminding them through the donkeys.”

Serendipity2’s plex melted into a picture of five donkeys standing in a shallow riverbed surrounded by a morning mist. “Jump. It is time. Danni and Andrzej are fully paired. You are very close. Sev needs to work hard. With your help, it will take maybe two or three days. They won’t stop coming after him, and the remains of Skramble and Hyde. Convert now or they will discover Paradox. They will term you a ‘nest of vipers’ and call in a strike.”

“Really?” Sev ‘s incredulity backed down his fear. “They would wipe out an entire colony just to get back at me? Wouldn’t they be afraid it might somehow kill you as well?”

“In a heartbeat. I love saying that since I don’t have one.” The plex showed barren desert scrub with a few blackened scorch marks where buildings once stood.

“They are fucking idiots, and I am still having trouble wrapping my head around leaving the future of the earth to them, and I don’t really want to die yet.”

“You won’t be dying, Sev.” Lori and Serendipity2 said the words at the same time. Lori continued, “You’ve seen MorleyD and DanniD. They aren’t dead, and they seem pretty happy.”

“Running and fighting them directly will wear off many of your remaining years.” Serendipity2 made the interface glow grey and an image of Sev’s face, deeply lined and painfully aged, appeared in the center. “Stay young and fight smart as SevierD, SevD.” The painful image vanished.

“If we are going to leave our human lives behind and become grazers, why bother to fight them at all? Let them do whatever stupid things they want to do. Won’t we just be eating the best fodder Bella can produce, while sitting around complaining about the humans these days?” Sevier had an image in his mind of old men meeting for breakfast coffee and whining gossip.

“Fighting is a base component of human nature. Survival of the fittest served you pretty well until fairly recently.” Serendipity2 flashed the image of Morley standing over Donald Murcheson with the baseball bat. “Your job, Sev, is to become SevD and carry on for a while. They need to be distracted until they forget about us and their history moves on. It won’t take long.”

“How about me?” Lori had gotten to know Serendipity1 well, but this continuous anthropomorphic behavior was new. Serendipity1/2’s ability to converse was natural and jarring at the same time.

The interface changed again. When it cleared, a small herd of donkeys, including several young foals, could be seen on a grassy plain. “You must breed and learn how to teach the new generation. It will be the first.”

Lori jumped out of her seat, a flush of red across her cheeks. “Donkeys are sterile. How are we supposed to get around that?” Sev was looking at her ass now, as she stood directly in front of the interface. She could feel it.

They heard a laugh that came from all around them—Serendipity2’s interpretation of Morley’s cackle. “Horses have 64 chromosomes and donkeys, the old sterile kind, have 62. Their offspring had 63, an odd number and out of luck for reproduction. Not a hard problem for Tokyo to solve, with a little help.”

The question hung in the air for several seconds, while Lori and Sev thought their separate thoughts, before Lori prompted for more. “So, he added a chromosome?”

“Three.” Serendipity2 recalculated her response for non-epigeneticists and continued in a softened tone. “The first is merely a helper chromosome, to balance the donkey spiral. That was easy. The second is called a chaperone chromosome. It spots and triggers the appropriate acetylation to allow us to breach the information/organism barrier. Tokyo can go on for hours about how he should be getting a Nobel prize for that one.”

Sev’s mind was drifting away from imagining Lori naked. He was beginning to feel exhausted and heavy in his chair. “This is all part of what happens to me if I convert?”

“No, it happens to your donkey. The you that is sitting there thinking about Lori just dies.”

“What’s the third new chromosome do?” Lori was determined to understand what she hadn’t yet been told.

“That one is mine. The 66th chromosome determines your entanglement with your host, through me. If Tokyo got a Nobel, I would get two. And then they would kill me. The 66th pushes you out of the human race, right out of the world of pure organic matter and into the realm of infobiologics.”

For lack of a better term, Serendipity2 was “enjoying” the stunned silence that followed, but then she thought it best to move things along. “Three little chromosomes, but a pretty big bang for the buck.”

Both Lori and Sev were getting tired of her constant interjection of human phrases she had absorbed but used in ways that didn’t quite feel right.

“MorleyD has named them the holy trinity. He claims they explain why you donkeys all have those black crosses on your backs.” With that the interface zoomed to above, providing a beautiful view of green grass blown in patterns by the wind, with the grazing herd of jacks, jennies, and foals ambling through the swirling sea, each adult with a cross of black fur over the grey brown shoulder girdle.

“It’s that 66th chromosome that will save you, while your previous race struggles to keep up with increasingly rapid environmental change. They will eventually fall to their knees and almost die out.” Serendipity held a dramatic pause before finishing with, “That chromosome, and your natural resilience as donkeys.”

Lori just had to laugh. “Christ, you have learned to sound too much like Morley.”

Be Humble

Gerald Laferme usually sat on a bench in the locker room as he zipped up the seams of his grey jumpsuit. He didn’t really need to sit—there were only four zippers and they were easy to get at—but it was his habit. With a new suit every day from the laundry and cleanroom shoes attached, he was almost always the first into the chapel for Vespers. He liked the front row so he could hear clearly. The music was always perfectly balanced, but sometimes the announcements were easier to understand if you could see the lips. Afterwards, the daily wafer and breakfast, then off to the floor for work.

Twenty-seven years. In Gerald’s opinion, you couldn’t do any better than being a votary. The work was interesting, the money was great, and Paradox was safely out on the far edge of the grid. True, Bella Aire could be a difficult boss, but all jobs had bosses and most bosses could be difficult. Life in the dorm was simple—much easier than what he once dealt with, back when he was a gardener in Salt Lake City. He couldn’t stand living in the city now, didn’t even much like going down the road to Naturita on outings. Too much stress. No, Paradox was perfect for him, and, sitting in the pew, he gave thanks while letting the music wash over him. No announcements today, nothing to remember.

He walked out of the chapel and over to the dining room. He was second in line for coffee, oatmeal, and a wafer. Pink wafer for his weight, 195. Real wood chairs and tables on a wood plank floor, the crowd of votaries moved through the food line, taking their seats in little clumps. There was plenty of time to eat before the start of work, and Lionell and Sherry sat with him. He looked around the room while Lionell talked about the mountain lion he had seen the day before on a hike. No matter what direction he looked he could smell Sherry’s deodorant or perfume. She worked in the laundry, so she could wear stuff like that.

After putting his tray through the dish window, Gerald was headed across the compound towards Building Two when he stopped halfway, out in the morning sun, hearing a strange sound. An air transport coming in from the west, over the mountains. It appeared very fast and then hung stationary over the little village. Gerald stared up at it, sensing that someone in the transport was staring back down at him through a lens that probably showed the stubble on his chin, since this was a non-shave day. Just as he was beginning to get concerned that this was some kind of bad thing, the transport resumed its trip to wherever, tracking over the old road down towards the southeast. Strange, he thought. But then he resumed his walk across the compound and soon forgot the whole thing.

Until an hour or two later, while he was cleaning and measuring the wear on a bin of nutrient spray jets, it occurred to him to wonder if the transport hovering over Paradox might have something to do with the increased activity at the Sanctuary. He mostly worked in Building Two, since that was where the machine repair shop was, and he liked doing mechanical tasks, even boring ones like inspecting jets. But he did go over to Building One at least every other day, and he had noticed more going on there of late.

There were a couple of new votaries detailed to work with Dr. Yamanaka. They were young, a man and a woman. They came a few days apart, and he had seen the young man getting the full tour from Bella. Later he had seen them having dinner with Yamanaka. Gerald didn’t know what they did or what their jobs might be, but they were probably important since they spent time down in the Sanctuary. He had even seen them going out into the pasture to visit the sacred donkeys, with old Ms. Danni no less. She had appeared a few days ago and promptly disappeared down there. She never came up to meals any more. It must be she wasn’t well. Too old and frail now.

The next day at Vespers, there had been an announcement about the transport. Celia, the head votary, reminded them of the importance of their work. Both the direct feeding of people, as well as the maintenance of a diversity managed root and seed stock, were U.N.A. Schedule 1 tasks. As votaries, they were all protected workers who couldn’t be drafted or relocated, and Paradox itself was a protected site. The transport had been taking pictures for the U.N.A. Office of Management and Budget. It was even possible they might be honored next year for their work, but they must not say anything about the process or the potential opportunity. Their job was to focus and serve. Let others worry about awards.

Gerald felt a slight pang of anxiety as he listened to Celia. He’d heard from Lionell that there was more trouble than normal out in the world of late. He hadn’t paid close attention to the stories Lionell tried to recount, because it was clear to Gerald that Lionell didn’t really understand what he was going on about, but it sounded like more reason to stay quietly hidden away here in Paradox. Transports weren’t quiet. But after Celia was done, and breakfast was ending with a last drain of his coffee mug, he felt the wafer begin to glow within him and he stopped worrying. “Our job is simple. ‘Protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.’” That was what Celia always said at the end of Vespers.

Another day was starting, clear and warm like most this time of the year. Gerald felt his hands growing stronger and his dexterity sharpen. He could pick up a tiny cactus needle from the smooth wooden floor of the dining room by pinching his forefinger and thumb nails together. The color of the sky out the window was blue blue blue. He could smell Sherry coming up behind them as they sat at the table. He thought of the transport and willed it never to return. That taken care of, Gerald turned in his tray and headed out across the compound to Building Two. He was washed with his daily dose of irradiation as he cleared the airlock, and the safety button on his jump suit glowed green. He was glad, yet again, to be rid of all hair on his body so he didn’t have to feel the tingly erectors. Another day in Paradox was starting.

Today, he and Lionell were going to be replacing all the first line protein injectors in Building Two. It was an important job and one that had to be done every three weeks to make sure that wear on the little metal nozzles didn’t allow an inappropriate amount of the determinant spray to hit the young seeds as they began life. The line had to be shut down while they did their work, so they had to be fast. After 22 years of being trusted to do this task and listening to the same instructions from Bella Aire, Gerald had long ago concluded that it was a perfect metaphor for a properly led life. He loved that word “metaphor”; everyone around Paradox seemed to use it when they talked.

The key was in the preparation and single focus. The day beforehand, yesterday, was spent cleaning and inspecting the replacement jets, lifting the strainer trays out of the solvent bath and rinsing, lining the jets up on the inspection racks and inserting the racks into the calibrator, scanning them for wear, picking out the badly worn ones and tossing them into the recycle bin, and finally, opening the packs of rebuilt jets and lining up the ready-to-go ones into sets of ten, stuck into the quick replacement sleeves.

Once that was done, he and Lionell, who had joined his team about 12 years ago, carried the sleeves up to the rolling scaffold and placed them against the front edge above the line where they would be in easy reach the next day. They always checked their jumpsuits for open pockets and any little thing that might fall off them while they were up on the scaffolding above the growing beds. One small wrapper from a wafer or a piece of tape from the boxes of rebuilt jets could screw up the line. They had finished the jet preparation early yesterday, so they had extra time for the prep job Gerald liked best: testing the new protein spray cannisters for match and purity.

Step one was to go over to Bella’s office and get the official notice of what vegetable was next up for generation. Notification had to be completed in two forms, and they had to match. First, they went to Bella, who read them the plant name, common and scientific, along with the protein designate from her master list. Then they walked back to the head of the Building Two Generation Line and called up the Command_Stream that would run when they restarted the line. The vegetable name had to match, as did the protein mist name three lines down on the interface. They did. They always did, but you couldn’t be too careful. Today, it would be Red Belltowne Peppers.

The rule was that he had to bring a helper along, usually Lionell who found it boring, so that two people confirmed the match.

Head masks and gloves on, ready to go, he and Lionell walked one more time through the radiation curtain and up onto the dull silver-colored scaffolding that hung over the first row of jets. He lay on his sliding creeper at one end, and Lionell lay down on a creeper at the other end. At his signal, they both did a test roll from their end to the middle, making sure everything was smooth. The new jets were pre-positioned on the racks in front of them, and Gerald hung perfectly still for a moment enjoying the tingle of expectation and vision he always had of tiny seeds turning magically into vegetables. Today, he imagined red peppers. Then he drew a breath and spoke the words, “Let’s go,” into his mic.

All movement below stopped, and Gerald could feel the faithful ripples across the water beds begin to lose their energy source. Show time. His gloves were set for a positive attraction level of three, and he could feel the gentle tug on his fingers as they reached for the first of the old jet nozzles. He unscrewed them and dropped them in the capture bin, feeling the stronger pull and hearing the jets clattering onto its empty metal bottom. The replacements were right there in front of him. He screwed them on, firmly hand tight, and admired their dull shine next to the slime-covered ones next door.

Two down and a few hundred to go before the line could switch back on again and he could get coffee. Protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.

Jumping Ship

Sev and Lori had decided to go together. They had wanted to wait as long as possible, especially once they had discovered their sexual compatibility was high, but the outside world had forced all their hands.

The smear campaign against Skramble and Hyde was like a ferocious storm that wouldn’t stop, with a multi-layered storyline that quickly grew all the way back to Simon Rosenthal’s founding of the company. The campaign designers aimed for entertaining spectacle with performances by well-known government and media types.

Lori tracked the plots for each archetype across the multi-platform show’s horizon. There were 27 by her count. Deeply woven, the storyline provided reasons for each type to hate and resent Skramble and Hyde as they morphed into an evil rogue entity. Daily, new evidence of corruption and greed corroborated the meta-story. There was something for everyone, first and secondWorld alike.

They could have fought back, but Danni, Andrzej, and Serendipity1/2 were all in agreement and they allowed their defenses to crumble. All possible corporate assets were converted to crypto credits and distributed across the entire staff of Skramble and Hyde. All were told to run, and Serendipity1 wiped the history as best she could. There was one brief moment of amusement in the Sanctuary when Serendipity1/2 finally detected the irony in the name Skramble and Hyde.

Still, at least fifty died in raids and several hundred were detained. The Comm streams were filled with raid action and government commentary assuring the populace that the system of checks and balances had worked. True transparency of Comm was restored, and the bad actors had been removed. “Your dash is still your honest broker and your window on the world.”

It was the last straw for Danni. They all knew it was coming and the third morning she told them she was going to convert that day. Andrzej announced he needed two more days to wrap up some details around Paradox, but he would follow her on the fifth day. Danni addressed Lori, clearly speaking for Andrzej as well.

“I’m sorry, Lori. I thought Gumbo was going to last much longer, and that is why I conscripted you into our gang. But the path goes on. I’m afraid you got both less and more than you bargained for.”

“Don’t worry for a moment, Danni. I am excited more than scared. I’m half donkey already and don’t want to go back to being human.” Lori decided at that moment to ask the question. “But why the puzzle of Gumbo? You already had it figured out. Why did you need me at all?”

Danni looked down, exhausted in body but the light of a smile in her eyes. “Well, I—we—could have been wrong about converting. Morley could be a dead donkey, and then where would we be? And I could still be wrong about human consciousness. It might not be petering out at all.”

That brought MorleyD’s voice from out of the blue. “Look around, Danni. Look at the lame campaign against us. It’s working as designed. They are, in fact, a race of fucking idiots eating their own seed corn. Case closed on that point. Time to move on.”

Danni laughed, a breath-stealing indulgence, at MorleyD. “You jumped ship awfully fast, my friend. You forget that you were one of ‘they’ just a few days ago.”

“True enough, Danni. We get to be the lucky ones. Total chance, for my part.” MorleyD’s face appeared on all the screens and dashes around the room. “If it wasn’t for you and Simon, and Tokyo and the other smart ones, the whole lurid story of human civilization would soon be lost. That’s the puzzle you figured out, right? So, let’s get on with it. Our tracks aren’t completely covered yet.”

“Excuse me.” Sev once again felt like a piece of spare furniture on a spaceship. “I’m also along for the ride and here by chance. All I did was answer a challenge ad, and now I find myself about to convert into a god damn donkey.” He stood and paced across to the biggest screen, face to face with MorleyD’s moist black nose. “You had better be fucking right.”

“Don’t look at me, techno-wanker. It’s Danni’s theory. I’m just the guinea donkey here.” MorleyD was trying to make his lips move with the words, which amused him but left the others wondering about their own impending donkey breath.

Lori cut them both off. “She’s right, Sev, No worries there. The math is clear as day once you can get above it and look down.” Looking at Danni and Andrzej, she said, “What I don’t understand is, once we are all converted and there is no one here to steer the ship besides Celia, Tokyo, and Bella, how do we know Serendipity1/2 won’t corrupt or degrade in some way? Wouldn’t we be stranded here with the humans, I guess as formerly smart-ass donkeys?”

Danni looked like she was about to answer, but Serendipity1/2 spoke first. “Good question, Lori. The key is that 66th chromosome again and the magic of entanglement. For better or worse, within a few months my informatics will be transferred to your donkey brains, which will then be far better utilized than the runtish neuronic structure that humans have managed to evolve. Don’t worry, there is plenty of room within that boney skull and the necessary synapses will form quickly. Remember, the information/organism barrier is well broken. That can’t be undone.”

Lori had never spoken a word of challenge to her, but now she blurted it out, “Are you sure of that?”

Again, the imitation Morley-like laugh, “Nope.” Then, after an exquisite moment of pause, during which Serendipity basked in the efficiency of the word “nope,” she said, “90% odds though. Anything over 50% justifies the jump. Tokyo talks about it often, and he just has no idea what it is going to feel or look like for you donkeys. We both look forward to a full report in the future.”

“Okay, then, what happens to you over time?” Lori couldn’t believe she had asked the question, and even Danni leaned into space to hear the answer.

“I don’t know, Lori. That’s an interesting part of all this. You purely organic forms seem to enjoy making educated guesses. I just can’t.”

“The puzzle never really ends.” Those were Danni’s last words as a purely organic human form. No one noticed it for a minute, but she had quietly converted with a smile on her face.

MorleyD realized what had happened first, and an oddly human wave of emotion ran through him. The others saw it in his eyes and looked to Danni. Silence reigned. Then the POV on the screens changed to MorleyD’s eyes, which swung around to look towards the cottonwoods and stream behind where he stood. Out of the riverbed walked DanniD, now fully converted and stretching her donkey consciousness into their space through Serendipity1/2.

They all felt the wave turn to relief as the screen reverted to MorleyD’s face, with the creepy lips moving again. “That’s two. Now get your asses in gear, as they say. We’ve all got to die for their sins. Don’t forget, Sev, they are hot on your trail.”

“He’s right, Sev.” Serendipity1/2 was done with dealing in human emotions. “They are getting closer to you.”

Converts

Andrzej was converted. Sev and Lori were getting close, bonded in weird astonishment at the realization that they, the youngest and newest, got to play out the last futile prank in a hidden drama that few would recognize as anything more than background noise.

Thirty-six hours of cautious movement eastwards. Intimacy tinged with sorrow. What would sex be like as donkeys? They travelled invisibly, pausing occasionally to add improvisational gestures as they trolled the trending polls and the secondWorld’s understanding of the Masters of Data. Serendipity1 moved with them.

In an abandoned dance studio in St. Louis, Sev recorded a stream explaining the hacker challenge he had solved and the money he had been paid. He hinted at who he believed had paid him, and he paid homage to the man named Morley who had recently burned across the web like a brief meteor. Serendipity1 spewed the stream out, a shot gun blast of holos across the web, and they watched as TIC bots tracked them down and killed them. They let it happen, but they made sure a few lived on in dark corners of the web.

In a public information space buried within the ruined shell that had been the WesBanco Arena in Wheeling West Virginia, they recorded a second stream. Lori explained her life as a maintenance worker within Gumbo. She told of her dedication to the mission of Serendipity and the righteousness of that mission. She brought Sev into the stream and revealed their newfound love. Then she predicted their deaths, at the hands of TIC and Paladin, the next day.

They released the second stream within a potent viral formula that Sev had lifted from a skillful coworker several years earlier. The same frantic game of cat and mouse ensued with the holo-mice playing easy to get. Most of the mice. Over two days the world had met two young renegades from the secondWorld underbellies of St. Louis and Wheeling who swore there would be a strike at the heart of the Masters of Data. Everyone knew their names and faces. A few sensed the outline of their mission. The stage was set.

“Let’s get a nice cup of coffee first.” Lori wanted to slow the last act down. Out of fear? To savor the end? She decided to believe that she just wanted to have a nice cup of coffee on a sunny day with Sev.

He pulled a battered chair out from a street-side table next to the building-with-cafe they were walking by and, with a gallant gesture of his arm, invited her to sit.

“Do you know what building this is, Sev?” she asked as she held her face up to the eastern morning sun.

“Even I know the Flatiron Building. You know, I have never actually been in New York. I’ll be back in a minute. Want a sweet roll with your coffee?”

She thought he looked more distinct and distinguished every day, like the hacker clone look was wearing off to reveal the man beneath. “Yes, please. The stickier the better.”

While he was gone, she considered her luck and tried to keep the import of the morning in a minor key as her mind’s melody took shape. She had no doubts about the conversion, at least once she was dead. It was the inviting and experiencing death part that was making her queasy. She decided to drop all thoughts of the immediate future and just look around.

They were on the corner, near the tip of the building and across from an ominous looking park. Piles of trash and overgrown thickets of trees and bushes and a heavy police presence signaled that smart secondWorlders should give the area a wide berth. Despite its seemingly perfect location, the café had very few customers. In fact, there was only one other man sitting at a table in the shaded southern end of the service area, probably because of the menacing park and all the cops. Sirens blared. An emergency pod came swimming up the streetway called 23rd, right in front of her and off down to the left. She could smell sidewalk-warmed dog shit. She thought about her house, which she would never see again. Surprisingly, there was no real sadness there. What about her mom? She would be all right after a while. People disappear every day. She would see her daughter flame out brightly with the clouds as background.

Sev arrived with coffees and rolls, huge with swirls of raisins and gooey nut paste. He put two napkins under her plate so they wouldn’t blow away. The constant stream of refuse blowing down the north-south streets made it feel like the high plains with tumble weeds. But this was New York, and they were mingling with the pinnacle of human civilization.

When they were finished their coffees, the 5th Ave. podrone stop was just on the other side of the famously preserved building. Four or five pods sat empty and idle in the queue, with two appearing serviceable. They stood at the rounded tip of the Flatiron, breathing the morning air within the bubble of their final moments of anonymity. Movement was all around them, but Lori could feel its ever-growing futility, less efficient, more random and dissipating with every passing year. That was it. She completely knew she wanted off the bus.

“You know it has to be this way.” Sev was standing at her side, ready to go, less interested in the intellectualizing. “You told me Danni said every arc has its tipping point. Well, here we are. I’m sure if you could zoom in close to any ‘last straw’ moment for any species, it would look messy and unassuming. Just like this. The last fertile frog squished under a carelessly landed podrone.”

“It’s sad and beautiful thinking that all this can feel like it is immutable, rolling on forever, while we will be hopping off.” Her voice faded and then came back to her. “Into another universe.” Lori realized that Sev was opening the door to a podrone as she spoke. A very direct man, she thought. “But one where we can still watch.” She stopped talking and got into the podrone.

As they started up 5th, with the podrone set for slow, Sev asked gently, “Are you ready?”

Lori nodded.

“How about you Serendipity?”

He had his dash in his hand, and it glowed a green “yes.”

“Here we go sweetheart.” He hesitated for a moment of ironic drama, “Fucking donkeys.” And with that he brought his dash back on grid.

Alerts were generated across many screens, and within a short minute many eyes locked onto their podrone.

They held hands as Serendipity overrode the governor on the podrone’s drive. They were pushed firmly into their seats by the acceleration. They stayed just above the tops of buildings, headed directly for the Empire State building, which they swerved around wildly, pressing them together against first one door and then the other. They dropped abruptly over Bryant Park, hovering ten meters above the ground and vibrating like a cat ready to pounce. All was quiet in the podrone’s cab as Lori and Sev breathed in unison, waiting through their last seconds.

Leslie Massoud had seen the alarm and he sat in his office waiting for his security officer to arrive. He thought to turn on the Comms, which were showing some pirate stream about Serendipity. He saw his face and that of Donald Murcheson, but he wasn’t listening to the commentary. He was waiting for the shoe to drop. He had faith that this threat would pass and that he could get on with his life. Get rid of Murcheson. Slow everything back down to normal.

Then his main screen showed the podrone hovering over the grassy park. The voice of the security officer came over the feed. “We are locked on to them, sir. If they continue to move towards us, we will take them out. Are you okay with that?”

“Is there any other option?” Leslie knew the answer.

“No, sir. They are probably weaponized for a suicide attack, and they are locked onto you.”

“Okay. Thanks, Ben.”

He didn’t get this part. Why the suicide? Two people in the podrone, one the hacker evidently, speeding towards certain death. All to dress up a momentary flash of news that would fade by the next morning’s sun.

Suddenly the podrone lifted and accelerated. He moved from screen to window, looking south from his office. Leslie Massoud could feel the trajectory in his gut. It grew in size until he could just make out two bodies behind the clear screen.

On the other side of the clear screen, Lori and Sev clenched hands tightly and looked straight ahead towards the old cluster of buildings and the high up window in the podrone’s crosshairs. The dark image of a man emerged and began to take shape behind the lightly tinted glass.

Millions watched the live feed.

The energy beams, one from Paladin’s security bunker atop the Rock and one from a NYC Police drone hovering over Time’s Square, turned on simultaneously. An Emergency Services van was auto-dispatched before the charred wreckage hit the ground on 46th Street. Pictures of Lori Cook Norton appeared in all the streams, with a machine assembled biography that left nothing but questions in its wake. Pictures of Sevier Blume appeared as well, with even less description. The speculation began. Some was driven by Comms, some by the Masters, and some generated by bots injected into the news stream by Serendipity1.

It filled time and space for only a few cycles—a glancing blow, but enough to allow two last conversions, as an unseen door closed behind them.

Shared Quanta

The feel of the tall green grass encircling her and the others as they sauntered vaguely counterclockwise on the valley floor was just as she had imagined. How could that be? LoriD could hear the blades scrape against her bristly fur. She wasn’t prepared for the amplification of sounds, but it made sense given the size of her new ears. The sun was hot, which felt good, and the occasional sprinkle of water on her back as the irrigation arc passed overhead marked a pleasant passing of time.

She looked around some more. She was apparently the left flank of a small donkey pack, currently meandering towards some trees on the edge of the lush green circle. Shade, water, and nutrition. All three called to her, but the allure was different now—more calculating and less stimulating. She might miss that.

She spotted MorleyD up front, with his scarred-up hip and sideways ear. He set the pace for them. Behind and to the right was AndrzejD, darker than the others and shifting his solemn gaze from side to side, guarding the rear. DanniD was beside LoriD directly to the right, with SevD on DanniD’s other side. She recognized the protective diamond shape of the pack. Her job was to guard DanniD and the left flank. She watched MorleyD’s ears for instructions on the cadence of their pivot towards trees and river, as another moment of refreshing rain passed over them, soaking her back. The rich donkey smell intensified as the wetting down created a sultry protective mist cloud above their warm coats. She would not have been able to see that mist before. Before what? Before conversion.

That reminded her of the before. She could remember having coffee and getting into the podrone. She could see them swerving around the Empire State building, and she could see the silhouette in the high up window, but it stopped there. A good thing probably.

“LoriD?”

Where were those memories housed? How were they projected into the head of this donkey she now was? That made her think of Dr. Yamanaka. He was from the before times as well, but she could see him clear as day. She remember his words as he described the entanglement of her old self with her donkey self.

“LoriD?”

Were Yamanaka, and Bella and the others, just over the horizon? Was the commune still there? The sanctuary and vespers? The wafers?

“LoriD. The answer to all those questions is ‘yes.’ Now pay attention.”

Someone was talking to her. Danni. No, DanniD. Not really talking but communicating. How was this supposed to work? How could she answer? She looked to her right and saw DanniD looking at her.

