Chapter 45



  Rick was disguised as a homeless World Nomad carrying a Nautilus backpack. He wore a full-face visor, and a layer of soft armor added bulk to his all-weather coveralls. Damon was unrecognizable behind a false beard, cheeks, and nose.
  They could see thousands of shoppers in a glance. The Total Search had revealed how different they all were. Harmonized confusion, a permanent echo; to Rick the noise was like a shout. He had to enjoy it to understand it. Having slept twelve hours, he was too relaxed. His long delayed vacation started tonight. He planned to buy new swimming trunks.
  Damon's eyes never stopped moving. Humans were ugly, almost the average age of menopause. He had spent the night in an air freight container, and still felt confined.
  The news was full of new fears, and the world felt like the day before a move. People couldn't control their emotions, even when they knew others were trying to control them. "World epiphany" a headline blared. "Merge or diverge?" The coming months would be interesting. If this had been fiction, it would have been the start of the sequel.
  The real action was elsewhere. A newly formed international task force was questioning the Starters and searching their property. Tina said they had found something important, a solution to an unexpected problem. She tried to learn more, but someone at the top had imposed total secrecy. They might never know more. Humanity's future was being decided while Rick was returning to obscurity. At the moment, it was a relief to feel irrelevant.
  Today was the year's biggest holiday: World Day, the anniversary of Article One, ratified in 2030. A time to celebrate and condemn history, for quiet contemplation and expensive gifts: the year's biggest shopping day.
  Rick and Damon had come to the right place. Extending five kilometers along a former California highway, Interface Nonline Mall sold lifestyles, and here the customer was the final product. Four thousand stores were arranged in a Super Random pattern, underground and in white towers, mezzanines and walkways crossing at all angles and into surrounding neighborhoods. No one knew where it ended. This was a former Russian enclave, part of the reparation payments for the Explosion, then promptly sold to foreign investors.
  The stores were part of a worldwide dispatch network. Rick saw ads for flowing clothes, fibers only a micron thick, ten times thinner than normal. Retro hairstyles, octagonal frizz sprayed on, merged into scales or split into fibers.
  This mall was the summit of a great society, encompassing all the arts and sciences, but only a tiny subset of products and services could be fully developed. The rest was suppressed. Everything was surface.
  They rode the escalator up a great atrium, layers of motion as fountains filled the air, smells they couldn't remember.
  "200 meters and closing," Damon said. A red dot was projected in his eyelids. He never shut them completely.
  This would be a "controlled rendezvous", a decoy operation while others handled the Starters. UN agents who broke local laws were tried in a world court, but only the final result mattered. Rick's death (if it came to that) would only energize the investigation.
  "News.news and Ignorance Magazine did an article about a day in the life of Knil," Damon said. "They made it sound like they were in the shower with him."
  Knil was the only suspect in the plasmid case. The combined volume of all human bodies approached half a trillion liters. Infiltrating this space had taken two decades. The UN wanted to know every detail.
  DNA (and RNA) was like a string of beads, which could only do two things: bend or not bend. Since the string was also a spiral, the bends could point in any direction, thereby changing the string to any shape. In theory, the new shapes could cut the string itself, split it lengthwise, and copy it using freefloating base pairs.
  That by itself might be enough for life to form, but on Earth it was only a first step. RNA was unstable, not strong enough to fold itself into functional organisms. Instead it made scaffolding for the next level: proteins. Simple amino acids could combine any number of ways to form the building blocks of cells, and the enzymes and chemical engines that powered them. Most human cells activated and multiplied only a few of their genes, on a massive scale. They were soon packed with RNA, a large percentage of the total cell mass, manufacturing specialized proteins.
  People already used XNA to store data in their bodies, and injected designer genes to make new cell lines. Some viruses could also change the host's DNA.
  Millipol's plasmids formed a living computer network spread over thousands of people, controlled by phage viruses in the food supply and the air. These were read by helper cells, which sent instructions to infected phagocytes, which created and destroyed the plasmids.
  The data output remained a mystery. There were too many chemical toilets and air filters, antibacterial showers and biodegrading microns. New bacteria evolved every second, an army in every cubic millimeter. Whenever someone coughed, they released hundreds of weakened viruses designed to spread immunity.
