Chapter 44


Smooth jazz played in the simulated twilight. Damon, Demillia, Tina and Rick sat in a theme restaurant booth, surrounded by virtual streets and buildings that seemed to contract in passing. The simulated city represented every known Fam, a showcase of styles and fashions.
  Today, all the screens showed Starter artifacts: chaotic control panels, sprawling neon cities, software people. One of the few Fams with no sense of style, their designs were so elaborate no one really noticed.
  When Rick finished his last call he knew less than when he had started. "The summit of the past is the ground floor of the future," Donitz had said. "The bullet of progress catches the bluebird of evolution." The best plan was not to have a plan.
  Donitz claimed he knew nothing about the Starter conspiracy, and was insulted at Rick's insinuations. He added that Rick should have tried to form an emotional bond with Tarek during their meeting, instead of blindly following the script. Should he have discussed his feelings, begged them to get along?
  Rick sank in his chair, and felt a glowing emptiness. Without a doubt, relief was the best emotion. Like a post-surgical interlude, as if the universe had been healed. Whatever else might happen, he had erased a mistake. He often felt bad for a good reason, and good for no reason; but not tonight. This moment had been his goal all along. The future could wait.
  Rick hadn't been home in three months. It seemed like a mythical place now. On one occasion, he had walked into his living room wall after having somehow switched the lay-out in his mind. The synthetic hamburgers in his freezer had been dead for years.
  The real revelation would not come for another eight hours, when the experts finally finished digesting Tarek's manuscript. Rick would be asleep then, reliving the same day.
  The Starters had discovered a "Magic Lamp", a way to alter the normal rules of statistics, and induction itself. The device could create a complex quantum field, a million Watt laser-tuned plasma, with more possible states than a star. According to one controversial and much derided interpretation of the Many-Worlds theory, the Lamp could multiply any universe that contained it, or at least a portion thereof. There would be more observers who existed in a universe in which the Lamp had been activated. Success created more possible thoughts, more diverse brain states, and more quantum universes than mere failure. Unlikely events could be amplified by an antropic feedback process, and retroactively made to happen - simply by pressing a button when they did.
  Over the years, many research groups and start-ups had tried to develop Reality Amplification technology, a quantum shortcut through the Multiverse. In some other possible universe, any conceivable problem had already been solved. They only needed to create a link. . .
  Damon would immediately wonder if the Magic Lamp could also cause a gigantic explosion. Of course it could.
  Rick already knew about this theory, and the sobering truth. Current science did predict certain rare types of psychic-like phenomena, but they had never been detected. He had participated in a C-Index experiment two years ago, trying to guess a list of numbers while a bizarre guru stared at the back of his head. Like every other serious experiment of its kind, it had been a total failure. Evolution had already exploited every opportunity, or else success was canceled out by all the other possibilities.
  The Singularity would change all that. The strange object had such a low entropy rate it might make the Magic Lamp possible.

  Their booth had a noise wall, and Damon could talk freely. "When groups are forced to interact, they create civilization. When civilizations interact . . , ask me next week."
  The Internal Inspections Group was reviewing Rick's actions. They wanted to know what he had done before he did anything else. Until then, he had placed himself on voluntary suspension. The attack on Anonymous had been delayed another week. He was afraid she would reemerge from the chaos before then.
  "My current focus is Harry Chen, from the Church of Ultimate Truth," Demillia said, surrounded by a flock of invisible notes. "He reached Qiyuan ten minutes after Rick. For some reason, Anonymous decided to give Chen a portion of her knowledge, mostly a contact list and a D-Map archive. The church immediately absorbed the data. Chen was smart enough to contact my boss before we contacted him, and they negotiated a deal that helped us find Tarek."
  "If he's that powerful, why aren't you chasing him?" Damon asked.
  "Millipol doesn't abolish groups, it absorbs them. The Church of Ultimate Truth has useful surveillance and observation skills. They could help stabilize the world."
  "That's what caused this mess," Damon said, swallowing a green mushroom.
  "True. The now-abolished section Minus Six tried to persuade the Starters to join our Open Collective. They used Russian State Security and others as intermediaries."
  "Including you."
  She would neither confirm nor deny the allegation. "Perhaps it was a political decision. If so, I had no input."
  "Chen spotted Anonymous before we did," Tina said. "So did Tarek and others. They even traded data."
  "Everyone ran circles around me," Rick admitted. One person working alone couldn't build a plane or a pencil, but sometimes they could outsmart all of society. "At least Tarek is cooperating. He claims the Starters have already destroyed every copy of RedList." A dozen prominent members were negotiating with the UN. Eventually they would all be reformed. "We somehow missed a vast conspiracy, so there must be others like it, perhaps even bigger." He had no idea the next one was only a minute away.
  "Is it true the UN is investigating a colony of extraterrestrials in California?" Damon asked, stifling a yawn.
  "I'm not even going to respond to that," Rick laughed. An hour too soon. He wondered how much Damon knew.
  Tina pulled a screen over her face. They heard faint mumbling until it popped back up.
  "Donitz says we caught Player-0," she said. "He surrendered at a UN kiosk three hours ago, and is cooperating for now. There's something funny about him."
  "The gamer who started it all?" Damon asked. "How did you find him?"
  "Actually, the World Mind did, with help from Tarek. Player-0 has an unusual skill set. Tarek suggested looking for a "false Starter", a non-member who exactly matches their profile. The World Mind had to eliminate many fans, enthusiasts, and wannabes."
  "It does context searches now?" Damon asked. "I mean, what's the World Mind?"
  "Following Tarek's advice, we persuaded Player-0 to submit to a full-body scan," she continued. "The test results show he is a victim of illegal gene-tampering."
  She displayed a row of slides. Aortal inflammation, ruptured white blood cells, non-repeating junk DNA. "Here's our latest theory:" she read as if from an encyclopedia article. "Thousands of people have been infected by a phage-infiltrated Ehrlichiae bacteria. 'Monocytophila' injects up to a megabyte of plasmids into selected human cells. So far, they've done no detectable damage. The infected cells form a biological computer network, spread over many people. It can handle almost unlimited data, but has a slow retrieval time. The altered cells could also manufacture various toxins and nanomachines."
  Damon typed a quick message. "A lot to learn in two hours," he said. "You must have suspected something."
  "I hope so."
  "Quite an achievement, since any portion of the network would seem harmless by itself." The human body was a separate universe, still the best place to hide illegal data. "Given the current research restrictions and monitoring laws, it must be a government project - or higher."
  "Half the world's taxes are ultimately collected by the UN," Rick said, sipping champagne from a tiny bottle. "How do they manage to spend it all?"
  "If Ravi's involved, I will do whatever it takes to destroy him," Demillia said coldly.