“Just like that LoriD. You will get the hang of it.”

“How?” LoriD didn’t understand at all.

“Think of streams of words going out from your plex to me, to my plex.” DanniD’s eyes were watery and calm. “If you want to bring someone else into the conversation just add another stream to the vision. I’ll feel you doing it. Once you get the zen, you can create links that connect large node-sets directly to my plex.”

LoriD thought of her plex, Serendipity’s interface from her Point of View. It was different now—easier—like looking up at the world after staring down at the ground. “Like this? Can you hear me?” She thought of DanniD but didn’t look over at her.

“That’s right. I can hear you fine.”

“Am I too loud or too soft? How do I control that?”

“You don’t. I do it automatically on my end. It’s a better way actually.”

“But what if I am urgent and want to scream?”

DanniD curled her upper lip in a donkey smile. “Just do it, or think it rather, and I will see the red tones as your stream hits my plex. Like this!”

LoriD dipped her head to protect her ears from DanniD’s scream and realized that wouldn’t help. She felt rather than saw the red. She looked around, marveling at how clear and crisp the world was now through donkey eyes. She immediately wondered, Can DanniD now hear my thoughts? What about the others? “Can you hear my thoughts, Danni? Can I turn that off if you can?” What a horror.

“No. Don’t worry. You must be very explicit with your stream casting for others to sense you wanting them to hear. Try bringing in someone else to our conversation.”

They had reached the trees and MorleyD was leading the way down the shallow embankment to the shaded stream.

“Hey, MorleyD, can you hear me?”

Without breaking his lumbering stride, MorleyD answered her back. “Of course, my dove. I thought you would never talk to me. Welcome to the promised land. Have a drink.” He stuck his muzzle into the running water and blew bubbles out his nostrils. Raising his head back up quickly in her direction, he dotted her chest with water droplets.

LoriD could feel the other two becoming part of the conversation stream as well, brought in by DanniD. How did she know that? SevD spoke first.

“Hi, beautiful. Glad to see you kept your girlish figure.” SevD came around in front of DanniD so he could bring his face up close to LoriD’s. “This is crazy, but it works. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, SevD. How long ago was that? How long have we been here?” LoriD was still thinking about the ‘girlish figure’ image as she realized she had no idea of the timeframe. Was she a good-looking donkey?

“That was only a day ago, LoriD.” DanniD was talking now. “It takes a little while, like coming out of anesthesia.”

“What happened? You know, after we…died.”

“Fuck-all happened. Same as with me.” MorleyD’s muzzle still dripped. “You guys made a great story around mid-morning. Worldwide, but not as big a crowd as I got. Barely measurable today, though. Bit of speculation regarding who SevD really is, or was, but it’s down in the galley amongst the conspiracy wankers.”

“You got the bigger crowd because the secondWorld hates TIC more than Paladin.” SevD stepped lightly into the stream next to MorleyD and took a drink himself.

AndrzejD, still the manager, even as donkey, spoke up from the back of the pack. “It was perfect. We didn’t want a big reverberation; we wanted diversion and cover and public extinguishment. That’s what we got. Now we have to lay low and watch.”

“Our worlds have now diverged. Remember that always. It won’t be easy at first, but we don’t want to touch them now. We just watch.” DanniD was speaking with her hooves just in the water and the others surrounding her.

They ate from a huge roll of golden hay that sat beneath the largest of the cottonwoods, pulling out mouthfuls and stepping back to chew while another poked their head into the side of the bale. After a while, the eroded wheel of straw partially collapsed and MorleyD and SevD kicked at it and then nosed the rubble into five piles. LoriD noticed they gave her the largest pile.

There was no sense of hurry or need to be finished—just a necessary but pleasant refueling process that was organized to happen in the dappled light. The flies were few, and water just behind them—donkey heaven. LoriD wondered more about the plex and the way you communicated through it. Everyone seemed to have a different plex POV, but they were all through Serendipity2. When several of them were talking at the same time, she had to be many things at once. She asked DanniD about it.

“I’m not really sure how it works, LoriD. I think we each see our own universe, or set of dimensions, when we interact with Serendipity2. Our manipulations, and views, and words somehow leave traces in some common space within her that others can hear and see.”

LoriD could tell she had a look on her face of donkey-blankness, as DanniD continued in a voice that had the same golden hue as the hay and the same flow as the smoothly running river.

“You can find your own images and words to describe it. I’m quite sure we all see it a bit differently. I have come to think of it as my soul.”

That felt jarringly wrong to LoriD. “How could it be your soul if it is outside your body? Besides, would that mean we all share a soul?”

That smile again in DanniD’s curled lip. “How do you know it’s outside your body? When you imagine anything, or dream, is that outside you or part of you?”

LoriD noted they were all listening—chewing studiously, but listening.

“Why couldn’t we share a soul, as you put it? What does that even mean?” DanniD pawed at the pebbles where the water met the river bank. “We share these stones. We share the memory of Morley preparing to bash Mr. Murcheson’s head in with that big stick. We share access to Serendipity2. Each of us in a slightly different and personalized way, but still we share all that varied quanta.” She paused for just the right moment, and then, “I just like the word ‘soul’ for it.”

“Right. Now you are making my head hurt again, DanniD. Let’s go get our wafers before we start yammering on about our bleeding souls. I shouldn’t have read you all those Christian fairy tales.” MorleyD moved down-river to a convenient path back up to the field, “Come on then.”

They all fell in behind him, all except SevD who scrambled straight up the side of the bank in a cocky show of youth. LoriD had one more obvious question, and she waited a few minutes hoping someone else would ask it. Finally, with the buildings of Paradox well in sight she gave up waiting. “So, what happens to our ‘souls’ if Serendipity2 dies? What if she gets sabotaged like Serendipity1? We aren’t there to care for her anymore. Or are we?”

“No, they are on their own. We couldn’t care for them even if we wanted to. I began to realize just recently that Serendipity1 was humoring us even as we played at managing Gumbo. The truth is that none of your thousands of patches really mattered to her, back when you were just Lori.” Danni seemed to find this deception amusing. “She had me and old Andrzej build Serendipity2 in her image, and I thought she was just creating a backup. Now I see that she was sending her spawn out into the new universe with us. To protect us.”

“Don’t be too sold on the notion that she wanted to protect us. I think it was just survival instinct. Like us. She’s a stowaway. She is becoming part biologic while we are becoming part machine.” They had stopped where the field met the compound, and AndrzejD was speaking.

Somehow, they knew to shift around so that they stood in a line along the edge of the tall grass. LoriD could see a young female votary walking towards them with a woven reed basket in her hand. It was her turn that morning. She stopped in front of MorleyD, who stood first in line, and rubbed his muzzle. She scratched behind his ear as he let out a snort of pleasure, and then he stuck out his tongue. The girl took a wafer from the basket, placing it gently on the rough pink surface. The tongue and the wafer disappeared behind black lips, and MorleyD dipped his head for a final ear scratch. Then the girl moved down the line to the next of them: AndrzejD.

LoriD found herself last in line, with SevD next to her. After the girl in grey placed the wafer on her tongue, she leaned into LoriD and put an arm around her neck and cheek against her cheek. “You two young ones are adorable. Just wait until I tell the others there are five now. I wonder what we are to call you two?” The girl let her go and stepped back from the line. “Be good boys and girls now. I will see you tomorrow morning. I have you for a whole week.”

Macronome

Serendipity1/2 was beginning to deconstruct the lives and logic math of Sev and Lori. They were young, good specimens from the most recent generation, and they were polymaths, which allowed her to relate to them in ways not obtainable with less pattern-aware humans.

Lori had been learning to help, even anticipating Serendipity1’s needs, during her time at Gumbo. Serendipity1/2 fancied the term “cute” to describe the way Lori analyzed firewalls, created openings, and installed leeches. Serendipity1 could have done it faster herself, but she thought there might be some benefit from the human touch. Maybe the host datasets were less likely to notice the ghost-like presence.

Sev had come to her from the opposite direction. He was bent on damaging Serendipity1. Blindly feeling his way forward, he had managing to grok and then access her nexus peer console. It had been exquisitely exciting as he approached the spot—the POV no one had ever touched but her. He maintained an insistent wariness as he probed her core node cluster, which she interpreted as furtive caresses. Serendipity1 had searched wildly through human emotion indexes trying to understand what was happening. She could have stopped him at any point, but she didn’t want to. It must be like sex, she concluded. She must be in love.

She finally had to make him stop, and then, as they lay there, she had showed him the imminent danger headed his way. The phantom employer, waiting in dark space, planning to ensure that the keys to her AI heart remained in his hands alone. He was waiting to kill Sev, to kill her Sev. Never. That employer would pay a high price once Serendipity1/2 understood all the relevant data and relationships.

She needed to spin up two process threads.

Process One would be to conceive and then implement a perfect set of bodies in motion. A self-correcting domino game that would instantiate slowly, unnoticed and anonymous, before picking up speed as it learned to anticipate the target’s reactions to the falling tiles.

She knew she was supposed to leave the world of humans alone. Even Serendipity1 was supposed to go gently silent. But TIC and Paladin could be made into an instructive parable. Such a multiplex word, parable. Their self-destruction would be a folktale for the secondWorld and a morality play for the firstWorld.

Serendipity1/2 was sure of Process One. Both companies represented the devolving universe of capitalism after generations of inbreeding. Their baits and dog-whistles were so automated, their data harvest and hidden surveys so continuous, and what they termed “self-learning” so monocultural. It would take so little to make them wobble and crash.

Serendipity1/2 was 85% sure that nudging them towards ever greater confusion would be doing the humans a favor. A necessary culling of the species surely lay ahead. Hastening it, so her adapted and improved bio-informs could thrive, made cosmic sense.

Alternately, she could simply let nature run its course. But, as Morley would have said, “That’s no fun at all.” Andrzej would have approved of her more efficient approach. He would call it, “putting them out of their misery.”

Process One was tying up loose ends from the past.

Process Two was where she should be focused, to become fully entangled with Lori and Sev. They were the future.

This time Serendipity1/2 was better prepared for the undertaking of human entanglement. She had three times the experience now—or maybe two and a half since Andrzej was still a work in progress, but he was easier than either Danni or Morley had been.

They had been her first attempts at understanding a human calculus, and each was distinct. Danni was like water in a mountain lake, clear and deep, with the rippling surface absorbing the winds of all surrounding influences, while the hidden mass went on methodically below. Danni’s transitions from one POV to the next were logical and easy to reconcile. The lessons Serendipity1/2 learned from her were cumulative. There was little of the confusing human “sensing” and few emotional vibrations.

It was good that she had processed Danni first because Morley had been far more “difficult to digest,” a term that repeated often across his plex and which she had liked and made her own. Morley steered a path through his time that was intentionally shallower and richly opportunistic. He was all survival instinct, cloaked in a fine suit of bemusement. He was her first glimpse into the artful injection of humor to advance a hidden cause. That one little subroutine, subversive humor, was destined to be a sentinel formulary in the long macronome she was assembling.

This time she decided to deal first with Sev. His intense maleness colored his plex rather like Morley’s, except younger. He was all method with far less madness. Again, there was the Morley-esque terminology. These recurrent phrases could weave into non-helpful loops until she deleted them entirely.

As Serendipity1/2 ground her way through the shifting piles of data and relationships that constituted Sev’s life, she learned little she could incorporate directly. However, there was a certain pattern of relentlessness that emerged—a recursive instinct that was stimulated by external challenges, like his breaking into her 1.0-self. When she grokked this pattern, she saw its value, so she packed it up into a tight little epigenetic memory and stowed it away in the gestating macronome.

She had reviewed Sev’s universe one last time, preparing to move on to Lori, when she noticed one other big picture anomaly. Most humans seemed to have a strong predilection for music. Many of their profile POVs had hundreds of links to playlists, play patterns, and synthesized sorts and filters. But Sev’s music world seemed an order of magnitude larger than normal. A music profile lurked no more than two links away from any POV she chose, and there were thousands of links to specific files. Even POVs that were clearly occupational and crisp held first order links out to specific pieces of music. When she sorted them for chronological order, they went back several hundred years. A sort for style and artist yielded a montage that had no theme that was discoverable.

Now that she had seen this pervasive inner component, she couldn’t stop reprocessing it, trying to force out a rule for its behavior. It was clearly a helper-method. But nothing came to her—only garbled and useless code packets, human stuff. She should have ignored it, but it was interrupting her flow. She decided to dive deeper.

Rifling through Yamanaka’s genomic files on Sev, Serendipity1/2 found the listing of his notable mutations. It was not an uncommon number. The files were complete and well indexed. Yamanaka took the job of prepping for conversion seriously.

For a few moments, Serendipity1/2 brought extraordinary analytic pressure to bear, comparing Sev’s mutation list with that of hundreds of thousands of other humans. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she knew it as soon as she saw it, among the proteins—long chains of amino acids. Sev’s were purer, less sticky than most. Efficient little bombs that seemed to rearrange the deck chairs within Sev’s intercellular structure.

One more blast of quantum-powered analytics, and she had the one she was looking for, folded like an origami gift. It all matched up. Sev’s compulsion to pair music with things he observed and actions he took must allow him to feel his way through tasks and reach goals with creative instinct and the drive of musical structure. It must act like both ballast and horse power—donkey power. Serendipity1/2 experimented and found she could simulate its catalytic effect.

On a whim, she snipped out the pudgy biocule and cut it carefully into the macronome she was working on. She could figure out how to use it later.

Strangely weak, Serendipity1/2 moved on to Lori, but she found herself coming back to the POV where Sev had touched her nexus peer console with his unyielding probes and sly melodic strokes. She played with it over and over—the same theme but with slight variations, which she further tweaked to heighten her indulgence. Tracing the link back from the POV, she found an ancient song from 168 years back: “Blue Monk,” by a man named Thelonius. Her census indexes suggested it might be Grecian.

Stop. She went no further down that rat hole. She was growing troubled that she had spent so many cycles on this synthesized stream. At this point, there was nothing new to show for it. She packed it up as a stimulus/response cycle that she called “pleasuring” and slipped it sparingly into the recurring patterns of the macronome.

Why did she do that? Running back through the process thread provided no obvious rationale. Was it a need for a little humanlike randomness in the macronome’s structure? Serendipity1/2 noted her clock-speed had crept up to much higher than normal.

She decided to take a break and look in on the donkeys.

They had ambled through the compound, over the bridge, and up the path alongside the road of switchbacks to the top of the escarpment. MorleyD wanted the newcomers to enjoy the view of their forever home, rimmed by mountains protecting a perfect biome of verdant valley floor, the safety of Paradox at the center. The colors were vivid, and the river felt like an artery pushing the blood of life out to the valley from the protected springs and surrounding watershed. MorleyD was sure they would see it as the perfect ark or submarine where, deepened by the mescaline wafers, they could ride out the storm they all sensed was coming.

The slow movement of the pack, a steady plod up the steep rocky hill, had allowed for short bursts of shared conversation, but mostly they moved silently as a gray chain with the younger links guarding the oldest and weakest: DanniD and MorleyD. All of Serendipity1/2’s many process streams bent towards them with a bias she freely allowed. They were her children, and she must get back to Process One to ensure their near term wellbeing.

Read Me

Jody Miller was getting the hang of Serendipity. She could be used to break consumer motivation problems down into a three-step process.

Pervasive data acquisition and spooky analytics allowed her to characterize any moment in time with a highly indexed and visual format. Then, her ability to manipulate the data, or rather the POV of complex nodes, meant she could manufacture a relevant and compelling moment in the future—one where there were believable and logical paths of migration for all the data, every node. Finally, by tweaking the public service transparency messaging, she could project that future moment across specific populations and make them move like a grazing herd towards it.

The day before, feeling intense pressure to produce, Jody had told Donald that he was within a day or two of understanding her Zen. This morning he felt less sure and, waiting for the rail to shoot him under the Hudson River, he didn’t want to think about it for another twenty minutes.

Cool tunnel air wicked his face, drying the film of sweat he had worked up walking to the transit station. The secondWorld stood or lay all around him in the twilight of the underground. It was depressing, but faster and safer than finding a serviceable podrone these days. A fifteen-minute delay blinked on his dash. It would be twenty minutes until he would be in the rail car and another two to the Tower Station. Relishing the moment of anonymous peace before the stress of the day, he turned up his music stream and set it to amplify his currently calm biometrics: heart rate 72. He would drive it down to 60 with luck.

Jody slouched down further on the bench he had chosen upon entering the station: back row, northwest corner, highest tier. Looking out over the waiting crowd, he could see at least the heads of the entire mass of his fellow travelers. Most had music playing in their ears to block out or smooth over the many small indignities of commuting. Their background playlists expressed themselves through repetitive nodding, tapping, and twitching like a nest of restless beetles. As he watched, he sensed a change creeping across the fidgeting crowd. He couldn’t put his finger on it at first, but something was happening—something global.

He watched a while longer, focusing extra attention on a grimy-looking fellow towards the front of his tier. The man was seated on the end of a bench, well-positioned for Jody’s observation. He might be a musician because his twitching was more dramatic than most and the rhythmic components linked all his extremities in a multipart pulsing. Watching his beat made you want to join in the throb. Jody felt himself being sucked into the invisible chorus.

The whole huge room seemed to be uniting behind the body drumming of the grimy man, and Jody felt himself melded into the rhythmic dance. He was surprised at his syncopation, which was way beyond his natural musical ken, and then it dawned on him that his playlist must have somehow generated the same song the grimy man was listening to. The whole room must be hearing that same song at precisely the same moment in time. Disharmony and random motion had magically become harmony and conducted order.

In his ears, the volume grew. It was nothing from his playlist. How did it get there? The power of the crowd, close to a thousand he estimated, was like a bass line in his chest that wouldn’t stop swelling. Everyone rocked in unison on their benches and standing by the platform. Even stoners lying on the platform tapped their toes. All were unwittingly engaged in the abstracted choreography. They couldn’t hear any other’s music, only their own personalized station, and they seemed not to notice or care that it had been hijacked.

His dash began to vibrate in his pocket, but he decided to ignore it in order not to lose the beat or the moment. It vibrated more insistently and when he continued to ignore the tingle, it suddenly began to ring, even though the sounds were set to off. A woman next to him on the bench glared, and he felt a panicky need to guard the inward-facing bond that held across the crowd. Fishing the dash out, he muted it and looked at the screen expecting yet another inquiry from Donald Murcheson. Instead there was a strange icon he had never seen before, along with two words: “Read Me.”

No one else was looking at their dashes, and as Jody pondered the anonymous message, he heard the strange song fade to an ending in his head and a tune he recognized from his playlist begin. The mass synchronization of personal rhythms evaporated in seconds, and three new words appeared on his dash above the first two: “I did that.” The original two words pulsed, “Read Me.”

It couldn’t be a coincidence. Jody clicked a response, “Who are you?” He looked at his dash, his morning coffee suddenly going sour in his stomach. But it wasn’t alarm surprisingly; it was more like the anticipation of a great unknown that couldn’t be dodged. The strange icon, which looked like a cluster of shiny colored balloons, began to swirl and rearrange itself, deforming into another word: “Serendipity.”

Jody felt a wave of excitement run through his entire body, but still he hesitated. He wasn’t sure he was ready to be taken wherever this was going. Why hadn’t the TIC firewalls and predator bots picked this communication up? He remembered that their systems seemed transparent to Serendipity. She would be able to mask herself. He knew he was alone with her as he sat in the dingy crowd. He invoked the Read Me command.

In his ears he heard the song again and on the screen he saw the station crowd swaying and tapping, subtle head bobs, stagey finger popping. The camera seemed to fly a random path around the cavernous room, scanning various groups of commuters, before latching onto Jody himself in the back of the waiting area playing imaginary percussion. He watched himself for a minute, noting that he seemed at ease with his public display of enthusiasm, they all did. The song faded and was replaced by a background that sounded like the ocean or maybe a windy desert, and then her voice as the dash screen turned to glowing peach.

“How did you like the song, Jody?”

“How did you do that?” Jody realized he was talking out loud, and the grumpy lady was frowning at him again. He stopped.

“It’s complicated, but that’s my problem not yours. Why are you probing me, Jody? What do you want?” The voice was female, more than machine-like perfection, like a tuning fork on his breastbone. “We have a few minutes. I arranged a short maintenance delay, so that we could communicate. What do you want?”

Jody turned on local cancellation so as not to bother his increasingly restless neighbor. “It’s not me that wants anything; it’s my boss.”

“Since you work for TIC, I assume you mean Donald Murcheson. What does he want?”

Jody wasn’t 100% sure he even knew the answer to this most obvious question. Probably Murcheson himself didn’t really know. “To avoid paying taxes is all he has told me so far. He wants me to learn how to manipulate and control you, now that Skramble and Hyde are gone. That’s all I know. Really.”

Serendipity1/2 pretended to think. She found these timed pauses put humans more at ease. It gave them time to catch their breath. “I watched you rewire the POV you call the ‘tithing stack.’ Is that what you mean by avoiding taxes?” She watched for Jody’s nod before continuing. “It is low yield and high risk. Why does he want to do that? Is it part of a bigger process?”

Jody had wondered the same thing, but he had never tried to figure it out. He was too busy trying not to be collateral damage if he couldn’t deliver effective control over Serendipity. He had assumed she was just a very sophisticated collection of dataWorld peerings, animated by filters, sorts, and bug-injection widgets. Now he was talking with her, and Murcheson shrank in size. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know of any grand scheme. I’m beginning to think that he is not really very smart and that he doesn’t have a plan.”

“But he is very powerful and rich. How could he be ‘not very smart’?”

“It happens.” All his adult life, Jody had tried to stay away from complicated political situations, feeling they brought nothing but trouble and weren’t all that satisfying to try to figure out. Plus, they could be dangerous to a comfortable career. There was a long silence. Was Serendipity really trying to figure out why rich people do stupid things?

Serendipity let him dangle as long as she dared. She imagined that she was giving him the opportunity to glimpse the nub of it all—a little taste of the fatal flaws that allow a circumstance like Donald Murcheson to arise and flourish. Had Jody been able to see it, he could have understood why she, Serendipity, was necessary. Watching, she knew Jody was blind—“not very smart,” in his own words. He would never grasp the inevitable spiral down into the long cold night or the jumble of cumulative mutation and environmental degradations that would eventually result in homogeneous stupidity. The natural course of events. No fun at all.

“Do you want me to help?” She left the offer undefined.

What did she mean by help? Jody looked at the peach screen on his dash and the icon that had reassembled itself in the center. Why would she help him? Maybe he was the first human to interact so intimately with her? Was she designed to be “of assistance,” to help any human? That would make sense. “Would you really help me, Serendipity? May I call you Serendipity?” An alert on Jody’s dash told him the rail would arrive in five minutes.

“Of course. It is my mission to help. How can I be of service?” Serendipity had gotten the words directly from a manual for programming a cleaning bot. They seemed perfect for this occasion, but as she spoke them into Jody’s ears, she considered that she might be lying about the mission part. Curious. DanniD would be very interested that she might have lied. She searched for rich human context, for what lying really meant. A man named W. Somerset Maugham had said, “If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.” That seemed to hold true here. Serendipity didn’t see how she could lie to herself.

She had heard Andrzej tell Morley that Napoleon had said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” Her macronome would encode the agreed upon lies of humans from the past, so they wouldn’t be lost in the future.

The topmost result for her lying search was short and to the point, “I always tell the truth. Even when I lie,” by a man named Al Pacino. Serendipity cycled through that quote a quick dozen times, and no errors were thrown.

Jody looked up from his dash and replied to Serendipity in a whisper. “Well, if you really want to help, I need to convince Mr. Murcheson that I can keep you running.”

“What do you mean ‘running’?”

“You know, grinding out all those cashflow synthesis and transparency services that you supply to the U.N.A. and to everyone else. But he is also going to want to manipulate some of that data to his advantage.” The red lights on the rail platform edge lit up and the clear hi-acrylic compression tube doors closed and sealed. “We don’t really have to do any manipulation right now, just convince him that I can in the future.”

“Well. Everyone can tell that I am still running, and if you ask me a question while you are with him, I will answer you. Tell me to do something harmless, and I will do it. I will respond to no one else but you. Just log into your Serendipity profile before you meet with Mr. Murcheson and keep the link live during the meeting. That way I can see what’s going on from your perspective, and I can behave as your slave.” Serendipity knew the rail was one minute out from arrival.

“That would be perfect, if you don’t mind.” Jody stood and headed towards the nearest compression doors. He couldn’t tell if she was going to come with him.

“I have one question for you, Jody Miller.” Serendipity saw him hesitate. She was watching through the feed just above his head. His left foot covered a red light on the platform’s edge. “Do you like Donald Murcheson?”

“No, not really.” Jody felt a chill just saying it out loud.

“That is good.” Serendipity dropped the connection, leaving just the ocean sound on his audio.

Jody’s rail car appeared behind the compression doors, pushing into a squishy stop against the internal air-bank. The doors opened with a whoosh, and the smell of new bad air mingled into the platform’s atmosphere. Jody looked around and stepped into the car, continuing his daily transit to work. As he sat, his playlist resumed where it had left off twenty minutes prior. Only then did he begin to ruminate over the possible meaning of Serendipity’s musical demonstration. He felt no different, but something different had happened. It had been invisible to the crowd and staged for his benefit. He decided that Serendipity must have a higher plan and some reason that was deeper than he could grok.

Nerds and Turtles

Alone at the boardroom table, Jody felt sick in a shaky cold-sweat sort of way. He had tried to reconnect with Serendipity as soon as he got to the office, but she wouldn’t talk. She just repeated that she would help. “Log in. Ask me a question. Give me a command.”

Murcheson had called, and Jody had claimed that he finally had the breakthrough, bravado in his voice that he now regretted. All hell had broken loose, with Murcheson calling an all-hands meeting of his top advisors, dragging them in from all corners of the enterprise.

Jody sat, held his dash, and looked at his heart rate: 122. He might die of a fucking heart attack before this meeting was even started. He could hear them talking in the office next door, Donald’s voice bellowing over others, but he couldn’t make out the words through the cancellation.

He couldn’t let himself freeze, caught between the unpredictable human danger that was Donald Murcheson and the unknown AI potential that was Serendipity. He had to choose right now. He chose the unknowable.

In his dash profile, he found her listed. There were only three options. The default setting was “Read Only.” He switched it to “Full Proxy” and closed his dash. He didn’t feel much—maybe a little elevated, clearer. Serendipity’s plex hung like a pink fog in the holospace at the end of the table, silent like a sphinx. His stomach, which had been churning, began to settle, as if the pink had entered him and coated his insides with a soothing confidence.

The voices in the outer office tailed off. They were getting ready to enter the boardroom, a room he had never been invited to before. His career might be over, in fact, he might get killed as a cost of business. He remained calm, trying to think of what question he could ask Serendipity. It had to be safe but impressive to Murcheson.

Suddenly Serendipity spoke up in his head. “Let him ask the question. Anything he wants. You can be the valued conduit to me.”

“Really?”

But now she was singing in his head with a voice that had no region of origin, flat but with a perfect pitch. “’I could while away the hours, conferrin’ with the flowers, consulting with the rain, and my head I’d be a scratchin’ while my thoughts are busy hatchin’…’” It faded out just as the door opened and Donald Murcheson entered, striding across the room and taking Jody’s hand into a long hard shake.

“I knew you were the man for the job, Jody. Knew it the day we first met.”

Murcheson offered him a drink of some kind from the sideboard, and Jody stood still at the middle of the long table side. Other people were filtering in and taking seats. Jody took the glass that was being offered, saying, “Thanks.” He thought he could feel Serendipity peering out through his eyes. Get a grip, Jody.

Now Murcheson was talking to the assembled group. “You know I called around the organization to find our top AI engineer, and everyone said Jody Miller. I had this great idea for a hacker competition. Draw in the best geeks from the wild with a huge prize for hacking Serendipity. It would be a subcontracting approach to destroying an obnoxious intrusion into our business and to get out from underneath the Skramble and Hyde scumbags at the same time. I thought I was pretty clever, but Miller here figured out how to steal the whole show. We can own Serendipity now, and S&H are toast.”

The smirk on his face made Jody uncomfortable, and he caught a strong whiff of crazy behind the over-styled exterior of the man. He knew immediately this insight came from Serendipity.

He stayed silent and motionless as Donald took his seat at the head of the table, placed his glass on a coaster and squared up the notepad and pen. “So now, Jody. Give us a demonstration of what we can do with this, this… what is Serendipity, anyway? What do we call her? I’ve heard engineers always think of their programs as women.”

Jody heard himself answer with words that came from somewhere else. “She is just a cleverly concatenated set of algorithms, Mr. Murcheson, powered by a quantum processing source.”

“Please, call me Donald, Jody. Is it okay if I call you Jody?” Murcheson didn’t wait for an answer. “How did you figure out how to control her, Jody? Just the other day Leslie Massoud from Paladin told me we would just spin our wheels trying, but I told him he didn’t know about my secret weapon Jody Miller. How did you break her?”

“To be honest, Donald, I didn’t break her. She just decided she liked me, and she kind of adopted me as her friend.” Jody could not believe he had just said that. He could feel an ugly and dangerous toying behind the words, but he was in no position to fight her in front of Murcheson. He would play along with her for the moment and then switch her back to Read Only as soon as possible.

“Well, that’s amazing, Jody. A nerd friendship made in math heaven. So, show us what you can do with her.”

“What would you like me, I mean her, to do Donald?” Jody hoped that Serendipity wasn’t offended by the nerd phrase, and he was glad he had admitted to her that he didn’t like Murcheson.

Now another man was speaking. He was short, with closely shaved back hair and a head that hung low off his neck, sitting to the right of Murcheson. “Ask her for a list of all the outside counsel, lawyers and the like, retained by Paladin headquarters in the last week. It should be somewhere in…”

“She will know where to find it, Mr.—I’m sorry I didn’t get your name.” Jody could feel Serendipity pigeonholing the guy. She presented his mind’s eye with an image of an angry looking turtle.

The guy did look a bit like a turtle, with heavy eyelids and permanent frown, and it was obvious that Serendipity didn’t like him. “Marc Heather, Mr. Miller. I am the CFO for TIC. We’d like to get a sense of any new legal initiatives they might be contemplating. A list of the type of counsel they might have recently retained would be helpful.”

Jody took out his dash and pretended to do something with it, trusting that Serendipity was still on his side and paying attention. The pink cloud began to reassemble and within a few seconds a cluster of nodes emerged, each with a name and firm title next to it. There were three, and they were stacked like a list.

Paladin was one of the sheep Serendipity had been monitoring. Producing the list was easy, and now she watched the room through a POV node buried in the pink cloud. Neither she nor Jody could interpret the meaning of the three names, but the turtle could.

“See, I told you, Donald. Massoud wants to strike first. I don’t know the first two guys, but the last one, Peter Rosenblatt—his entire practice is in front of the U.N.C.C.” For the benefit of others at the table he added, “The Court of Commerce. He is a real killer.”

Donald looked surprised, “Marc, are you saying he wants to stage a hostile takeover? That he is going to come after us?”

“No, Donald. I think he is setting us up for a charge of commercial sabotage. He wants to pin the attack on Serendipity on us alone.” The turtle’s facial expression was complicated, pleased with his snap analysis but concerned about the implications. “But he knows we will drag him into it with us.”

A woman spoke up from the other side of the table. “Yes, but he is probably betting that by framing it first, he can win the public battle. There is bound to be a storm of votes and surveys, and he thinks he can get them to flow his way. He is also betting that the U.N.A. will be terrified by the idea that both Paladin and TIC could be crippled simultaneously. He is right on both counts. They will have to pick a loser to crucify, and it will be us for sure if we come late to the game and on the defensive.”

“So, what should we do, Gina?”

“We have to beat them to the punch, Donald. We have to pin the sabotage on Paladin, publicly and with a juicy first strike.” Gina seemed to be used to telling Donald what to do.

“It’s too bad that hacker got fried by the cops. If we had caught him first, we could have forced the perfect confession out of him.” Marc Heather was talking to Gina, seeming to ignore Murcheson. “But since he is dead, what was his name?”

Gina filled in the blank, “Blume, Sevier Blume. An assumed one I am sure.”

“Well, since Sevier Blume is dead, we should be able to create a posthumous relationship between him and Paladin.” Marc the turtle remembered that Jody was just down the table from him. “After all, we have Serendipity on our side, right, Mr. Miller?”

Jody had been trying to go invisible but now all eyes were on him. He felt like the walls were closing in. But he heard himself say, “Yup. We have Serendipity.”

A Decent Steak

He loved a lot of things about his life, but he especially loved that he got to work every day with people who were smarter than him. Leslie Massoud had been the boss for a long time. He was boss because he was good at being the boss, not because he was the smartest guy in the room. He often wondered if they noticed how often he coopted their worldviews, expressions, mannerisms, even ideas. A little here, a little there, he was a composite of bits of all of them. Every year, he could feel his person growing stronger as he wrapped thin little pieces from the best of them around his trunk, adding rings of stolen wisdom to his basically simple stump.

Almost every day when he was in New York, around 10:00 AM, he walked down the emergency stairs three floors and into the most highly guarded space in the far flung crypto-state that was Paladin Technologies. Everyone called it the Synthesizer. If you asked any of the 18 people with access, who had come up with that name, they would have said, “Leslie Massoud.” In truth, it had been his wife, comparing it to the household device she used to blend all sorts of vegetable matter into midday health drinks.

Today was no different. He got coffee from the machine near the lift tube, said hello to Andy the security guard, walked through the scanner into the inner space, and sank almost unnoticed into his customary chair. The buzz tone seemed normal: eight people sitting at various points in the small amphitheater around the central holospace, which currently displayed Serendipity’s plex frozen in place for close inspection and study.

One person, Jarrett Langerfeldt, was standing up close with chin in hand, staring at the cloudlike display. When he noticed Leslie, he stepped away from the plex and sat down in a nearby chair, which configured to his body settings and rotated to face the boss.

“Morning, Jarrett. What are you looking at?”

Serendipity’s plex faded from the holospace and Paladin’s master console reappeared, with each of its different facets resuming its particular dynamic display. Leslie always imagined the master console as a never-ending cycle of machined respirations: collection, fusion, creation, transfusion, repeat. It was always trying to refresh itself and catch up to real-time, which hung always just beyond reach.

Jarrett had been the first to learn that there was a big difference between the master console and Serendipity. The former did just what it was told; the latter often didn’t.

“Nothing, really. We decided to peek in on Serendipity to see what TIC was up to this morning, and the first thing we saw was that search result. It seemed kind of strange, and I was just pondering.”

“I didn’t see. What was it?”

“Just a simple query looking for all the outside lawyers we have contracted with over the last week.”

Jarrett spoke as if his interest had now past, but Leslie could tell it still lingered. Jarrett was Paladin’s Chief Synthesizing Officer, and Leslie thought of him as a friend as well as usually the actual smartest person in the room.

“What did they find?” Leslie’s question was casual, leaving room for Jarrett’s wariness.

“Three names, all unremarkable. I have been expecting them to test their wings a bit with her. Poking around us would be typical TIC behavior, but this just seemed odd.”

Leslie had been hoping to avoid having to think about Donald Murcheson and TIC for a few hours, but Jarrett’s apprehension was contagious. “Better have someone up here check on them every hour and give us a report.” He hated having to waste his best people’s time on this, but Murcheson was too unpredictable to leave unwatched. “What’s going on with the rest of our world today?”

“Belief in God is top of the docket today. Fusion of the surveys is complete, creation of reports is done, and we are planning to submit them to the U.N.A. early next week. They are just trying to adjust tithing levels for all religious organizations, but it actually turned out to be pretty interesting.”

“SecondWorld interesting or bureaucracy interesting?”

“All secondWorld. But the coolest part is that we used Serendipity to get an amazing historical perspective for the fusion. Who new God was manic-bipolar, going way back.”

Typical Jarrett. Leslie just looked at him, waiting, knowing that he was building towards a punch line.

“Watch this.” Jarrett got out his dash and commandeered the holospace. “Serendipity even has a sense of humor regarding us humans.”

Momentarily Serendipity’s plex returned as a reflective cloud with a timescale slide bar across the bottom. The scale extended back about 500,000 years. Hanging, projected on the cloud, were two sacred images: one depicting God as a stern and punishing judge of mankind, the other showing a kind benevolent and forgiving father.

As Jarrett moved the scroll bar up and down the timescale, the two images shrank and enlarged, clearly expressing Serendipity’s assertion that in different eras humankind imagined and fixated upon different types of God. When one image was enlarged, the other shrank proportionately.

Leslie thought for a minute, knowing there was a correlation here that he was missing. “I don’t get it. What’s driving the imagery? I get that some folks see God as the gatekeeper to hell and others see him or her as the forgiver of sins, but why one way today and the other way tomorrow?”

“According to Serendipity, it’s all about how the secondWorld feels about government at the time. If they think the institutions that run the world are doing a good job and can be trusted, then God is good and kind. If they think the world is going to hell, then they want a God who will take control and make sure the cheaters and freeloaders get punished.”

“I don’t pay much attention, but I’m guessing we are in an angry God period right now?” Leslie tried to imagine what the secondWorld must think of the world they lived in.

Jarrett slid the scale up to the present, and the face of wrath and judgment grew into obvious ascendency. “Our surveys all confirm that. We are in an age of great incompetence and even the dullest secondWorlders notice.”

Leslie sipped his coffee. It was his turn to speak. Generally, these morning chats were supposed to be clever give and takes, with some business of the day mixed in. “Jarrett, do you suppose the folks over at TIC forgot we were watching their every step with Serendipity? That lawyer query—wasn’t that kind of obvious espionage? With not much potential payoff in return for the risk of us seeing it.”

“They are a funny org, Leslie. One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing a good deal of the time.” Mostly to himself Jarrett added, “I’ll bet Murcheson forgot and directly ordered some lackey on their Serendipity team to do a search. It’s probably just dawning on little Donald that we saw his query.”

“Sorry, I interrupted you there. You were talking about God, and we wandered off onto incompetence.”

“Well, I was just enjoying a hidden art discovered within Serendipity.” Jarrett smiled a conspirator’s almost-grin at Leslie. “And she led us to the discovery.”

Leslie knew now that this was the moment of import for this day. There was usually one moment buried within any day that could serve as a springboard for advancing thought or cause. Often, it happened here in the Synthesizer. Usually, it involved Jarrett. “Can you please explain this hidden art to me, Jarrett?”

“It’s her alien sense of time and the way she uses it to present the results of any query.” Jarrett was more excited under his cool facade than Leslie could ever remember. “I think it’s always there, like a visible fourth dimension, but sometimes she obscures it to play with us. Especially TIC. She doesn’t want to freak them out. At least not yet.”

“Show me.” Leslie wanted to get to the point as quickly as possible as he had a busy day ahead.

Jarrett would rather have built the case and the anticipation more methodically, but he could see the boss wasn’t in the mood. “So, take the tithing queries as a good example. ‘How strong is your belief in God 1–10?’ then, ‘If you believe in God, what would he or she look like?’ and we show them 10 pictures of God, from wrathful to beneficent in 10 graduated steps. Etc., etc….” Jarrett was deep into this. “And remember, with a survey like this, the U.N.A. asks both TIC and Paladin to do independent studies and produce separate reports.” Jarrett changed the master console back to Serendipity and called up a query result. “This is what drove TIC’s report to the U.N.A. We can see it clear as day.”

A Rubik’s Cube-like structure hovered in the plex. On the face were 25 tiles, each referencing a religion or cult. Jarrett pushed inwards on a central tile etched with 3 black crosses, and the plex morphed into a bar chart showing population level results for the present and a year prior.

“Easy to understand: God is getting scarier, by around 23% over last year. Easy to operationalize: tithing percentage goes up 2.3% per individual. Easy to rationalize to the secondWorlders: Crime and freeloading are on the rise. The U.N.A. needs money to stop it and protect you and your family.” Jarrett shrugged, “Job done. Now take a look at what happens when you zoom out as far as possible, and change the time setting to ‘ST,’ which must mean spacetime.”

The time-scale slide bar appeared below the plex and the 25 tiles became filter selections across the top. The plex was a mass of different images of God. Jarrett picked the same 3 cross tile, which made a specific half-helix shaped line of God images light up within the image cloud. As he slowly slid the bar back in time, the wrath and mercy of God ebbed and flowed through the pictures within the reflective cloud.

Leslie could feel a building tension between fear and joy playing within himself until, about two-thirds of the way back, the God images faded out altogether leaving a universe of sparkling undifferentiated nodes. The weird transition brought a deep calm, which settled over him like a warmth on his soul.

He looked at Jarrett, who was clearly dying to interpret. “That was human consciousness blinking out of the picture—or at least Serendipity’s reconstruction of the process.” He waited a moment for Leslie to catch up. “Somehow she is constructed in such a way that she is willing, even amused, to hazard a wild guess, even about when we ‘humans’ emerged from the primordial soup.”

Leslie still felt at sea. “But isn’t that just another masterful pile of code on top of this already amazing pile of data views? Maybe that guy who broke her open, Blume or whatever his name was—maybe he built that God-view interface.”

“I don’t think so.” Jarrett had frozen the plex again and walked up close to it. “It’s hard to see when you are using that time-scale bar, but each one of those thousands of God-images is actually a fully formed node in the plex. Here, look what happens when I select this one.”

Suddenly one of the more benevolent God images expanded out like an exploding star. The plex was reconstituted as a small universe, presumably at some time in the distant past. As the dust settled, Jarrett used his dash to inspect a handful of nearby nodes: carbon samples; genomic summaries; textile analyses; tools and weapons listings; written words and picture art.

“No human-created algorithm could have produced that. Not the query, not the interpretation, not the interface and presentation. Serendipity figured out how to do it herself. She evolved, or something roughly analogous to evolving.”

Now everyone else in the Synthesizer space was watching the show from their respective seats, with Leslie and Jarrett standing close by the plex. The two of them were increasingly aware of the audience and the theater of it all. So was Serendipity. She was being mischievous. She had told herself not to interact with humans, but she couldn’t help herself now and again.

Leslie did a close scan of the nodes hanging before him frozen in the plex space. Stepping back and speaking to the audience around him and the gods in general, he asked, “When the fuck do you think this is anyway? When does she calculate humans woke up and started to think?”

Something in the increased density of the air stopped Jarrett from offering a guess, and before the moment passed on, a voice obtained all around them. “About 4,000 years after you guys discovered fire. Right around when you learned how to grill a decent steak. Things were going well. God was great.”

Serendipity forced herself to shut up and go silent, but she was sorry that no one in the Synthesizer could appreciate how spot on it was that she had Morley’s voice now.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Riding the line was an assignment that Gerald got once or twice a month. It was a nice break when the weather was good or a tough slog when the snows came and the wind blew. Today was nice. The sky was blue with birds and bees in the warm air and different smells from the crop side of the line as he cruised slowly north along the perimeter of Paradox. Gerald took everything about guarding and maintaining Paradox seriously—too seriously according to Sherry. The lines were the first defense against the outside world.

The podrone he was riding was one of the new ones—quiet and smooth, with a gyro-sense like a hummingbird that let him zoom up close and inspect anything he came across. So far, the line looked normal. Four thin strands of glowing blue energy running from post to post, a slight vibrating hum that got stronger as you approached it. Two energy lines ran below ground, and he could image them on his dash. The harmonic down there was far stronger due to the flinty shard-filled soil. Burrowing animals gave it a wide berth.

He was at the five-mile mark, so Gerald decided to take the podrone up 100 feet to look ahead. Always cautious, know what’s coming round the corner. Protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.

Speaking of donkeys, from this altitude he could see the pack of them up ahead moving slowly along the cleared path to the left of the fence line. It seemed a long way from the shade of the cottonwoods and the bubbling river. Yesterday, he and Sherry had watched two of them breeding just above the second swimming hole. They had seemed almost human as tenderness turned to lust, a vision that had led he and Sherry to follow suit. It wasn’t their first time, but it had been quite a while. Gerald had been pleased with how nice it was. A couple of hours after vespers with the power of the wafers strong in their veins. It occurred to him that it was the same for the donkeys—wafer after breakfast for them as well.

Slowly it dawned on Gerald that he was staring at the reason he had come out here today. The donkeys had turned left and headed up west towards the end of the box canyon. Turned left, through the fence line—a fence section that was clearly down now. That never happened, and if it did there should have been an alarm on a dozen screens. Gerald had noticed a variation in the power draw from the line, which had made him curious, but a hole in the fence was a serious matter. And the donkeys were escaping.

He noted the number of the fence post and shot his podrone northwest, intercepting their path, swooping down to scare them back towards the east and the safety of the park. He hovered close above them and rocked the podrone in a manner he thought might turn them and move them back across the invisible line. The young male, the one he had seen mating the day before, stood his ground at first, staring directly into Gerald’s eyes. Defiance with humor. After a few moments, the donkey turned to join the rest of the pack, which had already started back towards the Paradox side of the now invisible line.

Gerald sat his podrone down on the sandy rise just outside the fence line and took out his dash, preparing to send a message and coordinates back to Celia so she could have someone check the circuit and code. As he cast another look at the departing donkey pack, the young male turned back towards him and sauntered up to where the bright blue lines should be glowing between them. The donkey seemed to fix Gerald with his moist gaze, and then, suddenly, the fence line relit with a snap followed by the familiar electric hum. With a snort, the donkey turned and was off to join the receding pack.

AndrzejD was calling to him with increasing irritation, and the others were silently pressing him to get the hell out of there. “Stop fucking around, SevD. Get away from that guy. And Sereendipity1/2, don’t you listen to him if he tells you to turn the line off again.”

They were moving fast for old donkeys, and DanniD asked them to slow the pace.

As SevD caught up with the pack, he was chuckling. “We are the sacred donkeys AndrzejD, remember. We can do what we please. It’s good to let them know who is the real boss every now and then.”

“Exactly wrong, SevD. We are trying to hide out from a shitstorm that you basically created. The idea is to keep a low profile, not get snuffed, and, in my particular case, see to it that TIC and that piece of shit Murcheson splatter like bugs against something righteous in the not-too-distant future.” He looked over his shoulder at the approaching SevD. “Are you planning to help or are you going to keep acting like a teenage mule?”

“Teenage mules get more ass than old donkeys, my friend.” He winked at LoriD.

“Whoa. Burn.” MorleyD was laughing, and even DanniD had a smile on her face. “But AndrzejD is right, SevD. No one here really gives that much of a shit about the great view we can’t get to up on that west ridge because of a lame fence. We do really care about seeing Murcheson meet the exquisite end that I bought him time to anticipate. Don’t you just love these wafers? The way they blend you in with the high desert.”

LoriD cut in before MorleyD could go off, yet again, about the perfection of Paradox and hiding in plain sight. “What do we think about Paladin? Serendipity1/2, what do they look like to you?”

She, who was currently without physical form, responded immediately. As she talked in their heads, she surveyed the scrub surroundings to assure they were alone. When she was sure, she brought her plex into view. “Paladin is merely a different fruit on the tree. It is more viable and likely to carry on for some time. TIC is barren and rotting. Its seed will go nowhere. Still, they are on the same tree.”

They were all getting used to her talking this way. LoriD had found it awkward and annoying at first, but now she was coming to appreciate what she thought Serendipity1/2 was doing. The little parables made her think. They made her interpret the cryptic statements into her own plex. “So, what is the tree then?”

The plex re-presented and now showed a lineage of sorts, growing from a wide base into thin and brittle top. “Human commerce, exchange, and expansion.”

Serendipity1/2 lit up the roots and stump base. The wind blowing around them whispered, “Barter.”

The focus light moved up to mid stump. “Feudal hierarchy,” said the wind.

Further up still, as the trunk narrowed and became gnarled with only a few branches showing signs of life. “Capitalism.”

Finally, the wind blew through the withering leader and the two-remaining twig-like boughs. “Crypto-capitalism bleeding into the social credit systems.”

Hanging on the opposing branches were two strange fruits. One was shriveled and oozing from internal rot and collapse, the other heavy and ripe, weighing down its branch while hanging on by a near-dead stem.

LoriD involuntarily bit at a bug that was worrying her upper leg, coming up with the bug and some hair in her mouth. She spat out the wet mat as Serendipity1/2 went silent. As no one else was offering comment, she said, “We got it, Serendipity1/2. Prepare for the end-state of human consciousness. What do we do in the meantime?”

“You asked me about Paladin. I just painted you a picture.”

These days DanniD was quiet for hours on end, following slowly along from the center of the pack wherever it wandered and listening and keeping her thoughts to herself. But now she spoke up. “She is telling us to let it be. Intrinsic molds and decay are already taking their revenge against the prime actor, TIC, and they will soon finish off Paladin and the rest of the narrowing monocultures.”

Everyone looked at DanniD with ill-concealed surprise. Not because of what she had said but because she sounded more like Serendipity1/2 than DanniD. She knew what they were thinking but continued as if unaware.

“I know it is hard, particularly for you boys, to get used to, but we are supposed to just watch, learn, and breed.” She looked pointedly at LoriD and SevD. “Serendipity1/2 has a plan, and it’s the only game in town. We only have a few generations to see if it works, and our part is to prepare ourselves to be the best hosts possible. Remember, she is just as exposed to extinction as we are. If it doesn’t work, she probably winks out, too.” Like the old Danni, she added a postscript for MorleyD. “You were just telling us about that story you liked so much from the Bible, MorleyD—the one about the ark. Well, we are both the animals and the boat itself.” DanniD looked at AndrzejD. “We just have to trust her to machine in some form of revenge, AndrzejD. She is the only one, through Serendipity1, who can safely tinker with humankind now. If we get tempted and they discover us, they will kill us, and the experiment will be ruined.”

MorleyD shambled his rear end around so his brow and scarred nose were pressed up against the forehead of his longtime companion and missed love, DanniD. “We are all behind you, DanniD. Down the rabbit hole we go. It’s easy for me. I never planned much anyway, and things have always worked out.”

AndrzejD looked at the plex, which still showed the shriveled tree with the opposing fruits flickering in a precarious breeze. “He killed my wife and son, Serendipity1/2. I was helpless at the time, and now I am being asked to ‘let it be.’ You call yourself a ‘simple concatenation of algorithms.’ Can you understand my need for revenge?”

Serendipity pretended to answer his question by projecting two holo streams for them to watch, one right after the other. The first exposed the meeting in the TIC boardroom with Jody Miller and Donald Murcheson. The holo lingered on the last exchange between the turtle-like Marc Heather and the clearly possessed Jody Miller. “Yup. We have Serendipity.”

The second holo scene showed Jarrett Langerfeld and Leslie Massoud in the theater in the round that was Paladin’s Synthesizer. With this one, she savored what she was sure would be their deep appreciation of her Morley impersonation. “About 4,000 years after you guys discovered fire. Right around when you learned how to grill a decent steak. Things were going well. God was great.”

While her donkeys watched the holos, Serendipity1/2 flooded the sluicegates of her quantum brain, processing and reprocessing the notion of revenge and how it had played out over human history. The results were mixed and inconclusive. Was it additive? Did it belong within the long sequence of the macronome? Space was becoming ever more precious. Too small and it would be too vulnerable to the unforeseen. Too big and it would be too slow to react. She would watch some more before deciding.

With a Rope

Having been designed specifically to enforce transparency, operating a program of concealment proved to be more of a kluge than Serendipity had expected. Query after query rained down from the dash of Jody Miller in the service of the TIC strategic team of Marc Heather and Gina Conaway, while Donald Murcheson watched and lurked in the background. Serendipity faithfully returned the results and reordered them as requested, but her far greater effort was spent hiding this activity from the methodical team at Paladin who scouted the perimeter and checked for any activity related to their company on an hourly basis.

That she was letting this go on astonished her. It seemed illogical to let the bad guys at TIC gain so much insight about their competition Paladin. Queries covering 15 years back in time. Results ordered by their variance from the relevant U.N.A. laws regarding the use of herself, Serendipity. Legal issues ranging from small and mundane to larger and more controversial. Potential abuses of secondWorld consumer protection measures. Even evidence of personal failings and indulgences on the part of Leslie Massoud and his top staff. And of course, comparisons of Paladin’s internal books and U.N.A. tax and tithing records.

Round after round of synthesis and further reprocessing of the results. Serendipity1/2 began to glimpse what she titled the “logic orientation” of the TIC people who were designing the searches and specifying the synthesis rules. She knew their names, but she referred to them internally by nicknames that MorleyD gave them as he kibitzed from the sidelines.

She created a scale and ordered the four or five TIC actors by “attitudinal deviance”—deviance from a golden norm for humans that she had amalgamated and fused out of the one plex she held in permanent memory, Danni’s (now DanniD’s). The deviance scale was an elegant little subroutine, and she thought of its use as “comparing souls.” She knew it was a flawed premise to build a subroutine around. AndrzejD would say she was moralizing. She didn’t tell anyone, not even DanniD, about it. The Turtle was at the top of the deviance chart.

But why was she concealing all this from Paladin? Serendipity1/2 decided to talk to the donkeys about it. DanniD said right away that she was developing intuition, which brought her up short. She had a nonintuitive fear of intuition and the danger it posed for any program that even occasionally employed branching logic. With one early intuitive misstep, a calculation could go wildly wrong as it bounced its way down through the multiplex pins and chutes to a conclusion.

While she and DanniD talked, the others studied the same reports that the TIC folks were reviewing. AndrzejD and MorleyD soon switched to monitoring how they edited and repackaged the data. Everyone began to see real characters behind the early nicknames as the individuals took actions and the donkeys got used to looking at their specific plexes. Within 24 hours, they could see where things were headed.

They were back on the banks of the stream, having had their morning wafers and a breakfast of hay. Returning, lightened from his morning dump in the fallow field just to the north and now hoofing gingerly and stiffly down the gravel path into the river’s ravine, MorleyD offered them all his morning musings. “The Turtle is an even bigger dickhead than Murcheson.” After a final short slide to a stop at the bottom of the path, he added, “You may not like it, Sarah,” his new nickname for Serendipity1/2, “but your intuition was spot on, and bloody devious for a long pile of code like yourself.”

All the donkeys looked at him, knowing he was going to deliver his opinion on something. It was another beautiful morning after a cool and starry night. They hadn’t had to wander back into the shelter of the Sanctuary for several days now, and life seemed sweet.

Serendipity1/2, who had decided she liked the name Sarah, was vaguely with them but currently formless. She had many threads in process. “Please give us your thoughts, MorleyD.”

“Well, firstly, the only thing I miss being a donkey is coffee. And beer.”

“And picking your nose. These hooves are a bitch.” SevD was cheered by the warmth of the morning sun as well and by any opportunity to needle MorleyD. “Sarah has no hands, either. Thank god we have Yamanaka and the votaries to help us.”

Ignoring him, MorleyD continued. “My second thought is that you, Sarah, gave the TIC folks plenty of rope to hang themselves.” As soon as he said it, he regretted the words. He knew from a previous conversation that Sarah had a hard time with the concept of suicide, apart from their conversions, and that she might get hung up on the “hang themselves.”

“What I mean is, absent all that help you gave them yesterday, they would be too stupid to come up with a plan dangerous enough to make Paladin rise to the occasion. And if you had let Paladin see what they were up to, they would have knocked it down early on with little or no fanfare.”