  Player-0 had used the plasmids to inject Synchro genes into selected regions of his brain. The new connections had accelerated his thoughts, making him more sensitive and focused. He claimed the plasmids were intended as an early-warning system, and a universal tool.
  A suspected Deep Cover Millipol officer, Knil Muran was the current CEO, dictator, and Strategarian of the elite Prophet Fam. They accepted one applicant in ten thousand, who then had to face months of grueling tests, training, and hazing. By the end, they had forgotten what was real. Only then could they join the world's most elite community. Every Prophet thought alike. They traded property, houses and jobs worldwide. Most Prophets were information experts, able to reorganize any Fam or corporation from within.
  They had all received the latest gene therapy: ten added years of life expectancy so far. Effective rejuvenation required a series of ten thousand injections in all organs. If one Prophet had the plasmids, they all did.
  Rick needed proof, but the Prophets were hard to infiltrate. He wondered how Knil would react. Ideally, he would never know.
  They reached a more affluent floor that looked larger than it was, an improvised fantasy land. Rick saw flying ads and walking mannequins. The wealthy crowd acted casual, expecting products to appear in their path. Booths rolled out from storefronts, and they could ride them back.
  The unlisted store appeared to be a mirror from the outside. Important and/or wealthy people received hints about its existence. After decoding the clues, they could enter through a private elevator. With some difficulty, the UN could smuggle up to six people inside.
  Damon studied the view from the ceiling cameras. Eclectic merchandise was scattered haphazardly on irregular shelves. An employee carefully adjusted three fallen cans. Knil was standing next to a display case with pink truffles, as colored light played through a wall of wine bottles. Even the wealthiest people lived between paychecks, each project financing the next. They could only build one skyscraper at a time.
  The Prophet lifestyle required thousands of contracts and informal deals, and Knil had to approve them all. Each moment had to be perfect. He preferred complex flavors, layered perceptions and inscrutable textures. Knil could only indulge some of his tastes here. Drugs would always be illegal, even if the only penalty was confiscation.
  An oversized former gang leader and Kombat champion, he had used plastic surgery to make himself unique. Not a member of any known race or ethnic group, his eyes were too far apart and too high, his forehead sloped oddly, and his skin had a metallic tinge. Built like a block, he could move with disturbing speed, but sometimes froze for minutes at a time. He embodied every Prophet value. They were the ultimate democracy, but his job was to provide stability. The deepest bond was control.
  "Plan 6," Damon said. "We only enter when it's safe." They removed their outer disguises. Rick alerted Tina and waited.
  Knil's two guards weaved through the display aisles, relaxed but intensely aware. They didn't blink when two men in body armor with prominent grenade belts strolled around a pastry display. Knil immediately saw they weren't criminals. "Kill them," he said in his odd high-pitched voice.
  Two seconds of clumsiness became a staged battle. Four microguns emerged from the guards' sleeves as the attackers launched a net. Both guards were caught in the shrinking fibers, and covered Knil with their bodies as they fell. The attackers tumbled behind a plastic shield. Despite the grenade belts, the guards fired several coordinated shots.
  The attack had failed. Knil's guards had been unarmed twenty minutes ago. Losing track of the direction, Rick followed Damon past running customers and a moving cart. He was here as a witness only.
  The store was quiet again. Rick waited while Damon launched a fine mesh that unfolded in the next aisle. They heard a snap from the alternating currents, designed to stop a riot. The guards were already unconscious from contact nerve agents in the nets, with a 5% risk of permanent injury. Rick hoped things wouldn't get worse, but he only felt calm expectation.
  Hit by paralyzing darts, both of the attackers were clinically dead. They were civilians doing a robot's job, recruited by Harry Chen, the best the UN could arrange on short notice. The mall ambulance arrived and hung from the ceiling outside. The police considered the situation, and evacuated the surrounding stores.
  Damon turned the corner, and scrutinized the five bodies. Alarms beeped and lights flashed on the two attackers' armor. "Stand clear," a disembodied voice said. The attackers tensed and shook, ramming against the floor. Flatlines trembled and became regular. Their armor compressed and relaxed their chests.
