The Unincorporated Woman Read online

  Marilynn opened her mouth to argue, but in a flash her Neuro partner was gone.

  Sandra activated a security field and came around her desk to sit where Dante had sat only moments before. The seat was cold to the touch. Sandra wasn’t sure why, but that little bit of tactile information always disturbed her. “Are we alone?”

  “Let me check,” offered Marilynn, placing two fingers from each hand to her temples. Seconds later, she was instantly in the Neuro.

  The old VR system used a brain–computer interface comprising an electroencephalography scalp band that could read neurofeedback and provide 3D visualization of brain activity. That band, combined with noninvasive neuroelectric monitoring and powerful software, created the first truly effective VR environments. The system had been so spectacularly successful that, much like the printed book, the VR rig’s basic architecture had changed little from its initial inception. And any advancement that might have occurred was quickly put to rest by the implosion of society during the Grand Collapse and the Virtual Reality Dictates that followed in the cataclysm’s deadly wake. The avatars had been only too glad to keep humanity’s interest in furthering VR in check, lest their secret be discovered. However, with the new paradigm of human–avatar relations, all bets were off and the avatars had pointed the way toward a more efficient VR mechanism: whole-body installation, as first proposed by Robert Freitas in the first volume of his seminal work, Nanomedicine.

  The key issue for enabling full-immersion reality had been in obtaining the necessary bandwidth inside the body. At the time of the Grand Collapse, that technology was not yet available. It was now. With a mature nanotech society, full-immersion reality was made manifest and Marilynn had been humanity’s first-ever VR-naut. Neuron-monitoring chemical sensors had been placed in her brain that could capture relevant chemical events occurring within a 5-millisecond time window, ensuring instantaneous—or close enough therein—brain-state monitoring. The temple touch points were a simple matter of creating a DNA recognition sensor combined with a touch pattern that acted as a key to activate the internal VR.

  In this way, Marilynn and the NITES had, out of necessity, achieved the unthinkable—their own bodies were now cybernetic VR rigs.

  Because Marilynn was and always would be an addict, her initial foray into such seamless VR was far more terrifying than it was exhilarating. But she quickly got over both emotions. Years of experience controlling her impulses coupled with the realization that millions of souls, both avatar and human, now depended on her, made the task less daunting than she’d initially imagined.

  Marilynn poked around the small space that the confinement field had made of the Neuro in the Triangle Office and found neither avatars nor programs set to eavesdrop. Then for good measure, she set her mind to look through the equipment in the office and found it clear. The first time she’d done that, she thought she would have a breakdown. Sending her mind and soul into and out of all the machines that make up daily life was like losing yourself in a maze a million miles long. But now she could do such things without even thinking about it. Marilynn removed her fingers from the side of her head and returned to human reality.

  “We’re alone, Madam President.”

  “Damn, I’d love to have one of those.”

  “We’ve been over this. If I get caught, I’m just a relapsed VR addict with some strange new technology. If you get caught, we’re screwed.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to get one, Marilynn, I just said I wanted one.” Then under her breath she muttered, “I’m just the one who helped design the damn thing, I should at least get a chance to play wit…”

  “If you’re done ranting,” interjected Marilynn, “there’s something else I have tell you.”

  Sandra’s ears perked up. Marilynn’s debriefings of her forays into the avatar world were always done in utmost secrecy, but most of the time, the avatars’ day-to-day lives were strikingly similar to those of their human progenitors—filled with boring and mundane tasks. It was generally the technical aspects of their society that most fascinated Sandra, and her debriefings with Marilynn, though often interesting, had become somewhat rote of late.

  “Yes,” invited Sandra.

  “I think I know who killed Justin Cord.”

  * * *

  “Start at the beginning. It’s critical that you leave nothing out.”