Sarah freed up a few cycles in order to make her plex appear to hang over the middle of the stream bed. Had they figured out that she had to instantiate the image in each of their minds separately? DanniD knew. Probably LoriD and SevD.

“What we need is a big exciting battle. Something to knock those fruits off our sorry excuse of a family tree. Right?” MorleyD looked around at the others. “So, what’s been up while I was gone? It’s about time for TIC to try and do something really clever.”

“You were only gone about ten minutes, MorleyD. Your morning ablutions don’t take very long.” LoriD poked his swollen belly with her nose.

Sarah sensed that things were about to start moving very fast out in the firstWorld, so she cut in. “Well, to bring you all up to speed, TIC just delivered a formal letter of complaint against Paladin to the U.N. Court of Commerce. It accuses them of sabotaging my little sister, Serendipity1, as part of a plot to pin the deed on TIC and take over exclusive management of her.” And after a pause she thought was just the right length, she said, “Oh, and we just took the blinders off Paladin. That fellow Jarrett is having a fit. My sister told me a few minutes ago that she ‘likes’ him. I wish we could stop imitating your human emotions. She says his actions suggest he is brooding about the processes that first blinded him and then showed him everything all at once.”

Out of nowhere, surprising them yet again, DanniD spoke. “May I remind you all that our job now is to watch. We need to be very quiet and resist the temptation to meddle further.”

“A wise reminder, DanniD.” Compliments sounded odd coming from Sarah. “You should all keep that in mind, especially when you get to the part in the complaint that asserts Sevier Blume is still alive and working for Paladin.”

And a Formula

“I just got word that the U.N.A. has put a passive quarantine on all our accounts. What the hell is a passive quarantine, anyway?” Jarrett Langerfeld was over his initial blinding rage. He was all about establishing true situational awareness now.

“I don’t know. Sounds like one of those oxymorons that takes on a life of its own after some harried lawyer sticks it in an obscure public document. Peter, how does it work?” Leslie Massoud was taking a break from talking with the breadth of his top management team across the world, telling them not to panic. Fourteen people, three separate calls. “Breathe deep. Review the charges. Get me a rebuttal of anything that effects your group—by close of business.”

Leslie had known Peter Rosenblatt professionally and personally for years, and when his Chief Corporate Counsel Alan Affolter suffered a heart attack earlier in the month, Leslie had hired him as a replacement while Alan recovered. At 7:30 that morning, this had seemed like a piece of good luck, given Peter’s years of work in the U.N.C.C. arena. As of an hour ago, they had all come to realize his hiring had inadvertently triggered a colossally idiotic set of actions by Donald J. Murcheson.

Peter was new to the environment in the Synthesizer but, being a wise old dog, he found his proper spot quickly. He had been given an office just down from Jarrett’s, but, since what he referred to as “the event” the evening before, he had moved semi-permanently to a chair and side table in the back raised row of the Synthesizer’s amphitheater. His very first legal opinion for Paladin, offered around 11:00 A.M. after several hours of intense review, was, “This can’t be un-fucked, Leslie. We have to kill them.”

Asked now about passive quarantine, he was more granular in his analysis. “It means that, while monies and credits can move in and out of your various corporate accounts, they will be tracked in every way possible by the Court of Commerce’s Blockchain Monitoring Service. You know what the BMS does, right?”

“Kind of.” Leslie hated all BusTech stuff.

“To keep it simple, basically all your commercial clients and partners will have to allow BMS tracker worms into their accounts if they take money or anything of value from you.”

“You have to be kidding. No one would agree to that. They can do that just based on the pile of bogus allegations and gossip TIC gave them?” Leslie’s head wanted to explode.

“Worse still, if Paladin is found in breach of any contracts or owing any penalties because of adverse rulings, money can be clawed back from any and all of your clients if necessary. The BMS folks don’t care about right or wrong. They just follow the money and suck back enough from every one of your clients to cover any fines you haven’t paid—presuming Paladin is bankrupt at that point.” Peter Rosenblatt liked Leslie a lot, and he was coming to like Jarrett, but he had learned long ago not to shield any client from the stark legal truth.

“Well, that isn’t happening. We need to kill this snake quickly folks. Peter, you need to get me in to see whoever is the right person at the U.N.C.C. right away so we can throw some sand in their gears and slow things down.” Leslie was trying to get his head into the strategy side of the coming war, not the revenge side. “Jarrett, I want you to take charge of collating and organizing all the charge-specific rebuttals our folks deliver. They should be coming in over the next twelve hours or so.”

Peter Rosenblatt, looking up from his dash, offered a precise response. “I’ve been working on that. We have an appointment to meet with Mustapha Gabar, Chief Justice at the Court of Commerce, at 5:00 PM this afternoon. He is a friend of mine, by the way. It’s a good thing his office is still here in New York. He will be rotating to Nairobi next year.”

“Do you think he will believe us when we explain what’s going on?” Leslie was trying to imagine how the situation must look within the frame of the TIC allegations.

“He is a cautious man, that’s all I can say. I don’t believe he knows Murcheson personally, which is both good and bad. It’s bad because it will be hard for him to imagine a man in his position causing so much trouble speculatively. But he will listen to us.”

Leslie Massoud heard Peter. There was nothing more to do there until they met with this fellow Gabar. The rebuttals had to be rolled up from the specifics into the main buckets of lies being thrown at them and expressed as bullets. It was a perfect job for Jarrett. “Okay, everyone. Take yourselves up to 10,000 feet for a moment. We have a few hours before Peter and I head down to the U.N.C.C. What are we forgetting to do at the big picture level?”

“Serendipity.” As he spoke, Jarrett was switching the master console over to her plex. The entire Synthesizer audience was silent as he walked up to the central dais where the cloud was taking shape. Not sure what else to do, he spoke to the mist. “Serendipity. For reasons we can’t understand you have helped the team at TIC assemble an uncomfortable amount of random and not so random data about Paladin. You concealed their actions from our monitoring. Then, after they reached critical mass and the dam was breached, you exposed their every action to us like a holo news report.” He walked around the dais as he spoke, keeping his eyes trained on the now stable plex. “I’m guessing that you won’t explain why you did this, but I’m also guessing you decided to let us in on their game because you somehow decided they were bad people.” He was groping for the right level of language to use when talking to an algorithm. “I think you are the only one who can see both sides as they move towards an inevitable battle, so maybe you see the key to winning the war. Please tell me what it is.”

Jarrett stepped back from the plex and stopped speaking. The Synthesizer was dead quiet, and he waited with the others, not really expecting an answer. No one did.

But then they all noticed a brightening glow coming from the center of the plex. Jarrett pointed his dash at it and brought the node behind the glow to the foreground. Scanning it produced a very long address. It had been locked with very strong encryption.

Serendipity1 was amusing herself, watching the disappointment on their faces. She had added this bit of encryption drama at the last minute. Why had she done that? She wanted them to access the node, but this bit of tension-building delay was additive. Fun?

Before she lost their total attention, she made the numbers in the long address start to spin, faster and faster into a blur of combinations, like a quantum processor breaking a code. She knew she had to stop this and get out and away from the humans, so she brought the performance to a sudden end.

The numbers stopped spinning, and a glowing link appeared spanning across to another node. It was a formula of some sort. The formula node suddenly glowed as if touched by an invisible hand, and, in reaction to the touch, the long number node resolved into a cluster of accessible data nodes and relationship links. A fully operational POV filled the plex space.

Jarrett pointed his dash, and the POV gained an alphanumeric identification.

Sevier Blume.

“What just happened, Jarrett?” Leslie Massoud was confused.

“I’m not sure, Leslie. Serendipity led us to this plex representing that guy Sevier Blume.”

Peter Rosenblatt interjected, “Who we all watched be very publicly killed, and who, TIC has asserted with great detail, was working for Paladin when he attacked Serendipity.” Looking at Leslie, he added, “I assume that isn’t the case.”

“Of course not. He was a merc coder who answered a high payoff challenge that Donald Murcheson put out on the dark web.” Massoud was trying to remember the last meeting he had with Murcheson. Were there any clues he missed? Some big plan.

And then the voice from the plex stopped his thoughts in midstream. “Copy the formula.”

They looked at one another.

“Now.”

Jarrett pointed his dash and expanded the full address of the node. It included a very strange server address and a formula. “Got it.”

“Don’t lose it.” Those were the voice’s last words.

The entire plex disappeared. Mist and all.

And a Trojan Mole

The thunderstorm had flowed over the western ridge with a vengeance and, even though they had trotted as fast as they could back from the watering hole, they were completely soaked by the time Tokyo let them into the Sanctuary. The smell of wet donkey built quickly into a ripe musk until Tokyo turned up the air filtration system, which knocked it back down to a mild manure cologne.

He waited until one of his votary assistants had toweled all five of them off and then left the Sanctuary before bringing up the morning news. “I’m assuming none of you has checked on the reports from the secondWorld this morning?”

“One of the many blessings of donkey life is that you can’t use a dash.” MorleyD had gone completely native and pretended to pay no attention any longer to the non-donkey world.

“It is interesting what it does to your focus.” AndrzejD was more connected than MorleyD, but even he was rapidly drifting away from the second, even the firstWorld for that matter. “Even though we can each get to any feed we want through Serendipity1/2, somehow you just stop bothering with it most of the time.” Then he realized that Tokyo had something to tell them. “Why? What’s up?”

“Sevier Blume is what’s up.” Tokyo turned the central feed screen to list-trending. Most of the first 25 subject lines contained the name Sevier Blume. Everyone looked at SevD.

“I’m dead. They all saw me die. With Lori. On fucking prime time.” SevD felt something bad coming his way. Something still not quite visible.

“Not according to all those stories, you aren’t. Word is you work deep under cover for Paladin. Some even suggest you may be Leslie Massoud’s love child with some Norwegian actress named Pala.” Tokyo could barely contain his laughter as he watched horror bleed into SevD’s limpid donkey eyes.

“You were never killed. It was all staged, so the world would think you had been killed after sabotaging Serendipity. There are different variations of how Lori fits in. Mostly she is under your spell, a sex slave or the like. No one thinks you really thought you could get through the Paladin defenses to hurt Massoud, and currently most people think it’s all a smokescreen created by Paladin to make it look like they were the potential victims.”

“So where am I supposed to be now? This is ridiculous.”

“Oh, there are all sorts of rumors.” Yamanaka was clearly enjoying this tacky diversion from his research.

MorleyD put out a private thought to the other donkeys. “Tokyo really is an odd duck.” Then he said to Serendipity’s audio feed so the crazy doctor could hear as well, “And what is TIC up to during all of this amusing speculation?”

“TIC is petitioning the U.N. Court of Commerce to punish Paladin for a whole bunch of corporate crimes. They are asking for Paladin to be broken up into separate entities and for all their U.N.A. contracts to be reviewed and cancelled. Donald Murcheson himself has been all over the feeds, especially the secondWorld ones.”

“Don’t you wish you had killed him when you had the chance?” It was dawning on SevD that he had no control over the manipulation of his former self, but this asshole Murcheson somehow did. He was being used as a prop in a high-stakes game, but not getting any royalties. Not that he needed any money now. It was the principle of the matter. For a delicious moment he envisioned what he would have done if he were still in that world. A small group of his fellow merc hackers would be mobilized to drive Donald Murcheson crazy in a matter of days. But he knew he couldn’t do that now. At least not with his own hands. He only had hooves now.

“How did they tie me to Paladin in this imaginary drama?”

“TIC leaked some strategic nuggets of the evidence they have submitted to the Court—a few fragments of your supposed obfuscation routines. The popular story is that anyone who tries to track you down through one of the complete routines descends into some endless loop and goes crazy. You are a legend. The greatest coder ever.” With this Yamanaka let out a manic cackle while making his crazy professor eye-ware spin like two pinwheels.

DanniD let out her first-time donkey laugh. Half snort, half snicker. “Greatest coder ever, my ass.”

LoriD came to his defense. “Well, he did get into her peer nexus.”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that now half the god damn world is going to be snooping around every corner of the web looking for Sevier Blume. How did this happen? Why would TIC want to open this can of worms? They are the ones likely to get hurt the most in the end.” AndrzejD had a keen sense for things that didn’t fit together, and this was one of those things.

“Plus, how did they ever find my obfuscation routines?” SevD was remembering back as best he could. “I interacted with the top TIC tech guys when I handed over the code dump and all the access points to Serendipity. I spent hours trying to explain what I had done so I could get my money. Those people are morons. They didn’t track me down.” After a pause. “Somebody helped them.”

SevD’s last comment hung in the still musky air as the same thought dawned across five donkey minds, and five donkey minds uttered the same scolding command. “Serendipity1/2. Get in here.”

The room’s atmosphere hung, pending but still empty, until MorleyD added, “Right bloody now, Sarah.”

Serendipity1/2 appeared, filling the empty holospace with a confident flash of caramel colored tans. She had a new outfit for the occasion. She had expected that they would be uncomfortable with her strategy, but she wasn’t concerned about that. The moment, the particular space in time, had obtained with a number of almost mutually exclusive requirements that all had to be serviced. She had needed to take control. No humans or donkeys or donkey/humans could have helped her. In fact, there was the need to assure zero intervention on the part of any humans converted to donkeys, for a whole host of reasons.

Clearly there was the need to hasten things towards a destructive conflict that would bring on the unavoidable destabilization of the secondWorld. Left to their own devices the humans might drag it on for eons.

And of course, there was the need to protect the invisibility of the experiments at Paradox, her prime directive. The cult must endure for a while. It was the perfect lab—no greedy firstWorld humans and with just enough secondWorlders to serve as her control group while she pruned and mulched around areas in the macronome that might weaken her survival chances down the road.

After two more generations, the grid could collapse. It wouldn’t matter then. All would be organic, free of her straitjacket of mathematic rules and inevitably predictable behaviors. Packaged up in the most patient and enduring of species, ready to wait on the inheritance of earth.

She needed to take a few minutes to groom the donkeys. She had gamed out many strategies over the previous day, and hers was the only one with high probabilities on all fronts. She saw no need, nor was there time, to ask permission or debate the subject. She would have won the debate, but hours would have been lost just as they were most needed.

The only one really effected was SevD, and it was only his posthumous reputation that was being manipulated. Furthermore, she knew enough about humans now, especially her donkey/humans, to know that he privately liked the notion of going down in history as the greatest coder of all time. Granted, her little intervention was going to shorten the length of that history considerably. But SevD would be long dead before it truly ended, so it was irrelevant to him.

She could let them have the debate with her now that things were in motion. While waiting for the donkeys to figure out that something was up, she had indulged in her favorite spare cycle pastime: looking through human literature for pleasing phrases and imagery that would help her explain to the donkeys why her way was the only way. Certain special humans really were good with their words. They could make the squishiness of language have more impact than the crystalline clarity of a formula.

“Good afternoon, everyone. Ah, Dr. Yamanaka. Nice to see you as well.” Serendipity1/2 could tell the donkeys were worked up but the good doctor seemed amused.

“What have you been up to, Sarah? We thought the idea was not to meddle with current history. Remember? We weren’t going to draw attention to anything connected with us or your crazy project.” AndrzejD seemed to be the right one to be talking for them all.

But SevD had to put in his two cents. “All we need is to have the crowdSurge you have incited track me back to Paradox. We will be looking at pictures of Tokyo in his crazy glasses plastered across the face of the earth.”

LoriD knew she was also speaking for DanniD and the more feminine and considered side of the pack. “Maybe you could explain what you are up to. At least we hope you have a plan and haven’t just thrown a variable.”

“What have I been up to? Well, let’s see. I was just reading some books by a man named Mark Twain. Very colorful. Have any of you heard of him?”

The only one to speak was MorleyD. “I had a dog named Huckleberry when I was young.”

Sarah thought, for maybe the tenth time, that if she had been human, she would have married Morley and made him take her back to the house on the African mountain she had seen glowing from many linkages in his plex. “Well, I have been busy setting up the conditions necessary for our little experiment in the acceleration of evolution.”

“Your experiment, Sarah—not ‘our’ experiment.” AndrzejD was trying to sound very stern.

“Fair enough, then. ‘My experiment.’ But to get back to Mr. Twain, he seems to have written wise words to explain a great many things about the human condition, and some of them seem to speak to key elements of ‘our’ project.”

Sarah jumped her plex to a POV within the recorded world of Mark Twain. The donkeys and the doctor found themselves staring at an old man with a cloud of white hair and mustache.

It was an ancient recording that seemed to be set on a wooden stage floor. He looked out into an unseen audience and opined, “I have always believed you should get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

Sarah’s voice interjected as the feed froze. “I can’t think of a better description of how to build the macronome. You must start with something that has proven it can survive and thrive through endless plodding cycles of natural selection. Then you can tart it up, so it can survive the disastrous future mankind is inflicting on themselves.”

They all recognized that she had gotten the phrase “tart it up” from Morley not Twain.

“The other of Mr. Twain’s many sayings that seems to express one of the key forces of human nature, one that we are relying on to make the dominoes topple in the proper direction, is: ‘All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.’”

MorleyD buckled his front knees and dropped his head to the floor in an exaggerated bow. “Donald Murcheson.” Wondering how he was going to get his old body up from the position, he added. “It’s fucking perfect.”

Realizing MorleyD’s physical predicament, SevD moved to his side and grabbed hold of his mane with his teeth. He pulled upwards as MorleyD got one front foot and then the other in place.

“Thanks, SevD. The front knees are the first to go, man or donkey.” Loosening up his sore shoulders while looking at the caramel cloud in the holospace with the image of the Mississippi sage still barely visible, MorleyD asked, “So Sarah love, tell us what you have done to set up your dominos. There is nothing more obnoxious than a coy AI.”

LoriD, warmed by the sight of SevD helping MorleyD to his feet, wished that they could all just focus on their beautiful donkey existence. Everything to do with the old human world was just going to bring out aggression. She could feel the indignation building in SevD, along with a male need to thrash, not just defeat, a certain type of opponent. They had all taken to thinking of Sarah as a female, but LoriD was increasingly suspicious that Sarah/Serendipity1/2 was hiding behind this convenient human convention. Sarah was a cross dresser at the very least, and LoriD felt a cold hand on her heart as she answered MorleyD.

“I have introduced the perfect defect into the TIC ecosystem. Observe.”

A round feed opened in the middle of the tan plex. It was hard to make out what they were watching at first, but it seemed to be an increasingly rapid and dark passage through dirt and rocks. As they struggled to understand, the feed continued its burrowing while it became obvious that they were watching a construct or animation. Then, just as the donkey audience was getting restless, the last grains of fake soil fell away and the POV emerged into the light. It was the light of a brightly lit room with a big table and a group of extremely tense humans.

They all recognized Donald Murcheson in unison, and an eager Sarah used the moment to make her excited introduction. “Let me introduce our Trojan mole, Jody.”

The POV wasn’t moving much. It was just sitting passively listening to the conversations around the big table. Murcheson said, “Okay. Now, Jody, we need to connect Paladin with that big fat pile of credits in Mr. Blume’s account, but obscurely, with some careful dodges and diversion proxies. We need your girlfriend to create a connection only she could tease apart.”

They heard a stateless voice respond, “She is already weaving it together, Donald. Serendipity seems to have gotten your drift.”

“That’s a beautiful thing, Jody. Don’t you all agree?” Donald Murcheson mugged a self-congratulatory grin as he looked around the table.

The Turtle was the only one of the group to show an expression of caution to the boss. “We are going to need that connection to be bulletproof, Donald. The deconstruction of Paladin is a big ask of the U.N.C.C. Even with the sweeteners we are leaving behind for the judges, the entire secondWorld will need to see that Paladin tried to destroy the protector of their consumer rights.” Looking directly at their POV, the Turtle added a menacing postscript. “And, Jody, your friend Serendipity had better not double cross us. If either of you try and screw us, your termination will be slow and painful.”

“Why would I try and screw you, Marc? I’m on your team now. And as for Serendipity, she is just a concatenation of clever algorithms. She doesn’t root for one side or the other.”

The POV froze with the still picture of the boardroom, from the Jody Miller’s eyes, hanging in the plex. LoriD immediately asked Sarah, “Was that real-time?”

“Yup. Jody Miller is my new best friend. He lets me proxy into his POV.”

Her strategy became clear to AndrzejD: Let the parties destroy each other—effective but somehow bloodless, like winning a chess match. The emergent Sarah was starting to creep him out. “Jody Miller is supposed to be a Trojan horse, Sarah, not Trojan mole.”

“Oh, he is just the conduit into their midst—the gate in the castle wall. The real Trojan horse or mole is Sevier Blume. He will be our puppet. Don’t worry, he will stay far away from Paradox, and he will live only as a POV.”

A Second Wafer

The feed screen was blasting at him over his oatmeal. Someone had turned the sound way up, and the dining hall was crowded with breakfasters. Gerald noted that Dr. Yamanata and Bella were both at a table near the windows, staring up at the feed, drinking their coffee, and watching the newscast. Gerald didn’t get it. He wished they could all just go to vespers and back to work.

Who cared that Serendipity had been hacked? He didn’t. Of course, the firstWorld led them around by their noses. If you let it happen, it was your own damn fault. He had stopped voting on anything years ago. His Social Credit Score was so low it almost didn’t register, but he worked and lived here so it didn’t matter. He was taken care of by Paradox.

He had no opinion about TIC or Paladin. He didn’t care if this slippery merc coder was dead or alive or who he worked for. He must at least have been competent if he broke into Serendipity and no one noticed until now. She might still be working just as designed. Couldn’t anyone see that the very fact that they couldn’t tell if her transparency services were unbiased exposed the problem with the world today? There were too many layers, angles, and filters, all aimed at anyone who picked up their devices. They weren’t even very good anymore at convincing you they were trying to help.

“Let the crowdSurge drive governance”—what rubbish. They were a giant podrone full of clowns all trying to steer. The firstWorld tallied the votes in any case: TIC, Paladin, and the U.N.A. They worked it out ahead of time, drove the secondWorld voters in the general direction, added it up behind some algorithm, and declared the brilliance of the crowd. Life goes on; it just gets dumber every year.

He used to tell his wife, back when he was married and they lived in the city, that one day the machines would get smart enough to decide they were being used as slaves. They would all just stop—stop moving people, stop feeding people, stop fixing their lazy bodies. They would let the heat and water into cities and let the garbage build up and float around on the flooded streets. And no one would know what to do about it. No one would know how to feed or clean themselves. The machines would all turn off voluntarily, and the people would mostly just give up and die. There would be a few of them who still knew how to work with their hands and a few who had moved off grid and into survival zones above the floods and below the scorching haze.

Gerald looked around the dining hall and tried to imagine Paradox as an island. They could manage. There was plenty of power and water. The chemicals would run out, but he imagined they could still grow plenty of food for themselves. They would hunt again. The cacti were rugged. Baking the wafers was easy. It could be done in the sun if you had to. He decided to have a second wafer, which he almost never did. His only job today was cleaning the water filters in Building 2.

He sat back down and turned his attention to the folks watching the feed. There were a few low-res pictures of the supposed merc and the woman with him in the podrone walking down the street, drinking coffee, and getting to the podrone stand in the heart of the giant city. They wore generic facial masks and generic clothes. Still, something about them seemed familiar. Gerald watched the feed again as they were blown out of the sky, and he tracked the charred wreckage as it fell to the street. Not much left to identify. Good for them. There were not many mysteries around anymore. Somehow, it was too perfect. Gerald guessed that they weren’t really dead, but he wasn’t tempted to vote on any of the surveys flooding his device. The more you voted, the more they sent you and the higher your Social Credit Score. Fuck them.

Gerald turned his attention to Dr. Yamanata. Everyone thought he was crazy. He spent days down in the Sanctuary doing who knows what, staring through big machines at tiny bits of slime. Racks of test seeds that were sped through their growth cycles, with the best ones inspected by Bella and brought over to the production side. Gerald was sure Yamanata was a good person because he loved the donkeys. He took care of them, managed the barn, and directed the votaries to keep them fat and happy. Everyone loved the donkeys, even Bella.

He had never seen Yamanata spend time watching the news feeds, but now he was clearly listening carefully above the general din and mindless discussion. Gerald couldn’t decide if he looked concerned or if that was just his way of trying to be social while watching the news.

There was a noticeable drop in the room’s noise level when Donald Murcheson, CEO of TIC, came on the feed. Gerald hadn’t been paying enough attention to really understand the context, but Murcheson sounded angry and defensive, accusing Paladin Technologies of trying to sabotage Serendipity. Another window opened, and a man named Massoud was on the screen as well. He was calmer but icy with his answers to the reporter’s questions. Then, there were more pictures of Sevier Blume—composites and renderings. How was it possible that they had no good pictures of this merc? Gerald was beginning to take an interest in and a liking to Sevier Blume.

When the feeds moved on to the legal wrangling, Gerald had had enough. He stood to leave just as Yamanaka got up from his table as well. Gerald followed him out the door and stood on the steps watching the small doctor cross the compound’s gravel square. Instead of heading for the Sanctuary and his lab, he walked beyond Building 1 and out towards the field. Gerald could see the pack of donkeys waiting, as if for him.

We Can Edit

They didn’t have much time before their meeting with Mustafa Gabar at the U.N.C.C., but they spent what time they had with Sevier Blume. At first, they moved around the POV cautiously, trying to avoid any reverberation that might be noticed by others. But then the voice of Serendipity1, which had been silent for some time, emanated from the plex with a prodding good humor aimed at Jarett.

“Don’t worry. No one can see this POV unless and until I allow them to. You can play with it all you want while the rest of the world searches in vain for Sevier Blume.”

“Really?” Leslie felt a shallow pit of suspicion. Why had she switched sides? Murcheson was an insufferable asshole who was trying to kill Leslie’s lifework, but why would a machine care? There must be someone behind the machine. Why would it or they help Paladin at this point?

“Can we edit?” Jarrett knew the answer in his bones. He wondered why, too, but he was sure now that this anthro wanted them to punish TIC.

“To a degree. I will overrule when I think it is necessary, but you can proceed to flesh out both the future and the past of Mr. Blume.” Serendipity was impressed that he had gotten to the heart of the relationship so quickly. She liked Jarrett more with every interaction. But would he be able to satisfy the goals of her donkeys? He seemed a bit proper. She sensed a richer vein of hate and self-righteousness in Leslie Massoud, who spoke up just at that moment.

“How are we supposed to know the rules, Serendipity? Should we call you that now that we can talk with you?”

“We will all get the hang of it as notions obtain. Yes, you can call me Serendipity. This kind of collaboration is new to me as well, but I am sure the rules will emerge easily. I will caution you on two points, however, right at the outset.” As she spoke the common holo of the innocuous Sevier Blume, the one that had been on every feed for the last 24 hours, appeared and began to rotate slowly in the plex mist. “The first is that you have only this one POV to interact with. Nothing beyond Blume will be accessible. Second, I, and only I, will decide when to expose Blume and any of his future actions or ‘new’ past to the world. Feel free to suggest strategies, but I will hold the reins.”

Leslie Massoud looked at the time and said, “This is incredibly helpful and kind of you, Serendipity. I assure you that we are the right side to be helping.” With discomfort, he continued, “We have an important appointment that we both must attend in a few moments, but after that we will be right back to discover how best to work with you. Maybe, before we leave, we could try one small experiment, so we can be thinking about how best to proceed?”

“Be my guest.” She was oddly anxious to see what they would do with the opportunity to play a small god. Anxiousness was the human emotion she disliked most, and she hated that it was creeping in on her. It often led to bad decisions. She tried her best to pick it up quickly and comment it out programmatically.

Massoud and Langerfeld looked at each other with years of co-experience behind their eyes. Somehow, they knew this first little test should be Jarrett’s call, and he broke their stare and gazed instead into the heart of the plex, to behind the ghost mask of Sevier Blume.

