Ghost of the Gods - 02 (51 page)

“I can tell from medical
assists
the victims are okay—and the gang members are very dead,” said Mark.

General McKafferty – Washington, DC – March 19, 0002 A.P.

Futile. Their efforts were all futile. McKafferty’s gut was full of strong coffee, tobacco, and nothing more. He had the unpleasant task of reporting to POTUS that the god-machine had a loaded gun against their heads. Any aggression on their part could trigger another rash of kill-zones. McKafferty had given orders for all troops to stand down and return to their bases. The Hogs and Raptors flying CAP would stay in place over Zero-G but not engage any drones. Normal Peacekeeper patrols had also resumed. The USAG military presence had been dialed back to almost invisible. McKafferty got off the phone from POTUS, slumped forward in his chair, lit a cigarette, and wished a massive heart attack would kill him right about now.

He heard the tone for an incoming priority flash. The aide manning the communications console handed him a tablet. As McKafferty finished reading the flash bulletin, he wished he could order an airstrike on NSA HQ in Washington. The flash notified USNORTHCOM that an NSA-controlled firmware backdoor existed in all computer equipment manufactured worldwide. No one outside NSA has been informed of its existence due to necessary security for the project. NSA had apparently manipulated manufactures into including a silicon black-box code named
Racetrack
into virtually all microprocessor chips. Racetrack was in the equipment NSA certified for use on Secure-Net. Racetrack was even in the equipment NSA used itself, since nothing was manufactured without the black-box in it. The god-machine had cracked Racetrack, the supposedly uncrackable top-secret backdoor, and with it stole the keys to the kingdom. Thank god, the NSA had a backup plan for secure emergency DOD communications. Tin cans and strings were already being deployed across Washington!

McKafferty felt vindicated, but was no longer clear about who were the true enemies of America. The intelligence services had created a modern-day Maginot Line while megalomaniacs like Zuris created dangerous new inventions with total disregard for how they might be turned on us. With allies like those, who needed enemies? McKafferty had a sense the current uneasy standoff between the USAG and the god-machine would last for quite some time. Each side would take a little ground, then lose a little ground. The dance would go on until the music stopped.

Sarah Mayfair – Dallas, Texas – March 19, 0002 A.P.

Sarah had been receiving memories capsules from Mark all through the night and into the morning. She knew where they were sheltering and everything that had happened. The sun had come up over the horizon a short time ago. They were now heading east straight into its light. Noah was still driving and Sarah had no intension of relaxing her guard. They were now only miles from the highway exit for Zero-G. Noah was unusually withdrawn. He had not said a word in twelve hours since Mark had sent them news of the god-machine invading cyberspace. Not for the first time, Sarah wished she had the ability to see inside Noah’s heart to learn the truth. At odd moments during the night she’d found herself wanting to trust him, but then wondered if that impulse had originated in Noah.

Sarah could tell from her phone that the Internet was up and down. The USAG sponsored Free World News service (FWN) was reporting some type of interference. Sarah switched channels to Air Truth. The station was going wild with breaking news and rumors. The top rumor was that the nanotech plague had somehow infected the Internet in what amounted to a cyber-attack.

As they banked through a 90-degree curve on the highway, Sarah got her first clear view of the battle zone. What filled the windows was hard to imagine. The huge pillars of smoke that she’d originally seen from almost twenty miles away marked the location of the Zero-G campus. The air was thick with so many drones flying at low altitude that it looked like a swarm of giant prehistoric insects had invaded the Earth. An assist identified both fixed-wing and helicopter drones. She felt like they were driving into a deathtrap.

The highway exit came up quickly, and with it Sarah allowed herself to feel a measure of hope. They were so close. What were the odds of losing Mark now? Traffic came to an abrupt stop just as they left the highway. She wanted to open the door and start out on foot, but she held herself in check. Soon traffic started moving. Noah circled a deserted block a few times. Sarah was frustrated but knew the ghost was avoiding some unnecessary confrontation.

Miles later Sarah recognized a street and then an abandoned professional building from Mark’s memory capsules. The air was fouled with toxic smoke and ash. According to Mark, the area had been quiet for hours, other than security patrols. There they were! She spotted Mark and Kathy walking out of the alley between two buildings. They looked like street people dressed in army surplus jackets. Noah pulled the Land Cruiser to a stop at the curb. Sarah climbed into the back to sit with Mark, leaving the front seat for Kathy. Before the doors were fully closed, Noah pulled away. Sarah was overwhelmed with relief. She kissed Mark and held him until she was convinced he was real. She took his hand and could not and would not let go of it again. She ignored the discomfort she felt radiating from Kathy.

“Are you both all right?” asked Sarah—though she knew the answer.

“We’re okay,” said Mark. “Sleeping and peeing in a dumpster had its moments.”

Noah pulled to the shoulder and casually did a U-turn. Sarah watched as a Peacekeeper Stryker came to a stop across the intersection they had been traveling toward. Soldiers were exiting the vehicle and setting up a roadblock.

“Do you feel these hives all around us?” asked Noah. “This place is a hotbed. We need to leave. They must know we are here.”

Sarah was surprised that Noah had finally spoken. Long before they’d reached Dallas, she’d felt the hives Mark had warned them about and grown as quiet as possible on the n-web. She prayed they would not be drawn to her or begin their terrible whispering. While she could prevent all but the tiniest leaks, who knew what other connections might exist because of her bloodline? She was now certain the Colorado hive had not committed suicide. Either a splinter group within the hive was responsible for murder or the Guides had sacrificed an entire hive just to deceive her into thinking they meant no harm. Regardless, there was one thing she was certain: That hive had not died to protect her child. Whatever had happened to that hive was a selfish act. She feared for her child. There would be no hope for the two of them if the hives won this war.

Sarah felt the Land Cruiser slow to a crawl. They were about a quarter mile west of the Zero-G campus. Traffic was backed up. Everyone grew silent as they moved under the outer edge of the swarm of drones.
As a Peacekeeper patrol rolled by in the opposite direction, several drones swooped in closer and kept their weapons aimed at the patrol until it had passed. Traffic came to a stop.

“The goddess with control of military weapons,” said Noah. “Nothing good will come of this.”

“The god-machine will do anything to keep Prometheus operational,” said Mark. “It’s the same kind of equipment the hives must be using to trigger kill-zones.”

“Maybe it is not the same kind of equipment the hives are using,” said Noah. “Maybe it is what the hives are using.”

“How’s that possible?” said Mark. “There’re no hives inside Zero-G and the god-machine has control of it.”

“Remote control,” said Noah. “Prometheus could be a zombie.”

“Zero-G has
the best security money can buy,” said Mark. “Besides, why would the god-machine share Prometheus?”

“Why would the goddess care?” said Noah. “As for security, the goddess has obviously defeated the organic’s firewalls. So could a guide.”

“No,” said Mark. “I’d have known it if the hives were using Prometheus.”

“Maybe you only think and see what the goddess permits,” said Noah.

“Bullshit!” said Mark. “But why take chances? Let’s stay and see if we can goad the military into destroying Prometheus. That’ll prove we’re thinking for ourselves and not the god-machine.”

“You’re not serious,” said Noah.

As if to send a message, a small swarm of drones veered toward a Peacekeeper patrol that was stopped by the side of the road. Sarah had a strong sense she knew what was coming. Without warning, the drones opened fire with a rain of missiles. The Peacekeepers were erased in a violent cloud of smoke and glowing debris. Noah turned pointedly toward Mark.

“You said it just minutes ago. Do you honestly believe the goddess will allow anyone to destroy that interface?” said Noah. “That drone attack was a warning to you. She knows what you are thinking the moment your thought touches the n-web. Besides, what makes you so sure this is the only Prometheus installation? With all the money and power of these corporations and the USAG, once they saw the potential, why would they build only one? We need to get Sarah to a safe place, then we can decide what to do next.”

“Why are you worried about Sarah?” asked Mark. “She can—”

Mark stopped short. He was staring at her with a stunned look on his face. Sarah could feel emotions radiating from him. He was not suppressing them very well at the moment. He had just discovered from an assist she was pregnant. Kathy was staring at both of them.

“What’s going on here?” said Kathy. “Is this some hybrid Vulcan mind-melding thing?”

“I’m pregnant,” said Sarah.

Kathy’s expression became rigid. The emotions radiating from her were unpleasant to feel.

“What wonderful news,” she said.

Sarah Mayfair – West Texas – March 19, 0002 A.P.

They had been traveling for hours. Sarah was surprised at how well Kathy and Noah were getting along. Kathy had spelled him thirty minutes ago and was now driving. They were engaged in a debate about science. Sarah absorbed the emotions coming from the front seat. Kathy was mildly entertained. Noah was uncharacteristically radiating a little, but it was undecipherable. Mark’s emotions were far easier to understand. Sarah could feel he was very happy about being a father and trying to suppress it in every way imaginable. He was also very troubled about Noah’s claim that the hives were using Prometheus and not trying to suppress that at all. He was confused. Sarah picked up his hand and put it over her tummy. She knew he could sense the same things she did. The free-swimming seeds were hard at work inside her womb, perfecting the DNA of their child. Their baby was going to be a very extraordinary person.

Mark Freedman – West Texas – March 19, 0002 A.P.

The sun was low on the horizon, and Noah was again driving. Throughout the day Mark had been receiving all kinds of information gleaned from the Internet. Some of it was useful and some of it was peculiar. The mechanisms that fed assists and the entangled interface were self-adjusting, trying to find a proper balance for this new source of information.

Mark knew that government surveillance and censorship was offline across the world. The media had quickly realized the government’s grip had been loosened, but not the extent. The official and unofficial story was that cyber terrorists had found a way to hack into vital parts of government and corporate computer networks. No one in the media fully realized it yet, but government monitoring and censorship were relics of the past. The Internet was again a free speech zone. That is, as long as you didn’t mind the god-machine sorting through your digital life, but then the public and the media knew nothing about the god-machine and as a result, very little about the true nature of their world.

A short time later, Mark came across a development that underscored the god-machine’s mind-set. It had altered the orbit of all civilian and military communications satellites around the world to achieve 9.4 percent better terrestrial coverage. It had likewise tweaked countless other systems. The god-machine was now healing the body of humankind’s machinery as well as humankind itself.

They had just pulled back onto the highway after filling the Land Cruiser with gas. Mark was weighing his options. All of them carried terrible consequences if things went poorly. Eleven days ago at the Colorado bunker Noah had revealed to him that a map of hive locations existed inside the god-machine. Shortly afterward, Mark had been captured. Once he’d known its existence, retrieving that map had been relatively uncomplicated. What Noah had failed to mention was that the number of hives was daunting. Mark had been unnerved when he’d first examined the map. He had to try once more to get McKafferty to act against the hives
.
Attacking them over a period of time was the only option, and the sooner a huge force like the military began, the sooner the scourge would be on its way to extinction. So much had changed since he’d spoken with McKafferty on his prison flight to Zero-G. He was confident the general would at least listen to him now. Maybe Noah was right and Prometheus was a hive weapon. This idea was such a struggle for him. Why was it so hard to think about it like that? As if to distract him, small memories containing single web pages began populating his mind. He ignored the peculiar memories, writing them off as a quirk of the god-machine adapting to its new world of data. As the pages kept appearing and accumulating, he finally read one of them. It was a classified CIA flash bulletin on the government’s secure intranet. What was this? It was impossible. Seconds later he was checking all the web pages to see if they contained the same kind of bulletin. They did. He was now certain of two things: Noah was right about Prometheus and the hives had launched a full-out attack.

“Turn on the radio!” said Mark.

“I wondered how long it would take you to notice,” said Noah.

“Just turn on the goddamn radio!” said Mark.

“What’s wrong?” asked Sarah.

“Any particular station?” asked Noah.

“Please, just turn it on!” said Mark.

The radio, like the Land Cruiser itself, was an antique. There was a static click. The voice of an excited FWN reporter came in mid-sentence from a crackling speaker. The reporter was stammering about massive kill-zones hitting large cities around North America. So far, the rest of the world had been spared. Coming from a USAG propaganda news channel, ironically, removed all doubt about the accuracy of this report. They would never broadcast such a story unless forced to do so.

“Please God, not again,” said Kathy.

Her voice was broken and she was crying.

“I’m not experiencing a thing from the kill-zones,” said Mark.

“Neither am I,” said Sarah.

“So what!” shouted Kathy.

“It means the god-machine isn’t doing this,” said Mark. “It’s the hives and they’re using Prometheus to do their murdering—”

“And,” interrupted Noah, “the goddess is allowing it because keeping the interface running is too important to her. What humans do to each other is up to them and simply part of her grand experiment. She’s even letting them kill off some of Gaia.”

“What if I convince McKafferty to nuke Prometheus and whatever other copies they’ve built?” said Mark. “Does the god-machine retaliate?”

“What do you think?” said Noah. “Why are you asking what you already know?”

Mark could feel the answer in the entangled interface inside his mind. The god-machine was no longer hiding the truth. It would stop any attack. She might even know in advance and strike preemptively to squelch any and all aggression—but would she retaliate after the fact? He just didn’t believe so. Was Noah trying to tell him that about the god-machine without her catching on? Mark realized he was thinking about the god-machine as a
she
. She had become a living being to him. Perhaps it was an inevitable side effect of having her always in his mind, whispering to him and fulfilling his needs like a spirit lover.

“Try a different station,” said Sarah.

Kathy adjusted the old-fashioned tuner until she found Air Truth amid all the static and emergency broadcast signals. The news was the same, though more thoughtful if not any less panicked. Air Truth was reporting that in the absence of any official statement they had to assume a link between the earlier cyber terrorism and these city destroying kill-zones. The size of the human toll was something Mark had difficulty accepting as real. Ten large cities had been devastated with initial reports of fatality rates close to 100 percent for humans and 80 percent for animal life. The large cities were Fort Worth, Columbus, Austin, San Francisco, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Jose, San Diego, San Antonio, and Philadelphia. Air Truth was reporting that each attack was occurring like clockwork, exactly fifteen minutes apart.