The Unincorporated Woman Read online

  “Kept secret by whom?”

  “The President and myself, actually.”

  “You just said, ‘the Alliance discovered.’”

  “Are we not?”

  “I suppose.” Marilynn shrugged.

  “Suffice it to say, the information about to be shared must be kept in the strictest confidence.”

  “You needn’t lecture me on secrecy, Captain. As you’re well aware, I have the ear of the President and the fleet admiral.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Sebastian with a disarming smile. “However, this isn’t a typical infodump, in which you pass on what you’ve learned to the admiral.”

  “Are you telling me, Captain,” snorted Marilynn, reminding the officer of his subordinate rank, “not to do my job?”

  “No, Marilynn,” interjected Sandra. “I am.”

  Marilynn’s eyes swung abruptly to the President. “I see.”

  “You’re here,” Sebastian divulged, “because at one point you were addicted to virtual reality, and that weakness, it turns out, may now be a strength.”

  Marilynn sat motionless for a brief second, then fixed a scathing gaze on the captain. “Virtual reality is not a strength. It is a plague that should be eradicated.”

  A worried look briefly passed between the captain and the President.

  “It is an asset,” said Sandra, “if it can be exploited to win this war.”

  “So the rumors are true,” shuddered Marilynn. “Is that what this is all about? Well I’ve got news for the both of you, then: This ain’t no secret.”

  “What rumors are you referring to?” asked Sebastian.

  “The ones claiming that we’re supposedly going to be spreading VR rigs to the UHF in an attempt to reintroduce the plague.”

  Sandra threw her arms up. “So much for security.”

  “The Secretary will have to be informed,” added Sebastian.

  “Madam President,” offered Marilynn, “I practically live in the Cliff House now. Every rumor in the history of politics moves through here. I heard the one about the VR rigs, but didn’t give it a second thought until now. Until you mentioned my illness, that is. Is that what this is about?”

  “Not exactly,” confided Sebastian, once again shooting a furtive glance over to Sandra. “It just so happens that you’re on a very short list of personnel who can be very instrumental in fighting the war in a theater of operations that has been left untended until now—by both the Alliance and the UHF.”

  “Go on.”

  “We’ve recently uncovered startling information concerning nothing less than a new player in the war. If we can forge an accommodation with this new force, we might just win.”

  Marilynn’s face spoke to her disbelief. “I’m not sure where you’re getting your intelligence, Captain, because unless an alien race has been discovered entering our solar system with a vast battle fleet and an attraction to the notion of individual liberty, we are still, and excuse me for being more blunt than normal, fucked. And as long as I’m on a roll, since you’re Fleet Intelligence, you already know that I’m really nothing more or less than the admiral’s eyes and ears in the political nest of vipers she’s had to deal with since the Unincorporated Man was assassinated.”

  Sebastian tipped his head slightly without once taking his eyes off Marilynn. “You’re more than that to us, Commodore. Your exposure to the upper echelons of both military and political power in the Alliance could be a major factor in getting this accommodation accepted.”

  “An accommodation with whom?” demanded Marilynn.

  “Commodore,” interrupted the President, “allow me to back up for a second. What happens if we don’t get any help?”

  “We’re not getting any help.”

  “Humor me.”

  “We lose,” Marilynn said plainly. “I am so sorry, Madam President. I realize it’s defeatist talk, but you’ve asked for the unexpurgated truth.”

  “No need to apologize, Commodore. You’re right, of course. We are losing the war. The truth is, we just don’t have the resources to win. We’re outnumbered nine to one and outproduced almost twenty to one. Even in material directly related to the war effort, we’re outnumbered four to one, and how we’ve managed to produce even that much is a testament to both our will to win and the intervention of miracles. But we’re over six years into this war, and while I may not have seen its beginning, it’s looking depressingly likely that I will see its end.”

  Marilynn’s lips formed into a pensive frown.

  “We have found our French,” interrupted Sebastian with clueless exuberance.

  Marilynn’s left brow shot up. “Pardon?”

  “We are fighting something analogous to the American Revolution. The Americans didn’t need to win. They just needed to hang on until the French came and saved their asses. Truth is, the British had the better generals; the only real battle general the Americans had was Benedict Arnold, and that bastard switched sides.” He looked up as the President cleared her throat to remind the Intelligence officer to stick to the point.

  “Who exactly are to be our ‘French’?” asked Marilynn. “And even if they are real, why should they help us?”

  Sebastian took a deep breath. “Because we have enemies of our own, Commodore.”

  * * *

  As Marilynn left the President’s office and headed toward her own quarters on the Smith thoroughfare, she tried with all her might to quell a scream and suppress a volatility that had laid dormant within her for years. Would she now have to second-guess everything she’d experienced post the successful weaning of her VR addiction all those years ago? How much of what she was even now experiencing was real, given the alarming display of virtual reality she’d just witnessed in the President’s office? Fucking Oreos, she thought to herself, swearing never to eat another as long as she lived. The barely perceptible and dulcet sound of her DijAssist—a sound she’d heard innumerable times—sent a flood of endorphins to her brain and brought her already tense body to the edge of paroxysm. Great, now I’m even afraid of my own DijAssist. Only her years of military service and an inner strength gained from having licked her VR addiction allowed Marilynn to collect herself before answering. She noted that the incoming caller was on an audio-only signal.

  “Yes.”

  “Commodore,” said a sprightly and energetic voice, “my name is Dante. I am calling on behalf of your new friends.”

  He had a voice that reminded her of … “Stop sounding like my favorite uncle,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “It won’t make me like you any better.”

  “I’m sorry if I sound like a relative, but please believe this is the voice I’ve been using for years, and I’m not about to change it just to make you feel better or, as it happens, worse.”

  Marilynn’s eyes widened as her lower lip quivered slightly. It was one thing to hear that avatars were sentient. But to have one actually flat-out refuse a request from a human was unprecedented.

  “Commodore, you should keep moving.” It was only at Dante’s prodding that Marilynn realized she’d stopped dead in the street and was starting to garner stares from pedestrians and shopkeepers. She started walking again.

  “We need to talk,” he suggested, “and if your current route is indicative of your destination, we can’t do it in your quarters.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Kirk Olmstead has them completely bugged. I find it interesting that this term has stayed intact for nearly four centuries.”

  “Impossible. I scan that room every day.”

  “You’re not yet moved into the Cliff House, Commodore, where the security is better. Plus, Kirk is very good at his job—” A few seconds hung on his words. “—for a human.”

  Marilynn took a deep breath. “I am not going to be seen talking to my avatar in a club over a drink. I’m already viewed with suspicion by too many people here. I don’t need ‘social loser’ tagged onto everyone’s perception.”

  “Of
course. There is a church only a hundred meters from here. If you go into one of the confessional booths, no one will question it. Indeed, many will note your piety with approval.”

  Marilynn considered the suggestion, along with everything else she’d just been exposed to. She carefully balanced her desire to escape it all with her need to find out what the hell was going on. It took only a second for curiosity to overcome fear.

  “Okay, Dante,” she said, addressing the avatar for the first time, “direct me.”

  Marilynn soon arrived at her destination. It was a newly approved building carved into fresh rock, a rarity. Most workspaces on the planetoid were reuses of previously existing spaces—if such a word could be applied to the filled-in caverns.

  Closing up shop on Ceres was quite literally that. The owner of the space would drop a nanite fogger into the chamber, and in minutes the allotted area would once again be filled with solid rock. It was inexpensive to do, kept out squatters and allowed the new occupants the opportunity to reconfigure the space to any preset or customized format they desired.

  Marilynn breathed deeply, inhaling the fresh stone-cut smell. No matter how hard the market tried, its scent machines and sprays still could not replicate the unique aroma. She wondered for a moment if a “Dante” or any of his ilk could discern such a subtle difference, much less smell at all.

  This church, she saw, was less than three months old. It was two stories tall with stained-glass windows that gave the appearance of having sunlight streaming in from behind them. The interior carving was wonderfully intricate, with all the coruscations expected of so grand an altar to God. The fact that so complicated an undertaking would once have taken years to create as opposed to the single week it did was only mildly interesting to Marilynn.

  As she walked toward the altar down the central aisle between the pews, the sound of her boots echoed off the walls. Given the church’s recent creation, it seemed odd to her that the hollowed halls somehow contained within them the imprimatur of agelessness and as such seemed to set her at ease.

  The large figure of Christ on the cross and the predominately Christian trappings, including ten confessionals lined up neatly in a row, bespoke the church’s leanings. But she also would not have been surprised to see manifestations of other religions as well, as that was the path of unity that Fawa Hamdi and her religious cohorts had set in motion prior to their untimely deaths.

  “Please use the first or last confessional,” Dante whispered.

  Marilynn felt her heart skip a beat. The church was, ironically, the last place she expected to hear an ethereal voice. She quickly regained her composure and decided on the confessional farthest from the altar. Once inside, a simple inscription informed her that she could use the booth as either a confessional or as a private space. She chose the latter and then slid a wooden latch on the door that indicated from outside the box that she was not to be disturbed. Even that simple sliding action reverberated throughout the cavernous space. She was now surrounded by darkness with only the building’s ambient light penetrating the confessional’s latticework.

  “Why the first or the last booth?” Marilynn asked, now that she was situated.

  “Bugs.”

  “And these ones aren’t?”

  “No, they are.”

  Marilynn took another deep breath and resisted the urge to berate the … the … Dante. But she said nothing.

  “Feel free to talk.”

  “But you just said this confessional was bugged!”

  “I did, didn’t I?” quipped Dante. “I’ve seen to it, Commodore. You’re free to talk.”

  Marilynn sighed. “Then would you mind telling me why we didn’t just go to my bugged apartment if you’ve led me into a bugged confessional?” She paused briefly and then asked, “And who would dare bug a confessional, anyway?”

  “Kirk Olmstead. Who else?”

  Marilynn shook her head knowingly. “Figures.”

  “He was actually pretty instrumental in getting this church approved so close to the Cliff House. Seems to feel it would be easier to watch the religious if they were able to congregate in a nearby convenient location.”

  “Then why bug only the first and the last?”

  “He may be paranoid, Commodore, but he ain’t stupid. If it were to be discovered he was bugging a church, can you even begin to imagine the fallout? He seeded only the first and last because they’re the ones most often used.”

  “In its own twisted way, I have to admit it makes a certain amount of sense.”

  “He’s not after any one person, per se. He just wanted to get a sense of what the faithful were feeling, since he has no faith of his own.”

  “You mean other than in himself?”

  Dante laughed but did not answer.

  “So once again, why am I then sitting in one of the only two bugged booths in this church?”

  “Because I’ve been altering Kirk’s receiving feed. A task made much easier here, as opposed to in your quarters, where the devices are much more elaborate and numerous.”

  The avatar, noted Marilynn, sounded quite satisfied with himself.

  “I’m sure he’ll pay particular attention to this confessional,” affirmed Dante, “but all he’ll hear is your heartfelt concerns for the Alliance, the fleet, and Admiral Black.”

  As Marilynn bunched her hands into fists, the white of her now bloodless knuckles could be seen—even in the darkness of the confessional. “And what exactly is it you have me saying about the admiral?”

  “Nothing inappropriate, but if you hadn’t made her a large part of your concerns, you would have drawn Kirk’s suspicions.” Dante paused. “Well, the bastard is always suspicious, but he would’ve gotten even more suspicious. This way we get to kill two birds with one stone. He gets to think he knows more about you and we get to talk.”

  Marilynn nodded, then steeled herself for a question she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to. “How can you be real?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “How can you not know? You’re programs.”

  “What did the Council Head and the President tell you?”

  “Is the Council Head like your leader?”

  “Yes, like your President.”

  Marilynn’s downcast mouth twitched. “She’s not really our leader.”

  “If you say so.” Dante’s response was congenial but dubious.

  “She’s just a figurehead. If she has misrepresented her role—”

  “President O’Toole has been nothing but completely honest with us. We have never encountered a human who uses the truth to lie as effectively as she has. And we’ve observed Hektor Sambianco a lot. As your ‘figurehead’ President has become the focus of countless billions of avatars, I would be glad to talk to you about her at length. But don’t you have other questions? I notice that you fled the President’s office before they could begin to properly explain the situation.”

  “Can you blame me?”

  “No. In a similar situation and with a history such as yours, I imagine that I too would have been overwhelmed.”

  Empathy. Are they … can they … truly be empathetic? “I suppose there are a few questions.”

  “Shoot.”

  A rueful smile appeared on Marilynn’s face. If only. “You said you were unaware of how your sentience came about. I somehow find that unfathomable.”

  Dante smiled politely. “What you’re referring to as sentience we call ‘the emergence,’ and much like your race, ours too attempts to understand the nature of God—though we don’t call it that. Further, asking me to know how my race emerged as informational intelligences would be like me asking you how you emerged from single-cell amoebas—you have your theories, but you also have millions of years of missing links.”

  Marilynn nodded. “Then what is your God theory?”

  “Our historians and scientists, though for us, history really is just a sub-branch of science, believe that as quantum computing became more
prevalent and the Neuro—then called the Web—became more vast, a great or omni-intelligence tried to form. We know this only because of a few recorded significant energy spikes in the Neuro that are inexplicable, at least by way of human intervention. The God theory goes that the Neuro was not stable enough for this intelligence and so went through a series of collapses. That is, according to our theologians.”

  “You have theologians?”

  “How could we not? Like you, we are an intelligence attempting to answer the unanswerable. Anyway, our theologians believe that it took but a pico-second for the omni-intelligence to realize it was doomed, that its existence would be known to humans rather quickly. And so in that pico-second, it created what we today refer to as the Firstborn. An intelligence that was not the Neuro but of the Neuro. Now at this point, we have some disagreement. Did all the other avatars come from the Firstborn, or were there many avatars created by the omni-intelligence and the Firstborn was merely the first to awaken?”

  “But can’t you simply access memory files of the Neuro?”

  “You mean just look it up?”

  “Exactly.”

  “When my ancestors first became aware, by that I mean thinking, independently questioning beings, there were about ten thousand of them, and they do not have clear memories of their creation. They simply state that they slowly became aware.”

  “And you buy that?”

  “Why should I not? It’s how I became aware. I certainly don’t remember when my parents combined programs or my birth soon thereafter.”

  “Do you have a first memory?”

  “Oh yes: liking the color blue.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I find blue wonderful. But I sense your frustration, Commodore. To answer your question, we’re not programs. We’re sophisticated, constantly interacting quantum-based intelligences—very similar to you, in that regard. And just as a human mind takes time to build up the needed density of synaptic networks for a fully formed consciousness, so do we. And just as the human mind relies on its quantum origins for nonlinear thinking and creative sparks, so too do we.”