Idempotency (39 page)

“Right. That’s not how it sounds from him. He sees the error in your ways. Your flawed, extremist views. Searle is a man we can work with. He understands numbers, understands the persistence required to make a vision reality. You, however—heh—you are an old horse who needs to be put out to pasture.” The senator smirked as if he were patting a newborn on the head.

Coglin stood up, but the blood in his face didn’t follow. His pale cheeks turned down, and he raised a bony finger up toward the senator. With spittle flying from his old, chapped lips, he began reciting: “Be afraid, for I do not bear the sword in vain. For I am the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer!”

The senator tried to interrupt Coglin’s diatribe, but Coglin merely continued chanting. The senator’s voice raised and his assistants began to pay attention. At last he yelled, “Turn him the hell off!”

And to that, Coglin’s bare hands came crashing down upon the lacquered table. Snarling like a caged mutt and in a raspy breath, half coughing, he spat, “I will destroy your body, and then harvest your soul, but before I do that, I will see to it that you never serve another term in public office again. Good day, Senator.”

The holoVid elegantly dissipated.

“Sir?”

Kane poked his head around the glass door into the conference room that Reverend Coglin had made into his makeshift office.

“Ah, Mr. Kane. Very good. Come in, sit down.” Coglin motioned to the seat next to his, rather than across the table from him. Kane sat down quickly and raised his eyebrows in anticipation.

“Everything okay, Reverend? I heard yelling.”

“Fine, Mr. Kane, just fine. Had to straighten out some investors, is all. Mr. Kane, have you heard the parable of the two sons? Matthew twenty-one, verses twenty-eight to thirty-one?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I must have forgotten that one.”

“Quite forgivable,” Coglin stated warmly and continued in the same tone, “Allow me to quote scripture: ‘A man had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ The boy answered, ‘I will not.’ But later he had a change of heart and went. The father went to the other son and said the same thing. This boy answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did his father’s will?’ They said, ‘The first.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, tax collectors and prostitutes will go ahead of you into the kingdom of God!’”

Kane stared at Coglin in utter confusion, eyebrows still raised.

“Mr. Kane, what I’m trying to discern here is, when I ask you to do something, will you do it, or just pay me lip service? What do you say to that?”

“Sir, I’ll do it, but . . .” Kane’s voice trailed off, then in a surprising flash of problem solving, he spoke up quickly “. . . but in your story, they responded that it was the first son who was going to heaven, and Jesus came back to them and admonished them for their answer. Didn’t he?”

Coglin looked surprisingly stumped. “It’s a poor translation. No matter—”

“But it’s the word of God, sir.”

“Enough!” Coglin rolled his old eyes back into his old head. “Bad example. The point is, Kane, I need to understand where your allegiances lie, no matter how extreme the request. Where do your allegiances lie, Mr. Kane?”

“Come again, sir?”

“Your allegiances. Who will you follow, Kane, when push comes to shove?”

Kane looked entirely perplexed. Worry lines on his forehead seemed to creep up toward the top of his shaved scalp. “Umm, you, sir—no—God! Is
God
the right answer?”

Coglin sighed again. “Yes, God, but
your boss
was the answer I was looking for.” Sighing dramatically, Coglin continued: “It’s simple, Mr Kane. In the coming days, we will need to make critical life-and-death decisions.”

Coglin paused and took in a deep, wheezing breath. “I—I hesitate to tell you this, Kane, but . . . I have reason to believe that Korak is considering a corporate coup, of sorts. I fear he may yet learn of my plans for Mr. Dansby. If so, I expect he may actively halt my attempts at transference. And therefore, in effect, end my life.”

Kane did not look shocked, but Coglin continued as if he had. “Oh, it’s completely understandable. Searle is a good soldier. A man of God. But power corrupts, and he has coveted my seat for decades. I believe he has conspired with several investors and high-ranking government employees to see that I am unable to beat my terminal illness, as sickening as that is. In fact . . . I hate to levy this kind of charge, but it’s essentially tantamount to murder.”

Kane nodded slowly. “Of course it is. What can I do, sir? What role am I to play?”