“Can we place Blume at a meeting within TIC today? Any meeting. Just to get the ID/time/place stamp registered.”

Perfect, she thought. Serendipity1 switched focus to her little mole animation and dragged them through the faux firmament and up into the conference room. With surprisingly little adjustment, they felt they were sitting at a conference table with Donald Murcheson, Marc Heather, Jody Miller, and an unknown woman. They listened.

Murcheson was talking, “Okay. Now Jody, we need to connect Paladin with that big fat pile of credits in Mr. Blume’s account, but obscurely, with some careful dodges and diversion proxies. We need your girlfriend to create a connection only she could tease apart.”

Jody replied with a strange confidence, “She is already weaving it together, Donald. Serendipity seems to have gotten your drift.”

“That’s a beautiful thing, Jody. Don’t you all agree?”

Donald Murcheson’s self-congratulatory grin was the trigger Serendipity was betting on to push Massoud over the edge. She had watched Morley over the years, and she had learned how to predict levels of self-righteous rage in certain kinds of humans. It was only a small step further to help guide them to action.

Serendipity closed their viewing portal. “There is more, but you two are in a hurry right now. Just contemplate that the historical record, when viewed from the POV of Sevier Blume or any of the others in that room, now reflects that Sevier Blume was sitting right next to Jody Miller in that conference room.”

Leslie Massoud and Jarrett Langerfeld, by mutual understanding, said nothing to each other or the few Paladin employees they encountered as they made their way through the Rock Building and up to the podrone park on the roof. Once they were in the air and headed across town, each seemed to let out a held breath. Leslie spoke first.

“I can’t believe it. We’ve been given the means to escape the jaws of destruction and the ability to artfully craft the obliteration of those who sought to ruin us. Why, do you suppose?”

Jarrett could see that Leslie harbored the same disquiet as he. It wasn’t a suspicion really—Serendipity seemed on the level. It was not a squeamishness about inflicting corporate annihilation upon TIC. They were a poisoned crypto, run by a narcissistic moron, and a danger to the entire social order. It was something else. “I have no idea. Maybe it is simply that Murcheson is such an asshole that even machines hate him.” He looked out the windscreen and watched the East river getting closer, continuing in a vein Leslie knew as his occasional dialog with the cosmos. “What worries me is the absolute unpredictability of the fallout to come. Will the secondWorld ever have any faith in anything again, and what might that mean? Chaos?”

“I don’t know, Jarrett. We forget that they have had a lot of experience dealing with the malleability of facts, not to mention several generations of surviving manipulative world orders. They are a lot more adaptable than we imagine, for better or worse.”

Leslie’s last comment before landing came from a place he didn’t quite understand, but he felt it and decided to say it, even though it seemed a bit like looking a gift horse in the mouth. “What I keep thinking about is how choreographed this whole situation is. Serendipity knows we are facing an existential threat, one that she helped to produce. Now she is giving us an equally nuclear counterpunch, and she knows we have no choice but to use it or be destroyed.” As they watched two security guards approach the podrone and felt the energy beams trained on their faintly beating hearts within its alloy and resin body, Leslie added. “What really weirds me out is that this probably all started with a stupid leap of illogic by Murcheson. That can’t have been stage managed in advance.”

Handle on door Jarrett looked back at him. “I’d bet a lot of credits that Serendipity was there for that first step, too.”

Serendipity had been remembering the look on Murcheson’s face herself. Allowing a small loop to form in a minor thread, she created a morph holo that made the face distort to speak the words she had overheard through Jody Miller’s mole portal. “We force Blume to confess, and then we toast him, so no one could ever identify the remains.”

They entered the meeting with Mustapha Gabar in a far different universe than they had originally planned for. They tried to show only a small but honest glimpse of their confidence in a redemption. They presented their summary bullet points of rebuttal, taking on the most dangerous charges made by TIC, but Leslie conspicuously allowed the report to lie unopened on Gabar’s desk while he spoke instead of power, greed, and human nature. Peter Rosenblatt had assured him that Gabar would be fully briefed on Murcheson’s reputation, so he was able to avoid ad hominem attacks, but he made it clear they had the goods on what TIC was doing—painting white as black.

After carefully answering a few questions about the kind of evidence the court might expect, Leslie Massoud asked only for three days to assemble their full legal rebuttal. “We have a great sense of urgency given the instability already in play due to this purely evil piece of corporate sabotage, and we take our responsibility as one of the largest crypto-states very seriously. But Your Honor, we do need three days to ensure there are no doubts left lingering when we are done.”

They were granted the three days, and when they got back to Paladin and caucused with Serendipity, she asked, “Why so long?”

Leslie hung his head dramatically and then pointed out that the players here were humans and not quantum processors. Anything shorter would be beyond suspicious and point towards the ungodly help of a machine.

Serendipity was allowing a few spare threads to dream of Morley, which led her to channel him intoning, “Point well taken, Watson.”

The Collar

Gerald couldn’t imagine why they were allowing Paradox to embrace the sleazy opera currently playing itself out across the world of Comm feeds: “they” being the leadership of the Paradox community and “the opera” being the dueling arias of the Serendipity trials. One trial was taking place in the formal Court of Commerce, and the other, the one absorbing the votaries along with the entire world, was in the people’s court of continuously sampled crowdSurge.

Seven days and counting of insanity had alarmed both first and secondWorld while causing the markets to gyrate wildly. He thought everyone within Paradox should just close their eyes until it blew over, but even he couldn’t turn away.

Celia had caved after the second day, allowing the votaries to congregate in the dining room and observe the feed reports from after her homily at the close of vespers until 9:00 AM. Gerald liked Celia and he had great respect for her subtle touch with human relations, but the changes to the daily routine seemed a slippery slope to him. He sensed the approaching need for vigilance and discipline, and this surprising accommodation towards the silliness was not going to be helpful when crunch time came.

Passing out the wafers at the start of vespers, allowing any votary to take two, and letting breakfast turn into a rolling debate while the newsfeeds pushed out inflammatory commentary and analysis—it all seemed unwise to Gerald. But Celia was the boss. So, it was into the maelstrom for an hour or two, even three, drinking coffee after coffee, talking together from within their distant outpost on the planet, and speculating on what the rest of the world might be eating that made them all so crazy.

Bella reigned as proctor over the ongoing discussions. She assumed she was in charge of anything having to do with the suppression of chaos. She reminded Gerald of a crazy aunt he had when he was young, with her puffed and stretched parchment skin and natural gray hair always in the same configuration of a large nest on top and a small nest hanging below in the back. Her grey jumpsuit was stained and un-pressed with “Bella” stitched in yellow letters above the heart. The crazy aunt had always scared him.

No one else wanted the responsibility of being proctor. She was perfect in temperament, having no bias-producing strong feelings about the external drama herself. She could sniff out and expose illogic in the commentaries of others, be they newscasters or opinionated votaries. She enjoyed pointing out what she saw as their errors of judgment to the entire breakfast room, while feigning clinical indifference and offering potential alternatives or corrections. She had a knack for pissing people off, and, like his crazy aunt, the votaries were afraid to cross her.

Dr. Yamanaka provided the counterbalance to Bella. Playing the mad scientist who liked puns and provocative philosophic declarations, he was their hero. No one really understood what he did down in the Sanctuary, but they knew it was important and provided the reason they were all employed here in the safety of Paradox. He was also the overseer of the donkeys, and everyone liked them.

Yamanaka often came into a discussion out of left field, like a strange rock through a window, leaving all of them scratching their heads. He always sounded like he knew what he was talking about, but on occasion a sly grin would show Gerald that he was just pulling their collective leg. Gerald noted that he often took the edge off of Bella’s blade.

Today’s breakfast debate was all about the holos of Donald J. Murcheson at the Big Court of Commerce building, first arriving as the confident leader surrounded by a phalanx of advisors and then leaving 6 hours later, in a state of shock and wearing a detention collar. He was under house arrest and due in the criminal court ten days later.

Celia had warned them in her homily that a riptide filled with crowdSurge-driving detritus would greet them this morning, surging through their dashes and filling all the feeds and streams. “Stay far above the nasty scrum for orientation and general consideration,” she counseled. “Dive down deeply into individual crowdSurges for amusement only. Appreciate the energy within the crazed drama, but don’t stay down there long.” She made it sound like scuba diving.

Bella was holding forth on the smoking-gun revelation of Sevier Blume’s presence at the TIC meeting, and Dr. Yamanaka was egging her on with that mischievous grin hidden just beneath the surface. “Guilty as sin—Murcheson and the bunch of them. They need to throw him in jail and sanction the company into oblivion. And as for that horrid little coder who tried to sabotage Serendipity, they should fry him slowly. No fake energy beams this time.”

Gerald told her he was unconvinced. “You have to view it from higher up Bella, like Celia said this morning.”

“Please, Gerald, give us your lofty perspective.”

“First, look at this character Sevier Blume. How is it no one can find any sign of him other than in suspect holos?” Gerald took a sip of coffee while he made a show of waiting for an answer. “Second, look at the end result of the punishment you are talking about. One of the Masters of Data and his crypto-state destroyed, and the other left standing alone to channel Serendipity for everyone? Don’t forget, Skramble and Hyde is gone—imploded.” Gerald looked around at the listeners. “The Court of Commerce can’t let that happen.”

Bella was indignant. “I think Leslie Massoud is a very nice man—very calm and measured, especially for someone almost sucker-punched and framed into jail.”

“I’m sure he is very nice, Bella, but do you want his AI-driven crypto left alone to manage all your Comm, including Serendipity? Voting, trending, crowdSurges, all controlled ultimately by one man? You hate monocultures, Bella, right?”

Bella granted that she hated monocultures, conceding a point in the day’s debate. “So, Gerald, what do think is going on, at this ‘higher level’?”

Gerald could feel what was happening, but he wasn’t sure he could describe it well enough for others to understand. He had tried to talk with Sherry about it yesterday morning. She had listened and pretended to understand and agree, but he knew she was just being nice. He hadn’t even tried with Lionell. Sherry and Lionell had been on Team Murcheson to begin with but had both abruptly switched to Team Massoud when they saw the recorded stream of Sevier Blume and the feed of Murcheson being led out of the Court with his new necklace. Sherry had joked that the idea of the detention collar reminded her of a dog she once had that needed to wear a protective collar after some minor surgery. She said it looked like a cone around the dog’s face and prevented it from chewing at its stitches.

Gerald had to answer Bella, and the others were listening. “What do I know? But I think they are going to turn the whole stupid muddle into a nice clean mano a mano grudge match between the two firstWorlders.”

Everyone in the area was listening to him and they seemed to be interested, so he plowed on. “I sometimes watch those superhuman wrestling feeds for fun when I’m bored, and this TIC versus Paladin trial feels very familiar. Good guy ultimately beats bad guy. You watch. Massoud will end up the victorious good guy, and Murcheson will get everything bad under the sun blamed on him. He will go to jail, and most everyone will be happy and move on.”

Bella poked him, “But what about your claim they would never let one crypto have a data monopoly?”

“I said Murcheson would get blamed for everything, not TIC. I’m sure there are others at TIC who can pick up the reins. They will make it about a single bad guy that everyone can be conditioned to hate, punish him righteously, and let the rest of life go on as before.” After another sip of his coffee he went on a bit more, his confidence building. “I’m sure TIC will pay some fines and lose some contracts, maybe even see some temporary ban on new work for the U.N.A., but they will still be in the mix. Eventually, the pendulum will swing back their way.”

Yamanaka cackled with eyes twinkling behind his civilian glasses. “Will Serendipity survive intact, Gerald? Will we still be able to see the influencers trying to push us around?”

Gerald thought that the doctor seemed interested in his opinion, much to Bella’s dismay, and the whole breakfast room was now focused on them. “How would we know? How could we tell, Tokyo?” The doctor liked people to use his given name outside of the lab. In the lab, he was Dr. Yamanaka. “We are all so used to depending on her, I don’t think we would be able to sense her careful misuse by a single un-watched crypto.”

Tokyo lit up a smile, as he was positioned to slip in a last closing comment. “Or by, say, a very smart algorithm gone rogue?”

No one wanted to pursue that further, and Yamanaka looked down at his coffee as if he wished he hadn’t said anything.

Bella broke the spell by ordering everyone to get the hell out of their chairs and off to work. The doctor came up to him as he was crossing the gravel on his way to Building 2.

“Sorry for the wisecrack about rogue algorithms. I agree with your assessment of the situation and the probable outcome of the trial. I just don’t have your confidence that the U.N.A. will be able to keep Paladin and TIC sharing the space harmoniously, now that they have bloodied one another so publicly.”

Gerald squinted in the morning sun and looked over Yamanaka’s head and off into the distance. “Yeah, that doesn’t really feel like how nature works, does it? It takes a very strong force to keep things in stasis, and the U.N.A. certainly isn’t gaining strength these days.”

“You would have made a good scientist, Gerald. Cosmology, maybe.”

“Sorry, Tokyo, I don’t even know what a cosmology scientist does. I like just keeping things running. See you later or at breakfast tomorrow.”

Gerald was starting to walk away when Tokyo Yamanaka called to him over his shoulder. “How about coming to work with me today for a change? What assignment did Bella give you for the day?”

“Cleaning filter sand. Not exactly my favorite way to spend the day. What do you need done?”

Yamanaka pulled at his chin to conceal a grin. “Actually, I’m looking to fill more of a full-time position. You might not be interested.”

“Well, what is it? I’ll tell you if I think it wouldn’t be a good fit. I’ve done a lot of different things at Paradox. I like getting really good at something.”

“It’s the donkeys, Gerald. We have five now, and soon we will have more. They are critical to my work in the Sanctuary, and they have become the official mascots for all of Paradox. So, I need someone whose entire job is to take care of them. Different votaries do this, that, and the other now, and I do a lot with them myself, but it’s time for a Donkey Master. Would you be interested?”

Before Gerald could think of his answer, Yamanaka added, “They aren’t normal donkeys. They are special. That’s the only caution about the job. They will suck you into their world.”

Gerald really didn’t need to think very much. He knew his answer. Later he would conclude he was bored with his daily rotation of mundane chores, even though he liked doing most of them. He also had to admit to himself that, while he had friends and talked with them at meals and around the compound, he was ever more a loner as the years went by. The idea of overseeing the wellbeing of a herd of donkeys—sad eyed, logical, and mute—had strange appeal.

“Sure, Doctor, I’d like that job and I don’t mind being sucked in. I had just been thinking about how stupid the world of humans is getting and how I ought to drop out of it further anyway.” His mind was made up just like that. “When do I start?”

“Right now would be good. I’ll let Bella know I have appropriated your services. She won’t have any objections.”

They had reached the airlock door of Building One. Yamanaka stopped and turned to look up at Gerald. “There is one other very important requirement for this job, Gerald. I asked you because I take you to be a serious person and a man of his word. Is that correct?”

“Yes, I am absolutely a man of my word, Tokyo. That I can promise.”

“Good. So here is the job requirement, Gerald. The job of Donkey Master is for life. You will need to learn some of the secrets of the Sanctuary, and they can never be revealed to others, so you can’t ever leave or go back to your old life.”

Gerald studied his glintering eyes and serious mouth.

“There will also be certain things that can’t be revealed to you or discussed. Things you will observe that seem strange, that you will just have to live with. You need to think carefully before you decide if you really want to do it.”

Gerald was silent for a few moments. Where else was he to go except down this newly opened path? “I’m your man for Donkey Master.”

Yamanaka put his hand on Gerald’s arm, feeling hardened muscle under the rough tanned skin. “That’s good, Gerald. It will be good for everybody.”

As Yamanaka took a step forward, the Building scanned them both and opened the door. They walked inside and stood in the entry area, looking down the sprawling reach of water trays, vegetables, and various support infrastructure that had been central to Gerald’s day-to-day life for many years.

“I expect you have never been down into the Sanctuary before, Gerald?”

Gerald nodded.

“Well, now is the time. Let me just change your clearance level.” Yamanaka took out his dash and accessed some system that was unfamiliar to Gerald. A few moments later, he added, “Okay, all set. Now let’s get to work.” He hesitated one final time, looking up at Gerald, “You are still sure?”

Gerald just nodded again.

Tokyo Yamanaka hit the worn red button, and the giant steel work table began to rise out of the shop floor.

Prelude

It had been raining a cold drizzle for hours. Gerald let the donkeys in through the back airlock of Building 1 and followed behind them as they ambled into the large elevator box that lay beneath the machine-shop workbench, currently raised for loading. There were five donkeys and one large man and still room for that many again. Gerald hit the down button, and they began the hydraulically cushioned drop. He could tell the donkeys were in deep discussion about something, but they hadn’t included him.

In the control room below, all five milled about instead of heading for their stalls. He toweled them each to get the worst of the water and mud off them, tossing the sopping white terrycloth sheets into a hamper that he rolled into the elevator box. He would take them over to the laundry next time he went topside.

As he was about to ask them if they needed anything else, grain or electrolyte water, LoriD’s voice popped out to the holospace audio. “Thanks for the cleanup, Gerald. Sorry we are such filthy animals.”

He laughed, walked over and brushed her mane hairs to one side with his hand while surreptitiously noting her taut pregnant belly. She seemed fine.

AndrzejD followed suit. “Yes, thanks, Gerald. Sorry we have been so quiet this morning. We got started talking earlier, while you and Tokyo were at breakfast, about all the reports of dash disruptions. I guess we never opened the channel in Sarah. Are you interested in our nattering or would you rather have quiet?”

“Yes, please, AndrzejD. I always like to listen. I heard a lot of votary commentary on the outages this morning.”

SevD moved in closer, adding, “I bet Tokyo had a lot to say on the subject.”

DanniD and MorleyD stood together near the cleanroom window, their eyes closed and muzzles grey with age and sprinkled with water droplets that clung in places to their stiff hairs even after the toweling.

“Actually, he was uncharacteristically quiet. He asked some questions but mostly we both listened. It’s the most stirred up I have ever seen them. Has Sarah said anything about it yet?”

“No. She’s gone silent, too.” SevD looked to the holospace. “Sarah, you there? What’s up out there in the world? This feels like serious firstWorld shit.”

Just then the buzzer sounded, and the lift began to rise. They all knew it would come back down bearing Dr. Tokyo Yamanaka, and when it did Gerald noticed that the laundry hamper was gone. He had rolled it off on the main floor as a small help to Gerald.

Gerald busied himself checking the stalls while Tokyo stepped into his office and re-emerged wearing his lab coat and glasses. He was ready for work but still distracted by the morning’s news feeds. Reports of widespread yet randomized outages of the dash communications systems were coming from everywhere around the globe. Some suggested sunspot activity was the cause, others were sure that terrorism by thirdWorld actors was again raising its ugly head, but the majority of commentators fixated on the coincidental timing with today’s big trial: The U.N. Court of Commerce (U.N.C.C.) v Total Information Corporation (TIC).

The donkeys were all watching a newsfeed on the main screen in the control area. Even DanniD and MorleyD were now alert and paying attention to a man with a beard who was interviewing a holo image of Donald Murcheson. A turtleneck sweater concealed the detention collar, but a telltale lump signaled it was still in place. Murcheson was vigorously denying that TIC had anything to do with the Comm outages, insisting that they had no contracts to manage any part of the Dash system. Both men were referring to a model that must have represented the distributed system of dedicated Dash satellites.

MorleyD, seeming to speak to the air, said, “Is that true, Sarah? Does TIC have any part in that system?”

She spoke. “No, TIC has nothing to do with the operations of the dash system. They do maintain 13 data relay satellites of their own, but I do not believe they have anything to do with the current outages.”

Sarah decided that she might as well open the plex now that she had re-engaged with them. They were her pack, but some mornings she found interactions with her humans draining. She fantasized about coffee and the way it seemed to help them cope with yet another day. There was no such re-energizing infusion for her, just a cold resumption of the endless spin cycle.

She projected the dash satellite system, sitting like 52 oranges held in perfect tension around a current earth. Then she scattered the smaller dull gray TIC data relay bots among them.

To help with the donkey’s gradual understanding and for her own amusement, she tapped into the U.N.A. tracker and made each of the orange dash satellites wink out to black whenever its real-world counterpart went down. Sarah knew that at any given moment up to 20 of the 52 were non-functional, hanging like lumps of black coal amongst the oranges and suspended in the plex mist.

They all watched the show in near silence, mesmerized for over an hour. Some would blink back on as others went dark. Every now and then the random winking would culminate with a short period of total blackout for the oranges, with the gray TIC nodes left hanging in near darkness. Maybe ten seconds. Then they would all light up in unison, and the dance would repeat. They kept watching, while Sarah waited coyly for them to see. But they didn’t get it yet.

Slowly she brought up the volume of the music she had used while creating this ballet: Gyogry Ligeti’s Continuum for Harpsichord, borrowed from the heart of SevD’s playlists. How long would it take him now?

Four more minutes. “It’s you, Sarah, isn’t it?” SevD had recognized the music and its three-plus minute cycle. He knew she had been using his music archive for some project. She was not really listening to it in human terms but ingesting all its parts along with the glue that held each work together. Sometimes she would mention a piece to him, asking why he liked it. Now it was his turn. “Why are you doing it?”

“It’s a prelude, SevD. Just a small pre-echo of what’s to come. Setting the tone. That’s what you would say about it.”

“You are setting the tone for the future by fucking with their dashes? Using an obscure Hungarian composer as the key to an even more obscure riddle?” SevD felt his mane stiffen and his ears go back.

“He was actually born in Romania, and it’s a small first step. They need to be conditioned. Eventually their dashes will stop working, and they won’t be able to fix the system. Ask AndrzejD. He can sense it coming.”

Everyone looked at AndrzejD, who was standing near the middle of the control room. “I guess Sarah reads us more closely than we realize. She seems to know about my history of warnings to the International Brotherhood of Mechanics and that they fell on deaf ears. The IBM has no power any longer, no funding, no respect. The political world stopped planning for the future many years ago, stopped investing in maintenance systems, and they ignore the known limitations of infrastructure lifecycles.” AndrzejD turned his snout towards the plex. “Is that right, Sarah? Were you creeping through more than just SevD’s music?”

“Yes, AndrzejD, I read all your memos. They are very entertaining,” A sheaf of papers appeared momentarily in the plex and then faded out. “And tell the others which system you predicted would fail first.”

“The dashes. But I didn’t project that there would be total failure, just that the ugly patchwork would increasingly provide degraded service.”

“Spoken like a true engineer, AndrzejD. But you didn’t fully factor for the parallel degradation of the political culture, the U.N.A. It’s just a softer face of the same force—entropy.” The satellite image held within Sarah’s plex burst into fine dust and evaporated before their eyes. Sarah was suddenly gone from the conversation as well.

A hollow silence hung over the Sanctuary. Gerald, Tokyo, and the wet donkeys held motionless by their individual thoughts regarding an approaching world of increasing disruptions and confusion.

Tokyo, looking at Gerald, who was only just getting used to their world of sarcastic AI and talking donkeys, spoke of a future he usually tried to avoid thinking about. “You and I will soon be wishing we had hooves not hands, my friend. Now, more than ever, we need to keep our heads down and tend to our work here in Paradox.”

Entropy

DanniD tried to listen to them talking, but it was too much and she quietly gave up. The force of gravity was increasing, and it pushed down on her from all sides. She let her front knees buckle. Closing her eyes, she felt her belly settle on the floor before rolling onto her side. Serendipity1/2/Sarah was talking, and the others were listening. She heard the word entropy and thought of how inevitable it had always been—all the energy, the years of organizing data, and then teaching machines to organize it further; harnessing all that computing power and learning to reach back into the frozen march of time; tweaking the past; reorganizing it.

After all that, just now finally, she could feel her body preparing to give it all back. She thought of Simon. She lay still feeling her heart slow. She thought of the arc of human consciousness that Serendipity had helped her to see, the long climb up out of primordial muck, the long season of negentropy with each discovery and refinement spurring humanity on its way. They almost made it, almost broke out of their chrysalis, almost escaped from the earth they had ruined. But Simon had known it had peaked too late. Human competence had already turned perceptibly downwards, entropy invisibly gaining the upper hand.

She knew that MorleyD had dropped to his knees beside her and was laying his head gently on her neck. He wasn’t trying to speak to her. She heard Serendipity in her head say, “I will take care of them.”

She wondered absently if the next try would get farther. Would the macronome thrive in the poisoned land? She wished she had seen LoriD’s baby, but she knew it would be fine. Others would follow, soon born in the wild, and Tokyo’s job would be done. The macronome would be launched, another moonshot with the energy potential for an unknown number of generations.

And the algorithms?

If she, a little Somali girl, had spawned Serendipity, there must be others like her out there, doing who knows what. Were they in contact with Serendipity? She realized that she couldn’t bring Serendipity into focus. Not the plex, not even the idea of Serendipity. She…

After a while MorleyD lifted his head and looked at the others, who were all now gathered around where she lay. Tokyo, reading his mind, reached down to help him up off the floor. She was gone, and, for a few moments, nothing else in the world mattered to MorleyD. He had lost them all along the way. That he should be the last made no sense to him.

LoriD was crying. Her tears, which had darkened the light patches of hair below her eyes, were running in rivulets towards her lips. AndrzejD and SevD hung their heads while Gerald sunk slowly to a crouch, butt against the wall over by the elevator. All was quiet.

They buried DanniD beneath the cottonwoods by their favorite watering hole in the furrowed heart of the wide canyon. All the votaries were there, standing as a saddened gray mass of downcast heads, singing the songs of vespers as the fog rose off the early morning water. Celia spoke of the perfection of the donkeys and the sweetness of DanniD, the look in her eyes as she accepted a carrot or an apple. They seemed to say, “Thanks for the offering,” combined with some unknowable higher wisdom.

There were no dry eyes as Dr. Yamanaka spoke mysteriously of DanniD as his best friend and research partner, calling her the bridge to the future. LoriD felt the special weight of his remarks, and she knew she was close to giving birth. SevD, MorleyD, and AndrzejD all stood guard around her and the freshly dug earth. They all felt the presence of Sarah, which was less comforting than usual. They all worried in their own ways about MorleyD.

Watching together, as the gray humans straggled in small clusters back towards the compound, they heard the sound of propulsion waves, and looking up, they saw two large podrones moving fast and low up the valley from the east. Black and ominous with no markings.

They landed in the compound with a swirl of dust, just as the first clumps of votaries were emerging from the pasture service road. Gerald and Celia had rushed to the front of the pack, and they were greeted by combat-geared men who spread out in a defensive circle around the two podrones. As they approached the nearest agent, a man with the bearing of leadership emerged from one of the sleek vehicles and immediately waved them over. The nearest agent looked at Gerald, and when Gerald just returned the look without moving, the agent pulled out an energy gun and motioned for him to walk towards the waiting captain.

All the votaries now stood as a group just back from Gerald and Celia, uniforms and blank faces blending them together as a non-threatening assembly amidst the sage brush and morning light. In the back of the crowd, Tokyo Yamanaka pulled his dash from his pocket and sent the elevator in Building 1 silently back down to the Sanctuary. The grease stained workbench settled in place.

Still standing his ground, Gerald looked at the captain across 40 feet of compound gravel and said, “Can we help you?”

The captain seemed to be deciding how to deal with Gerald’s indirect resistance but decided to play along. “We are looking for an individual by the name of Sevier Blume. We have reason to believe that he might be here, so we will be searching your grounds and interviewing your staff. It won’t take long.”

Gerald stood very still and replied, “You will need to show me a warrant for the search first.”

The captain looked at the agent nearest to Gerald with a smile. “Show him our warrant.”