  "Defibrillators in their grenade belts," Damon explained. "Knil killed a protester once."
  Flanked by the guards, Knil's armored overcoat covered him like a tarpaulin, with only a fist exposed. Rick bent down, turned Knil's heavy head, and pushed the extractor into his neck. Crude but reliable, it also injected a beacon under his skin. The plunger rose while Damon confiscated the guards' weapons.
  Impossibly, Knil began to groan. "You better kill me now."
  "Paternity test," Damon said without looking up.
  Rick split the blood sample while they walked to the emergency exit. Damon accepted his vial and vanished. As Rick turned the corner, two medics stepped over the guards, and knelt beside Knil, while two of Chen's agents entered from the other side. They ignored Rick when he tried to hand them a vial, and bent down to drag away the attackers. A customer joined the medics and attempted to free a guard, but became stuck himself. Rick tossed the last sample in a trash bin, hoping Chen would retrieve it.
  The aisle shook, and bottles bounced off the floor. The medics backed away as Knil broke free. Tensing and relaxing, he snapped the fibers one by one. He rose up and lumbered to the exit, still wrapped in the strands. With a flick of his wrist, he hurled the helpful customer ten meters down the aisle.
  Rick swerved through the back exit and into the mall crowd, removing his facemask. There was no privacy anymore. Everyone had been photographed a million times, every pimple on file. Slightly uglier than usual, his face prosthetics would fool most cameras. He tossed his coveralls over the railing, revealing the blue shorts, vest, and visor of mall security. He concentrated on each step, taking regular breaths. Rick was good at running backwards, but that wouldn't help him now.
  Shouts behind him as a group of punks fell down. For someone who avoided the media, Knil caused strangely familiar dread in those who unexpectedly met him, like a forgotten nightmare. No one else would dare to interfere. His legend came from third-hand stories with missing witnesses. Using supernatural hand-to-hand Kyangah skills, he could kill "ten in ten", even hundreds of people, in a storm of blows. He should have been stopped long ago.
  Thirty meters and closing. The injected sedatives had slowed Knil down. One man jogged along, waving to the ceiling cameras. A security guard ran the other way.
  Rick passed some kiosks and entered a service area. The door snapped shut, a curving hallway ahead. He entered a spiral staircase and started to circle down. The same landing rose up again, like in the Depot skyscraper. This felt like skydiving. In his rearview camera the steps rotated away.
  The lights flickered for an instant in the sound-absorbing silence. He didn't sense the changing air pressure, but a yellow dot appeared in his eyepatch map. One of Knil's guards was climbing down the central shaft. He heard alarms falling closer. The guard could probably climb faster than Rick could run.
  Knil had used his influence to order mall security to seal their exits and lower the fire doors. They had instantly complied, and now fifteen thousand shoppers were stranded, trying to assert their rights. This actually helped Rick, since all doors still opened for him. The guard had tripped a fire alarm to get through. Why did this stairwell even have a shaft? He thought he glimpsed an explanation on the map. The mall was so large it followed the earth's curvature, leaving a cone-shaped gap right here. Actually, it was built on a geoid, and the shaft was designed to collapse in an earthquake.
  The guard passed him on a hair-thin cable a meter away, carrying a rifle from a sports store. After a glance, only the taut cable remained.
  Fortunately, Knil had never actually seen Rick. The guards were chasing one of Chen's hired agents, five floors down. Rick took the next exit, and sealed the door with one-minute-adhesive.
  Everything was back to normal. He stood on the outskirts of a stylish law firm, a large multilevel space with changing carpet colors, designed to keep the partners on edge. The firm used lie detectors, profiling, and dynamic contracts to control reality. A few frivolous cases (verbal promises, insults, escalator mishaps) had taken on a life of their own, and might continue forever. Ubiquitous security cameras prevented most other lawsuits.
  A shout rose in intensity and echoed around him. Knil was twenty meters away, accelerating like last week's alien. A man in a data helmet strolled past.
  Rick had five weapons, including a cylinder with an elegant skull button. Rumors that it contained a powder of tiny atomic bombs were incorrect (but not impossible). Worse, it was a self-aiming gun, fire-and-forget against anything that moved.
  Knil was ten meters away when the security fence fell from the ceiling, strong enough to stop a truck. A second fence fell behind him, sealing the lobby. Knil stopped at the last moment, his nose touching the fence. The Back Room had anticipated everything, but not all at once. Two people were trapped in the cage with him, including the local UN liaison, who was impersonating Rick. Mall security would arrest Knil. He had nearly killed one of their guards during an earlier visit, claiming he had merely bumped into the man.
  Knil bent down and started to pull up the fence.
  "Halt! You're under arrest!" With blinding speed, Knil threw something at the armed UN agent, who collapsed soundlessly.
  Rick found himself running through an open-plan office with too many partitions. How had he entered this simulation? Leaning against his center of gravity, he saw cubicles at strange angles, patches of carpet, people rising as he passed. He bumped a chair. Maybe he should flip over a desk. As far as he was concerned, this case was over.
  He trusted the map, and even felt affection for Knil's moving dot, forty meters and closing. Some of the employees shouted false directions.
  The office floor narrowed, and became an area of storage racks and towering boxes. This was a spontaneous exchange, a nameless business without owners. It did have property, debt, and employees. Most modern products were unloved: spare parts no one knew existed, precursor chemicals by the milligram, bacteria by the ton.
  Knil was tackled by three security guards at once, but he remained standing. He shook from side to side, and the guards fell off.
  Rick reached the floor's other stairwell, opened the door, and continued his basement dive, this time counterclockwise. Breathing every four steps, the stairs seemed less steep as he leaned forward. He was too busy paying attention to feel fear. This was intensely fascinating.
  Tina scanned all available paths while trying to contact the cops. Knil's two guards were retracing their steps, but they were out of the game for now.
  As he reached the second landing, he heard a crash, and the door tumbled down behind him like an echo. Once again he took the next exit, the door slowly trembling shut. At the last moment he tossed a red canister through the gap, hoping the gas would further weaken Knil.
  The service floor was full of dark corners. He opened one door and vanished behind another.
  Midway between the two stairwells, the twisted access shaft seemed as steep as a ladder. With his last grenade clipped to his wrist, he zigzagged down the corrugated spine as fast as he could, steadied by his simulator training.
  He reached the small construction site in the wall, and peeled back the sticky sheet. After he had crawled inside, it resealed itself. The unauthorized tunnel was a smooth rectangle made of something like tangled vines. A distant roar was only wind in the tubes. He half-expected to end up in a small elevator.
  As he crawled the tunnel narrowed around him, until he found himself in an illegal storage space. This was the calmest place he'd been in a while. He saw boxes of low-risk drugs, viral pheromones, gene-optimized food products that would be poisonous to anyone else. Slowly crawling out of a false delivery box, he stood up in a dark employee closet.
  He checked himself with his camera. No dust, and his wrinkle-free uniform evaporated sweat, but his eyes bulged noticeably. He ripped off the prosthetics, and wiped his face. Ads danced around him. Bright lights ahead, the outskirts of an immense store.

  As he emerged to a celestial view, a voice said: "Welcome to Yamaguchi Cosmopolis".
  The store occupied half the mall, with ten floating levels and a transit system of small moving cabins. In some places the ceiling was as high as a stadium, but this section had more intimate display shelves, under a low sky of spot lighting and tireless ads. Ten thousand short aisles and kiosks represented hundreds of distinct lifestyles, with unlimited connections between them. The store's edge was hidden in a clutter of boutiques, exclusive bistros, and party planners.
  Rick began to walk. The sales floor was a sea of diamonds. Like an item on an assembly line, he found it hard to move under his own volition. There were too many distractions. Sight, sound, and smell changed in every dimension.
  Screens showed merchandise sorted by culture and personality. Products were customized and manufactured on the spot. Clothes were still on the loom, or in chemical bottles. There were stores within the store, simulated apartments that could be resurfaced in an afternoon.
  The biggest product was software, where one good idea could equal a lifetime of work. Some programs became obsessed with their owners, telling them what to do, and when to shut up. They would never be alone again.
  "He's ninety meters to your right" Tina said.
  Distorted sirens echoed overhead. Rick began to jog through a field of beds. The alarms moved faster than he did, circling back as his peripheral vision widened. He stopped, listened, and turned amid digital lights.
  Knil's icon blinked out, but the map showed dangerous sight lines in red. Rick still had the advantage. At every corner he turned away from the alarms. He passed a row of staring faces, presumably plastic surgery demos. Ahead, shoppers began to run. Crowds could form temporary networks through text telepathy. The sirens ceased.
  Knil blocked the aisle with sudden velocity, a monstrous degenerate. His upper body didn't move as he began to run, fifteen meters in two seconds. Like any machine, he didn't know his own purpose. All his attention was focused on Rick's demise.
  A notice appeared in Rick's screen: Knil had posted a bond to become a local deputy. For reasons he didn't care to read, Rick was now supposed to surrender. Knil's guards were under the mistaken impression they could shoot back at him.
  He had already turned around and was running as fast as he could, somehow not quite falling. Part of him was intensely curious how he would escape. Knil could have killed him five times over already. The next aisle was too far away.
  Then the guard from the stairwell raced past. He had been following Rick for the past five minutes, and Knil had probably followed the guard. "He's ours now," Tina explained. "Keep going." She was a great persuader.
  Rick turned the corner and slammed into a financing booth. Recognizing the booth's corporate style, he remembered the Prophets owned this store. It even helped market their lifestyle.
  Through the ceiling cameras, he watched the guard face his former master, jumping a loop in midair. They never paused to speak or stare, and didn't try to intimidate each other. The fight was businesslike, with abstract breaks, jumps, and brief blows, as if they were holding back. Had this been a recording, Rick wouldn't have known if it was possible. The guard finally fell for no clear reason.
  Following the arrows projected in his eyepatch, Rick leapt up four steps at a time, slid over the floor to slow down, and walked through a solid-looking wall. It was made of interlocking fibers that separated on contact and reformed behind him, the rips vanishing without a trace.
  Backlit sheets billowed from the ceiling like a gauze maze, a new display area under construction. Running through the void was like being underwater. Displaced by the draft, the thin sheets never touched him. He reached a large, blue-lit space, circled a glowing hole in the floor, and doubled back. The world turned around him, while Tina said something about an elevator.
  A shriek in the distance. There were too many paths for Knil to search. Expert software predicted Rick had a 97% escape probability.
  Before the final exit, he stood still and listened. First, he felt it in his feet and chest, then he could almost hear the roar. It surrounded him, yet seemed to come from within, at the center of a moving galaxy. More shouts, the hum of many people talking at once, the rumble of footsteps.
  In the past ten minutes, Damon had managed to contact most people in the mall, and told them his version of the truth. A few thousand shoppers had decided to see if they could stop Knil. To Rick, the danger seemed entirely appropriate. He was suddenly exhausted.
  Knil was protected by a layer of lies. When he became aware of the vigilantes, his thoughts sped up. Crowds were weak, and easily distracted. Since early this morning and increasing in the past hour, thousands of fake news stories had flooded the Net. In a very short time, someone had created hundreds of realistic videos of Qiyuan-style chaos. Entire cities appeared to be cut off, the inhabitants speaking unknown languages. Dozens of credible sources had reported alien sightings. Neural control, vertical clouds, strange holes in the ground. Net traffic was also disrupted.
  Most of the reports were obvious copycat pranks, but someone had carefully planned and nurtured the trend. If society broke down, the perception might be even worse than the fact. The public was advised to monitor official channels only, and to ignore anything that seemed unusual.
  Rick opened a service door to the mall's main transit artery, a long walkway with many entrances. He walked slowly, sweat stinging his eyes. Three people ran past without seeing him. A distant outburst of shouts faded fast. He hoped the virtual mob knew something he didn't, including how to disband. The moment someone recognized him, Knil would know his location, but escape was only seconds away.
  He entered the small, airport-style commuter station. A cart waited in its dead-end alcove, lit from within. Rick fell in the plush seat, and the door zoomed shut with small clicks. He felt exposed this close to the ground, surrounded by busy sounds as the cart got ready. Then a door opened ahead.