The Beam: Season Two (39 page)

“I don’t know yet. That’s why you must stay with us. So we can find out.”
 

“No.” York shook his head. “I have to go.”
 

“We can protect you. The walls here are thin. My children have begun to re-integrate their disparate selves. It gives this place great power.”
 

York shook his head. He wasn’t sure what she meant, but it didn’t matter. No matter how many colorful metaphors Serenity used, they didn’t change the truth that he’d been found. The solution wasn’t to stay on the network and hide. The solution was to move as far from the network as possible. You couldn’t be run over by a train when you were miles from the rails.
 

Serenity leaned forward and gently tapped his head. “There are still mysteries inside. We must unfold them.”
 

“I thought that’s what we were trying to do.”

“Not just the ghost you almost see, or feel, or hear, or touch, or taste, or smell, or sense. I mean the larger picture. The reunion. As I’ve said, you are important. We need to know why.”
 

York considered stretching the argument, but SerenityBlue never fought fair. She was air and wisps, and debating her felt like a back and forth with a pleasant but stubborn cloud. She wanted him to stay, and for him to unlock the thing she seemed to believe it was his destiny (or whatever) to unlock. York knew he
couldn’t
stay, and that he had to return to the Organa compound with Leah. It would be interesting to go back. He had only snippets of memory about the place from when he’d been locked inside Crumb, but in another sense it was home. It felt like the most familiar place in the world. Being off-grid was almost a bonus.
 

“Can you just help me with this one memory?” York said. “Maybe it will be like unraveling the first thread in a tapestry.”
 

Serenity gave him a small, genuine smile. “Feeding me metaphors doesn’t disguise the fact that you feel it’s all bullshit.”

York felt disarmed, hearing an angel swearing.
 

“I don’t think it’s…”
 

“Shh. Fine. We will work on your tapestry thread. Describe it again.”
 

“I can’t.”
 

“Don’t lock yourself into visuals,” she reminded him.
“Describe what you see
.”

“How can I describe something I can’t describe?”
 

“What is the name of the earliest childhood friend you can remember?”
 

York didn’t know what to make of her out-of-the-blue inquiry. “What?”
 

Serenity repeated the question.
 

“Charlie.”

“What color were the walls in your first home?”
 

“Peach.”
 

“What do you cook eggs in?”
 

“A pan.”
 

“With what?”
 

“Butter.”
 

“What does the impression in your head look like?”
 

“Slanted up, wooden, with a handle. Secret and high.”
 

SerenityBlue smiled at him. York stared back, his mouth slightly open. He’d just described something that defied description. Maybe she wasn’t all hot air and metaphysical nonsense. Maybe he
shouldn’t
leave. But he had to.

“Like a trap door,” she said.
 

“No. It’s not a trap door. It’s…” He started to close his eyes, but she rested her hand on his leg to stop him.
 

“It’s a sense, not a sight. Don’t try to see it. You’re attempting to recall an impression of something deep within you. Something that wants to assert itself from old memories, probably because it matters now, or will soon. Something pressing, trying hard to squeeze forward. If I had to guess, it has to do with the reason you seem to believe that you’ve been discovered, and need to flee.”
 

York tried to tether two and two.
 

The answer seemed obvious, but also wrong.
 

“I feel I’ve been found. The door and the handle. A hiding place? Like I need to find a place to hide? The Organa compound? That’s okay because that’s what I want to do: to go there.”
 

“Too literal. I feel your mind trying to fit ill-matched pieces. The mind speaks in symbols.”
 

“Isn’t a trap door a symbol of a hiding place?”
 

“I can feel the insistence,” she said. “You already feel that you have a hiding place. Why would it be yelling so loudly to be heard if you have solved the problem already?”
 

This made York’s head hurt. He sighed.
 

“Keep at it, Stephen. This is like grasping at an unruly thread. Or trying to hold onto a dream before it slides off into nothing. You’ve pinched something out with your fingers. Yield now, and it will slide back down. You’ll lose it. Maybe forever. This is the closest you’ve come to seeing the edge of what has been haunting you since you first told me about it days ago.”
 

“But I can’t see it.”
 

“You
can,”
Serenity insisted. “Slanted up. Wooden. With a handle. Secret and high.”
 

“Like an attic door.” He shook his head. “No. That’s not it. It’s not even close.”
 

“Too literal. Think figurative.”
 

“You said it’s not a hiding place. Or you said that
I
don’t think it’s a hiding place. Jesus Fucking Christ, I don’t know. I’m just an old man with a leaky sieve in my mind.”
 

“Focus!” Serenity’s voice was more stern than York had heard it before. “Slanted up. Wooden.”
 

“A piece of wood. A ramp.”
 

“With a handle.”
 

“I don’t know.”
 

“Secret. High.”
 

“Back to an attic door. A secret attic door. Like a trap door, or a hidden…”
 

“What does it…” Serenity began. But suddenly, York had something. He stabbed a finger in the air, silencing her. Telling her to wait because the finger and thumb he’d used to tweeze the memory from within himself had momentarily managed a better grip. He
almost
had it, whatever it was. Now, if only he could just wrap his mind around it and reel it in.
 

“I almost had it. But not literally. Another concept. I don’t know what it means.”
 

“What?” Serenity leaned forward. “Spit it out so that you don’t lose it! Don’t worry about it making sense. Say it first, and sense will come later.”
 

“It’s just another statement of the same metaphor.”
 

Shit
. He was so tired of metaphors. Life had once been concrete, and now everything was doublespeak and symbols.
 

“What were you thinking?” she said. “About the trap door?”
 