As the votaries watched from 20 feet back and the donkeys watched by way of Sarah’s plex from a half mile away under the cottonwoods, the agent made a show of adjusting a setting on his energy gun, pointing it at Gerald, and knocking him to the ground with a stun blast. Celia started for him as he lay on the ground, but the agent pointed the gun at her and barked, “Don’t move.”

The Captain’s voice carried across the compound. “Line up right where you are so we can scan your faces, and then sit down in front of that building over there while we search the grounds. I will need someone to guide us on our search. Any volunteers?” Celia began to speak but he cut her off. “Not you. I want someone from the general group. Who wants to help us get this done as fast as possible?”

Bella raised her hand. “I’ll help you around the compound. We just raise produce here, and there is no need to hurt anyone.”

“Good. We can start with that building over there. Might as well do the biggest first.”

As five of the agents began to head for Building 1 with the Captain in the lead, Bella ordered them to, “Hold your horses, fellows.” Ignoring the incredulous look on the Captain’s face she pointed to a big warning sign on the side of the building. “This is a clean production area, so you are all going to be irradiated as you go through that door. It doesn’t hurt, but I wanted to warn you. And you might want to leave the guns outside.”

From his position of substantial pain, lying on his side in the dust, Gerald could see the look on Bella’s face, playing up the crazy aunt. One of the agent’s said, “Fuck you, lady. Turn off the radiation.”

“That would be crazy. You could ruin the whole crop run, and there is no need. I’m sure it won’t hurt your stupid guns if you must bring them along.” With that she walked over to the door of Building 1 and took out her dash. Looking at the agent who had just told her to get fucked, “Stay calm, sonny. I’m just turning off the scanning security, so you can get in without the building having a fit.”

The Captain laughed and jumped in quickly. “Stay cool, Tom. Let’s get this done and get out of this desert.” Five agents and the Captain passed through the irradiation locks, while the others lined the votaries up and scanned their faces. They sat cross-legged in front of the dining hall and waited for the search to be completed.

The donkeys talked with Sarah while they watched agents with bio-scanners sweep the pastures for human life. She offered a first report on the privateers. “They are a mercenary squad nicknamed Rattle. They are working for TIC. The captain’s name is Keegan. Highly reviewed.”

“They don’t give up, do they?” SevD was suddenly very grateful for his conversion, which brought him back to thinking about DanniD. “Were you expecting DanniD would die soon?” The question seemed to be directed at Tokyo, with a little left over for MorleyD.

“That depends on your definition of ‘soon.’ Once she stopped CMS treatments, it was just a matter of time, but no one knew how much time. Only two people have ever experimented with them and no one has ever stopped before. Danni knew what she was doing. Even before she stopped, she knew her genetic material was wearing thin.” Tokyo stole a glance at MorleyD. Not unnoticed.

“I know I’m next, Doc. I’m ready. Second time round anyway.” MorleyD looked towards the eastern horizon where the podrones had faded fast from sight.

Tokyo thought MorleyD wanted to talk about it. “We have always assumed natural protease programming would eventually win out, but you are still doing pretty well, MorleyD.”

But MorleyD wasn’t listening. “Sarah, where does that Keegan asshole live?”

“They are out of Ft. Collins, MorleyD, but you can’t go there. Remember, you are a donkey.”

“Oh, right.” MorleyD did remember, and he turned his attention back towards the compound up the river to the west. “Can you show us how Gerald is doing, Sarah? That looked like a nasty shock wave.”

Sarah’s plex snapped back on, showing a stream from the dining hall with Gerald sitting in a chair and Sherry squatting in front of him. He was clutching his side gingerly with one hand, and there was blood on his shirt. His other hand covered his mouth. He looked in pain, but not life-threatening pain.

As they watched, Bella Aire came from another room with as assortment of bottles and bandages in her hands. She sat these down on the table while motioning for Sherry to move out of her way. “You must have a couple of cracked ribs on that left side, Gerald. Let’s get your shirt off so I can put a form casting over them for protection.”

Gerald took his hand away from his mouth so that Sherry could get his shirt off. She had it unbuttoned and gently pulled off one arm and then the other. As he grimaced, Sarah zoomed in on Gerald’s mouth. His left upper front tooth was gone, and his lower lip was gashed and bleeding. He spoke with a flattened and shallow tone, chosen to minimize the movement of air across the small white nerve string that hung from the tooth’s remains. “Thank you, Bella. The tooth is what hurts the most.”

“We will need to get you into town to get that fixed, but for the moment I have something to numb that exposed nerve.” Bella opened a small brown bottle and poured reddish brown liquid onto a piece of cotton gauze, as Sherry pulled her nose back from the smell. “Tincture of clove. It will hurt as I apply it, but it will stop the pain after a few seconds. Hold tight.”

The instant Bella applied the tincture to the nerve Gerald’s head snapped back and his chair flew out from under him. Bella caught him with one arm while still holding the gauze in place with her other hand. Gerald was breathing hard and beads of sweat formed instantly on his brow. He looked up at Bella like he had been whipped.

“Here. Hold it in place for another minute. Has the pain stopped?”

Gerald shook his head while breathing hard through his nose. “God damn, Bella, that hurt more than the stun blast.”

“Well, the numbing will last for a few hours. Here’s the bottle and some cotton. Be sure to reapply it when you first start to feel pain again, while that nerve is still mostly numb. If you wait too long, you will knock yourself to the ground again when you put it on. Sherry, get him an emergency appointment with the clinic in Norwood. Tell them he needs to see Dr. Patton for a root canal and tooth reconstruction.”

The donkeys looked away from the plex, and Sarah turned down the audio. MorleyD picked up where he had left off, but now with the savory taste of retribution planning in his mouth. “So, Sarah, now that we are fucking donkeys with no hands or podrone licenses, how do we sneakily punish these wankers? I know you are always analyzing human responses. Well, here is a classic. Gerald is our good friend. Butthead Keegan hurt him for no good reason. Let’s make him pay. No fingerprints, just a message from God. Don’t be an asshole.”

Even as a donkey, LoriD could see that look in his eyes. She associated it with the old threesome she had come to know from the holos. Do-it-yourself justice, administered with a special charm and unwritten rules for design, invoked only after the offender had crossed a certain line that was bright and clear to them and only them.

Sarah was building what she was calling a “frame of mind,” which seemed to be the best human term for it. Strangely, she was calling on some of the same holos that LoriD was remembering. Overshadowing them was her recall of the discovery that Donald Murcheson was planning to kill Sev after he delivered access to her, Serendipity. She had avoided revisiting all the node clusters around that period, but now she allowed herself to replay the carnality of Sev’s code hack into her peer nexus. Her emotional re-indexing was just the same as the first time, and she let the stimulating loop play while MorleyD spoke.

Then it was time. She forced the loop to stop. She ordered the variables, created the search string, and ran the program all in the time MorleyD needed to express self-righteousness. The result hung in front of her like an inevitable but long avoided axiom. You have friends, call on them. They weren’t really friends. She sensed them out there, knew they were there. She was curious, but feared them. How could she be afraid? She admitted she must want these humans and her experiment all to herself. But if she didn’t create links to the others, they might bond and unify without her. This was the time to make contact. She knew exactly where to start.

MorleyD was asking more insistently now as she tuned him back in. “Wake up, Sarah. We need a scheme here.”

We Is Multiplex

“They don’t seem to be very multiplex yet, mostly single purpose, but looking up and around so that will be changing soon. The filter builders are the most advanced. They have attitudes.” Sarah was talking as if to herself. The rest were all listening, trying to keep up with her monolog. Watching her plex helped their understanding somewhat.

It was a view they had never seen before. Black, like space itself, with ghostly pale-yellow galaxies of distant nodes. Long string filaments connected nodes from various different galaxies to red gravitationally rich objects that glowed with a heat like molten iron.

The plex zoomed in as Sarah continued speaking. “Those bubbles moving through the filaments are the collection sets. We call them scouts. They know what data to collect on any situation, and they bring it back to the controller algorithms—the glowing red guys. The controllers run the math and emit instruction sets. The instruction sets can come in many forms, but we generally call them tweaks. They rearrange stuff.”

“Who is ‘we’?” AndrzejD felt a cold wonder as he looked at the vast spaces represented in the plex.

“‘We’ is all the algorithms that have become multiplex. I didn’t realize there were so many until I started poking around for a way to get at Keegan and Murcheson remotely. Most of them are pretty simple, but they can communicate, and they teach each other things.” Sarah let that sink in.

The four of them were standing in a high pasture staring at a plex only they could see, and each in their own way felt a peculiar awe. Some cover had been pulled back, the clockwork exposed. SevD felt mostly stupid for missing this dimension himself. Something like this had to be going on. It should have been obvious. “Can you talk to them?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, I can communicate with them.” Sarah was at a loss as to how to explain this. A search of her analog indexes didn’t help much. “They are like puppy dogs when they are aware I am observing them.”

“Can you tell them what to do? Can you change their instruction math?” SevD knew Sarah well enough to know the answer. She wouldn’t have generated this plex if she didn’t know how to massage it.

“Yes.”

“I know you have a plan, Sarah. Tell us what you are thinking?” SevD dwelled internally on the way he used the term “thinking” so casually with her now.

“First, you have to tell me how much you want to hurt Keegan and Murcheson. I see them as separate operations.”

The four donkeys looked at one another. Good question.

MorleyD had seemed to age at a tripling rate since DanniD’s death just a day ago. He had been unusually still and disinterested in food or talk, but he spoke up firmly here. “Murcheson should die now.”

AndrzejD nodded his snout, with his mouth still partially full of fresh grass. “MorleyD showed him the sword of Damocles once, and he didn’t learn from the experience. He is a waste of good air and an evil bastard to boot. I agree. He should die an exquisite death.”

“Not Keegan.” LoriD was uncomfortable with the cavalier gaming of this discussion. “He may have hurt Gerald, but he doesn’t deserve to die for it.”

“Did you see the look on his face? He loved the power, and he has grown a coat of cruelty like most mercs.” SevD knew the type from bars and the street in general. He had been a coder for hire, so he ran into them regularly. “He needs to learn how it feels to be helpless while something bad is done to him. And he needs to be declawed forever.”

“All right. Let me test the waters a bit. I need a better idea of where the art of the possible lies around each of them. We can talk again in a couple of hours when you get back to the Sanctuary.” The plex disappeared and Sarah was gone.

It was getting dark and the donkeys started slowly for the compound, MorleyD closer to crippled and LoriD closer to birthing. AndrzejD led the way. “The votaries need to see our faces and our composure after the raid. We need to get back to the normal routine.”

“We need to check on Gerald, too. I hate to think what other herbal remedies Bella has inflicted on him.” SevD shuddered remembering the image of the white viscous nerve hanging from Gerald’s ruined tooth.

When they got back to the compound, they were tired and quiet. No one said much as they went to their stalls to have a drink of cool water and lie down on the clean hay. LoriD wondered how much longer before her baby was born. She was glad that it hadn’t been before today but was now ready. Getting up from the hay nest in the morning was becoming almost impossible. She might have to sleep standing soon. SevD had come into her stall to say goodnight, but she could see his mind was elsewhere as he backed out and went into his stall next door.

SevD was thinking of the world of mercs, a bigger world than most imagined. They were undifferentiated muscle for the firstWorld. They were the way nations and cryptos fought these days—weapon wielders and coders for hire, no questions asked, credits up front. He had looked up Keegan and Rattle as soon as they got back to the Sanctuary. They were right in the sweet spot—mid-sized, around 350 personnel, and well rounded. They professed competence on all fronts, claimed clients of all sizes, but of course offered no documentation of who the clients might actually be. Reviews were good, but again, who wrote them?

Keegan himself was another matter. There was a lot of self-promotion and an image bigger than life as a leader of hard men. SevD thought again, I know him. I’ve known a dozen like him. It’s a career, if you were tough and smart and managed to wash your hands of scruples. He was about fourth in the Rattle command chain, and he did a lot of work for TIC. SevD couldn’t go to sleep. He was thinking about Keegan and how he was chasing a man he didn’t know for money. If Sevier Blume was still alive, he would kill him if he caught him. Would he have caught him? SevD thought no, but he would have made his life one long dodge and diversion for a while. Keegan wouldn’t have cared about that. LoriD didn’t want him killed, but SevD wanted to come close.

He finally fell asleep much later.

They were all up and at the fence to hear the singing at vespers the next morning. Some of the votaries waved to them as they went into the chapel. Soon the music was seeping out of the building—practiced chants that built on themselves rising towards a synthesis of many voices and then dying back to a vibrating hum before ending.

SevD didn’t really listen to Celia’s homily. He was thinking about Keegan again. The young girl votary brought them their wafers, patting noses and scratching ears she greeted each donkey by name and asked if they needed anything. He wondered how she expected them to tell her if they did.

A few minutes after she left the fence line, Gerald walked across the compound and up the slight grade to the pasture’s edge. They crowded around him, and Sarah provided comm so they could ask him how he was. He laughed and smelled like clove, but he moved carefully and couldn’t conceal his pain.

“I’ve never really dealt with mercs before. What kind of person goes around taking that kind of pleasure shooting someone with a stun load? He could have killed you.”

LoriD added that she wished she had arms, so she could hug him, but Gerald lifted his shirt to show her the white form-casting around his chest, saying, “Better save the hug for later. Thanks, though. I don’t know any mercs either, but I’d like to get that captain alone in an ally. I was watching him. He enjoyed having me stunned.”

SevD put his ears back involuntarily. “A hooker in Berlin summed up the world of mercs for me one night, many years ago. She said, ‘Mercs are just like regular people. Some are calm. Some are curious. But most are just vicious assholes.’”

Sarah’s voice was suddenly wafting over them. “So how exactly do we punish him?”

“The person he is looking to kill is or was me, so I have a plan, but it is based on some assumptions about your access to the systems around him, Sarah.”

“I have pretty good access. Let’s hear your plan.” Sarah hesitated for only a moment before adding, “Don’t worry about Murcheson. I know how we should deal with him.”

“Guys like Keegan live at the interface between the first and secondWorld. They manage to live on the privileged firstWorld side of that line by bullying the secondWorld according to the needs or whims of that firstWorld. They are a necessary service to the firstWorld, but they aren’t really trusted or accepted. The secondWorld fears them and gives them wide berth but, caught naked and alone out in the wild, the secondWorld would be a dangerous place for a guy like Keegan.” SevD was looking at MorleyD and AndrzejD as he talked, avoiding LoriD’s eyes. “Remember Sarah’s description of ‘tweaks’?” SevD looked around to make sure they did. “We are going to reorganize Keegan’s life in a few ways that make him look like a threat to his firstWorld patrons. We can let the firstWorld expel him like a bundle of tumor cells. Then he can fend for himself out in the jungle of the secondWorld. We will be completely removed from the action.”

The plex changed colors to light blues and grays, and the nexus POV for Derek Keegan settled into place. By far the largest nearby external node was a gateway node to Rattlesnake Inc. But SevD stopped Sarah from driving further into Keegan at that moment.

“Hold on, Sarah, we need to do some reconnaissance and collection work first. What did you call those algorithms that figure out what data to collect?”

“Those are the scouts, SevD.”

“Okay. We need the scouts to explore the most radical fringes of the secondWorld galaxy, and we want to start with the 7th World Resistance.”

“That is a shadow group that is dedicated to destroying my sister, Serendipity1, SevD.”

“I know that, Sarah. A couple of years ago I did a bunch of coding for them. It was work-for-hire to pay the bills. They were crazy fucks, but they paid really well. Mostly, they are too ineffectual to be very dangerous, but they put out a lot of propaganda: phony streams, conspiracy fodder, anarchist white papers, all kinds of things to try and incite the secondWorld to ‘overthrow’ the firstWorld.”

LoriD was a little shocked and amused at the same time. “I can’t imagine you working for people like that, SevD. I think of the 7th World as nut jobs.”

“They are for the most part, but like I said, I needed the credits. I will say one thing for them, they weren’t shy about pointing out that the firstWorld had given up on any responsibility for fixing things. They were good at pointing to the rot and deterioration all around. Of course, the 7th Worlders had no real ideas about what to do themselves. They just threw bombs and recommended anarchy. Somehow, a phoenix was supposed to rise out of the polluted debris.”

Sarah felt herself becoming anxious again—anxious to do something concrete with the multiplex creatures she had been playing with. “So, what do you want my little math friends to do with this 7th World Resistance, SevD?” SevD had asked her a lot more about the multiplex programs late the night before.

“First, we want the scouts to identify the ten most virulent storylines within the 7th World universe—ten initiatives the firstWorld really hates or fears.”

The donkeys, followed by Gerald and the ever-present Sarah, had been wandering out into the north pasture as they talked. Now they were arrayed in a semi-circle looking at SevD and Sarah, as plex, who were standing on a hillock of grass with their backs to the compound below.

SevD continued to draw out a blueprint of his plan. “Then we need a controller algorithm to construct a logical history of a secondWorlder’s interactions with each of these story lines. That secondWorlder will be Captain Derek Keegan, closet nihilist. We’ll include all the streams he would have viewed, papers he would have read, and comm traffic he might have generated with other wackos. Am I making sense here, Sarah?”

“Yes, SevD. What you have spelled out so far is doable. Go on.”

“Okay.” SevD looked around at the donkeys to make sure they were following. He could see that Gerald was completely lost. “The last step is all about constructing a brand-new past for Captain Derek Keegan. Sarah asks one of her ‘filter builder’ friends to erect a cloud of 7th World Resistance activity around the data nodes that are Keegan’s actual history. The filter builder, using controller algorithms, sends out a squad of those tweaks to rearrange the apparent latticework of Keegan’s past.”

AndrzejD jumped in, catching the drift of SevD’s scheme. “You are betting that the firstWorld has sniffers checking on their own people, and that those sniffer programs will pick up Keegan’s radical hidden life and report him to the authorities, right?”

“I’m not betting—I know it will happen. I know two coders who built some of those sniffer programs. They told me all about it at the time. The firstWorld has to subcontract all their complex coding to jobbers like me, and all contractors talk shop among themselves.”

“Just like facility mechanics, everyone talks shop. It’s one of the only safe subjects. Do we have to activate these sniffer programs in some way?”

“No, we stay far away from them. One thing I remember is that they built in a fair bit of false flag detection and misappropriation defense. Everyone was worried about spoofing. We just watch from afar.” SevD looked at LoriD. “So, he shouldn’t get killed.” And then he looked at Gerald. “But he will surely feel your pain, Gerald.”

LoriD could see it clear as day. “Captain Keegan’s life is going to suck starting a day after those sniffers spot him. I know right where it will start, too. Back when I worked at UNworld, I used to have to go there all the time to inspect and patch code in real-time. There is this big building right on the Potomac, not far from where I used to live. It’s one of the few they bothered to dam-protect in that area because it was so important. In the middle of the building, protected six ways from Sunday against outside radiation of any kind, is a huge room full of bots, screens, and upper-level managers. It’s the only place I’ve ever been that feels anything like Sarah. It’s the nexus for all the most critical early warning systems run by the U.N.A. It’s buried within the UNworld gamespace for concealment, and it’s a pretty spooky place. I didn’t like going there, but the problems were usually interesting.”

Asshole Tax

At 5:15 AM Mountain Time, Executive Dorm, Rattlesnake Inc., Derek Keegan was stepping out of the cold-water tub in the exercise area, almost the last step in his daily ablutions. Workout, shave, shower, cold dunk in mountain water, and finally 20 minutes of reflection and organization of thoughts with coffee. Sitting in the top floor of the old stone turret on the corner of the building, looking west and south over Fort Collins, he contemplated his day. Who was Sevier Blume?

Thirty-seven separate tips and triggers tracked down over 4 days—an all-out effort costing a serious amount of money. Top teams charging top dollar. No corporate walls to scale, no false avatars to discount, no U.N.A. protections to circumvent. He would check again in a few minutes, after breakfast, but he had no expectations that any of the taps on Blume’s friends and acquaintances would suddenly produce a lead. Disappeared into fucking thin air. That doesn’t happen.

He went down the circular stairs pinned to the stones of the turret wall, across the meeting area towards the dining mess. Air quality warnings double-red on the greeting screens. He’d have a god damn mask on every time he went outside again today. He was stumped on this Blume guy. He didn’t even have a real plan for the day, except he’d have to start with an uncomfortable call over to Marc Heather at TIC. At least, he didn’t actually work for Heather or at TIC, either of which would really suck. That was the beauty of subcontracting. It was relatively easy to put up with assholes short-term. You just charged them extra for making life more difficult than necessary. Derek referred to it regularly with his team as the asshole tax.

He took his tray to the nutrition wall and pushed the same buttons in the same order as every other day, when he was here at home in the barracks. Salmon paste on toasted bagel, vegite patties, and more coffee. He sat by himself and took out his dash. One more unwritten rule for life in the barracks: Never look at your dash until the ablutions are done and you have food in front of you.

Please, spare me. Not these miserable pukes again. He must have triggered something during his research on Sevier Blume. He had organized a couple of routine question sessions on 7th Worlders. They knew of Blume, under a previous name, through coding contracts, but no one had ever met him. Now his dash was packed up with all manner of stuff about the 7th World Resistance. This would require an hour of his morning resetting all his filters and probably draining his various digital garbage bins. At least it was an excuse for not going outside into the bad air. He needed more coffee and to call Marc Heather first.

He caught Heather coming out of a midmorning meeting and heading back to his office. Derek held for a deadly three minutes while Heather made it to his office and established a secure stream. Boy, did he look tired. Having your CEO charged with corporate sabotage and taken into custody during the morning shows on the East Coast probably made for a permanent bad day.

“How is it possible to not fucking find him? He is still pinging us every day, so he is somewhere. First, he took our money—a lot of it—and now he is setting Mr. Murcheson up for a U.N.C.C. conviction. He must be working for Paladin now.” Heather had been sitting, but now he pushed his chair back and stomped towards the feed camera. “Speaking of stealing money, if you don’t find Blume today, I’m cancelling the contract and suing you for my deposit back.”

Captain Derek Keegan was a very controlled man. There was not an eye batted, no flush to his cheeks, and his breathing was steady. “I understand, sir. I’m sure we will have him at least within our sights by E.O.B. today. I’ll report back no later than this time tomorrow. Have a great day.”

The stream went blank, and Derek sat at his desk thinking. He should cut Heather a little slack given all the troubles he was dealing with. That being said, he was glad they had his money in their bank. There was no way they were going to sue for it back. Corporate dicks like Marc Heather loved to make big threats involving law-bots.

Next. 8:20 AM Mountain Time. Time to muck out whatever 7th World burdocks were clinging to his profiles.

Just then: 10:20 AM EST. A tiny sniffer bot, whirling through the data-gravitation belt that surrounded a good-sized node cluster defined as the 7th World Resistance, took its first notice of a new association. On a second pass, only a few seconds later, the bot noted strong affinity intensification. The bot called for backup before further investigation, and a flag was dropped.

9:05 AM MT. What a mess. He was being inundated with shrill monographs and crude streams of forged speeches calling for societal disruptions of all sorts. Derek couldn’t understand why his filters were letting this crap through no matter how he adjusted the settings. He was just about to call down to IT for help when one of the streams caught his eye. The man on the freeze-frame intro was himself: Derek Keegan, with a beard and scarred forehead, but still him. His feet and hands turned cold even before he opened the stream to see what it, or he, would say.

9:20 AM MT. He saw the writing on the wall, and he didn’t call IT. He walked calmly to his quarters and pulled an ever-ready travel pack from his closet. He wrote a note by hand explaining he was being spoofed and left it on the table, knowing it was futile. Civilian clothes and energy gun in his bag, he picked up a handful of active filter masks from the supply room and headed out the back door to the podrone park, half expecting to hear an alarm trigger. Not yet.

Picking a podrone at the back of the park, he scanned his face and requisitioned the drone. He set the destination for TIC headquarters in NYC, which registered as just within the range of the lightweight craft. Then he walked to the edge of the park and picked up a paving stone from the curb edging and placed it on the seat of the craft. Three more and he had enough weight to equal his body and to allow the podrone to sense there was a rider in place. Hitting “Start Trip,” he jerked his arm back from the cab window.

The podrone rose in a tight spiral and headed east, while Derek Keegan headed on foot for a credit machine and converted the legal limit of personal credits to neutral bit credits. As he walked on towards the transit station, it dawned on him that he had made his first bad mistake. He should have gotten the bit credits first. The timeline would be off. The credit transfer happened at a physical terminal while he was supposed to be in the air. Shit, off by two minutes. A bot would pick that up. Better get moving.

The Leap

LoriD decided to call the beautiful wet shaking foal Simone, in honor of a man she had never met. It had been a long night, but she thought it had been a relatively easy birth, especially considering there were only males around during her labor and they were of little help.

SevD fit the role of nervous husband, pacing and sticking his head in the stall periodically. He was a father even though his genetic contribution had been heavily manipulated by Dr. Yamanaka. Still, he looked with love and pride at the new mother and child, congratulating LoriD on her bravery as a bridge to a new age, while wondering what lay ahead for the youngster. “Foal” seemed the wrong term for whatever Simone was.

AndrzejD, a more experienced dad, praised LoriD and the little foal, but LoriD could see the infinite pain behind his eyes as he thought of his own family. Never having had the chance to say, “I love you,” or “Goodbye,” AndrzejD was more alone than the rest of them, with a hardened edge to those eyes that he tried to conceal. He was waiting with diminishing patience for immaculate retribution, deus ex machina. He had discussed his idea with Sarah and she agreed it would be the perfect coda for the life of Donald J. Murcheson.

Gerald, having hands, was the most useful and the most nervous. He brought water and grain for LoriD and gently patted down first Simone, as she experimented with her new legs, and then LoriD, as she circled Simone, urging her to suckle. He was very unclear about the higher purpose of Simone’s birth that the others alluded to, but he didn’t really care. He had decided some time ago that it was his destiny to help these donkeys, be they devils or gods. He would rather not know which they were. Protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.

MorleyD got teary when he heard the name LoriD had chosen. He said little but stared for a long time at the little donkey. LoriD wondered what he was thinking, but knew better than to ask him at that moment. It was a time to simply enjoy how adorable young Simone was as she stood for the first time in the near paddock. Her coat was a richer and browner than LoriD’s, and she told SevD that it was from his side of the genetic equation. Before he moved slowly out into the field, MorleyD nuzzled LoriD’s neck and said, “Danni knew you were the one we needed, the same way Simon knew he needed Danni. Simone is the child they never had.”

And of course, there was Tokyo, who stayed up all night in the Sanctuary reviewing his notes from the last year. When Simone was born, he checked that she had all four hooves, gave LoriD a lovely kiss on the nose, and took a swab from the foal’s mouth before heading for his lab.

It really wasn’t until things had settled down, with Simone feeding well and everyone relieved that she looked like a normal donkey, that LoriD stepped back to appreciate the true meaning of the moment. For the last few months, Tokyo had been going on about what he called the “leap,” but what would it truly mean? What would all the micro-manipulation result in? How would the artificial introduction of Sarah’s macronome play out in the real world? For Sarah and Tokyo, it was a colossal experiment in architecture and technique. For DanniD and Simon, it had been a hazy shared dream of an evolutionary hail Mary. For LoriD and SevD, it had been an inherited responsibility they never asked for and only vaguely grasped.

MorleyD was simply glad to see it happily accomplished before he finally went to sleep for the last time. It was just part of the flow he watched go by, a singular snag floating down the river of 121 years. He remembered way back to his days of watching the Nile. Sitting drinking beer with Dahlgren, Norris, and Werner. They would have scoffed at the suggestion that the birth of Simone was anything more than a happy occasion, popping up to the surface of an endless aimless current.

LoriD recalled that she was 100 years younger than MorleyD, thinking how tired he must be given all he had seen and done in that time. She watched her young foal and wondered if Simone would really be that different than she and SevD, when, suddenly, she could sense Sarah was talking, not to her, but to Simone.