  Marilynn nodded. “It occurred to me if I were going to be able to move about undetected in the UHF Neuro, it might be good to practice in the Alliance Neuro. Mind you, Dante’s been very good at pointing out the avatar way of things and I’ve certainly learned a lot about his world in these past six months of training, but since the backdoor incident with you, I figured there may be other areas in which they might be vulnerable. At first I simply went places that would be unexpected rather than forbidden, just to see if anyone would notice. Places like long-term record storage or our symbiotic weapons cage. Then I began to take things.” Marilynn noted Sandra’s raised eyebrow. “You’re the one who told me to poke around and not to bother you unless I found something interesting.”

  Sandra acknowledged the truth of Marilynn’s words with a nod and gestured for her to continue.

  “At first it was little things like our equivalent of data crystals or stims. I also, per your orders, started to monitor their communication links.”

  Sandra nodded once more.

  “Nothing too sophisticated, mind you. It also helps that they’ve never had to secure their data from humans before. I figured if I was caught, all I would do is tell the truth—that I was running a NITES operation to test the limits of avatar security against a trained human presence.”

  “Good cover.”

  “Yeah. So while I was at the movies—”

  “Movies,” repeated Sandra, eyes sharp with recollection. “I seem to remember reading about them in one of the reports—2D, right?”

  Marilynn nodded.

  “Something about avatar data space being severely rationed due to the war.”

  “Yes,” explained Marilynn, “2D movies make very good sense. Rather than have lots of avatars creating micro nodes within an increasingly limited Neuro space, the theaters provide one single processing node for hundreds of avatars.”

  “And gives them something with far greater entertainment value,” finished Sandra, now remembering the finer details of the report. “—better insight into human thinking.”

  Marilynn nodded almost dismissively, anxious to press on. “Anyways, we were watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for like the umpteenth time—”

  “Excuse me, Marilynn, but ‘we’?”

  “Dante and I.”

  “Was this a date?”

  Marilynn’s face registered surprise. She was forced to consider the question. “No! Well, not really. I mean, how?… No! No,” she said, shaking her head firmly. “Could we even?”

  Sandra chuckled. “Marilynn, I wasn’t there. Was it or wasn’t it a date?”

  “I guess by strict definition, it was. How very odd.”

  “That you never considered it as such?”

  “Yes.”

  Sandra’s eyes glazed over a bit. “I remember Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Hated the child catcher, loved the songs. Is it popular?”

  “Oh my god, yes.”

  Sandra nodded, but her brow folded into a neat corduroy pattern across her forehead. She seemed to be fishing for an answer that Marilynn couldn’t provide.

  “I should probably watch it, again.”

  “Why? It’s puerile.”

  “Agreed. But when we win this war, there are going to be only two powers left in the solar system capable of deciding the fate of the human race. And when that time comes, we’ll need to know all we can about the other.”

  “In that case,” added Marilynn, “pay special attention to the scene where the puppet is singing to the windup doll.”

  “Sorry.” Sandra gave Marilynn a quizzical look. “It’s been a while.”

 
; “It’s near the end. You’ll swear the avatars are being hypnotized. They can’t take their eyes off it. Some of them actually break down in tears.”

  “Hmm—please continue.”

  “Yes, Madam President. Remember that report on ‘shadow’ programs?”

  “The fake avatars that humans currently interact with.”

  “Correct. Well, I decided to create one of my own.”

  “You thought turnabout would be fair play,” grinned Sandra approvingly.

  “Yes, ma’am, I did,” answered Marilynn, pride evident in her voice. “Making the shell was pretty easy, but making it interactive was a bust. There is almost no situation in which a human can be with an avatar that will fool the avatar for even a few seconds.”

  “Why not? It would seem to be only a matter of coding.”

  “It’s hard to code against curiosity. Unlike humans, used to ignoring avatars or kept to a few mundane exchanges, avatars are incredibly fascinated by any human they meet. Even avatars I’ve been with hundreds of times still study me like I’m the most interesting thing they’ve ever laid eyes on. Shadow programming for humans in the Neuro might be useful in the future, but for now I found only one place that it can be used effectively.”

  Understanding blossomed on Sandra’s face. “The movies.”

  “The movies,” Marilynn agreed. “In that darkened space, avatars and humans are engaged in the same activity. They’re very much like us in that they’ll observe us to see if we’re laughing or crying at certain scenes, but they’re painfully polite and will rarely if ever comment during a screening. I daresay, half my shadow interactions seem to be the use of the word ‘shush.’”

  “Go on.”

  “Yesterday, I left my shadow at the theater with Dante and snuck out for a routine recon. I thought this might be a good opportunity to see if I could use a BDD to break into his house.”

  “What?” exclaimed Sandra, concerned.

  “For the past six months, the avatars and the NITES have been testing each other’s security because if we don’t push our limits, Al’s monsters sure as shit will. My only intention was to test Dante’s personal perimeter.”

  “Clearly you succeeded.”

  “Greater than I could’ve imagined. I intended to leave a box of popcorn on his coffee table. We try to one-up each other.”

  Sandra snickered at the petty rivalry, but by slow turns such as this, was beginning to realize how very similar the races actually were.

  “The BDD landed me in his secure room.”

  Sandra’s face grew rigid. “Security exercise aside, you do realize that you could’ve endangered the entire treaty.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did. But the fact of the matter was, I had already broken into his secure room—even if unintentionally.”

  “Philo’s dog, then.”

  “Exactly. That’s where I found this.” Marilynn activated the Triangle Office’s holo-tank, procured another data crystal from her pocket, and inserted it into the control panel. She directed the image to appear above the coffee table. Soon Marilynn and Sandra were both viewing a report showing the contents of a storage room in the Nerid facility orbiting Neptune. Hello, old friend, thought Sandra as she stared at the suspension unit she’d spent years perfecting. The report talked about the contents of room D4-3E40 and then went on to stipulate that Kirk Olmstead had had knowledge of the Nerid report years prior to his abrupt release of it to Hildegard Rhunsfeld’s database—just days before Justin Cord’s assassination.

  Sandra absorbed the information first with an expression of curiosity which quickly grew to one of grave concern. Her eyes dimmed to emotionless orbs as a single name flowed through her clenched jaw. “Olmstead.”

  “If we can trust this data,” confirmed Marilynn, “then, yes.”

  “Could it be ruse?”

  “That would suppose the avatars knew I was lurking about and planted this on purpose.”

  Sandra nodded slowly. “But if on purpose, to what purpose?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” suggested Marilynn, “it’s something as simple as getting rid of Kirk.”

  “So, replace an effective Security Secretary with one not nearly so effective.”

  “And therefore not as dangerous.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so, Marilynn.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a particularly dangerous way for them to go about it. This report doesn’t just implicate Kirk—”

  “True,” agreed Marilynn. “A man capable of assassinating one President—”

  “—could assassinate another,” finished Sandra.

  “Of more conern to me, Madam President, is that it implicates the avatars as well.”

  “Not all the avatars, Marilynn.” Sandra’s eyes narrowed and her face became as rigid and cold as finely chiseled stone. “Just the two we’re most dependent on for winning this war.”

  AWS Spartacus, Gedretar Shipworks, Ceres

  Omad Hassan slid his feet off the desk, stood up, and greeted Sergeant Eric Holke with a rare, genuine smile. “Sergeant,” Omad roared, returning Holke’s stiff salute with one far less perfunctory, “damned if it isn’t good to get a load of your ugly mug again.”

  “And, um, yours as well, sir.”

  Omad stared down at his cybernetic appendages. “For someone nicknamed Legless, you mean.” He then looked back up at the speechless sergeant. “Like ’em?”

  “Sure … sir.”

  “I coulda gone all out and got the premier line, but really, who needs that much tech below their legs? More shit to go wrong, if ya ask me. Plus,” added Omad, pulling a pant leg up to proudly display the new appendage, “these things practically walk themselves. And ya know, the whole ‘legless’ thing has kind of grown on me.”

  “You could say that, sir.”

  “Yeah, shitty joke, I know. But I’m sure you didn’t come out here to check out my legs.”

  “Afraid not, sir.”

  “Thought so. When a grand admiral and a President both come to visit at the same time, you know it can’t be good.”

  Holke nodded. “Something’s rattled the cage, that’s for sure.”

  “That’s all you got?”

  Holke’s eyes pivoted left and then right. He lowered his voice. “I think part of the UHF fleet is moving.”

  Omad’s irascible grin returned. “Listen, son. Stop by for a moment post this meeting, will ya?”

  Holke nodded as the room informed the two of them that the Presidential contingent had arrived. Two of Holke’s security detail entered the room, immediately followed by President O’Toole and Admiral Sinclair. With a curt nod from Sinclair and a slight smile from Sandra, Holke and the two guards made their exit.

  “Can I offer anyone a drink?” he offered, beckoning the two to have a seat. “Goddamned ship’s so damn big, they actually put a bar in my quarters.”

  “You’re in a battle cruiser,” insisted Sinclair, “because admirals should not be conducting battles in a frigate.”

  Omad shrugged off the grand admiral’s logic with the flick of a wrist. “The Dolphin was a good ship, sir. The old girl got me and her crew through most of the war.”

  “It’s not as if you haven’t been making the UHF miserable in Spartacus, here.”

  “She’s a good ship too, sir, but I won’t ever give up missing the Dolphin.”

  “Nor should you, Admiral. My first ship, back when I just started working for one of the mercenary companies, was called the CSS Corporate Raider.” Sinclair paused on the look he got from Omad and Sandra. “Go on, laugh. I was tempted to at first. It should’ve been scrapped, it was so old. And I’d swear on a stack of requisition forms that I spent more time repairing that piece of junk than actually flying it. Still, there are times I’d give almost anything to be back on her bridge. You never forget your first, Omad.”

  “No, sir. And now that we’ve successfully accessed memory lane, mind telling me why we’re all here?”

&nbs
p; “As you’ve probably already heard, Gupta’s on the move. Jupiter bound, by all accounts.”

  Omad shook his head and smiled. “That does it. It’s not enough that she’s a better admiral than me, now she’s gotta go and become a prophetess?” Omad looked up to the ceiling, shaking his head disapprovingly. “You took my legs, Lord. Was it too much to ask for a little foresight?”

  “It was a calculated guess,” offered Sinclair. “A good one, for sure. Anyhow, Gupta should be there in two to three weeks, depending on how much of his fuel he wants to burn.”

  “Closer to three,” figured Omad. “It’s not as if he can surprise us. He wants to smoke out J.D.—if she’s there. He may as well arrive with more fuel—gives him room to maneuver. What are my orders?”

  “About the same. In twelve hours, you’re to take your flotilla and begin what will appear to be another raid of UHF positions in the occupied Belt. You’ll even be dropping supplies to various resistance groups. Disrupt what you can, but once you’re clear, head deep into the Belt. We want them to think you’re going back to Eros.” Sinclair had a sad look about him as he stood up and gave the now standing Omad a perfect salute. “The President has some questions for you, Admiral Hassan. Please give her your full cooperation.”

  Omad’s brow rose perceptibly. “Full cooperation, Josh?”

  “Full cooperation, Omad.” Sinclair then bowed respectfully to Sandra, turned and left.

  Omad sat back down and stared at his lone visitor with cool detachment. “When did you become the President, Madam President?”

  “Depends whom you ask,” Sandra replied courteously. “And I’ll take that drink if the offer’s still on the table.”

  “That offer is always on the table, Madam President.” Omad hopped up and went over to the bar. “What’ll it be?”

  “Ever heard of a drink called Essence of Burning Village?”

  Omad was intrigued. “I have not. But if you tell me how to make it, I’m sure I can find the ingredients.”

  “Really wish I knew. I had it once and only once when I was in university. It was at a dorm party. Someone handed it to me, told me what it was called, and then disappeared. The only thing I remember is the strange tingling sensation it left on my tongue.”