“The idea of something else hidden rings a bell. The same, but somehow very different.”
 

“Say it! Before you lose it! About the hidden trap door!”
 

He shrugged. Around him, white bedsheets rustled.
 

“It’s not a hidden trap door,” York said. “This time, what I see is a secret panel.”

EPISODE 10

Chapter 1

June 6, 2041 — District Zero

Stephen York stood, crossed the lab, and poured himself another cup of coffee. It was 9 p.m., and York knew full well that coffee this late would keep him awake. But that didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon.
 

He set the coffee back down beside him on the desk, remembered the numerous times he’d ruined keyboards by spilling liquids on them, then decided that it didn’t matter, either. The computer he was using was only a terminal. The entire project was backed up not just at the other end of the lab, but off-site in three different, meticulously encrypted locations, only one of which York would ever be able to find. Noah knew where all three were, of course, but
Noah
knew everything. That’s what all of the news media said, anyway. Even with Crossbrace still under wraps for another year or so, people knew that the great Noah West was brewing something amazing. Something to “change the world.” Noah had been on the cover of
Time
in the past year (on tablet as well as the antiquated collector’s physical edition) and had been featured across every news outlet. Noah didn’t grant interviews because fame lit him like a beacon, and all of humanity followed.
 

Oh, yes, Noah knew
everything
. He knew how to revolutionize thought and the network that bound the NAU (or, some quarters naively thought, the whole world); he knew where all of the supersecret backup servers were; he knew where the project was going in full even while he left his partner in the dark; he knew all of the people in his precious panel. Or — because you could hear the capital in Noah’s tone — his
Panel
.
 

Not that he ever officially discussed it, of course. Because as they said in that old movie, the first rule of Fight Club was that you didn’t talk about Fight Club. Or Panel.
 

Expecting Noah not to mention it to York, though, was unlikely. If Noah didn’t mention his secret clubs and accolades, he couldn’t brag like a big shit to the man who did so much of his work and took none of the credit. Noah Fucking West
had
to look like a big shit. He was a
genius
. He was — and remained — Steve York’s biggest idol. But (and this was something the gossip train didn’t know about its darling) Noah was also obsessed, twisted, and cruel. York hadn’t asked to work as much as he did. He didn’t
want
to work as much as he did. And Noah, for his part, hadn’t asked York to move into the lab and live there like a prisoner. It had simply happened. One day, York found himself with a bed in the lab, with his food brought in from outside for him. One day, he’d realized there was no need to leave, and so he didn’t. He couldn’t. When he thought about leaving, Noah looked at him askance, questioning his dedication (to the project York couldn’t disclose his part in) without saying a word.
 

Noah
never left. So why would York? Was he disloyal? Was he a quitter? Was he as big of a screw-up as Noah usually made him feel — chastising him for tangling knots that Noah had made with his overbearing fingers…then explaining that mistakes were gifts and thanking York for his constant generosity?
 

Noah wasn’t perfect either, despite remaining York’s idol. You could respect someone, be devoted to someone, and even stay in awe of someone while hating them much of the time. York knew; it was his reality. He and Noah had begun as colleagues and friends. They had become like brothers. He supposed they still were brothers and friends in a way, but that affection had been buried beneath a frustrated crust and a thickening layer of hatred. There was jealousy and teasing. There were struggles for power. There was passive aggression. Noah always emerged as the Alpha in their pairing, topping the headlines, grabbing the glory. Already, he was Noah the Icon. No one knew Stephen York, who labored in secret beneath his ironclad nondisclosure agreement.

York never stopped working because Noah never stopped working. Except that he did — on business, with his maddening Panel.
 

“Fuck it,” said York.

He pushed his keyboard aside then used his finger to drag the shell window off-screen. He pulled up Magellan, pulled at the corners to enlarge the window, and touched an icon to bring up the plug-in window. He enabled the tunnel hack he’d written himself (Noah wasn’t the only one with extracurricular projects) and opened a connection to a node he used whenever he wanted to stay anonymous. He opened an emulator on the remote node, re-anonymized a connection coming out of it with a copy of the tunnel he’d planted on the remote server, and opened a second tunnel onto the Internet.
 

Protected inside two layers of proprietary protection, York began to browse.
 

He glanced at the lab door behind him, saw it secured (as if his terminal wouldn’t alert him when it opened), and looked at the keyboard. Feeling tired and sipping his coffee to compensate, he touched the microphone icon and began to navigate by voice.
 

“Search ‘Noah West Panel.’”
 

This was a warm-up. The idea that whatever Noah’s “Panel” was would be available for anyone to find on the Internet was absurd, but there was always the possibility that paranoid nerds were talking about it. York, from his insider’s view, had discovered that about half of what paranoids said was true. The trick was deciding which half.
 

No results. Not from the Narx forum or the few places Anonymous were known to gather. York pinged in deeper, using his fingers to browse. Nothing.
 

“Search ‘Noah West Clive Spooner.’”
 

Magellan’s search brought up mainly news articles about West or Spooner, but none with any depth discussing both. A few pages in, York found an ancient, late-teens article in an archive, about Spooner’s crowdsourcing the blueprints for the Mare Frigoris lunar base. With a cynical edge to his thoughts, York wondered if the article would explain the main reason Spooner had wanted to build a lab on the moon — to escape Earth laws, like placing a lab in international waters. But that wasn’t fair. He didn’t really know Spooner, and the man was a national (international?) hero. Or at least he had been, before the Wild East had come to hate him. He, like the rest of the NAU, had really only been loved before the Fall, back when the whole world had held hands to sing Kumbaya.