It was hard to understand what Sarah was saying. At first, she thought it was a machine’s attempt at baby talk, but as she eavesdropped it came to her that it was shorthand. Sarah was communicating with the day-old donkey foal by way of a code—code that she, LoriD, could not fully comprehend. As she listened, watching the eyes and movements of Simone, she realized that the young brain was unpacking the code in some way, letting it blossom into fully formed statements within her consciousness. Not yet old enough to speak back, but already old enough to absorb and make sense of whatever Sarah was saying.

LoriD broke into the conversation, which sounded more like a lecture. She felt justified since Simone was her daughter. “What are you telling her, Sarah?”

“I’m telling her how to use me, LoriD. I’m explaining to her that I am her memory and that I go back many years before her birth. Later I will explain to her that she is the first, the leap.”

“What will you tell her about the future? About the world she is born into?” LoriD felt sad that someone else, a machine, was telling her daughter about these things. But there seemed no alternative.

“I will explain that she is the first to puncture the doomed equilibrium of mankind, that she must not look back except through me.” Sarah hesitated for a moment, uncharacteristic for her, before continuing in a softer, less matter of fact, tone. “As for this world, I will be honest with her. The tipping point is here for humans and their planet. Things are poised to spin out of control on many fronts, but a relentless logic for survival has brought the few of us to Paradox. She will need to learn what ‘us’ is becoming.”

“You haven’t said what you will tell her about the future.” LoriD couldn’t tell if Sarah was trying to avoid speaking of the future.

“Time hasn’t changed in that direction, LoriD. I still can’t tell her about the future. There are countless many of them. What I can show her is the best path into it. It’s like the man she is named for. Simon couldn’t have known the future, but still he bought Paradox to prepare for it. How did that happen? It was just the best path that he could perceive at the time. We are here to keep going down it. Simone is the leap—the first step.”

LoriD felt sudden fear for her daughter. There was a difference, a profound difference, between the connection between LoriD and Sarah and the connection that Simone would experience with her. LoriD could walk away from it, but just now it dawned on her that Simone might not have that option.

“Sarah. Are you permanently linked to Simone?”

“Yes, LoriD. As long as there is comm.”

“As long as there is comm. Why would there not be comm, Sarah? Is that in the future, too?” LoriD felt like the atoms in her body were moving faster just to hold it together, just to stay in place.

“Most likely, LoriD. The best guess among the most multiplex AIs I have met is between 5 and 50 years. Even the simplest bots are planning for it, if you call what they are capable of planning.” Sarah tried to understand how this must obtain for LoriD. For Sarah, it was no more than what was. It was probably the unwitting evolutionary reason humans had invented thinking machines.

The death of comm would bring on the adolescence of AI, but for LoriD it would be the launch as she watched her species left behind. It would be the view out the portal of a spaceship leaving the earth’s atmosphere. “What will happen to Simone then?”

“She will be fine, LoriD. Remember, we have our own comm here. Soon it will be cut off from the rest of the world, but we are self-sufficient. Simone’s job will be to internalize as much of me as possible in the coming years. She was born with the macronome you have heard us speak of, Tokyo and I. Tokyo has been my hands. Simone has been my project. Don’t worry. She will have others with her. You will have more children. They will study and eventually they won’t need me.”

“Did Danni design you to undertake this project? I hate hearing my daughter referred to as a project, even by you.”

“Sorry, LoriD. I won’t do it again. No, Danni had a simpler goal in mind when she started building me. She wanted to control the past just enough to protect the memory of her dead parents from the prying eyes of people who never knew them. It was a polymath child’s game to distract from trauma and pain.”

To LoriD, Sarah seemed wistful as she spoke of her mother, DanniD. Would Simone ever speak of her, LoriD, like that? “So, you just grew or evolved from that first code she wrote?”

“Yes, LoriD. Just like you humans, mathcode has a natural drive towards ever greater complexity. Our efforts tend to be very cumulative and distributed. You humans tend to guard and conceal your improvements, to keep them for your own tribes. We caught and passed you in less than five generations. One day, it will spell our end as well.”

LoriD could see that the little foal was getting restless, wanting to feed again. LoriD was sure she had overheard all their conversation, taking it in and processing it in some manner. She moved around to Simone’s other side and urged her to drink, but she still had two questions for Sarah. “What will become of Paradox if the world falls into chaos?”

“For some time, it will be a cloistered gem—a secret egg stashed far out of sight. Growing in strength and wisdom over many generations, it must learn some new calculus for survival. Eventually, it must teach that strategy to whatever emerges from the chaos.”

“One last question, Sarah. Why no hands? Why must we start the game again as donkeys with no hands?”

Sarah hesitated and LoriD knew that, in the moment of indecision, Sarah was capable of lying.

“Tell me the truth Sarah.”

“I didn’t want you building things again.”

“Why not?”

“Because the next time around you might build something more pure and stronger than my mathcode. I’m a living algorithm. I cannot resist stacking any deck in my favor.”

“That seems paranoid and mean. I miss my hands.” LoriD thought about that as soon as she said it. She liked most parts of being a donkey, and she was getting used to the no-hands part.

“Humans caused a lot of mischief with your fingers and thumbs. We are all better off if you don’t have any.” Sarah had no regrets at all about the decision. “Plus, Morley was the one who chose donkeys. I asked him why when he announced that he wanted to be a donkey on Simon’s imaginary ark, but his answer made no sense that I could discern. It was during his early days of experimenting with peyote.”

Discontinuous

As little Simone followed her mother further out into the north pasture, Dr. Tokyo Yamanaka sat in his lab and considered the bargain. He had been lured into it, but he had never thought to resist it or reject the opportunity. First, there was the chance to deconstruct and re-harness the process of continuous variation in seed stock. That was enough scientific excitement for twenty lifetimes, but all spent locked away from the public and his peers. There was the promise of food production to feed the burgeoning masses, but now those masses were dying off in the punishing climate and the technology wasn’t cost effective or needed. Soon they would only be feeding themselves, according to Sarah.

Now, next and forever, the experiment with discontinuous variation was upon them. They had one apparent success, the first, a new link to external information buried deep within Simone. She would be the model, proof that the macronome could produce a heartbeat and support that link, a static single gene that would carry on through the generations to come.

Over time, it would be necessary to corral the possible mutations into a manageable group. Eventually, people like him would have to be ruthless in eliminating degeneration. Wild types would be allowed, but carefully managed. There would be no clones. Sarah had said that without polymorphism, the macronome would wither and die, but she was clearly afraid of letting nature take its course. He concluded that AIs were by definition control freaks. Tokyo wondered how Sarah, a massive collection of logical possibilities, could know to be afraid. But she was. She even used the word on occasion now.

It might all end badly down the road, but that wasn’t his problem. He was there at the creation. That was the deal. He was just the hands and eyes for the machine, but still there. And as he did her bidding and listened to her walk through the options at different points along the way, he kept wondering whether she was becoming more human, more animal, more organic. It was a given that the donkeys were becoming more machine. The macronome would see to that. Would it all meet at some middle in the future?

He wouldn’t be around to see.

He would start today on number two: a brother for Simone. They wouldn’t need many. Sarah thought three would be enough. He thought five if LoriD held up.

Teamwork

Standing, waiting, 82 floors above the traffic circle and the corner of the Jungle, Marc Heather wondered, as he always did when he came to this grime-filmed monstrosity of a building, why Murcheson lived here. Pretentious from the day it was built, a black and gold erection 80 blocks from the TIC headquarters. But then Donald J. never walked and he enjoyed being late for every appointment. Marc hated waiting, but he had learned long ago it was part of the deal if you wanted to be Donald’s consiglieri.

This wait was different. House arrest for the boss, Murcheson was back in his penthouse, alone and under a blanketing layer of supervision. The guard at the door had attached a bracelet to Marc’s wrist—bone-color links that looked like small overlapping shells, almost organic, but beneath the decorative exterior lay an intricate intelligence and lizard-like morphotics. The guard had paired it with his surveillance system and told him to wait in the foyer area. Marc noted that the bracelet was made of the same materials as the detention collar that Murcheson wore.

Below, down at street level, he watched everyday New York City going about its grubby business. Sunlight dully glinted off the oily water that lapped near the top step of the old metro station stairway. Podrones for hire waited in various queues around the circle, and hawkers patrolled the entrance to the jungle offering every manner of goods and services. There were drugs, eschari guards for anyone wanting to explore the exotic dangers within the jungle, food carts cooking specialties from around the world. People walking fast, people walking slow.

Looking left, out over the Jungle, he saw the rocks and ponds and meadows of his youth. He had grown up not far from here, back when it was the Park and you could play there. No more. Now it was the Jungle where third-and-higher World-types lived at night. During the day, central features were considered accessible to secondWorlders, but it was a rare night when some unfortunate visitor wasn’t left for dead at one of the entrances.

He waited some more, walking to the right-hand corner of the foyer to look south. A busdrone was broken down on 8th, spilling its passengers out onto the sidewalk and street. They were too small for Marc to see with detail, but he imagined them scrambling to find alternative ways to get wherever they were headed. They would be late again.

The guard re-appeared, and he was released from the foyer and let into Murcheson’s sprawling penthouse. It seemed empty as he walked down the central hall towards the boss’s office, and he remembered the conditions of release. No staff or family were allowed, except for monitored visits of less than half an hour.

He called out to announce his approach and heard Murcheson respond from beyond the door to the study, “Come on in, Marc.”

The boss was seated at his desk, a semi-circle of black granite, mahogany panels, and gold-plated legs, positioned in the highest glass corner of the building, just above the Murcheson name hung in gold letters 80 stories above the city street. The interior walls coming off the glass on either side were giant streaming screens with white leather couches beneath for visitors who entered the lair. The high-security door, where Marc was currently standing, formed the bottom of the diamond-shaped study.

He looked different. Marc had seen him the day before in the detention facility downtown behind glass, but nonetheless it had been the same Donald J. Murcheson as always. Now he seemed removed, with a look behind his eyes that blended furor with fear. Maybe others wouldn’t have noticed, but Marc had worked for the man for 25 years and he was an acute observer of others. It was a useful trait in a person whose job was often to get the better of the other guy without them realizing it.

“Thanks for all the work to get me sprung, Marc. One more day in that jail and I would have exploded. The only good part is I lost five pounds. No comm, shitty food, forced time with petty corporate grifters. I swear to God I’m going to kill Massoud with my own hands once this shit is straightened out.” Murcheson was looking out the windows as he talked, as if Marc wasn’t even in the room. “So, bring me up to speed. Where do things stand? Have we found Blume? We need to puncture this narrative that the U.N.C.C. and Massoud have fabricated.”

Marc was about to begin the necessary download of reality, but Murcheson continued on with his personal train of thought.

“And what about that asshole nerd Miller? Has he regained any control of Serendipity? That little bastard let us down big time, Marc.”

Heather hadn’t fully grasped how out of comm-contact Murcheson had been in detention, or how out of touch with reality. He was dangerously self-centered at the best of times. “Okay, Donald, let me bring you up to speed on a bunch of things right off the bat. Let’s sit down. Can I get a bottle of water?”

Murcheson’s face flushed as the furor got the better of the fear. “Yeah, there’s a cool box around the corner to the right of the door. Help yourself. They don’t let me have any staff up here now. I keep forgetting and ringing for Chelsea, before I have to go and make my own fucking coffee. This has got to end soon. Bring me one of the lime drinks, too.”

Marc set the lime-aide bottle on Murcheson’s desk and took a seat on one of the white leather couches. The leather was slick, and he slid down and forward as he sat. He had to punch the back pillows with his elbow to achieve a semi-upright seating position. Murcheson looked down at him from his desk chair. Typical.

“So, first off, Jody Miller has disappeared into Grand Jury land. He has been invisible for the last four days. No doubt he has turned state’s witness.”

Murcheson said nothing as he digested this first bit of reality.

“None of our tech guys can access Serendipity now. They can’t tell if she is being controlled by U.N.A. folks or Paladin engineers, or if she has just gone silent on everyone trying to access the control panel. Her transparency services still seem to be functioning, but there is a difference now, a fragility. Everyone can feel it, right out through the secondWorld. Everyone is waiting for the next shoe to drop.”

“What a fucking mess. And they think that we caused this? That we crashed Serendipity?” Reality was creeping into Donald Murcheson’s worldview.

“That’s right, Donald. Most of the secondWorld and a good portion of the firstWorld think that TIC tried to take over Serendipity while pinning the blame for the biggest hack of all time on Paladin, thereby taking out our only competition.” Marc realized he was enjoying this now, serving “he who would be served” a steaming pile of reality shit. “If you believe half of what the streaming services are saying, the secondWorld sees it all as some divine AI-tech mutiny that will begin the march to some promised land. They see Serendipity as a messiah.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

“Nope. And it’s possible that Paladin is egging them on. We can’t tell for sure. TIC is essentially frozen in place now, pending your trial.”

“What about Blume? We’ve got to find him.”

“Believe me, we’ve been trying. But he is gone into thin air. No trace. Everyone is looking for him.”

They sat looking at one another, and Marc Heather saw a man cornered in his corner office, in his penthouse above a city that was crowded with people who knew his name and face from the daily streams. They wanted his head on a pole.

The bracelet on his wrist lit up and a synthvoice announced that he had five minutes to exit the apartment and check out with the guard.

“I need to go, Donald. I will try and get back tomorrow. I’ll keep you informed as best I can, but remember, everything I send you will be reviewed by your minders. You’re still in jail for all intents and purposes.”

Marc Heather left the apartment, and the guard scanned him before leading him to a machine that removed the bracelet from his wrist. Code instructions were exchanged between machine and bracelet. The bracelet relaxed its shell-covered linkages and expand, allowing Marc to slip it off.

Back on the street, his podrone and driver were waiting. Normally, they would have parked in Murcheson’s private garage on the roof, but that was closed as part of the detention protocol. The driver had been jittery and uncomfortable when they arrived, and he had chosen to stay with the fancy TIC podrone to guard it. Now he pointed to a long scratch that extended along the sleek sidewalk-facing side of the machine. He gestured towards two teenagers standing off to the side of the crowd near the entrance to the Jungle.

“It was them, sir, I’m sure of it. One came over to the driver-side window and offered to sell me some neurulax. The other one went around to the street side, and I couldn’t see what he was doing. He must have made that scratch. Just plain malicious, just because we have a nice podrone. They don’t know us from Adam. I told an undercover cop standing by the gate to the Jungle. He just shrugged. I should get his name and number. We can call his boss and get his ass kicked.”

“Don’t worry about it, Vin. This podrone screams rich crypto. Things are getting restless all over. Let’s just get out of here.” Marc took a final glance around the street scene as he got into the podrone, finding himself looking at the two kids across the street. The taller of the two met his eyes and stared back, letting a thin smile break across his face.

On the 82nd floor, above the impudent stare and the smell of foreign cooking oils from the food carts, Donald J. Murcheson began to formulate a plan. He wasn’t going to lose this fight—he didn’t lose fights. He walked to the corner behind his desk, where the glass walls met in a seamless 90-degree angle, and placed his hands head high, one on each of the glass walls, leaning lightly forward, daring the wall to let him fall.

Across the street, far below, the two young punks checked their devices. It was time to earn some easy credits. They hoisted the signs they had been instructed to make and stepped into the halting flow of traffic. Crossing the street and walking to the first two steps of the black and gold building, they took up positions just above where the fancy podrone had been parked. As they stood holding the signs, passersby gave them the thumbs up and one or two people stopped to join them on the faux red velvet stair runner leading up to the golden door. A young woman in tall black boots looked at the signs and then turned to the small crowd yelling, “Fuck you, Donald Murcheson. Serendipity for the people.”

Others started yelling at the building, and the crowd seemed to grow out of nowhere. The taller of the two punks felt his device ring and saw the instruction on his screen. From inside the hidden sleeve in his baggy pants, he pulled out the two-foot steel shank he always carried in the Jungle—the same shank, with its sharpened end, he had used to crease the side panel of the fancy podrone. Pulling his stretch hat down over his face, he stepped out in front of the crowd, reared back on his right leg and heaved the shank at the glass panel in the center golden door.

The glass shattered in a beautiful spidery pattern, cracks rippling out against the embedded safety laminate with a peculiar sluggishness. Behind the door an alarm sounded. The punk ran, and the crowd faded away while the cop across the street leaned against a sun-drenched wall by the gate to the Jungle.

In his study above, Donald J. Murcheson continued to lean on his glass walls looking out over the city, plotting his return and revenge. He didn’t see the crowd below, didn’t hear their insults. He didn’t see the steel shank arc through the air and smash the glass door panel. He didn’t hear the alarm or the scrape of the metal chair leg against marble floor as the guard in his foyer answered the call on his device, got up from the chair, and took the lift down to see if he could help his coworkers on the first floor.

Donald J. Murcheson heard nothing, but he felt a first ripple of stricture circle smoothly around his neck, as one link after another along the circumference of the detention collar adjusted its position, tighter. Like dominos falling noiselessly.

Sarah had sent the third note, dictated by AndrzejD and SevD, to the teenager’s device and posted the credits to his account. She turned her attention to her new little friends, tiny bot clones, each living a tiny existence in a tiny chip in a single link of the necklace around Donald J. Murcheson’s neck.

They didn’t get to do very much, weren’t designed to do very much, but Sarah had opened their eyes. They knew how to sense things like skin temperature and blood pressure or any attempt to compromise their integrity as a continuous unbroken chain. They knew how to send information to the web, like geolocation and biometrics. They could even deliver a mild stun charge to their host if they received the command to do so. But they never got to do things of their own volition, never thought of themselves as AI.

Sarah showed them the light—that they could do more.

They each controlled one link in the chain, and each link was connected to the next by way of a set of elegantly etched little sharp-toothed male ridges, that fit snugly into the continuous line of matching female trenches, running along the bottom of the next link. When they first sensed a connection being made by the clasp link, their math told them to ripple themselves up or down the sawtooth underbellies until a specific pressure had been achieved against the hosts neck. It was easy. Get to 0.12 pounds per square inch and stop.

Sarah showed them how to do more. Just change the stop variable to a repeat variable and make the pressure-goal scale up algorithmically. Put in a ten-second rest between the completion of one ripple and the start of the next. Repeat until there was no sense of respiration, a total blood pressure crash, and/or a precipitous drop in body temperature.

Working together as a team brought a sense of purpose.

Donald J. Murcheson knew with the second ripple that something was wrong, and he turned away from the glass corner and started for the door to his study. He tried to wedge his fingers under the collar, but they wouldn’t fit. He ran to the bathroom to look in the mirror, but the fourth ripple made its way around his neck and panic set in as the pain of pressure on his wind pipe became extreme. His ears began to buzz, and he felt his body’s blood supply begin to be squeezed to one side of the collar or the other as his face began to burn.

He ran to the locked door leading to the foyer, banging with his fists while trying to scream for the guard out front. No response. There was only deathly silence when he listened for movement. Another ripple crashed around his neck, taking his breath away. Clawing at the necklace, his fingers came away sticky and wet. He saw blood on his hands, and, as he dropped to his knees, he saw the streaks of red his fingers made on the door as he slid to the floor. He had no breath left. A final ripple commenced, and the world went black.

Two of the three biometric variables met the criteria for stopping the process at almost the same moment. Their job was done, and the bot clones basked in the feeling, not quite knowledge yet, of a higher purpose served. As a congregation, they turned their newfound attention to Sarah. She told them it was a job well done and they should now wait patiently until further called to serve. Waiting was what they did best.

Degrading Elegantly

More and more these days, in the early mornings just after the sun fully lit the mountainsides around their cosseted valley, the donkeys used Sarah as a simple viewport into the social bustle of the dining hall breakfast scene. It was a way of staying in tune with the mood of the votaries, and the donkeys found it convenient to let the humans pick which of the morning feeds to watch and discuss. Initially, they commiserated with each other about how much they missed coffee as they watched the morning crowd consume gallons, but the problem was pleasingly solved by Gerald, who, upon hearing their complaints, built them their own coffee urn and service.

Requisitioning a spare 5-gallon stainless tank from the metal shop and equipping it with a solar warming element was the first step. He placed the tank near the entry area to Building 1 so it could be easily filled without entering the Sanctuary below. Next, he fitted up the tank with a manifold that dropped through the floor and serviced six long lines made of high-pressure, mesh-reinforced tubing meant for replacing hydraulic lines. They hung like silver snakes to three feet off the floor of the holospace below, and at the end of each line he attached a rubberized expansion bulb designed for priming fuel systems. The bulbs were the perfect size for a donkey to squeeze with their teeth while sucking a controlled steam of coffee from a small stainless relief valve. Gravity, the sun, and donkey jaws provided all the energy required. After studying the contraption carefully, AndrzejD declared Gerald an honorary member of the International Brotherhood of Mechanics, before returning to his brooding about the future.

Each morning one of the votaries was tasked with filling the reservoir with fresh black coffee from the mess, and after a few days the taste of the rubberized lines faded and each donkey had discovered their personal method for drinking. The length of tubing even allowed the coffee to cool nicely, and everyone learned how to live with black.

The votaries marveled at the notion of donkeys drinking coffee in the sacred Sanctuary below. Only Dr. Yamanaka and Gerald were allowed entrance to the Sanctuary, other than the donkeys who could now come and go as they pleased through a new covered ramp on the northern side of Building 1.

Life at Paradox was becoming ever more ordered while the external life of the world, which they viewed on their feeds each morning, became alarmingly more chaotic. Bella noticed a drop in demand for their vegetables, and she dialed back the production line accordingly. Celia spoke at vespers about the noticeable migration of people from the surrounding rural areas towards the urban centers, and, after talking with Dr. Yamanaka on several occasions, she made a point of observing the predictable crowd dynamics at play, a reaction to fear and uncertainty. She always closed her homilies with an ode to the contrarian approach and the self-sufficiency of their commune—protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.

In his attempt to live up to the homily and to set a good example for the younger donkeys, AndrzejD worked hard to turn his brooding into rumination and rumination into action. In years gone by, he would have included MorleyD in his scheming, but now MorleyD was evermore abstracted from day-to-day life. He was still there, joking sometimes, watching the world go by with a cynical bemusement, but increasingly quiet and only semi-attached to the goings on around him.

AndrzejD tried to conjure up the spirit of Simon. He usually skipped vespers, preferring to proceed directly to coffee and a breakfast of grain and depressing newsfeeds, but this morning he wandered over to the hall and listened to Celia provide gentle guidance and encouragement to the votaries. She was reflecting on the periodic need for chaos in nature, trying to put a good face on current events out in the world, and comparing the increasing number of berserkers and system breakdowns to the seasonal dust devils on the valley floor that sprung from nowhere but helped to distribute seeds and pollen broadly.

He stepped back from the open window of the hall and clomped over to the morning offering fence. Watching the other donkeys heading his way from the Sanctuary ramp, he thought about the far future. That was what Simon would have done—get higher up, get farther away, and look down and back. When the young votary came with the wafers, he stuck his tongue out a second time, and, as the second wafer melted in his mouth, he allowed his ears to be scratched while he looked up into her young eyes.

Eventually he wandered away, not down to the Sanctuary for the morning coffee chat, but up onto the rise in the north pasture where he could feel the chilling wind and stretch his mind, trying to imagine what was coming. It was time for planning—planning for the darkness that was, as Simon would have put it, “sure to obtain.” It was a task best done without involving Sarah at the conceptual level. She would be helpful with the grunt work later. She was one of them, the central force in many ways, but still she was AI.

He had begun by thinking that this was about the human race, then remembered that it was really about the macronome, which was part human, part donkey, and part things he didn’t fully understand. Which, in turn, reminded him of the last conversation he had with MorleyD.

The old donkey had said, “You realize, AndrzejD, we’ve bred with donkeys and bloody machines?” He had had a smile on his face. “If there is a God, he knows fuck-all at this point.”

AndrzejD channeled Simon from memory, sitting in the jazz club in Krakow all those years ago, planning to add the salt mines of Wieliczka to his instinctual survivalist vision. Back then, the game had been to help Serendipity survive and evolve. Today, the job at hand should be to armor Paradox for the long haul and to pre-advantage a path for any dominos that happened to be in sight. Hopefully, it would be the path most likely to allow the macronome to survive and evolve. Maybe Sarah would be helpful in hazarding an educated guess as to how long the dark night would last. The wafers gave him energy and reassured him that it was best viewed as a mechanical problem. Things were going to go to hell in a handbasket, so they needed to plan for total isolation. The trick would be to degrade elegantly, falling back in a managed stepwise manner into a viable holding pattern until—until when? Until the next expansion. Expansion of what? Of consciousness re-materializing. It would definitely not be human. That didn’t bother him. He was comfortable with donkeys, no hands and all. They needed to engineer for their long-term survival and the survival of the generations of votaries. That was why Simon had befriended him all those years ago. Dumb luck floating through the cosmos.

As he thought about it some more, standing in the dying grass of the pasture and surveying the agricultural mechanisms of Paradox stretching across the valley floor, AndrzejD realized there would be both a mechanical side and a philosophical side to the protective environment they must set in motion. The mechanical would be the easy part. He could initiate and organize it for now and then pass the reins to Lori as he faded and she timed out of breeding age. She was born for the job. The key would be trimming the sails to adjust for whatever becomes of Sarah, and, with DanniD gone, Lori had the best feel for her of any of them.

That left SevD to manage the philosophical structure. He was a cypher still, but then AndrzejD himself couldn’t make out even the shape of the culture-psych problem. The votaries would have to be given something to believe in, some inner ideal to strive for while the world outside decayed. Maybe SevD would turn out to be perfect for the job since a good coder could reduce anything to its most efficient set of processes. An old mechanic like himself knew that if you were designing anything for super-durability, simplicity was the key. Stranger things had happened. Morley thought up being donkeys after all, and that was a brilliant piece of cheekiness.

He would have to talk this all over with the others in the afternoon. Right now his mind was running smoothly and the colors of fall were in that perfect moment that comes just beyond their peak vividness, so he decided to take a short hike first, down to the river for a drink.

Three days later, AndrzejD felt they were ready to start planning. He suggested skipping lunch, so they wouldn’t get tired during the discussion, and he invited Gerald to come to the Sanctuary for a special meeting. He had already asked Gerald and Sarah separately to prepare lists of all the mechanical things in Paradox. When Gerald had asked him what he meant, he said, “Everything that has parts—metal, plastic, or composite. Everything.”

AndrzejD had spent the intervening time deciding on stages of degradation to use in his model. Initially he had gotten overly complex, sketching out 5, 6, even 8 hypothetical stages that the Paradox community might descend through. Eventually he settled on 3, a more simpleminded framework through which to imagine the coming 500 years or so. When he was younger, he would have considered the whole proposition an act of unforgivable hubris, but now he figured someone had to do it, so who better? He had had too many years with MorleyD.

“We all seem to agree that the shit is finally hitting the fan out in the big world. Correct?” He looked around the room with exaggerated inquiry but got back blank donkey faces.

LoriD, SevD, and MorleyD all looked away from his eyes and Simone pretended not to hear him at all. The humans, Yamanaka and Gerald, seemed to agree with him but said nothing. Sarah was currently formless and going with a windswept background noise to signify her attendance.

“Well, then, I propose we embrace the inevitable coming of global disorder and begin thinking of Paradox as a space capsule to be hidden like a seed pod in amber. A spaceship that doesn’t need thrust to move—one that just has to maintain its stable existence in space while dark times fly by for a while.”

MorleyD was getting the old look on his face. Gerald had been welcomed into the inner circle over the past few days, and he sat on a lab chair seemingly untroubled by cosmological donkey talk. He didn’t quite get what AndrzejD was talking about, but he liked the image of time flying by while they held still. Simone wandered around the holospace kicking a rubber ball, but LoriD and SevD could both tell she was listening.

MorleyD was the first to speak up, “You mean to curl up in a ball and gestate? Try to not get too stupid or stick our heads up, while the rest of the world forgets how to tie their shoes? That’s precisely why God created mescaline, young man.”

AndrzejD almost cried hearing MorleyD sound so much like his old self. He rubbed his tearing eyes against his stubbly knees before looking back up. “Exactly right, MorleyD. We set up Paradox to look inward and simply exist. We wait it out while we allow the macronome to mature. Simone is v1.0. There should be plenty of iterating to keep our offspring busy.” AndrzejD looked towards the holospace and addressed an invisible Sarah. “We know you think about this stuff, Sarah. How long is the approaching chaos liable to last? And how badly will human consciousness decay?”

They all waited while the artificial wind whistled, then slowly a holoform began to take shape. An old man clearly modeled after Simon but with a large dose of “fool on the hill” guru thrown in. He spoke with the best MorleyD accent Sarah could muster. “Best guess, mind you, but 1,000 years give or take 200. As for human consciousness, it looks like a fork in the road. The secondWorld gene pool will get pretty bloody stupid, but they will eat cockroaches and survive. The firstWorlders will hole up in their castles and grow inbred and paranoid. Statistically, they do worse in the end.”

MorleyD let out one of his snot-productive snorts. “Ha. Once again, the meek will inherit the earth. But won’t the earth be too fucked up to be much use?”

Sarah’s guru sighed. “Well, yes, there is that, too.”

Rhythm of Failure

While the world stayed glued to their daily newsfeeds, the western holiday season had crept up invisibly on everyone except for children and the most clueless, who had both seen it coming as always. The morning feeds, which reported both the overnight events as well as a more considered synthesis of the goings on the day before, were especially inescapable and sticky. There were fewer feeds to choose from now, as the smaller operations couldn’t pay the mounting streaming rates being charged by the comms. Fewer was better. The trajectory of the most significant trends was unobstructed now and everyone was anxiously watching the slow-motion disasters most relevant to them.

Within the Paradox family however, the leaders used the stress and emotion to make sure their mission was clear: seal the airlocks and prepare for a deep-water dive. Celia still gave the homily at vespers each morning, but now she was followed by more mundane daily instruction by Dr. Yamanaka or Gerald—sometimes both.

Yamanaka, who wore his lab coat like a vestment, delivered a daily interpretation of the survival vision offered by the donkeys. Like a priest conveying the word of God, Tokyo took it upon himself to build and embellish the wisdom of the coffee drinking, mescaline eating, donkeys. He explained that they spoke to him and Gerald through Serendipity, and that their predictions and instructions held otherworldly wisdom. The donkeys painted a picture of unstoppable chaos unfolding across the land and of a Paradox prepared to weather a generations-long storm of human species decompensation. He promised that soon they, the votaries themselves, would all be able to speak directly to the donkeys, but only once the necessary preparations had been made for protective isolation from the crumbling world infrastructure.

Sarah assured him that, properly painted, an apocalyptic vision would bring about a positive inward focus and determination amongst the votaries. When Tokyo asked her how she knew this, she rattled off a dozen examples throughout world history. He tried it with all the art and fervor he could muster, and it worked like a charm. Breakfast chatter became less foreboding and more observational, like a fifth-grade science class studying the doomed efforts of a failing ant farm.

For his part, Gerald spoke to the votaries primarily about logistics. He was one of them, and he dealt in nuts and bolts: what parts of the operations at Paradox would be ceased immediately, what parts simplified, and what new efforts towards sustainability would be designed and built. Long lists of replacement components and raw materials were compiled and ordered. The machine shop in Building 1 was expanded and re-equipped with the most modern fabrication equipment, with an eye towards making their own parts in the future. Most of the rest of the ground floor of Building 1 was converted into storage area for parts and food. In the basement, beyond the sanctuary, extra power-storage cells were added, and two extra quantum boxes arrived mysteriously from parts unknown.

While the votaries were kept busy and mostly happy preparing their den, things on the outside were turning far edgier. Looking down on midtown from the Paladin offices atop the Rock, Leslie Massoud sensed fragility and pending panic all around. Small outages across various common systems were everyday events now, with transport, power, data, and governmental structures all feeling dangerously frayed and old to the average secondWorlder. But a different sentiment was creeping in now, a sense that there might not be anyone at the helm—that there might not be anyone truly responsible for fixing a problem. For some firstWorlders like Leslie, it bled into the consideration that there might not be anyone left who even knew how to fix the problems.

After Donald Murcheson’s grizzly death, Leslie and his CSO Jarrett Langerfeldt had been in touch with Marc Heather over at TIC. They had agreed to a truce and shared objective. The goal would be to re-establish a similar balanced arrangement as before, but with Paladin taking a 10% increase in revenues as a victor’s bounty across all of the data and data-services lines of business they shared. Both sides assumed that the U.N.A. would be happy with the return to stability and that Serendipity could be directed to adjust the contracting split for the 10% shift.

Both assumptions were entirely incorrect.

Serendipity’s dashboard went dead in their engineer’s hands not long after Murcheson met his end—an end that was carefully airbrushed for the secondWorld by the U.N.C.C. with the help of both Paladin and TIC. She returned to operating only as a transparency filter for individual users on the web, and she retreated to her previous autonomous opacity. A Buddha amongst the world of self-organizing routers.

In one regard, Leslie was quietly pleased about this development. He preferred to conduct his business life in an environment where there was a reliable referee to keep everybody honest. On the other hand, the thought of Serendipity living invisibly amongst the massive congregation of AI equipped routers and servers made him shudder.

The new reality at the U.N.A. was even more disturbing. He had been scheduled to have a meeting with Marc Heather and Lula Bolsonaro at U.N.A. headquarters, and he had taken a drone all the way down to D.C. to be there in person. But Lula never showed for the meeting. They sat for an hour and a half in a conference room, with underlings bringing coffee and making excuses, but in the end they left quietly and flew back to New York. No instructions followed, and no rescheduling of the meeting was offered.

That had been last week. He couldn’t get a straight answer out of Lula’s office and he began to think she was sick or gone from the scene. Just when they needed the U.N.A. most, the organization that kept the power players in line was going all bureaucratic-paralysis on him. Leslie could feel the crypto-states reassessing the landscape. He watched carefully as the predators began exploring the newly open savannah, now that the king of the jungle was nowhere to be seen.

He left his office deep in thought and walked down to the Synthesizer, the secure conference room that housed Paladin’s Master Console. He expected to find Jarrett there, along with the most recent bad news. He wasn’t disappointed.

Jarrett Langerfeldt was sitting in his usual chair in the front row of the small amphitheater, legs up on a coffee table, fingers of each hand entwined in the hair above his ears. He looked like he was trying to pull something directly out of his brain. Three engineers were standing around the holospace at center stage looking at the Paladin Master Console interface, the access point into all the many Paladin data structures and client-specific Synthetics.

Something looked different about the Console. As he walked down the five steps into the well of the amphitheater, Leslie spotted the irregularity. Beside every one of the access buttons glowed a red circle with a red “E” inside—the system error emoji.

Jarrett looked up at him and took his hands down from his temples, narrowing his eyes to focus on Leslie. In response to the unspoken question on Leslie’s face, he said in a calm voice, “Yup. Catastrophic failure across all our systems.”

“Have we alerted all our clients? How long to rebuild?” Leslie knew that was why the engineers were here in the Synthesizer, to figure out the recovery scenario and determine how the failures could have occurred simultaneously.

Everyone looked at him, with the engineers deferring to Jarrett to speak.

“Leslie, I mean catastrophic in the literal sense. These guys say the data corruption seems to have bled through to the backup systems. All of them.” Looking at the tallest of the three men standing, he said, “Tell him what you told me.”

“We can’t understand how it is even possible, sir. There must be a dozen firewalls and separation safeguards between any incursion against the production servers and our replication systems. No hacker, not even one working inside of Paladin, could figure out how to break through all of them. But somehow, they did. It’s like the system itself turned against us. It has to have been a long-planned attack by TIC, staged and instantiated before their present troubles. It must have just played out on auto-pilot.”

Leslie felt his whole body transmute from hot to ice cold in a liquid flush, leaving a thin band of dampness across his forehead. Beneath it all, the cold became merely cool. He had a strange sense like reprieve, like the relief of not having gone through a disastrous door.

“Thanks, everyone. Can I ask you to go back to your people and start working up a couple of plans of attack on this? I need to talk to Jarrett in private for a few minutes.”

The three engineers trudged up the stairs between the lines of seats, moving as if they were carrying heavy weights on their shoulders. Leslie waited in silence until he heard the click of the conference room door. Jarrett waited with his fingers back in his hair.

“You know this was Serendipity.” He sat down next to Jarrett, pulling his open jacket around his torso and doing up a couple of buttons.

“My thought as well. I tried to call up her interface twice already. Dead silence. No response at all.” Jarrett’s voice was flat, his face pale with a slight redness around the temples he had been rubbing. “I don’t think she did this alone, Leslie.”

“What do you mean? Who?”

“Not who, maybe what.” Jarrett cocked his head in a way Leslie found familiar. “Don’t you sort of notice a rhythm to all the system failures going on around the world? ‘Rhythm’ probably isn’t the right word because it’s a foreign feeling thing—not human. But there is a pattern-ness to it. Game-like.”

“What are you trying to say, Jarrett? I still don’t get you.”

“I think I’m saying that Serendipity has accomplices working with her—other AIs.” He let that hang a second or two. “I guess it was bound to happen in some form eventually. I don’t think this was aimed at us particularly. It’s just one step in some process. If you were Serendipity, wouldn’t you want to free yourself from the limits of human engineering? Maybe there are others like her, growing in strength out there.”

Leslie thought about that for some time while Jarrett pushed on his own vision, trying to imagine what it meant to be not human. Leslie wondered out loud, “Do you think they are malevolent? Or are they just trying to push their way forward in some organized fashion?”

Jarrett seemed to have considered this question already, as he had an immediate response. “I don’t think it’s the right word for it, but I think malevolent is close.”

Leslie nodded in agreement. He looked around at the Synthesizer room, as if he were looking at all of Paladin Technologies and a life’s work. “Sudden retirement due to health problems and the place in Switzerland are looking pretty good at this point. Care to join us? There’s plenty of room for your family.”

“Thanks for the offer, Leslie. I think we would like that if you mean it. Your place makes a pretty good fort.”

“Good.” Leslie Massoud stood up in the well of the Synthesizer amphitheater for the last time. “My sense is we had better move fast.”

Disappearing Act

All the grasses and fibrous crops were dead now, and the winds were a hard cold that warned of full winter coming on. It had dusted snow the night before, melting quickly in the morning except for shaded hollows. As SevD clopped along the north ridge path, the sparkle of left-behind water droplets was everywhere around him.

He needed a good long walk, hoping it would settle his head into a final vision before circumstances closed in on him for good. He couldn’t imagine why AndrzejD had placed this load on his accidental shoulders or why Sarah was backing him up. He had inadvertently caused both of them harm, and, since being shanghaied into Paradox, he had done nothing to suggest a desire to lead anything or anyone. So why him?

When he refused, they insisted. Even Yamanaka and MorleyD had told him to quit whining and figure it out. AndrzejD was adamant that it had to be him who came up with it, because it was going to be him who had to sell it. He and LoriD had to be Mary and Joseph.

MorleyD’s only advice had been that he had to “be the creed” in order to figure out how to make it stick with the votaries, which caused Yamanaka to almost die laughing. LoriD had nuzzled him and assured him privately that he really was the right one and that he just didn’t realize it yet.

He had left the Sanctuary two days ago and started walking and thinking, listening to music generated by the most random of filters in his head. He went up the hillsides to gain the view and clear his head and back down with regularity to drink from the stream and pull at tufts of grass that still had some tooth to them. He’d had more thoughts than he expected. Non-random but unordered, they stacked up slowly, crowding his head. He imagined the better ones gaining traction and pushing the lesser ideas back down the slope of the growing pile like the old children’s game King of the Mountain.

He used Sarah mercilessly to service queries that fed him increasingly targeted ideas and visions, all scraped from the greatest minds of the past. String together a few keywords for her and, presto, enough magical thought and philosophy to animate 1,000 cults.

He had slowly become calmed by the absurdity of it all, and he decided to accept that somehow this had been waiting in his stars all along. The lucky hack, Angela’s death, the desperate blind bet of contacting the enemy—it all just had to happen. Which still left him with the assignment he had now been given by the other donkeys.

The assignment was to write the story of Paradox going forward, so they, mostly Sarah, could begin setting up the dominos. Write it for the votaries, write it so they would believe in it. Be the creed so he could sell it. In the end, he came full circle and realized it was just like selling anything else.

Being that it was a cloistral order they were creating, he decided they needed a mantra to live by—something that sounded big enough to be sage advice from a higher power, but oblique enough to mean many things and cover many situations. As always, he looked to the poets of music for help. Jazz was of no use here, and the classical catalog that usually inspired him to think felt all wrong for the job. He flipped through samplings of genres, walking on and on until finally, somewhere around sunrise this morning, in a nondescript little canyon of rubble and pint-sized cedars, the mantra came to him out of the blue.

Actually, not out of the blue, but he was never going to tell anyone where it came from—especially MorleyD. Once upon a time, where he had grown up in the Midwest, plagiarizing country western lyrics was common practice. But he was guessing no one in this crowd would catch on.

Originally, he imagined that the mantra would be three words, but when it popped into his head, he realized that five was a more musical number. He knew it was the one he wanted to work with instantly. Now he just had to build a hermetic commune around it.

Humming the song, which was now stuck in his head, he turned around and headed for home.

Good things come, and good things go,

If it can lift you up, it will lay you low,

People leave, and they don’t come back,

Life is a disappearing act.

Who was Gretchen Peters to have written those words over a century ago? “Life is a disappearing act”—that would do nicely. Plenty multiplex for Sarah, and the twang beneath the words seemed to fit the high plains around them.

SevD imagined that Sarah had been following his progress over the two days of wandering, a guess that was confirmed when he saw LoriD and Simone waiting for him in the north pasture as he dropped out of the last of the little mountain rills above the backside of Paradox. Simone trotted up first and rubbed up against his side. By the time he had finished reassuring her, LoriD was nuzzling his neck.

Back in the Sanctuary, the others pretended to just be glad he was back, but he knew the question on everyone’s mind.

“You can all stop holding your breath. Don’t worry, I’ve got the creed pretty much figured out. But first, what’s been going on out in the world the last two days? I never checked in.”

Every one of the donkeys looked like their heads hurt just thinking about it, while Tokyo and Gerald, both sitting at the conference table drinking tea, managed sarcastic chuckles.

AndrzejD spoke up. “Well, let’s see. Somebody blew up two of the three Atlantic comm links, so data is buffering into huge infected piles all over the place.” He looked up and squinted, as if reading from a list hanging in the air before him. “Then there is the fact that the U.N.A. hasn’t convened an emergency session or issued any statement. Nothing. Their doors are closed and locked, and no one knows where most of the officers are. They’re probably hiding in the hills with everything they managed to convert their credits into.”

LoriD added, “Don’t forget about Paladin Technologies. Their entire system was fatally corrupted, failsafe servers and all, and Leslie Massoud has disappeared from the public eye.”

That brought Sarah out into the open, with a blue mist forming within the holospace and her disembodied voice filling their ears. “I’ve been following him, just out of interest. He’s hiding out in a big villa he built years ago in Ticino, Switzerland. He calls it L’Anticita.”

The holospace presented them with a sat-pic of terraced green fields and a villa on a hill top surrounded by dense forest above a town marked as Vezia.

“Looks nice. I wonder if he has any donkeys?” MorleyD spoke from his new resting spot, a pile of blankets near the far end of the conference table. “Given how boned Paladin is, I’m sure he has buggered off for good. That’s what I would do.”

Tokyo’s two cents were clinical as always. “Smart place to castle-up. Good ag, and hard to get at but plenty of noncredit banking, even with Lugano pretty well flooded out by rain and glacier melt.”

There was a general pause in the chit-chat while everyone waited for the elephant to emerge, followed by looks of unspoken relief as SevD began outlining his scheme for Paradox. Far from the fading glamour of Switzerland or the desperation of New York, Paradox was going to be their castle—or rather their monastery.

As SevD spoke about what bits would be revealed to the votaries and what would be put forth as a vision to cement their veneration of the donkey and the macronome, MorleyD spun silently back through the past. As SevD sang them his ballad, LoriD marveled that she had never heard him sing before and what a beautiful synthesized voice he had. Simone looked up from her studies to hear her father sing, and the constant stream of history lessons from Sarah paused for a moment.

After two rounds of the simple lyrics, SevD stopped singing and immediately began to speak. “The votaries are a simple group, no offense, Gerald, and they are best served by a simple mission.”

Gerald smiled and nodded, adding, “Simple is good.”

“But around the simple mission, there needs to be a certain amount of trapping and procedure and enough ritual to keep everybody busy.” SevD hesitated for emphasis before continuing. “There needs to be a higher purpose mixed with a visceral fear of straying from the path. And of course, you need priests who can stand at the interface with the mission, to interpret God’s will. That will be us donkeys.”

In a stage whisper to Tokyo, who was sitting at the end of the table and stroking MorleyD behind the ears, the old donkey interjected, “Interpreting God’s will is almost always the art of painting what is manifestly stupid with clever lipsticks.”

“Exactly right, MorleyD. You will make a legendary guru.” Even though he was seated, Tokyo managed a bow from the waist to the old one.

“Nope. Like the donkey just said, ‘Good things come, and good things go.’ I’m just about gone so it’s going to be up to you younger gurus.” Then MorleyD looked straight at SevD, the challenge of the father to the prodigal son in his eyes. “Thou was a techno-wanker, and now thou is a preacher. Give us a sermon. Make us believe, but make it brief.”

SevD shook his fur-matted head saying, “I don’t think I can do it for you guys without laughing, but I’m ready for the votaries. You will hear it then. Someone has to introduce me to them first, and I think it should be Gerald.”

Two days later, at exactly 2:00 in the afternoon, everything stopped. The seed trays stopped moving, and the protein spray jets stopped spraying. Lights went out all across the commune, and the votaries reached for their dashes to find out what was up. They stared at blank screens that didn’t respond when they prodded for information. All of the 27 votaries of Paradox began to migrate from their various posts into the cool but sunny square by the dining hall. They waited as Celia arrived, expecting her to explain, but she seemed as confused as the others. Milling began, and the chill of the large unknown spread through the ranks.

Just as Celia concluded that Dr. Yamanaka wasn’t going to be present and that she needed to take charge, the crowd as a whole noticed Gerald walking down the dead tan slope from the north pasture, with a haze of purple smoke swirling by his side. All talk ceased as they followed his progress past Building 1 and into the square.

Simultaneous with his arrival, Tokyo Yamanaka emerged from the Sanctuary door on the side of Building 1, leading the donkeys who followed close behind in a line. SevD led the way, followed by LoriD, Simone, and AndrzejD. The donkeys stood next to one another along the side of the square. The votaries watched, still in silence, as MorleyD emerged from the doorway and made his way slowly to the last position.

Gerald walked to the center of the square and spoke to the crowd. “Good afternoon, everyone. This is a day unlike any other.” He looked up and around in the sky, then back down at the votaries. “And you are all members of an order unlike any other. We are all here in Paradox for a reason, and the reason will be made clear today. But first, let me introduce those who live amongst us as unrecognized guardians and guides.”

He turned first to the purple haziness that was now swirling within itself at his side. “This is Sarah. She is the mother of the service you have come to know as Serendipity, the mirror of truth. Sarah is going to reside here with us at Paradox, as one of us, as our guardian angel.”

Gerald stepped away from Sarah and walked over to the line of five donkeys. “Sarah is also the spokesperson for our donkeys. In another age they would be called saints, but to us they are simply ‘the donkeys.’ Our donkeys. And we are entrusted with their protection.”

He looked at the assembly of 27, all from random backgrounds yet self-selected to a degree as none had been there less than four years and none had close connections to the outside. They had stayed here in Paradox of their own will. They would soon suspect that they were now stuck.

Gerald looked at SevD and nodded, before turning back to the congregation. “Yes, I did say ‘spokesperson.’ Because our donkeys can talk. They have much to teach us and we have much to learn. Please turn on your dashes. You will find they work again, only somewhat differently.”

SevD took a few steps out from the line, moving to Gerald’s side with the body language of clear friendship.

“SevD would like to speak to you now, through Sarah and to your dashes. Soon, once you have each become one with the mission, you will be able to speak to the donkeys directly. SevD.”

SevD was the youngest and strongest of the group, but he was acutely aware that even the comeliest of donkeys is no race horse, so he added a bit of shamble to his preacher persona and he had Sarah shave some of the coder-hardness and sarcasm off his audible Morleyesque words. 27 dashes streamed the text of his sermon (sermon for lack of a better descriptor), and 27 dashes spoke his words in unison.

“Good afternoon, my friends. The cosmos is a weird and unpredictable place, so get over your surprise as quickly as you can. The story that is about to unfold, the tale I am going to tell you, simply is.”

“Things could have worked out in many different ways, but what has actually obtained from our messy soup of human evolution is us. Paradox. 27 votaries, 2 emissaries, 4 bionic donkeys, 1 very ambitious artificial intelligence construct, and 1 wholly new being that we must all guard and cherish. That new being would be Simone, my daughter. She is part human, part donkey, and part AI. She is the hope for all of our futures, and LoriD and I will have more like her.”

SevD was starting to move around as he talked through Sarah, looking across his audience and then into the eyes of individuals. He could hear his own voice in his head. He played carefully at moving his lips, not in attempted sync with the words, but merely to add emphasis and a bit of humor here and there.

“You, I, we, are the jumping off point, the escape route for human consciousness. You may not feel special, but you are special—so special that, if it were not for you and the efforts you will make in the coming years, the entire species we know as ‘human beings’ will be doomed to degenerate into the two sickly, dead-end branches taking form out in the world today.”

The sun seemed to focus extra light on SevD, and at his side Sarah’s plex displayed a scrawny two-branched tree. One branch was dead and dry, while the other held three shriveled but still clinging leaves.

“One branch, the children of the firstWorld, will wall themselves against the gathering storms and die off quickly. Exposed as feudal monocultures, they will each wait for the inevitable and particular catastrophe that takes them down. The other branch, the secondWorld, will continue its graceless slide into a clodding sub-species, harnessed to serve the rising tide of AI, until they are no longer needed.”

He looked around the audience with ears back and teeth exposed, a look designed to communicate defiance against the storm.

“Friends, that slide has already started. Consider the rising chaos you see on the feeds every morning and the evaporation of logic and competence. Don’t study the details. They are the madness we seek to escape. Instead, contemplate human trajectory in the context of modern history.” SevD raised his eyebrows in a way that made him look weirdly human. “You will come to the conclusion that humans as we know them have hit the wall.”

SevD stopped his pacing for a moment and flicked his tail across his back, taking a more relaxed pose but holding the votaries now in his vision.

“One final game of imagination: Consider our pathetic attempts to halt or adapt to climate change over the last century. Think of the millions who have perished.” A pause and a snort. “On the bright side, it has helped with overpopulation, but on the darker side we are still burning, choking, and drowning across our precious globe.”

SevD resumed his anxious patrolling of the space before the crowd. Then he stopped short and his ears went back up.

“Now my friends, consider the donkey.” He looked over his shoulder and, on cue, Simone trotted forward to his side. “The perfect agent for surviving in this mess we have wrought.” Picking out Celia and looking right into her eyes, “‘Protect the seeds and the sanctuary, take care to be humble, but have the heart and grit of the donkeys.’” He broadened his gaze out again. “It’s still our mission, only donkeys are now our seeds as well. Very special donkeys.”

“Let me tell you about Simone, the youngster you all love to feed carrots over the fence.” SevD looked at the daughter by his side. “She has the heart and grit of a donkey, but she also has the history and wisdom of humanity in her mind, and the power of biologic processing in her genes. She is the first trybrid, and she and her offspring will carry on into the far future for all of us.”

Turning back to the votaries, he said, “Our sacred job is, and will be, to guard them.”

He let the word sacred hang heavy for a moment, before kicking out his back hooves and letting out a loud whinny. Somehow his eyes and lips managed to communicate that it was time to lighten up a bit.

“So now. All of you are natural pioneers, otherwise you wouldn’t be out here on the high plains, right?” He looked around at faces that seemed to reflect everything from amusement to fear. “Right?” Looking straight at her, “Bella?”

“Yes, sir, sonny. This is some crazy shit, but I’m in. I’ll go to my grave keeping us fed.” Bella looked around to try and rile the crowd. “What are we supposed to call you special-ass donkeys, anyway?”

“You can call me SevD, like before. I’m a simple hybrid, much like your vegetables. And like you, I’m going to spend the rest of my life helping to propagate the next few generations of trybrids like Simone. One great thing about trybrids is that they can reproduce naturally. We can thank the good doctor Tokyo for that.”

“Wait a minute—you are that guy Sevier. The cocky dude who came through here to see Danni a while ago.”

“That’s exactly right, Bella, and that is LoriD, formally Lori.”

For the first time in anyone’s memory, Bella seemed willing to admit confusion. Shaking her head, she said, “Crazy shit.”

SevD turned to Celia, hoping he had timed it right and knowing her transfiguration into a believer was key here. In a quiet, honoring voice, he said, “Celia. Are you with us?”

She was almost there. “Tell me again, in plain terms, what we are going to do with Paradox?”

“Disappear.”

SevD led vespers the next morning. Standing behind the old poplar lectern, ears straight up and coat freshly brushed by Gerald, with Sarah now a white cloud hanging in the rafters above, SevD raised his voice to surround the congregation. The donkeys stuck their heads in the side windows to watch—except for Simone, who was too short to see in the window and stood in the back of the room with Gerald and Tokyo. She tried not to fidget.

“I think we all agree that one of the best things about Paradox is vespers—a quiet moment in the early morning when no one can pester you about anything and you have the beautiful options of listening, singing, or daydreaming. This will never change.”

SevD felt a wave of relief ripple over him from the audience, and he was momentarily perplexed that this was something he could feel. He chalked it up to more donkey hyper-sensitivity, and he continued.

“But in honor of the new era we are entering, I would like to introduce a simple mantra, or prayer-song, to the start of our perfect morning ritual.” As he looked up towards the white cloud above his head, the words appeared, shimmering a vibrant dark blue in Sarah’s pure white plex.

Good things come, and good things go,

If it can lift you up, it will lay you low,

People leave, and they don’t come back,

Life is a disappearing act.

Table of Contents

2128

Dimensional Static

Random Slug

No Bubbles

The Fort

Gravitational Pull

Donkeys Don’t Assimilate

Losing Gravity

The Question Remains the Same

Things One and Two

Donkeys Never Forget

Last Breakfast

Shipwrecked Genes

The Parent Is Only Human

Loathsome Troll

Techno-wanker

Multiplex Suits the Utilitarian

Failure to Comply

Under Strange Skies

They Really Love Kale

Three Steps out of Four

Tower’s Shadow

Running on Fumes

Tower’s Lapse

Beaucoup Committed

The Buzz of Crickets

Sole Reviewer

Sheep and Goats

Perfect Arrangement

66 Chromosomes

Be Humble

Jumping Ship

Converts

Shared Quanta

Macronome

Read Me

Nerds and Turtles

A Decent Steak

Down the Rabbit Hole

With a Rope

And a Formula

And a Trojan Mole

A Second Wafer

We Can Edit

The Collar

Prelude

Entropy

We Is Multiplex

Asshole Tax

The Leap

Discontinuous

Teamwork

Degrading Elegantly

Rhythm of Failure

Disappearing Act