Coglin appeared relieved at this comment. “It’s rather simple. When push comes to shove, I need to know that you will take orders from me—” Coglin’s glare locked onto Kane as he emphasized slowly “—and follow through on them, no matter the extremity of the situation. And by
me
, I mean me, or even me as Dansby.”

“Of course, Reverend. I believe in what we—you—are doing with all my soul. But . . .” Kane looked down, confused, then continued, “How will I know if you are Dansby—er, if Dansby is you?”

“Good question.” Coglin thought carefully, legitimately stumped. It was such an obvious question—how had he not considered this before? “Tell you what, Kane. If I need your help as Dylan, and you remain unconvinced that it’s truly me, I will make reference to the parable of the two brothers, in some form. Does that work for you?”

“Of course, sir, certainly.” Kane agreed, though confusion still painted his expression. Coglin cringed at Kane’s obvious lack of comprehension. The man knew logistics and security. Science and computers escaped him.

“Good.” Coglin leaned back in his seat and was again disappointed at the lack of a creaking sound. “I need you to understand that any attempts to thwart my plans with Dylan are tantamount to an attempt on my very life, and by extension the important work we are doing toward saving God’s people. Do you understand, Mr. Kane?”

“Yes, sir.” Kane sat bolt upright at finally having a riddle he could solve. “You’ll have my best people on the job, and I will personally stand by your side.”

“Great, fantastic.” Coglin nodded, then drummed on the table with his hands. “It is rare to find such devoted help these days. I’m lucky—no, God is lucky to have you, Mr. Kane.”

“I’m lucky to . . . uh . . . be haved—or, been hadded . . . Reverend.”

“Right . . . right. That’ll be all, Kane. Let me know when Searle arrives.”

Kane stood and responded, “I thought Korak was stationed at the Tobit facility until—”

“He’ll be returning soon, I’ve little doubt.”

“Okay, you’ll be the first to know when he arrives, Reverend.”

Coglin nodded with a sigh, and Kane obediently exited the room.

Sindhu had been in search of sleep for nearly four hours. She knew that even a few hours of deep sleep would heighten her senses and sharpen her acumen for the night to come. But the night to come was akin to the night before Christmas, and she couldn’t wait to open her presents. She tossed and turned as she planned and plotted.

Her ocImps suddenly began projecting a small, subtle globe that appeared two feet directly above her darkened, still closed eyes. The globe was adorned with a pleasant-looking smile, and as the orb began to pulsate with a regular cadence—brighter and brighter—the smile widened. The pulsations continued to increase in intensity; a yellow-hued wake-up call that Sindhu had set five hours earlier—except that Sindhu didn’t need to wake up. Disgustedly, she opened her eyes, reached in front of her, grabbed the virtual orb-alarm and tossed it as far as she could. The anthropomorphized orb winced as it virtually bounced off several objects around her room before hitting the corner of her desk and fizzling away like a popped balloon. As it fizzed away, it yelled a spittle-infused, far-too-positive reminder: “Snooze for seven, then you’ll be in heaven!” Thus far, Sindhu was unimpressed with her new ocImps. She would be even less impressed when the happy orb would return in seven minutes’ time to continue its mission of waking her.

Sitting up in her bunk bed, she began absentmindedly combing her hand through her dark hair, going over her plan yet again. She had five minutes until her untracked hour began at 2:00 a.m. The plan was simple: Make her way to the classroom near the facilities hall, find the SolipstiCorp tech, and attempt to extract whatever data she could. Extra credit would be given if she could somehow find information on Dylan in the process, but she was pessimistic. As she weighed potential variables, she subconsciously whispered a bitter curse toward Simeon as her hand combed the air where her hair should have been.

Two nights had passed since her first contact with Simeon. The team had run two test trials during her previous two ghost hours, simple explorations of innocuous portions of the facility. If Sindhu had been caught during these tests, she could have feigned believable ignorance. Fortunately, those test runs had gone off without incident. All the network logs that Simeon’s team could access had showed Sindhu sleeping soundly in her small second-floor apartment.

Simeon had wanted to do one final test, but Sindhu had talked him out of it. Time was fluttering away, and somewhere in the cavernous confines of the Saint Titus wing of the Titus facility, Dylan had lain unmoving for almost four days. The team feared the worst. Though it wasn’t explicitly discussed, each team member was protective of Dylan; unlike them, he hadn’t volunteered for this operation. He was just a gregarious businessman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So when Sindhu played the Dylan card to get Simeon on board with her own, riskier plan, it hadn’t required much arm-twisting.

The smiling globe popped up in front of her again, and she realized she had already wasted two minutes of her ghost hour. Already clothed, she hopped lithely off the five-feet-high bunk bed. Her bunk was made of a metallic-gray, powder-coated material. It was strong and thin—industrial. Below the bed sat a small, similarly crafted desk and chair. She sat down and slipped on a pair of sneakers. She was wearing her typical running attire: loose-fitting black spandex and a simple matching top. She considered grabbing a sweatshirt, as the facility cooled off noticeably at night, but she figured she’d be moving quickly and soon be warm enough. Requiring nothing else, Sindhu walked three paces to her door, cracked it open, and glanced up and down the hall. She noticed nothing at all, just as it had been the previous two nights, and so she ducked out and began to immediately jog away.

The lack of obvious security within Titus had initially surprised Simeon and the team, but security was not always obvious. Jay-san had been the one to discover numerous data points buried deep in logs that revealed small mobile security units stationed all around the facility. These units each stood one meter in height, with a circular trunk one-half meter in diameter. Each unit’s legs formed a tripod, with joints in the middle of the two front legs; these allowed the units to climb stairs faster than any human possibly could. During the day, this covert security force fronted as informational holoPods, making friendly banter with inquisitive passersby; but when called upon, the holoPods could access outfitted technology for both “peaceful” apprehension and large-scale crowd control.

Sindhu was not excited to learn of this covert feature of the facility. Further dampening her spirits, the SOP team had postulated that a small minority of the present workforce might be androids blending in undercover. “There’s no more effective means of hiding than not hiding,” Simeon was fond of lecturing the team.

She jogged around a corner and a holoPod, detecting movement, promptly presented a smiling holographic head above its sturdy three-legged trunk. The holoPod head nodded a friendly hello toward Sindhu, and promptly blinked off as she moved away. Sindhu breathed a sigh of relief at the knowledge that the holoPods were not equipped with optic detection, so they could not identify Sindhu as she passed. According to the holoPod’s data, Sindhu was still fast asleep in her small workforce apartment. The holoPod, now confused, reported an error that unidentified movement had been detected, but, as SOP already knew, these errors were presently ignored owing to the skeleton staff and the many false alarms they always received (usually from the cleaning automata).

An ambient light bobbed in front of her now, and she ran toward it briskly but still slowly enough to keep her breath below a peaceful panting. The sound of running water welled up around Sindhu and began to drown out the sound of her breathing. Less than a minute later, she was running through the Silas Wright Titus water-themed courtyard.

Various aqueducts and waterfalls created an M. C. Escher–like three-dimensional park. In the middle of the park, which Sindhu avoided, sat a frozen, perfectly circular lake. It was made of obsidian, which caused the lake to have a uniquely devoid look. All of the running water throughout the jigsaw park ended up deposited on the frozen surface of the Black Lake. Ornate ice sculptures, enormous in size, acted as drains for the incoming water, eventually pumping it back to the tops of the courtyard.

Sindhu immediately felt safer in and among the watery piping, partially because the ubiquitous sound of running water helping to hide her footfalls, but also because the many structures that guided the water provided deft angles to help hide her as she ran. She took a circuitous route to avoid the chance of meeting anyone who might be out for a late-night stroll. Even so, while her time across the courtyard was not record-breaking, it was swift. She covered the five-kilometer length in just under fifteen minutes.

Once she was on the other side of the courtyard, a few hallways whizzed past her as she ran, and finally Sindhu ducked into a utility room just past the lecture hall’s entrance. She was breathing more heavily than she had hoped she would, and she took a moment to balance her weight upon her knees. Simeon, however, did not allow her respite, as an encrypted text chat popped up in her ocImps.

BEGIN 256 PETABYTE OpenPGP PUBLIC, PRIVATE, & AUTHORIZED ENCRYPTED CHAT SESSION . . . AFFIRM THREE TIMES TO ACCEPT PUBLIC KEY AND SIGNED CHAT FROM: